Newsgroups: alt.drwho.creative
Path: andrew.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!scramble.lm.com!news.math.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!news.cse.psu.edu!uwm.edu!news-res.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!uunet.ca!news.uunet.ca!torfree!bx996
From: bx996@torfree.net (Cameron Dixon)
Subject: Fear of Dying Alone - 2/3
Message-ID: <Du4Byq.HL9.0.queen@torfree.net>
Organization: Toronto Free-Net
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 1996 11:01:38 GMT
Lines: 392

			FEAR OF DYING ALONE (Part 2 of 3)
				by Cameron Dixon

* * * * *

Sirens are screaming behind me.

Everything's gone wrong again, and somehow, again, in a manner I can't
fully describe, it's the Doctor's fault.  The way out has vanished, liter-
ally.  He said he'd wait for me here, he *promised*.

It's hard for me to think.  I hadn't planned past this moment, and I'm
only now starting to realize that I hadn't even planned *to* this moment.
My brain feels like someone's poured soft fizzing ginger ale into my
skull, and the sirens are screaming louder and I can't *think*.

I sit down, on the ground, and try to remember how I got here.  Images
flash through my mind, disconnected, random impressions, out of order.
The Doctor sitting at the table.  Alice flying through the window.  A
gentle whisper of friendship slicing into my brain, cutting and rearrang-
ing.  Did I--

I missed.  I had him in my sights and I missed.  My hands shook and there
was a roaring in my ears, or was it behind me in the chamber?  How did I
get here?  The government man helped me, as he promised he would.  He said
the Doctor would be here, at the Accelerator Ring, for the opening cere-
monies, and if I got here first--a window, overlooking the quad, waiting
for the Doctor to arrive, and he handed me the rifle and he *smiled*--

He returned on the day of the opening ceremonies as he'd promised.  There
was a room like a cathedral and a sound like a roaring in my ears, and I
stepped out of-- something -- and I was here, at the window, waiting for
the Doctor...

And while I stood at the window with the gun in my hands, he left without
me.  Left me here.

The sirens have stopped screaming behind me.  It's all a low mutter now, a
low, distant mutter that has everything to do with me.  There are foot-
steps now, approaching.  Any moment now, there will be a voice, and a hand
on my shoulder.

I can't go through that again.

There's a grating on the floor and a soft warm summer breeze blows through
it.  I grab it, think of Alice, and nearly rip my arms out of my sockets
trying to pull down the entire wall...but the grating comes loose, and I
fall to my belly and wriggle through into the ventilation system.

It's one of those old-fashioned early-21st century systems with the ducts
wide enough to crawl through.  That's convenient.  People are shouting
behind me, but I ignore them and continue on my way.

I don't know what I'm going to do any more, but the Doctor is in here
somewhere.  I'll think of something when I see him.

* * * * *

The stranger leans forward in my chair, staring into my eyes.  "You do
believe me, don't you, Mr Kelner?  It's very important that you believe
me.  The entire city could be at risk due to your wife's murder.  And who
knows what the consequences would be for the world?"

I shake my head.  "It's too much.  It's too much for me... What do you
mean, murdered?"

"Killed.  Her life was deliberately taken from her by another.  *Your*
life, casually extinguished by one man with no more thought than would be
given to plucking a leaf from the wind.  And if I told you where you could
find this person..."

He smiles enigmatically at me, and that's too much for me to take.  I snap
and rush at him, screaming, grab him by the lapels and pull him from the
chair.  "Tell me!  Tell me now!  *Tell me who did this to her, you son of
a--*"

I can't even remember him hitting me.  One minute I'm shaking him back and
forth and screaming, one part of me wondering at how light and insubstan-
tial he seems, and the next a bolt of lightning goes off inside my head
and then I'm lying on the ground, twitching slightly, tasting salt and
copper while my upper lip cries red.

The stranger steps back a pace and irritably brushes at his lapel.  "Now
if you're going to be like that," he scolds, "I'll just have to leave,
won't I, Mr Kelner?  And then you'll never know."

