Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [91]
He knew that Alinti saw more than a block of machined metal, dials, screens, displays. After all, none of these were things that the Esperons didn’t themselves possess. She saw power; she saw a microcosm of all that Espero had denied itself. He said nothing, allowing her eyes to drink it in, her mind to blossom with all the potentialities that the console held. He remembered Javill’s face when he’d shown him the light ball.
‘Your arrangement with my husband,’ she said, and he could see her fingers twitching, itching to touch the device, to possess it – and, by extension, to possess what it stood for, ‘is, of course, your business, and I wouldn’t presume to interfere.’ She looked down at him. ‘But Tannalis is an old man. A sick old man. It would be a shame if his illness were to. . . come between you and your agreement.’
‘As I said, your Imperial Excellence, I do not know your husband as well as you do. Our agreement was made at a time when his state of health was, perhaps, less precarious. No disrespect to him, but the sanguine features of that agreement are not predicated upon his being the other party to it.’
Carefully, Trove thought. He had to tread very carefully. Both of them knew where this was going, but he could not be the one to switch allegiances. Alinti had to be the one to make the deal; she had to feel she was in control. He had no more intention of honouring a deal with this one than he had with the Imperator, but she had to believe that he would. He knew that Tannalis lived on sufferance, and that it was conceivable he would die – of one thing or another – before the artefact had been recovered. Although things were progressing moderately well, he was not a fool: he could not yet afford to alienate the Imperial household. Not until he had the device in his hands.
And one member of the Imperial Family on his side was as good as another.
Besides, he had had intimations of the Imperator’s commitment to their deal wavering over the past day.
‘Perhaps,’ said Alinti, ‘it would be to our mutual advantage to discuss the terms that you reached with my husband. I appreciate that your work here needs to be completed soon, but death can strike at any hour. And it would be most inconvenient for you if Tannalis were to die before you had achieved your goals.’
She stared calmly and expectantly into his green eyes, and Trove began to explain how he had offered the Imperator the gift of immortality.
164
Chapter 19
‘Think of a number.’
‘Bloody hell!’ swore the Doctor as he swung the car in a tight arc and nearly threw everyone out.
‘Will you stop doing that!’ hissed Fitz. ‘It’s. . . it’s just wrong.’
‘We don’t have time to be taking corners at wheelchair pace,’ snapped the Doctor.
‘Not the driving – it’s the swearing that’s wrong.’
‘Not as wrong as that!’ the Doctor said, pointing, redundantly, at the pearly grey curtain that hung before them. Its surface, graduating from almost white at the ground to the clean darkness of the sky at its apex, sparkled and seethed.
‘How high did you say it was?’ asked Calamee, frowning.
‘It’s got higher. Much higher.’ The Doctor’s shoulders sagged. ‘I hadn’t counted on it getting higher. It must be liberating more energy than I’d thought. Why didn’t I work that one out?’ He shook his head disconsolately.
Fitz stood up in his seat and squinted at the wave as it slid, ghostlike, across the ground towards them. ‘Hiding in bedrooms isn’t going to help anyone, is it?’
‘Not unless they live in tower blocks – or unless Quasimodo’s got room to spare in his bell tower.’
The Doctor sank back in the cream leather of the car’s upholstery and rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands. ‘How could I be so stupid?’
‘You weren’t to know,’ said Calamee, squeezing his arm.
‘Wasn’t he?’ asked Sensimi.
Calamee and Fitz stared hard at her. She returned their stares coldly.
‘We should go back,’ she said. ‘Warn them.’
‘And then what?’ bellowed the Doctor suddenly, thrusting