Penelope and Talker entered the clearing, looking around carefully.

The Kapteynian held her strange weapon at the ready. Penelope was uncertain how wise it would be to actually fire the thing in the woods, given its effect on the timber buildings of Hekison, but for the moment it was their only protection.

The cart stood to one side of the clearing. The horses were tethered to different trees, grazing peacefully. There was no one here.

'I wonder what the story is here,' Talker clucked. 'Where's Ke Risht hair boy got himself to?'

'Talker ' began Penelope. 'Wait a moment. Do you have a name? "Talker"

sounds as though it's a t.i.tle.'

'Names, yes, most of the species on my planet use personal names. We birds don't, though. I was called Gardener. Now I'm Talker because I do the talking.'

'Don't you find it confusing? I can't imagine life without some way of dis-tinguishing between people.'

Talker shrugged. 'I know who I am.'

The Kapteynians had spent an hour flying over the forest., taking careful note of the lie of the land. Penelope had dispatched Aoi to report on their progress his lord's army was very visible, waiting on a nearby ridge.

'No pod,' Talker announced.

'Mr Cwej must have taken it with him. Perhaps he's even reached the monastery by now.'

143.

'Why would he leave this?' Talker slapped a wing against the side of the cart. 'He can't lift that pod, not even big muscly hair boy.'

'A good question,' said Penelope. 'Perhaps someone met him here and helped him on his way. The cart could be a diversion of some kind.'

'If he's around the place,' said Talker, 'my lot will find him.'

Penelope stood on tiptoe and looked into the cart. Her time conveyance! It seemed to have survived its rough journey.

'This is it, is it?' said Talker, behind her.

'It is. The Doctor considerably modified it, but I have the plans here, with his revisions.' Penelope extracted the rolled-up papers from her leather satchel and spread them out on the seat. 'Good grief, the man's handwriting is virtu-ally illegible.'

Talker clucked with amus.e.m.e.nt. 'So, do you think we can go somewhere with that thing?'

'Penelope!' said a voice. It was Mr Cwej. Talker spun around and nearly shot him.

Mr Cwej put his hands in the air. Talker was twice her normal size, feathers puffed up like the fur of an angry cat. 'OK, hairy, where's the pod?'

'Safely inside the monastery,' he said.

'Sure, sure. How'd you get it up there?'

'The secret entrance, of course,' said Penelope. 'I am right, am I not?'

'Erm,' said Mr Cwej, trying to feign ignorance.

'I knew it,' said Penelope. 'Gufuu-sama said to be on the lookout for it.'

'You're working for Gufuu?' said Mr Cwej. 'When did that happen? I thought you were the one who didn't want to get involved!'

'Mr Mintz presented me with some convincing arguments,' said Penelope, suddenly uncomfortable.

' Joel Joel is working for Gufuu?' Mr Cwej looked so outraged it was almost comical. is working for Gufuu?' Mr Cwej looked so outraged it was almost comical.

'Yes, he is. We are trying to make the best of a desperate situation.'

'You don't need to do this. If you just want to go home, the Doctor '

'I do not not want to go home,' thundered Penelope, surprising herself. 'And I see no reason why I should trust the Doctor rather than this daimyo. At least the warlord's motives are clear.' want to go home,' thundered Penelope, surprising herself. 'And I see no reason why I should trust the Doctor rather than this daimyo. At least the warlord's motives are clear.'

'The Doctor's just trying to stop people getting caught In the crossfire.' Mr Cwej scowled. 'And now you're working for one of the people doing the shooting!' He looked at Talker. 'Can I put my hands down, please?'

'OK,' said the bird, 'but I'll southern-fry you if you try anything.'

'Look, Miss Gate,' said Mr Cwej. 'All we want to do is find out what the pod is, and stop it falling into the wrong hands.'

144.

'Who are you to say Gufuu-sama's hands are any more wrong than Umemi-sama's?'

'What? Neither of them should get the pod. As long as it's still around and people think it could help their war effort, they'll fight over it. We have to find out what it is, and get it to safety, or destroy it. No more pod, no more fighting.'

