Doctor Who: The Also People (23 page)

The grav lift dropped them through the bedrock and out into a transparent tube that ran down the side of a conical-shaped building that protruded into space. Around them they could see similarly inverted structures hanging from the rock base of the facility. A web of walkways and grav tubes ran from building to building. It reminded Roz of the overcities back on Earth; even the way the people moved about, as if they really had somewhere to go, seemed comfortingly familiar. She felt Chris straighten imperceptibly beside her, automatically adopting an adjudicator's habitual stance. They looked at each other and grinned. 'Hello, hello,' said Chris,

'what's all this about then?'

Roz laughed.

'Look at that,' said Chris in an awed voice.

A ship was closing slowly with the tip of the building, light from the windows of Facility glinting off the curve of its long wasp-waisted hull. There were a series of mirrored bulges evenly spaced around its nose. Weapons, observation galleries? wondered Roz. As they watched a hatch just forward of the waist irised open and the ship delicately manoeuvred until it had swallowed the first three storeys of the tip. It was big, at least two thousand metres long.

Roz had a horrible feeling that standard interrogation procedures were going to be wholly ineffective in this case.

'How do you want to play this?' asked Chris. 'Good cop, bad cop?'

Roz shook her head. 'Aristocracy drill,' she said. 'Good cop, downright sycophantic cop.'

The grav lift dropped them neatly through the iris hatch and into the S-Lioness's reception atrium.

'Hi,' said a friendly voice from all around them. 'I believe you wanted a word with me. Why don't you go through to my parlour where you'll both be more comfortable. You both drink' – the voice paused for a moment – 'coffee; I've just had the template sent over.'

'I'm Forrester and this is my partner Cwej,' said Roz.

'I know,' said S-Lioness happily. 'You're the one who threw up at saRa!qava's party and your partner is Dep's latest boyfriend.'

Roz's heart sank. This was going to be even harder than she'd thought.

'Benny. Come in,' said saRa!qava. 'You look awful.' It was true, Bernice's face was pale and her eyes were shadowed somehow, as if by remembered pain.

'Do I?' said Bernice. 'I can't think why.'

'I was just trying out a new strain of yeast.'

'That's nice.'

'Are you sure you're all right?'

'No,' said Bernice, 'I'm not sure at all.'

'Why don't you sit down,' said saRa!qava, 'and I'll get you a hot mug of
stomach warmer
.'

Bernice slumped into a kitchen chair. SaRa!qava bit her lip thoughtfully as she hand-prepared the flavoured bovine lactate. Funny, she thought, how you always wanted to prepare comforting drinks by hand as if you were trying to infuse some of your humanness into the liquid. She had done the same thing the first time Dep's heart had been broken – and promised to let her build a new glider against her better judgement – right here in this kitchen.

Bernice took the drink listlessly and sipped it. 'Caramel,' she said. 'Thank you. So how is the new strain of yeast coming on?'

'You don't want to talk about yeast,' said saRa!qava.

'That's the trouble,' said Bernice. 'What I want to talk about, I can't talk about.'

'I'm Sorry.'

'That's all right, it's not your fault. Not even anything to do with you,' said Bernice. 'I shouldn't be laying this stuff on you.'

'Listening to someone's problems is practically the definition of friendship,' said saRa!qava.

'Are we friends?' asked Bernice.

'To the bitter end,' said saRa!qava. 'Do you doubt it?'

Bernice looked at her for a long time before seeming to make a decision. 'Have you ever had another person be completely dependent on you – literally their life depends on you?'

'You've never had children, have you?' asked saRa!qava. Bernice shook her head. 'Dep was my first and I remember all the things I couldn't do when I was pregnant. Especially after she started talking to me.'

'Talking to you?'

'Well, not exactly talking but definitely communicating.'

'What did she talk about?'

'What do you think, gimme this, gimme that, eat that, eat this.' She laughed at the memory.

'She had this total aversion to seafood and she used to kick me hard if I even thought about crustaceans.'

Bernice was smiling. It wasn't much of a smile, just a twitch at the corners of her mouth but it was a start.

'She wasn't much better after she was born,' said saRa!qava. 'Puke at one end and shit at the other with wailing in between. And just when I thought it was time to hand her over to the Masochistic Parent Interest Group she would look at me with those big eyes and demand my unconditional love.'

