Doctor Who_ Just War Part 4

Three months ago, she'd found this aspect of his behaviour infuriating, now it seemed almost endearing. He was also the only person she'd ever known who didn't notice when she was naked.

'I could have killed you. I had a gun under my pillow. I might have flunked the odd cla.s.s during my military training, but even I could blow your head off at point-blank range.'

'If you did that, I'd just grow a new one,' the Doctor joked.

At least Benny a.s.sumed it was a joke.

'Pick a less bendy one next time. One whose eyebrows occasionally stay in the same place for more than two seconds.'

The Doctor deliberately contorted his face. Benny laughed. She leant over and hugged him. It was so good to see him.

The Doctor seemed embarra.s.sed. 'Please, Professor Summerfield, put some clothes on, I have a reputation to maintain. You'll get me struck off.'

The Doctor extricated himself and sat on a small wooden chair, hands clasped over his umbrella. Benny looked at him.

He hadn't changed in the last three months of course. Unlike her, he hadn't aged a bit. A decade from now, they'd look the same age. A decade after that and everyone would a.s.sume that the Doctor was her son. She had always known that he was an alien, an immortal being who resembled a scruffy little middle-aged man, but most of the time the knowledge sat at the back of her mind and she didn't let it bother her. Once, just once, in the last three months, she had questioned his motives, wondering why he should leave her totally alone for so long. For a little while she had even wondered whether he had abandoned her to die in this time, for some inscrutable alien reason of his own. Perhaps she was turning into a racist. Or alienist. Whatever Roz was. As Benny watched him, the Doctor glanced down at the floor, then poked at something with the point of his umbrella.

He broke into a grin. 'Nice dress.'

Benny pulled herself up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. 'Check the pocket.'

'You know, I'd forgotten how ratty you were first thing in the morning. Ah, this is interesting.'

The Doctor turned the k.n.o.bbly piece of metal he'd found in the dress pocket over and over in his hand. Benny stood stretching, and stepped over to the dresser. She caught a reflection of her gaunt face, her dead eyes and her skinny arms. The Doctor hadn't looked up.

'Just a guess, Doctor, but I bet that Chris and Roz have had a better three months than me.'

'They're in London, with the TARDIS. And they've only been there a week. We had to attend to the political situation on Troxos 4. I'll tell you about it one day, or better still I'll show you. Er, won't you get cold like that?'

Benny shrugged indifferently. After a second, she looked up from her clothes drawer.

'The TARDIS is in London? How did you get over here then?'

The Doctor smiled enigmatically, and she decided not to press the point.

'I'll meet you downstairs when you're dressed.'

The Doctor lifted himself up and left the room. Benny reached over to bolt the door, but it was already bolted.

Rather than think about it, she reached for the holowig, and brushed the filament into her hair. She stood back, watching herself in the mirror as her hair lightened. Naturally brunette, she still wasn't used to seeing herself as a peroxided blonde.

She'd tried to bleach her hair when she was twelve, an act of defiance that had gone very very wrong, so badly wrong that she'd worn a plastifez until it grew out. She'd been blonde a couple of times since, over the years, but it had never really suited her. The holowig was less fuss, a gadget from a short-lived late-twentyfirst-century craze that used fibre optics and a simple holographic projector. Her hair was naturally longer now than she would normally wear it, shoulder-length. Benny remembered writing a paper on fas.h.i.+ons in the twentieth century. As she applied her make-up, Benny recalled a relevant pa.s.sage; 'Whereas most clothing now' - the mid-twenty-sixth century - 'tends to be fairly androgynous, in the first half of the twentieth century in the Anglo-Saxon territories clothing was used to emphasize s.e.xual difference: women wore skirts, and low-cut blouses, that emphasized their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hips. Men wore jackets with square shoulders and often wore hats, to emphasize their size and physical presence. This can best be seen in the military uniforms of the period (see ill.u.s.tration). Gender roles at all levels of society were more strictly defined anyway, with a - '. Typical Summerfield prose, Benny mused: wandering punctuation, too talky, and it wasn't really about anything.

