'And did your Doctor have a K9 too?' Leela asked Dorothee.

'A what? You mean one of those robot dog things?'

'Actually, Leela,' said Romana awkwardly, 'that's something I need to speak to you about.'

'You never told me you had a K9 as well,' Leela said with a grin.

'He's spent a lot of time with the Tharils in E-s.p.a.ce. Enforced actually. He's only recently overcome the problems of making the transition back into our Universe. So this is his first visit to Gal ifrey. He was granted special leave from his administration post in the Tharil government. And it was meant to be a secret trip.'

'But my K9 knew,' said Leela.

'Yes,' sighed Romana. 'My K9 was supposed to be upgrading our administrative records with his own data from the Tharils, when I discovered that he was talking to your K9 through the panatropic net. And of course, between them they started digging up all this data about the Doctor and Lungbarrow.'

'Hang on,' complained Dorothee. 'Just hang on. Who or what is Lungbarrow?'

Romana glanced quickly both ways along the bank. 'Let's have some tea,' she suggested.

'I need more guards now, madam!' shouted Castellan Andred. 'Otherwise the Citadel wil be overrun.'

'There are no more guards,' said Theora. 'The Arcalian squads have gone over to the Agency's side.'

Her beleaguered staff stood huddled behind her desk. To Andred, they appeared to be expecting the worst. From somewhere near, he heard the rattle of staser fire.

'Then I cannot vouch for the safety of the Citadel,' he said formally. 'We can't deploy the force barriers. The gravity cordons round the bomb are taking all the power we have. I must insist that you, your retinue and your guest evacuate the Capitol now.'

'We will not abandon the Citadel,' said the Chancellor.

100.'Madam, this is a military coup. There's nothing you can do here. Now, what about the President?'

'She has important business elsewhere.'

'I was told she had returned. Where is she? She won't have an Othering Presidency unless we act now. And where's the Lady Leela?'

'She and Dorothee McShane are safe. The President considers their business vital.'

'So vital that they cannot be reached? What on Gallifrey is going on!'

There was a distant explosion. The lighting dimmed for a moment. The Chancellor's staff drew back as a ring of grey guards materialized in the office. The circle opened to reveal the man in black who had called himself the Agency gatekeeper.

'Lord Ferain,' muttered Theora.

He bowed formally. 'Madam Chancel or, this building is now under the aegis of the Celestial Intervention Agency.'

He held up a doc.u.ment. 'Under the articles of emergency power that govern possible un-Gal ifreyan activity, I am here to investigate the alleged conduct of the Lord President of the High Council. And if that conduct is found to be in breach of Gallifreyan Law, to have her impeached and removed from office.'

Romana shepherded Leela and Dorothee through the green willows to where a table, a substantial more-than-the-idea-of-a-table table, was set with tea things in a very English style. There were two chairs. Romana sat down on the gra.s.s.

'I have to ask you to pour,' Romana said. 'I'm afraid I can't join you.'

'I wondered why it was only set for two,' said Leela. 'You said you were away from Gallifrey.'

'I am away. The Romanadvoratrelundar you can see is a projection of the real me. I'm speaking to you from. . .

well, from somewhere else. And I hope the K9s haven't blurted out where.'

'No,' Leela a.s.sured her. 'But many are speculating on your whereabouts.'

Romana groaned wearily. 'If only they'd give me more time. I suppose it's my fault for bul ying them. I shouldn't expect to change the habits of a thousand millennia overnight. Most of the Council have been in their jobs for a thousand years at least. It's like trying to stampede a herd of tortoises.'

'You have problems,' said Dorothee, pouring the tea.

Leela lifted the lid of a silver dish and exclaimed, 'These are m.u.f.fins!'

'Freshly toasted,' said Romana.

'Thank you. The Doctor bought us m.u.f.fins in London.'

Dorothee grinned. 'He knows how to party, doesn't he? He once bought us both baked Alaska, but I landed up paying.'

The three of them laughed.

Dorothee sipped at her tea. It was Earl Grey and far better than the French could ever manage. The cups were the best porcelain. She noticed that Leela didn't quite have the knack of social etiquette. She was holding the cup by the bowl rather than the handle and had her m.u.f.fin in the other hand. Not much of a ladylike bearing at all.

She turned to Romana, but the President's expression had suddenly turned very grave.

101.

'Go on then,' said Dorothee with a sigh. 'You didn't haul me halfway across the Galaxy just in time for tea for nothing.'

'That's true,' admitted Romana. 'Are you prepared to tell me what the Agency asked you?'

Dorothee felt herself freeze up. She looked at the two other women. If they'd both travelled with the Doctor, then they'd both seen h.e.l.l too. So how come they were so nice about it?

'I didn't like it,' she said. 'They tried ...' She felt her blood suddenly starting to burn with angry confusion. 'I don't know what they were trying. They wanted me. No, not me. My ident.i.ty!' She wanted to hit something. Or shoot the h.e.l.l out of something. 'They had all my memories, but they wanted more!'

She looked up and met Romana's blue eyes. They pierced her the way the Doctor's eyes could. A concern for her that cut deep through the bewilderment and b.l.o.o.d.y rage, but did not diminish her right to her anger.

That's cruel, said Romana's eyes. And Dorothee knew that the eyes could read and understand her fears and experiences.

'She shot me,' said Dorothee. 'Ace shot Me. And when I came back she said I'd been dead for twenty minutes.'

That's all the time they'd need. You died so they could copy and upload your memories into the Matrix.

