'Difficult to tell,' Cwej replied. 'The echoes '

Again, the sound of concrete being ground beneath something metallic and heavy. Footsteps, getting louder.

A shape, moving in the shadows.

'It's a bot,' Cwej said.

'Be prepared,' Forrester said. 'Like Bernice, I've got a bad feeling.'

The bot walked into the light. It was tall and gangly, its limbs like frozen mercury. There was some suggestion of concealed weaponry in its arms, and the sleek greyhound shape of its head barely concealed visual, IR, UV, kirilian and radar sensors.

Forrester frowned. She thought she'd seen all makes of bot in her time, but this one was new to her.

'Ever seen anything like that before?' she said to Cwej.

'New to me,' he said. 'Bernice?'

'Nope. But it's not designed to serve after-dinner mints, that's for sure.'

The bot's sensors moved to take in Forrester, Cwej and then Bernice.

'Three blind mice,' it said finally, it's plummy voice echoing and re-echoing through the flitterpark. 'See how they run.'

A shiver ran up Bernice's spine. There was something about that voice she recognized: not the sound, but the phrasing, the theatrical diction.

'Did you want to speak to us?' Forrester called out.

'No,' the bot said, sounding overly apologetic, and a trifle amused as well.

'I'm afraid that was just a ploy to lure you out of hiding.'

'Lure us out? Why?'

The bot's head searched Forrester out. Bernice could see the glint as it focused upon her.

'Because you have become an enc.u.mbrance. I had hoped that my various schemes to divert you would have worked, but you were more intelligent than I had given you credit for. A problem, but one easily solved. Please regard me as the farmer's wife, come to cut off your tails with a carving knife.'

It raised its arm gracefully.

'We've met before, haven't we?' Bernice shouted quickly, hoping to distract it.

'How very clever of you to remember,' it said.

'You were on the Arachnae Arachnae. You were the purser bot.'

136.A chuckle, very unmechanical. 'I was indeed. The poor thing was so terribly confused to find half an hour missing from its memory, I believe it turned itself in for disa.s.sembly. I was also the valet who waved to you on the walkway when you arrived in your blue box, by the by. I am everywhere. I am everything.'

'And you've met the Doctor before, haven't you?'

A pause.

'Now that is very very clever of you. How could you possibly know that?' clever of you. How could you possibly know that?'

'Because the TARDIS went missing, and because you didn't get his voice right. You met him in a different body, didn't you?'

'Far too clever. I see I made the right decision.'

The bot swivelled quickly, targeting Bernice with its arms.

'As the sports commentators used to say when I was younger,' it said, 'it's goodnight, Vienna.'

It fired.

137.

Chapter 10.

'I'm Shythe Shahid and this is The Empire Today The Empire Today , on the spot, on , on the spot, on and off the Earth. Fighting has intensified on the planet Murtaugh. and off the Earth. Fighting has intensified on the planet Murtaugh.

Rebel factions have taken control of the capital city, and the Imperial representative and his staff have been evacuated. Meanwhile, on representative and his staff have been evacuated. Meanwhile, on Earth, five apartment towers are ablaze in the latest development in Earth, five apartment towers are ablaze in the latest development in the Asian Undertown riots . . . ' the Asian Undertown riots . . . '

As soon as they boarded the Moorglade Moorglade, Provost-Major Beltempest had locked himself in the control cabin. He had taken all of the weaponry on the ship with him, as well as the cutlery and anything else that had a sharp edge, and refused to come out.

'If anybody tries to get through that door between now and Purgatory,' he had said, 'I'll fry them until they're nothing more than a greasy blob on the floor. You can take your chances with Pryce, Doctor. I'm not letting him get to me. Oh, and Pryce? If you do anything to the Doctor, I'll depressurize the entire ship. Understand?'

To reinforce the point, he had taken all the s.p.a.cesuits and evacuated the air from his cabin. The Doctor could picture him, sitting erect at the controls in his own personalized suit the one that had been specially modified to take his paunch, his four arms and his trunk screamer rifle in one hand and needler in the other, jumping at every noise.

'You're not human, are you?' Professor Zebulon Pryce asked as the engines wound themselves up for take-off. He had folded his tall, angular frame into a seat in the ship's small lounge, still as naked as he had been in his cell.

His milk-white pony-tail draped down the back of the chair. After a cursory glance around, he had shown no interest in his new surroundings. The Doctor couldn't fathom him out. Humans were usually so easy to understand, but Pryce . . . a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The Doctor scratched his head. Now who had he said that to originally, and what about?

