Genius Loci (novel)

Genius Loci was the eighth full length novel published as part of Big Finish Productions' Bernice Summerfield series. It was also the first novel to explore (and was set) during Bernice Summerfield's early life before she met the Seventh Doctor in the novel Love and War.

Publisher's summary
''One day she will bring down empires and decide the fate of the universe. One day she will be feared by the creatures of evil and revered wherever people have had just a little bit too much to drink.''

But all that is yet to come...

Right now Bernice Summerfield is 21 years old and living hand to mouth and drink to drink. Offered a job beyond her qualifications she is lured out to the backwater planet of Jaiwan where nothing has ever happened — ever.

There she joins a disparate team of archaeologists who have just discovered that the planet of Jaiwan may have been just a tad more interesting than people thought. This could be Benny's big break and her ticket to a proper career in archaeology.

That's if archaeology doesn't kill her first.

Plot
The twenty-one-year-old Benny gets a job on Jaiwan as an assistant field director using a false CV, on the run from Spacefleet and planning to hack into Mariela Ankola's database to gain archaeological knowledge. Mariela quickly realises that Benny's credentials are fraudulent and promises to help her get legitimate ones if she takes care of the dig's expedition, freeing Mariela up to get on with actual archaeology. Benny agrees and, having been shown such kindness, cannot bring herself to hack into her database and, when Mariela hands her PDA to her, she decides not to.

Benny meets the other archaeologists and learns from Chayana Lopeti of Pinky and Perky, terraforming machines which allegedly fell in love and began building cities for one another instead the railway and road that they were tasked with laying; they had a falling out and were shut down for the safety of the colonists. Benny forgets to cover up the Continuous Active Recording units during a storm, delaying work on a midden where bones have been found. On her way to find replacement units, Benny is contacted by county authorities who threaten to shut down the dig for spurious reasons unless they are given money. Archaeologist Heidi Maputo offers to resolve this using her family connections and Benny, unable to find replacements, improvises by purchasing potfish guns used to mark empty pots. She gives them to visiting schoolchildren to tag anything that they find.

An artefact resembling part of a jet engine, far more advanced than anything else that has been found on Jaiwan, is found. Benny realises that the bones found in the midden belong to a giant frog and that they might have been buried ritually. Mariela promises her a Master's degree for this discovery. Simone Agani finds artificial structures with the frozen remains of a potfish spider, indicating that Jaiwan had experienced dramatic climate change. Benny realises that Simone has used classified military data to make her finds and learns from Mariela that Simone, Hedi and Chay are military officers; when Benny tries to flee, she is caught by General Elsa Lafayette. Fortunately for her, Lafayette was a friend of her parents and promises not to report her.

Benny learns more about her colleagues from Mariela and talks with her about Mariela's goddess; she tells Benny to live louder, drunker, braver and more loving and dies in her sleep that night. Pilar Hidalgo tells Benny that Mariela had been grooming Benny as her successor and that Mariela had come across lethal toxins on a dig on Cray. Benny promises to make Mariela proud and hires the young Shawnee as her assistant. Shawnee finds hibernation tubes at one of the digs, one of which contains a mummified potfish spider which indicates the present-day potfish spiders are descended from sapient ones. Before making the public aware of this, Benny goes to see a potfish spider in a swamp, its natural habitat, and loses a foot to it.

Benny wears a prosthetic foot whilst a replacement is grown. The swamp is drained and evidence is found of a war on Jaiwan ten thousand years ago; reporter Lola visits the site and Benny is forced to tell her that the potfish spiders might be descended from an intelligent species, which would make the human colony on Jaiwan illegal per the laws insisted upon by the Silurians.

On her birthday, Benny receives her new foot and learns that her colleagues are being sent to the front lines, which General Lafayette has already told her will most likely result in their deaths. Before they leave, Chay tells her that, whilst the potfish spider in the hibernation tube was most likely sapient, those of the present day would appear to be descended from a genetically-engineered servitor class.

A report is found in the Jaiwan database which details how the colonists had found and built over a tunnel system dug by the natives. Benny and Shawnee investigate and find the remains of an underground bunker and theorise that the natives had been attacked before they could evacuate the planet in a rocket. The tunnels are flooded by an explosion at the reservoir; whilst Benny and Shawnee survive, the water awakens buttonmonsters which attack them until the soldier archaeologists return and kill them. The three soldiers are part of the First Regiment of Combat Archaeologists and have been tasked with resolving the situation on Jaiwan. They found Holgon, who supplied Benny and Shawnee with climbing equipment, with a bullet in his head outside of the tunnels.

Benny believes that the tunnel had been deliberately flooded in an attempt on her life and that the buttonmonsters are genetically-engineered organic weapons, dropped into the bunker during the attack on the natives. The colonists are worried that they will be forcibly repatriated as a result of the Hibernation Clause in the Protocols of Colonisation and Benny agrees to give Lola an interview which results in her being invited to speak to the President and his representative, Sunan Paramita. Later, a riot breaks out in Crystal Peak, the capital city.

to be completed

Characters

 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Professor Mariela Ankola
 * Pilar Hidalgo
 * Simone Agani
 * Heidi Maputo
 * Chayana Lopeti
 * Shawnee
 * Lola
 * Elsa Lafayette

Culture

 * Professor Mariela gives Bernice a copy of her personal database, which included a lot of files on 20th century Earth.

Individuals

 * Pinky and Perky were two artificial intelligences.

Foods and beverages

 * Krill is part CO2 scrubber, part additional protein source.
 * Vodka is Russia's greatest contribution to interstellar travel (in Bernice's opinion).
 * There is a Kwik-Kurry at General Layfeyette's army base.

Literature

 * Archaeology for Primates was published by Martian University Press in 2534.

Organisations

 * Benny dropped out of Spacefleet and is now on the run from it.

Planets

 * In January 2562, Benny decides to head for Earth.
 * The Professor encountered lethal toxins while excavating an industrial site on the planet Cray.
 * The planet Heaven is becoming a popular planet to be buried on, but the Professor has a Last Ticket for burial on Earth in the Rift Valley, Tanzania.
 * Pilar Hidalgo is from the planet Shantak

Science

 * Benny calls her group of archaeologists "Combat Archaeologists".
 * Nuclear dampeners create a field inhibiting chain reactions.

Species

 * Martians are known as some of the best archaeologists in the galaxy.
 * Benny still calls Draconians "Dragons".
 * Earth Reptiles never forgave humans for usurping them and taking over their planet.
 * Heidi mentions xenomorphs in a saying, "when the xenomorphs hits the ventilation shafts".

Technology

 * Continuous Active Recording units are used at the archaeological digs.

Vehicles

 * Fulcrum is a VTOL capable troop carrier.

Continuity

 * Draconians (and the Draconian War) were first mentioned/appeared in TV: Frontier in Space.
 * Earth Reptiles first appeared in TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Sea Devils.