'Go on, open it,' said the Doctor. 'Please don't stand on ceremony.'

The daimyo unwrapped the silk, revealing a small package carefully wrapped in handmade paper. He opened the paper.

'Ah,' he said, putting aside his pipe. 'You have made a careful study of our customs, Isha-san.' The foreigner bowed. 'But please allow me to correct a small matter of etiquette. Tea is given only at unhappy occasions, such as funerals.'

'It was entirely intentional,' said the Doctor. The daimyo gave him a sharp look. 'Please forgive my rudeness, but if you do not change your course of action, you will bring a great deal of sorrow to yourself and the people you rule.'

'I see,' said Gufuu coolly. He gestured to a servant, who scuttled over. 'Will you take a cup with me?'

'Of course. Thank you.' The servant picked up the package and went out to make the tea.

'Now then,' said Gufuu, settling himself. 'You had better say what you came here to say.'

The Doctor inclined his head. 'My lord,' he began, 'you want the kami kami that fell to earth near Hekison village. But you don't know what it is, or what advantage it might bring you. Isn't that right?' that fell to earth near Hekison village. But you don't know what it is, or what advantage it might bring you. Isn't that right?'

The daimyo gestured for the Doctor to continue. The foreigner said, 'It's true that the kami kami does have strange powers. It used them to fight off a band 80 does have strange powers. It used them to fight off a band 80 of samurai sent by your rival.'

'Then it is mine,' interrupted Gufuu. 'That land belongs to me, not Umemi.'

'This brings me to my next point,' said the Doctor. 'Not only will the kami kami oppose you if you try to move it from Hekison village, but your most dangerous rival now knows about it.' His eyes were intense with sincerity. 'The superior warrior knows when not to fight, as well as when to fight. Is it worth going to war over this unknown object?' oppose you if you try to move it from Hekison village, but your most dangerous rival now knows about it.' His eyes were intense with sincerity. 'The superior warrior knows when not to fight, as well as when to fight. Is it worth going to war over this unknown object?'

Gufuu stroked his beard for a few minutes, considering, while the Doctor waited. 'Next time I won't send three samurai,' said the daimyo, at last. 'I'll send a troop.'

'Don't you see?' insisted the Doctor. 'The more soldiers you send, the more the situation at your border will escalate and the more resistance you'll meet from the kami kami itself. Not to mention the villagers you might risk a peasant uprising. Let your rival waste his time and effort trying to retrieve it.' itself. Not to mention the villagers you might risk a peasant uprising. Let your rival waste his time and effort trying to retrieve it.'

Gufuu considered for a moment. 'What is your stake in all of this?' he demanded. 'Why this show of loyalty from a man from some far-off country?'

'If there's a war,' said the Doctor, 'thousands will suffer and die.'

' Bushi Bushi are devoted to suffering and dying,' said Gufuu. are devoted to suffering and dying,' said Gufuu.

'Farmers and craftsmen aren't,' said the Doctor. 'And neither are women and children. Let them have their idol, my lord. It's of no use to you.'

Chris knelt in Sonchou-san's drawing room, waiting for the headman to receive him. Mrs Sonchou had given him a pair of slippers to replace his shoes, but his feet were still cold and his legs were being squashed by his weight. He shrugged and shifted for the third time. Wishing he was comfortable Wishing the Doctor was there.

He heard a stifled giggle, and looked up to see a single eye peering at him through a sliding door that had beer opened an inch. A second face appeared above the first, and then both disappeared, pushing the door closed. Sonchou's grandkids. He must be about the weirdest thing they'd ever seen. Except maybe the flying heads.

He thought about Kame and his indifference to dying. It must be easy to be nonchalant about it when you'd cheated death. But Kame had been just as recklessly stoical about it before his resurrection.

Chris turned it over in his mind. This whole samurai thing about death must be so handy for the daimyo all that emphasis on loyalty, being ready to die for your sovereign lord. All that shame hanging over your head and ready to be used to punish you if you didn't live up to bushido bushido. Kame had no choice but to attack those warriors head-on.

There were plenty of cowards and traitors, despite the way of the warrior.

It was macho, militaristic nonsense.

81.And yet. . .

Chris remembered the first time he had realized he was going to die someday. When you were a kid you didn't think about it. You knew it in an abstract, vague way, but you didn't know know it. it.