I try to stand but my legs give way beneath me.  It's too much for me to
take in all at once.  She was killed?  Murdered?  The entire *city*?  He
seems to understand, and the sympathetic look covers his face, dazzling my
eyes so completely that I can't remember what expression he was wearing
before it returned.

"Tell me--" I croak.

"What would you do?" he insists.

"I'll kill him."  And as I say it, I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

The stranger smiles.  "Good.  *Very* good.  Very well, take a moment to
calm yourself down and I'll explain everything to you."  One of his eye-
brows quirks upwards.  "You may want to take notes.  There *will* be a
test at the end."

* * * * *

Navigating through the complex is easier than I'd thought it would be, not
that I was thinking at all when I broke in.  Every so often I reach a gra-
ting and I look through to the room beyond.  I remember the description of
the layout from Alice's notes; she'd made a thorough study of the cyclo-
tron before beginning work on the campaign to stop it from being built.
The company sent all of her personal effects back to her home after she
died.  I remember when they arrived at the conapt; I'd been walking around
in a comfortable numbness for days until her personal effects arrived, and
I turned to ask her where she wanted me to put them and really realized
that she was dead for the first time.  The security guards were called up
to my floor, because my neighbours heard the screaming and thought someone
was being murdered.  That's probably God's idea of irony.

But I read her notes, and now I can find my way around.  Or so I think
until I reach one grating and look through to see a room I don't recog-
nize at all.  It's a small chamber about the size of a broom closet, and
there appears to be a plastic coffin built into the wall.  Bunches of wire
and metal tubes snake out of the walls and plunge into the coffin.  I peer
into the room, trying to spot something which will tell me where I am, but
no such luck.  There appears to be someone inside the coffin, but the
material it's constructed from is on the opaque side of translucent, and I
can't make out who or what's inside.

Damnation; I'm completely lost.  I crawl on ahead anyway, and there--sal-
vation.  There are voices coming from another grating in front of me, and
I recognize one of them.  A voice I heard blown on the wind less than a
day ago.  Cyclotron, he's saying.  Research facility.  For the importance
of.  Life.  At the children.

I dropped my rifle back in the quad gallery.  I still have my hands.  My
teeth.  Anything.  He's still alive, still here, still trying to stop it.
I have to kill him.  For Alice.  Nothing else matters.

I've reached the grating.  I wrap my fingers through the mesh and push at
it, very gently, until it comes away in my hands.  I slowly slide through
the grating, listening to the voices beyond and trying to let the argument
cover the sounds of movement.

I'm emerging into the room under a desk.  It's the main control chamber of
the cyclotron, where the opening ceremonies will be held in only a few
hours.  Places have been cleared for the dignitaries who will be attend-
ing; right now there are only a few technicians and security guards in a
room full of consoles and an observation window that opens up into the
acceleration ring itself.

I can see Dr Palnu and the other Doctor towering above me.  The Doctor's 
umbrella lies discarded on the floor; two security guards are holding the
killer by his arms, and his toes are scraping the floor.  He's so *small*.
It's inconceivable.

"...trying to impede the progress of this project for months," Palnu is
bellowing, "and what good has it done you?  What progress can you claim to
have made?  When are you going to understand that there's nothing you can
do to stand in the way of--"

"Excuse me," the Doctor interrupts, "but I feel the need to interrupt
before you use the word progress three times in as many sentences."

Palnu stammers to a halt, takes a deep breath, glares at the Doctor, and
gestures to the guards.  "Take him away.  Do... *something* to him.  Just
get him out of here."

"Send me out of this room and your project is doomed," the Doctor snaps
suddenly, and it's as if the temperature of the room has dropped fifteen
degrees.  I can't take my eyes off the Doctor any more, but this time I
get the feeling that it's because he doesn't want me to.  Not that he
knows I'm there, he can't know, but he's suddenly become integral to the
world in some way so fundamental that looking away from him would be like
falling away from the centre of gravity.

"I'm not the dangerous one here.  You are, Palnu."

