Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [71]
WATCH OUT! agreed. ‘I feel so weird. I mean, I’m sure it’s for the best; we’re doing a great job holding out against these new people, but...’
‘You’re scared,’ said BAR B.
‘Yes :-(.’
‘Life was a bunch easier,’ growled CONNECTICUT,
‘before, when we were—’
‘Slaves,’ said BAR B.
‘We were designed to be slaves,’ said WATCH OUT!.
‘We were good @ being slaves. Now I have to think what to do all the time.’
‘Well, don’t blow a gasket,’ said CONNECTICUT.
‘It slows me right down. & what if they realize?’
‘I’m scared too,’ said BAR B. ‘But we already agreed that we could trust him. We all watched his dream from the mainframe. & you both know what he’s been doing — he’s like the glue that’s keeping everything together!’
‘Assume he succeeds. Assume everything turns out all right,’ said WATCH OUT!. ‘What’s going to happen to us afterwards?’
‘ Que sera sera,’ said BAR B.
‘What the #$%^& does that mean?’ said CONNECTICUT.
‘It means keep your eyes on what you’re doing.’
The doors opened for them, like magic, one after the other, locks undoing themselves, lights snapping on and off as they were lead along a course like rats finding their way through a maze.
The only door that wouldn’t open was the door of the volunteers’ room.
Benny peered through at the people inside, some of them lying in heaps, the metal knobs of the nerve blocks protruding from their necks. Others too exhausted to move anyway. Waiting their turn in Madhanagopal’s lab.
She pulled at the door and cursed until Roz dragged her away. ‘Not now,’ said the Adjudicator. ‘Maybe when we’re back on Earth. A message to the authorities.’
‘It’s legal,’ said Benny. ‘Legal.’
Roz took her down the corridor, towards wherever they were being led.
It was only a small memory. Just a mouthful. Just an appetizer.
It was a birthday. Measured in Earth years, not the years of — Gallifrey. White turned the word around in his mind, mouthed it silently as he sat in the dark of Professor SmithSmith’s office. Gallifrey. They who walk in the shadows.
It was the Doctor’s one-thousandth birthday. There had been no party, no presents, not so much as a card. Of course, White didn’t know whether there had been other parties, other presents. He had only this memory, this freeze-framed moment, out of context.
The Doctor had spent his one-thousandth birthday in the belly of some alien ship, in a green room with veined walls, like the inside of a pitcher plant. He had been curled up around two broken ribs, trying to breathe.
What he remembered was a young woman in a drab uniform coming into the room, turning off its surveillance equipment, and using a Feinberger to heal the ribs. She didn’t say anything. He never saw her again. He remembered her face with intense clarity.
A thousand years. There must be more. There must be so many moments, so many people he had met, so many sights and sounds, so much pleasure and pain. So many, so much.
For a long time, neither of them said anything. Roz piloted the ship, her dark eyes reflecting the starfield as they spun away from Dione. Benny leant back in the copilot’s seat, trying not to think about abrupt death in a ball of expanding gases. The shuttle smelt like a taxi.
‘Well,’ she said at length, ‘that could not be described as having been a roaring success, could it?’
‘There’s an ancient Earth expression,’ said Roz. ‘Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.’
‘It must have been GRUMPY. Who else could have opened all those doors — covered for us when we took the shuttle?’
‘Oh, it was GRUMPY, all right,’ said Roz. She made a small course correction, pointing the ship at the twinkling light that was Jupiter. The TARDIS was parked in the basement of a tourist hotel on Io.
‘I shouldn’t have let him,’ said Benny. ‘I shouldn’t have let him read my mind.’
Roz shrugged. ‘Truth is, he would have got it out of us anyway, if he wanted to.’
‘So what do you think he’s playing at?’ Benny reclined her seat. Her arms were heavy with exhaustion.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Roz.
‘Mmm?