Doctor Who: The Also People (3 page)

'I think this place was built by children,' said Roz.

'Children?'

'Don't you think so?' said Roz. 'It's got that kind of feel to it.'

Bernice snorted. 'Of course,' she said. 'They wandered up here on a Sunday afternoon and made it out of bits and pieces. Old orange boxes, left-over bubble plastic, old discarded cybernetic environmental management systems –'

'Children,' said Roz firmly.

'Absolutely,' said Bernice. 'The Famous Five build a multi-storey hotel. The design is chaotic, even incoherent, but the level of technical sophistication is too high. Trust me on this, Roz; I'm an archaeologist.'

'See that?' Roz pointed over Bernice's shoulder. Bernice twisted in her chair and saw where a silver grey three-metre globe was attached to the wall of the villa.

'Yeah?' asked Bernice cautiously.

'That's Chris's bedroom,' said Roz.

'It takes all types.'

'It detaches,' said Roz. 'When he's asleep, it breaks away from the main building and floats around. Chris thinks the movement could be keyed to his alpha rhythms.'

'And it floats?'

'Around the villa, over the trees and under the sky.'

'Why?'

'Because it's fun,' said Roz. 'Chris loves it. Loves the whole idea of it.'

'I'll bet.'

'Like I said, children.'

Bernice realized that Roz had a point. The villa did have a random quality that could be associated with childhood. As long as you didn't think about the investment in resources that the villa represented. Perhaps the place was empty because all the kids were away at school? Bernice watched Roz lean back in her chair and take another sip of coffee. She was wearing her inscrutable face again. Bernice realized that this was just the right moment to ask Roz why she didn't have any children herself.

Speaking of children, Roz, you're over forty, even with biological enhancement you're pushing the fertility envelope. Childbearing is supposed to be a genetic imperative; don't you ever even
think
about it?

'Speaking of children,' said Bernice, 'where's the Doctor?'

'In the kitchen fixing supper.'

'Thank God for that, I'm starving,' said Bernice. 'There's a kitchen then?'

'There's a room with flat surfaces that get very hot and some cupboard-like things that the Doctor takes food and ingredients from,' said Roz. 'It's a bit too generic for my liking. I mean, when I looked in those cupboards earlier, they were empty.'

'Anyone for tea?' asked the Doctor. Roz almost choked on a mouthful of coffee. Bernice could sympathize; she hadn't heard him coming either.

The Doctor stepped through the picture window frame and onto the balcony. In each hand he was carrying a silver service tray, a third tray balanced precariously on his head. A folded square of white linen was draped over his left forearm. He paused before the table as if waiting for applause. The two women declined the opportunity.

The Doctor scowled at them and started to unload the trays. 'It's not that easy to do,' he complained.

'Don't tell me,' said Bernice. 'You once worked in a Venusian burger bar.'

The Doctor pulled up a chair and sat down. 'Venusians didn't eat hamburgers,' he said, 'at least not while I was there.'

'What did they eat?' asked Roz.

'Each other mostly,' said Bernice.

Roz muttered something under her breath.

'Only at funerals,' said the Doctor and pushed a plate of steaming brown ovoids towards her.

'Pasty?'

Roz cautiously picked up one of the brown ovoids. The Doctor waited until she'd taken a bite before saying, 'Each other's brains to be precise.' Roz gave him a black look and continued chewing. Rather stoically, Bernice thought.

'Tasted a bit like chocolate cake,' said the Doctor, watching as Roz swallowed very deliberately.

'They had excellent biochemical reasons for doing it.'

'I don't want to know,' Roz said very slowly. 'I don't want to hear about their magnificent culture and how they loved their children and were terribly kind to small animals.'

'Of course you don't,' said the Doctor cheerily. He looked over the table and frowned. 'Where did I put the tea-tray?'

'It's still on your head,' said Bernice.

'Ah,' said the Doctor and lifted the tray off his head and on to the table. 'So it was. I'd forget my own hat if it wasn't folded up in my pocket.'

The teapot was black porcelain decorated with an attractive gold leaf inlay. Steam fluttered from its spout. Bernice counted five matching cups and saucers.

'Are we expecting company?' she asked.

