Match of the Day

by Chris Boucher

  ‘Come on Jer, come on.’ Keefer punched the urgent button on the remote but Fanson’s number continued to reject his signal. He cancelled the call and leaned against the runner to think it out. Somebody wanted him dead. Not to earn or to break into the professional rankings but just to have him dead, just to have him cease to exist. An android programmed to kill wasn’t an opponent, it was an executioner. Somebody had sent a robot executioner. And then the full realisation hit him. ‘It’s yesterday,’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s over, I’m as good as dead.’

  Ownership of an android was rare enough, but someone who could get one that would kill his unknown enemy must carry enough clout to be on first-name terms with all the gods. It wasn’t just money, although it would take rather more of that than Keefer could earn in several lifetimes as top number in the Prime Division. No, it was more than that. It was power. The power to have it done, whatever it was, without the suggestion of a question. There were maybe two people in all the settled planets with the sort of power it would take to have an android adapted to kill. And when whichever one it was knew the thing had missed, what then?

  If power like that wanted him dead then he was dead.

  The sound of an approaching jet-copter brought Keefer back to life. Perhaps they already knew. The icy calm that always came with combat cleared Keefer’s mind of everything but the instinct to survive. He leaned into the runner and took the weapons belt from the safety compartment. He clipped on the belt, thumbed an incendiary pellet from one of the holders and dropped it on the runner’s back seat just above the fuel-tank housing. The jet-copter was closing fast.

  Keefer sprinted for the cover of the bank that bordered the road.

  On the back seat of the runner the pellet reacted to the moisture in the air and started to burn. As it got hotter it began to melt through the structure and drop towards the fuel tank.

  Keefer slogged up the bank and flung himself down on the other side. The only real cover was a small clump of trees about three hundred metres from where he lay. If he tried for it the occupants of the ‘copter would be bound to spot him.

  His instinct told him that would be very bad news. Carefully he peered over the top of the bank as the ‘copter screamed in, balanced its jets and hovered over the runner. It was a gun-ship. It opened fire just about the moment when the white-hot incendiary pellet burned through the top of the old Mythmotor’s fuel tank.

  Keefer ducked back as the runner exploded, hurling flame and metal upwards like a burning fist. The gun-ship pilot missed his cue by a full beat. As he kicked the jets wide and the ‘copter lunged skywards it was already too late. Flame roared through the vents and the gun ports. Ammunition and fuel erupted scattering debris and fire across the motorway.

  Before the last pieces hit the ground Keefer was up and running for the trees.

  On the motorway the Central Traffic Computer stopped every vehicle within a mile in either direction. As he reached cover Keefer heard the sirens of the emergency services converging on the killing ground.

  Most of the Zone Three mid-evening newscast was devoted to an obituary of Starvil taken straight and unedited from the interplanetary network. Considering the short notice it was a good solid presentation. A brief biography was followed by reruns of his best kills and a nicely restrained eulogy by one of the more dignified network frontmen. If the actual details of his death were a little sketchy it was surely understandable since it had happened without benefit of tri-dee coverage.

  After the network linkup, Zone Three’s local news carried, amongst other things, a brief item about an accident on the R4 southbound in which three people were killed. Keefer was not mentioned, in fact no names were given at all. This could have been an editorial foul-up, since at the time Zone Three had a small drama of its own.

  On the very night when the main news story was the death of a legendary sports personality, the duty sports editor, one Jon ‘Mickey’ Michaelson, was found dead. Within three hours of the discovery of the body, Jerro Fanson, an independent promotions agent with a reputation as a hustler, had been arrested and charged with his murder.

  Leela clenched her teeth and closed her eyes but the sudden silence made her open them again immediately. The Doctor was standing peering down at her. ‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.

  ‘I was asleep?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Doctor smiled encouragingly. ‘You were snoring.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘How long were you snoring?’

  ‘How long was I sleeping?’ She stood up easily and without any sign of the stiffness she might have expected from falling asleep on her knees on a hard floor.

