'I've seen the defences in this place,' the Doctor went on. 'Don't you understand? They'll both be killed.'

Kortez looked unmoved. 'The Lieutenant is an officer of UNISYC,' he intoned.

'She'll die!'

'Life. Death. All part of the great wheel of karma. The cycle of existence. What pa.s.ses must pa.s.s.' The Colonel surveyed the hall, searching for someone to back him up on this. Qixotl didn't know where to look.

The next thing he knew, he was being grabbed by the shoulders and vigorously shaken. 'We've got to switch off the defences,' the Doctor insisted. 'Come on. We're going back to the security centre.'

'No,' droned E-Kobalt.

The Doctor stopped shaking Qixotl.

'The-sur-vi-val-of-the-hu-man-un-its-is-of-no-sig-ni-fic-ance,' E-Kobalt said, swinging its tubes from side to side in a vaguely menacing fashion. 'The-se-cu-ri-ty-of-the-Re-lic-will-not-be-jeo-par-dised. No-more-time-will-be-was-ted.'

The Doctor stared at the creature for a few moments. Then he turned back to Qixotl. Qixotl shrugged. 'You heard the man,' he said.

The Doctor spun on his heel, towards Homunculette. 'Mr Homunculette...'

'I agree with the Kroton,' the Time Lord grunted.

'I saved you from the Faction!'

Homunculette looked away, but didn't answer. The Doctor turned to Kortez. 'Colonel...?'

'What pa.s.ses '

'Must pa.s.s. Yes, I forgot.' Before Qixotl could even blink, the Doctor was striding out through the main archway, a planet-sized grimace on his face. 'All right,' Qixotl heard him mutter. 'All right. I'll have to save them myself.' And then he was gone.

There was a brief moment of silence.

'He'll miss the auction,' Cousin Justine noted.

'Is-he-a-threat-to-the-sec-ur-it-y-of-the-Rel-ic?' queried E-Kobalt.

'Not at all,' Qixotl lied. He remembered the way the Doctor had strolled into the security centre before. Yeah, the old b.u.g.g.e.r could easily switch off the Relic's defences, but Qixotl wasn't going to be the one to stand in his way. With any luck, the auction would be wrapped up before the Doctor could do any serious damage.

'Even so, we should take precautions.' Cousin Justine nodded towards her little Brother. 'Manjuele. Perhaps you'd be so kind as to follow him...?'

Manjuele looked puzzled for a moment. Then his face lit up, and he gave her a quick salute. 'No prob,' he said. Bowing extravagantly to the others, he waltzed out of the hall.

'Manjuele will make sure no sabotage is done,' Justine explained, smoothly.

'Fair enough,' said Qixotl. Qixotl didn't trust the cultists an inch, but if Manjuele thought he could take on the Doctor, he was welcome to give it a go. 'Ah. Mr Trask. Dead on time, pardon the expression.'

Trask staggered into the hall, his joints stiff as ever. 'Are we ready to begin?' he asked.

'Finally, yes,' said Mr Qixotl.

'Hallelujah,' scowled Homunculette.

The systems were probing him again. Invisible machines were sc.r.a.ping molecules from his skin, peering at the samples through microscopic microscopes. The Doctor kept walking. Qixotl hadn't done a bad job programming the defences around the security centre, but there were always loopholes.

He hadn't been expecting the Doctor, for a start. Not alive, anyway. The Doctor was an ex-President of the High Council, party to the biodata ultra-sensitivity that came with the robes of high office. He'd worn the Sash of Ra.s.silon, he'd felt the changes it had triggered on the deeper levels of his biology. When he'd inserted his biodata into the City's systems, he hadn't just put himself on the guest list. He'd given himself the biological equivalent of a backstage pa.s.s, access all areas. The High Council's codes had reprogrammed the security devices from the inside.

There was nowhere in the ziggurat he couldn't go. That included the vault, of course, but he'd think about that later.

