Doctor Who_ Match of the Day - Chris Boucher [19]
For the moment he set aside the thought that this whole thing could be another trap and concentrated on the details of what he must do. From his medical kit he took the bio-plastic dispenser and sprayed each man’s right thumb. When they were set he carefully rolled off the tubes of artificial skin before they had a chance to bond with the natural tissue.
Each one bore a thumbprint natural enough when slipped over his own thumb to fool most low-level identity scanners.
Carefully he placed each artificial thumbprint in the relevant ID pack and pocketed it.
This done, he dragged the bodies into a rough pile. In the mouth of each one he poured a handful of the remaining tracer bullets. When he burned the bodies these would explode making rapid dental identification unlikely. Then he scoured the wood for dead trees and dry brush, heaping everything he could find into a crude funeral pyre.
Now it was over Keefer had no particular feelings about the men he had killed. They’d lost that was all, and he was alive.
He used six incendiary pellets to set the fire. As it took hold he walked unhurriedly back through the wood towards the motorway.
Chapter Four
They had been working for several hours and even the Doctor‟s natural optimism was beginning to disappear. Who was it who said never confuse movement with action, he thought, as he paced backwards and forwards. He glanced across at Jerro Fanson hunched over the desk, staring blankly into the computer screen. It was a stupid aphorism; you might just as well say never confuse sitting still with thinking. And what was that legal one: anyone who represents himself in court has a fool for a client? He was a fool to think he could find a legal solution to the situation he and Leela were in. He‟d be better off exploring the possibilities of escape. Movement, action, that‟s what they needed.
„That could be the way to go.‟ Fanson sat back and rubbed his eyes. „With the right sort of publicity it could have been a major crowd-puller. A real must-see match of the day.
Suppose this was all just a cunning plan. Suppose you had it in mind all along to use your fighter‟s peculiar attitude to killing -‟
„Peculiar?‟ The Doctor stopped pacing and turned to glare at Fanson. Just because the world was mad it didn‟t follow that you had to go along with it, and anyway that wasn‟t the sort of statement he wanted Leela to hear go unchallenged. „I don‟t call refusing to kill somebody a peculiar attitude to killing.‟
„No you‟re right!‟ Fanson agreed, suddenly excited. „It isn‟t about killing at all. It‟s about not killing. It‟s about not killing and getting noticed as a result.‟
„And it wasn‟t a cunning plan,‟ the Doctor objected. You couldn‟t lie your way out of something like this, even if he was good at it, which he wasn‟t. In fact lying still made no real sense to him despite his best efforts to understand it and use it, technically. A lie was the deliberate denial of a truth.
How could that be anything but absurd? What a waste of memory. Let go of the truth and you would end up drowning in a sea of nonsense. One day he would step out of the TARDIS and it would be impossible to understand what he was doing, there would be cause without effect and effect without cause, there would be no reason in anything, he would never find his way back to reality. Of course reality had nothing to do with legality. Legalities, all legalities, were not about truth or lies or fairness or unfairness: they were about rules and how they were interpreted...
„It was not a plan, not any sort of plan,‟ Leela put in. „It just happened.‟
„Exactly,‟ the Doctor said. „And to say it was a plan distorts the multiverse. A minor distortion but a definite distortion.‟
„Get a grip, Doctor,‟ Fanson said testily. „I told you already -
insanity is not an acceptable defence. And it doesn‟t impress me anyway.‟
Leela was standing with one of her wrist bands