Deceit

by Peter Darvill-Evans

  She held her hand in front of his face. There was something in the palm. He couldn’t see clearly.

  ‘Injector pad,’ she said. ‘Just a local anaesthetic. But on top of a can of Triple-Z – I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere for a few days, Romeo.’

  He tried to stand. Nothing happened. He couldn’t even feel his legs.

  ‘Bitch!’ he said. He could hardly hear his own voice. She had something else in her hand now. Something shiny.

  ‘Keep still,’ she said brightly. ‘Not that you’ve got any choice. You won’t feel a thing, and I mean that most sincerely.’

  It was a knife! He tried to shout, but heard himself croaking. This was worse than a nightmare. This was worse than a horrorholo.

  ‘Don’t panic, soldier. I won’t damage your manhood, although God knows someone ought to. I just want your ID implant.’

  She worked with the knife, close to his chest. He hoped she was only cutting through his shirt. He felt nothing, not even when she pulled her hand away and he could see, between her finger and thumb, the small, pink plastic square that had been buried under layers of skin.

  He could breathe. He could hear. He could open and close his eyes. He could feel his heart beating.

  The woman didn’t move away. She was squatting next to the bunk. She wanted him to see what she was doing. She was using the knife to remove her own ID chip, slicing through the epidermis between her breasts, slowly and carefully making tiny incisions that would free the implant without drawing blood. She took her time, glancing up at him from time to time, smiling lasciviously.

  ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘And now you become me.’ She pressed her ID chip against his chest, and sprayed the area with an atomizer. ‘Plastigraft,’ she said. ‘You already look as good as new. And now I become...’

  She took the papers from his shirt pocket. ‘I become Reynald Yesti. Second Tracker – what a come-down. Never mind, eh? It’s only temporary. Just until I get on board that troopship and we’re into warp.’ She fondled the atomizer and licked her lips as she squirted artificial skin into her cleavage. ‘Well. That was wonderful, darling. How was it for you?’

  He fell sideways on to the bunk. ‘Who?’ he managed to say.

  She dropped the metallic cube into her backpack, and slung the pack over her shoulder. ‘You deaf, or something? I’m you, of course. And you – for a while, anyway – are Ace, who blows things up. Now – I’m off to join the celebrations. And then I’m going to Arcadia to kill Daleks. Sleep well.’

  Dear Diary,

  Well, that looks ridiculous, for a start.

  But it’s how people used to do it: Dear Diary, as if you were writing to a friend.

  I wish I were.

  It’s so slow, writing on paper like this. Out of practice. I suppose I’ll get faster. Assuming I continue with it. Assuming I don’t have to stop. For some reason.

  This is the last will and testament of Britta Hoffmann. I am in sound mind, but perhaps not for much longer. When I die, I hope to go to Arcadia. How convenient.

  That’s not funny.

  Down to business. Dear Diary, I’m writing this by hand because I don’t trust any of the station comms systems. And I’m writing a diary because – well, because I’ve no-one to talk to.

  That sounds awful. It’s not as bad as that. I’ve been here only two days, so it’s hardly surprising that I’m a bit disoriented and homesick.

  Everyone’s very friendly, but a bit guarded. Formal. They all work hard. Very dedicated. There’s not much social life. Good sports facilities – this place is so big! It’s mind-boggling: a swimming pool on a space station. And tennis courts, and amazing speedball courts with everything done holographically, even opponents if you want.

  And I’ve hardly seen any of it yet. There are loads more levels I haven’t seen. Actually, I think I’m not allowed into most of them. The security system is complicated, to say the least.

  And the androids are spooky. They’re the best I’ve seen, in many ways: almost perfect speech and movement. But they don’t look quite right. Each one’s different, and that’s unusual with any batch of androids. The robots are even weirder. Bloomveld told me that the ones on our level are the normal-looking ones! I don’t like him. He’s like the others, only worse. Always insinuating that there are secrets that he knows and I don’t. They all do it.

