Dorothee felt Innocet's grip tighten on her hand at the mention of that name.

'I instructed them to find you. No more than that.'

'They were more demonstrative.'

The ruler of Gal ifrey looked into the depths of the chessboard. 'I cannot afford to lose you.'

'Why? What do you need to confess now?'

'Nothing,' said Ra.s.silon. 'You will know that I have taken the action I deemed necessary to al ow my reforms to continue.'

189.

The other walked away to the edge of the garden, where a balcony overlooked the city. 'I warned you. A purge is not a cure. If this blood letting continues, you will soon be drowning.'

'But I have so little time!'

'Because you trust no one else to continue your work.'

'It is too precious. And now I cannot even trust my guards to bring me my friend.'

'A friend?' The other seemed amused. He clasped his hands to his chest like a priest.

'Yes,' insisted Ra.s.silon. 'At least I can trust you to criticize me.'

'And those dissenters at the temple? Were they also your friends? Or was their martyrdom something else you left to the discretion of your guards?'

Ra.s.silon followed him back through the roses.

'You mustn't go. Gallifrey needs your wise counsel.'

'A mistake,' said the other.

'No.' Ra.s.silon was in earnest. 'We have time travel. Harmony. The Looms and the Houses. We have a future again. None of this was achievable without you. In the face of extinction, we have stability.'

'Too stable. Too much Harmony for ever and ever, slower and slower. Gallifrey without end. Gallifreya perpetua. Gallifreya perpetua.

Gallifrey ad nauseam. The children of the Looms of Ra.s.silon will each have thirteen lives. While we, dear friend, the doomed relics of another age, have but one brief life a piece.' He sighed. 'Time to find something better to do.' The children of the Looms of Ra.s.silon will each have thirteen lives. While we, dear friend, the doomed relics of another age, have but one brief life a piece.' He sighed. 'Time to find something better to do.'

'You cannot go,' said Ra.s.silon.

The dark figure shook his head. 'I bequeath you my roses, Ra.s.silon. They are plagued by scissor bugs. You may have to purge them too.'

As he walked away, there was a flash in the air. A web of electric blue flickered round and over the garden.

'You cannot leave,' Ra.s.silon said.

The Doctor shot his companions a warning glance, before moving in beside the dark figure.

'Energy nets?' said the man. 'Are you so afraid of losing me? What do you really fear, Ra.s.silon?'

Ra.s.silon studied him coldly. 'After all this time, I stil hardly know you.'

This seemed to please his prisoner. 'They do say, my Lord President, you have truck with unnatural powers.'

'And do I?'

'Don't you know?' He set off back to the balcony. Ra.s.silon followed. 'That depends upon what our narrow perception defines as unnatural. I cal them other powers.'

'They are much overrated,' said the other.

Dorothee, watching with the companions, saw something move among the rose arbours. The shadow of a figure that she could not identify.

The other was studying the flickering barrier. 'And this from someone who professes to despise superst.i.tion.'

'I banished superst.i.tion,' insisted Ra.s.silon. 'I shut the gate on the Time of Chaos.'

190.

'And I can name you at least four provincial outer-worlds that have raised temples in Ra.s.silon's name.'

'Against my express edict.'

The other loomed over him. 'Then have the statues torn down. Or strike them with a thunderbolt.'

'Now that's a power you never offered me,' said Ra.s.silon with a wry smile.

Anger brewed in his prisoner's eyes. 'I won't be tied by a blood-bargain or a pact. I was merely sent on approval.'

'On my approval, or yours?'

The other gave a cold smile. 'Ra.s.silon, the People's G.o.d. How very quaint.'

'A state of affairs for which you naturally take no responsibility.'

'I advise. You don't have to listen.'

'But you're too valuable to dismiss!'

'I will not be chained!' With a snarl, the other smashed his fist against the energy nets.

Purple sparks showered among the roses.

Ra.s.silon backed away from the figure. 'Who are you?' 'What do you want with us?'

The darkness of the figure grew in the smoky sunlight. 'I'm bored. Bored with wielding great power. Who wants to be a player, when he could be a p.a.w.n in the thick of the game?'

'You? Give up power and manipulation?' laughed Ra.s.silon.

