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That had been the other reason for the fire, of course. I.M. Foreman had wanted enough light in the clearing for the Doctor to cast a good shadow, so she could see for herself what kind of state it was in. She wasn’t sure whether the Doctor had seen her staring, but if he had then he hadn’t said anything.

As it happened, he did have a shadow. But it looked sick, somehow. Too vague. Too thin. Every now and then, the shadow had copied the Doctor’s movements half a second too late, as if it hadn’t been strong enough or quick enough to keep up with him.

I.M. Foreman nodded at the ground, where the shadow was currently reclining across a pile of rusty leaves. ‘You got it back, then.’

The Doctor glanced down, with a look of obvious distaste. I.M. Foreman was sure she saw the shadow cringe when he stared at it. ‘Yes. It came back just after I saw Sam for the last time. At the end of the story. I’ll come to that, though.’

‘And you don’t even know why you lost it in the first place?’

‘We’re getting ahead of ourselves,’ the Doctor pointed out.

I.M. Foreman stepped forward, over the smoking remains of the fire, then held out her hands to help the Doctor to his feet. He looked up at her, but he didn’t move.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and find something to eat.’

The Doctor hesitated, then took her hands. The deer vanished back into the depths of the woodland as the two of them headed out of the clearing.

* * *

They went back the way they’d come, towards the valley between the two great green hills. The woods looked entirely different in this light. I.M. Foreman watched the webs of shadow that draped themselves across the ground, the way the branches seemed to tangle themselves around the Doctor’s own silhouette, as if the woods had spotted how weak it was and decided to pounce on it as it passed by.

‘My turn to talk,’ said I.M. Foreman. ‘Let’s go over what happened on Dust. Back in the good old days.’

The Doctor didn’t look convinced. ‘I haven’t finished my story yet,’ he said. ‘We’ll get confused.’

‘You mean you can’t keep two stories in your head at once? Mmm. No wonder you look so confused all the time. Life must be much too complicated for you.’

The Doctor mulled this over for a while.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s forget about Earth for the time being. Forget about Sam. Forget about Fitz. New page, new chapter.’

‘Where shall we start?’ asked I.M. Foreman.

* * *

WHAT HAPPENED ON DUST

(PART ONE)

Of course, nobody could remember whether ‘Dust’ was the name the original settlers had given to the place, or whether it was just a nickname that had arrived on the planet one day and never found the energy to get away again. That was how most things on Dust had ended up there, so why should the name be any different?

Somewhere in the universe – maybe in a computer system that nobody used any more, or maybe in one of the archives that had been buried and built over once the empire had rolled over and died – there was probably a file that could tell you exactly when Dust had been found, who’d been the first to stick Earth’s flag in the dirt, and why the empire had decided to settle the planet to begin with. But the people on Dust had even less time for history than the rest of the universe. History had been dragged down into the dust, just like all the dead things, Just like all the animal bones, Just like all the people and all the towns that hadn’t been thick‐skinned enough to go on living.

Ibis was what they called the Dead Frontier. This was the place where the leftovers of the empire had been left out in the sun to rot. The human species had come all this way, as far as the edge of its own galaxy, before it had realised that it no longer had any reason to go anywhere.

Most of Dust was desert, but even the word ‘desert’ gave the place a kind of dignity it didn’t deserve. No rolling dunes on Dust, no brightly coloured lizards to bask in the sun, no hills or curves or contours in the sand. There were whole valleys of cacti that breathed poison out into the boiling air, but nothing moved out in the wastes