Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [24]
‘If we want to understand her principles, we have to understand the contradictions,’ Guest concluded. ‘The images that define her culture. However meaningless they may seem. We have to understand why you’re allowed to eat cows, but not horses. Why some poisons are acceptable, and some aren’t even legal. We have to understand all these things. Fully.’
Compassion leaned back in her seat, ready to listen to the next wave of transmissions. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘So, who’s it going to ask her to kill now?’
* * *
Travels with Fitz (VIII)
Anathema, 1799
The planet couldn’t have been real. Or, if it was, then someone had done something deeply peculiar to the landscape. When the first of the landers had touched down on the surface, and the refugees from the colony had poured out into the light, they’d found themselves standing on ground that was perfectly smooth and perfectly black. No mountains, no forests, no rivers, not even the occasional bump, although there were one or two cracks in the ground, which seemed a lot deeper and a lot darker than anybody felt comfortable with.
There were buildings, of course. The Faction’s engineers had started work on a city, planting grand towers at strategic points over the non-landscape. Their construction machines were already stomping and trundling across the much-too‐close horizon, excreting slabs of grey polymer-rock from their stomachs, so by now there were just enough buildings to house the colonists. Fitz himself had been allotted a place of his own near the centre of the city-to‐be, although he’d hardly spent five minutes there in the hours since they’d touched down. He’d been wandering around the landing site for most of that time, threading his way between the people and the lifting drones, watching the colonists as they unloaded their possessions from the landers.
Most of the Faction’s machines were being brought down to the surface from the belly of the Justinian, and installed in the buildings close to the heart of the settlement. While the ship had been in flight, Mother Mathara had shown him something called a ‘biosphere-manipulation system’, which she claimed allowed the Faction’s followers to tap into the ecosystems of whole planets. Fitz hadn’t been sure exactly what that meant. Something to do with being able to alter the environment from the inside, to change the patterns of the weather and the biological limits of the animals. And so on.
‘Even we don’t know how to use the full potential of the systems,’ Mathara had purred, admitting to a gap in the Faction’s knowledge for the first time since Fitz had met her. ‘But we can make small changes to the ecosystem. We find it makes things easier for our colonists.’
Fitz had been told all about the Eleven-Day Empire, the hidden homeland of Faction Paradox, where the Mothers and Fathers had held their parliament ever since the Time Lords had wiped out their old homeworld. He’d been told about the things that had been done to the sky there, about the jungles of raw bone that were supposed to grow under the earth. The Mother had tried to make all this sound like an achievement, but Fitz guessed that the design of the Eleven-Day Empire had been an accident, a result of the Faction people messing around with ‘biosphere manipulation’ even though they didn’t know how to use the technology properly.
‘I still don’t get it,’ Fitz heard Tobin say, as he made his way back towards ‘his’ lander. He guessed she wasn’t talking to him, so he didn’t bother looking up. ‘Why now? Why the eighteenth century?’
There was a sigh. The sound of cold breath scraping against bone. Mother Mathara, Fitz realised, still in her mask. ‘I’ve explained everything to Nathaniel,’ Mathara said, wearily. ‘I’m sure he’ll tell you our plans when he feels it’s time.’
‘“Plans”?’
‘The Faction’s got our future mapped out for us,’ said a voice that could only have been Guest’s. ‘They want us to have access to the twentieth century.’
Fitz stopped walking. And very nearly stopped breathing.
‘It’ll be another two hundred