Doctor Who: The Also People (38 page)

'Will you have companions?'

'Got one already,' said Kadiatu and glanced at aM!xitsa.

'Is that true?' Roz asked the drone.

'Who, me?' said aM!xitsa. 'Explore the entire cosmos of space/time, meet new civilizations and patronize them rigid? I've got much better things to do, knitting patterns to finish, interesting pebbles to collect. Besides I've yet to be convinced that Kadiatu will be capable of getting her machine to go where and when she wants it.'

'Good choice,' said Bernice.

'Actually it's all part of a deal with God,' said Kadiatu. 'We'll act as its temporal back-up, just in case the High Council welsh on the treaty.'

'Will you go home?'

Kadiatu shook her head. 'Not for a very long time. Earth is my linear reference point in the same way that Gallifrey is the Doctor's, going back would be "complicated".'

Exile, thought Bernice, feeling a surge of pity for Kadiatu.

They stripped off as the sun grew hotter. AM!xitsa unshipped three blocks of memory plastic from the flitter. Once on the sand they popped open to become adjustable beach-beds. Bernice changed into a strapless bikini that she'd 'bought' on Whynot; Kadiatu and Roz preferred to go
au
naturel
.

'Nothing so silly-looking as a bikini line on an African woman,' explained Kadiatu. Roz laughed.

Bernice decided that there was an unpleasant current of nationalism running between the two women that would have to be knocked on the head – preferably in the next couple of hours.

Roz got out her videobook. Bernice persuaded Kadiatu to rip her brick-thick paperback in half so that Bernice could start reading it without waiting for her to finish. It was a classic bodice-ripper written in 2361 but set in 1980s London. Bernice amused herself by noting the anachronisms in the margin.

It quickly, by degrees, got too hot to read and then too hot to think. AM!xitsa floated over and rubbed sunscreen onto all three of their backs simultaneously. In between ministering to their every whim, the drone had excavated a wide depression in the beach and was building a series of lopsided towers out of compacted sand. 'When the tide comes in,' said aM!xitsa, 'this will be an exact scale model of The Mote in God's Left Eye.'

'Won't it wash away?' asked Bernice.

'Of course it will,' said the drone. 'That's the whole point.'

Kadiatu noticed that Bernice had her sun-shade up. 'Hey,' she said to Roz, 'Benny's wimped out already.'

'I don't know,' said Roz. 'These European women have no stamina.'

'Right,' said Bernice, 'I've had quite enough of this not-so-crypto-fascist panafrican neo-nationalism. AM!xitsa? I believe that these young ladies' brains are overheating.'

'Can't have that,' said aM!xitsa.

Bernice watched in satisfaction as the two women were carried kicking and screaming out over the sea and then dropped. Kadiatu managed to twist in the air and pierce the water cleanly but Roz landed, arms windmilling, right on her backside in an impressive plume of spray. Bernice winced in sympathy and started to laugh.

She laughed so hard that she didn't even notice she was flying until she was over the sea.

'AM!xitsa,' she said reproachfully, 'we had an agreement.'

'I'm sorry, Bernice,' it said. 'Equality of opportunity is a fundamental tenet of my society.'

She looked down and saw Roz, six metres below, waving up at her and grinning. 'Let's not be too dogmatic about this,' said Bernice. 'Oh,
shiiiiiiit
!'

Bernice came up spluttering, relieved to find the water was only chest deep. 'Where's my bra?'

she yelled. 'You flying piece of junk, that bikini was one of a kind.'

Something wet and skimpy slapped onto her head from above and wrapped itself around her face. 'Good shot,' said Roz.

Bernice pulled the bikini top off her forehead and put it back on. AM!xitsa hovered ten metres above them, spinning rapidly around all three axes – drone hysterics, Bernice guessed. She shook her fist at it. 'And you can stop laughing and all,' she said to Roz. 'Where's Kadiatu?'

'I haven't seen her,' said Roz. 'You don't think she hit her head or something?'

'Not likely,' said Bernice. 'That woman's completely indestructible.'

As if to prove her point strong hands grasped her around the waist and tossed her two metres into the air. At least she managed to come down with a bit of dignity that time. She resurfaced to find Kadiatu grinning at her.

'Where were you?' asked Roz.

'Under the water,' said Kadiatu.

