Текст книги "Doctor Who- Beautiful Chaos"

Автор книги: Gary Russell

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She grinned widely.

Crossland looked at the Doctor, then at Wilf. ‘Thought you said the chappie was an expert, Mr Mott?’

Now it was Wilf’s turn to look like a rabbit caught in headlights, because he was out of his comfort zone. The best he could come up with was ‘He is.’

Crossland harrumphed.

‘Actually,’ the Doctor said, ‘I think you’ll find “the

chappie” is a bit of an expert, especially on your so-called Chaos Bodies.’

That got their attention.

The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘It’s not a star, you know.’

‘We know it isn’t,’ said Ariadne.

‘Just don’t know what it actually is,’ Crossland said.

‘I do.’

Everyone turned to look at him. ‘It’s lovely Ariadne that gave me the final piece of the puzzle, with that…

unique blouse she’s wearing.’

‘Go on,’ she said.

But the Doctor stopped momentarily, because he was looking at Henrietta Goodhart.

Netty was not taking part in the conversation, though no one had noticed. Instead she was staring straight ahead, like she had zoned out for a while.

Donna caught the Doctor’s gaze and nodded slightly, and the Doctor gave a sad smile to her. Then he drew the attention back to himself, giving Donna time to stand Netty up, briefly resting a hand on Wilf’s shoulder to stop him following. As they began to move away, the Doctor caught Donna’s eye and he mouthed a ‘thank you’. Then he resumed his explanation.

‘It’s not a star so much as a superheated ball of psionic energy which acts as a containment protective field around a malign intelligence. An intelligence that wants to dominate and expand and survive. Something it’s fully entitled to do in its own little corner of space where it normally can’t hurt anyone. But when it crawls out of its

little dimension and enters ours, when it drags itself halfway across the universe to this planet, at this time, then I get interested. Interested and intrigued. Well, I say intrigued, I mean angry. And a bit scared. You see that Galileo star map thing reminded me of when I first encountered it, back in the fifteenth century and foolishly brought a sliver of it here, to Earth. Italy in fact. Near Florence. Well, that region. Anyway, a few slivers have found their way here now and again ever since because it’s quite fascinated by Earth and this solar system.’

‘You. Are. Mad.’ Ariadne said quietly.

‘It was the “fifteenth century” bit, wasn’t it?’

Crossland was nodding. ‘That. And the rest.’

Wilf tapped Crossland’s arm. ‘You should listen to him, Mister Doctor Crossland CBE, Sir, cos the Doctor is usually right.’

‘Aww, thank you, Wilf,’ the Doctor beamed.

‘My pleasure, Doctor,’ he replied.

‘So, Doctor,’ said Crossland. ‘What do you call this fanciful ball of energy then?’

‘Oh, that’s simple,’ the Doctor said. ‘One word.

Mandragora.’

As the Doctor said ‘Mandragora’, the Chaos Body began pulsating out in space. The other lights nearby pulsated in rhythmic response. And moved closer. On a mission.

As the Doctor said ‘Mandragora’, seven people sat bolt upright in an SUV parked in a car park at Heathrow airport, as if they’d just been switched on: the newlywed DiCottas; three students, their professor and his assistant,

just arrived from Rome; and a Greek farmer, just in from Athens.

The Greek farmer was in the driver’s seat. He turned the key in the ignition and switched on the lights, and the SUV began to move forward. On a mission.

As the Doctor said the word ‘Mandragora’, Donna Noble was sitting in the outer bar at the Royal Planetary Society with Netty, holding her hand, when she saw Gianni, the Head of Hospitality, stop pouring a drink. He opened his mouth as if about to speak. Words were being formed but no sound came out, until he gasped and finally spoke. But he spoke so softly Donna wasn’t even sure he had said anything at all.

As the Doctor said the word ‘Mandragora’, Mr Murakami was sat in First Class on a JAL plane bound for Narita, drink in hand, eyes closed, listening to a compilation of 1960s tunes by Hibari Misora he’d downloaded onto his prototype M-TEK.

