'We distorted your perceptions, I'm afraid. In c.u.mbria.

Our efforts to get through to 1994 altered the reality nexus.

That's how you got brought up here. G.o.dwanna saw us and you and decided to remove you in case you interfered with her plans.' Mrs Wilding went over to the crippled man he somehow knew as Dent.

'h.e.l.lo, Professor,' said Dent. Shouldn't he be giggling, mad or something? 'No, my peptides are all right for a while. Good enough for me to read your mind in fact. Sorry, it's a bit of a liberty I know.'

'That's fine,' Bridgeman said, aware that he didn't know if it was fine or not. No one had ever read his mind before. 'I feel strange. What's happened?'

Mrs Wilding breathed deeply. 'Suffice to say you were in a bad way after G.o.dwanna finished with you. I had to try and set you right - I'm sorry if I caused you any pain.'

Bridgeman shook his head and smiled. 'No. No, I feel fine. Quite light-headed actually.'

'I meant mentally. Spiritually. I had to bring out your fears, your phobias in order to quash the other things that G.o.dwanna brought out. Your deeper, frightened self. You managed to override them all. You should be very proud.'

'I would be if I had any idea what you were talking about.'

He suddenly saw the curled-up man properly. 'Nate? Nate Simms?'

Mrs Wilding held Bridgeman back.

'I'm sorry. I tried to do the same with him, but his fears are too deeply scarred. The real Nate Simms couldn't get out. I lost him inside his own psyche. He's lost.'

'For ever?'

'I'm afraid so.'

Bridgeman suddenly turned round. 'Where is he?'

'Who? Nate Simms? He's here.'

'No, not Nate. The other man I saw. The Doctor. He was trying to get through to me. He needed my help - it wasn't me that needed his! He was trying to get to me.' Bridgeman suddenly understood everything - and he grasped his temples. 'My G.o.d - you probed my head, didn't you?'

214.

'Yes. I'm sorry.'

'Don't be. You did me a great favour. Everything's coming back. The garden. You need to find the garden. The Doctor's going to meet us there.'

Dent pushed his chair towards them and grabbed Bridgeman's arm. 'Yes. Well done, my friend. How do we get there?'

Bridgeman smiled. 'Easy.'

The whiteness vanished and the three of them looked around. Sweet roses. Trees. Blossoms on the peach trees and the gentle buzz of bees.

'The hedges. They're low,' said Mrs Wilding.

'I wanted it that way,' said Bridgeman. 'Your G.o.dwanna has twisted me around. Now it's my turn.' He looked at Dent. 'Are you with me, sir?'

'You are a changed man, Professor Bridgeman. Beware you don't get over-confident.'

'Point taken, Mr Dent. Are you both with me?'

Mrs Wilding clasped Dent's hand. 'Of course we are. We want to go home. If we could get out amongst the stars again, Udentkista's health would return. I'd have enough power to save him, make him whole.'

Bridgeman was laughing. 'But don't you see? It's all an illusion. The garden - this is reality. That white place - we were here - we just couldn't see it. G.o.dwanna was altering our perceptions. Twisting us.' Bridgeman took Dent's other hand. 'Come on. Let's get her.'

Dent stared at him. 'Are you mad, human? I can't just run along with you! Look at me.'

'He's crippled, Professor. And his mind could go at any minute.' Mrs Wilding frowned. 'I thought you realized that.'

Bridgeman laughed. 'Do you know something, Mrs Wilding? Thanks to you, I feel complete for the first time in years.' He plucked a flower for her. 'Here, a token of my grat.i.tude. But you haven't done anything. Not physically.

You just opened my mind - the bits I'd closed. I'd told myself they had to be closed, but you opened them. I'm the 215 same man I was but now I actually believe I'm complete.

That's all it takes. Belief'

Dent looked from Mrs Wilding to Bridgeman and back. 'I don't understand this.'

Mrs Wilding hugged Bridgeman. 'You're right. I could do it to you but not see it myself'

'But you did do it, didn't you?' Bridgeman looked at Dent.

'She tried to cure you?'

