'Listen. Most of our universe is made up of dark matter, stuff that neither absorbs nor reflects light, but which exerts a gravitational force. And more than half the energy energy in our universe is dark, practically undetectable, not generated by matter or radiation. Yet these are the concepts, the metaphysical facts that explain our expanding cosmos.' The Doctor peered down at the readouts on the console. 'I reckoned as much,' he murmured. 'In this universe there's no trace.' in our universe is dark, practically undetectable, not generated by matter or radiation. Yet these are the concepts, the metaphysical facts that explain our expanding cosmos.' The Doctor peered down at the readouts on the console. 'I reckoned as much,' he murmured. 'In this universe there's no trace.'

'If it's dark matter and energy,' reasoned Fitz, 'maybe you just can't see it?'

'Fitz. You know what's out there right now? What accounts for ninety-nine per cent of matter?' He looked searchingly at Trix as if daring her to answer. 'Plasma. Hot, electrically conducting gases. A universe strewn by vast electrical currents and magnetic fields ordered by electromagnetism as much as gravity where galaxies have formed in ultracl.u.s.ters that have taken scores and scores of billions of years to form.'

Anji's brain felt like mush. 'So where did this this universe begin?' universe begin?'

'It didn't. It has no beginning and no end. It has always been always been growing slowly, agglomerating matter in giant strands twisting across s.p.a.ce.' growing slowly, agglomerating matter in giant strands twisting across s.p.a.ce.'

'But everything has a beginning,' Trix protested. 'Where did all the matter in s.p.a.ce come from if not from the Big Bang?'

'The Big Bang doesn't explain where all that matter actually came from, does it?' Anji happily scored a point to herself. 'And it doesn't explain what gathered it all together into a little ball, what made it explode, or what was there before.'

'They're both impossible to understand,' Fitz said wisely, 'so who cares? Life's too short to worry about it.'

'But it's incredible, isn't it? Just imagine.' The Doctor was staring out, enraptured by the starfield on the scanner. 'No boundaries. Worlds without number, knowledge without limits. I could explore forever and ever and never reach the end.'

Fitz cleared his throat meaningfully. 'How does all this help us?'

'What?' The Doctor seemed to drag himself back to them. 'Well... if the TARDIS can go back in time to just after the Big Bang in our universe and hold hold that point while we slip through the dimensions...' that point while we slip through the dimensions...'

Trix finished his sentence: 'We'll know that if we're ripped apart by the primal forces of creation, we're back in our own universe. Great!'

'There's a risk involved, of course there is,' snapped the Doctor, suddenly angry. 'I don't know if the TARDIS can stand those forces, but I I can't stand to be lost any longer. We've can't stand to be lost any longer. We've got got to get back before there's nothing to get back to get back before there's nothing to get back to to.'

Fitz, Anji and Trix all looked at each other nervously. Until Fitz, reliable as ever, changed the subject.

'Trix, why are you wearing a dress?'

'What, this old thing?' Trix smiled. She knew she looked good, all dolled up to impress the boys. 'Why not? Dress up nice, something nice'll happen to you. That's what my poor old mum used to say.'

'Right,' said Anji, unconvinced. Trix was one hundred per cent fake. You couldn't believe a word she said.

'And it worked, didn't it?' She placed a hand on the Doctor's shoulder and beamed at him. 'Looks like we're going back home, thanks to our resident genius!'

'It's a fetching design,' said the Doctor stiffly. 'But you'll remember to replace it in the TARDIS wardrobe before you leave us, won't you?'

Trix's smile faltered. 'Whatever.'

Anji was glad the Doctor wasn't taken in by Trix the way Fitz seemed to be. Of course, he was a sucker for a pretty girl with a sob story, and Trix had a million different ones at her fingertips: hints of a tragic past, a loveless childhood, uncaring partners... all ready to spring on him the moment she wanted something.

Trix's hand slipped from the Doctor's shoulder as he moved round the console, flicking switches and yanking levers. 'To pull this off,' he said, 'we'll have to push the TARDIS to its limits...'

The breakthrough didn't happen straight away of course. They may have found the key, but the door it opened remained as lost and out of reach as ever. It was going to take time. Fitz suggested to Trix that they dramatise this latest development for his film. Anji went back to her room and loaded Fitz's latest tape. She looked at the latest entries in his cheerful montage of dead and dying Earths, and wondered how the movie would end.

Anji was asleep when the TARDIS broke through into...