He had been playing basketball at the time. He was fourteen, already the tallest kid in his cla.s.s, pounding up and down the court with an evil grin and the ball thumping up and down in front of him. He remembered the echoes of running and shouting in the high-ceilinged gym, the feel of his hair sticking to his forehead and the back of his neck.

He didn't know why a basketball game would make him think about death.

The chain of thought was lost to him now too many years ago. But he remembered the feeling, kind of in his stomach and his head at the same time, as he wondered what it would be like to go up to Heaven. It wasn't scary so much as weird weird. Knowing that it was going to happen it was going to happen, no matter what.

You didn't think about that stuff when you were actually about to be killed.

That was different, your body reacting to the threat the way it had been programmed by those millions of years of evolution. It was more likely to pop up when you were trying to get to sleep at three in the morning.

Because if you did stop to think about it, you'd just freeze up, and kneel there on the cold ground. Kneel there, unable to do what you needed to do you you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you could have killed me you could have killed me while death opened one of her thousand doors and while death opened one of her thousand doors and One of the sliding paper doors opened. Chris flinched so hard that he nearly fell over.

Sonchou-san and his wife came into the room. Chris took his hands off his thighs and put them on the straw mat, bowing. 'After all this excitement, it's good to have a moment to talk with you,' said Sonchou, returning the bow.

'Do please stay for as long as you can.'

Sonchou-san knelt on the other side of the low table, while his wife knelt down beside them. 'Please have some tea,' she said.

'Thank you.' Chris smiled. She poured him a cup of the watery green stuff.

He was about to pick up the cup with both hands when he remembered that his host was supposed to drink first.

'Sonchou-san,' he said, 'I need to talk to you about Kannon. Or whatever it is up there in the shrine.'

The headman said nothing, bowing his head to his wife as she poured his tea. Chris went on, 'So long as the pod is here, it's going to attract trouble.

Both daimyo are going to keep on sending soldiers, until you find yourself right in the middle of a small war.'

Sonchou sipped his tea. 'You are right, Kuriisu-san,' he said. 'But Kannon herself drove them away. They fear her magical powers.'

82.'But don't you see,' said Chris, 'it's those powers they want. The more miracles she performs, the more determined they're going to get. She doesn't belong here.'

'Then why did she come here? Why heal me, protect us?'

'I don't know,' said Chris. 'Maybe she or whatever the pod is really does want to help you. Or maybe it's got something else in mind. . . But while it's here you and your people won't be safe.'

'Are you saying we should allow one of the daimyo to take her from us?'

'No,' said Chris, 'that can't be right. . . '

'Then what do you believe we should do?'

Chris hesitated. 'I don't know, Sonchou-san. I just. . . we have to do something. What do you think?' G.o.ddess, he sounded like an idiot!

'I think we should trust in her,' said the headman. 'I think we should have faith in her, and not be afraid.'

Chris didn't know how to answer that. Sonchou-san said softly, 'For as long as I have been alive, we have been their victims. Our crops have been taken as taxes, our young men as soldiers, our women as spoils of war. This village has been partly destroyed twice, once by fire set by soldiers, once by a pitched battle. Now, at long last, we have something as powerful as the lords and their retainers more powerful than them.' He looked Chris deep in the eye.

'Do not ask us to give it up.'

Chris found himself at the back of the village. He looked up at the fence, putting a hand to it, as though checking it one more time.

Behind him, the village was sleeping. Safely enclosed by its fence, safely watched over by. . . its G.o.d. Or something.

Chris sat down, leaning forward until he was looking through the fence into the darkness. He did something he had not done for a very long time.

'h.e.l.lo G.o.ddess,' he whispered. 'I need help.'

He stopped, looking around, as though suddenly embarra.s.sed that someone might be listening. There was no one there.

He started again. 'You must have had something in mind when you sent me to travel with the Doctor. You wanted me to be there, in all those different times and places. . . and I've been trying to do what you want. Fulfil my Adjudicator's oath. And be a hero.'

He rested his forehead against a log in the fence, rough, dry wood against his skin. 'Only I'm not a hero. I guess you know that now. I don't know what I'm doing here. I thought this was just going to be an adventure. That's what the Doctor said, but he's. . . you know what he's like. There's always a deeper meaning.'

83.He took a deep breath. 'I can't do this. I can't do this any more. I can't do it.'

There was no answer. Chris said, 'Look, G.o.ddess, I know I promised. I promised to enforce justice and uphold fairness and all of it. But I was wrong.

