Doctor Who_ Timewyrm_ Exodus Part 8

Speer had just returned from an interview with the Fuehrer himself. He had been displaying the plans for the new Fuehrer Palace, destined to be the crowning achievement of the New Berlin. It would be one hundred and fifty times greater than the old Bismark Chancellery. Two million square metres of floor surface, eight huge reception halls, a theatre, a dining hall with seating for thousands. But it still wasn't finished and the Fuehrer wasn't pleased. Speer sighed. They'd rebuilt most of Berlin in the last five years and even the resources of the German empire, backed by endless supplies of slave labour couldn't do the impossible.

Martin Bormann came into the room. Hitler's private secretary was one of the most powerful men in the Reich - and one of the very few who could still deal with the Fuehrer.

He looked enquiringly at Speer. "The interview - how did it go?"

The architect shrugged. "The usual impatience. Even Rome wasn't built in a day, but try telling the Fuehrer. He became angry."

"It is as I feared. There was another outburst?"

"I'm afraid so. The doctors had to be summoned and I left."

"It's getting worse," said Bormann slowly. "The constant driving forward, the sudden rages. Winning the war gave him no peace, he seems more driven than ever. Sometimes I think he'll burn himself out."

Speer made no reply. He could still hear the Fuehrer's voice, ranting and screaming, and he was still haunted by something he'd seen in, or was it behind, the Fuehrer's bright blue eyes.

Something trapped, frustrated, raging - something not quite human.

Hemmings" blow caught Ace between her upper lip and her nose. It was agonizingly painful, and her nose produced an immediate fountain of blood.

She toppled from the chair, rolled over on her shoulder and sprang to her feet, hurling herself at Hemmings, crooked hands reaching for his face.

Hemmings fell back astonished before the force of her attack, throwing up his arms to protect himself. Recovering himself, he grabbed her by the upper arms, steely fingers digging painfully in to the soft flesh, and shook her hard. Her head jolted to and fro and her still-bleeding nose sprayed drops of blood on his uniform. With a snarl of disgust, he hurled her into a corner of the room. She bounced off the wall and slid to the floor.

Breathing hard, Hemmings stared down at her. Her nose and lips were swollen and her face and much of her tee s.h.i.+rt were covered in blood.

"Yes, that looks much more convincing," he said and pressed a bell-push by the door. Almost at once the door opened and two Freikorps thugs appeared.

"Cleared after preliminary interrogation," said Hemmings. "Put her with the others for release."

The two men showed no trace of surprise, or even of interest in Ace's condition. They just grabbed her by the arms and hauled her to her feet.

Just as if they'd come for the rubbish, thought Ace as they dragged her out, and considering the way I feel. . .

They bustled her along the gloomy corridor and into a featureless waiting room where a handful of people sat huddled on hard wooden benches against the walls. There was a dazed-looking white-haired old man, two skinny depressed-looking girls, an immensely fat old woman wrapped in shapeless rags and a burly bald-headed workman with a bruised face and a black eye. They looked up without much interest at the sight of Ace, and she slumped down on a bench next to the fat woman, who gave her a friendly grin.

"Give you a hard time, did they, love?"

"Oh, it's nothing much," said Ace, sniffing the last few drops of blood up her nose. To her surprise, she realized she was speaking the truth. Her nose and her upper lip were still sore but it was wearing off. She must look a right mess with all the blood, but she wasn't really hurt, not badly. She fished out a grubby handkerchief, spat on it, and tried to scrub her face clean. After all, she thought, a belt round the chops and a nosebleed... I used to get worse in the playground many a time.

She settled down to wait.

The Doctor was surrounded by scattered files. He had studied the beginnings of World War II, Britain's unexpected declaration of war, the lightning Blitzkrieg, the collapse of French resistance. He had followed events up to what should have been the familiar miracle of Dunkirk, the escape of the battered remnants of the British Army, ferried out to the waiting destroyers in the famous fleet of little s.h.i.+ps.

The miracle hadn't happened.

In the buff-coloured military files before him, the Doctor found a different story. He read of the n.a.z.i tanks rolling on to capture the port of Dunkirk, of the futile last stand and eventual inevitable surrender of the remains of the British Army. He read of the glorious triumph of Goering's Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, and the destruction and defeat of the Royal Air Force.

Particular praise was given to the Fuehrer's humane and strategic decision to concentrate the bombing on airfields and radar installations rather than on London itself.

