'What?'

'I may may have managed to make the sensors work on a fine enough level to detect the machine when it's off, just from traces of its activity. have managed to make the sensors work on a fine enough level to detect the machine when it's off, just from traces of its activity. May May have. The trade-off is that I've had to narrow the sweep area geographically to about forty square miles. I'm beginning in Devon and moving up through Wales, going from west to east.' have. The trade-off is that I've had to narrow the sweep area geographically to about forty square miles. I'm beginning in Devon and moving up through Wales, going from west to east.'

'How long will that take?'

'Three or four hours. Now,' the Doctor stood up, 'I want you to sit here and watch the screen and if you see anything anything, press this button on the, erm, pager.'

'What if I fall asleep?' said Fitz, nervous at the responsibility.

'Why would you? You look bright-eyed and alert to me. And I'll turn on the coffee machine as I leave.'

'Go where?'

'After that mirror.'

Chapter Twenty-five.

In the night, the Crystal Palace seemed constructed not of glass but of shadow and reflection. Not fully illuminated but lit at intervals by electric bulbs, it was from the outside a mass of soft darkness with glints of hard yellow light in its depths. As the Doctor moved swiftly along beside the building, the interior shadows wavered and moved with his passage, and the light came and went as if from behind wind-stirred leaves.

Over the river, the public clocks of London began to sound, not quite in order, so that there came an overlapping echo of bass and tenor and dull iron notes, shifting in shape and pitch as they fell across the water. one-twothree/ONE-tw/two-THREEone/three-oneTWO/three-threethree-three, all the threes ending and dying and fading away. The Doctor automatically checked his own watch. It read the same. Three in the morning.

He paused to consider the situation: a guard at each of the several doors, but none, so far as he could tell, inside. Each door guard periodically strolled up and down a length of the building, checking for anything suspicious. None of them struck the Doctor as particularly alert or concerned, which didn't surprise him. There wasn't much reason to break into the Crystal Palace when a funfair was there except to vandalise the exhibits, a noisy enterprise at which the perpetrator was bound to be caught. Guarding the place was pro forma pro forma.

Which made it simple for him to get inside.

For a second, he stopped in the middle of the silent fair the frozen rides and mute calliopes and gazed up to where the light tapered out and the ceiling blended blackly with the night. There was something eerie about the shadowed stillness of this place that was in daylight such a whirl of movement and colour. All that energy, now suppressed and sullen, as if the unmoving rides were waiting tensely to swoop, or pounce. The carved figures on the showfronts, their painted eyes shaded, had this same guarded, anticipatory stealth.

In the dim light, the Black Chamber of Secrets had a forlorn air, small and shabby compared to the elaborate showfronts on either side. As the Doctor approached, he thought of hapless, pathetic Scale, of Sebastian Chiltern torn to pieces by his own brother and Nathaniel Chiltern's stoically accepted half-life. So much pain from that infernal machine just on this small scale, and unimaginably, cataclysmically worse to come if he and Sabbath didn't find the renegade Chiltern. Wherever he was.

He picked the chamber's simple lock and eased open the door. The light from the midway, though faint, allowed him to see all of the small room. But just to be certain, he stepped in and lit the lamp.

No mirror. Not on a table in the centre, not propped against one of the walls, not he checked briefly behind the door. The Doctor nodded, sad but unsurprised. Well, at least this narrowed the field. How many places in London could a monster, his time machine and an extra mirror go? Back to Chiltern's clinic? Or would it have made just as much sense to stay His eye was caught by a gleam across the room. The only furniture remaining in the chamber was a draped table shoved against the far wall, a low, boxy thing swaddled in black cloth. The Doctor had taken it for a covered pile of sacking or folded canvas. Now he realised there was something sitting on it, an object so incongruous that several bewildered seconds passed before he took in what he was looking at.

A toaster.

