The Well-Mannered War Part 25

'It's a small planet,' said Fritchotf 'The core's only a few miles down.'

The Doctor snapped his fingers. 'The core! Yes, I remember now, K9's survey...'

Fritchoff stood up and poked his head through the entrance to the cave. He looked at his watch. 'It's strange. What time do you make it?'

'Er, about ten billion AD,' the Doctor replied, not really listening.

'Odd,' said Fritchoff 'The patrol should have pa.s.sed by now '

The Doctor stood up and joined him at the entrance. 'I'd say they're too busy up there for any patrolling now.'

Fritchoff shook his head. 'No, not them. I mean the militant rebel patrol.'

The Doctor was puzzled. 'You just told me they'd gone.'

'No, the rebel militants have all gone, apart from me,' said Fritchoff 'But the militant rebels are still here.'

'Ah.' The Doctor scratched his chin. 'What's the difference?'

Fritchoff beckoned him to follow as he advanced along the pa.s.sage, navigating by using a small torch. 'The militant rebels are following an arbitrary line that plays into the hands of the state. Their stance is inherently counter-revolutionary. And their numbers are dwindling. There are only three of them, in fact.'

'Two more than your lot,' the Doctor pointed out as they moved down the tunnel.

'We have many sympathizers, Doctor,' he said. 'I shall have to raise your consciousness. At the moment you're an unthinking lackey of the prevailing ideology.' He led the Doctor down a turning that sloped down to a deeper, parallel tunnel.

'Is that an insult?' the Doctor asked. Then his attention was taken by a terrible odour that wafted from a deep crevice in the rock to their left. 'Wait a moment.' He moved closer, cautiously, and stood on tiptoe to peer into the darkened s.p.a.ce hollowed out of the wall. His face grew grim as he saw what lay there. 'Here are your militant rebel friends.'

Fritchoff edged closer. 'They're no friends of mine.' He stopped and then leapt back, his hand to his mouth. 'My G.o.d, what happened?'

The Doctor took the torch from him and shone the beam on the cavity. It picked out three human bodies, reduced to not much more than a ma.s.s of torn flesh and raw bone. 'This must have been their aperitif. These people wouldn't even have been missed.'

'What are they?' asked Fritchoff 'What killed them?'

The Doctor reached out with the torch and saw how the light sparkled across the tacky substance coating the bodies. 'The flies,' he said.

Liris stood before one of the screens dotted around the corridors of the Parliament Dome. The speculating part of her brain was operational once more, leading her to frown at the scenes of devastation and social breakdown. One of the great white towers came cras.h.i.+ng down, sending out waves of brick dust and scattering the people milling in the street below. But her thoughts were only of Galatea. The coming time was important, yes, days of destiny the Femdroids had long prepared for. But her superior's manner was becoming ever more high-handed, as if she had some G.o.d-given right to proceed.

Her musings were interrupted by the arrival of Romana, who advanced on her with a determined stride. 'h.e.l.lo? Liris?'

Liris turned away from the screen. 'My apologies. I was absorbing information.' She noted Romana's breathlessness, a sign of excitement and ill-judgement in organics. 'What do you require?'

Romana held up a disk. 'I want to show you something. May I?' She gestured to a receiving slot beneath the screen.

'Please.' Liris waved her on. 'We exist to serve.' She watched as Romana inserted the disk, and using the keyboard built into the wall next to the screen opened up a file containing a graphic diagram. Immediately, Liris flinched.

It was an exact representation of the Feeding Cycle.

Romana pointed to the rise and fall of the population. 'This pattern is too precise to be a coincidence.'

'What do you mean?'

Romana's voice became more insistent. 'Four times this planet has been destroyed from within, by some atavistic killing impulse. Perhaps deeply implanted, carried in the genes of the original colonists. A eugenic time bomb. And because the people here are part of it they can't see it.'

Liris a.s.sumed the dismissive expression worn often by Galatea. 'You infer too much from your findings, Romana. At this time you should concentrate on the election campaign.'

Romana reached forward angrily and retrieved her disk, clearing the screen to display more images of the devastation taking place outside. 'The people out there are ready to revolt. Hundreds are already dead. There must be a way to reverse whatever's causing it.'

'Your hypothesis is unreasonable and founded on dubious evidence,' said Liris, turning away. 'It is late. I suggest you return to your quarters and sleep. The situation is under control.' As she spoke the screen, spiting her, showed another huge explosion. This time, a section of one of the skimways, the clear plastic tubes that conveyed the citizens of Metron, splintered and fell, dislodging pa.s.senger cars like toys. 'There is nothing to be gained from this audience. You have misinterpreted the data.'

Romana gave her a long, hard stare, and walked away.

Immediately she was out of earshot, Liris reached for her amulet. 'Galatea,'

she said. 'A terrible thing. The alien girl Romana suspects. She has seen the Feeding Cycle and is agitating the scenario. All your work may be endangered.'

Fritchoff was getting warier of the Doctor, who was inspecting the remains of the militant rebels with scientific detachment. 'You really think flies did for them?' He couldn't bring himself to look at the bodies of his former colleagues. They'd been ideologically misguided, yes, but n.o.body deserved to die like that.

The Doctor shook his head. 'From their head wounds, I'd say they were killed in a rockfall. But the flies found them and secreted this substance -'

he held up a spatula on which glistened a trail of the mucus coating '- on to their bodies. To keep the tissues fresh for a while. They wouldn't want their meal to rot away completely.'

