"Pet.i.te, blonde, becoming if you care for that sort of thing?"
Again, the man nodded, and the Doctor checked the b.u.mp on his crown.
Nothing serious.
"What are those things in there?"
"In where?" The man frowned. "Door"s opened. Has something got in with the chiggs?"
11."Chiggs?"
"The chiggocks."
"Oh, chiggocks chiggocks. A pet name? Or a term for a dubious exercise in vivisection and low genetics?" The Doctor scowled. "Why do you keep those poor things walking? They"re trained to trot into the oven, perhaps?"
Now the man came to look at him properly. The Doctor counted the emotions lurching across the man"s face: puzzlement first, then suspicion, realisation, fear and finally. . .
"Help!" the man cried. "Help me, someone!"
With a sigh, the Doctor hit him on the head with the ladle again.
The man groaned and slumped forward on his face.
"Chiggocks," the Doctor muttered, as he squeezed a blob of arnica from a tube in his pocket and rubbed it into the man"s bruise. "Chiggs. . . Chickens and pigs?" He snorted. "And bullocks! Yes, nice bit of topside, most a.s.suredly.
How efficiently farmed. How practical." He shut down the sliding wall. "Butch-ers as well as vandals."
Pulling on an oversized smock and a sterile mask, he ventured back out into the kitchen stores. He had to move fast, find some mercury and round up his friends before it was too late.
The signs of the Doctor"s intrusion grew more obvious as Trix neared the boardroom. Various vapid-looking business types were walking shakily in the opposite direction. One pet.i.te woman was in tears, shrugging off the atten-tions of would-be comforters.
"They"ll catch them, Kameez," said a particularly oily stringbean in pinstripes. "Don"t you worry."
So, thought Trix. They were still on the loose. And probably heading back to the TARDIS now, hopefully with pockets full of mercury She had to get back there herself as soon as she"d dropped off the nosh she"d sneak away. No point in drawing attention to herself by dumping the buffet right here.
She paused to let a moustachioed man inspect her white card, then the articulated table turned itself through an impressive-looking doorway, and Trix guessed they had arrived. She walked through and found that a huge gla.s.s window was set into the wall. Then she registered the view.
It was staggering.
Fringed by blackness and stars was a planet. It looked like Saturn, but it was so big, it was like she was staring through a telescope the size of Belgium.
It hung within its glittering rings like a colossal fruit, its myriad moons a cloud of lazy flies drifting all around.
The Doctor had said they were in the future. She wondered when exactly.
What was was this place? this place?
12."You"re new here, aren"t you?" said a firm, female voice.
Trix started, turned away from the window. A woman with black flapper hair and a youthful but dispirited face was watching her from the far side of a very long table. Her cheekbones looked sharp enough to wound. She was putting on a shoe.
"It"s obvious," the woman went on. "They"re all like that when they first see the view." She smiled icily. "But do try to remember it"s our view, not yours.
Gawp like that again and you"ll be reprimanded."
Trix nodded and gave a little curtsey. I"m gobbing on your your quiche, she thought. quiche, she thought.
A tall, broad-shouldered black man walked in. From the way the flapper stiffened he was someone important. Now that she came to look, his fine suit, dark and silky, his imperious gaze, the impressive rings stacked on his fingers like he was trying to outdo Saturn, all told the same story: this man was the boss.
He glanced at Trix for a moment, then snapped: "Get the food ready to serve."
Trix nodded meekly and started steering the table over to the back of the room.
"Tinya, do you have the revised rough cut for the infomercial?" the boss-man asked. "Halcyon will be arriving any moment. I want to check it myself."
"Right here, Falsh." The slapper with the flapper smugly patted a credit-card-thin keypad, and a sort of bubble flickered into life above it. Quiet, scratchy little noises started up. Trix was intrigued to see more, but a trim little man with an elfin face and eyes too wide apart was waiting anxiously for her at the back. From his black-and-white uniform, he must be a fellow waiter.
"Thought you were never going to get here," hissed the waiter reproachfully.
Contrition had never sat well with Trix; by now she was terminally bored with apologising. "Well, you know, with the security alert and everything. . .
I"ll just leave you to it. See you!"
"Very funny," he hissed. "Fix a chiggock salad for Falsh, and I"ll prepare a plate for Halcyon."
"It"s a buffet. Can"t they help themselves?"
"Where"d they ship you in from?" The waiter"s look made it clear that while Falsh could doubtless help himself to most things, a buffet wasn"t one of them.
