Doctor Who: The Blood Cell (4 page)

The girl considered this. ‘Well, right now, I do think he’s a bit of an idiot. Does that count?’

Once more I was puzzled. She wasn’t behaving like a lovelorn fan. She stuck out a hand, the fingertips not quite brushing against the fence, just crackling against Protection System #3, the electric field. She didn’t snatch them back. She didn’t flinch.

‘Let’s start again,’ she said. ‘Hello, I’m Clara. I’m a friend of the Doctor’s. What brings you out here?’

‘I’m the Governor,’ I said, bowing in formal greeting. ‘I am mandated to greet any person on their first visit to the prison in accordance with Protocol.’

‘Just their first visit?’ Clara raised an eyebrow.

I nodded. There had been some talk about my having to come out to all visits, but after a while it just seemed to emphasise the futility of the exercise. Bentley had assured me I didn’t have to. I was grateful for this unusual kindness to me. ‘I’m obliged to come out and talk with you once. After that, well, you’re welcome to return as many times as you wish. But this is your one chance to talk directly to the Governor.’

Clara’s frown deepened. ‘Right then. So, for shorthand purposes, you’re not going to release the Doctor, even though I’ve worn my smartest skirt?’

I shook my head.

‘And there’s absolutely no chance of a quick chat
with him?’

I shook my head again.

‘Fine, then,’ Clara shrugged. ‘So it’s just you and me?’ She didn’t seem that annoyed. ‘Fair enough, although I do feel like the girl who found the lamp that granted her three wishes. Or something. You know how it is. For my next wish I would like infinite wishes.’ She smiled.

I smiled back, despite myself. ‘I am afraid I don’t know the fables of your tribe.’

‘Oh, don’t you?’ Clara’s smile widened. There was something about this girl that was rather winning. She wasn’t exactly treating this as a joke; more she was treating me as a human being. It had been, I suddenly realised, a long time since anyone had. Normally visitors just shouted at me. They never seemed to realise that I am as bound by the law as my charges, those I consider my friends.

She paced backwards and forwards across the landing pad for a little and then put up her hand. I guessed she was used to talking to people. Something in her manner – an educator. That was it. They did tend to be cranks and fanatics, although to describe this Clara as one seemed a little unfair.

‘To summarise, the only thing you can do is listen to me, and you only have to do that the first time I visit?’

‘That is correct,’

‘But you do have to listen,’ she grinned, as though struck by a thought.

‘Of course.’ It did seem the least I could do for the friends of my friends.

‘Fine. Then I’ve got a fable for you,’ she said, wagging a little finger at me. ‘It’s about a woman who was, ah, let’s say a kind of Queen of Jordan. And this Jordan was determined to get exactly what she wanted in life. And so she married lots of kings. And no matter how many kings she married, no one gave her exactly what she wanted. One was an, um, singer. Of sorts. One was a warrior. One ran away back home in confusion. And one looked very nice in a thong. I think there were other temporary kings, but those were the main ones. Anyway, the point is that none of these kings gave the Queen of Jordan exactly what she wanted, but she kept on marrying them as she was determined to get what she wanted. She wasn’t going to settle for anything less than perfection, and she was going to keep going, even if she ran out of kings. Which seemed likely.’

I considered this parable closely. ‘And you’re saying that you’re like Jordan, Queen of Jordan?’

Clara nodded, biting her upper lip with determination. ‘In so many ways you can’t even imagine,’ she vowed. She leaned close to the fence, the electricity sparking around her face. It flashed and flared in her eyes, and she looked grimly serious.
‘Listen to me, Governor. I’m going to keep on coming back until you do what I say. Release the Doctor. Or a lot of people will die.’ And then she smiled that sweet little smile, and just walked away.

Fanatics.

After the girl’s visit, I stepped up security. I ordered a DoubleR watch on the cell of 428. I also asked Bentley to check and see if there could be any outside influence causing the power fluctuations. As the Defence Array showed no signs of Clara’s arrival, perhaps she was somehow in hiding on the surface of the asteroid. The scanner sweep was negative.

The only thing that happened was that we had two more systems failures. Neither went up as far as five minutes and forty-two seconds, but still, they were serious enough that I ordered Bentley to send an error report back to HomeWorld. In case there was anything they could advise. Apparently the only immediate response from HomeWorld was a flurry of accusations and counter-accusations among the various contractors and subcontractors responsible for the building of The Prison. And the outages continued, although they were not as severe.

‘Well, I suppose it keeps us on our toes,’ I said to
Bentley. If I was hoping to get a smile out her, I was mistaken. No matter what I said, I could never get on the right side of her.

The Oracle blipped up from Level 7. He was peering through his fingers at me. He looked drunk. He often was.

‘Oh, Governor, there you are,’ his voice oozed delight.

‘What can I do for you, Oracle?’ I never enjoyed talking to him.

‘It’s more what I can do for you. The girl interests me.’

‘What girl?’

‘The one who came to visit. I could see it all through my mind’s eye.’ More likely through your tap into the camera relay. ‘She seems delightful. I see a …’ He took a deep sniff of the air. ‘… a vermillion path for her.’

