Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [82]
A dark figure rose up before him in his thoughts: burning eyes raking him from beneath a black skull-cap. Perhaps there were some things worse than death.
And yet . . .
And yet he fought so hard against death’s final embrace. He had endured agony, time and time again, rather than just lie down and give up. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, he suspected that more people died because of his interference than lived. But still he struggled. Still he fought.
‘Yes,’ he said, surprising himself. ‘Yes, I am afraid of dying.’
He held that revelation up to the light and looked at it. Well, he thought, you learn something every day.
He drained his tea in one gulp and placed the metal beaker on a nearby table.
The ship lurched suddenly as Beltempest engaged the engines and took off from the pad. The environmental controls in the lounge were working flat out to combat the heat from Dis’s sun. The Doctor imagined that he could sense it through the bulkhead: a malign, oppressive influence directly above their heads.
Perhaps Beltempest had the right idea, climbing into a spacesuit. At least he could filter out a lot of the heat that way.
‘Death holds no fears for me,’ Pryce said suddenly. ‘She and I are on first name terms.’ He reached out and picked the beaker off the table and started to turn it around in his hands.
‘You said that you don’t think it’s wrong to kill people – or, at least, to have killed people,’ the Doctor probed, peripherally aware that Pryce was displaying signs of nervous tension. ‘Is that because you don’t think that death is something to be frightened of?’
Pryce smiled. ‘You are starting from the premise that murder is inherently wrong, and asking me to explain why I feel differently,’ he said. ‘My position is that murder is right, and that it is your position that requires justification.’
140
‘But you’re the one . . . ’ The Doctor tailed off, unsure how far he could go in provoking Pryce.
‘The one who was exposed to massive doses of icaron radiation?’ Pryce finished the sentence for him. His hands still worked at the beaker. ‘I dispute your allegation that icarons can drive people to psychosis – even if it is just those people who, like myself, have undergone the body-bepple process. I have seen no evidence, but even if you are right, I would argue that it merely opened my mind up to a larger truth: the inherent meaninglessness of moral systems.’ He jerked his head slightly, and his pony-tail flicked up. ‘I can see more clearly now.’
‘But if I’m right about icaron radiation,’ the Doctor said cautiously, ‘you are the one who has been through an experience which could affect your thought processes adversely. You admit that?’
‘Of course,’ Pryce said easily. ‘Have you never been in a situation which could have affected your thought processes adversely?’
Hanging onto Morbius’s mind-bending equipment while his past lives were dragged from him, one by one . . . Letting the Zygons’ bistronic radiation short-circuit through his body . . . Lying, squirming, while Davros’s mind probe ripped his memories to shreds . . . Screaming soundlessly as Abaddon’s tiny thought parasites worked their way through his neuronic pathways, burning as they went . . .
‘Point taken,’ he admitted. ‘Nobody can argue from a privileged position.’
‘Thank you. I repeat my question: why do you think that murder is wrong?’
The Doctor hesitated. This was a potential moral minefield. ‘The state of being alive is intrinsically valuable,’ he said eventually. ‘And nobody has the right to take that away.’
‘You disappoint me.’ Pryce leaned back in his seat. He wasn’t even sweating in the heat. ‘That isn’t an argument at all. You are merely saying that there is some value in what is being taken away. That fails to explain why taking it away is wrong.’
His hairless brows drew together, creating furrows in his broad forehead.
He was holding something in his hand: something that had not been there before. The Doctor gazed down at it in surprise and dawning horror. Somehow, Pryce