Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [96]
Rumour had it that God had heard about a drowned city on a barbarian planet and decided that it sounded like a neat idea. God was also slowly sinking the city at the rate of six centimetres a month. The inhabitants had responded by adding an extra storey on to the buildings every year.
As the hydrofoil swept through the drowned streets, its wake washing against ruined stone and mildewed plasticrete, Bernice thought that she, probably better than any of the people, understood what God was about. The buildings had none of the precision that she'd seen in iSanti Jeni or the villa, the extra storeys looked like they had been hastily fabricated without concern for the style of the original. She was irresistibly reminded of an ancient city she'd once helped to excavate; it had the same accretion of layers over time, like a counterfeit artist 'ageing' a painting. God was trying to give Whynot the sense of history that was so conspicuously absent from the rest of the sphere.
Colonies of amphibian mammals lived in the half floors at the waterline. Marsh trees clung to the sides of the buildings, elephantine roots snaking down into the depths. The hydrofoil pushed a path through clumps of water lilies the size of satellite dishes and threaded its way through ornate bridges slung between the tottering houses.
It reminded Bernice of Venice; it even had the smell.
The hydrofoil pulled up against a wharf constructed from floating blocks of concrete. A cast-iron staircase led up to the first liveable floor of a sixteen-storey block that had a noticeable tilt to the left. The staircase was articulated – Bernice presumed to match the ebb and flow of the tide – its lower third slippery with algae and rust.
'Did I mention that God won't allow forcefield furniture here,' said saRa!qava as they laboured up the stairs. 'Everything has to be mechanical.'
'How does it stop people bringing stuff in?' asked Bernice.
'An inhibition field,' said saRa!qava. 'Anything non-sentient with a field component coming within a thousand kilometres just falls to bits.'
'Awkward,' said Bernice.
'Personally, I think God just does it to annoy.'
'Why come here then?'
'Because,' said saRa!qava, 'this is the only place to come if you want to do some serious shopping.'
Bernice wondered how you could go shopping in a culture without money. I mean, she thought, those once in a lifetime special reductions are going to be a bit meaningless when everything's free to start with.
They stepped around a six-centimetre-thick blast door that appeared to have been left open and rusted solid and into the building.
The interior looked like a shopping centre that had fallen into disrepair and had been subsequently converted into a flea market. There were spaces that looked like open shop fronts with merchandise hung from lintels and stacked in piles at the sides. Stalls made of driftwood or cut sections of the aquatic trees lined the spaces in between, a variety of people, organic and machine standing or sitting behind them. Bernice was immediately drawn to a shop selling leather goods, jackets and long duster-style coats hanging in sweet-smelling ranks in its dim interior. She changed her mind: it was a shopping centre that had fallen on hard times, been converted into a flea market which had then become incredibly fashionable.
'Everything is personally designed,' said saRa!qava. 'You can't order any of this stuff from central stores.'
'How does this work?' asked Bernice. 'Barter, IOUs, what?'
SaRa!qava laughed. 'Nothing like that. You just ask the stallholder for what you want.'
Bernice glanced at the stallholder, an incredibly tall man with sallow skin who was thin to the point of emaciation. He gestured politely, inviting her into his shop. She reached out to touch, a cream-coloured knee-length duster with a wide collar. 'What's to stop someone just rolling up and taking everything away.'
'Oh, that