Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [25]
She’d had only about three hours’ sleep for the last four nights.
Twelve hours of combined security and domestic work, half an hour back to the hotel. Trying to fall asleep with the thumping music and herbal stench of the bar still in her head, wondering when Mr Cheesecloth was going to pick the lock on her door and come visiting.
Mother of Nobody was lurking behind the bar, washing glasses and peering out across the main room with her tiny eyes. They were almost hidden beneath the shelf of bone that protected her low forehead. Her skull was mostly bald, except for a fringe of dirty hair at the back and a few wiry hairs sticking out on top.
Practical Xenoculture had barely mentioned the Ogrons. There wasn’t much to know about them, the course designers figured: sub-Neanderthals who didn’t have much to say, useful for manual labour and as grunt infantry. So long as one wasn’t pointing a weapon at you or trying to eat your leg, they were safely ignored.
That’s what the course designers thought, anyway. Roz had had some run-ins with the oggies in her time that had made her wonder just what was going on inside those inch-thick skulls.
Besides, Mother of Nobody didn’t just wash glasses. She owned a third share in the bar.
The Ogron matron had been alternately bossing her around and making sure she was all right all week. She’d seen the Ogron stop a customer beating up one of the Skagettes, while Roz was still struggling through the dancing crowd. Mother of Nobody had 63
picked up the slender alien as though she was a baby, staring down at the drunken lout until he whimpered and crawled away.
‘Penny for them,’ said Mother of Nobody.
Roz snapped back into awareness. She’d been staring out across the room, looking as though she’d been working, but the exhaustion had worn her edge right down.
‘I was just wondering how Genai was doing,’ she said. ‘That was a pretty nasty cut over her eye.’
‘She fine. Lying down. Not working today,’ rumbled the Ogron. ‘Give me someone to look after.’
‘Someone to boss round,’ said Roz.
Mother of Nobody rumbled again. ‘Lie down, Genai, stay lying down, no drink anything or shoot up today. Lie down, lie down.
Now, Ogron boy,’ said Mother of Nobody, ‘he easy to lead, not like girl with splitting head and bad temper. You act like he stupid and he follow: he act stupid. Got mind like mud.’
‘You mean clay,’ said Roz.
‘I mean mud,’ said Mother of Nobody, emphatically. ‘Slippery, slip through fingers, out of ears and make mess on floor. His mother or mother-sister clean up mud, put back in head. Ogron boy with no mother is lost boy. He get notion to work for metal gods or human or any damn thing that tell him what to do. You understand?’
‘Yeah,’ said Roz, thinking suddenly of Chris. ‘I understand.’
‘Show you something.’ Mother of Nobody reached down behind the counter and brought out a stone, which she placed on the bar. ‘This good rock,’ she said. Then she put a second stone next to the first. ‘This bad rock. You see difference?’
Roz looked. Both rocks were of the same size and, as far as she could tell, of the same grainy blue-grey stone. ‘I’m no geologist,’
she said.
Mother of Nobody’s chest rumbled again. ‘You can’t tell difference between good rock and bad rock, no human can,’ she said. ‘And you call we stupid. Human come to our place and break up rocks to make soil to grow green things. Mix rocks together, mix good rocks and bad rocks together so that land is confused. Human kill all orange monster things – Ogrons have nothing to fear and worship. Planet confused – Ogron confused.
64
Only humans happy.’ Mother of Nobody shook her massive head. ‘Still we mother and mother-sister do nothing. We wait for humans to go away.’
‘But they didn’t,’ said Roz.
‘No, they say we part of Empire now and we pleased. We see Empress and we think, “Ah, human have mother too.” We truly stupid race to believe so. Then they break birth taboo, take genes and make pygmy like she there.’ Mother of Nobody stabbed a finger at one of the pygmy Ogron maidens working the booths.
‘Sons and sister-sons