Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [82]
‘What did he do to the Jithrai? They were totally different.
Assertive. He infected them.’
‘Maybe,’ said Chris. ‘Or maybe he just brought out something they already had inside them.’
The Jeopard looked at Chris. It wasn’t an angry look: it was bruised. Ten years spent serving humans, millions of miles from home, had left a mark that would never be erased. ‘You tell him,’
he said. ‘If you ever find him, the real Doctor. You tell him about the Jithrai. Tell him they’re all dead now.’
‘Right,’ said Chris, making a mental note never to mention it.
Chris was waiting in a shopping mall when Roz got back. He sat on a bench, totally absorbed in Heavy Cruiser Weekly. He looked up guiltily to discover her standing there. ‘Hello,’ he said.
‘Any luck?’
‘No,’ said Roz. ‘I’m glad we didn’t plan on enlisting the local Adjudicators, though.’
190
Chris put his magazine in his pocket. ‘Let me guess. They’re in on it.’
‘Zatopek’s gone to ground, apparently with their help.’
Chris said, ‘Acting under orders?’
‘Acting on behalf of someone… Everyone’s acting on behalf of someone. How about you?’
‘I’m acting on behalf of my stomach.’ He got up. ‘I didn’t find a thing. Let’s get something to eat. I’m starving.’
They walked back along the street. The dome was showing an early evening, the sky hologram slowly fading to reveal the real sky, pitch-black scattered with perfect, untwinkling stars.
‘There’s the Jeopard café,’ said Roz.
‘Um, maybe we better not go there,’ said Chris.
‘Whatever.’
As they were passing, the Jeopard ran out of the café. He loped up to them through the thinning evening crowd. ‘Hey,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ said Chris.
The Jeopard’s fur was standing on end. ‘Someone saw him. I could tell them not to leave Tethys, because it’s someone in disguise, isn’t it?’
Chris nodded. ‘Do you know where he is?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Chris looked at the clock again. They’d been in the waiting room for two hours.
A pair of soft-spoken acolytes had met them in the Temple foyer. The floor and walls were marble – genuine marble, he bet, a rich brown colour shot through with white and grey. The light was muted, globes cupped in dark half-spheres at intervals around the walls.
There were no seats, only a statue of the Goddess, glistening in obsidian. The blindfold was so delicately crafted it looked as though it was made of real cloth. Her sword was real, the steel polished and sharp-edged. Chris had a strange urge to reach out and touch it.
In the silence the acolytes’ footsteps rang out for almost a minute before they appeared. Two of them, male and female.
They were wearing a modified version of the Adjudicator’s robes 191
– or was it the other way around? Chris suddenly felt underdressed in his street clothes, unworthy to be in the sanctuary.
It didn’t seem to bother Roz. She talked to them like they were desk clerks, which they were, really, and demanded to see someone who could do something about something.
The acolytes had led them through long corridors – more marble, more silence – and left them in this room. It was like a sort of ascetic version of a hotel suite, spacious but almost empty.
There was a clothes cleaner and a bathroom but Chris wasn’t surprised there wasn’t a bar fridge.
The clock was a hologram, activated by eye contact, which meant that whenever you looked it was there. Chris had been trying to look at it out of the corner of his eye, to see whether it really was gone when he wasn’t looking. Roz had been watching more news reports, flattened images sliding across the black glass of the coffee table.
‘Six wars have broken out in twenty-four hours,’ she said.
‘Like brushfires. Only one of them in the solar system – the Antarctic Alliance lobbed a missile at the Horne Collective.’
Chris got up and wandered around, getting a root beer from the kitchen unit. ‘You know, there’s a bed back here,’ he said.
Roz didn’t look up from the table. ‘I’m not that bored yet,’ she said.
‘Er,’ said Chris, suddenly not sure what either of them was talking about. ‘I meant that they might