Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [108]
The cake monster shrugged.
'You can't stop us,' said Benny.
The Doctor continued to ignore her. The violinists were reaching a climax, bows smoking across the strings of their instruments. He wasn't going to talk to Benny right now. He was waiting for her boss.
The colour of the gateway was changing: swirls of intense copper began to radiate from the hub. The Doctor watched with interest. He'd never seen anything like this before.
The actual egress was barely visible; the copper colour briefly covered the whole disc and then subsided. Only Benny really changed and not physically either. Instead the Doctor got the impression that she was filled up to the brim with another intelligence. He half expected her skin to crack and leak light.
The Doctor gave it a few moments to integrate its personality.
'How do you do?' he said. 'I'm the Doctor, I believe you already know my friend Bernice.'
'Intimately,' said the thing inside Benny.
'And who are you?'
'The concept of personal pronoun is not applicable in these circumstances.'
'Fine,' said the Doctor, 'm that case I'll call you Fred.'
Lowell Depot
The survey crews had been sent off on an early and extended tea break. Achmed didn't want them around when whatever happened, happened. Primarily because whatever was going to happen it probably wasn't covered by the company's workplace insurance.
Deirdre had a minicam trained on the weird assembly by the crash barrier. Others were placed to get a good view of the whole station and she had remotes covering the cavern at the far end of the structural collapse.
'What for?' he'd asked.
Deirdre thought they might tape something worth selling to The Bad News Show. 'Don't worry. Boss,' she'd said. 'I'll cut you in for a percentage.'
The drone lay on its side by the assembly. As soon as its work had finished it had drifted off slightly and just fallen out of the air. Whoever had been operating it obviously didn't need it anymore. Achmed wondered if it was salvageable; technically it was within his contract area and fair game. He decided to check his legal database afterwards.
Afterwards was the problem. The assembly looked like a huge holographic projector pointing down the station at the Central Line gateway. Except you didn't need gigawatt cabling for a projector, no matter how big it was.
Achmed looked over at Deirdre who had produced an apple from somewhere and was polishing it casually on her dungarees. 'Are you sure we should be standing so . . .'
There was a click and a huge subsonic hum like the biggest amplifier ever made being switched on. Achmed turned back to the assembly just in time to be blinded by the light.
It burst out of the projector in a single pulse of brilliant silver energy shot through with sickly green streaks. It raced down the station and into the gateway. The subsonic hum clicked off and the whole projector assembly collapsed, bursting into flames.
'Did you see that?' shouted Deirdre.
Achmed blinked rapidly but all he could see was one massive purple after-image. He hoped to God that he hadn't blinded himself permanently. Eyeballs were bloody expensive these days.
'I don't know where that was going,' said Deirdre, 'but I wouldn't want to be standing in front of it.
Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)
A single sustained note from a trumpet, high and sweet, suspended above the rough chords of the main orchestra.
Duke Ellington, thought the Doctor. And about time too.
Kadiatu was coming, he could smell the violence.
He looked down to check that he was standing on the cross of gaffa tape. X marks the spot. He shouldn't have long to wait now.
'What do you want?' asked the Doctor. Stalling.
'That depends,' said Benny/Fred. 'What do you want?'
The cake monster with Japanese eyes was tensing up, ready to attack.
'I want my friend back,' said the Doctor.
Jazz, thought the Doctor, is all about improvisation around a central theme. The musician creates spiral riffs within the framework of the rhythm. In the early days when the white