Doctor Who_ Loving The Alien Part 26

He was at the zoo, beneath the primate house, surveying a scene of stomach-churning carnage. Next to the general, Bill Collins swallowed hard.

There were ten or so people about police, army, government. A man pa.s.sed, looking green, with a clipboard. Crawhammer grabbed him by the collar.

'I ordered this place shut down! Those things broken up or killed, or whatever... What happened?'

'I don't know, General,' the man spluttered. 'The place should have been gutted and sealed. There must have been some sort of a mix-up in the office. Oh, dear...'

The man pressed a handkerchief to his mouth and closed his eyes.

Crawhammer pushed him away.

'Always the G.o.dd.a.m.n paperwork with the Brits,' he barked to Collins. 'Every time there's a screw-up count on it. Too much of the stuff, that's the trouble.'

He dropped his cigar b.u.t.t into a puddle of blood veined with engine oil.

'Collins, get some of our boys in here.' He scowled about the little a.s.sembly. 'They'll know what to do. They know what gutting means.

Now what about this murdered girl?'

A man tapped Bill Collins on the shoulder 'She's ah been dealt with. Inspector Hamilton, Special Branch.'

He flashed his badge. No need he looked like an English cop.

'We tried to get hold of you earlier, General.'

'Just flew in,' Crawhammer snapped.

Collins suppressed a smile. The general had been touching down in Was.h.i.+ngton at the time of the Russian raid, and had been personally informed about it by a furious President Eisenhower.

'Nothing's been touched,' the policeman said.

Crawhammer hunkered down, eyeballing the cop, his lips drawn back across his gleaming, crocodile teeth.

130.

'Does no one in this country get it?' he whispered. 'I want this place 'I want this place destroyed!' destroyed!'

They returned to Winnerton Flats in the general's staff car in silence.

He'd been in a thunderous mood since he touched down. Strike that since the s.h.i.+p blew up. He'd received Collins's report on the raid in icy silence.

'So tell me one thing, Major,' he'd said after a suitable pause. 'How come you're not dead?'

'Sir?'

'If this was such a rerun of the G.o.dd.a.m.n Alamo, how come none of my men have got more 'n a scratch or two between them? What were you all doing out there? Were you on a G.o.dd.a.m.n Easter egg hunt?'

'I can't explain it, sir. I was. .h.i.t...'

He'd felt the impact, felt a cold shock through his whole body, and woken up in the sick bay in the bed next to O'Brien. Apart from some impact bruises, he was fine. So was everyone else.

So they'd combed the grounds and found no bullets except their own no cartridges, no sign that the Russians or the s.h.i.+p had ever been there.

'The president wants me to report back personally,' Crawhammer had fumed, 'and that's what I got to tell him. Super-fast soldiers with advanced stun weapons.'

'I don't think you should underestimate these men,' Collins had urged. 'I tell you sir, they outcla.s.sed us big time. If they'd been shooting to kill...'

'At least they got Drakefell.'

Drakefell hadn't been seen since the raid, and Crawhammer had taken to consoling himself with the fact.

'G.o.dd.a.m.n welcome to the fruitcake sonofab.i.t.c.h.'

The traffic thinned quickly as they sped out of London, the silence broken only by Crawhammer's constant urging the driver to put his foot down.

'When I find out who b.a.l.l.sed up at the zoo they're gonna wish they were digging Commie coal in Siberia.'

'I think it's more important to find out who's been using the place, sir.'

'We know who, Collins. G.o.dd.a.m.n Reds! Cells of them, everywhere.

Even under London Zoo!'

Crawhammer let out a long, tired sigh.

'I'm used to fightin' enemies I can see, Major. A uniform. Or at least some slitty eyes or a funny accent... All this spy stuff... War should be 131 fought by men face to face. Or at least firing missiles at each other...

And now what are we doing? Turning gorillas into walking tanks...'

'I never liked the monkey experiments, sir.'

'Maybe I'm just getting old, Major. War's a s.h.i.+tty job. Always has been, always will be. Fifty-five million people died in the last war. You know that, Collins?'

'No, sir.'

'It could have been less if things had been done differently. Deals made with other n.a.z.i leaders, maybe. The Jews saved... Maybe we didn't have to go to war at all.'

