‘What have I done?’ Myajes dropped his head in his hands with a sigh.
‘If it’ll help at all,’ the Doctor offered, ‘think of all the lives you’ll save by having told us. It’s a shame you couldn’t give us the actual number for the house, but there can’t be too many pink houses in that part of Fobbing. According to the local map, it’s only a relatively small place. So don’t worry, we’ll find it.’ The Doctor then paused for a minute before continuing, ‘Anyway, if betraying your people really bothers you, just remember that you really had no choice. It’s early in the morning, so I’ll send someone to you in a minute with something to eat.’
‘If anyone steps through that door, I’ll kill them,’ Myajes snarled at the image.
‘That’s not a very good idea,’ commented the Doctor. ‘If you do that, then you’ll go hungry. I’d much rather you ate, though; I’m less likely to get accurate results in my experiments if you don’t eat.’
Myajes’ first thought was that he would much rather go hungry than help this Doctor and his experiments in any way. After just a few seconds, though, he realized that it would be a lot harder for him to escape from this place if he was starving. ‘Okay, Doctor, you win. I’ll let whoever you send leave unmutilated.’
‘Good lad,’ the Doctor replied, and at a signal from him the screen went blank.
Myajes watched the blank screen for a minute and then turned his attention to the glass door of his cell. There wasn’t a lot to do except wait for his breakfast to be delivered.
He had to escape, and soon; he had to get home and warn the Matriarch. It would help if he knew something more of the layout of Mars, but the only things he knew about the planet had come from the occasional news story that had been reported here and there. He couldn’t ever remember them even mentioning the laboratories. Then another problem occurred to him. The fact that he hadn’t seen it sooner was probably a reflection of how many drugs he had had floating about his system lately, or had he already considered this and forgotten about it again because of the drugs? Just say for a moment that he did somehow manage to break free of his captors. How long would he last running along the corridors of the Martian Colony with his stripes on full display? Everyone he bumped into would hand him in to the authorities as soon as look at him.
Maybe he could find something in the laboratory itself. There were at least three women in the place, including the guardswoman. Maybe he could get some makeup supplies from them, and with any luck they would be suitable to hide his stripes. Of course that would mean that they would have to be his color, and that alone would probably take a small miracle. It would also mean that he would have to be able to wrest the items in question from the women in question and then spend the necessary time applying the makeup to the visible areas of his flesh. And what about the clothing he was wearing? He’d have to change out of these pet rags and get something far more in line with what the modern Martian dressed in.
As promised, the door to his cell opened shortly afterwards and his breakfast was brought in. This time it was brought in by Doctor Suttcliff, and by the look of her, she certainly seemed to know her way around makeup.
Myajes decided to try to direct approach. ‘Doctor Suttcliff, I’m fully aware that I’m never going to see any others of my own kind again, but nevertheless, I’d like to keep my hand in with certain skills. Besides, at the same time it’d give me something to help keep me occupied. Do you think you could supply me with various types of makeup?’
Doctor Suttcliff just looked at him for a moment as if unsure he was serious. She put the breakfast tray on the bed beside him, coming dangerously close to her prisoner, and yet there was no fear from her. As she turned to leave, she commented, ‘I think it’s unlikely that Doctor Foster would agree to anything like that, but I can ask.’
‘Perhaps the good Doctor could observe me putting makeup on and learn something from how I do it,’ Myajes suggested hopefully.
As the door to his cell closed behind Doctor Suttcliff, the image of Doctor Foster appeared back on the big screen again. He was only there for a second, but in that second it was clear that he had been listening in on the conversation. ‘Request denied,’ was all he said, and then the screen went blank again.
Doctor Suttcliff, in the area between the two locked doors of his cell, turned and looked at Myajes through the glass of the cell’s main door and mouthed the words, ‘I’m sorry,’ to him.
Oh well, he thought to himself. He sat on the bed and considered his breakfast. He hadn’t really expected the doctor to agree to it in the first place. The whole thing had been a bit of a long shot.
For a moment he pondered Doctor Suttcliff. She seemed like the type who might have owned a pet Herbaht before all the recent government hysteria. As such, she might be more open to helping him when the time came. He’d have to consider how he might be able to use that to his advantage.
37
Laboratory Seven
Considering the very early hour of the morning, about one o’clock or so, the spaceport was far too crowded. Khosi was wandering through the terminal lost. It didn’t help that she knew the army must be after her by now, especially after what she had done to the commanding officer at the Cattery. There could be no doubt they would know what she looked like either. They had had cameras everywhere, and though she had considered confiscating that film on her way out, she’d decided that such an action might make her look suspicious. Besides, she had been sure she would be off the planet before they even realized what had happened.
