Doctor Who_ So Vile A Sin Part 20

'There's a Venusian in the bathroom,' she said.

'How do you know it's a Venusian?' he said.

'It said so.' She got a firm grip on the towel and sat down on the bed. 'What were you doing?'

Simon eyed the wallpaper. 'Checking for gingerbread.' It was her, of course, the one who'd been making the Centcomp requests. Jamey had just tapped into her information and sent him here. Partly to see what was here, partly to find out why she was interested. He wondered who she was working for.

'What do you suppose this is all about?' he said.

Genevieve shrugged. 'Maybe it's a sort of miniature amus.e.m.e.nt park, meant to accommodate people who get lost in the woods.'

'Maybe he is the Doctor.'

'A Doctor.' She stroked one of the cats, which stretched luxuriously. 'I want to know what's behind all of this alternative-reality business. I can't believe it's just an old man's fantasy.'

'Because there's a Venusian in the bathroom?'

'I'll wager that if I looked now, it would be gone. Just another hallucination brought on by whatever was in the tea.'

Simon got a sudden glimpse of long brown limbs as Genevieve shed the towel and slipped under the duvet. One of the cats grumbled as her legs pushed it out of the way.

She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at him. He stared back.

'Well,' she said, 'are you coming to bed or not?'

152.

He woke up in the darkness with his arm going numb under the weight of her head. Carefully he tried to extricate himself without disturbing her.

'You can move,' she said. 'I'm not asleep.'

Simon shook his arm to get the pins and needles out. He felt Genevieve s.h.i.+ft position, her arm slide over his chest, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s press against his side. Something else, warm, invisible and not Genevieve moved near his feet. 'The cats are back,' he said.

'Tell them to stay at their end of the bed,' she said. 'Can you hear something?'

Beyond the soft rumble of the cats Simon could hear singing. A human voice, soft, ancient. 'I think it's Doctor Smith,' he said.

'Perhaps he's singing the Venusians to sleep,' said Genevieve.

He rolled over to face her, putting his hand on her hip, feeling the smoothness of her skin as it pulled over the muscles of her thigh, tentative in a way that he'd never been with all those countless others before Sibongile. They were face to face now but invisible in the darkness, her breath against his cheek.

There would have been a room, he knew that, a room with white surfaces, hygienic and stain-resistant. A routine autopsy performed by machines that ticked and murmured as they peeled back the layers of Sibongile's body and invaded its secrets.

Killed stone dead by a non-lethal crowd-control weapon.

Something sonic.

He'd thought of that terrible room often enough, the minuscule cracks cracks throughout her body, woken drenched in sweat with the dream smell of disinfectant in his nostrils. throughout her body, woken drenched in sweat with the dream smell of disinfectant in his nostrils.

And now her face was fading from his memory, the image losing its integrity like the winding down of a simscreen in a power cut.

'Do you believe in love at first sight?' he asked the darkness.

'Don't spoil this by talking,' said Genevieve.

In the morning they walked up the hill together, towards Genevieve's flitter. She glanced at Simon for a moment and said, 'Asparagus balloon Constantinople.' The car obligingly powered down its security systems and they got in.

153.

Simon stared through the windscreen. At the ancient, ruined house, totally overgrown, the wood of its walls being converted to soil even as they watched. At the garden that was nothing more than an open s.p.a.ce in the forest, covered in long gra.s.s and humus and weeds. Even the collapsed tool shed would soon be the beginnings of a shrub or an anthill.

'Where to?' said Genevieve.

'A transit terminal, please,' he said. 'I've got a meeting to get to. What about you?'

'I have to get back to Callisto,' she said. 'The paperwork will have reached my office ceiling by now.'

When they'd woken up, the house was empty. They'd taken a long shower, and the hot water had lasted the whole time, and there was a fresh bar of soap.

When they'd walked out of the house, and then turned around and tried to go back inside, the front door had fallen off its hinges and plunged through the rotting wooden floor of the empty hallway.

