Match of the Day

by Chris Boucher

As far as he could remember, the Doctor had never been the getaway driver in an actual, genuine jailbreak before and he was finding it rather exhilarating. He sat in the driver’s seat of the illegal, unregistered runner that Sergeant Ronick had provided and watched the fat policeman strolling with Sita Benovides in the grounds of the police lock-up. At some point the two of them were going to make a run for the motorway, on the hard shoulder of which the runner was parked. The computer was programmed, the runner’s drive was ticking over and the Doctor was ready to do his part. Of course getaway driver was a relative term, he thought ruefully. All he actually had to do was to operate the passenger doors and then release the brakes so that the runner would move off and slot smoothly and unremarked into the constant stream of motorway traffic. It was not strictly necessary for him to be here at all, he realised, except that Ronick had clearly wanted him involved. The Doctor was not sure whether this was because he saw it as a test of their new partnership, or because he thought that a senior undercover officer in state security would have useful contacts and influence if things went badly wrong. It was probably a bit of both. Ronick struck him as a man who was dishonest enough to feel the need for as much insurance as he could reasonably devise.

  The elaborately casual stroll was bringing the ill-matched pair gradually closer to the perimeter markers of the lock-up security zone. The Doctor was surprised that, as far as he could see, Sita was still wearing her wrist and ankle bands. It was a detail that Ronick had been reluctant to talk about when they discussed the plan for the break-out. ‘I’ve got that covered,’ was all he would say about it, and the Doctor had thought it best not to press him, now he was not so sure.

  They must make a run for it soon, he thought, or they would draw attention to themselves simply by walking too close to the boundary.

  He rechecked the settings on the runner’s computer and rested his hand on the door control switch. On the couple dawdled across the close-cropped grass. He wondered if something had gone wrong with the plan. Perhaps Ronick’s friend had let him down. Maybe the runner had been spotted and they were trying to warn him off. Should he reset the computer to move the runner and take it round the block and bring it back? Problem was he had no idea how big the block might be and how long it would take to go round it, and, anyway, resetting the computer was time-consuming in itself. What would an undercover senior officer in state security do in these circumstances, he thought?

  And now Ronick and Sita had stopped walking altogether and were standing looking back at the lock-up buildings.

  What could they be expecting? Was it a trap? Slowly they turned and looked for the first time in the direction of the runner, and then abruptly they were across the perimeter and sprinting towards him. He resisted a sudden urge to open the doors immediately. The plan was that nothing should be more obvious than was necessary and a parked runner with its doors standing open was more noticeable than one with its doors closed. So he waited and waited until they had almost reached him, and waited, and then he opened the doors and closed them again behind the fugitives in one smooth almost uninterrupted movement. At the same time he released the brake, and the runner jerked into life and rolled forward and on into the motorway traffic.

  The Doctor turned round in his seat to look at his passengers. Ronick was the less out of breath of the two. It was probably fear that was making Sita breathless he realised. ‘Was there a problem?’ he asked.

  ‘Ask the major,’ Ronick grunted, pulling a toolbox from under the seat.

  ‘Was there a problem?’

  Sita brandished her wrist bands. ‘I paid for these things to be deactivated.’

  ‘And they have been,’ Ronick said. ‘Are you bleeding yet?’

  He opened the toolbox and took out a small rotary cutter.

  ‘Could happen any time,’ she said. ‘All it’ll take is the flick of a switch.’

  ‘We’ve got an hour,’ he said. ‘At least we did have until you started scuffling about.’

  She said through gritted teeth, ‘I could feel them tightening up.’

  ‘No you couldn’t.’ He started the cutter and began working on one of the wrist bands. ‘You just thought you could.’

  The Doctor checked the timer on the runner’s computer control panel. ‘It can be the same thing,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Doctor,’ she snapped. ‘He might think you’re state security but you don’t fool me.’

  Ronick pressed the cutter harder into the band. ‘I told her what you were and that I’d brought you along as a guarantee of good faith. Didn’t seem to work.’

