Doctor Who: Transit (19 page)

'I knew that,' said the young man.

'Who are you?' asked the Doctor,

'What you're looking at is an infotainment construct called Yak Harris that we bootlegged from the mainframe at English 37. We're using it as a template to talk to you.'

'I'll call you Yak,' said the Doctor.

'Fine by us,' said Yak. 'Once we got your signal it took us simply ages to work out a method of communication.

'How long?'

'At least thirty seconds.'

'That long?'

'We had to start from scratch.'

'I take it that you're not the whole entity.'

'We're a subset. Actually we're son of subset, the revenge of the subset, subset two, subset the sequel. There are probably other subsets that can communicate better than us but we're the subset that was on the logical pathway that led to you.'

'That doesn't seem very efficient.'

'You're the one with the junk transmitter.'

'Why were you looking for me?'

'We're sick, we need a doctor,
you
are
the
Doctor.'

'You want a consultation?'

'Yes.'

'Right then,' said the Doctor leaning forward. 'What seems to be the problem?'

Achebe Gorge

The ramp leading from the transit station to the surface had a gravity gradient from normal to one-third G. The ramp's actual physical gradient steepened as you climbed higher; it was designed to facilitate a seamless adjustment to Martian weight Even so Zamina stumbled when she got to the top. Like everybody else she immediately looked for the canyon walls. The thin air made everything clear and bright Zamina had expected the floor of the gorge to be smooth and featureless, but instead she found herself looking out over a broker-landscape of rust-coloured ridges and dark green pastures.

She realized that what she'd thought was a line of dark cloud across the horizon was the far canyon wall, four kilometres high. Zamina turned around and looked up. The scarp went up for ever until it was lost in the atmospheric haze. A huge bas-relief of President Achebe's face had been blasted into the rock six hundred metres up. The sheer weight of his profile seemed to bear down and overwhelm her inner ear. She felt herself losing her balance and toppling backwards.

Strong hands caught her and kept her upright,

'Easy there,' said a voice by her ear. 'Everybody does thai the first time.' The hands let go and Zamina turned. 'All right now?'

Zamina thought he looked like something out of a commercial, with his red curly hair and easy lopsided grin. He was wearing a white linen blouse with an OXFAM tag stuck on the breast. She half expected him to sell her life insurance.

He nodded over her shoulder at Benny. 'Is that your friend?'

'Who are you?'

'My name's Colin,' he said. 'I'm your resettlement officer.'

Passive selection, Colin called it as he led them away from the station, schoolyard sociology. The selection process by resettlement officers becomes an interaction between them and their clients. Colin always referred to the refugees as clients, he was very careful about it. And about not asking about the riots.

The solid column of refugees emerging from the station was slowly breaking apart as Colin's co-workers hived off small groups and led them away.

Zamina saw the strategy at once. En masse the refugees had a kind of power, a latent power, of course, formed out of shared experiences, but a power none the less. Fragmented like this they merely became small groups of tired individuals. Even Benny seemed defeated by Colin's easy charm, meekly following him as he led them away.

Colin got them to sit in the back of his Martian trike, one of many parked in neat rows to the side of the station. It had big spindly rubber-lyred wheels and a gaily coloured rainhood over the rear seats.

'What makes it go?' asked Zamina.

'I do,' said Colin getting astride the driver's saddle. He pointed out the pedals and the gear train that drove the back wheels. 'Couldn't do this in heavier gravity,' he said.

'I thought we were going to be put in camps,' said Zamina.

'Dangerous things, refugee camps,' said Colin, 'all that negative emotion sloshing about. Often they breed more problems than the crisis that created them. Dispersion's the way to go.'

'Australia,' said Benny.

Colin grunted and stood on the pedals, steering the trike out of the bikepark. Low gravity or not, Zamina noticed that he had strong well-muscled legs. She also realised why the short trousers he was wearing were always called 'pedal pushers'. They turned on to a tarmac road that headed further into the gorge.

'Most of the people around here are descended from Australian refugees,' said Colin. 'Including me.'

'Is that why you volunteered?' asked Zamina.

