Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [120]
The travelling show had set up shop just outside the wall, and it was making the locals move like nothing else on Dust. Even when one of the neighbouring towns had burned down about a year ago, and you’d been able to see the flames shoot a hundred metres into the sky from the town wall, Magdelana hadn’t seen more than twenty of the people turn up at the gate to watch. The show was so unexpected, so downright new, that even the zombie families who spent their days sitting on their porches and spitting into the dust had been pulled up off their backsides and dragged towards it.
Tonight, thought Magdelana, half the town’s going to be outside of the wall. For all she knew, it was the biggest trap in the history of the colony. For all she knew, the man with the blindfold was going to kill the lot of them.
Except that he’d saved her life, of course.
‘Look, I hate to pressure you, but do you think you could stop pointing that thing at me now?’ said the man who was sitting on the other side of the desk.
Magdelana turned to face him, but slowly, just so he didn’t think he was making much of an impression on her. She’d made sure his chair was a good two metres away from the desk, so he wouldn’t think about making a lunge for the shotgun. The snout of the gun was resting on the edge of the desk, aimed right at the man’s chest, with Magdelana’s right hand hovering over the trigger. She’d put her feet up on the desk as well, and she let her free hand dangle by her side, to make it clear to the man that she could be very, very casual about killing him.
The man was another offworlder. He’d turned up in town about an hour ago, along with some girl sidekick who’d vanished without trace soon afterwards. The two of them had appeared out of nowhere in the streets near the square, and none of the locals had bothered getting in their way, or even asking them who they were. When the man had tried asking the townspeople questions, in his stupid affected old‐dialect accent, they’d just shrugged at him and carried on with their lives as usual, squatting on their doorsteps and picking the recycled animal fat out of their teeth, or pulling the dirt out from under their toenails.
When word had finally reached Magdelana about the white‐haired man and his girlfriend, she’d told some of the younger men to hunt the aliens down and bring them in. But she’d barely finished giving the order when the man had walked right into her home‐cum‐office, and politely asked who was supposed to be in charge. He needed help to find the girl, he’d said. She’d wandered off somewhere, apparently, and she hadn’t found her way back to that big blue box they were supposed to travel around in. The other men had vanished after that, mooching off to the show like everybody else who wasn’t too sick or crippled to get out of the gate, leaving Magdelana to deal with the offworlder on her own.
‘You sure you’re not with the travelling show?’ she asked the man, keeping the shotgun trained on his chest.
The man looked offended, which Magdelana found funny, until she realised that it was probably all part of the act. ‘I assure you, madam, I’m no such thing.’
‘Mmm‐hm. So you’re not a side show freak or anything.’
The man made various noises of frustration at her. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And this is what you call civilisation in these parts, I suppose?’
‘Just seems kind of funny to me,’ Magdelana went on. ‘This many offworlders turning up at the same time. The show turns up, then you turn up. And you get right into the square without anyone seeing you come through the gate, same way the blind man did. And you’ve got a stage name instead of an ID. Doctor.’