Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [33]
For the same reason, he preferred to work alone: once upon a time, he’d had a partner, but that had ended badly. For the partner. Trove didn’t tolerate failure. Or treachery.
Noting the time, he set to work: he had been on Espero for too long already.
He had to find the device, and he had to find it soon.
A scratty-looking young man, his hair braided and tied back into a ponytail, squatted down on the pavement alongside a vivid, technicolour tableau of the Ascension. Shafts of rainbow-hued light speared out from Jesus’s head, his hands open in supplication, eyes lifted Heavenward. The artist wiped the 58
chalk dust from his hands on to his knees and began to roll a cigarette, looking up hopefully as the Doctor came to a halt.
They’d hardly said two words to each other since leaving the restaurant where they’d had their encounter with Madame Xing. Calamee had tried to involve him, pointing out jugglers or acrobats or rabbit-balancers, but he’d been miles away, hearing without listening, looking without seeing. The Doctor’s bizarre reluctance to allow the weird woman to put his head back on straight was inexplicable: how could you not want to get your memory back, especially if it had been fiddled with however many dozen times Madame Xing had claimed? It seemed to her like wilful ignorance, and ignorance – wilful or otherwise – wasn’t something that Calamee was particularly keen on. Her mother had often remarked on how she didn’t suffer fools gladly, and the Doctor’s behaviour seemed the height of foolishness. Perhaps he’d see sense and use the little light that Madame Xing had given him, although she suspected that stubbornness would win out over common sense.
The Doctor was rubbing his lips with the back of his hand and squinting
– not at the drawing on the ground, but up into the sky. She wondered if the sight of Jesus ascending to Heaven was triggering some memory in him.
Maybe he just had a Messiah complex. The artist smiled and nodded his head at her, and, more out of a desire to impress the Doctor than out of generosity, Calamee began to root around in her pocket for some change – when the Doctor suddenly gave an explosive cry of triumph and leaped forwards to grab the young man’s box of chalks.
‘Oi!’ he said.
The Doctor waved him back down, impatiently, and frantically began to clear a section of pavement of gawking onlookers, his face flashing between manic cheeriness and irritation. Taking one of the challis in his hand, the Doctor tipped his head this way and that, squinting at the blank pavement.
The artist realised what he was up to, and began to protest.
‘Calamee, give him some money please,’ the Doctor said without even looking at her.
‘Yes sir!’ she snapped – but did as he asked. He was too busy squatting down on the pavement to even hear her.
It was almost like a dance, Calamee thought as she watched: he sprang lightly around, one minute down on his knees, the next standing to assess his work and hopping from foot to foot. He sketched in broad, assured strokes, only occasionally pausing to rub out something. His arm moved incredibly quickly, outlining and filling in, his fingers smudging and smearing. As he wore the chalks, one by one, down to useless nubs, he tossed them aside. A crowd was gathering, watching in amazement as this offworlder put on his show. Calamee saw the look on the artist’s face, smiled apologetically, and 59
gave him some more money.
Eventually, with a sigh that seemed half disappointment, half puzzlement, the Doctor jumped up and shot a glance at Calamee. His face was smeared