Time Zero

by Justin Richards

‘It doesn’t take the creation of a whole now universe just to kill a cat.’

With Fitz gone to his certain death and Anji back at work in the City, the Doctor is once more alone. But he has a lot to keep him occupied.

At the Naryshkin Institute in Siberia, scientists are busily at work in a haunted castle. Over a century earlier, creatures from a prehistory that never happened attack a geological expedition. Pages from the lost expedition’s journal are put on display at the British Museum, and a US spy plane suffers a mysterious fate. Deep under the snowy landscape of Siberia the key to it all remains trapped in the ice.

Only the Doctor can see that these events are all related. But he isn’t the only person involved. Why is Colonel Hartford so interested in the institute? Who is the mysterious millionaire who is after the journal? How is the Grand Duchess, descendant of the last Tsar, involved?

Soon the Doctor is caught up in a plot that reaches back to the creation of the Universe. And beyond…
…to Time Zero.

This is another in the series of original adventures for the Eighth Doctor.

- Immobile: 1938a

- 53: Bodies in Motion

- 52: Sweet Sorrows

- 51: Still Point

- 50: Routine

- 49: Ghost

- 48: Walking with Beasts

- 47: Reunion

- 46: Time‐Lag

- 45: Pages Torn from Memory

- 44: Chronic Symptoms

- 43: In Siberia

- 42: Results

- 41: Encampment

- 40: Under the Hammer

- 39: Cold Blood

- 38: Audit

- 37: View through a Window

- 36: Cargo

- 35: The Great Attractor

- 34: Hunter and Hunted

- 33: Taking Flight

- 32: The Castle

- 31: Cold Comfort

- 30: Discovery

- 29: Involvement

- 28: Body of Evidence

- 27: Under Siege

- 26: Incursion

- 25: Duty Calls

- 24: Distractions

- 23: Sent Packing

- 22: Out Cold

- 21: Nothing to Declare

- 20: Off the Scale

- 19: Into the Darkness

- 18: Unreasonable Excuses

- 17: Taking Notes

- 16: Secrets

- 15: The Ice Cavern

- 14: Images

- 13: Decision

- 12: Realisation

- 11: Bargain

- 10: Fire and Ice

- 9: Other Worlds

- 8: Infinite Possibilities

- 7: Confrontation

- 6: Darkness and Death

- 5: The Dead Past

- 4: Opening the Dox

- 3: Indetermined

- 2: Paradox

- 1: Greater Good

- Time Zero

- Reality + 1

- Beginnings: 1938b

- Acknowledgements

- About the Author

For Alison, Julian and Christian

Immobile: 1938a

A man stands. Frozen in time. The chill breeze from the open door ripples the yellowed pages of the book he holds.

The elderly woman sniffs and shuffles out from behind her table and pushes the door shut. She gathers her coat about her neck and returns to the task of counting the day’s meagre takings. She might spare the man a glance. But he has been there for so long now, standing immobile, that she probably doesn’t bother. He will buy the book, or he won’t. His decision might add to the small pile of coins on the table, but it is unlikely to disturb the universe.

Unlikely, but not impossible.

53: Bodies in Motion

Everyone in Britain can remember where they were when Fluppy died.

This is largely due to the fact that it happened on live television – children’s television. The repeats on the news stopped short of the lingering shots of the poor animal’s caved‐in skull. But one of the tabloids managed to get a screen grab for its front page. In colour. It was an historic moment of the most memorable kind – the nation’s favourite puppy killed in front of millions of children on a winter’s evening a fortnight before Christmas.

‘Quite moving,’ Trevor enthused to the camera. The image cut back to a last shot of the coat hanger and tinsel glory of the advent crown, two of the candles burning lazily.

‘And next week,’ Suze added through her synthetic smile, ‘we’ll be lighting the third candle.’

‘Mmm,’ Trevor agreed. ‘Can’t wait.’ He set off towards his next mark on the studio floor. ‘But now to movement of a very different kind.’ He paused, a split second of horror visible in subsequent freeze‐frames as he lost his place on the autocue. ‘Now we all remember Newton’s first law,’ he said at last with some relief.

‘Every object continues at rest or in a state of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force.’

‘That’s right, Mick,’ Trevor said, apparently impressed. ‘Though we don’t mean school uniform, of course.’ His smile twitched as he caught the director’s eye, and returned quickly to the script. ‘What that really means is that nothing moves unless something makes it move. And once it is moving, it won’t stop or change direction unless something else affects it.’

‘Like gravity,’ Suze chipped in, interposing herself between Trevor and the camera. ‘Or friction.’

‘Exactly, Suze.’ Another camera picked up Trevor as he moved across the studio to where a young man was standing, shy and bemused. A small dog blurred past the young man and hurled itself at Trevor.

Trevor reacted with well‐rehearsed surprise and amusement. ‘Get down, boy,’ he chided gently. ‘Fluppy the puppy may be an exception to Newton’s law, of course,’ he said as he palmed off the dog. ‘Did old Isaac have a doggie? Did he, Fluppy?’ Trying to make it seem as if Fluppy was indeed travelling in a uniform manner under his own volition, Trevor managed to fling the creature away from him while keeping his balance and his smile.

‘But we’ve got somebody here with us today who can also, it seems, give Newton something to think about.’

‘That’s right, Trevor.’ Mick had joined them and was ushering the young man forwards. If either of them heard the snarl of protestation from Fluppy as Suze held him back, with her hand gripping his collar more forcefully than Isaac Newton would have deemed necessary, they ignored it with well‐practised ease. The effect was spoiled only by the startled glance of the young man as he looked across the studio and missed the cue he’d been waiting for all afternoon.

‘Isn’t that right?’ Trevor said, nudging the man.

‘Yes,’ Mick said, repeating the line they had rehearsed so often that day: ‘Our guest this week is someone who has an extraordinary ability. And he’s come all the way from Gloucestershire to share it with us.’

‘Absolutely, yes,’ the young man said quickly. He shuffled nervously as he saw his face stare back at him from a half‐dozen monitors. ‘I can make things move. Sometimes.’ He was supposed to be reading, but his eyes were watering so much he couldn’t see the words. ‘Though I think Newton would probably say that I’m exerting a force that we can’t perceive – rather like gravity.’

‘Right,’ Mick agreed without missing a beat. ‘And it isn’t a trick, is it? Not like those spoon‐benders and fairground magicians.’

‘No, no. Absolutely not.’

‘Terrific,’ Trevor said. ‘Well, we’ve devised a little demonstration, a sort of test for you.’ He paused just long enough for it to be apparent that the young man wasn’t going to give the scripted response. ‘And Suze has been setting up the apparatus, haven’t you, Suze?’

It was not really ‘apparatus’ and it was not Suze who had set it up. It was a golf ball on a table standing in front of the Charity Totaliser. There was a glass cover over the table, which Suze explained was to make sure there was no tampering with the ball, and to eliminate any chance of a draught. She said that the table was perfectly smooth and level, and she bent down and looked at the camera from beside one of the table legs to show there was nothing underneath.

The guest stood watching her, hands behind his back. He was a slight man, in his early twenties. He was wearing a suit his mother had picked for him and which the television company had paid for. His nose was bulbous and his face round. His eyes, in close‐up, could be seen to have large black pupils and irises that were midnight blue. His hair was black as ebony, seeming darker still against his pale skin.

He stood absolutely motionless, as if frozen in time, and stared at the golf ball. He was within reach of the table, but kept his hands clasped behind Ius back. He was leaning forward slightly, like a swimmer mentally preparing for the dive.

For once, Trevor, Mick and Suze were all silent.

The only movement was from Fluppy the puppy. With a triumphant snarl, he broke free from his handler and raced across the studio claws clicking on the floor.

Trevor ran to catch him, slipped on a patch of PVA glue which he had spilled earlier, and went flying. Mick stifled a laugh. Suze watched in horrified anticipation as Fluppy headed straight for the table for the special guest. They all knew Fluppy, they all knew what was about to happen. All except the Special Guest.

He only discovered as the excited animal sank its teeth into the fleshy part of his calf, piercing trousers and skin in a moment.

Since the cameraman knew as well as anyone what was going on, the viewers were spared this sight. Instead they saw this week’s guest’s face contort in a mixture of rage and pain. His eyes opened wide and his pupils seemed to dilate. The shot changed to a wider view of the studio just in time to show the golf ball hurtle across the table and crash through the glass cover. It missed the young man by inches, and the camera lost it as the ball embedded itself in the studio wall forty feet away.

But there were other things to watch now. The slight man was unmoved, his face fixed in its anger and surprise. Furry Ted flew from his shelf. The table was now covered in shards of glass. They lay like ice crystals across its surface. For a moment the glass was still, then it seemed to shudder as if the table were shaking. People dived for cover as the glass icicles whipped through the air. The standing shelf units wobbled crazily before crashing to the floor. Ornaments, toys, things that Trevor and Mick and Suze had prepared earlier smashed and crumpled. The Advent Crown’s candles blew out and it swung angrily on its string. When the string snapped, the crown spun across the studio in a blur of tinsel that glittered in the bright light.

A camera rolled suddenly and heavily into the table, knocking it sideways. Fluppy let go of his victim’s leg and leaped back with a frightened yelp as the table struck him.

The enormous Charity Totaliser, almost at the target now, toppled forwards. The huge piece of scenery was shaped like a giant test‐your‐weight machine complete with a brass bell at the top. But the tube that led up to it was filled with donations from ‘Give and Take’TM sales across the country – eighteen thousand, four hundred and eleven silver and gold two‐pound coins.

The technical crew was already sheltering under the control room gantry. The Floor Manager was holding on desperately to a fixed piece of scaffolding to save herself from being dragged – somehow – across the studio. The three presenters were curled up on the floor with their hands protecting the backs of their heads from flying glass, objects, anything. Suze was screaming.

One man was standing rigid, immobile, in the eye of the storm.

Camera 3 was against tile shattered table, angled downwards. The output from the camera was visible on half a dozen swinging, moving, crashing monitors. It showed Fluppy the puppy staring balefully upwards. It showed, in close‐up and perfectly focused, the central tube of the Charity Totaliser smash into the dog’s head, coins spilling across the floor in a glittering pile. For a moment, Fluppy’s famous ears were still visible in the chaos of coinage. Then the silver and gold stained red, and the Totaliser’s backboard knocked the camera sideways to ensure a good view of it crashing down on top of the coins.

Only then did the television screens in the homes of millions of children finally turn black.

In the studio, the chaos slowly died away and silence returned. The guest blinked and looked round, as if only now seeing what had happened. Slowly, carefully, he picked his way through the debris and made towards the studio doors.

There was someone standing beside the doors, he noticed. A large man, with his hair cropped short, dressed immaculately in a crisp dark suit that put his own to shame. The man seemed faintly amused by the whole proceedings. He smiled politely. When he spoke, his voice was rich and dark and low.

‘It is so good to meet you at last.’

The large man reached out and took his elbow, leading him out of the studio and down the corridor towards the dressing rooms. He spoke as if they had known each other for years, an old friend offering kind advice.’

‘A word, if I may…?’

The Special Guest said nothing, but allowed the man to follow him into the small dressing room. If the man had something to say, then he would listen. After all, it was unlikely to change his life.

52: Sweet Sorrows

The masts of the ships were like broken bones, sharp and jagged against the gathering clouds of the night sky.

Three figures stood on the quayside. The woman shuffled and stamped her feet in boredom and to keep out the cold. She was huddled inside a large woollen coat. The younger man was also wrapped up warm, slapping his hands together and blowing dragon’s-breath steam.

The Doctor had made no concessions to the November cold. His long velvet coat flapped open in the breeze from the harbour and his cravat was loosely tied at his throat. ‘Bracing, isn’t it,’ he said with a wide grin as he watched Fitz and Anji trying to deal with the biting cold.

‘I can believe the Thames froze over in Victorian times.’ Anji said. Her jaw was twitching as she tried to prevent her teeth from chattering. Why couldn’t they say their goodbyes in the warmth of the TARDIS?

But they had already said goodbye to Fitz in the TARDIS. She could have stayed behind and let the Doctor walk him to the ship. Or he could have gone alone. It was only a hundred yards after all. But there was something about saying farewell to a friend – a real friend. She couldn’t let go that easily, any more than the Doctor could. Any more than Fitz could, come to that. For all his posturing and play‐acting she could sense that he was grateful for their company in these last moments.

‘Well, I suppose this is it, then,’ Anji said, for want of anything more poignant or emotional.

‘I suppose so,’ Fitz agreed. But he didn’t sound too sure now.

‘You won’t change your mind?’ Anji asked.

‘Will you?’ Fitz countered.

The Doctor had stepped back slightly so that his face was in shadow. There was no steam‐breath from his mouth, Anji noted. The way she and Fitz were performing, they could couple up coaches behind them and do the Brighton run.

Anji shook her head. ‘It’s time to go home,’ she said quietly.

‘For those of us with homes to go to,’ Fitz murmured, glancing at the Doctor’s shadowy form. He shook his head, as if realising. ‘Sorry,’ he said louder to Anji. ‘You know what I mean. We’ve all lost something.’ He made a brave attempt at a smile. ‘And not just innocence.’

‘Oh?’ the Doctor asked.

A figure had appeared at the other end of the quay. A dark patch against the darker night as he strode towards them. The click of his heels audible as he approached, beating out the last moments they had together. And with that urgency, Anji suddenly had so much she wanted to say. So much she wanted to tell Fitz before he was gone.

She wanted to tell him that he was a good friend, and that this might sound trite but it was the best compliment she could think of and that she trusted him and would miss him and had enjoyed the time they spent together despite the death and the cold and the dark and the longing. And so much more.

But he was already trying to release his own emotions and feelings, his tongue tripping over itself as he looked from Anji to the Doctor to Anji again. And all she could do was listen and try to hold back her tears.

‘I’ll miss you both. Well, I’ll see you again soon Doctor, I guess. That is, soon for you – not for me. Months and months for me. But this is something I have to do, you know? For myself. I mean – I’m thirty‐three. Well, OK so you don’t really get birthdays in the TARDIS and you lose track of time, which is a bit ironic. But I sort of worked it out. And I want to have done something. Sorry, I don’t mean that all the time we’ve been together has been like nothing. But something for me. On my world. Just getting to see some of the wonders and the beauty and the excitement of where I belong. Or nearly. I mean, this isn’t 1963 after all, but I’m only eighty years adrift and that’s pretty impressive for the TARDIS, you have to admit. Sorry, Doctor. And Anji, well, like you said – this is sort of it, I guess. You know I wasn’t really sure about you at first, and I know you didn’t exactly take to me. But…’

His voice tailed off. When he spoke again, his words cracked with the emotion of it. ‘What the hell,’ he said. And he grabbed Anji and hugged her like a sister. Like Dave never had. And she was hugging him back and they both pretended not to see each other’s tears or to know how much it mattered.

‘You ready, Fitz?’ George Williamson asked. His voice was melodious and calm.

Fitz pulled away. ‘Course,’ he said, blinking rapidly. He picked up the canvas bag at his feet in his left hand, and reached out to shake the Doctor’s hand. ‘All set.’

Anji stepped back to let the two friends say their goodbyes. She glanced at George, and he was smiling at her. It was the easiest thing in the world to smile back, and she felt the clouds lift a little and a touch of moonlight glistened on the water. He would look after Fitz, she knew. Williamson might not be any older, might be far less travelled and experienced, but for all that Fitz needed looking after.

‘You understand, don’t you?’ Fitz was saying to the Doctor.

He nodded. ‘You have to do what you have to do.’ His voice was dull and flat. As if uncaring. ‘It’ll be colder than this in Siberia,’ he added.

‘We shan’t be in Siberia for a long while yet,’ George said. ‘Three months until we get to St Petersburg. Then we shall need to take on supplies, organise guides. Wait for the other members of the expedition…’ He waved a gloved hand to imply that there were a hundred and one other matters to be dealt with.

‘Bring us back a mammoth,’ Anji said as brightly as she could manage.

‘You know,’ the Doctor said slowly, ‘We could just drop you off at –’ But Fitz was shaking his head. ‘No, I want to do this properly. I mean, otherwise what’s the point?’

‘What’s the point,’ the Doctor repeated flatly. ‘Yes, I do sometimes wonder.’

It was a long hundred yards back to the TARDIS. Anji tried not to look back. But she didn’t manage. She was rewarded with the vague view of George and Fitz walking up the gangplank, of one of them turning to look back at her and waving. She knew it was George.

The Doctor did not look back. He looked at the ground, as if afraid he was about to trip on an uneven flagstone.

‘Will they find their fossils?’ Anji asked. She needed to say something.

‘Very likely,’ the Doctor mumbled indistinctly.

‘Prehistoric animals frozen in the ice?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Don’t you care?’

No answer.

She was silent again until they were inside the TARDIS. She could feel the tips of her fingers thawing. They should be glowing, she thought, as she tried to wriggle the feeling back into the rest of her hands. ‘Take me home,’ she told him as she took off her coat.

‘You’re sure that’s what you want?’

‘Like Fitz said, it’s time.’ She looked away. ‘Just tell me,’ she blinked away the moisture. Yes, the heat after the bitter cold was making them water, she was sure. ‘Just tell me, you do care. Don’t you?’

She could almost feel his hand hesitating behind her, unsure whether to pat her shoulder, to turn her round. So she turned anyway, and found he was already at the console, facing away from her. His long dark coat seemed to go on forever. She was staring at it so hard she could see every frayed loop of the velvet.

‘Don’t you care that your best friend is going off on a crazy expedition looking for things that probably aren’t there and from which he might never return?’ she blurted. ‘Mammoths, or whatever.’

‘It may not be that crazy.’ He still didn’t turn.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she shouted at him. ‘You might have let him go to his death for all you care. You don’t know.’

He turned so slowly she couldn’t believe he was moving at all. When his face came into view it was long and lined and drawn and pale. ‘I do know,’ he said, so quietly that she was surprised she could hear him at all. ‘That’s the problem, don’t you see?’

She shook her head numbly.

‘The past – your past – has already happened. It’s been and gone and we can’t change it. In our terms, Fitz has already been on the expedition. It was his destiny to go. Even when he was born he’d already done it, don’t you understand?’

‘But…’ She wasn’t sure what she was going to say, her mind was frozen by his tone. ‘But we don’t know, we can’t possibly know what happens – what happened to Fitz in the eighteen‐nineties. We don’t know that he dies.’ She had not thought it, but she had said it. And it shocked her, put so starkly.

Now the Doctor did take her shoulders. Her held her so tight she could feel her cold skin bruising. He stared into her eyes so deeply she thought he was seeing into her very soul. ‘I know,’ he said, his voice a dry rasp.

‘But how?’ she whispered. ‘How do you know?’

And he told her.

51: Still Point

A man stands. Examining the book he holds, concentrating on a single word inked almost illegibly into its scrawled pages.

The leather cover is scuffed and worn. The binding is slightly loose and several of the pages have pulled almost free. Others are torn or stained or missing entirely.

The title page, neat handwritten capitals standing proudly on the yellowing paper, gives the date as 1894. The end papers at the front are a freehand map, with ‘Not To Scale!!’ written beside the N and arrow for North. A vast expanse of landmass with a thin trail of dotted footsteps showing their journey. ‘SIBERIA’ it says across the page. And smaller: ‘Here Be Monsters. No, really.’

But it is not the map that holds his attention. It is not the date. It is not the title: ‘An Account of an Expedition to Siberia.’

It is the author’s name, signed at the bottom of the title page.

Fitz Kreiner

A coincidence? The man is holding another slip of paper beside the name. The paper has been folded and unfolded more times than he can recall. Yet the writing is neat and fresh.

Meet me in St. Louis’, February 8th 2001.

The short note is signed with the same perfect writing. The name looks like Fitz.

But the Fitz written with so neat, almost feminine a hand on the scrap of paper is nothing like the Fitz signed in the journal. Nothing.

The Doctor hesitates. Should he buy the book anyway? A curiosity?

A coincidence? Or a distraction. He has more than enough to do.

But from now – from October 12th 1938 – until February 8th 2001 is such a long time. Such a very long time… With a sudden dust‐clouding movement that makes the old woman blink and shiver, he snaps the book shut. He refolds his piece of paper, a quick well‐practised routine.

And he reaches out to replace the book on the shelf.

50: Routine

The irony was not lost on Anji. Most of the day she spent staring at a screen, and the rest of the time was lost getting to or from the coffee machine. Now, as she waited for the kettle to boil and spooned Nescafe into a mug, she was already thinking where to look next on the web. She made a point of never bringing work home with her. But the environment and the lifestyle remained the same nonetheless.

Except that she was very good at what she did at work. Here at home her success so far was negligible.

They had given her three weeks compassionate leave, which was apparently unheard of. She was pretty sure they’d done it retrospectively as the Doctor had dropped her off exactly three weeks later than he’d promised.

For the first few days everyone made a point of stopping by her desk and interrupting her just as she was working out what it was she was supposed to be doing. You think I’ve been gone just three weeks, she thought to herself each time. But actually it’s months… years perhaps. In a way it helped – they seemed to think her incompetence in those early days was due to her emotional trauma. And she’d dealt with that, she was over it.

Until she went back to the flat, and each evening she found that Dave wasn’t there. And each evening she remembered guiltily how she used to hope he wouldn’t be there and she could sort her brain out and get changed and showered in peace. And each evening she put more of his life away in boxes that she pushed out of sight.

For the next few weeks, after the initial sympathetic looks and meaningless words, they kept out of her way. Anji could understand that. She barely knew them any more. So much had happened to her, so much had changed – she had changed so much, and yet they were all exactly the same. And the exactly‐the‐same they were seemed shallow and pointless to her now. The work – the work that had been her life, her soul, her being was… just work. There was little excitement, few tangible consequences despite Enron and WorldCom, no nightmare or death.

The only exception was Mitch. He hadn’t changed. She doubted he ever would. They had both started work on the same day, both struggled to find their feet together. Anji had never really considered that Mitch was a friend, not until now. He was the best colleague she had. Mitch’s reassuring presence, his quick wit and sharp mind helped her settle back into her old routine in the way that the hands‐off attitude of her other colleagues did not.

Anji was so good that it was almost automatic. At first she had slipped away to the toilets every hour or two to consult the sheaf of papers she kept folded in her inside jacket pocket: share listings ripped from future copies of the FT; scrawled notes from her researches in the TARDIS library about future events and how they might or could or would affect the markets. But after a while she realised that actually this was all a safety net. No matter what she read, she still went with her instinct, her present‐day analysis. And almost always she was right. It was as if the experiences of the last virtual‐three‐weeks had sharpened the skills she already had and given her the confidence to trust in them.

Just as they had taken away her capacity to enjoy them.

Most evenings, Anji went through the same routine. She got back to the flat, packed some more of Dave’s life out of sight, persuaded herself that now was not a good time to call Dave’s parents – which got easier every time, and which promised to make the call when it happened even harder – then showered. After that, a sandwich and a mug of coffee. Then to work.

This was real work. This was difficult and unpredictable. It was lonely and frustrating. It was important. And when she did achieve some crumb of success, there was a liberating, perceptible thrill to it.

Anji knew there was no point in searching for the Doctor. There might be traces of him, second‐hand data, e-footprints through the information on the internet. But the Doctor himself would be careful not to be there. So she looked instead for Fitz, expecting not to find him, and for George Williamson and Anderton’s 1893 expedition to Siberia.

Her success was minimal. For all the months she had been back at work now, had been searching, she had found almost nothing. At first she thought she would just forget, just pick up her life and start again leaving the Doctor and Fitz in the vortex of her memory. Then she thought she might just check that Fitz was all right – was really all right after all. Then, as she realised that her life could never ever be the same, that her whole perception of the world had changed irrevocably, she became obsessed.

There was a certain fascination, as well as horror, attached to her realisation as she stood waiting for the kettle that what she wanted more than anything else was what she had wanted all the time she had been with the Doctor. She wanted to go home. Only now she knew that ‘home’ was the TARDIS. The realisation made her feel giddy and sick and close to tears.

So she searched. Her triumphs were small. One evening it occurred to her that although they had left Fitz in 1893 the expedition wasn’t due to leave properly from St Petersburg until 1894. But her initial euphoria at this was soon dampened by the lack of hits from a detailed search.

Equally, she experienced an almost ecstatic joy as she retrieved information about ‘George Williamson & nineteenth century & palaeontology’. She scrolled through the list of published papers – and found to her numbing disappointment that the last was dated 1892. She printed off sheets of biographical data and curled up on the sofa in her dressing gown to leaf through it, discarding pages until the floor was a crazy‐paving of printed paper. And there it was, right at the end of course:

‘There is no mention of Williamson in contemporary records after his departure with the ill‐fated Hanson Galloway expedition of 1894.’

It wasn’t even the right expedition.

The only light was the faint glow of the alarm clock, peering through the frosty stillness of the night. It was three‐fifteen in the morning and Anji was immediately awake. There was something on the edge of her mind, something half‐remembered that she had been thinking about as she drifted off to sleep four hours earlier. But the more she tried to think about it, the more remote it seemed. Like trying to catch a glimpse of a small creature as it peeks out from the shadows, only to have it scurry back into the darkness as soon as it sees you looking.

She tried to replay her thought processes. Her Internet search, what she had learned about George Williamson, the fact that there was no mention of the Anderton expedition to Siberia, but just of that other one…

And she had it. As she was thinking she sat up, slid her feet from under the duvet and on to the floor. Now she jumped to her feet and headed for the kitchen. She needed a cup of tea. Her mind was focused now, totally consumed with the problem. Ignoring the fact that in her sleep she had pulled the other pillow down so that it was lying beside her in the double bed.

The expedition – Anderton’s much‐vaunted expedition – was not due to depart for Siberia until 1894. It was unlikely that Williamson could have been on it and returned in time to join up with another expedition in the same year. The world was so much bigger then. Had Anderton’s expedition not taken place at all?

Anji’s brain rattled through the various possibilities as the computer connected and data started to speed down the ISDN connection. If only the information it carried was as finite, as unambiguous as the ones and zeroes that represented it. She clicked rapidly through the history list until she was back at George Williamson’s biographical notes. Scrolling down and there it was: ‘the ill‐fated Hanson Galloway expedition of 1894’.

A misprint? Possibly. The text was in blue – a link. Anji clicked it.

There wasn’t much. But it was enough. And it was not a possibility she had considered. She skimmed through the text, assimilating it easily and quickly Paul Anderton had been taken ill. Appendicitis. He had been replaced by the sponsors of the expedition – by Hanson Galloway, a young, charismatic and well‐respected Scotsman. There was indeed an expedition – her expedition. It left Vladivostok in 1894 amid much ceremony and pomp. An occasion attended by the Tsar himself.

And then nothing. A few reports sent back from southern Siberia, but little of consequence. The expeditionary team had disappeared without trace. Never seen again.

Anji read through the final paragraphs again and again, hoping for some clue, something to follow up. There was a reference to an explosion in the area. The sound of it was heard in Moscow. Tunguska, she wondered? Or was that later? She could check. Something to do.

On automatic she clicked through pages of information. Tunguska was later – much later. And perhaps it was the Tunguska event that had confined the 1894 Siberian explosion to the neglected backwaters of memory. Typical, Anji thought sadly, Fitz had been killed – perhaps – in an event that didn’t even merit a mention in the history books. Certainly, he had never returned.

It was nearly five in the morning. But Anji neither knew nor cared. The only thing that existed in her world was the phone. It was answered on the eighteenth ring. She didn’t realise she had been counting. She didn’t realise even that she was calling until she heard Dave’s mother’s bleary annoyed voice. Then Anji was crying, sobbing, into the phone and annoyance turned to anxiety and sympathy and Dave’s mum was crying too.

Almost an hour later, as she sat cross‐legged on the floor, the discarded telephone beside her, Anji was still crying. She cried for herself and for Dave. For Dave’s Mum and Dad. She cried because she had been crying for so long that she no longer knew how to stop. And she cried for shame – for knowing that every time she had said Dave she meant Fitz.

49: Ghost

Miriam Dewes saw the ghost on her second day at the Naryshkin Institute.

The final interview for the post had been in London. Vladimir Naryshkin himself had flown out to see her, combining the trip, he said, with a review meeting with his European sponsor. He had described the Institute to her then, shown her where it was on a map, and given her a set of photographs to leaf through. Neither the map nor the pictures prepared her for the reality of it.

Most of the flight seemed to be over Siberia. She had assumed once they crossed the border they must be nearly there. The pilot laughed and told her in hesitant English that if Siberia was a country in its own right, it would be the largest in the world.

Naryshkin greeted her in person. He did not venture out into the cold, but was waiting inside. The short airstrip was a frozen stretch of level road close to the back entrance to the Institute. The Institute itself was an impressive building. Concrete and glass jutted out from the remains of the medieval castle. The new building seemed to be grafted on to the old in the same way as the old was grafted on to the rocky hill.

Apart from the snaking road standing dark against the light covering of frost and snow, there was no other sign of civilisation. Naryshkin saw her looking back as she entered the castle. The light plane was taking off again, afraid to linger in case it iced up. The sound was almost deafening in the still, crisp air. The sentry glanced at her, then huddled back into his furs.

‘Five million square miles,’ Naryshkin told her as he closed and sealed the door. ‘And a population only about two‐thirds of Britain.’ His voice was deep and rich, heavy on the consonants. But his grasp of English was near perfect. He watched with amusement as Miriam stamped her feet and clapped her hands. Her cheeks were frozen and her eyes glazed.

‘I’ll show you to your room. You will find warmer clothes there. Your luggage arrived yesterday. Most of it,’ he added, seeing the small holdall she was carrying. He reached to take it, but she shook her head. She was shivering so much she did not dare try to speak.

‘It is cold even inside, I’m afraid.’ He paused in the corridor, turned slightly to smile at her with icy‐white teeth. ‘But that is after all the point, isn’t it?’

The room reminded her of her hall of residence at university. A narrow bed (with two duvets and a blanket), a narrow wardrobe, industrial carpet, a light‐wood desk and upright chair, and a small armchair by the window. Her two suitcases were at the foot of the bed. The furnishings seemed odd against the rough stone walls. There was a large heater under the window. The glass in the window was so thick it distorted the view out over the landscape. Judging by the window ledge, the walls were about three feet thick,

A small en‐suite bathroom afforded shower, hand basin and toilet. She unpacked the holdall in the bathroom with the shower running and the door closed. The sight of the sentry, rifle slung over his furred shoulders, had unsettled her. But it was too late now for second thoughts.

The wardrobe contained several thermal suits. They were basically jumpsuits, but made from a material that was both thin and warm – warmer than the parka that Miriam had brought. She was unpacking the second suitcase when Naryshkin called for her.

‘We have dinner about this time. Come, and I’ll introduce you to the others.’

He showed her where the Cold Room was on the way, laughing with amusement as she caught her misted breath. ‘I’ll give you a proper tour tomorrow. Tonight I have to catch up on some things.’ He had only returned from his European meetings that morning, he said.

On the way to the dining hall, Naryshkin explained that while the Russian government officially sponsored the Institute, they depended also on funding from a benefactor in Europe. ‘A joint project. He pays the government. Some of that money they pass on to us as a grant and the rest…’ He shrugged in a way that suggested he knew exactly what happened to the rest.

The Dining Hall had been the Great Hall of the castle. Now Formica‐topped folding tables and modern plastic cafeteria chairs with tubular metal legs stood on the flagstone floors, incongruous beneath the huge tapestry that hung over the massive fireplace. An area had been partitioned off as a kitchen, the plasterboard walls seeming flimsy and inconsequential amongst the heavy stone. Deep alcoves stood empty and in shadow. Studio lights hung from the high ceiling and stood on tripods around the edge of the room so that it looked like a film set.

The room was so large that at first Miriam thought it was empty.

Only as they approached the kitchen area did she see that there were several people sitting round one of the tables. They all wore similar jumpsuits to Miriam.

‘This is our new recruit – Miriam Dewes,’ Naryshkin proclaimed as they approached. His voice seemed diminished by the size of the room.

‘Quantum theory, isn’t it?’ a tall, thin man said as he stood up and extended his hand in greeting. His accent was American.

‘That’s right, and a smattering of particle physics,’ she agreed as she shook his hand. ‘Well, in this universe, anyway.’

He laughed politely. ‘Blake Michaels. I’m a physicist.’

Naryshkin introduced the others in turn. Yuri Culmanov was a Russian cosmologist, a short young man with dark hair slicked back from his round, moustachioed face so that he looked like an otter.

Basil Flanaghan was British, a well‐built man in his forties who blinked a lot and had a mass of unruly red hair and freckles. ‘Delighted,’ he snapped at her. He was, she gathered, an expert in optics as well as acting as the first‐aider and the closest they had to a medical expert.

The only other woman was Penny Ashworth. She was small and mousy, with wispy fair hair – a contrast to Miriam’s own dark bob. ‘Geologist,’ she explained with a nervous laugh. ‘So I haven’t a clue what’s going on here.’

They settled down to eat, Naryshkin showing Miriam where the microwave was and talking her through the contents of the fridges and cupboards.

‘The soldiers have their own kitchen in the barracks,’ he said. ‘Occasionally one of us gets the urge to produce a proper meal and we borrow it.’

‘How many soldiers are there?’ she asked, trying not to sound too interested.

‘Twenty. Special forces troops. In theory they are getting used to a cold weather environment. But they don’t really appreciate being here, you know.’

She smiled. ‘I can imagine.’

Once they were all seated, Blake Michaels began to quiz Naryshkin on his trip to Europe. ‘Your message was a little ambiguous.’ He grinned. ‘The point is to slow things down, not speed them up.’

‘Our sponsor is getting impatient.’ Naryshkin shrugged and prodded at a piece of stringy meat. ‘He wants us to make rapid progress. There is some urgency, I think, though I am not sure why.’

‘And this business about using ice?’ Flanaghan barked.

‘He suggested that we could slow light by passing it through ice.’

Naryshkin smiled. ‘His scientific grasp of what we are doing seems somewhat simplistic at times. I did try to explain that we need to cool the light itself, not just shine it through cold things.’

Miriam cleared her throat. ‘May I?’ she asked as they all turned to look. Naryshkin gestured with his fork for her to go ahead. ‘Well, it may not be totally crazy,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Light does slow as it passes through some materials – water for example. Not to any great extent, of course. So pure ice would hardly help.’

‘Distortion, for one thing,’ Flanaghan said.

Miriam nodded. ‘But ice might be a useful medium. If we were to introduce impurities. Some material suspended in the ice that did slow light. After all, if photons are particles –’

‘A big “if”,’ Culmanov cut in.

‘I’m just saying that it may not be totally fanciful,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’ There was silence for a few moments, then Miriam asked: ‘Just so I know what we’re talking about, what is it exactly that we’re trying to achieve here?’

Michaels laughed and slapped the table with the palm of his hand. ‘You tell us there may be some value in the notion, but Naryshkin here hasn’t even told you why we’re interested? That’s good – that’s very good.’

Miriam found she was smiling. But Naryshkin was totally serious as he turned to her. ‘I am sorry. The nature of our work is confidential, as I explained. But now that you are here you will of course need to know. We are endeavouring to create a black hole.’

The next morning, Naryshkin showed her inside the Cold Room. Even wearing her parka over the thermal suit she was trembling. She was pleased to see that Naryshkin, Michaels and Culmanov were shivering too.

‘We try not to spend too long in here,’ Michaels assured her. ‘Once everything’s set up, we monitor from up there.’ There was a wide window set into the side of the room and a gallery looked down into it.

‘Good idea,’ Miriam agreed as Naryshkin motioned for them to make their way to this observation area.

‘The goal is to create an optic black hole,’ he said as he closed the door behind them. Miriam could feel her face beginning to warm, burning her cheeks. ‘And that means slowing light. To the point where we can suck it into a vortex.’

‘Hence the centrifuges,’ Miriam offered, as they looked down into the steel‐lined room below.

Michaels nodded. ‘Like a tornado sucks in matter, so the light can be sucked in. In theory.’

‘And in practice?’

Michaels blew out a long misty breath. ‘The best medium we’ve found so far to create the vortex looks like being a spinning bath of rubidium atoms. We keep them at about one hundred degrees centigrade.’ He grinned. ‘Which it least gives us something to warm our hands on when we’re in there. But then we need to slow the light to a speed of about eight metres per second.’

‘Which means,’ Naryshkin said, ‘that the vortex will have to spin at about three hundred metres per second.’

Miriam whistled. ‘Tricky,’ she said.

‘Tricky,’ agreed Michaels. ‘But not impossible. We hope.’

It was only when Culmanov spoke that Miriam remembered he was there. He moved almost silently and kept in the background. She shivered again at the sound of his voice. ‘Once we detect Hawking Radiation,’ he said, ‘then we know we have succeeded.’

It was as they left the Cold Room that Miriam saw the ghost.

The man was not especially tall, but well‐built. He looked to be about thirty years old, wearing heavy furs, the hood pulled back. His ears stuck out slightly and his nose was a stumpy button on his face. His hair was dark and brushed back, receding from his high forehead.

He passed Miriam as she stepped out into the corridor, walking purposefully. She opened her mouth to greet him, but he swept past, seeming not to see her. She watched him, frowning at his rudeness, as he continued along the corridor. There was something strange about him – something not quite right. He seemed faint and pale, as if the colour had been bleached from him… Insubstantial.

There was a door at the end of the corridor, studded steel. It was closed. Just before he reached it, the man paused and swung round suddenly. She thought perhaps he had realised his rudeness and was about to apologise, to acknowledge her. But his eyes were focused elsewhere, looking beyond her.

Miriam was vaguely aware of Naryshkin and the others emerging from the Cold Room behind her. But her attention was fixed on the man now as he turned again. As he set off once more down the corridor. As he ignored the heavy steel door in front of him. As he stepped right through it and faded from sight.

She flinched as Michaels put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked. ‘You look like you just saw a ghost.’

And the others laughed. As if that was the funniest thing.

48: Walking with Beasts

A man stands. Out of time, out of place. In the shadow of a large‐leafed tree he shades his eyes from the brilliance of the sun and watches the creatures on the plain. Just watching is unlikely to change the world.

The beasts are huge, bodies like fused armour made of reptilian scales. They rip the grass from the ground and the leaves from the trees. Nearby is a different type of animal – even larger, with long, straight horns erupting from a bony head, a cruel beak, an upright orange crest behind the horns. There are several of them, moving slowly across the plain, perhaps in search of water.

In the clear blue sky, a large birdlike creature glides on leathery wings. Its head ends in a long jaw as it wheels and turns. And everywhere the sounds of animals on the move, calling to each other, sounding alarms and signalling to mates.

The man stands. Watching. He is about thirty years old, wearing heavy furs. The hood of his coat is pulled back. His hair is dark and brushed back, receding from his high forehead.

Behind the man, sheltering behind the trunk of the tree, furtive and nervous, is a small animal with dark, scaly skin and a long head. Its nostrils wrinkle as it tests the air. As it watches the man. A lizard, but with a mass of sharp teeth and an appetite for flesh… It is intrigued, has never seen anything like this before. Something that stands on two legs – not just as a quick balancing act to reach into the higher branches, but as a habit. Upright, standing.

Hesitantly, the small proto‐reptile rears up on its own hind legs. Imitating. For a second it manages to balance, but its legs are not built to bear the weight. Not yet. It tries again, again it succeeds for a second. Then two.

It will keep trying. It will balance on its hind legs for a few seconds. Eventually for a minute or more. Because it watched the man watching the dinosaurs.

The man stands for a while longer. The light of the sun seems to flow through rather than round him. As if he were insubstantial, a dream. Eventually, as the sun reddens on the horizon, he turns and slowly walks away. Fading from the prehistoric scene. Like a ghost.

Its head swaying to and fro with interest, the little creature watches him go.

Just watching is unlikely to change the world.

47: Reunion

The tavern they had been to the previous evening was closed. There was no explanation. The door was locked, and a one‐legged beggar croaked at them through cracked lips when they tried to open it. Fitz was half‐inclined to give the old man some money, but George shook his head and led Fitz away.

They stamped through the chill night, the air as crisp as the light covering of snow beneath their feet.

‘There’ll be another hostelry nearby,’ George said. His voice was muffled by the heavy hood of his furs. ‘Mark my words, there always is.’

‘I didn’t think you’d been to St Petersburg before,’ Fitz said.

‘I haven’t. It’s a universal truth.’

‘Universal.’ Fitz nodded, wondering if his friend had any concept of how wide that really was.

But already George was pointing along a narrow side street. ‘There, that should suffice.’

Fitz glanced at the street name. It was a wonder George had noticed the place. Katerin Street, it seemed to be called, if he had deciphered the Cyrillic correctly. Usually he was hopeless at it.

The street was empty, but light spilled from the open doorway of the tavern and they could hear the sound of drinking and conversation echoing from inside. It was a crush. The place was long and narrow: with tables along its length. Everyone who should have been on the street seemed to be at the bar, Fitz reflected. It would take forever to get a drink. Longer to find a table.

‘I think there’s a back room,’ George shouted in Fitz’s ear, his voice barely audible above the din. ‘They might serve us there. I can see a door.’

‘So why isn’t everyone in there?’ Fitz asked as they forced their way through the throng of people.

‘More expensive. You want service and a quiet booth, then that comes extra.’ George was head down, pushing.

Suddenly they emerged from the crowd and Fitz gulped in a breath of air. It was laced with tobacco smoke and alcohol fumes, but that was an improvement on the stifling smell of people who probably hadn’t had a bath in months and were dressed in the remains of long‐dead animals. Which wasn’t far off his own situation, he thought wryly.

The door did indeed lead into a back room. It was smaller than the main bar, half a dozen tables pushed against the walls. But the seats were upholstered (though not recently), and the atmosphere was cleaner. All the tables were occupied.

A young woman, her cheeks red with cold, was carrying a tray over to a table where two men sat. One of them was leaning back in the chair, his eyes glazed. His companion was slumped forwards, head on his arms on the table. Sound asleep. The girl put the beakers of drinks down on the table, apparently not bothered that dark liquid slopped out of them as she did so. The man who was still awake – or at least whose eyes were open – turned slightly to stare glassily at her. She stared back, and after what seemed an age he reached fumbling into his coat pocket and slapped several coins down on the table in front of him.

‘Over there,’ George suggested, pointing to the farthest table. There was just one person sitting at it. Like most of the others, his head was down, but the way he tapped his long fingers on the table top suggested he was more alert than most. Fitz watched as the serving girl went over to the table. She paused, speaking quietly to the man, hiding him from Fitz’s view as he followed George.

The girl moved away. George waved at the empty chairs beside the table to make the point as he asked, in loud English, ‘Do you mind if we join you?’

But Fitz was standing immobile, mouth open. Time seemed to have slowed. The noise from the bar behind them faded away as the man at the table turned towards them.

‘Not at all.’ The man’s English was perfect. ‘Be my guests.’

He stood politely, indicating that they should sit down. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of ordering drinks for you already. I hope that’s all right, but I wasn’t sure quite how long you would be.’

George was staring too, his expression a mirror of Fitz’s own surprise.

‘Something wrong?’ the man asked, his genuine concern evident as they both continued to stare at him.

‘No,’ Fitz managed to say, his mouth dry and his mind in a fog. ‘Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all, thank you.’

‘Oh good,’ the Doctor said, breaking into a wide grin. ‘I’m glad there’s nothing wrong. Sit down, both of you, and tell me the story so far.’

They were on to their third burning viscous beakerful by the time George and Fitz had finished telling the Doctor of their travels. Once he got over the surprise – surprise, not shock, he assured himself – of seeing the Doctor, Fitz was anxious to tell him all about their travels by boat and train.

George was more enthusiastic about the forthcoming journey into Siberia. Every now and again he would punctuate Fitz’s narrative with comments of his own – hopes of what they might find; dreams of dinosaur bones and fossils, of curious rock strata and pumice.

‘Perhaps there really is a mammoth or whatever frozen there.’

‘Ah,’ the Doctor said, wagging his index finger, ‘but how many tusks will it really have?’

George and Fitz both laughed, recalling the first time they had met. ‘And what about you, Doctor?’ George asked. ‘What have you been up to in the months since we last met? How is Miss Kapoor?’

‘Months?’ The Doctor glanced at Fitz, his eyes dancing with reflected light. ‘Funny, but it seems so much longer than that.’

But Fitz could see more than just amusement in those eyes. In the depths. He sipped at the strong drink and returned the Doctor’s gaze. He looked older somehow, his face lined and drawn now that Fitz examined it. And his hair was all over the place – even more all over the place than usual. The Doctor’s jacket was grimy. As he reached for his own beaker, Fitz could see that the stitching at the shoulder had been torn away so that the sleeve was no longer attached to the rest of the coat.

‘Been keeping busy?’ Fitz asked, keeping his tone light for George, but giving the Doctor what he hoped was meaningful and steely look.

‘You know how things are.’ He drained the beaker in a single swallow, and Fitz grimaced at the thought of doing the same. ‘I wonder, George…’ The Doctor was looking into his empty beaker.

‘Yes, Doctor?’

‘I don’t see that young lady at the moment, but I could do with another.’

George looked from the Doctor to Fitz. ‘Of course,’ he said slowly. ‘Allow me.’ He stood up. ‘I’m sure you two have things to catch up on. Please excuse me for a minute and I’ll get more drinks.’

‘Thank you,’ the Doctor said quietly. So quietly that Fitz wondered if George heard, or was meant to. ‘You’re a good man, George.’ He turned back to Fitz, leaning earnestly across the table. ‘So, how are things really?’ he asked. ‘Are you having as much fun as you seem to be?’

Fitz shrugged. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it,’ he confessed. He had been surprised by his own enthusiasm as he described their journey to date. ‘But, yes – yes I am.’

‘Good. I’m very glad.’

‘And we’re only just beginning really,’ Fitz went on. ‘On to Vladivostok in a few days to join up with everyone else. There’s some problem with Anderton, the guy supposed to be leading the expedition. But I gather that’s being sorted.’ He leaned forwards, eager. ‘I was thinking I might keep a diary, you know – some sort of journal.’

The Doctor’s expression seemed to be frozen to his face.

Fitz shrugged. ‘Just a thought. I found a small shop where this guy does leather‐bound notebooks. I thought I might appoint myself the expedition’s chronicler. Got to make myself useful somehow. Perhaps I’ll promise to send it to the Tsar.’

The Doctor’s face twitched, and he smiled. ‘The Tsar?’

‘Apparently we get to be seen off by the man himself at some ceremony. It’s all to do with finishing the Trans‐Siberian Railway.’ He frowned. ‘Or starting it, I’m not really sure which.’

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Which one will it be, I wonder?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Which Tsar.’

Fitz laughed. ‘Forgetting your history, are you? It’s Alexander III.’

The Doctor nodded, smiling. ‘It is at the moment. But if you’re not quick it’ll be Nikolas II.’

‘Oh.’ Fitz looked round, checking they could not be overheard. ‘I see.’ He grinned as a thought occurred to him. ‘Perhaps I can earn brownie points by warning him not to make any plans after 1917.’

The Doctor’s smile froze on his face. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he said. His voice was hard‐edged and his eyes flashed.

Fitz was taken aback. ‘Just a joke,’ he protested. ‘I wouldn’t –’

‘Well don’t.’ The Doctor’s expression relaxed, but his tone was still grave. ‘However much you might want to change something, you can’t. I thought you’d know that by now.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ Fitz told him, miming a yawn. ‘History is immutable. Whatever will happen has happened, and all that. You can never change it. You have mentioned that, actually.’

‘I have?’ he seemed surprised.

‘Once or twice, I believe.’

‘And I said “never” did I?’

Fitz shrugged.

‘Because,’ the Doctor said, his mouth twitching as if he were trying not to smile at his own cleverness, ‘that’s absolutely right. Once something is scratched on to the tablets of history, you can never change it.’ He leaned forward again. ‘Usually,’ he added. Before Fitz could react, he went on: ‘I wanted to ask you a favour, actually.’

‘Oh?’

‘Mmm. It may not make a lot of sense, but it is important.’ All hint of a smile was gone now. ‘Very important.’

‘Oh,’ said Fitz. ‘Right.’ He flashed his best, devil‐may‐care grin. ‘Got to save the universe again, have we? Well, I’m up for it.’

46: Time‐Lag

The man’s face was old, but his eyes were young. He was dressed in an anonymous charcoal‐grey suit as he watched through the one‐way plexiglass screen. In the room beyond, one of the nurses approached Subject Alpha.

‘Being a CIA mission, they were brought here,’ the agent in charge of the facility said. His name was Anstruther. The man he was speaking to, the man in the suit, had no name. ‘The plane they were flying doesn’t exist.’ Special Agent Anstruther sounded almost apologetic. ‘The crew have never been anywhere near Chinese airspace. Certainly they never filed a flight plan over Siberia. Probably they have never met. I doubt they’re even US citizens.’

The old man gestured at Anstruther to be quiet. ‘I get the picture,’ he murmured, intent on the scene behind the glass. ‘And just to complete the sequence, I was never here. Got that?’

‘Got it, sir.’

The room they were watching was secure – airtight; screened; bio‐level five secure. The nurse’s voice was filtered through a speaker as she addressed Subject Alpha.

‘I’m going to ask you some questions, if that’s all right, Jenkins.

The old man’s face was impassive as rock as he watched. And waited.

‘Nine seconds. On average, sir,’ Anstruther said quietly. There was no indication the man had heard him.

‘Not again,’ Jenkins said at last. ‘Why all the questions? It was routine, I tell you. Nothing out of the ordinary, except a bit of low‐level flying to avoid the Russian radar.’ He turned towards the glass and stared at the two men watching. ‘What the hell’s the problem here?’

‘He can’t see you,’ Anstruther assured the older man.

There was the hint of a smile on the man’s lips as he turned slightly – his head, but not his eyes. They remained fixed on Jenkins. ‘Of course he can’t. I’m not here. Remember.’

‘It’s a standard test,’ the nurse was saying. She sounded sympathetic. ‘I’m sure we won’t have to keep you and your crew here for much longer.’ She did not pause for an answer. ‘What is your name and rank?’

Jenkins was still staring at the glass. He made no move to answer gave no indication that he had heard. Two statues considering each other. Then, abruptly: ‘Jenkins, Captain Andrew Jenkins. US Air Force, assigned to Special Operations, Westing Base, Louisiana. You want my serial number, ma’am?’ He paused, still stiffened to attention. ‘Again?’

The old man nodded slowly. ‘Nine point three.’

‘Sir?’

‘Seconds. Between her finishing the question and his starting to answer.’

Anstruther sighed. ‘Nine point two on his last reaction test. Give him a couple of tenths for normal reaction.’

‘And his crew?’

‘All within a couple of points.’

Captain Jenkins was sitting now on the metal‐frame bed at the side of the room. He had one leg crossed over the other so that it did not reach the floor. The nurse chopped him gently on the knee joint with the edge of her hand.

And nothing happened.

‘Maybe he’s faking it,’ Anstruther said. ‘Hell, maybe they’re all faking it. Though God knows how.’

Jenkins’s leg swung forwards. ‘My reactions OK?’ he asked with a smile. ‘They’re usually pretty good.’

The nurse was facing the screen, walking away from him. Her tone was light, amused. Her face was set. ‘They’re pretty good,’ she agreed.

‘I want to see him,’ the old man said. ‘Now.’

‘Sir.’

‘And the flight data. Radar trace from the AWACS, message tapes and log. Everything.’

Less than a minute later, the old man stood in front of Captain Jenkins in the secure room.

‘Anstruther here says you’re faking it.’

They waited nine seconds for the bemused answer. ‘Faking what, sir?’

His old face wrinkled as he smiled. He did not answer. Instead he swung his arm back, then punched Jenkins violently in the face.

Jenkins stood absolutely still. Motionless. Frozen in time. Then suddenly he blinked and reached up, as if to try to block the blow that had already struck him. A split‐second later, Captain Andrew Jenkins staggered backwards, clutching his face. A spume of blood erupted from his nose and he cried out in anger, surprise and pain.

‘He’s not faking it,’ Control said. ‘Get me that data now.’ He turned on his heel before Jenkins could get to his feet. ‘And I want to see the clock from the spy‐plane. I want to know if that’s lost nine point two seconds as well.’

‘Anything else, sir?’ Ansttuther asked as soon as they were outside the room. He was still shaken.

‘Yes. I want to know where the time went.’

45: Pages Torn from Memory

It looked like an alien world. The brilliant white limestone of the circular building that stood in the centre of the paved courtyard; the curving glass roof over his head, connecting the smaller building to the main structure. Only the writing engraved into the curve of white stone gave away the actual location. It was in English.

The redesign of the Great Courtyard was somehow completely in keeping with the august building that surrounded it. Unexpected, but ‘right’. The Doctor stood and looked at it in appreciation. It was closer to what he would expect to find on another world rather than in the British Museum.

He spent a moment glancing through the doors of the Reading Room, to check that although the outside had changed, and despite the British Library moving to a new building, it was still as he remembered it. It was. He could see the desk where he had sat for so many hours over the long years. Somewhere in his pocket was his card…

But he had other, more pressing matters today. So he turned, shrugged off his memories, and started across the courtyard.

There was always so much to see. Always something new to catch the eye. He smiled at happy people with cameras; nodded sagely at serious people with notebooks; wondered how many times he had trodden the same path before as he paused to examine jewellery from pre‐revolutionary France. He tried to catch himself out, to take a different route every time.

He must have seen everything before, every exhibit. But, the Doctor reminded himself, context is everything. So if he saw the same things in a different order, they would present a different story.

The clocks were his favourite. There was a cluster of them; a small exhibition area where they ticked and tocked away to themselves, marking off eternity, oblivious to the damage they were doing to the cell structure of the people who looked at them, to the fabric of the building they were in. To themselves even, as with each incremental second they inched inexorably towards their own deaths.

One of the clocks was a ship. A sailing ship, all silver and gold. There was rigging, a figurehead, polished wooden decking, and of course a clock face. How long had it taken some craftsman to make that, he wondered. Some talented craftsman had laboured over it for years. Spending so much of his time making a clock – there was irony for you. The Doctor smiled thinly as he realised what he was thinking. At least the craftsman had achieved something, a little of him lived on in his creation. And here he was, criticising the poor man as he watched the seconds pass him by. Just watching, observing, uninvolved. Far better to be out there, doing something, achieving… anything.

He clicked his tongue in time with the delicate second hand, and continued on his way.

The exhibition was in the Russian section. There were tea urns, and agricultural implements. All manner of pre‐revolutionary Russian artefacts. Even a section of a railway carriage. He ignored them all, he was close now – so close. Brushing past a board that gave terse notes about the Narodniki, he saw the display cabinet he was after, pushed up against a wall. Almost as if they were embarrassed by it, had tried to hide it away.

A small sign above the cabinet gave brief notes:

The British expedition to Siberia led by Hanson Galloway, 1894

The Hanson Galloway expedition was seeking fossils and evidence of prehistoric life.

These are the only pages known to survive from a journal kept by one of the exhibition team. They were found in the Siberian tundra area near Vaslovski. These are the only trace of the expedition ever discovered.

For a moment, as he stood staring at the yellowed, cracked pages beneath the glass, the Doctor was standing in a small bookshop off the Charing Cross Road. It was 1938 again, and he was staring at the yellowed, cracked pages of a leather‐bound notebook. He could see himself, comparing the handwriting with that on the note he still kept in his pocket.

But this time he had no need to compare the two. He knew the writing did not match. Not even close. He also knew that Fitz had not written him the note, though he had no idea who had… But, staring again at the spidery, hurried pencil writing on the pages in the cabinet, he knew that Fitz had written these. His journal. The only trace…

Only the Doctor’s eyes moved, flicking quickly over what could be read of the torn, stained pages.

‘…no trace. All we found was a pebble, or stone. It was black, about the size of a golf ball. Weird, I know, but…’

There were parts ripped away, sections that were illegible, whole paragraphs where the pencil marks were smudged and blurred.

‘…Since that first murder, we are none of us sleeping so well…’

All of what was readable was committed to memory. Odd phrases caught his attention for a moment, then his eyes moved on.

‘…round black stone? Except it was fixed down. Part of the building, maybe? Or perhaps it was just incredibly heavy…’

He could hear the words in his mind, could imagine Fitz saying them, could see his be‐stubbled, grinning face.

‘…most terrifying things I have ever…’

‘You going to the auction, then?’

