Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [83]
Something was moving around in there.
‘One of those robots,’ he explained. ‘The tanks.’
‘Class two,’ Anji said. ‘The humanoid ones are class threes.’
‘What do the class ones look like?’
‘No idea – I’ve not seen one so far. Who’s controlling them?’
‘Not Baskerville.’ They’d seen Baskerville and his party scurry across the runway to one of the support buildings.
‘Cosgrove?’
‘That would be my guess. Right… it’s facing the other way.’
They hurried through the hangar, to the door in the far wall.
‘I went back to Baskerville’s office in Athens,’ the Doctor told Anji. ‘Baskerville had removed the time machine – or the vital components from it, at any rate.’
‘I think it’s got something to do with his coffee machine.’
‘Yes, he removed that, too. I was wondering about that.’
‘It’s in a silver case.’
‘The one he was carrying just now?’ The Doctor looked a little annoyed – he’d been almost within arm’s reach of it.
‘Uh‐huh. I looked in it, but I only found the coffee machine. The time machine components must be in a hidden compartment.’
‘We need that case.’
‘Why does he need the President?’ Anji asked. ‘He’s got a time machine, he’s got enough money to buy a Concorde, he’s got a robot army…’
‘He said he wanted to get back to the future.’
Anji held up her hand. ‘Right… you missed that bit. He’s not from the future. He used to be in the Russian army.’
‘So where did he get…?’
‘I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me that bit. He’s ruthless, resourceful. I imagine he stumbled across the time machine somewhere, then killed its original owner.’
The Doctor winced. ‘The damage he could do if he used the time machine without understanding it…’
Anji stopped, closed her eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ the Doctor asked.
It didn’t add up. Baskerville had a time machine and no moral scruples. Or, more precisely – and more dangerously – a moral framework that meant he could justify just about anything in his self‐interest. So why wasn’t he using the time machine for himself?
‘He could make a fortune,’ Anji said. ‘He could go back and sell weapons, he could play the stock market, he could set himself up as an adviser, an inventor, a brilliant medicine man… there are a million ways a time traveller could make money.’
‘There are?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Hell… he could buy up old Batman comics for a cent a time, or get autographs, or go back and pretend he’d written Harry Potter.’
‘I don’t think he’s really the –’
‘He could bet on every horse race, raid the pyramids, take paying tourists to see the Crucifixion, buy up land…’
‘Er, Anji…’
‘Stake a claim for every oil field. He could clear up in the insurance market, buy up Van Gogh’s unsold stock, he could put his money in an high‐interest account two hundred years ago and –’
‘I think you’ve made your point,’ the Doctor said gently. ‘Perhaps he lacks your business brain.’
‘No. I’ve talked to him. Doctor, do you know the one thing I’d do if I had a time machine?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Go home?’ he said finally.
Anji bristled at that. ‘No. The one thing I’d do, of all the things I could do, is simple: I wouldn’t sell it.’
The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘So he doesn’t want money.’
‘He does. He said he wanted money. Wait. IFEC… I have heard the word before.’
‘It does ring a bell,’ the Doctor admitted.
Something small whooshed over Anji’s head, and exploded a few feet away.
Anji saw Baskerville and Leo, aiming chunky guns at them – they looked more like flare pistols than ordinary pistols.
‘Gyrojet guns!’ the Doctor said. ‘Mini rocket launchers. Fascinating.’
Anji pulled him down behind a pile of steel oil drums. If they were empty, they’d provide perfect cover. If they were full of oil, then at least it would be quick.
‘It’s not a question of how interesting the bullets are, it’s how hard they hit us,’ she said.
* * *
Pad had given Fitz a running list of instructions.
The workings of the EMP cannon, the ones in this chamber at least, were vast machines, like the turbines of a power station. The Onihrs weren’t big