23:05 I'm suspicious. I picked up a few of his notions, when he arrived. Did you know he's a Time Lord?

Cousin Justine didn't know, and the news surprised her. 'I understood Mr Homunculette was here on behalf of Gallifrey.'

23:50 He is. Which begs the question, where does this interloper come from? One of the newblood Houses?

'Don't trust him,' said a voice.

Justine looked up from the newspaper, to see an unfamiliar outline stumbling into the anteroom. It was a man. Or had been, once. He walked with slow, heavy strides, as if worried his legs might fall off if he moved too fast. Apart from her eyes, all Justine's senses told her there was no one in the room except her and the Shift. At least, no one living.

'The Time Lord. Don't trust him. He killed me. Killed. Me.'

'You're beautiful,' Justine whispered.

The man stared at her, without feeling. Justine knew what she'd said, and knew how undignified it must have sounded, but it was the simple truth. This man was pure, the way only the dead could be pure. In him, everything the family had taught Cousin Justine to respect was made flesh.

'Not important,' the man said. 'Listen to me. The Time Lord. He killed me. I know him. I'm sure. He's '

He didn't get the chance to finish the sentence. A cl.u.s.ter of gangling limbs rushed out of the corridor and into the anteroom, knocking the dead man to one side, and he keeled over, without any kind of complaint. Before Justine could even catch her breath, something was moving towards her face at high speed. She ducked. A blur of silver slapped the air above her head.

Homunculette. He'd bolted into the room, moving faster than someone as sickly-looking as him should have been able to move. Cousin Justine saw a snarl on his face, a wedge of metal in his hand. She felt the Shift stumbling around inside her head, looking for some way of communicating with her, but there was no way for it to manifest itself. All Justine could see was Homunculette, a ragbag of expletives and bony limbs, doing his best to smash his weapon into the side of her skull.

Sam shouted. Kathleen didn't respond. The Lieutenant looked alert, but she seemed to be listening to something else entirely.

Sam finally caught up with her in one of the ziggurat's deeper corridors, near a stairway that presumably led to the bas.e.m.e.nt level. Kathleen tried to hurl herself down the steps, but Sam managed to grab her shoulders before she could make it. She pulled Kathleen back into the corridor, where the woman slid to the floor, and finally stopped moving. Exhausted, at last.

Sam knelt down by her side. Finding Kathleen hadn't been easy. Sam had stayed hidden in the pa.s.sage of the Faction's shrine, while Little Brother Manjuele had performed his "interrogation" in what had sounded like an Americanised South American accent. Finally, there'd been a noise Sam hadn't recognised. It hadn't sounded nice.

Kathleen and Manjuele had left the shrine together. Sam had waited a minute or two, then scarpered after them. Out in the corridors of the ziggurat, there'd been no sign of the Faction cultist, but after a while Sam had found Bregman again, hurtling down a torchlit pa.s.sage into the guts of the building.

Bregman's face was pressed against the floor now. Sam tried to get her attention. 'Kathleen?'

No reply.

'Kathleen? What happened?'

No reply.

'Can you hear me? What did he do to you?'

Instantly, Kathleen's arm shot out from underneath her. Sam blinked. The woman was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, so the limb was bare from the shoulder down, and the marks along her forearm were in plain view. Four small dots, the colour of burnt flesh. Like someone had attacked Kathleen with a hole-punch.

'I gave Manjuele what he wanted,' Kathleen said, flatly.

Hmm. That sounded ominous. 'And what did did he want?' he want?'

Kathleen finally looked up. Not at Sam, though. She was staring into the alcove, where the stairway was set.

'Can you hear him?' she said.

Startled, Sam looked around, half-expecting to see the Little Brother creeping up on them. There was n.o.body in sight. 'He says he can make it stop,' Kathleen went on. 'He says there's no need to be afraid. He says he's the one the monsters are afraid of. He can make them go away. There's evil in the universe. Some things must be fought.'

Oh, h.e.l.l, she was really losing it now. 'Listen to me, Kathleen. You're delirious. I don't know what's been done to you, but...' Sam stopped talking. She knew no one was listening.

