Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [81]
Then her face broke the surface of the media, her lungs tasting air again and suddenly remembering that they needed oxygen. The next thing she knew, her body was free of the sphere. She felt her knees crack against the platform, soon followed by her elbows.
There were people around her. Shadows falling across her body. She looked up, and found herself staring into the face of the Doctor, eyebrows raised, features all crumpled up with concern. Kind of cute, really.
Compassion was there, too. And Kode. And the Ogron.
Sam smiled at them all.
‘Gave him a piece of my mind,’ she said.
Naturally, it was at this point that she passed out.
* * *
Compassion:
The rest of the day was… interesting.
At the Doctor’s insistence, Compassion spent the first few hours surveying Anathema in one of the fighters, checking out the damage. For the most part, it seemed pretty superficial. The ‘ground’ under the city had burst open in a couple of places, and some of the buildings had started to slide into the gaps, where the architecture was now being slowly nibbled away by the Cold.
It was the psychological damage that worried her, though. There were no signs of fighting now, but wherever she took the fighter she saw people wandering aimlessly in the wreckage, not knowing how to react. This kind of thing was the inevitable result of principles, Compassion told herself. The Remote had no idea what to do next. Before, a bit of bloodshed and wreckage wouldn’t have bothered them. Now, they found it shocking. Disturbing.
This city, she thought, was going to go very mad very quickly.
That evening, the Doctor took the TARDIS back to the heart of the ship, and both Kode and Compassion went along for the ride. The Doctor wanted to check that the control system was stable, or at least that was what he claimed. But when they reached the central sphere they found Guest there. He looked perfectly calm, perfectly normal. He was just standing around on the platform, waiting for them.
The Doctor was surprised, and said so. Then Guest politely asked for a lift back to Anathema, and the Time Lord was very surprised indeed.
Half an hour later, Guest lay on a bed in one of the TARDIS’s many spare rooms, staring blankly at the ceiling. Sam was doing much the same thing, a little way down the corridor. The Doctor had said they’d both been through an awful lot, and deserved some rest. Whether they wanted it or not. Compassion stood in the doorway of Guest’s room, watching her leader – yes, that was what he’d been, just for a while – as he stared and breathed and didn’t do much else.
‘Well?’ Compassion asked him. ‘What do we do now?’
Guest didn’t answer. Compassion hadn’t heard him say more than a few words since they’d left the control system.
‘The Doctor says the weapon’s safe,’ she went on. ‘It’s not going to go off by accident or anything. He’s talking about putting some kind of security lock on it, just to be on the safe side.’
‘Is he going to let us stay?’ Guest asked.
Compassion narrowed her eyes at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Our city. The ship. It’s a Time Lord weapon. And he’s a Time Lord. They won’t want anyone knowing their secrets. Especially not us.’
‘I don’t think the Doctor’s that kind of Time Lord,’ Compassion told him.
For a while, Guest was silent again. Compassion was just about to walk out of the room when he said, ‘I nearly killed all of us.’
Compassion snorted at him. ‘We had a utopia here, for a while. The last thing a utopia needs are causes. I told you, didn’t I? Principles are just the lapses in logic these people use to stop themselves going mad.’
‘I was doing what we’ve always done,’ said Guest. ‘Listening to the loa.’
‘There aren’t any loa.’
‘That’s not what the Faction told us.’
‘All right. Then there aren’t any real loa. There are just the transmissions. The signals.’
‘That’s all the Cold was? Just an idea?’
‘Obviously.’ This conversation was starting to make Compassion feel itchy. Guest wanted her to give him all the answers.