Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [70]
INTERVIEWER: You think there might be defence risks involved?
SSA: Isn’t that obvious? The ‘security’ market’s supposed to be there to protect people, but it doesn’t, and everyone knows it doesn’t. It’s a law to itself. Just think about UNISYC, hiding away in that Security Yard of theirs. They won’t even tell me what’s going on. Nobody outside the voodoo cult’s allowed to know anything. If I were you, I’d be worried. One day, cults like that are going to have the hardware to take over the world. Or blow most of it up.
INTERVIEWER: You really mean that?
SSA: Think about it this way. Technology’s your future. You don’t need me to tell you that. The ISC’s already started work on that stupid ‘space wheel’ project, and there are a couple of people in Geneva who keep asking me how easy it’d be to put a base on the moon. So who’s going to control that kind of technology? Who’s going to control that kind of future?
[She sucks on the cigarette.]
SSA: Will that do?
[Cut back to the reporter.]
REPORTER: Nobody asks questions. Nobody has a right to ask questions. According the UN, a forthcoming report is due to reveal exactly what Guest may have supplied to the Saudi authorities, but it’s difficult to say whether we should be optimistic about that. The Saudis are hardly likely to be cooperative, and the upper echelons of their society already have access to high-level technology which, for all we know, may be too powerful for any government to own. It’d be nice to think that this programme may be the start of something big, of a movement to discover the full extent of the techno-cults’ influence. But it doesn’t seem likely. The cults will continue to wield power, to get away with murder – perhaps literally – until a lot more people ask a lot more questions.
[Beat.]
REPORTER: Nobody we’ve spoken to has felt any need to answer for their actions. Perhaps it’s time we made them answer…
* * *
Travels with Fitz (XI)
Anathema, 1801
Fitz stood on the highest level of the tower, gawping down at the floor several hundred feet below. The media was throbbing away above his head, and the ant-people were mumbling to themselves as they wandered in and out of the dome buildings. Fitz doubted either the people or the media had noticed him, but he imagined that they were both saying don’t jump, on the grounds that it made him feel better about himself.
He couldn’t really do this.
Could he?
Theoretically, it made sense. These last few months, it had seemed like the only thing to do, like the final, inevitable part of the plan. It hadn’t even been an issue. Now, with the vertigo chewing up his stomach lining and the ground bobbing up and down in front of his eyes, things were starting to catch up with him. This was death, for God’s sake. Not your first time doing something exciting and dangerous, not the day of your driving test, or the day you lost your virginity, or the day you took the exam that you were a hundred per cent sure settled your destiny once and for all. Two minutes more, two minutes of sweating and gulping and heavy breathing, then zip. Nothing else.
Fitz couldn’t even imagine that. He felt like he was waiting for the cop-out, for death to say ‘only joking, here’s the afterlife’ at the last minute.
He had to die. Nothing else made sense. He’d die, then Guest and Tobin and all the others would remember him, and in a couple of days he’d be hanging around the city again. Except that it wouldn’t really be him, of course. It’d be someone like him, someone close enough to the original to make the sacrifice not matter. One day, the new version would die, and be replaced by Fitz part three. And Fitz part three would die, and so would part four, and part five, and… and eventually, Anathema would get to Earth, and whatever version of Fitz was left could find the Doctor again. It was the only possible way out.
He didn’t have to die now, though, did he? He could live out the rest of his life in Anathema, surely. Hang around the place, get lost in the transmissions –
No.
He’d already thought this through. It had to be now.