Doctor Who_ Trading Futures Part 13

'Show me the safe,' the Doctor ordered the manager.

He was already opening up the door to let them in behind the counter. 'It's on a time lock. There's no way I can open it until the morning, and...'

Malady grabbed his collar. 'We don't want the lecture. Show us the safe.'

He led them to the back wall. The safe was a thick metal door, with no visible handle or place to enter the combination.

'How do you get it open?' Malady demanded.

'Don't worry about that,' the Doctor said, patting her head. The door was already swinging open. In his other hand, the Doctor had something that looked for all the world like an electric toothbrush.

The safe was quite a size, lined with brushed steel safe boxes.

'In!' the Doctor ordered the manager. 'Everyone. Come on.'

'In?' the manager asked, not quite sure he'd heard right.

'In!'

There were only two human staff, the manager included, everything else was done by autosecs. There were eight customers. The safe held the twelve of them, just. Malady had to help the old couple in.

The Doctor was pulling the door closed. Malady took a last look through the doorway and saw a wall of water surging into the square, towards the bank. The pressure had changed, there was a high wind blowing.

Outside the bells of the church of St Nicholas were starting to chime midday. As the Doctor hauled the door shut, and the bolts engaged, the sound was cut off, and the only thing they could hear was the sound of their breathing.

'We'll be trapped,' the manager shouted.

'We'll be saved,' Malady told him. 'Now, quiet, we'll need to preserve oxygen.'

And outside, the bank collapsed as the tidal wave hit.

The pain inducer was rubbish.

Fitz didn't mind that one bit, of course. The Onihrs had spent several minutes gloating about their pain inducer before wheeling it out. It was a box about the size of a television, which sat on a trolley. There was one coiled lead snaking out from it, which ended with a suction pad, which they'd stuck to his forehead.

Then they'd turned it on, and it didn't hurt at all. They seemed to think it would, so Fitz had played along he wasn't stupid. If he pretended it was agony, they'd keep it at that setting, they wouldn't start going on about how it had ten levels, and this was just level one.

It stimulated the pain centres of his brain. But as such, it was just an intellectual exercise it was like remembering remembering being in pain, or imagining what it would be like if he was. But the weird thing was it also damped down the pain he was feeling from being strung up. So the net effect was that he was better off. being in pain, or imagining what it would be like if he was. But the weird thing was it also damped down the pain he was feeling from being strung up. So the net effect was that he was better off.

'You are weakening, Doctor,' the nearest Onihr told him. This was the leader, as far as Fitz could make out. He had a spikier horn on his nose, and was slightly shorter than the other one. 'You will help us.'

'What do you know so far?' Fitz asked.

The other one edged forwards. 'We know we need a dematerialisation code. Many of the fragments speak of it.'

'Right. And what are you doing for a power source?'

'We have harnessed mini black holes.'

Fitz nodded. 'And what do you know about... the Vortex?'

The two of them looked at each other, gleams in their eyes. 'We have heard the name.'

Fitz rolled his eyes. 'You'll need to do better than that.'

'You will tell us!' The lead Onihr twisted a dial on the pain inducer, and Fitz's eyes watered as he remembered the time he'd jumped a bit too hard on to the saddle of a scooter.

'Let me down, and I'll tell you everything I know about the Vortex,' Fitz promised.

'Everything?'

Fitz smirked. 'Absolutely every single thing I know. Scout's honour.'

Baskerville had been standing, hands on the railings, staring out to sea, for a while now.

Anji and Dee had been watching the news coverage, trying to take it all in. Knowing it would happen just wasn't the same as seeing it. Dee seemed affected by it, but she'd fobbed off questions about how long she'd stayed in Athens or if she'd known anyone there.

Anji didn't know what to make of Dee. She wasn't quite sure why Baskerville had picked her as a confidante, or quite what she did for a living. She wasn't in much of a position to pry, though after all, Anji was meant to be a CIA agent posing as a British scientist. She'd be vulnerable if awkward questions were being bandied around.