The Doctor stared at the cups as if seeing them for the first time. He picked one up and slowly traced a fingertip down its side. He muttered a word that Bernice thought might have been

'flawless'. Then suddenly he flung the teacup at the balcony floor. It bounced with a peculiar muted twang and the Doctor snatched it out of the air. Smiling, he held it up for their inspection.

It wasn't even marked.

'Indestructible,' said the Doctor, replacing the cup on its saucer. His gaze flicked back and forth from Bernice to Roz, as if he were waiting for them to get the joke. Bernice shot a glance at Roz who looked as worried as she was.

'Random co-ordinates,' said Bernice. 'You promised.'

'I know what you're thinking,' said the Doctor, 'and I can assure you that the future of the universe is not at stake.'

'Well,' said Roz, 'that's a relief.'

'I'm warning you, Professor Summerfield,' said the Doctor, 'and you, Adjudicator Forrester, if this attitude of wilful melancholy persists I will have no option but to take punitive measures.' The Doctor seized a pair of dessert spoons from the table and held them up.

'You wouldn't dare,' said Bernice.

'What's he going to do?' asked Roz. 'Spoon us to death?'

'Worse,' said Bernice. 'He's going to
play
the spoons. Mind you, I use the word "play"

advisedly.'

The Doctor winked at Roz and slipped the spoons between his fingers.

'You know you're not supposed to do this,' said Bernice. 'It was specifically banned under the White City Convention on psychological warfare.'

'Last chance,' said the Doctor.

'You can't bully people into being cheerful,' said Bernice.

The Doctor started banging the spoons between the table and his hand. His face had an expression of dreamy single-minded determination. 'Did I ever tell you,' he shouted over the racket, 'that I once broke the Galactic record for continuous spoon-playing. Sixty-seven hours it was. I would have broken the Universal record but a Garthanian telekinetic kept on bending my instruments.'

'I wonder why.'

'What was that?' asked the Doctor. 'You want to see if I can do it with both hands at once?

Roslyn, be so good as to pass me those spoons there . . .'

'I give up,' said Bernice.

'I can't hear you.'

'I give up, I'll be cheerful, optimistic, gay, whatever you want. Only for God's sake stop.'

The Doctor stopped clicking the spoons and grinned at her.

'Never mind, Benny,' said Roz, pushing a plate towards her. 'Have a brain pasty.'

The afternoon wore on. It grew warmer on the balcony. Roz retreated to the shade of the living room. The Doctor produced a thick paperback novel from somewhere about his person. Bernice popped back up to her bedroom to find something cooler to wear.

The pixies had been at work again. The bed had been remade, the rag-quilt turned back at one corner to reveal clean sheets of pale lilac. Her clothes, the ones she had brought from the TARDIS, had been folded and neatly piled at the end of the bed. Her diary had been left on top of the clothes.

A similar thing had occurred earlier, while Bernice had been struggling with the suspensor pool in the bathroom. She'd stumbled back in to find her clothes stacked neatly on the newly made bed. At the time it had reminded her of the fairy stories of Northern Europe, the ones about small supernatural beings that did household chores in return for a bowl of bovine lactate left out on the doorstep.

She assumed some kind of domestic robot was responsible. If so they were the quietest and most efficient machines she'd ever seen. Or more to the point, not seen.

She decided to call them pixies, as if naming the unknown made it less frightening. She suspected the villa was infested with pixies and by logical extension, probably the whole Dyson sphere. That had worrying implications: robot-dependent cultures were notoriously decadent, fragile and often paranoid to boot. There was a classic treatise in the TARDIS database on the subject:
Taren Capel: A case study in robophilia
. The man who wanted to be a robot when he grew up.

Bernice was struck by a horrible suspicion. What if there were no people inhabiting the Dyson sphere? What if the machines had taken over, as they had on Movella? After all, there was no actual evidence that
people
lived in the sphere. Perhaps this manufactured landscape was empty, inhabited only by machines and animals. It would be just like the Doctor to take them on holiday to a ghost world.

She picked up the pile of clothes; they had a freshly laundered smell.

Although, Bernice had to admit, for a ghost world, the valet service was excellent. She pulled on her halter top and as an experiment left the rest of her clothes scattered across the bedroom floor.

