Shining Darkness Read online

  ‘No,’ Mesanth replied simply. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That it was better to be talked about than not to be talked about. Pleased to meet you. I’d shake your hand but, as you can see…’ He glanced down at his hands and wiggled his fingers.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Garaman – untie him,’ exclaimed Mesanth. ‘What good is this going to do? Which bit are you going to threaten to remove, hmm? How about his head?’

  The Doctor felt momentarily alarmed. He was quite fond of his head – and he was pretty certain that if they chopped it off it wouldn’t grow back. Although if it did, maybe it’d be the ginger one he’d always wanted. Go quite nicely with his friend the Ginger Goddess.

  ‘You deal with him, then!’ spat Garaman, waving his hand dismissively. ‘We’re reaching Sentilli. I can do without the distraction.’

  With a bitter shake of his head, Garaman waddled off to the bridge’s control chair.

  Mesanth set about untying the Doctor with two of his three-fingered hands.

  ‘Ahh!’ exclaimed the Doctor, rubbing his wrists. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘My apologies,’ Mesanth said humbly, waving the blonde robot away. It went to stand quietly near the door. ‘Garaman tends to be a little overeager.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be too hard on him. I like enthusiasm. And I’m sure he’s got enough on his plate, what with collecting all these segments and finishing off Khnu’s plan – what?’

  The look on Mesanth’s face was priceless: his fingers flexed and writhed suddenly, like agitated snakes.

  ‘How do you…’ began Mesanth. ‘How do you know about Khnu?’

  ‘It’s all there in the records,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Well, not all. That’s the thing: there’s no mention of what, exactly, she was up to. That’s why I thought it might be good to come aboard and have a chat to the people who’re actually doing it, y’know, “living the dream”. So to speak.’

  He stretched his arms and looked up at the lizard.

  ‘So…’ He beamed. ‘Where shall we start?’

  Donna was beginning to wish she’d stayed with Garaman and Mesanth: the former might have threatened to break her little finger, but they hadn’t shown the outright hostility to her that this lot had. And all because she’d tried to get information out of Weiou.

  Although they hadn’t locked her up, they seemed to have assigned Mother, the hulking great steel robot, to look after her. Which was as good as.

  ‘Why do they call you Mother, then?’ she asked, sitting in a room that they laughingly called the cafeteria. ‘Oh, sorry – forgot: you don’t talk, do you?’

  It was frustrating: just seconds away from being reunited with the Doctor, they’d been snatched apart again, and now she had to get to know a whole new set of weirdos. The way they talked about the Doctor suggested that they’d gotten on well, but she suspected that whatever goodwill the Doctor had built up with them had well and truly been lost by her. She didn’t understand it: their attitude to robots was seriously screwy.

  As she ate something that tasted like a cheese sandwich (but looked like fish pie), Mother stood there silently, glowering down at her.

  ‘D’you have to stare at me while I’m eating?’

  Mother inclined her head slightly. It was as though she were trying to figure her out, like she’d never seen a human before (and could a robot be a ‘she’? How did that work, then?).

  ‘So what did the Doctor say about me?’ she asked, pushing aside the remains of her lunch. ‘Gorgeous? Witty? Stylish in a practical and down-to-earth sort of way?’

  Mother just stared – but then, as the only other crew member in the room left, the robot glanced around in a curiously human way before kneeling on the floor on the other side of the table. Donna wondered if Mother were about to whip out an engagement ring and propose to her.

  Suddenly, a tiny spot of pink light appeared in the middle of Mother’s chest, and a pale, flickering rectangle sprang up in the air between them.

  >DONNA. THE GINGER GODDESS.

  As red as Mother’s eyes, the words were sketched out in front of her.

  ‘How d’you know ab- oh!’ She smiled. ‘The Doctor told you.’

  >I WAS THERE.

  ‘You were? Where?’ It suddenly hit her. ‘It was you that pushed that rock, wasn’t it?’

  >YES.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ Donna said. ‘Without you, we’d probably have been burned at the stake. Well, Mesanth and Ogmunee would, at any rate.’

  >YOU’RE WELCOME.

  Donna stopped as, overlaid on the words was a moving image – it was her! The image showed her approaching whatever camera the video had been taken with, her mouth moving silently as she looked over her shoulder, clearly arguing with someone. The picture froze and then repeated, looping round and round.

