Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [65]
‘I’d still like to have proof of this connection between icaron radiation and madness,’ Beltempest growled, wondering how the Doctor could refer with such apparent pity to the man who had almost killed him and his companion.
‘And I’d still like to know how you come to recognize the name of a very rare sub-subatomic particle,’ the Doctor murmured. ‘Can you arrange this so that the display shows us where the people who caused the events were at the time?’
‘But the display will be almost exactly the same!’ Beltempest protested, ‘at this level of resolution, anyway.’
‘Humour me,’ said the Doctor.
Another command. The display flickered slightly, and one or two of the dots seemed to move sideways by a fraction, but otherwise it remained unchanged.
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‘As I said, if this is the sort of help you are supposed to be providing us with, Doctor, then –’
‘And what I want now,’ the Doctor interrupted, ‘is to see the time-histories of all those people for . . . well, let’s say the week before the events took place.’
‘You what?’
The Doctor turned and raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me that your much-vaunted Landsknecht computer can’t work out where these people have been?
Surely you can tap into security files, or ships’ records, or something?’
‘If you think it will help,’ Beltempest said with heavy-handed sarcasm. He snapped another set of orders. The blue dots were replaced with a set of wormlike lines. All of the lines converged on the Earth.
‘Zoom in on the Earth,’ the Doctor instructed.
Beltempest complied. The image on the dome blurred, shifted giddily, and became a globe of the Earth, cloud-covered and rotating as if seen from orbit.
The globe was covered with blue lines, some coming from outside the screen, others starting from various points on the Earth’s surface, but all of them passing at some stage through a particular area.
‘That’s where the answer lies,’ the Doctor said. ‘That’s the source of all your problems. Zoom in again.’
They dropped through the atmosphere on a curving course, simulated clouds flashing past, until they were descending towards a cityscape.
‘And where is this?’ the Doctor asked.
Beltempest was about to give an instruction when the computer, as if tired of waiting for him to continually pass on instructions, flashed up a caption.
SPACEPORT FIVE OVERCITY.
It was early morning in Spaceport Five Overcity, but Bernice had lost all track of time. Ahead of her, the eerily empty moving walkway passed through a hole in the centre of a massive building. Other towers loomed all around like massive tree-trunks. She watched, while trying to overhear Forrester and Cwej’s conversation behind her, as the three of them moved slowly towards the hole.
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ Forrester was saying. ‘We can’t take her back to the lodge! Not after – you know.’
‘So what’s your suggestion?’ Cwej asked. Bernice could hear the nervous-ness in his voice.
‘I dunno,’ Forrester sighed resignedly after a moment’s thought. ‘If you’ve got any bright ideas, don’t keep them to yourself.’
There was silence for a moment, and Bernice watched the building slide over them. She didn’t want to be back on Earth. She wanted to be with the 112
Doctor, and she wanted both the Doctor and herself to be in the TARDIS, and she wanted the TARDIS to be somewhere nice and peaceful.
If wishes were fishes . . .
‘Look,’ Cwej said finally, ‘if, and I repeat, if the Adjudicator Secular is involved in some kind of cover-up, then we go above her head. Talk to her boss, the Adjudicator Spiritual.’
‘And tell her what?’ Forrester snapped. ‘We need proof. All we’ve got at the moment is suspicion.’
‘We’ve got the mind probe recording.’
‘Yeah, and what does it prove? That somebody tampered with it. We’ve got no real evidence that Adjudicators are involved. There’s nothing to say that she and her friend didn’t do it themselves.’
Bernice could almost feel the thumb being jabbed towards her back. ‘Who’s
“she”?’ she called back over her shoulder, ‘the cat’s mother?’ It was a phrase