Doctor Who_ Just War Part 16

Summerfield was not.

'Which year?'

'I'd rather not say.'

'Are you shy about your age?' But she laughed at his suggestion: either the drug was having more of an effect, or she was genuinely beginning to relax. Whichever was the case, he ought to be able to get a few more answers now.

No, no. I know I'm in my mid-thirties,' she was saying. 'If I had to name a figure I'd say thirty-three, but I'm not sure.'

She was very strong-willed, still capable of holding back the whole truth.

'But you can tell me what year you were born?'

'No,' she said quietly. She seemed convinced she was right. She was also trying to keep her answers as short as possible. Forcing an interrogator to fight for every last bit of information was a standard technique used by captured agents. He had won many such battles of will in the past.

'My dear, you must know which year you were born.

1909? 1908?' He was trying to jog her memory. Odd that she could forget such information. It must be a side-effect of the sleep deprivation.

And then the words came pouring out. 'It would be quite difficult to give you the precise date the way you understand it. Time is a relative concept, and when humanity started flying around in sleeper s.h.i.+ps, everything got mucked up.

Once we had hyperdrive, and people started arriving places before they set off because they were travelling so fast, the whole thing became somewhat meaningless. The big corporations and most of the people on the Inner Worlds use their own local time, in which case the days and years aren't always the same length as Earth. Those of us b.u.mming around the Outer Planets, or outside Human s.p.a.ce entirely, tend to use Terran Mean Time, simply for convenience. You see the problem? I could give you the date relative to Galactic Centre Adjusted, that would be about three-quarters of a century before the same date on Earth. In your terms, I'm from the mid-twenty-sixth century.'

Before she had finished Steinmann had asked, 'What is she babbling about, Joachim?'

'I have no idea.' The Standartenfuhrer was bored, and would clearly rather be abusing the prisoner in some way.

'Sir, if I may speak?'

'Yes, Kitzel?'

'At the end of Standartenfuhrer Wolff's interrogation, the prisoner claimed to be from the future. She is doing it again,'

Kitzel said softly.

'It's not much of a cover story, is it?' Steinmann asked, exasperated.

'Sir, she has now made these claims on two separate occasions while under great stress. I'm not suggesting that she is right, but she might believe that she is telling the truth.'

Kitzel spoke with some authority.

'She is mad? The British sent a madwoman to spy on us?' Wolff sneered, 'No, sir, she is just pretending. Trying to convince us she is feeble-minded.'

'I'd hardly do that, would I, Joachim?' the prisoner snapped. 'I know what you gits do with the mentally handicapped.'

'Sir, these island populations are rife with inbreeding.

This dulls the mental faculties. She might just be a simpleton.

Perhaps she is not even involved.' Kitzel's suggestion seemed plausible enough.

'The descriptions of the murderess were somewhat confused,' Steinmann noted.

'Excuse me. Who's "she"? For that matter, what the h.e.l.l sort of interrogator doesn't wait to hear what his prisoner has to say?' Summerfield asked. She sounded personally aggrieved by his behaviour.

'Professor Summerfield, under torture, you claimed before that you were an archaeologist from the future.'

Benny blanched. 'Did I? You didn't believe me, I take it.'

She was sticking to this story, then.

'If you are from the future,' began Wolff sarcastically, 'how did you get here? Is there a double-decker bus that stops off in 1941? You rang the little bell and stepped off? All change here for Earth, Mars and the Moon!'

'No, if you must know, it's a police box. And, yes, I've been to all three of those places.'

Steinmann ignored her flippancy, allowing her to build up this peculiar cover-story. 'A what?'

'A police box. Yes, it's quite obscure, I know. Apparently the British police used them before they invented the walkie-talkie. The light on the top would flash whenever the police station had a message for one of their bobbies on the beat, and he'd know to phone them. People could phone the police from it, too, if they needed help. Cute, really.'

'And what exactly is a walkie-talkie?'

'Oh, sorry, you've not got them yet. Portable radios.

They're about the same size as a packet of cigarettes.'

Steinmann had been noting all this down.

'I see. When are these portable radios invented, then?'

'Oh, quite soon. The 1960s, I think. They had them in the '70s when I was there.'

'You've been to the future?'

'She was born there, remember?' Wolff reminded him.

'Quite right. 1976 was the past. Except, of course, that it wasn't the real 1976. At least not at first. I think it was at the end.' Summerfield was apparently working it out for herself as she spoke.

'So you travel around in a police box. How big is it?

Bigger than a packet of cigarettes?'

Benny chuckled. 'It's about the size of a very big wardrobe. It would fit into this cell. Except you couldn't get it through the door.'

'What colour is it?'

'Blue. Dark blue.'

'And you live in there with the Doktor and... two policemen. No doubt the police box is the property of these policemen. No one else?'

'Well, there's the cat. Er, look, the Doctor owns the TARDIS, and it only looks like a police box.'

'It must be very crowded in there.'

'No, it's bigger on the inside than the outside.'

'Is it now?'

