Authors: Ben Aaronovitch,Kate Orman
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Science Fiction, #Doctor Who (Fictitious Character)
So Vile a Sin (12 page)
Chris didn’t hesitate, snatching the Walkman out of its socket in the console. Kim Wilde vanished in a puff of silence. The Doctor took the Walkman and grabbed Chris’s bag of tapes and bolted.
Chris followed him. In the galley, Zatopek was in convulsions, lying on the table and screaming in Czech. Martinique was trying to hold him down, grabbing at his head as it smacked against the plastic.
‘I’m burning!’ Zatopek shrieked. His dark hair was in disarray, like a black halo. ‘Sailing in the lake of fire!’
The Doctor was frantically fiddling with the Walkman. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ said Chris.
‘Get us out of this orbit,’ said the Doctor.
‘Planets emerging born out of the red sear in the lake, crawling above!’ yelled Zatopek.
‘Higher up?’ asked Chris.
‘No. Just get us into an orbit which doesn’t cross the crater.’
The Doctor shrugged as though something was irritating him, and a tiny drop of blood ran out of his nose. ‘
Now
, Chris.’
‘Right away.’ Chris turned and ran back to the bridge. Iaomnet was waiting. ‘What’s up?’
Chris flung himself into the seat next to her. ‘We’ve got to change orbit,’ he said. The acceleration plucked at them as they turned. ‘What’s the problem, Chris? Who screamed?’
‘Zatopek,’ said Chris. ‘I think it’s some kind of psychic attack.
Have you ever seen anything like that?’
‘No, this is my first –’ said Iaomnet. ‘No, I haven’t. Emil didn’t tell me he was Gifted.’
Another yell came from aft. ‘Merry Christmas, Emil,’ said Chris.
89
Half an hour later, the crew were gathered around the stricken psi. Zatopek was lying on the kitchen table, half covered by a first-aid blanket. He was murmuring about tacking across the wave of oblivion, hot chaos licking at the hull of his boat, and yelling at his neighbour to turn the noise down.
‘This is terrible,’ said Martinique. ‘This is terrifying.’ He looked at the device attached to his assistant’s head. ‘What is this, exactly?’
‘I’ve used one of Chris’s tapes to create a loop that will create interference in his neural pathways and reduce the intensity of the signal he’s receiving,’ said the Doctor.
‘He doesn’t look very happy,’ said Iaomnet.
‘For this to work, the noise has to be fairly radical.’
Chris picked up the remains of his cassette. ‘Not “Don’t Leave Me This Way”?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘It’s a powerful source and we’re still very close. I’m afraid I had to take drastic measures: Frankie Goes To Hollywood.’
‘“Relax” or “Two Tribes”?’
‘“Relax”,’ said the Doctor. ‘The psycho buffer remix.’
‘Ship’s engineer, huh?’ said Iaomnet.
‘Could you take him to his quarters?’ the Doctor asked her and Martinique. ‘I think it’s safe to move him now, and he needs a serious lie down.’
Chris watched as their passengers scooped up the muttering Zatopek and carted him out. ‘What about you?’ he asked, when they were gone.
The Doctor blew his nose. ‘I’m fine. There’s a powerful psychic signal emanating from Iphigenia – presumably from whatever’s under Aulis Crater. The signal is much weaker here.
I’m able to filter out the random interference to a considerable extent.’
‘What is the signal?’ asked Chris. ‘A message? Some kind of defence mechanism – like a
telepaths keep out
sign?’
‘I think it’s more in the nature of a leak. What’s down there is very, very old, possibly damaged or worn down… A tiny amount of its power must be escaping.’
‘Psychic pollution. So now what?’ said Chris.
90
‘We go back,’ said the Doctor. ‘And we land.’
Iaomnet slid Zatopek’s wallet out of his jacket pocket and flipped through it. Chris had the impression she’d done this before.
‘Land? Down there?’ said Martinique. He was sitting beside the bed, anxiously watching his assistant. The telepath was half asleep, eyelids flickering, lips moving. The four of them barely fitted into Zatopek’s cabin.
‘Surely that’s far too dangerous,’ Martinique insisted. ‘I’m not even sure if we should stay in orbit.’
Chris said, ‘But you’ve come all this way. Shouldn’t you at least find out what’s down there?’
‘No registration,’ said Iaomnet. ‘Either he left his institute ident at home, or he’s a Wild Card.’ She looked at Martinique. ‘Did you know he was a psi?’