By the time he’d realised that beneath the music there were subliminal messages about MorganTech, it was too late. Something in his mind was screaming, yelling, realising exactly what the amazing ingredient was within the M-TEK, but he also knew he’d never be able to break free and warn the world.

‘A drink Murakami-San?’ The flight attendant offered up a choice of wine or spirits.

With a smile he opted for a glass of red wine. He tapped his earphones. ‘Marvellous singer, died early. I always say it’s a tragedy when so many people have to die with so much unfulfilled potential.’

With a nod, the attendant moved on to her next passenger.

Mr Murakami continued to listen to the music, his mind gradually being corrupted by all the subliminal messages being fed into it, and there was nothing he could do.

As the Doctor said the word ‘Mandragora’, Madam Delphi waveformed into excited life in the Penthouse Suite of the Oracle Hotel beside the Brentford Golden Mile.

‘Dara Morgan,’ she exclaimed. ‘He is aware of me!’

Dara Morgan thought the computer would have shaken with glee if it had been possible. ‘Who?’

‘The Doctor. After all these aeons, after all this distance, the stars were aligned exactly as I predicted.

Tomorrow’s horoscopes will be very different now.’

And on Madam Delphi’s website, read by people all over the world, Sunday’s predictions for every sign of the Zodiac rewrote themselves.

All that they now said was ‘Welcome Back! Your life will change during the next 48 hours in ways you could never imagine. Embrace this change, and prepare for the next, greatest, phase of your life as Mandragora swallows the skies, and smiles down upon you all.’

Within fifteen minutes, a man in Cape Town had put these words on a T-shirt. A woman in Paris was creating a Facebook group for Mandragora. And in Milwaukee three youths graffitied the word ‘Mandragora’ across the walls of their school.

The Doctor was getting exasperated with Cedric

Crossland, and that other barmy woman, Ariadne something, was doing Wilf’s head in, so he left them to it and took a wander back to the outer bar area.

He spotted Donna and Netty, and he knew immediately that Netty was gone, off into her own world. And Wilf’s heart pounded a bit harder because, although he’d seen this a number of times, every time he did so, he asked himself a question.

What would he do if this was the last time? What if she drifted away and never came back?

Donna smiled up at him as he approached, her arm wrapped tightly around this old woman she barely knew but had taken under her wing just because her daft old granddad liked her.

Wilf pulled up a stool and sat facing them both.

‘You’re very good, Donna,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to do this. She’s not family.’

‘Yeah, maybe not, but she’s important. To you. And I reckon, deep down, to Mum as well.’

‘Oh, you know your mum, always moaning, always complaining but underneath all that…’

‘More moans, more complaints?’ Donna roared with laughter. ‘God, I love her, Gramps, but there are times I could flatten her, too.’

‘Here, I’ll have none of that talk, Donna. She’s a good one, your mum. Speaks her mind, but that’s no bad thing.

And she loves you, too. She just doesn’t know how to cope with a lot of things since Geoff… you know…’

‘Died? You can say it.’

‘Since your dad passed, yeah.’

Donna lifted her arm from Netty and reached out to take her granddad’s hand in hers. ‘So, how’d you meet Netty then?’

Wilf smiled. ‘She wrote to me after I got a letter published in the Journal.’

‘Ah, the Journal. They still going?’

‘Sixty years next year. This is the International Year of Astronomy, it’s all big double-sized issues. I wrote ’em a letter about the Triple Conjunction! Jupiter and Neptune!

Netty saw it, disagreed with my thoughts about how difficult it’d be to see with a telescope like mine and BANG, we had a little war across about three issues. Then one day she phoned me up out of the blue, we had coffee in London to sort out our disagreements and a week later she’d used her influence to make me a member of the RPS. And here we are.’

Donna smiled at him. ‘So when did you find out about her Alzheimer’s?’

‘Oh, she told me on our second… meeting.’

‘You were gonna say “second date”, weren’t you? Oh you sly old fox!’ Donna stared at him. ‘I’m happy for you, Gramps. To find a friend, someone you like to be with.

