Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [53]
Two extra humans. Our Eight became a bit of a melting pot: Michael got some of Yvonne’s feathers and I got some of Leon’s scales.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Michael’s even got tiny white wings growing from his shoulders.’
‘Wow! Like a purple angel?’
Scott looked puzzled. ‘Angel?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Emile was impressed. ‘So there’s no one else like you on the entire planet?’
‘I’m the only “dragon boy”. It’s hard. People can be cruel and superstitious. Particularly since the Sunless came.’
‘And your eyes, you have their eyes.’
Scott removed his hand from Emile’s leg. Emile shifted uncomfortably under the sheets. He wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. ‘I didn’t mean to – ’
‘No, it’s all right. I know it’s because we’re different and people are scared. Well, in my head, I know, but in my heart . . .’
There was a pause – Emile wanted to change the subject. He realized that he was still fingering the small metal ring between his fingers. ‘And do you? Accept no rule, I mean?’
Scott got off the bed and began to tug off the uniform. ‘We all did before the Sunless came.
“Do what you will” – that was Michael’s code.’
Emile noticed that Scott frowned a little when he spoke about Michael.
‘I think he may have changed it now,’ he added, after a moment. ‘He seems so affected by the presence of the Sunless. So frightened. I’ve always lived in the country where they’ve really left us alone. The city is so changed. So tense. Fear everywhere.’
Emile was going to ask him what Michael had changed his code to, but was distracted by an increasingly familiar feeling of discomfort as Scott casually started to undress.
Scott seemed completely oblivious to the effect he was having on Emile, caught up with his remembrances of his brothers and sisters. ‘Leon’s code is, “I am able to respond to you and you to me”. He’s a great one for response ability is Leon.’
Emile smiled to himself. It sounded just like something the tall reptile man would say. He liked the tone of the phrase. It wasn’t as bold as Michael’s, which, to Emile, just sounded selfish.
‘But if everyone did as they pleased, well, surely, everything would just fall apart. I mean what’s to stop someone stealing or something?’
‘So speaks a true profiteer!’ Scott laughed with pleasure and Emile remembered how much Scott and Leon had enjoyed debating with each other on the journey to the airship. ‘There’s nothing to steal on Ursu, Emile. Nothing at all.’ And then he said something that sounded like it might have been a quotation. ‘And possessing nothing, we are free.’
‘Oh come on, that’s bollocks!’ Emile exclaimed. He curled his fingers tightly around Scott’s metal ring and chain and held them tightly in his palm. ‘What if I don’t give your ring back? What are you going to do then?’
‘Emile, that’s only a couple of bits of metal. A bit of an old washer from a harvester. The chain is from a broken sewing machine. I made it a few weeks ago. It’s the words that are important and you can hardly steal those. Like everything of value, the harder you try to grasp it for your own, the quicker it will slip through your fingers.’
Emile didn’t know what to say to this. He knew that Scott was wrong but he couldn’t quite work out how to point this out to him. Tameka would be able to, though. There was no way she was going to accept any of this nonsense. You had to have rules.
His life had been full of them back on the relay station. The Natural Path was full of laws governing the behaviour of men and women. The mentor had instructed the class of boys in the Natural Path to manhood. The old man had read them stories about different men – the hero, the lover and the guide. Emile had learnt the lessons by rote. Lessons designed to make them all good, strong fathers and mates. But it had never meant anything to him. Emile had kept waiting for the meaning to fall into place, but at the same time he knew that it never would. He wasn’t ever going to be like the men in the stories. Wasn’t ever going to be like his father.
‘I don’t really want your chain, Scott,’ he said suddenly. ‘Here, take it