She smiled with no warmth. 'And don't lecture me, Doctor. These days, I worry about little else. Why otherwise do I indulge your investigations.'''

'Because you think they'll secure you a Type 102 TARDIS.'

'I depend on it.' She strolled to her chaise longue and stretched out on it. Her beaded skirt draped decorously over her shapely legs, an effect which evidently pleased her greatly. 'You haven't made best use of your research time, I understand.'

'I'm sure the Lady Mali is good in her own field,' said the Doctor, without looking at the young woman.

'Combat Elite Mali is expert in many fields.'

'You're not listening to me, Madam President. There is more to this than unauthorised access to the Matrix. Why would someone else search down and erase my original bioextract from the Matrix?'

'It's obvious,' replied Romana. 'There is now no record of your biodata before it was tainted by Faction Paradox.'

The Doctor glared at Romana. 'Just the sort of dirty trick that your agents would contrive.'

'Nevertheless, Doctor, it means that the only hope of tracing your untainted biodata is to find your genetic imprimatur within your TARDIS. Your Type 102 TARDIS.'

The Doctor stamped his feet in a petulant display of sheer exasperation, childishly pleased at the impression it made on the shagpile. 'Well, how very convenient for you!' He wheeled on Mali, who had stood until now observing the confrontation. 'Was that your plan all along?

Sabotage my only other chance to undo the Faction virus, ensuring that you could get your hands on Compassion. Was it?'

'Of course not,' she said softly.

Romana giggled from her chaise longue. 'It's unfortunate for you of course, Doctor. But you must admit that now it's in your interest and mine to trace your Type 102.'

The Doctor slumped down into an easy chair, though he was feeling anything but easy as his mind rushed through all his current options. After several minutes of uninterrupted silence, he said, 'What if I could synthesise the essence of your future TARDISes from Compassion?

Would you promise not to forcebreed her with your current TARDISes?'

Romana pursed her lips, and considered the suggestion. 'Why would I agree?'

'The Edifice will continue to grow,' said Mali, before the Doctor could speak.

Romana stared at her, as though she'd uttered a profanity in a church. At last she said, 'Go on, Mali.'

The Doctor watched Mali swallow nervously and take a deep breath. 'Latest reports in from my man Tragdorvigan, Madam President, he's on the Emonitor.'

'Yes, yes,' snapped Romana, clearly nervous about something. 'What about the Edifice?'

Mali looked grim. "The Edifice's effect on causality is increasingly being felt here on Gallifrey, and rippling out across the universe. It's as if a thread has been pulled in the fabric of spacetime and is starting to unravel.'

'Stop being so coy,' said the Doctor. 'Don't you think it's time you showed me this Edifice?'

Technician Nivet stared at the blank screen in the bank of equipment and cursed quietly under his breath.

'Magic incantations?' the Doctor said, smiling.

The burly blond technician looked up at the Doctor briefly and smiled. 'No, merely old technology. Predictably unreliable. I spend more than half my time coaxing it back to life, instead of using it for what it was designed for.'

'He's supposed to be the finest technician in the whole of Kasterborous,' noted Vice President Timon.

'So why is he working on this pile of junk?' asked the Doctor.

Castellan Vozarti's laughter filtered across the Survey Room. He sounded like a sniggering schoolboy, thought the Doctor. 'What's so amusing, Castellan?' asked the Doctor. 'I should have thought you needed all the best equipment you could lay your hands on in this crisis.'

This made Vozarti cackle even more. 'Listen to yourself, Doctor.'

'What?' The Doctor stared around the room, taking in the amused reactions of Romana and Mali. Djarshar, the Chancellor of Time Future, stood next to Vice President Timon. Both remained stoically unmoved. The Doctor raised his eyebrows and smiled back at the others.

'What?'

'Technician Nivet does indeed need the best equipment he can lay his hands on,' said Romana. "That's why we want your Type 102.'

The Doctor's smile vanished. "That "equipment" is not negotiable.'

'It's such an irony,' continued Romana, 'that it was one of Nivet's war TARDISes that you destroyed.'