'No,' the Doctor admitted, settling himself into the Nauga-hide upholstery of a chair.

'Double circulatory system?'

The Doctor was impressed. 'Well spotted.'

Pryce's gaze was fixed on the Doctor's chest. 'I've had a lot of experience with hearts,' he said, then looked away, towards the sealed control cabin. 'Do 138I frighten Provost-Major Beltempest?'

'Of course you do,' the Doctor said, 'although, if you asked him, he would probably say that he was just being careful. Are you sure I can't get you some clothes?'

'No, thank you. I am . . . accustomed to this state. Clothes would only irritate me now.' There was a flicker of genuine curiosity in Pryce's eyes.

'What is he frightened of?'

'He's frightened of dying,' the Doctor said in exasperation. 'You do have a reputation, you know.'

Pryce shrugged. 'He agreed to have me transferred into his custody,' he said. 'I didn't ask to be here, although the change of scenery is pleasant.'

'You said that you couldn't advise us on the icaron flux problem without access to the equipment in your old laboratory. He didn't want you back on Purgatory, and the prison authorities were very reluctant to release you, even temporarily, but I persevered. You should have seen the paperwork!'

Pryce gazed levelly up at the Doctor. 'Then he, and you, must think that the potential risk of my company is worth the possible benefit. That is your choice. I cannot be held responsible for what others think of me. I do what I must. We all do what we must.'

The temperature in the ship suddenly escalated. Tugging at his cravat, the Doctor supposed that the ma.s.sive heat shield had been pulled back into its recess above them.

Scowling, he said, 'You cannot evade responsibility for your actions so easily.'

'I've never tried to evade responsibility,' Pryce replied, gazing at the Doctor with no expression in the black pits of his eyes. 'I killed people. Why should I evade that?'

'You don't think it was wrong?'

'No,' he said simply. 'I don't.'

The Doctor stood and busied himself in the small galley for a moment, making himself a cup of tea in a metal beaker. 'Can I get you anything?' he asked. 'A gla.s.s of wine, perhaps?'

'Thank you, but no. I don't drink . . . wine.' As the Doctor re-entered the lounge, Pryce looked up at him. 'Do I frighten you?' he asked.

The Doctor hesitated, and sipped at his tea. He remembered a cave on Metebelis Three, and the way the radiation had sleeted through his body like rain through muslin.

'No,' he said. 'I have been frightened before, but I'm not frightened by you.'

Pryce smiled slightly. 'Good,' he said. 'But you are afraid of dying?'

Difficult questions. His mind flickered over a thousand human years of experience. For most Time Lords, death was nothing to worry about. Their 139minds were absorbed upon the moment of death into the APC, the Amplified Panatropic Computations Network that formed the repository of all Gallifreyan knowledge and experience, guiding the Time Lords in their philosophic enquiries and helping the President and the Celestial Intervention Agency decide upon their more mundane interferences in the affairs of the universe. The Doctor had lost that safety net when he fled his home world hundreds of years ago, and despite his subsequent elevation back to grace, his election as President of the Time Lords and his many adventures in the Ma-trix the hinterland of the APC he had never bothered to formally connect his mind back to it. If he died when when he died that would be it. No more Doctor. he died that would be it. No more Doctor.

A dark figure rose up before him in his thoughts: burning eyes raking him from beneath a black skull-cap. Perhaps there were some things worse than death.

And yet . . .

And yet he fought so hard against death's final embrace. He had endured agony, time and time again, rather than just lie down and give up. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, he suspected that more people died because of his interference than lived. But still he struggled. Still he fought.

'Yes,' he said, surprising himself. 'Yes, I am am afraid of dying.' afraid of dying.'

He held that revelation up to the light and looked at it. Well, he thought, you learn something every day.

He drained his tea in one gulp and placed the metal beaker on a nearby table.

The ship lurched suddenly as Beltempest engaged the engines and took off from the pad. The environmental controls in the lounge were working flat out to combat the heat from Dis's sun. The Doctor imagined that he could sense it through the bulkhead: a malign, oppressive influence directly above their heads.

Perhaps Beltempest had the right idea, climbing into a s.p.a.cesuit. At least he could filter out a lot of the heat that way.

'Death holds no fears for me,' Pryce said suddenly. 'She and I are on first name terms.' He reached out and picked the beaker off the table and started to turn it around in his hands.

'You said that you don't think it's wrong to kill people or, at least, to have killed people,' the Doctor probed, peripherally aware that Pryce was displaying signs of nervous tension. 'Is that because you don't think that death is something to be frightened of?'

