Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [57]
‘It needs an intelligent mind to appreciate what I have done,’ the runner said, managing to sound arrogant and just a little peevish at the same time. ‘I had hoped yours was such a mind.’
The Doctor resisted the urge to be flattered. This man was clearly interested in something more than erudite conversation and the chance to show off to an intellectual equal. He wanted something that he had not yet managed to get. After the flattery would come threats.
Sure enough, the runner said after a longish pause, ‘If you are no more intelligent than the others then I can see no reason to keep you alive?
And then, thought the Doctor, he would try blackmail.
‘They are alive at the moment but whether they stay that way will depend on you. Perhaps you’d like to pick which of them I kill first?’
And finally perhaps a demonstration of some sort.
‘I don’t think you believe me, do you, Thedoctor?’
Abruptly the Doctor was conscious that whatever was holding him was tightening inexorably and it was becoming increasingly painful.
‘Do you feel that?’ the runner asked. ‘Can you imagine it getting tighter and tighter and tighter until you are a crushed and liquefied mess?’
It didn’t take much imagination as the pressure increased on every part of the Doctor’s body. The pain came in excruciating waves and it slowly blotted out everything else, and just when it seemed he could stand no more, the pressure was released and the pain subsided.
‘Now.’ The runner’s voice was little more than a whisper and sounded close to the Doctor’s ear. ‘Shall we decide which of them is going all the way to the squelch? Let’s start by considering the options.’
Hanging in the darkness, a holographic image of Leela formed directly in the Doctor’s line of vision. She was suspended immobile in a coruscating column of yellow and white light. Bands of twisting brightness pulsed slowly up and down the column. It reminded the Doctor of a lights-and-illusion conjuring show he had seen used to dupe people on a planet where the original colony had collapsed into primitive barbarism. Though the image was bright in itself, the coherent light generating it cast no glow into the surrounding darkness and gave the Doctor no hint about his own situation.
‘One,’ the runner said.
On the column, the twisting bands visibly contracted.
Leela’s fingers twitched and her eyes opened wider. Her mouth formed an oval of mute pain, a silent scream.
‘Two,’ the runner said.
An identical column of light formed beside the first. In it, Kley was suspended. Her eyes were shut and her mouth was firmly closed.
‘Wake up!’ the runner commanded, and the bands expanded and contracted in sharp, teasing spasms. Blood showed on Kley’s mouth. She had obviously bitten into her lip but she did not open her eyes. The Doctor saw the blood trickle down on to her chin and decided that they were all, including him, being held in the vertical position. He was not sure whether knowing that would be of much use but the acquisition of knowledge was never worthless. Thinking always mattered.
‘Three.’ A third column contained Pertanor. He was glaring into the middle distance. He appeared to be straining to turn his head. Was that because he could see, or were they all imprisoned in the same darkness?
‘Four.’ Rinandor was still unconscious in her column.
‘Perhaps I should kill her first,’ the runner said. ‘Before she starts to vomit all over herself.’ It struck the Doctor then that whatever had caused this couldn’t have happened long ago.
The effects of drinking the liquid from the lake would be short-lived and they didn’t seem to have worn off yet.
There were four columns now standing side by side, rippling and sparkling round their isolated and more or less agonised prisoners. It was beginning to look to the Doctor like a rather macabre art exhibit.
‘Five,’ said the runner, and Belay was added to the line-up.
His eyes were open but they seemed to be unseeing, darting unfocused this way and that. He seemed to be speaking or, perhaps, shouting.