Eventually she found her way to the queue for the Martian shuttles. It was a lot longer than she had hoped, winding in and about a series of guide ropes more than ten times. Many people had fled to the north and west of the country to get away from the Herbaht wrath in London. Now it seemed that the people who had been living here in the north of the country were also uncertain that they were safe, and they too were trying to leave, or maybe they were just trying to get away from the Londoners.
Khosi waited in line patiently. She might not have the scent awareness of the Herbaht, yet she was very aware of the stench coming off the people around her and not sure that she hadn’t been better off with the Herbaht after all. And then there was the constant drone of inane stories they told each other as they waited for what seemed an eternity.
‘So I told my wife’s sister that she needed to have an operation… I got four of the numbers last week… Do you think we’ll have a white Christmas this year?... Little Timmy was sick so I had to go and fetch him…Yes, four dozen, four dozen and that was just in the first round…’ and so on.
The queue seemed to be moving very slowly as it weaved in and out along a path laid out by the black guide ropes. Sited high at the end of each of the longer turns in this line was a newspaper screen, but instead of showing those waiting any stories of what was happening in the world, the screens were instead used to show and repeat a looped collection of advertisements at their captive audience.
One thing that bothered Khosi a little was that the spaceline representatives were wearing purple uniforms almost exactly the same shade as the soldiers that guarded the Cattery, and this of course brought back memories of the few days she had spent in that hellhole. She speculated for a moment if the owners of the spaceline knew of the similarities between their uniforms and those of the Elite Guard, or if it was just a coincidence. She knew from her own intelligence gathering that only the guard at the Cattery itself wore purple; those who operated beyond the confines of the compound wore a camouflage uniform that fell more in line with the rest of the armed forces in this country.
In time she reached the final turn of the guide ropes towards the front of the line; only six or seven more people were in the queue ahead of her now. Here she had a good view of the procedure that those summoned to the counter were going through. She watched carefully as three people were served. The first of these needed to actually buy a ticket at the counter. Another had a special document that would
bump him into an upgraded seat. But all three of them had a funny little plastic card with their picture on it.
Khosi looked at the others in the queue in front of her. It seemed that this card was a necessity. Most of those in front of her had these little pieces of plastic in their hands in readiness of being served. She turned around to see those behind her, and likewise many there also had these cards in their hands.
Surreptitiously she studied the card held by the woman just behind her in the queue with half a mind that she might borrow one from someone in the twist of the line adjacent that hadn’t yet readied their own card. It was a simple enough card, but it seemed to have a small computer built into its surface, a computer that was apparently operated by D.N.A. As simple as it might be, Khosi had no time to reprogram one. Besides, she would have to do so under the gaze of the original owner of the card.
Khosi sighed. She had waited for a very long time in this queue and was loath to lose her place, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to get passage on any shuttle without one of those cards. Nothing in her imaginings had made her think that Myajes might be outside the country, let alone on another planet. It was no wonder she hadn’t researched the procedure for leaving the planet properly.
For a second she had a flitting idea. She would insist that they let her on because she was a member of the Bureau of Feline Affairs and she had important business on Mars. She could even back up her claim by using Myajes’ name. But the idea evaporated nearly as soon as it formed. If she couldn’t convince them then she might never get to Mars. And since they might insist on calling the Bureau and confirming that she was who she claimed to be, only to discover she wasn’t, it could cause her no end of problems.
It was a shame. There were just two people in front of her in the queue, but she couldn’t stay here. She ducked under the last set of guide ropes. One or two people turned to chastise her for attempting to jump the queue, and a security guard with a dog at his side at the front of the queue took a step towards her, but all stopped when they saw that she was headed in the opposite direction from the check-in desks.
She made straight for the ladies’ restrooms so that if anyone had seen where she had left from, they would’ve assumed that she was in desperate need.
Khosi made her way to the end cubicle and entered. It wasn’t the most ideal place in the world. There was a nasty gap under the door that anyone who was nosey enough could just stick their head under to take a look. Secondly, as she had walked in she had seen a sign attached to the wall-length mirror above the sinks. She wasn’t too clear on the written language of this country, but it seemed to say something about the lavatories being checked every fifteen to twenty minutes. How long had it been since the last visit, and how long until the next?
There were too many things to consider, too many chances that someone might discover what she was doing, but she felt she didn’t really have a lot of choice, considering the circumstances. And at least the cubicle had a lock on it which should help keep the least curious at bay.
From her handbag she took out something known to her as a frame. It took her a minute or two to unfold it properly and check that all the sides were connected properly. One advantage of having selected an end cubicle was that she could fasten this frame to a supporting wall rather than one of the flimsy partitions which were actually smaller than the unfolded frame. The wall didn’t need to be totally flat, but it did need to be devoid of protrusions sticking out from the middle of the frame to beyond the front of it.
