Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [18]
I held up both hands, trying to look harmless: just an ordinary guy in jeans and a sweater, not too tall, not too muscular, not too threatening. ‘I’m not the FBI I just want to talk,’ I said.
‘How did you find us?’ demanded Bob.
I grinned. ‘I’ll tell you all about it. Let me come along for the ride.’
Bob said, ‘Mister, you’ve got to be joking.’
Peri put a hand on his arm. ‘I think we’d better,’ she said.
‘Sounds like he already knows everything.’
Behind them, Mondy gave me a wink, and then joined the flow of late-night shoppers. His work here was done.
I kicked a bunch of crap off the back seat and squeezed into Bob’s car, obliged to hold a spare disk drive on my lap to make room for myself. They murmured to one another in the front seat, watching me in the rear view mirror.
‘The Doctor’s gonna kill us,’ Bob said.
Peri shook her head. ‘The Doctor’s gonna kill him.’
We headed back to Bob’s apartment in an awkward silence. When we got inside, Bob lurked about like a spy, pulling down the blinds, running a fingertip behind the Magritte print. At last, apparently satisfied, he sat down on the sofa beside his touch-tone phone, plucked its cord from the wall, and replaced it with a battered old rotary-dial phone from his bottomless bag of goodies.
Despite all the secrecy, Bob couldn’t resist explaining how they and the Doctor were going to make contact. ‘We’ve each got one number from a looparound pair,’ he told me. ‘The phone company sets up these lines so they can run tests. You give the other person one number in the pair and you dial the other one, and then you can talk to one another over the test line for free. At night, anyway, when the telco’s not actually using them. It’s convenient when you don’t want to give out your phone number.’
He dialled the number and held the receiver up to my ear.
There was no sound of ringing, just a click; and then a high-pitched electronic beeeeeep which sounded like the Emergency Broadcasting System. After perhaps ten seconds, the tone cut out for a moment, then started again. ‘That’s the singing switch,’ said Bob. ‘When the tone stops, you know someone has dialled the other number in the pair.’ He settled back on the sofa, arms folded behind his head, the receiver squashed against his ear by the inside of his elbow.
‘What if Swan knows about the, uh, looparound pairs?’
Peri said. Her voice became pinched and high when she was stressed, often sounding as though she was about to burst into tears. ‘You made it sound like she knows everything.’
‘Swan thinks the phone system is for kids,’ said Bob.
The tone was loud enough that I heard it cut out from across the room. Bob sat up at once. ‘Hello, Doctor, can you hear me all right?’ Peri put her ear close to the receiver so she could overhear their conversation. ‘We’ve got a little problem,’ said Bob. He and Peri both looked up at me as Bob filled the Doctor in on my presence. ‘Are you sure? All right –
OK, I’ll tell him.’
Bob handed the phone to Peri. ‘Why can’t we see you?’
she said. ‘Well, how’s that going to make it any worse?’
Bob sat down on the arm of the easy-chair. ‘The Doctor wants to see you,’ he told me. ‘Right now.’ Behind him, Peri put the phone down with an exasperated sigh. ‘Go to a payphone. If you’re sure nobody’s following you, call this number. It’s another looparound pair.’ He rolled up my sleeve while I was reaching for my notepad, and inscribed a number in ballpoint on the skin of my arm. ‘The Doctor will give you instructions on how to find him. OK?’
‘I guess you’re not coming along?’ I said.
Peri, slumped on the sofa, said, ‘I guess we’re not.’
30
One
Sheer luck led Smith Swan to discover the intruder on her system that Christmas Eve. With no family to visit, Swan routinely worked through the