Deceit

by Peter Darvill-Evans

  The middle of the twenty-fifth century. The Dalek war is drawing to an untidy close. Earth’s Office of External Operation is trying to extend its influence over the corporations that have controlled human-occupied space since man first ventured to the stars.

  Agent Isabelle Defries is leading one expedition. Among her barely-controllable squad is an explosives expert who calls herself Ace. Their destination: Arcadia.

  A non-technological paradise? A living laboratory for a centuries-long experiment? Fuel for a super-being? Even when Ace and Benny discover the truth, the Doctor refuses to listen to them.

  Nothing is what it seems to be.

  Full-length, original novels based on the longest-running science fiction television series of all time, the BBC’s Doctor Who. The New Adventures take the TARDIS into previously unexplored realms of space and time.

  Peter Darvill-Evans has sold Dungeons & Dragons for Games Workshop, written Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks for Puffin Books, and been a director of a magazine distribution company. Now the editor in charge of Virgin Publishing’s fiction department, he has decided to subject himself to the strictures which he has imposed on other New Adventures authors. Deceit is the result. He is the co-author of Time Lord, the Doctor Who role-playing game.

  ISBN 0 426 20387 9

  DECEIT

  Peter Darvill-Evans

  First published in 1993 by

  Doctor Who Books

  an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd

  332 Ladbroke Grove

  London W10 5AH

  Copyright © Peter Darvill-Evans 1993

  ‘Doctor Who’ series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1963, 1993

  The character of Abslom Daak was created by Steve Dillon and Steve Moore for Marvel Comics’ Doctor Who Magazine, used with kind permission.

  Cover illustration by Luis Rey

  Phototypeset by Intype, London

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

  ISBN 0 426 20387 9

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  For

  Ian Briggs and Sophie Aldred

  — thanks, and I hope you both still like her

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE: Five Years Ago

  PART ONE: Five Weeks Away

  PART TWO: Five Days to Go

  PART THREE: Et In Arcadia...

  PART FOUR: Landfall

  PART FIVE: Pool

  PART SIX: Mad, Bad, or Merely Dangerous to Know?

  EPILOGUE

  APPENDIX

  AFTERWORD

  Prologue

  FIVE YEARS AGO

  He rose from the couch, scratching an itch on his left arm. At the doorway he pulled aside a flimsy purple curtain – ugly colour – that had not been there when he had gone to bed.

  He shuffled across the room. Once again, it seemed wider. He crossed the Telepathic Net. Better than a brisk shower. He stood for a moment, enjoying the comforting tingle. At his console, screens were pixillating into life; subdued monitor lights began to glow.

  Settling into his chair, he ran the usual unnecessary systems checks. As the reports came in for processing from all corners of the station, he sat back and surveyed his quarters.

  He had been asleep only five hours, but the changes were noticeable. There seemed to be more columns and archways. Some of the pillars had been decorated in a spiral pattern. Not pleasing to the eye. Gaudy colours. He’d have to –

  He sensed impatience in the Net. He reached for the cranial harness hovering above his head. He drew it down until its central plug touched the socket in the neural implant on the top of his shaven scalp.

  One more glance across the room. Once it had been a bare space, he remembered, a functional area for work and rest. Now it was a labyrinth of gauze-curtained alcoves and dusty cul-de-sacs between frankly rather unaesthetic architectural features. It was partly his fault. And he kept forgetting to reprogramme the cleaners. The archways gaped like portals to infinite gulfs. He had a premonition, a lurching physical fear. There was nothing to be afraid of. He closed his eyes, tugged on the harness, and felt the plug slide into the socket.

  He would never get used to that sensation of falling. ‘Good morning, Bertrand. We welcome you. You’re a little perturbed today.’

  Good morning. It’s nothing, don’t worry. But I want a word with you about those twisted candy-striped columns that are littering my room.

  ‘You don’t like them. We thought you might find them intriguing.’

  Leave the interior decor to me, and you stick to number-crunching, how about that? Talking of which, how’s the latest projection?

  ‘We have just completed the final phase of the calculation.’

  And? He felt anticipation. Or was it anxiety?

  Voices in his head expressed wordless, soothing thoughts, but could not disguise their own excitement. ‘We must accelerate the experiment. We now have only six years and four months, Earth time, in which to complete it.’

  But that’s impossible.

  A soundless chuckle. ‘Leave the number-crunching to us. We have assessed the resource statistics and incorporated them into the calculations. It can be done.’

  Can you summarize the reasons for urgency? Surely this war will last long enough for our purposes?

  ‘A war is a unique event. Until the hostilities started, we had insufficient data. Therefore our initial projections were optimistic. It is now clear that although the war will last almost as long as we first calculated, the later stages will be sporadic.’

  And who will win?

  ‘Win?’ There was a moment of absence. ‘Earth will win. It is of little consequence to the experiment. We will of course use our influence to prolong the conflict, but nothing we can do will maintain the Daleks at viable deep-space battle strength for more than six years. Thereafter we will experience political interference.’

  From Earth?

