‘That’s very flattering,’ the Doctor said, ‘but I’m not sure it’s true and anyway I’ve already got a client.’ He looked at Leela, willing her to back him up, but as he had come to expect recently her attention was elsewhere. He turned to look where she was looking.
People had started coming out of the nearby houses and gathering in small groups. Even as he watched the small groups coalesced into larger groups. From neighbouring streets more people came. A crowd was assembling. It struck the Doctor that a growing crowd had something inevitable about it, something not properly free, that as a process it was as mindless as drops of water spreading into a puddle or possibly microbes multiplying under a microscope. ‘Doctor?’
Leela said, interrupting his inappropriate reverie. ‘It is another crowd of people.’
‘So it is,’ the Doctor agreed.
‘No,’ Leela said irritably, ‘I mean what do they want and what am I supposed to do this time? Should I wave at them?’
‘They’re just curious,’ the Doctor said. ‘It seems you’re definitely a celebrity.’
The driver said, ‘I wouldn’t wave at them. People round here are traditional fight fans. They’re not going to like you or what you did.’
As the Doctor could have predicted Leela immediately waved at the crowd. There was a long brooding pause and then one or two waved back, and after another general hesitation more began to wave. Leela waved again, more vigorously this time. A ripple of applause ran through the crowd and then they were all applauding and some were cheering. And then they were all cheering.
The Doctor had to raise his voice to make himself heard.
‘Imagine what would happen if they actually liked you,’ he said. ‘Or if you blew them a kiss. Try blowing them a kiss.’
Leela ignored the suggestion. ‘What happens now?’ she asked.
‘I can’t help thinking,’ the Doctor said, ‘that finding Keefer would be much more straightforward if we put some more of Jerro Fanson’s cunning plan into action.’
Leela looked puzzled. ‘Some more of his plan?’
‘Famous will only get you so far,’ the Doctor said. ‘Rich and famous is much more practical.’ He smiled his startling smile and turned back towards the crowd and waved at them cheerfully. They cheered and clapped. ‘This is rather enjoyable isn’t it? I can see where it might get to be addictive.’
He leaned towards the driver. ‘When’s the next formal duel?
One that everyone will watch and talk about?’
The driver frowned. ‘You don’t know?’
The Doctor pretended not to have heard. ‘What?’
The driver raised his voice. ‘Everyone knows that.’
‘Pretend for the sake of argument,’ the Doctor bellowed in his ear, ‘that I’ve been in the Court of Attack lock-up. You know: the place where they keep you cut off from any outside contact.’
‘Not for that long,’ the driver shouted. ‘It’s still the same as when you went in.’
‘The Maidenly-Baloch match,’ the Doctor suggested, keeping the guesswork out of his tone.
‘Still the biggest thing since spaceplanes,’ the driver agreed.
‘Can we get tickets do you think?’ the Doctor asked loudly, smiling to allow the possibility that he was making an outrageous joke.
The fight was a sell-out.
Maidenly had been ducking a confrontation with Baloch for months, so they said. According to the publicity, Swordmaster Maidenly knew that he was no match for the only other sabre specialist in the Prime Division. Baloch was one of the new breed of fighters. Unorthodox and spectacular, he was a flashy psychopath who took risks to inflict agony and humiliation because that was what he enjoyed. Maidenly on the other hand was old school. He killed for money and for pride. There was nothing else in it for him: no pleasure, no sick kick.
This time the money was reputed to be huge. The purse was the biggest ever fought for, and that took no account of the Guild-negotiated share of the gate. For the remote planet-wide and interplanetary audience there were an unprecedented fifteen levels of viewing: the most expensive covering every available angle and every possible close-up, every bead of sweat and every drop of blood, guaranteeing to miss nothing. More unusually, it was possible for thousands of spectators to be physically present at the fight and invitations for the best seats were changing hands for the sort of sums that only expertly hysterical hype can produce.
