Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [38]
‘This is ridiculous!’ the President cried. ‘You are a saboteur; this is some sort of trick! You wish to ruin EarthWorld for your own selfish reasons. Your story is patently absurd: you cannot possibly know what is happening in the centre.’
‘Hmm. You don’t visit your alleged daughters much, do you?’ said the Doctor.
Hanstrum visibly jumped, and for a moment it looked like he was going to hit the Doctor. ‘ “Alleged”?’ he roared. ‘What in the name of Earth are you implying?’
The Doctor gazed steadily at him, as if daring the man to take another step towards him. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘that they are not the President’s daughters.’
Hanstrum opened his mouth again, but the Doctor continued before he could speak. ‘They’re not anyone’s daughters. They are androids constructed by the President’s actual daughters, and they have a full control panel for the centre, and also screens on which they can watch the mayhem their real-life counter-parts are creating in EarthWorld. Unfortunately, the control panel has been seriously damaged, which means that not only are the people in EarthWorld in danger from the triplets, the triplets – the real, live girls – may well now be in danger from the marauding androids.’ He swung round to stare at the President. ‘How much do your daughters mean to you? Will you risk disrupting your precious opening ceremony to save their lives?’
The President held the Doctor’s gaze, but when he spoke it was to Hanstrum.
‘Go and check the girls. Find out if what he says is true.’
Hanstrum left the room.
‘This is meant for tourists, right?’ Anji said, tapping a stone wall. ‘It shouldn’t 70
EarthWorld
be that hard to figure out, then.’
They’d been tapping their way round the room, all four of them. It had turned out that the boys were fairly knowledgeable on the subject of secret passages, trapdoors and what they called ‘beast holes’ – apparently concealed spaces where, in the olden days of Earth, animals could hide from religious persecution. Anji had completely failed not to laugh.
It was Xernic who found the clue, and he got quite excited about it. In a dim corner of the room, he’d discovered a frieze of hieroglyphics. Anji was examining them, and trying to be encouraging.
‘This’ll be easy to work out,’ she said. ‘Now, I’m assuming they’re not genuine Egyptian hieroglyphs, because even in my day the average person wouldn’t be able to interpret those, so the chances of your lot managing to sort that out when they’ve even lost the knowledge of what a priest-hole is. . . and anyway, there aren’t any eyes or eagles or men with their arms stuck out in funny ways.
And they’re unlikely to be a letter-substitution code, because I assume if you’re having off-worlders to visit they’d speak different languages. So I would think that they’re general pictograms, or ideograms, rather than a form of alphabet.
I mean,’ she clarified as the boys looked bemused, ‘that we have to interpret what the pictures are, and that’ll tell us how to get out of here. So, let’s see.
Circle with lines coming out of it – looks like a classic sun representation to me.
Next one – some sort of plant? Sun plant?’
‘It’s got a flower,’ pointed out Xernic.
‘OK, sun. . . flower. Hey, sunflower! That’s actually a word! Can’t quite see how it would be relevant, but. . . what’s the next one. A hand? Sunflower hand? Marigold gloves. We have to do the washing up to get out of here.’
The boys looked at her anxiously.
‘No, no, I’m just being silly. OK, sun. . . flower. . . hand. What’s next? A curly thing. Looks like a pig’s tail. Sunflower handtail. That makes no sense. Oh, I know, it’s a spring! Do sunflowers come out in the spring? Or perhaps it is a plant after all, and we have to plant sunflowers in the spring. By hand! That’s it, of course! Plant sunflowers in the spring, by hand!’ She looked triumphantly round.
‘That’s really good,’ said Xernic doubtfully. ‘Very clever. How does it help, though?’
‘It must be a cryptic clue,’ Anji said. ‘Double-layered. Once we’ve solved this, it’ll tell us how to get out.’
‘.