Doctor Who: Ultimate Treasure (2 page)

Peri caught sight of herself in the cubicle's multiple mirrors.

She had clear skin, lightly tanned by the Lanzarote sun, with regular features framed by collar-length dark hair. Her figure was compact and well developed in a manner she was quietly pleased with. But at that moment, she decided, her most notable feature was the broad grin of sheer delight at the adventure she had found herself in. And she was determined to enjoy every second of it.

The attendant produced a sort of silver metallic jumpsuit.

'Perhaps this would be more to modom's taste?'

For a moment Peri eyed the design with interest, then the silver glitter reminded her of Kamelion and she frowned. The shape-shifting android had been the Doctor's companion when she joined him. But it had come under the influence of the Master, the Doctor's arch enemy, who had turned it against them. It had tried to take over the TARDIS and then chased her across Sarn's rugged landscape, first looking like her stepfather, then as the Master, and sometimes a hybrid of them and its true form.

Eventually, stricken with remorse at what it saw as its disloyalty and knowing it could no longer be trusted, Kamelion had begged the Doctor to put a merciful end to its tortured existence. It was a sad experience she'd prefer not to be reminded of.

'Uh, no thanks,' she told the attendant. 'I think I've got all I want now.'

The Doctor was paying for her purchases with some sort of futuristic credit system, which was fortunate because the plastic cards she had with her would probably be accepted only by a museum here and now. She watched him as he thumbprinted the transaction pad and arranged for the purchases to be sent by cargo tube to their docking bay.

He was a tall man with collar-length, straight, blond hair, and amiable clean-cut features. He appeared to be in his early thirties, but she guessed he was much older. His eyes were dangerously deep and very intelligent. His preferred costume was a white period frock coat, striped trousers, and a V-necked English cricketing jumper. For some reason he finished off his ensemble with a sprig of celery in his buttonhole. She was working her way up to asking why. All things considered she privately acknowledged that he was somebody she might find it very easy to fall for in a big way - except that she knew instinctively that was not going to happen. The usual rules didn't apply to the Doctor. For all his outward appearance, there was something mysterious and, well, alien about him. Perhaps that was part of his appeal.

Chocky's Inn was only half full at this hour, which was why Hok had chosen it.

The moment he entered he saw his two customers already seated at a corner table nursing drinks. Humanoids, as he had suspected. One thin and elegant by human standards, neatly dressed and well groomed; the other stockier and slightly crumpled, looking around him with sharp impatient eyes. An interesting and rather ill-assorted pair, Hok thought. What chance had thrown them together? Still, as long as they had the money, it was no business of his.

'I am the seller,' he announced, sliding into the spare seat beside them. 'You have the payment?'

The crumpled man produced a small heavy case from an inner pocket, placed it on the table and raised the lid. Hok saw a metallic glitter within.

Twenty bars, as agreed,' he said. 'You have the document?'

Hok produced a data capsule. The thin man took it and slipped it into a portable reader. Hok saw his eyes glint eagerly as he scanned the text, then nodded to his companion, who pushed the case across the table to Hok.

'Thank you, gentlemen,' Hok said, slipping the case into his belt pouch. 'I wish you luck. Perhaps you would be so good as to finish your drinks before leaving - discretion, you understand.'

And he was away through the bar doors before they could reply.

When the two left five minutes later there was no sign of Hok.

Not that either man took any trouble to look for him. There was a barely repressed eagerness in their steps as they headed in the direction of the main docking boom elevators. Neither noticed the floating camera drone that had been hovering unobtrusively in the shadows of the corridor ceiling. As they set off it dropped down and glided silently after them.

Astroville Seven served the recreational and administrative needs of a stellar nebula and its associated swarm of asteroids and minor planets. It more than satisfied Peri's expectations of what a futuristic space city should be like. As she had exclaimed when she first arrived, 'Oh, wow! This is really some place, Doctor.'

Astroville resembled a merger between a couple of Houston astrodomes, several skyscrapers and the Eiffel Tower, producing a central core bristling with residential towers and docking trees.

