'Then you hope to find something that isn't a fake?'

'I believe,' said Chiltern seriously amazing how easy it was to talk to the man; something about his eyes, a pale dreamy tint Chiltern had never seen in the human eye before 'that we'd be fools to say that here, at the end of the nineteenth century, we've suddenly worked out everything about the way the world functions. Have you read some of the work in physics coming out of Germany? Or Charcot's accounts of hypnotism and hysteria? Those open completely new avenues for explorations of the mind.'

'I've studied Charcot.'

'Then you see. Our smug foundations of certainty are being undermined from every quarter.'

'And you welcome that? Most people are disturbed at the idea of the destruction of the world they know.'

'Well,' Chiltern said shortly, taking a cigarette from a box on the table, 'it all depends on what that world is, doesn't it?'

'Yes, of course,' his companion agreed soberly. 'You're an alienist, I believe you said. You must see a great deal of suffering.'

Chiltern glanced at him with respect. Most people who commented on his profession made remarks about how many queer or funny or frightening things he must see, as if the mad, having lost their selves, had lost their ability to feel as well. 'More than is compatible with a just God,' he said, lighting the cigarette. He offered the box to Smith, who shook his head. 'More than should be accepted.'

'Yes, I agree,' said Smith, his eyes on some inner vision. 'It mustn't be accepted.'

'So here we are,' Chiltern said drily, 'questioning God's master plan in a parlour full of people waiting to attend a seance. Radical thinking turns up in the oddest places.'

'Well, it would, wouldn't it? Ideas that threaten the centre are always pushed to the edge. The truth is forced to keep company with the silly and the rightfully scorned.'

'Exactly!' Chiltern sat forward a little. 'We expect truth to show up at the front door with its Sunday suit on and its shoes shined. But truth is indifferent to our notions of intellectual propriety. It will out!'

'Yes,' Smith agreed softly. 'Like murder.'

'Ah, the East,' the woman in the mauve turban with the black feather stuck in top of it like the tuft on the head of a quail. 'So mysterious.'

Anji smiled. She had found this to be the best response to anything said to her, as it was taken as more evidence of how mysterious and Eastern she was. Also, frankly, she was afraid that if she opened her mouth she would find herself crying, 'This is all nothing but genteel racist garbage!', which would be true but would upset the Doctor's plans.

Which, speaking of mysterious, were as obscure as ever. He'd come back from that magic show or whatever it had been in Newcastle very tight-lipped and obviously unhappy about something, but other than muttering about doing without partners, thank you, especially silent and lazy ones, had divulged nothing about the trip.

She glanced at Fitz, looking almost comically uncomfortable in his stiff collar and three-piece suit. Those absurd Victorian clothes. She had told the Doctor she would prefer to stay in the TARDIS throughout their visit to the nineteenth century rather than wrap herself in all those layers of cloth and he had cheerfully replied that a sari would actually be a better choice since they would be spending a good deal of time in Theosophist circles, in which India was considered the fountainhead of spiritual wisdom. Anji felt absurd in a sari as if she were playing dressing-up with the old photographs of her paternal grandmother for a model but at least it was loose and comfortable.

The Doctor, for once, actually fitted the period sartorially. His cravat and bottle-green velvet frock coat were a shade dandyish, but not outre, and he looked perfectly in place standing amidst the dark, overcarved furnishings, softly lit by gaslight. He was absorbed in conversation with a gaunt, fair-haired man of around forty, with an expressive mouth and faded, near-colourless eyes, who had been introduced to Anji as Dr Chiltern. She wasn't sure what his speciality was. She thought she'd overheard him say something to the Doctor about 'the phenomenology of personality' which didn't encourage her to eavesdrop further.

'I wonder sometimes,' said the earnest young man with puffy reddish hair who, Anji had discovered, was under the illusion that he could write poetry, 'whether the Anglo-Saxon races are too pragmatic for genuine enlightenment.'

Anji smiled enigmatically.

Their hostess hurried over. She was a plump, energetic woman whose briskness put her at odds with her guests, who tended towards the sensitive and lethargic. Aside from Chiltern, the turbaned woman and the self-described poet, these included a blonde girl of eighteen or so, plump and bored-looking, and her aunt, a straight-backed woman with an uncompromising glint in her eye, who said, 'How much longer, Mary?'

'Oh soon, soon. You can't rush the spirits, you know More biscuits anyone?'

'You are very kind, Mrs Hemming,' said puffy-hair, taking a biscuit from the proffered plate.

'Nonsense. One mustn't face a journey into the unknown without sufficient sustenance. Mr Kreiner, another biscuit?'

Fitz seized the biscuit gratefully.

'Miss Kapoor?'

Anji shook her head, smiling.

'I hope you don't find our food too vulgar,' said the turbaned woman. Anji thought she had said her name was Mrs Ainsley, but she wasn't sure she'd quite heard her. She smiled again in order to avoid giving her opinion of Victorian food. If everyone was so crazy about the East, why didn't they use spices?

