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stuck in her throat, just as it always did. It reminded her of her own nation, and of the fact that her unusual talent was the only reason the French government put up with her. Too useful to be an exile, she thought, too useful for Madame Guillotine. ‘I came to America in order to discover more. My, ah, friends have been watching events here for some time ‘

That had been a slip. Fortunately, Cwej didn’t ask who her

‘friends’ were. He seemed distracted, staring at a cracked wall of grey stone to the right. In those few seconds, his neck was exposed to Duquesne, and she focused on a large pink vein that ran from his jaw to his collar. It almost seemed to pop out at her. An obvious target. One little cut...

She struggled to hold back her Directory training, trying not to remember lessons taught in a lead-lined room.

‘Christopher...?’ she made herself say.

‘Mmm?’ He turned back to her, flashing a brief smile. ‘Oh, sorry. I just thought I saw that wall blinking at me.’

The stone heads seemed to be frowning. What’s the matter, they were saying, can’t you hold your information?

Interface lurched drunkenly through the teleplasm, European history rolling across its memory. 1789. The Citizens of Paris began slaughtering the aristocracy, and Interface was there in the crowd as Louis XVI’s head fell from his shoulders. Then the mob turned in on itself, and Interface watched the revolutionaries fighting like dogs in a pit.

1794. The original Revolution coughed up its guts and died.

France was now being run by a group called the Directory –

And suddenly, Interface was in a room that stank of mahogany, among the heads of that Directory. They were looking through the records that Citizen Robespierre had kept, reports that the old revolutionaries had tried to incorporate in Robespierre’s ‘rationalist religion’. The men gasped, horrified, at the descriptions of the weird and other-worldly things that had walked the Earth, evidence from every known continent, from as far away as Terra Australis. Interface watched from a corner, silently, again wondering what Time Lord could possibly have been present.

This is terrible, the men were saying. Such things should not exist. The people must never know. They would panic, we would lose control... and in a matter of hours, it was agreed.

They would seek out those things that went against reason, the monsters and the caillou and the visitors from beyond the aether. They would seek to control them, and if they couldn’t control them, they would exterminate them. Another organization was spawned, a secret society, under the Directory’s control. Its hidden underbelly. Its Shadow.

With a sudden teleplasmic shock, Interface was back where it had started, watching Cwej and Duquesne walk through the cloisters, talking genially.

‘So you’ve been doing this a while?’ Cwej asked. ‘Just going from country to country, checking for any of these caillou people?’

Duquesne nodded, hesitantly. ‘Perhaps it will give me some idea of my own abilities,’ she said.

No, Interface wanted to say. She’s lying, Cwej. She’s not here for her own benefit. Ask her who she’s working for.

Cwej thought for a moment. ‘So, am I one of these caillou?’

A half-smile crossed Duquesne’s face. ‘Yes, Christopher.

Yes, I suppose you are.’

And if they couldn’t control them, they would exterminate them. Urgently, Interface began twisting the fabric of the TARDIS, creating a new mouth amongst the ruined cloisters...

Then the big shock came. A pulse, like a surge of electrical energy, coursing through the whole of the ship and sending a shiver through every circuit. At first, Interface thought it was just another side-effect of the ‘alien interference’, but once the shock was over, it realized that the pulse had come directly from the telepathic circuits of the TARDIS.

The ship had done this itself. Intentionally.

Interface saw Cwej scratch the back of his neck. ‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘I keep getting this memory. Something about frisbees. Something about bank robbers.’

Duquesne looked at him in alarm. ‘Frisbees?