Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [35]
DOCTOR: Please, Sam. We don’t have a choice.
SAM [shouts]: I can’t!
DOCTOR: Sam, you have to! Think about Ordifica. Millions of people are going to die. Including Mark Lessing. Billions more will be turned into slaves. You’ve seen how they work, Sam. You know it’s true.
* * *
Scene 56. The Nursery (Section 2)
[SAM gets a grip on a syringe. She stares at the baby inside the incubator.
[The infant Mark Lessing is sleeping peacefully, his eyes closed, his tiny chest moving up and down as the machinery helps him to breathe.]
SAM: It’s just a baby. That’s all.
[The screeching starts to waver, and change pitch. The noise is, if anything, harsher than it was.]
DOCTOR [shouts]: Sam… the power cells…
[SAM stares at the baby in the incubator. Every part of her body is shaking now.]
* * *
Scene 57. The Nursery
[The DOCTOR looks over his shoulder at SAM. In front of him, the CREATURES seem to be recovering.]
DOCTOR: Sam! Please!
* * *
Scene 58. The Nursery (Section 2)
[We see the baby again, his face perfectly peaceful, not aware that anything’s going on. Then we see SAM, as she raises the syringe.]
SAM [whispers]: I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
[Her hand trembling, she reaches out for the glass-plastic lid of the incubator, and swings it open.
[She pauses, staring at the baby for a few seconds more. Then, very slowly, she moves the hand holding the syringe towards the tiny form of Mark Lessing.]
* * *
Compassion felt dizzy. Very, very dizzy. Which wasn’t good, because she happened to be standing on the edge of the platform. She didn’t remember how she’d come to be so close to the brink, so her body had obviously been doing strange things while her mind had been tuned in to the media.
‘Well?’ said Guest.
Compassion didn’t turn. ‘That was revolting.’
‘Really? Why?’
Compassion tried to find the words, but for once the media wasn’t giving her any clues. ‘She did it, didn’t she? She killed the baby.’
‘Yes. She killed the baby. Does that bother you?’
‘Obviously!’
‘But you watched her destroy an entire planet,’ Guest noted. ‘You weren’t horrified by that. Not to this degree. And there were thousands of infants on the colony world. Possibly millions.’
‘But I couldn’t see them,’ Compassion said.
She turned, at last, and made her way back to her chair. Guest was pacing the platform nearby, hands clamped behind his back, as ever. ‘I think I’m beginning to understand,’ he said. ‘We were assuming that principles had something to do with a greater moral purpose. But I don’t think that’s true.’
Compassion sat. ‘Is it important?’
‘Yes. Think. The Earth-born humans still live in complex, highly politicised societies. But they’re starting to turn into us, into people like our ancestors. Signal-dependent. And the two systems of thought, the politics and the transmissions, are causing a kind of schizophrenia. You understand?’
‘No,’ said Compassion.
‘Principles are just sequences of images. Sequences they use to make sense of the signals around them. That’s why one baby can be more important to them than a whole planet. This is what the media’s been trying to understand. They’re not that different from us at all.’
‘It’s not possible, anyway,’ Compassion scowled. ‘You can’t change time, not the way the Doctor was trying to do it. Besides, he wouldn’t do a thing like that.’
‘How do you know?’
Compassion paused, and shrugged. ‘I just know.’
Guest stopped pacing. ‘Impressions from the media, taken from the girl’s memories. The Doctor must be very important to her. And I think you’re right. I don’t think he’d do what he did in the scenario, not even if he could. The media’s using the girl’s mind as raw material, that’s all. And it’s still using parts of our history.’
‘Mixed up, though,’ said Compassion. ‘Even the Faction couldn’t have taken out a whole Time Lord fleet. Anyway, if we really could have transmitted ourselves across the universe like that…’
‘I know. It’s the basic concepts the media’s interested in. The details