Downtime - Marc Platt [78]
Daniel Hinton had certainly been a misguided nuisance when he was at school, but he had never been a liar. There was a distinct possibility that the boy was right. The Brigadier could remember some garbled explanation that the Doctor had given about trying to reverse the power on the Intelligence.
The blasted thing was defeated, not destroyed. But he and the Doctor were barely acquainted in those days and he’d never really understood the implications. As it was, he was working on his own now.
‘Trust no one. Isn’t that right, Danny? Not even my people at UNIT.’
Kate had been watching the two of them with a look of growing perplexedness. ‘Just listen to you. Who do I call first?
Police, exorcist or psychiatrist?’
Danny ignored her. ‘The whole city’s fouled up. The computer Internet’s virally infested.’
At last, the pieces were forming up together. The Brigadier looked to his pupil for confirmation. ‘And that’s the Intelligence’s new body?’
Danny frowned almost apologetically. ‘It won’t stop there.’
This was not what the Brigadier wanted to hear. His daughter had been threatened and he refused to believe that some shapeless mass of malevolent thoughts that didn’t even feasibly exist was carrying out a personal vendetta against him. No one had so much as seen any Yeti, even he had only imagined one. He was determined to find some other acceptable explanation. If he could, he would put it down to bad dreams after a toasted cheese supper, or too much nutmeg on one of Celia’s rice puddings. The rest was just coincidence.
He looked at Danny’s Chilly sweatshirt and knew that he was fooling himself. That really annoyed him. Out of sheer perversity, he suddenly snapped, ‘Nonsense. The Intelligence was driven out! I was there!’
‘No!’ exploded Danny. ‘It’s trapped. It can’t break its link until all its old icons of power are destroyed. One icon still remains. The final Locus.’
‘How do you know?’ said Kate.
Danny shrugged. ‘Just do. The link was reversed. The icon that the Intelligence used now binds the Intelligence. The Intelligence has become the pawn.’
Outside, the note of the engine began to grind upwards.
Deep in thought, the Brigadier said, ‘Cavendish asked me about keepsakes...And when I think, there was something.’
Danny turned sharply towards him. ‘Yes?’
His tutor shook his head. ‘No, I lost that years ago.’
‘Like what?’ said Kate.
‘It was when you said “pawn”, I suddenly remembered. A little carving of a Yeti, like a chesspiece. Tibetan, I think.’
‘Dad.’ Kate stood up, suddenly very afraid.
He watched her open the metal chest and rummage through the toys inside. From the bottom she produced a grubby figure carved in ivory. ‘Like this?’ she asked and held it out to him.
He took it and studied the object. It was almost comical. A bulbous, ethnic representation of a furry creature bearing little resemblance to the massive horrors that had stalked London so long ago.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
The boat gave a sudden lurch.
‘But I’ve had that thing since I was a kid,’ insisted Kate.
The Brigadier steadied himself as the boat appeared to turn.
‘It’s infinitely dangerous. We have to get rid of it now.’
25
Taking the Knight’s Pawn
arrods watched a heron that was flying along the canal in Hthe Mananda’s wake. It seemed like a good omen, but then he had just polished off a beer and the last of the sandwiches that the young lady had given him. Suddenly everything seemed a lot better. He reckoned they had put trouble behind them for a bit. Perhaps the Brigadier could find him a situation of sorts. He wasn’t going back to the New World if he could help it, except maybe to collect his things.
Then he might travel a bit for the summer. He could do Ascot, Wimbledon or Henley Regatta. The sorts of place where you got a better class of rubbish.
He’d find a nice new shack too. A holiday