Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [29]
'SaRa!qava!' Bernice swept out of the lift wearing the most impractical dress saRa!qava had ever seen. The skirt was bell-shaped and so large that saRa!qava was sure it had to be supported by a suspensor field. It pulled it in tight at Bernice's waist before erupting upwards in a confusion of layers and frills of cloth that gathered at her shoulders and bodice. An enormous blonde wig added half a metre to Bernice's height. How slim her arms looked emerging from the puffs of cloth at her shoulders. Her long elbow gloves were the same white satin as the dress. SaRa!qava made a mental note to bully God into giving her the pattern later. She hadn't dyed her eyebrows to match the wig, leaving them as dark arches framing those strangely old-looking eyes.
Bernice snapped open a fan, fluttering it in front of her face. 'What do you think of the frock?'
she asked.
'It's extraordinary,' said saRa!qava. 'What's holding the skirt up?'
'Petticoats,' said Bernice, 'lots and lots of petticoats. I think you should know that I don't normally dress like this.' Bernice glanced back at the Doctor. 'Unless I have to.'
The Doctor was boringly dressed in the same crumpled linen suit he'd worn that afternoon.
Bernice caught saRa!qava's eye and winked. 'There's always one that has to be different, isn't there?'
The Doctor smiled as if complimented by this.
'Not that he's ever actually out of costume,' said Bernice.
SaRa!qava took great delight in introducing the Doctor to iRama who regarded himself as a leading light in the sphere's Gallifreyan Interest Group. The man had made the mistake of arriving in God's best guess at a Time Lord's ceremonial robes and hearing the Doctor tactfully point out the inaccuracies in the costume; this gave saRa!qava her first really good laugh of the evening.
Despite his sartorial inadequacies the Doctor was turning out to be good value as a party guest.
Still, there was something about him that made saRa!qava nervous, a sense of depth that reminded her uneasily of the times she'd talked to the really smart machines. Not the ones like God, who was by design and inclination cheerful and unassuming, but the intelligences that ran the warships and had prosecuted the war. However friendly they seemed when you talked to them, there was always the sense of depth, as if an unsympathetic rationality was ticking away beneath the façade. Like those machines, she noticed, the Doctor tended to ask more questions than he answered.
Roz was not good value as a party guest although she had some collateral advantage as a conversation piece. Plenty of people had asked saRa!qava who she was, this strange woman with grey shot hair and angry black eyes. Such old eyes, like Bernice's, although God was adamant that in strict chronological terms both women were half saRa!qava's age. Life as a barbarian hero was tough; the Barbarian Emulation Interest Group was always saying things like that. Live fast, die young. SaRa!qava guessed that with such a truncated life expectancy people like Roz had to cram in as much as they could get. And Roz was going to relive most of it if she didn't lay off the flashback she was drinking. You were supposed to mix small doses of the memory enhancer with something mellower like nostalgia. Roz had had a whole glass of the stuff; if she finished it she'd be getting memory flashes for a week. SaRa!qava frowned. She had given specific instructions that flashback was not to be included in the drinks inventory – where had Roz got hold of it?
An antique landing module spun lazily overhead, manoeuvring with little spurts from its attitude control jets. The module was a metre and a half across and saRa!qava could see tiny faces peering out of its windows. There was a name stencilled on its side – S-LIONESS. Not a drone then, a remote drone from a ship. SaRa!qava frowned. She made a point of not inviting ships to her parties: they were too unpredictable. Having seen S-Lioness, saRa!qava realized that there were at least three other ships with remote drones at the Windmills that