Pryce smiled. 'You are starting from the premise that murder is inherently wrong, and asking me to explain why I feel differently,' he said. 'My position is that murder is right, and that it is your position that requires justification.'

140.'But you're the one . . . ' The Doctor tailed off, unsure how far he could go in provoking Pryce.

'The one who was exposed to ma.s.sive doses of icaron radiation?' Pryce finished the sentence for him. His hands still worked at the beaker. 'I dispute your allegation that icarons can drive people to psychosis even if it is just those people who, like myself, have undergone the body-bepple process. I have seen no evidence, but even if you are right, I would argue that it merely opened my mind up to a larger truth: the inherent meaninglessness of moral systems.' He jerked his head slightly, and his pony-tail flicked up. 'I can see more clearly now.'

'But if I'm right about icaron radiation,' the Doctor said cautiously, 'you are the one who has been through an experience which could affect your thought processes adversely. You admit that?'

'Of course,' Pryce said easily. 'Have you never been in a situation which could have affected your thought processes adversely?'

Hanging onto Morbius's mind-bending equipment while his past lives were dragged from him, one by one . . . Letting the Zygons' bistronic radiation short-circuit through his body . . . Lying, squirming, while Davros's mind probe ripped dragged from him, one by one . . . Letting the Zygons' bistronic radiation short-circuit through his body . . . Lying, squirming, while Davros's mind probe ripped his memories to shreds . . . Screaming soundlessly as Abaddon's tiny thought his memories to shreds . . . Screaming soundlessly as Abaddon's tiny thought parasites worked their way through his neuronic pathways, burning as they parasites worked their way through his neuronic pathways, burning as they went . . . went . . .

'Point taken,' he admitted. 'n.o.body can argue from a privileged position.'

'Thank you. I repeat my question: why do you think that murder is wrong?'

The Doctor hesitated. This was a potential moral minefield. 'The state of being alive is intrinsically valuable,' he said eventually. 'And n.o.body has the right to take that away.'

'You disappoint me.' Pryce leaned back in his seat. He wasn't even sweating in the heat. 'That isn't an argument at all. You are merely saying that there is some value in what is being taken away. That fails to explain why taking it away is wrong.'

His hairless brows drew together, creating furrows in his broad forehead.

He was holding something in his hand: something that had not been there before. The Doctor gazed down at it in surprise and dawning horror. Somehow, Pryce had managed to twist the metal of the beaker into a sharp-edged weapon.

'If you can't do better than that,' he said, 'I'm going to have to remove your eyes.'

The blast spread fire across the plasticrete where Bernice had been standing.

She had instinctively dived to one side, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck shrivel in the heat. Gravel gouged at her skin as she hit the ground rolling 141sideways. The energy beam followed her, searing the plasticrete, spraying small splinters in all directions. Bernice felt them cut her face and neck as she kept rolling, trying to stay ahead of the ray.

Cwej dropped to a crouching position and fired. The beam from his blaster splashed harmlessly against the robot's burnished skin and reflected off in a distorted fountain of energy, blistering a nearby pillar. The bot didn't even seem to notice.

'It's armoured,' he yelled. 'That's unfair.' He shifted fire to the bot's body, concentrating on its joints, but that strategy was equally useless.

'No good,' Forrester shouted, scuttling into the cover of a pillar. 'Must be one of those a.s.sa.s.sin models the big corporations are supposed to use.'

'I thought they were outlawed?' Cwej exclaimed, holding fire for a moment.

'They are. Do you want to tell it or shall I?'

Bernice had rolled over and over until she was underneath a flitter. Her heart was pumping so fast she thought it would burst and there was blood in her eyes from multiple cuts on her forehead. The exposed flesh of her forearms and legs stung. Panic was a dead, cold weight in her chest. She knew that if that beam touched the flitter and ignited the atomic batteries, she'd be cooked like a lobster.

She scrambled to the other side of the flitter, preparing to make a dash for it but knowing that she would be cut down before she had taken three steps.

'Concentrate fire on the head!' Forrester cried, pumping off shots that missed the silver figure completely but blasted chunks of plasticrete loose from the ceiling. Bernice wondered for a brief, hysterical moment how Forrester had ever made it through Adjudicator training with an aim like that.

Several chunks dropped on the bot's arm, knocking its aim off. The beam shot into the darkness and the bot's head swung around, its multi-sensored muzzle seeking out the source of the annoyance.