Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [147]
‘Who?’ said Manjuele.
‘Nobody you’d remember,’ Justine sighed. She stuck the biosampler into her arm, and the skulls began to hum.
There were less insects on the way back to the village than there had been on the way to the City. At least, Bregman didn’t feel as many of them trying to rip her cardiovascular system out. She wondered if they all clocked off after sunset.
A few metres ahead of her, Colonel Kortez came to a sudden halt. He raised his arm, to point at something in the distance, where the trees thinned out and the sky was lit by spots of electric silver. Lamps, Bregman reckoned, hanging from the higher branches. The Colonel didn’t extend a finger. He couldn’t, with the medipac bandages wrapped around his hands like that. Qixotl had assured them the wounds would heal, but Bregman wouldn’t have trusted Qixotl’s opinion on a paper cut.
‘The village,’ Kortez said. ‘Remember, Lieutenant. The village is not what it seems.’
‘No, sir.’
Bregman expected him to start marching again, but instead he stood there for a while, staring into space. Business as usual, then, she thought.
‘Lieutenant,’ said Kortez.
‘Sir?’
‘I left you to die, Lieutenant. In the vault.’
Bregman had no idea what she was supposed to say to that. So she said, ‘Sir?’
‘All things happen as they will. However, I can’t help feeling... it’s a question of karma. You understand? Karma.’
He paused again. He looked like he was waiting for the world to turn around him.
‘I may need help, Lieutenant. When we get back to Geneva. You’ll tell the General everything?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
Kortez nodded. Then he carried on marching, stomping a path through the undergrowth towards the village. ‘We’ll be reporting failure, of course,’ he said, as he walked. ‘Don’t let that worry you, though, Lieutenant. General Tchike will be expecting failure. I’m sure of it.’
Bregman followed in his footsteps, without another word. In the vault, she’d told herself there was no point struggling. She’d told herself she was just a stupid human, part of the universe no one really gave a toss about. She understood, now, that Kortez had reached the same conclusion, when he’d come face-to-face with the Selachians all those years ago. He was like one of the zombies in Mictlan, a hollowed-out soul, a slave to anything that looked bigger and smarter than him. So here he was, completely out of control of his life, giving in to whatever “destiny” seemed to make sense to him at the time. Displacer Syndrome at its worst.
But the Doctor had shown her the truth. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d given the game away. He’d needed her in Mictlan, because without her, he would have been a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it. Not making a sound, not making a difference. However big and smart the other things in the universe thought they were – the Time Lords, the Celestis, Faction Paradox, whatever – they needed Bregman, and all the others like her. Without her, all the games they played across the universe, all the auctions and the wars and the power struggles, were utterly meaningless. They were ideas without heads to live in. Gods without followers.
Kathleen Bregman, a.k.a. Lieutenant Kathleen Bregman, a.k.a. Miss Chicken-Legs, was a real-life, honest-to-goodness stupid human. Ergo, she was one of the most powerful beings in existence.
Yeah. She could live with that.
All she needed now was the chance to shoot at some Cybermen, and she’d be happy.
LOST RITES
[THE PRESENT]
The dinosaur was still grinning, and even the vestal virgins were laughing their stupid heads off. Or at least, they would have been, if the dinosaur hadn’t already decapitated the lot of them. Mr Qixotl took his revenge by switching off the psychoactive fibres, and the tapestry unravelled, becoming a pile of very grumpy string on the floor of the security centre.
All over the Unthinkable City, the surveillance devices were closing their eyes, the furnishings were collapsing into blobs of