Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [116]
220
Coded Messages
> From: Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart (aglstewart@UNIT.com.uk)
> Sent: Friday, 10 January 2003 6:28 p.m. [GMT]
> To: Gabrielle Graddige (gabby@vgpublishing.co.uk)
> Subject: Re: ‘The InterCom Affair’
Dear Miss Graddige,
Thank you for your correspondence of 9 January concerning my perceptions of the so-called ‘InterCom Affair’.
Ordinarily I have little time for questions about UNIT’s work. Indeed, I am often specifically prevented by the Official Secrets Act and other security restraints from discussing cases of this kind. However, as the events you are researching have become such a media cause célèbre in the three years since they took place, particularly in light of the UN Security Council report on the circumstances leading up to the Jex-Canavitchi war, and also the recent – and in my opinion highly inaccurate and sensationalist – film The Day the World Turned Dayglo (sic), I see no reason not to discuss the matter with you.
In your particular case I must say that I was most moved by your own personal loss, that of your cousin Sergeant David Milligan VC, a fine soldier and a decent and honourable man with whom it was my privilege to serve. In the interests of setting the history of these events straight and in their proper context, I am therefore happy to be able to answer the questions that you pose in the hope that your proposed book, War in Space – the Real Story will finally be able to remove some of the more outlandish rumours that have surrounded these events. And UNIT’s involvement in them.
I would therefore, under these circumstances, be happy to be interviewed by yourself and I would ask you to contact my office at your earliest convenience to arrange this.
Sadly, however, I have to inform you that it will not be possible for you to speak with UNIT’s scientific consultant Doctor Smith for reasons that I am not, at present, at liberty to divulge.
Yours very sincerely
Lethbridge-Stewart
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Text taken from The Man Who Saved the World – Memos, Letters and E-mails of Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart of UNIT. Edited by Russell Farway (London Multimedia Publishing: 2052)
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Epilogue
Time’s Up
It had been the strangest of weeks.
In the aftermath of the war the entire world had seemed to make a collective decision to carry on with the party for a few more hours. And they did, like they had never partied before, high on being no longer under sentence of death. Then everybody went to bed and woke up the next morning with a bit of a hangover, as though nothing had happened.
Everyone went back to work. All the children returned to school. The stores all opened (though for a few days there were shortages) and everything got back to normal with a minimum of fuss and bother.
A few neighbours were arrested for murder, but the courts were surprisingly lenient for a while, especially where provocation could be proved. The international community got together to help those areas most affected by breaches in the defence grid and InterCom quietly closed all its offices before gangs of local toughs came round and closed them down for them.
Tegan and Geoff Paynter went to dinner one evening in Marina del Ray at the restaurant Mark Barrington had recommended to Paynter. They had a nice time, but spent the entire evening talking around the one subject they both knew really needed to be addressed.
Finally Paynter decided to grasp the nettle. He stopped Tegan in the middle of some frivolous chatter about one of the planets she had visited.
‘I just want to know one thing,’ he said, holding her hands. ‘Are you staying?’
Tegan didn’t reply for a long time. Then, finally, she summoned up the courage. ‘No,’ she said simply. ‘I can’t.’
Paynter breathed out slowly. ‘In a way I’m glad,’ he said. ‘We both know I’m married to the job.’
‘That’s true,’ replied Tegan, taking a sip of wine. She stared at her plate for a while and then continued. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘somewhere out there is a twenty year older version