Free Doctor Who: Transit by Ben Aaronovitch Page B

betrayal.
    He woke up with a blinding headache.
    His sensory impressions were garbled by the pain. He was under something soft and heavy. There was someone sleeping next to him, there was a sensation of a confined space, perhaps a small room and his nose was cold. He tried opening his eyes, shadows, blurred images on the ceiling above, more pain. He closed his eyes again.
    His mouth tasted of aniseed.
    He'd been drinking which was unusual. He'd had a taste for wine once, at least wine of a good vintage; then a taste for beer; then he seemed to remember giving it up in favour of cricket.
    The Doctor elevated his primary heart rate and managed to crank up his kidney action a bit. It wasn't easy; kidneys were not something he'd had a lot of practice with. That took care of the toxins in his blood but he suspected there were still some ethanol molecules cruising round his cerebellum and distracting his neurons. Complex little hydrocarbons wearing black bomber jackets and slinging cans of high-explosive deodorant at his defenceless braincells.
    His headache was beginning to subside and he felt better. Nothing like being a Time Lord to iron out life's little ups and downs.
    He tried opening his eyes again.
    There were images on the ceiling, a sharp thousand-line projection with good perspective and no sound. In the foreground an enormously fat man was shouting noiselessly. Behind him an expressionistic set gave the impression of a forest out of which reared the huge blunt nose of an ICBM. The fat man was wearing a half mask which incorporated the front half of a straw hat and was carrying a red umbrella.
    It was all terribly symbolic.
    Another man, not quite as fat as the first, entered stage left, dressed in military uniform and a large moustache. The fat man in the mask closed his mouth with a snap. The second fat man drew in a breath, the chest swelled, the mouth opened.
    Not shouting, realised the Doctor - singing, and judging by the way he held his chin, a bass. The first fat man opened his mouth again and it became a duet. The emotions expressed seemed to be complex, part the meeting of old friends and part a conflict of ideologies. The Doctor tried lip reading but all he got was a sense that the libretto was in Italian.
    What he wanted was the remote control. He followed the line of projection down with his eyes but it terminated beyond the foot of the bed. The Doctor sat up for a better look; beside him the lump in the duvet shifted slightly. He stopped still until the movement subsided. The room had the dimensions of a monastic cell and once out of the eiderdown he realized how cold it was. The projection unit was suitcase-sized with a streamlined shell of augmented bakelite. An attractive bas relief depicting waves and fishes was cast into the side panels. On one end was a discreet little logo: Imbani Entertainment: made in Burkina Faso. The screen was projected out of a clear panel the size of a postage stamp on top. There were no obvious controls.
    Above on the ceiling there was a silent flash and a plume of theatrical smoke cleared to reveal a large woman wearing a black bomber jacket and waving a sword.
    The Doctor felt along the top of the unit. His fingertips found a seam too thin to be visible running along the middle twelve centimetres. There was a shallow thumb-sized depression at either end; a little firm pressure and a panel hinged open. The Doctor was vaguely disappointed. He'd expected more of a challenge. Inside were two lighted touch controls and a thumbprint scanner pad.
    The Doctor picked up the unit and drew up his legs into a comfortable position. On the ceiling the opera bobbed along in parallel, the image stabilizing when he placed the unit in front of him. Twitching back the eiderdown he gently drew Kadiatu's hand towards the touch pad.
    The Doctor paused, frowning.
    The skin under his fingers was cool, at least three or four degrees cooler than his own, below human parameters even for sleep. He felt