Fitz turned to Tarra. 'You never said the Greyjan thing was your idea.'

Tarra fingered the bone mask in her hands, looking just a little embarrassed. 'Is it important?'

'What's important,' Kellen said quietly as he came over to join them, 'is that that lot don't get so spooked they drop out of the coven.'

'Why is that so important?' Fitz asked him. 'What are you really doing this for, Kellen?'

Kellen smiled unpleasantly at him, like a teacher confronting a wayward child alone after school, aware that his classmates could no longer offer support. 'I've long seen the real potential of this group. We're extending our knowledge all the time,' he said. 'Not regurgitating textbooks, learning the patterns of the universe by rote. We're only interested in the forbidden knowledge.'

Fitz felt horribly uneasy. 'Ever stopped to wonder just why it was forbidden?'

Tarra, who had recovered some of her composure, attempted a smile. 'All knowledge is power. That's the maxim this place was founded on. Those who know more than everyone else are -'

' more powerful than everyone else,' Kellen concluded. He stabbed a finger repeatedly more powerful than everyone else,' Kellen concluded. He stabbed a finger repeatedly against Fitz's chest. 'And besides that, there's the intrigue. Come on, you must be as desperate as we are to know who that onearmed figure we saw in the Visualiser really is, aren't you?'

Fitz was determined not to show Kellen was getting to him, and gave a small, tight smile. 'I think I could live with not knowing, thanks all the same.'

'Why should you live without knowing, Fitz?' Kellen said, an edge to his voice that Fitz found more frightening than the man's skull mask in the ceremony. 'What right do you have to ignorance?'

'These are good things we're doing, Fitz,' Tarra said blandly. 'If you turn your back on knowledge, you doom yourself to slavery at the hands of those who know better.'

Fitz could see Kellen had done a good job on Tarra. No wonder she was so keen to help him: the woman had to be totally brainwashed.

'That's the real lesson you learn on a world like Gallifrey,' Kellen went on. 'A world that cites a hundred reasons why it's best not to interfere, when the truth is it's too afraid to take charge of the cosmos.'

Fitz sighed. 'You're not, I take it.'

Kellen simply smiled again. 'Since the Dalek incident, things have begun to change here.

Slowly, sure, but they're changing. That bone thing in the sky is a part of it, a catalyst of some kind, I'm sure of it. A sign that all the traditional knowledge that's served us for generations, it's not enough. The tide is turning. And when it does ...'

'You want to be riding the wave,' Fitz muttered. 'Wipeout.'

Tarra walked over to the Visualiser, the cool click of her heels on the cave floor distracting both men. "The litany we need to perform the Salvage Rites will be at Eton's place,' she said.

'Salvage Rites?' echoed Fitz.

Tarra nodded. 'Summoning the loa to retrieve that projection as a real spacetime event will be child's play, with the full power of the coven operating.'

Fitz felt his guts twist. 'Do you mean you'll lift an image of that bloke right out of the future?

Bring him here so ... so we can talk to him?'

'Right here,' Kellen agreed. 'But not just an image.'

Fitz swallowed. 'Not just an image? But ...'

'Should be fun, don't you think?'

'Oh yeah,' stormed Fitz. 'A real laugh. A jolly little prank. That guy is ... Well, it sounds like he's the person I'm going to become, isn't he? From out of my future?'

Tarra walked back over and squeezed Fitz's hand. This time, her touch was soft and calming.

'A possible future, perhaps. But all things can be changed.'

'Then let your mind be one of them,' Fitz implored her. 'Leave him where he is, for God's sake.'

She shook her head. 'It's important, Fitz. If we can bring that figure out from wherever he's been drifting, it'll be a crucial demonstration of the power of the loa -'

'Stop calling them loa!' Kellen complained. 'I keep telling you, Tarra, they're equations. Just equations.'

'Makes them sound less scary, doesn't it?' Fitz said, his voice rising a fraction as fear seemed to give his balls a squeeze. 'Equations just are, you can write them down or cross them out.

But loa are voodoo, right? And so is bringing some geezer who's been dead for thousands of years back to life.'

'Speaking of which,' Kellen said, as the first of his inherited acolytes walked back into the cave. 'If our little joke is going to be ready in time for the President's Reaffirmation Ceremony ... we'd better get moving.'

