Here Be Monsters

'I've yet to hear any.' She couldn't afford to weaken. 'Come to the point.'

'I'm still there, I haven't left it. I - ' He stopped suddenly, and shook his head, though more at himself than at her, Elizabeth thought. And, in spite of his redoubled promise, that suggested that he still wasn't talking business. 'Look, Elizabeth, I obviously haven't got a lot of time, so I can't explain in any detail how I know what I know, so what I think may not seem very convincing to you. But I want you to listen - and to bear with me, please.

Please?'

'For about thirty seconds.' She didn't look at her watch. 'You heard what Mrs Harlin said?'

'Oh - the hell with her!' He gestured. 'And bugger Oliver - Fatso! Blame me, if you like.'

'It's easy for you to say that. You're old establishment. I'm hardly fledged.'

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He stared at her. 'Not so easy, actually. I'm on a bloody knife-edge with our Deputy-Director. But… not that I care. Just trust me this once, enough to listen to me, Elizabeth -

Miss Loftus, if you like.' The stare became fixed. 'In fact, if you listen to me now, you can be Miss Loftus for ever after. And that's another promise - until the Sun stands still, and the Moon ceases to rise. Okay?'

The offer took her aback. He was offering her… he was offering her too much, in terms of what he had to offer. Or perhaps he was offering enough to frighten her, on those terms.

She had to devalue it, to make a jest of it. 'Okay, Paul. But only if you'll tell me what

"tripod masts" means, between you and James - ?'

Again that clouded, defenseless look. Then it vanished. 'That's easy - James was just warning me to lay off. To run for my life, before Mrs Harlin sank me without a trace.' He almost smiled. ' Tripod masts - you ought to have got that one, Miss Loftus, with all those naval histories of your father's that you copy-typed for him.'

The reminder of past drudgery hardened her heart finally: he knew altogether too much about that past of hers, and by recalling it he merely encouraged her to hold him to his latest promise. 'I know what tripod masts are, Dr Mitchell.'

He took the point: she could see him reading the full meaning of the smallest print of the agreement he had proposed. 'Not what they are, but what they meant.' The fixed emotionless stare was back. 'Perhaps not inappropriately on this occasion, more than Commander Cable meant himself.'

There was no percentage in trying to read his riddles. 'And what did they mean?'

'Death, Miss Loftus, just death.' He let the word sink in. The Battle of the Falklands - not the recent unpleasantness, but the original one in 1914. James and I both read it up when he got back from there, just for curiosity. Before he closed in on Port Stanley in 1914, von Spec sent in a light cruiser to have a look. And the poor devil in the crow's nest spotted tripod masts in the harbour. And he knew in that second that he was a dead man, because they meant battle-cruisers - too big to fight, and too fast to out-run - I'm sure you remember that, Miss Loftus.'

Elizabeth did remember that, from Father's cold comparison of the customs of naval warfare in the good old days of wooden ships, when a man could surrender to superior force without losing his honour, and the rules of the supposedly more civilized twentieth century, in which no quarter was asked or granted - 'the logical requirement of democratic warfare, which was of course conducted not for vulgar profit, but for noble causes.'

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'I see.' And on a quite juvenile level she could see that James had warned Paul not to tangle with Mrs Harlin, who certainly had tripod masts. But, on a more serious level, Paul had seen the masts, yet had stayed to fight. 'So what is it that you have to tell me, that's so important it can't wait?'

'Okay.' While she had been thinking, so had he been. 'I think we have all the ingredients of a panic. And, as we don't have them very often here, they always scare the pants off me.'

'What sort of panic?' The why could come later.

'I don't know, exactly. But all the signs are there.'

Better to let him have his way. She must be late already, but she could handle the Deputy-Director, at a pinch. 'What signs?'

'We've all been taken off what we were doing. And I know what I was doing - and what you were doing, close enough. And I know what Major Turnbull was doing, for other reasons, which I don't intend to bore you with . . . And I've a pretty damn good idea what old James was up to, come to that.'

As usual, he knew too much for his own good.

'All right.' He misread her silence and her expression, nevertheless: with people, and perhaps with her in particular, he was fallible. 'They took me off. And they took David Audley off. And they took you off. Which I know because I have this access to the computer, to pick its brains, and they haven't cancelled it. So I tried to pick yours a couple of days ago. And you just weren't available. See?'

Even with her limited experience, Elizabeth saw. Anyone armed with those rights of access and his knowledge of how the department worked (never mind his insatiable curiosity) could probably elicit a great deal of information. For a start it might be mostly negative, but he would surely have more sophisticated methods than counting the cars in the car park to find out more.

The very thought made her cautious. 'And what did you conclude from that, Dr Mitchell?'

'It didn't start with you.' He shook his head. 'I was engaged in something quite interesting, not to say important.' The shake became almost an apologetic shrug. 'I thought maybe I could find a substitute.'

Again, Elizabeth saw - and saw also how he had reached this pass: he had cast around for someone else to do the job he'd been given - someone engaged on less important matters -

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before making a fuss. And, naturally enough, he'd tried to hang the albatross on her neck first - the most junior, if not the newest, recruit.

Oh, typical Paul! 'And came up with a dusty answer?'

The corridor door behind them swished and she saw his eyes flick past her, and then come back to her almost pleadingly.

'Miss Loftus - ' She just caught the last of Mrs Harlin's frown at Paul as she turned ' - the Deputy-Director has asked for you again. I cannot reasonably invent another excuse, unless you actually wish to be indisposed. At the moment he insists that either you are here, or you aren't.' She gave Elizabeth the benefit of the doubt, just. 'I do think you ought to come now.'

Tripod masts! thought Elizabeth. Or, to get away from their ridiculous naval code, from a past which she preferred to forget, here was a snake or a ladder, and she could choose whether to go up or down.

Thank you, Mrs Harlin. Please tell the Deputy-Director that I'll be with him as soon as I'm free.'

Mrs Harlin very nearly replied. But then she didn't, and Elizabeth watched the door swish, and lock.

'This had better be good, Paul - Dr Mitchell.' That he was regarding her with that ridiculous expression only irritated her more, sharpening her voice: on his face it was a positively unnatural look, quite alien to his character. 'And it had better be quick, too.'

'Oh - it's good.' Far too late, he erased the expression. 'That is, it's good intelligence. But it's bad news for you. Because I think Fatso is going to send you into the field.'

'Why - ' She just caught the wrong question in time -the Why do you think that's bad news?