‘Doctor, what are you doing?’
‘Now, you seal up your own suit. I really must insist. Do it, please! And then go find somewhere to hide. Find a heap of rock if you can, rubble to burrow in – something that might mask your own body heat further.’
‘While you do what?’
He pulled his suit’s comms system out at the neck, and dumped the rest. ‘Why, while I go and lure Florian Hart away, of course.’
‘But without your suit, if there’s a decompression—’
‘I need her to see me, Phee. And I am an experienced space traveller, you know.’
‘When Florian finds you, she’ll kill you!’
‘Not if I find her first. Now, enough questions. Go hide – go, go, shoo!’ He all but pushed her away, towards the heaps of debris by the chamber’s quake-cracked walls. And then, earnest and desperately vulnerable, equipped with nothing more than his black coat and crumpled trousers, he hurried off into the corridors of the ice moon.
Phee grabbed First’s hand, he followed her unresisting, and dug her way into a bank of rubble. There, huddled up, with the Blue Doll eerily still beside her, she waited, listening to the Doctor’s progress over her comms system.
‘This is Jamie. Ye’re sure Florian can’t hear us?’
‘Aye,’ MMAC replied. ‘I’m monitoring the wavelengths she’s using. I’ll switch ye over if she changes.’
‘We can see them,’ Luis Reyes called now. ‘In the mine shafts. There’s a deep radar system in here… I’ll overlay a body-heat scanner. Yes, the image is crystal clear. There’s the shaft, I see the exhaust of Florian’s scooter, very bright. And I see the Doctor, approaching her. What’s this big spherical mass in the ice – is it liquid?’
‘That’s the Doctor’s new tree telescope.’
‘Neutrino, Jamie,’ Zoe put in, sounding as tense as the rest.
‘It’s difficult to see in our scan,’ said Luis. ‘And probably in Florian’s too. Look – the Doctor is right beside its wall. He’s doing something to those bits of equipment.’
‘The heaters,’ Jamie said. ‘We put in heaters to keep the contents of the bubble liquid. He must be turnin’ em off!’
‘How do you know?’ Zoe asked.
‘Well, what else can ye do with them?’
‘Cooee, Florian? Here I am!’
Jamie snapped, ‘Is that the Doctor?’
‘Yes, Jamie,’ Luis called. ‘He’s jumping up and down! He could hardly make himself more visible.’
‘Och, I wish I was there, I’d knock him on the heid and haul him off!’
‘And get both of you killed in the process, probably,’ Zoe said primly. ‘I suspect he knows what he’s doing, Jamie.’
‘And here comes Florian,’ said Luis. ‘She’s heading towards him from the other side of the neutrino detector – it’s the way the Doctor’s positioned himself, he’s leading her there deliberately.’
‘But why?’
‘I’m waiting for you, Florian!’
Florian Hart’s skinsuit was in fact equipped with milspec sensor technology, much more powerful than anything issued to the miners. The tunnel she followed was in vacuum, but her skinsuit was comfortable.
She could clearly see the Doctor by his infra-red signature, on the other side of a roughly spherical anomaly in the ice. He was evidently in air; he wore no skinsuit.
‘Doctor! So glad I found you. Any last will and testament?’
‘Hmmph. Florian Hart, why is it that megalomaniacs like you always imagine they are comedians too? With your disgusting planetbuster you really were prepared to destroy us all, weren’t you? While you floated around in safety, up in the phibian ship, while you sacrificed the lives of those of us trapped on this moon – even your own guards?’
‘Oh, I am sure they would willingly have given their lives to the cause. If I’d told them about the bomb, of course. Well, despite your petty obstructiveness all is not lost. As soon as I’ve dealt with you I will return to the bomb and reset it. Your muddle-headed allies are too far away to stop me.’
‘What? No! Florian, surely you see that if you set this thing off you’ll destroy the very thing you seek, which is the bernalium of the Arkive’s hull.’
‘Oh, on the contrary, Doctor. I’ll be destroying the Arkive – blasting it to atoms – but the energies of a mere Z-bomb can’t harm the bernalium itself. It will merely be… scattered.’
