Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [30]
He stayed like that for half a minute, in silence. At his feet, Chris’s eyes were closed, his breathing even.
‘Dot,’ he said, ‘how long are we going to stand here?’
The muzzle moved away. Carefully, keeping his hands in view, he turned to face her.
She held the rifle in both hands. Her drone hovered nearby, managing to look nervous. It didn’t bother to translate when she jerked the rifle.
«I can’t leave Chris here like this,» signed the Doctor.
«Let me —»
She hit him with the rifle.
He staggered over the rough rocks, lost his balance. The charred gravel bit into his hands as he tried to catch himself.
He looked up at her, shocked. Her eyes were blazing.
She jerked the rifle again.
«I won’t leave him!» he signed.
So she shot him.
‘...and therefore not by any to be enterprised, not taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites—’
Zaniwe and Jenny were trying not to giggle into their bouquets. The chaplain gave them a stern look that disintegrated into a grin. ‘Ahem. Like brute beasts that have no understanding.’
Benny sat at the back of the chapel, one of two dozen People who’d put aside their work for the brief ceremony. Her mind wandered off the proceedings as she looked around the room. Everyone had turned out in their best, which was mostly the one-piece DKC uniforms they’d worn aboard the colony ship.
The blushing bride and her blushing bridegroom were wearing the borrowed Company uniforms they’d worn the last time they’d tried to get hitched, jackets unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up. They looked pretty stunning. Cinnabar had her arm around her intended, as though she were worried he was going to fall down. There were huge bags under his eyes.
Benny’s head was a jumble, like a ball of different-coloured wools all tied together. The Ikkaban poem and their propensity for sacrifice — self-sacrifice. Whoever was behind the virus. Whoever’s memories were coded inside it. Dot SmithSmith crying in silent rage. Jenny burning candles at the temple.
A breeze blew through the chapel, ruffling Benny’s dress.
‘First, it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord...’
How did the Doctor keep track of it all? He probably just set different parts of his brain to thinking about all the different things that were going on.
Children.
Children would mean being in love again.
‘If any man can show any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.’
There was the inevitable embarrassed pause. The shuffling and coughing brought Benny back out of her reverie. The breeze was blowing more strongly. The chaplain looked up. Benny realized that the windows and door were closed.
On the altar, the candles were bursting in little balloons of flame.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Benny.
A few people looked at her crossly, but more of them were watching the altar dismantle itself. Cinnabar was looking around in bewilderment. Someone yelped as their chair skidded out from under them.
Byerley fell to his knees as everything on the altar took to the air. ‘Stop!’ he cried. ‘Make it stop, I can’t stop it, make it stop!’
The chaplain was the first out the door. Benny fought her way to the front through the shouting and rush, ducking as a bowl of flowers flew past her head. Jenny was dragging Zaniwe out through the door, both of them yelling. The breeze had grown into a furious wind, whipping her fringe into her eyes. The chairs were turning over by themselves.
Objects were dancing in the air.
Cinnabar was clinging onto Byerley, shouting at him, her voice drowned out by the storm. He was gritting his teeth, eyes clenched shut, hands over his ears, as if shutting it all out would make it stop. Make it stop.
Benny had no idea what to do. So she just clung onto the pair of them until the wind quietened down and everything fell onto the floor and Cinnabar was sobbing over and over, ‘I love you, I love you,