Jolted out of his reverie, the Doctor turned. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The auction. You going?’ His accent was American, and he was a big man. He stood taller than the Doctor and much broader. His face was lined but his smile was young and genuine. There was an edge of grey to his hair. ‘I’m so sorry.’ The man thrust his hand out and grabbed the Doctor’s, pumping it up and down vigorously. ‘Lionel Correll. That’s like “corral” but with less “ah”.’

The Doctor found he was grinning too. ‘I see.’

‘And you are?’

‘Oh, I’m just the Doctor.’

‘Doctor, eh?’ Lionel Correll was staring down at the display case, his hands clasped behind his back as he leaned forward. ‘Nothing “just” about that. An honourable profession.’

‘I like to think so,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘You know about the expedition?’ he asked as he stood beside the big American.

Correll shook his head. ‘Just what I read in the papers. You going to the auction?’ he asked again.

The Doctor frowned. ‘What auction is that?’

Correll’s large finger tapped on the glass, leaving a misted impression. ‘This journal. Some mystery collector is selling the rest of it. Recently discovered, they say. You didn’t know?’

‘Really?’ The Doctor’s expression was fixed. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

‘Learn something new every day. If you’re interested, it’s at Gordon and Painswick. Next Tuesday afternoon. Maybe I’ll see you there.’

‘Maybe you will.’ The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. He turned towards Correll. ‘I thought you weren’t interested.’

‘Not specifically. But I’m always on the look out for a good investment. Stocks rise and fall, oil is too volatile and offshore is a mug’s game. But the price of the past is always on the up.’ Correll nodded at the cabinet. ‘You seem interested though, and you look like an expert.’ He smiled at the Doctor. ‘I can tell. So, you think it’ll be a good investment.’

The Doctor rubbed his chin. ‘Ask me on Tuesday,’ he said.

They shook hands again. ‘I’ll keep you a seat,’ Correll said.

‘You’re very kind.’

‘Not at all.’ Correll smiled and nodded and turned to go. ‘Three‐thirty, it starts. See you there, Old Timer.’

The Doctor was already studying the pages in the cabinet once more; was already back in the bookshop off the Charing Cross Road in 1938; was once again holding the journal and staring intently at the ragged pages. ‘Old Timer,’ he murmured to himself. ‘I wonder…’

44: Chronic Symptoms

The clock had been removed from the instrument panel. Now it stood alongside another, identical, clock on Anstruther’s desk.

‘The gap’s down to six seconds,’ Anstruther said, as much to break the silence as anything.

Control nodded. ‘So I see. What about Jenkins and the others?’

‘Same. Some variation, but basically they’re all getting closer to what the boffins are calling “Time Zero”.’

‘And what else are the boffins saying?’

Ostrander held doctorates and degrees from several universities in the US and Europe, none of which he was allowed to mention. But that was fine, as his credentials were taken for granted – the fact that he was here was guarantee of his ability. Nobody needed to know what certificates he had, any more than anyone needed to know his real name.

‘So, in about seven hours they’ll be back to normal and so will the plane?’

Ostrander sighed. ‘That is what I said.’

Control’s watery eyes seemed to harden. ‘And we will have learned nothing, have nothing left to learn from?’

The scientist coughed. ‘Well, we do have the ancillary data. Flight plan, and so forth. We’ve worked out from the taped communications where the time distortion occurred.’

‘I know. In Russian airspace when they flew low level to avoid the new radar installation at Kazinski. The middle of nowhere.’

‘Oh. You know.’

‘That is what I said.’ Control leaned forward, intimidating and serious. ‘Tell me something I don’t know. Something useful.’

Ostrander swallowed. ‘There is one thing. As they return to Time Zero, the crew – and the plane itself, come to that – they seem to be emitting a form of… radiation.’

Control clicked his tongue. ‘Radiation meaning something that is emitted, I take it.’

‘We do need to analyse the phenomenon further. But it would seem to be like Hawking Radiation – that’s what black holes emit.’

‘Thank you,’ Control said. His tone made it clear that he did know.

‘Yes. Well. One of my team is calling it “Chronic Radiation” for want of a better term.’

‘And what is it?’

‘It seems to be the energy that’s released from the process of catching up with Time Zero. Particles of time, chronons, dispersing as the timelines match up. The process of, well, whatever it was, sensitises the subjects and produces these particles which are then leeched out over, ah, time.’

Control leaned back in his seat. ‘So you can prove empirically what we already know.’

Ostrander frowned. ‘Put like that, I admit it doesn’t sound very impressive.’ His face relaxed slightly as a thought occurred to him. ‘It’s a distinctive form of radiation. Very distinctive, that’s how we found it of course. Since space/time is all bound up together it affects gravity waves, even warps space, although you’d never detect that of course. But we could detect the other anomalies. Maybe build something that could sniff out these particles and identify active sources.’

‘And if we detected a source, what would that tell us?’

‘I suppose,’ Ostrander said rubbing his chin thoughtfully, ‘that it could detect anyone or anything that had travelled in time.’ He gave a short sharp laugh. ‘So not a lot of use, I suppose. Sorry.’

A pale, bloodless tongue edged out of Control’s mouth as he licked his pale, bloodless lips. ‘Build it,’ he said.

43: In Siberia

The ink was frozen solid. So Fitz had to write in pencil. The process was further complicated by the fact he was huddled inside several blankets and wearing a thick coat. There was, he decided, cold and Cold. And he was Cold. In fact, he could not believe he had ever been anything like so cold in his entire life. The first few months of 1963 had been cold, but it had nothing on this.

Expedition leader Paul Anderton definitely had the right idea. Appendicitis had to be preferable.

It had started as an adventure rather than an endurance. Fitz had been caught up in the excitement, infected by George’s enthusiasm. He had met the Tsar (well, nearly – by standing on tiptoes at the back of the group he had been able to see the top of his head), and travelled on the Trans‐Siberian Railway. Which would be good when it was finished.

But Fitz’s interest had diminished as the cold set in and George’s mood darkened.

George’s problem was simple. The person now leading their expedition was Hanson Galloway. Galloway was a large Scotsman, his ruddy face surrounded by a curly mass of red hair that seemed to have a life of its own, even when encrusted with ice. Galloway and George Williamson had met before – and George’s contempt for the man was every bit as apparent as Galloway’s dislike of George.

The other three members of the team had joined them at Vladivostok. Gerhardt Graul was a Russo‐German linguist who acted as their translator. He was small and mouselike with a habit of jigging his head about as he spoke in fluent Russian.

Peter Caversham, by contrast, was tall and aristocratic. He termed himself ‘an explorer’ and seemed to have a never‐ending repertoire of stories about places that were even colder, or bleaker, or quieter, or whatever. Wherever anyone else had been, Caversham had been there first, and however awful an experience any of them had endured, Caversham had suffered worse. It amused Fitz to try to decide which of his own experiences would provoke the most ludicrous response. ‘I’ve been to Hope, where the ruler is a mechanical man and the sea is made of acid,’ he thought. And he could hear Caversham’s Sandhurst reply: ‘Oh I was there in sixty‐four. Helped the old chap oil his joints. Then we went for a brisk swim before breakfast. Livens up the taste‐buds don’t you know?’

Finally, there was St John Price. He was as reticent as Caversharn was garrulous. George had told Fitz that Price was an ex‐boxer, but Fitz wasn’t convinced by the ‘ex’ bit. Price was there to do the heavy work, the carrying and loading. But in truth there was so much to carry that Fitz doubted it saved much effort having him there. The huge man probably ate so much that he doubled the supplies they needed.

So Fitz’s enthusiasm and excitement had waned as the cold increased. And now he was lying inside a small tent on rocky frozen ground in the coldest place on Earth. A candle afforded him precious little light and less heat. His toes had gone a colour that scared him, though to be fair he had not dared to take his boots off for three days and from the numbness there was a real chance they had actually dropped off anyway. Added to that, he had promised to himself, the rest of the team and, sort of, via Galloway, to the Tsar that he would keep a journal.

Which was fine. Except that with the ink in his pen frozen long ago, he was left with just a few stubs of pencil to make his shaky imprint on the stiffened pages. He had to hold the leather‐bound notebook at arm’s length. Any closer, and the mist of his breath froze over the paper and he found he was trying to write through a thin haze of ice.

Somewhere in the distance, echoing across the open coldness, came the sound of an animal. A howl or a roar, whipped up and scattered by the wind.

‘What the hell was that?’ His voice was as cracked and thin as the ice on the page. He coughed and tried to sound more composed. ‘Just so I can note it down.’

‘Might be a wolf.’ George’s voice was softened by the tent walls between them. ‘Or a tiger.’

Fitz closed his eyes. That morning he hadn’t been able to open them until he had rubbed away the frost. Perhaps while he slept tonight his eyeballs themselves would freeze over.

‘You’re joking,’ he muttered.

George’s quiet reply was serious. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Well let’s hope they don’t care for frozen food.’

‘Look on the bright side,’ George whispered through the canvas. ‘Perhaps they’ll eat Galloway first.’

Fitz smiled in the gloom. He reached a shivering arm out of his blankets and pulled open the flap between their two tents. They were pitched together, angled so a single opening served both. George was opening his own tent flap at the same time, also smiling, also shivering. The candle in George’s tent quivered with the slight draught.

‘What is it between you and Galloway?’ Fitz asked. And the air froze between them. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘It’s none of my business.’

‘No,’ George said. ‘You have a right to know. Since we’re all stuck out here together.’

‘I thought you were looking forward to it.’

‘I was. I am.’

‘Except for Galloway.’

George sighed. He took a deep breath. ‘Galloway has a good reputation,’ he said slowly, quietly. Fitz waited. ‘But that reputation,’ George went on eventually, ‘is not his own.’

‘Go on.’

George was not focusing on Fitz as he spoke. His eyes were as misty as his breath. The light from the two candles threw ripples of yellow on to the canvas walls, as though the twin lights were interacting, conversing.

George’s voice was as distant as his point of focus. ‘After my father died, I wrote a book. It wasn’t much of a book, short and to the rather obvious point. I couldn’t have done it while he was alive.’

Fitz wanted to ask why, but he kept silent, let George continue.

‘Written in Stone, it was called. ‘He smiled briefly. ‘I thought that was rather clever. It was nonetheless hailed as a valid contribution on the subject of fossilisation and the cooling of the planet. It sold well and provided a modest income for a while. I was working as a librarian at the University. At Cambridge. So doing the research was relatively easy – the academic research anyway. I published a few more papers, nothing very startling. But my work brought me into contact with Edward Parton.’ He seemed to focus on Fitz for the first time. ‘You know Parton?’

Fitz shook his head.

‘Professor of History at Cambridge. Parson was formulating various ideas about how sediment formed, and about how idea about how archaeological finds could be dated by the debris and geology within which they were discovered. He found me reading his papers in the library when I should have been hunting out some notes for him He was happy to talk about his work with me. I was flattered, of course. But he was like that – he would share his insights, his ideas, with anyone he trusted. And he was a very trusting man.’

‘So what happened?’ Fitz could already guess.

‘That trust was betrayed. Someone published Parton’s theories as his own and built a reputation on them.’ George turned away, his tone suggested the matter was closed.

‘But didn’t he protest? Plead his own case?’ Fitz asked.

‘He wasn’t a very forceful man. He was ignored at first. Then it was put about that Parton’s was actually trying to steal the thunder himself. I was in Italy at the time, looking at rock formations,’ George added with a sigh.

‘And I take it,’ Fitz said quietly, ‘that the person who we are talking about is one Hanson Galloway.’

George did not reply.

‘So what happened to your friend Parton.

George lowered the flap of his tent. ‘What happens to any academic who is perceived to be stealing other’s ideas? He was forced to resign his seat.’ The last of the light from George’s candle disappeared beneath the closing flap of canvas. The shadows lengthened towards Fitz. His own candle flickered uneasily in the chill air. ‘Then he killed himself.’ And went out.

Darkness.

42: Results

She waited until they detected the first glimmer of Hawking Radiation before she made contact.

Yuri Culmanov brought her the news. He was the most excited Miriam had seen him. The usually passive little man almost ran across the Great Hall to where she sitting alone eating a near‐frozen sandwich.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘An accident?’ Haste always seemed to signify bad news.

But not this time. Yuri’s round face was split into a wide smile. ‘Success,’ he said, his accent thick with excitement. ‘Or at least, the first signs.’

She made him sit down got him a coffee, melting a lump of milk in it. ‘Tell me.’

So he told her. The faintest reading, but a reading nonetheless. ‘It means we are on the right track. For the first time we can see that the theory may become reality – that it might actually work.’ He took her hands in his over the table, speaking quickly to try to get the information out and share it. ‘If we can just slow the light source a little more. If we can find a medium that will…’ He broke off and grinned. ‘You mentioned ice when you first came here a while ago.’ He shrugged. ‘A prism of some sort, that’s what we need.’

He stood up suddenly, the chair toppling over behind him and clanging on the stone floor ‘Soon,’ he breathed. ‘Very soon now, I think.’

‘That’s terrific news Yuri.’ Almost despite herself, she found she was caught up in his excitement. ‘Does Naryshkin know?’

‘Of course, he was there.’ Yuri was bouncing on his feet, eager to move, to do something. ‘But Flanaghan doesn’t know. I must find him.’

‘Of course, he’ll be over the moon.’

As he left, Yuri paused and turned back. ‘I saw the ghost again today, after the experiment,’ he said ‘I think it is a good omen.’

Miriam smiled. She remembered how disconcerted she had been the first time she saw the apparition, the man in furs outside the Cold Room. ‘I’m sure it is,’ she told him. But already her mind was racing through the implications.

‘Now is the time,’ she was thinking to herself. ‘I’ve waited long enough.’

Hi Dad

I found this on the web and thought it might interest you.

Keep warm!

Love, Miriam

The system was simple enough. Addressing the e-mail to ‘Dad’ indicated that the message, the real message, was urgent. More urgent than an e-mail to her brother or a friend. The text she had typed furtively into her laptop, sitting on the floor with her back against the locked door of her room, was encrypted into the picture itself. It looked like a sunset over a tropical beach, but the distribution of different shades of blue in the 32‐bit sky would be resolved back into the letters that made up her message.

‘Keep warm!’ meant she expected a reply.

Acknowledgement of receipt – a simple ‘Thanks!’ from her ‘Dad’ – arrived within five minutes.

The picture that she received an hour later was of penguins diving off an ice flow. ‘Just so you feel at home,’ the simple message told her.

She ran the bitmap through the decryption routine and read through the real reply.

Received and understood. Send updates as appropriate. Analysis of progress suggests research may already have military applications. Your assessment that you can cope alone for now is noted, but Dad may decide to send some cousins to visit. Be ready to help them.

She read it again before deleting the file and reallocating the memory where it had been stored. She did not know what ‘cousins’ meant. But she could guess. And the guess frightened her.

In his room further along the same corridor, Vladimir Naryshkin was using a rather more direct form of communication to contact his European sponsor.

He spoke quietly and calmly into the satellite phone, explaining the recent success and how he saw the experiment developing.

‘It is still too slow,’ the deep voice at the other end of the phone told him. ‘Much too slow.’

‘My team has made incredible progress,’ Naryshkin protested. ‘We have stepped over boundary after boundary as we push science forwards.’

‘I know, I know.’ A sigh. ‘But I am getting impatient. I’m sorry – I know you are doing your best. Doing Wonderful work.’

‘We are so nearly there,’ Naryshkin assured him. ‘Refining our current techniques and improving them, perhaps two years.’

‘Two years?!’ The voice exploded from the handset. ‘I don’t have…’ Calmer now. ‘What would you need to achieve success ahead of that? Money?’

Naryshkin sighed. ‘I have told you before, sir. Money is not a problem. We have everything we need. Only a major breakthrough… If we discovered some substance that could slow the light entering the centrifuge.’

‘I know, I know. But perhaps I can help with that. I am on the track of… something.’

‘Of what?’

‘You recall, I suggested you experiment with ice.’

‘And we did try. But without appreciable success.’

There was a pause. Then: ‘I think you will succeed. I hope to bring you what you need, or at least to be able to lead you to it.’

‘Bring it?’ Naryshkin frowned. ‘You mean – here? You are coming here to the Institute.’

‘Why not?’ The deep voice laughed. ‘After all, I must practically own the place by now. And if I wait much longer it may not be possible.’

‘But, when?’ His mind was racing. They would need to prepare a room, to arrange demonstrations of the work and progress so far.

‘Soon. Very soon. But first,’ the man at the other end of the phone said, ‘I have some business to attend to here.’

41: Encampment

His name was Chedakin, and Fitz wondered if the man had ever been warm in his life. It was probably because he was so used to the cold that the guide did not shiver. He did not seem to need to rest either, but then he didn’t have a huge pack to carry like the rest of them. Just a gnarled stick.

It was slow progress, knee‐deep in snow, across the empty white space. In the distance, through the haze and swirl of cold air, Fitz could make out low mountains rising up to meet a sky that seemed the mirror of the ground. The dogs pulling the sleigh had given up calling to each other. Their tails hung down, heavy with icicles as they battled through the snow drifts.

Chedakin was old. His beard was white and his skin drawn and translucent like parchment. It looked as frail and delicate. His clothes were thin and loose, layers of protection’ against the cold that contrasted with the heavy coats of the expedition members. Fitz could imagine that beneath the cloth, his legs were as thin and gnarled and discoloured as the stick he carried. He spoke no English, and Gerhardt Graul struggled to cope with his thick accent and unfamiliar dialect.

‘Remind me where we’re going,’ Fitz forced out through chattering teeth.

‘The foothills,’ George told him. ‘There’s an old castle where we can make camp. Rock formations. We should get there in a few days, if the weather holds.’

‘And what was all that about stuff in the ice?’

‘He has not seen them himself,’ Graul shouted through the rising wind. ‘In the ice, frozen deep. His father told him that his father had seen… something.’

‘Wolves and tigers, probably,’ Fitz muttered. ‘And lost Siberian expeditions that didn’t have the sense to give up and go home when the going got cold.’

Chedakin was talking again. Urging them on with a high‐pitched keening encouragement that was intermittently broken up with lower, guttural sounds that might be words. Graul was shaking his head.

‘Don’t you understand him?’ Galloway roared in annoyance.

‘I understand his words,’ Graul insisted. ‘But they are meaningless.’

‘I thought not,’ Galloway said with evident contempt. He shouldered his way past Graul and pushed Chedakin roughly ahead of him.

‘I say, steady on, old man,’ Caversham called out. ‘Can’t afford to mistreat the guide, you know. He could lead us anywhere.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Fitz grumbled. As he spoke, his foot plunged deep into the snow, finding an invisible hollow and throwing him back into the crusty white landscape. It had happened to him – and the others – several times. He had learned the best thing was just to fall, not to waste energy trying to stop yourself. But once down, you needed help to get up again. Fitz lay there, on his back, the heavy rucksack holding him down firmly as if he weighed a ton, while his arms and legs flailed insect‐like in the air.

A hand reached down and grabbed Fitz’s wrist. He pulled and was soon upright again, staggering forward after the others. ‘Thanks.’

It was Price. ‘No problem.’ He grinned and strode off, his long legs making the movement seem easy.

Fitz sighed and followed.

‘Are you all right?’ Graul asked as he drew level.

‘I’m fine. Thanks. Just cold.’ He slapped the German on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about Galloway,’ he said. ‘He pisses us all off.’

Graul frowned. ‘Sorry?’

‘Colloquialism. It means we heartily respect and endorse his opinion in all things.’ Fitz grinned widely, feeling the skin of his cheeks crack.

Graul frowned again. Then he too grinned as he understood. ‘Pisses us off,’ he murmured. ‘Yes, I like that.’

They were at the back of the group now. Even the dogs were ahead of them, dipping in and out of the snow as they bounded forwards in slow motion.

‘So what did the old fellow say?’ Fitz asked.

‘I do not know what he meant,’ Graul said. ‘But his words were plain enough. He was describing the place where he says there is something frozen in the ice.’

‘Let me guess, it’s cold and it’s white.’

Graul nodded with amusement. ‘And he said it is near the place where the worlds meet.’

‘What does that mean?’

Graul shrugged. ‘I asked him that. He said his people call it the “window into otherness”. They keep away from there, he says. He told me that he himself believes it is a doorway that leads to the land of the dead.’

The mountains were far larger by the time the team reached the foothills. Caversham found a hollow area that gave some shelter, and Galloway agreed they should make their camp there. The snow had drifted in, but areas of the hollow were clear, the rock‐strewn frozen wound showing through like bald patches on the landscape.

‘We’ll aim to be at this castle place within the week,’ Galloway informed them all. ‘Make that our base of operations. It sounds like it’s pretty close to the sorts of things we’re after.’

George, standing at the back of the group with Fitz, snorted in annoyance and frustration. ‘Sorts of things,’ he muttered, just loud enough for Fitz to hear. ‘This was supposed to be a properly planned scientific expedition with defined objectives.’

Fitz smiled, then turned to see that Galloway’s small, dark eyes were fixed on him and George. ‘If you gentlemen have any contribution to make, I think we’d all be grateful if you would do us the courtesy of saying it aloud rather than mumbling away at the back there.’

‘Oh we were just agreeing that that’s the best plan,’ Fitz said quickly, before George could respond.

‘Yes,’ Galloway said slowly. ‘I imagined it was something of the sort.’ His tone left no doubt that in fact he had imagined nothing of the sort. ‘Mr Price, will you get the tents unloaded please.’

The previous night, only Price had been able to hammer the tent pegs in. Now even he seemed unable to penetrate the frozen ground. Fitz held a sharp wooden tent peg at arm’s length, his face turned away and his teeth bared and gritted as Price thumped down at it with a heavy lump‐hammer. The peg bounced in Fitz’s hands, almost breaking free of his grip. He let go of it, and it toppled over.

‘This is hopeless,’ Fitz said. Price nodded, without comment.

‘Have you not got those tents up yet?’ Galloway’s Scottish accent cut through the cold air. He was standing on a raised area at the side of the hollow behind Price, surveying the lengths of canvas and the tent pegs and guy ropes that were laid out across the ground. ‘My Aunt Sally could have pitched this camp by now,’ he added with a sneer as he stood over them, hands on his hips.

‘We’ve cleared the snow,’ Price said. ‘And the rocks.’

‘Oh, well that’s bully for you, that is. But could I just suggest that we might like to sleep inside the tents tonight. And it’ll be a sight easier to get them up before the sun sets behind these hills.’ He emphasised ‘hills’ as if to make the point that they were not mountains to a veteran like himself.

Fitz threw down the tent peg and stood up. ‘And could I just suggest that since the ground is frozen solid, probably to a depth of about half a mile, that there is no way we are going to get the pegs in. No way the tents are going up. And there is no way that your shouting and demanding and generally arsing around is going to help matters.’ He was shaking, and not entirely with the cold.

‘Is that so, laddie?’ Galloway asked, apparently amused.

‘I am not “laddie”,’ Fitz shouted back. He could feel Price’s hand on his shoulder, holding him back, calming him down.

‘Oh, aren’t you?’ Galloway’s voice was quiet. Out of the corner of his eye, Fitz could see George and Caversham edging closer, listening. But Galloway’s words held the majority of his attention: ‘Then what are you, may I ask? Inexperienced, unqualified, and unable to knock in a tent peg, it would seem.’

‘You have a go,’ Fitz said. ‘If you think you’re hard enough,’ he added under his breath. He picked up the tent peg from the ground in front of him and lobbed it to Galloway, In his anger he misjudged the throw, and the wooden peg flew over Galloway’s shoulder, almost hitting him in the face.

‘That’s right,’ Galloway shouted back, his face darkening behind his beard. ‘Resort to violence. After all, you haven’t the brains to argue sensibly, have you? You and that great lunk with you.’ He nodded at Price, and Fitz heard the big man take a breath of surprise and anger.

But Galloway was still speaking. ‘At least he can fetch and carry and follow simple instructions. What are you good for, eh, laddie? Why are you here, except to make work for the rest of us? Mr Last‐in‐line, that’s you. You’re always last up in the morning, always at the back of the group, always joking and malarking about with your posh friend there.’ He nodded at George, who was now standing beside Fitz. ‘And now you complain because you haven’t the strength to knock in a tent peg. Well, I’m not surprised. I doubt if you’ve done a day’s real work in your life. Laddie.’

‘I am not “laddie”,’ Fitz repeated. He could feel his blood beginning to boil despite the cold. ‘And you’ve no call to speak to Price like that. He does more work than the rest of us put together, and you know it.’

He took a step towards Galloway, and for a moment he thought he saw the man’s expression falter, a slight widening of the eyes, a hint of anxiety. And that made Fitz feel good. His hands were balled into fists at his sides and he could feel a nerve ticking under his left eye.

But then the moment was gone. Caversham was stepping in front of him, voice quiet and calm and reasonable. ‘The ground’s frozen solid,’ he said to Galloway. ‘There’s no way any of us will get the pegs into it, and it isn’t fair to chastise Fitz or Price here for that, you know.’

Galloway cocked his head to one side. ‘The great explorer speaks,’ he said mockingly. ‘And I suppose you have a suggestion? Some plan gleaned from your own wealth of experience no doubt. Patches of oil burning to soften the soil maybe? Or should we all lie down and breath heavily on it perhaps?’

‘We use rocks,’ Caversham said simply, annoyance evident in his tone.

Galloway blinked. ‘Rocks?’

‘Yes, rocks.’

Galloway still looked blank.

But Fitz had realised what Caversham was saying. When they had scooped away most of the snow, they had also shifted the rocks – those they could prise free from the frozen ground. There was a pile of them, heavy and ragged, at the side of the hollow where Price had managed to lug them. ‘I get it. We tie the guy ropes to heavy rocks and anchor the tents that way.’

Caversham turned, and smiled at Fitz. ‘You’ve got it. Interesting,’ he added loudly, ‘that Mr Last‐in‐line cottons on quicker than our illustrious leader.’ He winked at Fitz. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

Over Caversham’s shoulder, Fitz could see Galloway. His eyes were wide and his face almost as red as his beard. ‘Now, see here,’ he spluttered. But he seemed unable to get any more words out.

‘We’re busy,’ Price told him as he hefted a small boulder from the pile. ‘Either help, or get out of the way.’

It was, Fitz thought, the most that he had heard Price say in one go. And as with everything the man said, it was clear and to the point and it brooked no argument.

40: Under the Hammer

Good as his word, Lionel Correll had reserved a seat in the front row for the Doctor. He stood politely as the Doctor arrived and they shook hands.

‘Problem?’ Correll asked. He could not fail to notice that the Doctor was looking round, distracted.

‘No, no. This is fine, thank you.’

‘But you’d rather sit somewhere else?’

‘No, really.’ The Doctor smiled and sat down. ‘If we were at the back, we might have a better chance of spotting whoever is selling the journal.’

‘You think they’ll be here?’

‘Oh, I’m sure of it.’

‘You want to move?’ Correll asked again.

‘No. You can’t see people’s faces from behind them. So perhaps this is best. Faces can tell you a lot, you know.’

‘Yes.’ Correll said, aware that the Doctor was examining his own face, though he had no idea what he might be hoping to discover from it. ‘Once they resume, there are a couple of lots before the journal. So you’ll have plenty of time to have a snoop at the other people.’

‘Excellent.’ The Doctor rubbed his hands together eagerly, and turned his chair slightly so it was easier to look back over his shoulder at the other people in the auction room.

The auctioneer was neat and proper in his immaculate dark suit and white shirt. His tie was austere without being sombre. ‘Lot forty‐nine is of historical rather than intrinsic value,’ he said, his voice as stiff and proper as his attire. ‘The journal for the Hanson Galloway Siberian expedition of 1894. Previously thought to have been lost without trace, it is being sold off today by… a respected client.’ He raised an eyebrow and surveyed the audience.

The Doctor twisted in his seat and also surveyed the audience. ‘Definitely here, he’s being deferential,’ he hissed. Correll watched with amusement as the Doctor mirrored the auctioneer. The Doctor grinned back at him as he returned his attention to the podium.

‘I apologise for the fact that no prior viewing was allowed for this item, but you will appreciate that a large part of its value derives from the mystique of the object and the fact that it has never before been seen except by the present owner and her family.’

‘Aha,’ the Doctor whispered loudly. ‘It’s a woman!’

Correll could see that the auctioneer had heard him. A moment of embarrassment crossed his face and his jaw went slack. His eyes darted towards the back of the room. Correll looked back at the Doctor and could see that he too had noted the unconscious glance at the seller or her representative.

The Doctor grinned back. He made no effort to turn this time. ‘Old white‐haired lady in the tiara,’ he murmured so quietly that Correll was surprised he could hear at all. ‘Third row from the back, on the end.’ Had he memorised the entire audience and been able to deduce where the auctioneer was looking? Having realised that the Doctor had managed to trick the man into giving away his client with nothing more than a stage whisper, Correll decided that anything was possible.

Even so, he wasn’t prepared for what the Doctor did next. He put his hand up, innocent and wide‐eyed naive. Like a schoolboy who needs to be excused.

‘I haven’t started taking bids yet, sir,’ the auctioneer informed him with a smile that was almost a smirk.

‘I just wanted to say,’ the Doctor told him in a clear and loud voice, ‘that it isn’t actually the entire journal. Is it.’

The smirk vanished. ‘Er, no. Indeed not. As I was about to explain and as I’m sure everyone here knows, several pages were recovered separately and are currently on display in the British Museum.’

‘Just thought I’d mention it,’ the Doctor said happily. ‘Do go on.’

The auctioneer prepared to go on.

‘It’s a fascinating exhibition,’ the Doctor said turning round in his seat and addressing the audience as a whole. ‘Absolutely fascinating.’

‘Doctor!’ Correll said quietly, stifling a smile.

‘I can thoroughly recommend it, you know. But I expect you’ve all been.’ He turned slowly back to face the front. ‘That’ll be why you’re all here.’ Then suddenly he was looking at the audience again, and Correll was surprised at the piercing intensity of his gaze as he focused on the third row from the back. ‘I suppose that the interest in the exhibition is what persuaded the vendor that now was a good time to sell it. After the best possible price, I imagine. Out for every penny.’

The auctioneer cleared his throat impressively. ‘If you’ve quite finished, sir.’

The Doctor seemed to consider. He nodded. ‘All done, as they say.’ He settled into his chair and laced his fingers together over his waistcoat.

‘Then perhaps we can start the bidding. Shall we say at one thousand – what is it now?’ He demanded as the Doctor’s hand shot up once more.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the Doctor said, his face a mask of bewilderment, ‘I was placing a bid.’ He blinked. ‘If that’s all right with you?’

The price rose quickly. Correll bid five thousand pounds for the journal, but was immediately overtaken by a bid for six thousand. ‘Someone’s keen to get it,’ Correll whispered to the Doctor.

He nodded absently. ‘I wonder just how keen. And why.’ Suddenly his face was alive with eager amusement. ‘I don’t actually have any cash on me,’ he said quietly, ‘otherwise I’d bid the price up a little and see what happens.’

‘At eight thousand, two hundred pounds,’ the auctioneer noted.

‘Is it worth that much?’ Correll asked.

‘In my expert opinion?’

‘Yes.’

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s not worth a penny,’ he said.

‘Going once.’ The auctioneer raised his little hammer.

Correll sighed. ‘Oh what the hell.’ He waved discreetly to the auctioneer.

‘Eight thousand, five hundred,’ the auctioneer noted. Then almost immediately. ‘And now nine thousand.’

‘It’s that man on the mobile phone.’ The Doctor nodded to a gaunt‐looking man with steel grey hair in a suit standing at the side of the room. He had a mobile phone to his ear and was smiling with evident satisfaction.

‘Lassiter,’ Correll said. ‘He’s an agent.’

‘Not the actual buyer then. Pity.’

‘Going once at nine thousand.’

Lassiter’s smile was widening into a grin.

‘And going twice.’

The Doctor’s hand shot up again. ‘Twenty thousand pounds,’ he called out.

The Auctioneer was about to bring down his hammer. He blinked rapidly several times and stared at the Doctor.

‘What’s the matter?’ the Doctor asked. ‘Did I get it wrong again?’

‘My colleague’s is a serious bet, sir,’ Correll said.

The auctioneer nodded. ‘Very well, thank you Mr Correll.’

The Doctor seemed startled and impressed. ‘You’ve been here before!’

Correll laughed. ‘Once or twice, I admit.’

Across the room, Lassiter was speaking frantically into his phone.

‘Are we all done at twenty thousand?’

Lassiter, still speaking, held up his hand, asking for a pause.

‘I’ll have to hurry you, sir.’

Then he switched off the phone and put it in his inside jacket pocket.

The Doctor bit his lower lip. ‘I may have just cost you twenty thousand,’ he murmured. ‘Sorry.’

Correll shrugged. ‘Don’t sweat it.’

Then Lassiter called out, his voice clear and confident. ‘Thirty thousand.’

‘There again…’ the Doctor said. ‘May I?’

Correll laughed. ‘Be my guest.’

The auctioneer was looking to the Doctor now, waiting for him to complete his brief conversation with Correll.

‘Is it with me again?’ the Doctor asked politely. ‘I see. Well, shall we say forty…’ He broke off and sighed, shaking his head. ‘No.’

Correll could see Lassiter breathing a sigh of relief.

‘No,’ the Doctor went on. ‘Let’s make it fifty thousand, shall we?’ There were gasps from the audience. All heads turned tennis‐match style towards Lassiter. The look on his face was one of resignation. ‘One hundred thousand pounds,’ he said.

Attention returned to the Doctor. He examined his fingernails.

‘Going once.’

He smiled at Correll.

‘Twice.’

He sucked in his cheeks and inspected the auctioneer. He blew out a long breath, and eventually he shook his head.

‘Thank God for that,’ Correll said as the hammer came down.

‘All done at one hundred thousand pounds. For your client, Mr Lassiter.’

‘A lot to pay for an historical curiosity,’ the Doctor said.

There was a break after the journal was sold. The audience stood and mingled. There was coffee in the foyer, stronger drinks in Gordon and Painswick’s bar. There was just one topic of conversation. Correll could see Lassiter waving away all questions about his client.

The Doctor seemed more interested in the elderly lady in the tiara.

She wore a full‐length dress in pale green. Her face was long and lined with wrinkles, incredibly old. Her hair was brilliant white and her thin fingers cramped and curled with arthritis.

‘You want a coffee?’

‘No, thank you, Mr Correll.’ The Doctor smiled thinly. ‘I want to know who she is.’

‘Hope you don’t mind if I do. Excuse me.’ Correll left him still watching the lady intently.

Five minutes later he returned with a cup of coffee and with information. It had taken him only a few pertinent questions of people he knew in the coffee queue to find out what he wanted.

‘Her name,’ he told the Doctor, ‘is Alice Romanov, apparently.’

‘Romanov?’ The Doctor’s forehead wrinkled into a frown. ‘Really?’

‘So I’m told. She doesn’t get out much. First time she’s been seen here, but it’s no secret she’s been looking to sell some of the family papers and documents.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘I can imagine there would be some interest.’

‘She’s a Grand Duchess,’ Correll went on. ‘Her father was Alex something‐or‐other, son of the last Tsar.’

The Doctor’s attention snapped from the Grand Duchess back to Correll. ‘Alexei Nikolaivich, son of Nikolas II.’

‘That’s it.’

‘May I?’ Without waiting for an answer, the Doctor lifted Correll’s cup from the saucer he was holding and drained it. ‘Ah!’ He smacked his lips together. ‘Thank you. Alexei Nikolaivich,’ he said again, staring off into the distance. ‘Yes, a fine lad. A good, quiet boy.’

‘Her father?’ Correll wondered how he knew.

‘I doubt it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was shot in a cellar in Yekaterinburg in 1918 when he was only thirteen years old,’ the Doctor said. ‘That’s why. Or at least, that’s what we all thought.’

‘Maybe nobody told her that.’

‘Or was it fourteen?’ The Doctor was counting on his fingers. ‘Did I miss his birthday?’ he wondered aloud, his tone a mixture of surprise and regret.

‘You reckon maybe he escaped?’ Correll asked.

The Duchess was nodding and smiling, making her way towards the door.

‘I reckon maybe I’ll follow her. There’s more to all this than meets the cheque book.’ He grinned enormously at Correll. ‘Thanks for all your help, Lionel. I’m sure we’ll meet again.’

‘I hope so,’ Correll said, and meant it.

The Duchess was at the door now.

‘And thanks for the mouthful of coffee. Stimulates the brain cells marvellously, you know.’

Correll smiled. ‘I’ll get another cup,’ he said.

The Doctor was already halfway across the room. ‘No thanks,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘That was plenty.’

‘I didn’t mean for you,’ Correll said. But the Doctor was gone.

‘Follow that cab!’ The Doctor always got a buzz from saying it.

The cab driver, true to form, didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Right you are, Guv.’ The traffic was heavy, and the Doctor soon lost sight of the black taxi that the Grand Duchess had taken.

‘Sorry about that, Guv.’

‘It’s Doctor, actually. And never mind.’ He settled back in the deep back seat of the taxi with a sigh. ‘I wonder where they were going,’ he said to himself.

‘Could find out for you, Doc.’

The Doctor was on the edge of the seat at once, seatbelt straining and clicking with the sudden movement. ‘Really? A search you think? Divide up the area into quadrants and systematically trace all the possible routes through each, interviewing passers‐by and accosting pedestrians?’

‘No, actually, Doc.’ The driver half turned in his seat and grinned over his shoulder. ‘I was thinking of calling Charlie on his mobile and asking him where he’s going. He was driving the other cab, you see.’

The Doctor did see. ‘Oh,’ he said, slightly disappointed. ‘Well, it’s worth a try.’

There was a mobile phone on the dashboard and the driver was already hitting buttons.

‘Try not to arouse their suspicions,’ the Doctor asked.

The driver nodded. ‘Private investigations, eh? Divorce evidence, that sort of thing?’

‘She’s a frail old lady,’ the Doctor pointed out.

The driver was nodding, taking the point. ‘They’re the absolute worst,’ he said. ‘’Ere, Charlie?’ he shouted when the phone was answered. ‘Control here.’ He turned and winked violently at the Doctor. ‘Need a position check from you, and current destination.’

‘Just about to drop off a client at Eleven, Anderson Avenue,’ Charlie reported.

‘Triff. Thanks, Charlie. I’ll be in touch.’ He leaned back and called to the Doctor over his shoulder. ‘Anderson Avenue then?’

‘Please.’

‘Right you are. Me and Charlie often do the auction rooms,’ he explained. ‘Known each other for years, we have. You wouldn’t believe what people will buy at that place!’

‘I think I might,’ the Doctor said.

Number Eleven Anderson Avenue was a large Regency‐style house set back from the road. The Doctor learned from a polished brass plaque on the gatepost that it was called ‘Lakeside Manor’ and it was a ‘Retirement Home’ which also offered nursing care.

The cab had dropped him in time to see the familiar pale green back of the Duchess as she went through the front door. The driver had agreed to wait for ten minutes. The Doctor hesitated, reading and re‐reading the sign. She was an old lady, and if she was selling off her personal papers then she might have fallen on hard times. And perhaps Lakeside Manor was exclusive and expensive. Even if there was no evidence any more of the lake.

He strode up to the front door and was delighted to find it unlocked.

Inside was a large entrance hallway. At the end of it was another door, with a security number‐pad beside it. A notice asked visitors to kindly sign in and out in the book. There was a biro attached to the book by a length of string and a mass of yellowing sticky tape.

The Doctor did not sign the book. He looked to see who the last person to sign in was. But the last entry was several hours previously – an illegible scrawl that might have said ‘B. MacAlister’. Or not.

The keypad posed only a simple puzzle. The code was a pattern rather than a sequence, which made sense. There was another keypad on the other side of the door, he noticed as he let it swing shut behind him. He was in a corridor which stretched as far as he could see. It was painted in hospital green and there were doors off each side at regular intervals. Impersonal printed nameplates were slotted into brass frames on each door.

‘Can I help you?’ The woman was in her twenties, dressed in a typical nurse’s uniform. Her name badge read ‘Mary’. ‘They’re all out today, I’m afraid. A trip to the theatre. A matinee of something or other by Priestley. Quite a treat of course.’

‘Of course.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘I was looking for an old lady…’

Mary seemed amused. ‘Well all the old ladies are out, as I said. Except for Mrs MacAlister. And Miss Fredericks, of course.’

The Doctor wondered why Miss Fredericks counted as ‘of course’ when it came to skiving off the organised trips. But he knew better than to ask.

‘Mrs MacAlister,’ he said. ‘That’s the one.’

‘Ah, you’re a friend of her daughter. Come to collect her?’

The Doctor smiled. He didn’t like to lie, but he was happy to let her believe she was right. Mary pointed out the room, and went about her business.

‘Thank you,’ the Doctor called after her.

Mary waved a hand without looking back.

The Doctor tapped politely on the door labelled ‘Pam MacAlister’ and went in.

The old lady was sitting on her bed. She was in her nightgown. Her hair was grey‐to‐white and her face round and kindly. There might have been some superficial similarity with the Grand Duchess, but it was obviously not the same woman.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the Doctor said gently. ‘I think I have the wrong room.’

‘I thought you were my daughter,’ the woman said.

‘I can assure you, I’m not.’.

‘So I see. Where is she? When’s she coming back to see me?’

The Doctor backed out of the room. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘But I don’t think she can be far away.’

The code to get out was the same as to get in. There was a young woman watching as the Doctor let himself out into the hallway. She had shoulder‐length fair hair and strikingly green eyes, rather like a cat’s. He smiled at her politely, absently, not really remarking her. Perhaps she smiled back. Perhaps she was the old woman’s daughter. Or another of the staff.

‘Back to the Auction Rooms, Doctor?’ he murmured as he got back to the road. The taxi was still there, and the driver leaped out to open the door for him.

‘What’s your name?’ the Doctor asked as he climbed in.

‘Albert.’

‘Thank you, Albert.’

The Doctor said nothing all the way back to Gordon and Painswick. Albert, apparently sensitive to his thoughtful mood, was also silent until they arrived outside.

‘Hello. What’s going on ’ere?’

The Doctor looked out of the window, brought back to reality by Albert’s voice.

Several police cars were at the kerb, lights flashing. An ambulance was parked in amongst them, tile back doors open expectantly. There were several uniformed policemen at the main entrance, politely turning people away.

He paid off the cab and gave Albert a generous tip.

‘Looks serious. You think they’ll let you in?’ Albert asked.

‘I think they need a Doctor.’

39: Cold Blood

The cry cut through the air like a hot knife.

Fitz had no idea how long he had been asleep, or even if he had slept at all. The nights were taken up with a mixture of shivering and dozing, dreaming and drifting…

But when he heard the cry, he was immediately awake. His first thought was that something had startled the dogs. But a moment later they started howling – blood‐curdling animal yells that served only to emphasise the terrible humanity of the initial scream. He was out of his blankets and crawling rapidly from the tent before he had time to think.

The dogs were still barking, the sound echoing round the hollow. A thin sliver of a moon lit the icy landscape with an eerie pallor. Fitz stumbled his way across the hollow, half running, half falling. He did not really know where he was going, but he was as sure as he could be that the cry had come from the west edge of the hollow. That was where the dogs were tethered – he had thought it was the dogs. And the dogs had been frightened by something.

Galloway’s tent was apart from the others, and not far from the dogs. Fitz could see the animals pacing back and forth in agitation, pulling at their leashes, forms low to the ground as if in fear. Or perhaps preparing to defend themselves.

The flap of Galloway’s tent was open. George was standing beside the tent, white‐faced. The light from his lamp flickered through the opening and made the canvas walls glow an insipid yellow. How come we have to make do with candles? Fitz thought incongruously. George stepped aside and motioned for Fitz to take a look in the tent. He stooped and looked inside. And screamed.

His foot slipped from under him in the entrance and he was falling, his scream one of surprise. But it was fuelled by what he could see inside the tent.

George was beside him, catching him, lifting him, pulling him back.

‘Thanks,’ Fitz gasped. ‘Did you – did you see?’

George nodded, his face grave. ‘I heard the cry, like you I expect. I came to see what had happened.’

‘I slipped,’ Fitz said, embarrassed now more than fearful. ‘A patch of ice.’

Price loomed out of the darkness, Graul and Caversham close behind. Caversham had a rifle and was swinging it in a low arc, covering the area, his eyes piercing bright in the darkness. Suddenly Fitz saw him not as a figure of fun, an armchair adventurer with wild stories of derring‐do, but as an alert and intelligent explorer and hunter. He shivered.

‘It’s not ice,’ George said slowly. He swallowed and pointed down at the ground. ‘Frozen, yes. Liquid… But not ice.’

Fitz followed George’s gesture, conscious that the others were looking too. Looking at the dark stain that flowed from the tent and out into the hollow. He had slipped on frozen blood. A trail that led back to the body lying prone on the floor of the tent – Hanson Galloway, eyes wide and staring, beard sodden and stiff with the frozen blood, and a wooden tent peg hammered through his temple.

‘But who…?’ Fitz gasped. He turned to face the others, and found them all staring at him. Caversham’s gun was pointing at his head. ‘Oh come on!’

‘You did attack him with a tent peg this evening,’ Caversham pointed out.

‘You were angry with him,’ Graul said.

‘We all were!’ Fitz protested.

‘And now we find you at the scene of the crime,’ Caversham went on.

‘Crime?’ George said. ‘Maybe it was an accident.’

Price leaned menacingly towards Fitz. ‘It doesn’t look like an accident,’ he said.

‘I heard his cry,’ Fitz said, trying to stay calm. ‘I guess we all did. George got here first. Just.’ He turned to George.

‘That’s true,’ George said slowly. ‘Fitz wasn’t here when I arrived.’

‘You mean, you didn’t see him here,’ Caversham said.

‘Hey, look, what is this?’ Fitz was getting angry now, and loud. The dogs were still pacing, still growling. ‘I was asleep in my tent when he pegged out.’ He paused, realising what he had said. ‘Sorry. Anyway, George will tell you. Won’t you, George.’ But George did not answer. ‘George?!’

‘I’m sorry, Fitz,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘I heard the cry and I came running. I didn’t look in your tent, I didn’t see you at all until just now.’

‘So he could have been out here all the while,’ Graul said.

‘Well, I wasn’t.’ It sounded a bit pathetic, even to Fitz.

‘Let’s worry about it later,’ Caversham said, lowering the gun. ‘Until and unless we can prove anything else, maybe we should assume it was just some freak accident. Let’s all try to get some sleep, and we’ll bury him in the morning.’

‘I suppose he is dead,’ George said.

Caversham stepped past them carefully on the slippery ground and lowered the tent flap, tying it in place. ‘He’s dead all right,’ he said.

‘We won’t bury him in this,’ Price pointed out, stamping on the ground.

‘We’ll lay him out and pile stones over the body,’ Fitz said. ‘Though I doubt that’s what he would have wanted.’ Somehow that seemed to bring an element of closure to the situation, and everyone went back to their beds.

‘They all think I killed him,’ Fitz said to George back at their own tents. ‘And they’re pretending they can believe it was an accident.’

‘Why would they do that?’

Fitz gave a short nervous laugh. ‘Because there’s nobody to arrest me out here. And because, deep down – or even not so deep down – they don’t think it was that bad a thing to do.’

‘It’s murder,’ George said quietly, the moonlight casting sharp shadows down his face.

‘Yes,’ Fitz agreed, ‘it’s murder. And what really worries me is that I didn’t kill him. Because that means that someone else here did.’

‘That doesn’t mean they have a motive for killing you or me.’

‘Oh yes if does. If I die now, if I have an unfortunate accident, then everyone will think the case is closed. And I won’t be there to argue my innocence. My accidental death is now someone else’s alibi.’

‘Watch your back,’ George told him.

‘Thanks.’ Fitz closed his tent up and climbed under the blankets. ‘And my head.’ He was shivering, and he didn’t get back to sleep.

38: Audit

The policemen at the entrance to Gordon and Painswick had no difficulty believing that the Doctor was a high‐powered forensic expert sent for by the Scene of Crime Officer. He never actually said as much, but that was the impression they got.

Once inside the building, the very fact that he was inside the building seemed to serve as his credentials.

‘Where is it?’ he demanded of the first person he saw.

‘Down there, sir. Second door along. You with Furness?’

‘I will be as soon as you get out of my hair,’ the Doctor told him.

He found the room easily. There was another policeman outside. The door was standing open and a photographer was just leaving. ‘You can’t go in there, sir,’ the policeman told him.

‘I can go anywhere,’ the Doctor replied icily. ‘I’m with Furness.’

‘Right,’ the Doctor snapped as he entered the room, slapping his hands together. ‘Which one of you is Furness?’

Through an open door on the other side of the room, the Doctor could see that it was immediately behind the main Auction Room where he had been earlier. It was a room perhaps fifteen feet square, with racks of shelves and display cases. It seemed to be where the things to be auctioned off were stored immediately prior to their sale. There seemed to be something wrong with the room, something askew. But he couldn’t decide what it was.

‘I am.’ Furness turned out to be a small woman with a shrewlike face. She was dressed in a dark trouser suit.

‘Excellent,’ the Doctor said before she could start asking the obvious questions. ‘You’ve done an excellent job so far. Well done. Now then, what’s the situation?’

He could see for himself that there were two ambulance men lifting another man on to a stretcher. The man’s eyes were wide and staring, his face somehow lopsided. His features were wrinkled like a prune and his whole body seemed emaciated.

Behind the stretcher stood another man – the auctioneer. He seemed almost relieved to see the Doctor again.

Furness sighed. She gestured at the auctioneer. ‘Mr Gilbertson heard a scream. Found the body. There’s another man, Henry Jackson, who’s missing apparently.’ The way she said ‘missing’ implied she knew already what had happened.

‘So, your working hypothesis is that Henry Jackson murdered this man and then went missing?’

‘Too early to tell, sir.’ That was exactly what she thought.

Mr Gilbertson the auctioneer was shaking his head in agitation. ‘But that can’t be right,’ he said. ‘Not right at all.’

The Doctor stooped to examine the body, the ambulance men allowing him room. ‘And why is that?’ he asked.

‘Well…’ Gilbertson seemed stumped for an opinion now that someone had actually asked him for one. ‘You don’t know Henry Jackson,’ he said at last. ‘He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

Furness laughed. There was precious little mirth in the sound. ‘We’re not talking about a fly.’

‘No,’ the. Doctor agreed. ‘No, we’re not.’ He straightened up. ‘But I think Mr Gilbertson is right.’

‘Oh?’

. ‘Unless Henry Jackson was somehow able to scramble this man’s internal organs.’ He nodded at the corpse. ‘The heart and lungs, liver and kidneys, all jumbled up together, twisted and torn out of place. A massive disruption. You have a feel.’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Who is this man anyway?’ the Doctor asked.

‘Well, it’s Oliver Thomas. Only…’

‘Only what?’ the Doctor asked gently.

‘Only, he’s not that old.’ Gilbertson swallowed. ‘I’ve been trying to tell them, sir, I’m sure it’s Thomas. But it looks more like his father. Thomas is only thirty, if that. And this…’ He could barely bring himself to look down at the body on the stretcher.

‘This man looks sixty or more,’ the Doctor agreed.

They carried the body out and the Doctor made to close the door behind them.

‘It doesn’t shut,’ Furness told him shortly. She was right, the door caught the edge of the frame at the top. It was a good inch out. ‘Nor does that one,’ she said, pointing to the door into the Auction Room.

‘Really?’ The Doctor went over to it. ‘It was shut a couple of hours ago.’

‘They both were,’ Gilbertson said. ‘I don’t understand it.’ He slumped against one of the racks of shelves. ‘I don’t understand any of this.’

‘Well that’s a healthy attitude at any rate,’ the Doctor said. Sure enough, the other door didn’t shut either. He looked up at the ceiling, squinting, framing it with his hands. ‘And the ceiling isn’t square. He dropped to his knees and lowered his head to the ground. ‘The floor s not level either. Look, it dips right down in the middle there.’

‘Where the body was,’ Furness told him. ‘So what? It’s an old building.’

‘Are you sure, sir?’ Gilbertson was getting more and more agitated. ‘I’m sure I’d have noticed, someone would have noticed. And the doors – they used to close. Even this morning.’

The Doctor had seen something across the room while he was knelt down. ‘That’s what we need. Allow me to demonstrate.’

It was a black stone. A large pebble, on the floor beside one of the shelves, round enough to roll into the hollow and make the point. The Doctor bent to pick it up, but his fingers slipped over the surface. ‘How curious,’ he murmured. ‘What is this?’.

‘I don’t know. Never seen it before.’

‘Is it important?’ Furness asked with a tone of deliberate fatigue.

‘Unlikely to be fixed down then.’ The Doctor straightened up. ‘Yes, I think it is important.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘“A pebble, or stone,”’ he quoted. ‘“It was black, about the size of a golf ball.”’

‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing,’ the Doctor said. ‘Just something I read somewhere. Which reminds me…’ He turned to Gilbertson. ‘Where is the Hanson Galloway expedition journal?’ he asked.

Furness was shaking her head, perplexed. But Gilbertson was almost smiling. ‘Now that I can tell you, sir. It hasn’t been stolen, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘It did cross my mind,’ the Doctor admitted.

‘No, the buyer collected it an hour ago. Just before all this… unpleasantness.’

‘In person?’ the Doctor demanded. ‘You saw him?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Then who was it that bought the journal?’ the Doctor asked.

Gilbertson gulped. ‘Well, that is of course strictly confidential.’

‘And this is of course a murder investigation,’ the Doctor shot back. ‘Under these very special circumstances, I think client confidentiality can be stretched just a little. Don’t you?’

Perhaps glad that something was happening at last which she understood, Furness took a threatening step towards Gilbertson. ‘Curtis,’ he stammered. ‘Maxwell Curtis, the millionaire.’

‘Never heard of him,’ Furness said, not taking her eyes off Gilbertson.

‘Neither have I,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘Keep up the excellent work, Furness. I’ll put a good word in for you.’

‘Just for the record, sir,’ Furness said, turning away from the nervous auctioneer, ‘could I ask your name…?’

But the Doctor had gone.

When she got back from the coffee machine, there was someone sitting in Anji’s chair.

In the eighteen months, since she had returned to work, she had been ‘fast‐tracked’ through the company’s ranks and now had her own very successful portfolio of clients. Several of the most prestigious of the company’s clients relied on Anji’s judgement, in fact. She was doing well, and perhaps the only work‐related disappointment that she had suffered in recent months was that Mitch had moved to a company in Edinburgh. They had got horribly drunk the night he left, and she had an open invitation to drop by and ‘see how they do things in the frozen North’.

In the time she had been back, Anji had not had a major calamity, not lost any client money month‐on‐month, tried never to think about the Doctor or Fitz or Dave (and almost succeeded), and had never – ever – come back from the coffee machine to find someone else in her seat.

She reached over the man’s shoulder and set down the styrene cup between her keyboard and the phone, ready to let loose with what she thought about the situation. ‘Are you lost?’ was probably a good opening gambit, delivered in a stern, ironic tone.

But she never said it. The man turned. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Hello Larry.’

Senior Partner Larry Withers smiled back tightly. ‘Anji, I was looking for you.’

‘I was just getting a coffee.’ She shifted uncomfortably, putting her weight on the other foot. ‘Something wrong?’

‘Not at all.’ Her boss was on his feet, heading back towards his glassed office.

‘Bring it with you.’

‘Sorry, bring what?’ Had she forgotten a meeting? He seemed in a hurry. But then Larry was always in a hurry.

‘Your coffee, of course.’

She took a pad as well, and a pen… There was a large man waiting for her with Larry in his office. Anji got the impression that he had been watching her the whole way from her desk. He was perhaps in his late fifties, with hair that was almost but not quite entirely grey. His suit was straining at the shoulders as he thrust out a beefy hand, and she had to juggle coffee, pad and pen in order to take it.

‘I’m Anji Kapoor,’ she said. That seemed safe enough.

As she spoke the man’s watch bleeped. He smiled an apology and pressed surprisingly dexterously at a button on the side. It was a complicated watch – one of those with several clock faces on the dial, and a metal ring that could be rotated round the edge.

‘Sorry about that. Time‐keeping is an especial interest of mine.’ His accent was cultured American. East coast, she thought vaguely. Washington DC maybe. The man let her sit down. Larry, she noticed, waited for the big man before he too sat down at the circular table at the side of the office.

‘Alexander Hartford,’ he introduced himself. ‘Call me Alex.’

