Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [85]
SLEEPY wasn’t asleep anymore; he had felt the machine’s astonished awakening as the combined force of the telepaths’ mental energies had smashed down into it.
Roz and Chris and Benny knew what to do; let them take care of it, let them see it through.
The shaking became more insistent. Would regeneration count as a death? Would it mean losing his bet?
The Doctor opened his eyes, blinked in the fluorescent sear of
the Olpiron’s sickbay lighting. ‘Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?’ he asked Chesinen.
‘All right,’ said Lieutenant Ngaiyo. ‘What were you doing in the forest?’
He glared at the nine of them. Seven colonists, and two imposters, two of the Doctor’s — two of his companions.
Turquoise’s braided hair swung against his back as he shook his head. There were things inside it that hadn’t been there before.
‘You saw the spaceship,’ said the Xhosa woman, Forrester.
‘Not this again,’ Turquoise said. ‘You were expressly forbidden to leave the dome.’
‘Why don’t you shoot us, then?’ said the other one cheerfully. The colonists looked at him, looked at Cwej, in horror. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘All that stuff in the corridor was just to scare us. You would have already killed us if you were going to.’
Ngaiyo was becoming increasingly annoyed with his inability to keep these people under control. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘our plan is to interrogate you first and shoot you afterwards.’
That shut up the American. But now Forrester was saying, ‘What I don’t understand is why you’re interrogating us at all. Why don’t you just read our minds?’
‘Listen,’ said Turquoise. He waved a hand at the Yemayans. ‘This lot have been spinning us the same story over and over.’
‘And you don’t believe them?’ said Forrester.
‘It’s been a lot of science fiction,’ said Turquoise. ‘Living computers programming telepathy viruses, for Enkai’s sake.
Their brains have obviously been damaged by the contaminated inoculant.’
‘What does Colonel White think about it?’ said Forrester.
Ngaiyo shook his head. ‘He believes it, doesn’t he? What did the Doctor tell him?’ The lieutenant didn’t answer.
‘You’re hoping we’ll tell you something different, aren’t you?’ said Cwej.
Turquoise nodded.
‘I hate to disappoint you,’ he said, grinning, ‘but once upon a time...’
* * *
It had been an hour since Chesinen and Munoru had carried the Doctor to the ship’s sickbay. Now she was half-carrying him down a corridor, by herself, heading for one of the emergency hatches. His skin was cold and pale and his eyes wouldn’t focus. When she carefully reached for his mind, she found a jigsaw of confused images. He was still trying to pull himself back together.
She let him slide to the floor while she flipped open the hatch’s controls and started punching in the explosive sequence.
‘White,’ said the Doctor. He was huddled against the wall, eyes closed, as though to cut down on the amount of input he had to deal with. ‘What if White...?’
‘Relax,’ she said. ‘Right now he’s in the dome feeling sorry for himself, with a headache you could use to power a small house. He won’t want to use the telepathic link for hours.’
‘SLEEPY,’ he said.
‘I know you’re tired,’ she said. ‘I just want to get you somewhere safe before I work out what to do next.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Did you feel it? SLEEPY?’
The hatch blew out with a muffled pop.
‘Yeah,’ said Chesinen. ‘I felt it wake up. What the bloody hell was it?’
The Doctor giggled, suddenly, making her jump. ‘It was Colonel White in the habitat dome with the candlestick,’ he said.
She hauled him upright. ‘Oh, fantastic. Well, you can tell me later.’
‘Why me,’ said Byerley, ‘and not your own medics?’
‘It doesn’t do to let your subordinates see your weaknesses,’ said White. He made a motion with his hand.
Byerley took it to mean that he should sit down.
The infirmary was almost in darkness, as though White were very serious about not being seen. The only light was coming from the Other Room’s half-open door.
‘I left two patients in your care,’ said Byerley.
‘They’ve been seen to,’ said