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

they stress the amyglada, building for aggression you might say. The primary centre for modification in this one is not in the limbic system at all. The "kill instinct" is all in the forebrain. Damn unusual and very subtle. It's the cognitive perception of danger that triggers the response, not the emotion.'
    The drone rotated until its forward sensor array was directed at the figure in the water. 'She's a stone-cold killer.'
    'Does she speak?'
    AM!xitsa wobbled its body from side to side, drone body language for 'no'. 'She displays no social behaviour at all when she's awake. She does vocalize during her sleep, sometimes complete sentences, but I can't translate the language. Would you like a recording?'
    The Doctor shook his head, human body language for 'no'.
    The woman standing in the water still hadn't moved. By now even the smartest fish would have ceased to see her as a possible threat. Piscine brains lulled into complacency by her world-famous rock impression.
    'There's something very strange about her genetic structure,' said aM!xitsa. 'Even stranger I mean.'
    'Yes.'
    'Dormant sections in certain DNA strands that look as if they should be operating but aren't.
    Other sections that look as if they are just there as temporary markers. As if there were pieces of the jigsaw still missing.'
    'Yes.'
    'Her cytoplasmic DNA shows multiple redundancies. Very strange stuff indeed. I couldn't decode them, even with God's help.'
    'You didn't tell God what you were working on?'
    'Of course not,' said the drone. 'I told it that the samples had been passed on by some friends in XCIG.'
     
    'Did it believe you?'
    'God's very smart. I think it's probably suspicious. Now it knows you're here it'll have this whole area under very tight surveillance indeed.'
    'There was a lot of remote drone activity near iSanti Jeni this morning.'
    'The coding in her cytoplasm,' said the drone, 'information encrypted by her designers?'
    'No,' said the Doctor, more emphatically than he meant to. He'd hoped to keep aM!xitsa off that particular topic. 'That's from a different, far more ancient inheritance.' Time to change the subject. 'I'd like to thank you for looking after her. I hope it hasn't inconvenienced you.'
    'Not at all,' said aM!xitsa. 'She's been fascinating company, if not a stimulating conversationalist.'
    'I'm glad to hear that,' said the Doctor but he wasn't. He was beginning to wish he'd found some alternative guardian, one, and this was the real joke, with fewer 'human' qualities.
    'It's terribly wearisome referring to her by an impersonal pronoun,' said aM!xitsa. 'Isn't it about time you told me her name?'
    'Better that you don't know,' said the Doctor. Better that you think of her as a thing, an experiment, something dangerous to be studied and then, if it proves too threatening, made safe.
    Neutralized. Terminated.
    Murdered .
    There was a sudden flurry of movement in the water. The spear was jerked upwards. Impaled below the point thrashed a glistening silver shape. AM!xitsa and the Doctor watched in silence as the fish died.
    Bernice walked on to iSanti Jeni alone. Roz having gone to sleep again . Whatever the orange and vermilion stuff in the glasses had been she was glad she hadn't finished hers. God knew what had been in the mushrooms.
    That thought made her smile. In this place God most definitely knew. Could probably give her a complete biochemical analysis if she asked it for one.
    She left the table strict instructions to keep the older woman in the shade, picked up her shoes and started walking up the beach. The sun was definitely getting hotter but the breeze from the sea kept her pleasantly cool.
    There was a path over the headland. Nothing formal, just the line of least resistance between the tumbled rocks, places here and there where the sandy topsoil had been cleared by passing feet. That was assuming that the locals had feet and weren't gastropods or something equally weird. Not that that would bother Bernice; nothing