Spacecraft from star yachts to liners berthed at its many airlock bays. Its huge open central concourse was ringed with descending concentric tiers of walkways and shops, while crossing above them were transparent freefall elevator tubes carrying passengers and cargo like floating thistledown. Viewing windows the size of tennis courts were let into the outer walls, revealing a glowing nebula of multicoloured gas illuminated by a dozen stars shining like diamonds in chiffon.

And populating this megastructure were things that walked on two legs, four legs, more legs that she could count. Blue skins, green skins, iridescent skins, scales. Crawling things, rolling things, flying things. Things of odd shapes she couldn't begin to describe hidden within pressure suits. There were even a few things she wasn't sure were alive or not, except that they moved about. Like the United Nations but cubed. And she must think of them all, the Doctor had gently explained, as people.

Suddenly, amid the riot of shapes and colours, the need came upon her to buy a souvenir.

'Peri,' the Doctor chided gently upon hearing her desire, 'isn't the experience itself enough for you?'

'But it's traditional,' she protested. 'I've got to have something tangible to show for being here, or else I'll never believe it really happened. I've got my cultural heritage to uphold, you know.'

'I thought all those clothes might suffice.'

'Clothes aren't souvenirs!'

'Aren't they?' he wondered with mild surprise. 'Well, I'm sure there's somewhere we can buy a model of the station in a glass globe, which produces a miniature snowstorm when you shake it.'

'Not quite so tacky, Doctor,' Peri said, consulting her electronic guidebook. 'It says the lower levels of Blue section are good for that sort of thing. That's down this way. Come on.'

The Doctor followed her to the nearest gray chute, an amused and indulgent smile on his lips.

Hok returned to his shop by the back door that opened off a small service passage. He was elated by his first transaction. The final sale of the data original to Alpha would be the trickiest, of course, but by then he would have nothing left to hide. It had been impossible to arrange the purchase of such an important item without Alpha's knowing, but he had been able to mislead him over the day of delivery. Those precious few hours so gained he planned to use very profitably indeed.

He passed through the storeroom, switching off the alarm and master locking system on the way, and entered the front shop.

As he was about to turn on the lights he realised he was not alone.

Three figures emerged from amid the jumble of bric-a-brac and curios. Two were human - one compact the other tall and thin -

while the third was probably a Cantarite: bulky, slab-sided and horned. Their features were blurred by glimmer masks, but even with this distortion and the gloom of the shop's interior he knew immediately who they were, and a chill seemed to penetrate his carapace.

'Now where have you been all this time, Hok?' said the smaller human, his expression impossible to read behind his intimidating mask and his words oddly distorted by its diffraction effect.

'Nowhere special, Qwaid,' Hok said quickly, trying to keep his voice level. 'Just business... buying some new stock.'

'Just business, is it?' Qwaid said. 'Well that's fine, because we're here on Mr Alpha's business. About that special item of merchandise, remember?'

'But I arranged to meet him tomorrow.'

'Ah, well, Mr Alpha gets these strange fancies, you see, doesn't he lads?'

Gribbs, the thin human, clicked his tongue: 'That he does.'

Drorgon the Cantarite merely grunted agreement, like a rumble of distant thunder.

'His fancy was,' Qwaid continued, 'that you might take it into your head to sell on a copy of the merchandise to somebody else before him, and he wouldn't like that. He wants to be the sole owner, like. I told him: Hok wouldn't cross you, Mr Alpha, he respects you too much. But he was very insistent, and when Mr Alpha insists on something it gets done. So we've come to collect the goods a little early, just to be on the safe side.

'But, but... I haven't got it here.'

There was a crash and rattle of pottery shards. The remains of a third-period Tabaron vase lay about Drorgon's heavy horn-toed feet.

'Now see what you've gone and done,' Qwaid said regretfully.

'You've annoyed Drorgon. And when he gets annoyed he gets clumsy and breaks things: vases, doors... bones.' He looked about the shop and shook his head sadly. 'And there's an awful lot he could break here, so I'd think carefully about what I just asked you.'

Hok had never been particularly brave, and such resolve as he had crumbled under Qwaid's mocking tones. Why had he ever believed he could deceive Alpha? Instinctively a couple of tentacles clutched at his belt pouch.

'Oh, there it is,' Qwaid said.

Hok struggled feebly as Gribbs held his neck and Qwaid emptied the contents of his pouch out on to a table. The money-bar case fell with a thud. Qwaid opened it up and whistled.

