Part 8 (1/2)

As Bannen closed the door to his quarters, she concealed herself behind one of the artforms a few metres from the entrance to his rooms. The lighting in the corridor was dim and reddish; Ace found plenty of shadows to wrap herself in. She'd give Bannen twenty minutes or so to fall asleep and then head back to the Mushroom Farm. There was stuff there she needed to check out.

She had been waiting for less than five minutes when Bannen cracked open the door to his suite and peered both ways along the pa.s.sage. Satisfied that it was empty, the scientist left his suite and hurried away down the corridor.

Ace put her head in her hands and sighed with frustration. Didn't anyone anyone sleep around here? sleep around here?

Bernice closed the door to her suite and stood in the middle of the room trying to work out why she was worried. The base was fascinating. The people were fascinating. The work was fascinating. So what was wrong?

She thought she had become used to the idea of not being a paid*up archaeologist any more. After all, the idea of travel had appealed to her long before the Doctor had turned up on Heaven. Time travel should've been an archaeologist's wet dream but she was becoming increasingly obsessed by a dark thought; that ever since Ace had come back into the TARDIS things had changed. The Doctor had changed. Even she herself had changed, reluctant though she was to admit it, replacing her lost love of digging in the mud of some alien planet with... Well, with what? The clever ability to worm her way into other people's lives and fuel her suspicion with their pain?

No, dammit. No. Not her.

With characteristic suddenness, Bernice about*faced, left her room and strode back to the suite she had just left.

She owed someone an apology.

She banged on the door, and when there was no reply, pushed it open and entered.

The suite was empty. Cheryl was gone.

The Doctor closed the door to Miles Engado's office and walked slowly down the metal pa.s.sage, reddish light from transparent windows lending his thoughtful expression vaguely demonic overtones. Bishop had been less than helpful. That hadn't mattered in the long run, of course. The Doctor had got the information he wanted and given away nothing of any real consequence in return, but he felt his relations.h.i.+p with the Adjudicator needed to improve if there was to be any chance of resolving the situation here. Unfortunately, Bishop was a man used to working within his own jurisdiction, and was comfortable with it. He didn't need to cooperate with anyone and knew it. What made matters worse was that he had the weight of interstellar law behind him. The only thing the Doctor had on his side was time.

The Doctor began to marshal his thoughts. Somebody or possibly somebodies connected with the Eden Project had become a killer. That much was certain. What was also certain was that Ace had changed. Changed beyond his projections. Her suggestion to come to the Lucifer system in this time period, though cleverly routed through Bernice and disguised as a field trip for the archaeologist, showed signs of a confidence which Ace had never displayed before. The Doctor frowned. Was Ace growing up just a little too fast for her own good? Or was he guilty of losing touch with the one species he professed to have such empathy with? connected with the Eden Project had become a killer. That much was certain. What was also certain was that Ace had changed. Changed beyond his projections. Her suggestion to come to the Lucifer system in this time period, though cleverly routed through Bernice and disguised as a field trip for the archaeologist, showed signs of a confidence which Ace had never displayed before. The Doctor frowned. Was Ace growing up just a little too fast for her own good? Or was he guilty of losing touch with the one species he professed to have such empathy with?

The Doctor felt it was time to clear the air between him and Ace. Previous attempts had failed. This time would be different. The ident.i.ty of her mysterious a.s.sailant was still unknown all Bishop had been able to turn up from the security monitors had been a number of corrupted files. Even his own ministrations had been unable to wring anything more informative from the simularities than a field of hissing static, and Ace had been hardly more forthcoming. Worse, Bishop had blamed the Doctor for the fault, citing his aerosol programmer as evidence. It had taken the Doctor thirty minutes of fast talking to convince the Adjudicator he was not to blame. Even then, Bishop had had the cheek to accuse him of The Doctor stopped. Something was wrong. There was a whisper of sound drifting down the corridor: anguish, horror, pain, fear.

A familiar c.o.c.ktail.

The Doctor began to run. In seconds he burst in through the open door of Federique Moshe*Rabaan's personal suite.

Within a second, he had taken in everything the folds of silk that hung from the ceiling and turned the room into a tent, the maze*like designs on the floor coverings, the cus.h.i.+ons scattered around in place of chairs, the woman lying across her bed. Her hejab hejab had been removed, and the Doctor could see blood and tears mixed upon her face. The same blood was streaked all across the front of her had been removed, and the Doctor could see blood and tears mixed upon her face. The same blood was streaked all across the front of her chador chador and soaked the ornate silken sheets which covered the bed. and soaked the ornate silken sheets which covered the bed.

