Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [122]
‘Longer for me, or for you, Doctor?’ Vaughn finally replied, his normally 207
benevolent voice suddenly sharp, betraying an underlying tension. ‘I’ve lived through a millennium waiting for this moment.’
‘Lived through? I would query that. You were killed. I saw you fall. Nobody could live through that. Nobody.’
‘Ah, but you forget,’ that hated voice said, oozing false comradeship, ‘I had a Cyber-body, and a Cyber-augmented brain. They built me well, you know.’
‘They built you for a purpose. They were using you.’
‘Of course.’ Vaughn smiled. ‘I knew that, but to use me they had to rebuild me. I took what they offered – the immortality, the power, the vast increase in memory and processing power – and played them along.’
‘How did you survive?’
Vaughn shrugged, as if the information was of little concern, but the Doctor knew that he wanted to talk, had to talk, and if the Doctor could keep him talking for long enough then something might happen.
‘I had other bodies, hidden away,’ Vaughn replied. ‘Copies I had made without the knowledge of the Cyberplanner in my office. Spares, if you like. I never trusted the Cybermen. I knew that they would betray me eventually.’ A flicker of transient information in the desk cast highlights across his burnished metal face, his drooping eyelid, his sardonic smile.
‘That’s not the way I remember it,’ the Doctor sneered in provocation. ‘Perhaps your much vaunted memory increase is failing you. As I recall, you were shocked when the Cybermen showed their true colours. You had been completely sucked in by their pathetic offer of power.’
Vaughn looked away. ‘Perhaps,’ he said casually. ‘It was a long time ago.
I . . . I disremember, in the words of a long-dead American president. I have moved on to other projects since then, and I have done it by myself. I don’t need any help. You taught me that, Doctor.’
‘If I had thought that anything of you might have survived the Cybermen’s guns,’ the Doctor said venomously, ‘then I would have hunted down every last nut and bolt of you and melted them down for scrap.’
‘I was cleverer than you, even then,’ Vaughn said calmly. ‘When the Cybermen destroyed one body, my mind – my personality, my essence – was transmitted to an International Electronics communications satellite in geo-stationary orbit, then downloaded into another robot body in our New York office. From there I regained control over the company using a different identity. Share prices had crashed, of course, but they picked up again. It was not difficult. Unbeknownst to the Cybermen, I had already established fifteen separate identities around the world. Within three years, the entire board of Directors of International Electromatics consisted of various versions of myself.’
208
‘That must have made board meetings interesting,’ the Doctor said, amused despite himself.
‘Especially considering the fact that I was the secretary as well,’ Vaughn chuckled.
A sudden yellow flare outside the window reflected from Vaughn’s metal skin and momentarily illuminated the office.
‘Bonfire night?’ the Doctor ventured. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t bring any sparklers.’
‘Riots,’ Vaughn said casually. ‘Certain portions of the Overcity and Undertown are ablaze.’
‘Riots?’ The Doctor’s brain raced through facts, assumptions and theories.
‘Vaughn,’ he said, leaning forward earnestly, ‘I have to tell you something.
About these riots –’
‘They’re due to the icaron radiation emitted by my Hith ship,’ Vaughn said.
‘I know.’
The Doctor felt a sudden wave of black anger welling up within him ‘You know,’ he hissed, ‘and you don’t care?’
Vaughn shrugged. ‘I take the long-term view, Doctor,’ he said. ‘And if that means a few million people have to die so that I get what I want, then so be it. I consider it to be a large-scale research project on the effects of icarons on the general populace.’
The Doctor was about to say something he would probably have regret-ted for the short time that it would have taken Vaughn to kill him, but just then Vaughn’s butlerbot entered