  ‘Yes. Interestingly, our hypothetical calculations show that we would suffer in the same way from the Daleks were they to emerge victorious, and on a slightly shorter time-scale. We cannot allow interference before the experiment is concluded.’

  We need another ten years.

  ‘We can accomplish our priority objectives in less.’

  Then of course I will be proud to help to my utmost. He gasped, his mind drowning in waves of unspoken concern.

  ‘Bertrand, consider this carefully. You have already given so much, so many years. You have almost become one of us, but you are not yet ready. You must not neglect your physical needs. You are frail, Bertrand. You know you no longer have the strength to make your rounds of the station.’

  It was so unfair. It was they who continuously enlarged the working space. But he knew they were right. His life had become nothing but sleep and the neural link. His body was prematurely aged.

  I want only to serve.

  ‘We appreciate your loyalty, Bertrand. You know that we do.’

  He basked in a tide of gratitude. He could have wept.

  A single voice now, querulous and dogmatic. Hiroto’s voice. ‘You can continue to serve us. We want you to. We will need your help for many years to come. You must train your successor.’

  Bertrand recalled his own induction. Hiroto had been exhausted, too. A shrivelled husk, shrunken and crumpled in stature, his voice a whisper. He had taken great pains to tutor Bertrand. He had held. Bertrand’s hand as the neural implant was fitted,
and again during Bertrand’s first link. Strange how such a simple physical contact had been so important. And then Hiroto had died. Bertrand knew he had one more duty to perform before his own body expired.

  Of course. I must educate a successor. There are some promising candidates among the research teams.

  He presented a list of names – a list that he realized he had been preparing, subconsciously, for many years. He provided a visual image of a face to match each name. The station’s research scientists were recruited from the postgraduates of Earth, Astral, and the university planet Academia; Bertrand’s short-list was the pick of the crop. He began to enumerate their various qualifications.

  ‘Stop, Bertrand. We know our staff. You have selected well. But there is one other whom we should consider.’

  Another? Who? But he knew, before the facial image was placed in his mind. He wouldn’t have that face inside his head. He wouldn’t let them sense his shame and fear.

  He tore the cranial harness from his head.

  Slumped across the console, his head in his hands, he began to recover from the shock of separation. Recovery brought no relief. With it came memories and regrets, and long-buried guilt.

  He had been younger then. Much older than her, and old enough to know better. But he hadn’t known much: he was innocent beyond his years, and she had been precocious.

  She had led him on, seduced him. Yes; but that didn’t excuse what he had done. He knew now that it hadn’t been an unnatural act, not compared to the stories he had heard since. But he had been younger then. He suspected, now, that it had distressed her far less than she had claimed. She had been precocious. His remorse had been very real. And she had used his guilt. He had lied, tampered with the records, his dissimulations leaving a more glittering trail of slime than the original deed could ever have done.

  He had maintained his mental defences ever since. He had tried to have her transferred to another posting. Why had she clung like a limpet? What did she want? Hadn’t he paid her enough, over and over again? Her telepathic shields were even better than his own. She had a will of steel. He had shut her out, buried the memories, buried himself in the link to avoid her – and now they wanted him to train her as his successor.

  He opened his eyes. That face again. He wasn’t surprised. She was in his room.

  She had been pretty once. Or his lust had convinced him so. Now the wide eyes were disquieting, not appealing. The half-smile was mocking, no longer coy. The hairless skull shocked him.

  She ducked her head. He glimpsed the bulbous shape, the glint of metal.

  ‘Bertrand. Look what your money paid for, lover. I had it fitted on Earth. Nothing but the best. And now I’ve come to take over.’

  ‘Never!’ What was wrong with his voice? ‘I – won’t – let you.’

  She opened her hand. Lying on the palm was a plastigraft applicator.

  ‘A few milligrams of Dezeldox, while you were asleep. Time to go bye-byes again, Bertrand. This time you won’t wake up.’

  The link. He tried to grasp the harness, but it was hovering out of reach. His limbs were too heavy. His muscles were too weak. The drug was doing its work.

  ‘The – link. Must – connect. Must – drain – please...’

  She laughed. Standing, she plucked the harness from the air. ‘There’s only one person capable of maintaining the link now. They know it, I know it – and now you know it, too. Good-bye, Bertrand. This is the start of a new era.’

  She placed the harness over her head.

  Part One

  FIVE WEEKS AWAY

  A small starship flits through warp space. One of its networked picoprocessors carries the mail: its ROM-store contains a stack of silvery needles embedded in non-conductive plastic. Each needle is rectangular in cross-section – this can just be discerned by eye – and with the aid of a microscope it could be seen to resemble a swiss roll: a structured filament of organic molecules sandwiched between equally thin layers of inorganic material, folded and refolded. The needle has been electronically configured into blocks. There are eight thousand blocks along the length of one needle. Each block consists of enough data-recording medium to store the information contained in a set of encyclopedias. The entire contents of the library of Alexandria would occupy only a couple of needles. There are three hundred needles in the ROM-store.

  All of the needles are nearly empty. Each one represents a destination planet, and although the recordings will not be transferred physically, the picoprocessors of all the ships in this part of the galaxy have been set up to encode each needle as a separate planet.

