The heads were turning between Bregman and Manjuele now, like spectators at a tennis match. 'I don't understand,' Bregman said.

'Control rite. We got biodata. Your biodata. We can 'trol you from this end. Like a toy puppy. You give up to us, we get your tush out the hole. Got it?'

Bregman hesitated. Mind control. Another one of those things voodoo cults were supposed to specialise in. And maybe Manjuele was right. She couldn't escape the labyrinth alone, but with someone else inside her head, steering her by remote control...

If she let Manjuele into her skull, though, would she ever get her body back?

To h.e.l.l with it. It wasn't like she had anything left to lose.

'Tell me one thing,' she said. 'Why do you want to help me?'

Manjuele laughed again. 'Jesus, you dumb. You down in the vault, with the stiff. We get you out, you bringin' the stiff.'

'You mean, you're going to steal the Relic?'

'h.e.l.l, yeah.' The image of Manjuele extended an arm. Bregman thought he was reaching out to touch her, until she saw the knife in his other hand. 'You ready to give up now?'

'I'm ready,' said Bregman. Manjuele cut three lines across his arm, and let his blood fall to the ground, out of the frame of the hologram.

Then the Spirits came knocking. Bregman let them into her skull without a fight.

E-Kobalt rotated its cranial section fifteen degrees counter-clockwise, realigning its torso-centred sensory systems to cover the area to the polar south-south-west. There, on the other side of the table, the carbon-core organic unit identified as Cousin Justine was speaking.

'Our bid is essentially the same as that of the Time Lords,' the unit said. 'In return for the Relic, we're prepared to supply you with the technical secrets of the Faction. We're a spiritual organisation, of course, but our methods do have military applications.'

'Wait a minute,' said the Qixotl unit. 'Are you saying you're going to tell me how to do those, er, those blood rite things of yours?'

'Not all of them. Only those with destructive capability. I believe that's the field you're interested in. We don't give up our secrets easily, Mr Qixotl. We hope this offer will reflect the value we attach to the Relic.'

Qixotl raised an appendage. 'Well, y'know, I'm flattered. But I was hoping maybe for something a bit more... corporeal?'

'You consider our rites to be unreliable?'

'No, no. Not all all. Look, can we discuss this later? We can figure out details once we've heard what everyone's got to say.' Qixotl turned his exterior sensory apparatus towards the noticeboard next to him. 'Mr Shift? You haven't said much, so far.'

NO. IF YOU'LL PARDON ME, MR QIXOTL, I'D LIKE TO SEETHE NATURE OF THE OTHER BIDS BEFORE I MAKE MY OWN OFFER. WHAT I HAVE IN MIND IS, SHALL WE SAY, A LITTLE DELICATE.

E-Kobalt spun its cranial unit in a broad-band sensor sweep. It usually did that, when it was irritated.

It was being ignored. The Qixotl unit had heard E-Kobalt's offer, and cast it aside without a second thought. Now n.o.body was paying attention to the Kroton commander, however much it rotated its cranial unit or extended its frontal appendages.

This was an insult. Not just to E-Kobalt personally, but to the loomkeepers of Quartzel-88, and ultimately to the First Lattice of the Kroton Absolute itself. E-Kobalt had come for the Relic, and it considered this treatment to be a form of defeat. Needless to say, E-Kobalt-Prime of the Kroton Fifth Lattice didn't take kindly to defeat.

In the deepest crystalline connections of its brain, E-Kobalt began to put together contingency plans. It wasn't planning on going back to the Front empty-pincered.

E-KOBALT'S STORY

The Quartzline Front, campaign year F83

The planet had been cla.s.sified as Qu2296, although the Metatraxi, in their own ridiculous language, called it SkSki%ro+tho+ha=ve>n. Through the senses of its dynatrope, E-Kobalt could see the Metatraxi ships floating on the surface of the upper atmosphere. There were billions of them, literally billions, more than the dynatrope's tactical systems could comfortably count. The craft were arranged in a precise grid formation, each one exactly the same distance from its four neighbours, each one hovering at exactly the same height above ground level. E-Kobalt could only see the northern hemisphere from the dynatrope, but it knew the southern hemisphere would be the same. Not a single break in the pattern. In a way, it was admirable.

