Doctor Who_ Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman [72]
‘Yeah, so, anyway, the point of all of this is that I’m bloody terrified about Albinex. What if he starts a nuclear war? Could he change history like that?’
‘I’m afraid he could’ said the Doctor. ‘Doing irreparable damage to the entire universe, let alone the planet Earth.
Just as your future isn’t immutable, neither is the world’s.’
‘Great,’ quavered Joel. ‘I already had to grow up underneath the radar. I don’t want to have to do it again.’
‘Are you okay?’ said Benny.
Isaac looked up from the sheaf of mail. He had spread it over one of the tables in the coffee shop, and was sorting it into piles. bills, magazines, letters from contacts, a couple of packages.
‘Yeh,’ he told her. ‘I’m keeping busy while we wait for Albinex to contact us.’
She sat down opposite him. ‘I feel as though this is my fault,’ she said. ‘If we hadn’t come here, Albinex would never have started on his evil plan.’
Isaac opened an envelope and took out the invoice inside. ‘It can’t be helped,’ he said.
‘I wonder how long he’s been planning this,’ said Benny.
‘I’ve known him for a long time,’ said Isaac. ‘I thought I knew him. He saved our lives when we were stranded here.’
‘It’s not an easy thing, to be stranded,’ said his daughter.
‘After I escaped from the ship I’d been shanghaied onto, my pod crash-landed on Olundrun Seven. If it hadn’t been for the monks... poor Joel had it worse, though. And Ace.’
‘She told us a little about Iceworld,’ he said. ‘It’s a good thing she was already angry when she arrived. I don’t think she would have survived otherwise.’
‘Um,’ said Benny. ‘Actually, about Dorothée. I was wondering something.’
He picked up another envelope. ‘Yes?’
‘You said she’d visited here a couple of times.’
‘That’s right. Twice.’
‘I don’t want to pry. But bearing in mind her reputation, and the fact that as a man more or less single, in practice at least, you would have motive, means and presumably opportunity, and considering the fact that if she were inclined to do so, she would...’
She threw up her hands. ‘Oh, hell. You didn’t shag her, did you?’
Isaac put the invoice into the right pile. ‘Why?’
Her mouth opened and closed a few times. ‘Why what?’
she asked, at length. ‘Why would you want to? Why do I want to know? Why do I —’
Why do you want to know?’ he said dryly. ‘I think I could work the rest out for myself.’
‘Er,’ said Benny. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose I was just curious.’
‘You’re fidgeting,’ he told her. ‘Your eyes are jumping around all over the place. It’s more than just curiosity about a friend. Why?’
Benny leant forward and rested her head on her arms.
‘Because then she’d be two out of three with the men in my life. Minimum. And I really don’t want to think about the third.’
‘I see,’ said Isaac. He sorted the sales letters into a manila folder and stacked them on the seat beside him.
She tilted her head to look at him. ‘The suspense is killing me.’
‘The answer is no,’ he said.
Benny puffed out her cheeks. ‘Whew,’ she said.
Isaac allowed himself a smile.
Joel breezed past. ‘Oh cool,’ he said’ picking up one of the packages. ‘A videotape. That’s one of mine.’ He tucked it under his arm and went upstairs.
‘Allow me to change the subject completely,’ Isaac said.
‘What do you expect the Doctor will do about Albinex?’
Benny sat up again. ‘Whatever needs to be done,’ she said.
‘That sounds very grim.’
‘You haven’t seen him at work,’ she said. ‘For him, the solution isn’t blowing away the bad guy. He’ll talk Albinex out of it. And if he can’t talk him out of it, he’ll throw a wrench into his plans. And if he can’t throw a wrench in, he’ll improvise madly at the last possible moment.’
She reached out put a hand on his sleeve. ‘I hope Albinex can be talked out of it,’ she said. ‘It’s so hard, going up against someone who used to be your friend.’
‘Yes...’ he said.
‘I understand,’ said Benny.
‘Do you?’
Simon Kyle
‘I haven’t told you how I ended up in Spacefleet,’ said Benny.
Isaac folded away the last of the letters. ‘You said you were sent to the Academy as an orphan.’