And I reckon Mum is, too.’

‘Oh, I know. She’s just worried about her illness, and how much strain it puts on me. She and Netty were talking about nursing homes, but I won’t have none of that.’

He looked at Henrietta Goodhart. ‘She’s a great lady, Donna. I wish you could see her like I do.’

‘I did. At the house yesterday and this morning. She’s lovely, and I think you should hang on to her.’

And Wilf felt so, so sad. ‘But one day, I’m gonna lose her. It’s inevitable. I looked it up on the internet.’

‘Oh well, that must be true, then.’

‘Seriously. It’s not good. I don’t mean she’s going to die, but I will lose her because one day she’ll retreat to wherever it is she goes and won’t come back. We don’t have the medicines, the knowledge to cure it. It’s not fair.’

Then a thought struck him. ‘I bet out there, in the stars, I bet they could treat her. I bet there’s something…’

And Donna squeezed his hands. ‘It doesn’t work like that, Gramps. God knows, with everything I’ve seen, all the people I’ve met, there’ve been times I thought there must be solutions to illness, famine, all sorts of nasty things. I thought if I shouted at the Doctor loud enough he could find a way. But it doesn’t matter if you’re in Chiswick or Cestus Minor, there are no easy answers. We just have to deal with what fate’s given us.’

‘It’s not fair,’ he repeated.

‘No. No, it’s not. And I’m so, so sorry for you. Because I love you, and I really like Netty and if I could find a way to make everything easy for you both, I really, really would. And you know what, the Doctor doesn’t know either of you that well, but I reckon he’d try ten times harder than me. And it probably still wouldn’t make a difference, so there’s no point beating yourself up over something you have no control over.’

Wilf looked at Donna, and wondered what had happened to that silly, flighty girl he’d loved but worried about all those years. Now she was a fine, brave, brilliant young woman. And he loved her even more.

And then there was Netty.

He eased his hand away from Donna’s and took both of Netty’s in his. ‘Hey you,’ he said quietly. ‘Henrietta Goodhart, I think it’s time for a singsong, like we used to, back in the old days?’

Donna frowned in confusion, but he just winked at her.

‘I know what I’m doing.’

Softly he began to hum a tune. An old gospel hymn.

‘When the stars begin to fall,’ he began to sing quietly, ‘Oh Lord! What a morning. Oh Lord! What a morning…’

He glanced at Donna. ‘She told me that her husband used to sing this with her, during the war.

‘I thought she never married?’

Wilf smiled tightly. ‘Never let anyone know I told you this, sweetheart. She was married. For three days. And he was killed in Singapore, when the bombing started. She told me that they’d sung this at her wedding, on the way in a big Silver Rolls. She had a photo of it and showed me, it was gorgeous. And then, when they tried to flee Singapore, he died holding her hand and she sung it to him as he lay dying in her lap.’ He looked back at Netty.

‘Never tell anyone I told you that, least of all her. Promise.

She really loved him so much and swore she’d never marry again.’

‘Course I promise, Gramps. Course I do.’

He started again. ‘Oh sinner, what will you do, when the stars begin to fall… oh Lord, what a morning…’

Netty’s eyes seemed to focus, and she took a deep breath, as if waking up.

‘I went, didn’t I? Oh no, I’ve not been wandering out in

the streets in nothing but my underwear?’ She looked at Donna and winked. ‘Again!’

Wilf smiled at her, a tear almost trying to escape his eye, so he blinked it away before either of them could see it. ‘I think we need to get back to the party, rescue the Doctor, yeah?’

Netty stood up and let Wilf lead the way. She hung back a little and leaned on Donna. ‘I get more tired each time,’ she said. ‘Oh, and thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘His name was Richard Philip Goodhart. And your grandfather is the only person I’ve ever met who comes close.’

By the time they’d made their way back to the main hall, the dinner was over.

Wilf and the Doctor were now propping up the far wall, and Wilf was apologising because Ariadne Holt and Cedric Crossland had refused to take the Doctor seriously.

‘I’m embarrassed to know them.’

