[Adrics Repost]: Nyssa's End - Author's Note

[Graham Woodland]

I was originally going to follow Helen's example, and refrain from
posting this monster, which is archived at my website both in
browsable and in ZIP archive formats.

However, for anyone who can't or prefers not to read it that way, I've
decided to repost after all. What the hell -- it's not every day one
makes the final shortlist for a ten-year 'best of' category; and
besides, of all the things I've finished, _Nyssa's End_ is still easily
the one I'm proudest of; and the group is pretty quietish at the
moment; and it *has* been a year since the last repost; and, oh, enough
excuses already!

Many thanks to everyone who nominated/voted to put the Tome of Terminus
up for this honour; and indeed to all my other readers over the years,
both the silent and the feedbackful. Special thanks are due to Jeri
Massi for supplying several components of the initial inspiration; and
to BK Willis and Clive May, for many reasons what they wot of.

Anyone wishing to reach the archived version will find it at

http://www.quilpole.demon.co.uk/unhall/nyssend/toc.htm

...but for any of you who prefer to read it on the newsgroup, the
postings shall now commence!

Cheers,

--
Gray

http://www.quilpole.demon.co.uk

"She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time."
- William Goldman, _The Princess Bride_.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*First Episode: 'Hello, Andromeda!'*

"CATS!" yelped an impractically dressed daughter of Oz, avoiding a
shrewdly aimed swat by the smallest totter of her black spike heels.
"Keep your bloody hands to yourself, can't you?"

Her flatmate emitted her characteristic, rusty chuckle. " I'd
save that for our Simon, me girl. He's going to have his work cut
out ..."

" Who said I wanted him to? Si is too much the gentlemanly
Brit already, thank you very much." Tegan Jovanka glared at her
compatriot's image in her hand-mirror, half her attention already
drifting to an imaginary smudge below her own left cheekbone. Cats
in the glass, tilted at a Krazy House angle: squat, powerful,
handsome in a deadpan kind of way, striking even in her disgraceful
jeans and sweatshirt. "It's _your_ hands I'm off limits to, Cats
Hambridge!"

"Shucks," the other woman remarked flatly. "That wasn't a
'Come here, wench!'. That was a 'Stop primping before you mess it
up again, Si'll be here in five minutes. _Now_ come to the couch -
wench!"

"Awk," riposted Tegan disgustedly - and promptly perched
herself next to her friend. Cats had not been an obvious choice as
a flatmate, and her preferences had taken a bit of getting used to.
Not very much. Teasing aside, living with the outspoken little
technician was a lot like being around a very secular monk. Who, if
anyone, really attracted Cats was one of many cosmic puzzles of
which Tegan was just as happy to remain ignorant - but the fine
Jovanka nose for personal chemistry assured her that it wasn't
herself, so fair do's. She could be almost as easily, innocently
intimate with Cats Hambridge as she ever had been with little old
Nyssa, when they had shared a cabin during her travels -

_Tegan Jovanka, don't_ start!

As always when her thoughts drifted into that kind of rut, she
fidgeted discontentedly. Cats ignored her performance totally; and
it was that distance in her personality, too, that made her easy to
live with - when it wasn't utterly maddening. Come to think of it,
that distance was probably the only way in which Cats _was_ like
Nyssa -

No.

This was a nice little pad in Earl's Court, not a roving phone
box with a jinx on it the size of Ayres Rock.

Cats was a perfectly ordinary celibate lesbian tech-head
science-fiction fanatic, not (say) a screwed-up alien kid super-
genius with the common sense of a peanut - unlike an alarming
proportion of Tegan's former travelling companions. Cats was
_normal_!

And _Si_: well, he was out of this world in quite a different
way to that other man in her -

DING DONG!

_Tegan Jovanka,_ she thought as she hastily scrambled up to
work the entryphone, this _is your life!_ And the sudden warmth
that came with that thought more than made up for the tiresome
mental slip that had prompted it.

"Jovanka, Hambridge apartment," she called down.

An unhealthy, insinuating voice crackled back up the wires.
"Have you ever thought about where you're going to run to when the
Earth catches fire and the seas turn to Watneys, oh sinner woman?"

Tegan stabbed the 'enter' button with much vim. "Put the
Watchtowers away, Prof, and get yourself upstairs!" She looked
darkly over her shoulder at Cats. "Why I ever let you introduce
us..."

"Your face-paint's splodged," Cats said innocently; and Tegan
actually began to check in the mirror before catching herself.

"And _you_," she said, pointing a severe finger, "are nearly
half as bad. I know why you two knock around together!"

As if on cue, someone rapped a tattoo on the door.

"For those ignorant of Morse," came a muffled, very English
voice through the wood, "that was _'Alas, my lo-ove you do me wrong
To shut me ou-ut discourteously...'_"

"Not the singing!" both women yelled as one. Cats cut past
Tegan to open the door, chuckling as she did so.

"I'll tell you what he really rapped after he's gone," the
technician said _en passant_ in her ear, and admitted their visitor.

Tegan forgot about makeup, auld acquaintances, and Morse code
in a fingersnap. Simon Westport was a sight to behold, so she did
with gusto whenever she got the chance. The don was a great long
drink of water, loose-limbed and rangy, who had probably gangled a
lot before taking up the t'ai chi through which he'd met Cats. He
had the long, dark, sensitive face (and the long, dark, sensitive
hairstyle) of a Romantic poet, which since he _was_ a much-published
poet was probably allowed. He was a splendid dancer, a better
kisser (from Tegan's all-too-limited experience so far), and seemed
to know an unlikely amount about almost everything: this approached
cheating. She excused him because he was gentle, attentive, and
readily beaten at pool.

Si greeted Cats quickly and heartily, and then he stood before
Tegan: black suit to dress him in, black eyes to drown her in. His
hands were clasped behind his back as awkwardly as a schoolboy's,
and his thin lips wore a crooked, shy expression she barely
recognised. "Hello, Tegan," he said warmly, not budging an inch.

"Hi, Si," she returned, curiously. "You alright?"

He laughed throatily, then, and she knew he was. "All the
better for seeing you, my dear," he declared with a vocal flourish.
"I - I bought you a few things on the way; had an idea you might
like 'em. How'd you prefer 'em - one at a time, or, I don't know,
all at once?"

_"Si!"_ She was intrigued and delighted. "A _few_ presents?
You can't spoil me this much, you know! - Well, alright, just
once; well, yeah, of course one at a time, I'm not _that_ greedy - "

Very gravely, Si brought his arms from behind his back, and
began to throw roses at her. One. Two. Three, four, appearing
from nowhere in his hands as she blinked at the first onslaught. Si
was also a pretty decent amateur magician.

"_Stop_ it!" gasped Tegan exasperatedly, fighting off a near-
paralysing attack of the giggles.

Two final roses dropped dejectedly from the sleeves of his
loose jacket. "Apologies, my lady," he murmured with bogus
contrition, "for my woeful judgement." He reached inside his
lapels, extracted a whole bunch of red roses still in their
wrapping, and presented it to Tegan with an overstated bow.

From behind, the sound of Cats strenuously avoiding a snicker
was clearly audible.

Tegan realised that her mouth was hanging open like a
goldfish, and closed it with a snap. Impulsively, she spun around
on her flatmate, and shoved the roses into her surprised hands.

"Do something with these, mate," she said; and turned back to
her magician again, eyes flashing. She threw her arms around him
and kissed him soundly on the cheek before he could even realise he
was being attacked. Trapped, he made the best of it with
enthusiasm, his arm tightening around her slim waist, his mouth
lightly kissing the top of her head. Tegan wondered, dizzily and
not at all verbally, whether in Cats's absence she'd have actually
bashed through his bloody English-gentlemanliness at last.

As it was, though, he eased up presently, and slid his hands
onto her elbows. Ah well, there'd be other times. Private ones.
_Soon!_ At least he had the grace to look and feel warm,
breathless. Still, if she did have the only man in the world who
liked to play it long, Tegan'd go right along with him. "So," she
said briskly, looking directly up at him. Black eyes, deep in
laughter. "Where's this place you wanted to drag me tonight?"

A look of comical consternation swept over the academic's
mobile features, for just a long enough moment for Tegan to 'geddit'
- but before her irritation had even gotten into gear, the
expression was replaced by a hammy, head-shaking gallantry. "Oh,
sorry, you - ah, I had in mind the _Rambunctious Retreat_, up by
Frith Street; re-opened two weeks since. Splendid place, I'm sure
you'd love it. But I'm loath to spoil the surprise by saying more."
He gave her the cryptic wink.

"Your _surprises_," said Tegan dubiously. She'd experienced
Si's leading her to water before, with very varying results. Still,
he had been a real sport at Luba's the other week, which considering
his musical opinions was pretty heroic. She decided she'd rambunc
with the best of them tonight, if that was where his fancy led.

"Oh, this is a special one," he assured her. "I picked it
purposely. You shan't have seen such a place - not in all your
travels on Altair Minor!"

"Though there _was_ that time on the Planet of the Bondage
Boys..." Cats remarked ruminatively. Tegan didn't dignify this with
an answer, though she sometimes wished that she'd paid more
attention to what they'd been smoking, that night when the little SF
nut had drawn her story out of her.

It was Si's harping on the subject that got to her - and that
was a question she hadn't yet dared even to think about tackling.
She was afraid of the answer.

"I have _never_ been to - " she began witlessly, and then a
brilliant inspiration caused her to insert a long pause before " -
Altair Minor!"

Well, howzat then! Maybe hanging around with Si was turning
her into a wit after all!

He clapped two fingers of his right hand down across his left
palm, twice, which she knew for a sign of high appreciation.
Encouraged, she began, "But I'd _love_ to go - "

DING DONG!

Tegan blinked, hard. "You expecting callers too, Cats?"

"Not me." The technician picked up the entryphone, which
squawked briefly, and immediately proffered it to Tegan. "Yours,"
she said.

"Hello?"

"Tegan!" The tone was familiar, hail-old-friend-well-met.
The voice was musical, male, and no-one's she recognised.

"Hello? Who _is_ this?"

"As per some," wittered the unknown caller, incomprehensibly.
"You don't happen to remember what goes down a chimney up, do you?"

An icy feeling began to crawl down Tegan's shoulder-blades.
"Look," she said severely, "if this is supposed to be a joke - "

Si had come up alongside her, and had apparently made out the
idiotic comment. He shivered. "Look here, Tegan Jovanka, you
haven't been seeing my jolly old doppelgänger on the side, have you?
Only if you have, pax and all that, but I'd very much rather you
didn't let him in!"

"Don't be stupid!" hissed Tegan crossly, having no clue what a
doppleganger was and being in no state to care. "I have no idea - "

"Well, it _is_ a bit old locally," apologised the loon on the
intercom, "but you can't possibly have forgotten the flue-crabs at
the _Bell and Beast_ in Radjak ?!"

A deadly silence fell. Cats was the first to break it. In an
awed tone totally new to Tegan, her flatmate whispered, "That can't
be Who I think it is...?"

Tegan gulped, nodded numbly. "It could, you know."

"Tegan?" The voice had grown a little concerned. "Is this a
very bad time?"

"No," she said, helplessly. "Come on up!" And pressed the
fatal button.

Si's hands closed, most gingerly, over her shoulders. She
noticed that he was shaking, just a little. "Tegan?" he said, in a
very tender, very steady voice. "If this is some set-up, please
tell me now. I'll gladly concede you the palm for the whole
evening."

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Tegan straightened her back,
squared her chin, and swallowed very hard.

"No." Something steelier than she'd known in him slipped into
his voice, then. "You know, if you're not happy about this - "

"If there's something you didn't tell us - " Cats chimed in;
and _her_ voice you could have opened cans with. Suddenly Tegan
felt that the bad vibes she was radiating might easily escalate way
out of proportion. Her friends' reaction made her feel incredibly
safe and valued, but she had to put the lid on it directly.

"No, no, he's like I always said. It's just - a shock - "

"Yes," agreed Si, soberly. "I can see that."

The visitor knocked at the door. Tegan clucked twice to pull
herself together, dusted off her hands, and let the man in.

She'd never seen him before. They stood staring at each other
across the threshold.

He was tall, slender, dark, and looked entirely too much like
Si with a sensible haircut and a hangover. He also looked a lot
like the lead actor in a recent film she'd found hysterically funny
- at the time.

"Tegan?" he said tentatively, offering her a long-fingered
hand. She took it, still silent. Her knuckles felt full of ice.

"Doctor?" she said , almost disbelieving.

He inhaled through his teeth, embarrassed. "Pranged another
one, I'm afraid. I'm very sorry: I should have warned you..."

"_Doctor_," she complained more loudly, and threw herself into
his arms, ruining her makeup with a disgraceful flood of tears. It
was either that or tell him to go jump in the lake, which would have
been a bit much even for her. He held her in his old loose,
avuncular way - _that_ hadn't changed! - patting her back
soothingly; and only then, it seemed, registering her companions.
Tegan felt his awareness in the way his spine stiffened, the
atmosphere set. She unplastered herself from his shirt-front with
what poise she could muster.

"Been a while," she said. "Come in, won't you?"

He closed the door behind him, looking a little warily at her
two friends. "Ahm, I don't think we've met...?"

"This is my flatmate, Cats Hambridge," said Tegan briskly,
"and my very good friend Si Westport. Cats, Si: this is the Doctor;
you know all about him." She retreated firmly to Si's side.

The Doctor's face was a study. "They - do?" he managed.

Cats shrugged. "Curiosity hasn't killed this one yet, Doc."

Si's arm slid possessively around Tegan's slim shoulders. He
drawled, "Clearly, _either_ milady's yarns are as true as the sky,
_or_ she was and is a better fabulist than I am. When one has
eliminated the impossible, one must accept what remains, so..."

"Yuk," concluded Cats expressively. "Besides, she explained
so many incidents so much better than the official versions; and I
can tell cod science when I hear it!"

The Doctor was not best pleased. "I've been made a public
joke for no purpose?"

Tegan thought she'd better step in. "Cats and Si aren't your
Joe in the street, Doctor. And they couldn't have worked it out
without me. Who else is going to know?"

"H'mm..." His mind was visibly going off on some tangent.

"You think you have a problem," Cats added, "you should put
yourself in T's shoes. She has to live with the Megan Steranka
episodes."

"Megan Steranka?" The Doctor's nose twitched a bit.

"Bloody bottle-blonde, plastic-hourglass, coffee-tea-or-me
James Bond jam-tart!" explained Tegan, rather hotly.

"That sounds suitably ridiculous." The Doctor brightened.
"Westport! _Simon_ Westport!" He swivelled to face the poet full
on, and pumped his hand vigorously. "I'm honoured to meet you, sir!
I hope my old friend appreciates her situation. I've been a great
admirer of yours since, well, three hundred years back or a hundred
hence, depending on how one computes it. Water under the bridge
since then, of course. - Do you know, I almost believe I could
still quote the opening of _Queen of Infinite Space_, if you gave me
a mo to recollect it. I have to congratulate you. You can scarcely
guess how many young minds you'll win to your romance-of-space
visions, how many people will look up at the stars and see new homes
there, thanks to - I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong?"

"I have not," Si declared stonily, "ever written anything
called _Queen of Infinite Space_. Nor am I after directions for
writing it!"

"Whoops," remarked the Doctor, abashed. "Which have you
written? I'd hate to drop another chronical clanger like that one."

"_Hello, Andromeda,_" recited Tegan, proudly, "and _Vineyards
of the Night_."

"Ah, yes, already the Simon Westport of name and fame, then.
The Outward Urge, in full cry! No chance of damaging your poetic
development, I should hope. I'm afraid I never did read your early
stuff - nothing but _Queen_-and-so-on, actually - but cheer up! At
least your reputation's not a puffball!"

"I was already aware of this," Si declared, po-faced. Tegan
could feel his sides silently quaking, though: it _was_ going to be
alright.

"_Keeping_..." The Doctor shook his head. "It's gone. I
thought I had it there. Well. Ah, hum. Can we sit down? Talk?"

"Sure can," hummed Cats. _So, she's cruising high as well_,
thought Tegan. For a pair who devoted most of their dreams to the
Stars and the Great Future, she supposed her friends' enthusiasm was
only to be expected. Good job, really.

"Can I get you a cup of tea?" she asked the Doctor, knowing
he'd indulge. He shook his head. "No, but if you have any wine
about the place, I shall bless you."

"Cheeky bugger!" snapped Cats. "Cabernet Shiraz do you?"

The Doctor beamed. "Royally, Cats." He let Tegan show him
into the one armchair the studio was big enough to contain. Tegan
and Si sat together, whole feet away on the baize-green futon. Cats
joined them in a moment, after pouring them each a glass of
something ruby, rich, and delicious. They drank, and relaxed as far
as any of them were going to, in a briefly contented silence.

Tegan wasn't exactly burning up to learn the real reason for
the Doctor's visit. On past form, it would rapidly involve them all
in something dangerous, obscure, and grossly distasteful. _Just
say no, Tegan Jovanka. Love to see you and all that, but no. None
of us!_ Ha, she should be so - awk!

Some of Cats's little foibles must be rubbing off on her, too.

Before the silence could ripen into a moment of confidence,
she asked what she had to know anyway. "It didn't really happen
that way, did it?"

"What? Oh, my latest decease. Afraid so. Humiliatingly
accurate. Thug in alley, boom boom, good evening sweet prince. A
total throwaway." He looked appropriately glum. "If our old friend
the Master had really been within five hundred years of the scene,
he'd've laughed till he sicked up his gizzard."

"Then he wasn't - " Tegan left it hanging.

"We should be so - "

"_Don't say it!_" She brandished a hard little fist at him.
"What really happened?"

"Very mundane local politics," pronounced the Doctor sourly.
"And the glamorous medico was sixty-two, with blue hair and
religious enthusiasms. Ah well, the travesty has successfully
muddied the waters as usual, and I suppose _someone_ got some
entertainment out of it." He inspected them all narrowly: nary a
smile could he detect. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Throw us in at the deep end," Si invited promptly. "To what
do we owe the pleasure of present company? Beyond the purely
social?"

The Doctor looked immediately more cheerful. "Well, in a
sense it _is_ purely social." Yeah, right. "And in a sense it
isn't; or only by proxy, so to speak. Tegan, I've just received the
most fascinating message from Nyssa, and we're both specially
invited to join her for a visit on Terminus. - Amenities greatly
improved over recent years, she says. Four-star everything. And
herself your age now, running the show, and pining for our company."
He quaffed off the rest of the wine exuberantly.

_"Nyssa?"_ Speak of the sprite!

"I knew you'd be pleased." The Doctor bludged some more wine,
and gestured a toast to the occasion.

"Doctor," said Tegan, ever so sweetly, "I _know_ Nyssa,
remember? I'm sure she'll be pleased to see us, but what actually
made her call? If _she_ realises she's out of her depth, aren't
things likely to be a teeny bit serious?"

"No, no, not that way, anyway. Though I know what you mean.
No, she wanted my advice on a maths problem that's got the locals -
and the local Gallifreyan engineer, but that's another story -
stumped. Vital to some research she's doing, and so forth." The
Doctor preened. "Rather than spend a lot of public cash and private
time dickering with a planetary University, she thought she'd make
the occasion to meet old friends, have a chinwag, catch up on news
and so forth. So here we are!"

"Nyssa said that?"

"She used different words," hedged the Doctor, "but that's
what she said; yes. As far as you're concerned - pure holiday.
Purely social."

"M'm," said Tegan. "Very nice of her, too. I don't know,
Doctor..."

Three pairs of eyes bored into her, in pure twenty-four carat
amazement.

"Well, I _don't_!" She raised her voice. "I know this isn't
a problem for you, Doctor, but you can't just go gallivanting off to
the, the outer whatsits of space and time one moment, and then slide
back into your box on Dear Old Mother Earth as though nothing's
happened. I was bloody unemployable for months, last time I got
back; and it wasn't just because I'd spent the last week watching
Daleks melt down in their own g-galloping g-g-gangrene!" She took a
firm hold on the gag reflex that always accompanied thoughts of that
last 'jaunt'. "How can I say this so you'll understand, Doctor:
it's one life or the other; you can't live in both worlds!" And she
snuggled up shamelessly close to Si, to get his backing and to make
her point. "I've got a life here, now. I like it - lots. And the
way things've gone up till now, who knows when or if I'd get back to
it? Nyssa's a nice kid and all that, but do you see what I mean,
Doctor?"

"I - think - so," he muttered, looking as though he was trying
mighty hard. But Tegan should really have known what would come
next.

"This - what's the word - TARDIS of yours?" Si inquired
politely, squeezing Tegan's shoulder. "Would it have berths for,
say, three passengers rather than one?"

"It could," said the Doctor, very guardedly.

"And you could certainly insert us back into this time, this
very evening, even - once everything was over?"

"I _could..._" (Huh!)

"Personally," said Si offhandedly, "you must understand that a
voyage to other stars would have to be the great high point of my
existence. I've been dreaming, selling dreams about this very
notion, for the best part of my life. So I think I could wrench
myself to do so, if the need arose. I can't speak for Cats in this,
of course, but - "

"Don't push your luck, feller-me-lad!" that lady suggested,
rather urgently.

" - but, though more cynical than I about the great sweep of
Destiny, I know my friend feels something very similar about future
ingenuities and technologies. I don't know another soul in these
islands who can analyse the implications of imaginary discoveries
with half such rigour - or, dare I say it, panache? Cats, do you
suppose you could spare some time to go gander at the real thing?"

"I reckon," Cats reckoned laconically.

"Tegan," said Simon Westport then, practically oozing soulful
seduction, "my dearest, first lady of my heart: under those terms,
might Cats and I possibly carry enough of your world with us that
you could go see your old best friend after all? Without fear of
the ties you wish to bind you slipping away?"

He spoke as though her answer was a ritual formality; and it
struck Tegan then that Si was crediting her with setting up this
whole incredible dodge on purpose.

She could let the man of her dreams give her that credit, hop
off with him and Cats on a slightly suspect holiday at Nyssa's, and
swallow a few doubts and fears in payment, before returning home all
three humming with joy and mutual harmony. (_If_ they got back, of
course.)

Or she could disabuse him with a few well-chosen, sensible
words, instantly stripping her only two close friends of this one,
unlooked-for chance to realise their respective lives' dreams,
before swallowing down a nice safe bottle of paracetamol and jumping
under a nice safe Tube train. Tough one, Tegan Jovanka!

"I think," she said, forcing it out past a big lump in her
throat, "that you two just might."

The Doctor cleared his throat. "Personally, I think that's a
splendid idea. I'm just not entirely sure about extending Nyssa's
invitation on my own account..."

"We shall come bearing mighty gifts," boasted Si. "I shall
personally immortalise her in this - what is it, _Queen of Infinite
Space?_ - that I'm supposed to feel coming on. "

"That was one poem," said the Doctor irritably, "and scarcely
about our Nyssa, from what little I recall. The collection was
_Keeping up_... with the Joneses? The times? The Daleks? No, it's
really gone."

"Just as well, too," Si judged, a warning edge in his voice.
"Besides, perhaps taking me is ethically necessary. You mustn't
tamper with the course of history, must you? - How do you imagine
I got the inspiration for this future masterpiece in the first
place? _Vineyards_ was the best of my best, as I am now. No, I
have an almost prophetic good feeling about what I'll glean from
Terminus..."

"I'll bet you do," said the Doctor resignedly.

"I might want to give her something, too." Cats's voice had
gone very arch and dry. "Does she really look like Sarah
Whatshername?"

"Sort of." Tegan shrugged.

"Well, then!" She did her 'Moggy's got the cream' impression.

The Doctor looked puzzled. "Am I missing something here?"

"Cats likes women," Tegan explained. "But one's Princess Di
and the other's Kylie, so Nyssa's hardly in danger."

It was the Doctor's turn to shrug. "We can always bunk up in
the TARDIS if Nyssa's short of accommodation, I suppose. Yes, well,
an excellent plan. Delighted."

He looked broodingly into the dregs of his glass, and a hush
fell again for a half-minute or so. To Tegan's delight, he broke it
with his trademark, mercurial smile, and a loud clap of his hands.
"Well, then! When shall we set off?"

Si drank off the rest of his wine at a swig. "The ten-minute
pack," pontificated Cats, "is what separates your traveller from
your sissy."

"Half an hour!" declared Tegan, firmly. "This is supposed to
be 'four-star space holiday', not 'roughing it through Bulgaria for
bugger-all money'! I _want_ to be a clothes-horse! I want to be a
belle! I want to save the reputation of Earthwomen from lumberjack
shirts, combat boots, and the Doctor's wardrobe; and I'm bloody well
going to!" She got up and flounced off to the other room. "And
half an hour is _no_ time!" she added, over her shoulder.

"See what I mean?" Cats invited, sagely.

"Bet you couldn't dodge as many death-rays in those as I have
in four-inch heels," Tegan shot back promptly, and escaped into her
room.

It was nearly seven-thirty when the four of them snuck downstairs
into the cold autumn air. The clocks had recently gone back, so
that the young night looked far later and darker to Tegan than it
truly was. By tacit consent, they went their way quietly, feeling
actively furtive in their departure, though none had any thought of
being followed or watched. The Doctor strode, Si ambled, Cats
hiked, and Tegan did what her shoes made her do; but they kept a
shared pace. They passed north and westwards down the long streets
of Earl's Court, past red and green neon, great carved-up shabby
houses, fifty-seven varieties of swanky restaurant, Aussie pubs,
ersatz-Aussie pubs for the tourist trade, and hundreds of people per
furlong moving briskly along to big fun. Try as she might, Tegan
couldn't summon a twinge of the Goodbye to All That she'd fancied
appropriate.

_It's just like leaving a hotel_, she thought; and didn't know
how she felt about that. So she watched Si instead.

They had come to a place where the neon was running out and
the big down-at-heel houses were taking over fast. Tegan knew a lot
of places like this, though she'd never visited this particular
corner of nowhereland before. They were crossing a square with a
green at its centre, surrounded by black iron railings tipped with
fleurs-de-lis. Huge London planes stood over it, recollecting
richer days, and letting slick tawny leaves fall deliberately around
them. She could hear Si snuffing up their pleasant, ashy-leathery
smell (it _was_ such a London thing!), and felt he'd be able to
persuade her, later, that it was one of those precious and unique
imprints that stop any other place from ever being quite like home.

She swore under her breath at the slimy leaves, and minded her
footing. When they left the square, into a skinnier street with few
trees, she returned her full attention to Si. He was peering up at
the sky, at the odd stars that poked through gaps in the sodium-
peachy overcast: drinking them in like fine wine, his mind obviously
wholly engrossed in them. And here was where Tegan felt one
solitary goodbye snag her heart, though it wasn't hers, or even one
she entirely understood.

_Because they'll never be the same again for you, my love_,
she thought clearly, and knew that the poet would need quietly to
grieve for this. After about a minute, she felt abashed at the
insight, and cast about for a more normal Jovanka-type thought.

"Here we go!" said the Doctor cheerfully, and gestured to the
mouth of a very grotty cross-street.

"Doctor!" said Tegan sharply, having just been struck with a
doozy. "How did you know where I lived?" If the old bustard had
_bugged_ her after their last goodbye, she was going to...!

He chuckled. "Hacked into the Royal Borough's council tax
records. By the way, they've diddled you two for fifty-two pounds
eighty-one, point three. Did you know about that?"

"Only on general principle," said Cats. She peered down the
street. "I don't see your doo-dah there. Do you want to lead us
the rest of the way, or do we have to guess?"

The Doctor coughed. "No: follow me..."

Jameson Ave proved to be a short, dead-ending affair, chopped
off by the weathered green boards of a building site. Some of the
houses looked empty, and as they came further in, the air acquired a
thin smell of ammonia.

Two vandals of sleazy appearance were having at the concrete-
and-metal Superloo that stood just in front of the green boards.
One way or another, Tegan supposed this explained the street's
general aroma of piddle.

"Not _again_!" the Doctor complained, as the taller, leather-
jacketed vandal turned and addressed himself to them.

"'Scuse us, chum," Leather Jacket invited. His hair was lank
and hung in a thin ponytail; his voice was grating and shlightly
shlurred. "Don't suppose you know how to get these things open, do
you? It's not co-_op_-per-rating!"

"We'll give it a go," said the Doctor kindly. Looking warily
all around them, the others followed. The stocky, Mediterranean-
looking bog-abuser laughed inebriately, and slapped Si over-
familiarly in the small of the back. Si ignored him enormously, but
Cats' eyes narrowed in a way that boded a lot of no good. Tegan,
expecting the Doctor to do his sonic screwdriver party-trick,
blinked disbelievingly as she saw him effortlessly manhandle the
curved steel door to the left, and make to step inside.

"Ah, chum," said Leather Jacket, tugging tentatively on the
Doctor's natty jacket, "me and Bert-o had plans for that, if you
wouldn't..." He broke off abruptly, working his jaw in the air.

A flood of cosy, indoors-coloured light poured out into the
unsavoury night. As the gentlemen with plans for the Superloo
looked on, boggled, the Doctor disappeared inside, followed closely
by Cats, Si, and finally Tegan. "Boggle boggle," mouthed Leather
Jacket helplessly, as Tegan stepped carefully over the threshold.

"Never mind," Tegan reassured him. "You really don't want to
know." And then the door hummed closed behind her.

_"Hello, Andromeda!"_ whooped a plummy, exuberant male voice
from impossibly far within, just before the last chink of light went
out.

Leather Jacket stared fixedly at it. "Bert-o," he said,
painstakingly, "did I just see Simon Westport climb into a king-size
Superloo with two girls and a guy, to do deeds we really don't want
to know about; or did we score something this evening which I now
forget but should never, ever touch again?"

"Rory," replied Bert-o sullenly, leaning at an ill angle
against a piss-rusted Ford, "you din fuckin see nuttin."

EEEEE-AWWWW, EEEEE-AWWWW! The Superloo developed asthma,
flashed a pulse of Cerenkov-blue light across the unspeakable
terminus of Jameson Ave, and evaporated.

"I din fuckin see nuttin," admitted Rory.

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Two, 'Dodging'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Second Episode: Dodging*

There were two suns, and the trees sang arias to metallic green
butterflies big as seagulls. Under an indigo sky, many-coloured
streaky hills twisted their great kite-shaped petals to catch the
tricksy light. Vines like young rivers snaked through the
primordial forest, mailed in ivy-dark leaves like the shields of
giant Vikings. Shabby feathered monkeys, wild and unhunted, slunk
around tree-boughs to pelt each other with decaying purple fruits.

The hills were cities shaped of intelligent clays, and the
vines were superhighways. The world called Simurgha hammered with
industry, frothed with daft dreams, and hummed and popped with the
weirdnesses of quantum computing. The monkeys had been a high
executive caste in a bygone era.

Simurgha. Traken. Gormenghast. Xiao's Surprise. Kalliad-
Rukh.

_One day, my children, all this shall be ours._

View to a vineyard, so much, so strange the fruit...

Simon Westport sat before the TARDIS viewscreen, intently
watching the video-feed the Doctor had rigged from the archives. He
glowed visibly at the sight of how his prophecies had come/ would
come true, for Earthpeople and for others. Peladon, Mickey's World,
New Mars - The poet soaked it up like a booze-hound in a brewery,
oblivious to any outside world beyond Tegan's hand wrapped up in his
and her occasional commentary on the places she recognised. To her,
of course, this was just another in-flight movie: it was Si's
experience that absorbed _her_.

Across the console room, the Doctor frowned over a computer
terminal, fiddling with n-spatial arrays of coloured polyhedra, and
occasionally tossing off a preoccupied remark about some world whose
associations piqued him particularly. It was Domestic Bliss in
Space. Cats Hambridge's fingers drummed a devilish tattoo on her
knees.

Such harmony had not been in mortal souls earlier in the trip,
when they had attacked the Superloo of Space question.

"Yes, that!" They had been in flight for about five minutes, and
Tegan was pressing the issue, a touch shrilly. The Doctor offered
her a quizzical grin. "That's one rather interesting thing about
this trip. Nyssa sent me a fix for the chameleon circuits in her
message, a nice little block-transfer algorithm of a kind I haven't
seen before. Elegant, and a trifle exotic. I'm quite looking
forward to finding out where she got it."

If he was trying to be disarming, the effect was pretty
unilateral. "Doctor," said Tegan, her tone sharpening further,
"Block transfer is what you were doing at Logopolis, isn't it?"

"Well, now I think about it - "

"The equations that hold the Universe together?"

"They're one aspect of it, yes - "

"The very very dangerous thing that the Master rubbed out
Traken and a big slice of the bloody cosmos with when he started
screwing around with it?" Her voice was climbing. Si put a calming
hand on her shoulder.

_Hey ho_, thought Cats, her ears pricking up.

"Tegan," said the Doctor placatingly, "closed-gauge block
transfer is a perfectly routine part of all chameleon circuits; it's
completely safe - "

"Doctor! You don't know what Nyssa is doing with this, do
you? And just what is this 'mathematical problem' she wanted your
help with? Could that possibly be block transfer too?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. Look, I know things got a bit
fraught that other time - "

"Too right! 'A bit fraught!' And you got a bit snuffed!"

"I fell from a height," said the Doctor, coldly. "With the
Master's assistance. Neither Nyssa nor block transfer were
involved."

"No." Tegan conceded that as if having a tooth pulled.

"Correct!" His voice softened somewhat. "I know this has
associations for you, but please try to put them out of your mind.
Whatever Nyssa is doing, nothing could override the Logopolitan
signal. This algorithm is interesting, but you'll have to take my
word that it's totally harmless. Nor," a glint of exasperation
showing through again, "would I have brought you at all, if I
thought it'd put you in danger. Will that do?"

"Fine." Having made her point, Tegan didn't want to take the
row any further. She'd be a little snitty for the next half-hour or
so, but Cats was used to that.

_Poor Tegan_, she thought: _spot the slug, and miss the
funnelweb!_ If Cats's intuition was right, she had a very
interesting private talk with the Doctor lined up for herself in the
near future. She licked her lips discreetly.

And presently: -

" - then we were cooking with _gas_!" Tegan indicated the
cherry-red radiance of the Trifid Nebula onscreen. Si grimaced
affectionately.

Ye gods, he'd like to get through to this woman! He felt as
close to it, this last magical couch-potato session, as he'd ever
been. But it was always _Tegan, try something on! do something
quick! say something sharp!_ Anything but just chill out, be
herself idly, as though Tegan-alone couldn't possibly be enough to
hold his interest.

_'It's a Barnum & Bailey world...'_

And it wouldn't work out, not unless she could believe. Which
was a pity. He couldn't think of anyone he'd rather fall in love
with.

_It's the stars in your eyes I want, girl, not the stars in
your past!_

Now, of course, they'd have walked the star-lanes together.
_Now get out of that_, he thought, and smiled with his eyes at her.
And, wonders: under the light of a computer-rendered Trifid Nebula,
she kept mum, and smiled back.

A shame about the company, for it wouldn't last two seconds -

Cats stood up, yawning and slapping her jeans. She'd got the
fidgets early, bored with the kind of slide-show she could have seen
anytime on Earth. Cats was very pragmatic. "I say, Doctor?"

"Mmmmph?"

"You've got to be using some kind of morphic resonator to make
this dimensionality trick work, haven't you?. I've always wanted to
see one for real." Her tone was dry, joshing. "C'mon on, Doctor -
rest your brain a bit, give us the tour!"

"Ah - oh, the morphic resonator!" He peered curiously over at
their corner, nodded, and prised himself up to join her. The
science-minded duo nodded politely to Si and Tegan, and headed off
inwards into the TARDIS. "Yes, that's a remarkable..."

_It certainly is_, thought Si. Careful to keep the smile from
his face, he captured Tegan's hands gently in his own, and they both
turned half back towards the screen, so they were looking together
at the field of stars.

_'But it wouldn't be make-believe,_

_If you believed in me!'_

Cats and the Doctor took off like good 'uns down the white corridors
of the TARDIS, rhubarbing quietly about morphic resonance until they
were well out of their friends' earshot. The last word on that
particular subject was Cats's.

"I always knew Sheldrake was full of crap," she observed.
"What with all the other crank stuff that's turned out true,
though - " She made a quick, all-inclusive gesture. " - I was a
bit worried."

The Doctor led her round several obtuse corners, before coming
to a faceless door which he brushed open. Beyond lay an irregular,
polygonal room, heaped high with junk and blanketed with dust. A
lot of the junk trailed vividly-coloured, hacked-off wires. Several
of the roundels in the wall sagged open, also stuffed with overmuch
crud. The Doctor fought his way inside, over to what looked like a
big old television with a crystalline lead screen. He sat on it,
and motioned for Cats to perch on what she would.

"In case I'm wrong, however," he said, "there's probably one
here somewhere." Cats found a steady heap about her own height, and
leaned back against it.

"Thanks for giving me the nudge," the Doctor added. "I'm a
bit insensitive when my mind's on something. Gooseberry never _was_
my favourite fruit. - Did you really want the tour? I'm afraid the
user interfaces for all the good stuff are back at the console; but
we can rummage through this lumber if you want. I shall probably
learn as much as you will!"

"Thanks, Doc!" said Cats, sincerely. "Another time, maybe.
This block transfer stuff that had Tegan in such a tizzy. Your
Nyssa's working this at _Terminus_? Isn't that some kind of
critical point for the whole Universe, or was that all cobblers?"

"It _was_ that critical, yes; but not now. " The Doctor mimed
heebies. "It was sitting on a causal fault leading straight back to
the initial singularity - the 'Big Bang'. I had words with the
High Council on Gallifrey, and they sent an engineer to patch it."

"Which is so total, he's still there to maintain it," noted
Cats, pointedly. "Wouldn't that be about the dumbest place possible
to fiddle with the fabric of reality?"

The Doctor nodded, looking impressed. "Nyssa understands the
dangers better than anyone. The Master's meddling deleted her
homeworld, among many others. She must have a very strong reason."

Cats twiddled a broken aerial meditatively, getting dust as
slick as oil over her fingers. "Is she a psycho?"

"No! She's probably the sanest person I've ever really liked.
Which brings up an unpleasant possibility."

"Fault trouble?"

"Plausible, isn't it?" The Doctor's fingers sketched rapid
doodles on the leaden pseudo-telly's surface.

"But you brought Tegan anyway."

"I trust Nyssa." There was no flexibility in that. "Nyssa
would rather cut off her hand than hurt Tegan. So it's a long-term
problem - or it's one where distance won't be a defence."

"Like the Big Pop-goes-the-weasel?" Cats felt her skin
crawling over her bones, and doubted she'd masked it very well.

"Or hostage tactics by some enemy. I don't know, Cats. The
only thing I'm willing to bet on, at this stage, is that Tegan will
be at least as safe on Terminus as in Earl's Court." He grinned
evilly at her. "_You_ may not, of course!"

"Safe isn't what I crave," Cats confessed. "You might find a
couple of wild cards come in handy, sometime."

"I think I might." He caught her gaze, and held it. The
effect was rather like an eyeballing match with one of her
namesakes, but Cats was damned if she was going to back down first.
"I'm rather glad you worked all this out, from what little you knew.
What I don't want, though, is to ruin Tegan's time with a lot of
gloomy speculation that's probably all wrong anyway." He spoke
slowly, reasonably, forcefully. "You won't do that, will you?"

_I'm not backing down._ Cats blinked once, very deliberately.
_I'm walking away from silly boys' dominance games, yeah._ "Nor
Si's," she agreed. "You can read him like a book, when you know
how."

"Good." The Doctor descended from the pseudo-telly like a
tumbler, and blinked in his turn, several times. He was all amiable
eccentric again, the glimpse of something more constant and more
dangerous gone as if she'd never seen it. "By the way, you weren't
seriously hoping to seduce Nyssa, were you?"

"I don't lust after the little girl who played her in _Who
Goes There_," Cats told him matter-of-factly, "if that's what you
wanted to know. As for your pal, let's not be previous. I haven't
even _met_ the real Nyssa yet!" _Looking forward to it, though..._
She knew he was reading her body language, but that was sort of the
idea. He didn't look any more reassured than she'd intended.

"Well, I wouldn't get any notions," the Doctor warned. "She's
a Traken, and they were always very starchy and conventional about
relationships. Marriage was for life, the nuclear family was God-
Emperor, and they all seemed to thrive on it disgustingly. Nyssa's
a liberal - about other people - but I doubt she'd react well to a
proposition."

"We'll see," said Cats tranquilly, smiling at him. She
couldn't resist it. She reached down suddenly and tweaked his nose.
He made a vile noise, did a mincing little dance of avoidance around
assorted junk, and telegraphed a box at her ears. They both began
to strangle on laughter.

A tinny sound like a microphone clearing its throat
interrupted them. Tegan's voice came crisply over in sumptuous
surround-sound:

"Please return to the console room! A message has been
received from the authorities at Terminus, and a response is
expected. Warning: chrono-active defence systems detected, and
commencing initial scan. Thank you, and out!"

_I'd forgotten T could work this crate..._ But the Doctor had
almost fallen over when the voice came on: his face was flushed, his
eyes bright. Cats awarded him a questioning look. He grimaced
shamefacedly.

"Whoops," he remarked. "Forgot to uninstall that. Come
along, Cats!" He led the way quickly out and back along the
corridors, she trotting to keep up. "Synthesised it from Tegan's
voice-patterns, a while back," he chattered on. "I've been
travelling alone for a while, and it's nice to hear someone else's
voice besides your own, just now and then. - So, the game's afoot!
Nyssa's security must reach light-hours across the system, and she's
mounted Gallifreyan time-war defences." He whistled respectfully.
"I wonder how she arranged _that_?"

_Sad lad_, mouthed Cats behind his back, as they rushed around
the last corner into the console room.

Si and Tegan were tangled in each other's arms, mostly across Si's
chair, trying to calm each other's acute giggling. They didn't seem
to be very good at it. The Doctor ignored them, striding over to
the console. "Play message," he said, and skated his hands across a
control panel.

Leonardo's studio vanished from the viewscreen, to be replaced
by a thickset black guy of vaguely Ghanaian appearance. Si and
Tegan sighed, and pulled themselves more or less together. The
stranger looked as though he smiled a lot, and his voice was zingy
and reassuring:

"Welcome! This is a recorded message, on behalf of the Mayor
of Terminus, for time-capable craft on a station approach vector.
Know that you are entering a region of fragile space-time, in which
important temporal engineering works regularly take place. Please
accept the guidance signal from our security beacon: you will be
brought in along one of the momently-safe courses. Deviation may
cause you to be accidentally destroyed by automatic defence events.

"Please acknowledge receipt of this message, and append urgent help
request if you are experiencing difficulty. Terminus out!" The
screen blanked.

"That," said the Doctor, "was interesting. Pure Gallifreyan
idiom, which makes him the engineer. No-one I know, though..."

"Defence lock, forty-seven percent complete," advised
autoTegan. "Guidance signal, containing pilot override program,
loaded to isolated banks."

"Acknowledge," said the Doctor, and his fingers danced over
the console. "Watch it!"

The TARDIS juddered violently, and the central column shot up
to its full elevation like a shameless thing, pulsing and straining
with pink light. The Doctor slammed a slider rightwards.
"What...?" began Si; and then he and Tegan were dumped undignifiedly
to the floor by the next, floor-pitching lurch. Cats, grabbing the
top of a workstation to escape the same fate, was caught unawares by
the sequel, and rolled ingloriously to join them as the TARDIS
veered yet again, this time with the horrible sensation of going
round a corner that wasn't there. The Doctor, keeping his feet with
much difficulty and shuffling all this time, stepped back, breathing
hard.

"We can relax now," he asserted, implausibly. "We're in the
interstitial, scarcely in space-time at all. Plenty of chance to
figure out an approach."

"What," said Tegan, with ominous quietness. The three friends
picked themselves shakily off the floor, and began dusting
themselves down.

"I don't like to wait until I'm helpless before I decide what
to do," the Doctor said peevishly. "Call it a habit I've picked
up."

"The man said _destroyed_, Doctor!"

"Provoking, wasn't he?" The Doctor gestured broadly. "If
Nyssa's lost control since I heard from her, I don't much feel like
walking down this fellow's garden path. If she _has_ taken to
receiving visitors this way, I'd rather like to see if we can't
surprise her."

"She might have reasons, you know, Doc." Cats was finding the
Doctor's behaviour a bit much of a good thing.

"I suppose she does. If it's her - which I'd bet long odds on
- then she's gone out of her way to make Terminus TARDIS-proof. I
don't suppose any of you brought anything that might do for a
wedding-present?"

Six wide Terran eyes regarded the interstellar buffoon
perplexedly.

"The Time Lords don't export technology that can be used
against them." He shook his head. "I was just wondering how she
persuaded our cheerful friend to defect that thoroughly to
Terminus..."

Tegan drove him back to the subject. "So why not do what
she wants?"

"I didn't like the way she asked me." The Doctor beetled his
brows ambiguously. "More to the point, if we can dodge her security
on the fly, then it'll be no use against the likes of the Master.
False security's terribly dangerous."

"Not as dangerous as this 'dodge'," Si stated. "If it fails,
we're toast." He ambled towards the Doctor. "I don't think you can
take us into that."

"Don't you? Nyssa knows my TARDIS's signature, remember. I
doubt Terminus's systems will be _able_ to fire on us. If they can,
I don't want to meet the welcoming committee, either."

"So you'll do what?"

"Wait for some readouts." About ten seconds later,
hieroglyphics began scrolling up the Doctor's viewport. "H'mmm."
He frowned, and keyed in more inquiries. A couple more minutes, and
the tableau was shattered by a plaintive _beeeep_. "Well, well!"

He turned his attention back to his passengers. "I can't find
any openings from here. We'll have to get back to the spatio-
temporal levels, come in on a drunkard's corkscrew, and take any
chances we're given. Terminus already knows we're not co-operating,
so it's that or go somewhere else. There's some chance of toast,
obviously. Do we try to get in, or not?"

"I say, go for it." Cats rubbed a bruise on her arm.

Si took his Very Good Friend's hand. "I'm with Tegan."

Tegan was quiet for a good half-minute, her eyes narrowed.

"All right," she said then. "Let's get it over with!"

"Hold on tight," the Doctor advised them, hands already
skittering over the console. "The ride might get a bit bumpy this
time." As his companions hit the deck, the Doctor pulled the big
slider back leftwards, and launched their second approach to
Terminus.

It started mildly this time, but monstered up again pretty quickly.
As the TARDIS began shunting violently in various non-existent
directions, Tegan grabbed Si's hand tight, and gasped at him, "Glad
I don't get airsick - "

"Can't we talk about art, or something?" he mumbled back. The
scholar's face was acquiring the greenish hue of a particularly
unpleasant cheese. The TARDIS swerved heart-stoppingly around a
distant and wildly-skewed axis. A clatter of falling junk could be
heard distinctly from the inner labyrinth.

Cats was hunkered down in front of the viewscreen, her
attention fixed on the distorted images racing across it. Tegan
risked a quick peek. She saw mostly striated time-tunnel effects,
howling across a starfield which contained one or more
indecipherable silvery objects.

"Now!" cried the Doctor, and sent the whole shebang lurching
again. For a moment they just teetered like a kicked bucket, and
then everything split in two. Tegan saw Tegan, and saw herself
right back, as if she were on both sides of some megrim-making out-
of-body experience. The air, her mind, everything felt stretched.
She hugged Si's neck single-mindedly, _give us both something good
to hold onto!_ and hoped desperately that he'd keep resisting the
urge to chunder.

This was the sort of crap she'd always hated.

Her viewpoints merged, separated, merged, separated , and
finally merged again, leaving her with a head full of Silly Putty.
Si's eyes were watering heavily. He gave her a wan, game grin.

"Phase-jam failed," announced autoTegan brightly. "Enemy
defence holds conduit."

"I know!" the Doctor snarled, not looking up. He stabbed more
vehemently at the console. The wobblings stopped altogether, to be
replaced by a sudden sensation of falling far too fast in a lift.
This version didn't throw them around, however.

"Who nicked the inertia?" Cats asked no-one. Her screen had
filled up with the silvery sheen of the space station. The temporal
striations had dwindled to a jagged, unstable overlay like something
from a badly tuned television set.

"This is going to be touch and - "

The viewscreen flared intolerably bright for a moment, before
going blank altogether. Tegan yelled, "Doctor, get us out! They're
firing on us!"

"Could be a tracking laser," Cats guessed, not tactfully.

" - go! We'll have to -"

"Defence lock, one hundred percent complete," autoTegan
informed them. "You're out of choices, Doctor."

"Fuck off and die!" screamed the Doctor, with shocking
vitriol. A deadly silence hit the console room. The sound-systems
cut out in an abrupt, ominously final cough.

Tegan commended herself rapidly to the Great Whatever, certain
now that they'd had it. She'd never before heard the Doctor vent
even a mild obscenity, and they'd been through some pretty gross
situations together. _Nyssa, what happened to you?_

"Ahem," said the Doctor, looking terminally embarrassed.
"We're going to have to materialise on their terms, or take flak.
Here goes!" He set the central column to its heaving and wheezing.
"If nothing's happened to Nyssa, we ought to be all right."

Eee-awww, eee-awww! All sense of motion stopped, and a
familiar feeling of solidity blanketed Tegan. Cats and Si stood up,
and began to pace - Si rather weakly. Tegan joined her magician,
and all four travellers stared at the viewscreen.

They looked out on a wide creamy concourse, brightly lit up
with artificial daylight. A large mob of lurkers awaited them
outside: tall, broad-shouldered, gold-armoured, and toting gaudy
weapons. All were young, male, blond, and long-haired. They looked
rather like

"Hitler Youth go Woodstock," Cats commented.

"Vanir," chorused Tegan and the Doctor. He gave her a look.

"That's probably good news," he declared. "Let's just sample
that lively discussion out there before we join it." He flipped on
the audio pickup.

" - looks more like a khazi to me!"

"Bother!" muttered the Doctor. "I should have known that was
too good to last!"

"No-one asked you, Orming. Hold your bladder and shut your
mouth. Captain Maude, sir?"

"Captain Maude?" Tegan shook her head.

The officer addressed was slim, clean-shaven, and tough-
looking, with highly-polished armour and a long lean face. 'Maude'
just wasn't him.

"Try M-O-R-D," suggested Si quietly. "As in _mordant_ and
_Mordor_. Fits the culture."

"Ugh."

Captain Mord stepped a couple of paces forward of the rest.
He talked straight at the TARDIS, his voice raised in a way that
suggested it had quite a few notches left to spare. "You in there!
If you can hear me, come out. If not, we can wait longer than you
can. The quicker you come, the easier it's going to be. This is
Captain Mord Valdasson, for the Mayor and people of Terminus." He
banged on the door significantly with his weapon, which was six feet
long and resembled a turbo-charged halberd.

"Vandals," pronounced the Doctor, indignantly. "Again. All
right, let's get this over with. Everyone coming?"

"Don't be silly, Doctor."

"Yup."

"I'm afraid so."

They exchanged several long looks, and sallied forth.

Tegan was expecting what happened next, although the reality was
quicker and more brutal. With each prisoner safely pinioned by two
of the golden warriors, Captain Mord looked his catches over coldly,
lingering last and longest over the Doctor. "This is your TARDIS,
of course?"

"Yes. May I - "

"No. Shut up. There are no more unannounced guests inside?"

"No - "

"Good. Einar, Lambi, Herjolf: guard the doors. Kill anything
that tries to leave. Olaf, Adils, Big Sig: let the box have it with
Massacre if it does anything new. Njal, monitor. Goats back them
up, Horses with me." He set the tip of his magic halberd under the
Doctor's chin.

"You can't do this!" Tegan protested. "Get Nyssa - "

"Be silent," Mord overrode her, "or be sedated. You're all
going to our very special brig. _Very_ Time Lord proof." He raised
his voice again, to be heard by all. "No-one talks to you, no-one
meets your eyes, none of you say or do or try anything, or you get
the business ends of these. Her Honour will deal with you in her
own time. Now, move!" Tegan's captors pushed her roughly forward.
Si and the Doctor were both in the same boat; she couldn't see Cats.
There was a murmuring, and their progress stalled almost as soon as
it had begun.

"We ought to kill the pilot now, Captain." The speaker was a
burly, forkbearded type with unkempt whitish hair and a sad,
missionary voice. "Shouldn't leave Her the risk. He'll come back
to life anyhow if She lets him, won't he?"

Tegan wanted to scream ten things at once, but all that came
out was an empty cluck. Captain Mord was staring at or past the
idiot, as if he were giving the idea serious consideration. _Oh,
Doctor, I'm sorry - _

"Put up the halberd, Sigfus." The new voice was incisive,
familiar, and came from the back of the room. Glittering Vanir
surged aside to clear a path for its owner. "Murdering this clown
is _my_ privilege! _Doctor...?_"

It was Nyssa - not at all as Tegan had imagined her.

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Three, 'See Here, She Said'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Third Episode: See Here, She Said*

There ought to have been words. You could have heard them, and been
lost forever.

Simon Westport, the greatest poet of Earth's Space Age, whose
breath was the wind beneath the wings of our first starships, met
Nyssa Heal-All Helsbane, Keeper at Terminus and Lady of the Vanir,
in her own halls and under circumstances of high drama. He might
have left us a song, a sonnet, an ode. What we have is a scrap from
one of his journals.

Apparently she looked sort of like Sarah Norbury.

Maybe there were other words, and someone burned them. Maybe
they vanished at the same time he did. We'll never really know,
now...

The first thought that hit Tegan about Nyssa was, _Fashion death!_
Her old friend had clearly lost what little clothes sense Tegan had
been able to train into her. The Mayor of Terminus wore a black-
brown trouser-suit of uncompromisingly Traken cut, all gores and
ruffles and puffed sleeves. Even the dreaded tiara had staged a
comeback. With a sinking heart, Tegan now recalled just how trying
and arrogant dear old Nyssa could be when she was acting especially
'alien'.

The second thought, adding insult to injury, was that the look
actually _suited_ her these days. _Not a good sign, Tegan..._

The third thought was that, for a thirty-year-old Florence
Nightingale on an interstellar leper colony, Nyssa looked a
particularly gorgeous twenty-one. Tegan thought she could usually
tell when she herself was the most attractive woman in any given
room; and she didn't think she was, here. It was the first time
the little Traken had registered a blip on Tegan's rival-radar , and
somehow that was as disquieting as all the rest put together.

"Well, Doctor?"

Nyssa walked and talked with the assurance of long command.
She'd already had the aristocratic variety when Tegan knew her. And
Tegan knew that 'tolerant' tone far too well to be fooled by it.

_I think this might have been a mistake..._

"I'm fine, Nyssa; and so are your defence systems. Passed the
test with flying colours. There are very few improvements I could
suggest, and I'll make a full report on those the moment it's
convenient." The Doctor beamed down at her.

"Good." Nyssa continued to eyeball him, seemingly torn
between several obvious rejoinders.

"Your Honour?" Captain Mord was frowning. "You asked this
man to test our defences?"

"No," said Nyssa, flatly. "That was unsolicited. - You all
did very well, Captain. _Please_ don't let anyone shoot my guests
before I meet them, though. You can let them go now. They're
friendly." Tegan's captors released their grip on her: a pain of
relief flooded her upper arms, and she crossed her hands over her
chest to massage them. She could feel Si's silently wounded
dignity, and hear Cats's aggrieved muttering. Nyssa addressed the
Doctor again, her exasperation finally open. "That's a nice
regeneration, Doctor. _How_ many is it, now?"

"Eight..."

"I'm not surprised, if this is how you're carrying on! I
don't want it to be _my_ weapons that kill you, Doctor! You might
at least consider that." The Mayor tapped a lightly-booted foot in
an ominous rhythm. "And how could you _dare_ risk Tegan (hello,
Tegan!) that way?"

"Now, Nyssa - Your Honour - you know my TARDIS's signature..."

"They're automatic defences, you idiot! Why should I have
expected _your_ TARDIS to go up against them? You were lucky you
weren't incinerated!"

_Thanks a lot, Doctor!_

"Oh." The Doctor looked nonplussed for a second. "Just as
well I left some safety margin, then..."

Nyssa shook her head. "And these other people. I asked you
to bring Tegan. Who are they?"

Tegan had had enough. "Let's start again," she suggested,
loudly, so that everyone turned to look at her. "Hello, Nyssa.
You're looking well. I'm not doing badly either. These are my best
friends from Earth, Cats Hambridge and Simon Westport. It's good to
see you."

The short silence seemed to cover miles. When Nyssa spoke
again, though, her manner had thawed considerably.

"I'm sorry, all of you. I'd meant to meet you properly, but I
wasn't - expecting - the way you'd arrive! And I wasn't here to
handle it personally, because I've come straight from dealing with
another emergency." She stepped up to Tegan, squeezed her arms, and
pecked her lightly on each cheek. "It will always be good to see
you, Tegan!"

Tegan made herself smile fondly, and Nyssa turned away,
satisfied, to give the Doctor the same treatment. The Traken girl's
rare shows of affection had always been as characteristic and
intense as her more usual reserve. _That was just like being
schmoozed by a politician!_

_Well - isn't she? Mayor of Terminus, and all..._

_Oh, Nyssa! I never wanted to see you like this! Why did you
even want me here?_

_Tegan Jovanka, stop overreacting!_

"And you two are Tegan's friends." Nyssa had turned to Cats
and Si. "I hope we'll be friends, too. Of course you're welcome
here! I'm Nyssa, Tremas's daughter, called Heal-All by the Vanir,
of Traken and Terminus. I'm a biologist of talent, and a medic and
administrator of sorts. And you?" With a slight tilt of head and
hands, she offered her whole
attention to Si.

Detachedly, Tegan noticed her own jaws beginning to clench.
She stopped them. That was a Nyssa mannerism that had never
bothered her before.

"Simon Westport, Phoebe's son, of Earth," he told her plainly.
"Poet." Tegan admired the grave cordiality of their greeting, as
well as the steadiness and brevity of the handshake that went with
it. Nyssa turned to Cats.

"Catherine Felicia Hambridge, Martha's daughter, called Cats
by everyone," the stocky woman said cheerfully. "Of Earth.
Technician. I hardly recognised you with all your clothes on."

Nyssa's expression froze. "I beg your pardon?" Tegan was
unpleasantly aware of the golden highlights glinting off violent
men's armour.

Cats's face shone with innocence. "You haven't heard of _Who
Goes There_, then? You're a star back home, Your Honour. Not that
they do you justice."

"_Doctor...?_" Nyssa awarded him a look of deepest
suspicion.

"It's a children's programme," the Doctor explained hastily.
"Benign propaganda, scripted by UNDO. The Squadron-Leader likes to
see lots of pretty girls in short skirts in it, hence the joke." He
sighed sanctimoniously. "A decent fellow's harmless foible, Nyssa.
It's common enough, in men passing their prime..."

"It is, isn't it?"

The Doctor coughed heartily. "I understand you've done great
things with this station, Nyssa. I've been looking forward to
seeing your achievements here for some time. I don't suppose
there's any chance of a tour?"

When Si stepped out onto Terminus Station, the world crowded in on
him as it hadn't since he was fifteen. Colours and lights flared
high, sounds strained away from their senses, and he moved in the
fever dream whose mastery had made him a poet. Now, mastery fled to
the wind's four quarters, and he was a schoolboy in a visionary
taking again, distrait, overloaded, and helpless. The Vanir's
violent manhandling only added to the feeling's familiarity. The
first time around, too, it had gone hand-in-hand with getting beaten
up.

The TARDIS had been time out, a real-life film set.
Terminus -

It took Tegan's affronted outburst at Nyssa to pull him back
into focus. He counted silently, used the remembered coolth of a
mountain spring to splash himself awake, and stowed the gems away
for later. Their lustre lingered, and the brightness control was
still set about as high as he could bear it.

He registered all the others said and did. It was too
immediate, and he still too detached. He concentrated on it very
hard.

Nyssa, Tegan's oldest friend, was introducing herself. She
blazed. He hurt.

Nyssa of Traken. Darkest copper curls, crowned with ornate
silver tiara. High cheekbones. Face a tad too oval to call 'heart-
shaped'. Delicate, rather stubborn, cleft chin. All of these, seen
only as a frame for those bright, appraising, steel-grey eyes. He
managed to return her greeting, albeit briefly and rather stiffly.

They shook hands. Her skin was silken, her grasp sure. It
was a short, Casual Acquaintances sort of handshake.

Si felt the geese walking all over his grave.

By the time he'd shaken off the shock of that inexplicably
vehement reaction, Cats was well into her wind-up of Nyssa and the
Doctor. That brought Si happily back to earth, pretty pronto. He
usually found Cats to be good medicine. And if she saw fit to pay
those two back so promptly for her reception, that meant she'd
decided against holding a grudge about it.

_The ETs are luckier than they know..._

"A tour?" said Nyssa. "I should think so. Would you all like
to take a walk with me down to our Helm Room? We can see everything
from there, and I want you to meet our Chief Engineer, a very
brilliant man. You'll like him. His name's Alphard.

"Captain Mord, could you spare us a couple of escorts?"

The soft, greenish carpeting on the floors was one part of it. The
elaborate ceiling lamps and window-like, fractally shaded wall
lights, with the April afternoon illumination they gave: they were
another. The carefully placed, beautifully tended plant displays
helped too. Si had learned enough about space exploration to know
about the austere functionality that would rule - on pain of
nonsurvival - in any artificial space habitat. He'd also seen all
those SF films. He'd come out primed for an environment as bleakly
futuristic as the TARDIS. But Terminus looked and sounded and felt
like a _world_ - a true home.

_They've got antigravity, matter transmission, equations that
redescribe reality_, he realised. _They don't_ need _futurism!_

They passed a sculpture in black metal, with organic Henry
Moore lines, something like the sea or a boxer or duelling
teardrops. It made Si swallow a lump in his throat, and promise
himself a return visit at leisure.

_Funny how Tegan never described the place this way..._

He looked fondly down on the object of his affections. Tegan
was sticking close to his side, simmering down but still mussed,
taciturn, and aggravated. Ahead, the Doctor and Cats flanked Nyssa;
chatting semi-seriously, whilst their Vanir escorts Lambi and Einar
bookended the party.

_The Company_, he chided himself, _the lazar hospice: they'd
have gone for the basic line. Nyssa's people must have remodelled
half the interior!_ So: she had money to burn. Interesting.

"...power outage in the Black Sun," Nyssa was saying. "It's
the second over the past month. I'd appreciate it if you could talk
with Alphard and Amina about that. It ought to be impossible, so
we're in the market for insights."

"Amina?" said the Doctor.

"The Black Sun?" said Cats.

"Amina's my military commander. She runs the Black Sun and
deep-space operations, and Captain Mord secures Terminus proper."
Nyssa's voice actually attained warmth, confirming Si's suspicion
that she might be a pretty nice person to work for, were you up to
it. _Laureateships, anyone?_ "The Black Sun is Alphard's
brainchild. We'll speak of it with him."

His attention once fixed on Nyssa, Si found his eyes drawn to
her walk. It was graceful, an aesthetic delight, like a dancer's or
- _Wait. Isn't she some sort of martial artist?_ By Tegan's
account, the Traken's style of self-defence had been all about
balance and evasion, like t'ai chi if not softer. Whatever! He
could have watched Nyssa moving for hours, like a mobile sculpture
in the wind, like the seagulls flying.

But Tegan walked by his side, prickly and vigilant; and he
doubted he could convince her that the Mayor of Terminus wasn't half
so attractive as she, but was only dancers, mobiles, and seagulls.
He purposely let his eyes stray aside, back to the lights and
surfaces and people that had turned a space station into a real
world...

...No nasty air-conditioning, only gentle, sourceless breezes,
though something about them was still not the same...

...The walls: white or moon-white or cream-white, and not
really decorated all that much. Now and again, a lush green vine or
a sparse, stemmy golden one would break the blankness. A calm,
unfussy place. The few passers-by, as diverse as the Vanir were
uniform, walked briskly but without haste, conversing quietly,
sometimes acknowledging their Mayor with a friendly-seeming nod.
Yes. Si could relax here, even in action; and he could feel Tegan
doing just that beside him. They passed through a great atrium and
into a grey-bordered corridor.

The upward curve of a white-gold vine -

_Eureka!_

"Nyssa?"

"Simon?"

"Please. Call me 'Si'. I've been admiring your décor. You
don't by any chance practise feng shui, do you?"

"I don't know the term."

"It's a way of harmonising energies, especially in living
spaces. Not 'energies' in the scientific sense - aesthetic, maybe
phenomenal analogues: something like that." Ye Gods, he hoped he
wasn't sounding like some Stone Age savage. "Only I've seen that
done well on Earth, and this looks a lot like it."

Nyssa dropped back to walk alongside him. Her smile was
radiant.

"Thank you. I don't know 'feng shui', but on Traken we had
_calaglay_. Aesthetic energies are quite real, harmony was very
important to us, and I was well trained in it. Here, I've found it
invaluable."

"Yes," said Cats thoughtfully, "I can see how you might need
something like that - living in space long-term, I mean. Cuts down
on the psychoses, I bet."

"The Earthhome Federation are mercantilists," said Nyssa
dryly. "A certain level of psychosis - especially on the fringes -
goes along with that, so they tend to manage around it. I won't!
Actually, _calaglay_ has ended up as the foundation of my whole
foreign policy..."

The Doctor looked around, puzzled. "Isn't this still a
Federation station? How can you _have_ your own foreign policy?"

"We broke the Company in the courts, Doctor - give or take a
few local skirmishes. Terminus belongs to its own Mayoral Trust
now, and we have a seat in the Assembly."

"Not a voting seat, though?"

"Of course not. But we still have autonomy, and diplomatic
privileges."
The Doctor frowned. "Both of which can be revoked, any time
the Assembly chooses to declare a protectorate. Which it will
certainly do if you step out of line, or have something they want.
Why do I feel both these things are true?"

"They are," said Nyssa, smugly. She ticked points off on her
fingers. "Firstly, no-one in the Federation trusts anyone else's
schemes. Secondly, we've let them get some notion of our defences.
A large task force could destroy us, but hardly take us intact."
She nodded respectfully at Einar. "Thirdly, our medical work is
popular, and the trial made us a _cause célèbre_. The political
costs of moving against us would be significant."

The Doctor really sounded worried now. "These are your
protections?"

"They help. But fourthly, no-one can afford a war with the
Terileptil Museion."

Tegan's voice almost squeaked with outrage. "You're allied
with the _Terileptils_? Against _humans_?"

"Against no-one, Tegan." Nyssa's response was cool. "There's
no need to judge the whole species by the three convicts who tried
to annihilate your civilisation two thousand years ago. I wouldn't
deal with your Hitler or Jack Ripper, either."

"Doctor?"

"What Nyssa says is true." He didn't sound particularly
reassured by it. "I admit I still don't understand the strategy."

"I don't really have a formal alliance with the Museion,
Doctor. That would be provocative, and hardly reliable in a pinch.
I _am_ allied with the human-Terileptil mining venture at Fuji-
Greathearth, which is where my space marines come from." She looked
directly across Si at Tegan. "The Terileptil _taktikos_, Fastolf,
is my business partner and my friend. He's one of my favourite
people. I wish I saw him more often."

"Does he mess with people's minds?" This was the cardinal sin
for Tegan. Assorted nasties - _Oh. One of them that Terileptil._ -
had at various times abused her own, without permission. Si was
more than behind her on this. Brain-rape headed his extremely
short list of capital crimes.

"No," said Nyssa, and forced a smile. "You know how I feel
about that. The Plague Crew stole those devices from their own
prison. - I haven't really changed so much, Tegan!"

"Hardly at all, to look at you. I'm sorry, Nyssa. I'm out of
sorts."

"I know the feeling," the Mayor said, wryly.

"Your security," prompted the Doctor. "I trust there's more
to this than one exotic joint venture?"

"It's the _calaglay_, isn't it?" said Si. He was starting to
remember a more attractive side of Terileptils. "You're exporting
it to the Museion."

"Of course," said Nyssa, sunny again. "Fastolf and I used his
contacts to market my designs - modified Traken classics, mostly.
They've done rather well. We now own several major decorating
houses on Dragondance, Paschal, and Eye of Stars. If we're
attacked, the Terileptils can't just stand by and see it happen."

Cats was blown away. "That's your foreign policy? _Interior
decoration?_"

"You know, Cats," said the Doctor slowly, "that's rather good.
Terileptils are rabid aesthetes, as well as warriors. Owning
'several major decorating houses' is like saying you run several
major human churches. Except it accounts for more of the economy.
And Nyssa's irreplaceable. I think she has the Federation nicely
pinned." He gestured grandly at his old companion. "My
congratulations, Nyssa. Am I right in assuming you could lend me a
couple of bob?"

"Not if a 'bob' is very much, Doctor. I live on my salary.
All Dragon & Maiden dividends go straight to the Mayoral Trust.
_That's_ quite healthy, however."

"Speaking of healthy," said Tegan. "I guess you did perfect
that cure for lazar's disease. Congratulations!"

"It's that 'Heal-All' that gives it away," noted Cats,
helpfully.

"The Vanir," said Nyssa, with exasperated warmth, "insisted on
giving me a hero-Name, after their custom. It's a bit overstated!
Still, I suppose it's better than 'Hildegard Thump'..."

Tegan nudged Si meaningfully in the ribs. He knew why, too.
Nyssa's attempted joke suggested that Tegan hadn't exaggerated her
companion's ongoing struggle with humour. _Ah well, no-one can have
everything!_ He linked Tegan's arm, as they turned a sudden,
sweeping curve in the passage.

Black doors loomed ahead of them, with a giddy design of
silver stars. Si thought he recognised a different taste cutting
in. Nyssa walked to the front of the party, and turned to face them
all, the drunken stars her backdrop.

"I confess," the Traken girl (_woman!_) told them, "that I got
a _little_ bit further than just 'curing' lazar's disease. I'll
tell you all about it later. For now - Lambi? Einar? Would you
mind guarding the door, and turning any curious citizens away? We
need to speak with Alphard in private for a while."

"Go to it, Yeronner."

Nyssa turned back to the door, visibly hugging her secret to
her. _So, the girl isn't dead after all!_ This made Si's heart
glad. From the nearly silent catch in Tegan's breath, she felt the
same.

"Alphard," said Nyssa aloud, "we'd like to come in." And the
starry doors swung open.

The Helm Room was large, oval, done in uncompromising silver and
steel, and dominated by a huge round viewport, now showing shifting
abstracts of white lines against a black background. To Tegan, it
was like stepping out of the Galaxy's swankiest Rest Home for the
Young, straight into the Cathedral of Technology. The empty chair
before its 'rose window' hadn't yet stopped spinning.

"Hey, _amigo!_" Nyssa called, striding jauntily forward to
meet Alphard part-way.

_'¿Amigo?'_ thought Tegan. And: _Strewth, must they_ be
_friends!_

"Hey, _niña_!" The Gallifreyan engineer whacked Nyssa on the
shoulder. The little Traken displayed no surprise. In the flesh,
Alphard was smaller than Tegan had expected, broader but scarcely
taller than the diminutive Mayor of Terminus. He wore a loose-
fitting one-piece in royal blue with gold trim, which to Earl's
Court eyes resembled a designer boiler suit. He was very quick,
emphatic, and his shrewd eyes danced so that it was difficult to
meet them. "The Doctor," he assessed, "and Tegan Jovanka. Splendid
to meet you at last. Alphard of Terminus, Temporal Engineer, Zeroth
Class! _Niña_, your other friends. You must introduce us!"

Nyssa obliged. Tegan heard the doors fold shut behind them.
She noticed, over at the left end of the room, a little area with a
bunk and chairs and some small square machines; a discreet grey door
lay beyond them. _More than a touch of the workaholic, then..._

"Excellent - a worthy audience, then." Alphard grinned
toothily. "But Doctor, as a living Gallifreyan...legend...who's
seen fit to test our defences, I'd value your opinion. _Could_ you
see any sign of weakness in them?"

"Yes," said the Doctor, soberly. "Supposing I'd flown the
coop when you first challenged me, and come back having analysed
your structures at leisure? I don't say I could come up with a
counter-specific, but if I were - let's say, the Master - I'd
certainly try something like that."

"Won't work, Doctor. The configuration is quasi-organic, with
layers of contained chaos. The structures won't be the same next
time - or predictable." Alphard shook his head. "And anyone who
tries a back-time route will find themselves unpleasantly current.
Anything else?"

"Search me. Could you actually have set the systems to trap
the TARDIS at first brush, though?"

"I believe I could. I haven't been asked to - yet."

"Diplomatic reasons," Nyssa explained. "Gallifrey and I
disagree on a few issues, and we don't want to rub the High
Council's noses in it."

"What a marvellous image," mused the Doctor. "It might be
salutary - but no, I do take your point."

"Lots of defences for a hospital," Cats pushed.

"We're much more than that, Cats." Nyssa's tone was cool,
keen. "Alphard, let's show our guests the Black Sun."

Alphard spun back to face the viewport, gestured, and muttered
an alien abracadabra. The shifting lines disappeared abruptly,
replaced by a view of deep space. Tegan strained and frowned, but
whatever the 'Black Sun' was, she couldn't discern it.

"Oh, I see," said Cats. A sideways glance at Si told nothing
as to whether he'd seen too. Tegan hoped he hadn't. "What are
they, beacons?"

"Right!" said Alphard. "The Sun's home for our Project
Ourania: block transfer and assembly transform work on the structure
of spacetime. Chancy stuff. We've got it contained behind a 'black
border', an absolute barrier to matter or information. There are
portals, of course - all with octuply redundant safeguards,
naturally - but it has to be signposted from outside."

So, Cats had meant the nearer, brighter stars towards the
centre of the screen. How was Tegan supposed to have guessed that?

The Doctor cleared his throat. "What's it all about,
Alphard?"

"Block transfer a-life."

"I beg your pardon?" Tegan was _not_ going to spend her
visit standing around like a lemon.

It was Si who answered. "A-life... artificial, or abstract
life. Self-evolving, lifelike computer processes. We're beginning
to make some headway in that, back home."

"Stick to it," Nyssa advised. "That's where biology finally
gets its scientific basis. The processes we're researching at the
Black Sun, though, are hosted on the deep interstitial - the
foundation of space-time itself. You might say we're creating a
kind of 'living' space-time."

"I certainly see why all the security measures," said the
Doctor, with rather ominous softness. "What's the point?"

"The continuum we have is moribund and fragile, Doctor," Nyssa
told him. "As we found out at Logopolis, to our infinite cost! We
needed to _heal_ the causal fault here, not just stick a patch over
it."

"I suppose that might be a responsible course of action,"
conceded the Doctor. "It surely wasn't Gallifrey's original
approach, was it?"

"No," said Alphard. "Nor mine. Even I can't kludge around a
fault gross enough to reach to the moment of Creation, though; and
the fault environment destroys patches quickly. I started playing
with adaptive patching, and Nyssa pointed out to me that we really
wanted an evolving biotic spatio-temp system, to _grow_ over the
fault. That's when we really started working together! 'The rest
was history' - future or otherwise!"

