Doctor Who_ Original Sin Part 11

'How do you know?' the Doctor asked. This could be a line worth pursuing.

The bot thought for a moment. 'Imperial Landsknecht records confirm that you are the prisoner.'

'And are Imperial Landsknecht records always correct?'

'Yes.'

It was the Doctor's turn to think for a moment. He had to get this right first time. If he mucked it up, the robot wouldn't give him a second chance. He could only pray that it had no formal training in philosophy.

'That archive building,' he said casually. 'Contains a lot of information, does it?'

'Approximately seven quadrillion gigabytes,' the robot responded.

'Hmm. Very impressive. And how many separate doc.u.ments is that? Approximately?'

'Ten billion.'

'Broken down into various categories, I'll be bound?'

'There are fifteen thousand separate categories of doc.u.ment.'

Almost there. Just lead it those last few steps.

'And are there any catalogues that record the t.i.tles of all the doc.u.ments in each category?'

'Each category has a category catalogue that fulfils that function.'

The Doctor's mind was racing: checking each logical step to ensure that it led to one and only one conclusion. A paradoxical one. 'And I presume that 71the category catalogues do not actually contain entries for themselves. That would be stupid, wouldn't it?'

The robot thought for a moment, almost as if it sensed the yawning logical trapdoor. 'No,' it said finally, 'the subject category catalogues do not list themselves as entries.'

The Doctor wiped a bead of sweat from his temple. Time to spring the trap.

'If there were to be a catalogue that listed all of the catalogues that do not list themselves,' he said carefully, 'then which catalogue would list this catalogue?'

The robot stood, and thought. And thought. And thought a bit more.

The Doctor rubbed his hands together with glee. Good old Bertrand Russell.

Time to really get to work.

From orbit, the Earth seemed a lush, verdant world, ripe with promise and bereft of civilization.

Micheal van Looft, s.h.i.+ft supervisor on the Vigilant IX orbital laser satellite, knew it wasn't true. He knew that the green of the continents were just the cultivated tops of floating buildings, and the blue of the seas was a few metres of water protecting vast algae farms, and that thirty billion or so people lived down there, loved down there and died down there.

And he knew that his boyfriend was having an affair down there.

He'd known for months. Nick had simcorded up to the satellite shortly after Micheal's three-month tour commenced and told Micheal about it, laughing as he did so. He'd enjoyed taunting Micheal with stories of how good his lover was in bed. Micheal had felt like a knife had been thrust into his guts.

After three months he thought he'd got used to the idea. Life was quiet on the Vigilant belt. n.o.body really thought that any aliens were going to attack they'd all been pacified during the Wars of Acquisition and if they did, there would be plenty of warning. He read books, watched simcords, and thought.

After three months, he'd persuaded himself that he was better off without Nick. Honestly, he was.

And then he'd woken from a tormented dream in which Nick's face was obliterated by maggots of flame, and he padded naked from his bunk to the laser battery control room, and overrode the failsafes, and turned the satellite around so that the lasers pointed at Earth, not into s.p.a.ce.

And so he sat there, the cross-hairs slaved to track the tower that Nick lived in as the satellite transited the Earth. At that range, the beam would be five or six metres wide at the surface, and hot enough to melt rock. In five minutes the rotation of the Earth and the orbit of the satellite would carry the tower over the horizon. It was long enough. Long enough to remember the humiliation, the aching pain of betrayal, the long, sleepless, tear-stained nights.72.

And even as his finger circled the edge of the b.u.t.ton, feeling its silky smooth texture, running lightly across the incised letters of the word FIRE, something inside him screamed that this was insane.

But he pressed the b.u.t.ton anyway.

'Tisane?' Provost-Major Beltempest said.

'Bless you,' Bernice replied.

He smiled.

'No, you misunderstand. I was asking whether you wanted a tisane. It's an infusion of leaves in hot water.'

'I didn't misunderstand at all,' she sighed. 'I was making a joke. A small joke. And talking of small jokes, where is the Doctor?'

