Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [49]
The shrill words hung in the air for a moment or two.
‘You have nothing to offer Gallifrey, nothing that we couldn’t take from you anyway. But that is not our way. I am not here to choose between you. I am here to help you to talk, to find grounds for co-operation. General Sontar, you say you want to end the war, and I believe you. So end it.
Rutan, you want to be a force for good, a galactic policeman.
You do that. It is as easy as that.’
‘No. The Sontaran plans to escalate this conflict, kill the galaxy rather than admit defeat.’
‘You are sitting at a conference table, here to discuss peace. You have heard Sontar’s words. Whatever makes you think that the Sontatans want to escalate the war?’
The Rutan formed a throat and cleared it.
There were very few in the Capitol who looked younger than Larna, but Captain Raimor was one of them. His helmet almost came over his eyes. His voice had barely broken. He and his cohort, a constable called Peltroc, had led her to a nearby alcove to question her.
There was only one chair, and they offered it to her. They stood over her, maladroitly, apparently unsure how to proceed. After a minute or so, the Captain clumsily unclipped a headset from his belt and handed it to her. Larna handed it straight back.
‘It is your right, my Lady, of course,’ Raimor began in a voice that was meant to be worldly-wise, but merely sounded braying, ‘but could I ask why you refuse to let us use the mind probe? It would quickly establish your innocence.’
Because my mind is a private place, Larna thought, because it doesn’t just have my own secrets in there any more.
‘I have my reasons,’ she said coldly.
Raimor pulled out an old-fashioned computer notepad and stylus. ‘You were the last person seen with the murdered man.’
‘May I remind you that I am a witness, Captain, not a suspect.’
‘I’m sure the evidence will speak for itself,’ Raimor told her pompously.
The other one, Peltroc, spoke. ‘According to your housemaid, Technician Waymivrudimqwe visited you yesterday evening.’
‘That is correct. He had been using the Infinity Chamber, and sought my advice about a problem he had encountered.’
Peltroc, the junior one, didn’t really know where to look when he asked her a question. ‘Unusual that, a Technician visiting a Time Lord.’
‘We were in the same class at the Academy. I have only just graduated. We were friends.’.
Raimor bent over her, put his face in from of her own.
‘More than friends? Lovers?’ he asked, breathing over her.
She and Waym hadn’t been lovers, she had never even considered it, but she wouldn’t give this Captain any answer to such an impertinent question. The general population of the Capitol loved to hear stories of hypocrisy and decadence amongst the Time Lords. They liked to think that for all their principles and powers, that their betters were just like them: obsessed with their baser desires.
‘That is no concern of yours,’ she told him. It was hard to take the smooth-faced boy’s threats seriously. Whatever the case, as a noblewoman she outranked him, whatever he thought of her. Raimor had got the message. He pulled back.
Larna was unsure what jurisdiction the Watch had over Time Lords. She had a feeling that any formal enquiry about something as important as this should have to be conducted by a tribunal of her peers, not merely the nearest couple of guards.
‘What time was this?’
‘I arrived back at my room at around eight and had a shower. Waym arrived shortly afterwards.’
‘So you went up to the Chamber with him?’
‘Yes.’.
Raimor checked his notes carefully. ‘And he was still alive at this point?’
‘Evidently.’
‘Any witnesses?’
‘My housekeeper.’
‘And witnesses after you left your room?’
‘My room is only one floor below us here, a couple of minutes away.’
‘So, no witnesses.’ Raimor noted that