Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [18]
She realised that she was standing in an inverted T-junction, horizontal shafts leading off to the left and right. The same concrete walls, inset conduits and xenon strips as the shaft above her.
Concrete walls, she thought. Not a station then, a planet or an asteroid base - the shafts had the look of service tunnels, lighting strips with hard edges, not the diffusion units she was used to. An old-fashioned style, someone had mentioned time travel but how far back?
She remembered a series of boxes within boxes, infinity nesting within the finite, a control room that seemed almost a parody of technology. A figure standing at a console. It too was transdimensional - something monstrous crammed down into a parody of human flesh.
The light came down on her from above, brilliant and ecstatic. The weight of it pressed her down on to her knees. Benny felt as if the light shone right through her like an x-ray laser, heating up her insides and making silhouettes of her bones.
And all the children were there, from the shelter and the long dorm at the academy. Faces as yellowed as the ancient porcelain of the doll that was centrepiece of the trophy cabinet. All those fit young bodies running into the forest, clean limbs and bright eyes waiting for her, waiting for the airburst and the butcher's knife.
Again Benny came out, still standing beneath the shaft, the cold still making the floor vibrate beneath her feet. She felt awfully alone, a deep mammalian need for human contact, for warm skin and the sweet wash of pheremones. Homesick for night-time in the long dorm with the murmur of sleeping children.
Maybe time travel fucks with your mind, thought Benny.
Piraievs
Rain fell on the pitted tarmac of the Akti Miaoulis, it rattled off the rusting steel of the ferries that listed in the grey water of the harbour. A party of archaeologists ran past the tavema, holding sheets of newsfax above their heads to keep the rain off. Kadiatu watched them splashing through the puddles towards the derelict customs house.
'We were talking,' said the Doctor, 'about the meaning of life.' He pushed a square of feta cheese around his plate. They were sitting out on the tavema's veranda which gave them an unequalled view of the crumbling docks. Rain drummed on the thatched roof overhead.
'We were?' said Kadiatu. 'Are you sure?'
The Doctor poured the remains of their second bottle of ouzo into his glass. 'Of course I'm sure. I'm always sure.' He looked around the table. 'At least I'm sure that we need another bottle.'
Kadiatu ordered another bottle of ouzo.
'Do you believe in fate?' asked the Doctor.
'No,' said Kadiatu.
'Pre-destination?'
'Only in game shows.'
The landlord's daughter arrived with the ouzo and thumped it down on the table. Kadiatu managed to grab it before the Doctor and poured herself a drink.
'So why are you here?' asked the Doctor.
Kadiatu held up her glass. 'To get drunk.'
'Why here?'
'Cheapest bar I know.'
'Why am I here then?' asked the Doctor.
'I thought you wanted a drink.'
The Doctor finished his glass and poured some more. 'I never drink,' he said. 'I'm famous for my not drinking.'
'How many bottles so far?'
'This is the fourth,' said the Doctor.
The Doctor was silent for a while, intent on the bottom of his glass. Behind them, from the tavema proper came the sound of dominoes clicking on starched linen. Kadiatu could feel the drink slowly unknotting her stomach. Across the harbour the dirty white apartment blocks clambered through the rain and up the hills to Athens.
'So why are you here?' asked Kadiatu.
'I'm celebrating,' said the Doctor without looking up.
'What are you celebrating?'
'A birthday.'
'Yours?'
'Not exactly.'
'Whose then?'
Kadiatu saw his eyes again as he looked into her face.
'The universe,' he said.
Kadiatu snorted.
'You don't think the universe has a birthday, do you?' said the Doctor. There was an angry edge to his voice. 'Well, it does. In exactly ten minutes the universe will be thirteen billion five hundred million twenty thousand