'Major Angela always fetishised weapons,' Gila said. 'When we operated as a troubleshooting team she would have daggers and scimitars secreted all over the place. Very handy in a fight, Angela. Once I saw her pull a stiletto out of her beard and dispatch a Corellian pirate.'

Sam shuddered. 'Apart from the obvious, I mean, her being blind and all, why didn't she recognise you?'

Gila slid down the wall to sit on the highly polished floor. 'She's playing it very carefully. Being stuck out here has made her paranoid, not surprisingly. And it's true, I could well be an illusion - a facsimile of her old accomplice, sent by the Scarlet Empress to bring her back to the city.'

Sam asked,'Why are you all so scared of the Scarlet Empress?'

'Who said we were?' he snapped. His teeth were sharp and wet with stringy spittle.

'The way you all jump to attention when you hear she's after you. The way you talk about her.'

'I'm not scared,' he said.

Then the round tower's door flew open and one of the bears announced to them that they were to have dinner in the presence of Major Angela.

'Maybe she's decided to believe in you,' said Sam.

'It takes more than that to win Angela's trust. We'll just have to be on our guard.'

Iris watched, rather dumbstruck, as the cyborg completed its swift, expert self-a.s.sembly. For a moment she was transfixed by a glimpse of its livid, pumping heart, secure in a golden chalice in its chest cavity. It was the one still-organic component she could see in the d.u.c.h.ess.

Impulsively, she decided to make an appeal.

'You must help me.'

'I have placed myself at your service,' said the cyborg, standing and steadying itself in the gangway of the bus.

'I want you to help me rescue the Doctor from the birds and the Scarlet Guard.'

'Show me,' said the d.u.c.h.ess curtly and led the way out of the bus. It - she? - smelled faintly of oil and of something left too long in the fridge.

Angela was stroking her luxurious beard, her senses aware of one of the bears as it ladled out a rich and steaming broth into golden bowls. Sam was ravenous. She ate hungrily, and listened to the one-time partners in crime begin a wary, halting conversation.

'Everything has changed,' Angela was saying pensively. 'The whole world was changing, as it tends to, and I thought I could escape all that by coming here and making my mark.'

'And creating your own little empire,' teased Gila.

'Why not? It's worked very well.'

He shook his head. 'You've no idea what's going on in the outside world.'

'I know enough. I know that the Scarlet Empress is overreaching herself.'

'She won't rest until the whole world is hers.' Gila watched the Bearded Lady blindly toy with her dinner.

'She can't be allowed to have it all.'

'At last you're talking sense.' Angela looked grim. 'If the Empress becomes as powerful as she wants to,' said Gila,'you won't be allowed to carry on here, in your own little kingdom of the bears, you know.'

'I know.'

Sam had finished with her broth by now.'So what's the plan? What are we going to do?'

When she looked at Major Angela, she suddenly saw a tired, oldish woman, well past her fighting years. She looked helpless.'What can we do? What are we? What were we ever, even in our prime?'Angela looked bitter.'A bunch of circus freaks.'

Gila said,'I've never heard you talk like that before.'

'IVe never felt like this before. Up till now I thought I was indestructible.'

'What's changed?' The alligator man's tone was oddly gentle.

Apart from being blind? Look at me, I'm useless.'

'Not that useless.'

'And it's you being here, too, Gila. You remind me how old, how plump, how self-satisfied I've grown.'

There was a pause.

'We've got no choice,' Gila said decisively.'We have to stand and fight.

She's coming after us.'

Major Angela looked stricken.

Gila said, 'She's sent agents after us. To gather up our group of four and return us to Hyspero and the Scarlet Palace.'

'What agents?'

Gila nodded at Sam.'This one here. And two others, who are coming after us.'

Angela raised her sightless eyes to Sam.

