Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [27]
Above on the ceiling there was a silent flash and a plume of theatrical smoke cleared to reveal a large woman wearing a black bomber jacket and waving a sword.
The Doctor felt along the top of the unit. His fingertips found a seam too thin to be visible running along the middle twelve centimetres. There was a shallow thumb-sized depression at either end; a little firm pressure and a panel hinged open. The Doctor was vaguely disappointed. He'd expected more of a challenge. Inside were two lighted touch controls and a thumbprint scanner pad.
The Doctor picked up the unit and drew up his legs into a comfortable position. On the ceiling the opera bobbed along in parallel, the image stabilizing when he placed the unit in front of him. Twitching back the eiderdown he gently drew Kadiatu's hand towards the touch pad.
The Doctor paused, frowning.
The skin under his fingers was cool, at least three or four degrees cooler than his own, below human parameters even for sleep. He felt for the pulse, it was strong but too slow, forty-two beats per minute, way below the normal rest rate. Respiration was slow too, ten deep breaths per minute, the lungs filling to capacity and then emptying in a beautifully controlled manner. At these metabolic levels she should be slipping into a coma but instinctively the Doctor knew that for Kadiatu this was normal sleep. Perhaps somewhere on that sleek body too was a discreet company logo and the words Made on Earth.
He wondered if she knew what she was.
He placed her thumb on the scanner until the two touch pads lit up and then carefully replaced her hand under the eiderdown. The top pad glowed a deep emerald so he pressed that one first. Above the unit a neon rectangle unfolded into a screen, down the right hand was a strip of moving pictograms - mikons, guessed the Doctor.
He checked the ceiling. The opera was still in full swing. The three principals had been joined by a chorus of soldiers in DPM battledress and blue berets. They were carrying spears.
He touched the top mikon: a tiny spinning globe and a window opened.
Kadiatu had protected her operating system with an eight-digit PIN and a complex interlocking series of layered cut-outs based around prime numbers. It took the Doctor over two minutes to crack it. It was a lot of security for a student.
Inside the databases were a mess, strewn all over the conceptual map in random formations. It occurred to the Doctor that this might be the ultimate line of protection, making it almost impossible to find what you were looking for. Just as well, thought the Doctor, that I don't know what I'm looking for.
He opened a file at random and had a look. Pages of non-linear mathematics relating to tunnel installation. Kadiatu seemed to be striving for a localized self-generating field around a capsule that would allow it to travel faster than light in real space. It was an elegant piece of work, the main flaw being that if you changed the initial conditions of the field generation the capsule would be flung off at a dimensional tangent.
And that was time travel.
Buchannan Station - Pluto Ninety-Five
Mariko carried the board down the ramp and on to the platform.
She was particularly pleased with the way the board had turned out. She was certain no one else had a board like that. She had to be careful though, even with her new hands the razor-sharp edges had to be handled with respect. The half-metre spike on the front was a nice touch too.
Naran's new mouth stopped him from talking but Mariko didn't regard that as a disadvantage. Naran had never had anything interesting to say even when he could speak. It accentuated his high cheek bones nicely and gave him a rakish air. The look on his face when