'Did any of that actually happen?' said Simon.

'I hope hope so,' said Genevieve. so,' said Genevieve.

'I mean, did we actually meet Doctor Smith, and see a Venusian in the lounge?'

'Must have been something in the tea,' said Genevieve, starting the flitter.

Simon nodded. 'Must have been.'

Joseph Conrad 18 April 2982 18 April 2982 They decided to disembark in two parties, separated by at least twenty minutes. 'I'm finding it hard enough to cope with two Doctors,' Roz said, as they packed the few things they were carrying. 'Imagine what customs will think.'

The pa.s.senger liner docked with the metas.h.i.+p Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad at 19.04 IST. The liner had been gradually changing its s.h.i.+pboard day to match time on the at 19.04 IST. The liner had been gradually changing its s.h.i.+pboard day to match time on the Conrad Conrad, so that its pa.s.sengers would adjust as easily as possible.

Roz felt jet-lagged anyway. A combination of claustrophobia, dehydration from a month's worth of pressurized environments 154 and the hot neon light of the Conrad Conrad. She squinted as she walked down the long ramp with one of the Doctors, carryall slung over her shoulder.

A bagbot whizzed up to them the minute they reached the grey carpet of the s.p.a.ceport. It was a chunky box like a toaster on wheels, topped with a wide rack. The edges were padded, which was good, because the thing smacked into Roz's legs twice trying to get her attention.

'Take your bag, ma'am?' it said. 'Show you around? It's a big metas.h.i.+p, easy to get lost. Take your bag?'

The Doctor crouched down and tickled the thing's rim, as though it were a stray dog. 'We don't need a porter,' he told it, 'but we do need a guide.'

'Sure thing,' piped the bagbot. 'Just follow me, no problems.'

Roz looked at the Doctor as the thing started nudging its way through the crowd, moving through the long, grey corridor that led to customs. 'It followed me home. Can I keep it?'

He smiled. 'Might as well make use of the facilities, now we're here,' he said. 'We might be here for a while.'

'I thought you said this was going to be simple.'

'It ought to be simple,' said the Doctor. 'That doesn't mean it will be quick, though.'

The bagbot waited patiently while they cleared customs. It kept up a constant babble of tourist information as it led them through the crowds to their hotel. 'The Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad was originally a colony s.h.i.+p constructed by the Listeners. Are you sure I can't take that bag? No problem. Its route takes it from the Listeners' was originally a colony s.h.i.+p constructed by the Listeners. Are you sure I can't take that bag? No problem. Its route takes it from the Listeners'

original home, Viam, forty-eight light years from Earth, all the way out to the rim of the Empire and back again, in a continual two-year journey. It is ten kilometres in diameter, with a population varying between three and five thousand people. Two thousand are permanent residents, primarily merchants and their families. The metas.h.i.+p is designed to resemble an actual city as much as possible, with a dome and an artificial sky.'

'Who were the Listeners?' asked Roz.

'No one knows,' said the bot. 'They fled their planet before the Empire reached it, leaving three unfinished colony s.h.i.+ps in orbit.

Landing parties found numerous radio and hyperwave telescope 155 arrays. Apparently the Listeners had been listening to the human emission sphere, and they didn't like what they heard. The Listeners' planet was terraformed shortly after its discovery, but the remaining structures and artefacts were preserved for study.

The aliens left little information about themselves, or where they had fled to.'

'And the colony s.h.i.+p got turned into a tourist attraction,' said Roz.

'Humans like to appropriate bits of other people's cultures,'

said the Doctor. 'The Draconians say it's because humans like to be reminded of who they've dispossessed.'

'Just between you and me,' murmured the bot, 'the word is that the Listeners grabbed the Victoria Victoria.'

'The news reports said it was the Ogrons,' said Roz.