At least, the Doctor thought as he clung to the steadiest still-unburning branch he could find, at least the birds had got away safely. He watched their city's canopy burn brightly in acrid plumes of orange. He didn't owe them a thing, of course, and he'd been their prisoner and treated none too carefully, but he was glad to see they hadn't come to any harm. Now, he thought, he had to concentrate on himself. He looked down at his feet, hanging limply above the dense and smoky dark. There were several hundred metres to fall. He'd break his neck if he let himself go.

There was probably something in those capacious coat pockets of his to help with this kind of thing, but that would mean hanging by only one arm while he fished around with the other. The sinews in his shoulders were already aching and making the most disturbing crackling noises.

He wasn't, unlike some of the previous Doctors, convinced of his own superhuman faculties. He wasn't superstrong or even particularly brave.

Not always. Although he'd been in some pretty spectacular sc.r.a.ps in recent years. Jumping off an Ice Warrior ship over Central London.

Scuba diving with Zygons. Causing havoc once again on Skaro. He must be a fairly adventurous soul all in all, he decided happily. Then he started to cough and his eyes were streaming.

Me again. Iris.

The d.u.c.h.ess was a funny old thing. I don't know why they called her that. But she was a fighting machine. I've never seen anything like it.We crouched in the undergrowth beneath the burning city of birds and she surveyed the Empress's soldiers like a real pro. 'A party of five,' the d.u.c.h.ess said to me, keeping her electronic voice low and intent.'They will be missed. The Empress will never get back their beautiful painted hides.'

Then she picked herself up and ran brilliantly into the clearing. The firelight danced on her glittering sh.e.l.l. It must have been the first thing those tattooed guards saw of her - that gleam and glare of her skin.

They wouldn't have known anything about the attack. She lashed out, she flailed, she struck and she whirled into them. Her arms became dancing blades. In short, she slaughtered them. They died with barely a cry between them. I was thrilled and appalled. I was never one for violence - unlike the Doctor, of course, who seems to court it wherever he goes.

I came out of my hiding place, a handkerchief over my face. I tried not to look at the palpitating carnage strewn throughout the glade.'He's up there somewhere,' I told myself, and pointed into the crackly wreckage above, wondering how long we had before the whole blazing, twisted kit and caboodle came crashing down on to our heads.

The cyborg looked up. Her ten eyes lit up red.'I see him.'

Then she lifted easily, easily, into the murky air and vanished some distance above me.

I thought, What a useful companion she would make. I wondered if she could be persuaded to join me on my little perambulations through the vortex. But maybe not. She wasn't much of a conversationalist. It's not many people who could spend most of their time stuck aboard a double-decker bus with a taciturn, murderous cyborg.

I was feeling quite woozy by now. My usual symptoms setting in. By the time the d.u.c.h.ess streaked back down to the ground, with the battered and sooty Doctor clinging - as I learned later - to her back, I was unconscious and in a heap of my own among the remains of the Scarlet Guard.

When I came to, we were all enjoying the hospitality of Major Angela, the horrendously bearded lady of the forest.

Afterwards the Doctor could recall very little of their trip to the homestead of the bears. He was covered with soot, still coughing, and could do little but follow the cyborg as it swept through the woods, bearing the prostrate Iris in its arms. He followed dumbly, trying to catch up with himself. The d.u.c.h.ess seemed to know where she was going.

On the hillside they were met by the bears. Their shaven hides glistened with sweat; the heat from the fires was fierce even here. The bears' eyes were pinp.r.i.c.ks of burning light.

'I knew you existed!' cried the Doctor happily, wearily. 'I knew you were true!'

Up here, though, on the unpredictable hillside where they had recently lost Giselle, the bears had no time for pleasantries. Rather roughly they shepherded the Doctor, the d.u.c.h.ess and Iris along, through the rumbling gloom, to the whitewashed walls of the mansion below.

The leaden sky above them cracked in two. The forest shuddered at the lightning's touch and seemed to draw itself inward. Rain began dropping heavily, steadily, and the Doctor thought grimly that at least that would put out the fires. He imagined the birds in their ragged formation, fleeing their home. He barely registered the details of Angela's mansion as they were marched, dripping, indoors, across the wide waxed floorboards.

