Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [22]
‘Like the Adjudicator Secular was saying?’
‘Yeah. Been involved with quite a few myself. Ordinary people suddenly turning violent and killing friends, family, even total strangers. They all have that look. Like they just switched off. Sign of the times, I think.’
She pressed the button.
The suspect suddenly jerked in her seat as if she was having a fit. One flailing padded arm caught Cwej across the cheek and sent him sprawling.
Forrester dived across the table, trying to tear the contact from the suspect’s forehead, but the woman had toppled backwards in her chair, still thrashing her arms and legs. Cwej pulled himself up by the table leg. He and Forrester reached the suspect’s side at the same time. Forrester went to pull the contact 37
off, but her hand hesitated before it touched the wire. The suspect’s eyes bulged slightly, then half closed. She sighed: a long final exhalation.
And died.
‘Shit,’ Cwej breathed. ‘That never happened in the lectures.’
38
Chapter 3
‘I’m Evan Claple and this is The Empire Today , on the spot, on and off the Earth. Today’s headlines: drama during the investiture of a new baron at the Imperial Court orbiting Saturn as a courtier starts firing a plasma rifle towards the throne. Imperial Landsknechte killed the courtier within moments, but have themselves since been executed for their lapse on the direct orders of the Empress The question remains: how did the rifle get into the throne room? And today’s weather . . . ’
The end of the rope-ladder swept across the roof, blown by the wind.
Powerless Friendless gazed up at its length to the point where it vanished into the clouds. It was a long climb, especially for a gastropod, but he’d done it every day for five years. The ladder connected the wasteland where the old Scumble ship had crashed – a waterlogged marsh now – with the base of the INITEC building. It was one of the many ways that the underdwellers used to gain access to the riches of the promised land.
Powerless Friendless’s acquaintances – he didn’t have friends because Hith didn’t like company – covered a range of professions. Some were thieves, some were beggars and some even had real jobs to which they commuted every day. There was always a call for cheap labour, even in a robot-rich economy. The standing joke in the undertown was that even bots had more rights than the underdwellers.
Powerless Friendless’s position was somewhere between beggar and worker.
He busked in a plaza just outside the entrance to the offworld zoo. Always the same place. Force of habit. People still paid to hear live music.
Quickly Powerless Friendless swarmed up the rope, using the muscles in his basal foot and the adhesive properties of the mucus secreted by his skin to pull himself up. He tried not to look down at the receding marsh and the wreckage of the Scumble ship, but he couldn’t help being aware of the irregular buildings and canals of the Undertown appearing in wider and wider circles as he climbed. Tendrils of mist encircled his body. The weight of the hag’jat and rucksack slung across his back pulled him down, but he struggled on. His pseudo-limbs were tiring, his lymph pump was beating fast, but he kept on going. The wind tugged at his fedora, but he kinked his eyestalks to hold it more firmly on.
39
His mind began to wander. With a sudden shock, he found himself thinking about Waiting For Justice’s bloodied body. He tried to pull his thoughts away, but the vision of his agonized face, not seen, but imagined, hung in front of Powerless Friendless as he climbed. Death was nothing new in the Undertown, but Powerless Friendless hated it when someone he knew was killed. It reminded him of –
No. Don’t think about that. Anything but that.
He looked around in an effort to distract himself, and became aware that he had climbed up into the clouds without realizing. The rope ladder was suspended in nothingness. How long had he been going? Minutes? Hours? Days, perhaps? Above him, the curved undersides of the null-grav field generators appeared through