'Now ain't that strange. You say you've just been out buying goods, yet you come back with a full twenty-bar case. I wonder what you sold to earn it. I'm disappointed in you, Hok, really disappointed. And Mr Alpha's going to be disappointed in you too. And you know what happens to people he's disappointed in...'

Hok was trembling and squirming in utter terror. He managed to insinuate one tentacle down the side of the pouch. The money's an advance! I've still got the merchandise... see, here it is!' he gibbered, withdrawing a duplicate data capsule from a concealed pocket in his pouch and thrusting it at Qwaid.

Qwaid took the capsule. 'There, you see, that wasn't so hard, was it? Now about payment -'

'A gift!' Hok choked out wretchedly. Tell Mr Alpha it's a gift.'

'Well that's very generous, isn't it lads?' said Qwaid with hollow sincerity 'But what I meant was payment for trying to cheat Mr Alpha.'

It took a couple of seconds for Hok to realise the true meaning of Qwaid's words, and by that time Drorgon's massive hands were already settling about his neck.

Then the shop door opened with a jangle of its antique brass bell and two strangers walked in.

Because of the relative gloom inside the curio shop, Peri and the Doctor were actually several steps inside, with the door swinging closed behind them, before they properly took in the strange tableau of figures within. A creature about seven feet tall, vaguely reminiscent of a bipedal rhinoceros, had it hands clamped murderously about the neck of a much smaller and inoffensive-looking alien, resembling the mock turtle from Alice in Wonderland, but with bunches of tentacles instead of flippers.

Watching them were two humans wearing anonymous utility coveralls. Disconcertingly Peri realised their faces were misty and blurred, almost as though they were out of focus, so she could see no details of their features.

'Uh, I think maybe we've come at a bad moment,' Peri said faintly, stepping backward so quickly that her heel came down on the Doctor's foot.

It seemed to her that, incredibly, the Doctor had noticed nothing amiss. Extracting his toecap from under her heel he beamed brightly at the oddly assorted figures and said cheerfully,

'Hello. We were just looking for some early Etruscan miniatures.

Not the Wedgewood blues of course, but the Van Gough originals, with perhaps just a touch of Ming around the chasing...'

As he babbled this nonsense, he sauntered without any apparent haste over to a basket of assorted coloured-glass globes. He selected a fist-sized one, weighed it thoughtfully, then spun about and threw it very hard and very precisely at the pseudorhino's head. It could have shattered the skull of a lesser being. As it was, the impact merely stunned the creature sufficiently for the little turtle-backed alien to wriggle free of its grasp.

The taller of the two humans drew a wicked little snub-nosed pistol as Peri and the Doctor dived for cover behind a massive couch built of wooden baulks the size of railway sleepers. The gun hissed and some sort of explosive projectile blew a large chunk of wood to splinters. Another shot dislodged a stack of shelves and a small avalanche of oddments cascaded to the floor.

The basket of glass balls was upset and tumbled at their feet.

Snatching up the ornaments the Doctor started pitching them at the gunman and his accomplices. Peri followed his example and began hurling every throwable object she could lay her hands on.

In moments the other side of the shop was being showered with fragments of bursting glass and china. Shots hissed and cracked in the return. The noise level was startling.

Then without warning a two-toned siren burst into life, adding to the din. Clouds of freezing vapour billowed out from ceiling vents, filling the air with a dense white fog. There were indistinct crashes and angry shouts from within the opacity. A final shot rang out, then came the sound of running feet disappearing into the back of the shop, and a distant door banged.

The siren cut off as abruptly as it had begun and the fog began to disperse. Coughing, the Doctor and Peri cautiously rose from behind their refuge. As they did so an amazing figure emerged out of the thinning mist from an alcove at the back of the shop.

He was a rotund barrel of a man with a white beard and moustache decorating his chubby pink jowls. He wore a wide-brimmed black hat with a red plume, a ruff collar, a scarlet doublet with slashed sleeves and breeches. A scabbard hung from the wide, silver-buckled, leather belt that encompassed his vast waist, while the naked blade itself was being brandished by its owner in flicks and slashes at the air, as though he was still spoiling for a fight. When it became apparent the intruders had fled, he lowered his sword with evident regret.