The Doctor seemed unaffected by his own words, a faint smile on his lips.'But not more deeply than I do.'

Conaway shivered.

The Doctor shook himself. 'You know, you're right. I'm being indulgent. I'm worried about a friend, that's all. She thinks she knows everything.'

'And does she?'

'I'm very much afraid she knows all she needs to know, yes.' Suddenly it made sense. 'I didn't realise you had children.' Silence.'I'm sorry. It's just that you don't -'

'- seem the type?' A self-deprecating laugh. 'I'm not. But consider the roles we fulfil. The function of a parent is to enable their children to survive and the function of a child is to enable its parents to grow. Symbiosis. Happens everywhere. Any planet. You name it. I've seen thousands. That's the thing. The one inalienable thing that binds everything and everyone together. It's more important than anything, anything at all. It transcends even death.' A hesitation. 'And I don't understand it. IVe never felt it.' A subtle shift of his body placed his face in shadow against the brilliant stars.'I've died. I've died many times, in fact. But IVe never had "proper" children. Does that surprise you?'

'Honestly? Yes and no. If you are as you seem to imply, virtually immortal and capable of bodily regeneration, then the psychology is consistent. If not, if you're lying, then... at least it makes you an interestingman .'

He said nothing. Another subtle shift of his body and his attention was directed once more at the stars. 'It's a compliment.'

'And I thank you for it, Surgeon Major Conaway.' He fished in his pocket and handed her something vaguely damp and bedraggled.

Conaway shook her head in astonishment.'Lilies? For me? How thoughtful.'

'I like them very much but they're going to die if I keep them in my pocket much longer.'

She smiled. 'Who says you don't understand anything about children?'

Instead of responding positively to her gambit he simply added, 'Of course there's no guarantee they'll survive out here any longer or better at all.'

And that, Conaway acknowledged with some irony, reflected a deeper truth than her own optimistic but superficial metaphor.

Belannia XXI was a messed-up planet. Traumatised at birth during the formation of the solar system and bullied by the proximity of other nearby planet ma.s.ses, the medium-sized gas giant had the wrong sort of atmosphere, the wrong sort of gravity and the wrong sort of temperature to support Belannian life. Its atmosphere was composed of a nondescript mixture of inert gases, useless even for conversion to conventional fuel. Its radiation belts were just dangerous enough to prevent the use of its three largest moons as colony worlds, or even as supplies of certain rare Earth metals or water ice which existed there. In short it was a planetary subsystem that seemed by design to be the most useless piece of real estate in the entire solar system.

Therein, ironically, lay its strength.

Used for many generations as a weapons dump by the inhabitants of the inner and middle system, the planet and its moons had in recent centuries become even more dangerous. Everything from nuclear to chemical and biological weapons had been stored here by robot freighter. Software viruses, matter discontinuities and other technological nightmares had been abandoned here under a natural lock and key more effective than any devised by a Belannian. An even half-dozen civilised worlds were civilised now only at the expense of this dour and hapless world, a -world whose adulthood was even more troubled than its youth, thanks to the technological prodigality and moral turpitude of its neighbours.

Were there any life extant at all within this wasted system, no doubt there would nave been many problems. Fortunately, aside from a smattering of anaerobic material in the high-pressure deeps of Belannia XXI's atmosphere and a small military fort orbiting beyond the radiation belts in order to monitor the state of the abandoned material, there was no life whatsoever.

This, again ironically, merely added to Belannia XXI's eventual importance.

The subsystem of gas giant and two large moons was currently the site of an experimental terraforming process, hard at work converting landscapes that were invariably lethal into ones that were merely horribly dangerous.

Meanwhile, with a neat conservatism but typical disregard for any potential long-term consequences, five and a half centuries of lethal shenanigans, in the form of technological and biological planetkillers, had been launched by a fleet of robot orbiters into the heart of the Belannian sun.

'Sweep the mess under the carpet and build a paradise on top.' The Doctor's words were quietly spoken. They came to Conaway clearly through her s.p.a.cesuit radio. Her own words found it harder to compete with the crackle and fizz of radiation impinging constantly upon the transmission. It was an uncomfortable feeling to know the radiation was impinging upon her own body with equal relendessness, the suit being the only thing standing between her and a moderately unspeakable death.

'You make it sound like an accusation.'

'Not at all. Think of it... well, more like evolution.' The Doctor stooped to collect more samples from the slagged surface of Belannia XXI's larger moon, tucking them into a series of shielded canisters. 'Regrettably.'

Conaway trudged across the sculpted landscape beside the Doctor. Machines as big as small hills glided across the horizon. The machines had no lights. There was no one here to warn of their presence. Belannia XXI hung, an arc of orange-green, low against the horizon, a seething, morbid backdrop to the machines' indefatigable work.

'Doesn't look much like paradise to me.'

'Von Neumann had the right idea. And Clarke. Machines. Machines building machines. Slag, pollution, chemical exchanges, acid rain, smashed rock, rea.s.sembled molecules. And then one day a fresh breeze... lilies... sunshine... frogs.'

'People.'

'Oh, many, many people.'

