Part 29 (1/2)

On the cordoned-off road outside the Hubway main gate, two Sea King helicopters stood motionless and quiet. Around them, dark figures in combat gear sorted equipment and checked weapons.

Clark walked round, talking to each man in turn. He commented, encouraged, inquired. He watched as an Icarus glider was a.s.sembled by three of his men. The small microlight hang-glider was powered by a 100cc engine, which one of the soldiers was stripping down and checking.

On the other side of the road, several men packed equipment into a Land Rover Special Operations Vehicle. The low-profile vehicle was caged in heavy metal struts. Machineguns were strapped to the struts at both front and back, and an 81mm mortar was bolted to the floor of the rear section.

Clark nodded his approval to his troops, checked his watch, and moved on.

The Doctor was staring at the small icon representing the compact disc image when Harry found him.

'How's it going?' he asked.

The Doctor glared.

'That well, eh?'

'I haven't got time, Harry,' the Doctor said. 'Voractyll is already loose. To code up an anti-creature would take too long.

The world's computer systems will be entirely converted by the time I've finished. Beyond help.'

Harry looked at the computer screen. None of it meant much to him, but he a.s.sumed the Doctor knew what he was talking about. 'So what will you do instead?' he asked.

The Doctor sniffed. 'I'll have to convert the creature we already have persuade it of the error of its ways.'

'I thought you tried that before.'

256.

The Doctor nodded. 'But this time I at least know what I'm up against.'

'Will it work?' Harry asked.

'Wouldn't you like to know,' the Doctor said helpfully, and was immediately engrossed in his work. He peered closely at the screen, pulled his hat down low over his eyes, and started scribbling furious notes on a piece of sc.r.a.p paper which had appeared on the desk.

Harry watched for a minute, then quietly opened the back door of the van and jumped out.

The Doctor turned his head slightly so he could see the door close. Then he screwed up the piece of paper he had been writing on and hurled it across the van. 'Wouldn't I like to know,' he muttered and pushed his hat back so he could see the screen.

The Voracians on the mothers.h.i.+p had not managed to make contact with Stabfield. They were forced to rely on human communications, telephones and the ma.s.s media. Neither, it seemed, was able to access Hubway. Either the security services had been more efficient than antic.i.p.ated in isolating the house, or Voractyll's influence had already affected local communications.

Either way, Stabfield was on his own. He would have to repulse the SAS raid without Hanson's help and information.

'I am Voractyll. I bring wisdom and freedom.'

The segmented metallic snake coiled and slithered on the screen in front of the Doctor.

'I bring life.'

'Yes, so I believe,' the Doctor said. 'But life, wisdom and reason to the machine. At the expense of the organic. At the expense of humanity.'

The snake coiled into a figure of eight, metal scales sliding over each other as its face closed on the front of the monitor, seemed ready to b.u.mp against the gla.s.s. 'You are not digital,' it hissed.

The Doctor leaned forward. 'No. No I'm not. And that's a huge benefit, let me tell you.'

257.

The snake circled away from the screen, as if bored with the conversation already. 'Organic life is worthless. Beyond reason.'

'Not so,' the Doctor shouted. 'Come back when I'm talking to you. You might learn something.'

The snake paused for a moment, then the head reared and swivelled, curling back towards the Doctor. 'Organic life is fit only to serve,' it hissed. 'You are vague; you are emotional; you are illogical. The human is imprecise and disorganized.

The organic ent.i.ty is easily distracted.'

'Yet Stabfield and the Voracians wish to enslave, not destroy organic life on this planet,' the Doctor said quietly. 'Why is that, do you suppose?'

The snake's head swung across the monitor. 'An emotional response,' it said after a while. 'The Voracians have organic components. They too are impure.'

'No,' the Doctor shook his head. 'They, or rather their creator, realized the benefits of organic components. Voracia realized that digital machine technology in itself is not enough.

The machine is complementary to the organic, not vice versa.'

'Explain. How can that be? The organic is disadvantaged.'

'That depends on your definitions,' the Doctor said. 'You described the human being as ”vague, emotional, illogical, imprecise, disorganized, and distractible”.'

'Yes.'

'I agree,' the Doctor said.

The snake stopped in mid-swing. Its head hung motionless as it waited for the Doctor to elaborate.

'But,' the Doctor said eventually, 'another way of phrasing those same arguments is to say that humanity is creative, not vague or imprecise; resourceful, not emotional; adaptable to change, not distractible.'

The snake-creature considered. 'What values do these things have?'

'They have values you cannot appreciate or discern, since you are not organic. When did you ever feel for a friend, or make an intuitive connection? When did you last enjoy a meal or watch a sunrise? When did you ever appreciate art or literature? You can learn from history, but you cannot 258 appreciate it. You can observe and predict change, but you cannot adapt to circ.u.mstances.'

The snake coiled into a tight circle, looping round in itself endlessly, reflective scales blurring past the gla.s.s. 'And logic?'

it asked eventually, the flat metallic head appearing to be inches away from the Doctor's nose.

'Oh yes,' said the Doctor, 'logic.' He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. 'You take consistent decisions and actions based on logic, based on a quant.i.tative evaluation of available variables free from their context, free from distraction.'

'This is correct.'

'But I am illogical, irrational, organic I take decisions and act according to whim. I do what seems best at the time, based on my morals and my intuition. I take qualitative as well as quant.i.tative data into account. I modify my behaviour according to circ.u.mstance, according to context, according to experience.'