Doctor Who_ City At World's End Part 9

His eyes unconsciously lifted to follow the progress of a skycrane as it pa.s.sed close by with another load of rubble in its grab. For a moment he frowned at the corner of an object projecting over the side, then s.n.a.t.c.hed at Curton's arm.

'Don't let them dump that load!'

'"Police public call box",' Curton said, reading the archaic script printed on the door panel with some difficulty. 'What's that meant to mean?'

Ben walked around the box once again. Dust still clung to its ledges, but it seemed intact. Cautiously he tried the door. It rattled slightly but would not open.

'Can you get a laser cutter over here? There's something I want to try.'

'It's a miracle it's survived as it is, and you want to cut holes in it?' Curton said.

'If what I've been told is correct, we won't do any damage.'

Curton shrugged and went over to the main console. A spiderjack ceased dismantling the wall it was clinging to into manageable segments, walked down the sheer side of the tower until it reached the roadway and clumped over to them on its suction-pad feet.

'Cut out a ten centimetre circle around the door lock,'

Curton ordered it, indicating the spot on the box. 'Depth five centimetres, intensity setting three.'

The machine extended its legs and rose until it was positioned exactly before the box. A nozzle extended from under its sensor head and the tip glowed red. Carefully it drew a circle round the lock as it had been instructed. The nozzle withdrew and one of its forward manipulator limbs reached over and tapped the lock. Nothing happened.

'Material is resistant to cutting beam,' the spiderjack said.

'Recommend increasing beam intensity.'

'Increase to strength seven,' Curton ordered. 'Better wear these,' he told Ben, handing him a pair of protective goggles and putting on a set himself.

The laser flared more brilliantly than before as it circled the lock again. But when it faded the lock appeared untouched.

Curton stepped forward and cautiously touched the spot.

'It's not even warm,' he said. 'Some sort of superconducting surface, maybe. It dissipates the heat before it can burn through' He turned to the spiderjack. 'Use saw blade one, same cutting parameters.'

A small circular saw extended on a jointed arm, spinning up until its teeth were a blur.

'This cuts through steel like b.u.t.ter,' Curton told Ben confidently.

The humming blade touched the door beside the lock.

There was a shower of sparks and the box s.h.i.+mmered with a bluish film of light. The men ducked as the blade disintegrated in a flying cloud of shrapnel that ricocheted off the road and the spiderjack's tough sh.e.l.l.

'Cease cutting!' Curton shouted.

The humming motor died away and they cautiously raised their heads. There was not a scratch on the door or lock.

'Reporting serious damage to number one blade,' the spiderjack reported impa.s.sively. 'Replacement required.'

For a moment Ben could only gape at the incongruous blue box in wonder. With a s.h.i.+ver he recovered his composure. 'Just leave it right there,' he told Curton. 'I've got to call the mayor's office.'

Chapter Ten.

The Survivors Barbara awoke to the sound of booming voices. Two men were conversing loudly somewhere close by, but she couldn't immediately make any sense of the words.

She felt curiously detached from her body. There was a chemical taste in her mouth and her lips were dry, but she could not move her tongue to lick them. Memory returned in fragments. The tunnel... the concealed doorway... the figure with the gun. She had been shot with a dart. Evidently it had been drugged. Where was she now? Perhaps it would help if she opened her eyes, she thought muzzily. In her current state that seemed a daunting task. Then the words being spoken became intelligible.

'Please be patient, Prince Keldo. She will be ready shortly.

The effects of the dart must wear off before we begin.' The voice was slightly cracked with age but still strong.

'We must know what she was doing down there, Thorken,' replied the second, younger voice. 'Our egress point was hardly completed when she discovered it. Was this simply ill fortune or will others follow her?'

'If more come we shall not need to risk moving above ground in search of agents, Prince.'

'Perhaps... if she is suitable.'

'Look upon this female's arrival as opportune. She can be our first test subject.'

'You a.s.sured me the process was already perfected, Thorken,' the prince said with a suspicion of anger behind his words.

'It was perfected by the College of Science back in the homeland, Prince. We lack their resources. Of necessity some of my equipment has been improvised. But it will work, I promise.'

'It had better, Thorken. We need agents in the city to be our eyes and ears and more. When the time comes they may mean the difference between triumph and disaster.'

Barbara managed to force her sluggish eyelids open at last and her surroundings came slowly into focus.

She was in a room with smoke-stained metal walls, lit by harsh, white, coiled tubes. Cabinets and shelves held jars containing coloured powders and liquids. On battered tables intricate a.s.semblies of frames and clamps supported laboratory gla.s.sware, together with the festooned cables and angular forms of electrical equipment. She blinked.

Unaccountably it seemed as though all the tables were leaning slightly to the left. Then her sense of balance tried to tell her that the floor, and the rest of the room, was in fact tilted to the right. For a moment she felt sick until she noticed the tables had wedges under their legs to level them.

The two men broke off their conversation as they realised she was awake and strode over to her. Their appearance was so striking that Barbara drew in her breath sharply so that it rasped through her sore throat.

They were both at least seven feet tall and proportionately strongly built, with bronzed skins that seemed to s.h.i.+mmer in the light. The older man's hair was shot through with grey, but the younger one had a mane of golden hair that contrasted startlingly with his dark skin. In both, hawk-like noses dominated angular faces. They wore suits of what seemed to be finely woven metallic mesh. Silver for the older man and scarlet for the younger, who also wore a metallic scarlet band across his forehead.

