Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [87]
Father was probably asleep.
Javill wandered down the grand main staircase, through the hallway, listening to the sharp, echoing sounds of his shoes on the tiles, and out into the courtyard. The lights had been turned down, but he could just see the stage and the higgledy-piggledy rows of chairs. Javill wandered down the centre aisle, bumping his fingers along the backs of them as he went. He heard a sharp, electric buzz as an insect met its end on one of the flytraps mounted around the upper walls of the courtyard, and he reached guiltily 157
into his jacket pocket. Almost not wanting to touch them, Javill fished out the squashed, crushed and dismembered remains of the things he’d found in Trove’s room and looked at them. He’d gone in there expecting to find some wonderful, clever toys, but all he’d come away with was a dozen metal flies.
They’d started to move around of their own accord once they were out of the container, and Javill had dropped them and stamped on them. He’d never liked insects. But lying there in the palm of his hand, they were just things.
Bits of metal. One or two of them moved half-heartedly, their legs futilely wriggling in the air. He squinted at them, feeling sure that there should have been another one. It was probably at the bottom of his pocket, or had fallen out in his room. He glanced around to make sure there was no one watching and crossed to one of the raised flowerbeds that ran around the courtyard.
Gouging a deep hole with his fingers, he buried the horrible little things and tamped the soil down firmly on top of them.
‘Doing a spot of midnight gardening?’ came a voice from above him.
He jumped and stared around for a moment until he caught sight of Trove’s pale face looking down at him from a balcony. Damn the man! thought Javill, clenching his jaw. Did he always have to creep around like that?
‘Just. . . checking. . . things,’ he answered vaguely, and felt stupid for not having had a quicker and more convincing reply ready. But why the hell should he? This was his home, not Trove’s. He didn’t have to answer to the man.
Trove’s head vanished, and moments later he appeared silently at the main doors to the courtyard. Javill hadn’t heard his footsteps.
‘The toy I gave you earlier,’ Trove said pleasantly. ‘The light ball. Have you had a look at it?’
‘Briefly.’
‘Only I wondered if you’d like to see some of my other toys – some of them are much more impressive than that little thing.’
Did he know about the flies? Javill felt his mouth dry up. How could he?
‘I should be going to bed,’ Javill said brusquely ‘It’s a busy day tomorrow.’
Trove nodded. ‘For all of us. I’ll walk up with you.’
Javill felt his jaw clenching again, but smiled as pleasantly as he could as the two of them walked back into the hallway and up the stairs. Javill’s feet clip-clopped noisily; Trove’s didn’t make a sound. At the top of the stairs, Javill turned to head towards his own rooms. ‘Sleep well,’ he said.
‘Oh, there was something I wanted to talk about,’ Trove said suddenly, as if it had just occurred to him. ‘My flycams.’
‘Your what?’ Javill turned back to face the man.
‘Robot flies,’ he said. ‘Surveillance devices.’
‘Oh.’
158
‘I believe you borrowed a few of them from my room earlier. Perfectly understandable. They are fascinating, aren’t they?’
Javill said nothing, wishing that he’d never gone poking around in the offworlder’s things. He felt like a schoolboy being told off.
‘It’s just that I really need them back, Your Highness.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Javill said.
‘ Now would be very good, Your Highness. They are essential to my work here.’
Javill let out a sigh. ‘There was. . . there was an accident.’ He could hardly look Trove in the eye.
‘An accident?’
‘They were damaged.’
‘How damaged, exactly?’
Javill swallowed.
‘I. . . I stepped on them.’ He looked up at Trove who was staring coldly at