"Fixed it, have you?" Cats prompted.

"Yes." Nyssa's happy announcement took all her visitors by
surprise. "So far. The healing isn't complete, but it's going
according to schedule. If it works, it opens up some very promising
prospects."

"Do you want to tell us what?" Tegan spoke more sharply than
she'd intended. It had been a very long and nervous day.

"There are too many places where space-time is tenuous or
damaged," said Alphard smoothly, "especially post-Logopolis. If
they could be healed up, rather than just stabilised, the Universe
would be a much healthier place."

"But the Ourania process is still under quarantine, for the
moment," finished Nyssa.

The Doctor pursed his lips. "I'd think it would be! _Not_
the kind of thing you want spreading willy-nilly. Speaking of
which, who knows about it?"

"Several of us on Terminus," said Nyssa, "and many more with a
hopelessly vague idea. On the Gallifreyan side, knowledge of
Alphard's work is sealed to the High Council alone, under penalty of
capital treason."

The Doctor looked glummer yet. "Everyone, then."

"Exactly!" said Alphard. "The usual renegades probably knew
about it within a tenday; hence the defences. Of course, they do
have the side-effect that Gallifrey can't just come barging in on us
either, which is all to the good. Frankly, I trust Nyssa with this,
and all its wonderful potential, ten times more than I trust that
gang of inbred intriguers."

"I hope you're right," Nyssa told him; and it sounded to Tegan
like a well-worn protest, polite modesty rather than self-doubt.
Nyssa always had been very polite. The Doctor was still eyeing
Alphard curiously, one eyebrow slightly raised.

"Doctor," the engineer chuckled, sharp and low, "hypocrisy
doesn't become you. Given the choice, who would _you_ trust?"

"_Touché_," the Doctor conceded. "It's just a rather novel
perspective for a Time Lord."

"But I'm no Time Lord, O Time Lord!" Alphard's eyes glinted
with dark merriment. "I'm Gallifreyan by upbringing and culture,
and the only temporal engineer they even dared let near _this_
problem; but lacking their precious geno- and pheno-, a flunkey
forever." His grin at that was so joyous and self-satisfied that it
blew away all of Tegan's usual _oh-dear-chip-on-the-shoulder_
distaste for such talk. "That being so, I choose to flunk for
someone with style, taste, and more serious concerns - hey, _niña_?"
He reached out and squeezed Nyssa's elbow.

_She didn't flinch!_

"I don't deserve Alphard," Nyssa declared. "But I think
Gallifrey deserves him less."

"Sounds it," said Cats. "So what about these power outages?
That doesn't sound very 'organic' to me!"

"Don't go home," said Nyssa, glancing significantly at
Alphard. "Terminus needs you... The Black Sun mines energy from
the deep interstitial, or it couldn't possibly power space
reconfiguration. We convert most of that energy into vital
orderings - 'life force' for Ourania, if you like - and export the
rest to our main banks, or as power-packs to our neighbours."

"The power-outs didn't actually disrupt anything, then?" said
the Doctor.

"No," said Alphard. "They were too short, and our reserves
are too big. Another thing. The last drain went through the elan
generator, and by the entropic signature, so did this one. It
wasn't just the energy-mining hitting a lean patch. We bled enough
potential life force to keep a small planet alive for a day."

"It _could_ be something we don't understand about Ourania,"
said Nyssa. "It might even be that problem I asked you to help me
with. But Amina and I suspect sabotage: a ruse to make us close
down the Black Sun. That would be too convenient for too many
interests, and I don't intend to oblige unless it directly threatens
public safety."

"How do you draw the line?"

"When having it becomes more dangerous than not having it, of
course. I admit I'd like the fault to be permanently healed first,
too. Don't you think so, Doctor?"

"I think everyone will rest easier when that's accomplished,
Nyssa. You'd evacuate, and sacrifice the habitat, then? If it came
to that?"

"I like to think Terminus is one of the Universe's more
hopeful places. But we _are_ citizens of the Universe, first.
That's a large part of what we've created." She looked appealingly
around to Si, Tegan, Cats. "We _will_ start from nothing, somewhere
else, if that's what it takes to secure Creation from the fault!"

Tegan didn't doubt a word of her old friend's speech. She
could see the golden ranks of Vanir marching behind it.

Alphard clapped discreetly.

Nyssa almost jumped. "Oh, am I orating again? Sorry. It's
all true, though. Now." She planted her hands on her hips, and
faced the screen determinedly. "Now I remember my manners, I did
promise you a tour, didn't I? I think you'll be pleasantly
surprised by what you see... _Hospital!_"

_Agora._

Terminus had grown hugely. Tired and out of sorts as she was,
Tegan found it fascinating.

Academy.

Most of it was pretty, and some of it

Garden Heart

was even beautiful.

Docks.

Orientation.

Embarkation. She stood quietly by Si and let it soak in,
listening with half an ear to the occasional questions from the
Doctor or Cats, Nyssa or Alphard's answers.

Serenity Living and Serendipity Living.

Technical and the black and silver antigravity did not come
fifth for though Cats with nothing but imagination fancied Nyssa in
pidgin Alphard two terrible the curl of someone she recognised
integral and look oh I see it's like a ratchet and the white lines
back on the screen because they're talking here forever -

"Excuse me," interjected Si, into a brief lull, "but it's
really been a very long day; it was evening for us before we even
set out. I don't know about Tegan, but I'm almost asleep on my
feet, and all these wonders are quite wasted on me now my wits have
dozed off." He yawned, rather theatrically. "Tegan? Would you
think it terribly rude of me if I asked Nyssa to find me some crash
space?"

"Not at all, Si." She didn't have to fake her bleariness one
bit. "I was just thinking the same. Is tha' okay, Nyssa?"

"Oh, Tegan, I'm so sorry!" Nyssa was all solicitude. "I
didn't stop to think that you weren't keeping Terminus time yet! Of
course you should sleep!" She got up from the Doctor's side, where
she'd been mostly sitting out the latest ping-pong between Cats and
Alphard. "Do you share a room, or shall I arrange two?"

"Two, please," said Si, "only - do you have any adjoining
rooms? If that's all right with you, Tegan?"

Tegan captured his hand and looked Nyssa straight in the eye.
It was all a dream, anyway. "Do you have a double - with twin
beds?" Nyssa nodded kindly. "Si? Please?"

"You'll not have to ask me twice, dear heart." Tegan could
have listened to her poet's voice for long, so long. "Nyssa? All
our thanks - for this, and for everything."

"You haven't had much to thank me for, yet." The Mayor of
Terminus smiled, very sweetly. "But thank you so much for coming.
I wouldn't have missed seeing any of you for all of Marek's magic
opals! Cats? Doctor? How about you?"

"A Time Lord who couldn't handle time-lag wouldn't be
impressive," opined the Doctor. "I'll sit up a while longer, if you
are."

"Let's," Nyssa said briefly.

"What was that?" said Cats, breaking off from something or
other about gyroscopes.

"Are you tired? Do you need your room yet?"

"Are you joking?" Cats's voice was uncharacteristically
manic. "Do you need to ask? I _am_ relaxing!"

"I'm afraid she is, _niña_." Alphard sounded extremely
cheerful. "She strikes cold terror into the roots of my spine.
Best beware this one."

Nyssa gave Tegan the look. "I'll have Lambi and Einar show
you two to our best quarters in Serendipity. Sleep long, and have
pleasant dreams. I promise I'll try to entertain you more properly
tomorrow!" She led them to the door, touched it open, and spoke for
them to the golden boys who waited outside. "Goodnight, Tegan.
Goodnight, Si."

"Goodnight, Nyssa." It was all Tegan could do to hold herself
back from coming over suddenly all tired and emotional. Words she'd
never thought to say again!

The Vanir led them to a small, trim room done in white and green and
grey, its only decoration a sparse crystally mesh on the ceiling.
Si recognised the flavour of _calaglay_ instantly, and loved it. By
mutual accord, as soon as their escorts had taken their leave and
shut the door, he and Tegan turned to each other, almost falling
into an exhausted embrace.

"What a day, Si!" she managed eventually. "What a day!
Suddenly my life's slipped from under me again. Except for the best
parts." She snuggled shakily closer. "Thanks for that."

"You brought me, Tegan - all the way to the stars. Didn't I
always tell you you were apt to do that?"

"Oh God, Si, not blarney at this hour! I can't even keep
_straight_ talk straight!" She peered up at him with sleepy
slyness. "So, what do you make of Nyssa, then? Don't you think
she's _gorgeous_?"

"Nyssa? She looks sort of like Sarah Norbury." He made his
voice drip with arch unconcern. "I suppose she _is_ rather
beautiful - if you like the juvenile look. It's not my cup of tea,
so I didn't really notice."

"_Si..!_" threatened Tegan.

"It's an impossible question, dear. She's your friend, and
she's incontestably pretty. She's also not you - and you tend to
steal my attention, anyway. There is no decent answer."

"I cou' hi' you sometimes. Could hit."

He ran his hand up over her shoulder-blades, brought it
around, and tilted her head back easily. He kissed her long and
earnestly. She seemed profoundly uninterested in hitting him. She
let him come up for air before they both passed out.

"Whew!" she judged, swaying.

"Heartily seconded." His own voice came out a bit thick.
"That is... definitely a way to end a remarkable day. If you want
to change in here, I can use the closet. - You should know, Cats is
a liar. I _don't_ wear Donald Duck pyjamas."

"_Daffy Duck_," Tegan corrected. "Thanks, Si..."

She was already in bed when he ambled out again, looking to
Si's mind quite ridiculously doll-like in repose. He outed the
light, and padded softly over to his own bed.

"Si?" Her voice was terribly tired, but she hadn't quite
given up yet. "She really is up to something, you know. How can
she a' got _further_ than _curing_ lazar disease? She never said."

"She does enjoy being mysterious, doesn't she? I shouldn't
worry - I'm sure she'll be more than happy to tell us in the
morning." His own long, involuntary yawn interrupted him as his
head fell onto the small, firm pillow. "Goodnight, Tegan!"

"G'night, love."

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Four, 'Hell's Executioner'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Fourth Episode: Hell's Executioner*

Harlequin Death came for Tegan that night: she awoke, paralysed, to its
malicious rapping on her door. She couldn't lift a finger against it,
couldn't even defy it to go away. She was ever so far from home, from
the neon lights and tacky pizzas and money worries that had kept her
safe for such a little while. Small stars glinted down on her, like
shards of hope.
Because she couldn't forbid it, _Enter Death, hissing_. It knew
all illusions and could take away all hers, leaving her loveless and
worthless and evil.
But the stars were crystals, and the sky was white, and there
was breathing; and she knew then that she slept with her beloved, who
would not let -
"Wakey, wakey!" Cats's strong, sandy voice routed horror and
romance alike, and sent her bolt upright in bed, heart pounding, throat
dry as bones. Grey white and green, suite _Nyssa_ gave her! _Si_ in
the other bed! his lovely low snoring gargling to a sudden and
unpleasant close. The light from the artful 'windows' had the watery
tint of a northern dawn.
_"Cats!"_ The technician was a more welcome sight than the
Mara, but that was really the best you could say. She was still dressed
in yesterday's clothes, and had that hardy-me-on-a-spree look about her.
"What are you here for? What hour d'you call this?"
"Urrrl," Si agreed, from the nether depths.
"Search me, squire." Cats didn't actually smile, but she was
otherwise beaming happy debauchery with every muscle. "Didn't get a
wink last night, did I?"
"Bleurgh!"
"Leave it out, Casanova," Tegan told her witheringly. "No-one
believes you, anyway."
"Do what?" Her friend's response was as much puzzled as cranky.
"How - oh, you mean Nyss? Nah. In the immortal words of that grand old
pervert Fritz Leiber, 'girls are for dessert'." Cats yawned widely, and
stretched. "Last night with Alphard was _serious_ fun, and I wasn't up
for distractions; 'specially when they're that delicious." An
exaggerated leer. "When I want her, then I'll whistle. I _do_ know how
to whistle, you know!"
"So does every half-mooning lout on every building site," Si
pronounced, sliding groggily out of bed and onto his feet. "And look
where it gets them!" With the air of one searching for pirate gold, he
sought and located his slippers.
"'Eronner is doing all the whistling right now," said Cats,
swiftly sober. "The Doctor and I are taking a ride to the Black Sun
with her, by the next packet. Coming along? We've got about three-
quarters of an hour to grab breakfast, and meet them at Eventide Bay."
Tegan felt the acid bubbling straight out of the pit of her
stomach. "Why can't she let us have _one_ proper night's sleep? I
mean, she is just not - "
"I think she has to go," interrupted Cats, calmly, "and I think
she'd feel better if we were all close by her. Some feller's died on
the Black Sun, and Nyssa's precious Captain Amina is hollering for her
to come and see."
"It's started _already_?" Tegan's voice strained upwards.
"Yeah. Bit inconvenient for him, too. Anyway, if you're not
coming, Nyss says she'll arrange you a real crack protection detail from
the Vanir. You up for it?"
"What do you think, Tegan?" Si sounded a little wonky still,
but suddenly he had made himself civilised and awake. He was already
excavating well-folded clothes from his backpack. "Personally, I'm for
going along. I've been here in a thousand books and films, and I always
know the splinter party is asking for it..."
"All right," Tegan conceded. "I don't really feel like us being
left behind, either. - I've got to have the bathroom first! Sorry
about that..."
"Give you ten minutes," Cats cautioned. Tegan bridled, but saw
the sense in her flatmate's _diktat_, something she'd almost let turn
into a habit. Visions of sluttish buttoning and slapdash makeup looming
large in her mind's eye, she practically catapulted herself into the
shower, toting her whole pack along with her. Si winced - it was still
too early to smile - and started chatting with Cats about last night.
He quickly gathered that Nyssa and the Doctor hadn't stayed all that
long, and hadn't been noticed much while they were there. He couldn't
help wondering how things might have gone, had Alphard been 'Amina' and
vice versa. He felt the pricking of a good poem in that somewhere, but
he doubted he'd find it before it went stale.
When Tegan emerged from the bathroom only a quarter-hour later,
looking like a slightly hectic and rumpled spring morning, he kissed her
because he desired her, and disappeared quickly into a shower which
disguised deep-space meanness with a Refreshing Natural Rain approach.
It had Nyssa's fingerprints all over it. He left the shower, wasted at
least three minutes subsiding and towelling himself dry, and shaved with
electric dissatisfaction. He pulled on his Oxford blue slacks and polo-
neck, and sallied forth to join his friends.
They weren't alone. "Ketil," Cats introduced the tall, rawboned
Vanir, "and Ottar," the compact, handsome one sculpted to a Michelangelo
design. "Si Westport, the poet."
"Amazing," said Ottar. "A man with an honest occupation, and it
isn't fighting. Salutations!"
"Honoured - "
"Finally!" said Ketil, in a fault-finder's voice. "Time we were
going."
"There's just time to catch some porridge in the reffie," said
Ottar, "if anyone's hungry."
"No, there isn't," Ketil objected. "Can't keep Her waiting, can
we?"
"Food," declared Cats.
"Here, here!" added Tegan.
"Let's be off, then," said Ottar, and turned for the door.
"You're her friends and guests, and I'd rather be late with you than
starve you; but let's not be pushing it."
"I still think - " began Ketil, as they filed out into the fresh
air of the corridor.
"Do you ever _listen_ to her, Ketil?" Ottar looked disgustedly
over his shoulder at the three friends. "Welcome to lovely Nyssa's End,
where the Mayor's a demigoddess and a kiss is out of the question. One
of these days I'm going to goose her, just to see how many blood-feuds a
man can get into at once. She'd probably say something to shrivel me up
for a week, of course. That's against it. At least she feeds us
right."
"Your mouth is going to break your nose one of these days,
Ottar."
"My Ma always said I had a lucky face."
"'Nyssa's End'?" inquired Si, mostly to stave off more barrack-
room wit before breakfast.
"Don't call it that when She's around," Ketil warned. "She
doesn't like it."
"She's got some cockeyed reason for keeping the name
'Terminus'," Ottar explained. "Which is pretty bloody depressing, so
people turn it a little. Also, there's at least three jokes you can
make about our version on the long boring evenings. - Here we are.
Guzzle up, and let's be with her."

The refectory was a spartan place, about twice the size of a typical
greasy spoon caff, and with a similar early-morning feeling of very loud
hush. It was about a third full. The patrons looked to Tegan as though
most of them worked with their hands somehow, but that was about all
they had in common, except for the universal breakfast that came from
the dispensers: watery porridge with things floating in it, and a cup of
moss-green liquid. With Ketil and Ottar standing an intimidating guard,
no-one tried to talk to them. Tegan thought dark thoughts about Soviet
Communism, but sat down at the too-smooth woody bench with her
companions, and tucked in anyway.
The porridge was light and warming, with a faint savour like
cinnamon, and the things in it tasted of wine-soaked raisins. The green
drink was pleasantly tart and kind of citrus-y. Tegan found she'd come
to the end of it all in a couple of minutes. Si was ahead of her, and
_he_ looked blissful. Cats, who was partial to big veggie fry-ups,
whinged predictably about gruel, but her heart wasn't in it. They all
rose, filled and refreshed, and set off briskly for 'Eventide Bay'.
"Did the Garm stay around, Ottar?" Tegan asked, reminiscingly.
She didn't expect anything like the reaction she got. The
shorter Vanir actually flinched, and Ketil sucked air through his teeth.
"Sounds bad," Cats commented.
"Oh, nothing like that," the big warrior hastened to explain.
"She covered herself with honour, really. It just - upsets - Her... "
"A Company agent rubbed it out," clarified Ottar. "When we were
having those scraps about who owned what. Couldn't get the Federation
to do anything until and if we won that part of the lawsuit."
"Meaning no vengeance," said Ketil, with murderous distaste.
"Up till then, you know," said Ottar, "we didn't really know how
far she'd go. You must know she's a gentle lady, in her way. She had
us shadow-boxing with the mercenary falanges the Company was
unofficially harassing our traffic with: tricking 'em about, piling up
evidence for our suit, really keeping the casualties near nothing.
After the Garm went down, though, she suckered them into that trap at
Point 402-21: blew the Fascia's combined fleet to atoms, and detonated
their home docks to boot, which _no_ bastard expected of us. The story
splashed half-way across the Federation, and after that the Company was
lucky to hire a guy to guard a service hatch." They turned into a long,
narrow corridor with LIMITED ACCESS signs and automatic security gates.
"Funny, the courts started sitting up and taking notice around then..."
"She's a general, too?" Si's voice was suave, interested,
respectful. No-one could have taken offence at it. Tegan could tell he
was running out of patience with this demigoddess crap. _Come on, Si!_
"She's a _warrior_," said Ketil portentously.
_Oh, but the Garm! Nyssa, I'm so sorry!_
"She's a proper chief," Ottar said. "She just told Mord,
Ter'Fastolf, and that Amina what she wanted to happen, and turned 'em
loose on it. She ordered it, though: that's the point."
"You're our Lady's friends, too," remarked Ketil, for the first
time with something like approval. "Don't you worry: She won't let you
die unavenged!"
"That's nice," said Cats. "I'd really hate that!"
"That's our departure lounge ahead, isn't it?" Tegan broke in,
urgently. "Can we drop the subject, please? The Nyssa I knew wouldn't
appreciate it very much."
_She's really had people killed..._
"Yeah," sighed Ottar. "Sounds like the same person."
They came to Eventide Bay, where Nyssa and the Doctor sat
waiting for them.

Walking into Eventide in the morning made Tegan's head hurt, as if
Nyssa's call had squeezed all the juice out of the day between her room
and this departure lounge. The name wasn't fanciful; she knew at once
that morning was never allowed here, only the gentle sadness of an
evening far away from the crowds and shows. The wall-lights cast a dim
violet-shaded glow over a russet floor, and a round white lamp like an
alien moon allowed reading over by the right-hand couches, where the
Doctor waited with Nyssa, Lambi, and Einar. In a high iron stand in the
far corner, one true candle flickered and smoked. It all reminded Tegan
of what churches ought to have looked like between services, except they
didn't, and she couldn't believe in them.
She believed Eventide Bay. She wanted to stop and have a good
cry here, in or out of reason. She didn't, though, because she'd been
too much of a fountain for one week already, especially in present
company! But she hoped she'd read the catch in Si's breath right...
It was supposed to be a comfortable kind of sadness, she was
sure: a place for serious thoughts. But it felt righter than churches,
and agitated her worse. She daredn't even look at Nyssa or the Doctor.
Then Cats's friendly hand lighted wordlessly on her shoulder,
and she was her own mistress again. She took a deep, ragged breath, and
looked up brightly.
"Hello, Tegan," said Nyssa, and her voice was of a piece with
the Bay, warm and quiet and shot with sorrow. It was impossible to tell
how tired she was. "Si. Cats. I'm glad you came. I didn't know you'd
be waking up to this."
"Hail, Doctor Stormcrow!" said Ottar, with sombre humour.
"What?" It came out soft and scalding. The other three Vanir
visibly hackled.
"You've called him a hero often enough, Your Honour." Ottar
wasn't at all abashed. "A hero deserves a Name, and - well, _isn't_
he?"
Unwillingly, Nyssa smiled. "I think he has you there, Doctor.
You may be stuck with that one."
_Stormcrow, indeed!_ From the Doctor's ceilingward glance and
noisy release of breath, he was a mite less than enchanted, as well.
"So, what's going on?" Best be practical here.
"Hush!" soothed Nyssa. "This isn't a place for such talk.
There'll be plenty of time for that in the packet, and it's coming very
soon. I made Eventide Bay for a - touchstone - of what we're about,
before people go over to work on the Black Sun. Come sit with us a
while, and rest as we can!"
So they did, by the calm violet and the moonshine white and the
flickering candlelight.
And the packet came.

The great black double doors across the room slid open, and silverness
burst into the room: a ramifying mercury flower that waved man-high
petals of silent energy around the portal, spread gleaming ropes and
cobwebs across the floor, and had done before Tegan even had time to be
shocked by its suddenness and beauty. Nyssa led them across the silver
webs, for all the world like some ultra-modern pixie, and they all
followed her as in a trance. Si murmured from behind, for Tegan's ears,
_"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths/Enwrought with golden
and silver light..."_
_"The blue and the dim and the dark cloths,"_ Tegan whispered
back, as they passed the portal. _"Of night and light and the half
light."_ She knew that wish of Yeats, for it was a poem they'd shared:
_'Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.'_
They trod beyond the silverness, into a smooth white room with
two side-doors, a few moulded-in benches, a low table that arose
straight from the floor. They sat down, and soon the silverness rolled
back, like a wave on fast-rewind, and fused into a seamless white cap at
the end of the 'packet'.
To Tegan's surprise, none of the Vanir had followed them.
"We'll be about two hours," Nyssa told them. "The packet is
almost in its own Universe while it's travelling, so it's hard to
propagate very fast through i-space - the near interstitial. We've
nothing to fall back on but our own company until then." A definite imp
peeked out the corner of her eye for a moment. "I must admit, I've
been looking forward to this!"
"_I_-space?" Tegan flinched, then spoke very carefully.
"Nyssa, I wouldn't have thought you'd ever want to have anything to do
with that again!"
Nyssa had walked the information continuum once in their travels
together. Tegan hadn't gone with her, but she'd spent three weeks
picking up the pieces of that horrible fiasco. For the first and only
time in their friendship, the little Traken had simply and savagely
caved in on herself, racked with grief and nightmares, and unfair guilt
at her failure. Of course, if Tegan had had any attention to spare from
bringing Nyssa back from the abyss, she'd have been in a pretty bad way
herself.
"There's nothing to be afraid of, Tegan." The Mayor's composure
was almost callous. "Adric took the Cyberiad with him - "
The Doctor shook his head. "It was backed up; he only crippled
it. I finished the job a while ago."
"Thank you, Doctor!" And that was _not_ composed. It was
fierce. "Our repairs - or Something - did stir up the cacodemon Hastur
against us five years ago, but Alphard and I ran it off easily. I-space
entities can't really challenge prepared real-worlders, not alone; we're
just too substantial." Friendly concern resurfaced abruptly from
Nyssa's assurances. "Tegan, you should know that that goes for the
Mara, and anything like that. They can't come here, and I could destroy
them if they did. Some day, if you'll let me, I'll teach you defences
of your own."
"Thanks!"
"There are great beauties in the irreal worlds, Tegan, as well
as the terrors - and those, we can defy. I'd have you walk with me
among the phantoms of Traken, and wade by me in the Many-Coloured
Streams. You, more than anyone I know, deserve to know illusions that
are truly lovely, and true as a song! When all this is over, I'll make
time to take you there, for the asking."
Tegan saw the look on the Doctor's face as he regarded Nyssa:
the wondering, content look of a teacher whose pupil has gone beyond
him. For a moment, she'd have given anything to have him look at _her_
that way. But he never would, of course.
Nyssa governed lives, healed Time, fought demons.
Tegan knew where Tegan stopped.
She laughed shakily. "That's so sweet of you, Nyssa - but I
don't think I'll ever dare go there by myself; not if I live forever!"
"Dear Tegan!" cried Nyssa, her face alight. She threw her arms
around her surprised friend as passionately as if fourteen years had
never passed, unable to contain her joy a moment longer. "_That's_
already been arranged!"

Si felt the blow falling before it struck, but everything moved too
fast. By the time he'd got a thought into gear, it was too late
already.
When the packet had sealed up, and Nyssa had dropped her Mayoral
manner like a hot brick, he knew how her people's heavy hero-worship was
weighing her down, the dancer, the wind-chime, the seagull. When she
casually claimed to have met one of the major bogeys out of Lovecraft's
Cthulhu Mythos, and sent it away with a flea in its ear, a cold thrill
of unwanted belief went up his spine - but he knew she hadn't done it by
being any demigoddess, and that the secrets of Terminus and its mistress
ran very strong and deep. When her emotion carried her into rapturous
archaism, as she offered her friend sweet illusion with both hands, he
knew why Tegan loved her.
And when she embraced Tegan, and dried his mouth and boiled his
blood with her promise of immortality, Si heard everything coming apart
on her before the pieces hit the ground.
"What do you mean by _that_, Nyssa?" Tegan's response was
agitated - almost hostile.
"I'm sorry, my dear - I've sprung it on you; but I had to let
you know!" Nyssa persevered gamely. "You'll never age, Tegan: you nor
your friends neither. In seven or eight tendays, you'll be back in your
absolute physical prime, and you'll stay there. Accident or malice can
hurt you or kill you, but not time, nor any chronic condition. It's a
side-effect of my answer to lazar's disease, and of course we keep the
station saturated with that..."
She trailed off, sensing Tegan's withdrawal. Si felt equal and
opposite thrills pinning him like a butterfly to a board, helpless to
think or act.
Nyssa had let him off the Big One, given him the ages to live
his starry dreams. Beside him, he felt Cats's exultation blazing like a
bonfire.
_Tegan, don't!_ But he knew the wish was vain, as he made it...
The Doctor cut in before Tegan could say anything else.
"Nyssa," he said softly; and his voice too was worried, and far less
than approving. "I think you'd better tell us just what you've done
here."
The Mayor of Terminus visibly discarded a long-cherished spiel.
"Very well, then," she said shortly. "The early years were very bad
here - the set-up was far rottener than any of us knew - and I blundered
terribly. My improved radiation treatment used lower doses, more
efficiently. It also allowed a tiny fraction of radiation-resistant
lazargens to evolve, and mutate. Lazar's disease is _very_ old, and it
has many tricks in reserve. It came up with a super-virulent strain
that bred ahead of any dose of radiation that wouldn't kill the patient.
I was half-dead of it before I found the answer, and a lot of others -
including most of the Vanir you met - weren't that lucky." Her voice
bled briefly with re-lived disgust and self-contempt. "Little Miss
Heal-All wasn't much good for _them_!"
"Don't bash yourself, Nyssa," said Tegan flatly. "Just get to
the point."
Nyssa walked away, and shook her head.
"You have to understand what lazar's disease _is_. It powers up
the natural healing processes - and rides on their back. It also
corrupts the immune response. Secondary infections and auto-allergies
damage the body, but the boosted healing ability regenerates the tissue
- only ridden with lazargens, and morbid, prone to sloughing off and
being regenerated again. A lazar stays active long after their life has
become...monstrous, sowing lazar's disease wherever they go, along with
every other plague that happens to be abroad. A lazar planet would be a
fair copy of hell, and lazars are considered legally dead all across the
Federation. Nothing more subtle than hard radiotherapy can touch what
ails them - and even when they're cured, they can never go home."
"And you made an attenuated strain," the Doctor guessed. "Low
virulence and high adaptation, so as to out-compete the original?
That's clever."
"Better people than I have been trying that for two thousand
years, Doctor. I was _dying_, badly, and I was in a hurry! No. I
engineered a _more_ potent strain - optimised to infest the immune
system, which I only managed by plagiarising code wholesale from an
obscure Terran venereal disease some of our patients had handy."
Cats winced.
"That gave the immune system a net boost, and stopped the damage
in its tracks. We still looked and felt like the walking dead: I can't
begin to describe the unpleasantness. That gave me time and an
incentive, and I came up with the one idea I'm truly proud of in the
whole affair. I linked my lazargens into the immune response, so they
could spread throughout the body without being attacked. That and their
regenerative edge lets them out-compete the others eventually; and
because they're optimised for the immune system, the equilibrium level
in other tissues is fairly reasonable. After a truly vile ten months,
we ended up healthier than when we started." Nyssa shrugged
expressively. "Infectious, trapped, but healthy. We didn't realise
until some time later that the super-regenerator would start to reverse
ageing damage, given nothing else to work on. I made a few very small
final adjustments - almost suggestions, really - and _that's_ how we
came to be contagious immortals. It wasn't exactly planned! But now we
know it works..." She turned again to Tegan, and smiled very dearly.
"How could I not have called you?"
"You did _that_ to me?" Tegan had gone ghost-white, and her
voice was ashen. "You didn't even _ask_?!"
"Sorry about that." Nyssa didn't sound at all repentant. "We
_have_ researched a radiation therapy now that cures it, if you truly
object."
"That's not the same!" Tegan wailed. "I - don't know - !"
And it wasn't, of course. Si could just about understand, with
dread, why Tegan might turn down an offer of extra years on her life;
but cutting them off when she had them already, that would be another
thing again. That would be just a little too much like suicide for the
woman he had come to know.
"You tricked me into it, Nyssa! You didn't give me the choice!
I - I don't want to talk to you right now! I have to think!" Holding
back angry tears with obvious effort, Tegan stormed out through the left
side door. The Doctor gave Nyssa a hard look, shook his head
helplessly, and then followed his old companion, closing the door behind
him.
Nyssa, Cats, and Si exchanged blank glances.
"One of these days," said Nyssa ruefully, the Mayoralty already
seeping back into her tones, "I _shall_ manage to do something nice for
her! How do you two feel about it?"
"Consider yourself soundly kissed!" Cats understated, blatantly.
"Si?"
Si didn't know then why he broke one of his oldest rules, except
that it was terribly, terribly important to stop the civic steel coming
down over Nyssa's eyes again. He recited deliberately,

_"Tell me the meteor won't burn out._
_Tell me that its flame shines on above._
_Don't tell me there are other fish in rivers made of
stars -_
_Don't tell me there is time enough for love!"_

From Cats's poorly concealed start, she recognised the culprit
at once.
"That," said Nyssa animatedly, "is lovely, and very much how I
feel about it! Who wrote it? Is there more?"
"Yes," Si admitted, "but I don't like it much, and nor would
you. It's something I wrote at about fourteen, and the rest is pretty
tedious adolescent male self-pity."
"No, I wouldn't, then," said Nyssa, with frank feeling, "but
thank you for those lines! - I am afraid of people who feel the other
way, Simon. That _'kind decay shall cure all toil, and death wash
wasted hearts'_, and life's a burden to be laid down! Tegan - " The
Traken woman looked ready to stamp her foot, but only lowered her voice
instead. "She's the last person I'd have imagined that way! I used to
admire her so much, Si. She used to be so brave, even when she was
scared and hopeless and clueless. She was so _alive_! I expected
stubbornness, but - tell me, she does still love life, doesn't she?"
"Mostly," said Si, with great unwillingness. There was an edge
of cold terror to Nyssa's question. "I don't always know."
"It's still there," said Cats earnestly. "Something out there
cracked her up rotten, Nyss. I've seen her mending - especially since
she's been going with Young Mr Keats here - but she's still persuading
herself. You want to be careful with her!"
Nyssa laughed feyly. "Something out there cracks us all up
rotten in the end, Cats! It's called Death. Nothing is certain in this
dead hulk Universe except corruption and loss, or how would evil ever
get a foothold? There's only fighting the rot and failing, or getting a
taste for it, until we can heal the great death of everything!" She
heard the intense bitterness in her own voice then, choked it off at
once. "Short of that, I haven't much more to offer her..."
"Never think it, Nyssa." Si put every ounce of assurance he
owned into that.
She seized his forearms, squeezing them hard, and met his gaze
directly with her clear, too-seeing grey eyes. Back at Si's grave, the
geese were getting up a barn-dance. He hoped she couldn't feel his
rigidly-suppressed shiver.
"Make her want to stay, Si! If you couldn't, I don't know who
would. I can't lose her, too..."
The door opened. Nyssa disengaged. She was all Mayor, all
composed, as she turned to face the Doctor and Tegan.
"You're a rat, Nyssa," Tegan informed her. She stuck out a
stiff, emphatic hand. "Friends?"
"Forever, Tegan!"

The rest of the transit tended to drag.
By common consent, they spoke only of small doings on Earth
(mostly Tegan's), sprinkled with a few silly anecdotes from the Doctor's
latest tourisms. Cats Hambridge sat most of it out, speaking little and
laconically, playing numbly in her head with the possibilities of her
newly immortal life. She had a vague recollection that, under Earth
conditions, that meant your basic insurance company would give you good
odds on seeing six centuries before an elephant fell on you. Allowing
for Galactic medicine but interesting times, Cats rounded that off
mentally to a bankable five. She saw herself spending a deal of that on
Terminus, since that was where the main action seemed to be.
Could Nyssa _possibly_ have meant what Cats thought she'd meant,
earlier, while stung by Tegan's tantrum?
_Nah..._
_Good place to have a foot in the door, though!_
They were all too dazed and bruised for really good small-talk,
and only Si and Tegan were natural small-talkers anyway. It died out
soon enough, into a thoughtful and more or less companionable silence.
As the last of their two hours ebbed away, Nyssa grew restless, and
began to pace nervously around the far end of the packet. Cats,
watching her covertly and narrowly, wondered what she was anticipating,
beyond plain old murder.
_Sweet Marie Curie, that girl's been hurt so much!_ The thought
was violent and involuntary, laced with sudden anger at Tegan and the
Doctor and who knew what else. _I'm glad she's not mine..._
A sourceless bell-sound chimed inside the packet. Nyssa drew
herself fully erect as her friends approached, and her faraway look took
her over completely.
The end of the packet opened out into a spectacular silver
blossom. The Mayor of Terminus led her company out into the Black Sun.
The welcoming committee was big, motley, and evil-looking, and it had
lots and lots of artillery trained on them. Cats knew at once she was
in very deep trouble.
The guns and the goons weren't her problem.

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Five, 'The Master's Call'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Fifth Episode: The Master's Call*

They were many and grim, all in black and rust and gunmetal, each
with their own piratical flashes of colour. Their leader could have
passed for a statue: taller than Si, darker than Alphard, and built
like an over-lush Olympic athlete, with the stony expression and
eagle eyes of a great conqueror or psychopath. As Si followed Nyssa
out of the packet, he saw the little Traken stop, and exchange wary
gazes with her warrior. The moment stretched dangerously: a
forever's worth of fear hovered over Si's head, before the tall woman
cracked the smallest smile.

"_Amie!_" A transfiguration suddenly overtook Nyssa.
Laughing, she hurled herself across the bay and into the black
woman's arms, hugging her as fast as a child might hug a much-loved
tree-trunk. Gravely, and with infinitely more caution, the warrior
squeezed her back. Nyssa pecked her lightly on the cheek, then spun
around, and spoke with high happy ceremony:

"_Amie_, may I present to you that Doctor of Gallifrey, the
most worshipfullest man on life, who three times did save this our
Universe from a villainous untimely end - "

"_Five,_" Si could have sworn he saw the Doctor mouthing.

" - fair and valiant damsel Tegan Jovanka, truest and bravest
of companions; Simon Westport, her esquire, such a poet as should
bandy words with Fastolf's self; and Cats Hambridge, technician of an
Oil Age culture, who yet can answer Alphard. And these are my
friends and guests, and I commend them to your matchless care and
good-fellowship!"

The woman bowed slightly, in formal acknowledgement. Nyssa
turned her full attention back to her companions, and her voice rang
almost in song.

"Doctor, Tegan, Cats and Si, may I present to you Captain-
General Amina of Khadija's Flight; Battlemother of the Company of
Lions, a sword in war and a staff in peace; victrix of Ese's Edge,
the Trailing Moons, the Necklace, and Point 402-21 - and my very
earthly dear and cupmate for all our life days, such as I scarce
dreamed to find!" The archaic inflections dropped from her speech,
but her eyes still danced defiantly. "Congratulate us, my friends!"

It was Tegan and the Doctor she expected to come forward then,
and hug her and make much of her and her beloved 'cupmate'. But they
were surely both too stunned, and Si felt the pause opening up.
Before it could become a breach, he followed his old custom, to step
into it with something courteous and urbane.

And found he had failed disastrously to move, and lacked the
breath to speak.

Nyssa's smile began to fade.

Cats detested Amina on sight. With her Black Athena looks and her
predator's stance and her crushed-rock eyes, she made Xena Warrior
Princess look like an undernourished pussycat. Nyssa was a perfect
steel-clad sweetie, but her Captain-General radiated something
infinitely older and craftier and crueller. Cats had never seen such
a prize example of a type she'd always hated.

_Not only hated_, Jiminy Cricket reminded her squeakily. As if
she needed it.

It was such a shame that the towering Khadijite made her eyes
pop, and her chest constrict, and her knees and bowels turn to water.
Cats could already feel the imprint of bloody hands on her skin,
taste the arrogant lips crushed up against her own, hear the heart-
filling spite of their first-of-many rows. _This gal is Sandy
cubed!_

_'Falling in lust again, what am I to do...?'_

_Just once, can't it be someone I_ like?

Lovely, adorable Nyss wasn't even tempting. Tegan was
straight, fragile, and irredeemably vanilla. Alphard was a bloke.
Aphrodite was a figure of speech, and furthermore had a really shitty
sense of humour.

Nyssa ran to Amina like a lover, and called the warrior her
very earthly dear and cupmate. Cats hadn't picked up one single
solitary vibe from the elfin Traken, herself. _Either one of them
wears a really good mask, or this cupmate lark isn't what it looks
like, or I'm so run-to-seed Nyss didn't really notice I was a girl.
No, scratch that one..._

"Congratulate us, my friends!" That was a battle-cry, if Cats
had ever heard one.

_Go, Tegan, go!_

And Tegan didn't. And _Si_ didn't. And Mr Galactic
Sophisticate the _Doctor_ didn't! Truly pissed off, Cats stepped
forward, before yet another world of hurt opened up on her newest
friend.

"Good on yer, Nyss!" she said heartily, and pumped the Traken
woman's small, long-fingered hand. She would have kissed her,
friendly-like, as well: her nerves told her not to.

But she'd bought the others the seconds they needed to extract
their digits. Here they were, Tegan first by a short head,
rhubarbing merrily at Nyssa, and queuing up to hug her, and all.
Cats didn't have any attention to spare for them. She had to shake
Amina's hand without letting her cramps show. They exchanged words,
but Cats hadn't a clue what; her mouth was working on autopilot.
Lucky the Captain-General was no gabbier than Cats herself...

_See, she's not so bad! You didn't wet yourself, and you got
all your fingers back!_

Okay.

It packed up. Nyssa dusted herself off, and put on an
invisible business jacket. "I hadn't expected such a large
reception, _amie_. Is there something I ought to know about?"

"There's been another death, Nyssa. This one is definitely
murder. We found the corpse in a maintenance hatch, two nodes
upstream from where we found the first one. This one is older, I
think."

"In a _maintenance hatch_?"

Amina rummaged something out of her pocket, flipped it spinning
into the air, and caught it deftly to display on her palm. It was a
three-inch manikin in royal blue coveralls.

Tegan gagged noisily.

"Used to be Engineer Dupont," the Khadijite noted. "What do
you think, Doctor? That's the work of your kinsman the Master, isn't
it?"

"I suspect so," said the Doctor, grimly. "The matter
compressor is his personal terror weapon. It's efficient enough once
you've got it, but it's an idiotic thing to research. I'd say he's
been here on the Black Sun - and I don't see how that's possible."

Amina's eyes gleamed perilously. "Alphard's defences seem
greatly overrated."

"If the Black Sun's border really is black," the Doctor said
pointedly to Nyssa, "he can't have come here in his TARDIS, or
without using your packet. If it isn't, you have a more serious
problem."

"_Amie_," said Nyssa forlornly, "give Pierre his will; I think
he chose burial. - Doctor, the border _is_ black. This is another
of the Master's tricks. _- This time, it ends!_"

"Yes," Amina promised. "This time, he dies." There was a hot,
dull satisfaction in that. "Nyssa, our security has failed in the
worst way. I don't want you going anywhere without at least four
first-class escorts, hidden cover too. The same goes for Alphard.
Your friends need two guards apiece. Is that clear?"

"Yes, _amie_." Nyssa's meekness was only momentary. "Now,
how about the stranger?"

"No identity, no clear cause of death, no suspects. I'm no
judge. I've kept the scene sealed for you and your friend the
Doctor. I want you both to see it, before we take things further."

"Let's get to it, then." _Right on, Nyss!_ Amina quickly
formed up her troops, so that the company from Terminus was
sandwiched between double guard ranks on either side. She herself
stayed at the heart of things, sauntering along next to Nyssa. The
long tube sheathed across her back looked like an obese samurai
sword: Cats suspected it was probably more like a portable cannon.
Tegan, sick and furious, was sticking to Si's side like glue, and his
attention was clearly reserved for her alone. The Doctor actually
looked ready for a fight. They passed into the corridors of the
Black Sun, mean men and women thronging about them.

Tegan was beginning to doubt that she'd ever woken up. The day was
turning into one of those nightmares where you're surrounded by
people you love, but everything twists out of shape, and bad things
lurk around every corner.

She'd had the Mara dream again.

She was going to have to live until the stars went out, because
Nyssa had infected her with super-leprosy spiked with AIDS.

Nyssa had a girlfriend! Nyssa's girlfriend was a professional
killer who thought that flipping shrunken corpses in the air was
clever. _Poor old Cats!_

The Master had turned up right away, so maybe living forever
wouldn't be her problem after all.

She stayed very close to Si as they penetrated the twisty,
hard-edged corridors of the Black Sun. She didn't want him to start
snogging the Doctor, or turn into a pumpkin, or anything. She knew
she had all his attention, as he had hers, with no need for speech or
even touch, and she gloried in it. _Si, Si, when we get out of this
I am going to make you_ so _happy..._

_And at least I don't have to worry about Her gorgeous little
Honour now!_ Tegan didn't much like the part of herself that
murmured that, but there it was.

Crash, clatter, crunch, they marched through checkpoints and
down ramps, down to the place of death.

It was a cramped little room, moonstone trimmed in black, with
messes of machinery over most of it. Six men and two women
surrounded a corpse; the smell of soldier sweat was powerful. A
runty Irish type with a scarred face and a two-day beard tossed them
a rakish salute.

"Nothing to report, Ma'am; Yeronner. Still deader than a
Senator's head."

"Thank you, Scratch," said Amina curtly. "I want the Mayor
and her guests to get a proper look at the carcass. Step aside a
moment."

The soldiers made room for them, and the Captain-General of
Terminus Station ushered them gently forwards. Tegan saw the corpse,
which lay peacefully face-up on the floor with no visible marks of
distress. It belonged to a well-set-up, dark-bearded man of early
middle age, with a handsome and sinister face like a jester gone
wrong. The mouth had worn many smiles, but the lines around the
glazed black eyes betrayed no traces of laughter. Set on the dead
brow was a strange, ornate band like a Ducal coronet. Tegan would
never forget that face, not if she lived a million years. She
averted her gaze quickly, and pinched herself on the sly.

"The Master!" the Doctor exclaimed. He bent over his old
foe's body, placed his hand on the waxy forehead, shook his head.
His hands moved to the chest, and he placed his ear close where two
redundant hearts ought to have beaten. The silence became very
intense.

The Doctor looked up.

"He's not regenerating, Nyssa," he told her. "He'd be cold to
the touch, then, actually absorbing heat. He really is dead."

The Doctor closed the Master's eyes.

"What a shame!" said Nyssa. "Amina, have five people bind him
and take him to the auxiliary surgical bay. This is too easy, and I
trust this wretch less dead than I did alive. I'm going to treat
myself to an autopsy. Don't relax your vigilance at all, until I
give you the word."

" Nor then, neither," the warrior assured her, scornfully. "If
Alphard's to be trusted at all, then where the Master could break
through, the one called the Rani could come at least as easily.
Perhaps others. Doctor?"

"Until we learn how he came here, we can't know. But I'm
afraid you're right." He shook his head. "I don't think the Meddler
or the Pervert or any of the others would even try. If they were up
to the job, you'd be up to your ears in Sontarans and Daleks and
every sort of time-hopping riff-raff already."

"We'd deal with them, Doctor. But I prefer not to fight
blind." Amina's eyes flashed. "And what killed _this_ hyena?
Nyssa, we're going to be on amber alert, at least, for a very long
time. We may even need to declare martial law."

"Let me think about that," said Nyssa, sounding very tired.
She extracted a brown tube of pills from her pocket. Amina nearly
slapped them out of her hand.

"Nyssa! I've told you before about stims! You _need_ your
sleep! You'll damage your mind! Now delegate what you have to, and
go take a catnap."

"She may be right, Nyssa..." the Doctor said hesitantly.

This time the Mayor wasn't giving an inch. "I know, _amie_.
But you can skip sleeps in an emergency, and so can I. Doctor, would
you help me cut up this alleged Master? You know more about
Gallifreyan biology than I, and I'd truly appreciate your help."

"Certainly, Nyssa." Tegan realised the Doctor was terribly
unhappy about something.

"What's the headgear?" Cats was squinting curiously at the
Master's strange coronet.

"I don't know," said the Doctor, thoughtfully. "I doubt it's
for decoration, though."

Nyssa had produced a handset, and was speaking into it.

"Alphard, we've had a visit from the Master. He seems to have
eaten some rat poison. Send over the Accident Book by the next
packet, under my personal seal. Advise Amina when due. Thank you!
Nyssa out." She shrugged, then, and shared with her friends a horrid
Cheshire Cat grin.

"I'm sorry to run out on you like this," she told them. "You
see how things are. I've been flying on chemicals since the last
outage; and I don't intend to sleep until I know this monster is
really dead, and the bits are safely burned in a plasma furnace.
I'll see you all tomorrow morning, if not sooner. _Amie_, can you
please assign them all guards they can _talk_ to? I've been such a
miserable host... Coming, Doctor? We're going to need to prep up."

Amina was assigning them guards already as Nyssa hoved off.
The Doctor looked back over his shoulder, grimacing apologetically
before following the preoccupied and vengeful Traken. Tegan's guards
introduced themselves boisterously: a big well-kempt blonde who
seemed to be called Shellac, and a lean beige-skinned cyborg with a
metal eye and robotic hand, who was Ada. _How do you do_, Tegan
asked them; but her mind was on Nyssa all the while, and on far less
trivial and sociable questions.

_Well? Did she? And how do I feel about it if she did?_

_And how will the Doctor...?_

The surgical bay was blandly functional, offering no snags for a
wandering eye. Its smooth white surfaces gleamed with the tell-tale
liquid sheen of the Federation's self-cleaning neoplastics. The
Doctor had quickly imbibed the room's atmosphere of calm alertness;
only long experience warned him that it came through background-level
subsonics. He and Nyssa were both dressed in lightweight white
trousers and gowns, topped by filmy greenish-white coveralls designed
to be sterilised and recycled along with the precious organic
detritus of surgery. That was space-station economics in a nutshell.

Which would go by the board this time. The Doctor knew Nyssa
was in deadly earnest about annihilating every last molecule of the
Master's remains. He looked up gloomily from his VOC, the voice-
operated console that went with this era's manual surgery more surely
than scalpels and scissors. "The electrical activity isn't
depressed, or shunted into the coronet. It just isn't there.
There's nothing to find."

He wasn't precisely sorry that the Master was so inarguably
dead. But it was as intimate, demanding, and desolating a feeling
as losing a rotten front tooth. Less repairable, of course.

"Morbidity products in bloodstream, compatible with death early
yesterday," announced Nyssa crisply, withdrawing a battery of blood-
charged needles attached to a complex mechanical limb. "I'm
satisfied he's really dead, Doctor. You?"

"Yes." He'd thought it would be easier to say. Nyssa's
attitude wasn't helping. He wanted someone to be pathetic and
sentimental about it, so he could snap and lecture them sternly. But
his gentle ex-protégée was taking things to the other extreme, very
nearly gloating, which added to his depression and made him feel
faintly contaminated. "About the time of the power outage, then?"

"As closely as we can tell, yes. The missing power couldn't
have killed him directly, though. The whole room would have been
denatured, and there wouldn't have been any corpse to find. We can
start the autopsy proper now, Doctor."

"I suppose we'd better." The Doctor hated to ask, but he had
to know. "Nyssa, what were you going to do if he hadn't been truly
dead?"

"I _am_ a physician, Doctor!"

That was no little comfort. "The High Council would certainly
have wanted him to stand trial on Gallifrey."

" - But my hand might have slipped. I wouldn't trust the High
Council to water my cactus, and this man was a walking cancer in the
worlds. A formal trial here would have attracted unwelcome
attention, at the worst possible time." Nyssa's eyes, bleak as
moorland winds, glanced briefly off his own. "And I hate mock-
justice. I'd probably just have revived him, said some things I've
been saving up, and let him say his piece - looking him in the eyes,
of course. I think I'd owe us both that. Then I'd have invoked war
powers, and killed him quickly. Is that what you wanted to hear,
Doctor?"

"It doesn't matter what I want to hear, Nyssa. I've tried
mercy a great many times, and often enough I've had cause to regret
it. Besides, I'm a murderer and a genocide and a professional dodger
of responsibility. I'm not going to preach morality at you, least of
all about _him_!"

"Don't cry, Doctor. For him, if you want to; but not for me."

_"Nyssa - !"_

"I always seem to say the wrong thing," said Nyssa wryly; and
then her voice turned tender. "Doctor, you've known him for hundreds
of years, and he can't _always_ have been as evil as I've known him.
I should have let you mourn him! Asking you to do this was cruel and
thoughtless of me. You're a nice person as well as a good one; and I
can't afford to be, not here. Can you forgive me?"

"Let's just do the autopsy, Nyssa." His eyes really were
stinging; he took a deep breath. He wished they were anywhere else,
and not wearing this isolating surgical crap. "I mourned everything
in him that was worth mourning a very long time ago. What's left is
just the waste." He took up a laser-scalpel with an unnecessary
flourish. "I'll forgive you anything except keeping putting yourself
down! Please?"

"Pact?" Nyssa grinned tightly.

"Pact, then!" And they got down to the butcher-work that he,
at least, had been putting off all along.

It was very much later when the Doctor was able to remove the last
probe from the shambles of his old enemy. It had been uglier than
he'd expected, feeling like an obscene and malicious child as he
sliced and snipped and prodded and generally invaded the Master's
meat. Nyssa's frowning, unselfconscious busy-ness somehow made his
own part ten times worse.

The Doctor didn't miss the poetic justice of the Master's lack
of dignity in death; and this, too, added to his specious sense of
guilt and transgressed boundaries. But the worst of it was over.
And they'd found -
"No obvious abnormalities, Nyssa, except these two bluish
endocrine glands above the kidneys. I don't understand why he had
them; they are _not_ Gallifreyan!"

"They're Seresian glands, Doctor." Nyssa spoke steadily, but
her face flushed. "They're a Traken characteristic, a relic of his
stealing my father's body. These are almost vestigial, and they
couldn't have functioned for him anyway."

It was the Doctor's turn to frown. "How can you be sure of
that?"

"They're engineered rather than evolved, Doctor: we understood
them rather well. They're a part of our...empathic response? He'd
have had a lot of trouble adjusting if they _were_ working,
especially being what he was." She brightened, then. "Still, we'll
put that in the PathFinder for testing, too." She reached in,
snicked a piece neatly off, and placed it in a plastic sample bottle.
"I'd really love to think that _that_ was what caught up with him!"

Neither of them believed it for a moment.

"Which leaves only the brain," said the Doctor, resignedly,
"unless the microbiology comes up with something."

Nyssa snipped meditatively through something that had caught in
her scissors, and plunked them into the wash rack. "Doctor?" she
said. "Could you do me a great favour?"

"Anything, Nyssa!" he promised, with hearty recklessness.

"I'm going to try something that's almost safe. If I seem to
be yielding to hypnosis, can you pull me out?"

"Nyssa?" He'd missed yet another trick. That worried him
nearly as much as 'almost safe'.

"I don't really think even the Master at his peak could
hypnotise me these days, Doctor - not without something like the
Source of Traken to draw on. But he was much older and subtler than
I am, so better safe than sorry." She smiled affectionately at him.
"I do trust you absolutely, Doctor. That should give you quite an
advantage." And she raised her hands to her forehead, and
concentrated.

The Doctor could only watch, in wonder and concern, and ready
himself for unknown battle. One thing he did know: if some remnant
of the Master really did assail Nyssa's mind, he'd go all-in against
it; beat it to death with his bare brain, if need be.

Her frown intensified, and her slight frame shook with effort.
She didn't look remotely in trouble.

This Nyssa daunted _Hastur_. The Doctor had encountered other
entities who could have managed that - Rassilon, very likely Omega,
certainly the Keeper of Traken for that matter - but he doubted he
was one himself. He felt an unfamiliar impotence, banished it
sternly as a potential traitor. But where had she found such power?

Nyssa shook her head bemusedly, and relaxed. She met his gaze
directly, and her eyes were all her own.

"Now, _that_ is very interesting." The Mayor sounded honestly
surprised, and vaguely cheated. "It's total chaos in there. I can't
find any traces that he ever had a mind. Pattern analysis, please?"

"Analysis complete," said her VOC. "Correlation level: - 0.07.
Level of confidence: 62.54%. Conclusion: randomised input data.
More?"

"No."

The Doctor felt both sick and enlightened. "Something
scrambled his brain into information omelette. Do you know, Nyssa, I
think that's a lot worse than just being shot?"

She shrugged. "_I_ didn't do it."

He nodded. "With that thing you're not wearing, that isn't a
tiara - like his thing that isn't a headband."

Nyssa laughed freely, glad that he'd got it. "Exactly, Doctor.
They're both cerebral transponders. Mine is surgically integrated
and has direct brain connections through nanofilaments; his seems to
be a simple induction version. We'll have to pass it to Alphard, of
course, in case of surprises."

"You manipulate the Ourania a-life with that?"

"I can; I tend not to. It's really for communications more
than control. He, of course, must have been trying - Oh!" Her
eyes widened, and an almost vacant expression passed over her face.

The Doctor was standing over her before he'd thought about it,
combat-ready. But what stared back up at him was still purest Nyssa.

Awe wasn't exactly a normal expression for her, though.

"I _think_," she said, slowly, wonderingly, "I may know what
happened to him. Obviously, he was trying to take control of the
Black Sun by the back door, and he moved as soon as he'd tooled up.
But - he may have picked up a Signal not meant for him: something
that would destroy a corrupt mind like his, as surely as if he'd made
communion with the Keeper in the days of Traken's strength. That
could happen here, Doctor. I hadn't expected it, but it really
might." Nyssa's usually confident voice kept stumbling over itself.
"If that's so - why, we're safe, Doctor. We may do very well,
indeed!"

"I don't suppose you could tell me what _that's_ supposed to
mean?"

"Not shortly, Doctor - but don't worry; I'm not going
superstitious on you. I need to work out how much I can tell you
about this, assuming I'm not just being stim-silly right now."

"Right."

"Doctor! There may be Laws-of-Time restrictions on what I can
say! Please believe I trust you; but I _will_ have to think!"

"Do. Please." He could feel a headache coming on.

"Meantime," she said briskly, "I think we'd better rule out
rather more physical causes." She pulled out another folding arm
from her Surgeon's Mate, this one a heavy laser-cutter. "Let's just
have this skull open, shall we?"

The guards went talking and joking with them, big Shellac and
goblinish Scratch starting in before they were even round the corner.
Ocho, a soft-spoken fellow who looked like a taller and brawnier
edition of Alphard, soon got Cats into a chat in some dialect of
Radio Ham. They weren't being marched to their quarters, no, sir!

Si noticed that the _calaglay_ here was sparser and harder than
in the corridors of Terminus. Evidently Nyssa - or her Captain-
General - didn't want people getting too relaxed here. The Black Sun
was serious medicine, and no-one was supposed to forget that for a
moment.

_Very serious medicine, Nyssa - the Universe's own physic!
Will they call you 'Heal-All' on Gallifrey and Gormenghast; and in
the Andromeda Galaxy? Will you make this a new Logopolis?_

He was certain she had something like that in mind. He
wondered if he might not have finally found a politician he'd
willingly follow. _There's a disturbing thought!_

But he set a part of his mind aside for banter, and
concentrated the rest on Tegan. He knew she'd bear up until the
others were out of the way, and he could guess what it cost her. Her
introduction to the Doctor's world had been finding her dear old Aunt
Vanessa shrivelled into a dead hop-o'-my-thumb by the Master's matter
compressor. The Master had been a dirty brute, and was far better
dead.

Doubtless, Amina knew many traceless ways of killing.
Doubtless, in her shoes, Si would have done the same thing on behalf
of the woman _he_ loved!

They came to a small door off a short side-passage, where their
guards seemed at a loss for a moment.

"Now what?" asked one of Si's guards, an androgynous white-
haired waif called Pansy. Pansy was quiet, sibilant, and scarcely
bigger than Nyssa. Except for his/her partner Scratch, the other
guards seemed a little leery of her/him. Pansy didn't so much walk
as glide, and Si wouldn't have bet money on his t'ai chi master
getting anything past this creature.

"If you want," suggested Ocho, "we could call Deacon, and have
him show you round a bit."

"You what?" Cats's other guard, Zeinab, found that out of
order.

"Come on, Zeinab! These are Her Honour's oldest friends,
closer than Ter'Fastolf. Don't you think the Battlemother would have
told us if we had to watch out?" He spoke cajolingly, unruffled.

"Guess." The tall woman gave in with poor grace.

"Deacon likes his paperwork too much." Scratch's voice was
like nails on a blackboard, cheery or no. "Let's kick him up the
arse. Is that what you three are wanting?"

"Who's Deacon?" Cats asked.

"Trojan Prof of Relative Physics: works for Alphard, minds his
filing cabinets and such. He can talk, show you stuff, listen to his
own voice, like. He's just your man for the tour."

Cats slapped her thigh emphatically. "Sounds good to me!"

"Do you want to go, Si?" By which Tegan meant she didn't.
Well, it might have been interesting; but it wasn't the greatest
thing. He shook his head.

"I think I've had my eyes opened enough for one morning! I
could do with a bit of a rest before lunch."

"Me, too."

"Couldn't they, eh?" Shellac leered at him brazenly. He
ignored her.

"You're out of your class, Shellac," Scratch told her. "Right,
then: one Deacon, three bedrolls, and we'll take you to the reffie
when you fancy it." He produced a Satanic grin of his own. "Take
your privacy while it's in season, I should..."

Si nodded civilly, and led Tegan into the spartan little room
without further comment. He closed the door firmly on Shellac's loud
chortle.

They looked at each other for a long moment. Tegan blinked,
rather dizzily, and eventually said, "I'm just a bit blown out, Si,
if you don't mind."

He nodded. "It's going to take some getting used to, isn't
it?"

"What do you reckon? Did she kill the creep?"

"No!" The notion shocked and annoyed him. Tegan was usually a
lot brighter than she let on. "It might have been Amina's people,
but Nyssa couldn't have known about it."

"Where do you get that from?"

"The way she presented it to us, of course. Even if she did
kill the Master, she wouldn't have made it into a ghoul-show for our
benefit."

"She's tricky, Si. She's a better magician than you are -
misdirection, and all that. She's been playing games with us ever
since we arrived!"

He honestly didn't know how to answer that.

"And what did she really ask me here for?" A hysterical edge
was creeping into Tegan's voice. "I feel all funny with her, now!"

Si reached deep, very deep, and came up with a bucket of
amusement. "Because of Amina? You wonder if she might have had a
crush on _you_ in the old days? Does that make a difference, now?"

"Yes, it does, if you want to know!" She turned her back on
him sharply. Her shoulders were very stiff.

He knew this mood. He left her alone for about half a minute.
Then, very gingerly, he came up behind her and rested his hands on
her shoulders. When she didn't snap him off, he began a gentle
massage, and kept it up until he felt the tension fall from her taut
muscles. Wordlessly, she turned and kissed him. Her eyes were wide
and grave.

He took a risk. "This is really about the other thing, isn't
it?"

"Mostly," she admitted. She hesitated, trying to read him,
afraid of saying the wrong thing. "It wasn't a nice thing to do, Si,
but I know how she meant it. I'm going to make a go of it! Only,
only you and Cats are all that's left now, aren't you? - And, I
don't think Cats will mind, but how about you? We're contagious, Si.
We can't ever go home. We can't even go back in time to before she
invented immortality, can we? And I don't get the idea that we're
exactly going to be free to roam in her 'Earthhome Federation',
either, nasty place that it sounds." She hugged him, painfully hard.
Her hands were balling into fists. "We're Nyssa's people now, Si. I
never signed up for that!"

"Tegan!" he said, stricken. "I didn't think!" And he quite
simply hadn't. His dreams had come to life on him, and everything
he'd loved and left on Earth, he'd reflexively rolled up and stowed
away. He couldn't even pretend that knowing it made the difference.

"I know, love. You wouldn't. Si - if you ever change your
mind, and you still want me, I'll come home with you. Have her burn
us clean. Don't think it'd be a really big sacrifice, because
frankly, living forever isn't exactly my top ambition anyway."

And there, she'd said it straight out.

He found it strangely possible to talk past the lump in his
throat. "Why?" he said; and it was the gentlest word he ever
remembered saying.

Tegan groped for words. "I... I'm afraid it might get boring.
Everything. Look at what the Doctor does, not to get bored! Si,
don't you think there are some things you shouldn't live long enough
to get tired of, or you wouldn't be... you any more? Even human?
I'm not good with words, that's just how I feel." She coughed. And
said, into the cloud she'd brought on him,

"But we've got to fight it, haven't we? We have to try.
You've taught me a few things, Si Westport. I want to give them all
a go. There's no point in being scared about 'bored tomorrow',
today! It's just - like being told you'll never need sleep anymore.
It's _exhausting_!" She grinned widely and tragically. "And it's
having all the future I ever imagined taken away from me, poof! No
wrinkles, no carpet slippers, no ripening in front of the telly and
going to bingo with a lot of other old biddies; no crotchety old man
to nag to clean his dentures and cut the grass! Gone, like that!"
She starbursted her hands theatrically.

"Did you actually want that, Tegan?"

"I hated it!" she exclaimed. "But it was there, and it was
almost comfortable. What's out there now? Nothing we know, nothing
I can get attached to. I still don't really care how long it goes
on, Si. I just want to pack a lot in while it's going." Shy smile.
"You're good for that..."

They kissed passionately, then; and what went on in that bare
little room over the next few minutes was absolutely nobody else's
business at all, until Shellac made it hers by opening the door to
chuck in the three bedrolls. She la-la'd at them, and shut the door
again.

The back of the moment had been broken, and Si thought
privately that might just have been good fortune. If he and Tegan
were going to get any closer, he meant to pick the surroundings; and
she was the sort of person for whom he'd aim very high. They giggled
embarrassedly at each other, and started laying out the bedrolls.

Nyssa would help him. She couldn't _not_ have designed some
bowers into Terminus, somewhere! Quite how he'd raise the subject,
he didn't yet have a clue.

Tegan had left one splinter under his nails, so he dealt with
it as soon as the mood seemed right. "Sweetheart," he said to her,
an address he wouldn't have used before this trip had made everything
happen so fast, "are you really still friends with her?"

"Of course I am!" said Tegan, with automatic sharpness. But
then she cooled down, and took his hand pensively.

"She's changed, Si. She used to be such a strange little
thing: so hard and soft, all at once. Now she's just strange and
hard. I _hope_ we're still friends; but she does frighten me!" She
gave him a shrewd, candid look. "Doesn't she scare _you_ at all?"

"Nyssa? Certainly not!"

"Well, she ought to!" declared Tegan warmly.

Hours later, Nyssa and the Doctor sat together in the auxiliary
surgical bay, waiting for the second-order analysis results. The
Master's remnants, blood mostly siphoned off for microbiological
tests, now lay discreetly under a white plastic cover. His coronet-
transponder had been rinsed and dried, and was sitting under a hard
UV lamp for more thorough surface sterilisation, before they
despatched it to Alphard.

They were hot and sticky now in their coveralls, but Nyssa was
adamant that they not remove them until everything was finished with
in here. Her gloved hand rested lightly on his equally protected and
repellent elbow.

The Doctor knew he wouldn't get anything more out of Nyssa
about her Laws-of-Time ideas, which were a worrying development to
say the least. He had thought of a tangent he might approach them
on: it was something he had to get straight anyway.

"Nyssa?"

"Doctor?" she said drowsily.

He cleared his throat. "I've never actually encountered a true
black border before. However did you set such a thing up?" _And_
did _you?_

"Alphard, of course. He uses a tuned gravitational pinch-field
to create a cover-pattern of quantum black holes, winking in and out.
We manipulate the event-horizons to create a continuous, multi-ply
censorship field. It's costly, but it's foolproof - stronger than
the fabric of space-time itself, for whatever _that's_ worth these
days! It could be turned off from inside, of course; but the inner
layer is mostly self-sustaining, so even that would be difficult, and
it would take time and knowledge."

The hairs rose on the back of the Doctor's neck. "That's...
impressive. You're right, of course; Rassilon himself couldn't break
through that. The Master must have come another way."

"Treachery," said Nyssa morbidly. "I don't see any other
answer, and even that doesn't really explain much. I'm not going to
start suspecting people tonight, Doctor. I'm tired, and my judgement
is affected. It wouldn't be fair!"

"I think you're right, Nyssa. Could you tell me something
else? I'd never heard of Alphard before yesterday, and yet I'd have
sworn there weren't more than five temporal engineers in our history
who could have attempted something like this - all of them full Time
Lords, with centuries behind them." He shook his head inquisitively.
"How much do you know about him?"

"As much as one friend ever knows about another, Doctor." He'd
feared her anger, but there was actually a hint of song in her voice
as she answered him; and she smiled. "Better than most, since we've
worked mind-to-mind in i-space! I understand Alphard quite well,
and - " Her handset bleeped quietly in her pocket, and she answered it.

"The Accident Book? That's splendid, Masha! Could you look in
and put it down by the door? Thank you!" She turned back to the
Doctor, her face bright with anticipation. "This is it, Doctor.
This is our final confirmation!" A brawny, broad-shouldered woman
out of the Vanir mould entered, smiled slightly at Nyssa, and put
down a compact black box with a wide concave front end.

"Good labour, Your Honour," Masha said pointedly, "and pleasant
dreams after!" With which she saluted and exited.

Nyssa laughed as she went to retrieve the device. "Everyone's
against me!"

"Quite the opposite, I'd say... Nyssa, _what_ is the 'Accident
Book'?" She had pulled back the sheet covering the Master's remains,
and was scanning over them with the box.

"It's a bio-reader, Doctor." She completed her scan, and
pulled the sheet back. "We can get rid of these, now. There's
nothing more to do but wait for results. If you'll help me get this
into sterile bags, we can be in decon soon."

The Accident Book bleeped. "A perfect match," breathed Nyssa,
studying its display lovingly. "Chance of error: less than one in
ten-to-the-eight. It _was_ the Master, Doctor!"

"You accessed his _bio-data_?" The Doctor was stupefied.
"Nyssa, where -"

"A little sprite told me. The High Council won't ever know,
will they?"

This was, effectively, an order: the penalty for theft of a
Time Lord's bio-data was death. And the source of her privileged
information was obvious. Alphard must somehow have hacked it out of
the sealed databanks on Gallifrey - _before he'd met Nyssa!_ - or
else he'd left a confederate who'd smuggled it out later. A large
and sinister rat began to wiggle its bum under the Doctor's nose.
But Nyssa's loyalty to her friends had always been one of her
defining characteristics, and he knew he'd already poked at it more
than was wise for the moment. So he said, a touch lamely, "Wasn't
that rather a large risk for rather a doubtful return?"

"I don't think so, Doctor." He could almost hear her mind
snapping shut. "The man was a body-thief. The Accident Book codes
are the only way I could ever be sure of catching him. - By the way,
there's an automatic scan for those codes hidden in our Customs
checks. That's how I know he didn't come in the front door,
disguised or using hypnosis or otherwise. Either one of our own has
betrayed us, or we're all missing something very stupid! Still,
that's another day's problem." She yawned, and reached in her pocket
for the stims.

"Nyssa," said the Doctor, crossing quickly over to her, "Amina
was right. Just because you're constantly regenerating doesn't mean
you need any less sleep! Please, give me those."

"I know about that! I just have a job to do. When he's
cremated and I know what the tests say about his death, then I'll be
able to sleep!" But she didn't open the brown tube.

"You can't do your job if you have to go back into a delta-wave
box to reset your sleep rhythms!" the Doctor argued. "I thought you
needed your sleep more than humans, not less...?"

"Oh, did you believe that?" Nyssa smiled. "Dear Doctor! That
was something quite different. No. I'll see this through, and then
I'll do as I promised Amina."

"I think," said the Doctor firmly, "that a compromise is called
for. We'll dispose of this... biohazard, and go through decon. Then
I'll sit up and wait for the results - " He held up his hand as she
started to object, " - and let you have a nap, right here. I promise
to wake you up the moment anything comes through! Then we can wind
down with a cup of something relaxing, and both go to our beds. What
do you say?"

She stared at him, startled. "All right, Doctor. We will.
Would you do me one favour while you're waiting?"

"I should think so."

"If I give you those block transfer equations I was asking you
about, would you just have a look at them? You can give me your
opinion in the morning, if I'm awake by then."

"Delighted," he told her. "A distraction from my own company
is usually welcome. I have no patience with myself, and I never win
the arguments!"

Nyssa sighed heavily. "Shall we get started, Doctor? I'd hate
to fall asleep before we consign our old acquaintance to the flames!"

So they got started, finished, and had done with the whole
mess. She hadn't been joking about the plasma furnace. But by then
the Doctor was too numb to have any great portentous feelings about
it, and Nyssa didn't seem disposed to linger either. They returned
to the now-sterile surgical bay, and she passed him the formulae to
study while they waited for the second-order diagnostics. Having no
further reason to stay awake, all the energy seemed to drain out of
the little Traken at once; and within a minute she had dozed off by
him, childlike, her tiara'd head cradled in the crook of his elbow.
He took a moment to treasure that, before he plunged into the morass
of the block transfer equations.

He found comfort in even the illusion that he could still
protect her.

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Six, 'Night and Day'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Sixth Episode: Night and Day*

"So, this is the famous Tegan Jovanka?"
Tegan looked up from her delicious and rapidly-disappearing
veggie cutlet. The speaker, a broad-shouldered blonde with prominent
cheekbones and a light, motherly tone, strolled up to the table. She
and her hawkishly handsome male companion moved with the perfect co-
ordination you sometimes saw between long-term partners or lovers.
It did nothing for Tegan's nerves that all her guards' spines
stiffened perceptibly as the duo approached.

"You have the advantage of us, ma'am. Sir." Si softened the
formality with the non-committal warmth with which he uttered it,
like a man preparing to be charmed.

"Pleased to meet you," Tegan spoke up.

"And we you," said the man, his voice actually more resonant
and musical than Si's. He was tall and heavily tanned, with large
and lovely dark-brown eyes. The look he bent on her was one of
conscious kindness. He made all Tegan's instincts scream flight.
"I'm Gisco of Qart Elishat, Battle-Second to Amina. My wife," to
whom he bobbed his head gracefully, "is our First Officer, Marya
Sergeyevna Pavlova of Great Permia; Masha, among friends."

"Which I'm sure we are," Masha said smilingly.

Si took his gaze, openly but without challenge, and introduced
himself and Cats. "Hi," was Cats's leaden contribution. Sleep had
finally caught up with her after Deacon's tour. Five hours'
afternoon crash-nap had left her in a brown and unsavoury mood, and
Tegan was ignoring her flatmate diligently.

"How did I come to be famous?" Tegan demanded, looking
carefully at Masha.

"Nyssa's talked about you a lot," explained the First Officer.
"You and your adventures together! I swear, our Battlemother's quite
jealous of you!"

_Oh, great!_ Tegan felt the flames leaping into her cheeks.
"It was _not_ like that!"

"Wife," said Gisco, his hand brushing Masha's elbow, "that's
carelessly said. Nyssa was only a child!" His great eyes burned
into Tegan's, then, and she wanted to faint; but she called up the
Doctor's voice, telling her to hold fast, and she returned his stare
for all the long instant it took. The Battle-Second seemed abruptly
satisfied.

"I meant the adventures," Masha didn't apologise. "Her Honour
hasn't been available for adventures since we've known her..."

"...But you and the Doctor succoured her when she was." Gisco
accorded her a minute, respectful bow. "I believe I'm honoured to
meet you. Are we taking proper care of you?"

"I wouldn't like to be the villain who came after us!" Tegan
assured him, looking significantly over her shoulder where Ada stood
guard as she ate.

"And the company," Si lied politely, "is of the best..."

"The Company of Lions _is_ the best, dear." Masha grinned
broadly. "But I'm glad to hear you say it! It's well done, then.
Actually, I really came over just to put a word in your ear. I
looked in on Nyssa and the Doctor before dinner, and they weren't
nearly finished. I shouldn't count them into any plans you have for
the evening! Anyway, we'll let you get on. Coming, husband?"

"A pleasure," said Gisco, apparently to everyone at once. "And
a very good evening and good guesting to you all!" And the two
officers went out.

Several around the table suddenly breathed more easily. Tegan
discovered she'd mislaid her appetite.

Pansy was maliciously amused. "He's fair put the wind up you,
hasn't he?"

"Why don't you leave it out, Pansy." Cats didn't even bother
to look up, and her voice was dull like a blunt knife. The tiny,
white-haired soldier showed all his/her teeth gleefully.

"I would," said Ada.

