Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [16]
In the street outside Poul stood for a moment trying to decide whether to walk to his apartment or take a self-set autotrike. He never took the more luxurious robot-pull buggies -
not because he couldn’t afford them but because he couldn’t get comfortable that close to the Vocs that trotted tirelessly between the shafts of the two-wheeled carts. Perhaps comfortable wasn’t quite the word. The fact was he couldn’t get that close without falling apart in a sweaty panic.
They told him he had been comfortable with robots once.
They told him he had a robot sidekick when he went undercover on Storm Mine Four and he had no reason to doubt them. Actually yes he did, he had every reason to doubt them.
That would mean that a robot had gone undercover and what in god’s name would it go undercover as and how would it know what being undercover signified?
They wouldn’t tell him. They said it was experimental and that it was destroyed but they wouldn’t tell him what it was that destroyed it. And they wouldn’t tell him what it was that destroyed him. It was better they said if he remembered for himself.
He was supposed to trust them on that and trust their good intentions. Well, it wasn’t going to happen. The Company wasn’t altruistic. Caring and sharing? He didn’t think so. Medical treatment, a job, promotion. There had to be a reason for all that and he might not know what it was but somebody did.
He sighed. The auto-t’s were uncomfortable and fiddly to program and now he was out of the building his tiredness had lifted. So since he wasn’t in any particular hurry and it was a fine day he decided to walk.
It was the dry-time when the winter wind came razor sharp directly from the centre of the Blind Heart. The wind was called the Emptiness and when it blew it could be chill enough to make the bones ache. But when it did not blow, as on this day, the weather was often calm and mild - Ore-dream, the workless of the Sewerpits called it.
Despite the depression which dogged him constantly Poul found he was beginning to enjoy himself as he walked through the quiet streets, and he had covered perhaps half the distance to his apartment block before he noticed that he was being followed. He knew, because they had told him as part of his treatment, that his condition made him prey to paranoid fantasies. It was possible that this was just such a fantasy. It was possible that he was imagining the half-seen figure dogging his every footstep. Casually he crossed the tree-lined road and wandered into a refreshment arcade.
He chose a beaker of fizzy wine from the dispenser and took it to a table at the front of the arcade where he sat down and made a show of relaxing. Trying not to make it too obvious, he glanced up the road. To his surprise the figure he had seen following him was exactly where he expected. It seemed he had simply stopped and was standing perfectly still and looking in his direction.
Poul sipped at his wine. His hand was shaking and it was difficult to get the beaker to his lips without spilling the sticky-sweet liquid. He glanced up the road again. The man - it certainly looked like a man though it was hard to tell at this distance - had not moved or looked away. What was wrong with him? Was he just bad at the job? But then again Poul couldn’t be sure what the job was. It was obviously not important that the man wasn’t spotted. Why was he standing like that? Why didn’t he move at least?
Poul took another sip of wine and then he looked directly at the man. He stared at him for a long moment and when there was still no reaction he raised his beaker in a small ironic salute.
Nothing. No reaction. No response of any kind. Oddly, Poul felt vaguely embarrassed as though he had got some point of etiquette wrong or been deliberately ignored by an acquaintance at a party.
He binned the beaker and considered his options: confront the man, ignore the man, lose the man. He chose confrontation if only to banish the lingering discomfort of his failed attempt at theatricality. Gestures