Menagerie - Martin Day [0]
DOCTOR WHO – THE MISSING ADVENTURES
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MENAGERIE
Martin Day
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Doctor Who Books
an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd
332 Ladbroke Grove
London W10 5AH
Copyright © Martin Day 1995
The right of Martin Day to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
'Doctor Who' series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1995
ISBN 0 426 204849 2
Cover illustration by Paul Campbell
Typeset by Galleon Typesetting, Ipswich Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berks
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
In memory of Brian Hayles (reading The Ice Warriors during a wet holiday in Wales got me into all this) and Ian Marter (for postcards from around the world). Thanks to Steve Bowkett and Eric Pringle, for encouragement; to my agent, John McLaughlin, for help beyond the call of duty; and to all those who commented on the text, especially Ian Abrahams, Ian Atkins and my partners-in-crime Paul Cornell and Keith Topping. A final acknowledgement is due to Umberto Eco, for names ( Foucault's Pendulum, p. 539) and inspiration. Did we make it? Good night.
Dedicated, at last, to Helen.
Prologue
When Jenn Alforge was young she had built elaborate mazes for a group of white mice. Her father had given her the creatures, but they were gifts given in embarrassment rather than pleasure. It wasn't difficult to see why.
The mice had been genetically manipulated as part of a programme to develop antibodies to the second great space plague. These specimens were on the verge of viability: one had only three legs, another a tail that ended with three blunt prongs.
But they were hers. Jenn treasured them with an ignorance of disability that transcended normal human responses. The mazes that she diligently constructed from spare sheets of plastiglass were very different from the cruel experimental machinery of her father. The mice enjoy running down these corridors looking for cheese, she remembered thinking, as much as I enjoy building the mazes.
Her little subjects became more and more astute, getting to know the various doors and short-cuts, rejoicing in the rule of a benign, thoughtful monarch. She had looked down on the mazes like a child-god.
She was older now, and the nature of the maze she observed brought disregarded tears to the edges of her eyes.
In front of Jenn there were a number of projectors, throwing up 3D presentations in garish, flickering colours.
Taken together they showed a computer-generated cityscape reduced to a table-sized maze, populated by toy soldiers.
She passed her hands over a number of sensors, and the scale changed. The toys expanded in size and became men
— only their unblinking stares reminded her that they were androids — and the walls almost seemed real. But the accuracy of the cityscaping was not the point of the exercise, and neither was the technical sophistication of the androids.
Ì'm recording now,' she announced into a small communications device. 'Release the creatures at will.'
Despite the guns they carried, despite their gigabytes of military training, the android troopers were mere mice in a maze.