'My mother... They mentioned her. Shook me up a bit.'

'Your mother?'

'She's Chairperson of the Earth Alliance of Corporations.'

Bernice looked blank.

'You know they call it the Holding Company. It's like a board of directors for all the companies that trade off*Earth.'

'And your mother is Chairperson?'

'Yes.'

'Most people would be proud.'

'We don't get on. It just shook me up a bit, hearing her mentioned like that.'

'With a job like that I would have thought she'd get mentioned all the time.'

'It wasn't so much hearing her name, it was what she said. "War is bad for business." A lot of things were bad for business when I was younger. I wanted to study Arcturan literature, but that would have been "bad for business". I had to be a good little Chairperson's daughter and go into a respectable profession instead. The chip*head I wanted to live with was "bad for business", so I had to stop seeing him. And when it turned out that one of my mother's colleagues was "bad for business", he suffered a convenient heart attack just before he was going to reveal evidence of ma.s.sive insider dealing within the Company. That's when I left the Company and joined Earth Central.'

'What about your father?'

'I never knew him. Mother made sure of that.' Christine hesitated. 'Do you know what? For a long time it was him I hated. Not her. Him. For not having the strength to come back.'

Bernice looked away, remembering how her own father had vanished during the Second Dalek War. 'Join the club,' she said.

'I've called it the Mushroom Farm,' Bannen said proudly.

The Doctor gazed around in the closest thing to awe that he was capable of. So complex, and yet precisely ordered; so large that clouds hid the roof and the far walls were lost in the distance. This room that Alex Bannen had led him to first down the Pit, then along newly*discovered corridors carpeted with ancient dust must have taken up quite a chunk of Belial's interior s.p.a.ce; a.s.suming that there was no dimensional transcendence at work, and the Doctor doubted that. Usually, some warping at the edges of one's vision indicated trans*dimensional engineering, and there was nothing of that sort here. Just peace and cathedral calm.

As far as the eye could see, the objects that Bannen referred to as 'mushrooms' sprouted from the floor, walls, ceiling; every surface able to support an outgrowth. Obviously artificial, they resembled nothing so much as ma.s.ses of sc.r.a.p metal which somebody had played a blowtorch over. Each was different from the rest, and they appeared at closely s.p.a.ced, though apparently random, intervals. The rows retreated away, diminished by perspective, until they were lost in the haze of distance.

'There's obviously a pattern,' Bannen said, gazing around, 'but I'm b.u.g.g.e.red if I can find it.'

'It's based on a Fourier series,' said the Doctor absentmindedly. He was listening for the slight, but unmistakable echo from Bannen's words. There it was, almost inaudible even to his sensitive ears, followed by another, and another. The Doctor estimated the size of the room as just a Drashig's eyestalk less than eight kilometres across compensating for the non*h.o.m.ogeneous atmospheric density, of course and irregularly septagonal in shape.

'Doctor,' Bannen said thoughtfully, 'is it my imagination, or is there something out there?'

The Doctor followed the line of Bannen's podgy pointing ringer. Far, far out in the room, at the point where the Doctor estimated the centre to be, something ma.s.sive and smooth joined the floor to the ceiling. The haze made it difficult to tell anything more. The Doctor squinted, fine*tuning the musculature of his eyes in an attempt to wring every last drop of information from the sight.

In the end, it was Bannen who identified it. 'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,' he said. 'I think it's the Pit. All the times I've used it to get down to the Bridge terminal on the other side of Belial, and I never realized what it was going through.'

'Well, there you are,' the Doctor said as he walked further into the cavernous room. 'You should have taken the scenic route.'

On closer inspection, it could be seen that each mushroom was composed of a number of intertwining metal stalks which sprouted up together from holes in the floor and arched out overhead into a spiky umbrella. The surfaces consisted of a myriad tiny pieces of metal, each a different shape and shade of grey, forming a continuous mosaic. Bending closer, the Doctor could see tiny seams running between the jigsaw pieces.

'Tell me, Trau Bannen,' he said, 'how do you feel about the empirical method of scientific experimentation?'

'The what?'

'The "suck it and see" approach,' the Doctor said. Taking a step backwards, he reached out with his umbrella and pressed against a lozenge*shaped metal fragment half*way up the trunk of the nearest mushroom.

.

The letters hung in the air before her; three*dimensional yellow shapes floating a millimetre above grey shadows. Through them, Ace could make out the bright Tewa rug that, along with the simularity of a high cheek*boned, rather sunburned woman, was the only concession towards ornamentation in Paula Engado's room.