‘Scattered? You’ll smash up the whole moon! What’s left of it—’
‘All the better to extract the dispersed bernalium efficiently. I’m already preparing a process to do just that, Doctor. No more mining; it will merely be a questing of fielding bernalium-rich lumps of ice from the sky.’
‘Fielding? What do you think this will be, a butterfly hunt? You’ve no idea what you’re doing. Even if you merely broke up the moon itself – even just that – you could be sending a hail of meteorites through the Saturn system. Which, these days, is full of humans! And, Florian, this Arkive seems physically to be a sack of singularities. Of knots of twisted space-time. What about that? Why, it shattered the Wheel merely by turning over in its sleep! If you now blow it up – if even one of those singularities ended up in Saturn itself – you could destabilise the planet, a gas giant! And if you do that the consequences would be solar-system-wide. Even Earth would be at risk. And in addition you risk destroying an entity, an ancient consciousness, the last trace of a vanished civilisation – perhaps a cultural treasure of value beyond imagining!’
‘The Arkive is just an obstacle. You were right, Doctor, by the way. I do know all about alien life. After the alien intervention that wrecked my father’s T-Mat, I dug into some of the old records, clumsily concealed by governments, and agencies like UNIT.
‘There have been extraterrestrial interventions in this solar system for centuries, haven’t there? And what good have they ever done? Infestations. Clumsy attempts at conquest. Nothing but obstacles to human progress, one way or another. And so it would be now. All this Arkive of yours will do is to bring down on us more busy-body types like Luis Reyes. We’d be swarming with archaeologists and historians and bleeding-heart types, who will object to every spade we stick in the ground. No, Doctor, we can’t have that. That’s why my solution is so perfect, you see. The Z-bomb will eliminate the Arkive, which is less than worthless, while preserving the bernalium of its hull, which is hugely valuable, and essential for the next phase of human progress.’
‘Oh, come off it, Florian Hart. This isn’t about mankind. It’s not about economic growth and all that balderdash. It never is! Oh, soon enough you humans will be troubling the stars, I’m sure of that. But there are always ways to achieve economic growth without exploiting others, if you’re prepared to be patient.
‘No, this is all about you. You and your childhood, isn’t it, Florian? Is this revenge on those you believe destroyed your father? Do you imagine all this will help you sleep at night?’
Florian listened with growing anger. The Doctor’s lecturing reminded her of the oafs she had endured at school. Counsellors. Pastoral care providers. Trying to help her, to work through her issues. They were all idiotic losers, and so was the Doctor.
‘You dare to mock me, you worm. You’ve been an irritant since you came wandering out of nowhere in that box of yours. We should never have saved your pointless life in the first place.’
‘Yes, well, fortunately that was never up to you, was it?’
‘Now at last I can rationalise you, Doctor.’ She raised her blaster, aiming at his position with the aid of her thermal imager. The few metres of ice between them would be no obstacle, to a beam set to kill. She prepared a raking sweep, starting to the Doctor’s left, to ensure he couldn’t escape.
She fired.
And as soon as the blaster’s energy poured into the ice, a thin shell before her cracked and shattered, and water, liquid water, came pouring out in a gush, rushing enthusiastically into the vacuum. The blaster was knocked from her hands,
and she was thrust backwards as if by a huge hand, shoved back down the passage behind her by the pressure of the water. The corridor quickly flooded, the water rising over her as she thrashed for the blaster. But it was freezing, almost immediately, growing thick and glutinous, some exotic cocktail of pollutants allowing the water’s residual heat to pour away rapidly.
Trapping her like a fly in amber. She roared in anger, but she was already pinned.
She raised her head, to glare down the corridor. Her thermal imaging system was functioning still, and she could see the Doctor. See his face, creased in a grim smile. But he wore no skinsuit. Now that the chamber between them was breached, she realised, he was suddenly in vacuum.
And as she watched, he clutched his chest, coughed, folded over.
She laughed out loud. ‘You beat me, Doctor. But you gave your life to do it! Can you hear me, as you puke out your dying breath? Can you hear Florian Hart, laughing at you?’
