Timon dropped down into the nearest council seat, his face deathly white.

'Like throwing an uncorked wine bottie into an ocean at full swell,' said the Doctor quietly.

'Imbeciles,' repeated Greyjan furiously. 'It would leak untold amounts of unknown energy into our closed cosmos.'

'Had I known you'd wanted it,' the Doctor told Timon, his voice low and dangerous, 'I'd have taken it from Foreman's World while I had the chance.'

'Dumped it on their own doorsteps, the silly asses,' Greyjan went on. 'But the energy spread, out through the vortex, to heaven knows where. It nourished this new life, let them grow, develop adapting to a universe riddled with chronon decay and paradox, sidestepping millions of years of evolution simply by taking paths that did not exist before Gallifrey reached out its fildiy fingers to pull the universe apart.' He chuckled, but there was little humour in it. "There's always a price to be paid for progress, isn't there?'

'Doctor,' Mali said, a horrible thought occurring to her. 'What if the representation of the bottle in the heathland -'

She didn't have to finish. The colour had already drained from the Doctor's cheeks. "The Edifice,' he whispered. 'My ship, it's rebuilt itself around the leaking bottle. It must've used those same energies to sustain itself.'

Timon clasped his hands together. 'We feel the emanations of its power distorting this sector of space keenly enough. How much more acutely will the Enemy feel its effect!'

Mali stared round at them all in turn. 'And that's why the Enemy's coming here? Why they're going to start the War?'

'If they're that alien to us,' the Doctor said desperately, 'then perhaps they have no concept of war. Perhaps the first blows landed were never intended as such. You must communicate with them, make them see you come in peace ...'

'Enough, Doctor!' Timon ordered. At last, thought the Doctor, it seemed the Vice President saw something he could seize on to, something to use. 'You presume to instruct us on our diplomacy? You dare to involve yourself, you, a renegade, halfFaction changeling?'

The Doctor looked down at the floor, apparently unable to answer back.

'Whatever happens now, Doctor, whoever the Enemy may be, you are as much to blame as anyone else,' Timon shouted. 'It was you who brought them upon us. It was you who started this War!'

Chapter Thirtyfour.

Future history

Fitz looked up as a quiet bleeping started up from behind the ornate door of Romana's room.

Someone was coming but friend or foe? Whatever, they had a chance for a breakout. He swung his long legs off the bunk, but Romana flashed him a dangerous look, one that so eloquently conveyed a sense of stay back leave this to me don't get in the way mess this up and I'll kill you, that Fitz slumped back on his bed and pretended he was asleep, that nothing was happening. Let the President worry about it. He supposed she was paid well enough.

'You,' he heard her say, with a strength of feeling he couldn't decipher. His eyes snapped open so he could see why. 'Compassion!' he breathed, a grin spreading over his face. 'You're the most beautiful thing I ever saw, do you know that?'

Compassion looked sourly at him. "That means a lot to me, Fitz.'

'How did you get in?' Fitz asked; then noticed the stocky blueeyed blond feller standing beside Compassion.

'At a guess, she altered the pattern of her retina until she found the one it accepted,' the man remarked. Then he frowned at something behind him. "That and practically breaking the neck of this poor guard.'

'Bring him inside,' Compassion snapped, and the man obeyed.

'Who's your friend, Compassion?' Fitz asked, civil but wary the guy was bigger than he was, after all.

'Meet Nivet, my best technician,' Romana said, utterly unfazed by the rescue and cutting straight to the chase. She stepped neatly over the guard's body even as Nivet dumped it by her feet. 'Nivet, I'm concerned as to the stability of the Matrix with this Greyjan construct about. I presume he'll still have access?'

Nivet considered. 'Conceivably. But then, so will you. I doubt it's occurred to anyone to block your Presidential privileges just yet.'

Romana flashed him a glance that could freeze liquidhot magma. 'I should hope not.'

'You think the Faction want something from the Matrix?' Nivet asked.

'Maybe we do, maybe we don't.' Fitz hoped to impress the newcomer with what he hoped was an air of mystery, not ignorance. 'Whatever, they're planning something big.'

'We need to know more,' Romana decided. 'Nivet, can you find the rooms of Chancellor Kandarl?'

'The Lady Tana's father?'

'Take it from me: she ain't no lady,' Fitz said, deadpan.

Nivet shrugged and angled his head to indicate Compassion. 'She'll nave a map on board.'