The television pictures were horrifying. A British rescue team was, by chance, right on the scene. They'd even diverted the royal airliner to just outside Athens to use as a mobile command post. British helicopters were sweeping the area. The pictures concentrated on the airlifts to safety, tried so hard not to focus on the bodies and animal carca.s.ses they could see drifting along in the water.

Baskerville had watched the pictures only once, when the news channel had shown robots picking their way through the ruins. 'RealWar Teletroops,' he'd explained. Not true robots, but remote*controlled machines, operated by soldiers. Cutting edge stuff, but he expressed surprise that 'Malady' hadn't heard of them the US army was deploying robot legions in North Africa. Anji had changed the subject, and Baskerville had gone back to his contemplation.

Seismologists, oceanographers and just about anyone else a newscaster could loosely describe as 'a scientist' were being pulled into TV studios to be asked why they didn't see it coming. An odd thing that the TV always talked about 'scientists', lumping them all in together. When they were talking about some financial story, they'd distinguish between merchant bankers, investment bankers, fund managers, futures traders, stockbrokers... they didn't just lump everyone in as 'financiers'. It was a bit like the Eskimos having five hundred words for snow, she supposed, a reflection of the priorities of a civilisation. Although the Doctor had once told her that even someone with only rudimentary knowledge of the Inuit*Inupiaq polysynthetic language groups would know that there were only two words for snow in anything like common use among Eskimo tribes.

Still, there were five hundred English words for people who worked in banks, or who otherwise had a job pus.h.i.+ng money around. Most of them repeatable in polite company.

Anji was distracted by an elderly astrologer on television claiming he'd predicted this very disaster on his website this morning. He cited the URL, and a screengrab came up from it, and this was treated by the newsreader as definitive proof he was dealing with a genius.

If there were psychics, they'd do far better playing the markets than writing columns for online magazines. And why dress so ridiculously and act like such berks? If they dressed normally, Anji would at least be able to take them seriously.

She smiled as she reached a new understanding of the way the world worked. Of course they talked and dressed funny. It was the first principle of stage magic distraction. If you spent your time concentrating on the colourful jumper, you wouldn't be concentrating on challenging the big questions about what they did. More than that, it meant that, at some unconscious level, you started picturing the astrologers in suits, the ones who were were making a fortune selling stocks and shares. The making a fortune selling stocks and shares. The real real astrologers. You started thinking that the whole astrology thing really could be plausible. astrologers. You started thinking that the whole astrology thing really could be plausible.

But what did Anji know? She flew around time and s.p.a.ce in a police box, and was currently the guest of a man from the future.

She went over to Baskerville.

'Are you OK?' she asked.

'A little sad,' he admitted. 'I know it had to happen, but even so...'

'If it's any consolation, the disaster served its purpose. You clearly have knowledge of the future. Now, there's no way we can check your story, but you've acted in good faith, you've demonstrated you have a time machine.'

Baskerville nodded. 'I just want to get home,' he said sadly.

'Tell me about it,' said Anji, with feeling.

'I will if you want. It's a time of great scientific advance. There's no disease, no poverty.'

'An end to war.'

'There are wars. There are always wars. Death and taxes aren't inevitable. Wars are.' He almost seemed happy at the thought. 'It's time you made a call, don't you think?'

'A call?' Anji asked.

Baskerville gave a puzzled chuckle. 'Don't you think? It's time for you to call the President and move this to the next stage. You have a phone.'

'In my cabin.'

'Then make the call.'

Chapter Nine.

After the Deluge The air in the vault was starting to get stale, but the Doctor had insisted that they stay put for exactly an hour.

The old couple were worried about their son and his wife they would have been at work. The Doctor couldn't offer them any words of comfort. The old couple tried to remember if anything like this had ever happened before. They couldn't think that it had.

It hadn't dawned on anyone else that the Doctor and Malady seemed to have foreknowledge of the tidal wave.

All the time, Malady stood, silently, wis.h.i.+ng that people wouldn't waste oxygen chatting.

In time, the manager's watch beeped that it was one o'clock. The Doctor opened the safe, using the same tool that he'd used to get them in. Some sort of remote control, Malady a.s.sumed. It put her own lockpick to shame. Whoever the Doctor was working for had some nice gadgets.

