Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [40]
He’d seen the Doctor – a walking mystery, a wonder – and behaved as if he were only the odd little man he looked like. And he’d been greedy. The miraculous could not be captured, grabbed at like a runaway dog. You had to be humble and quiet, and let it come to you.
On the other hand, the Doctor was in league with the government – the same government that had created the weapon that took his hand. So he needed to be stopped. Molecross frowned: as far as he could remember from the available information, the Doctor couldn’t be stopped. That was how he managed to keep saving the universe. He was slippery; he embodied the unexpected. He wore a stupid hat, encouraging you to think he was an idiot.
Well, all right. Perhaps he couldn’t be stopped. But his plan could be exposed.
That was Molecross’s duty as a journalist. There might not be higher truths than the truths he sought, but there were higher needs. The need of the public to be protected from the nefarious. The only secrets the establishment kept were evil secrets – otherwise, why not reveal them?
His damaged arm ached horribly, and its dried seepage smelled. He’d better stop by UNIT again to have it treated and rebandaged. Maybe he’d get an artificial hand, an articulated metal one like Schwarzenegger in Terminator II.
Well, actually, Schwarzenegger’s whole skeleton had been metal, but for a lot of the movie you only saw the stripped hand or the cool black leather glove covering it. That wouldn’t be bad. Maybe he could get UNIT to pay for it. No.
Taking a favour from the people he was investigating would compromise him.
Molecross’s eyes filled with tears. The shabbiness of compromise, of concession and petty lies and half-truths. He so longed for the transcendent. For a few hours he thought he’d found it. He had fooled himself. A cold draft of doubt whispered across his mind – perhaps he’d been fooling himself all along, perhaps –
The Doctor. The Doctor existed. The door to transcendence cracked open again. All would be well, and all would be well, and every manner of thing would be well.
Chapter Ten
85
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Brett was not a clubbable man, nor, with his arrogant, aristocratic features, did he look like a clubbable man. Nor, frankly, had he any desire to be one. This made him the wrong person, he knew, to drop into a pub for some information but he could hardly ask Pat to do it. The fool would just get pie-eyed.
Brett dressed down as well as he could – he realised he could only get away with a certain amount of common-man attire – in a second-rate suit with a cuff that needed reweaving. He chose a pub only a mile down the road from the crop-pattern field. As he crossed the small car park, he noticed that the pub sign was one of those ‘cute’ ones: a cuddly cartoon dragon holding a daisy. He averted his eyes and pushed open the door. Cigarette smoke and the odour of stale beer – exactly what he’d expected. His suit would stink for days. Probably he should just give it away.
Arranging his features into a suitably pleasant expression, he went to the bar, pleased to see that two other men were there. He ordered a pint of porter, nodded companionably at the bartender, a spotty boy who looked too young for the job, and in the act of surveying the room took in his two neighbours. One was a portly, handsome man in a business suit, possibly a solicitor; the other, sinewy and smaller, looked like a farmer. They were discussing the recent American outbreak of mad cow disease with a certain amount of satisfaction.
When they had finished this happy indulgence in Schadenfreude and returned their attention to their drinks, Brett spoke up.
‘Can anyone tell me what those soldiers down the road are guarding?’
‘Damned