No. There were no words for it, none that could hope to do justice to the seething force of that very first recorded second of existence, the obliterating moment of creation.

Like Fitz and Trix, Anji had been drugged.

The time ship had thoughtfully dimmed its lights a little before midnight, suggesting sleep to its occupants. With the warm-up complete, the Doctor came round with a mug of laced cocoa for everybody. He sensed the time of discovery was near very possibly the time of his own ending. The crucial point had slithered sluglike, closer and closer. Now he wanted to face it alone, not with the tiring chatter of the children about him. If they didn't make it through, their little lives would end without fear.

Anji would never know this, for Chloe would take the knowledge to the grave. She was good at keeping secrets, and the Doctor had many.

She had pa.s.sed through the twisted, buckling walls of his blue box and watched him play among the debris of his ship's controls.

'Nothing works!' he was shrieking over and over, wild haired and terrified, the captain sinking with his ship.

Jamais had barked, the sound stretching the moment into minutes. The Doctor glanced up at them, recoiled in shock; then composed himself once more as he breathed the healing seconds, careful time like air restoring the console, coaxing life back into its shattered motors.

The Event washed the big little craft forward 80 million years. The first stars hadn't switched on yet. The universe was dark, hatching possibilities.

'Thank you,' said the Doctor. Chloe watched him come cautiously closer.

'We've helped you,' she explained. 'So now you have to do some favours for us.'

'Favours?' the Doctor looked oddly at her.

'Make me a promise,' she announced with a crafty smile. And they talked for a little while, and she showed him some pages from her special book.

'We'll be meeting you again,' she told him by way of farewell, and patted the heavy leather volume wistfully. 'It says so in here.'

She could feel the Doctor's eyes on her as Jamais took her away, out into the darkness in silence.

Five.

The week before today 'Hi.' Jacqui smiled at the couple on her doorstep. 'You must be friends of Daniel.'

'Ralf Canonshire,' the man announced. He was tall and lean in an expensive suit, clean-shaven, his thick hair plastered with gel and combed back from his forehead. 'This is my wife, Susan.'

Susan nodded bored acknowledgement. She wore an elegant dress as black as her long hair with a scoop neck that left little to the imagination. Jacqui felt her nerves buzz as she checked out the woman's green eyes. There was something catlike and dangerous about them.

Jacqui checked their names on the list and beckoned them inside.

'Is Daniel here?' asked Ralf, as they followed her into the kitchen.

'He's due any minute.' A couple Jacqui didn't know were kissing and groping furiously up against the wall. Susan acted like they weren't there; after a couple of moments so did Ralf.

Jacqui beamed at them both. 'Please, may I fix you a drink?'

Susan was looking at her, scrutinising her at least as critically as Jacqui did herself in the mirror morning, noon and night, and clearly reaching no nice conclusions. Jacqui knew she was ugly. Knew her straight fine hair flopped about as lifelessly as the rest of her, knew her nose was too big and her teeth like tombstones, and her chest as flat as her conversation. But Daniel liked her place Mum's old place in Holland Park, and so sometimes he let her host his little parties. They were glamorous and wild, a place where like and dirty minds could meet. Daniel made the world seem such a wicked place Jacqui could barely stand the thrill of it.

'Scotch and soda,' said Ralf. He was good looking in an angular sort of way. 'And a straight gin for Susan.'

'Do you have an orange?' Susan asked huskily.

'Sure,' said Jacqui. She pulled one from the fruit bowl.

Susan dug one glossy red nail into the orange and tore a hole in the skin. She held it to her straight, sharp nose then squeezed three drops into the gin. She turned to Ralf and raised the gla.s.s. 'To impossible dreams,' she said.

'Made reality,' smiled Ralf in return. Their gla.s.ses clinked.

Jacqui led them through the living room past small huddles of people who talked and smoked and drank, or lay together on ermine rugs.

'Have you been friends with Daniel long?' she asked brightly.

Ralf shook his head. 'It's not easy being Daniel's friend.' Jacqui nodded in deep sympathy as he went on. 'So much cloak and dagger stuff.'

'We don't mind,' said Susan, 'as long as any point all this has is suitably sharp.'

Jacqui nodded gaily. 'You're dressed to the nines, Susan.'

'Do you know the source of that silly phrase?' Susan smiled thinly when Jacqui shook her head. 'Nine was considered a mystical number, long ago. It connotes perfection.' She tipped her head to one side, sipped her drink, t.i.ttered softly. 'Nine's my lucky number.'