Then he became conspiratorial. "You know, I"ve served Halcyon before."
Poached or scrambled, thought Trix. "Oh yes?"
The waiter preened like the news made him c.o.c.k of the yard. "He likes everything perfectly arranged. Well he would, wouldn"t he an artist like him." He had a distant, lovelorn look in his eye, which swiftly startled into a sharp focus on the doorway. "Oh! He"s here!"
13.Trix turned to see a bizarre figure walk in through the doors, escorted by two guards and a pear-shaped redhead. Bedecked in a peac.o.c.k-blue trouser-suit in raw silk, complete with a black sash and a conquistador"s cape, he looked like some outrageous cavalier. He had a shaved head, and his scalp glittered with tiny gemstones of every hue. His features were slightly flattened and gave him a vaguely oriental look; Trix couldn"t be sure as his eyes were hidden behind a pair of slim dark gla.s.ses.
Trix returned to the challenge of chiggock salad before she burst out laughing and wound up having to apologise all over again.
"Halcyon," said Falsh warmly, rising up to greet this bizarre apparition. "So good to see you again." He smiled at the redhead. "And Sook."
"Greetings, Mr Falsh." Sook smiled demurely and shook his hand. She wasn"t pretty her features were sharp and too big for her face, and her red bob was so super-neat it looked more like a round helmet. "And Tinya."
"So good to meet with you both again," said the fake-smiled flapper.
Sook pulled out a chair for Halcyon, who said nothing to anyone as he sat down at the table.
"I hope your journey here was comfortable?" Falsh inquired.
Sook spoke for them both. "Perfectly."
You had to hand it to Falsh, thought Trix. Two lunatics popping out from nowhere, h.e.l.lbent on executive stress, and here he was playing the perfect host like nothing had happened.
Halcyon smiled wanly. "We heard the alarms," he said softly in a neutral accent.
"Just a drill," said Falsh. "I hope you weren"t troubled."
"A drill. A practice run." Each word was distinct and measured, but weirdly quiet for a man whose whole appearance screamed "loud". "So, you believe in training your staff, then, Falsh?"
"Of course." Falsh remained urbane and attentive, but Trix noticed Sook and Tinya brace themselves.
"A pity, then, that your training does not extend to your demolition con-tractors." Halcyon"s face was stony. "The demolition of Carme does not simply represent gross negligence and incompetence on the part of Falsh Industries "
Tinya couldn"t let that lie: "Blazar Demolition have accepted full responsibility for the error "
Halcyon raised a hand. "Error? You have blown apart one of the Ancient Twelve. Part of the very heritage upon which the Restore the Wonder Restore the Wonder campaign is to capitalise." campaign is to capitalise."
Falsh frowned. "Surely, though, Halcyon, all these rocks came to exist at the same time?"
14."Rocks?" Halcyon turned to Falsh, his lip curling down. "These planetoids planetoids were not were not discovered discovered at the same time." He spoke slowly, as if explaining to a child. "The KanYu philosophy describes the observation of forces between the heavens and the earth. The knowledge that a body exists lends it heightened influence. As awareness of an object grows, so does the hold it exerts on the mind and so the KanYu formulae are affected. . . " at the same time." He spoke slowly, as if explaining to a child. "The KanYu philosophy describes the observation of forces between the heavens and the earth. The knowledge that a body exists lends it heightened influence. As awareness of an object grows, so does the hold it exerts on the mind and so the KanYu formulae are affected. . . "
"Are you not done with that salad yet?" hissed the waiter.
Jolted away from Halcyon"s bizarre lecture, Trix saw the waiter had created a beautiful, decorous dish for Halcyon while she had only managed to pile up some weird kind of lettuce around a few slices of chiggock. She plopped a green tomato on top. "Finished."
Halcyon was still ga.s.sing on as the waiter presented his dish. He failed to react at all. Trix placed her sad salad in front of Falsh, and while Tinya gave it a funny look, Falsh"s attention was elsewhere. She and the disappointed waiter retreated discreetly back to the buffet table.
"What about the other two?" whispered Trix. "What are they having?"
"They"ll eat when their superiors have eaten!"
Unlucky, thought Trix. It didn"t seem likely that Halcyon would finish any time soon.
". . . and now you expect me to recalculate the environmental formulae," he complained, "when I had already achieved the perfect balance for the Grand Orchestration!"
