Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [92]
Close your eyes, walk forward, open your eyes. It would have been a simple and painless procedure, provided they did not think about it too closely. They weren’t going to find Sozerdor out there, but there was a chance that Sozerdor might find them – which for his purposes would be the same thing.
‘We need more to go on,’ Kley said reasonably. ‘We can’t just take your word for things. It seems that’s what got us into this mess in the first place.’
‘You want us to chase someone we haven’t seen, who is doing something we probably haven’t understood,’ Fermindor said. ‘As far as I remember you didn’t think that was such a good idea before.’
‘You have seen him, the Doctor urged.
‘Tagged and bagged.’
‘And I’ve told you what he’s doing.’
‘What you think he’s doing.’
‘And you think you’re an alien,’ Rinandor put in. ‘So how reliable are you?’
‘I mean Sozerdor’s come here to start a war?’ Pertanor said. ‘Does that seem likely to you?’
‘If it does you obviously are an alien,’ Rinandor said.
‘Very well.’ The Doctor held up his hand in exasperation. ‘If you insist on trying to understand then you’re going to have to take the consequences.’
‘Yes,’ Kley said.
‘And the problem with that is what exactly?’ Rinandor asked.
Once again the Doctor had to wonder how the Lentic trainer might be affecting him. Trying to understand was one of the drives he had always recognised in himself. How could he be objecting to the same impulse in these people, just so it would be easier to use them as bait? ‘I wanted to protect you,’ he muttered. ‘That was all.’
Leela led the way into the control bay. She was closely followed by Belay. Kley was more cautious but she led the others in and they followed her. Leela had already activated the mechanism by the time the Doctor joined the rather sheepish group, which stood waiting for something to happen.
What did happen could have been an accident. A coincidence of the sort that shamans and charlatans find convenient to build their reputations on. When the Doctor had a chance to think about it, however, it seemed more likely that the machine simply recognised the originals and their constructs and automatically offered a link for the purposes of comparison. Whatever the reason, the effect, first for Kley, and then for the others, was unnerving.
Kley walked out of the cave into the stark brightness. Light and heat were the same, a chest-burning breathlessness and the same dry smell of hot rock filled her nose and her eyes.
She would have looked up to try to see the approaching rescue ship, but even peering out from the shade of both hands she could see nothing. She turned her face from the searing white sky, took the communicator from her hip pouch and pulled it out of its dark-wrap.
It took Kley a moment or two to recognise herself. ‘Is that supposed to be me?’ she asked watching the oddly short, slightly stocky figure standing in the unforgiving blaze waiting for the voice link aerial to deploy. ‘That’s not how I look, is it?.
‘No,’ Fermindor said.
‘I thought I was taller.’
‘You are.’
‘I didn’t think I was that plump.
‘You’re not,’ Fermindor said. ‘It’s a crap copy.’
‘You’re such a liar, Fe,’ she murmured as Fermindor’s exact copy emerged from the cave and was immediately joined by perfect copies of all the others except Sozerdor. ‘I’ll never be able to trust you again.’
Pertanor giggled nervously. ‘How is it they got everybody else right and me wrong?’
‘I knew it,’ Rinandor said. ‘This is a nightmare. How many copies of Monly are there?’
‘What are they for?’ Kley said. ‘What are they doing?’
‘My guess is they’re decoying a rescue ship,’ the Doctor said.
‘Lead One, Lead One,’ Kley said into her communicator.
‘have you acquired visual lock? I repeat have you visual confirmation? Reset.’
‘Serian Kley, this is Lead One. We have you on drone locator with visual lock. Orbit drop one is in ten. Reset.’
‘But why? What’s the point of it?’ Pertanor said. ‘I mean, have they decided they like being us so they’re taking