  I haven’t met Lacuna yet. Doctor Van Holblad called me into his office for a chat, but he’s in charge of just our research team. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in command of the whole station, but everyone talks about Lacuna – usually in hushed tones. She must be quite something.

  ‘Does it’ continue like this for very much longer, Lau-Po?’

  The lines of text stopped scrolling down the wall screen, and then were replaced by Britta Hoffmann in close-up and in slow motion, her brow furrowing gradually as she lowered her pencil inexorably to the waiting paper.

  ‘At considerable length, Madam. And the visual boxes aren’t quite up to deciphering the handwriting, so I’ve had to spend three hours squinting at the video recordings.’

  ‘You poor thing. Are your duties becoming too onerous, Superintendent?’

  The threat was obvious. ‘Not at all, Madam. I am many years from retirement.’

  ‘Let us hope so. Now then – what about this young woman?’

  ‘She seems harmless. A very average research scientist. Bio-chemist. She’ll do her stint and leave, I reckon. Not management material.’

  ‘I seem to remember that you entered much the same report about me, some years ago.’

  Lau-Po tensed, then relaxed. She seemed genuinely amused by the recollection. ‘Yes, Madam. Perhaps so. But in this case, further surveillance is unnecessary. There is always the Net.’

  Britta’s face covered all of one wall. She blinked. The closing and opening of her eyes took several seconds. Her lips opened, as slowly as a dawn-wakened flower. The pencil rising towards them moved as cautiously as a ship manoeuvring into dock.

  ‘No, Lau-Po. I want this one watched. Continuous surveillance. And tag all the data with my priority code. Understood?’

  ‘Of course, Madam,’ he said. Poor little girl, he thought. Welcome to the asylum.

  Part Two

  FIVE DAYS TO GO

  He cut.

  He cut a hole.

  ‘She has not said a word since – you know, since it happened.’.

  ‘She was in the room. It must have been a shock.’

  ‘But not a word. She hasn’t even wept.’

  ‘She’s little more than a child. She just needs some rest. Peace and quiet.’

  He cut a hole.

  Professor Bernice Summerfield was worried. She was going to win. And that was worrying, quite apart from everything else.

  The three-dimensional display was hovering above the tapestry carpet in the centre of her room. She walked round it, several times, watching, the movements of the pieces as the TARDIS executed the best-options program based on the premise that the Doctor’s next move would be to bring the queen’s bishop forward from three moves previously and upwards five cubes, to block her rook’s imminent attack.

  The pieces stopped moving. As Bernice had predicted, the Doctor’s move would be futile. She was going to win. Checkmate in two moves, against any defence. She’d never beaten him at four-dimensional chess, and she had never expected to. A Time Lord, she reasoned, would always have a better understanding than her of a game in which the pieces could move temporally as well as spatially.

  The pieces shifted again, recreating the position after her last move. Her fingers toyed with the buttons on the hand-held keypad. What if the Doctor had something up his sleeve from more than three moves previously? Impossible: he’d use up too many energy points, he’d have nothing left for any movement on the board. So unless he’s got checkmate in one... But the TARDIS had already run that what-if program twice. What was the Doctor going to do?

  And why was he taking so lon
g to make his move?

  ‘Take it like a man, Doc,’ Bernice called out. ‘Or like a Time Lord, anyway. Are you listening? I’ve got you. Checkmate in two. You owe me a trip to Club Outrageous on Bacchanalia Two, that was the deal.’

  There was no reply. The soothing hum of the TARDIS was the only noise. The pieces in the display remained stationary.

  The trouble is, Bernice said to herself, when you don’t know what’s normal, you can’t tell when things are going wrong. When you find yourself travelling through time and space in a craft that looks like a blue crate on the outside and seems to be infinitely large on the inside, you tend to take the bizarre for granted.

