She'd kill him herself if she had to, if that was what it took to save her world. Slowly, cautiously, she felt for the gun Nivet had given her.

'It was a challenge to Gallifrey's right to rule, don't you see?' Greyjan said. 'And at a time when I was just discovering the true nature of chaos, Doctor, its raw rigidity and the beauty of its patterns. And just as I was a pioneer, so too were the Faction. They championed dissent.

Illogic.' Greyjan attempted a wry smile, but only the righthand side of his face wanted to respond. 'A duff note in our Time Lord harmony. And I saw the madness spread and overlaid itself so many times in so many places. At times, at the height of my black, black powers, I saw the universe as a whole, as a whole, I tell you, saw things ...' His eyes began to dart about as if he was suddenly unsure of his surroundings. 'The most terrible things ...'

'Yes,' the Doctor urged him. 'Yes, tell us about the patterns.'

You do that, Mali urged him, mentally, her fingers coiling slowly round her staser. But you'd better be quick.

Oddly, now Tarra and Kreiner had left the room, Fitz was even more scared. It was the thought of their coming back to get them that chilled him to the bone.

As always when he was terrified, he felt like talking. It was a useful distraction, avoided his wetting himself or blubbing.

'We're in big trouble, aren't we?'

Romana said nothing, but Fitz wasn't about to let her off the hook that easily. 'Didn't you say they were meant to be hiding, not giving us a hiding?'

'Be quiet, Fitz.'

Fitz obliged for a good ten seconds.

'What do you reckon they want with your throne room, then?'

'I wonder if Timon will change his allegiances again and side with the Faction,' Romana said, sneering at the thought. 'Pathetic old fool.'

Fitz considered. 'You're gutted about that, aren't you?' He prided himself on his sensitivity these days.

Romana scoffed bitterly. 'What I took to be fortitude, strength of character ... He's just sick.

A scared old man searching for hidden meanings in life, pretending there's something more to life than we see in the run of things.' Romana snorted. 'He uses arcane teachings the way a drunken man uses a street lamp.'

'To piss over?' hazarded Fitz.

Romana looked at him and sighed. 'For support rather than illumination. To steady himself.

Just the same as that cadaverous impostor Greyjan the Sane. You saw what pursuit of those unattainables did to him.'

'Uhhuh.'

'There is no support in life, no mystical meaning,' Romana said fiercely, as if trying to convince herself. "There's just your duty to perform and the wheels of time, pushing you on.'

'I think I've been pushed far enough for the time being,' Fitz said.

There came a sudden grunting from Compassion as if in sympathy. Fitz looked over and saw her arms move a fraction. She looked as if she was taking off one of the mime artists he'd seen in San Francisco, leaning into a wind.

'Whatever they've done to her, she's breaking through it!' Fitz breathed. 'Come on, girl!

Come on!'

'The patterns, Lord Greyjan!' coaxed the Doctor. He was getting somewhere, he could feel it.

'No!' The colour abruptly seemed to drain from Greyjan's face. 'I'd rather die. That's what I thought when I last faced them, anyway ... Leave it to the Faction. They see it all, they always have ... So wretchedly clever, it's hopeless to try to outsmart them, you know.'

Timon could stay silent no longer. 'But Lord Greyjan, the Faction are wayward children!

They care nothing for the arts, for the sciences they are bookburning philistines.'

'Don't be such an old bore, Timon,' Greyjan chuckled. 'Anyway, you're wrong. Half their science may seem like guff, but it works a lot better for being so. And they don't burn books.

They just draw over them.'

He mimed a big scribble in the air. 'Look, another pattern!' he shouted, delighted, struggling to sit upright in his chair. The Doctor duly allowed him some slack with his arm.

'But it doesn't matter, you see,' Greyjan said, feeling for the Coronet of Rassilon on his balding head. 'It's time to step aside, now. Only the Faction are strong enough to inherit the Time Lords' mantle, to face what is to come.' He beamed about the room with half his mouth. "They have my vote.'

There was an instant outbreak of shocked murmurs around the room at the President's scandalous words. Greyjan acknowledged the shocked faces all around him with benign nods.

'Heresy,' Timon muttered. 'This is heresy, Lord President.'

