Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [21]
Security, they’d said. When the Doctor had gone swanning off on his own, he’d left Sam in London to look after things there, and dropped Fitz off in Geneva to keep an eye on the UN. However, the authorities evidently didn’t like the idea of letting the Doctor’s spies run loose on their territory, which was why Fitz had been stuck in this room for the last week. For ‘your own protection’.
They hadn’t given him many home comforts, either. Apart from the TV set, the only source of entertainment was the bookcase, which had been stocked up with half a dozen sad‐looking paperbacks. He already knew the titles off by heart, and he had the terrible feeling he’d be memorising the ISBNs before the end of the week. The only remotely interesting item he’d found on the shelf was called Theoretical Monsters: A Credibility Test, which came stamped with various UNISYC seals that marked it out as being solely for the eyes of security‐cleared personnel. Plus friends of the Doctor, presumably.
As far as Fitz could gather, the book was given to new UNIT and UNISYC recruits as soon as they’d signed the Special Deterrents Act. Every wipe‐clean page was headed with the name of a different extraterrestrial species, under which was a small photo and a brief description of the species’ outstanding features. However, some of the races were figments of UNlSYC’s imagination, and the photographs were of men in rubber suits rather than actual alien corpses. At the bottom of every page were two boxes, one marked credible and one marked noncredible, which the recruit had to tick according to whether he thought the species was real or not.
There weren’t any answers at the back of the book. Fitz doubted that the recruits were ever told the truth, or even told what kind of score they’d racked up. The book was a test of character more than anything else, designed to probe the limits of the soldiers’ credulity. The really gullible ones probably ended up doing ‘special ops’ for the generals, obeying UNISYC without question, because if you were ready to believe in the Xxxxxxxxxxlanthian mind‐chewers from the Fifth Universe you were ready to believe anything they told you.
In all honesty, it wasn’t the fact that UNISYC was keeping him here that got to Fitz. It was the diplomacy he couldn’t stomach, the way he’d been given so many good, sound, logical reasons for being kept away from the outside world. He hadn’t been given a phone, he hadn’t been allowed to get in touch with Sam, and he hadn’t seen anything with XX chromosomes in days, apart from the surgically altered women on TV who were apparently supposed to be attractive in this decade. Plus – and this was the real clincher – there was now an advert on the seventy‐two‐inch screen that Fitz had already seen thirteen times this morning, and that made him seethe like nothing else on Earth. So he resolved to annoy the guard again.
He turned, opened the door, and stuck his head out into the corridor.
Where the guard was lying on the floor, with his back still pressed against the wall, an enormous bloody bruise across his jaw.
Where two lithe, black, plastic‐skinned things were rushing towards the door, babbling something in a language that didn’t sound entirely alien, waving the chunky, blunt‐nosed weapons that had obviously been used to smack the guard in the face.
Where there was a great rectangular window hanging in thin air, through which the two creatures had presumably arrived.
Fitz tried to slam the door shut, as if an inch and a half of wood substitute would be enough to hold the attackers off. But they were already on the threshold, close enough for him to see their faces. They were just people – he could see that now – with black plastic respirators over their heads and panels of sticky‐smooth body armour strapped to their bodies. Fitz opened his mouth, to shout the first thing that came to mind. However, the first thing that came to mind was the pointless question he’d been intending to ask the guard.
Which