Chiltern looked at the Doctor in bewilderment, but his eyes were still on the woman in the armchair. 'Why is that happening?'

'How should I I know? It just is. I used not to be able to get out except when Miss Goody went into her medium act. But now I'm out more than I want. It's all strange now. I see things... Nothing looks right...' Her voice trailed off. She suddenly seemed frightened. 'How's it going to end?' Her head swivelled towards the Doctor. ' know? It just is. I used not to be able to get out except when Miss Goody went into her medium act. But now I'm out more than I want. It's all strange now. I see things... Nothing looks right...' Her voice trailed off. She suddenly seemed frightened. 'How's it going to end?' Her head swivelled towards the Doctor. 'You know, don't you? You know all about time.' know, don't you? You know all about time.'

'I don't know the future.'

'All the same to you. One big circle.' She squeezed her eyes shut. 'I'm getting a headache. I'm going now.'

'Not yet.' The Doctor caught her hand. She scowled at him and tried to pull away, but he held firm. He ran a finger along the back of her hand and up her arm. She froze. Like a rabbit with a snake, Chiltern thought. Perhaps he should stop this. But then her face calmed and smoothed out. The Doctor gently touched her forehead. She looked at him peacefully. The Doctor turned to Chiltern. 'You can ask her about the trauma If you want.'

'What?' Chiltern stepped forward. 'ls she...?'

'Hypnotised. Yes.'

Chiltern looked at her in wonder. The features were Miss Jane's, yet the face, somehow, was not. He sat on the edge of the bed, across from her. The Doctor went to the window; he seemed to have lost interest. Chiltern said, 'What's the first thing you remember?'

She was silent. After a minute or two, he probed gently. 'The first thing you remember.'

'It broke,' she said.

'What did?'

She was silent again, but just as Chiltern was about to speak, she said, 'She broke the lamp.'

'Miss Jane broke the lamp?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'It was an accident.'

'Was anyone else there when she broke the lamp?' No response. 'Was anyone else '

'Papa.'

'Was he angry that she broke the lamp?'

'Yes.'

'Did he strike her?'

'Yes.'

Chiltern looked at the floor for a second, then continued: 'And this is when you were "born"?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Had to come.'

'Why?'

'Had to come.'

'Why did Miss Jane break the lamp?'

'Already broken.'

'What do you mean?'

'Broken when I came.'

'How long had it been broken then?'

'On the floor.'

'Was anyone else there when you were born?'

'No.'

'How did you feel when you were born?'

'I was bleeding.'

'Had you cut yourself on the lamp?'

'No.'

'Why were you bleeding?'

'She was hurt.'

'How?'

'Her father hurt us.'

Chiltern looked at the Doctor, appalled. The Doctor was watching the woman expressionlessly, his eyes very pale. 'This is monstrous,' Chiltern said.

'Yes,' the Doctor agreed. 'But you've encountered it before.'

'Not in a young lady of refinement.'

'Surely you don't think only the poor are capable of dreadful acts.'

'But they have reason reason. The poverty, the hardship, the sheer crowding... Why would anyone who wasn't in such circumstances...?' He looked at the woman sadly.

'You believe that a virtuous and just society would produce virtuous and just human beings, don't you?'

Chiltern frowned, puzzled. 'Of course.'

'You're a good man,' the Doctor sighed. 'Shall we let this poor woman rest?'

Chapter Four.

Constance Jane did not rest. The man with the faraway eyes, Dr Smith, pulled her by the hand, very gently, back to herself, and then, still holding her hand, as if to keep her safe, lowered her into sleep. He couldn't know that there was no peace for her in sleep. There were dreams there. Rather than meet them, she woke up.

The two men were gone. She was lying on the bed on her side, curled up, clutching the shawl around her. She looked at the pattern of sunlit squares on the rug. Like a quilt. Or a checkerboard. She was a piece in a game, and she didn't know the rules. She didn't even know the game.

That was all right, she knew all she needed to know that the game, whatever it was, was finally over.

Realising that, she finally felt peaceful. She smiled at the sunlight on the rug and went to the window. Through the grid she could see green lawn, and some flowers. She wasn't locked in; she could go out there if she wanted. But to what purpose? Things were the same out there in the sun as they were in here in the shadows. The light couldn't put her back together.

She wished she could talk to the other one, find out what she was like, what she wanted, whether she were lost as well. Poor lonely other piece of herself. Perhaps they could write to each other, she thought with a small smile. Of course, the other one didn't seem to like her very much perhaps she wouldn't write, or would only write cruel things. Really, they ought to be friends, stuck in this same body together. But of course, they never would be.