Kathleen unfolded her limbs, and started pulling herself upright. 'He says I don't have to worry about anything. Not even Displacer Syndrome.'

Sam put her hands around the Lieutenant's shoulders, more as a gesture of support than to help her up. 'Displacer Syndrome?' she queried.

'Displacer Syndrome. Displacer Syndrome.' Kathleen practically sang the words. 'UNISYC personnel are fifteen times more likely to commit suicide than the average human being. Did you know that?'

She seemed to be addressing the stairway. Sam shook her head.

'I'm coming,' Kathleen concluded. Then she broke free of Sam's grip, and threw herself down the stairs.

The Doctor hadn't spoken in ages. He'd strolled along the corridor to the security centre without a second's hesitation, Qixotl in tow, and nothing had tried to stop him. The defensive systems should have identified him as foreign matter, Qixotl reminded himself, should have ripped him to pieces. Maybe one of the circuits had messed up again.

Or maybe the stories about the Doctor were true. They said he'd been able to wander through deathtraps without a scratch, while he'd been alive. Which kind of contradicted the stories about how he'd died, but there you go.

The Doctor didn't even stop in his tracks when he saw the full horror of the security centre. He headed straight for the master console, and the pixscreen obediently unfolded itself from the surface at his touch. Qixotl glanced at one of the tapestries on the far wall, the one depicting the sentient dinosaur sawing the heads off the vestal virgins. The dinosaur's eyes were leering in Qixotl's direction, as if to say, "you've lost the plot, sunshine".

The Doctor was busy prodding the controls by the time Qixotl reached the console, the pixscreen cycling through the schematics of the ziggurat. Eventually, the Doctor found a map of the lowest level, and the screen showed him the complex crissfcross of traps protecting the Relic. The body itself, in its sealed casket, was indicated by a point of solid silver light.

The Doctor stared at it. And stared. And stared.

'Erm...' Qixotl prompted.

'I don't understand,' the Doctor muttered.

Qixotl looked up at the taspestry again. Even the vestal virgins were laughing at him, now. 'Why?' the Doctor went on. 'Why would the Time Lords need my body so badly? Homunculette's an agent of the High Council, he's not here to make sure I get a decent burial.'

'It's like I said, Gallifrey needs your biodata codes. It's the war.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'What's so special about my biodata? All Time Lords have the same sort of thing in their biology. I know I've got more practical experience than most of the others, and there's still that little question of my ancestry to be cleared up, but even so...'

Mr Qixotl wondered how much he could say without the Doctor having a go at him for "damaging the delicate web of s.p.a.ce-time". 'All right, it's like this. At the start of the war, Gallifrey lost a lot of stuff, yeah? Most of its secrets got scrubbed by the...' The Doctor gave him a warning glance. '...by the enemy. I mean, I'll tell you this much, those sods can wipe out information as fast as they can wipe out matter. Most of the Time Lords' big guns got taken out. The Demat Gun, the Sash of Ra.s.silon, the works. You know how much the High Council's technology relies on biodata codes, right? Most of the biodata codes went, too.'

The Doctor frowned. 'I'm an ex-President of the High Council. I've got all the codes they need.'

'Yup. And not just that.' Qixotl paused. 'Listen, I'll try not to give too much away here, but... between now and the time when you, y'know, finally kick the bucket... other stuff happens to you. I mean, you might think you've got a lot of weird bits in your biodata now, but wait until the... the end.' Qixotl wiped his brow with the sleeve of his jacket. This had to be the hardest conversation of his life. 'Your body's got all kinds of secrets stuffed into its biodata. Things the Time Lords have lost. And when I say lost, I mean, totally.'

The Doctor considered this for a few moments. 'They could go back in time. Get hold of the information they need before it was destroyed by the enemy.'

'Nope. Doesn't work. The enemy's fighting a fourdimensional war here. The two sides are in a, what d'you call it, a temporal stalemate. They're blocking off whole chunks of history to each other.'

The Doctor looked appalled. 'Then the enemy must know as much about temporal mechanics as the Time Lords do. I don't think I wanted to know that.'