Sooty and wet, he was led straight to the dining room, where a stilted dinner party was just about ending.

'Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam!' he cried, astonished.

She whirled around in her high-back chair and flew to him. She hugged him hard, getting herself filthy.

'You abandoned me,' she told him, and looked up into his face, surprised at how haggard he looked. His expression was bleak, staring, as the bears brought the cyborg and the unconscious Iris into the room.

He managed a weak smile and told Sam,'You know I have every faith in you and your independence. Now.'And she glowered at him.'I do!' he said.'Besides, you were never in any great danger, were you?'

Before Sam could reply, Major Angela was up on her feet and barking orders, unsure what was going on. The maid at her elbow mumbled a swift description to her of the new arrivals. She straightened her plain white uniform and pulled the tablecloth and dishes on to the floor with one jerk and an almighty crash. 'Lay the old woman on the table,' she instructed.

'What's happening now?' Sam breathed, realising that she still hadn't let the Doctor go.

'It seems that Iris has just about completed her mission,' he said.'But there's something very wrong with her. She's ill.'

In the ghastly quavering shadows from the fire, Iris looked already dead.

The flesh, it seemed, had dropped off her. She looked skeletal.

Gila studied her cautiously and looked up at the d.u.c.h.ess.'It's good to see you again,' he muttered through clenched teeth, half believing himself.'What's the matter with her?'

The cyborg turned all its eyes on him and they blinked once, as if in recognition.

Major Angela stood by the d.u.c.h.ess for a moment, and with one crabbed hand touched the cool metal of her arm. The cyborg flinched. 'It's really true! We are being drawn together again, against our wills.'

The Doctor watched as the d.u.c.h.ess, Gila and the Bearded Lady stood together, each appalled at the others' presence. Angela asked, 'Is the Empress doing this so she can destroy us?'

The cyborg gave a curiously human shrug.

'This creature...'Angela gestured at Iris."This creature is responsible for the situation. We should just do away with her now.' She reached into her white jacket, presumably for some weapon.

The d.u.c.h.ess slid out a restraining hand. 'No, Major. This woman is dying anyway. And she was operating on behalf of the Scarlet Empress, quite against her own will. Something we three have done many times, hi truth, this woman is no different to us.'

Major Angela was chewing her thumb, thinking furiously. 'We need some help.'

Gila laughed savagely.'And who will help us?'

The Doctor coughed politely. 'Maybe I could pitch in. I'm not unaccustomed to -'

The Bearded Lady sneered.'Who is this filthy beast?'

He frowned. 'Oh, n.o.body. A mere nothing. But I could have a stab at helping out, if you like.'

Gila touched Angela's arm and instinctively she brushed him off. 'It's true, Angela. He's quite resourceful, this Doctor. We would never have got here if he hadn't helped.'

The Major tossed her bearded head.'Does it occur to you that I never wanted you here at all?"

'Well, you've got us here,' snapped Gila. 'We just have to make the best of it. Your nice little seclusion is over.'

'Why should he help us?'

'For my friend,' said the Doctor suddenly. 'For Iris. Because she isn't well and I think she's in trouble.'

They stood locked like this, staring at each other for some moments, until Sam burst out: 'Look, you all want the same thing. You're all enemies of the Scarlet Empress and she's hunting you all. Can't you work together?'

Major Angela turned on her heel. 'I must take some consultation on this.'

When she was gone they gathered around Iris, and the Doctor fussed over her, checking her heart rates and the regularity of her breathing.

'She looks terrible,' said Sam.

The Doctor looked at the d.u.c.h.ess. 'She needs her bus. You know where it is, don't you?'

The cyborg nodded once and turned to go. At the door the armed bears drew forward as if to block her way, but the d.u.c.h.ess strode on, unperturbed.