71.A few seconds later he stopped and looked around. No one moved. No one even flinched. Petra was standing beside the pile of flesh. The young girl was staring at her arm, her face a mask of pure horror. Around them, people were staring at the cracked gla.s.s, pointing and ducking.

Around Tie Rack people had scooped up some of the gla.s.s, and a man was running away, stolen ties trailing behind him. He had dropped one and it was floating to the floor.

Except that it was not. It was just hovering in mid-air.

Nothing was moving at all - like a tableau.

He looked around in satisfaction. His internal body clock reckoned that he had about six hours. He would give it a boost in four. Then another three hours later. That should give him time to sprint up to c.u.mbria.

It was cheaper than a British Rail ticket, and he did not need to queue.

'What a wonderful library this is!' The Doctor was sitting atop of a set of library steps, about six rows off the floor.

Beside him, two candles flickered what little light they could give across the pages of the ma.s.sive leather-bound book he was studying.

Carfrae stood, her arms folded, at the foot of the steps.

'That's all very interesting, Doctor,' she said, 'but it hardly helps Si and me set up an Ex-Area, does it?'

'What? Oh yes.' The Doctor slammed the book shut and accidentally extinguished the candles. 'Oh, dear. Sorry.'

Simon heard him fumble about and eventually strike a match to relight them. He shivered. 'b.l.o.o.d.y cold in here, Doctor. Still, it's secluded enough.'

The Doctor shoved the book under his arm and gleefully hopped off the steps as if he were two feet off the ground, not seven or eight. Without breaking a stride, he landed and wandered to another set of shelves.

'You can learn a lot by reading, you know,' he said. 'I mean, how would Homer have given us The Iliad Iliad if he hadn't been well read? Mind you, he got it wrong. I was there.' He beamed at the two students as if the secrets of the 72 if he hadn't been well read? Mind you, he got it wrong. I was there.' He beamed at the two students as if the secrets of the 72 universe had just been shared out in equal portions and they should give him a round of applause.

'Homer probably couldn't read, Doctor. Or write.' Carfrae shook her head. 'They say he dictated the whole thing.'

The Doctor wagged his finger. 'Well, there you are then. I mean, if he'd done it himself, he wouldn't have got it so wrong. Education - that's the important thing. And you get more education out of reading books than a university could teach you in a lifetime.'

'Yes, thank you, Doctor. Well, if you've quite finished rubbishing our education system, perhaps you could tell us what you found so interesting in that book.' Carfrae gave Simon a look that suggested she thought the Doctor was insane. Simon smiled an agreement and slipped the book out from under the Doctor's arm. He began flicking the pages.

'Looks like a family biography. The people who built this house perhaps?'

The Doctor nodded. 'Very good. Now what are the pages made from?'

'Paper?' suggested Carfrae but Simon was frowning.

'Papyrus?' he ventured.

The Doctor shook his head. 'A bit too modern I think.'

'Papyrus, modern? Oh, come on, Doctor. It's one of the oldest types of paper on Earth.'

The Doctor pulled a book out of a shelf, ran his fingers over the leaves and replaced it. He hummed and hahhed until he spotted a pocket-sized, red-covered one. 'Ah. That's more like it.' Without reading it, he dropped it into one of his frock-coat pockets, causing one of the covers to poke through a tiny hole in the st.i.tching and make it wider. 'No, Mr Griffiths. It's not papyrus. It's not from Earth either. Try tearing a page.'

Simon grunted. 'Always taught to treasure books, not rip 'em up,' he murmured. And then frowned. 'I can't. It won't even fold or bend.'

Carfrae reached for it. And likewise failed to even crease a page. 'This doesn't make sense,' she said.

73.The Doctor took it back. 'Strange texture, too. It's not polymer nor crystalline. In fact, its molecular structure is rather bizarre - half of it is stable and half unstable, but the actual fractions are in a constant state of flux. Ever seen anything like it?'

Simon shrugged. 'I don't even understand what you're talking about!'

The Doctor began flicking through the book. 'Of course not.' He stroked a page with the tip of his finger. He held it up for them to see. 'Look at my fingertip. Notice anything?'

'Dust?'

'Paper cut?'

The Doctor sighed. 'Oh dear me, no. Stare hard at the tip.'

'It's a bit difficult in this light, Doctor. Move the candles nearer.'

'Oh, never mind,' said the Doctor. 'I'll tell you. My fingertip is probably three or four months younger now than the rest of my hand.' He beamed as if that explained everything. Simon and Carfrae looked back blankly and he deflated a little. 'Reverse tachyon-chronons. If you put this under an X-ray, it'd probably heat up, and put it under a spectrograph and - well, it'd cause enough feedback to break the machine. Time is flowing backwards and forwards over it in the same way air moves around an ordinary book.

Preserves it for, oh, roughly speaking, an eternity.'

'You what?'

'It's time-protected, Simon. A neat trick known only to a few races in the universe. Well, two that I can think of actually. And one of them is only a legend.'

Carfrae tried to form some words and then breathed deeply. She tried again. 'The book is extra-terrestrial?'

'Oh, golly, no,' said the Doctor. 'It's merely been coated in RTCs. It looks as if it was made in about 1895.'

'Victorian,' said a voice from the door. It was Peter.

'Doctor, the old woman on the stairs. She was dressed in a Victorian dress, I'm sure of it.'

'So what?' asked Simon.

74.'Possibly nothing,' said the Doctor. 'Possibly something.

Who knows? But it'll be fun finding out. Now, shall we go back to the Ex-Room with our little find?'

'Hang on a mo,' said Simon, 'I want to know more about that book. And the aliens that wrapped it in your TCRs.'

