Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [72]
‘Is someone going to explain this to me?’ Compassion said, sniffily.
Guest kept the gun trained on Sam. ‘This is the Doctor’s TARDIS. Kode brought it to Anathema.’
Sam jumped down on to the floor. Guest still didn’t take his eyes off her. ‘So… we’re really going to do it?’ said Compassion, sounding more than a little surprised.
Guest gestured for the woman to stand next to him, then pressed the gun into her hands. ‘Keep the girl covered,’ he said. ‘If she tries anything, threaten to kill her. Or threaten to kill yourself. Or anybody else who seems appropriate.’
Compassion stared down at the gun in her hands, clearly not following any of this. ‘You made the Doctor pick up our ship?’
‘Yes. Finding you wasn’t difficult. The TARDIS is a very advanced machine.’
‘I didn’t know I was that important to you.’
‘The girl,’ Guest pointed out. ‘The Doctor will be more cooperative if he knows she’s safe.’
‘Oh,’ said Compassion.
‘It’s time,’ Guest concluded. ‘I have to enter the coordinates into the navigational system.’
‘Good luck,’ Compassion told him, weakly.
‘Thank you,’ said Guest. And with that he left the cloister room, his footsteps echoing away along one of the big stone passageways.
Sam waited until he was well out of earshot. Then she turned to Compassion.
‘You’re not really going to use that, are you?’ she said.
Compassion kept staring down at the gun. ‘Don’t ask me. I suppose I’ll have to. You heard what Guest said. We’ve nearly completed the mission objective. We can’t let anyone stop us now.’
‘But you don’t care about the mission objective, remember?’
‘I said I wouldn’t die for it,’ Compassion told her. ‘Still seems like a good idea, though.’
‘Why?’
There was a long pause from Compassion.
‘Because it makes things more interesting?’ she tried.
Sam was just composing a witty riposte to that when there was a chattering, skittering noise from one of the far corners of the room. Compassion turned, training the gun on the ceiling. Just the bats, thought Sam, getting worked up about something.
Getting worked up about what, though?
She squinted into the corner. There was a shape, lurking in the darkness at the edge of the cloister room, only half visible in the artificial light from the artificial torches. It was a man, clearly doing his best not to be noticed. He was standing, but his posture was slumped and tired-looking.
The man must have realised he’d been spotted, because he started to stagger forward, into the sharper light in the middle of the room. He was, quite clearly, a businessman, with a beer gut that looked like it had evolved to fit the folds of his suit.
‘Look at it,’ he said, in a kind of gargling whisper. ‘Just bloody look at it.’
‘Don’t move,’ said Compassion, prodding the air in front of her with the barrel of the gun.
‘High-level surveillance and security technology,’ the man croaked. He sounded like one of the Remote now, pulling the words out of the air at random. ‘The very latest in state-of‐the-art hardware. Bigger on the inside. It’s bigger on the inside.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Sam.
‘We have to take this back with us,’ he said. ‘Think. Think of the profits. Microsoft? Damn ’em. Damn IBM. Damn… all those bloody kids with their bloody computers. Look at it.’
Compassion sighed. Then she lowered her gun, and slipped it into one of the pockets of her combat jacket.
‘This is pointless,’ she said to Sam. ‘I’m not going to shoot you, and he’s a grade-one basket case.’
‘We have to take something back,’ the man gurgled. ‘We have to take something out of the dark. I’m right, aren’t I? Think. Just think.’
‘Good choice,’ Sam told Compassion. ‘Shall we go and see how Guest’s getting along?’
‘Why not?’ said Compassion. ‘That’s what I’d do, if I had free will.’
* * *
When Guest got back to the console room, nobody was there to meet him. The doors were open, and one look at the scanner told him that the Doctor, Kode and the Ogron were standing