'All right, then. Go with her and search for anything you think could be important.'

'A big dossier marked "Secret Plan" would be good,' Fitz added.

Nivet stooped and pulled the staser from the unconscious guard's holster. 'I'll need this.

Donated mine to the Combat Elite,' he explained. 'She didn't feel dressed without one.'

The words would normally have caught Fitz's interest in a moment, but he was too distracted now by the way Compassion was looking at Romana. 'For what you've tried to do to me, I should kill you,' she said quietly.

'You belong to us,' Romana purred, unafraid. 'Our future history decrees it.'

Compassion didn't blink. 'I will never belong to you. Nor to anyone else. For the moment, Nivet has overridden my motive circuits, but I'll find a way to free myself.' She clenched her fists. 'Your history means nothing to me. This is my time.'

Fitz found himself strangely moved. You tell them, girl.

Romana smiled sweetly. 'Then I must use you while I can, mustn't I? Now go. Be off, the pair of you.'

'Watch her, Fitz,' Compassion said, and stomped off without another glance. Nivet sighed and followed her out.

Fitz felt suddenly awkward. Romana swished over to the door, but he hesitated to follow.

'Well, Fitz?' Romana asked, turning to face him. 'You can't watch me from over there.

Aren't you coming?'

Fitz looked nervously into Romana's seagreen eyes. 'What if Tarra's holed up there? Isn't she going to object to someone rooting through her stuff? She might have just tidied up or something.'

Romana sighed impatiently. 'She'll be hiding under a stone until she's ready to come out. It's the Faction's way.'

'So what are you and me doing then?'

'We'll search her quarters.'

Fitz sighed. 'If we find any stones there, we're leaving them well alone, OK?'

They hurried through the corridors of the Capitol, Romana sending Fitz on ahead at every junction to confirm that the way was clear while she waited out of sight. The place could've been designed for fugitives, there were that many alcoves and dark corners and conveniently placed statues and pot plants.

Fitz felt less confident, though, when he realised he recognised the hall they were moving through from his mad flight through it the night before. They seemed to be heading right for the Panopticon. When he commented as much, Romana merely nodded.

'Are you crazy?' Fitz demanded. 'There's bound to be guards all over the place.'

She turned to him, and those eyes of hers drilled right through his own. 'Gallifrey's not like your barbarous little planet,' Romana snapped. 'Even after the Dalek invasion I couldn't get the High Council to agree to a permanent, fully trained fighting force here. I'm surprised they even bothered with a guard outside our door.' She sighed. "They know the War is approaching. It's such a struggle to get any concession past the dinosaurs on my ...' She faltered. 'On my council. I've warned them again and again that Gallifrey can no longer afford to sit back in indolence and look at the universe about it: it has to act, to -'

'All right, Your Ladyship, all right,' Fitz said, trying to calm her down before fate could be tempted, sending a whole platoon along the corridor to bang them back up again. 'Fair enough, this is your manor, you know best.'

'It's the quickest route through,' Romana said, composed again. 'We'll use one of the access corridors, and stick to the shadows.'

'Always assuming Mother Tarra and her Faction haven't taken them all away,' Fitz said sullenly.

Romana led them to a patch of marbled wall which split silently open to reveal a doorway.

Gallifrey clearly wasn't fond of displaying its tradesmen's entrances. Romana stood inside it, and began floating gently up and out of sight. Alarmed, Fitz ran into the alcove to see what she was doing and found with a surge of queasiness that he was floating too.

'Quite a view, isn't it?' he heard Romana say above him. Looking up automatically, he realised he could see right up her dress.

She was right, though: the view into the Panopticon was breathtaking. Riding up in Charlie's great glass elevator, Fitz could see it all laid out before him. It was strange how different it seemed now that the people had cleared away: the sheer emerald walls, the vast floor space, the florid murals carved into the sides of the towering podium Romana had gazed out from just hours earlier and the statues, of course ...

Oh Christ. Something was very wrong here.

'I don't remember that statue,' Fitz said nervously. They were so high up he was almost looking the nearest giant stone figure in the eyes. 'It looks kind of like the Doctor! His hair's a bit short ... 'While the great stone figure was sporting a crew cut instead of the more familiar tumbling curls, the resemblance was undeniable. 'Who is it, one of his ancestors or something?'

'No, it's the Doctor,' Romana said lightly. 'It's always been the Doctor.'

