Downtime - Marc Platt [83]
The Japanese maples she had planted were showing their first scarlet leaves. Beneath them, there were drifts of white narcissi and the last of the crocuses. But it was still too early for her pride, the blue Himalayan poppies propagated from the stock that Charles Bryce had once sent her. Or was it just too late for her to see them again?
She looked down from the terrace over the New World campus. Chillys were moving everywhere like yellow-headed beetles. The purpose that her students had always displayed, that marked them out from the students at other establishments, was now all too clear. They were all on the business of the computer – or rather, the mass of hateful thoughts that lived in the computer. Compassion and the search for what she most wanted had made her blind to that.
She heard the gravel crunch behind her, but she no longer cared who, or what, was approaching.
The voice of the old man sounded flat and tremulous in the open air. ‘I had a daughter once. What happened to her?’
On a sudden impulse, she turned. ‘Father?’ She was looking up into the watery eyes of the intruder.
Travers peered down at her, studying her through his cracked spectacles. The face was no longer cruel or tortured, just searching and very lost. This was the real Travers again. A broken old man. After a moment, he shook his head angrily.
‘No. No, not you. Anne.’ He grunted with disapproval and turned his gaze out over the university and the hills beyond.
‘ Yeti Traversii,’ he proclaimed in despairing tones.
‘Brought It back from Tibet. All my fault!’
Victoria grasped the rail of the balcony and looked down into the depths. ‘My father died on a cold world, a thousand light years away.’
Acrid smoke from the burning Dalek city and ash like coarse grit blowing in Skaro’s wind.
Chillys moving on their business.
Travers rallied a little in response to her words. ‘I died fifteen years ago,’ he informed her. ‘Saw it in The Times.
“Professor Edward Travers CBE.” Silly old fool!’ He angrily yanked the white scarf from round his neck and threw it on the gravel. ‘ “No Flowers By Request.” They still sent them though. No one listens!’
Victoria was gazing out into nothing, seeing nothing.
‘Sometimes I can’t even remember his face.’
She was slightly startled as she felt the old man’s hand move gently onto her shoulder. She brought up her hand to touch his.
‘And I travelled in time,’ she said. ‘Where do I belong now?’ Anger, simmering for so long behind doors that had been slammed shut in her mind, finally spilled out. She rounded angrily on Travers. ‘Don’t you see? We’ve been tricked. It was the Intelligence all the time!’
A rage began to seethe up in him too. He rocked back and forth and spluttered into his beard. ‘Unfinished business!’ he stammered. Tears were streaming down his wizened cheeks.
A loud boom echoed across the campus. They saw the apex of the pyramid roof of the central computer block stabbing shafts of concentrated light up into the lowering clouds.
27
Special Powers
arah had a problem keeping up with the UNIT convoy.
SGetting past the hundreds of abandoned gridlocked vehicles was less of a problem for them than for her. The UNIT jeeps simply drove full speed on the pavements, but Sarah’s Spitfire had to take it more carefully.
Brigadier Crichton had not wanted her to come, but she insisted that she knew the layout of the university and would have followed even if he had warned her off.
The new UNIT helicopters, complete with their computer data feeds, were not deemed safe transport either. In fact, with no radio and most of the latest razor-smart computer weaponry up the Swannee, they were back to basics. Sarah suspected that her own Brigadier would