'You've never been put on trial, exiled, summoned to carry out ridiculous tasks, dragged back to your ancestral home to atone for sins that weren't even yours...' He let his words dry up. Then, 'I think I rather envy you, his. You've had, in many ways, the life I wanted for myself.'

So that night, I dreamed of the swamps - our small town huddled between the monstrous boles of trees, the tops of which none of us ever saw. we barely saw daylight.We grew up pallid and phlegmatic. My family and the families we knew never moved from their source. And everything we had smelled of the rank waters of the swamp. It seeped into everything. We coughed, our chests rattled, we sank back in torpor and the phlegmy stupefaction of our place in the world.

A dangerous land: infants were routinely carried off in the dark by the slinking, jaw-clashing quadrupeds whose scales my own flesh had grown to imitate. It was a miracle any of us lived to maturity. And when we did there were festivities. Such poor, doleful festivities. The best we could manage saw us feasting on a lumpen broth of turnips and frogs, drinking whisky of fermented bark, smoking tobacco rolled from the leaves that dwindled to the forest floor and we dried over our fires. This tobacco we stunned ourselves with, in order to blot out our fetid, unchanging circ.u.mstances.

In my dream I was leaving home again. I was following the stranger who had come to town to tell us that Hyspero was a world with a thousand and one different circ.u.mstances, environments, places and ways to live.

Our dark squalor wasn't all. Everyone I knew looked sceptical at this. He was charismatic, this stranger, so they listened. Gathered to hear him describe the great capital city of Hyspero, which teemed with wealth and intrigue. They listened to the hooded, robed stranger, as if he was telling them fairy tales. And yet I, just grown to maturity, a figure of curiosity and suspicion because of the mutant growth of my skin and my peculiar, burgeoning powers, was drawn in by his tale of the rest of the world.

I went with him and found, when we left the swamplands behind, that every word he had told us was true. But he was a slaver. And what difficulties I had after that, sold into bondage, eluding and escaping him.

But at least I was on my way.

I slept this night at the edge of the desert, sweltering under the canopy of words the four of us had talked up that night, that hung over us, webbing us in complicity. We were all runaways, it seemed to me -well matched, really. I could smell the rotting hulks of the trees again, the stagnant sickness of the waters. I was home again, waiting for the lure of the evil stranger who would, in his own way, free me.

It was a relief to wake up, to find myself me now, and on this current quest.

The others still slept. The fire was almost out. Lilac embers crackled in the makeshift grate.

I heard a shrill creaking noise: the working of an ancient, unoiled joint. It seemed to be coming through the air and coming closer. I grasped the sword Iris had lent me from her secret armoury aboard the bus and stood, wondering if I should alert the others.

Then, out of the dark, flew a silver bird.

Quite gently it came, winging softly and disturbing the air like the slightest of breaths. It came out of the dark and hovered directly above the fire. I squinted, fell back, rubbed my eyes. The bird flapped its wings before me and it seemed to consider me.

It squeaked like an old machine and I saw that it was a created thing, of thin, beaten metal, all knocked together with pins and rivets. Its wings were like splayed fingers and its head like two thumbs entwined. I saw that it wasn't a bird at all, but two disembodied hands, joined together like those of someone making a shadow-play of a bird.

It creaked and hovered and beat its fake wings at me.

They were the hands of a cyborg, the nails painted plainly black, disguising sensors and intricate circuitry. They were, I realised, the hands of the cyborg we were pledged to seek out. The d.u.c.h.ess's hands.

Somehow the cyborg d.u.c.h.ess was aware of our coming and had sent out these hands, this cool, metal envoy, to... what? Check up on us?

Warn us of something?

I was about to ask aloud, when the hands turned in mid-air, flapped three times for momentum, and shot off into the night.

I stood staring silently after them, unsure even which direction they had taken.

In the morning I didn't tell the others what I had seen.

I don't know why.

Chapter Nine.

All About Equilibrium

Sam half expected the Doctor to crow with triumph when it turned out that Iris's map wasn't as marvellous as she'd pretended. He was, though, remarkably restrained as they pulled down the blinds once more to consult the archaic charts. Gila looked frankly sceptical as she worried at the tangled, multicoloured and dotted lines that covered and confused the mountain ranges.