Roz looked stunned. 'Jesus. How long can you hold your breath for?'

'Don't know, never timed myself.'

'I know,' said Bernice, giving Roz a sly look. 'Why don't you duck down under the water and stay there as long as you can while me and Roz time you.'

'OK,' said Kadiatu. 'Ready?'

Bernice looked at her watch and nodded.

Bernice and Roz waited all of thirty seconds before swimming hell for leather for the beach.

He made the mistake of nodding off on the beach and while he was asleep someone buried him in the sand. He woke up to find his world contracted down to the narrow
vistavision
strip between his hat brim and the top of the mound he was buried under.

He tried wriggling his fingers and arms, testing the consistency. There was some give but the sand had been packed down pretty solidly. He tried moving his legs, aiming to at least kick his feet clear of the sand but, again, while there was some movement he was definitely stuck fast.

He wanted to scratch his nose.

He lay still for a while, thinking about his predicament. He tried a very old trick that he'd picked up at a
shao lin
monastery during the Song dynasty. Now that was a bunch that knew about self-control. He couldn't remember the proper Mandarin mnemonic so he hummed a snatch of 'My Baby Just Cares for Me' by Nina Simone instead. Then, after taking a deep breath and summoning up his
ch'i
, or inner self, he attempted to expand his chest by twenty centimetres. After three minutes of straining he started seeing stars against a darkening landscape. After seven minutes everything went black.

He gave up after ten minutes. Beyond a certain point there was no give in his sandy prison at all. It was far too solid to have been packed down by human hands – he grimly suspected some kind of machine involvement.

He
really
wanted to scratch his nose.

A small remote-drone wearing a parachute drifted serenely across his field of vision and vanished to his right. After a few seconds the remote-drone backed up into sight and slowly turned to face him.

'Good morning,' said the parachute.

'Good morning,' said the Doctor. 'How are the trees coming along?'

'Very well, thank you,' said the parachute. 'Now it's just a question of making the fruit edible.'

'Some kind of removable skin perhaps,' suggested the Doctor.

'What a good idea,' said the parachute. 'Well, I must be off. I'm doing a synchronized free-fall display this afternoon and I want to make sure I get the right jumper.'

'Good luck,' said the Doctor.

The parachute zipped out of sight again.

Damn, thought the Doctor, I forgot to ask him why it had to be an apple tree.

Perhaps if he were to set up a sine wave with his body he could shift the sand. If he could set up some form of harmonic feedback it should erode the structural integrity of the compacted sand. After all, it was only a matter of finding the right frequency.

Roz and Chris wandered into view. They stopped when they saw the Doctor and turned to face him. Each of them had a surfboard under their arm.

'I wonder why he's buried in the sand,' said Chris to Roz.

'I don't know,' said Roz. 'Maybe it's relaxing.'

'We could dig him out,' said Chris.

'What if he's buried himself on purpose?'

'You mean it might be part of a plan?'

'One can never tell with the Doctor,' said Roz, 'but I'm sure he must have a good reason. It's probably something cosmic.'

'Oh,' said Chris. 'Cosmic, you think?'

'Oh yes,' said Roz, 'definitely something cosmic.'

'You don't think he just fell asleep and got buried by children?' asked Chris.

'Absolutely not,' said Roz. 'The Doctor would never allow himself to be incarcerated in such an absurd and undignified manner without the most exquisite and subtle of purposes.'

'Perhaps we should ask him?'

'Best not, we might disturb his concentration.'

The Doctor watched as the two walked out of his view.

'Chris,' he heard Roz say in the distance, 'are you sure we're supposed to
stand
on these things . . .'

You make one little mistake, thought the Doctor, and the whole world queues up to make fun of you. He went back to trying to calculate the correct harmonic frequency but the itch in his nose was too distracting.

Bernice came along and sat on his chest.

'Gosh,' she said, 'I bet your nose is really itching.'

'You really had to say that,' said the Doctor plaintively.

'I had a dream the other night,' said Bernice.

The Doctor's hearts sank. 'Yes,' he said.

'I meant to ask you about it but then I got distracted.'

'People attach far too much importance to dreams,' said the Doctor. 'They are, after all, merely a sort of filing system for the unconscious.'

'Is that so?'