Beltempest eased his elephantine body out of his oversized chair and walked over to a filing cabinet with an impressive security lock. Placing his palm against it, he said, 'Your friend is currently held in a secure cell. I'll deal with him in good time. First, I thought I should have a chat with you.'

'I think I should warn you, I'm not very communicative under stress.'

'You'd be surprised,' he said calmly as the cabinet opened to reveal a kettle, a tea caddy and two cups.

Bernice bit back a sarcastic response and took a moment to study the provost-major as he busied himself pouring water into the cups and adding a sprinkling of dried leaves from the caddy. He made a strange figure amid the walnut panelling and lace curtains of his office. He must have been well over six feet tall, and his stomach bulged so far that it must have been years since he last saw his feet. His skin was the colour of Earth's sky at dawn, his trunk swung back and forth as he moved and he had the sweetest, kindest eyes Bernice had ever seen.

He handed her a cup of tea and settled himself back into his seat. She sniffed the tea cautiously. Spicy, but not unpleasant.

'How did you know who we were?' she said. 'I mean, how did you know that we weren't who we said said we were?' we were?'

He looked away, out of the window. 'Your name appeared on the Arachnae Arachnae's pa.s.senger manifest,' he said. 'When we cross-referenced to Imperial Landsknecht records, which we always do in order to spot potential terrorists, troublemakers and deserters, your names sprang up in glowing red letters underlined in fire. Known troublemakers.'

'You're lying.'

'Would you believe that a little bird told me?'

'No.' Bernice shook her head. 'You were tipped off, weren't you?'

Beltempest's face was the picture of innocence. 'By whom?'

'By the person who stole the TARDIS and tried to kill us.'73.

'That sounds like paranoia to me,' he said, leaning forward in apparent interest. 'What's the TARDIS when it's at home?'

She sighed. 'Look,' she said, 'we're getting on so well, but can I ask what's going to happen to me?'

'You'll be shot,' he said calmly, and sipped at his tisane.

'What!' Bernice exploded. 'But I thought '

Beltempest's stare was implacable, and tinged with disdain. 'The sentence for impersonating a Landsknecht investigator is death,' he said, pressing a b.u.t.ton on his desk. The door opened and a yellow-and red-splotched warbot strode in, weaponry bristling. 'Take her to the prep centre,' he said, and smiled. 'Don't worry, he added, 'your death will be useful to us.'

'What about an appeal?' she yelled.

'If you like,' he said, and raised a hand to his head for a minute as if he was thinking. 'I'm sorry,' he said after a moment, 'your appeal failed.'

The bot took her arm in a surprisingly gentle grip and led her towards the door. She felt her spirits sink.

'Wait,' Beltempest said calmly.

The bot stopped. Bernice turned around as far as she could in the bot's grip.

Beltempest had produced a blaster from his desk drawer and was pointing it, oddly enough, not at her, but at the bot.

'Nice try, Doctor,' he said. 'But you haven't got the walk quite right.'

With a hiss of hydraulics, the top half of the robot swung open to reveal the Doctor's gnomish face.

'It's amazing what you can get in tins these days,' he said.

The flitter was already inches off the raft when Forrester jumped into the pa.s.senger seat.

'Quick, get out of here,' she said, throwing the battered mind probe unit over her shoulder and into the back.

'Already done,' Cwej said calmly. The flitter jumped into the air, pressing Forrester back in her seat.

'Head for the Overcity. Find a s.p.a.ce in a park somewhere. We'll access the info there.'

'Any problems?' His wide toy-bear eyes never left the control panel.

'No.'

One of the simcord screens showed the raft receding into the mist. Within moments Forrester could see the whole lodge laid out beneath them, twenty rafts linked by catwalks and bridges. The Undertown encroached on the edges of the screen as they ascended.

'Sure you got the right one?'

She scowled at him.74.

'Of course you're sure,' he continued. 'Silly of me.'

'It was connected up to the centcomp input,' she said. 'Had to be the right one. They'd downloaded the info, but hadn't got round to flus.h.i.+ng the buffers yet. The underlife's memories are still in there.'

