Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [56]
Thanks to a combination of paranoia and real concern —
apparently some political parties had taken to hiring serial killers — Unit operatives could get in just about anywhere.
Including the Company’s restricted research base on Dione.
‘Incoming transmission,’ said the ship’s computer softly.
‘On audio,’ said Roz.
‘This is DKC at Dione, DKC at Dione. You have violated Privately owned space.’
‘We read you, Dione. This is the interworid shuttle Murrumbidgee en route to you from Earth. This is an unscheduled flight; repeat, we are not a scheduled flight.’
‘We know that, Murrumbidgee. Please transmit your authorization codes. Alternatively, please make peace with your gods. Either you’re on official business or you’re space dust.’
The ‘Agents’ exchanged glances. Roz transmitted their codes.
‘We hear you, Murrumbidgee. Sorry for the rough welcome, we’ve had a lot of trouble with protesters recently.’
‘So you blow up anyone waving a placard?’ muttered Benny.
‘Thanks, Dione,’ said Forrester. ‘Our ETA is six minutes.’
‘We make that five point two,’ said the voice, and clicked off.
The two women let out the breath they’d been holding.
‘Piece of cake,’ said Roz.
The youngest of White’s lieutenants retrieved the Doctor from the infirmary when he was missed. None of the troopers were quite sure how he had been misplaced.
Yellow was black, like most of the troopers. Her hair was cropped short — but not shaved, so she wasn’t Maasai, like the lieutenant who’d been left in charge of the infirmary. The Doctor wanted to ask her where she was from, rummage in his memory to see if he’d ever visited the place. Instead he said, ‘Do you know what a phoenix is?’
‘Type of fighter ship, isn’t it?’ she said, striding through the empty corridors. He had to walk fast to keep up.
‘I meant originally.’
She paused, not looking at him. She was probably asking White’s permission to have a conversation with him.
‘It was a beautiful bird,’ he said, ‘the only one of its kind, with golden feathers and a voice like honey. It lived for five hundred years. Then it built a nest of spices and aromatic wood, got inside, and waited for the sun to set the nest on fire.’
‘Why?’
‘When the nest was reduced to ashes, a young phoenix emerged.’
‘Oh.’
‘Mmm. Fascinating, isn’t it?’ There wasn’t a flicker of recognition in her eyes. The lieutenants and White had made no mention of the call. ‘Imagine being there, just one chance to see it in half a millennium. Watching the nest catching ablaze, the smell of cinnamon and burning feathers...’
Yellow stopped short. ‘Stop that. That’s crazy.’
They couldn’t hear it.
The telepathic colonists all described the same thing —
the calling, the burning, the sweet smell. But the lieutenants couldn’t hear a thing. Even though the cry had become a relentless, urgent shout.
‘If you come knocking at poetry’s door, with the Muse’s madness in your soul, and you think that art will make you fit to be called a poet — then you’ll find that the poetry you write when sober is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen,’
pronounced the Doctor. ‘Do you think I’m crazy?’
Yellow started laughing. ‘I’m not paid to have opinions —
I’m paid to enforce them,’ she said.
‘But surely you must have some sort of impression of me.’
‘Yes,’ she shrugged. ‘I think you’re probably mad.’
‘I thought I was mad,’ said the Doctor. ‘For a little while.’
‘What was it like?’ asked Yellow incuriously, moving on.
‘I was off in a world of my own, a little Neuromancer beach. One of those spaces you can only visit in your dreams. Or when you’re meditating, sometimes...’
Yellow eyed him. ‘Or on drugs.’
Now the Doctor laughed. ‘Don’t you ever have the feeling that this world is just a fake, just a sort of condensed version of a real world?’
‘All this Plato,’ said Yellow.
‘Somewhere