Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks (7 page)

Mike was shocked to discover that his attacker was old, maybe in his fifties.

‘Who do you work for?’

But the man gazed stupidly past Mike’s face; his old body tensed and jerked like a puppet. A low moan escaped his lips. With a shock Mike recognized him as the headmaster of Coal Hill School. The body went limp and slid out of Mike’s hands, slumping boneless and dead to the ground.

Mike recoiled, breathing hard. He looked wildly about.

No one was in sight; no one had seen. He ran, leaving the headmaster among the maze of gravestones.

But he ran after the Doctor.

‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ intoned Parkinson and snapped his braille bible shut. He heard the Doctor reach over and then the rattle of dirt on the coffin lid. ‘It’s over,’

he said after a respectful pause.

‘No,’ replied the Doctor, ‘it’s just starting.’

It was only as the Doctor led him away that Parkinson realized he didn’t know whom he had just buried.

Mike watched the Doctor walk away, arm and arm with the vicar. He fixed the position of the grave in his mind, the better to report to Ratcliffe later.

Ratcliffe had told him he would see many strange things and he was right, as usual. He had always known things, secrets. When Mike was small, running wild on the bombsites, Ratcliffe had given him a bar of chocolate – a small bar with foreign words on the wrapper. ‘It’s from Germany,’ Ratcliffe had explained.

‘You been there?’ Many returning soldiers had brought back things from overseas.

‘No, Mike me lad,’ said Ratcliffe, ‘but I’ve got friends there.’

The chocolate had been rich and dark; Mike made it last a long time. As Mike grew up, Ratcliffe would talk to him. He told Mike about the world: how the bankers and communists were all in league together; how the government planned to ship in negroes from abroad to keep wages down and force decent white people out of their jobs.

Mike had absorbed it all.

Ratcliffe’s pronouncements had of late become less general and more accurate. Last Saturday, Ratcliffe had caught him in Harry’s Cafe. He had asked what Mike was doing in civvies. Mike had winked and told him it was a secret. Ratcliffe seemed to find that enormously funny, then he had leaned over the table and whispered in Mike’s ear: ‘There’ll be a new American President by this evening.’

With that, he winked hugely and left.

That afternoon in Dallas, Kennedy’s head jerked forward and then back.

‘Secrets,’ Ratcliffe had always said, ‘are the key to everything.’

‘Once we possess this Hand of Omega,’ said Ratcliffe, ‘what then?’

‘We shall be on the brink of great power.’

‘And our agreement?’

‘You too shall share this power, if you have the stomach for it.’

Ratcliffe licked his suddenly dry lips. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There will be casualties, many deaths.’

Ratcliffe relaxed, shrugged and said: ‘War is hell.’

Ace bit into a slice of toast.

The boarding house in Ashton Road was one of a row of jerry-built terraced houses that had survived the Blitz. To the north the big concrete mistakes of post-war planning still gleamed hopefully over Hoxton. It was a dying community: children had vanished into the new towns out of London, leaving parents isolated. Doors were locked during the day now; mistrust showed in hard looks and muttered curses.

In the dining room of the house, the carpet had worn thin in places and the covers of the stuffed chairs were shiny at the seams from a thousand washes. A faded picture of Mr Smith in naval uniform hung on the wall: he had been lost with his ship in the freezing Arctic Sea while running weapons to the Russians in 1943.

Under that picture Mrs Smith laboured to keep her home spotless for the people who stayed there and for the stubborn pride of the bereaved. Everyday Mrs Smith would dust the knick-knacks from abroad that littered the mantelpiece with memories. She dusted the new television that Mike had bought but she never watched; she laid out breakfast places on the gate-legged table under the window.

At this table on that morning Rachel nibbled toast and remembered Turing. Ever since Turing had compared the human brain to eight pounds of cold porridge, Rachel had always thought about him at breakfast. She has also gone off porridge for good.

Across the table Allison read the paper, with studied intensity, her face unreadable. A war baby, thought Rachel, who had trouble understanding the way her assistant thought sometimes. I wonder what kind of world her generation will create, Aldous Huxley or George Orwell?

She had a horrible suspicion that for an answer all she had to do was ask Ace: ‘It’s not your past, Ace,’ the Doctor had said. ‘You haven’t been born yet.’

