Doctor Who_ Loving The Alien Part 37

'Oh, he's clever all right,' said McBride. He was recalling their first meeting with George Limb, at his house in Belsize Park, back in '41.

He'd certainly charmed Ace. And the Doctor. McBride had mistrusted the old man from the start.

'They've been giving instructions on the radio for what to do if there's a nuclear attack.'

'Duck and cover,' snorted McBride.

'Yes,' said Sarah hollowly.

McBride watched as she sniffed at an overgrown rose bush. It made a pretty picture.

'Why are you so set against Uncle George anyway?' she asked.

'Where did you hear he shot someone?'

McBride hesitated. What was the point?

'Ah, it's nothing, I guess,' he lied.

He saw a rose crumble as Sarah's lips brushed its petals. It was late in the year the bush was already dying.

'All this...' Sarah said. 'It could all be gone in seconds. Us too...'

She shuddered.

'Nah,' said McBride, smiling grimly. 'Not if we duck and cover.'

They were stuck outside Trafalgar Square. A bus had broken down.

Jimmy jammed his palm against the horn and swore. The Doctor rapped his fingers impatiently against the dashboard.

'I zipped about through time a lot,' said George Limb. 'Sometimes watching, sometimes meddling, I admit... You know, I feel quite 176 responsible, knowing what I now know, Doctor. I was always so scrupulous, do you see? One would never leave one's litter strewn about the countryside after a jolly good ramble, would one? And yet you tell me that is precisely what I have done, haven't I??'

'Litter,' grunted the Doctor.

'Yes... You see, I always went back and put things right again.

Stopped myself at the crucial moment, as it were... Quite intriguing, meeting one's other selves...'

'Overrated,' grunted the Doctor.

'But in my case, terribly illuminating.' Limb stared hard at the Doctor. 'How many beings in the cosmos, Doctor, get to witness in advance their own demise? Many, do you suppose?'

The Doctor straightened in his chair.

'I have seen it, Doctor. Many times. I stumbled upon it by accident at first. It shocked me.'

'Why?' asked the Doctor. 'We all die.'

'Not like this.' George Limb shuddered. 'Time has an alarming sense of caprice, do you not think?'

'Undoubtedly.'

'In the end,' said Limb, 'it seems I am destined to pay for my past meddling in a most appropriate way. I helped open the bottle and as it were let out the Cyber genie. And it would seem that I myself am destined to become a victim of the Cyber process.'

'As you say, appropriate,' said the Doctor.'

'Naturally, I used my runabout to try and alter things. It never worked. Whatever I did, however I interfered with the pattern of events, the end result was always broadly the same.' He shuddered again. 'I say broadly, Doctor... I have seen some truly hideous manifestations of the Cyber process.'

He was agitated. His breathing sounded fast and irregular.

'Nothing I did worked,' he said. 'In the end it was always... those machines. So I intervened more heavy-handedly, but still I couldn't change a thing. I began to realise that it would take an event of cataclysmic proportions to do so.'

'A nuclear war.'

'Precisely.'

'You know, it's one of time's great ironies,' said the Doctor, 'however we reckless time-travellers might succeed in altering the world around us, we can never alter our own destiny. You might by your interference win an incalculable fortune but if you are destined to live out your life in poverty, that somehow is what will happen.

You're at the eye of the storm, Mr Limb. When all is in chaos around 177 you, you are untouched.'

'Oh dear,' said Limb. 'And I'd gone to so much effort.'

'I can see that,' snapped the Doctor. 'You've woven your usual tangled web. Tell me, how did you ensnare Edward Drakefell?'

'Oh, Edward,' said George Limb, with what sounded like fondness in his voice. 'Well, you see, having decided that time-hopping wasn't going to solve my dilemma, I set about finding out just how far Cyber research in this reality was progressing. Mr McBride and your police inspector friend helped, with their little publicity splash. Apart from that I had to work entirely from media sources. All my old contacts were gone, do you see? They were all either dead or in prison or too old to remember their own names. News reports on television and radio, the newspapers... they were all I had. Luckily I was used to reading between the lines of government announcements, official denials and so forth I used to write the blessed things... Do you know, it's what they don't say that is often most revealing? Well, in any event I finally located the focus of the research, at London Zoo.

They were experimenting on primates. I got a job as a lowly a.s.sistant keeper in the reptile house little more than a sweeper-up, really. I swept and I observed. It was there that I first noticed Dr Drakefell, though I'm glad to say he failed to notice me. He seemed... interesting to me. Nervy... Brilliant, but curiously unsure of himself. I had no particular use for him at the time, of course...'

George Limb yawned.

'Do forgive me, Doctor. It has been a long day.'

'Go on,' said the Doctor sharply.

'Very well... The research programme began very shakily, and I must admit I did my utmost at first to ensure it remained that way. The whole area was off-limits to us keepers, but remarkably none of the locks had been changed. Gaining entry was easy, though to my disappointment there was precious little to see. They made very poor progress until I began surrept.i.tiously nudging them in the right direction. I would sneak in at night and alter figures in their computing engine.'

