Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [14]
‘Yeah.’
Cwej brought the flitter round in a tight curve, his paw-like hands easily handling the controls. The gravitational stabilizers sent spray arcing in a rainbow to one side, catching the light of the fires. The old, stained walls of th buildings surrounding the plaza zipped past, dark windows gaping at them.
Faces watched them go, most of them with more or less eyes than the norm, all of them ducking out of sight if they thought they had been spotted.
‘Would you tell me about it? Please?’
He sounded so eager that Forrester didn’t have the heart to refuse. Besides, she’d told the story so many times that she could remember it word for word.
‘It was just after the Hith Pacification,’ she said. ‘I was squired to Fenn Martle.
We must have spent fifteen years together. Good years. Anyway, we were on traffic duty one day, up in the Overcity. We were trolling along in a flitter, just like we are now, and Mart spotted a guy throw a ditz off a walkway.’
‘A ditz?’
24
‘Yeah. Centauran animal. Like a bee, only it’s the size of a poodle. ’Bout as intelligent as a three-year-old. Expensive to keep as well: they need some special kind of food from their home world. Buzzing’s supposed to be soothing.
Anyway, this guy threw it off the walkway, thirty floors up. Ditzes can’t fly on Earth, something to do with the gravity, or something. This one just dropped like a stone. Mart swore he could hear the thing’s frantic buzzing through the flitter canopy till it was out of sight. We landed by the guy and Mart gave him an earful, but he denied it. Said he didn’t own a ditz, and even if he did, why would he throw it off a walkway? Well, we knew what we’d seen, but it was our word against his.’
‘Didn’t you have the cameras on?’
‘By the time we realized what was happening, it was too late. And we’d never have recovered the body. Even if anything survived the drop down to the Undertown, the underdwellers would have had it barbecued by the time we got there. So, the guy’s got bored with his pet, and throws it away, and we can’t do anything about it. Except that I like animals, and I don’t feel like letting him get away with it.’
A large building with a gaping hole in its wall was coming up on them fast.
Forrester winced as Cwej aimed them straight for an alley between it and its neighbour and notched the speed up from FAST to TOO FAST.
‘Shouldn’t you leave that to the navicomp?’ she hissed between clenched teeth.
‘More fun flying by hand,’ Cwej said, his eyes shining with exhilaration. ‘So what did you do?’
‘About what?’
‘About this guy and his ditz?’
‘I asked for his ident, but he was one of these wackos that didn’t believe in the biochips. Some kind of religious problem. Had special dispensation from the Empress to carry a plastic ident. When he handed it to me, I ate it. And then I busted him for not possessing any identification.’
Cwej laughed. ‘Didn’t he tell anyone?’ he asked.
‘Of course he did, but who’s going to believe that an Adjudicator goes around eating IDs? Centcomp fined him once for not having any valid ident and again for perjury.’
‘Brilliant!’
‘You’re new to this. Tell me again in a month that it’s brilliant and I’ll buy you a drink.’
‘You’re on.’
Cwej swung the flitter through narrow gaps and skimmed close to the blank faces of decaying houses and crumbling office blocks. Glancing to her left as a wall loomed large in her field of vision, Forrester caught sight of her own 25
reflection in the shattered remains of a window. She looked nervous. She felt nervous. Goddess save her from rookies.
‘So what happened to Mart?’ Cwej asked. Forrester wished that he hadn’t.
‘He died,’ she said, the words like ashes in her mouth.
‘How?’
No tact. Didn’t they teach them tact at the Academy?
‘Badly,’ she said with enough bite in her voice to shut even Cwej up.
The flitter began to lose height, looping around a topless church spire and descending towards the dank alleys and