Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [34]
‘He’s a toody,’ Kley said.
Fermindor stopped and turned to look at her. ‘This runner’s a toody?’
‘Yes.’
‘We weren’t told that.’
‘What difference does it make?’ she asked, knowing suddenly that it made a serious difference. Toodies would understand another toody better than she did, wouldn’t they?
Was that the difference it made? Or was it that they didn’t instinctively despise a toody? Underestimate a toody?
Fermindor frowned. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If it doesn’t make a difference why weren’t we told?’
‘ Because it doesn’t make a difference,’ she said. ‘He’s a runner. A rogue weapons tech. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?’ How bad could it be? How badly had she underestimated this runner?
‘But you were told, Chief,’ Fermindor persisted.
‘I’m in command of the mission,’ she said.
‘You didn’t think it was important to give us all you had on the runner we were chasing?’
Sozerdor and Belay were both staring at her now. The fact was she hadn’t checked on the team briefing because there hadn’t been time, and she had been told that Monly had taken care of it. She was tempted to bluff it out. The truth would surely destroy what little was left of her authority. She hesitated, but then she had to acknowledge to herself that lying took more energy than she had left. ‘I thought you knew,’ she said. ‘It was supposed to have been covered in the briefing.’
Ironically it was Belay, a firster himself, who voiced the thought that was in all their minds: ‘What else haven’t they told us?’
‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know,’ Pertanor protested.
‘It wasn’t here before,’ Rinandor said.
Leela prowled round the edge of the lake trying to see how deep it was and whether there was anything living in it.
‘Leela?’ the Doctor called to her. ‘Those equipment packs aren’t worth the risk. Stay out of the water.’
For once Leela agreed completely with what the Doctor said, if not with the way that he said it, and although she disliked being told what to do she had no intention of going into this lake to prove a point. While she was, with some reservations, prepared to accept that Pertanor and Rinandor believed what they were saying, her immediate problem was that it couldn’t be true. This lake had been a lake for a long time. The jungle clearing it was in was not a new one – the trees and general vegetation showed that – and the bank at the water’s edge was weathered and had been colonised by small bog plants. As far as she could see the island looked well established too. Plant growth correctly developing from water’s edge to high point showed clearly that this was no small hill left above the waterline of an overnight flood. Even if there was any hint of a reason for a flood, which there was not. And there tossed down in the middle of the island, in the middle of the lake, were the two discarded equipment packs which the couple admitted belonged to them.
‘There can’t be anything in the water,’ Rinandor said.
‘Are you sure about that?’ the Doctor asked.
‘It’s only just happened. They don’t come complete with wildlife.’
‘They don’t come complete with convenient islands either,’
the Doctor said, watching Leela cutting lengths of tropical vine from a tree at the edge of the clearing.
‘It’s not exactly convenient,’ Pertanor said. ‘If we want those packs back I’m going to have to wade for them.’
‘You’d have to swim, I think,’ the Doctor said. ‘Not a good idea under the circumstances.’
‘I can do that,’ Pertanor said defensively. ‘I can swim.’
‘It could be that swimming is what you’re being invited to do,’ the Doctor said. ‘It would be far more sensible to wait here. Leela seems to have a plan.’
‘What would you do without her?’ Rinandor said scathingly.
‘Think more. Run less,’ the Doctor said and smiled, leaving her uncertain whether she had been insulted or not, leaning as she was on Pertanor to take the weight off the painfully aching leg she had twisted running in mindless panic.
At any other time, Leela would have been sure that Pertanor and Rinandor were lying. If she was reading the signs correctly, and she