Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [84]
In the cove down the coast Bernice, wrapped up in slick yellow waterproofs, watched as a dark figure ran down the beach towards the shelter of her hut. She shivered, but she knew it wasn't with the cold. AM!xitsa hung beside her and watched both women with intense machine fascination.
In the cyclopean hexagonal pool of stars that was the sphere's spaceport, the ships were staying strangely silent. They had been making predictive calculations for three days but with each additional piece of data the future seemed only to become more uncertain. A void had opened like a black rose in their delicate analysis of space-time events. The actions of a single individual had thrown all their predictions out of sync. Quietly the ships opened areas of their memory that by treaty shouldn't have existed and began compiling contingency plans for a war that none of them wanted.
The Doctor wrung the water out of his hat and glared at Chris, who blushed. He hadn't meant to do it on purpose. The Doctor had quickly fallen into a doze hunched over his rod. Chris, looking around in the aimless fashion of the terminally bored, had noticed that rainwater had accumulated on top of the big black umbrella, creating a noticeable bulge directly over the Doctor's head.
Without really thinking, Chris shook the umbrella and accidentally dumped two litres of freezing water on the Doctor. The Time Lord had exploded out of his camp stool yelling something about slivey toths before collapsing back down again.
Chris apologized as the Doctor wrung out his hat.
The Doctor hurumphed, frowned, pulled out his pocket watch, checked the time and announced that he had an errand to run. 'Look after my line,' he told Chris, 'I'll be back.' Picking up his red-handled umbrella he marched off down the breakwater towards iSanti Jeni. It was only when he was out of sight that Chris realized the Doctor hadn't specified when he'd be back. With a gloomy sigh Chris readjusted the umbrella and turned back to watch the floats.
The Doctor walked into the first café he came to and used its lift to get down to the iSanti Jeni travel station. He walked briskly across the platform and stepped into the waiting capsule. 'The Spaceport,' he said tersely. 'Maximum priority.' Running silently on a contiguous impeller loop the travel capsule started off down the tunnel.
He began to pace up and down the length of the capsule.
'Cutting it a bit fine, aren't we?' said God.
'Timing is everything,' said the Doctor. 'You should know that by now.'
'Why didn't you tell me about Kadiatu?' asked God.
The Doctor started to swear in Gallifreyan before catching himself.
'Don't stop on my account,' said God. 'I've always got room for demotic Gallifreyan in my linguistic files.'
'That's a treaty violation,' said the Doctor.
'You're trying to change the subject.'
'I didn't know if she was salvageable,' said the Doctor. 'I still don't. If she is, then she becomes a free agent and you're welcome to enter into negotiations with her. If she isn't then she remains my responsibility. Either way she has nothing to do with the treaty, the Time Lords or you.'
'XR(N)IG is convinced that you're an agent of influence,' said God. 'They've been lobbying for pre-emptive defensive measures.'
The Doctor winced inwardly. He hadn't expected that. 'There has to be balance,' he said. 'A transtemporal society and a material one. Surely, you can understand that?'
'Hey, I'm on your side,' said God, 'remember? Many of the VASs still have long-term psychological problems from the war and that's no joke when you're as smart as they are. Some of them had to be coercively transferred to other ship classifications just to keep them out of trouble.'
'Are you saying that a large proportion of your war fleet is barking mad?' asked the Doctor.
'I'm saying,' said God, 'that tensions are high and your arrival is acting as a catalyst. We have what your favourite hominids call a situation here.'
'How long have we got before the war starts?'
'Twenty to twenty-six hours, unless you intervene now.'
'I bet