'Miss Jane,' said Nathaniel simply.

'What?!' the Doctor yelled. 'Are you mad too? I thought you, of all of them, had a moral sense!'

'All of them them?' Nathaniel echoed angrily. 'There is no "them", Doctor. There's only us.' He nodded toward Chiltern. 'There's only me.'

'You're not like him.'

'For God's sake,' Nathaniel cried, 'why do you think that's so? If he has no moral sense, it's because when we were split it ended up in me. If he's "evil", I'm responsible. And if I'm "good", it's to his cost.'

'Rubbish! That's what Sebastian believed about you, that your madness was his fault.'

'Sebastian was a complete human being. I am not!'

The Doctor stared desperately around the room. 'Too late,' he whispered. 'Is it too late? Is it happening?'

'Stop being melodramatic, Doctor! The machine has been used several times without causing damage to anything except the person in it.'

'It's cumulative cumulative, a kindling reaction. The fact that nothing has happened yet only means it's getting ready to.'

'That hardly follows.'

With a cry of rage, the Doctor wrenched his ankle free, losing a shoe, and hared down the aisle. Nathaniel sprang after him. Then, abruptly, almost comically, they both drew up short.

On the stage, the door of the machine was opening.

Miss Jane came out.

She stood gazing at them calmly. Her hair had fallen down on her neck. Absently, she reached up and freed it completely, then twisted it to hang neatly down her back. Her quiet eyes moved from one man to the other, but not, the Doctor noticed, to the back of the theatre. He glanced over his shoulder. Chiltern had withdrawn.

'It's not you, is it?' said Nathaniel. 'That is...'

'It is me,' she said. 'It's all of us.' She came down into the aisle, took Nathaniel's hand. 'Thank you.' She looked more carefully at the Doctor, fully taking in his condition. 'What's happened to you? Are you all right?'

'I ran into a revolving door,' said the Doctor. 'Where did you go?'

'I went back to before... to before something bad happened. And I stopped it. He must have been frightened, because he never tried again. He can't have, because here I am.'

The Doctor sank into a chair. 'You changed your past.'

'Yes. I did.' She frowned. 'Was that wrong?'

'Wrong?' said the Doctor. 'Well, maybe not "wrong" exactly. Dangerous and inadvisable and possibly disastrous, but no, I wouldn't say "wrong".'

'The Doctor is a pessimist,' said Nathaniel.

The Doctor knows what the hell he's talking about,' said the Doctor. He stared gloomily at Miss Jane. 'You seem to have got away with it. The trauma never occurred, you never split, and it didn't make that much difference to history because here you are, whole, and none of the rest of us has blipped out of existence. By rights, since you never split and therefore never became a medium, you should never have come to England and met Chiltern and been in a position to enter the machine but somehow the timeline just sorted that out. It does occasionally, when the event isn't that important.'

'It's important to me.'

'And I'm happy for you. Truly. But how well or badly your individual life goes is not the axis on which the universe turns. You were very lucky. We all were. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a machine to disable.'

He stood up.

'Doctor,' said Nathaniel nervously. 'I am going to sneak Miss Jane out past the guards and escort her safely to a hotel. Though I am not armed, I believe my presence will deter any but the most maniacal attacker, and how likely is it that we should meet such a person unless it were someone who had recently been dangerously infuriated?'

The Doctor started to say something then stopped. His mouth tightened. 'I see.'

'I would ask you to accompany us, but I'm afraid that the likelihood of such an encounter would then be greater.'

'But surely,' said Miss Jane, confused, 'we would be safer with three.'

The Doctor smiled at her and shook his head, then looked at Nathaniel calmly. 'I understand.'

'Yes.' Nathaniel offered Miss Jane his arm. She took it, with a puzzled glance at the Doctor, and he led her up the aisle. The Doctor watched them go. He heard the door shut.

For a moment, he just stood there. Then he turned and grimly mounted the steps to the stage. He crossed to the impregnable console cube, then to the machine, with its one mirrored door swung open, showing him his bloodied, hollow-eyed, ineffectual self. Could it even be be destroyed by ordinary means? destroyed by ordinary means?

Chiltern appeared at the top of the aisle, grinning. 'Don't try anything, Doctor. I can always track down your lady friend.'

The Doctor walked to the front of the stage.

'You're a gentleman, Doctor. If a bit of a contradiction.' Chiltern made his slow, ungainly way down the aisle. 'According to you, that machine can kill millions. Yet in order to save one life, you leave it intact.'

'I'm like that,' said the Doctor. 'Whimsical.'

Chiltern smiled unpleasantly. 'And you've left yourself alone here with me, knowing I want you dead. Aren't you worried?'

