'If you want my cooperation, then Romana is the only one I'll talk to.'

The Chancellor Parallel cleared his throat again. "The Lady President Romana,' began Branastigert pompously, 'is personally inspecting the Edifice. She left earlier today with the Chancellor of Time Present -'

Timon saw that the Castellan was irritated by the way Branastigert had suddenly volunteered this information.

'Edifice?' asked the Doctor.

'A vast structure which appeared recently in the skies over Gallifrey. The Lady President Romana swiftly recognised the threat it poses.'

'Threat?'

'A massive threat,' Branastigert continued, despite Vozarti's deepening scowl of disapproval.

'It appears to be warping local space, bending gravity around it, spreading ripples into the local vortex. We cannot risk destroying it lest we unleash a white hole or some such cataclysm.'

'Cataclysm?'

'As foretold in the Green Book of Gallifrey,' observed Djarshar gloomily.

'My Lords Temporal!' snapped Castellan Vozarti at last. "The Doctor is a prisoner, not a Council adviser.'

Timon waved his hands in admonition. With a few simple repetitions, the Doctor had indeed managed to elicit more information from the two Chancellors than was appropriate.

Unfortunately, being admonished by the younglooking Vozarti was hardly threatening.

Timon found it difficult to take seriously someone who looked like a surly precentenarian.

The Doctor was laughing again, much to the other Chancellors' annoyance.

'Do not mock, Doctor,' said Djarshar, hurrying towards the doors, his long robes of office swirling over the flagstone floor. 'If she were here, I am sure the Chancellor of Time Present would agree with me. And now that you have arrived, I must consult the Black Book of Gallifrey for further guidance.'

The Doctor's derisive laughter echoed after him. "That's right, don't rely on your own skill or judgement: make a decision by looking it up in an index.' He waved an imaginary book in his hand. 'Check it out in the Little Red Book of Gallifrey. Consult the Bones of the Dead, and the Scrolls of Antiquity and the Runes of Rassilon. Don't rely on the Sense of Common or the Patently Obvious. Scurry off and see whatever toys and trinkets are left in your musty cupboards.'

Timon was shocked by the Doctor's levity. He could see that the other Chancellors were, too.

'Do not presume to mock us,' whispered Branastigert. "The Slaughterhouse is no subject for levity.'

'Slaughterhouse?' asked the Doctor.

'We should not pander any longer to this collegiate arrogance!' Djarshar admonished the Doctor with a wagging finger. 'You put the presumptuous pride into Prydonian. I'd say you never deserved promotion beyond Scrutationary Archivist. Yet you obviously believe you are some kind of Gallifreyan hero. Well I tell you, Doctor, you are no Haclav Agust. You are no Yassinbur.'

And with this ostentatious admonishment, Chancellor of Time Future Djarshar swept grandly out of the Vice President's office, trailing the Chancellors of Time Past and Time Parallel in his wake, an imperious exit marred only when he caught his robes of office on the door handle.

Timon looked at the two who remained the absurdly young Castellan standing to attention, and the shabby figure of the Doctor. 'You should not taunt the Chancellors, Doctor. You must realise that your continued existence lies in their gift. Do not depend on your presumed friendship with the Lady President, for the Lords Temporal and I are her High Council. We are Gallifrey.'

'Ooer,' said the Doctor in a languid tone. 'So many things to worry about. The Lords Temporal holding the Sword of Rassilon over my head by a thread. The Edifice of Doom hanging over Gallifrey. And how will I ever get the bloodstains off this jacket?'

Timon grinned at the Doctor through the bottle, seeing his features shift and change. 'Talk yourself to an early grave, Doctor.'

'Well, I mean! An Edifice? More of the Time Lords' typically overblown terminology for everyday things that they do not have the wit to understand. Whoever heard of such a thing ...? Oh.' The Doctor's scoffing words faded away as he looked at a display screen behind Timon. The Vice President had simply switched it on as the Doctor was talking. The whole wall now showed the looming shape of the Edifice hanging over the Gallifreyan horizon.

'It seems it is a container of some kind,' explained Timon. 'From what we can determine, it is made of solid bone.'

The Doctor snapped his head round to stare at Timon. 'Bone?'

'Do you think you can exploit your routine of wideeyed innocence on me, Doctor? Knowing the Faction's predilection for bone, we fear it may be some kind of trap.'

'Far too many of Gallifrey's youth have been turning to superstition,' said Vozarti quietly.

