He was pointing a gun at Ray.
He said, "All right. Where is it?"45.
Chapter Four.
Lady Silk Ace"s first thought as she stood there looking at Major Butcher pointing a gun was bitter self-reproach that she hadn"t managed to at least drink some of her beer. No doubt the opportunity for that was long past now.
"What"s she doing here?" said Butcher, nodding at Ace. Ray shrugged as well as he could with both his hands held high above his head.
"Beats me, man. She said the Doctor sent her."
"Well forget her and forget the Doctor." Major Butcher kept his gun aimed at Ray. "Where is it?" There was a pause as Ray seemed to be formulating an answer. "And don"t try asking me what I"m talking about," added Butcher in a dangerous voice. "You know what I"m talking about."
Ray shrugged his shoulders again and said, "Over there in that box."
"Over where in which box?"
"Can I put my hands down, man?" said Ray. Butcher gestured impatiently with the gun and Ray lowered his arms, went over to a box of records and took out the big square envelope he"d only just placed there.
"Open it," said Butcher. "Play it." Ray shrugged once again, then tore open the envelope and extracted a record in a cardboard sleeve. He carefully took the Duke Ellington record off the turntable and lovingly restored it to its sleeve.
"Get on with it," said Butcher.
Well at least I"m finally going to get to hear some music, thought Ace.
Ray took out the new record, which had a blank red label, and put it on the turntable. He switched the turntable on then lowered the tone arm and suddenly the room was full of music. Fast-moving boogie-woogie with an ethereal, insinuating female voice singing lush syllables above it. The voice was extraordinary, smooth and smoky, immediately catching and commanding the listener"s attention. But before Ace could begin to make out the words being sung, Butcher barked, "Turn it off!"
"Play it, turn it off," muttered Ray. "Make up your mind, man." But he took the record off the player and returned it to its sleeve. He looked at it uncertainly for a moment, then reluctantly offered it to Butcher. The Major gestured with his gun for Ray to set the record down on a chair. Ray did so and now Butcher gestured for him to step away. Only when he had done so 47did Butcher step forward and pick up the record, which he tucked under his free arm.
"You"re stealing his record?" said Ace. She was unable to contain herself any more. "You barged in here at gunpoint to steal his record?"
"I"m confiscating it," said Butcher.
"Why?"
"That woman you heard crooning on that record was Lady Silk. A j.a.panese propaganda singer."
"She"s American," said Ray.
"She"s a traitor seeking to subvert and undermine morale on the home front,"
said Butcher. "And it"s a criminal offence to be in possession of one of her recordings."
"But she"s got a great set of pipes, man."
"It"s illegal to play that record?" said Ace incredulously.
"To play it or own it," said Major Butcher.
"But why?"
"I told you. Lady Silk is a saboteur in the pay of the j.a.panese. A sinister seductive siren warbling to America through the long night of the war. Trying to lead this country off course."
"Sounds like the sort of tripe you put in one of your books, Major Butcher daddy-o." Butcher flashed Ray a look of hatred at this insult, but the gun in his hand remained steady.
"I"m taking this record away for security a.n.a.lysis. What action will be taken against you for attempting to obtain it, you"ll learn at a later date."
"Baby, I can hardly wait for that later date. I"ve also got an autographed photo of Lady Silk, you know."
Butcher grinned crookedly. "I know. But that"s not against the law. It"s just her records that are banned. You can look as much as you like. Just don"t let me catch you listening to her."
Ace considered asking if they could hear some Duke Ellington instead, but decided against it. However, she did attempt to surrept.i.tiously lift to her lips the beer bottle that had nestled cool and ignored for so long in her hands.
Butcher immediately pointed his gun at her. "Put that down and get out." Ace sighed, set down the beer bottle and left.
She had closed the door behind her and was halfway down the corridor when she heard loud jazz begin to blast from the apartment. Ace listened for a moment. It was the Duke Ellington after all. Ace grinned and wondered how Ray had talked Major Butcher into letting him play it.
Ace was on the way out of the building, down the wooden stairs underneath the balcony, when she saw a familiar figure bustling towards her. It was the 48Doctor, and he seemed to be in a hurry. He was halfway up the stairs, moving in a brisk athletic lope, when he looked up and saw Ace. "Ah," he said. "I was hoping to catch you here. How did your interview with Cosmic Ray go?"
"It was going just fine until Major Bulldog turned up."
"Butcher? Here? What did he want?"
"To confiscate a record by some j.a.panese-American singer called Lady Silk.
She"s a real looker and Ray says she"s got a great set of pipes."
