The Doctor said sympathetically, 'Of course, my dear fellow, but don't wander too far, will you?'

'Don't worry. I've seen how easy it is to get lost here.' He walked out of the library and into the daylight.

The rest of us were silent for quite a while longer.

'Do you think they'll ever come back again?' I asked. 'It would be such a shame if all this were to be... well, wasted.'

'Shame?' The Doctor frowned. 'That has to be the understatement of the millennium. It would be a tragedy beyond even biblical proportions.'

'But... there were thousands of moai moai abandoned on the factory world. They must have sent millions into s.p.a.ce.' abandoned on the factory world. They must have sent millions into s.p.a.ce.'

'Even millions isn't that many. Consider the sycamore tree -that releases thousands of seeds every year. Over the lifespan of the tree that probably adds up to millions. How many seeds come to fruition? How many fall on stony ground or are eaten by animals or killed by cold or radiation or any of a hundred other natural controls?'

'I see what you mean.' I thought for a moment. The wound in my side was aching and I too felt like sitting down. 'In other words... these islanders... they could be this culture's last hope of survival.'

He nodded. 'But they're still carrying the virus. Whatever it is.'

Another thought had been worrying me. I voiced it now while I struggled to understand the Doctor's words. 'I've been thinking about something else. Can you explain how it is that I still live? As a student of the human anatomy I'm quite aware that the wound DaBraisse inflicted was terminal.'

The Doctor shrugged. 'That I don't know. Perhaps the transport system has some kind of biological stabilising subroutine built into it - something to minimise or control physical trauma to emergent returnees.'

I thought about that. 'If there was, wouldn't it prevent the islanders from bringing a plague here?'

'Possibly Perhaps they never thought of that. I imagine they were in something of a hurry. And perhaps they were just unlucky. The chances of a host virus being able to affect the originator species are probably millions to one against. Think of animals - most diseases that affect dogs don't affect people. Those that can be transmitted across species are rare.'

'Not being a veterinarian, I'll take your word for that.'

'Good. An open mind is the sign of true forward thinking.'

I studied the Doctor intently. I shivered, and not just with the cold. I watched him has he glanced around the library, touching the walls and floor with his eyes and mind, caressing the structures - and more than that, reaching backwards in time to the people who had built them. 'You want to bring them back, don't you?' It wasn't a great leap of imagination.

'I want to do a very great many things before I grow old.' His voice - and his expression - hinted at awe for the ingenuity of this alien species.

For myself I was in two minds. Although the victims in this situation were only Polynesians, still they were humans. On the one hand I could see how the Doctor might be impressed. On the other, as a member of the species who might have been affected by their actions, I felt only outrage.

The Doctor moved to one side and placed his hand flat against the curved wall of the library. 'The DNA hidden from your enemies inside another species, the wormholes to bring the DNA carriers back. It was a good plan. It should have worked. It deserved to have worked. All we have to do to make it work is work out why it didn't.'

'So we're back to the plague again?'

'Yes.'

'Something to which the islanders are immune but which is lethal to the species whose DNA they carry?'

'Yes.'

'And which wiped out the previous colonists when brought here by the islanders decades ago?'

'That's it exactly?

'Well... as a doctor I have to say there are any number of possibilities.

Measles, mumps, chickenpox, scarlet fever, whooping cough, polio, the common cold.'

The Doctor nodded glumly. 'A list as long as my scarf.'

I looked at the prodigious item of apparel and frowned. 'I do hope not.'

'I wonder if a broad-spectrum antibiotic would -'

'A what?'

'Never mind. I don't suppose you've heard of penicillin?'

I frowned.

'Or got any? I had some, you see, been keeping it for a rainy day. But DaBraisse, he went through my pockets while I was a prisoner on the man o' war. I made the mistake of telling him I had diamonds. He took everything. Even my yo-yo.'

'I see.'

He thought further. 'You know, I get the feeling I'm missing something.

Do you ever get that feeling? That there's something right there, perched on the end of your nose, but you can't see it?'

'Not unless you're talking about a pair of spectacles.'

