199.

Gufuu was still watching, impa.s.sive. The Doctor said, 'You're welcome to the empty pod. Although I'm afraid it no longer has its mysterious abilities. All of its "miracles" were caused by this poor creature's attempts to get someone's attention, or to protect himself.' He rapped a knuckle against the cold metal sh.e.l.l of the pod. 'Now he's free, and he can't be put back inside, believe me it's just a lump of metal.' He bowed to the daimyo. 'It's all yours. If you want it.'

They were all looking at the warlord all the monks, the time travellers, the aliens. He had come all this way, fought so hard, lost an army for nothing.

His hand was on the hilt of his sword. In a moment, he would pluck out the shining steel, and the slaughter would begin.

Except, of course, that the superior warrior knows when not to fight.

Gufuu-sama pushed the sword back down into its scabbard. Joel noticeably jumped at the sound.

Without a word, the warlord turned and walked away. The samurai parted around him. A moment later, bewildered, they followed.

The Doctor watched until they had all squeezed back out through the breach in the wall. Cold dust was settling around the pod as its hissing fell away into silence.

He turned. Now everyone was looking at him, their eyes huge, astonished that they were still alive.

'Right,' he said. 'I'm off to the bath.'

200.

23.Life in linear time

In the garden, in the tea hut, by the smoking firepit, the Doctor and Kadoguchiroshi sat together. The old Zen master had carefully laid out the implements for the tea ceremony: the kettle, the bamboo water scoop, the whisk.

The Doctor listened to the sighing of the steam as the Roshi gently brought the water to the boil. After a while, the old monk picked up the remaining cup from his ancient set, used a bamboo spoon to put in just the right amount of tea, and ladled the boiling water over it. The Doctor watched silently as the monk whisked the tea up into a froth. The Roshi put the cup down in front of him.

The Doctor held the precious cup in both hands, carefully. He shut his eyes and breathed in the steam. When he opened them again, the Roshi was giving him a questioning look.

He dropped the tea cup, and it broke into a hundred pieces.

The Roshi smiled.

A team of monks was working on the gap in the monastery's defences. Already the rubble of the wall had been sorted into neat piles, and the bits of stone too small to be re-used were being carried away.

Chris watched them work. He'd helped for a while, but he'd felt like an Ogron, clumping about. The monks moved simply and precisely, completely concentrated on what they were doing. Focused in the here and now.

A few days ago, being useless would have bothered him terribly, but now he was content to watch. He had done something impossible. He had managed without the Doctor. He had been wobbly with exhaustion and grief, but he had managed managed. He wasn't useless. He wasn't worthless. He had helped save everyone.

Maybe, just maybe, just a little bit, he was even worth dying for.

Someone thought so, once.

201.

Joel and Penelope, and the Kapteynians, were still amazed that Gufuu hadn't chopped everyone into mincemeat, monks and all. But Chris under-stood why the daimyo had simply walked away. Lose your cool, and lose face.

His samurai would never have forgotten.

The monks' slow dance made him think of Chiyono and her broom. He wished she could have waited a little longer, just a few more days, but the Roshi had said she had collapsed soon after their departure for Hekison village. She had pa.s.sed away quietly in the infirmary without regaining consciousness.

He hoped she was in Heaven, or Nirvana, or wherever, with Liz and Roz and (maybe) Kat'lanna and everybody they'd lost. He could see the Doctor talking to Joel, over on the veranda of the main hall. Chris hurried over.

'You can't,' Joel was saying.

'I can,' said the Doctor.

'Oh no. Oh my G.o.d. You can't.'

Joel slid quietly from a standing position to become a small, frightened pile.

The Doctor stood, looking down at him, his face still. 'Doctor. . . ' said Chris, but they both ignored him.

Joel said, 'You can't leave me here. It's as good as a death sentence. I can't survive here.' He looked up at the Doctor, blindly. 'Can't you at least leave me my things? My PowerBook and my watch and things?'

'Of course not,' said the Doctor. 'I can't let you get up to any more mischief with history.'

'I will,' promised Joel fervently. 'You're messing up history just by leaving me here. What if I accidentally screw up the timelines?'

'You won't,' said the Doctor. His voice was low and emotionless. 'I'm leaving you in the care of Kadoguchiroshi. He'll make sure you survive. You'll be fed and clothed. You'll work very hard and you'll meditate and study. After a few years of boiled rice and the Lotus Sutra, I think you'll have learnt your lesson.'

'I thought I was supposed to have learnt my lesson already,' said Joel dully.

'You know I could never have killed you. You're just doing this to get back at me.'

'Listen to me, Joel Andrew Mintz,' said the Doctor sternly. 'You knowingly and willingly travelled through time with the intention of altering history.

You told yourself that you would only change history in "good" ways. But you found yourself caught up in the violence of a period and place you knew almost nothing about. In your ignorance and desperation, who knows what harm you might have done?'

'But I wasn't going to change history!' protested Joel. 'I was only going to make a few things better, just do a little bit of good just like you!'

202.

'This isn't a hobby! You can't just go handing computers over to feudal lords at the first hint of danger!' The Doctor scowled at him. 'And the worst of it is that you, of all people, ought to have known better.'

Joel listened to the whole speech, growing paler and paler. Finally he just bowed his head, pressing one hand to his face as though he wished he could disappear.

'Listen,' he murmured, desperately. 'Listen, do you want to know about your future? Because I've met you. Your next self. He said he was the eighth one.

I'll tell you all about it if you'll take me with you.' He looked up, pleadingly.

The Doctor shook his head and smiled.

'But don't you '

'Don't imagine you can bargain with me, Joel Mintz. Poetic justice would see you as dead as the Caxtarid by this stage. Consider this a very light sentence.'