'Not particularly.'

'Why not?' Chiltern was at the foot of the stage steps.

'I'm expecting the cavalry.'

Chiltern paused. 'What?'

'Sorry. Anachronistic entertainment reference. It won't work, you know.'

'What?'

'Running yourself yourselves through the machine again.'

'Really?' Chiltern hobbled up on to the stage. 'Forgive my questioning your expertise, but it just worked for that young woman.'

'A different situation.'

'And the universe', Chiltern peered around elaborately, 'appears to be in place. At least this little piece of it.'

'Luck,' said the Doctor. 'Ever hear of it?'

'Only bad luck.'

'Well, you're going to have more of it once you go back through the machine. Probably end up with a blender in place of your head.'

'You know,' Chiltern looked him up and down, 'I was watching you from the back, and that contortion around you becomes more marked when you're nearer the machine.'

The Doctor blinked. 'An illusion,' he said quickly.

'I don't think so.'

'You only have one eye,' the Doctor pointed out rudely. 'That distorts the depth of field perception.'

'This has nothing to do with depth of field.' Chiltern's good eye wandered from the Doctor to the machine and back. The other one gibbered and drooled. 'You seemed disturbed earlier when I wondered what might happen to you in the machine.'

'Did I?'

'Yes. You did.' Chiltern took a shuffling step forward. The Doctor took a steady one back. Chiltern smiled. 'You seem to know a great deal about time travel.'

'I read a lot.'

'In what library? From what century?'

The Doctor took another step back and said nothing. Chiltern smirked.

'You've let me get rather close to you,' he observed, 'though not quite within my... reach. I suppose you think you can outrun me.'

'It had occurred.'

'Well, you're right, of course.' Chiltern nodded solemnly. 'Running is not one of my strong points since the '

One of his briers snaked out not toward the Doctor but into the wings. The brier yanked, and with a bang the front of stage fell open like a giant trap door and the Doctor dropped into the orchestra pit.

The Doctor yelled, as much in anger as in pain, and scrambled to his feet. Chiltern crouched at the edge of the pit, his face hungry and rapt. The Doctor spotted a door to the understage, darted for it and fell again when Chiltern whipped a bramble around his leg. He rolled on to his back, trying to kick loose. Chiltern laughed.

'You're in a bad spot, Doctor.'

The Doctor wrapped his hands in the edge of his coat, grabbed at the bramble. 'Chiltern, I'm warning you! You don't want to put me through the machine!'

'Methinks you doth protest too much.' Chiltern raised another long brier, waved it idly, then flicked it behind him. As if someone had struck a gigantic piece of crystal, a clear, penetrating note swelled through the theatre.

The Doctor's head jerked up. 'No!' He pulled savagely at the brier around his leg. 'You mad fool! Turn it off! Now!' He threw himself back as a thicket of thorns swooped down at him. 'Chiltern!' The brambles twined round his limbs. The Doctor tried to protect his eyes. The thorns scraped at him as Chiltern hauled him up from the pit. The sweet, pure vibration from the machine rang in his head. 'Oh please,' he whispered into his hands. 'Please don't throw me in that brier patch.' don't throw me in that brier patch.'

Chiltern dumped him on the stage and started pulling him toward the machine. The Doctor struggled, flailing for something to hold on to. There was nothing. The machine loomed closer.

'Don't do this, Chiltern!'

'Yes,' boomed a deep voice. 'Don't do it!'

The Doctor spat out another of those words he didn't understand. Of all the What timing! Chiltern stopped dragging him, and he turned his head and looked irritably up the aisle to Sabbath.

'I suggest you turn off that machine,' Sabbath advised Chiltern. 'And I assure you, it would be most unwise to put the Doctor into it.'

Chiltern was frozen in surprise. 'Who are you?'

'An expert in these matters.' Sabbath approached the stage, his eyes roving over Chiltern. 'Dear me, you're a bit of what is that modern phrase I've heard? a dog's breakfast.'

'I told you the machine was no good,' rasped the Doctor.

'No good under these particular circumstances, perhaps,' said Sabbath smoothly. 'But in the vortex, who knows?' His eyes gleamed triumphantly at the Doctor. 'I should hate to see it destroyed.'

'Destroyed?' said Chiltern. He was still staring, his mouth slightly open. The Doctor sympathised. Sabbath came on. He wasn't armed except for his cane, but the Doctor knew Chiltern couldn't handle both of them. Not to mention the Angel-Maker, who was no doubt around somewhere.