'You can't argue with that,' said Bernice, 'can you. It's a biological imperative.'

'Rubbish,' said saRa!qava, 'nothing's truly genetic. I made a decision to conceive Dep for my own reasons and I had to accept the consequences of my actions. Dependency is a powerful psychological weapon and small children use it unmercifully. Don't get the wrong idea; I know how things go down in other "civilizations". I had free choices and unlimited resources at every stage. I don't know how I would have behaved if I was one of those slave-wives; perhaps I would have drowned Dep at birth.'

Bernice had stopped smiling. 'No,' she said, 'I doubt that.'

'One can only hope so and give thanks for what one's got,' said saRa!qava. 'And live with the consequences.'

AM!xitsa intercepted them on the path leading over the headland and wouldn't let them anywhere near the cove.

'Come on, aM!xitsa,' said kiKhali, talking at organic speeds for agRaven's benefit. 'What have you got hidden back there?'

'None of your business,' said aM!xitsa.

'Fair enough,' said kiKhali. 'But I've got my ship on my back and it really wants to know what it is you've been doing for the last three months. So come on, give me a break.'

There was a tiny pause which agRaven just
knew
was the two drones communicating at machine speeds; she hated it when they did that. Then aM!xitsa spun around and hurtled back up the path.

'Let's go,' said kiKhali.

'Just like that?' asked agRaven.

'I'm not going head to head with aM!xitsa,' said kiKhali. 'No secret could possibly be worth that.

We're not going to get near that cove while it's on guard.'

'Give us a lift then.'

'AgRaven, you know I hate carrying people on my back, it's so undignified.'

'Well, I'm not walking back up that beach, I've got enough sand in my shoes as it is.'

KiKhali reluctantly extended its dorsal field and lifted her onto its back. 'I told you to wear the sandals. Sometimes I really envy the barbarians. I bet Roz Forrester wouldn't have taken no for an answer.'

'Have you reported to !C-Mel yet?'

'Just finished.'

'What did it think?'

'It got all excited and started talking to the other ships,' said kiKhali. 'You know, I think our wonderful ship knows more than it's telling us.'

'What a surprise,' said agRaven.

What struck Chris about the S-Lioness, apart from its sheer scale, was how unlike it was to any other type of spaceship he'd ever seen. The S-Lioness was a VAS, the people's top of the line warship and had served in several major engagements and countless skirmishes during the war.

He found himself strangely disappointed. Intellectually he'd known that the S-Lioness was entirely run by its machine intelligence but he'd expected something a bit more, well, dramatic, than a series of pleasant living areas complete with two swimming pools and an arboretum. S-Lioness didn't need a bridge or an engine room but Chris felt obscurely that something was missing without them. And if they didn't have to fly the ship or fire the weapons or even flush the toilets for themselves, what exactly did the six hundred plus crew
do
?

'Keep me company,' said S-Lioness. 'No, Roslyn, not like pets. If I'd wanted to I could have filled the place – up with dumb animals or taken no crew at all.'

Roz frowned. One of S-Lioness's little eccentricities was answering questions before you asked them. Chris could tell that the habit was driving Roz berserk. That the ship was doing it on purpose and that Roz knew she was being manipulated just served to make it worse. Calling her Roslyn probably didn't help either.

'Of course I remember vi!Cari,' said S-Lioness. 'Nice little machine, I thought, one of the more promising drones of its generation. Well, they say that about it now but it wasn't like that
before
.

There was a nasty incident and vi!Cari sustained some psychological damage, but then it was war.

Plenty of other machines had worse experiences but came through it all right. Your friend aM!xitsa, for example. You've met the enemy, I believe, at the party, very polite people they are, even during the war and they have such a wonderful sense of rhythm.'

'Did –' started Ros.

'Yes, feLixi was on board, at the same time as vi!Cari but I wouldn't say they were friends although VAS crews tend to be a bit clannish, all that shared sense of danger.'

'But –'

'Landing parties, especially on low-tech worlds like yours, where machines would be conspicuous. Operations like that could be quite hairy, especially if the rules of engagement were tight. It was considered bad form to blow away a planet just because one of your crew got killed.'

