The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [70]
Blasé with all this adulation, he raised a cool hand in acknowledgement and strolled over to get his hat.
‘I said it would blow him away,’ said the Doctor’s voice.
Being full of ancient scrambled eggs, Sarah didn’t join the others in the scratch meal which Umberto and Maggie cobbled together for the garrison, a puritan affair of chunks of bread and lumps of mozzarella cheese in the hand, with the odd tomato on the side, eaten on the hoof while keeping a strict lookout. But she listened enthralled to the epic saga 245
of The Triumphs of Jeremy as expounded by the hero himself, modestly leaning on the battlements of the gate tower, stun-gun at the ready in case of a full frontal attack.
(For the Brigadier was convinced that after such a definitive defeat, the ghost ploy would not be used again.) But even while she enthused and congratulated, half an eye stayed on the Doctor and the Brigadier, marching slowly up and down on the other side of the tower, deep in some sort of council of war.
The Doctor had taken the news that Max was still very much in evidence fairly philosophically, though he seemed to find the situation more serious than ever.
The odd phrase drifted across: ‘…midnight, it seems’;
‘…the flight of the dragon’; ‘…the last resort’. At one point the Brigadier was obviously in vigorous opposition to the Doctor’s suggestions, Sarah noticed; at another, the Doctor seemed to be quite angry with the Brig. But eventually they seemed to reach an amicable consensus.
‘…so I thought I might sort of take it up, you know,’ the champion sharpshooter was saying in a sort of bored drawl.
‘After all, a talent like mine shouldn’t be allowed to –’
‘Excuse me,’ said Sarah and shot off after the Doctor who had beckoned her to follow him and disappeared down the stairs.
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‘Good luck, Miss Smith – ah – Sarah,’ said the Brigadier as she rushed past him.
Good luck? Now what? And where did the Doctor get off, expecting her to run after him like a pet dog?
Realizing that she was in fact running after him, she slowed down to a sort of casual trot and caught up with him as he strode back towards the keep (the TARDIS had landed back in the rear courtyard). She was all ready to say something pretty devastating about the way he patronized her; if she could think of anything.
But as she drew alongside, he turned to her and said,
‘Good. Good. I need your help, Sarah. The whole fate of the world could depend on you.’
Ah. Now that was different. A turn for the better.
Perhaps he was beginning to realize that… Eh? What did he say?
She stopped in her tracks. ‘The fate of the world?’
‘I’ll explain in the TARDIS. Now do come along.’
And there she was running after him again. Damn!
‘But she made me promise not to tell anybody!’
Even as she said it, Sarah realized how childish it sounded. She looked at the Doctor’s grim face and saw that from his point of view, she was an irresponsible twit. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But you do see that if she’s going to trust 247
me, she mustn’t think I go running round telling her secrets to all and sundry.’
For this was the plan: as it was clear that the ghost of the castello, the white lady, must somehow be linked with the release of Maximilian from the wall – after all, as the Doctor pointed out, there was no other era pin-pointed by the psycho-probe – and as they were both convinced that Louisa was the white lady herself, then the best way forward was for Sarah to capitalize on their relationship and persuade Louisa to change her course of action –
‘To change the course of history? Sarah had said drily when the Doctor reached this point in his explanation.
‘We’ve gone too far already to back out now,’ he said.
‘Our intervention before is a matter of history itself, as you pointed out. As it went wrong, we have no other option.’
It was then that Sarah told him of Louisa’s conviction that there was buried treasure to be found – and of her intention to