'It's pragmatism, you silly old fart,' Greyjan retorted, his lopsided smile returning as Timon's jaw dropped still lower and the muttering grew louder.

The Doctor closed his eyes, trying to shut out the madness around him and concentrate.

'They have my vote,' Greyjan had said ...

'Vote ...' the Doctor echoed aloud. Then his eyes widened. 'Ascension! Of course!' He stared round the room, aware his voice was rising with panic and excitement. 'We've all been fools. We're being distracted from what's really in store!'

All eyes were on the Doctor now, no one was watching her. Mali felt the weight of the cold gun in her sweaty hand.

'Too much to worry about, too many balls in the air,' the Doctor went on, a hand clasped to his forehead as if trying physically to hold his thoughts in order. "The Edifice, the Enemy, rumours of War ... This is a crucial time, the time of prophecy. Time, Greyjan, time.'

'Lord Greyjan is the great Sage of Paradox, Timon proclaimed shakily. 'It is meet he should return to us in a time of temporal turmoil, to put right all that has gone wrong while he has slept. Presently he is simply unwell, that is all.'

'You found the home of the Faction, didn't you, Greyjan?' the Doctor murmured, nodding as if he already knew the answer. 'The heart of their power.'

'The ElevenDay Empire,' Greyjan said, a nostalgic look in his good eye, a mad gleam in the other. 'Nestled in an improbable eddy in sidereal time, barely detectable.'

'You knew the Faction stronghold in time ... and said nothing?' Timon was appalled, rage screwing up his gaunt features.

'I applauded their ingenuity,' Greyjan confessed. 'Took their secret to the grave. It gave me great pleasure I must -'

'Eleven days on the planet Earth in September 1752,' the Doctor said, cutting across him. 'A Shadow Parliament, they like to call it.'

'You too are well informed, Doctor,' Timon snapped.

'I was offered a seat there if I could accomplish my task,' the Doctor replied with equal hostility. 'To get to the heart of the Edifice. To let its powers build as it responded to my presence. To smear the scent of Time Lord blood into this sector of space to attract the Enemy. They told me it was a weapon to be used against Gallifrey. I wanted to disarm it for you, when all the time ...' He laughed briefly and bitterly. 'Oh yes, I played my part well enough.'

Mali's finger tightened on the trigger. The Doctor was babbling, now. This madness had ...

to ... stop ...

'And me, Doctor?' Greyjan struggled free of the Doctor's loosened grip, whirled around to face him, his crown shifting to a jaunty angle. Mali cursed he was blocking her line of fire.

'Have you fathomed my part in all this?'

The Doctor pointed at him in accusation. 'You know it yourself, now, don't you?'

Greyjan nodded, feverishly.

'Listen to me, everyone!' The Doctor ran over to Timon, who stared disbelieving up at him.

The guards didn't react, waiting to see what would come next. Mali brought up the gun but hesitated. All her instincts were screaming to her that she had to hear this. Only the monitoring technician was still resolute at his station, refusing to be drawn into the drama unfolding around him.

'The period of Greyjan's Presidency,' the Doctor said, 'while the briefest in Tune Lord history, spanned those Earthrelative days in September 1752.' He paused, theatrically, letting the information sink in. 'I believe that Faction Paradox have deciphered the chaos of the Enemy's first assault. Whatever unknowable energies are released, they plan to use them drawing on Greyjan's ancient access codes now active again in the Matrix to overlay their drawing on Greyjan's ancient access codes now active again in the Matrix to overlay their Shadow Parliament directly here.' He shouted round at the assembly and the fresh outbreak of scandalised mutterings as if worried those about him might be deaf. 'Here! The heart of the Faction's power, here on Gallifrey!'

'Preposterous, Doctor,' Timon said, but his frail voice betrayed his fear.

'No. No. They can do it. The Faction took Greyjan's data extract, they fashioned him and buried just one purpose in his higher consciousness.' The Doctor started to advance on Greyjan. 'To restructure the probability matrices to their own design!'

'I say, am I doing it now, without even realising?' Greyjan asked, clearly delighted. 'How wonderful of me. How wonderfully clever.'

The Doctor lunged for the coronet, but Greyjan slapped away his hands and jumped up, starting to dance round the Council Chamber. 'Let it come!' he shouted. 'Let the Sour Time be upon us.'

