Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [8]
And anyway, at least he was in with a chance of finding something interesting. Admit it, Bernice, there’s nothing here but bits of broken parasite pottery.’
‘Well – ’
‘This place is a joke. I’m telling you. I’ve had it.’
The whole thing reminded Tameka of chemistry lessons when she was twelve. She’d quickly lost interest in the subject after she’d excitedly reported to her teacher that her tiny strip of amber paper had turned pink when she’d touched it to the piece of lemon. What do you mean, you know that lemon turns the paper pink? she’d demanded of him after he’d failed to display the required enthusiasm for her important discovery. Her twelve-year-old self hadn’t been able to comprehend the point of doing the experiment if everyone already knew the answer.
This Chelonian site was the same. When she’d read about the Chelonians in Bernice’s book, the giant warlike turtles had caught her imagination. But since they had begun work at the site, it was becoming abundantly clear that she had as much chance of finding anything remotely new or interesting about them by unearthing the millionth slave dwelling as Emile did of getting married.
Archaeology was not turning out the way she had expected.
Bernice was speaking. ‘OK, I accept we’re unlikely to uncover any examples which have not been recorded before. But this place isn’t a joke, Tameka.’ Benny gestured around at the dismal site. ‘Far from it. Just try to imagine what this place must have been like.’
Tameka sighed. The site was enormous, a vast plain stretching between two low rises of hills. A network of cordoned-off pits marked the foundations of the tiny slave dwellings. Above the site, spindly beige trees with long, rakish leaves stretched away into the hillside. Grey mud, the consistency of wet sand, was everywhere.
The only thing she found herself imagining was the trip home.
‘These buildings were packed with people from a dozen or so races, huddled together, cold and afraid, at the mercy of the Chelonian guards. No, we won’t find any treasure or anything completely new. But we might find clues to how the parasites struggled to survive.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ Tameka conceded. Bernice was right of course. As she invariably was.
Since its discovery twenty years ago, the site of the slave camp on Apollox 4 had become more than just archaeological interest. It had come to signify and represent human struggle against alien domination. Extremist groups used the existence of the camps to justify a position of intense xenophobia. The less radical claimed them as a testament to human courage and survival.
It was still cold and wet and boring though.
A plastic sheet covered the edge of the excavation pit. Tameka sat down heavily upon it. Too heavily. She felt the wall give a little and then it completely collapsed under her weight, and she slid ungraciously into a puddle at the bottom of the trench, pulling with her the plastic sheet and several of the recovered artefacts that had been carefully laid out.
A stream of curses flowed from her mouth. She glared furiously at Bernice and Emile, daring them to laugh at her. A clump of her sodden hair slapped her in her face and she grimaced. It was going to take a month of intensive hot-oil treatment to salvage the knotted mess.
She had a suspicion that Bernice was stifling a smile. Emile bit his cheeks and then turned away and started to giggle.
‘Right! That’s it,’ she stormed, clambering angrily to her feet and wiping the slimy grey mud from her backside. ‘That’s absolutely it! I’m booking myself on the next flight out of here. I’m telling you, anything is better than this.’
She was annoyed to see that Bernice had stopped listening to her protests. In fact she wasn’t paying her any attention at all. Tameka tried to see what had so arrested Bernice’s attention –
without letting on that she was at all interested.
Glancing behind her, she noticed that a circular pipe was protruding from the gouge in the new bank that she had inadvertently created.