They were in the sandy foothills still, looking for the best route across.

What Iris had enthusiastically described as the easiest, widest and most secure road for the bus to take had completely vanished.

"There's meant to be a road here,' she cursed, as they crested yet another steep hill, the broad vista of green crags stretching impressively before them. Iris's gaze was fixed on the ground, however, glaring at the place where she had predicted a forking in the road. They were supposed to bear left. But the road they were on had chosen to peter out. They had hit an utterly desolate land.

So Iris stared deeply into the luminous map and still nothing came clear.

'It's obvious,' said Gila at last.'The desert has simply brushed the road away. The sands have risen up to obscure all previous tracks and traces.' To him - who prided himself on his lack of superst.i.tion - it even seemed to be a sign that no adventure could be the same twice. A new route must be uncovered.

'It certainly looks that way,' said the Doctor.'Tabula rasa .'

'Isn't that a drink?' Sam laughed.

'You're thinking of Tia Maria.'

Iris cursed again. 'Why is it you can never trust anything to stay the same?' She looked accusingly at the Doctor, as if it was all his fault.'I had it all sorted out. The neatest route. Everything!'

The Doctor shrugged.'We'll just have to rely on our wits.'

'Oh, whoopee,' said Sam.

'He's right,' said Gila.'Travelling blind into the mountains.'

'That's exactly what I didn't want to do,' said Iris. 'I hate flying straight into the unknown. Anything can happen. You can wind up anywhere and any old how.'

This made the Doctor cheer up immediately. This was much more like his way of doing things. He chose to mollify Iris.'Look,! know you don't like barging in and taking unnecessary risks...'

She gave him a warning glare, as if he was being sarcastic.

He went on, '...But why don't we just materialise ourselves on the other side of the mountain? Hmm? It would save so much bother - just a short jaunt.' He stared at her appraisingly.'Even my rackety old TARDIS can manage little jaunts.'

'So can mine; snapped Iris.'She's just temperamental sometimes.'

'Go on,' urged Sam.'Give it a go.'

They couldn't understand her reluctance to simply take them straight to their objective. So far they had played along with her, even pretending that this was just an old bus. But the days had come and gone and they had started to feel a new sense of urgency. It had crept up on them gradually and, the moment the road beneath them vanished - swallowed up, as Gila so decorously put it, by the voracious desert -they pressed their advantage and ganged up on Iris. She twisted and sighed and grew cross.

'All right; she said, caving in at last. She stomped back off to the cab.

'Don't blame me if it goes hideously wrong and we end up scrambled into a million shrieking particles...'

'We'll trust you,' the Doctor beamed.

She scowled at him and settled heavily back in the driving seat. 'Sit down, everyone,' she commanded. "This old thing doesn't travel as smoothly as some TARDISes you might be used to.'

With that she started to twiddle the dials, flip down the necessary switches and conjure up the coordinates. She did it all with the stagey flourishes of a magician about to make his a.s.sistant vanish.

Flying blind, indeed. Didn't the others realise? They could wind up anywhere. They might find themselves teetering at the very summit of the tallest peak, or materialise encased in solid rock. Her safety mechanisms were permanently on the blink. She couldn't bring herself to tell everyone how little faith she actually had in her vessel. The Doctor might periodically b.i.t.c.h about his own ship, but at least he never had to worry about the things that kept Iris awake. Her last (and final) companion had fled her company, saying the bus was a flying deathtrap.

The Doctor's might be an antiquated time vessel, but it wasn't a cut-price one, patched and cobbled together with spares picked up from all over the place. She remembered, with shame, fixing the dimensional stabilisers with a pair of laddered tights. She'd never got round to fixing them properly. Life seemed too short for routine repairs. Still...

'Here goes!' she yelled, and gave the dematerialisation lever a firm yank.

Sam, Gila and the Doctor held on tight to whatever came to hand.

