Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [1]
Normally, Chris would have been ooh-ing and ah-ing over the machinery, toy-box-sized from this height. He had sat perfectly still, staring at the seat in front of him.
Chris was right at the front of the procession. From time to time, as the dirt path wound through the Zone, the Doctor caught glimpses of his companion. His surviving companion.
9
Chris wore his full Adjudicator uniform, deep-blue armour with gold trimmings, full cape hanging from his broad shoulders. He stood painfully straight, his upper lip rigid. He must be cooking in that armour.
The Doctor was near the back of the procession. Behind him, a group of Ogrons moved, not exactly marching, but silent and organized. Behind them, a group of Earth Reptiles.
In front of him, soldiers, human soldiers. There were ten of them, each with a bad-tempered buffalo snarling on their armour, Colour Sergeant Muller leading the way. Dwarfed by the standard she was carrying. The flag tinkled in the gentle breeze, a row of metal chimes sewn to the bottom of the cloth. Beside her, a second flag: the ancient UN standard, light-blue and white.
Then nine more of the buffalo soldiers. Side by side with another eight figures in DPM fatigues and blue berets.
In front of the soldiers, the nobility. Mostly members of the Inyathi clan, scores of men, women and children in traditional dress. The women walked at the front, wailing. Sometimes it was a wordless sound, rising and falling Sometimes there were words, too distant to understand.
The viewers at home would be listening to murmured commentary on the traditional! Xhosa dress, especially what the clan leader, Leabie Forrester, was wearing: a red blanket thrown around her body, a weight of blue and white jewellery around throat, forearms, ankles. Pointing out the different Zulu costumes, kilts and furs, and the Knights of Io in their traditional Indian clothes. Putting names to the Baronial Allies who had been invited, from Hungary and Mexico and Australia.
Men and women wandered purposefully up and down the edge of the procession, hands clasped in front of respectful black kaftans. The POVs. Each wore a media badge, but it was only a legal requirement. You wouldn’t fail to realize you were being watched by one. Men and women with green eyes, transmitters slid softly into place over their pupils. Whoever decided they were less intrusive than cameras had never spent an hour being stared at.
Green eyes, watching.
10
The rain should come down, ruining their view, forcing them to peer through sheets of freezing water. Unable to focus in on the little man sloshing through the red mud.
It should have rained hard, pouring down from a sky as angry as he was, to wash the grass into mud, the stream into a torrent that would sweep away this field, this hilltop, the gaggle of the still living.
Still living. The dead on holiday. The sparrows still flying.
He realized that the chimes on the buffalo soldiers’ flag were dog tags.
The procession slowed and halted, forming a semicircle of mourners around a wide, bare circle of naked earth. The POVs shuffled, looking for the best positions.
Now he had a clear view of the very front of the procession.
The wooden bier, held by Chris and three young Inyathi men. He saw Thandiwe standing beside her mother, her shoulders bare, her little face imitating the grim expressions of the grown women around her.
Chris saw him in the crowd, but didn’t look at him. Perhaps the Doctor’s need to be invisible, to not be here, was starting to affect the people around him. He wasn’t here, standing in the African sun while someone dug a hole in the ground so they could hide his friend in it. He was in the rainstorm, and on a battlefield on Callisto, where he should have been but wasn’t. Having left it just a little bit too late this time.