  The Doctor pulled his battered hat from the pocket of his long coat and jammed it on his head. ‘That depends on which watch you think is more reliable.’

  ‘I do not think I was asleep,’ Leela said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ the Doctor said. ‘It can be hard to tell, some dreams are very vivid.’ He headed for the door. ‘Shall we go?

  Yes I think so.’ And without saying anything else he was gone.

  Leela noticed that, as had happened before, he made almost no effort to check on what might be waiting outside the TARDIS. She tried to see if anything was showing up on the screen above the door but the only movement she could make out was the Doctor wandering forward into who-knows-what danger. She tightened the strings on her hide boots.

  ‘Wait for me,’ she called as she set out after him.

  Chapter Two

  The Doctor looked around at the concrete culvert and found himself wondering why it was that the TARDIS seemed to favour materialising in unobtrusive alleyways in industrial complexes, obscure corners of underground labyrinths, half-hidden woodland copses, or anywhere really that was not immediately identifiable. Perhaps it was easier for her to slip in unobserved. Or perhaps such anonymous places had fewer existential links to be severed and temporal resonances to be tuned out. ‘Or of course,’ he said aloud, ‘it could simply be a coincidence, a matter of statistical probability. It could be what most places in most worlds are like.’ He strolled on through what he assumed was a service duct of some sort, regretting vaguely that he had skipped the class in transdimensional locus attraction dynamics in favour of the theory and practice of yo-yos and juggling for beginners. ‘The trouble with juggling is that you forget how to do it,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not at all like riding a bicycle.’

  Leela trotted up beside him. ‘Doctor? Why did you not wait for me?’

  ‘I did wait for you.’ The Doctor did not break his stride. ‘I am waiting for you. Try to keep up, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘You were talking to yourself,’ Leela said.

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘Everyone talks to themselves.’

  Leela shook her head emphatically. ‘I do not talk to myself.

  Warriors do not talk to themselves.’

  ‘They just don’t do it out loud,’ the Doctor said smiling, but he was abruptly aware that the lumpy landing had left him more disorientated than he had realised. He hoped the TARDIS was recovering more quickly than he was himself. He wanted her to be ready. He didn’t intend to spend very much time here, wherever here was, in fact he wasn’t really sure why he was bothering to explore at all. It was probably worth finding out where they were though. It seemed pointless to suffer a lumpy landing without having anything to show for it except lumps. And there might still turn out to be a reasonable reason to be here. Of course a reason is not the same as a purpose, as he had to keep explaining to the hopelessly purposeful... it was a shame that people kept looking for purposes when they should be looking for reasons... the point was you could make up a purpose to suit any particular insanity but a reason existed and had to be found...

  Leela interrupted his chaotic musings. ‘What is this place and why are we here?’ she asked reasonably.

  The Doctor glanced back to where the TARDIS was already partially hidden by a buttress, a heavy angular support tha
t ran from the base of the culvert, across the top, and back down to the base again. ‘Yes,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘Yes what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What is this place and why are we here?’ Leela repeated. It was a challenge more than a question now.

  ‘I should have brought a ball of thread; the Doctor mused.

  ‘Or a bag of breadcrumbs.’

  Leela said, ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘Devising a way of finding the homing device shouldn’t be beyond the wit of a Time Lord. I wonder if that’s another training course I missed?

  Routine TARDIS locator location.’ He turned back and walked on with renewed determination. ‘Keep an eye open for identifying features we may need to find our way back in a hurry.’

  Leela touched the hilt of her knife. ‘You think this place is dangerous.’ She strode along beside the Doctor, her gait easy and relaxed, only the brief touch to the knife hilt betraying her tension.

  ‘I think this place is anonymous,’ the Doctor said. The channel was sloping slightly downwards and bending gently to the left, and they were approaching another buttress. He noticed for the first time that they gave off a faint, slightly luminous glow. ‘One whatever-this-is looks much like another whatever-this-is.’

