Match of the Day

by Chris Boucher

  ‘Whatever it was you came here looking for,’ the Doctor said, ‘I’ll do my best to provide it.’

  ‘What do you think that is?’

  ‘I think you came here looking for the help of a senior agent in state security,’ the Doctor said. ‘But you’ll have to make do with me. Do we have an agreement?’

  Ronick said, ‘Why not?’ And as he took the Doctor’s hand his eyes were hidden behind his smile.

  Finbar had estimated that it would take about eighty hours for the old freighter to rendezvous with the Lady Hakai’s space-yacht, the Ultraviolet Explorer. He had stashed enough food concentrates and water in the medical supply locker to sustain Keefer during the time, but he could not provide much in the way of waste elimination facilities. In fact he could not provide anything except the rather unsanitary advice of the seasoned space-hand. He had suggested using any or all of the bulk cargo silos. ‘But don’t use the same one for liquids and solids,’ he had said. ‘That way lies squelching and discomfiting stinkiness.’ Keefer considered it briefly and chose instead to limit himself to the minimum inputs required to keep his body in some sort of balance.

  He had relaxed completely, lowering his metabolic rate so that he was on the edge of sleep, drifting in and out of a semi-dream state, unconscious of the passage of time but continuously aware of the sounds and smells around him.

  During the journey nobody had come to where he drifted and it was only when the freighter’s directional thrusters cut in, sending soft murmuring vibrations through the air of the deck space, that he had finally woken.

  He found he was unexpectedly hungry, and a lot thirstier than he should have been. He checked the time elapsed. For whatever reason it had taken a hundred and thirty-six hours to find the huge space-yacht and begin the approach and docking manoeuvres. Even allowing for the full error margin, a flight overrun of fifty-six hours was unlikely. Either Finbar had got it wrong or the Ultraviolet Explorer had changed its routine.

  While he listened to the delicate bursts of power, Keefer slaked his thirst slowly and ate some of the concentrates. He had to bring himself back to full function very carefully, he could not afford any physical imbalances. He needed to be sharp if he was going to get to and confront the Lady Hakai.

  If she was the one, the unexplained enemy who had sent the android against him, then he needed to be machine sharp.

  As he ate and drank he considered the possibilities for boarding the Ultraviolet Explorer. They seemed to be limited to two: he could identify himself, throw down a challenge and fight his way on; or he could get himself off-loaded with the cargo. A frontal attack meant he didn’t get a look at the Fat Boys before he took them on, which would be a mistake. An avoidable mistake if he went the cargo route. But if the breather ran out, or if the silo pressure tubes had purification filters, even basic crud screens, riding with the bulk lecea as it was sucked through into the space-yacht’s storage would be a worse mistake. That would be a final mistake from which you learned nothing except that you’d made a mistake and it was final.

  He waited for the food and water to take their full effect so that his mind was as clear as possible, before he finally decided to risk the lecea.

  It was not until she woke up that Leela realised she had been asleep. The last thing she remembered was being carried between two men who had been talking about what they would do with her if their plans went wrong. She remembered concentrating on listening for information. She remembered concentrating. Then there was nothing. She did not remember concentrating on nothing. She did not remember falling into the darkness.

  Now here she was, still in the darkness but she was awake.

  She knew she was awake because... she knew she was awake. She knew she was no longer asleep. She could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing and yet she knew she was not dreaming. She knew she could see nothing, hear nothing and feel nothing and she knew that must mean that she was awake.

  She reached out into the darkness. Her hand brushed against something soft and she grabbed for it but it evaded her grasp and was gone. She felt giddy for a moment and was almost sick. What was the creature she had just touched?

  Was it something so poisonous that touching its skin could make her ill? She felt giddy and sick again, and she put a hand to her face and wiped away the slick film of sweat that had broken out on her forehead. That was when she realised the mask and breathing filters had gone. Exploring further she found that the coverall had been removed. Something touched her shoulder. Instinctively she felt for her knife. It was not there. Her combat pouch was missing too.

  Something touched the top of her head and as she tried to jerk away from it a spinning wave of dizziness swept over her and filled her throat with vomit. She choked it back, swallowing hard and gritting her teeth. She would not be sick. She was starting to be sorry that she had woken up.

  Think, she thought. I must think.

  Questions you must ask yourself when you are captured, she heard her warrior trainer say: Am I wounded? Where am I being held? How can I escape? As far as she could remember he never said anything about asking yourself what sort of poisonous horror was hiding in the dark and how you ended up being thrown to it. No mention of being thrown to anything. Apart from the horda. Panic flickered at the back of her mind. Had she been taken back and thrown to the horda? Panic flickered harder, fluttered harder at the back of her mind. Had she never left? Panic shook and shocked her.

  Was this the pit of the horda? Was that where she had always been, had all the rest been just a dream? A nightmare. Was this the nightmare that was death? Panic took her breath away and plunged her towards a darker darkness.

  Think. She must think. That was what the Doctor told her.

  You must think, because without thought there was only fear and chaos. Thought, she heard him say, might not stop you being afraid but at least you understood the reasons for your fear. Think. Question. First question. Why was it so dark?

