The Time Lord didn't stir. He had been sitting in the lotus position all night at least, he'd been sitting there when Joel had got to sleep, and he was still there now. He was back in his own clothes, the borrowed j.a.panese outfit neatly folded in its box beside him Joel realized the Doctor was about an inch off the floor. Very clever, old man, but I've seen the future and you're not it. He wondered if he was going to get a chance to drop that little fact into the conversation. Best to save it.

He pulled on his clothes, the jeans and the suede jacket and the Real Ghost-busters Real Ghost-busters T-shirt. He was tugging on his overcoat when he saw that the Doctor had come back down to Earth. The Time Lord blinked at him. T-shirt. He was tugging on his overcoat when he saw that the Doctor had come back down to Earth. The Time Lord blinked at him.

'When do you suppose breakfast is?' said Joel.

The Doctor uncurled himself and stretched. 'We'll have to wait until someone comes to get us,' he said.

'Do you reckon the daimyo will have made up his mind?'

'I hope so,' said the Doctor. 'In any case, I want to get back to Hekison as soon as I can. Regardless of what Gufuu decides, I need to find out what that pod is. And get it out of there.'

'I wonder how Chris is doing.'

The Doctor took out a paperback copy of Kleinzeit Kleinzeit. 'I'm sure he's coping very well.'

Farmers were pouring in through the village gates. 'Shut them! Shut them!'

someone was shouting. The great wooden door closed with an earth-shaking thump.

Kame was the last inside. He ran up to Chris, his face deadly serious. 'Seven of them,' he said. ' Tengu, I Tengu, I think.' think.'

Great. Wonderful. s.h.i.t. s.h.i.t. 'What weapons?' said Chris. 'Has anyone been hurt?' 'What weapons?' said Chris. 'Has anyone been hurt?'

'I don't think so,' said Kame. 'They didn't fire on us.'

'Everyone stay calm!' shouted Chris. Villagers with slings and bows were climbing on to roofs, looking down over the fence. 'They might not want to fight. Don't shoot unless they do!'

88.He climbed up the ladder to the sentry post above the gates. The two men moved aside respectfully, looking at him to see what he wanted them to do.

'Just wait,' he said quietly. 'We'll see what they want.'

'Here they come, sir!' said one of the sentries, pointing.

They were walking along the path through the middle of the rice paddies, out in the open. They were short, maybe a metre and a half tall. As they came closer, Chris saw that their bodies were hard and dark, their faces beaked and large-eyed.

For a moment, he believed that they were demons, tengu tengu, spirits come down from the trees to deal with the meddling mortals.

In the next he saw that they were wearing energy weapons, small pistols hanging from belts around their body armour, and he realized he was grinning all over his face.

OK. All he had to do was stop a fight breaking out. He could handle this.

The demons, aliens whatever marched up to the gates and peered up at him. Chris gripped the wooden rail.

The sliding door opened, startling Joel. The Doctor glanced up from his book.

It was Aka-san, in armour, carrying his helmet under his arm.

The samurai spoke. 'My lord directs that I lead a troop of soldiers back to Hekison village, and that we set up camp there to investigate this kami kami and its nature and powers.' and its nature and powers.'

Joel was shutting down his laptop. 'When do we leave?' he asked.

'Isha-san,' said Aka-san, 'you will accompany us and help us in our investigation. Mintsu-san, you will remain here and enjoy the hospitality of Gufuu-sama.'

The Doctor and Joel glanced at each other. 'Gee, they must really like me,'

said the redhead.

'Don't worry,' said the Doctor, standing up. 'I'll sort this out.'

'No,' said Joel. He scrambled to his feet. 'I mean, don't worry about me.

They're not going to suddenly behead me, are they?'

'Hopefully not,' said the Doctor. He glanced down. Joel took his hand off the Time Lord's arm. 'Are you sure about this? Very sure?'

Joel looked into those old eyes. 'I'm sure,' he whispered.

The Doctor put his paperback into his pocket and followed Aka-san out of the room. After a few moments, Joel closed the door.

Chris sat in the dust, surrounded on all sides by black birds the size of large children.

They watched him with deep black eyes, their legs tucked up under them like roosting chickens, their wings folded by their sides.

89.Their Talker Chris hadn't worked out if she was their leader, exactly, or just the one who, well, did the talking pecked the ground to get his attention.

'Ke Risht,' she hissed, taking a stab at his name, 'Talker will keep this short.

Hei. You have something we want.' You have something we want.'

'All right,' said Chris. 'But first, what is it?'

Talker squawked. 'Seven aliens come looking for something. What do you think it is? Tree no! Hut no! Rice no! Big metal thing fell from sky, you featherless git.'

Chris hoped the TARDIS was enjoying itself translating the Kapteynians'

language. 'Yes,' he repeated patiently, 'but what is it?'

'Talker not talking about that.' She waved a wing. 'None of your business, hair boy. Give it back.'

'We have a problem,' said Chris. 'The we call it the pod, all right?' Talker clacked her beak in a gesture that Chris had worked out was a yes. 'The villagers don't want to give up the pod. It's healed people and it's making their crops grow much faster than normal.'

Talker plucked an insect from her feathers and chewed on it, thoughtfully.

'Must be something else,' she said. 'That pod couldn't be doing it.'

'So you do know what it is?'

'Of course I know what it is, hairy. I know what it can do, which is nothing, so look somewhere else for your farmerbenefiting thing. Hei. Hei. Now listen. Now listen.

On Kapteyn's Star 5 there are sixty sentient species, plus. We birds are the negotiators and messengers between all those people. Hei. Hei. Talker-cla.s.s birds the best of the lot. Top negotiators. Would've been here earlier except for surveillance drones.' Talker-cla.s.s birds the best of the lot. Top negotiators. Would've been here earlier except for surveillance drones.'

