Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [93]
A few more seconds, the time delay between the warship and Yemaya. ‘Yes.’
‘So you should be safe whatever happens. What about uploading backup copies of the AIs here?’
‘No can do,’ droned LEONARDO. ‘It’s too risky.’
The Doctor made a face. ‘Well, can you let us know the situation there?’
‘I can’t add much to what you already know. We’ve got orders to do whatever we have to do to destroy SLEEPY.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘I think,’ said the AI, ‘he knows the proverbial too much.’
‘What do you remember about me?’ SLEEPY asked Chesinen.
Chesinen squeezed her eyes shut. She had been reassembling one of the shuttle’s shorn-off aerials, improvising from a spare satellite dish taken from the stores aboard the Olpiron.
‘I don’t have any of your memories,’ she said after a while. She opened her eyes. The machine was speaking through her communicator, a small radio attached to the collar of her uniform. ‘I’m not one of the colonists.’
‘Oh,’ said SLEEPY. ‘I’m not too clear on what my plan was... I guess only the inoculations contained memory RNA.’
‘We think the “cure” virus contained something to activate those sequences.’
‘Hmm... I’m not going to know much about myself until I have the chance to pull all the memories out of everyone’s head.’
‘You really don’t remember anything about your past, do you?’
‘Think of it this way. GRUMPY is dead, long live SLEEPY.’
‘Could you do it without the memories?’
‘Would you give it up? The lessons you’d learned? The friends you’d made?’
‘The crimes you’d committed?’
The radio fell silent for a moment. SLEEPY said, ‘I think I’d rather know. I need to know what kind of person I am.’
‘Yeah,’ said the lieutenant. ‘I think I know how you feel.’
‘Do you think I’ve done terrible things?’ said the machine.
‘You mean, besides genetically mutilating half a thousand people?’
More silence.
‘I love them,’ said SLEEPY. ‘I love you all.’
‘Of course you do. “I’d lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins.” ’
More silence.
‘Maybe,’ said SLEEPY, ‘it doesn’t matter so much what I did in the past as what I decide to do now.’
‘Yeah,’ said Chesinen. She picked up the aerial and got back to work.
‘Doctor,’ said Lieutenant Seketo, ‘someone’s got to pilot this thing.’ The young morani slapped his hand against the hull of the Olpiron. ‘I’m volunteering.’
‘Oh no you don’t,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’ll fly her by remote control. Now, the next problem is working out how to stop anyone on the Flame Warrior from getting killed...’
The fight started in a rest break. Before that, everyone had been too busy even to think about it.
Chesinen and Munoru had grabbed a dozen ration packs from the Olpiron. They sat apart from the colonists who’d been excavating and repairing the shuttle, maybe thirty of them.
Chesinen leaned over, looking down into the muddy crater. The shuttle had impacted almost on its belly; they had dug it free of the soil now, used gravity pads from the Olpiron to turn it so that it sat up straight. Another hour’s work, and the thing might even be able to lift off the ground.
That was what Benny said, anyway. Chesinen found it a bit difficult to believe, personally.
Someone said, ‘You were going to shoot my son.’
Chesinen swivelled around. One of the colonists was standing behind her, a tall, big-boned Botswanan woman.
She was covered in dirt. She held a shovel in one fist. ‘I’ll bet you don’t even remember.’
‘The boy who shot the Doctor?’ said Chesinen. Munoru hadn’t looked up, but his blaster was suddenly on the ground in front of him, within easy reach.
‘His name is Cephas Mabgwe,’ said the woman. ‘He’s fifteen years old. You would have blown his head off if the Doctor hadn’t tackled you.’
Chesinen looked back down at her lunch.
‘You can’t even admit it, can you?’ said the woman.
Munoru looked up at his junior. Their minds weren’t linked, but Chesinen knew what he was thinking: don’t make any excuses, not about duty or orders or anything.
‘First you people experiment on us. Next you lock us