Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [46]
The merchandise was what had caught Sam’s eye. There were stacks of cardboard boxes all around, open‐topped, their contents covered only by a few thin layers of polythene. A couple of thousand boxes, in Sam’s estimation. And, judging by the stack nearest to her, every one of them was full of little plastic vials.
‘Cold,’ said Sarah.
Sam caught her eye. ‘What does it do, exactly?’
‘It doesn’t do anything,’ said Guest. ‘It’s the Cold.’
Guest was climbing out of the other car now, as were Compassion and the second guard. Sam took a quick look around the place. There weren’t any other people around, no guards on standby at the factory. That struck her as odd. The entrance to the warehouse was open, and unguarded. How hard would it be for someone to get in here and start nicking the vials?
But the Remote were supposed to specialise in security systems, weren’t they? And high‐level electronics. The cars steered themselves, the gates were self‐opening. There were going to be plenty of automatic defences around here, then.
Sarah turned to Sam, and started talking as if the Remote people weren’t even there. ‘You said something about the Cold, back at the hotel. You said you think it’s where this lot get their orders from.’
Sam nodded. ‘Maybe the stuff in the vials is alive. Part of some larger gestalt entity.’
That little smile popped up on Sarah’s face again. ‘I can’t believe you can get away with saying things like that. I never could.’
‘It’s a gift.’
‘Watch them,’ Guest told the Ogrons. The guards grumbled their way across the warehouse floor, until they were standing close enough to Sam and Sarah for their collective breath to be offensive. ‘Don’t let them touch any of the boxes,’ Guest added.
Sam and Sarah exchanged glances. Compassion had opened the boot of Guest’s car, and now she and Guest were rooting around inside it, muttering to each other. Meanwhile, Kode hung around in the background, looking like he felt left out of things.
‘What d’you think they’re going to do with us?’ Sarah hissed.
Sam shook her head. ‘They want something from us. Information. You heard what Guest said back at the hotel. He’s expecting to be attacked. Maybe he thinks we’re the advance party.’
‘You think he knows about the Doctor?’
One of the Ogrons nudged Sarah then, and went ‘ggrn’. It was presumably Ogron shorthand for ‘shut up’, but Sarah just stuck her bottom lip out at him.
‘No,’ Sam muttered. ‘Why? Do you?’
‘A thing or two. You said he’d vanished. Any idea what happened?’
‘I think he went looking for Guest’s home base. Wait a minute, I’ve just thought of something.’ Sam cleared her throat, and called out across the warehouse. ‘Hey, Kode! Tell me something else, all right?’
Kode turned, a startled look on his face. He glanced back at Guest and Compassion, but they were still busy removing whatever it was from the back of the car.
‘This place you come from,’ Sam persisted. ‘Where did you say it was?’
‘Anathema,’ said Kode.
‘Yeah. That. Is it on another planet, or what?’
‘No,’ said Kode. But he didn’t elaborate.
‘OK. Thanks.’ Sam turned back to Sarah, and lowered her voice. ‘Well, in that case, I haven’t got a clue where the Doctor is. Just don’t expect him to turn up in the nick of time or anything.’
Sarah looked back at the warehouse entrance. Sam followed her lead. From here, you could see the main gates of the factory complex, the empty road outside the fence, even the row of tiny houses off in the distance on the other side of the fields.
‘Don’t worry,’ Sarah said. ‘We might get lucky.’
‘Now,’ Guest announced.
His voice sounded muffled, and when Sam turned to face him she saw he was wearing a mask. The mask covered his entire face, with no visible holes for his eyes or mouth, the whole thing held in place by a single thick strap of plastic. Actually, the whole mask seemed to be made of plastic. Thick black plastic, with a kind of tacky, rubbery quality