Everything that wasn't nailed or screwed down rattled, fell over or shot into the air. Outside, through the windows that hadn't been smashed and boarded up, or covered with useless maps, spun the endless aquamarine void of the s.p.a.ce-time vortex. It seemed more immediate, Sam thought blearily, seeing it here in Iris's ship, rather than the Doctor's. Here, you felt you might just step out of the bus's pneumatic doors and plummet for ever into the airless, timeless mirage.

'I'm making up the precise coordinates,' Iris shouted, above the clattering in. 'Just like you said.'

She was taking a perverse pleasure in this, thought the Doctor. Rubbing our noses in being forced to turn all devil-may-care.

That was when the bus went into a sickening nose dive and they were all flung against the walls. There was a painful cascade of cups, lamps, books, bottles and knick-knacks.

'I can't control it!' Iris screamed.'I knew this would happen. She hates short jaunts!'

'Do something!' the Doctor bellowed and fought to stand upright. He clung to the pa.s.senger straps and tried to haul himself towards the driver's cab as the bus bucked and jounced.

Time slowed when he reached her side. The two of them shouted at each other, while Gila and Sam were left sprawling behind in the ma.s.s of Iris's old belongings.

'Let me have a go,' the Doctor shouted at Iris.

She tried to slap his hands away.'You don't know her,' she cried, and started to jab at the controls.

'You'll run us aground; he warned.

They were careering madly. He stared into the coruscating maw of the vortex and found himself entranced. He never liked to look too hard. It was a null place, and yet full of mult.i.tudinous, mesmerising possibilities.

It played tricks on him.

'We're ready,' said Iris nervously, her fingers twitching at the controls. 'I think we can rematerialise.'

She looked up then, and saw, with the Doctor, the wraithly figures cl.u.s.tered about the ship's exterior. The creatures pressed their insubstantial selves against the windscreen gla.s.s, mocking and flaunting and jeering. Their dead and empty eyes looked straight in at the pa.s.sengers.

'Djinn,' said the Doctor. "They've come after us.'

'Right,' said Iris grimly, and plunged the relevant lever down. With a tremendous lurch and the familiar groaning of a TARDIS's engines wheezing into life, the whirling vortex about them seeped and bled away...

... and was replaced by daylight once more.

Searing blue daylight that made their eyes ache and water, the second they lifted their battered, deafened heads.

'Safe!' Iris yelled and slapped the dashboard.'We did it!'

The mountains were behind them. They had come through.

Gila struggled through the mess to the very back of the bus, into the trashed kitchen, and shouted back that they were definitely over the mountains. Sam let out a whoop.'No climbing!'

'Hang on a second,' said the Doctor, staring outside.

They were perched on the lip of a sand dune. They had arrived in the foothills at the other end of the mountain range. But the bus was balanced precariously on the very lip of - and here Sam got to look out of the window and report the worst - 'A sixty-foot sheer b.l.o.o.d.y drop!'

It was a smooth, sand-blown one-in-ten.

The bus rocked slightly under their feet as they moved. Iris barked at them all to keep still.

'I knew something like this would happen! I told you all - I said, there's no safeguards against anything like this. We're lucky we haven't been dashed to pieces on the rocks - or worse.' She rounded on the Doctor.'This is your fault.You bullied me.'

'Stop hopping about,' he said, his tone deadly serious. 'If we dislodge the bus we could fall backwards all the way down that crest.'

They all fell silent.

The TARDIS's engines moaned and whispered, as if in protest. Now they could feel that steady, slow, seesawing motion, as if the bus was shilly-shallying.

The waited.

The Doctor made a decision.'Sam, Gila, come down here to the front of the bus. If we concentrate our weight down this end...'

They started to move.

There was a creak.

'Slowly!' the Doctor warned.'It's all about... equilibrium.'

At that point there was a despairing howl from the engines, and then they cut out completely.

"That's it!' said Iris. 'She's given up. She's gone into hibernation in shock.

I told you she hates short jaunts. Her nerves won't stand for it.'

The bus was silent. No pacifying background hum. They could hear the tyres whisper as they tried to get a purchase on the sand. The shuffle of the ground beneath them was the only sound and it seemed deafening.

'I think we're all right,' the Doctor said.