'Well, then, there's your mistake. If you knew me '

'"If" is a dangerous word, Doctor Whoever You Are.'

'I told you who I am. Look at the card.'

Waller looked at the card and for the briefest of moments she thought it was blank. Then the words and the holograph swam into focus, and she felt the itch in her brain again, like a warning. She forced herself to empty her mind, look at this stranger without preconceptions, concentrate only on what she could tell about him for sure. What she could prove.

He was about her age, maybe a little older. Cropped, dark hair, prominent nose and ears, inquisitive eyebrows. Wide blue eyes that held a gentle mocking quality. And he was a researcher, for 8 News.

'Did you bring a camera?' she asked, checking the sky for one of the floating orbs that tended to follow his sort around.

'That part comes later,' he said. 'For now, I'm asking questions, just trying to get a feel for the subject matter.'

'A doc.u.mentary?'

'Of course. "Thought Crime on Our Streets". "The Fact of Fiction". I want to see what Inspector Waller goes through every day to hold back the nightmares. And we'll forget about that little mixup just now, yeah? We all get a bit confused sometimes. Cheers.'

He had hopped onto the back seat of her bike, leaving Waller embarra.s.sed and fl.u.s.tered.

'OK,' she said sternly, trying to regain her authority, 'you can ride out the shift with me and I'll answer your questions. Just don't get in my way.'

'Aye aye, Cap'n,' said the stranger enthusiastically. Waller froze with one hand on the steering bar, one foot in the air, and he started guiltily. 'Inspector, I mean. That was just a memory lapse. Not fiction.'

She regarded him suspiciously. His clothes were still a concern: the jacket in particular, cut from some sort of animal hide. But then, it was normal for media types to be a bit eccentric. All one step away from the Big White House, in her opinion.

She rummaged in the storage compartment, found a spare helmet and tossed it over her shoulder to him. Then, without waiting to see if he had donned it, she fired up the hoverjets and floored the accelerator.

She had reinserted the vidcom into the dashboard, allowing it to interface with the police bike's system. Its circular screen lit up again now with the image of Steel's strong face with its silver hair, square jaw and hard, grey eyes.

'It's him again, Waller. He's broadcasting.'

'Got a fix yet?' she asked.

'Still triangulating. We got lucky this time. I had people scanning all frequencies. We caught this one as soon as it started and it looks like it's coming from your sector.'

'I won't let you down, Steel.'

'I know you won't. You're the best officer I have.' Steel glanced at something offscreen and his expression tightened into a cautious smile. Steel glanced at something offscreen and his expression tightened into a cautious smile. 'We've got him. I'm uploading the info to your 'com. Good luck, Waller. Steel out.' 'We've got him. I'm uploading the info to your 'com. Good luck, Waller. Steel out.'

The screen turned green, and yellow programming symbols that Waller didn't understand flashed across it. Then the symbols were replaced by a big black arrow, which blinked insistently. It pointed dead ahead. This was it.

She felt a shiver of antic.i.p.ation, but this too was dangerous. The best advice her mother had ever given her was that the most certain future was not yet fact.

'You enjoy your work, don't you?'

She had almost forgotten about her pa.s.senger. His voice came to her now clearly through the helmet radio, unhampered by the sounds of traffic and the rushing of air around them. 'Of course I do,' she said. 'It's the best job in the world. I'm saving people from themselves.'

'Yeah, that's not why you do it, though, is it? It's the uniform. The badge and the gun. The power that puts you above all those other drudges out there.'

She would have slung him off the bike there and then if she hadn't been concentrating on following the arrow. It swung to the right, and she wrenched the steering bar around, vaulted four rows of vehicles and caused a minor accident at the lights in her wake. 'No comment,' she answered tightly.

'Oh, that's good,' he said. 'I can use that in the programme. "No comment." That's very good. Some people would have told a white lie then, but you...'

'There are no white lies,' Waller growled. 'Just lies.'

'Sounds a bit harsh.'

'I'm a police inspector...' Waller fumbled for the stranger's name she must have seen it on his card, but it wouldn't come to her. 'Er, Doctor. I see the damage done by fiction every day, the misery and the destruction. Oh yeah, it starts harmlessly enough. You hear the young people saying how it gives them a buzz, makes them forget their troubles for a while but it never stops there. You know what I was doing when we met outside that residential building? Chasing down a cell of fantasists. They were gathering weekly in a cellar and get this swapping comic books!'