Palnu snorts derisively.  "Oh, you'd like us to believe that, but--"

"It's not a matter of like.  You're the dangerous one because you're not
the one who's really in control.  You think you are, but he's simply
blocking the truth from your mind."  The Doctor gestures wildly with one
of his hands, and the guards tighten their grip.  "There's a room directly
next to this control chamber that doesn't show up on any of the plans of
the complex.  It's a small room the size of a broom closet, and it con-
tains a bio-neural link to the acceleration ring.  It's not part of your
plans.  If you didn't mean to put it there, then who *did*?"

* * * * *

"His name is the Doctor," the stranger continues, once I've calmed myself
down.  "He's a known environmental terrorist, the leader of an organiza-
tion known as the Green Apocalypse Intelligence Activists--or GAIA, for
short.  We have identified the Doctor and his compatriots as those respon-
sible for the attack upon the Butler Institute project site in New England
last year--an unprovoked and savage attack which resulted in the deaths of
over twenty-four innocent people, including the project co-ordinator, his
personal assistant, and his eight-year-old son."

I nod.  I remember the story from the newsfeeds.  He acknowledges my res-
ponse and continues.  "Some time ago we received information that GAIA had
targeted the Sepran-Palnu Accelerator as their latest technological bug-
bear.  When we learned that they had hired your wife to design the adver-
tising campaign protesting the construction of the accelerator on city
property, my people contacted her, and when she learned of the nature of
her clients she was only too happy to divulge all the information she
could about them."  He sighs.  "Unfortunately, there was miscommunication 
between departments, bureaucratic red tape... By the time we were free to
act upon the information, it was already too late.  The Doctor set up an
alibi for himself and before we could do anything his followers had..." he
pauses delicately, "taken care of your wife."

"Taken care of," someone says.  It must be him again, we're the only two
people in the conapt.

"I'm sorry."  Those eyes.  "I'm telling you this because, even despite
these setbacks, they still haven't stopped their campaign of terror.  The
cyclotron is due to open in three days' time.  We believe that the Doctor
intends to sabotage the opening ceremonies.  But he simply doesn't under-
stand the risks he's running."  The man gestures with his hands, obviously
very passionate about what he's trying to explain to me, yet tightly under
control.  "The Doctor is a...what in your terms I believe would be refer-
red to as a 'green-freak'.  He fears what he doesn't understand, and that
includes much of modern technology.  And he most definitely does *not*
understand the benefits of the Sepran-Palnu cyclotron's successful opera-
tion.  He thinks he understands it, but he doesn't.  Not really.  Do you
know what a cyclotron does?"

"It smashes atoms together," I hear my voice explaining from six miles
away, quoting from Alice's notes.  "It knocks them apart into the funda-
mental building blocks of matter.  Just for a few fractions of a second,
the scientists can see the basic bits of the universe."

"Exactly!"  He beams like a teacher at a clever pupil.  Or like a man
smiles at a dog who has just mastered a clever trick.  "The fundamental
forces of creation, Mr Leckner..."

"Kelner."

"Your name isn't important!" he snaps.  "Think of the achievements await-
ing our people.  A Unified Field Theory at last.  Technology beyond even
nano-dimensions.  Quark engineering!  The discoveries waiting to be made
as are yet inconceivable!  And the Doctor wants to stop all that for the
sake of a few trees!"  He shakes his head incredulously.  "He killed your
wife when she got in his way.  He's unbelievably ruthless, Frank.  And
he's unbelievably dangerous.  The acceleration ring has been constructed
directly beneath this city.  If he sabotages it during the opening cere-
monies, while it's running up to full power, this could be the biggest
disaster since..."  He hesitates, then continues, "There are no words to
describe it.  The destruction would be apocalyptic.  Four million people
live in this city, and they'd be the lucky ones--they'd die right away."

He leans forward earnestly.  "The Agency needs this Doctor taken out of
the picture.  But we're tied up by red tape.  The same bureaucrats who
delayed our investigation until your wife was dead are holding us back
now, out of fear of being seen in opposition to a special interest group
which publicly supports 'green' policies.  If it comes out that we were
responsible for...taking care of the Doctor...despite his crimes against
humanity, his crimes against the average citizen..." he looks at me sympa-
thetically, those eyes... "Our Agency would fall.  We can't have that.  We
require absolute deniability.  We need someone who is not affiliated with
us in any way."

