Doctor Who - The Wheel of Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  Jamie scoffed. ‘You? Babysittin’? Ye could babysit a computer, maybe. Or a Cyberbaby!’

  ‘Yes, all right, Jamie.’ She sounded hurt. ‘We’re doing fine. She’s got her little blue doll, and her other toys. Is that all right with you?’

  ‘Aye, aye. Sorry.’ He leaned over to Sam. ‘Say hello to yer wee sister, Sam!’

  Sam just rolled his eyes.

  ‘What did you want, Jamie?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, aye. Listen, d’ye have a line to MMAC?’

  There was a click, and MMAC replied immediately. ‘Right here, big man.’

  ‘What, ye’re listening’ in?’

  ‘No, but the use of ma name triggers a detection system.’

  ‘I wanted tae ask ye both—’ He glanced out of his window again. ‘What’s Florian Hart doin’ with a big old booster rocket on the moon’s surface? I thought she was down there to plan how to get yon mine up and runnin’ again. Did she take it out o’ the Wheel?’

  ‘No,’ MMAC said. ‘But I’ve a stockpile of old craft like that on Tethys. Another o’ the moons. Spare parts fer the Wheel, ye might say. Those old birds have got useful electronics in ’em sometimes. Other stuff ye can scavenge. There was some damage done to yon facilities by those Blue rascals, Jamie. Maybe she’s tryin’ tae fix it.’

  ‘I suspect it’s all innocent,’ Zoe put in. ‘I’m working in an old Mars shuttle craft myself, built into the Wheel. Decades old, but I can patch into the avionics and what’s left of the AI to support the Doctor’s project, linking MMAC to the Arkive…’

  ‘Hmm. A missile, ye say? Which means it would have had a big bomb in its nose?’

  ‘Aye, once,’ MMAC said, ‘but I cleaned ’em all out long before they were brought out here, Jamie. Ye can check if ye want. I was always very careful about safety, when I was puttin’ this Wheel together. Scrupulous, ye might say.’

  ‘Jamie, is that all?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, good luck then. The sooner we can put all this together the sooner we’ll have everything resolved.’

  ‘Aye. We’ve all got work to do…’

  He shut the line down, still not quite satisfied. Something about the sight of that big old rocket lying there on the moon’s surface disturbed him. A missile, with Florian Hart, angry, impatient, ambitious, working only a few paces away. It didn’t feel right.

  Just do your job, Jamie boy. Just do your job.

  Inside the facility, Jamie, Sam, Dai, Sanjay pulled on backpacks laden with gear, strapped their blasters over their shoulders, and clambered down the shaft’s rough ladder and deep into the moon. Sam and Dai still hadn’t fully recovered from injuries they’d suffered on Titan, but they’d been able to satisfy Jamie and Sonia that in the low gravity they wouldn’t be impeded. And, well, they’d wanted to come, wanted to take part in the mission, and that counted for a lot with Jamie.

  They soon reached pressurised shafts and corridors, and that made moving easier. But as they penetrated deep into the moon’s friable ice, Jamie was soon lost, even though he was carrying a map, a fancy layered thing prepared by Zoe that showed the deep structure of the mine shafts. The Doctor wanted a big cavity to be melted into the ice directly over the Arkive’s chamber, because that was the way the Arkive seemed to be directing her neutrino blasts, straight up into space. Zoe had marked a roughly spherical chamber on the map, and had even marked firing positions for them with crosses. The trouble was, where Jamie came from nobody ever used maps, save maybe for scratches in the dirt as some veteran explained how they were going to raid a redcoat camp. He grown up learning his mountains and moors and glens from direct experience. And for sure nobody ever needed a map in three dimensions like this, all contours and layers showing down and up as well as side to side…

  ‘Are you lost, granddad? Poor old fella.’ Sam took the map from his hands and made a point of turning it the other way up. ‘We’re on the right road. But we need to split up here. Dai, Sanj, you go that way – left. Granddad, you follow me…’

  In the end, Jamie found himself alone in a deserted shaft, with sparse light globes glowing fitfully. But this point would become the ‘north pole’ of the Doctor’s spherical hole. Sam had wormed his way down to the ‘south pole’, having sent Dai and Sanjay to opposing points on the equator.

  Now Sam called over the suit comms, ‘All set? Blasters charged?’

  The others called in positive replies.

