Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [33]
The design was rough and ready – everything was covered in welding lines –
but it had a functional elegance. The train engine wrapped the capsule in a self-generating, dimension-warping field. That field protected the physical vehicle from the thermonuclear explosion, shunting the power instantly to the baffles, which sucked it up and pushed it back into the field in a huge positive feedback loop. When the field strength got above a certain level, the whole thing was booted unceremoniously into another part of space and time.
No wonder she couldn’t control its flight; it would be like trying to steer a car that ran on dynamite. And it was just as damaging to the road. Kadiatu had managed to invent a whole new form of pollution.
Every remaining inch of the hold had been stuffed with useful things: medical supplies, weapons, food preserved in various inedible ways. He flipped open one box and discovered neatly stacked bars of gold. The only empty space had been left by her spare bombs.
‘What’d they do to you?’
The Doctor jumped, banging his head on the curve of the wall. Kadiatu was a flickering silhouette in the cargo hold doorway, her nightdress hanging 62
heavily around her. Her eyes were empty hollows in the feeble light of her candle. ‘I am presuming you didn’t beat yourself up.’
The Doctor got his breathing back under control. He rolled his shoulder back and forth a couple of times. It seemed to be alright again. ‘If you make a hole, something will probably decide to live in it.’
‘Like weeds growing in cracks in the road.’
‘Even a non-Euclidean theoretical construct is a habitat, if you look at it the right way. Something’s living in the fractures.’
‘What’s it up to?’
‘Travelling around. Hunting and gathering. Flexing its muscles, making a bit of noise, seeing if anyone notices.’
‘And you noticed.’
‘Yes. And they noticed I noticed.’
‘Who are they? What was their technology like? Advanced? Did you understand it?’
‘I don’t – I don’t remember it very – I don’t remember . . . ’ He frowned, as though he’d forgotten where he’d left something. ‘I . . . ’
Kadiatu hunched back, uncomfortable. ‘One thing I can tell you,’ he said, looking her in the face, ‘they don’t treat the people who work for them very well.’
‘Do you know how I can get out of here?’
‘Oh, that’s easy. Dive your shuttle into the sun.’
‘What?’
‘When you hit a hot enough section of chronosphere, the temperature should trigger dimensional transference. And you’re on your way. An ef-fectively unlimited power source. You can keep making jumps until you end up somewhere you like.’
‘I can’t do that. I’d do more damage. I’ll have to think of something else.’
‘That’s better,’ smiled the Doctor.
Kadiatu looked like she wanted to hit him.
63
Chapter 6
In Taberna
Life is just one damned thing after another.
(‘Kin’ Hubbard, A Thousand and One Epigrams) Ace held up her left arm. It was covered in bangles, tight rings of gold glistening dully with lapis lazuli. They didn’t go well with the loop of the force shield generator. The maid servants were wondering if she were ever going to take it off.
Sedjet hosted two or three parties a week. There didn’t seem to be much else for him to do. Tonight the servants had more important things to worry about than Ace’s strange ornament; they were slapping dough on the outsides of smoky ovens, unsealing jars of beer and wine and arranging flowers about the house. Overseeing it all, Mrs Sedjet moved about in her finest garments, a crimson cloak knotted over her white dress.
Ace sat in the corner, like a vase of flowers: pretty and useless, slowly wilting.
It had been a week since Sedjet’s proposal. She’d asked for time to think, trying to get her head around the fact that she wasn’t going to be rescued.
Perhaps he was a little hurt that she needed to be rescued from him.
But Sedjet’s patience was great, even if his intellect wasn’t. So now she sat on a stool, watching the servants preparing scented wax cones to perch atop rich guests’ wigs, and tried for