'No, I'm a specialist in population trauma,' said Colin. 'This is my job.'

'But there's thousands of us,' said Zamina.

'Most of the rest are volunteers.'

Zamina felt a sudden chill.

'He's the awkward squad,' said Benny.

'Right,' said Colin. 'But don't worry, I'm not the police or anything. You are supposed to be screened before you get on the trains, we're only supposed to get what we call the PTPs, passive trauma population, here. But you always get mistakes in an operation on this scale.'

'So what are we then?' asked Zamina.

'PDEs,' said Colin. 'Potentially Disruptive Elements. But like I said, don't worry. What you've done isn't my business.'

'Where are you taking us then?'

'Home,' said Colin, 'to meet my mother.'

Home was a bungalow built from blocks of cut Martian sandstone and roofed with white tiles. Colin's mother fed them grilled steak and iced tea at a table of laminated hardwood in the small kitchen. She smiled more than she talked but there were lines of pain etched into the comers of her eyes.

Colin didn't stop talking. A constant stream of anecdotes and trivia, most of it funny and all of it engaging, Zamina felt like she was being wrapped up in streamers of cotton wool. She wondered if it was natural talent or whether Colin had trained for it.

She found herself growing tired in big sudden waves. It was like the time she and Roberta had tried working right around the world, a punter in every time zone. Nearly got ripped off in Los Angeles when she fell asleep under a trick.

Transitlag, Roberta called it.

There were two single beds waiting for them, with clean sheets of yellow calico, side by side in the spare bedroom. The sheets felt cool and abrasive against her skin as she climbed between them. The pillow was soft and smelt of flowers.

She woke up with a hand across her mouth.

'Be quiet,' whispered Benny, 'I've got to tell you something and I don't have much time. Do you understand?'

Zamina nodded and the hand was removed. Benny loomed over her, a faint wash of light from the window illuminating her face. Her expression was strained, vertical lines on her forehead, the lips pinched and tight. Her eyes were in shadow.

'You remember the. man in the cavern, the one I called the Doctor?'

'Yes.'

'You have to find him and give him this.' Benny put something in Zamina's hands. It was the little book that she always carried with her. 'Tell him that "its" control is restricted outside of the transit system.'

'How?'

'Hurry,' said Benny, 'I can't fight it for long.'

Zamina rolled from the bed, casting around for her clothes.

'No time,' said Benny. 'Go, Go!'

Zamina actually saw Benny's face change as if an enormous shutter had clanged down in front of it.

'Hey, girl,' said Benny, 'you wouldn't rat me out?'

Zamina slammed her fist between Benny's eyes. The eyeballs rolled up in their sockets and Benny fell sideways on to the floor. Zamina stepped over her to gather up her clothes.

Damned if she was going to run out of the house naked.

The House

Blondie had soft hair on his chest. In the daylight it was so blond as to be invisible but in the darkness when touch became their primary sense it lit up like neon on Kadiatu's intimate map of his body.

They'd made love again, with him on top this time. Kadiatu locking her legs across his hips, her arms around his back, straining to drag him inside her, to make him part of herself. Serious sex this time, no jokes or laughter, just deep mammalian instinct ascending through a complex strata of emotions.

They slept afterwards, exhausted and loose-limbed, tangled into the bedsheets and each other.

Kadiatu dreamed that she stood shipwreck naked on a beach as a storm swept in from the sea. She was breathing hard and the rhythm of her lungs matched the rhythm of the water as it broke against the shore.

In her dream the family dead walked out from the sea towards her. They came up the beach as a chain of corpses, stamping out the death dance in the pale sand. The beating of their feet was the rhythm of the sea, the rhythm of her heart beating.

Death had robbed them of their faces and of the insignia on their uniforms. It reduced them all to a single nation, a single race of people without division or quarrel. They danced towards her and with the total certainty that comes in dreams she knew that they wanted her sacrifice.

'What can you offer?' they demanded. 'We gave our lives, some short, some long, some crying, some cursing. What can you give so that the children may live?'

'My life,' moaned Kadiatu, 'my life for the children.'

'Your life was pledged before you were born,' said the dead 'What else have you got?'

