Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [6]
So now Joshua stood by the chest of drawers and tried to forget the fear he’d seen on his father’s face when he’d finally looked up. He tried to forget the horrible smell of burning as Pa and Uncle Ake had fetched the spare petrol cans from the truck and set fire to the spaceship. Joshua didn’t know quite what they’d done with the body of the horse-man, but he assumed that it had been destroyed too. In a mutual, shameful silence, the three of them had watched the ship burn, sending a luminous pall of smoke spiralling up into the night sky. It cracked and fizzed like melting plastic, and every so often, Joshua thought he could hear a tiny, feeble scream. Maybe there were others, other horse-men, still inside. Burning. After a while, as the flames had begun 8
to die down, Pa and Uncle Ake took him back to the truck, and back home. Pa had something in a plastic rucksack that he kept in the car, but he wouldn’t show Joshua what it was, and wouldn’t talk about what they’d done. And when, eventually, he’d heard his parents come to bed – after more muttering and shouting and clattering of pots – Joshua had sneaked downstairs to see what Pa had in the rucksack.
His hands had trembled as he’d pulled it open: inside, gleaming softly, was the Y-shaped thing that the horse-man had worn around his neck. A souvenir, thought Joshua. No – a trophy. He wanted to touch it, but it held too much shame, too much guilt, and Joshua didn’t want to be infected by it.
But its silent call had been too much to resist, and now here he was, gazing down into the drawer where it had been hidden by Pa. He reached out and took hold of it.
9
Chapter 2
‘D’you think you could keep your monkey under control?’
Calamee squinted into the sun as the Saturday afternoon crowds began muttering and murmuring, their heads turning towards the vast, sandy bulk of the Palace and the satanic iron gates that, depending on your point of view, either kept the public away from the Imperial Family, or the Imperial Family away from the public.
Curious, she pushed her way towards the source of the crowd’s attention, ignoring the irritated grunts of her fellow Esperons as she elbowed her way through. Nessus clung to her shoulder, his little toes digging into her through her summer frock, slender fingers entwined in her close-cropped hair. She could feel him swaying his head from side to side excitedly.
And then, as if an almighty hand had reached down and split the throng, the crowd opened up before her and a figure cannoned into her, knocking her on to her backside.
‘Ow!’ she yelped, struggling to get up, ready to deliver a hefty slap to her assailant. But before she could, her fingers were grasped by a cool hand and she was heaved effortlessly to her feet, to be faced with the widest, wildest eyes, the palest face and the most unkempt hair she’d ever seen. Nessus squeaked on her back as he locked his arms around her neck. She could feel him shivering.
‘Sorry about that,’ the man said breathlessly, glancing over his shoulder.
‘It’s just that I appear to be being chased by an armed retinue of your Palace Guard, and I’d really rather avoid being impaled by their staves.’ He looked back at her. ‘If at all possible.’
And with another look behind him, he was off, sprinting through the bemused crowd. Before she knew what was happening, Calamee felt Nessus spring from her head and bound away after the offworlder, darting through the legs of the Esperons with an agility she hadn’t realised he possessed.
‘Nessus!’ called Calamee. ‘Come back!’
And before she could think about what she was doing, she hared after the little creature. And the stranger. As she raced to catch up with the two of them, Calamee could see that his status as an offworlder endowed him with all the charisma of a sewage worker just off his shift: the mass of people 11
packed into the Palace square moved aside to let him through as though the mere touch of him might soil them permanently. Offworlders were a rarity on Espero, and many people had never seen