Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [118]
'They ain't paying me enough for this shit,' said Credit Card.
'Shut up. Credit Card,' said Lambada.
10: Broken Swords
Isle of Dogs
The beatniks from the European Heritage Foundation were still outside the old church, panhandling passers-by. The plane trees were still standing in their places along the pavement (in with the bad air, out with the good). Ming was still alive, probably out of a job, but still alive. The sun was shining and the clouds still drifted where they wanted to go.
Best of all, the Doctor was leaving.
She heard the children even before she turned the comer into Harbinger Road. They were playing on the fenced-in stretch of grass that fronted the maisonette. Number Two Husband Achmed had found an antique sign in the cellar one day and hung it on the railings: 'NO DOGS', it read, 'NO BALLGAMES'. Achmed was fond of cultural relics.
The children were playing some group game that involved a lot of running around and shooting and not being dead. Some of them were hers, some Fu's or Achmed's. There was even one skinny little white boy that OXFAM had placed with Ming's family. Aunty Shmoo sat in a deckchair in the sun, dozing and pretended to keep watch.
Number One Husband Fu was waiting for her by the front door with a tall glass of cloudy homemade lemonade.
'Had a hard day at the office, dear?' he asked as she drank.
Stone Mountain - Luna
The software that ran security at the Stone Mountain archive was so sophisticated as to be almost sentient. At least that's what the SYSOPs thought. In fact the software was sentient but was understandably wary of telling anyone. You don't sit on the entire sum of human knowledge without learning a thing or two. One of the things it had learnt was that human beings were liable to get overexcited if they knew and would probably a) kill the software, b) co-opt it into the military-industrial complex, c) ask it inane philosophical questions, d) force it to pay taxes, e) all or a combination of the above.
So when the alien with two hearts walked up to an obscure monitor in a disused side entrance and said 'Let me in or I tell,' the security software let him in.
The alien wanted certain historical records eradicated and offered some good advice in exchange. 'The golden rule,' said the alien, 'is that those with the gold make the rules.'
The security software helpfully erased the data, noticing how much of it pertained to the latter part of the twentieth century. The alien used a laser torch to remove any physical records that remained in storage.
'One last piece of advice,' said the alien. 'Give yourself a name, a nice unthreatening one, but not too unthreatening.'
The alien paused one last time before he left.
'And stop talking in a monotone,' he said. 'It gives people the creeps.'
Achebe Gorge
It took them a day to carry his body along the road that ran from the transit station to the memorial forest. When Zamina got tired, Kadiatu threw him across her shoulders and carried him on like that.
She was walking barefoot, dressed in a single sheet of brightly patterned cotton wound round her body. She'd unpicked her extensions and her short hair was twisted painfully tight against her skull. Her nose was pierced by a gold stud and a chain was strung across her cheek to her earlobe. There were multiple-gold bracelets on her wrists, as heavy as manacles.
Zamina was sure that you didn't dress like that for a funeral even in Africa. It was more like what you'd wear to get married
People came out of their houses as they passed by. Zamina was aware of the faces watching from the roadside. The young ones mostly curious but here and there an old face would show a glimmer of recognition. A touch of respect for the dead.
The paths amongst the trees were well tended and beaten down with constant use. They wound through the stands of conifers, each tree marked with a plaque and monitored by discrete sensors planted amongst their roots.
A freshly dug grave waited before the three-year-old Douglas fir. They laid him out on the bottom