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‘No offence, but we’re not really expecting people to come from far and wide. You’ll be entertaining the regulars. If you’d rather wait until next week, that’s fine.’

‘He’ll sing a song tonight. Won’t you, Fitz?’

Fitz thought about it for a couple of seconds, then broke into a goofy smile.

‘Yeah.’

‘You know that the Vortex was irreparably damaged at the moment of Gallifrey’s destruction. It was a miracle we saw what we did.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘The explosion must have created an event horizon in relative time. It prevents any information escaping, and anyone from travelling back to prevent it blowing up, or anyone from Gallifrey’s past escaping into the present.’

‘So it’s impossible to see whatever was making those “footsteps”. Convenient for you that the evidence that exonerates you is tucked away in those precise moments.’

‘I have no idea whether it exonerates me or not. I’m here, Marnal. Something happened between me sitting in the Edifice waiting to die and me. . .

well, the next thing was me waking up on Earth in the nineteenth century.

The beginning of the hundred years I was stuck on Earth. I suppose.’

‘You never questioned who you were?’

101

‘I did very little else for a hundred years. Something had happened, I knew that.’

‘You knew you were implicated in a terrible crime.’

‘I knew that whatever had happened, trying to remember made me feel uneasy just thinking about it.’

‘Guilt.’

‘No. . . although there were times when I mistook the feeling for that.’

‘You don’t feel guilt now you’ve seen what you did to your own people?’

The Doctor thought about it for a moment. ‘I regret any deaths, not just those of my own people.’

‘The life of a human is worth as much as the life of a Time Lord?’ Marnal asked.

The Doctor glanced over to Rachel. ‘Yes,’ he told them. ‘Why? Do your laws of time say something different?’

‘If either a human or a Time Lord had to die, you wouldn’t mind which one?’

‘What do you mean “had to die”? I would try to prevent both of them from dying.’

‘If you could only save one?’

The Doctor was scowling. ‘This is stupid. It doesn’t even qualify as a hypo-thetical situation.’

‘You would betray a member of your own race?’

‘If there was no alternative, if the greater good would be better served, yes.

Anyway, what’s wrong with humans?’

The Doctor kept a careful eye on Rachel. If he could get her onside, he would be able to get out of here. Marnal obviously had contempt for human beings. If the Doctor could goad him into saying that out loud, Rachel would see Marnal in his true colours.

‘Earth’s your favourite planet?’ Marnal asked.

The Doctor deflated at the change of subject. ‘I have a soft spot for it, yes.

From what I gather, you must have too.’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘You’ve spent over a hundred years here. You seem to have bought property.

Oh, and made at least one friend.’ The Doctor smiled at Rachel. ‘I did the same once. Without, of course, your glittering literary career. I’m quite fond of human beings.’

‘Do you prefer humans to your own kind?’

‘If you’re a typical Time Lord, then perhaps the universe is better off without us.’

Marnal stepped back, clutching his lapels, apparently satisfied with what he’d heard.

102

‘Rather than trying to score debating points,’ the Doctor suggested, ‘why don’t we work together to find out what happened? We both want the same thing.’

Marnal shook his head. ‘Believe me, you don’t want what I want, Doctor.

One last debating point. It’s interesting, given what you’ve just said, that Fitz managed to survive when every single Time Lord was killed, isn’t it?’

He indicated to Rachel that he wanted her to help him take the glass bottle back upstairs.

‘I’ll leave you to think about that,’ he said.

The Doctor stayed quiet. He didn’t want to keep reminding Marnal about his companions. No doubt, Fitz and Trix would be trying to find him. Or perhaps they’d found him already, and were waiting for the best moment to come to his rescue.

Rachel made Marnal a coffee. His ready meal was in the oven, which took forever to heat up.