'Did that really –'

'Once, an asteroid facility called Omicron 378,' said S-Lioness. 'But there were extenuating circumstances. And in answer to the question that you are resolutely not asking: it wasn't me.

That's true, Chris, vi!Cari did have a peculiar talent for ferreting out secrets; nothing to do with its design, more like a quirk of its personality. And to save time, Roz, you don't mind if I call you Roz? I was completely shut down on the night of the murder. The Doctor's theory is sound,
if
you can explain why vi!Cari had its defensive shields down and where the extra power came from.

FeLixi is wrong. He tends to consider too many possibilities when he looks at a problem. A ship couldn't have modified a normal lightning bolt to do the job. I know I couldn't and I'm the best there is.'

Roz glanced at Chris, flicking her eyes to indicate that she was planning to terminate the interview soon.

'Aren't you going to ask me your last question?' asked S-Lioness.

'Well, we had better be going now,' said Roz with forced politeness. 'We have other lines of inquiry to follow up.'

'What a shame,' said S-Lioness. 'I'd like to say that this was one of the most fascinating conversations I've ever had.'

'Thank you,' said Chris.

'Yes, it would be nice to say that,' said the ship. 'Don't hesitate to stay away.'

The ship waited until they reached the atrium and the base of the grav lift before saying: 'The answer to the question you didn't ask, and believe me you can't even begin to comprehend how much it pains me to say this – as to who the murderer is? Your guess is as good as mine.'

Once they were back in the grav lift Chris wanted to speak but Roz signed at him to be silent.

'God, are you listening?' she asked.

'Yep,' said God. Chris looked around for the source of its voice. They seemed to be alone in the shaft, nothing but empty space above and below.

'Has S-Lioness bugged us?' asked Roz.

'Let me have a little look,' said God. 'There's one in Chris's hair. Do you want me to neutralize it?'

'Yes, please.'

Chris felt his hair rustle as God plucked a tiny metallic insect off his scalp. The tiny bug waved its tiny legs and feelers in protest before vaporizing with a small pop.

'Can we talk now?' asked Roz.

'I wouldn't advise it while S-Lioness can see you,' said God.

'Lip reading, eh?'

'Oldest trick in the datastore.'

'And where are you?' asked Roz.

'Can't I stick around for just a little bit longer?' said God plaintively.

'God!' snarled Roz. 'I'm going to get very angry.'

'I'm in
your
hair,' admitted God somewhat sheepishly.

'Well, buzz off,' said Roz. 'You can't afford the ground rent.'

Another tiny bug emerged from Roz's hair and buzzed around her head a few times before flying back down the lift shaft.

'You know, Chris,' said Roz, 'I used to really hate the robots back home, but now I'm beginning to miss 'em.'

'But, Roz,' said Chris, 'you used to hate
everything
back home.'

'You're right. But since we've been with the Doctor I've found so many new things to really hate that all the things I thought I hated have begun to look much more attractive.' She sighed. 'I suppose it's true: travel really does broaden your mind.'

The Doctor strolled along the esplanade taking in great lungfuls of fresh sea air and whistling a cheery melody from
Sarajevo: The Musical
. The sky above was a deep purple, streamers of stratospheric cloud stretched their fingers across the sky, ruddy in the darkening light of the sun.

The waterfront cafés and bistros were turning on their lights, checkered tablecloths, cruets and occasionally chairs flew hither and thither as they prepared for the evening promenade. With the groan of artistically distressed machinery the harbour lighthouse rose out of its concealed recess at the end of the breakwater.

The Doctor doffed his hat as a remote-drone whirred past with a brace of floating toddlers trailing behind it like chattering balloons. He had arrived in iSanti Jeni during the quiet hour between the late afternoon walks and the evening promenade. Light spilled from the open windows of the town as families, couples and solitary individuals squabbled, laughed, cried and dictated to their houses what they wanted to eat.

Smiling, the Doctor watched a squadron of drones the size and shape of frisbees flash down the esplanade at head height in a perfect diamond formation before vanishing around a corner with a chorus of electronic giggles. A pair of teenagers rode unicycles in and out of the cast-iron bollards that lined the seawall. He heard a glass smash in one of the bistros followed by gales of laughter and scattered applause.