Anji saw Larry blink, in the sort of way that implied he was not allowed to call the man ‘Alex’. Sure enough, he said: ‘Anji, Mr Hartford represents one of our most important clients.’ He emphasised ‘most.’. He was perspiring – not much, but enough to let Anji know that this statement was most definitely true.

‘And that is?’ she asked.

Larry was about to answer, but Hartford waved him to silence. ‘You won’t have heard of us. Hartford‐Waverly is an accounting and auditing company. We’re US‐based, as you may have guessed, but we operate worldwide.’ He smiled, perfectly‐capped teeth glinting III the fluorescent light. ‘And I don’t just mean the UK and the Eurozone.’

Anji gave what she hoped was a polite ‘interesting, but so what’ smile and nodded. ‘You’re right, I’ve never heard of Hartford‐Waverly.’

‘Mr Hartford has asked especially for you to be assigned to his company for a particular job,’ Larry said.

Hartford stared at him. There was no discernible change in his expression, but it was somehow threatening.

‘I’m not an auditor,’ Anji said. ‘Or an accountant.’

‘Good,’ Hartford told her. ‘Because we have more than enough of each of those. What we’re interested in is someone who can bring an analytical approach to the table. Who can spot trends and make predictions. Who can assess the situation based on limited data and provide a set of conclusions that are extrapolated from that data rather than an emotional response or a gut reaction.’

Anji wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. She went to make a note on her pad, but decided against it. What would she write? ‘And Larry told you I was the best person for the job?’ she asked. Thanks, Larry, she thought. More work – just what I need.

‘No,’ Hartford said. ‘I told him that you were the best person for the job.’ He leaned forward, massive hands laced together on the tabletop. ‘In fact, I think you’re unique.’

He seemed completely serious, otherwise she would have laughed. Larry was talking again now. ‘You will be assigned to Mr Hartford for three months initially. I have agreed with Josh and Graeme that they’ll take over your portfolio for the duration.’

‘You mean it’s a full‐time assignment?’ She was bristling, already concerned about the mess she’d come back to. She’d have to nurse Graeme through the transactions, and Josh was a law unto himself. She had to warn her clients not to trust him without double‐checking with her. There were some long evenings ahead.

‘We’re running a detailed assessment of some work being done at a scientific institute,’ Hartford said. ‘You’ll be working with us. There. On site.’

‘On site?’ Anji frowned. That rather scuppered things. And she could not recall anyone being sent away to join a client’s team for anything longer than a few days at most. ‘For three months?’

‘That’s right,’ Larry told her. ‘Initially.’ He coughed, embarrassed. ‘If you could clear your desk this afternoon.’

‘You’re taking my desk?’ What did ‘initially’ mean – didn’t he expect her back? Was she being head‐hunted in some strange way?

‘We leave tomorrow,’ Hartford said. He handed her a large envelope that had somehow been inside his jacket pocket. ‘Flight details are in here.’

‘Tickets?’ she asked automatically.

‘You won’t need tickets for this flight. Just mention my name.’

She took the envelope, and as she did so she could feel her stomach dropping away. Excitement? Or apprehension?

‘And where are we going?’ she asked. ‘Where is this scientific institute?’

Hartford was shaking hands with Larry, taking a heavy overcoat from the hook on the back of the door. He turned to answer her as he left. ‘It’s in Siberia,’ he said.

37: View through a Window

It was Price who insisted on solemnly saying a few words over the pile of stones. They all stood round, heads bowed as he recited the Lord’s Prayer, then each of them placed a final small stone on the heap before moving away.

The old guide, Chedakin, watched with apparent interest but made no effort to join in. He had not asked about the events of the previous night, though he did seem to be uneasy. As they started off he indicated the best route through the increasingly uneven ground, and then dropped back to speak quietly to Graul.

What Fitz had imagined were the foothills were looming ever larger as they approached, and he could tell that even these would be a struggle to climb. ‘How the hell do we get the dogs and the sled up there?’ he asked George.

George shook his head. ‘I suppose we shall have to leave the sled. Maybe the dogs too.’

Graul joined them, gesturing for Caversham to come over as well and the group slowed to a stop. Chedakin continued to lead the dogs forward, Price staying with him, shouting encouragement to the animals. They seemed, Fitz had noticed, to respect the large man.

‘What is it?’ Caversham demanded. ‘Is he after more money or something?’

‘No,’ Graul said. ‘I asked him that. He says just that he will not go on.’

‘What?’

Graul nodded towards the two mountains ahead of them. ‘Once we are at the pass, perhaps in three days, he is leaving us.’

‘But, why?’ George asked.

Graul shrugged. ‘He says that is as far as he goes. As far as any of his people will go. They will not approach the bad magic.’ He opened his hands apologetically. ‘That is how he describes it. He says the land is cursed.’

‘Is this to do with Galloway’s death?’ Fitz wondered.

‘I don’t think so. He hasn’t mentioned it.’

‘Probably thinks it was fated,’ Caversham muttered. ‘Maybe he’s right.’

‘He says he will keep the dogs and the sled with him, and wait for us if we wish.’

‘For how long?’ Caversham asked.

‘A week from when we part company. No more. After that he’s going back to his village and we can find him there.’

There was no point in anyone else trying to persuade the little man to change his mind – nobody but Graul could speak his language. So they muttered in irritation, and continued the slow plod through the snow towards the misty, distant mountains. The pass that Graul had pointed out seemed to lead through the mountains, and Fitz thought it would take them longer than three days to reach it. But as they rose, the snow thinned and they were walking on rock which made the going much easier and quicker. Frequently they had to stop as the sled bounced on the uneven surface and packs and parcels fell from it.

Fitz doubted that any of them would sleep that first night after the ‘accident’. But when he finally crawled into his tent he had no trouble at all drifting away into a dreamless blackness.

By the end of the next day, Fitz was beginning to believe that they might make the pass in two more days. What had seemed to be a dark speck in the snow at the side of the jagged gap in the mountains was now resolving itself into the castle that Chedakin had mentioned. The stone structure seemed to jut from the rock of the pass itself, Fitz thought, as they grew closer with every numbing step.

For the most part they walked in silence. Since Galloway’s death nobody was especially talkative. But mainly this was because as the ground rose ever steeper, so the simple effort of walking became ever more exhausting. They settled into a routine, each plodding on at his own pace. A routine broken only by the more and more frequent need to repack the sled. It was almost a relief when on the third day Chedakin announced to Graul that he had come as far as he was willing.

They unpacked the sled, Caversharn and Price checking each package and provision and deciding whether it was needed or could be left with Chedakin. Fitz’s shoulders ached and he doubted his back would ever be straight again. The only redeeming thing about the whole expedition, he reckoned, was that he had lost almost all the feeling in his body with the cold. He shuddered to think how much pain he might really be suffering. Every tin or parcel or rope or package that went on the pile of stuff to take on up the mountains with them brought a moment’s disappointment. He could see George and Graul were both watching as apprehensively as he was.

‘You’re kidding,’ Fitz announced, his frustration and fatigue getting the better of him. He shook his head and pointed at the mound of provisions beside the depleted sled.

‘Do you hope to stay alive, or do you want to be sure of it?’ Caversham asked him.

‘I’ll settle for “hope” rather than die of exhaustion carrying twice my own body weight,’ Fitz told him.

Caversham returned a wry smile. ‘That’s what I thought. This is the “hope” pile. And that’s cutting it fine in my opinion.’

‘I suppose there will be less to carry back,’ George said. ‘That’s something at least.’

‘We should have brought a mule,’ Graul said as he started to lash together the packages he was allocated.

Fitz nodded over at where Price was expertly packing together a pile that was over twice the size of anyone else’s. ‘I’d settle for a couple of St. John Price clones,’ he said.

‘A couple of what?’ George asked.

‘Nothing,’ Fitz told him. ‘It doesn’t matter. I hope we kept a tin opener.’

The weather closed in that afternoon, which was how they found the window. The clouds had descended and snow was falling lightly. It made the going slower. All of them were wary, worried about slipping on the ice as they trudged up the narrow pass. Its floor was frozen solid, only the few rocks and pebbles that poked through the ice afforded them any footing and there was the constant worry and danger of slipping. The heavy loads they were all carrying on their backs made them even less steady on their feet. The best and safest way to make progress, Fitz had discovered, was to keep your head down and try to keep the weight of your pack above you.

It was because he was staring at the ground in this manner, that Fitz walked right into Price who had stopped in front of him. The impact barely moved the huge man, but Fitz bounced backwards, lost his footing and crashed to the ground. He was already resigned to bruises and perhaps even a few broken bones, his whole body felt brittle – like ice – it was so cold. But Price turned and caught him by the arm as he slipped and slithered towards George behind him.

‘Sorry,’ Price said. ‘I was looking at the sunshine.’

Recovering, Fitz looked at him puzzled. ‘Sunshine?’

Price turned and pointed. ‘Over there. I was wondering where it is coming from.’

Sure enough, about twenty yards away to the side of the path and lightly up the bank, a shaft of bright yellow sunlight had melted a patch of the snow. A few stray strands of grass were poking through what looked like soil. Fitz could not remember when they had last seen unfrozen ground, let alone grass.

‘Good grief.’ George’s voice was husky with the cold. ‘How can that be possible?’

Fitz was trying to see where the light was coming from. There was no gap in the clouds, no sunlight visible anywhere else. It just seemed to start in mid air – he could see the fine particles of snow caught in the brilliance, twisting lazily as they fell slowly to the ground.

‘What is it?’ Graul asked. Fitz had not noticed the others walking back to join them.

‘Let’s go and see,’ Caversham suggested, ever practical.

A ‘window’ seemed the best description. They hardly spoke as they each stared through the patch of air where the sunlight seemed to originate. It was a shimmering, ragged hole in the world, starting about three feet above the ground and roughly five feet in diameter. The sunlight shone powerfully through it. And as they approached, they could indeed see through it, like a window. Into another world, another reality.

‘Incredible!’ George said as they arrived in front of it. He reached out tentatively, but Fitz caught his hand.

‘Careful.’

Now they were close to it, angled to see the ground on the other ‘side’. Through the ‘hole’ in the air Fitz could see grassland, a savannah. There were even trees. And the sun was shining brightly as wispy clouds skittered across the sky.

‘Feel that.’ Caversham had his hand in the sunlight that spilled into their own world. ‘So warm…’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘What is it? I’ve never seen anything like this.’

‘Really?’ Fitz asked, half‐sarcastically. But also automatically – it was weird, true. But it was not so out of the ordinary compared to some things he had seen.

‘You can hear the breeze,’ George said. ‘And even the animals…’

Fitz leaned closer. George was right. He caught the distant roar or growl of some creature carried on the breeze.

‘Should we… go through?’ Graul asked hesitantly.

They considered this. George’s face had lit up at the idea, while Caversham frowned and Price remained as impassive as ever.

‘There’s no way of knowing if we can get back again,’ Fitz pointed out, and George’s face fell. ‘Or if it’s safe.’

‘Is it Africa?’ Price asked.

‘I doubt if it’s anywhere we know, anywhere on this world,’ Fitz told him.

‘What makes you say that?’ Caversham seemed genuinely interested to know rather than returning Fitz’s sarcasm.

‘I’ve travelled,’ Fitz admitted. ‘Maybe even more than you have.’

Caversham raised an eyebrow. ‘And have you seen the like of this before?’

‘Not exactly. But I have seen doors that open into spaces that couldn’t possibly be beyond, portals into other worlds, other realities.’

‘And?’‐George asked, breathless.

‘And we should be careful.’

‘More things in heaven and earth, eh?’ Caversham said. ‘Well, maybe you’re right.’

‘But we can’t just leave it, pretend nothing’s there,’ George protested. He was looking round at the snowy bank. He dropped to his knees, hoisting his pack up on his shoulders as he did so, balancing so he could reach into the snow. He fumbled around and after a few moments pulled out a lump of rock. The ice glistened on its ragged surface as it caught the impossible sunlight.

‘What are you doing?’ Caversham demanded.

George did not answer. Instead he tossed the rock at the window. Whether by instinct or intuition, Fitz immediately leaped back. His movement galvanised the others, and they all stepped away from the hazy hole as the rock sailed through it.

For a moment the rock seemed to stop, frozen in time. Then pale blue crackles of light, like cracks in the air itself, leaped out from the rock to the edges of the window, as if an invisible sheet of glass or ice was shattering under the impact. A split‐second later the rock fell through, and the whole ragged area was filled with fire and smoke. A fist of flame reached out through the window, pummelling them as they staggered further backwards. Graul slipped and fell with a cry. Fitz turned away as the heat seared his face. George yelled in astonishment and fear.

When they looked back, the window was filled with smoke, its edges clearly visible as the fire on the other side struggled to take hold of the dry grassland. Through the smouldering heat came a sound. It was like the growling sound that George had drawn their attention to earlier, only louder. Close. A thundering roar of anger or pain that seemed to tear the atmosphere apart.

‘What animal could make a noise like that?’ Graul wondered as he struggled to his feet.

‘I don’t know,’ Fitz said. ‘And I don’t suggest that we hang around to find out.’ He led them back to the path, George following only reluctantly.

‘Shouldn’t we wait and –’ George called.

‘No,’ Fitz interrupted. ‘Definitely not.’

He did not look back until they were almost over the ridge, almost out of sight. Then he saw a faint smoky hole torn in the fabric of reality, the first tentative rays of another world’s sunlight struggling through once more and thawing the ground below. Then the light was abruptly cut off once again, as if more smoke had blown in front of it. Or some huge shape had moved across to blot out the sun.

36: Cargo

Hartford sent a car for Anji early the next morning. Very early the next morning. If he was trying to impress and please her, she reflected, this was not going to help.

Anji’s initial apprehension at leaving her clients’ accounts in less able hands had turned into anger and indignation during the previous evening and night. At a moment’s notice she was being asked to uproot from her whole life and decamp to the ends of the Earth. Still, she thought ruefully, at least this time it was the ends of her own planet rather than the farthest reaches of time and space. But whatever the excuse and despite the fact she was being paid for it, Anji could not dispel the feeling that she had been traded as impersonally and as commercially as one of the commodities she herself bought and sold and shifted round the globe.

The driver was American, stiff and proper. He all but stood to attention as he held open the back door of the large black car for her. She wasn’t awake enough to register the route they took out of London. They did not set off towards Heathrow, so she assumed they were going to Gatwick.

But they weren’t. When they drew up at the barrier and a uniformed guard – a soldier – approached and demanded in an American accent that the driver show his pass, Anji began to wonder what she was getting into.

The soldier saluted the driver. ‘The Colonel’s waiting for you on the plane, sir.’

‘The “Colonel”?’ Anji asked him as they drove into the base.

‘Mr Hartford was in the army,’ the driver said. ‘He has a lot of contacts.’

‘I guess he does,’ Anji said. They were passing low huts and prefabricated buildings. She did not have to ask where they were headed. In front of them was a wide tarmac strip – a runway. And there was only one aircraft on it. Hi‐tech fighters and larger refuelling and cargo planes were arranged along the side of the runway and across the airfield. But at one end, evidently being readied for take‐off, was a huge transport plane.

Anji had no idea what type of aircraft it was, apart from ‘huge’. It was the only plane she saw that wasn’t painted in camouflage military style. It was a gleaming white, with no markings she could see. The back end of the plane was hanging down to form a ramp, and a group of soldiers was using a forklift truck to lift a large palette draped with tarpaulins up into the plane. The car drew up beside a set of wheeled steps that led up into the front of the plane.

Hartford greeted her inside and showed her to a seat at the back of the cabin. It was like the first class compartment of an airliner, except much wider. The whole passenger area must take up about a fifteenth of the main body of the plane, Anji thought. The rest was free for cargo.

‘Sorry about all the cloak and dagger stuff,’ Hartford said. ‘But it’s quicker and easier, and you’ll be surprised to hear it’s cheaper to operate from here than the commercial airports.’

There was a spare seat next to her, but out of habit Anji stuffed her shoulder bag under the seat in front. At the front of the seating area she could see there was a conference room, complete with a large oval table and upright office chairs. The chairs, incongruously, had seatbelts.

She looked round as she sat down. She had a window seat, and through the small plastic porthole she could see the driver of her car handing her luggage up to someone who was out of sight. There were about twenty seats in the plane. Hartford sat at the front, talking earnestly and quietly to a tall black man. There were ten other people in the area, Anji counted. Three other women. Hartford was by far the oldest. The others were all in their late twenties, she guessed. All immaculate in suits. Anji was wearing comfortable trousers and a loose blouse with a thin jacket. She felt underdressed.

Everyone else had short hair. Perhaps there was a hair code as well as a dress code at Hartford‐Waverly. Perhaps they would ask her to trim her own bob into the almost crewcut style (style?) that the other women had. She ran her hand through her hair while she could and looked out of the window again. She was sitting bolt upright, unconsciously mirroring the pose of the other people.

‘OK, team, listen up.’ The black man was on his feet. ‘We take off in five. So get belted in and prepare for a long journey. If you can catch some zees, then that’s a good idea.’

It was a miracle, Anji thought, that something this big could get off the ground. Hartford brought her a coffee soon after take‐off.

‘It’ll be a long flight,’ he said. ‘I have to debrief my team about their previous assignment, and get them up to speed on this one, I’m afraid.’ She thought he was asking her to sit in. ‘That’s no problem, Alex. Just call me when you get to the relevant topics.’

He shook his head. ‘I’d rather you kept an open mind, if that’s OK. I’d like your unbiased opinions and assessment. I was just apologising for the fact we’ll be leaving you to your own devices for a lot of the time.’ He nodded to the conference room. ‘There’s a galley to the side. Help yourself to coffee. There’s nothing stronger, I’m afraid.’ He smiled as if about to make a joke. ‘Company policy.’

Great, Anji thought as she tried to get to sleep. I’m on my way to Siberia, but they won’t tell me why. And I’ve got landed with an outfit where they shave your head and deny you access to alcohol. Sleep was beginning to seem like the only sensible option.

Since Hartford didn’t seem about to introduce her to anyone, Anji made a point of going round the cabin and shaking people’s hands, She had managed perhaps forty minutes sleep. Then she got herself another coffee and did the rounds on the way back to her seat at the back of the cabin.

Hartford was in the conference room, preparing his pitch, probably. ‘I’m Anji, Anji Kapoor. Hi,’ she said to the tall black man who had addressed them all at the start of the flight. He was leaning forward in his seat, his shoes off and his toes pawing at the cabin carpet. It was an almost animalistic movement.

‘I know,’ he said without looking up. He was almost as tall as she was, although he was still sitting down. He shook her hand without smiling, ‘Bill Thorpe,’ he rumbled. ‘I’m Mr Hartford’s personal assistant.’ He smiled thinly as he said it. He offered no further conversation, so Anji moved on.

There was no way she would remember all their names. Not till she spent some time with them, at least. There was a Mike, and a Joe, There was Manda and Cath. Was one of the men called ‘Hump’ or had she misheard? She gave up listening. None of them seemed interested in her anyway.

The last person she spoke to, sitting nearest to her, was the last of the women. She actually smiled when Anji introduced herself. ‘Sonya Gamblin,’ she replied. ‘Pleased to have you along.’

‘I’m glad someone is,’ Anji said. ‘So what do you do?’

‘Do?’ Sonya seemed at a loss for a moment.

‘I thought you were all accountants or auditors,’ Anji said.

‘Yeah. Right. Well,’ Sonya said as if deciding which to be, ‘I’m an auditor, The kind that sorts out trouble, you know?’

The man in the row in front – Wences, was it? – gave a short laugh as he overheard. ‘Sonya, you are trouble,’ he quipped.

‘Don’t you forget it,’ Sonya told him.

They both seemed to have lost interest in Anji, so she took her coffee back to her seat and stared at the clouds outside. There was something wrong here. Something that made her spine itch.

She must have dozed off. When Anji glanced at her watch, she saw that several hours had passed. Blearily, she looked round. They seemed to be flying through the night, and the lighting had reduced to a dull glow. The cabin was empty.

Anji shifted position, trying to see further forward. Her foot banged into her shoulder bag under the seat in front, and she dragged it out and dumped it on the spare seat beside her. She could see the others now. They were all in the conference room at the front of the cabin. The lights were on, but from where she was sitting she could not see the board or screen that Hartford was pointing at, that they were all so intent upon.

She rummaged through her bag and pulled out the book she was reading. It was a detective novel by someone she had never heard of, but the enthusiastic press quotes and review comments on the back cover made it sound like she should have. She wasn’t far into it, but so far she was hardly enthralled.

As much to stretch her legs as anything, Anji unbuckled her seat belt and stood up. She opened the overhead locker and hefted her shoulder bag into it. There was a bag in there already – a large khaki kitbag. A printed plastic label hung free from one of the carrying straps: ‘Sgt S Gamblin’ and a serial number.

‘Sergeant?’ Anji murmured. She dosed the locker, and opened the next one along. There was another, identical kitbag in it. With an identical label. Identical except that this one read: ‘Pte W Jonas’.

Glancing at the conference room to satisfy herself that everyone was busy, Anji checked the locker behind her seat. It was beside a heavy door that led into the cargo compartment.

Sure enough, there was a kitbag in this locker too. ‘Pte H Harries’.

What was going on here? Were the auditors all ex‐military? Perhaps their job was to audit a secret military base. In Siberia. That would explain what Hartford had called the ‘cloak and dagger stuff’.

But that did not explain why they needed to take a massive cargo plane, Anji decided. And since she was standing right beside it, there was no harm in trying the door through to the hold, was there? After all, it was sure to be locked. But just to satisfy her curiosity…

The door was not locked. It opened easily when she swung the heavy handle across. Well, if it was unlocked, there was no reason why she shouldn’t take a look. They had, after all, left her to her own devices. With a furtive glance back at the conference room, Anji stepped into the darkness of the hold, and closed the door quietly behind her.

There was some light. A dim, red emergency glow. Enough to illuminate the nearest of the palettes of supplies. She took a step forward and her foot caught on something – a piece of wood. She almost tripped, but regained her balance. It was a short plank torn away from one of the palettes.

As Anji’s eyes adjusted, she could make out more of the palettes of supplies and equipment. They seemed to stretch forever into tile red glow. As she approached the first of the mounds, she realised just how big they were. She was dwarfed by the size of the tarpaulin‐covered mountain.

One of the corners was not tied securely, and Anji was able to lift it and peer underneath. To see a pile of wooden crates. Not terribly helpful or inspiring. Beside it was a neat stack of rucksacks. On closer examination in the dim light she could see there were cords attached, printed instructions and warnings. Parachutes. She counted – there were sixteen of them.

The next palette was more intriguing: underneath the heavy cover was a vehicle. It was painted predominantly white, but with patches and uneven stripes of black. It had heavy tracks in place of wheels – a snow‐cat. A snow‐cat painted in camouflage colours.

There were several snow‐cats, many crates, and eventually a smaller pile of wooden boxes. One of the boxes just’ under the open flap of the tarpaulin had the lid prised open. Anji could see the gap between the lid and the box, could see the dark shadows of the nails that no longer secured the lid. She climbed under the tarpaulin, managing to leave an opening for the light. There was a red emergency bulb above the palette and as she pulled the lid of the crate aside the interior was illuminated with a dull red glow.

Grenades. The crate was full of grenades. Anji was no expert, she didn’t know the type or the make or how destructive they were – even if they contained smoke or gas or explosive. But they were unmistakably grenades.

There was a crowbar lying beside the box. Whoever had checked the contents, for whatever reason, had presumably left it there. She used it to pry off the lid of the next of the boxes. To find it was full of guns. Machine guns. The next was full of ammunition – belts of bullets carefully folded and packed.

After that the light suddenly dimmed, and she heard the cough. It was a polite, deliberately‐clearing‐the‐throat cough.

Anji could see the silhouette of the man who was blocking out the light. He beckoned for her to come out from under the tarpaulin.

It was Hartford. The tall black man, Thorpe, was beside him. And Thorpe was holding a gun.

‘Now that is a pity, you know, Miss Kapoor.’ Hartford’s voice was menacingly quiet. ‘I was so hoping that when this was all over, We wouldn’t have to kill you.’

35: The Great Attractor

The bell jangled in the distance. Maxwell Curtis settled back in the chair and waited for Holiday to appear. His hands held the book tightly, as if afraid it might escape from him. He was fixated on a single paragraph on a single page of the handwritten journal. His heavy finger traced down the margin as he read it again. And again.

‘You rang, sir?’ Holiday’s voice was cultured, yet there was an element almost of disdain in his tone.

‘I’ve found it’ Curtis breathed ‘Just as you suspected. Exactly as you said.’

‘Indeed, sir?’ The large manservant took a step closer. The light of the evening fire flickered across his dark suit and threw his face into and out of shadow as he bent to look at the book. The light flowed over and round him as if desperate to illuminate Curtis, falling towards the seated man and washing over the book he held.

‘An ice formation. A cave. Just as you said.’

‘So I see, sir.’

‘There is even a map’ Curtis thumbed ahead several pages and showed him the sketch.’

Holiday nodded. There was satisfaction in his voice now. ‘They should be able to find it from that. Even Naryshkin can follow a map.’ He straightened up. ‘If you are sure it is the place.’

‘We found ourselves in a vast cavern, apparently hewn from the glacier itself,’ Curtis read. His voice was shaking with emotion and excitement. ‘And here look: Deep within the ice, we could see tiny flickers of light, dancing flames held stiff as if frozen in time.’ He looked up at the big man. ‘This is it!’ he hissed.

‘So it would seem,’ Holiday murmured.

Curtis pulled himself to his feet with an effort, brandishing the journal and jabbing at Holiday with it. ‘We know that low temperatures, close to absolute zero slow down light. And we know that slow light is what we need. Forget Naryshkin’s cold room and his cynicism. Here we have it – a material that slows light perhaps to the point where we can finally achieve our objectives.’ He breathed heavily, sagged slightly with the effort. ‘Finally.’

Holiday reached out to steady his employer. The manservant was not tall, though he was taller than Curtis, but he was heavily built – solid. ‘The next communications window is in about three hours,’ Holiday said as he helped Curtis back into his chair. ‘Do you want me to arrange a satellite link up with the Institute?’

‘Yes,’ Curtis nodded emphatically. ‘Yes, as soon as we can.’

‘I could send him an e-mail? Scan the map from the journal and send it over to them now?’

Curtis considered. ‘Do that as well,’ he said. ‘But I want to talk to Naryshkin. Face to face.’

They got some passing trade in The Black Swan. But not much. Mostly it was locals, villagers. They did not serve food, and the beer was unremarkable. So there was little reason for anyone to travel to the pub.

Leo King knew his clientele. So he knew at once that the man who walked in at seven o’clock that winter Thursday evening was not a regular. He would have remembered him if he had ever been to the Swan before, he was sure; with his shoulder length hair curling in the damp air, his threadbare waistcoat, his wide smile and those deep eyes that seemed to take in so much without really trying.

But it was not the man’s appearance that surprised King. ‘I didn’t hear a car,’ he said as the man approached the bar and smiled broadly. He nodded at the people sitting at the low round tables. He paused to glance at Ollie Dickerson’s hand of dominoes, and raised an eyebrow as if he knew already who would win.

‘Nor did I,’ Alan Marks agreed with King as the man joined them. ‘Walked did you?’ he asked the man.

‘In this weather?’ the man seemed surprised. ‘It’s raining hard out there. ‘Cats and dogs.’ He grinned. ‘And mice and frogs too, come to that.’

King looked at the man closely. His long‐fingered hands were resting on the counter, emerging from faded cuffs that seemed too big for his thin wrists. There was no hint of damp, no sign of rain on him.

‘We didn’t hear your car,’ Marks said.

‘Really?’ the man replied. His expression seemed to become effortlessly enigmatic.

‘What will you have?’ King asked when it was apparent that the stranger was not going to elaborate.

‘Given the inclement nature of the elements, I think a small brandy is called for.’ Somehow there was a pile of coins on the counter top when the man moved his hands away. ‘I hope you gentlemen will join me,’ he said.

‘I don’t accept drinks from people I don’t know,’ King started to say as he fetched the brandy. But somehow it came out as: ‘Thank you. Don’t mind if I do.’ He frowned, and refilled Alan Marks’s pint from the beer engine.

An hour later, everyone in the pub was clustered round the bar. He was called the Doctor, and his soft voice and calm, amused manner had soon drawn people into conversation. He had commented favourably on the brandy and told them an amusing story about Napoleon and how he used to like a tipple. He had done a trick with a beer mat that King signed and which then disappeared only to be found again under Albert Greville’s pint on the other side of the bar. He listened to their stories of local life and how the new bypass would ruin everything, and he laughed with them at the story of old Jed Meacher and the cow in the ditch. And he bought them all drinks.

‘So come on then,’ King demanded eventually. ‘Tell us – how come we didn’t hear your car?’

‘My, er, vehicle is parked about half a mile away,’ the Doctor said. ‘I have a bit of trouble navigating with any accuracy.’

‘Usually that’s more of a problem when you leave a pub, not when you start out,’ Marks said with a cackle of laughter.

‘But if you walked,’ King persisted, ‘why aren’t you wet?’

‘Wet?’ The Doctor seemed surprised.

‘Yes. You said it was raining outside. Cats and dogs. And so on.’

‘Oh yes.’ He sipped his brandy and smiled. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I have an umbrella. I left it to drip in the porch.’

This caused general laughter. But King was still not convinced. ‘Must be a very good umbrella,’ he said.

‘Oh well, it’s just an umbrella. You know.’ The Doctor leaned across the counter and smiled. ‘Though I have made one or two refinements to the basic design.’ His eyes took on a faraway aspect, staring into the distance beyond the bar. ‘I got rather drenched in Spain, I seem to recall.’ He stood upright again. ‘So who lives in the big house, across the river?’ he asked. ‘I walked past it.’

‘That was a long walk,’ one of the locals said with a laugh.

‘Perhaps I drove past it then,’ the Doctor said. ‘Does it matter?’

‘That’s Mr Curtis,’ Marks told him.

‘Maxwell Curtis?’

‘Why do I get the impression that you already know?’ King asked as he refilled the Doctor’s glass.

‘Thank you. I had heard he lived round here. Famous, isn’t he?’ The Doctor looked round at everyone, eyebrows raised expectantly.

‘Used to be,’ Marks said. ‘More of a recluse now. Made his fortune, so I hear, now he keeps himself to himself.’

‘Doesn’t pop down here for a swift half very often then?’ the Doctor supposed.

This drew the most laughter so far.

‘His man, Holiday, comes in once in a while,’ King admitted. ‘He’s a strange one and no mistake. Sits by the fire and reads his paper. You know he has his own wine sent over. A case of it arrives here every couple of months. All paid for, then he pays again when he orders it. Says it wouldn’t seem right not to.’ He shook his head. ‘Like I said, a weird one that.’

‘Never see Curtis though,’ Marks said. ‘Made his money with that act of his. You’ve seen it on the telly?’

‘Not that I recall,’ the Doctor replied. ‘What exactly did he do?’

‘Not sure exactly. Some sort of trick wasn’t it? Got bowling balls and things to roll towards him. “The Great Attractor”, they called him.’

‘Like those human magnets who stick cutlery all over their bodies,’ someone chimed in.

‘What, all over?’ someone else asked with a guffaw.

‘So what does he do now?’ the Doctor was asking. ‘I mean, it must be pretty boring, sitting about at home. Surrounded by cutlery and bowling balls.’

They laughed again at that.

‘Research, I heard,’ King said. ‘Some sort of sponsorship. Experiments, origins of the universe or something. There was that article, remember?’

He was talking to Marks, but it was the Doctor who answered. ‘Oh yes,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve read it.’

They watched him go from the window. The rain had finally eased, and the light above the pub sign illuminated the Doctor as he walked away down the road. His head was bowed, his hands in his pockets, his tread purposeful and measured.

‘He’s forgotten his brolly,’ Bert Draper said.

‘Run after him with it, Bert,’ King said. ‘He’ll want it if the rain starts again.’

Bert Draper pulled on his coat and opened the door to the bar. There was a small porch area outside, before the outer door. He held the inner door open as he looked round.

‘No brolly here,’ he said at last.

King frowned.

‘Must be one of those collapsing ones,’ Marks suggested. ‘He’ll have it in his pocket.’

‘Yes,’ Leo King said absently. ‘Yes, that must be it.’ He watched the silhouette recede into the darkness of the night.

34: Hunter and Hunted

Night was drawing in, shadowing the brutal landscape in darkness. Since leaving the strange ‘window’ behind them, Fitz and the others had all picked up the pace. Ahead, the dark silhouette of the castle loomed over them, as if about to topple out of the mountainside itself.

For the first time since they had moved on from the window, Fitz allowed a sense of relief to creep into his bones. With luck they would be at the plateau where the castle was built before it was completely dark. With luck they would have somewhere to shelter tonight, something other than a flimsy tent to stave off the cold of the night.

But even as he was thinking this, the savage roar they had heard earlier echoed round the mountain pass. A moment later, another, slightly higher‐pitched howl answered.

‘Strange how the sound carries in the still air,’ George said. His voice was tense with nerves, asking for reassurance.

But Caversham was not about to give it. ‘That was close,’ he said quietly. ‘Perhaps fifty yards behind us.’

‘But, that means…’ Graul started. He broke off and turned nervously to look down the uneven slope.

‘Come on.’ Price strode out, beckoning the others to follow. ‘Before they get our scent.’

‘Our scent?’ George gave a short nervous laugh. ‘You can’t be serious!’

‘This is very serious,’ Caversham said shortly. They started to run.

‘Run’ was, Fitz decided, an exaggeration. The best they could manage in their huge backpacks was a slightly faster stagger. But when the animal roar came again from behind them, it sounded more distant and he began to wonder if their panic was justified.

Caversham had dropped back so that he was last in the line, his rifle unslung. Graul was leading the way, Price close behind him. When George slipped with a cry, and crashed to the ground, it was Price who was at once with him, pulling him up.

As he turned back to help his friend adjust his pack and dust the snow off him, Fitz fancied he saw something behind them. Just a hint, a shadow of a shadow – a large area of darkness that was moving up the slope after them. A trick of the night, he hoped.

When the roar came again, he felt his whole body tense. It was surprise first. The fear came a moment later. Fitz was still looking back down the slope, so he was looking at Caversham as the explorer turned quickly, swinging the rifle.

‘That was ahead of us,’ Caversham said.

‘I know,’ Fitz replied. He seemed to be’ rooted to the spot, his feet frozen to the icy ground.

‘One of them has circled round and is waiting for us.’

‘I know!’ Fitz said again, too loudly. ‘But what do we do?’

Whatever Caversham’s reply was, it was cut off by another howling screech. But this time, the cry of a human.

Graul was at the front now, furthest up the slope. And in front of him, looming out of the dusk, was a nightmare creature. Fitz could barely see it through the gathering gloom. He got an impression of dark, scaly skin, a long head most of which seemed to be mouth. Of deep‐set pale eyes glinting in the night, of a creature perhaps eight feet tall rearing back on its hind legs and roaring back at Graul as the man screamed in terror.

Then in a sudden, darting movement that belied its size the monstrous animal fell forwards on to all fours, its head smashing into Graul’s shoulder and sending him flying. Graul crashed into the snow at the side of the path, his arms and legs scrabbling as he tried to get up again.

But the creature was already lurching forwards on its hind legs. One of the forelegs lashed out, smacking Graul across the face, coming away stained and darkened.

Caversham was aiming the rifle, shouting at Price to get out of the way as the big man shucked off his heavy pack and ran to help. The creature’s head snapped up at the sound of the shot. Caversham worked the bolt, chambered another round.

Fitz was still frozen into immobility, not knowing what to do. He felt George’s terrified hand on his arm.

Another shot. The creature ignored it, lowered its head, jaws gaping, saliva dripping.

Graul’s scream echoed round the pass. Cut off as the savage teeth lamped down on his neck. Became a whimper. Was silenced completely.

The creature was rearing up again now, something hanging from its mouth as it chewed, as it roared defiantly, triumphantly, at the bullets that ricocheted around. It was answered by the lumbering shadow further down the pass.

‘We’re trapped,’ George said. His voice was stretched out like piano wire.

‘We have to get past that one. Make for the castle,’ Caversham said. He was reloading the rifle, running towards the huge creature as it feasted.

Price, incongruously, was putting his pack back on. Fitz helped him. Perhaps they could edge past the thing while it was busy.

But even as they approached, it stepped away from the broken, bloodied corpse in the red snow and turned towards them.

‘I only have one chance at this,’ Caversham yelled at them. ‘When I fire run like blazes. Don’t wait for me.’

‘What?’ Fitz yelled back. ‘Don’t be stupid, we can outrun it.’

‘I doubt it.’ He was taking aim. ‘Look at the length of its back legs.

Fitz would rather not look at any part of it. ‘You loony, you’ll just annoy it!’ But his words were drowned out by the roars coming from behind them as more of the creatures caught the scent of death; by the percussive blast from Caversham’s rifle; by the screech of pain and anger of the creature.

Then they were running. The creature ignored them, batting at its face with its forepaws. Behind them, Fitz could just see Caversham reloading, walking calmly, slowly towards the creature, taking aim again as he was almost within the thing’s reach.

Yet another shot. And this time the roar was cut off. The creature’s eye exploded, spattering blood and fluid across its long jaw, and the massive beast crashed to the ground.

‘I told you to run!’ Caversham caught them up easily, led them forward. They staggered as rapidly as they could away from the dead monster, away from Graul’s broken remains, away from the roars and howls of the animals behind them.

33: Taking Flight

They were obviously not expecting her to give them any trouble. Thorpe ushered Anji back to the cabin, an amused smile on his face. He still had his shoes off and he padded after her like a huge, predatory cat.

But Anji’s mind was racing Despite Hartford’s words, they would hardly have tricked her into joining them on this flight if they intended simply to kill her. Which meant she was valuable to them – somehow – alive. Which in turn meant (if she crossed her fingers) that they would not shoot her. Probably.

She reached this conclusion for the second time, still without finding a flaw in it apart from the fact that there was a man with a gun behind her, just as Hartford pulled open the door and went through. He held it open for Anji to follow. Beyond him she could see the rest of his team watching, waiting. They all had a hungry look about them. They were alert and ready for some sort of action.

Once she was in the cabin, strapped – tied? – into her seat, there was no escape. She would be going wherever they were taking her and doing whatever it was they wanted her to do. So, now or never, she decided as Thorpe stepped though into the cabin behind her.

Anji smiled at him, stepped aside to let him pass. He did, moving ahead of her, keeping the gun stead – aimed at her chest. He nodded with his head for her to return to her seat, and Anji made to do as he instructed.

But then, still smiling, she stamped as hard as she could on his foot. She could only guess at the pain he felt from the expression on the man’s face. She wished she’d been wearing her stilettos rather than the sensible shoes with wide heels. Now was the moment, in that split second as she turned Anji knew that if he was willing to shoot her, he would do it now.

She did not wait to see She was through the doorway and back into the hold, slamming the door shut as violently as she could and feeling it connect with Thorpe. The door clicked into place and she pulled down the locking lever. There was no way she could hold it shut, but there was the piece of wood she had tripped on, lying on the floor nearby. She jammed it behind the lever. The lever was moving now, yanked fiercely from the other side of the door. But the wood held it in place and the door remained closed.

Think, think, think. Anji paced up and down, massaging her forehead as she struggled to decide what to do. There was a thumping from the other side of the door now. The lever was moving slightly further with each attempt, the wood beginning to splinter. It wouldn’t hold them out for long.

Her pacing had brought Anji to the pile of parachutes and she looked down at them. That was no use. There was no way she was prepared to jump out of an aeroplane even with a parachute. She turned to walk on, then stopped. Hang on – they wouldn’t know that. For all they knew, she hoped, Anji might be the South East England free‐fall champion. She grabbed the parachute on the top of the pile and ran towards the back of the plane.

There was a set of controls by the opening ramp. A red button and a green one on a panel that hung down on a heavy cable. Anji stepped back as far as she could while still holding the control box, and grabbed hold of a metal support stanchion. Then she pressed the red button. It was stiff, and she needed to use both thumbs, arm wrapped round the stanchion.

With a dull ‘thunk’ the button depressed. A moment later there was a grinding sound and the back of the plane started to open. Immediately there was wind – a howling gale that ripped through the cargo bay. The nearest palettes shifted uneasily, sliding slowly towards the back of the plane. If it opened much further, Anji would be struggling not to be sucked out.

Somewhere in the distance there were shouts. She could feel the deck vibrating under her feet. The cabin door was open, they were coming for her. Without another thought, Anji flung the parachute out through the widening gap, into the whirlwind outside. Then she struggled back. There was a dark area behind her, in the corner beside the door. Maybe she would be safer there, sheltered from the gale.

It was a little calmer, but not much. Anji curled into a ball, hugging herself and the shadows. Just as she knew she was about to be rolled across the floor, sucked out of the back of the plane, the wind died. The cargo door was slowly closing – operated from the flight deck, no doubt. She crawled back into the darkness. There was a dip in the float a lower section just large enough for Anji to drop into, out of sight.

She was just in time. Moments later, Thorpe and several others came running to the back of the plane. There was no pretence now. They were carrying guns – big guns. Machine guns or assault rifles mean‐looking.

Hartford marched up to the group by the cargo door. ‘Well?’ he demanded.

‘The palettes are all here, sir,’ Thorpe said.

‘Well, that’s something. What about Miss Kapoor?’

‘One parachute’s gone,’ someone shouted from further back.

‘You think she jumped?’ Thorpe asked.

Hartford glared at him. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ He raised his arm. Anji could see him adjusting something on his wrist – his watch? She remembered how it had bleeped when they shook hands. She could hear the same bleeping now. Hartford swore.

‘Problem, sir?’

‘The GPS only gives a ground fix,’ Hartford said angrily. ‘So the signal gives the same position as the plane.’

‘But she could be several thousand feet below us by now,’ one of the soldiers said.

‘Exactly. Options, Major Thorpe?’

Thorpe took a moment to answer. His faced was bathed in red from the emergency lighting. ‘We’re close to the target zone now. If we drop here, we add maybe a few hours to the schedule but we can pick her up again en route.’

Hartford nodded. ‘Do it.’

Thorpe was already moving back along the cargo bay. ‘Right, let’s get suited up, chutes on. Prepare those palettes – we are go for a drop in five minutes. Sergeant Gamblin, tell Sanders to circle over this position till we’re ready for a drop run.’

It was a long five minutes. Every second of it, Anji was sure they would realise she was still on the plane and search for her. She could imagine them wrenching her out of her hiding place, dragging her back to the cabin at the point of a gun.

But they were all too busy, attaching cables to the palettes and changing into bulky, white, military clothing.

Before long the troops – obviously they were military, how could she ever have thought this lot were accountants? – were lined up by the rear doors. Anji counted fourteen of them in all. Hartford and the dozen others she had seen in the cabin, plus another man from somewhere. Thorpe opened the back doors of the plane using the control that Anji had found. He didn’t need to use both thumbs, she noticed.

The wind was less severe this time, and she guessed the plane was flying lower. She had felt her ears pop a few minutes before. The metal side of the cargo bay slammed into her back as the plane’s nose lifted. Al once the palettes started to roll back towards the opening doors. One by one they reached the edge, tilted, toppled heavily backwards and fell into the white sky outside.

There was another man in white uniform, running to join his fellows. He was sliding and falling towards the open cargo doors, but grabbed by two of the soldiers and helped to find his feet. Then Hartford was giving a thumbs‐up and one by one they threw themselves out of the plane.

When the last of them was gone, Anji climbed out of her hiding place, and made her way carefully to the rear door. She held on tight to the stanchion, as before, and leaned forward to see outside. Behind the plane and far below she could see the gently twisting circles of white parachutes dropping lazily towards the ground. Then a swirl of cloud blew across, and they were lost to sight.

The plane was still tilted at an angle, the engines labouring. It seemed to have straightened out just before Hartford and his team jumped. Anji wondered if she should close the cargo door, but decided against. She knew now that there were controls for it in the cockpit, and the pilot would see that someone was operating the controls in the cargo bay. She wondered why he had not closed the doors himself as she struggled and staggered towards the front of the bay.

The palettes of equipment were all gone, so there was nowhere she could find a gun – even if she was prepared to use it. So Anji picked up the largest piece of the splintered wood she had used to jam the door closed.

The cabin was empty, of course. Most of the lockers had been left open, the kit bags gone. Anji closed the door behind her, and was relieved as the rushing air was stilled. She made her way as quietly as she could towards the cockpit, brandishing the heavy piece of wood, ready to clobber whoever appeared.

But nobody appeared. The cockpit door was swinging open on its hinge, and the cockpit was empty.

Two extra people, she thought. Pilot and co‐pilot.

Sixteen parachutes. Fifteen people jumped. And Anji had thrown her own parachute out of the plane.

She stood for almost a minute in the doorway, looking round in disbelief. This could not be happening. They must have left someone to fly the plane. Mustn’t they? But they hadn’t. The plane was expendable in exactly the way that Anji had reasoned she was not.

Except they thought she was on the ground by now. They were looking for her. It wasn’t much of a triumph that she had fooled them by staying on the plane.

The plane, Anji realised as she stared out of the front windows, that was now flying at low altitude towards a range of mountains. Anji rarely swore without a good reason, and hardly ever in public. But as she slumped into the empty pilot’s seat and stared at the bank of incomprehensible controls in front of her, she decided that she had a very good reason. And there was nobody else on the plane to hear her.

32: The Castle

It was completely dark by the time they reached the castle. Behind him, through the night, they could hear the creatures calling to each other in howls and roars.

‘It’s almost like they’re talking,’ Fitz said.

‘Yes,’ George agreed thoughtfully. ‘And did you see the size of the brain cavity?’

‘Just the size of the teeth.’

It was apparent even before they reached it that the castle was a ruin. The main entrance was a gaping hole where a door or gate had once been. The walls were largely intact, but there were sections where the battlements had fallen and stone was strewn across the landscape.

‘We need to find one building at least that’s fairly intact,’ Caversham said. The buildings were arranged round the courtyard, their mined walls spilling into it. ‘This place is not so easy to defend as I’d hoped.’

‘Defend?’ George asked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Those creatures, whatever they are, have got our scent. They’re accomplished hunters, they won’t just go home, you know.’

‘Accomplished hunters?’ Fitz said. ‘They’re dinosaurs.’

‘I don’t know or care what they are. But they tracked us up the pass, and one or more of them circled ahead of us. They were forcing us into a trap. That makes them hunters.’

Fitz frowned. ‘But that implies they’re intelligent. That they…’ He paused as he recalled his brief conversation with George at the castle’s entrance. ‘They’re able to communicate with each other.’

‘Could dinosaurs do that?’ Price asked.

‘Not as far as we know,’ George said. ‘Their brains were much too small. They hunted, the carnivores, of course. Though not intelligently, not to a plan. But these creatures…’ He shook his head. ‘Who knows.’

Eventually they found a part of the castle that seemed more or less intact. It was the farthest corner from the entrance, and the part most protected by the overhanging mountain behind. The remains of a heavy wooden door hung off its hinges and Caversham ushered them inside before doing his best to pull it shut. Price helped him jam the door into its rotting frame.

‘Are you keeping them out, or trapping us in?’ George asked as they finished the task.

‘Ask me in the morning, when it’s light,’ Caversham told him. ‘Now, we need a fire. For warmth, and so we can use it to defend ourselves if need be.’ He turned to Price. ‘See if you can find some more wood – broken doors, floors, anything. Then bring it back here.’

‘What about us?’ Fitz asked. It seemed sensible to let Caversham give the orders – at least he seemed to have some idea of what he was doing. And Fitz was beginning to think that perhaps the outrageous stories he had told them of his previous exploits had more than just a grain of truth in them.

‘Find somewhere for us to make camp,’ Caversham decided. ‘Ideally a room with more than one entrance so we have an escape route. But we need to be able to seal it. Large enough to start a fire without burning the place down, so ventilated too.’ He smiled. ‘Though I doubt that will be a problem.’

‘We’re on it,’ Fitz assured him. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’ll stay here, on watch. If and when those things arrive, we’ll need as much warning as we can get.’

‘Then what?’ George asked.

‘I’m hoping they hunt at night and sleep in the day. In which case we can put as much distance between them and us tomorrow as we possibly can.’

George frowned. ‘What makes you think that’s the case?’

‘He’s hoping,’ Fitz said. ‘Not constructing a thesis.’

‘And if you’re wrong?’

‘Pray that I’m not,’ Caversham said.

‘It’s a shame we only have the one gun,’ Fitz said as he turned to follow George into the dark interior of the castle. The walls were damp with condensation and the flagged floor was slick with moisture freezing to ice.

Caversham called him back. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘take this.’ He reached into his coat pocket and pulled something out.

‘What is it?’ Fitz took the heavy metal ball and looked at it dubiously, He tossed it from one hand to the other.

Caversham caught it in mid air, and handed it back to Fitz, closing his hand around it. ‘It’s a grenade,’ he said. ‘I have more in my pack, somewhere. To blast the rock away so your friend can find his precious fossils.’

‘Be prepared,’ Fitz muttered. ‘Thanks.’

‘You just be careful with it,’ Caversham replied. ‘Only pull the pin if you’re absolutely sure there’s no alternative.’ He looked round the corridor, ‘Otherwise you could bring this whole place down on top of us.’

31: Cold Comfort

With a clarity born perhaps of helplessness, perhaps of fear, Anji could make out the details of the distant mountains as the plane approached them. She could see the gulleys and glaciers, the snow‐capped peaks and the white‐dusted lower slopes. She was flying over the foothills now, feeling strangely tranquil in her helplessness. So this was how it was all going to end. She breathed out a long breath and tried to relax into the rigid seat.

Was that a castle she could see, nestled into the side of the lower snowy slopes of the mountain? She could see the turrets and the heavy stone walls. And she could see where newer, less substantial buildings had been built on to the outside of the castle, where the courtyard had been roofed over. She would be over it soon, heading towards a mountain that loomed beyond and dwarfed the huge structure.

Anji’s hand was patting the side of the pilot’s chair, beating out a restless rhythm. Almost unconsciously it felt its way round the contours and edges. Was that a lever, a handle? Probably to the adjust seat. She gripped it.

And was suddenly, startlingly alert again. In a second she was out the seat and crouched beside it, staring at the handle she had almost pulled Without thinking. Gazing at the red capitals, the yellow‐and‐black warning stickers.

Then she was back in the seat once more, pulling the straps tightly round her as she clicked on the four‐point harness. ‘EMERGENCY USE ONLY.’ Well, if this wasn’t an emergency she wasn’t sure what was.

She could see black lines running like scars down the side of the mountain, deep trenches in the snow. She could feel every facet of the handle, even the tiny ridges where the black paint had scuffed at the edges. Anji swallowed, closed her eyes, and pulled.

Nothing happened. The lever had not moved.

She tried again. Still nothing. The castle was almost below her now. Was that a group of tiny people just outside what looked like the main gates?

At full stretch, Anji managed to reach round and get both hands on the lever. She yanked with all her might.

It felt as if someone had driven a truck into the small of her back. But before she could scream with the shock and the pain, the canopy above her exploded outwards and her breath was ripped away by the cold air outside. She was flying, strapped to a metal seat that probably weighed more than she did, and flying – no, falling – through the icy air.

Another jolt, less violent but just as painful, following the first, and she was looking up aghast at the umbrella‐shaped parachute above her It seemed rock‐steady as she swayed beneath it. One edge crumpled slightly and for a moment she was terrified the flimsy material would fold up and collapse, leaving her to plummet to the ground below. So far below.

The plane kept going. She fixed her eyes on it, not wanting to look either up or down, watched it flying onwards towards the mountains. Miraculously, it cleared the first peak and kept going… going… Until it was out of sight.

At which point the chair hit the ground, rolled over, and Anji was screaming, thumping at the buckle against her chest, breathing in rasping frozen air.

She staggered away from the ejector seat, leaving the parachute to bellow and roll in the wind. The wind that was tearing through her thin clothes and making her shiver. The snow was over her ankles, into her suddenly not‐so‐sensible shoes. The tears were freezing on her face.

And somewhere in the distance was the sound of an explosion. Muffled, muted, but clearly audible. A pall of black and orange smoke rose above the mountain peaks. Between Anji and the crashed plane was the castle. It rose like a mountain in its own right, and she staggered towards it, falling almost immediately. Up again, and falling again. So cold, so very cold. She could no longer feel her fingers. Her body was shaking so much she thought she would fall to pieces.

‘I should have stayed in the plane,’ she managed to gasp through chattering teeth. Her only hope was to get to the castle, to reach shelter. But as she staggered and fell and crawled towards it, Anji thought it looked a lifetime away.

30: Discovery

‘Are you serious?’

‘I can assure you that I am entirely serious.’ Maxwell Curtis’s face filled the monitor. The image flickered and static rippled over his features.

‘And on the basis of this journal,’ Naryshkin said, ‘you expect me to trek across the tundra in, search of… ‘He waved his hand in annoyance and perplexity. ‘In search of ice.’

‘Not just ice!’ Despite the weakness of the satellite link and the distortion, Curtis’s passion was clearly audible. ‘This is it, don’t you see Vladimir? The end of our journey – the very material we need to complete the experiments.’

‘In a hundred‐year‐old journal of a lost expedition?’

Curtis sighed, his enthusiasm giving way at last to a frown, ‘It isn’t far from the Institute. At least go and look.’ He paused, before adding: ‘Or must I find someone else to run the Institute, someone who will this small thing for me?’

Naryshkin was astounded. ‘Are you threatening me?’

‘I hope I don’t have to. What is the problem here, Vladimir? Why not indulge me. Half a day, that’s all, to get there and see for yourself. Half a day that may save months if not years of effort. And if there’s nothing in it, what have you wasted?’

Naryshkin was shaking his head. ‘All right, all right,’ he said quietly ‘Read me the passage again. I received the map that Holiday e-mailed, but tell me again what it is we are looking for.’

Curtis’s eyes were dark circles on the cloudy screen as he smiled. ‘I promise you will not be wasting your time,’ he said. ‘And soon I shall be there to share in your excitement and success.’

There did not seem to be time to encode a message and e-mail it. In any case, the incursion team was close enough now for a verbal report. The base of Miriam’s hairbrush was the transmitter, the bristles poking through the mesh of the concealed sneaker. Her voice was real‐time encrypted, but there was still a chance that someone would register the transmission, so she had to be quick.

‘He’s taking Yuri and Penny with him, but he won’t say where. Just that it’s a mad fool expedition that our sponsor has insisted on.’

The reply crackled through the dark hairs that were caught in the bristles of the brush. ‘OK, we’ll take it from here. We should acquire visual contact soon. Report back when they return or if you learn anything more. Out.’

‘Oh yes,’ Miriam said, remembering. ‘Out.’

But the speaker was already silent, save for the hiss of static like the cold wind outside.

The three figures were bulky and clumsy and easily visible in their brightly coloured parkas. Swathed with thermal material and stumping along through the snow, it was impossible to distinguish male from female.

‘Three of them, just as she said.’

A group of harsh white figures watched from behind a ridge. The image of the three from the castle was relayed from the binoculars of one of them to a small screen that the others were watching.

‘Get a direction, plot a probable course. Let’s see if we can work out where they’re headed.’

‘Sir.’

‘B Group to follow them.’ The man’s voice was crisp, unaccented. ‘Tell Charles I don’t want them to see his team.’

A voice crackled in the man’s ear.

‘Got that, sir. They won’t see us, because we’re not here. We’re following now.’

‘Here it is.’ Naryshkin was surprised. He had expected to find nothing. But here, just as Curtis had said, just as was marked on the map, was an opening in the snow and ice. Peering inside, he could see a tunnel leading deep down into the glacier.

‘We’re going in there?’ Yuri demanded, stamping his feet in an effort to keep warm. ‘Is it safe?’

Penny Ashworth was already examining the sides of the entrance. ‘It seems safe enough. If we attach a rope to that boulder over there, we should be able to lower ourselves in.’

‘And get out again, I hope,’ Naryshkin added.

‘Funny,’ Penny said as she lowered the rope down into the tunnel. ‘It looks as if there’s light down there.’

‘Reflection, perhaps,’ Yuri suggested. ‘Shall I go first?’

‘No,’ Naryshkin told him. ‘It may be dangerous. I shall go first.’

Yuri shrugged. ‘You’re the boss,’ he said in Russian.