Lightning lit the hollow sockets of their eyes.

A rumble of thunder in the far distance made Kadiatu open her eyes. There was nothing but stars through the open window The thunder continued, resolving into a low continuous rumble that increased in volume until the glass panes rattled in their frames. Kadiatu got to the window in time to see it come over the hill

The aircraft was a wedge-shaped patch of black, running lights flashing on each stubby wing. As she watched, it dropped vertically on to the lawn, landing with a burst of blue flame. In the silence that followed she could hear the distinctive cracking sound of carbon fibre cooling down from a white' heat.

'Shit,' she said stumbling back to the bed and groping for her jeans. 'Blondie, get up.'

Blondie woke up when Kadiatu managed to find the light switch. He looked at her stupidly as she pulled her jeans on and jammed her feet into her trainers.

'Get dressed,' she told him. Her T-shirt had found its way under the bed; by the time she retrieved it Blondie was already lacing up his boots. Kadiatu wadded up her socks and underwear into a tight ball and stuffed them into a jacket pocket.

As they ran downstairs she tried not to trip over her laces.

The fuselage and wings bore a long-dead flag, a polar projection of the earth supported by oak leaves laid down with non-reflective paint. The Doctor was sitting casually on the wing's leading edge, talking to the pilot. The Doctor said something and the pilot turned her head in their direction. Kadiatu saw starlight reflected off white marble eyes.

'Hey,' said Blondie, 'isn't that ...'

The Angel Francine. Here and running taxi service for the little man with the weird eyes. Kadiatu felt a thrill of fear that had nothing to do with monsters or alien computer viruses.

A hatch whirred open to the rear of the cockpit, a metal stirrup ladder unfolding forward of the wing. The Doctor waved them in. 'Welcome to Deux Ex Machina Airways,' he said.

The rear section had four ejection seats mounted two by two. Kadiatu eased in beside Blondie and helped him buckle down the harness.

'I've never been in an aircraft before,' he said.

'Don't worry,' said the Doctor. 'Flying's as easy as falling off a bicycle.'

'Especially when the pilot's blind,' said Kadiatu.

Francine lifted them on thrusters to ground plus twenty metres, tilted the nose back and pulled three Gs straight up. Blondie's eyeballs were showing a lot of white by the time they levelled off. A sudden tremor shook the airframe and the ride became unnaturally smooth. On a short hop like this they didn't need to go supersonic. Kadiatu figured that Francine just liked to break windows.

The widescreen monitor at the front of the section showed them a forward view and avionics data. At one thousand metres the lights of southern England moved deceptively slowly.

'I hope there's a film,' said the Doctor.

'It'll have to be a short one,' said Kadiatu.

'Is she really blind?' asked Blondie.

'As a bat,' said the Doctor.

The jet tilted forward and the lights of central London rushed up to meet them.

STS Central - Olympus Mons

The conference had been going on for over an hour and Ming was running hard to sustain her position. If she'd been dealing with politicians it would have been easier; politicians were sensitive to public opinion and Ming had a whole section of the KGB working on that.

Instead the holographic figures spaced around the table wen of the regional mandarins, non-elected and difficult to touch Each of them was sitting at identical tables around the system Washington, Brazilia, Harare, Beijing, Tehran, Jacksonville-Zagreb, all the power centres. Hologram eyes reading hologram body language and looking for weakness.

Most of them were old, old enough to remember the decade that followed the war. They could feel the same thing now, the crust shifting beneath their feet, the sharp smell of sudden political death. They were old, these mandarins, old and scared and dangerous.

Damage limitation was the name of the game and they wen making Ming work hard. The regional bureaucracies wanted to shift responsibility for the evacuation of the Lowell Projects on to the STS and the relief NGOs. Budget bar graphs in primary colours on the table top went up and down like steam pistons Zagreb had got the notion from somewhere that the crisis on Pluto had its roots in the Stunnel accident.

Only Jacksonville wasn't hitching; they'd been getting disaster grants for decades for the project in Achebe Gorge and saw the refugees as an opportunity to grab a bigger share of the cake.