Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [60]
A blow to that tissue can render the Time Lord unconscious as their heartsbeat and breathing abruptly slow. Other damage can cause excruciating pain.
Stimulate that ganglion, and every nerve in the body reacts. As we can see from Figure 2.’
‘Why are you showing me this?’ Tears were running out of Benny’s nose.
She wiped them on her sleeve. ‘Why are you?’
‘Perhaps you need this information,’ said the White Lady. ‘And anyway, it’s my job.’
‘It’s your job,’ said Benny hotly. ‘You’re a torturer, a torturer!’
The White Lady sighed sharply. ‘Really, your subconscious does not even begin to contain the cultural information necessary to understand this dream.
I no more torture people than Death kills them. The first time the Doctor met me, it was entirely of his own volition. My job is to bring home to you something you already know – that the Doctor plays with people as though 114
they were pieces in a game. He is too old, too callused, too callous. He will sacrifice anyone for advantage.’
She leaned down, bringing her featureless face close to Bernice’s. ‘And that is why you are dying in a dusty Egyptian tomb, an impossible distance from your home. There is nothing more for you.’ She plucked the blossom from her lapel, and stretched out a pale hand. ‘The Doctor has abandoned you here, and you must give up now. Just give up, now.’
There was a long silence. The flower was an inch from Benny’s nose. It smelled of scarlet and crimson.
When she answered, she could barely hear her own voice.
‘It’s not true. He’s one of the pieces too. He would sacrifice himself if he had to. He’s done it. I saw it.’ Benny felt some strength come into her trembling body. ‘I saw it.’
Benny was stooped over the Doctor, frantically trying to get a response out of him. Blood was trickling from his mouth and nose, sluggishly. His eyes had flickered shut.
The White Lady shook her projector switch, irritably. The flower was gone from Benny’s field of vision. ‘It’s my slide,’ sobbed Bernice. ‘And you can’t change it. You can’t change it.’
And now there was a song, somewhere in the distance, an elusive melody.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head, but she could only make out a few notes of the tune. But the words were clear. Come here, come here.
She sniffed, blinked, looked up.
‘Mlle Summerfield,’ said Vivant, ‘The work will not be done if you simply lie about, now, will it?’
Ace’s chance came sooner than she thought. Akhenaten laughed, swung his daughter into the air, gave her over into her mother’s arms. He was an odd-looking bod, Ace thought, even as she meandered into the hall, doing her best to look like just another sodden party-goer. He was skinny, but with a pot-belly. His face was long and his smile was weak. He didn’t even bother to go lion-hunting to keep himself in some sort of shape.
He stalked out of the hall, followed by three guards, count ’em. They’d be good, too, top quality stuff. For a moment she wished she had her combat suit. Give ’em a twist, a flick of the wrist, no muss, no fuss.
She wandered out after Pharaoh. When a guard tried to stop her in the hallway, she kicked his left kneecap loose and stomped on his larynx when he fell down.
Hmm. Maybe she wouldn’t need her suit after all.
∗ ∗ ∗
115
The cannons were distant tonight. Midnight found the Doctor in the kitchen, very slowly peeling another of Thierry’s apples with a knife.
He was letting events flow by him, carelessly caught up in the river. There wasn’t much else to do besides letting Kadiatu bundle him about like a pile of old clothes. He sighed, looking down at the rag-bag he was wearing. He missed his silk shirt. He missed his hat.
He missed Ace. He missed Ace very much indeed, Had she survived Cold Storage? Was she still alive, on the other side of one of the Ants’ temporal crevices? Or had the metal insects got to her? If a scout had come for him, what about her?
I say, old bean, what about me?
He looked up, to where an imagined Bernice