  ‘Ye sure this is going to work?’ Jamie asked. ‘Meltin’ ice with guns?’

  ‘It’s how they blew the bubbles in the Wheel in the first place,’ Sam said. ‘With big industry-strength blasters. It’ll work if you don’t make a muck of it, granddad. Do you want to count us down?’

  ‘I’ll leave that tae ye, ye scallywag.’ Jamie pressed the flaring muzzle of his blaster down onto the ice under his feet.

  ‘On zero, then. Three, two, one – zero!’

  Jamie closed the trigger.

  Used to firing muskets, he had braced for recoil, but there was none. He could hear nothing, in fact, see nothing. But he knew that energy was pouring out of the weapon into the substance of the ice beneath him, and he smelled an odd burning scent – electrified air, Zoe called it, like the air of an ocean beach on a fresh day.

  ‘Hey, granddad,’ Sam called now. ‘You do realise you’re melting the ice under your own feet. That’s why we put you at the north pole. I hope you can swim!’

  In fact that had occurred to Jamie when Zoe had set out the scheme for him. And in fact he couldn’t swim. But he knew the theory. The blasters’ four beams would meet at the centre of the cavity, and the melting would start there, and work its way out through the ice. If they timed it right the melting would stop long before it reached the ice under Jamie’s feet, leaving a hollow in the ice, full of meltwater, neatly sealed up. And no swimming highlanders.

  But Jamie was no theorist, and he was relieved when time was up and they shut down their blasters, and he was still on dry land, so to speak.

  Harry Matthews called down from the surface. ‘Running some deep radar from up here, boys. I can see the cavity. Perfect – just as the Doctor wanted it.’

  Jamie thumbed his comms studs. ‘Doctor, Zoe – d’ye hear that?’

  ‘We did, Jamie,’ the Doctor called. ‘Splendid! Now, what’s next?’

  Jamie remembered the plan. ‘Well, we’ll run a pipe down from the phibian to bring in the cleaning fluid from the hold. We’ll have tae fix heating units to keep the meltwater liquid. You said the water down here is full o’ funny stuff, funny chemistries, and will freeze very fast otherwise. Oh, and we have to put those little sensor pods of Zoe’s in place all through the cavity. We have those in our packs… A couple of hours, Doctor, and ye’ll be in business.’

  ‘Well done to all of you. Well, get on with it then!’

  Over the open comms, Jamie heard Sam and Harry discussing how to handle the pipe from the ship. Stepfather and stepson, separated by a divorce, united in an interesting job. Jamie grinned as he set a heating unit down on the ice beside his feet, got out a small handheld drill, and set to work.

  41

  ‘DID YOU HEAR that, Casey?’ Zoe asked.

  The little girl sat on a mesh flooring panel, surrounded by a litter of toys. The new blue doll, her favourite, sat on her lap. ‘Jay-ee.’

  ‘Yes!’ Zoe said, oddly delighted. ‘That was Jamie, you recognised him! He’s doing very well, isn’t he? And soon we’ll all be talking together. You and me, and the Doctor and the Arkive.’

  ‘An’ MMAC.’

  ‘Are my ears burnin’? Oh, nae, I haven’t any ears, ah forget.’

  Casey laughed at the gruff voice.

  ‘Hello, MMAC,’ Zoe said. ‘And I suppose you have your alert software searching for your name being pronounced by three-year-olds, do you?’

  ‘Ah, well, I do keep a weather eye on little Casey. She’s a poppet, isn’t she? Ye know, I made her a toy once. A model of me.’


  ‘Did she like it?’

  ‘Scared her wee noggin off. Maybe when she’s older.’

  ‘Do you feel like running another simulation?’

  ‘Aye, why not? We dinna want to be the ones laggin’ behind when everybody’s ready tae go.’

  ‘Quite so. I’ll set it up.’ And Zoe, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat of this compact little craft, began throwing switches and tapping screens, running preparatory subroutines.

  This particular relic ship, now bolted firmly in place in the great necklace of ice and metal that was the Wheel, wasn’t particularly old, though its design harked back to much more venerable craft. It was a shuttle that had once served a base on Mars, but it had the body plan and black-and-white markings of the old NASA Earth-orbit space shuttles of the late twentieth century – though it was smaller, more compact, more robust, and its engines, now safely removed and dismantled, had been a good deal more powerful. But the principles were the same: a lifting body shape, hull coated with white heat-insulation blankets and black tiles resistant to air friction. Jo had recommended it as Zoe’s base for her part of the Doctor’s project; the shuttle was never going to fly anywhere under its own steam again, but its electronics were still sound, especially the avionics, the flight control.

