by Mark Speed
“Yes, yes,” said Thickett. He tried the driver’s door for the twentieth time but it wouldn’t budge. “But this is the other Doctor’s. The house belongs to one David Ware, a licenced cab driver. David Ware. Where, you see? Doctor Where. This is his –” he lowered his voice so that the police and fire crews couldn’t hear – “time-machine. His Spectrel.” He hissed that last word in an awed whisper.
“So you think he drove off in his other taxi and left it behind?”
“Yes.”
“So it must be broken. I mean, look at it – it’s got flat tyres. That’s not state-of-the-art, is it? Surely he might have taken his Spectrel.”
“He has his reasons. They have their reasons. Maybe they’re spying on us?”
“Then it could be a trap. Or a piece of misdirection?”
“Ah, maybe that’s what the Doctor – the Doctors – want us to believe.”
“The Doctor isn’t a threat, Mr Thickett. However, whatever demolished this house presents a clear and obvious threat to the British public. Our remit is to protect them.”
“Yes, yes,” snapped Thickett. “But it’s also to protect them by advancing and incorporating scientific knowledge. This beauty is mine. Imagine what we’re going to learn from it. Ah, here we are.”
A parking enforcement truck pulled up. It was the kind which had a small crane with a sling, capable of lifting a vehicle onto its back. Thickett went over to the driver, shouted some orders over the noise of the engine and gesticulated at the black cab.
Peterson shook her head and looked back at the house. Thickett would be shocked if he knew what she thought she knew about the Time Keepers and their Spectrels.
The fire crew had turned off the water at the mains, as well as the electricity and gas. Two of them were tightening a piece of scaffolding in the centre of the smashed front of the house to shore it up. Their watch supervisor came over to her.
“It’s safe now, Miss. Want to take a look inside?”
“Sure.”
They walked over the detritus on the lawn – pieces of splintered floorboard and ripped carpet – and stepped through the hole into the remains of the living room. The ceiling had been caked in mud as the creature had burrowed into the layer of heavy clay that lay beneath the fertile topsoil of Essex.
“Don’t know how you explain that one on the household insurance,” said the fireman.
“I don’t know how you explain all the soil in this room. How would you? Ever seen anything like it?”
“Nope. If you asked me, I’d say you might mistake it for a low-velocity gas explosion. You know – one that didn’t quite go supersonic and create enough of a shockwave to blow everything to bits. Just enough of the right methane-air mix to create a mess, blow the window out, churn up the soil.”
“Except that…?” prompted Peterson.
“Except that there was no gas leak, no evidence of fire, and if the explosion was strong enough to blow the front of the house out then why’s the back and everything else still alright?”
“Nor would that explain the damage to the garage. So how do you explain it?”
“No idea, but I’m open to suggestions. I understand you’re the expert.”
“Not necessarily an expert per se, but I’m a scientific officer who is charged with explaining the otherwise inexplicable.”
“Oh, very X-Files. MI16, your boss said. You’ve seen something like it before?”
“Somewhat like it. Been a bit of a spate of them. I’m sure it has a perfectly rational explanation.”
“Well, let me know when you do.” The fireman picked up a piece of newspaper from the detritus and scribbled his number on it. “I’d love to hear more about your glamorous line of work over a drink sometime.”
“Thank you, I’m flattered,” said Peterson, putting the paper in her wallet. She emptied it of such scraps on a monthly basis. In her head she kept a bar chart which displayed the number of solicitations per month, and she carried out multivariate analyses of the various factors she felt affected it – clothing, makeup, weather – to see how they affected the number of hits. She tried her best to minimise the attention because it was a distraction to her work. Of course, the running analysis was itself a distraction, so she recognised she was in a zero-sum game with her subjects. She wished she could dump the research, but her brain never seemed to be short of memory or processing capacity so it just kept accumulating the data and analysing it without her consciously doing so.