It was light. Naryshkin could see the way down the tunnel quite clearly – more clearly the lower he went. It was not a long distance. Perhaps thirty feet. The tunnel emerged into a cavern, and he dropped from the tunnel entrance to the floor. The rest of the rope was coiled lazily on the icy floor.

‘I’m down,’ Naryshkin called, tugging on the rope to let the others know he was safe and had arrived. He did not wait for a response. He was staring across the cavern, pushing his torch back into his pocket, mouth hanging open at what he saw.

The light, the ice, the glow of frozen fire. And on the far side of cavern, frozen solid – caught in a moment of time…

‘Good grief!’ Penny breathed behind him. ‘What have we found?’

29: Involvement

It was so cold now that Anji could feel nothing. She had even stopped shivering, which she was sure was not good. Not good at all. Her entire life was a rolling, crawling movement. She was detached, almost as if she were watching herself make hesitant progress towards the castle in the distance. She could not even feel the hard lumps of rock and ice that bruised her body as she rolled over them, not any more.

Except when she summoned the energy to lift her head and stare blearily through the white‐out towards her destination, Anji’s entire world was the next six or eight inches of monotonous snow, of ice, of grey rock poking through close to her head.

Snow – ice – rock.

Reach forwards a few inches and drag herself forwards.

Snow – ice – rock.

Reach forwards a few inches.

Snow – ice – boots.

Reach forwards…

Boots?

There was a pair of boots just in front of Anji’s face. White boots, from which loose white trousers emerged and flapped in the chill breeze. She could feel the ice in her eyebrows, stinging in her eyes and her nostrils as she struggled to look upwards, to see where the legs went.

A pair of white‐gloved hands grabbed her firmly under the armpits and dragged her to her feet. Her own legs trailed under her, unable to support her weight. Something was shoved at her, pressed into her mouth and she was drinking a warm, scalding warm liquid, choking, coughing. A coat wrapped round her.

A face. Dark beneath a white hood. Smiling, amused, triumphant.

‘Miss Kapoor,’ Thorpe said, his voice muzzy in the cold, ‘we saw your parachute. How nice to renew your acquaintance.’

They let her get her breath back, sat her in the cabin of a snow‐cat and massaged some feeling back into her legs and arms. She was too tired and cold to resist. She could not run, and anyway there was nowhere to run to.

‘You’ve led us a merry dance,’ Hartford said. He handed her a steaming mug and she clutched and held it tightly. Their breath was a cool mist despite the heating in the vehicle. ‘Almost killed yourself several times.’ He smiled, white teeth within white hood. ‘But you’re too valuable to us, you know.’

‘I gathered,’ she stuttered through her clenched teeth.

‘We’ll always find you.’

‘I know. With your watch‐thing.’ It was getting easier to talk now. The coffee, if it was coffee, was thawing her throat. She might even be able to taste it or smell it soon.

Hartford nodded. ‘You know about that?’

‘Lucky guess,’ she told him.

‘“Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?”’ Hartford said quietly. ‘It detects chronic radiation. A useful little gadget.’

She said nothing, and wondered what he was talking about. No doubt he’d tell her if it was important. Right now she just wanted to curl up warm and sleep.

‘You’d never have made it to the Institute, you know,’ he was saying.

‘The castle?’ she wondered.

He nodded again, refilled the cup from a flask. ‘You’d have been dead in a few minutes more.’

‘Are you fishing for gratitude?’ She hoped it was plain from her tone that he wouldn’t get it. But even to Anji her voice sounded like a weak croak.

A tap on the window by her head startled Anji. Through the frosting, she could see Thorpe giving Hartford a thumbs‐up. ‘All set,’ he mouthed.

Hartford nodded. ‘Move out in five,’ he shouted. ‘I want it all over in an hour so we can report in on schedule.’

Thorpe waved to show he had heard and understood, then disappeared back into the white landscape.

‘Since the plane was at its lowest over this sector, and the communications lag started from here, we know the Institute is the source. It’s the only thing here.’ Hartford smiled at her, as if he had worked out her darkest secret. ‘So you see there’s no point in lying.’

‘Obviously not,’ Anji said slowly. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it. Just one thing, though.’

‘Yes?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

Hartford’s smile froze. ‘There’s no point denying it,’ he sald sharply. ‘We know the Naryshkin Institute is experimenting with time technology – it has to be. And we know you are involved.’

Anji huddled into her coat. ‘Do you? I’ve never been here before in my life.’

In answer Hartford held out his arm, the watch‐like device on his wrist flashing and bleeping frantically. ‘Chronic radiation,’ he said. ‘That’s how we tracked you to London. Even in the States we got a strong enough signal to triangulate.’ He smiled with evident satisfaction. ‘There’s no point in lying, you see We know you’re connected to the experiments they’re doing here. Because we know you’ve travelled in time.’

For the first time he seemed disconcerted when Anji started to laugh.

28: Body of Evidence

Architecturally, it was a mess. The Doctor clicked his tongue and tutted to himself as he walked round the building. Somewhere in the middle of it he was pretty sure there was an Elizabethan manor house. But the Victorians, Edwardians and various other bastions of architectural design had added to the original until it was unrecognisable. As well as that, the external shell of the house seemed to have bracing struts and heavy wooden beams added at many points, without any apparent regard for aesthetics.

But despite his interest in the architecture, the Doctor reminded himself that he was there for a reason. He found a side door well away from the lighted windows and set to work. There did not appear to be an alarm system, and the lock was easy enough. Before long he was making his way down uneven darkened passages towards the centre of the house.

The building’s inside was as haphazard as the exterior. Walls and ceilings seemed to be bent into strange angles. Doors failed to fit properly. The paintwork was faded and peeling. Whoever lived here seemed to have no interest in the upkeep of the property, the Doctor decided.

He paused in what was evidently a library, reading along the titles on the shelves by the moonlight that shone in through the casement. Now that he was inside it was turning into a lovely clear night, he decided ruefully. Most of the shelves were dusty, the books obviously not moved for years. But close to the door he found several rows of books that were newer, not dusty, arranged neatly and purposefully. Many of them had dog‐eared post‐it notes sticking out of them.

‘Hawking, Feynman…’ The Doctor brushed his finger along the spines as he read. They were books on cosmology. The origins of the universe. Black holes and nebulae… The next shelf was a collection of books about conjuring and stage magic. Christopher Priest’s The Prestige was lodged amongst the text books and histories. Carter Beats the Devil was pushed to one side.

The Doctor was about to open the door and move on, when a thought occurred to him. This was an old house. He had been picking his way carefully through it, desperate not to be heard. Yet not once had he grimaced at a creaking floorboard, not once had the house attempted to betray him. On the one hand, of course, that was a good thing. But on the other, it was decidedly odd. He sucked in his cheeks, thought for a moment, then jumped up and down.

The only sound was the soft soles of his shoes as they landed on the wooden boards. There was no give in the floor at all. The Doctor kept bouncing, jumping, moving round the room like a demented kangeroo, increasingly desperate to find a single floorboard that creaked or groaned. But there was none.

He sat down on the floor to get his breath back. ‘How very odd,’ he murmured to the dusty air.

In the centre of the library was a large reading table. Arranged around it were several upright chairs. From where he was sitting, the Doctor could see the legs of the chairs and table silhouetted against the moonlit lawn outside. A skeletal structure of wood and metal. Bracing struts and cross‐beams. He turned his head slightly to one side as he surveyed tile tangled mass. ‘Very odd indeed.’

In an instant he was on his feet and bouncing across the room, hopeful even now of catching out the floor. Then he bent down and examined one of the chairs more closely.

It was heavy – almost impossible to move. The whole of the chair’s structure had been strengthened and braced with heavy metal scaffolding. The other chairs were the same. And the table. ‘Perhaps some of the books make for heavy reading,’ the Doctor mused quietly. He shrugged – a mystery for another day.

There was light in the corridor outside the library. It came from an open door further along. The Doctor could hear voices coming from the room, and made his way carefully along the corridor. Especially careful now as he was quite sure there was a universal law of irony that meant the one floorboard in the entire house that did creak would do so under his foot at the most unfortunate moment.

Peering round the doorframe, the Doctor could see a heavy armchair beside a flickering fire. The back of the chair was reinforced with iron struts, he noticed. Even the low coffee table beside it was held together with a cat’s cradle of ironmongery. Sitting in the chair was a man. The firelight seemed to gather on his face, illuminating it. The Doctor saw the slightly pinched features of Maxwell Curtis, recognising them from one of the magazine articles he had read that afternoon.

On the table in front of Curtis was a small monitor screen. The picture was snowed over with static, but the Doctor could make out a man’s face amid the blizzard.

‘But you found it,’ Curtis was saying, his voice loud and excited. ‘You found the ice cavern, just as the journal said.’

Journal. The Doctor’s eyes flickered round the room, and now he saw the leather‐bound book lying on the coffee table. He recognised it at once from the auction.

‘Yes, yes, that is right. It was there exactly as you said, exactly as the map showed.’ The man on the screen was also talking loudly, his voice almost as distorted and broken up as his face.

‘And the material, the ice?’ Curtis was leaning forward, his hand gripping the arm of the chair so that his knuckles were white in the gloom of the room. Surely there should be more light?

But the man on the screen had his own agenda. ‘Never mind the ice,’ he shouted. ‘Ice is hardly a rare commodity here.’

‘But this ice –’

The man cut him off, and the Doctor saw Curtis’s look of surprise and anger.

‘It is what we found inside the ice. That is what is so exciting. You will see it yourself when you come!’

‘Inside?’ Curtis seemed unsure about this. He looked over towards the door as if for reassurance, and the Doctor whipped his head back out of sight. ‘Something inside the ice? The journal made no mention of that – what is it?’

The Doctor risked another look. Curtis was once more intent on the screen.

‘A body,’ the other man said clearly. ‘We have found a body. Frozen inside the glacier.’

But before Curtis could ask more, before the man could explain further, before the Doctor had blinked in surprise, the man on the screen looked away. It was a startled, frightened movement. Instinctive.

A response to the staccato sound of gunfire from somewhere behind him. A moment later there was the noise of an explosion. The man was on his feet, the screen a blur as his image wiped across it.

‘Naryshkin – what is it?’ Curtis was hauling himself to his feet. ‘What’s going on there?’

More gunfire – louder and closer now. A scream. Shouting.

Explosions. Then the sound cut off.

And the screen went blank.

27: Under Siege

‘That sounded close.’

They had made their encampment in what had once been the castle’s Great Hall. The room was broken, and the debris from its collapse helped fuel the fire. The smoke curled out of the hole and drifted away into the night.

Price was sleeping, using his pack as a pillow. George and Fitz were sitting nervously by the fire, trying to keep warm. Caversham was by what had been the main entrance way. The remains of tile wooden door were propped shut, wedged with some of the sturdier struts and beams from tile collapsed roof. The fire crackled and popped and spat. But what Fitz – what all of them – had heard was the animal roar from outside. It sounded almost plaintive, disappointed, hungry.

And close.

‘Well, I’m not going to look,’ George said. He tossed a lump of wood on to the fire, sending up a shower of sparks and ash.

Caversham looked over, annoyed by the sound and tile light. He waved for them to be quiet. ‘I’m trying to hear,’ he hissed across the room. ‘There’s something outside, I think.’

Fitz joined him at the door. ‘What did you hear?’ he asked quietly. ‘One of the dinosaur things?’

‘I’m not sure. But listen.’

Fitz listened. It sounded like a buzzing or humming. Like machinery or equipment. But they all knew there was nothing like that in the empty corridor beyond tile door. Then, as they stood silent and still, a light shone through the cracks in the door, round the edge of the frame, under and across the floor. It was a brilliant white, artificially bright, strobing and throbbing in time to the buzzing hum. The light seemed to flicker and ripple, the rays from one crack interfering with those from another so that it threw patterns like nerves across the floor and tile walls.

Caversham leaned forward and peered through a crack in the door.

‘There’s nothing there,’ he said slowly. ‘Just the light.’

‘Could it be someone come to find us, to rescue us?’ George asked. Fitz had not heard him join them. By the fire, Price was sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

‘How would they know where we are, or that we need help?’ Fitz wondered.

‘Wait here.’ Caversham started to pull away the bracing struts from the door. ‘I’ll go and see.’

‘Are you sure?’ George asked.

‘If we don’t look, we’ll never know.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Fitz said as he helped drag the protesting door open. The light spilled into the room, making night into day.

‘No. There’s no point risking more than we must.’ Caversham pushed the door shut behind him before Fitz could protest. ‘I won’t be long,’ he said through one of the gaps in the wood.

Fitz watched him go, a dark shadow cut out of the pulsing light as he walked slowly along the corridor. Then the light swallowed him up. ‘How long do we give him?’ George asked after a minute. Fitz did not answer. He was wondering the same thing.

After another minute, George grabbed the door and swung it open again. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘I’m going after him.’

‘No, wait –’ Fitz made to grab him, but George was gone. Swallowed up by the light as he strode down the corridor after Caversham, Fitz turned to Price, wondering what to do now.

The sound of the gunshot, together with the screaming, made up his mind for him. He turned and ran after George. And as he ran, conscious of Price close on his heels, the light cut out and abruptly he was running in darkness, his eyes not used to the gloom, his boots skidding on the icy flagstones. He caught his foot on the uneven floor, cannoned into something – someone – and recognised George’s grunt of pain and surprise.

‘What’s happening, where’s Caversham?’

‘I don’t know.’

From behind them came the scrape and hiss of a striking match. Price’s features flared into light. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a torch from the fire.’

They waited, an agonising time in the near‐darkness, their eyes slowly adjusting. When Price returned brandishing a flaming piece of wood from the fire, Fitz’s vision again smeared over as his pupils contracted.

They made their way the whole length of the corridor. There was nothing in any of the ruined rooms they passed, no sign of Caversham at all. The door at the end of the corridor was still jammed solidly shut. Peering through the gap between the wooden planks that formed the door, Fitz could see one of the lizard‐like creatures strutting slowly across the courtyard on its hind legs. Its head moved to and fro as if testing the air, as if trying to sniff them out. There was no way it could see them, but Fitz drew back anyway, afraid.

The light – the light from the torch. That could be seen. He grabbed Price’s shoulder, having to reach up for it, and pushed him back down the corridor, explaining in a hushed whisper.

They retraced their steps, to no avail. The only thing of note that they found was the lump in the floor that Fitz had tripped over.

‘I’m sure it wasn’t there earlier,’ George said. ‘We’d have seen it.’

‘Maybe,’ Fitz said. He was worried that they were desperate to find anything, that they might read significance into normality just to try to make sense of things. But despite his initial doubts he knelt down with George to inspect the black shape in the guttering torchlight.

It was smooth and round, the rough size and shape of a golf ball, and so black that it seemed to absorb the torchlight. Fitz reached out to pick it up, and his fingers slipped off its slick surface.

‘It’s slippery,’ he exclaimed.

‘Ice,’ George said.

Fitz tried again to pick it up, but he was unable to move it. He leaned down so his head was close to the icy floor. ‘Doesn’t seem to be frozen down. I can see right underneath except for the point where it touches.’

‘Is it important?’ Price asked.

As if in reply there came the sound of a crash from back down the corridor. It was followed immediately by another, and a third. Splintering wood and shattering, crashing stone took barely a second to register, then they were on their feet again.

‘It might be,’ Fitz shouted. ‘But it’s hardly the most important thing right now.’

With the roars and triumphant bellows of the dinosaur‐lizards echoing down the corridor after them, they ran as fast as they could for the Great Hall.

Price slammed the door into place and they wedged it tight shut with the shattered beams. Price then thumped smaller bits of wood round the door, wedging it into the frame.

‘Will that keep them out?’ George asked, breathless.

‘I doubt it,’ Price told him. ‘Not for long.’

Fitz was looking round the large room, scanning the walls, glancing up at the frustratingly high windows. ‘Caversham said we needed a room with an emergency exit,’ he said. ‘I guess we forgot that.’ He looked back his two friends. ‘And I guess he was right. We’re trapped in here now.’

26: Incursion

The corridor was full of smoke and the main lights were out. Incongruously, the figure of the ghost was walking oblivious through the heavy air, turning at the door, fading through it just as he always did.

Naryshkin spared him only a glance. There was gunfire from the other end of the corridor – coming from the direction of the Great Hall, the dining area. His first thought was that one of the guards had gone mad. The Russian troops were hunting down one of their own. But the continued thump of explosions and the swirling smoke made him reconsider. What the hell was going on here?

More figures were emerging from the smoke now – guards, half walking, half running backwards, firing their assault rifles as they came. One of them caught a bullet in the throat and collapsed backwards, falling at Naryshkin’s feet and writhing as blood exploded from his neck. Naryshkin leapt back with a yell.

One of the guards grabbed Naryshkin and hurled him back up the corridor, shouting. But the guard’s words were lost in the rattle of automatic fire. A moment later he too was knocked across the corridor, crashing into the wall and sliding stickily down to the floor.

Naryshkin turned and ran.

They let Anji watch from the cabin of the snow‐cat. She was locked in, and she wasn’t about to try to hotwire it. She’d probably blow herself up, or lurch the vehicle over the edge of a cliff or something.

Smoke was rising from the castle in front of her. She had watched a group of Hartford’s soldiers enter the low modem building that Thorpe had identified as the barracks. They emerged a few minutes later and ran after their colleagues through the main doors of the original castle. There was a radio in the snow‐cat and she could hear the crackled instructions and reports.

‘Barracks secure. Three bandits down, eighteen in custody.’

‘How are they secured?’ Thorpe’s voice rumbled through the static.

It sounded like Sonya Gamblin who replied. ‘We took their clothes and locked them in the dormitory. They won’t come out unless they want their extremities frozen off.’

This brought a chorus of laughter, which quickly gave way to more reports and updates.

‘Main Hall area clear. Pursuing bandits along corridor to east.’

‘Two boffins held in living area.’

The sound of the radio was drowned by gunfire, then an explosion.

‘Giuseppe here. We’re drawing heavy fire in the west tower. Request backup.’

‘We’re on our way.’

And so it went on. The smoke continued to rise. Flames flickered inside the building. Anji watched and listened, numb.

Later, much later, two of Hartford’s men came for her. They pulled Anji down from the cabin, and led her at gunpoint into the castle. There was a strange mixture of old and new, she noticed absently. Flagstone floors and plasterboard walls, hanging tapestries and fluorescent lighting. Except that the lights were off, a red emergency glow permeating the smoke that rolled along the corridors…

Eventually they brought her into a large room. It looked as though it had been the Great Hall of the castle, suits of armour stood in alcoves and a huge tapestry hung over an impressive fireplace. Flimsy‐looking walls had been set up at one end to partition off an area, and outside it were grouped several tables with plastic and metal chairs arranged round them. A cheap street cafe in the comer of the vast room.

Hartford’s men had the people lined up along the far wall. There were about a dozen men in combat uniform, standing with their hands on their heads. Some of them looked sullen, others murderous. In front of these, shuffling their feet, were several people in civilian clothes. They looked confused and frightened – three men and two women.

Anji was led to one of the chairs round the nearest table and pushed into it. Hartford turned for a moment from talking to Thorpe on the other side of the seating area. He stared at Anji, then turned back to his conversation.

As he did so, two more of Hartford’s team entered. They were half carrying, half dragging another man in civilian clothes. He seemed to be unconscious. Like his colleagues he was wearing what looked like a brightly coloured jumpsuit.

‘What’s this?’ Hartford demanded as they dumped the man on the floor beside the other civilians.

‘He caught a bullet. Think it’s in his lung.’

One of the women dropped to her knees beside the unconscious man. ‘Oh my God, Blake,’ she sobbed. Her wispy, fair hair fell forward as she leaned over his prone body.

Hartford dragged her to her feet and pushed her back into the small group of white‐faced people. One of them, a broad‐shouldered man with red hair and a mass of freckles, stepped forward.

‘My name’s Flanaghan,’ he said. He sounded English. ‘I’m a first‐aider, maybe I can do something for him.’ He took a step towards the man on the floor, who was moaning quietly now.

‘Please,’ Flanaghan said, ‘I can help him.’

The man was coughing. A trickle of blood escaped from the side of his mouth and ran down his chin towards the floor. His body heaved with effort as he coughed and choked again. The woman with fair hair turned away, hand to her own mouth. The other woman, with shorter dark hair, held her.

‘Which one of you is Vladimir Naryshkin?’ Hartford demanded ignoring Flanaghan.

A wiry man stepped forward, standing next to Flanaghan. ‘I am,’ he replied in accented English.

‘We need your help,’ Hartford said, stepping over the writhing body without looking down. ‘I want every detail of the work done here Experimental results, the lot.’

Naryshkin’s lip curled. ‘Why?’ he hissed.

Hartford sighed. From inside his white camouflage jacket he pulled a large pistol. He pointed it directly at Naryshkin. ‘That doesn’t concern you.’

Naryshkin shook his head. ‘You will get no help from us. And if you kill me, you will learn nothing.’

Hartford seemed to consider this. ‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘But this man is dying anyway.’ He looked down at the man at his feet. His eyes were open now, staring up at Hartford as the man’s whole body convulsed again.

‘It’s probably a mercy,’ Hartford said. And pulled the trigger.

The gunshot echoed round the Great Hall. Both the civilian women flinched. One of them screamed, Anji wasn’t sure which. Or maybe It was Anji herself who had screamed. Flanaghan looked away. Naryshkin kept his eyes fixed on Hartford.

The body on the floor buckled under the impact of the bullet, convulsed again, heaved. Then was still. The head sagged to one side and a mouthful of blood escaped from the dead lips.

Hartford was already turning away, calling over to Thorpe. ‘Major, I want one Russian soldier shot every thirty seconds until these people agree to co‐operate. Is that understood?’

‘No!’ Naryshkin shouted, taking a step towards Hartford. Immediately Sonya Gamblin ran up and clubbed him back to the wall.

Hartford seemed not to notice. ‘Starting now.’

‘Sir.’ Thorpe nodded to one of the soldiers. The soldier raised his rifle.

‘We’ll co‐operate,’ Naryshkin shouted. ‘Whatever you want.’

Anji pressed her face into her hands.

The single shot echoed round the hall like its predecessor. It was followed by the slump of the dying man’s body.

‘Just tell us what you want,’ Flanaghan said. His voice was quieter than Naryshkin’s but shaking with emotion.

‘That’s better.’

Anji peered out from her hands, tried not to look at the body of the soldier.

‘I want to know about the time‐travel experiments,’ Hartford said.

‘What time experiments?’ Naryshkin asked. ‘We’re not interested in time travel.’

‘Wrong answer,’ Hartford said simply. ‘Ten seconds.’

‘It’s true,’ the fair‐haired woman screamed. ‘We’re trying to build a black hole.’

Hartford just stared at her. He seemed not to notice the next gunshot, the next body on the floor.

‘I want you to tell me about the time‐travel experiments, he said again. ‘I want you to tell me how you managed to send this woman through time.’ It took Anji a moment to realise he was pointing across the room at her.

Flanaghan was shaking his head. Naryshkin looked confused.

The last man stepped forward. He was short, with slicked back hair. ‘We are trying to slow the speed of light,’ he said. He sounded like another Russian. ‘Theoretically that might have implications for time travel. But I have never seen that young lady before.’

Hartford did not reply.

‘You have to believe us,’ the dark‐haired woman shouted. ‘Please!’

Anji stood up, chair scraping across the stone floor behind her. ‘It’s the truth,’ she said loudly. Perhaps Hartford would listen to her.

‘I know,’ Hartford said without looking round, ‘that you are experimenting with time travel. I know that Miss Kapoor has travelled through time.’

He paused for the next shot. ‘I do not believe in coincidences,’ he said as the sound died away.

Anji’s hands were tight fists. She had to do something. This was because of her. She had to stop it. But she knew that Hartford would never listen to the truth. What would he believe?

Naryshkin had slumped to the floor, his head in his hands, shaking.

‘All right,’ Anji said. ‘All right, I admit it.’

Hartford turned slowly to face her, and she gulped, wondering if he’d go for it.

‘Kill them, and you’ll never get what you want.’

‘And why is that?’ Hartford asked, walking slowly towards her. ‘You have eighteen seconds, by the way.’

‘You’re right, I have travelled through time.’

‘Using technology developed at this Institute?’

‘Yes.’

He turned in triumph. Naryshkin and the others were staring at Anji in disbelief.

‘But the damage may already have been done,’ Anji said quickly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean they’re telling the truth, We’ve never met before.’

‘How can that be?’ Hartford demanded. He was standing right in front of her now, the gun pointing at her. ‘If they sent you through time?’

‘They sent me back in time,’ Anji said. ‘You’re right. Only…’

Hartford blinked. ‘Only what?’

‘Only they haven’t done it yet,’ Anji told him.

25: Duty Calls

There was a bell‐rope by the fireplace, and Curtis pulled on it frantically. He stood with his legs apart, as if bracing himself upright. Perhaps he was crippled, the Doctor thought. Or riddled with arthritis. Certainly he did not seem to be comfortable standing.

But then he did not seem very happy at all. The video screen remained blank despite Curtis’s attempts to reconnect the call. Now he was shouting loudly, angrily, for someone called ‘Holiday’.

The Doctor moved quietly along the corridor and opened the door to the next room. He did not bother to look to see where he was, but turned immediately and pulled the door almost closed. Then he watched the corridor outside from his hiding place.

Holiday was a large man, well‐built rather than tall. Even so, the floorboards did not creak under his weight either, the Doctor noticed. He ran along the corridor towards Curtis’s increasingly frantic shouts.

‘Coming, sir. Coming.’

The Doctor smiled and nodded and gave him ten seconds. Then he went back to the open door to the room and peeped inside.

Curtis had flopped back into the armchair. Holiday stood completely still, without apparent emotion as he listened to Curtis’s account of what had happened.

‘And don’t bother trying to reconnect,’ Curtis finished. ‘There’s no response. What in God’s name is going on in Siberia?’

‘Siberia?’ the Doctor breathed.

‘I really couldn’t say, sir,’ Holiday replied calmly. ‘The plane is due to be ready in an hour…’

But the Doctor was no longer listening. In his mind he replayed the conversation he had overheard between Curtis and the man on the screen. The man with the Russian accent, he realised. It made sense, they had been discussing the journal from the auction after all – a journal that told of an expedition through Siberia.

Curtis’s raised voice brought the Doctor back to the present. ‘Just get her!’ he shouted.

‘I really don’t see the point, sir,’ Holiday protested,

‘She had the journal. She says she has other artefacts, some of them may relate.’

‘But we don’t know that.’

‘She had the journal in her possession for years. She may know something that will help.’

‘We have no idea what is happening in Siberia,’ Holiday pointed out. ‘You yourself said –’

But Curtis cut him off. ‘Just call her. Get her on the phone and I’ll find out. I want to ask the Grand Duchess some questions.’

The Doctor nodded enthusiastically from the shadows. ‘You and me both,’ he murmured.

The woman who answered the phone was young, attractive and had fine blonde hair that hung to her shoulders. She gave the number, no more, then listened.

When she did speak, her voice was cultured and precise. ‘The Grand Duchess? Please wait a moment and I’ll see if she is available. Who may I say is calling?’

Holiday had brought a cordless phone from a table in the corner of the room. ‘It’s Mr Holiday, ma’am. Mr Curtis wishes to speak with the Duchess.’

Curtis gestured for the phone, clicking his fingers impatiently. But Holiday did not pass it over.

‘She is just on her way, sir,’ he said. Moments later: ‘Your Ladyship, how kind of you to come to the telephone. I have Mr Curtis here… Yes, indeed. He is wondering if you have any especial extra knowledge about the journal or its background. I have assured him that you have told me this is not the case, but he is very keen to speak to you himself.’ He listened for a moment, his firelit expression unreadable. Then he handed the phone to Curtis and stepped deferentially away to let him speak.

Curtis spoke quietly into the phone and the Doctor strained to hear. He seemed to be asking about the journal’s background, and also whether the Duchess had any other artefacts or papers that were related to it. Eventually he handed the handset back to his manservant, who switched it off and replaced it on the table in the corner of the room.

‘Am I to understand, sir, that the Duchess now believes she may have some relevant papers?’ Holiday asked.

‘She mentioned that it might be the case.’ Curtis pulled himself out of the chair and gestured for Holiday to help him across the room. ‘She is coming here.’

‘Now, sir?’ Holiday sounded surprised. ‘It is nearly nine o’clock.’

The Doctor ducked back into the adjacent room, listening keenly. ‘Of course now,’ Curtis snapped. ‘We’ll wait for her in the library.’ The old floorboards creaked under his tread as Curtis made his way down the corridor, past the room where the Doctor was concealed.

‘Shall I postpone the flight?’ Holiday was asking.

Their voices were fading now.

‘Of course not. She’s coming with us.’

And as they faded down the corridor, the Doctor heard Holiday ask: ‘And is the Duchess yet aware of that fact, sir?’ But the answer was swallowed up by the silence.

When he was sure they were gone, the Doctor went into the room with the fire. The journal was not on the coffee table – either Curtis himself or Holiday had taken it with them. But the handset for the cordless phone was on the table in the corner.

Through Directory Enquiries, the Doctor got Anji’s home number. She was not there. After several rings an answerphone cut in. The Doctor listened to Anji’s message, wondering what he should say – that he happened to know that someone had found a body somewhere in Siberia and that there was an outside chance it just might, possibly, be Fitz? He hung up. He tapped his fingers on the table top, then called Enquiries again.

The phone rang just as Larry Withers was locking his office door. He considered letting the voicemail system get it. After all it was gone nine o’clock and Anna was probably about ready to kill him anyway.

But if someone was ringing this late, it might be urgent. Or it might be Anna. Maybe he could tell her it rerouted to his mobile and he was already on his way?

Without realising he had already made a decision, he found he had unlocked the door again. Now he was in a hurry to get the phone before it switched to voicemail. He scooped up the receiver. ‘Withers,’ he said, breathless.

‘Er… Does it?’ The man on the other end of the phone sounded confused. ‘I’m sorry, I was trying to contact Miss Kapoor. Miss Anji Kapoor.’

Larry sighed with annoyance. Anji’s phone had been rerouted to his own. ‘She’s not here,’ he said. ‘She’s gone away.’

‘I realise it’s late…’

‘No, I mean she’s away on business. Are you one of her clients? I can give you the name of someone to call tomorrow if that helps.’

‘Well, no, It doesn’t actually.’ The man somehow managed to sound annoyed and apologetic at the same time.

Larry glanced across at Anji’s empty desk. For a moment, just for split‐second, he wondered what would have happened if Anji had decided not to go, or if he had decided he could not spare her. For that instant he thought he could see her, still at her desk, working late usual. A thin, ghostly image of the woman that was there for as long he considered the decision she – they – had made, then was gone.

‘I need to speak to Anji, Can you tell me where she is?’

As Larry still stared at the empty desk, he caught sight of the wall clock beyond. Nine‐fifteen. He was a dead man. ‘Yes I can,’ he said abruptly. ‘She’s gone to Siberia.’ He dropped the phone back on to it cradle.

The Doctor listened to the dial tone for several seconds. ‘Why is everyone suddenly so interested in Siberia?’ he wondered out loud.

‘Everyone?’ The reply was soft and close, filled with self satisfaction.

‘Well, rather more people than I would normally have expected,’ the Doctor replied with a smile. He turned as he spoke, and found Holiday standing behind him. The burly manservant was holding a pistol in his large hand.

‘Perhaps we should ask Mr Curtis if he can help you satisfy your curiosity,’ Holiday suggested.

‘Yes, what a good idea. I’d like that.’

Holiday gestured with the gun, waving him towards the door. ‘This way, if you would be so kind… Doctor.’

24: Distractions

If nothing else, Anji took some comfort from the fact that she had managed to stop Hartford and his men killing anyone else. At least for the moment.

The Russian soldiers were herded away, presumably to be locked in their own barracks with their clothes confiscated. Having spent what seemed like hours struggling through the snow fully clothed and almost freezing to death, Anji thought that the notion of trying the same thing in your underwear would deter even the hardiest of the Russians from attempting to escape.

With the soldiers and corpses removed, Hartford and his team turned their attention to the scientists. Yuri Culmanov took Hartford and Thorpe, together with Anji, to what he described as the Cold Room. This was apparently the place where most of the practical work was done. Even though she was still in her thermal clothes, Anji felt the icy blast of air as the door was opened.

She heard Thorpe gasp behind her. But it was not a reaction to the cold.

‘What the hell was that?’ His eyes were wide and staring. ‘Must be imagining things,’ he muttered, embarrassed.

‘No,’ Hartford said. ‘I saw him too.’

‘Saw who?’ Anji asked. She could see that Yuri was grinning.

‘It’s just the ghost,’ he said.

‘The what?’

Yuri shrugged. ‘You get used to it. He walks along here, disappears through the door.’

‘Ghost?’ Anji echoed. ‘That’s just what we need.’

‘Indeed,’ Hartford said, his composure recovered. He pushed Anji forward, into the Cold Room. ‘Proof that there is a time experiment in progress, wouldn’t you say?’

They stood shivering among tile centrifuges and work benches, Hartford tapping buttons on the device on his wrist.

‘You getting a reading, sir?’ Thorpe asked.

What is that?’ Yuri ventured.

‘It detects time‐travel… stuff,’ Anji told him.

‘Really?’

Anji shrugged. ‘It found me, so I suppose so.’ She turned away so not to have to watch Yuri’s expression of incredulity. Instead she witnessed Hartford’s frustration with the device. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Not working?’

‘Maybe it’s the cold, sir,’ Thorpe said.

‘It should lead us to the equipment they’re using,’ Hartford said. ‘The experiment.’ He glared at Anji, ‘But all I get is the reading for her.’ He jabbed his pistol towards Anji, and she thought for a second he was going to eliminate that rogue signal. With extreme prejudice.

‘She’s swamping everything. We need to get her away from here. If they’ve hidden it, we’ll never find the thing.’

‘Find what?’ Yuri protested. ‘I told you – we all told you. We are only interested in black holes.’

Hartford ignored him. ‘Start searching,’ he told Thorpe. ‘Everywhere, I want this place taken apart.’

‘How do we know what we’re looking for, sir?’

Hartford considered this. ‘Take one of the scientists with each group. When they get too itchy, when they protest too much, when they go ape because you’re about to bust something up – then you’ve found it.’ He shoved Anji over towards Yuri, and they collided.

The small Russian helped Anji regain her balance, holding her protectively. ‘Thanks,’ she said quietly.

‘Take these two with you,’ Hartford ordered. ‘I’ll see if this thing works when she’s the other side of the building.’

Thorpe took them back to the Great Hall, where the other scientists were now seated at one of the tables. With nothing else to do for the moment, while Thorpe organised his team into smaller groups to search the facility, Anji introduced herself.

‘Do we really get to send you back in time?’ the woman with dark hair – Miriam Dewes – asked.

Anji looked round to check none of Thorpe’s men were within earshot. Two of them stood with guns ready a few yards away. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘But don’t tell them that.’

The other woman, the straggly blonde, was Penny Ashworth. The men, apart from Yuri Culmanov, were Vladimir Naryshkin who ran the facility and Basil Flanaghan who had tried to stand up to Hartford earlier, The dead man, Anji was told, had been an American called Michaels.

Hartford returned before long. He did not look happy. Anji gathered from what she could hear of his conversation with Thorpe that he still could not detect anything other than Anji herself on his time‐detector. Which didn’t surprise her. After all, she knew there was nothing else to detect.

‘So what do we do?’ Thorpe asked as the two of them approached the table where Anji and the others were sitting.

‘Get her out of here,’ Hartford said. ‘Way out of here. But I want her kept alive. For now,’ he added.

‘How kind,’ Anji murmured.

‘Get me a map,’ Thorpe said. He pointed at Penny. ‘You – map, now.’

Penny scrambled nervously to her feet and ran from the Hall. One of the armed men followed her. She returned a minute or so later with a large rolled sheet which she gave to Thorpe.

Thorpe unrolled the map on the table where they were sitting, holding down the corners with cutlery from a nearby set of trays. He studied it carefully.

‘What’s this?’ he jabbed his gloved finger towards a set of small dots a little way from the castle.

It was Flanaghan who answered. ‘There used to be a village there. Abandoned long ago, but the remains of the buildings survive.’

‘Shelter?’

‘Well, sort of. If you can call it that.’ Flanaghan stood up to get a better view. ‘It’s not far from the ice cave,’ he said slowly. ‘I hadn’t realised.’ He pointed to an area to the west of the village, close to the castle itself. ‘Just here. That’s where we found the body.’

‘Body?’ Anji asked.

‘I’m not interested in bodies,’ Thorpe said, knocking Flanaghan’s hand aside. ‘You know the area?’ he asked Flanaghan.

‘Well, yes…’

‘Good. You can go with her and show my people the way.’ He turned and shouted: ‘Gamblin, Jacobs, get over here.’ He turned back to Anji. ‘They’ll take you to this village, get you well out of the way.’

Hartford had joined them. ‘Then we can get on with finding the time travel experiments,’ he said as Thorpe indicated the village on the map. Hartford nodded with satisfaction.

On the other side of the table, Yuri sighed. ‘I keep telling you,’ he said. ‘There are no time‐travel experiments here.’

Hartford turned slowly to look at him. Anji could see the fear Penny’s eyes, watched Miriam push her chair slightly away. Flanagh nudged Yuri to be quiet. Naryshkin shook his head.

But the Russian was angry. ‘We are interested in slowing light to create a black hole. Imagine it – an optic black hole here in Siberia. That is what we are trying to do.’

‘Yuri,’ Naryshkin said quietly.

‘Black holes, huh?’ Hartford said. His voice was low and menacing. ‘And where do you find black holes then?’

Yuri seemed surprised, not registering the danger in Hartford’s tone, ‘In space, at the moment. They are regions where space is itself stretched to the very limit. Where gravity reigns supreme.’

‘The journeywork of the stars?’ Hartford said with evident distaste. ‘I thought Whitman said that was a leaf of grass.’

‘But you want to make a black hole here.’ Anji could see that Hartford was holding his pistol by his side.

‘There may already be black holes here. Black hole atoms, tiny nascent black holes of dark matter providing a positive charge in place of the proton.’ He smiled weakly. ‘There could be a black hole inside you, and you would not be aware of it.’

‘Oh I’d be aware of it,’ Hartford told him. He raised the pistol. ‘Making black holes is easy,’ he said. ‘See if you’re aware of this.’ Then he pulled the trigger.

Yuri flew backwards, his chair falling over so that he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. A dark hole torn into the centre of his forehead. Penny screamed. Flanaghan was on his feet shouting at Hartford, but Anji could not hear the words through the echoing roar of the shot and the pounding of the blood in her ears.

Then Thorpe was pushing Flanaghan away, towards the two waiting figures, pulling Anji to her feet and shoving her roughly after him.

‘Who are these people?’ Flanaghan demanded when they were outside. They trudged for ages through the snow, eventually finding a narrow path where at least the ground beneath their feet was solid.

‘I don’t know,’ Anji said. ‘But they’re not accountants.’

Flanaghan just stared at her. His eyelashes, she noticed, were very pale. His freckles seemed have faded slightly – cold, or shock, she wondered?

‘I’m not an accountant either,’ Flanaghan said at last. ‘But I don’t go round quoting Walt Whitman and then shooting people.’

‘Well, it takes all sorts. I guess.’ Anji sighed, blowing out a stream of wispy air. ‘So what do you do round here? Apart from struggling to keep warm. And not get shot.’

He seemed happy to talk. ‘I’m an expert in optics,’ he said. ‘Not the sort you serve spirits from. Light. Refraction. That sort of thing.’

‘Fascinating,’ Anji replied.

He glanced at her, amused by her obvious lack of interest. ‘Imagine two tiny slits in a sheet of card,’ he said. ‘A bit like the gaps between the mountains up ahead, where the sun is shining through.’

Anji smiled back. ‘OK. Then what?’

‘Then you shine a light at the card.’

‘And what happens?’

‘Well the light passes through the two slits, and on the other side it spills out and you can see interference patterns. Bands of light and dark.’

Anji had heard this one before. Or at least, she thought she had. ‘You’re telling me that light is a wave form?’ she asked. ‘The light and dark is where the waves cancel out or accumulate, right?’

‘That’s right.’ He nodded appreciatively. ‘Yet light also comes in bits, particles. Called photons.’

‘Heard of them,’ Anji said.

‘So what do you suppose happens if we fire just one single photon at the card with the two slits?’

Anji shrugged, though she doubted he could tell, she was so wrapped up against the cold. ‘You just get a bit of light coming through?’

‘So you wouldn’t expect to see interference patterns,’ Flanaghan asked her.

‘I guess not. If there’s just one photon, there’s nothing for it to interfere with. There’s no wave cancellation or accumulation or whatever they’re called. No ripples.’

‘Exactly.’ He nodded enthusiastically.

‘You mean I’m right?’

‘I mean you’re correct in assuming that’s what we’d expect.’

‘Ah.’

‘But in fact you do get the interference patterns, just the same. It’s as if the photon went through both slits at the same time.’

‘Which is impossible, right?’

They walked on in silence for a few moments. Then Anji asked. ‘So what do you do?’

‘Well, you can detect a photon of light. So you put a detector on each slit.’

‘Because it seems like there’s a photon going through each of them, right?’

‘Right,’ he agreed. ‘But guess what?’

‘Two photons?’ Anji hazarded.

Flanaghan shook his head. ‘No. Just one photon. And it only goes through one of the slits.’

‘So how do you get the interference patterns?’

‘Well, that’s the strange thing.’ He was grinning now. ‘If you actually try to detect where the photon went, you don’t. No patterns. No interference. Take the detectors away, and the interference returns.’

Anji considered this. ‘But that’s… weird.’

‘Mmmm.’

‘Impossible.’

‘But it happens.’

‘So what’s going on?’

‘According to Quantum Theory the light photon is sort of in both places at once, until you try to detect it. Then it has to make up its mind where it really is. A superposition of states, we call it.’

‘Seriously weird,’ Anji said.

‘Anyone who isn’t shocked by quantum theory,’ Flanaghan said, ‘hasn’t understood it. That’s what Niels Bohr thought anyway.’

Anji nodded. ‘And you think about this stuff for a living?’ He laughed, and she shook her head. ‘What about you?’ she called over her shoulder to the soldiers behind. ‘What do you think? Are you shocked?’

‘Enough talk,’ Sonya Gamblin shouted back at her.

‘So you don’t understand it either,’ Anji muttered in reply.

In front of them was what looked like piles of broken wooden planks. ‘That’s it,’ Planaghari said.

‘I thought you said it was a village?’

‘I said it was the remains of one.’

As they got closer, Anji could see that the planks were the remains of floors and walls. Wooden supports stuck up from the ground, and there were several sections of flooring attached to a couple of them.

‘They built the village on stilts,’ Flanaghan explained. ‘So the foundations wouldn’t freeze.’

‘Great.’

‘I’ll be back in a little while,’ he said quietly.

‘Right…’ It took her a moment to realise what he’d said. ‘What?’

Anji stopped and turned towards the Englishman. Immediately Jacobs – stocky and brutal – was there shoving her forward again with his gun.

Flanaghan winked at Anji as she stumbled and sprawled headlong. He bent to help her up. ‘Give us a hand, I think she’s broken her ankle.’

This was news to Anji. But she groaned as convincingly as she could. Jacobs bent to examine her. Behind him, Sonya kept her covered with her assault rifle.

And beside Sonya, Anji could see that Flanaghan was bracing himself. Then suddenly he was flying sideways in a rugby tackle that knocked Sonya over, winded her. He was up in a moment, running, stumbling, bent low to the ground.

Sonya Gamblin was struggling to her feet, grabbing her gun. Jacobs was straightening up, so Anji kicked his legs from under him and sent him sprawling.

Gunfire erupted, snow sprayed in salty puffs from the ground at Flanaghan’s feet. Then he was gone, lost in the expanse of white.

‘Get after him,’ Sonya shouted at Jacobs. She was dragging a set of handcuffs from her jacket pocket. ‘And you – over there.’

She pushed Anji roughly to one of the upright stilts, and made her put her arms round it.

‘Hugging trees is one thing,’ Anji said.

‘Shut up.’ Sonya handcuffed her wrists together so she was tied to the upright post. ‘We’ll be back for you later,’ she hissed. Then she was off, running unsteadily through the snow after Jacobs. After Flanaghan.

In the distance, over the howling of the Wind, Anji heard the sound of gun shots. She heaved as hard as she could at the wooden post. It barely moved. But a cold avalanche of snow from the remains of the broken floor above crashed down on her head, knocking her sideways and spraying icy crystals into her face. She breathed out a long chattering breath of frustrated mist and sank down to sit uncomfortably at the base of the post.

23: Sent Packing

Maxwell Curtis was surprisingly polite and friendly. Once the Doctor had explained that he was interested in the journal, and that really he just wanted to have a good look at it, Curtis told Holiday to stop being melodramatic and put the gun away. Without any apparent grudge, the manservant obeyed.

They were in the library where the Doctor had jumped round to test the floor. Now the lights were on, and outside floodlights illuminated the gravel driveway so that it seemed almost to be day. Curtis was seated in one of the chairs at the reading table, Holiday standing beside him.

‘And what precisely is your interest in the journal?’ Curtis asked, holding the book as he spoke.

The Doctor told him.

Holiday’s lip curled, a barely noticeable reaction. Curtis laughed out loud. ‘I hardly think so,’ he said.

The Doctor shrugged. ‘I haven’t had a chance to examine it properly. But I assume you have copies of the pages from the British Museum.’

Curtis nodded. ‘And they complete the journal,’ he said. ‘I have it complete now.’

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘May I?’

Curtis considered, his mouth moving as if he were rolling the idea round inside it. Then he handed the battered, leather‐bound book to Holiday, who took it over to the Doctor.

As the Doctor leafed carefully through the brittle pages, a taxi drew up outside. It crunched to a halt on the gravel, and the driver got out to open the door for his passenger.

‘Show the Grand Duchess in here,’ Curtis told Holiday. The big man nodded, and left the room.

‘Well?’ Curtis asked, his voice husky with interest. ‘Satisfied.’

‘Oh yes,’ the Doctor told him. ‘Quite satisfied.’

‘And your contention remains the same?’

‘Exactly the same.’ He turned back several pages. ‘I assume you have read it?’

Curtis nodded. It was a ponderous movement, as if his head was heavy on his shoulders.

The Doctor was running his finger down the margin, hunting for a section he had seen earlier. ‘Here we are, what do you think of this, then? The light in the cavern bad a preternatural quality It seemed almost to stand still in the very air itself When Price held his lamp behind an outcropping of ice, and moved it, the light seemed to move more slowly on the other side of the ice. As if the ice were sticky like treacle and the light was having trouble passing through…’ The Doctor looked up. ‘Didn’t that strike you as odd?’

Curtis frowned. ‘I’m not sure I follow you, Doctor. The description of the cavern, the sketch map on the previous page –

‘Yes, and a very good sketch it is too,’ the Doctor said, turning back to it. ‘You’d scarcely guess that the author was frozen to the bone and struggling to survive.’

‘These led Naryshkin to the ice cavern,’ Curtis insisted. ‘He said so. They found it, exactly as described.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘I heard.’ He smiled apologetically at Curtis’s expression. ‘Terrible habit, eavesdropping, I know. Sorry about that.’ His smile faded away. ‘Naryshkin also said they had found a body. That’s not mentioned in here.’ He held up the journal.

‘That proves nothing. Perhaps the body is that of the man who wrote the journal. He could hardly describe his own death, now could he?’

They smiled across the room at each other. The Doctor walked over and sat down beside Curtis, angling the journal so they could both see it. ‘He had a good try, though, didn’t he?’ He had turned to the very last page. ‘See, here…’

As the Doctor read the last paragraph of the journal aloud, the door swung open and Holiday returned, the Grand Duchess with him.

‘They are outside now. We all know it is only a matter of time before they break into the Great Hall and discover us. Even Galloway admits that now, and seems to accept it. There is always the possibility that they will try to take us captive, keep us prisoner. With that in mind, I have concealed a loaded revolver behind a loose stone above the fireplace, The third stone from the left in the row immediately above it The stone can be pulled away, and the gun is there, ready and waiting. It may be that this is my final way out. I must stop now, there is a scraping sound from the door. Lights and shouting from beyond. Price is on his feet, aiming the rifle and –’

‘And there it ends.’ The Duchess’s voice was dusty and cracked. She hobbled across the room and seated herself in a spare chair beside the Doctor and Curtis. ‘I have read it a hundred, perhaps a thousand times,’ she said. ‘You see how the poor man’s writing becomes hurried and untidy as the end approaches. He is desperate to record everything.’

The Doctor agreed. ‘So I see,’ he said. ‘Though I’m surprised that he was not more concerned with saving his own life from…’ He shrugged. ‘From whatever danger approached. He’s rather less than specific about the trouble they are in.’

‘We cannot know his character,’ the Duchess said, her voice heavily accented. ‘Who can say whether he was a man of action or a man of words?’

‘Well,’ the Doctor said slowly. He reached inside his jacket, then paused, hand frozen midway. He smiled suddenly and spoke a few sentences of fluent Russian.

Curtis and Holiday exchanged confused looks. The Grand Duchess smiled. ‘I think perhaps we should converse in English,’ she said slowly. ‘For the benefit of our friends here.’

‘Oh, I agree entirely.’

‘But your Russian is very good. Very good indeed. ‘

‘Thank you.’

The Doctor’s hand emerged, empty, from inside his jacket. ‘So how did you get hold of this fascinating document?’ he asked lightly.

Curtis cleared his throat. ‘I would deem it a favour if you were to bear in mind that the Grand Duchess is my guest, Doctor. Not yours.

The Doctor was abject. ‘I’m so sorry, of course.’ He held his hands open in a gesture of apology and invitation. ‘You go right ahead.’

Curtis turned to tile Duchess. ‘You said that you do have some other documents and artefacts in which I might be interested,’ he said.

‘That is correct.’

‘I’m not,’ Curtis said shortly.

‘I am sorry?’ The Duchess was surprised.

‘Interested. Only the journal has any value.’

‘Then why…?’

‘Why have I asked you to come here?’ Curtis smiled. ‘You said yourself that you have read the journal hundreds of times. You know it so much better than I could after just possessing it for a few hours.’ He leaned carefully forward in his chair. ‘I want to make use of your expertise,’ he said. ‘I want you to come with me to Siberia.’

‘Siberia?’ the Duchess echoed, her face a mass of frowning wrinkles.

‘I shall of course reimburse you for the time and inconvenience.’ He watched the Duchess’s reaction. ‘Handsomely,’ he added.

‘When are you thinking of going?’ the Doctor asked. ‘Only poor old Naryshkin did seem to be having a spot of bother earlier.’

‘Which is why we leave tonight.’ Curtis looked at Holiday, who nodded.

‘Everything is prepared now at the airfield,’ he reported. ‘We can leave within the hour.’

The Duchess cleared her throat, a dry, cracking sound. ‘I shall need to bring some things with me,’ she said. ‘Papers that may be relevant if you wish to retrace the expedition’s path. Personal possessions as well, of course.’

‘A toothbrush is always useful,’ the Doctor agreed happily. ‘I assume you still have your own teeth?’ he wondered. ‘Thought so,’ he said as she glared at him, her watery blue eyes seeming suddenly darker.

‘Very well,’ Curtis said, ignoring the Doctor. ‘Holiday, will you take the Duchess to her home and help her pack whatever she needs.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘And then return here to collect myself and the Doctor.’

The manservant blinked. ‘The Doctor, sir?’

‘He also seems to have some expertise and knowledge that may be useful.’

‘And what’s more,’ the Doctor added, ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ He grinned. ‘There is just one small thing.’

‘Oh?’ Curtis turned towards him. ‘I was not giving you the option, actually, Doctor. You will come with us.’

‘Oh absolutely. But I have a bit of packing of my own to do if that’s all right. There’s something I’d like to bring along.’ He Iooked at Holiday. ‘Assuming there’s room for it on the plane.’

22: Out Cold

It was the first time he had ever killed anyone. Looking down at the young man’s body, Basil Flanaghan felt only the cold numbness seeping through his boots from the frozen ground. He was surprised how easy it had been – how easy for him, and how easily the man, Jacobs, had died.

Flanaghan knew the area. The snow and ice were his friends. He never tired of the landscape, and spent every spare moment out exploring, walking, lapping it up. As soon as he spotted his chance, as they arrived at the remains of the village, he ran for it. There was a gully, he knew, just beyond the bank of snow. It ran for several hundred yards and it took him only a minute to fall into it, dig his way into the drifted snow, cover the hole and wait.

He had heard the crunch of the snow close by as they searched. Quick, urgent movement as they lost track of him, as it seemed the landscape had swallowed him up where his trail simply ended.

When it was quiet again, he had tunnelled his way along, away from the direction in which he had last heard his pursuers. Then, after listening carefully, he dug upwards and poked his head cautiously out of the snow. To find himself alone in a barren white and grey landscape.

His plan, so far as he had one, was to sneak back to the village and try to release the Asian woman, Anji, while the soldiers were searching for him. He assumed they were soldiers. They sounded American, which gave Flanaghan pause for thought. But when it came right down to it, all that mattered was that they were trying to kill him. That they had already killed Blake and Yuri.

Paying less attention than he should, his mind taken up with these thoughts, Flanaghan had come over a rise to find Jacobs just ahead of him on the track that led round the edge of the rising mountain. The track fell away sharply beyond Jacobs – a thirty foot drop on to the iced ground below. Ahead of them, it led between two of the slopes. The wind was funnelled through the pass, wailing and howling when it was strong. But when it was just a breeze, like today, it sounded like someone calling, singing, crying…

The young soldier was walking away from Flanaghan, his assault rifle held ready. Perhaps he thought the sound of the breeze was Flanaghan, up ahead of him. But any moment he might turn, might already have heard the man behind him, might bring round the gun and fire. So, without thinking, without planning, without considering the consequences, Flanaghan launched himself forwards. He pitched headlong down the slope, leaping just as Jacobs turned.

The gun was coming round – its movement slightly slower than Jacobs’s surprised face turning towards him. Then Flanaghan’s shoulder powered into Jacobs’s chest, sent him reeling, sent the gun flying before he could fire a shot. The wind was picking up now, whipping round the two figures as they fell. Flanaghan collapsed to the track, winded.

But Jacobs was knocked backwards, teetering on the edge, arms flailing, toppling, falling. He cried out as he fell – a long, mournful sound. But as Flanaghan struggled to his feet and staggered to the precipice to look carefully over, the cry was adopted by the gathering wind, echoed and dissipated. And Jacobs’s body was a spreadeagled stain on the ice below.

Long ago, Flanaghan had shot for the school team. He had been in the Combined Cadet Force. So he had at least some idea of how to use the rifle. He hoped he wouldn’t have to.

Time was deceptive out here. He knew that. You could check your watch what seemed like minutes after the last time and find you’d been out walking for hours. Or you could walk for hours, and find that only a few minutes had passed. Flanaghan had no idea how long it took him to make his careful way back to the village. He was increasingly wary as he approached. The other soldier, the woman, was out here somewhere. Perhaps she was looking for him. Or perhaps she was waiting with Anji.

In fact, Anji was alone. He could see her in the distance, a dark figure sprawled at the base of the skeletal fragments of a building. He was worried that she didn’t move. But as he approached, watching all the time for movement, for the woman with the gun to rise up from the snow and replay his own trick of earlier, he saw Anji stretch and shift position uncomfortably. She was tied to the wooden upright, he realised.

‘Where is she?’ he hissed as soon as he was close enough.

Anji’s eyes were wide with surprise and fear. She shook her head.’. No Idea. She cuffed me here and went after you, I think.’ She saw the rifle in his hands and her jaw dropped. ‘What – where’s Jacobs?’

‘He met with a bit of an accident,’ Flanaghan bent to examine the handcuffs that secured Anji to the piece of wood. ‘Very sad.’

‘Don’t suppose you have a key?’

He shook his head. ‘Nor a saw, before you ask.’ He blew out a long misty breath as he considered. ‘OK, here’s the plan. Lean back, far as you can, so the chain is stretched tight against the wood. And look away.’

She didn’t look happy. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to shoot the chain.’

‘What if you miss?’

‘I won’t. But maybe the wood is solid enough to stop a bullet. She just looked at him.

‘Do you have a better plan?’ he asked.

‘Ido.’

