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 had 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 Smith stared down on her with faded eyes.
Ace wondered whether Mrs Smith had some nitrate fertilizer and some 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.
7
SATURDAY, 12:13
RATCLIFFE STARTED WHEN a section of the wall slidnoiselessly 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.
Rachel was studying the Doctor when the group captain came in. The little man was staring at the maps laid out on the billiard table – staring at, but not seeing them. It was as if he were studying another landscape that only he could see, planning moves on some unimaginable gaming board.
‘Well, Doctor?’ asked Gilmore.
‘Group Captain,’ said the Doctor. ‘About the evacuation.’
‘I have been in direct contact with High Command and they have agreed to a staged quiet withdrawal under the Peacetime Nuclear Accident Provisions. They felt that given the state of the current government…’
‘Thanks to Miss Keeler,’ said Allison.
‘They felt, Miss Williams,’ Gilmore looked sharply at the young woman, ‘that the initial stages could be carried out under the aegis of the Intrusion Counter Measures Team. The D-notice committee has been informed and a cover story prepared.’
‘What is it?’ asked Rachel.
‘I have no idea,’ said Gilmore with surprise, ‘not my department.’
Ask a stupid question, she thought.
‘Now, Doctor,’ Gilmore said briskly, ‘since you hold my career in your hands, I hope you can justify my faith.’
‘With respect, Group Captain,’ said the Doctor, ‘your career is magnificently irrelevant.’
Rachel saw Gilmore flinch as if he had been slapped. Emotions rippled across his face – anger and wounded pride. For a moment it was a face of a young lieutenant, lost on a moonlit beach. Then twenty-three years of memory clamped down and it became a warrior’s mask again.
‘Any more transmission sites?’ the Doctor asked Rachel.
Rachel checked the map. ‘Just the one at the school.’
‘Good,’ said the Doctor. ‘I need a direct line to Jodrell Bank and, let me see,’ his brow creased, ‘1963 – the Fylingdales installation.’
He seized a notepad and scribbled figures. ‘Order them to search these localities for high orbital activity.’ He gave Rachel the note: he had written six groups of three digits, meridian and polar co-ordinates.
‘The detector vans should be moved so they can cover this area here and here.’ He marked the maps with red crayon. ‘All air and ground forces must be ordered to avoid engaging the enemy at all costs. We must act with extreme caution.’
‘And if we don’t?’ asked Allison.
‘Goodbye civilization as you know it.’
Ace was bored – really bored. The steam radio on the table was playing music that was all windy strings. Some jazz would be nice, a bit of go-go better, or even house or something by that trio of blonde bimbos whose name escaped her. Anything would be better than Dennis Boredom and his terminally tuneful string quartet. She had already tried the television, but all that showed was some woman with a posh accent thick enough to insulate cavity walls who played a piano while a wooden donkey jerked up and down.
And people get nostalgic about this decade, she thought. In seven years I’ll be born; in twenty-four years I’ll be sweating gelignite and something will happen – what did the Doctor call it? – an ‘adjustment’. An adjustment will happen and take me out of time. Ace decided she liked that. It could be worse: it could be Perivale.
Ace went to the window and pulled back the chintz curtain. A couple of boys were kicking a football around the street. She watched them, and then she noticed a square of cardboard in the window. It was hanging face outward; Ace took it off the hook and flipped it over. It was a hand-lettered sign which read:
NO COLOUREDS.
Ghost smell of disinfectant and charred wood.
Ace snatched up her jacket and rucksack, almost choking on the memories.
‘I’m just going out for some fresh air,’ she called out angrily. Not knowing or caring whether Mrs Smith heard, Ace ran out of the house, slamming the front door behind her.
‘What’s next on the list?’ asked Mike.
Allison ran her finger down the sheet of paper attached to the cl
ipboard. ‘Parabolic reflector, twenty to thirty centimetres.’
‘What’s that in English?’
‘Twelve inches or thereabouts.’
The Doctor had dashed off the list in the map room and handed it to Gilmore. He had handed it to Rachel, who, of course, had handed it to her. Allison and Mike had then scoured Maybury Hall for the varied array of items. Cannibalizing the messroom TV had not enhanced their popularity with the enlisted men.
‘Where are we going to get a parabolic reflector?’
‘Radio aerial,’ suggested Mike.
‘No, it says silvered, as in mirror. It’s the last item.’
‘I know, it’s…’ He stopped and waved his free hand around.
‘On the tip of your tongue,’ said Allison.
‘Hot.’
‘Cooker.’
‘Warm.’
‘What?’
‘Like a cooker… electric…’ he was getting quite frantic, ‘ring… electric ring…’
‘An electric heater?’
‘Yes,’ said Mike with relief.
‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place.’
Rachel watched the figures clatter onto the teleprinter: orbital co-ordinates, occlusion and estimated mass.
That can’t be right, she thought.
The mass was given as four hundred thousand tonnes.
Oh my god! That was incredible!
A hand reached down and ripped the completed message off the machine.
‘Here we are,’ said the Doctor.
He sounds almost cheerful, thought Rachel. What does he know?
‘It’s a big mothership of some kind – could have as many as four hundred Daleks on board,’ continued the Doctor. ‘At least we know where it is.’
‘Much good that does us,’ said Rachel.
‘It would be foolish of me, I suppose,’ said Gilmore, ‘to hope that this mothership is not nuclear capable.’
Doesn’t he realize yet what we are dealing with, thought Rachel – engineering on that scale, technology beyond anything dreamed of.
Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks: 50th Anniversary Edition (Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Collection) Page 6