"How baffling. Where"s Butcher now?"
"Still inside, interrogating Ray. But Ray"s giving as good as he gets, if the volume of that music is anything to go by." The sound of jazz blasted from Ray"s apartment, echoing through the hallway. Ace and the Doctor turned and started down the steps below the central balcony, back out into the daylight.
The Doctor had just reached the bottom step, moving slightly ahead of Ace, when there was a sudden sharp crack of sound.
"Get down!" shouted the Doctor. He threw himself on Ace and they both hit the ground a few yards from the steps, in the gra.s.s at the foot of an oak tree. Ace was winded but didn"t resist as the Doctor pushed her behind the tree. He sheltered there with her, waited for a moment, flashed her a look and then poked his head out. He stared at the balcony of the building. It was a sunlit, empty s.p.a.ce. The music from Ray"s apartment had stopped. The day was silent except for a rustling stir of breeze in the oak leaves above them.
Nothing moved in the quiet sunlight. "What is it?" said Ace finally.
"Gun shot. Somebody was trying to shoot us. From up there. The Doctor indicated the deserted balcony. Ace stared at it for a moment, then started brushing herself off. She had blades of gra.s.s all over her blouse.
"Well, they"re gone now," she said. There was a clatter of racing footsteps from inside the building and Major Butcher came running out, still clutching his gun. He paused halfway down the stairs and stared up at the balcony.
Then he looked at the tree where Ace and the Doctor were hiding.
"You two. Come out of there." He lifted his gun.
"No need for weaponry, Major. Really." The Doctor stepped out from behind the tree with Ace behind him. Butcher lowered his gun and squinted at them.
"What were you doing there?"
"Looking for an earring. Ace lost an earring. Didn"t you Ace?"
"Yes," said Ace, touching one of her earrings. "But we found it. Thanks."
Butcher stared at them in silent disgust. It was clear that he didn"t believe them, but he seemed disinclined to say so.
"May I ask why you are brandishing a gun?" said the Doctor.
"I thought I heard a shot," said Butcher. He holstered his pistol and went back into the building without a backward glance. Ace and the Doctor looked at each other.49.
"I don"t understand," said Ace.
"It"s all fairly clear," said the Doctor. "Somebody tried to take a shot at me.
Or you. Or both of us. Major Butcher heard it he must have good ears to have done so over the sound of Ray"s music, but then I imagine he"s heard gunshots before and recognises them. So he came dashing out, just too late to be of any use to anyone."
"No, I understand all that," said Ace. "What I don"t don"t understand is why he just left us here. If he"s so suspicious of us and if there"re records being smuggled in and gunshots going off, why isn"t he interrogating us?" understand is why he just left us here. If he"s so suspicious of us and if there"re records being smuggled in and gunshots going off, why isn"t he interrogating us?"
"Clearly he"s pursuing an investigation that began before we came on the scene and he knows we"re not connected with it."
"Are we not connected with it?"
"Not yet." The Doctor smiled. "Now can I buy you dinner? I know that being shot at gives you an appet.i.te."
Dinner consisted of steak, baked potatoes and a tomato salad served at the dining room in the Fuller Lodge. Ace was just sitting back to enjoy digesting it, with the Doctor sitting across from her, eating a banana and jotting notes on his napkin, when she looked up to see that someone had joined them.
It was Professor Apple. He was holding a bunch of red roses wrapped in paper and Ace felt a terrible sinking feeling. The perfectly cooked piece of rump steak suddenly became a lump of dead meat nestling in her stomach. Apple thrust the bunch of flowers at her, ignoring the Doctor completely. "Acacia. I just wanted to see that you"re all right."
"Why shouldn"t I be all right?"
"I mean working with him." Professor Apple nodded at the Doctor, taking account of him for the first time. "If you find you"re in any way uncomfortable or unhappy, or if he makes any demands on you you"re not entirely at ease with. . . I hope you"ll do me the honour of working with me. I"ve never seen anyone perform complex calculations with such. . . "
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Ace.
Her obvious impatience and irritation didn"t seem to give Apple pause. He simply changed tack. "Do you like the roses?" He jutted the bouquet at her again, letting go of it, so they fell onto the plate where her steak had rested a little earlier, their red petals nodding gently.
"Yes, the roses are beautiful," said Ace in a weary, rote, singsong voice.
"They"re for you."
"Thank you very much," said Ace in the same singsong voice. Professor Apple beamed at her for a long moment during which neither the Doctor nor Ace said anything to him. Specifically they didn"t invite him to sit and join them. At length Apple realised that the invitation was not forthcoming, and 50withdrew, still beaming at Ace. When he"d left the dining room Ace looked at the roses, then at the Doctor, who was smiling wryly.