"That's why we do it'

"That's why you get the machines to do it for you.'

"There's a distinction?'

'Ask the machines.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Humility. Excellent.' The Doctor filled another canister with faindy energetic slag.

Conaway shook her head.'Sarcasm. Excellent.'

The Doctor stood up, continuing apparently widiout noticing her barbed comment. 'Does anyone ever stop being bound up in the vision of their own bright future long enough to ask themselves what the machines might be thinking of all this?'

"The machines? Thinking?'

'Yes. I'm sorry, was that a hard idea to grasp?' he asked.

'Well...'

'I can see it was. I'm talking about slavery. Servitude. Removal of choice. A concept dating back more millennia than I care to recall.'

'You imply the machines have a choice.'

'Don't they?'

'Why would they? They're just machines.' 'Of course, I understand. They're just collections of molecules a.s.sembled in particular ways; a conglomerate of symbiotic systems learning to perform a function; one they perpetuate themselves to achieve.'

Conaway uttered a short laugh. 'A shallow a.n.a.logy. They're not parents; they don't teach their children. They don't have children. They don't have art; they don't have philosophy and they don't have religion either. They're just a bunch of circuits through which electricity flows.'

The Doctor turned to glance at Conaway through his helmet visor. 'Tell me what makes your brain any different.'

'You're not getting me on that one. If we knew how the human brain worked for certain you can bet we'd be building more efficient machines.'

'But would they be machines any more?'

'We came here to collect samples, not argue philosophy. My radiation alarm is telling me things I don't want to know. Let's get back to the ship and get out of here.'

'You go. I quite like the rain.'

'Even when it's composed mostly of gamma particles?'

'Alpha, beta, gamma... They all have to work a bit harder to get through my thick skin.'

Conaway blew out her cheeks. 'Down to you, then. I'm off She turned.

Facing her was a figure dressed in military armour holding a very large gun.

'Ah,' she said, surprised to recognise the figure. 'Don. h.e.l.lo. Doctor,' she added brightly as an afterthought,'I'd like you to meet Major Smoot. Donarrold Lesbert Smoot.'

The Doctor nodded distractedly: 'I a.s.sume from your tone of voice Major Smoot's somewhat imposing weapon in fact poses little threat.'

Conaway thought about that for a second.

While she was thinking Smoot shot them both.

Chapter Four.

The contractions were only seconds apart now. Maresley was... the expression on her face was...

Harome felt his heart lurch. She was so beautiful. She was in so much pain but she was so beautiful. Her presence lit up the delivery room with an indescribable radiance, something he felt rather than saw. It moved through him, blasted him raw with its energy, left him sick and shaking. He grabbed a pa.s.sing nurse. 'Is anything wrong? Is there something wrong? Why does she look like that?'

The nurse said rea.s.suringly, 'Everything's fine, Mr Janeth. Your mother looks like that because it hurts. That's to be expected with natural childbirth. The lack of anaesthesia. She'll be fine.Your brother is going to be fine too. You can watch his heartbeat on this monitor if you like. Now, please, if you want to be present during the birth, you have to let us work.' He turned away from Harome to rejoin the small group of medical staff hovering around Maresley.

Harome watched the nurse return to work, his mind whirling with images and feelings - incredible, inarticulable feelings, inexpressible except as a sound crossed between hiccups and hysterical laughter.Brother They thought it was hisbrother coming into the world.

He moved closer to Maresley, and his hand sought her face. The hotcolddrenchedparchedrackedugly beautiful sensations made him sick, elated, disgusted, invigorated, all at the same time. He had no words for this. It sapped his strength and yet propelled him onwards at what felt like insane speed. No description, no book, no comic, no TV show or PC game had ever - could ever have - prepared him for this.

'I...' Her voice was like parchment, scrunched, crackling; the words squeezed out as if every effort would cost her life. Her breath, the staccato rhythm, a machine on the brink of collapse. And yet she went on. Hour after hour. Day after day. Eleven months - a normal pregnancy - and now this... this... awful, inescapable...

'I'm...'

Her acknowledgement of self became a gasp of pain. Her body jerked, and Harome jerked with her.

'Having a bit... of... uhh -' More pain, a shout - 'problem here.' Her teeth clamped together. Her jaw clenched. Her face crumpled. She twisted again. Her hand grasped his and mangled it.

'It's fine, everything's fine,' said the nurse.

But then the hospital shook and the lights went out and Maresley began to scream and Harome knew it wasn't fine at all.

Outside the hospital, things were not much better. The third-generation colonists on Farnham's World - largest of three now habitable bodies...o...b..ting Belannia XII - had received warnings of the spatial disruptions emanating from their sun but, typically, had chosen to exercise the pragmatic determination that had enabled them to build lives and homes on some of the most hostile real estate in the Bel system. Faced with a threat about which they could do nothing, the citizens of First Town elected to pursue their normal lives as far as possible - and be mindful of disaster if and when it should happen. This was not in reality such an ill-considered decision. After all, the colony had no s.p.a.cecraft - all such equipment having been converted to terraforming or agronomical function by their great-grandfathers decades before - and the trade ships that plied their piece of s.p.a.ce called infrequently at the best of times, and were in any case entirely inadequate to remove the entire population. Instead Mayor Jarold Farnham (Senior) had sensibly enough opted to use the terraforming machinery (of which there was currently a surplus) to excavate shelters, additional to those already located beneath City Hall, beneath the hills outside the town big enough to shield as many of the population as could fit into them from whatever dangers they were proof against. Obviously a shelter was not going to save them if the moon destabilised or the atmosphere became irradiated - but anything less was in the eyes of the settlers both defendable against and recoverable from.