  ‘Where’s this from?’ she asked.

  >YOU TRIED TO HELP MECHANICAL ZB2230/3 ON KARRIS.

  ‘Oh!’ It all came back to her. The bimbot. ‘That!’

  >WHY?

  Donna was thrown for a moment.

  ‘Well, it was hurt.’

  >ITS LIPANOV RATING WAS 23. IT WAS NOT SENTIENT. YET YOU TREATED IT AS IF IT WERE. ‘Its what?’

  >LIPANOV RATING – A MEASURE OF MACHINE SENTIENCE. MECHANICALS WITH A LIPANOV RATING OF 40 OR MORE ARE GENERALLY CLASSED AS SENTIENT. THOSE BELOW ARE NOT.

  The words scrolled off the edge of the screen area faster than Donna could read them.

  ‘Whoa!’ she said. ‘Back up there a bit, sunshine.’

  Mother’s words scrolled back round again, slower this time.

  ‘And what’s yours – your Lipanov thingy?’

  >80.

  ‘Oooh,’ said Donna, trying to sound impressed. ‘A right little brainbox!’

  >IT DOES NOT INDICATE INTELLIGENCE – ONLY SENTIENCE, SELF-AWARENESS.

  ‘Right,’ Donna said carefully, not at all sure that she understood the difference.

  >WEIOU RATES 68 AND YET YOU ATTRIBUTE LESS SENTIENCE TO HIM THAN TO ZB2230/3. IS THAT BECAUSE OF HIS APPEARANCE?

  ‘Um,’ said Donna, starting to lose track.

  >BECAUSE HE IS LESS HUMANIFORM, clarified Mother, YOU ASSUME THAT HE IS LESS SENTIENT. WOULD THAT BE ACCURATE?

  ‘What?’

  >YOU JUDGE HIS WORTH BY HIS APPEARANCE.

  Donna’s mouth almost fell open. She remembered the conversation she’d had with Mesanth about the difference between the bimbot and the door.

  ‘What are you saying?’ she demanded. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ She felt her face redden. ‘Are you calling me a racist?’

  >THAT WOULD BE TO JUDGE BY RACE. YOU JUDGE BY APPEARANCE. THAT IS DIFFERENT.

  Donna closed her mouth tightly. And then opened it again, ready to rebuff Mother’s words with something clever and sharp and witty.

  But there was nothing there.

  Mother had accused her of judging robots by what they looked like, not by how sentient they were: how different was that from racism? And if she couldn’t argue against the first bit, how could she genuinely, hand-on-heart, argue with the second? She wasn’t racist. She knew she wasn’t. But no matter how she turned it over in her head – as Mother knelt and watched her, silently – there was something horribly inescapable about the robot’s conclusion.

  ‘Where I come from,’ Donna started carefully, chewing at her bottom lip and carefully avoiding Mother’s gaze, ‘things are different.’ She summoned up the courage to look up into Mother’s implacable face. ‘We don’t have…’ She nodded towards the machine. ‘Robots. Not like you. Not like Weiou.’ She paused again, struggling to find the right words. ‘You lot – all of you Andromedans – you’re so… so …weird. No offence,’ she added hastily. ‘Not weird, exactly. Just strange. Different. Back home in Chiswick, the closest I’d ever get to a conversation with a machine is shouting at the photocopier.’ She shook her head again. ‘It’s only natural to see something that doesn’t look human and doesn’t act human and to as
sume it doesn’t think human, isn’t it?’

  >IT IS UNDERSTANDABLE, agreed Mother.

  There was a long silence.

  ‘It doesn’t make it right, though.’ Donna said quietly. ‘Does it?’

  >NO. BUT WE ARE ONLY AS IGNORANT AS WE CHOOSE TO BE.

  Donna gave a bitter little laugh. At herself.

  ‘Meaning it’s up to me how much I learn about other people? Now you’re just being nice,’ she said.

  >IMPLYING THAT YOU ARE IGNORANT IS NICE?

  ‘Believe me, it’s better than what you could have called me. I’d say sorry, but sorry doesn’t really cut it, does it? Not over something like this.’

  >WE ARE ALL PRODUCTS OF OUR PROGRAMMING, OUR EDUCATION, said Mother. IT IS HOW WE TRANSCEND THAT PROGRAMMING THAT DEFINES US. I WAS CREATED AS A WAR MACHINE. I HAVE CHANGED. WE CAN ALL CHANGE.

