Doctor Who_ The Turing Test Part 7

I wondered what 'the rest' was. From Elgar's expression it seemed unlikely that it would involve much opportunity for the Doctor to put his side of the case. I thought of the dead Jews, the horror on White's Greene's face, and imagined a summary shooting in a dark alley.

'But he wasn't responsible,' I protested.

My sense of horror must have shown in my voice: Elgar looked up sharply. 'For what?' he asked.

'The Jews White has told me your theory. I don't believe it. I don't believe the Doctor would be a.s.sociated with such men. I'm not even sure that the people who sent this message I mean ' I gestured at the code sheets.

Elgar bent down so that his face was level with mine. I could smell his breath, oddly clean, metallic, like gun oil. 'Mr Turing, your job is to break codes. I'm asking you to break them. The Doctor is a wanted man. If you see him you will hand him in, or you may share his fate. Is that clear?'

His gaze was frightening. I have compared Greene's to that of a hawk, but this was the look of something far more implacable than any bird of prey: I can only think of William Blake's 'Tyger', the Beast of the Industrial Revolution: What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

If Elgar had drawn his pistol and pressed it against my skull, like an American gangster, I wouldn't have been surprised, but he didn't. He stood up again, waved at the papers in front of me and asked, 'What is all this?'

I was shaking so much that I could hardly reply. 'Th th the D d d Doctor's message, sir,' I said, sounding just as weak and intimidated as I felt.

'Why are you keeping it here? I want that message sent now.'

'I'm not sure it's complete correct ' I choked on the words. They felt like a betrayal of the Doctor.

Elgar swaggered across the room to the window. 'So you don't trust him either, eh? Well, don't worry. This message is my problem.'

I would have thought the exact opposite was true: arresting the Doctor was Elgar's problem, and decoding the message was mine. But I didn't feel like arguing. I could hear the Doctor's voice echoing in my mind: Go along with him he knows more than we do. Go along with him he knows more than we do.

Very well, Doctor, I thought. I'll trust that piece of advice, at any rate.

'I'm not getting anywhere with checking the message, sir,' I told Elgar, truthfully enough. 'The Doctor's genius is unique.'

Elgar glanced at me, his eyes cold. 'I was told that you were the most able man on Earth in that area.'

I blushed at the praise, inappropriate and inaccurate though it was. 'Yes. I was one of the best, though there were others just as good. But certainly, from what I have seen of his work here in the last few days, the Doctor is better than any of us.'

'Is that why you like him so much?'

I shook my head. 'I like him because of who he is. I believe he may have been misled, but ' I lied 'I don't think he would kill anyone.'

Elgar nodded. 'Believe what you like. I know the truth, or most of it.'

'And what is the truth?' I asked.

But he left without answering, closing the door behind him with a precise click.

I suppose it was inevitable that, later that day, I should be the one to find the Doctor again. In retrospect it's obvious that I was looking for him, though at the time my mind told me I was merely going for a walk. It was a walk that led through the ever-gloomy Parisian streets to the cafe where the Doctor had told me about his failure to join the RAF, the cafe with the long windows and the silent, middle-aged woman with her folded arms and dismissive manner.

He was there, drinking red wine, speaking in French with a young blond man. As far as I could tell the French was rapid and idiomatic they were discussing the shortages and privations of wartime Paris. I hesitated my doubts must have shown in my face.

The Doctor looked up and smiled, said in English, 'Do join us, Alan!'

I had little choice but to sit. I glanced at the door, wondering belatedly if I had been followed.

The Doctor introduced the young Frenchman as Bernard. We shook hands, and Bernard enquired in polite if halting English after my health. We then had a slow and rather confused conversation in both languages, about the various cafes in the district and their merits. Bernard objected to most of them because they did not serve coffee.

'But there is one that has coffee always. It is called Le Bar, for the Americans. It is always the Americans who get things and it will be just like that after the war. The Americans everything. The French, the English, the Russians nothing. The Americans have won this war and they will not let us forget that.'

Bernard was becoming genuinely angry as he spoke, his face flushed, his gestures violent. I wondered why he disliked the Americans so much, when they had liberated his country.

Unless he had been a collaborator with the n.a.z.is in which case I looked at the Doctor. His face was shadowed, and he seemed to be staring into outer s.p.a.ce or, more likely, inner s.p.a.ce. I could see guilt there, and a sort of terror. Was I looking at a murderer? Had he murdered before? Would he do so again?

'What do you think about it, Alan?'

Bernard's question lifted me out of my fog of suspicion and fear but by this point I'd forgotten the topic of conversation.