And the ice closed hard around her.
Regardless of the Doctor’s commands, Phee pushed her way out of the mound of rubble and ran, sweeping up the Doctor’s discarded skinsuit.
The Blue Doll First followed her, with his usual efficient, eerily inhuman gait.
Phee found the Doctor quickly. There was no air in the chamber, none at all, and the temperature had plunged to the cold of deep space. He lay on his front, unmoving, a sprinkling of frost on his tousled dark hair.
The voices on the comms kept calling, asking for updates, pleading for the Doctor to reply.
‘This is Phee Laws. I’m with him. I’m with the Doctor. There’s no air here. He wasn’t wearing a skinsuit. He wanted to attract Florian Hart to the neutrino detector. He did it. But he couldn’t have survived.’
‘Don’t move him,’ Zoe said urgently. ‘Just stay with him. Don’t move him!’
The Blue Doll stood and stared, and Phee wondered how much he understood.
INTERLUDE
INDEPENDENT MNEMOSYNE
I
‘Order! And that means you, Dai Llewellyn, and don’t think I can’t see you.
‘Welcome to the First Constitutional Convention of the Independent State of the Mnemosyne Cincture. And I might say, what are you all doing here, isn’t it your on-shift? Oh, I forgot. We don’t have shifts any more, do we? Just kidding.
‘You know me. I’m your mayor, for now, Jo Laws. Luis Reyes here has kindly volunteered to serve as an independent scribe of the proceedings, with Sonia Paley as scrutiniser. Anybody got any objection to that? If so speak up. Look, I’m serious. This is your meeting. If you have something relevant to say at any point, say it.
‘Good. Second item. As far as I’m concerned I’m only here to open this meeting, because somebody has to. As soon as we have some kind of constitution in place I’ll be stepping down as mayor, and I may or may not stand for re-election as – well, whatever executive role we choose to define. I’m serious, we have to do it right, and maybe I’ve been too long in the saddle anyhow. And in the meantime, I’ll step down as chair of this meeting if anybody wants to propose a better candidate. Come on. Anybody?’
‘I propose Jo Laws keeps the job, for fear of someone even worse getting it.’
‘Seconded.’
‘All who agree—’
‘Aye.’
‘OK. Thanks for nothing. Now we come to the people up here with me. We have representatives of various interest groups to lead the discussion. I know you all picked these characters by some manner or means, but we’ll go through a verification that you’re still happy with them. We have representatives of the classifications, As, Bs and Cs. And up here too is Sam, my own son, representing the youth of the Wheel. Who are no longer just fodder for the vast engine of labour that was the Wheel and its mine. And who are demanding a right to protection, to nurturing, to proper opportunities for education and choice of destiny – a right to be heard. That’s what he’s told me. Good for you, son, and I’m very proud of you, but I won’t embarrass you any more.
‘Third item. In this other row of chairs beside me are guests. You’ll recognise Luis Reyes of the Planetary Ethics Commission, and Sonia Paley our Marshal, but who’s actually attached to the International Space Command, a UN organisation. Oh, and you’ll see one empty chair. We’ve left that for one much-loved guest who isn’t with us today…
‘These folk are to be regarded as guests; they can advise, but they aren’t of the community, and they don’t get a vote. But in particular I feel we need their input into how to prepare our case as a newly independent nation, to be presented to the representative of the ISC who’s on her way here right now from Earth. Ostensibly she’s coming to check on the legal status of our three refugees—’
‘And to take home Florian Hart!’
‘They shouldn’t have thawed her out!’
‘All right, all right. But as an independent nation this will be our first interface with the United Nations and the national and regional governments of Earth. And that gives us a deadline, the ISC rep is due here soon, so we have to get our act in order.
‘Fourth item—’
‘Sorry, sorry! So sorry I’m late! I just could not get away from the medical centre. Hello, Phee, can I sit with you back here? Phew! Have I missed much? I wish I’d brought some popcorn…’
II
‘Doctor, you do make a lot of noise for a man who spent thirty minutes in a vacuum.’