'Sir?' This didn't sound like Crawhammer.

'But there's one thing war teaches you, and that's you never, ever blink in the face of an enemy. You get me? It's a staring contest, and you better not blink, cos you know d.a.m.n well ol' Adolf won't, or Joe Stalin, or Mao Tse-tung.'

He spat the chairman's name.

'That's why fifty-five million people died, Collins cos we didn't blink.'

'And... that's why we experiment on monkeys, sir...'

Crawhammer rapped Collins's shoulder proudly.

'That's why we experiment on monkeys, son.'

McBride drained a bottle of whisky. His office was thick with tobacco smoke. He'd been drinking since they returned from the funeral. So had the Doctor. Most of the time they'd sat in silence.

'I didn't think you drank, Doc.'

'I don't, said the Doctor. 'Not usually, but then this isn't a very usual day.'

'You're hitting that stuff pretty hard. If you're not used to it, you're in for a heck of a time.'

'It doesn't really affect me,' said the Doctor. 'My anatomy is somewhat different from yours.'

'So why're you drinking it?' McBride asked.

The Doctor shrugged. 'Just being sociable, really,' he said, and slumped back into silence.

'There's... something you don't know, Doc,' McBride said after a while, 'but I think maybe you should. That James Dean guy... him 'n'

Ace were kinda... having relations...'

The Doctor nodded slowly. 'She was sleeping with a man who doesn't exist. A ghost. The one thing I didn't check Ace's body for was Va.s.ser Dust.'

'I just thought... I guess Ace'd have told you herself if she...'

132.

His voice tailed off and he sniffed slightly.

'Thank you, Cody.'

McBride jumped to his feet.

'd.a.m.n it, why don't we do something, Doc?'

The Doctor looked sadly up at him.

'I should never have come here, Cody.'

'Yeah, you said already. But seeing as how you are here...'

'I closed the door on my own temporal trap.'

McBride hadn't understood this sober. Now, drunk, he thought he understood perfectly.

'So... you came here in your crazy blue box to stop Ace getting shot.'

'Yes.'

'So... why not get back in your blue box and go round again?'

'And dig myself in deeper. You can't constantly intercept time like that. There would be chaos. The time lines would collapse. No, my only course of action is to leave before I do any more damage.'

'Aw, c'mon, Doc... Sure, you're down on yourself now...'

'You don't understand. I really, really shouldn't be here at this time, in this reality. The more I interact with it, the more I tangle things up.

The walls are already damaged.'

'But didn't you say Limb had a time machine too?'

'He did the last time we met.'

'So maybe it's him that's messed things up, not you.'

'Oh, I'm sure he's at least as guilty as I am, but that's not the point.

Even by trying stop him even by talking to you now I'm contaminating this reality. I'm trapped by the paradox I created. Do I try to solve the problem and risk making it worse, or do I withdraw and try to minimise the damage? I don't know, Cody. The temporal variables are too imponderable. I'm too deeply entangled to see the way.'

'So Limb's just going to get away with it.'

'Haven't you heard anything?'

'And what about Rita? We still ain't heard a word! You just gonna walk away from her?'

'I'm sorry, Cody...'

The Doctor rose to his feet.

'Perhaps it's time I was on my way. I truly wish our reunion had been under better circ.u.mstances, my friend.'

'Yeah,' McBride grunted.

The Doctor smiled and shuffled towards the door.

'You know, Doc... wherever she is, I hope Ace ain't watchin' right 133 now,' McBride said, loudly and levelly. 'Cos if anyone did to you what Limb did to her she'd hunt them down. You know she would! How can you just walk away like this and call yourself her friend? And without that, all this cosmos c.r.a.p of yours means squat. You hear me?'

The Doctor stopped. He took a deep breath and turned.

'Alexander the Great,' he said.

'What?'

'Gordium... Little town in Asia... Tricky sort of knot thing on a plough. Along comes Alexander '

' and cuts it through with his sword,' McBride interjected. 'I remember that.'

'Exactly,' said the Doctor. 'I wonder if you're descended from him?'

'Uh, what did I do?' McBride felt lost as usual. The whisky didn't help.