In this daze, she travelled along the complex pipeline of destinations where Neville sent her until, at last, she was reunited with him on the starship bound for Ashkellia. New evidence had come to light, proof of the whereabouts of the tomb of Valdemar. Erik was terribly excited.

Pelham had stuck to the story she had concocted with Hopkins. She wondered whether Neville suspected anything, but although he certainly knew about the destruction of the base, he didn't seem to make any other connections. Despite his paranoia, he hadn't suspected a thing.

Knowing that Hopkins would almost certainly be right behind her, knowing that she was caught between two madmen, Miranda Pelham had set off on the final part of her twenty-year journey to Ashkellia the palace of the Old Ones, and her appointment with Valdemar.

'I can understand why you were so reluctant to use that little toy of yours,' says the Doctor, rather ruefully, as he attempts to reach the bruises on his back where the iron clads have been busy.

'The New Protectorate,' he muses. 'A strange, rather anachronistic period in Terra's history. The rigours of puritanism applied to a purely materialistic philosophy. Odd really, like a toffee without an apple.'

Pelham finds that her imagination is running along other tracks, such as what Hopkins is eventually going to do to her.

'Don't worry,' the Doctor rea.s.sures her, 'it's not a permanent situation. Little more than a blip really. It'll all blow over in... oh, a couple of centuries.'

They have been led into an imposing, efficient-looking torture chamber. If the New Protectorate lacked imagination, it found its creative outlet in the mult.i.tude of ways it was possible to inflict pain on a human body. Pelham was not relishing the possibility that where Kampp left off, Hopkins would more than readily pick up.

'You do realise,' she says as they stand... well, not so much stand as hang, chained to the wall by their wrists as they are, 'you do realise that we are going to tell them everything, immediately. I don't want you getting all stubborn and brave, you got that straight?'

The Doctor ponders this. 'Well, I...'

'Because if they disbelieve even one word, suspect even a single lie, then they'll start again.'

'If you insist. Mind you...'

'No.'

'I was only going to say...'

'No.'

The Doctor shrugs as Pelham twists herself round to glare at him. 'Let me give you the speech, Doctor,' she says. 'Before you start going all n.o.ble on me. I'm a coward, I'm proud of my cowardice, I look after it, nourish it, feed it. The merest concept of the smallest possibility of the slightest amount of pain to be inflicted upon my person and I will go to any inconvenience to avoid it. I will put myself out; I will be proactive in avoidance of that pain. And if that includes denouncing you as a traitor or a spy or whatever Hopkins wants me to denounce you as, there's not even an issue, there's not even a list of priorities. It's done.'

'At least you're honest.'

'I'm not proud of my cowardice. In fact, I understand that it may appear morally repugnant. However, like a limp, it's a part of my life.' She raises her eyebrows. 'Sorry, just thought it would be better for you to know.'

'Thank you,' the Doctor replies. 'You have been most rea.s.suring. I think you're braver than you think.'

'Oh!' she says with alarm. 'Don't think that! Loads of people have said that and I've denounced them all.'

The Doctor smiles, something she hadn't expected. 'Aren't you getting tired of hanging around?' he says. Is he aware of the irony or not? She doesn't know. In fact, she doesn't know anything about this lunatic. Except, perhaps, that he's the sanest man in this solar system.

He clears his throat. 'Uh huh! Excuse me! Excuse me!

Could we hurry this up please? Ms Pelham and I do have other things we could usefully be getting on with whilst contemplating what you're going to do to us.'

'Doctor,' she warns.

'Failing that, how about a crossword, or a magazine? To pa.s.s the time!'

The door to the torture chamber opens. 'Ah,' says the Doctor and winks at her.

Pelham starts to tremble. She has a feeling, not dissimilar to the feeling she felt down in the entrance to the tomb when Erik and Neville's man disappeared and she was all alone with the G.o.d she had created. 'Oh G.o.d,' she moans, 'Oh G.o.d.

There's no way out. I'm going to die. Please, Doctor, don't let them. I don't want to die.'

'Ssh now,' he says softly. 'I've got work to do.'

Hopkins enters. Well, whoever it is he is wearing an inquisitor's hood is at least a foot shorter than any iron clad Pelham has ever met, so she deduces it must be him.

'h.e.l.lo,' says the Doctor enthusiastically. 'Come right in.'

Hopkins is followed by two of his officers. They are as stern-faced and grim as he must be beneath his hood. None speak as they make their way over to their prisoners.

