Doctor Who - Downtime Part 23

He had cut-gla.s.s eyes that watched over the rim of the tumbler. The Brigadier wondered just how much the Captain had drunk while he waited.

'You know they call your era "The Blunder Days"?'

'What?' retorted Lethbridge-Stewart.

Cavendish smirked. 'Blood and Thunder. Well, you took on some formidable opposition. Cybermen, Daemons...Yeti.'

'No worse than jumped-up officers with tuppenny-halfpenny commissions,' the Brigadier observed.

The atmosphere went cold. 'Right,' said Cavendish and studied the contents of his tumbler.

'Why exactly did you call me up to town, Cavendish?'

'Information...sir.' He glanced round the lounge and confided, 'Of a personal nature, you understand.'

'Meaning?'

'Someone's been hacking into files at Geneva.'

' My My files, I take it.' files, I take it.'

There was a pause where Cavendish seemed to be gazing into s.p.a.ce. He suddenly smiled. 'There aren't many who can remember back before UNIT's founding.'

The Brigadier studied him for a moment. He wondered what on earth it had to do with UNIT. 'That's all covered in old army reports.'

'The MoD were never very forthcoming when dealing with UNIT. Besides we need more personal details.'

'We? Are security in the dark on this one too?'

Cavendish's manner suddenly became less nonchalant, more sneering. 'Strange that you never rose higher than Brigadier, wasn't it?'

The Brigadier showed no reaction whatsoever. 'Internal politics,' he said. 'I didn't realize there was a market for my memoirs. I'll send you a copy when I get round to writing them.'

He was not exactly warming to Cavendish. He reckoned the Captain a bit of a lounge lizard, just the sort of person to run a black-windowed Porsche. He had been trying to ascertain what exactly the officer's game was. It was unorthodox, that was certain, and he knew that he was not going to play along.

Instead, he regaled Cavendish with one or two stories of his days at UNIT. Exploits that he was sure would be generally accessible to the current staff, if not apocryphal by now.

He deliberately strung the young man along, hoping to catch him off guard somehow. Cavendish was becoming increasingly familiar, probably due to the drink, and laughed out loud at the punchline '...so UNIT got blamed for blowing up the church.'

The Brigadier glossed over the strength of public outrage at the Aldbourne incident; questions in the House; a near riot at the General Synod. Only the secret capture of the Master had swayed the committee of enquiry's verdict in UNIT's favour, but relations between the UN and the MoD had never been lower.

'Are you sure you won't join me?' Cavendish enquired again as a waiter delivered another whisky.

'Not for me, Cavendish.' The Brigadier was watching the ornate clock, wondering about his schedule, when he glimpsed in a large wall mirror two youths in yellow baseball caps waiting outside the lounge doors.

'You must've picked up the odd souvenir in your time,'

said Cavendish.

The Brigadier regarded him without a trace of emotion. 'I counted them in and I counted them all back out.'

'No special keepsakes? Things do do get mislaid.' get mislaid.'

'If you lose things, you can lose men too.' The Brigadier glanced at his watch and the mirror. He was still under surveillance. He stood abruptly. 'Well, it's been good to talk to you, Captain, but I have another appointment.'

He could no longer see the doors, but he heard them opening behind him and caught the sound of a tinny repet.i.tive beat.

Cavendish stood, suddenly nervous. 'So soon? I was concerned, Brigadier.'

'So was I.' In the angled gla.s.s bordering the mirror, the Brigadier saw a flash of green and yellow. He sensed the presence behind him and saw Cavendish's eyes flick over his left shoulder. He pulled out his gun and backed round to the right.

The two youths he had encountered in Watling Street had been right at his back. One was holding up a pair of headphones that emitted the tinny pulse of sound.

When they saw the gun they faltered.

'A taste of blood and thunder for you, Captain,' the Brigadier warned. 'Now back off I'm leaving.'

The youths glanced to the Captain for instruction. After a moment, he nodded them away.

The Brigadier moved sideways to the doors, keeping his a.s.sailants firmly in his sights. The strawberry-milkshake receptionist was there, barring his retreat. She backed off from the gun too, another one with cold, cut-gla.s.s eyes.

The Brigadier ran across the foyer, dodging through the milling j.a.panese tourists, and out into the busy street.

Behind him, he heard Cavendish's distant yell. 'Get after him!'

20.

Arrivals ondon was laid out like a toy city below her. When she L swooped lower, she saw that a tide of bodies was swarming through the streets around and between the endless lines of stationary vehicles.

She moved along between the buildings, just above the level of the streetlamps, but even now she knew that her task was impossible. The air was full of thoughts, anxious and stressful: thousands of instincts and concerns that the daily rhythms of the city, perhaps the whole world, were so disrupted. The air was angry. Some disaster was imminent.

She could sense its lowering approach, but its nature eluded her. She could no longer focus. The object of her own quest slipped further and further out of reach.

Hope did not desert her. She had vowed to him him that she would find it before that she would find it before he he returned. returned.

