Doctor Who Short Trips: 2040 by John Binns

Author:John Binns [Binns, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction - Science Fiction, Science fiction; English, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy - General, Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Fantasy, Doctor Who (Fictitious character), General, Short Stories, Media Tie-In
Publisher: Big Finish

Culture War

Kate Orman

Mathilde at the age of five, riding her tricycle into the farmhouse's sitting room. Her insulin pump is a great chunk of plastic awkwardly strapped to her arm. She has drawn 'no smoking' signs on butcher's paper and attached them to the trike with tape. She plays on a kazoo as she rides, singing 'defense de fumes' over and over through the razzing pipe. The two gentlemen at her parents' dinner table look at her, one over his packet of cigarettes and one over his pipe, in astonishment. Her mother, blushing and frowning, picks up Mathilde from the trike and carries her wordlessly out of the sitting room. Her father hides the protest vehicle in the kitchen. When Mathilde's mother doesn't return, the Doctor excuses himself from the dinner and goes to look for them. He finds them outside, sitting on the edge of an unused concrete water trough, laughing so hard they can't speak.

The annex to the Vignes farmhouse was barely a year old, still smelling of fresh paint and new carpet. But the rich smells of the rest of the house had already permeated the fresh floorboards and the plastic. Sitting in the prim lounge down the corridor from the labs, the Doctor could smell old stone, and Auvergne cooking, and centuries of milk and cream and cheese.

The Doctor inhaled gently. His senses were sharp enough to tell one chemical from another - the ketones and ammonia, the amino acids and aldehydes, the butyric acid and the geosmin, all the molecules that made up the must of cheese. The nearby labs leaked a smell of mould (the cold rooms), disinfectant (the floors), and - he wrinkled his nose - bad breath (one of the cultures).

Beside him, in another of the orange plastic chairs scattered around the low coffee table, Inspector Toprak sat stiff-backed, her deep black eyes constantly roaming the room. She didn't see what she wanted. If the answer to their mystery was anywhere it was in the attached kitchenette, making coffee.

Mathilde Vignes came into the lounge with the cafetiere (2-methylvaleric acid, pyrazine, pyruvic acid, acetone). She put the glass jug down on the coffee table hard, making Toprak flinch. Mathilde's forearms were strong, her face freckled, her dark hair just starting to show grey. She plonked herself down in one of the plastic chairs and gazed at her visitors sourly.

'Well,' said the Doctor.

'Madame Vignes,' began Toprak.

'You people have been nothing but trouble for us right from the start,' said Mathilde, stabbing a finger at Toprak. The BMB inspector sighed and sat back again. 'From the days of the raw milk underground, when my mother's customers would wrap their cheese in six plastic bags and hide it in their handbag.'

'Well, all things have gone in very the other direction,' said Toprak in her dry and difficult French. 'Now anything goes. Raw milk, contaminated milk, giraffes' milk. Engineered moulds. Germs from every place on Earth.' Mathilde sniffed loudly. 'However, it is still against laws to transfer biological materials without the authorisation.

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