第 6 页

In my next and final report, I will try to supply you with exact names, dates and faces. I'm off now to track them down.

Au revoir.

A friend

---

Liver-spotted hands yanked the paper from the dilapidated Smith-Corona typewriter. Arthritic fingers slowly creased it and slid it into a plain OHMS manila envelope.

The old man strained to rise from his chair, cursing quietly as the muscles in his back moved a fraction later than all the others. He paused for a second, letting his body adjust to the new posture.

'Now,' he murmured. 'Who? And where? And, for that matter, why?'

He pulled the green curtain away from the window and daylight illuminated the small, sparsely furnished office. He flicked off the green-shaded brass desk lamp and nodded briefly at the portrait of the Queen that stared down from a fake wood-panelled wall opposite.

The telephone rang, and for a second he looked around, confused, trying to work out where the annoying sound originated. Of course, he recalled, it was under the cushion he'd thrown over it last time it rang. 'Extension sixty-four. Yes?' he snapped in a tired voice. 'I'm busy.'

'Too busy for an old friend?'

He paled, grateful that his caller couldn't see his face.

'Hello. What can I do for you?'

'I understand that you have a meeting tonight. I'd like you to miss it. I'd like you to travel down to the South Coast.' As always, the younger man's lisp caused the 's' sounds to become soft 'th'es.

---

The old man shivered. It was an order, not a request. As always. 'All right. Where?' Directions (or rather, instructions) followed and, after he had received a curt farewell, the line went dead.

The liver-spotted hands rolled another sheet of paper into the Smith-Corona, in anticipation of another missive tomorrow.

Elsewhere in the building, people carried on with their jobs, ignorant of exactly what was going on in Room 64. Outside, Big Ben chimed three o'clock and the siren of a police patrol boat echoed up the Thames towards Vauxhall.

The receptionist sat behind her chrome and glass desk. Her immaculately creased white outfit, and the tiny white cap on her head announced her role as a nurse as well as telephonist, book-keeper and information desk attendant. She nibbled at the top of her pen as she stared across the hallway and through the polarized glass doors opposite. Outside, two people waited and watched as a car drove up. She strained hard to listen for any traces of conversation, but gave up. It did not really concern her anyway, and she had her own work to do.

'Good morning Sir Marmaduke. Always a pleasure to see you.' A short dark-haired girl, also in a crisp white uniform, almost curtsied as the rotund figure heaved himself out of his chauffeur-driven car. Nodding breathlessly in reply, Sir Marmaduke Harrington-Smythe CBE, psychologist and analyst, walked slowly up the five steps of the five-storey white building, known to the few aware of its existence as the Glasshouse.

He knew that someone would have watered the flowers in honour of his arrival, as well as those crawling plants that seeped over the tops of the balconies above the main doors. The staff would have polished the windows, which were white and barred in keeping with the thirties architecture, with its squat design and rounded corners.

He stopped at the top of the steps for a moment to stare up at the rich blue panoply of the afternoon sky, which contrasted sharply against the stark white of the building as it caught and reflected the sunlight.

The young dark-haired girl glanced at her companion, an equally dark-haired young man, his hair trimmed to the same page-boy style as hers. He wore an equally pristine white outfit, but with trousers instead of a knee-length skirt. That was the only real difference between them. Well, thought Sir Marmaduke, that and the fact that he'd never heard the boy speak a word, nor had ever met anyone who had heard him speak. In unison the girl and boy leant back, pushing open the double glass doors for him to enter the Glasshouse.

The receptionist looked up as Sir Marmaduke entered, and smiled a greeting at him, which was returned. She turned to watch the odd couple as they followed Sir Marmaduke down a long sterile white corridor. They walked a few paces behind him, perfectly in step, every gesture performed in complete unison. Neither was ever an inch or a second out of place.

The Irish Twins they were called; although the receptionist was aware that no one in the building really knew if they were twins, Irish or otherwise. She lost sight of them as Sir Marmaduke led the way down into the patient area. Underground.

---

Doctor Peter Morley tried to stop his hand shaking as he placed the plastic cup under the cold tap. He desperately wanted to relax, to take a deep breath and sigh loudly. Anything was better than letting his nerves overcome him.

