Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [12]
Oh my God, the bastards — they’ve been using us as guinea pigs!’
The Doctor put a hand on Byerley’s arm before he spilt his coffee. ‘Not necessarily. Who was responsible for the vaccinations?’
‘DKC,’ said Byerley. ‘The Dione-Kisumu Company. They provided most of the medical technology.’ He gestured around the lab with his cup, angrily.
‘I’ve heard of them,’ said the Doctor.
‘We came here in a DKC colony ship. You’ve met Captain Kamotja, haven’t you? She flew the thing. The crew took it back, and she stayed on to oversee the initial stages.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘The Company made quite a profit during this century’s push for colonization.’
‘Doctor,’ said Byerley, ‘I need to ask you about that.’
‘About Dione-Kisumu? They were Kenyan, weren’t they?’
‘No. About you — and Benny and Chris and Forrester.
About why you’re here.’
‘All right.’ The Doctor folded his arms. ‘We knew from future history that an outbreak of psi powers occurred on Yemaya 4 in the year 2257. But there was very little information about it. As though someone deliberately covered up the records. I wanted to see for myself what happened here.’
‘Believing that you’re not human is much easier than believing that you come from the future. How — how far in the future?’
‘We travel,’ said the Doctor, ‘a lot.’
‘Why us?’ said Byerley. ‘Why this colony? Yemaya doesn’t have any strategic significance. The geological survey was completely run-of-the-mill.’ He shook his head.
‘Why is all this happening to us?’ He pointed at the Doctor.
‘You must know.’
‘You may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong... Time moves in mysterious ways.’
‘What the hell are they trying to do?’ Byerley let him go, sat down behind his desk, despondent. ‘We came here to get away from all of that sort of thing. From the companies and corporations. Do you know where I was working before I came here?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Sydney,’ said Byerley.
‘Downstream from the nuclear plant. There are kids there living in a rubbish tip.’ He raised his hands, as if to shield himself from the memory. ‘There was a little boy that the others kept blindfolded. He made weapons for them, by touch.’
‘I didn’t think anyone still lived in Sydney,’ said the Doctor softly. Not in this epoch.’
‘When I — when I took the blindfold off, his eyes were like a pair of loose grey eggs. They rolled and pulsed as though someone was inside his head, trying to push their fingers out... and I just walked away. Just gave him his antibiotic shot and walked out of there.’ He reached out blindly for his coffee, knocked the cup over. ‘I can’t get away from it,’ he whispered. ‘Even here...’
The Doctor picked up the cup. The cold liquid formed a neat pool on Byerley’s desk, surface tension holding it in place. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t. You can only do the same thing you were doing in Sydney.’
Byerley looked at him.
‘You can fight back,’ said the Doctor.
‘Fight?’ said Byerley. ‘I’ll kill those bastards. Wait till I get on the communications link. The Colonial Commission...’
‘No,’ said the Doctor sharply. Not yet. We don’t want them to know that we know. In fact, we should keep this between the two of us for as long as we can.’
The sun was going down when they reached the waterfall.
Benny’s mind had been in neutral for an hour, empty of everything except the wind through the trees and the distant hissing of the water.
Zaniwe and Jenny had made the trip twice before, leaving beacons behind in the forest. They navigated partly by memory, partly by tracking the beacons, short poles with a red bulb of radio equipment on top. They looked like matchsticks poking out of the undergrowth.
There was a wide clearing at the waterfall’s base. The air was cool, a fine spray of droplets forming a mist around the rocky pool at the bottom of the cliff. They pulled off their backpacks, dropped them on the ground. Benny lay flat on her back and made a face. ‘Argh,’ she said.