'Our little group must seem very dull,' Mrs Ainsley continued, turning to Fitz, 'compared to the Golden Dawn and the Psychical Research Society.'

Fitz just stopped himself from saying that the Golden Dawn were some of the grottiest bores he'd ever met. He looked enviously and a bit resentfully at the serenely speechless Anji. 'I liked the Psychical Research lot,' he said.

'Oh really?' said the aunt. 'Don't you find their scepticism poisonous to everything we believe in?'

'Now, Helen,' said Mrs Hemming, rescuing Fitz from having to reply a relief, as he hadn't for the life of him been able to figure out what any of these people believed in. The theorising he'd heard had stuck him as an immensely overcomplicated structure enclosing a centre vague as mist. 'They're very respectful. A movement needs well-intentioned critics.'

Helen sniffed. 'Perhaps the spirits do not agree.'

'Right,' said Fitz. 'That would explain why they never show up for the researchers. Wouldn't it?' he finished weakly when everyone stared at him.

'I've written a poem about ghosts,' said puffy-hair.

'Except for poltergeists, of course,' said Fitz, attempting to alleviate any offence. 'Lots of those, aren't there? Banging around everywhere.'

'A lower lower spirit,' said Helen coldly. 'Mindless and destructive.' spirit,' said Helen coldly. 'Mindless and destructive.'

Unaccountably, her niece giggled.

'In it, I call them "pale ether-shrouded wanderers".'

'We should love to hear it, William,' said Mrs Hemming diplomatically, 'but Miss Jane may be ready at any moment, and I should hate to have to interrupt you.'

'Have you met Yeats?' Mrs Ainsley said to Fitz. 'I think he Is such a genius. The Irish, you know, are a primitive people and nearer to the spirits than we.'

'He's the poet, right?' said Fitz carefully. 'The one with all those theories about the phases of the moon?'

'You have have met him then?' met him then?'

'Well, mostly he talked to Anj uh, Anji, uh, Miss Kapoor.'

'Ah. Well, of course, he would would.'

Mrs Ainsley smiled at Anji, who smiled back.

'We have all lost someone!' said William suddenly. 'That's why we are here!'

'I haven't,' said Helen shortly. 'That is to say, I haven't,' said Helen shortly. 'That is to say, I have have, but Phylemeda and I are not here to talk to Jerome.'

Probably didn't talk to him when he was alive, Fitz thought. And lucky him. As if reading his thoughts, Helen fixed a beady eye on him: 'And whom have you lost, Mr Kreiner?'

'Uncle,' said Fitz quickly. 'Uncle Bob. Very close we were. Used to take me fishing.'

'And why do you wish to contact him now?'

'Well, you know, just to see how he's doing. How the fishing is on the other side of the veil. Hate to think there wasn't any, wouldn't you? I mean,' he faltered as her eye grew even beadier, 'being as he was so fond of it.'

'All our desires will be fulfilled in the beyond,' said Mrs Hemming kindly.

'What about now?' pouted Phylemeda. Her aunt and Mrs Ainsley stared at the girl with shock.

'I've written a poem about desire,' said William. 'Several, in fact.'

'I'll just go check on Miss Jane,' said Mrs Hemming. 'I'm certain she will be ready for us by now.'

Chiltern felt one of his headaches coming on. He swore to himself. The sensible thing would be for him to take his leave and go home and to bed with a supply of hot compresses that would probably hold the symptoms down to no more than a day. If he waited, the pain might be worse and would almost certainly go on for longer. But he was weary of being ruled by his migraines angry, if truth be told. He kept his seat in the stuffy little back parlour to which they had all retired for the seance. Constance Jane's 'spirit cabinet' filled almost a quarter of the available space, leaving the guests to sit jammed together on chairs imported from the dining room. Chiltern found himself elbow to elbow with Dr Smith and Aunt Helen, with Phylemeda on the other side of her aunt, and Mrs Hemming at the end of the row. Miss Kapoor was immediately in front of him, flanked by Mr Kreiner and Mrs Ainsley, next to whom sat the poet person.

A round table covered with an Oriental rug had been placed between the spectators and the cabinet, and behind this Constance Jane stood facing them. She was tall and a bit gawky, with a pretty face and a raw American accent. Her brown hair was apparently determined to slip out of the pins with which she'd secured it on top of her head. To Chiltern's practiced eye, she looked unhealthy, possibly even consumptive, and was certainly depressed her shoulders slumped, she rarely looked up, and her flat, American voice hardly rose above a mumble.

'Now I don't know how this happens,' she was saying. 'And I don't know why. I just know it does happen and it's a gift, and if you're given something, why, you ought to give something yourself in return.' She fingered a tambourine that lay on the table next to a gas lamp. 'Now, I'm going to go into the cabinet and contact my control, Chief Ironwing. And when he manifests, then you should ask your questions. Odd things might happen, they sometimes do, but there's no need to be alarmed.'