  ‘Now you are being silly,’ Leela said lengthening her stride and beginning to move ahead of the Doctor.

  He made no attempt to keep up with her, pausing instead to look more closely at the surface of the buttress. ‘Am I being silly?’ he asked of no one in particular. ‘Yes, I think I probably am.’ Leela was disappearing round the bend ahead.

  ‘As it happens I don’t think this is a culvert,’ he called after her. ‘Or a storm drain. You don’t bother to light culverts or storm drains. Not even with a chemically reactive paint... or a bioluminescent coating, it could be a bioluminescent coating.

  If it is bioluminescent, the question becomes: is it naturally occurring or is it deliberately engineered?’ He rubbed the surface with his finger. It was slightly warm to the touch, suggesting it wasn’t bioluminescence. ‘And the other question becomes why am I dithering about here talking to myself?

  Why don’t I just get on with it? What am I afraid of? That’s three questions. Why can’t I count properly? That’s four questions. I think that’s four questions.’

  He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated on what had happened in the TARDIS an infinite sometime briefly ago. It was as though his other incarnations before and after, the once and future Doctors, had fringed and multiplied, overlapping and leaving him not quite jumbled and almost confused. There was still no place for him now. He should not be here. That was it. This was not his here and now. This was still not his here and now. He waited, trying not to concentrate. He concentrated, trying not to wait. And then it was done and he was himself again. He felt it all focus and slot together, and he knew he belonged where he was. He shivered and opened his eyes and was himself and only himself again. He wasted no more time and set out after Leela. It’s an alleyway, he thought, or possibly a corridor in a building of some sort. He walked on quickly, bothered that he had let his travelling companion get so far ahead. Being an aggressive young primitive she was bound to get into trouble, it was one of her more reliable traits.

  Before long he reached the point in the bend where he could see the light at the end of whatever it was, a tunnel perhaps? If it was a tunnel that would make it the light at the end of the tunnel that he could see. It didn’t look like an oncoming train of any sort, it looked a lot like daylight. And he could see what looked like sand in the daylight. What he could not see was any sign of Leela. A tunnel leading to some sort of sandy terrain: surely the TARDIS hadn’t brought them to another storm mine. There were occasions, too many occasions recently, when the old thing went back over new ground, or forward over old ground, constantly round and round as though obsessed. It tended to get diverted into the backwash of minor temporal anomalies far more often than used to be the case. It was getting predictable, unoriginal even: been there, done that, got the hat and scarf... The options analysis switching loops were probably fogged with partially rejected parallels. The opening balances needed resetting: another of the training courses he’d skipped. The way things were going, or rather the way things weren’t going, most of the TARDIS needed an overhaul up to and including the police box paintwork. What a dull prospect, he thought, and how very fortunate it was that he had neglected to learn how to do any of the required procedures, after all who was it who said: show me a perfect house and I’ll show you a wasted life? He smiled to himself and said aloud, ‘So show me a perfect TARDIS, and I’ll show you a wasted incarnation.’

  He strode on and, approaching the shadow framed brightness, he could see now that he wasn’t in the open ore-scoop of a storm mine. The TARDIS hadn’t brought them back to a tangle of interrupted universes it was trying to unravel and re ravel. At least it might not have done. This might be somewhere new.

  He stepped out into the sunshine to find himself in a big circular arena. The wide floor was sand at the edge and short scrubby grass in the middle and was bordered by a smooth and seamless wooden fence. Beyond this there were seats rising in tiers to just below the high, clear dome that covered the whole amphitheatre.

  The Doctor walked a little way across the sand and stood looking around him. To one side of the tunnel entrance Leela was examining the fence.

  ‘It’s a sports arena by the look of it,’ the Doctor said. ‘Now all we have to do is work out what the sport might be.’

  ‘I am not certain,’ Leela said, ‘but I think this wall is splashed with blood.’