'That wasn't enough though, was it? She kept on at me. She was me me and I was nothing. And she was me too. A right vicious little b.i.t.c.h. All the worst bits slung together. She had all the facts, but she didn't understand them. I could see right through her. She'd got all the lurid details, but she didn't know how I felt or what I imagined and that's what I hung on to. But she went on and on, always coming back to the Doctor. Who was he? And why and what was he? And that's what I hung on to. 'Cos and I was nothing. And she was me too. A right vicious little b.i.t.c.h. All the worst bits slung together. She had all the facts, but she didn't understand them. I could see right through her. She'd got all the lurid details, but she didn't know how I felt or what I imagined and that's what I hung on to. But she went on and on, always coming back to the Doctor. Who was he? And why and what was he? And that's what I hung on to. 'Cos I I believe in him and she didn't know why!' believe in him and she didn't know why!'

The teacup cracked into a dozen pieces in her grip.

Romana's face slid to one side.

There was another woman there. She wore robes the colour of embers and her face was painted silver. Her fingers reached out and touched Dorothee's face. fingers reached out and touched Dorothee's face.

'It is pa.s.sed,' she said gently.

'You see, Gallifrey is a temporal anomaly,' Romana said as the others tucked into their tea. 'It exists not only in the Universe of N-s.p.a.ce, but also within its own exclusive time stream. Long before the Time Lords came to power, the ancient Gal ifreyans had a sensitivity towards time and its movement. Our world was ruled by a line of oracles who could see and predict far into the future. Ultimately, they failed to predict their own downfal , and that resulted in probably the most terrible day in Gallifreyan history.'

'When the planet was cursed and became barren?' said Leela.

'And we've been in post-matricidal trauma ever since. There are plenty more m.u.f.fins if you want them.'

'Strewth,' said Dorothee. 'The Old Time. I remember the Doctor carrying on about that once. He got real y worked up.' She noticed that the stack of m.u.f.fins on the dish had been completely polished off, and she had only eaten one.

Romana, who had been watching Leela, continued, 'These days we have the Matrix of course, which pretty well serves the same oracular function. The thing is that Gallifrey moves at a different time speed to the rest of the Universe. That's what sets it apart, but for a long time its metabolism has been running down. In Earth terms, it's like a clock that's losing perhaps a second every hour and it's getting slower all the time.'

'What's that got to do with me?' said Dorothee. 'You stil haven't told me about this Lungbarrow place.'

'Haven't I?' Romana said, her eyes reflecting the clouds and the sky in the deep, deep water. What do you think it What do you think it is? is?

102.

'It's his House,' said Dorothee without thinking at al . 'On the slopes of Lungbarrow mountain. Mount Lung in the mountains of Southern Gallifrey.'

Yes?

'Yes, I'd forgotten. There are Cousins, because there are no children. They're all born from the Family Loom. Do you all have families like that?'

And?

'Well, it's ...' She faltered, shocked by the next revelation. She put down her tea. 'Jesus, I didn't remember that bit before.'

'It's true,' said Leela. 'That's what K9 and I discovered.'

'But that's crazy. A whole House can't just vanish. There'd be a crater or something.'

'There might wel have been,' said Romana. 'The trouble is that the House of Lungbarrow's last official entry on any record was almost seven hundred years ago. That was the Deathday of the House's Kithriarch, the head of the Family. A guard captain was dispatched to carry out certain official duties, but there's no record of his return, or of any investigation.'

'The captain was a Cousin of Andred's,' said Leela.

'The Castel an?' grinned Dorothee. She had just stopped herself cal ing him Leela's toyboy. 'Are you married then?'

'Like Housekeepers to Houses? No. We are. . . together.'

'In fact, until Leela started to investigate, no one had even noticed that the House was missing.'

'Does he know? I mean, he didn't cause...'

Romana shrugged. 'I sent a message to his TARDIS. Just please come home, really. I thought the ship was less likely to ignore it than the Doctor was. You know what he's like.'

Dorothee picked up her tea and swirled it in the cup. 'Look, I know we're talking about seven hundred years ago, but was he there?'

'No,' said Romana. 'K9 found records that said he'd been disowned and disinherited by that point. Technically and legal y, he had no Family.'

And yet he was always lecturing me about my mother, thought Dorothee. No b.l.o.o.d.y wonder.

'Besides which, we know that he was in the Capitol at the time,' Romana added.

'And of course, he never answered your message.'

A sudden breeze stirred the willows and the tablecloth. Dorothee shivered. Romana stood and walked to the lake.

'He didn't come to me, no. But I put a let-pa.s.s with the message and last night his TARDIS came through the transduction barrier system.'

'Then where is he?' said Leela.

Dorothee rapped the table with a teaspoon. 'Give you one guess. OK, so you want me to go and find him.'

'And the House, please. It's absurd, but I can't be seen to be involved.'

'Romana,' said Leela quietly. She nodded across the water.

103.

A man was watching them from the bridge. He was dressed in a black robe.

'It's him,' Leela muttered. 'The one who held me captive. He is a serpent.'

'Ferain,' said Romana. 'How did he get in here?' She pointed over the edge of the idea of the bank. 'Dorothee, please reach down there.'

Dorothee hurriedly crouched at the edge and reached down into the impression of the lake. She felt something solid and pul ed out a black globe. It wasn't wet.

'You want this delivered, right?'

Romana glanced back towards the bridge. Ferain was moving down towards them.

'I shall deal with him now,' said Leela.

'No,' snapped Romana. 'Dorothee, please take the Doctor this dispatch. I've had the TARDIS's coordinates fed into your motorcycle's temporal guidance system.'

'The House of Lungbarrow?'

'No... not exactly. The coordinates are directly below where the House should be. Inside Mount Lung.'

'Inside?' said Dorothee.

'And when you give the dispatch to him, say Fred sent you.'