Doctor Who_ Longest Day - Michael Collier [17]
Like the ones on the floor where they had landed. In that room.
Sealed off but surely recently used.
Forgetting about the staff quarters, the Doctor hurried back in the direction of the TARDIS.
***
Leaving the muggy hut, Tanhith had to shield his eyes against the glare of the sunlight. Everything withered before a cruel, brilliant sun. There was an oppressive stillness in the air.
His 'quarters' were on the periphery of the settlement; it was an outhouse for supplies that had long since been used up.
He shared it with two other members of the crew, Maadip and Elb, but at least it was better than sharing with the prisoners. Felbaac was so determined to prove to these poor worn-out men he was one of them that he was bedding down in the communal dorm. Yast, of course, was by his leader's side, while the two other crew members were based in the rocket, working to put things right. An order from Felbaac -one he knew couldn't be carried out but gave anyway, just to keep them occupied. It fooled no one, of course, but at least the scourge of the Thannos Multiplanetary Government was leaving Tanhith alone.
He considered heading towards the settlement centre, then changed his mind and decided to head away from the shabby shacks and the beaten men. Elb and Maadip must be training up some of the inmates now.
Tanhith had watched the first couple of sessions and found them too painful to keep attending. Felbaac was giving them dreams that he was in no position to deliver. He thought of the government's own campaign of disinformation. The Outer Worlds were backward. Their beliefs were primitive, their right to self-determination proven unnecessary. Yast insisted that you had to turn that disinformation back on the enemy - and if that involved lying to your allies, then so be it. Tanhith himself had doubts as to what was true and what false.
Still, it remained a fact that one by one the Outer Worlds were being reconstructed, homogenised to the Inner World ideal. The old architecture, the old ways, all gone. The minerals and resources left as waste in the wake of the terraforming were being dumped on Hirath for reclaiming sometime in the far future when they were viable once more. And the people dissenting, those who would not claim temporary habitation on a pinprick government rock while waiting for repatriation, were dumped here, too. Perhaps they could be reclaimed at some point in the future.
Otherwise, a chunk of Hirath came cheaper than fashioning a prison planet.
And it was so much more humane than allowing dissidents to share the government stockades - the message was clear: they would be victimised and killed. Life in the holding camps on Ipmuss had been hard enough, but even the presence of callous K'Arme guards reminded you you existed, you mattered even if only as a hindrance, an object of hatred. You could feed on that, gain strength from it. When they shipped you to Hirath, you were forgotten. Nobody.
He paused and looked at his reflection in the grimy glass of another storehouse. His long blond hair was matted over his tiny ears. His face was weathered, the skin pockmarked. He allowed his long eyelashes to knit together, blotting out the sight. He felt he'd been nobody for years now and couldn't be bothered to fight against it the way Felbaac did.
At least here he was in good company.
***
Sam was running. She'd got bored with walking, just like back on Earth.
Fair enough, you had to get from A to B, but she always felt the time in between was such a drag. She always wanted to be somewhere rather than just be going somewhere.
So she ran. There were times in Coal Hill when she'd just wanted to run and run and never come back. Leave behind the narrow little streets, the narrow little viewpoints, the hanging around on street corners. Well, she thought wryly, at least I managed that in the end.
She remembered the head teacher asking her to run for the school.
Remembered how cool her friends - and her enemies - had thought her for saying no, for telling