The Room With No Doors by Kate Orman

Author:Kate Orman [Orman, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426205005
Publisher: Virgin
Published: 1997-03-14T23:00:00+00:00

12

Alienation

Te Yene Rana couldn’t be bothered with holograms. As far as the Caxtarid was concerned, she looked close enough to human to pass for one, and if the primitives didn’t like her metallic red hair and eyes, that was their problem.

So she told herself. The truth was that she wasn’t properly equipped for a first-contact situation. So far she’d been mistaken for a foreigner, a demon and some kind of sex worker. Thanks. She was in a foul mood.

So she sulked in her room at the inn in Toshi town, using remote drones to gather information. Without the right equipment or reinforcements, with a suspected alien involvement, she had to play this very carefully.

One of her drones had been following the little expedition from Hekison village. She’d watched them all day, bored to death, eating raw fish – whole fish, not this sashimi nonsense – and waiting for them to arrive. Bring the damned thing to her. Thanks.

She was damned worried about those aliens now. The damned damned drones did not have damned translators built in; she had been trying to play back their recordings through her single translator unit, but the damned sound wasn’t good enough.

Besides, the drones were incredibly conspicuous. She had one open now, ripping its guts out, finding the essential bits so she could make a small, in-conspicuous, sound-only version, filtered through her translator.

She looked at the bug she’d created. Looked like a damned enormous fly.

She chucked it out of the window. The miniature drive cut in a moment before it hit the ground, and it bumbled off down the street, swatted at by a peasant as it buzzed past.

She’d left the thing enough vision to steer by. She sat at the unrolled monitor screen, directing it with one finger on a palm-sized, flat pad.

Soon enough she found them, conspicuous with their white skin and (foreign?) vehicle. She flew the clumsy bug along the wall of the building, trying not to bounce the little drone off the wooden planks, and parked it outside the window of their room. On the second try. The first time, she eavesdropped on a conversation about Noh masks for ten minutes until she realized she had the wrong room.

The fly settled into place on the windowsill. The translation scrolled slowly up the screen as the aliens jabbered away.

DOCTOR: Chris.

CHRIS: Oh no. Not this again.

DOCTOR: We need to talk.

CHRIS: What – what exactly did you do to me yesterday? I mean, when I was telling you about what happened to the village? (Pause) It’s like I can remember it all in detail, but I can’t feel the feelings.

DOCTOR: There’s no time. There’s never time to feel the feelings. Not when you’re in the thick of it. Deal with the emergency first, and then angst about it afterwards.

CHRIS: And we’re still in the emergency?

DOCTOR: Yes. Until we get the pod to safety, and find out what it is.

CHRIS: Yeah, but – isn’t it sort of – I mean, I can remember being completely

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