Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [68]
‘Let’s drop it,’ said Ethan tersely.
‘Life is terrible,’ Molecross went on. ‘Isn’t it? Suffering and death. Even the best life has those. I always knew there was something else. Something beyond all that.’
‘A place where when people stand up from the toilet they leave behind candy bars?’
Molecross flushed. ‘There’s no need to –’
‘Yes there is. You’re off in the moonglow. You want to live with the fairies.
You’re scared of life and you want to get out, only without dying.’
‘I want the marvellous,’ said Molecross. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
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‘We don’t live in Eden.’
‘But Eden is where we belong.’ Molecross’s voice was simple and innocent.
‘Not here, among all this pain.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Rain was coming, thought Brett. And what kind of rain would it be? Not water.
Not fire. Certainly not pennies from heaven. He grinned and turned from the window. As usual, Unwin was passed out on the couch. Probably he hadn’t accomplished anything, even with Amberglass’s numbers to build on. Brett’s spirits fell. He had to face facts. This attempt would probably be a failure, like the ones in Kent. They still weren’t far enough along.
Nonetheless, he needed to be there in case anyone, any. . . thing, did arrive.
The Doctor felt the snow on his cheeks and lips. He put up his umbrella.
He hadn’t enjoyed sitting around for hours waiting for an alien invasion that might not even happen. But they would want to come through, or at least attempt to, as quickly as possible. Not immediately – they’d need to connect up to whatever else Unwin had been able to work out – but soon. So he had to be here, in case something went wrong. If it did, he had one more spanner to throw into the works.
He searched along the glacier’s edge until he found a pair of boulders that, particularly if he wedged his open umbrella between them, would make an excellent shelter and hiding place.
He didn’t construct this immediately. The snow was very beautiful. The Doctor watched it soften the hard ice, turn the grey white. He wasn’t worried about his circles vanishing. Their effectiveness didn’t depend on their visibility.
The Doctor thought about ice. Vapour to liquid to solid – reverse entropy.
Achieved, of course, by an expense of energy somewhere else. A freezer was a little anti-entropic chamber, but outside the chamber electricity was what enabled the laws of physics to be suspended.
He stiffened, mouth slightly open, eyes fixed. A race of equations. Entropy.
Energy. Transcending entropy was such a radical physical achievement that only an enormous amount of power could keep any such system intact. But to create and preserve a situation of no wasted energy, you’d have to use more energy than you were saving. So obviously the energy couldn’t come from the system itself.
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They didn’t want to come here. They wanted to take something away.
‘Ah,’ he breathed angrily. He should have known. He’d let the idea that he was fighting an invasion prevent him from seeing any other options. What a fool he’d been. An eddy of snow enclosed him. He wanted to bat it away, like a cloud of gnats. The snow was falling more heavily now – large, feathery flakes.
But he could still see through it. And he saw Brett.
The Doctor took an automatic step back, but Brett wasn’t looking in his direction. He was standing several hundred feet away, smoking, eyes on the ice. He couldn’t see the circles, the Doctor thought with relief, not that he’d have been able to destroy them all anyway – that would take much longer than making them had.
Wind pushed the snow aside, and he got a good look at Brett. Tall. Aristocratic features. Dark hair brushed back from his forehead. Who are you, the Doctor wondered. Why would you bring such destruction down on your own planet?
Brett was shivering but he didn’t notice. His lips were parted, his heart racing. Blood rushing through his veins, hot blood. Well, there’d be no more of that. Perhaps soon. How peaceful the silence was. It lulled him. He half shut his eyes. Perhaps very soon.
‘Balls