Part 25 (2/2)

'Full cooperation is advised,' Ace said tersely, and fired a blast from her weapon into the wall beside the Doctor's head to ill.u.s.trate her point.

With Atrimonides' fingers biting painfully into her neck, the hatch slid away to reveal blackness. The executive transporter moved past Christine on all sides. With a desperate cry she fell forward, into the carpeted interior of the executive transporter's emergency airlock. The grasping hand at her neck convulsed once, agonizingly, and then relaxed.

The executive transporter boomed like a giant bell as it impacted against the bay wall. Christine didn't hear the scream.

No longer attached to his body, Atrimonides' hand drifted free of the hatch coaming.

Something red and pulpy squeezed out of the centimetre*wide gap between the executive transporter and the bay wall, forming s.h.i.+vering globules which clung to the wall's hexagonal bracing struts.

As the emergency airlock hatch slid shut, Christine curled up into a floating ball and was violently sick.

PART FOUR.

DEMOGORGON.

Corporations have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like.Edward, First Baron Thurlow

Chapter Fourteen.

As Bernice entered the refectory she almost b.u.mped into the Doctor. He was standing just inside the doorway, supporting Piper O'Rourke, who was looking old, tired and bruised. Beside them both, Cheryl Russell was sucking her bloodied knuckles.

Over the Time Lord's shoulder, Bernice saw that the refectory was full. The entire Project Eden team or what was left of it was milling around: cowed, shocked and submissive. IMC troopers stood along the periphery of the room with raised weapons. The simularity in the centre of the refectory was even displaying the company logo: the letters IMC in brushed duralinium, curved around a spiral galaxy. It looked to Bernice like a hand crus.h.i.+ng a b.u.t.terfly.

'Move it!' A muscular Company goon in macho combat gear slapped her rump. She turned and was about to deck him when she realized that his needler was aimed at her stomach.

'I said move it!' He grinned. His teeth were even and white, and Bernice wanted to ram them down his throat. His chest tag read 'ARDAMAL'. Bernice stared him down: memorizing his face and making sure that he knew it. His smile grew wider. She stalked off before she said something that he might regret, stepping accidentally on one of the deactivated security drones now littering the Base, and cracking its delicate sh.e.l.l.

Clang. The ma.s.sive airtight door to the refectory swung shut. Silence fell. People glanced fearfully around at the impa.s.sive troops, waiting for the executions to start. The baleful light from the windows cast trembling shadows towards the IMC logo. Somewhere in the background, the food dispenser drifted aimlessly, offering tasty delicacies to uninterested people.

Bernice beckoned the Doctor over. 'What do you think they're going to do with us?' she hissed.

'If they wanted to kill us, they'd have done it already.'

'Oh yes?'

'Look at it from their point of view. Why waste the energy?'

'We have to do something,' she urged.

'I'm open to suggestions.'

'I thought you were supposed to be the one who always had all the answers.'

He smiled bashfully. 'A convincing bluff, I'm afraid.'

'Certainly took me in.' Bernice glanced around. 'Oh h.e.l.l,' she continued, 'I'm going to make a break for it. Can you cause some kind of distraction, Doctor?'

'Distraction is my middle name.'

'Yes, one of them,' Bernice muttered as the Doctor bounded into the centre of the room.

'Well,' he announced, 'no doubt you're all wondering why I called you here.' All heads turned to watch him as he reached into his pocket and took out three multicoloured b.a.l.l.s. 'You'll like this.' He began to juggle, making it look as if he was just on the verge of dropping the b.a.l.l.s each time he caught them. 'There is nothing up my sleeves but my arms, there is nothing down my trousers but a ferret.'

People started laughing: nervously at first, and then with real amus.e.m.e.nt. A wave of relaxation swept across the room. Even the troopers seemed to be fascinated as they crowded closer for a better look. Perhaps their orders didn't cover lunatic Time Lord jugglers.

Bernice took advantage of the show to slide sideways, until she was standing behind Miles, Teal Green and a psychologist named Filo Julee. A few yards away, the food dispenser's sensor light was on as it scanned the crowd for likely clients. She looked it over. It was just about large enough...