She felt the tug of the silver cord. Reality rushed at her as she coiled back into her body.

She snapped awake and saw Christopher at the other side of her desk, staring intently across at her, exuding all that smugness for which she so despised him.

Bewildered, she said urgently, 'There's still time. I must find the Locus.'

Christopher smiled. On the desk top, the small pyramid of opaque gla.s.s had begun to pulse with rhythmic light. A voice erupted out of the air. His His voice. voice.

' Victoria, I am here. Victoria, I am here. ' '

The old man who was Travers stood where the stick had brought him. His unseeing eyes stared from behind grimy spectacles with cracked lenses. He was gaunt and stiffly erect, barely containing a fearful coiled energy like some fearsome bible-brandishing preacherman. His threadbare clothes were filthy and torn. His tangled white hair and beard had not grown in a decade. His face was a mask dragged like scrim over bony features frozen by one driving thought.

He stood waiting in the centre of the university reception, his hand resting on his immaculately vertical white stick. A dozen Chillys, drawn by the thoughts they heard from their headphones, gathered round him in wonder and fear.

One girl slid a scarf from her neck and wrapped it with reverence around his shoulders.

The old man shuddered at her touch. The mouth twitched and the throat growled out its question. The question.

'Where is the Locus?'

The Brigadier hunched up and stared at the pavement, trying to stay as inconspicuous as possible. He had stood for fifteen minutes in a telephone queue of people trapped by the transport system breakdown. Ringing home, ringing the office.

d.a.m.nation. Why didn't they hurry? He was a sitting target standing here.

When he finally reached the phone, the line was appalling.

He was surprised to reach Sarah Jane Smith so quickly.

'h.e.l.lo?' he barked. 'Miss Smith?'

At first, he thought he was through to some sort of answerphone. A robotic voice said, 'Your telephone call has been received and your voice print recognized. The mistress is being summoned. Please remain on the line, I am boosting the reception differential.'

The quality of the line improved radically and the Brigadier heard Miss Smith saying, 'Who is it, K9?'

The other voice replied, 'Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, mistress.'

'Oh, thank goodness,' he heard her exclaim.

'From a public callbox situated at the junction of Great t.i.tchfield Street and Foley...'

'Yes. All right. Thank you, K9!' Her voice was suddenly close in on the line. 'Brigadier?'

'Miss Smith. I need your help.'

'Oh, I'm so relieved to hear you.'

'Please, just listen.' He glanced along the street and saw a youth in a green uniform about fifty yards away. 'I want you to contact UNIT for me.'

'But I've already tried that, and well, I thought there was something very wrong. I spoke to someone called Cavendish.'

'Cavendish!' The Brigadier hunched up further as the young man in green ran past the phonebox. He was followed by a tramp who seemed to be having trouble keeping up.

'Yes. Captain Cavendish. Do you know him?' she asked.

'He sounded like a right little charmer.'

'Miss Smith, just ring the regular UNIT number. Ask for Brigadier Charles Crichton and quote them the following codes: NN and QQ.'

'NN and QQ. Right, got you.'

'Tell Crichton what you told me. It's a risk, but we must reach someone we can trust.'

'But Cavendish said...'

With a click, the line went dead. It was replaced by a series of high pitched bleeps. The Brigadier's thoughts swam. He slammed the receiver down hard. Leaning heavily against the side of the booth, he tried to extract his phonecard from the machine. It seemed to be jammed. As he watched, there was a crunching sound and the card was slowly extruded, its shape mangled and bitten.

He pocketed the object and left the phonebox, forced to concentrate on every step, making his way north.

A pack of five Chillys were moving up Regent Street, heading towards Portland Place. Danny and Harrods ducked behind an abandoned bus until they had pa.s.sed. The traffic lights at the junction with Mortimer Street were dementedly flashing all their lights at once. From somewhere they heard the echoing sound of police loudhailers. The West End was apparently being sealed off.

'Well, sir?' whispered Harrods.

Danny was nervously tapping a finger against his teeth. 'I don't know.' The certainty of what he was seeking had gone.

It was part of his gift seeking and finding an object; visualizing it and then simply going to collect. But he was seeking a person, not an inanimate artefact or a computer code; not his sister's watch hidden in the garden, or his father's car keys. He couldn't visualize. He just didn't know any more.

'This way,' he said and they hurried west towards Wigmore Street. The cafes and shops were deserted, the roads clogged with abandoned vehicles. Danny ran, his head turning this way and that, vainly searching for some clue. His head was starting to swim. He was removed from his thoughts, flying above their surface, but unable to reach them. They flashed and rippled mockingly like sunlight on water.

He saw a cl.u.s.ter of huge white eyes flickering and glaring.

They drew him in. In his head, he heard a high pulsing beat.

He went to it, but an invisible wall barred his way. Arms stretched out, he pinioned himself against the barrier, trying to force a way through.

In his head he saw a toy a lumpen carving of a bear creature. He couldn't get past it to see the Brigadier.