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By Root 710 0

them. Something nasty and biological in the punch, a nightmare recombining cocktail that ate away their flesh so that it fell from their bones and slopped all over the deep pile carpet.

It would have done more to clean up the world than everything I've done in twenty-five years on the streets . . .

Someone was watching her.

Roz spun round, the water dragged at her thighs and she almost fell over.

The Doctor was standing on the dunes with his back to her, next to where she'd piled her armour. His stance was so theatrically courteous that she could read the artifice in his back – a gentleman preserving the proprieties in front of a lady.

'Molo ntombazana,' called the Doctor.

'Molo mhlekazi,' replied Roz, surprised that she could remember the correct response in Xhosa.

'So formal?' said the Doctor. 'Surely we're friends?'

Roz waded back to the beach and started putting on her clothes. 'The only other title I could think of was utat'omkhulu.'

'Grandfather,' the Doctor chuckled. 'I haven't been called that in a long time.'

'And I haven't been called a young woman for at least twenty years.' The undertunic felt sticky as she pulled it over her wet skin. 'And I haven't spoken Xhosa since I left home.'

'Does it feel strange?'

'Very,' said Roz. 'You can turn round now; I'm decent.' She pushed at the pile of armour with her foot. Wearing it suddenly seemed such a childish idea.

'Leave it,' said the Doctor. 'No one will take it.'

'What if the tide comes in?'

The Doctor used the heel of his shoe to scratch a design in the sand, a couple of angular symbols like those on the beach-bar's table and an arrow pointing to the armour. 'God will spot that and send a drone to take your things back to the villa.'

He proffered her his arm. ' Sahamba,' he said; let's go.

Roz turned her back on the armour and took the Doctor's arm. They started back down the beach.

' Wafunda isiXhosa ngapi?'

'I was stuck in a prison and one of the prisoners taught me to speak it,' said the Doctor. 'He taught me a lot about patience too. And how sometimes being without power is a form of power.'

' Kwenzikani?'

'He stayed in prison until the people who put him there finally broke down and started negotiating with him. He refused to be released until they acceded to his demands.'

'Did he win?'

'Yes and no,' said the Doctor. 'He got what he wanted but the price was high. He was absent from the weddings of his children and the funeral of his mother. All the rights, privileges and duties of a man were denied him. He found himself a stranger in a brave new world.'

'Was it worth it?'

'He thought so,' said the Doctor. 'Or at least he thought it was necessary. Somebody had to make that sacrifice, if only for the sake of the children.'

'Jeez, Doctor,' said Roz, 'sometimes you're a real fun guy to talk to.'

'And such a beautiful day for it too,' said the Doctor. ' Uphi uKhrisi leBeni?'

'Benny was gone when I woke up,' said Roz. 'Chris was playing in the sea. Found himself a friend.'

'Oh yes,' said the Doctor. ' Intombazana perhaps? Pretty?'

'From what I could see.'

The Doctor laughed; it was a delightful, innocent sound. 'Oh, to be young and resilient again.'

'Slice,' said saRa!qava.

One of the floating loaves of bread instantly exploded into a shower of neatly edged slices. Roz flinched, the Doctor looked up curiously, Bernice carried on talking to saRa!qava. She'd already been through the exploding bread routine at breakfast. A cast-iron breadboard swooped off a shelf and intercepted the slices as they fell out of the air.

Chris was up on the lounge level playing a game with the older children and a young woman called Dep who had turned out to be saRa!qava's daughter. Her real biological daughter, mind you, not just a close cousin or some stranger who'd wandered into the household one day and never got around to leaving. If you overlooked the fact that Dep was a different colour, had independently mobile hair and a distinctively different elbow joint arrangement you could see they were related; something about the nose and mouth.

The breadboard