The Doctor looked at Wilf in sadness. ‘Don’t be. These are good people. Some of them are a bit odd, but at heart they’re just marvellously normal. Why should they believe me?’

‘Well, we have had spaceships and Sontarans and stuff over the last few years.’

‘There’s no accounting for mankind’s ability to rationalise things, Wilf. What one group of people will be scared by, another group see no danger from because it’s within their comfort zone. These people are marvellous pioneers, loving the stars, the constellations and just

watching and noting and cataloguing the heavens. Like you! None of that should ever stop, it’s too important, even if things are unlikely to be recognised for a couple of centuries. Nobody took Galileo or Copernicus or Organon seriously in their own times.’

‘You take their rudeness very well, Doctor.’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘It’s not personal. People like Doctor Crossland just don’t want to contemplate things that fall outside their sphere of reference. At worst itsfoolhardy, at best easily overlooked.’ Then he looked at the glass of lemonade in his hand. ‘Usually.’

‘But this Mandragora stuff, that’s not usual, is it?’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘It’s a malevolent entity, Wilf. Last time it was here in force, a lot of people died.

But it was trying to stop the Italian Renaissance, to stop science reaching the state it’s at now. I can’t see what it hopes to achieve today. Go back forty years and stop the transistor, or the microchip and yes, you’d spoil the next generation of human progress. But here? Nothing particularly special happens this year, this decade even, that can really affect Earth’s future that much. You lot just plod on for a century or so. Getting out to Mars. A couple of major space flights—’

‘Mars? We get to Mars? Do we find Martians?’

‘Spoilers,’ the Doctor winked. ‘My lips are sealed.’ He swigged his lemonade. ‘So I’m not sure whether to leave the Mandragora Helix alone up there and assume that it’s just keeping an eye on things, or be prepared for a big battle.’

‘Perhaps it’s got something to do with those Carnes

boys, Doctor. You said you thought they had aliens in the family.’

‘Oh yes! And how did Joe Carnes know my name?’

The Doctor sighed. ‘Oh Wilf, Wilf, Wilf! You just ruined a perfectly pleasant evening.’

‘I did? How? And, um, sorry.’

‘Because you just spotted a chink, a tiny, tiny flaw in my logic. Mandragora is linked, in a bizarre way, to astrology, not just astronomy.’

‘Astrology’s nonsense.’

‘Well, most of it’s just made up by newspapers. But it dates back to the Dark Times, so there’s probably something in it. Go back to the birth of the universe and you’ll see every society, every civilisation has some form of zodiac, a belief in the power of ancient lights linked to some kind of belief system based around the movement of planets and stars and constellational shift. Astrologers on the planet Hynass swear blind that there’s no such thing as coincidence and have absolute faith in the knowledge that every event since the Big Bang has been divined, is a matter of pre-established fate that no one can ever break out of. Now you might think it’s nonsense and I might think it’s nonsense, but Mandragora thrives on that belief, that unproven system, and uses it. Cause and effect.’

Wilf frowned. ‘But it’s still nonsense.’

‘Oh yes! Yeah, course it is. Nonsense! Well, probably.

Doesn’t stop Mandragora being able to tap into those energies though.’

Wilf shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, Doctor.’

Donna walked over. ‘Granddad, I think Netty could do

with some support against that mad old witch’s opinions on a woman’s place in modern society.’

Wilf nodded. ‘Cheers, Doctor. I hope you’re wrong by the way.’ And he wandered off.

‘What was that all about then, sunshine? You upsetting my gramps?’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘No, Donna, not at all. He’s got me thinking about coincidence and causality.’ He glanced over at Netty. ‘How is she?’

‘Not sure. She just drifted off for a while but then she just seemed to wake up, all smiles and dragged me back here.’

‘It happens, I’m afraid,’ he said, still observing her as she slipped an arm around Wilf’s waist. ‘And don’t forget, she’s used to it herself.’

Donna tapped his hand. ‘And there’s something else. In the bar. That good-looking bloke who showed us in earlier?’

