Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [95]
‘You’re a dear boy, Balog,’ said the President, peering with rheumy eyes at the rouged old countenance in his mirror. A look of discontent passed over his face as he caught sight of the result of Yallet’s efforts. ‘I wish, though, that my Onya hadn’t left me. She really understood how to do my hair for these public occasions.’
Freeth’s thick lips pouted in disapproval. ‘A bondservant,’ he said. ‘A middle-lower, or at the most a lower-middle.’ He spat the words out as though they tasted rancid. ‘You can’t trust these people, Father. They have no sense of integrity – of loyalty.’
The President sighed. ‘But Onya of all people!’ He swung his wheelchair away from the looking-glass and gazed admiringly at the grotesque caricature of an overweight toddler standing before him, as if it were the apotheosis of manly beauty.
‘I just give thanks that I have you,’ he said. ‘It’s a great comfort to an old man to know that our heritage is in safe hands.’
Freeth smiled puckishly. ‘Our heritage if not our hair, eh, Father?’
The President started to laugh, but the wheezy sound turned into an asthmatic gasp. Freeth pressed the requisite button on the arm of the chair and watched, still smiling, as a precisely appropriate dose of medication saved his father’s life yet again.
The blare of music which had been melding with the distant roar came to a discordant end.
‘Ready, Father?’
The old man shook his head. ‘I’m beginning to dread these public occasions, Balog,’ he said.
‘You don’t have to stay after the opening march of the combatants,’ answered Freeth. ‘You can come back and loll in here until the award ceremony.’
His father nodded unhappily.
The double doors slid open, with a surge of sound like the blast of heat from a furnace. A fanfare struggled to be heard.
‘Your cue, I believe,’ said Freeth. ‘Now, don’t go over the top. Three pirouettes and a double somersault will be quite enough.’
As the wheelchair carried him through the doors to the rapturous greeting of nearly five hundred thousand of his loving people, the President was still laughing his creaky laugh.
The action of a flying bat the size of those from Kimonya, with the beats of the immense wings being echoed in the up-and-down motion of the body, felt remarkably like that of a small boat in a choppy sea. It reminded the Brigadier of a wildly improbable cutting-out expedition (landing from canoes behind the enemy lines) that he had led when he was seconded to the SAS as a captain. He felt again the rush of adrenalin and the fierce eagerness for action which had possessed him then, carrying him through the hail of fire which greeted them – they had been betrayed –
ultimately to carry the day.
His sentiments were not shared by Jeremy. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ said the small voice behind his left shoulder.
‘Nonsense,’ he called back. ‘Just a few pre-battle butterflies, that’s all. Soon be in the thick of it. Concentrate on that.’
‘That’s what’s making me feel sick,’ replied Jeremy.
The Brigadier was relying on two factors to allow his bat-battalion to get through to land its troops at the relevant targets for the coup.
Firstly, although Rance had warned him of the echo-location scanners – a form of radar, thought the Brigadier –
he had also pointed out that they were not geared to the expectation of attack. Their function was to police the occasional flycar demonstration by the braver dissidents, allowing the air patrol wing to destroy them.
So if the bats came into the city at a relatively low altitude, they would not only be shielded by the towering factories at the perimeter, but stood a good chance of