Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [2]
She broke the surface of the pool and was instantly forced to retch up the fluid in her lungs.
She was out of her depth and had to tread water with her feet and one hand until her lungs cleared and she had coughed the last of the fluid out of her throat. She felt disorientated and swam until her feet touched the floor, and then she began to walk up the sloping bank of the pool, the warm body of the newborn in her arms.
There were ten humans standing at the top of the slope. Their heads had been shaved, only a dusting of stubble remaining. Strangely, they were all wearing identical clothes: loose, one-piece, charcoal-grey outfits made from some durable-looking material. The clothes looked weathered and worn, like the wearers themselves.
Their ashen faces were drawn tightly over their cheekbones, their lips bloodless, making them appear gaunt and quite striking. However, something about their appearance disturbed Kitzinger greatly: their expressionless faces bore a leukaemic glaze – as if they weren’t really there at all.
Ghosts. Ten pairs of expressionless eyes stared at her from their sharp, angular faces. Dull, industrial-grey eyes. Their eyes disturbed her more than anything else about them.
Kitzinger saw her naked fifty-year-old body reflected in those mercury eyes.
She had seen eyes like those once before . . .
They stood silently, watching her. The tension in the chamber was palpable. Everything about the strange people suggested violence and aggressive behaviour. They were clearly some kind of warrior or – Kitzinger searched for the word – soldier. That was it, people trained to fight and kill.
However, for the moment, they seemed to be content just to appraise her with their cold eyes.
She was distracted by the newborn in her arms. The child folded her wings with a wet flapping sound and then opened her beak and vomited Bloom liquid over Kitzinger’s shoulder. It ran down her back, hot from being inside the tiny body.
She set the child down in the ankle-deep water, and wiped the thick liquid from her own face and shook it out of her short, white hair. The little girl wobbled unsteadily, flapping her wings and crouching like a gargoyle in order to keep her balance. Like a foal, she stumbled on her matchstick legs. It took all of her concentration to prevent herself from toppling over.
Kitzinger turned to look at the silent, menacing figures; they must have sensed this as their attention shifted from the Oolian child, and their dark eyes came to rest on her. They weren’t Ursulans, that was for sure. The idea of their being off-worlders didn’t disturb her half as much as the fact that they were all wearing identical clothes.
Uniforms.
These, and their shorn scalps, were a symbol of subservience to something or someone.
Kitzinger felt a chill of fear for the first time since she had set eyes upon them. People who didn’t make their own decisions, who just followed orders, were inflexible and dangerous.
Her own brightly coloured clothes were still in an untidy pile where she had stepped out of them. The silent figures were in the way. Her nakedness suddenly began to trouble her. She shivered, feeling vulnerable. ‘Are you just going to stand there or what?’ she demanded, surprised by how frightened her voice sounded.
The nearest figure, a broad-shouldered female, cocked its head for a second as if it were trying to understand Kitzinger’s words. Later, Kitzinger would wonder whether this had in fact been a signal to the others, because immediately afterwards they began to move.
Fast.
Too fast for Kitzinger to protect herself. Two of them launched themselves forward, knocking her over backwards into the shallow water.
Kitzinger heard herself grunt as the wind was knocked out of her. The water closed over her head. She was struggling to