‘Gianni?’

‘Yeah, him. He was going on about someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Dunno, I wasn’t sure he was even speaking at first but it seemed to be something about a man licking a mad dolphin.’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Could be anything. Probably had too much to drink himself.’

‘Or working with these people has sent him nutty,’

Donna grinned. ‘Oh well. Not sure why you’d lick a mad dolphin, though.’

The Doctor laughed. ‘Nor me. We should think of

heading off soon, though.’

‘Why?’

‘Something to do with a very old and dangerous alien entity suspended not far above your planet that is unlikely to be there sightseeing.’

‘How dangerous?’

‘Well, it’ll be waiting for something like a lunar eclipse which, looking at the moon tonight, doesn’t seem especially imminent.’

‘There’s always the Triple Conjunction.’

‘The what?’

‘Gramps told me about it, it’s why they’re all so excited by his discovery of that new star. This is the International Year of Astronomy, and they’re all waiting to see the first triple conjunction between Jupiter and Neptune.’

Donna was quite proud that she’d retained all that information, but the Doctor was legging it across the room to Doctor Crossland. ‘The Triple Conjunction,’ he yelled.

‘When is it?’

‘Sorry?’

‘This year, yes? But when this year?’

Crossland sighed. ‘I thought you were supposed to be clever?’

‘I am. But, like all clever people, I can only learn things when people give me straight answers to straight questions and not sarcasm.’

Doctor Crossland looked triumphant. He had outsmarted the Doctor. ‘Well, if you knew as much about astronomy as you say, you’d know it’s ongoing. It started

a while back.’

‘When the Chaos Body was first sighted?’

‘I suppose so, yes.’

‘And when does it hit its peak?’

‘It’s why we’re having this dinner, Doctor. The main event occurs on Monday, about three o’clock in the afternoon, local time.’

‘You appear to be looking very smug, Doctor Crossland,’ the Doctor said, ‘for a man who may well be dead in forty-eight hours. Give or take five or six hours.’

Doctor Crossland frowned. ‘Is that a threat?’

‘Yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘Not from me, from me it’s an assurance. The threat is from Mandragora. From your Chaos Body. It’s here to kill you all.’

He hurried over to Wilf, Netty and Ariadne Holt. ‘Sorry to break up the party, Wilf, but I have to go. Can you get Netty home OK, Donna?’

‘Oh, Doctor, you go, don’t worry about us. I have a cab booked to take me home at eleven anyway,’ Netty said.

She touched Wilf’s arm. ‘And don’t even try to argue with me, Wilfred Mott. This is your night, so I didn’t want you feeling all responsible for me tonight.’

Wilf looked from her to the Doctor.

‘Wilf can’t leave,’ said Ariadne Holt. ‘We haven’t done the presentation yet.’

‘It’s only us that’s going,’ said Donna. ‘Granddad will stay.’

‘Like hell I will,’ said Wilf. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘No one’s coming with me,’ the Doctor said, but no one was listening to him.

Donna pulled him closer. ‘Gramps, Netty has already had one… spell this evening. You have to stay with her.

Make sure she gets home. Go with her in the cab, then keep the cab and get home, yeah?’ She reached into her handbag and took out three tenners. ‘Dunno if it’s enough, but it should help.’

Wilf refused the money. ‘I can pay my own way, thank you, sweetheart.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you can,’ Donna said. ‘But take it anyway, so I don’t have it on my conscience that you might’ve got stranded somewhere and have to drag Mum out of bed to come and pick you up, all right?’

Wilf looked at his granddaughter, then at the Doctor, who pretended to find something interesting on the ceiling. He took the cash. ‘Call me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got my mobile.’

‘I know you have. And it’ll be switched off or have a flat battery. Same as always. We’ll be fine, I’ll see you in the morning.’ She kissed him, then Netty and grabbed the Doctor’s hand. ‘Come on you, time we were gone.’

