Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [53]
She remembered writing a paper about the semantics of conflict once, during a particularly excruciatingly boring journey on a clapped-out Draconian free-trader. Something about how naming a war that hadn't happened yet created an expectation that it would happen. She'd used World War III as her primary example – or had the argument been that naming the war meant that you didn't have to fight it? The Doctor had once mentioned a World War IV, did they skip III and go directly to IV?
A war against some insects, saRa!qava was saying, but everything was cool now and the insects turned out to be OK people in the end. One of them had been at the party last night –
talking to Roz of all people.
'They started it,' said saRa!qava.
Yeah, thought Bernice. Of course they did.
They tried to check the ranges by calling up data on weapons capabilities only to be informed that no such information was held in public records. 'That just means that ASBIG didn't leave any of it on public record,' said saRa!qava. ASBIG being, would you believe it, the aggressive ship-building Interest Group. 'You could always ask God, I'm sure it knows.'
'I'm trying to avoid religion at the moment,' said Bernice.
'May you be struck down by a thunderbolt,' said God. 'Oops, sorry, bad taste remark there.'
Roz woke up with the lingering aftertaste of forgotten dreams like spaces in her head. Stumbling into the bathroom she tried to wash them away with cold water from the sink and caught sight of her reflection in the floor-length mirror. There was a ghost memory of a wounding. A soundless, painless detonation between her breasts, of falling into stagnant water. She watched her reflection touch the exact spot with its fingertips and shuddered. A blaster wound, she thought, in a fatal area. Most definitely not one of her fine collection of line of duty injuries. She pulled oil from her travel kit and used her fingers to rake it through the rough untidy curls of her hair. The curls were beginning to mat near the roots, it having been too long since she'd last combed them out. She found an afro-comb in her kit and went to work, pulling ruthlessly at her hair and trying to remember a time when it hadn't been shot through with grey.
There were notes from the others scattered around the villa. Chris's glowed in mid air above the coffee pot. AERIAL RECON – CRIME SCENE W/T DOCTOR. Roz waved her hand through the letters and they vanished. In the living room Benny had left a yellow memo stuck to a pile of clothes. The note warned Roz that it was going to be hot again and that she might find these items useful. A peace offering, decided Roz. Or, having looked at the clothes, possibly a practical joke. The sleeveless top was OK, made of some lightweight cotton/silk hybrid but she had to lie on her back on the sofa with her legs in the air to wriggle into the lycra shorts. She found the final note written on lavender writing paper and placed in her blaster carry case. She recognized the spidery hand as the Doctor's.
My dear Roslyn. As you know we find ourselves faced with an interesting mystery here.
Chris is likely to be somewhat distracted by other interests. Bernice too is liable to find her attention diverted by other matters. For reasons that I am unable to articulate, my own scope for action is severely circumscribed in these circumstances. I am therefore relying