She entered the cabinet and seated herself on a little wooden chair. Mrs Hemming hurried to shut and fasten the cabinet door, then lowered the lamp flame till it burned blue and went out. They heard her return to her chair.

'A hymn is often appropriate,' she said, once she was seated, and began to sing in a clear voice, ' "And did those feet in ancient times..."'

The participants joined in with varying degrees of skill. Fitz, who didn't know the hymn, abstained, and he didn't think he heard Anji, though he could distinguish the Doctor's pleasant light tenor and Chiltern's baritone. A reedy soprano behind him must be Phylemeda. Everyone was just finishing the line about arrows of desire when, abruptly, the tambourine crashed down on the table.

Fitz jumped, and felt William and Aunt Helen do likewise. The singing stopped cold.

'I do not like it,' said a deep voice from within the cabinet.

In spite of himself, Fitz felt something like a chill creep through him. The voice was not only deep, but unnaturally harsh. He supposed Constance Jane could have produced it, but somehow it felt wrong.

'We apologise, Chief Ironwing,' said Mrs Hemming sincerely.

After a brief silence, the voice said, 'Ask me.'

Earlier in the parlour, they had drawn lots, and William had come up first. Now he said quaveringly, 'I want to talk to Mother.'

'Not here,' said Ironwing immediately. 'Who is next?'

'Wh-Well, wait. Wait. What do you mean, not there?'

'He only means that she's temporarily unavailable, William,' Mrs Hemming whispered. 'It's all right.'

'But I '

'Please,' she whispered.

William subsided.

'Who is next?' Ironwing repeated.

Fitz was next, but after William's reception he wasn't inclined to speak up. He had a feeling Uncle Bob wasn't going to fly.

'Mr Kreiner...?' Mrs Hemming prodded gently.

'Erm...' said Fitz.

'You mustn't be afraid,' Mrs Hemming continued reassuringly. 'Please, ask your question.'

'Ask!' barked Ironwing. Fitz jumped, as if a teacher had called on him unexpectedly, and blurted, 'My uncle Bob!'

'Bob's your uncle!' responded Ironwing and laughed heartily.

No one knew what to do with this, least of all Fitz. While they sat in confused silence, the tambourine suddenly shook merrily.

'Look, you nitwit,' said a completely different voice, 'what are you trying to pull?'

'Me?' said Fitz faintly.

'You've got no uncles.' The voice was peculiarly high, and it was impossible to tell whether it were female or male. 'Your parents are dead. You're what in the next century they'll call a loser, and you travel through time in a blue box with one not of this world.'

Mrs Ainsley made a bewildered noise.

'Fishing!' Fitz said desperately. 'How's the fishing over there?'

'Please,' said Mrs Hemming, 'may we speak to Chief Ironwing again?'

'Your solicitor has placed your funds in an investment that will fail in twenty days,' said the strange voice, apparently to Mrs Hemming. 'There will be a terrible war, by the way, but most of you will be dead by then.'

The tambourine smashed against the ceiling. Then it fell jangling to the floor. The voice began to sing in an unpleasant, babbling way.

'Oh dear.' Mrs Hemming started for the cabinet. Chiltern and the Doctor were on their feet. Beside Fitz, Anji stood up, so he did too, and they both hurried forward. Inside the cabinet, the song turned into a cough and the cough into gasps. Mrs Hemming grasped the handle just as the gasps became a shriek, and when she jerked the door open, Constance Jane, only the whites of her eyes visible, swayed and fell forward unconscious into Fitz's arms.

'Good catch,' Anji murmured later when they were all back in the front room. She and Fitz were standing in the corner of the parlour, while Chiltern tended to Miss Jane, who lay unconscious on the chaise. William the poet had swiftly and rather queasily made his departure, and Aunt Helen had dragged the unsympathetically curious Phylemeda away. Mrs Ainsley, apparently almost as overcome as Miss Jane, had collapsed in a chair and was cooling herself with a little jet-androse-silk fan, the draft from which made the plume on her turban bob back and forth. Beside Anji the Doctor, face thoughtful, watched Chiltern gently bathe Miss Jane's face and wrists with a damp cloth while Mrs Hemming hovered anxiously.

'Her pulse is almost back to normal,' Chiltern observed to Mrs Hemming.

'Thank heaven!' exclaimed Mrs Ainsley, her plume fluttering. Chiltern glanced at her bewilderedly, then returned his attention to Miss Jane.

Remembering her guests, Mrs Hemming brought over a tray with the heavy crystal decanter of sherry. Her hand shook slightly as she tried to pour, and the Doctor gently took over the serving duties. 'Oh, thank you,' she said apologetically. 'I'm ashamed to be so all to pieces. But nothing like this has ever happened before.'

'No?' said Fitz, genuinely surprised. 'I'd have thought it would be an occupational hazard.' Mrs Hemming seemed puzzled by the phrase, and Anji shot him a warning look. 'I mean,' he faltered, 'if it's your profession to, you know, be possessed, then '

Mrs Ainsley unexpectedly came to his rescue.