The Doctor called goodbye to Netty, Wilf and Ariadne Holt as Donna dragged him through the door and back into the entranceway, past the doorman and out into the cold night air. ‘I was going by myself,’ he protested, but Donna had already waved down a cab (well, stood in the middle of South Lambeth Road and whistled down one that had made the right choice between stopping, ignoring her or running her over).

Donna clambered in, hauling the Doctor in afterwards.

‘Where to?’ asked the cabbie. ‘I’m off duty soon, so

better not be far.’

‘Chiswick High Road,’ the Doctor said to him, adding to Donna, ‘I need the TARDIS.’

The driver pulled out, drove under the railway bridge and headed back towards Nine Elms and West London.

The first report came in at 23.04. It was from the Clemenstry Observatory in Western Australia. It reported that the new star, the one that had appeared in the heavens a week or so back, seemed to be moving in conjunction with another star, M84628•7.

Which was a bit unusual, Professor Melville declared, jabbing at his computer screen with a ballpoint pen. He was in his office at the Copernicus Array in Essex, but probably wanted to be in the radio telescope control room itself. He usually did.

‘That’s the problem with these new stars, these Chaos Bodies,’ he said to his young ‘assistant’, Miss Oladini.

‘They’re chaotic and make no sense, scientifically speaking. Don’t you agree?’

‘On the nose, Professor,’ she said, not having a clue what he was talking about. She was only here on a short-term contract from the Lovelace Agency in Brentwood, finding temporary work placements to learn new skills.

‘New skills’ – she was 25 and already needed ‘new skills’.

Somewhat embarrassingly, she wasn’t remotely interested in astronomy but didn’t have the heart to tell Melville that.

Instead, she kept him fed and watered with chocolate bars and tea and listened to him talk about his cat and his mother. (He lived with one and was talking about having the other put to sleep as it had bad kidneys, but Miss

Oladini still wasn’t entirely sure which way round it was.

She had a sneaking suspicion, however, the cat was the healthy one.)

Professor Melville was a sweet old man. Emphasis on the ‘sweet’. And the ‘old’. He said he’d been a pop star back in the Sixties, but she wasn’t sure she believed him.

Miss Oladini certainly liked him, though she rather suspected he was only employed at the Copernicus Array (cos surely he was way beyond retirement age) out of sympathy. Probably why he took the night shifts, keep him out of trouble.

The Copernicus Array itself was a radio telescope built in the gardens of an old Georgian mansion house that had been converted into the Array’s offices, meeting rooms and so on. A shame, Miss Oladini thought. It was a lovely old house – she often liked visiting old houses and although a lot of care had been taken to preserve the original fixtures and fittings, this place seemed sterile and lacking in natural character. She often wondered who had lived here hundreds of years back, what had become of them all and how they’d feel about their drawing rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and ballrooms being converted into rooms full of dull scientists and administrators.

At 23.09, the report had come in from the Griffin Observatory in Maryland. It too mentioned the Chaos Body moving into alignment with another star. But a different one to Clemenstry’s M84628•7. This was M97658•3. Which was patently absurd.

‘Have they all been drinking?’ Melville wondered.

That seemed like quite a good idea to Miss Oladini,

though she only really wanted to get home to her bed. She wasn’t keen on cycling in the dark and, at this time of night, there were lots of people on the roads who might be a bit worse for wear.

At 23.17, the report came in from the Tycho Project, near Beaconsfield. The Chaos Body was edging towards M29034•1.

Of course, this wasn’t all simultaneous – after all, it wasn’t dark in California or Perth right now, it was just that Melville was doing a night shift and had only just turned his computer on.

‘All we need now, Miss Oladini, is Minsk to offer us something daft and—’

And sure enough, at 23.19, the Colossus in Minsk fed through details of how the Chaos Body was in alignment with M23116•3.

Now Melville was alert and curious. Miss Oladini, too, despite her lack of interest in astronomy, because she’d been a mathematics student (hence her ending up here) and she calculated the odds of one Chaos Body suddenly forming a new constellation with four pre-existing stars all on the same night to be… well, bigger odds than there were numerical spaces on her calculator.

