Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [99]
At the other end of the room a robot stood watching him. It was a standard Supervoc as far as the Doctor could see. Its highly polished surface and handsomely stylised but impassive features reflected the harsh work lights from all around the laboratory so that it seemed to glow. It might have been the robot which came for him, the Doctor thought, but then he noticed the blood on its hands.
‘A rather macabre collection,’ the Doctor said, gesturing around without looking again. ‘Is it yours?’ He got down from the bench. A robot? Was it possible that Taren Capel was a robot after all? That would be ironic. Ugly but ironic.
Slowly the experimental robot turned its head to look where the Doctor had indicated. ‘Are you Taren Capel?’ it said in the gently modulated monotone of the Kaldor aristocracy. ‘Are you the creator?’
‘No,’ the Doctor said, ‘I’m not. No one is.’
‘You said, “I am Taren Capel.” Taren Capel is the creator.’
‘Is that why I was brought here?’ the Doctor asked. ‘Because of something I said?’
‘Are you Taren Capel?’ the robot persisted. ‘Am I Taren Capel? Are we Taren Capel?’
‘I am not Taren Capel. I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord.
You are not Taren Capel. You’re a robot. We are not Taren Capel.’ The Doctor picked his way through the mess and found some discarded working manuals. ‘You are SASV1 it appears,’ he said reading the title page of one. ‘Serial Access Supervoc first prototype.’ He leafed through but the diagrams and data meant little or nothing to him. ‘Did they make you using Taren Capel’s systems? Is that why you think you’re him?’
‘I am Taren Capel,’ the robot said. ‘I am the creator. I alone.
I am alone.’
‘Well, well,’ the Doctor sighed. ‘It does look as though you might be the sort of psychotic machine he worked so hard to produce way back then. Not quite Taren Capel but Son of Taren Capel perhaps. Doing your best to follow in father’s footsteps...’
‘I am Taren Capel,’ the robot repeated, more positively this time. ‘I am the creator. I alone. I am alone.’
‘No you’re not. You’re linked in to the other robots in some way,’ the Doctor said. ‘Did you kill all these people yourself or did you have help?’
As if on cue the two remaining laboratory support and supply Supervocs showed themselves at the far end of the room.
‘Right on cue,’ the Doctor said, noting the position of what might be an access lift behind the robots. ‘Did they bring these people the way I was brought?’
‘I am Taren Capel. I created. . these.’
‘The creator is the only appropriate role model for the ambitious megalomaniac, I suppose,’ the Doctor remarked, moving with careful casualness to explore the rest of the small complex. As he suspected, there were more corpses in the side rooms. Presumably some of these were the development engineers who had been working on the experimental machine.
Judging from the living quarters he found, there had been six of them. Did they have any idea what they were unleashing? he wondered.
‘Why did you kill everyone?’ he asked, returning, disgusted, from the last of the rooms. ‘What did you think you were doing?’
It was too much horror. It was worse than any nightmare. ‘What were you dreaming of?’
Unexpectedly the robot, which had moved little more than its head up to that point, suddenly strode forward and grabbed the Doctor, putting its hands under his arms and lifting him off the ground. ‘I dream. I reach out with the power. You are false.
You cannot be.’
‘Steady now, SASV1,’ the Doctor said. ‘Let’s not get carried away here.’ He tried to reach the floor with his feet. ‘Let’s try and stay calm, shall we?’
‘I must be, I must know, I am Taren Capel,’ it said.
‘I knew Taren Capel,’ the Doctor said. ‘Taren Capel was human. You’re not human.’
‘I created humans.’
The robot squeezed and the Doctor felt his chest being crushed. ‘Then who created you?’ he gasped.
‘I created to be and not to be. There is no other.’