'You've as many lives,' agreed Ralf.

'And I want to take as many,' she said softly.

Jacqui flushed and showed them into the box room. Ralf sat on the single bed, and Susan chose the chair at the small dresser. 'Daniel's got you down for a private consultation,' she explained.

'I should hope so,' said Susan, with a lascivious look at her husband. She pulled a small velvet pouch from her Hermes purse. 'We have everything we need, I take it?'

She poured out a trickle of diamonds into Ralf's hand. They sparkled in his sweating palm.

Jacqui took a deep, shivery breath. 'Oh, yeah.'

A deep voice behind her made her jump: 'I'm pleased to see you're not wasting my time.'

She spun round to find Daniel framed in the doorway. He was a tall, broad American in his forties, his grey hair neatly combed and parted, his dark suit tailored and expensive. But he sweated a lot, and his subtle cologne never managed to swamp his own odour. Money and dirt, he stank of. But Jacqui didn't mind. She took anything he cared to give her, his stink included.

'Wait outside, Jacqui.'

She nodded, bit her lip and slunk away. 'Good girl,' Daniel muttered, not sparing her a second glance.

Jacqui waited outside the door. She loved to listen to Daniel; his transatlantic drawl spoke of c.o.c.ktails and big deals; it was intoxicating.

'The down-payment is satisfactory,' he said. She heard the stiff rustle of photographic paper. 'This is the man. You want to kill him? Be my guest. You've seen the testimonials, met the satisfied customers. You know our organisation delivers.'

A pause, then Susan spoke: 'And we can do what we like to him?'

'Anything. So long as you leave him dead by the end of it. There's no ha.s.sle, no fuss. No comeback. Just tell us when you want to do it and we'll be there to clean everything away. It's guaranteed.'

'This', said Ralf, 'is going to be fun.' And Jacqui walked away to see what else was happening in her happening flat, giddy and quite weak at the knees.

Six.

Back at the beginning There's no light, no s.p.a.ce, no time pa.s.sing. But at the beginning of the universe there are again three people watching: Chloe, her friend Jamais, and Chloe's dolly.

Chloe pats Jamais's glossy black head. He has counted back another slow minute of his own time. He is good at counting, better than she is. She is better at reading.

There's that tiny ball of matter that the universe will spring from like a cheap conjuring trick. The beauty and the majesty of the Event are nothing to Chloe, though she supposes that might change were she allowed to grow older and see things as grown-ups do.

Today, for now, it's just boring. Everything is boring. And her bottom still stings from its spanking.

Chloe and Jamais have been told off for talking to strangers. Chloe knows it was wrong, but she had to see the Doctor again. His arrival means things are coming to an end, or to a different beginning; she can't tell which, but she knows he's the one who will make it all happen. She wishes she could tell him more, wishes she knew everything herself.

Jamais wants Chloe's attention. He's been beaten too, and he skulks about mournfully with an over-p.r.o.nounced limp. He likes to lay it on thick. But Chloe is concentrating on her book, while Jamais paces, while the little ball of universe waits dully among the nothingness. She's reading aloud to her dolly.

'He's had lots of different names over the years, has Guy,' she tells dolly. Names are important to Chloe. That's why she has never been able to choose one for dolly she's never been quite sure which would be just right. 'He's a very special man.'

Jamais barks his piteous best.

Chloe leans forward to her doll confidentially. 'We're not allowed to help him. But somebody should.'

She nods, and reaches out to make dolly do the same.

But Jamais is dry-nosed and cross, and snaps at Chloe's dolly before she can reach it. She screams and shouts as Jamais sinks his teeth into the doll's plastic skin, and shakes his broad, black head to and fro.

Chloe screams her loudest. Jamais cringes, drops the doll. Even the atom in the Void trembles fit to burst.

Then, Chloe scoops up her wet dolly and cradles her. Her eyes narrow with spite for Jamais. He slinks off pretending not to care, but she can tell from his drooping gait how upset he is. He potters over to the atom and c.o.c.ks a leg.

The yellow trickle sets it off POOF!

BOOM!.

And the universe is off again. So hot and fierce and powerful and vast, no words can...

The start of the universe is boring, boring, boring today.

Chloe blinks and is home again. She and Jamais are in the glitter room.

She rests her doll down at the lowliest foothills of the mountain of diamonds, with a firm look at Jamais. He cowers correctly, and she knows he won't be mean for some time. She smiles, to say she loves him still.