He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, seeing his thinning hair tinged with grey streaks that had not been there before his arrival. Dark rings surrounded his already sunken eyes. At school they had nicknamed him 'The Skull', rather unfairly, he had always thought. His hair had been receding and his features pinched since he was about ten but 'The Skull' had been going a bit far. Now, as he regarded a face that had been cooped up in this place for eight long months, he began to think it wasn't so much wrong as premature. He noticed a slight tic in his left eye - a sure sign of tiredness.

'I need sleep, you know,' he said to the security camera just above the cubicle door. 'Some privacy wouldn't go amiss, either. I might want to pee.'

His only reply was the continuous slow blink of the tiny red light atop the camera, reminding him that every conversation and action was being monitored and recorded all day, every day. Eight months he'd been here at the Glasshouse, stuck in the basement and hidden away from the world, and still he felt nervous about peeing in front of the camera. He wouldn't mind, but the urinal was side-on to the door so the camera saw... well, everything.

'And I thought using the gents in the King's Head was embarrassing.' He washed his hands, refilled his plastic cup and swigged down some deliciously cold water. Best thing about the place; the food and drink were always first class.

He threw the cup into a blue disposal sack, knowing it would be incinerated at the end of the hour, regardless of whether it contained one cup or fifty documents marked 'Top Secret'. He turned, sighed, ran a hand through his few strands of hair, pushed the door open and stepped back into the bustle of the basement.

He was standing in the general work area, his three assistants milling around. They appeared to be oblivious, as ever, to his mood and even his presence, but Morley suspected that they just chose to ignore him. Or was he just letting his paranoia get to him? And when had he become so paranoid, anyway?

Determined to stop being so morbid, Morley watched his team at work. Jim Griffin, the analyst, was running some experiments on a massive array of computers, speaking every result into a tape-recorder as it appeared on the small screen in front of him, and occasionally scratching at his nose with a biro. His dark hair spiked as if five thousand volts had been run through him. On a bench on the other side of the room, Dick Atkinson, the chemist of the team, was heating something porridge-like in a microwave and inserting metal rods into it, reflecting the microwaves back into something that might once have been a leg of lamb.

Near the double doors was Cathryn Wildeman, the short, dark-haired American zoologist, fiddling with an electron microscope and looking hard at something Morley couldn't begin to imagine.

All three of them stopped their work suddenly and stared at the doors as the reason for Morley's earlier nerves could be heard thundering at the Irish Twins as it approached:

'Absolutely not, Ciara. We don't have time for such trivialities. I want her processed and passed to D Wing ASAP, is that understood?'

'Of course, Sir Marmaduke,' came the predictable response.

Morley allowed a quick smile to cross his face - anything that meant the gruesome twosome got a dressing down had to be good news. Sir Marmaduke's unwelcome face quickly dispelled any pleasure from his mind as the obese figure pushed the doors open and strode into the laboratory as if he owned the place.

Which he did, Morley reminded himself.

'Peter!' Sir Marmaduke bellowed. 'Peter, a word. Now!' He pointed towards Morley's tiny office at the far end of the lab. Accurately sensing the various moods of the newcomers, Morley's three staff quickly turned back to their work as if no interruption had taken place, while Morley himself meekly followed Sir Marmaduke to the indicated office. He swallowed hard, trying to force the knot of anxiety out of his throat. Whatever had brought Sir Marmaduke down here had put him in a foul mood, and Morley seemed to be the cause of it. Morley didn't even register the annoyance of having the Irish Twins follow - someone else in the room, even them, had to be of some benefit. A glance at them, and their matching ear-to-ear grins, failed to reassure him.

Sir Marmaduke pushed the door open and pulled on the light cord, showering the little room with flickering fluorescent light for a few seconds before the tube settled and bathed them in a harsh unnatural white glow. It gave the pristine white of the Irish Twins and their uniforms a faint electric lilac look.

'Sir Marmaduke, how are you?'

Sir Marmaduke sat at Morley's desk and stared at a white cup half-filled with cold Bovril. 'Waste, Peter, I cannot condone waste.' He gingerly picked up the cup, nodding at the Irish Twins. They both moved immediately, but in different directions for once. The female took the cup and dropped it into a blue disposal bag hanging on the side of a filing cabinet. The male turned to the security camera over the door and produced a slim black box from a pocket. He aimed the control at the camera and pressed a button. The red light blinked off.

