The sound came again, and then again. Stealthy footsteps... and only one of them, it sounded like. She tensed herself, hefting the trusty crowbar in anticipation as the footsteps drew nearer, and risked a peek round the corner of the boxes. A figure was walking slowly towards her with what looked like a gun in his hands. A full-grown figure, not a dwarf. She breathed a little faster. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound... She sprang out of her hiding place, the crowbar already swinging as she moved, but the figure sidestepped easily and brought the gun up swiftly to bear on her.
'Peri!'
Kevin lowered the gun, and Peri almost passed out with relief. 'Oh, Kevin!'
'Are you all right?'
'I was about to ask you the same thing,' she replied, not altogether truthfully. Her mind was buzzing with too many other questions. 'How did you get away?' being the first of them.
'Easy,' he grinned. 'I just played dead until they went away. They called up some collection team on the radio, and left me for them. I scarpered before they arrived. If they're all that thick, then we've no problems...'
'They haven't seemed that thick so far,' Peri pointed out, ruefully. 'Anyone who can build androids like that —' she gestured at the broken miner '— isn't thick at all. Did you know they were all androids?' she asked, suddenly.
'What else would they be?' grinned Kevin. 'I didn't think they'd imported a whole tribe of pygmies, just to dress up this place... Why?'
Peri shrugged. 'Oh, just not something you come across every day in off-season Blackpool.'
'I think I've found a way out,' grinned Kevin, crowing a little.
'At last!' sighed Peri. Kevin turned to go, but seemed to wobble a bit. 'Are you really all right?' Peri asked, concerned for a moment.
'One of them rocks caught me a proper clout, that's all. Go on, you lead the way — it's up there by the log cabin...' She looked up at the log cabin on the other side of the gallery, thirty or forty feet away, and started to walk towards it. With one backward glance over his shoulder, Kevin followed...
The Doctor noted with detached interest that the guard had to open his cell door with a very large key as he ushered him into his guest-quarters. No magic wave of the hand for him, then. The tricks department was one the Mandarin obviously kept very much to himself. Might be useful, that... Stefan pushed the Doctor rudely in the back, forcing him into the cell.
His eyes immediately fell on the shiny machine in the corner, all bells and whistles, or, more accurately, all screen and logos and flashing lights. It looked like big brother to one of the machines upstairs in the video arcade, and the Doctor loathed it on sight.
'What,' he demanded imperiously, 'is that monstrosity?'
'It is that upon which you will play your last game with my master,' replied Stefan, softly.
'Is that all?' replied the Doctor, as scathingly as he could.
'It will suffice.'
'Will it indeed?'
The Doctor looked at the machine a little more closely, but could see nothing remarkable about it. Just another mindless shoot-em-down video game... Stefan grinned wolfishly at the Doctor's apparent perplexity, and turned on his heel to go. 'Does room service extend to dinner?' called the Doctor to the retreating broad back. There was no break in stride, and certainly no reply as Stefan and the guard left, locking the cell door behind them with a great deal of fuss and noise, or so the Doctor thought. He shrugged and was about to turn back to examine the machine when he saw, now that Stefan was out of the way, a recumbent form on the bed. He hurried over and turned the figure over. There was a stirring and a groan as Kevin struggled to raise himself up off the bed.
The Mandarin delicately moved his fingers again on the surface of the crystal ball, activating the viewing screen again. The Doctor's attempts to bring Kevin back to consciousness were as primitive and as futile as were to be expected, which, the Mandarin thought, was good enough in the circumstances. He checked himself quickly. For a very long time, he had been promising himself never to underestimate the Doctor again. He was not about to spend another tedious length of his time-continuum waiting for his next chance.
The fingers moved again, and the scene in the goldmine swam up on the screen: Pert being followed by Kevin as they made their way cautiously past a group of miners, endlessly filling a gold-ore truck. The Mandarin smiled contentedly as he flicked between the pictures, the Doctor and Kevin, and Peri and Kevin. He did so like a good trick. And this one had a certain... roundness to it, a certain... elegance of self-fulfilment. Time to step up the game, he thought, and moved his fingers again...
Peri stopped near the log cabin.
'Where now?' she asked, with a sigh.
'To the left,' replied Kevin, indicating a narrow path past a couple of barrels. Peri stopped and cocked her head again. She listened for a moment or two.
'It's gone very quiet in here,' she observed, and indeed the background noise of the ride had gone down to just a few creaks and groans as the equipment settled down. Even the interminable 'Darling Clementine' was conspicuous by its absence.
'They've all knocked off,' shrugged Kevin.
'Just like that? The miners haven't knocked off, surely?'
'Waiting for the night shift to come on, eh?' answered Kevin cheerfully.
'I don't like it. Not one little bit,' protested Peri.
'Come on then,' answered Kevin, shortly, 'let's get out of here.' He motioned for her to lead the way again, and she took a breath and started walking along the path.