A stubby finger prodded the camera, fingerprints squidging against the screen, ‘I tell you now, she and I are going to meet quite soon.’ He nodded at the wisdom of his own remark and then threw his hands up to mime fireworks in the air. ‘And we shall light up the sky! So many vibrancies! See if we don’t.’

I shook my head a little. ‘I’m not sure you’re her type.’

‘No matter.’ The Oracle, a shade disappointed, winked at me. ‘I predict interesting colours for her
and for … ah yes, Prisoner 428. That one casts a long, puce shadow over the future.’

I next encountered Prisoner 428 on the viewing deck. Unless you stand on the landing pad, it’s the only bit of The Prison that offers a view of the stars.

It was late at night, and I was out there alone. I often came to the viewing deck on my own, to remember the past. I always came there without a Custodian, and I felt a momentary panic when I saw 428 standing there. I clicked my fingers and a Custodian emerged from the walls, gliding up to me, hovering and ticking as it awaited instructions.

‘Prisoner 428!’ I called. ‘Explain yourself. What are you doing here?’

‘Looking at the stars.’ 428 didn’t turn.

‘For a start, prisoners are not allowed to look at the stars.’

‘Seems rather cruel,’ said 428. He still hadn’t turned.

‘It is done for your own benefit. Psychocriminologists adjudged that the sight would merely decrease prisoner morale.’

‘That so?’ 428 turned to me. His face was framed by the stars spinning slowly behind us, and for a moment I thought how oddly right that looked. ‘Your psychocriminologists sound a pretty idiotic bunch.’

I couldn’t disagree with him, so I moved on to point 2. ‘Point 2. Prisoners are not allowed in this area of
The Prison.’

‘Ah,’ 428 clucked. ‘Well, I’ll make a note of that and avoid it in future.’

‘Point 3. Prisoners are asleep at this time.’

‘Tsk. I don’t really sleep.’

‘Point 4. Prisoners are locked in their cells at this time.’

‘Oopsie.’ 428 made a comical face of regret. ‘What can I say other than that my cell door just kind of fell open? They do that around me. It’s magic.’ Was he laughing at me? ‘I’m like the man who bends spoons. Only you’d choose to sit next to me on a bus.’

‘You have broken four rules—’ I stopped, and realised I didn’t sound at all angry. It was as though I had forgotten all about who Prisoner 428 really was, and what he’d done. I started again, shouting this time. ‘Listen to me, 428. You have broken
five
different rules of The Prison – if you include not addressing me by my proper title.’

‘Well, yes, so you’ve said, sir.’ 428 nodded, a little bored. ‘Tell you what, I’ll just wander back to my cell, shall I, and try and get some shut-eye?’ He turned on his heel and started to walk away, then stopped. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, I think you could do with some rest too. You’re looking a little pasty.’

‘428! You will address me as Sir!’ I thundered.

428 just turned and walked steadily away, waving a hand at me distractedly. ‘Get some sleep, sir. You’re
going to need it,’ he said, and was gone.

I stood there for a moment, shaking with rage.

The Custodian beeped, wanting to know if I wished it to follow 428 and restrain him. I shook my head. Well, let him have his little victory.

Everyone liked Guardian Donaldson. She was everything Bentley wasn’t. Donaldson was a small, slightly plump woman and she was always bustling and smiling.

Her cheeriness masked a shrewdness. People assumed that Donaldson was a soft touch, but she was, if anything, more of a stickler for the rules than Bentley. The thing was, when Donaldson caught people out, they’d be more likely to hold up their hands and chuckle ruefully, ‘You got me.’ Bentley’s sheer correctness meant that she was feared. Donaldson was treated a little like a favourite teacher.

The only person who Donaldson was reserved around was Prisoner 428. I’m not sure if Bentley had had a word with her (the two were very close), or if she was just a shrewd judge of character.

I saw Donaldson and 428 talking one day on a monitor. I didn’t hear what 428 was saying but I heard Donaldson’s withering response: ‘If you stopped trying so hard not to fit in, you’d get along here just fine.’

*

Prisoner 428 made a friend. Bentley informed me of this fact. I pretended not to really be bothered, but I was already crackling with excitement. She leaned over my tablet to activate the cameras, and I noticed again that Bentley didn’t really smell of anything. Just soap. This wasn’t really remarkable, it was just that there should be a smell. I remembered my wife leaning over me to show me some gossip on a TransNet blog, and there would always be a smell. Funnily, I couldn’t remember what my wife’s perfume smelt like. It had been so long.

Bentley stepped back, and I hastily dismissed the idea, the very notion, of her perfume. I was the Governor, after all. Governors do not sniff the air like poets in spring. Instead I looked sternly at the screen. The feed was from one of the cameras on board a Custodian, stationed at the edge of the canteen. 428 was standing eating from a bowl with a spoon. Next to him was the weary figure of 317, a tiny old man. Poor Lafcardio.

I watched the two of them shuffle away, exchanging
furtive glances with their fellow prisoners. For a moment, my memory tugged, wondering what it would be like to go to Paris with those two. It sounded like a nice place.

Surprisingly, it had taken me a moment to recall Lafcardio. A harmless enough old man, he’d taken to the prison regime calmly, almost as though the university he taught at had just suffered severe cutbacks. He was an old friend, one of the ones it wasn’t worth breaking.