Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [26]
Not only that, but because he was somewhere other than England the Brendon uniform meant nothing. The only culture here was money culture. Turlough didn’t have much money but he had the one thing that in Los Angeles mattered almost as much – an English accent.
All the girls just love the accent.
Plus, he had a UNIT ID card that told any nosy barman that he was twenty-one.
And so it was that he found himself in a bar on Sunset Strip, drinking his eighth beer and surrounded by a plethora of beautiful, gagging-for-it women, 48
all of whom swooned every time he opened his mouth. Hell? OK, maybe a second opinion was required . . .
‘What’s your name?’ asked one of the women. Bunny? Or Candy? Something soft and fluffy that ends in a ‘y’.
‘Turlough,’ he said instinctively, still thinking he was in Mr Sellick’s history class. Then he relaxed, remembering he was a continent away from real hell.
‘Vislor,’ he continued. ‘Junior Ensign Commander . . . ’ He was, he reflected, very, very drunk.
‘You’re English, right?’
‘I’m from England, yes.’
‘God, I just love your accent,’ said the y-ending Thing. Thankfully, she didn’t go on to ask him if he knew ‘Mrs Smith in Blackpool’.
Turlough’s eyes caught those of a woman sitting towards the back of the group. You’re in Big Trouble she seemed to say. Avoid the y-ending Thing, Vislor. She’s like Cybill Shepherd on acid. She’ll mess with your mind because she’s so bland.
‘Excuse me,’ said Turlough, almost falling from his bar stool. ‘I have to pee.’
When he returned the women had gone. All except the one with the eyes.
The magic eyes.
‘Amazing contraptions,’ Turlough said, pointing drunkenly towards the lavatories. ‘Individual flushes. What will they think of next?’
‘Can’t say I’ve noticed,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t frequent the men’s room.’
‘You should,’ said Turlough, far too loudly. So he sat down, heavily. ‘You should,’ he repeated. ‘Very educational. Everything I learned about life I got from the wall of the fourth cubicle in C dorm.’ Turlough tapped the side of his nose, in a keep it shtumm fashion. ‘Not that I’m telling tales out of school y’understand,’ he said. Then realisation hit him firmly in the face. ‘Except, that I am of course. But it was a crappy school anyway. Now you take Eton, they’ve got the lot.’ Turlough finished his drink. There was a madness in his eyes, as though he had suddenly realised just how far from home he was.
Literally and metaphorically. ‘You have absolutely no idea what I’m blathering on about, do you?’
‘No,’ said the girl, licking her lips. ‘But I’d like to. You interested in science?’
‘I live for science,’ said Turlough. His attention was briefly caught by a football game on the TV above the bar, but the girl grabbed it back with both hands.
‘It must be amazing to be on other planets, don’t you think?’
‘Sure,’ said Turlough, with an unconvincing shrug of the shoulders. ‘Why not? I mean, have you been to Milton Keynes?’
‘I’m Eva, you want to have sex with me?’
49
Turlough had never understood the rules of American football, but he was fairly certain that one chap had just scored and . . . ‘I beg your pardon?’
Eva draped a silk scarf around her shoulders. ‘I’d kill for a cigarette,’ she said flatly. ‘But you can’t smoke in bars in this state because the government are all Nazis. You want to come back to my place?’
‘Yes, I’d be quite prepared for that eventuality,’ said Turlough with as much dignity as he could, before sliding off his stool again. ‘But first,’ he added, ‘I have to go in there again and be sick.’
It was an apartment on the eighth floor of a building three blocks from the bar. By the time they reached it the night air had cleared the cotton wool from Turlough’s head and he was starting to think about what the Doctor had said.
Everything is connected.
Other planets . . .
Turlough stopped as they reached the door to Eva’s apartment and she fumbled to find her keys. His brain was starting to go all fuzzy again.
Inside, Eva kicked off her shoes and