Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [15]
The thing that Creed remembered most vividly from that first meeting was the way her eyelashes retained a delicate coating of ice from the sub-zero temperatures outside. Her lashes were still frozen when she first sat down. In the midst of the delicate nest of white lashes her eyes were a startling vivid blue-green. They regarded Creed curiously over high feline cheek-bones as she looked up from loosening her snow-caked ski-boots. For a moment she seemed too nervous to speak.
‘My ancestors were Magyars,’ she blurted out after a moment’s silence. ‘Sir,’ she added.
‘That’s nice,’ said Creed.
‘They were apparently very tough, very resourceful people,’ said Amy. ‘That’s a family legend, sir.’
‘Don’t call me “sir£ again. It makes me nervous. What the hell are you rambling on about, Cowan.’
‘What I’m trying to explain, Mr McIlveen, is why I’m late here on my first morning. It’s completely unfair, Mr McIlveen.
I know that’s a completely wimpish thing to say. But it is unfair, when you consider that I set off at the crack of dawn, deliberately, to get into the office early. So I could make a good impression. I was going to be early. Two hours early, Mr McIlveen. Not late.’
‘OK, your technique is gradually working,’ sighed Creed.
‘Forget Mr McIlveen too. Hearing you repeat it that way is like having my teeth drilled. You can call me Creed.’
‘The stupid thing is, if I hadn’t been trying so hard, trying to be early, none of this would have happened — Creed.’
‘What exactly did happen?’
‘If I hadn’t set off two hours early I wouldn’t have been on that particular stretch of road at that particular moment.’
‘Would you like some coffee, Cowan? Sugar? You look like you need it. What particular stretch of road?’
‘Through Gaines Woods.’ It was a belt of thick forest about twenty miles away, separated from the Agency by a wide expanse of fields now buried under snow, huge adjacent hectares of unworked farm land.
‘I know the place,’ said Creed.
‘I’d never driven through there before. It’s full of trees.’
‘That’s why they call it Gaines Woods, I guess,’ observed Creed unhelpfully.
‘One of them fell on my car.’
‘What?’
‘One of the trees fell on my car. Totalled my cellular phone. I couldn’t call anyone to come out and pick me up.
The highway was too far to walk and in the wrong direction anyhow.’
‘Wrong direction?’
Amy still had her heavy parka on and in the central heating of the office she’d practically begun to melt inside it.
The glaze of ice was gone from her lashes and her cheeks were bright red. She struggled with the zip of the parka then looked up at Creed. There was a sudden set of fierce determination on her clear, sweat-glazed face. ‘I got up early this morning,’ said Amy Cowan, ‘because I wanted to come to work. And I didn’t intend to let anything stop me.’ There was a glint of steel in those eyes.
‘Magyar blood, huh?’ said Creed.
‘I guess so. I was determined. So I set off across country.’
‘You came all the way from Gaines Woods on foot?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘In two hours?’
‘Well, actually I used skis.’
‘I’m impressed,’ said Creed. ‘Lucky you had some skis in the car.’
‘I didn’t, actually.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘I had to make them. From branches.’
‘Branches?’
‘You know, like on a tree? Fortunately there were plenty of trees. The place was full of them. That’s why they call it Gaines Woods, I guess.’
She looked up at Creed, frank eyes full of rude merriment. He grinned at her like a wolf over his coffee cup. ‘I guess,’ he said.
‘They weren’t really very good skis. Kind of a primitive lashed-together sort of rig. But the best you could expect using a Swiss Army knife.’
‘So you managed to get here after the tree fell on your car, travelling across country on homemade skis, and you’re only half an hour late.’
‘That’s why I mentioned my family. The Magyar blood.
They’re tough, resourceful people. It’s thanks to those tough, resourceful genes of theirs that I’m only half an hour late.’
‘Well, Agent Cowan,’ said Creed, taking a deep breath.
‘Just don’t let it happen again.’ He smiled