Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [7]
Except, of course, that Konga-Tchin had turned out to be a fake. A runaway slave, employed by a showman with a flair for the exotic.
‘Abracadabra, shalom-shalom,’ growled the Negress. Isaac found himself distracted by her costume, a rough shawl covering smoother, tighter garments that he couldn’t quite identify. ‘I see into the mists of time and stuff, blah blah blah.
Anything in particular you wanted to know?’
There was, but he couldn’t find the words, so he just shook his head. ‘Erm, no. Nothing. In particular. Um, the future?’
The Negress leaned back in her seat, and Isaac got the impression that she really didn’t give a damn about anyone’s future but her own. ‘Yeah, well, there’s a lot of it, the universe is still in red shift. There’s a couple of good wars coming up, if you like that kind of thing. I can give you some dates, if you want. People are going to get born. They’ll go through the usual interpersonal shit. They’ll kill each other.’
She shrugged.
‘Works for me,’ she said.
‘Well, yes.’ Isaac nodded seriously, as if to prove that he wasn’t confused by such profound thoughts. ‘But I was thinking of something a little more... personal?’
‘Personal?’
‘Personal. Um. My future.’
The woman sighed. ‘What’s your name?’
‘What?’ Isaac had a sudden vision of some monstrous jungle-god, scratching his name into the book of the damned.
‘Um, I’d rather not...’
‘ Name? ’
He cleared his throat. ‘Penley,’ he mumbled. ‘Isaac Penley.’
‘Right. You’re not going to achieve anything of note in your entire life. If you were important, the Doctor would’ve claimed to have met you by now. He’s claimed to have met just about everyone else. Henry the Eighth. Cyrano de Bergerac. Everyone.’
Isaac opened his mouth to ask who the Doctor was, then imagined a half-naked witch-doctor dancing before the jungle-god, talking with the spirits of the famous dead. His jaw snapped shut again.
‘All right,’ said the woman, misreading his expression. ‘I’ll tell you what you want to know. You’ll lead a happy, prosperous life, move out to the plains, buy yourself a nice big house and a nice big flitter, or horse-and-cart, or whatever it is you have here, and your children’ll grow up to be lawyers or generals or something. You still won’t achieve anything much, and you’ll die of old age, probably in your sleep. Happv?’
She didn’t so much say the last word as bite a word-shaped hole out of the air. Isaac nodded, for the simple reason that he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
‘Good. Any other questions?’
Any other questions?
Yes, thought Isaac. Oh, yes. Questions about the shape the world is being twisted into, questions about the mumblings I hear from the town and all the wars they seem to want to start, questions about Church and State and Heaven and Hell and politics and anarchy and everything in between. Questions that I can’t even fit into proper sentences.
And he felt a series of words slide onto his tongue, and prayed that this would be it, that this would be the one question he desperately needed to ask, that just the right letters would fall from his lips and the Negress would understand what he really wanted and give him all the answers.
He opened his mouth.
‘Is it true you eat people in Africa?’ he heard himself say.
There was a silence as big as all outdoors. The woman’s expression was unreadable.
‘No,’ she said, emotionlessly. ‘But that isn’t going to stop me biting your face off.’
Erskine Morris stared at the thing that was floating near the top of his drink, sniffed it, swore at it, then swallowed it anyway. He had no idea whether it was a vital ingredient of the cocktail or just a piece of flotsam that had accidentally fallen into his glass, but the liquid was powerful enough to make sure that his taste-buds never found out for certain.
Besides, he was three glasses past caring.
‘ Naturellement, I find the writings of Monsieur Jefferson most interesting,’ Tourette was saying on the other side of the pub. ‘His thoughts on liberation are most liberating. A-hahhah.
Hah-hah.’
‘Hellfire