Everything was right about this one. The venue was a large and famous arena, perhaps the most famous of all the arenas apart from the first, simple and most sacred one. The publicity claimed that not since the days of the first fights had a duel been more significant and a setting been more noble...
And then on the night, with it all in place and an audience in the hundreds of millions waiting, Maidenly was a no-show.
He simply disappeared. It was assumed that he had lost his nerve and run.
In a desperate attempt to salvage something from the situation the fight was immediately thrown open to spot challenges. Five young men came forward and were dispatched by Baloch in a series of spectacularly vicious kills. In his sixth fight he was decapitated on the first pass by a pale woman with short-cropped red hair. Nobody knew who she was or why, in the confusion that followed the victory, she slipped away without claiming the purse. If it occurred to anyone apart from their agents that two more of the Prime Division’s star performers had been eliminated in bizarre circumstances, there was no real sign of it in the newscasts.
A brief press campaign to find the ‘Killer Queen of the Dreamdrome’ reached a shrill crescendo, produced nothing and lasted only until the next top-item sensation.
The Doctor and Leela had been present in the Dreamdrome, in one of the executive viewing suites, on the night of the Maidenly-Baloch non-match. They had been the last-minute guests of the Hakai Corporation, one of the main sponsors of the duel that never was, and to begin with the Doctor had found the experience quite agreeable. To be fawned upon and to have your every word listened to and given more weight than it probably deserved was not something he was used to, and he found it seductive. In this corporate environment Leela was treated as a star in the making. While she was not regarded with the same respect as the Doctor, the business strategist behind her rise, she was still feted as a Prime Division prospect, a potential object of popular adoration and a source of major earnings. They listened to him, they admired her: the evening was going splendidly and the Doctor had enjoyed it all, right up until the spot challenges began to be fought out. That was when he stopped enjoying himself and when Leela stopped being bored by the whole experience.
A government minister, one of the other corporate guests of the Hakai Corporation, had suggested that Leela should join in the excitement. If she fought the vicious Baloch, he advised, there was: ‘a huge audience just waiting to acclaim you. You would instantly become the most famous duellist on the planet.’
‘I have other plans for her,’ the Doctor said firmly. He had seen that Leela was in danger of being caught up in the moment and he had to intervene quickly before she got swept away by the general mayhem and blood-splattered insanity.
‘This primitive bloodbath is no part of my DDS.’
‘DDS?’ the minister enquired.
‘Duellist development strategy,’ the Doctor said, with what he hoped was the right degree of pompous arrogance needed to make such nonsense believable. ‘I’m taking on a stable of young duellists even as we speak. The intention is that they will complement Leela’s very particular fighting style. I have a unified strategy in the process of development and I am quietly confident of a great personal triumph. Our fighting school will soon be the most famous in the history of the noble contest.’
‘Oh come off it now,’ the minister scoffed. ‘You cannot possibly make such an extravagant claim. The noble contest is greater than any particular fight or any particular school of fighting. And it always will be.’ He held out his empty glass and an attendant filled
it with bright yellow vine-flower wine.
‘This is the second-level yellow?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the attendant murmured.
‘I prefer the golden myself. The aftertaste is subtler,’ the minister said to no one in particular. ‘It’s not bad though.’
The attendant did not make the mistake of agreeing, or disagreeing, or making any sort of comment.
The Doctor looked down into the arena where Baloch had just slashed the hamstrings of his latest challenger and was now in the process of dancing round the crippled youth making delicately agonising cuts with his fast, blood-ribboned sabre. ‘I can see for myself the power of the noble contest,’ he said.
‘Baloch is something of an aberration,’ the minister agreed.
‘An entertainer, though. A crowd-pleaser. You have to admit he’s a crowd-pleaser.’
‘He has skill, Doctor,’ Leela said, watching Baloch intently, both in close-up on the main relay screen and directly down in the harshly lit fighting circle. ‘And he is not afraid.’
‘Does that make him a warrior I wonder?’ the Doctor said.