"Yeah," supported Shellac. "I tell you, Tegan, the guy scares
shit out of _me_! Hey, everyone, remember that lark on Casablanca,
when he caught Barney with that twelve-year-old and gaffed him to the
pier by his - "

"I think I like this fellow after all," Si said loudly.

Scratch winced. "You didn't see what he did once he had him
gaffed. You didn't want to, neither. He's Hadashti, and they're
not, like, sane where kids are involved. Nasty bastard; worse than
'Eronner." He shook his head half-admiringly. "Good man to have in
a bad place, mind."

An icicle slid down Tegan's spine as she realised what must
have been going through Gisco's mind about her. "Lovely weather
we're having, aren't we?" she suggested.

"Too right." Cats stood up. "Anything to _do_ around this
place?"

"Drink," said Ada. "Gamble. Exercise. Screw. Read."

"Look at bloody Traken art!" added Scratch.

"Make a fool of yourself," finished Pansy.

"Yeah, that sounds good. Where do we go?"

"Tegan?" said Si. "Fancy a drink?"

_Don't I!_ "It's not going to be much fun for you guys, is
it?" she said, curiously. "I mean, they don't let you drink on duty,
do they?"

"We get deaders," Scratch informed. "Taste just as bad, but
you can't get pissed on 'em. You get used to it."

"_I_ can get drunk on milk shakes if I feel like it!" boasted
Shellac. "Come along, Teegs! We'll cheer you on till you fall down.
Who's for the _Space Bender_?"

Si had guessed what he was letting himself in for when he made the
suggestion, and fun hadn't been high on his mind. He disliked
raucous company and roaring joints, even though he'd learned how to
visit either and come away with credit. And the Company of Lions
were about what he'd have expected: fairly mellow - for a motley band
of space scum who'd floated to the top. Nyssa's influence lay very
lightly, here.

The _Space Bender_'s sign had a crude but magnificent charm: a
hand-painted slab of rough plastic, showing a man in military uniform
reeling in the night. Gouts of stars spewed from his mouth and his
beer-bottle. Inside, it was dull and cluttered, and there were
drinks machines instead of bar-staff. Ocho said that Terminus would
pick up the guests' bar bills, but promptly bought a round on his own
credit, beating Scratch to it by a hairsbreadth. It was obviously
some fiddle. Si had a dark beer, Tegan white wine, Cats went
straight to something called Rocket Fuel. They all sat around a
couple of corner tables (except that at least two of the guards
always found reason to be walking or standing, somewhere close by).
They talked about safe things, mostly sights of Old Earth; nothing
that would turn the conversation nasty again.

The dark beer was very warm and sweet. Tegan sipped her wine
like lemon juice. _Such cheer, my dears!_ But excepting Zeinab,
who was obviously disposed to sulk today, just about everyone was
working admirably hard at it. It might even have caught fire, except
for Cats: downbeat and taciturn one moment, doggedly over-merry ten
minutes later, her presence dampened proceedings like a threatening
raincloud. Si was beginning to worry about her.

He'd known her nearly two years longer than had Tegan, whom
Cats tended to shield in any case; and this didn't feel like lack of
sleep. It felt like the kind of savage disappointment that would
have had Tegan long since off in tears, and it felt like it was still
sinking in. Could Cats really have had a Kylie complex or worse for
Nyssa, even before they'd started out? Cats Hambridge, obsessive
fan, was not a picture he could put together, outside her own running
jokes. But now she had _met_ Nyssa -

Which wasn't like meeting Kylie, or even Princess Diana, at
all.

All he and Tegan could do for Cats was to keep her company; and
spending the evening all three cooped up in their temporary roomlet
in the Black Sun was too appalling an option to contemplate.
Besides, he had to pump their guards at some point. He had a very
maddening Traken to make sense of.

Gisco was a _nasty bastard; worse than 'Eronner._

He had to know about Nyssa. He had to understand her. But,
right now, what he had to do was to entertain and distract Cats - who
normally had the better detective's mindset, anyway. Fancy was _his_
business! He turned his attention to sparkling.

Forty minutes later, he hoped he'd done some good, but he'd
pretty much given all he could.

" - _you_ had to wait on the _merchants_?" Zeinab was having
trouble with Tegan's descriptions of twentieth-century shopping,
which the Khadijite seemed to find on a par with having to carry your
own slops to the sewage farm. Explanation didn't seem to be working
too well.

"They were all wankers," interrupted Cats dismissively, "and it
was as boring as sin. - Is there any _action_ round this place?"

"Depends," said Ada. "What's action?"

"Laughter. Song. Girls. That sort of 'action'!"

Tegan's mouth had almost dropped open. Si didn't think she'd
ever seen her flatmate in precisely this mood before. By its nature,
he didn't know it too well, himself...

A short silence fell. "There's a fucking curse on _that_
around here," muttered Shellac.

"Shut up, Shellac," Scratch told the big woman, in a would-be
joshing tone without an ounce of humour. The two soldiers locked
eyes, and it was Shellac who looked away. "A couple of the spare
girls go your way. I wouldn't get fussy. 'Eronner won't have tarts
on the Station - bless her little cotton socks!"

"I don't do 'tarts', Scratch." Cats was almost offensively
quiet and reasonable about that. No-one quite knew where to look.
"And I'll take laughter and song, if nothing else is going."

Shellac belched disgustingly, and slapped a heavy hand down on
Tegan's shoulder.

"Tell you what, Teegs!" she said. "Cats! We could all go for
a girls' night out down the _Ole 'Ole_, 'cause it's the eighth-day.
Lively, merry. Guys who come have to keep their hands to themselves,
and we don't. We've got dancing, darts, music, singing, and no
smart-arsed hairy types earwigging unless we call for 'em. What
d'you reckon?"

"Come on, then!" said Cats, inhaling the rest of her kerosene.

Si and Tegan exchanged a quick look of total accord. The
evening was going absolutely nowhere in its present life, and a
separation of the sexes usually loosened tongues. If Tegan was game,
then Si was eager.

His darling produced a hand-mirror, inspected her face
jealously, and made an imaginary adjustment to her hair. Satisfied,
she snapped the case shut, and rose.

"I'd love that, Shellac!" she said.

"I think you get to go to the ball, Pansy," observed Ocho,
defecting to Si.

"Comfort and joy!" said Pansy.

The Doctor hesitated. Asleep, Nyssa's face had shed many harsh
years, whose traces her immortality plague could never hide from eyes
so well attuned to them. He hated to wake her, but he had promised.
He brushed an errant curl back from her forehead, and his hand
remembered his strange, lost daughter. That was no good! "Nyssa?"
he whispered. Her sleep was too deep to break so gently. "Nyssa!
Wake up! It's done!"

Her breathing changed, and her eyelids flickered. Her grey
eyes opened widely on his own; and her expression was _melted_ in a
way he'd seen a score of times - seldom gladly, and certainly never
in her. It shocked him profoundly, and his start brought her
abruptly awake. "Oh, _Doctor_! It's you!" She sat up hastily. "I
dreamed... Was the Master really here? Is he really dead?"

"Yes, Nyssa. He's really dead. You asked me to wake you when
the post-mortem diagnostics came through."

"And?" Sleep still burred the Mayor's speech.

"He didn't die of any known disease. Apart from having his
mind randomised, he seems to have perished in rude health."

"That's good. He eavesdropped, then, and it killed him. We're
going to win, Doctor. What's the time?"

He told her. Nyssa, still visibly awakening, screwed up her
eyes as if she wished she weren't. "Oh, _no_! - Doctor, I ought to
be in bed. Amina's told me and told me, and I keep finding more
important things to do! She'll be so angry with me!"

She sounded so genuinely distressed, the Doctor didn't dare
just humour her. "You've been sleeping for three hours, Nyssa. Your
stims jag is over. Isn't that what Amina cares about?"

"Yes. Of course. We're _cupmates_, Doctor! I'm not afraid of
her! I've just - " She checked herself, and looked down at her
feet. "She wants to protect me from everything, and fight my battles
too. She can't do that! But if I can't be good for her when I have
a choice, whatever am I? I'm sorry. I'm being tired and stupid."

"I don't think so, Nyssa. Will it be all right for you to join
me for a cup of cocoa before we sleep, though? If I were in your
shoes, I'd want to unwind first..." He trailed off. He was terribly
unsure of the ground he was trying to test, here.

His hearts rose so when Nyssa said, "Certainly, Doctor. That
would be a lovely way to end a very long day - if you don't mind my
being just a _little_ bit light-headed, still! Come to my office,
and then we'll chat until we're relaxed." She clambered ungracefully
to her feet, swayed, and seemed to find her balance abruptly, just as
the Doctor was preparing to catch her.

He couldn't resist. He took her by the shoulders anyway, and
planted a light, impulsive kiss on top of her head. Nyssa regarded
him with wide-eyed amazement. "What was _that_ for, Doctor?"

"It wasn't for anything, Nyssa," he said, the words gambolling
off his tongue without calling in on his mind at all. "I just happen
to love you very much, that's all. You do know that?"

Her eyebrows rose even further, and for a moment she was quite
speechless. "Keep this incarnation, Doctor!" she said, eventually.
"It suits you. Come along and have some cocoa now. You must be
nearly as tired as I am!"

So they opened the door, picked up their changed guards, and
tramped down five minutes of corridors to Nyssa's Black Sun office.
It was small, neat, and well-furnished with plants. It had a
miniature food-and-drink dispenser, from which Nyssa got them both
cocoas, pouring them into beautiful dragon-glazed mugs. They sat in
contented silence for nearly half the drink, before they began to
speak.

In space, no-one can talk about the weather. He chose a
question for which she must, surely, have come up with some kind of
answer.

"Nyssa, now you have immortality, what are you going to do
about the _Lebensraum_ problem? Humans are already more than fertile
enough; if they try to expand the Federation to keep up with _this_,
you know as well as I do what kind of wars we'll see."

"That's why I've kept it back," explained Nyssa. "Our cured
lazars go on to closed mining and factory asteroids of our own, or
to places where the problem doesn't arise, like the Fuji-Greathearth
stations. And we have some marginal, subsistence-level colonies well
off all the known spacelanes. That stops our blocking up, in the
short term; and it'll be generations before our own natural increase
becomes significant."

"And then?"

The Mayor of Terminus got a momentary, faraway look. "The core
of the lazargen immortality algorithm is _extremely_ general, Doctor!
We have a Terileptil version in the pipeline, and others will follow.
I won't see this abused to establish humanoids as a Galactic master-
race! We are quite prominent enough as it is."

"That's quite right and noble, Nyssa," said the Doctor
sincerely, "but it doesn't help the numbers problem, not at all. Do
you see strong population control finally catching on, then?"

"That's rather out of my hands. If Project Ourania truly
succeeds, that shouldn't be a problem, either - but that isn't going
to be any time soon. All I can do at this point is to try to buy
some centuries."

He nodded. He badly wanted to ask how her project to heal
wounds in spacetime could possibly solve an overpopulation problem,
and he suspected he might be able to cajole answers out of her right
now. Regretfully, he changed the subject.

"The Master - aaah-TCHOO, excuse me! - could have done some
pretty awful things just with your lazargens, couldn't he? He always
did fall over through getting too greedy..."

"Yes. Amina and I have talked through most of the
possibilities." Her eyes narrowed, and she huddled over the last of
her cocoa. "I think he'd have raised a huge, immortal army in the
deep hinterlands; taken a few centuries for expansion and training,
and then come for human space like a shark. He, of course, would
serve as its 'living god' - and he must have hoped to steal some more
direct wonder-working from the Black Sun."

A dark humour entered Nyssa's voice. "It would all look rather
like what I'm doing here, to begin with, wouldn't it? You needn't
worry, Doctor." She twinkled at him. "I want to _heal_ my world,
not to live its life for it! Living my own is more than enough for
me, already... And so is getting up, I think! Do you suppose you
could help me to the door? I do believe I'm finally ready to go to
bed."

_Tegan_, said her reflection in the lager, _beware of a dead enemy!_

_- Beware of a place that's driving me nuts!_

"DO ya want my BOdy?
CATCH it while it's SMOking!
DON't ya be a WIMPy HEAD!"

Cats was off dancing to the ghastly music. Ada and Shellac had
been relieved by the night-watch. They were still keeping Tegan
company, but Shellac wasn't drinking strawberry shakes any more. If
you shouted very loudly, you could just about hear each other across
the table.

_Can't you do something about Nyssa?_ White-hot light danced
across the surface of her beer. _What she's doing here is insane!_

-_Like having my beer talk back to me_ isn't?

_That's_ illusion, _not_ delusion! _You're the only one
susceptible enough to reach..._

- _You're definitely the beer talking. I'm de-Mara'd forever!
And if you're not the beer, and you're still in my head tomorrow,
I'll tell Nyssa. She'll kill you!_

_I shouldn't be at all surprised._

"Tegan?" Ada's stiff face registered concern. "Are you all
right?"

"Fine!" Tegan hollered back, barely overcoming the music.
"Beer disagreeing with me!"

"That's 'cause you're neglecting it!" yelled Shellac. The big
blonde took a long swig of her own, and leaned eagerly over the table
to point past Tegan's face. "Hey, Teegs, how about some of _that_ to
take your mind off it?" She indicated a tall Adonis clone across the
room, who sported neatly-cropped dark hair and obscenely clingy
purple silk evening clothes. "You want I should get you an
introduction?"

"No, Shellac - "

"Hey, don't be shy. Mick-Mack's a real gent." Cunning leer.
"I can always take him off your hands, if it doesn't work out!"

"I'm with Si, Shellac! Your friend - is very handsome - but
I'm not - _interested_!"

"What?" The soldier looked amazed. "True Love, and all that?"

"I bloody well hope so!"

"I'll be fucked!" said Shellac, piously.

"BOUNCE me round the BALLroom,
BANG me round the BEDroom,
COME 'n' get what YOU can TAKE..!"

Back at the _Space Bender_, the place had filled up, but no-one was
dancing.

"They _are_," said Scratch argumentatively. "They're as
different as night and day; but it used to be good, before 'Eronner
started believing in her own cult. Your lady's her pal, and she's
ballsy enough to stare down Gisco. Would there be any chance she'd
talk some sense into her?"

"Tegan will say what she thinks to anyone," Si said,
cautiously. "Nyssa, I hardly know. I don't get the idea that she
much likes all that hero-worship she gets from the Vanir, though..."

"You could fool me." The ugly mercenary downed some more
stout. Si had settled on the same drink, as the only one going that
was better than nothing. He was alternating between full-strength
and deader tankards. "Let's say she doesn't, though. If it's not
the nazis, it's that little bastard Alphard and _his_ mumbo-jumbo.
Why else would she cut Battlemother out of the loop, the way she has
lately, as if she couldn't trust her with her life and soul and all?"

"She wouldn't," said Ocho softly. "Half of this is
scuttlebutt, and the rest is their business! They made up those rows
about Amina's pillage rules and Nyssa's slave-trading, didn't they?"

"Well, there's exactly what I mean - "

"Excuse me." Si hadn't realised he could speak so firmly to
such hard cases, but his disappointment at being taken for a ride was
too strong. "I misheard there. I thought you said 'Nyssa's slave-
trading'."

"I did." Ocho laughed easily. "Cured lazars are still legally
dead, so the Company used to sell them for slaves where I come from,
New Brass. Nyssa and the Vanir didn't have any other way to finance
Terminus when she started here, and they ended up sending down
volunteers on short leases, until they had the station defended and
viable again. If you see any professional idlers on this station,
they earned the privilege the hard way!"

"Trading slaves," said Scratch loftily, "is against our
Battlemother's principles."

"She _did_ take the pay anyway, Scratch."

"She offered to raid for it, instead. What d'you want,
starvation?"

"I wouldn't be here or sane if either of them had been too pure
for the traffic, my friend. How should I complain?" Ocho raised his
fruit juice to Si. "You wouldn't have known you were drinking with a
nethead.aut, would you?"

Si shook his head. "That's not a term I know."

"No? No, I suppose it wouldn't be. I keep forgetting you
people are actually from the Oil Age. It scarcely shows... It's an
induced quasi-autism. The mind is conditioned to be asocial,
expressed almost entirely through tailored cyberspace environments.
Dedicated, off-the-shelf super-hackers, I suppose you might say.
Very popular for defence and security, especially. Nyssa needed
skills like that about ten years ago, so she bought Alphard and me
from New Brass, to handle it. She tried to give us our freedom, and
of course she found it didn't even mean anything to either of us. So
she came to each of us in i-space - and healed our minds, by sharing
hers with us."

Ocho spoke in the tone of a man reminiscing about an ancient
and kindly-remembered love. "I'll tell you this much: she didn't
think she was any sort of big shot then. It wouldn't have worked, if
she had. What she thought about was other people, and sweet life.
I don't see someone like her changing, not really."

This was all very heart-warming, but now Si was really
confused. "Wait a moment, Ocho. I thought Alphard was the
Gallifreyan engineer?"

_"Alphard?"_ The other man shook his head. "He's never been
anywhere but New Brass and Terminus. What confuses you is that he
handles those things now. I suppose they must have left manuals, or
sent messages, or something. He's been a first-rate genius since
Nyssa fixed his mind, you know; he's probably the next thing to a
Time Lord in his own right, these days."

"Yeah," agreed Scratch. It was a very scathing agreement.

"That must be it," said Si; and let Scratch take up the point
he was obviously raring to make. But that wasn't it, not by a long
chalk.

Alphard had claimed to be Gallifreyan by upbringing and
culture, and Nyssa had gone along with him. The Doctor had leapt
to the same conclusion even before then, simply from the way the
engineer talked.

Then why should Ocho tell an obvious lie?

The air was wet and rather swimmy. That would be the sweat, from all
the dancing. Shellac had turned into a friendly octopus, with at
least two right arms draped matily around Tegan's shoulder. Tegan's
lager wasn't talking to her any more.

The thumpy music had stopped at last. Shellac was trying to
teach Tegan a drinking song. Tegan didn't want to learn it.

"No, come on, listen again! All join in, slowly, now: _'Davros
and his Daleks come down to Gallowglass/ We sent the fucker packing
with his plunger - '_ "

Tegan collected herself. "Shellac," she said to the remaining
image, which was looking at her expectantly, "I don't really like
songs like that. I'm no good at them. You sing."

The mercenary looked puzzled for a moment, then squeezed
Tegan's shoulders rubberily. "Hey, Ada! Teegs wants something sad.
How's _Lally Clare_ start? _'By the dah di dah, something, I...'_ "

Tegan's eyes swept the room rather desperately. The darts
players were using a big, anatomically correct poster of a naked man.
Even by this beery light, the face looked a lot like Captain Mord.
She looked away hastily.

Cats to the rescue!

"_This_ way, you big cow!" Cats, Tegan noticed disapprovingly,
was very drunk. She was leading a buxom, athletic woman with tea-
coloured skin and splendid, glossy hair, dressed in tacky black
plastic shorts and bodice. By way of reply, the big cow dragged Cats
over to one of the spare chairs at Tegan's table. They both tried to
sit down on it at once. Zeinab, trailing a little way behind them,
looked on with extreme distaste.

"Hiya, T," said Cats. She solved her chair problem by shifting
to the next one, and propping her feet on her new friend's lap.
"This is Zerina. Zerina, meet Tegan."

"Ooh, isn't she dinky?" Zerina's voice was light, playful, and
distinctly unfriendly.

"Never mind _that_!" Cats ground her flat heel meaningfully
into the other woman's thigh.

"I don't mind at all. I'm just hired help." Zerina captured
the offending leg, and began sliding her hands up and down it. "So
pleased to meet you, Tegan. Give Her Honour _all_ my love when you
see her, won't you?"

"Do you mind, Zerina?" Zeinab's voice dripped disgust.

"Well, hoity-toity! I'm sure Tegan's a very good sport. You
are a very good sport, aren't you, Tegan?"

"I'm sure you are, too!"

"You'll never know, darling." The soldier turned away
deliberately. "Are _you_ a good sport, Cats?"

"Find out," Cats smouldered.

"Thanks, I don't mind if I do!" Zerina lurched up, and pulled
Cats to her feet after her. The technician didn't seem to need much
pulling. "Have a lovely evening, won't you all?" The pair made for
the exit, Cats's night-watch guards following at a discreet distance.

Zeinab sat heavily down in her comrade's chair. "I've seen
firing squads more subtle than those two!"

Tegan felt sick.

_"Cocktail!"_ came a triumphant cry from the dartboard.

"I can't think of the words to _Lally Clare_, either," said
Ada, into the embarrassing silence.

"This is all wrong!" declared Shellac heartily, having got her
wind back. "Tegan, you're the veteran of Old Earth. You ought to
teach _us_ some songs. You must know some good stuff!"

"No..." began Tegan, her mind a hopeless blank. "Well...no,
all right, all right, I'll try." One _did_ come to her. An eager
hush descended.

" _'Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,'_ " Tegan
faltered, " _'ninety-nine bottles of beer! You take one down, you
pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer - '_ "

Si drained the last of the brandy he'd been nursing, and braced
himself to get up. Through his headache, he had to acknowledge
ruefully that he'd been outclassed on every front. His plan of
alternating live and dead stouts had been good theory, but it hadn't
taken into account the limited capacity of his stomach, or the sheer
length of the session. Now they were packing up, it was more nearly
breakfast than supper-time.

Scratch's booze tolerance was, all too clearly, far more than
twice his own.

As for the pumping effort, Scratch and Ocho had played him for
a total rube, mixing insultingly obvious truths with arrant nonsense.
That was what being an Oil Age primitive with no head for hard liquor
got you!

He could believe that Nyssa, at absolute need, would sell free
volunteers into temporary slavery - but she certainly hadn't cursed
an abusive father to an eternity as a living stone statue.

Gisco probably did hail from a world into torture and insane
courage and incomprehensible religion - it might, if sufficiently
depraved, even model itself on ancient Carthage - but it hadn't been
founded by a passing spaceship from the original city.

Fastolf the Terileptil presumably _was_ conceited and artistic
and fond of human culture. Si was willing to bet largely that,
however the great reptile described himself, it wasn't as a higher
incarnation of William Shakespeare.

And while the Vanir and the Lions plainly despised each other
all too lustily, the story of the dartboard in the _Ole 'Ole_ was
just a particularly obscene change on a very old cliché.

He didn't think he was going to get the point of the Alphard
joke tonight.

Above all, whatever 'cupmates' might be exactly - and even
allowing that Nyssa _might_, as an adolescent, have carried some
quietly Platonic torch for Tegan - he simply, stupidly refused to
believe that the lovely Traken could betray any commitment she'd made
to Amina, in word or in spirit. He knew he was putting a near-
stranger on a pedestal, and he just didn't care. Alas, this was the
one implausible notion about which Scratch, if not Ocho, appeared to
be in deadly and repetitious earnest.

"Ready to turn in, then?"

"I think so." Si stood up. To his great mortification, Ocho
immediately had to support him. "Sorry about that. My legs seem to
have turned to rubber."

"It's not too far."

"Hey, Roy! Chee! We're on the move."

"Sure you are."

"Coming, Si? Here we go. - So, what do you think? There's
'Eronner, trying to do everything for everyone on a station full of
nazis and lazars who mistake her for Mary Mother of God or worse, and
going nuttier than a sack of squirrel shit from it. You know what?
Amina was the only one with the guts to laugh at her fancies, treat
her like a real live woman. That's how it started. Your precious
Nyssa would be playing with jellybeans and calling herself Cleopatra
Corpse's-bane by now, if our Battlemother hadn't taken her in hand!"

"It _could_ have happened," conceded Ocho dubiously, playing
the good cop. Roy and Chee left the bar ahead of them. They spewed
forth into the silent corridor, whose lights had sunk to the eerie
illumination of an arctic white night; and then they began steering
back to his room.

Si hoped Tegan was asleep already.

"And so what happens then?" Scratch was determined he should
get this straight in his head. "First she says we have to play
along with the bent Fed courts, while the Company's hired guns keep
chipping away at us. Then they off her furry pal, and she declares
war on the whole pirate Fascia at once. Okay, we went with that;
sure, and we won it together." The little man scowled prodigiously.
"We took their home _docks_, for Christ's sake! You care to know our
engagement rules? I will tell you, Si, old pal. No proper pillage.
No entertainment out of them or their people. We lost mates to other
outfits, after that one came down. We lost more at the end, killed
dead, shepherding the pirates' families and whores and grease-monkeys
to their transports before we blew up their worldlets. And no-one
knows how many others we lost from day one, 'cause we couldn't
interrogate the Company sabs properly when we caught 'em. Amina
says: sorry, lads, no torture, not ever again; because it was either
that or no Nyssa, and _that_ couldn't happen this side of hellfire!"

"Good woman," said Si owlishly.

"And you know what, eh? Some of us actually got to feeling
proud of it. Being different. Being in with a real Big Time
Operator who _didn't_ want to conquer everything in sight, just fix
things that were hurting." Scratch shook his head like a bothered
dog. "I'm not saying living forever doesn't make the last
difference, you understand. But who you believe in, that's something
else. 'Eronner was starting to seem like something really special."

"She is," stated Ocho.

"But this past month, especially, after that first power-out!
They have another of their rows, which God knows is nothing new; and
now it's like Battlemother's just some girl who minds the service
hatch, and don't need to know the whys and wherefores of what her
betters are planning. There's some here after thinking that
'Eronner's getting too good for the likes of us, now the dirty work's
out of the way; and that'll bring nothing but trouble! We're all in
it together now, aren't we?"

"They ought to have been there when Nyssa and Amina were saying
hello this morning," Si suggested. " _'Eronner_ was very nearly
singing carols when she introduced us. If that was indifference, I'd
love to see affection!"

"Well - I don't say she's bad-hearted. I'm just saying you and
your pals want to give her a bit of an arse-kicking; let out some of
the airs Mord and Alphard have been pumping into her. A loyal word to
the wise, like!"

"As I told you. None of my friends take much stock of airs and
graces - Tegan, least of all." It was a weak gambit; but it was the
best he could do, and now Scratch might be ready for it.

And he was. "Well, there's another thing. It's just as well
you came along with her, all things considered. Everyone knows she
was 'Eronner's best friend; and no-one expected her, if you'll excuse
my mentioning, being such an eyeful. Things could be downright nasty
if people get the wrong idea about why she's been sent for, just
now."

He'd been hinting at this all evening. "Gisco?"

"Well, he doesn't hold with girl-girling in the first place,"
said Scratch, thoughtfully. "But he's blood-loyal to our Battlemother
- and then again, he's funnier about Nyssa than some of them Vanir.
Acts like she's his own kid, when he isn't trying to ignore her.
Some Hadashti religious thing, as usual. No, I reckon your lady
took the right line with him and Masha."

"You'll never have any luck if you talk about Gisco, Scratch,"
Chee warned the short guard, over his shoulder.

"I will if I don't call him a - " Scratch recited a long and
elaborate sexual perversion involving dog-dirt and lampreys, which
for its own protection Si's mind instantly erased.

"That might help."

"All I'm saying," said Scratch, "is, like, watch your steps,
and don't go making things harder for yourselves or 'Eronner. You
and Tegan might go a bit heavier in public. The hand-holding and
flirting won't cut much ice with the suspicious ones."

Si tried to growl at him, but it didn't come off. "Do you mean
Shellac _hasn't_ been going round telling everyone What The Butler
Saw this morning?"

"We're simple soldiers, Si," Ocho told him guilelessly. "If no
part of you was in any part of her, you're still just flirting!"

At which point Si's headache became crushing, and that was the
last of the conversation he remembered.

The door snicked shut on their escort, and they were kissing and
fumbling and trading lustful, drunken insults. Cats had promised
herself she'd never end another evening this way again. She promised
herself that every time. It was like swearing off booze or sugar.

When her shirt was more or less off, Zerina tried to trip her
backwards onto the bed. Cats automatically pivoted, and it was the
mercenary who scrambled for balance. She didn't fall, though. She
turned Cats around, and said in her ear, "I've got a surprise for
you, kitten."

"Wanna bet?" Did _all_ the iffy pick-ups say that?

Zerina giggled her nasty PR flack's giggle. It was just as
well Cats wasn't interested in knowing her socially. "Open that box,
Cats. It's all for you!"

_Sorry, I don't do bondage on the first date!_ She nearly
said it, but she couldn't even care enough to bother. She opened the
big wood-look box obediently. It had very pretty rags in it.

"Go on," said Zerina, sharply. "Get those off, and put that
on!"

Pleasantly surprised, Cats laughed aloud. She took out the
rags and shook them. They resolved into a multi-coloured robe. Her
laughter perished on her lips as she realised what it was: a
streetwalker's caricature of a Traken-style summer dress. Lust
murdered, she rounded on her night's companion in heartsick disgust.

"What did you want to do _that_ for?"

Zerina blinked, hard. " 'Eronner won't have whores on the
station. We have to make our own entertainment!" She began
circling Cats cautiously, visibly picking up confidence as she did
so. "And what everyone here really dreams about is a piece of what
our Battlemother's got- not that _she's_ getting any these days,
either!" Even drunk, she was very quick and strong. Suddenly she
was behind Cats again, twisting her hand in Cats's short hair, trying
to force the mood back. "Put it on, _Nyssa_!"

But Cats twisted into her arm and struck out of her grip, and
bobbed back out of reach. "No," she said, levelly, and gave the
other woman the Look. The Look had always stopped everyone cold,
except for Alex; and it had stopped Alex pretty well too, that last
time, when combined with a crashing blow to the head from an
anglepoise lamp. That had been the point at which Cats had realised
that she and Alex weren't ever going to be good for each other.

Zerina's answer wasn't violence. Cats hadn't expected any, and
wouldn't have expected to beat the professional soldier, if it came
to it.

" - You _stupid_ little _tease_!" And Zerina began a long,
dull litany of obscenities, a last-ditch attempt to inflate an
erotically dead situation with contempt and taboo. She trailed off
as Cats turned away, obviously not even listening.

"Do you know what I believe?" Cats asked the raw shadows on the
wall, and Zerina in case she was paying attention. "If you're really
good in your life, you get someone like Nyssa, next time around. If
you aren't, you never meet her, or she's taken. But if you're
_really_ bad, you meet her, and you don't even want her. You just
pick each other up in crap bars, and pretend it doesn't matter. -
I'm sorry, Zerina. This was a mistake."

The night-light froze the moment grievously, and Cats thought
it would never end, ever.

"Cats?"

"I'm sorry. I'm going."

"No, Cats, don't. Please, don't. Just sit on the couch with
me. Talk, if you like." Zerina touched her elbow with guilty care.
"You're scaring me. You think too much. I didn't mean to hurt you,
not like that!"

No, Zerina wasn't your basic nice person. But then, Cats
wasn't either. _She understood that too well, didn't she?_

Cats turned again, and a senseless generous joy flooded through
her, straight up from the empty places where a lover might have
lived. She took Zerina's golden hands tenderly in her own, and
smiled warmly up into the mercenary's amazed eyes.

"Pick me up," invited Cats Hambridge, "and call me Kylie..."

"Hello, everyone!" said Nyssa, entering the refectory with her
bodyguard. She wore a loose, casual, ivory outfit with green and
old-gold trim, which would have suited her to perfection if she ever
took off that silly tiara. She looked about sixteen in it. She
moved and sounded a lot nearer sixty. Gisco hovered at her left
hand, clearly poised to catch her if she fell.

Tegan gulped her black coffee. She hadn't been feeling very
charitable towards Nyssa this morning, not that it was morning
anyway; and she'd been ready to let her old chum know it.

She'd awakened to sheerest horror. She'd slept in her clothes,
she smelled like a disused brewery, and she didn't have anything to
change into. _Si was in the next bedroll!_ In an aching chamber at
the back of her head, tables full of drunken soldiers were still
singing, _'Thirty-seven bottles of beer on the wall...'_ and passing
them around zealously. The floor had pitched wildly as she dashed
for the tiny shower/WC, where she'd been promptly seasick.

Si had turned out to be nastily methylated himself, which was
also annoying, but at least meant she didn't have to slit her wrists.
Cats was still missing - though hardly missed, after last night.
Now Tegan knew why her flatmate never brought girlfriends home! She
and Si had taken a forced march to the refectory, figuring that if
they could face coffee right now, life might be worth living again.
Their guards had been mercifully quiet. She resented them for the
gross evening, and Nyssa for handing her friends over to them in the
first place. Suddenly, and under the eyes of Si and the Doctor, that
felt too small.

"Morning, Nyssa!" she said, and looked more closely at the
elfin face. She hadn't imagined it: Nyssa was definitely wearing
make-up. It didn't entirely hide the puffiness around her eyes, or
the redness at their rims. Tegan felt worse yet.

"You okay, Nyss?" said Cats curiously. She'd been up and about
with the Doctor, taking a turn around the Black Sun, before they'd
all met up in the refectory. Cats had answered her friends' edged
greetings with her rarest, beatifically lovely smile, making Tegan
reassess last night a bit; and she'd been exuding uncommon sweetness
and light ever since.

"Amina's launched a coup," said Nyssa, looking sideways at
Gisco. The Mayor-voice that Tegan hated was missing. "I'm under
strict military orders not to think about any real work for a tenday
at least, or until I stop talking about emigration schedules in my
sleep! In a word, I'm joining you all for a quiet holiday. - It
looks as though the Master died of overreaching himself, so we really
can relax. The packet will be in Morninglight Bay in about half an
hour, if you're ready. I can hardly wait!"

"Bravo for Amina!" said the Doctor simply. Nyssa smiled a wry
smile, and nodded. Tegan shivered. She couldn't _bravo_ anyone
who'd leave Nyssa in a state like this.

"We can't lower our guard, however," Gisco cautioned. "The
Master should never have been able to trespass here. Until we know
how he came, we have to beware of this 'Rani' in his footsteps - or
of whatever mollocking traitor smuggled him in. Our Mayor's safety
must be paramount!"

"Yes, Gisco," said Nyssa. She hesitated. "Doctor - all of you
- I don't know how you feel about this, but I shan't be able to relax
if we have to trail a small army around with us all the time! I
wonder if you'd like to move back into the TARDIS for a while, and
have that shifted into my suite? Then we can all keep some privacy,
without having to annoy the Vanir every time we want to see each
other."

"You'll keep some bodyguards, of course."

"Yes, I shall," said Nyssa, "but we're not going to be silly
about it."

"That sounds like a charming idea to me!" enthused the Doctor,
beaming round at all his companions for support. Tegan knew that
beam. He wasn't inviting alternatives.

Anyway, it sounded like Tegan's cup of tea. Cats added her
voice to the Doctor's. Si was plainly waiting only for Tegan. She
said, "Love to!", quickly, and they were all settled.

They still had time to spare, so Nyssa joined them for late
elevenses.

Nyssa's cupmate didn't turn up at Morninglight to see them off. Cats
was furious for Nyssa, but glad for herself. She didn't ever want to
see the ruinously attractive Captain-General any more than she could
help; and she reckoned that would be about the one thing that could
really spoil her present mood, her favourite: that serene certainty
that, somewhere out there in space and time, Someone was waiting for
her, making everything always all right. For the umpteenth time,
those lines Si had tagged her with from Myers's Silverlock hummed
through her head:

_'To me it's all one who she is, or if I meet her...'_

_Right on, Si!_

When their packet docked, they set off straight away to see
Alphard in the Helm Room. They had to brief him, and hand over the
Accident Book and the Master's coronet, before Nyssa could start her
'holiday'; but this would have been Cats's own personal choice
anyway. (Imagine a quick gleeful mind like Alphard's, in a body like
Amina's. _Who-o-o-a,_ down, _girl!_) Cats knew already that she was
going to try and wangle herself an apprenticeship, Oil Age primitive
and all.

_The outsider sees the game best, she assured herself cockily._

Alphard actually missed a flip when he first saw Nyssa, but he
recovered in seconds. They exchanged warm greetings, and the
engineer devoured their news eagerly. "Who are you turning over to,
here?" was his first question. "Mord, or Cherry?"

"Mord," said Nyssa, decidedly. She'd agonised about this one
in the packet - for all of a minute. "Security is our first concern,
now. I don't want the Council second-guessing him, and they don't
need any taste at all of executive power in this kind of situation.
They're a model of deliberation and openness as things stand: let's
keep them that way!"

"And Amina's idea? Martial law?"

"Positively not!"

"I'm with you, there. Eh, Doctor?"

"Oh, quite so. Even Amina wasn't certain about it, was she?"

"If I analyse the coronet, Mord starts with the docks, and
Amina takes the Black Sun, we ought to have clues soon."

"I think I'll ask Cherry to check out the democratic faction,
though. He has sympathies that way himself, and people will talk to
him. The Master was obscenely good at manipulating idealists."

"Idiots, you mean." Alphard snorted with good-natured
contempt. "_Niña_, listen to your cupmate: you are _out_ of this
game for the duration! Call Mord now, and tell him he's elected.
I'll brief him and your deputy myself, and we won't breathe another
word to you until we've cracked it."

This didn't soothe Nyssa at all. "Don't let this take you away
from the main project, please!"

"As if!" He grinned dazzlingly at Cats. "Can I beg a
technical assistant, then?"

"I'm not the one you'll have to beg, _amigo_."

"Me neither!" said Cats, blinking rapidly. She stepped forward
and shook Alphard's hand, hard. "Cheers, mate!"

Alphard slapped her slyly on the back. "Wait until you see
what you've got into! - _Niña_, are you going to make that call?"

Nyssa threw him a stinking look, but she did page through to
Mord, and told the Vanir Captain about the 'coup'. She didn't give
him much chance to object to his sudden promotion. "Thank you, Mord.
Oh, could you do me a favour? If you'd have the Doctor's TARDIS
moved into my suite, in the large reception? Yes. And - yes, they
can join mine. Could they look in on Tegan and Si's room in
Serendipity, and pick up their luggage on the way? There isn't much,
and it'll save everyone's time. Yes, thank you. Nyssa out!" She
turned to eye her friends speculatively. "We're going to have to
commission you some more outfits - no, not you, Doctor. Doctor?"

"Aaah-TCHOO!" hammed the Time Lord.

Nyssa brushed at her loose sleeve fastidiously. "I wasn't even
thinking about it. Doctor, did you get anywhere with those equations
I showed you?" He'd been poring over some kind of maths for most of
their journey in the packet. Cats didn't need any genius to guess
what kind.

He looked as shifty as a schoolboy. "I might have an answer to
number two. I don't know how it could be made rigorous, though."

"_That_ quickly, Doctor?" For once, even Alphard's cool was
broken.

The Doctor shrugged. "The major lemma's structure was like
something I had to cobble together in a quite different situation. I
know my solution works, because the machine did what it was supposed
to at the time. The trouble is that I can't prove it's stable. It
might all come apart on you a few kiloterms down the line, unless you
can impose intelligent bounds to apply fiddle factors."

"That's still wonderful progress, Doctor!"

_You're a bit anxious about this stuff, aren't you, Nyss?_

"I don't think so, Nyssa. The other equations don't even look
like anything I've ever seen, and they're rather fierce for the likes
of me. Even if I do find solutions, they're liable to be just as
conjectural as the first one. And being block transfer, we couldn't
simulate the expansions in any medium, without the results actually
happening. You need proofs, and I don't see how I can provide them."
He frowned. "What I don't understand is why you thought I'd be
particularly good at this. The Galaxy is full of better
mathematicians than I am. If I were in your shoes, I'd do some quiet
recruiting."

"You're doing yourself an injustice, Doctor." Nyssa's faith
wasn't shaken. "I have it on the very best authority that you can
solve these. They really are very important."

The steel Cats had seen once before came out again, as the
Doctor turned ominously upon Alphard.

"I don't entirely like the sound of that. And I didn't like
hearing that I'm operating under Laws-of-Time constraints here,
either. Tell me that you haven't bound Nyssa and me into some kind
of prophecy, won't you?"

Alphard's eyes glinted back at him like black diamonds, and he
showed his teeth. "No."

"Doctor?" said Tegan. "What's going on?"

_"Stop it!"_ hissed Nyssa. "Both of you! Now!"

Her voice was so ragged, so lacking in command, that it stopped
both men in their tracks. Without thinking, Cats crossed over to
Nyssa's side, glaring back at Alphard. A moment later, Tegan and Si
moved together, to stand on the Mayor's other flank. Alphard laughed
shortly. The Doctor sighed.

"Thank you all," said Nyssa, calm again. "Yes, Doctor: I _am_
receiving tachyonic signals from Terminus's far future." She tapped
her tiara significantly, and Cats mentally kicked herself for not
drawing the parallel with the Master's coronet. "We _are_ using them
to bootstrap our technology. Project Ourania would be centuries
beyond us, otherwise. You didn't truly believe I could work
miracles, did you?"

"There's got to be a catch in that, hasn't there?" said Tegan
softly.

"A catch?" scoffed the Doctor. "You can't even begin to
imagine!"

"But I can," asserted Nyssa, "and I have. I don't seek - and
my Whisper doesn't offer - knowledge that will constrain my choices.
I don't know how long any of us will live, or who are our secret
enemies, or how we'll solve any given problem. Alphard and I spent a
very long time designing the Whisperer and the Ear, and working out
just what we could communicate without becoming prophecy-bound. All
we've done-will-do, is to pass back some technical and mathematical
knowledge, along with a very few non-compelling hints. And, Doctor?
The choices I've made have been mine alone!"

"And these equations?" said Cats.

"They're as much of the key to completing Ourania as the
Whisper and our own best efforts could give us," explained Alphard.
"Knowledge doesn't come from a vacuum, even in a time loop. There's
more that we never work out by ourselves, along this line of research
or anything like it."

"Our whole approach," Nyssa said, "may be fatally flawed. We
don't even know that Ourania ever works at all! That's the price we
pay for liberty and ensoulment. What the Whisper tells us is that,
_if_ this line succeeds, it must be seeded with outside information -
the solution to these equations. And _if_ we get that solution, it
comes to us only through you, Doctor! That doesn't mean you do solve
it; but I don't think I or my successors would waste all of our time
like this, unless they know you're capable."

The Doctor shook his head very slowly. "You begin to frighten
me, Nyssa!"

"The death of the Universe terrifies _me_, Doctor! I'll do
what I have to, against it." And those words weren't spoken
heroically, or stoically, or with the chin up. They came from a
tired girl in her holiday clothes, who looked like all she wanted to
do was crumple into a chair and put her head in her hands. "Please
help me, won't you?"

He looked very troubled. He took her hands in his own. He
said, soberly, "It'll take all Gallifrey to stop me."

"My man," exulted Alphard, "it'll take more than - "

BOOM!

Thunder crashed shockingly through the walls and floor of
Terminus. Tegan jumped. Nyssa swayed. Cats, Si, and the Doctor
bumped heads trying to stop her falling, and all staggered back.
"What was _that_?" cried Tegan.

"I'd imagine," said Alphard, going for his console with an
unholy bounce, "it's a bomb. If I don't miss my guess - " He
nodded. "Serendipity Living. Damage report!"

"Damage report for Serendipity A3-35 is unavailable because of
damage control damage."

"That was your room," said Nyssa, tinnily.

"Nyss. Easy."

"Alphard to Mord! Alphard to Mord! Come in! Come in, damn
you!"

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Seven, 'The Lad That's Gone'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Seventh Episode: The Lad That's Gone*

They said goodbye to Richard Ramparia in a green field in Garden
Heart, beneath a holographic sky, grey like steel girders on a frosty
morning. Gene 'Cherry' Kirsch, Nyssa's plump and ruddy-faced
civilian deputy, was rambling to the end of the porter's eulogy.

Nyssa stood among her friends, near the back of the crowd,
surrounded by a shining throng of Vanir. Last night she had joined
her warriors at Lambi's wake, a closed and private affair. Before
that she'd been to see Einar in the hospital wing, although she had
dozed off at his bedside, and spent most of her visit asleep.
Ramparia, she hadn't known at all. The Doctor had persuaded her to
leave the funeral to Cherry, and she'd agreed without demur. Then
she'd asked them if they'd accompany her.

_"...as much a soldier of Life as any of our gallant Vanir, a
strong man for the Union whose promise he believed in..."_

"It's not just another funeral: he took a blast meant for us.
Cherry can do the Mayor of Terminus things, Doctor. I'm going as
just Nyssa." Her laugh was tarnished silver. "Maybe it'll remind
some people there _is_ such a person! - Will you come with me?"

_"...out to Charlotte today. But at last, the Mayor and people
of Terminus don't really have any words..."_

The mining charge had totalled the bedroom as Ramparia had
opened the door; and it had come packaged in nails and razorblades
and coarse abrasive.

And so Nyssa wore ash-white robes belted with a glimmering
cord, and stared icily into the distance, leaning lightly on a
walking-cane which Ottar had practically forced into her hand that
morning. Immortal or not, Si thought she looked like her own ghost.
Cherry's pious angles and clichés seemed to have most of the crowd
riveted. Si found them almost as offensive as the clueless rent-a-
vicar who'd blighted his Uncle Ned's funeral, and felt relief as the
politician's rhythm slipped into a ritual closure:

"...Goodbye, Richard. Die not to our memory, but haunt us
happily, until that day of Jubilee, when entropy shall flee our
children's eyes, and we shall raise the dead again. Amen."

_What?_

"Amen!" responded Nyssa, along with the people of Terminus.
And Cats. Si felt the quiet strength and challenge that rippled
through the air on it. The slumbersome part of him that remained
Anglican felt giddy and wrong. He reached for the earthly comfort of
Tegan's hand. For the first time, he understood just how alien and
frightening his lady found the prospect of joining 'Nyssa's End'
permanently.

_Not this, Nyssa_, he thought; and knew it, as he did so, for a
vow. _Not the mysticism. I'll sing your song, and I don't know
there's much else I could refuse you; but not this, ever!_ At which
he straightaway felt clean and calm and sure again, and understood
that he had had to do that. _To thine own self be true, what..?_

Richard Ramparia had chosen burial, so the honour guard bore
him off to the digestion cist. Tegan hadn't relished learning what
'burial' meant on a space station. Looking at the flower-wild lawns
and the lush frondy trees, Si knew he'd choose the same fate himself.
After the casket had been lowered, the crowd began to break up, and a
hum of talk began to rise. Nyssa turned away with sad grace, and
began picking her serene path back the way they'd come. Her party
moved with her. On their way, the cane had looked like simple good
sense; now, it looked like a ridiculous overreaction to her
exhaustion. No-one felt much like talking, until they approached a
spur off the main footpath, that was flanked by dusty-leafed conifers
and knots of blue flowers.

"I don't think I'll make it home," said Nyssa,
conversationally. "I want to go to that grove. There's a quiet
arbour there to sit in; that's all I'll need." Ottar, ahead of her,
immediately lengthened his stride. Inside a minute, he, Ketil,
Sigfus the fork-bearded fanatic, and three namelessly Nordic extras,
had disappeared into the stately trees of the grove. Shortly
thereafter, a young couple emerged, going back the way the Mayor's
party had come. Nyssa greeted them by name as they passed, as if
nothing out of the ordinary were going on. They returned her
courtesy in kind, but gave her and her nervous escort a prudently
wide berth.

Inside the grove, the Vanir spread out widely to seal its
perimeter, not accidentally leaving Nyssa and her friends some
privacy in the arbour. Si paused by a statue near its entrance. It
was a grey facsimile of an undistinguished-looking man with round
shoulders, a composition so aggressively mediocre amongst the
surrounding _calaglay_ and good taste that it practically jumped out
and accosted him. It was ill-kempt and mossy, with an unhealthy
chalky bloom, and a withered daisy-chain for a necklace. Up close,
he could see runic white scratches on its right arm, resolving into a
childish graffito:

'Melkur is a BUM!'

According to _Who Goes There_, any truly evil being setting
foot on Traken had been instantly marmelised by the Union's sheer
ambient goodness, resulting in a living statue known as a Melkur. No
doubt it really had; and no doubt Nyssa really had spent most of her
first hours on Terminus discarding flimsy clothes on flimsier
pretexts, whilst 'Megan' tried to vamp a comically camp alien public
schoolboy, and the Doctor whacked people with celery.

_The_ Melkur had been the Master, who'd faked the legendary condition
through his TARDIS whilst waiting for the Keeper's strength to fail.

Previous Melkurs must have been ruins, idols, and metaphors.

And if Scratch and Ocho had told the truth about this being
Nyssa's answer to child-molesters, the real body must have found its
way into a nice discreet digestion cist.

Mustn't it?

The noises he heard from the arbour called him hastily away.

Tegan had always cried at funerals; but she'd drawn a kind of Sunday
strength from them, too. Nyssa, as usual, was too deep-frozen to do
either. Her detour to the arbour still wasn't a total surprise; nor
was the abrupt, precise way she turned on her cane and sat down on a
stump-shaped seat.

"Thank you!" she said, and proffered the Doctor her cane. He
accepted it gravely. Tegan knew him so well; she saw in his every
line how he held himself back by main force from twirling it in the
air and saying something melancholy and half-wise. The crackle of
dead leaves shouted loudly into the silence. "Er-huh," added the
Mayor of Terminus.

"Yeah," sympathised Cats, steadily.

"Hhk-khh!" said Nyssa, staring into her lap, and the ashen
white of Traken mourning.

Tegan and the Doctor exchanged alarmed glances. He opened his
mouth to speak.

"I'm alright!" Nyssa mouthed - and broke into a series of
racking, dry, voiceless sobs. Each spasm pitched her head lower,
until it hung over her knees, and her back shook like a bad
earthquake day. Si's concerned footsteps crunched quickly into the
arbour; and Tegan was proud of him, but he couldn't know!

This wasn't Nyssa's grief for any Richard Ramparia. She hadn't
cried like this after the Master had destroyed her _planet_!

But Tegan had known her like this before - in the throes of
vicious, suicidal depression that had nearly destroyed Nyssa after
she'd failed to rescue Adric from perishing along with the Cyberiad.
_There is no such thing as love!_ the Traken girl had raved, more
than once, as Tegan and the Doctor had put everything they had into
persuading her otherwise. But especially Tegan, because the Doctor
wasn't very good at it. And: _I'm poison, Tegan! I should have died
with the Union!_ And so on, and worse.

And, one morning, cool and practical again: _Tegan, I've been
selfish and silly. I love you and the Doctor more than I can
possibly say. Thank you for putting up with me. Do you still want
to show me your London?_ Tegan had never forgotten the crab-apple
fragrance of Nyssa's hair as they'd hugged, then - or the warmth with
which the Doctor's eyes had met her own, afterwards. London had
proved a rare old time for all three of them.

It had all been very weird. It never had looked like a case of
lost love. By the time they'd run afoul of the Song of Machines and
its plot to destroy Earth, Nyssa hadn't had any use for Adric that
didn't involve a bargepole. Tegan hadn't blamed her for a moment.
But after the nerdy little Alzarian mathematician had sacrificed his
life to take the Cyberiad down, Nyssa obviously had blamed herself a
great deal. (How did she think she _ought_ to have treated him?
_'Adric, I realise you're a caring male and a gallant companion, so I
suppose I'd better let you sniff around me after all'?_ Oh, right!)

Tegan didn't need any of her friends' genius to guess who was
guilt-tripping Nyssa, this time around. Opening her shell, and then
making her feel like a worthless failure. _What a bitch..!_

The last Traken could will herself to death more easily than a
human. The Doctor had warned Tegan as much, that other time. But
when Nyssa had been on one of _these_ jags, she wouldn't let you
speak to her, touch her, comfort her -

_Si!_

His tact had to fail him just now, while Tegan was
woolgathering. She heard the Doctor try to say something quickly,
and come up with nothing but the frog in his throat. Si had already
bent down in front of the sobbing woman, and touched her wrist
lightly. "Nyssa."

Nyssa's head snapped up, and she glared furiously into Si's
face. Tegan winced at what she knew was coming.

Her love and her friend stayed like that, black eyes locked on
grey, for many seconds.

"I'm sorry," Nyssa said, catching her breath, not looking away.
"I didn't know that was going to happen. I must be wearier than I
thought!"

"Yes, you would be. You take your Doctor's advice now, Nyssa!"
Si wrenched his gaze over to the Time Lord, silently requesting the
walking-cane. He got it. Cats helped Nyssa to rise.

This was when Tegan understood that Nyssa could come between
her and Si, without ever having to be 'interested' in men. All she
had to do was make Tegan look plain and shallow and dull beside her,
and that'd be that, whatever any of them wanted!

The new improved Tegan, who was going to have to live with
herself forever, decided she wasn't going to gnash her teeth and eat
her heart out about that. She was going to Take Action, pronto. If
Si wanted something to get poetic about, she could give him it in
spades.

"You," said the Doctor firmly, to Nyssa, "are going straight to
bed, to sleep. And if you _will_ take my advice, you'll do so in a
delta-wave cabinet, and set it for a day and a night. Well?"

"If you're looking for an argument, Doctor, you're wasting your
time." Nyssa sighed. "May I use yours? It'll be almost like old
times, then. I can't think of anywhere else I'd rest so well!"

_Yes, well, you always were a bit strange._ As the Doctor
invited Nyssa heartily back to the TARDIS, Tegan went to her old pal,
and stage-whispered, "Welcome back, shipmate!"

Something in those hundred-year-old eyes danced. "Thank you
for coming, Tegan!"

"All right, Cats," said Alphard, gesturing a new diagram into
existence. The great screen swam with planes, projected solids, and
coloured vectors. "Can you make anything of that?"

"Shouldn't think so." Cats cocked her head curiously. "I need
practice with this D-switching malarkey. It looks like a dog's
dinner to me. Can you narrow it down a bit?"

The engineer yawned archly. "I suppose so. How about that?"

Cats hesitated. She peered at the simplified network from
several angles. "Those delays. What's the next frame? - Hey,
right. That looks like another signal crossed your channels, very
crafty. You'd never have known if you hadn't run a full map, it's
acting so polite. Are there more?"

"I noticed three others that gross." Alphard grinned. "You
can track them down from main, and tell me what you think."

"You couldn't reconstruct the signal?"

"I'm betting we can't."

"No bet. How many others didn't cross our packets at all?"

"Right." Alphard looked pleased. "What picture are you
drawing, so far?"

"Dunno. An AI core would generate a lot more traffic, wouldn't
it?"

"I don't see how we could not notice."

"How about Hastur, and all those guys?"

"An i-space creature would have to upload itself, and that
wouldn't be easy. It definitely wouldn't be quiet."

" - And you'd have an intelligence core again, and there isn't
any foreign intelligence on your network. Okay, so it's a smart non-
sapient bot, or more than one. Smarter than your cyber-defence AI?
Nah. Alphard, mate, you've got an intruder intelligence patched into
your system - or your own AI's corrupt. Don't you reckon?"

"My AI cores check each other constantly." Alphard seemed to
be enjoying this as much as Cats. "Anything that could corrupt one
without raising the alarm, could control the station already - and it
could fake the traffic patterns, too. Next?"

"There's just the patch-in, then."

"Could be, _gata mía_, could be! But even I might have trouble
making that stick. Scary, isn't it?"

"A TARDIS has to have one hell of an AI, doesn't it? And if
you could get one into Terminus, couldn't you program it to 'cheat' a
bit?"

"Superb!" enthused Alphard. "And we still haven't found the
Master's TARDIS - there's another puzzle for you. Mord and Amina
have plenty of mass-detection equipment, and no camouflage could hide
it from that. Still, you've found your way to where I did. The
Master has left us some present we don't know about!"

"Yeah, that's the obvious answer." Cats scowled. "What about
those chaos waves in Ourania, though?"

"Cats, Cats! Ourania is strong a-life. He might have hacked
into it through the coronet to steal power - that was a clever item!
- but he couldn't impose a program on it. I created it, and _I_
can't program it! No, the waves look like accelerated development."

"I was thinking about that," Cats said, slowly. "Like you
said, Ourania's alive and evolving. Do we know it isn't taking a
hand itself?"

"Forget it. The Black Sun is just too small to evolve
intelligence. If we break quarantine, and start counting its size in
light-years - yes, one day! As it is, you might as well try to
evolve a brain in a pudding-basin..."

"...Intelligence needs elbow-room. Okay. Hold that thought.
Ourania is to Gaia as sky is to earth, right? You want to bring all
space-time alive one day?"

"Alive is better than dead and rotting."

"And you really think it'll be intelligent?"

"If we bring it up right!"

"Check. How much of this gets around?"

"Good guesses - around Terminus. Nyssa's rather obvious."

"Yeah. Cherry's little spiel sounded familiar... There was
this physicist in my time, name of Frank Tipler, preached the
Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle or some such. He reckoned
human intelligence has to take over the whole Universe eventually, so
it basically becomes God? Who obviously, being our descendants,
resurrects those of us who died before death got obsolete, to join
the Divine Society?" Cats shrugged. "That part of your package too,
or just the bunco boys gilding the lily?"

Alphard flashed her a broad grin. "How could we know that?
Nyssa dreams about undoing Death, though, and her passions are
contagious. She sets the tone for Terminus. I've never heard of
your Candid Drunk; but Hadashti religion says something like that,
and our Christians will talk your ears off about an ancient called
Teilhard de Chardin. Something about the Universe evolving towards
union with God at, what did he call it now..?"

"The Omega Point," said Cats, dryly. "Done playing games,
Alfie?"

"Which games - _kitty-cat_?"

She clawed his nose with her nails. He shoved his face in
hers, and bit suddenly, hard, at her own. She dodged into him, and
his teeth clamped on air. She said, "Amina, _amie_! Alphard,
_amigo_! Black holes, and tachyons, and greatest engineer of
Gallifrey! Give us a _break_!"

They broke. He was amused. He said, "You like to push people,
don't you?"

"Only way to find what makes 'em tick."

"And when you do, Cats?"

"Get 'em with a feather to the ribs..."

"...Or a feather-light razor to the throat?"

` "Situationally."

"Naturally."

"Laurel."

"Holly."

"Alphard."

"Omega."

Cats slid her index finger, feather-lightly, across Alphard's
throat. "Spill!"

"Destiny," judged the Doctor, "is a dicey old thing."

Picture this: Nyssa's lounge, elegant and comfy in sand-pale
and loam-brown and deep forest green, picked out with sparse
highlights of silver and crystal and gold. Textures: heroically
piled carpet, velvet-soft upholstery, smooth hardwood. A ten-foot
concrete Superloo gloated from one curved corner, like a nasty piece
of conceptual art that knows it's done its job.

Tegan reclined on the sofa, her head pillowed contentedly in
Si's lap. A couple of minutes back, the TARDIS had flashed with
green-and-orange flame, and the Doctor had rushed out with smoke
still curling about his clothes. Si had started up, but Tegan had
put a calming hand up to his cheek, and said dreamily, "No luck,
Doctor?"

"It isn't a matter of luck, Tegan." The Doctor perched
dejectedly on an armchair, and indicated the now puce Superloo with
disgust. "This owes a great deal more to incompetence!"

"You're hard on yourself," Si noted.

"This was supposed to be practice for Nyssa's block transfer
problem. Even so much is beyond me! I'm beginning to suspect false
prophecy..."

"Come on, Doctor!" Tegan rallied him. "It's not as if you were
ever our maths specialist. You had other things to do!"

"Well, no: of course, I'd have farmed it out - oh, _eureka_."

"You've got a bit of a pong on, yourself." Tegan had never
heard anyone say _eureka_ with so little enthusiasm. The Time Lord
slapped pettishly at his smoke-ridden jacket.

Si mussed her hair quietly. "I really have to crack these
equations," the Doctor harped.

"You know," said Si, "_eureka_ is probably germane to that.
Perhaps it would help to take a bath, or at least talk about
something else for a while."

"What would you suggest?" The Doctor wasn't in a super mood.

"What's this problem you have with prophecy?" Tegan demanded
promptly. If he wasn't going to be pleasant, he'd just have to be
enlightening. Besides, lecturing was good for him. "You're always
popping into the future and back again, aren't you? You know loads
of things that are going to happen!"

"Nothing except the present is really fixed, Tegan. The past
and the future are probabilities. Where they meet for us, we have
reality and free choice." He gave the two humans a brooding look.
"That can fall apart when you tangle your own time-line. If what you
are now depends on things you have to do in the future, you're apt to
find yourself caught in a destiny. _Doomed_ is the traditional word
for that, and quite right too!"

"Most of us," Si pointed out, "think it's tragic not to find
your 'destiny'. It can't be all bad; and if you say it comes from
your own choices, somewhen..."

"Not if someone like Alphard set you up for it," said Tegan,
darkly.

The Doctor nodded. "Destiny is a dicey old thing. If you're
bound too tightly by prophecies, you end up as their agent - their
zombie, eventually. Souls don't hold up well against that kind of
abuse." His totally matter-of-fact tone made Tegan shiver violently.
Si's cool hand stroked her forehead, but it felt as fluttery as a
leaf. "Or then, if you manage to break free, you've broken a piece
of your own causal history, a piece of your reality..."

Si nodded. "You _can_ edit your history without destroying the
Universe, or any such rot, then?"

"Oh, no," said the Doctor, and there was a very cold thrill in
his voice. "You always destroy a bit of it; fray the fabric a little
bit, make it all a little less real. Of course, it's mostly the
parts near the broken prophecy that suffer. If you make yourself
sufficiently absurd, your contradictions cancel most of you out,
until you're just another phantom of i-space, out there looking in
with Cthulhu and the vampires and the dead gods." He grinned like an
evil schoolboy. "Gallifrey's nightmare. - Hence, the Laws of Time.
Meeting yourself, for instance, is either a severe sort of binding or
a logical impossibility. You really don't want to fool with either
one."

"Doctor," said Tegan, real worry now clouding her tone, "you've
met yourself. You've practically held conventions!"

"But I'm discreet, and I hide or forget a lot of things that it
wouldn't be helpful to remember," explained the Doctor. "I've had to
become rather good at that. A prophecy that can't affect your
actions can just be allowed to sink into the quicksand of possible
pasts, until it might as well not have been made. Your state depends
less on it, do you see?"

"Not really."

"Take my word for it. For instance, Ka, ka, ka-_TISH_! I know
that I _don't_ want to know what I'm reminded of by - Excuse me. I
shouldn't be remembering it. Well, you get the idea." He sniffed
loudly. "I interfere a good deal, so I spend a lot of time running
away from prophetic situations."

_And that's not all_, thought Tegan, with a well-worn, distant
indignation.

Si said, "Don't you believe Nyssa's as safe from them as she
thinks?"

"No, I don't. She's playing about as close to the edge as it's
possible to get, and that's scarcely her style." The Doctor started
to wrinkle his nose, then thought abruptly better of it, and deployed
a handkerchief instead. "I begin to wonder just whose agenda we're
following here."

"You don't trust Alphard at all, do you?" Tegan felt obscurely
vindicated.

"About as far as I could throw a neutronium cricket ball," the
Doctor agreed. "Though his pose doesn't exactly invite trust,
anyway. He's one who'd rather dazzle."

Si's eyebrows twitched very slightly upwards. Tegan, looking
up into the poet's face, knew exactly what he was thinking.

She wasn't about to say it, though. "He reminds me of someone,
Doctor. Not when he's clowning around, but a couple of times - like
when you two started locking horns about whether he'd caught you up
in something. I don't know who, but it wasn't anyone I liked!"

"Interesting," said the Doctor thoughtfully. "Let me know if
it does come back to you, won't you? ...Though he has a lot of
Gallifreyan mannerisms, and the Time Lords you've met haven't been
very choice, now I come to think of it. It's probably just that."

"Maybe," she said, thinking it likely, relaxing.

"Hi ho," said the Doctor. "Back to work, I suppose." He
indicated the obscene TARDIS. "I don't think the old girl likes her
new dress very much..."

"I'd get that cold seen to first," Tegan advised him.
"Nyssa'll kill you if she catches you dripping on that carpet!"

When Nyssa came out of her sleepy-tank, she looked older, wiser, and
stronger again, and she greeted all her friends warmly. When the
Doctor almost sneezed over her, she threatened to drag him off to
sick-bay there and then. He shook his head glumly.

"Been there, done that," he told her. "Apparently this is an
allergic spike from first exposure to your lazargens. I'm told that
happens a lot, and I daren't treat it with anything stronger than
cough sweets."

Nyssa blinked. "That's certainly normal. I didn't realise you
were susceptible."

"I doubt it'll make much difference, given my own regenerative
systems," he predicted, flourishing his handkerchief, "but it never
hurts to wear belt _and_ braces."

"Your motto, Doctor," catted Tegan.

"Mine, too," said Nyssa, with far milder irony. "I'll see you
all tomorrow, and then we can start our holiday in earnest!" She
crossed briskly to the door.

"No work now, Nyss!" Cats warned her, gliding threateningly in
her wake.

"Not work, Cats," said Nyssa, absently. "Traken!" She opened
the door, and disappeared into a welcoming squad of Vanir. They
closed it after her.

"Does anyone want to guess what _that_ was all about?" Si
wondered, at the same time as Tegan said sharply, "Doctor, is she all
right?"

"Virtual reality," Cats explained.

"Star Age courtesies are strange," opined Si, his expression
clouded.

"She'll be visiting phantoms, I expect," said the Doctor.
"Traken will have left traces on the Universe, and I daresay Nyssa's
linking them into some kind of walled garden in i-space. That must
be where she promised to take you, Tegan!" He shook his head sadly.
"I wonder how much time she spends there?"

Cats cleared her throat awkwardly. They all looked at her.
"Ummm, Doc, I think she might mean all that mumbo-jumbo about raising
the dead. Is there any way she could bring these 'phantoms' across?"

"No!" said the Doctor violently. "The spirit is in the detail,
and that's lost to chaos. Nyssa's walking in memories. She _knows_
what happens when you raise up the empty dead. KHA-HEM! The
Cyberiad was one of the minor hopes of the Universe, until it tried
to help out by incarnating the Cybermen. She'd never make that
mistake."

"The Cyberiad," Tegan breathed. She suddenly wanted to cry,
because she knew beyond sense that the Doctor did too. "You don't
think she'd try to bring Adric back, do you..?"

"Don't!"

"Sorry!"

"No, no. I really don't. " Was he trying to convince himself?
"Who's for a walk? I shouldn't mind checking out the local
attractions."

The local attractions did include at least a couple of pubs, though
they called themselves 'taverns', and sold no hard liquor. The
_Trumpet Vine_ was a pleasant, airy place, whose lights opened on
imaginary gardens and whose saloon housed real, lush-leafed plants.
The weak beer was nutty, spicy, and delicious. Tegan enjoyed it
hugely after the nasty boozers of the Black Sun; but the next day she
let Si and the Doctor visit it alone, so that she could have some
time alone with Nyssa.

Her little chum had practically danced back into their rooms
that morning, determinedly radiant, and most definitely all herself
again. New improved Tegan wasn't going to spoil anything by fretting
over whether Nyssa might fancy her, or Si, or just big bad black
Amazons who made her cry herself sick. She was going to do both of
them proud, just like the best of the old days, when they'd shared a
cabin and been best mates and never worried about it!

Besides, she needed to ask Nyssa a private favour.

They'd settled down together on the sofa, and talked. Tegan
had forgotten what it was like, really talking to Nyssa. It came
flooding back very quickly.

Nyssa never talked about nothing. She didn't know how. But
when she was with you, she gave you all of her. She was as attentive
and sensitive as a lover; and you said more than you would have, and
felt right about it afterwards.

It was a lot like being with Si, only without the constant need
to impress, the sexual tension.

This is what Tegan learned, while she was working her way
around to her request:

Nyssa had no intention of ever raising the dead. "I'm no god,
Tegan - and I certainly don't want to become a demon!"

She thought Tegan and Si were very lucky in each other. "You
make me so glad. I've always wanted this for you."

She liked Cats, but didn't understand her. ("That's all
right," said Tegan, feelingly. "No-one does!")

And the really important thing:

"I think the place you want is called the Hotel Tomato, over
the peach grove in Garden Heart." Nyssa smiled. "If you decide you
like it, give me the word, and I'll arrange you a booking."

"Thank you, Nyssa! - But there's another thing." Tegan
steeled herself. "I mean, you're being lovely to us, and all that.
Only if I'm going to stay, I can't be living off you all the time,
can I? When the holiday's over, I'll need a proper job, like anyone
else."

"You've always worked in services, Tegan," said Nyssa, a little
doubtfully. "There isn't as much of that around here as you might
think. We don't encourage servant-type work - not as a main
occupation, anyway! - unless it reaches the point of expressive art.
And think of the security problems! You'd be far harder to protect
than an engineer or a poet. Wouldn't it be more logical for me to
arrange you an independent income? I could afford it."

"It's still you giving me money for nothing, Nyssa. It's not
right." She framed her next words very carefully. "I love being
your guest here, Nyssa; but I have to be something on my own account,
too! And I want to shop, and buy Si presents and things, and splash
out on silly things I can hardly afford. It's not nearly so much fun
if I'm just spending someone else's money!"

"Ah, Tegan!" Nyssa shook her head, pleased but perplexed.

Tegan wagged her finger under Nyssa's nose. "And don't you
_ever_ tell Si I said that last bit!"

Nyssa giggled, carrying Tegan over the edge with her. "You
will fit so well into Terminus, Tegan. You really will!"

"What as? Comic relief?"

"Well..." The Mayor's expression became calculating. "I
really ought to delegate more of my admin to Cherry. Everyone keeps
telling me so! I'm sure he'd welcome a skilled private secretary to
handle his callers and organise his work for him..."

"...And keep an eye on him for you?" asked Tegan cynically.

"That, of course. We understand each other fairly well, and he
won't take offence. He'll probably find some way to make capital out
of it. The man's a true democrat at heart."

"You didn't make that sound like a compliment."

"It wasn't supposed to be. Democracy is a splendid alternative
to civil war, but it's a ridiculous way to run a government, if you
actually trust each other! The Earthhome Federation is _democratic_.
Terminus is a free republic - and I like to think it'll embrace
aristocratic communism, one day, too."

"You're a commie? I thought you were really into money, and
private property, and all that!"

"Of course I am. How else would you distribute luxuries?"
Nyssa shook her dark brown curls vigorously. "I think we're using
the same word for different things. You're thinking of something
like those _Marxist_ totalitarianisms on Shqiperia and Wellbeloved,
aren't you? Consensus through class war, union through uniformity,
prosperity through poverty and all the rest. What revolting
nonsense!"

"You'll love talking to Cats about this, Nyssa. You really
will." Cats's kindest name for communists was _the marching morons_.
"So let me get this straight. You want me to keep an eye on Cherry,
and tell you if he starts acting too... democratic?"

"Tegan, don't look at me like that!" But there was laughter on
Nyssa's lips. "All _I_ ask from the people is advice and consent.
If they want to elect Cherry instead, and he wants to take
contradictory orders from every temporary majority or cunning lawyer,
that's wholly up to them. It's just that, with the Master's
incursion and now the bomb, matters are a little strained. If you're
in Cherry's office, you can be well protected; I can offload more
chores without having to worry about what use he's making of them;
and above all, the Vanir won't get too excited about imaginary
Council plots against me!"

"You're sneaky, Nyssa!" said Tegan, with pure admiration.

"Thank you, Tegan," said Nyssa demurely. "You ought to know
that Cherry was a professional thief and swindler before he came to
Terminus. He even caught lazar's disease running some complicated
charity fraud that went wrong. He's quite reformed in that way, and
he really is an excellent politician; but he's not universally
trusted."

"Gosh!" And they went on to speak of other things.

When the Doctor and Si came back from the _Trumpet Vine_, the
room was filled with gay, formal music, somewhere between Bach and a
country dance. The two women had moved the sofa over by the wall,
and were dancing a complicated alien measure. "Music, close!" called
Nyssa, as they came to the end of a sequence. It played out the
last few notes, then shut off. Tegan and Nyssa bowed to each other,
and turned to face the men.

"Bravo!" said the Doctor, clapping at them.

"You haven't even heard the news yet," Tegan announced happily.
"Tell them, Nyssa!"

Nyssa spread her hands wide, palms up. She said, "You're all
invited to a Traken banquet at the Union Palace in Garden Heart, in a
tenday's time. There'll be music and dancing, poetry and riddles.
You shall be guests of honour, and all the best company will come. I
promise I won't do anything else like work until the second morning
after! And I hope this can make up for your rude reception."

Si bowed with an exaggerated, mediaeval flourish. "A thousand
times over, O Nyssa!"

"Tegan, _why_ do we both associate with such silly people?"

"Just lucky, I guess..."

"Let me understand this," said Nyssa, that evening. "Three people
were murdered. The harlequin pretending to be the Doctor carried me
up the drainpipe to the roof, because he was actually George's mad
brother, who'd been mutilated by rogue masons for stealing their
Secret Rose, and mistook me for my apparent double Bitsy-Anne because
we were wearing the same costume. What, exactly, was I doing about
all this?"

"Kicking your feet and showing off your legs," Cats explained.
"Cameras were on the ground, Adric's point of view as they held him
back from wading in and rescuing you."

Nyssa sniffed. "Co-incidentally looking up my skirts: yes,
some of this is coming back! I really must have been shockingly
drunk. I somehow failed to notice almost every other detail. Still,
it was a splendid party - until George and I came down from the roof,
anyway!"

"You can't blame Bitsy-Anne, Nyssa," Tegan told her, not that
she'd liked the vapid little bint herself. "You really were being a
terrible flirt!"

"So the Doctor gave me to understand," said Nyssa, acidly. "I
pretended not to know George wasn't the Doctor; he pretended not to
know I wasn't Bitsy-Anne. What possible harm was there in that and a
dance? Flirting was _mannerly_ on Traken, Tegan! How was I supposed
to know that your species practised infidelity?"

"That's putting it a little harshly," protested Si. "It isn't
quite a racial pastime."

"Isn't it really?"

Cats said, "I bet you hadn't abolished murder, even on Traken.
Did you guys 'practise' it?"

"We didn't practise infidelity one-fiftieth as often as your
people practise murder. We couldn't have borne it. How could anyone
suspect their own beloved of something so vicious?"

"You're too good to live, Nyssa," Tegan chaffed her.

"I prefer it to the alternatives. Did this series serve any
non-salacious purpose at all?"

"Too right it did!" Cats exclaimed. She'd heard the
explanation from Tegan, and had far fewer doubts about it. "Every
bastard seems to want a piece of Earth, can't think why, and we were
coming up with too many 'incidents' for people to keep their minds on
the ball. You couldn't let it out, and UNDO couldn't shoot every
bugger who'd seen Daleks sneaking around King's Cross, either. _Who
Goes There_ solved half the problem right off!"

"I don't see how."

"Wake up, Nyss! Most of 'em would think it was a film shoot.
What about the rest? 'Hey, Mister Charles Fort, my name's Cats
Hambridge. I just saw three Cybermen chasing the Doctor, Nyssa, and
Princess Di down Wandsworth Bridge subway. What do you _mean_, piss
off you sad wanker?' "

"The Defence Ridiculous," remarked the Doctor, emerging
unsteadily from the TARDIS. Much of his mind was clearly elsewhere.
"It was also quite handy when one needed help in a hurry, without a
lot of tedious explanation!"