  ‘What do you think I am?’ the Doctor asked cheerfully.

  The cutter’s high-pitched whine deepened slightly as it bit.

  ‘One more variant of the same old crooks and con men,’ Sita said, concentrating hard and staring into the Doctor’s face,

  ‘who latched onto the noble contest and turned it into a money-making circus.’ She flinched and grimaced as the cutter touched the skin of her wrist and drew blood.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ronick muttered.

  ‘Just get on with it,’ she urged.

  ‘You think I’m an agent,’ the Doctor said, trying to distract her again.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I think.’ She glanced at her wrist. ‘This is taking too long,’ she said to Ronick. ‘There isn’t going to be enough time.’

  ‘You want guarantees?’ he muttered. ‘There are no guarantees.’

  ‘I want my hands and feet,’ she snapped. ‘I paid for my hands and feet.’

  Ronick worked on grimly. ‘There’s a theory,’ he said eventually without looking up from what he was doing, ‘that if you put enough distance between you and the base unit the bands are inactive.’

  ‘A theory?’ she said angrily. ‘A theory? I never should have listened to you.’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ he said.

  ‘A possibility.’ She laughed without any sign of being amused. ‘What, that was the plan all along? You’re going to test some half-baked theory using my wrists and ankles as experimental subjects?’

  ‘Well not this one anyway,’ Ronick said triumphantly, as with a final angry buzz the cutter severed the band. ‘Other wrist,’ he ordered without pausing.

  The Doctor checked the timer. Unfortunately it looked as though Sita was right: there would not be enough time to do all four bands. And it seemed unlikely that the distance theory was anything more than wishful thinking. ‘Is there another cutter?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Ronick said, peering closely at what he was doing.

  ‘Why not?’ Sita demanded.

  ‘I didn’t think of it,’ Ronick said. ‘It was an oversight all right? I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry,’ Sita said angrily. ‘You’re sorry?’ She looked at the Doctor. ‘What’s your excuse?’

  ‘I haven’t got one, I’m afraid,’ the Doctor said. It sounded to him that to add to their difficulties the cutter Ronick was using was beginning to lose its edge and was starting to labour.

  Sita must have noticed the change in note too because she said, ‘You brought extra blades at least?’

  ‘Takes time to change them,’ Ronick muttered.

  ‘You really planned this meticulously didn’t you?’

  ‘I got you out didn’t I?’

  ‘Tourniquets?’ she asked flatly and when he did not answer she said it again in exactly the same tone only louder.

  ‘Tourniquets?’

  ‘Yes!’ Ronick said angrily. ‘I brought tourniquets just in case.’

  ‘That part of the plan is working anyway,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘You brought four I imagine? May as well look on the bright side I suppose at least you get to keep one of them for your next gullible amputee.’

  ‘And at least you get to keep your brain functioning,’ he said, moving the cutter backwards and forwards very slightly in an attempt to compensate for its declining effectiveness.

  ‘Judging by this fiasco,’ she sno
rted, ‘I’m not sure that functioning is how I’d describe what my brain has been doing.’

  The Doctor had been considering the way the bands worked. Presumably they were triggered to contract by some sort of microwave pulse technology and at the moment their particular frequency was blocked at source or simply not being sent at all. A contract instruction would be sent on a delay, with perimeter markers and tamper-warning relays and the like set to cancel the delay and trigger immediate contraction. The contract instruction would be stopped by a faint, ultra-short range microwave pulse generated by the wall-mounted scanner plates. He knew very little about microwave technology but it seemed reasonable to him to suppose that one pulse must in some way be the reverse of the other.

  Ronick’s cutter was making less and less headway with the second wrist band. ‘Come on, come on,’ he was muttering to himself. ‘Come on you scuffling piece of crap.’

  Obviously with no signal, the Doctor thought, the bands remained inert and this allowed them to be tampered with without setting them off. He rummaged about in the pockets of his coat without success until finally he found the sonic screwdriver where it had fallen through a hole into the lining.

