Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [37]
Every so often, she glanced back over her shoulder, half expecting to see something huge bearing down on them. But the darkness was so deep that she doubted she’d have seen anything.
The city felt like it had crept up on them: one minute they’d been in almost complete darkness, and the next they were walking down the side of a roughly tarmacked road with proper, if dim, streetlights, only minutes away from what looked like shops, complete with illuminated windows.
‘This looks too normal,’ she said, catching up with Fitz for the umpteenth time. ‘Roads, shops, lights. You don’t think we could actually be on Earth, do you?’
66
‘I’m not sure Earth has a monopoly on all those things, Trix,’ he said, turning to give her an irritatingly Doctorish look. ‘And we’d remember – well, you’d remember – if the Doctor had said that he’d picked up a distress call coming from Earth, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course I would,’ she said tartly. ‘But I do think it’s a bit off that the Doctor didn’t tell us anything about where we were before getting himself. . .
lost. Maybe he told you and you just can’t remember.’
‘Quite possibly,’ he said breezily as he checked the road – pointlessly – for traffic before crossing. ‘But if you tried a little bit harder to get on with him, maybe he’d have told you as well.’
Trix gritted her teeth and pulled a face at his back. She was beginning to wish she’d left him lying on the grass.
‘So tell me about this Imperial Family of yours,’ the Doctor said, knocking back the remains of his coffee and waving the waiter over for another. He’d managed to cadge a cigarette off one of the other diners, and was struggling through each lungful of smoke, like a kid trying to look grown up. Nessus was curled up on the seat next to him, gently snoring, his head tucked under his spindly arms. The Doctor threw the mokey a glance. ‘I take it that mokeys are a native species? And that the name’s just a quaint corruption of monkey?’
‘They’re not very bright, but they’re very friendly. And Nessus certainly seems to have taken a shine to you.’
‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ said the Doctor archly, coughing and stubbing out his cigarette. ‘But the Imperial Family?’
The waiter arrived with more coffee and she waited until he’d poured before continuing.
‘Something we’re not very proud of. Well, apart from a few die-hard tradi-tionalists. There are eight nation states, and they all have proper democracies apart from us. Yes, I know – you came all this way and end up here. Sorry.’
Calamee pulled a face. ‘It could have been worse, though: you could have ended up in New Roma with Pope Constanza’s Vatican Police breathing down your neck. But it’s not like the Imperials have any real power any more – we have a proper government that do all the real work and everything. I think they keep the Imperial Family on for show, for the tourists. A shame you didn’t meet them.’
He gave a shrug, shifting his chair and waking Nessus who yawned hugely and curled back up again.
‘I don’t know that I’d recognise them if I saw them, would I? I seem to remember having a word with one of the Guard, and before I knew it, I was being shepherded inside.’ He paused. ‘It seemed a bit odd at the time, but when you’ve been to as many odd places as I have, it’s nice to feel welcome.’
67
He tailed off, staring at the tablecloth as he sipped his coffee. As the evening had descended, Calamee had guiltily remembered that, somewhere in the city, there were a couple of parents. Possibly worried. Certainly annoyed.
Maybe even angry. But it wasn’t as if it was the first time she’d wandered off.
They’d probably just call her friends – or, more likely, get her house-parent to call them – before deciding that she’d gone off to see a film or a show or something. They wouldn’t really get worried until they found her still missing tomorrow morning.
She realised she needed the toilet, so she excused herself, but a few