Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [25]
‘What’s that for?’
‘Effect!’ answered Newton.
Once they had been a group of dropout anarchists who, because of a shared interest in hardcore SF, had named themselves the Black Anoraks. They had been active on the margins of militia-group politics, but really they were just in it to surf the Internet to find things worth bombing. And then bomb them.
Some, like Hayley and Nigel, were English. She was the daughter of an obscure earl, he was the son of a milkman from Hull who’d got a scholarship to Harvard and then decided to travel the land that begot Star Trek for opportunity and profit. Others like Bill, Sam Danvers and Lynda Bowmar were a raggle-taggle bunch of student radicals, computer geeks and people who liked causing other people lots of suffering.
They were a relatively harmless bunch of sadists who – apart from blowing up a couple of TV stations when they had the temerity to stop showing Space 2693 – spent most of their time on alt.nerd.obsessive bitching about the state of the media. With pseudonyms like ‘Trilogy’, ‘Canon’ and ‘Ret-Con’, they threatened no one of any consequence.
That was until Newton got amongst them and organised them. And gave them a cause (however vague). Suddenly, they were a bunch of laughable clowns no longer. Now, they were the Sons of Nostradamus. And they were dangerous.
The cassette spluttered to silence. Bill got up to fix it. ‘The batteries are dead,’ he said, picking up the machine and shaking it. This worked and the monastic chanting was resurrected (if only momentarily).
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, leave it alone. I told you to get another packet of LR20s, but would you listen?’ moaned Newton.
‘Do we have to have this crap on? I’ve got some Delerium in my bag, they’re pretty ambient!’ suggested Hayley. She shuffled her plump bottom on the cold stone floor.
Bill shrugged and sat down again, pondering on how much better things had been in the Anoraks. In those days it was simply a case of putting some 47
hapless local Fox affiliate on The List and then, KA-BOOM. Now there was all this ritual involved. And the hitting.
‘The great seer goes on to say that Castor, Pollux and a comet shall appear in the sky before a monarch is killed. Century II.15, check it out, it’s a good one. “The letters of the great prophet shall be intercepted, they shall fall into the hands of the tyrant, who shall deceive the King with their troubles” That’s us you see, we’re the tyrants.’ And, to show he meant it. Newton smacked Nigel across the back of the head.
‘Stop doin’ that!’
‘Nostradamus used the magiks of his day and looked into his burning water to be given his visions. By Lucifer. “The most learned of the celestial sciences shall be found wanting by the ignorant Princes. Condemned by a proclama-tion and banished as evil. Surely, they shall be put to death.”’
Newton liked the sound of that. They all did. ‘Patience, kiddies,’ he said with a broad wink. ‘Chaos and carnage shall be ours. Soon we will meet the man who will lead us through the end of days, and into a new age. “His war shall last seven-and-twenty years, the heretics slain, the captives exiled, the waters shall run red with blood.”’
Turlough had promised the Doctor he would stay out of trouble, but he longed to explore Los Angeles. The neon and plasticity fascinated him. It was, he thought, just like Trion. Before the revolution.
In three hours he’d become lost in the bedazzling glitter of the city of lights.
Even the unnerving suspicion that he was constantly being watched had begun to fade. Besides, he was used to these paranoid moments. Travelling with the Doctor made thinking that everyone (no matter how bright their smile or short their skirt) was trying to kill you into an occupational hazard. He felt hedonistic and alive; at last he’d found somewhere in the universe that had no pretensions of being anything other than what it actually was.
The palm trees may have suggested paradise, but the looks on the faces of those he met told