Mel thought about that, but she was interrupted from her cogitation as a shattering roar sounded close to the window.
"Doctor?" she called, her voice trembling.
"Just the local fauna," he a.s.sured her. "Sort of."
"But I"ve seen those things. I stood the bed end-up by the window and climbed up to see out. They look like Earth dinosaurs, huge meat-eating ones."
"I know, I encountered a couple of their kind an hour ago."
"When you escaped?"
"Something like that."
Mel frowned again. "Why are you being so evasive, Doctor?
It"s not like you at all."
"What did you think of them? The dinosaurs, I mean."
"They looked . . . well, weird. I don"t know how to describe it.
It was like they"d just been . . . superimposed on the landscape."
"Observant as ever, I see," the Doctor approved. "And memory like an elephant"s, if I recall."
"The nearest one was sort of hovering," Mel pressed on, 74 remembering, "as if it wasn"t really here at all. And I think it had a thin yellow line around it."
The Doctor laughed. "Don"t worry, I"ve faced monsters exactly like that before."
"What happens if they . . .? No, never mind."
"What?"
"It"s just that . . . well . . ." Mel faltered uncertainly and smiled at her own superst.i.tions. "Whenever I conjecture about something awful like that happening, it always seems to."
She could almost see the Doctor"s Cheshire cat grin through the wall. "And you"ve noticed that, if those creatures wished, they could bring this whole building down around us in seconds. Well, I think it"s unlikely. Jason conceived of them as an extra layer of security. They"ll have no interest in attacking."
Mel breathed a sigh of relief. "That"s comforting. So those things aren"t real then?"
"Not as such, no. But they"re certainly solid."
"And they"re being maintained in the same way as this place is? By Jason"s thoughts?"
"That"s right."
"But . . . what if Jason forgets the prison?"
The wall shimmered momentarily.
"And . . . remembers all about the dinosaurs?"
Another great roar sounded from outside.
"Wouldn"t that cause the whole building to disappear and leave us with no protection whatsoever against them?"
The White Knight swooped low over Metro. Bernice clung tight to his neck, dug her knees into his ribs and tried to avoid being sick as he performed a barrel roll to circ.u.mvent a manoeuvring airbus. "I never thought I"d miss that computer," she said queasily.
"He"s below us," the Knight reported, oblivious to her discomfort.
The Quiz was standing in the open back of a hovercar, waving over his shoulder whilst guiding the vehicle with one hand.
"Put me down before you start fighting, won"t you?"
75.The White Knight laughed and stared intensely at the silver-garbed figure. A moment later, the Quiz jumped, startled, and turned his full attention to steering. His hovercar was going down.
"What did you do?"
"I used my heat vision to fuse his navi-chip."
"You"ll kill him!"
"So? He"ll be inexplicably resurrected next issue, won"t he?"
"If you say so."
The car was out of sight now beneath six levels of congested traffic. A plume of black smoke marked its trail. Benny groaned as her carrier spotted a gap and plunged through it.
The wreck of the Quiz"s vehicle had stalled cars on six lanes of the ground-level thoroughfare. Amazingly, its occupant had escaped unscathed. However, the Knight"s sidekick had appeared from somewhere and joined the action; the pair were grappling now at the roadside.
The White Knight dropped Bernice and leapt into battle without a thought. "Thanks for keeping him occupied, chum,"
he addressed Sparky. Then he took hold of the Quiz"s throat, held him immobile and drew back his fist to land it across the villain"s jaw. Sparky giggled excitedly - and unnecessarily, Benny thought.
"That"s it!" she said as the Quiz landed in a pile beside her.
"I"m out of here."
The White Knight called her back. "Hold on, don"t you want to see who"s under his mask?"
"No need. I remember now. I remember everything." Which meant, she thought, that she must be near the surface of the crystal. A few steps more and Metro City, its traffic and its super-powered protector would all be so much fictional dust.
The White Knight unmasked his fallen adversary, and Benny looked despite herself.
He had the Doctor"s face.
"I"m sorry for staring," she said, when she had done so for a moment, "but I didn"t know this story had a multiple choice ending."
76."It doesn"t," Dr Who a.s.sured her, and someone brought a heavy implement down on the back of her head.
"Oh, not again," Benny muttered as black spots coalesced in her vision. "There are two good ways of attaining oblivion. Why do I always get the one which doesn"t involve vodka?"
She fell over.
Jason eyed Bernice"s crumpled form dispa.s.sionately. Then he concentrated until Metro City blurred and flattened. Its dirty browns and greys ran like water colours, merging into lush greens and sparkling blues. He sighed, relaxing in the cool, fresh breeze which blew in from the sea. Bird-song drifted across the dew-gilded field.
"That"s better, isn"t it?" said Jason with a smile.
Face down on the gra.s.s, Benny groaned and stirred. Dr Who produced an enormous cartoon mallet and smashed her back into unconsciousness.
77.
9.