“It’s no more glamorous than your line of work,” she said, then realised what an insult it probably felt like to a man who was used to veneration by members of her sex. She took a few photos of the mess, doubtful they’d be of any use. Whilst she knew blood-spatter patterns could reveal a great deal about a murder scene, she doubted mud-spatter would cast much light on the incident.
“Going to board it up now, boss,” said one of the fire crew at the front of the house, so they picked their way back to the hole and stepped into the front garden.
“Was your team first on the scene?” she asked.
“Yeah, we were as it happens. I thought I knew the area, but I have to admit we were a bit confused. All these roads – they call them banjos round here – are a bit alike. I reckon we must have passed it at least twice before we found it.”
“Oh, that happens.”
“Well, we get measured on response times, so I’m for the high-jump.”
“So do you actually remember driving past it the first couple of times?”
“Between you and me, the whole thing’s a bit hazy. I could have sworn we passed a telephone box. But there isn’t one on this road. I mean, there would never be one in the middle of a banjo, would there? Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. Here’s my card. Give me a call if you recall anything else – no matter how trivial you think it might be.” She gave him a smile that she’d mathematically proven would make most men remember her instructions.
The pitch of the parking enforcement truck’s engine changed, and she looked round to see it straining to lift the dilapidated cab. Thickett watched impatiently from the kerb as the driver worked the controls at the side. “Too heavy!” he shouted above the din.
“It can’t be too heavy. Try again,” insisted Thickett.
The driver went back to his controls. This time the cab lifted immediately, causing the truck to rock dangerously as the cab swung back and forth.
“Careful!” yelled Thickett.
“I am being careful!” shouted back the driver. “It’s too light now.”
“You must be mistaken,” said Thickett.
“Must have been stuck,” said the driver. “I didn’t see nothing. You sure the engine’s not dropped out or something?” He left the controls and studied the underside of the cab, and the area where it had been parked. “Inertia,” he said.
Thickett made eye contact with Peterson and made excited gestures which she took to be about the apparent variation in weight and its impossibility.
The driver swung the cab slowly into position, two feet above the back of the truck, and lined it up. There was an ominous creaking noise from the neck of the crane, and the truck groaned uncomfortably as it settled down onto its suspension. Its wheels flattened against the road. There was a loud retort as the bolts that fastened the neck of the crane to the hydraulic pistons shattered and the driver jumped for his life. The cab slammed down onto the back of the truck with a massive crash. The truck’s windows shattered and the crane neck bounced off the roof of the cab then fell onto the roof of a car parked on the other side of the road, crushing it and spraying shattered glass everywhere. The car’s alarm activated, and wailed to the neighbourhood.
“Be careful!” said Thickett.
“You be careful!” said the driver. “What the hell is this thing?”
“If it’s damaged I’ll hold you responsible,” said Thickett, climbing up onto the truck to inspect the miraculously undamaged cab.
“You n
ever told me anything about this,” said the driver. “I’m off the job, mate.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Thicket, jumping back down and pulling himself up to his full height, which fell short of the driver’s by several inches. “Well, I don’t think you’ve got much choice, have you? You’re not getting it off in a hurry. Your equipment’s clearly sub-standard, and I’ll hold you personally responsible if this specimen isn’t delivered to our depot by nine tomorrow morning. Do you understand?”
“Specimen?” said the driver. “Jesus. I’m not going anywhere with this. No way.”
“You have to,” snapped Thickett. “Remember who you’re under contract to.” He pulled out his wallet and stuck his badge in the man’s face. “Now get moving.”
“Well, I’m not going without my crane.”
A couple of police officers had taken an interest, and stepped between the two men. One of them explained that the crane would have to stay where it was, pending an investigation by the Health and Safety Inspectorate the following morning. It was explained to Thickett that driving a truck with a shattered windscreen would be a serious traffic violation. Either the truck and the cab would have to be towed, or the windscreen would have to be repaired in situ.
