Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [31]
‘Very poetic.’
The constant thrum of the engines altered in pitch. Bernice could tell to the nearest millisecond when they would break through into reality.
‘We’re leaving hyperspace,’ it said. ‘Should you not tell your companion?
He might wish to see the sight for himself.’
‘He’s off in the bar with a group of high-powered Landsknechte on their way to a conference. I’m sure he’s seen it all before.’
The bot nodded. ‘Perhaps he has,’ it mused. ‘Perhaps he has. Have you been travelling with him long?’
Something was wrong. Bernice could feel a chill run up her back. The bot was too familiar, too chummy. If she didn’t know better, she would swear that she was being patronized.
It gazed at her for a long moment. She could feel the tension building up.
Before Bernice could reply, stars were twinkling through the grey nothingness. She watched as the tentacles of chaos withdrew, retreating before the advance of the material universe.
‘You ask a lot of odd questions for a purser,’ she challenged.
Although nothing about the bot changed, it gave Bernice the impression of amusement. ‘Knowledge is power.’
54
Before she could respond, the ship turned slightly around its primary axis, and Purgatory spun into view. Bernice couldn’t help blinking. Surely no planet could look like that. It just wasn’t . . . natural.
Purgatory’s surface was a patchwork of hexagons, each hundreds of kilometres across. The ochre of a scorching desert and the lush green of forest were separated by straight boundaries. The blue depths of an ocean and the glowing white of an icebound landscape sat beside each other, ignorant of the incongruity. Towering mountains and level plateaus, urban wastelands and jumbles of volcanic rock, glittering cities and cultivated fields: a disparate assortment of landscapes set randomly together.
‘And that’s Purgatory?’ she said.
‘That’s Purgatory,’ it confirmed. ‘One step away from hell.’
The bot suddenly twitched as if a short circuit had momentarily overridden its balance sensors. It gazed around in what looked suspiciously like panic.
‘Dear me,’ it said in a high-pitched, fussy voice. ‘Dear me, so near to disembarkation, and I have passengers to attend to. If you will excuse me . . . ?’
It scurried off, its posture radically different from moments before. Bernice watched it, amazed. ‘They didn’t tell me that the tickets included a cabaret as well.’
The rain hammered steadily down upon the armoured roof of the Adjudication Chapel. It was getting on Forrester’s nerves. It reminded her of the time when she’d been caught in a projectile weapon shoot-out. She’d thought that they were an historical anachronism, but the Therenids still used them, and when a group of mercenaries from a Therenid hive-ship went off the deep end in one of the entertainment towers, a lot of damage had been done. Blasters and lasers cauterized where they didn’t kill. Projectile weapons caused a lot of messy and unpredictable collateral damage.
She opened her mouth to tell Cwej the story, but one look at his face persuaded her otherwise. He was slumped morosely in a form-fitting seat, pushing its adjustability to the limit, hands clenched around a cup of coffee. She’d offered him scotch, but he didn’t drink on duty. Of course he didn’t drink on duty; what had she been thinking of? He didn’t do anything else against the rules, after all. Why should he drink on duty?
Forrester knew that she was getting more and more wound up. She’d already snapped Cwej’s head off a couple of times. It wasn’t his fault – well, all right, it was his fault; after all, he did play the ‘wide-eyed and innocent’ card too often – but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Not too much, anyway.
In a vain effort to distract herself Forrester looked around the ready room.
It was late in the afternoon, and the place was almost empty. Most of the other Adjudicators were out on patrol.
55
The rain was getting to her. She