Once the Doctor had reached the master console, he called up a complete schematic of the lowest level. Apparently, it had changed shape since the last time he'd been here. On the pixscreen, he identified a series of corridors that looked worryingly like a human digestive system. He found Sam first, and called up a visual image of her.

What he saw on the screen was genuinely horrifying.

Sam was lying on the floor of a pink-walled room, her body almost lost in a garden of growths that reminded the Doctor of overripe kidneys. Things were moving in the squishy undergrowth, their bald, slippery heads occasionally bobbing up into view. The largest of the antibody creatures hovered above Sam's head, its arms extended towards her neck. The being looked almost like an embryo, a half-finished humanoid with stunted limbs and an over-developed forehead. Its skin was like wrinkled plastic, the colour of blood.

The Doctor actually had to catch his breath. Only after he'd recovered himself did he notice the way the thing was looking at him.

It was staring right out of the screen, its huge black eyes trying to force themselves into a squint. As the Doctor watched, a smile appeared on the antibody's face. The mouth was tiny, little more than a slit, and the Doctor found it hard to believe it was attached to a digestive system, or to a larynx of any kind. But its lips were moving all the same.

It was mouthing words at him. The antibody was linked to the security systems, the Doctor realised. It knew he was watching it on the pixscreen. For the briefest of moments, the Doctor was sure the face looked familiar. Something about the way its features were aligned, but...

There was no sound from the pixscreen. The Doctor's hands flew across the master console, searching for a volume control. By the time he found it, it was almost too late.

' but it's me,' the thing on the screen gurgled. ' the thing on the screen gurgled. 'It was me, all the time.'

Manjuele checked the corridor outside the shrine. No life, no movement. Everyone was at the auction, apart from the b.i.t.c.hes who'd gone down to the vault. Good.

He grinned at the skulls as he went back into the shrine, just to remind them that they were dead and he wasn't. Then he crossed over to the dais, and slipped the biosampler over his knuckles.

'Got a present for you,' he said, to whatever Spirits might have been listening.

He unscrewed the tips of the biosampler's collection valves. The stuff inside stank like sour milk. Manjuele didn't know what it was called, but Justine had told him it was a liquid you could use for storing biodata, which was all the detail the Little Brother needed. He held his hand out. Big red spots of gunge dripped from his knuckles and hit the dais, then started mixing with the stuff that was already there.

'Ashes to ashes,' Manjuele said. He always said that, when he did a rite. He didn't know why.

Once the new bioma.s.s had sunk in, he slid the knife out of his pocket. He didn't have to use the knife, for this part of the ritual. He could have used the sampler, like Justine always did, but Manjuele felt more comfortable with the knife. It was the same one he'd used to cut his ID scar into his face, a lifetime ago. The family liked to talk about "fetishes" yeah, OK, so the word still made him sn.i.g.g.e.r and he liked to think of the knife as his own private little fetish.

He rolled up his left sleeve, exposing his forearm, where the skin was crisscrossed with scar tissue. He found a patch that looked like it could still bleed properly, and drew the knife across it. There wasn't any pain. He'd done this too many times for there to be pain.

The blood dripped onto the dais. The second the juice touched the bioma.s.s, the walls of the shrine started to hum. Manjuele always liked to imagine it was the skulls doing the humming, not the shrine's engines. When he and the Cousin had cut open the Corporation man on the dais, the day they'd left Dronid, the walls had screamed, really really screamed.

The stuff on the dais bubbled. That was the shrine at work, Manjuele knew, taking the UNISYC woman's biodata to pieces, a.n.a.lysing it, and using the engines to make the right connections through s.p.a.ce-time. Manjuele said a prayer, in his own native language. The family was good about stuff like that. They let you talk to the Spirits whatever way you liked.

A shape fazed into existence in front of him. Like a little hologram, a fuzzy blue humanoid figure, hovering about a half a metre off the ground. It was the UNISYC b.i.t.c.h. She was lying on her back, staring up at something above her head.

