Part 20 (1/2)

'There's a Venusian in the bathroom,' she said.

'How do you know it's a Venusian?' he said.

'It said so.' She got a firm grip on the towel and sat down on the bed. 'What were you doing?'

Simon eyed the wallpaper. 'Checking for gingerbread.' It was her, of course, the one who'd been making the Centcomp requests. Jamey had just tapped into her information and sent him here. Partly to see what was here, partly to find out why she was interested. He wondered who she was working for.

'What do you suppose this is all about?' he said.

Genevieve shrugged. 'Maybe it's a sort of miniature amus.e.m.e.nt park, meant to accommodate people who get lost in the woods.'

'Maybe he is the Doctor.'

'A Doctor.' She stroked one of the cats, which stretched luxuriously. 'I want to know what's behind all of this alternative-reality business. I can't believe it's just an old man's fantasy.'

'Because there's a Venusian in the bathroom?'

'I'll wager that if I looked now, it would be gone. Just another hallucination brought on by whatever was in the tea.'

Simon got a sudden glimpse of long brown limbs as Genevieve shed the towel and slipped under the duvet. One of the cats grumbled as her legs pushed it out of the way.

She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at him. He stared back.

'Well,' she said, 'are you coming to bed or not?'

152.

He woke up in the darkness with his arm going numb under the weight of her head. Carefully he tried to extricate himself without disturbing her.

'You can move,' she said. 'I'm not asleep.'

Simon shook his arm to get the pins and needles out. He felt Genevieve s.h.i.+ft position, her arm slide over his chest, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s press against his side. Something else, warm, invisible and not Genevieve moved near his feet. 'The cats are back,' he said.

'Tell them to stay at their end of the bed,' she said. 'Can you hear something?'

Beyond the soft rumble of the cats Simon could hear singing. A human voice, soft, ancient. 'I think it's Doctor Smith,' he said.

'Perhaps he's singing the Venusians to sleep,' said Genevieve.

He rolled over to face her, putting his hand on her hip, feeling the smoothness of her skin as it pulled over the muscles of her thigh, tentative in a way that he'd never been with all those countless others before Sibongile. They were face to face now but invisible in the darkness, her breath against his cheek.

There would have been a room, he knew that, a room with white surfaces, hygienic and stain-resistant. A routine autopsy performed by machines that ticked and murmured as they peeled back the layers of Sibongile's body and invaded its secrets.

Killed stone dead by a non-lethal crowd-control weapon.

Something sonic.

He'd thought of that terrible room often enough, the minuscule cracks cracks throughout her body, woken drenched in sweat with the dream smell of disinfectant in his nostrils. throughout her body, woken drenched in sweat with the dream smell of disinfectant in his nostrils.

And now her face was fading from his memory, the image losing its integrity like the winding down of a simscreen in a power cut.

'Do you believe in love at first sight?' he asked the darkness.

'Don't spoil this by talking,' said Genevieve.

In the morning they walked up the hill together, towards Genevieve's flitter. She glanced at Simon for a moment and said, 'Asparagus balloon Constantinople.' The car obligingly powered down its security systems and they got in.

153.

Simon stared through the windscreen. At the ancient, ruined house, totally overgrown, the wood of its walls being converted to soil even as they watched. At the garden that was nothing more than an open s.p.a.ce in the forest, covered in long gra.s.s and humus and weeds. Even the collapsed tool shed would soon be the beginnings of a shrub or an anthill.

'Where to?' said Genevieve.

'A transit terminal, please,' he said. 'I've got a meeting to get to. What about you?'

'I have to get back to Callisto,' she said. 'The paperwork will have reached my office ceiling by now.'

When they'd woken up, the house was empty. They'd taken a long shower, and the hot water had lasted the whole time, and there was a fresh bar of soap.

When they'd walked out of the house, and then turned around and tried to go back inside, the front door had fallen off its hinges and plunged through the rotting wooden floor of the empty hallway.

'Did any of that actually happen?' said Simon.

'I hope hope so,' said Genevieve. so,' said Genevieve.

'I mean, did we actually meet Doctor Smith, and see a Venusian in the lounge?'

'Must have been something in the tea,' said Genevieve, starting the flitter.

Simon nodded. 'Must have been.'

Joseph Conrad 18 April 2982 18 April 2982 They decided to disembark in two parties, separated by at least twenty minutes. 'I'm finding it hard enough to cope with two Doctors,' Roz said, as they packed the few things they were carrying. 'Imagine what customs will think.'

The pa.s.senger liner docked with the metas.h.i.+p Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad at 19.04 IST. The liner had been gradually changing its s.h.i.+pboard day to match time on the at 19.04 IST. The liner had been gradually changing its s.h.i.+pboard day to match time on the Conrad Conrad, so that its pa.s.sengers would adjust as easily as possible.

Roz felt jet-lagged anyway. A combination of claustrophobia, dehydration from a month's worth of pressurized environments 154 and the hot neon light of the Conrad Conrad. She squinted as she walked down the long ramp with one of the Doctors, carryall slung over her shoulder.

A bagbot whizzed up to them the minute they reached the grey carpet of the s.p.a.ceport. It was a chunky box like a toaster on wheels, topped with a wide rack. The edges were padded, which was good, because the thing smacked into Roz's legs twice trying to get her attention.

'Take your bag, ma'am?' it said. 'Show you around? It's a big metas.h.i.+p, easy to get lost. Take your bag?'

The Doctor crouched down and tickled the thing's rim, as though it were a stray dog. 'We don't need a porter,' he told it, 'but we do need a guide.'

'Sure thing,' piped the bagbot. 'Just follow me, no problems.'

Roz looked at the Doctor as the thing started nudging its way through the crowd, moving through the long, grey corridor that led to customs. 'It followed me home. Can I keep it?'

He smiled. 'Might as well make use of the facilities, now we're here,' he said. 'We might be here for a while.'

'I thought you said this was going to be simple.'