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somewhere.’

‘So you don’t exist in our world?’ said Simon.

‘Nor you in mine,’ said the Doctor. ‘No offence, of course, the timestreams are big enough for everyone. Think of me as a set of hypothetical situations.’

149

‘If you insist,’ said Simon.

‘One of you stays,’ said Genevieve, ‘one of you goes.’

‘Hundreds if not thousands of each,’ said the Doctor. ‘Some of me are killed in a prison cell by the Earth Reptiles and left to rot

– things weren’t so friendly then. Some of me have gone on to destroy whole worlds – always in a good cause, of course – and others don’t face anything more traumatic than a bad aphid infestation. Some of me aren’t me at all; at least one of me is a ruthless dictator with my picture up everywhere. In a sense we’re all just third-generation copies of the original.’

‘The original Doctor?’ said Simon. He was starting to get the feeling he got when he cram-viewed too many study sims in a row, carried away on a wave of input.

‘Time, as you say, has a way of changing our plans,’ the Doctor was saying. ‘Choosing the future Time wanted would have meant opening up the past. A real Pandora’s Box, crammed to the hinges with dark and fantastic secrets. I was curious, of course. But in time, as the knowledge filtered through, I would be changed. Changed in ways I couldn’t predict. I did know one thing.’ His ancient eyes were serious. ‘Whatever I would have become, I would have called it evil.’

There was a few moments’ silence. Simon asked, ‘You said you’d been here for a thousand years.’

‘Next Thursday,’ beamed the Doctor.

‘How? You can’t be human.’

‘After a thousand years of looking after this planet, I’d say I’m as human as I’m going to get. You could say I’ve gone native.’

A shaft of late-afternoon light shone through the window for a moment, the last before the sun disappeared behind the distant city. Simon had a strange urge to go to the window and see if the city was still there, if they’d been drawn inexplicably into the Doctor’s fantasy world like children into fairyland.

For a moment he could have sworn he saw an alien, an honest-to-God BEM with green skin and five arms and five legs, its ceiling-high anemone shape caught in the beam of sunlight. He glanced at Genevieve. She had seen it too – she was staring at the suddenly empty spot in the lounge, staring out of the window.

From the garden came the sound of children laughing.

150

It was dark by the time they finished dinner. The Doctor had done all the cooking himself, with the assistance of the kitchen machines. And probably with help from more of his invisible friends: organic vegetables, herbs from the garden, and a home-made wine that tasted like punch. In the head.

Simon still felt a bit foggy, the wine’s aftertaste like fuzz in his mouth. The Doctor had hovered upstairs and shown them the guest bedrooms, fresh sheets on the beds, towels neatly folded on the end. Simon’s room came equipped with a couple of cats, who were obligingly warming up the antique brass bed, purring.

Simon sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the fat, sleek animals. The room was oddly shaped, right at the very top of the house, tucked away under the sloping roof.

There was a triangular mirror hung on the wall. Simon looked at himself in it, wondering what Genevieve saw. He kept his sandy hair cut short. He had the usual tan and the usual slight fold to the eyelids. The fact that he looked so ordinary was a definite plus for a terrorist. Worked for Mr Jamey.

A window faced on to the garden, pitch-black. Simon wondered what was out there. The lights of the overcity, hidden by the Reserve’s thick forests? Or Doctor Smith’s world, populated by peace-loving humans and their friendly reptile friends? If he walked out of the door and headed away from the house, what would he see?

Nothing – he didn’t have a torch. He hadn’t meant to stay until dark. He certainly hadn’t meant to spend the night.

He reached out a hand and fingered the