"Of course," said Cats slyly, "it was _mostly_ just salacious.
Tegan's character got the worst of it, but sweet little Sarah had her
moments too." She licked her lips ostentatiously. "Everyone
remembers the bit in _End of the Line_ where you wander round
Terminus throwing away your clothes because your body temperature's
gone haywire..."

"What?"

"Oh, only down to your shift. It was a children's programme,
after all That didn't come off until you had to crawl on all fours
down a narrow ventilation shaft for no good reason." Cats sighed.
"Happy, innocent days!"

"Doctor," said Nyssa, her voice cold and unbelieving, "how
could you have _told_ them?"

Cats blinked. "You saying all that happened?"

"Something like that. I don't remember those hours very well:
I was rather demented. Well, Doctor?"

"The Squadron-Leader actually put that in?" His voice was
strangled, and his face was changing colour to match his lurid
TARDIS. Tegan couldn't really muster much sympathy.

"One of those after-dinner anecdotes, Doctor?" she said. "I'm
sure it was lots of fun. I hope the running joke about Megan
throwing herself at you wasn't your idea, though!"

"No! Absolutely not!" He cleared his throat laboriously, and
regarded the carpet. "I'm definitely in the doghouse, aren't I?"

"Yes!" all three women chorused.

"Quite right, I expect." He made a sketchy hat-tipping motion.
"Tegan, Nyssa especially, I'm deeply sorry. I shall go and make
myself obnoxious elsewhere, if you'll all excuse me..."

"Had you been going to talk about something else, Doctor?"
Tegan noticed happily that the betrayed edge had left Nyssa's speech.

"I had - "

"Then won't you please make yourself comfortable, and share
some of our wine?" Nyssa flowed to her feet, and poured them all
refills from the crystal decanter on the small table. The wine was
garnet-dark, and rich in that complicated and airy-fairy way that Si
liked so much, but it was nothing to sneeze at. Trapped and
forgiven, the Doctor allowed himself to be seated and smiled on and
regaled. He inhaled through his mouth, sighed with deep relief and
content, and offered a good health once Nyssa was sat down again and
ready to drink it. After that, they all hung onto the long quiet
moment, and let the ghosts of flavours chase each other around their
palates, until they felt talk in the offing again.

The Doctor was first to break the convivial silence. He said,
"I came up with a proof about the first equation's solution."

"That's wonderful, Doctor!" carolled Nyssa. "I knew you could
do it!"

He ducked his head. "Not exactly. You see, that's rather the
thing. I've proved you need to expand it out well beyond the
synoptic limit on the way, and you know what that means with block
transfer. Any sensible attack on the problem will cancel itself out
by physically deranging my brain. Any approach that avoided that,
would be like trying to solve a conventional equation one symbol at a
time! I can't touch this problem, Nyssa. And you're quite right
about human mathematicians being useless; they'd have less chance
than I do. I'm sorry."

"You have to solve it," said Nyssa, blankly. "You have to."

"Is it truly _that_ important to you, Nyssa?"

"How can you doubt it?"

Tegan could feel the badness building up. The Doctor said
reluctantly, "I think your Whisper's conditions could still be met.
This solution would come only through me, isn't that what it said?"

Nyssa nodded, frowning intensely.

"But it could only be achieved by an intelligence that switched
far more freely between i-space and real-space than anything local.
This mind would have to be able to avoid the synoptic limit, by
working much of the expansion out of physical domains. It would have
to be a true block transfer adept - and of a kind that simply
wouldn't evolve in this Universe."

"No," she insisted stubbornly. "That makes no sense."

"Nyssa," said the Doctor, very sadly, very kindly, "it means
Adric."

"That little shit!" The wine-glass snapped in Nyssa's hand.
Bright blood and dark wine mingled as they fell to the rich carpet.
Tegan was too stunned to say a word. She hadn't even thought Nyssa
knew how to swear! And, _Adric_..?

Cats went for the medical kit. The Doctor said, his tone still
more compassionate, "I can still rescue him, Nyssa. I could take the
TARDIS to the last minutes of the _Cashflow Crusader_, and bring him
back to Terminus. That's what your Whisper is talking about."

That was the last straw. "Doctor!" croaked Tegan. Most of her
vocal chords seemed to have seized up. "You mean you abandoned him
on purpose? You let us believe you couldn't save him, and..?" She
trailed off. It was too, too horrible.

"Yes, Tegan. I did allow you to believe that. But I left the
real question open, and we may need him now."

"Never, Doctor!" Nyssa's voice was hatefully implacable. It
was worse than the way she'd sounded when she talked about the
Master. "Not if it turns all my dreams to dust. Adric chose to die
in a way that very nearly redeemed his life, and I won't let you undo
even that!"

"Nyssa - "

"If you do this to me, Doctor, never speak to me, never come
near me again!" The little Traken was actually on the verge of
hysteria. "I refuse to share a Universe with that vile puppy!
_Adric stays dead!_"

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Eight, 'Sweet Illusion'.

[Helen Fayle]

"Graham Woodland" <gr...@quilpole.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:NqZHZBAb...@quilpole.demon.co.uk...

> I was originally going to follow Helen's example, and refrain from
> posting this monster,

...<grins> Well in my case, I didn't want to repost something which is
currently being ripped apart and re-written on account of - well - being a
bit pants in places, really... (If nothing else, most of Chapter 14 has
vanished to be replaced by what was chapter 15...) Although the re-write up
to where I left it last is now largely complete, and the reposts will
commence once the Awards are over.

But a finished item with such a pedigree as this needs no excuses! Post
away!

...oh, you have... <g>

H

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Eighth Episode: Sweet Illusion*

"Nyss," said Cats, seizing her injured hand, "you can't just sit
there bleeding, y'know. How do you use this histo-plast stuff?"

"Spray it on," said Nyssa, startled out of her rage.
"Antiseptic wipe, then the minimum dose." And she let Cats clean
and seal her cut before she said anything more. She looked dazed
and lost. _And she is lost_, it struck Si suddenly. _This isn't
what she is, and she doesn't know the way back..._

For a moment, he felt it building, forming at the tip of his
tongue: the unknown speech her silence called for, more powerful and
needful than any poetry he'd made. And then Tegan asked what she
had to, and time was past:

"Nyssa, what's this with Adric?" Her voice was tight and
painful as a violin-string.

"He betrayed us to the Cyberiad, Tegan," said Nyssa starkly.
"And except at the very end, he betrayed himself, too horribly for
you to imagine. He is beyond any forgiveness this side of death,
and I'd far rather die than have either of those two live again."
She flinched. "We never wanted you to know this!"

"Doctor?" Tegan hadn't yet believed it. He nodded heavy
confirmation. "I thought he'd tricked it and got caught, and -
Nyssa, you tried to _rescue_ him!"

_Didn't you?_ her shadow screamed.

"Of course I did. The Doctor guessed something, and tried to
warn me; but I thought it was just poor old Adric, in over his head
again." A terrible spasm of hatred shook Nyssa then and fled, like
a gale through an old gorse bush. "I loved him like a little
brother, Tegan! I didn't really need to find out what he wanted to
do to me at cyber.rip.cuum! What he was doing to himself and my
simulacra wasn't even possible in less than five dimensions, and it
was pure perdition along every one. For _that_ he would sell his
soul, our love, your world to the machines' cacodemon? Hell take
him, then, and be done!"

_"Nyssa!"_ The Doctor's voice cracked like a whip on sheet
steel.

"Not that, then - not that last," she conceded. "But death,
at least. I'll not say the manner of it didn't become him."

"The things you saw were hardly from Adric's own mind any
more, Nyssa," the Time Lord ventured, much more gently. "The cuum
was a vicious addictive spiral: that's how the Cyberiad created it.
And there was enough of him left to wake up in the end, when the
real you came for him."

Nyssa sniffed. "He didn't have to access it in the first
place. He didn't have to let it tempt him down to the infernal
levels. He wasn't offered virtual brothels, or simulacra of me to -
use - in them, because they didn't appeal to him! He _could_ have
refused, couldn't he, Doctor?"

"Yes...to begin with, while it still seemed like fantasy."

"For one moment, there," said Nyssa, "I almost thought you
were going to say he lied about that, to run me off before he
kamikaze'd. But you'd have told me afterwards, of course. And then
I'd have come back with you and Alphard, and plucked what was left
of him from the demon." She blinked as against bitter tears: her
eyes stayed dry. "We shan't interfere with what he chose for
himself, Doctor. Not any of it."

The Doctor shook his head. "I should never have let you go in
after him," he accused himself.

"Then the Cyberiad would have devoured Earth, and the rest of
humanity afterwards. No-one else could have roused him against it."
Acrid as smoke from burning plastic, her words. "He wouldn't have
been ashamed enough!"

"Nyssa," said Tegan, in a tiny voice. Si knew his lady had
entertained extremely mixed feelings about the callow young
Alzarian, and he also knew that she'd just had another large scoop
taken out of her heart. "Those nightmares..."

"...were only partly nightmares, yes." Nyssa turned a
deathly, haunted face to her. "You were there, too, Tegan. Sort
of. In part, out of geometry. Incidental props. Better we were
all unmade, than that you'd seen it. Did you think it was truly
_your_ touch I cringed from?"

And she took up Tegan's slender hand, and kissed her friend's
knuckles, twice. Tegan looked a question at her.

"I can talk about it, now." She spoke as if that surprised
her. "But I have to remember you're here, safe and beside me." Si
saw the life and the iron seeping back into her. "_That_, I will
never forgive him, dead or alive! Dear, dear Tegan - if you hadn't
been exactly who you are, everything would have been spoiled after
the cuum, and I should never have believed in love outside the Union
again. And, Doctor? Once Tegan got my attention, it was you who
showed me that what happened wasn't my fault. Wasn't that so, then?
His wickedness, his selfishness, _his_ decisions, not mine?"

"Yes, Nyssa. It was all of those things, and I left death
open for him because of it." There was something gnawed in the way
he said that. "Because of how he'd hurt you. But remember how
young he was, even for his years. He was really still a child -
tricked and corrupted by one of the greater Powers. Let's take that
much into account."

"Pardon my saying so, Doctor," Si broke in, "but it's quite
some time since you were a fifteen-year-old boy, isn't that so?"

"I wasn't ever what you understand by a fifteen-year-old boy,
Si."

"Mmm, right. I remember the condition rather well. It's not
nearly as childlike or innocent as you might think, and I was
probably less 'old' than most." Si stroked his cheekbone
thoughtfully. "What I do remember clearly is that one had to make
choices that didn't belong to children. I can't swear I'd have done
any better than he did; but if I'd gone Adric's way, I wouldn't have
wanted my friends to bring me back. Certainly not because 'I was a
child, and I didn't know better'! He did, and he knows that. Knew
it. However the tenses work out..."

"You wouldn't have betrayed us anyway," added Nyssa, with a
total conviction that cut into him like a razor. She turned to her
old mentor.

"You're talking yourself into going back, aren't you?"

"I'm saying there's a case for letting him work his passage
back, Nyssa. Given how you feel about it, I'm not going to act
against your wishes!"

Cats wrinkled her nose at his tone. Nyssa paused, then said
decisively,

"Not good enough, Doctor. I know you, and you know me.
You'll get around me somehow, sooner or later, if I don't put a stop
to it now. Swear, as you love me, that you will never, _ever_ bring
Adric back!"

He jerked as if adder-struck. "Don't do this..."

"Swear, Doctor. Swear, or go somewhere else."

He rose. Si honestly didn't know what he was going to do.

"That isn't a choice, Nyssa," the Doctor told her, coldly.
"All right. I swear, on my love for you - since it is that
important - that I shall never act, in any way, to prevent Adric's
death on the _Cashflow Crusader_. He is now truly dead to us. I
shall simply have to find a way to re-enter E-space, track down the
Alzarian ship, recruit another mathematical genius, and get back
again." He drunk off his wine, set it down, and offered them all a
crooked thin-lipped smile. "At least we're not short of time for
it. Goodnight!" And he walked back into the puce TARDIS.

"Prick!" muttered Cats. "I ought to build a solve-it machine,
myself."

"Don't hold it against him," Nyssa said, her voice only
slightly shaken. "He's like this sometimes, when you cross him. He
always gets over it. More wine, anyone?"

After she'd served all of them, and they'd drunk a silent
health, Tegan said very softly, "That was a terrible oath to make
him swear, though, Nyssa."

"I know, Tegan. I couldn't think of anything else that would
bind him." Nyssa looked momentarily past her old companion at Si.
_Comfort her_, that look said, plainer than words. "It's all done
now, though. - Tell me something!" Brightening. "Are you still so
fond of jazz?"

The trick, thought Cats, would be to get by without having to lie to
Nyssa about the exponentiating chaos in Ourania. Cats had learned
plenty today, but that was really all she or Alphard had been able
to achieve. She'd just have to keep the talk on that. She said
_Cheerio_ to the muscle-boys, and palmed the door open.

No sign of anyone. The formal little foyer was huge with
silence. "Hi, honey!" Cats called. "I'm home!"

Nothing. Must be in the TARDIS, then. She went through to
the lounge. Nyssa was there, alone, staring at her CAD unit. It
was a grey rectangle with a folding stand, sloped like a drawing-
board, and Nyssa transferred her designs to it directly through her
tiara. She'd been working on these banquet designs when Cats had
set out that morning.

"Hi, Nyss!"

"Hello," absently, not looking up.

"Good day?"

"Yes, thank you."

Cats sauntered closer, and looked over Nyssa's shoulder. The
tablet was covered with alien William Morris-work, overlaid with
glowing _calaglay_ arcs and blobs. "Remembering to eat?"

"Yes?"

"Where's the gang?"

"Mm."

"The Moon is made of Stilton cheese!"

"That's good."

Cats stiffened two fingers on either hand, and jabbed them in
below Nyssa's ribs. The Traken whirled around to her feet, her
hands floating and falling as she aborted a trained counter-attack.
Her face was flushed a furious, ugly red. Her mouth began to work.

"I ought to put you over my knee," Cats observed, "but that
really isn't my bag. You're working again, Yeronner."

"Please don't do that again." A plea, it wasn't.

"Won't need to. Nyss mate, back on Earth we used to call
people like you 'workaholics'. You want to lighten up. You're
supposed to be on holiday, remember?"

"This is for the banquet, Cats! That's to be the high point
of the holiday. I want everything to be exactly right for all of
you..."

"Nah." Cats caught her gaze directly. "You want rest, Nyss.
And we want you - with us, or at least having a nice nap or a good
book somewhere. But with us, if you like. We don't mind much
_what_ kind of chintz you have on the drapery!"

"It's really a Traken thing."

"Oh, Mary Shelley save me! Look, we know you care, okay? You
don't have to hand-stitch it into fifty tapestries to prove it. -
C'mere, you little impossibility!"

Nyssa didn't, but her mouth began to buckle into a smile.
"Didn't I get us all tickets for the _Big Hearted Dive_ tonight?
Don't you think I've got things planned for the rest of the tenday?
I promise, we'll have plenty of time together."

"With you fixing banquets seven hours a day, doing a tour
guide act for another seven, and Amina shooting all our heads off
when she finds you worn to a nubbin again? Think again, sweetie!
We're all going to do a lot of quality time-wasting every day, or
you and I are going to fight."

"Maybe we should compare styles," suggested Nyssa, in what
Cats was coming to recognise as her Do You Think I'm Serious? mode.

"Come up and take a hack at me, some time." Cats struck a Mae
West pose. Nyssa put a discreet hand over her own mouth. "Meantime
- where _are_ the others?"
-
"The Doctor's taken them exploring the TARDIS."

"Meantime, Nyss, your Auntie Cats is going to teach you to
chill out. Now you come here, and do as you're told!"

Which, this time, Nyssa did.

"So," said Tegan, "who do _you_ fancy, Doctor?"

"Some suggestible Vanir, I think." He grimaced. "That
forkbearded jackanapes who was so keen to kill me on arrival,
possibly - Sigfus - or one of the other enthusiasts. They're
probably weak-minded enough to hypnotise themselves by talking into
a mirror! I doubt the Master passed up an opportunity like that.
How about you?"

"I'm supposed to be watching out for the wicked democrats,
aren't I?" she reminded, tartly. "I'd better stick with them.
Terminus Popular Front."

"Wh-_AT-CHOO!_'s that?"

"It's a joke, Doctor!"

"Oh."

_Well, screw you, too!_ By association of ideas, she turned
directly to Si. _Hot tomatoes, hot tomatoes..._ "Set us straight,
Prof!"

"I've got a tempting candidate," he told her, "but he couldn't
have planted the bomb himself."

"Go on."

"Gisco. He's a religious zealot, he's at least partly
homophobic, and he has some mystical thing about Nyssa. We know
from Cats and Alphard that he's probably worked Ourania into it, too
- and that some of his 'Hadashti' ideas, like the Jubilee, have
spread into Terminus folk culture. Either - "

"Gisco?" The Doctor's voice grew strangely querulous.

"Yes - "

"Gisco! Hannibal!" Harsh, now, urgent and commanding.
"Susan, come back at once! Well? _Well? Stop her! - TINTA, NO!_"

Tegan didn't even know she was going to slap his face until
she'd done it. She hit hard.

"Oh, my goodness!" he murmured vaguely, knuckling his eyes.
She was thinking furiously what to do next when he brought down his
hands, and looked at her in a way that was all here, and all _him_.

"Looks like we've found our villain," she said grimly. "How
did he do that to you, Doctor? Are you all right?"

The Doctor hesitated, as if testing footholds. "He didn't."

"Whoever!"

"What happened, Doctor?" Si, keeping his cool donnish head in
a crisis.

"That," said the Doctor carefully, "was not the same 'Gisco'.
That was a very old memory block, collapsing rather violently when
poked with a familiar name. It seems I visited ancient Carthage,
many lives ago, and ran into something I needed to forget - probably
some prophecy, as usual." He frowned heavily. "It's most unlikely
to bear on our situation, as such. What concerns me is that my
memory management may be getting fragile. I thought I felt it slip
the other evening, too; but I caught that one."

"About the same thing?"

"I forget."

Tegan narrowed her eyes. "Doctor, just how bad could this
be?"

"Very bad," he said candidly. "If all my blocks failed
catastrophically, I'd be doomed for certain sure. I've intervened
too much, and my time-line's got knots in it. As it is, there's no
real danger. That temporary I just knocked up would hold for days;
but I'll only need one night to do a global shore-up." He waved a
hand in distaste. "That will blur some of my remoter memories a
little, and I do hate to lose detail; but it _will_ work, and I
don't feel like taking chances."

Si was still on the Sherlock trail. "Is this sort of thing a
normal hazard for you?"

"No," said the Doctor, "by no means! And I don't see its
being imposed from outside, either. Which means..." He scowled.
"Noise. A retrieval instantiation from a faulty block transfer
computation. That could do it - if one were careless and unlucky.
How could I ever have forgotten how much I hate doing sums that can
rewrite your own head?" He stared gloomily at a random roundel. "I
probably rubbed out that knowledge, last time I worked them..."

Tegan wondered, from his unenthusiastic manner, just how far he'd
convinced himself of all this. Then it came to her that, if he was
wrong, he'd soon be dead or worse. _Souls don't hold up well
against that kind of abuse._ Tegan's wonder cells cut out abruptly
and completely.

"So," she said, "we're no further forward on whodunit, then?"

"Not that I can see."

"Time to be getting back then, don't you think?" She
stretched ostentatiously, giving Si a sweet smile as she did so. "I
don't know about you gents, but I still have to change for this Fast
Ludo Duffy gig."

"Don't forget his Terminal Five, Tegan," returned Si, his eyes
failing to pop half as scandalously as she'd have liked. "We
wouldn't want to do that!"

"A girl can bloody well dream, can't she?" And it was
flounce, stride, and saunter back to the lounge.

They walked in to find Cats and Nyssa on the carpet, oblivious
to the outside world.

"Rock!"

"Paper wraps rock," said Nyssa happily, "and you owe me
seventeen guffins." The Doctor cleared his throat softly. "Oh,
hello! I hope you had a good afternoon, too. Shall we all get
ready for this evening, then?" She floated to her feet. "I truly
think you'll love our Calor Jazz, Tegan!"

Tegan caught her breath as they passed out of Consul Street into the
great _agora_ of Terminus. "I wish I could sit down and sketch
this," she told Ottar, her eyes straying to the strutted, skyey ball
of Garden Heart above them.

"Be our guest, Skywalker."

_"Ottar!"_

"Made that up myself." Her best Vanir shrugged generously.
"Nyssa's bragged you up to be a hero three times over, so either you
answer to a Name or you get used to being Lady-Teganed. Right,
Hjort?"

"Right as reaving, Lady Tegan!"

"I didn't reckon you for the Lady Tegan kind, somehow."

"I'm not!" Tegan didn't know whether to laugh or yell at him,
though she leaned towards laughing. She usually did, with Ottar.
That was how she knew she liked him. "What made you pick _that_
Name, though?"

"That used to be your trade, the way she tells it."

"Awk. Ottar, that's so lovely, but trust me: I couldn't be
'Tegan Skywalker' for anything! You sort of had to be alive in my
time, to see it..."

"Oh. The next one that comes to mind is 'Tegan Hotlegs'.

"Is that like people go round calling you 'Ottar Ironbuns'?"

Hjort chuckled fulsomely. "She got you, Ottar. I'll pass
that around."

"Do that, Hjort Oh-Bugger-He-Poisoned-My-Beer." The burlier
guard scowled, marking him in Tegan's mind as one who could dish out
but not take. They were wending vaguely in the direction of
Terminus Hall. The _agora_ wasn't crowded, precisely, but it was
alive enough with stalls and performance artists and impromptu
meetings that it might as well have been. "You like to draw, then,
Tegan?"

"Oh, well, I used to. Just a little. Silly stuff." She
gestured widely to include all the beauty and good taste around
them. "Only, for a long time I didn't want to; and then Si, he's so
hot on real art, you know? I just wouldn't want him to see my
scribbles; and now I've seen Nyssa here, making her fortune and all
this, being a proper artist herself..." She shrugged.

"You shouldn't compare yourself to Her," Hjort rallied, being
one of Those.

"I know just what you mean," Ottar assured her. "I keep
fiddling with a _Terminus Saga_, myself; but I'm leery of putting it
out where 'Eronner might see it and say something kind. Silly, I
know. This is a girl who mistakes that whopping fraud Ter'Fastolf
for a genius. Still, what can you do?" They steered their way
through a blocking crowd around a bookstall. Several of them, the
stallkeeper included, were arguing loudly about semiotics, or at
least using the word a lot. Ottar brightened as they won through.
"Tell you what, though. Buy yourself a sketch-pad, and come draw it
some day. You show me yours, and I'll show you mine."

Tegan chewed on this, then snorted. "I never thought I'd say
_yes_ to an invitation like that! What my life has come to!"

What it had come to was that the Great Commie Catfight had
finally erupted, and still been going strong when Tegan had walked
out, forty minutes later. Everyone else acted like they were
enjoying it, and it hadn't been exactly dull or nasty. It had just
finally got to Tegan that, for people who hardly seemed to disagree
on _how_ to run Terminus, they were wasting an awful lot of puff
arguing the _why_. Nyssa sang the praises of liberal aristocratic
communism, Cats came back pat with enlightened anarcho-capitalism,
and all it'd ever buy you was they were both cool, arrogant
technocrats with hearts as big as balloons.

Tegan was a middle-of-the-road democrat, herself. _I'm an
idiot, and so are you._ Ideology bored and annoyed her. If you
knew the right thing to do, why not just get out there and do it?

So go shopping.

She'd got a standing promise out of Nyssa that she could pay
the money back, once she'd started earning. Ottar had come with
her, as usual; but his partner today was heavyset, bristle-jowled
Hjort, with his stolid joviality and Doctor Watson moustache -
Ketil's world having fallen out of his bottom the previous night.

"Where to now, Lady Tegan?" pressed Hjort.

"I'm a bit out of practice for the flea market," said Tegan,
pointing past several more acres of booths, bustle, and peculiar
haggling. Three pitches to their right, she could distinctly hear a
would-be purchaser offering to throw in a backrub. "Let's warm up
in that arcade. I want to hit some boutiques, anyway."

"Most of my married pals feel the same way," Ottar noted.

"Heh, heh, hnffh!" Hjort agreed.

"You'll probably want to cut left, and head for Rag-Rich
Lane."

"How's that?" Tegan frowned.

"It's the part they're most afraid of."

"Charge!" decided Tegan.

Under the Doctor's stern gaze, Cats and Nyssa concluded their
argument.

Cats stood with her hands on her hips, and looked square into
Nyssa's grey eyes. "I'm sorry I called you a touchy-feely termite
queen," she said, with fair grace.

"And I'm sorry I didn't call you anything so entertaining."

"Mates, then."

Nyssa's eyes opened very wide. "Oh - Australian style. Yes,
'mates'. Would you gentlemen excuse us for a while?"

"What now, Nyssa?" the Doctor demanded.

"Traken tea ceremony, Doctor," she explained. "It's a very
potent way of restoring harmony after a quarrel. Would you do me
the honour of taking tea with me in my room, Cats?"

"Love to, Nyss."

"We may be gone some time," Nyssa warned, leading Cats over to
her door. "It's quite elaborate. We'll see you later, Doctor; Si!"
The two women passed through, and closed the door behind them.

One of the little things Cats liked about Terminus was the
soundproofing.

"Traken tea ceremony, eh?"

"Yes, I really do apologise for that. It was all I could
think of, and I've been hoping for a discreet chat without having to
worry about interruptions. We could make something up, though. Do
sit down. Would you care for a cup? I would!"

While Nyssa fiddled with the dispenser, Cats gave her room the
once-over. It was white and crystal, silver and dove-grey, at once
less frilly and more intensely feminine than Cats had expected.
Near the foot of the great soft bed stood an abstract, Nyssa-sized
figure in black ebony plastic, which quite clearly stood for Amina.
Its presence was brooding, protective, and oddly encouraging, in a
way its living original simply wasn't. _Yeah: Nyss is in love with
her, all right. Or was..._

"I did want to ask you something - quite intimate. If I may."

Behind Nyssa, patterned onto the wall inside a kind of art-
window, was a triple portrait, done as separate line drawings.
Centre-stage was Tegan's old Doctor, complete with rhubarb.
Rightmost was a laughing, youthful Nyssa, running forever forward,
her arms held out. To the left, an oval frame enclosed Tegan's
face, pensive, questioning. It was done in a decent amateur style:
one that Cats knew well, from the doodles and sketches that had
often taken over the phone pad in Earl's Court.

"Be my guest," Cats invited simply, as the other woman brought
over a wide-mouthed cup of clear, grass-green tea. It smelled and
tasted something like burnt cinnamon. Nyssa joined her on the
floor-cushions, not too close, and said rather awkwardly,

"Cats, you're a human, and a - lover of women. Like Amina.
It's not something I really understand, you know. I wonder if you
could help me? I think I may need it..."

One. Two. Three. "What about it, Nyss? How's that
different from being a Traken 'lover of women?' "

"Because there's no such thing."

Cats frowned. "You have to make your own rules, Nyss. _That_
isn't what's messing you two up, is it? You think you're being too
un-Traken with her?"

"I'm afraid of it."

"And you let her know it? Nyss, I have to say it, I'm
disappointed in you. Don't play those games!"

Nyssa looked as though she might get up and walk, but she
shook her head ruefully. "I'm not communicating with you, am I?
I'm _not human_, Cats. I'm a perfectly normal Traken! I come from
a people with five thousand years of genetic and social engineering
behind us, and I can't undo that without undoing myself. I warned
Amina what she was getting into, before we pledged each other as
cupmates."

"You make my head hurt. Are you two lovers, or not?"

"Cats, look at that bed. Do you imagine I bought it to
_sleep_ in?"

"I was going to talk to you like a Dutch auntie," Cats
observed, "but you don't sound like you have any problems with
that."

"Of course I don't! She's my cupmate, and I love her, 'body
and soul, until the last darkness rings down'. But she wants to be
my cupmate and husband too, and that's very wrong. I thought we'd
sorted this out a long time ago, but lately it's been going from bad
to worse..."

"Hellfire! You want to marry some guy?"

"If I ever met him and if he were free, certainly," said
Nyssa, guardedly. "To find your true spouse, to raise children to
the Union with them: that's the height of every Traken dream, you
know. Not that it's likely I ever shall! But even if I stayed
unwed, for Amina's sake - I know I could bear that, if I only
thought she'd let me choose - that isn't like _our_ being married!"

"Nyss," said Cats, soberly, "you're right. You're not human.
Straighten me out about how it worked on Traken; 'cause right now, I
just don't see it."

Nyssa fumbled for words, too close to her subject to describe
it easily. "Where can I begin? The family was the keystone of our
Union, Cats. We chose to be long-lived and infertile, and children
were very dear to us. Bringing them up was our highest calling, and
it took two people with one purpose, a true Union in miniature. And
before, and afterwards, and anyway for those of us who never raised
children - still we had what that called for: one man, one woman,
forging one purpose of two lives, unto death and into forever!" She
tossed her head with sudden self-consciousness. "We were a very
passionate people, you'll notice. It's one of the reasons we liked
games and ceremonies so much. Obviously, we used long courtships,
and married late."

_Shit, Nyss, I don't like where this is going!_ "That where
cupmates come in?"

"Or spearmates, among men. Our ancestors weren't always very
subtle... Best friends, better than best friends, seeking husbands
and works together: the sister who guards your back; the lover who
finds your laughter and kisses away your tears; the aunt who spoils
your children; the one you visit with while you don't want your
husband or can't have him, and the one who brings you home!" She
bit down on her teeth unhappily. "Mateship is supposed to be
easier, less intense, than marriage. We would say 'two purposes,
one love'. That is how it was, for us. One man, to cleave to and
burn with and raise children by. One woman, to cheer and to help
and to trust in everything. It held us all together. 'Marriage is
Union brick, and mateship is the mortar.' Cats, does this make any
sense at all to you?"

Cats thought: _She came from a world where_ that _actually
worked. A world where no-one cheated, where everyone made flowery
love to everyone else all the time, just for politeness and fun,
'cause it was too silly to believe that anyone'd take it as a real
come-on. And she lost all that, for keeps. Oh, Nyss, Nyss, you're
so dangerous!_

"It makes sense, all right," she said flatly. "It's
just...different. Okay: if you're not going to get married, what's
your prob with Amina?"

"Being cupmates isn't enough for her, not any more." Nyssa
could have etched glass with that voice. "She wants to force her
purposes into mine; she expects a part in all my decisions on
Ourania, now, and anything else that matters. After that first
power-out, she said she'd 'left things in my hands' too long; that I
was 'keeping it all to myself', and I had to start sharing. That's
ridiculous. Do I intrude myself into her Company of Lions? That's
hers. This is mine. Cupmates don't try to _possess_ each other!"

"Not good. So. What do you want to do?"

"Cats, I know already what Amina wants of me. She wants me to
be her wife and cupmate too, with no life that's all my own, and no-
one else to turn to when the wildfire burns. That would be a hard,
dark road for me; but I do love her, and I knew who _she_ was when
we pledged cups, too. It's just that - Cats, if I do this, it will
change everything I am. It's my very last boundary, and when I've
crossed it, I'll never be really Traken again. No-one will be. Am
I being very cruel to her, Cats? Am I coining her false love? I
won't do that!"

Cats shrugged: _How should I know?_

"I know," said Nyssa, "but there's no-one else I would ask.
Think of it this way, Cats. You fall in with a quite different
Traken refugee, let's call her Elissa, and you love her after your
human fashion. She will be your cupmate, forever and with all her
heart, but never anything more... alien. What should you say?"

A short bracing season later, Cats had to answer,

"I might just go for it; and I reckon I'd stuff it up. And
that's me, and I'm weird. Most of us humans - especially the rough,
tough, live kind, like my old girls or your Amina - couldn't live
like that, Nyss. We're built on fear and pride, not love. Love we
have to work at, give it all the breaks. What _should_ I say, then?
'Sorry, Liss old love, let's just be pals instead. I have to go see
this guy about a wombat. Ta-ra!' "

"Sorry, Nyss old love," she added.

And under the vaults of the Peacock Arcade:

"He slipped off that way," said Ottar, quietly. "Behind those
racks of fancy plastic. Little dirty blond with a sharp nose. Go
and pretend to browse, Hjort. See if you can get a fix on him.
It's probably nothing, but my neck really doesn't like the way he
was looking at us."

Hjort beetled his heavy brows, said more loudly, "I'm a
plastics man, myself," and steamed off the way Ottar had indicated.
A natural spy, he wasn't.

Tegan looked at Ottar. "You two aren't going to go round
beating up everyone who gives me the eye, are you? I can handle
that stuff myself, thanks!"

"We'd have been all day at it," the handsome Vanir told her,
not raising his voice. "Look, we haven't got long. Brains aren't
Hjort's strong suit, but he isn't going to take all day not finding
that fellow."

"What are you up to, Ottar?" He'd been one of the very few
people on Terminus she'd felt really comfortable with. He was also
bloody attractive, in quite an opposite way to Si. She really hoped
he wasn't leading up to a pass.

"I'm up to getting you to call in at Young Mama Hubbard's
before you go home, and buying yourself a bag of Cockney teacakes.
_Don't_ eat them, though; and don't tell anyone I told you!"

"Oh, very cloak and dagger!" said Tegan witheringly. "That
means I'm on your side, does it? Which side is that, exactly?"

"There's no side on me, Tegan. You haven't got her a present
yet. I thought you might be on the lookout for ideas, and I'm
telling you that's a good one. Just let her wonder how you knew."

Presents were almost all Tegan had managed to buy on this
little scouting mission. For Cats, she hadn't even hesitated over
the _Diva! Maddi Chen Does Sixteen Fizz-Pop Classics_ multi-disc.
For Si, she'd followed Ottar's advice, and bought a well-thumbed
softback of Andy Aylmer Giddings's 'classic' _Dop_. The Doctor had
been harder; but that great big suet dumpling Kemi Florist had come
up with an answer, and a roses-and-rhubarb bouquet would be heading
his way before the banquet. She'd even bought herself a natty
little purple toque she'd probably never find the occasion to wear -
and a sketching set. But what did you buy Nyssa?

And, "How do _you_ know?"

"It's just a guess," Ottar admitted. "She never buys them
herself. On the other hand, it's a bloody funny taste for Alphard,
Cherry, and Amina to share - and I've never seen any of them eating
one. Try it for size!"

"I see you haven't."

"No, and I don't mean to. If it gets to be a public thing,
she won't enjoy them any more." He lowered his voice yet further.
"And supposing she didn't take it that way - I like Nyssa's End, and
I like her company. When people start getting close to her, she
usually finds reasons to send them away. She and Kari and Olvir
were like _that_, when I arrived; and here she is, and there they
are running Chalcedony colony at the arse end of nowhere." Ottar
smiled pure Northern sunshine at her. "This is the first time she's
ever called her friends back. I'm counting you as a good omen."

"You say the nicest things, Ottar," Tegan told him, a bit
sourly. "Okay; let's do it!"

"Couldn't find anything in the plastics, Ottar!" Hjort
announced, huffing back to join them.

"Don't be upset, Cats. I think I knew what you'd say. I needed you
to say it, though. Thank you! I can't go on treating Amina as I
have been. I'll think more about this."

"Thanks for wanting to ask me," said Cats, around an
unfamiliar lump in her throat. "I'm honoured."

"And I'm blessed, Cats. You're already like another Alphard
to me; and there are things one simply doesn't discuss with a man!"

"I couldn't _quite_ be another Alphard, Nyss." Cats sketched
a curly gate in the air.

Nyssa did a double-take. "He's told you about that?"

A merry nod.

"I didn't know he could take that much to anyone. Is he still
waiting for the Doctor to work it out?"

"Yeah."

"Then I shan't spoil his fun. - What I meant was that I can
be quite free with him. Except for things like this." She gestured
openly. "You don't really find me any more physically attractive
than he does, do you?"

"You're a picture to look at, Nyss, and a pleasure to be with.
But not the rest - nah. It'd feel like hitting on the sister I
don't actually have. Can't explain it."

"I never had a sister, either," said Nyssa wistfully. She
smiled suddenly. "Shall we be rash, Cats?"

"It's my middle name."

"Wilt be as a sister to me, Catherine Felicia Cats Martha's-
daughter? For that we be kinless women in the night of time, that
yet have found strange kinship?"

"Shalt!" said Cats, nearly overcome.

Nyssa kissed the palm of her own hand, and brushed it lightly
over Cats's cheek.

"Then th'art my loved sister, and shall need no ties nor oaths
between us kin; and my table's ever set for thee, and my door lies
open."

Cats copied her gesture with clumsy tenderness, and said,
"Same here!" She wasn't about to spout fustian like that for anyone
- not about stuff that counted. "Do I get to be the big sister, or
the little one?"

"That's the beauty of making it up, Cats. We can change it
about, to suit our occasions!"

"That's what I call good design, Nyss-Sis. Well, this should
keep me going for a while," _seeing as how the last guy you cared
for like a sister tried to sell you and Earth out to a demon, for a
dungeon full of virtual-Nyssa fuck toys!_ "I must be doing a good
human being impression lately. Say, Tegan always gave me the idea
that you two were more than just friends; and I _knew_ you weren't
lovers. Did you do this with her, too?"

"No," said Nyssa, wryly, taking no offence. "I'm not sure
that 'just friends' has any real limits, though. Tegan is dearer to
me than I know how to say; but I never even dared _tell_ her about
Traken mateship, and I couldn't possibly think of her as a sister!"

Young Mama Hubbard's was a famous patisserie on High Times Plaza, by
one of the tower-walks that rose to Garden Heart, and it sold cakes
too fancy or unhealthy for Nyssa's refectory dispensers. Sugary
butterflies hovered, lace-winged, over swirly iced buns; chocolate
fudge mudcakes glistened like dieter's quicksand behind the counter;
a foot-high edible Terileptil, with marzipan skin and rainbow candy
scales, leered down benignly from its plinth by the pay point.
(That gave Tegan the creeps. Maybe this Fastolf creature was
honestly Nyssa's friend, and maybe he wasn't; but if Tegan never saw
another reptile again in her life, after the Plague Crew and the
Mara, that'd be too soon. Even Earth snakes messed with your head,
if you gave them half a chance!) The shop wasn't large; but the
airy arches of white, wedding-cake plastic that picked out its
boundaries made it look several times its real size; and the
matching low banisters that guided its brisk queues added to the
illusion of space.

Young Mama Hubbard herself was a bustling, short-haired
'Cockney' who talked like a jolly machine-gun, apparently so as to
give every customer the personal touch without actually slowing down
the queue. What she said to Tegan went something like:

"Tegan Jovanka isn't it Her Honour's old friend, this is a
surprise I know you from the bad company you're keeping, that Ottar,
if you lead her astray I'll hear of it put it about, Hello Hjort,
long time no see when am I going to convert you to something better
than a ship's biscuit, anyway Tegan here's your teacakes your card,
enjoy them have a good stay, see you again soon I hope, Hello Sam I
heard about Betty,"

and Tegan found herself swirled smoothly into the exit queue,
saying rather giddily to Ottar above the low hum of the crowd,
"_Cockney_ must mean something different here!"

"It's from cocaine," explained Ottar. Tegan nearly dropped
her bag.

_"Cocaine teacakes?!"_

"Aaah!" said Hjort waggishly. "Rings a bell now, does it?
There's what you get for harking to Mister Ironbum too much. Finds
a nasty fancy taste, and passes it around like Permian pox..."

" Cock!" said Ottar. "Not 'coke'. Mama's a Cockney; she
comes from Cockaigne. It's some old English paradise. _Very_
English planet, too, from all I've heard. You're sort of English
yourself, aren't you?"

"No," said Tegan, between her teeth.

"So what was _Coke_-aigne?" They slid around the last
squiggle, and through the exit arch.

"Expensive white powder," said Tegan. "It gave you a buzz,
and made your nose rot off. It's no loss - "

As they spilled out into the clotted crowd on High Times
Plaza, Tegan felt something hard and sharp bite into her backside.
She got out her yell on her way down to the ground, tripping over
someone's boot as she started. Maybe it was Hjort's, because he
reacted fast, very nearly saving her from the fall. _"Back!"_
roared Ottar, in a voice suddenly as dangerous as an oncoming train.
_"Don't trample her!"_

Her head must have hit something, though, she thought
remotely: all the noise was so loud, and so far away at the same
time. She must have lost a moment. "Lady Tegan!" said Hjort,
insistently, as though repeating himself. She was on her side now,
pushing herself up instinctively with her right hand. Her head
hurt. The burly Vanir bent down to help her up. "Are you all
right?"

Harlequin Death; Terileptils; the light splintering in his
eyes. She rose shakily. _Enemy!_ Burning eyes, burning hell,
vermilion as hate. "Lady Tegan?" "What is it?" Concerned,
ignorant voices, lost in the shadowland. Her own private devil,
elegant and venomous and hissy, stepped out from where Hjort stood,
and spoke in Hjort's deep voice. "_Ssso_ nice to _sssee_ you
again!"

"You can't be here!" gasped Tegan, knowing her tongue wasn't
moving. "She promised! She'll kill you!"

"_Nys_ssssa _pro_misssed? Oh, my." The Mara reached out for
her from Hjort's shadow. "Third time pays for all!"

"NO!" Tegan screamed, aloud - and broke free of its deadly
fascination. She spun on her heel and pitched into a run, unreal
crowds parting about her. "Leave me alone! Doctor! Nyssa!
_Doctor!_"

She was outrunning it. It wasn't following.

A great obscene snake - swollen and livid as a bruise,
iridescent with beautiful corruption - rose up directly in front of
her, six, ten, twenty feet. It laughed at her with a laugh
distilled from all her memories of the Master. The Mara, whose only
humour was innuendo and spite, had never had anything as hot-blooded
as a laugh to call its own.

Tegan turned hopelessly to run again. The snake pronounced,
in a lazy, cultured, and enormously human voice,

"You can't run from it, Tegan. You _will_ betray them!" It
spoke with the malicious knowledge of an evil oracle. "You were
born to betray them, both of them..."

Which was her final terror, finally brought home.

It made Tegan nothing -

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Nine, 'The Lover's Return'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Ninth Episode: The Lover's Return*

When the Mara taught Tegan that she was going to betray everyone she
cared for, her mind went the same black as a soap bubble, the
instant before it bursts. She was nothing, and the dread vanished
with her -

- and the Voice From The Beer made her colours shimmer again,
saying carefully,

"You're safe now, Tegan. I've taken it away. Please, stay
calm."

"Who are you?" She was nowhere, floating in a dream, but she
began to remember defiance. "You don't sound like the Mara!"

"I'm not. Nor was that." The Voice paused. "The Mara
wouldn't risk the defences of Terminus. Even I had trouble - and I
couldn't get an attack like that past them. Not that I mean I'd
try! You're the only one I can reach, and then only when you're...
completely... detached. So please, don't get excited. We have to
talk."

"So." Was there such a thing as anger, somewhere? "If it
wasn't you or the Mara, what was it?"

"A hypnotic dreadspell, I think," the Voice puzzled aloud.
"But it must have had about ten lives' worth of elan behind it! Did
you run up against the Master?"

"No," said Tegan flatly. "He's dead."

"I can't believe you've all fallen for that old trick again!"

"We haven't." The no-world wavered at Tegan's awakening
vehemence. "Nyssa chopped him up, and threw the bits in a plasma
furnace. What is a dreadspell?"

"Easy! Easy! I'm telling you! It makes you believe the sum
of your fears. It's not real. It was meant to destroy your mind,
but I saved you. It's gone. He must have been trying to shatter
Nyssa and the Doctor, by leaving you a vegetable. You _are_ their
weak spot, you know. Anyway, that isn't important now. You have to
learn how to contact me." The Voice became wheedling. "I need a
friend on the real-side, or I won't be able to help. But listen,
you mustn't tell _anyone_ yet, do you understand? No-one. I saved
you, and I think I can save Nyssa and the Doctor; but you have to
trust me!"

"Come off it, Adric. _- Adric?!_"

"Tegan," said the Voice apprehensively, as the no-world began
to shake in and out of focus, "please be very, very calm - "

"You rotten, stinking, bastard little pervert bastard! _Get
out of my mind!_"

And just like that, it was all blown away, and she was
floating over the _agora_. Floating? Her eyes flickered wider
open.

No. Not floating. Ottar was carrying her, his handsome face
a grim, deadly mask. He was even stronger than she'd guessed,
making little of her physical weight. She could almost hear the
curses he wasn't repeating. Hjort walked point, brandishing an
ominously humming halberd. Tegan could just see another Vanir type,
this one in civvies, following behind them and wielding Ottar's own
weapon.

"Ottar?" she said, in a small controlled voice.

A winter's grin flashed across his bleak face. "Tegan," he
said, without breaking his stride. "We're taking you back to Nyssa.
There's no demon that will stand against her. You're going to be
all right."

"Forgive us, Lady Tegan," Hjort intoned over his shoulder.
"We couldn't defend you. It _was_ an attack, wasn't it?"

"Don't think about it," Ottar overrode him. "You weathered
it. That's all that matters."

"I did, didn't I?" said Tegan, more strongly. She wriggled
experimentally. Her limbs were definitely alive. "Put me down,
Ottar. I'm not crippled. It was some kind of mental attack, an
illusion. I don't think he's going to try that trick again." She
realised at once that this sounded like terrible bragging; but so
long as it calmed the troops down, and got her back on her own feet,
who cared?

To her surprise, Ottar didn't argue with her for an instant.
Instead, he set her gently down on her feet, and rewarded her
bravado with a smile of real warmth. In the moment while their
faces were still up close, and before he'd slid his arm back from
her shoulders, she mouthed impulsively: _they jabbed me with a
needle_. The Vanir nodded thoughtfully.

"I dare say," he said, for general consumption. "Should have
guessed that one of 'Eronner's friends wouldn't be a pushover; eh,
Hjort? Baldur, I'll have my halberd back now; thanks for bearing
it."

"Always honoured," returned Baldur, with perfunctory courtesy.
"Think I'll walk with you up to Her place, though."

"Thanks again for that..."

"One more thing," Tegan said presently, forcing herself to
keep up a brisk pace as they returned down Consul Street. There'd
be time to turn to jelly later. "Nyssa is supposed to be resting.
She doesn't need this sort of stuff, not now. Let me tell her in my
own time, could you? You guys and Alphard and the Doctor can handle
these bastards until she's better."

"Now, _that_," said Hjort, simply, "comes from a brave and
generous mind. I'm for it."

"All _right_!" came a ragged chorus from Ottar and Baldur.
And Tegan walked home with her bodyguards, apparently a brave and
generous person who couldn't be thrown off her stride by the odd
sick spook messing with her head.

She wanted Si. She wanted the Doctor.

She wanted Earl's Court, too, but that was off the menu.

Nyssa led him into it, drawing away from him so that he followed her
retreating energy through their touching fingertips, instinctively
as a good t'ai chi partner. Her left hand hovered near his eye-
level as she turned and sank her weight a little rightward; a slight
torque in that wrist cued him to his neat three-quarter turn, and
when he came around it was to meet her serene grey eyes full-on, and
to rest both his hands with hers, half-way between their hearts.
They pulled their hands back and aside like swimmers, as they
finished on an upper-body bow that didn't quite end in an Eskimo
kiss. Her smile was wide and radiant.

"And that," she told Si, "is the third, which is quite all the
Kaleidic mode you'll want to use for the next few months. You both
learn very quickly! Remember, though: for a beginner, Kaleidic is
strictly an ornament. Keep your expression clean, simple, and
Agalaiac - more 'dear friend' than 'intriguing stranger' - and don't
worry if you never come up with the Heroic at all. It doesn't have
to happen every time. Now, Si, watch while the Doctor and I foot
it. Music kal-3.2, on!"

Nyssa in a simple light trousers-and-skirt suit, printed with
abstract blue patterns like stains from a hundred curaçao glasses on
a white tablecloth; the Doctor in black trousers and loose white
shirt, his long dark hair romantically dishevelled, Michael Faraday
as gigolo. As the glad, knotty melody filled the room, Si suffered
a strong, arousing, and disturbing sensation of spying on himself.
He'd have been happier all along, had the Doctor resembled him a
good deal less. He put that firmly out of his mind, and returned to
soaking up the Traken freedance. It was, naturally, far easier to
do than to follow.

Cats had decamped to Alphard's once the dancing had started,
pronouncing it pansy. Oddly, Nyssa had found this almost
hysterically funny; and Cats had seemed to know why. Those two were
finding an unlikely lot in common.

Next, Nyssa had him and the Doctor dance Kaleidic third while
she watched and corrected them. Si had no qualms about dancing with
another man: it was actually far less embarrassing than watching the
Doctor with Nyssa. The Doctor's energies were unexpectedly fast and
spiky, but his control was so masterful that it was almost like
smoothness anyway. Fortunately for all concerned, he was no longer
sneezing often enough to keep his partners on mucus alert.

"Now," said Nyssa, when they were done. "Before we set it
aside for today, there's one more mode it's lawful to teach you.
You should know one move, and two changes. Si?" He came to her,
and she shocked him, wrapping an arm around his waist and leaning
bonelessly into his chest. Traken dance, so far, had minimised body
contact with almost religious thoroughness.

"This," she said cosily, her words echoing through his heart,
"is the rest position for Nisbaean, the intimate mode. If I were
the taller, I'd rest my head over your left shoulder. You should
only use small touches of Nisbaean, except with Tegan: much more
means you're lovers, or are courting it." A thought struck her,
quite palpably. "Actually, among humans, you could probably use
more Nisbaean without being unseemly! Everyone assumed certain
things about each other in the Union, but outside it, I've noticed
that people need far more assurances... I'm probably the only
person you really ought to be formal with." She looked up at him
speculatively. His body didn't react in any overt way, but he was
appalled at the way his muscles ached for her, as if they'd
forgotten all other warmth. His mind hadn't, thankfully; and so he
met her gaze with loyal friendship; and she said, "Be that as it
may...", and stepped back and to her left.

"Come to me, Si," she said. "Hold my eyes. As if you were
going to sing to me."

He did this. Her mouth opened, and her embrace began to
change. It was his bones that sang. He could feel how this would
end, in about three steps, with his right arm wrapped tenderly
around her waist, and his head rested over her left shoulder.

"Sorry," Tegan chimed in brightly, "am I interrupting
something?"

"Never, Tegan," Nyssa told her, disengaging easily. "You're
back at just the right time. Will you join us?"

"I don't think so." Bright, and brittle. Si looked at his
lady, and saw that under the flipness she was dreadfully shaken, and
her face was very pale. He had to hold down a savage, guilty anger.
_Tegan! Don't you trust us more than you trust French farce?_
"Thanks all the same. Doctor, can I have a word with you? Now?"
She looked significantly towards Puce Corner.

"Surely, Tegan. - Thank you, Nyssa. I'll drop by for the
catch-up class tomorrow. Tegan, has anyone else ever told you that
your young man is heavenly to dance with...?" They disappeared into
the TARDIS together.

Nyssa was looking at him again.

"She isn't small or stupid, Si," she observed sensibly. "I
think this is about something quite different."

_He_ should have been the one to say that!

Once they were in the console room, the Doctor cleared his throat.
"Er, you really did recognise the Nisbaean mode, I take it?"

"No," said Tegan, distractedly. "She hasn't got round to
teaching me that one yet."

"She did say it would be mainly for you and Si to use. Her
Traken proprieties, again."

"You're nagging, Doctor," she warned him. "I'm _glad_ they
get along so well!" The corner of her mouth twitched unwillingly.
"Nyssa's helping me nudge Si into taking me to the local honeymoon
hotel, if you must know. And don't you ever mention that to
anyone!"

"Why don't you just ask him yourself?" The Time Lord sounded
more annoyed than he had any business being.

"It's just - oh, you wouldn't understand. It's one of those
illogical _human_ things." She pulled herself sharply back to the
subject. "Doctor, keep calm now - oh, great, now I sound like
_him_!"

"Si?"

"No, Adric..."

"You most certainly don't! Can we start this conversation
again?"

Deep breath. "Don't go running off to Nyssa, but the enemy
just took another chop at me, in the marketplace. Someone in the
crowd jabbed me with a needle, and I started seeing the Mara and
hearing voices. I threw a fit, and word's going to get around Nys -
Terminus, that I'm a real almond flake. Can you test me, and see if
there're any traces in my blood?"

His manner changed at once, all shock and solicitude. "My
dear Tegan, of course I can! This way!" He ushered her directly to
the TARDIS's small, oddly-stocked sick bay; briskly, but with a
courtly flourish that had grown since she'd known him. He asked
where she'd been jabbed, decided hastily that he wouldn't need to
inspect the site after all, and made her sit back in a vastly
comfortable reclining chair. He took about ten minutes to satisfy
himself that she was physically all right, while she filled him in
on what had happened to her at the _agora_. Her blood sample went
into a small well on a medical station behind a roundel. As she
finished her recital, the station pronounced Scottishly, "Blood
content: normal. Ionic balance: normal. Intoxicants and drugs: low
residual alcohol, compatible with non-precision activities. Full
data has been saved."

"Close program," said the Doctor, regarding Tegan with
frustrated relief. "You know, it's rather difficult to believe in
any drug's working quite so quickly and specifically. I wonder if
that jab was meant to do anything more than catch you off-balance
for the real, mental assault."

"I thought it might work out this way," Tegan admitted, trying
not to sound smug. It was so rarely she could show herself a step
ahead of him, and she wanted his respect so badly! Well, she was
about to need all the confidence she could rack up.

"Doctor," she said in a rush, "I want you to hypnotise me.
Come into my mind, have a good look. Find out if he left anything
behind."

Disbelief, anger, and alarm chased in quick succession across
his lean face. "How could you ask that? Tegan, you obviously have
no idea what you're saying!"

"I've all too bloody good an idea, thanks very much!
Remember?"

"I thought you never wanted..."

"Every villain seems to treat my mind like open house,
already," she told him tartly. "It might even be nice to have a
friend drop by, for once."

She laughed shakily. He took her shoulders, squeezed hard.
"Are you very sure?"

"Yes, Doctor." She felt like a puppet pulling her own
strings, one step removed from what she was doing. "If they make me
betray either of you, I'll die. I have to know I'm still my own
woman."

"You? You'll always be that." He snorted. "Very well. Look
into my eyes, Tegan." She looked back into deep, black eyes, as
dark as Si's and far hotter, many times more potent than the
hellfire orbs of the Hjort/Mara illusion. Warmth spread quickly
downward from her face, bathed her body. "Trust me. Think only of
me." His voice, his eyes, her world. His hands, clenching and
unclenching softly on her shoulders. Not _her_ Doctor. More
intense, wholehearted, perilous. It mustn't matter, can't! "Come
to me, Tegan. Come." _Doctor!_ "Let go..."

She fell into a well of burning honey, and melted scaldedly
away.

...Dancing at Lindy's, near Leicester Square: ending their time
together on a high note. It was an evening to remember, a pole of
her dreams; but now the Doctor's viewpoint was contaminating hers,
and it stopped her breath. She'd known she could inspire that much
annoyance. She'd only hoped she could provoke such desire. And
such grand, alien, crippled love, that could never walk straight but
only circle all around the houses. After that last tango, leaving
him, so she could serve fat tourists thin airline food - and be her
own Tegan Jovanka...

...Joy. Nyssa's delicious embrace, and the Doctor's goofy, adorable
smile. As they stood outside his TARDIS in the weak Amsterdam sun,
she was sure to the brim of her heart that she'd never want to leave
either of these two again...

[...Omega, bringing them together. Omega, who ought to have been up
there with the Mara in her nightmares, except that he hadn't been
truly evil, just wicked. A girl had to know the difference, once
she'd stepped in both. Omega, who'd robotised her and her cousin
when that had seemed handy, and later made himself the perfect host,
as kidnappers went: courteous, interested, kindly, and practically
burning through his nullification armour with a love of life as
vivid and urgent as the Doctor's. She'd very nearly found herself
starting to like him.
Omega, who'd wrenched her into the Time Lords' Matrix and
coolly, quite regretfully, tortured her, using the local space
itself as a dreadful rack, until the Doctor promised not to
interfere with his return from the antimatter Universe to rule
Gallifrey. That return had been blank madness, madness enough to
annihilate great swathes of the Galaxy or worse. It was a promise
the Doctor couldn't have made and shouldn't have kept. (She felt
his hearts crushed against the stone.) But he kept faith, for long
enough to save her.]

...They came for her, he and Nyssa. Here he was with death in his
mild grey eyes and in his hands; there was Nyssa, buying him that
crucial distraction as she dodged in with a ludicrous, keening,
utterly sincere war-cry; there went great Omega, chickening out and
buggering off in the precious new body he'd snatched from the jaws
of defeat. Now the Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan tracked him through
Amsterdam, to stop the Galaxy getting destroyed anyway. The death
and vengeance had fallen from her companions as soon as they had her
safe; and the three of them chased down the end of everything,
laughing...

...The real end of everything. Daleks; very sick Daleks...

_"No!"_ His dark eyes; fire and honey. Fighting back. "Doctor,
you're going too far!" She never wanted to know how he'd felt at
the end of that, when she'd left him 'for good', sick and hopeless
to her core. And she daredn't feel that way, ever again. "Lighten
up, or _stop it!_"

Lightning in the wells; danger; threat - and then her words
caught up with the rest of him, and the fires died, and watered wine
rushed into the honey; and she floated off into vague, drunken
dreams, until he pulled her out again.

When Tegan came to, her sweat had gone cold on her skin, and the air
was like dirty sheets. She felt as if she'd been unfaithful, and
she was afraid that she had been, quite profoundly. _That was my
past,_ she justified herself. _And if I could crash a Time Lord
that heavily, I can certainly..!_ But she hadn't the heart to
complete that thought, and it rattled over empty words to a
standstill.

"What's up, Doc?" she asked, trying on a silly grin.

"As far as I can tell," he told, a bit testily, "your mind is
truly your own. If anything's hidden deeper down than that, the
worst it'll be able to give you when the time comes is an attack of
imp-of-the-perverse. I should think you have enough practice at
handling that."

"And thank you, too!" She had, though.

"As for the dreadspell," he went on, "if there really was one,
_something_ made it fizzle pretty thoroughly. Those things leave
awful trauma, and you haven't really had much more than a bad
fright." He paused, as if called on his mettle. "...I - may have
gone in rather heavier than I meant to, there. I'm still not used
to this self, yet: I didn't quite know my own strength. I didn't...
hurt you, did I?"

"No." And neither of them were going to push _that_ any
further! "You're more psychic this time round, then?"

He winced. He still hated the way she used that word, then.
"I was rather a telepathic dunce when you knew me, Tegan. That
regeneration took more than I really had, and I was quite badly
damaged." He grinned quizzically. "I never thought I'd get it all
back; and now it seems to be working better than ever! It almost
makes it seem worthwhile, being shot by people who called themselves
Moida Muddas and running away with a fundamentalist medic who
mistook me for Raphael!"

"Raphael who?"

"The Archangel. I think I was supposed to portend the Second
Coming, or possibly just Armageddon..."

"Read you well, didn't she?" teased Tegan.

He eyed her suspiciously. "Just which part of what I said are
you talking about?"

"All of them," she said sweetly, " 'Doctor Stormcrow'."

"I think I'm going to bounce your smart-mouthed Vanir friend
off a few bulkheads," he declared grimly. "Getting back to my
amazing mental powers, in this case they've turned up a great big
dud. I'm really no wiser about these illusions than you are."

She realised he was looking at her like an equal; and however
much she'd always wanted that, the fact was oddly discomfiting. She
faced up to it. "Do you think any of it could really have been
Adric?"

"Yes," he told her, pulling a long face. "The Cyberiad was
borrowing his abilities, so as to block-transfer itself through on
the flux blast; and it probably bound him into the cuum with strands
of itself, too. They must have been badly tangled up. Adric only
needed to break its control, and keep tangling with it until the
bomb blew - then they'd both have died." He shrugged. "If he'd let
it go, or defected back to it, though - one or both of them could
have fled all the way back into i-space. When I finally polished
off the Cybermen, I was up against a half-arsed resurrection from
kernels and backups, so I presume the original Cyberiad really did
lose its identity with the _Crusader_."

"That's a strange way to put it, Doctor."

"Death isn't the only possibility. If the Cyberiad pulled
some trick, or Adric bailed out, at the instant the flux bomb went
off, they'd both have taken terrible damage anyway." He looked like
a man chewing on a slug. "Neither way exactly seems out of
character. What worries me a bit is that they might have survived
by merging. The Cyberiad always was a chronic assimilator."

"Yuck!"

"Quite. We _could_ have Adric's corrupted demon to reckon
with - or, worse, it could be an Adric-Cyberiad fusion. Either one
might have several unhealthy interests in Terminus right now, don't
you think?"

"That really gives me the creeps!"

"Yes, you! Me! What about Nyssa?"

Tegan shuddered. "She'll go all cold, and blink like one of
her precious bloody Terileptils, won't she? I think she hurts
herself when she does that, Doctor. I really do." She thought
furiously, couldn't see any way around the next conclusion. "She'll
believe it, too. It's the last thing she wants to be true, so
she'll believe it. We'll need real proof to change her mind. So,
do you think _that's_ what it's about? Not Adric at all, just a
trap for Nyssa?"

"You've really thought this through, haven't you?"

"I'm getting the flavour of this lovely little corner of the
Universe. What do you think?"

"I'm not sure. He didn't mention the cuum, did he? Or
anything else that the Master, say, wouldn't have known?"

"No. No, he didn't."

"And again, an enemy who didn't know about the cuum wouldn't
know how to use Adric against Nyssa. They'd use his illusion to
gain your trust." His mouth wried up in a one-sided grimace.
"Which would be the Master's style."

"Do we really know he's dead?"

"Yes. Please don't ask how, but I happen to know that really
was his own corpse, not a clone or anything like that. But 'the
evil that men do lives after them'...

"Not _his_ 'demon'!" Tegan pleaded.

"Not outside the _Who Goes There_ film, no. I was thinking
more of his dupes. He was alive when Nyssa sent for us, and he had
time to prepare a reception. He could have imprinted one with a
mask - a kind of AI sketch of his own mind - to cast a dreadspell,
charged it up with just a trickle of the elan we presume he stole
from the Black Sun, and... no. Your Hjort would make a good
candidate, except for the Adric apparition. He didn't have any kind
of opportunity to force anything that complex on you, even if the
Master could somehow give him the ability. So if we believe in a
Master-dupe and a real dreadspell, we still have to take Adric's
part at something like face value."

"So what, then?" She was trying to be patient. "Back to my
idea. I bet Nyssa's told _someone_ about what happened to her.
Alphard. Amina. That Fastolf creature, in case you've forgotten
him..."

"...None of whom could impersonate Adric to you," the Doctor
reminded her, with a faint, very annoying smile.

"Well, no," she said discontentedly; and then felt herself
wilting. "It _does_ look like it's really him, doesn't it?"

"For the 'dreadspell' too, perhaps," he told her, seriously.
"He was surely right about the Mara or the other cacodemons not
being able to slip anything through the defences of Terminus. But
Adric was a thief and a computing prodigy; and if he's still
trailing bits of the Cyberiad - well, what it didn't know about
hacking isn't ever likely to be invented. And there's this: he is
or was a block transfer adept. That's some leverage on reality,
even if he can't use it much without a physical host."

"He said he needed 'a friend on the real side'." Tegan's
voice was tight.

"Yes, he would." The Doctor scowled thunderously. "Don't
ever listen to that voice, Tegan. If things reach a pass where we
have to talk to it, I'll back you up. Meanwhile, if you feel
terrors coming on again, _think of me_!" He shrugged with bogus
self-deprecation. "There's enough of a link between us to protect
you somewhat. Mind you, I doubt that the Cyberiad at its peak could
put anything over into real-space that you couldn't banish with a
firm 'No!', anyway, now you know what to expect." Tegan thought she
could do a firm 'No!'. "As for Adric - a contest of wills between
you two never was his wisest move, was it?"

"Oh, Doctor!" She hugged herself frustratedly. "Why couldn't
he have got that _one_ thing right, at least?"

"I don't know, Tegan." She realised, guiltily, that he was
bleeding over it worse than she was. "We don't even know that he
didn't, yet. But let's not give Fortune any more hostages than we
have to - especially not yourself!"

"I'll get Nyssa to teach me her psychic judo - when she gets
better. We're not going to tell her about this, are we?"

"Before the Banquet? On probably the first holiday she's
taken in fourteen years?" He mimed horror, at least half in
earnest. "Certainly not! The four of us and her local champions will
just have to work around her." Patent, lightning mood change.
_I saw that coming!_ "Shall we go back and join the dance?"

"Let's!" She linked the arm he offered, and they promenaded
sedately back into the lounge. Nyssa and Si had gone back to the
friendly, wide-open Agalaiac mode; but Nyssa sparkled over to them
like champagne on two feet, and begged Tegan to join them in the
Nisbaean.

"What are we waiting for?" demanded Tegan. Nyssa rattled off
computer cues, and swept into Tegan's arms as the dry-sweet Traken
music began.

When her friend had taught her the move and the changes, Tegan
went to practise with Si, while Nyssa paired off with the Doctor.
Her poet came to her embrace with promising ardour and relief.
_Nothing to what I'm promising_ you, _sonny boy!_

_Hot tomatoes, hot tomatoes..._

"Bravo!"

Four brilliant green eyes outshone the stars of the void, and
they came prowling, circling in. The one on the floating throne
threw back his faceless head, laughing silently and clapping
gauntleted hands in delight. He was faceless, and presumably
invulnerable, because of the green nullification armour that covered
him head to foot.

He yelped as the great white cat, big as a puma, jumped into
his lap and sank its claws into his thigh.

"I'm two Cats, Alfie!" the black panther noted pointedly,
padding over to sit at his feet. "Not a dog, and _not_ a good one.
Let's have a bit less of that 'good doggie' attitude all round, eh?"

The engineer began to scratch behind the white cat's ears. "I
wouldn't think it. 'Dog' is wrongly gendered anyhow, surely?"

"You want me to stop bitching? You should be so... Okay.
This really is a blast. We have to fool around with this more
often." Withdrawing its claws, the white cat began purring
luxuriously. "Now we're decently private and dressed for it, how
good's the news really?"

"Good by definition," said Alphard, "if as fishy as the Sworn
Word of Rassilon."

"Fish! Fish! Coincidence!"

"Quite. But where could the fish swim in, _gatas mías_?
Ourania can't be programmed, and isn't behaving as if it had been.
It just seems to be stabilising itself at a new complexity level -
_how_ high, we can't know until it's cooled further."

"Who says they swam _in_?"

"Out? Do you know something about black borders I don't?"

"Snuffed one of your singularities from the inside, didn't
it?"

"In that last chaos storm, yes. That _was_ a worrying moment!
But such things happen - and it didn't come close to breaching the
border."

"Okay, it was probably a random one-off." For reasons of
emphasis, Cats switched throats in mid-speech. "It might also have
wanted to find out whether it _could_ break out, without burning its
boats right off. Maybe _it_ knows something about your notion of a
black border that we don't!"

"It knows nothing! I don't believe it could develop any
intelligence at all, leave alone that much. You might as well
expect the lint in your pocket to evolve into a thief."

"Or the beer you just spilled to start a bull session with
you, right?"

"Speaking of which," Cats added, underlining her white
avatar's point.

"Adric's advent. Another truckload from the docks!"

"Yeah. Are you buying that?"

"I've got an open mind."

"How about an i-space E-space block transfer adept hacker to
tunnel under that border?"

He yanked her tail, hardening his armour before she could
gouge him a good one. "That's for the sentence," he said, "and
_that_," rolled-up engineering diploma, thwack, "for the sentiment!
It's impossible on every level - as you know!"

The panther considered this, before pissing copiously on his
boot. "_I_ knew. Thought you might know better, if you thought
twice."

"No such hope." With a clap of gauntlets, he changed the
pungent fluid to rose water.

"Reckon you can keep it out of Terminus proper, though?"

"Trivially - if it isn't really a block transfer adept."

"Suppose it is?"

"Nontrivially, then," qualified Alphard, "but yes." He doffed
his great helm, to reveal emptiness and the starry skies behind.
"So, Cats. Between us and the darkness, why am I going to botch
it?"

"My-aaaa-aargh." Stretch, yawn, show great big teeth. "If he
slips through, you'll know he's Adric, won't you? You hoping to
trap him? Squeeze some of that maths out of him?"

"In the gold!" Sinister, merry laughter gusted through the
void. "After what he did to her, I'd gladly wrack the little jackal
till his bits squeaked; but Nyssa wouldn't see reason about that.
We can probably set the solution as the price of his freedom,
though. _If_ it's really Adric, which isn't so likely."

"It was enough like him to fool Tegan, wasn't it?"

"A mask could have done that. The Master and the Cyberiad
both had opportunities to cast masks of him. The mask might be
autonomous now, or still serving its maker's purpose. No data!"

"Hang about. If it's that good a simulation, wouldn't it be
able to work block transfer anyway?"

"No. It might know some of the rules, but it couldn't expand
them. The masking process can't copy souls, Cats! A soulless thing
would just Gödelise itself to pieces on a true block transfer
calculation; the process would be more intensely real than _it_
was."

"That sounds kind of theological."

"No, quantum-theoretic. The soul's in the subtle living
patterns of the microstructure, way down low where chance meets
determinism. The organism reconciles them in a form of action - as
an empty presence leaves them in weak contradiction." The Time
Lord/nethead flipped a negligent hand, something he often did when
he reached an important point. "But the reconciliation is a
mystery, because it's in the microstructure. It can't be read, even
in principle, without changing it. A total-recursion scan _could_
copy the soul along with the mask; but the process wouldn't preserve
the original, so it would really just be a migration. The soul's a
mystery, Cats - and mysteries are always unique!"

She took a couple of minutes to digest that. "Hold on," she
said, then. "Would it have to be _Adric's_ soul behind Adric's
mask?" Two cats rose up on their haunches and pointed their
forepaws meaningfully between his imaginary eyes.

"Cunning," he admired, "but yes - I think! The soul's nature
would be a critical limit for block transfer work. If his was
adapted for a smaller Universe with a more intimate i-space
interface, his talents make real sense." He shrugged. "I'm not
certain. If there were any soul/mask hybrids before yours truly,
no-one saw fit to leave records."

"Wait a bit. Your soul's Joshua State 471-and-so-on's. Can
_you_ expand block transfer?"

"Scarcely better than a human. _Down, girl!_ Among Time
Lords, I rank as a super-genius creampuff generally. I get better!
Soul and persona are meant to be one organism, and they grow into
each other. I don't see how the E-space adaptation would leave
moulding on Adric's mask, but it might. I'm far out of my field,
and what I know is out of date."

She scratched busily on his armour. "And masks grow into
souls, eh? I should have guessed. Are you really that much like
the original Omega, at all?"

"I'm less political, less arrogant, closer to perfection than
I was. And I prefer humans and Traken to Time Lords, these days.
Even as a soulless mask, I liked Nyssa better than the Rassilon-
worshipping eunuchs who sent me. Also, the Joshua in me has - "

The stars exploded outwards, roaring, into grainy fractals in
green and yellow and purple. Blunt rock-crystal mountains crashed
into their random sockets, each glittering pyramid defining its own
local gravity. As Cats's bodies tumbled through the tangly
fractals, they resolved into grass and trees and vines. A brace of
dark-skinned warrior dryads - each dressed in storybook, rather
Trakenising hunting dress - leapt joyfully onto each of Cats,
initiating a long minute of general clawing, nipping, pummelling,
and tickling. Their laughter and cries were high and cold, like a
mountain stream over bare rock. Just as Cats started to get
something of her own back, the jumble fled away into the void; and
Alphard, wearing his own form again, grinned above her from his
throne.

" - interesting perspectives."

Cats pulled herself together, and rose to face him, hands on
hips. "I don't want to be tactless, Alfie, but was that one of the
mad ones? I thought the whole point was to fix that."

"We did." He grinned wickedly. "_That_ was just
idiosyncrasy!"

"More like perversity."

"Paw like it too. Maw and Paw research together?"

"Sorry, y' old bastard; wrongly gendered. Amina's more my
poison - " She broke off abruptly.

"Get lost, Alfie! That is so _tasteless_!"

Tegan stepped out of the bathroom shyly, barefoot, electrically
lovely in a turquoise silk robe decorated with soft gold hearts and
flowers. Si came away from the little arc of balcony, that
overlooked a terrace bedded with pansies and marigolds and great
lusty ornamental tomatoes, and joined her by the love-seat at the
room's softly _calaglayed_ focus.

"You may kiss my hand," she told him, haughtily nervy; which
he did, most chastely, before bowing her into her seat, and pouring
her glass and his full of chilled, light, flowery Haute-Lorraine,
this age's improvement on champagne. He joined her then, and they
clinked glasses.

"To us!" proposed Tegan.

"To our future!" Si agreed.

He drank deep, wondering about the present. Nyssa had
contrived to hint rather strongly to him that he might want to take
Tegan to the Hotel Tomato pretty soon, and it _was_ just the sort of
bower he'd had in mind, perfect to a detail. Tegan had jumped at
it. Too fast? There was an air almost of conscious daring about
her, this night. He'd have to ease her out of that, before he even
thought to ease her out of anything else.

On a low round table before them, in the curve of the love-
seat, sat a silver dish of dainty bite-size morsels, savouries and
sweets and berries. Tegan picked up a parcel of spiced meat in
flimsy pastry, and brought it slowly to his lips. He pecked it.
She fed it to him a tenth of an inch at a time, getting pastry
flakes down his deep-piled Oxford blue gown, until he growled and
seized her hand and licked her index finger definitively clean. She
scolded and laughed and praised him with words that were only drawn
breaths, and fell to running her free hand witchingly through his
long fine hair.

He couldn't take very much of that, so he let her go, met her
bright hazel eyes, and made her a silent toast. They drank again,
and again. They looked at each other some more. With the
deliberation of a chess-player whose time has come to move, he took
a fruit like a large mulberry, and crushed it slowly against her
lips.

She liked. So did he, terribly. When they had done what they
could with that, Tegan leaned luxuriously over to him, and placing
her mulberry-glistening lips near his own, she commanded,

"Tell me a poem, Si."

