Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [65]
In the darkness on the other side of the cell, Badar could just make out the prisoner’s head bobbing up and down. ‘Yes. It’s got nothing to do with the laws of time. It’s all to do with me. It’s to do with the way I see things. I see people in need of help on the outer planets, and I tell myself it’s a crusade. I see people in need of help in Africa, or Israel, or even in Britain, and I tell myself it’s only local politics. I like to think I’ve got principles, but it’s the way things look that makes me act the way I do, not the way things really are. It’s true, what you said. I just do whatever I think I can get away with.’
He was babbling, Badar realised. Now the man was letting himself tell the truth, he could hardly stop talking. All this must have been bottled up inside him for a long, long time. ‘The ideas,’ Badar pointed out. ‘The ideas are what matter.’
‘Yes. Yes, they are.’ Was that a laugh, or had Badar imagined it? ‘It’s amazing the perspectives you get, once you’ve been tortured half to death. It was the same on Ha’olam. It was the little things that mattered to me. Teddy bears. Jelly babies.’
‘Help me,’ said Badar.
He thought he saw the man cock his head. ‘Help you? How?’
‘Finish the world. Finish the world for me.’
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean –’
‘You know,’ Badar insisted. ‘You know. Finish the world. The ideas are all that matter. Make the world make sense. After they take me outside.’
‘I can’t –’
‘They tortured me,’ Badar said. ‘They tortured both of us. My people. The British. All of them. They put batons in my eyes. They’ll do the same to you, soon. Help me. Please. Make it make sense.’
The man fell silent. Badar waited for him to speak again. This time, he managed to stop himself falling asleep while he was waiting.
‘All right,’ the man said, eventually.
‘Promise me.’
‘I can’t promise –’
‘Finish it,’ Badar snapped. ‘Promise me.’
Another long silence.
‘I promise,’ the man said.
Badar felt himself relax. He hadn’t even noticed he’d been tense, but now his muscles were going limp, the nerves unravelling in his limbs, his skin prickling where it had been shocked by the guards. They hadn’t used the batons on him in… well, he couldn’t remember how long, exactly, but the skin never forgot.
Still. It’d be over soon. It’d all be over.
‘You can tell me your name now,’ Badar said.
So the man did. But the name was very long, and Badar was asleep before he’d finished it.
* * *
Travels with Fitz (IV)
Jumpstart Island, 2594
It was a stupid name for a settlement. When the humans had first come to the planet, and started planting hydrodome cities on the few available stretches of soggy land, this was where they’d built their chief spaceport, in what Fitz now recognised as the usual go‐get‐’em imperial style. And it was completely appalling. The spaceport building was a great big silver spire, as phallic as it was possible for a structure to get without looking downright silly, but covered in bumps and nodes that were presumably supposed to look like the engine modules of old spaceships.
The spire was pretty much hollow, the space inside crisscrossed with moving stairways, the walls lined with balconies full of tack shops and departure lounges. Everything – every wall, every railing, every supporting column – was made out of the same material, something that was obviously meant to look like sparkling crystal, but instead made the place look like the most tasteless shopping centre in the history of existence. Little fist‐sized 2-D television sets pottered around the spire on their antigravity motors, so you could hear the chatter of the local channels wherever you went. If (God forbid) you actually looked at one of the sets, it’d notice, and start following you around. Trying to tempt you with the most interesting adverts in its memory.
Fitz let the stairways carry him up to the fiftieth level, feeling the sweaty warmth of the people on the steps above and below him, but somehow managing