'Dr Royston, this is no time to be obtuse. We need answers.' I considered. 'I suppose we could synthesise a serum from my blood, or from Horace's or Miss Richards's. We'd be immune to or inoculated against some of those diseases.'

He sighed. 'It's no good. We need to hit all of them at once. And that means you'd have to be inoculated against them all, and that's impossible, unless you were from -'

Leela interrupted warningly. 'Doctor, Something is wrong, I feel it -'

But the Doctor wasn't listening. He had turned, slowly, to stare at his companion.

' - the future!' He finished, suddenly slapping himself on the head. 'Oh!

I'm a dunce! I'm an utter nitwit! A nincomp.o.o.p of prodigious proportions!' Picking Leela up as if she were a child's doll, the Doctor whirled her around in a kind of madcap dance. Clouds of dust erupted at every step.

'Doctor, what -' Leela protested.

'Leela, I've said it before and I'll say it again: you're a genius!'

'Oh good: What's a genius?'

'It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you're from the future!

Hundreds of generations in the future. Those on Earth now are your ancestors. Why, Dr Royston here might be your great-great-great-great-great-great... er, where was I? Oh yes, great-great-grandfather.'

'And?'

'Well, medical advances being what they are I should think you're immune to everything and the common cold. I mean, why else send starships out looking for new planets to colonise unless the population growth on good old Terra Firma had been raised to bursting point by advances in medical knowledge and techniques?'

'Er...' Leela bounced helplessly in the Doctor's arms.

'I don't know.'

'Know? Of course you don't know! Not in your head, not in your experience. But in your genes, Leela. Your DNA. Because immunity factors can be conferred and transferred and bottled and labelled and... ooh, you are a clever savage, did I ever tell you that?'

'You said I was a genius.'

'Did I? Oh good.' The Doctor abruptly deposited Leela on her feet, where she swayed dizzily for a moment, beaming happily. 'Now we must cross back over the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Go back to the island. You must get whatever medical supplies and equipment you can and then we can take some of Leela's blood and we can inoculate the islanders so they won't carry whatever disease it was that killed the last lot of returnees, and then, when they are ready, they can come back again. To their home. And the dead can live again. Just like in the prophecy. Across the sea of night to sh.o.r.es where dreams are real.' He beamed, and his smile seemed to warm this cold land for a moment, as if in preparation for new arrivals.

'Now doesn't that sound like a good idea?'

I had to agree.

The Doctor seemed about to expound even further upon the subject when Leela suddenly looked around in alarm. Did you hear that?'

'What?'

'A cry! The sound of death!' Her expression hardened. 'Where is Richards?'

I looked around. She had gone, slipped out, I presumed, while we were talking. And then it hit me. She had followed Horace. Could it be she intended him harm?

Leela obviously thought so. 'I said I felt something!'

Dagger drawn, Leela ran from the library. The Doctor and I followed.

We found Stockwood and Richards huddled together on the ground, motionless. Blood seeped out from beneath their bodies; I could not tell whose.

'I warned Stockwood about her. I said we should have killed her. Now it is too late!'

I was about to move close to examine them when Leela gave a sudden shout - not a word, an utterance. A noise that seemed more akin to an animal than any person. I looked at her in surprise. She staggered backward, sat abruptly on the ramp. Her face was alight with dumb shock, pointed upward into the sky. I followed her gaze.

'The sun. Something has poisoned the sun!'

26.

The Cave of the Sun's Inclination

All I really wanted to do was sleep. At this moment I would have traded every penny I ever owned for one night's sleep. One night with the dreams of childhood, of innocence. One night with fantasies of the French tutor mother had once arranged for summer holidays, one night with memories of my mint-julep-sodden fifth Christmas, one night with dreams of bullying or football or inadequacy. Anything. Anything at all.

Anything rather than face Alex for this last time.

But my dreams had vanished years ago into a past long clouded by doubt and guilt and nightmares. And now I was here, on the southern slopes of Ranu Raraku, in sight of the stone devils that had hounded me from a secure and confident youth into a dubious future; here with the funeral bier of my old friend with visions of whose death I had tortured myself for thirty years, never once realising what the awful, ironic truth of his actual death would finally be, or how much more it would hurt than all my life's fevered imaginings.

