Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [56]
Many of the passers-by stopped briefly by their table to say hello to saRa!qava and have themselves introduced to Bernice. Someone the size of a man and the shape of a cockroach sauntered over and thanked them for a wonderful party last night. 'I do hope your friend is feeling better this morning,' said the cockroach to Bernice. 'Please give her my regards.'
'I'll be sure to do that,' said Bernice.
A quartet of very human-looking women walked past, wearing sun hats with outrageous brims and pushing a gigantic bath chair. Something touched her memory like the brush of a butterfly's wing. Bernice turned to ask saRa!qava who the women were but when she turned back again they had vanished. The slapping sound of the waves against the harbour wall came back before she noticed it had gone.
'Is this crude little thing really going to help?' asked God.
'If solving this murder was a mere matter of getting the right database,' said Bernice, 'you'd have done it already. Isn't that right, Mr Omniscient?'
'Please don't call me that,' said God. 'Too many people think it's true.'
'Isn't it?' asked saRa!qava. 'That's the first time I've heard that.'
'I'm just very well informed,' said God. 'There's a big difference.'
'Why do they call you God then?' asked Bernice.
'It was a joke, a nickname I got when I was still creating myself.'
'Well, if you could get off your pantheon for a moment,' said Bernice, 'you can tell me whether you monitored any large energy surges the night of the murder.'
'Apart from a gigantic thunderstorm?'
'Apart from that.'
'Not a sausage.'
'So much for that theory.'
'Is that Roz?' asked saRa!qava, pointing up the breakwater.
'I'm not sure,' said Bernice. It could have been Roz except the walk was wrong. The movement was slow, relaxed and upright, with a sway to the hips that wasn't at all like the Roz Forrester that Bernice knew. The woman saw them watching and waved, Bernice waved back. The woman strode towards them, a brisk impatient march that was so instantly recognizable that Bernice had to wonder whether she'd been tricked by the distance. All that sunlight glaring off the water, she told herself. I need sunglasses.
'How's it going?' asked Roz.
Bernice told her about the time telescope and the frustrating little gaps where the data was stored in someone's mind. Roz frowned when she heard about the ships and their long-range weaponry. She said she thought she might be able to fill in some of the gaps. 'I met a guy called feLixi at the party,' she said to saRa!qava. 'Does he live locally?'
'Just the other side of town.'
Roz asked for directions and saRa!qava pointed down the esplanade with instructions to turn right at the end and look out for the weirdest looking building. 'That's feLixi's.'
When Roz was a safe distance away saRa!qava turned to Bernice and raised an eyebrow. 'Well,'
she said, 'you don't think?'
'I'm certainly not going to think it,' said Bernice, 'thank you very much.'
***
'What kind of game is long-distance brownian motion?' asked Chris, hoping to put the Doctor off his next shot.
The Doctor squinted down the length of the deck, figuring out the angles. The red target puck was currently at the centre of a grid of white squares painted on the deckplanks. Chris had managed to place three of his yellow pucks in a rough line between the red puck and the starting line. He couldn't see how the Doctor was going to get around him, not without going for a trick shot that ricocheted off the cabin bulkhead and that was all cluttered by the legs of divans and sunchairs lined up against it.
'It's a guessing game that the machines play,' said the Doctor. 'They tag a molecule