  Why could she see nothing? Was she blind? She put her hands up close to her eyes. Nothing. She closed her eyes and opened them. No change in the blackness. She rubbed her eyes. There were the briefest of small flashing specks of red and yellow against the blackness. It meant nothing, she knew. It told her nothing. So either she was blind or she was being held in total darkness. She felt a little better. She was beginning to get control of herself. Second question. Why could she hear nothing? She listened. She could hear herself breathing and when she swallowed the faint sound of it crackled in her ears. So she was not deaf. She felt better. It was shaming to have panicked. Warriors did not panic.

  Thinkers did not panic.

  Third question. Why could she feel nothing? She extended her arms and swept them carefully around her. There was nothing within reach. The thing that had touched her, that she had touched, did not seem to be hunting her. If it was, then it was a poor hunter and she could probably outwit it.

  Her confidence was back now. She could cope now.

  Strangely, though, she was feeling giddy again. She squatted down onto her haunches and put her hands flat on the ground. But there was no ground. She put both hands on top of her feet and then with one hand felt round and then under her feet. There was no ground. She must still be asleep.

  There was no ground under her feet. She felt the panic spasm paralyse her breathing. There was no ground under her feet. Think. A warrior did not panic; a thinker did not panic; she was Leela of the Sevateem and she did not panic. She sucked in a deep shuddering breath. Think. If there was no ground under her feet then she must be hanging above the ground. She felt around herself and above herself but she could not find the means by which she was suspended. And again she was giddy and feeling sick. Could she be felling? No that was not possible. She could not have been falling for all the time she had been awake. She had no idea how long she had been asleep, but however long it was she could not have been falling for all that time as well. She must still be asleep.

  ‘This is not happening
,’ she said aloud. ‘I must wake up.’

  ‘Good, you’re awake finally,’ a voice said somewhere close by, and light filled her eyes and blinded her for a moment.

  ‘Thought they might have overdone the dosage after all. What a scuffling nuisance that would have been.’

  Leela’s eyes adjusted quickly and she found she was in a small room with curves where you might expect the edges to be. The walls, floor and the inside of the roof were all covered with the same smooth, grey cloth. At least it looked to her like cloth, and it looked like there were walls, floor and roof.

  It was hard to tell for sure though because she could not reach the cloth to feel it and she could not be certain which was the floor and which was the roof because she was floating helplessly in the air. Her eyes and her sense of balance were both suddenly unreliable. She could not be sure which way was up and which way was down. It was like being submerged in totally clear water without knowing where the surface was. She struggled to get control of her movement and direction in the same way she would if she was swimming, by pulling with her arms and kicking with her legs, but all that happened she found was that she made jerky swimming movements and stayed in the same place.

  She felt giddy again and slightly sick.

  ‘From your reaction I gather weightlessness is not something you’re used to,’ the voice said. There was amusement in its tone. ‘The first thing you need to do is relax, stop fighting it. Trust me that’s one fight even you can’t win.’

  Leela recognised this as another of those... what did the Doctor say they were? Proximity speakers, yes that was it, they were called proximity speakers. She knew them to be a way for cowards to give orders without needing to show their faces. The owner of this voice was in a control room somewhere. When she found him she would teach him that a coward could never hide. Her anger stopped her feeling sick.

  ‘Just so you know,’ the voice went on, ‘this is a stripped-down speeder yacht and we’re on a flat-out, one-way burn-it-down. Bad news is the living conditions are pretty basic. No, let’s be honest, the living conditions are total crud. Mine are anyway. Good news is it won’t be for that long, comparatively speaking it won’t be for that long, and there’ll be a useful touch of pseudo-grav for practically half the flight. It’s not a full-scale drive-integrated generator or anything fancy like that but it should help a bit. The engines will kick in again soon, at which time you can sort yourself out, explore your quarters, that sort of thing. You’ll find the ablutions compartment at one end and the feeding station at the other.

  Sort of appropriate really when you think about it.’

  Leela had stopped struggling and was listening and waiting. This man, she realised, liked to talk. That was good.

  Most of what he was saying meant little or nothing to her, she did not know what pseudo-grav was, for instance, and why it was useful, but it was clear that things were about to change in some way. Change was good because it could offer a captive chances for escape. She reached a hand out but she was no closer to the wall. Weightlessness? How did they do this? Why did they do this? In many ways, if you could concentrate on not being sick, it was a pleasant feeling. They did not do it to amuse her though, of that much she was certain. It was probably just a way of keeping prisoners helpless.

  ‘Any questions?’ the voice said.

  She had many questions, but asking them of her guard showed her ignorance and ignorance was weakness and weakness was something she should not let him see. ‘Why have I been taken captive?’ she asked.

  ‘Any questions you think I might answer?’ the voice mocked.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘You’re not listening,’ the voice said, sounding bored. ‘I say again: any questions you think I might answer?’

  Leela craned her neck round, trying to see the device he was using to spy on her. ‘Where are you? Show yourself.’

