Doctor Who and the Empire of Glass | Page 6

willing to accept a few coins in exchange for an hour or two of pleasure.
"That'll do," he said gruffly. "For now. But mind you pay me promptly next week, otherwise I'll have the police call round! He spat to one side, making sure that his tenant knew he didn't believe these stories about audiences with the ruling authority of Venice, then turned and clattered down the stairs. Turning at the landing, he saw the man's eyes gleaming in the dark gap between door and jamb. The thought put him in mind of the rat he had seen earlier. Shivering, he crossed himself and continued round the corner and down, past his own rooms, to the door.
As he walked out into the narrow alley that separated his house from the widow Carpaccio's, he glanced upwards. The lip of the roof platform jutted over the edge of the roof towards a similar platform on the widow's house. He could still remember the way she used to sit up there for hours bleaching her hair in the bright sunlight. That was when she had been young and beautiful, and Carlo had been younger and full of life. He used to watch her from his bedroom window, waiting for the wind off the Adriatic to skim the roofs of the houses and lift her skirts a few inches. Ah, the follies of youth.
He squinted for a moment. Was there something on the platform? Something long and tubular, shrouded in a velvet cloth?
He shook his head. He had coins and Grimani had a new consignment of Bardolino wine from the mainland. By the end of the evening, he hoped that their respective positions would be a little more equitable.
Steven Taylor stood in the TARDIS doorway and looked around. They had landed on a beach of mixed sand and pebbles that fell steeply to a blue sea. A few hundred yards away, a mist hovered over the waves, hiding the horizon and turning the low sun into a dull circle. The mist thinned overhead to reveal a purple sky. Steven couldn't tell whether it was naturally that colour or whether it was a temporary meteorological condition.
He took a cautious sniff of air. It smelt... well, it melt like nothing else he had ever smelt. That was one of the problems about being a space pilot. He'd gone from living in a cramped apartment in the middle of an Earth Hiveblock to living in a cockpit in the middle of deep space, with only the occasional night in a space station to relieve the monotony. Even his time imprisoned on Mechanus had been spent in a small, sterile metal room. The first new thing he had smelt since childhood had been the burning forests during the Dalek attack, and since then he had been plunged from new world to new world, each one of which didn't smell like anything he had ever smelt before. Things always looked like other things he'd seen, things even sounded like things he'd heard, but smells were unique. Individual. Incomparable.
"What can you see?" Vicki asked from behind him. "Oh, get out of the way Steven."
He stepped out of the TARDIS, feeling the sand crunch beneath his boots. It was hot and humid, and he could feel sweat prickle beneath his tunic and across his scalp.
Vicki pushed past him and walked a couple of steps towards the water. "I love oceans," she said cheerfully. "There weren't any on Dido - not within walking distance, anyway, and I used to dream about them."
"Don't touch that liquid, my dear," the Doctor fussed as he left the TARDIS and carefully locked the door behind him. "It might be acid, or... or all manner of things." He slipped the key into his waistcoat pocket, and cast a quick glance at Steven. That key had been the source of several arguments between them. Steven felt that he should have his own key, just in case anything ever happened to the Doctor. The Doctor dismissed the idea, claiming that Steven was just scaremongering. The truth was, of course, that he didn't trust Steven an inch.
The one thing they were both agreed on was that Vicki shouldn't have one.
"What a wonderful place," the Doctor said, gazing around. He sniffed the air in the same way that Steven had seen him sniff fine wines. "Salt marshes, I think you'll find. Ah, yes, and wood smoke. There must be a settlement of some sort nearby." He walked a few steps down the beach and bent down to pick up a dried out strand of seaweed. "No sign of tides," he said, examining it carefully. He moved towards the water's edge. Taking a small strip of paper from a pocket, he bent forward and dipped it in the water. "And the neutral pH