Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [42]
SAM: What are you –
[There’s a painful tearing sound as COMPASSION rips the receiver away from SAM’s neck. SAM yelps.
[Fade out.]
* * *
‘What have you done to her?’ asked Sarah.
It took Sam a while to get her head around the woman’s voice. It didn’t sound the way it had a few moments ago. Then, it had been forced. Scripted. Now it was just… talk.
Sam shook her head. Opened her eyes wide. She could see the walls of the room around her, the horrible fake works of art that had been hung there, the small furnishings that had been piled into the corners.
‘The Cold,’ she said.
‘What about the Cold?’ said Guest, suddenly looking nothing like Wesley Snipes whatsoever.
‘It’s where you get your signals from, isn’t it? It’s got something to do with that stuff in the vials. It’s alive. It’s a living thing. It’s the thing that gives you your orders.’
‘I told you,’ said Compassion. Somehow, her voice wasn’t as harsh as it had been when the receiver had been attached. And, if she looked anything like Nicole Kidman, it was a version of Nicole Kidman that had gained several pounds and lost all her sense of fashion. ‘We can use any transmissions. Even ones from Earth.’
‘But it’s not where you get your really good ideas from, is it?’ Sam insisted.
She saw Compassion clutch the half‐empty vial around her neck. But the woman didn’t speak.
‘You’re not people at all,’ Sam concluded. ‘You’re just receivers. Walking receivers.’
‘We try,’ said Guest. ‘We have fewer nightmares that way.’
Sarah politely cleared her throat. ‘Can I ask something now, please? What exactly is going on here?’
‘We’re getting to the bottom of things,’ said Sam. ‘We’re just doing it at gunpoint, that’s all.’
* * *
6
Dog Out of a Machine
(six characters in search of some exits)
1:
Kode kept his hands on the steering wheel, and occasionally even risked turning it a fraction to the left or to the right. Whenever the vehicle turned a sharp corner, the wheel would twist under his fingers, and he’d bend in the appropriate direction, to make it look like he was the one doing the driving.
The computer was an inbuilt part of the car’s design; autonavigation was something the local humans were just getting the hang of, apparently. Guest had beefed the software up a bit when he’d bought the two vehicles, so now the cars could practically steer themselves, but Kode didn’t want the passengers to know that. The local transmissions informed him that people in these parts were impressed by nifty driving skills. Women, especially.
He adjusted the mirror above his head. The mirror was evidently some kind of navigational aid, but it seemed much more suited to a bit of short‐range spying. The two women sat on the rear seat, looking bored more than frightened. One of the security guards sat opposite them, his gigantic spine pressing against the back of Kode’s chair. The car was big, the kind of vehicle you expected to come fitted with its own bar and grill, but even so the guard had to curl himself up to fit into the passenger section.
‘Where are we going?’ the girl asked.
Kode didn’t answer at once, mainly because he’d forgotten. He glanced down at the display screen on the dashboard. ‘Er… Somewhere safe.’
The girl tutted. Loudly. ‘There’s that word again,’ she said.
‘We’ve got a base about sixty klicks out from the hotel,’ Kode told them, determined to prove that he knew what was going on. ‘Guest wants to get you as far away from COPEX as he can.’
‘Really?’ the woman (whose name definitely wasn’t Bland) said. ‘I’d have thought he could have got us a lot further away than that, if he wanted. Sixty kilometres, what’s that in old money? Forty miles?’
‘Good point,’ the girl added.
Kode wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he cocked his head a little, and listened to his receiver. The signals were weak, though. The car was driving itself along an open road, native fields on either side, its progress watched by nobody but the local fat, spotty grazing animals. The roads were lined