Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [94]
Padil set the charges to five minutes as the Doctor instructed and Leela climbed over the side and placed them where he indicated. Toos, Tani and Poul did their best to hurry the stragglers and everything seemed to be going well when there was a sudden collapse in part of the roof nearby and people began to scramble up makeshift ladders and out of the large hole they had made. A dozen of them rushed blindly for the,bridge.
As more came out they saw the robots running down the track towards them and they began to panic and fight for a place on the long narrow bridge.
‘What should I do, Doctor?’ Leela shouted from under the supports where she had just finished fixing the explosive packs.
‘Do you want me to take them out?’
‘Leave them where they are and get yourself out from under there, Leela,’ the Doctor shouted.
Leela climbed out and up on to the roof.
With two minutes to go and the robots bearing down on them, people were still struggling with each other to get on to the bridge.
‘Doctor?’ Leela asked urgently. ‘Shall I get rid of the bombs?’
‘Bombs?’ Someone at the end of the bridge had heard her.
‘What bombs? Where are the bombs?’
‘There are bombs,’ somebody else shouted. ‘Bombs!’ The panic worsened.
‘People!’ the Doctor shouted. They ignored him.
The robots were very close now. His plan was ruined. There would barely be time to get everyone off the bridge. Luring the robots on to it before it blew was out of the question. ‘People?
People!’ the Doctor shouted at the top of his lungs and clapped his hands as loudly as he could. ‘There’s time. Stop panicking!
Stop running! Walk!’ On the bridge the people started to sort themselves out and get across it and off it.
‘Doctor?’ Leela said.
Something in her tone made him turn at once. The first group of robots had stopped running and was walking towards him. They all seemed to be making small chewing motions with their jaws.
‘When you shouted stop running, walk, they stopped running and walked,’ Leela said.
‘Stop walking!’ the Doctor shouted. They stopped.
Behind him on the bridge a couple of the stragglers hesitated. ‘Not you, you idiots,’ Toos shouted from the other side. ‘Keep moving - you’re running out of time.’
Other robots ran past the stationary group. ‘Stand still!’ the Doctor shouted but they kept on coming. ‘Stop running, walk!’
he shouted. They ignored him and kept coming. What was different? Why wouldn’t they listen? Then he realised and he remembered and he understood. His words and action in the hatchling dome - it was some sort of imprinted control cue.
‘People? People,’ he shouted and clapped his hands. ‘Stand still!’
The robots all stopped and stood making small chewing motions with their jaws.
As they waited in front of him for new behavioural instructions the Doctor was struck by how little they resembled fully developed human beings. So this is how it ends, he thought, not with a bang but a whimper.
Behind him the explosive packs went off with two loud roars. The empty bridge shattered and dropped into the chasm between the two buildings.
Cailio Techlan was no longer overawed by the legend of Carnell.
He could see it in her face and demeanour and he could hear it in her voice. How inconstant is the admiration of others, he thought. A reputation for infallibility was so easily compromised.
You couldn’t be slightly fallible, that was like being slightly dead.
She was startled to see him though, and with that went fear, a fear of the unexpected and a fear of him.
So she knew the main strategy had gone astray and she knew he was supposed to have been murdered and she knew another plan was in play. His expensive sources were right. Worth every penny, as Bibo Mechman might have said. This was indeed a more dangerously involved young woman than she at first appeared.
He gave her his iciest stare, ‘Firstmaster Uvanov