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She stuffed some of the food into her mouth, half-noticing that it tasted like apricots. ‘Sixteen. Not the kind of anniversary you normally celebrate. Ten, yeah. Fifteen, maybe. But sixteen...?’

The man stared at her as if she’d just admitted to being a baby-eating devil-worshipper.

‘It’s usual enough in these parts,’ he said pointedly.

She decided not to argue. These people just needed a reason to celebrate. Any reason, whether they agreed with the principle behind it or not. It’d been one of those centuries.

Like that little fat-faced man, Isaac someone-or-other, who’d come to her tent just to ask if there was a future at all. End-of-the-century blues. There’s always someone who thinks the world’s going to end.

Roz continued along the street until she came to the church, and squatted on the steps, concentrating on the building opposite. One of a dozen stone-faced pseudo-mansions on Paris Street, with narrow windows and whitewashed walls, fronted by a porch made up of unconvincing classical archways. She’d come here a lot, the past few days, watching the house from the church steps, concentrating on the routine of the man who lived there and trying to look like she was just a poor dumb foreigner basking in the glory of this fine monument to the Protestant faith. Just another stake-out, she’d tell herself.

In her pouch, the cold thing pushed against her leg expectantly. She rested her hand on the lump.

The house was owned by a man called Samuel Lincoln, who’d visited her tent a fortnight ago. She’d told him he’d have a fine family, offspring that’d go far in the world of politics, and he hadn’t believed a word of it. Well, that was his mistake, seeing as it was probably her one accurate prediction.

Lincoln. She’d recognized the name almost immediately. And she’d known. She’d just known, that was all. Call it time-traveller’s instinct, call it whatever.

Samuel would turn out to be the father of the legendary Abraham, the President who’d blah blah blah something about Civil War blah blah blah fathers of democracy blah blah blah wore a big hat and got shot...

Roz had been born nearly a millennium after the fall of the United States, so her knowledge of Great American Heroes was based entirely on the historical simcord dramas that the Empire would show whenever they wanted to make a point about the proud heritage of the human race. But her certainty that Samuel was one of the President’s ancestors wasn’t based on her knowledge of history. Yeah, call it time-traveller’s instinct. That, and the fact that the TARDIS crew always seemed to end up around important people and events, for some reason even the Doctor didn’t seem to understand properly. There must’ve been hundreds of Lincolns, even in a half-grown nation like this, but she would have bet her sister’s fortune that she’d ended up in the same town as the most significant one.

Besides, Lincoln senior had Abraham’s nose. A dead give-away.

And the moment she’d met him in that tent, and he’d chuckled at her predictions, she’d known. She’d started to figure out the one way to get out of this God-forsaken millennium. She had a plan. She had an escape route. And Samuel Lincoln was the key.

‘ Io Ordo Io Ordo Ordo. ’

Daniel Tremayne had been in Catcher’s cellar before, but back then it had just been a louse-ridden lumber-room, made up of stale air and splinters. Now it was different. He was sure it was bigger, for one thing. The walls looked like they’d been covered with marble, and there was some kind of platform in the middle of the baby-arse-smooth floor, muddy light glinting off the crystals that had been pushed into its surface. Daniel briefly wondered how much the thing was worth.

‘ Ordo Ordo Io Ordo Io Io... ’

He didn’t recognize the words the men were chanting.

Chanting, or whispering, or something between the two. There were half a dozen of them, standing ten, twenty feet away; their clothes were ordinary, shirts and jackets and shoes and pants, but their heads were hidden under crude sackcloth hoods, crumpled