Fritchoff shook his head. 'Rubbish. There's no insect life on Barclow. No life at all, apart from us and the Chelonians.'

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. 'Us?'

'I mean the militarist expeditionary force and the 'Chelonians' Fritchoff said quickly.

'Hmm,' said the Doctor. 'Well, there's life here now Of a most sophisticated -' He broke off and smote his forehead. 'Of course! This far into the future, it isn't surprising. The fly, one of the most successful, most industrious and adaptable species of all. Somehow its development took a wrong turn. Or a right turn, depending on how you look at it. A group consciousness, with a gruesome technology of their own, and a limited ability to influence and dominate the minds of the dead, probably through electrical stimulation of the brain's pre-frontal lobes.' He looked ruefully at the specimen on the end of the spatula and then threw it away in disgust. 'It's a chilling thought, Fritchoff. They're using your people.'

Fritchoff had a second's flicker of fear as he struggled to rationalize the Doctor's theory. But he was used to fitting any facts to his own viewpoint.

'You're fantasizing. The militant rebels were no doubt slain by agents of the Metralubitan government for daring to speak out against their imperialist position.'

'No, Fritchoff. I've seen our enemy.' The Doctor turned away and started to walk back to the cave hideout. 'And they're big nasty black flies.'

Fritchoff hurried to match his long strides. 'It's one of the inevitable defences of the recidivist mind to dismiss all evidence of state corruption with an implausible -' The Doctor's arm was suddenly around his shoulder.

'Hey, what do you think-'

'Get down,' the Doctor hissed in his ear. He pulled Fritchoff to the ground with startling force.

A moment later Fritchoff heard a strange buzzing. He looked up and saw, framed by the arched entrance, that his hideout was occupied by a tightly packed black cloud of humming, chittering insects.

Chapter Eight - The Killers.

MNN was now unable to keep up with reports of the riots around Metron.

As dawn's early light broke over the city the Femdroid newscaster made a grave announcement. 'The sh.e.l.ling has now reached our very doorstep.

Regretfully, MNN is going off-line. We hope to be back with you as soon as we can.'

The com-screen went blank. K9 moved back and emitted a defeated noise.

'The unrest has escalated, despite my appeal. It is illogical and self-destructive.'

Stokes had entered the guest suite from his room, tying up the belt around a dressing gown. He yawned affectedly. 'You're learning about life, son.'

'I'm not your son,' K9 said emphatically. He turned on Stokes. 'Aggression among these humanoids is a direct result of economic mismanagement.

Poverty increases feelings of social alienation.'

'Thank you, Engels,' Stokes said through another yawn. 'Don't rant at me.

I'm not registered to vote here anyway. Even if I was I wouldn't. Politics is merely a show made by those in power to con the proles into thinking they have some say.' He wandered over to the suite's minibar and poured himself a small measure.

K9 followed him. 'You advocate the freedom of the individual but have no respect for the social strata needed to allow such freedom.'

'You do go on, don't you?' Stokes knocked back his drink in two gulps. 'I couldn't sleep. You're solving the problem nicely.'

'I am immune to insults,' said K9, in truth rather hurt. He looked through the window, at a lightening sky that was filled by billows of black smoke. The streets were now all but deserted. 'My supporters have betrayed my beliefs.'

'I can see the scales falling from your one red eye,' said Stokes. 'You've been so naive.'

'Pessimism is also a form of naivety,' K9 pointed out.

'Oh, I'm not arguing with you.' Stokes gave another huge yawn and went back to his room. 'Going back to bed. Wake me when it's all over.'

K9 watched him go with a sense of puzzlement. In the past, the merest hint of danger had been enough to send Stokes scurrying to escape, or at least to take cover. Now, in the midst of a planetwide riot, with the threat of a b.l.o.o.d.y war, he was concerned only with sleep. 'This behaviour does not configure with Mr Stokes's personality as registered in my data banks,' he said to himself 'I shall investigate.' He motored towards Stokes's bedroom.

Urgent impulses flowed between the amulets worn by Galatea and Liris.

'There is no alternative,' said Galatea. 'Romana must be conditioned.'

'But hers is an alien mind. We cannot know the outcome.

There was a pause before Galatea's response came, crackling with authority. 'Why this persistent questioning of my decisions, Liris?'

'It is my function to question. Were it not, the decisions you make now would be altogether less momentous.'

'I do not revel in the import of my task. When the work is done I will be glad to return to more quotidian challenges. Bring Romana to the Conditioner.'

'Can she not be told the truth?'

'No, Liris. The organics must not know until it is done. They are nervous creatures by nature.' She said firmly, 'Decirculate her.'

Fritchoff blinked, half expecting to see the cloud of flies disappear like stray thoughts in a dream. Crouched at the Doctor's side, his knees tucked under his chin, his mouth dry, he began to feel an unaccustomed sensation. This was not something he could argue away. It was something evil and unreasonable, not bound by any of the forces that shaped the world. The new sensation was a horrid, clammy fear.

The buzzing increased in intensity and he heard a ghastly clicking, like bone striking bone, coming from the middle of the cloud. This was followed by a gurgling voice which said, 'Doctor... you are the Doctor...'

'Can you hear anything?' the Doctor whispered.

'They're calling your name,' Fritchoff whispered back.