It occurred to the Doctor that he might be dreaming. Certainly, everything suddenly had a warped, disorienting quality, rather like his reflection in the object's curved chrome surface, distorting and spreading as he walked slowly to the table and bent for a closer look. It was a toaster, all right one of those nicely solid round-edged ones from the 1950s, with chunky black plastic handles. The Doctor stood with his hands on his knees, staring foolishly, as if the thing might abruptly metamorphosise into something more period-appropriate, like a toasting fork. He reached to pick it up.

The table moved.

The Doctor sprang back. The table tilted, widened. This wasn't a dream. He was chillingly awake. He backed against the wall, helplessly, as the table curved, straightened and stood up.

For an instant, the black cloth parted, showing the Doctor what he had finally, much too late, guessed that, like a shiny metal tumour, the toaster was growing from a human back. The figure turned, slowly and clumsily, dragging its rustling robe, and things that the robe concealed.

'Doctor,' whispered Chiltern. 'So good to see you again.'

The Doctor's gaze had been fixed on the trailing robe, on an ill-shaped, restless bulge where Chiltern's left leg should be. Now he raised his eyes. Sebastian's face, Nathaniel's face, bruised where the Doctor had battered it with the gate, but otherwise identical. Except that there was something wrong with the right eye, which was wet and red and continually blinking as if from a tic, opening and shutting and opening and snapping, really, snapping open and shut, like... like a...

It was a mouth. A tiny, toothed mouth, biting at the air. Chiltern grinned mirthlessly, like a skull. He raised his left hand and the Doctor saw that the little finger was a wriggling worm. 'There are other... additions,' he rasped, 'of a more... personal nature. I won't inflict you with the sight, though they are or must be to some tastes, if not, alas, to mine quite fascinating.' He had limped closer. The Doctor could see the mouth in the eye-socket clearly now, see that there was hair around it and that the little teeth were sharp. A rodent's mouth. A shrew? A rat? Tears dripped from beneath its chin. Or was that saliva? The Doctor looked away.

'Oh no!' said Chiltern harshly. 'You'll look at me. You'll look!' He pulled open his robe. The Doctor smelled roses, and the next instant a tentacled mass exploded at him. He dodged but the stuff caught him, twisting around his chest and arms and throat, pinning him to the wall. He felt his skin tear in a dozen places but couldn't move his head to see what held him. Chiltern smiled his death's-head smile. Gradually, gracefully, there twined into the Doctor's view a sinuous branch of scarlet blossoms.

The Doctor shut his eyes in pity. Immediately, thorns pricked at his lids. 'Open, if you want to keep them.' The Doctor did. 'Did you enjoy my little disguise? I knew there was a chance you might show up here. I've been waiting. And when I heard you at the door, I couldn't resist trying to surprise you. I think we both agree I succeeded.' Again, the smile. 'Very gratifying. But just wait', Chiltern stepped back, 'until you see the piece de resistance piece de resistance.'

With a theatrical flourish, he swept aside his robe. Sprouting from his rib cage and occupying the space where his left leg should have been was a tangled, thick-briered rosebush.

'Always in bloom,' said Chiltern. 'A pleasant touch. I suppose it remains forever in the state it was in when we... merged.' From behind him, he pulled the long cord of the toaster. 'I'm sure you remember this. I've come to think of it as a prehensile tail.'

'You're in eight pieces after all,' said the Doctor, his voice choked from the strangling brier, 'but only one of them is fully human.'

'Very good. Yes, I came apart, and when I pulled myself together I pulled an assortment of other things with me. All from the same year. I believe it was 1957. The results are a bit ludicrous, don't you agree? I think the toast-making mechanism is a particularly good joke. It took me weeks even to figure out what it was was. That's all I've really learned about the future: toast is important. My, you're looking quite sad. I believe my plight has touched your heart. Does that mean you'll help me?'