'The Americans will have everything,' prompted the Doctor in a flat voice, without moving his head. 'Discuss, with particular reference to President Truman's undoubted good intentions and the Americans' unshakeable belief that they are the best people in the world.'

I tried to laugh, but the sound was half strangled. Bernard looked from me to the Doctor, and back again, and frowned.

'I don't understand,' he said.

'The Americans have a good deal,' I said, thinking of my year at Harvard. 'But they don't, as Mrs Morton would have said, "get the benefit".'

'What do you mean?' Bernard still sounded confused.

'Oh, I don't know. They're insincere, they take the world for granted. Most of them have no depth.'

'Oh, Alan, you're generalising horribly! You must know better than that!'

I glanced up at the Doctor. 'You talk as if you were my house tutor!'

He had the grace to smile. 'And you talk, and think, most of the time, as if you were a schoolboy.'

I felt a moment of almost unbearable liking for the Doctor, a warm rush of friends.h.i.+p. Perhaps inevitably this reminded me why I was here, and what news I had for the Doctor.

'There are some things I need to tell you,' I said, glancing at Bernard. 'In private.'

Bernard's English wasn't that bad. 'It seems you two must talk,' he said. 'And I must return to the factory.' He stood up. 'I will see you again perhaps.'

I watched him go. Certainly he played the chance acquaintance well, but I was learning to trust no one and no appearances. Bernard could be anyone. The Doctor could have met him here deliberately. He might even be waiting outside. He might be armed...

No. This was paranoia. I made a conscious effort to stop.

'Come on, Alan, ask me.'

The Doctor was staring into inner s.p.a.ce again. His eyes were quite still, unblinking.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

'Ask you what?' I said at last.

'Whether I did it. Whether I killed her. I can see suspicion, you know. I can smell it.'

I blushed and stammered. 'I I w wasn't about to I mean '

Killed her her? How did he know?

'You knew it wasn't Elgar?' I asked.

He shrugged. 'You think I can't tell the difference between male and female screams?'

Actually, they hadn't sounded like either. I was reminded suddenly that there was something beyond my understanding here, something of White Rabbits and Wonderland, of languages that were not spoken on the Earth I knew.

'It's all right, Alan. I don't blame you. The evidence for my guilt is there. If I didn't know I hadn't done it, I'd be almost certain I had, believe me.' Suddenly he looked up, his face loosened, and he was giving me one of those broad, innocent grins. 'But I didn't, which means we have to work out who did. Number-one suspect ' He met my eyes.

I took my cue: the answer was obvious enough. 'Elgar. Since it was his room, and he's so keen to blame you. Simple misdirection. And he had access to the room at all times. But why? He was working with her.'

'Or he was pretending to. Or he was once her confederate, and has now betrayed her. Or she was about to betray him, and he got there first. a.s.sumptions, Alan, the world is littered with a.s.sumptions. Most of them die, but a few fall on fertile ground and turn out to be the truth.' He swirled his wine. 'The trick is to work out which ones are true before anyone else does.'

'How are you going to do that?'

He shrugged. 'I can't tell you.'

'Because you can't remember?'

'Because you don't trust me.'

I felt as if I had been punched in the face.

'Don't worry, I've told you I don't blame you. I wouldn't trust me either. In truth, I don't trust me very much, most of the time. Which is why I'm going to leave now, and you're going to stay here.'

I looked away, towards the surly bar owner. She gazed at me, indifferent. I wondered if she understood our foreign conversation.

The Doctor was getting up.

'Wait!' I called. 'There are things I need to tell you!' I was thinking of Elgar's hardly veiled threats. I owed it to my friend to warn him, to give him a chance to get away.

But the Doctor didn't stop. I slapped a five-franc note down on the table and followed him into the street.

He was gone.

And this time I couldn't find him.

Chapter Nine.

It was a more difficult question than any code, any equation, any problem of logic. To betray, or not to betray? In one way it was simple: I couldn't turn the Doctor in, because I didn't know where he was. I could tell Colonel Elgar where he had been, and I could tell them about Bernard but these facts were probably useless. However, in another way, it was a stark choice. I had been ordered to tell Elgar if I met the Doctor. There existed the possibility that the information I had would be sufficient to enable Elgar to track him down. Therefore if I gave the information, I could be responsible for my friend's death. If I didn't, as well as breaking my oath to my country, I might be responsible for the deaths of others others like the woman, Elgar's colleague, who may or may not have been killed by the Doctor, accidentally or not.

