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The Doctor sat on one of the uncomfortable seats, watching the occasional landing and takeoff. Iaomnet kept looking at her watch. Five minutes, ten. It would take Zatopek a while to find a flight at this hour.

Roz had seen a momentary projection of one of his possible selves, but the alternative that had encountered Zatopek had stuck, surviving. He was learning more about what the Nexus could do all the time.

It was just possible that the Nexus could do anything.

Iaomnet seemed to come to a decision. She edged her coat open slightly, so he could see the needler. ‘It’s time for us to be leaving,’ she said.

Ah. ‘How do you know I’m the real me?’ he said. ‘For all you know, I could be anybody. Maybe you’ve just let the real Doctor escape.’

‘I’ve got what I want,’ said Iaomnet. ‘If you’d just like to step this way…’

She was far too professional, he noticed, to gesture with the gun or nod her head or do anything that might break her concentration, even for a moment. He sighed.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a plan you’d care to share with me?’ he asked hopefully. ‘I wouldn’t want this situation to be a complete loss.’

The next day.

Roz and Chris stood at the ticket machine. ‘Where should we go first?’ said Chris.

162

‘It doesn’t matter, so long as it’s away from here,’ she said.

‘We’ll worry about our search when we’re clear. Somewhere on the way to Earth.’

‘Not a liner,’ said Chris. He gave her a worried look.

‘I’m fine,’ she insisted, ‘just a bit sore.’ The whole left side of her chest felt as though it was bruised, but the hotel’s autodoc claimed she was fine. She nodded at the ticket machine.

‘Something slow. Definitely nothing Imperial. Iaomnet will have reported in by now.’

She had contacted Almayer’s, guessed the Doctor’s password on the third try, and arranged to have the TARDIS shipped somewhere safe. Shame they couldn’t fly it themselves, but there you are.

Chris’s finger hovered over the selections until he found something that met all the criteria. ‘There’s a Hith transport leaving in half an hour,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t say if they’re accepting human passengers.’

‘They will once we hit them with a few credits. We’ll have to go and talk to them.’

Roz always carried her old Adjudicator ID with her. Chris had thought it was just a memento, but she’d used it to bully a spotty guard into showing them the last day’s worth of visual records of the spaceport.

A few pattern searches through the data, and they’d found the Doctor once – and then again. The copy Doctor, looking furious, searching the spaceport before boarding a flight. Iaomnet and her prisoner had obviously got away from him.

‘Are you sure we’re following the right one?’ said Chris, following her as she headed in the direction of the Hith Spacelines desk. ‘I mean, is the wrong one the right one to follow?’

‘The real Doctor can take care of himself,’ said Roz. ‘He’ll probably just get Iaomnet to take him to her leader, or something.’

163

Part Two

Cassandra

164

1

Janus

3 June 2982

Isotank technology had been pretty much the same for centuries.

A large container of water, maintained at a steady thirty-five degrees Celsius. A form-fitting suit which flared out to encompass the nose and mouth with a comfortable, soundproofed breathing apparatus. In a well-designed tank you couldn’t even hear your own pulse.

Genevieve’s psychoanalyst had recommended regular dips in the tank for their relaxing effect on the brain. The relaxation usually lasted about fifteen minutes before she got bored enough to switch on the biode in her left eye, the text flowing across her field of vision against the soft reddish-black background.

She had been in the tank for thirty minutes, moving through a maze of security protocols, selecting her route with a glance. If her shrink noticed the REM on his monitors, he probably thought she’d just fallen asleep. If security noticed her poking around, she wouldn’t receive more than a formal caution. The material she was searching through