Doctor Who_ Battlefield - Marc Platt [22]
He fiddled with the dial on the portable television.
Fierce bursts of static-like interference from a new storm obliterated the Test score. Yet the sky was cloudless and there was no breeze. He had a nagging premonition that England were 36 for 8 against the Russian touring team.
Perhaps he would drive Doris across to Arundel tomorrow for the second day’s play — if the match lasted that long. As it was, there was a pleasant restaurant overlooking Chichester Bay, where the harbour had been before the sea flooded the water meadows. They could always have lunch there.
‘Alastair, phone for you.’ She was standing by the french windows with the radiophone.
‘Who is it?’ He barely straightened up.
‘It’s Geneva.’
He frowned. Now what? Another reunion? Another peace conference? Another interview on the ‘Today’
programme? Didn’t they ever let go? He looked at the little plants in the seed tray. ‘Tell them I’ve retired,’ he called.
‘Tell them I’ve decided to fade away.’
He heard her apologizing and saying goodbye. Moments later, she was beside him, her hand on his shoulder.
‘Alastair, that was the General-Secretary.’
He stood up effortfully. His past always made her uneasy. That was why she talked about it incessantly. Well, he could soon settle her mind. ‘I don’t care if it was the king. I’m still retired.’ He pointed down at the petunias.
‘What do you think?’
‘He said something about the Doctor being back.’
Lethbridge-Stewart straightened up and stared at her.
Like a summons: something he had always known would come again. A cold thrill, that his oh-so practical life could be perpetually linked with something so infuriatingly and gloriously unpredictable. And always it would be disruptive and bring chaos in its wake. And this time there were things that he did not want to be hurt. But as always, his deepest, most secret reaction was: at last.
He turned back and looked at the apple tree. ‘I wonder how high it’ll get,’ he said.
She pressed his arm again. ‘Who’s the Doctor, Alastair?’
‘Yes, we met Peter Warmsly,’ said the Doctor, putting down his third glass of water. ‘He seems very knowledgeable.’
Shou Yuing helped herself to more of Ace’s crisps.
‘That’s one way of putting it. He has a thing about King Arthur. Digs things out of the ground by the lake. You’d think he was living the legend.’
‘He is an archaeologist,’ said the Doctor.
The Chinese girl sighed. ‘I can’t see it myself. All that patient scraping. I keep getting the urge to bung half a kilo of TNT down a hole and bring the lot up in one go.’
‘Now you’re talking,’ enthused Ace.
The Doctor glanced at his eager companion in annoyance. Despite all he had shown her, she still refused to learn respect for Time’s disparate patterns. ‘The point of archaelogy is to carefully recover the past. Not disintegrate it.’
‘It won’t make any difference,’ said Shou Yuing. ‘The only half decent thing Peter ever found is that.’ She pointed up above the fireplace to where a blackened scabbard hung.
The Doctor walked across the room from the bar and stared up at the battered relic.
Ace nudged Shou Yuing and whispered. ‘You could try something with more brisence.’
‘More brisence than tri-nitro-toluene? Like what?’
Ace tapped her rucksack. ‘Tell you outside. He gets upset when I talk about explosives.’
They slipped out of the garden door, leaving the Doctor engrossed in the scabbard. Its antiquity was strangely familiar — like deja-vu approached from the wrong end.
Perhaps it would one day become familiar. But that was the random pattern of Time he had been trying to explain to Ace.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ said Elizabeth Rowlinson.
‘Yes,’ he said. She had been sitting so quietly in the warm sunshine that he had almost forgotten her. She smiled, but did not move her head towards him. Her fingers left the pages of the Braille book she had been reading. ‘Sometimes I can feel its presence. Silly, of course.’
Without even consulting his copy of Malory, he said,
‘The scabbard is worth ten of the sword.