Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [53]
The Doctor tried to sound reasonable. ‘The locked cage won’t confuse them if you’re standing there, will it?’
‘I’ll hide: Con said:Or better still, why don’t you lock me up in it again? Now that would be confusing.’
They really were an extraordinarily paranoid group of people, the Doctor reflected. ‘I thought Topmaster Uvanov put you and your flier at my disposal?’ he suggested.
That almost had the required effect. It was clear to the Doctor that Con was nearly as nervous of getting on the wrong side of Uvanov as he was of upsetting some murderous agent.
He wondered whether to mention the Sewerpits.
‘Just say when you need me,’ Con said. ‘I’ll be right here waiting. Just shout when you want to lift on out.’
‘Now!’ the Doctor shouted.
‘Now?’
‘Now. Come on,’ the Doctor chivvied as Con finally and reluctantly moved to follow him. When he had realised that he must be careful of what he said to those newly formed robots he had met in the hatchling dome, he thought, he should have made a mental note to be careful when speaking to the humans as well.
Both the big main doors and the smaller access door were unlocked. ‘They didn’t think we were much of a threat,’ the Doctor said, stepping through and staring round at the floodlit vista of roadways and gantries and pipe runs and storage silos which stretched out across the back of the docking bays. Behind it all the sky was beginning to drift towards the pale grey lightness of early dawn.
Following him out, Con muttered, ‘They didn’t know about you.’
The Doctor ignored him. ‘How do we get into that tower control suite?’ he asked, setting off at a brisk pace for the six -
hundred-foot-high metal column topped off by what looked like a slightly squashed metal tulip.
‘Dockmaster Control? Why do you want to get into the Dockmaster Control suite?’
‘Research.’
‘There’s nothing in there but the Docko-dickos,’ Con protested. ‘You said we were lifting out of here.’ He jumped in front of the Doctor and put a hand on his chest. ‘You’ve been misleading me.’
‘Settle down, Flierman Con Bartel,’ the Doctor said.
‘Remember Uvanov and the Sewerpits.’
Aggressively, as though spoiling for a fight, Con stood his ground and pushed his face close to the Doctor’s. ‘There’s someone watching us,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t like the look of him. I think he might be one of yours.’
‘One of mine?’
‘An agent or something.’
‘Where?’ The Doctor looked around.
‘Don’t look,’ Con hissed.
The Doctor couldn’t see anybody. ‘I can’t see anybody,’ he said. ‘He was over there,’ Con insisted, pointing at the base of a nearby gantry.
‘There’s nobody there now,’ the Doctor said. ‘Are you sure you didn’t imagine it? What did he look like?’
‘He was like you.’
‘Then you did imagine it.’ The Doctor set off for the tower again. ‘I am unique,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Uniquely unthreatening and unthreateningly unique. There is no one else who looks like me. Not even me actually.’
‘I don’t mean he looked like you,’ Con said. ‘I mean he was out of place like you are.’
The Doctor strode on. ‘In what way out of place exactly?’
Con was glancing round nervously. ‘He looked prosperous.
Plain smock and leggings. You know, tasteful? Wealthy maybe.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Not really. He was sort of average height, brown hair.
Ordinary. But he shouldn’t have been there and he was watching us.’ ‘It is remarkably quiet and deserted round here,’ the Doctor said thoughtfully. ‘It can play tricks on the perception. Perhaps what you saw was a robot working.’
‘It wasn’t a robot,’ Con scoffed. ‘You can’t mistake a robot for a man. Robots can’t look like people.’
‘Are you sure?’ Ahead of them the Doctor could see now they were closer that the tower was a remarkable feat of engineering. The flimsy-seeming metal column was not buttressed in any way but rose straight from the ground. Six hundred feet up in the air, the enclosed observation platform at the top of the tower looked delicate, and the connection to the column was also unreinforced.
‘It’s not allowed. It’s never been allowed.