by Doctor Who
’
‘Past light speed of course,’ said the Doctor.
‘ Past light speed?’ Flowers stared at him. ‘That can’t be done.’
‘What happened to the “C” in SCAT, Flowers? Where’s your creativity?’
‘Doctor, I really think –’
‘What does gravity do? Makes you heavy, right? So to counter heavy, you need light.’ He grinned, leaned back in his chair. ‘ Faster than light. . . ’
Nesshalop’s eyes were bulging on her pale pink stalks. With a high-pitched chittering, she expounded a theory that lit up the screen in icing-pink scribbles. The console in the middle of the oval table glowed a misty gold and began to tremble and hiss.
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‘Yes, Nesshalop!’ grinned the Doctor. ‘Just the kind of thinking that’s needed!’
‘The translation circuits can’t handle the equations,’ Flowers warned.
‘It’s all right, I know what she’s getting at,’ said the Doctor, looking into Nesshalop’s brilliant blue eyes. ‘But let’s add to the algebra –cross the Ts, make the Is dotty, draw a little love heart round the X. . . ’
Flowers stared. She didn’t understand everything she was seeing but it was obvious there was some real premise grounding the equations, a proof like nothing she had ever seen before.
The console started to steam. ‘Doctor, Nesshalop, stop,’ snapped Flowers. ‘Take off your mindmitters.’
Globs floated gingerly down from the ceiling, sensing something was wrong. But the truth was, a part of Flowers was willing the two aliens to keep going. They were conjuring some strange mathematical truth into existence. The hairs on Flowers’s neck were on end.
The Doctor stood up, knocking his chair flying, and Nesshalop reared up from the ground. The two of them seemed lost in each other’s eyes, not blinking, not looking away, while the equations solved themselves and split away. Flowers couldn’t keep up or keep track any longer. The console was rattling as if something big was caught inside it, glowing so fiercely that Yahoomer trumpeted with all four trunks and backed away. Blista shrieked, clasped his webbed hands to his head.
Flowers was about to bring down the globs on the Doctor and Nesshalop when a curious thing appeared on the screen.
It was a schematic, showing the orbits of the planets in the Justicia system.
Nesshalop nodded, her eyestalks intertwining, as the diagram burst from the screen into three-dimensional life over the meeting table.
And the fiery console was burning a blinding white, gold and yellow, forming surrogate suns for the planets to circle.
Then the console exploded in a spectacular burst of sparks. Flowers threw herself to the floor, landing in an undignified heap.
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The globs descended on the Doctor and Nesshalop, but neither seemed to notice for several seconds, eyes only for each other.
Flowers clambered up, choking on smoke. ‘What have you done, the pair of you?’ Through her smeared specs she saw the console was clearly ruined, and the rock wall where the screen had been was charred and blank.
‘Sorry about that, got a bit carried –’ The Doctor broke off and gasped. His face contorted with pain, and Nesshalop emitted a pitiful shriek as the same thing happened to her.
The globs had started throbbing with ashen light. In certain cases the bio-organisms were permitted to ‘caution’ an offender. This apparent vandalism clearly counted.
‘Don’t hurt Nesshalop!’ the Doctor shouted, eyes wide, teeth gritted. ‘It wasn’t her fault, it was mine. . . I didn’t realise the console’s limitations. . . ’ He sank to his knees, and stared beseechingly at Flowers.
‘Get off them,’ Flowers snapped. But the globs persisted, glowing more darkly now, getting sticky and wet like leeches. ‘I said get off them! Priority command, voiceprint Lazlee Flowers – release them!’
Grudgingly the globs let go at last and spiralled back up to their space in the shadowy hollows high above.
The Doctor made his way over to where Nesshalop sat sobbing in her quivering puddle of nutrients and breathed gently on her glistening skin: the ritual of expressing regret among Nesshalop’s people.
Flowers wanted to join him, but it was taboo. The gesture was socially acceptable only between two equals – and Flowers was not Nesshalop’s equal. She was one of her jailers. No matter what she tried to tell herself, these people weren’t her friends and colleagues.
Their lifestyles and customs were not hers. They were her subjects.
