Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [67]
He gaped at the two women, held in place like statues. He stared at Madhanagopal.
Benny tried and tried to get a breath, her heart pounding savagely, watching Director Madhanagopal walking up the corridor towards them. He regarded the pair of them coolly.
Benny’s vision was turning a strange shade of blue. He was just going to let them die!
Abruptly the dreadful grip was released. Benny fell to the floor in a heap, drawing greedy breaths. She was dimly aware of Roz on her knees. Still trying to get the sword back out of its scabbard.
‘GRUMPY says some extraordinary things about you, ladies,’ said Madhanagopal. ‘Tell me, are they true?’
Benny just breathed. Roz said, ‘Let me up and I’ll show you.’
The Director shook his head. He gestured, and Roz’s sword wrenched itself loose from the scabbard, leapt into his hand. ‘I suppose it must be,’ he said, examining the blade.
‘After all, any employee with intentions such as you described would have been detected by GRUMPY — who must, incidentally, have known about you the moment you arrived. I really must have a word with it...’
Madhanagopal let go of the sword. It shot through the air like a missile and skewered the guard.
That had been six hours ago. She thought.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Madhanagopal’ doing something with a large beige machine.
A DNA synthesizer. The lab was a large white room, with benches and equipment around two walls.
Don’t let them change you, she told herself, over and over, like a prayer. No matter what they did to her, what they added or took away, she had to stay Bernice Surprise Summerfield. She couldn’t lose herself this time, lose the Doctor, lose everything. Don’t let them have your heart.
And now Madhanagopal was collecting his equipment together. He stood next to the bench. A metal tray hovered in the air in front of him. One by one, the instruments picked themselves off the bench and arranged themselves on the tray. Swabs, needles, vials of DNA, Feinbergers.
The tray followed Madhanagopal across the room as he came over to her, hovering at his elbow. ‘You know,’ he said, turning her head so that she was facing away from him, ‘I’ve always thought my rapport with computers came from my being able to know them so intimately. I can see into a computer, Ms Summerfield, and know the state of every bit. I can even change those bits. Edit the computer’s memories directly. If only I could do the same with human beings.’
His long fingers drew the nerve block out of her neck, bloodlessly. Gasping with the sudden return of sensation, she kicked at him, narrowly missing the tray.
A dozen invisible hands grabbed her and held her down on the gurney. She yelled and fought while Madhanagopal picked up a needle from his floating tray.
‘DKC is the only company that hires psychics,’ he went on, while she struggled. ‘At least, the only one we know of.
There are so few psis, it just isn’t economical. DKC don’t know about my talents. It would be much more convenient to be able to edit the human memory than to have to kill the occasional witness. But that’s what GRUMPY is for.’
He showed no signs of effort, as though this was the most natural thing in the world to be doing. ‘Using the machine, I can ook deeply into the human brain, as deeply as I like. It is all patterns, after all. With GRUMPY’s help, I can create any ability; any memory I can model.’ He picked up a vial of DNA, considered the tiny amount of liquid inside. ‘I could, for example, take my own memories and convert them into niachine code.’
‘You son of a bitch! shouted Benny. ‘Whatever it is you’re going to do, I hope it fails! I hope the whole fragging thing falls apart, and every part of you is lost! Every part of you!’
‘Hysteria isn’t going to help you,’ said the Director. ‘On the other hand, nothing at all is going to help you.’
Dinner with White
‘It’s an odd phrase, isn’t it? “Stream of consciousness.”
Consciousness doesn’t flow, really, it jumps about all over the place. The monkey mind. In your line of work you’d be quite aware