The way was open. Contact had been made. Now, thought Little Brother Manjuele, for the really nasty part.

Mr Qixotl took his place at the table, and had a good long stare at the faces around him. Colonel Kortez and Cousin Justine both looked serene; Qixotl might have believed they had something in common, if he hadn't known that one was as mad as a duck and the other was part of the most dangerous politico-terrorist organisation this side of Event One. Homunculette was biting his nails, Trask was his usual charmless self, and E-Kobalt stood silently on the far side of the table, its head still twisting from side to side. In the Shift's place, Qixotl had erected a small noticeboard, so everyone could read the ent.i.ty's messages.

Qixotl flashed them all a smile. 'Right. Before we get down to it, maybe I should say a quick word about the way this auction's going to work. Now, obviously, I don't want money for the property. Y'know, most of us here are time-active... pardon me, Colonel... and we all know how useless hard cash is if you're skimming time-zones. What I'm going to do is this: I'm going to start by asking each of you what kind of offer you're thinking of making, just roughly, and I'll let you argue your cases in a kind of rational, orderly manner afterwards. That OK with everyone?'

He looked for a reaction. Kortez was nodding, but n.o.body else looked very enthused. The muzak became 3 per cent more irritating than it had been previously.

'Good,' Qixotl mumbled, trying to sound like he meant it. 'So. Who wants to start the bidding?'

There was a moment's silence. The bidders were all trying to out-stare each other, Qixotl realised. The Kroton was the first to speak, presumably because it didn't have any eyes and thus felt left out of the staring match. 'You-re-quire-mi-lit-ar-y-spe-ci-fi-cations. Tech-no-lo-gi-cal-da-ta.'

Qixotl nodded. 'That's right, Mr E-K. That's the kind of thing I'm after here. Got any suggestions, have we?'

'On-be-half-of-the-Kro-ton-Ab-so-lute-I-am-au-tho-rised-to-off-er-you-the-be-ne-fits-of-Kro-ton-weapons-tech-no-lo-gy.'

Mr Qixotl wasn't sure how to respond to that. He hadn't researched the Krotons at all, so he had no idea what Kroton weapons technology was actually worth. 'I'm with you so far. What kind of hardware are we talking about?'

'In-re-turn-for-the-Re-lic-you-will-be-supplied-with-the-en-ti-re-mi-li-ta-ry-out-put-of-the-pla-net-Quart-zel-Eight-y-Eight-for-one-lo-cal-cal-end-ar-year.'

'Er. Quartzel-88. And is that good, at all?'

The Kroton's head rotated in an irritated fashion. 'On-the-machine-looms-of-Quartzel-Eight-y-Eight-the-Krot-on-Ab-so-lute-grows-its-most-pow-er-ful-weap-ons. It-was-on-this-plan-et-the-Ab-so-lute-produced-the-de-vi-ces-which-dec-im-at-ed-the-Met-a-trax-i-homeworld.'

Sadly, Qixotl had never even heard of the Metatraxi. 'Yeah, I'm sure. But what do these weapons do, exactly?'

'The-wea-pons-of-Quartzel-Eight-y-Eight-re-duced-the-moons-of-Szac-ef-Po-to-pow-der. They-en-sured-the-surrend-er-of-the-com-bined-for-ces-of-Crip-tos-to-phon-Pri-ma.'

'Can we have subt.i.tles?' Homunculette hissed.

HE SAID, THE WEAPONS OF QUARTZEL-88 WERE USED TO REDUCE THE MOONS OF SZACEF-PO TO POWDER, AND ENSURED THE SURRENDER OF THE COMBINED FORCES OF CRIPTOSTOPHON PRIMA, read the noticeboard.

The Shift was ideal for subt.i.tles, thought Qixotl. 'OK, listen. No offence, Mr E-K, but I've got to ask... so what?'

The Kroton's head spun alarmingly. 'I-do-not-un-derstand.'

