Match of the Day

  MATCH OF THE DAY

  CHRIS BOUCHER

  DOCT

  OR WHO:

  MATCH

  OF THE DAY

  Commissioning Editor:

  Shirley Patton

  Editor & Cre

  ative Consultant:

  Justin

  Richards

  Project Editors: S arah Emsley & Vicki Vrint Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd,

  Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane

  London W12 OTT

  First published 2005

  Copyright © Chris Boucher 2005

  The moral right of the author has been asserted Original series broadcast on the BBC

  Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC

  ISBN 0 563 48618 X

  Imaging by Black Sheep, copyright © BBC 2005

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton For Lynda

  Chapter One

  As the Mythmotor Repro dropped down off the elevated section onto the twelve-lane drag, Keefer touched the hidden switch on the control board and killed the inboard link. He accelerated carefully, simulating the response of the computer overrides, and enjoyed the sensation of being in total control of the runner. So what if it was illegal? He had a right to protect himself according to his contract: ‘in any way not prejudicial to the lives of non-participants.’ Non-participants, yeah that’d be right. He shuddered slightly as he thought of the chancers, three so far, who’d tried to take him down. No declaration, just step up and shoot for it.

  Breach of contract? Pity about that. They’d still make a liftload of money. And he’d still be dead as yesterday.

  He pushed his speed up to the legal limit and was comforted by the knowledge of the extra power waiting in the modified drive. ‘You and me,’ he said aloud to the vehicle,

  ‘the scufflers can’t touch you and me.’

  And then Keefer saw him. Four, maybe five hundred metres ahead, a slim figure standing motionless on the shoulder of the road. Even at that distance he could see the long gun clearly. For a moment he froze while the runner rushed him on towards the assassin. He thought he saw a flash as the laser sight probed for a head shot. He’d imagined it probably, but it was enough to snap him out of his death trance. He angled the runner across the lanes towards the shoulder.

  ‘Not too fast,’ he whispered, ‘don’t spook him.’ Beyond terror now, Keefer was filled with an icy elation. ‘Take your time friend,’ he said. ‘You know the traffic computer’s got me trapped. Wait for the perfect shot... Wait.’

  With fifty metres to go Keefer yelled his triumph: Too late you scuffler!’ and slammed his foot on the accelerator. The drive howled with power. Keeping his foot on the accelerator, Keefer turned the wheel hard towards the shoulder. The tyres screamed as the runner began to slide. As the rear slewed round he hit the brakes. The runner rolled. It heaved from the road, turning slowly in the air. Too late the assassin pulled the trigger of the gun and high-velocity bullets spewed through the floor. The last thing the shooter must have seen was the underside of the old Mythmotor as, wheels still spinning, it crashed down towards him. For one aching moment it seemed to hang in the air; then with ponderous grace it landed squarely on its wheels, flattening him into the motorway.

  Keefer released the safety casing, unlocked the runner door and stepped out. The elation had gone, as it always did, and he was left frightened and angry. ‘Murderous scuffler,’ he whispered, forcing the words through a dry, constricted throat. ‘You’re supposed to notify a contract. I’m supposed to know you’re coming. Neither of us earn like this, you stupid amateur scuffwit.’

  Reaction was making his legs weak, so he walked to the verge and sat down heavily. On the motorway vehicles continued without pause. None of the passing witnesses interrupted their travel programming to stop or to report what they had seen, assuming that the Central Traffic Computer would be responding. Since it had not been controlling his runner, however, the computer had registered neither breakdown nor accident. Keefer was on his own.

  The unthinking acceptance of the control computers’ power to deal with routine problems and dangers was one of the things that made society safe and well adjusted. It was also what made contract duellists like Keefer rich and famous. At least, the Prime Division were rich and famous. Men like Starvil, Maidenly and Cordell, and perhaps most famous of all, the woman, Coodar.

