Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [125]
'The poem was real and you know it,' said feLixi. 'You know that my feelings for you are real.'
'You can't even say it, feLixi, can you? To you, love is just a word you looked up in a linguistic database.'
'I love you, Roz, and you know it.' There was hurt in his eyes and perhaps she did know it but it was too late now.
'I don't care who loves who!' she said. 'I won't play cover-up for you, feLixi. I won't walk in aTraxi's footsteps and I won't step out into the lightning. You killed vi!Cari and you're going down for that.'
'Vi!Cari was a robot, Roz. What's a machine to you?'
Roz turned away then and fixed her eyes on the windmills. 'Listen,' she said, 'this won't do you any good, you'll never understand me but I'll try once and then shut up. People don't live alone, never have, never will and when you live together you need rules – call them laws, traditions, ukuzila, taboos, whatever you like – because sometimes right for you is wrong for me and we've got to live together because chaos is always waiting just beyond the light of the fire and the darkness doesn't knock politely on the door of your hut. I've stood both sides of that line, feLixi, I've been places where they'd slit my throat for being an adjudicator and places where they'd kill me for being the wrong colour.' She ran a finger down the skin of her face, remembering France and the stories of her grandmother. 'Yeah, that's right, on my own planet too, a hierarchy of contempt based on melanin production. Is that stupid or what? What it comes down to in the end is that someone's got to walk the line between order and chaos because we all want to live in the light of the fire. A long time ago Roslyn Inyathi Forrester chose to walk that line and what she wants doesn't matter. So I'll have some bad dreams for doing this but that'll pass.
'And if all I've said doesn't mean anything to you then forget it and we'll make it just this: I'll do it because I've got to look in the mirror every morning and I don't want vi!Cari staring over my shoulder as I comb out my hair and I'll do it because you counted on my prejudices just as my superiors on Earth did, just like the last man I loved did. So I'll pack up your poem and a few good memories and take them out when I get lonely late at night and maybe, just maybe, I'll cry myself to sleep and wish that I'd stayed here with you but at least when I wake up I'll still be Roslyn Forrester.'
She still couldn't look at him but she knew he was staring at her. The windmill blades slowly turned, slicing power out of the wind. God controlled the wind, the movement of the air, the passing of the seasons, the energy from the sun. It regulated the existence of two trillion people and all it asked for was a bit of conversation and the chance to make suspicious yellow dip. And the Doctor, what did he ask for, what memories did he unpack in the dark of the night and what did he see when he looked in the mirror?
'Did you get all that, kiKhali?' she asked out loud. 'I know you've been listening.'
With a whisper of displaced air the machines arrived. KiKhali first, its expression ikon set in a resolutely abstract frown, aM!xitsa following. Lights from the windows of the control section flickered off fast-moving shapes the size of marbles – subcomponents of !X automatically establishing a defence perimeter. !X was there for feLixi, Roz reckoned, to be his gaoler until the little machine got bored and handed over to another volunteer. FeLixi sat on the steps, hands on his face, kiKhali and aM!xitsa giving him an unnecessarily wide berth, their main sensor strips flickering here and there, everywhere but at the man.
And so it begins, thought Roz, the exclusion from society. He can't even exile himself from the sphere because no ship would want him on board.
'Not bad for a meatbrain,' said kiKhali, 'not bad at all.'
Roz shrugged. 'When did God figure it out?'
'About a second after you did,' said aM!xitsa.