Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [8]
‘Look, it’s been a long voyage. And it’s only getting longer.’ 24 was wheez-ing, trying not to struggle. ‘We need a bit of entertainment. The escapes are a nuisance, but they’re fun, they’re something to do. Back on New Haarlem I used to go motorbike racing. You know what a motorbike is?’
Ms Cohen had no idea what he was talking about. Meijer’s stolen English took on a wistful note. ‘I used to be the best damn racer in the whole East quarter. It was great. You learnt how to look after the bike, how to fix it, as well as how to ride it. There was always something to do. But here . . . ’ His stare dropped away to his prisoner. He let go of the man’s throat. ‘We need something to do.’
24 gulped air. Ms Cohen said, ‘I mean it, Meijer. Leave him alone.’
‘Cruk off.’
17
‘You wouldn’t have woken me up!’ blurted Ms Cohen. ‘You wouldn’t have made me do this if the Ants didn’t want his mind. They’d have just dumped him out the airlock like all the other useless bodies. They didn’t kill me because they needed me. Meijer, they want to know what he knows. And I want you to stop brutalising him!’
Meijer stood there, staring at her. She bit down on her lip and stared right back at him, hoping he couldn’t see her hands shaking and the blush that was spreading across her neck and ears.
‘Ah, shit,’ said the hired hand at last. ‘Do you want to see this process or not?’
He slapped the controls beneath the computer screen. The Leech sizzled into life; Number 24 gasped, convulsed, went rigid in the chair. His eyes were wide, the pupils contracting to points. On the screen, part of the fractal flared as the Leech stimulated the first area of his brain.
His mouth was open. He did not scream.
And then he went completely limp, his head lolling onto his chest.
The Leech spluttered angrily and gave up. The screen went dark. Only the vital signs readout remained, a tiny bunch of squiggling lines.
‘That’s it?’ said Ms Cohen.
‘That’s all,’ said Meijer. ‘We’ve never gotten further than that in nineteen tries.’
Ms Cohen took 24’s face in her hands. His hair was wet with sweat. She levered one of his eyes open, carefully. It was a solid disc of blue, the pupil shrunk away to nothing. ‘I’ll need time to study the results,’ she managed.
‘Will the Ants give me access to the computer?’
Meijer puffed out his cheeks. ‘Don’t want much, do you?’
The Ants provided her with an interface based on the starliner’s computer –
a lap-top with a fleshy mess growing over the back and sides. It took her a couple of hours to get used to it, as information was passed back and forth between the electronic and the organic systems. Once or twice, the link cut out completely, and the lighting dimmed and returned. She wondered what that was supposed to mean.
She played back the EEG readings from the process. 24’s mind had simply shut down 2.7 seconds after the Leech had begun primary stimulation. It had to be some sort of defence mechanism. Something built into the alien brain –
to prevent him from being interrogated in just this way?
The alarm started its ear-splitting pinging. She didn’t even startle this time.
That had been a slow one; he must’ve been recovering from the process. She folded up the lap-top, put it on the bench she was using for a bed, and followed the alarms to their source.
Hired hands jogged past her, ignoring her, guns gripped in sweating palms.
18
They came in all shapes and sizes, all ages – all human, which made her wonder. Who had they been before they became the Ants’ servants? Each of them must have been offered the same deal: help us, and stay out of the big chair.
That was why Groenewegen and Caldwell bet fifty thousand, fifty million.
She’d heard Caldwell win the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Mars Arch. They were going to spend the rest of their lives on this ship. Frightened of the chair, the way Meijer was, the way she was. Just surviving.
She found herself in a storage area with leathery white walls, like the inside of an apple core. Huge