Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [10]
No one else was visible in the room, but that wasn’t surprising. The other occupant, the one Mr H had been shouting at, wouldn’t be seen or heard until it wanted to be.
‘We were wondering how much longer we’re going to have to wait,’ hissed Homunculette, almost literally lying through his teeth. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t be so rude as to suggest we’re getting impatient –’
‘Perish the thought,’ cut in Mr Qixotl.
‘– but we’re reaching the stage where we might be thinking about getting impatient, at some point in the near future. If you get my meaning.’
Mr Qixotl tried to look cheerful. ‘Not getting edgy, I hope, Mr H. Saw your little friend up on the roof, on the way in. Still expecting trouble, are we?’
‘Marie isn’t my friend,’ snapped Homunculette. ‘She’s my companion. There’s a difference.’ Then he stopped scowling, just for a moment, and looked generally anxious instead. ‘On the roof? What was she doing on the roof?’
‘She’s your “companion”, Mr H, not mine. Looked like she was keeping watch, to me.’
Homunculette relaxed. Visibly. That didn’t happen often, in Mr Qixotl’s experience. Homunculette’s face looked as if it had been built for tension; it was long, it was narrow, and it was topped by a crop of thinning black hair that all the gel in Mutter’s Spiral couldn’t make stylish. ‘Marie isn’t happy about the security arrangements in this place,’ he muttered. ‘She’s worried about an attack from the outside. You don’t even have any atmospheric defences set up.’
Mr Qixotl smiled disarmingly. He hoped. ‘Relax, Mr H. Only another three, er, parties to come before we can start proceedings, and one of them’s only a couple of minutes away now. Listen, if you’re getting itchy feet, why not go and have a chat with Mr Trask in his guestroom? Sure he’d be glad of the company.’
‘Thank you, no,’ spat Homunculette.
Mr Qixotl opened his mouth to say something facile and reassuring, but found himself suddenly distracted by the table. There was an unusual pattern in the wood grain, a pattern he’d never noticed there before. It looked almost like... letters?
THE HUMAN REPRESENTATIVES ARE COMING? spelt the table.
Mr Qixotl grimaced. ‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right, Mr Shift. Why d’you ask?’
He stared at the table, but the words had faded away. His eyes wandered towards the newspaper.
I WAS EXPLORING THE FOREST EARLIER, read the front-page headline. I SAW THEM MAKING THEIR WAY HERE.
Mr Qixotl picked up the paper and started reading the lead story, which had until a few seconds ago been about a major scandal involving the President of Malta. ‘Didn’t see you, did they, Mr S?’
BARELY, read the newsprint. THE WOMAN MIGHT HAVE CAUGHT SIGHT OF ME AT THE VILLAGE, BUT I (CONTINUED ON PAGE THREE)
Mr Qixotl turned the page.
(FROM PAGE ONE) DOUBT SHE KNEW WHO I WAS. TELL ME SOMETHING, MR QIXOTL.
‘Whatever you like, Mr S.’ Mr Qixotl tried to maintain his smile. He hated talking to the Shift. He hated talking to any non-corporeal life-form. The Shift was the messenger of a power which enjoyed dealing in abstracts, for some reason. It was a purely conceptual entity, only existing as a set of ideas inside the head of whoever it wanted to communicate with. Right now, it was somewhere inside Mr Qixotl’s neurosystem, altering his perceptions so he could see its little “messages” worked into the text of the New Bornean Gazette. He flipped through the rest of the paper, eventually stopping at the crossword.
1 ACROSS. Why exactly did you invite humans to this auction? My employers assumed that only representatives of time-active cultures would be here (8,6).
‘That’s what we thought, as well,’ scowled Homunculette, evidently having read the same thing on the sports page.
Mr Qixotl sniffed. ‘Yeah, well. They’re from UNISYC, they’ve got their own reasons for wanting the property. That’s why the auction’s being held on Earth, so the human reps can get here without busting a gut.’
3 DOWN. Speaking of the “property”... I’ve been looking