He read finally, and with mounting astonishment, of the success of Operation Sealion, Hitler's plan for the invasion and conquest of Great Britain, of the freak storms that had sunk most of the British Navy, and the equally freak spell of fine weather as. .h.i.tler's troops crossed the Channel.

The landings had been virtually unopposed, and soon the Panzer columns were smas.h.i.+ng their way towards London.

The Doctor sat back in his chair, staring into s.p.a.ce - and into time. Like a chess player, battling some invisible opponent by remote control, he tried to get a sense of his enemy's thought patterns.

Dunkirk was the splitting-point. But surely Dunkirk, and the invasion that followed, were simply the culmination of a long-term plan, a slow-burning fuse hidden deep in n.a.z.i history. He thought of the unlikely rise of Hitler from his obscure beginnings. The seeds of the evil were planted there.

Suddenly the Doctor felt a response to the probing tendrils of his thoughts.

It was as if whatever he was trying to sense was sensing him. And there was a shock of recognition, of familiarity.

"You!" thundered the voice inside his head. "Welcome, Doctor. I hoped we should meet again."

A seething whirlpool of violent emotions swept through the Doctor's mind, emotions he struggled desperately to control, to a.n.a.lyse. Above all there was frenzied, insane rage, but there was also fear, and a sense of powerlessness. Was there an undercurrent of yearning, of pleading?

As if incensed by the Doctor's thoughts, the storm of psychic energy swept through the records room, hurling papers, chairs, tables and finally the Doctor himself into the air.

The storm subsided as suddenly as it had come, dropping the Doctor with a thump, his head banging against a metal filing cabinet. As he lay, half-dazed, in the wrecked room, the Doctor heard metallic, inhuman laughter.

The laughter of Ishtar. He could smell brimstone... I was wrong, he thought dazedly.

Quite wrong. It's the Timewyrm after all. . .

Ace and her fellow prisoners were jolting through the streets in a Freikorps lorry. There was a guard in the truck, a pimply, crop-haired youth in the ill-fitting black-and-tan Freikorps uniform. He was clutching a .303 rifle, its bayonet fixed.

Ace turned to the workman sitting next to her. "What's going on? I thought they were letting us go?"

"They are, luv. Leastways, I 'ope so."

"So why didn't they just let us out?"

He gave her a look of mock horror. "In a posh place like that, outside the Savoy 'Otel? They don't want the likes of us mucking the place up, specially if we've been knocked about a bit. 'Uman litter, that's what we are.

So they takes us and dumps us where n.o.body minds."

"Silence! No talking in the truck!" said the guard in a high, nervous voice.

The prisoners looked at him. "Belt up, sonny," said the workman.

"What did you do?" asked Ace.

"They say I "ad one too many and fell out with some Freikorps lads. Don't remember much about it to be honest. Terrible thing, drink. . . "

The truck jolted to a halt and the guard jumped down.

"Ere we are," said the workman. "All git aht!" He jumped down from the truck. "Well, I'm off for an 'air of the dog wot bit me - if I can find a pub with some beer left." He wandered away.

The rest of the prisoners, Ace included, got down from the truck. Ace looked round. They were in an area of nondescript little streets, under the shadow of a railway viaduct. She turned and saw the fat woman struggling to get down from the truck, watched impatiently by the guard.

"Get a move on, we ain't got all day," he said impatiently, and gave her a shove that nearly unbalanced her. Ace barged him out of the way and helped the fat woman down.

"Thanks ducky," she wheezed as she eased her bulk out of the truck.

"Here, you!" said a hoa.r.s.e angry voice. The guard grabbed Ace by the shoulder and spun her round. "Didn't you learn your lesson the first time?

Maybe you need to go back for another dose."

The fat woman bore down on him like a tank. "I wouldn't hang about, sonny, not if I was you. The Freikorps ain't too popular round here. They been known to disappear."

"Yeah?" said the guard. "You know what'll happen to this place if anyone touches us?"

"I know, all right," said the fat woman calmly. "Shoot a few hostages, blow up a building or two. We've seen it all before. Only - it wouldn't do you much good, though. I mean, you wouldn't be here to see any of it."

The hatred in the fat woman's voice chilled Ace's blood. It seemed to chill the guard's blood too. He jumped into the truck, banged on the roof of the cab and the truck rattled away.

