Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [75]
‘You’re vectoring the virus yourselves? So you found a friendly face back then?’
‘Sort of. Doctor, what is it you’re doing?’
The Doctor passed her the fragment of metal. ‘A spaceship crashed somewhere in this area. We need to find the main bulk of the thing.’
‘Oh,’ said Roz. ‘Would that be the thirty-metre gouge in the ground I passed ten minutes ago, then?’
He grinned at her. ‘It’s good to see you, Roz.’
Benny had experienced a moment of total and ( shaking, even paler than before, she put her uniform on) complete panic when she had been — arrested by two of the DKC troopers.
But they’d just escorted her to the infirmary, where Colonel White was hunched over Byerley’s computer, a pair of blue-uniformed DKC medics peering over his wide shoulders.
She waited in silence, nervous, like a patient in a dentist’s waiting-room. There weren’t even any magazines.
She hoped she was leaking viral particles as a kid’s balloon leaks air.
Benny leant forward, peeked around the door of the Other Room, and was startled to see Dot watching her. Had they kept the poor woman ( incidentally, you have been here less than two days, not three) in there all this time? Had anyone bothered to let her know what was going on?
When she glanced back, White was staring at her over the top of the computer. He looked different — she couldn’t put her finger on it. What had changed? Oh — his hair was messed up. Before, it had always been immaculate, military hair. It looked slightly shocking, as though he were going about naked.
She realized she was staring at him, glanced away. He said, ‘Do you know where the Doctor is?’
‘No,’ said Benny.
He reached into her head, violently, and Benny yelled, jumping up from her chair. ‘Get the hell out of me!’ she shouted, as White scraped about, looking to see if she was telling the truth.
He didn’t stop. His mental touch was rough as sandpaper and careless as a Nazi nurse. Benny snatched up her chair and came at him yelling.
Someone caught her, just as she reached him, the chair raised above her head. She struggled, cursing. When she realized that the hard thing jammed into her ribs was White’s blaster, she stood very, very still.
Dot let go of her. ‘Put the chair down,’ said White. Benny Put the chair down, and sat on it on her second attempt.
‘Why did you return?’ said White. ‘No, it doesn’t matter.
You’re not important here. You’ll stay here with the deaf-mute, under armed guard. If you try to leave again, I’ll have her shot. Is that clear?’
It wouldn’t be as good as being put with the other colonists, but, as with any large building, there ought to be enough air ducts to get the bug around. ‘Whatever you say,’
she told him. ‘There’s just one thing you should know.’
‘What’s that?’ said White, without much interest.
‘Your mission’s going to be a failure. Everything you try to do here will fail. No crop you plant will rise. Your books will turn to dust, and everything you have said will be cast aside.
All your temples will be torn down. Your name will blow like a speck of dust in the wind. All your temples will be torn down.
Your name will blow like a speck of dust in the wind.’
White looked at her.
‘It’s an Ikkaban poem,’ she said, ‘and it’s all yours.’
The clearing — well, it wasn’t a clearing per se, more a sort of chunk missing from the forest — was ninety foot long but only fifteen wide. The spaceship had evidently exploded in mid-air, scattering pieces of itself over the surrounding area; and had finally impacted here. It must have hit hard, a single belly-flop into the ground, burying itself.
Small plants were already growing from the chunks of soil that covered the vehicle’s corpse. Bits of it stuck up above the ground, splashed with earth, vacuum paint corrupted by air and water, streaked by fire.
The Yemayans straggled into the clearing, one by one.
Roz crouched