Doctor Who_ Match of the Day - Chris Boucher [65]
‘Then I have nothing to say,’ Sita said and stood up. While the guards were binding her hands behind her she found herself wondering whether there would ever come a time when she would regret not saying: you’re a vain and stupid man with hideous taste in everything, especially wine and decor. She had nothing much to lose now. But, then again, she had indulged herself once before when a man had irritated her and look where that had got her...
Chapter Eleven
„Where is she?‟ When he got back the Doctor had gone to look for Leela on the training ground only to find that she had left it earlier in the day. Soon afterwards it seemed she had left the compound altogether, driven away in a chauffeured runner. The security man on the gate had neither the authority nor the nerve to try and stop her. „Doesn‟t anybody know where she went?‟
The trainees glanced at one another and shrugged and shook their heads. Outside the weapons and therapy annexe where they were assembled, the Doctor could hear the crowd in the viewing stand beginning to slow handclap and boo and raise the occasional desultory chant of Leela, Leela, Leela.
„She must have said something to someone,‟ he pressed.
„Don‟t you ever talk to each other when you‟re training?
Surely you do.‟ The young duellists looked sheepish and vaguely guilty, which rather puzzled him, so he waited without speaking. Silence he knew could be a very effective interrogation technique. Oh dear, he thought, am I interrogating these people? It was not my intention to become an oppressive authority figure. But you can‟t pretend to be an authority figure without behaving oppressively, like an authority figure. And that was the trouble with pretending: do it well enough and nobody can tell you are, not even you, eventually...
It was Meta who finally broke the silence. „I think she was having second thoughts about...‟ He waved his hand vaguely.
„About what?‟ the Doctor prompted.
„The New Way,‟ he said. „She asked me what a fighter could do if they wanted to run away and hide.‟
„She asked me that too,‟ one of the others piped up.
„And me,‟ another said.
„I think she was losing her nerve,‟ Meta said. „I think -‟
„I think that is such crap,‟ Benron interrupted angrily. „She was not losing her nerve. She is brighter and tougher and braver than any two fighters you can name.‟
„I can‟t name two fighters who‟ve run for it,‟ Meta said.
„Step out onto the practice ground and I‟ll name you one,‟
Benron challenged. „Right here, right now.‟
So that was it, the Doctor thought. She got tired of waiting for me to do it and she‟s set out to find Keefer herself. As Meta and Benron squared up to one another he stepped between them. Paying neither of them any attention he deliberately made the move look almost absent-minded. „So what did you all tell her?‟ he asked.
Keefer thought it could still be some half-cocked scam to part him from the wad of cash he had flashed around, but somehow he doubted it. If the pilot intended to make a move his best chance had been while they were actually sneaking aboard the supply freighter. Even a scuffwit would realise that. Besides which, the man had finally introduced himself, as Melly Finbar, and it was Keefer‟s experience that chancers didn‟t offer names before they stepped up and tried for it.
„Pick a silo,‟ Finbar said, indicating the series of circular maintenance access plates in the floor of the freighter‟s bulk cargo bay.
Keefer nodded at one in the centre and Finbar opened it using a hand-held remote override. They peered down into the wide-bodied tube. It was three-quarters full of some sort of light-coloured grains. Keefer reached down and scooped some up in his hand. „It‟s lecea seed,‟ he said disbelievingly.
Finbar grinned. „All the way from the wet-fields of home,‟ he said, „in case the Lady Hakai gets nostalgic. And to feed the Fat Boys.‟
„You mean it‟s real? It‟s grown organically back home and shipped out?‟
„If you were the richest woman in the settled worlds would you settle for less than the real