Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [105]
Ley lines. Used to transmit TV pictures. Sarah started to wonder what kind of insane race had spawned these people.
‘The point is this,’ the Remote man went on. ‘We’ve tapped into the biosphere of Dust – what there is of it, anyway – and we’ve told the planet not to let go of anything that’s part of the scenery. So the travelling show’s stuck here. Dust won’t let you get away. Not as long as our systems are on line.’
‘Are you saying you can manipulate whole planets?’ asked the Doctor. Sarah could imagine his sceptical frown when he said it.
‘No. We can just give them a few basic instructions, that’s all. Believe me, if we knew enough about how biospheres work to control everything, we’d have turned this bastard planet into another Earth by now. Run by us. Obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ said the Doctor.
There was more conversation after that, but Sarah didn’t hear it. She turned to I.M. Foreman, and saw that he’d drawn his legs up on to his battered old armchair, crossing them under his body. Getting ready to meditate, by the look of him.
‘Can they really do that?’ Sarah asked, putting just enough anxiety into her voice to let him know that ‘no’ was the optimum answer. ‘I mean, can they stop us going anywhere?’
‘Shh,’ said I.M. Foreman, as he put his hands on his knees. Yup, thought Sarah. Definitely meditation time.
‘No,’ she told him. ‘I won’t shh. Did you hear what he said? Those people are going to –’
‘I know,’ said the blind man. ‘Please be quiet. I think I’ve just figured out what’s really going on here. Everything’s starting to come together.’
‘So what are we going to do?’ Sarah demanded.
I.M. Foreman lowered his head. If he’d been anybody else, Sarah would have assumed that he’d been closing his eyes.
‘I’m going to talk to the others,’ he said. ‘Then we’re going to start making plans.’
* * *
The message spread through the travelling show in less than a minute, moving from wagon to wagon, skimming across the minds it found there. Mohandas the Geek heard I.M. Foreman’s thoughts first, and responded to them in his usual way, with a noncommittal grunt and a wave of animal sweat. He was actually quite lucid, if you could understand the language of his hormones properly. From Mohandas, the message spread to Melmoth, the Map of Scars, whose entire body was engraved with information that nobody outside the show had ever been able to read. From Melmoth it reached Mr Zarathustra, the Walking Brain, whose cranium was so vast and bloated that he had to constantly sit with his head in his hands to make sure his neck didn’t snap. Then the message touched O’Salamander, and John Salt, and Mould the Worm-Boy, and the Goofus, and…
And soon, every member of the travelling show had heard the news, straight from the telepathic centres of I.M. Foreman’s own brain. They all knew about the Remote, they all knew about the biosphere machines on board the Remote’s ship, and they all knew exactly what I.M. Foreman had in mind. Most of them had already worked it out for themselves, but it was always good to synchronise your thoughts.
Well… actually, not every member of the travelling show was told the news. Nobody bothered transmitting I.M. Foreman’s message to the occupant of wagon number thirteen, because they all knew how unstable Number Thirteen was, and they all knew there was no point trying to tell it anything. But the rest of them were in perfect harmony. They knew exactly what they had to do, and what was going to happen to them because of it.
* * *
The Faction’s warship stretched its wings as soon as it arrived in orbit of Dust, letting its bones crack in their sockets. In the command section at the top of the spine, the crew monitored events down at ground level, while the vessel scanned the town