I must be getting old, thought Rachel, because I really don’t want to know.

‘The Professor said he’d be back by now,’ Ace said suddenly.

‘What was he up to, anyway?’ asked Rachel.

‘Working,’ said the Doctor from the doorway, ‘unlike some people.’

Mike was grinning over the Doctor’s shoulder. ‘Have a good sleep?’

‘ ’S OK,’ said Ace. ‘You’re late.’

‘I found him wandering the streets,’ said Mike.

‘I was not wandering,’ the Doctor said testily. ‘I was merely contemplating certain cartographical anomalies.’

Mrs Smith handed Mike a note.

Mike read it. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘if you don’t mind I think the group captain is waiting for us.’

Ace sprang out of her seat. ‘Great! something to do at last.’

‘Ah,’ said Mike. ‘He specifically ordered that "the girl"

should remain here.’

That did not go down well with Ace. She appealed to the Doctor, but he merely shrugged and pulled the baseball bat out of its hiding place in the umbrella.

‘I brought you a present,’ he said. He held up the bat and for a moment blue energy crackled about its tip.

Rachel recoiled. That wasn’t static – static doesn’t flow like that, she thought. That’s another damned energy weapon. ‘How did you do that?’ she asked before she could stop herself.

‘Higher technology,’ the Doctor said airily, ‘and no I can’t tell you how.’

Rachel had to ask: ‘Why not?’

‘You’re not ready for it – nobody on this planet is.’

There he goes again, Rachel thought.

Ace was protesting even as she took the bat. Rachel drew Allison out through the door.

Mike followed, but paused in the doorway. ‘Sorry, kid,’

he said to Ace. ‘Work to be done. Back at six – have dinner ready.’ He closed the door quickly behind him.

Ace said something loudly from the other side.

‘Where did she learn words like that?’ said Allison.

‘She certainly has a colourful command of the English language,’ agreed Rachel.

‘No doubt about it,’ said Mike, grinning, ‘she isn’t from Cambridge.’ He ignored Allison’s sour look and opened the front door. ‘Come on, we can wait in the car.’

Ace struggled with her temper. ‘Professor, you can’t leave me here.’ Her voice had a childish whine which even she noticed.

‘Ace,’ said the Doctor with exaggerated patience, ‘I’m trying to persuade Gilmore to keep his men out of trouble.

If I can’t do that, a great number of needless deaths will occur.’

‘You’re up to something.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I have to come with you.’

‘No.’

‘Who else is going to guard your back?’

‘Will you obey me just this once? When I get back I’ll explain everything.’

‘Tell me now.’

‘I don’t have time.’

Grown up against child again, thought Ace. Even with the Doctor it always comes down to that. But a nagging voice told her that this time she deserved it.

‘I’ll stay, if that’s what you want.’

‘Trust me,’ said the Doctor. She did – all the way.

‘Doctor?’ she said as the Doctor opened the door.

He half turned. ‘Yes?’

‘You’d better explain when you get back, or...’

‘Or?’

Ace lifted the baseball bat; blue light flickered briefly around it. ‘Things could get nasty.’ She smiled and as he closed the door she thought he smiled back. A chintz curtain swirled in the draft; seaman Srnith stared down on her with faded eyes.

Ace wondered whether Mrs Smith had some nitrate fertilizer and sonic spare sugar. That was how she had started when she was twelve: a bag of nitrate fertilizer, a two-pound packet of sugar and some empty paint tins. The trick, she learned early on, was containment. The force of the blast comes from the rapidly expanding gases created by the reaction of the chemicals. With a crude explosive –

‘sweetener’ she had called her early stuff – the better the paint tin was sealed, the better the bang.

When she was fourteen she discovered the love of her life – nitroglycerine. With chemicals taken from the chemistry lab she synthesized her own, graduating to making nitrocellulose and then industrial grade gelignite.

One evening she hit upon nitro-nine, a forced recombination of the nitrate solution with a minimal organic stabilizer made up from shredded cornflake packets. Nitro-nine had awesome destructive powers – it was also very unstable.

But then. Ace figured, so was life.

Mike leaned on the steering wheel and stared gloomily after the Doctor. ‘I wonder what he’s up to?’

