Doctor Who_ Slow Empire Part 10

'So this is supposed to be one of the great hubs of Imperial commerce or whatever?' Fitz said. 'Then where is everybody?'

The TARDIS had materialised in a narrow alley, featureless except for a broken bulb fixed to the wall and several piles of rotting mulch that once might have been paper. They had followed the alley out into a street, equally deserted, through which the wind whistled. Crumbling tenement blocks towered to either side, dark and deserted. Many of the windows were broken not through any act of vandalism, but through the way that structures settling over time impact on the gla.s.s in them and shatter it.

'It doesn't exactly seem to be bustling, I'll admit,' said the Doctor. 'Possibly the TARDIS extrapolations weren't as accurate as I d thought.'

Anji, meanwhile, was looking up at a ma.s.sive painted h.o.a.rding fixed to the side of one of the buildings. The face of it was blistered and crazed (in the sense of being cracked) in a way that said that, if you were to touch it physically, the ancient paint would slough off in a slower of dust. It was still, however, possible to make out the portrait of a figure: an elderly, grandfatherish man seated in an armchair, the perspective such that his eyes appeared to regard you, wherever you might be standing, with a kind of stern but proud affection.

'What does that say?' she asked the world in general, squinting at the blocky lettering, in an unknown language, stencilled over the portrait.

'It says something to the nature of UNCLE C CHUMLY IS IS... OVERLOOKING OVERLOOKING, I think it is... YOU YOU,' said Jamon de la Rocas, who was currently the only person in the world in general who had a chance of knowing what it said.

'What, not noticing us, you mean?' said Anji. 'Uncle Chumly?'

'Well, on mature reflection, it probably says WATCHING WATCHING OVER OVER YOU YOU,' said Jamon.

The little group headed on through the grid of empty streets, under a slate-grey sky that held not the slightest smear of cloud, the only break from it being when they pa.s.sed under the occasional, derelict remains of a monorail track. The oppressive sense of desolation struck a nerve in Fitz that seemed in some way deeper and more subtle than merely walking through a bunch of ruins could account for. It took a bit of thinking before he worked out what it was.

There was no sound of anything anything save the wind. There were no birds or the local equivalent of what birds might be here no insects, no plant life growing through the cracks in the paving. Nothing, however minuscule and insignificant, living here at all. It was as if the buildings had simply been placed here with no function but to be the facades of some artificial maze. And he, the Doctor, Anji and Jamon were the sole inhabitants, the only rats running through it. save the wind. There were no birds or the local equivalent of what birds might be here no insects, no plant life growing through the cracks in the paving. Nothing, however minuscule and insignificant, living here at all. It was as if the buildings had simply been placed here with no function but to be the facades of some artificial maze. And he, the Doctor, Anji and Jamon were the sole inhabitants, the only rats running through it.

'I've been noticing something,' he said to the Doctor, who was striding along, hands thrust into the pockets of his Happy overcoat, as if he hadn't a care in the world.

'Oh, yes?' said the Doctor turning to him. 'What have you noticed?'

'I've been noticing that since we've been in the Empire, in this sprained time of yours, it's like we've been doing the same sort of things, over and over again, with only one or two changes each time. I mean, look...' Fitz's gesture took in the group of them as they walked. 'We've been doing this a h.e.l.l of a lot, just going round various places in a gang. I mean, one or two of us split off occasionally for a while, sometimes, but then we all sort of come banging back together again and carry on.'

'Sometimes it's a great comfort to be part of a gang,' the Doctor said mildly. 'Sometimes that's just what's needed.'

'Yes, but it's happening over and over over again,' said Fitz, 'and there's a kind of unnatural feel to it, like something's forcing us to do it, somehow. I mean, usually we're lucky if we end up spending time on the same again,' said Fitz, 'and there's a kind of unnatural feel to it, like something's forcing us to do it, somehow. I mean, usually we're lucky if we end up spending time on the same planet planet. Back in the TARDIS you said something about a malign influence operating on the Empire, so maybe it's doing something to us. I don't know, nudging us to do things in some way, doing something to our heads. I mean, we've seen how you've been acting lately, and '

'Really?' The Doctor's voice was perfectly light, in the way that manages to convey that one had better be d.a.m.ned well careful what one says next. 'And how, precisely, have I been acting?'

Fitz looked into his eyes and, while he saw no sense of threat there, decided on the whole that it would be better not to push it.

'Forget it,' he said. 'It's not important.'