'Come on,' said the bot. 'Do you really think they could pull something like that off? Welcome to the JC JC's main street, folks.'

Roz and the Doctor paused for a moment, looking around. It was like Fury, only a lot more upmarket; in fact, if you didn't know you were on a s.h.i.+p, you might think you were under any old dome. 'Why would anyone spend the money to come here?'

the Doctor wondered.

'The s.h.i.+p's technically not under the jurisdiction of any solar system,' said Roz. 'It's hard to enforce Imperial law here. People come here for cheap duty-free and for peculiar drugs, or to get their faces and fingertips modified.'

'Does it rain?' the Doctor asked their guide.

'Only on special occasions,' said the bagbot. 'The metas.h.i.+p's food is produced hydroponically, with no need for precipitation.'

'So it's sunny all the time?'

The bagbot said, 'The tourists seem to like it. Except the Lacaillans. Apparently on their homeworld it rains all the time.'

'How bright are you?' the Doctor asked.

'I haven't been formally rated,' said the bagbot. 'I flunked the Turing no human talks about luggage all the time.'

The Doctor crouched down by the robot again. Roz glared at anyone who gave him a funny look, sending them on their way.

'Can you run an errand for me?'

156.

'Sure,' said the bagbot hesitantly. 'What did you have in mind?'

Chris looked at his watch. 'OK,' he said, 'let's go.'

The Doctor and Iaomnet followed him down the ramp, looking around. They were almost the last ones off the liner there were only a few other pa.s.sengers trailing off the s.h.i.+p, and some uniformed staff.

Customs was miles away, down a long grey hallway. They trudged along, past holograms for the Heart of Darkness Discotheque and the Lord Jim Shopping Centre.

Iaomnet looked p.i.s.sed off, but she'd looked p.i.s.sed off for a month. It had stopped being a do-something-violent kind of p.i.s.sed off about a week ago, gradually changing into a who-cares-anyway p.i.s.sed off. They were all in this together now, the Doctor kept telling her. Maybe she was starting to believe it.

She'd even stopped trying to contact Imperial Intelligence every chance she got.

'Why'd we have to wait?' she said. 'Why didn't we just tell customs they were twins?'

'That was wearing pretty thin aboard the liner,' said Chris. 'It would have been a bit easier if you didn't both insist on wearing the same clothes.'

The Doctor straightened his lapels. 'I need some way of hanging on to my ident.i.ty,' he protested.

It had been a h.e.l.l of a trip. They could have got here in a week, but the Doctor had insisted on travelling slowly. He was too spread out, he said he didn't know what would happen.

'So,' Chris asked the Doctor, 'is this going to work all right, then?'

'I hope so,' said the Doctor. 'We need to work out exactly how that copy was created. I can't do it without the TARDIS.' He smiled. 'It'll be good to see her again, but I'm glad I left her here.

Goodness knows what proximity to... what's on Iphigenia would have done to the poor old girl. The first thing is to get settled in, make sure no one's got their eye on us, or indeed their double-eye.'

157.

Chris realized he couldn't remember whether this was the original, or the copy. It didn't seem polite to ask.

'How long are we going to be here?' Iaomnet was saying. 'You know they'll be looking for me.'

'I'd say it's rather unlikely they'll come looking for you here,'

said the Doctor. 'It's taken us a month to get here. If anyone's interested in us, they'd have done something before now.'

The bored-looking customs officer didn't give the second Doctor a second glance. Chris grinned. They were safe, for now.

All they had to do was get back to the TARDIS and let her sort the two Doctors out. And make sure Iaomnet didn't get away.

'I don't think I like the look of the buffet,' said Roz. Chris had already started loading food on to his plate. 'What is that, anyway?'

'Come on, Roz,' he said. 'You must've eaten lots of alien food as a kid.'

'I don't remember,' said Roz. The hotel's restaurant wasn't crowded, which only added to her worry.

'There were heaps of sim ads for alien stuff when I was little,'