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The Doctor sat all alone with two unfinished plates of food. All alone, unless of course, God was eavesdropping through the villa's comm system.

If she ever works it out, he thought, I'm going to be an ex-Time Lord.

Mind you, if I'm lucky, Kadiatu will kill me first.

'AgRaven. Wake up!'

AgRaven fell out of bed. The last time kiKhali had used that tone of voice had been during the war. It took her a moment to realize that she was safely in her cabin on board the !C-Mel. The fluid bed was rippling with the speed of her departure, disturbing the other occupants so that they rolled over. Gingerly she lifted the covers and checked: a man and a woman, neither of whom she knew. What in blazes had she been doing last night?

'AgRaven,' said kiKhali's voice, 'are you awake yet?'

'What is it?' she asked peevishly. 'I've got company.'

'I know,' said the drone, 'I was there.'

'How was I?'

'Same as usual.'

When am I going to learn? she asked herself. Quality not quantity.

'If you can bear to tear yourself away for a minute,' said kiKhali, 'I've got something to tell you – IDIG business. Meet me in Gossipmongers, it's dockside on the thirty-third level.'

'I know where it is,' said agRaven. Gossipmongers had the best privacy screening in Starport Facility. If kiKhali wanted to meet her there then it must be something important. 'I'm on my way,' she said, 'and make sure something stimulating is waiting for me' – agRaven staggered to her feet – 'and a measure of purge while you're at it.'

!C-Mel wanted to know where she was going. 'Just out for a wander,' she told the ship.

'Thought I'd walk off my hangover.'

'What shall I tell your guests?'

'Make something up,' said agRaven. She reached the entrance to the main umbilical. 'I don't care what it is as long as it's plausible.'

'You wouldn't be keeping secrets from little ol' me.' !C-Mel was making its voice particularly winsome.

'Chance would be a fine thing,' said agRaven, and legged it off the ship.

KiKhali was humming with excitement when agRaven joined it in Gossipmongers. 'Can you still do that trick with the bugs?' she asked it as she sat down. KiKhali had picked up a particularly sneaky ECM package from the Insects when they were mopping up at the end of the war. There was a fifty/fifty chance that !C-Mel couldn't shield its bugs from it.

'You're clean,' said kiKhali. 'I had a visit from one of our barbarian friends – the one that eats raw meat.'

'You dragged me out of a warm bed for that?'

'She was surprisingly polite, and she wanted to know about Omicron 378.'

'Oh.'

'And information on the crew of the S-Lioness.'

'Vi!Cari's ship,' said agRaven. 'That makes sense at least. Why all the secrecy?'

'She seems to think that the ship that blew away Omicron 378 is still alive,' said kiKhali. 'If that's true, and the R-Vene wasn't disassembled, then God is going to be well and truly pissed off with XR(N)IG.'

'Oh shit,' said agRaven. 'You don't think it's docked here now?'

'How would we know?' said kiKhali. 'And I found out something else as well. Vi!Cari was actually on board the R-Vene at Omicron 378. It was actually there when the place got wasted.'

'Can a machine recognize another machine even if it was in disguise?' asked agRaven. 'Could you?'

'Not me,' admitted kiKhali, 'but I'm willing to bet my right dorsal impeller that vi!Cari could have. Did you know we were on war alert for two hours yesterday?'

AgRaven looked sheepish. 'I think I must have slept through it.'

'Time Lords always bugger up the ships' predictive assessments because they can step out of the normal chain of causal events. What really got the wind up the VASs was that someone discovered another transtemporal being on the sphere.'

'Another Time Lord?'

'Not according to the Doctor; human, he says, the same species as the other barbarians but souped up. But get this – who do you think is nurse-maiding this renegade?'

'AM!xitsa,' said agRaven. 'Has to be.'

KiKhali's face ikon flashed a big happy grin.