Doctor Who - The Wheel of Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Ooh.’

  ‘Yes! And the Karkus said, “I… am… your… slave. Command… me!” Because that was all you had to do with the Karkus, you see. Beat him once, and he was your loyal servant forever. So Phee said, “Well, for a start you can get up and tidy up that door you kicked in. What a mess!” “I… obey,” said the Karkus. And he went to fix the door with his, umm, magic door repairer. And when he’d done that – oh!’

  ‘Karkus!’

  ‘I think somebody’s trying to contact us. That green light… I think there’s some smart circuitry in this old shuttle trying to self-repair, and fix up an emergency comms system. Gosh! I wonder who it is. Maybe it’s the Karkus, coming to save us.’

  ‘Karkus! Karkus! App-oo… pie!’

  ‘All right, the story. Well, when the Karkus had fixed the kitchen door…’

  46

  HARRY’S MAP SHOWED that the Z-bomb had been placed not far from one of the main vertical access shafts. Not surprising, thought Jamie, since that was the way Florian’s emplacement team would have gone in to deliver it.

  But when Jamie’s amateur bomb-disposal team got there they found the shaft blocked by big ice boulders.

  ‘Infall from the quakes,’ Sam suggested.

  ‘Maybe,’ Jamie growled. ‘Or Florian’s bombers might have smashed it in after ’em.’

  ‘So what do we do? Looking for another way in could take hours – days, even.’

  ‘Time we might no’ have,’ Jamie said. ‘Can we no’ just get this stuff out o’ the way?’

  ‘With what?’ Sam lifted his blaster. ‘Mum set our weapons so weak they wouldn’t cut a cake.’

  Harry grinned, and raised his own blaster, liberated from the Bootstrap surface facility. ‘This might have a little more poke.’ He raised it, and fired point blank at the uppermost boulder in the shaft. They all ducked back as the boulder exploded in a spray of a kind of thin snow, settling rapidly. ‘After you,’ Harry said mildly.

  So they worked their way down the shaft, with Harry smashing the worst of the blockages out of the way. The ladder set into the wall had been badly damaged during the quakes, but Jamie found it was easy to float from rung to rung, there was plenty of time to grab a handhold as you drifted down.

  Soon they were at the bottom of the shaft. Harry, without looking up, studied his map and pointed. ‘This way.’

  ‘Ye mean,’ Jamie said grimly, ‘the way past yon Blue Soldiers?’

  There was a mass of the figures, eerie, still, their bare artificial flesh coated with frost, blocking the passage. They hadn’t formed up in a rank as humans might have; instead they were heaped up on each other at all angles, like pegs forced into a hole. But they had their heads raised, their eyes open, and they stared at Jamie and his team.

  ‘Leave this to me,’ said Harry grimly, and he moved forward with blaster raised. ‘It will be nice to extract a little payback.’

  ‘No.’ Jamie grabbed his arm. ‘Wait. Let’s try talkin’ first.’

  ‘Talk? To those plastic monsters? Are you mad?’

  ‘Let’s at least try.’

  Harry stared at him. Then he shrugged, and backed away.

  Jamie fixed his blaster on its sling on his back, and stepped forward, arms open, gloved hands empty. ‘I know the Arkive can see me, through your eyes. Or it can see through the Dolls, the Doctor says, so it stands to reason it can see through you too, right? So listen to me. I’m not gonna hurt ye. That’s what the Doctor told ye, isn’t it? But we have to get past. There’s a bomb that’s gonna blow us all to kingdom come, if we can’t stop it. And,’ he added on impulse, ‘if there’s anythin’ of Dr Sinbad Omar left in ye Blue fellows, and he died so ye could live, then ask yerselves what he would do.’

  Harry snorted, and raised his blaster. ‘You’re wasting your time.’

  ‘Let’s just see.’

  There was silence. Time stretched. Jamie imagined he could hear ticking – a clock attached to the bomb that might kill them all.

  Then, as one, the Blue Soldiers rustled backwards, squeezing back down the passageway. They didn’t retreat entirely, but they left a way wide enough for the humans to pass through.

  Jamie grinned. ‘Told ye. Now let’s get on with it.’ And he led the way forward.

