Doctor Who: Christmas on a Rational Planet by Lawrence Miles

Author:Lawrence Miles
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426204763
Publisher: Doctor Who Books
Published: 1996-08-15T10:00:00+00:00

7

The Edge of Distraction

A man in a grey mask was standing on the corner of Burr Street, demanding answers from Beth-Ann Wolcott, the councillor’s daughter. The man was determined to find out why she’d never married. There was something deeply suspicious about that, apparently, especially at her age. The door of the Wolcott house was open, and there were other masked men inside, peering under the beds and pulling up the floorboards.

None of the men were members of the Renewal Society.

They were just ‘concerned citizens’. Half an hour earlier, the sackcloth of their masks had been used for storing potatoes.

As the rationalists moved from street to street in search of

‘evidence’, the rumours spread in a manner that was almost viral. More children had been butchered, it was said, though no one seemed to be able to name the children that had died. A shrine to Baalzebub had been located in the ramshackle home of a Spanish family, but nobody was sure how the place had been identified as a shrine to Baalzebub. A woman living in Eastern Walk had been unmasked as an anarchist witch –

again, the method of detection seemed unclear – and was now awaiting trial by the Renewalists.

Twenty-five minutes after the church bell had tolled eleven, a man named Samuel Lincoln took shelter in the doorway of a grocery store in Paris Street and, seeing the smoke rising from the ‘African quarter’ of town, made disparaging comments about the behaviour of his fellow townspeople. A local priest, a wiry and wide-eyed man by the name of Hatchard, took him to task and insisted that ‘the flock of Satan must be purged’.

An argument ensued, with Samuel Lincoln calling the priest a

‘fanatical buffoon’ and the priest calling Samuel Lincoln a

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