'She seems to be conscious now,' the younger man said, regarding Barbara with clinical interest. 'Question her first about her presence in the tunnel.'

But Barbara was shaking her head in fear and confusion.

She tried to protest, but all that came from her lips was a dry croak.

'Give her water, Thorken. She must be able to speak.'

The older man filled a plastic beaker and pushed it against Barbara's lips. She drank greedily, feeling the sensation returning to her mouth and throat. Automatically she tried to take the beaker in her own hands, but for some reason she could not lift her arms.

She looked down.

She was sitting in a large metal-framed chair, held in place by straps about her wrists and ankles and across her chest.

Fear dispersed the last lingering traces of the anaesthetic, and she pulled desperately at her bonds.

'What are you doing? Let me go!' she choked out.

The man called Thorken reached out a huge hand, closed it about her cheeks and squeezed, spreading her jaws apart as the flesh was forced between them until she whimpered with pain.

'You will be silent unless spoken to, woman. Then you will answer all questions immediately and fully. Sensors built into the chair will detect any falsehood. If you refuse to answer or attempt to lie you will be punished until you cooperate. Understand?'

The hand was removed but Barbara was so shocked that she could only nod dumbly. There was no doubt in her mind that he meant every word he said, no more, no less. Protesting at her rough treatment was pointless.

Thorken and Keldo stepped over to a small console mounted beside the chair, and the older man threw some switches.

'We begin: what were you doing in the drainage tunnels?'

Barbara gave a stumbling account of her experiences after the meteor strike, which seemed to satisfy the two men. Then Thorken asked: 'What is your function in Arkhaven?'

'Sorry... I don't know what you mean. Is Arkhaven the name of the city?'

Thorken frowned and tapped the panel before him. The prince's face contorted into a scowl of anger that made Barbara s.h.i.+ver with fear.

'She is clearly lying, Thorken!' he boomed. 'Yet your devices do not register the fact. They are faulty.'

'With respect, they are not in error, Prince. But they only detect the physical symptoms of anxiety a.s.sociated with the act of lying. Evidently she does not know what Arkhaven is.'

'Explain yourself, woman!' the prince said, addressing Barbara directly for the first time.

'I... I'm not from this world. We, my friends and I, travel in a machine that moves through s.p.a.ce and time...'

They let her finish, though the scowl on the prince's face grew steadily deeper. Thorken looked up from the console.

'She is relating the truth as she believes it, Prince.'

'But it is madness; the stuff of myths and legends!'

'Quite so, Prince. Her answer is nonsensical, therefore she is evidently deranged. We theorised that many Arkavians might be driven to this state by their confinement in the city and the pressures of war, if you recall.'

The prince's expression cleared slightly.

'Ahh... of course. The lesser races do not have our strength of will, that is known. But can she still serve? Will this interfere with her conditioning?'

Barbara's head jerked up. Conditioning? That was a term used in brainwas.h.i.+ng. 'What are you going to do to me?

Please don't...'

Without looking round Thorken touched a b.u.t.ton on the console. Barbara gasped as an electric shock briefly jolted into her through the frame of the chair. It had been the most casual of warnings. She knew the shock could have been far worse.

Trembling and desperately frightened she clamped her lips shut, not daring to utter another word.

'I see no reason why it should, Prince,' Thorken continued. 'Indeed, any slight behavioural inconsistencies induced by the process might be explained by her mania.'

The prince nodded. 'Then begin the procedure immediately. She must be returned to where we found her as soon as possible. Have you found a suitable item in which to conceal the sender?'

'She was wearing this primitive timepiece. Prince,'

Thorken said. Barbara saw he was holding her watch and realised for the first time that it was missing from her wrist.

'Perhaps it is an antique. The sender can be fitted to it without interfering with its function.'

'Good,' said the prince, examining the watch with interest.

'You are sure she will recall nothing of this meeting?'

'Nothing, Prince. There will be a blank in her mind as though she had slept. Any dislocation of her time sense will be put down to the privations she has suffered in the tunnels.'

Thorken stepped up to Barbara and swung a metal arm out from a stand behind her chair. Mounted on the end was a large many-lensed lamp, rather like a smaller version of those used in operating theatres. This he positioned carefully a couple of feet in front of Barbara's face so that she was staring into the array of lenses. Each lens was tinted a slightly different hue and their surfaces were engraved with intricate patterns of lines arranged in rippling waves and spirals. They seemed to flicker before her eyes, making them water. She had once seen something similar in an exhibition of modern art. There had been something compelling about the images even though they'd given her a headache...

She turned her head aside. This was the brainwas.h.i.+ng device!

But Thorken forced her head straight again, extended clamps from the headrest and secured it in place so that she faced the lenses.

'If you close your eyes there will be more shocks,' he warned her, 'each more intense than the one before.'

He returned to the console and operated the controls.

The lenses began to pulse with soft light. A droning electronic hum, rising and falling in synchrony with the lights, issued from concealed speakers close to her ears.

She had to fight it! Think of something else. She began counting backwards softly to herself.

'A hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six ahh!'

Another jolt of electricity coursed through the chair.

Thorken had guessed what she was doing. She must be silent.

She must count in her mind, she must... What number had she reached? She had to start... to start...

The sound and light seemed to bore into her brain, blotting out every other sensation. The fine patterns on the lenses swirled to fill her mind. She felt herself falling into an infinite void.