Doctor Who_ To The Slaughter Part 24

133.

'Are you satisfied now?' It was Sook! 'You've been inside it all along.'

And Halcyon! 'Then it's really not a trick?'

'You felt all around it. How else could you have travelled from the cargo hold to your dressing room if not inside it?'

'Thank G.o.d!' Fitz yelled as he kicked open the door. 'You've got to help me, there's been some kind of attack. . . '

He trailed off.

There was Sook, staring at him like the proverbial kid with her hand in the cookie jar.

There was the TARDIS. Put down by a robot disc-magnet, he a.s.sumed square in the middle of the opulent dressing room.

And there was Aristotle Halcyon, standing in the open TARDIS doorway.

134.

Chapter Seventeen.

'Kreiner?' Halcyon looked nervous, unsettled.

What's going on?' Fitz demanded, the shock of his discovery displacing the horror of the strange a.s.sault he'd just witnessed. He saw the TARDIS key protruding from the lock. Remembered the feel of Sook's hand on his chest as she kissed him. How quickly she'd broken off, leaving him sat on the stage alone, a rejected fool.

He'd been done over, smooth as you like.

'I understand now why you went to such lengths to reach me aboard the Rapier Rapier,' said Halcyon. He smiled, stepped forwards, arms open wide as if to embrace Fitz. 'And I respect you for wanting to prove your artistry to me with the PadPad, but really, you should simply have shown me your box! It's extraordinary, it is genius. . . its very absurdity is beautiful, Kreiner.'

Fitz couldn't take his eyes off Sook. 'Thanks.'

'Thanks to you you, Kreiner, we shall all of us break free from Falsh's petty embrace.' Halcyon sounded almost evangelical. 'And it will start tonight. We shall demonstrate the Endless Cupboard in front of an audience of billions across the Empire. This warping of spatial dimensions, it's so staggering a concept. . . can you imagine the demand there'll be for a product such as this this?'

'I don't know what the h.e.l.l is going on here,' said Fitz, crossing to the TARDIS and pocketing the key. 'But it can keep. We need help fast. There's a man been trampled to death by a load of chiggock-things.'

Now Sook found it in herself to look at him. 'A man's been what?'

'Killed! These chiggocks were trampling him.'

'What kind of a joke is this?' she spluttered. 'Killer chiggocks?'

'Oh, ha, ha, ha,' Fitz shouted in her face. 'Yeah, what could I know? Someone as stupid as me. Well maybe you should just see for '

An alarm went off, a high-pitched piping. Fire alarm, maybe.

Fitz turned and stormed out, a big black pit in his stomach. It wasn't hard to find his way back to the kitchens thick smoke was belching out from the side corridor. He heard feeble screams perhaps the chiggocks had moved on to the other chef.

A clatter of feet behind him made him turn. A squad of security guards had appeared in the main pa.s.sage.

135.

Their leader grabbed Fitz by the shoulder while her team pushed on into the kitchens. 'What happened?'

'Know what?' He caught the foul smell of burning hair mingled with a delicious, herby scent of roasted meat. 'I don't think you'll believe me.'

Impatiently she let him go and followed her men.

Fitz stood, lost in thoughts as dark and hazy as the smoke curling around him. Sprinklers kicked in, tepid water raining down and soaking his new, s.p.a.ce-age clothes.

Figured. It always rained on him.

Fitz was so busy splashing about in his shower of self-pity that he didn't notice Tinya sneak out from the dressing rooms behind him and creep away down the corridor.

Falsh arrived at the podule to find the charred wrecks of two s.p.a.ceships in the docking bay beside the Agent's own. He didn't waste time wondering what had happened. Soon he would hear the facts from the fish's mouth.

In the meantime he was due a call to Callisto.

'Tinya,' he snapped.

'Progress.'

Seconds later her expectant face bubbled out of his wristpad. Weird trick of the light: her black hair looked sopping wet.

'Yes, Falsh, I hear you.' She knew better than to ask where he was. 'The R and D team are fully installed and a.s.sisting Pent Central. They have priority access pa.s.ses, and one of the slugs for study.'

'Good. No later than four hours from now I want them to present their find-ings to whoever's in charge there, and copy in the President. The data they've been primed with is legitimate. It proves irrefutably that those creatures are not genuine, that they were created artificially.' She was dying to learn how he'd come by that data, he could tell, but she'd never dare to ask. 'Once Pent Central have that, the President should get things moving and we'll be all right. She won't want to leave her precious Halcyon out in the cold.'

'He's acting up,' Tinya reported. 'Didn't make the press-op.'

'I'll talk with him when I get back,' said Falsh. 'He'll be fine. Have a word with the network heads and give them my personal a.s.surance we're go for tonight.'

'Check.'

'Get on to NewSystem too. Make sure they keep standing by.'

'Check.'

'I'll be back with you by six. Do anything you have to but get Halcyon to the stadium for rehearsals.'

'Check.'

He smiled. He said it out loud, and it happened, like a wish come true.