  Donna chewed on a fingernail, recalling the attitudes of Mesanth and Garaman and their absolute certainty that they were right. How could people so right be so wrong?

  ‘But robots can’t feel, can they? I’m not being horrible, but…’ She struggled for the words. ‘But robots are just things, aren’t they? I mean, they’re built, made out of metal and circuits and stuff. They’re not alive. Not really.’

  >YOU MAY NOT BE MADE OF METAL, BUT YOU’RE STILL ‘MADE OF STUFF’. WHY DOES IT MATTER WHAT THE CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL IS?

  ‘But Mesanth says that robots are just mimicking thinking and feeling.’

  >AND HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT JUST MIMICKING THINKING AND FEELING?

  ‘Because I know I’m not.’ Donna tapped the side of her head. ‘It’s all in here. I know what I feel.’

  Mother raised a steel hand and repeated the gesture, tapping the side of her head.

  >ME TOO.

  Mother had given Donna a lot to think about, but she wasn’t going to be allowed the luxury of time to herself to get it all straight in her head. Boonie called the two of them through to the control room, where Weiou was running around like an overexcited child, chatting to the other robots (even the little service ones that, Mother had assured Donna, were so low on this Lipanov scale that they barely counted as food mixers).

  ‘He’s innocent,’ said Li’ian. ‘Someone – someone with a pretty good knowledge of robotics and communications systems – hooked into him and used him as a mouthpiece. I’ve checked his memory out and he’s just got a blank space there.’

  ‘Garaman?’ suggested Donna, feeling vaguely traitorous for suggesting it, despite the conversation she’d had with Mother.

  ‘Who else?’ glowered Boonie.

  Weiou caught sight of Donna and came over, his cartoon face a picture of distress.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Donna, giving him a little pat – that she hoped didn’t seem too patronising. ‘It’s not your fault. Sorry I was such a bully. I was just worried about the Doctor.’

  ‘S’OK,’ said Weiou. ‘Still,’ he added, his upper body turning as he gestured to the control room and its occupants. ‘Wow!’ His eyes went wide. ‘You’ve no idea how exciting all this is, you really haven’t. I mean, all this jetting about space and chasing bad guys and stuff – it’s probably all in a day’s work to you lot. But I’ve spent all my life on Junk – cataloguing, sorting, organising.’ He made a typing gesture with his fingers. ‘This is the kind of life some of us can only dream of. What’s next? Where are we going now?’

  Donna had to smile – he was like a little puppy. And whether Mesanth was right, and he was just imitating enthusiasm – or Mother was, and it was all genuine – Donna couldn’t help but be infected by it.

  ‘There are two possible systems on the hyperspace trajectory that Garaman’s ship took,’ Kellique said, and a transparent, holographic display sprang up in the air at the front of the control room. ‘The Sentilli system, which has a black hole as its primary, and Pew, which has a binary star. If they’re looking for an inhabited world, Pew is the more likely, although all sixteen of its planets are in very erratic orbits. Sentilli has thirty-six planets, but they’re all pretty much washouts as far as life goes because of the nature of their sun.’ She shrugged. ‘Until they emerge from hyperspace, we won’t know for sure. Another hour and we’ll have a better idea.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ said Boonie, turning to Donna, ‘I think we need to talk.’

  Donna nodded.

  ‘I’m really, really sorry about what I—’

  ‘No, no,’ Boonie cut in. ‘Not that. That’s something we might have to discuss later. I mean Garaman and his little band. We need to know anything that might help us work out what they’re up to – anything they might have said, no matter how insignificant. Take your time – let’s see what we can come up with.’

  ‘I was quite warming to your friend Donna,’ Mesanth said. ‘She had some… strange views, but I think she was an essentially good person.’

  ‘Can we talk in the present tense, please,’ said the Doctor. ‘Hopefully, she’s still alive. And yes, she is a good person. Why, what’s she been saying?’

  ‘Her experiences with mechanicals are interesting,’ Mesanth said, and the Doctor noticed how he smelled of fish and lavender. Not the most usual odour, but certainly not the most unpleasant that he’d encountered.

  ‘Told you about the robot Santas, did she?’

  Mesanth nodded. ‘She gave the impression that your galaxy has far fewer mechanical civilisations than ours.’

