She bowed her head. The soaking hair pressed her down. She slowly edged her hand towards his.

The lagoon erupted at their feet. Something huge began to emerge, climbing the sunken stairs. Water cascaded down its bedraggled fur.

The Doctor pulled Innocet back.

'Badger! Why are you always pestering me!'

'I am required to protect you,' boomed the machine. 'I destroyed the amphibian orcholotl.'

'I don't need a bodyguard. I've managed for centuries on my own.'

Innocet edged to the top of the stairs. She turned and ran, down through old neglected corridors where the whitewood trees were overgrown and tangling through the furniture.

'Innocet!' He was coming after her. Her wet dress caught and tore on a branch.

And in her head, they were cal ing her too. Cal ing her to join them in hiding.

But there was nowhere to hide any more.

'Innocet!' He was behind her. This little man, this serpent had destroyed the Family, the House that she would never now pledge to serve might and main, drudge and droil.

Innocet, they called in her head.

'Cousin!' he said at her shoulder.

She grabbed at a rusty sword that hung on the wal and levelled it at his chest. 'Stay back!'

'Put that down, please.'

'Leave us alone!'

The shape of Badger came crunching through the branches.

'Innocet, put the sword down,' said the Doctor.

'No!'

'Badger wil attack anyone who threatens me. Even you. That's how Quences programmed him.'

The huge machine dwarfed him as it advanced.

'Stay back!' she yel ed above the voices in her head.

174.

'Badger,' he ordered. 'You will not harm Innocet. She's not attacking me. Now, stand back!'

The avatroid swayed where it stood.

After a moment, the Doctor edged towards her. 'Now, give me the sword.'

'I cannot,' she said.

'Please.' He reached gently for the blade.

A sudden outburst from the voices in her head. She swung the sword against his outstretched hand. He made no sound, but blood trickled between his fingers.

Badger roared in fury. The Doctor was knocked aside. The machine reached for Innocet, lifted her and threw her against a tree.

The voices went quiet.

She was lying on her side at the foot of the tree. Its branches spread above her. Her hair would not let her lie flat.

And he was there, looking down at her with extraordinary tenderness.

'Don't move. I'll go for help.'

'I had to protect our Cousins,' she whispered, every word an effort. 'It's my fault.'

'Of course it isn't.'

'They couldn't stand the dark. There had to be somewhere for them to go. Somewhere the House couldn't see.'

'And you helped hide them?'

'Yes.'

He stroked her hair. 'But the House knew. It must have known.'

'Of course it knew.' She started to cough. 'But it loves them. That's why it let them go.'

'But it wouldn't let them leave completely, would it?' There was anger in his voice. 'They're just hiding somewhere to get away from Satthralope.'

'It was al I could do.'

He leant down to kiss her forehead. 'How could one person endure so much alone?'

Blood tasted in her mouth. 'They're waiting for you, Snail. They've waited a long time.'

'In my room? Is that where they are?'

Her body ached. 'So weary. Had enough now. Can't do any more.' She felt him reaching gently into her mind.

Please understand, she thought. Please finish it for me.

'Innocet, no. Don't end it here. You've got many lives left yet.'

I want an end, she thought. No more dark. A real end at last.

'Innocet.'

'Go and find them, Snail,' she said and pressed his hand.

175.

She closed her eyes and heard him move off.

She folded away her thoughts in the dark.

The Doctor wiped his face on his soaking sleeve.

He left Innocet lying against the whitewood tree. When Badger started to follow him, he said 'No!' quietly and the machine stopped in its tracks.

'Go and get help,' he said and the brute lumbered away.

Along the pa.s.sage went the Doctor. Not far now. The place was al too familiar.

He reached the door. The door to that place where he had taken refuge from the absurd mock infancy of a fully grown Gallifreyan childhood.

The children of my world would be insulted.

The place where he had first h.o.a.rded five-dimensional star charts and read Thripsted's Flora and Fauna of the Universe (Abridged for Younger Readers) and made working models of birds' wings and carved his name on the lid of his indignant desk.

They say a Gallifreyan isn't ful y grown out until he tastes his own tongue.

The place was quiet. He expected to disturb a whole flurry of echoes and memories as he pushed open the door.

But he heard only the squeaking of a hinge beetle in the wainscot.

His room was empty. Stripped of its furniture and fittings as if his own remembrance had been exorcized.

He had thought of and believed in so hard that it became reality and was sustained. It sat in the floor like a mouth.

An impossible well on the second floor.

A figure stood balanced on its edge, gazing down into the flickering depths.

'Chris,' said the Doctor.

'Can you hear them?' said the young man. 'I have to go to them.'

'Come back, Chris,' the Doctor said. 'Those thoughts are meant for me. They're not yours.'

Chris didn't look up. The glow was. .h.i.tting his face, making it a mask. 'No, they're calling me.'

'What do they say?'

Chris edged away round the rim of the well. 'They're calling me. They've been waiting. They're calling the Doctor.'

The Doctor reached for him, but Chris threw himself off the edge and vanished deep into the light.

Silence.

He stared into the impossible depths of the well. He looked in vain for some way to let himself down. His fingers touched the sword cut on his hand.

He walked back along the pa.s.sage, pushing through the wild branches, to where Innocet lay against the tree.

She was cold.

'Innocet?'

176.

[image]

Just a shape in a wet dress. No thoughts. No dreams of renewal. Just empty and cold.

He sat on the floor in the sickly lamplight, holding her hand.

Of anything he had ever known, this was the worst.

For long moments, he absorbed the once-familiar angles of her face for a last time. Final y he leant across and gently untied the cords that held the great coil of plaited hair to her body.

'Dear Cousin, forgive me this last dishonour.' Using scissors, he cut through the braid and eased it away from her head.

No more guilt. Travel freely now.

He returned down the tangled pa.s.sage to his room, unwound the coil of hair and knotted one end to a branch.

Testing his weight on the rope, he slid into the mouth of the well and started to lower himself into the depths.

The thoughts licked up like silent flames around him. As he went deeper, he saw figures clinging to the walls.

Faces he knew. Cousins he remembered. Tulgel, Chovor the Various, Farg and DeRoosifa. But their faces were twisted and gaunt. Maljamin and many-chinned Salpash, now a chinless shadow of her previous girth. Haughty Celesia and little Jobiska.

Faces burning in the hel of their own thoughts.

More and more of them. All staring their silent accusations.

Pitiful, wasted and exhausted characters with gaping eyes and mouths, gathering round him like a lynch mob of ragged scarecrows. There was no renewal here, no rebirth. Fed on spite, his Cousins were de-generating in their own bitterness.

He was grateful at least that Innocet had avoided this.

The well shaft widened into a cavern where they cl.u.s.tered in, jostling and pushing.

'I'm here now,' he said. 'I'll put this right, I swear to you all.' But he could hear nothing from them.

He pushed through the crowd until he saw a figure hunched on the cavern floor.