'Hey, tell you what,' Fitz said bitterly, 'I'll get moving first.'

'Fitz, don't go.' Tarra protested. 'Stay with me.'

He put a thoughtful finger to his mouth as if faced with a difficult decision. 'Well, sounds like real fun, but I think I'll pass if that's all the same to you. Raising the dead may raise the roof for you lot, but me ... I think I'll skip.' Fitz slouched off, hands in pockets. He didn't know where he could go or what the hell he was going to do next, but hanging round here was not an option.

Despite resolving to walk straight out, Fitz couldn't help spoiling his exit by turning for one last look at Tarra. She was staring at him, mournfully, shaking her head almost imperceptibly from side to side. He should go back for her, take her away from Kellen. He should try to make her see that what she was doing was wrong.

No. He should learn to mind his own bloody business.

Fitz turned on his heel and carried on walking towards fresh air and sunlight.

Kellen sneered at Fitz's back as the gangly primitive left the room. Kaufima came in at the same time, and gave Fitz a wide berth as he stomped past her, focusing on Kellen. Her tears had dried, and she was trying to put on that composed act for him again.

Poor little Kaufima. She looked fantastic, she dreamed of setting the world on fire, but was as wet and as dull as ditch water. She came closer, and Kellen smirked. Like so many bored little rich girls, she kept sniffing around him long after the event, ever keen to escape the safe, dull boredom of the Capitol.

'Isn't it dangerous to let someone as primitive as he is on the loose on Gallifrey?' Kaufima asked him. 'If he's caught, he could tell the guards about us.' She felt herself flush. 'He could name us!'

'Don't worry about the monkey,' Kellen told her. 'He won't go far. Where can he go? And besides ...' He leered at Tarra. 'Now Eton's cleared off, there's no one else vying for the attentions of our high priestess, here.'

Tarra looked annoyed and skulked away. Kellen saw Kaufima try but fail to disguise a small smile of satisfaction before petulantly puffing out her cheeks. 'How are you going to get rid of him, Kellen?'

He slid an arm around her, enjoying the blush that crept over her pale cheeks. 'Let me worry about that,' he murmured. 'First, I'm going to bone up on my rituals.'

'Need some company?' she asked, looking into his paleblue eyes.

'It's a serious business,' he said, slowly withdrawing his arm. Kaufima looked away, the blush growing almost crimson. Maybe she could burn after all, mused Kellen. 'We'll assemble again this evening.'

Kaufima seemed uneasy. 'So soon?'

'So much to do,' Kellen said. His voice had become cold. 'And like I say, don't worry about Fitz. When we've finished giving Greyjan the Sane back to the world, we're going to have some fun with our little monkey.'

Third Interlude Infected Now he has found the book hanging in its stasis field at last, be considers its convenience.

None of his kind trust anything straightforward now: they would think this a trap, unreal, a construct existing for some unknown purpose. It cannot exist simply for him, the Event pinned down in its pages. It cannot own just one truth for its own sake.

Even so, he lets hope guide him as he gently removes the ancient book. It is bound in reptile hide of some kind, with an omniscate embossed on the cover. He smiles to see the volume sag and settle once returned to Pangea's gravity. It is a reaction so genuine, so strangely honest, it heartens htm. He lifts the heavy cover, turns pages. They whisper like secrets as they pass his fingertips, and he knows he must be swift and careful. He will be missed.

Then a fragile page bursts over his hand into fine white powder. He scans the fragments, anxious, and finds they relate to somewhere called Dust. He wonders for a moment if the irony is intentional, fears some sort of trick. On that miserable world, he knows his hero's life force was infected with a Faction Paradox virus that would one day make him one of their own. That it changed his biodata, growing stronger with every regeneration until it could riddle his existence with the Faction's interference. Then, in the Doctor's eighth life ...

The dust has fallen in discomfiting patterns around his feet. The page revealed beneath is dark and crusty. He reads faded words in disbelief. Every Time Lord knows the Enemy homeworld is called Earth. Some believe it is retribution for the ancient Time Lords standing by and watching as the little world was invaded and devastated time and time again. Some believe the Enemy faked a thousand invasions to lend their stupid speck of a planet some semblance of dignity. In any case, the Time Lords take a more active interest in that world now. He himself has helped prepare and launch a great warship three billion years in the past, its mission to destroy Earth once and for all, not by travelling through time, but through space.