It wound up, along the wall of the gallery, climbing quite steeply to disappear into a fissure in the rock wall, the scene with the gold truck and cabin forming a valley between where they were now and the ride-track they'd been following since they came into the ride. Peri wondered idly just how Kevin had found this track from where she'd left him — come the back way, obviously...
Kevin let her walk on a little, then looked around, carefully. In the far distance, right at the end of this gallery, a boiler suit moved into sight briefly from the tunnel, just long enough to wave in Kevin's direction. After a glance at Peri's retreating back, Kevin waved back, then he turned to follow her.
For a split second he seemed to stagger off-balance and, as he did so, his head started to shimmer and fade out. The effect would have been perfectly familiar to the Doctor, who had seen the same thing happen to his cell door not too long ago, but even the Doctor would have doubted the evidence of his eyes, for in less time than it takes to blink, the shimmering had vanished and Kevin was himself again, the only detectable difference now being a wolfish grin on his face as he regarded the distant figure of the girl ahead of him, a grin that belonged far more comfortably on the face of Stefan.
Chapter Six
As with so many of these do-it-yourself jobs, reflected the Doctor, bitterly, it's the fiddly bits that take the time. It had been hard enough teasing the thread inch by inch from the old-fashioned buttons on the mattress while Kevin shielded him with his body, but now here he was, scrunched up on tip-toe in the corner of the room, still listening to the boy's life history, or what must be a good part of it, while with infinite care he tied his trusty sonic screwdriver to the side of the monitoring video camera.
'... and then the ruddy miners, or whatever they are, started hurling ruddy great rocks at us and here I am... look, what are you doing?'
The Doctor made the frantic signals so beloved of interviewers the world over as his right hand whirred around in Catherine Wheel fashion indicating, Keep it going...
'Wha'? Oh... yeah, all right... Well, before that, then, I was, er, born in Bootle, like, just outside the 'Pool, and I think me first memory must've been of me old mum bashin' the clothes wi' rocks down by the stream, 'cos we couldn't afford a spin-dryer, like...'
As Kevin joined most of his fellow Liverpudlians in fantasising about his humble origins and the hard but honest life of the good old days — a direct legacy of the Beatles' publicity machine — the Doctor sighed mightily and cursed th
e tiny loops. which snagged up and constituted the greater part of any length of twine he'd ever head dealings with, all over the Universe. He swore he'd never leave the TARDIS again without a ball of Oombrean Snagfree 'Fine twine for thee and thine', an advertising jingle he'd coined when in a very tight spot indeed back in the Globus Wars of Independence. Well, it was the sort of thing one wrote only in very tight corners, he whimpered to himself defensively. And the rebels had needed the money... 'That's still no excuse,' he muttered, angrily.
'Wha'?' queried Kevin, only to be met with more frantic 'Keep it going' signals. 'Oh, right,' he sighed, 'Well, did I tell you when I came to, I was being carried by these two blokes in boiler suits? I mean they seem to use them like guards or summat around here, an' everyone wears a boiler suit. Why they can't afford a decent set of clothes beats me, I mean they didn't have my disadvantages, did they, an' I don't wear a boiler suit. Not all the time, like. I mean, not that many boilermakers carry guns, do they, not where I come from any road. Be a strike if they did, you bet your life —'
The Doctor jumped down, a broad grin on his face. 'It's all right, you can stop now.' He looked up at the video camera and made as rude a face at it as he could manage.
'I was just getting to the interesting part,' grumbled Kevin.
'Really?' replied the Doctor, unable to keep the doubt from his voice. 'Well, that should do the trick.' He gestured with manifest pride at the sonic screwdriver tied to the side of the video camera.
'Oh great,' responded Kevin flatly, 'I'd hate to think it'd all been for nothing... What is it?'
'That?' The Doctor- shrugged modestly as he wiped his hands on one of his more florid handkerchieves. 'Oh, it's just a simple three-channel laser image loop on continuous feedback, with a quasi-random selector built into the secondary output control... I think.' The moment of honest doubt destroyed the effect of the bafflegab, but he didn't seem to notice...
'Yeah,' replied Kevin, nodding sagely; 'but what does it do?'
'Like all cameras, it lies,' replied the Doctor, shortly. 'It's sending back a picture of you, sitting on the bed, talking interminably, but in it I'm sitting next to you.'
'Sort of fascinated, like...'
'Sort of,' replied the Doctor, flinching at the thought.
'I can understand that,' Kevin said, nodding again with the wisdom of the ages, 'but why is that thing watching us anyway? I mean, this isn't your average building society or bookies, is it? I bet hardly anyone tries to knock over a place like this...'
'I believe it's meant to ensure that no one gets out, rather than the wrong people don't get in.'
'I know it'll take a long time, like, but whoever is watching that picture you fixed is going to smell a rat. After the first couple of days or so..
'I rather think he's going to be far too distracted by whichever game he's playing with Peri —'
'What?' asked Kevin, sharply now.
'Oh, don't worry,' replied the Doctor, rather glumly though, 'that's all he does — play games... Calls himself the Celestial Toymaker, or did last time we met.'
'Variety act, is he?'
