Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [48]
‘Understandable, really,’ said Fitz with a painfully reasonable nod. ‘If a little bit sad. But you don’t break down cultural barriers by segregation, do you?’
‘Well maybe not, Dr King,’ said Trix, fighting down the urge to slap him, ‘but we’re here now and unless you have a dream for these people, I don’t think the two of us are going to do much to bring the walls tumbling down.’ She sighed and turned back to Farine. ‘Look, I’m sorry if our presence here upsets or offends you. It’s not even as if we’re here by choice. We’ve lost a friend of ours and we were just –’
‘Did the creature understand you?’ Farine said suddenly to Fitz, as if Trix had vanished.
‘Oi!’ she said. ‘Excuse me! I am still here you know.’
‘I know,’ replied Farine with what Trix imagined was intended to be heavy sarcasm. Instead, it just came across as petulance, and Trix began to amend her estimation of how old the girl was. Downwards.
‘I think it did,’ Fitz said. ‘But obviously I can’t be certain. I’d need to see one again, in less trying circumstances.’
‘Through electrified bars would be good,’ Trix muttered, looking round. She could still hear the sounds of the crowd, roaring and chanting and shouting.
And above it all, the incessant jangling from the carnival band.
‘We’ve got to go,’ said Farine to Fitz; whether she meant Trix, too, was a moot point. He glanced at Trix with an ‘oh, what the hell!’ look.
It was only then that Trix saw, standing across the narrow street, a small figure. Like they were, it seemed to be sheltering in a doorway, cloaked in shadow. But it was clear that it was just a child.
‘Hang on,’ she pointedly said to Fitz alone. ‘Back in a sec.’
Checking that no one was watching – and glad to be away from the two of them for a few moments – she darted across the road.
It was a boy: a small boy, probably not much more than nine or ten years old. He wore a big, loose jacket and his hands hung limply by his side. In the weak ochre light that found its way down the street, she could see that he was staring at her in a curiously blank way.
87
‘Should you be out on your own at this time of night?’ Trix asked, crouching down by his side. She didn’t normally ‘do kids’, but she remembered rather enjoying telling Cinderella to the two princes recently, and anyway it got her away from Farine and Fitz for a moment. She wondered if the boy’d got separated from his parents in all the fuss over the night beast. It suddenly occurred to her that whoever the boy had been with might even have been attacked by the creature, or crushed by the mob. The boy nodded solemnly, his eyes fixed on hers.
‘Where’s your mum, or your dad?’ She looked around. ‘Are they here?’
The boy shook his head slowly.
‘You’re out on your own? In all this?’
He just looked at her.
‘What’s your name? I’m Trix.’
‘Reo,’ said the boy. ‘Reo.’
Trix paused, wondering what she was supposed to do now. If she took him under her wing, she’d actually have to do something with him. Find his parents, his home. She thought of Anji and Chloe, and wondered what the two of them were doing now.
‘Where do you live?’
He hesitated a moment, and then lifted one small hand and pointed. That was useful.
‘I think I should take you to a police station or something,’ Trix said. ‘They’d know what to do with you – find your mum and dad. Shall we do that? You going to come with us, then?’
But Reo just stared at her.
‘Are you with the soldier?’ he asked after a pause. Trix frowned. ‘The soldier?’
‘The creature that your friend was talking to.’
‘It’s a soldier, is it?’ Trix realised she was sounding a bit patronising, doing that ‘talking to kids’ voice that she so hated when she heard other people doing it. She tried to sound a bit more like she was addressing an adult. Kids liked that. ‘Well, yeah, maybe it is a soldier. But my friend wasn’t really talking to it.
The creature was just sniffing him, you know, the way animals do sometimes.’
‘D’you know where it came