Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [112]
‘When what happened?’ asked Kreiner. Then he bit his tongue, realising slightly too late that this was exactly the question I.M. Foreman had wanted him to ask. As it turned out, his tongue tasted like iron filings.
‘I found them lying at the bottom of a valley,’ the showman-priest explained. ‘Twelve of them. Twelve complete strangers. Some of them were like me, and some of them… weren’t. But they were all just lying there, looking half dead. All of them injured. All of them struggling. I had to help, didn’t I?’
‘Wait,’ said the Doctor’s companion. ‘You’re saying that you found all twelve of yourself just lying around the place? In the middle of this wasteland thing?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. Like I said, they’d all been injured. They’d all gone through some kind of trauma. They couldn’t remember how they’d got there, or what had happened to them. They couldn’t remember anything about their previous lives. Still, it didn’t take us long to work out the truth. To work out that we were all basically the same person.’
Kreiner’s eyes flickered back to the Doctor. The old man was shaking his head, clearly having a hard time believing this.
‘And you never thought to ask how they got there,’ he muttered.
‘It did cross my mind,’ I.M. Foreman told him, with more than a hint of irony. ‘But after the first couple of hundred years we still hadn’t figured it out, so there wasn’t a lot we could do except get on with our lives. In the end, we just put it down to fate. One of those questions you know nobody’s ever going to answer for you.’
‘I see,’ said the Doctor. He didn’t sound entirely satisfied by that answer.
‘Whatever the truth was, we thought it was probably a sign of something,’ I.M. Foreman went on. ‘That was why we started the travelling show. It felt like the right thing to do, once we were in that position. It’s the real philosophy of the show, remember. To let the audience see how far one person can push himself. To let everyone know how much a single individual’s worth. How much potential there is in your own lifeblood. We felt like we had a duty to explain that to the universe.’
Once again, the showman shrugged. With great aplomb.
‘Seemed to make sense to us,’ he concluded. ‘Sounds a lot less impressive when you say it out loud, though.’
* * *
9
Building the Perfect Monster
(one of those solutions that may well be worse than the problem)
The capsule from the Faction’s warship hit the ground about half a kilometre from the town wall, just outside the range of the Remote’s receivers. The pod’s casing cracked open on impact, and the material began to disintegrate, exactly as it had been programmed to. These days, the Faction tried not to leave any evidence behind.
The contents of the capsule were duly released on to the surface of Dust. Faction Paradox had become directly involved in the planet’s affairs.
As if things weren’t complicated enough already.
* * *
‘This doesn’t change anything,’ snapped Father Kreiner.
Suddenly, all eyes were on him. Freaks, Remote, and all. He thought he felt something at that point, a twinge that ran through his receiver and into his nerve centre, as if the systems on board the Remote ship were trying to tell him something. He doubted it was as important as what was happening in the square, though, so he put it out of his mind for the time being.
‘I rather think it does,’ mused the Doctor, obviously glad to have something to say again. ‘Have you thought about the ramifications of this at all? If all of I.M. Foreman’s future selves are on this planet, then –’
‘I know,’ Kreiner told him. ‘You’re going to say I can’t kill him. If I