Free Pirate Loop, The by Simon Guerrier Page A

cheese and pineapple stick. The Doctor watched him as he nimbly ate the pineapple and then the cheese from around the stick, and then did his best to copy the procedure – careful to make it look like he'd never done this before. If he could put Archie at his ease, make him drop his guard... One chunk of pineapple escaped him, slipped down his chin and slapped into the carpet between his trainers.
     
'Oops,' said the Doctor. 'It's pretty tricky, this.'
     
'Yeah,' said Archie, helping himself to another cheese and pineapple stick.
     
Archie!' growled Dash, still by the door back into the ballroom, still brandishing his heavy gun. 'I said no more. You'll be sick.'
     
'I don't feel sick,' said Archie.
     
'Do what Dash says,' growled Joss. The Doctor watched Archie put his cheese and pineapple stick back on the tray behind them. He turned back to say something to Dash, and then a sudden thought struck him. He looked back at the tray, on which the cheese and pineapple sticks were crowded. There was no space to fit any more on the tray. There was no empty space from the two cheese and pineapple sticks he and Archie had eaten.
     
He glanced up at the robot barman, still at the other end of the bar, still holding the glass of branka juice until someone told it not to. It had not nipped over to top up the cheese and pineapple sticks. The Doctor looked again at the tray and then around it at the fittings on the bar. No, he could discern no transmat technologies or any other clever doodads which might automatically replenish the tray.
     
'Good, innit?' said Archie.
     
'Very good,' said the Doctor. 'And no matter what you eat, the food just keeps coming?'
     
'Yeah,' said Archie. An' we eat a lot.'
     
'It's true, dear,' said Mrs Wingsworth as she walked into the cocktail lounge, brushing past Dash and Joss. 'They've been gorging themselves for hours!'
     
'You,' snarled Dash, 'get wiv the others.'
     
'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Wingsworth in a mocking, singsong voice. Dash and Joss kept their guns trained on her, but didn't seem surprised to see her. Neither, noted the Doctor, did the other Balumin prisoners.
     
'Er,' said the Doctor. 'I don't mean to be rude, but didn't I see you die?'
     
'Oh that,' said Mrs Wingsworth, batting a tentacle at him like his question were some irksome insect.
     
'It's annoying,' growled Archie.
     
'Yes, it is a bit of a nuisance, isn't it?' agreed Mrs Wingsworth. 'Every time they shoot one of us down, we just wake up in our berths. It's an outrage, you know.'
     
'I can imagine,' said the Doctor, baffled.
     
'They're really not what we were promised,' Mrs Wingsworth continued. 'We're meant to be first class. And they've given us tiny spaces!' She was talking about the berths, the Doctor realised, not about having been killed.
     
'She's gotta point,' said Archie. 'I 'ave more room to myself on my ship!'
     
'Well, it's part of the experience,' said the Doctor. 'Bit of discomfort to sharpen the senses. I'm sorry, it's Mrs Wingsworth isn't it? I didn't know the Balumin had regenerative powers like that.'
     
'No?' asked Mrs Wingsworth. 'Well, they do say schools are dumbing down, don't they?'
     
'S'a bit of a swizz, you ask me,' said Archie. 'You kill someone, they should stay killed.'
     
'Yeah,' agreed Dash, from over by the door.
     
'That's more a reason why you shouldn't kill anyone,' chided the Doctor. 'Isn't it?'
     
'I'd like to know what my Uncle Cecil would have made of it,' said Mrs Wingsworth airily. 'He was a famous consultant, you know. Treated the Yemayan Ambassador, Mr Sutton. Was quite something at the time. And he was very interested in this sort of thing. I think he even wrote about it.'
     
'I'll have to look that up,' said the Doctor. 'When I've a spare moment. Though I can probably guess what he concluded.' He looked Mrs Wingsworth up and down quickly, and again she batted him away with a tentacle. 'Speed of recovery like that, you've probably got a nifty gift for remyelinating