Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [69]
REPORTER: I don’t… I mean, that’s just…
MORGAN: It’s sick. It’s pretty sick, yeah. But that’s… what can I say? That’s the kind of world we’re getting into here. It’s all on the quiet, all very cliquey. We have to stick together, everyone knows everyone else. The DTI, UNISYC, everyone. You get into that mentality, and –
REPORTER: You start to go mad.
MORGAN [laughs]: Well, no. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just the way things are. You get these groups…
[More footage from COPEX. We see businessmen congregating at the bar, talking among themselves and swapping brochures. It all looks quite chummy.]
REPORTER [voice]: Wherever people get together, the same old patterns repeat themselves. At COPEX, we were reminded of voodoo cults, or of medieval black-magic cabals. Though most of the torture trade is entirely legal – it’s against the law to manufacture unlicensed electric-shock weapons in Britain, for example, but that doesn’t stop them being exported by British companies from locations like Mexico City – these people aren’t unlike drug dealers, or pornographers. They have their own languages, their own codes of practice, and they resent any attempt by outsiders to regulate them.
[Beat.]
REPORTER [voice]: In this case, however, the members of the ‘cult’ just happen to be among the most powerful people in our society. And they’re answerable to nobody. When we requested an interview from the DTI, they didn’t even deign to send us a refusal. The subculture operates under a veneer of respectability. These days, even the Church of England invests in companies like GEC, known for supplying ‘defensive’ weapons to genocidal regimes like that of Indonesia.
[Scene change. We’re looking at a face we haven’t seen before, a woman sitting in front of the camera in the BBC studio. She’s glamorous, athletic-looking, and apparently in her early thirties, with honey-blonde hair and a large amount of green eye-shadow. She’s also wearing a silver catsuit.]
REPORTER: We spoke to the part-time special scientific adviser to Unit Nations Intelligence in the UK. Though she was prepared to appear on camera, we can’t reveal her name for security reasons.
SPECIAL SCIENTIFIC ADVISER: How do I look, by the way? I did try to dress down, so –.
INTERVIEWER: You look fine. Really. What were you saying before, about…?
SSA: About what?
INTERVIEWER: Questions.
SSA: Oh, that. Well, there’s a lot of questions you’ve got to ask yourselves. Forget the civil rights thing for a minute, you’ve got to ask where the technology’s coming from. And where it’s going.
INTERVIEWER: Can you explain what you mean by…
SSA: Technology’s meant to be there for the good of all… [grimaces] …humanity. But it’s not being used by anyone who’s answerable to the rest of the human race. It’s not even being used by your governments, officially. It’s being put together by cults. In… what’s that place called? Japan, that’s the one. A bunch of fanatics dropped a nerve agent into the subway there. Killed a lot of people like that. And now the UN’s getting reports that the same cult’s building Tesla machines in Australia. We’re talking about machines that can cause earthquakes –
INTERVIEWER: But what about the internal security market?
[The SSA lights up a cigarette. Slowly.]
SSA: Nobody on your… nobody on this planet’s trying to find out who’s building what. Or why. Think about all the money these people must have put into the research. I could’ve cured half a dozen minor diseases by now, if you’d given me funds like that and a decent lab to work in. The point is, all this new technology’s in the hands of some self-interested maniacs whose names you’re not even allowed to know. The security market’s one of the ways they communicate, that’s all. And you know what the scary part is? The scary part for you, I mean. The scary part is how close these people are to the ones who’re supposed to be running things. It’s almost like you’re living in the dark ages. You know what I mean. The priests get to know all the big secrets, but the rest of you have to manage by yourselves.