Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [11]
Tobin cracked her knuckles. ‘We’re ready. Where are we going, anyway?’
Mother Mathara paused. And even in that pause Fitz was thinking it, the forbidden thought, the idea the Faction had tried to get out of his head ever since they’d found him in the Cold. Please say the twentieth century. Please say we’re going home. Back to Earth. Back to the Doctor.
‘The end of the eighteenth century,’ said Mathara. ‘It’s an important time for us of the faith.’
Fitz didn’t even bother to feel disappointed.
* * *
Just like Mathara had said, it took them two or three hours to lay in a course for the eighteenth century. Fitz went for a walk once it was all over, with his legs cracking under his weight as he strode along the crew corridors. He found himself thinking of the Faction’s own warship, the vessel where he’d gone through the initiation. The ship had been a lot like this one, a skeleton instead of a complete entity. But then, the Faction’s ships were built that way. Stillborn by design.
Not that Faction Paradox would ever have used its warships to move the colonists. The warships were special, solely for members of the family, for the Mothers and Fathers of the Eleven-Day Empire. They stuck to the backways of the universe, keeping out of sight whenever possible. Back in San Francisco, all those lifetimes ago in 2002, the Faction’s agent on Earth had been an ugly little boy with chronic personality problems, nothing more than a baby thug with a few time-travel tricks up his sleeve. One of Faction Paradox’s working classes, Fitz told himself. The crew of the warship would be altogether more elegant than that, and certainly far more civilised than the human refugees on board the Justinian.
Everything was aesthetics, that was what the shadow had said during the initiation. Everything was signals.
Fitz wondered what kind of world he was going to help these people to build.
* * *
15
Realpolitik
(from London to the TARDIS)
20 August, 17:10
Kode lit up another cigarette, slipped it between his lips, and fell back on to the bed. He wasn’t sure what the cigarettes actually did to him, but he’d been having urges to smoke them ever since he’d arrived on Earth, and he didn’t see any particular reason why he should bother resisting. The need to light the things, he concluded, was an undercurrent in the local signals. Perhaps cigarettes were the natives’ way of making time go faster, of speeding up the transmissions.
He hadn’t turned the TV off since Guest had left the hotel. He’d removed the receiver from his ear, and rested it on top of the set’s casing, along with one of his spares. The receivers were definitely having an effect, but it still wasn’t anything like home. The signals from Anathema couldn’t reach this place half as fast as he’d have liked.
Kode considered walking over to the window, and staring wistfully out at the darkening sky. Fortunately, he didn’t have to. The receiver on the TV set must have caught the thought, because it helpfully started flashing pictures of the darkening sky across the screen, so Kode stared wistfully at those instead. He wondered how far away Guest and Compassion were now. How far away the ship was. Close enough to Earth for the weapons systems to start warming up? Quite possibly. None of the Remote had ever seen the weapons systems, of course, but Guest had reliably informed everyone that they’d come on line as soon as the ship was within firing range of the planet.
Kode took a long, long suck on the cigarette. The TV programmes still weren’t enough. Interference or no interference.
Eventually, he persuaded his body to get up off the bed and wander across the room, to the corner where Compassion had left the suitcase. Kode swung the case on to the bed before he opened it up. There were a dozen more receivers inside, all the spares they’d brought with them to Earth. Kode wondered how many he could arrange around