'Shocking!' agreed the Doctor. 'But and I ask this purely in the line of business, you understand what harm does it do, in fact?'

'You must have seen them: fiction geeks, sociopaths. They can't engage with reality, so they retreat ever deeper into unhealthy fantasies. Their behaviour becomes erratic, illogical. They see things that aren't there, react to imaginary threats. They become a danger to themselves and to others. It's best to stop the rot before it starts. Tolerate a lie, Doctor any lie and you open the way to madness.'

'No wonder there are no politicians,' said the Doctor. 'I bet they were the first up against the wall.'

'The government disbanded when we had no further need of it,' said Waller. 'Our laws were complete.'

'And of course they can't ever change.'

'Of course not. What are you suggesting?'

'Nothing at all. But some things can't be stated too often and you put your case so well. I'm seeing potential here.'

Waller smiled at the compliment and noted at the same time that the arrow on the vidcom had turned a solid red. She was within two blocks of her target. 'You need material for your programme? Stick with me, pal. You're about to witness the biggest fiction bust this world's ever seen.' She leaned forward eagerly over the steering bar. Her palms were sweating beneath her gloves.

'One more question,' said the Doctor. 'What is this world called? I don't mean Colony World 890whatever. I mean its name. It must have had one, once.'

Waller had to admit, he'd been a welcome distraction at least with hindsight. He had kept her focused on the present. Now, though, she needed to concentrate on the task at hand. He was almost within her grasp. She could taste her victory.

'I don't know,' she shot back tersely. 'I don't want to know.'

But the Doctor persisted. 'You must have heard something. A rumour. Something.'

'The original name of this world was abandoned,' she recited stiffly, 'when it was found to be problematic.'

'Problematic how? It can only have been a word or two.'

'But words have connotations, Doctor. Names have meanings, hidden below the surface. Sometimes they're just one step away from...'

'Fiction?'

She drowned out the question with a heartfelt curse. She steered her bike onto the pavement and jammed on the brakes, only the gravity cushion keeping her seated. She glared at the vidcom as if she could intimidate it into changing its mind. But the awful words were still displayed there, in block capitals: SIGNAL LOST.

'Something wrong?' asked the Doctor.

'I almost had him!' Waller howled.

'Who?'

'You heard what Steel said. He was broadcasting again. From here. We must be right on top of him. But...'

She cast around hopelessly. She could hardly begin to count the number of windows on this street alone. There were hundreds, thousands. There'd be officers swarming all over the area in minutes, but never enough of them. And they would be too late. They were always too late.

'I still don't know who you mean.'

'Gryden, of course. I mean Hal Gryden. The most dangerous man in the world.'

'Fantastic! But why?'

There was a new sound over the traffic. Ringing. An alarm. Waller cranked up her audio receptors again and pinpointed its origin. Just around the corner and half a block away. She kicked her bike back into gear and pulled out onto the roadway.

'You'll see,' she said grimly.

THREE.

There was a spyhole in the door. Rose stared out at the distorted image of a short stretch of hotel corridor. It was empty, as far as she could see. She pressed her ear up to the wood. Nothing.

The footsteps had stopped a few minutes ago, but she hadn't heard them go away.

This was nothing to do with her. It was probably nothing at all.

But then, where was the Doctor?

Things had quietened down outside too. Rose glanced back at the sleeping form of Captain Jack. Was it worth waking him? She'd look daft if there was nothing, just some drunk coming in late or looking for the ice machine.

But then, the Doctor would have looked. And he would have found something.

The decision was made. She opened the door.

The corridor was was empty. Emboldened, Rose stepped out into it. It was dark and quiet. She jumped as the door clicked shut behind her. It was OK, though. It would unlock to her touch: they'd taken fingerprint scans at reception. empty. Emboldened, Rose stepped out into it. It was dark and quiet. She jumped as the door clicked shut behind her. It was OK, though. It would unlock to her touch: they'd taken fingerprint scans at reception.

There was nowhere to hide. Just rows of doors. She must have been imagining things. Or she'd missed the sound of one of those doors opening and closing. Just a hotel guest, then, after all.

She smiled to herself, diffusing the tension that had built up inside her almost without her knowing it. She still wished she knew where the Doctor was. She hated it when he took off without her. He was probably just restless, though. Did he even sleep? If it'd been something big, he would would have said. have said.

The moment she turned her back, she heard noises. Rose whirled, catching her breath, feeling her pulse pounding in her neck.