'I didn't know you could do that.' Morley stared at the Irish Twins.

'Well, of course you didn't. You're not that important, y'know.'

Sir Marmaduke clearly had no qualms about offending Morley, and the doctor was so used to his rudeness that he barely noticed it any more. 'You work here on a need-to-know basis, Peter, and that's how it's going to stay. Rest assured that Ciara and Cellian here are far more my eyes and ears than any number of governmental security cameras.' He waved Morley to a small, uncomfortable seat in the corner of the room. It was, the doctor found himself musing, the one where he normally threw his newspapers - the ones sent via the internal mail. Heaven forbid that he might venture outside and buy his own. Oh no, totally forbidden. Someone might see him and that would never do. Imagine the reaction -

His reverie was broken by the Irish Twins leaving the office. A thought flashed through Morley's mind as he watched Ciara. She was beautiful. Her walk, her poise, her face and her figure were all perfect. What he would give... No, forget that. Mind you, he had to acknowledge that the male twin was just as handsome, with his square jaw, sparkling blue eyes, and jet black hair in a fashionable cut. Cellian had one of those figures that Morley was jealous of - slim but sculptured. A clothes designer's idea of heaven. Probably.

The twins pulled the blinds down in unison, covering the glass partitions on either side of the door as they left the room. Morley knew from experience that they would be waiting just outside, like faithful lap-dogs for their master.

'Got a new one for you. A policewoman from down south. Look at this.' Sir Marmaduke produced an envelope from under his jacket. Morley ripped it open, then stopped before he got any further. It had a UNIT seal on it.

'Er, Sir Marmaduke, I'm not sure I'm cleared for this level of documentation.' Sir Marmaduke shrugged. 'So? I gave it to you, ergo you're cleared for it. Now read it.'

Morley flicked through the file, seeing various UNIT memorandums signed by a Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, plus a couple 'dictated, but not read' by someone who was referred to only as 'the Doctor'.

'UNIT's Scientific Advisor. Your equivalent.' Sir Marmaduke indicated that he should carry on.

Morley started to flick through some photographs, each with a name stapled to it. BAKER, (Major) NORMAN (dscd RD1); LAWRENCE, (Doctor) CHARLES (dscd RDI); SQUIRE, (Mrs) DORIS (G/H RS1); MASTERS, (Rt Hon) EDWARD (dscd RD1); DAWSON, (Miss) PHYLLIS (G/H RS1)... He put the file back on the table. 'Yes, I recognize the two women. The Dawson woman was a research assistant to old Scotty. I mean John Quinn, at Wenley Moor Atomic Centre. And Mrs Squire was a farmer's wife. He died, I think.'

'And where was Mrs Squire from?'

'Derbyshire, if I remember rightly.'

Sir Marmaduke nodded. 'And the connection is?'

Morley thought. 'Wenley Moor. It's in Derbyshire. Quite close in fact. Charles Lawrence was the director?'

Sir Marmaduke tapped the file. 'And Baker was his security officer, retired from the regular army after a little... mishap in Northern Ireland at the back end of the last decade. The other parliamentary chappie was assigned to "kill or cure" the place. Got killed himself, from a rather nasty plague that was eventually cured by this mysterious Doctor person at UNIT.

'Now, there's one other interesting thing about our two ladies from Derbyshire. What d'you know of their symptoms?'

Morley shook his head slowly. 'I'm very sorry, Sir Marmaduke, but I was down here. I don't know that I ever saw them more than two or three times. I didn't even realize they were connected.'

'No, I suppose not, Just a couple of civvies caught up in something top-secret and needing the special ministrations of this place, eh?' Sir Marmaduke tapped his nose. 'But things do change, Peter. We now have a third connection. Look at this doctor's report; some northern chap called Meredith. He was the local GP up there. Both Squire and Dawson had to be restrained, claiming they'd seen monsters.'

Morley shrugged. 'Nothing unusual in that. After all, the Glasshouse was set up for people like that. And UNIT, for one, keeps us in customers.'