The water was about an inch deep, and surprisingly dirty. There was already a strong musty smell, the damage was comprehensive broken windows, mud everywhere, all the leaflets and wallpaper sodden wet.

The old couple were crying, imaging their home like this.

'Come on,' the Doctor said.

'Where?' Malady asked. She was numb even having seen the tidal wave bearing down, she'd held the faint hope it wasn't real. The safe had been soundproof for an hour, everything had been so quiet. Outside, all the time, a city had been dying.

'Baskerville's office block. We need to find that time machine.'

'He knew about the tidal wave he wouldn't have left it behind.'

'It looked like it was part of the fabric of the building I saw huge power cables. Even if we just find out the power source, it could be important.'

They were outside now, in the Square. The water was deeper, here. It lapped over their ankles. There was near*silence no traffic noise, no people in the streets, not even birdsong. In the distance, Malady could hear helicopters. There was also a sound like a tarpaulin flapping the water, she realised.

'Baskerville's building is on the other side of the city,' Malady told the Doctor.

'How did you get me from there to the safehouse?'

'A car. I left it in the underground garage at the safehouse.'

'Every bas.e.m.e.nt and cellar in the city will be full of water,' the Doctor told her.

'The Plaka is mostly pedestrianised, but there's a car park a few streets away. We should be able to find a four by four, or some other car that can use these roads.'

The Doctor nodded. He looked around. 'I could have prevented this,' he told her. 'If you'd believed me, if you hadn't knocked me out.' He hesitated for a moment, clearly sensing what she was thinking. 'I'm sorry I didn't mean to make you feel guilty. I... this wasn't your fault.'

'It wasn't yours, either.'

The Doctor sighed. 'Perhaps not. Perhaps this was no one's fault.'

Cosgrove pa.s.sed around the identipics.

He'd warned them about the probable involvement of the CIA, now he was briefing them on the third party.

'There are at least two of them,' he told them. 'This one is a little older, and he seems to be the leader. He neutralised two Service men, immobilised me, stole my property and blew up a Manta. And he did it with a rubber ball. This one he's some sort of operative, working for the other one. He managed to escape me in California.' He looked up. 'Now, I know what you're sn.i.g.g.e.ring at. You think I'm old. Past it. That they outfoxed an old fool who's spent too long behind a desk. I've been in the Service over sixty years. Think about that. You think I did that by getting soft? If you think that, you just start running, and see if you you can get away from me.' can get away from me.'

He let that thought sink in. 'But this man did get away. Now I want these people found.'

'If they were in the city when the tidal wave hit...'

'...then they're dead, and I want to see their corpses. Now, I don't think this one's had time to get back from California. I've only just arrived, and I was travelling about as fast as it's possible to travel. This This one, on the other hand, the leader, he's here. He's here and I want him stopped.' one, on the other hand, the leader, he's here. He's here and I want him stopped.'

'Killed, sir?'

'I want to do it. But I want you to beat me to it, if you possibly can. Dismissed.'

The Doctor had insisted on driving.

The Landrover Espial had started first time. The prometheus wasn't working, though the city traffic computers must be down. The Doctor didn't seem to need it anyway.

The roads were pa.s.sable, some were even beginning to dry out in the afternoon sun. Some telegraph and power lines were down, some walls and facades of buildings had collapsed. The surface was uneven. Debris. Not bodies. It was macabre, but Malady had thought they were driving over bodies at first. Until she turned a corner, and she'd seen very visible proof that bodies float.

This was horrible.

There were helicopters in the air a lot of them. A couple were small newscopters, but the others oddly seemed to be RAF. Since they'd sorted out Cyprus, there hadn't been much of a British presence in the area. But now there always seemed to be one visible, whichever way she looked.

There might have been a carrier nearby in the Med, out on exercises. But she thought she was au fait with EZ deployments in the whole area. Monitoring them had been her original a.s.signment here, after all. They couldn't have sneaked a carrier, even a submarine one, past her, and the nearest was the Mandelson Mandelson, in the Gulf.

The Doctor seemed preoccupied with something. The fate of the Asian girl she'd seen him with at the airport and getting out the car at Baskerville's office block?