He nodded consent, and she snuggled round into the crook of
his arm and waited. He'd known for two months what poem he was
going to win her with, on this evening of evenings - Eddison's, of
all men's! - but now _My dear, my tongue is broken_ he could not say
it, and, "_Incognita_," he breathed her, and one of his earliest
came from his throat, then; one he'd written as the youngest of men,
when ever having a girlfriend at all seemed in grave doubt, let
alone the one who'd be, "Beloved," he said, "Unknown - "

_"Across a sea of fantasy; a drift of foam day-dreams,_
_It seems_
_To me, such sandy certainty, that we should meet,_
_And loud hearts greet_
_Beloved,_
_Unknown._"

She was still, curious, tense in his arm. He made his voice
stronger:

_"Beloved_
_Unknown - _
_Across the playing of our days; the tendrils thrown between,_
_Unseen_
_To each, in all; to share such flesh, such song and pain,_
_And still remain_
_Beloved,"_

"_Unknown_," Tegan mouthed in silent, closing chorus. _Why that_,
her bright eyes asked; _why now, why me?_ He hadn't the first
clue. Tegan leaned across him, slid her right arm around his neck,
and kissed him quite savagely. He began to hold her in earnest.
Slim, fiery, contrary, so much of his desire. As her kisses came
closer and harder, her tongue nipped in delicately between his lips,
tasting and teasing them. Mulberry juice, à la Tegan! He was
crazy-glad she hadn't fallen for the Great French Kiss Swindle. It
came down a welcome octave after that, but it stayed as strong, as
close. They necked upon the love-seat for a long contented age.
Si, softly aroused, felt no urge to end it; and he felt a vague,
headachy dread when Tegan pulled back, glowing giddily, and pulled
him to his feet by one hand and his assumed grace. Her smile rang
gay, false, possessive.

"This is a better place, Si," she purred, leading him through
the green bead-curtain that screened off the bed and its small
furniture. He felt like a felon being haled off to prison. He
sensed clammily that he couldn't follow through on this, not if he
wanted to.

You can't make sure of me! his mind cried at her, resentfully
loving. She wasn't a fast lady: that was the worst part. Scratch
the bright enamel, and she was the opposite of air-hostess jokes.
He had dreamed of this - in their season.

She faced him, dishevelled and beautiful, hands at the
loosened sash of her silky robe. She was flying on fear and lust,
and giving it everything. _Choose, lover, gentleman!_

_Give me you you you, and never mind if it's spoiled; just ask
Nyssa, spoiled is the best we get -_

_Turn me down. Go on. 'She was throwing herself at me man,
she was that hot for it!'_

Si grabbed her hands, catching her unawares, and pinned them
to her sides as he kissed her again, slow and thoroughly. Their
fists rubbed slowly against her hips, through the silk. "Tegan,"
he said, calling up all the charm he had, "Tegan, I want to ask you
something..."

"You never know. Don't count on my refusing."

"How," kiss, "would you feel about bundling?"

"Hey!" she said, pretending frivolity. "One or no-one, Si. I
don't think the others'd be interested, anyway!"

He stopped that laugh at his belly, though she must have felt
it. "It's an old Scottish custom, love. The betrothed couple get
used to sleeping in each other's arms before they get married, with
enough clothes and bedclothes between 'em to ward off scandal. I
don't care about the clothes, and the scandal can go hang." He
kissed her cheek again.

Hurt flickered briefly in her eyes. "Is that a proposal,
then?" she demanded brittlely.

His heart sank. "Do you want it to be?"

"No," she said, staunchly. "You're going to have to do a lot
better than that for me, Si Westport. You'll have to get down on
your knees, for a start."

He pretended puzzlement. "_What_ am I going to have to do
better than that, on my knees?"

"I'll show you," breathed Tegan, reaching up to claim another,
chaste-ish kiss, "_next_ time you take me here..."

They woke in each other's arms the next morning. He found it
mighty good.

Nyssa, thought Tegan, was trespassing on her territory again.

The Mayor of Terminus was in a magnificent dither. Having
prepared long hours in advance to meet Amina at Eventide Bay, when
she came over for the looming banquet, Nyssa was now seventh-
guessing herself in a way Tegan knew all too well, trying to decide
finally between the dark brown suit and pale-copper embroidered
tabard she was wearing, and a layered, gauzy, black-and-white thing
that'd probably take all the time she had left, just to climb into.
She was soliciting everyone's opinions, too.

Tegan had championed the black-and-white, which would look
about ten times more feminine; but the clock was starting to
persuade her the other way.

"It's totally artificial!" the Doctor maintained, with
tactless vehemence. "You look absolutely charming as you are!"

"There's nothing wrong with a little _art_-i-fice, when it's
not deception," Si countered. "It's simply another way of paying
someone a compliment, taking trouble over them. He's right
otherwise, of course. You're splendidly turned out, full of all the
best artifices, and utterly ravishing, either way!"

Nyssa considered this. "But, don't you suppose - "

Tegan considered shooting all three of them.

" - that it might seem - "

Someone knocked at the door, and Nyssa jumped. If it turned
out to be Amina, Tegan wouldn't by now be surprised. "Come in!" It
was Ottar and Ketil.

"Message, Yeronner," said Ketil respectfully. Nyssa inclined
her head. The big Vanir looked meaningfully at Ottar, who cleared
his throat and recited, deadpan:

"Subspace transmission: Ter'Fastolf presents his lady his
compliments, and protests he may not by no means save black
_Nygromancy_ (of which he'll have none!) post to Terminus so speedy
as share the joys of her Banquet; but being mere Enchanted and no
Enchanter, shall speed to her side 'cross the vasty deep, as soon as
free and quit of that _demalefication_ negotio she will wot of;
wherein he has modest store of hope. And shall now drink a full
hearty toast to his nest-niece; with her great gallant love, and all
her true friends and cameradoes of years past, with whom he trusts
to meet right soon! Waffle ends."

"My thanks, Ottar!" Nyssa looked ruefully amused. "Tell me,
what do you think? This, to meet Amina?" She pirouetted. "Or
this?" She took up the dress, and held it to her rather fetchingly.

"The tabard's you," the Vanir said positively.

"Precisely!" pressed the Doctor, kick-worthily. "Nyssa, what
is demalefication?"

"It's one of our diplomatic projects," said Nyssa
abstractedly. "One of the Terileptil Museion's allies brings forth
creatures - Amina calls them _shaytans_ - that are living Doomsday
weapons: physically and psychically tooled evil, enough to devour a
planet apiece. We're trying to bring together a party in the
Museion to pawn them in disarmament negotiations. They've been
quite effective in the Galactic balance of terror, but there really
isn't a place for such things in this Universe!"

"I believe we've met one," the Doctor told her. She looked
strangely sceptical. "You're quite right about that!"

"You and Tegan? - Doctor, you're both still _alive_! This
isn't even Hastur or Nyarlathotep; it's as real as they try to be.
I'd no more go up against a shaytan than I'd wrestle a nuclear
explosion! I'd throw everything I had into psychic shields, and
have my batteries attack it with antimatter cannon and charged black
holes. If they didn't need to moloch nations of their own people
every time they created one, they'd rule this whole spiral arm or be
extinct. As it is, they're Museion clients, but they trade on their
stockpile quite handily. You must be thinking of some other
ultimate evil..."

"This one came without its own power-source," explained the
Doctor. "It was another Earth job."

"The _Malice_?" Tegan wondered if a single one of her horrors
was going to stay dead.

"What an excellent name for it," said Nyssa, new respect in
her voice. _Brave heart, Tegan!_ "You destroyed it, I take it?"

The Doctor bowed theatrically. "We did."

"Nyssa," complained Tegan, "doesn't it tell you anything about
the Terileptils that they're chums with people like that?"

"It tells me they're no more virtuous than humans, Tegan. I
knew that. Fastolf is my friend, not the whole Museion!"

Nyssa was going to trust herself to death one day. _I wonder
what's really keeping the great scaly bugger?_ Tegan thought. And:
_Did she just say Terminus could beat off a powered-up Malice, or
not?_

_Oh, please, no..!_

Her friend turned back curiously to the two Vanir, who were
still hovering. "Was there something else?" she asked. "Or is this
social?"

Ketil flinched. "Don't we wish," said Ottar, but then
stumbled on the next thing.

Ketil said, "Doc van Duyn says someone poisoned my beer with
shitative the other day. Hjort's slung his hook; Mord thinks he's
sneaked off to the Dead Zone. There was shitative traces in Hjort's
locker." It was Ottar's turn to wince.

"Why are you bothering the Mayor with this?" challenged the
Doctor.

Ottar shrugged. "Hjort'd be a really bad fellow to trust, in
case he does turn up."

"So now we know," said Nyssa to Tegan. "Hjort was the vehicle
for the Master's last attempt on you. It's probably too much to
hope that he was the bomber as well."

"He's alibied," confirmed Ottar, looking at Tegan a bit
askance.

"You _knew_?" Tegan was poleaxed.

"It was all rather obvious," Nyssa opined. "You'd clearly had
a narrow escape; and you just as plainly didn't want me to know
about it. I thought it politer not to ask, until I put my Mayor's
chain back on again. What was it? A hypnotic program?"

"Um - " Tegan swallowed.

"I'd really rather know what I'm up against." Nyssa's grey
eyes appraised her coolly. "There's something else you're holding
back from me, isn't there?"

Tegan looked helplessly at the Doctor. He nodded grimly. As
quickly and calmly as she could, she described her adventure at the
_agora_ - and, hating herself, told Nyssa about the Voice of Adric.

She was waiting for that cold, deadly blink. It didn't come.
Nyssa listened attentively, carefully, and ended with a toss of her
head and a bitter little laugh. "Poor old Adric!" she said. "I
should have guessed he'd botch death as thoroughly as life. I truly
wish he hadn't!"

"I'm so sorry!" cried Tegan. "I didn't want to spoil your
holiday..."

Nyssa looked as startled as if Ottar had carried out his old
threat to goose her. "What?" she said, blankly.

She walked two steps up to Tegan, reached up, and kissed her
lightly on the cheek.

"Oh, my brave, brave dear!" said Nyssa tenderly. "I see I
shall have to teach you some psychic self-defence. The demons shall
never dare you again. When the banquet's over, you must come with
me to i-Traken; and I'll teach you all that, and show you wonders
besides!"

"Hello, Nyssa," said Amina caustically, from the doorway.

Nyssa looked for a second as though she'd been gut-punched;
but when she turned to face her cupmate, she was all gaiety and
elegance again. "Hello, love!" She opened her arms for an embrace
that didn't happen.

Amina's gaze and huge, accusing index finger seemed to be
drawn unwillingly past them, across the room, to the great puce Time
Toilet in the corner. The Captain-General wasn't physically
equipped to match its complexion with her own, but she certainly
wasn't failing for lack of passion..

_"Get that_ thing _out of here!"_

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Ten, 'Lady of the Dance'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Tenth Episode: Lady of the Dance*

_ = Agalaiac Stance =_

"My dear friends!" cried Nyssa, rising to her feet and saluting the
company with a tall glass of mineral water. Her voice seemed to
come from up close, as if she stood at every table in Bragi's Hall
at once. A hearty dinner, an angel-light dessert, and rivers of
delicious drink had left her guests merry, and disposed to show it.
"Hear, hear!", and "Same to you!" and the like rang back in
scattered chorus, a good deal of it from the waiter and guard
contingents. "We ain't cheap!" came from Tegan's table, courtesy of
the caretaker-_calaglaios_-comedian, Albertina Sisulu.

Cherry, at the far corner, laughed ripely. Tegan's future
boss didn't improve, close up. She'd seen Cabinet Ministers on the
BBC she'd liked better.

The feasting-hall at Union Palace was a sight for sore eyes,
not to mention hungry bellies or dry throats. Tegan drank off more
of her fat red wine, and let her gaze wander again. Nyssa's guests
sat at big, well-demolished tables of eight, according to an
intricate seating plan with a gaping hole in its heart. The lights
were low and evening, the tablecloths and tapestries rich - here
with smooth lively abstracts, there with strong, knotty branches
decked with curious fruit and vines, everywhere genial and
appetising and just a bit too much like arty wallpaper. In place of
chandeliers, clouds of fiery stars like frozen fireworks hovered
below the ceiling. Behind Nyssa, the dance orchestra had already
got into position, and were watching their Mayor like everyone else.

The duty Vanir - lots of them - were being as discreet as they
knew how.

"My dear friends!" Nyssa repeated. "Thank you all for coming
here tonight, and making this such a splendid evening." More
cheers. "But more than anything else, I'd like to thank you now for
all your work, your trust, and for being part of our great adventure
here." Her glance strayed briefly to the stranger at her side.
Amina, of course, was 'sick'. _Too bloody right!_ Nyssa didn't
let her voice break. "We've shared so many pleasures and dangers,
and you've all been so patient with me! The truth is, there have
been so many things I've had to keep back from some or all of you,
for fear of our false friends and unfriends out there -" She
gestured sweepingly upwards and about, before smiling, and speaking
more strongly.

"I don't think it's been any secret that I've had to keep
important secrets! But now I've decided it's time I took
Cit'Montagni's advice, and revealed all - though perhaps not _quite_
in the way our favourite holo-artist would prefer!" General
laughter, which Nyssa let die down of itself, into the expectant
hush she wanted.

"We've come close to our great throw of the dice," she said,
earnestly, "and our enemies seem to have caught our scent at last.
I'll ask no-one here to follow me in the dark; and I'd have you,
sweet friends and tried comrades, the first to see our whole picture
- for love's sake, and in death's spite!" She offered that as a
toast, and the hall clamoured with it briefly, before all eyes fixed
on her again, and the silence became absolute.

Tegan glugged a hasty refill. This was some holiday. She
found it hard to look at Nyssa; who hadn't been half so pretty, that
same morning.

_ - Choose Partners -_

The two cupmates had launched on a truly nasty row within ten
seconds of their reunion. Nyssa, once she'd found words again, had
refused disdainfully to eject the disreputable TARDIS or its inmates
from her suite. Tegan had forgotten, or perhaps never really known,
just how efficiently her sweet-tempered friend could put over cold
anger and contempt. Amina had started to bellow back a violent
ultimatum, then bitten it off by main force. Tegan had never heard
anyone actually gnash their teeth before.

Nyssa glared thorns and defiance back up at her lover. The
big woman grabbed her arm, like a branch she was minded to twist
off, and said harshly,

"_In there!_ We'll discuss this in private."

"Your delicacy astounds me," snapped back Nyssa, letting
herself be marched to her room. "Indeed, we'll _discuss_ this!"
And the door snicked shut behind them.

Si and the Doctor had both gone weak and pale. Ottar and
Ketil stood stock-still, their faces utterly impassive. Tegan
didn't even want to know what _she_ looked like!

"Do you suppose we should take a walk?" the Doctor wondered.
Tegan knew exactly what was weighing on his mind.

"It's happened before," said Ottar disgustedly, "it'll happen
again. We're worse than useless, here. Let's get to the _Trumpet
Vine_ or somewhere, until they've sorted it out."

Ketil muttered something vicious under his breath. They got.
They talked. They drank. Tegan and the Doctor came home without
Si.

_ - Agalaiac, Touch Heroic -_

"You'll all remember," recalled Nyssa, "that when I first came to
Terminus, we had three great problems - to cure lazar's disease; to
heal the rift in time that threatened to undo Creation; and to break
free from Company servitude. That last labour was not chiefly mine;
and unlike mine, it's achieved. I don't mean to say more about it
this evening, except once again to thank the slave-veterans, the
soldiers, and the engineers who won that war; and all the people of
Terminus who've joined hands in our Republic since, and brought a
real victory out of that peace. To which we can never drink too
often - "

Tegan drank.

_ - Kaleidic -_

They'd run into the midday break, and the _Trumpet Vine_ was more
crowded than usual. A hefty, tonsured, Indian-looking guy got up
and waved to them: "Hey, Ottar! Cit'Westport! Over here!" He and
his companion began clearing chair- and table-space without waiting
to be answered. That left a lot of clear, because they were sharing
their session with about two dozen real, old-fashioned books, and
not a multi-disc among them. No-one seemed to resent their
occupation. Ketil did grunt sourly; but Ottar sighed, and led them
across.

"I should have known we'd bump into you," he observed. "Simon
Westport, Tegan Jovanka, Doctor Stormcrow: this is Pramod Parekh of
Troynovant, the Number One Bookworm of Nyssa's End." The woman was
ropy, blanch-skinned, snaggle-toothed, and quite possibly the
ugliest human Tegan had ever met in her life. She wore rough grey
work-clothes. "And Gallswallow of Gormenghast, his only known
rival." Gallswallow smiled, so sunnily that she actually approached
homeliness. "They've probably been plotting this ever since you got
here. They're always good for a gab - if you read."

"Splendid!" exclaimed the Doctor, accepting one of the
proffered seats. The others, excepting Ottar, Ketil, and a redhead
called - Tegan forgot what - followed suit.

"Since before you came, actually," Pramod confessed
cheerfully. "No way could I miss words with the guy who wrote
_Keeping up the Stars_! I'm almost embarrassed to be meeting you
in an age where Joe in the street hasn't heard of it; but the
Federation makes for prosy times, I guess."

"Dead ditchwater times," agreed Gallswallow. "Dead as Nyssa's
Terminus lives alive. In _Keeping up the Stars_, I often thought
you spoke like prophet, as one who saw Earthhome from herewards,
enjoying. Strange that your body follows on your vision, as drawn
by dreams. You credit such?"

Si said, with very great control, "I haven't written this book
yet. I'd really rather not discuss it until I have. I should say,
though, Gallswallow - "

"Swallow, to be easy."

" - Swallow. Si. - I should say that knowing Terminus is
enough to colour anyone's dreaming, and that that's exactly what you
recognised. It's no more mystical than that."

wallow frowned. "You will leave Terminus, to write of it?
Leave for your own age, and the old death?"

_No!_ Tegan howled inside, wanting to take her head in her
hands and squeeze the burning, slimy thought away. _No, Si, no;
not_ you _doomed to die, not because I'll end up sick of
everything!_

_Make it go away._

_I never will. I promise, I never will..._

"Prophecies," the Doctor interrupted with gay urgency, "are
unhealthy things, and there are generally ways round them. For
instance, Si could write the book, and I could take it back to Earth
for publication. I'm sure we'll manage something like that. But
for all our sakes, even for Her Honour's, I'll trouble you to talk
about something else!"

"What about beer?" Pramod suggested.

"Many thanks," said Si promptly, "I do believe I'll take you
up on that. How about you, Tegan?"

"I'm just the gal who can't say no," bantered Tegan edgily,
budging up closer.

_- Agalaiac -_

"...left us with lazar's disease and the causal fault to cure. At
the time, there seemed no connection between the two, and small
enough hope of either. The Time Lords sent us the best of their
young temporal engineers, Halpenximandar, and he fled home in
despair for Creation. My first attempt on lazar's disease ended as
disastrously as you all know. We were thrown back on desperate
remedies.

"My augmented lazargens finally cured the disease, and gave us
immortality through regeneration. Call it luck if you will,
serendipity if you prefer. What few of you will know is that the
lazargen solution was the key to our other problem, too.

"The High Council of Gallifrey decided that Halpen's trauma,
danger, and humiliation were too grave to wish on any other of their
children. They also lacked faith in their ability to achieve
anything useful. Harking back as usual to past glories, they drew
from their archives an artificial intelligence, recording the
knowledge and style of one of their great engineers of antiquity.
This mask, brighter and braver than their living scions, they sent
to Terminus, and I came to count it a friend. It lay under
improper and servile constraints, which I helped it remove."

Scattered applause. The Doctor, sitting half-way across the hall,
started so violently at this news that he nearly drenched his dish-
faced neighbour with red wine. Tegan drank sympathetically. She
hoped he was minding himself, tonight.

_ - Extemporising Medley -_

Si, the literature don, was in his element with the likes of Pramod
and Swallow. Ottar, who was into storytelling, didn't fare too
badly, either. Tegan, not that kind of reader, soon had to work at
keeping up her interest. She was glad that _Dop_ had turned out
such a good present for her love _(thanks again, Ottar!)_; but she
wasn't sure anyone needed to know that exactly _why_ it was so good.
All the others were doing was killing it for her before she'd read
it, like a gang of English teachers!

The Doctor hadn't read _Dop_ or _Second Troy, Too!_ or _Titus
Groan_, either; but that never stopped him pitching in when his
blood was up. He knew so much and had so many opinions about
everything, he could draw all the morals, quips, and quibbles he
wanted from the general conversation. Right now, he was using that
talent to let off steam by the boilerful. By the end of the third
glass, he was getting so unwontedly heated about nothing, Tegan was
beginning to worry about him. He stumbled in the middle of a
particularly thunderflashy sentence on grotesquerie, for whose point
Tegan was still waiting, and said much more quietly and rather
dizzily,

"Do you know, I think I've had enough for the afternoon? I
may have been skimping on sleep a little. I think I might just
toddle off back to the TARDIS, and take a siesta..."

He stood with a flourish that upset his glass. Si caught it.
"Excuse me!" gasped the Doctor, steadying himself with both hands on
the rim of the table. If it hadn't been so early, or if he hadn't
always been able to drink Tegan and everyone else under the table,
she'd have said he was gone as a newt. Big meaty Bjorn and the
redhead went to steady him. He shook them off with irritable,
nervous energy.

Tegan caught Si's eye. She had a very bad vibe about letting
the Doctor go off in this state, with nothing smarter than a Vanir
bodyguard. She didn't want him to wander back into the TARDIS
alone. "Mind if I come with you?" she said, rising before he could
answer. "I'm a bit woozy myself. - Don't break it up for me,
Ottar! You're into this stuff. Why don't you swap over?"

"I'll take you up on that," advised a big mousy-blond lunk,
hitherto with Si.

"Cheers, Thorkil," Ottar accepted, drawing up a seat. "You
too, Cloudclimber!"

"No..."

"I'll hit it, one day." The Vanir dropped back into the main
conversation. Si gave Tegan a nod, and carried on. The larger
party set off back to the Mayoral suite. It wasn't a talkative
journey.

The Doctor didn't stumble again, or even act drowsy. He set a
stiff, hectic pace, and spoke a little louder and more clearly than
usual when he bade Ketil and the others goodbye at the door. Tegan,
noticing this, linked his arm. She didn't want him breezing
thoughtlessly into anything he shouldn't. When they entered,
though, there were no sounds or signs of life from the lounge, and
they passed straight through it to the lurid TARDIS. The Doctor
squinted suspiciously at it, as though he doubted its reality.
Well, that was fair enough!

Into the console room. Tegan led him onto the chairs by the
viewscreen, and sat down beside him. He clearly wasn't going to
sleep, and she reckoned she'd better keep his attention until he'd
burned off his high. "Doctor," she said, "there was something I was
meaning to ask you while Nyssa - "

"Elissa? Impossible. We shall have to solve this one
ourselves!"

Greenfly crawling up her spine. "Doctor?" she said carefully.
"Who's Elissa?"

"Elissa, h'mmm? Well - Elissa! And you call yourselves
teachers these days! You probably know her as Dido, Queen of
Carthage; but what you forget or ignore is that 'Dido' was a
nickname. At Carthage, they called her Elishat; but the funniest
thing is that when the Greeks and Romans corrupted that to 'Elissa'
in their arrogant way, they were right and the Phoenicians were
wrong!" He gave a senile little cackle. "Now, however would I know
that? She passed into the fire, you know. She's gone, gone
forever."

Carthage again! She'd asked Si about that place last time,
when the Doctor had been safely out of the way. What little he'd
been able to tell her made it as evil a place as she'd ever heard
of: torture, and treachery, and child sacrifice. What would the
Doctor have been doing there - and what made that last 'forever'
sound so terrible and lost? "What about Elissa, Doctor?"

"Liz Shaw? My wife? Don't be absurd, Jo. Our relationship
was purely professional. The Master has a vulture eating at his
liver, and its name is Envy." She slapped him. He rubbed his cheek
ruefully. "I only asked for a cup of tea!"

"Doctor!" She threw her arms around his neck, stared
tearfully into his empty, shifting eyes. "It's Tegan, Tegan,
_Tegan_! You're losing yourself! Come back!" She braced her mind,
tried hopelessly for the hypnotic power that he'd used on her.
"It's Tegan, Doctor. This is Terminus. Nyssa's End. Don't leave
me?"

"Tegan?" His voice came from ever so far away.

"Doctor! Block off your memories! They're taking you over
again!"

He drew himself up, went dead silent for a minute. If his
hand hadn't risen to stroke her hair calmly, methodically, at the
same time, she thought she'd have gone mad, waiting. When the
stroking stopped, his speech was his own again.

"Thank you, Tegan," he said; and then he held her while she
sobbed. "I'll be all right, for the present."

It was a couple of minutes before she'd pulled herself
together. She drew away from him, and narrowed her eyes. "Could
Adric's demon be doing this to you, Doctor?"

He shook his head uncertainly. "Not alone, certainly. I'd
say not at all; but with the Cyberiad, or as part of it? I don't
_know_!"

"For that matter," said Tegan, because it had been bothering
her since yesterday, "if Adric and the Cyberiad can ramble about in
i-space, I still don't see why the Master can't either!"

"Well," said the Doctor slowly, "he could. Potentially. But
the Cyberiad uploaded its physical frame along with its mind and
spirit, when it first went irreal. Even in i-space, a disembodied
intelligence is nonsense. If Adric made the transition, either he
was hosted on the Cyberiad, or he transferred his body during the
flux blast - just as the Cyberiad had hoped to surf into reality on
the flux, in the other direction. The Master certainly stole enough
energy to upload his body; but he didn't _do_ it! The only other
possibility - "

"Yes?" she said eagerly.

" - isn't." He frowned. "If he used the local computer
network as his medium, he'd choke up the whole system..." And his
face lost colour. "Oh, my goodness!"

_"Don't start!"_

"No, no, this is still me," he assured her hastily. "I just
had a rather disturbing thought. Adric had it in for the Master;
and the Cyberiad would have despised him. As for the Master, he'd
dare anything for the power of the Black Sun. If they tricked him
here, so they could somehow use that power to suck him dry, _they_
could be hosting him. In which case, we'd have a melding of Adric
_and_ the Cyberiad _and_ the Master to reckon with - and even on
their terms, the Master would dominate more than either of the
others could possibly believe. He was Prometheus, Vulcan, Daedalus
the Master-Craftsman. Absorbing him would change all three as
thoroughly as death." He made a quick choppy gesture. "What I hate
about this theory is that it explains everything all too well - and
I'd hate to bet that _that_ fusion couldn't nudge my memory-blocks,
even through the defences of Terminus! I'd better invest some
energy in psychic shielding..."

Yuck! "Are we going to tell Nyssa this, before the banquet?"

"Yes," said the Doctor positively, "as soon as she and Amina
have finished making up, or whatever it is they're doing. This is
just too dangerous not to warn her about." He hesitated. "And we'd
better go and tell Alphard. Whatever his game is, Nyssa's trusted
her whole defences to him. He has to start preparing against this!"

"The Unholy Trinity," muttered Tegan, scampering to keep up,
as he made purposefully for the door.

He grimaced sideways at her. "Lucifer _was_ another of his
titles," he acknowledged, "but don't let his conceit run away with
you. Religious posturing is a vice as Gallifreyan as quafutery!"

"As what?"

"I don't even believe I mentioned that to you!" He flung the
door open, and commandeered the services of four guards. They set
off at a brisk clip down the corridors. This was reassuringly
familiar. "Doctor," Tegan said, a bit breathlessly, "does that
explain why we can't find his TARDIS?"

"That's the one fly in the ointment," he replied, walking
faster. "It's probably due to his sneakiness..."

"Or how he got here in the first place?"

"Yes, well. I suppose that's the other." He slowed down
again. He really expected her to have something to say about it.

She didn't mean to disappoint him. She'd been thinking hard
about this, from day one. "He wouldn't have gone anywhere without
it, would he?"

"He's a practising Time Lord, Tegan!" he scoffed. "He
_could_, for a while. He could also take off his skin, and dance
around in his bones. Either would be about as likely - and as
pleasant."

"But he couldn't come here in it?"

"Not as far as Nyssa or Alphard or I could tell, no."

"Then if I were him," said Tegan, "I'd hide in it, and I'd
have someone bring it in as a big piece of luggage! Couldn't he do
that, Doctor?"

"He couldn't hide all that mass, Tegan. If he wanted to keep
it corporeal, they'd be toting kilotons at least. I think Customs
might have noticed."

"Crushed again!" said Tegan happily. She'd never felt so
pleased to be squelched. His mind was firing on all umpteen
cylinders, the way it belonged! The Master's TARDIS was still a
last loose end to his theory, though.

She said, "There's another thing we ought to ask Alphard.
I'll tell you when we get there!"

They got to the Helm Room. The Vanir let them in. They found
themselves alone.

_ - Agalaiac -_

"My friend and colleague, Joshua of New Brass, was closer to the
Engineer than I. Joshua's mind was gentle and glorious; but his
personality suffered a catastrophic failure, imploding on weaknesses
left by the accursed autism-mongers of his world, that I lacked the
skill to foresee or to heal. I had the honour to help the two of
them merge, to the realisation of the mask and the survival of the
man. And although I'm left with one friend where once I had two,
yet both endure; and few causes can boast such a champion as our
modest Alphard!" Their modest Alphard, sitting with Cats on the far
side of the room, raised a sarcastic glass in the Doctor's general
direction. Cats pinched him. "I thank him for letting me tell his
story tonight, to those of you who've not heard it. But now is a
time for trust, and an end to secrets among ourselves. It took
Alphard's genius to recognise... "

Now, _this_ was a creep-out, deserving a drink and a half!
Tegan started to take one, and found her glass annoyingly drained.
Dusty, Swallow's more presentable art-curating brother, reached
gangrelly across the table to pour her a refill. _Whoa, Tegan!_ she
thought. _The night is young! _

_- Cats and Alphard!_

_ - Kaleidic -_

Technology's Cathedral yawned emptily before them. The Doctor
turned sharply back to the door-wardens. "Have they left, then?"

"Nope."

"Still there, Stormcrow!"

He stalked across the room.

"Sho-op!" called Tegan. The great doors closed behind her.
She turned on her heel, and snapped, "Open up!" Rather to her
surprise, they did. The Vanir looked curiously at her.

"Just checking," she said, "you can shut now, if you like!"
The doors closed again.

"Finished?" asked the Doctor dryly.

She nodded. He jerked his thumb meaningfully in the direction
of the bunk area, with its little grey door. She looked at him. "I
thought that was the john!"

"It is, for all I know." He went over and tried it. Locked.
"But I expect he'd have some other private rooms nearby, too."

The whole thing was making Tegan uncomfortable. "They're real
binge-workers, aren't they?" she pointed out, mostly to herself.
"They've probably had an overnighter, and crashed out."

"Most likely." He perched on one of the small chairs. Tegan
took the edge of the bunk. "Who's been humping in _my_ bed?" the
air demanded, in Alphard's hammiest tones. She leapt up from her
seat as if it were hot, and followed the Doctor's example.

He chuckled. "Annoying fellow! Perhaps that will bring
him... What else did you want to ask him?"

"That Malice thing," she said, bluntly. "These shaytans that
the Terileptils' evil friends make. I want to know whether Terminus
could stand up to one."

"Yes." He seemed struck by the idea. "Yes, that would be
handy to know. You're worried that Nyssa's Fastolf might show up
with one, I take it?"

"Aren't you?"

"I trust Nyssa's judgement," he evaded, "but I do know
Terileptils. Their form runs a bit like the perfect Renaissance
gentleman - you know: gallant, creative, gracious; aggressive,
rapacious, treacherous..."

"Oh, lovely." This sounded like the snakes Tegan remembered.

"They _are_ individuals, Tegan - very much so. I'm sure Nyssa
wouldn't be so fond of Fastolf if he weren't quite sincerely devoted
to her. She'd be incredibly hard to deceive about something like
that. What concerns me is that it might not be enough. It might
even increase the temptation. If he can cast himself in his own
mind as the grand tragic villain who betrays everything he loves for
the sake of his Destiny, your classic Terileptil is quite capable of
selling his best friend to the devil, and then suffering heroically
about it for the next two hundred years. It's one of the little
quirks that hurt their popularity."

"I wonder why!"

"Of course, if he _doesn't_ betray you, he might well fight
the devil off you with a toothpick. I'm sure Nyssa knows what she's
dealing with; but it certainly wouldn't hurt to find out - " He
broke off.

_"ĄHola!"_ The truants crowded in through the little grey
door, flushed and tacky with sweat. They were both breathing hard,
and wore identically joyous, goofy grins.

_Cats and Alphard?_

It had to be a joke, didn't it? But how could they have
managed the timing?

Well - they couldn't!

They had another woman in there with them, or they didn't.
Tegan realised that, whatever the answer was, she didn't want to
know about it. Another little pillar crumbled away.

_Those whom the Gods would destroy,_ she heard Si quoting in
her head, _they first make mad._ The old Gods must have cursed
Terminus, then! Everyone was getting all out of whack...

The Doctor was bringing Alphard and Cats briskly up to speed
about his Trinity theory. It actually put a crimp in Alphard's
style, for half a minute at least. The engineer's face set like
congealed gravy as he considered it, and he fingered his rough chin.

"What the young people come up with these days!" he bounced
back, at last. "I don't trust my defences against _that_! Analysis
needed. More work for us, Cats!"

"Nothing like learning on the job." Cats's eyes sparkled
mischievously.

_I'm not going to notice. I'm_ not!

The Doctor and Alphard exchanged some rapid, jargonish banter
about interstitial defences and eudemonic exclusion thresholds.
They sounded like they were testing each other, as much as anything.
With this out of the way, the Doctor broached the subject of
shaytans.

About this, Alphard was breezier. "A shaytan, now - all
necromanticked up, and ready to blast? Close call! Of course, if a
shaytan did fly this way, the Museion would have half the Galaxy up
its colon."

"A most inelegant predicament!" the Doctor agreed. "Unless
they've prepared a response - say, to help their allies use Black
Sun elan instead of self-holocaust to power up a shaytanic fleet for
grand conquest." He grinned tightly, wickedly. "Striking at the
instant Nyssa gave them Terileptil immortality would be quite
operatically infamous, wouldn't it?"

Cats whistled a non-tune.

"Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs!" Alphard offered a
genuine-seeming smile to take the sting off his words. "Dealing
with Terileptils is fun. They're so quirky and cunning, they almost
cancel themselves out. I'm sure Fuji-Greathearth will stay in our
fold - when those interesting times come!"

"I imagine you and Nyssa know best."

"We do." Alphard's expression became meditative, almost
rueful. "Besides, I've a foolish hunch that 'Uncle Fastolf' might
not go through with betraying her. He'd deny it, but I suspect he's
secretly as Nyssa-struck as the plebs of Terminus!" And he laughed
out loud.

_Nyssa-struck._ That was a good word for what gummed up
everyone's brains here. _I want to get back to Si,_ thought Tegan.
She'd had enough of all the rest to last her a while!

_ - Agalaiac -_

"...healing the causal fault with a living, adaptive patch. It was
well enough for me to suggest that, but I honestly had no conception
of how hostile an environment the fault was. Saying that it reached
back to the fireball of Event One doesn't begin to describe it. It
was the first syllable of a Last Word, just as surely as Event One
was the completion of the First - and it was already beginning to
give the First the lie. Its form was death, and it blasted our a-
life agents faster than they could grow into its borders.

"I doubt, even now, that I really understand the levels of
destructiveness inherent in a Creation fault. Halpen came to - and
that knowledge broke his hope, and sent him moping back to
Gallifrey." She paused significantly. "I didn't like Halpen, and
he didn't like me. I don't think that was any secret! But for
this, I'll not condemn him: that he fell under a load few of us
could even lift!" She raised her glass and took a sip, though she
didn't go so far as to make it a toast.

_Go, Nyss! Lay it on, won't you?_

"Alphard learned what Halpen had, and laughed at it." Nyssa
grinned in a pained, lopsided way. "I know he laughs at everything,
but that took character!" In the interests of balance, Cats trod
lightly on Alphard's foot, under the table. "And he found an answer
to it - found it already in our hands. Joshua's great project was
an analysis and generalisation of the lazargen regeneration
algorithm. Alphard designed a variant to work for our Ourania a-
life. We gave our living space-time an immortality cousin to our
own - hoping to make it strong enough first to seal over the fault,
and later to grow into it and heal it up completely. Until this
last tenday, that healing was proceeding according to schedule."

Sudden, absolute silence. Alphard nudged Cats gently back.

"But now Ourania has self-organised to a new level of
complexity. Yesterday, the transitional chaos had ebbed far enough
for us to fathom its gross structure. Friends and citizens, the
fault is _gone_. As of today, the Universe has a future!"

A low, eerie hum rose from her announcement. Cats had
expected whoops and rebel yells, but the news was too big for that.
The sound just went up in quiet crescendo, like the Angel Chorus
from _Lily the Pink_, until someone could stand it no longer, and
chanted, "All hail Heal-All!"

Nyssa winced. "Mud in yer eye!" Cats bawled, aiming to break
the rhythm before it got started. "Jacky Daw!" toasted the Doctor
loudly. Huh? "Yay!" "Heil Idunna!" _"Party!"_ "All hail Heal-
All!" "Here's to it!" "The engineers have hairy ears!" "Bring the
Jubilee!" "Thank you, God!" " - and all who sail in her!"

RHUBARB RHUBARB RHUBARB!

_ - Kaleidic Change -_

Tegan and the Doctor bogged off, terminally confused. Cats turned,
reluctantly, to Alphard.

"That was a real wow, Alfie; but I don't think I want to do it
again. You make a great Amina, and a virtual-ly perfect lover, but
even in her avatar I still notice you're a man. Couldn't say how,
but there it is; and that's just not one of my kinks. No hard
feelings?"

"Speak for yourself!" cracked Alphard. "Have you got her out
of your system, then?"

"As much as I'm going to: yeah, pretty well. Love, it ain't!
Let's get back to this Three-in-One problem." She slapped her
thighs vigorously. "It'll be fun giving Nyss our other news, won't
it?"

"I should say!"

"Reckon she'll wind down a bit, now the Universe Is Saved and
all?"

"Not a jot." The engineer curled his lips into something very
like a snarl. "From where she's standing, it isn't. And she's
right, Cats!"

_- Agalaiac -_

"Health to the Universe, and the reprieve of Creation!" Nyssa's
toast, coming to everyone's ear as from their neighbour, chopped
down the rhubarb and took back her people's attention. The hush
that followed was expectant, but not very deep: a collected breath
held for some graceful coda, and the announcement of the dance.
Terminus knew its Mayor's feeling for art and taste; and what could
she possibly add to what she'd just told them?

_Hold onto your hats, guys,_ thought Cats. _How far are you
going to go here, Nyss?_

Nyssa shook her head sadly, and told them, "It isn't enough."

The air turned crystal. Across the hall, Tegan stiffened, put
her wine glass very carefully down, and stared at her little friend
disbelievingly. On Si's left hand uncoiled Ambitious Salesmith, but
she leaned forward with excitement rather than nervousness.
Salesmith was a dishy piece of plastic surgery, to whom Cats could
happily have done seven impossible things before breakfast. Her
looks were one of the house styles for the Galactic True Life news
agency: she was their official Terminus correspondent, and Nyssa's
unofficial Minister of Propaganda. Seemed that, what with all the
art and music and human interest features, she just never found time
to report that crackpot immortality story...

"I commend to your attention," said Nyssa, "the Second Law of
Thermodynamics: _entropy always increases_. We've prevented one
fault in space-time from destroying the whole continuum, by bringing
one small area to life. The rest of our Universe is dead, decaying,
rotting on its bones. Long, long ago, the peoples some call the
dead gods abused and paradoxed it to death, and themselves into
irreality. There is a locus called Logopolis, where mathematicians
perform endless block-transfer computations to save the Universe's
state from collapse; but they can never take away the death that
waits a moment beyond their work. To that death fell my thrice-dear
Traken, and other worlds past number or grief - Xian Gu, Yggdrasil,
The Dreaming! - because of one evil man's meddling. It didn't have
to be them. But for the Doctor's courage and wisdom, it would have
been _all_ worlds. Everything that ever was or will be. One man
could do all that, without even intending it.

"There will be others, as millennia and their millennia roll
by. The wounds from this first onslaught have weakened space-time
gravely: and our dead continuum knows no healing. The cacodemons
without, and their cultists within, watch for every chance to harm
reality, that they might feast on it. We infest the warmed and
ventilated corpse of a Universe that once lived and flourished; and
we wonder that death is always near us!

"We call ourselves immortal! You, my friends, would have me
take pride in having staved off ageing, until accident or the great
death of everything takes us. And yet I can't believe there's a
single star born today that will see out its natural life, so close
are we to the end of ends. No child of this Universe can hope for
immortality, unless its parent's immortal too. Unless we can grant
_that_, there will be no Jubilee for us, no Union with everything,
never our meeting with the beloved dead in Eternity! This is my
belief. I know that many of you hold others: these I honour. But I
think it behoves us to act as though our labour is needed for the
good to bear fruit - in this thing, as in all.

"We must do what has never been done before - we must carry
the war back to entropy, back to death, and drive them from the
Universe they've usurped! With care, yes - with care a thousand
times, and over a thousand thousand years if need be - but we can,
and I believe that we must. How can we? Why, because we can bring
space-time alive! _Ourania_, I have called our creation: the Living
Sky, as Gaia signifies a living world! For safety, we've kept it
mewed up in the Black Sun in its beginnings. But a day shall come,
when we can and must release it, and dare that our Universe might
live and thrive and grow afresh. From that day, entropy must fight
for every victory, and 'death shall have no dominion'. We can't
hope to dictate Life's progress, or to see its ends - but it lies in
our hands to open the doors.

"I humbly submit that here is a project worthy of our
immortality!"

_ - Agalaiac, Disputatious -_

Si drew back a fraction of his attention from Nyssa's speech. To
his left, the creepily pert-pretty Ambitious was taking feverish
mental notes, and wishing too obviously she was wired. Cherry,
opposite, was soaking everything in blandly, like a man who'd known
all along. But at his right hand, in her bright butterfly Traken
ballgown, Tegan sat nervous and stunned. Her eyes were on the
Doctor, who was fidgeting ominously; and she gripped her wine-glass
far too tightly. Si captured her free hand, drew it gently beneath
the table, and gave it a squeeze. She relaxed, a very little.

They looked at Nyssa again, both of them:

"...a project worthy of our immortality!"

Si was half in a rapture, though he'd anticipated this.

Nyssa had reacted to the Doctor's atrocious theory with calm
fatalism, and promptly dubbed the Adric-Cyberiad-Master fusion the
'Desecrator'. It was so apt a name that no-one was going to argue
with it, and Si thought it far happier than the Doctor's tasteless
Trinity reference. After being double-whammied with that and
Amina's stormy departure _to see friends_, Nyssa had turned
frighteningly efficient and dynamic. Wonderful as she'd been so far
this evening, Si sensed that his Traken friend hadn't run out of
surprises - and he found fear in his heart, over the rest...

"Doesn't that beg a couple of questions, Nyssa?"

The Doctor had risen to his feet, and was brandishing his
wine-glass. Nyssa looked at him. So did everyone else. Tegan's
hand gouged hard into Si's, as if she were digging for bone. The
Time Lord wasn't a bit abashed.

"Aren't we rather adapted to entropy? I mean, I hate to seem
like a wet blanket, but isn't the Second Law of Thermodynamics one
of our more fundamental conditions of being?"

"Yes," said Nyssa simply. "We'll have to adapt ourselves
anew, of course - ourselves and our worlds."

"That is a _large_ adaptation. Our minds and bodies would
become utterly alien, surely?"

"Certainly, Doctor. It won't happen tomorrow, or next
century, after all. We shall have time to negotiate the change.
Death changes us more radically, and it doesn't negotiate. _The
Doctor's voice to all tables, please!_"

A series of swirling, perverted sea-shell noises afflicted
everyone's ears, after which the sound-system obeyed her.

"Thank you." He bowed grandly. "Nyssa, I have to salute your
vision - or is the word _hubris_?" A flourish of glass and garnet-
dark wine, sparking fires from the overhead starclouds. Inchoate
anger and alarm on all sides, incense rising slowly against him,
Nyssa ridiculously tiny and alone as she harked attentively to her
old mentor. "Aren't you at all afraid that changing the whole
Universe might be just a little outside your remit? Don't you
wonder what else you might chase out the door, along with death and
entropy? Things, perhaps, that might give what lives we have their
value?"

_Yes!_ cheered Tegan silently, with a squeeze of Si's palm.

The anger grew audible, like stirred-up bees. Nyssa sang out
at once, "I'm Mayor of Terminus, not our prophet or dictator!
However, I'll take advantage of this point to get up on my soapbox;
and if I talk nonsense, so much the worse for me!" And Nyssa
vaulted nimbly onto the table, turning a slight leftward stumble
into a flamboyant curtsey to the company. Anger melted into general
cheers and applause and table-pounding, the Doctor clapping as
loudly and gleefully as anyone. She began -

_- Kaleidic -_

Si hadn't dawdled too long in the _Trumpet Vine_, after Tegan and
the Doctor's abrupt departure. He'd stayed for a couple of coffees,
and then set briskly off home: he couldn't quite relax enough to
enjoy the session as he ought. He looked forward to others. He
really had to look up Bill Mondragon's _Tragical History of the
Cyberiad_, sometime soon...

By the time he got back, Nyssa was out of her room again,
sitting alone in the lounge. She'd changed into a loose black
satiny lounging suit, as though her other clothes had been dirty;
and she was staring with unnatural intensity at a Fast Ludo Duffy
concert holo, high wild Calor Jazz climbing the walls around her.
Her face was long and brooding.

"Multi-disc, off!" she called, noticing his presence, and
doffing her outward blues like a cloak. "I'm glad you're here. Are
Tegan and the Doctor coming?"

"They left before I did." That was definitely all Nyssa
needed to know! He was trying to frame the next necessary question,
when she saved him the embarrassment.

"Amina says she's going to spend some time with her friends on
Terminus." Her voice was quite level and matter-of-fact. "She'll
have her own base in Serendipity. Si, do _you_ think I 'come on' to
Tegan?"

"No," he told her, truthfully. "There isn't that edge to it.
You just dote on her a little."

Nyssa grimaced self-consciously. "I do, don't I? Well, you
ought to understand that! Amina usually would, too. She might roar
and call me names and shake me if she walked into a scene like that,
but she'd _know_ - and we'd both be laughing about it." _There are
too many ifs and mights and woulds in that! I wonder whom she's
trying to convince..?_ "This is my fault for letting her down at
Eventide, after all our arguments. She isn't _like_ this! I'll go
and visit her this evening, when we've both had time to cool down."
Nyssa dismissed her cupmate with an airy wave of her hand. Despite
everything she'd said, she was still clearly fuming. "Would you
care for a little dance practice - no, no, I don't mean that after
all. Do you play cards, perhaps? Poker?"

"Abominably," confessed Si. An impish glint crept into the
Traken woman's grey eyes.

"Anybody would say that!" she declared. "We'll play for
guffins, then?"

"I'm not familiar with that stake."

"To be redeemed in random favours of the loser's choice, at
unexpected but appropriate times."

"I do believe you're on."

Nyssa went for her cards - a beautiful big deck, as various
and ornate as a Waite Tarot - and they settled down on the floor to
play.

She wasn't outrageously good, as it turned out; but she was
more than good enough to take Si, who found himself losing his
concentration far too often, and playing even worse than he
remembered. He thought he'd better put a stop to it before it
became utterly boring, or he ended up owing Nyssa more guffins than
Tegan would approve of. It took him three more hands, and then
another two before her position was confident enough to make it fun.
He raised her and raised her, until she stared at him in tolerant
bemusement. "I'll see those now," she advised him.

He shrugged, and showed her his winning hand.

"All right," sighed Nyssa, "that _does_ beat a full house, I
suppose..."

"Thank you."

"Four aces and the Queen of Flowers is rather good, by
itself."

"It is, don't you think?"

"I presume the antique joker is wild?"

"Oh, it's used to this sort of thing."

Nyssa's mouth gaped in a brief, soundless scream. "Poor
Tegan! You can't be trusted at all, can you?" She gave him one of
those quick, diamond looks he couldn't handle. "Couls you teach me
to do that?"

He cleared the dryness from his throat. "I shouldn't be at
all surprised," he told her; and they were off.

Nyssa was quick, clever, even brilliant; but magic wanted
practice, and much of its cleverness hid in the fingers. He took
her through the basic moves of palming a card, and fended off her
post-row impatience, explaining to her how to make up an 'easy' deck
by pre-rolling cards and powdering them. After yet another semi-
failure, she shook her head vigorously.

"I'll show _you_ magic!" she challenged, and reached suddenly
for his left ear as if she meant to whip a goldfish from it. He
followed her motion like a rube. Something cold and metallic
recalled his attention to the notch of his collarbone. Very
carefully, he let his eyes drop to take it in. She was holding a
wicked little dagger to his throat - by the tip of its blade,
offering it to him pommel-first.

"Th'art paid," she whispered, "since is no help for me
neither, but cheat..."

Si swallowed. His wits played cat's-cradle with her words,
her _that's why she always wears loose sleeves!_ pyjama-like satin
suit, her excessive token of intimacy and trust. "Do you always
carry those?" he said lightly. She nodded.

"Amina insisted I have something secret and lethal,
everywhere. Traken _zaphirets_ isn't really designed to do harm.
My _amie_ swears by knives for infighting, and they work well with
my style. She's trained me well enough that an assassin who got
through to me might go down to my 'surprise'. I'll never be more of
a warrior than that, of course - and never so much, I hope!"

His vague, indecent thrill increased. "Should you really be
showing me that?" he asked gently, regretting the question at once.

"No, truly," she said, "but how can I care? If it were you or
Tegan, Alphard or Cats or the Doctor - oh, Si, it should be time to
die! As well sharpen my knives against Amina, as if I shouldn't
perish with every strop." She blinked at the dagger, whose pommel
still rested in the hollow of Si's throat, and withdrew it into her
own space. "Against any of you, I'll wield no weapon but my
tongue!" Wry face. "I generally do more harm with that, anyway..."

He chuckled politely at her non-joke, and helped her to her
feet, like a good little gentleman. Her usual electricity numbed
his arm, but he reckoned he needed the practice.

_- Agalaiac-Heroic -_

"The greatest temptation to evil," preached Nyssa, standing over the
remains of her dinner, "is that only loss and entropy are certain,
in our broken world; that all love and life can do is make a brave
showing, and go down gallantly! A child may believe otherwise,
believe that good must triumph because it 'must'; but when she grows
up, she'll learn to her sorrow that she _must_ lose everything she
cherishes; that _everything_ must be stripped of _everything_! So
love turns to grasping, and joy to fear, and sweet labour to bitter
toil. Despair speaks her heart cold facts, and hope knows no answer
but silly romance.

"Is it any wonder that so many of our friends, so many of our
own _moments_, yield to evil and despair? At best, we waver from
the fight's endless weariness; worse, we cave into self-indulgences
we know are wrong, those little restful deaths. Worst of all, we
come to doubt they're wrong at all - accepting the way things are,
behaving with vulgar realism; even learning to relish it at last,
and signing up to the winning cause. That cause is death and decay,
of matter and life and spirit - and the blows struck in it, under
all its many banners, are all I know as evil!"

Nyssa shifted her balance on the table, making the ends of her
furlike ceremonial stole swing dramatically. Tegan looked sideways
at Si, but he was hanging on every word. _Nyssa the Barbarian!_ she
thought, as her little friend made a sweeping gesture that was all
Lady of the Vanir. _Won't you be told? The Doctor's right!_ But
Nyssa carried on, as Tegan held out her glass to Dusty and let him
pour her more drink,

"In our sober senses, of course, we know that 'joining the
winning cause' is a monstrous error: that the victor's spoils are
more bitter than the loser's tears, and that the great death's
servants shall themselves fall victim to it at last, throw others to
it as they may." _Can't you at least throw away that rotten
script?_ "But it's an easy error to fall into - as easy as death
itself! I think most of us have been partakers in it, some time or
another; even if we've found it little to our taste.

"Is it 'fundamental to our existence' that corruption should
always win every game? Yes. Is the evil that knowledge grinds into
our world also fundamental? Yes! Are we to fight that? _Oh, how
can we not?_"

Nyssa's breath came faster with passion, or maybe rehearsal.
Maybe both! Tegan felt hot, bothered, and uncomfortable. She
wished wholeheartedly that her old companion had never taken up
politics.

"If we do end entropy's sway, will that stop Time and condemn
us to stasis? It shall not! A living Universe will grow again; and
that growth will point Time's arrow as surely as entropisation does
now. Don't I speak truth, Alphard?"

"Don't you just, Nyssa!"

"Will that change excuse us from courage, fidelity, love,
labour, grace, or anything else worth its place in the world? It
will not! But they'll no longer be writ in watercolour, no longer
denied and faded to nothing. We're so used to the death of real
hope and meaning, their promise must frighten even the best of us!"

_Mee-ow!_ thought Tegan, wetting her lips with indignant red.

"So much for the intelligible 'benefits' of the great death.
I see none. Now, what am I to say about my _hubris_, my impious
pride, in making a proposal too big for me or any mortal? Well, you
shall judge my defence!"

She coughed then, swallowed, and accepted a glass handed up to
her from the table. She drank off her first wine of the evening,
handed the glass back with a lively smile, and began again:

"Doctor, haven't you presumed to fight great evils, time after
time and against all odds? Is there anyone, outside the dastard
theocrats of the High Council, who'd condemn you for it? Haven't
you saved the Universe from its own fragility three times already -
or was it five?" Low laughter. "I forget! I don't even dream
about matching that; but I'm afraid of abusing our luck. What if
you're off being held in dalliance vile somewhere, next time someone
fiddles with the Great Airlock?"

_At least she's not going to let anyone get ideas about
lynching Him!_ Tegan wondered how Nyssa had learned to kid along
her audience so well, without ever actually managing to be funny.

"And of course, you did restore the Logopolitan broadcast.
That was really quite presumptuous, wasn't it? The whole point of
that is to keep the Universe away from its natural state - which, as
it stands, is total, catastrophic collapse into the void." Now
Nyssa wasn't even trying to be funny. "So, we've decided to keep
the patient on its rather ugly, overstrained life-support system.
As a healer, that suggests to me that we're also committed to
finding a cure for its sickness - is that so wrong, _Doctor_?"

He yawned openly. "Now, how could I argue with wisdom like
that?"

Tegan didn't know what would have happened next, if Alphard
hadn't zinged a pistachio nut off the back of his head. Hard.

"Point taken," he observed. "Specifically, then? Because we
fight sabotage when we see it, does that mean we know enough to
devise a treatment programme? A hospital orderly would do the one,
but I'd hate to see them try the other!"

"Ah," cried Nyssa, "trust in Providence! I should have known
you'd come out with that one, it's so unlike you. For that, I'll
make my soapbox a pulpit. Let me tell all of you about Traken
hell!"

_Oh, Nyssa, no...!_

_ - Agalaiac, Elegiac -_

The morning of the banquet had crept around at last. Tegan was
bickering with Cats about suitable dress, and Si was wisely keeping
his mouth shut. Tegan was doing most of the work. The Doctor was
busy playing with his TARDIS, and Nyssa had gone off to make up with
Amina the previous evening. Everything was as close to normal as it
had been for a while.

Nyssa's door opened the tiniest crack, and everyone started.
There wasn't supposed to be anyone in there.

"Tegan?" came a small voice, muted but unmistakably Nyssa's.
"Could you come in here for a moment?"

Cats and Si exchanged a quick, satisfied look. _Of course,_
thought Tegan hastily, _she's planning one of her surprises!_
"Sure," she said; and did. Nyssa, standing behind the door, closed
it immediately behind her.

_"Nyssa!"_

"I've put together a little surprise for you, Tegan..."

"Nyssa, what happened to your _face_?"

"I walked into a door," said Nyssa seriously. Tegan's stomach
flopped over. Her beautiful friend had a spectacular, yellowing
black eye, and the right side of her face looked puffy and
jaundiced. "Please don't worry the others with this. I'll be quite
healed up in time for this evening..."

"Nyssa..." said Tegan helplessly, a storm brewing up in her
head. No-one should get away with doing this - especially not to
Nyssa!

"I've been careless," said the Traken dismissively. "It
shan't happen again." Her battered face twitched in painful,
Mayoral calculation. "By the way, Amina and I had a small falling
out last night. I think I'd better tell you why - "

_ - Agalaiac -_

"...surprise you that we believed in such a thing? Well, we didn't
- not as fact. My ancestors understood their spirit-world and its
myths as story, irreality. But they knew they were _important_
stories - living stories that could shape the course of our world,
characters who'd take a part in its action, because they lay close
to our hearts. They were also more intimately acquainted with evil
than my generation, so we took care to pass along their wisdom. Our
parents would never terrorise us with threats of hell - but they
would tell us the story our sages told of it, the tale of the fate
of evil.

"Traken hell is not a punishment for sin - though it can be
its consequence. The tale tells of an ancient wizard called the
Necromonger, who had a knack to raise the decaying husks of the
dead, for his own purposes and for trade. Here we would call him a
_zombie raiser_, a _utilitarian_, and a _sociopath_. He had no
taste for cruelty; but he loved death better than life, for it
served as a means, and had no ends of its own to set against his.
Therefore he promoted it, and used necromancy, and became a great
power on Traken of eld; nor could our gods quell his evil. Then
they sent Marek, their Trickster and Messenger, to redeem or undo
him. The Necromonger was quite unrepentant; so, in return for the
liberation of all things in his thrall, Marek offered him absolute
power and dominion over the void spaces of the world, where his wish
should be reality's command. Greedily he made the compact - and was
damned, for life and healing and all good things were beyond his own
compass, and held hard away from him forever after.

"It is said that those who betray and despise life also end in
the Necromonger's hell, not as punishment, but by natural bent.
There is no growth, nor peace, nor true love that abides; but only
the sterile will and desire and ego they brought with them.
Everything rots away slowly, for that lack, down to the very marrow
of matter and spirit; and the damned larvae exhaust their strength
for every natural kindly pleasure, and turn ever to stranger and
lonelier and emptier perversions, decadences feeble enough for their
ravelling forms and rotting atoms to persist in for some while
longer.

"This is how we chose to paint the fruits of evil. This is
Traken hell.

"Doesn't anyone here find its laws at all familiar?"

_"Why, this is hell,"_ interpreted Si, appalled, at Tegan's
side, _"nor are we out of it!"_

Nyssa sketched him a tabletop curtsey. "Thank you, Simon!"
_Yes, thanks a lot!_ "Am I supposed to respect some unknown
Providence that consigns our Universe - its lives, its loves, its
joys! - to the Second Law's perdition? Or that would put us on a
hell-bound craft, and ban our turning it around? That would be mere
wickedness, and I'll not believe in it nor consent to it. No: if
there's Providence for this Universe (which you all know I doubt),
we must be its agents - and take this wonderful opportunity to
provide! If there's none, we must follow our own wits and ethics,
as ever. Either way, how dare we stand idle?"

A wave of loud but uncertain applause swept over the room.
Nyssa shook her head, smiled, and said:

"No, the Universe's morbidity is simply that: a sickness, and
the great source of evil. I don't think for a moment that Ourania
will undo evil entirely - but we might, for the first time, make its
arguments obviously stupid, and break their power. Evil can't
endure to be mocked, they say!

"One day, if we do well, we may laugh it off from star to
star! - But hark at me. Soapboxes do this to people, I
understand." And Nyssa laughed at herself, and vaulted down off the
table.

"This sweet old life!" she said, straightening. "We curse it
every day for its sorrows, its loss and its brokenness; and now we
have a chance to make it blessed, instead. Humour me a little
longer before we strike up the dance, and I'll tell you what I'm
proposing - "

_Doctor!_ Tegan wanted to cry. _She's losing everything, and
she's as crazy as anyone we've ever fought! Can't you do anything
to stop her?_

_= Rest a Breath, and Take Your Partner's Hand =_

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Eleven, 'Three Steps to Heaven'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Eleventh Episode: Three Steps to Heaven*

_= Step Back and Dance =_

_ - Agalaiac, Touch Nisbaean -_

Nyssa, looking like a refugee from a Friday night punch-up, told
Tegan about her _small falling out_ with her cupmate.

"Amina," she said dispassionately, "is an excellent
strategist! Since the Desecrator would be so dangerous to deal
with, she wants me to pre-empt its existence. She told me to go
back with the Doctor to the _Cashflow Crusader_, kill the Cyberiad
while it's struggling with Adric, bring _him_ back as a live
prisoner, and force him to solve our block transfer problem." She
shrugged. "None of that contradicts our timeline, of course."

Tegan stared at her. "Would that _work_? If we're fighting
this Desecrator, already?"

"Ah, but that isn't decided. As she pointed out, we've
scarcely tangled with it yet. If we take Adric and the Cyberiad out
of the equation, the most likely explanation for our Enemy will be
something much less formidable - probably some silly plot the Master
cooked up before overreaching himself. _That_, we should be able to
deal with in short order." Nyssa wrinkled her nose. "Very touchy,
very tricky, but not actually a paradox. I must admit, my first
reaction was very much like yours. Amina hasn't had to use time-war
tactics before, but she seems to have a true instinct for them."

"Awk!"

"Of course, I told her it was out of the question. I won't
enslave Adric, and he and I can't exist in one time-frame anyway.
I'd never know peace or joy again."

"But...if the _really_ evil him is here already, otherwise..."
Tegan faltered. "You don't think the Doctor might have a point,
about letting the old Adric work his way back? I mean, you wouldn't
have to keep him here, or spend time with him..."

Nyssa caught Tegan's eye with her good one. "He took the most
precious thing I had, Tegan, and he sullied it. I'll never forgive
him! Unforgiven, I still can't _use_ him as a convenience, as he
used you and me. Please, don't plead his case with me any more."

Tegan decided not to hear what Nyssa hadn't quite said. "The
Doctor wouldn't go now anyway, would he?"

"I did tell her that, when she pressed me. I explained that
I'd made it quite impossible."

"Didn't she believe you?"

"Oh, yes. She thinks he has his measure." Nyssa's look
became quite unreadable. "She said he'd do anything at all, if we
held you hostage against his obedience."

_"What?"_

"She reminded me that we were playing for the future of the
whole Universe. As my military advisor, it was her duty to point
out the option, and to find some way to take out the Desecrator in
the face of my qualified stupidity." Nyssa turned away. "I found
her whole train of thought intolerable, and I was quite candid about
it. We quarrelled. We're not on speaking terms at the moment, and
she'll catch a diplomatic illness for the banquet. But, talking of
the banquet, I didn't really invite you in to weigh you down with my
personal problems. I told you I had a surprise for you - quite a
nice one, I hope!"

Nyssa walked over to a great ornate chest that sat by the far
wall, bigger than a wardrobe, cunningly carved and inlaid with
intricate patterns of ivory and dark woods. It was Amina's _kist_,
whatever that might mean, and had been installed yesterday. As
luggage, Tegan thought it pretty gross. Atop it sat a glad-coloured
pile of layered, gauzy rags. She swallowed a lump in her throat,
when she saw her own crude old sketches set into the wall above it.

And her friend was favouring her left side, and moving stiffly
as a cripple.

It forced itself on her, then, the image she knew would haunt
her nightmares for the next week or so. Nyssa knew how to defend
herself - though she usually lost, for all her skill, because she
simply wasn't violent enough. But if the attack came from someone
she loved -

- she wouldn't be able to. Tegan could see her too well in
her mind's eye, curling up on herself, waiting dumbly for it to
stop -

How long could she stay in love with someone who did this to
her? How long had she? Wouldn't this kill it?

_And what will our Nyssa do then, poor thing?_

She turned to face Tegan, and gave her a thoughtful,
appraising look. "Could you just slip that dress off for me,
Tegan?"

"Sorry?"

"The dress. I want to see if I've got this quite right."
Nyssa took up the bright cloths from atop Amina's _kist_, and shook
them out for Tegan to look at. She caught her breath. The new
dress was a stained-glass riot of merry colours, as Traken as
Nyssa's tiara and as Tegan as anything she'd ever danced in. "It's
for you, tonight, and to keep. Do you like it?"

It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given her. It
looked like murder to get on, and it looked lovely enough to be
worth it. Tegan felt glorious, heartwarmed, and guilty. "I - I
love it, Nyssa! _Thank_ you!"

Her friend folded the wonderful dress carefully across her
arm, and limped over to help Tegan change.

_- Agalaiac -_

"I believe we should gain three assurances about Ourania, and then
dedicate ourselves to its cause. I call these _stability, respect,
and completeness_. When we're certain of these - not before! - we
can break the Black Sun's quarantine, and look to the great
regeneration.

"Stability's simple. We have to be sure the Ourania process
can truly sustain reality for longer than the Logopolitan fix, and
won't undermine it for a temporary show of strength. All our work
at the Black Sun says yes to this question - and according to
initial tests, the new configuration is at least as stable as the
old. Even so, except in desperate emergency, I'd prefer we waited
for mathematical certainty. We're taking steps about that."

"See Spot run!" the Doctor stage-whispered genially to his
dining companion. Nyssa, who often failed to hear 'nonsense',
ignored him.

"_Respect_ is quite another vine to train. The core of the
Black Sun is dark, high vacuum. When Ourania expands into the world
of light and matter, we want it to respect the worlds and people and
signals that are already there. If it obliterated everything else
to stabilise the space-time metric, it might as well be entropy by
another name! We need to make sure that won't happen. That's a far
harder problem than stability, but the Doctor's already made
excellent headway."

The last word ended in a pained cough, as Nyssa's throat
flaked out. Out of the wine-glasses held up to her, she picked the
one tumbler of water, and drained it with a nod of thanks. The
Doctor rose as she prepared to speak again, and bowed respectfully
as if to a judo opponent.

"Thank you for the shameless flattery, but now I'm confused.
A while ago, I thought you were just opening the doors to 'Life's
progress', and we were all going to have to adapt to it. Ourania's
to be autonomous, then? But for this 'respect' to mean anything,
you'll also be controlling what it will and won't change! Do you
see yourself, or any or all of us, acting as its 'brain', now?"

"No," declared Nyssa, firmly. "I've no pretensions to deity
myself, and I won't condone anyone else's. The Living Sky must be
its own creature!"

"But," said the Doctor rather scornfully, "hardwired to absorb
matter and so on intact, not just gobble up the space-time they're
founded on. Is that it?" He mugged at everyone. _"Well?"_

She smiled disarmingly. "I think it shall be well, Doctor.
That _is_ it, of course."

"Then once it hosts our patterns, will it develop along lines
compatible with preserving them, h'mm? H'mmm? Why should it?
Can't it just change them as it likes, once it's loaded us up?"

Nyssa awarded him a teacher's look for her star pupil. It
must have galled him to the bone.

"Because, if we can solve that equation with the synopsis
problem, we can flood it into existing structures as a stable frame,
and have it co-opt noise bits for its volatile substance. Given
long enough, it _will_ be able to change everything - just as we
_can_ change our bodies, or an AI _could_ modify its hardware - but
the presumption will be against it."

"Ah yes, the presumption." His impatient intake of breath was
so dearly familiar to Tegan that it scared her for a moment. _But
he's not babbling this time. He's talking sense. Of course he's
kept some old habits!_ "At last, we're only initial conditions,
aren't we? We _are_ going to be reconfigured away, when it's big
and smart enough. And I'd think that was likely to be sooner rather
than later, if we have any more evolutionary quantum-leaps like that
one in the Black Sun. Or am I missing something important?"

"Yes," Nyssa baited him gently. "Of course, some might say we
owe the Universe that created us a chance at healing, even at the
cost of some sacrifice by ourselves. But I don't want us simply to
throw away all that immortality promises! Nor dare we set ourselves
up as masters of something far greater than ourselves. I propose we
assure respect with communication, rather than compulsion."

"Now, why did I not think of that? You'll _ask_ it to
preserve us?"

"A little more than that, Doctor. As Ourania grows towards
intelligence, it will be very young, very raw, and with no society
or culture of its own kind. I think we should begin talking to it,
teaching it, _raising_ it: not as a servant, not as a god, but as a
loved child. We should chat to it, take time with it, listen to its
ideas and give it back our own. I also think that, as the one
society with a practical commitment to Union, we're uniquely
qualified to bring it up benignly!" Her jaw set. "Another reason,
for the libertarians among you, why I've spoken so firmly against
allowing industrial sex or slash-interacts or hate-debate here.
Such habits of thought aren't just inimical to Union. They mustn't
be allowed to contaminate our daughter while her character is
forming - and contact with her mustn't become a priestly sort of
privilege. As she grows, we should all be able to pass some time
with her!"

"She's a she, then?" cracked someone from the back of the
room.

" _She's_ a figure of speech," Nyssa gave back, "and I'm a bit
anthropomorphic sometimes. I always wanted a daughter, anyway!" A
diffuse, good-humoured murmur awarded her the point.

"That," explained the Mayor, "is how I see the answer. We
shall let Ourania come to its first bloom as a member of a society
seeking Union - fortune willing, a society that will _build_ Union!
- and that shall be all the guarantee we can fairly ask. Ourania
will be a very, very special member of that Union, but we can strive
to make it one. And, Doctor, when the conflicts you speak of come -
they shall not come in war or disaster, as so often in human
history. They shall be solved, negotiated, worked around in love -
and if the time comes to make a Commitment that may change us
forever, we and Ourania should make that decision together, in Union
solidarity - for yes, for no, or for later." She smiled adorably.
"I see no other way, nor desire none..."

"Nys-_sa_! Nys-_sa_!" came from a couple of uncontainable
elements around the hall; but she didn't have to look at them to
make them stop.

"And this is all your modest plan?" The Doctor gestured
elaborately. "This is all we're waiting for?"

"Oh, no!" said Nyssa warmly. "There's one last piece of
unfinished business, Doctor; though you've more than half solved it
already. _Completeness_, that crowns everything else - "

_- Kaleidic Change -_

In the module called Serendipity Living, there was a suite; and in
that suite was a bedroom; and in the bedroom was a moonstone-
coloured wall; and against the wall flashed a crystal starburst, as
a gorgeously frost-etched glass struck the wall with shattering
force.

Before being demoted to hazardous waste, it had been a
cherished anniversary gift from Nyssa to Amina. Just now, it had
made a particularly satisfying missile. The black woman gave a
short, humourless laugh.

There was going to have to be a reconciliation. There was no
other way to make the silly girl do what she had to. This led to a
problem. Nyssa was embarrassingly demonstrative in private, if one
gave her the slightest opening.

Had Amina ever actually found that nauseating little chipmunk
_attractive_?

Ourania had to be quickly perfected and secured. The
Desecrator had to be ruled out of existence. Personal feelings be
damned -

- and Nyssa would sense insincerity a mile off, and throw the
Traken vapours. There really was nothing for it but to relent. To
comfort the Mayorlet, and cajole her. To look on her with a lover's
eyes -

_How could she?_

"I'm not taking that mealy-mouthed Traken trollop to _bed_!"

The first glass's companion followed it to bright destruction
against the far wall.

_- Agalaiac -_

"I shan't bore everyone by repeating the old story of how I came
here," said Nyssa, "and you all know how my Traken died. After the
Master's attempt on Logopolis, so much was cracked and destroyed and
faded to myth. So many worlds lost to us, except as phantoms,
footprints on the rest of existence, chaos holograms in the
universal noise. By so much - so much! - we're diminished. Here's
a wound too grievous for any regeneration to heal.

"Except." Nyssa rolled that word around her mouth like a
buttered sweet. "Except! There is one great hope - and we _must_
take it, or we'll compound the Master's crime twice over!"

A phantom echo of rhubarb made its rounds. "A bit strong?"
the Doctor muttered to himself, interestedly, apparently forgetting
how his virtual gob hovered over every table. Cats, who'd already
got the gen from Alphard, just sat back and appreciated her new
sister's performance.

"I've said it: all that's left of the lost, is the traces of
its interactions with what survived. It serves no function in that
present structure - it's historical baggage, random circumstance,
noise. Noise! That's what Ourania is supposed to co-opt and
organise, to spare the Universe's living structures! If we let
Ourania consume it, we sunder ourselves from the dead forever."

Something made Cats sneak a look at her companions. Si
listened with grave fascination; but Tegan looked horror-struck, and
the Doctor's expression made her wish suddenly for a concealed
knuckle-duster. _Lighten up, you guys! You_ know _she's not going
to do that!_

_Anyway, dead's always been dead up till now. Deal with it,
hey?_

"If there were no records from which to reconstruct the past -
body and soul ," said Nyssa softly, "then though all the Universe
acted in Union, death would be irrevocable. It would be bitter for
me to win immortality for myself and all my neighbours, only to give
my home that I loved to a death beyond death, a parting past even
our Jubilee!

"I'll not lie to you - according to Alphard's and my
calculations, the dead of today's worlds wouldn't be in danger.
Their traces and correlations should be rich enough for that final
future Power to resurrect in full, given the kind of chrono-
archaeological surveys that even today's Time Lords could probably
manage. But what fell at Logopolis - ah, that's so far dissipated,
its substance diverged into the abyssal interstitial, where dreams
go when they die. If we lose its footprint here, we're back to
trusting in God: I mean infinite power and bounty, which, to me,
seems infinitely far in the future! I hope I've explained why,
given _arguendo_ there were such a Providence now, I don't think it
should affect our actions.

"This is the hardest of our three problems: to vitalise a
_complete_ Universe! And it's the most insidious, too, because it's
the only one we could ignore without risking our precious skins. Of
course, that would be morally atrocious, and I'll never be part of
such a plan." Her eyes flashed generous fire, and she grimaced
twistily. "Killing the living is abominable; but killing the dead
is so far beyond injury, it's _insulting_!"

Licensed to come up briefly for air, her audience did just
that. Then their Mayor was off again:

"Then can we release Ourania, before all traces of the lost
have been sifted from the space it moves into? Well, here's our
dilemma. We can have Ourania copy gross structure into i-space as
it goes along, to create partial reconstructions, phantoms of what
used to be. What it can't do is copy the parts of the hologram
that are hidden in the quantum mystery: the microstructure that's
lost by reading it, that's always unique, and never objectively
known.

"If Ourania scans the whole hologram into the reconstruction
limbo, it leaves no basis for its own volatile component in our
space - it won't be able to run the regeneration algorithm, or
anything else. If it leaves out the mystery, then what we build in
limbo will be an image of the lost, but not the thing itself. And
it will diverge with time. The choice seems to be between the
living and the dead.

"That mustn't happen. It's theoretically possible for Ourania
to mediate between the two, so that the mysterious structure is
shared until its effect is integrated across both domains. When
they're ready to be fused, it will be as though the lost reality
hadn't been annihilated at all, but only closed off behind a slowly
decaying black border. Its past won't truly have changed - we can't
undo _that_ destruction without fatal paradox! - but it will have
its own virtual, post-determined history; and the worlds we lost
should return, as if they'd evolved from the points where they were
erased.

"The worse side of this would be that even time-travel to the
lost eras will stay impossible: there'll be no reality there to
visit. I should be fortune's darling indeed, if I lived long enough
to walk the earth of the true Traken again; and I shall never come
home to the friends I left behind. But their tracks shall no longer
be wiped out of existence, nor shall all their works have ended in
vain vacuum! With that, I think we can rest content - with that,
and our hope of Jubilee.

"For here is perhaps the greatest good: that if and when
Ourania enlivens all space, it could in principle restore the lost,
even as all the rest of us who've lived mortal lives. I don't say
that it _would_, or even that it - I should rather say, _we_ - would
know how, even then: but if that final Union chose, and if it knew
how, it would have all the material it needed.

