Doctor Who_ Placebo Effect Part 10

'Delete keyboard.' The keyboard vanished.'Box image from SSS.' The moving pictures of Ritchie interrogating his two mysterious prisoners shrank and shot into the bottom-right corner of the screen. Replacing it was the symbol of the Galactic Federation. 'Access people database - search parameters... oh, two hundred years.

ACCESS ACCEPTED.

The image was replaced by swirling multicoloured patterns.

'Search. Keyword "Doctor", as a designated name. Ignore records of "Doctor" as a trade or description.'

Ms Sox turned her attention back to the tiny image of the interrogation while the computer database was further hacked into. Ritchie, poor man, appeared to be getting nowhere with his prisoners. She wondered what this Doctor had actually done to annoy the SSS Commandant so.

ACCESS - DOCTOR LOCATED.

'Show.'

Over the next seven minutes, Ms Sox read about what appeared to be at least four different people called 'the Doctor', none of whom looked remotely like the one in Ritchie's office. But there were odd coincidences.

The word 'TARDIS' appeared in all the entries, as did a note that he was almost always accompanied by young humanoid females. The most recent record was from 3984, when the Doctor was a guest of no less a personage than the Federation Chair himself.

'Interesting. Seconded to the planet Peladon... links to something called the "Ancient Diadem"... links to Pakhar... links to...' She shook her head. This Doctor certainly got about a bit. She racked her brain. Peladon, well, that was no longer part of the Federation. She'd never heard of the Pakhar Diadem thing. But the fact that he seemed to be a personal friend of the Federation Chair, as did two previous Doctors with different faces... hmm.

Perhaps he was some kind of free agent. A glorified detective and master of disguise. Of course, that didn't alter the fact that one of these Doctors had appeared a number of times, more than fifty years between each appearance - and on three occasions, he'd also been involved with Peladon.

'Doctor whoever you are, you are a mystery. Normally, I like mysteries, but right now you're a pain. Still -' she closed her computer down - 'I'd like you to be my mystery and not that of the s.p.a.ce Security Service. Tomorrow, I think you and I will have a little talk.'

'They're late. d.a.m.n.' It was very dark in this part of Carrington City, especially as one in three halogen street lamps was broken.

'Wait! Here they come,' said someone to the right of the first speaker.

'OK, coming into range...' He had the driver in his sights. But he had to wait for the car to hover lower - they didn't want it to crash, or there'd be alarms going off everywhere. Sure enough, the cab hovered and then landed.

The first shot neatly zapped through the front of the cab and sliced the driver open from the chest to the tip of his head. Before the body had fallen sideways, the second shot hit the other man in the side of his skull, pulverising his brain in less than a third of a second. His body toppled forward and on to the floor of the cab.

Immediately the killer's compatriots scurried forward, checking expertly that no one had seen anything. One jumped into the front of the cab and shoved the driver cleanly aside, operated the hovercar and, with the two fresh corpses still inside, took off. The other scurried back.

'Perfect,' he reported.

The killer nodded.'We'll meet again in two days.We can a.s.sume that Typtpwtyp thankfully did not survive the Twin Suns Lodge's mission and so we can move our plan forward accordingly. Without his information, they can only guess at what they need to know, which suits us far better. Now I'll contact our Lodge and get more orders.'

His fellow Foamasi acknowledged his words and quickly went off in an easterly direction, swallowed up by the darkness, until it looked as if no one had ever been there. The Foamasi a.s.sa.s.sin then produced a small device, and aimed it at the street lights that were off. They came back on. The blocking signal to their generators was now inactive.

Despite the now well-lit street, the Foamasi a.s.sa.s.sin casually slung his weapon over his shoulder and scuttled back to his hotel. If anyone was to see him... well, no one ever wanted to get on the wrong side of a Foamasi with a gun, so they'd stay well away, and very quiet. Now, that was power.

'We're late. Sorry.'

The medics examining the dead Foamasi in the sterile room looked up, surprised. They weren't expecting a relief team tonight anyway. They certainly weren't expecting the relief team to aim blasters and fire at them.

Two of the medics lay spread-eagled on the floor, surprised expressions on their dead faces.

The third medic, the one who had been interested in the Doctor earlier and who wore skin-tight white gloves, crouched down beside them. 'Can you get their bodies out of here easily?'

The three members of the 'relief team' nodded in unison. Two of them crossed the room, effortlessly picking up a body each and taking it outside.

They, too, were wearing skin-tight white gloves.

The remaining one, his hands similarly attired, pointed at the dead Foamasi.'Why is that here?'

The other medic shrugged. 'It was killed and the SSS wanted it examined.

Why weren't you here earlier? I need to get out of here as soon as possible.'

'Do you have the formula?'

The medic laughed at the newcomer. 'Better than that, I have the drugs already prepared. This place spends so much of its time chasing its own shadows, they never notice anything going on under their noses.' He crossed the room and pulled open a drawer in a metal cabinet. He threw a small seven-centimetre disc over to the leader of the 'relief team'."The details are mostly on that. The rest are in here.' He tapped the side of his skull, then dipped his hand back into the drawer and brought out a plastic bag of pill bottles. "This is the first batch. We should try them out on our new friends.'

