Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [67]
Tameka hit the play button on her Stowaway, which they’d wired up to the bus’s PA system, and the opening strains of ‘I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper’ began to belt out into the evening.
The flashing lights Jock had strung along the side of the bus began to pulse. Not actually in time to the music – but then you can’t have everything.
The spotlights made her blink and the world beyond her was plunged into darkness. Bernice tried to imagine what they must have looked like: three bewigged, electric-blue-sequined figures, dresses shimmering in the white lights, dancing in time on the top of the balloon-strewn coach.
Attracting attention was not going to be a problem.
‘You wouldn’t believe I spent the seventies in a punk-rock band, would you?’ Bernice shouted to Tameka. Bernice waved to a young Ursulan man who was staring up at them, his bald head creased into a frown of incomprehension. Confidence was going to be their greatest ally.
‘What’s punk?’ Emile asked, from between them, already slightly out of breath beneath his blonde wig.
‘Dance to disco, Emile,’ Bernice laughed, waving away his question. ‘Trust me, you wouldn’t like rock.’
Emile looked quizzically at her, but then was forced to concentrate on a neat twist and a twirl.
He was rather good at this, Bernice thought, and he certainly had better legs. She desperately tried to remember her steps, failed completely, and lost her place in the music. She bobbed up and down as best she could in her bright-red wig, but was terribly aware that she was not the strongest dancer in the trio. Tameka moved with the easy confidence of a girl who had spent her teenage years in discos and nightclubs, walking through the dance steps and clapping her hands with panache. Emile was really enjoying himself. Knees slightly bent, grinding his young hips to the stomping disco beat and giving little yelps of pleasure.
Bernice’s hips weren’t quite so young and didn’t so much grind as lurch. Still, she had other things to worry about. As the bus moved slowly down the long street, the guards behind the gates of the New Administration building started moving forward. Bernice did not fail to notice that they were carrying long black truncheons.
Bernice carefully counted herself in and began to dance. After a fashion.
The building of the New Administration was squat and functional, with narrow windows irregularly spaced along its grey front. It was as if the architect had anticipated that it would need to be defended. It was lit from below with hundreds of orange lights. Spotlights swept across it. Bernice wasn’t sure if they were a security measure or just part of the celebrations.
The streets were thick with Ursulans in their grey, red-striped uniforms. They stood in silent protest outside the high metal fence that surrounded the building. There must have been at least two thousand people standing motionless. Once again Bernice was struck by such a powerful demonstration of their unity. Denied the right to define themselves with their words or clothes or acts, the Ursulans still refused to speak as slaves. Silence was their last defence.
This silence was rudely interrupted by the sound of Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip asking if they were like a droid, devoid of emotion.
Any moment now they are going to start throwing bricks at us, Bernice told herself, feeling rather reassured. But they didn’t. Instead the people in the crowds began to clap and cheer them on. Tameka and Bernice exchanged worried glances as they danced. This was disastrous. The people in the crowds appeared to think that they were some kind of brave and no doubt suicidal protest against the Sunless.
This was not the plan.
Tameka had realized the consequences of their being thought of as protesters. Emile was, for the moment, oblivious to it all, skipping excitedly through routines like he was attending his first youth-club disco. And maybe – in a bizarre sort of way – he was. Tameka stopped dancing and began to shout down at the crowd, her words lost beneath Sarah Brightman’s amplified voice.