Only a handful of the Metatraxi ships would be occupied, E-Kobalt knew that much. The rest were dronehusks, hollow sh.e.l.ls constructed on the Metatraxi nesting-worlds, unintelligent semi-organics that relied on orders from the swarmleader to function. E-Kobalt shifted the dynatrope's sensors from one ship to the next, searching for the swarmleader's own vessel.

There; that was the one. The Metatraxi craft were identical in design, no visible difference between the dronehusks and the personnel craft, but there was a hole punched in the carapace of the swarmleader's ship. E-Kobalt had made the wound itself, two campaign days ago, when the swarmleader and its six-drone escort had run into the vanguard of the Fifth Lattice near Qu2101. E-Kobalt resisted the urge to open fire again. The Metatraxi would have shielded themselves by now, transmitting counter-frequencies to jam the Krotons' hyperbolic resonators. Besides, the ships of the Fifth Lattice were outnumbered by roughly ten billion to one.

E-Kobalt felt something tugging at its consciousness. The Metatraxi leader was sending a message, and the dynatrope was picking up the signal, trying to shunt it straight into the commander's nervous system. E-Kobalt acquiesced. Immediately, the features of the swarmleader, the unit that referred to itself as qQqa=mo+rna=t, etched themselves across its brain.

'Thi%s i%s yo+ur fi%rst and o+nly warni%ng,' qQqa=mo+rna=t announced, its jaws crunching and grinding as it spat the words out from under its sh.e.l.l. 'Thi%s pla=ne>t i%s u*nde>r the> pro+te>cti%o+n o+f the> Me>ta=tra=xi%. The> Kro+to+n A=bso+lute> wi%ll no+t be> pe>rmi%tte>d a=ny fu*rthe>r e>xpa=nsi%o+n wi%thi%n o+u*r ju*ri%sdi%cti%o+n. A=ny a=tte>mpt to+ a=ppro+a=ch thi%s pla=ne>t wi%ll be> co+nsi%de>re>d a=n a=ct o+f di%sho+no+u*r.'

E-Kobalt felt its head rotating in contempt. The Metatraxi had a code of ethics the Kroton Absolute found almost impenetrable. If a Kroton fleet had outnumbered its enemy on this scale, it would have opened fire without a thought.

They deserved to be dispersed, E-Kobalt decided. And, before qQqa=mo+rna=t could spew out another word, it sent the detonation order into the depths of the dynatrope's weapons systems.

E-Kobalt could have destroyed the Metatraxi vessel two days ago. It hadn't. Instead, it had blown a hole in the ship's carapace, and planted a crystalline spore in its hull. The swarmleader had been allowed to escape, to return to Qu2296. The spore had gone undetected by the Metatraxi systems, and it had been growing since the battle, readying itself for detonation. E-Kobalt had expected the enemy to use a dronehusk grid formation to defend Qu2296; it was a standard Metatraxi tactic, and the Absolute knew its enemy well enough by now. The spore had been created, by the loomkeepers of Quartzel-88, for just such a situation.

The spore exploded. E-Kobalt watched a smear of white spread across the carapace of the swarmleader's ship, as the exterior armour cracked and crystallised. Then the hull split open, and four spikes of solid crystal extended from the fissures, each pointing towards one of the four nearest dronehusks. The spikes had been grown from the matter inside the hull, E-Kobalt knew, turned to crystal by the chemical processes of the spore.

The spikes impaled the four dronehusks, cracking open their sh.e.l.ls, planting more of the spore material inside them. There was a brief pause, before those four ships exploded, too, sending out spikes of their own. E-Kobalt watched, satisfied, as the chain reaction continued. The dronehusks, without orders from qQqa=mo+rna=t, didn't even try to get out of the way. Those few craft occupied by Metatraxi pilots broke the formation, but the gaps in the grid weren't big enough to stop the spread of the crystal. It swept from ship to ship, in all four directions, expanding to cover the northern hemisphere. By E-Kobalt's reckoning, the dronehusks in the southern hemisphere would be gone by the end of the campaign day.

The planet's defences were down. The Kroton colony planters could move in, and claim Qu2296 in the name of the Absolute. Without another thought, E-Kobalt sent new instructions into the control systems of its dynatrope. The mission objective had been achieved. It had a duty to report back to the highest of the high, the hub of all tellurium-based civilization. The First Lattice of the Kroton Absolute itself.