‘Of course not,’ said the grey-haired professor. ‘I was as surprised as any of you by the… attack he experienced.’
Iaomnet tucked the wallet back in Zatopek’s pocket. ‘Well, there’s something going on here which I don’t like,’ she said,
‘and I don’t think we should proceed until we get some clarification.’
‘But we can’t abandon the mission now.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t want to land.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said the professor, glancing at his assistant. ‘I don’t know. He might need proper medical attention.’
‘Exactly. I say we go home.’
‘Well,’ said Martinique, ‘you’re not in command of this mission.’
‘No,’ said Iaomnet, ‘but what’s the point of getting ourselves killed? How am I going to write that dissertation if I get fried?’
‘We land,’ said Zatopek.
They all looked down at him. He reached up and pushed one of the headphones away from his ear, the music spilling out in a recurring tinny hiss. ‘I will be able to create a barrier in my mind, with a little work,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I was taken unawares. But once I am ready, we must return to the crater.’
91
Martinique looked down at the younger man. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he said. ‘Whatever’s down there –’
‘We land,’ insisted Zatopek, his voice heavy with some emotion Chris couldn’t identify. ‘We must discover the source of the power. There will be nothing more important we could do in our entire lives, Henri.’ He looked at Chris. ‘How long before we can return?’
The Adjudicator said, ‘How long before you’re ready?’
Iaomnet picked out the landing site, a smooth rock shelf close to the summit of Artemis Mons. Much too smooth. As the Hopper softly lowered itself, Zatopek and the Doctor peered out of the cockpit window. Gazing into the shadowy cleft in the mountainside where the meteorite had torn through Artemis, trying to see the skull beneath her skin.
Chris obligingly switched on one of the vehicle’s floodlights.
The beam stabbed into the gash. After a moment, their eyes adjusted.
There was a gentle bump as the Hopper’s landing feet pressed against rock. Iaomnet shut down the engines. There was a moment of ringing quiet, that constant background noise absent for the first time in days.
No one noticed. They were all staring at the doors inside the mountain, the structures and shapes exposed to space when the rock had been torn away.
After a few minutes, Martinique said, ‘All right.’ His voice quivered. ‘Emil, Iaomnet, would you please accompany me to the airlock, where we’ll suit up for EVA.’
‘I think I’d better come with you,’ said the Doctor. ‘After what happened earlier, you may need a doctor.’
‘He has a point,’ said Iaomnet. ‘I’d feel a lot better if he came with us.’
‘The more, the merrier,’ said Martinique. Zatopek opened his mouth to protest, but the professor went on, ‘And hopefully the safer. Are you qualified for an EVA, Doctor?’
The Doctor grinned. ‘I’m qualified in everything except HTML
markup and dentistry. Chris, what are our Ogron friends up to?’
92
‘They’re in their quarters, as always,’ said Chris. ‘Probably playing ludo.’
‘All right. We’ll be on the surface in fifteen minutes. Get ready to track us.’
‘Right.’ Chris turned back to the controls.
A few minutes later, he heard the Doctor say, ‘Testing, testing.
Who can hear me?’
‘I can,’ said Martinique.
Iaomnet: ‘Me too.’
Zatopek: ‘Yes.’
Chris told them, ‘Everyone’s coming through nice and clearly.
I’ve got your vital signs on my board… now. Take it easy out there, don’t try to see everything at once.’
They moved through the airlock, then out in front of the Hopper. Chris saw Iaomnet was carrying a double-barrelled plasma thrower, the least subtle weapon in the ship’s small armoury. The Doctor gave Chris a cheery wave, and the four suited figures headed in the direction of the gash, bouncing slowly in the moon’s gravity.
Ten minutes passed. Chris watched the vital-signs monitors, making sure that all of the suits were functioning properly. He could monitor their oxygen levels, their heart rates, the lot, and he’d made sure each of them knew it. Not to make them feel safer. So that they knew that he’d know if anyone did anything they shouldn’t.
‘Who can hear me?’ said the Doctor.
‘I can,’ said Zatopek. There was a pause. Chris held his peace.
‘You’ve isolated our communications, Doctor?’ said the geologist.
‘Yes. Now would be a good time to tell me what you know, don’t you think?’
Zatopek didn’t answer right away. Eventually he said, ‘Can you imagine what life is like as an unregistered psychokinetic?’
‘I’m sure you can,’ said the Doctor.
