Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [50]
‘Negative. Sensors detect three life forms remaining inside warehouse area. None corresponding to twenty‐year‐old human normal. Suggest immediate retreat, mistress.’
Just to make the point, K9 revved up the engine. Sarah stared past the approaching aliens. ‘But Sam… she was with me…’
‘Extrapolation,’ K9 chirped. ‘Human female Sam no longer exists within the parameters of normal space. Suggest immediate retreat.’
Sarah bit her lip.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Go.’
* * *
Travels with Fitz (III)
Augustine City, 2593
Fitz Kreiner woke up on the morning of his 626th birthday, and looked in the mirror.
‘Looking good,’ he said, with a lot more sarcasm than he’d actually intended.
The apartment was big, by the colony’s standards, but it still reminded him of the room he’d been given in the UNISYC building. Nearly six hundred years ago, Fitz reminded himself. Seemed like about six months, seeing as he’d spent most of the intervening time in the Cold. According to the colonists, you didn’t age while you were in the Cold, because of some stuff about its being outside the normal time‐space flow. But it had its own internal chronometry, so you still had to add the time you’d spent there to your total age. Fitz didn’t know what’d happen if he just went around calling himself twenty‐nine. Presumably some Time Lord or other would turn up and give him an official warning.
Which, not surprisingly, made him think of the Doctor. Which made him think of the twentieth century. Which was something he didn’t want to do, not right now, so he went over to the TV wall and waved his hand over the big on panel at the bottom of the screen.
He cycled through a handful of the eight zillion channels available, until he found a news programme smart enough to autotranslate itself into archaic English. He watched a lot of news programmes these days, and it was comforting to see how little had changed while he’d been out of action. The broadcast came from Earth Central, so the transmission was weak, and the set could give him only 2-D. The government was talking about cracking down on the outer colonies again, apparently, trying to bring the errant human republics back in line. The word ‘empire’ was being used in presidential speeches for the first time in half a century, according to the pundits.
What would they say? Fitz wondered. What would they say back on Earth, if they knew what was really going on out here?
‘They’d crap themselves, wouldn’t they?’ he asked the newscaster. He hadn’t switched the TV to ‘interactive’ mode, though, so the newscaster didn’t give him an answer.
Fitz told the set to find a local news channel instead. It did. The colony medianet was reporting the same story, but in glorious 3-D, and this time the Earth government people were definitely the bad guys.
‘Media bias,’ Fitz told the screen. But then that wasn’t surprising, was it? Bearing in mind who ran this planet.
The colony leaders were the ones who’d pulled him out of the Cold, all those months ago. As it turned out, they hadn’t been expecting to find him there. The Cold was a brand‐new invention, as far as they were concerned. The stuff had been around for centuries, they’d explained, but they were the ones who’d thought of turning it into an antipersonnel weapon. They’d sent some of their own people into the Cold as test subjects, and when they’d brought the guinea pigs back to reality, Fitz had popped out along with them. Having been forgotten by the universe for almost six hundred years.
‘But I came from 1996,’ Fitz had protested.
They’d said they believed him. They’d concluded that at some point in the future, some of the Cold would end up being taken back in time, and used on Fitz six centuries before its creation. Strangely enough, they’d seemed very blasé about the whole time‐travel concept.
‘Isn’t that some kind of paradox?’ Fitz had asked.
They’d said yes, and they’d all seemed very, very excited about it. So excited, in fact, that they’d decided to grant him citizenship. They’d shown him the apartment, given him a food allowance, and every