‘Or simply a psychopath with no imagination.’ But Leela was not to be provoked.
‘It makes him hard to beat,’ the minister opined. ‘Is that why you have other plans for your pretty young fighter?’
The Doctor had observed the way everyone deferred to this man and had surmised that he was probably not someone to be antagonised unnecessarily and so he smiled his most charming smile and said, ‘You have seen through me, minister.’ He lowered his voice confidentially. ‘The truth is I’m not sure she’s ready for the likes of Baloch. And I wouldn’t want...’ His eye was drawn to one of the subsidiary relay screens and he was momentarily distracted by a close-up sequence of the brutal antics going on in the arena.
‘You wouldn’t want to waste an earning asset by cashing it in too early,’ the minister murmured. ‘I quite understand. I would feel exactly the same in your position. We think alike you and I. We have a lot in common. We could be brothers.’
Although he knew it was the drink talking the Doctor was irritated by the man’s thoughtless cruelty and he was sorely tempted to point out that they had nothing whatsoever in common, not even their basic physiology, but he was forestalled by the arrival of a slim, dark-haired young woman.
‘Sita, my dear,’ the minister greeted her warmly. ‘You’re late. You’ve missed a major part of the entertainment.’ He looked past her. ‘Where is your father?’
‘He sends his apologies. He’s unwell. A virus he thinks.’
‘Hung over more like,’ the minister chortled. ‘It was an excellent lunch we had yesterday.’ He glanced towards the Doctor. ‘May I introduce Sita Benovides, the daughter of an old friend.’
The Doctor was still unsure of the protocol of greetings: in this case was he supposed to shake her hand, kiss her on the cheek, or bow perhaps? He decided to take his cue from the minister and make no physical contact with the young woman. He merely doffed his hat and beamed at her. ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Sita Benovides. I’m the Doctor.’
‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘I imagine most people do, don’t they?’
‘Was the case really that high profile?’ the Doctor said. ‘If I’d realised how many people were watching I might have been nervous.’
‘You don’t strike me as the nervous type,’ she said.
‘The Doctor has plans to dominate the noble contest,’ the minister smiled. ‘I admire that sort of ambition in a man. I think he and I are going to be the best of friends.’
‘He is a good friend to have,’ the young woman said to the Doctor, though she was looking directly at the minister. ‘Like his taste in wine, his loyalty can always be relied upon.’
Once again the Doctor was aware of how threatening people seemed to find this man. Even the daughters of old friends were careful in his presence. That’s certainly one definition of a friend; he said.
‘Is there another?’ the minister asked.
‘There are many others,’ the Doctor said. ‘Nothing is absolute. Only nothing is absolute.’
Leela who had been completely absorbed in watching the duels and was paying no attention to the comings and goings in the viewing suite interrupted the conversation abruptly.
‘Look, Doctor,’ she said, ‘the next challenger is a woman.’
In the arena a bloodied bundle of flapping tissue and flopping entrails was removed from the fighting surface and a pale woman with short-cropped red hair stepped forward to face the maniacally gleeful Baloch.
Chapter Nine
Sita set out to find whoever-it-was and she was fairly sure she had found the track and traced them back: from the ersatz battle zone of the ‘Space Main security perimeter, to the burned corpses in the wood, to the downed gun-ship and the general destruction on the motorway. But there the trail stopped.
She had risked her cover to check with sources in the police and in the security services and find out what the story was: only to be told that there was no story. The incidents were just incidents, random and unconnected.
Stuff happens. Look for causes and you’ll go crazy. Look for links and you are crazy. She couldn’t believe that was what they believed, except that they wouldn’t lie to her, not all of them anyway, not all at the same time. Different departments,
different
investigation
teams,
different
computers, same conclusions: file under accidental scuffle-up, and forget it.
Now while Major Sita Benovides was decidedly annoyed by what had happened, and she was given to bearing grudges, still she might have let it end there, left it and got on with her career. But then Lars ‘Driftkiller’ Ronick laughed at her.
