She found another hotel room, crawled inside, and smoked an entire pack of Yemaya Strikes.
Outside, she could hear sirens everywhere. Given what had happened the last time they"d encountered an N-form, she"d managed to keep the damage down to a surprising minimum.
Given what had happened last time.
They"d be coming for her, Mr Cheesecloth and whoever he was working for. Even a green-walled, cigarette-burnt hole like this one would have some securicam, somewhere. She was surprised they hadn"t got here already. Maybe she"d just given them one h.e.l.l of a fright, and they were waiting to see what she"d do next.
73.The gun was in her hand and aimed before she even knew it.
"Who the living h.e.l.l are you!" she yelled.
The tall, curly-headed stranger just raised his hands. "It"s me,"
he said.
"Jesus," coughed Roz. "I nearly swallowed my cigarette. Who are you?"
"I"m the Doctor," said the stranger.
She looked at him. She"d never seen him before. Tall, his curly head nearly b.u.mping on the low ceiling. He was wearing a coat like a fairground performer. She half expected him to start juggling.
"Or at least, I might have been."
"What?"
"I"m on Iphigenia, Roz. I need your help. Desperately. Come at once. Aulis. You won"t miss it."
"What do you mean, you might have been the Doctor?"
"If you don"t reach Iphigenia right away," said the maybe-Doctor, "I won"t have been. No one will have been. There"ll have been no one to tell you not to spoil your tea with sweetener."
Roz stared at him. She reached for her money belt, on the end of the bed. "I"m on my "
She looked up. He was gone.
She pulled on her shoes, swearing. She didn"t know what the h.e.l.l that had all been about, but she did know one thing.
Whatever was on Iphigenia was so dangerous that not only shouldn"t she go there, but the Doctor shouldn"t have gone there either.
74.
2.
Iphigenia 5 January 2982 Bruchac was going over the pre-flight checklist when he saw the guy waving at him from the tarmac. He put down his DataStream clipboard and walked down to the main airlock of the Hopper, halfway down the length of the little intersystem shuttle.
The safeties were off in Aegisthus"s artificial atmosphere, both doors open.
The guy was standing beneath the airlock, the wind blowing his blond hair around. "Hi," he said, waving an ID. "Biocustoms. Can you let me up?"
Bruchac hit the extend-ladder b.u.t.ton with his toe. The guy grabbed hold of it and hauled himself up, work case tucked under his arm. He was tall and muscular, filling out his blue uniform.
The yellow and black flash of Aegisthus Biocustoms bulged on his left breast.
"Thanks." The guy smiled. There was an environmental mask slung around his neck. "Charter Pilot Leo Bruchac, right?"
"Why didn"t you radio ahead?" said Bruchac. "I"m due for pushback in twenty."
"I"m in a hurry." The customs guy snapped open the work case, consulted the screen in the lid. "Is this your ship?"
"For the next month," said Bruchac. "Look, is there a problem?"
"Maybe," said the customs guy. He was in his twenties, and 75 sim-hero handsome. Bruchac imagined him on a recruiting poster. Organic Import/Export Regulation it"s a man"s life Organic Import/Export Regulation it"s a man"s life.
The guy took out a medical handscan, putting down the work case. "I just this minute got a report that on its last trip this Hopper visited Mictlan. About a week ago."
"Yeah," said Bruchac. "Part of the supply route."
"Mictlan"s a nice planet," said the customs guy, waving the handscan around the airlock. "If you like dead people."
Bruchac said, "Look, I checked the flight records myself.
Everything was SOP. The Hopper stayed in the s.p.a.ceport and didn"t go anywhere near the quarantine areas. And it went through standard decontamination before leaving. You must have all that in your records." He looked at his chronometer. "I"ve got pa.s.sengers arriving any minute."
"There"s just been an outbreak of Breckenridge"s Scourge reported on Mictlan," said the customs guy.
"Breckenridge"s Scourge? I"ve never even heard of that."
"Neither had I, until we got the report in half an hour ago.
Turns you into one huge boil, apparently. Thing is, Biocustoms on Mictlan say the standard decontamination might not kill it."
"You"re kidding. They only just contacted you?"
"Apparently it takes about a week to incubate. People are dropping like flies on Mictlan." He paused. "Not that that"s anything new."
"So what you"re saying is, this shuttle might be contaminated?"
The customs guy shrugged. "They say the outbreak started with bacterial particles lodged in a Hopper"s air filters. Don"t worry, I"m sure you"ll be fine." He started waving the handscan at Bruchac.
"Listen," said the pilot. "You"ve got a lot of work to do. Why don"t I leave you to it?"
"Sure," said the customs guy. "I"m going to check the air filters and do a sweep of the ship. You can wait back in the ready room if you want."
"No problem," said Bruchac. "No problem at all. Just give me a yell when you"re done."
76.
The Hopper"s c.o.c.kpit was tiny. Chris Cwej squeezed in through the door and looked through the front window. Charter Pilot Bruchac was legging it across the tarmac. Chris grinned and tossed the work case into the co-pilot"s chair.
He went down to the cargo deck. There were a couple of Ogron handlers still lugging boxes of equipment around, securing them for the flight. Chris smiled at them. Small eyes stared back.
Chris cracked open lockers until he found a spare pilot"s uniform. It was a size too small. He looked at his chronometer the pa.s.sengers would be here in five. He shrugged and started pulling off the Biocustoms uniform, tossing the mask into the locker. The Ogrons were ignoring him, strapping down the last of the equipment.
In his time he"d flown everything from an Adjudicator flitter to an experimental n.a.z.i plane. The Hopper would have bog-standard controls; he could probably let the flight computer do most of the work. All they had to do now was get out of the s.p.a.ceport before Bruchac checked with someone.
