Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [68]
‘Human girl,’ Manjuele repeated. ‘Found her down in the shrine. Lucky us.’ The biosampler wouldn’t work in the City, Manjuele had been told, but the shrine wasn’t really part of the City, because it was in another dimension, or something like that. He didn’t understand the technical stuff, but the principle was easy to figure out. The shrine was family territory. On family territory, you could do what you liked to outsiders, same as in little São Paolo. He could’ve done more to the UNISYC bitch than taken a biodata sample, but he hadn’t been in the mood. Too skinny for him, anyhow.
‘How good a sample did you get?’ asked Justine.
‘Deep as it gets. Deep as I could without ripping her up.’
‘Enough for a control rite?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good. Things are getting out of hand.’ She glanced at the wrench, the one Homunculette had dropped on the floor of the anteroom. ‘We may need another agent, soon.’
‘Whatever,’ said Manjuele. On the other side of the room, Homunculette started moving again, so Manjuele crossed over to him and stamped on his head.
The interior of the ship was black. Pitch black. Qixotl guessed he was standing in a short passage, maybe an airlock tunnel, but the walls were sucking up the light from outside the hatch before it could reach his eyes. He’d waited a good two minutes before he’d followed the Doctor into the guts of the ship, waiting to see if there’d be a heart-wrenching scream from inside. Obviously, there hadn’t been.
‘Interesting,’ said the Doctor. He was a little way in front of Qixotl, probably at the end of the tunnel.
Oh, great. Trust him to get enthusiastic, all of a sudden. ‘Why isn’t there any light in here?’ Qixotl mumbled.
‘Mmm? Oh, there is. The walls are luminescent.’
‘They’re black, Doctor.’
‘Yes. Luminescent black. Humanoid eyes can’t pick up the frequencies.’
Qixotl remembered how the guest room he’d prepared for the Daleks had looked. The room had been black, as well, the walls covered with bumps and nodules Qixotl hadn’t understood the purpose of at all. He’d hoped, really really hoped, they hadn’t been anything to do with sex. There were some things he didn’t want to have to imagine.
‘Yeah, well, my eyes are pretty much humanoid at the moment, and I’d kind of prefer it if I could see where I was going, y’know?’ he murmured.
‘Don’t worry. There should be a secondary lighting system on board somewhere. When they see we’re coming... hmm. Now, that really is interesting.’
Qixotl realised the Doctor was going to keep saying “interesting” until someone asked him what he was talking about. OK, whatever made him happy. ‘What’s up?’
‘Touch the walls.’
Qixotl hesitated. ‘I’m not going to get a shock or anything, am I?’
‘Just touch them.’
Nervously, Qixotl extended a hand, and brushed the nearest wall of the tunnel. It was cold. Very cold. There was even a thin layer of frost on the surface.
‘That isn’t frost,’ the Doctor said, making Qixotl wonder if the psychic dampers he’d had planted in his skull were playing up. At least three of the powers he’d invited to the auction were known to have rudimentary telepathic abilities, so the dampers had seemed like a wise precaution.
Qixotl scraped some of the not-frost off the wall, and crunched it between his fingers. ‘More like crystal, right?’
‘Stand back. I’m going to open this door.’
‘Er, what door?’
There was a high-pitched squealing sound, followed by a drawn-out mechanical groaning. Even in the blackness, Qixotl could make out the wall at the end of the tunnel irising open. There was a wider area on the other side of the opening, presumably the control section of the ship, although it was too dark to be certain.
A squat pillar-box shape stood in the middle of the opening, a dark silhouette about the same height as Mr Qixotl. For one horrifying moment, Qixotl saw himself as a cyborg might see him, a contour map of heat traces and biological functions.
‘Interesting,’ the Doctor