"What this would mean would be _patience_ on our part. If the
limbo Universe were to be activated before its time - if we were
arrogant or foolhardy enough to try to bring back the lost on our
terms, or to our schedules, or worst of all to pervert limbo to
recall our own dead - we wouldn't just create alien counterfeits of
those we desired. We wouldn't just jeopardise their return in their
own good time. We'd create a paradox, as the shared structure tried
to fill two contradictory roles at once, and failed. The two
Universes would have to divorce - quickly, and forever - or both
perish. Of course, we all know we're not gods, and we wouldn't dream
of doing such a thing - but let this resolve be in our minds from
the beginning. _Raising the dead is not for us._ We can only
prepare the way.

"It'll be sweet preparation, though, and dear labour!

"This, then, is what I suggest: that we delay releasing
Ourania until we perfect and prove the sharing algorithm. The
Doctor actually _has_ a routine that will do this; but it's an
empirical thing, and it would normally be used with an intelligent
monitor to hand-correct it if it started to diverge. I wouldn't
leave anything to chance in these matters!"

Cats raised her eyebrows. Atheist and materialist she might
be, but she was fairly certain that corollaries of Murphy's Law
operated when you said things like that, dropping meteorites on your
head by return of signal. Still, that was what failsafes and
redundancy were for, weren't they?

"Also, we'll need some 'seed' structures - descriptions of the
Universe that will allow Ourania to interpret the chaos holograms in
context, including detailed phantoms for pattern-matching. I've
chosen the Traken phantoms for that purpose. It seemed appropriate,
somehow.

"If we go this road - _we_, for I'll not break Ourania's
quarantine until we have a consensus on it! - then it may be long,
decades or more, before we're ready to act. It may also be mere
months, if all goes well; and the sooner the better, for we've
already begun to attract attention, and enemies are on the move. If
we do proceed with the Ourania project, I should also warn you that
neither the Earthhome Federation nor Gallifrey is likely to look
kindly on it."

_"That,"_ whooped Alphard, tossing a fig into the air, "for
Gallifrey!" Cats snatched the descending fruit, and ate it. Nasty,
turdlike things, figs; but she knew her cue when she saw it. _Bet
that was the only reason you served 'em..._

"Personally," said Nyssa, laughing lightly with the rest, "I
think that Ourania, if only we hold out and strive for that
_stability, respect_, and _completeness_, will be well worth the
wait. There shall be world enough and time for all good things; and
even though we shall deal only with their beginnings, we may still
be blessed beyond thought or old time's hope. If - _if_ you judge
it right, and trust it will succeed! The full debate will come in
Council, and in booths and coffee-houses all across the _agora_,
unless I miss my guess; but here's where I would go, if you will go
with me - "

_"NYSSA! HEAL-ALL! RHUBARB, RACKS OF RHUBARB!"_

Alphard said in Cats's ear, under the brief tumult, "I've
_warned_ her about letting them stay up late!"

The Doctor swayed lushly to his feet, wine in hand; and
Bragi's Hall fell silent, because Nyssa wanted it to. All eyes and
ears were on him.

"Nyssa, this is the most comprehensively insane proposition
I've ever heard," said he, and drained off his glass.

_- Agalaiac, Changing Down -_

Tegan sat and drank, mesmerised and heartsick, as Nyssa's brilliant
rant uncoiled in front of her like a rainbow snake, and the spark-
cloud chandeliers nailed bitter white light into her eyes. It was
worse than she'd dreamed. Her oldest, dearest friend had gone far
beyond arrogance and flakiness. She was skipping off where the
buses didn't run and the planes didn't fly, and for the first time
Tegan wondered if anyone - even the Doctor - could ever bring her
back.

Or would it be the other way round? Everyone else seemed
about ready to follow her into the outback of hell, if she'd only
give the word. Si looked concerned, but still enchanted. As for
Cats, she'd probably go along with it just _because_ it was crazy!

_I hate you, Cherry: politician, con-man, thief! You taught
her these cheap tricks! She never used to be able to speechify, not
to save her life! And - she'd never have used it like this!_

But it wasn't Nyssa's sleek, smug deputy who'd driven her mad.
Her ravings stank of Alphard: his megalomania, his tricky
rationality, his straight-from-the-factory Renegade Time Lord grand
obsessions. Without someone older and wilder egging her on every
moment, the careful girl Tegan had known could never have come up
with a monster idea like Ourania!

She looked away with loathing as the engineer, hand-in-glove
with Cats, pulled a cheap trick of his own with a fig. _Oh, Nyssa!_
she mourned. _We left you all alone in this horrible place, with a
girlfriend who beats you up and that capering little monkey on your
back -_

She tried to shut her mind up altogether then, despising the
turn her thoughts were taking. As the sound of fanatics died down
in the hall, the Doctor got up, a little tipsily, and Tegan's heart
rose painfully into her throat.

"Nyssa," he declared dramatically, " this is the most
comprehensively insane proposition I've ever heard." He drank off
his glass with a flourish. "It's incredible in conception,
outrageous in detail, and dangerous to a degree. I haven't one
other objection that you haven't already knocked down; I can't say
any of your assertions are false; I've promised to help you, and I
shall." He beamed at the company with perilous vacancy. "Besides,
if you want insane enterprises, you've come to the right shop.
Here's to our madness, then!" Forgetting his glass was empty - or
not? - he mock-completed the toast, and threw himself grinning back
into his chair. Cheers at his endorsement, his deference to
'Eronner, from people who didn't know him or recognise the
flamboyant bad grace with which he offered it.

"Thank you, Doctor," said the Mayor civilly, not fooled for an
instant. "When despair's sanity, all life is madness; at least ours
is hopeful enough to drink to!" Which she did. Then she blinked,
and looked across the hall. On one of the centre tables, a neat-
bearded brunet had risen to his feet. He cleared his throat.

"Rabbi Kaplan's voice to all tables, please!"

"Thank you, Nyssa." His mellifluous, public-speaker's
baritone was that of a young man in his prime; but he used it with
the slow sad confidence of decades. "I hadn't wanted to speak until
I'd heard the Doctor; now I'm certain. Nyssa, Your Honour, there
has to be a witness, and I'm electing myself. I seem to be alone
here, but I can't accept this. Please, _please_ beware of deadly
pride. Think longer before you lead us into this thing, for most of
us will follow you into the lions' den if you let them. Don't try
to do God's job for him. Even you - even the Time Lords, even a
Union of all Terminus, with your artificial life thrown in - are no
more fitted for that, than any two-year old child.

"You've done so much here. You've ended lazar's disease, and
even senile decay; and this honours and exalts our mortal bodies and
minds, and I've cheered you all the way. You've healed a wound that
might have killed the Universe, if it had been left for any tom-fool
to meddle with. And more than these, to my mind, you've helped us
start to build one of the few truly ethical societies I've ever
heard of."

He shook his head at the obstinate, ominous silence. "Don't
be tempted, Nyssa. You already have more on your plate than any
three average Joes like me. This ambition of changing the terms of
our creation, because you can't see the hope in the ones we were
given? Don't let's go there!"

Tegan felt a strong, warm rush of affection for the brave old
cleric - and she feared for him. She was glad she couldn't see the
expression on any of the Vanir's faces.

"Please. I know I'm a voice in the wilderness, and probably
the skunk at your feast as well. But please, everyone, _think_
about it, before you do this terrible thing. That's all I can ask
you."

Nyssa paused, and her brow crinkled thoughtfully. Her answer,
when it came, was quiet and devastating. "Are you still my friend,
Teacher?"

"Yes," he returned calmly, "for my part, I am."

"Then thanks with all my heart." She gave him one of those
unfair, stone-melting smiles. "You keep on speaking yours, Ariel!
You may yet do more for me than you know. For instance, you've just
now opened my eyes to something rather important."

_Yes! Listen to him!_

Nyssa raised her voice. "Is there anyone here who actually
thinks that unanimity has something to do with Union? I know that
Marxists, religious fanatics, and lumpkins tend to stress it; but
aren't we a fairly select company in a very civil society?" She
shook her curly head vigorously. "Isn't there anyone else here who
trusts me enough to tell me I'm being wrong, reckless, just plain
unethical? I didn't really mean to start the debate tonight; but I
didn't like the way Rabbi Kaplan suddenly turned into the Dalek at
the dinner when he raised a very common objection in a very nice
way! Well? Anyone? I didn't think my case was _that_ inarguable!"

And Tegan's nerve failed her. After so long apart, and with
Nyssa so wounded and unhealthily intense about their friendship, and
Tegan wearing this beautiful, beautiful dress she'd made in honour
of it - it would seem so much like a public slap in the face! _She
means 'anyone', not_ me..!

Around the room, a very few people stood. Maybe eight out of
two hundred, as many as that. Dusty, across the table from her, was
one of them; blinking and turning his head, as if he'd shocked
himself. The brief hush that followed wasn't exactly sympathetic;
but the oppression had gone out of it. at least.

"Thank you all," said Nyssa, softly. "Keep straightening me
out - me, and those who come after me. This brings me to something
I wasn't sure about mentioning tonight. Listen, everyone - I know
I've often asked for your trust, and I've been honoured with it
maybe past my deserts. I know I've just, in a sense, asked for it
again, more than ever before. But I have noticed for some time that
I've been getting a little bit above criticism in the public mind,
and that worries me. Among friends, it's frightening. I'm not a
naturally good administrator - I've had to supply the lack with
extra work, and talented delegates. I don't even _enjoy_ politics!
The Mayoralty's been a great honour; but I took it on simply because
it was the civil way to direct a lot of the things we needed done,
at first - and, if we're being honest, because I saw a chance to get
us started on the long rare road that leads to Union. Now we're on
our way, though -

"It's no secret that I've been ill, lately." She winked
naughtily across the room at that arch-gossip Young Mama Hubbard,
who pretended a serene interest in the spark-clouds. "The truth is,
I've taken on more than this very mortal frame can handle, lazargens
or no. I still want to see out the present crisis; but afterwards,
take notice that I'll be stepping down, and concentrating on what I
know best: Ourania, bioenergetics, _calaglay_, and my personal life.
The Republic ought to be ready for that, by now. Please be
preparing for it!"

A low, disturbed murmur went through Bragi's Hall, as though
she'd announced she was abandoning them. Cherry rubbed his nose
meditatively, blocking Tegan's view of what was surely a disgusting
smirk. Dusty sat down, looking even more dazed than before.
Albertina was caught without a quip.

"Excuse me!" said Nyssa sharply. "_Don't_ start that! I'm
not taking away my counsel or my company or my labour; I'm simply
declining to become one of the office fittings! If I lacked
anything to confirm my decision, this would supply it. I'm one
citizen, not the Spirit of Terminus!"

"Says you!" Tegan could have sworn she heard muttered, from
somewhere across the room. She wondered if it was Ottar.

"All right!" the Mayor laughed, her good humour mostly
restored. "Before and after that time comes, I shall offer some
masterclasses in Traken political philosophy: that _is_ a gap it's
hard to fill. I just don't have to stay in office to do it - in
fact, the job takes away my time! And I'll let the candidates
shadow most of my work, too. I'll even be happy to serve as a
special advisor on the Council. What I won't do is wear away my
life at a job that others could do better; or allow you, dear
friends, to carry on distrusting your own abilities so!

"Remember, too, that what talents I may have will always be at
your service; looking always towards that Union I know we shall some
day build.

"Still, this is beginning to sound like an abdication speech;
and that's well in the future. Life's enemies are crawling out of
the interstitial again; even as in Hastur's siege, and maybe more in
earnest, for Ourania threatens to put down their menace forever.
I'll not desert my post under their fire, pathetic as it may prove;
and them seen off, I should love to see Ourania's three conditions
fulfilled before I step down finally. I don't insist on that; but,
if you'll allow me the vanity, I admit it would be sweet to me, and
a token I'd served well and earned rest.

"Well, I've harangued you and battered your wits long enough!
Thank you for all for your patience, trust, and respect; I pray I
shall always deserve it; and there's nothing more to do here but to
toast present and future joy, the hope we've dared to embrace here,
and all our loves - "

The cheer that followed her toast was shattering, and Tegan's
throat felt sore before she even realised she'd joined in.

"Enough of talk," Nyssa sang, "and let's pull aside the
tables, and start up the dance...!"

_= Break =_

Everyone pitched in on the clear-up, though the volunteer waiter
squads took care of the dirty work. Waiting, cooking, or decorating
for the banquet carried an automatic invitation to the dance with
it, so there'd been no shortage of applicants. Koichi Kimura, the
conductor, was taking the orchestra through musician's fuss, oddly
different from the tuning-up Tegan was used to hearing, and proving
that some things at least changed in two thousand years.

The Doctor had polished off the social niceties swiftly at his
end, and then gone cruising purposefully in Nyssa's direction; but
she was already embracing Ariel Kaplan, and enjoying a quiet and
very public confab with her rabbinical friend. Thwarted for the
moment, he re-targeted on Tegan's group, which minus a couple of
deserters had stayed intact, and was busy with an obvious discussion
that Tegan didn't honestly want to be done to death with. Si was
wallowing in it, the voice of entertaining reason as usual; and
Swallow had trotted over to support her brother. Ambitious, Cherry,
and the fashion designer Leia Sempster were ranged on the other
side; though Cherry tacked closer to Si's position, and showed an
unexpected, comfortably sleazy wit that didn't make Tegan like him
one bit better. _You don't really care about anything, do you?_ It
was all very cordial, very Terminus, and Tegan had had enough of it
before it started.

The Doctor, in his crotchety mood, was more than she could
stand to deal with. She excused herself to Si with a meaningful
look, and wove her way across the hall to Cats. Her former
flatmate, who didn't dance to anything unless it had a disco beat or
worse, had staked out a place near one of the sherry-and-nibbles
spreads that were being put out in the far reaches. "Hi, T!" Cats
greeted her brightly, offering her something like a baby vol-au-
vent. Tegan shook her head, and swigged down half of the nearest
glass. "Good dance?" she said. "I mean, banquet?"

"You're hitting it a bit hard, aren't you?" The technician
cocked an eyebrow, and punched Tegan lightly above the elbow.
"Still, I know what you mean. Tonight's opened _my_ eyes a bit; and
I'd already had a sneak preview from Alfie." She glanced amiably
across the room at her boss-mate-whatever-he-really-was-to-her,
where he was playing to his own circle of admirers. "Real stunner,
isn't she?"

Tegan winced. "Don't!" She killed the rest of the tawny-
sweet wine. It was too weak for sherry. "She was saying when she
was tying me into this, about how much she was looking forward to
dancing with me tonight."

"Of course she is, you chump! You're good enough to dance
with Si, and she thinks you hang the Moon anyway. You'll do fine -
just ease up on that liquor!"

She swallowed, and nodded. Cats punched her arm again, not so
gently, more solicitously. "Hey, girl! You okay?"

"Yes..."

"Powder our noses," decided Cats, and they walked off together
into the side-aisle and through into one of the Ladies-es. This was
a large watery-white expanse with folding, brightly-vined privacy
screens, great potted palms, faint salubrious perfume, and
Scandiwegian seascapes showing on the window-lights. Shortly
thereafter, they rejoined a good way out from the door, and Cats
drew one of the screens around to shield them.

"So, what's up?"

"You don't know how bad it's got between her and Amina."
Tegan sniffed. "I - I think she's getting a bit obsessed with me,
Cats. Se - as a woman. She isn't acting quite right in the head,
anyway! She's really making me uncomfortable; and I can't even talk
to Si about it, or we'll just have a row again." She dabbed at a
leaking eye with a silk handkerchief, and realised that she truly
was going to have to fix her face before she went back in. Was that
Someone trying to be funny? Their sense of humour was worse than
Nyssa's...

Cats whistled, and considered. "I tell you what," she said.
"Except I _didn't_ tell you, okay?"

Nod.

"First off, she's still in love with her Meanie; and you know
she can't even think about being unfaithful. I reckon she's just
forgetting you're not Traken. Her people thought flirting was being
polite, remember?"

Tegan wasn't convinced. "I've seen her with other people,
Cats. This - " She patted at the gorgeous dress. "It's getting
sort of heavy; and the way she tips her tiara at men doesn't count.
She doesn't _go_ for men, does she?"

"Yeah, I thought that was coming. Look, put all this Dyke
Queen of Purple Planet shit out of your airy little head, and
remember she's not quite human. She's actually more het than
anything. All her folks were. It's designed into their jeans."

_"What?"_

"Trakens are bi - sort of. _One_ man, _one_ woman, pretty
much for good - and it's definitely the breeder side the poor
'eathen bastards major in. Nyss wants to marry and have kids, if
old Meanie will ever let her. She is _not_ gagging to run her hot
little hands all over your luscious bod, okay? She just wants to
kiss you, and dance with you, and throw her arms round your neck
every now and then, and all that other sticky-sweet schoolgirl
stuff. Take it and like it, and don't forget no-one told you!"

The blood drained from Tegan's face as all sorts of things
fell into place with a clang. Nyssa _did_ come over a lot like one
of those posh, crushy public schoolgirls. But that relief was
nothing to the blow that came with it. _She's looking for a
husband!_

Tegan and Si had never got around to exchanging any promises.

She'd pulled out all the stops at the Hotel Tomato, and failed
humiliatingly to make love to him.

Beside Nyssa, Tegan looked like a seedy barmaid. She didn't
know one single thing she could do, that Nyssa couldn't do three
times better. She couldn't even begin to compete - and she'd seen
the way the clocks stopped, when Si and Nyssa really looked at each
other...

"Thanks!" she said brokenly, and fled back into Bragi's Hall
without fixing her make-up.

_= Step Back in Agalaiac =_

Tegan came back from her second visit to the Ladies, made up to
fearful perfection and ready to fight. In a miserable state after
leaving Cats, she'd blundered past Ottar, doing guard duty in the
aisle. He'd given her a private, deadpan wink. Ottar, that gallant
lunk, who had the loony notion that she was so brave...

She knew she couldn't be brave to save her life, not while she
was looking such a fright! So she returned his wink, turned in her
tracks as if she'd just remembered something, and marched straight-
backed to base again. When she emerged the second time, she'd put
her nasty jealousy of Nyssa aside, and felt up to changing Si's mind
if he started getting ideas anyway. She blazed a bright trail
across the ballroom in her Traken dress, gaudily lovely as a
phoenix, and felt the heads turn as she met her poet halfway, to the
dry old-timey backing of the band's 'appetisers'.

His smile struck her warm from her tongue to her feet, and his
eyes answered her like a good man's. "Love," he said, "you're
making them weep. Will you seal my fate, and give me the first
dance?"

_The first and the last and -_ "Yes," she said, returning his
smile and twinkling up at him, "I do believe I will!"

"Ladies and gentlemen," cried Koichi Kimura, "please take your
partners for _Sharazad Galliard_!" Everywhere, people were shifting
and stepping out. Over Si's shoulder, Tegan saw Nyssa, her arm
linked firmly through the Doctor's and her head cocked as she
chatted rapidly up at him, leading him almost by force onto the
dance floor. _He always needed persuading!_ The lively tune struck
up, then; and there was no more time nor desire for reflection, but
only her man, his inky eyes, his masterly movement in the dance;
keeping up with him, and helping him wring out the joy in the
music -

- the joy -

it came on big and familiar, formal and sweetly piercing,
quick and warm as blood

- the joy -

in his arms

- the joy -

- of a damp squib! It wasn't that Tegan couldn't dance while
squiffy: she'd had more than enough practice at that. But the
Traken-style measures were so precise, and had so much spontaneity
and play in their combinations, that they made for a different ball
game. Tegan's head got giddy and swimmy. She could do the simple
Agalaiacs just fine; but every time Si tried to move into something
fancier, he felt her timing falter, and trimmed back to the simpler
mode. A looker-on might have thought them pretty good for novices:
Tegan just felt like a lead weight around Si's neck. Through her
bleary self-contempt, she caught another glimpse of the Doctor,
steering Nyssa almost aggressively around the floor. It was a
blessed relief when the rotten music stopped.

"I feel a bit queer," she announced, twitching him a smile.
"I think I'll sit the next few out!"

They walked back to the dance-floor's edge, where the partner-
swapping was already under way. Si offered to join her on the
sidelines, but Tegan told him to get out there and show them some
tricks! Duly pushed, he paired off with talky, willowy, archly
feminine Leia. The Doctor, striding back with Nyssa in tow, claimed
his dish-faced dining partner with a lavish bow. Julie van Duyn,
she was: Nyssa's medical chief. Turning from the two Doctors, and
looking like everything lovely in the world, Nyssa asked Tegan for
the next dance.

"Thanks!" said Tegan. "I'm feeling a bit whatsname. You go
knock them dead, Yeronner, you pixie!" If there was anything she
wanted to do less than dance with Si right now, here it was. But
because she couldn't hurt her friend either, she reached out and
brushed a wisp of Nyssa's sleeve. "Could we take one in the second
set? I think I need time to settle that banquet," _and sink about a
gallon of water!_

"Surely, dear heart," said Nyssa, and rolled her hand
caressingly over Tegan's, in a move eerily like the t'ai chi
_pushing hands_ she'd seen Cats and Si practising once or twice. It
was tender and calming and - as she could tell, after her talk with
Cats - not a lover's trick at all, only an intimate friend's.

_Oh, Nyssa! Please, please come through all right -_

"Please take your partners for _Abalone_!"

Nyssa slipped off through the knots of people, to curtsey
expectantly at Captain Mord. The boss Vanir didn't wait to be asked
twice.

So Tegan wallflowered it, and watched the dancing unfold.

_- Kaleidic -_

" - for _Traken Grand Suite_!"

Tegan watched like a beady-eyed parrot over her tumbler of
still water, as Si and Nyssa finished their brief conference, and
set out together into the music. She ignored the other couples who
merry-went-round in front of them, and it wasn't five minutes before
she was in good company. _Traken Grand Suite_ opened out quickly
into clockwork intricacies, full of Kaleidic cogs that you could
curve around like most people, or go through the mill in style. Her
love and her best friend went through one after another, pulling off
charming surprises at every tricky turn, until the others began to
move aside to give them more room, and keep them in better view. Si
had a gift, rare in a man, of yielding so well to an experienced
partner and sensing her wishes so finely, that he could seem to lead
perfectly even in moves he wasn't truly versed in. How Tegan knew
it! She watched, lost in very deliberate admiration.

Nyssa, of course, had been brought up like a princess on a
world of rich Arts & Crafts Commies, and knew dancing like most
people knew breathing. Back at Halfcote Hall, she'd once learned
the Charleston cold in an hour - and rivalled her teacher, an
annoying flapper who probably spent every evening at that sort of
party. Tegan, a working girl, had never had the time or training to
get _that_ good. She'd always thought that dance was one place
where she could hold her own, though...

She'd never seen Si and Nyssa dance together in earnest,
before. They looked like a legend in the making.

_Dear God_, she thought, as they tripped radiantly through an
amazing change, _they're so beautiful!_ Without warning, the
remnants of her party mood collapsed savagely, and she found herself
tucking into her own heart with a small sharp spoon.

_They're totally out of your class! Oh, yes, Tegan Jovanka,
either of them_ would _want_ you, _wouldn't they?_

"I'm just in the bloody way!" she muttered into the water; and
knitted her brows miserably about getting out of it. Some people
could have seen it coming before the other two had even met; but
_because_ Tegan wasn't in their class, she needed it spelt out in
pictures!

Beautiful, bitter beautiful pictures. ..

"Tegan!"

The Doctor, flushed and in full cry, bore down on her little
side-table. "Splendid, isn't it?" he demanded in a high voice,
jerking his head towards the dance-floor. "Tegan, my dear, shall we
show them how it's done? _Shall we dance_ - ta-da! - _or go on
moping....?_"

"Let's!" she said recklessly. He was obviously at least as
drunk as she was, and she didn't blame him one bit. She rose, and
offered him her hand.

_"...Shall we dance,"_ he chanted, _"and walk on air...?"_
With which he quite literally swept her off her feet, and into the
whirl of the dance. She couldn't look at anything else any more.
He led, stronger and quicker and warmer than she'd ever known him,
but never fumbling a step; she followed him easily, closely, losing
herself to the glorious fierce falling sensation of doing the wrong
thing and never caring. The music paused for seven of her skippy
heartbeats, then, before stepping up in merriment and tempo; and as
she spun up into it, nothing in the world but his wild dark poet's
face, so dearly alien and so like the man she'd thought would love
her - the scales fell away from her mind, _sauce for the gander is
sauce for the goose!_, and it no longer felt wrong, after all...

_- Nisbaean -_

Si had found his centre with Nyssa, in this dance: as intimate and
erotic as his heart could desire, as comradely and decorous as they
always had to remain. He was truly content, and would bundle
tonight with Tegan with clear conscience and singing blood. Perhaps
more, under this enchantment, with Tegan's own potent brand thrown
in -

(said skin and bone and breath, without words)

All his attention was bent on his and Nyssa's easy, flowing
harmonies, and the good places they were taking them. His gaze
scarcely left that sweet face, those sparkling grey eyes, the ugly-
pretty glitter of her cyborg tiara; and hers cherished him, too,
without plan or possession. As they took a turn to Si's right,
though, Nyssa cooled the movement deliberately, and her eyes
widened.

"Oh, dear!" she whispered, touching Nisbaean briefly so as to
be discreet and heard. "Maybe you'd better go and claim her for the
next dance. Another half-turn, I think, and don't notice too
obviously!"

He'd caught a glimpse of them during their first turn, but
thought nothing of it. As he and Nyssa came around so as to afford
him a better view, he saw what she meant. They were beginning to
attract attention, and not just with their showy, flinging changes.
Tegan was far looser and better co-ordinated than she'd been in
their own dance, though the Doctor was very obviously the dominant
spirit.

Si sighed. "That's rather a lot of Nisbaean, isn't it?"

"She's drunk," diagnosed Nyssa, "and he's fey. He's still
angry with me because I didn't give him a chance to - " They passed
another couple, went through a complicated routine, and lapsed back
into close Agalaiacs.

" - talk me out of things. He doesn't like other people's
surprises, anyway. I don't think what he's doing is quite nice, do
you? Let's cut him out."

She spun out on a limb, at the far reach of his arm, and
tripped back laughing-faced up to him, something special in her
oldest-style dress of rainbow-fringed browns. "I wonder," Si told
her, "about my reception. He's showing her a livelier time than I
was; and, as you justly observe, she's drunk."

"I have a plan..." Under cover of a slightly risqué Nisbaean
change, Nyssa whispered Si her idea. "You do know it, don't you?"

"Yes."

"I knew you would. You _are_ for each other, you know! I
happen to know it isn't his sort of thing at all. Be ready after
this last round..." She squeezed him rather closer than the change
required, out of sheer happy anticipation.

_Traken Grand Suite_ wound down to a satisfying, universally
Agalaiac ending, and various couples wandered off the floor. The
Doctor and Tegan remained defiantly planted where their dance had
deposited them. "Bravo!" the Doctor cried, clapping his hands in
peremptory encore. Si was beginning to find his behaviour really a
bit thick. A gentleman who wanted to make a public ass of himself
oughtn't to drag his tipsy lady-friends into it! "Ready?" he asked
Nyssa, who nodded. They'd slipped into position before the breath
had fairly left his mouth. Grounding himself in a strong stance, he
made a stirrup with his hands, and Nyssa stepped up into it,
steadying herself on his shoulders, and grabbing the hall's
attention in seconds.

"It's been said," the Mayor declared from her perch, Si hoping
she'd get through with it quickly, "that I'm childishly addicted to
surprises; and maybe that's so. I hope I'm not so predictable in
this that too many of you were ahead of me, and that Koichi and his
band will forgive me for deranging their programme a little - but
I'd like to ask now for a special dance of old Earth that I brought
to Terminus a long time ago, and that my old friends from the Jazz
Raisers may still remember. In honour of our dear Terran guests
tonight, I'd like to give you - _the Charleston_!"

One of Kimura's hands ran over his lectern like a keyboard,
the other through his lank dark hair, before his brow cleared, and
the rest of the orchestra took in their adjusted scoreboards.
"Now," declared the conductor, shaking his baton admonishingly in
Nyssa's direction, _"you has jazz!"_ And, in but a couple of
moments, they did. Nyssa hopped down from Si's hands, and he turned
to sweep Tegan off her feet. Unfortunately, the Doctor had been
there first.

"I thought he didn't Charleston?" said Si quizzically, turning
back to Nyssa under cover of the general jiving.

"So did I!" she said, exasperatedly. "He didn't where _I_
learned it!" She unset her jaw. "I do, however. Shall we - if you
still want to talk to me?"

"I'll think about that," he teased her, stepping into the
swing of it, "while we dance - "

The frenetically good-timing rag rhythms took up all their
time and energy; and if they drove off the vague spectre of romance
and replaced it with a spirit of busy play and callisthenics, who
was Si to call that a bad thing?

_- Kaleidic Change -_

"I say!" he called, across the emptying spaces that followed their
Charleston. "Do you do other requests?"

Tegan clung to his side blindly, thoroughly tossed about and
stunned. He was so ravishingly strong and sudden, like nothing on
Earth. She was dimly aware of having nailed her colours to some
mast or other, but not what or how or why. Tonight was Leicester
Square come right, and it only had not to end...

_Tegan!_ nagged her conscience, sounding like some priggish
young boy she'd known. _What's happening to you?_

_Bog off!_ she snapped; and it fled back into the vacuum.

Kimura cast Nyssa-and-Si a quick sideways glance across the
room, then nodded. "We might, sir!"

"How about some tango?" She carried on eyeing infinity.

"My old grandmother was Kalevalan," Fast Ludo Duffy called
back meaninglessly, from the ranks of brass. "What do _you_ think?"

The Doctor chuckled, and rubbed his long hands gleefully.
Kimura flickered through his scoreboard, then gave a second, sharp
nod. The rest of the orchestra straightened up for business.

"Ladies and gentlemen," cried the conductor, "please take your
partners for Delroy Kivi's _Refangled Tango_!"

He turned back, and took her.

_= Withdrawals =_

It was a musician's tango, Astor Piazzolla territory: as much for
listening as for dancing, but hurting badly for lack of a real
bandoneon. The dance-floor crowd cleared further, down to the hard
core. Si and Nyssa exchanged a look of worried accord. He could
tango if he had to, but it was a dance he disliked: invented by
Argentine pimps to show off their whores, and still tainted with
contempt. She took him by the hand, and led him off to the side-
table where Cats and Alphard were sitting. Cats was technobabbling
fiercely at her craft-master: she was plainly angry, and just as
obviously in no humour to talk about it. She broke off when she saw
Si and Nyssa, and joined Alphard in greeting them. The four of them
split a jug of punch that the engineers had poached from somewhere,
and sat watching the dance in increasingly embarrassed silence.

"Oh, that's going too far!" exclaimed Nyssa, as the Doctor
initiated a particularly pimpish sequence. "What _is_ he playing
at?"

"Cock games," Cats snarled.

"Doc Cock o' the Walk," mused Alphard maliciously. "I wonder
if we could make that stick?"

Si felt something sharp and heavy being hauled into place
overhead. "He's had some erratic episodes lately - when he was
going through that lazargen allergy..."

"What?" Nyssa gasped. "What? Why wasn't I told?"

"You weren't at your wonderful best, _niña_," Alphard reminded
her, "and then the allergy faded, as usual."

"Oh." Whatever she'd been going to say next died on her lips,
as the Doctor lifted Tegan up, and her legs began to scissor around
his waist. Their display was rapidly becoming a ghastly star turn.

"That," said Si grimly, a cold certainty coming to settle in
his stomach, "is not her! Alphard, could he sway her mind to this,
without a lot of rigmarole?"

"If she trusts him? Easily! Are you sure he needs to?"

Punching Alphard, Si told himself, wouldn't mend a thing.

_- Heroic -_

The music wasn't that wild, but _he_ was! She scarcely registered
the few others on the floor, and didn't mind that they two were
becoming the centre of attention. Her skin burned so hot against
his, he felt like walking ice, dangerous and thrilling and adhesive
as a blade left out in deepest winter. He strutted, slung her
about, broke her posed resistance; and she helped him. His night-
dark eyes ate her will, filled her world.

"Sarah Jane," he pronounced very deliberately, in time with
the music, "you are the most stubborn - perverse - delectable -
little _dish_!"

He'd mastered her so completely, and his words were so
deliciously wrong, it took her a moment to notice he'd forgotten her
name.

"Doctor," she objected dreamily; and he laughed, lifting her
up to him as if she weighed no more than a paperweight. Her bright
skirts rustled up her legs as she wrapped them tightly round his
waist, and leaned daringly backwards. He'd never let her fall! The
rustling of that lovely dress, her giddy position, the cool air on
her bared skin, woke something in her from its trance. "Cool it..?"

"My darling," he said, huskily passionate, "with your
guidance, Prom's cunning, and my help, what can possibly go wrong?
Kiss me, beloved!"

"Doctor, no!" It was so hard to find that strangled protest.
Prom? Prom? _Who's he talking to?_

His eyes jarred back into focus. He took her weight onto his
shoulders, as if he meant to put her back down; but as she released
her legs, he lifted her high above his head, like a great big
wineskin.

_Awk..!_

"Ladies and gentlemen!" he bellowed at the top of his voice,
"I give you that mistress of the air-lanes, that moaner of Lisas,
the darling of worlds - _Tegan Jovanka_!"

He held her aloft for a long frozen minute, and then put her
down very gently, as though she were made of glass. Tegan stood in
her own skin again - and his eyes were mild, and wounded, and
terribly far away as he looked at her.

_"Elissa!"_ he complained, and toppled over backwards.

_= Step Out =_

As the Doctor hoisted Tegan into the air and began to rave, Si and
Nyssa both sprang to their feet. When he put her down, the Mayor
said urgently, "Let's get him off to bed - "

_"Elissa!"_ Only Si heard Nyssa's stifled, disbelieving sob
at that word. And then the Doctor fell like a timbered tree. Tegan
grabbed at him with a wild, lost cry, and saved the Time Lord's head
from bouncing off the floor. The ballroom went still as nightmare.
Nyssa, as half the heads in the room turned to her for a lead, stood
paralysed and open-mouthed, looking like a five-year-old child whose
father had just keeled over in the middle of her birthday party.

Si began to tear himself away from her, to step forward.

Tegan was kneeling over the Doctor, one hand over his chest,
the other over his forehead. She turned on them, her eyes
streaming, and broke the silence with an anguished, accusing cry.

"Well, _do_ something! He - he's cold as death. Nyssa, he's
_regenerating_!"

_= End of a Merry Dance =_

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Twelve, 'A Knife to the Heart'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Twelfth Episode: A Knife to the Heart*

"Nyssa, he's _regenerating_!"

He hadn't swallowed his tongue. His breathing was subsiding
gracefully, and his double pulse had been padding to a stop instead
of racing away from her. His skin was cold already, cold as the
clay. Tegan recognised his lesser death when it came for him. She
felt a whisper away from understanding it all, from saving him.

"_Aesculapian_: ambulance to Bragi's Hall!" Julie van Duyn
commanded the air - first to catch her wits, and dashing for her
black medical bag.

Nyssa's idiot panic broke up like cracking pack-ice. "Julie,
we have to keep him alive until it arrives, but _don't_ use standard
pharmacopoeia; human medicines might kill him! Give him
TurboLazarus to boost his lazargens, and then I'll - "

_"NO!"_

Tegan's scream silenced the hall, as it all fell wickedly into
place. In a voice utterly cleansed of drunkenness, she demanded,

"Freeze him, or stop time for him, or something like that.
_Stop him regenerating!_ Nyssa, you boost his lazargens over my
dead body. You'll kill him. Is that what you want?"

"We know what we're doing, Tegan - "

"You?" Every word embittered her tongue. "You still don't
see what you've done, do you? He _had_ regeneration, Time Lord
style! It's nearly as good as your kind, by itself. Your virus
puts whatever anyone's got into overdrive, remember, you told us?
_Overdrive_, Nyssa. He's regenerating his lives away! _You're
already healing him to death!_"

Van Duyn hesitated. Cats nodded in sharp, appalled
fascination, and darted a side-glance to Alphard, who returned the
gesture like a man in a bad dream. She said urgently, "It makes
sense, Nyss! If it was re-growing deleted connections in his brain,
then how he was acting..."

"Functional brain damage," groaned Nyssa. "So that's why -
Tegan must be right! _Aesculapian!_ Dispatch emergency stasis
unit, in separate ambulance if that's quicker! Cats, does he have
anything on the TARDIS now that might help?"

"Wish I knew."

"Tegan? Si?"

"I've no idea - "

"Don't be stupid!"

Nyssa flinched from the raw venom in Tegan's tone. "I didn't
realise - "

"Can you stop it happening?"

"I think so. I don't know!"

"You don't know." Tegan climbed to her feet, her eyes burning
and clear, and walked away from it. She'd never keep her head if
she looked back at him: never credit that it wasn't for the last
time. _Isn't it?_ "Alphard," she said, walking straight up to
confront him. "You're a Time Lord. Stay with them, and don't let
them mess him up!"

"I'm not a Time Lord, or a medic. My interference won't
help."

"Well, right!"

"You need looking at too, T," Cats told her. "He laid some
kind of whammy on you there, didn't he?"

_When didn't he?_ "I'll be all right," she lied. "I just
need to lie down." _I just need to get away from that - Traken!_
"You go with them, Cats. Please. Nyssa, please don't do anything
else clever." She wouldn't turn back to face her former companion.
"Si? I want to go back to the TARDIS." He gave her his arm
instantly, and four Vanir came forward to flank their exit. The
fire-cloud chandeliers struck shards of light off the grandeur of
Bragi's Hall into her eyes as she left, like evil candles in a
Gothic horror film. She wanted to lie down, she wanted Si to hold
her if he still wanted to, but most of all she needed to ransack the
TARDIS databanks. She had to do something for the Doctor, or what
was the point of her at all?

Tegan didn't know how Nyssa lived with herself.

She'd wanted to sit alone in the treatment room, outstaring the grey
ceramic of the main stasis tank; but that was self-indulgent,
irrational, and unworthy. It was supposed to have been the greatest
night of her life, and now it was the worst, and it was her own
fault. That was all there was. Sitting around playing the tragedy
queen, and depressing Julie and the medical staff until they felt as
horrible as she did, wouldn't improve his chances one bit. She had
to go home. If everyone there hated her, now, she couldn't say she
hadn't given them good reasons.

_At least_, she thought, fighting an urge to hysterical
laughter, _no-one will ever mistake me for a goddess again!_ Her
Vanir bodyguard, hardened to death and sickness as they were, had
been silent as the grave, coming and going. Well they might be!

She supposed that, somewhere in the grind, she must have
become un-Traken at last. No true daughter of Union could have been
so wrapped up in herself and her own schemes, as to make such a
thoughtless, heartless oversight as this. She deserved death, of
course; but that, too, would do more harm than good. It was the
Doctor, the best of men, who'd taste it, if she couldn't undo that
wild, cancerous regeneration her lazargens had inflicted on him.
She ought to be able to: she gave herself three chances out of four
to succeed, which was good odds in its way. _Not for this!_

_Are you proud of me, Father?_

Ottar coughed gently, and she realised she was outside her own
door already. She cherished that man. Less polished than Mord, and
nothing of a general, there was a tender, thoughtful toughness
about him that reminded her of the best of the Traken Fosters. _And
that's how it may be, Ottar! I may fall, but you and Ariel and the
other great hearts - yes, even Gisco, even Cherry! - you'll build a
human kind of Union anyway. Perhaps Traken's day really is done..._

No. Her chin came up, and she thanked him with a wan smile.
_Nyssa's, maybe: Traken's, never!_ She palmed open the door, and
walked through into her lounge.

Something was very wrong, she knew at once, even besides the
obvious. What?

"Is he going to live, Nyssa?"

"Probably - very probably. I think we can even arrest the
regeneration, so he'll still be as we knew him. Thank you, Tegan,
for saving me from a terrible mistake!"

"Right!"

Where was Si? Nyssa realised, then, what had struck her as
wrong. Tegan was sitting alone on the sofa, in what came as close
to practical garb as she ever wore. The Traken dress whose design
had taken up so many years of love and memory lay on the floor by
Nyssa's doorway, folded up in neat and unmistakable rejection.
_"Tegan - !"_ she blurted, in anguish.

"You didn't expect me to wear it again, did you?" This one,
terrible time, Tegan was the one to keep a cool head. "Since you
ask, I did look up the TARDIS databank. There's nothing there
that's any use at all, unless it's filed under something even
stupider than usual, which it probably is. Why don't you try,
tomorrow? You're the genius here, aren't you?"

Tegan had the right of it, and her words cut into Nyssa like
knives. "I'm sorry...!"

"You're _sorry_?" Her first love stared at her incredulously.
"Is anyone supposed to care? You didn't trust me to decide the
right way about living forever, meaning _your_ way; so you conned us
all into coming here in the dark, and he didn't get time to think
about what it meant and protect himself! And you - you didn't even
bother to think it through, you were so busy putting over your own
_garbage_! I don't want you to be sorry, Nyssa. Just give him his
life back. That's all I want from you."

"I know," Nyssa gulped. "I will!" And she fairly bolted into
her room, not knowing whether it would be aching and empty again,
not caring what her _amie_ might do to her this time, in case it
wasn't. She ran straight into something large and beloved and
dangerous.

Amina's arms, voice, musk, folded all about her.

"I heard what happened," she said, gruffly. "I'm sorry. I'm
sorry about everything."

Nyssa buried her face in her cupmate's breast, and immediately
began to cry her heart out in the racking, shivering way she hated
most. Amina held her quietly, patiently waiting for the long storm
to blow itself out, as she had the day the Garm was murdered. The
Garm! Joshua! All those dead Vanir and lazars who'd trusted her!
Even, she supposed, Adric - and now even _him_, her second father,
the man she'd always secretly believed invincible. She always
blasted the lives of anyone who came close to her. How had she ever
dared forget it?

_Not you, my love_, she promised desperately, hugging the
warrior who'd saved her life and sanity back when Terminus was a
failed slaving racket, and 'ambition' was planning to survive
another year. _I shan't let it happen with you!_

Midnight at the cathedral: Alphard's technological temple in the
Helm Room, his great humming prayer to the gods of Can-Do. He and
Cats were back from the hospital, too tired to rest, having
contributed about as much to Nyssa's efforts as you'd expect. Cats
wasn't happy. "How do you reckon his chances, really?"

"I believe he'll pull through." The engineer's grin was faint
and ghastly. "Time Lords are a hardy bunch, and they've upgraded
since my day. Nyssa's looking ahead for the worst, which is what
I'd want in my doctor - or _for_ my Doctor..."

"Yeah, well," said Cats darkly. "I'm all for that, but we
were a couple of lemons tonight. She didn't need us there at all!
That was Miss Belle of the Ball, putting the old spike heel in."

"It _was_ a large blunder, Cats! I might have thought of it,
even if my _niña_ didn't."

"Okay, but T had just been humping the Doctor all over the
floor, to spite her and Si! Probably helped bring his whatnot on.
She's got a nerve, coming down on Nyss that hard!"

"Spite?" Alphard threw himself into his revolving chair, and
regarded her quizzically. "It looked like lust and alcohol and mild
hypnosis to me. Does she actually have a screw loose, or is there
something else I don't know?"

Cats snorted. "She got it in her head that Nyss had the hots
for her, and she wasn't handling it too well. I thought I'd better
set her straight, quiet-like, so I told her a bit more than I had a
right to. Wish I'd kept my mouth shut, now."

It was punishing herself to tell him; but he shrugged it off,
and she knew she'd hear no more about it. "It's just one of those
little nasties that happen around Nyssa, then," he dismissed,
sympathetically. "I'm glad I'm out of that game! There isn't room
in this Galaxy for a woman from a _nice_ culture. She's like a dab
of jam in a roomful of wasps." He shook his head vigorously.
"Cats, I'm worried. The Desecrator hasn't even made an obvious move
yet, and we've already lost our chess Champion. Our Monarch - Nyssa
- is distraught; and she and Amina have picked their time to
distract themselves with this idiotic lover's quarrel. Even Tegan,
who at least knows the Desecrating Three first-hand, has scrambled
whatever brains she had for the duration!" He spun at her. "_We_
have to keep our eye on that ball, because no-one else competent
will be handy. If the Desecrator strikes over the next few days,
while all the others are tied up in their own knots, we could be in
real trouble. I have a bad feeling about that ape, Squitter-Hjort.
Why can't Mord find him?"

"No," said Cats, happy to change the subject, "I dunno either.
In the Master's TARDIS, at a guess - wherever he stashed that, which
doesn't help us much."

"And may not be right. I wish she'd sack those Odin-
worshipping meatheads in a mass, and replace them all with robot
drones! They'd be tougher and more reliable, and they couldn't be
stupider!"

"And while we're worrying about the Desecrator," Cats put in
pessimistically, "let's not forget about the one who isn't included
in it. Does anything so far make more sense if the Rani's in on the
game?"

"Who?" He stared back at her blankly.

"The Rani? The other big-fish renegade Time Lord?"

"Oh - the alchemist! Why bring her into it? I don't recall
her seeming particularly impressive, from what records I sneaked a
look at. Why not the Gambler, or the Peacemaker, or the Pervert,
then?"

"She's the one Amina and Gisco were going on about: like if
the Master could get past you, so could she. If they didn't hear
about her from you, where are they getting off anyway?"

"What you have to remember about Amina," said Alphard then,
relieved, "is that she'd have big problems with all the serious
opposition being male. I'm sure I _did_ mention the Rani, years
ago; but if she's making her out incredibly dangerous, that's pure
feminist chauvinism. Forget that worry, at least!"

Cats frowned. "The Doctor's fought her. He seemed to think
our Meanie was dead right."

"Says the man who breached my defences so easily! No, no,
I'll take it on board." For a moment, his irrepressible breeziness
showed signs of blowing itself out; and she saw all Omega's
centuries in his face, and wondered that she could pal up with a
creature of such an alien order. Then he pressed on:

"She does have some record of working with the Master, doesn't
she? Perhaps he needed another Time Lord to work this conjuring
trick with his TARDIS; but how could he trust her with it? No, I'd
worry more about Amina herself than the small fry of Gallifrey. If
_she_ keeps a cool head, she might seize an advantage from all
this."

Cats felt part of a nasty jigsaw puzzle snicking into place.
"You don't think she's loyal?"

"To Nyssa? Surely! Not to what she stands for, though.
Amina couldn't give a masturbating monkey for Union or the Jubilee:
she's gone along where our _niña_'s led. She knows the military
potential of lazargen immortality, and it's been on her agenda from
day one. I don't want her racking up points while Nyssa's
vulnerable." He flashed white eyes and teeth at her. "Your job.
Nyssa likes you. You need to patch this thing between her and
Tegan." Cats wrinkled her nose. "But you do! I've always had the
notion Nyssa thinks something absurd of her: a breach will hit her
hard, am I wrong? I'm not a woman, and I don't do relationships, so
you get to fix it!"

"Okay." Cats squared her shoulders. "Tegan isn't a bad girl
at heart, I guess. I'll rope in Si. If Art and Science in chorus
can't bring 'em both round, it's not going to happen." She
considered frowsily. "Reckon it should, though - knowing them.
Now, how about our campaign against the real baddies? Map it out,
so we can sleep on it."

"Just roughly," Alphard cautioned, "and then sleep! Start
with the rogue packets on our network..."

He'd held Tegan at last, in the dead hours of that night, when she'd
come in from her self-imposed vigil in Nyssa's lounge. She was
shaking hollowly within moments, reaction finally cancelling the
burning-cold, jagged silence that had filled her since the Doctor's
fall. He supposed she'd had painful words with Nyssa, which he
hated but knew he mustn't meddle in. And, returning, it only took
one look to see that he'd better bury her own behaviour that
evening, and leave it that way. He'd never seen Tegan so near the
edge before, but he recognised the symptoms, and he'd had the low-
down on her old depressive attacks from Cats. One wrong move from
him, and she'd implode in guilt and rage, and give him the free hand
he didn't want and couldn't use. What that would do to _her_ -

He took up her hands and kissed them, and brought her into his
arms as she looked up at him. "No news," she gasped. "No news.
She _thinks_ he's going to get better!"

He said nothing for some time, making quiet sounds in his
throat, rubbing her shoulder-blade soothingly. "You have to sleep,
Tegan," he told her firmly. "We both have to sleep."

"Let's just both turn around and change," she said tersely.
"I don't want - " She flapped: _either of us to go anywhere!_ He
nodded understanding, and that's what they did. Even when they
bundled tightly together, with a quilt over both their bedrolls, she
was still shivering softly; and it must have been a terrible hour
before either of them slept. It did come to them, though.

The next morning, she was still sleeping when he woke, which
wasn't like her at all. He stayed a couple more hours, keeping her
close company until she stirred from muttering dreams; and then
slipped softly away from her, so as to be up and handy when she came
to.

She stumbled to her feet looking almost human, which made it
all worthwhile.

The day, for one still shell-shocked in all quarters, got
better. A message arrived about mid-day from Nyssa at the hospital,
while he and Tegan were exploring Terminus's eccentrically staid
television service. The message was short and to the point:
_Regeneration arrested_. This beat the news headline, in which a
foreign guest had collapsed dangerously ill at the Mayoral banquet
from an exotic reaction to lazargens, unnamed medics being
'cautiously optimistic'. Since there was no way that anyone who
cared could _not_ have heard the whole juicy story at first- or
second-hand by the day's end, what with all the people at the
banquet, Si suspected that someone was applying Nyssa's personal
clout to avoid rubbing salt into Tegan's wounds. Or possibly
reporters here were trained to behave like gentlefolk: what did he
know? On Terminus, even that was possible...

Nyssa wasn't home that evening; which was a pity, because by
then he'd picked over the catastrophe of the banquet, and come up
with a pressing question for her. Ottar said that nothing new was
doing at the hospital, and that the Mayor would probably sleep
there, or at Amina's.

Nyssa came back from Amina's next morning, tired and subdued, but no
longer half so desperate as she'd been. Her voice was crisp again,
and the long fight shone once more from her steel-grey eyes. She
and Tegan greeted each other with distant, wary civility. The
latest news was good, Nyssa told her twentieth-century friends.
Yesterday she'd given the Doctor some of the lazargen suppressors
that her people used to rein in their contagion, when they had to
venture off Terminus; and this morning his lazargen count was still
bottoming out. The irradiation programme was already under way.
Once the immortality plague was burned from his system, his own
excellent healing could take the lead, and he might be back with
them inside the tenday. Tegan said she was glad. Tegan added that
she thought she'd go and do some more research in the TARDIS
databanks, and that she hoped Nyssa wouldn't overstretch herself too
soon and make herself ill again. Nyssa said she wouldn't, and Tegan
withdrew into the TARDIS.

Si looked meaningfully at Nyssa's door. She nodded soberly,
as if not altogether surprised, and led him into her den. He
blinked several times, never having seen the fair little room
before, and not missing the Amina sculpture, or Tegan's charming
amateur portraits above the _kist_. His first question was blunt:
"Is the news really that good, Nyssa?"

"It's all true..."

"I assumed that."

She shook her head. "Physically, he's 'comfortable'. He
might be a little cancer-prone for a few years; but that's not a
serious problem, with his metabolism. If we were going to lose our
patient, I'm sure we'd know it by now. It's his mind I'm more
worried about."

"Do you think he'll wake up with that 'functional brain
damage' that confused him at the banquet?"

"I doubt it would be so bad, but I don't know for sure." Her
voice gained strength. "Alphard says he was still moderately
coherent when he fell, so his fundamental Time Lord abilities should
be able to restore him to form. If anything, the lazargen attack
has probably boosted his psychic talents! I still shan't feel happy
until he's conscious again, though, and I've spoken with him."

"You're right," he agreed. "This isn't the kind of
speculation Tegan needs to hear. Nyssa, there's something that
keeps coming up, and I wonder if you could tell me about it?"

"I'll do my best."

"Who's Elissa?"

Her face crumpled. "A Traken name. It's someone who doesn't
exist any more."

"Traken?" This, he hadn't expected. "The Doctor mentioned
her to Tegan as being Dido, founder of Carthage: a very defunct
culture which turns up again in Earthhome, complete with nonsensical
explanation. He may or may not have called her his wife, which I
know makes no sense. It also seems the Doctor visited Carthage at
least once, long after her era, and blocked it from his mind for
fear of prophecy. Then, at the banquet, he cried for her before he
fell - and you looked as though he'd raised one of your own old
spectres. Nyssa, please, what is really going on here?"

She looked gravely up at him, as though everything he said
confirmed a sorrow she already knew. "Why," she said, "Elissa was a
very common name on Traken, you know, after one of our Four Sages.
There was a children's rhyme that we used to sing, when we played
wall-ball," and she broke into a bouncing, girlish chant:

" _'Lissa the Phoenix loves the sky/ Marek's a dodger, and so am
I!/ Tesman heals the quick and the dead/ Bright the tears Go-
Lightly shed./ Air, fire, water, earth - your ball!'_ I don't mean
_that_ Elissa, of course!" She hesitated. "Si, can you lie to
Tegan?"

"If," he said, startled, "I had as good a reason as you must
have, to ask that. Why?"

"Because I daren't tell you any more unless you promise she'll
never, ever learn a hint of it from you. Be silent, put her off,
tell her barefaced lies - whatever will hide it from her most
usefully! Will you promise me that, Simon?"

"Yes."

"I made a poem, once - did you know that? I was very young
and callow, and it wasn't at all profound; but it meant very much to
me." She looked at him cautiously, as if longing for his approval;
and when he didn't discourage her, she recited in the high, pure,
artificial tones of a well-schooled choirgirl,

_"And I would call you Elissa,_
_and I would call you the sweet fresh snow,_
_and I would call you my darling,_
_and the morning's light, although_
_the night shone all around..."_

And he understood, though now everything else made even less
sense than before. He saw her expectant look, and offered her the
nod of a fellow-sufferer.

_"Lissa the Phoenix,"_ he said, _"loves the sky?"_

"Yes!"

"Nyssa," he said, understating the case by some miles, "I
don't see how Tegan could possibly be the Doctor's Elissa. And if
you've never told her..." She shook her head in confirmation.
"Then why would they use the name?" A horrible thought came to him,
then, and he looked at the little Traken as though she'd become as
wonderfully monstrous as Queen Mab. "You're not tangling them in a
prophecy, surely?"

"Si, what must you think of me?" She laughed, a puff of pure,
dissipating outrage. "No, and especially not this one. This isn't
something that must happen, ever. It isn't even something that
_has_ happened, not any more. I think it's a false prophecy from
his first life - and oh, Si, it cut me to the heart to hear it!"

"I'm not very good at paradoxes," Si told her, "especially
when they come to life on me. Just what did or didn't happen? And
if it didn't happen, how can it be true now anyway? Non-
technically, if there's such an explanation..."

"There was a time," she reminisced, "before the Cyberiad,
before I knew them both quite so well, when I really thought I could
make that happen. That Tegan should share my cup, and be Elissa to
me; that she'd win the Doctor, with my _expert_ Traken help in
courting and such things; and that we'd all ramble together through
time and space, and one day she'd help me find my husband, too.
It... hurts... to learn that dream came so nearly true, its shadow
lies on the Doctor's own past!

"But you see, if he'd come to know in the past that he'd one
day marry Tegan, and everything - Susan, whatever happened at
Carthage, who knows what else? - would follow on from that - he'd
have to hide it from himself completely. A doomed love with no
choice in it is a soulless thing, an abomination. He had to give
himself and all of us the freedom to choose, when the moment came.
So it came like a thief in the night - and, this time round, one or
all of us said No. I think it was me, and that she became your
Tegan instead of the Elissa he would have married; but we'll never
know that, now.

"None of it has happened any more, and it _mustn't_ have
happened, or we'll be in dangerous contradiction. We have to find
other likely explanations - co-incidences, psychic resonances, or
time-meddling at Carthage: ours, if all else fails. Maybe he went
back to prehistoric Traken and met Elissa the Phoenix Sage, for all
I know, and if she really existed at all! Maybe she _has_ to have
lived - now. But I can see a footprint in Time, when it's made by
an elephant with boots on; and I know perfectly well where all these
'co-incidences' with Tegan and Elissa and the Hadashti are coming
from!"

He felt the question was wrong as soon as it left his mouth,
but he was obscenely interested in the answer. "Do you _know_ it's
an alternate past, Nyssa? The future's a chancy thing..."

"Not if she never knows I heart-named her Elissa, it isn't!
That's why we have to keep it from her, absolutely. Gisco's told me
his people's legend of Elishat Dido the Wanderer, and how she threw
herself into the fires to keep faith with her dead husband. If
Tegan becomes Dido, Simon, I think they both die evil deaths
fighting the powers behind old Carthage, Qart Hadasht of the Tophet;
in that case they must have left their child, Susan, safe with his
first self. No wonder the old man took steps to undoom how _that_
happened!

"Somehow, later, I made the right choice - perhaps by staying
on Terminus - and undid their doom. It's still a weak attractor,
though, and we have to keep it decaying."

"You're right," he said sombrely, "that's final." And so it
was.

"That's a commitment," declared Nyssa, "and from us, it calls
for more than secrecy. We must determine in our hearts that it
_didn't_ happen that way; base all our actions on reasonable
alternatives, so that those other explanations grow more likely, for
when the probabilities collapse on us. Informed faith is a very
powerful tool, when you're as near the crux of a prophecy as we
are."

"Tegan's _at_ the crux, though."

"In her case, I really think ignorance will be bliss!" She
laughed a silvery, unhappy laugh, and it strayed a little further
out than it should have done.

"Nyssa," he said, seizing his chance, "she doesn't hate you,
you know."

"Why not?"

"You duck!" he said affably. "She was hurt and dizzy and
frightened, and she thought she'd lost someone precious to her, and
she'd had her mind invaded _again_! She's been angry with you, of
course; but that doesn't mean she doesn't love you any more. Don't
miss out on a friend like her, Nyssa. She's a special person, as
you know better than I. Have a heart-to-heart with her sometime
soon, because she's about ready for it. Just - tell her things!"

"What do you mean?"

"You worry too much about how she'll take things, my fair.
You're more open with me and Cats than you are with her, _but_ - "
He forestalled her interruption with a heavy stress, "that's been
causing half the problems between you, before this. Let her know
where she stands, and she'll be happier. The only two things you
truly can't tell her about are the false prophecy that she married
the Doctor, and that your pet name for her was Elissa. Other than
that - she's big enough to like the truth!"

She peered up at him sceptically. "Do you really think I
should?"

"You _can_ be a bit bewildering, old thing. Clear her mind
with your customary tact, delicacy, and charm, as soon as your
instincts tell you she's listening."

Nyssa turned her head down, so that he couldn't properly see
her expression, and took the bumps of his left wrist between finger
and thumb of one silken hand. "You're a good man, Simon Westport,"
she said, a little tremulously. "You're exactly what Tegan needs
and deserves!" Her palm slid lightly over the back of his hand, and
she twisted her head further to the side. "I - Si, I think we'd
better take care, in future. You're the most Traken human I've ever
met, but this isn't Traken, and - well, Tegan and Amina are both
insecure, and jealous. I don't think we should spend time alone
together, or doing things that leave them out - not until years have
passed, and we can all four laugh about it! Don't you think that's
right?"

She'd never spoken to him with such direct, earnest intensity;
and she still couldn't look at him. He felt an expected acid around
his heart, as if it were being digested; and her dear touch stung
him like needles, because she was preparing to withdraw it for good.
He knew he had none of her Traken empathy, whatever she might want
to think; but he suffered a moment's illusion that he had, and that
he felt her feeling the same way.

"It's a pity you're right," he said lightly, pulsing her hand
and releasing it, so that she didn't have to be the one to pull
back. Mutual relief perfumed the air as they broke contact. The
devil of it was, she _was_ right - even though neither of them would
ever, ever have stepped over the mark. But this was about other
people, not their private rights and codes. There was enough pain
in Tegan's world already. "You're the best friend I've ever known
for two weeks..."

"For so long?"

They said their goodbyes; and he left in a zephyrous daze,
because Nyssa had given him an impulsive, heartfelt hug for
understanding, and pecked his cheek by way of fond farewell.

Tegan sat alone in her dressing-gown, having a quiet night in with
the book she'd bought Si. Dusty had invited them to an Industrial
Art evening at the Hansel factory module. Alphard and Cats and Si
were all keen; but Tegan didn't feel ready for another night out, so
soon, and this one sounded like watching paint dry. She'd begged
off, and borrowed that big book _Dop_, which Si had finished days
ago. She'd never understood how people did that, except with the
real throwaway stuff.

She didn't feel so mopy now, at least. Cats had stalked her
earlier, caught her by herself, and talked to her 'like a Dutch
auntie' about her Nyssa problems. Her technician friend didn't
often speak to people for their own good; but she'd been the one to
chivvy Tegan out of the lingering, unsteady depression that had
crippled her after the Sickness of the Daleks fiasco, and Tegan was
used to taking notice of her. It was true, she supposed. Nyssa had
been an arrogant, thoughtless little snip, but Tegan had been
finding the worst possible ways to look at everything she'd said and
done. _She loves a woman - she must have called me back to come on
to me! She gets on with Si - they must want to cut me out!_

"Come _off_ it, girl!"

Cats had been quite kind and even sympathetic, as she usually
was when she was really serious; but Tegan could tell that her pal's
patience was taxed to its limit. She _had_ gone a bit far, she knew
- and she knew what Cats couldn't, why Nyssa had every reason to act
distracted: the violent abuse the little Traken took from her Amina.
Didn't she know better than to stand for that?

And as for this great book, _Dop_! She'd seen _The Grapes of
Wrath_, and Giddings's story reminded her of that, in space. It was
full of fierce references to Si's _Vineyards of the Night_, which
even came into the title:

[
_"The wine ain't for us, Clobber! The Gal's a winyards for the big
guys with their big wads so they don't have to work, and their big
ice so they don't have to think, and their big wrecking crews so you
don't better tread on their toes doin' neither on your own count!
Wine pressed from the starry skies, like the man says; but we're for
the pressin', and they're for the drinkin', and we'll never see no
trickle of it, savin' only this awful dop they pour down our throats
to keep us good and drunk and goosey..."_
]

If Andy Aylmer Giddings wasn't the world's biggest pinko
whinger - and why would a straight sort like Ottar think he was so
great, if he just wrote silly lies? - the Earthhome Federation was
an even nastier place than Tegan had thought. Debt-slavery and
genetic bondage; giant corporations that could break worlds for
breakfast; the nuttier-than-thou blasphemy of the Executive Creed,
and the coy atrocity called the Interstellar Convention on the Right
to Manage - and the sheer naked piracy and racketeering! It might
be a one-sided view, but it sounded pretty close to the side the
Mayor and people of Terminus had brushed against. In a Galaxy like
this, Nyssa at her worst practically ranked as a saint!

A soft, double knock on her door. Tegan knew that knock; had
been half-expecting it. She swallowed. "Come in!"

He wasn't dying to himself any more. The Mayor of Terminus
hadn't killed him. Nyssa was her dear friend, really truly!

The door slid open, and Nyssa slipped through, wearing one of
those earthy-coloured velvet outfits that made her look like a
scarily beautiful cuddly toy. She hovered uncertainly.

"How is he?"

"Better again. With the lazargen damped, it can't resist
being irradiated away; and his metabolism can handle a good deal
more radiation than a human's, so his systems are clearing up very
quickly. Time Lords are awfully robust. How are you?"

"I'll be all right."

"I'm sorry for what I did to you all with the lazargens."
Nyssa's eyes strayed longingly down towards her boots, as if she
hoped to find a crack opening up beneath them. "It was terribly
wrong of me - even if the Doctor had been immune, as I assumed.
Please, Tegan - when he gets better, say you'll forgive me!"

Tegan felt her resistance crumbling already, but she set her
face into its most forbidding expression. It couldn't just be _all
right_, like that! "You won't do anything like this again?"

"Never! I know, now, I've been trying to control more things
myself than one person ought to; and I've been hurting everyone
around me because of it." No Mayoral glibness, now: here was the
Nyssa Tegan had always known and loved, earnestly generous and
speaking coolly from the heart. "That's ending already."

She meant it. She couldn't be Tegan's Nyssa and _not_ mean
it! "I forgive you," said Tegan awkwardly, the bald words like
pebbles in her mouth. The last of her severity gave way in a rush,
and she knew she needed to offer more.

"Will you forgive _me_, Nyssa? I was out of order, that
night."

"You were telling me the truth," Nyssa insisted, "or, if you
mean the dance, I don't think you were really your own mistress in
it..."

"We'll never know that, will we? And - look, I'm not sorry
for _what_ I said, all right?" Tegan found her voice rising again.
This was going off beam. "I don't know what I mean to say. Put it
this way." She swallowed. "Nyssa, if you want to let me have that
dress back - not to wear, mind, because I couldn't - but - well, I'd
really like to keep it. Because it's lovely, and because you gave
it to me."

"Are we really friends again then, Tegan?" The Traken's voice
was tiny, and she looked as shaky as an aspen.

"Yes, Nyssa. We're friends. Best mates again." How hard
_bloody hard!_ could that have been? She put on her loudest,
brashest, most exaggeratedly Aussie tones. "So come and sit down
with me, Sheila, and tell me what's on the go!"

Nyssa flushed with such pleasure that, if Cats hadn't
explained the score, Tegan would have felt downright nervous about
her. The Mayor joined her on the bed, and said,

"Amina and I are seeing each other again, at least." She
sighed. "It isn't going to be easy, healing the wound between us;
but I have to. To tell the truth, we hadn't been together for some
tendays before that argument during the first power-out. We'd had
an absolutely silly spat - not about anything, really: we'd just got
into one of those ruts where everything your partner says or does
irritates you, and it blew up as usual - and I was letting it blow
itself out, instead of taking time and giving ground and being her
mate as I ought to have. There were always so many things around
here that I _had_ to be getting on with! Then I came to the Black
Sun for the emergency, and she was agitated and I was abrupt, and
afterwards we had the most terrible, poisonous quarrel." Tegan
marked Nyssa's reflexive, barely suppressed flinch, and her hatred
for the heavy-fisted Captain-General tightened another notch.
"After that, neither of us could bear the other's company for quite
a while. We mended our working relationship quickly, at a distance,
and I thought she hadn't meant everything she'd said - but I found
differently, when we went over and I spent the night with her again.
She's very serious about it, and she won't be my lover until we've
sorted it out."

"Should I ask?"

"She's holding out for a marriage of purposes - being full
partners in everything, not just mates who help and cheer each other
along. Anyway, I'm afraid that's a lot of what's been wrong with
me, since you've seen me here. I haven't shared love for a large
slice of a standard year, and I've been getting more than a little
unready!"

_She didn't really say that, did she? The Great Healer of the
Universe might not have her mind on her job, because she isn't
getting her oats, or - or whatever girls like her get?_ "Unready?"

"Trakens aren't designed to live singly, Tegan. We're
optimised for Union in some very physical ways. Our Seresian
systems amplify our empathetic drive, which is well and good; but we
grow distressed if we have to go too long without loving and being
loved, body and soul. It was always a cultural thing with us - we
called it the _unrede_, the folly of the lonesome - but with our
biological commitment, it became rather serious. We _have_ to have
someone to share love with, or we just get more and more erratic!
Don't you remember that first time we came to Terminus?"

_"Nyssa!"_ This was shocking, and frankly scary. "I thought
that was the lazar fever! You mean - ?"

"No, Tegan. I've had several fevers, and that was the only
one where I ever ran around tearing off my clothes and breathing
heavily at the likes of Turlough. Don't you remember what a right
little miss I was turning into, even beforehand? The lazargen
allergic response just tipped me over into complete delirium. If
I'd had Union to fall back on, I'd have succumbed far more slowly -
but even there, general love doesn't eliminate the need for the
intimate, particular, and personal!"

"So... if you hadn't left us...?"

Nyssa grinned wickedly. "Didn't _you_ find Turlough rather
sexy?"

"Oh, come on!"

"There was a taint about him," agreed Nyssa, "and his
character was fairly deplorable, but he certainly was very
attractive in his way. That was another reason to be gone. I don't
know what he was really about, but as I was, I didn't think he was
someone I should stay around!"

"He was the Black Guardian's stooge."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I actually liked him, and I thought
he meant well - ultimately."

"He got better."

"That would be the Doctor."

"Yes," Tegan endorsed. "That would be the Doctor."

"Good for both of them!"

"Right."

"The only other thing that helps at all is delta-wave sleep.
I was actually on the TARDIS when I first came to womanhood. I
realised that I was having my first attack of unreadiness after I
noticed that Adric was starting to look good; so I made up some less
embarrassing nonsense for the Doctor's benefit, and had him set up
the cabinet. That cleared my head for a long while - it just
doesn't address the underlying problem, and it's one of those
therapies that degrades rather drastically with overuse." She shook
her head vigorously. "If the Garm hadn't carried its own touch of
Union with it - or if Amina hadn't decided she wanted me, and
laughed at me when I told her I wasn't interested - I don't know
what would have become of me!"

Tegan frowned. "If you weren't interested, what was it? Just
this - unrede?" It was starting to sound disgustingly like being in
heat. _Of all people..!_

"Oh, no!" said Nyssa promptly. "I always thought she was
magnificent, and beautiful - and outrageous, and terrifying, but a
true friend, too. It's just that one day, when I told her again I
wasn't interested, she didn't laugh back, and I noticed I was
telling lies; so I told her what it was to be Traken, and we fetched
the best cups we could find, and pledged them; and we managed to
keep two whole days for ourselves, and loved until the rest of the
world seemed like a coloured cloud in a dream! We were an odd
couple - everyone thought so - but we were so happy, then!"

It was dreamland, all right. "She beats you up, Nyssa! That
isn't love!"

The Traken woman sniffed, and straightened her spine. "She
loved me with a passion, and I've given her back duty and
indifference. That's crueller injury than a few twelve-hour
bruises. She apologised, Tegan!" Tegan discovered that her heart
could, in fact, sink further. "She's so proud, and I've left her so
hurt and lonely! That's why she's holding me off now, you see. She
knows we can't go on harrowing each other like this. It's a
dreadful sin on Traken to let love waste away, and I've very nearly
done it!"

"It's not just you, Nyssa. Sometimes people just don't work
out!"

"I can't break our cup - or do nothing, which would be to make
her do it."

"Didn't you have divorce, on Traken?"

"Yes," said Nyssa stiffly. "Didn't you have murder-suicides,
on Earth?"

"Nyssa, don't talk like that!"

"I wasn't saying one came with the other, Tegan. I was
telling you how we felt about it." Her voice became flint and
steel. "One thing I have told her. If she ever harms you, or tries
anything like that revolting little hostage scheme she tried to sell
me earlier, then I _will_ break our cup, and I _will_ die - but I'll
see her in a damned digestion cist, before I go!" It was all Tegan
could do not to shy away from her friend's sudden, intense violence.
The Mayor breathed deeply, and let the fury die away from her words.
"She says herself that scheme was only an option, and one put to me
in the bitterness of her heart. It wasn't like her at all. I just
wanted it clear all round that I won't have this spilling over onto
third parties!"

"So what will you do?"

"It's my neglect that's brought her to this. I have to make
another commitment, now, and keep this one better. I'll ask her to
have me back, and marry me as a human. On Traken my husband would
have to be a man, and my cupmate a woman - I'd never have wished it
otherwise - but I have to start admitting that Traken's dead. I'm
not even truly Traken any more. A Traken out of Union isn't really
a Traken at all, and I've been gone too long. She must be my wife
and cupmate too, and lead me in the dark. I'll resign the Mayoralty
as soon as she consents, for it was what spoiled us; and then she'll
have all of me, not just the bits left over from work." Her voice
rang with determined, unhappy pride. "She'll never have to be
lonesome or afraid for my love, ever again..."

Tegan wanted to scream: _That never mends it, Nyssa! She'll
just bully you more and more, and make you feel smaller and smaller,
and guiltier and guiltier! Why won't you see that?_

She wanted to stop this terrible mistake in its tracks: she
wanted it so badly. She was the wrong person to say it, though, and
things between her and Nyssa were still too raw. _Best get Cats to
talk to her, pronto!_

"Oh, Nyssa!" Bereft of anything clearer to say, she put all
her warmth into that, and hugged her old friend hard around the
shoulders. Slowly, like a fist unclenching, Nyssa relaxed into her
comforting arm.

"You're the only person I've told, yet," she said, contented
exhaustion seeping into her voice. "Please, don't tell anyone else.
I want Amina to be the very next person to hear it."

All Tegan could do was to hug her again. Nyssa turned to meet
her eyes fondly, and smiled her elfin smile.

"We've come to strange places, haven't we, Tegan? I certainly
never dreamed I'd end up like this, back on the old days in the
TARDIS! Love is so strange. Everything seemed so much simpler,
then..."

"Didn't it just?" Tegan snorted derisively. "Run for your
life before the arch-villain shoots you, then sneak up on him with a
weighted handbag before he blows up the world! That's what I _call_
simple!"

Nyssa giggled helplessly, and rested her dark curls on Tegan's
shoulder. Only the threatening points of her brain-tapping tiara
separated it from the rare old times. "That wasn't all that was
'simple', Tegan. Remember how you had to save me from the bogus
ice-cream man on Salacia, after I'd just downed him with
_zaphirets_? I felt such an idiot!"

It had been about as funny at the time as a dinner date with
Jack the Ripper; but remembering Nyssa's naïve blundering, and the
Pervert's spectacular incompetence, Tegan found herself infected by
her friend's giggles, and then some. "Do you remember when I led
you astray at _Slightly Oliver_?"

"Further than you meant to, I'll warrant!"

"The cocktails were my fault. The hairdresser's wasn't!"

"Oh, dear Tegan!" Nyssa returned her embrace. "We've had
some times, haven't we?"

"Tell me about it!"

They didn't need any more words, though. They nestled
together quietly, in deep content, remembering.

"Do you know," said Nyssa at last, wistfully, "I used to think
it would be like that for always? I used to dream that everything
would work out between you and the Doctor, and that _you'd_ become
my cupmate, and we'd all travel through space and time forever..."

"Oh, gross!" said Tegan, twitching automatically away.

Nyssa's face went absolutely dead. She pulled to her feet,
shaking, and said, "I'm sorry. I should never have said that. I
have to go."

Tegan tried to talk, but her voice cheated her. Mouth.
Mouth. "Nyssa," she got out dazedly, not sure what she was saying,
"I didn't mean - " She didn't know what she didn't mean. She
couldn't say.

"Yes, you do." Nyssa's voice was preternaturally collected,
like someone's who's woken into an old nightmare and found it
reality. "It's quite all right, Tegan. I know such things disgust
you." She turned on her heel, and made purposefully for the door.
"It honestly doesn't matter at all!" And she walked out with tight,
hard, painful steps. Tegan, still paralysed, thought she could hear
the remains of their friendship splintering like broken glass under
the Mayor's retreating boots.