She held back, feeling dumb and useless, as they shared their distress with one other.
The Doctor looked up from Nesshalop and gave Flowers an angry look. ‘Not sadists or savages, you said.’
‘That was out of my hands,’ she protested. ‘You damaged the infras-tructure, the globs are a part of that.’
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‘Those things wanted to cripple me!’
‘I assure you, they’re not programmed to be –’ She was shouted down by Yahoomer complaining in his vocal alien tongue. Blista too had started hopping crossly on the spot. ‘I can’t understand them,’
said Flowers with a sinking feeling. ‘And they can’t understand me –the translator’s ruined!’
‘Never mind.’
The Doctor stepped away from Nesshalop, who
seemed calmer now. ‘You can thank us in any language you like. We’ve just sorted your gravity problems, after all.’
‘What?’ Flowers stared at him, not sure if he was teasing her or getting her hopes up to get back at her somehow. ‘I – I understood some of what I saw, but. . . Doctor, do you mean to say that within ten minutes of your joining this group, you’ve solved the problems I’ve been exploring for over five years?’
‘Nothing wrong with taking the scenic route,’ the Doctor told her,
‘lots of pretty views along the way. But I wanted to go straight to the summit, and Nesshalop helped push me along.’ He smiled. ‘So d’you want to know what we think?’
‘Do I want to know?’ She stared at him, choked off a slightly hys-terical laugh. ‘Doctor, tell me. Tell me. Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me –’
‘I dunno.’ The Doctor seemed to consider. ‘Maybe Nesshalop should tell you.’
‘How! The console’s ruined, the translator circuits are burnt out.’
‘Oh, of course!’ He slapped his hand against his forehead as if this hadn’t occurred to him, then stared at her in shock. ‘Don’t you carry spares?’
‘Nesshalop is the only Sucrosian here, Doctor.’ Flowers pushed her glasses securely back on to her nose and pursed her lips. ‘It will take days to transfer her implant’s thought codes into a new translator.’
‘Days, eh?’ He looked flummoxed by the news. ‘So really you can only get this information you’re dying to hear from me. . . ’
‘As well you know,’ she said sourly.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows suggestively. ‘Rose is in a borstal, you say? Let’s deal.’
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Rose’s second morning in the kitchens was almost as grisly as the first. Still hot and hellish, shouts and smoke and nerves. Hands raw and cut and stinging. Warily checking about her, making sure no one was too close, no one was planning to stitch her up again.
The thin girl who’d started everything yesterday was keeping her distance now. Rose wasn’t knocking it – she had enough enemies here already – but she idly wondered why.
‘You don’t want to worry about Nix,’ said big Maggi, sidling up to her with a little smile on her gormless face. ‘Kazta warned her off.’
‘She did?’
‘She wants to get you herself, see.’
Rose frowned. ‘Oh.’
‘Don’t go nowhere by yourself. But don’t let on I told you.’ Maggi looked sad. ‘When we give you a thumping, I’ll try not to hurt you too bad. ‘Kay?’
‘Sweet. I’m touched,’ said Rose. Maggi smiled again, so the sarcasm was obviously lost on her. ‘For God’s sake, this
is playground stuff. If Kazta wants to play the queen bee round here, that’s fine by me so long as she stays out of my way.’
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‘Sorry, Rose. She has to teach anyone new who’s boss. If she doesn’t, someone else will.’
‘Why are you warning me, anyway?’
‘I don’t want to hurt you. You’ve got nice hair.’ She smiled shyly.
‘It’s lovely.’
‘Well, when Kazta scalps me, maybe she’ll let you have some.’ Rose glowered at her. ‘Look, you could stand up to her, couldn’t you? Together we might be able to. . . ’
But Maggi shook her head and lumbered back to her steaming sink full of dishes.
Rose felt the familiar nervous griping in her stomach.
But maybe there was a way to turn Kazta’s spite to her advantage.
At lunchtime, a weary Rose met up with Riz at the canteen. She spied the Governor, sitting at the top table with a handful of warders, Blanc and Norris among them. That was good.