With the frame in place on the wall, she felt for the controls at the top and a shimmering image of her quarters appeared in the middle of the frame. Slowly the image stopped shimmering and became clear. The image became so clear that any independent observer might’ve thought they could just reach through the frame and touch what was on the other side, and indeed they could. They could also, as Khosi now did, step totally through the frame and be somewhere else entirely. And any independent observer that had seen Khosi disappear through the frame would now see her in the room beyond, at least until she moved out of sight.
Twelve minutes later, and in an obvious hurry, Khosi reemerged into the cubicle, and without pausing she found the controls again and turned the frame off. She waited as the image of her room shimmered slowly until it went totally opaque, and then it vanished altogether, leaving no more than the frame itself attached to the wall. Now it was safe to remove it, and she peeled it carefully off the wall and folded it back into its compact size and returned it to her handbag. Only when all evidence of her excursion had been removed did she allow herself to breathe calmly. It had been a nasty twelve minutes of worry. If someone had found that frame while she was gone, she might’ve found herself with a lot of very awkward questions.
As she left the cubicle she experienced perhaps just a touch of paranoia, the feeling that one or two of the other people in the restroom were watching her as she emerged. She decided to let it pass. It wasn’t really important unless one of them actually said something, and even then it was probably best to ignore it.
She returned to the main concourse and found the line that she had left nearly twenty minutes earlier, rejoining it. It wasn’t nearly as long as it had been when she had left it, but she was still a lot further from the front than she had been. At least this time she had a passport, albeit a fake one made with the help of the information collected by her people’s data gatherers and stored in a central database.
When she finally got to the check-in desk, she half expected the man who served her to recognize her as the woman who had left the queue earlier. She was sure he was one of those who had been serving then. Yet he didn’t bat an eye lid, nor make any comment about it as he processed her requirements.
There was no problem with the passport. Well, she hadn’t really expected there would be. Despite all the technology that was used to make them virtually copy proof, they were no match for the technology that she had at her beck and call if she needed it.
‘Is this all you’re taking along, ma’am?’ the man at the check-in desk asked, indicating her handbag.
‘That’s it,’ Khosi replied simply. ‘I like to travel light, and I only intend to be there for a few hours at most.’
‘I see,’ replied the man. He seemed to like to make small talk while he tapped the relevant codes into his table-top computer screen. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have a bit of a wait before there’s a free seat on any of the shuttles. There’s been quite a surge in the number of people wanting to travel these last few days.’
From where Khosi stood, she couldn’t see anything that might tell her what the actual time was, but she knew it couldn’t be any later than two in the morning. The next Mars-bound shuttle had to be the twelve minutes past three. ‘The three-twelve’s over-booked then?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ the man replied, ‘as is the five-twelve. Then there’s the six-twelve, the seven-twelve, and the eight-twelve, but I’m afraid those are the rush hour shuttles. One every hour but always full up. The next shuttle I can get you on is the nine-twelve, just after the main rush hour, but I’m afraid that’s nearly seven hours away.’
‘Well, it seems I have no choice,’ Khosi replied, more than a little disappointed. ‘I’ll take it.’
Seven hours until her flight. What could she do until then? Would she actually be able to catch her shuttle, or would the Elite Guard have tracked her down by then? They must have found the Colonel’s body by now, or what was left of it.
Local time was nearing one in the afternoon as she entered the English section of the colony on Mars. Mars seemed to be every bit as busy as the spaceport that she had just left, and she couldn’t help wondering how they could possibly find room for so many people in such a relatively small area of the planet.
She had hoped she wouldn’t have to be here too long. Myajes had been taken to Laboratory Seven, in the English section. Well, she was in the English section, and the laboratories were all likely to be in the same
area. If only she could garner some clue as to where that section might be.
There were a number of displays scattered around the immediate area. One in particular showed a cut-away model of the entire colony, and for a moment she thought it might be of some use to her, but it was a very simplistic description of the colony as a whole and nothing on it had actually been given a name. Perhaps there would be a map of the colony on one of the nearby walls! But she found nothing of any real use on any of the displays.
This was the part of the spaceport used by those who had just gotten off a shuttle. She found it hard not to be dragged along by the flow of people heading into the colony proper. Most of these people knew where they were going and didn’t want to hang around here longer than absolutely necessary.
She left the spaceport and entered the outermost ring on the lowest level of this section of the colony. The outer ring was popular because it was the only place in the entire colony that had windows from which people could stop and look at the surface of the planet. As she too took a turn to look out, she could see a small domed building just at the point where the horizon almost hid it. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to go there to find her quarry. The corridor itself had originally been painted white, but it had been covered in the dust and dirt of thousands of visitors a day and had turned a murky grey. The area was also liberally coated in graffiti varying from the link number of someone offering a good time to some derogatory comment about some Earth-bound sports team. Khosi knew that a lot could be learnt about the psychology of a species by such announcements. Had she not been on an important mission, she might have liked to make a few notes to take with her.
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