'Indeed so,' said the Doctor. 'Sometimes one thing merely leads to another and you don't have to bring a malign, benign or any other kind of influence into it at all. Is there some ultimately sinister and evil purpose to the fact that large portions of humanity on Earth get up and go to work at the same time?'

'Not at all,' said Jamon, who had been listening to this, in the tones of one wanting to make a contribution. 'I have witnessed such a thing on countless worlds. It is merely how slave labour on those worlds operates.'

'Even in entirely random circ.u.mstances you get the odd Markov chain,' the Doctor continued, definitively, 'Developments, recurrences and extended strings of phenomena that appear to make sense. Certain, telling phrases and constructions repeated any number of times. You'll remember how I mentioned iterations in a probability s.p.a.ce back on Shakrath? Well, on any other scale than the immediately local, attempting to manipulate the process simply won't work. The sheer fractal proliferation of vectors means you'd have to think an impossible number of moves ahead...'

'We're coming up on something,' said Anji.

And indeed they were. They had failed to see it before because it was of a slate-grey almost matching the sky. It was a ma.s.sive pyramid, rising above the roofline in the distance though quite how far away it was still impossible to tell.

'Well, that looks like it might be of some interest,' the Doctor said, switching instantly from the dictatorial to the cheerfully enthusiastic. 'If there's anything to actually find on Goronos, I'm sure we'll find it in there.'

'You certainly might, Doctor,' said a new voice. 'Though not, perhaps, in the way that you expect.'

From the buildings all around burst human figures, several hundred of them at least, Fitz thought, they seemed to be human, but there was something horribly wrong with them. It was not that they were diseased, or skeletal, or mouldering: it was that they were obviously very recently dead. Their pale skins had a bluish corpse pallor about them. Their chests had an unnatural stillness about them that showed not even the tiny, subconsciously recognised signs of respiration. Their eyes had rolled up in their heads to show their whites. Even so, they still moved, muscles twitching in co-ordination as though receiving electrical shocks shocks, no doubt, provided by the coronet of electrodes attached to each of their heads.

'A stealthy way in which to wait in ambush, yes?' said the voice. 'Instruct the heart to stop, so not the slightest tremor of movement is betrayed. Vestigial anabolic energy can keep the motor functions going for some small while thereafter. Of course, the bodies aren't much use for anything after, save for processing into nutrient slurry. Still, never fret, there's plenty more where these fine chaps came from...'

The Doctor, meanwhile, was casting about himself, trying to locate the source of the voice and seemingly oblivious to the ma.s.s of walking dead men slowly advancing on himself and his companions.

'Who are you?' he called. 'Do you know me? You sound as though you know me. Show yourself!'

'Ah, but of course, Doctor,' said the voice. 'Yes, of course, I do know you, in a sense. Though not in others, most unfortunately. In that light, allow me to introduce myself to you...'

A new figure stepped from a doorway. It was tall and pale and quite definitely alive. Its face was marked with jet-black lines and whorls and it wore the robes of an Amba.s.sador.

'My name is Jarel,' he said. 'I that is, we, I suppose have been expecting you. You've taken your good time about it, I must say we feared that you might have become lost. My estimable colleague on Shakrath, it seems, had no luck in winning your compliance. Well, then, let us see what effect some time spent in the Cyberdyne might have...'

Fitz thought he heard the Doctor say something in reply but it was drowned out by Anji's sudden scream as the walking corpses surged. Cold, stiff bodies that crawled with static electricity piled into him. Clutching hands pulled him down into their jerking ma.s.s. He felt the bite of metal into his forehead and temples and then he knew no

'How long have I been here?' Fitz demanded. 'How long have I been stuck in this place?'

'Not long at all, really' said the Doctor, contriving to look shifty.

'You're contriving to look shifty,' Fitz told him, 'which not only means you're lying like a dog on a new carpet, but that I'd probably want to slit my wrists if you told me, right? Besides, "not long" for you could be a couple of hundred years and you wouldn't break a sweat. Some of us go wrinkly and bits fall off, you know?'

'Let's just say,' said the Doctor, 'that you've suffered no physical harm whatsoever, shall we? Please trust me. I know whereof I speak.'

Fitz sighed. 'All right, then. First bit drops off, though, and you're gonna find yourself on the receiving end of a galactic malpractice suit like you wouldn't believe.'

Some small, buried part of his mind noted that he was taking all this very well. Strangely well, in fact. Either the Doctor, as Fitz sometimes suspected, projected a kind of aura which helped people deal with any and all manner of utterly horrendous situations or his time with the Doctor had simply blown half of the fuses in the parts of him that would react to such things.