  To get through the passage he had to step, gingerly, on plastic-smooth chests and legs and even faces. The Blues did not so much as flinch; they might have been carved from solid marble. Jamie tried not to show his own fear, to avoid sparking off some kind of incident.

  At last they were through. Jamie emerged into a larger chamber, lit by a few scattered light globes. And immediately there was a flash of light, a soundless splintering of ice rock in the vacuum above his head, a hail of fragments. Sam shoved him in the back and they both fell to the ground. The rest of the party squirmed down around them.

  ‘Och,’ said Jamie, winded, embarrassed at having to be saved. ‘Now some beggar’s shooting at us!’

  ‘Florian’s guards,’ Sam said.

  ‘They’re here to guard the bomb,’ said Harry. ‘That’s it. Straight ahead. I recognise it from footage of the wars of those days…’

  Jamie dared to lift his head. At the rear of the chamber the ice had been shaped into a kind of rectangular alcove. On a shelf sat an object like a fat suitcase, pearly white, smooth. It was a beautiful bit of technology. But a small console sat on the top of it, with green-glowing lights, and a display showing numbers – numbers counting down. Jamie had seen enough bombs to recognise certain unmistakeable characteristics.

  Another blaster shot came zinging across the chamber, lower this time, making him duck back down.

  Harry murmured grimly, ‘I suppose you want to try talking to these chaps, do you?’

  ‘Well, it’s worth a try. And besides we don’t know how many there are. But how do we call them? We’re in vacuum, aren’t we?’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Harry tapped at stud controls on his own skinsuit neck, and then at Jamie’s.

  ‘– clear off,’ came a crisp voice. ‘This is Bootstrap business. And this is a hazardous area. You’re advised to turn around and clear off out of here. We mean you no harm, but you may come to harm even so.’

  Jamie, exhausted, his mind drained, tried to work out what to say to get past this latest obstacle.

  But Sam touched his arm. ‘Take a breather, granddad.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know this guy.’

  ‘You know him?’

  Sam shrugged inside his suit. ‘The Wheel’s a small place. The whole Saturn system’s a small place, in human terms. You get to know people. He’s OK, even though he’s a Bootstrap goon. Let me try.’ He pressed studs at his own neck. ‘Hey, Booster. Booster Cavey?’

  ‘What? Sam? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me. Sam, who beat you at three-dee dodgeball in that tournament in Res Five that time.’

  ‘Sam, who I taught everything he knows about playing the drums.’

  ‘Sure you did.’

  ‘Sam… I’d much rather not have to shoot you.’

  ‘Well, ditto, Booster. Although,’ he muttered to Jamie, ‘with my mum’s kiddie settings on the blaster I’d do no worse than tickle him. Look, Booster – that’s a bomb you’re guarding there.’

  ‘Sure. A shaped cavity charge. Shortly we’ll get the order to fall back, then it will go off, and cut a new shaft to the bernalium workings.’

  Sam shook his head. ‘No. You’ve been lied to, Booster. First of all, there won’t be any call to fall back. And second, it won’t be just cutting a shaft. You have to believe me…’

  And he began to explain Florian’s plot, as he understood it, with interjections from Harry and the others.

  Meanwhile Jamie spoke softly. ‘Doctor – Zoe – I hope ye can hear me – I don’t know if ye can see what I see. There’s the famous bomb. And I think I can guess what those numbers countin’ down mean. I’m all for talkin’ our way past these lads, but then I’m gonna need ye to
tell me what to do. How do ye defuse a Z-bomb?’ He peered harder. ‘An answer in six minutes or less would be dandy. Five minutes fifty-nine seconds. Fifty-eight…’

  ‘It’s all ma fault. All o’ it.’

  ‘MMAC? MMAC! Is that you?’

  ‘Zoe? Where are ye?’

  ‘I’m in a defunct shuttle. A Mars ground-to-orbit ship I think. We’ve been patched together thanks to some miracle coordinated by the Doctor, and whoever’s still alive and functioning on the Wheel.’

  ‘I see ye. Is that wee Casey I hear wi’ ye? I’ll come get ye, just as soon as—’

  ‘No! No, listen to me, MMAC. There’s something much more important we have to do first.’

