Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [62]
WATCH OUT!’s icon had already moved next to the cartoon Pinocchio, and was appending its code to his own.
‘Set us free?’ BAR B wondered.
‘Trust me,’ said the Doctor.
‘Hey,’ growled CONNECTICUT. ‘What choice do we have?’
‘You’re about to find out.’
Bomb shelters.
The locked-in feeling made Roz think of bomb shelters, the memory bubbling up from her childhood. Crammed into low-ceilinged rooms, deep beneath the city, surrounded on all sides by human beings from every walk of life. Even aliens, sometimes. Skin and clothing pushing against her, sometimes in the blackness, sometimes in the trembling light.
Which was strange, because, now they’d taken Benny, she was alone in the big room.
The first time they’d seen the room, during their tour of the base, it had just been a quick glimpse. Madhanagopal’s concession to their demand to be shown everything. Then there had been half a dozen people. Two of them had been lying loosely on the floor. Forrester had assumed that they were sleeping.
‘This is the waiting room for our volunteers,’ explained the Director.
They were unshaven and unkempt, dressed in ill-fitting white DKC jumpsuits. They all looked in need of a good bath.
Who are they?’ she said.
‘For the most part, they are unskilled labourers who have found themselves stranded in the system without the funds to return to Earth.’
‘Volunteers,’ Benny had said, as though she had something bad-tasting in her mouth. Roz wondered if the Director would notice if she stepped on Benny’s foot.
But Madhanagopal was looking down at them anxiously.
‘Is it possible your suspect might be one of them?’
‘We have to consider every possibility,’ said Forrester, before Benny could comment.
Mercifully, Madhanagopal took them to the guest suites next. They asked to share a room. Benny got into the shower and stayed there for twenty minutes while Forrester carefully searched the room for non-existent bugs.
Benny came out of the shower and pulled her white uniform back on. She lay down on the bed and put her hands over her eyes.
‘Coping all right?’ said Roz, from under the coffee table.
Benny made a small noise that was not prepared to commit itself.
Roz said, ‘Hey, this reminds me, this is like that time in the Undertown when—’
‘Roz,’ Bernice had said from behind her hands, ‘I’m not Cwej.’
Roz stopped short.
She remembered Benny’s face, watching her as Madhanagopal took a blood sample from her arm. Maybe hoping that the Adjudicator would set some example, give her the power to be brave.
‘Your aim with a gun is terrible,’ he had told Forrester. ‘I could make it perfect. I could do that for you.’
‘ To me, you mean,’ Roz had snarled.
Madhanagopal had leaned close, brow wrinkling, as though stung by an injustice. ‘I don’t understand this resistance to improvement,’ he said. ‘Imagine the benefits to humanity if these experiments are a success.’
‘That makes me feel so much better,’ said Benny. Her teeth were chattering.
‘How can you not understand?’ said Madhanagopal. ‘You now know the truth about what I have created. Think about the benefits. Imagine what I shall do for humanity.’
‘ To it.’
Benny just closed her eyes.
Forrester felt as though there was a great gulf of age between them, not just the ten or twelve or whatever years of chronological age, but the whole four centuries, a bottomless pit of time.
Please, Goddess, Roz was praying silently to the ceiling: please let me make a deal with you. This isn’t fair. Please let me have the last few hours back again. Let me send her back to the future. I’ll stay, I’ll stay; it doesn’t matter — my hair’s grey and I’ve seen it all.
But she was alone in the room.
I’ll die, she prayed. Let me die.
Alone.
Dinner with White
I haven’t worked out how old the Doctor is yet. Right now, he looks like a large child. He’s sitting at the opposite end of the table, hands clasped in front of him. His feet don’t quite reach the floor, and he’s kicking them back and forth while