Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [80]
‘Except for the whole colony burning down,’ said Roz.
‘That bloody machine didn’t plan on that, did it?’
‘I said might have...’
‘Let’s see,’ said Chris, counting on his fingers. ‘The colonists were already infected with the psi powers, and with the dormant memories. So they would have come out here and found SLEEPY. Then what?’
‘Then SLEEPY would have been activated by their combined mental energies, and would have reassembled its memories.’
‘But,’ said Roz, ‘you were the only person to, er, remember its memories.’
‘That’s a point,’ said the Doctor. ‘Evidently something went wrong.’
‘Well...’ said Chris.
The Doctor eyed him. ‘How’s your telepathy? Let’s test it.
What am I thinking about now?’
Chris squeezed his eyes shut. After a moment, he looked at the Time Lord and shrugged.
‘Good,’ said Roz.
‘It’s just,’ said Chris, ‘that I seem to remember downloading myself into a banking database on Mars. I’m reasonably sure I’ve never done that.’
The Doctor looked at him sharply. ‘When did you remember that?’
‘Just now,’ said Chris. ‘Maybe I picked it up from SLEEPY during the — the seance.’
‘Possibly...’ The Doctor glanced up at Roz. ‘Either that, Or GRUMPY added a few extra things to the “cure”. Perhaps with its foreknowledge of the current situation. That would explain...’
‘Explain what, Doctor?’ said Chris.
‘Never you mind,’ said the Doctor. ‘We should check whether the others have suddenly recovered any memories.’
‘And then what?’ Roz wanted to know.
‘And then we get everyone together, including the telepaths back at the dome, and try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.’
‘Hey,’ said Chris. ‘If you took the virus’s specs back in time, and GRUMPY read them before it had created them, then where—’
‘Oh God,’ said Roz. ‘Don’t start.’
‘Doctor,’ said the drone.
‘What is it, BAR B?’ said the Doctor. He held out a hand, but the drone didn’t settle onto it — it kept hovering, agitated.
‘Doctor!’ squealed the drone. Its voice changed suddenly, to CONNECTICUT’s growl. ‘I think we gotta problem. Oh, #$*%!’
The little robot shrieked and spun in the air. The Doctor and Chris leapt back from where they were sitting, but the drone didn’t explode, just landed heavily in the grass with a sort of sigh.
‘Doctor,’ it whispered.
The Time Lord knelt down, cautiously picked it up. ‘BAR
B?’ he said.
‘CONNECTICUTs gone,’ she squeaked. ‘He’s gone.’
‘They must have found the link,’ said Roz.
The drone lifted into the air, spun until its antenna was facing the Doctor. ‘There you are,’ said a new voice.
‘There was no need to do that!’ exploded the Doctor.
‘Be quiet and listen,’ said White. ‘I have Summerfield here, and if you don’t return to the base immediately, I’ll have her killed. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor tiredly. ‘I was just about to come back in any case. We need to talk.’
The guard was seven foot tall. He looked down at Byerley
‘What’s your problem?’
‘You know,’ said the medic softly, ‘once upon a time, erased an entire medical system’s records in order to store part of my memory in it. Four people died. I didn’t care.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I think you’d better let me talk to your Colonel,’ he said.
‘I’m going mad.’
Cwej and Forrester went with the Doctor to the dome. This was because they couldn’t talk him out of going.
There were four guards waiting at the entrance. ‘I still say this was a bad idea,’ muttered Roz.
‘Even if White can’t shoot Benny,’ said the Doctor quietly,
‘be could still kill another of the AIs, or one of the colonists.’
‘That’s not what I meant. White’s been pushed about as far as he’ll go. What’s he going to do with you?’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Leave White to me.’
‘Got something up your sleeve?’
The Doctor nodded.
‘Care to share it?’
‘Of course not,’ said Chris. ‘They can read our minds, remember?’
Deep inside the colony’s mainframe, in a memory cache that the technicians hadn’t found, BAR B and WATCH OUT! were quaking together.
They were safe for the moment; the Doctor had shut down the link to the drone