Valley of the Crow
by Nigel Daft
Part 7 of the K-Nine Stories
K-Nine was beginning to feel at home in this pleasant Welsh town. As they travelled towards the town centre, Dirk explained to K-Nine that he lived in a residential area called Saint Dials. K-Nine ran this through his translator which came back with “A holy man with a face like a clock”. That didn’t sound right and K-Nine made a mental note to upgrade his translator software when he returned to the TARDIS. Wanting to find out more about the place, K-Nine turned to Dirk and said “Is there a data information centre in the town ?”
“A what ?” replied Dirk with a puzzled look on his face.
“I think you call them libraries” said K-Nine after consulting his Thesaurus.
“Ah yes, there’s one near the bandstand by the pub” said Dirk.
As K-Nine headed off towards the town centre to find the library, Dirk said to him “Nice to meet you butt, we must talk again sometimes. You can usually find me in the Bush on Friday evenings. It’s a great place for a beer and a chat; really friendly bar staff as well ”.
“Affirmative” said K-Nine as he remembered the charming young lady who had spoken to him on his previous visit to the Bush.
K-Nine entered the concrete complex that comprised the town centre. He passed by a large supermarket called Asbury’s, a pub called Wetherforks and a restaurant called Mac Ronalds but no sign of a bandstand or library. He decided to ask one of the local shoppers for directions and they told him where to go. “That’s strange” thought K-Nine “I thought Russian places ended in ‘off’ not Welsh ones”.
Eventually K-Nine located the Library and went inside through the automatic doors. He turned to his right and was confronted by a spiral staircase winding it’s way up to the first floor.
“Oh boll ….” thought K-Nine.
An attractive dark-haired woman entered, and seeing K-Nine’s predicament said “You can use the lift if you like. It’s only supposed to be for library staff, but I don’t think they will mind”.
“That’s very kind of you Stephanie Bishop” said K-Nine.
“How did you know my name was Stephanie ?” queried the young woman.
“It says so on your identity badge” replied K-Nine.
The woman laughed, and then asked K-Nine if he was looking for anything in particular in the Library. K-Nine explained that he wanted to find out more about the Valley of the Crow, or Cwmbran as it was known locally. Stephanie pointed towards the reference section in the corner of the building and K-Nine went off to investigate …