And he realised that she wasn’t looking at him at all. She was looking past him – at the woman who had just spoken. The woman with the gun.

‘Drop the gun, and turn round very slowly.’

‘Sorry,’ he murmured to Anji. He dropped the rifle, letting it hang for a moment by its strap before he laid it down in the soft snow. It sank in leaving a shadow of itself in the crust. He turned, slowly.

‘Where’s Jacobs?’ she asked as she approached him. She kept the gun pointed at him, kept her eyes focused on him.

‘He fell off a cliff.’

She didn’t react. She was right in front of him now, her rifle aimed up at his face as she stooped down, reached to get the rifle he had dropped in the snow.

As he had dropped it, Flanaghan had let the strap fall away from the rifle so that it looped out close to his foot. He kept his eyes fixed on the soldier’s, keeping her attention, as he moved his foot just enough to get the toe of his boot inside the loop of strap, just enough to pull the rifle away as she reached for it.

The woman’s hand closed on nothing but snow. She scrabbled round, and inevitably glanced down.

As soon as she looked away, Flanaghan kicked out. He had intended to kick her gun away and then try to grab her before she recovered. But his foot was caught in the rifle strap still, and instead he sent spray of stinging snow up into her face, her eyes, as she looked down.

She cried out in surprise, blinking at the melting snow, raising her own gun again. His foot was still caught in the strap.

But then Anji was moving. Keeping hold of the wooden pillar, she swung her whole body round in an arc. Anji’s feet connected with Sonya’s head and sent it snapping backwards, knocking her down. But Sonya was still holding the gun.

The shot echoed off the snow and ice. It caught Flanaghan red‐hot in the shoulder and sent him reeling. His foot was still tangled, but that meant the rifle went with him. He scrabbled, wrestled for it.

Another shot.

There was a look of complete surprise on the female soldier’s face. Just for a moment, just for as long as it took for her to register what had happened.

That Flanaghan had shot Anji.

Or rather, as Flanaghan could see the woman now realised, he had shot through the chain that held the handcuffs together. And Anji was pushing herself away from the upright wooden post, crawling backwards through the snow to get as far away from the woman with the gun as she could, trying to get to her feet. Flanaghan could see over the woman’s shoulder as she turned back, as she aimed at him. He could see that Anji knew what was about to happen, was struggling out of her coat and flinging it desperately at the woman to try to spoil her aim. The coat wrapped round the gun just as she pulled the trigger.

Flanaghan felt another burning impact and was on his back, struggling with his own gun. ‘Run, Anji,’ he shouted. But it sounded like a croak, and he doubted she had heard. He struggled to sit up, tasted the blood metallic in his mouth, saw the woman shrugging away Anji’s coat, turning, bringing her rifle to bear on Anji as she scrabbled away.

Without really knowing what he was doing, Flanaghan fired again. He managed to remain upright long enough to see the eruption of blood from the back of the woman’s head, long enough to see Anji scramble at last to her feet and half‐run, half‐tumble away across the snow.

Suddenly he was looking up at the grey sky, watching the flutter of snowflakes, hearing the moaning cry of the wind. It sounded like a man sighing, struggling to draw breath through blood, gasping out the last of‐

Within a minute, she was completely lost. If Flanaghan was still alive, he would have called out for her. If Sonya was still alive, she would be hunting for her. But even if they were both dead, Anji no longer had any idea where in this white wilderness they were, no idea how to get back to the village.

The snow was falling quickly now, plastering over her footprints so that she could not retrace her steps. She wished she hadn’t panicked, hadn’t run. But that was no use now. Life was full of what‐ifs, of decisions taken or not taken and opportunities lost. If the universe split every time someone made a choice, she thought, then somewhere in the multiple set of realities there was an Anji who had never left the Doctor; who had never come to Siberia; who still had her coat.

But there was also an Anji who had died with Dave; who had been killed when Hartford’s plane crashed with her still on board; who had been shot by Sonya in the cold white snow…

Not that it mattered now. She was alone, lost, lying in the deepening snow with no coat. Her face was sore and numb, her whole body shaking uselessly in a futile effort to generate some warmth. And Anji knew, as surely as she had ever known anything, that she would be dead within a few minutes.

21: Nothing to Declare

‘I hope you haven’t gone to all this trouble just for me.’

‘What do you mean?’ Curtis asked. He seemed preoccupied, worried. The Doctor’s attempt at light conversation as they sat in the plane did not seem to relax him.

‘This.’ The Doctor gestured in the air. ‘Such a large plane. A cargolifter, is that what they’re called?’ He looked round, like a child in a toy shop. ‘Absolutely fascinating.’

‘And why would we go to this trouble for you?’ Holiday asked laconically as he strapped himself in across the aisle.

‘Well, it hardly seems necessary for just the four of us. Six, if you include the pilot and co‐pilot, I suppose.’ He smiled warmly and rubbed his hands together. ‘I thought perhaps it was a generous accommodation for my blue box.’

Holiday’s eyes narrowed. The Grand Duchess settled herself into a seat further along and studiously ignored them.

Noticing this, the Doctor added loudly: ‘I mean the Duchess’s trunk is pretty substantial for a short break in Siberia, but even that and my box together hardly warrant the use of this sort of technology.’

Curtis turned, with apparent effort. There was an empty seat between him and the Doctor and he peered across it. His pupils were black pinpricks in his opaque eyes. The pores of his skin were dark dots. ‘Your blue box intrigues me, Doctor.’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘A little idiosyncratic I admit.’ He grinned. ‘Sometimes, you know, it intrigues me too.’

‘Not the box itself. I’m intrigued to know what is inside it.’

‘And I’m intrigued to know what’s inside the Grand Duchess’s trunk.’ He gave her a wave as she glanced across. She glared at him briefly and looked away again.

The Doctor was saved from answering further by the pilot’s voice over the intercom asking them to prepare for take‐off.

‘Perhaps it’s Schrödinger’s Cat?’ the Doctor mused as the plane powered down the runway. The engines strained, the noise building until it was almost deafening. Eventually the huge plane lifted ponderously off the tarmac and skimmed over the ground.

‘That trunk of yours must be even heavier than it looks,’ the Doctor shouted across at the Duchess as the plane struggled to gain altitude. ‘Maybe it’s Schrödinger’s weight‐lifting kit rather than his cat?’

‘I’m afraid I have no idea what you are talking about, you strange man,’ the Duchess rebuked him. Her voice was almost lost in the engine noise. But the Doctor beamed at her as if she had complimented him handsomely.

‘Well, since you ask,’ he said, settling back and adjusting the seat’s position so he could recline and steeple his fingers, ‘I’ll tell you.’

‘Oh good,’ Holiday said, just loud enough for the Doctor to hear. His tone was unenthusiastic.

‘Schrödinger suggested,’ the Doctor went on, undeterred, ‘that you could put a cat in a box.’

The Duchess seemed unimpressed at the idea. ‘There is no cat in my trunk,’ she announced loftily.

‘Ah,’ the Doctor said, with a wink and tap of the nose, ‘but there might be. We don’t know for certain until we open it.’ He beamed at his audience. They stared stonily back. ‘You see, what you do is you set up some device – you can use a photon of light passing through a slit if you really want to make the point. But in Schrödinger’s example, the device allows for poison gas to be released inside the box. Or not. There’s a fifty‐fifty chance and you don’t know whether it’s happened or not.’

‘Why?’ the Duchess asked, her face wrinkling even more than usual.

‘Well, that’s the clever bit, you see. That way you don’t know if the cat is still alive or not.’ The Doctor frowned. ‘Of course, the box needs to be air‐tight or you could run into trouble. And if it’s air‐tight then the cat’s rather had it anyway. But leaving that aside,’ he said, making a brushing gesture with his hands, ‘you are now in the position of having a cat inside a box and no way of knowing if it’s alive or dead.’

‘But all you have to do is to open the box,’ the Duchess pointed out.

‘Not take the money?’ the Doctor mused. ‘You’re right of course. But until you do, Schrödinger’s Cat is in an “indeterminate state” – it’s neither alive nor dead.’

‘Rubbish,’ Holiday told him. ‘It has to be one or the other.’

‘Well, yes. But you don’t know which until the box is opened.’

‘I rather suspect that the cat knows,’ Curtis said.

‘No. Well, yes. Sort of. Look,’ the Doctor sat upright suddenly and gestured with frustration. ‘Forget the cat for a minute.’

‘It was you who told us to poison it,’ the Duchess said.

‘Yes, fine. Well, anyway it doesn’t have to be a cat of course. Though that might affect the poison you choose. Anyway, you open the box and the cat is alive or dead. Can we at least agree on that bit? Good,’ the Doctor said after some nodding. ‘Now at that moment, a decision has been taken, and the universe splits.’

The Duchess’s mouth dropped open.

The Doctor held up his hand. ‘Hang on, we’re nearly there. Follow me closely now. In one universe the cat is alive, and in the other it’s dead. That’s what Quantum Theory says. At every decision point, the multiverse gets bigger. It’s still finite, although because there have been an awfully huge number of possible differences and decisions, it’s an awfully big finite number. I mean you could sit down and count your way through them all. If you had the time.’ He leaned back again. ‘And a rather more comfortable chair than this one.’

‘So…?’ the Duchess prompted him.

‘So,’ the Doctor said, ‘Schrödinger used this as an example of just how silly Quantum Theory is. Like you, he said that the cat must make its mind up whether it’s alive or dead – it can’t be neither one thing nor the other. It either is or it isn’t. But the irony is that people now use Schrödinger’s Cat to explain Quantum Theory rather than rebuke it.’ He paused and nodded, evidently pleased with the way the explanation had gone. Then a puzzled frown slowly drifted across the Doctor’s face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘how did we get on to this?’

It was over an hour before anyone spoke again. And again it was the Doctor. ‘Of course!’ he exclaimed, his leap to his feet curtailed by the seatbelt across his lap. ‘I was asking what’s in that trunk of yours.’

The Grand Duchess had been leaning back in her seat, apparently sleeping. Now she opened her eyes and turned slowly towards the Doctor.

‘Though I suppose,’ he said as she continued to stare at him, ‘it’s really none of my business.’

The Duchess nodded slowly, and closed her eyes again.

‘But,’ he said loudly, ‘I would be terribly interested to know how dear Alex escaped the firing squad. You’re his daughter, is that right?’

‘That is right,’ she said, opening her eyes again. ‘Yes.’

The Doctor sucked in his cheeks. ‘I always thought it was odd that they burned the bodies of the maid and the boy. Why not burn them all? Or none of them?’ He raised his eyebrows, making it clear he expected an answer.

But the Duchess was getting to her feet and started to walk slowly and carefully back along the aisle. ‘You will excuse me,’ she said. It was not a question.

‘Something I said?’ the Doctor asked in an anxious tone.

‘Indeed no,’ she assured him. ‘I just wish to stretch my legs.’

The Doctor watched her all the way to the back of the passenger compartment. He watched her open the door to the hold, waved to her as she glanced back to see if he was looking.

As the door closed behind the Duchess, the Doctor turned to Curtis, who was staring out of the window lost in his own thoughts.

‘What do you reckon is in that trunk of hers?’ he asked.

20: Off the Scale

Two white‐clad figures watched the girl shivering as the snow powdered her face. She had lost consciousness a few seconds ago, and they both knew she would be dead in minutes.

‘What do you reckon, sir?’ the shorter of the men asked. Captain Mike Nesbitt considered.

‘We can’t just leave her to die, sir,’ Corporal Lansing said. ‘She’s a civvy. She came with the Yank team, but she’s obviously not one of them.’

‘She obviously upset them too,’ Nesbitt pointed out. ‘But we can’t afford to look after her. Not with the odds stacked as they are now. And we don’t have spare thermal gear.’ He looked up from the woman. ‘You have a suggestion?’

‘Yes, sir, I do.’

Lansing carried the woman. Keeping low, Nesbitt reckoned it was a calculated risk getting this close to the Institute’s main entrance. But the only sign of anyone around was a dead Russian soldier lying close beside the gates.

‘As close to the gate as you can,’ Nesbitt said. He had almost to shout above the wind now. The snow was driving at them virtually sideways, which at least meant they were less likely to be seen.

The woman’s head lolled and she murmured something Nesbitt didn’t catch as Lansing dumped her down into the snow.

‘Do it,’ Nesbitt said.

Lansing hauled his rucksack off his back and rummaged round in a pocket. He pulled out what looked like a small nail‐gun and a plastic wallet. He took the capsule he needed from inside the wallet, loaded it into the device and pressed the muzzle hard against the girl’s exposed neck, right at the front of her throat. The sound of the shot was lost as he pulled the trigger.

The girl’s neck spasmed, her head knocked backwards by the pressure of the injection.

‘What now, sir?’

Nesbitt smiled, feeling the ice cracking round his mouth as he did so. ‘We ring the bell and run away. Just like when we were kids.’

‘I think you had a rather different childhood from me, sir,’ Lansing said as they ran for the nearest cover. They dived behind a drift of snow and watched.

Within a minute, the gates were hauled open from the inside. Two camouflaged figures emerged, guns at the ready, each covering the other as they crabbed forwards over the exposed ground.

‘Might be a good way to draw them out,’ Lansing said. ‘As and when.’ The two armed figures from the Institute had spotted the girl’s body now. They relaxed immediately, and one of them lifted her easily on to his shoulders. Then they disappeared back inside.

‘Smooth,’ Lansing commented. ‘They’ll assume she staggered back this far and pressed the intercom button, then passed out.’

Nesbitt nodded. ‘And she won’t remember anything to contradict that. Come on, Iet’s get back to Base Zero and see what the status is.’

Hartford was livid. A muscle worked in his cheek as he stared down at the woman’s unconscious form.

‘What happened to Gamblin and Jacobs?’ he demanded.

‘No idea, sir.’ Wences shifted uncomfortably.

‘Then find out,’ Hartford shouted. ‘Now!’

Once Wences had gone, leaving at a run, Bill Thorpe cleared his throat. ‘What do you want to do with her?’ he asked, nudging Anji’s prone body with the toe of his boot.

‘Set up a bed in the canteen,’ Hartford said. His voice was low and gravelly. ‘Keep her warm, and let me know the moment she wakes up. I want her somewhere we can keep an eye on her every second of every minute.’

‘One other small matter,’ Thorpe hazarded.

‘What?’

‘We have a plane heading this way. About ten minutes out.’

‘If you must know, Doctor, it was because Alexei was not there.’ The Grand Duchess said.

‘I’m sorry?’ The Doctor looked up. He had been dozing, his brain taking the opportunity of some peace and quiet to run through everything he knew about Curtis, the Grand Duchess, the events at the Auction House…

‘That is why they claimed they burned his body. They could never produce it.’

‘Ah,’ The Doctor nodded. ‘Well, I don’t think they actually intended ever to produce any of the bodies.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘I think we’re almost there,’ he said as the engine sound deepened slightly. Snow was spattering past the windows as they lost height.

Beside the Doctor, Curtis was struggling to his feet. Across the aisle, Holiday was already standing.

‘Shouldn’t you be strapping in, restoring your seats to the upright position, that sort of thing?’ the Doctor asked.

‘The pilot will be concerned that he can’t land on the short runway at the Institute,’ Curtis said as he pushed clumsily past the Doctor. He seemed tired and ill from the journey.

‘Well, it’s a thought,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘The weather doesn’t help, of course.’

‘And what will you tell him if he says he cannot land?’ the Grand Duchess inquired. ‘What if he says it would endanger our lives?’ There was a hint of anxiety in her tone, and in her eyes.

‘It is his own life he needs to worry about first and foremost,’ Holiday said as he followed Curtis towards the cockpit.

‘I bet you’re glad you asked,’ the Doctor whispered loudly to the Duchess.

She raised an ancient eyebrow, the wrinkles round her eyes twitching with the effort. They could clearly hear the sound of the wind and feel it buffeting the plane as it flew ever lower.

‘No boiled sweets,’ the Doctor observed in a melancholy tone.

Base Zero was a collection of white tents in a hollow close to the Institute but out of sight behind a low hill. Around the edge were parked the various snow‐cats and other vehicles that the SAS team had used to get there. Inside the largest of the tents was a mobile command centre. Lightweight folding chairs stood around lightweight folding tables on which laptops and other equipment hummed and gleamed.

It took Nesbitt only a minute to get updated. There was a plane approaching – a large cargo plane. But nothing was scheduled so far as they knew. His first thought was that it was the American incursion team bringing in reinforcements. That was an unwelcome development and would make his job all the more difficult. Especially as there was another factor that now came into play.

‘He was quite insistent, sir,’ Private Phillipps told Nesbitt. ‘The last gravity wave readings were in the region of a few nanometres. These were off the scale.’

‘And centred here?’

‘Near as they can tell. Within a hundred kilometres. God knows what they’re up to in there.’

Nesbitt nodded. ‘How long till the plane lands?’

‘Maybe five minutes. We’d hear them if the wind died down for a moment.’

‘No time to take the Institute before it gets here, then.’

Lansing was shaking his head. ‘We don’t know it is reinforcements,’ he pointed out. ‘Maybe Charles can tell us.’

‘Good idea.’ Phillipps was already back at his equipment.

In seconds the plummy voice of Corporal Charles Beauchamp crackled through the speakers by the comms laptop. ‘Plenty of activity, sir. Just in the last couple of minutes. Doesn’t look like they’re rolling out the red carpet though.’

‘So what does it look like?’ Nesbitt demanded.

‘Looks like they’re as surprised as we are. Looks like they’re preparing a welcome of their own.’

‘What sort of welcome?’

‘Well…’ Charles paused, as if considering how best to phrase his thoughts. ‘It looks like they’re getting ready to blow the plane to Kingdom Come.’

19: Into the Darkness

Dust flew from the door as it shook violently under the impact. Again and again it shuddered and creaked and cracked as the creatures hurled themselves at it.

Fitz had been all round the room, but found no other exit. The remains of a fireplace had given him some initial hope, but the chimney was blocked solid with fallen rock and stone from the walls above. George had made a game effort to scramble up one of the ragged walls, hoping to reach a window and haul the others up to join him. But now his knees were bruised and his hands scraped raw with the effort. The highest he had managed to climb was about seven feet from the ground. The window was still ten feet above his head.

‘Stupid design,’ Fitz complained. ‘I blame the architect. I’ll have words with him when we get out of this.’

‘If we get out of this,’ George said sullenly. None of them seemed scared. They were frustrated and exhausted, but not yet terrified. Not while the door held.

The dusty remains of a tapestry hung above the broken fireplace. It was faded and torn, the image barely visible. It seemed to show a man on horseback, the horse rearing up, the soldier with his sword drawn. His face was grim and determined, as if he knew he was about to die.

It was a sentiment Fitz could relate to.

The door shuddered again and a large section of wood splintered off and flew across the room.

‘Won’t be long now,’ Price said. ‘Best arm ourselves.’ He led them to the fire and they each picked the largest piece of wood they could comfortably wield. Then they turned to face the door, torches held ready.

After two more shuddering blows, the third did it. The wedges round the edge of the door gave way before the door itself. The whole wooden rectangle exploded inwards, falling end over end towards the fire and making Fitz, George and Price jump aside in alarm.

More alarming was the massive brutish creature roaring with satisfaction in the entranceway. Behind it others struggled to push their way into the room, following impatiently as their leader stooped to get through the doorway. It dropped to all fours and padded surprisingly quietly over the threshold. Its heavy breath fogged the air as it shook its head in satisfaction.

‘Now,’ Fitz shouted. ‘Drive them back.’ If they seized the initiative, if they surprised and frightened the creatures, maybe they could still get out of this alive. He ran towards the huge beast, waving the flaming wood in front of him like a sword.

The creature reared up, perhaps in fear but perhaps just out of interest, as Fitz approached. George was beside him, Price close on their heels. The creature’s head swayed in time with the swing of Fitz’s torch, He lunged forwards experimentally and thrust the torch at the creature, relieved to see that it drew back from the flames.

But then the huge reptilian monster lunged towards Fitz. With a single massive blow from one of its forelimbs the creature sent the torch flying from Fitz’s grasp. It spun across the room, trailing dark smoke in its wake. Saliva sprayed his face as the creature roared and kept coming at him, mouth gaping, teeth dripping. With a cry, Fitz fell back.

Price was there at once, waving his own torch at the creature with one huge hand and dragging Fitz back with the other. George was yelling and lunging as well. Then they were scurrying back towards the fire. There were several of the creatures in the room now, dark eyes watching their prey keenly.

Fitz’s torch had clattered to the floor on the other side of the room. It had skidded across the threadbare tapestry above the fire and a trail of flame licked down the material. Now it seemed as if the whole of the wall was burning.

It was a desperate thought, but it was the only idea that Fitz had right now. He ran to the fireplace and grabbed a surviving edge of the tapestry.

‘Over here!’ he shouted – not to George and Price, but to the creatures gathering in the doorway. ‘Oi, croc‐face, come and get your din‐dins if you want it.’

Ponderously, one of the creatures turned to look at Fitz. It tilted its head to one side, regarding him with what seemed like amusement. Its eyes glinted in the firelight. Fitz could feel the heat on his face, felt warm for the first time in what seemed like centuries.

The massive reptilian form lumbered across the room. As it approached it gathered speed, its hind legs working faster until it was barrelling towards Fitz so fast he wondered if he had time to pull down the burning tapestry.

He yanked as hard as he could. Felt something give. From somewhere behind rum he could hear a scraping, grating sound of stone rolling over stone. But while the tapestry seemed to be lower than it had been, it did not fall. And the beast was almost on him. Ten steps away… Eight… Six…

He pulled again. Four steps away… Somewhere in the distance George and Price were shouting to him but they might have been in another world. Two steps away…

Then the tapestry was falling – a solid sheet of flame collapsing towards Fitz. He leaped clear, rolled across the icy hard floor, twisted to see what was happening. In time to witness the mass of yellow flames fall across the head and shoulders of the creature that was turning towards him. It howled in surprise, then screeched in pain. Its head was shaking from side to side and it collapsed to all fours as it tried to shrug off the blanket of flame.

But to no avail. The smell was pungent, choking Fitz’s nostrils, clogging his mouth as he tried to breath, as he tried to drag himself clear from the rampaging creature. It staggered away, blindly shaking. Screaming in fear and agony now as well as surprise. It lurched heavily across the room, retracing its steps, and blundered into the group of its fellows near the doorway. They leaped aside, trying to keep out of its way, calling to each other in annoyance and fear. Slowly, they retreated outside the door as the creature collapsed in front of the entrance. The fire had taken full hold now, its whole body wreathed with smoke and flame.

‘How did you know?’ George gasped as he helped Fitz to his feet. He was aware that his clothes were smouldering, that his face was scorched and his hands black.

‘Everything’s afraid of fire,’ Fitz croaked, his throat sore from the heat.

‘Not that,’ George said. ‘How did you know about the passageway?’

‘What?’

Price was pointing to a large, dark rectangle in the wall beside the fireplace, behind where Fitz had been standing. ‘You pulled the tapestry,’ he said. ‘And it opened.’

‘Come on then!’ Fitz shouted as he pulled himself to his feet.

‘Yes, what are we waiting for?’ George was euphoric.

Price, however, seemed more thoughtful, wary. He was shaking his head. ‘Who knows what’s down there?’ he said.

‘Who cares?’ Fitz told him.

‘And they’ll just follow us.’

‘We can’t stay here, can we?’

The blackened corpse of the dead creature was visible through the dying flames. And through the smoke that still rose from it, they could see the other beasts gathering in the corridor outside.

‘If we all go, we’ll all die,’ Price said.

The first of the creatures leaped through the guttering flames and landed on its hind legs with an impact that made the whole room shake. A spattering of dust and fragments of stone showered down on to Fitz and the others.

‘What are you saying?’ Fitz demanded.

‘You go,’ Price told him. ‘I’ll hold them off as long as I can.’

‘With what?’ George yelled at him. ‘You’ll be killed for sure.’

‘With the fire. Get as far away as you can, as quickly as you can.’ He grabbed George roughly by the shoulder and hurled him towards the passageway.

Another creature leaped through the struggling fire to join the first. Together they leaned forward eagerly, anticipating the fight ahead and knowing how it must end.

‘I’m staying with you,’ Fitz told Price.

The huge man grinned at him, teeth glinting in the flickering light. ‘You’re leaving,’ he said. ‘Either now in one piece, or in ten seconds with a broken nose.’

Fitz blinked. ‘Fair enough,’ he decided. He stuffed his hands into his coat pocket in an attempt to seem nonchalant about it. His fingers grazed the rough metal surface of the grenade that Caversham had given him. ‘This any use to you?’ he asked, offering the grenade to Price.

The creatures were stalking towards them now. Others stepped over the charred fragments of the dead creature. One or two lowered their massive jaws and ripped at its flesh.

‘You keep it,’ Price said. ‘It might save your life, you never know.’

‘What about your life?’

‘I’m dead already. Now go’ He pushed Fitz after George, who was already waiting for him inside the passage.

Fitz turned back from the doorway ‘Thanks,’ he shouted. It was inadequate pathetic but the most he could do.

Price grinned back at him Then he took a massive burning strut of wood in each hand raised them above his head and let out an almighty, defiant yell of rage.

The yell rang down the passage after George and Fitz. It was still echoing in their ears as they ran full tilt into the darkness.

18: Unreasonable Excuses

‘Where is Naryshkin?’ Curtis demanded. He seemed far from well. His face had darkened, and his skin looked blotchy. His eyes were watering and he could barely stand.

‘I’m afraid Comrade Naryshkin is indisposed,’ the big man told them.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Doctor said politely, ‘But I didn’t catch your name.’

‘Hartford,’ the man barked. ‘But you can call me “Sir”.’

‘Can’t we get in out of this dreadful cold?’ the Grand Duchess asked. They were standing on the runway by the side of the plane. The pilot had managed to stop it a few yards short of the end of the level strip. Skid marks reached back through the snow, showing where the plane had screeched to an eventual halt. The pilot and co‐pilot were looking back at them as the Doctor, Curtis, Holiday and the Grand Duchess were led towards the castle entrance.

‘Will we be able to take off again?’ Holiday wondered.

‘No,’ Hartford told him shortly. ‘But that’s my decision, not a technical assessment.’ He paused, raising his hand so that the two white‐clad figures with the pilot and co‐pilot could see him gesture. A short, chopping movement. ‘And just to make absolutely certain…’

They all turned – in time to see the pilot and his colleague crumple to the ground. The sound of the shots reached them moments after the bodies buckled and spasmed.

‘What in heaven’s name do you think you’re you doing?’ Curtis shouted. But his voice was weak and had lost its usual authority.

‘Those were human beings,’ the Doctor said. His own voice by contrast was dark and powerful. ‘You have no right –’

‘I have every right,’ Hartford cut him off. ‘They were superfluous. And their deaths made a point.’ He stepped towards the Doctor, snow whirling between them as they stared into each other’s eyes. ‘Are you superfluous, whoever you are? Do I need to make another point?’

‘Where is Naryshkin?’ Curtis asked again. His voice was husky and he swayed on his feet. Holiday moved to steady his arm.

‘Who are you?’ Hartford asked in reply.

Curtis looked surprised. Holiday answered for him. ‘This is Mr Maxwell Curtis, the main benefactor and sponsor of this Institute.’

‘Indeed. And you?’

Holiday shrugged. ‘I am his assistant. Holiday.’ His eyes narrowed to slits. ‘May I ask why you are here, sir – what you intend?’

‘I’ve had enough questions,’ Hartford said. He nodded for the other armed men to take them inside. ‘All the scientists are confined to their quarters. We will allocate you a room each. And you will stay there until I question you, or unless you have a very good reason to leave. Unfortunately I cannot spare the men to guard each room or to organise food and drink and other necessities. So we operate a trust system here. Betray that trust, and you die.’ He smiled at the simplicity of it.

‘What about the experiments? We have to finish the experiments,’ Curtis said. He reached out, as if to clutch at Hartford’s arm. But Holiday held him upright, and pulled him back.

‘All experiments are suspended for the moment.’

‘But you can’t! Naryshkin must finish his work.’

‘Why?’ the Doctor asked quietly. But Curtis just stared blankly back at him, pupils large and black.

‘No,’ Hartford said firmly. He turned and entered the Castle. The armed men pushed the Doctor after him and the others followed.

‘Please,’ Curtis begged as they were led into a huge room – what had once been the Great Hall. ‘I have the Hanson Galloway journal with me.’ He gestured weakly to Holiday who pulled the leather‐bound book from his jacket pocket and handed it to Curtis. ‘You can have it,’ Curtis said. ‘If only –’

‘I don’t want it,’ Hartford told him. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

As they spoke, a short, dark‐haired woman passed them. She edged uneasily past Hartford. ‘I was getting a drink of water,’ she said, her voice laced with nerves.

Hartford’s eyes narrowed and he seemed to consider this. Then he nodded. ‘Very well, Miss Dewes.’

She sighed audibly with relief and left the room.

‘This is the dining area and kitchen facilities,’ Hartford explained. He gestured‐for a huge black man to come over. Like all Hartford’s men, he was heavily armed.

‘Thorpe here will show you to your accommodation. Leave it without good reason, and you’ll answer to me.’

The Grand Duchess gave a polite cough.

‘You are?’ Hartford snapped.

‘I am the Grand Duchess Alicia Romanov.’

Hartford raised an eyebrow, but seemed otherwise unimpressed. ‘And what do you want?’

‘I have a trunk with me. On the aeroplane. My luggage. It is labelled.’ Hartford’s expression darkened, but the Duchess went on: ‘You would not deny an old woman what little vanity she has left?’

‘Very well,’ Hartford said. ‘I’ll have someone bring it to your room.’

‘I have a large blue box that might –’ the Doctor began.

‘No.’ Hartford said.

‘Just thought I’d ask.’

‘I don’t need to salve your vanity…?’ He cocked his head slightly to one side – an obvious question.

‘Doctor,’ the Doctor said. He smiled. ‘But you can call me…’ He studied Hartford’s expression. ‘Doctor,’ he finished.

‘Medical doctor?’ Thorpe asked. He was looking meaningfully at Hartford as he spoke.

The Doctor did not answer him. Instead he pointed across the room to where there were tables and chairs set up round a kitchen area. At the side of the tables was a bed, a figure lying unmoving in it. ‘You need a second opinion?’

‘Later,’ Hartford decided. ‘Show them to their rooms first, then bring the Doctor back here.’

By the time they reached the first room, Curtis could barely stand without Holiday’s help.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ the Doctor hissed at Holiday.

But the big man frowned at him. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said quietly, ‘He gets like this.’

‘Perhaps I should take a look at him?’

‘No!’ Holiday snapped with sudden and surprising vehemence. ‘I will attend to Me Curtis.’

Thorpe pushed the door open. The room beyond was small. There was a single bed, a wardrobe built into an alcove, and a desk and chair. In the corner was a small armchair.

Curtis staggered inside. Holiday made to follow, but Thorpe stopped him. ‘One per room,’ he said.

‘But Mr Curtis is ill,’ Holiday pleaded.

‘Then you’d better hope he gets better before your next pay day.’ Thorpe smiled, white teeth matching his coverall. ‘Go in there now and you won’t be there to collect the cheque.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ Curtis croaked. He slumped down in the small armchair. There was an audible crack. His body seemed to sag for a moment, then the chair exploded. The arms fell away to the sides and the back collapsed. Curtis was left sitting, dazed, on the floor.

It was as comical as it was sudden, and Thorpe guffawed with laughter. ‘You’re well out of it there,’ he told Holiday and swung the door shut on the image of Curtis struggling to get to his feet.

Holiday mopped his forehead with a snow‐white handkerchief and they continued down the corridor. They were almost at the studded steel door at the end when behind them, another door opened. A small woman with tangled fair hair stepped out. She reacted when she saw Thorpe and the others. ‘I heard a sound,’ she said nervously. ‘A sort of cracking. Maybe a shot.’

‘And you think that’s a good enough reason to leave your room?’ Thorpe asked. His eyes glinted in the uncompromising light.

She swallowed. ‘I – I…’ But she seemed unable to go on.

Thorpe sighed. ‘That’s the third time, Miss Ashworth,’ he said quietly, ‘Three strikes and you’re out.’

The woman’s eyes widened in terror.

The Doctor stepped quickly forwards. ‘Look, I’m sure we can work –’

But he got no further. Thorpe’s pistol was raised, pointing at the woman’s head. She whimpered and cringed away, hands flying to her mouth.

Holiday took a step back, his own mouth open in horror. The Duchess screamed.

The shot echoed round the corridor, the sound continuing long after the woman’s body had slumped to the floor. The blood pooled around her shattered head and Thorpe clicked his tongue.

‘There was no excuse for that,’ the Doctor said. His voice was quiet, yet it carried easily to the others. ‘No excuse whatsoever.’

Thorpe turned slowly to face him, the gun still smoking in his hand.

‘You want to make something of it?’ he asked.

The Doctor met his gaze. ‘That was a destructive act, pure and simple,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing creative about killing. Nothing can be made of it. You do it so easily, have you ever thought about how much harder it is to preserve and save lives? How much more of a challenge that is?’

‘I know my limits,’ Thorpe replied. ‘I know where my talents lie. Be careful I don’t get the urge to demonstrate them again.’

The gun was still levelled. Slowly, Thorpe raised it so it pointed directly between the Doctor’s eyes.

Then he sighed. ‘Son of a…’ He shook his head and lowered the gun. His gaze was focused beyond the Doctor, further down the corridor. ‘Here we go again.’

The Doctor turned. A man was walking towards them along the corridor. He was of average height and build, perhaps in his thirties. He was wearing furs, the hood pulled back so that his unshaven face was clearly visible. His dark hair was brushed back.

The man seemed not to notice the other people in the corridor, did not remark on the dead body of the woman staining the floor. He made no effort to step over or around any of them, but kept walking. Only when he had passed them, and almost reached the door at the end of the corridor did he turn. But again he seemed not to be looking at them, and in a moment he was gone – fading through the door as if it were not there.

The Duchess gasped. Holiday had gone white.

Thorpe laughed nervously. ‘Gets me every time,’ he said as he put his gun away.

‘What was it?’ the Duchess asked breathlessly.

‘A ghost?’ Thorpe shrugged. ‘Who knows.’ He heaved open the heavy door and nodded for them to go through. There was no sign of the man in the next section of corridor.

Holiday was shown into a room almost identical to the one Curtis had been given. But when it was the Duchess’s turn, her room was rather larger.

‘The honeymoon suite,’ Thorpe told her with a grin. She did not smile back.

The Doctor peered in past the large man. ‘I like the view,’ he said. Through the single large window he could see the main castle entrance. In the distance a mountain mirrored the shape of the rebuilt gatehouse. The two were almost perfectly aligned.

Thorpe swung the door shut, cutting off the view, and the Doctor gave a sigh of disappointment.

‘You’ll have more than enough time to admire the views,’ Thorpe told him. ‘I’ll show you your room on the way back to the Hall. Then you can examine the patient.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’ the Doctor asked as they made their way back down the corridor.

‘Been outside too long without her coat. Hartford will tell you.’

In his room, Curtis lay heavily on the bed. He was sleeping fitfully, his face streaming with sweat.

He turned over and muttered at the sound of the door opening. But he did not wake as someone slipped inside the room and closed the door quietly behind them.

Nor did he wake as they lifted the leather‐bound journal from the desk where he had lain it. Only when the door clicked shut again did his eyes flicker open for the briefest moment. His coal‐dark eyes stared up at the ceiling for a while before closing again.

Had he looked to the desk, he might have noticed that the journal was gone.

‘I want to know what happened to the two people I sent outside with her.’ The voice seemed to be floating through layers of cloud. ‘I want to know what happened to the other prisoner.’

Anji could feel her eyelids flickering. She could see the light beyond, yet they just seemed too heavy to open. She lay still, gathering her strength. Where was she? Was this…? No, that was ridiculous. The voice – she knew the voice. It was Hartford, she realised with a shiver.

But now there was another voice answering. Speaking loudly and precisely, and somehow Anji felt that the words were addressed directly to her.

‘You realise,’ the voice said, ‘that there may be some initial amnesia brought on by hypothermia.’

Anji almost gasped out loud. She knew this other voice too.

Hartford again: ‘What?’

She was about to open her eyes, about to struggle into a sitting position and grin insanely because now everything would suddenly, irrationally, be all right.

‘She may not be able to remember what happened,’ the Doctor was saying, ‘When she eventually comes round. Which may not be for quite a while yet.’

That was certainly meant for her, Anji decided. She tried to relax, though she could feel her heart beating anxiously and excitedly. ‘Who is she, anyway?’ the Doctor asked.

‘It doesn’t matter who she is,’ Hartford snapped. ‘I just want her fit enough to answer my questions as soon as possible.’

A hand took hold of Anji’s wrist to check her pulse. She opened her eyes the merest fraction, and saw the Doctor’s face close to hers. He was bent low as if to listen to the rhythm of her breathing. ‘Stay unconscious,’ he murmured.

That was easy, Anji thought. A dull mist was descending again in her mind and she could feel herself drifting back to sleep. With an effort she fought it back, and strained to hear what was going on.

It took several minutes for Hartford to bore of watching the Doctor. When he did he went over to talk quietly with Thorpe on the other side of the large room. The Doctor could see them examining what looked like a wristwatch. Hartford was shaking it angrily.

‘…worse if anything…’ Hartford’s words drifted over as he turned to look back at the Doctor.

The Doctor pretended to be absorbed in his patient’s condition. He whistled softly when Hartford and Thorpe both left the Hall, leaving them alone.

‘You can wake up now, Anji,’ he said.

She sat up at once. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘What am I doing here?’ He frowned. ‘There’s trouble here, that’s where I go. But what about you?’

‘I was brought here, by Hartford and his lot.’

‘Why?’ the Doctor asked.

‘I wish I knew,’ she told him, massaging her forehead. ‘They seem to be interested in me because they think I’ve travelled in time.’ She moved her hand round to rub her neck, and gave a sudden yelp of pain as she drew her hand round to her throat.

Immediately the Doctor bent to take a look. There was small red dot where Anji said it was painful A puncture mark perhaps? He felt round it carefully. ‘Just a spot,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I think.’

Oh great: Anji threw her hands up. ‘First I get kidnapped, then I eject from a crashing plane. After that I nearly freeze to death before becoming some sort accessory to several murders. And if that wasn’t bad enough I’m now getting acne.’

‘I saw a ghost just now,’ the Doctor said matter‐of‐factly. He sat down beside Anji on the bed and grinned at her.

Anji nodded. ‘Yeah, someone mentioned there is one. What is it? Headless horseman, grey lady?’

The Doctor continued to smile ‘Not so, melodramatic.’ His smile faded. ‘But rather more worrying,’ he said. ‘It’s George Williamson.’

17: Taking Notes

They ran headlong through the darkness, not knowing or caring where the passage might lead. Fitz’s shoulders were sore and bruised from colliding with the stone walls. At one point they reached a sharp bend, and George and Fitz both bounced off the wall and found themselves entangled in a heap on the floor. It hurt like hell, but they were both laughing near hysterically as they pulled themselves upright and continued with rather more caution.

‘I can’t hear them following, George said, gasping for breath. ‘Do you suppose they’ve given up?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fitz replied. ‘Maybe they can’t get down the passage. Or perhaps they’re busy.’

‘Busy? What with?’ Fitz heard him catch his breath as he realised. ‘Oh, Price. Yes…’ George’s voice tailed off.

‘Caversham seemed to think they hunted by smell,’ Fitz said. ‘Perhaps the fire has smothered our trace.’

George’s reply surprised him. ‘I can see your face,’ he said.

‘What?’ Fitz blinked in the darkness. And found that he could see George’s outline against the blackness in front of him. ‘Yes. There’s some light getting in. From somewhere.’

The passage ended in a stone wall, but light was seeping through the tiny cracks between the stones.

‘There must be a way of opening this. Like in the Great Hall,’ Fitz murmured as he felt round the walls. Sure enough his hand found a heavy iron ring set into the side wall. He grasped it and pulled. It was stiff and he could feel the rust flaking under his palm. But with a tortured grating sound the ring moved, and with it the wall in front of them swung slowly, heavily open.

It was moonlight they could see. The clouds were gone and the night was crystal clear. They were in a room about fifteen feet square with several doors off it.

There was a single, large window through which Fitz could see the main entrance to the castle, the crumbling gatehouse over it. And beyond that another peak – the tip of the highest mountain was exactly aligned with the top of the gatehouse. He wondered vaguely if this was a deliberate design feature. But the roar of one of the dinosaur‐lizards shocked him back to reality.

‘There!’ George was pointing down into the courtyard below.

Several of the creatures were milling about, searching through the rubble perhaps for food. Perhaps, Fitz thought, for the two of them.

‘I think we’re stuck here for now,’ Fitz said, drawing back from the window,

‘So what do we do? We’ve lost the packs, so we’ve got no food. No way of making a fire.’

‘Let’s get some sleep, while we can,’ Fitz decided. ‘In the morning, when we can see what’s going on, we’ll try to get past them and down the mountain again. With luck we can be back with Chedakin and away from here before tomorrow night.’ But he did not feel nearly as confident as he hoped he sounded.

‘Should we barricade ourselves in?’ George asked, indicating the open doorways.

Fitz shook his head. ‘What would be the point?’

The room they were in was largely intact, so they were at least sheltered from the wind. But it was still desperately cold. They huddled up in their heavy coats, curled into almost foetal positions to preserve their body warmth. Within a few minutes, George was asleep, snoring quietly. Fitz could see his breath rhythmically misting the air.

When he was certain that he was not going to be able to sleep, Fitz pulled the leather‐bound notebook and a stub of pencil from his inside coat pocket. The book fell open at the map he had drawn as they made their way into the depths of Siberia on the train. He had thought it rough and crude at the time, annoyed by the lurching of the train. Now, compared with the later pencil scrawl, it looked like a work of art. He stared at it for a few moments, letting his eyes adjust and focus in the pale moonlight. Then he took the pencil and wrote across the area where they now were. The writing probably covered hundreds of miles, but the sentiment was what mattered. ‘Here Be Monsters,’ he wrote. And then after some thought he added: ‘No, really.’

For perhaps an hour Fitz read through previous entries he had written. It was strange, he thought, how the most important things now seemed trivial. Strange how the words he read did not seem to be his own – it was as if he was reading someone else’s account. Filtered and somehow stilted compared with the actual events he remembered. But then he remembered writing the words too, and they seemed to reflect exactly what he thought and felt at the time.

He turned at last to a blank page, and started to write. It was awkward holding the pencil with his glove, but he was too cold to take it off. The pencil would probably freeze to his fingertips.

He had not written anything since the evening after Galloway was killed. That seemed so long ago now. He briefly outlined their journey to the foothills and how he thought he had felt. He tried to recall the mood, the images, what everyone had said. He wrote it as if it was the recent past – today’s events rather than lifetimes ago. Graul, Caversham, Price… Lifetimes,

He wrote about how Chedakin had left them, pointing them up the mountain pass and telling them about the castle. He described as best he could the window in the air, and Graul’s death and their flight from the monstrous creatures.

Only when he finished, when he had got to the point where he and George had taken the hidden passageway to this very room – when he had caught up with reality – did he realise he had not mentioned Caversharn’s disappearance. In a way that was appropriate, since he had barely thought about it. He set the pencil to the paper again, not caring that it was so blunt now that the words were almost illegible. He described the light strobing under and round the door to the Great Hall, and how Caversham had gone to investigate.

We followed at once – myself, George and Price. But of Caversham we could find no trace. All we found was a pebble, or stone. It was black, about the size of a golf ball. Weird, I know, but that was all.

I was certain it wasn’t there when we first went down the corridor. But then it would have been easy to miss, in the dark. And we were tired. So tired. Since that first murder we are none of us sleeping so well which is hardly surprising. And then, when the creatures came though, we no longer had the chance even to try to sleep. Though George is sleeping soundly now…

So, what of Caversham? Is his disappearance perhaps linked to that round black stone? Except it was fixed down. Part of the building, maybe? Or perhaps it was just incredibly heavy. But it looked and felt like a stone a slippery pebble. We were wondering if it was relevant, I remember discussing if perhaps we were trying to find a meaning where there was none.

But that was when one of the things smashed its way through the door – which is without doubt one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen.

Tomorrow we will try to slip past them and escape down the mountain. If I can just sleep, just get some rest. Perhaps I shall wake in the morning and everything will be fine. I’ve often had that hope, actually.

It’s never happened yet.

16: Secrets

Once she was properly awake and her head had stopped the worst of its throbbing, Anji realised just how delighted she was to see the Doctor again. She surprised him at one point by reaching round and dragging him into a hug. The look on his face made her think for a second that he was going to leap to his feet with a cry of ‘Unhand me, Madam,’ or some such archaic expression of outrage. But he endured it and even managed a tight smile afterwards.

‘Hartford’s got this time‐travel detector thingy,’ she explained.

The Doctor grinned. ‘I bet he’s getting some interesting readings now that I’ve arrived. If it works.’

‘Seems to,’ Anji told him. ‘That’s how he found me. Now he thinks it’s down to me being here that he can’t detect the time‐travel equipment.’

‘What time‐travel equipment?’ the Doctor asked in surprise.

‘Well, there isn’t any, is there,’ Anji told him. ‘As far as I can tell, he brought me along because he’s convinced I’ve used their machine, which doesn’t exist. So he thinks I can help explain it – which I can’t, except I’ve led him to believe that the scientists haven’t built it yet but that when they do, they send me back from the future. Which has rather confused things.’

The Doctor nodded slowly. ‘I can imagine.’

‘It confuses me, anyway.’

‘So,’ the Doctor said, ticking off his points on his fingers, ‘Hartford wants something that doesn’t exist. He’ll go to any lengths to get it, including shooting anyone who even considers getting anywhere near in his way. Curtis thinks that he’s got Naryshkin creating an optic black hole, and Naryshkin has found a body in the ice. Using, I might add, a map that shouldn’t exist to show him the way.’

Anji pulled her legs up under herself and twisted so she could see his face. ‘They mentioned the body. In some sort of ice cave, apparently. So Flanaghan told me, anyway.’

‘That’s right. Frozen. He, umm…’ The Doctor broke off and cleared his throat.

‘What?’

‘Hmm?

‘He umm what?’ Anji said, feeling a bit like a cartoon Red Indian.

‘Oh, I was just going to say that Curtis bought an expeditionary journal for a hugely inflated price at an auction to get the map that led to the body which lay in the cave…’ He was staring off into the distance, his voice getting quieter. ‘Close to the castle that Jack built,’ he finished, his voice barely more than a sigh.

Anji was beyond mere confusion now. ‘And that helps us how?’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Probably not at all. But it was the expedition that George was on, and he’s currently haunting one of the corridors.’

‘Ye‐es. Hang on, but that means…’ Anji stopped. The Doctor was nodding glumly.

‘Yes, I thought that too. If George is a ghost, what’s happened to Fitz?’

‘You said he was going to his death.’

The Doctor was indignant. ‘I said almost certainly, not that he would definitely die.’

‘How almost certainly?’ Anji demanded.

‘Look, Anji.’ He took her hand between both his own. ‘At any point there are different ways the future might go. We travel up and down one of them, usually. Unless we get shaken loose on to another for some reason, but that’s never a good thing. But even if Fitz is dead in our universe, there are countless others where he survived. In fact, this may be one of the very few times where it is actually a comfort to realise that a fraction of an infinite number is still, by definition, infinite.’ He smiled and nodded. But from his eyes, she could tell he was not even convincing himself.

‘That’s the biggest load of bollocks I’ve heard in a long time,’ she said. ‘And I work in the City.’

‘It is actually true,’ he said gently. ‘But I admit it isn’t much of a comfort.’

‘So what do we do now? Before Hartford comes back and wants to know how to meet his great‐grandfather.’

‘I doubt that’s really his plan,’ the Doctor said.

Anji smiled her sweetest smile. ‘I was being sarcastic, actually. A form of wit that is most underrated and for which our good friend Mr Kreiner was a stalwart advocate.’

‘Oh,’ the Doctor smiled as if only now realising. ‘Oh well, in that case, what we do is simple.’

‘That’ll be a first.’

‘You stay here.’

‘Right.’

‘While I go and chat with the Grand Duchess Alicia Romanov.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Anji had to untangle herself from the bed covers to turn and watch him stride across the room. He seemed to be heading for the large fireplace in the middle of the opposite wall. ‘What Grand Duchess Thingy Romanov?’

‘Well, exactly,’ the Doctor said. He was standing in front of the fireplace gazing up in apparent admiration at the huge tapestry that hung above it. ‘Cover for me if Hartford or one of his friends comes hack, will you?’

‘If they see you in the corridor, they’ll kill you,’ Anji told him. She was quite serious, and hoped he realised that.

The Doctor’s tone did not exactly reassure her. ‘In that case,’ he said lightly, ‘I’d better use the secret passage.’

And with that he reached up and pulled the tapestry. Hard. With a creaking and scraping, a section of the wall beside the fireplace swung open to reveal a dark corridor beyond. The Doctor stepped through the open section of wall and waved cheerily at Anji. Then the wall swung slowly shut behind him.

Leaving Anji staring at a blank section of wall, vaguely aware that her hand was raised and was waving hesitantly back at him.

The passage was not long, and the Doctor was pretty sure he knew where it led. Sure enough, when he found the mechanism to open the door at the other end, and let it swing open just enough to peer out into the room beyond, he was treated to the impressive view of the mountain peak from the Grand Duchess’s room.

He could also see the Grand Duchess herself. She was sitting at a rather Spartan dressing table, examining her own face in the mirror. The Doctor watched, smiling to himself as she repaired her makeup and adjusted her earrings. He pulled the door almost closed when he saw her begin to stand up, and after a few moments heard the door of the room open quietly, then close again.

After counting to ten very slowly, the Doctor opened the door again and stepped into the room. The Duchess’s trunk was close to where he had emerged, and he wasted no time in picking the lock and opening it. Inside was a pile of dresses.

But it was what was under the dresses that interested him. He lifted them from the trunk, dumped them over the bed, and examined the rest of the contents.

There was more makeup, although there was a large box of the stuff together with brushes and creams and treatments and ointments on the dressing table. Also various books. Text books and history books – Russian history. There was a copy of The Plots to Rescue the Tsar by Shay McNeal, which did not surprise him. Nor did the well‐thumbed English‐Russian phrase book or the Russian dictionary.

‘That’s the problem with the world today,’ he mused out loud as he picked his way through. ‘There are just so few surprises left.’

‘That depends on your perspective.’

The Doctor finished flicking through the phrase book, and tossed it back into the trunk. Only then did he look up and smile at the Grand Duchess standing in the doorway.

She closed the door carefully. ‘May I ask what you are doing?’

‘Oh I think it’s pretty obvious what I’m doing.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘Which is ironic, because it’s pretty obvious what you’re doing too.’

‘What do you mean?’ Her accent was more pronounced when she was angry.

‘I imagine you’ve been having a little chat with Mr Holiday,’ the Doctor said, unimpressed by her vehemence. Let me guess – he was less than happy that you came along. And now you’re less than happy with what you’ve got into. Have you two known each other for very long?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ But her tone was hesitant, anxious. The Doctor lifted the dresses and dumped them back into the trunk.

He sat down on the bed and patted the mattress next to him. She made no move to join him, and he sighed in disappointment. ‘Have it your own way,’ he said. ‘I was going to suggest we pool our resources. Share our knowledge.’

She looked at him with evident disdain. ‘What – knowledge?’ she asked. ‘What do you know?’

‘About you?’ he said. ‘Let me tell you.’

As the Doctor continued to speak, the Grand Duchess slowly walked over and sat down beside him on the bed. She said nothing until he had finished.

Her voice when she did speak was calm and quiet. ‘You are a very clever man,’ she said.

‘Well,’ the Doctor replied with a smile, ‘if I was that clever, I wouldn’t need your help.’

15: The Ice Cavern

‘Fitz – wake up!’

He struggled back to consciousness, wiping the sleep from his eyes and registering the cold, hard floor beneath him. ‘What – what is it?’

George was shaking his shoulder ‘I must have dozed off’ he said breathless and excited.

‘You were snoring well enough last I remember,’ Fitz told him.

‘But they’ve gone. No sign of them.’

‘What – the creatures outside?’

George nodded. It was still dark outside apart from the pallid light of the moon filtered through a few scurrying clouds.

‘It will be light in an hour,’ George was saying as Fitz pulled himself upright. ‘Maybe we should make a move now?’

‘We can’t run away for ever,’ Fitz said blearily. ‘But there’s nothing wrong with getting a good head start.’ He walked over to the window, aching all over, and looked down into the deserted courtyard below. ‘You’re right. Let’s get packed.’

He turned to find George staring at him open‐mouthed. ‘Packed? But we don’t have –’

‘Sorry, it was a joke,’ Fitz admitted. ‘Ha ha,’ he added by way of explanation.

They made their way cautiously out of the room, along a narrow corridor and out into the courtyard. The first streaks of dawn were staining the sky behind the mountain peaks and making the snow and ice glow eerily. Of the creatures, there was no sound or sign.

Only when they got to the main gateway did they pause to look back, did they risk a few whispered words.

‘What do you think?’ George asked.

Fitz shrugged. ‘Maybe they’re asleep somewhere. Or perhaps they went back to their window, through to their own world.’

‘You think that’s where they came from, then?’

‘Don’t you?’

George nodded slowly. ‘Fascinating,’ he breathed. ‘I just wish we had the time and the facilities to study such creatures properly.’

‘Really?’ Fitz grinned. ‘Let me make a note of that, for the record.’ He pulled out the journal and made a point of leafing through the brittle‐cold pages.

‘It’s an academic interest only, you understand,’ George said.

As he spoke, they turned and started down the pathway back to the pass. Behind them, as if in answer to George’s words, a mighty roar split the early morning.

They looked at each other, paused in mid‐step.

‘You may yet get your wish,’ Fitz said. ‘Close‐up examination.’ Then he was running, dragging George after him, and they could both hear the thumping tread of the beast and feel the ground shaking and sec the snow shifting as it thundered after them.

Fitz had the journal clasped tight as he ran. When he tripped, stumbled, fell, it went flying. The covers opened and the pages riffled in the breeze as it turned in the air. Several sheets broke free and fluttered away lazily.

George helped Fitz up, and they were running again. Fitz grabbed the journal, gathered the pages he could find quickly.

‘Leave it!’ George yelled, his eyes wide, focused behind Fitz.

He left it, took only the pages he already had, bundling them into his pocket, and he ran.

It was a relief to run without the heavy packs on their backs. Fitz could almost believe they would outrun the creature behind them. Almost.

‘We need to find somewhere to hide,’ he gasped to George.

‘No chance if it’s scented us.’

‘So what do you suggest, then?’

‘Over there!’

On the other side of the pass was an opening. A dark patch in the middle of the snow. George was running towards it.

Fitz turned. And wished he hadn’t. The beast was so close he could smell its breath. He found himself staring into its crocodile jaw as the teeth snapped shut, missing his face by inches. He propelled himself forwards, diving headlong for the darkness as George disappeared into it, hoping that it was too small for the creature to follow them.

He was rolling, skidding, bruised and battered, sliding down a shallow icy incline after George. Outside the creature was howling in frustration, calling for help from its fellows.

Fitz landed in a curled heap on the frozen ground. Ice beneath him, so thick it acted like a mirror. And it was light – much more light than the moon or the early sun could be responsible for.

‘What in Heaven’s name is this place?’ George asked. His voice was an awed hush that echoed softly round the ice cave.

Everything was ice. They had fallen, it seemed, right inside the mountain itself, into the heart of a glacier. The walls were curving sheets of ice rising to cathedral proportions high above them. Icicles dripped down, yards long. The floor was a skating rink broken by mounds of snow that had drifted in and raised areas of ice.

‘Will they find us in here, do you suppose?’ George asked.

Fitz trod carefully, wary of losing his balance. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘But they have found their way in before – look.’

George joined him by the wall of the cave. Fitz was pointing into the ice itself, rubbing away the frosted coating with the back of his gloved hand. And there inside, gazing back at them, frozen into immobility, was one of the creatures. The saliva seemed frozen on its jaw, the eyes glassed over as it stared back at them, unseeing. The vague outline of its body was blurred and misted behind the huge head. It looked as if there might be others behind it, also frozen in the cave wall, but it was impossible to be sure.

