Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [36]
Clouds curdled, high above the Undertown.
Through them, Powerless
Friendless could just make out the bases of the ever-present towers, looming like gods over the broken remains of their domain. As he looked at the crumbled stone buildings surrounding the crowded square, their massive columns now fallen, and their arched porticos rotted with the passing of the centuries, Powerless Friendless could see why, if they were gods, they chose to remain so aloof. It wasn’t much of a world for a deity.
He shivered as the constant rain pricked at his exposed eyeballs and trickled down his too-moist skin. Usually he tried not to think about gods. Religion 62
was a tricky business – every race had a pantheon that was incompatible with every other race – but that didn’t stop the worship, or the arguments. The Hith were no exception.
His eyestalks twitched in a smile. Perhaps there was a Hith deity who watched over those whose memories had been taken away, but if there was then Powerless Friendless couldn’t remember its name.
Reluctantly, he lowered his gaze to the crowd of underdwellers that filled the square. He felt his skin crawl at the presence of so many other living beings. He shouldn’t have come. A lonely Hith is a happy Hith, isn’t that what they said back on Hithis?
He’d been fine, slinking alone through the alleys and bridges of the Undertown. After the Doctor and Bernice had shaken up his memory he had started to believe that everybody was watching him, following him, talking about him. After a few hours of aimless wandering, he had decided that he was overreacting. Warily, he had returned to what he laughingly called his home. As time passed he had relaxed. He was safe.
In contrast to the narrow alleys and rotting walkways that characterized the worldwide Undertown, the square was the largest open space for miles. The moss-covered flagstones suggested that it had once been submerged – a nexus for various main canals, perhaps – but dams now blocked off each entrance, and a clever series of run-off channels and wind-driven pumps kept it clear of rainwater. It was a meeting place: the only one the local Underdwellers had.
He didn’t usually go there, but this was a special occasion.
He hoped that Olias would get a move on. He felt exposed, standing there.
Anybody looking for him – if anybody was looking for him – wouldn’t get a better chance than this. Anybody who knew anything about the Undertown would know it was Waiting For Justice’s and Annie’s funeral, and Waiting For Justice had been an associate of his.
Olias stood atop an island of stone in the centre of the square, flanked by four metal statues and seven brutal Ogron bodyguards. Legend had it that the statues represented long-extinct animals, but Powerless Friendless had always thought that their regal bearing and calm and benign expressions marked them out as superior life forms, perhaps the original inhabitants of the Earth, once powerful but now overthrown by vicious, squabbling humanity. There had been a column, midway between the statues, but it had fallen in some natural or wartime disaster, and the rubble still littered the square.
‘Gentlebeings,’ Olias rasped, her voice echoing from the distant ruins, ‘we have gathered together to honour, in our respective ways, two of our own.
Friends who lived life without hurting others. Friends who were generous.
Friends who were kind. Friends who took nothing from those who could not afford it.’
63
Olias was a Sunhillowan: race whose body chemistry was based upon ger-manium rather than the more usual carbon or silicon. Her skin glittered constantly, and shifted upon her etiolated frame as if smaller animals were running up and down beneath it. She was also the most powerful crime boss in the local Undertown area, a position she had held onto by an odd but effective combination of viciousness and benevolence. It was said that she knew everybody within her area of the Undertown by name.
A movement