Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [40]
He tilted his feathered head to one side: Tameka was reminded of a parrot her mother had kept in a cage.
‘You’re not wearing a uniform. Are you a friend of Scott’s?’
‘No,’ she said, defiantly. She didn’t have any idea what he was talking about and kept getting distracted by his thin grey tongue, which slithered around in his beak. ‘Maybe I just don’t like yellow stripes, OK?’
A crowd started to gather around them. She reached out for Emile’s arm and pulled him closer to her; his hand slipped gratefully into hers.
‘Look, just leave us alone, will you? We don’t want any trouble.’
An elderly woman using a gnarled stick to support her shrieked when she caught sight of them.
‘More of them!’ She spat curses as she hobbled across the dusty road to where they were standing. ‘You’re putting everyone’s lives in danger just to make a point. It’s the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from that half-breed, but not from a woman. They’re in the village as well – you know that? They catch you dressed like that and who knows what they’ll do? Don’t you care at all?’Tameka started to back away, having no idea how to respond to the old woman. The woman’s face was crumpled and deeply lined. Her few teeth were blackened. Tameka just wanted to keep some distance between them.
The woman pointed her stick at her and kept demanding that she explain herself.
They were becoming the focus of attention in the street. There were too many people gathered around them, a closed circle of angry, interested and bemused faces.
Time to get out of here. Gripping Emile’s hand tightly, she turned away from the woman and began to push her way through the crowd. ‘Let us through, all right?’
Thankfully, no one tried to grab hold of them, but they didn’t step out of their way either. A few people shouted questions and accused her of things she didn’t understand.
She came face to face with a boy as she struggled through the crowd. She was given the impression that he’d been looking for her.
‘Tameka?’ he asked.
She stared at him. His hair was long and fine and green. It shone like emerald silk against his pale skin. His eyes were the colour of mercury: she saw the panic on her powdered face reflected in them. ‘How do – ’
‘Doesn’t matter now. Come on, I know someone who wants to see you.’
His was the first friendly face she’d seen since they’d crashed on the planet. She let him drag her through the tightly knit crowd. However, they didn’t get far. His presence only angered more of the people around them. The people around them became more aggressive, pushing them back into the middle of the crowd.
‘I knew it!’ The elderly woman cried when she saw them together. ‘I knew she was one of the dragon boy’s friends.’
‘Oh get lost, Margaret,’ the green-haired boy shouted. Tameka was shocked by the anger in his voice. ‘Keep your ugly face out of my life. Haven’t you got anything better to do than poke it in where it isn’t wanted?’
‘Why won’t you think about the implications of what you’re doing? They’ll kill us all if they see us out of their stinking uniforms. You know that. Why do you insist on provoking them?’
The argument reminded Tameka of her mother, who’d never approved of the way she dressed.
She’d called her a slut for putting soap in her hair. Tameka was relieved that the focus of the present argument had moved away from her. Now she just needed to get herself and the kid away from here. Somewhere she could get her thoughts together. Work out a plan for getting them off this weird planet and back to Dellah. Get Emile back to the university and call up her boyfriend and get a lift home. She’d had enough.
The green-haired ‘dragon boy’ was screaming something at the woman, but Tameka wasn’t paying any attention. She didn’t want to have to get involved. Where was Bernice? She should be dealing with this – not leaving it all to her. She remembered the destruction of the haulage ship and felt her guts twist. As she stared at the angry faces shouting around her, she suddenly felt like screaming at them all.
I don’t want to have to deal with