Talker's feathers had puffed up again. 'That pod belongs to us,' she said.

'You give it back to us, and we'll take it offworld.'

'Can't,' said Mr Cwej. 'Not until you tell me what it is.'

' Who's Who's got the gun?' said Talker, waving the weapon. 'Anyway, you don't need to know what it is. You just want to make sure the humans don't get it or fight over it. We'll collect it, we'll just leave. Sound fair?' got the gun?' said Talker, waving the weapon. 'Anyway, you don't need to know what it is. You just want to make sure the humans don't get it or fight over it. We'll collect it, we'll just leave. Sound fair?'

'Look,' said Mr Cwej, 'the thing is obviously some kind of weird weapon.

How do I know you won't grab it and take over the Earth?'

'External genitalia to this,' said Talker. Penelope felt herself blush. 'I'm gonna bonk you over the head and leave you halfway up a tree. Then I'm going to fly up to the monastery and. . . '

'And what?' said Mr Cwej.

'I just had a thought,' said Talker. 'To, awk, do what I need to do with the pod, I need someone who's dead. Technician ate a worm he shouldn't have the first night we arrived here.'

'Don't look at me,' said Mr Cwej. 'I'm just a pilot.'

'The Doctor,' said Penelope. 'He's from a technologically advanced future.

Might he have the skills you need?'

'It's a thought,' said Talker. 'Let's get him.'

Mr Cwej shook his head. 'We were separated when Toshi caught fire. I don't know where he is now.'

Talker squawked. 'You're a bunch of no help.'

Te Yene Rana was saying, 'These daimyo have the right idea. You've got to keep the d.a.m.ned little people little little, you know? Tax them till the pips squeak, keep them out of any decisionmaking processes, burn down their houses from time to time. When they complain about it, kill them off in large numbers.'

She gripped the reins, guiding her beast of burden around a tree. Umemi-sama's army was riding slowly and surely across a broad plain. In the distance, the mountains rose up.

About a dozen of her probes were skimming along behind her. The rest, deactivated in her room at the inn, had gone up in smoke with Toshi town.

'Peasants are cheap and plentiful,' she continued. 'If they make poor workers, at least they make good fertilizer. They're a faceless, h.o.m.ogeneous ma.s.s, easily controlled. It's only the exceptional ones you have to worry about.'

145.

'Fascinating as this is,' said her prisoner m.u.f.fledly, 'I don't think I see your point.'

'The rabble-rousers. The whackos. . . You know the sort of thing. I was there when we invaded Kapteyn 5, you know. The place was a madhouse.

Sixty sentient species, crammed together in four continents and two oceans.

Bugs, birds, humanoids, it was like a d.a.m.ned zoo! But we sorted it out. We exterminated four races, made deals with eight, and enslaved the rest. Tribute system: they hand over a percentage of their population each year. Some of them are d.a.m.ned useless we just eat them.'

'I know all this,' said her prisoner. 'I've read Historian's Account of the Account of the Kapteynian Peoples Kapteynian Peoples.'

'Never heard of it,' said Te Yene Rana. 'Anyway, my point is, these daimyo have the right idea. Keep that pod out of the hands of the peasants. Let 'em have the guns, if it keeps them happy; with any luck they'll be too busy shooting each other to bother with him. Petty wars on Kapteyn 5 made our invasion a pushover. And anyway, you've got more guns, and bigger guns.

But imagine if the peasants got hold of something you didn't have, something more powerful. . . '

'The villagers weren't planning to overthrow the government,' said the prisoner. 'They just wanted the soldiers to leave them alone.'

'Ah,' said Te Yene Rana, 'but what if one of them had realized its potential as a weapon and had actually done something with it?'

She glanced back at him. The Doctor shifted slightly, looking appallingly uncomfortable, bound and draped over the back of her horse.

'What kinds of torture do they have here?' she wondered.

'Oh, do shut up,' replied the Doctor.

Penelope appeared in normal s.p.a.ce ten feet above the ground. She fell into the vegetable garden and lay there, winded. A cog rolled out of the time conveyance and down the slope. I'll fetch you back, she thought at it, when my brain is once more functioning normally.