“If you don’t mind, Mr Thickett,” said Peterson, “I think I’ll call it a night here. I think we’ve reached a logical impasse. Don’t you?”
Thickett glared up at her. “You saw it, didn’t you? You saw that it could vary its weight. How do you explain that within your current understanding of the physical universe, Doctor Peterson?”
“As I said, Mr Thickett, I was much more interested in the danger presented by whatever demolished the house. Quite why you remained so interested in an apparently unrelated object is something that defies rational explanation in itself.”
“I’m looking to the future, Miss Peterson,” said Thickett, between clenched teeth.
“So am I. I’m looking to the future and hoping to prevent whatever this thing is from destroying any more property. It’s my job. God forbid there’s more than one of them. I can’t imagine the trouble we’ll be in if an invasive species like this starts breeding. I’ll drop these samples back at the lab and see you in the morning. Goodnight, Mr Thickett.”
“She’s not a happy Spectrel, is she?” said Dr How. They had been looking at a projection of the scene in Dagenham from the point of view of the Spectrel’s badge. The three-dimensional image hovered in the air in front of Dr How’s Spectrel.
“She’s a bit grumpy, that’s all,” said Ware. “I don’t know where she gets it from,” he said to Kevin, with a grin. “Still, she’s done herself proud, resisting arrest.”
“Unfortunately, she’s used up quite a bit of energy by throwing a tantrum. She’s also drawn a little more attention to herself than she perhaps should have done. She could have gone along quietly, then just waited for us to rescue her.”
“Well, you gotta understand what she’s been through, Peter. I ain’t proud of the neglect, am I? Then there’s this cyber-attack you were talking about. She’s got a right to defend herself.”
“Yes, yes. We could just do without the attention of these people.”
“Who are they?” asked Kevin.
“Mmm? Oh, MI16,” said Dr How. “Directorate of Military Intelligence, Section Sixteen. Formed in 1945 to deal with scientific intelligence.”
“The Nazis had funded all this scientific research, you see,” said Ware. “The V-1 Guided missile, the V-2 ballistic missile – and a host of other stuff. They needed a whole new department to gather the documents, the artefacts, and interrogate the actual scientists.”
“But I thought there was just MI5 and MI6?” said Kevin.
“Nah,” said Ware. “There was MI sections right up to Nineteen. I must say, I thought Sixteen was disbanded and shoved into Six after a while.”
“Section One became GCHQ,” said Dr How. “The big base of eavesdroppers based in Cheltenham. The ones who crack codes, hack emails and listen to telephone conversations.”
“Anyway, they were more than a little interested in us Time Keepers,” chipped in Ware. “But we didn’t want to talk to them.”
“We’d done our bit for Britain during the War,” said Dr How. “As always. But we digress.” He turned to his Spectrel. “Thank you,” he said, and the projection stopped. “She’ll be okay, but we have to get her back soon. She’s going to need extensive repairs.”
“Again, my apologies for the complications,” said Ware.
“It happens, cousin. Just so long as you’re back with the cause now.”
“I’m back.”
“So, like, who do you think is attacking you?” asked Kevin.
“Could be anyone,” said Ware.
“Or, indeed, anything,” said Dr How.
“Yeah, but like, do you really think it’s this beetle thing?”
“If you’re asking me whether the beetle is attacking us – or, more specifically, my cousin – of its own volition, then the answer is almost certainly no.”
“Like, how do you know?”
“Come on, Kevin, look at the facts. It’s a fairly dumb critter, as they go. Give it something that looks even just a little like a member of the opposite sex and it’s happy. Give it some food and it’s pretty passive. No, something’s controlling it. And it’s no coincidence that it attacked so soon after we arrived on the scene.”
“Well it might be obvious to you, but I’m new to all this. Like, do you have any enemies?”
Both of the Time Keepers laughed.
“Come on, guys,” protested Kevin. “You can’t expect me to know all of this stuff.”
