Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [17]
The other Lost Boy covered his brother with the stun gun. ‘Don’t try anything,’ Kode said. ‘We’re armed. Besides, my Ogron’s bigger than your Ogron.’
‘Oh, grow up,’ said Sarah.
Kode looked genuinely hurt.
* * *
20 August, 22:31 (Saudi time)
The city was called Riyadh, but it looked just like every other Earth city Kode had seen. The air was less wet than it had been in Britain, and there were a few minor differences in the local architecture, but it gave Kode the same feeling that – say – London had. Squat buildings, all of them looking as though they’d been damaged in some war or other, the walls rough and covered with pockmarks. The air smelled funny, probably not exactly the same as the air in London, but still full of rotting people and rotting food. There was oil in the air, too much grease for the lungs to handle properly.
What set Riyadh apart were the signals. There weren’t so many in this part of the world, and the impressions they left Kode with were… odd. Fragmented. As if the locals hadn’t got the hang of transmitter technology yet. The images were cut up into strange orders, coloured with bizarre flashes of local culture. There were religious icons sewn into the signals, centuries of dogma worked into the media.
Fear. That was what he could feel. Fear of some god or other? Maybe. Or maybe the people just knew how protective the media could be of that god, and knew how much they’d have to suffer if they offended it. Curiously, though, the underlying themes of the media weren’t that different from those in Britain, even if the surface noise was wrong.
London and Riyadh were the same, Kode decided. But London thought it was different. London thought it wasn’t scared. The people there had used the signals to cover everything up.
They’d been walking through the backstreets of the city for some time now, trying to find their way in the dark, navigating by the lights of the buildings. There were hardly any locals on the streets, not at this time of night. The few people they’d passed had hurried on by, never even looking Kode in the eye. Sarah and the traitor Ogron were walking ahead of Kode and his guard, Sarah clasping the TARDIS tracker in one hand, letting the machine guide them. Brilliant green contour lines were flickering across the display, and every now and then a brightly coloured blip would indicate the target’s position.
Finally, they found the right building. They had to wander down a blind alley to reach it, the old walls around them blotting out the light from the rest of the city. Kode didn’t have a problem, not with the receiver changing the light frequencies as they went into his head, but Sarah and the Ogrons seemed to be struggling a bit.
The building looked ancient, half demolished. Whole sections of the outer wall had been pulled away, and lengths of wood had been nailed over the gaps. There were strips of coloured plastic stuck over the planks in places, engraved with words in the local language. Kode got the Ogron to pull the wood away from the walls, then ordered Sarah and her accomplice through the entrance with a nod of his head.
The interior of the building was just as shoddy as the exterior. One of the holes in the wall let in light from the other side of the structure, apparently enough for Sarah to see by. Kode inspected the decor. There were cracked tiles under his feet, pieces of shredded electrical wiring sticking out of cracks in the walls.
He noticed the disruption at almost exactly the moment that the TARDIS tracker went ‘bloop’.
It was sitting in the corner of the floor space, fooling the naked eye into thinking it was part of the architecture. But it felt… heavy. A great dark weight dropped into the local transmission pool, making ripples that Kode’s receiver couldn’t possibly ignore. It was touching him, stroking him, the same way the media did back at Anathema. The media always felt like something hostile, though, whereas the thing in the corner was simply dispassionate. Curious, but not ready to judge anyone.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Sarah. She