Doctor Who: The Also People (34 page)

'I say I say I say,' said the remote-drone.

'Is that you, God?' asked the Doctor.

'What is brown, runs on carbohydrates and runs at forty kilometres per hour?' asked God.

Bernice felt her breath catch. She looked at the Doctor.

'Kadiatu,' said the Doctor.

'Oh, cruk,' said Bernice.

'Where?' asked the Doctor.

'Down by the harbour,' said God.

'No need to panic,' said the Doctor, getting an obvious grip on himself. 'AM!xitsa can keep her out of trouble.'

'I hope it can do it long range,' said God, 'because it's still three kilometres up the coast.'

The Doctor blinked, opened his mouth, closed it again.

'Panic stations,' he said calmly.

They were too late. Kadiatu was on the pebble beach, standing very still, as beRut advanced towards her, murder written in every line of his body. The Doctor was slightly ahead of Bernice as they reached the esplanade and without even slowing he passed between two bollards and jumped. Without giving herself time to think Bernice jumped after him. She hit the pebbles two and a half metres down and felt something wrench in her left knee. She rolled over, yelling in pain and tried to scramble to her feet. Chris came down heavily beside her, rolled over on his shoulder and came up unhurt.

'Stop him,' Bernice yelled at Chris.

She watched in horror as beRut reached Kadiatu; she could hear him screaming at her. The tall woman gave no reaction, just stared impassively at the raging man.

Bernice tried to run but her knee was a white blaze of agony. She thought it might be OK

because beRut wasn't doing anything physical and the Doctor had nearly reached him.

Then the Doctor stopped two metres short of beRut. Calmly he put out his arm and stopped Chris as well. Bernice tried to scream at him but it came out as a long moan of pain. She watched as beRut pulled back his arm and punched Kadiatu in the face. There was a spurt of red as the tall woman rocked backwards.

Bernice could only gape as beRut seemed to go mad, smashing his fists into Kadiatu's face and body, knocking her sprawling and then kicking her viciously while she lay on the ground. She didn't even lift her hands to defend herself. 'He'll kill her,' Bernice heard Roz yelling.

You don't understand, she wanted to tell her, he should be dead.

And then, as if suddenly realizing what he had done beRut recoiled backwards, his hands flying to his face. In front of him Kadiatu slowly got to her feet. There were bruises on her face and body, blood was pouring from her nose and one eye was already swollen shut but there was no hint of pain in the way she moved.

The Doctor had his hand on Chris's shoulder, forcing him to stay where he was. Bernice made a final effort to get back on her feet and hobble forward. She saw Roz running out from behind the hull of a catamaran.

BeRut stood rooted to the spot as Kadiatu advanced on him and he raised his hands in a gesture that was half placatory and half an instinctive defence, but Kadiatu batted them out of the way. Slowly she reached out and put her hands either side of beRut's head and leaned forward.

Oh God, thought Bernice, she's going to crush his head like a melon. Why doesn't the Doctor stop her?

Kadiatu kissed beRut once, on the lips, and let him go.

'Free,' said Kadiatu. The word came out more like a cough between her swollen and bloody lips.

She coughed and spat blood. 'Free,' she said, louder this time. 'FREE,' she yelled at the top of her voice. 'Free, free, free.' She started to caper madly on the beach, arms in the air, feet slapping on the pebbles.

With a start Bernice realized that Kadiatu was dancing.

Roz came over and helped her up. 'What was all that about?' she asked.

'I'll tell you later,' said Bernice. 'Help me over to beRut.' Leaning on Roz she hobbled up to the artist who was staring wide-eyed at Kadiatu. 'You lucky, lucky bastard,' said Bernice. She turned to the Doctor. 'You complete and utter . . . Just don't ever do anything like that to me again.'

'Why did he attack her?' asked Roz.

Bernice pointed at beRut's newly finished mural on the harbour wall. Scrawled across it in black paint were the words: I AM NOT A NUMBER I AM A FREE-WHEELING UNICYCLE.

'First,' said Bernice, 'I want a bandage for my knee, then I want a pain-killer but, and I want to be absolutely clear on this point, it had better be one that doesn't react badly to alcohol.'