Fitz remained staring into the ice as George moved on, searching along the other walls. Only when George spoke did he turn.

‘I remember my father telling me once,’ George was saying, ‘he was a clergyman, you know…’

‘I didn’t.’ Fitz watched George, staring into the ice wall on the opposite side of the cave.

‘He told me that one winter it got so cold in church that the flames froze on the candles, and he couldn’t blow them out. So he had to cut them off with a knife.’ He laughed. ‘I believed him too.’

‘So?’

‘So maybe he was right.’ George turned from the wall. ‘I can see flames inside the ice. Tiny frozen flames.’

Fitz frowned. He picked his way over to the far wall and stared in where George pointed. Sure enough, deep inside the ice he could see the telltale flickers of light – like matches flaring into existence. Except that they were completely motionless, caught in the split‐moment of their birth. Impossible flames caught mid‐dance m the Ice. ‘What is this place?’ Fitz murmured, unconsciously echoing George. But even as he spoke, he knew. ‘Of course,’ he murmured. ‘It’s the Ice Cavern. This is the place.’

‘And then there’s this.’

‘What?’ He was transfixed, unable to look away from the flames within the ice. From outside came the echoing howl of the dinosaur lizards – one or many, it was impossible to tell.

‘It seems to be made from the ice itself. Carved. Like a sculpture. And there’s writing on it – lettering, look.’

Fitz turned to see what George was looking at. Whatever it was, it could not be more confusing or incongruous than fire within ice.

‘There are flames inside it too, making it glow.’

Fitz took a stumbling step forwards as George continued to describe the thing they were now both looking at.’

‘Can you read what it says?’ He turned towards Fitz, and blinked in surprise at his friend’s expression.

Fitz could only guess at how he must look. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know what it says.’ He sank to his knees, exhaustion and confusion suddenly overcoming him. ‘It says “Police Public Call Box”.’

Inside the glassy ice‐structure that looked exactly like the TARDIS, the flames were frozen, flickering, dancing.

Burning.

14: Images

Anji met the Doctor’s gaze. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said again.

‘There really is no need. I’ve seen the map in the journal that Curtis has.’

‘And I’ve seen the map that Flanaghan had. He showed us how to get to the ice cave.’

‘What if we get caught?’ the Doctor said. ‘They’ll kill us, you know.’

Anji shook her head. ‘They’ll kill you. But they still need me. I’m all they’ve got out of this so far – someone they think has travelled in time.’

‘Yes, well, let’s not dwell on that,’ the Doctor said abruptly. ‘Come along, if you’re coming.’

He led her over to the fireplace and tugged at the edge of the tapestry once more. ‘You pull the tapestry, you see?’ he said. His voice seemed unnecessarily loud.

‘I know,’ Anji hissed. ‘I can see.’

The Grand Duchess was waiting for them. She had found a huge fur coat from somewhere and handed it to Anji without a word.

‘Thank you, er, Ma’am,’ Anji said. She wasn’t sure if that was exactly the right form of address, but she wasn’t about to curtsey.

The Duchess glared at Anji as if she was being sarky again, then opened the door and let them out into the corridor beyond.

They tiptoed through the castle, ducking out of sight on a couple of occasions when they spotted one of Hartford’s people. On each of these occasions the Doctor insisted on pointing out the exact make and model of gun they had and asking Anji again how many there were on Hartford’s team. As they hurried along the corridors, he also insisted on listing the scientists who were still alive and guessing at where their rooms were, along with Curtis and Holiday. By the time they slipped out of the back entrance, Anji was getting rather bored with it all.

The plane was collecting snow on its wings and across its back. The Docor pointed out the bodies of the pilot and co‐pilot – slightly darker mounds on the runway. ‘They shoot first and worry about it later,’ he said as they darted across and took cover behind one of the plane’s enormous wheels.

‘I know,’ Anji replied.

The Doctor smiled, and turned her round so she was looking back at the castle. He pointed up at the battlements. ‘Two guards up there.’ He said clearly. ‘Not paying much attention to the back of the Institute, luckily for us. That could be useful. I imagine that they have the grenade launcher up on the roof somewhere. Some vantage point. Probably some other heavy stuff too. But you know that already.’

‘Doctor,’ Anji said with exaggerated patience, ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re on about.’

He seemed surprised at that. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, patting her lightly on the shoulder. ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’

The Doctor’s face was large on the laptop monitor as he spoke. His voice was filtered through the tiny speakers so that it sounded tinny and devoid of cadence.

‘Smart guy,’ Phillipps said as they listened to the Doctor explaining their surveillance device.

‘You can just see the lens when it catches the light,’ he was telling Anji. ‘Quite neat, really.’

‘Maybe,’ she replied. ‘But they haven’t stuck it in your neck, have they? Goodness only knows what they might see me doing.’ The image blanked out as she covered her throat with her hand.

‘That’s not very polite,’ the Doctor’s voice said.

‘Doctor, we have no idea who they are. They might be as bad as Hartford’s lot. Or worse.’.

‘They might.’ Nesbitt and Phillipps exchanged looks, but even through the laptop speakers they could hear the amusement in the Doctor’s voice. ‘But they’d have to be pretty bad, wouldn’t they? And they did save your life.’

‘They did?’

‘I imagine so. They found you in the snow, and took you back to the Institute.’

The image reappeared. The Doctor and the woman were approaching a dark opening in the side of an ice‐covered bank.

‘I think this is it,’ the Doctor said quietly. He turned to face the camera. I’m afraid you may find this a bit boring. But please do pay attention – It may be far more important than what Hartford and his people are up to.’ He began to turn away, then seemed to change his mind. ‘One other thing,’ he said, leaning close so that his eyes stared directly at Nesbitt from point blank range. ‘If you do turn out to nasty, unpleasant people, you’ll have me to answer to.’ With that he turned away.

Phillipps gave a short laugh. But there was no humour in it… Nesbitt was not surprised. He felt the same. Somehow, despite the distance between them, despite the man’s obvious eccentricity, the Doctor s words had sent a chill through him that even the snow outside could not rival.

Anji did her best to smooth away the crust of frost while the Doctor walked slowly round the rest of the cavern and made ‘Ooh’ and ‘Ah’ noises. There was definitely something in the ice.

‘Some sort of reptile?’ he said out loud at one point. ‘Frozen too deep to tell.’ He was standing staring at a wall of the cave.

From where she was standing, Anji fancied she could see a dark shadow deep below the frosted surface, but nothing more. ‘Will you come and help?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure this is a man, or a figure at least.’

‘Mmm.’ Reluctantly, the Doctor turned away from the section of to he had been inspecting and walked back to join Anji. ‘But is it Fitz?’ he said. ‘That’s the question.’.

‘Unless you have an ice pick, we’re not going to find out,’ she told him.

‘This do?’ He handed her an ice pick.

Anji bit her lip to prevent herself from asking. She did not want to give him the pleasure. Though she could tell he was taking it anyway ‘Here,’ he said, ‘let me.’ The Doctor took the small ice pick back from her and started to hack into the wall. ‘Mind your eyes,’ he said with glee as shards of glasslike ice flew past them.

‘What do you think happened?’ Anji asked after a while.

The Doctor had taken his jacket off, despite the cold. ‘You’d have to read the journal to know that,’ he said. ‘You know, when we’ve got this fellow out, I d like to take a closer look at the creature embedded in the wall over there.’ He flexed his long fingers, ready to start hacking away again. ‘Maybe there’s more than one,’ he mused. ‘Broken through from another world.’

‘Sorry?’ Anji had to shout above the sound of the pick impacting on the ice.

‘Later, later, later,’ the Doctor told her. He stopped again and peered closely at the ice. ‘This isn’t Fitz,’ he said.

He was right, and Anji felt a wave of disappointment flow over her. The last blow had dislodged a large chunk of ice from over the figure’s face. ‘George Williamson,’ she said quietly. ‘Perhaps that means that Fitz survived.’

The Doctor said nothing. He was hacking away at the ice again with renewed energy and urgency.

It took another hour to break the body free from the wall. Anji took a turn for a while, not because the Doctor was tired but to keep herself warm. As they loosened more of the ice they could see that George was dressed in heavy furs.

‘Just as he appears in the castle corridor,’ the Doctor mused.

‘Is that significant?’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘No idea.’

They chipped the ice away from round the frozen corpse so that it stood proud from the wall. Anji was afraid that if they let it fall, or even if they accidentally hacked into it, George’s body would shatter. It wouldn’t surprise her. Nothing, she thought, would surprise her now.

She was wrong.

As the last ice fell away from his face, George gave a tremendous gasp, and his eyes opened wide.

Anji took a step backwards in fear. The Doctor, by contrast, laughed out loud with delight.

‘My dear fellow!’

‘Doctor?’ George’s voice was cracked and chipped like the ice on the floor around him. ‘What are you doing here? I must have been knocked unconscious.’

‘And then some,’ Anji said.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Kapoor?’

‘Don’t worry about it, not now.’ The Doctor was still grinning like a maniac. He reached out his hand. George went to shake it, smiling back.

Then both the smiles froze on their faces. Their hands touched, but kept moving, each grasping air, each finding the other insubstantial.

‘Like a ghost,’ Anji breathed.

Slowly, almost timidly, George stepped forward. He reached out his arm, and pushed it through the Doctor’s chest. He blinked the ice out of his eyes, and walked right through the Doctor.

‘Are you ghosts?’ he asked, in surprise.

‘No,’ the Doctor said slowly. ‘But I think you are.’ He pointed back at the wall of ice. ‘Look there.’

‘Good grief!’

Anji could see it too – a shadow, an impression, a faint image of George was still embedded in the ice. Like a faded photograph, or washed‐out watercolour.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ the Doctor said. ‘But I have some rather unpleasant ideas.’ He tapped his thumbnail against his teeth as he considered. ‘I need the TARDIS to make a proper assessment,’ he went on. ‘I wonder if I can persuade Hartford to bring it here.’

Anji laughed. ‘Not likely. Where is it, anyway?’

‘It’s on the cargo plane that Curtis brought us in.’ The Doctor turned to George and made to thump him amicably on the shoulder. But his fist passed through and appeared the other side of the astonished man. ‘You are a man out of time, George Williamson,’ the Doctor proclaimed.

George smiled at him. ‘Nothing new there, Doctor.’ Then his smile faded. ‘Doctor,’ he said earnestly, ‘I came here with Fitz.’

‘I know.’

‘He’s – well, he’s dead. I’m sorry.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘I know,’ he said again.

Anji knew too. She had known for over a year. But to hear it actually said still hammered into her emotions. ‘No,’ she heard herself saying. ‘You can’t possibly be sure of that.’

‘Anji,’ the Doctor said gently.

‘How can you know?’ she shouted at him. Her voice echoed round the frozen cave, ringing off the icicles.

‘I saw him die,’ George said quietly. ‘It’s the last thing I remember.’

‘And I’ve read his journal,’ the Doctor said, his voice also controlled and calm. ‘I mean the real journal.’ He sighed, and she could see the tears freezing in his glistening eyes. ‘I bought it in an antiquarian bookshop on the Euston Road in 1938.’

13: Decision

A man stands. Frozen in time. The chill breeze from the open door ripples the cracked pages of the book he holds.

The Doctor hesitates. Should he buy the book anyway? A Curiosity? A coincidence? Or a distraction. He has more than enough to do.

With a sudden dust‐clouding movement that makes the old woman blink and shiver, he snaps the book shut. He refolds his piece of paper, a quick well‐practised routine.

And he reaches out to replace the book on the shelf.

The book slides easily back into its dusty place. But the Doctor hesitates, the book half‐in and half‐out. A decision, a turning point. If he leaves it now, he will never know for sure. And what does he have to lose?

He pulls the book out again, and turns to smile at the old woman counting the money.

12: Realisation

The only way out of the ice cavern was back up the sloping passageway they had arrived through. It was glassy with ice, impossible to climb. And the sound of the creatures outside, calling to each other, perhaps readying themselves for another attack, was hardly an incentive to try.

‘An invidious choice,’ George had remarked. ‘We can freeze or starve to death in here, or get eaten alive outside.’

Fitz sat cross‐legged, numb from the waist down, staring at the ice sculpture. There was no doubt about it – the form that jutted from the clear wall was the TARDIS. It was carved, gouged from the ice. The exterior was slightly misshapen and lumpy, icicles dripped down from the ledges and the panels of the doors. The handle was a bump in the ice.

It was frosted and opaque in places. But in those areas where the ice was clear as glass, he could see the frozen flames inside. They illuminated it from within. He had once seen a large alabaster vase at some country house, on a visit with his mum, he guessed. There was a lamp inside the vase, so that it seemed to glow softly in its alcove. The effect here was similar. The ice‐TARDIS was imbued with an inner life as if it were alive…

He pulled the journal from his pocket and smoothed out the loose pages that had torn away from the binding earlier. He spent some time slotting them back into their right places, annoyed that several were missing – including the last page. Was this how his life would be seen he wondered? A half‐written book with the final page missing? Perhaps someday someone would find the journal and his body: frozen in the ice like the creatures trapped in the other wall – preserved in the moment of death; timeless. Or maybe they would only find the pages that had fluttered away from him on the tundra outside. Or nothing at all.

He was leafing through the book as he thought. His eyes scanned the scrawled pencil text, reading without consciously absorbing; seeing but not remarking.

‘I expect they’re waiting for dark. It won’t be long.’ George was landing looking up the passageway. The howls and roars of the animals outside echoed faintly down it. He turned away. ‘I should make some notes,’ he said. ‘Can I have some paper, and borrow your pencil?’

‘Help yourself.’ Fitz tore a page from the back of the book and handed it to him together with what was left of his pencil. ‘I don’t have a knife, I’m afraid.’ Just a grenade, he thought as he felt the cold lump in his pocket. And that would hardly be the best thing to sharpen the pencil.

The journal lay in front of him, fallen open at one of the loose pages he had replaced. And as Fitz scanned the words, another piece fell into place and he felt an icy finger tracing its way down his spine. Tingling and pins and needles were inching through his legs.

It was his account of Galloway’s death. It was his description of how he arrived at the tent, found George there already.

‘Unfortunately, George could not give me an alibi as he had not looked to see that I was in my tent when he heard the cry. Like me, he ran straight towards the noise, not pausing to check who else was around’

And there it was. He stared at the words without seeing them.

George had not checked that Fitz was in his tent any more than Fitz had checked that George was still there. In fact, George had been at Galloway’s death scene before Fitz had. He could only have been moments ahead of him, yet Fitz had not seen him, had not heard his hasty awakening or his scrabble to get from the tent and to his feet. He had found him with the body. Unable to vouch for Fitz.

Of course he was unable to vouch for Fitz – George had no idea when Fitz had got up, if he had been in his tent at all. Because George had not been in his. George Williamson – the one man Fitz knew had a motive for killing Galloway – had been there already.

Not only that, but when Caversham disappeared, it was George who had run after him down the corridor; George who was the last the see him alive.

He turned slowly and looked at his friend. He was leaning back against a large chunk of ice, sketching the bizarre scene in the cavern wall. The edge of his tongue licked out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on the detail of the ancient animal embedded in the ice.

George Williamson palaeontologist, geologist, Fitz’s friend. George Williamson the murderer. Seeming to sense Fitz’s attention, he looked across, smiled.

But, with the sound of the creatures outside calling to each other, gathering themselves for a final assault, Fitz could not bring himself to smile back. And it seemed to him that George’s expression froze and hardened like ice As if he realised what Fitz was thinking. What Fitz now knew.

11: Bargain

‘Show me the fire,’ the Doctor had said.

George had apparently understood what he meant immediately, and indicated an area in one of the ice walls. The Doctor was now scraping away the frost and polishing the icy surface.

‘Doctor.’ She tried not to let her anger show too obviously. ‘Do you mean to tell me that you’ve known about Fitz’s death since 1938?’

He continued to wipe at the ice with a grubby hanky. George looked from Anji to the Doctor and shuffled his feet with embarrassment.

‘Well,’ the Doctor said at last, pausing to breath heavily on the wall and give it another polish. ‘Well, not exactly. I mean, I didn’t know it was that Fitz – our Fitz.’

‘How could you not know?’

He glanced at her, a hurt expression etched on to his face. ‘I hadn’t met Fitz then. Not as far as I knew anyway. And anyway, the journal didn’t seem to be in his handwriting. I had this note, you see. From Fitz.’

‘In different handwriting.’

‘Yes.’

Anji was about to tell him how ridiculous this sounded when an Image rose unbidden in her memory. A small room. The Doctor sitting on a bed, holding a battered copy of The Age of Reason. ‘Is that his writing inside?’ she heard him ask in her mind. And she recalled how he had seemed to sag at her reply.

‘The note you had wasn’t actually written by Fitz, was it?’ she said huskily.

‘No,’ he said simply.

‘But, if you bought the original journal…’ This still didn’t make sense.

‘Exactly,’ the Doctor said before her brain could catch up with it all. ‘Look in here.’

Anji stared into the polished ice, at the tiny flames within. They did not seem to be moving at all. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘It can’t really be fire, not trapped in the ice like that. Can it?’

‘Frozen in time,’ the Doctor murmured.

George was peering over Anji’s shoulder. ‘They look smaller’ he said. ‘Much smaller.’

‘The fire’s going out?’ she suggested.

‘The ice hasn’t melted,’ the Doctor said thoughtfully. ‘This ice slow light, that is the point after all. That is what Curtis needs for Naryshkin’s black hole experiments.’

‘But why?’ Anji asked. Even to her it sounded whiny and pathetic.

‘And more to the point,’ the Doctor asked them, ‘given the ice didn’t melt, and given the fire is dying, where did the energy go?’

If Thorpe had ever seen Hartford so angry, he could not remember it. Together they strode through the corridors of the Institute. Thorp said as little as possible and let Hartford rant.

To begin with they had returned to the Great Hall to find the Doctor and the Kapoor woman both gone. Wences, on guard outside the Hall insisted they had not passed him.

Then Hartford found that both Harry Harries and Manda Simpson were missing from their posts. Hartford spent a full minute standing outside the main entrance in the cold, where Simpson was supposed to be on duty. He spoke loudly and without pausing for breath for the entire minute. Every word an expletive.

Thorpe knew better than to interrupt. He spent the time looking round for some clue as to where she had gone. She was a good soldier, Manda – she wouldn’t desert her post. There was nothing. Or rather, nothing that could explain it.

‘What is that?’

It took Thorpe a moment to realise Hartford had returned to normal speech. He was looking down at the same thing as Thorpe – a dull black lump jutting up from the covering of snow.

It was a pebble, or a stone. Smooth, but dull. Black. It was about the size of a golf ball. Thorpe tried to pick it up, but his fingers skidded off the surface, unable to get a grip.

‘Forget it,’ Hartford snapped. ‘Get Joe to stand guard here.’ He turned and marched back inside.

‘Where now?’ Thorpe asked as they made their way back through the corridors.

‘I’m reporting in,’ Hartford said. ‘I need to ask –’ He broke off and stopped so abruptly that Thorpe almost walked into him. Hartford was staring down a side corridor – a corridor that led past the room the Grand Duchess was in and down towards the Cold Room. ‘Who the hell is that?’

There was a woman in the corridor. Thorpe turned quickly enough to see her caught for a split‐second like a rabbit in headlights. She stared back at him with catlike eyes. Her blonde hair swung over her shoulders as she turned. And ran.

Hartford was after her in a moment, gun out ready. Thorpe followed. But when they reached the next corner, she was gone.

‘Must be in the Duchess’s room,’ Thorpe said.

Hartford nodded. He threw the door open and they stepped inside. ‘You might at least have the courtesy to knock.’ The Duchess was sitting at the desk, pinning up her white hair. She did not bother to turn towards them. She was wearing a long, silk dressing gown.

‘Someone came in here. Just now,’ Thorpe said. But looking round he could tell there was nowhere anyone could hide.

‘Only you,’ the Duchess told him. The mirror was angled so that he could not see her expression, but Thorpe could hear the annoyance in her voice.

‘Come on,’ Hartford said, ‘she must have ducked into another room.’

Only when they had both left did the Grand Duchess turn and look at the closed door.

There was no sign of Curtis in his room. Miriam Dewes crept over to the desk her heart thumping so strongly she was sure she could hear it. There was a depression in the bed where he had been lying – where he had been when she sneaked in earlier and took the journal.

The bed looked odd, she thought as she replaced the leather‐bound notebook on the desk. He would have missed it, but that could not be helped. There might have been something in it that her employers would be interested in. As it was, it seemed to be completely useless. Well, almost completely.

As she turned to go she realised what was strange about the bed. It was at an angle. Curious, she bent and looked underneath. One of the legs was buckled and broken.

She checked the corridor was empty, then ran back to her own room as fast and as quietly as she could.

If there was one person in the whole world who frightened Thorpe more than Hartford, it was the old man whose weather‐beaten face stared unblinkingly out at them from the video screen set up in a corner of the Great Hall.

‘Absolutely not,’ Control said. His left eye twitched almost imperceptibly. ‘No reinforcements. No further contact. In fact I’m amazed you even ask.’

Hartford, in contrast to his superior’s calm, looked about ready explode. ‘You sent me here to do a job, sir,’ he roared. ‘You got me out of retirement – again – because I’m the best.’

Control’s reply was almost as loud. ‘Then prove it. It’s up to you to ensure you have the correct tools and sufficient resources for your mission, Colonel Hartford. If you can’t handle the situation without making waves, we may have to disavow any knowledge of you, Alternatively, you can get the job done and go back to reading Walt Whitman on that ranch in Oregon.’

‘My mission was to find and retrieve the time‐travel equipment,’ Hartford said, barely more restrained now. ‘But there isn’t any.’

‘You mean you haven’t found it,’ Control corrected him.

‘Perhaps.’

‘Very well. You have the woman.’

Thorpe kept his face neutral as Hartford glanced at him.

Control seemed not to notice. ‘She will have to do. You mission, as I’m sure you remember, was to get the equipment and technology and bring it back. Or if that proved impossible, to ensure that nobody else has access to it.’ He leaned closer to the screen so that he seemed about to break the glass. ‘Despite what you may have read, battles are not lost in the same spirit as they are won. If you can’t find it, I suggest you make sure there’s nothing left for anyone else to search through. Clear?’

‘Clear,’ Hartford ground out. ‘Sir.’

The screen went blank.

‘I’ll organise demolition charges,’ Thorpe said quietly.

‘Thirty minute timer, controlled from my chronometer.’

‘I’ll get them started,’ Thorpe told him.

Before Hartford could respond, there was a polite cough from behind them. Surprised they both whirled round.

To find the Doctor standing there, watching them with interest and apparent amusement. Less amused was Anji Kapoor, who was standing with him.

‘Before you get too distracted with other things,’ the Doctor said, ‘I wonder if I could borrow a couple of your chaps to help me move some equipment. Time‐travel equipment actually. Blue box sort of stuff.’

Only now did Thorpe realise there was a third person with them. The man was familiar, though Thorpe couldn’t immediately place him. He was wearing furs and needed a shave. He seemed to be faint, Indistinct, almost as if…

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ the Doctor was saying. ‘Allow me to introduce George Williamson.’ He smiled benignly. ‘He’s a ghost.’

The change in Hartford’s demeanour was astonishing. He listened as the Doctor explained hurriedly that he thought he had found the time machine that Hartford was after.

‘The thing is, it’s a natural phenomenon. That’s why the scientists here have no idea what you’re talking about.’ He glanced sideways at Anji. ‘Though presumably they will at some point realise the potential of the ice formation we have found, and use it to send Miss Kapoor here back in time.’ He grinned. ‘Simple really.’

‘And you can prove this hypothesis?’ Hartford asked – thoughtful rather than belligerent.

‘Oh yes,’ the Doctor told him confidently. ‘I think so,’ he added, sounding less sure now. ‘Probably.’ He nodded to himself. ‘I expect.’

Hartford looked closely at the Doctor. He seemed to be ignoring both Anji and George for now. ‘What do you need?’ he asked.

While Thorpe and two more of Hartford’s team organised unloading the TARDIS from the aircraft outside, the Doctor and Anji were allowed to see the two surviving scientists. They left George in the Great Hall, rather than have to spend time in lengthy and unsatisfactory explanations. Hartford insisted on leaving an armed guard to make sure George didn’t try to leave.

‘What are you going to do if he does?’ Anji asked. ‘Shoot him?’

Hartford smiled at her, apparently amused by the question. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Shoot you.’

Hartford went with them to their rooms, and listened carefully as the Doctor asked first Naryshkin, then Miriam Dewes, if they were aware of the flames apparently trapped within the ice in the cave. They knew of the cave, of course, but each of them expressed surprise at the Doctor’s description of the ice.

‘I still don’t believe it can be a coincidence,’ the Doctor observed when they were done talking to them.

‘Why not?’ Hartford asked him.

‘They’re trying to create an optic black hole. To do that they need to slow light.’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘So it is rather handy that exactly the right substance to do that, something with the relevant properties and attributes, can be found a few minutes walk from the lab. Don’t you think?’

‘If you’re right about the ice,’ Hartford pointed out.

‘Yes,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘Well, let’s find out.’

‘It is possible,’ Hartford said as they returned to the Great Hall to find George, ‘that someone else knows.’

‘Who?’ Anji asked.

‘That had occurred to me,’ the Doctor said. ‘Whoever established this Institute here in the first place.’ They had all heard the Doctor ask Naryshkin who had chosen the Institute’s location. Now Anji realised the point of the question, and Hartford, she could see, had also realised that the Doctor was about three steps ahead of them both.

‘Financial benefactor Maxwell Curtis. Someone else to talk to,’ the Doctor mused. ‘But I think I’d like to be a little more sure of my ground before we do that.’

Thorpe was waiting for them in the Hall. ‘We’ve loaded your box on to a freight sled,’ he told the Doctor. ‘And the charges are being laid now,’ he said to Hartford.

‘What charges might they be?’ the Doctor asked. ‘Bank charges? Electrical charges?’

‘It needn’t concern you,’ Hartford snapped.

‘Oh but it does,’ the Doctor assured him. ‘Cavalry charges?’

Hartford ignored him. ‘Thorpe, you and Jonas go with them. Any trouble, any attempt to escape – kill them.’

‘Understood, sir.’ Thorpe turned back to the Doctor. ‘Anything else you need?’

‘Yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘I need the Grand Duchess.’

‘Why?’ Hartford snapped.

‘Because she owned the journal, because she may know more from that than any of us do.’ The Doctor grinned. ‘And because I enjoy her company.’

The Doctor’s mood of jovial excitement lasted until they reached the main entrance. The TARDIS was lying down on a low sled in front of the Institute. The sled was attached to a diesel‐powered vehicle on tracks. Anji and the Duchess, who kept glancing disconcertedly at George, immediately set off towards it.

‘This box,’ George said.

‘What about it?’ Anji asked.’

‘I have seen it before,’ he said. He was frowning. ‘Or something like it. In the ice.’

But before Anji could ask him what he meant, she realised that the Doctor was not with them. He was crouched down, examining something on the ground. With a sigh, Anji went back to see what he was doing.

‘There was another one in the corridor,’ Thorpe was saying. They seem to be fixed down somehow.’

They were looking at a dark lump poking up from the thin layer of ice. The Doctor had dusted the snow away from it and was rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He was no longer smiling.

‘Things are worse than I thought,’ he said quietly.

‘You know what it is?’ Jonas asked. He was a short, stocky man. His voice was hesitant and nervous but his assault rifle was ever poised. He glanced at Thorpe, as if for confirmation that it was OK to speak.

‘No’ the Doctor said. He straightened up and dusted the snow from the front of his coat. ‘But I’ve seen one of these before.’

‘Where?’ Anji asked.

‘In an auction house in London. Where there should have been a dead body.’

Thorpe said: ‘One of our people went missing from here.’

George stepped forward, his arm passing through the Doctor’s shoulder as he moved. She flinched and shook her head in continuing disbelief.

‘I have seen it too,’ he said. ‘Here in the Castle. Though many years ago of course. When Caversham went missing.’

The Doctor nodded, his face grave, ‘I know. Fitz mentions it in the journal. Come on. Time is moving on.’ They strode out across the frozen ground towards the TARDIS. ‘What’s the common factor here do you suppose?’ he asked. ‘The linking element?’

From where he stood behind the broken end of a low wall on the other side of the institute, Curtis could see the group of people approaching the Doctor’s blue box. He watched as the tall black soldier got into the small cab of the powered sled and started the engine. He waited until they were almost out of sight before he crossed to the main doors, glanced briefly down at the dull black lump on the ground, and went back inside.

‘Did they perhaps learn of the ice from Fitz’s journal?’ George asked as they made their way towards the entrance to the cave.

‘He mentioned the ice?’ Anji asked.

George shrugged. ‘He certainly had the journal while we were in the cave.’

‘The problem with that,’ the Doctor said, ‘as the Grand Duchess here will tell us, is that the journal Curtis has is a fake.’

‘But,’ Anji said slowly, ‘it does mention the ice cave. Doesn’t it? Am I missing something here?’

The Doctor opened his hands wide as if throwing the question to the audience. ‘Duchess?’ he prompted.

‘I cannot explain that,’ the Duchess said. ‘The journal – the faked journal – was provided by a business associate of mine. A prop.’

‘Prop?’ George echoed.

‘Business associate?’ Anji said. She was beginning to see what was going on here. ‘You mean, you knew it was a fake.’

The Duchess seemed scandalised. ‘Of course I did. But I never expected the real journal to turn up.’ She shook her head in annoyance. ‘As far as I knew there wasn’t a real journal. Just a few pages of scribble in the British Museum.’

They had reached the entrance to the cave now – the mouth of the sloping tunnel that led down into the cavern. The Doctor waved to Thorpe in the cab of the sled, and pointed to the dark opening. The sled ground to a halt beside it and Thorpe stepped down from the cab.

‘What now?’ he asked.

‘Well, ideally, I’d like the TARDIS – my box of equipment – down there in the cave.’

Thorpe considered the problem. ‘We can slide it down. Looks like it will just about fit, so long as the passage doesn’t get any narrower. Don’t want it getting stuck on the way.’

‘Indeed we do not,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But it actually opens out as it goes.’

‘What if it blocks the opening at the other end?’ the Duchess asked. The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘The TARDIS isn’t that stupid,’ he said as if it were up to the box to sort it out.

Thorpe nodded and climbed back into the cab. He swung the sled round and backed it up to the entrance.

It took all of them to push the TARDIS off the sled and base‐first into the opening. Anji was surprised that the Duchess helped – she seemed stronger than she looked. George also tried to help, and seemed more and more frustrated as his hands slipped through the TARDIS exterior.

Eventually, the TARDIS reached the point of balance. It tipped slightly, then a little more before swinging upwards and sliding slowly out of view.

Thorpe sent Jonas after the TARDIS, then the rest of them. He waited to follow last.

When Anji arrived – with a flurry of snow and ice – at the bottom of the slope and sprawled on the ground, she saw George standing in front of her. He was staring at the TARDIS which had come to rest against the ice‐wall of the cavern.

He turned slowly towards Anji, just as the Doctor arrived behind her with a shout of glee like a child on a water‐slide. George’s expression was a mixture of confusion and perplexity. ‘That’s where it was,’ he said. ‘That’s where I saw it.’

‘Saw what?’ Anji asked.

‘This box. Only, it was made of ice.’

‘I hardly think so,’ the Doctor said. ‘Memory playing tricks on you after all the time in the ice. Deja‐vu rearing its ugly head.’ He unlocked the TARDIS and went inside. Almost instantly he was back again, holding a small red box with a meter set in the top.

They were all in the cave now. The Duchess, Jonas and Thorpe were looking round in amazed interest. The Doctor was standing by the wall where the’ tiny flames seemed trapped within the ice. Slowly everyone else made their way over to him.

‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘The energy has definitely dissipated. There are residual readings of a far stronger energy field. Look, the original exothermic coefficient is off the scale.’ He held the meter up for them all to see. ‘And now it’s hovering close to zero.’

With a sudden rapid movement that made Jonas clutch his rifle more firmly, the Doctor pocketed the device and turned to face his audience.

‘Now what we need to know,’ he announced, ‘is what made that happen. What could possibly have released that amount of tempora‐thermic energy?’

His thoughtful expression froze at George’s answer.

‘But don’t you know?’ George said. His voice was low, husky. ‘It was Fitz.’

10: Fire and Ice

‘What is it?’ George asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I just realised,’ Fitz said slowly. He stood up, stamping the life back into his feet and legs. ‘I should have known all along of course, but I was more concerned that everyone thought it was me.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Thought it was me who killed Galloway.’

There was a distant scrabbling from the top of the sloping passage, and a flurry of snow fell down into the cavern. It hung in the air like smoke.

‘Yes,’ George said slowly. ‘I’m sorry about that.’ He folded the paper he was working on and put it and the pencil in his coat pocket.

‘Sorry about the suspicion falling on me? Or about murdering Galloway?’ Fitz asked levelly. He could feel his whole body trembling with emotion. The cold wasn’t helping.

Lumps of ice were sliding down the passage into the cavern now. The scrabbling and scraping had intensified and almost without realising they were shouting at each other to be heard.

‘About involving you, of course,’ George was making his way across the cave towards Fitz. He jumped clear of a slew of ice and snow that slid out of the opening and across the floor. ‘It was an accident, you know.’ He sounded almost apologetic, but his eyes were fixed keenly on Fitz, waiting for his reaction.

‘An accident? You hammered a bloody great tent peg through his head!’ They were almost within reach of each other, but Fitz was yelling at the top of his voice, trying to be heard above the avalanche from the passageway. ‘How can that be an accident?’

And with the snow and ice and spray came the first of the creatures. It was sliding on its belly, legs splayed out and head twisting as it tried to catch their scent. Its roar shook the cavern and brought down chunks of ice from the ceiling high above which crashed around Fitz and George as they stood face to face.

‘Perhaps we should defer our discussion until a more appropriate moment,’ George shouted.

They were circling each other warily, unsure. An accident – was possible, somehow? Could Galloway have fallen on the peg, maybe? Fitz wanted to believe, so much wanted to believe. He searched his friend’s face for some clue. But George’s expression was inscrutable, his eyes wide with adrenalin. Then George was suddenly reaching out for him – both hands in a rush. Fitz stepped back, tried to duck away, but the hands connected with his chest and pushed, shoved, hurl him across the cavern.

Fitz sprawled on his back, desperately trying to drag himself away. And even as he did so, he saw the terrible lizard‐creature’s jaw snap down savagely on the empty space where he had been standing. George was hurling himself after Fitz, tumbling across the icy floor to land beside him.

‘I think this is it, you know,’ George shouted above the creature’s screech of triumph. It thumped across the floor towards them, the ice cracking beneath its feet. Behind it another of the beasts hurtled into the cavern. And another.

‘Yes,’ Fitz said. He doubted George could hear him. ‘I think you’re right. This is the time and the place. Let’s put another scratch on the tablets of history.’

The grenade was warm in his hand, even through the glove. Time seemed to slow as he held it out in front of him; as he reached out his other hand and grasped the metal pin; as he pulled. As it came free.

The creature before them paused, its head slightly to one side as if puzzled, watching. George was yelling at Fitz, mouth working, but no sound. No sound at all. Underwater pressure in his ears as Fitz lobbed the grenade.

But not at the creature.

At the wall of ice where the tiny flames flickered, where the impossible fires were frozen.

The grenade twisted in the air, then skidded and bounced until it rested at the foot of the huge glassy wall.

The first explosion was almost a disappointment. An orange flare reflecting off the ice and percussing round the chamber. A billow of dark smoke. The creatures flinching, backing away. As the smoke cleared, Fitz could see that the whole wall of ice was glowing – the flames inside erupting outwards, racing towards him as they broke free of the ice and threw its shattered remains across the cavern.

He pushed George, with all his might, hoped he would reach the shelter of a huge chunk of ice that had fallen from the ceiling.

Not waiting to see what happened to George, Fitz turned and dived across the cavern – towards the ice‐TARDIS. He twisted as he fell against it, against the cold doors. Saw George looking upwards from the ground, fear frozen in place as a tidal wave of snow and slush crashed down on him, burying him.

Then the doors split open under his weight, showering him with pinprick splinters and shards, and he felt himself falling into the flickering interior of the ice itself. The creatures were silhouettes against the expanding explosion. The blast was white hot, intensely bright.

And the whiteness closed over Fitz, blotting out his vision, his hearing, his senses and stopping his heart in mid‐beat.

The explosion lit up the evening sky, a huge beam of cold light cutting through the air and strobing upwards. The reality‐shattering sound of the blast was heard as far away as Moscow.

9: Other Worlds

There was silence for several moments when George finished his story.

‘Fascinating,’ the Doctor said after a while. A gust of icy white steam accompanied the word. ‘And you say that the TARDIS, the ice version of my blue box was positioned exactly where the real one is now?’

George nodded. ‘But how can that be?’ he asked.

‘Does it matter?’ Thorpe wondered. He gave the impression of being bored with the whole story.

‘Well it might or it might not,’ the Doctor said. ‘Just as the ice‐TARDIS that George here told us about is an image of where the TARDIS might or might not have one day been placed. Depending on decisions we made along the way.’

‘Doctor,’ Anji said, interrupting his enthusiastic flow. Her mind was numb with cold and shock, she was in no mood for one of the Doctor’s rambling explanations.

‘What is it?’ He could see she was upset. As soon as he spoke, his own face fell. ‘I’m sorry, Anji.’

‘Fitz is dead,’ she said. The words sounded flat, impersonal and devoid of emotion. Just as she felt – drained and numb inside. ‘He died in here.’

‘I know.’ The Doctor put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I feel it too. But I already knew. I’ve had a while to come to terms with it. Since we were in Spain. Though I think I knew even before that, before I even met Fitz.’

‘So what do we do?’ The Grand Duchess was shivering. There was a mist of exhalation in the air in front of her.

The Doctor squeezed Anji’s shoulder, then turned to the Duchess. ‘I suggest we take a look and see if George’s ice‐TARDIS has turned up again now that reality has solidified round our decisions, as it were.’

‘If I understood you earlier,’ George said, ‘what I saw was a possible future, is that right?’

The Doctor nodded. ‘In simplistic terms.’

‘Let’s keep to those, shall we?’ Anji said. She wiped at her eyes with her sleeve and felt the ice crystals scrape at her skin.

‘So now the event has occurred, now your box really has been here, why would the ice‐TARDIS, as you call it, reappear?’

The Doctor raised an index finger. ‘Good point,’ he admitted. ‘Yes, very good.’ He walked round in a slow circle as he considered this. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll toss for it.’

Thorpe gave a short laugh. ‘That’s the scientific mind for you.’

‘We’ll what?’ the Duchess asked in surprise.

‘Toss a coin,’ the Doctor said. ‘I must have one somewhere. Heads we move the TARDIS and see what gets left behind. Tails we don’t.’

‘And that helps us precisely how?’ Anji asked.

‘It means we’ve not made a decision. It means we are leaving it to chance. It means there are two possible outcomes and that the TARDIS of five minutes from now is in an indeterminate state. It may or may not have been moved.’

‘But the world doesn’t work like that,’ Anji told him. ‘Or if it does, and the universe splits with every possible decision anyone makes, we don’t notice it. Do we?’

‘Not usually,’ the Doctor said. ‘Which is why I hope – I really hope that if we move the TARDIS there will be nothing to see. Otherwise…’ His voice tailed off.

‘Otherwise?’ George prompted.

‘We’re in trouble,’ the Doctor said quietly ‘No “ifs” or “buts” or “indeterminates”. Real trouble.’

The coin seemed to hang in the air – caught at the very top of its spin, frozen in time. Then it fell, was snatched from the air by the Doctor’s fist and slapped down on the back of his other hand. He peeped carefully beneath his palm, angling so he could catch the light reflecting off the icy walls.

Then the Doctor grinned and pocketed the coin. ‘Heads,’ he announced.

‘How do we know you are not lying?’ the Duchess asked quietly.

‘Trust you to think of that one,’ Anji muttered.

‘You don’t,’ the Doctor said. ‘But that is at least half the point, isn’t it?’

‘The other half of the point being, how do we move this box of yours anyway?’ Thorpe said.

‘Ah, well, I’ll just pop inside for a moment and I think you’ll find that it moves itself.’

Anji frowned. ‘Why didn’t you get it here like that in the first place? If you know what I mean.’

‘And let Hartford know just that tiny fraction of what the TARDIS can do?’ The Doctor clicked his tongue in mock reproach. ‘Think of the decisions he’d have made based on that.’

‘But Thorpe will tell him anyway.’

‘That was then, this is now,’ the Doctor said. ‘Circumstances have changed. We have less to lose. At least relative to Hartford’s involvement. Sorry,’ he added to Thorpe.

Thorpe shrugged. ‘I doubt the Colonel will worry if your box turn out to be on wheels. Or skis.’ He smiled thinly.

The Doctor shivered. ‘Nothing quite so mundane. It’s cold in here isn’t it?’,

‘It is,’ the Duchess told him emphatically. ‘Can we leave now?’

‘Give me just a moment.’ So saying, the Doctor let himself into the TARDIS and the door closed behind him.

‘I suggest we give him exactly five minutes,’ Anji said. ‘I’ve got a friend…’ she blinked. ‘Had a friend,’ she corrected herself with a glance at George’s shimmering form beside her, ‘that the Doctor kept waiting for over a century.’

She was saved from having to explain this by the unholy mechanical scraping and trumpeting that was now coming from the TARDIS.

‘What the hell?’ Thorpe’s gun came up.

Jonas actually fired a shot, his face contorted with a mixture of surprise and fear.

The bullet ricocheted off the ice. The ice where the TARDIS had been.

The ice that was sculpted into exactly the same shape.

It was as if the blue box had lowly drained of colour, leaving behind just a translucent shell made of ice or glass. Anji took a step forward. The Duchess was holding her withered hand over her mouth in utter astonishment. The sound died away, leaving only the ice‐TARDIS behind.

‘I told you I’d only – Oh.’

The Doctor was behind them, impossibly back in the cavern, picking himself up from his sliding reappearance down the slope. ‘Must have slipped back a few seconds as well as over and up a few yards,’ he murmured.

‘I take it this is… not good,’ Anji said, indicating the icy form in front of them.

‘You could say that.’ The Doctor was leaning over her shoulder, pointing along her line of sight. ‘You see, deep inside?’

She did. Like the tiny flames frozen within the wall of the cavern, there was a burning heart to the TARDIS. A mass of orange and red flames unmoving within the ice. Trapped, frozen, still.

‘I suppose there is a certain logic,’ the Doctor said.

‘There’s no logic at all,’ Thorpe said. Anji was pleased to see that he looked worried.

‘After all,’ the Doctor went on as if no one had spoken, ‘the TARDIS is itself made of fire. In a sense.’

‘What happened to you?’ George was asking. ‘And to the other box, the blue box?’

‘Oh, it’s back up on the sled,’ the Doctor said matter‐of‐factly. ‘Which is where we should be. It’s time to go.’

‘Somewhere where the fire is actually warm?’ the Duchess asked.

‘Oh that fire is hot enough, believe me. Release the potential exothermic energy trapped inside and you’d know about it.’ A shadow passed over the Doctor’s face. ‘A veritable volcano. But let s find somewhere more comfortably warm.’

‘Good,’ said Anji.

‘There’s just one little thing I want to do on the way.’

‘Oh,’ said Anji.

It took George longer than they expected to find what he was looking for. The landscape had changed over the past century – over the past day even. The snow was getting deeper and drifting across the narrow path so that it was difficult to find a safe way down the steep incline. They trusted that the sled was more stable and followed its tracks down the lower slopes of the mountain.

Everyone except for Anji and the Doctor had mouthed in surprise to find the TARDIS back on the sled when they climbed up out of the ice cavern. If it really was made of fire in some way as the Doctor had said, Anji thought, it was certainly not giving out any useful heat. It was gathering snow, crusting over with the frosting like a Christmas decoration.

Eventually, just as Anji was sure she was as cold as she had ever been despite her thermal clothing, Jonas gave a startled cry.

‘Here we are,’ the Doctor announced. He slapped his hands together and blew into them. ‘Aren’t we, George? I recognise it from Fitz’s description.’

Thorpe, Jonas and the Duchess just stared. Anji was used to the unusual, but even so she had to admit it made for a strange sight. It was as if a sheet of glass had been stuck end up in the snow. A frameless window emerging into the pale daylight. The surface was uneven where the air had frozen.

‘I’d say the climate on the other side had changed considerably, wouldn’t you, George?’

‘It was sunny through the portal or whatever it is,’ George confirmed. ‘That was how we saw it. A patch of ground had thawed. Grass was growing.’

‘Here?’ Thorpe said. ‘Grass?’

‘Different time of year,’ the Doctor pointed out. ‘Winter now in the other world, perhaps.’

‘It’s just ice,’ Jonas said. As ever he was holding his rifle ready, though it was shaking as he shivered.

‘We should get back,’ the Duchess said.

The Doctor grinned. ‘Your old bones feeling the chill are they?’

‘Very funny, young man.’

‘What is that?’ Thorpe’s voice was low and urgent. He was pointing at the sheet of ice.

There was a shape just visible, moving, on the other side. Though it was obvious from where they stood that beyond the ice was merely more snow.

‘It’s something in the other world,’ George said.

‘Other world be damned.’

‘Language, Mr Thorpe,’ the Doctor said. He was staring at the shape. It was like a vague image on a badly‐tuned television. It cleared slightly as whatever it was moved closer. Then it pressed against the ice, a scaly green‐brown texture.

And an eye.

Staring directly at them, huge and watery.

The Duchess gasped. Anji stifled a scream. Thorpe stepped backwards.

‘One of the creatures,’ George said.

‘Interesting,’ the Doctor breathed. ‘Nobody make any sudden movements or do anything noisy.’

But his words were lost in percussion as the Jonas fired the rifle. The bullet shattered the ice over the portal. It crazed like glass before exploding into fiery fragments. The roar of the creature beyond mixed with the echo of the gunshot. The huge eye was rust red through the smoky window of air, gushing blood that froze on the scaled skin, crusted round the wound… And the enormous head was pulling away.

Jonas was rooted to the spot. Thorpe was shouting at him to wait for an order in future before firing. But there was no future. A massive clawed foot lashed through the broken air and swiped savagely at the stocky man, sending him crashing backwards.

He didn’t even have time to scream. His eyes were staring dead before he flopped into the snow, sending up a blizzard of white haze.

‘Back to the sled – run!’ The Doctor pushed Anji and the Duchess ahead of him. Thorpe was already running, instinctively grabbing for George and almost failing as his hand closed on airy nothing.

The monster was pushing through the window, screaming in pain and frustration, head twisting back and forth as it tried to find its prey with its surviving eye.

It found the Doctor. He was following the others at a stumbling run through the knee‐deep snow. Anji turned in time to see the creature bearing down on him, saliva freezing in icicles from its slavering mouth, tail lashing, clawed talons raking downwards, striking across the Doctor’s shoulder, ripping his sleeve almost completely from his coat, knocking him headlong into the snow.

Anji started back, but Thorpe picked her up – swinging her off her feet and bundling her ahead of him into the cab of the sled. The Duchess was already pressed into the tiny space as Thorpe revved the engine.

The whole vehicle shook as the creature slammed into it. A slimy wet trail followed its jaws down the windscreen. The whole glass front cracked across like ice.

Then Thorpe thrust the sled into gear, and it powered forwards. It wasn’t moving fast, but it was angled away from the monster and threw it sideways from the windscreen.

‘Stop!’ Anji was shouting. ‘Go back.’

‘No way.’ Thorpe was staring forwards. The Duchess was curled up shivering in fright and cold. The creature was roaring behind them. Through the side window of the cab, Anji could see it rearing up its hind legs and screaming after them.

And between its feet was the huddled dark form of the Doctor’s body. Unmoving.

Of Hartford’s team of fifteen, he could only now contact six others. Eight if he included Thorpe and Jonas. A garbled message from Thorpe, laced with static and white noise, told him they were on their way back to the Institute.

When Hartford saw the sled with its cracked windscreen and battered sides splutter into the main courtyard, his eyes narrowed and his blood boiled. He could see the ‘ghost’ or whatever he really was running beside the sled, leaving no footprints in the snow. The door of the cab opened with a grating protest of bent metal, dropping on its twisted hinges. Thorpe and the two women – Kapoor and the Duchess – climbed out. No Jonas. No Doctor.

That was when Hartford lost it.

This was supposed to be a simple covert op. Straight in, grab material, straight out and back to retirement – this time, he had promised himself (again) for good. Minimum risk, and that was from the Russian troops who were either dead or locked in their barracks in their underwear. Instead, he had found that what he was tasked to retrieve either did not exist or had yet to be invented, or just possibly was frozen in a cave somewhere down the mountain. And his people were dying. Or disappearing. All he had to show for the mission so far was a collection of small black lumps of stone, and they were fixed so hard you couldn’t prise them up from the floor.

Thorpe stood to attention as Hartford let him know just what he thought and how he saw the situation. When he was slightly calmer, he ordered Thorpe to get the two remaining scientists to the Great Hall. He’d discover once and for all if there was anything in this God‐awful place worth taking. Then they’d move out and blow it to bits behind them. The charges were laid, even if several of the team who had placed them no longer answered their radios or seemed even to exist. He could start the countdown from his watch. Thirty minutes from when he decided – then it would be over.

There was just Thorpe and Hartford with them in the Great Hall. Thorpe had an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. But he looked haggard, older, tired. Anji wasn’t surprised, he had been through a lot – more than she had in the incredulity stakes. But she had seen the Doctor mauled and then trampled, probably. Killed, almost certainly. That was something that she had thought was impossible. No, not ‘thought’, more just sort of believed. Assumed. It numbed her every bit as much as the intimation of Fitz’s mortality.

Thorpe, she felt, was used to death. Close to death. But despite her time with the Doctor, despite losing Dave, Fitz, and now the Doctor himself, she could never come to terms with it.

Thank God for that, she thought.

Looking at Thorpe and Hartford, tasting the fear that hung in the air around them, she knew there would be more death yet.

The Grand Duchess seemed to have regained her composure and was sitting opposite Anji, though she seemed not to want to talk. Which was fine. Vladimir Naryshkin and Miriam Dewes were led in by one of Hartford’s henchmen, who was then dismissed to ‘check on the charges.’

George was standing behind Anji. He had tried to sit on the table, but found he fell through it. The expression of surprise on his face was more comical than the event.

Anji rubbed her throat. It was sore, and she remembered as her fingers explored the tiny red lump that she was not alone. ‘I hope you’re getting all this, whoever you are,’ she muttered. She smiled at the Duchess’s frown – she had heard too.

It was like listening through cotton wool. Anji had to concentrate, she was so tired, so numb, to hear what Hartford was saying to the scientists. He was shouting, ranting. He had Thorpe pointing his rifle directly at Naryshkin.

‘Whatever you have that’s of value, I want it. And I want it now.’

‘It’s all experimental. Theoretical,’ Miriam said. Her voice quivered. She was obviously nervous, afraid for her life. But at least she could talk. Naryshkin seemed to be in a world of his own, just staring at the the tabletop and not even listening.

‘Then what is he doing here?’ Hartford demanded, pointing across at George’s nebulous form.

Before Miriam could attempt to answer, someone cleared his throat in the doorway. It seemed to break the spell for a moment as they all turned to look.

‘I do apologise. I was told everyone was to come here.’ It was Holiday. Anji recognised him at once from the Doctor’s description, and despite the situation, she stifled a smile. The big man was rubbing his hands together as he crossed to the table where Anji and the Duchess were sitting and pulled out a chair. He blinked when he saw Anji, and spared George a nervous look.

‘Where’s Curtis?’ Hartford asked. A nerve was ticking under his eye.

‘I can only apologise again, sir,’ the manservant said. His hands were working, but his voice was calm and deferential, as if he was sorry the port had run out. ‘He was not in his room when I looked just now. I believe Mr Hump, is it?’

‘Just Hump,’ Thorpe said.

‘Just Hump then, he went to look for Mr Curtis. And told me to come here. In fact to come here “you son‐of-a-bitch and don’t get lost or the Colonel will skin you alive.” Sir.’ There was no hint of amusement in tone, but as he looked away from Hartford he raised his eyebrow almost imperceptibly at Anji.

Hartford seemed not to notice or care. ‘Curtis,’ he barked at Thorpe. ‘I need Curtis. He set this place up. He knows what’s really going here. Where it’s hidden.’

‘There is nothing hidden here,’ Miriam said. ‘Please believe us.’ Hartford rounded on her immediately, pointing his fingers like playground gun. ‘Oh yes there is. And I shall have it. You’ll tell me, one of you will tell me. Otherwise I’ll kill you all. It’s hidden here and I want it.’

Miriam did not reply.

But Anji could see Miriam was frowning. ‘Hidden,’ she was mouthing to herself, as if thinking barely aloud. ‘In here…’

‘Get Curtis,’ Hartford bawled at Thorpe.

‘Sir.’ Thorpe left at a run.

Hartford drew his pistol. ‘I am going to count to ten,’ he said. ‘Then, if nobody tells me where it is hidden, I am going to shoot Comrade Naryshkin.’

Naryshkin glanced up at his name. But his face showed no sign he had understood.

‘One.’

‘You can’t,’ Anji shouted. ‘Don’t you understand yet? There is no time experiment.’

‘Two.’

‘It’s black holes,’ Miriam pleaded. ‘That’s all we do.’

‘Three.’

‘Optic black holes, and we haven’t succeeded in making one yet.’

‘Four.’

‘We have to slow light further before we can achieve an event horizon.’

‘Five.’

‘Please!’

‘Six.’

Miriam stood up. Hartford watched her, but kept the gun pointed at Naryshkin.

‘Sit down!’ he shouted. ‘Seven.’

‘You want what’s hidden?’ Her voice was strained with nerves. ‘Hidden in here?’ She edged towards the fireplace.

‘Tell me. Eight.’

What was she doing? Anji watched as Miriam reached up and conuted the stones across the top of the fireplace.

‘Third from the left,’ she said. ‘Third from the left.’ Her hand was shaking as she reached for the stone.

‘This had better be good,’ Hartford said. The gun was still aimed directly at Naryshkin. ‘Nine.’

Miriam was tugging at the stone, pulling at it, clawing the edges with her nails. ‘It’s here, behind this stone. It has to be. Wait, please. It says so in the journal.’

Anji’s blood froze.

‘What journal?’ George asked from behind her.

‘Nine and a half,’ Hartford said, without a hint of amusement.

‘I took it from Curtis’s room.’ She turned to look at Anji, desperation in her eyes as she saw that Hartford was moving the gun, bringing it across so that it was now aimed at her.

‘But it’s a fake,’ Anji screamed. She turned to the Duchess. ‘Tell her!’

‘Ten.’

The Duchess was on her feet – her hand over her mouth.

Miriam was again scrabbling at the stone. ‘The gun,’ she whimpered. ‘I know it’s here. It has to be.’

Naryshkin looked up as if aware for the first time of something of what was happening.

‘Time’s up,’ Hartford said His voice was hollow and empty. His finger squeezed the trigger with an expertise born of practise and experience.

And a body crashed lifeless to the floor.

8: Infinite Possibilities

‘Pity,’ Nesbitt said. He meant it. ‘She was good.’

‘Sir,’ Phillipps adjusted a control and the image zoomed in on Miriam’s body, lying lifeless by the fireplace.

Hartford’s voice was coming from the laptop speakers now.

‘I’ll leave you to think things over. You have thirty minutes to tell me where the time‐travel equipment is hidden. After that…’ The threat hung in the crackling air.

Nesbitt sighed. ‘Let me know if anything happens.’

‘Sir.’

‘I’ll go and check on our patient.’

They had him hooked up to a portable heart monitor. The thick canvas of the tent kept out the worst of the snowy wind, but Nesbitt could still hear it howling round outside, like a huge animal. He shivered.

Bob Lansing was adjusting one of the controls on the monitor. ‘We’re losing him,’ he said as his commanding officer pushed his way into the tent.

Nesbitt could see that he was right. The fiery line of the heartbeat was almost flat. The peaks were becoming fewer and further apart, less pronounced. The box gave a plaintive ‘ping’ whenever it peaked. The volume seemed to reduce with each blip.

‘Nothing more you can do?’

Lansing shrugged. ‘Not with this kit. Poor beggar should be dead already by rights. His readings are right up the creek. Even his temperature says he’s dead already. I mean, look at his clothes.’