'The flying heads,' said Chris.

'We don't want to laserize huts, you don't want us to be laserizing them, so give up the pod and we give you hairy folks something nice back, hei hei.'

'Oh, do stop rabbiting on in that ludicrous pidgin,' said one of the other birds.

'Trade tongue is!'

'You mean you don't have to talk like that?' said Chris.

'Well, of course not,' said Talker, 'but the trade tongue's limited vocabulary and simple structure has proven ideal for most interspecies communication.'

'It, ah, sounded a little jumbled. My translator is handling this language much better.'

'Right-oh,' said Talker. 'As I was saying, we're experts in interspecies negotiation. If the villagers aren't willing to give up the pod, we'll trade for it. I take it you're authorized to bargain on their behalf.'

'Well, not exactly,' said Chris. 'But none of them have ever seen an alien before. Besides, I'm the one with the translator.'

90.'You're not from around here, are you?' Talker looked at him sideways with a big crow eye. 'I concluded as much when you neither attacked us nor ran away screaming.'

'I don't think we should start deciding what to do until we know a bit more about each other.' It'd be nice if we could do our deciding after the Doctor gets back, he thought. Wonder how long I can stall them.

Talker pecked the ground. 'All right,' she said, at length. 'We'll tell you the whole story, if you'll '

They all looked up at the thunder sound. Hooves. Again. 'Oh, no no!' said Chris, jumping up. 'Not now!'

'Don't worry!' said Talker, pulling down her helmet. 'We'll take care of them.'

'No!' said Chris. 'They shouldn't see you. We don't want a fight!' He grabbed Talker's weapon as she was aiming it, and they struggled back and forth. She was far too strong for someone who looked like a giant chicken.

The samurai came out of the trees, then. A thousand of them. No, thought Chris, getting his brain back under control, probably about thirty. More than enough to pound the village into the ground.

One of the Kapteynians let loose an energy bolt. It ploughed into the front line of the attacking riders. Horses screamed and reared, and Chris caught a glimpse of a rider spinning wildly, flames shooting up from his banner.

Talker wrestled her gun out of Chris's hands and bonked him on the head with the b.u.t.t, not gently. 'Stand aside, hair boy. We toast these primitives for you, watch and see, hei hei.'

It didn't stop them. They came thundering across the fallow fields, roaring.

Towards the Kapteynians and their phased plasma rifles. Towards the village.

'Oh, s.h.i.t s.h.i.t,' said Chris.

Aka-san had put his son in charge of keeping an eye on the Doctor. Young Aoi was being very diligent about making sure his charge didn't suddenly ride off.

Not that he could have slipped away quickly enough to avoid an arrow in the back.

They rode in formation across the plains, at a leisurely pace, banners flapping in the wind.

It wasn't until they were fording a stream that Aoi got a chance to speak to the Doctor. The man if he was a man had been glowering for the entire journey, riding a little apart from the others.

'Lord Doctor,' said Aoi, as their horses splashed through the stream side by side, 'how was it you defeated the vampire?'

The man looked up from his thoughts. Aoi could almost see him packing them away, his eyes losing their depth as he considered the young man riding 91 beside him.

'She was greedy,' he said. 'And she'd never drunk blood like mine before.'

What kind of blood? wondered Aoi. 'I let her drain me until she thought I was dead. When she was sleeping, I set the Castle on fire.'

They emerged from the water, their horses shaking themselves. The Doctor added, 'It's not as romantic as the fairy tales that built up around it, I'm afraid.

It was brutal and straightforward.'

'Her bite cannot have been pleasant.'

'I meant setting the fire,' said the Doctor. 'My socks are wet.' He looked up sharply. 'Oh no,' he whispered.

Aoi frowned, puzzled. A moment later he smelt the smoke on the wind.

His father barked a command, and they were suddenly galloping forward, covering the last ground between them and Hekison village. Aoi remembered the way the forest thinned out to nothing, and then an empty plain, the steep rise.

Before they got to the top they could see the fat black clouds of smoke, rising.

The samurai halted at the top of the slope, their horses snorting with alarm.

Red and orange flames were poking fingers up through the dense smoke spreading rapidly from the front of the little village, Aoi saw.

Samurai were galloping all around Hekison, shouting, loosing arrows. They had broken formation. Aoi couldn't see who they were firing at. The villagers couldn't be putting up that much resistance, surely. . .

He heard his father's shouted order, and almost before he knew it, he was racing down the hill, drawing his long katana katana, ready to protect the property of Gufuu Kocho. Stampeding through the rice paddies, trampling the plants beneath their hooves.

Somewhere behind him, amid the cries and the thunder, he could hear the Doctor shouting something. But he couldn't make out what it was.

Penelope was running.

There was nowhere safe. As soon as you ducked behind one building, the samurai wheeled around in their lethal dance, helmets racing past the irregular line of the fence.

Some of them were fighting hand to hand. They weren't the problem. It was the ones who were taking potshots at one another.

Penelope heard something whizz past her head like an angry insect. She tried not to think about what might have happened if the shot had been a little closer. Beyond the fence, there were constant sharp noises as the har-quebusiers fired, and louder, tearing noises as the bird creatures fired their weapons. Searing orange and purple light danced behind the posts and vines.

92.At the back of the village, at the furthest point from the fighting, Mr Cwej was herding peasants over the fence. They were shouting, or standing still in confusion, but the ones who had got the idea were running into the forest.

Penelope wondered if she could make it across the few yards between them.

Mr Cwej glanced up and saw her, shouting something over the noise of the battle.

She saw a woman run towards him, saw an arrow come from nowhere and embed itself in her skinny body. The woman stood for a moment, as though astonished, and then crumpled into the dust.