Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [54]
The Doctor was continuing with no regard for Hoover’s blustering. ‘So un-perceptive, in fact, that you never noticed your wife was an android. Now, perhaps you will tell me the facts that I asked for?’
But Hoover just stared at him.
After a long walk – a very long walk – they were now in a roped area that Fitz presumed was meant to be a boxing ring – with just one slight error.
‘When is a ring not a ring?’ Fitz asked the elderly Elvis, but just got a blank look in response – unsurprisingly, as the ring in question was actually perfectly circular.
Fitz was feeling incredibly self-conscious, dressed only in boxer’s shorts (green and shiny) and boots – although they had also given him a towel, which he’d draped round as much of his skinny upper body as he could. Elvis was in shorts too (white with sequins), and his belly hung over the top.
The gold robots had picked them up and thrown them inside. A tracksuited trip – Asia – had pushed a button and the ropes of the ring had hummed to life.
No one had mentioned whether or not the barrier was fatal to touch, so Fitz was playing it safe by staying in the middle. Antarctica seemed to have appointed herself Fitz’s second; she had a towel round her neck and was wearing a big green FITZ! rosette. Africa – with an orange ELVIS! ribbon – was over the other side. Both had armfuls of weapons. Oh joy.
Elvis Lives!
99
Asia – no ribbons, no allegiance – trotted over to the ring and blew the whistle that hung round her neck. ‘The rules!’ she cried. ‘King Elvis versus Fitz Fortune, to the death! Any weapon is allowed, including all forms of unarmed combat. No body area is off-limits. Participants can only leave the arena once their opponent is dead. Seconds should not get involved in the fighting, even if they really want to. And I’ve got your popcorn – buttered for you, Antarctica, salted for Africa. Come and get it!’
Antarctica pushed her truckload of weaponry through the barrier, and trotted off to take her pink-striped cardboard box of popcorn. As the barrier obviously didn’t kill people, then, Fitz decided to take advantage of the distraction to nip out. He landed back in the middle of the ring on his bum, nursing a tingling hand, and watched dazed as Elvis half-inched a big swingy spiked ball on a chain – a flail, was it called? Something like that – from Fitz’s pile, and, with some difficulty, on the third go began to whirl it round his head.
Pulling himself rapidly together – and ignoring the cry of ‘Naughty, naughty, Fitz Fortune!’ from his second – Fitz dodged the swinging blow and picked up a polearm. With dexterity born of fear, he tangled the chain of the flail and yanked it out of Elvis’s hand. ‘Don’t do that!’ he shouted, alarmed. ‘We’ve got to work together, find a way out of this!’ He then fell backwards on to his backside again, having failed to take into account that a polearm plus a flail weighs a good deal more than a polearm alone.
‘No way, kid!’ Elvis shouted back, staggering slightly too. ‘Only way out is if you’re doing the dead thing. They said that, an’ I beeleeve them.’ To Fitz’s dismay, Africa had returned with her popcorn, and was stockpiling nasty pointy-looking stuff in Elvis’s corner. Elvis grabbed something that Fitz didn’t know the name of, but it was long and sharp. ‘Now stop crying like a dirty hound dog and face me like a man!’
‘Who are you calling a hound dog?’ muttered Fitz, scrabbling in the pile for something with which to defend himself. ‘I certainly ain’t no friend of yours!’
he yelled defiantly, picking up a similar pointed thing and waving it wildly in front of himself. ‘Just hold back a second, so we can talk about this!’
‘Nothing to talk about, boy! You gonna be lonesome tonight – in the grave!’
‘And stop with the song-lyric references already, unless you want me to stamp right down hard on your blue suede shoes!’ called Fitz, parrying desperately.
Elvis, although presumably considerably older than Fitz, and probably about six stone heavier,