A m.u.f.fled thud. A clatter of wood against wood. A brief sc.r.a.ping. Now silence again, abrupt and deep.

There was a door in the opposite wall, just down the corridor. She took two, three cautious steps towards it, read the sign on it. It wasn't a room. She hadn't realised that before. It was a cleaner's store cupboard.

She wished she had a broom or something herself. She would have felt safer.

Whoever was in there, she thought, they were probably more afraid of her than she was of them. That made sense, didn't it? Monsters don't go hiding in cupboards.

No, scratch that. In the Doctor's world, they probably did.

'I know you're in there,' she said, trying to sound brave. Jack was still within shouting distance. The stairs weren't far either and she was a good runner.

Rose took a deep breath, pulled open the cupboard door and leaped back in one motion.

She had revealed a skinny guy with sandy hair and a floppy fringe. About her age. He was cowering amid mops and buckets: surprisingly lowtech kit. No monsters, then. Rose let out her breath and grinned, and the guy responded, his own fearful expression softening into puzzlement.

'I was just, um...' He looked around the tiny cupboard, blinking fast, one hand circling vaguely.

'No, you weren't,' she said cheerfully.

'No. Um... no.'

The guy looked down guiltily, as if only just realising that he was holding something. It was a bundle of papers. He tried to shove it behind his back but caught his elbow on a mop handle and dropped the lot. He fell to his knees and scrambled to retrieve the scattered sheets. When Rose made to help, he became panicstricken. He tried to mutter something about being able to cope, but the words got caught in his throat.

She grabbed a handful of sheets. The top one was filled with drawings. A comic strip, she realised. Over a sequence of six panels, an impossibly wellendowed young woman was chased through a medieval castle by ragged creatures that she described in a jagged word balloon as 'Braineating zombies!!!' She was cornered, at last, in a torture chamber, where she shrank into a corner, cupped her hands around her full red lips and screamed for a man to rescue her.

'You won't tell them, will you?' pleaded the skinny guy.

'Tell who what?'

'The cops. They're after me. Because of, you know, the fiction. They busted my reading group.'

'Reading group?' Rose looked at the other papers in her hand. There were a few more comic pages and a few sheets filled with neat, black text. 'You mean that's what all the racket was about? The sirens? All that, because you were... what? Just reading?' She remembered what the Doctor had said. 'Fiction!'

'It's not what it sounds like.'

'I don't care. I don't see what's wrong with it.'

A desperate hope shone in the young man's watery eyes. 'You... you don't mean... you don't read read yourself?' yourself?'

'Not...' Rose began, then stopped herself. She didn't want to seem thick. 'I mean, magazines and stuff, yeah.'

'Oh.' The guy looked disappointed. 'You mean nonfiction.'

'Mum didn't keep a lot of books about the flat when I was a kid, but I read at school. Sometimes. I'm Rose.'

He was staring at her, his jaw working soundlessly. Rose had to prompt him before he introduced himself. 'Domnic. Domnic Allen.'

She gave him back his papers. 'Where d'you get this stuff?' she asked.

'We...' He hesitated for a long moment, as if uncertain whether he could trust her. 'We write it. We write our own stories and swap them. Did. I mean, we did did swap them. It was great to have an audience, to share my... my thoughts, even if it was only with a few people. It's over now.' A mournful look crossed his face. 'Nat was cut off by a police bike. I saw her. She'll be on her way to the Big White House. And the others... I have to contact them, find out if they... I don't know how I got away. I just kept running. Roach always kept us up to date on the best hiding places, the buildings you can get into without a code. This one, the hotel, it's a good one. You can get to the lifts without being seen from reception. I rode up as far as I could, then I didn't know what to do.' Rose opened her mouth to say something, but Domnic cut her off. 'Shush! Can you hear that?' swap them. It was great to have an audience, to share my... my thoughts, even if it was only with a few people. It's over now.' A mournful look crossed his face. 'Nat was cut off by a police bike. I saw her. She'll be on her way to the Big White House. And the others... I have to contact them, find out if they... I don't know how I got away. I just kept running. Roach always kept us up to date on the best hiding places, the buildings you can get into without a code. This one, the hotel, it's a good one. You can get to the lifts without being seen from reception. I rode up as far as I could, then I didn't know what to do.' Rose opened her mouth to say something, but Domnic cut her off. 'Shush! Can you hear that?'

They listened for a moment and she shook her head. 'Nothing,' she mouthed.