There was was magic in life; it was called money. magic in life; it was called money.

136.

One venture had failed. The next he couldn't afford to.

'Falsh out.'

The bubblescreen popped and Tinya vanished.

Fitz had stomped and squelched away from the chilling kitchen scene and the water. He didn't know or much care where he was going, and ended up in the loading bay. For a long time he just stared at the nacelle of the Rapier Rapier. It looked like a huge hypodermic p.r.i.c.king this plastic artery.

Then he became aware of Sook behind him.

'You were right about the chiggocks.'

'That makes me feel a whole lot better.'

'It's totally weird. They're bred brainless. They shouldn't be able to do anything.'

'I shouldn't be able to travel inside an "Endless Cupboard" but I do.' He snorted. 'Or rather I did.'

'Kreiner '

'So that's how you converted Halcyon away from the axis of evil, huh?' He turned on her, accusingly. 'Gave him a new toy to play with.'

'I was thinking of you!'

'Of me?'

'You said that this Doctor, he's the only one who knows how this TARDIS thing works, right?' Sook shrugged. 'Well, Halcyon doesn't know it can travel.

It's the dimensional interface that has him hooked.'

'You're confusing me with someone who gives a stuff.'

'You care about your friends,' said Sook firmly. 'Now Halcyon's got a real incentive to get them out of Falsh's custody, whatever whatever else is going on. If the Doctor shares the secrets of how to fit the big box inside the little one with Halcyon ' else is going on. If the Doctor shares the secrets of how to fit the big box inside the little one with Halcyon '

'He won't.'

'Why not? With Halcyon's name behind it he'll make a dimensionally tran-scendental shedload of money from ma.s.s production of those things '

'He doesn't care about money!'

'This deal would be a good thing,' she said quietly. 'Like Halcytone is a good thing.' She looked at him hopefully. 'Life enhancing! Nondestructive profit making, not taking away, not cheating.'

'So, what, he'll abandon blowing up half the solar system now he thinks he can flog Endless Cupboards off a production line?'

'He's accepted the moratorium on the demolition,' said Sook. 'I can go on working on him, make him see that his future lies '

137.

'And you say Falsh has corrupted him!' he laughed. 'You've convinced yourself that if he goes for the money and doesn't pretend it's for any higher motive, then it's all right.'

'I couldn't just betray him!' she shouted.

'Oh yeah? So why'd you ever talk to Gaws and Mildrid in the first place?'

She didn't answer him.

'Why didn't you just ask me for the key, Sook? Come to me and try to explain all this to me then.' Fitz's voice softened. 'Why make me think you. . . '

'Listen. It's not as simple as just taking Halcyon to your blue box and showing him how amazing it is,' she said wearily. 'It has to be presented to him in a certain way. . . '

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. You just didn't think I'd agree, so you helped yourself.'

'I thought for the chance to save your friends it was worth '

'Stop bringing them into this! For your information, Halcyon was going to speak up for me against Falsh, he said so. That's how I was going to get my friends back with his support. But you know what? I was worried your Old Preserver mates would set him off on one, queer my pitch. So I thought about telling Halcyon you were involved with old Gaws and Mildrid. I did, I thought about it and I might well have done it.' He took a few petulant paces away and turned his back on her again. 'Except you told me I could trust you. And like the berk I am, I believed you.'

She came up behind him. 'Is it really so much to ask of your friend? His freedom. . . his life. . . in exchange for the principles of how that box works?'

'The Doctor would never do it, Sook,' said Fitz. 'Really.'

'Well. Seems to me all this talk is academic,' said Sook the Sook of old: reasonable, practical, a little miserable at heart. 'Let's think short term. You can tell tell Halcyon that the Doctor will agree to sharing his big secret, and Halcyon will get him back for you. No more effort on your part.' Halcyon that the Doctor will agree to sharing his big secret, and Halcyon will get him back for you. No more effort on your part.'

Fitz didn't answer.

'We can worry about everything else later.' She took another step closer to him. 'If the Doctor won't share, well. . . You can take off and fade away in your precious box, can't you?'

'What about you?' he said quietly.

'You can leave us to muddle our way through our own moral minefields.'

Now she reached out to touch his shoulder. 'You're not really so cross about me stealing a kiss, are you Kreiner?'

He looked into her eyes. 'If you steal something, you should put it back.'

She stood on tiptoes, leaned up and kissed him, open-mouthed, just for a few seconds.

Then she turned and headed back towards the stadium. 'I'll tell Halcyon you agree. We'll let him talk to Falsh about it. I'll let you know what happens.'

138.

Fitz watched her go, and found himself thinking about Trix. About the way she could wrap him around her finger.

Dimly, he suspected he'd been done over again. But brightly, he decided not to worry about it for now.

Falsh found himself actually whistling as he walked along the deserted corridors. He'd clear up this mess, get the Agent off his back for good. Then he'd see that the demolition of the Jovian moons proceeded as planned. That would usher in a new age, with the solar system a viable concern once more.