Part 15 (1/2)

He repeated the process with the sugar. She watched, leaning on the counter, not daring to say anything. No problem, wait until he was ready, move the conversation around in gradual steps until she could ask a few carefully chosen questions. Mention her room in the TARDIS, that sort of thing.

He began to stir the dark fluid, slowly. 'Dad?' she hazarded.

'Yeh,' he said, without looking up.

'Do you think you're going to find Ia Jareshth?'

He didn't react. No, he did react, but on the inside. G.o.d, she thought, he's like one of those stiff-upper-lipped Academy teachers, never showing a flicker of humanity to any of their students.

But she couldn't imagine any of them trying for the thirty-eighth time to recapture a cup of coffee they'd had in Mexico three years ago. Not those cardboard cut-out lieutenants.

She still hadn't told him about s.p.a.cefleet.

Her father stopped stirring and stood back a little, contemplating the steeping coffee. He looked at the clock over the stove. 'Five minutes,' he said. 'I don't know. If she's not here tomorrow night, they're going to have to leave without her.'

'Do you think she ran?'

Isaac made a little waving gesture with the metal spoon.

'She'll be a d.a.m.ned fool if she doesn't run right back.'

'Dad,' blurted Benny, 'did you have anything to do with the TARDIS going missing?'

He raised a blond eyebrow at her. After a moment he said, 'He left you here to find out.'

'No he b.l.o.o.d.y didn't,' she said. 'Answer the question.'

'No,' said Isaac, 'I didn't have anything to do with it.'

'Had it occurred to you,' said Benny, hoping the relief didn't show in her voice, 'that you and the Doctor might have a mutual enemy? Someone who took Ia Jareshth and and the TARDIS?' the TARDIS?'

He tapped the spoon against his chin. 'It doesn't make sense,' he said. 'If they knew about us, they'd raid the place.

This is more like cat and mouse.'

'They who?'

'UNIT, or the British or American military. Or Department C19, or the secret service, or the CIA. Conceivably the KGB.'

'It would have to be someone who knew what they were looking for,' said Benny. 'Knew what the TARDIS was.'

'Exactly,' said her father. 'I tend to discount the military, who are kept very much in the dark about these things, and the KGB, whose information on extraterrestrial incursions outside the Soviet Union has never been very good.'

He took out two coffee mugs and a big silver tea-strainer, and put them on the counter. 'It is possible that they're trying to avoid upsetting the American military with an outright raid so close to their base. Though they could always use the usual ”nuclear terrorists” claim to hush it up. I think it might be a good idea to send Albinex to see a few of our... friends.'

'What if it isn't any of them?' said Benny.

The Admiral poured coffee through the strainer until his mug was almost full. 'It would be very embarra.s.sing if someone was abducting aliens from Little Caldwell,' he said.

It took her a moment to realize that he meant it as a joke.

'Listen,' said Benny. 'There are some things I need to tell you.'

He took a drink of the coffee. 'Close,' he said, and looked at her.

'Um,' she said. 'I don't know what you'll think about this.'

He waited, patiently. Not unconcerned, not pretending to be unconcerned, just open.

'Well,' she said, 'firstly, I'm not a professor. My twentysixth-century credentials are fake.'

He nodded, taking another mouthful of the coffee. 'Why is that?' he asked.

'Um,' said Benny again. 'All right, skipping over some important details, I ended up at s.p.a.cefleet Academy. But I went AWOL and lived in a forest for a year.' The corner of his mouth tugged up. 'Well, they shouldn't have taught us wilderness survival in the first term. Anyway, skipping over more details, they caught me and drafted me.'

'And you went AWOL again, and became an archaeologist through experience.'

She nodded. 'Hang on,' she said. 'How did you know that?'

He put down his coffee cup. Dorothee told me.'

Benny's jaw dropped open. When she regained control of her faculties, she said, 'Ace was here here?'

'In the seventies,' he said.

'Why didn't she tell me?' Benny said. She hung onto the counter. Did she know - did she know it was you you? Why didn't she tell me?'

'She wanted to,' he said softly. 'She wanted to. Perhaps she just hasn't found you yet.'

'I should've realized she'd come here,' said Benny. 'A twentieth-century epicentre of weirdness like this. Ace. My G.o.d. And she told you all about me.'

'No.' Isaac put down the cooling cup of coffee. 'I stopped her. It was good to know you were alive, that you were all right. But I couldn't know too much. Not too much.'

'You're just full of surprises, you know that?' said Benny.

Bridget and Ms Randrianasolo were walking up ahead, talking about what the peace camp was going to do when the missiles arrived. Jacqui walked with Roz, her boots squelching in the cold mud. She was only a bit shorter than the black woman - actually, they were about as tall, because of the pompom on the top of Jacqui's woolly hat.