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He waited for Bernice on the balcony, knowing that she would seek him out. He faced the sea, chin propped on the back of his hands which rested on the handle of his umbrella. The case was on the table; beside it was the black rose in a small crystal vase with a fluted neck – he had expected this confrontation and planned for it. He felt her walk on to the balcony behind him and sit down. Her calm breathing was like an accusation.

'I assume,' he said, without looking at her, 'that we're finished with the furious-hurling-of-obscenities stage and are into the eye-of-the-storm-icy-calm-demanding-answers stage.'

'Yes, we are,' he heard her say, 'although a beating-the-truth-out-of-the-doctor-with-a-handy-blunt-instrument stage could be arranged very easily.'

Good, he thought, she's still rational, she still has some trust left. He made himself turn in his seat and look at her; he owed her that much. Her eyes were suspicious, hurt even, but there was an ounce of curiosity in them. She still has some trust left, despite everything.

'Why?' she asked.

The Doctor felt a sudden surge of pride. Be vague, let your conversational opponent frame the question for you, you never know, it might be the question that you would have asked if you'd known to ask it. 'Why is she here,' he said, 'or why are we here and are they connected?'

'Start with the first.'

The Doctor glanced at the black rose; it was still in full bloom. 'I found her,' he said, 'on a British slaver drifting off the coast of Sierra Leone in the spring of 1754. Everybody else was dead, including the ten-year-old cabin boy and the ship's cat. She was feral by that stage and if she hadn't been starving to death I never would have got near her. As it was I had to shoot her with 60cc of teterodoxine just to bring her down. I got her on board the TARDIS and hosed the blood off. Then I came here and dropped her off at a small cove down the coast.'

'Just like that?'

'An old friend of mine agreed to look after her.'

'And where was I when all this was going on?'

'Asleep in your room,' said the Doctor. 'It was just before we met Chris and Roz.'

Benny didn't ask him whether he'd made side trips without telling her before – he knew she knew he did. 'Ace said that Ship had changed her.'

He shuddered despite himself. 'Ship tried to make her part of itself, just as it tried to do to me.

It was a – violation. Ship put knowledge into her head and tried to use her as a slave. No, worse than a slave, an appliance, a peripheral.'

'Is Ship still trying to use her?' asked Bernice. 'Is Kadiatu all that's left of Ship?'

'Oh no,' said the Doctor. 'Ship is deader than a dormouse and good riddance.'

'Oh good.'

'It's much worse than that.'

'Oh.'

'She's become very dangerous.'

Bernice laughed. 'I don't remember her ever being exactly what you'd call safe.'

'It's what's in her head that makes her dangerous,' he said. 'She's already designed one time machine just as a school science project. With the knowledge the Ship downloaded into her brain she's probably the most competent temporal engineer this side of Gallifrey.'

'Should we be talking about this sort of thing' – Bernice made a vague motion with her hands, indicating the rest of the sphere – 'out in the open. I got the strong impression that you didn't want God to know about certain things.'

The Doctor glanced at the black rose; it was still in bloom. 'We're safe for the moment,' he said. 'It'll take God at least five minutes to penetrate my jamming signal, after that we'll have to be careful.'

'Will we be able to talk about this again?'

'Not until we're back in the TARDIS.'

'Which is currently –?'

'In a defensive picosecond forward displacement.'

'You don't trust God then?'

'Let's just say I'd rather not put temptation in its way.'

'What an interesting theological concept. We must discuss it some time,' said Bernice. 'But not right now. How dangerous is Kadiatu?'

'Very, very dangerous.'

'To what?'

'I'm trying to think