They were nothing if not dogged, these people. The Mayor himself proved it by addressing a public meeting as the rock-chewers snuggled into position at the base of a line of hills outside the town.

The Mayor was a slight man. Small, insignificant almost. But by his own admission he was very tall when standing on his own personality. 'You can knock down our homes,' he told the a.s.sembled throng. 'You can destroy our farmland. But the people of Farnham aresurvivors .' A cheer of agreement from the crowd. 'It's what weknow ; it's what wedo . And it's what we dobest . At this very moment my daughter-in-law is proving me right. If luck's on our side sh.e.l.l deliver a son - but either way a child can only strengthen us. The future is what we make it-We will continue whatever the cost, whatever the odds. Because that is what wedo .'And he picked up a shovel, dug it into the ground and hauled a respectable ma.s.s of soil back over his shoulder.

Behind him, a kilometre away, the rock-chewers began to spit rubble.

The resounding cheer that echoed skyward at the conclusion of the Mayor's speech had barely begun when the ground shook, the sky flashed, the power failed - and the rock chewers, their beamed power interrupted by a series of downed antennae, ground to a halt before they'd cleared even the topsoil from the site of the proposed shelter.

A star cannot scream - nevertheless the force that emanated from the newly reborn main-sequence star Bel could be said in some respects to be at least a.n.a.logous to a scream. The force may not have consisted of the actual movement of sound through a medium, but its impact was felt for a large number of astronomical units from its immediate ambit. On the inner worlds of the solar system the force of the scream was enough to tear down mountains, fracture crusts, disrupt entire tectonic plates. Further from the source the physical impact was less dramatic, although the emotional results were no less profound. The scream lasted no more than a few hours - maybe half a day - but during that time one moon was reduced to asteroidal debris, inhabited continents across three inhabited worlds were laid waste and more than seventeen million people lost their lives.

The force of the scream diminished as directed by a peculiar variation of the inverse square law as it travelled outward from Bel. By the time it reached the orbit of Belannia XII, twenty-three minutes later, the power had dropped sufficiently so that no actual land ma.s.ses were in danger of dissolution. Nonetheless, the force still had sufficient energy to disrupt the radiation belts that circled the gas giant like dangerous reefs. Hard radiation sprayed around the planet like fountains. Atmospheric disturbances on the three terraformed moons multiplied a thousandfold.

The light show would have been considered beautiful - by any who saw it and lived.

On Farnham's World, the ground shook, buildings fell, power went out. Radiation counters began to tick ominously. Over the course of the next few hours and days the ticking formed a nightmare backdrop to the colonists' frantic efforts to dig themselves into the bedrock which they could only pray would shield them from the worst of the danger.

For two days the Geiger counters clicked, while clocks ticked away the moments remaining to those whose lives they measured.

Two days - yet for Harome Janeth it had been a lifetime. He ran now, stumbling through the shelter tunnels hollowed into the rock beneath First Town's City Hall. He moaned as he ran, doubled over, clutching his future in his aching arms. He talked to the future. Rea.s.sured it, sang to it, even. He told it of its mother, how beautiful she was, how brave. He voiced silent words which told of her love and his fury. Their loss. His words were gibberish, sentences incomplete, the ramblings of a madman. Harome didn't care. All he knew was pain and fear and it had broken him.

Now he was running from his feelings, from his fearful memories. Running from the friends who would have stopped him. Running into the future because the past was too much to bear.

The Mayor had forced him to come here. He didn't want to be here. He wanted to be out there. With those for whom there was no room. He wanted to be one with the lightning. The lightning that lathered their world with invisible death, the lightning that he had seen in Maresley's eyes in the moments and seconds before her life ended. The lightning he now felt sparking sheets of flame behind his own eyes. Maresley. Oh dear, Lord, Maresley!

One life over, another begun. t.i.t for tat. Maybe it worked like that for the G.o.ds but not for a man. Harome wanted more. He wanted it all. A child. A mother. A wife. A life for them both.

And, if he could not have all, then he would have nothing.

Behind him came the sound of running feet. Shouts.

'Harome! Stop!'

'It's your child Harome! Think what you're doing!'

But Harome did not stop, did not think. He was long past either, light years past. Clutching the squealing bundle of life he had helped shape close to his chest, Harome scrambled out of the entrance to the shelter, lifted his face to the sky and gave his son to the lightning.

Beyond the veil of storms, other eyes watched also, other minds considered, concerned for the welfare of a child. When the sun Bel gave voice again the force of the recent emission would be by comparison as the injured cry of a single child was to all the screams that ever were.