Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [31]
The space pirate shrugged. 'I didn't think anybody liked the nasty little jobber.'
'Are you saying,' asked Bernice, 'that these machines have feelings?'
The space pirate looked at her, appalled. 'You really are a barbarian, aren't you?'
Roz was doing OK right up to the point where the cockroach ate the canapé. Not brilliant though, just OK. Roz didn't really like parties; she felt foolish standing around trying to make conversation with people she didn't particularly want to know. The costume didn't help. She'd found she couldn't remember how to knot the skirt properly and had to keep hitching it up over her hips.
There was a queasy lump in her stomach that told her that she'd drunk something she didn't agree with. It wasn't her fault. These damned people blurred the distinction between narcotics and honest alcohol; she could have been ingesting anything. If she ever got back to her own time and space she'd probably have to arrest herself for substance abuse.
There was dancing and that made it worse.
Twisting figures were reflected in the polished marble floor of the capacitor hall. Some danced smiling, some frowning in concentration, some with their eyes closed, out of step with the music and off in some interior world of their own.
She remembered her umakhulu – grandmother – painting flowers along the sides of her small breasts while her mama pulled at her hair and cursed its failure to braid well. They were beautifying Roz and her sister in readiness for the party. Roz and Leabie were going to dance that afternoon in honour of her father's guests. Roz felt sick, terrified that she'd forget the steps and embarrass herself. She knew she couldn't dance, the rhythm just kept slipping away from her.
Her mother was intolerant of failure.
Not that uMama cared for the guests; iZulu emhlotshana she called them – blond Zulus. Not a proper purebred family at all, but one of the new generation of nobles created by the Empress, acquiring the titles of ancient Africa to dress up the wealth they'd plundered on the high frontier.
Father wanted their support, though, for one of his complicated political intrigues, wanted it badly enough to have his daughters painted and set to dancing. He was hoping to link their families in a very old-fashioned way.
She was doing OK. This was not Baronial Krall at Kibero Patera on Io. She was not twelve. She didn't have to dance if she didn't want to. She could stand around and make conversation like a civilized human being.
Then the cockroach said, 'Excuse me.' And ate the canapé.
His mouth, his human-shaped and textured mouth, split open at the sides to allow him to extend large hairy mandibles that picked the canapé from the tip of his top leftside arm. Up until then Roz had assumed that the cockroach body was the costume and the human head the real part. Bizarre, but no worse than an exotic body bepple's she'd seen at home.
Standing in front of him Roz had an unparalleled view of the cockroach's anterior cilia, writhing like two bunches of albino worms, as they masticated the canapé and shovelled the fragments into the sucking hole of his mouth. The discarded cheeks of his mask flapped loosely on either side as the cilia processed a second canapé.
'These are very good,' said the cockroach. 'You should try one.'
A wave of chemically tainted memory crashed over Roz, filling her nostrils with the stink of dirty water and the roast pork smell of burning flesh. She felt the shocking coolness of the water against her thighs, of a palm against her breast, of fingers pulling at her hair. She saw her mother's face, Martle's face, the Doctor's face, Bernice's face, Chris's face – and finally her own face, her eyes wide open and sightless, a fist-sized hole punched through her chest where her heart ought to be.
She heard the sound of children laughing.
The cockroach was surprisingly agile for such a big creature; it managed to skip backwards fast enough to avoid most of the vomit.
'Was it something I said?' it asked politely.
But Roz was already running for the door.
They played a shooting