The other two 'relief team' members returned.

'Time to go,' said the medic.

The four white-gloved men left the sterile room, and the dead Foamasi - proving once again that SSS security was not all it ought to be - vanished without trace. No one had seen them enter. No one saw them leave. And no one realised that the two medics were dead until the scientist they worked for found the partially disembowelled Foamasi on the sterile table the following morning, and a couple of agents located the two bodies, shoved clumsily into a waste-disposal chute.

Chapter 6.

Are You Still Dying, Darling?

The Wirrm had a plan, and so for, it was progressing very satisfactorily.

Whoever was actually responsible for constructing the infrastructure of Micawber's World had done their job very well indeed.

As artificial planetoids go, it was pretty much state-of-the-art. Indeed, even by 3999, no one had bettered the technology used. A couple might have jazzed up the basic design, sorted out a couple of minor counterbalancing errors and no doubt added various pretty shapes and geometric tunnel entrances, but the basic creation of Micawber's World was still impressive.

Originally it had been a tiny lump of useless rock drifting through s.p.a.ce - possibly having drifted away from the asteroid belt. It was seized by one of Carrington Corp's many scavenger s.h.i.+ps and immediately claimed. A quick Claim of Owners.h.i.+p was registered with both the Earth Government and the Galactic Federation, and Chase Carrington had somewhere to achieve his life's ambition.

Creating a Utopia took time. And money. Carrington lacked neither, nor did he find himself short of designers, engineers and architects, all keen to make their mark on history by contributing to his great dream.

And so, thirteen years before, Carrington had formally laid the foundation stone of Micawber's World (Micawber was his mother's maiden name) on the surface of the asteroid. Mind you, the necessity of having to wear a s.p.a.cesuit, and the fact that Carrington's new world was tethered to forty-three geostationary s.p.a.ce shuttles to stop it drifting, didn't exactly ensure that the holovid press call was that well attended. But when his engineers announced their revolutionary new power source, the galaxy took notice.

Cynics awaited the announcement that it had all gone wrong, while supporters held their breath to await the start of construction.

A ma.s.sive metallic skeletal sphere, five thousand kilometres in diameter, was constructed and gradually filled in, working inward like the creation of a Dyson sphere. Fifteen hundred kilometres in, the solid base began to be threaded through with a series of tunnels, with a number of links to the surface. These also provided access to the centre of the planetoid, where several specks of a neutron star were held in a specially positioned magnetic-field generator, supplying the planetoid with artificial gravity.

Surrounding that was the pulsator, duplicating the power of a small sun, using harmless solar radiation to power and heat the surface via a network of microscopic cables threaded back up through the tunnels. The technology used to create these previously theoretical but apparently impracticable devices came from three or four different sources, pooling their resources in Carrington's famous laboratories.

And thus, a few years later, Micawber's World opened its s.p.a.ceport to tourists, who flocked there in their thousands from all over the galaxy.

Carrington had indeed created a leisure paradise and, as if to indicate just how satisfied he was, he moved his entire business empire from Mars to Micawber's World. Both the Galactic Federation and the s.p.a.ce Security Service opened bureaux there as well. As more and more shops, hotels, restaurants and bars bought out franchises and licences, everyone, even the sceptics, had to acknowledge that in just a small s.p.a.ce of time, Carrington Corp had achieved the impossible. Micawber's World was a success. It came as no surprise when Carrington announced his plans to buy up the Grecian Corp and secure the rights to the famous Olympic Games, building a stadium to host them on his new pleasure planet.

And now the planet was gradually filling up with dignitaries, sportsmen, amba.s.sadors, royalty and holovid crews ready to take part in the biggest, brightest and best Olympics ever. Carrington intended that it should be a Games no one would be allowed to forget.

Whether the Wirrrn which had settled on the asteroid hundreds of years previously intended him to be right remained to be seen. After all, the Queen was used to being patient.

And what better breeding stock could they ask for?

SSS Agent Jean-Paul Cartwright was not entirely sure how he came to know all this.

To be honest, there was quite a lot SSS Agent Jean-Paul Cartwright could not explain right now. He understood about Andromeda, about the Great Swarming, about the urge to survive, to spread the Seed and to dominate.

He understood the entire histories of planets he couldn't remember ever hearing of. He understood so many of the secrets of the galaxies, what they were like millions of years ago, how they had evolved, and about some of the astonis.h.i.+ng species that occupied them.

Where did this information come from? He had images of Jill, his sister.

Except that he was an only child.

He was certain that Agent Morris had a sister, though. He seemed to recall his referring to a 'Jill' now and again. So how come he could remember watching her growing up? Could still see images of Acquilian pleasure ponds, holodolls and sc.r.a.ped knees? Come to think of it, he could remember growing up among the smells of spicy kitchens, glorious food and Roman Catholic ma.s.ses. Yet he was sure he grew up in New Lyon, not with a Nouveau Romaine background... So how come the aroma of freshly made wholemeal pasta was so prominent in his mind. Wasn't that Marco Pirroni's life?

