Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [75]
‘We can grieve later,’ said Paynter, holding her at arm’s length. ‘I’m hurting too, but we have to get away from here. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ she said, forcing herself to stop any self-indulgent waterworks before they had a chance to start.
‘Good girl.’ Paynter looked back at the dead man. ‘I got some information from him before I killed him, and I didn’t like the sound of it.’
‘What information?’ asked Tegan.
‘They’ve sent a pair of assassins after us, and they’ll be here any minute.’
He took Tegan’s hand and set off at a trot towards the desert, dragging the unhappy girl with him.
The Griffith Observatory stood liked a domed spacecraft in the shadow of the Hollywood hills. Newton leaned on the railings behind the planetarium looking up at the vast white sign above the snaking path of Blue Jay Way. In one of the houses directly beneath on the gigantic O, a party appeared to be taking place.
At seven a.m.
Only in LA!
When he had first arrived in this city he had been taken in by the plasticity, the fake warmth and crass commercialism – a bit of fairy dust that some celestial capitalist had sprinkled on the town. He loved to get up into the hills in Bel Air, real Charles Manson country, and just sit in his car watching the amorphous globule of humanity beneath him coming and going. Living and dying.
He had plans for this place. Big plans.
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Then the aliens got themselves involved in his sordid world and now he felt like a gatecrasher at his own party.
When Nostradamus had predicted that, “to the great Empire shall come another, distant and being light and goodness, the Kingdom shall fall in great despair”, Newton knew (really knew) that he was talking about this time and this place.
‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Ryman.
‘Jesus!’ shouted Newton, turning sharply. ‘I nearly crapped myself.’
Ryman looked uninterested in such detail. ‘You’re punctual,’ he noted.
‘And that, in itself, was difficult enough. Why do you want to meet at this godforsaken hour?’ asked Newton.
‘It seemed appropriate,’ Ryman answered, joining him at the railing and looking at the Hollywood sign. ‘A new dawn is coming, figuratively as well as literally.’
Newton considered this. ‘Why here, specifically?’
‘It’s as good a place as any,’ noted Ryman. ‘And besides, there’s something I wanted to show you. Come with me.’
They crossed the car park towards the observatory and paused beside the hexagonal monolith celebrating the achievements of the great astronomers.
Copernicus, Galileo. Kepler, Herschel. ‘Your namesake,’ Ryman said, pointing to the figure and face that depicted Isaac Newton.
‘My ancestor actually,’ said Newton proudly. ‘We’re very big on family history.’
Ryman began to laugh.
‘What’s so amusing?’
‘Just a passing thought,’ Ryman said. ‘It occurs to me that humanity is very big on family history, but not too interested in what goes on outside the family.’
Newton turned with a quizzical look on his face. ‘I don’t follow?’
‘Yes you do. You all do,’ said Ryman with a chuckle. ‘Everything the human race believes it knows about the universe, it only knows because my family, my race allows it to.’
The aliens. Again Newton felt shaken. The same as he had that first day when he had been given his revelation: everything you know is wrong.
‘I should like to know more about your race,’ he said at long last. This wasn’t the first time he had said so.
But, as previously, Ryman seemed amused. ‘Why?’ he asked.
Newton searched hard for an answer that would coax Ryman into conversation, but would also satisfy his own inner conflict. ‘We have a saying in England,’ he said. ‘“If you want to defeat your enemy you must first sing his song.”’
‘Enemy?’ Ryman was curious now, Newton could tell that.
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‘You tell me.’
So Ryman did.
‘We’re from the Pleiades system,’ he began, a distant look in his eyes. ‘Somewhere, sort of . . . ’ he pointed vaguely to the right of the sky. ‘Over there. Nice place, you