Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [20]
Emile shuffled in after her and closed the door. He wandered over and crouched so that he was at eye level with the statuette. The blue light of the scan turned his bleached hair ultraviolet, and picked out the whites of his eyes and the dandruff on his shoulders. ‘What’s it supposed to do, anyway?’
Bernice looked up from the screen. ‘I’ll tell you when the scan’s complete. How did you get on?’
Tameka shrugged. ‘No joy. There are no flights back to Dellah until the end of the week. My credit’s good. I could charter a flight, but I may as well wait for the one that me and Emile are already booked on.’ She paused and then said, ‘Unless . . . well, Bernice, I was thinking. . .’
‘No. You can’t come with me.’ Bernice didn’t even want to begin this conversation. The sooner her students were back on Dellah, the sooner she could be after Jason. There was no way she was taking them with her.
Tameka looked affronted. ‘Oh. That simple, is it?’
Bernice nodded. ‘That simple.’ The ’puter buzzed, distracting her. ‘Aha!’
‘Found something?’ Emile asked. ‘I thought you said that the police couldn’t find anything inside it. No secret codes or anything.’
‘Secret codes?’ Bernice laughed. Emile’s face was full of the excitement of being brought up on a diet of cheap holos and comic strips. ‘Oh come on.’
Emile looked embarrassed, which, she had learnt over the last week, was a semipermanent state of affairs for the boy. He was shorter than Tameka, still encumbered by puppy fat. He kept his home-bleached hair gelled stiffly in a short flat top with a tiny quiff at the front. Tiny silver rings ran up the edge of one ear, reminding Bernice of a reporter’s notepad. Under his overcoat, he wore a patterned waistcoat over a brightly coloured shirt and cheap synthetic trousers (but dyed Day-Glo orange) rolled high over a pair of chunky service boots. Rings adorned his fingers and he wore a beaded necklace bearing a religious icon Bernice didn’t recognize. The clothes were a carefully coordinated mishmash: thrift-shop cool.
He did his best to smile. ‘What are you doing all this for then, Professor S?’
Probably gay, she thought. Probably doesn’t know it. Bernice grinned back at him, suddenly extremely glad that she was never going to be a teenager again.
‘The police have been investigating our friend here,’ she said, tapping the figurine, ‘thinking of her as a possible container of secret information, dangerous information.’
‘Ignoring the container itself,’ Tameka chimed in. Thankfully the young woman appeared to be too interested in what was going on to sulk.
‘That’s right.’ Bernice turned back to the ’puter. ‘I’m hoping the context and origin of the artefact itself will provide a clue as to what Jason was up to. And where he may have been taken.’
‘What have you got?’ Emile asked. ‘Do you know where it came from?’
‘It’s a match from a series of company records.’ Bernice looked closer at the screen. ‘Old records. Very old. These predate the Galactic War.’
‘I didn’t know that much was left over from then.’
‘There isn’t. Have you heard of the Butler Project?’
Both Emile and Tameka shook their heads. ‘No.’
‘It’s a massive attempt to collate and index the records of the companies that went bankrupt during the war. This information comes from the archive of the Piercy Corporation.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘You wouldn’t have. It went out of business years ago. According to the biog provided by the Butler Project, the Piercy Corporation was a small outfit which specialized in deep-space exploration. Its ships were commandeered for the war effort, and it didn’t last long after that. No ships, no exploration. No exploration, no rich pickings. No rich pickings, no profit.’
‘No profit, no company?’
‘Tameka,’ said Bernice, grinning, ‘you are on the wrong course.’
Tameka picked up the figurine. Bernice saw that she had won the girl back. ‘And does it tell you where our little friend came from?’ Tameka asked, now absorbed in the problem at hand.
‘I can’t tell yet. Butler are a wily bunch. They’re only letting me