Chapter Two
By morning Rose had dismissed the strange man as a pathetic stalker -- he had probably bumped into her intentionally. Still, she was grateful she didn't see him in the lobby or in the restaurant when she came down for breakfast. By the time she and Pete were flying high above Utah, she had forgotten the man.
They were not the only passengers. A few Geocomtex employees who had attended the expo were on board the zeppelin as well, and Rose struck up a conversation with one, a young man called Kevin Barrett, a computer tech.
"You live on the base?" Rose asked him.
"Well, it's too much of a commute from anywhere else. I mean, there's Gold Hill nearby, and some of my coworkers live there, but it's a tiny town, and doesn't really have enough places to rent. It's not so bad on the base." He shrugged.
"I don't think I'd want to live at work, be there all the time." Especially not that place, Rose thought – an underground bunker with its own pretend military running all over, and Van Statten as top dog.
"There's a bar in Gold Hill where we hang out. And I usually make it to Salt Lake City once a month."
He sounded to Rose like he was saying these things to keep himself convinced his was a great life – or maybe complaining with coworkers nearby was a bad idea. Feeling an urge to improve his spirits, she said, "You get to work with all this alien stuff, right? Must be interesting."
"Mr. Van Statten keeps a lot of it under lock and key. But you'll probably get to see his museum." Kevin leaned in. "To be honest, that's all the non-classified finds – meaning, it's all pretty useless. But he loves showing it off to guests, and even if there's nothing there too earth-shattering, it's still impressive. You're in for a treat."
Sure enough, for the second time, Rose found herself touring a museum of alien artifacts owned by Henry Van Statten. But this time she was an invited guest, not an intruder setting off alarms. The collection was smaller, but otherwise, much of it looked familiar from Rose's memory of the other place: meteor rocks, unidentified dead technology, even a Slitheen's arm. No Cyberman head, but that was no surprise: Here, Cybermen were all too earthbound.
"I outbid your bosses for some of these prizes," Van Statten told Rose.
"And for more than just this, I'm sure."
"What makes you think that?" He was as smug as ever.
"We know where your technological innovations have come from. And you know we know. Let's not pretend."
"Okay, you're right. It makes it all the sweeter to have you guys come begging to me."
Pete didn't take the opening for "begging," for the moment, but played the genial guest. "What's that thing down there?" he asked, directing Van Statten's attention to the stuffed head of a bug-eyed alien farther down the corridor.
As the two men moved on, Rose lingered, pretending to be interested in a pile of glittering metal that she was sure the Doctor would have dismissed as rubbish. She rounded its display case until she was out of Van Statten's sight.
Out of her jacket pocket, Rose slipped an energy detector, courtesy of Torchwood. The readings were showing next to nothing. Not even enough to account for the electrical lights of the display cases. Rose slapped the detector's side and muttered, "Either this is malfunctioning, or there is one hell of a dampening field on this place."
"Oi! What are you doing here?"
A uniformed guard was striding toward her from the side aisle, and Rose slipped the Torchwood device back into her pocket. Only then did she register that the guard was female, her accent English … This was Ace -- Rose recognized her from the photo, even if now the woman was displaying a scowl instead of that warm smile. If doubt were possible, the guard's name badge erased it: McShane.
Rose couldn't say anything outright, not without risking Ace's cover. So she would lay down some hints.
"Uh, hi! I'm with Mr. Van Statten – he's giving a tour to me and my dad, Pete Tyler." Rose leaned out into the main corridor. "They're down there -- moved on without me! I just got caught up in looking at this … stuff." Ace frowned as Rose gestured to the pile of metal junk. "Great, isn't it? It's supposed to be from space. My friend Mickey, he was so jealous I was coming here. He loves this sort of stuff. Wants me to tell him all about it. Everything I see. So I was, you know, taking a closer look."
Ace showed no trace of reaction to Mickey's name. "Move along then. If Mr. Van Statten wanted you to get a closer look, I'm sure he would —"
Ace stopped at the sight of Van Statten returning with Pete from the end of the hall.
"Rose!" Pete called. "We're done in here."
"Yeah, I'm coming!" Rose turned to Ace. "Sorry to have bothered you. Nice meeting you."
Ace did not answer as Rose left her behind in the museum. But she was alive, and still an employee in good standing. There was good news for Mickey and Jake. And surely Ace had honed in on Mickey's name and understood. Rose found herself wishing she had dropped Jake's name too, to be that much surer. Couldn't be helped now.
Van Statten seemed to accept Rose's excuse for lagging behind – a little raving about his "fantastic" collection did the trick. He led them out of the museum and into a lift, where he keyed in a destination and they began to ascend.
"Time to get down to business. Come meet my lead scientist on the Anasazi Project."
"Anasazi?" Pete inquired.
"Came up with the name myself. We used some materials salvaged near some Anasazi Indian ruins in Utah. I liked the sound of it."