'Well, sure, you can wipe whole planets. But, y'know, that's all a bit pa.s.se, right? I mean, a couple of decent-sized particle warheads could do the same kind of damage you're talking about.'

'The-weap-ons-of-Quartzel-Eight-y-Eight-have-re-peat-ed-ly-won-vic-tor-ies-for-the-Kro-ton-Ab-so-lute-ac-ross-the-Met-a-trax-i-bor-der-'

'I'm sure they have,' Qixotl cut in. 'Look, maybe you could think things through for a bit longer, come up with a more coherent proposal while the rest of us are talking, yeah?'

The Kroton's head did a 360-degree turn.

'If it's weapons you're after, I can make you a better offer than that,' s...o...b..red Homunculette. Mr Qixotl p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. Weapons technology was always a good investment, wherever you went in the universe, and he'd been hoping Homunculette would start thinking along those lines.

He acted casual, though. 'Oh yeah, Mr H? What did you have in mind?'

'The secret a.r.s.enal of Gallifrey itself.' Homunculette glared at Justine, as if to say "beat this". 'You know what my people are capable of, Qixotl. You've heard the legends.'

'Yeah, I've heard. The Demat Gun, the Hand of Omega.' Qixotl leaned back in his seat. 'Trouble is, Mr H, I've also heard a nasty rumour all that stuff got lost at the start of your war.'

Homunculette's smug look evaporated almost instantly. 'Don't underestimate us, Qixotl. We've still got some of the most advanced destructive technology in Mutter's Spiral available to us. How would you like someone to unpick your whole timeline and replace it with monkey biodata?'

'That a threat, Mr H?'

Homunculette clenched his teeth. 'I'm giving you an example of what Time Lord weaponry can do, Mr Mr Qixotl. That's all.' Qixotl. That's all.'

Qixotl stifled a fake yawn. 'Hmm. Pardon me saying this, Mr H, but I can't help noticing something about this war your people are fighting.'

'What about it?'

'You're losing it. Badly. So your weapons can't be that great, yeah?' He turned to face Justine, leaving Homunculette to fume. Yeah, it was all a bluff. Yeah, Time Lord technology would do very nicely, thanks. But at this stage, Qixotl's main aim was to up the ante as far as possible. 'OK. Cousin Justine. What does the old family have to say?'

'Hey,' the man shouted.

The blooms were still hovering above Bregman's head. Crude copies of her own face, dangling on the ends of sticky pink stalks. When the man had appeared out of nowhere, the heads had seemed more surprised than Bregman herself. They'd swung around to face him, and now they were bobbing up and down in an agitated fashion, hissing ineffectually.

The man didn't seem to be all there. A hologram, Bregman guessed, all blue and blurry. The face was Little Brother Manjuele's, and he was still grinning.

'You wanna get out of here?' the Little Brother asked. His voice crackled like an old audio recording.

Bregman shrugged. Manjuele laughed. 'Jesus H. You out of your head.' The hologram squinted at the hissing heads. 'Ugly suckers. Take after their momma.'

Bregman said nothing. And felt nothing, come to think of it. Her mind was already made up. She was going to stay here and die. There wasn't any point fighting this place. Chalk one for the BEMs.

'Asked a question, UNI-b.i.t.c.h. Wanna get out of here?'

'There's no way out,' Bregman told him. 'It's the vault. It's not going to let me go. It's never going to let me go.'

'Yeah? See, you think you got no way out. F'you, maybe not. Me, I got the shrine. Shrine's gonna find a way out for you.'

Bregman almost felt like laughing. 'You don't understand. This. The labyrinth. It's me. I can't get away from it. I can't get away from me.'

It made sense to her, anyway. She wondered if she sounded as mad as the Colonel to Manjuele. 'S'like I said,' the man drawled. 'Maybe you can't get out. We got ways.'

'Like what?'

'You give up to us. You give up, you get out.'