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“Issues!”
Evelyn blinked owlishly at her new friend. “Hmmm?”
“Relationship issues. I’ve got ‘em.”
“That’s nice. I don’t suppose you also happen to have any tonic? You know, to go with this excellent gin? And your issues, of course.”
“It is good gin, isn’t it?” Benny smiled smugly. “But it can’t hold a candle to my issues. Now, those are truly impressive! But I can’t tell you about ‘em. Nope. My lips are sealed.”
“Then I wouldn’t dream of pressing you,” Evelyn assured her. “Now, about that tonic—“
“But if I could talk about them… WOW. I mean, just, WOW. I’ve got issues—relationship issues, I mean--issues like you wouldn’t believe, and I can’t talk about them.”
Evelyn smiled warmly. “Well, if you’re certain…. Though I have been told that I’m a very good listener, should you change your mind.”
“And what the hell do you want tonic for anyway? This is good gin, this is. Much better than the rotgut you’ll find on most archaeological expeditions.” Evelyn blinked again, inordinately impressed by Dr. Summerfield’s ability to correctly articulate the word ‘expeditions’ in her current condition, to say nothing of ‘archaeological.’ “I stole it—erm… borrowed it directly from Brax’s private stash.”
“Borrowed, eh? Does that mean we’ll have to return whatever is left in the bottle?”
“Not bloody likely!” Benny snorted. She seemed to think about it for a second, however, because a sly smile crept on to her face. “Or maybe it does mean that. You’d better drink up, Dr. Smith!”
“Smythe.”
Benny didn’t miss a beat. “Drink up, Dr. Smythe! Anything that isn’t finished goes back to the cellar. Brax will never miss a bottle that isn’t there (or, if he does, he’ll never be able to prove that I took it!), but just imagine the fit he’ll have when he comes across a half-opened bottle!”
“I could keep up with you a bit better if I had some tonic to go with—“
“And nobody can throw a fit quite like Irving Braxiatel. Oh, what I could tell you about Brax and his fits! But you’ll just have to take my word for that because I have issues with him that I simply can’t discuss.”
“Mr. Braxiatel? Really?”
Benny scowled at Evelyn suspiciously. “I can not talk about Brax if I like; what’s it to you? And how do you know him anyway?”
Evelyn’s head felt a bit too fuzzy to parse Benny’s first question, so she concentrated upon the second one. “I don’t,” she admitted. “I mean, I don’t know Mr. Braxiatel very well, having just met him today, but—“
“Me too,” Benny muttered morosely.
“Excuse me?” Benny shook her head and waved her hand, indicating that the interruption was unimportant. Evelyn shrugged and continued. “As I said, I never saw the man in my life before he convinced the Doctor to go off hunting sand creatures with him. Still—“
“And why is that?” Benny demanded heatedly.
Nonplussed, Evelyn blinked yet again at her erratic hostess. “Uh… perhaps because our paths hadn’t crossed before today?”
Benny shook her head irritably. “Not ‘why are you only now meeting Brax?’ The question is, ‘why did Brax and the Doctor go off in to danger together while both insisting that we remain here?’ That isn’t like either one of them.”
“Well, it certainly is out of character for the Doctor, I’ll grant you that. But how is it that you happen to be familiar with his little quirks?”
“Because I know him, of course! Travelled with him for ages, as it happens, so I have his quirks down pretty well. Not this incarnation, mind, but at the end of the day, the Doctor is always the Doctor.”
“But—“
“But he didn’t know me this afternoon. Yes, yes. I know. The problem is that I haven’t travelled with him yet. He’ll really meet me some time in his future, so I’d appreciate it if you kept this conversation to yourself, please.” Evelyn nodded. This had happened before, with D.I. Menzies, so she knew how to be discreet. “Anyway, from years of experience, I can say with absolute certainty that Irving Braxiatel almost never exerts himself if he has underlings around to do his work for him, and that the Doctor almost never leaves his friends behind when he has an adventure in front of him. What other people call danger, he calls fun, and he wouldn’t dream of leaving anybody out of that.” Benny focused shrewdly on Evelyn, and the older woman began to wonder if the archaeologist was truly as intoxicated as she appeared. “Seems a bit odd that both of them would break habits of lifetimes simultaneously, don't you think?”
Evelyn grabbed the bottle in order to pour herself another glass of gin. While she’d still prefer to add some tonic to her glass, she was growing to enjoy Benny’s habit of drinking straight gin. “So are you suggesting that we go out in to the desert, in the middle of the night, to look for them? While I usually enjoy running after the Doctor, I think that in this particular instance I’d prefer to stay here—as requested—and finish this bottle of gin.”
“Oh, we’ll finish the bottle! No fear on that! We’ll finish it and then we’ll go find them!”
“Always assuming that we’re both still standing at that point.” Evelyn grinned ruefully as she considered the decreased level of liquid in the bottle. “A rather large assumption on my part, I’m afraid.”