'It all sounds a bit silly now I say it out loud, I admit.'

She was beginning to see now that her strange story wouldn't hold up.

'You make it sound like Skidbladnir.'

Kitzel and Wolff both looked puzzled, until Summerfield said, 'He means Frey's magical s.h.i.+p in the Norse myths. It could contain all the G.o.ds, their horses and weapons while still fitting in Frey's pocket. The reason he brought it up is that a real archaeologist would probably be familiar with the myth.'

Summerfield was right of course, but she didn't realize how much she was revealing with her sarcastic response. It was a not-quite-successful attempt to appear unafraid, but it proved that she was still very much in charge of her faculties.

Most importantly, it was clear that Summerfield thought she was more intelligent than he was. She was trying to play psychological games with him. Very well. Steinmann changed the subject. 'How does a "TARDIS" work?'

'I'm not sure about the technicalities. In layman's terms the TARDIS removes itself from Minkowski s.p.a.ce, then integrates itself into a fifth dimension. It travels through something called the Vortex, a transdimensional spiral built by the Doctor's people which encompa.s.ses all points in s.p.a.ce and time. Then, the TARDIS just reorientates itself at the other end, and reestablishes a plasmic real-world interface.'

Steinmann laid his pen down, and glared at her. When he spoke his voice was just a touch harsher than before.

'Professor Summerfield, I am a scientist. What you have just said is meaningless nonsense.'

'Is it? d.a.m.n. As I say, I take it for granted.' Summerfield shrugged apologetically.

Steinmann changed tack once more. 'Can you describe something more mundane? Something from the future?'

'No. I can't.' Her answers were curt again.

'Can't? Not won't?' Steinmann challenged.

'Don't get pedantic on me, Oskar. I'm from the future, but I can't tell you about it. It would risk affecting established history.'

Steinmann's eyes narrowed. 'If I were to learn the future, I might be able to change it?'

'Well, yes. If you took knowledge you had now back to the last war, you could have altered the outcome. You could have sent Heinkels and Dorniers against London, not Zeppelins. You could have sent Panzers into the British trenches.'

'You wouldn't need to do that,' suggested Steinmann.

'Just a few pieces of information would be enough: we could check our historical records, have a complete list of where the weak links in the Allied defences were in the last war, warn our people precisely where and when the enemy would attack. Even with only a few grains of random knowledge, we could draw conclusions about the future. If we knew the exchange rate between the dollar and the mark in - what year did you say?

- 1976, or who holds the record for the fastest seaplane, or who the King of England is then we'd have a way through the chaos. We'd be able to negate the b.u.t.terfly Effect.'

'You know about that? Then you know why I can't tell you even the slightest detail about the future,' Summerfield said stubbornly. Wolff and Kitzel were watching this exchange.

'Sir, you are beginning to talk like this crazy woman,'

Wolff said flatly.

'Shut up, Standardenfuhrer. It's too late, Professor Summerfield. You talk of Inner Worlds and Outer Planets.

You talk of Galactic Centre and Human s.p.a.ce. So, man has reached the stars?'

'Yes,' she admitted. 'So you've already described the future. Tell me something specific.'

'No, I can't.'

Steinmann leant over, and said gently, 'Have you ever been to my home city of Stuttgart?'

'Yes, when I was a child. I refuse to describe it.'

'So Stuttgart still exists in 1976 and it's still called that?'

'I'm not from... look. I'm not saying anything more.'

'But you have said so much. You see, I already have some knowledge of the future. I know for certain that Germany wins the war. So, I have another piece of knowledge about the future: the existence of Der Der Tausendjahrige Reich Tausendjahrige Reich! A millennium from now, the Reich will still be standing.'

Benny thought about that for a moment, then burst into laughter. 'Sorry, but I've seen Earth a thousand years from now. As a matter of fact, it's where the Doctor and I met Forrester and Cwej, the two policemen I was talking about.

Their time was hardly perfect, but there wasn't a n.a.z.i to be seen. In fact, when the Doctor told us we were coming here I had to tell them all about you. At this point I really do think I should mention that they knew all about Freud and Einstein.

Fascism disappears as a political force in your lifetime, Oskar. This Reich doesn't even last a thousand weeks, let alone a thousand years. By 1976, to pick a year at random, the only people wearing the n.a.z.i uniform were sad little blokes who couldn't get it up any other way. A few gangs of glue-sniffing thugs had the swastika tattooed on their foreheads, but they never learnt what it really stood for. They hung around on street corners, spitting and swearing, trying to shock their parents. They weren't up to anything other than petty vandalism and beating up immigrant women and children. In other words, Fascism ended just like it started.

Your only legacy will be their hatred, their ignorance. You want to see what n.a.z.ism means, you just look at Wolff and Kitzel there: the men are s.a.d.i.s.ts, the women just stand in the corner and simper. Neither of them are exactly mental giants, are they?'

Summerfield's eyes were wide now, full of pa.s.sion. Wolff moved forward to hit her, hardly a refutation of her argument.