Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [87]
Vap Oppat Pol shrugged: a long shudder that ran the length of his body.
‘Money, my friend. What else is there?’
‘You did this for money !’
‘We were losing the war. The Skel’Ske would have staved off the inevitable for a month, perhaps two. We would have been wiped out. Hithis was lost, whatever I did.’ Vap Oppat Pol looked away. ‘I wanted to survive, so I offered the humans a deal. What was wrong with that?’
‘And now? Have you come to watch me bleed for them too? Isn’t the knowledge that you have betrayed Hithis enough?’
Vap glanced around, furtively. ‘I’ve been betrayed too!’
‘Really?’ Daph ladled his voice with irony, but Vap didn’t seem to notice.
‘Yes! I overheard a conversation. They’ve just been stringing me along. They have no intention of paying me at all. They’re going to torture me!’
‘How terrible.’ This time, even the thick-skinned Vap must have realized that he wasn’t being taken seriously.
‘I’m getting out,’ he said. ‘I’ve booked passage on a ship leaving Earth with the little money that they did pay me. I’ll make a new life for myself somewhere out in the galaxy. There’s a planet named Oolis I’ve heard about. I could make a life there.’
Hope washed through Daph’s body, washing away the pain and the weakness.
‘And me . . . ?’ he whispered, hardly daring to hope.
Vap Oppat Pol handed him the box.
‘There’s an electronic key here that will open all the doors between here and freedom, and a map of how to get from here to the Undertown. You’ll be safe there.’
‘I can’t stay on Earth!’ he said, shocked. ‘They’ll spot me instantly. I’m a Hith!
We’re at war!’
148
Vap shook his head sadly.
‘The war’s over, my friend,’ he said. ‘They don’t like us, but they tolerate us.’
He laughed mirthlessly. ‘Humans are magnanimous in victory. They can afford to be.’
‘Does that mean . . . I can go home? To Hithis?’
Vap Oppat Pol opened his mouth to answer, but his skin flushed grey with shame and he turned away.
‘Good luck,’ he said, and slithered towards the door. Before he reached it, he turned his eyestalks to say: ‘Three last things. Firstly, I’ve rescued the control nexus and put it in the box with the key and the map. They can’t operate the Skel’Ske properly without it. Keep it safe. Secondly, if I’m ever back on Earth, I’ll leave a message for you written on the wall outside the Spaceport Five Offworld Zoo. Remember that: the Spaceport Five Offworld Zoo. Thirdly, I’m changing my name. Word has gone out that all Hith must do the same, to remind the humans of what they have done to us. I am going to call myself Homeless Forsaken Betrayed And Alone, because I am. If you ever need me, that’s the name I’ll be living under on Oolis.’
He slithered away, leaving nothing behind him but bad memories and a box.
Daph’s pseudo-limb hovered indecisively over its lid before reaching out to flip it open. He gasped, and flinched as . . . the time tank hissed open and Dantalion’s soggy face loomed over him.
‘Powerless Friendless,’ he said, ‘my friend, how do you feel? Hold nothing back, describe every ache and every pain.’
‘I . . . ’ He paused, thinking So much information. So many memories. He extruded a fine pseudo-limb and traced the pattern of scars along his side, remembering every cut, every burn, every last inch of pain.
How stupid could he have been? All that time spent hiding down in the Undertown. All that money so carefully saved up so that Dantalion could rip out the memories of his humiliation like human dentists would remove a rotten tooth. All for nothing. Time and time again he’d busked outside the Spaceport Five Offworld Zoo, not knowing what residual memory drove him there. Time and time again he had crept into the INITEC building through the unlatched window in the lower level to clean himself, not knowing that it was from there that he had escaped in the first place. He had a score to settle. Oh yes, by the Gods of Hithis, he had a score to settle.
‘My name isn’t Powerless Friendless,’ he said