A drifting cumulus cloud obscured the sun for a moment, and Kitig realised that one of the jogging figures was Mauvril.

He stopped, waited, watching her come closer. He wasn't sure how he knew that there was something wrong, but he knew.

Their eyes met as she came closer.

'The Doctor,' he said, feeling an icy chill touch his heart. Surely, after all he'd said to her, after all her talk of forgiveness and peace, she hadn't let him die. 'Is he dead, then?'

'No,' said Mauvril. 'He isn't dead. But he wants to see you.'

Kitig walked up to Mauvril, touched the side of her neck gently. 'Then do you believe me now?'

' "Evil can only foster evil"?' Mauvril hesitated. 'Yes. But that doesn't mean I can trust the Doctor.' A pause. To Kitig's surprise, she took hold of his hand. 'But I do trust you. I'll take you to him now.'

She let go of his hand, led the way along the foreshore and up the newly greened slope to the settlement.

'Quan-Nafarnis is almost a town now,' she commented.

There were fourteen confirmed pregnancies among the soldiers: marriages were being arranged for the raising of children, the shapes of households and clans to come forming in the air like the great white clouds of the rains.

The future, thought Kitig. My My future. Do I really want to risk it all? future. Do I really want to risk it all?

But Kitig knew that he couldn't abandon the Doctor. His conscience demanded that this essentially good good being should be allowed to live. Surely the Doctor could be persuaded, somehow, to serve the cause of the Tractite future? Couldn't he being should be allowed to live. Surely the Doctor could be persuaded, somehow, to serve the cause of the Tractite future? Couldn't he see see that it was better? that it was better?

The fresh scents of flowers had penetrated even into the scrubbed air of the command dome. In fact, to his amazement, Kitig saw a low bowl filled with water lilies in the main corridors, new curtains over the images of death on the walls.

'I didn't realise ' He stopped, not quite sure what to say.

'Realise what?' asked Mauvril sharply.

'That you umm were redecorating.'

'It seemed appropriate.' A pause. 'After all, we're not at war any more.'

'Except with the Doctor.'

Mauvril didn't reply, just led the way to the Doctor's cell, told the guards to move aside.

Inside, Kitig was shocked by what he saw. The Doctor's form was skeletal, a broken puppet inside the loose shell of his clothing. He smelled of weakness, of death. There was a glucose drip attached to his arm.

Kitig turned to Mauvril, furious. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but he hadn't been expecting this. 'Is this your idea of mercy?' he accused her.

Mauvril looked away, then began to back out of the cell. 'I'll leave you with him,' she said.

'I want to know why you've done this! You obviously weren't giving him any food why not? Why '

'Food was short before the rains. I didn't see why we should make a special effort for an Empire agent when the rest of us were rationed. Anyway, he has to die in the end. Why waste good food keeping him alive?'

'That's a ridiculous excuse. There are a hundred Tractites here. The amount of food needed for the Doctor would have been tiny.'

'Nonetheless, we felt we couldn't spare it.'

'I would have spared some from my own rations if '

'And it was decided that '

' "It was decided"? "We felt"? Are you claiming you weren't responsible for these decisions? What kind of '

'Please.' The Doctor. His voice was little more than a whisper, but it cut across all their shouting. 'Please stop arguing. I need to speak to Kitig alone.'

Mauvril's eyes met Kitig's for a moment. 'Tell me what he says.'

She backed out of the cell and closed the door.

Kitig leaned over the Doctor, looked at the sunken face, the bruises where the circulation had failed under the stress of hunger.

'I'm sorry. My people I apologise ' He couldn't find the words, not even the most simple, elementary phrase. His mind was numb with shock and anger.

'You didn't know.' It was a statement, not a question. 'Her way of killing me, without killing me. A sloppy decision. Not very military. But ' the ghost of a smile ' I'm still alive. Perhaps you can change her mind.'

'Perhaps,' said Kitig. 'I'll try. I'm certainly going to tell her that she must give you food. Fresh clothing. Larger quarters.

It's obscene to keep you like this.'

The blue-green eyes fixed on Kitig's, and suddenly there was no trace of weakness there, no trace of the weeks of priva-tion and near-starvation. 'You'll have to do better than that. My survival isn't all there is to it, you know.'

Kitig felt his body tense. He knew what the Doctor was going to say next. But he didn't know how he was going to answer.

The Doctor's dry lips opened again, and the expected words came out. 'You'll have to help me, Kitig.'

Rocks pitched against the cliff wall, bounced back. Jo felt habiline hands grabbing at her arms, her legs.

'No!' she shouted. 'We can help you!'

Ahead of her, Sam was climbing the cliff wall, as agile as any of the habs.

Then she was at the top, reaching down.

Jo grabbed the arm, half jumped up, got a grip on the top of the rock wall and hauled herself the rest of the way.