Hopkins is holding a small, stubby club.

'Look,' Pelham starts to gabble. 'Please, Hopkins, don't kill me. I'll do anything you want. I'll tell you everything, you know that. This one here, they call him the Doctor, he can tell you everything you need to know about Neville and what he's going to do. Listen to him, you have to listen to him The situation down there, it's just awful...'

She feels the crack of the club across her face, and her expensively capped teeth rattle. She screams, loudly, and starts to cry.

'I didn't give you permission to speak,' says the m.u.f.fled voice beneath the hood. His gloved hands grab her face and lift it up to meet his hidden eyes. She knows of old that he is inspecting her tears, seeing how close she is to breaking.

'That's the trouble, you see,' says the Doctor, 'if you tell them everything all at once, any self-respecting torturer feels he's missed out on something.'

'How right you are, Doctor,' says Hopkins.

The Doctor looks up at the two officers standing behind their master. 'I'm impressed,' he says. 'Keeping a straight face with him in all this get-up.'

There is an involuntary twitch in one of the officer's cheeks.

'Silence!' bellows Hopkins and strikes the Doctor.

When the Doctor has recovered, he looks at the little hooded man. 'Can you see me all right?' he asks, concerned.

'How many fingers am I holding up?' High above his head, the digits waggle in their restraints. The offending officer turns his head away to cough. Even Pelham finds her fear retreating. It's still there but she feels more in control.

Hopkins raises the club once more. 'You are a decadent, Doctor. I know. You have that arrogant superiority common to all aristocrats. My role is to teach you the error of your ways.' He states this calmly, without emotion. 'Fetch the needles. Some say that pain is all in the mind. I don't believe that, do you?'

The Doctor is staring out, apparently distracted.

'Well?' Hopkins snuffles.

The Doctor's head jerks, as if he is just waking up. 'Oh, sorry,' he says, 'I didn't realise you were talking to me. It's that hood, I can't see your eyes and your head was more inclined to the left so naturally I a.s.sumed...'

'I asked you a question!'

'Yes, you did.' He looks up. 'No, it's gone. You couldn't repeat it, could you? My memory's terrible when I'm hung up.'

Pelham can see he has gone too far.

'I don't like your face, sir. I don't like your smug manner and I don't like your dress.'

The Doctor pauses for a moment. Then, all innocence, he replies, 'I'm not wearing a dress.'

Pelham groans, actually makes the noise. Hopkins nods beneath his hood. 'I see. I see. Lieutenant Carlin, kill this man.' The smirking officer pulls a pistol from his belt.

'I wouldn't do that,' the Doctor says calmly. 'Not if you want Paul Neville. Pelham here won't be able to help you on her own.'

Hopkins raises an arm to postpone the execution. 'And why is that?'

'Because you're running out of time. He's not the man he used to be, you know.'

'What?'

'Oh dear,' sighs the Doctor. 'This is going to be a long story...'

'And I'm tired of listening to you,' Hopkins sneers. 'I don't know who you are and I don't care. Goodbye.'

He means it. He does. Pelham can see it even if the Doctor can't. He has made the mistake of thinking he was winding up a normal psychotic. Hopkins wasn't like that; he worked to his own rules. He could never kill enough.

'Listen to him,' Pelham shrieks. 'Listen!'

'Oh, the mouse squeaks,' Hopkins snarls, and whacks the club across the bridge of the Doctor's nose. Coldly, as if it is a new experience, the inquisitor examines the Doctor's reaction to the pain. He strikes again and this time the Doctor cries out.

'You are mistaken if you believe my treatment of you is something I enjoy, acted out to appease some delusional mental fantasy,' Hopkins tells him. 'Your death is not a pleasurable experience for me. I simply perform my duties according to my position in the state. I once slew thirty LaRoi children from youngest to eldest, one after the other, in front of their parents. It was important, historically, for them to understand their family line was to be no more. The task was unpleasant but necessary. I did not flinch.'

'The Doctor's right,' Pelham says, not hoping, not anything, just wanting to live. 'You'd better let him go. I saw some weird stuff in the palace and he's the only one who knew anything about it.'

'I don't care about palaces, I just want Neville.'

'Then for G.o.d's sake, listen!' she cries. What is she saying?

Where is all this verbiage coming from? Shut up, you stupid woman, shut up!

She finds she is not stopping. 'If you kill him, then you can torture me all you like because there is no way you will get to Neville without him.'

At last, Hopkins turns. 'Torture you...'