'You're right,' whispered the young man. His shoulders were trembling.

'You're right. This is what I deserve. No one has the right to meddle with history, not even for the better. You ought to just leave me here. Trapped.

Trapped forever, with no way out.'

Chris looked at the Doctor. The Doctor sighed, looked at his pocket watch, checked the weather, scratched behind his ear, and said, 'Oh, Fugue and Toc-cata. Get your things together, we're leaving in an hour.'

Talker was hard at work in the monastery garden, chattering away with two of the villagers. Penelope watched as the bird's slender fingers tenderly plucked a damaged plant from the soil and set it upright. Talker was back to being Gardener now.

Psychokinetic sat nearby, his feet tucked up under his scrawny body. A gaggle of children from the village were playing around him, patting him and combing his feathers with their fingers. He pecked at a bowl of rice from time to time. Gardener said he would soon recover, given copious quant.i.ties of food, sunlight and calm.

He looked up at Penelope as she walked up. 'I know I keep saying this to everybody,' he said, 'but I'm sorry. I was panicking in there, and I '

'You are entirely forgiven,' she insisted. The Doctor had made translators from the circuitry of the Caxtarid's drones drones; she wore one pinned to her jacket.

'I cannot imagine how you bore your imprisonment as well as you did.'

'So much happened because of me,' said the bird. 'So much.'

'The events of the last few days are the result of the Caxtarids' cruelty and the daimyos' greed,' said Penelope, with certainty. 'I think we should be thank-ful that their vices did not lead to a worse outcome.'

203.

Gardener got up from the garden and joined them, preening her feathers and removing dirt. 'I have concluded my negotiations,' she told Penelope. 'We will return to Hekison village and help rebuild it. And protect it, although the Doctor has insisted we abandon our weapons and armour.'

'Quite rightly,' said Penelope. 'All of these events have been lost to Earth's history, and they must remain that way.' She looked up as Mr Cwej joined them, dodging giggling children. 'Speaking of history, Mr Cwej '

'It's "Shvay",' he said. 'Not "Kwedge".' He smiled. 'Anyway, you can call me Chris.'

'I beg your pardon, Chris. What I meant to ask was whether history was not, in fact, altered. Would Gufuu and Umemi have had their battle if not for the pod?'

'The Doctor thinks so,' said Chris. 'He wants to doublecheck, but he thinks the battle probably just happened a few years earlier than it was going to.

In the end it won't matter neither of the daimyo was going to end up running the country. Their districts will be taken over by Hideyoshi within three decades.'

Penelope glanced at the farmers, who were deep in a discussion of the vegetable garden. 'And these people? And the monks?'

Chris shrugged. 'The Doctor doesn't know. Peace is coming, at least. We'll have to look it all up in the TARDIS databanks when we get back.'

'Then you will not be leaving Mintsu-san in my care?' said Kadoguchiroshi.

The old monk and the Doctor were walking through the monastery garden. The air was a little warmer than it had been. Soon the trees would be blossoming. 'The Admiral will keep an eye on him for me,' he said.

'But you insisted that his actions were a serious crime.'

'They were,' said the Doctor. 'But he's not a bit like that, really. He just got carried away.'

'What of Kuriisu-san?'

'Did he ever answer your koan koan?'

'Yes,' said Roshi, stopping at the well. 'I believe he did.'

The Doctor looked at the not-quite-random pattern of moss growing across the stones, the subtle shades of red and deep green. A tree was growing over the well, early flowers bursting into life on its branches.

'It was wrong of me to try to force him into a mould,' the Doctor said. 'I think I mistook his faith and optimism for naivety.' He sighed. 'All these years among you, and I still don't understand what's going on inside your minds.'

'The greatest masterpieces,' said Roshi, 'are created directly out of our own natures, when the busy, worrying, scheming mind is put aside for that single moment.' He nodded. 'Allow Kuriisu-san to continue to act out of his own 204 nature. And do not be deceived by changes in yourself, however dramatic.

Continue to act out of your own nature.'

The Doctor was silent for a long time. Loosened by the breeze, a blossom dropped from the tree. Roshi caught it. At last, the Doctor said, 'In spring's scenery, there is nothing superior or inferior. Some branches grow short, some long.'

Roshi smiled, and handed the Doctor the flower.

205.

24.Room for living

It took them the best part of a day to reach the TARDIS, the Doctor wandering up the rocky mountainside without so much as breaking into a sweat, Penelope clambering over rocks and fallen trees with the same vigour and determination as had brought her safely home from Africa. Joel puffed and wheezed and required numerous rest breaks. He stayed quiet, partly because he was out of breath and partly because he didn't want to push his luck.

It would have been easier, he reflected, if they hadn't made him carry Penelope's time machine.

When they reached the Castle, it was almost night. There had been a late snowfall this high in the mountains, hiding the shrivelled plants and the fetid pools. The Castle grounds almost looked peaceful.

Penelope was gazing at the blue oblong of the TARDIS, unimpressed, while Joel looked around at the withered trees and the burnt building.

'Right,' said the Doctor, rubbing his hands together. 'First stop, 1996, where I'm going to have a little chat with Admiral Summerfield before I let you out.' He gave Joel a stem, teacherly look. 'You're on probation. Any further foolishness and it'll be boiled rice and pickled vegetables. Is that clear?'

'Yes, Doctor,' said Joel.

'Good. Second stop, 1883.'

'It does not look particularly comfortable,' said Penelope. She brushed her fingers across the pseudoflaking blue paint. 'I a.s.sume this is some variety of disguise, though it seems inappropriate for this period. . . '

The Doctor extracted the TARDIS key from his hat. 'You did insist on seeing my time conveyance,' he said.

'I had expected something more awesome,' she teased.