  ‘It would seem so, yes,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But then both galaxies are so huge that it’d be a bit unfair to draw conclusions from the little bits of them that I’ve seen. Wouldn’t want to seem like I’m generalising. Never a good thing, generalising.’ He winked at the joke, but Mesanth didn’t seem to get it.

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Mesanth (a tad overeagerly, thought the Doctor). ‘But you must agree that there has always been friction between mechanicals and organics.’

  ‘Oh, always is such a big word. It’s on a par with “every” and “never” and “they’re all a load of lazy, scrounging gits and they should get back to their own planet” isn’t it?’ He smiled at Mesanth, but his eyes were hard and humourless. ‘What were we saying about generalising?’

  ‘Ahh,’ said Mesanth after a moment’s pause. ‘You’re a promechanical.’

  ‘Am I? Really?’ The Doctor sounded quite excited at the suggestion. ‘I like to think of myself as pro-humanity, whatever shape that humanity comes in.’ He raised a hand as Mesanth began to speak again. ‘And if you’re going to start arguing with me that mechanicals aren’t really alive, then I’ll stop you here, save you the time. Stop thinking of someone as being like you and it means you can start treating them differently. And usually treating them worse. That’s the kind of thinking that leads to segregation and prison camps, isn’t it?’

  ‘Facts are facts,’ Mesanth said.

  ‘And arrogant, opinionated nonsense is arrogant, opinionated nonsense and I really don’t have time to listen to any more of it. I’d much rather you told me about this thing that you’re collecting the parts for.’

  Mesanth’s hands began to flex again.

  ‘The way I see it,’ the Doctor continued, breezily, ‘is that if you genuinely believe all this tosh, then you ought to be quite proud of it, and more than willing to go on about it at length to me. All this organic supremacist stuff’s a bit old hat, isn’t it? “We’re better than you cos we’re made of goo rather than metal,” etc, etc. You seem like quite an intelligent fellow – d’you really believe it, or is it just something to do at the weekends? Like re-enacting military battles or getting drunk on cheap cider. You can’t really believe it.’

  ‘You haven’t experienced what we have,’ Mesanth said. ‘Our galaxy is being overrun with machine intelligences. Given enough resources, they are capable of reproducing at a much greater rate than most organics.’

  ‘Granted,’ agreed the Doctor. ‘But they haven’t, have they? How long have you had peace here? How
many centuries have organics and non-organics lived, side by side, with barely a war or a skirmish? How much have organics and non-organics contributed to each other’s cultures?’

  ‘The point is,’ Mesanth said firmly, ‘that that can’t continue for ever.’

  ‘Why not?’ The Doctor leaned forward, his face right in front of Mesanth’s. ‘It’s worked pretty well up to now, hasn’t it? If the people of my galaxy could see yours, they’d be astounded at the way you’ve all gotten on up to now. Wouldn’t you rather be seen as leaders in interstellar peace and harmony than yet another galaxy of bickering, scrapping kids?’

  ‘It must seem very simple to you, as an outsider,’ said Mesanth. There was a hint of frustration in his voice, the Doctor thought. ‘You have no understanding of the issues involved here.’

  ‘Oh,’ retorted the Doctor, ‘I think I have. Anyway, I’m not going to convince you, and you’re not going to convince me, so why not just tell me what it is you’re up to, what Khnu’s grand plan was, and then I can go back to Donna and we can leave you to get on with it?’ He grinned, but there was an edge to his smile.

  Mesanth eyed him warily – when suddenly Garaman’s voice squeaked over the intercom.

  ‘We’re entering the Sentilli system,’ he said. ‘All crew to their stations. Repeat, all crew to their stations.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Doctor, crestfallen. ‘And you were just about to explain your plan to me. Don’t you just hate it when that happens!’

  The Doctor watched, appalled at his own stupidity, as the assembled device rotated in space, just half a kilometre from the hull of the Dark Light. Now that the four segments were stacked upon each other, the Doctor could see how they formed a cylinder – obvious, really, with hindsight. But then wasn’t everything? Each segment rotated independently as the whole device turned silently until one end was pointing towards the black disc of Sentilli.

  ‘You’re going to open up a black hole!’ he said slowly and turned to Garaman. ‘I should have guessed.’

  ‘Why should you have guessed?’ asked Mesanth.

  The Doctor shrugged.