Doctor Who: The Also People (14 page)

God is watching, all the Gods are watching.

Rambling while Rome bums. I have doubts, but doubts are good. Davros had no doubts, neither did the Master. Cybermen and Sontarans have never a care. They wouldn't stand on a balcony in the unreal light of an artificial planet and ask themselves what it all means, really, when you get right down to it.

Doubts are good, they're what makes me –

Human?

Hyper-lude

Imagine a globe, a bubble if you like, you can make any size you like because it exists in a subdomain of hyperspace where dimensions like depth and width are a matter of taste. Now imagine the surface of your globe is like that of an oily soap bubble, rainbow colours shifting across the surface. Now imagine that each discrete element of that colour represents an analog logic state capable of recording a fixed range of values.

Now, remember a summer's afternoon, one from when you were young and a single afternoon could last half a lifetime. Try to remember everything: the precise colour of the sky, every mouthful of food, your emotions, what you did and what you thought. You can't, of course. Some of it is inaccessible, buried in the basement of your subconscious, and some of it has just plain gone, crowded out by more recent experiences. But just pretend for a moment that you can remember everything from that afternoon. That's a tremendous amount of data, sorted, catalogued and analysed and, as stated above, discarded. Now string all those afternoons together and add in all the mornings and nights between the ages of, say, three and nine. Never mind the complete works of Shakespeare, or all twenty-six volumes of
Encyclopaedia Universalis
, they represent information that has been pinned down and sanitized. What we are talking about here is the accumulated memories of a child, with all its subtle interactions of mood and texture.

We are talking about data that has a kind of life of its own. We will call the sum of all this data a
childhood
; it's as good a unit of measurement as any other.

We'll assign a value of one
childhood
to our imaginary globe. This, by the way, being a conservative estimate.

Now, pull back from the globe until it's a small shape in the centre of the mind's cinema. Add a second globe next to the first, identical in every respect and also with the value of one
childhood.

Add a third globe and another after that in a line from the first. Keep on adding the globes but start to curve the line in on itself so that we are left with a spiral of globes. When you reach the centre and run out of room you should have a hundred globes and
a kilochildhood
of data.

Rotate this spiral through ninety degrees to the horizontal and start adding the globes in three dimensions, building a second spiral outwards from the centre of the first spiral. When it reaches the circumference go down a level and repeat the process working from the outside in. Repeat this until you have a cylinder a hundred globes tall with a storage capacity of a hundred
kilochildhoods
. Create another hundred thousand cylinders of the same dimensions, stretch them out in a long line and then carefully wind that line up into the shape of a sphere, just like a ball of wool. This ball will have a capacity of ten million
kilochildhoods
or ten
gigachildhoods
.

The average drone mind is made up of one of these balls. It gives them a standard estimated intelligence rating of eight times that of the average humanoid.

String these balls together into another line and wind them up into a much larger ball. We are now entering into the kind of cosmic numbers that only the machines can truly understand. One of these superballs has a capacity of 13.3
tetrachildhoods
and is the usual size of a ship's mind. It also represents the upper limit of what, for the sake of clarity, we shall refer to as the ball of wool construction technique. Ships' minds have an estimated intelligence rating of a thousand times that of an average humanoid, although ships are usually the first to point out that once past the sentience threshold it becomes impossible to truly differentiate between levels of intelligence.

Philosophically speaking. They go on to talk about the role of experience, sensory input matrixes and endocrine interactions. The average humanoid, if they've managed to stay awake, usually replies that all this might be so but they still can't beat your average drone at chess. The ship then tells them that they're missing the point and then shifts the conversation on to something more interesting.

Since we've now reached the upper limits of the ball of wool construction technique we will have to shift paradigms. Imagine the superballs are in fact two-dimensional planes, like planes of very thin glass with sides of near infinite length. Imagine about a million and float them in a subdomain of hyperspace that is simultaneously very large and the size of a proton. Once you've managed that, no cheating now, imagine a string of these proton-sized subdomains and, you've probably guessed it, wind it up into a ball.

