Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [63]
The Doctor returned to the kitchen table and amused himself by chopping the onions into transparent slices.
A sound came to him as he bent over the kitchen table. It floated down through the wide rooms of the house, picking up reverbs and random echoes. The Doctor smiled when he heard it. It was the sound of children laughing.
Kadiatu chased him up the narrow stairs to the attic. Blondie just managed to keep ahead of her, one hand stretched out for balance, the other holding up the bath towel. He'd stepped out of the bathroom and met her on the landing. They'd faced each other for a moment, a big grin spreading across her face, and then Blondie bolted for his room.
He wasn't fast enough to get the door closed before Kadiatu burst in. She stood in the doorway looking him up and down, her eyes filled with a kind of lazy wickedness.
'Not bad,' she said and grabbed him.
She kissed him straight on, African style, black eyes boring into his. Making it a contest to see who would blink first. She pushed her hands under the towel to grab his buttocks. Blondie grabbed at her T-shirt and they broke apart so he could pull it over her head. They fell towards the bed, twisting to come down on their sides. Kadiatu made pedalling motions with her legs, trying to kick off her jeans. Blondie heard the belt buckle thump on to the carpet, the touch of her skin against his chest and thighs was as shocking as the sea.
The old springs in the bed creaked as she moved astride him, one hand reaching down to guide him in. They stayed motionless at fust getting used to the feel of each other. From the window rectangles of sunlight were texture mapped around Kadiatu's body, turning her skin a golden brown. Blondie traced the edges with his fingertips, letting them wander up her side and across the top of her breasts. She laughed.
'Do you always look so serious?'
'I'm a serious kind of guy.'
Kadiatu grinned down at him and rocked her hips from side to side. 'Too serious by half.'
&nbps;
The water in the gallon saucepan on the stove was beginning to boil nicely. 'Not complex enough,' muttered the Doctor as he poured an exact amount of salt into the water. He was used to being underestimated, in fact it was almost impossible for him to be overestimated, but not complex enough? It was insulting.
He emptied two kilos of pasta into the boiling water. One of them was bound to be very hungry tonight.
Would Benny have killed him? He'd sensed hesitation on her part; perhaps he should have waited to find out. As an experiment it had a certain validity. If it had been Ace would he have waited to find out? Perhaps not.
Complexity, thought the Doctor, is a matter of scale. Not seeing the wood for the trees. Individual people, snowflakes, that sort of thing.
The onions went into the black iron frying pan. It didn't need oil; years of grease had created a slick patina on the iron that was far better than Teflon.
A machine intelligence? Even the Cybermen would make a differentiation between individuals, if only on the basis of potential. A computer or patterned energy intelligence would probably do the same. Since it was exploiting human beings, it must be aware of them but without differentiating between them.
The Doctor held up a tin of tomatoes, concentrated for a moment and banged his index finger against it. The lid popped off and fell with a clatter on to the kitchen floor. He repeated the process with the second tin and put them back on the counter. Then he stooped down to pick up the lids.
The problem with alien intelligences, thought the Doctor as he put the lids in his coat pocket, is that they're alien.
It uses and modifies human beings, it operates within the confines of the transit system and displays tactical awareness. It was working towards definite goals and ambitions, the Doctor was sure of that despite his lack of supporting evidence, and yet it didn't regard him as a threat even with active intelligence of his capabilities. So how intelligent was this intelligence?
And by what