‘You sure you don’t mind me eating with you?’ Rose asked Riz, once they’d queued for their food and she was leading the search for a free table. ‘I mean, if I’m a target. . . ’
‘’S all right,’ said Riz, staring distractedly at a group of boys with their backs to her. ‘But if Kazta’s mob give you a kicking, try not to bleed in my chips, ‘kay?’ She gave that weirdo laugh of hers.
Rose took Riz towards the top table at the back of the canteen.
Either people were understandably shy of sitting too near to the top brass, or the Governor’s flatulence was keeping them away in droves.
Rose chose a table three down from the Governor and his entourage, and three up from where Kazta sat with her cronies, Maggi included.
Rose gave Kazta a big smile and a cheeky wave. Kazta’s face didn’t crack. She was seriously checking Rose out. The long intense stare was presumably meant to look intimidating.
‘I’m not putting up with this,’ Rose said. ‘Riz, I could use your help.’
‘I ain’t fighting.’
‘I’m not asking you to.’ She grinned. ‘Not with your fists, anyway.’
She checked on the Governor. He seemed oblivious to her presence at first, sitting in silence with his plate of slop. Then he looked up, 58
straight at her, like some little Rose-sensor had kicked in.
Slitheen are big on hunting, she remembered.
Rose looked over at Kazta. The look. The smile. The hair, gelled into spikes hard enough to gore you.
She dug her spoon into some lumpy, watery mashed potatoes.
When she was thirteen, she’d had a boyfriend in the year above. He was a genius at food fights, the scourge of dinner ladies everywhere.
Deadly accurate, he could set whole canteens into chaos with a well-loaded fork and a few subtle flicks of the wrist.
He was a rubbish kisser, but in other arts he had trained her well.
Timing was everything. She waited until the Governor shifted his weight on to one buttock, a small smile suggesting he was discreetly letting one go.
And while he was distracted, Rose took brief but careful aim and flicked her mashed spud in Kazta’s direction.
The watery blob of white slime flew through the air over one, two, three tables until it splashed on the shoulder of the girl beside Kazta and sent bits flying everywhere. There was laughter and rebukes and accusations, but all subdued; people were too wary of the Governor and his warders.
Rose knew she had to overcome that.
Kazta’s face reddened with fury. Rose blew her a little kiss, hoping to provoke her, but Kazta’s mean little eyes kept flicking over to where the big man sat.
So Rose heaped another sludgy mound on to her spoon – not just mash but a few bullet-like baked beans too – and fired again.
This time the missile struck Kazta right in the chest. Rose relished the fury in those piggy eyes, saw the spark start to ignite.
‘Food fight?’ hissed Riz with an Are you mad? look in the direction of the Governor. Then she grinned. ‘Guess it beats eating the stuff!’
Riz scooped a huge dollop of potato gloop and flung it over her shoulder at random. It smacked into someone’s head with a wet explosion, the soggy fragments snagging in the dreadlocks of a bloke close by, who groaned in revulsion. His table-mates laughed, so he splattered a spoonful in their direction. And at the same time, Kazta 59
– not about to let her victim get away with this, and stuff the Governor – loaded her own spoon and hurled a mess of beans and mash in Rose’s direction, Maggi and her other minders quickly following suit.
But Rose ducked; the mess splattered over the girls on the table behind her. They retaliated by chucking handfuls of their lunch wildly back over their shoulders, hitting others, who yelped and laughed and scooped up missiles of their own. . .
Within seconds, pandemonium had erupted as a full-scale food fight got under way. Kazta found herself a key target for several splats, as dozens of long-persecuted victims turned on their tormentor – with potato in her eyes, she couldn’t see who was attacking, nor where the next assault was coming from.
And just as Rose hoped, the warders leaped up from their seats automatically, yanked their truncheons from their belts and started scattering, bellowing for order. The Governor, red-faced and scan-dalised, was left alone and unguarded. Rose ducked down under her table and crawled swiftly through a forest of chair legs and stamping size sevens to get to him, heart in her mouth, mashed potato in her hair, yells and shouts and clattering in her ears.
