Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [22]
‘You mean, like a guest list?’
‘Like a guest list. Ah.’ The Doctor’s fingers touched liquid, brushed the surface of a tiny reservoir deep inside the guts of the machine. A fluid bio-array, then. Perfect. The substance was sticky and rippled expectantly beneath his fingertips. ‘Give me your hand.’
‘Why?’ said Sam. So he ignored her, grabbed her hand anyway, and locked it between his fingers. ‘Ow,’ she said, as he thrust both his hand and hers into the bio-array.
There was a moment of sheer bodily confusion, as the Doctor forgot exactly who he was and what he was doing. A side-effect of coming into contact with the array, he reasoned. He was becoming part of it, and it was trying to become part of him, trying to force its data into his biosystem. He denied it access, and told it to stay off Sam, as well. The bio-array obliged. It knew better than to argue with a life-form like him.
The Doctor withdrew his hand, and let go of Sam. His fingers weren’t even wet. The array had backed down, and now it was keeping itself to itself.
Sam made a sudden gasping sound.
The Doctor turned. One of the panthers was standing at the threshold of the building, its musculature practically filling the archway. Though its body looked tense, there was a faintly bewildered look on its face, as if it had been in the process of doing something important, but had forgotten exactly what.
The Doctor stepped forward. The animal didn’t react. He kept walking, until he was right in front of the creature, then reached out for its face.
After a moment’s thought, the panther started licking his fingers. The Doctor smiled.
‘We’re on the guest list,’ he said.
Mr Qixotl waddled along the passageway at full tilt, wondering if he’d be able to retain that dignified, professional air even when things were falling apart around his ears. Not that anything had gone wrong, as such. The “property” was safe, Homunculette hadn’t got round to physically assaulting him, and everything was going according to schedule.
From the point of view of diplomacy, though, things could have been better.
The humans had turned up at the ziggurat. Two of them, both from UNISYC. Mr Qixotl had been so busy arguing with Homunculette, he hadn’t even noticed their arrival until he’d run into the man – Kortez, his name was – in one of the tunnels between the entrance and the conference hall. The trouble was, the man had left the other human rep back in the main corridor, and by the time Mr Qixotl had reached her she’d already stumbled across the guest rooms. At least, she’d stumbled across Trask’s guest room. The girl had been at the ziggurat entrance when Qixotl had found her, retching her guts out.
He’d hustled the two humans into the cocktail lounge, the female looking decidedly green around the glands. He’d left them there with a complimentary bottle of something he didn’t think they’d find too toxic, saying he’d formally introduce them to the others soon, and assuring Kortez that yes, actually, the chairs were exactly what they seemed.
Mr Qixotl skidded to a halt in the guestroom corridor. Yeah, OK, so maybe the human woman had a point. Trask wasn’t an easy entity to deal with, not by anyone’s standards. Homunculette looked the same as any other humanoid, and you even got used to the Shift, after a while. Trask, though... it wasn’t as if there was anything physically wrong with the man, as such. If you saw a photo of him, you’d think he was perfectly normal. It was only when you saw him, in the flesh, that you realised.
The signals he gave off. The zombie body language. He didn’t move like a living thing. Mainly because he wasn’t a living thing.
Mr Qixotl steeled himself, then walked up to the doorway of Trask’s room.
‘Afternoon, Mr T,’ he said, trying to sound cheery. ‘I hear you had a little visitor.’
Trask was sitting on the bed, a skeletal smile fixed on