Part 33 (1/2)

She ducked as the flesh-covered arm punched through the air next to her head.

'Is this the only door?' she shouted at Powerless Friendless.

The Hith nodded. 'I'm afraid so,' it said.

The flesh of the door stretched and distorted as the bot outside pushed against it. Bernice could make out the seams and rivets in its surface. Its blind, blank head swivelled to face her, a bizarre parody of humanity.

'I'm going to kill you, my dear,' it said, voice m.u.f.fled by the skin of the door.

'I am am going to kill you.' going to kill you.'

Vaughn's attention appeared to be momentarily distracted; his eyes, despite being metal, had a dreamy, abstracted quality, and his lips were moving. The Doctor thought he caught Bernice's name being mentioned, but he couldn't be sure. He took the opportunity to study the figure standing behind the desk, its skin gleaming in the reddish light of the window. Vaughn's body was obviously robotic, more robotic than the last time they had met, but designed more as 206an acknowledgement that he had once been human than as a facsimile of one.

How long had it been since they had last stood facing one another: another office, another time? A thousand years for Vaughn; five hundred or so for the Doctor. They were both older, but were they any wiser?

Vaughn's attention suddenly focused back on the Doctor. He was frowning slightly, as if he had received some unwelcome news.

'Tea?' he offered in that hatefully familiar voice. Even half a millennium couldn't erase the Doctor's instinctive reaction to Vaughn's patronizing tone.

'Forgive me, but I can't remember whether you take sugar and milk.' Vaughn smiled sleepily. 'Tell me, Doctor, do your tastes change when your body does, or do your likes and dislikes remain constant?'

'I still abhor evil,' the Doctor snarled, filing away for the moment the fact that Vaughn knew about his regenerative ability. How had he found that out?

From the Cybermen, perhaps? 'I still fight the guilty on behalf of the innocent.'

He felt rather petty, reacting so extravagantly to Vaughn's hospitality, but the man had always brought out the worst in the Doctor. That smooth, cultured facade concealed a mind as amoral and as calculating as any machine. The only difference between Vaughn in the twentieth century and Vaughn now was that his outside was now as hard as his inside.

'Doctor, I wouldn't have you any other way,' Vaughn said, and ran a gleaming finger across the surface of the desk. Lights rippled in response. 'It will take my butlerbot a few moments to prepare the tea; I hope you don't object.'

The glow from the window flickered, making his shadow s.h.i.+mmer across the desk.

Despite himself, the Doctor remembered.

He stood beside Vaughn, watching with horror as the flimsy double doors at the International Electromatics factory burst open, and three Cybermen strode the International Electromatics factory burst open, and three Cybermen strode forward. The sunlight glinted off skin like mercury. Vaughn once their ally but forward. The sunlight glinted off skin like mercury. Vaughn once their ally but now their enemy struggled with the ungainly shape of Professor Watkins' cere-brotron mentor, dropping two of the invaders to the concrete floor, but the third now their enemy struggled with the ungainly shape of Professor Watkins' cere-brotron mentor, dropping two of the invaders to the concrete floor, but the third Cyberman fired its X-ray laser and Vaughn's chest exploded. He fell forwards Cyberman fired its X-ray laser and Vaughn's chest exploded. He fell forwards onto an iron railing, trailing smoke behind him . . . onto an iron railing, trailing smoke behind him . . .

Soon after that, UNIT had arrived. The Doctor hadn't bothered looking for Vaughn's body after the battle had ended, and before long he and his companions had moved on to the Collection and that nasty business with the Bookworms. Obviously UNIT hadn't bothered either, and the question of the precise whereabouts of Vaughn's cadaver had got lost in the overall cover-up.

'It's been a long time,' he said.

For a second, Vaughn did not react, as if his attention was elsewhere. The Doctor had noticed that it happened every ten seconds or so.

'Longer for me, or for you, Doctor?' Vaughn finally replied, his normally 207benevolent voice suddenly sharp, betraying an underlying tension. 'I've lived through a millennium waiting for this moment.'

'Lived through? I would query that. You were killed. I saw you fall. n.o.body could live through that. n.o.body.'