'Oh yes,' said the Doctor, 'nothing significant about the images whatsoever. By the way, did you know Roz is learning to surf?'

'Shall I tell you about it?'

'Please don't go to any trouble on my account,' said the Doctor.

'It's no trouble,' said Bernice. 'I was talking to this Dalek –'

'Well, there you go,' said the Doctor, somewhat desperately. 'Daleks, objects of childhood fear, all standard stuff, nothing metaphysical about that at all.'

'If you don't shut up, Doctor,' said Bernice, 'I'm going to bury your head.' She waited for him to say something but he wasn't going to risk a face full of sand. 'Kadiatu was there and so were you,'

began Bernice.

The Doctor sighed. Sometimes he thought that Bernice was just too perceptive for his own good.

'I've been thinking about the TARDIS's ever so convenient translation system,' said Bernice. 'It occurred to me that we're all connected, you, me, Kadiatu, all your companions. I had an interesting little talk with aM!xitsa and he said that Kadiatu was doing most of her thinking while she was asleep and that in some way her own thoughts were altering the actual biochemistry of her brain.' She reached out and idly scratched the Doctor's nose. 'I think you had no intention of letting me make the decision but you knew if I was involved that it might influence Kadiatu on a subconscious level through the link with the TARDIS.'

'It's an interesting theory,' said the Doctor. 'Personally I think we just got lucky.'

'You're not going to tell me, are you?'

'I don't have the vocabulary,' said the Doctor.

'It's not fair,' said Bernice. 'You're a mythic figure, Ace is fast becoming a creature of legend, people are bound to start using Kadiatu to frighten small children and Chris looks like he stepped off the Elgin marbles. What I want to know is, when do I get a bit of fame?'

'Benny,' said the Doctor, 'I happen to know that you are an object of veneration in at least two cultures.'

'Really?' said Bernice suspiciously. 'What kind of object?'

'Oh,' said the Doctor, 'a sort of female version of Bacchus.'

'I'm a god of wine?'

'Not just wine,' said the Doctor hurriedly, 'all alcohol really, sort of the goddess of indiscriminate drinking.'

'I'm completely overwhelmed.'

'And sarcasm,' said the Doctor, 'in your manifestation as the goddess of the morning after the night before.'

'Goddess of hangovers,' said Bernice, 'I might have guessed. What's Roz then, the goddess of bad manners?'

'Really, Bernice,' said the Doctor, 'there's more to life than being mistaken for a supernatural deity.'

It rained the next day. Chris, Dep and Kadiatu were slouching around in the living room when the Doctor walked in with a chess set. He laid the board out on one of the floating tables and held out two fists to Kadiatu. She tapped the left and the Doctor opened his palm to reveal a white bishop.

They drew up chairs and sat down facing each other across the board.

'Five seconds per move,' said the Doctor. 'First person to predict the precise number of moves to the first possible checkmate wins.'

Kadiatu nodded and opened with a queen's pawn advance.

The first game lasted twenty-eight moves and ended when the Doctor held up his hand and said: 'Mate in six.'

Kadiatu frowned at the board. 'Yes,' she said finally, 'mate in six.'

They turned the board around and set up the pieces again, the Doctor playing white. Chris and Dep watched as the two players slapped down the pieces with such speed that it was almost impossible to follow the course of the game.

Again the Doctor held up his hand. 'Twelve,' he said.

'Never,' said Kadiatu. 'You couldn't possibly force a mate in twelve.'

'Not me,' said the Doctor. 'Twelve moves until you beat me. I said the first possible checkmate, regardless of who's in check.'

'But that's stupid,' said Kadiatu. 'If we do it like that, it means either of us can deliberately play to lose in order to make the correct prediction.'

'Yes,' said the Doctor. 'Interesting concept, isn't it?'

'If you say so,' said Kadiatu. 'Are you implying that losing is as important as winning?'

'What I'm saying,' said the Doctor, 'is that you have to know by which set of rules you're playing the game.'

Kadiatu leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. 'Is this going to get needlessly philosophical?'

The Doctor said nothing as he replaced the pieces on the board and turned it around.

'What if I don't want to play?' said Kadiatu.

'Too late,' said the Doctor. 'You sat down at the table and now you
have
to play.'

Kadiatu smiled. 'All right then,' she said, 'but this time we make it two seconds a move.'