Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [20]
But in any case Professor Apple couldn’t follow her and he couldn’t stop her getting her capsule and taking it. And if she took the capsule she wouldn’t be exposed as a fraud and everything would be all right. Ace had just firmly decided that everything was going to be all right when, around a bend in the road and striding directly towards her, came Major Butcher.
Butcher’s eyebrows jerked up as he saw Ace hurrying along the road with Professor Apple in pursuit. She dropped her head shamefully and hurried past him. If only she could get back to the WAC building. . . Butcher kept walking right on past her and she felt a moment of gratitude but then she heard him falling into step with Professor Apple. She didn’t dare risk a glance back at them, but she could hear their footsteps and snatches of what they 35
were saying.
‘– be working with you at the school?’ said Butcher.
‘She certainly should. But it’s becoming evident she actually can’t –’ said Apple with venom. Ace kept hurrying towards her quarters, towards sanctuary She didn’t look back. She increased her pace and tried to force a casual, carefree expression of innocence onto her face. It fell like the rictus of a cadaver.
‘– going now?’
‘Back to her quarters on some sort of women’s matter,’ Professor Apple’s voice dropped into inaudibility as he conferred briefly with Butcher. Ace kept walking. Then Apple’s voice rose again, with a note of vicious anger in it.
‘Calculating prodigy? She can’t calculate two and two. He hasn’t brought her here for that. She’s just his, you know. . . ’
Ace flushed and increased her pace.
‘She’s pretending she can perform complex mathematical calculations,’ said Professor Apple. ‘When in fact she only has one use. She’s letting him put his hairy little hands on her and. . . ’ Apple’s voice sounded about to break, like that of an adolescent boy. It was rising towards incoherence, growing ragged with spite and anger behind Ace as she hurried towards the WAC barracks.
The barracks was a hastily erected, long two-storey building with a low flat roof, numerous windows (which at least provided plenty of light but also provided a sense of being constantly watched) and tarpaper walls. The building was flanked on both sides by telephone poles and was anything but aestheti-cally pleasing. Ace hurried up the wooden steps. She raced into her ground-floor dormitory, stood for a near-swooning moment of disorientation as she tried to remember which of the many identical bunk beds was hers.
She found it, experienced a dipping moment of terror when her bag was not where she thought she’d left it. Then she remembered where she actually had left it, scooped it up, took out the metal case containing the capsules, opened it and quickly swallowed one, grateful for its loathsome oily flavour.
Once she had done that she felt an immediate profound sense of relaxation.
There was no longer any need to hurry. She took her time using the loo then sauntered back out through the dormitory. As she was leaving, a hawk-nosed ginger-haired office clerk she’d noticed sitting next to her at breakfast came hurrying in. As soon as she glimpsed Ace, the girl looked away, completely ignoring her, and pretended to hurry to another bunk bed where she rifled amongst her own belongings. But it was perfectly evident to Ace that Butcher had somehow summoned the hawk-nosed snooper and sent her in here, to the women’s realm, to spy on Ace.
Ace walked out of the building and wasn’t at all surprised to find Butcher and Professor Apple waiting on the porch for her. ‘I understand you’re having 36
a little trouble,’ said Butcher laconically.
‘Not at all. Everything is fine.’
‘Professor Apple here tells me that you’ve refused to perform any of the mathematical calculations assigned to you.’
‘Then Professor Apple there is mistaken.’ Ace smiled.