Ace had once managed to get hold of that paper. She had been particularly taken with 'Mods were so named due to their love of modernist poetry'. A mistake that anyone could have made. It was hardly fair, anyway. Archaeologists should be able to get away with generalizations and guesswork without representatives of long-dead civilizations coming along and laughing at them. The Pharaohs hadn't phoned Howard Carter up and corrected him on points of detail, had they? No, they jolly well hadn't. This period was as distant to Benny as the Hundred Years War was to Ace - the occasional error was bound to slip in every so often. Benny finished getting dressed and packed her belongings - including the milk - into a small travel bag.

When Benny had finished, she made her way downstairs to the kitchen and the Doctor. Ma Doras was sitting at the kitchen table, mugs of tea ready for them. She was a stout woman nearly sixty years old, with great wide hips and thick ankles. As ever, a cigarette hung from her lip.

The Doctor was in the middle of an anecdote. '...and when he turned round they were all wearing -'

'Morning, Celia. The Germans have all gone, trouble down at St Jaonnet. Something to do with the explosion last night,' Ma said quickly. The old woman turned her full attention to the new arrival, apparently relieved that she didn't have to hear any more.

'I saw the explosion happen,' Benny said. Ma didn't look surprised.

The Doctor sipped at his tea, chuckling to himself.

Suddenly, his expression clouded over. 'Celia is going now, Ma.'

The old woman's expression flickered. 'I'll miss you, Bernice.'

It was the first time that she'd ever used that name.

Benny gave a thin smile. She would not be sorry to leave Guernsey, but would certainly miss Ma and Anne. Before she went, though, she had to ask a question. 'Why did you help us? The Germans could have you killed.'

Ma Doras and the Doctor shared a conspiratorial look.

Ma spoke softly. 'I can remember the last time the Doctor was here, a long time now. Back before the first war. He saved the islands then, and those of us who were there know what he had to go through to do it. There's worse out there than n.a.z.is, believe it or not, and there's worse than dying.

That's when Celia, my baby Celia, died. Will you tell me something now, Doctor?'

He nodded, and she continued. It's going to get better, isn't it? We'll win the war?'

Benny watched the Doctor, expecting his usual knowing silence. Instead he spoke in a low voice. 'It'll get better, Ma, but it will get worse before it does. More islanders will be deported, tens of millions of people will die across the world, soldiers and civilians, men and women, Jews and Gentiles.

Great scars will be left on history, wounds that will take generations to heal. Terrible weapons will be built. But there will also be courage, technical innovation, hope for the future.

This will be the last war of its kind for a very long time. Anne's children will live all their lives in peace and safety and so will their children.'

They had left shortly afterwards. Benny took one last look at the boardinghouse, then they set off for the crash site. After a few minutes it became obvious that the Doctor knew the way.

'What is the size of the German occupying force?' The Doctor sounded almost conversational as he interrogated her.

'It varies; somewhere between twenty and twentyfive thousand.'

The Doctor seemed to work something out with his fingers. He chuckled. 'More per square mile than in Germany!

What are they doing here?'

'Most are just barracked here. The islands are being heavily fortified. The sea defences at St Peter Port have been improved, there's some sort of underground hospital complex being built and there's unusual activity, and very high security, up at the airstrip.'

She peeked at him to check his reaction.

'Good.' He nodded absentmindedly, as if he already knew the answers. 'Did you know that Victor Hugo wrote Les Les Miserables Miserables in St Peter Port? I told him to change the t.i.tle, but he wouldn't listen.' in St Peter Port? I told him to change the t.i.tle, but he wouldn't listen.'

'There's a statue of him in the Candie Gardens. Doctor, I may be talking out of turn, but what are we doing here?' She had waited long enough, and now the Doctor was here she wanted some answers.

'It's all to do with that explosion.'

Benny rolled her eyes. 'You don't say. I won't ask how you knew where and when it would happen. I take it it's alien?'

'Um?' The Doctor was checking his pocket watch. He was annoying her again now.

'The piece of metal. It's from a s.p.a.cecraft. The same s.p.a.cecraft that I saw this time last week.'

With a magician's flourish, the chunk of metal appeared in the Doctor's hand. He tossed it to her. 'You're the archaeologist. See for yourself.'

Benny turned it over, peering at it. It was black, twisted.

