Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [33]
‘I’m sorry for yesterday,’ she started. ‘I was rude and thoughtless. You do so much in the hut as it is. It was unfair of me to have shouted at you.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ His eyes didn’t leave the small cooking equipment as he carefully heated up the basic rations their captors had provided. Kitzinger knew that she had really hurt his feelings.
‘It does matter, Aric. It matters to me. And I think it matters to you, too.’
He looked at her for a second and then turned back to his work. He nodded, almost impercep-tibly.
She rested her hands on his shoulders and began to knead the hard, corded muscles. ‘However hard it is, we’ve got to remain honest. If we start bottling things up we’ll end up resenting each other. We’ll be dividing ourselves.’ She nodded towards the chamber, which was visible through the transparent section of the wall. ‘We’ll just be doing their work for them.’
He handed her a little dish of rehydrated and heated food. ‘I know. I just . . . I’m just finding it harder and harder . . . just to go on.’
‘I know. I know you are.’
They ate in silence. Food was so scarce that their meals were taking on an almost sacred quality. After they had finished their meagre dinner, she slipped her arms around him and pulled him into her lap. He twisted and slipped an arm around her, burying his face in her neck. They sat like that for a little while. Kitzinger closed her eyes and rested her chin on his head. They had run out of conversation months ago – their life histories recounted, favourite stories told, songs sung.
Kitzinger made a point of keeping in physical contact with Aric in the evenings. If they could no longer distract each other with sparkling wit and exciting anecdotes, then they could offer each other at least the basic comfort of a hug.
Aric shifted in her arms, struggling to sit up. She opened her eyes and saw the reason for his movement. There were three dark shadows standing patiently in the airlock, waiting for the air to equalize.
They had visitors.
Aric slipped out of her embrace and quickly scuttled over to the far side of the hut, staring anxiously over at the airlock. He tucked his arms around his knees as, heralded with a hiss, the door began to open.
As ever, Nikolas was accompanied by two of the ashen-faced humanoids. Nikolas called them the Sunless, but not, Kitzinger noted, when they were nearby. He pulled off his respirator and nodded an empty welcome to her. Despite his wearing one of their charcoal-coloured uniforms, there was no way that Nikolas could have been mistaken for one of the aliens. His face was long and narrow, his nose and forehead particularly so. His dark red hair curled at the nape of his neck, and his mouth was continually caught up in a sneer. He didn’t look any older than eighteen.
His eyes were large and prominent, and were the same industrial grey of the invaders. Pools of mercury staring coldly back at her.
Kitzinger had often wondered if he was somehow related to them. But there was no doubt that he was an Ursulan. One of her own people. If he was the age he looked then she had probably birthed him from the Blooms herself. If she hadn’t ever met him then she would have never believed that an Ursulan could have behaved as he did.
There were dark rings under his eyes and he was unshaven. Nikolas looked tired – perhaps the cold affected him as much as it did her. Despite his tiredness, he was smiling at her, lewdly. It made her feel sick.
‘If I’d known you were . . . busy I would have come back later,’ he lied.
Kitzinger didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to provoke him. Instead she just shrugged her shoulders noncommittally. He had once instructed one of the Sunless to beat her when she had ignored him.
He wandered over to a small collapsible table on which a ’puter sat. He ran a finger across the top of the frame of the screen as if he were checking for dust. ‘You have compiled an