  ‘Can I keep on savin’ folk as we talk? I’m squirtin’ around pickin’ up bits of the Wheel afore they drift too far away.’

  ‘Of course. But, look, MMAC – we have to talk about Z-bombs.’

  ‘Aye! Like the beast Florian Hart smuggled down to the moon. The beast I let lie in some old Demeter booster. Aye, lass, I know all about Z-bombs. And I know I failed.’

  ‘Failed? What do you mean?’

  ‘I was supposed tae make this Wheel safe. To build it out of safe components. I was supposed tae check o’er all the old junk I scrabbled together – all the old shuttles and boosters and missiles. Empty out the fuel, an’ toxic fluids. Disarm explosive bolts – anythin’ like that. An’ if I found a planetbuster bomb or anythin’ like it I was tae throw it into the sun! That was ma job. An’ I didnae do it.’

  ‘You didn’t find the Z-bomb warhead in that old Demeter rocket.’

  ‘Nae.’

  ‘But that’s impossible, MMAC. Don’t you see? There’s no way you could have missed such a device. It would have violated all your programming – it simply isn’t logical. MMAC, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I believe your memory must have been tampered with.’

  ‘What? Ah, hush ye.’

  ‘I know it’s difficult to accept. But it’s simple enough to do, believe me, especially with a primitive substrate like yours.’

  ‘Wha’? I’m state o’ the art! Or was.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that. Look, I can do a simple trace – I can run it from here… Wait a minute. This might sting a bit.’

  ‘Ooh.’

  ‘It will pass… Ah. There. Can you sense that deleted region?’

  ‘Yes… No. I know I’ve forgotten somethin’…’

  ‘But you don’t know what it is. Precisely! It’s been quite coarsely done. Look at the inputs and outputs to that region, MMAC. Remember what you were handling at the time.’

  ‘A Demeter rocket!’

  ‘Yes. MMAC, you’ve done nothing wrong. You would never have let through a planetbuster bomb. But they didn’t let you see it, and then deleted any memories of that moment of blindness. It must have been done long ago, all in preparation for a contingency like this.’

  ‘Why, the schemin’, connivin’ – we’ve got tae put a stop to this.’

  ‘Exactly! Now, I know you can recognise a Z-bomb. But do you know how they work? In particular – how do you defuse one?’

  ‘I’ll look it up. And then I’ll come and save ye. But Zoe, one question—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why’s Casey wearing a cape?’

  47

  AS SOON AS the data from MMAC was downloaded to the Doctor, Jamie got to work.

  The Doctor’s voice was an insect buzz in his ears. ‘That’s it. Take that second screw right out. Who would have thought that your dirk would make such a handy screwdriver?’

  Jamie was crouched before the bomb. He took the loosened screw between forefinger and thumb, his hands clumsy in their skinsuit gloves, and set it aside. This was the last stage of the disarmament. He’d already worked through a series of codes, entered on a keypad. Now there was this last bit of physical disassembly to do. It wasn’t particularly warm in this cavern, and the sleek body of the bomb gave off no discernible heat, but Jamie was sweating profusely. But he had no way of mopping a brow sealed up behind a spacesuit visor. And he had to shift to keep his own shadow from blocking his view; the light was very poor.

  ‘Jamie—’

  ‘Aye, who’d a thought that about ma dirk?’

  ‘All right, Jamie, stay calm.’

  ‘Don’t tell me to stay calm, yer blitherin’ Sassenach.’

  ‘Well, Jamie, I’m neither blithering nor a Sassenach, as you know very well. Now, you need to take the cover off the timer unit. You might need to use your dirk to prise it free…’

  ‘No, it’s come away fine.’ The cover was a complex box of metal punctured with holes. When he lifted it away that glaring countdown clock still remained, but he had exposed a tangle of cables, wires and electronic components underneath.

  ‘The matter is pressing, Jamie,’ the Doctor said, with only a trace of anxiety in his voice. ‘As it stands the time left is—’

  ‘Dinna tell me. It won’t make me do the job better, will it?’

  ‘Probably not, no.’

  ‘So wha’ next?’

