Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [91]
The Doctor had considered confirming the Tarenists’ claim that he was Taren Capel, and using that power to convince them that they were the best people to plan and organise an evacuation of the Sewerpits. Presumably they would be more inclined to believe it from what Leela persisted in calling their tribal shaman.
Actually she was right, that was how they thought of the man.
Pity he couldn’t use his authority as Taren Capel to convince them that he wasn’t Taren Capel.
‘The Sewerpits are intended to keep robots in - is that what you’re saying, Doctor?’ Tani summarised.
‘That’s what he’s saying,’ Toos said impatiently. ‘It’s not difficult to understand.’
‘It’s difficult to believe,’ Padil remarked.
This from his most devout disciple, the Doctor thought.
Perhaps that was a good sign. Perhaps she was finally starting to think for herself.
‘Difficult for those who do not accept the words of Capel, humanity be in him,’ she went on, looking at the Doctor, ‘as I do.’ Then again perhaps not, he thought.
Several others in the room muttered, ‘Humanity be in him.’
Leela said, ‘There is no need for belief. There is the robot for proof.’
‘His words are proof enough,’ someone said.
There were murmurs of agreement.
‘It might have been a faulty unit,’ Letarb suggested.
‘It didn’t run as if it was faulty,’ Toos said. ‘Why are you wasting time here?’
‘Tribal councils always waste time,’ Leela muttered to her.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Denek said. ‘No robots ever come in. Why is that?’
‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor said. ‘The field obviously affects them. It disrupts their control systems so they can’t enter it. My theory is that a killer is defined as malfunctioning and that the field is set up to accommodate it. Or. .. in order to be capable of killing, a robot must be of a higher order of complexity and the field accommodates that. Whichever way: killers cross, normally inhibited robots don’t.’
‘And once in they can’t get out again.’ It was the young former security man. ‘It’s a trap.’
‘My point exactly,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s a trap which all of you who live here in the Sewerpits are sitting in.’
Poul got up from where he had been sitting at the back of the room. His hands were visibly trembling. He clasped them together. ‘Speaking personally, I’m not keen on being trapped in a confined area with killer robots. I tried it once. I didn’t like it.’
‘I thought you couldn’t remember any of it,’ Toos said.
‘That’s what they told me.’
‘That’s what they told me too,’ he said. ‘And I tried not to.
Taren Capel got in the way of that.’
‘Humanity be in him,’ Padil and several of the others intoned.
‘There was no humanity in that murderous madman,’ Poul blurted out. ‘He made robots of death. He wanted to be one of his damned robots of death and slaughter his own kind. We wouldn’t be here if the Doctor and Leela hadn’t helped to kill him.’
The volunteers who stood guard at the entrance to the Tarenist house and the watchers outside were all drawn into the noisy pandemonium that immediately broke out. The Doctor’s efforts to calm things down were futile. There were scuffles and punches were thrown amid cries of ‘traitor’, ‘liar’ and
‘blasphemer’. Somebody yelled, ‘Robots don’t kill, company spies do!’ Several of the senior members rushed into a side room and returned almost immediately brandishing stun-kills.
Nobody was paying attention to what was happening anywhere else. Nobody was outside to hear the first of the rumours which flashed across the ’pits that gangs of men and women were roaming through the alleys killing whoever they found. These were not nightstalkers, they said, not degenerates creeping out of the deepest, darkest places to prey on the weak and the unwary. These were people from the city: average, ordinary-looking people, dressed in smart clothes, and they were butchering men, women and children indiscriminately. Soon the word was out that they were doing it with their bare hands.
They could not get the best ones for the work because the