‘All that
suspicion
. Always suspecting and being suspected. Is this new friend I have made really an agent of the Institute for the Gifted? Is that telepath wearing the institute’s symbol probing my mind even as I walk past? Remember to let the coffee cup fall 93
when you drop it, remember to use your hands to smooth your hair. So difficult to live with the secret.’
‘So dangerous,’ said the Doctor. ‘Especially here, where our lives depend on one another. Even if you’re not a telepath per se, you’re vulnerable to the psychic leakage. I saved you once, Emil, but what if I can’t do it again? Tell me why you’re really here.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m asking you to show some common sense. The others don’t need to know.’
‘You already know too much about me,’ said Zatopek. ‘I can trust Martinique, and Iaomnet’s grade depends on our good report. But how can I ensure you don’t inform the authorities of my wild talent?’
‘Now it sounds like you’re threatening me.’
‘You’re right, Doctor. We do have to trust one another.’
Silence. Chris saw the telltales shift as the Doctor opened his comm channels up again. ‘– extraordinary!’ Martinique was saying. ‘And it’s the age of the find that’s the most significant thing. The crater was built to hide those structures, I’m sure of it.
What civilization visited this dead moon, ten million years ago?
What did they build here, and why?’
‘Are we going inside it?’ asked Iaomnet, sounding as though she’d rather snort a gecko.
‘Of course we’re going inside it,’ said Martinique. Chris imagined the man’s eyes shining inside his helmet. ‘Just a small sortie at first. No more than a few hours.’
Chris said, ‘I won’t be able to track your vital signs and communications once you’re shielded by the rock.’
‘Then we’ll have to be careful,’ said Martinique.
‘Very careful,’ said Zatopek.
‘Very very careful,’ said Iaomnet.
‘Very careful indeed,’ said the Doctor.
Chris watched their progress on his monitors for another hour, peeking through the Doctor’s binocs from time to time. The party was heading for a big blue rectangle that stood out from the other shapes. It looked a lot like a door.
94
Chris switched to the Doctor’s suit camera when the group got close enough. ‘It’s an airlock,’ said the Time Lord. ‘The shape and size suggests a humanoid species.’
Martinique said, ‘How do you know it’s an airlock?’
Iaomnet lifted her plasma thrower. ‘Knock knock,’ she said.
‘Hang on a moment,’ said the Doctor. The airlock loomed on Chris’s screen. Suddenly the picture was filled with steam.
‘Doctor!’ said Chris. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course,’ said the Doctor. ‘Just dust and some very, very old air escaping. The airlock is easy to open from the outside. You’d hardly want to design one that was hard to get into…’
‘Unless you were a military installation,’ said Martinique, ‘and you didn’t want visitors.’
‘On the other hand,’ said the Doctor, ‘this particular door was hidden by tons of rock.’
‘So we still don’t know what we’re going to find,’ said Iaomnet.
The Doctor’s point of view shifted, taking in Zatopek’s helmet for a moment. ‘There is,’ he said, ‘as the saying goes, only one way to find out.’
The Doctor and company had been out of contact for two hours.
Chris was sick of playing video games. He decided to go and see what Son of My Father and Sister Son were up to.
The Ogrons were jogging in circles around the cargo bay. Part of the small space was taken up with sensor equipment, but the rest was neatly stacked packaging, collapsed into flat squares.
Chris sat down on an unopened crate, watching the Ogrons for a while. Son of My Father saw him and raised a hairy hand, but they kept jogging, relentlessly, the metal plates of the floor rattling under their feet.
Chris shrugged, took off his jacket, and joined them.
The pointless movement took the edge off his nerves. He wiped sweat from his face as he followed the Ogrons around. No one told them what was going on around them. Did they run because they were nervous? Or were they just burning off excess energy?
95
At last all of them stopped, leaning against the wall and the crates as they got their breath back. Even Ogrons get out of breath, Chris realized. It made them seem more human. Well, it
did
– it was something familiar.
Son of My Father clapped a meaty hand on Chris’s shoulder.
‘You a regular guy,’ he said. ‘You got to watch out for the people on this ship, Chris. Sometimes bad rocks fool you: look like good rocks on the outside.’
Chris nodded. ‘Thanks. I’ve already worked out that Iaomnet’s not a student. Or not just a student, anyway. She’s probably a double-eye.’
Son of My Father shook his head. 'Not what I mean.’
‘Well,’ said Chris, ‘Zatopek has kind of given himself away as well.’
‘Not what I mean either. Watch out.’
Chris stood up. ‘Is the Doctor in danger?’