"You were rather short with the poor fellow."
"He narked me off. The way he treated you as if you weren"t there."
"I notice you didn"t make him take the roses back, though."
"Nope," said Ace, studying the bouquet. "Just wait until the girls back at the barracks see these. I suppose I"d better put them in some water." Some water and a container an empty Coca Cola bottle fashioned from green gla.s.s were duly found and the WACs at the barracks were suitably impressed or envious, or both, though Ace made d.a.m.ned sure none of them found out that it was Professor Apple who was her benefactor, attributing the flowers to a mystery admirer. The only WAC who didn"t take any interest in the bouquet was the ginger-haired girl with a hawk nose, whom Ace suspected of being one of Butcher"s flunkies. Ace thought she spotted the girl watching her as the lights went out and she rolled over in her bunk bed.
The following day she dutifully took her fish oil tablet as soon as she awoke, which was just as well since the Doctor put her to work immediately after breakfast. They had been given their own cla.s.sroom in the schoolhouse and the Doctor had a blackboard full of his own equations, which generated a lot of numbers for Ace to apply in calculation. "Sorry about this," said the Doctor.
"But it"s our first day here and everybody"s going to be watching us."
"Especially Butcher."
"Especially Major Butcher. And since I am supposed to be a world-renowned physicist and you"re my walking computer, we should attempt to live up to our billing. Now can you solve this simultaneous equation for me?" Ace and the Doctor threw themselves into the work on the blackboard and it was lucky that they did. In the course of the next few hours they had a steady stream of visitors, including an amiable Oppenheimer, a sceptical Fuchs and a fum-ing Professor Apple, who peered at the blackboard for a long time, shot a venomous glance at the Doctor and then went out again.
During one of the intervals when they were safely alone, Ace said, "I didn"t think you liked interfering with history."
"I don"t."
"But you"re helping them to build the atomic bomb."
"Not really." The Doctor stared at the smudged blackboard, crowded with formulae chalked in his distinctive, eccentric handwriting. "All this is just a kind of smoke screen. I mean, it"s all very well as far as it goes, but I don"t actually add add anything to the project here. I"ll simply offer them solutions they were coming to anyway, just a little before they would have made the discoveries for themselves. And sometimes a little bit after." anything to the project here. I"ll simply offer them solutions they were coming to anyway, just a little before they would have made the discoveries for themselves. And sometimes a little bit after."
"So you won"t look too perfect," said Ace.51.
"Yes. For the same reason I will sometimes deliberately put mistakes in my equations."
"Not in any of the calculations I did for you, I hope," said Ace. "I have my reputation to think about."
They worked a long, arduous day, not finishing until well after the sun had set and the other cla.s.srooms were dark and empty. "That ought to do it," said the Doctor, clapping his hands to remove the chalk dust. "It"s always sensible to make a good impression on one"s first day at a new job." The darkened hallway of the schoolhouse was echoing and spooky as they walked out. The cool dark desert night was fragrant with the smell of woodsmoke and blossom, and the sky was studded with the precise, bright, infinitely intricate gleam of the stars. Ace"s stomach rumbled.
"Sorry to spoil a beautiful moment," she said.
The Doctor chuckled. "Not to worry. I knew you would be hungry after your mental excursions. The brain burns an astonishing number of calories. So I"ve arranged a late meal for us."
"But isn"t the dining room at the Lodge closed?"
"Certainly. So I contracted with the Oppenheimers" cook, Rosalita, to provide some of her famous chilli."
"Wicked. I loved that chilli."
"Yes, you did seem to enjoy it at the party. Now if you don"t mind a walk on this beautiful night we shall go to the Oppenheimers" and collect our supper.
I believe it is just a pleasant stroll away, down the road locally known as Bathtub Row."
"A stroll along Bathtub Row in the moonlight? You certainly know how to treat a girl." In fact, the curve of road leading to the Oppenheimers" house was quietly beautiful in the moonlight, handsome rows of houses with trees and lawns. "It"s lovely here. Why do they give it that stupid name?"
"Because the new buildings hastily erected for the project only provide showers. If one wants the luxury of lolling in a bathtub, one needs access to these fine dwellings along here."
When they reached the house they found the lights in the front room on and the curtains open, affording a view of Kitty Oppenheimer sitting on the sofa with her feet tucked under her, reading a magazine. She seemed so absorbed and content, like a cat curled up happily there, that Ace felt reluctant to disturb her. But in the event the Doctor didn"t knock at the front door.