Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [33]
The New Jupitan Buckinghamshire or Surrey, rather than its North London.
There was a teenage blonde girl watching them from under a tree.
Anji was suddenly back in the game. The girl looked rather like a young Drew Barrymore, but wearing a leopard-skin leotard.
A Man is the Sum of His [False] Memories 61
The three boys stopped dead in their tracks. ‘Oh, gosh,’ said Xernic. ‘That’s one of the mad princesses.’
‘No,’ said Anji, ‘it’s an android built to look like one of the mad princesses, remember? It thinks it’s a cave person, it won’t bother us. And if it does, you can zap it with that android-zapper thing. Come on.’
They carried on towards the girl. Anji was almost amused to see that the three boys, even the bluff Zequathon, seemed more nervous of a replicant adolescent girl than they did of the dirty great full-of-teeth dinosaurs they’d passed earlier.
The girl sauntered from under her tree to meet them. ‘Ug ug,’ she said in a cultured voice not befitting a cave person at all. ‘You’re not supposed to be here. Are you Fitz’s friends?’
Anji’s stomach did a strange leap. The game had changed.
‘Who wants to know?’ said Zequathon.
‘I do.’ She opened her hand, showing them a device that looked like a TV
remote control. ‘See this button here? That will summon all the androids in the area to this spot. And this red one? That will enrage them. They’ll tear apart anything in their paths.’
Anji did not like being talked to like this, especially by stuck-up children.
‘Then you’ll be torn apart too. Or does that not worry you? You can just go into a garage for repairs?’
The girl laughed, raising the device.
Anji turned. ‘Xernic, quick! Zap her!’
The boy fumbled desperately with the silver box, pointing it at the girl. She froze, finger still poised over the controls. Anji waved a hand in front of her face: no reaction.
‘Thank goodness for that,’ she said. ‘Now, the question is: what was all that about? And how does she know about Fitz, anyway?’
‘He’s our pet,’ said the girl. ‘Ha-ha, fooled you.’ And she pressed all the buttons at once.
‘So the triplets’ mother’s not actually dead?’ said the Doctor. ‘I don’t think it technically counts as matricide, in that case.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said one of the triplets gloomily. ‘Still our fault.’
‘And you can hardly call her “alive”,’ said another. ‘So Father doesn’t care what it technically counts as.’
‘Hmm.’ The Doctor pondered. ‘Their father – forgive me if I don’t refer to him as “your father” – seems to have singularly failed to be paternally understand-62
EarthWorld
ing about this. I’m a great believer in showing people the errors of their ways, rather than just locking them up, you know. The triplets were very young, and if they didn’t mean her harm. . . ’
‘We loved Mother,’ said android-Asia, simply.
‘Tell me all about it,’ the Doctor said.
‘Mother was a scientist,’ she told him. ‘They say we inherited our technical abilities from her. But her field was genetics, not robotics. Hanstrum was the one who taught us robotics. Hanstrum? You really don’t know anything, do you. Hanstrum is Father’s chief technician. He was the only person apart from Father who was allowed to visit Mother in her imprisonment. No, she hadn’t done anything wrong, silly. It’s an old Earth custom. A woman who wants to have children is kept in confinement until she has them. Mother was in confinement for years before she had us. We were allowed out, for a while, when we were young. We don’t really remember it.
‘We don’t like New Jupiter, though. We wish we’d been born on Earth. We’ve read every book and seen every film about Earth that Father owns, and we think it’s wonderful. Hanstrum says there are people on New Jupiter who don’t like Earth. When we’re the President, we’re going to have them all killed. Yes, Father says he’s going to execute them, but he never does. And anyway,