They let out on a floor with hallways of the same concrete blocks and exposed pipes that characterized all these lower floors. But the large room they entered was considerably brighter – white, sleek and well-lit. A self-assured, gray-haired woman in a lab coat stepped forward. "Who are these people?" she asked, lacking any of the obsequiousness of most of Van Statten's employees.
Employees like Kevin Barrett, for instance: Rose spotted the young man she had met on the zeppelin. He had been concentrating on a computer screen, and looked up vaguely when he heard someone enter — then hopped to his feet at the sight of his boss.
The boss took no notice of him, instead answering the woman: "Pete Tyler and his daughter, Rose. From Torchwood – you've heard of it?" Van Statten didn't wait for an answer – it was clear she had. "This is the head of the Anasazi Project, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw."
Dr. Shaw looked skeptical. "They're not from Torchwood's science division, I take it?"
"No, more like the PR division."
Rose bristled. "Bit more than that."
Dr. Shaw turned back to her equipment. "Why are they here?"
"Why do you think?" Van Statten said. "To get a piece of the project for Torchwood."
Pete said with a smile, "We're hoping to strike up a partnership with Mr. Van Statten. And you."
"You needn't worry about me. I doubt it will be my decision to make."
"No, it won't," Van Statten said, "but you could give them that report on the project I told you to get ready. Do you have it?"
"Of course," Dr. Shaw said, and even though she had hardly been friendly to the guests, Rose found herself liking the woman for her indifference to Van Statten's bluster. "It would be ready to go," Dr. Shaw explained, "but for some technical difficulties with the computer, which Mr. Barrett is resolving."
"Mr. Barrett" was still standing at attention by the computer.
"Well," Van Statten demanded, "are you working on it?"
"Right, yes, sir." Kevin scrambled back to his seat.
"Ever since he added that latest security protocol to the containment program, the thing's been tetchy," Dr. Shaw said.
Kevin turned red and tapped furiously on his keyboard, while Van Statten glowered.
"So," Rose said to Dr. Shaw, "how do you come to work for Mr. Van Statten?"
"He recruited me."
Van Statten completed that thought: "I was lucky to get her around the time I struck a deal with Lumic. She has a knack for working out the most bizarre technologies and turning them into something useful -- I'm surprised you guys never snatched her up. As for the work we did for Lumic, you can tell Torchwood that the power we used to provide to Cybus Industries is a fraction of what we can provide now. We've been busy refining the system to peak efficiency. Shaw calls our business with Lumic a mistake – she was always trying to talk me out of it. But I prefer to think of the whole thing as a testing ground. Lumic was our guinea pig – who didn't always get the best of it."
Dr. Shaw said, "It's true, there was that incident at the Cybus factory in Houston. I hadn't worked out the power fluctuations yet, and … well, you should know what happened there."
Rose didn't know what had happened in Houston, but Pete was astonished: "Houston was your doing?"
"You bet it was," Van Statten preened, but Dr. Shaw derailed that.
"Don't let him give you the idea that it was deliberate sabotage. Because it wasn't. I was doing my job as carefully as I could, but Lumic wanted to step up his operations exponentially, and insisted on taking advantage of the power supply sooner rather than later."
"But it's been more than just 'refining the system,' right?" Pete said. "The Anasazi ruins – Torchwood knows something crashed here, two years ago, right in your lap. And you got the salvage."
And there was nothing Torchwood, or UNIT, or any American agencies could do about it, Pete had told Rose. Van Statten's reach may have been more limited than it was in Rose's world, but here the state of Utah was unquestionably his domain.
Pete continued as Van Statten kept a noncommittal expression. "Lumic was a client of the Anasazi Project – the name gives it away. He was already dead by the time of the Anasazi crash. So what is it? What's the new power source?"
"Come on," Van Statten said. "I can't give everything away."
"But this time we'd be the guinea pigs. I'm not sure Torchwood can agree to that without seeing what you salvaged."
Dr. Shaw broke in. "Such an inspection may happen at a later stage, but it hardly seems necessary now, Mr. Tyler. With the greatest respect, you and your daughter would not be qualified to evaluate what you see."
Kevin finally stood up from his computer, and came over holding a tiny data slip, which he handed to Van Statten, who in turn held it out to Pete.
Rose took it. "Thanks," she said a grin.
Van Statten looked as though his patience was wearing thin. "That's got all the specifications, the schematics, delivery capabilities, you name it. And that's all you get to know. Call it trade secrets. Take what you can get, take it back to your bosses, but if you, or they, spread it further than that, I'll know. The deal will be off and you'll be lucky if that's the worst that happens to you."
"We will respect confidentiality, Van Statten," said Pete. "I'm sure you'll do the same for us." He waved his arm toward a bank of screens high along a wall, and changed the subject. "What are we looking at here?"
