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The second boy took the first by the arm and drew him away. 'Don't worry,' he said to his friend, 'Billy'll sort them slots out for us.'

The entrance to the health centre was a pair of sliding doors made from high-impact glass. The outline of a flag had been laboriously etched into the surface and then tinted with polychromatic polymers.

'That's a dead old flag,' muttered Benny, 'even for this century.'

The gangbanger on the doors had the same flag spray-painted on the chest of his flak jacket. His blond hair was razored into a crew cut and his blue eyes were lazy with drugs. As front man to the clubhouse he probably wasn't geared up too tight but the Dixies had a reputation for random violence.

'What do you want, slots?'

Benny looked the boy up and down. 'One moment,' she told him and turned to Zamina. 'What's a slot?'

'You know, a girl.'

'Not very respectful is it?'

'I guess not,' said Zamina.

Benny turned back to the gangbanger, drew her gun and jammed it under his chin. 'Now,' she said, 'I want to talk to Billy.'

Lunarversity

The opera had frozen solid and the lead singer was vomiting data into the room. It spewed out of his mouth in coils of damp blue green. As the data streamed out the unit tried to rectify the singer's image, causing his head to balloon outwards to twice normal size. The surface of the construct glistened with fractals as the data took up a convoluted three-dimensional shape. Alphanumerics in white neon formed stage left obliterating part of the chorus with the words 'STONE MOUNTAIN, PP-HIST ANALYSIS 234 - SHIRL'.

The unit finally gave up trying to sustain both images and the opera blinked out. The data construct hung alone in the notional centre of the image and began to rotate slowly. It reminded the Doctor unpleasantly of the fungus on Heaven. It was a phase portrait, he could see that now. A non-linear system turned ninety degrees and mapped out in three dimensions. There were chunks bitten out of its coils, wounds ragged with random pixels caused by an insufficiency of data.

Doctor Livingstone, I presume, thought the Doctor.

'Very clever,' he said out loud.

'I suppose breakfast in bed is out of the question,' said Kadiatu from behind him. Her voice was muffled by the eiderdown.

'And the opera?'

'Il Dottere Va in Viaggio, by Marconi Paletti,' said Kadiatu. 'There's a MIG coffee-maker at the end of the bed.'

The Doctor reached through the projection field and switched on the Russian coffee-maker. He heard Kadiatu sit up and stretch her arms. 'What's the straight bit in the middle?'

'That's the nineteen-seventies which is what I'd call a data-rich environment. It's straight because there's a continuous linear progression for five years. You were stuck, weren't you?'

'Exiled.'

The MIG made a series of explosive gurgles.

The Doctor could hear her extensions falling one by one over her shoulder as she twisted her neck. There was a faint musk made of human pheremones and perspiration as warm air escaped from under the covers. 'You were looking for me?'

'I was tracking your movements through history. I wasn't expecting to run into you on Kings Cross station.'

'Something of a coincidence.'

'Isn't it just.'

'Could you turn that off,' said the Doctor. 'I've just seen somewhere I haven't been yet.'

'Screen off,' said Kadiatu and the construct vanished. 'Minscreen; newscan; lookfor; badnews.'

The Doctor turned to face her. 'You're expecting bad news?'

'You do have a reputation,' said Kadiatu. 'What are you here for this time?'

'Does there have to be a reason?'

'Trouble follows you around.'

'I was with King Tenkamenin at Kumbi Selah, he offered me kola nuts and a place to sleep in the Royal Compound. We stayed up all night speaking of philosophy and the old gods. When I left the sun was breaking over the hills and the society women ran the initiates down to the summer stream to wash.'

He caught Kadiatu's black eyes and held them. 'Nobody died that day.'

'They died yesterday,'