That is a section of the mind of God. Nobody ever tries to estimate its intelligence. Nobody wants to be that depressed. Trillions of thoughts rush at translight speeds through God's mind.

Huge deep thoughts that move so quickly that before you finish speaking your first sentence God has probably predicted the entire course of a conversation you're going to have next year.

There is only one mind that is any way comparable to that of God's, although of vastly different configuration and attribution. It is currently residing in a time capsule that constantly hangs one picosecond ahead of the everpresent
now
.

If they could communicate, what thoughts would these two utterly different minds share?

Concepts so utterly grand and grossly inexplicable that their very articulation could disorder the progress of creation. Even now both minds, lonely in their splendid isolation, yearn across that picosecond barrier, each seeking a consummation that cannot,
must not
, be allowed to happen.

5

All the Answers

He told me he had all the answers

To all my loneliness and pain

He said to open my heart to Jesus

And let God take all the strain

God Knows All About It,

by Johnny Chess

From the LP
Things to do on a Wet

Tuesday Night
(1987)

It was cold up on the high plateau lands behind iSanti Jeni, cold enough to make Chris's breath steam when he stepped out of the aerodrome's clubhouse. The cold had sucked up a thin mist from the surrounding valleys, half obscuring the field of grass that served as a runway. The main hangar was a hazy box shape at the far end.

The grass, brittle with frost, crunched under their feet as Chris and the Doctor set off for the hangar. Above them the gaudy architecture of the night sky faded to grey as God turned the sun up. Chris made sure that his jacket was fastened and the furlined collar turned up. He pulled on the heavy gloves that he'd found with the jacket in the clubhouse locker. The Doctor had ignored the heavy flying gear available, preferring to brave the cold in his crumpled linen suit. Perhaps the frigid air didn't bother him.

The hangar's side door was unlocked. Never any locks on public buildings, Dep said. Nothing you could steal that couldn't be ordered from central stores with less fuss. No wonder they needed help when dealing with a murder.

The biplane was waiting for them just inside the main hangar doors, exactly where Dep said it would be. Chris slipped off his glove and ran his hand along the underside of the lower wing. The treated fabric was smooth and slightly yielding like that of the biplane he'd flown in over the English Channel. It even had the same slight fraying around the aileron mountings. Still, there were differences: a subtle sweep of the wings and a complex recurve in the leading edges that pointed to a better understanding of turbulence than the designers of the early twentieth century.

Despite that Chris half expected to see the tricolour painted on its tailplane, a roundel on the fuselage.

'It's beautiful,' said Chris.

'It'll do,' said the Doctor.

The hangar doors were strictly manual; Chris had to push them open by hand. The big doors were well balanced but heavy and the effort made Chris sweat inside his jacket. He paused once they were open to look out over the aerodrome. The sun was burning off the ground mist, trees were visible as slender shadows at the far end. Chris took a deep breath. The air was clear and fresh.

He thought of the fresh smell of Dep's hair as it caressed his face and shoulders, how he could read her passion in its ceaseless flexing and touching and how it had tightened around his waist when she'd finally lost control.

'Chris?'

'Yes?'

'If you don't mind?' said the Doctor.

'Sorry.'

The Doctor took the rear cockpit and Chris took the front, easing himself into the narrow bucket seat. A leather flying helmet and goggles were hanging off the joystick. Chris pulled the helmet over his head and tried on the goggles. There didn't seem to be a head up display. The instrument panel was made of some kind of wood polished to a deep amber glow. The indicators were simple enough: airspeed indicator, altimeter, VSI, engine temperature and lubricant pressure. They had archaic analogue pointers and were labelled in a language that Chris couldn't read. It didn't worry him. One end was stop, the other was fast – two-thirds along was probably cruising speed. Same with the altimeter except with two pointers, when both the long hand and the short hand were pointing to the top you were probably on the ground.

