Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [10]
& Guilds in moral support.’ He beamed the smiliest of smiles. ‘First class!’
‘I’m worried about her,’ said Col, checking the locks on the cages and throwing the clipboard onto Ty’s desk. It narrowly missed her coffee cup, the one with the picture of the kitten with its paws up in the air and the caption saying: ‘You’ll never take me alive!’
Ty snatched the cup up in an easy, fluid gesture.
‘Hey!’ she said, her voice deep, but tinged, as always, with just a hint of amusement.
‘She’ll be fine – Candy knows the Slim Forest like the back of her hand. Anyways up. . . ’ He plonked himself in an orange plastic chair across the desk from Ty. ‘What’s the result of the latest maze test?’
He threw a glance towards the other side of the timber-walled room where twelve cages sat, three rows of four. Each contained an otter –
most of them curled up on the dried leaves they gave them for bedding. A couple were sitting back on their haunches, watching the two humans talk about them. Ty shook her head and ran her fingers through her braided, black hair. She’d been talking about getting it cut for a while, but Col knew that was all it was: talk. Ty was too proud of her braids to let anyone at them with a pair of scissors.
‘Same as before: the newer ones are about sixty per cent worse at it than the older ones. I took the three from last week out earlier and let them go: they were beginning to work out how to work the locks.
Too clever by half, some of ’em.’
‘Sssh!’ Col chided her with a grin. ‘They might hear you! Who knows how sensitive they might be? You don’t want to hurt their little egos. Not with those claws, anyway.’
Ty smiled.
‘If you ask me, it’s the ones we’ve caught in the last two days that we have to be nice to.’ She raised her voice and directed her words at the cages. ‘They’re the dim-but-aggressive ones.’
Col turned to look – they were still getting back on track with their research into the otters since the flood had washed away almost everything they’d done before. And they were no closer to working out why the otters seemed to get smarter and smarter the longer they were in captivity.
‘Just don’t tell Pallister, that’s all.’ Ty’s voice had dropped in volume and in pitch. Col knew what was coming. He rolled his eyes and slid his half-empty cup across the desk. He really didn’t want this conversation again.
‘I’ve told you, Pallist–’
‘Pallister’s an opportunist,’ Ty cut in. ‘He’d never have been elected Chief Councillor if it hadn’t been for the flood. And a right mess-up he’s made of the reconstruction.’
‘Oh, and you could have done better?’
Ty waved his comment away.
‘I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is that he’s out to make a name for himself. He’s an old-style colonial. Future only knows why they let him come out here. No, scratch that: I know why they let him come out here. Because he was a middle-ranking nobody of a technician who had a few organisational skills and knew people in the right places. And with the flood, he’s come bobbing to the surface like. . . ’
Her voice tailed off as she realised what she was about to say. ‘Anyway, if Pallister gets it into his head the otters are halfway intelligent, he’ll have ’em rounded up, chain-ganged and set to work building houses or whatever. It’ll be Lucius Prime and the lemurs all over again, and we all know how that ended.’
There was a sudden clumping noise outside and the wooden door to the lab was thrown open. Standing there, illuminated by the overhead fluorescents, was Candy, sopping wet. She had a strange look on her face.
‘Hiya,’ she smiled – but it was a tight, awkward smile.
‘What’s up, honey?’ asked Ty instantly, jumping to her feet.
Without answering, Candy stepped inside. Behind her was someone else – a someone else dressed in a weird, dark-brown two-piece with a couple of buttons down the front, a muddy white undershirt and some sort of tie around his neck. His face was smeared with dirt and his drenched hair was struggling to spring up. He grinned brightly, and it was as though