Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [71]
An immortal being who was capable of travelling through time and space. He didn’t look the part. Actually, she found it difficult to remember what he looked like. She remembered that his voice was distinctive, but couldn’t remember whether he was meant to have a Scottish or an Irish accent. It wasn’t true, was it? None of it was true. She didn’t live in a police box and she certainly couldn’t speak Martian.
‘I have told you everything that I know,’ she insisted. Her hand was still throbbing.
She had retreated into a fantasy world, and now Steinmann was stripping away all the fantasy, all the science fiction, peeling away every one of her lies. She still had clear memories. Dreams of men goose-stepping, the drone of planes. Nazis in the bathroom. New Year’s Eve: that German private who’d come into her room. She remembered his hot breath on her neck, his hand on her face. If it hadn’t been for Gerhard and Kurt, then who knows what would have happened. Her bed at home was cold, cold and hard. There was a constant tang of cigarette smoke and rotten food in the air. The meat she ate was fatty, stringy, laced with salt so you couldn’t tell it had gone off. The Royal Hotel was running out of soap, but still had plenty of carpet cleaner. Those were facts, facts that she could remember from real life. Her name wasn’t Bernice, it was Celia. She remembered people calling her Celia. She couldn’t remember anyone ever calling her Benny. It was such a ridiculous name anyway.
‘Another injection.’
‘You will kill her,’ stated the nurse. Was that concern, or glee? Celia wasn’t sure of anything any longer.
‘That is of no concern. Perhaps we will learn the truth before she dies.’
Celia felt the jab, and thought that she could feel the drug flowing through her bloodstream, rooting out the truth. All the lies that had built up were dissolving away now. How much nicer it would be if she really was Benny, intrepid explorer and archaeologist. Someone who’d stand up to all this, quipping with supervillains. Someone special, who’d travelled further than anyone else, visited all those exciting ages in history. Battling evil, slaying the monster, but always back home by teatime. But it wasn’t true. Her name was Celia and her job was to clean up after the Nazis, to beat their carpets and to scrub their toilets.
Another agonizing stab on the back of her hand.
‘I hate you!’ she heard herself shouting.
Celia had lived on Guernsey all her life. That explained why she couldn’t picture London without her mind painting in glass skyscrapers on the skyline. She hadn’t got a degree in archaeology. Deep down, she knew that much, and now she admitted it. Her whole life was a lie, it had been a lie ever since the day that her mother had died. What was her mother’s name? What was her father called? What was her surname? She had no recollection, but she knew that her mother had been killed in an air-raid... killed by the... the word was a far and distant thing. Two syllables, harsh in the mouth. She couldn’t recall the name, only what it symbolized.
Evil. Something that had been there as long as she could remember. It was a byword for hatred and destruction. Death.
They exterminated everything that wasn’t like them.
Indestructible monsters. Opportunists who attacked without warning, who ignored diplomacy. Divide and conquer.
Invasion. They killed millions: they didn’t distinguish between the military and civilians. Rows and rows of headstones. A planet full of graves. Remembrance Day. Lest we forget.
Chanting their boastful slogans. Advance and attack, attack and destroy. Their right arms stiff, extended in a permanent salute.
Power. Conquer and destroy. Genesis: an insane genius, wounded in the last war. Wanting the best for his people, knowing that they must change in this hostile environment, become harsher, more disciplined,