'Years ago,' said Dent. 'It didn't change a thing.'

Bridgeman suddenly pulled Dent forward, kicking out at the chair, which sped back and crashed into a tree and promptly fell on its side.

Dent was standing. His Victorian clothing faded - for a brief moment he was an Aborigine again. Then he was standing tall, younger, dressed in a tight grey survival suit, bulging with his muscles, a lithe, strong frame. As he had been when he had first arrived on Earth, forty thousand years before. And he burst into tears.

'You mean . . . he's always been able to . . . to stand?' Mrs Wilding stared at the chair, one wheel spinning uselessly.

Likewise, her face was younger, her survival suit tightly wrapped around her. 'And his brain isn't addled?'

'You cured him, Mrs Wilding. Centuries ago. But your G.o.dwanna stopped you realizing it'

Dent stepped forward, a little unsteady. 'I think I can get the hang of this, Tarwildbaning.'

Mrs Wilding hugged him. 'Are we ready to face G.o.dwanna now?'

'Yes,' said Dent.

'Good,' said Bridgeman.

'Oh, this I've just got to see!'

G.o.dwanna was standing, her arms folded, leaning against the tree that the wheelchair had hit. 'Darlings, are you the best army that can be raised against me? You haven't a hope.' She clicked her fingers.

Out of the bushes, dropping from trees and clambering around flowerbeds were the other occupants of the garden.

Insane, traumatized and completely bewildered.

216.

But Bridgeman could see it in their eyes - they would follow G.o.dwanna to the bitter end. They were her army.

G.o.dwanna raised her arms forward and flicked her hands upwards. 'Kill them.'

Sand, drifting through her fingers. Like my memories.

Polly jerked herself back to reality. 'Since when did I get so poetic,' she said to no one in particular. She stood and looked across Byron Bay. In the distance was a little island - at least it looked little but it could have been ma.s.sive. It was hard to say, the mist around it distorted her perceptions.

She was annoyingly aware that a lot of her perceptions seemed to have been distorted recently but could not think in what way exactly. Something about a house.

She had taken a long walk. Sidney and Tim had stayed in the motel, looking at road maps for Cairns - or rather Port Douglas, another hour further up the coast. She had never found geography interesting and as a non-driver the need to become fascinated by red squiggly lines crisscrossing with blue and yellow ones bored her to tears. Because Daddy's surgery was so far down in Devon, people like Roger and Uncle Charles were always trying to get her to show them the route on a big RAC atlas, but it was all Greek to her.

She remembered once having to get Miles, her youngest brother, to call Uncle Charles up and tell him. And Miles was only twelve and he could read maps. Typical.

So she had walked around this supposed hippy commune only to discover it was as commercial and lacking in love, peace and freedom as everywhere else. Presumably the hippy dreams had died shortly after they started. She'd taken a very long stroll up a path to Australia's most easterly point and watched dolphins playing in the water below. She had wandered past a white lighthouse and dodged past tourists posing for any number of ill-focused and ill-constructed photos. There had been some students, English ones, and that stirred something in her memory. Maybe this elusive house had something to do with students.

'Whoops, sorry, lady.'

217.

A young blond Australian had knocked into her, trying to evade his girlfriend's plastic bag of water. The thrown bag exploded at Polly's feet, wetting them.

'Oh Jeez, I'm sorry.' The girl had her hand over her mouth.

The boy just stared. 'Laurel, you can be so dumb at times!' He scooped the bag up and saw Polly's soaked ankles. The water had gone inside her shoes. 'I'm really sorry.'

'It's all right,' Polly murmured. In her mind's eye, she saw the white bag explode at her feet over and over again.

White. Explode.

The train trip. Short. The plane trip. Short. The pa.s.sport, the money. False. No Newcastle stopover. The unreal car and equally unreal driver, Sidney. The short trip from Sydney airport. Polly's mind had been manipulated. Time had been accelerated.

Once upon a time, Polly described herself as weedy, easily frightened. Once upon a time, that was true, but her brief time with the Doctor had begun to cure that - she was learning to stand on her own two feet.

