Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [92]
‘I don’t know if I understand what he told me. Not fully.’ Her breathing was slowing as she calmed down. ‘He says his brain is supercooled. That the galvanic messages that are his thoughts are travelling too rapidly.’
Talker said, ‘That could explain a lot. Psychokinetic could hardly lift a rock.
That’s why we weren’t expecting the Caxtarids to realize he had psychic powers. It’s illegal, for slaves. They kill you or do experiments on you. Or sell you back for more slaves without the brain power!’
‘All he cares about is getting out of that thing,’ breathed Chris. ‘That’s what this has all been about. Penelope, does he know any way out?’
She shook her head. ‘No, or he’d already have used it. He’s trapped.’
‘That’s an industrial life-support pod,’ said Talker. ‘Meant for animals. It’s down near absolute zero in there. If we try to open the pod and we muck it up, we’ll either kill ourselves, or we’ll kill him.’
Chris reached down and pulled the Yakko Warner fridge magnet off the pod.
‘He might have been better off if we had blown him up,’ he said.
Someone shouted. They looked up.
For a moment, time was frozen, as the single arrow arced over the monastery wall. Everyone stopped what they were doing, pausing for the three seconds it took the shaft to curve, peak, fall, and finally embed itself in the wooden wall of the main hall.
Chris ran to the arrow. There was a scroll wrapped around it. He opened it, glanced at the Japanese writing, waved it about in exasperation, and handed it to Dengon.
The monk quickly scanned the lines, and looked up at Chris in astonishment. ‘Isha-sama is alive,’ he said.
‘Do you know how to use that?’ asked the Doctor.
Joel jumped so violently that he almost dropped the laser rifle. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground with the heavy weapon in his lap, fiddling with the safety catch.
He adjusted his glasses. ‘I can probably work it out,’ he said. ‘It’s a pretty basic design.’
‘It ought to come in very handy for Gufuu’s assault on the monastery,’ commented the Doctor. A page had brought him a helmet full of water from the 188
stream, and he was cleaning himself up as best he could, using a now very muddy Paisley scarf.
‘I can’t give him a futuristic weapon,’ said Joel dully. In his bewildered eyes the Doctor could see the young man he’d met in Little Caldwell, thirteen years of Joel’s life ago. ‘It seemed like such a good idea at the time, you know?’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Why didn’t you stop me?’ said Joel. ‘You knew all along. You even wrote something in my diary. Why didn’t you stop me?’
‘Because I want you to stop you,’ said the Doctor mildly. He looked at his raw silk shirt, grimacing at the stain and tear that had ruined one shoulder.
‘But you let it go on too long,’ said Joel. ‘I’m in too deep now. I can’t turn back.’
‘Of course you can,’ said the Doctor. ‘I wonder what became of my hat.’
‘I can’t.’ Joel shook his head.
‘You’re getting more last chances than most.’ The Doctor folded his arms.
‘How did this all begin, Joel? When did the idea of disappearing into history and staking out your own little patch first begin?’
‘A long time ago,’ said Joel.
‘I remember. . .
one night I was reading
alt.alien.visitors, and I suddenly realized that all I could do was read. I couldn’t post something to the Internet about what I’d experienced, all the aliens I’d met, all the adventures and stuff I’d had. Nobody could know. Nobody would ever know.’
‘And that wasn’t enough for you?’
‘I guess not,’ said Joel. ‘Obviously everybody in Little Caldwell knew, and some of our contacts. But the rest of the human race. . . you know when I really decided to go through with it? When I read some stupid article in the newspaper about a Star Trek convention in Liverpool. The usual crap about how fans were desperate losers. And I thought, if it wasn’t for Trek and Professor X and all the SF I’ve read, I couldn’t do this job. Every new weird thing would boggle my mind. I’ve helped save the human race, and they call me a nerd.’
He dug at the ground with the rifle