Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [105]
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Clench. He felt the weight on his chest, pinning him down. He opened his eyes.
The cobra was five foot long and impossibly heavy. He had never seen one this close before. He found himself admiring the detail of its face, each of the scales lovingly hand-crafted into a sleek, black, close-fitting garment, the lidless eyes behind the protecting spectacle, never closing, always watching. Green eyes, watching.
For a moment he wondered if the shuttle door had been left open – one of the pets from Leabie’s garden had escaped into the cool interior of the ship. For a moment he thought that someone else would come in and lift the weight of the snake off his chest.
But only for a moment.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the Eternal Verity.’
The snake shifted her position. His heart clenched in protest, making him struggle for breath.
‘All right,’ he gasped. ‘You win. I give up.’
‘This isn’t a game,’ said the snake.
‘The race, then. The hare loses to the turtle. Don’t you understand? You win.’
Her tongue lapped the air near his face. ‘It’s our bargain.’
‘Then I’m ending it,’ he said. ‘Enough. I won’t fight any more.
Do what you want. Death. Regeneration. I don’t care.’
‘Not this time.’
‘What do you mean? Not this time?’
‘You haven’t learnt your lesson.’ She slithered forward, her tongue flickering near his ear. ‘Without warning,’ she hissed.
‘Without purpose. Alone and afraid.’
‘I know all about that,’ he said. ‘This situation meets those criteria, wouldn’t you say?’ He shut his eyes. ‘Quickly. Before they come back in and that medic starts doing goodness knows what with his Feinbergers.’
The snake chuckled, sliding down along his right shoulder on to the bed. ‘You haven’t learnt anything,’ she said.
He tried to move, to bring her back to him before she could seek out another of his friends. But his heart stuttered and clenched again, and he found himself sliding, sliding down into the dark.
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Later, when he was sitting up in the shuttle’s personnel section, trying to drink tea from a plastic cup while the medic fussed over him, Chris said, ‘I didn’t want to mention this earlier, but we left the shuttle door open and the biggest snake I’ve ever seen got inside. It was OK, though: we threw it out before it could do any harm.’
The Doctor just looked at him. ‘Spitting cobra,’ said the medic.
‘You said it,’ said the Doctor.
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Part Three
Valhalla
246
1
Callistro
25 August 2982
The Doctor wandered Leabie’s palace. It was silent and dark.
That was partly because it was the middle of the night. But even in the artificial daytime, it had still seemed silent and dark.
Missing something essential.
There was a lot of wandering to be done here. It was as though the palace had been made for explorers. The Doctor had a map, but he didn’t bother to look at it, just producing it when one of the population of security officers asked for his ID.
He came across Chris, floating on an inflated raft in a vast swimming pool. In the darkened room, the ceiling was covered in white ripples reflected from the water. There was no tang of chlorine in the air – nanomachines gobbled up the algae like microscopic piranha.
The Doctor sat on a deckchair, waiting until Chris’s raft drifted up to the edge of the pool. The bump woke Chris up. He blinked up at the Doctor. ‘I think I dropped my magazine in the pool,’ he said.
‘Here you are, sir,’ said the life-saver bot. The spindly android crouched down by the side of the pool and handed Chris the magazine, which it had carefully dried and pressed before reading several of the more interesting articles.
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The Doctor watched the android climb back into its high chair, looking over the pool.
‘Oooooh,’ groaned Chris. ‘I have never eaten so much in my entire life.’
‘I gather the coronation party is still going on,’ said the Doctor.
Chris looked at his chronometer. ‘But it’s been three days,’ he said.
‘The previous Empress’s coronation feast went on for two and a half weeks,’ said the Doctor.
‘Citizens will make merry on pain of death?’ said Chris.