'So where have we been for all this indeterminate but probably really appalling amount of time?' he said. 'What's been happening to us?' He banged the electrode headset he was holding against the simple console in front of him. 'And what's this this thing?' thing?'

'It's really quite simple,' the Doctor said. 'It's just a matter of '

Just then, the voice of Anji came from outside the hatch.

'I've found him,' she said. She seemed to be in something of a bad temper. 'You wouldn't b.l.o.o.d.y believe believe how hard it was to find him in this pathetic triangular cargo-cult knock-off of a Borg Cube, but I found him.' how hard it was to find him in this pathetic triangular cargo-cult knock-off of a Borg Cube, but I found him.'

'Excellent!' the Doctor turned back to Fitz. 'I'll have to tell you on the way. Do you feel up to pulling up your trousers and making to move, yet?'

'From what I understand of it,' said the Doctor, 'Goronos was basically a ma.s.sive and extended archive for the local duster of Imperial worlds. It was a highly stratified society of Masters and slaves, the lower orders acting in the manner of functionaries, but within an entirely limited remit, often charged with the making of a single and specific decision, which most of the time had already been made in any case.'

'Sounds like most middle management I've ever had to deal with in my life,' said Anji. 'So what happened then?'

She, the Doctor and a still slightly shaken-looking Fitz were following a narrow steel corridor lined with cubicle hatches. It was the seventh or eighth they had thus far followed, each entirely similar to the last. Fortunately, there was little chance of getting lost. For her previous wanderings of several hours, the Doctor had given Anji a small indelible pencil with which she had marked her progress, looking through the little porthole in the hatches and rather more definitively marked the way back from what was now their destination.

'The equivalent of an industrial, political and informational revolution combined,' the Doctor said. 'b.l.o.o.d.y insurgence, transition from steam to atomic power in a single jump, ma.s.s hanging of the original Masters, the invention of a Difference Engine, storming of this, that and the other and the discovery of parallel processing. With the dust settling and the by-now highly interconnected infrastructure frankly stuffed to quote one of the greatest thinkers of my, your or anybody else's times they ended up being forced into a particularly draconian form of communalism merely to survive. Nothing wrong with communalism, of course, because it's merely the name we give to those mechanisms that support people as a whole but on Goronos it was tainted by the slave mentality fundamental to what remained of its original society.

'They couldn't think in terms other than their original function; they invented a leader for themselves called Uncle Chumly and reiterated the old forms. They wired themselves together into what's, in effect, a ma.s.sive supercomputer each individual nothing more than an on/off-switch. There are millions of them here possibly billions all partic.i.p.ating in the production of the kind of informational meta-matrix that would look outdated on a desktop on twenty-firstcentury Earth. I said that communalism any community, in fact is a mechanism for looking after the people whom it comprises and this is a community stripped to the bones. Most of its processing power is simply used to generate a virtual environment, which is then fed into the sensoria of those producing it. There are what you might call "mobile" units rather like those walking corpses Jarel the Amba.s.sador used to capture us, only slightly less dead used for maintenance purposes, but they comprise less than a fraction of a percentile. The population of Goronos, essentially, is what you see here.

'All these people, just so many hot-swappable processing units, fed through tubes and doing nothing except press one b.u.t.ton or another, are being fed the product of their collective work a life which they think makes them content. You and Fitz were experiencing that, but your virtual worlds were falling to pieces around you, because the meta-system wasn't sophisticated enough to deal with the complexities of those who are truly human...'

Anji had been following the Doctor's explanation, but she still felt that numb kind of astonishment one gets when one is confronted by something one can't understand. She couldn't understand the stupidity stupidity of it. of it.

'This is stupid,' she said. 'It's madness. These millions of people subsuming themselves. I could understand it if it was something like wiring all their minds together to produce something vast and G.o.dlike, something bigger than the sum of its parts, but why do it for something that's not even good as a single human being?'

'One thing leads to another,' the Doctor said. 'You take one step, it makes it easier to take the next one and you can only see it's madness when you see the end result. The original intention was no doubt to simply take care of people and it certainly ended up doing that, just not in the sense it was meant.'

'How do you know all this?' Anji asked. 'How did you find all this out?'

