Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [88]
‘It was about two hundred feet long, bright red, with a big white “3” on the side. It had stubby rocket pods at its base. None of the tourists even noticed. Perhaps it was an everyday occurrence there. That’s what I thought.’
‘Did you watch Thunderbirds as a child?’ the Doctor asked. ‘You must have done, you’re the same age as… well, I remember watching children’s TV in the eighties and –’
‘Thunderbirds? It… it looked like Thunderbird Three.’
‘Right down to the “3” on the side.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Didn’t you find that a bit odd?’
‘At the time… well… no, it all seemed to fit.’
‘Because you were expecting it.’
‘I wasn’t expecting it. How could I?’
‘You said it yourself: “it looked like something out of Gerry Anderson”. You didn’t travel back in time. You just thought you did.’
Anji looped a strand of hair back over her ear. ‘It’s not a time machine.’
‘No.’
‘But it makes people think it is.’ She was stumped.
‘It’s a drug,’ Fitz said offhandedly. ‘There’s something in the coffee that makes people think they’re time‐travelling. A hallucinogenic.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘It has to be. Something that makes whoever drinks it very suggestible. Something that makes them see and hear things. Baskerville must be very skilled in directing that – making people see what they want to see. And it must metabolise quickly. If you remember back to what he said, I bet you’ll see he was carefully directing events. That’s why you only get ten minutes in the past. A clever precaution – it means that if anyone suspected they’d been drugged, there would be no sign of it in their system by the time they had a test.’
‘It seemed so real.’ But Anji was annoyed that Fitz got to the answer first, she wasn’t arguing with the conclusion.
The Doctor nodded. ‘By definition.’
‘And it went wrong with me. Because I’m a time traveller – because I was experienced, and too open‐minded about what might happen.’
The Doctor looked amused. ‘Possibly. Either that, or you just had a bad reaction to the chemicals, or the conditioning went wrong.’
Anji preferred her explanation.
‘So… Baskerville isn’t a time traveller?’
‘No.’
‘He doesn’t have a time machine?’
‘No.’
‘He’s a local arms dealer on the verge of pulling off the biggest confidence trick in history?’
‘Yes.’
Fitz looked back at the building. ‘But there’s an alien invasion force and a British secret agent in command of a robot army who are both after the time machine.’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re not going to be happy when they find out there isn’t one, are they?’
‘No, they aren’t.’
* * *
Baskerville bundled President Mather into a chair.
Dee tried to barricade the door, but couldn’t find anything to use. This was a small first floor reception office – the place where the paperwork for the airstrip was stored.
‘What is going on, Baskerville?’ the President demanded. ‘This is the “place of safety” you were talking about? It’s a war zone. I have to get back to Istanbul.’
‘With all due respect, Mr President, shut up.’ He turned to Dee. ‘The aliens have tracked us here. You said they couldn’t do that.’
‘I said they couldn’t track the Concorde.'
‘This base is meant to be data‐invisible. The whole point is that it doesn’t have a data presence.’
‘Perhaps the aliens can smell it,’ Mather suggested.
Dee was switching on her laptop, checking its datanet connections.
‘Come on, Baskerville. We can do what we came to do.’ She turned to Mather. ‘You remember your ULTRA codes?’
‘I beg your –’
Baskerville rammed his gun into Mather’s cheek. ‘You heard. Now, please say “yes”, or your country will go into a World War without its leader.’
‘You don’t scare me, Baskerville.’
Baskerville cocked his pistol.
‘I don’t care whether I scare you or not. Do you know the ULTRA code?’
‘Yes. Some of it.’
‘He’ll know enough,’ Dee assured him. The computer was up and running, connected to the datanet.
‘Ready?’
Dee slipped a couple of VSCDs into the drive. ‘Two seconds. Get the DNA scanner.’
Mather felt a jab at the back of his neck.
‘Blood sample,’ Leo said.
Baskerville held up what looked like a medical