Doctor Who_ Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman [44]
‘What exactly is it you’re doing?’ she said.
‘I’m making a ghost-detector,’ he said, with the complete seriousness of someone who doesn’t realize they’re mad.
‘I see.’ Woodworth took a spoonful of fluff off the top of her cappuccino. ‘How does it work?’
‘The “ghost” is actually a sentient individual who has been shifted forwards in time by one picosecond,’ said the Doctor. ‘Producing some very strange effects. This —’ he tapped the jumble of components will detect the characteristic ripples in local space-time as she moves through it.’
‘She? You sound as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I have,’ he muttered, joining two diodes with a paperclip.
He looked up at her suddenly. ‘She could explain the bees,’
he said. ‘And the out-of-season wheat. Small-scale temporal distortions.’
Woodworth breathed a silent sigh. Who was it who’d said, ‘The story of my life — if they’re handsome, they’re nuts’?
‘I would have thought you’d be fascinated,’ he said.
‘I am,’ said Woodworth, ‘but that doesn’t mean abandoning my natural scepticism.’
He’d finished whatever it was he was doing. Now he wound gaffer tape around the thing to hold all the bits in.
‘So what are you going to do with her when you find her?’ Woodworth said.
He smiled at her. ‘I could ask you the same question.’
14 Aliens R Us
‘What’s he like?’ said Isaac.
Benny was sitting in the overstuffed chair in the middle of the upstairs guestroom. Myn Jareshth watched them both from the edge of the fold-down bed.
Benny said, ‘He’s like... he’s like an uncle. An uncle who has a job you don’t know much about.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You know, something a bit nasty, which none of the grown-ups can tell you about because you’re too little... so you little bits about it, just things you’ve overheard or things you’ve glimpsed.’
‘As though he’s in the army.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Why an uncle?’
‘Well, because he takes you on trips. He’s kindly and a bit odd.’ She smiled as she drifted back through years of memories. ‘He likes jazz and the Beatles, and cats, and dipping croissants in coffee. He’s a vegetarian who doesn’t like pears.’
‘But he’s not an uncle if you’re an alien monster.’
‘He once said that he’s what monsters have nightmares about,’ said Benny. Her smile faded. ‘But everybody’s a monster sometimes. I’ve seen him be callous, and dangerous... sometimes he just fails to understand. And then you realise that the friendly uncle is —’
‘A façade?’
‘No, that’s not it. It’s more like a mode he can drop into so that he can relate to you.’
‘Is he... a good man, Benny?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded firmly. ‘Yes, he is.’
‘Even if sometimes he does terrible things?’
Benny considered. ‘He never does anything because he’s lazy or greedy, or for revenge.’
‘Does motive make a difference if it’s your planet that gets blown up?’
‘Maybe not,’ said Benny. ‘But he really does the best he can.’
Downstairs, ten minutes later.
The Doctor was surrounded by empty coffee cups, his face a grimace of concentration. He held up the device he had built, close to one blue eye, and twiddled with the components.
Isaac watched from behind the counter. He wondered if it looked as though he was hiding there. Determinedly he put down the glasses he was polishing and walked up to the Time Lord.
The Doctor glanced up at him in mid-twiddle.
‘I didn’t take your TARDIS,’ said Isaac.
‘And I didn’t take your Lacaillan,’ said the Doctor wryly.
‘We have a problem,’ said Isaac.
‘Yes. Sit down.’
Isaac sat down. ‘What are you making?’
‘It’s a ghost-detector,’ said the Time Lord.
Isaac nodded. ‘The aliens who assaulted you were taken by the military,’ he said. ‘So far as we can tell. I’ve made a few enquiries, but they’ve vanished into thin air.’
‘They were after information about nuclear warfare,’ said the Doctor, ‘though I don’t know exactly what information, or why they thought I’d have it. It can’t be a coincidence, though, that your base of operations is a neutron’s throw from a major nuclear facility.’
‘We’ve been here a lot longer than the USAF,’ said Isaac.