She ran into Chris in the living room. He was standing by the sofa dressed in a garish blue bathrobe. He looked up as Bernice approached and quickly put his fingers to his lips. He nodded at the sofa where Roz was curled up asleep. A videobook was still clasped in her hand, a small
page?

ikon flashing forlornly in the left hand corner of its screen. Chris bent over her and gently removed the videobook and placed it carefully on the coffee table. Relaxed, the older woman's face seemed younger, almost youthful. Bernice was struck by the oddly tender expression on Chris's face as he covered his partner with a blanket.

'She's tired,' he said quietly.

Bernice nodded. They were all tired. The events on Detrios were still too close. Especially for Chris. Perhaps the Doctor had been right to bring them here for a holiday. If it was a holiday?

'Are you coming outside?' Bernice asked Chris.

He glanced at the balcony, at the Doctor, who was sitting there with his back to them. Chris shook his head. 'I thought I'd take a dip in the roof pool.'

'There's a swimming pool on the roof?'

'Yeah,' said Chris. 'The bottom of the pool is completely transparent. You can see right into the rooms below.' He remembered Roz and lowered his voice again. 'And there's a games room you won't believe.'

'Is that where you've been all afternoon?'

'I lost track of time.' Another glance at the Doctor's back. 'You know how it is.'

'Why don't you have a swim and then come down?'

'Yeah,' said Chris, 'that's what I'll do.' He looked down at Roz. 'She doesn't like it when dreams come true,' he said sadly. 'She thinks the universe is complicated enough as it is.'

Bernice watched as Chris headed for the stairs. There was a tightness across his shoulders that she'd never noticed before. She heard Roz snort softly in her sleep, shifting her position on the sofa. You get comfortable, old bean, thought Bernice. Enjoy it while it lasts.

And perhaps she should follow her own advice.

But then again, why break the habit of a lifetime.

Bernice paused on the threshold of the balcony. 'I'm not coming out there until you show me your hands.'

The Doctor raised his hands. 'Don't shoot, I'm unarmed.'

Bernice stepped through the invisible wall that separated the hot balcony from the cool interior of the villa. It wasn't just the contrast between sunlight and shade. Earlier on she'd stuck her hand halfway through to check; there was a precise demarcation between hot and cool. An invisible wall.

'Unspooned is all I'm interested in,' said Bernice, taking her seat. There was a wine cooler on the table and a single narrow-waisted wine glass. Neither had been there when she'd gone upstairs for her halter top. She was pretty certain they hadn't been there when she'd been talking to Chris inside.

'I ordered you some wine,' said the Doctor.

Bernice pulled the bottle out of the wine cooler; it was shaped like a glass corkscrew, the liquid inside a pale amber colour. 'I see,' said Bernice. 'First the stick and now the carrot.' The bottle was sealed with a real cork cork. She poured a half measure in the glass, swirled, sniffed, tasted.

'Good?' asked the Doctor.

'Unusual.'

'But good?'

'Excellent.'

'Aren't you supposed to spit it out afterwards?'

'Absolutely not,' said Bernice filling her glass. 'I've always felt that wine tasters have got the wrong end of the stick on that one.'

'They spit it out so as to avoid becoming incapacitated.'

'Proves my point exactly.' Bernice sipped the wine. It had a light flowery bouquet and tasted like summertime in the high Alps. 'I wonder what it's made from?'

The Doctor picked up the bottle and examined the label carefully. 'I haven't got the faintest idea.'

'If I could see through the walls of the sphere, what would I see?'

'Stars, constellations, galaxies, the usual sort of thing.'

'Would I recognize any of the stars?'

The Doctor thought about this for a moment. 'No.'

'Not a single constellation?'

'Perhaps,' said the Doctor. 'But what you think of as Human Space is a very long way away.'

'But you've been here before?'

'Actually,' said the Doctor, 'I don't visit this place very often. Nothing particularly interesting ever happens here.'

'Stagnant?'

'Peaceful,' said the Doctor. 'Terribly well organized.'

'Efficient?'

'Totally.'

'Prosperous?'

'Disgustingly so.'

'Boring?'

'Very.'

'People?'

'About two trillion.'

Bernice put the wine glass down, very carefully. 'Two
trillion
as in two thousand billion?'