Melville patched through the latest photos onto the big screen that dominated one wall of his office. It was indeed a big screen, and state-of-the-art technology that other observatories and radio telescopes around the UK would have donated a lot of right arms for. All Melville had to do was trace an invisible line from his laptop screen to the big screen on the wall and images and words flowed from

one to the other like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Melville was proud of the software, but hadn’t a clue how it worked. He just knew it did and it meant he could move images around on the wall-sized screen without leaving his chair. Which he was doing now.

First he centred his own photo of the Chaos Star. Then he overlayed Clemenstry’s. Then Griffin’s, Tycho’s and finally Colossus’s.

‘Professor…?’

‘I know.’

‘But that’s…’

‘I know.’

‘I mean, how…’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘I know.’

Melville grabbed a phone on his desk. It was red. As he started punching in numbers, he glanced up at Miss Oladini. ‘Have you signed the OSA, Miss Oladini?’

She frowned. ‘Do what?’

‘The Official Secrets Act. Did they make you sign it when you got your work placement forms for this place at the agency?’

Miss Oladini thought for a moment. Melville was scaring her with the question. Normally, he was a nice old guy, bit dotty, bit rambling, smoked his pipe too often. But now he was suddenly alert and officious, stern and all sense of ‘eccentric’ gone.

And Miss Oladini realised that the silly, fussy, dotty old man was an act. Underneath it all, Professor Melville was

sharp as a whistle. Maybe he really had been a pop singer.

‘Well?’

She nodded. She had signed something that had the word ‘official’ in it, she remembered that. Frankly she hadn’t taken much notice of it when Mrs Lovelace at the agency had got her to sign. All the temps signed bits of paper for health and safety, insurance waivers that sort of thing, when they got their placements. One extra hadn’t meant much at the time.

Now it seemed big and scary.

‘Why?’

‘Because without your signature on the bottom of that form, what I’m about to do and what you’re about to hear would have us both in jail for the rest of our lives if you haven’t.’

And Miss Oladini thought hard. Her brain was good with numbers. ‘Form KD62344,’ she said suddenly. ‘I signed it twice and initialled a box, bottom left.’

Melville winked. ‘Thank you.’ He punched a final number on the phone. ‘Aubrey Fairchild, please. This is the Copernicus Array, Code 18. My name is Melville.’

Miss Oladini looked back at the assembled collage of images. The Chaos Body plus the other stars on display meant nothing individually. But now that Melville had put them together, they formed a picture. And not just some abstract nonsense that people saw as a couple of fish, or a plough or a rollercoaster.

This was very clearly, distinctly and sharply a face. A face with a mouth twisted into a laugh.

Miss Oladini shivered because that laugh wasn’t a

happy laugh. It was pure malevolence.

‘Prime Minister? Melville, Administrative Professor at the Copernicus Array. I’m sending you a Code 18 image.’

There was a pause. ‘Yes, sir. No, sir, the images have only been combined here, it’s still a UK threat but give it a few hours…’

Professor Melville looked across at Miss Oladini. ‘No, sir, just myself and my assistant. We’ll stay put until we hear from your people, Prime Minister. No, absolutely, total lockdown, no communications in or out of the Copernicus Array under any circumstances. Goodnight, sir.’

Professor Melville replaced the phone.

‘That was really the Prime Minister?’ Miss Oladini asked.

Melville nodded. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but I think we’re in for a long night here. Could you check where we are regarding tea and milk?’

Miss Oladini started to leave the room, then turned back to see Melville take a mobile phone from his jacket pocket. She hadn’t even known he had a mobile phone.

‘Professor? Didn’t you just promise Mr Fairchild that we’d have no communications?’

He smiled. ‘That’s why I need you to check on the tea.

If you are not in the room, you can’t be held responsible when I break that promise, commit treason and quite probably professional suicide. Now, for your sake, off you go.’

Confused, Miss Oladini left the office. But she waited just outside the door, to see if she could hear who he was

calling.

She heard the tell-tale electronic beeps of the keypad then, after what must have been quite a few rings, he spoke. ‘Good evening, my name is Professor Melville.