My head ached as I walked back to the hotel. I felt physically ill, as if I were suffering from influenza. I shook, I sweated, I felt alternately hot and cold. By the time I reached the hotel I believe I took a circuitous route I was sufficiently unwell that I forgot about the closed-off floor, and almost went to my former room, only to be turned back by a pretty young Marine. He noticed I was ill, and called a bellboy to escort me to my new room. The 'boy' a grizzled old Frenchman who had probably fought in the last war was also worried by my condition, and offered to fetch me a brandy 'on the house'. I was grateful to accept.

I stood with my brandy in my darkened room, staring out of the window at the dark capital of a strange country, feeling cold and ill and entirely unable to make a decision. I had no idea of the whereabouts of either Elgar or Greene, in any case.

Gradually I came to a decision: I must speak to Greene. Surely his brilliant, subtle mind would understand that there was more to this than the Doctor's guilt or innocence. He, too, had decided to trust the Doctor on the strength of his feelings that was why we were here. I was certain he wouldn't go along with Elgar's brutish interpretation of the truth.

But did he have any authority? I considered this problem for a while, and decided that the best thing was to get him on my side first, and work out the rest afterwards.

It was midnight before I felt I had the strength to act upon my decision: and by then it was too late to find out which was Greene's new room. Only the night porter was about, and he was as elderly as the bellboy and spoke no English.

In halting French I tried to obtain the information I needed. 'La chambre de Monsieur Greene er, Monsieur Greene er, non non, Monsieur White Blanc...?'

I must have sounded like an idiot, and the porter treated me as one that or he smelled the brandy on my breath. 'Allez vous couches,' he said. 'Dormir le matin tout sera mieux.'

I decided the old man was right. There was nothing that I had to say that couldn't wait until the morning.

As I returned to my room, I became aware of Elgar's mechanical snoring. I couldn't be sure of the source: it seemed to fill the pa.s.sageway. It was like the sound of a war machine on the move a tank perhaps, or something stranger. I even fancied I could hear the rattle of caterpillar treads in the sound of his breathing.

I went to bed with the curtain open, and slept little, dreaming fitfully of war machines far bigger than any real tanks or aircraft, secret German weapons as huge as hillsides, sprouting machine-laid fires of destruction.

In the morning, Greene and Elgar were gone that is, they had left the hotel altogether, and for good. I was told as much by the concierge, then, whilst I was still working out what this might mean, I was met at breakfast by an English sergeant named Brevell, who told me that he had been given orders to accompany me back to Bletchley.

'By train, sir, and boat,' he added. 'I gather you didn't like the aeroplane ride.'

I hadn't, but that wasn't the point. I felt suspiciously as if I were under a sort of house arrest. I asked Sergeant Brevell where Greene and Elgar were.

'Greene? Don't know of a Greene, sir. Colonel Elgar's gone to the base at Montmereil.'

'And after that?'

'Can't say, sir.' He shrugged. 'And to be honest, I don't know. I've been told by the colonel to get you on the ten-thirty train for Cherbourg which gives us just an hour and a half, sir, so if you don't mind packing straight after you've finished your breakfast '

It was my turn to shrug. I gazed at my half-empty plate the remains of a fried egg, half a slice of bread, and a piece of sausage. I didn't want to eat any more. I got up, nodded at the sergeant and went to my room. I didn't have much to pack: it seemed at that moment as if my entire life was so empty that it could fit into one small suitcase. A few s.h.i.+rts, a spare pair of trousers, some crumpled underwear that was me. Even the room seemed dingy, the walls showing their cracks in the grey morning light. I thought of Bletchley and my return to Hanslope afterwards but no warm remembrance clicked in. I felt that I lived a hollow life, where a fascination with numbers and codes subst.i.tuted for any real human contact. A life of greys, dimly shading away, the graph of my emotions flat.

I knew then that I did love the Doctor a possible traitor whom I would probably never see again, and whom I might have to betray to the authorities if I did. It didn't make my life more interesting to know this. It only filled the grey void with an aching confusion. I began to feel ill again.

A knock on the door. 'You all right, sir?' Sergeant Brevell.

I made an effort to compose myself. 'I will be five minutes,' I told him.

I dressed, and looked at the blade of my razor. I distinctly remember contemplating whether to shave, or simply cut my throat with it.

That was the first time. I have thought of suicide since, many times. I do not think that I was entirely serious about it on that first occasion. Behind my momentary depression, I still had hope. But the thoughts that crossed my mind frightened me. As a result it was less than five minutes before I was shaved, packed, dressed and ready to go.