Since it had become Commander of the Fifth Lattice, E-Kobalt-Prime had visited the First Lattice exactly one hundred and twenty-nine times, but the place still managed to make it feel inadequate. E Kobalt thought of the Lattice as a "place" because, like most Krotons, it wasn't sure where to draw the line between the ent.i.ties that controlled the Kroton Absolute and the city-vessel they inhabited.

Back on the homeworld, the First Lattice had been a great fortress, its foundations reaching deep into the crust of the planet, its sensory organs stretching almost to the clouds. But the Lattice had moved as soon as the war against the Metatraxi had begun, decades ago by the campaign calendar. The fortress had grown engines, turning itself into one enormous dynatrope unit. It had taken the neural energies of over four thousand Krotons to lift it off the ground and out into s.p.a.ce; the effort had exhausted all of them, but the sacrifice had been worth it. These days, the First Lattice was large enough to consume whole cities, though it was still navigated by only four minds, the Highest Brains that had overseen its growth over the centuries, and that now formed the heart of its structure.

E-Kobalt was still wearing its null-gravity body when it disembarked, its legs so long that it could have touched both sides of its dynatrope's control section just by flexing its joints. But even this form was tiny next to the tunnel ahead, the pa.s.sage from the docking nodes to the caverns at the core of the First Lattice. It took days to travel from one end of the tunnel to the other, E Kobalt knew that from experience. Even so, it began the the walk without a moment's hesitation.

Of course, it could have used some kind of vehicle. The pa.s.sage was wide, easily large enough to accommodate a dynatrope. But that wasn't the point. Above all else, the First Lattice was an object of veneration. If the four Highest Brains were to be approached, they were to be approached properly, and with the due decorum. Step by step. Kilometre by kilometre.

(It was a Kroton thing. No one else would have understood.)

Three days later, E-Kobalt arrived in the cavern occupied by the four Highest Brains.

The word "cavern" might not have been strictly accurate, as the area had been crafted by the sheer will of the Highest Brains, but it was large and empty enough to make E-Kobalt feel it had been there since the first tellurium-based life-forms had crawled out of the primal ocean. The floor was enormous, a field of polished crystal at the bottom of a shaft that stretched from the core of the First Lattice to the sensory organs at its very tip. If you fell from the top of that shaft, the rumours said, you'd fall for a full day before you hit the ground. Even among Krotons, there were stories like that.

Each of the Highest Brains was a cranial unit the size of a standard habitation block, a single flawless crystal that no longer had any need for legs or weapons attachments. Intake tubes sprouted from every available surface, sucking matter from the jagged white walls of the cavern. High overhead, the Brains were linked by delicate neural connections, and from the ground E Kobalt could see other Kroton units using them as walkways, making their way from neural port to neural port, inputting new data from Kroton-occupied worlds along the Quartzline Front.

But as the Commander of the Fifth Lattice, E-Kobalt-Prime had the honour of standing on the floor of the cavern, and thus holding the full attention of the four. The news of the victory at Qu2296 would already have been received and processed, days ago, but Lattice commanders were expected to report to the Highest Brains in person. It was the way of things.

'YOUR-PUR-POSE-IS-TO-BE-A-MEN-DED,' said the Highest Brains, in perfect harmony.

Their voice shook every nerve in E-Kobalt's body. The commander was surprised, even a little disappointed. It had expected questions about the battle against the Metatraxi. Honours, perhaps. Not this. 'I-do-not-un-derstand,' it said, hoping its legs wouldn't shatter.

'YOU-WILL-WATCH-THESE-ME-MO-RY-RE-CORDS. YOU-WILL-UN-DER-STAND.'

So E-Kobalt spun its cranial unit, aligning its senses with the cavern walls. As ever, the walls were alive with fizzing, flickering images. Every part of the cavern was in tune with the minds of the Highest Brains, so as the four mulled over the information they received from the other Kroton units, their thoughts and memories were projected across the smoother surfaces. Usually, however, it was considered impolite to look.

