Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [45]
‘But there’s no such thing as “just an armchair”, right? If someone English makes a chair, the chair looks kind of Englishy. If someone African makes a chair, it looks kind of Africany. This chair doesn’t look anythingy.’ Sam indicated some of the other furnishings around the room. ‘A couple of weeks ago I was in the fortieth century. And the chairs there looked all fortieth century-ish. I suppose you only start noticing this kind of thing when you time travel a lot.’
‘What did you say?’ said Bregman.
‘I said, the chairs in the fortieth century –’
‘No, to hell with the chairs, I meant about...’ Bregman realised she had no way of asking the question “what do you mean, time travel?” without sounding like a moron, so she shut up. Sam kept talking.
‘If Qixotl’s a time-traveller too, and he knew he was going to have to do this room up specially for humans, I’d have thought he’d go out and look at human furniture in a history book or something. But the chairs and things don’t look like they come from any period in history.’
‘Great. The chairs aren’t what they seem.’ Bregman glanced over her shoulder at Kortez as she said it. The Colonel was sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, eyes closed, hands on his knees. Still meditating. You could give him a good slap around the ears right now, thought Bregman, and he still wouldn’t come back down to Earth. She somehow resisted the temptation to test this hypothesis.
Sam was still agonising about the upholstery. ‘I’m thinking about what the Doctor said. Biodata. D’you think you could tell what kind of furniture someone might like, just from what’s in their biology?’
Bregman shrugged. ‘Possible. You’re talking about DNA, that kind of thing? If you know someone’s got two legs and a tush from what’s in their genes, you can probably figure out what kind of chairs they’d want to sit on.’
Sam snapped her fingers. ‘And if you know what light frequencies and stuff their eyes respond to, you can work out the best colour scheme for them. Like this room. It’s so... I don’t know... tasteful. You know what I think? I think this whole place was put together using your biodata as a whatsit. As a template.’
Bregman mimed a round of applause. ‘Jesus, you’re good at this. All I know is, you’re supposed to shake hands with them if they’ve got arms and shoot at them if they’ve got tentacles growing out their faces.’ And even as she said it, something flashed across Bregman’s mind, something bright and clear and unexpected. She wasn’t sure, but she guessed that, from the outside, her eyes would be popping out of her head like she’d seen a vision of the Virgin Mary.
‘You all right?’ asked Sam.
‘I think I just had a great idea,’ said Bregman.
Trask was smiling, and had been ever since the human woman had come to the room. The smile had started out as a muscular twitch, the result of a social impulse Trask hadn’t actually had any use for in nearly four hundred years. Since the woman had left, he’d had no reason to change his expression, so he hadn’t bothered resetting his facial muscles.
He certainly wasn’t happy, though. He wasn’t anything, much. He was aware, as always, of his responsibilities, and that was as close to self-awareness as he wanted to get. His controllers had charged him with the task of recovering the Relic, and carrying it back to Mictlan by whatever means became necessary. Beyond that, there was nothing of importance to consider. No need for any new thoughts inside his head.
Ideas are for the living.
For the first time in decades, Trask felt himself flinch. Ideas are for the living. It was true, of course, it was very true. But the thought was, in itself, an idea.
Please don’t be alarmed, Mr Trask. It’s only me.
The Shift. The first entity Trask had encountered when he’d returned to Earth, when he’d turned up at the City entrance with the sun searing his eyes and the heat of the forest burning the dead flesh off his limbs. The Shift was in his head. Nestling at the back of his brain.
I apologise for my directness, Mr Trask. Usually, I’d be much more subtle