'What are you talking about?' Fitz protested. 'You didn't say he was one of your five statues earlier.'

'What do you mean, five?' She sounded vaguely amused. "There's only ever been four, one for each of the colleges who built the Panopticon.'

Fitz felt his stomach lurch as he looked down and saw how far up they'd come. Maybe Romana was right, and this was some weird effect of vertigo, or ... No. As he looked around he realised the whole layout of the place was different. There were four walls now, not five as before. A statue, a corner, and about a quarter of a mile of standing room seemed to have vanished. Fitz knew TARDISes could do that sort of thing, but surely ...

'Stop mucking around,' Fitz insisted. 'It had five walls and as many statues, we talked about it!'

'Four, Fitz.' Romana's tone suggested this was the end of an idiotic conversation, but Fitz wasn't having it. Another soft, posh Time Lady voice was speaking to him too, from a little further back.

'I remember talking to Tana about Gallifrey's special number ... six.'

'Preposterous,' Romana snorted. 'She's Faction, you idiot.'

'She said there were six colleges, six statues!'

'This is getting tiring, Fitz. The statues are just the same as they've always been. The Doctor, the Other ...'

'No!' Fitz was almost laughing in his frustration. 'Can't you see it? It's all changed! This place is square!'

'Naturally.' She stepped off midair and on to a walkway of blue copper, her footsteps echoing lazily around the empty hall.

'No!' He followed her on to the walkway and chased after her. The air was colder up so high, and Fitz's arms were already puckered with gooseflesh. 'You just can't see it, can you? Your history's being torn away and rewritten and you really can't see it! Your precious Panopticon had five walls earlier. Now it's got four. What if tomorrow you find it's got three, and you start telling me that three is the basis of all Time Lord society, huh? You're not going to worry about this until there are only two sides and it closes on you with an almighty bang, like a book slamming shut on you ...' He dapped his hands together for effect and it sounded like a pistol crack. "The End!'

Romana came to an impatient halt, then spun round to face him. 'What could cause such a phenomenon?'

Fitz realised he was out of breath from his exertion. Perhaps the oxygen was thinner up here.

Perhaps he should exercise once in a while. 'You tell me,' he puffed. 'I'm just an Earth primitive who can count to five.'

'It's an intriguing thought,' Romana admitted. 'A great influx of energy ... forcing Gallifrey's continuum in on itself, collapsing it to a singularity ...'

'Could that happen?' Fitz asked nervously.

'Of course it couldn't; Romana snapped. "There have been temporal pulses washing over Gallifrey for months now, but they've only ever caused minor interference with our operations rooms.'

Fitz shuffled his feet. 'Maybe they've got worse.'

Romana's eyes narrowed. 'Maybe you've got altitude sickness. Five sides, indeed. Now come on.'

She moved off, her black dress flirting with the shadows all around them. Fitz shivered and let her arse lead him onward. He should've stuck to just looking up her dress in the first place; maybe then he wouldn't be bricking himself up here.

'If you weren't dampening my dematerialisation circuit I could take us straight there,'

Compassion complained.

Nivet didn't stop walking. 'Of course you would. Via half the known universe I'd imagine.'

'We could go together,' she said lightly. 'With your ... technical interests, don't you think you'd find the experience fascinating?' She placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him, and let it linger there. 'It's not a trick. Your background leads me to believe you could ... understand me. Help me to develop.' She smiled, a smile that actually reached her eyes. 'Wouldn't you like to form an ... empathic link with me?'

Nivet looked into her wide grey eyes and wondered. He could make them blue instead, or brown. Change her hair from ginger to dark, lose the freckles, take in the chubby cheeks ...

Make her look like anyone he wanted. Enjoy something that was truly unique. He started to smile back at her, but as the possibilities went on occurring to him, he found his lips felt more comfortable with the beginnings of a sneer.

'Sorry, Compassion, I can't see it working. I'm not sure there's anything in this universe you could empathise with.'

Compassion casually withdrew her hand, but her smile remained in place. Her apparent serenity bothered Nivet: he had the feeling she knew something he didn't. It gnawed at him all the way to Kandari's rooms, where the dark red of the door matched his mood.

Compassion, just as when they had freed Romana and Fitz, allowed her left eye to change shape and colour, presenting a brightgreen iris in a white almond to the entry coder. Nivet imagined her morphing through a million combinations of retina patterning, and marvelled once again at how technology he could barely begin to grasp was being used so intuitively.