'Yes, indeed.' Sabbath started up the stage steps. 'Temporally speaking, the Doctor is an extremely unusual individual. One might say unique. I can't predict exactly what would befall the machine if you attempted to run him through it, but you may take my word that it would be calamitous. As he very well knows.' He eyed the Doctor with amusement. The Doctor gazed back sourly. 'He's a tricky fellow. Fools others into helping him find things he intends to destroy, for example. I dare say he was goading you on.'

'It would kill him.'

'And you. And, in a manner of speaking, the machine. But it would save Time. That's all that matters to the Doctor. Now please shut it off.'

Chiltern held his ground. 'I don't believe you.'

'You know,' said Sabbath, gaining the stage, 'I don't care.'

The Doctor made a sudden, desperate lunge for freedom. Chiltern staggered, then grabbed at him again the Doctor cried out as the thorns snagged in his flesh. He heard Sabbath's angry roar Chiltern must have attacked him too. The Doctor thrashed frantically as the brambles slipped around him like jagged-edged snakes. The machine's hum razored through his brain. It was happening, he could feel it. The stretching fabric, the snapping threads, one here, one there, one now, one then it would be just a few at first, one, then another, then another, and then they'd come faster, like the patter of rain before a downpour, and then Chiltern suddenly jerked and grunted. The thorns loosened. The Doctor batted and pulled at them furiously. Chiltern rolled away from him, snarling in rage. The Doctor writhed loose and leaped for the machine. As he wrenched the door open, he thought he heard Sabbath yell, telling him to stop, telling someone someone to stop, then he was inside. The central chamber was blank and empty. He plunged in and slammed the door behind him. to stop, then he was inside. The central chamber was blank and empty. He plunged in and slammed the door behind him.

Splinters of time hit him from eight directions. His head shot back, his back arched. He clawed at the transparent walls, whimpering. The pain... the force force... He began to turn, caught in some invisible circling current. In the mirror opposite, he saw himself, coatless, bloody, stretched in agony. Slowly he rotated. The next mirror floated into view. There he was, coatless, arching, scraping futilely at the wall It wasn't him.

The Doctor could barely focus. He tried to squint. It wasn't wasn't him. It was a smaller man, brown-haired, dressed in white, squinting back out of fierce blue eyes. He'd seen him somewhere, hadn't he? Dreamed about him? What him. It was a smaller man, brown-haired, dressed in white, squinting back out of fierce blue eyes. He'd seen him somewhere, hadn't he? Dreamed about him? What The next mirror drifted in front of him. The Doctor wondered if the time pressure was distorting his senses. For this wasn't him either, but a robust, heavy fellow in a motley coat, his face slack with reflected bewilderment. They watched each other move away. The Doctor shut his eyes. just keep them closed for a bit. Reorient. Give it a minute... There.

He looked. This time the man looking back was a tall, curly-haired, pop-eyed fellow in a long scarf, someone Tenniel could have drawn for Lewis Carroll. They stared at each other in amazement. The Doctor put out a hand. So did the other. Then he was gone, replaced by the reflection in the next mirror, a stylish, white-haired man in a velvet jacket.

A new wave of pain hit the Doctor. His head snapped back and hit the wall, his joints felt as if they were pulling apart. He was too weak to cry out. He would have fallen in a heap if the current hadn't borne him up, still turning him gently while his nerves crackled and short-circuited. Break, damn you! Break! You've never had a spanner like this thrown in you! Chew on me till your teeth crack. Grind me up till your gears lock. I'm the nail in your tyre, the potato jammed in your exhaust pipe, the treacle poured in your petrol tank. I'm the banana peel beneath your foot, the joker that ruins your straight flush, the coin that always comes up heads and the gun you didn't know was loaded I am the Doctor!

He fell. Around him, everything cracked and collapsed. The machine was shuddering apart, shaking itself to pieces. The lenses powdered into bright sparks. The roof slid off. The mirrors quivered on their base and then, one by one, fell shattering on their backs. Before the last one toppled, he glimpsed in it an elderly man, strong-featured and bright-eyed, crouched as he was, staring at him. Then that image fell too, and the Doctor huddled at the bottom of the still-standing inner chamber in the loudest silence he'd ever heard.

Nathaniel Chiltern and Constance Jane stood at Mrs Hemming's door. She had thanked him. They had said good night. Still they stood there.

'What will you do?' he said.

'Mrs Hemming talked of hiring me as a companion, and to help her in her spiritualist work.'

'Would you like that?'

'I would,' she said. 'The fact that I turned out to be a fake doesn't mean that spiritualism is. And it comforts many people.'

'Oh yes,' he sighed, 'the relief of suffering. It's the only worthwhile work, isn't it?'

She looked up at him. For a moment it seemed as if he might bend closer to her. But the moment passed. He raised his hat. 'Good night, Miss Jane.'