'Isn't Nathaniel enough?' the Doctor gasped. Chiltern smiled, as if at a clever pupil. 'You never left Dartmoor, did you? Where did you hide? An old mine?' Chiltern just kept smiling. 'Then you came to him last night, worked on his guilt, talked him around. That's why he tried to get Anji away from me. You were going to kill me there.'

'And now I'll kill you here.'

'Why murder Sebastian? He wanted to help you.'

'Did he? He wasn't making much progress. In the meantime, I was living in a cellar. Now why', Chiltern moved in close again, 'do you imagine he locked me away? Do you suppose he thought I was mad?' The Doctor said nothing. 'What do you think?' He gave the Doctor a little shake. 'Hm?'

'I think you're mad as a hatter.'

Chiltern laughed. Then he lifted the Doctor and slapped him into the wall. He held him there, then dragged him down, slowly. The Doctor groaned.

'I always was you know,' Chiltern said confidingly. 'But he wouldn't let it be. He kept trying to cure cure me. And what about you, me. And what about you, Doctor Doctor? Can you cure cure me?' me?'

'You're incurable.'

Chiltern's remaining eye paled to the colour of dirty ice. 'Really?' he whispered. The brier uncoiled from around the Doctor's throat and laid itself gently against his cheek. A soft rose brushed his temple. 'You're certain?'

'Yes.'

Chiltern stabbed a thorn into the Doctor's cheekbone and drew it languidly down his face, laying the skin open. The Doctor hissed in breath. He felt the blood slide hotly out and run down his neck. 'Where is the mirror?'

'With its brothers.'

'The machine is here?'

'What strange eyes you have.' Almost wonderingly, Chiltern pushed the Doctor's hair back, then took a handful and turned his head first to one side then the other. 'It's easy to believe you're not human. Sebastian told me, of course. But I'd have known anyway.'

'How?'

'I can see it. Around you. I felt it too. It's difficult to describe. A contortion. As if right next to you everything were going more swiftly. Or more slowly.' Of course, thought the Doctor. Like the Angel-Maker, or Millie in her trance. The time-sense of the mad. Chiltern was still gazing at him, curious and speculative. 'I wonder,' he mused, 'what would happen if we put you you in the machine.' The Doctor's face went still. 'Dear me, you don't seem to like that idea.' in the machine.' The Doctor's face went still. 'Dear me, you don't seem to like that idea.'

'Chiltern,' the Doctor said carefully, 'you have to understand. Using the machine again could cause '

' hideous destruction beyond all imagining.' Chiltern stroked his hair softly. 'Yes, yes, I know I overheard you with Sebastian. What's that to me? I already have hideous suffering beyond all imagining.'

'All right,' said the Doctor angrily, 'let's reduce it all to you. You could die.'

Chiltern laughed. 'That's supposed to dissuade me? I fear you don't know your audience, Doctor. But do go on. I want to hear you try to save the situation.' supposed to dissuade me? I fear you don't know your audience, Doctor. But do go on. I want to hear you try to save the situation.'

The Doctor was silent. Chiltern's face changed. 'Such a good man, pleading for all those unknown lives. And yet, as I recall, you can be quite brutal if you feel the occasion calls for it. I refer to your energetic activity with that gate. You remember, don't you? It was something like this.' And he raised the Doctor and smashed him against the floor.

And then again.

And then again.

And then

Are you ready?' Nathaniel Chiltern asked.

Constance Jane held on to his hand, staring at the machine. It was beautiful, really. Shining and brilliant. It belonged on a stage. She looked around the small gas lit theatre of the Phantasmagorical Exhibit, reminded of some of the places in which she'd performed as a medium. The stage was bigger of course; she supposed the front part covered an orchestra pit. In the seating area, empty chairs held a phantom audience. Witnesses to her new life. But still...

'I don't know,' she said uncertainly. 'Perhaps Millie should do this. She's much bolder than I am.'

'That may be,' said Nathaniel, 'but as it happens, she's chosen not to be here.'

'She did choose, didn't she?'