'Good thing for us: it's the only evidence we have. I hope you signed it out properly.'

'Don't be stupid,' she snapped. 'This is no time for paperwork. I sneaked it out.'

The picture began to fade as the flitter entered the greasy, rolling clouds that separated the Undertown from the Overcity. The bottom levels of a block appeared in one corner.

'I feel like a kid,' he said.

'Don't worry,' she said, straight-faced, 'we'll stop and pick one up on the way.'

He laughed. 'You know what I mean. Like we're playing truant or something. Didn't you ever do that?'

'Do what?'

'Sneak out of school and go off somewhere?'

Forrester thought back to her childhood, so long ago that it almost seemed to belong to someone else. Someone innocent. Long hours in front of a simcord screen, alone. Lessons from centcomp. No friends. No fun.

'No,' she said.

Cwej picked up on her tone of voice, and shut up. Forrester closed her eyes and let the acceleration press her back into the seat. She felt sick. She'd disobeyed orders before, but never like this. If Cwej was right and she'd seen the evidence every step of the way then they were really on their own.

There was a cover-up going on, and the Order of Adjudicators was implicated.

She cursed under her breath. Eight hundred years of history lay behind the Adjudicators. They prided themselves on being incorruptible. They depended upon it: Adjudicators were the only means of dispensing unbiased, unarguable justice across the whole of human s.p.a.ce. One whisper of corrup-tion and the whole fragile edifice would come crumbling down. Planets would develop their own laws: what was legal on one would incur a death sentence on another. The economic basis of the Earth Empire would be thrown into chaos. And all because of one frigging underlife murder. It had almost happened during the Lucifer crisis and it had taken the then Adjudication Service hundreds of years, and a metamorphosis into a quasi-religious organization, to put right the damage.

The flitter lunged up from the clouds into the glittering world of the Overcity. As always, Forrester felt a flash of vertigo. The towers seemed to 75loom over her, crowding together at the top, threatening to fall and crush her.

As always, it only lasted an instant.

Cwej skimmed close to the side of one of the towers. Mirrored gla.s.s reflected Forrester's face back at her. She felt her hands clench, and tried to relax. He was only a kid. Let him enjoy himself.

In an attempt to relax, she wondered what might be behind the mirrored surface of the gla.s.s. It could have been anything: a home, a restaurant, a brothel or a bowling alley. No way of telling. Surfaces deceived.

The top of the block was approaching fast. Cwej took them arcing high above the rim and looped over, bringing them down softly on a stretch of gra.s.s. Forrester climbed out while he shut the systems down. The sky was a deep, glorious rose colour, dotted here and there with wisps of pure white.

Sunlight glinted from an alien craft as it came in to land at s.p.a.ceport Five.

Forrester couldn't tell which race it belonged to, but she felt a sliver of hatred penetrate her heart none the less.

She looked around. The park stretched on as far as she could see, broken here and there by the blue, waist-high walls that marked the edges of the towers. A small grove of aspen trees provided some convenient shade nearby.

She started to walk over to them, but felt herself drawn to the nearest rim. The blue walls were merely a convenient marker: the real wall was transparent and twenty feet high. She placed her hands against its cold, slightly springy surface and looked over. The clouds rolled, far below, hiding the Undertown from the eyes of the Overcity.

'You want I should set it up?' Cwej called as he walked over, dangling the mind probe in one hand.

'Know how?' She walked over to the grove of trees, beckoning to Cwej to follow.

'Can't be that difficult,' he replied. Forrester smiled at his brashness.

She watched as he looked around for somewhere to sit. Eventually he removed his robe and laid it on the ground. His body armour was bright and unscratched, complementing rather than contrasting with his golden fur. Forrester removed her robe and threw it down next to him. As she sat, she noticed him staring at her own body armour. Compared to his it was shabby and battered. Compared to anyone's it was shabby and battered.

'Seen some action, huh?' His voice was oddly hesitant.