  Oh, and if Zoe wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on Casey while she worked – it would free up Jo, she had so much to get through – the little girl would be no trouble – she wouldn’t be able to escape as long as Zoe kept the airlock hatches closed… And Casey did like Zoe’s face, after all. Oh, hadn’t Zoe known that?

  No, she hadn’t. Zoe, puzzled, had stared at her own face in reflective surfaces. She saw a round, very young-looking face, full mouth, wide eyes, framed by neatly cut dark hair… It had never occurred to Zoe to wonder how children might react to her. It wasn’t a topic that came up in astrophysics classes in the City. Or, indeed, while fighting Cybermen or Ice Warriors with the Doctor.

  Anyhow here the two of them were, safely tucked up in the flight deck of this old shuttle, which was warm, humming, with a comforting new-carpet smell. Luckily the little girl seemed more interested in her toys than in the switches and panels all around her. She shouldn’t have been able to do any damage – everything should be inert, save the systems Zoe could access from her pilot’s position – but this was a spaceship, and it was very old, and you never knew…

  ‘Ready to go, MMAC?’

  ‘Aye, when ye are, lassie.’

  Screens on the console before Zoe lit up with images of Saturn’s rings, the features that were so familiar now, the ringlets like hair strands, the colours, and the spokes and bars and ripples that, they knew now, were the frozen thoughts of the Arkive. And behind her, on a big display flag she had draped over some of the defunct consoles, larger-scale imagery came pouring down, retrieved from MMAC’s sensors and from free-flying probes he had sent out over the plane of the ring system.

  Casey gurgled, clapping.

  Zoe smiled. ‘Beautiful, MMAC. And you’ve made a little girl very happy.’

  MMAC laughed again. ‘Then ma work is done. Wha’ next?’

  ‘Now for the simulated neutrino signal.’ She worked a keypad, and a screen filled up with an image of Jamie’s detector, like an X-ray photograph, showing a ghostly spherical cavity enmeshed in the shafts and corridors of the deep mines of Mnemosyne. Green crosses showed her the positions of Jamie and the boys, who had stayed at their posts. Now she tapped a tag on the screen. A simulated neutrino pulse washed up from the heart of the moon, causing sparkling collision events all over the detector volume. It was like a firework display in a glass bubble, she thought. And the products of those collisions caused sensors in the detector to light up in turn, all in simulation. The software kicked in, tracing back the products to the collisions that had caused them.

  And immediately the screens, and the big display flag, began to scroll with interpretations and amendments, as the software, backed by the chip from the TARDIS’s universal translator, began to process the data.

  ‘It’s workin’,’ MMAC said. ‘It’s a right lash-up. But it’s workin’, lassie!’

  ‘Well, this is just a simulation, MMAC. Let’s not get carried away until we see the real thing.’

  She spoke cautiously. But in truth she was delighted; yes, clearly all this was going to work just as she, leading the design, had intended it to.

  She sat upright in her chair, intent, calm, poised. She never felt more alive than in moments like this, with a system she thoroughly understood at her command, and colleagues in space and down on the moon ready to work with her, and a fascinating intellectual challenge to be met. As if all the parts of her were working together.

  Behind her the little girl gurgled again. Zoe felt a quite unreasonable stab of fondness for her.

  ‘Explain it to me again, Florian,’ said Luis Reyes. ‘What are you doing here exactly?’

  Florian Hart did not reply. She stalked around the room, her skinsuit hood pushed back in this airtight section of the surface facility. Some of her guards stood by, apparently at ease. But Luis noticed that they were all in a position where they could watch him. Other guards had gone off deeper into the facility, accompanied by the Bootstrap techs Florian had brought here.

  They’d all flown down here in a small, crowded shuttle, since the Wheel-to-moon cable systems were still out of action, and an uncomfortable little trip it had been too. Around them, immense machines hummed and telltale lights glowed green. These mighty engines pumped air and power into the mineworks below, mineworks idle and abandoned save for two enigmatic travellers, a handful of kids, and the strange alien entities the Doctor claimed he was trying to communicate with.