'Wha-'

'The first of the war TARDISes you shot down was from the fleet that Nivet maintains for the Chancellor of Time Future.'

The Doctor continued to glower at her. 'And you are aware of the circumstances of that unfortunate incident. Why are we wasting time? Show me this Edifice, for goodness' sake.'

'Surely you have seen it on our horizon, Doctor?' Chancellor Djarshar had folded his arms, an emphatic barrier between them.

'Yes, yes, yes,' the Doctor said. 'From this angle, that's barely a twodimensional view. I think we need to examine it in at least the basic four, don't you? Come on, Nivet, what's the problem?'

Nivet continued to mumble. The Doctor marched smartly up to the bank of equipment, raised his right fist and delivered a sharp blow to the top of the dead screen. It immediately sprang into noisy life.

'Nice technique,' said Nivet.

The Doctor wiped invisible dust from the top of the screen. 'Is this Phase 40 equipment?'

'Yes.'

'I have a way with obsolete machinery.' He paused for a moment, then placed a tentative hand on the technician's broad shoulder. 'I'm sorry about your war TARDIS, Nivet. And her crew.'

Nivet shrugged off the hand. 'I know. Look, the screen's showing some readings at last.'

The fourdimensional display crackled into life.

'Look!' breathed Romana, joining them at the display. 'It's almost entirely visible in all dimensions.'

The Doctor could sense a tightening in his chest. His breaths were starting to become ragged.

The familiar feelings of fear and anxiety and panic were starting to well up in him once more.

It was as if every instinct in him wanted him to leave the Edifice alone, not even look at it.

'Can you see what it is?' Romana said. 'Why couldn't we see that before?'

Nivet said, 'The spatiotemporal cartographer has mapped out the Edifice's fourdimensional structure. So at last we have a temporal orientation as well as a spatial one. It looks a bit like a flower, doesn't it?'

'More than that; the Doctor uttered. The display now showed a huge flower, with six broadsplayed petals. Usually, it would have been bright yellow, of course, one of thousands scattering down from high up in the Capitol rafters over a cortege. 'It's a Gallifreyan Flower of Remembrance.'

Nivet snorted. 'Most unlikely. Though who knows what's really out there? If you believe these readings, then you'd believe that the thing's carved from bone! And why would it look like one of these ... Flowers of Remembrance?'

'You've not been to many funerals, have you, Nivet?' Timon said. 'The flower is a memento mori. It is a portent of doom. A dreadful omen -'

'Vice President!' snapped Romana. 'Do not even feign such superstitious nonsense. This is no phantom: it is a physical event which is causing untold damage to local spacetime.'

The Doctor gasped for breath. I've seen it before. I recognise the markings on the petals. We were too close, and we were only considering it in three dimensions, but ...'

Romana had come across to him, held him by his upper arms. She seemed concerned about him. 'What is it, Doctor?'

'No wonder Compassion reacted like she did when we landed.'

Romana released his arms, and a dreadful realisation started to fill the Doctor. The Lady President hadn't been concerned to discover what was happening to him.

She was concerned only to discover what he knew.

'So,' she said to the rest of the room, a tight smile on her lips/the 102 has been on the Edifice all this time, has it Doctor? And we thought you'd concealed it on Gallifrey.'

The Castellan stepped forward to confront the Doctor. 'We must have the Type 102.'

The searing pain in the Doctor's chest and head threatened to engulf him, to overwhelm him.

'I ... I thought you were all ... too afraid ... of this Edifice.'

'The Type 102 TARDIS is too great a prize to let slip away, Doctor. We must remove it from the Edifice immediately. No more games or timewasting.' Vozarti grabbed hold of the Doctor's chin and forced him to meet his gaze. 'If you've been up there already, you must know how to get back aboard.'

'I don't,' protested the Doctor weakly. 'I swear, I don't.'

'You know how to reach the Type 102.'

The Doctor knew deep in his terrified hearts what the Castellan was going to say next. 'I can't,' he said pitifully. 'I just can't.'

'Nonsense,' snarled Vozarti. 'You will lead us on to the Edifice.'

