Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [108]
It didn’t. Retour smiled at her, his ravaged scholar’s face gleaming with enthusiasm. ‘This is the sort of incredible luck you read about. If you study the great scientific discoveries you realize that they weren’t carefully planned endeavours at all. In fact they usually involve outrageous, fortuitous accidents. Some lab assistant accidentally puts some gunk in the wrong petri dish and you wind up with penicillin. It’s as though a discovery has to happen. As though it’s trying to break through into our awareness.’
Despite herself, Amy found that she was listening closely to what Retour was saying. She had experienced that feeling herself when she’d tried to be a hotshot scientist at Cornell.
On those rare occasions when her research had been going well.
Retour, damn him, picked up on her sudden interest.
‘You know what it’s like,’ he said. ‘You work at a problem and work at it and then suddenly it’s as if critical mass is achieved and a chain reaction begins. The revelations come rushing toward you by every available route.’
Amy faked a yawn. ‘It all sounds a bit mystical to me.’
‘Really? Well look at what happened today. Outrageous good fortune. I had no idea exactly when old-man Leemark would come bursting in. It could have occurred at any time.
Yet it happens this afternoon. The perfect moment to reinforce and magnify the effect of what we already achieved in the lunchroom.’
‘What exactly did happen in the lunchroom?’
‘You mean you haven’t seen the recordings? Well, never mind, you can study them this evening. Rest assured that you did your part perfectly. But the critical thing was to make Ricky the centre of attention and yet, at the same time, give him a shock so that he couldn’t retreat into his usual defence postures. He usually becomes intensely self-conscious. He hates the attention of the other kids and he reacts like a porcupine. He becomes so uncomfortable that if you look at him you begin to feel uncomfortable yourself. His anxiety is infectious. It’s like the spikes of the porcupine driving away unwanted attention.’
Amy was silent. Despite herself, she found that she was listening again, anxious to know what he would say next.
Retour was caught up in his story. ‘All we needed to do was make sure Ricky was too shaken up. Too preoccupied with some small emergency to follow his usual pattern. So I made sure that the summons to the principal’s office was timed to coincide with his reading of the note we planted for him. Bang.’ Retour slammed a fist down on the armchair for emphasis. Dust rose in the strange light. ‘He reads the note so he’s off balance. And then, bang.’ His fist came down again and dust lifted. ‘The kids hear his name on the PA and they all turn to look at him. The timing was perfect.’
‘I know all that,’ said Amy, feigning indifference. ‘I meant what exactly was that note? Who wrote it?’
‘I did,’ said Retour.
‘And what did it say?’
‘“I know who your real father is”.’
Amy sat silently for a moment. Then she said, ‘And do you?’
‘Yes,’ said Retour. He climbed out of the armchair and went back to the window. The strange light of the imminent storm glowed on his face.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I certainly do.’
Chapter 33
‘Norman, Norman, Norman. Listen to me. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
Redmond set aside his cup of coffee. It wasn’t easy finding a suitable surface to put it on. The stewardess’s sitting room looked like a war zone. He finally selected a semi-intact coffee table and set it upright in front of the sofa.
These were the only pieces of furniture in sight that were both unbroken and the right way up; their normality contrasted strangely with the rest of the ravaged sitting room.
The back wall of the room was open to the London dawn and a cool breeze was flowing in through it.
Redmond positioned the coffee table and sat down again beside Norman Peverell, on the sofa. The civil servant was wearing a ratty old dressing-gown which had once belonged to the stewardess’s boyfriend. He sat glumly sipping