'RTCs actually,' corrected the Doctor. 'I like an enquiring mind as much as the next me will. Probably. But now is neither the time nor place. Peter, did you find Polly or Ben?'

Peter shook his head, and added that Kerbe hadn't been too helpful when asked why the Ex-Room had been locked from the outside.

'He wouldn't be. I think poor Herr Kerbe is a little out of his depth right now. The less he can try and explain - and therefore fail to do so - the better for his peace of mind.'

'He's a bit naffed off about the mess I made of the lock though,' Peter said, grinning.

'I'll bet. Still, that'll teach him,' said Carfrae.

They were back in the Ex-Room by now and the Doctor pulled the door to behind them. 'Trouble is, it doesn't shut properly now. We won't be soundproofed.'

Peter dipped into his pocket and produced the sliding bolt and socket he had kicked off the outside. 'If I had a screwdriver, I could put it on the inside.'

The Doctor poked around the inside pocket of his jacket and produced three screwdrivers of varying sizes, one of which was absolutely too long to have fitted inside any jacket comfortably, but all three students had given up trying to apply the laws of physics to either the Doctor or his coat pockets. Peter selected the smallest and began making a hole in the wooden door.

'Alien races?' prompted Simon. 'You were saying?'

The Doctor was rummaging through the tape-recorders and wiring that the students had brought with them. 'Later, Simon, later. We need to get this room Ex-ed up as soon as possible. We may need protection and this could be our best defence.'

'Protection? From what, Peter's old ghost?'

75.'Oh no, far worse than some silly osmic projection. No, I'm talking about whatever Kerbe and his mistress have cooked up.'

'Not ghosts then?'

'Not ghosts. Definitely.'

'Then why do we need an Ex-Area? It's only good for ghosts,' Carfrae asked.

'Nonsense. Any atmospheric seclusion area can be a great defence. You'll see.' He smiled at Carfrae as if he thought he had rea.s.sured her.

He hadn't. 'I should've joined the TA,' she said.

'We're getting near the village, Ben,' said Polly, pointing at a red phone box.

'Took the long way though, didn't we, d.u.c.h.ess,' he replied.

'Oh, do stop moaning, Ben Jackson. The walk will do you good. Get some of that fat off you.'

'Fat? Fat? What fat exactly, Pol? I've hardly had a drop of beer since signing on with the Doc. And TARDIS food rations aren't exactly covered in chocolate.' He stopped suddenly. 'Cor, I don't half fancy a Mars Bar. D'you think they still do them in 1994?'

Polly shrugged. 'I really don't know, Ben. And to be honest, I don't care. Besides which, we're not exactly carrying much cash. How much have you got on you?'

Ben dug deeply into his pocket. Two and six plus a threepenny bit. You?'

'Nothing. And anyway, Britain is decimal now; remember what we learned at the South Pole. Our idea of money belongs in a museum.'

'Like us, really.'

'I'm sorry?'

'Look at us, Pol. Rejects from the London night-life, circa circa 1966. Thirty years on, our clothes probably look really silly. 1966. Thirty years on, our clothes probably look really silly.

We're ana . . . anarch . . .'

'Anachronistic?'

76.'Yeah. I mean, we've really got to be careful what we say and do.'

Polly nodded. 'You know what's really frightening?

Suppose we find out something about ourselves. Suppose one of us becomes famous and dies in a car crash. I mean, it'd be in the papers. Imagine if we went through the local library's back copies of The Times The Times and found our own obituary.' and found our own obituary.'

'At least that'd tell us something important.'

'What?'

Ben smiled. 'That at some time the Doc got us home.'

'Yes but think, Ben. If we were coming back just to die, would you want the Doctor to try and get us back? I don't think I would.'

Ben stopped walking. 'What would happen if we did find out we'd died in, say, 1982? OK, so we say ta-ta to the Doctor now, in the future when we're still alive. Problem solved.'

Polly was appalled. 'But what about your mother? My Uncle Charles? We could hardly just turn up on their doorstep and say, "Sorry I missed my funeral, but here I am again, looking like I did in the mid-sixties." They'd have a heart attack or some seizure or other.'

'I think we need that Mars Bar.' Ben began walking into the village. 'Or a double scotch.'

Silently, staring at her feet, Polly followed him. 'I'm sorry,' she said after a moment.

'What for, d.u.c.h.ess?'

'Oh. I don't know. Spoiling your hopes. Being pessimistic.

Realistic I suppose.' Polly touched his hand. 'I want to go home just as much as you do, Ben, but I don't think 1994 is right for either of us. Just in case. You're right. We'd be too anachronistic.'

Ben nodded. 'One bit of good news though.'

'What?'

'These trousers I borrowed from the TARDIS wardrobe.

Like the old Ship herself, the pockets are bigger on the inside than out. I've just found what I presume is a twenty-77 pound note. It's dated 1993. 'Ere, doesn't the Queen look old!'

Polly flicked it over. 'Faraday. Yucky purple though. Hey, Ben, twenty pounds - d'you think it's still a fortune?'

'Nah, d.u.c.h.ess. Probably wouldn't buy you a hot dog now.

Shall we find out?'

'Hot dog? Oh, Ben, I'm starving. Let's see what's available.'

Ben agreed but held her back for a second. 'Difficult as I know it is for you, Polly, I think this is important. Best not get talking to too many of the locals. We've no idea how easy it is to give ourselves away. They might talk about a football match and I mention a team that no longer exists.

Or you might want to talk about that fashion woman, whatever she's called, and her stuff might be old hat now.'

'OK, Ben. I get the picture. Let's just see, shall we?'

They wandered into the street, pa.s.sing without a glance the vandalized red telephone box and involuntarily held their breath as a policeman wandered in front of them, but he did not give them more than a cursory glance.