  Therefore each needle contains only a few memos and reports – market research for the sales director, personnel records with salary updates, the half-yearly profit and loss account, copies of local correspondence – and some personal mail.

  In one of the starship’s cabins, someone seated at the communications station has retrieved an item from the mail: a personal message from Britta Hoffmann. The addressee’s private security code has been invoked to access the recording; this is illegal. The lights have been dimmed. The holographic projectors glow, and in the darkened cabin appears...

  ... a school of fish. An almost-vertical, wavy line of a dozen silvery-purple little fish, hardly moving, just trembling in the darkness, quivering enough to set their silver scales scintillating.

  They move, slowly at first, not going anywhere, shifting back and forth against the blackness, the column undulating. Their movement becomes rhythmic, insistent.

  A stifled giggle breaks the silence.

  ‘Here we see the indigenous life-forms of the planet Ellanon.’ It is a woman’s voice, breathless and excited. ‘Remember the day we went snorkelling? Those little fishes went everywhere! And here they are again. Take a good look! Lights on!’

  A flash of brilliance. Blurred shapes condense into crispness as the holovid recorder adjusts to the sudden glow of artificial illumination. In the claustrophobic surrounding of a holographic representation of a starship cabin that fits inside the real one like a hand inside a glove, a woman stands naked. Her eyes shine as brightly as the scales of the fishes that are tattooed in a line from her left breast to her right hip.

  She is young, slim, lithe. She stands on tiptoe and twirls, her long, blond hair lifting in a golden arc.

  If she had been wealthy, one would assume that gene selection had had a part in creating her appearance. But the wealthy don’t have to travel between the stars to find their fortunes. She is as natural as she looks.

  As she spins, she plucks up a robe, and as she slows to face the recorder, she pulls it tightly round her body.

  ‘That’s enough peeking,’ she says. ‘No point in getting you all worked up when we’re this far apart.’ Her eyes are bright with excitement – or are those tears?

  ‘Hello, soldier boy.’ Her voice is quiet now, her hands awkward in each other’s company. ‘Oh, Dimitri. I’m already missing you so much. I’ve been saving up so many things to say to you, and now the time’s come and I can’t think of anything.

  ‘We’re going to dock at the station soon. A bit of excitement at last. I can’t wait to get down to some real work again. But I wish you were here with me. And not just for that, stupid: I know what you’re thinking. It’s because I’m a bit nervous. Butterflies, at this stage, isn’t it ridiculous? It’s not like me at all. I wish you were here though, Dimitri, just to tell me I’m being silly.’

  She looks, suddenly, straight at the recorder. Her pale eyes are huge, beseeching. Then she shrugs, a one-shouldered movement, her head tilting to one side, her eyelids lowered over glittering eyes. Her smile is once again radiant.

  ‘And I am being silly, I know I am. I’m so lucky, really. There are people in the company who’d kill to get this posting. Everyone’s madly jealous. All the high-ups have been posted here at some time or other. It’s the big project, apparently – all the serious research is done here. So it’s the passport to success, prestige, riches, l
ots of holidays with lots of snorkelling! But the funny thing is...’

  She pulls the silky material more tightly, and shivers. ‘This is going to sound really dumb. But the funny thing is when I talked to some of the project co-ordinators and station managers, before I left – people who’d been posted here in the past – none of them reacted as I’d expected. Some of them laughed: you know, “Ha!”, like that, very cynical. And some of them looked so sad. They wouldn’t tell me anything about it. And I’ve been having such weird dreams, coming here on the ship. Yes, I know you can get weird dreams in warp space, but I don’t, usually. And it’s the same thing, over and over again. Dreams of being eaten. Eaten alive. It’s horrible.

  ‘But I suppose it’s just anxiety. That dreadful woman waiting to interview, me, perhaps the moment I arrive. Only an hour or so away now. What can she be like, Dimitri? She sounds so – so cold.

  ‘Anyway, that’s enough of my paranoia. I’m happy really – see? Except that I’m missing you so much. No more to say. Love you. Don’t get yourself killed, it’d be very thoughtless of you, especially now all the real fighting’s over. Think about me every day, won’t you?

  ‘I’ll send this holovid back on an X-ship. It’ll take an age, but you’ll still see it months before you see me again. Oh, Dimitri...’

  She blows a kiss at the recorder. She waves. She says ‘Record off,’ and disappears.

  In the X-ship cabin, a voice says ‘Override. Delete.’ The holovid recording is erased from the ROM-store memory. Dimitri will never receive his letter.

  The image of Troheim crossed her legs. That was to show she was agitated, but Celescu suspected it was also to show her legs. He sighed. Some holograms, he thought, are nice and easy on the eye. She was whispering urgent instructions to her terminal, which was beyond the visual field.

  She was slim, and she was wearing a shimmersuit that would have knocked a hole in Celescu’s credit rating. Her hair was tiger-striped; Celescu assumed this was the latest fashion on the core worlds. Her dark eyes were implausibly large. Through the transmission interference, she looked no more than twenty-five years old. Celescu wondered what she really looked like. Did the Spinward Corporation think that a Spacefleet officer was going to be distracted by a holosynth?