  But, looking back, the bizarre had been getting quirkier for some time. Ace’s decision to leave the TARDIS hadn’t been taken only because she’d fallen for that wide-boy traveller on Heaven who’d died destroying the Hoothi. It hadn’t even been just because she blamed the Doctor for his death. She’d said that the TARDIS was getting ‘well weird’.

  Weird was right. It was getting worse, and it was getting downright dangerous.

  Bernice had tried for several days to persuade the Doctor to tell her where the TARDIS was going to materialize next. She was sure he needed a rest; she sure as hell needed one. His replies had varied from the noncommittal to the indignant, but had contained no information. Had he been affected by the destruction of the Seven Planets? Millions had died. He had been powerless to prevent it. His presence had almost made things much worse. She didn’t like to ask him. He didn’t mention it. Bernice had slipped into the control room and queried the navigational console: as she had suspected, the TARDIS was going nowhere.

  The next time she had managed to track him down, the Doctor had been standing in a fountain, up to his ankles in water in one of the rooms full of gothic follies in what she thought of as the back of the third level of the TARDIS interior – although orienteering inside the TARDIS was another thing that had become increasingly difficult.

  He had been staring up at the vaulted stone ceiling.

  ‘Most people take off their shoes and socks before paddling,’ she had said. ‘I only mention it. Friendly advice.’

  He hadn’t heard her.

  ‘And another thing,’ she had said, waving her hand in front of his eyes, ‘the corridors keep changing. Left turns have become right turns. And vice versa. Some of the corridors are just blocked off.’

  ‘Benny!’ the Doctor had said. ‘Hello. Who are you waving at? Too late! They’ve already gone.’

  ‘And so have you, Doctor. Now look, about the corridors–’

  ‘If I were you, Romana,’ the Doctor had said, conspiratorially, ‘I should stay in your room for a bit. Much better, while these changes are going on. Why don’t you configure the four-dimensional chess again? I’ll give you another game.’

  Bernice had wanted to know who on earth Romana was, but reckoned she’d get more sense out of the TARDIS data store than the Doctor. She had returned to her room, and had set up the chess program. She had expected a short game: it had never taken the Doctor more than five days to beat her.

  And now, only three days later, she had won. She was very worried.

  If the Doctor tells you to stay in your room, she thought, what do you do? What would Ace have done?

  She picked up her shoulder bag and marched towards the door, almost breaking her nose when it failed to open automatically. She hit it. It opened.

  Outside, the corridor which had always run both right and left now ended at a wall just to the left of her door. She turned right and strode off.

  I only wanted to look at the books again. The secret books.

  And yes, I did try on some of her clothes.

  That was naughty.

  But it wasn’t my fault.

  He cut.

  He cut a hole.

  ‘She’s a daughter of the house of Delahaye. Why doesn’t she snap out of it.’

  ‘Don’t shout, Gerald. You’ll make her worse. She’s to have complete rest while she’s wearing the comfrey and henbane poultice. Help me pull the curtains, the room must be dark.’

  Dark. It was dark.

  I heard someone coming. I hid in the wardrobe. It was dark.

  She was beautiful, but she was unhappy.

  He cut a hole.

  Dear Diary,

  Well, I went to the edge to look at the planet anyway. And getting to the edge was quite an expedition. I expected to come across lots of security doors that my code wouldn’t open, and there were certainly plenty of those. But then there were all the dead-end corridors that seemed to go nowhere. And there were staircases – I’ve never come across stairs in a space station before. And the signs were confusing, because so many of them are out of date. It was like working my way outwards through the skins of an onion: I’d reach a viewing gallery, only to find that it had been turned into a hydroponics plantation, or a warehouse, or a robot repair shop, because it wasn’t on the outside any more, because the station has been extended so many times. It felt as though the station was being built faster than I could find my way through it!