  Keefer was not yet Prime Division. But he would be, he was confident of that. He had a talent for survival and an instinct for the spectacular counterattack. It made him good copy and a crowd-pleaser in a contract duel when the tri-dee cameras could cover an agreed killing ground. Indeed, as his nerves settled, Keefer’s anger that this coup had been undeclared only increased. If the remote tri-dee cameras had recorded it there was no question that it would have been shown planet-wide and there was a strong possibility that it would have made the full interplanetary network. It could have been the breakthrough into Prime Division that he had waited for. He cursed the assassin again. ‘Scuffling scuffwit, I’d have taken your contract. You didn’t have to short-cut. I’m not that expensive.’

  He got to his feet and moved back to the runner. Now all he’d get out of it was some local publicity. If his agent did a little fast promoting they might make the mid-evening newscast and the next fax-sheet issue. He dialled up Jerro Fanson’s private number on the remote-call.

  ‘Rational intelligence,’ said the Doctor, tapping dubiously on one of the control console’s transdimensional flux relay indicators, ‘is based on the capacity to remember.’ The indicator continued to blink intermittently and the TARDIS

  continued drawing supplementary power from the less predictable zero point energy flux.

  Leela yawned and stretched. ‘You have told me that,’ she said. ‘You have told me more than once that rational intelligence is based on the capacity to remember.’

  ‘I have?’ The Doctor was not really listening. ‘I must have forgotten.’ He tapped the indicator again. Was the TARDIS

  really losing stability and developing a dangerously random half-dimensional drag, or was he looking at a faulty indicator and imagining the rest?

  ‘Knowledge that is not based on memory,’ Leela parroted,

  ‘is instinct which is a matter of evolution. Training is not the same as instinct although it looks the same.’ She pulled the hunting knife she always carried from the sheath on the belt of her tunic and offered it to the Doctor. ‘You have also said: when in doubt hit it with something heavy.’

  The Doctor ran a hand through his unruly curls and smiled his vivid, wolfish smile. ‘That was a joke,’ he said. ‘On the other hand so is this.’ He took the knife and hit the relay indicator with it. The indicator continued to blink. ‘Last time I was on Earth,’ he said, ‘or maybe it was the time before that... well whenever it was, I came across an interesting puzzle.’ He hit the indicator again; harder this time. Nothing changed. ‘A watch - that’s a small mechanical device for matching the passage of time against the movement of the planet and indicating it on a dial - was running fast and so never showed the correct planetary time. Whereas a broken watch that wasn’t running at all actually showed the correct time once every twelve hours.’ He hit the indicator harder still. ‘So which watch was better? The constantly inaccurate one, or the occasionally correct one?’ He hit the indicator again and it stopped blinking and went off altogether. The Doctor stopped smiling and frowned. ‘And which is this do we think?’

  Leela was getting used to the Doctor’s habit of teasing and of using games to test her. She thought for a moment then said, ‘There is no answer to this puzzle. Both the devices are useless unless you know the correct measurement of time to begin wi
th. And if you know the correct measurement of time to begin with both devices are useless.’

  The Doctor nodded appreciatively. ‘That’s very clever,’ he said. ‘Rather too logical for someone who insists on carrying something like this about with them.’ He handed the knife back to her.

  ‘You have told me that before too,’ Leela said, sheathing the knife with a small flourish and adjusting the tunic belt so that the knife rested comfortably against her left thigh.

  ‘So memory is necessary for rational intelligence,’ the Doctor said. ‘But it doesn’t guarantee it.’ He smiled as he spoke but that did not make the comment any less cutting.

  When his agent, Jerro Fanson, eventually came on the line Keefer said without preamble, ‘Jer, I’ve just taken a non-contract hit. Chancer on the motorway with a high-velocity long gun.’

  On the small viewscreen Fanson’s chubby face frowned with concern. ‘You all right?’

  ‘He blew a few holes in the floor of my runner.’

  ‘The floor?’

  ‘I bounced on him.’

  Fanson grinned. ‘Gaudy kid. Very gaudy.’

  Keefer didn’t smile. For all that Fanson was his agent and Keefer liked him, he was an outsider to this. What had happened between the attacker and Keefer linked them in some way that Keefer himself did not understand. It was as though they shared some secret, some guilty secret that they could have admitted only to each other. With a genuine pro’

  the link would have been stronger, but Fanson’s admiration was an intrusion even when the opponent had broken all the rules.