'Uh. Anyhow. Gallifrey can't get in touch with its own past, but technically, you're not part of Gallifrey's past. Not any more. You're a renegade, you're an independent. Too tricky to put a time blockade on. Besides, your body's more powerful than anyone else's, they reckon.'

The Doctor held up his hand, motioning Qixotl to stop talking. 'All right. I don't want to know how the war starts, and I don't want to know who the enemy is. Are. Will be. But you can tell me one more thing. Who are the Celestis?'

Qixotl looked around the chamber. He wasn't sure why. In case there were any spies hanging around in the corners, he supposed. 'The Celestis are Time Lords,' he said. 'The ones who saw the war coming. I mean, according to Homunculette, the High Council got taken by surprise when it all started. They've got that gizmo on Gallifrey for predicting the future...'

'The Matrix,' the Doctor said. Qixotl nodded. Actually, he'd known full well what it was called, but he didn't want to look like he knew too much.

'Yeah, that. But the Matrix only makes guesses, right? Because the Time Lords aren't allowed to peek into the future, not properly. And anyway, the enemy are time-active, so the Matrix didn't see 'em coming. Something to do with non-linearity. But get this. A bunch of high-ranking Time Lords outside the High Council still figured out the war was going to happen, don't ask me how. And they got scared, because, y'know, if the enemy kill you, they don't just kill you. They make sure you never existed in the first place. So this bunch of Time Lords decided to get out, the only way they could.'

The Doctor's attention was fixed on him now. Which was a good job, Qixotl realised, because it meant he hadn't noticed the way the pixscreen had changed. It now displayed a simple 2D image of the ziggurat roof. A small black speck had appeared in the sky above the building.

Qixotl kept talking. 'Anyhow. This bunch of Time Lords... they call themselves the Celestis, right?... decided to get one over on the enemy. Really smart move, they made.'

The Doctor crossed his arms, as if to say "talk faster". 'Which was?'

'They wiped themselves from the continuum. I mean, completely.'

'What?'

'Yup. The Celestis took themselves out of s.p.a.ce and time. Scratched out all traces of them ever existing in the physical universe. Beating the enemy to it, kind of.'

'That doesn't make sense,' said the Doctor.

'Yeah, it does. Because and this is the clever bit when they took themselves out of reality like that, they put themselves on, y'know, another plane of existence. They kind of stopped being real, and turned into... ideas. Because you can kill a person, but you can't kill an idea. Get it?' Qixotl shot a quick glance at the pixscreen. The s.p.a.ceship was growing larger by the second, its outline slowly filling the sky above the ziggurat. Qixotl hoped the Doctor wouldn't see it. He'd probably recognise the design, the smug git.

The Doctor, however, looked like he was a million miles away. 'I'm not sure I understand. The Celestis are Time Lords who put themselves into conceptual s.p.a.ce?' His eyes widened, and he slapped himself on the forehead. 'You mean, like the Shift?'

Qixotl squirmed. 'Erm, well... I'm not really supposed to tell anyone who the Shift's working for...'

'I see.' The Doctor nodded. 'Removal from the material plane. Using the same kind of technology that put the Land of Fiction together, I'd imagine. Ingenious. Totally mad, of course, but... Celestis?' He was talking to himself now, Qixotl realised. 'The Celestial Intervention Agency? It's their level of insanity...'

He stopped murmuring, and glared at Qixotl, who quickly took his eyes off the pixscreen. 'So. The Time Lords need my body to stand a chance of survival. But you've decided to sell it to the highest bidder.'

'It's like I said. The laws of economics. Business is '

'I know what you said!' Instinctively, Qixotl ducked. The Doctor hadn't actually thrown a punch, but the outburst had almost been violent enough to leave a bruise. 'Do you have any idea what sort of fire you're playing with? The fate of my corpse could determine the fate of the entire lifeline. This auction could turn out to be the most important event in the entire history of sentient life.'

Mr Qixotl cleared his throat. 'Y'know, I was just thinking of my interests...'

'Faction Paradox! The Time Lords! The Celestis! What are you expecting to happen? Do you think they're all going to sit down around a table and talk about this politely?'

'Well, yeah, actually. Look, Doctor, I don't think you understand the kind of profit margins we're talking about here.'

