Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [118]
‘I’m fine,’ said Chris. He was watching EmpireGold. ‘Can you believe this, they’re fighting in Achebe Gorge. There hasn’t been fighting on Mars for centuries. Not since the Ice Warriors.’
The Doctor walked back and forth, back and forth. His clothes were crumpled again, his brown velvet waistcoat unbuttoned. He flipped out his pocket watch, looked at it, flipped it back.
‘There’s not much information,’ said Chris. ‘I might try one of the other newsfeeds. Either nothing’s getting out or they’re censoring it.’
An engineer walked into the ready room. A young man, he couldn’t be twenty. He saw the shots of Mars on the screen. ‘Any news?’ he asked, in a thin voice.
‘Nothing new, really,’ said Chris. ‘Not for the last hour.’
‘I’ve got family there,’ he said. ‘My mum runs a kiosk on the Olympus Mons ski slope.’
‘I’m sure she’s OK,’ said Chris. ‘Right now all the fighting’s around Achebe.’
‘Thanks. Sorry,’ said the young engineer. ‘That wasn’t what I came in to say. Your shuttle’s ready, sir.’
‘Great!’ Chris bounced to his feet. ‘Doctor! Let’s go!’
‘Go and warm her up,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
Roz walked out of the meeting room, feeling lightheaded. The Doctor came out of nowhere and grabbed her arm.
‘If you’re a party to this madness, Roz, then the friendship between us is finished.’
‘Not a chance,’ said Roz.
He looked at her, astonished. ‘Do you think I’m joking?’
She grabbed him by the lapels. She’d always wanted to do that.
‘We’ve stared into the abyss together, you and I, Doctor. Jesus, 274
the things that we have seen. And when all those children you call your companions have their fits of moral anguish and cover up their eyes because of the things you have to do just remember who it is that stands by you. Who does the necessary even when the necessary costs.’
The Doctor stared at her, silent, his blue eyes piercing right into her skull. She resisted the temptation to shake him, stop him staring.
‘Finished? We’ll never be finished, Doctor, because you owe me. So you can threaten Bernice and Dorothée, you can show your human side for the cameras, but I know. That history kills people and sometimes even you can’t save them. So you owe me this, for my family, for the children of the angry man and for the ones that died in the slave ships and mines and all the others you couldn’t save at the time.’
‘Millions will die.’
‘Millions are dying already.’
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. ‘Only now they’ll die for truth and justice.’
‘Well, it’s better than dying for a profit margin.’
‘And what about you?’ said the Doctor softly.
‘Jesus, will you quit it with the stare?’ Roz let go of his lapels.
‘What about me?’
‘If you step back into history, I won’t be able to protect you.’
‘This isn’t history, Doctor,’ said Roz. ‘This is family.’
275
2
Valhalla
When you come home from a long trip away, and everyone wants to know what it was like, you find yourself telling the same stories over and over. After a while, the anecdotes become polished, the rough edges of detail worn away in your memory.
War is like that. Seen in the quiet aftermath, war reduces itself to a series of phrases and photos, place names and images. A man shoots a bound man through the head. Women dancing in the street, showered with confetti. A child screams, running towards the camera. A pile of starved corpses, limbs like firewood.
The Three Days’ War barely lasted long enough to produce its own set of images. There were one or two. A pair of battleships colliding near Phobos, the first spurt of flame from a ruptured plasma engine bursting free into space. An angry face in a rioting crowd in Brazil, scream of rage with no name or cause attached.
Even a Jeopard refugee, haunted, slit-pupil eyes in a weary breadline.
What most people remembered about the Three Days’ War were the place names. Some of them already had battles attached, but after the