On a whim, she poked her fingers through the letters. They rippled like reflections in a puddle, and curved to fit the contours of her fingers.

Be serious, she admonished herself. You've got work to do. She rested her hands on the smooth ebony of the desk, alongside the gently glowing section which marked the keyboard.

Pa.s.sword, she thought.

She drummed her fingertips on the desk. The contact lenses that enabled her to 'see' the simularity projection smarted, and she resisted the urge to rub her eyes. She'd been offered corneal grafts, like the rest of the Project Eden team, but had refused, hating the idea of somebody mucking around with her body. She'd had enough of that during the Dalek Wars.

Pa.s.sword.

Well, she could always try it the hard way. Ace had been trained to crack most types of security, and she had taken a lot of the icebreaking programs with her when she rejoined the Doctor. This security system was an antique compared to the cortical lattices on which she had been trained. It bore a closer resemblance to the DOS*based systems she'd used at school than to the more outre outre STROSS*based languages she had encountered in the past year or so. Easy meat for somebody as determined as herself. Still, if she didn't want to leave any traces of her presence, it could take her anything up to an hour to suss the pa.s.sword out. Anything could happen in an hour. STROSS*based languages she had encountered in the past year or so. Easy meat for somebody as determined as herself. Still, if she didn't want to leave any traces of her presence, it could take her anything up to an hour to suss the pa.s.sword out. Anything could happen in an hour.

Perhaps there was a quicker way.

She glanced around the room, casting about for an idea. Most people chose something close to home, or so she'd been taught. It made sense; her own pa.s.sword on the rickety old Apple Mac back at school had been Wicked! Wicked! She had kept the same pa.s.sword for the advanced cortical lattices which had run (would run?) the various ships she had served aboard the She had kept the same pa.s.sword for the advanced cortical lattices which had run (would run?) the various ships she had served aboard the Saberhagen Saberhagen, the Corporate Raider Corporate Raider and the and the Admiral Raistrick Admiral Raistrick. Pa.s.swords were usually chosen to be something that could be remembered easily. It was just a question of getting into the psychology of the person, and Ace had learned a lot about psychology in the last year or so, even if she still did prefer brute force to persuasion. Of course, it didn't help that she hadn't really known Paula that well. She'd just been a face in the corridor to her. Ace had been shocked at her death, yes, but she'd lost closer people than Paula and not cried about them. Surprisingly, the girl's death had hit Cheryl hard, and even Piper had looked haggard for a few days afterwards.

Ace found herself remembering another death, another body consumed in flames, back when she'd been another person. A more innocent person.

Yes, she could sympathize with Miles.

A sudden noise outside, like a sleeve brushing against the wall, snapped her attention back to the room.

She waited, every muscle tensed, every nerve screaming, but the noise was not repeated.

The sudden rush of adrenalin made her mind race. Facts and faces buzzed around like flies. Odd occurrences, unusual looks, conversations that suddenly changed tack when certain people walked into rooms. Shared laughter.

Like they said, it was a million*to*one shot, but it might just work.

