Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [42]
‘Terrif,’ Sam had said.
After that, the Doctor had stormed off, in the direction of the guest rooms. He’d said he wanted to talk with Mr Qixoti, though he hadn’t said why. Sam had been left to wander the corridors alone. According to the Doctor, the place was quite safe, and Qixotl had made sure there were all the comforts an organic life-form could ask for. Sam hadn’t bothered pointing out that the place was nonetheless an enormous torchlit pyramid in which one guest had already bitten the dust. Comfort wasn’t really an issue.
She stopped at an L-shaped turning. She’d been following a single twisted passageway around the ziggurat, and she guessed she’d very nearly come full circle. She only stopped because she saw movement up ahead. A spot of light. Like the torchlight, only smaller, not as bright.
Sam crept towards the glow, sticking to the shadows whenever she could. Whatever the Doctor had said about diplomacy, she really didn’t want to run into either of the bat-skulls again. She got the feeling they were the kind of people who’d been first in line to cut up the frogs in biology class.
As she got closer, she realised the glow was the end of a lit cigarette.
There was an alcove to the left of the passage, a stairway up to the next level. Sitting on the bottom step, cigarette in hand, was the skinny dark-haired woman Sam had seen in the cocktail lounge. Then, she’d looked nervous; now, she looked shattered, the sweat stains practically welding her shirt to her skin.
The woman looked up. She would have been attractive, if her face hadn’t been covered in blue sleep lines and her hair hadn’t been drooping over her eyes in sticky black tentacles. Sam raised her hands.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘Two arms, two legs, one head. I’m safe. Honest.’
The woman laughed. The laugh turned into a cough. She dropped the cigarette, and stubbed it out with her boot.
‘Don’t know if they’ve got any ashtrays around here,’ she said. ‘You’re human, aren’t you? I mean, really human.’
Sam nodded. ‘OK if I join you?’
The woman shifted to one side. Sam plonked herself down on the step next to her. ‘Thanks. Been having a look around this place. Feet are starting to kill me.’
‘Uh,’ said the woman.
Sam held out her hand. She wasn’t exactly sure why she was trying to strike up a conversation like this. Maybe it was a typical human reaction, when there were so many aliens wandering around the place. All those of like genes ended up sticking together, in the end. God, there was nothing like intergalactic travel to bring out the bigot in you, was there? ‘Samantha. Sam. Sam Jones.’
The woman mulled over the hand for a moment or two, then shook it. ‘Bregman. Lieutenant Bregman. UNISYC. Uh. In the interests of good civilian relations, maybe you should call me Kathleen or something.’ Sam had no idea what UNISYC was, but she nodded anyway. ‘You’re with the “independent”?’
‘What? Oh. You mean, the Doctor.’
‘Yeah. Him. He’s not one of us, is he?’
Sam tried to get a fix on Kathleen’s accent. It sounded vaguely English, but a particularly distorted and Americanised kind of English. With a hint of French, maybe. ‘One of who?’
‘Us. You know.’ Kathleen half-shrugged. ‘What I mean is, you’re not working for any of the powerblocs on this planet. You’re not here on behalf of Earth. Am I close?’
Good question, thought Sam. ‘I think we’re supposed to be non-political. I keep trying to get the Doctor to go Marxist on me, but he won’t do it. How do you know he’s not human, anyway?’
‘Christ knows. Instinct, maybe. All you have to do is get close to them, and you can tell. No one ever tells you stuff like that, do they?’
“Them” meaning “aliens”, Sam presumed. ‘D’you meet a lot of them in your, er, line of work?’ she asked.
Kathleen reached into her backpack, which she’d