Rachel was trying unsuccessfully to find a comfortable position for her legs under the dashboard and wondering why she as chief scientific adviser rated only a Ford Prefect. ‘Who knows?’ she said flippantly. ‘He has alien motives.’

Mike turned to her. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, I don’t think he’s human.’

Mike’s expression grew concerned. ‘And Ace?’

‘Oh, she’s not an alien,’ Rachel said slyly. ‘You’re all right there.’

The young man looked relieved. ‘Good,’ he said, quickly adding: ‘I wouldn’t want her to be foreign, would I?’

Rachel suppressed a laugh.

‘Here comes the Doctor,’ said Allison. ‘Looks like he’s carrying something.’

‘Looks like a toolcase,’ said Mike.

More magic, thought Rachel.

Saturday, 12:13

Ratcliffe started when a section of the wall slid noiselessly up into the ceiling to reveal a large flat screen. It took him a few moments to resolve the sharp grey lines and red blobs into a recognizable picture. It was like one of those hideous abstracts that decadent people thought of as art.

Except, he realized, it was an aerial view of the immediate area. A green symbol flashed near the centre on what Ratcliffe was sure was Coal Hill School. Angular letters in orange crawled across the screen.

‘The enemy is about to start moving,’ came the gritty tones of the voice.

‘You think Group Captain Gilmore suspects us?’ asked Ratcliffe. ‘Alerting the military now could cause problems.’

‘Not the paltry military forces of your world – the real enemy: the imperial Dalek faction, Ven-Katri Davrett, may their shells be blighted. Soon it will be war.’ The voice held a note of grim satisfaction. ‘Are you ready for war, Mr Ratcliffe?’ It was almost an accusation.

‘Yes,’ said Ratcliffe. ‘This country fought for the wrong cause in the last war. When I spoke out they had me imprisoned.’

‘You will be on the right side in this war.’

A soldier opened the door of the Mercedes and snapped a salute; Gilmore clambered out and returned it. He had managed a catnap during the short journey from Whitehall to Hendon – it was the only sleep he had been able to grab in the night and morning spent arguing with his superiors.

In the end the Army, sensing a possible embarrassment for the Royal Air Force, had agreed.

He had been left for three hours in a musty Ministry of’

Defence anteroom as they deliberated. Dead generals in dark oil paintings stared down at him while he waited. The Air Marshal emerged from the conference room in a billow of cigar smoke. ‘It’s your show now,’ he had said, passing Gilmore a thick sheaf of notes – the Rules of Engagement.

Gilmore was met by his batman at the entrance to Maybury Hall. ‘Coffee,’ he told the man, ‘black, three sugars, in two minutes in my room.’ The man nodded and scuttled off.

Gilmore strode up the corridor and opened the door to the duty room. Staff came to rapid attention in their seats.

Sergeant Embery snapped to his feet. ‘Evacuation plans,’

Gilmore passed him the thick document, ‘implementation immediate.’

The aroma of coffee filled his room. On the spare cot-bed, his batman had laid out fresh battle fatigues. The walnut handle of his service revolver protruded from the holster placed neatly on the folded squares of khaki cloth.

Gilmore washed in a white enamel basin with cold water from a matching jug. Cold brought a measure of sharpness back. Dressing brought him more into focus, making him more the man, more the soldier. But even the bitter coffee couldn’t eliminate the subtle tang of fear in his mouth. He buckled on his gun belt with short savage tugs.

In a dimly lit hut twenty-three years ago, so newly built that it stank of resin, he had watched flickering green lines on a cathode ray tube as the WAAF operator intoned courses and speeds into her headset, a litany of Stukas.

Within minutes the bombs had been falling among the box-girder radar towers. They had heard the screaming wail of a Stuka’s dive, the death whistle of the bomb and the dull crump of the blast. The operator had calmly continued relaying flight information to Group Area Command, her soft voice never faltering until a bomb severed the landline.

That night he and the operator went down to the beach together. He had said her name over and over again as the terror abated into something else. The sea was a sheet of silver; small waves whispered over sand. ‘Rachel,’ he had said as the bombs went away.

Gilmore was transferred to training command in Scotland the next day. As he drove away he saw a formation of droning specks heading inland. Operator Jensen was already reporting their vectors to HQ in that soft calm voice of hers. Neither of them had ever married.

Gilmore pulled on his peaked cap. The badge was bright from polishing.