The other snapped his fingers. There was an explosion in the cold air. The energy web disintegrated. And the Hand of Omega was at his side.

Ra.s.silon eyed the box. Steam drifted off its surface. It crackled to itself.

'You'l never give it up,' he said. 'What about your Family? The ones you think you keep hidden? Will you take them too?'

'Rule wisely, Ra.s.silon,' said the other. 'And be wary of your disciples, lest they worship the icons and not the man.'

He walked down from the tower unhindered, the box following.

'Guards!' shouted Ra.s.silon. 'Seal the ports and time wharfs. No one must leave!'

The Doctor was moving away after the other.

'Wait,' called Dorothee, but they were already drawn in his wake. 'I saw someone. Someone else was watching.'

'Where?' said Chris.

As they rose away from the tower, another insubstantial shape moved out after them.

'Who is he?' asked Romana.

'The Cousin from h.e.l.l,' said Dorothee.

'Our Cousin Glospin.' Innocet had a chill in her voice. 'I should have known he'd come after us.'

191.

Leela, her colour much restored, tried to pul away from the group. 'I shall deal with that craven-hearted snake.'

'Don't break the line,' warned Innocet. 'If you stop to challenge him, we might lose you and the Doctor altogether.'

The Other stood on the steps before a new munic.i.p.al building, gazing down across the city. The box was at his side.

Pa.s.sing citizens ignored him. 'Go,' he said to the box, but it had gone already.

There was a flash in the sky followed by the echoing boom of an explosion. A bal of flame billowed up over the miniature gantries of the distant s.p.a.cedrome.

He walked against the stream of people running from the building. The Doctor moved after him, followed by his own unwelcome entourage.

Gates and sealed doors opened as if they recognized the Other. He ignored the DANGER signs and marched unchal enged, straight through to the heart of the complex. An immense vault opened above and below, its oval sh.e.l.l veined with whispering instrumentation.

'Warning,' declared a synthetic voice. 'Protective attire must be worn in the progenitive chamber.'

The Doctor moved with the other, out along a walkway that spanned the chamber. Out through that calm air of expectancy peculiar and seminal to sacred places.

The watchers lingered at the entrance.

'What is this?' said Leela. 'I thought he was leaving Gallifrey.'

The Doctor and the Other had halted just before the centre of the bridge.

Romana glanced at Innocet. 'You know, don't you?'

The Doctor's Cousin lowered her eyes. 'I think we should leave,' she said.

'Why?' said Dorothee. 'Surely the Doctor needs us.'

Chris shook his head. 'Not now. Innocet was right. I don't think we're meant to see.'

A drone of rising power began to surge through the chamber. Klaxons began to bellow.

Dorothee looked back as they pul ed her away. The Doctor, tiny beside the ma.s.sive cloaked shape of the other figure, had turned to watch them. For a moment, his eyes met hers across a widening gulf of time and lost hope.

His head suddenly moved up to stare at something.

'It's Glospin,' shouted Dorothee.

The dark ghost was watching from one of the upper walkways.

As the group turned in confusion, the energy surge peaked. A torrent of light fell in dazzling, twisting plumes from the upper pole of the chamber. It struck through an eye at the bridge's centre.

The other stepped into the light. The raw energy, a fierce, primal, living stuff, painful to look at, consumed the man's shape utterly.

There was the sound of a great, whispered sigh.

The Doctor stood alone, staring into the depths of the light.

Glospin turned and vanished.

192.

'Sorry,' said Dorothee.

They drifted away in defeated silence.

Moving through the deserted building, Innocet said, 'The legends were wrong. The Other never left Gallifrey. He died in the energy of the open progenitive cascades, just as the Pythia threw herself into the Creva.s.se of Memories.'

'Irrefutable proof, Cousin,' sneered another figure, cutting across their path. 'Or is your brain still soft from post regenerative trauma?'

'Go away, Glospin,' answered Innocet. 'These memories are private.'

'But he's right,' said Romana. 'That chamber was the original Loom. The Prime Distributor that fed the subsidiary Looms in the Houses.'

Glospin nodded to her. 'Good, whoever you are. The Other went into the system. The monster threw himself into the random genetic helices to re-emerge who knows where!'

'It proves nothing,' said Innocet.

'Not to us. But something else understood. Don't forget the Hand of Omega.'