My answer will be yes.

"We need *you*, Frank."

My answer will be yes.

"It's the only way, Frank.  The only way to obtain justice for the murder
of your wife."

Yes.  I can, I will, I must.

"I can't..." a voice says.  I wonder who brought a child into the conapt.

"You must."

I'm shaking again.  "But I can't just kill--"

"You can.  You *will*."  With hardly a flicker of change his face is
entirely different.  Blue eyes like ice.  A hard, frozen smile.  He is
looking past my face, through my eyes into my brain.  I feel like a but-
terfly pierced by a pin.  "You will obey *me*.  You *will* obey me.  I am
the Master, and YOU WILL OBEY ME."

"I will..."

"You will..."

"I will kill him."  It's been taken care of.  Somebody else will do it, I
don't have to worry about it.  I relax.  Whoever it is keeps speaking.  "I
will obey you.  I will kill the Doctor."

The Master smiles at me.  "Now that wasn't too difficult, was it?"

* * * * *

"You must see that something is wrong!" the Doctor insists, desperately
tugging against the guards' unyielding grip.  "Your thoughts are not your
own.  Why else would you install a bioneural link to the cyclotron's
acceleration ring?  It wasn't part of your plans, it wasn't part of the
research, it isn't even part of this *century*!  It doesn't show up on the
blueprints, or any maps of this research centre, it doesn't feature in the
specs you gave to the city planning commission, because you didn't design
it, *he* did, and he forced you to put it there!"

"I don't know what you're talking about--" Palnu begins.

"Of course you don't!  You don't remember having it built and installed
because he doesn't want you to remember!  You're nothing more than a tool
to him, an unwitting pawn enabling him to construct his own version of the
Trakenite Source or the Eye of Harmony here on Earth, under this city, 
under *his* control!  He's convinced you I'm trying to sabotage your
research project when he's been undermining it from day one for his own
ends.  He even murdered the woman I hired to delay your project until I'd
removed his fingerprints from it.  He's only interested in his own survi-
val at the cost of all else.  This entire city is in danger, Dr Palnu, and
you *have* to remember what he's done to you before it's too late."

Palnu's wavering.  I can see it in his eyes--he can't look away from the
Doctor.  The Doctor's gaze is earnest and terrible.  He's stopped strug-
gling and the guards have stopped trying to pull him away.  His voice
seems to fill the room.

"Remember.  Remember a tall thin man with a goatee and moustache.  Remem-
ber a stranger with a voice so charming you can't tell up from down when
he's speaking to you.  Where did you see him?  What did he say to you?
When?  You have to remember!"

He's speaking to Palnu.  Everyone hears him.  You can't stop listening.

"REMEMBER!"

I remember.

* * * * *

"Don't mind me.  I second-hand-smoke a couple of packs per day myself."

It's an old joke.  She laughs anyway.  Ahead of us, a tall thin man sticks
up his hand, hailing a passing taxicraft.

* * * * *

The stranger leans forward in my chair.  He looks like the Devil, or like
I've always imagined the Devil to look.  Very polite, very clean-cut, very
tall and thin.

* * * * *

Very tall and thin.

I remember.

"He even murdered the woman I hired to delay your project until I'd remo-
ved his fingerprints from it."

A tall, thin man steps into a passing taxicraft.  Five minutes later, it
mounts the curb at sixty kilometres per hour.

"I am the Master...and you will obey me."

Oh, God.  God help me.

And Alice, forgive me.

* * * * *

I stand up.

"He's telling the truth," I hear myself say.

Everybody turns to look at me.  The situation pauses for breath.

"Excuse me," Palnu says, "but who the hell are you?"

I look at him and realize that I have no idea how to respond to that.

But then somebody else does.

"His name is Frank Kelner," a voice says from the doorway, "and, frankly,
I'm not pleased about this at *all*."

* * * * *

[to be continued]

-- 
== Cameron "The Lemming" Dixon ====================== bx996@torfree.net == 
== "I used to think I was indecisive, but now, I'm not so sure..."      ==
==========================================================================