Chapter Fourteen.

Talk of The Devil

Fitz choked a little as the smoke caught the back of his throat. The air of the shabby digs was once again filled with the powerful scent of strong, alien incense. As a boy, he used to think that the worst cocktail of smells in the world was his father's combination of Old Spice and Park Drive. In this room, there was something worse. The electric tang he'd first noticed was masked by these pervasive new scents, which made him feel slightly heady, distanced from what was happening somehow. On the whole, he decided, he'd prefer a drag on one of his dad's Park Drives.

The seance had started as soon as the light had faded all round MidTown. Ressadriand had seemed surprised to see Fitz and Tarra back so swiftly, and was initially reluctant for the evening seance to begin. Tarra and the cocky lad Kellen had mocked him for his cowardice.

So when the rest of the coven had started to drift in through the gathering gloom of evening, that wet drip Ressadriand had reluctantly fired up the Visualiser while the others prepared the room.

Now the low chants and moans of the coven echoed eerily around the small room. The walls flickered in the candlelight and the soft speckled illumination from the Visualiser screen.

Tarra was weaving her way about the room, orchestrating the movements and sounds, and waving her ivory box around. Fitz watched warily, unable to join in. His family weren't churchgoers, and he'd never felt comfortable when attending a funeral or a wedding.

Everyone else always seemed to know the words of the ceremony, and could sing the hymns in tune. He always felt as if he'd been invited to a dull gig for a band he'd never heard of.

And so it was at the seance, except that now he did not feel anything like the warmth or benevolence of a church service. What was it then that did feel so familiar?

He watched Tarra for a while. He could see the curves of her body under the man material of that little black number she'd slipped into. The skull mask was a bizarre addition. She continued to slink around the room with that feline grace, as though she was stalking something in the darkness, humming an eerie tune which controlled the events.

Even with their cruel and savage halfmasks in place, it was obvious who the other coven members were from their clothing. There was Kaufima, the foxy chick with the bare shoulders, thrashing her head from side to side and spraying her long dark hair in all directions. The twins, whose names he couldn't remember, shuffled their feet in synchrony.

Old man Eton was, not surprisingly, trying to get close to Tarra, but she just shimmied away and out of reach as the crowd surged about the room.

The coven members continued to weave their own pattern around Tarra, parting to allow her a way through, closing up again after she'd passed. Being led by her steps, her movement.

Dancing to her tune.

Kellen danced in Tarra's wake, following her every move, he had thrown his head back, and was grinning at the audacity of it all. Fitz could see the guy's teeth beneath the bone halfmask. The other coven members were more solemn, though, swaying from side to side in time to Tarra's ululating song.

That was it, Fitz suddenly realised. That was what he found so familiar from those church services. It was the solemnity, the reverence. And maybe something else?

He looked towards the Visualiser. Ressadriand wasn't swaying, he wasn't getting into it at all. Through the halfmask, Fitz could see Ressadriand's eyes. They were wide with alarm.

Yes, thought Fitz. That was the other thing he'd sensed. It was an uneasy edge to the whole performance. It was fear.

The Doctor slumped in his chair, pressing at his temples with his balledup fists. But even this did not ease the pressure building inside his head. Faintly he could hear Castellan Vozarti talking.

'I will not return there,' replied the Doctor, choosing each word carefully.

The Castellan crouched down beside him so that he could not avoid making eye contact. I was not offering you a choice, Doctor. You will board the Edifice with us, and you will take us to the Type 102.'

The Doctor stared up at him through tears of pain. 'You are mistaken, Castellan.' Behind Vozarti, the Doctor could see Romana shaking hands with a thin old man who had just entered the Survey Room. The newcomer was dressed in the formal dress of a High Councillor, seemingly bent double by the weight of his heavy robes, but the Doctor did not recognise him.

Romana released the man's hand. 'You are welcome to stay, Councillor Samax. The Doctor is about to identify the location of the Type 102.'

'Madam President,' demurred Samax in a reedy voice. 'I must prepare for your Reaffirmation Ceremony.' He bowed, and left the room.