Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [62]
Martha looked round the room. An awkward hush had fallen. It couldn’t have been more obvious, she thought, than if someone had pulled out a great big photo of a hole in the ground, with all the Sundayans standing around it, pointing, holding up a sign saying ‘Great big hole in the ground’.
‘Oh great,’ said the Doctor, his shoulders sinking. ‘Just great! ’
Candy knew she ought to feel guilty for coming back here on her own, ignoring the Doctor’s instructions. But, really, she didn’t.
She’d never been good at taking orders, even from someone as like-able as the Doctor. And besides, she knew that his ‘Tell the settlement!’
had just been an excuse to get her out of danger. What could she have told them that they didn’t already know, or couldn’t have guessed?
No, it made more sense for her to find the rest of the kidnapped Sundayans. Even if she couldn’t actually rescue them, she could at least let everyone else know exactly where they were. Brains might not have been Candy’s forte, but getting stuck in certainly was.
So she started off back to the city, and then took a wide loop around, bringing herself out near the riverbank, a kilometre upstream of where she’d left the Doctor and Ty. Poking her head out of the bushes, she pulled out her monocular and used it to scan downriver: she could see the buildings clearly, but there was no sign of the otters, the brainwashed settlers or the Doctor and Ty. She hoped that meant they’d got away.
So. . . where were the rest of the settlers? She’d had plenty of time to think as she’d made her way back, and it seemed only common sense that if they weren’t at the settlement then they’d be somewhere else doing the creature’s dirty work. And that surely had to mean the ship, the One Small Step. . .
Candy shuddered inwardly at the memory of finding Col and what he’d done to himself-all to stop the creature from finding out any more. But she – and, Candy suspected, Col too – reckoned it was probably too late.
After she’d realised that it was pointless trying to drag Col’s body from the ship, she’d noticed the shipbrain’s illuminated control panel; and, curious, she’d checked it out to see what could have brought Col all the way out here in secrecy.
What she saw puzzled – then angered – her: Col had been deleting records from the ship’s memory. Pallister’s records. It took her a few minutes to work out why. And when she did, the anger kicked in.
‘Why, Col?’ she’d whispered, scrolling through Pallister’s records.
‘Why d’you do it?’
Col had been deleting Pallister’s history file – the record that had come with him aboard the ship. Normally only for the eyes of the ship’s Captain and the previous Chief Councillor, both of whom had died in the flood, Pallister’s history file seemed somewhat at odds with the picture of himself that he’d presented at the elections. Elections that Col himself had been in charge of organising.
A few moments of thought and it was clear to Candy what Col had done: Pallister’s history contained numerous convictions for petty crime, fraud and embezzlement. And yet none of that had been mentioned during the elections. Quite the reverse, in fact. The history file placed on public record, in the run-up to the election, had shown Pallister to be a model citizen, beyond reproach. A selfless, hardworking, dedicated man.
Col had helped to fix the election so that Pallister would win.
And then when news of the One Small Step ’s return had reached Sunday City, Col must have panicked, thinking that someone might check the ship’s records and discover that someone had fiddled with them. So he’d rushed out here to delete them, covering his – and Pallister’s – tracks. Maybe Pallister himself had suggested it.
Was that what he’d been apologising about? Col’s words came back to her, sharply, as though he were speaking them now: ‘Tell them I’m sorry,’ he’d said. ‘For letting it find out about Pallister.’
But why? It made no sense. Why would it matter whether the creature discovered that Pallister was a petty criminal