'Profits! Profits! You're playing with the Web of Time, and all you care about is how Time Lord bioma.s.s is doing on the FT index!' The Doctor threw his arms wide, as if to call upon some ancient and terrible G.o.d of rhetoric. 'If you're so determined to put the whole universe in jeopardy, why didn't you go the whole hog? Why didn't you just invite the Daleks?'

Immediately, Mr Qixotl's eyes shot back to the pixscreen. The Doctor noticed, this time, and turned to see what he was looking at.

The black s.p.a.ceship had touched down on top of the ziggurat, its underbelly flattening most the roof garden. The Doctor turned back to Qixotl, an expression of absolute horror on his face.

'You didn't,' he said.

Mr Qixotl tried to look apologetic.

7.

SURPRISED?.

Cousin Justine knew her arms were in the wrong position before she even saw the wrench swinging back towards her face. In her own time, on her own planet, even the word "physical" had been considered slightly obscene, but the training on Dronid had erased the old stigma. She wasn't ashamed of her body any more. She knew the subtle equations that governed close-quarter combat, knew how to move with with the opponent as well as the opponent as well as against against him. him.

So she knew there was no way on Earth she could stop the wrench before it smashed into the side of her skull. In the half-second she judged she had left before the impact, Justine told the Grandfather what was happening, and respectfully asked him to prepare a place for her at the family table. Naturally, the Grandfather didn't deign to reply.

The wrench jerked in Homunculette's hand. The rhythm was broken. The flow of the combat changed in an instant.

Justine rearranged her limbs without a moment's hesitation, readying herself for a counter-strike. Little Brother Manjuele was standing behind Homunculette, gripping the Time Lord's wrist with both hands. Justine hadn't noticed the Little Brother come into the room; he hadn't been part of the flow until now, he hadn't even been a consideration. Homunculette didn't seem to notice Manjuele was there. His eyes were still fixed on Cousin Justine, as if he couldn't understand why the wrench wasn't connecting with her head.

Justine punched him in the throat. Homunculette gagged, then dropped the weapon. Justine lashed out again, barrel-punching his neck. Homunculette didn't look hurt when he dropped to the ground. Irritated, but not hurt.

'Thank you, Little Brother,' Justine said, once she'd caught her breath.

Manjuele gave her a quick salute, and a grin broke out across his face. Justine tried not to think of it as a nasty nasty grin. In her own time, before the Faction had found her, she would have considered Manjuele to be the lowest form of human life, a creature that had never even stood a chance of getting close to the Grace of G.o.d. One of the criminal cla.s.ses, and worse than that, a foreigner. Living proof that Mr Darwin was nearer to the truth than Justine's elders had wanted to admit. grin. In her own time, before the Faction had found her, she would have considered Manjuele to be the lowest form of human life, a creature that had never even stood a chance of getting close to the Grace of G.o.d. One of the criminal cla.s.ses, and worse than that, a foreigner. Living proof that Mr Darwin was nearer to the truth than Justine's elders had wanted to admit.

The Faction had reconditioned her, of course. They'd taught her that all beings were as one in the eyes of the Grandfather, that the real haves haves were those who'd found the Spirits, and the real were those who'd found the Spirits, and the real haven'ts haven'ts were those who still believed in the deceits of the Time Lords. But every now and then, a little piece of England would find its way into her thoughts, and she'd wonder what her family her first family, her old family, her genetic family would have said about the Little Brother. She'd tried dressing him up like a gentleman, but that was the only concession she'd made to her past. were those who still believed in the deceits of the Time Lords. But every now and then, a little piece of England would find its way into her thoughts, and she'd wonder what her family her first family, her old family, her genetic family would have said about the Little Brother. She'd tried dressing him up like a gentleman, but that was the only concession she'd made to her past.

'I can't get up,' said Trask.

Justine turned. Trask was lying on his side near the doorway of the anteroom, his limbs perfectly stiff. He'd fallen like a skittle, though he didn't seem upset.

Manjuele sn.i.g.g.e.red. Justine shot him a warning glance.

'Dead joints,' Trask told them. 'Not flexible.'