The Doctor looked a little proud despite himself. 'When the mobile units wired me into the Machine, I went through the same sort of abreaction as you and then Fitz. It took quite a lot less than a second, and I managed to overload a large section of the network. It tried to compensate by feeding me every sc.r.a.p of information it had to bolster up the virtual construct, and from it I was able to infer a reasonably coherent extended history.' He frowned momentarily, as though regretting a personal failure that he really should have been up to overcoming. 'I tried to get into the Archives themselves while in that virtual state, but found myself locked out by some surprisingly sophisticated countermeasures. It seems that somebody I'm sure we can all guess who has actually been reprogramming reprogramming this whole affair, using techniques quite out of place for this world. That's something I really think we're going to have to Aha! I a.s.sume that this is the right place?' this whole affair, using techniques quite out of place for this world. That's something I really think we're going to have to Aha! I a.s.sume that this is the right place?'

Anji noted the mark she had made on one of the hatches. 'That's the place.'

JAMON DE LA ROCAS WOKE TO SEE THE SMILING FACE OF UNCLE CHUMLY ON THE TELESCREEN. HE BROKE HIS FAST NUTRITIOUSLY IN HIS APARTMENT-BUILDING CANTEEN. HE TOOK THE MONORAIL SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY TO HIS POST AT THE BUREAU OF INFORMATIONAL EXCHANGE. AFTER A PRODUCTIVE DAY OF WORK HE RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT AND FELL ASLEEP, HAPPY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF A JOB WELL DONE.

Jamon de la Rocas sat in his cubicle, sickly paste fed slickly into him through a tube, pressing one b.u.t.ton after another. A light would come on in the console before him, and he would press the appropriate b.u.t.ton. A light would come on in the console before him, and he would press the appropriate b.u.t.ton. A light would come on in the console before him...

His gaze never left the console. His eyes gave not the slightest flicker of awareness. There was nothing about him save for the sense of a mechanical device in motion: electrical impulses triggering contraction and relaxation of muscle fibre, the interplay of those muscles doing nothing more with the potentially marvellous mechanism of a human hand except for having it press a specified b.u.t.ton, over and over again.

'What's wrong with him?' Anji said, looking through the hatch. 'Is that what we were like?'

'No, you you weren't,' said the Doctor. He seemed a little worried. 'You were displaying all sorts of secondary twitches and tremors as your minds the very physical structure of your brains tried to shake off what was imposed upon them and rea.s.sert themselves. All it took was for me to talk to you for a while and you broke free of your own accord.' weren't,' said the Doctor. He seemed a little worried. 'You were displaying all sorts of secondary twitches and tremors as your minds the very physical structure of your brains tried to shake off what was imposed upon them and rea.s.sert themselves. All it took was for me to talk to you for a while and you broke free of your own accord.'

He leaned in through the hatch and lightly touched Jamon's bald head, into which the circlet of electrodes had been firmly sunk. There was no reaction whatsoever not even the minuscule and unseen reaction one might get from touching anything anything alive, no matter how lightly, as opposed to something inert. A reaction that one doesn't, consciously see, but of which one is subconsciously and definitely aware. alive, no matter how lightly, as opposed to something inert. A reaction that one doesn't, consciously see, but of which one is subconsciously and definitely aware.

'I think,' said the Doctor, 'that it's a question of the hardware being too compatible. The basic nature is being overridden by something that was designed, specifically, to fit it...'

'So what you're saying is that Jamon isn't human?' Anji said. 'I knew it. I always said that there was something wrong about him.'

'I don't mean that at all,' said the Doctor, a little sternly. 'What on earth, as it were, would a human human be doing out here this far from Earth in any case? It's more akin to the way that a virus that hasn't made the species-jump can affect cats, let us say for example, and not leave humans with so much as a sniffle. The Machine was designed for people of the Empire, so of be doing out here this far from Earth in any case? It's more akin to the way that a virus that hasn't made the species-jump can affect cats, let us say for example, and not leave humans with so much as a sniffle. The Machine was designed for people of the Empire, so of course course it's going to subsume him utterly.' He considered the insensate form of Jamon for a moment, tapping at his mouth with a finger in the manner of one in the throes of a painful dilemma, and making sure that everyone d.a.m.ned well knows it. 'I really hate to do this,' he said at last, 'but I'm going to have to take a bit of drastic action.' it's going to subsume him utterly.' He considered the insensate form of Jamon for a moment, tapping at his mouth with a finger in the manner of one in the throes of a painful dilemma, and making sure that everyone d.a.m.ned well knows it. 'I really hate to do this,' he said at last, 'but I'm going to have to take a bit of drastic action.'

