Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [86]
‘Good fre‐quen‐cies,’ the Ogron said. ‘We talk.’
‘Affirmative,’ said K9.
Sarah looked between the dog and the alien. ‘Sorry, am I missing something?’
‘Ogron is communicating on frequencies undetectable to human senses, mistress. Receiver will facilitate communication.’
‘It’ll also give me a bad trip,’ Sarah pointed out.
K9 wagged his tail a little more. ‘Suggestion. Attach receiver to me. I will broadcast all relevant signals to you.’
‘And filter out the other stuff?’
‘Affirmative.’
The Ogron grunted his approval. Sarah sighed, as loudly as she possibly could.
‘Shall I get the MIDI leads, then?’ she asked K9.
* * *
Lost Boy didn’t remember what had happened to his family. His brother, the other Lost Boy, claimed he could still see the day they’d died, as clearly as if it were yesterday. The other Lost Boy said the cave had been attacked. He said there’d been people in armour, taller even than the mother of the family, people who’d come down from the skies and filled the cave with fire. He said he’d been the one who’d saved the infant Lost Boy from the flames, that he’d burrowed into the ground, hiding them both until the aliens had gone away. The other Lost Boy didn’t know who the aliens had been. Enemies of some species the Ogrons had worked for, he liked to say, come to have their revenge on their rivals’ instruments of war. Come to destroy the enemy’s resources.
But the other Lost Boy lied a lot. He lied about the number of aliens he’d killed; he lied about how he’d got the scars on his chest. Lost Boy had believed his brother’s story of the family, once upon a time, but now it sounded like another one of his lies. Sometimes the aliens wore black armour, sometimes silver. Sometimes they were humanoid, and other times they were even Krotons, blown up to gigantic proportions. Why Krotons should want to kill Ogrons, Lost Boy couldn’t imagine.
The first thing Lost Boy himself could remember was the big cave, the cave of the old women. They’d named him and his brother there. They’d both been given the same name, although Lost Boy was sure the old women had rumbled more deeply when they’d talked about his brother, suggesting that he was the stronger of the two, the one with the blacker skin and the longer arms. Lost Boy had always resented that.
Perhaps, he thought, that’s why I’m here, in the settlement of the humans. Perhaps that’s why I’m betraying the Remote. Because I’m the weakest of the dead family, the palest, the shortest‐armed. The Remote aliens spoke Lost Boy’s name in the original tongue, not translating it into their own language. They just said Frayyt. There was no feeling in the way they said it, no vibration in their stomachs. That, at least, was a consolation.
Lost Boy and his brother had been taken from the home world before they’d reached the mating age, which had made his brother angry, although Lost Boy himself had been thankful. He could still remember, in perfect detail, the day the buyers had come. The doorway had appeared in the middle of the cave, a rectangle of spitting, popping grey. It had made the younger Ogrons excited, and made the older ones rumble with annoyance. When the aliens had stepped through the doorway, they’d been dressed all in black, the armour plating slithering over their stunted limbs. Lost Body had loosened his bowels, thinking the monsters from his brother’s story had come back to finish their work. But his brother hadn’t been scared, and fortunately nobody had noticed the mess Lost Boy had made. Most of the old women had smelled far worse.
The old women had sold a bond‐pack of the younger Ogrons to the Remote, and the Ogrons had gone willingly. It had been as it always was. The aliens left their payment, their food and their hardware and their special rocks, and the Ogrons gave up their fittest males, or at least those who weren’t likely to be missed.
Sometimes, the aliens left other things. Potions, to be taken by the mothers while they were pregnant. The aliens said the potions would make