Chris manipulated the joystick and the pedals, craning his neck to do a visual inspection of the control surfaces. The controls responded smoothly and satisfied that he could handle the plane Chris glanced back at the Doctor who gave him a thumbs-up. Chris stabbed at the big blue button that he hoped was the starter.

The big radial engine caught first time, the propeller spun and blurred. Chris eased the throttle forward and taxied the biplane out of the hangar. There was a clear run for take-off and so, checking that the tail was clear of the doors, Chris pushed the throttle to maximum. The biplane hurled itself forward, bumping across the grass, the nose tilting downwards as the wings caught the air.

The transition to flight was so fast that it took Chris by surprise. The biplane bounced twice on the grass and then it was flying. Instinctively he used the rudder to correct a drift to the right.

Watching his speed he eased back on the stick lifting the nose into the fresh blue sky. He felt slight tugs on stick and rudder – it was the wind challenging his control of the biplane. Not much, just a small warning that he was in the domain of aerodynamics now, that the sky was unforgiving, that the price of freedom was always danger.

Chris laughed as the biplane soared into the sky.

'Can you hear me?' asked the Doctor, his voice issuing from the speakers woven into the sides of Chris's flying helmet. An adhesive microphone dangled from the helmet. Chris pressed it to his throat where it stuck.

'Loud and clear,' said Chris. 'Where do you want to go?'

'Head for the coast, I'll direct you from there.'

'Ay ay, skipper.'

'Chris?'

'Yes, Doctor?'

'I believe the correct terminology is "roger wilco".'

'Roger wilco.'

'That's better,' said the Doctor.

'Doctor?'

'Yes.'

'Which way is the coast?'

'Turn ninety degrees to starboard.'

Chris started a gentle bank to starboard.

'Doctor?'

'Yes?'

'What does "roger wilco" mean, exactly?'

'Well, "wilco" is obviously a contraction of "will comply".'

Chris levelled the plane out on its new heading.

'So who was Roger?'

'Give it some throttle, Chris,' said the Doctor. 'I want to get over the murder scene some time
before
my next regeneration.'

Their course took them over a gigantic waterfall. So vast and extensive was the plume of spray that, from a distance, Chris had first thought it a bank of unusually lowlying cloud. A great river, at least two kilometres broad, snaked across the plateau and hurled itself a kilometre down the sheer side of an escarpment. The noise of the falling water grew steadily as they approached, until it was so loud it had blotted out the sound of the biplane's engine. They flew over the rim of the fall at a height, according to the biplane's altimeter, of 'squiggle' which to Chris's experienced eye looked to be about four hundred metres. The water had carved a semi-circular notch in the softer stone of the escarpment, leaving isolated pillars of harder rock jutting out of the rushing water like primitive statues. Or perhaps the water hadn't carved the rock, perhaps it had been designed like that.

'Now that,' said the Doctor, 'is what I call landscape gardening.'

There was some turbulence over the fall and Chris had to struggle to keep the biplane on an even heading. Nothing too serious, just a little bump and grind, the sky's reminder to the pilot of its prerogatives.

Beyond the falls the ground fell away to a wide swathe of forested hills, greener and more rugged than the plateau behind. The sea was visible, a smudged line of white and blue in the distant haze. Chris put the plane into a shallow dive, levelling off thirty metres above the tree tops and following the contours of the terrain. At that height, Chris could see colonies of bright orange primates roosting in crudely woven huts amongst the upper branches, either lounging in the sun or scampering from limb to limb. As the biplane approached, the monkeys halted their activities and watched, their pale upturned faces like so many small flowers. Chris was sure that a couple of the small animals waved cheerily at him as he flew overhead.

The Doctor pointed out a small cove and asked Chris to perform a quick orbit over it. The Doctor peered down but the short beach was deserted. As Chris pulled the biplane into another turn a small shape shot up from the forest below and drew level, matching course and speed with nonchalant ease. It was another drone of a similar design to kiKhali. The Doctor introduced it to Chris as aM!xitsa.