'That's not a bad description,' smiled the Doctor.
'And er — you. Just who are you? His agent?'
'Heaven forbid!'
'So what, then?'
'My dear chap, you'd be none the wiser if I told you in infinite detail, and it would take an awfully long time. Let's just accept things as they are, shall we, and try and get out of here? Now, empty your pockets on the bed...'
None of which Kevin found even the slightest bit reassuring. Slowly, and watching the Doctor with great suspicion, he did as he was asked.
Three technicians in white laboratory coats stood nervously in front of the Mandarin's desk, waiting as he studied a very detailed and very complex electrical circuitry plan in front of him. Stefan stood behind them, a fact which seemed to have escaped none of them. After a long moment's consideration, the Mandarin spoke, quietly.
'The time lapse for visual response in the second phase will not be sufficient..
'Exactly, Lord,' exclaimed the technician, astonished as always by the Mandarin's immediate grasp of even the most complex technical problem.
'What solution do you propose?' asked the Mandarin, gently. Too gently. The technician gulped and timidly put forward his solution.
'I believe we should increase the diameter of the carrier here, Lord —' he leaned forward and gestured to one of the hundreds of lines on the diagram—'by not less than forty microns. That would solve the problem.'
The Mandarin studied for a moment, then beamed broadly. 'Most ingenious, Yatsumoto, thank you.' All three of the technicians joined the Mandarin in the broadest of grins, their obvious sense of relief far out of proportion to either the problem or its solution, unless you considered the Mandarin's usual penalty for failure... None of them knew, and never would, that the Mandarin had spotted the problem, and its solution, on first sight of the first plans. It had merely been a matter of who would spot it next, and who would solve it first. That, after all, was the nature of this particular game.
'Let California know the change in specification, will you?' asked the Mandarin.
'Immediately, Lord,' replied the technician and, with a small bow, all three turned and left, Stefan ushering them out. He closed the door softly. The Mandarin grinned coldly.
'You lose, Stefan.'
The henchman grinned ruefully. 'The little men are more cunning than I had realised, Lord.'
'You're not the first to notice that, I can assure you. Another hazard?'
'I can afford no more at present, Lord,' Stefan replied, with some small embarrassment.
'You'll have to win off someone else then, won't you, my boy? And soon...' The term 'my boy' when applied to Stefan seemed repulsive, and the glint behind the suggestion was not so much fatherly as ice-hard.
'I will, Lord,' replied Stefan, echoing the Mandarin's soft manner to convey dreadful threat.
'That, after all, is how the game is played, is it not?' The glint remained.
'Indeed, Lord.' Stefan turned to go, then stopped as he opened the door. 'Will you speak to Tokyo now, Lord? They have kept the satellite line open for some time.'
'Very well,' sighed the Mandarin and, with a wave of his hand dismissed Stefan, who closed the door quietly as he left.
The Mandarin passed a hand over his face in what was almost a human gesture of tiredness. He stood and wandered, as if aimlessly, to stand in front of a wall decorated with what: was too photographic to be called a painting, too diffused to be called a photograph. Years of study by a team of the best experts on Earth might eventually deduce it was a study of a gas-cloud, though not of this or any other known galaxy, and even then, they would have no way of knowing what it meant to the Mandarin, or why he passed his hand so gently over the surface, or what thoughts passed through his head to bring a softness to his eyes which had never been seen by another living being...
Abruptly, he took his hand away and, almost in anger, crossed back to his desk. He sat swiftly and pressed an ivory button set into the small console there. The viewing screen immediately came to life, with a head and shoulders picture of a Japanese man, white-haired and moustached, dressed, it would seem, in a severe business suit. The eyes were watchful, though they could see only the red light on the phone camera before him, the manner calm and forceful, a manner which could only be gained by years of high office, of the habit of command. The man bowed towards the Mandarin only very slightly.
'Lord,' he greeted, his English excellent.
'Toshiro,' returned the Mandarin, a careful note in his voice.
'My board of directors is anxious for news, Lord.'
'Your board of directors is anxious when you tell them to be, Toshiro.'
'Would that were so, Lord, but alas, they are independently minded, and not so easily led as you suppose.'
'I didn't say it was easy, Toshiro, but you lead them nevertheless.'
'
You are too kind, Lord.' Another small bow, but almost ironic now.
'You haven't been waiting for half an hour on satellite
costs to tell me that, Toshiro. What do you want?' 'A deadline, Lord. My factories are ready —'
'So are mine, Toshiro. And the Germans, and the Americans, the Taiwanese, even the French are ready.'
'When, Lord?' It was almost a whisper.
'Soon, Toshiro.'
'I need a more definite answer than that, Lord.'
'Your needs are familiar to me, Toshiro,' replied the Mandarin, the soft tone and the hard glint never more in evidence than now. 'Profits, raw profits on a scale that only I can provide. Profits which you can join me in, but which you can never, never demand. Is that not so, Toshiro?'
DOCTOR WHO - THE NIGHTMARE FAIR Page 7
