Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [72]
One of the massive doors at the end of the cylindrical cell hissed open. The force shield inched its way towards where he sat on the bunk, until there was enough space to comfortably admit her.
He was like something from a horror sim. The cold-blooded and insane killer who looks entirely harmless, even comic. The sims about the year of the disaster were full of characters like him
– quite a small man, wearing very crumpled clothes. She stepped forward, and the force shield moved with her, until she was standing close enough to see his face clearly.
‘They tell me you call yourself “the Doctor”,’ she said.
He lifted his hat. ‘Unfortunately, no one seems to have heard of me.’
‘Soon everyone will have heard of you,’ she said. ‘Is that why you did it? So you’d go down in history?’
The Doctor allowed his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. The room was bare, as though there was a corner of the palace they’d forgotten to plaster with ornamentation and plunder.
The room was huge, as though it had to encompass crowds.
Now there was no one there. Just him.
‘Excuse me?’ He took off his hat. ‘Is the Empress Gloriana at home?’
Directly opposite him, a pale circle of green light appeared.
Ten feet across, a few feet above the floor.
He walked towards it, carefully, half expecting a bit of furniture to unexpectedly smack him in the shin. But his first impression had been right. There was nothing in here.
Nothing but him, and the gnarled scrap of a woman floating in the green sphere.
‘I know you,’ she said.
‘No,’ said the Doctor.
168
‘I’m sorry,’ said Genevieve, ‘I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Genevieve ap Gwalchmai.’
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, with a small smile.
‘I’m Duke Walid’s personal aide.’
‘I can’t have made your job any easier,’ said the Doctor. ‘I suppose I’ve thrown everything into confusion out there.’ He gestured vaguely at the palace, all around him.
She nodded. ‘The Council have been in session for hours. But they already have long-standing plans they can put into effect.
They’ve been waiting for the Empress to die for a long time.’
‘So what are they talking about?’
‘Well,’ said Genevieve, ‘what to do with you, of course.’
‘I see,’ said the Doctor.
‘You’re a bit of a problem, you see. In cases like this – not that there’s been a case very much like this one, not for a long time –
it’s usual for the guards to rush in with guns blazing. No time is wasted trying to interrogate or sentence a puff of vapour. I’m afraid you threw the guards into confusion by surrendering.’
‘Poor things.’
‘The Council know you’re to be executed; they just can’t make up their minds about how to do it. They’re falling all over themselves to show their loyalty by coming up with worse and worse methods. When I left the meeting, the Pontifex Saecularis was partway through describing a complex technique involving virtual-reality simulation, advanced surgical techniques and drawing and quartering.’
‘They want to be careful, or I may vent my spleen.’
Genevieve managed not to laugh. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it –
everyone’s eyes were glazing over. Personally, my money’s on slow electrocution.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What did you expect?’ Genevieve said. ‘You killed the head of state of half the galaxy. What did you think was going to happen to you?’
‘I suppose I thought she had a plan,’ he said. He scowled.
‘Some people have no gratitude.’
169
The Empress had no voice of her own. She spoke in a jarring mix of words, snipped from media sources. The sim images travelled across the surface of the sphere, colours in an oil slick, distorting and disappearing.
‘I,’ she said, in the voice of a little girl. ‘Know,’ said a deep-voiced man with a Southern accent. ‘You,’ said an elderly woman.
‘Hello,’ said the Doctor, raising his hat. His reflection was lost in the colours travelling across the glass. ‘Your Effulgence, I presume.’
‘I. Am. The. Empress,’ she confirmed. ‘You. Are. The. Doctor.’