Doctor Who: The Angel’s Kiss by Melody Malone

Author:Melody Malone
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: BBC Digital

Chapter 6

The Soul of Wit

I WAS ALLOWED to walk back unaided to where Max Kliener was waiting. But two Hanks followed closely behind me, each holding an identical pistol in their identical hands. Max Kliener, meanwhile, had transformed into Max Show-off.

He seemed only slightly put out when I interrupted his spiel to say: ‘It was you that sent those thugs to kill me last night after the party, wasn’t it?’

He opened his hands in a ‘what can I say’ gesture. ‘After Rock told me he should have recognised you and didn’t, I was worried how much you knew.’

‘Which Rock was that?’ I asked, pleased I’d timed my question to coincide with walking past several of them propped up inside their bell jars. We really were in the country of the bizarre now.

‘It’s best to plan ahead,’ Kliener told me. ‘You never know when you might need a new star.’

‘So the first Rock was right when he said someone was out to kill him.’

Kliener shook his head. ‘Wrong on every count, lady.’ He was starting to annoy me.

But I smiled to show otherwise. ‘Oh?’

‘He wasn’t the first Rock, not by a long way. And no one was trying to kill him. It just… happens.’

Light was beginning to dawn. I could understand the attraction of having a ready supply of the world’s best-known movie stars standing by. If they were in the habit of dying off, that made even more sense.

But where did Kliener get them from? I glanced back at the coffin-shaped tank and he clapped his hands approvingly.

‘I think the dame’s got it,’ he said. ‘Clever girl.’

‘Lady, dame, girl, make your mind up.’ All right, so my mind was on working out the plot rather than witty dialogue right now. ‘You have a way of making someone look how you want – am I right?’

‘Top of the class, doll.’

‘You asked about my height and weight, so I’m guessing it’s to do with moving bits round rather than hacking them about.’ I had a vague idea of how it might work, but he’d need the sort of power supply that wasn’t readily available in 1930s New York.

‘That’s right.’ Kliener took his cigar out of his mouth for long enough to examine it and seem surprised it wasn’t lit. ‘It’s all to do with redistribution of flesh and bone matter.’ He knocked on the nearest bell jar and it made a dull ringing sound. ‘These are all different people. But now, thanks to my work, they look the same.’

‘But they’re asleep,’ I pointed out. ‘They’re even more bored with what you’ve done than I am.’

He chomped his cigar. ‘Funny girl. They’re just waiting till I need them. As you know I got a costume store, and a prop store and a scenery store. Now I got a star store too.’

I peered through the glass at a sleeping Giddy Semestre. She looked just like the real thing. Though, I realised, I’d probably never met the real thing. I wondered who she used to be.

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