Part 6 (1/2)

The box was suddenly removed from Polly's hand and dropped back into the rucksack. Ben turned to protest but found himself facing the sardonic smile of Fraulein Thorsuun. 'It's called a compact disc. It's the replacement for the vinyl records you're used to. And I doubt young Carfrae there would like to know that you were being light-fingered.'

Polly stared in shock. 'Stealing?' she hissed. 'Never! We were just . . . just . . .'

Thorsuun held up a hand. 'I know. Trying to work out which year you're in. 1994. I take it you're from the late Sixties?'

Ben nodded. '1966,' he said. This Thorsuun woman seemed to take their time-travelling in her stride. He suddenly felt very wary, and took an instinctively protective step nearer Polly.

'And him?' Thorsuun nodded at the Doctor.

Ben found himself having to answer. He did not want to.

He wanted to avoid answering this strange, cold woman's questions and yet he felt he had to. 'He's the Doctor. I don't know where or when he's from. We met him -'

'I know,' said Thorsuun. '1966. You said.'

Ben looked at Polly and then back at Thorsuun. 'You don't seem entirely surprised. Is time travel common by 1994?'

Thorsuun smiled. Broadly. 'Oh, you sweet little creature.

Of course it's not. There have been instances over the last few decades, a couple of incoherent references in newspapers and The Fortean Times The Fortean Times. But on the whole, time travel is restricted to a few lucky people.'

Polly decided it was time to be defensive. 'And you're one of those ”lucky people”?'

51.'Don't I wish. No, I'm merely immortal. An illegal alien, you might say. Immortal and stuck here. For now.'

'Are you going to escape then?'

Thorsuun stroked Ben's cheek and he found it impossible to push her away. 'Of course, little creature. You and the Doctor are going to take me far away.'

'I'm sure if you asked the Doc -' Polly began but Thorsuun's face lost its smile - and it was replaced by a twisted sneer.

'Asked? Asked? You poor morsel. I don't ask. The Doctor will take me - of that I'm sure.'

'Why?' Polly was determined not to be put off.

'Because if he doesn't this rather backward lump of rock is going to be reduced to a radioactive cinder smaller than that CD. In about ten hours. And only I can stop it.'

Ben and Polly looked across at the Doctor.

As if aware that he was being stared at, the Doctor slowly looked up and saw Thorsuun. Ben looked at her and then back at the Doctor. For the first time since he had known him, he saw a look of pure surprise on the Doctor's face.

Surprise and something else.

Fear.

Thorsuun smiled again.

George Smithers had lived in c.u.mbria all his life. For the last twenty years of his working life, he had been an admin clerk at the Windscale nuclear plant - or Sellafield as it had been renamed after a bout of bad publicity in the early eighties.

After his son died of leukemia in 1987, he had begun to question the rea.s.surances he and his fellow workers had been given regarding the safety of fissionable fuels. After his wife had died in 1991 from lung cancer (admittedly she was a twenty-a-day smoker) the questions and doubts had become vocal recriminations. It had been quietly suggested that he take advantage of a good redundancy package and the offer of a rent-free cottage in one of the nearby villages.

52.'There's scores of youngsters out there looking for work, George,' they had said. 'You're not happy here. You've had more than your fair share of trauma and tragedies. We think you'd be better off out of here, but we want to show you our appreciation and recognition of your work.'

They had given him a quite healthy lump sum and the Gatehouse on the Grange estate, working for some German administrator from one of the London universities. On his last day his colleagues had wished him well, stuffed half a dozen bottles of Jack Daniels in his bag (and a couple of doubles down his unprotesting throat) and seen him to the perimeter fence. He had nodded a sad farewell to old Chalky at the Visitors' Centre and pa.s.sed through the gates.

With a last look at the KEEP OUT sign, with its NUCLEAR PLANTS ACT 1966 addendum, George Smithers had begun his new life.

The move into the Gatehouse was the best thing possible.

