Doctor Who_ Match of the Day - Chris Boucher [49]
A government minister, one of the other corporate guests of the Hakai Corporation, had suggested that Leela should join in the excitement. If she fought the vicious Baloch, he advised, there was: ‘a huge audience just waiting to acclaim you. You would instantly become the most famous duellist on the planet.’
‘I have other plans for her,’ the Doctor said firmly. He had seen that Leela was in danger of being caught up in the moment and he had to intervene quickly before she got swept away by the general mayhem and blood-splattered insanity.
‘This primitive bloodbath is no part of my DDS.’
‘DDS?’ the minister enquired.
‘Duellist development strategy,’ the Doctor said, with what he hoped was the right degree of pompous arrogance needed to make such nonsense believable. ‘I’m taking on a stable of young duellists even as we speak. The intention is that they will complement Leela’s very particular fighting style. I have a unified strategy in the process of development and I am quietly confident of a great personal triumph. Our fighting school will soon be the most famous in the history of the noble contest.’
‘Oh come off it now,’ the minister scoffed. ‘You cannot possibly make such an extravagant claim. The noble contest is greater than any particular fight or any particular school of fighting. And it always will be.’ He held out his empty glass and an attendant filled it with bright yellow vine-flower wine.
‘This is the second-level yellow?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the attendant murmured.
‘I prefer the golden myself. The aftertaste is subtler,’ the minister said to no one in particular. ‘It’s not bad though.’
The attendant did not make the mistake of agreeing, or disagreeing, or making any sort of comment.
The Doctor looked down into the arena where Baloch had just slashed the hamstrings of his latest challenger and was now in the process of dancing round the crippled youth making delicately agonising cuts with his fast, blood-ribboned sabre. ‘I can see for myself the power of the noble contest,’ he said.
‘Baloch is something of an aberration,’ the minister agreed.
‘An entertainer, though. A crowd-pleaser. You have to admit he’s a crowd-pleaser.’
‘He has skill, Doctor,’ Leela said, watching Baloch intently, both in close-up on the main relay screen and directly down in the harshly lit fighting circle. ‘And he is not afraid.’
‘Does that make him a warrior I wonder?’ the Doctor said.
‘Or simply a psychopath with no imagination.’ But Leela was not to be provoked.
‘It makes him hard to beat,’ the minister opined. ‘Is that why you have other plans for your pretty young fighter?’
The Doctor had observed the way everyone deferred to this man and had surmised that he was probably not someone to be antagonised unnecessarily and so he smiled his most charming smile and said, ‘You have seen through me, minister.’ He lowered his voice confidentially. ‘The truth is I’m not sure she’s ready for the likes of Baloch. And I wouldn’t want...’ His eye was drawn to one of the subsidiary relay screens and he was momentarily distracted by a close-up sequence of the brutal antics going on in the arena.
‘You wouldn’t want to waste an earning asset by cashing it in too early,’ the minister murmured. ‘I quite understand. I would feel exactly the same in your position. We think alike you and I. We have a lot in common. We could be brothers.’
Although he knew it was the drink talking the Doctor was irritated by the man’s thoughtless cruelty and he was sorely tempted to point out that they had nothing whatsoever in common, not even their basic physiology, but he was forestalled by the arrival of a slim, dark-haired young woman.
‘Sita, my dear,’ the minister greeted her warmly. ‘You’re late. You’ve missed a major part of the entertainment.’ He looked past her. ‘Where is your father?’
‘He sends his apologies. He’s unwell. A virus he thinks.’
‘Hung over more like,’ the minister chortled. ‘It was an excellent lunch we had