  ‘It’s messy enough to get us some good coverage,’ said Keefer, ‘if you stir up your contacts.’

  Fanson shrugged unhappily. I’ll try kid, but I doubt we’ll rate a mention tonight. Starvil took a spot challenge about two hours ago. And lost.’

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘As last hour’s news.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Open field garrotte. It was all over in five minutes. Starvil went down like a stumbling amateur.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Keefer. ‘Starvil was the best. Open field was his speciality.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Fanson, looking gloomy. ‘Hand, knife, garrotte, no one could touch him. Only somebody did. His agent’s screaming foul and trying to hit the Guild insurance fund. He’s got no chance. It was a private challenge but it was legal, notified and legal.’

  ‘Forget his agent!’ Keefer snapped. ‘Who was it took Starvil?’

  Fanson looked hurt. ‘His agent’s bleeding kid and why not?

  He had a lot invested.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Nobody knows. It was an anonymous notification. I reckon it was Coodar. She and Starvil had a thing going for a while.’

  He shrugged. ‘They fell out.’

  Keefer shook his head. You don’t waste a Prime target like Starvil without earning.’

  ‘That’s what his agent says. Where are you? I’d better get on it if we’re going to make the newscast.’

  Keefer glanced round. ‘R4 southbound, junction 4 by 12. I shouldn’t bother though.’

  ‘There may be an angle.’

  For the first time Keefer smiled. ‘You’re a good agent Jer, but you’re not that good.’

  ‘A Hit and a Miss in the Afternoon of Death,’ intoned Fanson. ‘It has possibilities.’

  ‘It stinks,’ said Keefer, still smiling.

  ‘That’s why it has possibilities,’ his agent said and broke the connection.

  While he waited for the tri-dee recording unit, Keefer moved round the runner checking the possible camera angles with the practised eye of the professional performer. Finally he bent down to peer at the shattered remains of his would-be assassin. Only now that his nerves had steadied and the practical demands of his trade were uppermost in his mind could he bring himself to examine the man he had killed. As he stared at the corpse it took Keefer several seconds to register that what he was looking at was not a man at all.

  Leela retied the leather threads at the tip of the knife sheath round her leg just above the knee. ‘You have lost control of the TARDIS again,’ she remarked as she checked the contents of the combat pouch she also carried on the belt of her hide tunic. Whetstone, blood-staunch patch, energy chew-stick, painkilling herbs and hair comb - yes they were all there. ‘That is why.’

  ‘That is why what?’ the Doctor demanded, though he knew perfectly well what his bright and irritatingly observant young companion was about to say.

  ‘That is why you are angry with me.’

  ‘I’m not angry with you,’ he said, his face a study of patient irritation. ‘Nor have I lost control of the TARDIS.’

  Leela said, ‘You were not pleased when the flickering light went out.’

  ‘It went out without explanation.’

  ‘You hit it,’ Leela said reasonably.

  The TARDIS whispered to itself and wheezed a little, like a heavy sleeper stirring from a dream. The random drag seemed to the Doctor to have become a less random and more definite drag. It felt to him as though the half-dimensionality was filling and the TARDIS was struggling to create a place for itself, and for them, in a continuum where they had no previous and future existence. At these moments there was always and forever so much adjustment to be made, so many discontinuities to be cauterised, so many causal links to be jury-rigged and patched. An infinity of previous and future interactions had to be unpicked and reweaved in less than the shadow of an instant. But this was happening much too quickly. This was underpowered. This was going to be uncomfortably lumpy.

  Jerro Fanson lit a rolled smoke, rehearsed a couple of confident smiles, then keyed the number of the Zone Three Sports Desk. Michaelson was on duty. ‘Mickey! Good to see you,’ said Fanson, flashing the better of his two smiles.

  Michaelson’s thin face smiled back. ‘Hello Jerro.’