Selling off the old converted farmhouse had been a wrench but ultimately the memories had faded. He had ploughed most of his redundancy into the Leeds - that Arthur Daley advert had convinced him of the value in that - but paid for a short holiday to Majorca. In forty-seven years, he had never gone further south than Duckenfield and so abroad had been a bit of an adventure.

'I need an estate manager for my c.u.mbrian house,' the German, Kerbe, had said on the phone. 'I already have a gamekeeper up there. Well,' he chuckled in a way George had come to like, 'I use the term loosely. Poor Mr Coates has no poachers to fend off, nor any game to protect. He's more of a caretaker, but he liked the t.i.tle of gamekeeper.

You British are so proud when it comes to job t.i.tles. But he looks after the wear and tear of the place. I let it to students doing research and although sometimes either I, or our bursar, go with them, nine times out of ten, it's just some befuddled university lecturer who might tell you the chemical composition of gra.s.s but try to convince him to pay the milkman, and he's panic-struck. That's what I need 53 you for. And since you're already a local, what more can I ask for?'

Two weeks later George Smithers was working on the estate, renovating the kitchen at the Grange and generally doing all that was asked of him. Helping with all this was Charlie Coates, a weaselly looking man who might have played a good armed robber in an episode of The Bill The Bill.

George Smithers was not sure he entirely liked Coates but he had to admit he was not unpleasant or rude. Just a bit s.h.i.+fty. One day he would ask Kerbe where he had found his 'gamekeeper' - somehow he did not fancy asking Coates directly.

Coates had later introduced him to the university's bursar (and rumoured by Coates and others to be Kerbe's 'fancy woman'), Fraulein Thorsuun, who arrived one weekend to prepare for the next batch of students. George Smithers took an instant dislike to her but Coates fawned and doffed and generally crawled. George soon got the notion that if she were kept sweet, all would be well with Kerbe.

George Smithers did not want to move home again. He was nice to Fraulein Thorsuun.

He was dimly aware that Coates was doing strange things to the locks up on the big house but chose not to enquire what. The papers and invoices from the locksmiths pa.s.sed through his hands, he signed the credit slips and thought nothing more of it.

Until the night of the noises.

Firstly there had been an amazing groaning and wheezing sound right outside his office window. It was dark but he could clearly see a dark blue box outside, in the trees.

Where it had come from he did not know but when he went to investigate, he decided upon an answer. It was an old police box. There had been a couple in Carlisle once, huge concrete things. This seemed to be wooden. Students.

Normally it was traffic cones and the occasional policeman's helmet. A police box was a new one on him, but it was not doing any harm. And knowing students, it would be gone in the morning.

54.The second noise was an equally weird one. A popping sound, as if someone had pulled a huge plug or stopper out of something. Again he went outside but could see nothing until he heard voices from behind his Gatehouse. Slowly he walked around the house, hiding in the shadows. He recognized Coates's voice, but there was a strange, feminine voice as well. It sort of .. . purred, rolling its Rs and its Ss were sibilant. He caught a glimpse of Coates and two others, the newcomers dressed in what looked like red leather, with black studs all over. George Smithers's first thought was that they were students going to a fancy-dress party.

As he kicked a dustbin and Coates and his friends turned to look at him, George Smithers's next thought was one so ridiculous and incredible that he could not really comprehend it.

Facing him, dressed in that red studded leather and carrying a ma.s.sive futuristic rifle, was a standing-upright five-foot something tabby cat with a scar.

He wanted to laugh but it aimed its gun and fired . . .

55.

Episode Two

'An ambulance is out of the question. I'm sorry.' Kerbe was seated at the foot of the stairway where Peter had fallen earlier. He casually ran a hand along the wooden banister and then began tracing the s.p.a.ce between the bal.u.s.trades with the palm of his hand. He was smiling, his head slightly c.o.c.ked to one side. He neither looked nor sounded sorry at all.