Ping‐ping. So faint.

‘What?’ Lansing turned back. ‘That’s odd.’

‘An echo?’ Nesbitt suggested.

They both stared closely at the screen. The line was barely lifting as it detected a weak beat of the heart. But when it did, it was producing it double‐peak. Lansing adjusted another control.

It was more apparent now. The second peak of each beat was slightly higher, gaining in strength. Ping‐PING.

Then gradually, the weaker beat began to pick up as well. The gap between them lengthened and now it was apparent that there were two distinct beats.

‘His heart’s beating very fast,’ Nesbitt said. ‘That’s all. Maybe he’s recovering?’

But Lansing shook his head. ‘No, the amplitude is different the readings should match up. Maybe it’s picking up one of us somehow. Atmospherics, maybe.’ He didn’t sound at all convinced. ‘Because this is saying that each of those sets of beats is coming from a different heart.’

A steady tone. Suddenly the machine flat‐lined. An abrupt end to the discussion as both men gaped. Then as one they turned to look at the body on the bed – at the dead man.

Except that the bed was empty. The conductive pads of the heart monitor lay abandoned on the survival blanket. It was only as they stared that Nesbitt gradually became aware that there was someone standing beside him.

‘All systems go, it seems,’ the Doctor said. ‘Yes, it’s nice to be back to normal.’

‘We saw what was happening on the feed from the camera implanted in your friend’s neck,’ Nesbitt explained. ‘Not that we believed it. But when that thing came through the ice window or whatever it is, I sent a team to see what was really going on. To the ice cavern, and then to the window thing.’

‘And they found me?’ The Doctor nodded appreciatively. He had not sat down, or even stopped moving, since he had woken up. He was pacing up and down the command tent, pausing only to bounce on the balls of his feet or swing his arms in exaggerated gestures to punctuate his words. ‘I’m very grateful.’

‘They managed to drive that creature off. It went back through the window.’

‘Back home,’ the Doctor said thoughtfully. ‘The bullet broke the ice as it were. But it also released the potential energy trapped in the interface. An exothermic release that broke the surface tension and allowed the portal between the worlds to open. It won’t last thankfully. Without another release the energy will dissipate.’

‘So no more monsters?’ Lansing said.

The Doctor paused in mid‐step, his eyes shadowed and dark. ‘There are always monsters,’ he said grimly. ‘But hopefully there won’t be any more coming at us from that particular direction. Who are you and what are you doing here?’ His grim tone had not altered as he changed subject.

Nesbitt sucked in his cheeks as he considered how to answer. There was something about this Doctor that inspired confidence. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to Nesbitt that he should tell him the truth. He was certain the Doctor would know if he lied.

‘Captain Nesbitt, SAS,’ Nesbitt said. ‘Someone in Whitehall was rather worried about what was happening at the Naryshkin Institute.’

‘And what is happening there?’

‘Gravity waves, I believe.’

‘That figures. And whoever it is that’s worried thinks they might be making a weapon of some sort?’

‘They believe the technology has that potential, yes.’

The Doctor blew out a long, disappointed breath. ‘And so you were out here to get hold of that weapon.’

‘Not quite.’

‘Oh? What then?’

Nesbitt smiled tightly. ‘It was suggested that if we could detect the gravity waves, so could other people. There are all sorts of legitimate reasons for research into gravity waves, apparently. We’re not interested in what they’re doing. We’re interested in who else is interested in what they’re doing.’

‘You didn’t trust the Russian soldiers there to protect the scientists?’

‘Some of those scientists are British.’

‘Some of those scientists are dead,’ the Doctor said quietly. ‘What are you doing about that?’

‘We weren’t expecting the Yanks,’ Lansing told him. ‘Our rules of engagement take account of possible incursions from enemy powers, non‐aligned countries, friendly powers with an axe to grind – even the French, trying to get one over on NATO.’

‘But not US special forces,’ Nesbitt said.

‘You’re sure that’s who they are?’

‘They have standard equipment, clothing, transport. They act and move by the book.’

The Doctor considered this. ‘Do you act by the book, Captain Nesbitt?’

‘That depends on who else has read the book.’

In the corner of the tent, the screen linked to the camera in Anji’s neck showed the body of Miriam Dewes, still lying on the floor of the Great Hall. ‘Is that by the book?’ the Doctor asked, quietly.

‘What do you suggest, Doctor?’ Nesbitt asked.

‘I’d suggest that Hartford and his team are extremely dangerous to say the least. I’d suggest that Hartford is losing control – in every sense. And as he does so he becomes even more dangerous. I’d suggest that we need to take command of the situation before more innocent people die. Before the world is plunged into chaos and darkness.’

‘You think Hartford is that much of a problem?’ Lansing said.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘Hartford is a detail. An inconvenience. The real threat is far more serious, believe me.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ Nesbitt asked.

‘I want you to take control of the Institute. Preferably with the utmost speed, and the least possible loss of life. Then perhaps I can find a way to contain things.’

‘You still haven’t told us what you are so worried about, Doctor.’

The Doctor slumped down in one of the folding chairs. He raised his two hands, index fingers extended as if there was a string between them. ‘Gravity waves,’ he said. ‘Not easy things to detect because they affect the world around them. So what do you do? You dig a tunnel. A very long tunnel. Long as you can, in fact. Let’s not worry about the curvature of the Earth for the moment, or how you focus the monitor to detect the source of the waves… But just imagine if you will that you have a completely flat tunnel perhaps, what, fifty miles long?’

‘Fifty miles?’ Nesbitt was wondering where this was leading.

‘More if you can manage it. Then you set up a big laser and shine it along your tunnel. The clever thing now is that you’ve put a mirror at the other end. A perfect mirror, of course – flat, no blemishes, atomically accurate. What happens?’ He snapped his fingers and pointed at Lansing.

The Corporal blinked. ‘The laser gets reflected back.’

‘Exactly. Along the self‐same line. And of course you’ve set it up so that the waves of light exactly match. The length of the tunnel from laser‐tip to mirror is a perfect multiple of the wavelength of the laser light. Which means?’ The Doctor rippled his fingers, as if drawing the answer out of Lansing.

‘Well, it means the laser exactly matches up with itself.’

‘Good. Excellent.’ The Doctor leaned forward. ‘Now along comes a gravity wave. They’re very small. And because they change the size of the ruler as well as the thing you’re measuring, you can’t detect them. But…’ He paused and raised his finger, lecture‐style. ‘But what happens to the tunnel?’ He waited for a couple of seconds before his expression betrayed his disappointment at the lack of an answer. ‘The tunnel changes length,’ he told them. ‘Just very slightly. The greater the gravity wave, the greater the distortion. And that means?’

‘Well…’ Lansing looked as Nesbitt, who shrugged.

‘Think about the laser,’ the Doctor prompted. ‘Its waves exactly match, remember. But if the tunnel changes length…?’

‘They no longer match!’

‘Exactly right. Light’s wavelength isn’t affected by the gravity wave, so the two waves – the original and the reflected light – get ever so slightly out of synch. Bounce the light up and down the tunnel a few times, or even a few hundred times, and you’ll see the difference even more clearly. Or rather you won’t as it’s still so small. But you can detect it.’ He smiled up at them. ‘like watching twin heartbeats on the monitor,’ he said softly. ‘So how big are the gravity waves your chums in Whitehall have detected?’

‘They’re talking in nanometres,’ Lansing said. ‘Except…’

‘That’s quite big,’ the Doctor admitted.

‘Except,’ Lansing went on, ‘they said the last one was off the scale.’

‘Did they now?’ The Doctor stood up and stretched. ‘And would I be right in guessing that they detected this increase in intensity here just after I arrived?’

‘Yes Doctor,’ Nesbitt said. ‘But that still doesn’t explain why we should go in now.’

The Doctor was pacing again, seemingly deep in thought. ‘You went to the ice cave, you said?’

‘That’s right. Corporal Beauchamp took a couple of guys in.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Good, because there’s something in there I’d like you to bring along. I’m assuming too,’ he went on, ‘that Corporal Beauchamp brought out a sample of the ice.’

Lansing and Nesbitt exchanged glances. ‘Yes,’ Nesbitt admitted, ‘he did.’

Two minutes later, the Doctor was holding the ice up so they could clearly see the tiny flames flickering within. It was the tip of a stalactite.

‘You know what it is?’ Nesbitt asked him. ‘What’s so special about the ice?’

The Doctor dropped the ice into a plastic mug. ‘Now all I need is some hot water. Do you have a kettle to hand by any chance?’

Phillipps brought in a thermos of hot water in reply to Nesbitt’s shout across to the next tent.

‘What are you going to do now, Doctor?’ Nesbitt wanted to know.

‘Melt the ice, of course.’

‘Is that safe?’ Phillipps asked.

But the Doctor was already pouring steaming water into the mug. The section of stalactite listed to one side, then began to sink slowly into the hot water. The Doctor swilled the liquid round, hastening the process. Once the ice had melted completely, he passed the mug to Nesbitt.

‘The flames are gone,’ Nesbitt said.

‘But the water’s still hot, you’ll notice. The energy has to go somewhere.’ The Doctor took back the mug and stood it on the tables beside one of the laptops. ‘Ever heard of o-regions?’

Nesbitt shook his head. ‘You?’ he asked Lansing and Phillipps. Neither of them had.

‘Pity.’ The Doctor dipped his finger tentatively into the mug, snatching it away almost immediately. ‘An o-region is a part of space that is so far out, so isolated from everywhere else that its light hasn’t yet reached the rest of the universe. They’re big,’ he went on. ‘And being isolated, they are in effect mini‐universes in their own right. If you can conceive of a mini‐universe.’

‘Is that like alternative realities? Quantum theory and all that?’ Phillipps asked.

‘No. You’re thinking of universes parallel to our own, split off at some decision point in the past.’

‘Like the world through the window?’ Nesbitt asked.

‘Exactly.’

‘So what about these o-regions?’

‘I think,’ the Doctor said, again testing the water gingerly with the tip of his finger, ‘that the flames in the ice are light from an o-region. The first light to reach Earth from another region of the universe. Except that this light, the light in the ice, is slowed down.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘Well it means they knew about us before we knew about them, I suppose.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Nesbitt said. ‘You’re saying that it isn’t the ice that’s slowing the light down, freezing it so it seems not to move. It’s some property of the light itself, is that right?’

The Doctor had picked up the mug. He looked down into the water, blowing on it to cool it down. ‘That’s exactly right,’ he said. And with that he raised the mug and drank the water down in one. ‘That’s better,’ he said as he replaced the mug on the table. ‘Nothing like a warming drink on a cold day.’

‘Was that safe?’ Lansing asked, stepping away from the Doctor.

‘I sincerely hope so. You were right in one respect, you know,’ he went on. ‘There is an infinite number of o-regions, each developing Iike a mini‐universe in its own way. And since you could, in theory – though I wouldn’t recommend that you try – work out every possible collision point and potential change in our own universe to date, that means that there’s only a finite number of possible histories. Huge, but finite.’

‘And what does that mean?’ Nesbitt said.

‘It means that every possible version of history that you can imagine will occur.’ The Doctor grinned. ‘In fact, given the rather strange way that maths with infinity works, it means that every possible version of history will actually occur an infinite number of times.’

‘Er,’ Nesbitt hesitated, ‘is this strictly relevant?’

The Doctor shook his head. He was still smiling, but his smile faded as he spoke. ‘Not strictly, no. But I’m trying to gain your confidence and respect, remember. Trying to convince you that I know what I’m talking about and that you should act. It’s not strictly relevant, more sort of tangential. And fascinating. And frightening too, don’t you think? Consider how fragile and thin our own reality must be.’

‘So what’s the tangential relevance?’

‘I won’t bore you with the details,’ the Doctor said. ‘But basically, what it boils down to, is that George Williamson was not frozen in the ice for a century. In fact, George Williamson is not at all what he appears to be.’

7: Confrontation

It was as if the walls were curling in on him as Thorpe made his way towards the main entrance of the Institute. Hartford had sent him to find Maxwell Curtis, and Thorpe had an unpleasant feeling that when he got to Curtis’s room all he would find would be a small round black lump of… of something.

But as he moved along the corridor, Thorpe began to wonder if he was ever going to arrive at the other end. The ground seemed to be sagging under his feet. The light was going too. The fluorescent strips seemed just as bright when you looked at them, stared at them so hard they left trails across the retina, ghost lights that stayed with you when you looked away. But somehow the light did not seem to reach to the floor, or down the walls. It had lost its strength, was being sucked away.

There was someone waiting for Thorpe at the end of the corridor, at the point where it joined the offshoot that led to Curtis’s room. As he approached, he could see that it was Curtis. Or at least, from the grey light falling across the man’s body, it was someone wearing Curtis’s suit.

But the light did not reach the man’s head. It seemed to shy away from it. An inky black stain seemed to spreading through the air above the man’s shoulders. Where the head should be.

And Thorpe saw that the light was falling into that blackness. That the corridor was sloping impossibly down towards the figure. That the walls seemed to be bent round the man. Before he even realised it Thorpe found himself staggering towards the end of the corridor, towards the blackness.’

He dug in his heels and tried to stop, but his boots skidded across the floor. He scrabbled at the wall, but found nothing to grip. Above him one of the strip lights exploded. He ducked instinctively, but the shower of glass fragments was cascading along the corridor, not falling to the floor. It was as if the whole place had been up‐ended so that sideways was now down. And Thorpe was falling, falling towards the blackness.

At the same time, the blackness was walking slowly towards Thorpe. The stained air moved with it, the corridor warped and bent as if he was seeing it through a lens. He could feel himself being squeezed and crushed, stamped under a giant, invisible foot. Thorpe was on the floor now, sliding along – down – towards the advancing darkness. Hands reaching out towards him, hands with darkened palms.

Even the sound of his shouts was sucked away, shouts that were turning to screams. Crushed into silence.

The blackness walked on. But Thorpe was gone. Only a small black tone remained – a dull pebble, about the size of a golfball. The corridor was empty again, and reality snapped back into shape.

In the Great Hall, Hartford tired of trying to raise his people on the radio. There was no response from the team at the main gate. Thorpe was not answering either. The thirty‐minute deadline he had given Nuryshkin was nearing its end, but he was more concerned about what was happening elsewhere.

The ghost, Williamson, was disconcerting him. He stood beside Anji Kapoor, and stared at Hartford. Hartford was tempted to put a bullet through him just to be sure. But he knew it would do no good – simply show them how frustrated he was getting. That wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all. He’d been brought in for this mission because of his calm, cool efficiency. Because he was the best. Because he got results and came out with the team intact. Always.

Always up till now.

Still the ghost stared at him, translucent eyes accusing him, stripping away his protective shell.

‘Shut up!’ Hartford shouted. ‘Just shut up. All of you.’

In the nervous silence that followed they all heard the sound of an explosion, followed immediately by gunfire.

Through the chaos and confusion, two creatures walked calm and unworried. Neither of them was human.

The Darkness strode along the warping corridors, making its slow way towards the Great Hall. It had only to wait, of course, and the Great Hall would be drawn to it. But the logic and thought of the human it had once been – that it still was, somewhere deep, inside prevailed. For the moment.

At the main entrance, before the smoke of the percussion grenade had cleared, before the exchange of fire between Hartford’s depleted forces and Nesbitt’s SAS team had settled into the cat‐and‐mouse chase it would swiftly become, the Doctor strode into the smoke. He looked neither to left nor right; he heard nothing of the melee around him; he saw only the image in his mind of Miriam’s body in the Great Hall and of Hartford turning towards Anji.

Fitz was gone, and even if it was not his fault, it was his responsibility. He was not about to let Anji go the same way. His jacket sleeve hung loose, his face was blackened and scratched. His hands were clenched into tight fists at his sides.

One of Hartford’s killers lunged out of the smoke, assault rifle already coming up, finger on the trigger. The Doctor stared point blank at the hot barrel. He didn’t hesitate. He grabbed it with both hands and swung. The man on the other end of the gun was smashed sideways into the corridor wall. The man let go of the gun and crumpled to the floor.

The Doctor tossed the gun away. He paused only to grab the man as he tried to stand up, and throw him back at the wall.

The man slumped to the floor, unconscious. But the Doctor was already gone, swallowed up by the smoke.

The SAS had split into three teams. Nesbitt was leading one of them Lansing the second. Beauchamp commanded the third. They had studied maps of the castle facility weeks ago, planned several possible assaults depending on how the enemy force was deployed and in what strength. They had run through each dozens of times in a mock up of scaffolding and tea chests in a hangar at Hereford.

The heads‐up displays each of the assault team could see inside their goggles was linked to sensors that measured how far they had come, slaved to a GPS system to double‐check the positioning and the data overlaid on a three‐dimensional computer model of the Institute. Every one of them knew exactly where he was, where he was headed, and where everyone else was positioned.

At the sound of the gunfire, Hartford visibly flinched. He ran to the floor of the Great Hall and looked out. His expression betrayed the confusion he was feeling.

‘You’ he shouted across the room. ‘Come with me.’ The prisoners looked at each other in confusion. ‘Naryshkin,’ Hartford growled.

Vladimir Naryshkin cautiously approached the door. When he was within reach, Hartford grabbed him and pushed him out into the corridor. ‘Come on!’ he hissed. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I may need some bargaining power. Or a shield,’ he added.

He followed the scientist out into the corridor. ‘Nobody else leaves here,’ he yelled as he slammed the doors behind him. Smoke was already swirling along the corridor outside the Hall. He set off for the main entrance, pistol drawn and readied.

The smoke got thicker the further they went. Percussion and smoke grenades, he guessed. He could taste the acrid stench of them.

Finally, approaching the Cold Room, Hartford could see a figure up ahead. One of his own, or one of the intruders? He waited, Naryshkin stood in front of him. If there was any gunfire, Hartford was not about to face it himself.

The figure in the smoke was moving purposefully, not checking round or making any effort to avoid being seen. Hartford’s own people knew better.

So Hartford levelled his gun over Naryshkin’s shoulder.

‘Ah, Colonel Hartford.’ The Doctor stepped out of the rolling smoke. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

‘And I wanted to kill you,’ Hartford told him. He aimed the gun, enjoying the moment, savouring the expression of surprise on the Doctor’s face. Let it turn to fear and he would be even happier.

But it didn’t. Instead another figure pushed through the smoke. Like the Doctor, the figure seemed not to notice or care. It ignored Hartford, ignored his gun, just kept walking.

The ghost. Williamson.

Hartford watched in disbelief as it seemed to melt through the foggy smoke. He turned to watch the figure head on up the corridor. As it went it turned and looked back, as if daring Hartford to shoot him.

Hartford turned too, annoyed that he had let himself be distracted.

Apart from the grey billowing smoke, the corridor was empty. Both Naryshkin and the Doctor were gone. As he looked round in confusion, he heard the click of a lock. The Cold Room. Hartford grabbed the door handle, but he was too late. The heavy door refused to open.

With a scream of rage, Hartford stepped back and fired a full clip into the door. Impossibly, the smoke in the corridor seemed to clear, as if drawn away. Hartford could see a man walking through the smoke. But it was not the Doctor. The Doctor was beside him now, had not slipped into the Cold Room with Naryshkin, but had been standing right with him, unseen while Hartford was watching the ghost.

‘This is not good,’ the Doctor was saying quietly ‘We have to get away from here.’

The man stepped closer. If it was a man. He was wearing a suit, but instead of a head there was just a smudge of blackness. The smoke seemed to swirl into it, light seemed to be sucked in so that the whole figure was indistinct.

‘What is it?’ Hartford said, for the first time in years hearing fear in his own voice.

‘Dangerous.’ The Doctor was dragging him away.

But it was an effort. They were both struggling to keep their feet, to keep from falling towards the thing that was striding purposefully towards them. The whole corridor seemed to be bending, warping, around it.

‘It’s Curtis,’ the Doctor shouted. ‘What he has become. He’ll kill us all.’

‘You mean everyone here?’ Hartford screamed back. There was a hurricane blowing round them now, smoke rolling past. The armoured door at the end of the corridor was screeching on its hinges as it swung open.

‘I mean everyone in the world. But us first. The gravity force will crush us to a singularity if we cross the event horizon. There’s nothing we can do about that.’

Hartford was staring down the corridor, his eyes fixed and unblinking. ‘Oh yes there is.’ He raised his hand, as if checking the time. But the device on his wrist was not a watch. He pressed two of the buttons inset on the side, and a series of numbers flared into red life on the watch‐face.

30:00

29:59

29:58

‘What have you done?’ the Doctor hissed. They were still struggling back along the corridor, feet sliding from under them with every exhausting step.

‘I’m blowing this place sky‐high.’ His voice was laced with satisfaction. ‘That’ll stop it.’

The hinges finally gave out and the heavy door tumbled end over end down the corridor. It whipped past Hartford and the Doctor and crashed against Curtis. Except that it seemed to fall into him, into the blackness that was his head.

‘Blowing things apart won’t stop anything,’ the Doctor shouted. You really think an explosion can stop that? It will just absorb the energy like it absorbs matter and light.’

Curtis had stopped. For a moment, the door was visible, shrinking, collapsing, crumpling like old paper. The wind died and the smoke rolled on again. Just for a few seconds, as the door was compacted almost to nothing. In those moments, Hartford and the Doctor scrambled back along the corridor as fast as they could.

Then a small black lump fell from the darkness and dropped to the floor of the corridor. The terrible hurricane started again, sucking away the smoke and the sound of explosions and gunfire, and Curtis stepped towards them.

‘It hesitated – it stopped!’ Hartford yelled above the sound, his voice only just audible. They were being dragged back down the corridor again now.

‘Only while he absorbed that door, as it crossed the event horizon into the black hole.’

‘We can get away. If something large enough goes through.’

‘Possibly. Something heavy,’ the Doctor shouted back. ‘But what have we got?’

‘You can stop him?’ Hartford was yelling. ‘You can stop the killing?’

‘If I can get ahead of him. If I have time to think!’

Hartford felt calm now. Calmer than he had since he arrived at the institute.

‘Tell me one thing, Doctor.’

‘I’m not sure this is the best moment,’ the Doctor protested.

‘There is a time machine here, isn’t there? I was right?’

The Doctor turned to face Hartford. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Out in the ice. There is a time machine.’

‘What will you do with it?’ Somehow, maybe because of the intent way the Doctor was looking at him, Hartford knew the Doctor had plan, and he knew the strange man would see it through.

‘I’m going to destroy it.’

Now at least Hartford understood what his mission really was, why he had been sent here. ‘Then we’re after the same thing.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Good luck, Doctor!’ Hartford shouted.

‘What?’ The Doctor’s expression changed from perplexity to horror. ‘No, no that’s not the way! Why are you doing this?’

Hartford was pulling off his watch. ‘Because, I was sent to do a job. Because I’ve never hesitated to sacrifice anyone I needed to in order to fulfil my mission.’ He smiled thinly, pressing the watch into the Doctor’s hand. ‘Because perhaps after all the United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.’ Hartford turned away, turned to face the darkness. And ran towards it.

The doors to the Great Hall exploded inwards. Anji leaped to her feet in fear and surprise.

‘Ah there you are!’ The Doctor was running, Anji didn’t like his expression. ‘Everyone over here, quickly.’

Everyone was now Anji, George, the Grand Duchess and Holiday. They grouped round the Doctor in confused silence, waiting for him to explain what was happening.

‘There is a theory,’ the Doctor said to them, ‘that black holes were all created at the big bang. That the matter that will one day collapse into a black hole is potentially all around us, just waiting for it to happen.’

‘It has been mentioned,’ Anji said, remembering Yuri. His body was still in the room somewhere. She did not look round to see where.

‘Good, good,’ the Doctor said, still staring across at the doors. Smoke was rolling in from the corridor outside. ‘Because it’s that theory that led to this Institute being set up. It’s because of that theory that Maxwell Curtis was so keen to give them all the funding they needed and why he was so desperate for them to discover how to create a black hole. Though that wasn’t what he was really aiming to achieve of course.’

‘What are you talking about?’ the Duchess said. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Were you expecting to be around to see what happened, Mr Holiday?’ the Doctor said, still focused on the doorway. ‘Or was that another of your little miscalculations? Like bringing the Duchess here along? Or knowing my name before I told you it?’

‘What do you mean?’ Holiday demanded. And in that moment, Anji could see more clearly than ever what the Doctor had told her.

‘You’d better all hold on to your hats,’ the Doctor said quietly. ‘Even you, George.’

The smoke was gone. A black shadow seemed to have fallen across the doorway, was creeping over the floor.

‘Because,’ the Doctor said, ‘we’re coming face to face with proof that the theory holds true.’

A figure stepped into the Great Hall…

‘I have faced people who became clocks.’ The Doctor’s voice was dry and husky. ‘I’ve fought against beasts from other dimensions, and evil you can’t begin to imagine. I’ve bargained with fire demons and I’ve forgotten more than any of you will or can ever know, Even you, Holiday.’

… and the lights flickered and dimmed.

‘But I don’t believe I’ve ever had to face anything like this.’

6: Darkness and Death

The floor seemed to be sloping down towards the doorway. Anji could feel herself beginning to slip, her feet scrabbling to keep their grip.

‘What’s happening?’ the Duchess gasped.

Everyone was having the same problem keeping their balance. Only George seemed unaffected, standing upright and still within the storm of movement. The roof seemed to be curling inwards, angled down towards the shape in the doorway. Towards the figure with no head, just a black cloud that hung in the air over its shoulders.

‘Concentrate, Curtis,’ the Doctor was shouting. ‘Try to regain control. You can do it. I know the elemental forces are getting stronger, but you’ve been doing it for years – holding those forces in check.’

‘You can do it, sir,’ Holiday echoed. ‘We’re nearly there now. So very nearly there.’

The tapestry above the fireplace flapped as if in a violent breeze, pulled towards the doorway, the threads straining.

Curtis’s voice was deep and sonorous, seeming to come from all around them. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. For a moment, as he spoke, the floor seemed to level out, the ceiling sprang back into place. But then they warped and curved again, and Curtis cried out in dismay and pain.

‘No – it is too late. The gravity waves are too strong.’

‘Doctor, what is going on?’ Anji shouted. ‘What’s happening to him?’

‘The nascent molecules must have been in his head, maybe in his brain,’ the Doctor said. His voice carried above the noise of the flapping tapestry, the scraping of furniture as it slipped and slithered across the floor towards the doorway. ‘He’s turning into a black hole. At first it was gradual, he could draw matter towards him, feel himself getting slowly heavier over the years. But he could control it, keep it in check.’

Curtis was swaying back and forth in the doorway, sinking slowly but perceptibly as the stone floor beneath him sagged impossibly. The ground lurched again and Anji grabbed for the Doctor as she tumbled forwards. He dragged her back, trying to keep his own footing. A chair rattled and skidded across the flagged floor and seemed to collapse into the dark shape in the doorway.

‘If he loses control,’ Holiday shouted, ‘then we’re dead.’

As he spoke, there was the sound of running feet and shouts from outside.

‘Oh no,’ the Doctor said. ‘Keep out, get away from here,’ he shouted. But now his voice was swallowed up by the noise as more chairs and a table crashed across the Hall.

Then three figures appeared behind Curtis. Three of Hartford’s people, driven back to the Great Hall by the SAS attack. They paused for the briefest instant, staring at Curtis – at the empty blackness where his head should be – before they opened fire.

The dark stain in the air seemed to spread out. The gunfire became shouts, became screams as the figures in the corridor outside were sucked into the blackness. A shrieking face appeared fleetingly in the cloud as if trying to push its way out. Then that too was swirled away. A large black pebble fell heavily to the ground at Curtis’s feet.

The darkness receded, and another face stared out of it at Anji and the others. Maxwell Curtis.

The Doctor frowned. ‘He’s feeding off the life force of those people,’ he said. ‘Using their personalities to bolster his own as they cross the event horizon and are absorbed.’

‘You’re right, Doctor.’ The room stretched back to its usual shape as Curtis spoke. ‘But I can’t sustain it for long. Already I can feel the Darkness growing again within me.’

‘You’ve been doing this for a while, haven’t you?’ the Doctor said. He walked slowly towards Curtis as he spoke. ‘Every time the Darkness gets too much for you, you’ve absorbed someone. Like the poor man at the auction house when you collected the journal. Sucked over the event horizon, reduced to a near singularity of super‐compressed matter weighing so much it seemed to be fixed to the floor.’

‘I cannot help it, Doctor. It isn’t a choice. I had to hold off the Blackness – can’t you see that?’

‘Yes,’ There was real sadness in the Doctor’s voice. ‘Yes, I do see that. Believe me, I know. If you hadn’t, the whole planet – the whole of this section of space would be drawn into the black hole.’ sighed. ‘So you strengthened the floors and the furniture in your house, and you hoped and prayed to find a solution. You funded research into how black holes can be created in the hope that one day you’d find a cure. Or a way to reverse the process.’

‘But how did you know – how did you ever guess what was happening to you?’ Anji asked.

‘Oh, he didn’t guess,’ the Doctor said, turning away from Curtis face them. ‘Someone told him. Someone who has known all along. Someone who knew about the ice cave and its properties suggested to Curtis that this would be an ideal location for the Naryshkin Institute.’

‘Who?’ Anji asked.

‘The same person who provided the fake Duchess with her fake journal. Fake apart from the one piece of information that he knew Curtis needed, and would pick up on. That he would see, with a little prompting, as the solution to his dilemma.’ As he spoke the Doctor had been circling the group, looking carefully into the face of each of the people there. Now he stopped. In front of Holiday. ‘I knew all along,’ he said quietly. ‘You called me by name before you could possibly know it. I deliberately didn’t use it on the phone.’

‘Holiday has been helping me,’ Curtis said loudly. ‘He has always helped me.’

‘Why?’ the Doctor snapped. ‘Why is he helping you? And what solution can he possibly have offered you?’

When Holiday spoke, his voice was quiet and calm, a distinct contrast to the nervous and deferential manservant of a few minute earlier. ‘I have offered him a cure, Doctor. I have offered the world a solution.’

‘Using the ice in the cave?’ the Doctor asked. He looked from Holiday to Curtis and back again. ‘Or rather the light. The slow light. How can that help? What can you create by slowing down light, apart from another black hole?’ But as he finished speaking, his face drained of colour and his mouth remained open in realisation.

‘Yes, Doctor,’ Holiday said. ‘There is a time machine.’

‘And I shall travel back along the slow light beam,’ Curtis said. He sounded excited at the prospect. ‘Back to a time before the contaminated matter within me was even created. At last I will be free of it.’

‘That is not possible, surely?’ Anji said. ‘Hasn’t the black hole been there for ever? That’s what Yuri said. The matter was created when all matter was created – in the Big Bang.’

‘Then I shall go back beyond that,’ Curtis said. His eyes were dark pebbles and his face was already going a greyish colour. ‘Soon. It must be soon,’ he gasped. He clutched his hands to his head and staggered from the room.

‘Where’s he going?’ the Duchess asked. Her voice had changed, her accent seemed less pronounced.

‘To the ice cave,’ Holiday said. ‘To the time machine.’

‘And then back to before the creation of all the matter in the universe,’ the Doctor said. ‘The time before time. Time Zero. We have to stop him.’

‘But why?’ Anji asked. ‘We’ve been to the ice cave, and OK we’ve seen some weird stuff. But there isn’t a time machine there.’

‘You’re wrong Anji,’ the Doctor said softly. ‘There is, and you’ve seen it.’

‘I have? You don’t mean the TARDIS? That’s back here, in the courtyard outside.’

‘No, not the TARDIS. In any case that wouldn’t work for him, any more than we get younger or older as it travels through time.’

‘Then what?’

The Doctor was looking round the small group of people. His gaze latched on to someone, standing quietly behind Anji. ‘George, you’re very quiet,’ he said. His voice was grave. ‘Is it because you know what I’m talking about?’

George nodded. ‘I think I do, Doctor.’

‘You weren’t frozen in the ice for a hundred years,’ the Doctor said. ‘When the cave exploded and the energy was released, you were caught within two interacting shafts of slow light. Intense beams, circling in opposite directions, slowed to the point where time and space swap roles and time itself becomes an actual dimension.’

‘It confused me at first,’ George admitted. ‘I found if I walked one way I was travelling forwards in time, walk the other and I travelled back again. I thought that was…’ He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I thought it was death.’

‘That may be partly why you’re insubstantial. Like a ghost, but not a ghost. Trapped in a circling spiral of time within the cave.’ The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘You are the time machine, George.’

5: The Dead Past

‘Aren’t we going to follow Curtis?’ Anji asked.

‘Not unless you know how to deal with a black hole,’ the Doctor said. He won’t be able to maintain control for long. Even absorbing life force won’t help him for much longer.’

The Doctor pulled something from his jacket pocket, and Anji realised with surprise that it was Hartford’s ‘watch’.

‘How did you get that?’ she asked.

‘A present. One that may pose a more immediate threat than poor old Curtis.’

He held the watch up so that they could all see the face.

22:13

22:12

22:11

‘It’s linked to the explosive charges Hartford’s men left.’ He was pressing buttons on the side of the device, but to no apparent effect.

‘I guess we can’t stop Curtis if we’ve been blown to kingdom come,’ Anji said. ‘But assuming you get that sorted out, how do we stop him?’

‘By using our brains,’ The Doctor looked round at them all. ‘We have a great deal of knowledge and intelligence available to us here, albeit applied in rather different ways.’ He pointed to George as he went on. ‘For instance, you may be able to tell us something useful about the time machine, from your own very personal experience of it.’

‘Everything I can,’ he agreed.

‘Can it work?’ the Duchess asked. She seemed bewildered by the whole thing, not surprisingly, Anji thought.

‘Oh yes,’ the Doctor told her. ‘It’s all to do with slowing down the light source – just as the scientists working on optic black holes here needed to. Which is why Curtis was interested, of course. And how he was deceived.’ He had the back off the watch now and was prodding dubiously at its innards with his index finger. After a moment he shook his head in annoyance and held the watch to his ear as if to listen to its ticking.

‘I’ve been deceived – I don’t think this is a watch at all, you know,’ the Doctor announced with a grim smile. As he spoke, he turned towards the Grand Duchess. ‘Now here we have a master, or rather a mistress, of deception. Of pretending to be what you are not and distorting the truth. Though strictly speaking, shouldn’t you have been Romanova rather than Romanov?’ The Doctor smiled, as if welcoming the latest guest at a dinner party. ‘Allow me to introduce Miss Beatrice MacMillan,’ he said to Anji.

‘Who?’

‘Trix will do,’ the Grand Duchess said. Except that now she spoke without any trace at all of the Russian accent. If anything it was more upper‐class home counties. ‘And I assume I can now dispense with this rather uncomfortable persona.’ As she spoke she was pulling at face. Her fingers gripped a particularly pronounced wrinkle, and pulled. The skin stretched like rubber, tearing away. A few seconds, a few more wrinkles pulled away, and Anji was looking at a much younger face. A woman perhaps in her late twenties, though she might be almost a decade younger or older.

The grey wig came off next, and the woman who was not a Duchess shook out her own, fair hair. It dropped, tangled, to her shoulders. She stared with amusement at Anji, her eyes green and piercingly alert, like a cat’s. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any moisturiser with you?’ she asked. ‘The latex really dries your skin something rotten.’

‘Sorry,’ Anji said. Even that was an effort.

‘You know,’ Trix went on, ‘coming here was a really bad move in retrospect. I should have taken the money and run.’

‘Yes, you should, Miss MacMillan.’ It was Holiday who spoke. ‘That was our agreement after all.’

‘Ah yes.’ The Doctor was facing Holiday now. ‘The devoted manservant. Mr Holiday. Responsible for telling Curtis what was going on, and for finding out about the expedition journal. And of course for writing it and providing the prop to Miss MacMillan for her deception. Now she was just after the money. But what are you are after?’

‘What do you think, Doctor?’ Holiday met the Doctor’s steady stare and held it. ‘I did tell you. Have you forgotten so soon?’

‘Our little chat in Spain, you mean? About the nature of Time.’

Holiday blinked.

‘I knew it was you all along,’ the Doctor continued. ‘As I said, your mistake with my name. And also the conceit of yours. And I do mean ‘conceit’ in every sense of the word. Holiday, a corruption of Holy Day. Think of a holy day,’ he said, turning to George.

‘Er, Christmas?’

‘You get mistletoe at Christmas,’ the Doctor said. ‘But that’s not quite right. Tell them, Anji.’

Anji knew the answer. The Doctor had told her almost as soon as they met, not least so she didn’t give away that she could tell. ‘Sabbath,’ she said quietly.

Sabbath laughed and clapped his hands. ‘Very good, both of you. Not that it matters really. Once Curtis reaches the time machine, none of this will matter.’

‘I think it will,’ the Doctor said. ‘Your suit distracted me for a while,’ he added. ‘I couldn’t understand how you managed to squeeze your rather ample form inside it.’

Sabbath was amused rather than angered by the comment. ‘Really, Doctor?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I didn’t expect you to have any trouble understanding how something can be bigger inside than it appears from without.’ He was smiling now. ‘You will be interested to know that it also has very large pockets.’ And suddenly he was holding a pistol, pointing it at the Doctor’s chest.

The gun moved steadily, slowly, across from left to right. ‘Which side first, I wonder?’ Sabbath breathed. ‘So many decisions. And each time the universe splits. Not a very neat or satisfactory way to go about things.’

‘That’s hardly reason enough to try to change it,’ the Doctor said calmly, ‘I assume that’s what you think you’re up to here. Collapsing the multiverse back down to a single, manageable, controllable time line. Getting rid of all those unwanted universes that exist parallel to our own. Unwanted by you and whoever it is you keep hinting is pandering to your ego, that is. Letting Schrödinger’s cat out of the bag.’

‘Despite your unwarranted jibes and insults, Doctor, Curtis will travel back to Time Zero.’

‘It might be a bracing walk, but it won’t cure him.’

‘No, it won’t. The energy of the black hole that he is becoming will be released before the universe was even created. All bets are off from that point. The energy spills forwards through time.’ Sabbath smiled. ‘Who knows, maybe it even kick‐starts the Big Bang. But whatever happens, there is a single time line, a single universe that stems from that monumental decision, that one defining event.’

‘No there isn’t,’ the Doctor said. He shook his head sadly: ‘The energy means that Time Zero is in effect extended up till now – the point where Curtis enters the time envelope. It might wipe out establish history to this point in every universe starting from the single universe that the multiverse sprang from. It might even suppress the universe’s own ability to spin off new universes in eleven‐dimensional space. Braynes and strings and super‐gravitational waves,’ he murmured. ‘All very impressive. All very academic. All very impossible.’

‘And why is that?’

The Doctor gave a great sigh. ‘Because it can’t work, that’s why. All that will happen – if “all” is the right word – is that Curtis will become a black hole and suck us all over the event horizon.’ The Doctor pushed the pistol to one side, but Sabbath moved it back so it was still pointing at the Doctor.

‘He can’t travel back more than a hundred years,’ the Doctor went on, looking down at the gun. ‘He might – might – be able to get into the time envelope where George is trapped, but he can’t push it back to before it was created. He can only travel backwards and forwards within that envelope. To the present, and back to the point where George was trapped.’ His eyes narrowed and he leaned forwards, ignoring the gun now pressed into his chest. ‘And that is it.’

But Sabbath seemed unflustered. ‘Is it, Doctor?’ he asked. ‘Is it really?’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Unhappily, since we’re all going to be blown up in’, he paused to check Hartford’s watch, ‘just over eighteen minutes, I’m afraid I won’t be here to say “I told you so.”’

‘Couldn’t he use some of his technology from the Jonah to stretch the envelope?’ Anji wondered. The Doctor seemed confident enough, but Sabbath’s calm denial worried her, and who knew what sort of equipment he had on board his time ship.

‘You need some pretty sophisticated time corridor‐type technology. Not a vortex Ship. You don’t get older or younger as you travel back and forth in the Jonah any more than we do in the TARDIS. I destroyed the time machine that might have done the trick, though I didn’t realise; you wanted it for yourself back in the nineteenth century,’ he said to Sabbath. ‘That must have been rather galling. And now you discover that the slow light in the ice cave won’t work for you either. You have my sympathy.’

‘No I don’t. And anyway,’ Sabbath said softly, ‘when Curtis tested the time envelope earlier, he travelled back to before George Williamson was caught in the field. He killed one of your colleagues here in this very castle,’ he said to George. ‘Isn’t that right? He was rather upset about it, came to tell me what he had done.’

‘Caversham,’ George said. ‘All we found was a black pebble. There was a light, out in the corridor. Then he was gone. Vanished.’

‘The opening of the envelope, some of the slow light spilling out into reality,’ Sabbath said.

The Doctor was worried, Anji could see. But he did his best not to show it. ‘How long before you were buried in the ice was that?’

‘The night before.’

‘A few hours then.’ He breathed a noticeable sigh of relief. ‘Well, if that’s the best you can do with whatever technology you’ve acquired, I really don’t think we need to worry.’

‘Er, Doctor?’

‘Yes, George?’

George swallowed. ‘I have tried to follow what you are saying. I think you are maintaining that this dimension, this corridor of time that I can walk along does not – cannot – extend back to much before the moment I found myself trapped within it. Is that right?’

‘Yes George. That’s right.’

George hesitated. Anji could see him considering whether he should go on. ‘But,’ he said at last, ‘I have walked back and seen the dinosaurs.’

‘What?’ The Doctor’s face was an icy white.

‘I watched them on the plains – feeding, hunting, living and breathing.’ He was staring off into the distance as he remembered. ‘It was such a sight.’

‘You could have changed history,’ the Doctor said, his voice a mixture of anger and frustration. ‘Just by being there, without knowing what you were doing, you could have altered evolution even.’ He frowned suddenly. ‘I wonder,’ he murmured, ‘if that is why the window, the portal… Why the fabric of reality between these two universes is far more serious than I ever dared to believe,’ he said. His eyes were burnt with anger. ‘What have you done?’

‘Sixty million years or more,’ Sabbath said quietly. ‘Time Zero approaches.’

‘If you’re right, it’s only a matter of time – minutes at the most – before we see the whole of space‐time start to fold in on itself. Before the past and the present, this universe and the next become blurred and indistinct. Before everything ends.’

Sabbath raised the gun, his head cocked amused to one side. ‘Begins, surely, Doctor?’

‘Doctor!’ The shout came from the doorway.

Sabbath turned, bringing the gun round.

But there was nobody there.

The figure that had stood framed in the doorway an instant before was already diving to one side, rolling, coming up again into a kneeling crouch. Rifle levelled and aimed.

The gun leaped from Sabbath’s palm as the shot cracked round the room. He cried out and stared down at his bloodied hand.

‘Don’t move,’ Captain Nesbitt told him as he stood up, keeping the rifle aimed at Sabbath.

Without a word, the Doctor handed Sabbath a handkerchief.

‘Now then Doctor,’ Nesbitt said, ‘where would you like us to put this?’ He gestured back to the doorway.

Where four of the SAS men were struggling to carry something into the room.

It was the glassy form of the ice‐TARDIS from the cavern.

4: Opening the Dox

‘Time travel always splits the universe,’ Sabbath said as the soldiers put the ice‐TARDIS down in front of the Doctor. ‘It has to. One universe where the time traveller is not there, one where he is. Even before the different decisions and events that follow.’

‘You think so?’ The Doctor gestured for them to put down the ice‐TARDIS. ‘That’s good,’ he said to Nesbitt and his men. ‘Thank you. By the way,’ he went on, ‘the late Colonel Hartford left us some presents.’

Nesbitt nodded. ‘We found a few plasma‐thermite charges. I’ve got men making them safe now.’

‘Good.’

‘You don’t know how many there are, do you?’ Nesbitt asked. ‘Only I’d hate to miss even one.’

‘A problem?’

‘Big problem. Also, we have no idea how long there is till they’re set to detonate.’

The Doctor held up Hartford’s watch for them to see.

12:33

12:32

12:31

‘Not long enough to search the place for other charges, though I’ve got men on it,’ Nesbitt said. ‘And we’re already too late to get far enough away to be sure of being safe.’

‘Great,’ Anji said. ‘So now the question is only whether we get blown to bits before the universe ends.’

The Doctor was frowning. He had the back off the watch again. ‘In theory I can stop the timer,’ he said. ‘Just one more little thing to worry about.’

Sabbath gave a short laugh. ‘That’s the trouble with your meddling, Doctor. For all your good intentions you simply muddy the waters. Every problem you solve, every person you save, adds to the complexity and confusion and chaos that is the multiverse. What it comes down to is this: You have no idea what you are doing.’

The Doctor spun round, the watch forgotten for a moment. ‘How dare you?!’ He was shaking with raw and violent anger. ‘You say I don’t understand, after what you have tried to do? You think you can restore order to the multiverse, is that it?’

Sabbath inspected his right hand. The bleeding where the bullet had grazed it seemed to have stopped. He dabbed at it again with the Doctor’s handkerchief. ‘The fact that there exists a window between this reality and the next suggests a connection, wouldn’t you say? Suggests that the two can be smashed together.’ He held out the bloodstained handkerchief.

‘Smashed being the operative word.’ The Doctor snatched his handkerchief back and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘You travel through the vortex in your aptly‐named Jonah, and you don’t even understand the basics of temporal mechanics, do you?’ He shook his head annoyance and returned his attention to the inside of the watch.

Now Sabbath looked disconcerted at the Doctor’s vehemence. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ the Doctor said without looking up, ‘that the universe doesn’t work in the way you think it does. You’re forgetting the cat. At the very least you’re overlooking when that split occurs.’

Sabbath’s eyes narrowed. ‘Go on.’

‘The universe doesn’t split when I travel in the TARDIS. It doesn’t split when I intervene.’ He turned the watch over and thumped heavily on the top of a table several times as he spoke. ‘Because I know what I’m doing.’

‘Really?’ Sabbath folded his arms across his chest. ‘And what, pray, does happen, then?’

‘That depends. The universe remains in an indeterminate state – like Schrödinger’s cat. Neither one choice nor the other. Any of a selection of events or decisions may have occurred. It really doesn’t matter. Because I travel within a single universe. The real universe for want of a better term. We don’t flit about between them on a whim. That really would be chaotic.’

Anji could see the face of the watch as the Doctor continued to jab at its insides:

11:24

11:23

11:22

Sabbath seemed to consider. ‘And this indeterminate state…?’

‘Is later resolved. At a point in time when it is apparent what has really happened, the whole interlinked set of choices – the web of time if you like – crystallises along a single path and forms a pattern.’ He stepped closer to Sabbath and looked him directly in the eye. ‘That’s what free will is all about.’ His voice was a low husky whisper that barely carried to Anji as she strained to hear him. ‘But perhaps that is what your friends, whoever they might be, are really out to suppress.’

Sabbath was silent for a while. The whole room was silent. The soldiers looked at each other, their expressions professionally neutral as they stood patiently by the ice‐TARDIS. George looked from Anji to the Doctor and back again. Anji’s own attention was fixed on Sabbath.

‘It’s an interesting theory,’ he said at last. ‘Though I don’t think either of us will be able to prove it one way or the other.’

‘Not from the wrong side of an event horizon, I agree.’ The Doctor turned to Nesbitt. ‘Could I borrow your rifle for a moment?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to try to prove a theory of mine.’

‘My pleasure, Doctor,’ The SAS Captain handed the Doctor his assault rifle, keeping a wary eye on Sabbath. Corporal Lansing moved slightly to cover him from the other side of the table.

For a horrible moment, Anji thought the Doctor had reached the point of such frustration that he was going to shoot a bullet through the watch. But to her relief he stuffed it back into his pocket as he took the gun.

‘Let’s try a for‐instance,’ the Doctor said as he weighed the heavy rifle in his hands. He held it by the barrel, pointing the butt at the ice‐TARDIS.’ My TARDIS may or may not arrive in the ice cave in George’s time. Perhaps Fitz just imagined it had or hoped it would. And I really don’t know if it will or not, but it’s possible either way. True?’

‘I suppose so,’ Sabbath admitted.

‘So this shadow of it, this ice‐TARDIS if you like, is a manifestation of that indeterminism. It makes apparent the state of “maybe”. Yes?’

Sabbath nodded slowly. ‘Not that it matters.’

‘Oh it matters,’ the Doctor said severely. ‘The very fact that we can see that manifestation made real before us is indicative of the fact that the whole structure of space‐time, the multiverse itself is collapsing. Just as you planned. It will, is and has happen, happening and happened. All at once, here in this universe, And the effects will spill out and speed up and spiral out of control if we don’t stop Curtis soon.’

‘But if that’s true, Doctor,’ Anji said, ‘why haven’t we seen other signs of it? Before now even. I mean, if it’s rippling back or whatever to Big Bang and beyond.’

‘Perhaps we have,’ the Doctor said grimly. ‘Like an image of George walking past the Cold Room, replayed over and over from another time. Or whatever temporal anomaly alerted Hartford’s superiors the fact there’s a time machine near here… The window between the worlds where reality is stretched so thin a bullet or a rock can pass through its very fabric.’ His voice dropped an octave. ‘It has to be stopped,’ he said emphatically.

‘So what do you suggest?’ Sabbath asked, smugly. ‘As you say, it is happening already.’

‘Not quite. It is still undetermined exactly what will happen. As Schrödinger would tell you, inside the box the cat may or may not be alive. And there’s only one way to find out.’

As he said this, the Doctor stepped forwards. Anji flinched as he raised the rifle high above his head and swung it down savagely at the doors of the ice‐TARDIS.

The ice‐TARDIS exploded like fragile glass, ice crystals hurled across the room and crashing to the stone floor. The Doctor raised the rifle again. But there was nothing left to swing it at.

Nothing except for the figure that stood silhouetted where the ice‐TARDIS had been. The figure that had been standing inside it. The figure now slumping forwards and collapsing to the floor.

Anji’s hand was over her mouth, stifling her scream.

The figure struggled to his feet, Wiping a stubbly chin across his sleeve in confusion and blinking at the light. A book dropped from the man’s hands – a leather‐bound notebook. The pages were ragged and some were falling out. It fell face down on the floor and the man stared down at it in confusion and surprise.

‘I think this is yours,’ the Doctor bent down and picked up the book.

He closed it carefully and pressed it into the figure’s trembling hands.

‘Thank you, Doctor.’ His voice was hoarse and dry. But it was as distinctive as his silhouette, as the stubble on his chin.

‘Fitz!’ Anji gasped.

3: Indetermined

The landscape was grey rather than white. Even the sun seemed to have dimmed and struggled to spread light on the snow and ice.

Curtis shuffled forwards, his legs heavy and his head leaden. The black mist was returning – both inside his mind and outside it. He could feel his consciousness slipping away, his individuality trembling on the brink of the event horizon, about to tumble over. He had to get to the ice cave, had to find the light sources and enter their influence, had to stagger back to the very beginning. It would get easier as he went, it had to – as the influence ebbed away.

He could see the hole in the side of the glacier, the opening made by the British soldiers earlier. He had seen them carrying a large rectangular block of ice up the slopes to the Institute. Curtis had been tempted to make a detour, to absorb them and try to eke out a few more minutes of humanity. But he could sense that the time was gone. He had drawn out his own life as far as he possibly could in that manner.

So many deaths.

It had to stop.

Holiday was right. Holiday was always right. Ever since he had stopped Curtis as he left the television studio, so many years ago. Before he even knew, when he thought it was just an ability – a talent he could control. Everyone had thought he had to concentrate, to exert his mental energies to make things fall towards him. But Holiday had understood at once. He knew, knew the increasing effort Curtis had to go to just to stop things falling towards him.

Trying to sleep was the worst, sleeping while keeping his affliction in check. And the dreams. Such dreams.

But it was nearly over now. He was in the cave. He could see the ice formation, just as Holiday had described it. The image of the man frozen in the ice – frozen in time – was etched into the ice.

He made his foggy way across the cave, arms outstretched, his eyes black pearls within the dark mist that grew over his face, his neck, his shoulders…

‘Over a century?’ Fitz shivered. ‘You’re kidding.’ He was clutching a mug of hot coffee and wrapped in a thermal blanket. ‘A day maybe. And believe me, that was long enough.’ Since the Doctor was absorbed in his work on the watch, Fitz turned to Anji for reassurance. ‘I don’t look a hundred and fifty or so, do I?’

‘You look bad,’ she said. ‘But not that bad.’ She was struggling to resist the urge to hug him. Again. If he hadn’t been shivering so much, she might never have let go of him the first time, after he staggered out of the broken ice. ‘Pity we’ve only got about five minutes left before we get blown up.’

Fitz shrugged as if this was nothing out of the ordinary. ‘And what’s with you, George?’ he asked. ‘I know I said I’d seen through you, but…’ his tone was jovial, but Anji could see there was a hard edge to his words. Some unspoken disagreement that reached into Fitz’s eyes, and made George shuffle uncomfortably.

‘Fitz,’ he said hesitantly, ‘I… I don’t know what to say. This is… good.’ He shrugged. Anji thought that maybe he wanted to hug Fitz as well. But he couldn’t – his Victorian principles wouldn’t allow it any more than his nebulous form could actually do it.

‘No, it isn’t good.’ The Doctor was pacing up and down in front of them staring at the watch. ‘Not good at all.’

‘Well, thanks for that,’ Fitz said.

‘There must be a way to stop this thing. What was that?’ The Doctor paused. ‘Oh, it’s good to have you back, Fitz. But what it tells us about the state of the universe isn’t so good.’

‘If this Curtis guy is so dangerous why don’t we follow him and take him out?’ Nesbitt asked.

‘Take him out?’ The Doctor seemed perplexed. ‘He’s turning into a black hole and you want to, what, buy him dinner? Discuss it over canapés?’

‘I meant kill him,’ Nesbitt said.

‘How do you kill a black hole? How do you defuse an elemental time bomb that’s about to negate the universe?’

‘There must be a way,’ Anji said, pleaded.

‘Yes, there must,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But we’ll find it by thinking, by using our brains. Not by charging around shooting at people.’

‘I imagine,’ Sabbath said quietly, ‘that Mr Curtis has reached the ice cave by now. We should see some interesting effects before long I fancy.’

‘I don’t know what you’re so smug about,’ Anji told him angrily ‘You’ll get blown up too in couple of minutes.’

Sabbath smiled at her. ‘I have absolute faith in the Doctor’s abilities. If not his mental reasoning and grasp of temporal theory. I’m about be proved right, and the Doctor proved wrong. So there you have several good reasons.’

‘Er,’ said Fitz, ‘look – what exactly is happening? I mean apart the end of the universe thing, obviously.’ He was staring at MacMillan, apparently fascinated by the sight of the young woman old lady’s clothes. She smiled back at him and shrugged.

Anji looked away, annoyed.

The Doctor sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter. For the most part. But Maxwell Curtis is changing. Rapidly changing. His transformed nature warping space‐time. He’s so heavy now – heavy in temporal as well physical terms that is – that time is bending round him.’

‘Is that possible?’

‘You didn’t see what happened to the floors and ceilings when he was in here,’ Anji told Fitz.

‘And time as well?’

‘Look.’ The Doctor swung one of the chairs round and sat on it backwards. His arms were across the back of the chair as he explained, ‘Imagine that the layers of time are like sheets of thin rubber stretched tight.’ As he gestured he seemed to realise that Hartford’s watch was in the way.

‘If you say so,’ Nesbitt said.

‘I do.’ The Doctor held out the watch. ‘Any chance one of your people can sort this out in the next’, he paused to check the countdown, ‘minute and a half?’

‘Lansing,’ Nesbitt said, handing the watch to him.

‘Now,’ the Doctor went on, ‘there are tiny gaps between every second, every minute, every year. Interstices in time, if you like. But in the present time, on the sheet of rubber that represents “now”, Curtis is such a focal point for the temporal and gravitic waves, that it’s like he’s a heavy stone – a pebble of compressed matter – placed on one of the sheets.’ The Doctor smiled thinly. ‘OK?’

Evidently he considered the explanations over. He stood up and started pacing again.

‘So what does that mean, exactly, Doctor?’ It was Nesbitt who asked.

The Doctor sighed, and sat down again, angling his chair so he could address everyone equally. ‘That sheet, the “now‐sheet”, then bends downwards, until it actually touches the sheet below. And in turn, that next sheet is forced down On to the one below that, and the next and the next… Ad infinitum. Time is literally overlapping, intersecting with itself.’

