Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [4]
Oates would die soon, of course, as they all would. But not alone and in the frozen cold. A happy ending of sorts. Just not the right one.
Patrick Unwin helped himself to a Scotch from Brett’s drinks cabinet then sat down in a Chippendale armchair and looked around the room. He wanted to find it obscenely, vulgarly rich, but Brett – or probably, he thought snidely, Brett’s late father – had excellent taste. That was a Stubbs on the oak-panelled Chapter One
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walls; he’d checked earlier. And next to it a minor Rembrandt. Probably a fake by one of Rembrandt’s pupils – a lot of them were. And frankly, the El Greco was a bit. . . lurid. He was overrated, El Greco.
Brett came calmly into the room. Unwin watched him enviously. Brett was always calm. Sometimes Unwin hated him for that. But then, there were so many things to hate about Brett. First on the list being the fact that he didn’t appreciate Unwin’s genius, didn’t realise that all of this was owing to Unwin, not to Brett, who couldn’t even handle simple logarithms.
‘Why so jumpy, young Pat?’
That was another thing Unwin resented. Brett was hardly three years his senior. But he held his tongue.
‘It’s your theory, after all,’ Brett continued dryly. ‘You should have perfect confidence.’
‘Something can always go wrong,’ Unwin muttered.
‘Well, that’s the sort of thing we’re going to fix, isn’t it?’ Brett smiled, as he always did, at nothing in particular, as if his facial muscles had just decided to twitch that way. It was more like a spasm than a smile. ‘You certainly have the means, what with all that fancy equipment I bought for you.’
‘Well, you have the money,’ Unwin said ungraciously.
‘And all honestly inherited by the sweat of my brow.’ Brett said casually. He had an aristocratic languor as well as an aristocrat’s natural sense of power and entitlement, though Unwin knew his great-great-grandfather had made his money in commercial boilers. Still, he looked the part, with his clean-cut features and high, arrogant forehead. Even his rather small eyes, a disagreeable burnt coffee colour, couldn’t ruin the effect. Unwin himself was slender, almost weakly so, with thin lips and thinner hair.
Well, let him pose and condescend, Unwin thought resentfully. He couldn’t have done it without me! I’m the brilliant one. In a cold little hollow of his heart some other truth quivered, but he didn’t want to think about that. So they had accepted a little outside help. So what? Unwin’s was still the primary work, the important work. And it had all been his idea to begin with, the stunning and revolutionary idea that randomness could be eliminated. That was why computers were ultimately superior. None of that science-fiction silliness about AI. They were superior because they were incapable of true randomness.
‘Have another drink, young Pat,’ said Brett. ‘Nothing to worry about.’ And he smiled.
In the console room the Doctor watched as, on the viewing screen, Vesuvius 14
The Algebra of Ice
erupted and its lethal ash descended to destroy Pompeii. Then, for half an hour, he watched the mountain shudder, releasing sporadic spurts of lava. The scene shimmered, and once again the volcano erupted, but mildly. There was little ash. Two or three streams of brilliant lava flowed down at such a leisurely pace that the city’s populace were able to take to their boats and evacuate.
The Doctor turned off the screen. He didn’t need to see any more.
He made a cup of tea, then took it to the console room and sat in the room’s one armchair. But he didn’t drink, only rested the saucer on his leg and stared absently ahead of him, thinking.
After a while, tea still untouched, he left the cup on the floor and went to the console. He set the controls and waited while the TARDIS groaned and wheezed – like a car with a motor on its last legs, he thought,