As E-Kobalt retuned itself, it realised it was watching a record of events on one of the biped-infested worlds at the edge of Kroton s.p.a.ce. It saw the colony through the eyes of the Krotons who'd first landed there. It saw the planet being crystal-formed, it saw the native humanoids cower from the might of the advancing Kroton army, and it saw the way the Absolute had cleverly utilised the mental energies of the bipeds to enhance its own power supplies.

Then the mood of the memory changed. E-Kobalt watched Kroton units exhausting, disintegrating. It watched the bipeds rising up against their rightful masters. It watched one particularly striking humanoid, a male unit with curly blond fur and clothes so bright they seemed deliberately designed to jam Kroton sensory systems. It watched this individual gloating, as all but four of the Krotons on the planet were destroyed. Those four were allowed to go free, to return to the First Lattice. Almost as if the biped wanted to give the Absolute a message.

'THIS-ME-MO-RY-WAS-RE-CORD-ED-SE-VEN-CAMPAIGN-YEARS-A-GO,' the Highest Brains chanted. 'WE-MADE-THE-DE-CI-SION-NOT-TO-RE-VEAL-ITS-CON-TENTS-TO-THE-REST-OF-THE-AB-SO-LUTE.'

That made sense, E-Kobalt reasoned. If the underlings found out that a Kroton occupation had been fought off by a mere humanoid, morale would have suffered. 'The-bi-ped-re-spon-si-ble-for-the-up-ri-sing-must-be-i-den-ti-fied,' E-Kobalt noted. 'Its-spe-cies-may-be-a-threat-to-the-se-cur-i-ty-of-the-Ab-so-lute.'

'THE-BI-PED-I-DEN-TI-FIED-IT-SELF-DU-RING-THE-UP-RI-SING. IT-IS-KNOWN-AS-THE-DOC-TOR. IT-RE-FERS-TO-IT-SELF-AS-A-TIME-LORD.'

Time Lord? E-Kobalt hadn't heard the term before, but it suggested horrible things about the alien's abilities. 'Is-an-y-thing-known-a-bout-this-species?' it asked.

The cavern was filled with a deep and frosty rumbling. The four were conversing in tones below the sensory range of most Krotons, E-Kobalt guessed. 'SINCE-THE-AB-SO-LUTE-EN-COUNTERED-THE-DOC-TOR-WE-HAVE-BEEN-SEARCHING-FOR-A-NOTH-ER-TIME-LORD-SPE-CI-MEN,' the Highest Brains declared, eventually. 'NOW-WE-HAVE-LO-CA-TED-ONE. THIS-IS-WHY-WE-ARE-BRIE-FING-YOU-ON-THE-SIT-U-A-TION.'

And with that, the Highest Brains extended a limb from an access port high overhead, a tendril easily as long as the cavern was wide. E-Kobalt saw it curling upwards, reaching out for a fissure in the wall. It scooped something out of the fissure, then lowered it towards the ground.

The object was a life-form. A biped, wrapped in a coc.o.o.n of oxygen gel, to keep it functional inside the atmosphere of the First Lattice. The humanoid wriggled in the grip of the tendril, its features indicating either terror or revulsion, E-Kobalt wasn't sure which. Its skin was pink and soft, though most of its body was covered by a layer of thin black fabric. The purpose of this material wasn't entirely clear, as it certainly wasn't strong enough to be armour. On top of the biped's cranium was a dome of much stiffer fabric, with a circular rim around its edge.

'THIS-IS-A-TIME-LORD,' the Highest Brains told E-Kobalt. 'WE-BE-LIEVE-IT-IS-A-SURVEILL-ANCE-UN-IT.'

'I'm not a spy!' the Time Lord squeaked. Its voice was tiny, compared to that of the four. 'I'm just a civil servant!'

'SILENCE.'

E-Kobalt scanned the biped carefully. 'Where-was-this-un-it-lo-ca-ted?'

'ON-THE-PLA-NET-DE-SIG-NA-TED-Q-U-1-3-3-3. THE-PLA-NET-IS-UN-IN-HAB-IT-ED. WE-HAVE-NOT-BEEN-A-BLE-TO-LO-CATE-THE-CREATURE'S-VESS-EL.'

