Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [9]
Can you point me in his direction?’
Forrester sighed. ‘ Her direction. Fresh out of the Academy?’
Cwej’s smile widened. Forrester felt nauseous. Nobody had a right to be that cheerful.
‘No, I graduated last year. I’ve been on traffic patrol over in Spaceport Nine Overcity ever since.’
‘Of course you have,’ Forrester said, looking around for Rashid’s raft. ‘I’ve got to see the Adjudicator Secular myself. Follow me.’
‘Thanks. ‘Preciate it.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ Forrester snarled. This boy was going to get on her nerves pretty damn fast.
∗ ∗ ∗
15
Bernice was sitting on the floor of the TARDIS boot cupboard when the Doctor found her. From the doorway, all he could see was her cross-legged form in the far distance, illuminated by a single beam of light. As he stepped inside the room, however, he realized that the shadows around her were filled with row upon row of shoes and boots, arranged in concentric circles, like a waiting audience. Burnished highlights shone back from cracked leather.
Bernice did not appear to have noticed him.
He picked his way cautiously through the boots, noticing step by step old friends whom he had thought lost for ever. There were the elastic-sided pair inside which he had hidden the TARDIS key when he was in the Ash-bridge Cottage Hospital. Next to them were the green rubber waders that he’d splashed about the marshes of Delta III in. Over to one side he saw the brogues that he’d been wearing when Kellman had electrified the floor of his room on Nerva Beacon. The heels were still charred. He smiled. Portrait of the Doctor as a collector of shoes. Time considered as a collection of worn-out footwear.
Clearing a space, he sat beside Bernice. She was holding a tumbler of some amber fluid and gazing out across the sea of attentive boots. She had an old rag across her lap and a pair of Roman sandals beside her.
‘Some people might think,’ she said suddenly, startling him, ‘that possessing several thousand pairs of shoes, boots and sandals indicated an obsessive personality.’
‘Nonsense,’ he replied. ‘Do you know how long I’ve lived? Over a millennium. Do you know how much footwear I’ve got through in that time? A lot.
A lot more than a lot.’
‘A mega-lot,’ Bernice muttered.
‘Yes, a mega –’
The Doctor trailed off into silence. Mega. A word he had not thought about for some time. Quite deliberately.
‘Quite a few,’ he finished lamely.
‘They don’t look worn out to me,’ Bernice said.
‘Fashions change. Opinions alter. Location must be taken into account.
What looks good in the light of a red giant sun can cause severe embarrassment on a planet circling a white dwarf. What one race might consider to be footwear fit for the gods might cause another to call for the fashion police.’
He reached out and snared a pair of bright green shoes with orange spats.
Bernice winced when she saw them.
‘Take these . . . ’ the Doctor started.
‘No thanks!’
‘I used to love these, once upon a body. Nowadays I wouldn’t be seen dead in them.’
16
He caught Bernice’s sideways glance at the brushed suede shoes that he was wearing, and shifted his position slightly so that he was sitting on them. They sat in silence for a few moments, gazing out towards the sketchy shapes of the roundels in the shadows. Eventually, more to break the silence than for any other reason, the Doctor reached out and took the tumbler from Bernice’s hand. ‘ Lch’thy-li!’ he said, and gulped the liquid down.
‘“Lch’thy-li”?’ She looked at him strangely.
‘Berberese for “Here’s blood on your horns”.’
‘Oh.’ She shrugged, still eyeing him as if he had done something completely bizarre. ‘Well, the feeling’s mutual, I’m sure.’
The Doctor knew that human emotions weren’t his strong point, but he took the plunge anyway. ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ he said.
‘And they said you were insensitive,’ she murmured.
‘Who said?’
‘Nobody. I was joking.’
‘Would a holiday help?’ His eyes gleamed.
‘No thanks! Your holidays are