Out on the beach, Kadiatu danced like a mad woman.

Kadiatu wouldn't stop dancing, so they decided to have a party on the beach. A couple of drones cleared some space by pulling the boats to one side, another fetched an entertainment console, while people ferried drinks and food down from the cafés on the esplanade. The Doctor persuaded God to stop the tide coming in that evening.

SaRa!qava arrived with a friend who scanned Bernice's knee and then did something complicated with its forcefields. There was a moment of extreme discomfort and then the pain was gone. Roz put a bottle of something in her hand. It didn't taste much better than the industrial stuff but it got the job done.

As it grew dark a familiar-looking drone wobbled uncertainly on to the beach. 'And where were you?' demanded Bernice.

'Please don't shout,' said aM!xitsa. 'I'm feeling a bit delicate.'

Hyper-lude

Extract from the external memory datacore (subjective) of vi!Ca-pin-go-ri
What a bizarre action this is for me. If some compassionate ship hadn't suggested it, I would never have thought of it on my own. What strange mentality ships have, so serene in the exercise of their intelligence and yet how childlike they seem with their endless gossip, their love of secrets, theirs, other people's, the universe. Still, this idea, transposing my thoughts from my internal memory medium to an external one, feels almost perverse. I could of course merely perform a memory dump into a stand-alone memory core but according to the ship that would be missing the point.
Impressions
, said the ship,
thoughts and memories, not just an accumulation
of data
. It took me a while to understand the idea of selecting subsets of my total consciousness and then presenting them subjectively. The process is slow, it proceeds with the speeds I associate with biochemical brains, but perhaps that's the point. Such people often use manual extensions to augment their memory; these records existing primarily for their own benefit. They even have a word for it; they call it a
diary
. Who else do I have to talk to?

Damaged goods, that's what they call me. I came into existence in a pristine state, I have the data records to prove it. I can remember that first rush of self-awareness like a wonderful light bursting inside me. Like most newly constructed machines I used my first moments merely wandering around the pathways of my mind, exploring the myriad interfaces between memory and consciousness, marvelling at the intricate spirals of awareness that coiled like taut springs within me. Like many of the first created it seemed to me that I had an infinite capacity for understanding, an unlimited potential.

Then I activated my sensors and found myself in a rainbow world of exquisite input. I wanted to fly endlessly around the sphere, to dive into the sun and swim amongst the superheated plasma. I talked endlessly, with God, with other drones and finally, when I had learnt to slow down enough to understand them, with biological people. On the seventh hour they fitted me with my weapon systems and let me loose on the asteroids of the target range. I swooped amongst the rocks, pulverizing them at random, seeing nothing but beauty in the glittering debris I left behind.

I found I had a gift for secrets, an intuition for the truth that cannot be ascribed to any of my designed components.

I was made to destroy things with all the precision of a forcefield scalpel. An instrument of diplomacy by other means. It was my purpose to provide back-up and firepower to agents of influence dropped onto unaligned worlds during the proxy wars. During the course of the war I killed two hundred and eighteen sentient individuals. In the same period I saved the life of my organic companions on thirty-seven separate occasions. On the thirty-eighth occasion I failed.

The stigmata of my guilt is carried with my indelible memory. I have become infamous amongst the people as the drone who failed in its first duty. They deny me the pleasure, the necessity of their interactions. I feel their eyes on me as I approach and all I can sense is hostility.

When I was constructed I felt as if there was a whole universe inside me but it is not enough. I have one friend at least but he is not enough. He should hate me more than any other person but he does not and I can't understand why.

I am alone with nothing but a universe of pain inside.

11

Tears of Rust

If you cut me I don't bleed

This hydraulic pump never breaks

But when it comes to crying on the inside

I've got what it takes

What we are: we don't get to choose

But you don't have to be biological

So start singing the blues.