No one had ever been sure whether Driftkiller got his nickname because of his sea hunter ancestry or simply because he was a lame-brained throwback with all the subtle wit of an explosive harpoon. ‘Let me explain some things to you, girlie,’ he said. ‘One,’ he held up a chubby finger. ‘Fart at one of those security ‘copters and it’ll go down in flames.
Two,’ a second finger waved at her. ‘Get a half-baked gun club round the old camp fire with enough booze and as much explosive ammo as they can carry, and what you end up with is a fully-baked gun club. And,’ he waggled a short fat-rolled thumb, this time without bothering with the count, ‘as for that bunch at Aerospace Main - one got wiped? Scuff me, I’m amazed they could count well enough to figure that out.
Gods-in-a-runner you officer-class types are a laugh riot.’
And then he shook his head and laughed riotously.
‘Is that three things or four, Driftblubber?’ Sita asked coldly, but it was too late for effective counter-punching. She hated to be laughed at, but what really got to her was that
‘girlie’. It made her angry enough to check everything again, and again, until she finally came up with one interesting anomaly.
She found a booking hostess at Aerospace Main who was sure she recognised the name of one of the dead men from the wood. He was not on the ticket computer of course though this was not altogether surprising Sita thought, because by the time the hostess met him he had already been dead for twenty-three hours. Despite this the girl stuck to her story. She remembered distinctly that Norbert Lung,
the Norbert Lung, had left on a flight to the OTS. She remembered because she had discovered afterwards that there was no the Norbert Lung.
‘He was just an any old Norbert Lung. He wasn’t famous at all, he was a super-rich arse playing games. I tell you, because they’ve got more money than you can shake a stick at, and they buy themselves a top-rate ticket, they think that gives them the right to make a fool of you.’
‘What did his ID say he was?’ Sita asked.
‘Was?’
‘What was his listed occupation?’
The girl looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘But he claimed to be famous,’ Sita per
sisted. ‘A famous what?’
‘I don’t remember, all right? Look have we finished?’ She pushed her cup away and got up from the rest room table.
‘Only I’m due back on shift.’
‘This is just between us you know. It’s not official or anything.’ Sita tried to look hurt and slightly vulnerable. ‘I need to trace this man.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s personal,’ Sita said. ‘The bastard took advantage. He made a fool of me too and I’m not going to let him get away with it.’
The girl sat down again. ‘I never saw his ID,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘I should’ve done. I’m supposed to check everyone but with all this don’t make a fuss ‘cause I’m famous rubbish I was... I don’t know...’ She shrugged.
Sita nodded sympathetically. ‘Don’t feel badly about it. The man’s toxic-drain scum,’ she said, thinking he didn’t want you to see an ID because he didn’t have one or because what he had didn’t fit him. And the dead man had not been super rich, not rich at all. But what was really odd was the total absence of Norbert Lung on any travel records. He wasn’t on any of the computers. That was slightly creepy if you thought about it. Assuming the booking hostess was right and there was no guarantee that she was. There was no evidence to support her...
As the girl left to go back to the projection cubicle that put her real-time image behind a dozen interactive checkins, Sita was beginning to regret asking questions. She had the uncomfortable feeling that she might be better off not knowing what she was finding out.
Leela was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with what the Doctor was doing. He had what he called an ‘office’ now, which as far as she could see was a cluster of rooms with a lot of unnecessary seating and decorations and many elaborate communications devices. He had even had the TARDIS brought to this office. ‘You can get anything done if you know the right people and have enough money to pay them,’ he had told her. She was not sure what money was but it was clearly valuable. But the Doctor had not given money to the right people because he did not have any. This did not matter because he had credit, which was money he promised to give the right people. She could not see how he could do that if he did not have the money already. Where did this strange money come from to begin with? Did just promising to give it to the right people make it appear? And if it was that easy to produce how could it be valuable? It was all very puzzling but there were more important problems to worry about.
Match of the Day Page 12