I'm not up to the job. Let me off the hook. Get the Doctor back here where he belongs, looking after everyone. I promise I'll just get him to drop me off somewhere where I won't be able to screw things up.'

No answer. Not from inside or outside.

'OK. I know that's pretty pathetic. I'm feeling pretty pathetic. OK, I'm not good enough, I found that out in Turkey, and you know it, so what do you want me to do? If anything goes wrong, it's your fault!' he hissed into the silence. 'Not mine! It's up to you what happens here! Whether there's Justice or not! You, not me! Do you hear me?' No answer. 'Do you hear me?'

But there was no answer, because he was alone.

He got up. In the moonlight, the village looked tiny. He sighed, and started making his way back down to the house.

He turned back for a moment. 'Oh,' he said, 'by the way why did did Kosen's pupil call that scribble a masterpiece?' Kosen's pupil call that scribble a masterpiece?'

84.In Penelope's dream It was autumn.

She was in a j.a.panese garden, surrounded by trees and rocks, randomly placed to suggest the wilderness.

She wore her travel clothes, men's clothes made of strong cloth. Her boots clicked against the stepping stones that formed a snaking path, leading her deeper into the garden.

Penelope hugged herself. Her breath was just visible in the chilly air. She ought not to be here. She ought to be at home, in her workshop, or even by the fire in the kitchen. She did not belong in this different world, different time.

But instead of turning back, she went on, through the sound of singing cicadas, towards the sound of trickling water.

She almost shouted as a great flood of b.u.t.terflies came out of nowhere, pouring through the garden in a silent rush of orange and black. She put her hands in front of her face to ward off the softly flapping wings, the myriad legs and feelers. In an instant they were past her and gone, soaring off into the hidden distance.

She caught her breath and moved on.

There was a hut at the garden's centre, its roof partly obscured by old, rich moss. The doorway was so low that Penelope had to get down on her hands and knees and crawl inside.

Inside, the hut had six sides. Six smooth, featureless walls, a high ceiling, out of reach. The doorway she'd crawled through was gone.

Penelope sat against one of the walls, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees, hands clasped, staring from behind her spectacles.

She took up just a tiny corner of the huge, empty, closed room.

'Out,' whispered Penelope.

It was neither hot nor cold in here. It was neither dark nor fight in here. No one ever came here. And she would never get out.

She turned her face to the wall. 'Out,' she sobbed. 'Let me out.'

85.

9.Pigeon English

Chris pulled on his clothes, scratched at his stubble, and peeked around the corner of the sliding door. Penelope was still asleep beside the smouldering firepit. He decided not to wake her. If today was like yesterday, she'd need her sleep.

Lucky her. He'd managed to stay awake all night. Lucky him.

He got the Doctor's satchel and took out the rainbow egg. It pulsed with light where he touched it.

OK, so how did you play back this thing's recordings? Chris cradled it in his palm, willing it to show him the last day's worth of temporal fluctuations. He turned it around in his hands, squinting in concentration.

It took him five minutes to work out how to do it, imagining time unwinding like a coiled ribbon, feeling the colours rush over the surface of the egg in reverse.

There. Kame's death, yesterday morning. He let the recording play back for a few seconds nothing but a murmur of chronons and then wound it forward, fast.

Nothing. Nothing but the background noise of time.

So Penelope had been wrong about time turning back. Kame had come back to life some other way.

It didn't make sense. The headman had been healed by the pod; it had done all that other stuff. . . so why not Kame? Was there something else around, something they hadn't detected, that was doing it all?

It would really suck if there was a war over the pod, and it turned out not to have any powers at all.

And n.o.body would listen to him. Sonchou had faith in it; Penelope didn't want to interfere; Kame was bursting for a fight. Everyone wanted the pod just where it was. Except the demons, of course, and seven zillion samurai.

There was a sound like a whip cracking somewhere nearby. It took Chris a moment to recognize it. He dropped the sphere on to his bed and grabbed his 87 shoes as the sound came over and over.

When he opened the sliding door, Penelope was struggling out of her sleeping bag.

'Gunshots,' she said. 'It's started.'

Joel woke up with a dreadful crick in his neck. He fumbled for his gla.s.ses, sitting in their case on top of his PowerBook, and looked at his magic nerd watch.

'I'm thirty-three today,' he told the Doctor.