Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [68]
We really need to talk to someone who knows more about them.’
Beltempest thought for a moment. The Doctor, watching him intently, added: ‘You know somebody who can help, don’t you? That’s how you come to know about icarons.’
Beltempest shook his head. He didn’t want to think about this. He really didn’t.
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‘Yes you do,’ the Doctor insisted. ‘Who is it?’ When Beltempest failed to reply, he added, ‘Look, people are dying as you sit there. Tell me the person’s name.’
‘Pryce,’ Beltempest sighed. ‘Professor Zebulon Pryce, of the University of Sallas. Famous case, ten years ago or so. He discovered how to produce icarons by smashing beams of blumons and zeccons together, published a number of papers on the basic mathematics, quantum states, and so on. The Landsknechte offered him facilities and a grant to study the weapons applications first hand –’
‘Weapons applications?’ the Doctor said darkly.
‘Purely defensive, of course,’ Beltempest said dismissively. ‘We wanted to know whether icaron beams would be more powerful than the proton beams we’re using now. Anyway, Zebulon came here to Purgatory to work. He had his own building, near the spaceport, with a cyclotron to produce the icarons.
I was only a trooper at the time, but I remember the case . . . ’ He trailed off into silence.
‘What happened?’ the Doctor prompted.
‘He went mad, of course,’ Beltempest sighed. ‘I suppose it’s obvious to you, but we didn’t know that icarons could cause people to go psychotic. Pryce was the first human researcher on them, and none of the alien races whose databases we’d examined –’
‘Ransacked,’ the Doctor whispered.
‘– had discovered them either,’ Beltempest continued. ‘He fooled us all for three years. We thought Landsknechte were deserting into the training environments, living in the jungles and whatever. Turned out he was killing them off, one by one. He’d lurk in the ventilation ducts late at night, and leap out at them. Paralysed them with dermal patches, then took them back, still conscious, to his lab.’ Beltempest took a deep breath. ‘At the court martial it was said that he’d kept them alive for weeks, gradually dissolving the flesh from their bones with coronic acid but leaving their circulatory systems and their nerves still intact.’
‘How was he caught?’ The Doctor’s voice seemed to be coming from a million miles away.
‘Fuse blew on the cyclotron, causing a fire. He wouldn’t evacuate the building, so they sent Landsknechte in to get him out. We found – we found . . . ’
His voice caught, and he stopped for a moment before continuing. ‘Some of them were still alive when we broke down the door. Just skeletons wrapped in shreds of tissue. Skeletons with eyes. Staring, staring eyes. I’ll never forget it. Never.’
The Doctor laid a hand on Beltempest’s arm.
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‘They stopped the research and destroyed the building, of course,’ Beltempest said finally in a voice that was just a shade too calm and too controlled,
‘but they kept him alive. Justice had to be done. Justice had to be seen to be done. If you want an expert on icarons, Professor Zebulon Pryce is your man.’
‘Where is he?’ the Doctor asked.
‘At the Imperial prison, on the planet Dis. The Landsknechte wanted him executed, but he’s got the whole case tied up in knots with appeals and legalese.
Something to do with the fact that although the Landsknechte employed him, he was still on the books of the University of Sallas and therefore under Imperial, rather than Landsknecht, law. It doesn’t help that lawyers for both sides keep dying.’
‘Will you take me there?’
‘No.’ Beltempest’s eyes were bleak and dry. ‘I might just be tempted to blow the planet to smithereens from orbit.’
‘I need to see him,’ the Doctor insisted, ‘and I think you do too.’
‘Oh I see him,