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

thirty metres away; could she throw such a crude weapon that far? Probably not, but would you want to bet your life on it? Luckily for him she was facing out to sea, although this was probably not so lucky for the fish. Sunlight glittered off the water that beaded her head and back. The spear didn't so much as tremble, held in perfect balance, perfect stillness.
    He remembered her dancing with the soldiers in the street outside M. Thierry's house in Paris.
    The flowing interplay of muscle over bone and under skin. A macabre Blue Danube waltz choreographed for a single diva and four expendable extras.
    Corpse de ballet , thought the Doctor.
    There was a whisper of displaced air and aM!xitsa the drone was beside him. The machine's external fields were flush with its ellipsoid body, showing a dappled pattern of green and brown.
    Joke jungle camouflage. A small hologram projected from the drone's nose, two dark dots above a horizontal line against an orange background. A human expression pared down to an absolute abstract: aM!xitsa's face ikon.
    'Doctor,' said aM!xitsa, 'does God know you're here?'
    'I told it last night.'
    'That should give it something to think about.'
    The Doctor nodded towards the figure in the water. 'How is she?'
    'That's difficult to say,' said aM!xitsa. 'She catches fish and eats them, sometimes she even cooks them first.'
    'High protein diet. She's building up her reserves.'
    'She eats other stuff as well,' said the drone. 'Fruits, berries, leaves. Occasionally soil as well, about a hundred grammes a week.'
    'Good to see she's getting all the food groups then.'
    'She's built a hut on the other side of the cove, three metres back from the tree-line. Made it out of sun-dried mud-bricks.'
    'She is an engineer.'
    'The first one was washed away in a rain storm.'
    'That's the trouble with mud as a building material.'
    'So she built a kiln.'
    'How long has she been here?' asked the Doctor.
    'You should know.'
    'Well,' said the Doctor, 'you know how it is. Time and relative dimensions in space. You can lose track.'
     
    'Three months,' said the drone.
    The Doctor removed his hat, stared into its depths for a moment and then replaced it on his head. 'I presume you've been scanning her?'
    'Oh yes,' said aM!xitsa.
    'And?'
    'A grade thirty-six technology you said.'
    'Thirty-five going on thirty-six.'
    'Remarkable.'
    'They're an inventive race,' said the Doctor, 'especially when it comes to weapons technology.'
    'Do you want to see the details?'
    'Yes, please,' said the Doctor.
    AM!xitsa projected a discreet holograph behind the bole of a tree where it wouldn't be visible from the beach. It quickly filled up with complex three-dimensional shapes, spiky bundles of molecules that rotated slowly for inspection, phase space graphs on time/event axis. The drone's voice assumed a more studied, professorial tone. 'Most of the non-indigenous organic forms were broken down and expelled within the first thirty-six hours. I recovered some samples from her faeces and urine but the damn stuff wouldn't grow in culture.'
    The hologram displayed the characteristic flat and undifferentiated cells of the ship's invasive cellulose. Even in abstract representation they were coloured a virulent and unhealthy green. The Doctor's hand drifted uneasily to his left shoulder, remembering.
    'And the residual organic material?'
    AM!xitsa displayed a flayed cross-section of the brain. 'A concentration in the hypothalamus, smaller structures in cerebellum and occipital lobe. I believe she may have assimilated the foreign material.'
    The Doctor said nothing, remembering the pain. The lawnmower smell. The ship dying. Ace shouting out in fear and anger. All those minds going into the dark. Paris burning. A human body of animate mahogany veined with virulent green.
    'I'm particularly interested in the nature of the design modifications incorporated into her original geneset,' said aM!xitsa. 'Normally when the technologically challenged build fighters