A pan of him has actually believed the stratagem might work. But the words on the page destroy the dream, and more beyond it. The dark page demonstrates that Earth is not the homeworld of the Enemy at least, not today, a voice inside whispers, not for this author's purposes. It seems this has been but one more smokescreen, meaningless after all, a ball of rock and sea and misinformation. He feels his patience edge up to a precipice. He has long suspected that many of the absolutes he clings to are falsehoods, but this book seeks to prove his entire existence a fiction.

He cannot put it down. The dust seems to flicker in the low light, and makes strange patterns around his feet.

Chapter Eighteen.

Looks familiar

The summons roused Mother Mathara from her dozing. Her great bone head seemed heavy on her shoulders as she eased herself into a sitting position on her couch.

'Who's there?'

'Kristeva. I have a field report.'

Mathara went to rub her sleepy eyes and froze. It was a ludicrous gesture she always attempted upon waking; no amount of time or scorn seemed able to make her stop. She made her outstretched hands into fists. Her eyes were lumps of jelly pinned to circuit boards, well out of reach.

She cursed herself for falling asleep and activated the door control.

Kristeva nodded respectfully as he shuffled in to the dark room.

'Is Greyjan's construction proceeding?' she croaked.

'It is.'

'And Kreiner?'

Kristeva's transparent lips twitched. 'The body in the vortex shall be regained.'

'A useful opportunity,' Mathara remarked. 'Quite apart from Kreiner's own value to the Faction, if it can be demonstrated that organic life from our own world can pass through the bottle universe and back into our own without ...' She chose her words carefully. 'Without adverse effects ...'

Kristeva nodded, his face threatening to crack open. "The mixing of realities now seems inevitable, Mother Mathara. The loa whisper it with unanimous voice, in every tongue. The energies wreathing the Edifice continue to be stoked by the Doctor's presence. The time will soon come.'

Mathara nodded. 'Time ... it concerns me there is still no record of the Edifice being a Faction construct, not in any point in our history.'

Kristeva inclined his head. 'It is paradox, Mother Mathara. An event wiped from our old history in anticipation of a new one.'

Mathara cackled. 'It seems appropriate that the Doctor should prove his loyalty to us by reclaiming the Edifice for the Faction under the very noses of the Time Lords.'

Kristeva nodded. 'As well as helping us engineer what is to come.'

Vozarti glanced across at Nivet for the tenth time in as many minutes. 'Still nothing?'

'Nothing from Gallifrey,' Nivet agreed evenly, frowning at the lashup of equipment at his feet.

'I've been getting readings on the portascan,' Klenchron piped up.

Vozarti quietly ground his teeth while the technician failed to elucidate. The atmosphere in this place was like an acid, corroding the spirit, and soon their position would become untenable. His guards were rapidly losing morale, and doubtless faith in him at the same time.

He couldn't really blame them: he looked like a kid fresh out of the Academy, and he'd let their captive escape. Mali was gone, and he was powerless to open the doors that could get them out to follow her. If no word came through from Gallifrey soon he knew he'd be facing losing control.

'So report your findings, Technician Klenchron.' Use rank names, Vozarti decided. Remind the men of order, of hierarchy, of duty. 'And perhaps you'd like to explain why you undertook them without specific instruction?'

'I suggested he give it a try,' said Nivet. 'I understood it was our function to learn as much as we can about this structure.'

'Very well. So what have you learned?'

Klenchron looked worriedly up at him. 'First off, the Edifice is thousands of years old.'

Vozarti looked round at the shattered chamber. "That I can well imagine.'

'And these fragments littering the place are riddled with time distortion.'

Vozarti frowned. 'So the Edifice has timetravel capability?'

Nivet nudged a shard of bone with his foot and pushed the portascan back in his pocket. 'For these fragments to be so irradiated I'd say it's used it, too. This place must've toured half the universe.'

Vozarti felt himself losing patience once more. 'But what's it for?'

A harsh, brittle noise like eggshells crushing made them all look up towards the doors.

Patches of the ivory walls were becoming a mottled yellow, as if ageing before their eyes.

Then the dull smears seemed to open outwards as three giant spiders, six feet across, scuttled through.

'Everyone back away, slowly,' Vozarti commanded.