Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [77]
‘Not yet,’ he said. He glanced over his shoulder at her. ‘But that wasn’t the control centre.’
‘What was it, then?’
‘Be quiet,’ the Leela beside her said flatly. ‘You are not allowed to talk.’
Leela thought it might be because there were four of them.
She could see herself from different sides at the same time.
Was that how she moved? It must be. Did she look like that?
She must do. It was not working the way a reflection worked.
It was working the way madness worked. They were not her.
She was not them.
‘It was a sort of processing centre. The way we were using it was crude. I think we might even have been interfering with the system. Like an infection. There has to be a more refined way.’
‘Communing.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You were told to be quiet,’ the Leela on the other side of her said.
‘Talking is not allowed,’ the Leela beside the Doctor said.
‘Bossy lot, aren’t you?’ the Doctor said cheerfully.
‘Is that how I sound?’ Leela asked.
‘Absolutely,’ the Doctor said and flashed her a grin over his shoulder. ‘I have tried to tell you but you simply didn’t listen. Now you know what I have been putting up with.’ He glanced back again and beamed. ‘I’m sure you must be as impressed with my patience as I am.’
Leela knew he was trying to make her feel better, but she would have preferred it if he had been more serious. ‘How do you know which one is me?’ she asked.
‘You’re the one without the knife.’
‘I am serious, Doctor.’
Abruptly the Leelas on either side of her took hold of Leela by the arms and, still hustling her along, each of them placed a knife against her neck with the points pressed under the angle of her jaw. The Leelas flanking the Doctor did the same to him. ‘This really isn’t necessary, you know,’ the Doctor said. ‘We’re not going to run away.’
‘You are not going to talk either,’ one of the Leelas said flatly, pushing the knife point into his flesh so that it drew blood.
When the Doctor and Leela had walked in silence for a while the Leela copies relaxed their holds and their knives and the Doctor was able to extract a large white handkerchief from his coat pocket and dab at the cut on his neck. Ahead of them the lighting seemed to have failed so that it looked as though the passageway they were following ended in a dark blank. The Leela copies did not slow their pace so the Doctor and Leela had no choice but to hurry towards whatever the blankness was.
As they approached it Leela could still see nothing in the darkness. It was like the total dark of the cell she had been held in. Was that it? Were they to be put back in the cells? If they were then she would have to fight, whatever the Doctor said. In that cell she was dead. She was not going back there. She was a warrior. Warriors did not die in lightless cells.
The Doctor hoped that Leela would realise that what they were seeing was the same sort of coherent light effect that the runner, or Monly or whoever he was, had used on them before. Would she realise it was just another nervous-system illusion he was using the machine to generate? Always assuming he was using it and not the other way round. The more the Doctor saw of this machine, the more convinced he became that it was far beyond the technical competence of the people who were presently playing around with it. It was as if someone had stumbled over a stardrive and was using it to cut metal for a prototype internal-combustion engine. As they reached the edge of the blankness he said, ‘It’s just a trick door, Leela. Smoke and mirrors. Don’t panic.’ Then he stepped into it.
The two Leela copies who had been beside the Doctor stepped back and remained waiting on the threshold.
‘I do not panic,’ Leela said automatically and she was immediately propelled forward by the two Leela copies escorting her. She stumbled towards the dark but, as she came level with the Doctor’s escorts, she suddenly regained her balance, grabbed one of them by the knife hand and swung her towards the other one. Once she got the Leela copy moving Leela pivoted hard and tripped