Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [103]
who haven’t got a clue what the real world is like, do you know what I mean?
My grandfather and five of his brothers fought in the war against fascism.
He was at Dunkirk. One of his brothers was in the company that liberated Dachau. Another one died in a Singapore POW camp. They were all antiwar.
Anybody with any sense is. But sometimes you’ve got to fight for your right not to fight.’ He paused, unsure if he was making any sense, but the Doctor’s eyes encouraged him to continue. ‘You’ll find that any soldier who’s ever been into combat is, at heart, pacifist. It’s a paradox, isn’t it?’
‘My life in microcosm,’ said the Doctor ruefully. ‘I always seem to be walking through battlefields, wading knee-deep in the carnage and spouting some soliloquy about dogma and misunderstanding. Agincourt, Waterloo, Rorke’s Drift, Passchendaele, El Alamein, My Lai . . . I saw them all. The worst horrors of Earth’s history have happened because powerful men wanted them to happen. And because other people – good people – did nothing, or waited too long to do anything to stop them.’
Paynter was silent for a moment. ‘I guess sometimes it’s our responsibility to save the unfortunate from the tyranny of the fortunate.’
‘And on that note,’ said the Doctor, patting the soldier on the back, ‘we have much work to do.’
They found Tyrone putting down the hot-line phone to the president.
‘How is he today?’ asked the Doctor, who had, himself, spoken to the man late yesterday evening and told him of his own experiences of the two races involved. The Doctor had been intrigued by the President’s intelligence and wit, and by the fact that he clearly knew enough about extraterrestrials from Pentagon files for the Doctor not to have to battle to make his story believable to a sceptic. ‘They’ll never understand this in Ohio,’ the President told him, as he ended their conversation with the hope that he and the Doctor would live to see each other in a few days’ time.
Tyrone thought for a moment. ‘He’s being surprisingly philosophical about the future. He’s obviously concerned that most of southern California may well be about to go up in flames, but he’s taking the pragmatic rather than the political view of things. Lucky it’s not election year, really.’
‘Saving lives in the face of intergalactic bullyboys might look good to the voters,’ ventured Paynter. The Doctor and Tyrone both looked at him as though he were mad. ‘So what did he say when you told him Los Angeles was about to burn?’ asked the captain.
‘He said “it wouldn’t be the first time”,’ Tyrone confided, just as Lethbridge-Stewart came into his office. He seemed to have aged dramatically in the last twenty-four hours, the silver threads now significantly outnumbering the gold.
196
There were salutes, given and returned, as Lethbridge-Stewart sat down wearily and put a bunch of papers on Tyrone’s desk. ‘The latest for Geneva and from the tracking stations around the world,’ he told the Doctor. ‘You may want to have a look at those when you get the time.’
‘Time . . . ’ said the Doctor, sadly. ‘It’s the one thing we –’
He was interrupted by the telephone ringing. All men looked at each other for several seconds before, finally, the Brigadier picked up the receiver.
‘Lethbridge-Stewart,’ he said crisply. ‘Yes. Yes, he is . . . ’
He handed the phone to the Doctor. ‘For you,’ he offered. ‘An old friend.’
The Doctor took the receiver and listened for an agonisingly long time to what the voice at the other end had to say. He only interrupted twice, to get certain facts repeated to him. At length, he thanked the caller and put down the telephone, looking up to find a row of expectant faces, including Tegan and Turlough who had also come into the room.
‘I have to go out,’ he announced dramatically. ‘You too, Brigadier. It seems someone is keen to help the world with its problems.’
There could hardly have been a more inconspicuous place for the confrontation. A patch of overgrown scrubland