'That's right. Go on, do it. You've done just about everything else to me. If what the Doctor says is going to happen happens, then things are going to change around here. If you kill him then torture me all you want. You'll be doing me a favour.'

She thinks, she knows, she has gone too far. There is no walking away from this. It's not bravery, nor stupidity, that has made her say these things. It is that she is tired, tired of lying, of all those months trying to balance between Hopkins and Neville. She's had enough.

'It may be wise to listen to what they have to say, Citizen,'

says the officer who had been forced to conceal his amus.e.m.e.nt earlier on. What was his name again? Carlin.

'After all, we have no idea what is actually down there.'

'I disagree,' says the third man, another tall and rather dashing officer. 'We don't need to know what is down there.

May I suggest, Citizen Hopkins, that the artillery officer release two Hammer cla.s.s warheads on to the relevant coordinates?'

Pelham has often wondered why such a deranged, inverted sn.o.b as Hopkins should surround himself with men of such n.o.ble, aristocratic looks. Every time he looks at them, the thought of his own squat, bald physique must drive him berserk. Of course, he probably does it for that very reason.

At the moment, however, Hopkins looks pretty berserk with both men for interrupting his fun. Actually, to Pelham, this missile idea sounds pretty reasonable.

'I'm afraid your missiles won't work,' says the Doctor.

'Apart from the fact that there's bound to be some kind of psychic response from the palace, the missiles would undoubtedly be unable to manage Ashkellia's atmospheric idiosyncrasies. In other words, they'll melt before they reach their target.'

'Silence!' snarls the missile-suggesting officer.

'Only trying to help,' the Doctor mutters. A well-aimed blow from the club quietens him down.

Hopkins considers. He stares first at Pelham, then up at the Doctor. He paces the torture chamber, puffing out his chest as he does so. The two officers try not to look at each other. Pelham finds that she is annoyed that her ultimatum, her willingness to sacrifice herself for the Doctor, has met with only this reaction. This was her big moment, surely?

'You say you want to help me, Doctor. Why is that? What's in it for you?'

The Doctor shakes his head, 'You know, if Neville succeeds in opening the breach into the higher dimensions, all this, everything you know, will be destroyed. Nothing will be left unaltered. Time itself will no longer exist. I'd like to try and stop Neville doing this. How about you?'

The Doctor is detained in the brig as the ship enters the atmosphere of Ashkellia. Pelham has been whisked off somewhere and he feels alone for the first time in days.

Left to himself, he feels the burden of guilt threaten to overwhelm him. Why hadn't he realised? It was ridiculous to think he could have been so blind. Of course Neville would have known what to do once the power was restored.

The Doctor knows he is guilty of selfishness; worse, of blindness. His desperation to hurry this up, get back to what seemed of utmost importance to him, affected his perception as much as the higher dimensions affected the palace. It was almost as if someone else was putting thoughts in his head.

Almost.

He cannot evade the responsibility. He is to blame, no one else. Not for the first time, he resents the White Guardian and the demands made upon him.

Still, now he is in this position, he must redress the situation. If he can. He sits himself in this dark room, pulls his hat down to cover his face and tries to clear his mind.

Romana. What has he abandoned her to? Poor young thing, so full of herself, so eager to see the universe. Well, he'd certainly given her that, all in one go.

The disgusting vaccine gurgles inside him. 'Fat lot of good you are swirling around inside me,' he berates it, out loud.

The Doctor touches his head beneath the hat. Somewhere inside it, even in the warped complexes of the Time Lord mind, there lies the organ he stunted with the... the magic potion of the Old Ones. A prehistoric link, he supposes, with the universe when all was whole; right at the start, when all things were one. He can't imagine what that would have been like a socket waiting for a plug and a wire. Suddenly switching into the immensity of the universe in its entirety.

No, it is not imagination he lacks; it is the capacity to perceive.

If only he had had more time. If only he had managed to replicate the vaccine's numbing effects and administered it to Romana. If only he hadn't started something he couldn't finish.

He thinks of the Old Ones, how they must have felt when they realised what they had released. The first alterations; subtle, almost imperceptible. Their control room changing around them, seemingly coming to life, and then they themselves changing, feeling the world shift and widen. Were they ever aware of what was happening to them? Of course, in the end they must have been. They found a way to hold it back. Logical really.

Now all he had to do was find the same solution.

The docking process clangs around the ship. He looks up.

This is no time for rumination. He must be active; he must concentrate fully on the task in hand. Forget the Key to Time.