Timon moved up out of his chair, made a feeble grab for Greyjan, missed and fell forward on to the Council table. 'Guards!' he wheezed. 'The President is unwell, restrain him!'

Greyjan jumped on to a chair, howling with laughter. The ancient jewels in the coronet he wore started to glow a deep ruby red.

The Doctor staggered back from the chaos as each of the guards ran to obey, charging about after Greyjan as if playing some mad game. 'What are you waiting for, Mali?' shouted the Doctor. 'Stop him! Use that stupid gun you were subtly trying to shoot me with, before it's too late!'

He knew everything as usual, and Mali felt herself flush even as she took careful aim, tracing Greyjan's frantic movements with the staser barrel. Greyjan's red, puffing face was a vivid target. She squeezed on the trigger.

Then something hard hit the back of her neck, knocking her to the ground. Her training kicked in: she rolled forward easily, turning to face her assailants a woman with some kind of skull mask and a figure in black widi one arm.

Everyone in the chamber came to a breathless halt, like children caught playing somewhere they shouldn't, silent with guilt.

Timon began to splutter with impotent rage. 'Who would dare ...?'

'Oh, they would,' said the Doctor, his voice ringing round the Council Chamber. 'The Faction advance guard, I take it,'

The skullfaced woman snapped her withered jaws together. 'I am Mother Tarra.'

'Guards!' yelped Timon. 'Shoot to kill! Kill them!'

A guard close to Mali glowed red, then seemed to wink out of existence. She stared at the empty space in horror, a faint smell of sulphur catching in her throat. 'I wouldn't shoot,' the man in black growled. 'Or I'll do the same to your President, your Vice President then the whole stinking lot of you.'

'Do as he says,' the Doctor commanded. 'We mean it.' Mali turned to him in horror. 'They mean it,' he corrected himself, but his voice was hushed now. With it, a heavy silence fell across the room.

Most of the guards looked to Timon for guidance, but he couldn't meet their eyes, staring at the floor, trembling. Some turned to Greyjan instead, who was staring with bemused fascination at the two newcomers.

'This really is very cheeky of you,' Greyjan said eventually, almost admiringly. 'Faction Paradox, daring to set foot once again on Gallifrey.'

'Our ancestral seat,' Tarra said, licking her thin lips. 'We have returned to claim our own, President Greyjan.'

'I was never truthfully yours,' Greyjan protested mildly.

'In the end,' Tarra said, her sunken eyes sweeping round the room and settling on the Doctor, 'everyone is ours.'

'But in the meantime you'll have a good gloat, eh?' the Doctor challenged, but Mali could hear the faked confidence in his voice. He was putting on an act, just as he had on the Edifice when he felt everything getting too much. Unsure of himself. Uncertain of how much he was changing.

'So endlessly brave, Doctor,' Tarra sneered. 'Even in your condition.' Mali detected a twinkle deep in one of the bone sockets. 'Or in our condition. You'll commit so many atrocities in our name when you finally fall to us, rushing in where angels fear to tread.

Perhaps we'll even let you out in the universe with your little wayward Romana once more, place those lively imaginations to a better use.'

'Romana was looking for you. Where is she?' the Doctor demanded. 'And what have you done with Fitz?'

'What ... have we done ... with Fitz?' croaked the figure in black. As Mali stared on, the figure began to shake. Then he lurched towards the Doctor, arm outstretched, the fingers of his gauntlet curling to a claw.

Chapter Thirtyseven.

See how they run

Romana drummed her fingers impatiently on the side of the chair as Compassion's face contorted with the effort of whatever it was she was doing to her insides. Finally, she fell forward, right on top of Fitz.

He gasped, winded. 'Compassion, love, maybe there was a time when this would've been fun, but ...'

Compassion tumbled off him, her eyes rolling too for good measure. 'Shut up,' she said, ripping through the fabric that bound his wrists to his ankles. He winced as pins and needles started waking the cramped muscles.

'Where is Nivet?' Romana asked. 'That blood -'

'He isn't here,' Compassion said simply.

Fitz decided not to probe that one any further. 'So, it's just us, then. Not much we can do, is there? I vote we stay here and let the Doctor save our arses.'

Romana looked at him. 'You can't rely on him. Not any more.'