Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [7]
Eventually, he reached the nearest City gate, a colossal (yup, “colossal” was good, “colossal” was even better than “great”) megalithic arch set into the wall at the south-western edge of the enclosure. As expected, the ground by one of the gate-stones was damp. Trying not to get any closer than he absolutely had to, Mr Qixotl sniffed at the wet patch.
Leopard urine. Good. This was where the animals usually came to relieve themselves, but they weren’t exactly regular, and Qixotl hadn’t been sure whether any of the cat spoor would be fresh enough for him to use. He slid the decoder out of his jacket pocket, activating it with a flick of his thumb before dipping the business end into the puddle.
Mr Qixotl had put a lot of thought into the City’s security systems. At first, he’d considered using robotic surveillance devices, birds with security cameras in their heads, cybernetic animals with glowing red eyes, that kind of thing. But it had all seemed a bit passé, really. In the end, he’d decided on a little selective breeding instead. The island already had a primitive bio-induction system in place, installed two decades earlier by a local government with an obsessive environmental streak, so adding a few new biodata systems to the works hadn’t been a problem. As a result, the leopards he’d introduced to the ecosystem had rapidly evolved neural systems capable of translating sensory information into pix-pulses and encoding the data as hormonal traces. Or, to put it another way, everything the animals witnessed got turned into TV pictures and stored in their urine.
Mr Qixotl allowed himself a brief moment of smugness. Credit where it’s due, he thought. I haven’t lost my touch.
The decoder sorted through the recent memories of the leopard that had wet this particular patch, and fed the data to the two-inch pixscreen set into the machine’s handle. Mr Qixotl saw the rainforest through the animal’s eyes as it crept between the trees, the image blurring and jumping whenever the creature blinked or turned its head. Finally, two shapes became visible through the greenery. With another flick of his thumb, Mr Qixotl set the device to give him sound as well as visuals.
‘Did you ever see Brigadoon, Lieutenant?’
‘Er, no. No, Sir.’
‘Beautiful film. Beautiful. All those wonderful old songs. Do you know why they don’t write songs like that any more, Lieutenant?’
‘No, Sir. No idea.’
Mr Qixotl checked the decoder’s chronometer. That had happened twenty-six minutes ago, so...
He stood, shook the decoder, and slipped it back into his Scintachi jacket. Twenty-six minutes. By now, the UNISYC reps would have found an entrance and started exploring the City. Assuming, of course, they’d remembered their invite card. Qixotl headed back towards the ziggurat, determined to reach the building before his latest guests arrived.
If no one’s around to offer them drinks, he thought, they might start getting ugly. Humans are like that.
Geneva Neutral Province, 19:32 (Eurotime)
‘You know the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, of course?’ said the General.
‘Mmm. Which version of the story were you thinking of?’
‘The Eisenck Portfolio.’
‘Oh, the neutered version. Early twenty-first century.’ The Doctor cleared his throat, and made a great show of brushing some imaginary dust off his jacket lapels, though for no particular audience. The General had his back turned now, and was gazing out at the skyline on the other side of the window. ‘The Green Knight says he’ll let any man chop off his head, as long as he can come back the next day and chop off the head of his executioner. The knights fall over themselves to do it, because they don’t know the Green Knight can walk away from his decapitation with a smile on his face. He’s not quite