Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [8]
Chris shrugged. The hovertractor was stuck in the ground at an angle, looking as if it had swerved and crashed.
‘What happened to it?’
‘ I did, I’m afraid.’ A skinny black kid came from around the back of the tractor. ‘I was... well, I was...’
‘He tried to drive it psychokinetically,’ said Cinnabar. ‘It’s all right, Cephas, you just made a mistake, that’s all.’
The boy withered under Roz’s glare. ‘I was just trying to get the hang of it,’ he said. ‘If I’m going to be stuck like this for the rest of my life..
‘You’re not,’ snapped Roz. ‘Plan on being cured. Shortly.’
The boy’s mouth drew into a line. ‘It’s okay for you. You can leave any time...’
‘What can I do for you folks?’ said Cinnabar, half disappearing into the tractor’s engine.
‘Oh, we’ve been sent to get more soil bacteria samples,’
sighed Chris. ‘The Doctor wants some bugs from the tilled areas, in case anything got dug up. Hey,’ he added, ‘that’s new, isn’t it?’ Cinnabar stuck her head out and looked where he was pointing across the field. A small dome had been set up, almost a kilometre from the habitat dome.
‘That’s the SmithSmiths,’ murmured Cinnabar. ‘Haven’t you seen them, going around with their masks on?’
‘The filter masks?’ said Roz. ‘I thought they must be working with chemicals.’
‘Nope. They’re trying not to let themselves get infected.
They stay in their own dome most of the time. The kids never come out.’
‘Paranoia.’
‘It’s something religious, I think. I don’t know them too well. Given we still don’t know the source of the infections, maybe they’ve got the right idea.’
Cephas said, ‘No. If we’re going to sort this out, we’re going to have to do it together.’ He turned big eyes on Chris and Roz. ‘My sister said they might make us leave the colony. Before we could infect anyone else.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ said Chris.
‘It might make sense,’ said Roz. ‘Slow the rate of new infections.’
‘Possibly,’ said Cinnabar. ‘But for all we know the bug’s in the soil or the air. Cephas is right. We’re not going to solve this by splitting up. Pass me the bluminator, will you?’
The boy knelt by the tool kit. His hand hovered over the device. Then he flicked it up into the air, watching it hover in front of his face. It shook in his invisible grip.
He let it drift up, past Roz’s scowl, into Cinnabar’s outstretched hand. She grinned.
Bernice came with him when he took the girl to the infirmary.
‘Psychokinesis,’ said the Doctor, as he lifted the sobbing child onto a bench.
Doctor Byerley St John abandoned the genetic sequence he was working on and strode across to them. He sat down on the bench beside the little girl, and took her hand. ‘You’ll be all right, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Lots of people have caught the same germ you have, but it doesn’t hurt. You won’t even feel sick.’
Next to the crying six-year-old, Byerley was huge. He was muscular, with the frame of a dancer rather than a bodybuilder, with serious eyes and dark hair.
‘I want my daddy,’ she sobbed. ‘Are you going to send me away?’
‘No-one’s going to send you anywhere, honey.’
‘But my teacher said that all the people with the germ will have to go and live somewhere else.’
‘Not if I have anything to say about it. I’m going to call your daddy, and then I’m going to prick your finger to take a drop of blood, okay? Then you can have a jelly bean.’ She nodded, sniffling. There was clay in her hair, sticking it to her forehead. Byerley got up to get his equipment.
The Doctor was stalking about the lab, peering at machines and reports. Benny patted the girl on the head, awkwardly. ‘When I was your age,’ she said, ‘I used to wish I had magical powers all the time. I used to wish I could fly, so that instead of getting into fights, I would just fly away.’ The girl just shook her head. ‘Look, Doctor, if you’ve got any new insights...’
‘It can’t be Yemayan,’ said the Doctor, pacing. ‘And if...
but then, the colonists’ gene pool was deliberately diverse.
It’s not...