Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [59]
She was in a much better mood.
Her prisoner watched from the corner. ‘My people have become experts in the design of these living machines,’ she told him. ‘One such device is the creature that prevents you from moving.’
He glanced at the animal embracing his left ankle. The Manacle of Flesh, a variation on the Prompter of Confessions, designed to partially inhibit the motor nerves. He could move, albeit slowly and awkwardly. And speak. And scream.
‘This device,’ she said, crouching in front of him so he could see it wriggling in her hands, ‘will give me complete control over your tactile senses. I will be able to make you feel anything I choose. Pure heat, as though your nerves are on fire. Utter cold. And pain. Unimaginable pain. Wherever I choose, for how long I choose.’
He didn’t try to resist as she knelt beside him and began to fit the Prompter of Confessions behind his ear. He’d written the false note for his friend readily enough, almost as though he wanted the human to be on his way – or was it just that he didn’t want to risk displeasing her?
The Prompter snuggled against his skin, reaching down his neck to seek out his brainstem, and up to his temple. ‘The device will swiftly seek out the centres of your brain which controls pain perception, forcing open any pathways which may have closed to inhibit the agony, multiplying the sensations I cause you a hundred times. The real genius of the device is that it simulates pain without causing physical harm.’
She would begin a finely controlled programme of stimulations, beginning with several high-level shocks to loosen him up, and then building, slowly, with variations, to a roaring crescendo of agony. All without asking any questions, of course. By the time she was finished with him he’d tell her anything she asked him.
She was just deciding whether to gag him when he plucked the Prompter off his head and tossed it out of the window.
She shot to the windowsill and looked down into the street, where a large cart was running over the Prompter of Confessions, mashing it into a pancake.
She turned back to him with murder in her eyes.
‘Can’t we talk about this in a civilized fashion?’ he said, plucking the Manacle of Flesh off his ankle.
She managed to catch it before it went out of the window.
∗ ∗ ∗
121
Penelope rode through the cool morning. She hadn’t seen anyone since she’d left Toshi, except a wandering monk and a couple of merchants who had ignored her.
She took out the map while her horse ambled along the forest trail. She was less than half a day’s easy ride from KAPTEYNIAN BASE.
She hoped that by now the Doctor’s conscience was pricking a little at his behaviour towards her. She imagined him as one of those dreary university professors, taking it on themselves to lecture her on Woman’s Place or something equally antiquated.
‘Ah,’ she could imagine him saying, ‘you’re one of those Suffragettes, aren’t you?’
‘Suffrag ist,’ she would correct, fiddling with her spectacles in irritation.
‘What you have to understand, Miss Gate, is that the male and female of the species have completely different psychologies. Men’s brains have been prepared by evolution for their role as thinkers, artists and leaders. The male mind is naturally more rational. Have you never considered, for example, why so few great painters were female?’
‘I had always assumed it was because it was illegal to train women in painting,’ she would reply. ‘Have you never considered that these supposed differences in the minds of the sexes are merely a convenient excuse for perpetuat-ing their current circumstances?’
In one version of her daydream, this lead into a fascinating discussion of Darwin, Marx and the Pankhursts, and a conversion of the offending professor to the cause of emancipation. In the more realistic version, the lecturer droned on painfully for some minutes about the scientific evidence for Woman’s Place, et cetera.
She was barely tolerated in the universities.