Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [65]
'Like the tide coming in,' said the Doctor.
'Yes,' said the drone. 'And like the waves of an advancing tide, as they progress up the beach some of the water fills the depressions in the terrain of her mind. And when the wave recedes –'
'It leaves rock pools,' said the Doctor softly. 'Rock pools of thought.'
'Or memory,' said the drone. 'I still believe she's doing most of her actual thinking when she's asleep but certainly some of the higher structures are now beginning to operate on a semi-conscious level when she's awake.'
'Can you get me close enough to see her?'
'Are you sure that's wise?'
'AM!xitsa,' said the Doctor, 'if she's beginning to regain her faculties I may not get another chance. Besides, if you're with me, how could I possibly be in danger?' The drone said nothing.
They both knew that the woman was machine fast and human unpredictable.
The hut was a low structure built of fired mud bricks with a thatched roof. She had cleared the undergrowth from around the front entrance, built a firepit and earthen kiln. On the other side was a low frame constructed from branches lashed together with vines. It puzzled the Doctor for a moment until he recognized it – a drying frame. He'd seen the like all over Africa in the twentieth century; the women built them to dry cooking pots and plates after washing up. Why had she built it? She was from the late twenty-first, had grown up amongst energy efficient TVs and solar-powered dishwashers. Whose memory had she used as a template for this anachronism?
The entrance was a rectangle of darkness in the blind face of the wall.
There had once been a leopard that fell into a trap.
The deck of the ship had been treacherous, swaying in the Atlantic swell and slippery with blood. He'd been careful moving about the ship, picking his way through the cabins at the stern, checking the bodies and the bits of bodies. Too late now he'd seen them, too late to go back to before and stop the slaughter. He found chests full of trade goods in the minor hold, glass beads from Liverpool, cheap enamelled mirrors from Bradford, knives and flintlocks from Sheffield and Manchester. Manufactured trinkets to buy and bribe their way down the West African coast. And in the main hold the shelves and manacles would be waiting for the next cargo. A human cargo.
Stinking, crying, moaning and dying until their despair was etched into the very fabric of the bulkhead walls, to be danced each morning and hosed down with seawater, the sick thrown over the side with the dead.
How they must have laughed to see her. Licked their chops and calculated her price on the auction blocks of Port Royale or New Orleans. Counted up the profit in their heads and taken it as a good omen for their venture. And making that calculation they never thought to ask why it was she smiled so broadly as she was led in chains up the gangplank.
The Doctor ducked under the lintel of the hut and stepped inside. As the octagons in his retina took over from his night-blinded rods and cones – her shape seemed to crystallize out of the darkness. A shadow shape of curves and angles – the human body in the foetal position.
Do you think I haven't thought of it? he didn't ask the sleeping woman. Do you think I didn't formulate a thousand schemes to end that particular injustice and a thousand like it? I could have armed the coastal tribes, I could have used my influence to get Hitler that place at art school.
He reached out with his hand to touch her.
'Doctor,' said aM!xitsa, 'she's just gone into REM sleep.'
His fingertips grazed the curve of her shoulder.
'Big surge there,' said aM!xitsa. 'Alpha waves just went way out of line.'
She unfolded from the bed – insect fast. He easily turned her first blow with the heel of his hand, too easily – it was a feint. Her left hand lashed up, striking for his neck. Suddenly he was out of position, out of practice and out of luck.
Then, miraculously, the hut was a rapidly receding shadow below him, nightbirds scattering