Doctor Who: The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch Read Free Book Online

'Who wants to know?' she asked.
    'I do,' said the table. The voice was light, conversational and sounded entirely human. 'If you don't want a drink, I can offer you a wide range of snacks, delicacies –'
    'Are you sentient?' asked Bernice. Roz was surreptitiously looking around for a speaker grill.
    'Of course I'm not sentient,' said the table. 'I'm a table. I have two functions, one is to hold material objects at a convenient height by virtue of my rigid structure and the other is to take your order. What would be the point in a sentient table?'
    Bernice considered this. She had to admit it was a good point.
    'I lived in an apartment with a door that acted like this,' said Roz. 'It had a nasty accident involving a wide beam disintegrator and three metres of quick-drying epoxy resin.'
    'We'll have a drink,' said Bernice quickly.
    'Good,' said the table. 'What do you want to drink?'
    'What have you got?' asked Roz.
    'There's a menu in front of you,' said the table.
    Bernice looked down. The dayglo Arabic was scrolling towards the edges of the table, new strings of writing spooling out of a null point at its centre. Bernice sighed. 'We can't understand the menu,' she said. 'Can you give us a verbal summary?'
    'Hey,' said the table smugly. 'You name it we've got it.'
    'In that case,' said Bernice, 'I'll have an exaggerated sexual innuendo with a dash of patriot's spirit and extra mushrooms. Roz?'
    'I'll have the same,' said Roz, 'but with an umbrella in it.'
    'Coming right up,' said the table.
    'And get us some shade here while you're at it,' said Roz.
    A parasol-shaped forcefield opened above their heads and turned opaque. 'Now, that's slick,'
    said Bernice.
    Roz shrugged, as if forcefield parasols were an everyday occurrence where she came from.
    Perhaps they were. On her last trip to the thirtieth century Bernice had been far too busy running for cover to notice details like that.
    'An exaggerated sexual innuendo,' said Roz. 'What kind of a cocktail is that?'
    'I just made it up,' said Bernice. 'God knows what we'll get.'
    What they got was two tall glasses swooping over the dunes on the back of a self-propelled tray to make a perfect landing on the table. The drinks were a cloudy orange shot through with streaks of vermilion. Moisture started condensing on the glasses as soon as they stopped moving.
    One of them had a small paper parasol stuck in the top.
    'That one's yours, I think,' said Bernice, taking the other drink. It was wonderfully cool against her palm. Something grey floated near the top of the glass; it was the extra mushroom.
    There was a waterfall somewhere inland; the Doctor could smell it. If he concentrated he could just hear a low rumbling to the south. A big one then, larger than The Smoke That Thunders on the Zambezi and big enough to cast its spray as far as the coast and create a sub-tropical microclimate around the cove. The short stretch of beach was a dazzling white, enclosed by rocky promontories on both sides and by low forested hills on the other. The trees were tropical varieties, narrow-trunked with spreading crowns of broad emerald leaves. Brightly coloured blooms nestled at their roots and ran in streamers along the symbiotic vines that linked tree with tree. It was an isolated place and judging from the scantness of the path he'd traversed to get here, rarely visited. Just what the Doctor ordered in fact.
    The Doctor waited just inside the tree-line, confident that the sharp contrast between shady forest and the dazzling sand would conceal him. Well, moderately confident anyway.
    She was standing so still he didn't see her at first. Hip-deep in the water, the swell of the waves lapping around her waist and thighs, she had a spear in her right hand, poised motionless above her head. Some kind of pale wood, bamboo, guessed the Doctor, with a fire-hardened tip.
    Her left arm was held slightly behind her body, elbow bent for balance, fingers spread as delicately as any pianist. The woman was