Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [18]
'Not at all,' said aM!xitsa. 'She's been fascinating company, if not a stimulating conversationalist.'
'I'm glad to hear that,' said the Doctor but he wasn't. He was beginning to wish he'd found some alternative guardian, one, and this was the real joke, with fewer 'human' qualities.
'It's terribly wearisome referring to her by an impersonal pronoun,' said aM!xitsa. 'Isn't it about time you told me her name?'
'Better that you don't know,' said the Doctor. Better that you think of her as a thing, an experiment, something dangerous to be studied and then, if it proves too threatening, made safe.
Neutralized. Terminated.
Murdered.
There was a sudden flurry of movement in the water. The spear was jerked upwards. Impaled below the point thrashed a glistening silver shape. AM!xitsa and the Doctor watched in silence as the fish died.
Bernice walked on to iSanti Jeni alone. Roz having gone to sleep again. Whatever the orange and vermilion stuff in the glasses had been she was glad she hadn't finished hers. God knew what had been in the mushrooms.
That thought made her smile. In this place God most definitely knew. Could probably give her a complete biochemical analysis if she asked it for one.
She left the table strict instructions to keep the older woman in the shade, picked up her shoes and started walking up the beach. The sun was definitely getting hotter but the breeze from the sea kept her pleasantly cool.
There was a path over the headland. Nothing formal, just the line of least resistance between the tumbled rocks, places here and there where the sandy topsoil had been cleared by passing feet. That was assuming that the locals had feet and weren't gastropods or something equally weird. Not that that would bother Bernice; nothing wrong with walking on your stomach, some of her best friends had been gastropods. Nice people on the whole.
Providing the buggers didn't step on your head.
The headland she was climbing was narrower than it looked and the coast curved inwards quite sharply. As a result Bernice didn't see the town until she was almost on top of it. It was built up around a 'natural' harbour, complete with harbour wall, a pebble beach and waterfront esplanade. There were even a variety of boats drawn up on the beach, mostly compact-looking trimarine yachts but with one large wooden-sided tug. That one was single hulled and listed alarmingly as if it were about to topple over at any moment. There was a man on the beach painting a mural along the entire length of the harbour wall, a pretty moody piece judging from the subdued ochre tones and lurid oranges. As Bernice climbed onto the flat top of the breakwater and walked closer she realized that the man might instead be repairing an earlier work. Parts of the mural seemed to have been damaged, as if a giant hand had used a wire brush to clean the paint off the wall.
ISanti Jeni shone under the clear blue sky. The buildings seemed to be constructed out of crudely dressed stone and painted white with blue or magenta trimming. From the headland they had seemed to sprawl up the sides of the uneven semi-circle of hills that formed an amphitheatre shape behind the harbour. There was little differentiation between buildings, one flat-roofed structure merging into the next one along, and at first Bernice thought that any streets the town might have must be roofed. When she reached the esplanade she realized that the numerous narrow alleyways ran off it at seemingly random intervals. The buildings that fronted the esplanade had sun-faded awnings over openings the size of shop windows. Bernice peered inside the first opening she came to. As her eyes adjusted to the dim interior she saw tables and chairs laid out restaurant fashion but no people. After a moment a tray, very similar to the one that had served