  ‘Wasting time and money,’ Florian said now.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You asked what we’re doing here. That’s what you’re doing, Reyes, with your pointless nursemaiding. Just as pointless as all your pottering about and nosing. And all the while you’re cashing your fat paycheques, funded by the hard labour of the taxpayers of the solar system.’

  He had to laugh at that crude attack. ‘Well, it would be hard labour if it was up to you. Come on, Florian. You’re being enigmatic, to say the least. Have been ever since Sonia and Jo Laws gave you the clearance to come back here.’

  ‘Pah. I don’t need their clearance to do anything.’

  ‘Actually you do. I’m not here to nursemaid you but to inspect what you get up to. Just remember, Florian, I haven’t pressed the issue of access to your records. I’m quite sure there will be evidence in there of Blue Dolls and strange mass concentrations at the core and all the rest of it, all inconvenient to you, and all hidden away. I’ll leave all that to the investigating commission. But for now – where have those young techs of yours gone? What are they doing, Florian?’

  ‘I don’t answer to you.’

  ‘Why do you need a Demeter rocket?’

  ‘I gave Jo Laws a written submission for it.’

  ‘I saw that. It was so vaguely worded that Jo would never have passed it if she wasn’t juggling a dozen crises at once, as you surely knew. You’re going to take “spare parts” from a corroded relic like that? How old is that thing? Why, you don’t even use the same materials any more. Using hulks like that for shelter up in the Wheel is one thing. Are you really going to stick a bit of space junk into the middle of a super-modern high-technology facility like this mine?’

  ‘You’re not technical. You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t I?’

  She glanced at her wrist chronometer. ‘Look, I’ve got a lot to do and not much time to do it in. If you don’t mind—’ She walked off, towards the work rooms at the rear of the building.

  He stood to follow. Immediately a couple of Florian’s guards blocked him. He called past them, ‘Actually I do mind. I’m not supposed to let you out of my sight.’

  ‘So sue me,’ she called back.

  ‘I might just do that.’ He glanced at the guards, both
powerfully built men in armoured suits. He stepped back. ‘Well, you won’t mind if I take a look around up here, right?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  He waited until she was out of sight.

  Then he grinned at the guards. ‘Well, you heard the lady. I’m going to take a look around outside the building. That’s not restricted, is it?’

  The guards exchanged glances. The marginally bigger one shrugged.

  ‘Thanks. Now if one of you wouldn’t mind running down a skinsuit check with me…’

  42

  SINCE ZOE AND Sonia had gone back to the Wheel, Phee and the Doctor had been alone in the chamber of the Arkive – alone save for the Blue Doll called First, and Phee wasn’t sure if he counted as company. They had been here for twenty-four hours already. They had set up a little camp, with fold-out chairs and sleeping bags and a food store brought down from the surface.

  Now they were preparing for work. The Doctor had Zoe’s instrument pack at his feet, the control panel in his hand. A big display flag stood before them, inert for now, showing pale blue emptiness.

  The Blue Doll stood silently with them, facing the hulk of the Arkive, behind its screen of rippling light.

  Even up close the Arkive wasn’t much to look at, at first glance anyhow. It was a shapeless mass of some kind of hull metal – an alloy of bernalium, the Doctor said. But then he had pointed out features to Phee, and her fascination had grown. The scarring of meteorite strikes. Erosion caused by the interstellar medium, the dust that lay between the stars. Stumps that might once have supported some kind of shield, or sail. Mounts for long-vanished antennae. Even vents like rocket exhausts, scarred and scorched and clogged with debris. All this was evidence of great age, the Doctor said, billions of years perhaps; this artefact might be as old as the Earth itself.

  She longed to touch that hull. To rest her human palm on the bernalium alloy. To feel age – to feel space. But nobody knew how toxic that venerable surface might be.

  Certainly the hull was intact, however old it was. And inside was – something. Whatever it was consisted of huge masses. Standing close to it, she actually could feel the shifting gravity field of those masses as they rolled and churned. The Doctor speculated that the hull might contain miniature black holes, held suspended in an immensely powerful magnetic field; the holes would serve as an inexhaustible source of energy, as well as causing gravitational fluctuations – and, perhaps, were the source of the neutrino transmissions he had detected. He had said, ‘Maybe these black holes, in their ever-changing configuration, even store the “mind” of this being. Its very thoughts. I’ve seen stranger technologies.’