Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [31]
Kathleen Bregman was pale-skinned, 163 centimetres tall, and had hair that stuck together in ugly clumps whenever it was exposed to daylight. She wasn’t technically unfit, but whenever UNISYC ran a standard physical QRT her test scores hovered ominously around the 0.6 mark, and she’d never told anyone about the pains in her guts or the needles in her legs when she did the ten-kilometre survival run. Whereas, by contrast, the woman who’d walked into the room was tall, bronzed, and – in a very real sense – perfect. She wasn’t even attractive, as such. The way she moved told the world she didn’t need to be attractive. If supermodels were as cool as they thought they were, Bregman decided, then this was how they’d look.
The woman manoeuvred past Mr Qixotl without breaking her stride, brushed past the Faction Paradox representatives without a second glance, and stopped in front of Homunculette.
‘There may be a problem,’ she told him.
Homunculette dropped the bottle. It bounced. ‘Problem? What kind of a problem?’
‘An intruder.’
Everyone reacted to that, except Kortez. Cousin Justine exchanged glances with her comrade. Mr Qixotl shuffled back into the room, an anxious look on his face. The beermats seemed edgy. Homunculette looked like his head would explode if he heard any more bad news. ‘Explain,’ he snapped.
‘I found someone wandering around the ziggurat. He didn’t have an invitation.’
Mr Qixotl cleared his throat. ‘Erm, how do you know he didn’t have...?’
‘I scanned him,’ the woman replied, emotionlessly. ‘No invitation.’
Homunculette’s eyes looked as though they were getting ready to pop out and go walkabout. ‘Where is he now?’
‘Here,’ said the woman. A black hole blossomed from the front of her head, and something almost two metres tall was vomited out of her skull, landing in a messy heap on the floor of the cocktail lounge.
Bregman lost her grip again.
Under his breath, Colonel Kortez recited another mantra. The others were making too much noise for them to be able to hear it. Truth be told, it had been years since Kortez had needed a mantra, but it was all part of the procedure. To an old UNISYC hand, it was as normal as checking your safety-catch or polishing your boots.
The alien woman’s face folded back in on itself. The man who’d been belched out of her head lay motionless on the floor, face-down, clearly unconscious. The other representatives were moving in on him, curious looks on their faces. Kortez felt the thing that had identified itself as the Shift whisper through his consciousness, eager to see the intruder through a material pair of eyes.
Homunculette nudged the intruder’s body with the tip of a dirt-encrusted shoe. The intruder obligingly rolled onto his back, and everyone leaned forward to peer at his face. Except for Lieutenant Bregman, of course, who was busy being sick in the corner.
The face was striking, but hardly remarkable. Long features, smooth skin, a high forehead. The man’s eyes were closed, but somehow he still managed to look gently bemused.
The mantra froze on the Colonel’s lips.
What had General Tchike told him?
What had he been told about the mission?
The other representatives started arguing again. The Time Lord was yelling insults at Mr Qixotl, who was simultaneously panicking and reassuring his guests that there was no cause for panic. But Kortez was already several kilometres above them, extending his spirit until it touched the roof of the world, just as his chiefs at the Goa Institute of Military Spirituality had taught him.
Rising above proceedings. Moving out of reach of the noise. Remembering.
UNISYC’S STORY
Arizona, Earth, March 2069
We’re standing in a desert that used to be a county. We’re on the edge of a crater, although it takes us a while to figure that out; we’re not used to seeing holes this big. The camera moves, sweeping across the landscape until we can make out the size of