'She appears to do what she wants.'

Constance nodded. 'I guess that means that she approves. Otherwise, she'd come out and stop me, wouldn't she?'

'I have no doubt.' He took her hand in both of his. 'I wish I could guarantee this.'

'Oh.' She looked up into his grave face. 'That's all right. No guarantee on anything, is there?' She turned toward the machine. 'Tell me what to do.'

'It's quite simple. I start the machine, and we wait while the time diffraction and recombination takes place. A light on the control board comes on when it's safe to enter. You enter through that panel with the glyphs on it. I close it after you, and you walk through the door to the inner chamber and into the past.'

She bit her lip. 'And what about you?'

'I'll do the same thing with my brother. Different time setting, obviously. The day when Sebastian put us through the machine. We'll go in together, and, I hope, emerge again as one.'

'So, if it works, I won't see you again.'

'I won't exist,' he said steadily. 'But, really, I don't exist now.'

'And if it doesn't work?'

'I imagine it will kill us. I hope so.'

She looked down. 'All right,' she said finally. She squeezed his hand and released it. 'Let's go.'

Nathaniel went to the control cube at the side of the stage. She kept her eyes on the machine. As she watched, it seemed to become brighter. She heard a sweet musical hum, piercingly clear.

Was the metal really gleaming more intensely? Or was she imagining it? She clasped her hands together till her fingers ached, unable to look away. Could she do this? It was only a few steps. Think of it that way. Just a few steps. And then she was there, and it was just a few more steps...

'You can go now,' said Nathaniel softly.

She started. Nathaniel crossed and opened the door. She walked toward it as if in a dream. She glimpsed the inner chamber, glowing with sunlight and shade. She saw a corner of a wooden porch, the white wall of a house. Yes. She raised her chin. Her step lightened. Yes. She let Nathaniel take her hand and guide her in, heard him push the door to. In front of her, the second door opened. She stepped forward.

Yes.

Nathaniel stood tensely outside the machine, arms crossed, almost shivering. He could use a pipe. No. No more of that. No more of that, whatever happened. Oh God, he thought, whatever does happen to me, let it work for her. Let it not turn out an obscene joke. If she... if she came back... changed, it would be better to... He paced to the edge of the stage. No. He couldn't do it. He wouldn't be able to kill her.

But the other one would.

I really should devise a name for him, he thought giddily. We can hardly go on calling each other Nathaniel.

Of course, it wasn't for much longer.

His head snapped up. There was a stumbling and struggling from the entrance. 'Is that you?'

'Who else?' His other self lurched into view. 'And I've brought a guest.' Chiltern heaved forward something entwined in thorns and dropped it in front of him like a heavy package. It groaned.

Oh God, it was a man. Nathaniel raced up the aisle. 'What have you done? Who is ' He stumbled to a halt. 'Doctor?'

'Hello,' the Doctor said thickly.

'Are you out of your Release him, for God's sake!'

Sullenly, Chiltern slid the briers away. The Doctor rolled limply on to the carpet. Nathaniel knelt beside him. 'This is monstrous!'

'Well, what do you expect from a monster?' Chiltern leaned sulkily against the back wall with his arms crossed, watching Nathaniel wipe the Doctor's bleeding face and examine his torn arms and chest.

'Are you badly hurt?'

'No.' The Doctor took the handkerchief from Nathaniel and pressed it to his wounded cheek.

'That should be sewn up.'

'No offence, but your sense of priorities is skewed. Where is the machine?' The Doctor started to get up. Casually, Chiltern sent out a brier to whip around his neck, jerking him back with a thud. The Doctor gasped in pain and annoyance. 'Can you call him off?'

'Let him go,' said Nathaniel.

Chiltern sighed. 'We'll compromise.'

He shifted the brier to the Doctor's ankle. The Doctor carefully stood up, bracing himself on a chair back. He saw the stage and went white: 'You're not using using it!' it!'