  I’m getting used to the strange, twisting corridors and the oddly-shaped rooms in this place. But some of the things I found! There are passages that are too small to get into – complete with lighting, and carpets, and doors off, and everything, but too small for people or robots. And huge empty spaces, so big and dark you can’t see the other side. Actually they’re less frightening than the illuminated ones, when you just open a door and find nothing on the other side except the lights of galleries that must be kilometres away. Sometimes there are structures in these spaces, complicated metal things that curve away like the framework of a half-finished starship. Then there are corridors that stretch across the empty spaces, supported by rickety-looking girders. Some of them lead to blocks of rooms that are just suspended in mid-air. I didn’t explore any of those.

  The funny thing is, I didn’t come across many robots actually building anything. In fact, I don’t think there are enough robots on the station to do this much construction work. Maybe they all come out and do their welding while we’re all asleep! I don’t understand it, but then there are so many things I don’t understand about this place.

  I was exhausted, and thinking about turning back, when I finally reached the edge. I walked into yet another tiny hallway – this one was decorated with green and red liquid-lights that seemed to spell out meaningless words (typical decor in this place!) – and then I walked down some steps and suddenly I was in a kind of tear-shaped pod on the outside of the station. And set into the skin of the pod, in a sort of abstract pattern, were strips of vitreous, so I could see out. And there was the planet!

  Arcadia is so big and beautiful. We must be in a very low orbit. The planet covers almost half of the sky. It looks like pictures of Earth. The oceans are blue, the land is green and brown, the clouds are white and fluffy and look close enough to touch. We’re so low that you can see rivers and forests and lakes and the snow on the mountains. I just stood there looking at it for hours.

  Appearances can be so deceptive. It’s ironic, really, that such a lovely-looking planet with such a lovely name can’t support human life. I wonder what happened to the colonists who came here all those years ago. I suppose the Corporation resettled them somewhere else.

  All the same, Arcadia is a perfect research site. I looked for Landfall, the manned surface station, but I couldn’t find it. Like looking for a needle in a haystack, trying to find one small speck of humanity in that amount of uninhabited wilderness.

  It took me ages to find my way back to the biochemistry department. I skipped dinner and came back here to write this.

  What else can I say? The research is going well. The others are more friendly now. The computers are quite simply amazing – the most powerful I’ve ever worked with. I sometimes feel that I’m helping them, not the other way round. We get a steady supply of samples from the ground station at Landfall, so we can analyze the
changes in the plant life on a day to day basis. It’s becoming clear that the effect of stopping fertilization is accelerating. I feel so privileged to be part of a long-term trial like this. Imported plants, and the whole changed ecology of Arcadia, have been nurtured for hundreds of years. I don’t know of any other Corporation that would set up such extended experiments. This will be the first measurement of the effect of ceasing to support an imported ecology.

  And the results seem to be clear: partial terraforming isn’t stable. No fertilizers have been added to rainwater for four Arcadian months, and already some of the fastest-reproducing imported species are showing genetic deterioration. Even the indigenous species are producing lower yields of seeds.

  Of course, it doesn’t help that other teams are working on other experiments at the same time. It’s sheer madness, actually. Some of them interfere with our data – in particular the project that’s designed to assess the effects of a reduction in the amount of sunlight. Or I assume that’s what it’s for. That’s one of the most secretive of the research teams. I don’t even know who’s in charge of it. Maybe it’s this chap Pool I’ve heard people talking about.

  Later.

  Well, talking of people in charge, Doctor Van Holblad called me into his office today – just a few minutes ago, in fact. It was a strange interview. He didn’t want to get to the point. He started off by telling me that his term in post was coming to an end soon, as if that wasn’t common knowledge. For want of something to say, I asked him if he would be pleased to leave.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll find a way to stay,’ he said, mysteriously.

  ‘Would that be allowed?’ I said.

  ‘I expect it can be arranged,’ he said, and then he started saying very odd things. ‘It will involve some small sacrifices, no doubt. But it will all be worthwhile. To become one with the ocean, to become that within which the fishes swim and breed, to become the material from which the coral build their intricate and towering reefs. I have been granted a glimpse of that existence, young woman. Who wouldn’t choose it, when the alternative is inevitable decline into unending darkness?’