Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [83]
Sarl gestured at the motionless robot. ‘You show me a sign.’
‘I do?’ the Doctor asked.
‘You show me your messenger.’
‘That thing?’ The Doctor was momentarily taken aback.
Then he realised what the man was saying. ‘Are you saying that is Taren Capel’s go-between?’
‘You summoned him to show me.’ Sarl had obviously abandoned any doubts he might have had about the Doctor’s identity.
‘That’s a robot, Sarl,’ the Doctor said. ‘You’re telling me a robot brought Taren Capel’s instructions?’
‘You don’t need to keep testing me,’ Sarl said, earnestly. ‘I acknowledge you. You are Taren Capel. Humanity be in you.
You are my guide and judge.’
‘Get a grip, Sarl.’ The Doctor turned away in exasperation.
‘Come on, let’s go back.’ He started to stride back up the alley. ‘I am not Taren Capel,’ he said loudly, more loudly than he intended. ‘Taren Capel is dead.’ He lowered his voice slightly. ‘I saw him die. That thing out there is a robot that is capable of killing. One of them tried to kill me.’ He stopped walking. He shouldn’t have been that blunt. The man was a product of his world and with all his experiences the Doctor should understand if anyone did. He waited for Sarl’s reaction. When there was none he turned, half-expecting to see the man speechless with anger or shock or something of the kind. What he did not expect was to see Sarl sprinting across the open ground towards the motionless robot. ‘No!’ the Doctor shouted. ‘Sarl! That thing is dangerous!’
Sarl reached the robot and turned and stood beside it shoulder to shoulder. ‘You are Taren Capel,’ he shouted back at the Doctor. ‘This man,’ he went on, putting his hand on the robot’s shoulder, ‘knows who you are and so do I.’
‘Get away from it!’ the Doctor shouted. ‘It’s not a man!’
The robot put a hand on Sarl’s shoulder in an odd gesture which clumsily mimicked what he had done.
The Doctor tried again. ‘Sarl! It is Taren Capel who orders you to come back across the boundary!’
Sarl turned his face to the robot and smiled. Wordlessly the robot broke his neck and dropped his twitching corpse on to the ground. When the twitching stopped it walked off without a backward glance.
Uvanov became a Company Board member and a firstmaster as the crisis was developing. The Production Director, his main rival for the seat, had made the mistake of throwing in his lot with the Landerchild faction. Nods-and-winks had led him to expect a major shake-up was coming and that Landerchild was the man to have on your side. Whispers suggested that he was a man with a plan. Unfortunately for the Production Director, whatever the plan was it appeared to have been undermined by Uvanov’s frontal attack on Landerchild at the first Board meeting he had attended. After that Landerchild, it seemed, was no longer in a position to sponsor anyone and Uvanov was the majority choice. Landerchild himself was beginning to regret his unquestioning acceptance that for the plan to work patience was the essential order of the day but he kept his peace and his languidly relaxed demeanour. Uvanov was magnanimous in victory and the Production Director remained in place for several days before being dismissed from the Company.
As he took his seat at the table, Uvanov already knew what most of the other Board members could not have accepted even if he had been stupid enough to raise it. He doubted whether they could have considered the idea without immediate medical support. The deaths which were threatening to panic the population were not the work of any Tarenist gang of murderous perverts. It wasn’t people at all. It was robots. Try telling that to the populace and see what sort of panic develops.
He had no real proof of course. There were no eyewitnesses, no surveillance tapes. A few surveillance images of very ordinary men and women - average height, brown hair, dressed in plain smock and leggings - which were captured in the vicinity of some of the incidents, were significant only if you knew about the new class of robots. They were not proof even then. There was nothing directly incriminating