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The runner said, ‘I think the girl would be an ideal candidate myself. I think that’s the one you would find most stimulating. Yes I think the girl. But the choice is yours. Which one of these would you like me to squeeze the life out of?’

There was one missing, the Doctor realised. Where was the second-in-command – what was his name...? Fermindor, that was it. Where was Fermindor? Why was he not a candidate? If he was already dead would the runner not have used his death to demonstrate his ruthlessness? Did he imagine the omission would go unnoticed?

‘All this just to get me to speak?’ the Doctor said. ‘Or was there something else you wanted from me? I’m afraid my capacity for applause is somewhat limited in these circumstances. I could shout bravo from time to time. Would that do?’

The runner’s voice was once again close to his ear, little more than a whisper. ‘Tell me what you know,’ it murmured.

‘I’ve always found that what I don’t know is much more interesting,’ the Doctor said. ‘Isn’t that your experience?’

‘Tell me what you know or pick four survivors,’ the voice whispered.

The Doctor had never taken his eyes off the five tormented images. He was finding it increasingly disconcerting to be able to see them so clearly but to have no light at all by which to see any part of himself. ‘You can stop whispering, he said.

‘I’m totally disorientated, as you must know, so it’s an unnecessary elaboration of your threat-and-torture techniques – which, I’m sorry to have to tell you, do rather lack subtlety. If you’re serious about becoming a brutal psychopath I think you need to do some more studying.

Sadly there are no established courses that I’m aware of –

Fiend Six Six Six: Barking for Beginners; Psych O-One, that sort of thing – but I can recommend some classical sources, some unholy texts as it were. History is full of role models for you. It’s a crowded speciality. For an amateur like yourself it will be a difficult field in which to make your mark.’

The runner’s voice did not change in any way as it whispered, ‘No survivors, then.’ The bands contracted on each of the light columns and within them the victims’ faces contorted with agony. Even the unconscious Rinandor was reacting.

The Doctor struggled to think of some way to stop what was happening. ‘What is it you want to know?’ he asked, doing his best to keep the tone of the question calm and matter-of-fact.

The runner’s voice became normal and conversational, matching the Doctor’s tone. ‘It is one of the great disappointments faced by all rational beings, that they will never know everything there is to know.’

‘That’s not a disappointment,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s the consolation for being alive.’

‘There is no consolation for being alive,’ the voice said.

The torture of the prisoners was reaching a climax. It looked to the Doctor as though the images might be getting bigger. Was it his imagination or was it a deliberate ploy?

‘If you kill them,’ the Doctor asked, ‘what hold will you have over me?’

There was no response from the runner. The Doctor watched the images expand and blink out of existence as each of the prisoners reached the point of death. He was left finally with the utterly blank blackness.

Then the voice of the runner said, ‘You carry the past inside you. Every time someone dies there is less of it. Death is essential. If everyone lived for ever, the past and the present would be the same.’

If this madman has killed them all, the Doctor thought, he has his justification ready and prepared. A weapons technologist would always need reasons. At some level, everyone needed reasons for everything. This was a rationalising madman, but how rational was he, and how mad?

‘Our essence is change,’ the voice went on. ‘We are movement. Being out of balance is life. Perfect balance.

Stasis. That is death. Life yearns for perfection. Death is perfection. Do you understand?’

Quite mad, the Doctor realised. There was a good chance they