He stood up again, and kicked one of the melting shards of ice across the room. It tinkled into a corner. ‘The TARDIS has a special affinity with time. As, I suspect, does the light in the ice cave. Which gives us proof of the hypothesis. A shadow of the TARDIS passing back through time in the form of the ice‐TARDIS.’

‘And how come I was inside it, then?’ Fitz wanted to know.

‘I think you survived because neither Anji nor I would admit you were definitely dead.’

‘Thanks. I mean that, actually.’

The Doctor grinned suddenly, and punched him lightly on the shoulder. The sleeve of his jacket slipped down from the torn shoulder as he did so.

‘Still not got it mended then?’ Fitz asked him. ‘I can recommend a good tailor, if you need one.’

‘No you can’t,’ Anji told him.

‘You’re another indeterminacy,. Fitz,’ the Doctor said. ‘Another one that needed to be resolved. Like George here.’

‘Oh?’ George asked.

‘Yes, the real you is still frozen inside the ice. What you are here is a might‐be, a possible‐George. One that can interact with us up to a point, but which hasn’t yet solidified into true reality. And maybe you never will,’ he added quietly.

‘You’ve lost, Doctor,’ Sabbath said. ‘Why don’t you just admit it?’

‘And let reality unravel like…’ He struggled to think of a suitable simile, pulling his ripped sleeve back up into place as he blew out a long breath. Then he frowned. The Doctor’s forehead creased for a moment in concentration. He turned to face Fitz. ‘What do you mean, “a good tailor”?’ he demanded.

George laughed. ‘He means you haven’t mended your jacket since we met in St Petersburg.’

The Doctor grinned back. ‘Of course.’ He shook his head as if wondering how he could have been so stupid. But when he looked again at Fitz, Anji could see that his expression was serious. ‘Tell me about St Petersburg,’ he said.

The light shone in and around him. It was dazzling and illuminating. Through it he could see a tunnel – light like ice sloping gently downwards. He started walking.

Walking now.

Walking a minute ago…

An hour ago…

Last year…

Towards Time Zero.

2: Paradox

Sabbath made to stand up, but Nesbitt pushed him back down into his chair.

Lansing stepped forward, holding the watch carefully in the palm of his hand. ‘I haven’t a clue about this, sorry.’ His expression and his voice were grave.

00:27

00:26

00:25

‘Let’s hope we’ve found all the charges,’ Nesbitt said.

The Doctor lifted the watch from Lansing’s outstretched hand and tuned it over. ‘Yes, let’s hope so,’ he agreed. ‘But in case you haven’t, I’ll just pull out this red wire and see what happens.’

‘Er,’ said Anji.

‘Is that safe? Do you think?’ Fitz hazarded.

Trix swallowed.

‘Oh I think so,’ the Doctor said. ‘Probably.’ And pulled at the tiny wire. It didn’t move, and he frowned. ‘Tweezers, anyone?’

There was silence.

00:17

00:16

00:15

The Doctor peered closely at the inside of the watch. Then he put it to his mouth and bit heavily at the thin red loop of wire. His face creased with the effort and they could all see the numbers clearly between his fingers.

00:12

00:11

00:10

The wire came free. The numbers froze on 00:08, blinking. The Doctor pushed at his teeth with his thumb as if worried one of them might have come loose.

‘Why don’t you give up this charade?’ Sabbath said. ‘There’s no way you can win.’

‘It isn’t a game,’ the Doctor shot back.

‘We could cheat if it was,’ Fitz said in a sulky voice.

‘That wouldn’t be very fair,’ George told him.

‘Oh but Sabbath here has done nothing but cheat,’ the Doctor said ‘Right from the start.’

‘How?’ Anji asked.

The Doctor shrugged, as if it were obvious. ‘He adjusted the time envelope so it will stretch back before it was created. He faked the expedition journal to lead Curtis to the ice cave in the first place. In fact, his whole plan is full of paradoxes and contradictions, isn’t it?’ He paused again, lost for a moment in his thoughts. ‘Well done, Fitz,’ he said at last.

‘What did I do?’

‘Yes,’ Anji said, ‘how come he gets all the fuss and praise suddenly?’

‘It’s called charisma,’ Fitz told her with a wink.

‘It’s called something,’ she agreed, trying not to glance at Trix as she said it.

‘It’s called cheating,’ the Doctor said. ‘The key is in the contradictions. The indeterminates. The unresolved paradoxes. Because,’ he said, swinging round to address Sabbath, a note of triumph in his Voice, ‘the universe works the way I say it does, not the way you assume. If the TARDIS really did split reality, nothing I did would ever have any meaning or consequence. There would be no point.’

‘And that bothers you?’ Sabbath asked.

‘It would if I thought for one fraction of a moment that it was true, yes. But it isn’t.’ He leaned close, reaching over Sabbath’s shoulder and holding the back of his chair. ‘And I can prove it,’ he said. ‘Come along!’ He moved so fast that he was a blur. Galvanised suddenly into action, running at full tilt from the Great Hall.

‘Where’s he off to?’ Nesbitt asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Anji said, ‘but I think we should follow him.’

They heard the sound before they saw what was happening. Fitz overtook Anji at a run, to her evident surprise.

‘Come on!’ he yelled as they emerged into the daylight.

Across the courtyard, they were just in time to see the blue shape of the ‘TARDIS – the real TARDIS – fade and disappear from the sled.

‘What the hell?’ Nesbitt said.

‘He’s run out on you,’ Sabbath told them as he caught up, Lansing jabbing him with his rifle. ‘Trying to save himself from the temporal effects.’

‘Why don’t you just shut it?’ Anji said.

‘Yes,’ Fitz agreed. ‘He’s not running out on us. He’s got a plan.’

As if in answer, the air was split by the tortured sound of the TARDIS engines as it solidified again in front of them. It was closer now. Within a few moments, the doors opened and the Doctor came out.

‘Ah, there you all are.’

‘Have you done it?’ Anji asked. ‘Whatever it is you were doing?’

‘Well, sort of.’ He seemed buoyant, bouncing on his feet. ‘Work in progress, if you like.’ He pulled something from his pocket and threw it to her. ‘Here, catch.’

It was a lump of ice. Anji could feel it melting through her gloves. She held it up, and could see the tiny flicker of frozen fire deep within.

‘I was too late to stop Curtis entering the time envelope,’ the Doctor confessed. ‘Which is probably just as well, since I’ve no idea how I might have done it.’ He reached over and tapped the lump of ice. ‘Tell them about o-regions, would you Captain Nesbitt?’

Nesbitt seemed surprised at the request. ‘Er, well,’ he blustered. ‘They’re parts of space. Sort of.’ He looked at Lansing for help.

‘As I understood it,’ the Corporal said, still keeping his rifle pointed at Sabbath, ‘they are self‐contained regions of space so far removed from other areas that even the light from them has not yet travelled to another part of the universe. Isolated in the extreme.’

‘Excellent,’ the Doctor congratulated him. ‘This light,’ he tapped the ice again, ‘as I told the military gentlemen here, is from one of those regions. But it travels slower than our own light. That is, after all, the point of all this, isn’t it?’ He waited for Sabbath to agree.

But the large man seemed disinterested. He was inspecting his fingernails. ‘He’ll be fifty years or more into the past by now,’ he said quietly. ‘Speeding up as he goes.’

‘But this isn’t just light, is it?’ the Doctor went on as if Sabbath had not spoken. ‘There’s something living inside the light. Just as bacteria can survive inside ice. Not that this mattered to your plan. What did matter is that O-regions are constantly meeting and coalescing. As the light from one reaches another, it is no longer isolated.’ He lifted the ice from Anji’s hand. ‘And because our light travels faster than the light in the region this came from, the O-region and the creature within the light inside the ice knew about us before we knew about them. In fact,’ he went on, ‘the light from Earth will have reached them centuries ago – and with it knowledge of Curtis’s nature.’

‘Which means what exactly?’ Fitz asked.

The Doctor was looking at Sabbath as he answered. ‘It’s the black hole that Curtis will become that has drawn this light here, isn’t it? Just as any black hole draws light from wherever it can.’

Sabbath was smiling now. He nodded, as if to congratulate a slow pupil who has just caught on.

‘Except, of course,’ the Doctor continued, ‘Curtis has not yet become a full black hole, has he? And for that to have happened in the past – long enough ago for the knowledge to have reached the o-region – he depends on the time machine in the ice cave. And that only works because of the properties of the light. The light which Curtis has not yet attracted because he hasn’t yet become a black hole in the past.’ He paused and glanced across at Nesbitt and Lansing. ‘Do stop me if there’s anything you’re unsure about, won’t you.’

‘So it’s a paradox?’ Fitz said. ‘In fact, it sounds like the granddaddy of all paradoxes.’ He blinked. ‘Sorry, forget I said that,’ he murmured.

‘More than that,’ the Doctor said. ‘It is a paradox that can only exist within a single universe.’ He was talking to Sabbath again, and now Sabbath wasn’t smiling. ‘If you’re right about how time travel works, which is after all what your whole scheme is predicated upon, then none of this can happen. Can it? If your theory is correct, then when Curtis travels back in time, that creates a new universe – a new universe where a black hole was there at Time Zero. Otherwise we’d already be living in a universe Where that was the case. But the light that the black hole attracted is here in this universe – not some other as yet uncreated one that you hope will supplant all others. It has to be for your plan to work.’

The way the Doctor was standing with his hands behind his back, Anji had an unhappy feeling he might have his fingers crossed. Lots them. ‘So the universe isn’t split by time travel?’ she asked. ‘Though I think my brain soon will be.’

‘Demonstrably not.’ The Doctor’s hands appeared from behind his back, and he tapped Sabbath on the chest with his index finger. ‘You’re wrong. You’ve proved yourself wrong. Why don’t you admit it?’

Sabbath’s voice was like gravel. ‘I admit nothing to you, Doctor.’

‘Totally wrong,’ the Doctor said gleefully. A trickle of water dripped down from his hand as the ice melted. ‘About the nature of the universe, the nature of time, everything. Time will preserve the single timeline, the one real universe, wherever and whenever it can. It doesn’t spin off whole new ones at the drop – or not – of a cat. It forms loops within itself rather than a whole new universe. Then the time line coalesces round its chosen path, leaving ox‐bow lakes of might‐have‐been, backwaters of what‐if…’

‘I hope you know what he’s talking about,’ Trix said quietly to Anji. ‘Is he always like this?’

The Doctor glared across at them both. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘buying the Daily Telegraph rather than the Independent has a very limited effect on the rest of the universe you know. Well,’ he added with the hint of a frown, ‘depending what you read in it, I suppose. But it forces the indeterminate state of “Telegraph or Independent” rather than splitting off a whole new universe where that is the only difference. That’s why Fitz’s death or non‐death didn’t create a new universe our universe accommodated it within itself.’

‘Are you saying that the whole of Quantum Theory or whatever is wrong?’ Anji asked.

‘Oh no. The universe splits when it has to, when there is no other way to resolve things.’ The Doctor’s face fell into shadow as he turned back to Sabbath. ‘But it doesn’t take the creation of a whole new universe, just to kill a cat.’ The ice was all but melted in his hand now. ‘And forcing together universes that have split for very good reasons can only have catastrophic consequences.’

From somewhere in the distance, it seemed, came the sound of gunfire and explosions. It was a strange, eerie noise. It seemed to be coming from all around them, yet it was still distant. Barely audible.

‘You see,’ the Doctor said. ‘Or rather, hear. It’s starting.’

‘What is?’ Trix asked.

‘Echoes from the past. Look!’ The Doctor pointed across, towards the main gates.

Nesbitt and Lansing both drew in breath sharply as they saw themselves, and the rest of the SAS group, running towards them. But like the sounds, they seemed insubstantial, shadows in the air. And overlaid, interspersed with them, Hartford’s team was crashing into the courtyard. Both assaults muddled and chaotic and overlapping.

‘It starts with the events with greater pitch and circumstance,’ the Doctor said, his voice barely audible above the ghostly firefights. ‘But soon everything that has happened here, that will ever happen here, will be taking place at the same time. Not just the events from this universe, but from every universe and every possible universe. To be or not to be, in every sense.’

The Doctor watched the confused, shadowy images for a few moments. Then he stepped back and clapped his wet hands together. ‘Luckily,’ he said, ‘there’s an easy way to stop Curtis and the black hole and sort everything out.’

‘There is?’ Anji said.

‘Oh yes.’ The Doctor looked round at them. ‘Right then, I need Fitz, Anji and George, please, with me. Captain Nesbitt, would you kindly look after Mr Sabbath until I get back?’

‘I’ll just wait here too, shall I?’ Trix asked. The Doctor did not answer. ‘Thought so,’ she said. ‘Just thought I’d check.’

Sabbath rubbed his chin thoughtfully as Anji and Fitz stepped forwards. ‘So, you’ve got there at last, Doctor. I knew you would.’

‘Worked it out you mean?’ Fitz said. ‘You can’t keep him fooled for long you know.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that. I meant that, at last, the Doctor has come to the point where he has to face up to reality, in every sense. Can you do it, Doctor? The solution, as you say, is easy.’ He took a step forwards, his eyes staring intent at the Doctor’s expression. ‘But can you do it?’

‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor replied. His voice was quiet and devoid of emotion. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘Why?’ Anji asked. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘The problem is that the Doctor now has to make a decision. It’s all about choice, after all. No unresolved paradoxes, no indeterminates, no cheating this time.’

‘What’s he talking about?’ Fitz said. ‘What choice?’

The Doctor did not answer. He turned away.

‘So much for all those speeches about free will and the sanctity of the individual,’ Sabbath gloated. ‘You wouldn’t let me kill Nathaniel Ashe, and he wasn’t even an innocent bystander. So what’s it to be this time, now that there really is only the one choice? Will you save the universe, Doctor? Or sacrifice a single life?’

And walked silently, head down, through the ghostly fighting figures towards the solid reality of the TARDIS.

1: Greater Good

Monsters from an evolutionary might‐have‐been moved ghostlike through the castle. Hartford’s incursion team attacked the Russian special forces. Again and again. Nesbitt’s SAS stormed their way in with percussion grenades and lightning efficiency once more. George Williamson turned in a corridor, as if looking back at someone. But there was nobody there, which was ironic since he was not there himself.

Miriam Dewes fell dead to the floor in the Great Hall, Yuri Culmanov dying beside her. And Blake Michaels… At the same moment, Fitz pulled at the decaying tapestry and opened a secret passage. He and the Doctor both entered it together, neither aware of the other, separated only by a tissue of reality; a trick of time.

An ice‐TARDIS exploded yet once more.

And a little over a mile away, the real Fitz stepped out of the real TARDIS and stood once again in the ice cavern where he might or might not have died over a hundred years earlier.

It amazed Anji that George had not commented on the peculiar interior dimensions of the TARDIS. Perhaps he had seen and experienced so much recently, well, in the last century or so, that it just did not seem very remarkable. He stood, seemingly preoccupied, with Fitz and Anji at the console as the Doctor busied himself round the controls clicking his tongue and worrying switches.

Only now did it occur to Anji that while the Doctor had been out of her life for over a year, perhaps for him it had been only a day. Or, and given his apparent expertise now with the TARDIS controls, perhaps for him decades had passed before he happened to find himself on a plane to Siberia with a man who was really a Cosmic Event.

The journey took only a few minutes. Then the Doctor opened the doors, and they stepped out into the ice cavern. At the far end, Anji could see a hole torn in the glassy wall. It reminded her of the window into the other reality, the other universe. She supposed it was where the SAS had blown their way in to get the ice‐TARDIS.

‘Right on target, for once,’ Fitz said. He seemed to be in a sullen mood too, forever glancing sideways at George. Maybe he was disappointed that Miss fake‐blonde MacMillan had not accompanied them, Anji thought. It had to be dyed. Didn’t it? Not that it mattered at all given that the universe was about to end. But that colour didn’t happen in the real world, whatever Quantum Physics might think. Without really thinking about it, she ran her fingers through her own hair, trying to tease out the worst of the knots.

‘Yes, here we are.’ Despite the urgency, the Doctor seemed hesitant, unsure quite what to say or do next, staring down at the frozen ground.

It was George who broke the silence. ‘It’s me, isn’t it?’ he said tightly. ‘You have to kill me to stop Curtis. That’s what Sabbath meant.’

‘Oh George,’ the Doctor said, quiet and sad. When he looked up his eyes were large and moist. ‘I wish there was another way, I really do.’

‘What?’ Anji stared. ‘You’re going to –’

But the Doctor cut her off sharply. ‘I’m not going to do anything. It’s entirely up to George. It’s his choice. His life.’

‘Some choice,’ Fitz said grimly. He was looking around the cave, as if reminding himself how it looked. ‘Wait a minute, Doctor,’ he said. ‘There’s something wrong here…’

But the Doctor ignored him. ‘If you die,’ the Doctor said to George, ‘If you really die rather than getting caught in the light beams, then the time envelope will cease to have existed. That’s a possibility. In fact, I think that’s why you’re insubstantial now – indeterminate. That may already have happened. In which case, Curtis will be able to get back as far as 1894. No further. At least, not by that means.’

‘But he can still do it?’ Anji asked.

‘Yes,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘He can use the ice itself, or rather the light trapped within it. At the moment he’s sort of piggy‐backing on George. If George isn’t around, Curtis will have to use the raw light source.’

‘Great,’ Anji said. ‘Then what do we do? How does that help?’

‘We destroy this ice cave,’ the Doctor said grimly.

‘I don’t think we can destroy it, Doctor,’ Fitz said. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you. I blew this place to bits – saw it explode. Yet here it is, completely intact. Just as it was.’

‘He’s right,’ George said. ‘A huge explosion.’

The Doctor was nodding enthusiastically. ‘Exactly. The ice cave is destroyed, the slow light released by Fitz’s grenade back in 1894.’ He mimed the explosion by throwing his arms wide and making sound. ‘The black hole that Curtis has become erupts from the broken ice that he was using, in which he was trapped like the light source. The energy is dissipated through time, right along the path he’s been taking rather than consuming the world. And the blast is heard in Moscow, talked about and remembered until Tunguska eclipses it and the memories fade.’

‘But how did you know?’ Fitz asked. ‘How could you possibly know back in 1894 when we met in St Petersburg, when you told me I’d find this cave and asked me to destroy it? Back then, how could you guess what would happen?’

The Doctor sighed. ‘Oh Fitz, Fitz, Fitz. You of all people should know that.’ He gave a weak smile. ‘It might have been 1894 for you,’ he said. ‘But it was only about twenty minutes ago for me. When I found Curtis had already started his journey, I had no other option but to ask you destroy the ice.’

Fitz just stared. ‘Ri‐ight,’ he said at last.

‘But it hasn’t happened,’ Anji pointed out emphatically.

‘Of course not. It can’t happen until George forces Curtis to transfer to the ice and light, and the energy is there ready for Fitz to release, Until then it’s in an indeterminate state. It has and has not happened, it might or might not have occurred.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The universe may or may not exist.’ He turned to George. ‘I really am sorry. But it’s up to you. It’s your decision, your choice that will determine what events really took place here. Whether the grenade just exploded, or the black hole was released with the ruptured ice and dissipated along the whole time path causing goodness only knows what side effects, but – I hope – preserving reality. And you must choose very soon. I can’t do it for you.’

‘I can.’ Fitz’s voice was low and as hard‐edged as Anji had ever heard, His eyes were as dark as his tone. He stepped towards George. ‘I thought he was my friend, but all the time he was deceiving me. He killed Galloway and Caversham.’ Fitz was right in front of George now, staring into his faded eyes. ‘A murderer’s life for the whole of reality? There really isn’t any choice, Doctor. Just tell me what to do.’

‘No, Fitz,’ the Doctor said quietly. ‘George must decide.’

‘I’m sorry, Fitz,’ George said. ‘About Galloway. But I didn’t kill I Caversham.’

‘You followed him and he just disappeared, is that it?’ Fitz was shaking, and not just with the cold. ‘Found out you’d killed Galloway, did he? Realised it wasn’t me after all despite you letting me take the rap.’

‘No – I –’ George shook his head, confused and upset.

‘It wasn’t George who killed Caversham,’ the Doctor said gently. He put a hand on Fitz’s shoulder.

‘I went to look for him,’ George said. ‘I was walking along the corridor; I heard something and looked back. But there was nothing there.’

‘Outside what is now the Cold Room at the Institute,’ the Doctor said. ‘I’ve seen you do it. It was Curtis, Fitz. Hence the after‐image of George in the corridor. And you found the evidence, remember. The pebble. I know, I read your journal.’

Fitz blinked. ‘Read…? How could you?’ He pulled the battered book from his coat pocket. ‘It’s here.’

‘I know. Though you did lose a few pages.’

‘They blew away,’ Fitz remembered.

‘You’re in the British Museum, Fitz,’ Anji told him, trying to lighten the tone, to snap him out of it.

‘How could Curtis have killed Caversham?’ he demanded.

‘He tested the time envelope, found he could get back to before George was trapped in the ice.’

‘So why did he come back?’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘I think maybe he didn’t want to go through with it until he was absolutely sure he had to. Until he knew there was no other way. He needed to talk to Holiday – Sabbath, he wanted to know whether Naryshkin had another solution. He was scared, Fitz,’ The Doctor finally lifted his hand from Fitz’s shoulder. ‘We’re all scared,’ he admitted quietly.

‘He still killed Galloway,’ Fitz said. ‘Didn’t you?’

George nodded. ‘Yes, I did. I didn’t mean to. He wanted to discuss how to approach the palaeontology, that’s what he said. So I went to his tent.’ The emotion of the memory was etched on George’s translucent face. ‘Then he attacked me – went for me with a knife.’ He stepped towards Fitz, hand out, pleading. ‘I had to stop him, to defend myself. I grabbed the first thing that came to hand, and I hit him with it. I thought I might drive him off, or even knock him out. But when I saw what happened, what I was holding… ‘His voice dropped away to nothing and George’s head bowed.

‘A tent peg,’ Fitz said slowly. ‘You hit him with a tent peg.’ He shook his head. ‘Why didn’t you say that’s what happened?’

‘Galloway thought I was going to expose him, ruin him. As if I could. What good would it do to tell everyone the truth after he was dead. And who’d believe me anyway?’

‘So you let me take the blame?’

‘No… That just happened. I thought maybe it would be seen as an accident.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Fitz blew out a long misty breath. ‘But you couldn’t say “oh yes, I saw Fitz, he was asleep in his tent,” could you?’

‘I’m sorry, Fitz. But I didn’t know. What if you hadn’t been? What if you were with Caversham or Price or someone? Then you’d all know I was lying, all know that I’d – I’d killed him.’ He turned away. ‘I didn’t think, not for a second, that anyone would suspect you, Fitz. That was stupid, and I’m sorry. I suppose I just thought that everyone else shared my opinion about you.’

Fitz blinked. ‘What opinion? What do you mean?’

‘That you’re a decent, honest person,’ George said. ‘That you’d do anything to help if you thought it was for the best, and never hurt anyone. That you’d go to Siberia on a whim just because someone you respected asked you. That you’re dependable and brave and the best friend a man could have.’

As he spoke, George turned slowly to face the Doctor. ‘I’m ready,’ he said. ‘I’ve made my decision.’

Fitz was still shaking. Anji could see the light glistening on a single tear that escaped from his eye. Watched as it froze on his cheek. ‘George…’ His voice was a husky rasp. He choked, swallowed. ‘George, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything.’

Anji wiped her own eyes.

‘You can’t do it, George,’ Fitz blurted. ‘There has to be some other way.’ He looked at the Doctor.

Anji followed Fitz’s gaze. They were all looking at the Doctor now.

But his face was impassive, as cold and empty as ice.

Time Zero

There was a soldier on guard at the door. Trix and Sabbath were sitting on opposite sides of one of the tables in the cafeteria area of the Great Hall. Around them, ghostly shadows of past events played themselves out.

People ran, died, made coffee and ate and laughed. It was like a haze – if Trix focused on them, she could make out the individuals. She could see the area where the cafeteria section had been set up either with or without the modern walls. Even the table she was sitting at seemed somehow less solid than it had a few minutes earlier.

She smiled at the soldier in the doorway, trying not to let herself be distracted as a heavy wooden door that wasn’t there was battered down by an enormous creature that seemed half‐lizard, half‐dinosaur. ‘Is he right, do you think?’ she said.

Sabbath was staring down at the table. His huge hands rested on the surface and he seemed to be inspecting the lines and creases on them. ‘The Doctor?’ he asked without looking up.

‘No,’ she said patiently, ‘the King of Tibet.’

He did look up now. A slight smile on his face. ‘Who you have met, no doubt?’

‘We’re old friends. Of course the Doctor. Is the world going to end, or the universe split up or get smashed together or whatever catastrophe he was going on about?’

Sabbath’s smile faded. ‘He may be right,’ he admitted. ‘He may actually be right about it. It’s possible that I have not been told the entire truth. For whatever reason.’

‘That’ll be it,’ Trix said in an understanding tone. ‘Someone else made a mistake. Couldn’t be, I suppose, that you’re just plain wrong for once, could it?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Thought not.’

‘You are a very annoying woman, Miss MacMillan. If that really is your name.’

She smiled and threw her head back so that her hair rearranged itself in a neat bob. ‘It might be,’ she said. ‘That’s sort of, what’s the word? Indeterminate.’ She considered for a moment, sucking in her cheeks and pouting her lips. ‘If that is actually a word at all.’

‘If the Doctor is correct,’ Sabbath said slowly, as if to himself, ‘then what he is doing is not without hazard.’

‘You mean it’s dangerous.’

‘In the extreme.’

‘Like either the world ends, or he blows us all up saving it? That sort of extreme?’

Sabbath’s eyes narrowed, seeming to recede into his round face. ‘Rather worse than that, I’m afraid.’

‘Just so we know.’ She stood up and stretched. ‘Fancy a coffee?’

‘The different universes are already overlapping.’

‘I’d noticed,’ she called back as she went over to the kitchen area, ‘If the Doctor is too late, or if the energy is not completely dissipated, then the whole of reality might be thrown into confusion.’

‘And we’d notice, would we?’ Trix called back.

But Sabbath seemed not to hear. ‘Different versions of history play out in parallel. No longer separated by the thin membrane of reality. A universe where different sequences of different events exist and coexist side by side, overlapping, intersecting, merging.’

Trix reappeared with a mug of water.

‘The Doctor was right about one thing,’ Sabbath admitted. ‘He and I travel back and forth within the same reality, the same Quantum Universe.’

‘I seem to recall,’ Trix said sipping from the mug, ‘that he used that as a rather emphatic indication that you were in the wrong. Or did I mishear that bit?’

Sabbath stood up suddenly, his chair skidding backwards and toppling over as it struck the edge of a flagstone. His face was reddening as he spoke. ‘Yes, I was wrong! Happy now, Miss MacMillan?’

Trix seemed unperturbed. ‘Well, apart from the overlapping, intersecting, merging reality bit.’ She sat down. ‘What were you proposing to do about that? If it happens? And if we can even tell that it’s happened?’

‘There was always a chance I might not succeed here,’ Sabbath said. He picked up the chair and sat down again.

‘No?!’ Trix sounded scandalised at the thought.

He glared at her: ‘It is as well to be prepared.’

‘My great grandfather used to say that. He was Baden‐Powell, you know.’

Sabbath stared at her. ‘Really?’

‘No, not really,’ she said, ‘He was the Tsar of all the Russias, remember?’

‘Was he?’

Her eyes were wide and innocent. ‘Scout’s honour. So what was your back‐up plan, not that it matters if we’re all going to die horribly anyway.’ She waved a hand to shoo off someone who had just walked through her. ‘This is all rather disconcerting to an inexperienced lass from the country like me, you know.’

‘I have to get away from this world,’ Sabbath said quietly.

‘Urgent appointment, eh?’

‘A race against infinity.’ He was smiling again, as if he had made a joke he knew she would not appreciate.

‘So how will you get to this world? How do you travel in time, assuming for the moment that I accept time travel is possible at all?’

‘In the same way as the Doctor would, only with rather more style. I just need to get back to my ship.’ As he spoke he drew something from his pocket. It was a boat, a small plastic model of a streamlined speed boat. He turned it over in his hand, examining the detail.

‘Is that your ship?’

Sabbath shook his head. ‘Well, it belongs to me, but it isn’t a model of the Jonah. This is just something I picked up on my travels. It gave me the idea for my next port of call, shall we say?’ He smiled, evidently amused by his own joke.

Trix clicked her tongue, her eyes fixed on the model Sabbath was holding. ‘Such a shame about the guard on the door.’ She leaned across the table and stared appealingly at Sabbath. ‘Tell me about the Doctor,’ she said.

‘Why?’ He looked up abruptly, returning tile model to his pocket.

‘Because I’m interested.’ She leaned back and folded her arms. ‘And because, if you tell me about the Doctor, I’ll tell you about the secret passage he used earlier to escape from this very room. How’s that for a deal?’

The grenade was warm in Fitz’s hand, even through the glove. Time seemed to slow as he held it out in front of him; as he reached outt his other hand and grasped the metal pin; as he pulled. As it came free.

History was a blur. Curtis was running now, breaking through the years. He saw the blood and terror of the Russian Revolution going on around him, was tempted to stop, take the time to watch. Perhaps on the way back, when he was free of the numbing, icy blackness that clouded his mind and fogged his senses.

The creature before them paused, its head slightly to one side as if puzzled, watching. George was yelling at Fitz, mouth working, but no sound. No sound at all. Underwater pressure in his ears as Fitz lobbed the grenade.

But not at the creature.

At the wall of ice where the tiny flames flickered, where the impossible fires were frozen.

Trix was standing close beside Sabbath as he concentrated, her fingers edging towards his jacket pocket. He was staring at the fireplace where Trix had pointed. He saw the shadowy image of Fitz grabbing the tapestry as the creature leaped across the room. Saw the doorway swing open.

The soldier at the main door was worried, could see something was wrong, was coming over.

The grenade twisted in the air; then skidded and bounced until it rested at the foot of the huge glassy wall.

The image of the doorway by the fireplace solidified. All the images were becoming more solid, more real, as reality itself was ripped apart.

The soldier was running, shouting, could see Fitz and the monster and the secret doorway.

Sabbath was running too, diving for the opening even as it shimmered in and out of possible existence.

The first explosion was almost a disappointment. An orange flare reflecting off the ice and percussing round the chamber. A billow of dark smoke. The creatures flinching, backing away. As the smoke cleared, Fitz could see that the whole wall of ice was glowing – the flames inside erupting outwards, racing towards him as they broke free of the ice and threw its shattered remains across the cavern.

Decision taken, choice made, George Williamson stepped into the ice. For a moment his shimmering translucent silhouette seemed to merge and overlap and intersect with the shadowy figure barely visible within the ice.

For a moment he was able to stare back and see the Doctor and Anji and Fitz looking at him. He saw the sadness and the hope and the friendship in their eyes.

He started running, back towards 1894. Towards the beginning and the end of things.

Fitz pushed George, with all his might, hoped he would reach the shelter of a huge chunk of ice that had fallen from the ceiling.

Gasping for breath, George stepped out of the ice. His hands, he noticed, seemed more real, more solid now. But he had no time to wonder about this. In front of him, Fitz was shoving a figure across the cavern towards George.

And the figure was himself.

Fitz had turned away, diving backwards as George’s own past self fell towards the ice wall, towards the light that shone out from the glacial wall cracking open from the grenade’s blast which still echoed round the cave.

George – the George that Fitz had pushed out of danger – fell to the floor, scrambled up, was about to dive for the scant protection offered by the overhanging roof of ice.

Then he stopped. Stared. Saw himself staring back.

A faint image, an imprint in the air dived for cover, was caught in the light and blinked in surprise and disbelief.

But the solid, real George stood and stared and did not move.

The ice was crashing down, the roof collapsing, another explosion building and rumbling deep within the fiery ice.

George nodded, smiling at the confused version of himself that was now trapped and about to die. The one who had never entered the ice or been frozen in time. And he felt himself slipping away, fading gradually to nothing. Like a ghost.

Not waiting to see what happened to George, Fitz turned and dived across the cavern – towards the ice‐TARDIS. He twisted as fell he against it, against the cold doors. Saw George looking upwards from the ground, fear frozen in place as a tidal wave of snow and slush crashed down on him, burying him.

The tunnel of light was collapsing around him. Curtis could feel himself being wrenched apart, torn open. The energy was being sucked from him. He had to go on, had to continue, had to get back the beginning.

Through the ruptured wall of light he could see another wall. A wall of ice. He leaped across the abyss, scrabbled to gain a grip on its slippery surface, hammered at the ice until it cracked and crazed and shattered.

He fell through into the tunnel. For a split‐second he was confused, unsure. Then he was on his feet again, vaguely aware that they were lost in a mist of blackness and that he was rolling rather than running down the tunnel.

The doors split open under Fitz’s weight, showering him with pinprick splinters and shards, and he felt himself falling into the flickering interior of the ice itself The creatures were silhouettes against the expanding explosion. The blast was white hot, intensely bright.

The rolling Blackness filled the ice tunnel. It billowed along it, ever faster, like smoke. The whole wall of ice was glowing around the blackness, as if the light was being sucked out of it.

But the Darkness was thinning, dissipated by the light. The rumbling of the dark smoke became the roar of a tremendous explosion as the walls and floor and ceiling of the tunnel shattered and exploded.

Then the flames inside the walls erupted outwards, racing towards the Blackness from all directions as they broke free of the ice. The fire tore into the blackness, and threw its shattered remains across Time.

And the whiteness closed over Fitz, blotting out his vision, his hearing, his senses and stopping his heart in mid‐beat.

The light was faint, barely noticeable it was stretched so thin. But it was still slower than normal light. The interaction with the sunlight threw a rainbow of vortex‐colours over a tiny point on the Siberian landscape.

Somewhen a bird was caught twisting and wheeling in the light, unaware of how its own timeline was compressed and distorted.

Somewhen else, USAF Captain Andrew Jenkins and his crew flew a plane that did not officially exist low over Siberia to avoid being detected by radar. For the briefest moment it was washed with the rainbow colours, its timestream slowed as it passed through the escaping energy.

The explosion lit up the evening sky, a huge beam of cold light rutting through the air and strobing upwards. The reality‐shattering sound of the blast was heard as far away as Moscow.

As the ice exploded in 1894, the creature within it, the fire from another world, found itself released and free, It splashed out over the collapsing ice and snow, burning into the ground, burrowing down as It sought out another medium that could give form to its energy. And found the magma deep below the frozen surface.

Slowly it suffused and dissipated through the molten rock. Patiently it made its way round the world, testing the crust, seeking out a route back to the surface and a new host that could give it form and life and thought. Something with which it might have an affinity.

Fire and light
Heat and substance
Possession and death

Burning

Reality + 1

They walked slowly and quietly out of the TARDIS and found themselves just outside the main gates of the Castle. The sun was shining brightly, but without much warmth. The snow seemed even more white in the brilliant evening light.

‘You mentioned possible side effects,’ Anji said, shielding her eyes from the glare off the snow.

‘Yes,’ the Doctor said.

They waited, but he did not seem to want to add anything to this.

‘I have a question,’ Fitz said, more brightly than Anji had expected.

‘Just one?’ the Doctor asked.

‘One in particular.’

‘Which is?’

‘Well…’ They were walking slowly back towards the castle entrance. Fitz hesitated, as if embarrassed. ‘Well,’ he said again. ‘Am I dead?’

Anji laughed. His hurt expression made her laugh even more.

‘No, Fitz,’ the Doctor said. He was smiling too. ‘You’re not dead. And we never thought you were, did we, Anji?’

‘Not for a second,’ she said as she managed to stop the giggles.

‘Oh,’ Fitz said. ‘Good. Though, if I understand it,’ he added, ‘if you were really certain, then I wouldn’t have been in an indeterminate state or whatever.’

The Doctor strode off in front of them. ‘I hope that isn’t all you’ve understood,’ his voice floated back in the still, crisp air.

‘No,’ Fitz admitted. ‘I understand a few other things now too.’ He grinned at Anji. ‘Like you can’t bear to be without me.’

‘Not entirely true,’ she told him. ‘I was just getting used to having a real job again, a real life.’

‘Well, perceptions of what’s real or not are pretty warped right now, aren’t they?’

She didn’t answer. She had already decided that she was going back to London, back to work. She had never intended not to, she realised.

What she had not decided was how to break the news to the Doctor and Fitz.

The Doctor was standing at the top of a shallow rise just in front of the shattered gates, staring out across the landscape below them. As they caught up with him, he raised a hand and waved.

In the distance, Anji could see several dark figures running across the snow. One of them waved back.

‘Corporal Lansing,’ the Doctor said. ‘I wonder what he’s looking for.’

‘Perhaps he’s just taking the air,’ Fitz suggested.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘Obviously his men are deployed in a search pattern.’

‘I wonder what they’ve lost,’ Anji said.

‘What,’ the Doctor agreed, ‘or who.’

‘Ah,’ said Fitz.

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘But I rather fancy they’re a little late, don’t you?’ He pointed across towards the horizon, towards the base of the foothills.

As Anji and Fitz turned to look, the sound reached them. It was a harsh scraping, wrenching, tearing sound. As if the fabric of the earth was being torn apart. The soldiers were running towards the sound, towards the shape that was thrusting up through the snow, cracking the frozen ground open like pack ice and jutting up into the daylight. The sun glinted on the brass deck. If Anji squinted, really screwed up her eyes, she could just make out the stocky figure climbing up the side. Was that someone helping him up, a woman perhaps? Or was it a trick of the harsh light?

Before she could decide, before Fitz or the Doctor could find it in them to comment, the shining leviathan was dipping back out of sight.

‘We camped there a few days ago,’ Fitz said. ‘Or whenever. I didn’t know there was a lake under there.’

‘There isn’t,’ the Doctor said quietly. ‘There doesn’t need to be.’

He was still staring out across the snow towards the dark crack where the ship had thrust up. But the Jonah, and Sabbath, were gone.

‘I’m sorry, Doctor.’ Nesbitt was waiting for them just inside the gates.

‘I know, I know,’ the Doctor said, waving aside the apology. ‘How did he do it?’

‘You’d better talk to Miss MacMillan.’

‘Before we do that,’ Anji said as sweetly as she could manage, ‘how about one of you gets this camera thing out of my neck. Hmmm?’

Nesbitt smiled. ‘Excuse me. It shouldn’t hurt. Well, not much.’

She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. But it didn’t hurt. It felt like he was squeezing a spot, though she tried not to think about that. When Anji opened her eyes again, a tiny glass lenses was nestling in Nesbitt’s palm. The back end of it was stained red. She tried not to think about that too, rubbing her hand across her throat. It came away with a thin smear of blood across her middle finger.

‘Thanks,’ Anji said. ‘Thanks a lot.’

They found Trix in the Great Hall. She had changed from the Duchess’s dress into a thermal suit that hugged and emphasised her body in a manner which Anji thought was outrageously unnecessary. Though Fitz seemed to appreciate it.

‘It was just so sudden,’ she told them. ‘There were sort overlapping, ghostly images and stuff.’

‘Yes,’ the Doctor said tightly.

‘And one of them was Fitz here.’ She paused to flash him a huge wide‐eyed smile. ‘Opening the secret passage by the fireplace. The one you told me you used to get to my room earlier, Doctor.’ She raised an eyebrow as if to imply they had been in the habit of meeting clandestinely in her room.

‘Really.’ The Doctor didn’t sound convinced.

‘So it wasn’t that you told him about it, or anything,’ Anji said. ‘I just thought I’d ask.’

‘Come on Anji,’ Fitz said. ‘You can tell she’s trying to help.’

‘You must spend some time’, Anji said quietly, ‘explaining to us exactly what you have learned.’

Fitz stared at her, his mouth open as if he could not believe that she was not completely convinced by Trix’s explanation.

‘I learned something, actually.’ Trix put in before either Fitz or Anji could say anything more. ‘From Mr Sabbath. Though of course,’ she went on, ‘if you don’t think my story is credible…’

‘Not at all,’ the Doctor said quickly. ‘Fitz is quite right. What did you learn?’

‘He thinks you’ve screwed up,’ she said to the Doctor. ‘Big time.’

‘He’s a sore loser,’ Anji replied.

‘Oh he’s certainly that. But he seemed to think there was some problem with overlapping realities.’ She paused to look round the room. ‘Don’t see it myself, I have to say. But he had a plan to fix things. Or something.’

‘Which was?’

‘Sorry?’

‘His plan,’ the Doctor said slowly.

‘Oh, he didn’t say.’

The Doctor closed his eyes. He seemed to be muttering some incantation under his breath.

‘But he did happen to mention that he needed to get away from this world, if that helps. At all.’

‘Possibly.’ The Doctor’s eyes were open again, alive with inner light as he considered the possibilities. ‘We have to get after him.’

Trix stood up and stretched. ‘Yes, that’s what I thought. I just wish I could remember his exact words, or anything else he said that might help.’

‘Yes,’ the Doctor agreed enthusiastically, ‘it might.’

‘It was while we were discussing time travel. And your blue box.’

‘You discussed that, did you?’ the Doctor said quietly.

She shrugged. ‘It cropped up in the conversation. Of course,’ she went on, fixing him with her catlike eyes, ‘if I came with you, in your box thing, that would give me time to remember those exact words, wouldn’t it?’

‘No,’ the Doctor said.

‘Wouldn’t it?’ She seemed surprised.

‘I mean you’re not coming. No way.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Anji agreed. ‘Anyway the Doctor has to take me back to London first.’

‘Give me a lift home perhaps?’

‘No!’ the Doctor said again.

Trix stared at him for several seconds, unblinking. ‘Oh well,’ she said at last. ‘Just thought I’d ask.’ She smiled suddenly and brilliantly. ‘“A race against infinity.” That’s what he said. I remember now.’

‘Thank you, Trix,’ the Doctor said. ‘That may help us.’ He reached out and they shook hands.

‘My pleasure, Doctor.’

‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘And goodbye.’

‘Hint taken,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll go and pack my things. Goodbye, Fitz.’ She smiled at Fitz again, before turning to glare at Anji.

‘I think we can leave Nesbitt and Naryshkin to sort out some explanation of what happened here,’ the Doctor said when Trix was gone.

‘You really want to go back to London?’ Fitz asked Anji.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve just settled back into my life. Look, it’s been fun – if that’s the right word. And it’s been terrific to see you both again.’

‘And find I’m not dead,’ Fitz said.

‘Yes. But time moves on…’

‘It does indeed,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘And if it’s home you want to go, then it is to home we shall take you.’

Without discussing it, or even coming to any conscious decision, they were now walking back through the castle corridors. Towards the TARDIS.

‘Unless you’d rather hitch a lift back to Blighty with the troops,’ Fitz suggested.

‘No thank you. I had quite enough fun getting here on military transport. Not that I knew that was what it was,’ Anji said. ‘I’ll tell you about it some time. When I’m over the trauma.’

‘I thought you weren’t staying with us,’ he teased.

They were at the TARDIS. The Doctor was pulling the key from his waistcoat pocket while at the same time somehow managing to swing his arms round his own body to keep warm.

‘Over a drink,’ Anji said. ‘In a pub. On Earth.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

Fitz and Anji stood looking at each other as the Doctor unlocked the TARDIS door and swung it open. For once neither of them was being sarcastic, neither of them was pretending, neither of them felt uneasy with the other.

‘I meant it,’ Anji said. ‘It’s been fun. Despite everything.’

‘You trust him to get you home this time?’ Fitz asked, teasing again.

‘I trust you both,’ she said. ‘What was that?’

They had all heard it. A crunching sound from the other side of the TARDIS. Something heavy dropped or someone stamping on the ice‐frosted snow.

The Doctor frowned. ‘I’ll have a look. Probably nothing, but you never know.’

‘I’m not letting him out of my sight, not for a moment,’ Anji told Fitz, and they followed him.

They walked right round the TARDIS and back to the front again where the door was still standing ajar.

‘Nothing. Imagination,’ Fitz said.

‘Collective imagination?’

‘Or,’ the Doctor said brightly, ‘an echo of things past.’ He ushered them inside. ‘Or things to come.’

‘Is that a problem?’ Fitz wanted to know.

‘I hope not. Though I have to admit –’

‘Uh‐oh,’ Anji said. ‘Here we go.’

‘That we do have one very small job to do on the way back to present‐day London.’

‘I knew it.’

‘Much of a detour?’ Fitz asked.

‘Just back to 1938. The Euston Road.’

‘Er, why?’

‘Because, Fitz, you still have your journal.’

He produced it with a flourish from his pocket. ‘So I do.’

‘And I bought it in 1938 from an antiquarian bookshop on the Euston Road.’

‘But that’s impossible,’ Anji said.

The Doctor grinned. ‘Not if we get there a few days before I bought it and sell it to them, it isn’t.’

Anji cocked her head to one side. ‘Can we do that?’

Fitz laughed. ‘Oh I do so love it when we get to save the universe and turn a tidy profit.’

‘I think I’ll be out of pocket overall,’ the Doctor said as he busied himself about the console. ‘It cost me three shillings and I doubt we’ll get two for it.’

He sounded, Anji thought as she stifled a smile, a bit miffed.

Beginnings: 1938b

The elderly man sniffed and shuffled out from behind his table to push the door shut. He gathered his coat about his neck and returned to the task of counting the day’s meagre takings.

The Doctor, Anji and Fitz exchanged uncomfortable glances. The Doctor cleared his throat. ‘Would you like us to come back?’ he asked over‐politely.

The old man glanced up. ‘Didn’t see you choose anything,’ he said. His voice was like a crackly old record.

‘We’re not buying,’ Anji said.

‘Selling,’ the Doctor added.

‘Have we got a treat for you!’ Fitz told him. The man looked unimpressed. ‘Well, yes we have actually,’ Fitz explained.

The Doctor put the journal carefully, almost respectfully down on the table. The old man peered at it suspiciously for a moment. Then he took a pencil from behind his ear, and prodded the book with the blunt end.

‘What is this?’

‘It is the much sought‐after expedition journal of the ill‐fated Hanson‐Galloway excursion to Siberia of 1894,’ Fitz told him proudly.

The man grunted and returned his attention to the piles of coins he was counting. ‘One and six,’ he announced after a while. ‘Take it or leave it.’

‘One and six?!’ Fitz spluttered. ‘That’s an insult!’

Except that his last word was drowned by the Doctor’s loud: ‘Very generous offer thank you.’

The old man pushed a shilling and a sixpence across the table. The Doctor gathered them up and tipped a non‐existent hat in polite farewell.

‘Another job well done,’ he announced as they emerged on to the street.

‘And we have been,’ Fitz said sourly.

‘It’s not your money,’ Anji pointed out.

‘It’s my epic, though, isn’t it? My life’s work. My pride and joy.’

The TARDIS was standing at the next corner. For once it did not look at all out of place even though people were having to step round it on the pavement.

‘One and six, indeed.’

‘He did give us new coins,’ the Doctor said enthusiastically. ‘Look at that – all shining and sparkly.’

‘Oh hooray.’ Fitz kicked his feet. ‘Though I suppose they might be worth more than one and six in the future. Is there a market for 1938 coins, Doctor?’

The Doctor was staring down at the two shiny coins in his palm. ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he said. Then he frowned, opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked up.

His face seemed suddenly drained of colour. ‘Back in a tick,’ he murmured.

Then the Doctor turned and ran full pelt back towards the bookshop.

‘Counterfeit do you suppose?’ Fitz said. ‘Or just short‐changed? I was thinking I could invest that. Do they let two‐year olds open high interest building society accounts?’

They arrived back in the shop to find the Doctor desperately haggling with the old man, who seemed to have come to enthusiastic life. They were each holding opposite ends of the journal, as if engaged in a bizarre tug of war. The one and sixpence was lying on the table in front of the Doctor.

‘But you just paid me one and six for it,’ the Doctor insisted in an exasperated tone.

‘I won’t take less than three shillings,’ the old man replied, equally insistent.

‘I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Too late.’

‘Two shillings.’

‘Three, I tell you.’

‘Half a crown.’ The Doctor’s voice seemed to have risen an octave.

‘Two and nine pence, not a penny less.’

‘Done,’ Fitz said loudly. ‘In every sense of the word.’

The Doctor let go of the book and rummaged about in his trouser pockets. Eventually he pulled out a handful of coins. He picked out several and slammed them down next to the original sixpence and shilling. ‘There,’ he said in a tone that suggested he was leaving poisonous spider rather than money.

‘Quickly, back to the TARDIS,’ the Doctor whispered to Fitz and Anji as they reached the door. He was holding the journal tightly to his chest.

‘What’s the rush, what’s going on?’ Anji wanted to know.

‘Hurry!’ the Doctor hissed as they stepped back into the street. Then he was running again.

A moment later the door opened once more. ‘You there – young man!’ The bookseller was shouting after them, waving his fist. ‘Come back.’

Fitz and Anji were running after the Doctor now. People were turning to look.

‘Come back,’ the old man shouted again, starting after them at a stumbling run. ‘These coins have King George VI on them,’ he shrieked. ‘What’s your game?’

‘Why does he have a problem with George VI?’ Fitz asked as they tumbled back inside the TARDIS and the Doctor closed the doors.

‘And why did we need to get the book back suddenly?’

‘This book,’ the Doctor said breathlessly as he held it up, ‘needs to be returned to the bookshop I bought it from in time for me to buy it in the first place.’

‘In 1938.’

‘Yes. Otherwise, much of what has happened won’t have been able to happen and…’ He waved his arms about in a way that suggested they should draw their own conclusions.

‘Goodbye reality?’ Fitz hazarded.

‘In short, yes. We wouldn’t have been there to stop Curtis and Sabbath.’

‘So what’s the problem?’ Anji asked.

‘The problem is, that the coins the man gave us…’

‘The nice new shiny coins you promised I could have?’ Fitz put in.

‘Yes, those coins, had the head of King Edward VIII on them.’

‘So?’

‘And were dated 1938.’

Anji considered this. ‘So?’ she said again.

‘So Edward VIII abdicated,’ Fitz said slowly. ‘In 1937, wasn’t it?’

‘December 1936, very good Fitz.’

‘But that isn’t possible,’ Anji said. She was beginning to have a bad feeling about this. A Very Bad Feeling.

‘Nor is the fact that he’d never heard of George VI, assuming that George VI is now on the throne. Which means –’

‘That Edward VIII hasn’t abdicated.’

‘Not in this universe.’

‘Which means?’ Anji said. ‘Can we have subtitles for the hard‐of‐thinking here please?’

‘It means the universe was split by what happened in 1894. And we’re in the wrong one.’ The Doctor threw his hands up in despair. The journal sailed through the air and Fitz had to jump to catch it.

‘Curtis going back in time to 1894 and his death should have created a separate Quantum Universe,’ the Doctor said. ‘Rather than the events cascading backwards in our own. But it didn’t. It hasn’t. And now the different Quantum Universes are all messed up.’

‘Isn’t that what Sabbath wanted?’ Anji asked.

‘No. Not at all. He wanted them all to coalesce and form a single coherent time line. But they aren’t collapsed, they’re vying for reality.’

Fitz was struggling with this too. ‘You mean, like, they’re all overlapping and somehow the wrong one’s in charge right now?’

‘Something like that.’

‘So what do we do?’

The Doctor puffed out his cheeks and considered. He paced round the console twice before he answered Anji’s question. ‘We have to ensure that the right universe wins the battle for reality,’ he said at last. ‘And while we do that, we have to get this book…’ He stopped pacing and blinked, staring down at his empty hands before frantically patting at his pockets.

‘This book?’ Fitz waved it at him.

‘That book, yes.’ The Doctor ran both his hands through his long hair as he continued. ‘We have to ensure that it gets back to the right bookshop at the right time in the right reality or else everything – and I do mean everything – everything will unravel. Reality will fall apart, and all the universes will try to coexist together in the same part of the eleventh dimension. We have to do it soon.’

‘Er, is that “soon” as in “before you take me back to 2003 London”?’ Anji asked. She had a suspicion she already knew the answer.

‘Anji – I can’t.’

‘Right.’

‘Really, I can’t. What if it’s the wrong London? What if it’s a different reality where you never left, or died or never existed even? It might seem just the same, until one day you find it’s different in some small way. Which would mean the you that should be in the real universe isn’t in the right place and isn’t doing something that will ultimately hold the universe together.’

‘Right,’ she said again.

‘That could be more catastrophic than not returning the book. It could mean that the very web and structure of –’

‘Yes, thank you, I think I get the picture actually.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Me too.’

‘I’m not,’ Fitz said. Then he caught her expression. ‘I mean, about you sticking around. If that helps.’

‘Not much,’ she lied.

And he smiled, to show he knew she was lying.

‘So we have to put things right,’ Anji summed up. ‘How do we do that exactly?’

‘Well.’ The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘I haven’t a clue. Any suggestions?’

‘You mean from us?’ Fitz asked. ‘The Brains Trust here?’

‘Sabbath has a plan,’ Anji pointed out. ‘That MacMillan woman said so.’

‘Mmmm.’ The Doctor nodded. ‘Good point.’

‘And you’re much cleverer than Sabbath,’ Fitz said.

‘Another good point.’

‘So,’ Anji clapped her hands together, ‘we adapt his plan.’

‘Excellent!’ The Doctor beamed, his fists clenched triumphantly in front of him. He leaped at the console and started to work the controls, running from panel to panel like a man possessed.

Fitz and Anji grinned at each other, relieved yet anxious at the same time.

‘Sabbath has a plan,’ the Doctor said again. ‘Yes.’ He nodded excitedly. Then paused and rubbed his chin as his eyes misted over. ‘I wonder what it is.’ His forefinger beat a steady rhythm against his lips as he considered. ‘Can either of you add anything. Anything at all that may be useful.’

‘Count me out,’ Fitz said ‘Anji?’

Anji was on the other side of the console, staring down at it. ‘What’s this boat doing here?’ she asked.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to various people who have offered help, advice and information. I thank them all.

In particular, I’m grateful to Steve Cole and Jacqueline Rayner for their editorial help; to Lawrence Miles for commenting helpfully on the storyline; and to Mags Halliday, Lloyd Rose, Simon Messingham, David Bishop, Nick Walters and Paul Leonard for helping weave Time Zero into the ongoing narrative thread. Also Martin Day and Keith Topping for the use of Control.

Thanks also to Erwin Schrödinger, to whom I may or may not indebted.

About the Author

JUSTIN RICHARDS has no cat. He might (or might not) have had a cat when he was child, but if he did he never ever put it in a box. He does have two children, but that’s not the same thing at all. Believe me, if you have a cat and you’re thinking of trading up for kids, there is a big difference.

When he isn’t busy with the children, Justin acts as Creative Consultant to BBC Worldwide’s various Doctor Who book ranges as well as doing some writing of his own – novels, audio, television, non fiction and other ‘stuff’. Presumably this is done during the time he would have had to spend with the cat, so given that Justin never has enough time for writing, he’s thinking of not getting another one.

Doctor Who: Time Zero

Commissioning Editor: Ben Dunn
Creative Consultant: Justin Richards
Editor: Stephen Cole
Project Editor: Jacqueline Rayner

Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd
Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane
London W12 0TT

First published 2002
Copyright © Justin Richards 2002
The moral right of the author has been asserted

Original series broadcast on the BBC
Format © BBC 1963
Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC

ISBN 056353866 X
Cover imaging by Black‐Sheep, copyright © BBC 2002

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham
Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton

Table of Contents

Immobile: 1938a

53: Bodies in Motion

52: Sweet Sorrows

51: Still Point

50: Routine

49: Ghost

48: Walking with Beasts

47: Reunion

46: Time‐Lag

45: Pages Torn from Memory

44: Chronic Symptoms

43: In Siberia

42: Results

41: Encampment

40: Under the Hammer

39: Cold Blood

38: Audit

37: View through a Window

36: Cargo

35: The Great Attractor

34: Hunter and Hunted

33: Taking Flight

32: The Castle

31: Cold Comfort

30: Discovery

29: Involvement

28: Body of Evidence

27: Under Siege

26: Incursion

25: Duty Calls

24: Distractions

23: Sent Packing

22: Out Cold

21: Nothing to Declare

20: Off the Scale

19: Into the Darkness

18: Unreasonable Excuses

17: Taking Notes

16: Secrets

15: The Ice Cavern

14: Images

13: Decision

12: Realisation

11: Bargain

10: Fire and Ice

9: Other Worlds

8: Infinite Possibilities

7: Confrontation

6: Darkness and Death

5: The Dead Past