“Nonsense! This stuff is gentle as a lamb! Why, I could—“
Evelyn never did find out what Benny could do, because the archaeologist’s attempt to leap to her feet while talking led to a rather spectacular collision with a nearby table. “Professor Summerfield! Bernice! Are you okay?”
“That depends,” Benny moaned in to the sand, still flat on her face from her recent fall. “Did we lose all the gin?”
“We lost none of it,” Evelyn assured her. “I was still holding the bottle when you fell.”
“Well thank the Goddess for that!”
“Your papers, however, are rather the worse for wear. They’re all on the ground and are mostly out of order.”
“S’alright. They’re just student field reports. From what I’ve seen of this lot, throwing them all in to a jumble won’t hurt most of them and might improve a few.”
Evelyn laughed, delighted to learn that university students remained eternal, regardless of century, solar system, or species. “Well, let me help you up at least.” Once she had done so, she poured Benny another glass of gin and set the bottle down on a bookcase that seemed a bit sturdier than the table had been. “Now. You were telling me about your relationship issues with Mr. Braxiatel.”
“Was I? I thought—“
“You were,” Evelyn said firmly. “Most definitely. You were going to go find some tonic for me, and then you were going to tell me all about Irving Braxiatel.”
“If you say so,” Benny said doubtfully. “Though do you mind if I skip the tonic search for the moment? My legs are feeling a bit wobbly right now.” Evelyn was tempted to point out that drinking her gin in such large gulps was unlikely to alleviate her wobbliness, but having finally got Benny to agree to stay on one subject at a time (not to mention her theoretical agreement to tonic water), she decided not to push it. “Okay. Brax. Brax is, well, Brax. I’ve known him for ages, but he’s only met me today.” Benny looked thoughtful. “It’s been that kind of a day, I suppose.”
Evelyn laughed. “Do you often have days filled with anomalies and paradoxical encounters?”
“More often than you might think,” Benny said ruefully. “And it’s not just the typical stuff that occurs to time travellers. In fact, I haven’t done any time travelling for donkey’s years, but that still hasn’t helped; these things just seem to happen to me. I sometimes suspect that anomalies follow me about.”
“Surely it’s not that bad,” Evelyn said with a suppressed chuckle.
“Nah, it’s not,” Benny admitted with a sudden return of her previous good cheer. “Who wants a quiet life anyway? I never would have left Heaven with the Doctor if I wanted that!”
“Heaven?”
“Not the mythological one, mind, but the Heaven where people go after they’ve gone to heaven. Or maybe they go there before they can be admitted to heaven?” Benny shrugged. “I guess it all depends upon your personal beliefs, doesn’t it? But as for me, no, I was just in the dirty and dusty Heaven, if you know what I mean.”
“Perfectly.” Evelyn’s fabrication skills had improved immensely through her association with the Doctor.
“So, I left Heaven to go with the Doctor, and through him I found Isaac again, and I met Wolsey and Jason and Joseph and eventually Brax. And they’re all still in my life, all still demanding my time and attention and generally all being pains in my arse! Not that it’s Wolsey’s fault, of course, since he seems to be going a bit lame lately, the poor dear. And not that it’s the same Joseph that I met when I travelled with the Doctor and Ace, though sometimes I think he might be, and at other times, I’m certain that he’s a different Joseph, even though he’s entirely the same. Who knows? Well, Brax knows of course, but no one really knows what Brax knows, which is one of the reasons why he’s so bloody irritating. But if it weren’t for Brax, I never would have met Adrian, which means that I wouldn’t have beautiful Peter in my life—or at all!—and that simply doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“Good gracious!” Evelyn exclaimed, far too astonished to blink. Still, now that Benny was in a confiding mood, perhaps this was the time to ask, “You really do have issues, don’t you?”
“Yep!” Benny looked entirely too satisfied with herself.
“I don’t suppose you also happen to have any tonic about, do you?”
“Nah. I enjoy an occasional gin and tonic, of course, but when my life is as big of a mess as mine is now, I prefer my drinks without it. Not that I’m drinking to forget, mind!”
“Of course not!”
“No, it’s just that I like to think that at least one thing in my life is straight, even if it’s nothing but my drink.” She looked thoughtful and then laughed. “As it happens, I very seldom find myself drinking gin and tonics…”
“Well, that’s a rather neat way of putting it!” Evelyn waited for a reaction, but Benny just stared at her rather blankly. She sighed. “Sorry. The Doctor has been a bad influence on me.”
“Join the club! Oh, the stories I could tell you about the Doctor…” She looked a bit wistful. “But I can’t tell you any of those stories because I never talk about my relationship issues.”
“Of course not, Bernice. It never occurred to me that you might.” Evelyn went over to the archaeologist’s bunk and grabbed a pillow to place against the back of her chair. She had a feeling that it was going to be a very long night.
THE END