Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [56]
As Sarah followed him to the grand front door, she talked to herself like a Dutch Aunt. (Good that: a cliché caught bending and given a swift kick up the bum!) Listen to me, my girl, she said to herself. You are an investigative journalist on a story. The last thing you need is an emotional involvement with a handsome hunk who isn’t even a real human being.
You’re so right, she agreed with herself; but as she remembered the deep brown eyes (Velvety brown? Or was that another cliché?), so filled with concern, she knew she didn’t believe a word of it.
The Brigadier sipped his port. The Doctor had been right to probe. How much more was there to learn about this place? He looked up. The woman was returning; and she was full of gentle apologies.
‘The President becomes very upset if he has to face some of the more disturbing aspects of modern life,’ she said. ‘To be honest, his mind refuses to take in the plain facts.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘That’s an affliction which isn’t confined to the aged, by any means.’
The Brigadier looked at her as she continued her explanation. Neatly and unobtrusively dressed in a dark green suit, with her black hair pinned up in a serviceable bun, she nevertheless had an air of natural authority surprising in a servant, however senior. Who was she? And what position did she actually have in the President’s household?
‘We try to shield him as much as we can,’ she was saying. ‘He is very old – the father of his people. Their love for him is one of the few things which gives me hope for the future.’
Not a very servant-like thing to say. Hardly comme il faut to start interrogating your host’s domestic staff, but never mind, this ought to be cleared up.
Before the Brigadier could open his mouth, the Doctor spoke. ‘Forgive me, but you are?’ He left the question hanging in the air.
‘My name is Onya Farjen,’ she replied. ‘I suppose you could call me the President’s housekeeper.’ She turned to go. ‘I’ll leave you to drink your wine.’
She couldn’t just fob them off like that! ‘Er, there are one or two things I’d like to ask you – if you wouldn’t mind,’ the Brigadier said, awkwardly.
She turned back briefly. ‘I’ve said too much already,’ she replied. ‘Please don’t go. The President will return when he feels better.’
The Brigadier, frustrated, watched her go. ‘Pretty rum sort of housekeeper, if you ask me,’ he said, as the door slid shut. ‘Do you really believe the old chap doesn’t know what’s going on?’
The Doctor grunted.
‘Yes, but do you?’
‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t be the first President to be kept in the dark – and he won’t be the last.’
Chapter Nineteen
‘Help yourselves to a little old glass of blip-juice, do!
Rasco! Come and drigdrig like wild!’
Greckle – for that’s who it must be, thought Sarah –
grabbed the hand of a nearby guest and, silver mini-skirt twirling (Silver to match the hair framing her little round face; that wasn’t a wig – but how could dye make hair shine like an old Georgian cream jug?), she drigged her way into the mass of head-banging, shoulder-banging, belly-banging driggers. The dance left a lot to the interpretation of the individual dancers, which was just as well, since many of the alien body-shapes Sarah could see would have found a more strictly formal set of movements impossible.
Rasco, Greckle’s partner, for instance. How could he manage to dance so nimbly, if a trifle thumpily, on feet like that? What had the Doctor said? Parallel evolution? Sarah had had a maths mistress who was known as Porker, but Rasco would have won hooves down in a wart-hog look-alike contest. And the creature – person rather; one mustn’t be species-ist! – who was swaying about on twelve feathery tentacles might have been happier with an old-fashioned waltz than with the floor-shaking drigger-drig-drig-drigger-drigger-drig thud of the off-the-beat drigdrig beat.
Nevertheless, the majority of the guests were young, beautiful and Parakonian. Feeling overdressed in her trousers – the amount