Downtime - Marc Platt [3]
Yet she remained gentle and kind, and a little prim, as Jamie knew to his cost. Yanked brutally from her own time and home, she was learning rapidly how to fend for herself. Good housekeeping, he supposed.
Jamie’s snoring changed note. Brought out of his reverie, the Doctor stared at the scanner screen. Stars were there. And more stars beyond them. And clouds of gas in imperceptibly slowly billowing iridescence. And more stars. And clouds of imagination and possibility. And space curved slowly through the stars, turning oh-so gradually round, above, below, so that beyond the infinite abundance of stars, he thought he eventually saw, far, far away, the back of his own head.
And somewhere in the darkness between the stars, lurking, waiting, an insubstantial mass of hateful thoughts, perhaps just behind him, was the Great Intelligence.
Again the thought nagged at him. He tried to remember what he had forgotten. Bother! It was obvious. He had slammed the door on the invader, but he had not plugged the keyhole.
Brigadier A.G. Lethbridge-Stewart
Ministry of Defence
Bassingbourne Barracks
Whitehall
Royston
London SW1
Herts
Ref. 176YT/309DA4013
Dear Brigadier
Thank you for your letter of 13th May, which the Chief of Defence Staff has passed to me.
The Minister has studied your suggestions regarding the setting up of a watchdog unit to deal with extra-terrestrial incursions.
While acknowledging your key role in the offensive pertaining to the ‘London Event’, the Minister feels that such an event is unlikely to recur. Furthermore the formation of a new defence division would at this time be a prohibitive drain on the National Expenditure.
He also points out that any incursion originating from outside this planet would constitute a global threat, thus any defensive action should not and could not be undertaken solely by the United Kingdom. Perhaps the NATO or even the Extra-Terrestrial Society are better placed to deal with your suggestions.
Yours sincerely
C. A. Fortescue
pp Chief of Defence Staff
‘I’d say I’d been fobbed off as a crank,’ the Brigadier complained.
‘Usual whitewash,’ agreed Air Vice-Marshal Gilmore and passed back the letter. ‘This is from some Whitehall pen-pusher who’s seen less action than the average housewife.’ He drained his whisky and studied the cut-crystal tumbler.
The lounge of the Alexander Club on Great Portland Street was a sanctum heavy with tradition. From the walls, a gallery of generals, entrapped in an amber of cracked varnish, viewed with disdain the sunlight that fought to angle in through the high windows. The long velvet drapes were stiff with decades of cigar smoke that seemed to stain the very air. In such company, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart felt humble and untried, but also oddly comfortable, as if the rank recently settled on his shoulders was a right justly earned.
Gilmore briefly lifted a single finger into the air like a Russian Tsar proclaiming his divine right of regency. A waiter, steward, batman, whatever he was, summoned by the Air Vice-Marshal’s divine proclamation, recharged their glasses.
‘Just leave the bottle,’ said Gilmore. His sandy hair, greying at the temples, was brilliantined and his moustache clipped in RAF regulation style. ‘Your letter caused quite a stir. There are still copies circulating – you know what government departments are like. And you may be surprised to know that more people took it seriously than this absurd response would have you believe.’
‘Then why...?’
‘Expenditure. It’s too complicated for them. Defence is a nightmare to the government mandarins. Ministers with bees in their bonnets over expensive military developments which they know next to nothing about? Heaven forbid! It won’t do, will it? Especially suggestions from some newly promoted brigadier that would cost half next year’s defence budget to set up.’
‘So they just knock it on the head.’
‘Absolutely.’
Lethbridge-Stewart leant forward, his anger barely contained. He couldn’t tell if Gilmore’s tight smile was mockery