Dark Secrets
Chris Cwej surfaced from a dream about fluffy bunnies, to hear an insistent voice droning in his ear, entreating him to wake and to answer the questions put to him. What questions? he wondered vaguely.
He felt the back of a hand across his face and his neck snapped to the left. His muscles felt heavy and his head lolled as the dream world washed back over him. The rabbits were sneering and jabbering and insects were erupting from their cute little bodies in explosions of black blood.
". . . not responding to . . ."
". . . alien metabolism, obviously overly susceptible to the sleeping drug we . . ."
A light faded up from somewhere and imprinted orange globes onto the backs of his eyelids. Chris felt something sharp against his larynx and heard a muttered threat, something about having his throat slit if he didn"t cooperate.
At last, he managed to force his eyes open. He closed them again as a fierce blast of light stabbed into his optic nerves.
"I think he"s coming round."
The voice in his ear spoke again, its tone dripping with menace. "You will tell me why you wish to destroy us."
The security forces moved in quickly and violently, rapping out warnings once only and shooting those who failed to obey instantly.
Kat did think about resisting, but the first few deaths dissuaded her. The rebels had neither the manpower nor weaponry to make a decent fight of it. She leant over Thruskarr"s inert body, no longer uncomfortable against his 78 moist skin, and she cried for a nightmare that seemed never-ending as the cold sound of blaster fire screeched loud in her ears. Of those few who had risked fleeing, most were brought down in broken heaps. The stench of smoke and blood filled Kat"s nostrils and dragged tears from her eyes.
Gloved hands latched onto her arms a moment later. She was pulled away from her sleeping friend and, although she didn"t struggle, she was punched twice in the stomach for good measure. She was dragged roughly from the hall and pushed into a growing crowd of sullen rebels. They had believed that the Detrian rulers didn"t know how to find them. They hadn"t been prepared for this.
A few of her comrades, it seemed, had escaped. But more were lying in the settling dust now, dead and dying. The wounded lizard men, ignored by the guards, were left unattended, to their own fates. Her brother, Mortannis, stood mutely by her side and nursed an injured shoulder, the fight gone out of him for the first time Kat could remember.
"We"ve got enough," one of the tormentors grunted, an age later, and the contingent of black-uniformed men surrounded their captives and urged them forward, using their guns like cattle-prods. Kat"lanna stumbled on with the rest of them, head spinning, the iron taste of blood in her mouth and her heart weighed down by the misery of frustrated anger.
Chris was strapped by his arms, legs and torso to a metal chair.
Beyond that, he could discern little. A powerful light shone directly into his eyes and, behind it, he could only just make out the vague shadow of the squat man who kept barking questions.
"I"ve told you," he said for the third time. "I don"t even know which planet this is. I"ve no interest in destroying anything."
"Unsatisfactory!" his interrogator snapped. "You will answer the question or you will be taken out of here and hanged. Why do you wish to destroy our planet?"
Chris groaned and his head rolled forward. His eyelids felt heavy. "By the Undying One," another voice hissed, "what sort of Security Chief are you? Can"t you get a thing out of him?"
The interrogator spoke archly. "My usual techniques, Politik 79 Merrioc, can frequently prove fatal. The Superior does not want this specimen harming, I understand. Are you countermanding that order?" The onlooker sighed with exaggerated impatience.
Chris felt a hand on his chin. He opened his eyes, a difficult action made easier by the round face which leered at him and blocked out the uncomfortable light. "Are you a servant of Darkness, sent to bring down Enros and his Miracle?"
"Am I what?" His head was thumping and black spots were crowding his peripheral vision.
The Security Chief let go of him and turned away, disgusted.
"As I said at the outset, Politik, the best thing we can do is fill the alien with truth drug."
"But that"s expensive."
"And this is an important matter."
The one called Merrioc fell silent as, presumably, he contemplated that. By the time he answered, Chris was asleep again.
Some time later, Merrioc stood at ease in the Superior"s office, returning her gaze evenly. "So the alien saboteur refuses to talk?" she said, resting one elbow on the plastic desktop and lowering her chin onto her fist.
"Well, not "refuses" exactly, Superior. He seems incapable of understanding. The Security Chief thinks he may be damaged."
"Have you considered using a truth drug, Merrioc?"
"I have already authorized that expediency, Superior. The Security Chief will question the boy again when the dosage has had time to take effect."
She smiled and settled back into her seat. "Well done, Merrioc. I can always rely on you."
"There is something else, ma"am."
"Oh?"
"More intruders, I"m afraid. In the Miracle."
She sat up sharply. "What?"
"We caught one in the transmat beam, but for some reason it never arrived here. It was almost as though the alien disintegrated en route."
"Well try again!" the Superior ordered.
80."Have done, ma"am. Unfortunately, the new arrivals - two or three of them - converged with our earlier intruder.
Whatever was protecting it now covers all of them. We can"t lock the system onto their coordinates."