Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [60]
‘I’m surprised the doors opened,’ Con remarked as they hurried away. ‘You’d have expected it to lock us in. That’s a full security alert. Everything locks down.’
‘I expect the lift was pre-programmed,’ the Doctor said.
‘To let him out.’ Con snapped his fingers. ‘Of course it was.
But after you showed him a short cut, we got out in his place.’
He grinned at the Doctor. ‘You undercover agents are pretty special, aren’t you? Cold and calculating doesn’t do it justice.’
The Doctor thought about arguing but gave up the idea.
Like most people, Con was going to believe what he wanted to believe. Why it was always more difficult to persuade people that something wasn’t true than to convince them that it was remained a mystery to him. He paused and stood waiting as a squad of stopDums suddenly appeared and marched briskly towards them. He doubted whether these robots were agile enough to respond if he and Con dodged away at the last moment but that turned out not to be necessary. The Doctor was not entirely surprised when the squad ignored the two of them completely and doubled past on their single-minded way to block access to the tower. All over the docking bays robots were emerging and moving to apparently predetermined positions.
From seeming empty and deserted, the bays were now bustling with activity.
‘They’re going to let us walk away,’ Con said disbelievingly.
‘It’s as though we don’t matter.’ He looked at the Doctor. ‘Hey, it’s not another agent thing, is it? Another secret device? We’re not invisible now, are we?’
The Doctor smiled broadly. ‘I could get to quite like you, Con, which is strange because I normally find idiots rather tiresome.’ He looked around. ‘The flier’s over there somewhere, isn’t it?’ He pointed.
‘No,’ Con said, pointing and setting off in a different direction.
‘Are you sure?’ the Doctor demanded.
‘I may be an idiot,’ he said with no sign of rancour, ‘but I know where my flier is. Where it was anyway.’
‘It won’t have been touched,’ the Doctor said, more confidently than he felt. It shouldn’t have been touched, he thought, because if they weren’t part of the plan then neither was the flier. But that was only a theory.
They strode on for a while in silence and then Con said, ‘Are you going to tel me why they’re ignoring us?’
‘Because we’re not supposed to be here,’ the Doctor said.
‘That’s what security alerts are for,’ Con said. ‘To catch people who aren’t supposed to be here.’
‘We’re not part of the plan, it seems,’ the Doctor said, ‘so as far as they’re concerned we’re not here. As far as all this is concerned,’ he gestured around, ‘we don’t exist.’
Con shook his head. ‘They’re not that dim, not even Dums are that dim.’
‘It’s one of the dangers of working to a plan,’ the Doctor said. ‘You can lose sight of what’s actually happening.’
‘You’re saying that somewhere there is a man with a plan.’
‘Or a woman. We mustn’t be sexist about these things.’
‘Sexist?’ Con sounded puzzled.
‘Never mind,’ the Doctor said. ‘Another time another place.
I’m saying someone has a plan.’
‘Who is it? Can you tell me who it is?’
‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor said.
‘But you know what the plan is,’ Con prompted.
‘No.’
‘You don’t know what it is and you don’t know who’s behind it but you do know there’s a plan.’
The Doctor remembered his conversation with Uvanov: Someone is targeting me, Doctor. Targeting you in what way? I don’t know.
For what reason? I don’t know that either. Don’t you think that’s just a bit paranoid? He increased his pace and said, ‘I don’t see any sign of the flier.’
‘It’s a good thing you are an agent, Doctor,’ Con said, hurrying to keep up, ‘or I’d be worried about your hold on reality.’
It came as no surprise to Stenton ‘Fatso’ Rull when he got the wake-up call telling him that Ander Poul had gone berserk at the docking bays and was trapped in Dockmaster Control. He