He was back at the airlock in time to welcome the pa.s.sengers aboard. Two men, one in his mid-thirties, one in his sixties, and a young woman with a fine-boned face. All of them in casual gear, duffle bags slung over their shoulders. And the Doctor, in his tweed jacket, smiling breezily.
"Professor Martinique?" Chris asked.
The older man raised his hand. Chris said, "I"m Charter Pilot Cwej. Come on up. I have a couple of pre-flight checks to complete, and then we"ll be ready to depart."
He helped Martinique clear the top of the ladder. Thankfully, the airlock had a bit of elbow room, despite a row of metal storage cabinets along one wall. Martinique shook his hand. "This is Emil Zatopek, my a.s.sistant, and this is Iaomnet Wszola, a student. And this is " He waved at the Doctor, wearing that slightly bewildered look people sometimes got around the Time Lord.
"My flight engineer," said Chris. "h.e.l.lo, Doctor."
"Everything running smoothly?" asked the Doctor.
"Very smoothly. Why don"t you show everyone to their cabins, and I"ll get us under way."
77.Iaomnet stopped in the airlock doorway, giving him a sharp look. "I thought the pilot we booked was called Bruchac," she said.
"Oh," said Chris, "he"s not feeling too well."
Once they"d been under way for a few hours, Chris left a cl.u.s.ter of semi-smart navigation programs in charge of the flight and headed aft to the galley.
The academics and Iaomnet were sitting on the floor around a j.a.panese-style table. The flat white surface was covered in hard copies of enhanced satellite images. To Chris they mostly looked like fuzzy photocopies of blobs, but Martinique and Zatopek were deep in conversation, scribbling on the pictures in red pen.
Iaomnet gave Chris a "What can you do?" smile. She had black eyes, and jet-black hair cut in a practical bob.
The Doctor was trying to puzzle out the Hopper"s kitchen appliances, without giving away the fact that he"d never used them before. Chris squeezed past Martinique and Zatopek and rescued the rice cooker from the chilling unit. "Where are the Ogrons?" he asked.
"In their quarters," said the Doctor. "I invited them to dinner, but they declined."
"We couldn"t have all fitted in here at once," said Iaomnet, unfolding her legs. Her head knocked against the wall behind her.
"Ouch. Why on earth is the galley so small?"
"More s.p.a.ce, more fuel, more money," said the Doctor. "You could park this ship in the first-cla.s.s suite of a luxury s.p.a.celiner."
He stepped on Chris"s foot, which Chris took to be a secret signal until he realized that the Doctor was just trying to get past him to the drinks machine.
Chris folded down the menu screen above the heater, idly tapping his way through its index while the Doctor battled the drinks machine. "Dinner in two minutes," said the Time Lord optimistically, nudging Chris out of the way.
Chris put the menu screen up and sat down at the table, awkwardly folding his legs sideways.
"So these are Iphigenia?" said Chris, peering at the photos.
78."Yes," said Martinique, surfacing from his discussion with his a.s.sistant. His dark hair was fashionably tinged with grey.
"Satellite images. Here you can see Aulis Crater, and here, right in the centre of the crater, Artemis Mons. Mons. The mountain of Artemis, the Greek G.o.ddess whom no man could see unclothed The mountain of Artemis, the Greek G.o.ddess whom no man could see unclothed on pain of death."
"And that"s where we"re going, is it?" asked Chris.
"Yes," said Zatopek. He looked only a little older than Iaomnet, with striking features and black hair pulled sharply back from his face.
"The largest crater anywhere in human s.p.a.ce," said Martinique.
"Are you sure these are from a satellite? They look like a military fly-by to me," said Chris. He tapped a finger on the faint white lines at the very edge of the picture. "You always see a scale like this on long-range recon probes." He picked up another of the photos. "Same again here, and on this one."
"Are you the first academic expedition to Iphigenia?" asked the Doctor, juggling an alarming number of bowls, cartons and cups over to the table.
Martinique gathered up the photos before they could be either further a.n.a.lysed or covered with soup. "The significance of these pictures has eluded previous investigators. The crater"s age, for example. Now, it formed during a period when the surface of Iphigenia was not plastic enough for the crater to have formed the way it did. A meteor of that size striking a clump of ice and rock should have shattered it into pieces."
"Maybe your estimate of its age is off," said Iaomnet.
Martinique waved his hand. "There are other, smaller indications. The shape is a little too perfect. Other things."
"So if this is military information," Iaomnet wanted to know, "where"d you guys get it?"
"I have my sources," Zatopek said severely.
"Tell us about the significance of the pictures, Professor Martinique," said the Doctor, kneeling down at the table.
The academic nodded and shuffled through the photos until he found the shot he wanted. He dumped the rest of them into Zatopek"s lap. His a.s.sistant raised an eyebrow and started putting them back in order.
79."Here," said Martinique. He tapped a circled area with the tip of his pen. "Do you see anything out of the ordinary?"
"It looks as though a meteorite strike took a bite out of the mountain," said the Doctor.
"That"s right," said Martinique, a little surprised. "Revealing a complex substratum."
The Doctor picked up the photo and held it up to his nose.
After a moment he took out his bifocals and slipped them on.
Chris leant over for a better look, his head almost resting on the Doctor"s shoulder.
Beyond a certain point, he knew, computer image enhancement merged into metaphysics. But the line down the side of Artemis Mons, if it was real and not some binary artefact, could only be artificial.
When the Doctor lowered the photo, everyone was looking at them expectantly. Iaomnet had paused with a forkful of fish halfway to her mouth.
"Disneyland," said the Doctor.
"Where"s that?" said Iaomnet.
The Doctor just handed the photo back and picked up a sushi roll in his chopsticks.
"There"s something artificial under the surface of the mountain," said Chris. "Some kind of hidden base?"