‘Which is more or less what your physicians have been saying. Strictly between you and me I have a small advantage. Respiratory bypass system. Does come in handy from time to time. But mum’s the word – eh?’
‘Speaking of Mum—’
‘Doctor! You have a place up here on the podium.’
‘Oh, Jo, must I? I do so hate to be conspicuous.’
‘We rely on your wisdom.’
‘Flattery will get you nowhere. Oh, very well. So have you made a start?’
‘Well, we’ve tried to—’
‘Of course you must rely on the best models to hand. As painfully worked out by humanity over millennia of bloodshed, but a rather magnificent effort, given that you had no help. The British parliamentary system – as crusty and robust and long-lived as a barnacle on a ship’s hull. American principles of freedom and self-determination—’
‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’
‘Order!’
‘Exactly, Sam. You see, you know it all already, and it is yours; you don’t need help from the likes of me. You’re free now – that’s the thing. You’re free to negotiate with the likes of Bootstrap, to sell them your labour if you like, but you are no longer owned by them. Or indeed by anybody else. And you can raise your children as you see fit, not just for labour in the mines. You can go off and colonise Enceladus and Titan – do whatever you like. And I should do away with all that corporate labelling nonsense. Cs and Bs and As – humans aren’t robots, you’re not Cybermen, you don’t fit into neat categories, and nor are you supposed to. And then there’s the status of your oldest resident to consider.’
‘Who?’
‘Why, the Arkive, of course. After all she was here long before you were. It may not be an issue for a constitutional convention, but as a matter of urgency you must establish her official status. As an alien artefact she doesn’t fit comfortably into legal systems drawn up when humanity believed it was alone. Is she property? If so, whose? Yours, Bootstrap’s, humanity’s? Can you patent her – or some aspect of her, like the Blue Doll manufacture technology? Or is she an independent entity in her own right? To be treated like the representative of a separate nation, perhaps, to whom appropriate diplomatic courtesies should be extended?’
‘If I may speak? There are organisations on Earth connected to the search for alien life that have done some thinking on these issues. I’d be happy to advise.’
‘Thank you, Luis. And I have some thoughts on the Arkive’s long-term fate – as best we can arrange it. I have Zoe working on that. But remember the
Blue Dolls! They too are independently sentient creatures in their own right.’
‘They’re killers!’
‘Yes, they have killed, and destroyed. They did what they were programmed to do. But now the war is over; I made peace, on your behalf, with the Arkive, their controller. And besides, even before the ceasefire they transcended that programming. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. They care for each other. They ask questions, of life and death and the meaning of their existence. They have even created art. They are made things, but they have evolved their own culture, and it deserves preservation and respect… as long as they last.’
‘Doctor? What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, Jo, I mean Mayor Laws, they seem to have a certain built-in obsolescence. The signs of ageing are already obvious, sadly. Though they remain child-sized. And they have no way of reproducing, of course. The same with the Blue Soldiers. So those of you who despise them can comfort yourselves that they won’t be a problem for long.’
‘Again we can help with that. Room can be found on Earth, or on the moon.’
‘All right. Thank you, Luis. You’ve given us food for thought, Doctor; we’ll deal with all these issues in the best interests of everybody – and I mean all the residents of Mnemosyne and the Wheel. But if you’ve done hijacking my meeting, let me get us back on track. We’re here to discuss a constitution for our new nation. And though it galls me to admit it, Karen Madl, my ex-husband’s partner, is not just a hotshot space pilot. Turns out she has university-level training in constitutional law. She’s been taking input from you all and has prepared a draft constitution for you to consider.’
‘Not really a draft. More principles to guide the construction of a draft.’
‘Whatever. You want to come up here and tell us what you have?…’
‘You’ll always remember this day, you know.’
‘Yes, thank you, Doctor.’
‘I’m not surprised none of you are leaving, even you youngsters. This isn’t about dry-as-dust documents and legal principles. You are building a new nation. Your own nation, one of the first independent states beyond the Earth. This is a day that will always be remembered, as long as there are people in the Saturn system.’
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