"Monitoring the main outposts of the Anasazi Project, both here and off-base."
The screens blinked between dark rooms with bored guards standing about – nothing enlightening at all. Rose guessed the scenes would be quite different if there weren't outsiders in the room.
Pete asked, "You've got operations off-base?"
"Just the screen on the left there. The converter station. It's unmanned except for guards."
"Where is it?"
"A few miles from here, in the desert."
Rose asked, "Can we go there?"
Again, it was Dr. Shaw who answered. "No. I must insist. There is quite delicate equipment there. When Torchwood sends out scientific advisers, as I'm sure it will if this progresses, why then, arrangements may be made."
"Fair enough," Pete said.
Rose looked at the left-hand screen. While it showed more than guards, she had to admit it still told her nothing. She could make out panels of blinking lights, screens with readouts of undoubtedly incomprehensible figures. If the Doctor were here …
She could imagine them sneaking across the desert, somehow getting past those guards, and with the briefest of inspections, a flick of the sonic screwdriver, he would know what was going on. He would be fascinated, perhaps – marvel at the setup and proclaim it brilliant. Or maybe pronounce it antiquated rubbish. Rose had no way of knowing. She had no sonic screwdriver; she had only her untrained human wits. And a piece of Torchwood tech that could take readings to carry back to the brains in London … but would the risk be worth it? Then there was the matter that she couldn't even get readings here – at least not down in the museum. Would that outpost be any different?
Dr. Shaw was watching. There'd be no attempting to scan for anything in her territory, that was certain. Rose shook herself from staring at the screens, and her eyes landed on Dr. Shaw's desk. Among papers and instruments it held but one personal artifact: a photo of a man in uniform, taken decades ago, by the look of it.
"That's a UNIT insignia, isn't it?" Rose asked.
Dr. Shaw nodded. "He was my colleague there."
"You worked for UNIT? Why not approach them with this business?"
"It's Van Statten's decision, not mine. However, in my experience, UNIT does not have the same ambitions with regard to developing alien technology as Torchwood has."
"Does your friend" – Rose indicated the man in the photo – "still work for them?"
Dr. Shaw did not look at Rose as she replied with a simple, dignified statement: "He is dead."
"I'm so sorry."
"It happened a long time ago, in the line of duty."
Rose studied the photo, of a serious-looking man with dark hair and moustache. The Doctor had worked with the UNIT of her own universe, she knew, but he had never mentioned anyone there by name. Had he known this man's counterpart? Had that one been killed too?
"What was his name?" Rose asked.
"Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart."
A still-foolish part of Rose's heart vowed that she would ask the Doctor about the Brigadier one day. Committing the name to memory, she said to Dr. Shaw, "They do good work at UNIT. Important work."
She met Dr. Shaw's eyes, and the older woman seemed to understand what Rose was trying to say.
"Thank you. Alastair believed in it."
Van Statten and Pete had been looking at the other screens. Coming back to the matter at hand, Rose assumed her dad would fill her in on whatever Van Statten was going on about, if it was anything important. Now the two men wandered back over to Rose and Dr. Shaw.
"Time to let Shaw get back to work. I'll have some guards show you to your rooms. Upper level – I think you'll find them comfortable. Give you time to settle in, and you can meet me for dinner at nineteen hundred hours."
The Tylers' luggage had already been brought to their adjoining rooms, which were indeed in an incongruously posh enclave of the concrete and steel world of Van Statten's base. Rose could only assume not all employees were put up in such luxury.
Pete came over to Rose's room soon after their escort had left them. He shut the door behind him.
"Someone left something for you in my room." He pulled an envelope from his breast pocket. It was sealed, with "Rose Tyler" written on it in blotchy ballpoint pen. "Found it slipped under my door. I don't think the guard noticed."
Rose ripped it open, and it contained a single slip of paper with the words:
Outside Blue Moon Cantina in Gold Hill
9 o'clock tonight
It had to be Ace, right? Rose explained in low tones about the encounter in the museum. "I've got to get away to see her."
They arrived early for dinner, Rose with a simple plan that she hoped wouldn't seem suspicious. As they walked into the dining room, she was saying, loudly enough for Van Statten to catch it: "It's not that I don't want to hang out with you, Dad, every evening in America, but…"
"You're going a little stir-crazy?"
"A bit, yeah. That bloke Kevin Barrett talked about this bar in the nearest town – what's it called?"
"The town? Gold Hill," Van Statten said.
"Right. Thought I'd go out and relax, have a drink, get a little local color."
During this exchange, Van Statten had a way about him that was patronizing and knowing enough to make Rose nervous, but then he grinned and said, "Tell you what – I'll get Barrett to drive you out there. If he was talking about Blue Moon Cantina, which he has to be, because that's all there is, its main clientele is my staff, so I don't know how 'local' the color will be, but you should go on, have a good time."