Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [109]
‘It stands for Interstellar Nanoatomic ITEC,’ Beltempest replied.
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‘If I knew what ITEC stood for it might help,’ grumbled the Doctor.
Beltempest sighed. ‘Where have you been? ITEC is an acronym for Independent Terran Empire Corporation.’
A bit like the words ‘limited’ or ‘incorporated’ back in the time of his exile on Earth, the Doctor reflected. Interstellar Nanoatomic ITEC. Something about that name caused a shiver to run up his spine. Not the name itself, but its component parts. He’d heard them before, in a different order, and not in a pleasant context.
‘Interstellar Nanoatomic ITEC is the only major corporation whose head-quarters are still on Earth,’ Beltempest continued as the Doctor rolled various alternatives around in his mind ‘Every other one has moved to the outer Rim planets, but INITEC stayed. Their building is in Spaceport Five Overcity, but –’
Now that name rang a bell, as Quasimodo once said.
‘Spaceport Five Overcity,’ the Doctor said grimly. ‘The area of Earth that everybody who went mad had passed through, if you remember our calculations on Purgatory.’
It fell to Beltempest to sum up what they were all thinking All except Pryce, whose thoughts were of a colour and texture that nobody else could understand.
‘So the Skel’Ske is on Earth,’ Beltempest whispered, ‘and the radiation from its engines is driving people mad.’
The null-grav lift shaft was only large enough to carry one normal-sized person, and Viscount Henson Farlander, aide-in-chief to the Empress, could feel its curved walls scraping his sides. He rose gently away from the vast ball-room with its teeming flocks of the aristocracy toward the Imperial Presence.
The walls were cold – cold enough that ice was forming on them – and he tried his best to pull his flesh away to avoid blisters. Still, it was a miracle of engineering. Not six inches away was the hard, cold vacuum of space. Here in the shaft it was just a trifle uncomfortable.
The shaft deposited him at the base of the spherical Imperial Throne Room.
He looked around, stunned as always by the view. The transparisteel walls were polished so well that he couldn’t even see them. All that he could see was Saturn’s majestic bulk, and the rainbow of its rings arcing away from him, front and back, as if the Imperial Throne Room were a transparent bubble sliding gracefully along an endless road of ice.
The Divine Empress’s naked body hovered above him: a warty excrescence of flesh with stumps for limbs, bloated by the incurable, inoperable tumours and diseases of extreme old age. Thin wires haloed her asymmetric head, leading to the machines that boosted her intelligence and sent it flying across space. She had ruled for so long that generations had lived and died without 186
realizing that she was centcomp; that she was the controlling intelligence that ran the solar system. And yet . . . and yet . . .
There were some problems that even she couldn’t solve.
‘NEWS?’ her voice boomed. Farlander knew that only a fraction of her attention was directed at him. The rest was shunting information for hundreds of trillions of people across billions of miles.
‘Most Supreme and Puissant Majesty . . . ’ Farlander began in his most humble voice.
‘NEWS?’
Henson clapped his hands across his ears.
‘It’s protocol,’ he snapped.
‘Whether you like it or not, it’s the way an Empress is addressed.’
‘NEWS?’
‘Oh, very well.’ Farlander sighed. ‘Where do you want to start?’
‘MEMORY PROBLEMS.’
‘Well . . . ’ Farlander hesitated. The Empress was direct, brutal even when it came to plain facts, but Farlander was uneasy about discussing her frailties.
Even in the Imperial Court, rumours spread fast.
Even in the Imperial Court? Especially in the Imperial Court.
‘The technicians believe that someone else has gained access to centcomp,’
he said finally, taking a deep breath. ‘To you. They believe that this person has the ability to alter your memories. They think that –’
‘FIND THEM,’ the Empress said. ‘KILL THEM.