The habilines screamed at them from below.

'Come on on,' said Sam.

Another stone hit Jo's stomach. She almost lost her balance, had a brief teetering sight of the bottom of the rock wall, a furious habiline face staring up at her, then Sam was dragging her away again, up the rough slope of the hill.

The first habs appeared behind them, and another stone clattered past.

Jo ran, ran wildly in a way she hadn't done since she'd last been with the Doctor, panic making her legs go on long after they should have stopped working. Sam kept ahead of her, stopping occasionally to let her catch up.

Gradually, the habilines fell behind, the pursuing screams and stones less frequent. Finally they faded away, and all Jo could hear was her own gasping breath and the pounding of blood in her ears.

'OK, stop,' she called to Sam.

The younger woman kept running.

'Sam, please please.'

Sam looked over her shoulder. 'They might ambush us again. We need to be out on the plain. Well clear of this.'

They followed the trail down through the rocks to the plain. Sam slowed up a little, but Jo could hardly keep pace. Her ears were ringing, her legs felt as if they'd turned to jelly.

Must spend some more time in the gym, she thought, then almost giggled at the ludicrousness of the thought.

At last Sam stopped. Jo slowed to a walk, gradually caught up. Sam was leaning forward, her hands on her thighs, breathing in great gulps like an athlete after a marathon.

Jo settled for sitting down.

'What now?' asked Sam after a while.

Jo looked around. They were out on the open grassland. The grassland where Rowenna and Julie had died. Where there was no water. Where there were dogs, hyenas, lions, all on the look-out for an easy meal.

'I don't know,' she said. 'I'm sorry, Sam, but I simply don't know.'

Jacob had always been different, but until he'd exiled himself to ancient Africa he hadn't known how different.

He pushed the knife into the throat of the terrified antelope and watched as the blood spurted out. He waited for the pressure to drop, for the dying animal's struggles to weaken, then he knelt down and began to drink.

Rich. Salty. Delicious.

He was living as people were meant to live: by the destruction of other life. He understood now why it had been so essential to destroy humankind. If they were all like him, it was no wonder the planet was falling apart all around them.

He remembered the environmental group he'd tried to join. He could still remember the forest clearing, the idiots with their poems and their paper bags and their lunatic idealism. And he he had been prepared to do something. To really make a difference.

To destroy destroy.

That was why destiny had chosen him.

And Jacob knew that he was still different now. While the two women had lived like the apemen, had made themselves less than human and waited to share a messy and uncomfortable death, he had stayed away. Here on the plain, with his knife.

There was plenty of food and drink, if you were prepared to kill for it. And the more you killed, the more fun it was.

He began to cut open the antelope's chest, searching for its heart, but was distracted by a sound.

A voice.

People. Here on the plains. Here on the plains.

For a heartbeat Jacob was afraid. Was it the Doctor, back again?

Then he realised that the voice was female.

Jo. Or Sam. Probably both.

Jacob crouched down, scurried into the long grass, trying to wipe the blood from the rags of his clothes.

Then he realised what he was doing. Running away. Hiding. He was afraid afraid of them, as if they were the murder squad. of them, as if they were the murder squad.

Well, they weren't.

He was.

He could murder them. Easy.

He pulled the knife from the crude sheath he had made for it, then listened.

The voices blew in the wind, snatches of a discussion. '... have to go... lions... water hole...'

Jacob crept towards the voices, knife at the ready. The last voices on Earth, except mine, he thought.

And I'm going to shut them up.

Kitig stood on the rocky crest of the hill, on the far side of the lake, looking down at the shore, smelling the wind.

Follow the scent of the humans.

Kitig could still hear the Doctor's voice, echoing in his skull. The alien had refused to explain the message, simply tapping his ear until Kitig understood: there were listening devices in the cell.

He'd repeated the message to Mauvril, certain that the Doctor had expected him to do this. Mauvril had said that the Doctor was 'obviously delirious', as if that explained everything. But she had looked and smelled unmistakably guilty.

Kitig had realised, then.

There was something that Mauvril was trying to hide. Something she had told the Doctor, or something he had guessed.

Kitig sniffed the air again, trying to take in every nuance. Flowers, fresh grass, the faint tang of ice, of distant water, of the soda lake, of ash No. Not ash. Something burning Screaming and burning Yes. The smell of pain.

Kitig started to pick his way down the rocky slope, tracking the smell. It was mixed with the smell of deep soil, the smell of the earth uncovered when he had helped Mauvril and the others dig out the foundations of the new houses at the top of the settlement.

So. A place where the soil had been broken, then. And not far from the settlement.

Kitig tracked the scent through the long green meadows and their flowers, losing it often, but always finding it again, hovering over the new life like an angry ghost.

At last he found the source. A place where the grass was higher, the flowers were brighter, the colours of life more wonderful.

And there were bones sticking out of the earth.