'Growing numbers of the bored and disaffected are dabbling in Faction rites. Falling into the cults of Eutenoyar and Apeiron ...'

Timon was unsure whether he liked this revelation in front of the Doctor. 'We have not attempted to penetrate the Edifice,' he interjected. 'We are ... studying it.'

'Hah!' snorted the Doctor. 'What you mean, Timon, is that you're kidding yourselves.

You're observing it in the absence of knowing what else to do. Come on, you can admit it to me and the Castellan. You're afraid.'

'We are cautious.'

'Formalistic flummery!'

'Tell us, then, Doctor,' began Timon, his voice low and dangerous. What do you know of the Edifice? We know you steered your TARDIS by it.'

'What?'

'All this bluster about needing to see your friend the President, and your ability to deliver us a Type 102 TARDIS. Do you think we are not yet aware of all this? The Lady President Romana was captaining the second of the war TARDISes that pursued you past the Edifice.'

Timon was pleased to see the Doctor's reaction to this information initial disbelief turning to horrified acceptance. 'Imagine how she's going to feel about the loss of two vessels. So stop playing us for fools, Doctor. You're still alive for a reason. Tell us about the Edifice.'

The Doctor had slumped down into a chair, as though his legs had finally surrendered to fatigue. 'I tried to prevent those deaths.'

Vozarti was standing over him now. 'Our observations of the Edifice haven't been fruitless.

We know that a genetic imprimatur is needed to gain access. And the signature is unmistakable, Doctor. It's yours.'

Timon watched the Doctor's reaction. He seemed to have been numbed by this new information. The Vice President picked up his Klein bottle again, rotating it in the actinic light that spilled over his neatly organised desk, and feeling the soothing temporal effects on and through his hands again. 'You are the key to this, Doctor literally.'

Timon smiled to himself, feeling a satisfied glow spread through his hearts, and the warm tingle of the bottle in his hands. He exchanged a knowing glance with the Castellan, and returned his gaze to the Doctor. They had him now, he could tell by the way that the Doctor obviously could not look at him he could only stare at the stone flooring and shake his head sorrowfully.

'I cannot help you,' the Doctor said. He suddenly thrust his hand forward, fingers splayed and held unwaveringly over the desk in the stark overhead light. Timon almost jumped, almost dropped the bottle.

Then he looked more closely. Saw what he was being shown.

Despite the sharp light falling on the desk, the Doctor's hand cast no shadow.

'I am becoming a Faction agent,' stated the Doctor bleakly. 'My biomass must've changed beyond recognition. I can't get you into the Edifice.' The Doctor pulled his hand back. 'Not now.'

Timon continued to gape, hardly noticing that he had let go of the Klein bottle. It rolled across the bright clean surface of the desk, its shape morphing and twisting in the light, until it dropped off the edge. Timon heard it smash on the flagstones. The Doctor sat in his chair, unmoved. 'You ...' Timon gulped, tried to compose himself again. 'You allowed yourself to be taken by the Faction?'

Vozarti tossed his head in a gesture of contemptuous dismissal. 'So, the Doctor is of no value to us after all.' He activated his communicator. 'Guard detail to the Vice President's office immediately.'

This seemed to break the Doctor's gloom. 'You're forgetting Compassion.'

Vozarti sneered. 'Expect no mercy from us now, Doctor.'

'I mean, the Type 102 TARDIS.'

'You gave it a name?' This evidently amused the Castellan greatly.

'You need Compassion to mother your new sentient TARDISes President Romana told me so herself. To prepare for the forthcoming war with the Enemy.'

'You're remarkably well informed, Doctor. But you are Faction, so unfortunately that does not surprise me.'

'I have not surrendered to the Faction yet.' The Doctor leaned on the desk and stared straight at Timon.

Timon remained strangely fascinated by the way the whole of the Doctor's face was illuminated, none of it in shadow, as though softly lit from within. 'Let me try to synthesise something from Compassion. Some way that you can propagate your new TARDISes without inflicting whatever horrors you have in store for her. If you can guarantee that, Vice President, I promise I'll find a way into the Edifice. I'll find a way to make my new Factiontainted imprimatur compatible with my old, purer one.'

Access to the 102, thought Timon. A way on to the Edifice. All without the involvement of the Lords Temporal and the usual collegiate squabbles on the High Council. And the Doctor was practically begging him.

The main doors opened, and three Chancellery Guards strode into the room. They saluted the Vice President and bellowed at their Castellan: 'Reporting as ordered, sir!'

