Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [71]
He gave up the riddle and allowed himself the luxury of thinking about the outworlder girl. Never had he met a Parakonian who shared his views so completely; and as for her distress at what she had experienced... He visualized himself taking her in his arms and comforting her. He could almost feel her head resting against his chest.
He shook his head, angry with himself at the fantasy and angry with a world which could offer such a hope only to snatch it back. He would never see her again, and the absolute certainty of that knowledge was more painful than the almost certain threat of death.
Although Waldo was left with a short, sharp headache, the actual implantation of the transmission needles hardly hurt at all, in spite of the shaking hands of the technician who used the gun. Waldo felt quite sorry for him having to operate under the cold gaze of Vice-Chairman Tragan.
There would have been little point in trying to resist.
Better to die with the bullet of the hunter in his back than to suffer the torturously slow ebbing of life he would have experienced as the paralysed victim of a stun gun.
Once they were left alone, Tragan explained that the hunt would, in fact, start that very day.
‘You seem surprised.’ he said. ‘You must understand that we in the Entertainments Division pride ourselves on our efficiency. Keeping people locked up is a needless expense. Until you are dead, you appear on the wrong side of the balance sheet, you see. A recorded hunt can be entered as an asset even before it is transmitted.’
Waldo said nothing. What was there to say?
‘You’ll he given a small pack of rations – the same as the ones given to the hunter and his tracker in fact. The chase has been known to last for several days. You’ll wear the same protective clothing, and regulation jungle boots. A large part of the enjoyment of our audience comes from the pretence that you have a chance.’ He looked at Waldo sharply. ‘That’s why we encourage the rumours of escape in past hunts.’
‘Thank you for your honesty, at least,’ said Waldo.
Tragan turned back at the door. ‘I think you may regret your puritanical disregard of our transmissions. You might have learnt a lot.’
‘For instance?’
‘For instance, the vital importance of making your night-time shelter a weeping dray bush rather than a swarm of blood-sucking trigworms. They have a very similar appearance.’
Waldo smiled.
‘Yes, I am trying to scare you,’ said the Vice-Chairman, with some irritation in his voice for once. ‘And I have no doubt that I’m succeeding, in spite of your bravado. How’s the headache, by the way?’
‘It’s quite gone,’ replied Waldo. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you.’
‘No, no,’ said Tragan. ‘I should hate you to start our little game wanting to die. That comes at the end.’
Sarah sat on a fallen tree, keeping an eye on the guzzling Jeremy, and thought about Waldo. Presumably Onya meant that it might be possible to rescue him from the hunt itself.
Was she in love? She’d been in love before, but this was somehow different. She just liked thinking about him – the way you couldn’t stop thinking of a cheese and pickle sandwich when you hadn’t eaten for yonks and were stuck on a story.
She grinned at the thought – and the image came up of his back view as he led her out of the clutches of Tragan.
There was no question of it. She preferred men with small bums.
Oh for Heaven’s sake! Now she was not only writing clichés, she was a walking talking cliché herself. And how superficial could you get, thinking about a bum – no matter how elegantly shaped – when its owner was in mortal danger?
Pushing her tangle of emotions to one side for consideration later, she gazed across the clearing to the small group by the camouflaged flycar. The Doctor seemed to be stroking Onya’s paralysed arm – or was it more like a laying on of hands?
Pleased that her attention had been diverted, she got up and went over.
‘The stungun blocked the energy flow, you see,’ the Doctor was saying, ‘so we