'Who are you?'

She started. For an awful moment she thought it was herself who had spoken, in some other voice, some other person. But no, she hadn't, there really was someone. She pressed her face to the grille. She didn't see anyone outside. 'Is someone there?'

'Next to you.' The voice was a man's. 'In the next cell. Who was there with you earlier?'

'Doctors.'

'Chiltern?'

'And another man. Who are you?'

'Listen,' said the voice intently, 'I don't belong here. I know how that sounds. I know it sounds mad '

'Yes it does,' she said. 'I'm ill but I'm not stupid.'

'Wait don't go! Don't go!'

She curled her fingers through the grid. The voice seemed to be coming from the left. 'I'm still here,' she said.

'You oughtn't to be here, should you? This is the violent ward.'

'There were no other rooms.'

'Doing good business, is he?'

'Why are you here?'

'I'm here by mistake.' In spite of herself, she laughed. 'No, listen listen! He's locked me up, but he's the mad one. He doesn't realise it '

'I'm sorry, but I have to go now,' she said, and left the window. She left the room too, and the ward, and went out into the garden. She found a bench by a sunny wall overgrown with still-open morning glories, and sat there and thought. She was afraid of what she thought about, but not as afraid as she had been of many other things.

'His brother, eh?' said the Doctor. 'And he says impossible things though, obviously, they're not impossible to say.'

'Impossible things,' said Fitz, 'are what we run into six of before breakfast.'

They were in the TARDIS, in one of the many rooms containing inexplicable, at least to Fitz and Anji, machinery, looking at an equally inexplicable readout that appeared to be a graph of some sort, with ominous-looking spikes and even an occasional smudge though perhaps, Anji thought, that was from the printer. The Doctor sometimes got confused about which was the correct ink to put in.

'Significant,' she said of the graph, 'but opaque.'

'Well it is, rather,' said the Doctor in dissatisfaction, smoothing the paper on the table, as if that would help. 'The time sensors aren't set up for exactly this type of phenomenon, whatever it is, and the location and intensity and even the exact number of disruptions can't be detected with any precision.'

'How can you be sure the disruptions are even human beings?' said Anji.

'Oh that was simple. I cross-referenced with some biological scans.'

'And you've just been guessing about the form the disturbances would take?'

'I never guess,' said the Doctor, piqued. He turned the graph around, apparently to see whether reading it upside down would help. Or perhaps, she thought, he'd had it upside down all along. 'In order to survive in time, all sentient beings have to be protected from full perception of it, rather the way the human eye filters out most light waves. Any time disruption linked to humans is either going to cause or be the result of mental aberration.'

'Why didn't you just start interviewing nuts?' said Fitz. 'Like the inmates at Chiltern's place?'

'The difficulty with schizophrenics is that they're often not very articulate.' The Doctor gave the paper a half-turn and looked pleased. 'And as my experience with Constance Jane showed, even if they're articulate, they're unlikely to know what's happening to them.'

'What's causing causing this?' said Anji. 'And shouldn't it show up on that graph somewhere, some big spike or something?' this?' said Anji. 'And shouldn't it show up on that graph somewhere, some big spike or something?'

'Yes it should, but it's not. Whatever caused the disruption may be gone or...'

'What?' she said after the Doctor had stared silently at the graph for a while.

'Or switched off.'

'Switched off?' said Fitz. 'You mean, you think it's a machine?'

The Doctor nodded. 'A time machine.'

In the thick, sweet haze of smoke, Chiltern slumbered. His eyes were half-shut, gazing unseeingly across the dark, low-ceilinged room past other slumberers some still, some restless and muttering to the brazier. A man crouched beside this, preparing the pipes, his face golden in the faint glow. Chiltern couldn't tell how old he was. He never could with the Chinese.

He felt better. The headache wouldn't materialise now. He could barely sense its presence only a faint, threatening shiver at the edge of his brain. His thoughts slipped around as if the surface of his mind were a wet stone. He liked the sensation. Nothing would sit steady on the shelf of memory, everything tilted and fell and slid away. It was a form of silence. He could rest.

The day had affected him very badly. He didn't know why. At present, he was no longer even capable of wondering, but earlier he had been puzzled by the depression that had descended on him after the Doctor had left. Miss Jane's situation was terrible, to be sure, but no worse indeed, much better than that of many other patients he'd seen over the years.

The years... Chiltern was afraid for a second he might have been wrong about the headache. He groaned slightly and shifted on the pallet. But no, the pain was lost now, vanished, dispersed.