  ‘I’m on the flight deck,’ the voice said, ‘and that’s where I’m going to stay. I have no intention of giving you the chance to cut my heart out or whatever it is you have in mind.’

  ‘It is as I thought,’ Leela said contemptuously. ‘You are a peering spy and a sneaking coward.’

  ‘You say that as though it was a bad thing.’ The voice was amused again.

  He was talking too much for a trained guard, Leela thought, and as long as she could keep him talking he might still give away something useful. She tried a different approach. ‘How many of you are there? Are the two who ambushed me with you?’

  ‘They were unavoidably detained.’

  There was something in the way the voice said it that made Leela think her kidnappers had been outmanoeuvred while she was asleep. They might even have been killed. ‘Did you kill them?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I didn’t kill them. I’m a pilot. I leave killing to the professionals like you.’

  Leela registered that she was talking to the pilot, and ignoring his insult persisted, ‘But they are dead.’

  ‘Not my concern,’ the voice said, sounding concerned.

  Leela recognised the concern and attacked the weakness it suggested. ‘If they are dead and you did not kill them,’ she said, ‘how safe will you be?’

  ‘I’m safe enough for the moment,’ the pilot said. ‘Especially if you stay where you are and I stay where I am.’

  It sounded to Leela as though there might be no one else in this stripped-down speeder yacht, whatever that turned out to be, but her and this man who was the pilot. ‘How many other guards are there?’ she asked.

  ‘You don’t expect me to answer that.’

  ‘It does not matter,’ she said, smiling as sneeringly as she could manage. ‘I know the answer already.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ the pilot said, sounding slightly unsure.

  ‘Are you sure you are able to do the job alone?’ Leela asked.

  ‘Between you and the rest of the ship there are two sealed bulkheads and two emergency airlocks, which are all controlled from the flight deck. If it wasn’t for the actual flying I wouldn’t be needed at all.’

  ‘Just as the two who ambushed me were not needed,’ Leela remarked.

  There was the briefest of pauses then the pilot said, ‘They lived greedy, they died stupid. Not my problem.’

  ‘You are not greedy and stupid?’ Leela suggested, without emphasis.

  ‘Well I’m not stupid,’ the pilot said.

  Leela noticed she was drifting very, very slowly towards the wall, or the floor or the roof, and was now almost within touching distance of it. She stretched out her arm and extended a finger and touched the grey cloth. It was foam padding, which felt soft and smooth, but when she pushed at it with her fingertip she found herself propelled away, drifting not quickly but more quickly than before. ‘So you will not die,’ she said, as she drifted down or up towards another surface. This must have been what had happened in the darkness she realised when she thought that a moving creature had poisoned her with its touch or that she had been thrown into the horda pit. She had been bouncing around like this and being made giddy and sick by the strange movement. That was the thing about darkness. It tricked your senses with all the things you feared most. She had not understood until this moment how much she feared the horda, how much she feared dying.

  ‘Sooner or later everybody dies,’ the pilot said. ‘Trick is to make it later rather than sooner.’

  Leela was floating closer to the wall, but this time she was careful not to reach out and push haphazardly but rather to wait until she was close enough to it to use the surface in a more controlled way. She tucked her knees up against her chest and put her arms round her legs and in this position let herself bump gently against the soft foam. She stayed folded in a ball waiting for the best angle and when she felt herself beginning to drift away from the surface again she straightened her body, held her arms out in front of her, and kicked off with her legs. She flew the length of the cabin faster than she had expected but then she found it easy to slo
w herself by putting her hands flat against the surface she was approaching and letting her arms relax. She was not fully under control but she was no longer completely helpless. With practice she felt she could master this weightlessness. She would practise, she decided. She pushed herself off again. Practising would not be difficult. This was fun.

  ‘I’m sorry to spoil your fun,’ the pilot said over the proximity speakers, ‘but before you get too carried away, we’re coming up on the first navigation vector point.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Leela asked. Showing ignorance of technical detail was not a dangerous sign of Weakness, she decided. It could work the opposite way in fact because it would flatter the pilot, which might put him at his ease and make him careless.

  ‘It means the main drive will be kicking in for... let’s see now... thirty hours or so. Then there’ll be twenty hours weightless... after which it’ll be full main drive for the rest of the trip. Assuming they make it to the rendezvous coordinates at the agreed time and I don’t have to make a whole bunch of adjustments, I should be able to hand you over before we become so bored with each other’s company that death seems like an entertaining alternative.’

  ‘I have nothing by which to measure the passing of time,’

  Leela said.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ the pilot said, sounding smugly amused again. ‘You’ll just have to take my word for it, won’t you.’

  Leela asked, ‘You will warn me when these things are about to happen?’

  ‘I will indeed,’ he said, and immediately intoned: ‘Main engine burn begins in five; four; three; two; one. Burn is initiated, we have white lights on all boards, acceleration is steady and rising.’

  Leela heard the engine’s vibration softly murmuring in the air and felt the smallest beginnings of a directional change in her, now not quite weightless, glide.

  Chapter Thirteen