“Sorry,” said Ware. “It’s just that – even if you were going off your BBC knowledge – you should realise that there are plenty of people who’d rather we weren’t around.”
“Yes, but who?” said Kevin.
“Oh, don’t mention that word in Peter’s house,” said Ware, and slapped the youth on the shoulder.
“I just want to understand what the situation is,” protested Kevin. “I mean, Dr How’s told me that there are aliens all over the place, but he hasn’t told me who they are, what they want, why they’re here – none of that. I think I’ve got a right to know. I mean, why are you two here anyway?”
Dr How gave him a serious look again. “As I think I’ve told you, Kevin, we Time Keepers operate under an intergalactic treaty. We are, if you will, peace keepers, of sorts. We’re entrusted to do certain things. That’s why we’re called Time Keepers. As for the other aliens, there are delegations from many different cultures. They’re here to observe and to represent their civilisations.” Kevin opened his mouth to speak. “And, no, they’re not here to kidnap people on lonely country roads; nor do they carve up cattle in the Mid-Western United States.”
“Not for the most part, anyway,” said Ware.
“There are miscreants, yes. But most civilisations mean well.”
“And there are ones that don’t?” asked Kevin.
“There’s always a small percentage of otherwise intelligent beings who want to destabilise, or control.”
“Or just trash the status quo,” added Ware. “Who knows what they want?” He flashed a look at his cousin. “Who hasn’t a bleedin’ clue, actually.”
“Enough, David.”
“What about the other Doctors? I mean, the other Time Keepers?” asked Kevin.
“As we like to say on Gaelfrey, Kevin, ‘All in good time’. Now, we must all rest. We have much to do tomorrow. Trinity will show you to your rooms.” The other two glanced at the stairs, surprised to see the big black cat swishing her tail silently.
“I’d better call my Mum and let her know I’m staying out.”
“I took the liberty of having my Spectrel leave an explanatory message in your voice earlier,” said the Doctor. “She’d not be grateful for a call at this hour in the morning. I bid you goodnight. Oh, and just one thing.”
“What’s that?” asked
Ware.
“Both of you – please shower thoroughly before you go to bed. You know I… Look, it’s just this cleanliness thing. Okay?”
“Where are you sleeping, Doctor?”
“A good Time Keeper sleeps in his Spectrel,” said Ware, putting a hand in the middle of Kevin’s back, and guiding him in the direction of the stairs. Trinity was already climbing them.
Kevin glanced back over his shoulder. The chair at the desk was empty and the red telephone box glowed in the corner.
The Doctor was gone.
Chapter Eleven
Dr How had known who it was the instant the doorbell had rung.
“Mrs Roseby, good morning,” he said. “And to what do I owe this great pleasure at this early hour?”
“Don’t you try sweet-talking me, Doctor How. You know very well why I’m here.”
“No, really, I don’t.”
“You arrived back at God-alone-knows what hour last night in a scruffy-looking cab with a couple of very dodgy-looking people and woke my Albert up. And I’m concerned that this wreck of a vehicle,” she gesticulated at Ware’s cab, “is bringing down the neighbourhood.”
Inside his pocket, Dr How’s fingers curled around his Ultraknife. He made a conscious effort to let it go and bring his hand out empty. “Mrs Roseby, I have every right to arrive at my own home in whatever means of transport I choose at any time of the day or night, with whomever I choose to do so. Domestic cats are semi-nocturnal so it’s only natural that Albert was awake. As for my guest’s cab, it has every right to park on my property. However, if you feel it’s affecting the value of your house, I’d be delighted to move it before you put it up for sale. I have to say I’m glad to hear you’re considering moving into a nursing home; your niece has often expressed concern about your safety.”
Doctor How had chosen to press several buttons at once. It put him in mind of pulling the lever on a one-armed bandit, and he could almost hear the words lining up in his neighbour’s head as the wheels stopped spinning.