Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [26]
'Attention!' The volume made Mariko's teeth rattle.
'All of those unwilling to volunteer for transmogrification - take one step backwards.'
Mariko squirmed against the unyielding concrete of the wall.
'Excellent,' said the President, 'that's what I like to see.' He stretched out both hands and plunged them into their chests Mariko looked down and saw his index finger sinking into the flesh between her breasts as if it were putty. She felt the knuckle scrape against a rib as it was pushed in.
I feel no pain, Mariko said to herself, I must be in shock She said it again and again, a mantra against madness as she felt the fingers scrabbling about like rats in her chest cavity She saw the President set his shoulders and push.
Then there was pain.
Lunarversity
The Doctor dreamt of Ace running under the brilliant blue sky of Heaven. In his dream her eyes were the colour of amber, slotted like a cheetah's, and her hair flew behind her like a mane. Not a cat, thought the Doctor and the words rang in his dream ears, never that self-absorbed. You were always a wolf to me, proud and headstrong, tireless and loyal. Out on the open plain Ace threw back her head and howled. The sound floated over the ranked graves of the planet, full of pain and betrayal.
He woke up with a blinding headache.
His sensory impressions were garbled by the pain. He was under something soft and heavy. There was someone sleeping next to him, there was a sensation of a confined space, perhaps a small room and his nose was cold. He tried opening his eyes, shadows, blurred images on the ceiling above, more pain. He closed his eyes again.
His mouth tasted of aniseed.
He'd been drinking which was unusual. He'd had a taste for wine once, at least wine of a good vintage; then a taste for beer; then he seemed to remember giving it up in favour of cricket.
The Doctor elevated his primary heart rate and managed to crank up his kidney action a bit. It wasn't easy; kidneys were not something he'd had a lot of practice with. That took care of the toxins in his blood but he suspected there were still some ethanol molecules cruising round his cerebellum and distracting his neurons. Complex little hydrocarbons wearing black bomber jackets and slinging cans of high-explosive deodorant at his defenceless braincells.
His headache was beginning to subside and he felt better. Nothing like being a Time Lord to iron out life's little ups and downs.
He tried opening his eyes again.
There were images on the ceiling, a sharp thousand-line projection with good perspective and no sound. In the foreground an enormously fat man was shouting noiselessly. Behind him an expressionistic set gave the impression of a forest out of which reared the huge blunt nose of an ICBM. The fat man was wearing a half mask which incorporated the front half of a straw hat and was carrying a red umbrella.
It was all terribly symbolic.
Another man, not quite as fat as the first, entered stage left, dressed in military uniform and a large moustache. The fat man in the mask closed his mouth with a snap. The second fat man drew in a breath, the chest swelled, the mouth opened.
Not shouting, realised the Doctor - singing, and judging by the way he held his chin, a bass. The first fat man opened his mouth again and it became a duet. The emotions expressed seemed to be complex, part the meeting of old friends and part a conflict of ideologies. The Doctor tried lip reading but all he got was a sense that the libretto was in Italian.
What he wanted was the remote control. He followed the line of projection down with his eyes but it terminated beyond the foot of the bed. The Doctor sat up for a better look; beside him the lump in the duvet shifted slightly. He stopped still until the movement subsided. The room had the dimensions of a monastic cell and once out of the eiderdown he realized how cold it was. The projection