"Freikorps pipsqueaks!" said the fat woman scornfully.

Ace remembered her mission. "I'm looking for a place called Ma Barker's Caff..."

The fat woman looked at her suspiciously. "Where'd you hear about that?"

"It was recommended to me - well, to me and a friend of mine. An old man at the Festival said they did a really good cuppa."

"Old man? What old man, what was 'is name?"

"I don't know. He was white-haired and very tall. He said to say Pop sent us."

The fat woman beamed. "Ah well then, that's all right. You come with me love, and I'll show you. It's not far from here, and it's on me way . . ."

Alarmed by a noise like a rus.h.i.+ng wind, the old caretaker hurried to the archive room. To his horror he found the room in a shambles, and his visitor unconscious on the floor. For a moment the old caretaker paused, frozen in horror. If harm came to a top-ranking n.a.z.i in the museum...

He knelt beside the body. "Herr Doktor! Herr Doktor!"

To the caretaker's vast relief the Doctor opened his eyes.

"Are you all right?" asked the old man anxiously.

Rubbing the back of his head, the visitor sat up. "Fine, fine, never better!"

He sprang to his feet, reeled and staggered against the filing cabinet, clutching it for support.

"I heard a noise, a strange rus.h.i.+ng sound, I came to see what was happening and found this." The caretaker looked round the wrecked room.

"What happened here?"

"Something very strange indeed."

"Were you attacked?"

"I suppose I was, in a way."

All the caretaker's fears returned. "I a.s.sure you, all doors were properly secured," he babbled. "No unauthorized person could have got in."

"I think it's more a matter of an unauthorized ghost," said the strange visitor and smiled rea.s.suringly. "Whatever happened, it certainly wasn't your fault.

You've been most helpful, as I shall inform my superiors. Now, let's get this place sorted out. . . "

"Please, allow me, Herr Doktor."

"No, no, I insist. It's all my fault, in a way."

To the caretaker's astonishment, his visitor insisted on helping with the clearing up. He picked up the overthrown chairs and tables and put them back into place, while the caretaker returned the papers to their folders and the folders to the filing cabinets.

When the job was done the visitor said goodbye, shaking hands in a way the caretaker had almost forgotten. "I'm sorry things have been so hard for you," he said. "We must hope for better times."

The Doctor marched round to the Museum forecourt, where he found his driver still sitting rigidly to attention behind the wheel. He leaped out to open the limousine door for the Doctor.

"Freikorps HQ," snapped the Doctor.

The driver jumped back behind the wheel and the car pulled away.

"May I ask if the Herr Doktor had a successful morning?"

"You may not," said the Doctor coldly. "Not unless you wish to find yourself explaining to the Gestapo the reasons for your curiosity about matters which do not concern you."

It was an effective conversation stopper. The driver was silent for the rest of the trip, which suited the Doctor very well. He was brooding over what had happened to him, over the strange mixture of emotions that he'd felt so clearly. Mad, bad, and trapped, he thought. I wonder... He was troubled by the ease with which that alien mind had entered his own.

The trouble is we're linked, the Timewyrm and I. Maybe she senses where I am... She might even know what I'm thinking . . .

Leaning back in his seat, the Doctor began summoning up certain mind protection techniques he'd learned as a young man on Gallifrey from a hermit who lived on top of a mountain. He remembered the frozen puddles on the icy path to the summit, and a daisy that had seemed to hold the secret of existence. The knowledge was long disused but it was still in place.

He closed his eyes and emptied his mind.

As they pulled up outside Freikorps HQ, the Doctor smiled, opened his eyes and sat up, filled with new energy and purpose. Future unauthorized guests, or ghosts, would find the doors of his mind bolted, shutters down, and alarm systems switched on.

He sprang out of the car and marched into the swastika-draped hotel foyer.

Once again he saw General Stra.s.ser coming down the stairs, surrounded by his retinue.

At the sight of the Doctor he hurried over. "Ah, Herr Doktor! I am just off on my postponed tour of the Festival. Unless of course there is any reason. .. "

The Doctor shook his head. "By all means continue."

The General lowered his voice. "Your investigation progresses?"

"I am on the trail," said the Doctor mysteriously. "Can you tell me where I might find Lieutenant Hemmings? I am hoping he will have news of my a.s.sistant."

The General looked round for help and immediately an aide, one of the surrounding colonels, stepped forward.