It _was_ gross! It was just what she'd been afraid of! But
it hadn't been real any more; it had been a crushy young girl's
treasured fantasy, confided in deepest, most Nyssa-ish trust. Tegan
didn't think Nyssa would be confiding anything in her again, any
time soon - if ever.

_'Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.'_

_Oh, no...!_

What was she going to tell Cats and Si?

Ottar's room in the Vanir barracks was a neat, comfortable,
uncluttered place, like a homelier version of the little London
studio Si called his _pied-dans-la-porte_. Tegan couldn't decide
whether it was_ calaglay_ or not. The only actual decorations were
a discreet, informal portrait photo of Nyssa in an oval frame, and a
larger, restful video seascape with ice and whales. She sat down on
Ottar's futon, and talked with Einar about the hospital, while their
host perked them up some of the Yardhaven Moranter coffee he swore
by. She was glad she still felt welcome somewhere!

She'd had to tell her friends why Nyssa was avoiding them all,
now, and she'd spared herself nothing. They were the clever ones,
they were the ones who seemed to understand the craziness that was
eating into her old companion. They might be able to fix something,
when the Mayor was ready to listen to them.

Cats had been utterly disgusted, and wouldn't even talk to
Tegan any more. Si had been kind to her, which was worse. The hurt
and disappointment in his honest black eyes had been almost too much
to bear. She'd taken her bedroll to her own bunk, that night, and
he hadn't spoken against it.

She sipped her coffee. It was as delicious as Ottar had
promised. "Thanks!"

"So," said Ottar, when he'd relished his first mouthful long
enough. "What's wrong, Bright-Wing?"

"Wrong?" She was too distracted even to tell him off for his
silly Name game.

"I'll tell you what it looks like to me," the Vanir offered
warmly. "Your favourite wizard throws a mad glamour at the banquet,
you get caught in it, and now all your friends are giving you the
old-time lazar treatment! Even 'Eronner on one of her hobby-horses
isn't usually as daffy as that. What did you do, scratch her face
bloody when she came to apologise?"

"I might as well have," said Tegan bitterly. "Why did you
really invite me here, Ottar?"

"Because I like your company, funny-face. - That's not a
hero-Name, by the way. You let me get away with Bright-Wing, so now
you're stuck with it. Anyhow, I thought you could use a break; and,
if you want to know, I don't think much of the deal they're giving
you back there."

"That's where I came in," said Einar placidly. He'd been
nearly as handsome as his shorter comrade, before he'd walked into
the razor-bomb that had killed Lambi and Ramparia. Half his face
was raw and weepy, the mostly destroyed cheek shielded by a gauze;
and his right arm was strapped in an immobilising sling, until his
lazargens repaired the last of the tricky nerve and joint damage.
"Ottar's the wise guy; he reckoned you'd better not go visiting
handsome hunks like him alone, until your man was seeing sense
again, so I drew watch-dragon duty. Just think of me as furniture!"

Despite herself, Tegan had to laugh. "No-one could do that,
Einar!"

"You're not used to my conversation. Give me time."

"I bloody well will, just for that!" She sobered again, as
she looked warily at Ottar.

"What Einar is too bashful to say out straight," Ottar
explained, "is that he's as closemouthed as a bucket of clams, as
well as being paid up to the club who know Herself is a live
gorgeous girl who gets stuff wrong, and not bloody Idunna born among
us!"

"Who?"

Einar blinked, as if she'd asked who was Cleopatra. "Idunna
of the Golden Apples - the old goddess of youth everlasting. Well,
_she_ wasn't old, but you get me. Sigfus started that - crap - up,
and it used to be a kind of joke among the other lads; but it isn't
any more, not with a lot of them. Hjort, now, he was right into it,
and he's run out on her anyway. Tells you something, that."

"They really think she's a goddess?"

"Who said thinking came into it?" Ottar made a rude gesture.
"If they ever listened to her instead of praying to her under their
blankets, thinking's what they might have to start doing; and that's
what scares 'em rotten! Never let her tell you this Republic notion
of hers is natural, 'cause it isn't. It's about the least natural
thing I ever heard of, not being worse for that. Men didn't _ought_
to be sheep!" He coughed. "Anyway. Point is, if Nyssa's being a
little hinny again, you can speak free about it. Neither of us will
take offence, and no-one else is going to hear. Of course, we can
talk about the top fifty interacts instead, if you'd rather."

_I do have friends here! I really do!_ Tegan hated to ruin
that by telling them what she'd done, but snubbing the Vanir's
overture wouldn't make it any better. Shrinking inside, she told
them baldly how Nyssa had confessed her childish crush, in friendly
love and nostalgia after telling the story of how she'd come to her
great romance with Amina; and how Tegan had jerked away from her as
if she were filthy, and let her tramp away in shame and grief and
loss, her sweet memories of the TARDIS trodden into the muck. There
was a short silence when she'd finished.

"Yeah," said Ottar, pursing his lips briefly as if to whistle.
"That's a bad one, all right. I reckon she'd take a while to get
over a knock like that. I would."

"You see what they mean, then. I'm sorry, Ottar, Einar. I do
this to people!"

"You sound like her." He shrugged. "Look, Tegan: if my old
hall-pal Whatshisname had told me he used to want to poove around
with me, then back before I came here, I'd probably have decked him.
Now I say: okay, if you're into it, but I never met a man I'd want
looking at _me_ that way! I don't see a Traken guy making the
difference, either. Okay, in your place I'd have grinned and looked
dopey; but if I was _really_ in your place, I don't know I'd have
done so well. If you're looking for someone to curse you out,
Bright-Wing, you've come up dry here!"

"I didn't think I could. I'm not even sure about me..."

"Try to be," Ottar suggested bluntly. "We all love her, but
she's sillier than a string of sausages, sometimes, and the people
she bowls over are worse. This is the girl who could probably have
had Kari, or Tuyet Nguyen, or Yella Dane - not counting men at all,
which you know just being with her that _she_ does - and look who
she takes up with." He shook his head gloomily. "I don't say the
Captain-General hasn't got her points, but what a lousy mismatch!"

"Ottar," said Tegan then, narrowing her eyes, "these rows they
have. How different is this one?"

"Bigger. Over the wrong thing, at least this last round."
The soldier's voice was harder than his words called for. "You're
the first woman she's ever acted really jealous of. Maybe
'Eronner's told both of you things she shouldn't."

"There were Vanir walking her back from Amina's that night,
weren't there? What about her _walking into doors_?" Einar winced.
"Half of you worship her, you say the rest of you love her too, and
you let that happen? Don't say you don't know about it!"

"We don't interfere between those two." There was clear
warning in that. "Of course we know about it. It's half of why the
Lions and the Vanir don't get on. This one was bad, but it's
happened before now."

"You don't interfere." Tegan's voice sickened with contempt.
She hadn't expected that, from him. "_Domestic_ is always all
right, isn't it?"

"Olvir or Kari would have tried something, and she could never
be sure about Bor," Einar told her, trying to calm things, "orders
or no orders. She doesn't want them here, Tegan!"

They both ignored him. "Look," said Ottar, the glint in his
pale-blue eyes reminding Tegan for the first time that he really was
a professional killer. "What I tell you now never leaves these
walls, see?" She nodded fiercely. "I like Nyssa. I like her as a
woman. I know the station's full of people who'd tell you the same
things; but most of 'em just want her for a trophy, or for power, or
to go on silly head-trips about her. She's an icon, isn't she? Me,
I like the way she talks and the way she thinks and the way she
smells, and if the chance ever came my way, I'd marry her like a
shot. I even reckon I know what I'd be getting into: Thor knows,
I've thought on it! Okay, it's a pipe dream, as much as hers was,
but that's the way it is.

"I tell you, Tegan, there's times I've heard her tear into
Amina, and _I've_ wanted to give her a good slapping!"

"Thank you, Ottar. That's very clear."

"Tegan. Amina's _intelligent_. She's not quick, not witty,
not great at talking. She gets loud and bothered and dogmatic when
they quarrel. Nyssa, though - she can flay off your skin with her
tongue, when she really gets going. Didn't you ever find that?"

"No," said Tegan, not quite truthfully.

"She's sort of psychic sometimes, isn't she? You know when
there's only one right thing in the world to say, and she finds it
without even having to look? Time and again?" Tegan nodded
jerkily. "Well, she can do that to hurt, as well; and she does it
to Amina. A couple of times I've seen the old battleaxe standing
there dumb as the dead, just soaking up stuff that must make her
feel lower and lonelier than a tapeworm, until 'Eronner runs down.
In public, mark you. I couldn't stand for that. I might not be
able to beat her - but I might have to slit my wrists, if it started
going that way between us; and you don't want to know where my
religion says you go if you cop out like that!"

"No..." Tegan felt sick. She was imagining one of Nyssa's
ghastly black moods turned outwards, every sentence dripping acid
and despair. She could almost hear the destroying, final precision
with which the Traken would pronounce them.

Einar coughed.

"It's just between them. The rest of us get the sharp edge of
her tongue now and then, but she never mauls anyone else that way."

"Amina will push," added Ottar. "She pushes, and she orders,
and she scolds, especially when she's right. Sometimes she sends
Nyssa into this kind of talking berserk, where she acts like Amina
is the only thing she hates worse than herself; and now and then, I
could swear our little darling's gone looking for trouble. They're
not bad people, Bright-Wing. They just didn't ever ought to have
been together. They're still in love, as far as I can tell, which
is worst of all."

"They are," Tegan confirmed dully. "She is, anyway.
Horribly. It's just going to get worse, Ottar!"

"Then we may have to avenge her some day," he told her
bleakly. "It's her call while she's alive, though."

"I'm glad she has people like you two. I wish she was still
talking to me. I wish lots of things, I guess!"

"How's the Doctor?" Einar changed the subject, so he thought.

"Julie says he's doing well."

"That's good. He'll be with us soon, then?"

"I hope so." Tegan turned again to Ottar. He'd told her
something so important to him, so private, just so she could know
where he was coming from! It came to her that she couldn't do less.
"You know with you and Nyssa?" she said wryly. "I used to feel the
same about the Doctor. I guess I never quite got over it! I'd
rather not have shown it off to all Terminus, though..."

"Wyrd love you, Bright-Wing! No-one with a soul bigger than a
pea thinks ill of you - especially after you saved him by standing
up to her, like she always says we should."

"What about Si, though? It's not fair on him!"

"Yes, it is. You chose him, didn't you? If he can't take a
woman like you having some old flames, he ought to stay away from
the hearth. Anyhow, I make him out a bigger man than that. Am I
wrong?"

"No," muttered Tegan. She felt something turn in her wound.
"But since I hurt _Nyssa_..."

Einar sucked in his breath through his teeth.

Ottar laughed! "Tegan Bright-Wing, he's just like you and me!
He's got the far look, which is what you'd expect in a poet; and
he's met one of the stars, like you did. If it doesn't change the
big thing for you, it won't for him, either."

She'd never quite thought of it like that. "Thanks. Really
thanks!"

"And you tell him from me, if he's going to be a fool about
it, I'll nip in under his nose and steal you for myself, just for
the spite of it!" They all laughed, then, and let a lot of their
nervousness out with it. "Seriously, things are moving far too fast
around here now, and pressing too hard: that's all. Anyone who
doesn't like you is battier than the slats of Hel's hall. Nyssa
isn't, and nor are your pals, when they've had time to think. I
know it hurts right now, but soldier it out." A reassuring smile
made his hard, handsome face so beautiful that it hurt too. "It'll
get better!"

She believed him, when he said it. She could have gone over
and kissed him, but she was in enough trouble already. Instead, she
thanked him again, and started asking him and Einar about their
people, the Vanir. It was high time she learned a bit about them!

"No, _amie_, don't, don't - "

Nyssa's pleading was cut off by a brutal crack, and the thump
of her head against the wall. "I'm sorry - !"

The awful, wet indifference of fists slamming rhythmically
into flesh: one, two, three. Nyssa, breathless and voiceless,
crashed noisily to the floor. The tiniest of mews escaped her.
Amina's loud voice crowed harsh, hating, vengeful obscenities over
the downed Traken; and then came two heavier impacts, and the
splintering of ribs beneath a military boot.

_"Tegh..!"_

Tegan, of a muck sweat and with her heart racing frantically,
looked urgently around her in the sudden silence and dark. Nyssa
was dying, she knew, dying sure that Tegan despised her -

Across the cabin, in the other bed, Si was snoring.

It was dark. It was quiet. It was the TARDIS.

Rooms in Terminus were soundproof, anyway.

It hadn't happened. Yet. Why wasn't Tegan comforted?

She wiped her sticky forehead with her sleeve, the back of her
hands on the bedroll, and slid carefully out onto the floor. She
wouldn't be able to get back to sleep for an hour after that, at
least. She didn't want to, either! Moving quietly so as not to
wake Si, she found her slippers and dressing-gown, stood uncertain
for a moment, and then stepped out into the colourless light of the
TARDIS corridors. She needed to walk this off.

She hiked randomly through the familiar parts of the maze,
lost to thought and rest alike. After a nameless while, she'd gone
as far as she dared. The Doctor's home had always been tricky and
full of pitfalls for an unwary wanderer; and with him still
unconscious and on life-support, there was a desolate, unfriendly
air about it. As she turned back, alert now but still on edge, her
thoughts circled back again. _I can't let her marry that rotten
hell-cat!_

_What can you do about it, Tegan Jovanka? She's in love, and
you've hurt her so badly she won't even see you..._

_There has to be something!_

There was nothing. Nothing at all.

She'd nearly come full circle when she heard the sound. It
came from the console room, and it sounded awfully like the TARDIS
door creaking open.

The night terrors crowded in on her again. She pinched her
arm. Nothing changed. _It's not the bogeyman -_

But Adric had been a companion. The TARDIS would have opened
for him. Now that he was part of the Desecrator, could it forge
whatever the 'old girl' recognised, for its servants? Could it walk
out of i-space into the world, itself, and come for the Doctor's
friends, or to steal his TARDIS? Tegan wanted to run.

Slowly, creeping up on tiptoe, she snuck up to the console
room doorway, and peered around. She met Nyssa, wandering dazedly
the other way.

The first thing Tegan saw about her old friend was that she
and Amina had been scrapping again. Her lacy white nightdress was
badly ripped, hanging indecently off one shoulder; and it was soaked
with what looked like a glass or more of spilled red wine. Her
cheek was bruised, nearly as badly as before, and she held something
ahead of her in her crimsoned right hand, like a talisman.

It was the soulless blankness in Nyssa's grey eyes that
flipped the scene over for Tegan, and brought her all the way awake
- that and the smell, clogging and salty and coppery. Red wine
didn't smell that way; and it wasn't so thick and sticky, and didn't
cling to bare skin.

"Tegan?" Nyssa's voice was high and frightened, and about ten
years more childish than the day they'd first met. "Could you fetch
the Doctor, please?" She gestured with the bloody dagger in her
right hand. "I think I've killed her."

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Thirteen, 'She Won't Be Walking'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Thirteenth Episode: She Won't Be Walking*

Si dreamed of Tegan, opening the bedroom door, letting in light and
unhappy air.

"Ah?" squeaked the TARDIS, some way behind her.

"Hush, darling." His lady's tone was kind and serious and
calming, in a professional way he didn't recognise. "I'm going to
get Si. I won't be a minute."

"Si?" A strange, half-familiar voice, this one, plaintive and
small and crackingly juvenile.

"Stay there, dear. Si will help us. You're going to be all
right, now." Tegan came in and closed the door.

He knew he was already awake, and that nothing was going to be
all right, not now and quite likely not ever again. His body
refused to credit it. Then she was bending over him, shaking his
shoulders. "Si. Wake up. I need you, now! Nyssa needs you.
She's in trouble."

He sat up straight, instantly alerted by her touch and what
she'd said, his usual waking bleariness shrugged off into the too
too real night. "I'm coming. Should I change?"

"No. Are you awake?"

"Yes." The question made sense, from someone who'd suffered
several Alice in Wonderland conversations with him before his
morning coffee. He stood up, grabbed his dressing-gown in the dark,
and threw it on. "What's happened?"

"Si, listen quickly! You have to know this. Amina used to
bash Nyssa about, something rotten: she left her black and blue,
that night before the banquet. Nyssa thought it was her fault for
not loving her enough, and she was going to propose marriage to her,
or something like that, to make up. She wouldn't let me tell you.
Only it went bad, and Amina tried to beat on her again, and Nyssa
found a knife somewhere and stabbed her! She says she thinks she's
killed her."

"Si?" The faerie voice sounded outside the door. "Tegan?"

"I need to get help," Tegan told him, rushing on. "Si, I
want you to stay with her, calm her down. I daren't leave her
alone. First, we have to take that bloody knife away from her!"

"Tegan? Tegan, where's the Doctor?"

Si and Tegan exchanged a swift, grave look, and strode
together to the door. Si stepped in ahead of Tegan, just too late
for her to react, and swung it open. Nyssa stood in the neutral,
pitiless light of the corridor, barefoot and indecent in the bloody
tatters of her nightdress: Mayor and medic, bright artist and sweet
companion, immortality's maker and entropy's adversary, as raped-
and-revenged starlet in a TV exploitationer. Clasped loosely in her
right hand, which she held fastidiously before and aside from her as
a thing unclean, was the dagger she'd teased him with at that risky
poker session, foul with Amina's gore. Amina's, who'd insisted she
carry that something _secret and lethal_, everywhere...

"Nyssa," he said at once, in an agony of assurance. "Come
back with us to the console room, and sit down. We'll take care of
everything. It isn't good for you to walk about like this."

"She won't be walking, will she? I sliced her heart like a
lemon. I couldn't really have done that, Si. Not to my _amie_."

"Nyssa," he coaxed her. "Please, give me the knife. You
don't need it any more."

She stared back at him with wide, empty eyes, and opened her
hand for him unquestioningly. He took the dagger in time to stop
its slipping to the floor, and handed it on to Tegan. He placed an
arm around Nyssa's thin, bare shoulders, and steered her back to the
console room. Tegan was already moving ahead.

"I'm getting the Vanir," she told him, quick-fire, "and I'll
see what I can do out there until the ambulance comes. I'll be back
soon, Nyssa. Stay with Si! Si, she shah - she is shocky. Put your
dressing-gown on her. Keep her warm, and talking!"

_Tegan out!_

He felt a twinge pass across the Traken girl's back, but
otherwise she stayed quite passive, and let him lead her to the
comfortable chairs by the TARDIS viewscreens. She began shifting
agitatedly when he tried to have her put on his dressing-gown, and
he didn't press it. He offered it as a wrap for her shoulders; she
accepted that humbly, and sat down by his side. She pressed the
aching, tacky hollow of her dagger-hand urgently into his own palm,
as if she wanted to give it away forever. He felt sick and sorry;
but to refuse her would be to exceed cruelty, and he couldn't do it.

Keep her talking? Whatever was he supposed to say to her?
She solved that problem by emitting a sudden, hysterical giggle.

"I've just remembered. I killed the Doctor too, didn't I?
Tegan said so."

"No, Nyssa, you didn't. You saved him again. He's sleeping
now, but he'll be back with us soon."

"He always comes back to life, doesn't he? Do you suppose
she'll come back, too?"

He found himself speechless. This was crueller than he could
have imagined.

"Oh, not the same way, Si," she said, her old light reason in
her voice. Her style was recovering, as fast as the substance was
falling away. "But that wasn't the real Amina, you see. That was
something that took her place while she was away." She explained it
as if to a dear, much-respected blockhead. "I couldn't have killed
my _amie_, don't you understand? I could never have bested her in a
fight - I'd never even have reached my knife. If I had, she'd have
taken it from me, and told me to go away and peel some apples with
it! She was like that. And she'd never have treated me so!
Something evil must have come to walk in her place. Now it's gone,
why shouldn't she come back?"

"Do you think so?" He didn't know whether or how to stall her
earnest, fact-banning illogic, but he couldn't collude in it. He
recalled with a sinking heart that this was a woman who believed you
could sometimes change the past by act of faith. Time and
prophecies seemed so tangled around the Doctor's Elissa, that had
almost made sense back then; but all Nyssa could undo here was
herself. He looked into her shining grey eyes, pretending he saw
sanity, and placed his other hand over her polluted one.

"She said that if I really belonged to her now, she was going
to make me prove it." Nyssa's voice was small and fretful again.
"She told me to lie still, and let her tie me up. Amina loved me!
She'd never say that! She hit me and called me bad things when I
said no, and she tried to drag me to the _kist_ I gave her, her
warrior's trophy-chest. She said she was going to put me in there
and have me. That's evil. My _amie_ was good, so I knew it wasn't
really her. I slipped her hold, and snatched up my dagger and
stabbed whatever she was, deadly. She tried to get away, and then
she fell over, and goodnight, and then I came looking for help. I
suppose I was a bit confused. I did the right thing, didn't I?"

"Hush, Nyssa."

"Where's Amina? Where's my _amie_? I want her back! Do you
think Tegan will take very long to find her?"

When Si had been thirteen, he'd strolled home one day to find
one of the local cats, a scruffy moggy with whom he'd been on
shooing terms, lying road-killed in the kerb with its skin ruptured
and its guts drying in the sun. He'd run home with the sight
swelling in him, blurted out the death, and burst into shameful
tears his parents had understood all wrongly, never having seen what
he had: something wonderful beyond design, bloodily and
irretrievably broken. He felt that again here, except that the
difference was the difference between an annoying cat and Nyssa
Heal-All, the woman he might have loved. It was too enormous to
take in, and as immediate as bad cups of tea in an Accident &
Emergency department.

_She's an empath!_ He tried to shut his feelings down
altogether, before he could make her even worse. "If there's
anything she can do, I think Tegan will do it." An inspiration
struck him. "Do you want Cats? Cats, or Alphard?"

"Yes, please."

"She'll be back soon. When she - Here she is! Hello, Tegan."

Tegan walked back into the TARDIS with the glassy-eyed calm of
a woman who's had one shock too many, Captain Mord close behind her.
"You haven't killed her, Nyssa. She's... recovering."

"Don't be absurd, Tegan! You're trying to humour me, and I'm
a perfectly rational medic! I _did_ strike her heart, it _won't_
function, and no-one could possibly just be 'recovering' from that."

"That one seems to have sealed off somehow," said Tegan, "and
the other pulse is stepping down. She's cold, her skin's crawling,
and her bones feel like they're melting. Did you know your cupmate
was a Time Lady?"

"She's not." The façade of Nyssa's madness dropped from her
along with Si's dressing-gown, as she leapt to her feet. "Don't you
think I know the beating of my own love's heart against my skin? I
told you it wasn't her!" Amidst all the horror, those last words
left her lips like a song.

"So!" said Mord. "Who's this one, Your Honour?"

"I could guess," Nyssa told him, with an executioner's edge
now, "but I'd rather go and find out. I want my _amie_ back, and
I'd like to speak personally to the creature who took her away!
Coming, Tegan; gentlemen?"

She marched straight to the TARDIS door and out, heading for
her own room, the others following confusedly in her determined
wake.

She lay drowning in Amina's big purple nightgown, amidst a heavy
drift of dust like fine dandruff: a petite Indian-looking beauty,
with olive skin and flowing waist-length hair, glossy and black as
wet ink. She lifted her head, and glared at the circle of bleak
faces around her.

"Well, don't just stand there, fools!" she snapped. "Help me
up! I've work to attend to!"

"The Rani, I presume," said Nyssa sardonically.

The Time Lady peered with distaste at the fine-boned, delicate
hands of her latest incarnation. "Apparently. Ah, matters come
back to me." A hard, impatient hunger transformed her pretty new
face, and Tegan realised with a shiver of revulsion why the Doctor
had compared her to the Master. Her presence filled the room as
effortlessly as either of theirs, dominating it with sheer freezing
egotism. "And you're that murderous little girl-lover, Nyssa Let's-
Heal-The-Universe. You kept me so busy avoiding your insipid
attentions, I missed your psychosis altogether." She scowled, and
drew her knees up to her chest, pulling the descending upper folds
of her nightgown irritably together. "Amazing. I must be the first
person in the Universe to be stabbed by a _Traken_!"

"How little you know us," returned Nyssa, almost gently.
"What have you done with my cupmate?"

"Well, now!" The Rani smiled an evil smile. Tegan couldn't
believe how quickly she was collecting herself. "That comes at the
end of the negotiations, not the beginning. Do you want to get on
with them?"

"You're in a poor place to bargain, renegade!" Mord grated.
The Vanir Captain looked about as sinister as the Rani right now,
and a good deal bloodthirstier. She dismissed him with a glance of
quick contempt, and addressed her answer to a politely
expressionless Nyssa:

"It's an interesting position, isn't it, Your Honour? You
have the high hand, but I have the ace of trumps. Kill me, and your
lover's lost to you forever. I have some other safeguards, in case
you want to take the high-minded political line; but knowing how you
pant after her, I don't think they need to come into the picture
yet." She sighed in a put-upon manner. "I think I'll settle for my
life, freedom, and a modest profit, in return for your toy soldier.
Once we've concluded terms for that, we can build on it for some
other deals I think you need to make."

"That's a very good strategy," Nyssa congratulated her
earnestly. "Do you know what I think Amina would say to that?"

The Rani yawned. "Something heroic and self-sacrificing and
primitive, I'm sure. Is this relevant?"

"She'd say, 'That's a very good strategy. Let me show you
where it falls down.' "

"Is that so?"

"Yes. Gal'Rani, take us to your TARDIS. That's the only
place you'd dare keep her."

"If I haven't spirited her away with it."

"Up a shaytan's vent, you did!" sneered Alphard. "No TARDIS
has left here since I installed our defences."

"The way none arrived either, little man?"

"We'll search it anyway," declared Nyssa, "and you'll go with
us to defuse any silly traps."

"Indeed. I suppose there's some reason for me to do this?"

"Oh, yes. If you won't co-operate, I'll deprive you of this
life, too."

"Then you lose Amina. Be serious, Your Honour."

"I'm deadly serious. I won't kill you. I'll just spill
another of your incarnations for you, right now; then we'll be back
where we are. Is it worth that to you?"

"I may be on my last incarnation - and if I weren't, I
probably wouldn't survive two regenerations in such quick
succession. I doubt that's ever been done. Try again, pumpkin."

"If you call me that again," said Nyssa, "or anything else
you've stolen, I'm going to hurt you as much as you hurt me. You
wouldn't like that, Rani!"

"You don't torture," observed the Rani. "If you start now
I've stepped on _your_ toes, you'll destroy your own credibility.
Your whole Union project will fall apart before its time."

"Balls!" snapped one of the Vanir. Mord nodded his
endorsement.

"Hurting a bully back isn't torture, Rani. It's self-defence.
Don't goad me again. Very well: if you haven't taken Amina's life,
I'll grant you your own - all of them. If you'll show me exactly
what you did, and how to counter it in future, I'll release you.
That's far more generous than you deserve, and the price is showing
me to your TARDIS straight away. If you stall me any further, I'll
start to doubt you can return her alive. Choose, Rani!"

The Time Lady's face composed itself to serenity, and Tegan
sensed she believed she'd just won a point. "I haven't taken your
woman's life. I can show you how I came here, and how I took her
place. Now, what guarantees - "

"You're stalling." Nyssa's expression shut down, and her
words came out with a flat tang of havoc.

"You have the word of an honourable woman," Si declared,
"whose forces on Terminus hate oathbreaking worse than murder." A
rumble of Vanir approval. "I should take what you can get!"

The Rani glanced, for the first time apprehensively, at Nyssa,
and nodded. "May I stand?"

"Yes," said the Mayor, in a voice so small it could hardly be
heard. "Your TARDIS?"

The Rani rose, and turned to face Amina's _kist_. Nyssa cried
out wretchedly, as if she'd been stabbed herself.

"_Open_ the damn thing, bitch!" Alphard barked. _Lovely
fellow when he stops joking_, Tegan thought jaundicedly. The object
of his disaffection stepped with deliberate indifference over to the
richly-carved chest, and ran her fingers lingeringly over part of
the ivory inlay. As if by magic, the heavy lid swung open, spilling
out rich artificial light.

"You stand to the left, for choice," the Rani shrugged, "and
climb into it. There's a gravity shift, switching subjective
orientation from down to straight ahead. One right angle. It's not
a trap. Did everyone understand that?"

"Bodyguard," said Mord, at a slight nod from Nyssa, "carry on.
Goats, go in ahead, and take possession. Horses, keep halberds on
enemy. What next, Your Honour?"

"Leave a rearguard at the door," she told him, "and then we're
all going in."

The Goats took a short forever to report nothing untoward -
Mord had them in line-of-sight most of the time, anyway. Nyssa, her
friends, and van Duyn went next, amidst their bodyguards. Seeing
their directions switch as they climbed one by one over the edge
threatened Tegan's digestion, but she'd been through a lot worse
before. It was seeing the incongruous Roman column over by the far
wall that sent her into full-fledged Panic Mode.

"Nyssa, get back!" she yelled. "That pillar thing's lethal!
_Remember Logopolis!_"

They'd found the Master's TARDIS, too.

To Cats's alarm, Nyssa simply glared at it, balling her hands on her
hips. She snorted as her bodyguard closed ranks in front of her.
Alphard called out,

"No problem, _niña!_ Its weapons won't work inside the Rani's
machine. It's practically inert." _Whew!_ He turned on the Time
Lady, with something approaching admiration.

"You crazy bastards. If we opened that up, we'd find yours
inside it again, wouldn't we?"

"Try," invited the Rani dismissively, "and find out."

"Answer him," Nyssa threw back over her shoulder. She didn't
take her eyes off her oldest enemy's ship. "You bargained for
freedom."

"I can't lie to you, technician," the Rani told him, with an
insulting dollop of syrup. "You've seen through us."

"So what's that about?" Cats pressed.

"It's why we couldn't find them," Alphard explained. "The
mass of this one is mostly in there, the mass of that one is mostly
in here - which is in there again, and so on. You get an infinite
convergent series, and screw-all mass for us to detect. You also
get a handy chance of total self-enveloping when you set it up,
which is instant promotion to ghosthood." He made a face at the
Rani. "Couldn't you two have saved us the bother?"

"With me overseeing the process? I think not!"

"Be done," said Nyssa. "You smuggled them in as cargo, then,
and substituted your TARDIS for Amina's _kist_ in the hold. You
were targeting her already, and you knew about my gift before she
did. Who told you?"

"No-one."

"Explain. This comes under 'what you did', and 'countering it
in future'."

"It was just intelligent improvisation. We came past customs
as a low-priority luxury multifac unit, and switched in your
warehouse to the first suitable crate bound for the Black Sun.
Amina was an unexpected bonus."

"You couldn't have bested my _amie_," said Nyssa dangerously.
"Not you. Not him."

_Nyss, you idiot! Cut the daydreaming, quick!_

"I wouldn't dignify it with the term 'victory'," taunted the
Rani. "We waited till she came in, alone - she was alone most of
the time, wasn't she? - and found the _kist_ waiting for her. She
looked so sentimental and mushy, for the butcher she was, it was
quite a touching little solo scene. She didn't even have time to
react when she opened it. The Master was all for killing her with
his compressor; but I preferred that she lived, so I reined the fool
in, and downed her with a hypno-field when she opened the lid.
Aren't you thankful I was there?"

"No. Oh, _amie_!" Nyssa mourned. "If I hadn't left you all
alone..."

" - they'd probably have got you both!" Tegan cut her off
sharply. Nyssa rounded savagely on her tormentor.

"If he taught you to steal her body, that isn't her being
alive. I want to see her now!"

"I'm sure you do." The Rani's amusement was almost boiling
over. "That wasn't our bargain. I admitted you to my TARDIS; I
haven't killed her or confiscated her body; I've told you how I got
in here. Let's close that account. I ran a simple anatomical scan,
surface-read her enough to imitate her in one of her macho black
moods, and tapped your Black Sun's elan to power a free, programmed
regeneration into her likeness. Even if I liked little girls, which
I don't, intimacy with you wouldn't have been a sane idea while your
mind was your own; so I manipulated you into the argument you were
spoiling for anyway, and established myself on the Black Sun, while
the Master went about his own business as we'd agreed. Only one of
us was going to control Ourania, and we were rivals from the moment
we parted company, unless we were both defeated and had to escape
together.

"Naturally, you were my own best asset, if I could make you
take me as a partner in the Ourania enterprise - a trust you very
sensibly didn't extend to your cupmate. If you had, I'm sure I
could have gotten you under my thumb quickly enough. When I found I
wasn't going to get that without impersonating your savage in your
bed, I had to move quickly. I decided to disappear you into my
TARDIS, take Terminus by surprise with the Company of Lions under
pretext of Alphard and the Vanir's betraying and abducting you, and
tap your full potential in private and at leisure. You cut that
option off... decisively.

"Now you know 'what I did, and how to counter it' - though not
some other useful background I might be willing to offer.

"What you _haven't_ bought from me yet is Amina's... return,
or any sort of access to her. You can search my TARDIS if you wish;
but you won't find it as easy as you think, without my co-
operation." The Rani waved her hand graciously. "Go ahead. When
you tire of it, you can let me go as you swore, or offer me
something interesting in return for your lover. The generalised
lazargen algorithm might do. I'll think about it. Run along,
then!"

_She's in no shape for dealing with the Devil!_ Cats almost
wished Nyss was a bit less honourable. A nasty premonition was
stalking her that her Traken heart-sister wasn't going to enjoy her
reunion.

Nyssa sighed. "It's true, isn't it? I have to let you live,
I'm not going to take up torture, and I have to let you go free.
But I never said anything about not mutilating you first."

_"Nyssa!"_ exploded Doc van Duyn, then cringed back in sudden
dread. Even several of the Vanir looked shocked. Tegan made a
muffled gagging sound, and Si watched with silent, intense concern.

_Trust her, y'bastards!_

"So." The Rani grimaced twistedly. "Now we hear the true
voice of your so-called Union. I'll restore the damage eventually,
you know - and the final price will rise to cover it, with usury.
By the way, I like your nice distinction between mutilation and
torture. It doesn't look as though your people are so enlightened!"

"Ah, Gal'Rani!" Nyssa's laugh was fearfully free and easy.
"How you judge everyone by yourself! Would you sever me from the
joyous half of my life? Two can play that game. Once we've
finished searching, you're free to leave by the next ship that will
take you. Your TARDIS shall stay here - behind a black border.
Even a Time Lord telempathic link won't work through that! Be
lonesome and weak forever, and lose the only thing that could ever
care for you, except you restore my own love to me!"

That scored. "It's a quasi-sentient entity," the Time Lady
bit back, dark eyes blazing now with hate. "Losing me will be a
weeping wound to it. You were so laughably eloquent on the subject
of hostages, when I menaced _your_ little bit of fluff on the side!
What do you do for your own recreation - torture dogs to spite their
owners?" The dainty-looking woman hawked and spat with considerable
force. "I begin to see why the Master was so pusillanimous about
you. Scratch you, and you could be his own daughter. - Oh, I was
forgetting. You _were_, in his last incarnation, weren't you?"

"Some creatures have to be separated for everyone's good,
Rani," Nyssa told her, with chilling tranquillity. "Actually, I
have a much better plan than that. Alphard's engineering skills
make you and the Master look like small-time mechanics, and I'm
rather good at bioenergetics myself. Now we have access to your
TARDIS, I think he and the Doctor and I can take it to i-Traken, as
soon as you're out of the loop, and give it an unconstrained taste
of being linked in to Union. I think that, afterwards - you being
what you are - it may just be ready to bind to a new owner, and
reject you for good. Has anything like that ever happened to a Time
Lord before, do you suppose?"

"You think you can seduce my TARDIS?" The Rani's laugh was
incredulous, and far too high-pitched.

"With you out of the way? I don't know, or I might do it
anyway." Nyssa glared a killing frost at her enemy. "I'm still a
child of Traken, though, which gives me better odds than anyone; I
have the cream of Gallifrey for my friends here; and my prize would
be a second chance with Amina. Yes, I really do think I might!"

The Rani considered. She looked from face to hostile face,
and came back three times to the Mayor of Terminus. And caved in.

"All right!" she snapped, a definite fear now infecting her
voice. "If I take you to her, you'll let me leave, at once, in my
own TARDIS? You'll take no further action against me?"

"If she's safe, and you leave us alone forever after: yes, I
swear. If you take us to her _now_."

"She's in the Deep Theatre," said the Rani unwillingly. "This
way!"

Cats wanted to cheer her brilliant little diamond of a sister.
A quick look at Si and Tegan showed them drawn up close together,
their faces bright with relief and joy. Cats nudged Alphard in the
ribs, and took a raincheck on the jubilations.

They all walked down miles and miles of corridors.

The first thing to strike Tegan about the Rani's Deep Theatre was
its owner's slight, nervous hesitation before she opened it. The
second thing, a moment later, was its double smell: the dead
harshness of disinfectant mixed with something else, salty-sweet and
vile.

It took a moment to register the centre of that sterile white
room. Amina was there, naked as a slab of meat, shackled at wrists
and waist and ankles to a large slick board tilted at two o'clock to
the vertical. Translucent feeding and waste tubes led off from her
body to tanks and machinery. Something fell, too quickly to be made
out, down to a trough below the big woman's feet. The Rani stood
silent, defiantly hopeless as a nasty child who's done something
unforgivable to the budgie.

"What," demanded Nyssa shrilly, "is _that_?" Tegan followed
her old friend's pointing finger, and scarcely muffled a cry of her
own.

Some of the ooze around Amina's slack mouth was moving,
extending, revealing itself as a khaki-coloured grub that began to
inch its way down the warrior's chin. As Tegan watched, a bogey in
the right nostril wriggled a little forwards. It was so far beyond
gross, her guts couldn't even credit it. _I made it through the
Daleks_, she warned them in advance, _I can make it through this!_
She concentrated on Si's healthy, human presence at her side.

"It's not what it looks like," the Rani said hastily.
"They're spagyric larvae - think of them like medicinal leeches.
They're simply extracting an elixir - "

"Amina!" cried Nyssa, walking with quietly tearing eyes up to
the damaged form on the board. "Oh, _amie_, it's Nyssa, your
cupmate, your cupcake, your pumpkin. I've come for you, I love you,
I'll marry you and only you, if you'll please have me, forever and
ever, love!" She stroked an abused, slatey cheek with her turning
hands. "I don't want to be Mayor any more. I don't want to be
anything but yours, yours until the last darkness rings down, yours
until the last light wakes us up again, if you'll only come back to
me. _Speak_ to me, my _amie_, my love!"

Tegan found herself going violently hot and cold. The Rani
rolled her eyes. Amina's empty eyes didn't flicker, and all that
came out of her gaping mouth was the head of another maggot. Nyssa
spun to face the renegade Gallifreyan.

"What have you done to her? Undo it!"

"Well, now," drawled the Rani, "let's talk about - "

"Will you trifle with me _yet_, you corruption?" said Nyssa
venomously. "I'll feed your false soul to Shub-Niggurath, and leave
your husk to live for a witness! You stand between me and my
cupmate. Do you think I can't do that - or won't?"

Tegan felt Si's sudden, wheezy inhalation as if it were her
own. She guessed this was a Very Bad Thing. She guessed that
feeding souls to the sort of things that ate them, would have to
be...

"Don't be absurd." The Rani's contempt was edgy and hollow.
"You know better than to damn yourself out of temper - "

"I think I'm rather effectively damned already. I don't think
I'll notice the difference." Nyssa raised her hands to her tiara,
and in a high voice not like her own, began to shriek, _"Iä, Iä..."_

Tegan didn't know what Shub-Niggurath was: but her heart and
hairs reassured her that, even now, Nyssa wasn't truly raising a
demon. The Rani's senses seemed to tell her something else. "Stop
that!" the Time Lady screamed. "Before you destroy all of us! I'll
tell you everything!"

"What have you done?"

"The larvae. They capture thoughts and sensations from her
mind as they become explicit, and isolate them into self-contained
autocatalytic sets in the elixir. That way I can assimilate them
individually, without having to wear her mask."

This rigmarole must have meant far more to Nyssa than to
Tegan, for the Traken went ashy pale, and her front of poker-playing
sanity dropped away from her as completely as her earlier hysteria.

"She was too strong for you," accused Nyssa bleakly. "You
couldn't cast her mask against her will, could you? She wouldn't
think of what you needed, unless you drugged her too heavily to
think clearly at all. My _amie_! So you dice her mind fine with
your abominations, and gobble up the pieces like cocktail pirozhki;
and will you know something? Will you know?"

"I can amend it," the Rani urged. "I know most of what she
was, and there's more I never reached. You can show me what's
missing, and we can patch it in."

Nyssa visibly bit back some obscene retort. "She cheated you,
Hel-daughter. You imitated her coarsely, came across in just the
ways that made me least ready to go along with you. Had I only
trusted her as she deserved, I'd have known you for the foul
counterfeit you were when you asked to use Tegan as a hostage!

"I can't amend this. You can't amend this. You've chewed her
mind down to the bone, until she doesn't know her name or my love.
What's 'amendment' for that?"

"With my help," stated the Rani, "and only with my help, you
can reconstruct everything you loved most about her. The soul's a
mystery, of course, but that I've scarcely touched. As for the
persona, it'll be operationally the one you knew, within closer
tolerance than major trauma would leave you. You hate superstition,
so you must admit as a scientist that it _will_ be your Amina, safe
as I promised!"

"You really don't understand the difference, do you?" Nyssa
stared at her enemy with genuine pity. "You think you can mock up a
copy of a mind you've murdered, and so long as it strokes you in the
right ways when you push its buttons, you'll have un-killed it
again. I'll not have you pouring my love's orphan spirit into a
false mask with your taint on it, you soulless thing! I'll heal her
as I can - or, more likely, mourn her..."

The Mayor's face shut again, finally. "Captain Mord," she
said formally, "bear me witness. Captain-General Amina knows not
her name, nor her speech nor deeds, nor any of those who loved her:
the Rani has eaten them all, save only her own soul's troth and
courage and resistance. With care and luck and a neutral mask, she
may come in time to walk, and feed herself, and win to skills and
character, even as a child grows into these things. By luck, and
only by luck, her soul may shape her new persona so that, in some
few very dear things, she may grow again somewhat as her former
self. But she who shared my cup when the night oppressed me, and
who broke the Fascia at Point 402-21: _that_ Amina shall never walk
among us again! Has the Rani kept faith with us, my Captain? Is
that 'life? Is it?"

"This is no life, Your Honour," snarled Mord, with dreadful
satisfaction. "It's death and sacrilege."

Nyssa nodded. "Your halberd, Captain? May I borrow it?"

Tegan did a quick, shocked double-take. As Mord handed his
weapon gravely over to his Mayor, the Rani's eyes darted among all
the other halberds that were trained on her, returning with no news
of escape to Nyssa. "By the laws of Terminus," the Rani cried
shrilly, "I'm entitled to a fair trial, and a legal sentence! I
appeal to the Republic!"

Nyssa lifted the head of the energy-weapon until it pointed
directly at the Rani's sharp nose.

"That's true," she said, as if in a waking dream. "The law's
quite specific. We must peaceably confine you until you can be
granted a fair trial; and unless we declare a relevant emergency,
the death sentence requires your consent." She tapped the Rani's
chin with the halberd. "It would be quite disgraceful for the Mayor
to subvert the Republic with a false emergency, for the sake of her
own heart's feud..."

The Rani relaxed visibly, but nothing else changed. Nyssa
still looked puzzled, uncertain what to do, and no-one else dared
move. Apparently without thought, the Traken's free hand floated to
the intensity control.

"You killed my cupmate," said Nyssa softly.

_NYSSA, DON'T!_ It was the Voice of Adric, so loud and
vehement that Tegan could hear it as from the next room, even though
it wasn't meant for her.

Nyssa's jaw set. She slammed the power to maximum, and fired.
The Rani's head exploded into flash-lit vapour, and a hot moist wind
blew past Tegan's cheek. It had a taint like steam and dirty
tallow. The Mayor of Terminus shook the burnt-out halberd at the
headless corpse as it thudded to the floor.

"Plasma furnace, please, Adils, Kjartan. Get a bag. Wear
gloves." She turned a sick, aged face back to her friends. "Dear
comrades, I've disgraced my office. I ask that you hold fresh
elections as soon as the Desecrator is destroyed, or Ourania awoken.
Alphard, you must act for me in the meantime, for I can't serve.
Mord, you are acting Captain-General. Tell Masha that her
Battlemother died with honour, and how I failed her and avenged her.
Tegan, tell the Doctor I'm sorry for everything. Julie, do anything
that's left to be done for Amina. If you bring her so far that my
presence could make a difference, or if her gymnanthrope dies, you
may fetch me." Her terse commands had the frightening finality of a
will. She stepped around, one last time, to the mindless
'gymnanthrope' of Amina, and closed the staring, gluey eyes with
tender kisses.

"Goodbye, _amie_. I - I hope I'll see you again, at the end
of the night. Please, never be ashamed of me?"

She turned away, once more and forever. "Traken," she said,
like an indictment, her tone darkening further. "Father; Kassia;
Adric; the old dead of Terminus; the Garm; the Doctor; and thee,
Amina, even thee! My love kills or ruins anyone it touches, tried
and proven; but here's an end of it. I'll never love again. By my
father's _manes_ I swear, I'll ne- _ouch!_"

The Vanir were caught on the hop. They hadn't expected Cats
to step forward and administer a vicious kick to the shin. Nyssa
flapped back her incensed warriors, gripped Cats's wrists, and
stared back into the technician's hard eyes.

"What was that for?"

"'Cause if you swear that oath, Nyss," Cats told her coolly,
"I know you'll keep it, and that's not happening. Do you really
reckon your old Dad would be proud to hear that from you?"

"He couldn't know - "

"You can't know. Okay, you'll never love again, you don't
give a shit for anyone. _You don't swear._" Cats's voice was black
iron. "You don't want to know what I'll do if you swear, Sis."

"All right." Nyssa let go of her, and shrugged angrily. "I
shan't. I promise. It won't make the slightest difference, you
know."

"Okay." Cats stepped back. Tegan wished she had half her old
roommate's sense, or grit. The ex-Mayor looked back to her Vanir.

"Please," she said, "take me to my old quarters in Serenity,
or to anything like them that's empty. I don't want to see anyone,
and I'm not fit for them anyway. No friends, no questions, no
messages: _nothing_! Unless Julie comes with news of Amina, or the
new authorities come to arrest me for murder, or I tell you
otherwise, I won't be here. You'll all have to do without me, and
you won't find it the loss you think. Goodbye for now. If I decide
not to stay - we'll speak again, first. Please, now...!"

Nine Vanir fell into formation about her, Mord at their head.
Amidst the golden phalanx as it tramped off, small, strangling
sounds escaped at last, as Nyssa Heal-All wept bitterly for her lost
love. Cats took a step forward, then stopped and swore.

It wasn't until then that Tegan noticed Si's arm around her
own shoulders, or realised that she was crying as hard as Nyssa.

The Desecrator's silent laughter echoed all about her.

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Fourteen, 'The Friends of Nyssa Heal-All'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Fourteenth Episode: The Friends of Nyssa Heal-All*

Davey the Friendly Dalek appeared to Tegan on her third day at work
in Terminus Hall. He was purple, and he had a soulful Disney Kid
voice. He said:

"Gee, Miz Teg-gan, it looks like you're an-swe-ring a let-ter
of con-do-len-ces! Want me to take care of it for you?"

Tegan struck at the _Struggle on_ button with her cursing
thimble, but the little sprite dodged away, and spun its turret at
her reproachfully. "That is-n't very pro-duc-tive!" it complained.
She stabbed at it again, catching it, and it shuffled off sadly into
the distance, moaning, "Awww..." She swivelled her chair, and gave
Cherry a filthy look.

"Tasteless, isn't it?" her boss agreed. The Deputy Mayor's
heavy, ruddy face was dragged down further, this as the other
mornings, by a deep coffee-and-brandy hangover. If he was really
affected by Nyssa's bereavement, this was the only sign of it.
Tegan doubted the old con-man honestly cared at all, except that
Mord and Alphard's new authority must be putting him into the shade
a bit. "There's Prosaica for you. Take up the offer, though. We
don't have time to polish these up."

"I'm only writing one letter to cover them all!" Tegan
protested. "There must be tens of thousands of them! I'm not
answering them one by one, or anything!"

"Quite so. Prosaica can personalise 'em a bit, by content.
That's the polite, professional approach in the Federation."

"Professional? Cherry, don't you read what comes out when it
decides to 'correct' your language?"

"You've got a bee in your bonnet," Gene Kirsch asserted.
"You're shacked up with a poet. These aren't supposed to be works
of art, or even to fool anyone. They're supposed to be what people
expect. Ambitious and I dealt with the important ones - the Mame,
the media hubs, the friendly politicians - as they came. Choose
Help|Last|Delegate, and get the crap out of the way."

Disgruntled, Tegan did as he told her. Davey the Friendly
Dalek reappeared to do a happy little dance in the background.
Respect for the occasion, it wasn't.

"I didn't know Nyssa was so famous..."

"She isn't." Cherry shrugged. "There's over a trillion
people in Earthhome alone, though, and she _did_ break the Company
flashily enough to become a Personality. She's also young, pretty,
winning, and female. No percent out of a trillion is still a silly
number."

"And I don't see why we had to make an announcement of it!"

"You and all the other rubes. 'Eronner's cronies can be
beggarly ignorant, outside their own fields." Cherry knuckled his
fleshy, broken-veined nose. "Ambi and I actually had to tell 'em
what I tell you - that if we tried to keep everything dark, our
enemies in the Fed would cry coup, and try to push through a
protectorate to 'restore order'. With Ter'Fastolf still as
incommunicado as Nyssa, that's the very last thing we need.
Centexcellence and Bethel are flying that kite anyway, but they
won't have a flea's chance in a furnace - my way. See?"

"Sort of," Tegan conceded. _Another worry we don't need!_
"What do _you_ reckon Fastolf's up to?"

"No good," said Cherry succinctly. "Ter'Uncle Bill
Shakespeare ought to have been first to send Herself sympathy. He's
dead, nicked, or busy doing someone the dirty - most likely, us."
He wiped his forehead with his wide cuff. "You know what a shaytan
is?"

"Met one," she batted back.

It was the shudder she couldn't quite repress that seemed to
convince him. "Be afraid," advised Cherry. "Be very afraid. I
used that up some time between lazar's and Hastur. After that you
just drink a lot. Why don't you check through the paper-mail? I
want to contemplate high policy!"

He struck an enormously idle pose at his own desk. Tegan
bridled instinctively, but got on with it. Nyssa wouldn't have
wanted an eye kept on this clown for nothing. Letters, whose form
seemed to have changed very little from her own day, except that
Terminus envelopes had no stamps, and were so decorated it was a
shame to tear them. Petition about improper literature in school
libraries - there. Original caricatures of Councillors, latest
donation by Serge Ajetunmobi - over here. The fifth letter was a
beaut, and Tegan had to read it twice.

"Cherry," she said, bunging it into the recyc unit, "somebody
knows you too well. That was the most blatant bribe offer I've ever
seen!"

His bloodshot eyes bulged. "What did you do that for, foolish
child? Did you for a moment confuse it with a bill?"

"Sorry. I should have kept it for evidence, shouldn't I?"

"You should have kept it for my money! Who sent it?"

"Cherry," she warned him. "I'm not in the mood for jokes."

"I'm not joking." And he wasn't!

Tegan regarded the fat man with fascinated disgust. "When the
cat's away, the mice will play? I don't think so!"

"I wouldn't call Nyssa a cat."

"I wouldn't help you fiddle her people, either! You ought to
be ashamed of yourself!"

He chuckled cynically. "Tegan, my lamb, you have some very
strange ideas about Nyssa. She _knows_ I take bribes. Didn't you
know that was the Traken national sport?"

"It was not! Her people weren't like that! How would you
know, anyway?"

"We've discussed it at length, when I was teaching her basic
politics. Gods and little fishes, someone had to!"

"She was trained to rule on Traken, Cherry. She was learning
politics while you were still swindling old ladies! What did she
need to learn from you?"

"Soft soap. Smoke and mirrors." Which Tegan had guessed at
already. "You know - all the basic swindling that makes for good
players and healthy democracy."

"Nyssa isn't a swindler!"

"Mmm. I think the Ourania sell shows promise, don't you?
Besides, she wants to con our good citizens into taking
responsibility for their own state. That's the biggest swindle in
the Galaxy, and she still needs my help there, because she's just a
little bit too much of an aristocrat to work it well."

"And so you're just sort of generally corrupt as a public
service? I suppose you're going to tell me _she_ takes bribes,
too?"

"Not really, no. What would you bribe her with?" The
politician shook his head. "Besides, I'm a reformed character. I'm
not _corrupt_. I take bribes on the Traken system, like everyone
else with any wit, which oils the wheels and makes everyone
happier."

It was all waste time, in most ways, until Nyssa came out of
deep mourning or the Doctor came out of his coma - not that either
of them would want much to do with Tegan, afterwards, but she'd have
to cross those bridges when she came to them. She still couldn't
believe she was sitting here having this conversation. "The Traken
system."

"Well, corruption would be breaking the spirit of the rules -
giving a bad tender the contract for a rake-off, say, or letting
someone wait for service until they paid you, or boosting someone's
job past its priority." Cherry rubbed his hands together
sanctimoniously. "I don't do that - not here. It's just that,
where I have discretion, and one choice looks as good for the
Republic as the other - then, if that discretion's worth something
to somebody, everyone's a winner."

"What codswallop!"

"What's wrong with it?"

"That's selling public services to the rich for your own
profit! I don't believe Nyssa lets you do that! I think you're
taking advantage!"

"It doesn't have to be to the rich, Tegan," Cherry pointed out
smoothly. "I can take a teacake - or nothing - and throw back a
meg, if the fit takes me. That's why we use bribes as tiebreakers,
in our quiet little way, instead of fees. Bribes are _voluntary_ -
and the basic service isn't so shabby, either. Also, they relieve
the rich of unwanted moolah, please more people than alphabetical
order, keep our eyes on human individuals in the bureaucratic
desert, and often make the bribee do overtime which is good for the
soul." He clucked his tongue. "Wouldn't work so well in a place
that wasn't aiming for Union, I'll grant you. People might almost
abuse the system." Now he was coming over all avuncular. "Tegan,
don't ever forget what we are, here. Nyssa's wrong about her
Republic - grotty little human beings like us need democracy, with
all its faults! - but she _is_ trying to make something like Traken
over again, and the taste she's given us so far is sweet. I like
its vices as much as its virtues, but I _am_ strong for the Union,
and what I'm telling you _is_ the straight. Trust me on this!"

"I don't believe you," said Tegan stiffly, and turned back to
her letters.

"Fine," returned Cherry, equably. "Just don't throw away any
more of my bribes." He propped a large document pointedly in front
of him, between his work-screen and his coffee-cup, and invoked an
easy listening channel. Tegan had liked to work in the quiet since
about age seventeen, so she could hear herself think, or not think
at all. Music was for parties! She began to wonder whether Nyssa's
dissolute deputy could possibly be this obnoxious unless he was
trying. She forced her mind back to her work.

_"...couldn't buy you Haute-Lorraine, nor make a megacred/
Woman will you weep when I am dead?"_

_Si was right! This_ is _hell, nor are we out of it...!_

"..._Woman Will You Weep?_ by Ritter Richesse. And now, here
is the news..."

"This," Alphard understated, "is a turn-up!"

"Run it by me again," drawled Cats, who'd understood it all
too well the first time. "Suddenly, I don't feel too cocky any
more..."

"Seventy-two percent correlation between 'noise' in the
Ourania sensors, and our clandestine network events. I... may have
been wrong, Cats. I'm an engineer: I haven't the feel for life that
Nyssa has." He got up as if his seat had grown hot, and began
pacing. "This looks like our Young Goddess has evolved intelligence
before her time - and as though she's taking a hand. How? Why?
_What is our daughter like?_"

"She's 'our daughter' to you too, eh?"

"Mine and Nyssa's, yes. I don't see where the others come
into it." He laughed strangely. "I just don't have our little
darling's prejudice in favour of family! It seems Ourania doesn't
trust us, and might not be friendly. She must know I can destroy
her if it comes to it, and maybe that's her problem. In which case,
what's her counter, and how's she working it?"

"Either she can get stuff through your black border," said
Cats, "or someone's given her a sleeper process on your network,
that takes programming from the noise results. Yeah?"

"One can't be done. The other would have to be damn good, not
to be detected."

"But if the noise program was sharper than your AIs..."

"Then she's a super-genius already - or she's relaying it
from someone who is."

"Like the Desecrator? Couldn't that just be running the whole
show?"

"I've told you before, Cats. _No-one_ can program strong A-
life, least of all on this scale! If this is coming from Ourania,
she's acting on her own account!"

"Okay, keep your wig on." Cats scowled. "Doesn't mean she
isn't working _with_ the Desecrator, though, does it? I get the
idea that the Master and the Cyberiad could both be awfully
persuasive - and Adric and the Cyberiad would have made a mean pair
of hackers. This fits a bit too well. You thinking of shutting her
down?"

"That's the last thing I want to do," said Alphard heavily,
"and think of this: the Ourania Project is Nyssa's last reason for
living. Even from her room, that damned tiara will tell her the
moment I shut it down. She might just die on the spot, being what
she is."

"Yeah, right." A crawling coldness came to nestle between
Cats's shoulders. "She might, mightn't she? Okay, that's out.
What do we do, then? Talk to the sprog?"

"Find some way to: yes! Quickly, too." Alphard marched back
to his chair and hurled himself into it. "The other factions will
challenge me soon, you know, especially if we share this with them.
The fainthearts will be getting cold feet about her whole plan, now
she's not leading it; and the soldier-boys will be getting ready to
throw their weight about in the crisis. Once we're bogged down in
committee, we're kebab-meat for the Desecrator. We have to beat
them to it!"

"Let's get to it!" Cats struck a Kylie pose, and scampered to
join him.

BING BONG!

"Urgent communication from: Acting Captain-General Mord, to:
Acting Mayor Alphard. Please respond."

"Fuck it!"

Alphard sighed. "Quick, wasn't he? All right, put the man on!"

*Shenanigans at Terminus*
'Lazar program not compromised' as medic-Mayor stricken
- _What's Well_, Troynovant

*Ambitious Gets Ambitious*
Nubile newsie Ambitious Salesmith, who retired mysteriously to Terminus
to act as court correspondent to its medical Munchkin Mayor, was wheeled
out yesterday to deny that Nyssa Traken's General and longtime companion
Amina had died in a sick lesbian bondage surgery ritual. Our aptly-
named Ambi, herself romantically linked with Nyssa in TtS #20834,
fiercely defended...
- _Touch the Stars_, CalDreaming

*Dragon & Maiden Stocks Slump: Terminal Turbulence?*
Creative Director Collapses, Ter'Fastolf Unavailable
- _Money Matters_, Cockaigne

*GOD IS NOT MOCKED!*
Evil 47/666 Is Smitten Down, WHEN WILL THEY REPENT?
- _Blow Your Horn_, Bethel

*La Beale Nyssa Is Indisposed*
- _The Troubadour_, Lys

*Hypocrites Corner 56: Nissa of Terminus*
Rabid red radfem Mayor Nissa, whose censured your fave sites out of her
Lazar Hell Terminus, and demands the Fed stops _you_ accessing bona
erotic resources, resigned in disgrace after her private lebbo love
games ended with the messy death of her exotic Black Amazon partner.
Whoops!
- _Plaything_, Salacia

*Mame Mary-Clare's Featured Prayers*
For the hard hearts of _Camellia_ and _New Brass_, that they may turn
from their vile trade in human misery... for _Fr Jerzy Vekaria_, that
the Zarbi may repent their cruel sentence... for _Mayor Nyssa of
Terminus_, that out of her pain she may come to the comfort of Christ...
- _The Universe_, Constancy

*Wobsymps Move To Block Protectorate As Terminus Spins Out Of Control*
- _Effectiveness_, Centexcellence

*An End to Insolence!*
...blatant provocation of Federation assassins, striking at our dear
sibs of Greathearth through their true ally and bright-limner, Nyssa
Heal-All Star-Eyes Brownie True-Grief Drake-Friend nes Fasto a Traken!
When, ah! when shall the Wonder-Race wreak its magnificence once more
upon the cold coward apes whose thousand insults...
- _Glory-Intelligencer_, Dragondance, Terileptil Museion

*Unspeakable Joy!*
- _The Phantom of Truth_, tachyNet.sub.gro.ha.cha.ineffables

_"Here is the news: I love you,_
_New Eire's heading west,_
_And the Hansa Stock Exchange is high,_
_And they still say breast is best,_
_And the flaming fields of Eden_
_Have sunk beneath the sea -_
_Here is the news: I love you,_
_And I guess that's all from me."_

It was worse than country music, and Tegan was ashamed that
her eyes watered at it. _Jolly crew, aren't we?_ she rallied
herself, in Si's voice. That nearly sent her right over the edge.

Oh, they were back in the same bed, now, and they'd even given
up bundling: they'd just clung to each other, since Nyssa's fall,
and she supposed they could have made love at last, if she'd given
him the sign. He was so - husband-like - with her now, so
comforting, so supportive, making out she'd been all wonderful when
the tragedy had struck. That first night, she'd needed it; but when
you looked at it, what had she done? Si had chased Nyssa's madness
away. Cats had stopped her swearing off all love forever, and
hadn't cared if she got killed doing it. Tegan had woken Si up,
given the Rani a first aid check, and narrowly avoided being sick.

She opened a beautifully calligraphed letter of
congratulations for a Flower-Fair _Agora_ project, and put it in a
pile of its own.

It was Tegan who'd driven Nyssa, heartsick and blind with
sorrow, into the false Amina's arms; Tegan who'd rejected her
because she hadn't trusted the most faithful girl in the world not
to try to make her! Would it have cost that much to have hugged her
sentimental friend, and kissed her brown curls, and told her she'd
always been a funny little sheila? _Oh, gross_, indeed!

Nyssa didn't want her any more. Nyssa hadn't wanted her - not
that way! - for years.

It was Nyssa and Si who were supposed to be together! And
just because he was the kind of man Nyssa could love, he'd never
leave Tegan for her old companion, never let on to her that she was
second-best. Tegan knew it anyway, and drank gall. _Maybe I ought
to just wait for the Doctor to get better, and have him take me
back..._ but then she'd die a mortal death on Earth, alone. They'd
all know it, too, and be hurt worse still. Besides, oath or no
oath, she thought it might be a generation or two before Nyssa
opened her heart again. If she ever dared...

The next letter was addressed to her personally. "I've got
mail," she said to Cherry, questioningly. "Here? Already?"

He chuckled. "It's probably your first bribe. Read it out.
I can tell you whether you've been complimented or insulted."

Tegan snorted, and opened the dull brown envelope. Inside was
a thin white card, bearing a short message in heavy red block
letters. She read through it, failed to take it in, read it again,
and passed it over to Cherry. "It's not a compliment," she said
faintly.

HEL, BITCH DYKE SHORTEYES, YOU AND LOKI SPOILED OUR IDUNNA!
LORD ODIN SMOTE HIM DOWN! '1 DOWN 1 TO GO'.
WE KILL YOU FILTHY!

"Vanir work," Cherry pronounced. His fat face set, and his
piggy eyes lost their bland amiability. "We don't tolerate things
like this, Tegan. We don't tolerate them at all." His fingers
danced over his keyboard. "I think we need to speak to Captain
Mord, right now. _- What do you mean, insufficient interrupt
priority, you mangy decerebrated hound of hell?_"

"The Dead Zone?"
"It was a routine patrol, Honoured. Njal lost contact with
Ivar and Flosi, missed his own next report. His whole squad is
gone, and we're searching. You know how bad comms can get in the
Dead Zone. What's your counsel?"

"Seal the Zone," ordered Alphard. "Take a free hand against
anything that comes from it. If our people come back, quarantine
them until further notice in our Time Lord containment brig. Deploy
heavy artillery and defensive screens at the Zone's ports."

"I sealed it directly," said Mord. "I'd like to get my men
back!"

"Don't invade the Zone. How many are you missing, counting
Squitter-Hjort?"

"Seven, now."

"Captain-General, I'll tell you what I'm thinking. The
Desecrator's _devious_, and this looks like its first open gambit.
We're already down Nyssa, the Doctor, and Amina; and all it's lost
is a rival and a TARDIS base which it may not have been able to use
anyway. I don't fancy taking its bait."

"Are you going to cede it the Zone, and Njal's patrol?"

"As far as I'm concerned, it's _got_ Njal's patrol - any of
them it didn't kill. The Zone isn't worth having, and even if all
seven defected they couldn't break out. It's working some trick
there, or you'd have caught Hjort before now. It couldn't have
taken your patrol without an edge, either. I think we're supposed
to go in. It maybe loses Hjort, we lose men and position, and it
makes its real move while we're engaged. On form, that means a
strike at Nyssa, me, you, the C20 mob, the Doctor again, or all of
us - something to leave us well whacked. Tactics are your pidgin,
but don't walk into the Zone!"

"Then what?"

"Hold the perimeter, and watch for a move somewhere else."
Alphard exhaled heavily. "Commandeer Thunderfac's production for
police drones, hunter-killers, and any other specialists you need.
Talk the specs over with Goldspink, and tell him this: these drones
mustn't be turnable! I want them to slag themselves at our own
hard-wired signal, or if their cores move so much as two sigmas out
from Boltzmann base temp. He'll tell you that's wasteful: tough
luck. As soon as you've got enough, flood the Zone with the
bastards, have them bring out any living or dead animal matter; take
structural scans; and kill anything they can't capture."

"Robots."

"I know, they're inefficient, un-warriorlike, all the rest of
it. Captain-General, I want Terminus _secure_, and I don't give a
beer-fart how we get it. Am I missing anything significant?"

Mord considered briefly. "Nothing I haven't taken care of.
Bodyguard and routine security - "

"Sort it out."

"Have you taken care of that TARDIS? Do we know it can't
access it?"

"Not any more, it can't - not in a month of blue moons!"

"Then I have my orders, Honoured." Mord's tone was crisp and
disapproving. "Implementing now. Mord out!"

Alphard looked at Cats. She shrugged. "I could do with
something to beat up, myself."

"Ditto," he returned irritably, "but only from overwhelming
strength, which I haven't got. Why do I have to do my generals'
thinking for them?"

"You reckon this end is running from the Dead Zone?"

"I _reckon_ we're meant to think so." He stomped up again.
"Which doesn't mean it isn't true! It just doesn't answer much.
I'm sure it has that other strike waiting in the wings, and even
that doesn't really mean anything. We have to secure our Ourania
flank before we carry the fight back to i-space, and without Nyssa
I - "

BING BONG!

"Urgent communication from: Battlemother Marya Pavlova of the
Company of Lions, to: Acting Mayor Alphard. Please respond."

The great engineer snarled silently, and for a fleeting moment
Cats felt a heavy chill in the air that was pure Omega. The seams
in her good mate's character showed, once in a while, enough for her
to know she got on with Alphard a hell of a lot better than she
would have with the original Omega or Joshua. She hoped a year
would come when she couldn't see the join any more.

"As you pointed out, Cats," he remarked, all her Alfie again,
"fuck it! Come on, let's hear what our mercenary matriarch wants.
Bring her on!"

Masha's broad features filled the screen. She had the drawn
look Nyssa had worn towards the end of her stims binge. "Alphard,"
she said, wasting no time, "I need to speak to the Mayor."

"You can't. What do you want?"

"We need her to confirm Mord's appointment as Captain-
General."

"I confirm. I was there when she said it. Is that _it_?"

"Nonetheless, we need to hear it from her. Also, we'll
welcome her presence at the Black Sun, so she can explain in full
meet exactly what happened to Grandmother. What you've given us
isn't enough."

"Is that so?"

"That's so." Masha was as unflappable as ever, but her strain
showed through in her voice. "The lads elected spokesmen today, and
Gisco and I have talked with them. Your old friend Ocho suggested
you release Grandmother into our custody, and let Dr Baah examine
her. I think that would be a very good idea."

"Nyssa didn't: she gave Julie vD other orders, hoping to
salvage her. Ocho is your people now - more than I thought, if he's
ringleading this crap. Let's see some of this famous military
discipline, shall we?"

"Alphard," said Masha, with a cold smile, "I'll bandy words
with Nyssa about that, not with you. She sees warriors, and you see
tools: leave it there. Ocho was speaking for _Nyssa's_ party, the
minority. Scratch spoke for the ones who are running out of faith,
and I believe he took that on to block the hotheads. The Lions are
in shock, and unhappy, and you've given us little to work with.
We've had to discourage a lot of loose talk, these last tendays,
about Nyssa's disloyalty to Amina, and plotting to set us aside.
Now it's come to this: Amina worse than dead, with half a foul
explanation at second hand! Gisco and I still believe in Nyssa -
never ask me why! - but we need her to take her own part. Three
days of mourning are fair to her: now she must tend to her comrades.
Make her understand, engineer!"

"She isn't taking messages," snapped Alphard, "not even from
_me_! I speak for her, do you hear me? Your Battlemother broke her
heart, before the Rani trampled the pieces into the goddamn carpet!
If you can talk Mord into letting you through, do so, and have
better luck than mine. If you can't, do your job, and keep your
people to their contract! The Desecrator's just seized the Dead
Zone; I'm expecting another strike from its agents any time now;
_we're at war!_ Liaise with _Captain-General_ Mord. Secure the
Black Sun, at any cost. Don't bother me with your morale problems
while I'm trying to do a hundred urgent jobs of my own at once!
Understood?"

"Understood. This is really important, Alphard. I don't know
how much longer we can hold the situation without more co-operation
from Terminus. We'll do what we can. Pavlova out!"

Alphard started as Cats slid her hands down onto his rigid
shoulders, and began methodically to massage them. _"Gatas
mías..."_

_"Miaow, miyyy-yaow._ Shut your gob, and take it like a
woman." She carried on for a couple of minutes, purring and mewing
whenever he took a breath to speak, until he felt more like flesh
and blood again. She slid her fingers lightly over his face, and
said:

"She's right, Alfie - same as you were right earlier. We need
Nyss, and she might need us, too. I'm going to blag my way in."

"Our military are losing their tiny meaty minds. My _niña_
isn't quite in hers." He hesitated, peeled her fingers away, and
turned to face her. "Don't chance yourself, Cats!"

She gave him a wicked smile. "Trust me!"

"I do." Recovering, he stepped around and gave her a
resounding thwack on the back. "That's what's got me worried!"

_"Phwipp-phwoargh!"_

Cats sauntered up to the guards at Nyssa's door, resplendent
in her best shorts, a warm black shirt, and freshly spruced-up
boots. Ottar led the detail. The fun had gone out of his pleasant
face. He shook his head.

"Sorry, Cats. No news."

"Yeah, I was afraid of that." She slapped her empty hip
pocket. "This has gone on long enough. She'll see me."

"Wish she would," said Ottar, "but we can't even carry a
message. Nice thought, though."

"She promised she would. You wouldn't make 'Eronner break her
word, would you?"

"Her what?" The Vanir's voice was suddenly grave.

"There's this oath," Cats lied. "Before all this happened,
she swore I could always come to her, whatever. It's a Traken
sisterhood thing."

Ottar motioned his men quiet. "Cats," he warned, "I know you
mean well by her. But if I do open that door, and she doesn't know
anything about this, you and I are going to fight." His expression
became utterly bleak. "I wouldn't betray her trust, see? Make me
do that, and woman or not, you'd better be ready to stop me breaking
all your bones. Is that a deal, or shall we just forget it?"

"Yeah, fine," said Cats, a lot more carelessly than she felt.

Ottar turned to the door. A Vanir with a long dark braid
objected, "Hey, Ottar! You can't make deals like that. We need to
raise Mord."

The other man shrugged. "He's busy, Adils, and this sounds to
me like something 'Eronner might have done. He can always bust me
if I'm wrong." And he opened the door, and stood blocking it.
"Your friend Cats," he said.

Nyssa's thin, drugged-sounding voice rose angrily. "What's
this, Ottar? I told Mord I didn't want _anyone_!"

"Sis!" Cats hollered. _"My table's ever set for thee, and my
door lies open?"_

A moist cough. "Come in, then. Ottar, please keep the door
shut behind us!"

The Vanir stepped aside, stone-faced, and let Cats in. The
door closed.

Nyssa was huddled on the sofa, in a dressing-gown that didn't
look as though it had been changed since she'd locked herself away.
Her curly hair was a mass of uncombed tangles around her cybernetic
tiara, and she looked gaunt and unfed. She was working at a low
table, with a flat console, notepad, and a couple of printed books
in front of her; also the dried-up leftovers of something like
goulash; two empty teacups and one dreggy one; a dirty spoon stuck
to the table; and a small brown tube that Cats had seen her with
before. When the ex-Mayor looked up, her eyes were bright with
stims, and hostile.

"I really never thought you'd use that against me," Nyssa said
bitterly. "Well, the door opened!"

"Thanks. What're you doing?"

"Trying to find some clue to restoring Amina."

"Any luck?"

"None."

"That's hard."

"What do you _want_?"

"Budge up, Sis." Cats stepped over another dirty crock, and
squeezed in between Nyssa and the arm of the sofa. The Traken
trembled violently, turned her head to snap something vicious, and
then collapsed in heaving, dry sobs all over her heart-sister. Cats
stroked her back slowly, until a few minutes had passed and she
could talk again.

"You ought to leave me alone, Cats," were the first words she
managed to get out. "I only destroy anyone who loves me, you know."

"Well, take your time about it, eh?"

"Oh, Cats. Cats!"

"Buck up, little darling." Cats scratched her behind her ear.
"We're going to need your help for a bit. The shit's starting to
hit the fan, and there's some stuff no-one else can do for us. Hush
up and listen." And Cats carried on stroking her wounded friend,
and told her briefly what was going on. "We'll all be with you.
Always."

"I can't _do_ it, Cats!" Nyssa wailed. "I can't speak to
people, or do anything useful - anything except this, and this is no
good either! Perhaps I should, but I can't. I can't even think
about it! It's like trying to walk on a broken ankle!" She looked
fearfully, and a little rebelliously, up at her comforter.

Cats kissed her eyelids, which set her off crying again, and
held her until she'd quietened once more.

"Now, my girl, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to
clear up this grot." She gestured at the table and the general
nastiness of the room. "You're going to send for Si - "

_"Si?"_ squeaked Nyssa. "I can't - "

"Yes you can." Cats stood Nyssa up, and hugged her tightly
around the waist. Suppressing a most unsisterly pang, she carried
on, "You get yourself into that shower, and invite him round for
afternoon tea, and a nice long private chat. I'll stay with you
until then."

"But - "

"But nothing! He's good for you and you know it. Now, you
get ready for polite company, 'cause right now, you're a mess!" She
turned her friend about, and propelled her stumbling towards the
bathroom.

Nyssa hesitated a moment, began to turn back. Cats growled at
her, and she fled to her shower.

Cats sat down for a quick breather, more or less satisfied
with Phase One. She looked at her watch: she wouldn't really be
happy until her distraught little chum came out again.

