Part 27 (1/2)

'Of course I will.'

A couple of corporals were pulling open the door for him. Bessie shot silently out and off onto the dirt track.

Bambera was shaking his head. 'Shame.'

'That's why they call them ”The Blunder Days”, ma'am,' Captain Ford said. 'He thinks we can go in, al guns blazing.'

The sn.i.g.g.e.ring continued for a couple of seconds until I rounded on them. 'At least he's doing something. At least he isn't sitting in a wood, waiting for the Martians to find us.' They looked blankly at me.

'Professor Summerfield,' Bambera said sharply. 'I've read the files: back in the seventies, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart repulsed a couple of smal -scale incursions. I've read his reports, and he relied on two things: luck and the Doctor. Since we've not had any luck, and your friend turned out to be half-lemming on his mother's side - ' her voice trailed away.

'I'm going for a walk.' I announced levelly. A witticism had just occurred to me, one of those peculiar expressions Ace would come up with. 'Sod this for a game of soldiers,' I called back as I headed for the door.

I took my mug, leaving them to compile their reports and sit around on their a.s.similations. I felt an overwhelming urge to get out of the camp, to be on my own. Without thinking, I wandered out beyond the perimeter and found myself a sheltered spot facing away from the camp. I sat with my back to a tree trunk, my eyes closed. A hundred yards away, a line of black-clad Provisional Government troops with raised rifles marched forwards as if they were directed by Eistenstein himself, gunning down everything in their path. At least they could have been doing for all I cared. This wasn't my timezone, it wasn't even my own home planet.

There was a dull shape in my chest, something that a week ago had been a sense of loss. I had spent the week crying, not for one lost Doctor but two. I found it difficult to mourn for the young man who had run off into the red cloud, frock coat flailing. Although Alistair recognised his old friend, I only saw a stranger - irritating new habits and mannerisms, virtual y nothing of the old body language. Carefree instead of careful. A little brother or first boyfriend, not a father. It wasn't just him - his death had robbed the universe of all future Doctors, young and old, fat and thin, bald and hairy. Now the Doctor had gone, we would have to sort al this out on our own.

It was a daunting prospect. Where did one begin? What would the Doctor have done? He'd have tried to talk to the Martians, he'd have made them see reason. If they couldn't do that, then he'd use their own weapons against them. He'd find out what the Martians were really planning and he'd stop it, once and for all. He wouldn't use guns, he'd talk to them. And he'd have sorted it all out in about an hour and a half, two hours tops.

And he'd make it al look so easy.

A twig snapped behind me, but before I had time to turn, I was pushed down onto the floor.

'Don't move.' It was a lanky man in a tattered business suit. He was holding me down, and he had a knife. 'Stay still or I kill you. Keep quiet.'

I nodded. The man waved the knife a little closer, betraying his nervousness, rather than his resolve.

'Good morning,' I replied.

'I said shut - '

I grabbed his wrist, slammed it against a tree trunk and kicked his feet from under him. He toppled over, and I stuck my knee in the back of his neck. It had been a while since I'd had cause to use my Aikido, and so I was rather gratified that I could stil lift my leg so high.

'Let me go,' he screamed. 'Civilisation.'

'What?' I scowled.

'Civilisation. It's the end of the world. The end of everything. Ten days ago I was a civil engineer. Now look at me.'

I considered my options, then stood. 'You're talking about being civilised. So let's cut out all this knife and kung-fu c.r.a.p and talk.'

The man scrambled to his feet. I held out my hand and we introduced ourselves. The stranger said his name was Raymond Heath.

'OK, Ray. You were a civil engineer. Where?'

The sound of boots crunching through undergrowth. Soldiers from the base were hurrying to my aid, taking up positions behind me.

'Are you OK, Professor Summerfield?' one of the lads asked.

'Yes thank you, private.'

The soldiers stayed alert, scanning the wood to make sure my a.s.sailant was on his own.

'Carry on,' I told Ray quietly.

'I worked at the EG refinery, just outside Reading.'

'The what?' I asked.

'EG. You know: one of the Greyhaven companies.'

So I listened.

95.***

Lethbridge-Stewart was slotting coins into the pay-and-display machine. While the mechanism whirred, he checked the car park. No-one was watching him, except a three-year old with a bal oon.

As far as he knew, neither he nor Benny's photograph had appeared in the press or on television in the last week.

Perhaps the authorities thought that they had died in Adisham. More likely, with the Doctor dead, they weren't considered a threat any longer. The Brigadier had reached that conclusion himself, but he'd rather hoped that UNIT would pose more of a threat.

Lethbridge-Stewart quickened his pace a little, pa.s.sing through a row of trees to the main street. He used to live in Gerrard's Cross, so he'd been to Windsor his fair share of times over the years. The streets were as busy as he remembered, there was even a school party making its way over to the Castle. London was less than an hour away, just along the M4. The population of that city was living in fear, under curfew, with a kilometre long wars.h.i.+p hovering over them. Here, people were going about their daily business. A quartet of Etonians pa.s.sed him, moaning that the BBC had cancelled last night's episode of The X Files The X Files 'due to recent events'. 'due to recent events'.

Lethbridge-Stewart could see the WH Smiths sign now. He continued towards it, pausing every so often to look into other shop windows. This was a simple technique. If anyone was fol owing you, they'd have to stop as well, or walk straight past you. You could also check the reflected image of the other side of the street, without having to look directly at a potential tail. As part of his basic espionage training, he'd walked down Oxford Street, from one end to the other. Half a dozen MI5 man were trailing him. His primary goal was to shake them off, the second was to identify as many of them as he could at the debrief afterwards.

The point was, of course, that he couldn't do either. If you walk down a street, people look at you. If you are going to Smiths, chances are a dozen others are too, so they'll be walking down the same pavements. At the debrief, he'd been honest enough to admit that he couldn't spot anyone who was definitely following him. He described a couple of the people he thought might have been MI5 agents, al of whom had been innocent pa.s.sers-by. He got points for honesty, and realism. Despite all his weaving in and out of shops, he doubted that he'd shaken off the men following him. He had managed to drop out of sight for almost a full minute, more than enough to pa.s.s over or drop off any doc.u.ments he might have been carrying. He'd pa.s.sed that part of his training.

He walked into Smiths, checking the dozen or so shoppers. He paused at an empty newspaper rack.

'Excuse me,' he asked the nearest a.s.sistant, 'but - '

'Oh there aren't any,' she said in a sing-song voice.

'The government have banned them?'

'S'pose.'

'You don't seem terribly interested,' he informed her.

'Don't take much interest in it. Politics,' she explained. 'You know ”beef's safe to eat”, '”no it isn't”. It's all made up.

Everyone eats beef again now, don't they?'

'I never stopped,' Lethbridge-Stewart informed her.

'Even though it might turn your brain into a sponge? A load of people stopped eating it for a couple of weeks, but only when it was in the news. It'll be the same with the Martians. Already is. I'm used to them now, and they ain't that bad.'

Lethbridge-Stewart continued on to the 'local interest' section. There was a shelf there full of Ordnance Survey maps. He picked up a couple for north of here. If they wanted to prevent being captured, they needed the best knowledge of the terrain available. With the right intel igence, they could evade the Martians and the Provisional Government forces for months. The resistance would be able to collect intelligence data and keep one step ahead of the enemy.