He reached into the cubicle and pulled the circlet of electrodes from Jamon's head. For a moment, the pale man simply sat there, dumbly, staring at the console with its two b.u.t.tons and two lights.

Then he opened his mouth and screamed.

'I will kill this Jarel!' Jamon de la Rocas snarled. 'Great shall be his pain as I tie him to some handily convenient promontory such as I might find affixed among the furnishings of the foul lair in which he no doubt lurks, and then with great and meticulously considered care I shall...'

He had been pontificating in this vein for quite some time, seemingly more intent upon telling himself what he was going to do to the Goronian Amba.s.sador than taking notice of those around him. It was as if, for the moment, he had retreated into his own private world.

Of course, Anji thought, the unkind might say that he had already spent quite enough time in a private world, as had they all but, when she looked at Jamon in his utter rage, she had the queasy sense of looking at somebody who had been unforgivably violated. She wasn't sure if the fact that he had absolutely refused to talk of what he had experienced in the Cyberdyne was a good thing or not.

As the Doctor led them on through corridors lined with hatches, she turned to Fitz. 'What happened to you? What did you experience?'

'It was...' Fitz groped for the words, and in the end was forced to settle on, 'It's was just strange, you know? I've always had this dream well, just a sort of happy little fantasy in the back of my head, to be honest of being a rock star. Striding about the stage and stuff, centre of attention and all that. It seemed to pick up on that and tried to give me it but it got everything wrong. It was like the only way it could understand what I wanted to be was in the negative, so it was like, "I'm an evil person and I'm going to do this evil thing because I'm evil, and now I'm going to go and do something else evil over there." You know what I mean?' Fitz scowled, 'And the whole idea of fab drugs and groupies waiting in the hotel with a bottle of baby oil was right out, I can tell you. I ended up with all the bad stuff and none of the things that would make it any good. Thing is...' The scowl turned into a frown. 'Thing is, I could get a breath of why all these people would do it. This what do you call it, the Cyberdyne, didn't quite know what a guitar was, but when I was playing what it thought thought was a guitar, in front of a crowd, it felt a bit like being a G.o.d or something...' He shook his head as if to clear it. 'It didn't make up for the rest, but I can see how it would be seductive.' was a guitar, in front of a crowd, it felt a bit like being a G.o.d or something...' He shook his head as if to clear it. 'It didn't make up for the rest, but I can see how it would be seductive.'

Anji thought about her own hallucinations. From what she could remember of them, before they had twisted into strangeness, she has simply led a reasonably contented life as what was basically the equivalent of a financial consultant. Were her innermost dreams so boring and conventional? The pale man who had chased her was obvious enough, symbolically it was her mind reminding her of the Amba.s.sador, Jarel, who was responsible for those hallucinations in the first place. But what of that other man, the man who had saved her in one sense and had talked her into waking up?

It was probably some subconscious dream-construct of the Doctor, she supposed, so of course there would be any number of details that didn't match but she had formed the distinct impression that he hadn't been any version of the Doctor at all. So just where had she come up with him? Where had he come from? Who was was he? Anji had the queasy feeling of her head being invaded by forces quite other than the Cyberdyne itself, and she didn't like the feeling in the slightest. he? Anji had the queasy feeling of her head being invaded by forces quite other than the Cyberdyne itself, and she didn't like the feeling in the slightest.

The Doctor himself had said that she was what was the word abreacting of her own accord when he had found her, but had he been a bit more forceful in helping that along than he had admitted to? Instead of, say, talking to her and bringing her out of it, what if he had shouted and slapped at her in a way that was, in the end, only slightly less intrusive than when he had just ripped the electrodes from Jamon's head? She couldn't imagine the Doctor doing something like that but, then again, one of the lessons of life that we eventually learn is that people are forever doing what we imagine they are incapable of.

The alternative explanation, of course, was that the 'Doctor' she had met in her hallucination had been constructed purely by herself, that it was some avatar thrown up by her subconscious some part of herself that was trying to tell her that, whatever else it might want to be, it certainly didn't want to be a financial consultant. Either way, it worried her deeply to have her mind being played with so not least because of the sneaking suspicion that at least one of the things playing with her mind might be herself.

'Come along,' the Doctor said. He seemed to be offering encouragement rather than merely chivvying them along. Back in dashing, running and swinging-fromthe-chandeliers mode, Anji thought vaguely. Good for you, if n.o.body else.

'Where are we going again?' she asked him. 'I only ask, purely in the spirit that you haven't even bothered to tell us in the first place.'