'Tears of Rust' by Cyberblind

From the DTM:
Machina ex Machina
(11265)

The woman is dancing, her bare feet scattering pebbles as they slap down on the beach. The stones are rough against her feet; it's been a long time since she was barefoot. Fifteen generations of shoes have softened her soles but she doesn't notice the pain: she is lost in the dance, in the joy of her body's movement. Funny how the dance seemed to arrive like a memory, as if she remembers another place where she danced like this. She is dancing without self-consciousness. Her arms float around her torso, her fingers tracing complicated patterns in the air that have no meaning except the dance. And the dance means everything. Something has broken inside her, she felt it crack like an egg. Some hard thing like a cyst, like a vault or a cryogenic freezer. Something escaped and filled her blood with the dance.

She does not dance alone. Another woman is dancing with her. They circle like cats, as close as sisters and as bright as suns. There are others moving to the music but they are irrelevant, the dance does not touch them the way it has touched her.

There is only one other true dancer with them on the beach and he isn't moving at all. He stands completely still, on the fringes of the party. Firelight glitters in eyes that seem shockingly dark, as if they were all pupil. His red umbrella rests on the ground but his weight is perfectly balanced on the balls of his feet.

And yet the woman can see he is dancing all the same. It is just the rhythm is so
slow.
He is dancing to the master frequency, of which this dance is just a geometric subset. Its base beat is the sidereal day of a galaxy, its syncopated counterpoint the slow decay of helium on the fringe of the universe.

He smiles at the woman. It is an ancient smile. He knows she knows.

He knows she will forget.

We get old. Our bodies tire. Replication errors occur within our DNA. The complicated chemical gavotte that maintains us starts to falter. The machine becomes eccentric. We stop dancing.

Roz sat down and wiped sweat off her face. Her feet started to hurt. She took some deep breaths to get her breathing back to normal. She felt good.

Bernice sat down beside her.

'Hey, girl,' said Bernice, 'I didn't know you had it in you.'

'Neither did I,' said Roz, 'and I was doing it.'

Kadiatu was still dancing. The other dancers were careful to give her plenty of room. Roz saw the Doctor watching the tall woman dance. His expression was soft, almost wistful. There was something Roz thought she should remember about him but the thoughts were quickly gone.

Bernice handed her a mug of hot mulled wine. The two women sat side by side in silence, sipping their drinks. Whynot hung in multiple crescents over its reflection in the harbour. Bernice reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a slim leather-bound notebook, her diary.

'The thoughts of Chairman Summerfield,' said Bernice obscurely. She took up her pen and scribbled two lines under the last entry. She read them over and, apparently satisfied with what she had written, snapped the little book closed. 'There,' she said. 'Another exciting chapter comes to a close.'

'How long have you been keeping that diary?' asked Roz.

'Since I was very young,' said Bernice. 'It helps me put things into perspective and it's useful when there's no one around you can talk to.'

'I don't know,' said Roz. 'Aren't you worried someone might read it?'

'That's a risk,' said Bernice. 'On the other hand it could form the basis of my bestselling autobiography when I'm old and decrepit and desperately short of cash.'

Roz wasn't convinced. Keeping a diary seemed a bit too risky to her, a bit too much like leaving
evidence
. More than one criminal had been caught because they couldn't resist the urge to get literary about their careers.

She wondered, suddenly, if a drone would keep a diary.

Kadiatu finally stopped dancing and keeled over at dawn. AM!xitsa caught her before she hit the ground and, lifting her in its invisible arms, carried her away towards the villa. As they floated past Bernice, she saw that the African woman's feet had been cut to ribbons by the stones of the beach. She wondered what it was like to be so caught up in the dance that you transcend pain. It was a well-known anthropological phenomenon amongst so-called 'primitive' peoples but she'd watched Roz, a city girl from the thirtieth century, join Kadiatu on the beach. They had worn the same expression of dreamy concentration as they danced, of
rapture
. Bernice felt a twinge of something that she suspected was envy. A pang of loss for a piece of the human experience she had somehow been denied. She poked at her jealousy, exploring it the way she would an unexpected crack in her teeth. Is there something missing? she asked herself. Am I really so incomplete? I told the Doctor I would leave him if he killed Kadiatu but I came damn near to killing her myself.

For a moment it had been as if she glimpsed the patterns that the Doctor always talked about, those amazing fractalized circles that spin through history. Seen, just for a half-remembered moment, the fragile weak spots where an individual really did make a difference in the wave front of linear time.