Why was he remembering everyone else's experiences, jumbled together, cras.h.i.+ng in and out of fleeting moments, half-seen friends and families just out of reach, just on the edge of his vision? Why did the word 'mother'

conjure up a dumpy brunette as well as a sad-looking, grey-haired woman standing outside a grey stone cottage, dressed in black, s.h.i.+vering in the harsh Irish winds? Irish? He wasn't Iris.h.!.+

Or was he?

And why did the image that dominated his mind coalesce into a ma.s.sive insectoid creature, two bulbous amber eyes, powerful mandibles, a sprouting of antennae, a proboscis and a sectioned body. The same size as he was, but so much more powerful... And that sting on the tail...

Why? What was happening to him?

And where was he?

Jean-Paul Cartwright forced his eyes wide open, panting -almost hyperventilating - in the darkness.

Slowly his eyes grew accustomed. He couldn't move. His arms were pinned to his sides but he was upright - seemingly some way off the ground. A flash of recognition - these were the tunnel walls he and... and... Ed Salt, that was right: he and Ed Salt had been working in.

Something had been there... rearing up, cluttering... insects of some sort...

blocking everything out. He'd been aware that his tracer, connecting him to Pete Clarke's PMD, had suddenly gone dead. The creatures were s.h.i.+elded from it and so were he and Eddie. They had touched him...

There was a pain in his... his side and back. He'd pulled a muscle. There it was again...

Focus on the tunnels. Think, man, think. What had Dallion drilled into them? Think. Observe. Absorb info-infor-Absorb. Yes, he was absorbing information from the others in the troop.

Bailey, McGeoch, McKay... Ed Salt...

They were there, surrounding him. Hanging off the walls around. They were in a circular area, where the tunnels met, a kind of crossroads under Micawber's World. But why were they here? What was supporting them?

'Ed? Marco? John?'

The others were all unconscious, slumped slightly in their...

The pain... it was causing his head to ache... to realty ache...

'I am Jean-Paul Cartwright,' he said, determined to stop whatever was hurting him.'I am... Jean-Paul... I am Edward Salt. And I am Steve Bailey.

And I am Robbie Smith. Yes, we're all here. All together.'

A dull light seem to blur around SSS Agent Cartwright's eyes, giving the room an orange but fractured look. Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred... countless images of the area he was in, all from slightly different angles, burst into his brain, "was.h.i.+ng over him. He could see the others, he could see himself, he could see their friends, families, lovers, his past, their pasts, his home, their homes, he could see different lives, different worlds, different races, he could understand books, plays, songs in a thousand different languages and cultures. He was... he was... something new.

A huge wave of euphoria overtook his mind, erasing everything and nothing simultaneously. It was all still there but now it was compartmentalised, it made sense. It was neatly filed away, like his own original memories.

Stored and stacked, ready to be delved into when necessary. But now he possessed the acc.u.mulated knowledge of thousands upon thousands of individuals. Individuals who were, quite rightly, no longer individual. Of course, the other species had been weak. Ineffectual. But now they were together, they were strong. They were perfect.

They were no longer Jean-Paul Cartwright, or Marco Pirroni, or John McGeoch or G'res'lx orjis Tok Nannarn or... or...

They were Wirrrn, now.

And that was good.

The room was In pitch blackness except the thin beam of very harsh light that surrounded him like a pillar. He could not see how many other people were in the room, but by listening to the breathing he had ascertained there were at least two others as well as Commandant Ritchie.

Neither of them was Sam Jones.

Good.

He took a deep breath. Any second now, Ritchie would restart his pointless questions and he would stand there, answering them truthfully - admittedly most of them were 'I don't know' - and know that Ritchie was getting more uptight. He clearly either did not like conducting interrogations, or else wasn't used to them. After all, Micawber's World was a little out of the way and the Doctor suspected that most SSS prisoners ended up back on Earth, where the interrogators were far better at their jobs.

The Doctor's mind began to wander. He found few things more boring than interrogations. He'd been abused, tortured, had the good-cop/bad-cop routine, and been examined by more mind probes or mind a.n.a.lysis machines than he could remember.

And still he stuck by his best tactic - never stating anything other than the truth. And, as a result, more often than not, the machines or the interrogators - or both - had had nervous breakdowns and given up. Ritchie was no different, except that as he wasn't an expert at this, he wouldn't know when to give up defeated. So the Doctor just smiled unhelpfully in the general direction of Ritchie's last position and hoped this would be over soon.

Truth was, of course, that he had learned far more about the SSS operation here on Micawber's World than they had intended, simply by listening and carefully manipulating the questions Ritchie asked him, ensuring he got more than he gave.

The SSS were here at the request of someone in Carrington Corp to act as security for the Olympiad. This heavily overcrowded building - usually just an administrative outpost -was making tempers fray. On top of that, a troop of agents had vanished while setting up lighting to help the engineers power the Stadium; a rogue Foamasi had been brutally murdered; and an incident had occurred in the lab where he had seen the Foamasi corpse.

To top it all off, he couldn't help but feel that everything was being watched by someone elsewhere - probably the SSS were so paranoid they needed to monitor each other - and he had no idea where Sam was now.

They'd brought her in, spitting fire pretty much as expected.