Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [70]
Umemi barked orders, and the Doctor found himself grabbed by two samurai large enough to blot out the sun.
‘You don’t care, do you?’ He was still shouting at the Caxtarid. ‘You think this is funny. You’re like a child pouring boiling water into an anthill.’
She stepped up to him and grabbed his face in her hand. ‘Are their motives any better – in the long run?’
‘Tell me what the pod is,’ he insisted, his eyes boring into her.
She just laughed and let him go. The samurai dragged him off ‘When they’re finished with you, Doctor,’ she called, you can expect torture and death.’
‘You must be such fun at parties!’ His hat had fallen down over his eyes.
He couldn’t see her, but her last barb reached him, even across the movement and noise of the courtyard.
‘Not from me. I’ll let them do it,’ she called. ‘It’ll save me the damned trouble.’
140
16
Fourth-dimension dream
Chris crept through the forest, keeping as low as he could. He hid behind a thick pine and peered out at the soldiers.
The army stood eerily still, like mannequins, lined up in tidy rows. Lancers and archers, marksmen and infantry, like full-size metal figurines in a tabletop wargame, or holographic characters in a sim, too perfectly aligned and still to be real. They were small, and after a while Chris realized it wasn’t their genes or their diet, but their age. They were teenagers, or in their early twenties, younger than he was.
In the middle of that lot, beneath the orange banners, was Gufuu-sama.
And maybe Joel. Chris wanted to see if he could spot the redhead amongst the troops, but he didn’t dare break cover.
What were they waiting for?
The superior warrior knows when not to fight, as well as when to fight, supposed Chris. You could lose face by losing your cool. They were waiting to see who would blink first.
He’d left the cart and horses deep in the forest, maybe two hours ago. In that time he’d carefully recced the area, making a mental map – the road that wound up to the monastery gates, the plain at the base of the mountain, the shape of the forest that surrounded it. As far as he could tell, no one was sneaking around in the woods. The soldiers were just standing there, waiting.
How was he going to get the pod up to the monastery? The main road was in plain view of Gufuu-sama, from the warlord’s position on the ridge.
Maybe he just couldn’t. Maybe he’d have to stay here until he found out what they were waiting for. He took the letter out of his pocket. It was just about finished.
Dear Doctor,
I didn’t always feel like this. I kind of wanted to try to write down how I feel. Maybe I’ll never show you this. Maybe it’s just to help me make up my mind.
141
I always wanted to be a hero when I grew up. Like my dad and his dad and so on, one of the good guys. That was the best thing about the Adjudication Creed, taking the Oath and everything. It was all written down, you knew exactly how to do things and why they were done. . .
All the different procedures and situations, and the legal precedents and civil rights safeguards. That was in the last exam of all, as though the Academy thought it was the least important part of our training, even though it was the most important part.
I got my best mark on that exam. Well, out of the theoretical stuff.
Roz always said I did everything by the book.
At first I thought it was because of Roz, After she died, I felt so, well, dead. And I know it wasn’t easy for you either, but I thought I’d got over it OK.
And then I thought it was Liz. For some reason it was even worse when Liz died. OK, for some reason, for a very good reason. I let her die. I let her die to save me. I utterly failed to serve and protect. I wasn’t a hero.
But it wasn’t a single thing, really. It’s a bunch of little things. Each time some little bad thing happens some innocent bystander gets killed, something beautiful gets destroyed –