Doctor Who - Bernice Summerfield - 07 - Ghost Devices by Simon Bucher-Jones

Author:Simon Bucher-Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: High Tech, Precognition, Spires, General, Science Fiction, Fiction, Women Archaeologists
ISBN: 0426205146
Publisher: VIRGIN PUB
Published: 1997-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

* * *

The Negotiator relinquished its blocking signals and returned

control of the shuttle to the doomed organics and waited for

the missiles its internal sensors had detected to blow the

shuttle into atoms.

It felt no sense of loss in connection with its imminent

destruction; if it felt anything it was the quiet satisfaction of

having balanced its conflicting mission objectives. It had not

imperilled the great aim of bringing Peace, nor had it

personally killed. Its circuits were undisturbed and at rest.

The missiles hit the shuttle and blew it to hell.

INTERLUDE

God:

Subroutine: Prognostic Omnipotence by Divine

Emulation,

Bernice (Variant) 57 Running: Start Parameters As

Real Time.

Best-Guess Future (+2/-2) 97.7%

Clarence stopped in the narrow ship‟s corridor and brushed

the metal of the spaceward wall with his sensitive fingers. It

gave off a hum that tingled in his fingers. The ship was

primitive, but it had been well designed for all that, and,

possibly for glandular and biological reasons, the angel felt a

twinge of kinship like an anthropologist watching a

particularly astute primate.

It knew it was delaying the debriefing deliberately, and it

marvelled at the squeamishness it had developed in respect

of this task. What was it about feelings? Things had been so

much easier when it had been a Ship.

Only animals are squeamish, it said to itself sternly, only

icky, lower animals; not me.

Liar, liar, pants on fire, a still small voice said in the back

of his head.

With a hand whose biology was a lie he pressed the door

sensor of Bernice‟s stateroom. The pill container lay empty on

the bedside table. She was quite dead. Choked on her own

vomit.

Clarence ran his emotions through a lookup table. He

realized he felt sad.

„Oh, God,‟ he subvocalized. „If possible take this cup away

from me.‟

„That‟s hopeful,‟ Gabriel said encouragingly, „this one almost

made it to the debriefing.‟

„Unlike emulations one to fifty-six,‟ God said.

„You‟re forgetting thirty-three.‟

„I never forget, I‟m just not mentioning thirty-three.‟

„I‟ve just never known an emulation get at its own under-

lying code.‟

„I said I wasn‟t mentioning it, OK?‟

„Sorry.‟

11

NOSTRADAMUS WAS RIGHT

Elspet rubbed his eyes blearily and cursed, realizing that he

had left a smear of ink across his forehead.

Fellows‟ latest messages, lapped out on the girders that

connected the chain of cells, had been faltering, and while

the physicist wasn‟t wasting code discussing his

predicament, Elspet guessed that he had been assaulted,

maybe tortured. Malkovitch had been ingenious to have

devised this means of communication but his trouble was

that he did not understand how to be flexible. Elspet took the

situation far more philosophically: if the Lizard King wanted

him to be locked up with nothing but obscure mythology for

company, well that was just how he liked it anyway. Elspet

Vespatrick was in heaven. He was fed, and he had

intellectual stimulation. OK, so human female company and

distilled beverages would be a plus, but he could get by, and

eventually Bernice and the others would come back and kick

Mandir‟s skinny quasireptile butt.

The text from the Vo‟lach symbols on the Spire was dry as

toast on its own, but mix it with the honeyed words of the

Canopusi‟s visionary experience and you had food for

thought. Elspet had begun by equating the warring symbols

with Chaos, the wobbly blue one, and Law, the

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