'Hey,' she whispered. The food dispenser ignored her. 'Hey, over here! Don't, you recognize a customer when you see one?'

The machine wafted away from her and attempted to interest a pale Miles Engado in a tofu bar.

The Doctor had four b.a.l.l.s in the air now, although n.o.body could see where the extra one had come from. He was milking the audience for all he could get: throwing the b.a.l.l.s out in every direction and catching them in a windmill of arms. He was mugging terribly, his rubber features running the gamut of exaggerated emotions from wide*eyed amazement to crumpled despair.

'Oh, for...' She tried to catch up with the machine, but she didn't want to attract any undue attention from the IMC troopers, and the thing seemed determined to ignore her.

Christ, she thought savagely, a person could starve to death whilst that thing forces sticky buns on dieters and ham rolls on vegetarians!

Finally, she grabbed hold of the dispenser's cooling fin whilst it was waving a krill doughnut around in a vain attempt to attract custom, pulled it close and, in a casual and unremarkable manner, moved her hand down to the dispenser's access plate and ran her fingers around the seam until she felt a magnetic bolt buzzing beneath her fingers.

The Doctor was standing on one hand now, and juggling five different b.a.l.l.s whilst singing a medley of songs by Abba. Under cover of the racket he was making, and the laughter of his audience, Bernice quickly removed the first four bolts. The fifth one decided, for some mysterious mechanical reason that only small but vital components are privy to, that it was going to play up. Bent over at an ungainly angle, trying to wrench the thing free, Bernice was acutely conscious of the picture that she must be making. The small of her back began to feel warm as she imagined a small bead of laser light centred there, cueing a flamer, or a needier, or a screamer, or anything nasty and permanent.

There! The bolt came away with a tacky wrenching sensation. Somebody had probably spilled something on it. Bernice straightened from her crouch with the five bolts buzzing like bees in her hand, pulled the access plate open and furtively tried to check the s.p.a.ce inside the dispenser. Most of the food seemed already to have been disseminated, and a safety cut*out had switched off the stasis field when she opened the hatch. Bernice dumped the remaining food on the floor with a few sweeps of her hand and kicked it under the rubber skirts of the machine. She glanced around with an innocent expression on her face, but all eyes were on the Doctor's antics. She pulled the shelves out and climbed swiftly inside the food dispenser, jerking the leads from the stasis*field generator and pulling the plate shut after her.

There was something sticky beneath her fingers. Chocolate? Machine oil? Whatever it was, it was just the icing on a whole mountain of complaints. She was forced to crouch in the bowels of the machine with her knees up around her ears, her elbows jammed against the interior dispensing machinery and her back wedged so tightly against the shelf supports that she was going to come out with her spine looking like a piece of corrugated duralinium. And the machine did have bowels she could smell them: a dark, rancid odour comprising the spilled residue of a hundred types of food. She wanted to be sick, but that would be a bad idea. A very bad idea.

Paper*thin knives of light penetrated through air vents in the dispenser's casing and drew hot lines across Bernice's face. Motes of dust sparkled and died as they drifted in and out of the beams. Bernice wanted to sneeze.

By s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her eyes up against the glare, she could just about make out what was going on in the refectory.

The Doctor was standing on his head and juggling the b.a.l.l.s by knocking them with the soles of his feet whilst gargling 'The Star*Spangled Banner'. One of the troopers was pa.s.sing his helmet around his colleagues, who were putting money into it. A collection? Bernice didn't know where the Doctor got his talent from, but if he ever got tired of fighting ultimate evil, he could make a healthy profit as an intergalactic busker.

Suddenly the b.a.l.l.s were gone. The Doctor stood frozen with his legs waving wildly and a baffled expression on his face. The laughter swelled, and was supplemented by applause, which died away slowly as the crowd gradually realized that this was not part of the act. The Doctor clambered petulantly to his feet, with the thunderous expression of a child whose toys have been impounded.

Bernice watched, amazed, as a spiral of pink flesh rotated in the air behind the Doctor. Six more joined it, slowly s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g out of nothing, until they suddenly stretched together into a tangled web of pulsating tendrils. Four of the Doctor's five b.a.l.l.s appeared in the midst of the fleshy curtain.

<script>