Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [81]
And he knew they did not understand what he asked them. He tested them all to destruction. He was dissatisfied and his balance was disturbed.
Something had interfered with the experiment. He would run it again with new subjects. This time they would be targeted more specifically: the match would be physical and by background. But as they were found he must also fmd the source of the disturbance.
This time he called to all the robots, the robots that were his and were him, to watch and to listen and to find what was corrupting the data he was gathering. This time his will spread beyond his reach, going from one to another. Something was deliberately trying to prevent him from being. He would know what it was and then he would deal with it finally.
At the central service facility, routine work was speeded up to meet the requirement for extra Vocs and Supervocs. Additional back-up squads of stopDums were formed by resetting standard Dums and were assigned to conspicuous standby locations.
Despite the drain on resources, the ultra-secret test programme on the first full production run Cyborg-class robots, the potentially compromised production run, continued uninterrupted. The delay in the Cyborgs’ conditioning due to the terrorist raid had produced some minor behavioural anomalies -
there was a bizarre chewing reflex, for example - but there was nothing to suggest any major defects had developed.
The tech team were relieved and starting to relax slightly.
Uvanov was reported to be almost satisfied.
The question of how to persuade the population that the new generation of robots was a beneficial advance remained unresolved and until that was dealt with, the Cyborg class would stay a closely guarded secret. The rigorous tests continued in the meantime and as the multiple subjects came and went through the rush of the central service facility no one noticed that the spirit of Taren Capel was with them.
It was all happening too quickly and it was getting out of hand.
Sarl had made it clear from the beginning that he was not happy to see the Doctor, and when the others agreed to let him stay at the committee safe house it was against his strongly expressed views. The man asked too many questions. The only person who could vouch for him was the girl Leela, and she was probably a spy herself. Worst of all he had brought with him Ander Poul, the half-mad ex-security agent who was wanted for a multiple murder that they were being blamed for because the bodies carried their mark. It had been a pointless massacre and when news of it broke the Tarenists had been made to look like monsters, demonised and reviled. It made it almost inevitable that the latest outbreak of senseless killings should be blamed on them.
The strategy, to build the movement gradually, preaching Capel’s message of a return to a world where humanity counted while at the same time striking at strategic robot installations, had been ruined. Poul claimed not to have done the original murders, though he admitted he was there and he thought he remembered hitting a security officer as he was escaping. He claimed he couldn’t remember what he was escaping from. He claimed not to have heard of the movement but he made wild claims to have met Taren Capel. He said the girl Leela had met Taren Capel too. He remembered her with him. And so Padil had the idea that this man who called himself the Doctor might be Taren Capel himself. It was all happening too quickly and it was getting out of hand.
‘Relax, Sarl,’ the Doctor said, studying the effect on his sonic screwdriver as he waved it back and forth across the edge of the invisible boundary. ‘You and I both know I’m not Taren Capel.’
‘I’m not sure any more.’
‘Yes you are.’ The Doctor had deliberately engineered this meeting away from the others, particularly away from Padil whose religious fervour was becoming bothersome. ‘You’re a rational man.’
They were standing at the end of a narrow alley between