Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [109]
The virus, and, by extension, Fred, constantly improvised to achieve its objectives. The Doctor understood this, he operating in an identical manner. The question was: of him and Fred, who was better?
The next ten seconds, he thought, should decide that.
The cake monster started its jump.
The Doctor forced himself to stay in place.
A single burst of coherent light drilled through its skull. It was a magnificent shot considering that Kadiatu was sprinting at the time. She was by his side before the body hit the ground.
'Is that the real Benny?' she asked.
'Sort of,' said the Doctor.
Kadiatu raised her pistol. 'Time to die,' she said.
Without taking his eyes off Benny/Fred the Doctor reached out and shoved Kadiatu off her feet. Killing Benny wouldn't even slow Fred down.
The entire artron energy reserve of the TARDIS hit him right between the shoulder blades. The Doctor let the power fill him up. In front of him he saw Benny/Fred struggle to react, but Fred was unused to the physical limitations of a human body. The Doctor had been counting on that.
Just when he thought he was about to burst he let the power go.
Kadiatu picked herself up just in time to see the Doctor, Benny and the gateway vanish in a brilliant wash of white light. When it subsided the Doctor was standing alone.
'Benny?' said the Doctor.
'What the fuck was that?' said a voice. Kadiatu looked over and saw Lambada climbing out from a tangle of debris. She pushed away the body of a cake monster as she got up. Credit Card followed her out. Kadiatu looked around but couldn't see Blondie anywhere. She was going to ask Lambada when the Doctor called her over.
'Kadiatu, listen,' said the Doctor. 'I'm going in after Benny. If I don't come back I want you to destroy all records of me. The history files, the opera, the lot.'
'Why?'
'If I'm killed,' he said, 'it's better that I never existed at all.'
'I don't think going in there's a good idea,' said Kadiatu.
'She's my friend,' said the Doctor. 'Wish me luck.'
The Doctor ran towards the gateway and jumped. He passed through the interface and vanished.
'Damn,' said Kadiatu.
'He shouldn't have done that,' said Lambada.
'Don't tell me that,' said Kadiatu.
'No,' said Lambada, 'I mean the whole tunnel is going to collapse.'
'How long?'
'Thirty-two seconds,' said Credit Card.
Kadiatu stared at the Stunnel gateway.
'Shit,' she said and threw herself in after the Doctor.
9: Chain Gang Song
Node One
There was no sensory input but there was a sensation of movement. The Doctor felt himself marooned in space of infinite complexity. He realised instantly that he was in danger of disassociating, flying apart down all the logical pathways of probability.
I am what I am what I am, he thought fiercely and felt a part of himself detach and go spinning down an alternative pathway. He got a glimpse of himself as he went, he had outsized forearms with anchor tattoos and a pipe.
Stop, thought the Doctor and the sensation of movement ceased.
What he needed was a frame of reference, a hook to hang his hat on. It took a while but soon he had constructed a sphere around himself which he called Node One. The inside of the sphere was dotted with recessed roundels, scaled-up duplicates of the ones in the TARDIS. Each one represented a possible pathway that led from the Node. He colour-coded the roundels: black for those pathways he'd already traversed, blue for Popeye the Sailor's route, red for the rest.
He spun a web across the roundel he'd come through; it would transfer his frame of reference to anybody following after him.
Fred was somewhere in the system ahead. An intelligence operating within its own environment, it wasn't going to be easy to defeat.
First he had to find it.
He could hear the Popeye subset of himself in the distance, his little ditty echoing through the pathways. By concentrating