Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [88]
‘Yes?’
The woman clicked her tongue. ‘That’s it. You see? I said there was one thing I didn’t understand, and you said “yes”. When you came in here, you would have said “uhhn”.’
‘Would it make you happier if I said “uhhn”?’
‘No, no. What I mean is… all of a sudden, you’ve got a proper syntax. You can use proper sentences.’ She leaned over to the metal dog, which had parked itself near Lost Boy’s chair. ‘Is that something to do with the receiver, K9?’
‘Affirmative,’ chirped the dog. ‘Receiver picks up signals on subsonic frequencies, allowing in‐depth communication with Ogron life form.’
‘Subsonic?’ the woman queried.
Lost Boy thumped himself in the stomach. ‘We speak from here most of the time.’
The dog waggled its ears. ‘Nature of Ogron diaphragm and chest cavity allow for use of subsonic language,’ it added.
‘The translator only translates what I say in proper words,’ Lost Boy told the woman, tapping his fingers against his temples. ‘Most of what I say gets lost. With the receiver, you can hear everything.’
‘So the Remote can talk to you on your own level?’
Lost Boy shook his head. ‘They don’t. They don’t care. They tune their receivers to filter out the subsonic words. They find my language… annoying.’
The woman sucked at her lip. ‘The Doctor said… well, no offence, but he told me you weren’t very intelligent.’
‘You don’t understand us,’ Lost Boy told her. ‘You don’t hear most of what we have to say. We give you poetry, and you hear it as… as meaningless words about rocks.’
‘Ogron culture is noted for its lack of technological sophistication,’ the machine‐animal pointed out.
Lost Boy slapped it on the back of its head. The head in question wobbled on its skinny neck, but stayed in place. ‘We don’t need technology,’ he rumbled. ‘We are technology. We’re hardware.’
The woman nodded. ‘So. You want to stop the Remote. Is that it?’
‘There’s something bad,’ Lost Boy said. ‘The Cold. I can’t explain. Not even with the receiver. They want to change… the way things are.’
‘History?’
Lost Boy nodded. He’d heard Guest use the word, although it didn’t seem to translate well into Deep Ogron. ‘They say there are people who can stop them. Lords. Masters of time.’
‘Like the Doctor,’ the woman suggested. ‘And that’s still got to be our first move. To find the Doctor. He’ll know how to sort the mess out. Anyway, he still owes me ten quid from the seventies. Or was it the eighties?’
‘The Doctor,’ Lost Boy repeated. ‘He’s one of the Lords?’
‘Affirmative,’ said the machine‐animal.
‘Then I can help,’ Lost Boy told them.
* * *
The office was in Barnes Road, southwest London, but Sarah somehow managed to make sure she went through Shoreditch on the way from her home, telling herself she was just bending space‐time to her own will. She drove past Sam’s house, and slowly. She wasn’t sure why. The passers‐by were passing by, just as they always were. From the outside, the house seemed perfectly normal.
Some part of her had been expecting the place to be surrounded by police cars and newspaper reporters. Maybe even UNIT jeeps. But there was nothing, nothing at all.
She couldn’t go back. She couldn’t check up on the girl, to see whether her father had kept shtoom, or whether he’d told her all about the ape man and the mad woman in the kitchen. It’d only make things worse. More damage to the space‐time continuum, more mess for the Doctor to clean up when he finally got here.
And he would get here. Sarah was sure of that. Last night, Lost Boy the Ogron had told her everything. The Remote were expecting the Time Lords to show up and put a stop to their plans, whatever their plans might have been. Guest had some kind of equipment for detecting the presence of a TARDIS; at least, that was what Lost Boy believed, although he’d admitted he wasn’t really an expert when it came to the technical side of things. Lost Boy had finally left Sarah’s house at a quarter past midnight, driving his oversized car back to the hotel.
The Ogron was going to steal Guest