Doctor Who_ Hope - Mark Clapham [42]
The Doctor arrived to find no sign of life, skidding to a halt on a metal platform, a crossroads suspended between the blocks. One woman and two militiamen lay dead, their weapons smoking as they lay on the ground. Of the killer, and the heads of his victims, there was no sign.
Chapter Seven
Secret Origins
Miraso seemed happy to let Anji have the run of the Silver Palaces information resources, and so Anji spent the morning attempting to research Silver himself. She had some measure of his current power from examining his finances and the technology he had access to, but she knew little about the man himself. So she took a portable information unit and wandered around the Palace, in search of some quiet place to work. Anji soon found the perfect place the atriumstrokegreenhouse in which plant samples were grown. To her delight she found that the first few fullsize apple trees were growing, planted in an area surrounded by a rough bronze grass. Still, it was soft enough for Anji to sit under the nearest tree, and the harsh Hope sunlight was filtered enough to be pleasantly warm.
She sat under the tree, in this strange indoor garden, and flicked on the information console. Looking for answers, she found little. There was no coherent story to it all. Instead Anji got lost in her own questions. Where had Silver come from? Was Silver his name, or a nickname due to his metallic nature? Where was he born? Who were his parents, or did he come out of a tube? What had his childhood been like?
The heat thrashes the barrio during the afternoon, the sunlight pouring in through Humbertos window. Maria don Silvestres only son is too weak to go to school, to play with the other children, even to stand up, walk over to the window and close the blinds to stop the harsh light causing reflections on his monitor screen, interfering with his work. If nothing else he can move his hand over the keyboard, manipulate the code on screen. The poisonous waters of this small, dirtball town attacked him in his mothers womb, took away his chance to live in the sun, to live any kind of normal life. His mother works eighteen hours a day, and although she does her best for her only son she is never there enough.
The old computer she found him is his best friend, closer to him than any living thing, any person at all. It does not stare at his sickly complexion, or feel nervous in the presence of a child permanently attached to a respirator. Instead, it responds to his commands, his persuasive coding and occasional, delicate repairs. His mother had been nervous about leaving her son with a soldering iron by his bed, and with good reason Humberto would love to hurt himself to feel anything real. But to him the iron is a medical tool, designed to heal his beloved machine. To use it to cause harm, even to his worthless self would be sacrilege.
Besides, soon he will be beyond harm or healing. Humberto has read the paranoid ramblings on the communication channels, of what the World Council does to those who interfere with their military technology. Black skimmers swoop at dawn, missiles tearing through the huts where technoanarchists prepare their viruses on wristtops. The anarchists reach for their guns, but plasma beams tear through the huts, ripping them to pieces. World Government One, Anarchists Nil. Thats what happens to dirtpoor criminals who mess with the rich and the powerful. They get wiped out.
Well, better to go out in style, to be noticed by those above in their environmentally sterile habitation blocks, breathing their clean air instead of the filth outside. Better to be seen by God for one second before he rubs you out than never be noticed at all.
Humberto may well be delusional, locked away for so long with only a computer for company. For what he wants is to be worthy of destruction, to offend the powers that