  A promising start: Michaelson wasn’t known as Miserable Mickey for nothing. ‘Got something good, Mickey. Wanted to give you first crack.’

  ‘Generous of you.’

  ‘You know me Mickey, all heart.’

  Michaelson scowled suddenly. ‘A giant-hearted carrion eater. What is it you want to sell me Fanson? Your boy Keefer?’

  ‘You make him sound like a fistful of slime,’ said Fanson, with more than a touch of genuine anger. ‘Let me tell you something -’

  ‘No!’ snapped Michaelson. ‘Let me tell you something. I liked Keefer, as much as you can like any of them. He was a natural. And he had guts. He would have made Prime sooner or later.’

  ‘What do you mean would have done?!’

  Michaelson stared out of the screen for a long moment.

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’

  ‘Don’t know what?’ yelled Fanson. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. That I don’t know!’

  ‘Reefer’s dead.’

  ‘Dead? When? Where?’

  ‘Fifteen, twenty minutes ago. On the motorway.’ He paused to punch the retrieval sequence on a small display unit.

  ‘Yeah here it is. R4 southbound, junction 4 by 12. Head shot, high-velocity long gun. Spot challenge, notified and accepted an hour before.’

  Fanson relaxed and smiled. ‘For a minute there I thought you were serious. When did you take up practical jokes Mickey?’

  ‘It’s on the computer, Jerro. Notification, place, result. I’m sorry man, I assumed you knew.’ Michaelson gave a slight shrug of embarrassment. ‘I thought that’s what you were trying to sell me.’

  ‘It was,’ said Fanson.

  ‘I knew it!’ Michaelson raged. ‘You scuffling parasite!’

  ‘Now wait a minute, Mickey.’

  ‘Don’t Mickey me, Fanson. You just blew every connection with Zone Three. You’re out, man!’

  Before Michaelson could hit the disconnect switch Fanson keyed the emergency jammer. The picture went hazy for a moment then cleared. ‘Now you listen to me Michaelson. No scrawny little staffer
tells me what connections I do or don’t have with Zone Three or any other company! Do you hear me Michaelson?’

  Michaelson smiled sourly. ‘I hear you,’ he said softly. ‘I hope it was worth the fine. Or is this really an emergency?’

  ‘It is for you! Somebody’s screwing up your data input.

  Keefer’s alive!’

  ‘Are you saying it didn’t happen?’

  ‘Oh it happened all right,’ said Fanson, his temper subsiding.

  Michaelson looked back at his display unit. ‘R4

  southbound, junction 4 by 12?’

  ‘Right,’ said Fanson.

  ‘High-velocity long gun?’

  Fanson nodded slowly. ‘Right. But there was no spot challenge.’

  Michaelson spoke quietly as though suddenly afraid of being overheard: ‘Come on the notification is here. According to this you accepted it an hour before the kill.’

  ‘That’s crud!’ snapped Fanson. ‘Are you calling me a liar? It was a chancer! He tried for it. Keefer killed him.’

  The two men stared at each other for a long moment. For each, the sincerity of the other was obvious and unnerving.

  Michaelson broke the silence. ‘What’s going on Jerro?’ he said very softly.

  The TARDIS shuddered, smoothed out the shudder so that it was an unshudder, and then shuddered again.

  ‘I think it might be a good idea,’ the Doctor said, ‘to hold onto something.’

  He reached for the main console and, as soon as he touched it, felt a sub-gravity ripple tingle through his fingers and scratch at the back of his eyes. Giddiness pushed at him. Before Leela could make the same mistake he swatted her hand away. ‘Better still,’ he grunted, ‘I should sit down if I were you.’ He slumped to the floor and hunched up clutching his knees to his chest. ‘Like this.’ He closed his eyes against the heaving whirls.

  Leela knew better than to argue with the Doctor at such times. She dropped to her knees and braced her hands on the floor on either side of her. ‘Will we be damaged?’ she asked, raising her voice above the pulsed howling of the control console. There was a long lurch that had ended before it began and began before it had ended, and it felt to Leela as though she would fell and if she fell she would fall forever.