'Didn't I?' the Doctor said, trying to inject a sense of apology into his voice but not noticeably succeeding. 'I'm sure I did. Are you sure I didn't tell you where we were going?'

Something in Anji knew just knew knew that if she let it, this could devolve into an extended Abbott and Costello routine along the lines of who had said what to whom. that if she let it, this could devolve into an extended Abbott and Costello routine along the lines of who had said what to whom.

'Just tell me,' she said with murderous restraint. 'Just tell me where you're taking us.'

'Well, I told you that I tried to access the Archives of this place by somewhat intangible means, yes?' the Doctor said promptly, apparently picking up on her tone. 'With a notable lack of success. I did learn, however, that this place still fulfils the function that Goronos once did, in part that of receiving and relaying information from the worlds in this sector of the Empire. It strikes me that this information must be integrated and compiled somewhere, and I thought it might be a good idea to see where that place is.'

'So where is it,' said Anji, 'exactly?'

'We're in a big pyramid.' The Doctor gave her a look. 'Where do you think would be the best place to try?'

They made their way up through the pyramid. It wasn't a question of finding stairwells or elevators: the certain corridors led on a natural if barely perceptible incline, so that their progress could be more or less described as gradually ascending in a spiral.

Occasionally, they would sense the coming of some of the so-called 'mobile' units, going about their work as they maintained the body informational. They avoided them.

Fitz, for his part, felt increasingly uneasy. He was aware that everyone else here had quite enough on their plate in the uneasiness stakes, but he got the feeling that what he was feeling was unique. Possibly it was the fact that he had spent longer than anyone else in the Cyberdyne longer than anybody else except Jamon, but Jamon's reaction had been completely different and he wasn't talking about it but he had the vague sense that it had instilled something into him, some obscure connection with it. It was as if he could feel the minds of the subsumed millions around him, feel their thoughts as they ticked away like clockwork within an artificially imposed, recursive and utterly limited set of parameters. The c.u.mulative sense of knowing that there must be something better, knowing that some other life was possible, but without the slightest clue as to how to set about finding even the slightest possibility of achieving it.

If only I could load the International Times International Times into this lot, he thought, thinking of an underground paper he had picked up during his personally discontinuous time in the late sixties on Earth, the somewhat naive radicalism of which had subsequently dated like n.o.body's business. In the context of the Goronos Cyberdyne, though, it would have been truly mind-blowing. Blown minds in their millions. into this lot, he thought, thinking of an underground paper he had picked up during his personally discontinuous time in the late sixties on Earth, the somewhat naive radicalism of which had subsequently dated like n.o.body's business. In the context of the Goronos Cyberdyne, though, it would have been truly mind-blowing. Blown minds in their millions.

Over and above it all, Fitz remembered what he had said to the Doctor just before their capture, about how they seemed to be doing the same kinds of things over and over again, how it seemed that they were merely running through some predetermined maze. It was therefore no surprise to find, when they at last reached the top of the pyramid, an elegantly proportioned chamber with the TARDIS taking pride of place in it, next to a bulky, inert-looking object under a dust sheet.

'He must have had some of his "mobile" units bring it up here,' said the Doctor. There was no question as to who was meant by he he. 'These Amba.s.sadors seem to have a singular compulsion to try to get inside the old girl, I must say. It's all a little dubious, if you ask me.'

'Then we must find the man and have it out with him!' Jamon declared, shaking his fist with the vehemence of anger. 'Hunt the cur down and press our point all the better, press the point of a trusty dagger blade within his lights!'

'I think that might be an extraordinarily bad idea,' said the Doctor. 'At this point, it might be better for all concerned if it's possible to avoid the Amba.s.sador Jarel entirely.'

Cautiously, they entered the chamber, eyes peeled and ears skinned for any sign or sound of Amba.s.sadorial presence. What they did did find was a series of console terminals rather more complex than those on which a several billion Goronians pushed one b.u.t.ton after another. The equivalent of printers hummed and chattered discreetly, etching their indecipherable words on thin plaques of a material something like jade. find was a series of console terminals rather more complex than those on which a several billion Goronians pushed one b.u.t.ton after another. The equivalent of printers hummed and chattered discreetly, etching their indecipherable words on thin plaques of a material something like jade.

'You know what this reminds me of?' Anji said. 'It reminds me of that film. What was it? The man who did Time Bandits Time Bandits and it was originally going to be called and it was originally going to be called 1984 and a Half 1984 and a Half. Just watch out for pictures of us turning up on the printers and a message saying "kill immediately", that's all.'