Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [24]
‘The Doctor sent me.’
‘Sent you? The Doctor? The little guy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Moved pretty good for an older cat. When he was cutting a rug last night.
When he was, like you know, dancing, man.’
Ray suddenly seemed to realise he was standing there in his underwear.
‘Excuse me a sec.’ He darted into the bathroom and closed the door. There were gratifyingly frantic sounds as he washed.
Ace took advantage of his absence to snoop around the place and, specifically, to go over to the table and have a look at whatever it was he had tried so clumsily to conceal. A portrait frame of carved green jade, containing the photograph of a very beautiful woman with elegant oriental features. A flourish of handwriting bisected the photograph, just overlapping the woman’s high cheekbones and slanting almond eyes. The writing, in a flowing feminine calligraphy in indigo ink, read, ‘To Ray. With a world of love, Silk.’
Why hadn’t Ray wanted her to see this? The woman certainly had a luminous beauty, and something in her eyes, lingering just short of utter depravity, hinted at a passionate nature. Ace suddenly wondered if this was the great love of Ray’s life and if she was locked up in a detainment camp somewhere because she was a half, or a quarter, or one-sixteenth Japanese.
Ray emerged a few minutes later, clean and scrubbed, wearing a silk bathrobe with a lotus emblazoned on it. He went over and perched in a leather armchair beside the one Ace had chosen. The unpleasant smell of sweat, which at least had had the claim to being a natural smell, had now been replaced by the overwhelming synthetic reek of some cheap cologne that could have doubled as bug repellant. Unfortunately, Ray had drenched himself in it.
He had also trimmed his goatee, so Ace decided she at least had to give him points for trying. She found herself almost liking the big clumsy man. And then she remembered the terrible things he’d said about her cowgirl outfit.
Thank God she’d managed to dress in something slightly more suitable today.
Her jeans and black cotton shirt might still have seemed odd for the period, but at least they didn’t make her look like part of a travelling freak show.
42
‘So this Doctor who sent you here, you’re sort of his human calculating machine.’
‘At least that’s a nicer way of putting it than idiot savant.’
‘Did he send you over here because he wants you to help me with my equations?’
‘No,’ said Ace. Then quickly, so as to change the subject. ‘You’ve got a green thumb.’
‘Green thumb?’ he asked, and Ace indicated the flourishing plants. Their fat shiny leaves jutted from painted pots that looked like the work of native craftspeople. ‘Oh, I got the knack growing muta,’ said Ray.
‘Muta?’
‘Yep. That’s how I learned to make plants thrive and now I’ve got the gift.
Plants just love me now man.’
‘What is muta?’
‘You know, gauge, man. . . Muggles. . . Pot, baby, pot.’
‘You mean dope.’
‘That’s right baby, that’s right.’
‘Do you have any?’ said Ace, purely in a spirit of scientific enquiry.
‘No man, no. Shhhh!’ Ray lifted a fat finger to his fat lips and glanced around as if someone might be listening. ‘Don’t even say that. If Major Butcher got any notion I was growing or buying or using loco weed he’d have my ass shipped out of here and back to a prison camp so fast, baby, the breeze would part your hair, wartime necessity or no wartime necessity. I’m lucky I’m not behind bars right now.’
‘I know. It must be terrible about your family.’
‘My family?’ Cosmic Ray looked at her blankly.
‘Being locked up in some horrible camp just because their parents or grand-parents were Japanese.’
Ray’s face suffused with gloomy rage. He shook his head. ‘That’s so terrible man. So terrible. These people are good loyal Americans and just because they look Japanese they’re put behind bars.’ He fell silent, then looked almost shyly at Ace as though to assess her reaction to his outburst. His rage had seemed entirely genuine, but suddenly Ace wasn’t so sure.
‘I don’t know about