And so I stood with my friend in the star-shadowed darkness of the crater, the moon gone, and I laid my hand upon his cold brow, lined in madness, now smoothed in death, and I bawled like a child and screamed and stamped and kicked the nearest stone monolith and cursed it to move and punched it with what feeble strength I possessed until finally, spent, aching in every joint, the skin of my knuckles rubbed agonisingly raw, I sank to the ground beside the bier and let the chill of the ground and the sky and his death seep into every bone and fibre of my being and mind.

And I knew he was gone.

And he was was gone. gone.

But I was not alone. She She was here as well. I saw her cloak outlined against the stars. A void darker than the night sky shaped like a woman She walked slowly across the gra.s.sy stones of the crater to stand beside us. 'I have only to close my eyes for a moment in exhaustion or grief and, in my head, he is alive.' Her voice was a whisper, loaded with grief. was here as well. I saw her cloak outlined against the stars. A void darker than the night sky shaped like a woman She walked slowly across the gra.s.sy stones of the crater to stand beside us. 'I have only to close my eyes for a moment in exhaustion or grief and, in my head, he is alive.' Her voice was a whisper, loaded with grief.

I nodded silently. 'His skin warm, his face creased in concentration or laughter; the insignificant movements of and relationships between the facial features that signify the ongoing processes taking place within the controlling mind.' Processes which I knew had now stopped.

I heard surprise in her voice. 'You understand.'

'How could I not?'

'I don't know what to do. I stand here and look at him and my heart tells me this husk is not my brother. It is not how I remember him. It is not my brother.'

'It is. Oh, Lord, save us, for it is is he.' he.'

And now she turned away from the bier, turned to face me, the grief replaced by anger. By rage. 'Get up, you snivelling wretch. Show some pride and manhood before the man your arrogance destroyed!'

I let my head sink on to my chest. Truly I was a wretched specimen. I could not respond, could not argue, could not even speak to this woman whose grief I understood at least as clearly as my own.

'And don't think you understand what I am feeling. You do not!' Her voice was a whip in the darkness, cracking about my body. 'You men. You go off on your adventuring. You live your dream and in some cases you die for it. And that's enough for you. Well, it isn't enough for me! None of you ever think of the women who love you. The women you leave behind.

The women you judge too frail or stupid to accompany you into life's great adventure. A woman would - could - could - never do that. She would never leave family or loved ones, not for all the scientific knowledge, nor the acclaim or fortune it brings, nor all the tea in China!' Her voice broke then and she began to sob. do not understand you and I hope to G.o.d in heaven I never will.' never do that. She would never leave family or loved ones, not for all the scientific knowledge, nor the acclaim or fortune it brings, nor all the tea in China!' Her voice broke then and she began to sob. do not understand you and I hope to G.o.d in heaven I never will.'

Another voice spoke harshly in the darkness. Leela. I had not heard her arrive. That wasn't surprising. She moved like a shadow. 'Hear me, Richards, sister of Alexander, who is dead. My name is Leela and I am a warrior of the Sevateem. Where I come from I am a hunter and a provider. I have saved the lives of many and taken the lives of many to do so. I have loved ones and I have left them. I came here to this land to understand myself and my ancestors. The Doctor tells me that by learning we change ourselves. He invokes the Prayer of Uncertainty by the Priest Heisenberg: "That which we study and learn from, we also change." This I do not understand. But I know this: all things can be understood by those with the will. All things. And I will keep my love for my father and mother and sister, though my father is dead and my sister was killed before I was born, and I will hold their faces and their love like holy metal within my head and I will still still go open-eyed into the world - go open-eyed into the world - because if you do not learn then you are no better than an animal: just mindless meat waiting to become somebody's food. Hear me, Richards, and hear this: if the women in your land do not learn and travel and take control of the ties that bind them, then they are already dead. they are already dead. Rejoice, Richards. Offer thanks that the death of your brother has brought you life, as the death of my sister brought me life.' Rejoice, Richards. Offer thanks that the death of your brother has brought you life, as the death of my sister brought me life.'