Doctor Who: Telos Novellas [012] - The Eye of the Tyger by Paul J. McAuley

Author:Paul J. McAuley
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9781903889244
Publisher: Telos
Published: 2004-01-12T23:00:00+00:00

Where is my kind bewcome, so conely and clear?

Now am I loathest, alas, that ere was light.

My brightness is blackest and blue now;

My bale is ay beefing and burning:

That gars me go gowling and grinning.

Out, ay welaway! I well enough in woe now.

She bowed, a trifle embarrassed, at my soft applause. I supposed that she had also been reciting poetry when I had surprised her last night.

Together, we walked back to the tower, where we found the Doctor on the flat, circular roof, using a telescope to examine the war at the far end of the ship.

‘Fascinating,’ he said, straightening up and beaming at us across the telescope’s fat, brassy barrel. ‘You really must take a look, Fyne. I’m sure you were taught about sieges in military school, but I doubt that you’ve ever seen one in the flesh, so to speak.’

I bent to the eyepiece and found the traverse screw and turned it as lightly as I could, swinging the view across the battle front. A complex of covered trenches, some smashed in and obliterated by big circular craters, sprawled across the ochre ground in front of the huge cliff.

Tottering towers built of lashed-together poles leaned here and there against the black rock. There was what looked like a pit, shielded by a raft of tree-trunks, with spoil-heaps on either side, and I could see dots moving in and around the trenches furthest from the foot of the cliff – Tx’s soldiers, the enemy.

The Doctor began asking Casimir about ways of escape. ‘Is there a boat? Or perhaps material to build some kind of big kite. If we can catch the air currents just right, we could climb near that big light tube at the centre of the world. It must be hung in free fall at the axis of spin, yes? So the centrifugal force will lessen as we near it, making flying easy. We could fly all the way there. What do you think, Fyne?’

I turned the traverse screw further, sweeping the view up the black Cliff. I said, ‘I can’t see this bridge.’

‘It is deep inside the end wall,’ Casimir said.

‘Well, that’s where we need to go,’ I said. ‘As for escaping, all we have to do is wait for nightfall, and then we’ll creep out and overpower the guards at the gate. It should be easy enough. We can swim out alongside the causeway –’

‘No,’ Casimir said.

I looked up at her fierce beautiful face.

‘I gave my word to Tx,’ she said, ‘that I would not hurt anyone.’

‘This is war,’ I said. ‘No-one will think the worse of you if you break a promise for the greater good.’

Casimir shook her head; a wholly human gesture. Her mane flew from side to side. ‘Tx and his army want to overthrow the officers, but they are still our wards. It would be against the three-fold way to harm any of them. They will be punished, when my father returns, but it will be a subtle chastisement.’

‘The officers are fighting back,’ I said.

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