Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [69]
Powerless Friendless followed the smell of roasting fish until he found Olias’s place.
He knew he was in the right area when he saw the fishing rods. They jutted from the roof of the massive edifice of cracked plasticrete, their lines trailing away into the surrounding waters. He could see shadowy figures behind them: fishermen or guards, nobody was sure. Could well be both. Olias’s was not only the best, but the safest restaurant in the whole of the Spaceport Five Undertown. Everybody knew that. Olias had contacts. People up in the Overcity who dealt with her. Drugs, people, cheap technology: Olias could provide it. Olias more or less ran the whole of Spaceport Five Undertown.
More powerful than the viscount who ran things up top, she was.
Powerless Friendless slid out along the catwalk that led to the building, aware of the eyes watching him from the roof By the time he got to the door, he had been recognized and pronounced harmless. If he had looked like trouble, or if Olias had taken a sudden and unprompted dislike to him, he would never have made it.
As the door opened for him, one of the fishing lines nearby jerked and started to move. Powerless Friendless stopped to watch, his mouth already watering. There was a flurry of activity from the roof, and the line pulled taut. The water beneath the catwalk suddenly exploded into life as whatever had taken a fancy to the bait tried to escape. Too late. Whoever was working the line wasn’t about to let their catch go. They reeled it in slowly, cautiously, letting the line out if it felt about to snap, but always reeling in more than 118
they let out afterwards. Powerless Friendless caught a glimpse of a pale body lined with suckers as it was hoisted up, still jerking, to the roof. Might have been a mutated fish, might just as easily have been an alien underdweller out for a late night swim. Either way, within half an hour the creature would be gracing somebody’s plate, roasted in its own juices, blackened with alien spices, served with a chilled Elysian wine.
People came from the Overcity for Olias’s food. She was in offworld tourist guides. Bodyguards recommended.
Pangs of pain shot through his mouth as his glands went into overdrive. He hadn’t eaten properly since – since he couldn’t remember when.
Inside, Olias’s restaurant was a huge, barnlike building of bars, winding stairways and tables tucked away in corners. Simcords of various planetary landscapes were scattered across the walls. Powerless Friendless recognised the ice forests of Zobeide and the towering fern-cities of Baucis, although he couldn’t recall visiting the planets themselves. He felt faint at the smell of the food. His five linked stomachs were tying themselves in knots, and his mouth was so full of saliva that he had to keep swallowing to stop it from dribbling off his mouth-cilia and down his body. Retracting his pseudo-limbs to stop himself from inadvertently picking up food from people’s plates, he slithered his way between the tables.
Dantalion was at the bar. He was smaller and fatter than Powerless Friendless remembered, and his skin was deeply furrowed, the Birastrop sign of old age. Something about his eye – his real eye – said that he hadn’t got long to live, and he knew it. His other eye – the metal orb – reflected Powerless Friendless’s face back at him.
He gazed blearily at Powerless Friendless over a frothing glass held in one of his lower limbs. ‘Yes?’ he said, thumping the glass down. It continued to froth, and something moved inside it.
‘You – you don’t remember me?’ Powerless Friendless asked.
‘People provide me with financial recompense in return for two services,’
Dantalion said, and wiped the back of his hand across his upper lip. His voice had the careful precision of the very drunk. ‘They pay me to stop them remembering something, and they pay me so that I don’t remember who they are afterwards.’
‘I think I remember you.’
‘Then, my friend, you didn’t pay