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In the darkness a new column materialised. It was the same as the others had been but this time it contained the figure of the Doctor himself. ‘The brain goes last,’ the voice said. ‘You will be able to see yourself die.’

‘I take back what I said earlier,’ the Doctor said, waggling his fingers and watching the image carefully. ‘You may have a natural aptitude for unpleasantness.’ There seemed to be a very slight delay between the movement of his hand and the response of the image. It was hard to tell for certain because the range of possible movements was so limited.

‘Unpleasantness?’ the voice sounded genuinely offended.

‘You underestimate me, Thedoctor. Unpleasantness does not begin to describe what is about to happen to you.’

‘I’m prepared to take your word for it, the Doctor said, moving his fingers, first one hand and then the other. He was almost sure there was a delay. He tried closing and opening one eye and then the other. The delay was barely perceptible but it was there. What sort of technology was it that could not deliver an instantaneous holographic image? Unless it was a virtual image, constructed and manipulated separately and slaved into whatever he was contained by. Perhaps that was what he was being shown all along, he thought hopefully.

Perhaps the pictures of the others were just images of pain, manipulated and exaggerated for his benefit. ‘Tell me what it is you want me to say and I’ll say it.’

‘That’s the problem with interrogation,’ the voice of the runner said. ‘How can you trust what you are told when eventually all you are told is what you want to hear?’

‘Well it helps if you ask questions,’ the Doctor said. ‘“Tell me what you know” doesn’t really offer much in the way of guidance to your victims. I am at a loss to understand why you killed those people if all you want is a debate.’ It seemed to the Doctor that the runner was wasting time for some obscure reason of his own. The delay between his movement and that of the image might have become very slightly more marked too. He had been watching his virtual lips as he spoke. They were definitely out of synch with what he could feel of his mouth. It was as though someone was getting overconfident and careless, or else they were trying to make sure he had noticed that there was a delay.

The runner’s voice was now replaced by the Doctor’s.

‘Don’t you find it fascinating,’ the voice said, ‘that even the refusal to say anything must say something? If communication is possible then we may tell each other lies but we can’t tell each other nothing.’

‘Should I be flattered that you paid such close attention to all my conversations?’ the Doctor asked.

‘I wouldn’t be,’ Fermindor said from somewhere between him and the image of him. ‘That crapwit is crazy.’

There was a sudden flash of white in the Doctor’s eyes and he thought he saw the glowing column of the holographic image gather itself into a whirling ball, which dissipated into a cloud of bursting pinpoint fragments of blazing light.

The image of the Doctor stood blinking in the brightness before it, too, faded, leaving the Doctor standing blinking in the brightness.

He looked round. He was in a tall, tubular chamber made out of an opaque, waxy-looking material which was a deep yellow flecked with tiny particles of sparkling crystal. The chamber was perhaps three metres in diameter and four-and-a-half metres high. Access appeared to be a circular hole in the floor, which looked barely large enough to have allowed the stocky Fermindor to squeeze through it.

‘Have you seen any of the others?’ the Doctor asked.

Fermindor shook his head. He looked quite unscathed and remarkably rested and healthy. ‘Listen, I only fell across you by accident,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want to rush you, but I think we should get out of here before it realises what I did.’

‘It?’

‘I think this whole place might be alive.’

The Doctor touched the wall. A hint of static prickled vaguely across his hand. ‘What