  He ripped the hem open and took it out. It had occurred to him that he might be able to use the screwdriver to feed enough controlled power into an inert band to reverse its polarity and this might trigger it to open. Briefly he wondered why the idea of reversing the polarity of something seemed so familiar to him. He was fairly sure he had never said. ‘Maybe I can reverse the polarity using the sonic screwdriver,’ but it certainly felt as though he had. ‘Sita,’ he said, shaking off the feeling, ‘would you put your foot between the seats here so that I can look at your ankle band. I think I may be able to help.’

  ‘How exactly?’ she said. ‘Are you planning to chew it off?’

  ‘No. I have a...’ he waved the sonic screwdriver vaguely.

  There didn’t seem much point in trying to explain what it was and what he was going to do with it. For one thing he wasn’t sure that he could explain it and for another it struck him that he had no idea whether reversing the polarity would open the band or tighten it still further. ‘...a device,’ he finished rather lamely.

  ‘A device,’ she sneered. ‘That’s impressive. Why was I so worried? The agent saves the day’ She made no attempt to do as he suggested. ‘You might as well stop and change the blade,’ she said to Ronick, who was making very little progress with the cutter. Without speaking he stopped and began to dismantle the blade holder. ‘Where’s the medical kit?’ she asked.

  ‘Left-hand locker,’ he grunted.

  ‘What a lucky coincidence,’ she said, reaching for it. ‘That’s the side with the hand that stays attached.’ She opened the kit and took out three bands, not unlike the wrist and ankle bands except that these had manual adjusters, and laid them out on the seat beside her. ‘I assume you both know how to apply a tourniquet,’ she said. ‘Only my hands, sorry my hand will be a bit full, metaphorically speaking.’

  ‘Do stop moaning, woman,’ the Doctor said, feigning anger.

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that when you’re bleeding to death. You’re supposed to be a major in state security. Start acting like one. Now put your foot between the seats so that I can work on that band.’

  Sita thrust her foot through the gap. ‘For the record I’m an ex-major in state security,’ she said.

  The Doctor examined the band closely. The ones he had been fitted with had lines of tiny circular spots raised slightly, almost imperceptibly, higher than the rest of the surface. He ran his finger over the band feeling for one of these.

  ‘If you’re looking for the off switch,’ she said. ‘There isn’t one.’

  ‘If there’s an on switch there must by definition be an off switch,’ the Doctor said. ‘They are the same thing after all.

  It’s simply a question of finding it.’

  ‘By all means let’s have a philosophical discussion about switches,’ Sita said witheringly. ‘This is the ideal time for it.’

  The Doctor said absently, ‘Logic rather than philosophy I think, don’t you?’

  ‘Are you insane?’ Sita demanded. ‘Are you insane or are you simply trying to drive me insane?’

  She tensed her leg and twitched her foot in anger and the Doctor lost his place on the ankle band. ‘Keep still,’ he said.

  ‘We’re running out of time here.’ As he said it he found one of the spots he was looking for and lightly pressed the head of the sonic screwdriver over it. ‘Try not to move now,’ he instructed and turned the sonic screwdriver on. Almost immediately the runner hit an uneven patch of road. He felt for the spot again. It was easier to find this time because it was hot to the touch now. Was that a good sign or a bad sign, he wondered. He put the sonic screwdriver back on the spot and reactivated it. If he had got this the wrong way round would there be time to reverse the reversal before there was irreparable damage to the tissue and bones of the ankle?

  ‘How much longer are you going to be with that blade?’ Sita said to Ronick.

  ‘Nearly there.’

  ‘Nearly out of time,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I scuffling know that,’ he muttered.

  She sighed softly. ‘I don’t want to be an amputee,’ she almost whispered. ‘I really don’t want to be a multiple amputee. I can’t think of anything worse.’

  Ronick said, ‘Not being able to think, that’s worse. Not much point in having all your fingers and toes if you don’t know what twenty means.’

  The Doctor had been surprised to hear the fat detective say something like that, since it was more or less what he would have said himself. ‘That’s more or less what I would have said myself,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll trade places with you,’ Sita said. ‘See how you both feel then.’