Knowing he was already too late to help, the Doctor bent close to her face, struggling to pick up the words she was whispering over and over again.

'Allahu Akbar...'

G.o.d is great.

She stared up at the Doctor without seeing him. Her eyes were dark and ringed with heavy lashes; her complexion was a flawless olive colour. In human terms she was beautiful. He reached out to touch her temple, and her anguished moans ceased immediately. She blinked; when her eyes shut it was life that moved them, when they opened it was nothing more than a motor reflex.

There was a pen clutched in one hand, a crumpled piece of paper lying on the pillow beside her head. The Doctor stared at the writing on it for a long moment before sadly reaching back out to close her eyes.

Though her face was already cold, the blood running from her open wrists was still warm.

And there was a sound.

The Doctor looked more closely. Her bruised left hand was still moving.

There was no blood, as the vibroknife she had been clutching burrowed through her fist and dropped to the floor. Lacking a touch upon its pressure sensitive trigger, it immediately deactivated.

The Doctor made a quick circuit of the suite. It was empty, but that condition could change at any moment.

Quickly, he replaced the note exactly where it had been on the pillow and left the room. He left the door slightly ajar, exactly as he'd found it. The solution to all his problems, it seemed, had presented itself with almost cla.s.sical timing.

He wasn't about to waste the opportunity.

Chapter Six.

It was Christine LaFayette who, with characteristic tact and subtlety, had forced a twenty*five*hour day on to the Project Eden team. Claiming that the natural biological rhythm of the human body went in cycles of that length, she had produced an impressive array of studies and statistics to prove it. Reluctantly at first, then with increasing enthusiasm, her colleagues went along with her. They found stress decreasing, tiredness evaporating, concentration increasing and job*satisfaction levels. .h.i.tting the roof.

It was Piper O'Rourke who, in her typically blunt fas.h.i.+on, had tried to force through a hot s.h.i.+ft system. It made more sense, she had argued, to have one third of the crew working whilst one third slept and one third relaxed, rotating every eight hours and twenty minutes. It was only when the crew threatened industrial action a recourse denied to company employees but still open to those who worked for Earth Central that she withdrew her plans. Despite occasional attempts to slide her reforms through, the crews of both Bases worked, ate, played and slept at the same times, with only a skeleton crew of insomniacs and misanthropes working through what had been arbitrarily designated 'night'.

So when Third Psychologist Shmuel Zehavi who had successfully managed to hide his sleepwalking habit from all but one or two sympathetic colleagues woke up to find himself standing in a pool of partially congealed blood and staring down at the body of Federique Moshe*Rabaan, the majority of the Project Eden staff were alone, asleep or both...

In her room, Cheryl Russell writhed in sweat*soaked sheets, dreaming of an androgynous lover whose face sometimes resembled Sam Russell and sometimes Paula Engado...

In the Mushroom Farm, Alex Bannen held a gentle conversation with an image from his past to keep the nightmares of Earth at bay...

In the corridor outside the Mushroom Farm, Ace listened to Bannen's voice, and to the quiet replies that followed his words, and wondered who was in there with him...

In the TARDIS, Bernice Summerfield wandered through vaulted white corridors and chambers, wondering why, no matter how far she walked in a straight line, she always ended up back in the console room again...

In the Coordinator's room, Miles tossed and turned uncomfortably in his sleep, disturbed by the distant drums of the Tewa ancestral dance; while his spirit, unable to cross the distance to the Earth Mother, watched enviously before unwillingly rejoining his restless body...

In her office, shrouded in shadows, Piper O'Rourke's thoughts wandered back over the years and light years of her life: the petty jealousies, the minor betrayals and the secrets buried so deep that even she had forgotten them, but which had returned to haunt her none the less...

Down at the Bridge terminal, First Technician Julie Ndema and Second Scientist Craig Richards, temporarily abandoning their duty schedule for a game of poker with Richards' lucky deck, were so completely absorbed in the turn of the cards that they had totally missed the subtle sting being worked by the artful Tiw Heimdall and a.n.u.skia Smyslov...

In her room, Christine LaFayette slipped smoothly into a familiar dream of a strong, cold, human*machine lover, the only lover she had ever lain beside...

In his s.h.i.+p, Adjudicator Bishop sneezed, and wondered for the thousandth time how much longer it would be before he slept...