  Jerro Fanson couldn’t quite believe what was happening. It was obviously a scuffle-up, but even so, even by the standards of this bunch of button-pushers, it was shambling scuffwittery. He shifted slightly on the tilted couch.

  ‘Do you deny you quarrelled with Jon Michaelson?’ The Interrogation Controller looked down at the detector screen as he waited for Fanson’s reply.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Again. Do you deny you quarrelled with Jon Michaelson?’

  This time Fanson waited until the small, eyelevel screen flashed REPLY at him, indicating that the computer had balanced all the data variables outputting from his body and brain, and was ready to analyse the minutest change in relation to his answer. ‘No I do not deny I quarrelled with Jon Michaelson.’

  On the Interrogation Controller’s screen the single word TRUE flashed up.

  On Fanson’s screen an abstract pattern of shapes and colours danced and changed, making it difficult to think and plan ahead. He tried not to look at it. He had to concentrate.

  The struggle between interrogator and prisoner was the same as it had always been, always would be, whatever advances were made in the state of the art. Some men were better fitted to resist than others, but all men ultimately had a breaking point. The only possible escape was through the truth and the hope that the truth that was told would obscure the truth that was hidden. Since he was innocent Fanson had only one truth to hide. He wasn’t sure why exactly, but he knew he must buy Keefer some time. He was determined not to tell them that the kid was alive.

  ‘What did you quarrel about?’

  On the screen the mesmerising pattern coalesced and the word REPLY flashed in his eyes.

  ‘Status.’

  On the Controller’s screen the computer registered TRUE: POSSIBLE EVASION.

  ‘Whose status?’

  ‘Mine.’

  TRUE: PROBABLE EVASION. The Controller made a note to return and develop that line if he hit a block on the main attack.

  ‘Did you kill Jon Michaelson?’

  Fanson allowed himself to relax very slightly. He was back on safe ground. Since he hadn’t killed Michaelson the machine was bound to register the truth of his denial. That should give them all a sudden rush of blood to the panic button. REPLY shone into his eyes. No. I did not kill Jon Michael
son,’ he said firmly.

  On the Controller’s screen the computer’s evaluation was unequivocal. FALSE: DIRECT LIE. Despite a small surge of triumph, the Interrogation Controller was careful to maintain a neutral tone. I repeat. Did you kill Jon Michaelson?’

  The Doctor peered more closely at the stains on the wood of the arena fence. ‘It certainly looks like blood. And there seems to be a lot of it.’ He walked further along, examining the wall as he went. ‘In fact it’s everywhere.’

  ‘Do you think it is human?’

  He shook his head and shrugged uncertainly. ‘Anything’s possible. But if it is, someone’s had rather more than a nosebleed.’ For some reason he could not quite fathom, the light coming through the dome seemed colder suddenly, less bright.

  ‘This is not a good place,’ Leela said, frowning. ‘This cannot be a place for sport . Why would there be blood shed? To shed blood for sport is not reasonable. This,’ she gestured at the bloodstains, ‘this tells of much killing. What would be the point of such killing for sport?’

  A matter of instinct; the Doctor said. ‘It often overrides reason. You should certainly understand that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The Sevateem always killed for a reason?’

  Leela glared at him. ‘Warriors never kill for pleasure.’

  ‘Never just for pleasure perhaps,’ the Doctor suggested.

  ‘There is no pleasure in killing,’ Leela said flatly.

  Behind them a voice, heavy with shocked outrage and menace, said, ‘What in the name of all the gods do you imagine you’re doing?’

  The Doctor turned and smiled at the heavy-set man in the one-piece black uniform. He had ‘security’ blazoned across his chest in fluorescent yellow, and low on his hip a handgun hung in an open holster. ‘I don’t do anything in the name of gods,’ the Doctor said, ‘but if you’re the cleaner you’re not doing a very good job.’ He gestured vaguely round at the blood-spattered fence. ‘You missed a bit.’