Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [35]
‘ Now! ’
He sighed. ‘Yes, yes, I know all that,’ he scolded, as if he had suddenly heard what she was saying. As they reached the bottom of the ramp, the Landsknechte came to attention. A man in a captain’s uniform stepped forward, holding a gene-tester. He was tall and dark-haired, and his skin was a dull, hard shell, like a beetle’s carapace.
‘Identification?’ he said.
The Doctor proffered his right hand. ‘I am a plainclothes Landsknechte agent, here on official business,’ he said calmly.
The captain ran the gene-tester over the Doctor’s hand and glanced at its tiny simcord screen. The tester buzzed faintly. ‘It will take a few seconds to check your identity,’ he said. ‘I apologize for the – ah yes, that seems to be in order, sir.’ His attitude changed markedly. ‘If I can be of any assistance . . . ’
‘We wish to consult your records,’ the Doctor announced. ‘Judicial investigation, you know.’
‘Of course, sir. And the lady?’
‘My companion.’
‘And her identification?’
The Doctor glanced at Bernice. ‘She’s nervous of those machines,’ he said.
‘Can you not take my word for it? I can vouch for her.’
I’m sorry, sir,’ the captain insisted, ‘but regulations state . . . ’
‘Of course,’ the Doctor said. ‘Bernice . . . ?’ He indicated that she hold out her hand.
The captain reached out towards her with the gene-tester. Bernice felt the muscles in her back go tense.
‘Oh look,’ the Doctor said, gazing upwards and shading his eyes, ‘is that a flock of macrobiotic dodos?’ The captain glanced involuntarily upwards, and the Doctor quickly shoved his left hand into the gene-tester and out again. ‘My mistake,’ he said, unabashed, as the captain frowned at him. ‘They’re extinct, of course.’
The gene-tester buzzed. The captain gazed suspiciously at it, then at Bernice. After a few seconds, his face cleared. ‘Thank you,’ he said, gesturing to one of the hard-faced Landsknechte. ‘This man will fly you to the officers’
mess. Please accept our hospitality while your investigations continue.’
‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor.
‘You can’t resist a touch of the dramatic, can you?’ Bernice hissed as they walked away from the Arachnae and towards an armoured hovercar that sat like a fat ladybird near the ship. She was conscious from the stares of the 61
tourists and the Landsknechte that this VIP treatment had raised some eyebrows.
‘A little foible I have.’ The Doctor’s face was strained, and a fine sheen of sweat covered his forehead. ‘Ostentation is my middle name.’
‘A big foible, Doctor, one that’s going to get us into trouble, one of these days.’ She frowned. ‘How did you do that?’
The Doctor looked a little sheepish. ‘A trick I learned from the Master,’
he admitted. ‘He frequently used regeneration as a means of disguise. My friend Romana – you remember her? – did a similar thing during her first regeneration: trying out various genetic configurations before she settled on one. It occurred to me that I could temporarily shift my genetic make-up enough to mimic somebody else, just for a few seconds. Two somebodies else, to be precise. Or do I mean “two somebody elses”? Whatever. It saps the energy, but it’s an effective disguise.’
The Landsknechte dilated an iris door in the side of the hovercar and gestured for them to enter.
‘ That’s why you were so chummy with that group of Landsknechte of the Arachnae,’ Bernice said as they sat in the spartan interior. ‘You were trying to pick up their genetic make-up!’
‘They were nice people,’ he protested.
‘Then you should be ashamed of yourself.’
He squirmed in his seat as the hovercar took off in a cloud of dust. ‘Time Lords don’t get ashamed.’
‘What, never?’
‘No.’ He sighed. ‘We had our shame psycho-surgically removed a great many generations ago.’
The rain joined heaven and hell with a myriad threadlike silver lines, and the hiss as it hit the water of the square reminded Powerless Friendless of static, although he couldn’t remember ever hearing static. Just another orphaned memory. He should put them all in a box and