And she had been tricked. Manipulated. Those poor kids in c.u.mbria, they had been left to die. The Cat-Person, reduced to a kitten. Charlie Coates - had he really gone back to his Gatehouse and been blown up or was he already dead by then?

The tarot cards - an attempt to throw doubt on the Doctor and Ben - but Polly believed in the tarot, her internal powers, her long-mocked dowsing prowess and in ley lines. She had been manipulated; she was being used by someone who needed her power to find his way home.

Tim.

Atimkos.

No hero. No tall dark stranger to whisk her off her feet.

Polly understood it all now - and she did not like it.

Now, sifting the sand through her fingers, her memories painful but intact, her whole mind and body bewildered but 218 strong, she was ready for a fight. She stood up and walked the short distance to where Sidney's 'car' was parked.

Tim and Sidney were leaning on it, looking at a map.

'Don't bother with the map, Tim. You can take us directly there now. Your charade is over.' Polly whipped the map out of Sidney's hand.

'Hey, Miss Wright, that's my -'

Polly ignored him. She pointed at Tim. 'You used me.

Tried to tap into whatever natural powers I may or may not have. All you had to do was ask nicely.'

Tim smiled. 'No, asking wasn't enough I'm afraid, Polly. I need strength - your strength. The strength of anger or fear.' He waved around him. 'And I'm using it now. Feel it, Polly. I can see a songline linking us to G.o.dwanna's hide-out already forming. The Earth is reacting to your strength, lighting the beacons.' He raised his arms up. 'Yes, feel that power.'

Polly was furious. 'Stop it, you pig! Stop using me!'

Tim shrugged at Sidney. 'Sorry, mate.' He touched Sidney who, along with his car, vanished leaving a ball of white light glowing on Tim's hand. Pure psychic energy. 'Use it, Polly! Use your anger!'

Polly could not stop herself. She was crying in frustration.

'Stop it, you'll destroy the world!'

Tim was yelling incoherently. Polly stared around her, the sky was flashing like some strobe light, black, white, black, white. Polly watched as the gla.s.s in nearby cars cracked and then splintered as Tim's pitched screams got higher. The roads were trembling. The gla.s.s in the hotels, houses and shops similarly exploded. People inside and in the street did not have time to panic. In her mind's eye Polly could see the boy and girl with the bag of water hugging each other as their world began to shudder and crumble. She saw them, all the tourists, all the people around her, freeze and begin to change. Starting from the ground and going up, their bodies stiffened and became gla.s.s. For one instant all life on planet Earth except herself and Tim (if he was really alive anyway) was made of gla.s.s. Every tree. Every blade of gra.s.s. Every 219 house, car, train and aeroplane in the sky. Every cloud, every puff of cigarette smoke - all gla.s.s.

The sun was gla.s.s. The moon was gla.s.s.

Only she and Tim were flesh and blood.

The ground shattered open and the white light, the energy like that in Tim's hand, roared up into the heavens as it had in c.u.mbria. Then, with the largest shattering she had ever heard, Earth and everything on it shattered into atom-sized particles of gla.s.s and then winked out of existence for ever.

It was all over.

220.

Episode Six

The trouble with letting aliens aboard the ship, Aall decided, was that they had an annoying tendency to get themselves lost. Frequently, a long, protracted search would reveal them to be somewhere in the depths of the ship's engine rooms, mewling pitifully for food, succour and warmth. Aall would then have to drag them back to the main areas, warm them up, feed them and then report to the Queen that the problem was solved.

Normally Queen Aysha would execute the stupid aliens and that was that. Aall would then consider the last hour a total waste of time and wonder what would happen if they just left the silly creatures to starve/freeze/jettison themselves to death.

This one was different - Queen Aysha clearly had no intention of shooting it, or offering it to the neutered sire-stock to play with. No, she wanted it dragged to her litter-room and talk with it. Talk? With an anthropoid? After all the years of campaigning they had been involved in, Aall had yet to meet an anthropoid with an IQ larger than a house mouse. Still, Her Majesty seemed rather taken with this Doctor-thing. Even Chosan seemed slightly awed by it.