The Doctor had called it a 'hyperwalk'. They had discussed the possibility briefly while he was adding notes to the machine's plans. He had calibrated the device to travel instantly from one point in three-dimensional s.p.a.ce to another, the way they had travelled from Hekison village to the forest.

But that required destination coordinates.

Penelope rolled over in the dirt, feeling the world not spin around her, the opposite of spinning, as though it was terrifyingly stable and hard. She reached out to the time conveyance, and removed the punchcard from it.

There was only a single hole in the card, just a single instruction to enter the fourth dimension.

146.

She had walked up the mountain, the heavy machine wrapped in her arms, sometimes through the air and sometimes through the rock, seeing the back of each tree as well as the front, moving in a direction she had no name for, until she had walked through the wall of the monastery and entered normal s.p.a.ce at an angle that had knocked the air out of her lungs.

Everything looked so simple, so solid, so normal. Her mind was settling back down. The human brain had never been meant to perceive the world in four dimensions.

Her hand shot to her heart. She pressed her fingers urgently against her chest, feeling the pulse echoing deep inside, and relaxed. Her heart was still on the left side.

It would have been so easy to give in to the strange tuggings she had felt, allow her body to turn itself inside out or back to front.

'I never want to do that again,' she said out loud.

She looked up up up, thank G.o.d, up at the figure standing over her. She could see only the front of the woman's head, thank G.o.d.

'What are you doing in the vegetable garden?' asked the monk.

The two armies faced each other across the plain. The purple and orange banners were silent in the still air. Joel was uncomfortably reminded of the pieces on a chess board the moment before the game started.

They had given him a sword and even a gun, but those were mostly for show he could fence, but he had no idea of how to fight with the heavy longsword, and less idea of how to use the matchlock.

Gufuu-sama sat on a stool at the centre of his troops. The warlord gazed out across the plain, silently, his face hidden inside his helmet. He had not moved for hours, not even when scouts and messengers rode or ran up and bowed, delivering their observations of the enemy.

Gufuu hadn't even moved when Umemi's army had come into view, troops slowly appearing above a ridge at the opposite end of the plain. The soldiers were the same, the marksmen quietly watching the enemy, the samurai absolutely still in their saddles. He envied them their calm. It was almost as though they didn't care no, that wasn't it at all. Their backs were rigid, their bodies poised for instant action. They were focused focused, so focused they weren't thinking about anything but here and now, not death or consequences.

Joel's heart was hammering. He didn't want to be here. Not in the middle of these soldiers, on the verge of a battle, in j.a.pan, in the sixteenth century.

This wasn't what he had planned. But then, he hadn't planned anything anything, had he? He'd just got this great idea about making his little mark in history, and jumped in feet first.

147.

He thought of all those half-finished projects sitting around on his computer. The fanzines that had never got to issue one, the Professor X: The New Professor X: The New Adventures Adventures submission he'd been mucking around with for two years. All the unanswered e-mail that was never going to be answered. submission he'd been mucking around with for two years. All the unanswered e-mail that was never going to be answered.

It was too late to turn back now.

Maybe there wouldn't be a battle. Maybe there'd be nothing to fight over.

Maybe the pod was already taken care of. Maybe they'd all see sense, that there wasn't any need to fight, that it would be a senseless waste of human life.

'Maybe,' said Joel out loud, 'monkeys will fly out of my b.u.t.t.'

The two samurai on either side of him turned to look at him. He shrank down in the saddle and wished he was dead. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Chris waited half an hour to make sure he was alone again.

Penelope had gone to the monastery. He hoped. He'd tried to talk her out of using the time machine, but she'd been so certain she knew how to make it do what she wanted. . . when she'd turned into a Pica.s.so woman, with two surprised eyes on the one side of her face, arms reaching into nothing he could do. Either she had been right, or she was trapped in the fourth dimension, or she was smeared across s.p.a.ce-time like a distorted painting, and there he couldn't help her.

Talker had shrugged, squawked and flown off. It was time for her to bring the Kapteynians back together.