she typed.There was a pause as the machine considered her answer. it said.Ace laughed aloud. This was easier than she'd expected.She flexed her fingers and started to type. Minutes flowed by, unnoticed, as she worked. Now she was in the system, she could accomplish what she'd come here to do.Ace caught a sudden movement out of the corner of one eye. She whirled, reaching for a gun she no longer carried. Her fingers clutched uselessly at her T-shirt as something heavy crashed into the side of her head.Ace moaned with pain and fell to her knees. She was aware of the sound of fingers tapping against the keyboard, shutting down the neural net she had been trying to access. Erasing its memory.'No!'She gathered her strength to stand, but before she could move another great weight smashed into the side of her head. And another.'No...'Her body slipped sideways. She tried to scream.Blackness came first.'What the h.e.l.l...?' Bannen shouted, lunging for the Doctor. But it was too late. There was a very small click.And nothing happened.'You little lunatic! Don't you realize the dangers?''But the rewards, Trau Bannen! The rewards!''Anything could have happened!''That's exactly what I'm interested in.' He grabbed hold of Bannen's lapel and dragged him closer to the mushroom, 'Look closely.' The Doctor placed a finger over one of the shards of metal and gently exerted pressure. The shard began to glow with a pale yellow light.Bannen peered closer, momentarily forgetting his anger. 'Fascinating. If they're all the same, then this must be some kind of huge control room. Must be a heat sensor, since it didn't operate when your umbrella touched it.''Hmm,' the Doctor said mysteriously. He took Bannen's hand in his own and placed it against the same shard. The tiny fragment of metal glowed pastel blue.'Interesting. But so what?''I'm not sure...' The Doctor touched the shard again. Its colours changed.'Doctor, we're getting nowhere with this.'The Doctor beamed and reached out again. The shard glowed pink. He scowled, keeping his finger pressed down, and the glow shifted through the spectrum to violet.Bannen leaned closer. 'Does this mean what I think it means?' he said, and reached out with his forefinger.'Miles Engado is Coordinator and you're not,' the Doctor whispered.As Bannen's finger made contact, the switch turned red.'What the h.e.l.l do you ' And then Bannen realized. 'Mood! The switches change their function depending on the mood of the person who touches them! Happiness, sadness, even,' he frowned at the Doctor, who stood there beaming with innocence, 'jealousy.' His eyes widened as he realized the full implications of what he was saying. 'We think in binary because that's the way our neurons fire. Off or on. Yes, of course, you see? On! Off! Plus! Minus! But not them. Not the builders of this! Perhaps the Angels, if it was the Angels who built all this, had brains wired up in different ways. Multiplexing! Parallel processing!' The frown came back like a sudden storm. 'But,' he snapped, 'that still doesn't give you the right to ignore proper scientific procedure!''It's perfectly safe,' the Doctor said peevishly.'Says who?'A wild smile crossed the Doctor's face. He jabbed out at random with his umbrella. 'You see?' he said brightly. 'As long as I don't actually touch any of the mushrooms with my bare skin nothing.''Oh yeah?' Bannen said, gazing over the Doctor's shoulder. The Doctor turned to look.As far as the eye could see, every mushroom in sight was lit up like a Christmas tree.Ace was naked, gouging at a man's chest with a knife.Blood gushed across her hands. The knife came free, bringing with it a tiny square of plastic embedded in a ragged lump of flesh. As bubbles frothed in the spreading stain of blood, the man tried to scream, but only succeeded in vomiting a crimson tide which poured in slow motion down his chin, his neck, her legs. His eyes bulged from his face, staring imploringly up at her: begging her to stop before it was too late. She tried to back away, but the floor was too slippery to get a grip. The knife slipped in slow motion from her nerveless fingers, tumbling slowly as it fell and jangling endlessly when it hit the floor. His mouth was working but his words never came.His body spasmed once, then slumped to the floor.'It wasn't like this!' she yelled, knowing it was a nightmare but unable to break the spell.She shook her head violently and murmured softly in denial as a hand reached down to touch her face gently for a moment before moving away...'What do you think?' Bannen whispered.The Doctor stared across the cavernous room. Everywhere the eye could see, coloured lights twinkled. He removed his umbrella from the switch it was holding down. The lights went out. He rocked the switch another way, and a different galaxy of light was born. 'I always try not to think,' he said. 'I find intuition and guesswork so much more rewarding.''So much power,' Bannen said. 'The Lift goes up and down, the Pit path operates continuously, the lights go on and off, and we can't trace any generators, or acc.u.mulators, or anything! And meanwhile we have to fill in forms in triplicate if we want to run a shaver.'The Doctor frowned. 'You can't trace a power source?''Nothing.''Then where do you get your own power from?''Cold fusion generators. Zyton seven fused with hymetusite using a parranium catalyst.''Isn't that terribly inefficient?''Tell me about it! We can't use solar panels because Belial's...o...b..t about Lucifer means we get eclipsed too often, and we can't sink a geothermal shaft because the centre of Belial is cold.' He snorted. 'That's why we're here, although most of the rest of the team seem to be so wrapped up in trying to talk to the Angels that they've forgotten the fact. Earth Central sent a von Neumann probe past here, decades ago now. According to the reports it sent back, there's an element down in Lucifer's core that we've never come across before one of the stable elements with very high ma.s.ses that have been theorized since the twentieth century but have never actually been seen in practice. That's why we need to talk to the Angels. It's not some philanthropic crusade for communication, you know? It's about power. Power for Earth.''But even so ''Don't think we haven't tried to get something better in the mean time. Either Earth Central can't afford it or the Energy Police say it's irrelevant to our investigations.' He spat the phrase 'Energy Police' out as though it were a curse.'Somebody has to remind you of the real world,' a voice snapped behind them. The Doctor turned to see a stocky figure dressed in the bright yellow chador chador of an Islamic woman, her head covered by a matching of an Islamic woman, her head covered by a matching hejab hejab.You must be Krau Moshe*Rabaan,' he said, removing his hat. 'We don't appear to have met. I'm the Doctor.'The woman swept past him imperiously. Although she was shorter even than the Doctor, she gave the impression of towering over both men.