'I only stopped off to get my bearings,' the Time Lord wailed. 'I didn't know the planet was yours. I'm sorry. Honestly, I'm sorry. And I don't know what happened to my capsule. Really. The High Council must have taken it back to Gallifrey by remote control, after you found me '

'Gall-if-rey?' queried E-Kobalt.

'THE-HOME-WORLD-OF-THE-TIME-LORDS,' the Highest Brains explained. 'THIS-UN-IT-WAS-RE-TURN-ING-FROM-A-PLA-NET-IT-REFERS-TO-AS-DRO-NID. THE-TIME-LORDS-ARE-PRE-PAR-ING-FOR-WAR.'

'Against-what-force?'

The tendril squeezed the Time Lord, and dangled it in front of E-Kobalt's senses. The Time Lord shrieked. 'Please! I can't! I can't tell you! I have to keep the secrets of the High Council, they don't want anyone to know what they're doing. I can't tell you about the war. I mean it.'

'Tell-us-or-you-will-be-dispersed.'

'I can't! Don't you understand? I've got a psychic tripwire in my head. All civil servants are fitted with them, it's standard practice. If I try telling you about anything secret, I'll set the tripwire off. I'm serious. I'll have a psychic seizure. I'll be killed.'

E-Kobalt addressed the Highest Brains. 'Is-the-bi-ped-telling-the-truth?'

'WE-BE-LIEVE-SO.'

'Then-we-can-not-gain-the-re-qui-red-da-ta-from-this-un-it?'

'NO. BUT-IT-MAY-STILL-BE-USE-FUL. WE-HAVE-AL-READ-Y-AN-AL-YSED-THE-TIME-LORD'S-BI-O-LO-GI-CAL-PROFILE. ITS-GE-NE-TIC-STRUCTURE-HAS-BEEN-MA-NIP-U-LA-TED.'

The Time Lord's head bobbed up and down, as if it were having trouble aligning its sensory systems. 'It's true. Please, I can't tell you the details, the tripwire... but it's true, yes, I admit it. I've got things wired into my biodata.'

'Explain.'

'Oh, no, I can't... I mean... things. The Ra.s.silon Imprimature. It's how we control our, er, our vessels. It's all in my biodata. I mean, there are other things, too, but... please, don't ask me. Please.'

'MA-JOR-MO-DI-FI-CA-TIONS-HAVE-BEEN-MADE-TO-THIS-UN-IT'S-BI-OL-O-GY. IT-IS-CA-PA-BLE-OF-COMPLETE-PHY-SI-CAL-RE-GEN-ER-A-TION. THERE-ARE-OTH-ER-GE-NE-TIC-FEA-TURES-WE-CAN-NOT-a.n.a.lYSE. WE-BE-LIEVE-THEY-MAY-BE-IN-HE-RENT-WEA-PONS.'

E-Kobalt felt its legs tremble underneath its body. Inherent weapons. Krotons were capable of growing armaments, and attaching new ones to their exterior sh.e.l.ls, but to actually have an a.r.s.enal inside your genetic structure...

Every Time Lord was a walking warhead, E-Kobalt concluded. No wonder the being known as "Doctor" had been able to defeat an entire Kroton colony. 'This-un-it-is-not-des-ig-na-ted-for-mil-li-ta-ry-pur-po-ses?' it queried.

The Time Lord wobbled its cranial unit from side to side. 'No, no. I told you, I'm a civil servant. That's all.'

'Then-Time-Lord-mi-li-ta-ry-un-its-are-fit-ted-with-more-pow-er-ful-in-he-rent-wea-pon-ry?'

'What? Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose they are. I mean, the Doctor '

The tendril tightened. The Time Lord gasped for air. There was a terrible rumbling in the air of the cavern. 'THIS-UN-IT-IS-FA-MI-LI-AR-WITH-THE-DOC-TOR.'

'The-Doc-tor-is-a-Time-Lord-mi-li-ta-ry-un-it?' E-Kobalt enquired.

'Well... sort of,' the Time Lord gasped.

'The-Doc-tor-will-be-par-tic-i-pat-ing-in-your-war?'

'We hope so. We sent out a call, when we found out what the enemy was planning. We asked him to come to... to Dronid. We wanted his... help... with the battle. Please, you're crushing my ribcage...'

'Did-the-Doc-tor-respond-to-your-summons?'