She couldn't make anything of it, she couldn't tell what type of metal it was, what that weird stuff it was coated with was or how it had been manufactured. She told the Doctor as much.

He took the fragment back and it vanished with a flick of his wrist.

'Is it alien? Well, that's a very subjective question, isn't it?

I think it's chronistic, though. I know for a fact that it was manufactured near here.'

She was puzzled. 'Then our work here is done, surely?'

'Um?'

'Concentrate, Doctor. We've finished here. If this is man-made and from this time period - I don't think "chronistic" is a word, by the way, and the archaeologist in me would prefer "concurrent" - then no one's changing history. Therefore, the Doctor and Benny leave in the TARDIS, pausing only to pick up any policemen from a thousand years in the future that they may have left lying around.'

The Doctor stopped in his tracks and laid his hand on her shoulder. 'Take a deep breath, Benny.'

'I'm perfectly calm, I just...'

'Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Do you feel the air surging into your body? Your lungs inflating? New oxygen pumping around your body and into your brain?'

Benny nodded, her eyes still closed. The Doctor's voice was almost hypnotic. 'By breathing in those air molecules you've changed history. You've left footprints that wouldn't have been left, eaten food that someone else could have eaten.'

She s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably. For the last couple of months she'd lived under rationing. Last night, she'd only allowed herself two inches of water for her bath, and felt guilty about that.

'Yes, well, I couldn't help it.' She paused, then stamped her foot. 'Hang on a minute, your hypocritical old fraud! You told Ma the outcome of the war, so don't blame me for breathing.'

'I wasn't. There are billions of humans on this planet, all of them eat, all of them breathe. All of them, some more than others, are changing history every second of their existence.

So many choices, so many possibilities. Something is wrong here. That piece of metal is a clue.'

'What are you saying?'

'Not only evil aliens change history, Benny. It's more subtle than that sometimes. That piece of metal should not be here. That is why we're here. Pinpoint the problem, and remove it before it has a chance to alter history.'

'The Doctor on a surgical strike,' whispered Bernice.

'What was that?'

Benny looked down at the little man. How long had she been travelling with him now? She had been thirty when she had met him, and she'd thought that she'd seen it all She didn't know for certain how old she was now. Time is relative, as the Doctor kept saying. When she was in a philosophical mood - three or more gla.s.ses into the evening, usually - she liked to say that you were as old as you felt. Flying around saving the universe she felt a decade younger than she did scrubbing floors in a hotel.

They had reached the stile. Benny could see over it into the field. A ring of German troops surrounded the cove, an armoured car sat in the middle of the field. More unarmed troops were bent down collecting debris, placing it in large paper sacks. From this angle, it was impossible to see down into the cove itself. They were safe where they were, though, for the moment. She ducked out of sight, but the Doctor popped up his head.

'There are a lot of them,' he remarked. 'Too many. Three dozen? That's just what I can see.'

'Is there another way down?'

'The ones on the cliff will see us if we get down that far, and they'd have the high ground. We'd be sitting ducks.'

The Doctor was crouched, leaning on his umbrella, his eyes closed. Benny looked around. No one had seen them, but it was hardly the time or place to go into a trance.

The Doctor's eyes snapped open. 'Could you arrange a diversion?'

'Bernice Summerfield versus the ma.s.sed n.a.z.i hordes.

Oh yes, an even match there.' The Doctor looked disappointed, so she continued. 'I'll do my best to outwit them. After all, I'm old enough to be their mother.'

'Sign you're getting old that, when the n.a.z.is start to look young.'

Benny winced.

'I'll need to get down onto the beach. Even I can't slip past so many people, not when they're alert.' The Doctor was already sizing up the situation.

Benny nodded thoughtfully as she pushed her travel bag into the hedge. She pulled the holowig from her head and stuffed the filament into her pocket. Her hair dark again, she vaulted over the stile.

'h.e.l.lo, everyone. Have you seen my coat? I left it here yesterday.'

Some of the troops stepped forward. A couple of them had raised their machine pistols, but not many of them considered her a threat. All of them were looking at Benny, though, and she was right - they were all younger than her.

There didn't seem to be a commanding officer. She didn't recognize any of them. One of the troops had come up to her.

'This is restricted place,' he announced in a very thick accent.