  ‘Now you have to isolate the wires going from the timer unit into the body of the bomb, to the detonator. They should be obvious, according to MMAC and Zoe. The detonator is actually a four-stage process, with conventional explosives triggering a fission explosion, which then sets off a shaped thermonuclear detonation, which in turn—’

  ‘Aye, ye can draw me a picture later. Which wires, Doctor?’

  ‘The red and the blue ones. A bundle of four.’

  ‘I canna see the colours too well. The light in here—’

  ‘The ones at the front of the timer.’

  ‘Got ’em.’ Jamie grabbed the wires and yanked them out of the bomb casing.

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t pull them out of the casing.’

  ‘What! Ye might have said!’

  ‘Well, you might wait to be told what to do! Since we’re all still alive I take it you haven’t done too much damage.’

  ‘Get on with it, Doctor.’

  ‘All right. Now you must take your dirk and cut the wires, in a certain sequence. Two reds, then the single blue, then the final red.’

  ‘Which reds first?’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, Jamie. As long as the blue is third of the four. It’s just another code, and that’s the key.’

  Jamie took the wires in his hand. In the shifting light of the suit lamps all the wires looked more greyish than either red or blue. ‘And if I get it wrong?’

  ‘Well, you won’t have time to know about it. I suggest getting a move on, Jamie.’

  ‘All right, all right…’

  Which first? One of the wires looked that bit darker than the rest – not so much blue as dark purple versus light purple. He picked one of the other wires, and cut that.

  And lived. The bits of cut wire retracted, vanishing into the casing.

  Now two light ones, one darker. Two reds left, one blue. He picked one of the similar ones. Cut it.

  And lived. The wire snaked away.

  But now he fumbled the remaining two wires, and when he picked them up again, he wasn’t sure if he had them the same way around as before. Which was red, which was blue? Blue had been the marginally darker one – hadn’t it? He shifted his position, trying to get a bit more light.

  He glanced at the clock. Twenty seconds.

  ‘Jamie, I do suggest—’

  ‘Aye, I know. Eeny meeny miney moe.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Just kidding.’ But he wasn’t, not really. He chose a wire, cut it.

  And lived.

  There was a scream of rage in his earphones.

  The Doctor laughed. ‘Florian Hart! So you can see what we’ve done! The game’s up, Florian.’

  ‘Not yet, Doctor. Nobody defies me. Don’t believe you can hide from my wrath.’

  *

  In the cavern of the Arkive the Doctor was gleefully hugging both Phee and an unresponsive First.

  T
hen Luis Reyes called. ‘Doctor. Reyes here. I’m with Sanjay. We’re in the surface facility, code number—’

  ‘Yes, yes, Luis—’

  ‘I can see her. Florian Hart. She’s come straight down out of the phibian ship on a scooter. She’s moving at a fair lick, and I suspect she’s armed.’

  ‘You do surprise me.’

  ‘She’s heading for her new trial bore, off to the east of my position. Leads pretty much straight to the Arkive cavity, Doctor. Where you are. Nobody we’ve got is going to reach her in time. And, Doctor, her line about how you can’t hide? I suspect she’s using thermal imaging gear. Looking for your body heat. Standard issue, used to search for trapped miners.’

  ‘Hmm. So it’s not over yet. Thank you, Luis.’

  Phee tugged his arm. ‘Doctor, what are we going to do?’

  He looked at her absently, his crumpled face rather blank; he was clearly thinking hard. ‘Well, for a start, you are going to do nothing. Just stay here. And keep First with you.’

  ‘Here?’ Phee, uncomprehending, glanced around at the mute bulk of the Arkive. ‘But this is where she’s headed!’

  ‘Quite. But I can’t allow her to get here. I should think even a blaster would be powerful enough to do rather a lot of harm to the Arkive. No, no, I can’t allow her to come here – and therefore this is the safest place for you two. Do you see?’

  Phee tried to puzzle that out. ‘I… think so.’

  ‘Good, good. And then I must stop her before she has a chance to set off her accursed bomb. Now. Luis said she’d probably be using body-heat sensors to track me down.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He glanced down at his open skinsuit. ‘Tell me, do these suits trap body heat? Or radiate it away… They must at least blur the signature.’ He began to strip off his suit.