Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [88]
'What did you find out?' asked feLixi.
'Oh,' said the Doctor, 'this and that. They do like to gossip ships do, especially when they're in dock. Worse than Tuesday morning at the town pump in a small Welsh village. They thought they might have to have a war but I talked them out of it.'
'That's nice,' said saRa!qava. 'Anything we should worry about?'
The Doctor shrugged. 'The heat death of the Universe,' he said, 'but the diary's pretty much clear until then.' He asked how the fishing went and Chris told him about the talking fish, except this time he stated that the fish was at least three times as long as his outstretched arms. 'More than that surely,' said feLixi. The Doctor grinned and said they'd obviously got the hang of the sport.
'I don't suppose you bothered to ask whether he had seen anything odd in the last couple of days,' said the Doctor. 'Thought not. If you want something done you have to do it yourself.' He stood up and made for the door.
'Doctor,' said saRa!qava, 'where are you going?'
'Fishing,' said the Doctor.
The Doctor cast bread onto the face of the dark water, nimble fingers tearing the crusts off and flicking them into the sea below the breakwater. As it grew darker the lighthouse groaned out of its recess. He was amused to hear that it apparently ran on clockwork. The sound of iSanti Jeni starting its evening promenade floated over the harbour, voices and music echoing off the streamlined shadows of the boats that bobbed in the water. He would have liked to have repeated his performance: card tricks, sleight of hand, perhaps a bit of juggling. Such simple tricks for so technologically sophisticated a culture but the audience had lapped them up. It occurred to the Doctor that the audience must have assumed that he wasn't using any technological trickery during his show. They seemed to appreciate skill here, rather than results.
It would have been nice to walk back to the esplanade and become a mere entertainer once more.
A great and unexpected sadness welled up in him, a regret that he couldn't just juggle and play the spoons and pull coins out of the ears of children. It was such a small, human regret. So tiny and insignificant when set against the vast crimes he had committed. Perhaps this incarnation of himself, this small man with his panama hat and red umbrella was meant somehow to caper for an audience, to sing for its supper.
Bring happiness to a few but misery to no one.
He remembered a song, a scratchy old 78 record with some unknown blues singer with a voice pulled from a landscape of dusty roads and strange fruit. I get so weary following this old road/It don't go nowhere but damnation. That voice was coming out of time and speaking to him alone.
That ol' dusty road undulating off to the horizon and the rich smell of freshly turned soil. He shuddered. And behind, the bodies twisting in the wind, blood on the leaves and blood on the ground. Human sacrifices on the road to nowhere.
Frightening that a voice could pick itself out of the grooves in the vinyl, drifting in and out like a Billie Holiday solo, breaking down the walls and storming the fortress of his soul.
Frightening that someone knew.
He wanted to walk back to the esplanade and stand in the spotlight with his hat placed at his feet. Wanted a different road so badly it was like an ache in his chest.
Wanted to give up the responsibility for good.
He threw another piece of bread into the sea.
He went through two whole loaves of bread before the fish finally deigned to show up.
Politely the Doctor lowered himself on to his haunches so that his face was closer to that of the fish. Because he was curious the Doctor allowed himself a few moments to ask the fish why it was a fish.
'Got myself reconstructed, didn't I,' said the fish. 'I could have been an aquatic mammal but I figured if you were going to drop out you might as well go all the way.'
'Are there many others like you?' asked the Doctor.
'Couple of million,' said the fish. 'Mostly associates of the Voluntary Devolution