Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [63]
‘And when it gets there?’
Compassion shrugged. She did that a lot, Sam had noticed. Almost as much as she said ‘obviously’. ‘They’ll sit back and wait. To see if they’re going to have to activate it. I mean, that’s if there are any Time Lords left by then. Most of them are supposed to be getting out of this universe. Something about a universe in a bottle. Don’t know the details.’
‘Wait. Wait. There’s a bomb the size of a planet heading straight for Earth, but you want me to help you live there? You can’t be serious about this.’
‘It’s as safe as living in Anathema. Might as well live on the target as on the side of the bomb. Besides, the chances are it’ll never be used. I’ll take the risk, thanks.’
Sam was going to ask Compassion if it didn’t bother her that her ancestors’ homeworld might be wiped out in the flick of an eyelid. But she decided not to waste her breath. The Remote had learned everything they knew from Faction Paradox, and Faction Paradox probably would have approved of that kind of thing. The cult must have put Anathema on the hull of the ship because it knew nobody would ever look there, because it knew the Time Lords couldn’t interfere with the vessel without drawing attention to themselves.
‘This is horrible,’ Sam whimpered.
‘Obviously,’ said Compassion.
‘Three billion years, that’s been coming? No, wait a minute. Is that three billion Earth years, or…?’
‘Time Lord years,’ said Compassion. ‘Same as Earth years, though. The Time Lord planet’s got the same kind of cycle as Earth. Don’t know if that means anything.’
Then something seemed to distract Compassion, and her hands tightened on the controls. Some kind of signal, thought Sam, something ordinary human senses couldn’t pick up –
And then Sam heard it as well. Faint, at first, but getting louder. Something that could only accurately be described as a wheezing, groaning sound.
‘Tachyon signals,’ Compassion murmured. ‘And there’s something else. There’s… noise…’
‘The TARDIS,’ said Sam. She looked around, wondering how the police box could land in a space this small. A moment later, it dawned on her. The vision of the warship was fading away, solid walls slowly creeping into existence on the other side of the cockpit.
‘It’s materialising around us,’ Compassion said. She sounded more than a little anxious about that.
Sam relaxed, for the first time in hours. The seat squirmed under the weight of her collapsing muscles, but she ignored it. The silhouette of a tall humanoid figure appeared outside the fighter, watching the craft and the TARDIS embrace each other.
‘He’s back,’ said Sam. ‘And it’s about time.’
A few moments later, however, she had to face the fact that the man wasn’t the Doctor. It was Guest.
* * *
22
Voodoo Economics
(the final edit)
Extract from the transcript of the BBC 2 documentary Seeing Eye, first broadcast 3/2/97. Programme title: ‘Voodoo Economics’.
[The programme opens with footage of an office building, evidently taken with a small portable camera. We see a car pull up in front of the building, and its single occupant climb out of the driver’s seat. This footage is obviously fly-on‐the-wall, taken without the subject’s knowledge.
[The man drags an enormous suitcase out of the passenger seat before he closes and locks the car door. The suitcase is of the ultra-high‐security variety, the kind you need two keys and a passcode to open.]
REPORTER [voice-over]: This man works in a perfectly ordinary office building in London’s Barnes Road. He’s a thirty-eight‐year-old businessman, with a wife, one child, and a home in the suburbs of Twickenham.
[The man crosses the pavement and heads towards the office, not once looking in the direction of the camera.]
REPORTER [voice]: He also happens to be an international arms dealer.
[As the man vanishes through the office doors, the view changes. We’re looking at the same building, but now the camera focuses on the first floor up. We can’t see through the window; it looks like it’s tinted,