She saw him from under the table, getting up and hurrying for the exit. He would pass by quite close – she couldn’t miss this chance.
Wriggling frantically from out of her hiding place she grabbed hold of the Governor’s leg, pulled on it hard and twisted. He yelled and fell over, smashing into another table, tumbling on to his back. Rose had straddled his chest in seconds, her knees pinning down his arms. She yanked up his thick grey fringe, ready to grab the zip, ready to expose him. . .
But there was nothing there but his wrinkled forehead.
Rose started going through the hair at his temples like a gorilla picking fleas from its mate, a panicking feeling rising up inside her.
She was wrong. No, she couldn’t be wrong – the blue light, the smell, the flatulence. . . But there was no zip and so no proof, nothing she could
Suddenly she was being hauled off him. She caught a glimpse of grey uniform, heard angry voices, her own panicked shouts of ‘ He’s an 60
alien, he’s an alien!’ over and over until the truncheon cracked down and the world went silent and black.
With his first day’s work over unexpectedly quickly, the Doctor had been sent by Flowers on a proper tour of the SCAT-house – while she went to see Consul Issabel to outline the Doctor’s terms. He’d put a gravitational cat among the pigeons. Now all he could do was sit back and hope it would drag in Flowers and her boss by its force of attraction.
The globs bustled him through a succession of magnificent laboratories and testing areas. In one, he saw the Slitheen bossing around various creatures, doing all the languages and accents as if they were locals. This must be the solar workshop.
‘What are you up to?’ he called over.
‘Big flare’s about to rip out from the largest sun,’ Ecktosca Fel Fotch replied, sparing him only the briefest of glances. ‘We’re going for full-on containment.’
‘What you using?’ Neither he nor Dram, or any of the workers for that matter, bothered to answer, intent on their instruments. ‘No, hang on, I’ll guess – the mother of all compression fields! Big enough to squeeze a star!’
The Doctor could see a child’s excitement shining from the Slitheen’s big black eyes. Clearly they were on to something. . .
Or up to something.
‘See you later, boys,’ called the Doctor, as the globs shepherded him on to the next scheduled stop.
Flowers sat in a hard seat outside Consul Issab
el’s office, waiting to be seen. But while her backside had gone to sleep, her head was a whirl with the events of the morning, with the snatches of equation she’d seen on the screen and the elusive proof behind them. The idea of generating extreme gravitational waves opened so many new possibilities. It seemed it wasn’t so much a question of acceleration as of volume. . . and the Doctor had ideas on how to answer those questions.
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Finally, the door to Issabel’s office buzzed open. Flowers fair near shot inside and gabbled out her story.
Consul Issabel was a hunched and spindly person in her fifties. Her head looked too big for her sloped shoulders, the pale skin lined and tight over her high cheekbones. And while her eyes burned with a fierce intelligence, she seemed unwilling to look directly at you, staring instead at a shoulder or chest.
‘The mindmitter console destroyed, you say?’ was her first, rather lukewarm reaction.
‘Oh, I expect we can recover the information in the datacore, but until new translation software can be acquired –’
‘Breakages must be paid for, Flowers, and a replacement console will not come cheaply.’ She half smiled. ‘I trust the globs exacted some small retribution?’
‘They did,’ said Flowers, stony-faced. ‘But it hardly seems fair – the Doctor and Nesshalop have broken through the impasse that’s been blocking this project for years, in a matter of minutes! We have a way forward now, and I’m convinced it’s one that will bring us results.’
Issabel seemed dubious. ‘Gravitational waves amplified to break the light barrier?’
‘And if we could build spaceships capable of riding those waves. . . ’
Flowers felt a flutter in her tummy. ‘I remember you mooted a similar theory yourself when we first conceived the project. Imagine being able to propel spacecraft millions of light years in a matter of weeks! Days even! True intergalactic travel, and the patents in Justicia’s name! And it’s perfect timing, too, with the meeting of the Senate tomorrow!’ Delegates from all the Justice worlds were coming for the bimonthly presentation from Issabel on the SCAT-house’s latest findings. The last two had been cancelled, and it rankled with Flowers that all this year they’d had so little to report. But now. . .