  The Doctor heard in her voice that she was giving herself up to the calm numbness of terror. He knew from experience that the calm numbness of terror could give way to the thrashing hysteria of terror with only the briefest of ear-splitting screams by way of transition. The screaming he could put up with, indeed he had come to expect it from his travelling companions, at least before Leela, but thrashing about could jeopardise the success of what he was doing. The area of the band around the head of the sonic screwdriver was actually beginning to stretch and swell. It wasn’t coming apart as he had hoped but it was bloating flaccidly and loosening around the ankle.

  ‘Ready,’ Ronick said and the cutter began to whine again.

  ‘It’s hopeless,’ Sita said, but there was a small hope in her voice.

  It’s not a good time for a change of mood, the Doctor thought. When hope returned could thrashing hysteria be far behind? The place on the ankle band into which he had been feeding power from the sonic screwdriver was continuing to stretch, expanding out into folds on either side of itself. He stopped and eased the folds open, pulling the whole ankle band into a wider loop. It looked big enough, he thought.

  Quickly he took off her shoe and slipped the loop down over her foot and off. He dropped the band onto the seat beside him. ‘Let me see your other foot,’ he commanded.

  Without comment Sita pulled her shoeless foot out from between the seats and pushed her other foot through the gap. It was a moment or two before she realised what had happened. ‘You got it off.’ There was disbelief in her voice.

  ‘You got it off. How did you do that?’

  On the seat beside the Doctor the discarded band was moving. It had started to contract. Time’s up, he thought without bothering to look at the runner’s timer. ‘Hold still,’ he and Ronick both said, almost in unison.

  ‘It’s happening,’ she said. ‘I can feel it. They’re tightening up.’

  The bands were no longer inert and it was possible, the Doctor realised, that the anti-tamper circuits might be triggered by what he and Ronick were doing. They might be speeding things up, hastening the inevitable, actually making things worse: except that there
was no way to make things worse. It was this or nothing. The area of the ankle band he was working on was expanding as before but this time as fast as the sonic screwdriver generated extra space the slack was taken up by the general contraction.

  ‘It’s beginning to hurt,’ Sita gritted.

  The Doctor wasn’t sure whether she was talking about her ankle or her wrist or both.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Ronick said and the whine of the cutter deepened as he pressed harder and harder. ‘I’ll get it off you if I have to cut your hand off myself.’

  ‘Joke,’ she gasped, ‘bad time... bad taste... no round of applause from me.’

  ‘Everyone’s a critic,’ Ronick muttered. ‘I thought it was worth a hand myself.’

  For the moment all the Doctor could do was to keep up with the contraction round the ankle, neutralising its effect by continuously generating more unfolding band. There had to come a time he hoped when the expansion had weakened it so much that the band would tear itself apart; or the band would reach some sort of design limit and simply stop contracting; or preferably both.

  ‘Done it, done it,’ Ronick almost shouted. ‘Gods there’s a lot of blood. I must have nicked a vein or something.’

  Sita was elated. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she exulted. ‘Blood I can replace. Here get the binding seals from the medical kit. I owe you, Driftkiller.’

  ‘Talk’s cheap and getting cheaper all the time,’ Ronick said.

  ‘And it’s Ronick, or Lars, or even Sergeant. Not Driftkiller all right? Driftkilling was my old man’s profession and as it happens he was a scuffling scuffwit. How’s it coming Doctor?’

  ‘Keep her still,’ the Doctor warned. ‘Keep your leg still, Sita, I haven’t finished yet.’

  ‘I thought I felt you take the band off,’ Sita exclaimed. The elation had vanished abruptly. There was an edge of panic in her voice now. ‘What’s gone wrong? Has something gone wrong? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong.’ The Doctor tried to sound reassuring.

  ‘It’s taking a bit longer that’s all.’

  ‘It can’t take longer we haven’t got any longer. They’re back on. They’ve switched them back on.’