Accelerate allied military capability to a point where the Soviet Union became so alarmed '

' that they would respond with all means at their disposal,' Limb interrupted. 'That was my plan, yes. Although, curiously, the Russians already knew something was afoot. It was they who contacted me.

Heaven knows how they found me.'

'I a.s.sume you're referring to Miles Dumont-Smith,' said the Doctor.

'Yes. A man of little insight or competence,' said Limb. 'Just a party 178 apparatchik beneath his expensive suit.'

'You're wrong,' said the Doctor.

'Really?'

'Later,' snapped the Doctor. 'Carry on.'

Limb paused for a moment, registering his polite overlooking of the Doctor's brusqueness, then continued.

'By this time Drakefell had left the augmentation project, and I must admit I had rather dismissed him from my mind. The Americans were starting to take a serious interest in the project particularly in the field of Cyber optics.

'Oh yes, the spy satellite.'

'Indeed. They started to move people and equipment to Winnerton Flats. I observed from a distance, and was delighted to see that Dr Drakefell was appointed director. It was at this time that I began to cultivate his acquaintance. Ironic I had no notion that he had Betty's lode-circuit.

'Drakefell seemed... focused, one might say. Obsessive, even. A man driven by his work. They launched the rocket...'

'And it apparently crashed.'

'Yes,' said Limb. 'Or so everyone claimed. But by then I knew Drakefell well enough to see that he was covering something up. The old nervousness returned. He clearly was no better at handling pressure here than he had been at the zoo.'

'So in order to draw the truth out of him, you set yourself up as his Psychiatrist.'

'Oh, I did more than that, Doctor. I pushed him to the point of nervous collapse. I increased the pressure on him. I gave Miss Hawks a tip-off anonymously of course that the official statements about the rocket launch were untrue. I set her upon her investigation. I even recommended that she hire a private eye.'

'Cody McBride'

'I couldn't resist it, Doctor.'

'But it did you no good, did it? The s.h.i.+p was still destroyed before you could get your grubby little fingers on it.'

'It took me a long time to get the truth out of Drakefell. He was terrified. I persuaded him to take my dear Sarah on as his personal a.s.sistant she was an immense help to me, but still I was unable to penetrate the s.h.i.+p.'

'It was you listening in the maze at Winnerton Flats, wasn't it?'

'Ah, the maze!' Limb smiled. 'Delightful, our little chase. You know, I devised a very similar sort of game when I was a lad. I used to go to Hampton Court a lot.' He chortled. 'I would get my chums 179 terribly lost. I can't have played that game in seventy years, Doctor.'

Rita basked and dozed until the sun warmed the day. She watched some toddlers play they looked just like normal tots, stumbling, crying, laughing. She saw a young couple practically making out on the gra.s.s, and raised her eyes. You didn't see that in public every day.

An elderly couple sat alongside her and spread a white handkerchief on the bench between them. The woman reached into a bag and pulled out and unwrapped a packet of sandwiches. Some cake followed, wrapped in greaseproof paper, and a Thermos flask.

She sidled closer, a vague plan forming in her mind.

'Good morning,' she said. 'They look nice.'

'Good morning,' each of them replied. Then, from the woman, 'Elevenses. Would you like one, dear?'

'Oh, my dear,' the old man interjected, 'I don't think the young lady... That is... Forgive me for asking my dear, but you're not...

American, are you?'

Rita smiled.

'Heck no,' she said. 'I, uh, spent a lot of time out there. Studying them. Funny little folk.'

'Oh, please forgive me,' said the old man. 'Would you like a sandwich?'

'Thanks,' said Rita, taking one and biting into it. Cuc.u.mber. Sort of.

It was just like the food at the hotel.

'Funny,' she said. 'Food never really fills you up, does it?'

The old man looked at her in surprise.

'Well, of course not,' the old man said. 'We vent everything we need.' She'd half-suspected as much. Stella had been... filling up, just like at a gas station.

'Personally I wonder why we even bother,' the old man continued.

'No, you don't, the old woman chided. 'You love our picnics.'

She turned to Rita.

'Well, I could never give up eating,' she said. 'I would miss it terribly. But I agree it's not quite the same any more...'

'How long has it been now?' asked Rita.

'Well, we weren't done until '53,' the old woman said. 'We didn't fancy it.'

The old man looked embarra.s.sed.

'She didn't fancy it,' he corrected. 'Half of Europe was done before I could persuade her.'

'Well...' said the old woman. 'I just... didn't fancy the idea, at my age.'

'Bet you're glad you did, though,' said her husband. 'Can you 180 imagine what it must be like out there for monkeys?'

'Stan,' the old woman scolded. 'You shouldn't call them that.'

'Her sister,' Stan confided. 'Her and her husband. His fault always a crank. Big Churchill man.'

'Stan, he was not!'

'Wouldn't have it done. Went to America. Maybe you met them when you were out there.'

He harrumphed a short laugh.

'He's just showing off,' the woman said. 'Are you going home to watch the speech, dear?'

Rita hesitated. Careful...

'I'm not sure yet,' she said.