He paused for breath and Tinya jumped in. "NewSystem Deconstruction are setting charges to demolish the remaining moons even as we speak. And they are, undertaking a feasibility study into reshaping some of the retrograde moons into a new planetoid, one with ma.s.s equivalent to Carme."
"An artless imposter. . . " Halcyon looked grave. "Carme has been a fixed point in Earth"s heavens since its discovery almost 400 years ago!"
"In 1938," said Tinya knowledgeably, "with Lysithea discovered the same year."
Sook raised an eyebrow at her, and even Halcyon paused.
"Indeed," he said icily.
Trix felt a moment of disorientation.
So this was the year, what, 23- something.
"A man named Seth Barnes Nicholson found her," said Halcyon, staring off through his shades into the middle distance. "He waded for weeks through stacks of primitive optical slides until there she was: a tiny point of shifting light. . . " He was getting louder, carried away. "Named for Zeus"s lover! Mother of Britomartis!"
"We take your point," said Tinya bravely, "but we did design and construct a new Mercury."
15.Halcyon harrumphed. "Well the old one was somewhat irretrievable."
"And surely there are hundreds of smaller agglomerations up there created in just the same way."
Halcyon stared at her. "So, you propose to lump that clutter together to create a convenient replacement to spin in Carme"s...o...b..t?" He shook his star-studded head. "An imposter rock squeezed from a hundred base histories, usurping one of the Ancient Twelve? There will be negativity! It"s inevitable!"
"It"s rock, sure," said Falsh. "But like Tinya says they"re all rocks. Carme had been mined to death in any case, like the rest of them. Who will really know the difference?"
Sook chose this moment to step in and soothe matters perhaps eyeing Halcyon"s untouched plate and guessing her own wouldn"t be filled in a hurry.
"We could think of this as an opportunity Halcyon," she said, placing her hand on his arm. "You could reshape Carme. Sculpt her. Create a whole new compa.s.s of positive arcs to outweigh the negativity."
Halcyon shrugged off her grip. "I don"t see why this test detonation was even necessary," he grumbled, his voice falling to barely more than a whisper.
"Neptune"s and Ura.n.u.s"s clutter went decently enough. It"s given the agitators further fuel for protest before we"ve even begun on Jupiter."
"There was nothing of cultural or historical value on Carme," said Falsh with another sly glance at Tinya. "So the Empire Trust will have no legal comeback for its destruction. And I a.s.sure you there will be no more mistakes." He grinned broadly, his teeth shark-sharp and white as pack ice. "Meantime, I trust the antiquities I have acquired for you will be of some small personal compensation?"
"They may perhaps lend me balance me as I rework the orchestration," Halcyon agreed without pleasure. "Are they being loaded aboard my flyer?"
"As we speak," said Tinya. She glanced at Falsh, who nodded. "Perhaps now"s a good time to go over the infomercial? We"ve arranged synchronised primecasts on all channels there"s not a soul in the system who won"t be aware and watching." She stabbed daintily at her keypad. "As you"ll see, the President has already recorded the opening links as scripted in the first draft, but if you"re not happy we can edit her right down. . . "
The virtual screen popped out from the keypad, larger this time, a huge sphere of light. The infomercial was heralded by music from nowhere, deep, sonorous ba.s.s and pitch-perfect treble.
This time, Trix could enjoy the show.
A minute or so later, she felt the waiter"s elbow in her ribs; her mouth was hanging open and she"d been warned once about gawping.
16.
Chapter Three.
Fitz had wandered through the darkened corridors of the ship and found no one. Perhaps it was night-time and everyone was asleep.
The rooms were weird. Some of them were really big, empty save for occasional concentrations of furniture. Others were smaller and still more Spartan a couch, a mirror, a weird sculpture, maybe. None of the rooms seemed to have much point. Fitz deduced they must be some form of art.
Suddenly he glimpsed movement in the next room along fleeting shadows on the wall. Trix, maybe? A googly-eyed monster? Cautiously he investigated.
Whoa. The walls themselves themselves seemed to be moving. Each was a slow spin of colours ranged around a white, hovering chair in the middle of the black-tiled floor. The colours bled into patterns both soothing and unsettling, beguiling the eye. Fitz approached the wall. He felt like he was tilting, falling, his mind rushing with the ever-flowing colours. seemed to be moving. Each was a slow spin of colours ranged around a white, hovering chair in the middle of the black-tiled floor. The colours bled into patterns both soothing and unsettling, beguiling the eye. Fitz approached the wall. He felt like he was tilting, falling, his mind rushing with the ever-flowing colours.