'Ah, but you forget,' that hated voice said, oozing false comrades.h.i.+p, 'I had a Cyber-body, and a Cyber-augmented brain. They built me well, you know.'

'They built you for a purpose. They were using you.'

'Of course.' Vaughn smiled. 'I knew that, but to use me they had to rebuild me. I took what they offered the immortality, the power, the vast increase in memory and processing power and played them along.'

'How did you survive?'

Vaughn shrugged, as if the information was of little concern, but the Doctor knew that he wanted to talk, had had to talk, and if the Doctor could keep him talking for long enough then something might happen. to talk, and if the Doctor could keep him talking for long enough then something might happen.

'I had other bodies, hidden away,' Vaughn replied. 'Copies I had made without the knowledge of the Cyberplanner in my office. Spares, if you like. I never trusted the Cybermen. I knew that they would betray me eventually.' A flicker of transient information in the desk cast highlights across his burnished metal face, his drooping eyelid, his sardonic smile.

'That's not the way I remember it,' the Doctor sneered in provocation. 'Perhaps your much vaunted memory increase is failing you. As I recall, you were shocked when the Cybermen showed their true colours. You had been completely sucked in by their pathetic offer of power.'

Vaughn looked away. 'Perhaps,' he said casually. 'It was a long time ago.

I . . . I disremember, in the words of a long-dead American president. I have moved on to other projects since then, and I have done it by myself. I don't need any help. You taught me that, Doctor.'

'If I had thought that anything of you might have survived the Cybermen's guns,' the Doctor said venomously, 'then I would have hunted down every last nut and bolt of you and melted them down for sc.r.a.p.'

'I was cleverer than you, even then,' Vaughn said calmly. 'When the Cybermen destroyed one body, my mind my personality, my essence was transmitted to an International Electronics communications satellite in geo-stationary orbit, then downloaded into another robot body in our New York office. From there I regained control over the company using a different ident.i.ty. Share prices had crashed, of course, but they picked up again. It was not difficult. Unbeknownst to the Cybermen, I had already established fifteen separate ident.i.ties around the world. Within three years, the entire board of Directors of International Electromatics consisted of various versions of myself.'

208.'That must have made board meetings interesting,' the Doctor said, amused despite himself.

'Especially considering the fact that I was the secretary as well,' Vaughn chuckled.

A sudden yellow flare outside the window reflected from Vaughn's metal skin and momentarily illuminated the office.

'Bonfire night?' the Doctor ventured. 'I'm afraid I didn't bring any sparklers.'

'Riots,' Vaughn said casually. 'Certain portions of the Overcity and Undertown are ablaze.'

'Riots?' The Doctor's brain raced through facts, a.s.sumptions and theories.

'Vaughn,' he said, leaning forward earnestly, 'I have to tell you something.

About these riots '

'They're due to the icaron radiation emitted by my Hith s.h.i.+p,' Vaughn said.

'I know.'

The Doctor felt a sudden wave of black anger welling up within him 'You know,' he hissed, 'and you don't care care?'

Vaughn shrugged. 'I take the long-term view, Doctor,' he said. 'And if that means a few million people have to die so that I get what I want, then so be it. I consider it to be a large-scale research project on the effects of icarons on the general populace.'

The Doctor was about to say something he would probably have regret-ted for the short time that it would have taken Vaughn to kill him, but just then Vaughn's butlerbot entered the office. Its face was a black ovoid, and numerous pairs of spindly arms radiated from its chest, each terminating in pincer-like hands sheathed in white gloves. It was carrying a teapot, two cups, two saucers, a jug of milk, a sugar bowl, two teaspoons and a plate of lemon slices.

'Ah,' said Vaughn. 'Shall I be mother?'

Doc Dantalion pa.s.sed a comblike front limb through his antennae. If he didn't get out of there soon, he was going to boil in his exoskeleton. The s.p.a.ceport Nineteen departure lounge was so full of humans that the air above them was rippling in the heat, and their exuded sweat was condensing on the walls and ceiling. The place stank of them: a greasy, dirty, meaty stench that, most offworld races agreed, was one of those things that distinguished humanity from most other bipedal humanoids.