Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [65]
Hang on. If he was lying to them about not being able to take them to Earth they were going to kill him? Not very logical. He pointed this out.
‘Hmm,’ said Asia. ‘I see what you mean. Well then, if you’re telling the truth we’ll kill you.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, Asia!’ cried Antarctica. ‘Let’s just find out the truth. We can decide whether or not we’re going to kill Fitz Fortune afterwards.’
118
EarthWorld
Asia looked indulgently at her sister. ‘All right. Let’s let the machine do its work.’
The machine. Still didn’t sound good.
And this must be it. The door opened, and Africa pushed in a large contraption on wheels. It looked a bit like something that might be found by an intensive-care bed. Lots of switches and dials and little coloured lights.
Harlequin patterns flickered over the stone walls.
‘We call it our Memory Machine,’ Antarctica told Fitz. ‘We can take deep memory and personality prints with it, not like the surface scans from the portable machine.’ Africa was flicking switches, and the thing was humming into ominous life. ‘You just have to relax.’ Africa was now plugging in small headphones – worryingly featuring metallic spikes that looked like they’d stick right in your earholes.
‘It may not work on me,’ he said, trying to be casual. ‘There might be. . .
complications.’
‘Oh, because of your being artificial?’ said Asia. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll he fine.’
Fitz yelped. ‘You know?’
‘Yup. Sorry, is it supposed to be a secret?’
‘I thought you said you’d only taken a surface scan thingy?’
‘Yes, we did. And that knowledge was the closest to the surface of all. When we made a copy of you –’
‘You made a copy of me?’
‘It was all it could think of. Bit disappointing, really.’
‘You made a copy of me?’
‘Well, yes. Didn’t want your friends finding the real you, now, did we?’
‘I wanted to keep you!’ put in Antarctica, cheerfully.
‘Let’s just hope that the Doctor hasn’t left in his TARDIS already with your double. That would be unfortunate.’
‘Unfortunate. . . ’ echoed Africa, coming over and running a finger down his cheek. Fitz instinctively shrugged her off, which was possibly not the best way to treat a homicidal lunatic, however much shorter than him she was. She hissed, and stepped back to the machine. Oops. Possibly a terminal ‘oops’.
‘The Doctor’s cleverer than that,’ said Fitz. ‘He’d spot it was a fake. He’ll still be looking for me.’
‘Like he did before?’ asked Asia, and Fitz’s stomach did a flip-flop as he realised just how much they knew even without this deep-memory thing. ‘This copy – does it have my –’ how to phrase this? – ‘inhibitions?’
If You Prick Me, Do I Not Bleed?
119
Antarctica giggled. Asia gave her a look. ‘Do you mean will it tell the Doctor how he abandoned the real Fitz, then killed him and then destroyed his own planet?’
‘Um. . . well, that’s what I was basically getting at, yes.’
‘Don’t know. Sorry. Anyway, put those on.’ Asia was gesturing at the spiky headphones that Africa was holding out. ‘Take them, or we kill you now.’
Fitz opened his mouth to start trying to reason with them again, but decided it was pointless. Logic didn’t seem to mean much to them. Wordlessly, he took the headphones.
Surprisingly, they didn’t hurt. The metal bits filled up his ears and were a bit uncomfortable, but there was no pain. So they were probably not devised by Africa. They blocked most of the sound from outside, and when Asia flipped a switch a low hum began, which drowned out the rest. He could see the trips’
mouths moving, but couldn’t tell what they were saying. More switches were flipped, and the hum grew louder. Unbidden, images crowded into Fitz’s head.
Things he’d been thinking of only recently, like his childhood trip to the zoo, and going off with Sam and the Doctor, and, well, and Gallifrey and all that stuff. Things he’d done lately, like waiting in London for the Doctor, and all that stuff in Belgium with Anji and Dave. The triplets seemed to be getting a bit