Vozarti winced, and waved their salutes away.

'Very well, Doctor,' said Timon. He immediately instructed the guards to escort the Doctor to residential quarters in the Penansulix Scientific Structure. 'Use my transport.'

Vozarti scowled as they left the room with the Doctor, though Timon saw that even this did not add many lines to the Castellan's face.

'I know what you are worrying about, Castellan. That this is a scam of the Doctor's to free himself of the Faction virus.'

Vozarti was still scowling. Timon rose from his seat, smoothed down his robes of office, and walked around the desk to place a reassuring hand on Vozarti's arm.

'If it is, then he is wasting his time there is no hope. The Doctor may think that practical work is better than bookish study. But I've researched the darker side of Gallifrey's history, and I know that once you are marked by the Faction, there is no way back. We shall have the Type 102 from him, we shall board the Edifice, and then the Doctor can rot in his personal Faction hell.'

'Shall I advise the High Council, sir?'

'I'll tell them myself,' said Timon. Eventually, he thought. No point in letting the genie out of the bottle yet.

At his feet, the glittering shards of the broken Klein bottle flicked in and out of the present.

Chapter Ten.

Taken for a ride

The underground carriage smelled of undusted upholstery. No, not underground what had Tarra called it? Oh yeah, the Transtube. The travel system that would take them to the centre of the capital, or maybe it was the Capitol, wherever that was. Their section of the Transtube was empty. Just like the Northern Line late on a Sunday night, he thought. No matter how closely he looked, though, he couldn't see any adverts for Beecham's Powders.

That would be too much to hope for, he thought, as memories of the weird seance came back to him. A weird seance with him as the star turn. He felt Tarra's cool hand in his. 'Do you think that guy just smuggled me in as a trick?'

'Picked up some sad case from the MidTown, you mean? Promised you a few cheap beers.

Or maybe,' she continued, looking askance at Fitz's dishevelled appearance, 'a change of clothes and a square meal?'

Sure, thought Fitz, build up my confidence. But he persisted: 'What do you think?'

Her reaction was inscrutable, and she said nothing.

'All that stuff,' persisted Fitz. "The blood in that basin. And what they were saying afterwards, about how we'd seen a forbidden snapshot of my future Tarra squeezed his hand, then let go. She produced a small ivory box from her pocket. There were regular indentations in its upper surface, and she ran her fingers slowly over them, as though she was reading Braille. The light of the carriage made the skin of her slender fingers seem old and puckered, like she'd been in the bath too long.

He was about to ask where she had heard his name before when Tarra pressed a sequence of indentations in the box. Fitz found himself thrown away from her down the length of the carriage as the Transtube screeched to a halt.

Fitz picked himself off the floor. He wasn't surprised to find that Tarra had obviously braced herself for the emergency stop, and was now standing by the doorway.

'Ouch; said Fitz in a perfectly normal voice, but Tarra was either obviously fully occupied or just ignoring him.

Her fingers flickered over the ivory control device. At once, the nearest exit door vanished into the floor. Fitz had been impressed with the way the doors had all done this when they first boarded the Transtube, back near the rundown digs. He was even more impressed to see that now, exactly aligned with their exit, was a doorway in the tube wall. The door creaked open to reveal a dank sixsided corridor, with one of the sides forming a narrow walkway at the bottom.

'These tunnels are weird,' observed Fitz. 'Hexagonal. You'd think it was easier to dig them circular.'

Tarra said, 'Six is a special number: six members of the High Council, six colleges of cardinals, six sides to the Great Panopticon, six suits at cards.'

'Six suits?'

'Flames, Clouds, Souls, Deeps, Mesmers and Dominoes.'

'Numbers count,' said Fitz lightly.

'More than you know,' she answered. 'Now don't dawdle. I want to get this done and get back to MidTown.'

'MidTown?'

'Kellen and Ressadriand and the others are waiting for us, Fitz.'

Typical, thought Fitz. It's a slum, so it's given an elevated name. Not too elevated, but enough to imply that it couldn't possibly be where the dregs of society pooled together and could not escape.

Except, of course, for Tarra and Kellen and the others. What were they doing out there?

Slumming it. Literally.

'I said don't dawdle.'

As soon as Fitz stepped out, the Transtube door flicked back into position, and the whole train started up again, thundering away into the darkness. Tarra switched on a light in the tunnel, pocketed her control device and moved off.