Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [62]
‘Retire,’ Fermindor said without hesitation. ‘With the best contract bonuses and personal-injury package I can sue out of them.’
The Doctor nodded knowingly. ‘The standard front-line ambition.’
‘Every Investigator’s dream,’ Fermindor agreed.
But not Fermindor’s dream as far as the Doctor could remember, so what had happened to the man to make him so different? He slowed his pace slightly and dropped back a little so that he could see if there was anything strange about his walk or general movements that might suggest he was injured or drugged. The Doctor hated it when he knew something was wrong without quite knowing why.
From time to time as they had been walking a pulse of brightness in the floor had overtaken the Doctor and Fermindor and raced on ahead of them, gradually disappearing round the long curve, the glow slowly dissipating until it was completely gone, leaving only the uniform underfoot lighting to illuminate the way. There seemed no predictable pattern or regular timing to these pulses, and now, behind them, there was another sudden increase in the light level. The Doctor glanced back to see the wave of light sweeping along the passageway above the silent pulse. He increased his pace and the light passed and rushed on. The function of the light pulses interested him, and he found himself actually hurrying after this one in the hope of seeing it do something different or change in some way. Ahead of him, Fermindor had speeded up too. That was when the Doctor thought he knew what the pulses were for and he stopped walking. ‘Fermindor?’ he called. ‘Wait a minute.’
The other man stopped and turned. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m getting tired.’ The Doctor yawned as if to emphasise the point. ‘How about you?’
‘We’ve got to keep moving.’
‘Yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘I think that’s the point.’ He glanced back into the darker distances of the passageway behind them. ‘And any second now we’re going to be encouraged to do just that.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘This,’ the Doctor said as another pulse of light flowed through the floor.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ Fermindor urged, taking a couple of anxious steps after the departing light.
‘Interesting,’ the Doctor said. He could feel it himself, the same impulse to move on. There was, it seemed, some frequency within these pulses which interfered directly with the brain’s electrical activity. ‘Move along, follow me, keep up. That’s what it’s saying.’
‘You’re not hearing voices, are you?’ Fermindor asked nervously. ‘I thought we could help each other but if you’re hearing voices we’re in real trouble.’
‘The next one will be even more intense,’ the Doctor said.
‘Universal non-verbal movement instructions? All-purpose crowd control? What’s it really for, I wonder? It can’t just be for us.’ The next pulse came and as he had predicted the Doctor found that the need to follow it was much stronger.
‘We have to go!’ Fermindor almost shouted. He was fidgeting, agitatedly hopping from one foot to the other.
The Doctor hesitated and then said, ‘All right.’ They immediately set off at a brisk pace. Fermindor relaxed at once and the Doctor was irritated to find that although he knew they were being manipulated he still felt better the faster they walked.
It gave the impression that it was a huge dome-shaped space, but it was impossible to tell for certain how large the chamber was because most of it remained in total darkness.
Occasional prickles of energy sparkled and flickered briefly across the vast open plain of a gradually revolving floor on to which, from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of channels, waste materials of all kinds poured continuously. Anyone watching long enough and concentratedly enough might catch a glimpse in the lightning flashes of the slow vortices swirling around the distant centre, each one drawing down a different constituent as the debris was steadily reduced to its basic elements.
At the edge of