Chivvying Nyssa had been a lot easier than she'd hoped; but
Cats couldn't breathe the life back into her friend, couldn't give
her the strength for this crisis. Si could. Cats thought her
poetic pal had a direct hotline to Life-with-a-capital-L sometimes,
in just the other way to Nyssa's. If anyone could really bring
Nyssa back to them, Si was the man. He and Nyss went together like
mustard and cress!

Alphard's apprentice sighed, got up again, and addressed
herself to the revolting tabletop. She doubted her friend had left
the sofa much, not even to sleep - if she'd slept at all. From the
spilled, dried-up cup on the floor, she'd probably passed out once
at least. Cats rolled up her sleeves and set to work cleaning up
Nyssa's parlour, looking now and then towards the bathroom door, and
quietly humming _Lucky Star_.

Si got Nyssa's invitation from the Vanir, and accepted at once. He
had a couple of hours to play with. He posted a message from the
library to Tegan at Terminus Hall, and took a brisk turn round the
_agora_, which was buzzing with the news of the Dead Zone's siege.
He returned with his booty to the TARDIS, to change into his best
for the occasion. He wished he were half as practical as Cats.

He had a few tricks up his sleeve, though.

"Where's Sigfus?"

"Old Forkbeard? He's been visioning himself sick, lately."

"With mead, I'll lay you a long 'un!"

"Mushrooms, more like."

"I'd lay _Leia_ for a long 'un!"

"Yeah, and _with_ a - "

"You'd lay a goat for two pins. With your needle." _Snerk!_
"So, where'd they put Sigfus?"

"Drew the easy one, didn't he? Supply crew, up the arsenal.
Miss all the fun, if he's not careful."

"Wouldn't that be a shame - Death-and-Glory's high priest, and
all?"

"I thought he was more 'Eronner's. I see where he comes from,
mind!"

"You reckon there's a difference? In the long run, I mean?"

"What long run?"

"Nothing makes a difference in the long run, Bjarki."

"Not yet..."

He came to her door as the tall dark Man in Black: black evening
suit and lounging shoes, black silk shirt, and carrying a matt black
paper bag in his left hand. Ottar gave him a solemn wink as he
announced the guest's arrival with a knock on the door. After a
slightly suspicious delay, Cats opened it, looking uncommonly
salubrious. She inspected him, raised her brows appropriately, and
stepped aside to let him in.

"See ya, Sis!" she called back, walking past Si and shutting
the door meaningfully behind him.

Nyssa stood in the middle of the floor, lovely and lonely as a
dark star. She wore a lace-trimmed Traken dress the colour of wet
slate, caught about the waist with a belt of silver leaves. Her
Serenity apartment was a bare place, nothing of a home; and both she
and the room felt somehow newly-washed. Only her hair was less than
perfect, a few stray locks straggling out around her tiara.

"Hello," she said tensely.

"Hello!" His own hard-won urbanity had gone suddenly
threadbare. Nyssa said,

"Can I get you some kind of tea, Simon?"

"Moon Mist, perhaps?" It was the nearest Terminus offered to
Earl Grey, which was what he felt the afternoon wanted.

"There's quite a nice cousin on the dispenser menu - if that
will do."

"I'd be delighted." Nyssa went and dialled for two cups. As
she returned with them, and offered him a seat by her on the sofa,
Si placed the paper bag on the table.

"Tegan sends her love," he told her. "She bought you these
teacakes from Mama Hubbard's."

Nyssa stiffened at once, though she looked longingly at the
bag. "Thank her, please," she said in a controlled, hungry voice.
"I know she's sorry for me, and I know how she feels about me, and -
and what I did. I shan't be hurting her in future."

"Hurting her? Goose, goose, absolute goose! You _shocked_
her, that's all; and she's been gnawing herself over how that
wounded you, since the very moment it happened. You just tried to
say the dearest thing one Traken friend could possibly say to
another: that's how she feels about it!"

Si's wild inventions tripped off his tongue with the
conviction of total honesty, because that was what they were.
Tegan's awful guilt and her bruised affection for Nyssa had been
unfeigned; and she couldn't be his Tegan and _not_ feel as he'd
said! As far as Si was concerned, he was just the gifted
ambassador.

Nyssa shrugged. "Ever since she came back, things have been
wrong. We used to be such good friends, and here all we've done is
to hurt each other! That's what you missed, before. I'm too scared
to face her again, Si. I'm too scared of everything, now."

He'd heard the Traken woman's bitter, self-condemning rants
before. He couldn't throw this one into the same basket as the
others. It had the unaffected ring of self-knowledge.

"I'm not really sulking, Si. I know that grief isn't an
excuse, if Terminus needs me. It doesn't need me! If anyone leans
on me for anything, out there, all they'll find in their hand is a
broken reed. They will lean, and I won't betray them so. As for
dealing with Tegan - perhaps, one day. Don't you understand, Si? I
have nothing to give, not any more." She shook her head vexedly,
and tapped her teacup. "Perhaps even this was a mistake..."

Si rose, and moved the table out of his way.

"You think so, too." She did at least sound disappointed. He
turned back to face her.

"No," he told her, holding her eyes. "I don't think it was.
I just have a message I think you should hear." He louted low on
one knee, and said in his most excellent, affectionate mimic of
Tegan's voice,

"Come back, you crazy, wondrous little sheila! We all love
you, whatever happens!"

"She said _that_?" Nyssa seemed amazed, overcome at this
really rather weak improvisation. A hint of candlelight flickered
far, far behind her grey eyes, and then vanished again. "It won't
work, Si. You should cherish Tegan forever, for what she is - but
Sheila's as long dead as Elissa!"

"Sheila?" Si had the now familiar feeling of swimming
unexpectedly out of his depth.

"She didn't explain it - oh, and then, your courtesy. Of
course. It was her heart-name for me, you see, once upon a time in
the TARDIS. It was one of those things that made me think she might
come to feel as I did, at last, even though our people were so
different! I only learned it by accident..."

"Go on."

Nyssa's voice was steady and regretful, but there were echoes
of old joy in her when she spoke of it:

"It was the time the Doctor ran into the Crystal Light on
Calliope, while we were waiting for him in the TARDIS. We didn't
know what was happening, and we decided to go after him. I was
practically dressed for the place, and I had just the scientific
skills that seemed relevant, and there were good reasons for one of
us to stay with the craft. I explained them all to her, and she
seemed to listen. I thought I'd actually got through to her with
logic, for once! Then she grabbed my shoulders as I turned to go,
and she said, 'You're not going anywhere without me, Sheila!' I was
furious - and so happy, I could have died and come back to life!"

She shook her head, and smiled sadly down at him. "We were
different people, in different times. I wouldn't undo what I chose,
if I could - no, nor what she chose, either! She found you, and I
found my _amie_, for a little while. Perhaps I'll know Amina again.
That would change everything. That, I can find a little strength
for. Except for that, my part's played out.

"Don't let Tegan feel this is her fault, Si. It was partly my
fault, and mostly the Rani's. Please, let's just have some tea and
those lovely cakes she bought me, before you go back to her, and...
talk about something silly, and nice!"

He was losing everything Cats had won from her. He said, "My
dear, I bought you a present, too." He brought a closed, empty
right hand up to her face with a great flourish, and opened it on a
white rose. He tickled her nose with it, very gravely.

_"Si!"_ she protested joyously, as they looked at each other
over the flower. For that instant, her face glowed with life again,
and he saw one last desperate chance for all of them. He held her
gaze, and bespoke the woman behind it directly, with the authority
of a word of truth,

_"Earth I will have, and the deep sky's ornament,_
_Lordship, and hardship, and peril by land and sea,_
_And still, about cockshut time, to pay for my banishment - "_

It was from Eddison's _Vision of Zimiamvia_, a hymn to
Aphrodite. It was the verse his tongue had broken on for Tegan,
that night at the Hotel Tomato.

Nyssa, who couldn't possibly have known it before now, joined
him very quietly in the last line:

_"Safe in the lowe of the firelight I will have thee."_

"This is wrong," she whispered, alive still, into the blood-
warm silence. "Perhaps it isn't all quite dead - but you're
Tegan's, and my dreams belong to Amina - "

"It wasn't a proposal, dear love," he told her, as masterfully
as he had to. "If everything were different, it would have been -
but it isn't; and this is something Tegan would tell you too, if she
could find the words, and you'd listen..."

He couldn't lie to her, here; and she must have felt that, and
believed he spoke truth because of it. _"Si?"_

"There's more to it than just romance, Nyssa. If your Sun
_does_ seem to have gone out, won't you at least come sit by the
hearth? Come and stay with us, and bring your dreams with you.
Alphard and Cats will drop by, Ottar and Ariel and the Doctor.
We'll always be there for you, and count ourselves blessed when you
want it." He dropped automatically into her own intimate, archaic
style. "Thou'rt never no burden, Tremas-daughter, but sweetest
benison to us both."

"I...I..."

"Don't leave us for the cold and the dark, Nyssa. We couldn't
bear it. Didn't you know your empathy was catching?"

She stared back, in a shrewd effort at cynicism. "And you think
you need me active, for the sake of Terminus?"

"If you want to - and can." He shrugged. "Cats is the
pragmatic one here. Tegan and I just want our Traken back."

"You should both have been born there," she returned, her eyes
steely-bright with tears. "This is the sort of thing that happened
there. I hope you didn't think I could fight that! What shall I do
then, my cavalier? Shall we go, now? Shall I play at being a
power, again?"

"Will you?"

"You must show me the way now, Si. Now, and I don't know how
much longer! I'm no leader, not any more..."

And she took his arm, and let him lead her to the door. As
they came out, Ottar and his Vanir cheered until the decks rang with
it.

Nyssa punched Ottar in the side with a small strengthless
fist, and laughed the laugh of a brave hurt child.

They set off in bright array for the Helm Room. Si was
thinking of Tegan. He'd have to speak to her before Nyssa could.

And she'd have to stop talking about sheilas!

She'd have to get used to living without him - sooner or later.
She'd done it before, and she'd do it again. It was worth it, if he
brought Nyssa back from the edge. _Please_, she prayed the God she
didn't believe in, _give me one more chance with her. I promise,
I'll never hurt her so again!_

His message was more promise than she'd dared to hope for.
She went quietly and busily through her work - just stuff to train
on, really - and tried not to think about it any more.

If she was wrong about them, and she could live her dream
after all -

Or if she was right, and the Doctor came to his senses, and
still felt -

Nonsense. Dangerous nonsense. Workworkwork!

She got through a lot of stuff before the call came through
from the Portmaster, and Cherry copied it through to her screen as
he accepted it. "Long time no crisis, Warren."

"Gene, beacons report incoming flotilla from system's edge at
four point seven three by zero point one four, 'prox line of Bashbag
Nebula. It's not answering our hails, and it's too shielded to show
origin or even resolve ships. What to do, please!"

"Alert Alphard and the military."

"I can't rhxmbll uhm ixywhocka rhubarb." The image broke up
streakily, and disintegrated as abruptly as the sound. Cherry
cursed a blue streak with practised efficiency, finishing up, " -
reroute and restore it!"

"Run in circles scream and shout: Fatal error!"

"Roger wilco," said Tegan sarcastically.

"Ignored false username," the AI sneered back. "Have you
tried: removing drown noise from civil communications net?
replacing 6 illegally deleted node boxes, updating, 7?"

_"What?"_ Tegan and Cherry chorused loudly.

"8."

_"Niña!"_

Alphard spun his seat around from the Ourania work on the
great screen, and leapt up to greet Nyssa in a transport of
merriment. Cats joined in, lower-key, looking more carefully at
what had just walked in the door. Her Traken friend stood very
close to Si. She looked less lonely than Cats had ever known her -
and weaker, and less sure. Alfie caught the vibes at the last
moment, toned down his welcome to a gentle slap on the wrist and an
unexpected peck on the cheek. Nyssa rolled one hand affectionately
and half-absently over his, and said,

"My friends tell me I'm needed here."

"Always were, girl!"

"Your _niña_ will always be here. Her Honour is dead and
digested. You're still Mayor until you call the elections. How can
I help, Your Honour?"

With uncommon restraint (for him) Alphard told her about the
mutinous feelings fermenting on the Black Sun. Nyssa shrank back
slightly towards Si.

"I'd better talk to Masha straight away," she said,
apprehensively. "I hadn't planned to deal with such things alone,
but I can't drag a possible hostage into a situation like that!
Perhaps we can sort this out quickly."

"Nothing like trying," Cats encouraged. Her fingers skipped
over the console. "Battlemother Marya Pavlova, if you please? This
is Nyssa for her..."

"Trying to transmit your message whose status is:
Untransmittable."

"What the hell?" Alphard bounced back to his station. "Have
the buggers cut themselves off? Comms report!"

"Civil networks are down due to: drown noise induced at
foreign node boxes."

"Reroute via military channels."

"Access denied."

"_Our_ military channels?" complained Cats. "Dirty work at
the crossroads, eh? Hell, let's - "

" - blaze it across the ether. I'm ahead of you..."

"No handshake received error. Re-broadcasting... No
handshake received error. Advisory! Broad-spectrum jamming beacon
active in: Dead Zone, Segment 34. Please deactivate before re-
trying."

"The Desecrator's coming," declared Nyssa. Si drew her closer
to his side, and squeezed her reassuringly.

Ottar frowned. "Another cacodemon? That's what's behind
Hjort's mob?"

"_Mob's_ right!" said Alphard, still busy at his panels. "It
took lots of hands to do this, and it was well-planned. If the - "

"Received: priority override broadcast routed through military
channels. Permission to override Helm option was denied. Play
anyway?"

"Bring them on!"

There was a flourish of trumpets, and the main screen filled
with a golden-armoured, halberd-hefting figure with an impressively
forked beard. It was a posed still of Sigfus, the guy who'd been so
eager to kill the Doctor for Nyssa's protection when they'd first
arrived.

"Rat _bastard_!" Ottar defined.

"Good people of Terminus!" boomed the apparition, in a
mournful, vaguely ill bass. "This is an emergency announcement from
your new Captain-General Sigfus, speaking for the Lord Odin All-
Father and His beloved Daughter Nyssa-Idunna, Whom He now once more
takes under His wardship. Mord is dismissed, and awaits judgement
for his failings. This station is now under martial law. Return to
your homes or workplaces, stay calm, and prepare to rejoice!
Loyalist forces are already striking to liberate the Lady from the
foes, seducers, and evil counsellors who have entrapped her and
worked her fall.

"These of her ancient foes are to be delivered to the All-
Father's justice, on pain of death and eternal damnation for any who
shield them! Loki, Father of Evil and Lord of Lies, now styling
himself the Doctor. Hel, his incestuous daughter, Queen of
Corruption, here called Tegan Jovanka. Surt, chief of the Sons of
Muspell and Bane of the World, called Alphard. 'The Mighty One will
show more mercy, even to these, if they yield to his doom.' As for
those other Sons of Muspell aboard this station - "

"Sons of what?" Cats mouthed at Si.

"Fire giants. Black people."

" - free pardon, for they knew him not.

"Let evildoers beware! The Lord Odin comes to sit in His new
High Seat, and to heal His wronged daughter, and to join Her in
creating a deathless new heaven and earth! People of Terminus! Be
brave and true, and ready to earn His reward. Await further orders,
unless His foes assail you. Captain-General Sigfus, High Priest and
Vicar of Odin, out!"

Cats made gagging noises, for lack of any better comment.
Si's arm tightened around Nyssa.

"Out of his head," growled Ottar, "and up his own hole!
Anyone notice he didn't dare claim he'd _captured_ Mord?"

"He must be playing from a strong hand, though," pointed out
another Vanir. "Just to do this much."

"Well done, that man!" snapped Alphard. "So: the Desecrator's
impersonating Odin, confiscating our ground forces, and interdicting
our communications. Short of counting on Mord or pressing the self-
destruct, does anyone have any useful ideas here?"

"This won't do at all," agreed Nyssa, pulling herself gently
away from Si. "Let's see if they've left some way for me to get
through to Sigfus! I ought to have some influence with him..."

The sound-system coughed electronically. "I don't know
whether this is a good time to mention this, but: Incoming flotilla
detected. Origin: unknown. Number: plural. Type: unknown,
presumed military because: over-military-calibre shielding prevented
type identification. Can't hail because: no communications access."

"Hey!" This was the first good news Cats had heard in all
this. "We've still got scientific control-and-data channels, then.
We can work something with those!"

"And this fleet?" prodded Alphard.

"Yeah." Cats scowled. "That!"

"It needn't be an enemy," said Nyssa, a bit shrilly. "If
we're lucky, it might be Uncle Fastolf. He told me he'd come when
he could..."

"He always come loaded for bear?"

"He's unpredictable - and he has enemies. Cats, you and
Alphard must find a way to hail them! If only it could be him!"

_Well, yeah. If only it could be a natural-born traitor who
knows half your secrets, coming straight from the Planet of the
Shaytans with Something hidden under a thick black cloak, just
conveniently the moment your government falls apart!_

"Right on, Sis," said Cats, and went to do as she'd said.

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Fifteen, 'Tegan's Coup'.

[Graham Woodland]

[The management apologises for the accidental lack of a subject line in
the previous episode.]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Fifteenth Episode: Tegan's Coup*

The corridor echoed with the angry chatter of automatic energy
weapons, as the opposing Vanir shieldwalls chiselled away at each
other's defences. Shattered _calaglay_ patterns on the walls, and a
pervading stink of hot metal, bore witness to several wild attempts
to decide things with a lucky halberd-bolt. Herjolf had put a stop
to that, for the while. If his little squad sat tight for another
ten minutes or so, the game was in their hands - with nothing
Bjarki, on the other side, could do about it.

Herjolf liked that. Glorious death, under the very eyes of
Odin Himself, would be pretty good, he supposed; but glorious
immortality suited his plans better. Herjolf was feeling very
lucky.

Lucky enough to take Doctor Loki!

His squad had been in the van of the movement to take the
Hospital Wing; and though the battle had shifted and cut them off
from the others, Bjarki was just as isolated, and he was the last
obstacle along this approach. With Sigfus pinning down Mord's hard
core back in the Dead Zone, that left nothing else between Herjolf
and his target except the peaceniks and gaffers of the Life Guard,
who might remember enough about war to trip him up with a broom-
handle. If only he could take out good old Bjarki, he was home
free.

The shieldwalls would continue to duke it out until one
glitched, or took an unlucky hit, or ran out of energy. At that
point it could be knocked out altogether, exposing the enemy. Vanir
armour would keep out the worst of the active shieldwall's fire, for
long enough that the shieldless foe could charge across - but it'd
take such damage in the process, the result of the next halberd-duel
would be practically foredoomed.

Bjarki had stepped down his shieldwall's fire level twice now,
which was to admit that he was running low on energy. Herjolf, on
the other hand, had more than half his power-pack left, with a fresh
one in reserve. He was no slouch with a halberd in close combat,
nor were his mates Gunnar or Rock-Hedin. He was going to win!

Herjolf had always been headed for glory, in his silent and
sage way: he never had been like the others. Once he'd worked out
that Idunna had come back, he'd half-expected that the All-Father
couldn't be far behind. She was trying to stop Ragnarök, the fated
end of everything and triumph of evil. That had been Odin's
personal quest since just about forever. So when Sigfus had started
spreading word of His coming...

...Ha! Any fool could fake out a holy enthusiast like Sigfus,
and playing Odin would be the sure-fire way to work it. Herjolf had
gone in a sceptic, hoping to rescue his little Goddess from a plot.
But when he'd seen the Wanderer, and met the dreadful Eye that had
outstared the Abyss, he couldn't think of doubting or disobeying Him
any longer. He was proud of his leeriness up to that point, though.
Cool and cagey, not wishful and trusting: that was the way to the
Wanderer's favour! He was sure he'd been noticed for it.

And if he took _Loki_...! Idunna needed a good, lusty, manly
husband, that was for sure; and it was her Father Who'd grant the
boon. Herjolf wasn't like the others, and the Eye that had burned
into his mind would know it. Sigfus and all the others might be
revolted at the Lady's girly indiscretions, and act like she'd
polluted herself; but a wise man took a broader view. He liked
girls, and it didn't bother him that she had an eye for them, too.
Actually, the thought quite excited him. He'd be just the fellow to
break her of the habit - gentle, understanding, yet passionate and
firm. Great thoughts swelled within his golden armour.

"Oy!" yelled Rock-Hedin, outraged, as Bjarki played them a
scurvy trick.

From behind the enemy shield-wall, a powerful, high-pressure
spray of frothy industrial cleaning fluid gouted up at the ceiling
between them. Now it sank, in droplets and bubbles, momentarily
fouling the energy-weapons' field of fire, the way complex
refractive changes did. Bjarki covered the ground between them
before they had time to do more than ready themselves; but he didn't
try to come around either side of the shieldwall, and his squad
weren't with him.

Instead, he blasted the centre of the shieldwall point-blank
with his halberd, using the dead man's strike with which Idunna had
killed the Rani. The shield's power hummed and died. Bjarki's
burned-out weapon clattered to the floor, as its owner legged it
back the way he'd come.

"Charge!" yelled Herjolf. It was their only chance to take
back the situation.

Their luck wasn't in: the air had already cleared enough for
Bjarki's shieldwall, slammed up to full strength as soon as he was
back behind it, to give their armour a heavy hammering before they
got around it. One of Bjarki's men took down Gunnar as he made the
turn; Herjolf narrowly avoided tripping over his comrade's corpse,
got a medium-close shot against the killer that gouged his armour
and withered his right arm lifeless to his side. From behind his
golden mask, the injured foe whooped pain and defiance. Herjolf
danced around for the kill, trying to get his quarry between him and
the third man's weapon.

Bjarki had got inside Rock-Hedin's halberd, and was losing a
grappling match.

The third guy - Olaf, Herjolf thought - leapt forward, and
threw his halberd before Herjolf could dodge. It was a desperate
move, and final. It crashed through his eroded armour as if it had
been paper, and Herjolf went down in sudden, unbearable black
flames. There was an infinite, gnawing hole where most of him
should have been. He waited for the Valkyries to come for him.

He was waiting forever and ever.

Half-way through Sigfus's ultimatum, Cherry flicked a switch. It
didn't send the sicko away, so Tegan asked him about it afterwards.

She wasn't really cool about this. Being mistaken for a
Doctor-shagging, Nyssa-molesting Queen of Corruption would have been
almost funny, if it hadn't been so obscene and hatefully earnest.
_We kill you filthy!_ She had to keep her mind on useful things.
Cherry grimaced in reply.

"I sealed the door. Your bodyguard missed a trick, if they're
with the rebels. They should have snatched us before that blowhard
got started."

"Can't they just blast through it?" Tegan was remembering the
halberd-bolt with which Nyssa had destroyed the Rani. She'd have
given enough to forget it!

"Not with just a couple of halberds - no, not easily." He
glared around his office walls. "I _told_ her every politician
needed a hidey-hole or a secret passage, or both. Now she'll be
sorry!" He wiped his nose irritably on his index finger. "Not as
sorry as we will. It looks like we get to sit this one out."

"I don't know." In Tegan's experience, no good ever came of
trying to sit things out in safety. "Off the record, do your
democrats collect weapons? You know, just in case..."

He scratched the side of his head meditatively. "There's a
few who might - and at least one of them claims it's a moral duty
to, though he's never been caught at it himself. You're not
thinking of pitting a few civilian dissidents against a tooled-up
army, are you?"

"I just want to get an idea what's going on." Tegan frowned.
"How about you, Cherry? What have you got right here?"

"A Viet daisygun," he said promptly. "Be prepared, is my
motto - not that it helps us much here."

"What does that do?"

"Makes someone dizzy for a few minutes. I don't hold with
violence."

"Two people at once?"

"No. I doubt it'd work through a Vanir fright-mask, either."
He let out an exasperated breath. "We're not going to play heroes,
Tegan. We wouldn't stand a chance."

"I don't want to be a hero," said Tegan. "I don't want to be
here when twenty of them come up with something to vaporise that
bloody door, either! And if it makes any difference to you, we have
to help the Doctor and Nyssa somehow, too!"

"How?" Cherry demanded, practically.

"Er, we'll think of something."

Cherry cursed vilely. "Excuse me," said he, and opened a slim
drawer. Tegan, suspecting treachery, stepped up quietly behind him.
There was a black panel inside, with big emergency-type buttons
marked FIRE and POWER and LS ISOLATE and more cryptic shouty things.
Cherry pressed SEAL. Nothing obvious happened.

"The case is altered," he stated. "Terminus Hall is now
sealed off from the _agora_: no-one will get in or out without a
barrage of what you don't want to lob around in a space station, or
else a long siege. If they haven't already got a team in, that just
leaves your bodyguard, stuck outside." He glared up at her. "War
is not my métier, you understand!"

The office bell rang.

"They want me alive," mused Tegan. "Look, Cherry, if there's
more than two of them, they can bust in here anyway, can't they?"

"Probably - or if they brought spare power-packs for their
halberds."

"Right. You time that thing to open in half a minute. Stand
well over the other side with your daisygun; I'll stand just inside
the door to the other side. When they come in, I'll fall all over
the one nearest me, as if I was surrendering, and you can shoot the
other one from behind, where their mask won't protect them. Then
you can get a clear shot at his mate, while they're still tied up
with me. If a bunch of them burst in, then we can just put our
hands up and cry uncle."

Cherry didn't budge. "That's the silliest suggestion I've
heard in a very long time."

"They're probably loyal, anyway," said Tegan rapidly, not
really believing it, "or we wouldn't be free now. But we have to
control the whole Hall - food, drink, stop them dragging us out with
hostage-taking." She flapped her hands frustratedly. "Look, in the
TARDIS we pulled off sillier things than this all the time, all
right? Just do it, Cherry. _Now!_"

He shrugged fatalistically, and tapped a quick command into
his console. Rising, he extracted a small fat weapon from his
rumpled jacket, and moved into place. "Fifteen seconds," he said,
as Tegan followed suit. "If I die, you're fired!"

The door opened. Tegan threw herself at a surprised and
maskless Stainless-Signy, one of the very few Vanir 'shieldmaids':
stocky and dour, with grey-dyed hair.

"Get off me!"

"They've heard His Holiness as well, I guess." Bjorn, his
hands held up peaceably, ambled into the room. "Nice little set-
up."

"Thank you," said Cherry, with dignity. He returned his
daisygun carefully to its place under his jacket.

"Or is it just true what they say about Tegan?"

"No," said Tegan indignantly, disentangling herself. "Sorry,
Signy."

"No matter. Have you shut up the Hall?"

"Yes..."

"Good!" beamed Bjorn. "So, Bright-Wing. What do we do now?"

Naturally, there was a way to access the hijacked comms channel.
Naturally, their only permission was to leave a message for Sigfus.
Alphard wanted to hold Nyssa in reserve for a live conversation, and
have one of the others message the rebel leader, as her flunkey.
Ottar thought a direct approach from 'Idunna' would work better.
They stopped discussing it when they noticed that Nyssa had stopped
listening. She was staring past them all, waiting passively for
them to finish. Si placed his hands on her tense shoulders, and
told her, "It's yours to choose."

She dipped her head. "I'll speak. Please record this,
Alphard... Nyssa Tremas-daughter to Sigfus Asmundirsson, greetings.
Please cease fire, and contact me for an immediate parley. I'm a
free agent, and quite in my right mind. If you kill Tegan or the
Doctor, I shall death-will myself. If you care for me as you say,
end _all_ violence _at once_! Nyssa out."

Alphard sent the recording. Nyssa said levelly, "Does anyone
here have any euphorics?"

"Leave it out, Sis!"

"I wasn't bluffing about that. I'm in that frame of mind. He
won't respect me if I start melting down in tears when we speak. I
need to cheat, I'm afraid."

"Anyone?" Alphard demanded. No-one answered.

Si caught Cats's eye. The Australian shrugged meaningly.

"You've got Tegan and the Doctor to think of. That _is_
cheating. He won't make a dent in you!"

"No," mused Nyssa. "I suppose he won't. Help me, _amie_!
Cats, Si! At least Sigfus isn't very perceptive..."

They waited long minutes. Cats and Alphard were already back
in their own world, working up ways to hail the mystery flotilla
using their science equipment. Nyssa let Si hold her, loosely and
warmingly, her tousled head drooping backwards onto his shoulder.
He doubted she was really in the company of the living, either.

Sigfus called her back. Si released her. She stood alone in
the centre of the room.

"All hail, Idunna Odin's-daughter!"

"Hello, Sigfus. Do we have peace?"

"Lady Heal-All! To love peace is your nature. Your Father
offers it freely. Will you come home to Him, and bring our brothers
with you?"

Nyssa gave a faint, incredulous snort. "Sigfus, do you
actually believe I'm a goddess? _I_ certainly haven't noticed any
signs of it!"

"This is known," the rebel leader intoned. "Though it is dark
to you, under Loki's glamour, your true folk see your light; and the
Lord Odin confirms it."

"Please listen to me very carefully. Do you remember our
problem with the cacodemon Hastur? You're taking the word of
another one. He is not my father, and he certainly isn't Odin! He
_killed_ my father, and stole his body, the worst of crimes. Now
he's joined in trinity with my other most mortal enemies. He's also
a hypnotist - a glamour-caster - and you're under his spell.
Please, Sigfus: remember me. Remember when you first swore loyalty
to me. I'm still the same Nyssa.

"Be true."

She was putting all she had into it, weaving a subtle glamour
of her own. It was hard to be in the same room as her, and not go
to her.

It was wasted on the fanatic. "I keep my oath, Heal-All. I
do the All-Father's bidding, for your greater good. Will _you_
remember your love for your Father, when He walked on Traken -
before He put off His mortal clothes and returned deathless to the
heavens? Reach through Loki's lies, sweet Idunna. Come back to
Him!"

Nyssa's sudden, keen agony slid into Si's gut like a blade.
She managed not to cave in to it - just. But she fumbled for an
answer.

Ottar covered for her.

"Sigfus, you windbag," he accused the self-styled High Priest
loudly, " 'greater good' doesn't come into it. You swore to her.
She's our Lady; _she_ decides what's good and what isn't. If she
tells you to go up against the true Odin Himself, His own rede says
_that's what you do_! Now cut the preaching, and get back to your
fealty!"

"Her will is not her own," Sigfus dismissed. "You must
restore her to her Father, Who will save her - and take the arch-
demon Surt, while you have him. In Odin's name!"

Nyssa had found her voice again. "This is a waste of time.
Sigfus, put me through to your 'Odin', since you don't have enough
free will to negotiate with!"

He donned a smug expression, remotely akin to a smile. "The
All-Father isn't to be summoned like a naughty thrall. Await His
word, bright Lady. He will come - on His own terms. I pray that
you come to Him first. Blessings befall you. Sigfus Asmundirsson,
out!" And he vanished.

There was a general outbreak of swearing. Si didn't join in.
Nyssa didn't react at all.

They got her to nap, in the end, while Cats and Alphard worked
on communications. Si and Ottar sat with her in Alphard's home
corner: waiting for the next move, and watching their Lady breathe.

Tegan was beginning to see how a shabby old grifter like Cherry had
got to be the second most popular person on Terminus. Beside her,
Stainless-Signy was shaking her grey head.

As the artificial night began to fall on the lights of
Terminus Hall, they'd assembled the civic staff (no more than
thirty), and the various petitioners, volunteers, councillors,
lobbyists, experts, and cranks who'd been working with them when
Sigfus had announced his coup (enough to fill a biggish meeting
room). Cherry was working them all, shoring up their confidence and
purpose. He was rumpled, informal, and practical. He spoke with
sober good humour, and he used straight language.

He came over as being more competent than you were, but still
someone you could look comfortably down on if you got the urge.
Someone who could agree with that opinion, and never be ashamed of
it, just chuckle and get on with stuff. Tegan had never seen a scam
quite like it.

He was talking them round to ignoring the mutiny as far as
possible; to carrying on with the ordinary work they'd been doing,
mostly, as an act of combined defiance and good sense. He was doing
well with it. He was smart and prudent; and whether his warmth and
pluck was genuine or not, he was infecting the others with it like a
dose of lazargens. Tegan knew what Signy was thinking.

"This isn't any way to win," she agreed, in a whisper.

"Try another way, then?" That was a definite offer.

"We've got a fixed shield, two halberds, a daisygun, a tasp, a
third dan in something I've never heard of, and my nail file. I
know where he's coming from!"

Both the Vanir shrugged. Tegan thought she'd better change
the subject.

"Do you think they'll reach the _agora_ soon?"

"Nah," said Bjorn. "Mord isn't a man you'd want to leave
behind you! They have to beat him or go down; and they'd need to
send platoons just to show their faces out there." Over in the
main group, there was a ragged cheer at something Cherry had said.

"They'll have small groups from the barracks controlling the
main corridors, with shieldwalls." predicted Signy. "Ottar must
have got your man and 'Eronner to the Helm Room, or we'd know all
about it. It looks like stalemate, until they've played it out in
the Dead Zone."

Stalemate - unless they did something. "They want the Doctor,
too, don't they? He's in the hospital."

"Oh, yah!" said Bjorn, with offensive enthusiasm. "That isn't
set up for a siege! They might get a snatch squad through,
there..."

"Thanks." What could she _do_?

The crowd began to disperse, back to their jobs, or into
smaller groups to talk. Cherry came lumbering over.

"Right," he said. "Now for the _agora_. We'll want to
evacuate it, tonight, and suck in all the provisions we can. I've
got some volunteers to go out and organise it. We'll raise the
shield again for the supplies, and take in anyone who's afraid
they're a target. Everyone else goes home. Then we hunker down
again, and leave the rest to Mord's loyalists."

"There's a lot of people in the _agora_, aren't there?" Tegan
fumbled towards an idea. "And lots of cover, and things to use as
shields? Bjorn was saying the rebels would need to send platoons to
be safe here."

"Well?"

"Well - couldn't we just take in the children, and the ones
who won't fight? There can't be _that_ many mutineers, especially
if they've had to fight a big battle before they can even come after
us. If you could get enough volunteers out there, couldn't we
ambush them if they do come here - just pull them down with junk and
numbers?"

The two Vanir whistled discordantly - Bjorn with appreciation,
Signy with obvious doubt. Cherry widened his eyes at her, and gave
her a slow, unimpressed nod.

"We might just make it. The Idunnists are natural marks.
Let's give it a chance in three of working. You've seen what a
halberd can dish out, haven't you? - Stainless? What would you
say it'd cost us to fight like that? Hundreds of dead, surely?"

"I daresay."

Tegan flinched inside. She knew this was war: knew they had
to stop the Desecrator before it took the Black Sun, and got its
claw around the Universe's throat. Hundreds wasn't much, for that.
More people than that died on the roads every year, for the right to
tootle around too fast in tin boxes. And they were talking about
volunteers, too...

She couldn't make herself ask it.

_What would the Doctor do?_

"It's for Nyssa, _and_ democracy," Cherry mused. "I might
just be able to rustle up enough heroes, at that." He smiled
widely, and glared at her. "I won't try, do you understand? And
don't you think about selling our people what'll get them killed,
either! We'll do as I said."

"Yes, Cherry."

His anger flickered out an instant before his smile. "It's
what she'd do, you know."

"I know. She always was good at waiting. I still think we
ought to do something - positive!"

"We _are_, Tegan."

He was so certain, so warm, so reasonable. If only he'd been
the Doctor, she might have believed him.

Two in the morning, coming up to the human body's own midnight; and
Julie van Duyn, Thorgeir the Green at her side, hurried down the
long comfortable corridors of the Hospital Wing to commit a major
ethical violation. Far behind them, the echoes of battle rang on:
halberd-strikes and the quick murderous gossip of shieldwalls on one
side; the promiscuous cacophony of hastily improvised technicals on
the other, with their cleaning jets and Surgeon's Mate laser-
cutters, and other things Julie didn't care to think of. She had to
get the Doctor.

Julie wasn't a hero, any more than she was a beauty. She
didn't want to be either one. She could never see wasting all the
time and care Nyssa spent on dress and dance and wit, just to become
a laughable imitation of another kind of person. As for heroes, it
seemed to be written into their job that at defining moments they
had to Do Their Own Thing, instead of the sensible one! Heroes made
tragedy, and Julie hated tragedy.

She was going to risk this one.

She'd never thought to see the Life Guard take up arms again.
The rebels hadn't reckoned with them, either! All those years ago,
before Nyssa had hardened into greatness, she'd spent so much time
with the Vanir's chronically sick and wounded - always too many of
them, back then! - and kept away their morbid fears of dying unfit
for battle, unworthy of their heaven. For Magnus and Thorgeir,
during their long convalescences, she'd inspired more. Those two
had been first and bravest: first of all the Vanir company to
renounce violence against the living, and to swear themselves openly
to Nyssa's way of fighting death, as the truest most earnest war of
all. And so the Life Guard were paramedics and technicians, nurses
and orderlies, and something else indefinably their own; and Julie
loved them and their Lady for it.

And now they were taking up arms again, killing their own old
comrades and dying at their hands, because crazy Sigfus was after
one of their patients, and didn't care what he did to get him.
_Loki, indeed!_

Julie hadn't tasted hate or fury for a very long time. She
knew them now.

The Doctor should spend at least two more days in his tank,
and then a tenday recovering in absolute peace.

The Life Guard couldn't hold out forever.

She and Thorgeir ought to leave the Doctor sleeping. That was
the ethics of it. The enemy certainly seemed to want him alive,
didn't they?

They turned a curved corner, descended a gentle slope. _What
they want_, Magnus had backed her up, _they don't get!_

The Doctor had more experience than any of them, and a famous
knack for desperate situations. He might understand what this was
really all about. He might come up with a Plan. He might help them
turn the coup around - if Julie didn't turn his brains into
scrambled eggs by chopping into her safety margin, and awakening him
into chaos and war!

It was too bad for them both. He wasn't going to lie in a
nice safe tank like an unborn baby, while Sigfus's fanatics burned
down the Life Guard to get custody of him, and turned Terminus into
some vicious cosmic war machine. He'd have to take his chances
along with the rest of them.

Thorgeir and Julie turned again, and passed through the
midnight-blue door of Morpheics, where the Doctor lay in therapeutic
coma. The tank that held him had a one-way clear plastic top, so
that they could both see him clearly when they crossed over to it.
He looked strangely old, folded silently in on himself; and his wild
black hair floated tendrils in all directions, as if he were
underwater.

Thorgeir handed her an injecting ampoule of galline. It
wasn't nice stuff, but it was the only real option right now. Julie
took a deep breath, and keyed open the tank.

Nyssa danced a long slow movement of _zaphirets_, stretching her
muscles out of sleep, restoring circulation and calm. Cats and
Alphard were ready to try out their hastily scratched-up protocol
for talking to a conscious Ourania.

If the Desecrator had really made common cause with their
Living Sky so quickly, it couldn't be _that_ hard to communicate
with it!

_And our Nyss should be better equipped than anyone..._

The alien flotilla had kept its shields up as it approached.
No-one was going to be talking to it at all, until it peeled off a
few of its defensive layers. This wasn't a way to approach friendly
space.

Cats would have fidgeted, normally, but it was getting all too
heavy to fidget about. For the first time since she'd left college,
she was beginning to feel unlucky.

Nyssa laced her hands together, well in front of her, and
stepped through a wide circle into a resting position. "Well," she
said to Alphard, her arms falling to her sides, "I'm ready!"

"Good!" exclaimed the engineer heartily, sounding as hollow
about it as Cats felt. "Now, listen: whatever it tells you, go
through the protocol!" He pinged her tiara lightly with a blunt
forefinger. "_Don't_ let it convince you to go for some kind of
communion through this dinky thing, direct!" A protective snort.
"Time enough for that when the Desecrator's a dead record, and
you're tooled up for demon-bashing!"

"Don't worry about that, _amigo_," Nyssa told him steadily.
"I left the Dayspring in my room, and I wouldn't even try such a
thing without it, at my best. I've underestimated our daughter once
already: I pray I shan't again!" The New Brazier nodded gruffly.

Dayspring? _Dayspring?_ Cats knew that word - yeah, Pop
Kipling! _Dayspring Mishandled_, not one of his best. Dayspring
was dawn. So, Nyss had some kind of talisman for i-space, did she?
Explained a few things. _But what? Dawn of what?_

_Sun-rise, early in the morning -_

Cats pulled her tired and wandering wits together sharply.
She could always go bye-byes once this was sorted out!

Nyssa touched her hands to her tiara, tilted her head back to
look at the great screen, and said, "Now... "

Alphard flicked a nice big manual switch on the console. Some
things you just _had_ to be able to cut off, whatever the bastards
did to your software! If Alphard flicked that switch back again,
Ourania would have to come crashing through the borders of the Black
Sun before it could get at Nyss. _Impossible, right?_

_Yeah, sure._

"Ourania," said Nyssa, in a voice tender and curling like blue
smoke. "Living Sky, life's hope, heart's daughter, will you hear
me? I'm Nyssa. We don't know each other, but I'm your mother.
When I learned our Universe was dead and decaying, I dreamed of you.
When the last unmaking began to form at Terminus, I made you to
drive it away, and to kindle life again. You did that. You did
well. But I never knew that you could know _me_! I didn't dare
hope you'd become a person for a thousand years!

"I should have realised what was happening, when you
reconfigured yourself. I'm sorry, but I didn't. Bad things were
happening to me. But you - you are the glad news that comes
unlooked for in the night. I love thee, Ourania. I'd know thee.
Wilt thou not speak to me?"

A long, dark pause filled the Helm Room.

On the small console screens Alphard and Cats were sharing,
lines of text began to print out:

WELKIN PROTOCOL INCOMPATIBLE MESSAGE

APPARENT FORMAT: SILKWOVE (local!) car HELM CODE !PORTMASTER!
REQUEST to SYSTEM ADMIN

INTERPRETATION: REQUEST ACCESS TO MAIN HELM DISPLAY

GRANT?

"It wants the main viewport," said Alphard. Nyssa nodded.

_It's afraid of you, too, eh?_

"Grant," said Alphard, confirming it on the console. The
great screen turned black.

The blackness began to fill with beautiful stars, white and
blue-white, delicate reds and Capella yellows. Slowly, over the
starry sky, another image began to form.

Big, blurred chunks, first, slowly resolving...

...into something like a human...

...a woman...

...no, a boy...

...with...!

"Oy!" cried Ottar sharply. From the state of Cats's throat,
she knew she'd made some such noise at the same time. She knew who
it was, though she'd never seen him.

It was Adric, complete with gold star. His eyes were black
and empty, and his smile was idiotic and quite humourless. He was
wagging an unfeasibly large and phallic sceptre in Nyssa's
direction, like a halberd. Eager replicas of it began to overlay
the stars. A speech balloon appeared at his mouth, and filled with
one sentence after another, in flashing comic-book script:

HOW ABOUT IT, TRAKEN BITCH?

OOH - YOU TEASED ME TO DEATH!

FANCY ONE? FANCY A THOUSAND?

TAKE IT AND LIKE IT! The screen became messy and unspeakable.

_"He's lying!"_ exclaimed Si, abruptly and furiously. Cats
turned round, gave her old mate a curious look. He blinked back, as
if he wasn't entirely sure what had made him say that.

"Take it away," said Nyssa, with a terrifying, calm sorrow.

The screen merged into complete whiteout. The white began to
fade and congeal, into silvery-grey shapes on a black background.
They didn't stay anonymous long.

Where Adric had stood, now there was a sad silver robot with a
handle on its head. The background was a throng of more of the
same, all of them brandishing big torchlike weapons. Cybermen!

The Cyberleader opened its downturned pillar-box mouth, and a
kind of tickertape screed spewed out:

YOU SILENCED THE SONG OF MACHINES!

YOU GAVE YOUR FRIEND UNTO DEATH.

HE IS WITH US NOW.

THE CYBER-RACE NEVER FORGETS.

It hefted its blaster, and fired at her. A moment later, its
minions followed in chorus. Bigger, more urgent ticker-tape with
each salvo of shots:

THIS - FOR ALL YOU HAVE BUILT.

THIS - FOR ALL THAT YOU LOVE.

THIS - FOR YOUR MEAT AND MACHINES.

THIS - NYSSA, KILLER OF SONGS!

And the blasts came so quick and fast together that the whole
screen became a blaze of flickering fire. After a while of this,
Nyssa said,

"Ourania, my dear, I see you've had words with the Desecrator.
It's clever and cunning and deceitful, such a creature as no-one -
no child, above all! - should have to face. Yet all I'll ask is
that you'll speak to me directly, and judge which of us you trust
best. Harrow my heart more, if you think I've wronged you; but
speak to me afterwards, and let me try to make amends! For thou'rt
my daughter, and thou'rt always loved of me; and I would cherish
thee, and never hurt thee!"

The fire went abruptly out, leaving only the stars and the
darkness.

The stars and darkness began to part too, like curtains in a
theatre.

Absolute blackness on the background, behind, and all the
foreground filled with a Face. A handsome, bearded face it was,
with black hair and black eyes and a cruel smiling mouth like a
jester gone wrong. Last time Cats had seen it, it had been very
dead. It wasn't any more. It was laughing like the Demon King in a
bad pantomime, and its jackass noise filled the whole room. Nyssa's
breath hissed out between her teeth.

"Oh, my dear Nyssa!" guffawed the Master. "You _have_ been
naïve!"

The _agora_ was evacuated, the supplies were gathered in, and
Terminus Hall was secured again. Cherry napped in his chair, his
screen on, ready to awake all the way if anything happened before
morning. Tuyet Nguyen, everybody's favourite philosopher - the
woman who'd given Cherry his daisygun, as a rather pointed present -
had come and chatted with them for a while, and not left until Tegan
was safely dozing; then she'd gone to take her special brand of
peace somewhere else that needed it. If only she weren't so
painfully honest, and so committed to non-action, Cherry could have
voted for her to succeed Nyssa any day.

Of course, then she'd have been just another hack, so Cherry
would have voted for himself instead. He liked Tuyet, though. He
liked most people. He was still making his mind up about Tegan.

"No!" she groaned. He blinked heavy eyelids, woke from his
reverie. He didn't move, not yet. He listened.

"No." Her arms moved; her right fist clenched lightly and
unclenched again. "I don't believe you! Spoiled her life. Made
pretend Nyssas, 'bused them. _And_ me..."

Goosepimples began to break out on Cherry's neck and arms.
Abruptly, Tegan's arms went limp, and her voice became disjointed,
rambling. The sense that she was talking to a _presence_ receded on
that instant. He had to lean forward to catch her next words:

"...That hurt her more than anything..." Low, low, into the
pit. Then out again, as she began to curl up on herself.
"...Do'or, why di' you... Coul't you..? ...Snakes 'n' ladders..."

Her head was almost touching her knees. She was another one,
then - another of the fragile ones he had to juggle. _I hope that's
not her wishing she'd never been born._ That kind were too
dangerous, and Cherry palmed himself on his rational cowardice.

_"Why did I let you go?"_ It was so quiet, coming through
vocal cords so over-strained, that he might almost have imagined it.

He hadn't; but nor had he a clue whom she meant. There were
just too many obvious possibilities, even to him. There was no way
to find out, to prepare.

Yes, Nyssa's old companion might prove very dangerous indeed.
Cherry chewed that over for a few moments, decided there was nothing
useful he could do about it right now, and went straight back to his
nap.

Nyssa had seen something Si hadn't. He felt the hope pouring away
from her, like tension. _Thrice it's denied her..?_ No, no, no -
leave those thoughts alone! But she played it out gamely:

"Dear Ourania! _He_, above all, is your enemy! He has
butchered more of space and time themselves than we could heal in a
thousand years, recklessly, trying to get control of it all. He
devoured my father, the best of men. He calls himself 'the Master'
because he cares for nothing but control: he has servants and he has
foes, but never anything else, never friends. You deserve better
company than that!"

"What better company could there be - dear Nyssa?" It still
spoke through the Master's image. "He is mighty, and wise, and
beautiful!"

"And deceitful, and terrible, and treacherous. Dear, you are
a higher order of life than he! He can never abide that. He will
try to make you his creature - with lies, if he can't use force.
I'm sure that he already dominates Adric, and even the Cyberiad - "

"He does."

"Oh, daughter! Don't let him take you, too. You would hate
it forever, and he would make himself a dark god to the Universe.
Will you know me, my darling? Shall we open our minds to one
another?" She tapped her tiara.

"Oh, daughter," mimicked the Master gleefully, "I must
respectfully decline! The cards are all in my hand, as it stands.
Let us discuss the terms of your surrender."

Si's spirits sank like a great big boulder.

"If you don't extricate yourself from my daughter, you
infection," Nyssa choked, "we shall obliterate you. Leave! Leave!"

"Why, daughter," said the Master guilelessly, "there is
nothing _for_ me to leave! Did you truly think that your dabbling
had evolved intelligence so suddenly? I thought you were better-
educated than that! I _am_ the living spirit of Ourania. My body
_is_ the Living Sky. _I_ reconfigured it, from within; _I_ healed
the Creation fault, by act of will. That really makes me a
benevolent god already, by most definitions, wouldn't you say?"

"It makes you a body-thief," Nyssa shot back. Her voice was
still steady, but Si saw the brightness on her cheek. "Again. That
was the second power-out, wasn't it? You used the elan to transfer
your whole psyche to the Ourania substrate. You couldn't program
strong a-life, so you _became_ it. I suppose that, with Adric and
the Cyberiad mediating on the i-plane, the hacking couldn't really
have taken that much talent."

The Master conceded her point with a cheerful spreading of
suddenly-present hands. "He was a foolish, addicted boy, it was
machine-life - both natural servant types. True talent lies in
delegating tiresome work to the correct servants, as you and I know
very well." He clucked delicately. "Which brings us back to your
rather precarious position, since other servants of mine appear to
have you under a rather effective siege at the moment..."

Ottar scowled. "How'd you recruit those bastards, without one
of us blowing your head off?"

The transfigured Time Lord chuckled. "A dominated porter, a
surveillance jewel, an aspect of your folk-god, hypnotic masks
imprinted - let us call the details an exercise for the hearer,
since you have pretensions to wit among your tribe! Solve them, and
I'll grant you the captaincy of Nyssa's personal guard, after the
surrender. Well?"

Nyssa checked any response with a quickly uplifted palm.
"That is moot. Your technique is obvious, and your handful of dupes
shan't hold any part of Terminus for very long."

"Handful?" That noisome laughter again. "A majority, rather
- now, if not previously." He wagged a chiding finger at her.
"It's very dangerous to trust to religious fanatics for your police
force, my darling daughter. They may be supremely loyal, but
they're still simplicity itself to turn!"

_"Stop calling me that!"_

"You'll like that better than what my Adric slave process
would like to call you - or make you." The Master raised an
eyebrow. "And as for the Cyberiad remnant: oh, dear. That kept
babbling something about morphing you into a Sierpinski gasket,
before it 'got stuck in'..?" A sorrowful shake of the head. From
Cats's muffled gagging sound, Si deduced more than he wanted to
know. "_Infinitely_ vile and decadent, don't you think? I've had
to discipline it quite severely for the notion. I'm very much
afraid, my dear Nyssa, that I'm the only power in this game with
your interests at heart..."

"Are you serious?"

"Never more so! Frankly, if you were my protégé rather than
the Doctor's, I should be prouder of you than he seems to be.
You've already become an Elissa, an Alexander, even a Rassilon in
your young way: one of those _Übermenschen_ who transcend and define
their whole epoch." The Master's eyes narrowed. "I treasure
greatness in this petty, jerry-built corner of Time. I mean to
foster it, not destroy it. We share a purpose, my little Death-
Killer! You'll find my terms more than generous."

"Name them."

Si reminded himself to breathe.

"You can end this bloodshed at once. Transmit Sigfus a joint
message with me, acknowledging my supremacy in my aspect as Odin,
and receiving Terminus back from me as my regent. I must control
all top-level command codes, of course, and you must rule without
popular interference; but other than that, and subject to my
explicit orders, everything shall be yours as before. I have larger
concerns now; and I should like to see you prove your potential."
The Master shrugged whimsically. "Who knows? Even a god of
immortal space might one day want a successor - and my sentimental
inclination to think of you as my own daughter simply goes stronger
with time. My former self didn't win _every_ part of his last
battle with Tremas, you know - _imn'anaya, ech-phylaxini darac?_"

_"Kered,"_ returned Nyssa, bowing her head a fraction. "My
friends would be safe?"

"As you wish. The Doctor must remain in stasis until I'm
ready to release him, however. I need no ill-considered heroics at
this juncture." His voice grew grave and stern. "Will you yield to
me, then - my daughter? Will you be my regent on Terminus, and free
me to attend to the death of entropy?"

"If I won't?"

A shrug. "Then I must choose Sigfus, who has obedience if few
other virtues." A sorrowful, wicked smile touched the Master's
lips. "You're aware of his attitude towards your companions, and
towards your 'blasphemers' among the citizenry...well, best we don't
dwell on that! Nyssa?"

Nyssa wavered. She looked at Ottar, looked away again. She
cast a glance of appeal at Alphard, who strode briskly to the
console, and addressed the great image scornfully.

"There's a defect in your reasoning, Desecrator! Know me:
Alphard of New Brass and Gallifrey, Omega Redux, the engineer who
set up that sweet substrate you're infesting. Know more: Nyssa has
resigned. _I'm_ Mayor; you have _me_ to deal with! I'm too much
for you. Stop baiting my poor little _niña_ and quit the Black Sun,
or die - here, now!"

The Master regarded the little engineer with a mixture of
revulsion and contempt. "Go away and posture somewhere appropriate!
How could _you_ possibly harm _me_?"

Alphard's strong, stubby fingers danced an incredible pattern
across a silvery keyboard. He said conversationally:

"You need my Helm Room, and you'll promise anything to get it.
I wonder if that's because anyone who controls it can release you
from the black border - " _feint_ " - or build more layers over
you - " _feint_ _" - or sculpt or reset the whole Ourania
substance?"_

And he finished by pressing a black button. The Master's
image froze instantly.

"Sorry about that," he told Nyssa. "Those three outlived
their function! We'll just have to start from scratch..."

"Alfie," said Cats, about a quarter-minute later, "why'd the
metrics just bounce?"

"Because," supplied the Master merrily, "I configured myself
shields and buffers against this sort of nonsense, as soon as I took
control of Ourania. Did you really take me for an imbecile?" His
voice hardened. "Enough buffoonery. _Nyssa?_"

The Traken drew herself up, looked slowly round at all her
friends again, and squared her slight shoulders. She said
deliberately,

"You haven't won yet, have you? I still think Mord can beat
your dupes. In the unlikely event he doesn't, I have three
conditions for co-operation. If you _are_ serious, be ready to meet
them."

"Really? Be rational! When Mord loses, what will you have to
bargain with?"

"Myself," said Nyssa starkly. "You profess to value my life.
I don't. And, quite honestly, the prospect of working for you
doesn't make me feel any better about it." She shrugged. "Of
course, if you're lying about it all, death is certainly better than
falling into your hands! No, I need something to make the gamble
worthwhile."

"What will you ask, my daughter?"

"I want that regency," Nyssa stated. "And I want to see a
proof that once you've become immanent in Terminus space-time, you
can bring _my_ Amina back out of the past, to be my wife and
cupmate, here and now. I don't really care what else you undo to
get that, provided you don't kill my other friends in the process!"

_"Niña!"_ exploded Alphard. "You know you can't do that!"

She shrugged again, indifferently. "If we win, I can't. If
we lose, what else matters?" She returned her attention to the
Master, and Si saw a new expression cross her face, one he hadn't
seen before and never hoped to again. It was quite as malicious as
her enemy's own.

He smiled appreciatively. "A great and challenging price.
I'll consider it. Your final request?"

"It's best demonstrated, my would-be father. Recall from your
Adric process what I did to him on our way to Salacia, that time he
tried to _forcefully persuade_ me in the Small Computer Room!"

A virulent, cold shiver spasmed through Si. Cats and several
Vanir muttered awful things. The Master frowned for an instant,
then his smile broadened again. "You make me proud of you once
more. Apt, if rather over-lenient."

"Make him hurt that much again," demanded Nyssa avidly, her
nostrils flaring. "In that way, or its best analogue. _Forever!_"

"Why, I think we might consider that done. - Down, boy!" The
Master laughed. "Are you sure you don't want to end the slaughter?
I can grant you two out of the three straight away."

"Thank you, but no. Mord can defeat Sigfus, and I'd rather
dictate terms than accept concessions. We'll talk again when we
know who rules Terminus. Find a way to restore my _amie_ from the
days when she loved me, if you mean anything you've said. You're
slightly less intolerable than I remembered. Nyssa out!"

She closed the connection, and the viewport went blank. Si,
still numb with shock, stood there like an icicle.

Nyssa didn't go to him. She went to Alphard.

"Secure?" she asked him.

"As a drum."

Cats's worried face lit up. "That was a line?"

"Yes." Nyssa and Alphard performed a weary, slow-motion
gimme-five. It was a strange sight. "_Got_ him!"

Si found his voice. "How so?"

Nyssa turned to him. "His simulations rang false, and I've
caught him in a pointless lie. Adric would never have physically
assaulted me, and I never used violence against him."

"Then - "

"Adric isn't in there, nor the Cyberiad. That was the Master
eavesdropping on our theories, through our security systems, and
using them to his own advantage. Now that we know what he did, and
what was really happening to the Doctor, there's no reason to them
any more.

"There never _was_ a Desecrator." Nyssa shook her head, let
out a long breath. "That was just our own bad dream. The Master
has been our real enemy all along!"

The Doctor's eyelids flickered open. The black eyes behind them
were vacant, unfocussed. His lips moved faintly, in something less
than a word.

_If I've ruined him..._ Julie shoved her wretchedness deep
down towards the pit of her stomach, and said, "Doctor? Doctor!
Wake up!"

"Umhumahnah. Humhumahnah." A smile, then. "Goodnight,
Tegan!"

_Gone. We lose._ The disaster was so enormous that she
found herself squinting numbly at it, like an exotic bug under a
microscope. The destroyed Time Lord twitched, and pulled a crazy
face.

He yawned hugely, then. "Julie?" he said curiously, making no
move to rise. "Why am I on my back? Has someone been spiking my
drink?"

"You've been ill," she sighed. "Very ill. Can you move?"

He flopped an unenthusiastic arm up and down again. "I can't
say I feel like it."

"No choice," Thorgeir informed him. "We have to get away
before the turncoats break through. It's a jihad out there, and
Sigfus is telling 'em you're Loki."

"H'mmm." He blinked, flexed his long legs experimentally.
"I've been out for some while, haven't I? - Julie, I seem to
recall being rather out of control at the banquet. Did what I'm
starting to remember really happen?"

"Yes," she said dispassionately. "Your lazargens over-drove
your native regeneration system. Your memory management blew up,
and you went into regenerative coma. We cured that, but we've had
to cut short your recovery. You'll still be very weak. Try to sit
up, now."

He grimaced, but sat upright immediately, and started to
wiggle the circulation back into his limbs. Before more than a
handful of seconds had passed, and too suddenly for Julie to
protest, he'd vaulted wonkily onto the floor. A moment's steadying
hand from Thorgeir, and he was standing on his own feet - pale and a
little rubbery, but mobile. His voice was already firming up, as he
commented,

"Two hearts come in handy sometimes. - My apologies all round
for that night. I should have realised... Nothing's happened to
Nyssa or Tegan, has it?"

"They're safe and free, as far as I know," said Julie sharply.
"We're not winning, though; we need your help - "

"It's yours. In a few words, what have I missed?"

"Too much," judged Thorgeir. "We need to get into one of the
service ducts. No use jawing if it gets us found or cut off."

"Ah, the old reliable! Well, lead away, and you can explain
as soon as we're out of immediate danger..."

They got out. It was a couple of hundred metres to the
nearest access hatch; they met no-one on the way, heard no sounds of
battle. Thorgeir opened the hatch, sent Julie and the Doctor in
first, and brought up the rear himself. They crawled down the wide,
blandly textured duct until they came to a broader space, where it
met another gently curved passage. Julie hesitated. Thorgeir
directed her round the arc to the left. They stopped a short way
down this branch. The Doctor, panting and looking more drained than
was good for him, demanded an explanation again. Julie gave him the
grim story, one slab at a time. When she'd finished, he closed his
eyes in pained contemplation. When that had gone on just a bit too
long for comfort, and she opened her mouth to say something, he held
up a forbidding hand, for all the world as though he was watching
her. She scowled, noticed he didn't react to _that_ at least, and
waited.

"No good," he said, at last. "The packet's too much of a
bottleneck. Even with Alphard's help and the TARDIS, we can't bring
over the Company of Lions without making them sitting ducks." He
looked half-hopefully at Thorgeir. "Sigfus must have a position
holding Eventide Bay, mustn't he?"

The big Life Guard nodded. "_I_ would. With a handful of
men, that cuts off a fresh army he couldn't fight. If he's so
stupid he doesn't, he'll lose anyhow."

"If he's that stupid, the Desecrator - his 'Odin' - will do
his thinking for him," murmured the Doctor. "No, he'll hold the Bay
- unless a stronger force from this side takes it away from him. Oh
well, this is all beside the point unless we can get back to my
TARDIS! Shall we get started?"

"Forgive you? Oh, dear Tegan, don't be silly! There's nothing to
forgive. I know you'd never mean to hurt me!"

Nyssa embraced her lightly - as close as the air she breathed,
scarcely touching, the way they'd always used. Her curly hair
smelled fresh and warm and herbal under Tegan's nose, and there was
soft light and clean steam everywhere.

"Tea's up!" said Cherry. His voice was so alarmingly
solicitous that Tegan started fighting her way awake at once. A hot
hurting tear fell from her left eye, as she lost the dream and
gained the unwelcome day. _That_ Nyssa was dead with a stake
through her heart, and Tegan had helped to hammer it home!

She focussed her eyes on the steaming tea, the cold morning
light. "Thanks. What's wrong?"

The Deputy Mayor coughed. "You're fast... I'd have let you
sleep, but your military friends seemed to think you'd rather be
awake for this. Try that tea, will you?"

She slurped up a mouthful, not noticing the taste. "What _is_
it, Cherry?"

"The fighting's reached the _agora_," he said, pulling a
disgusted face. "Mord seems to have picked it for his last stand.
A lot of it looks like a demolition site by now; Sigfus has been
blasting him out of cover with heavy artillery. - We can't win,
Tegan. Mord is just too badly outgunned. I give it until about
noon before the rebels start pounding Terminus Hall. About all we
can hope for is that they'll spend themselves finishing Mord. I
don't see that one surrendering."

This was morning, all right. "You would, I suppose?"

"Probably. I don't know. I _fix_ things, Tegan. It'll take
a god out of the box to fix this one."

"Forget it." Tegan took another long gulp of the herbal tea.
"Signy? Bjorn? Is this it?"

Bjorn grunted. "Maybe we should have tried your idea, Bright-
Wing. Too late now. Still, the Hall shields should hold up good.
Might be a long siege, till the relief comes, though..."

Cherry squinted at him. "Not with these provisions, it won't.
Five days maximum." He yawned heavily, and sighed. "Still, all we
can do is sit tight. Something _might_ turn up; and at least we'll
keep some nutcases pinned down guarding us."

"I meant - Signy? Can't he fight his way through to our door,
instead of just - dying, out there?" Tegan's voice was beginning to
climb the scale. "Wouldn't that be the best cover of all?"

The Vanir shieldmaiden nodded dour approval; but it wasn't
really a _yes_. "He's been falling back this way since he reached
the _agora_; but Sigfus sent a platoon around to cover our door,
with a shieldwall and a Korsakov platform. It'll decimate Mord if
he ignores it; and if he goes on the offensive against _that_,
Sigfus's main force will trash him before he's through. Look - I'll
show you."

Tegan put down her tea, and followed Signy dumbly to the
active monitor, which seemed to be hooked in to outside cameras
showing the _agora_. The other two came along for the ride, too.

Tegan had liked the _agora_ from the moment she'd set foot in
it. What she saw now was nothing she'd ever want to sketch. All
the brightly coloured booths were vanished, or in tatters. Ahead
and to the far right, one of the great arcades was down: a
straggling expanse of rubble, burnt and twisted mish-mashes of metal
and plastic, a few stubborn girders here and there holding up
fragments of wall that trailed broken and orphaned wires. There
were other things there, various sizes and shapes, mostly along a
line that pointed from the arcade towards Terminus Hall. Some of
them had been bits of war machines, and others just as obviously
hadn't.

She hoped none of them were Ottar.

_It's happening_ again..!

The line ended with a strong company of men, maybe as many as
forty. Perhaps it was just the picture quality, but their golden
armour and devil-masks didn't look all that shiny right now. They
were retreating slowly Hall-wards, at an angle skewed away from the
great doors, under cover of tall grey mobile screens that Tegan knew
would spit vicious energies at anything that approached them too
closely. _Shieldwalls._ Two of the walls had big, irregular pieces
taken out of them. Mord's Vanir also boasted several big, chunky
weapons that looked like some kind of hand-held rocket launcher, and
a hovering globe with a long flexible tube that looked a lot like
the oldest-fashioned Hoover she'd ever seen.

She couldn't tell what Sigfus had, behind his advancing
shieldwalls further towards the arcade, but it had to include about
twice as many men. As she watched, a chink opened up between
shields, and something gouted a ball of flash-white fire straight
towards Mord's line. The friendly shieldwall stippled the air with
energies that tore into the glowing missile; but most of the fire
got through, and the wall and those nearest it shook violently.

"Plasma cannon again," muttered Bjorn. "It won't take much
more of that..."

Someone, she thought it was Mord, booted the Hoover. It
snaked its flat-headed tube high over the shieldwall, writhed, and
arced a tatty red fireball over into Sigfus's ranks. This seemed to
cause some commotion, and the plasma cannon didn't reappear.
Halberd-strikes knifed back up at the Hoover's vulnerable head, one
blowing it to slag. The Hoover whipped most of its tube back into
its round body, and did nothing more bar the hovering. More
halberd-bolts came from both sides around the edges of their walls;
none had any effect that Tegan could see. The slow retreat carried
on.

"...And that's the Korsakov squad," said Signy, switching
cameras to one nearer the main door. This mob were behind another
shieldwall, but their artillery piece loomed over it: a great black
tube, mounted on a massive stem, yoked and curvily panelled and
bristling with weird fittings Cats would probably appreciate. Tegan
thought it looked like a giant murderous telescope. It also looked
like it had the door pretty well covered.

She frowned hard. "Just what _is_ that thing, Signy?"

"Power laser and projectile combo, with heavy-duty shielding,"
the other woman explained. "You have to reset it when you move it,
and the range isn't great if you want to bash through shieldwalls
with it; but if you _are_ going to move into its circle, you're sort
of committed to taking it out quickly."

"Which with Sigfus up his - tail," said Bjorn, "he can't do."
He shook his head and whistled. "The Captain's pulled some things
out of the air in his time, but this would be good even for him."

"_Too_ good," said Signy, bleakly. She seemed to lose
interest in the screen all at once.

Tegan couldn't stand it. "They're really going to die, aren't
they? We can't just leave them to it!"

" You want the three of us should come out solid and die with
them, Bright-Wing?" said Bjorn. He actually seemed to be serious.

"Forget it!" the other two chorused loudly. Signy gave Cherry
a dirty look, and continued, "No wasting! On the other hand...if we
got enough volunteers, and we timed it right, we _could_ do a
suicide swarm job: be running across its path long enough for Mord
to get his squad inside, maybe even take out some of the crew.
Expensive, nasty, risky - but we'd trade mostly civilians for all
armed fighters, and put a spoke in the false Odin's wheel. Anybody
fancy it?"

"No!" vetoed Cherry. "Soldiers are supposed to lay down their
lives for civilians. It doesn't work the other way around. It
doesn't even make sense. Nyssa would turn herself in, if she so
much as knew we were thinking about it! Tegan, tell me you don't
really want to use my people for cannon fodder!"

"No," she said, revolted at her own thoughtless suggestion of
last night, as much as at Signy's new variation on it. "Not that.
But we have to do something..."

"That's what 'doing something' means, here. We need to do
_nothing_. Bite your teeth, if it helps. _I_ am!"

"I don't care _what_ you're biting!" she stormed back.
"They're _dying_, Cherry. We're _losing_. I'm going to do
something about it, even if you won't!"

"Aha." A cynical, most unfriendly smile spread across the
politician's face as he registered the two Vanir's admiring
reactions. His face flushed very red, and his voice became very
quiet and smooth. Even his anger was bland and buttery - but Tegan
almost found herself liking him for it anyway, just as she'd been
disliking herself. He sat down heavily in his chair, yawned
furiously, and said,

"All right. I bow to _force majeure_, and the reality on the
ground. Tegan, you have my job. You can be acting Deputy Mayor.
You fill Nyssa's place, since it seems I can't. You're the
adventurer, after all, and I'm just a fat corrupt peacetime
politician with no head for these things. You 'do something',
without exterminating the people she loves! You _do_ have a plan, I
take it?"

Tegan's mind raced furiously; and then she had it. They'd
nearly had it, minutes ago.

She could save Mord, and the core of Nyssa's loyal army.

She could save the refugees at Terminus Hall, even if Nyssa
lost altogether, and the Hall fell.

She could clear accounts between Nyssa and herself, once and
for all.

"Yes," she said. "I've got a plan. - You can hate me all you
like, Cherry, but I'm going to need your help. Yours too, Bjorn,
Signy..."

"I don't hate you," said Cherry sadly. "I just don't believe
in you. I wouldn't believe in myself, in this place. That's why I
lent you my job. What do you want to do, Your Honour?"

Quickly, because it had to be done quickly, she told them what
she was going to try. It felt a lot more final once she'd said it.
Bjorn and Signy were shocked and amazed, but they couldn't really
say anything against it.

Cherry sat back and smiled a very crooked smile, and Tegan
couldn't make out what he was feeling at all.

"Alert condition!" the AI announced, breaking the dull silence.
"Incoming flotilla arriving at Terminus trafficspace. Three ships
emerge from over-military-calibre shielding, hailing Mayor and
people of Terminus (no reply capability!). Can't identify ship
codes, because: links to Port database down - "

Nyssa came to life again, and leapt up like a puppet whose
strings had just been yanked. After the way she'd coaxed her
imaginary daughter, and run rings around the far-too-real Master, Si
had thought she'd found her feet again - but as soon as the moment's
crisis had passed, she'd sunk back into listlessness, as if waiting
for someone to aim her at something. It was as though her brilliant
improvisation had actually come from mere habit, from her long
shaping as Mayor, from its being the easiest and most natural thing
for her to do. Si wasn't sure whether he was more awed or grieved
at what that implied about her; and he felt too keenly the limits of
what he could give her. He wished Tegan were here - for Nyssa's
sake and her own safety, if not exactly for her company during a
long and trying wait. (Tegan would be the first to admit that
having to hang around helplessly brought out the absolute worst in
her. Cherry's ears must have been sandpapered down to nubbins by
now!) But if she were here for Nyssa -

"What was the message?"

"_Ping._ Message: From: Will Boreas Jewel-Quickener Fatman
Swan-Drake Tumble-Bug Shaxpur, to: Mayor and people of Terminus.
Text: [Aside] What cheer, Nyslet's lad? Where's traffic, where's
service? Art drunk as skunk? [Aloud] I'm minded for a visit, along
of my jolly crew. Of your courtesy, stand down defences, and greet
your great true friend of Greathearth! Message ends. _Ping._ No
response detected.

"Advisory context: Transmission from ship of apparent class-
equivalence: Freetrade cruiser. Two class-equivalent skirmishers
performed apparent orbital reconnaissance of Terminus traffic-space,
prior to context: Second message. Interested?"

"Uncle Fastolf," said Nyssa, with satisfaction, "in his
_Mistress Quickly_, with the skirmishers _Shallow Justice_ and
_Slender Mercy_. That much is normal, and well! Second message?"

"_Ping._ To: Whoever's listening on Terminus. Text:
Terminus, is aught amiss? May this modest Terileptil assist? Such
is his pleasure. Do you respond, drop defences, and greet us all
friendly at your docks. Message ends. _Ping._ No response
detected."

Alphard snorted. "The subtle Wonder-Race. Fooey!"

"Alfie? The mass behind that everything-shield, there - "

"Yes, _gatas mías,_ it _could_ be a shaytan. Aren't we
surprised?" He scratched his scalp vexedly. "And the badness of
our sort-of transmitter won't exactly allow the usual fencing.
We've got about a hundred _bits_ before it burns out, if it works at
all! Save that for direst emergency, then. I think we just have to
play dumb - and see how our defences match up against a shaytan, if
it comes to it." The engineer scowled dreadfully. "I'm nobody's
moralist, but those things are _created_ to be distilled evil! If
he brings it out and we can't drive it off, we may have to kamikaze
the station against it: detonate the main drive. Better that than
the alternative - No! Wait! We might be able to make some kind of
deal with the Master! He has more reason to be afraid of a Black
Sun grab than we do, and if they damage each other badly enough...
Yes. If anyone knows any better ideas, it's about time for them."

Nyssa broke the long and horrid pause that followed. Her
voice was slow, determined, carefully confident. More than all of
these, there was life in it.

"No," she said. "Check any mass combination from these:
monitor, Trouper transport, three destroyers. If he's bringing his
whole fleet, and a regiment of ground troops, and no shaytan at
all - "

Cats invoked a quick calculation at her console. "Put all of
them in, and you're nearly there. I guess he could have brought
even more than you knew about."

"If he's brought all that lot," said Ottar, "he's come with
conquest on his mind anyway. He can't know about the revolt,
Yeron - Nyssa. All he could know is that you've stopped the
Unmaking, and made Terminus spacetime safe enough to be worth
snatching. He's still the enemy."

She sighed. "Perhaps... I think we need to trust someone,
though: at least a little. Our prospects are miserable, and I'd
rather surrender to Uncle Fastolf than the Master. Perhaps he
_does_ want the Black Sun, but - no, not with shaytans. I won't
believe that." The little Traken hunched her shoulders painfully.
"Alphard, it's up to you. You're in charge. But if it were me, I'd
drop the defences, and invite him to force-board at the docks. I
don't see any other real hope for us; and I think we're losing
friends all the time. Please, does this make sense to anyone?"

"Yes," said Si, feeling a cold lump in the pit of his stomach.

"I really hate this," said Ottar, "but yes, it does. Sort
of."

"What he said," Cats seconded tersely. They all looked at
Alphard.

"Well, people!" returned the engineer, grinning far too widely
and spinning his chair around for emphasis, "I suppose that's what
we do, and may the future forgive us if we're wrong! Dropping the
defences from here is easy as dropping our pants. What message do
we want to send in less than a hundred bits, though?"

Cats drove an elbow into his ribs, and told him. Despite the
situation, almost all of them laughed. There was a touch of
hysteria about it.

When she'd finished laughing, Nyssa sat down again. Si joined
her. She gave him a wan, grateful smile, and touched his hand
lightly, before she began staring into the distance again.

_Dear Doctor,_

_I hope you won't read this, but this is just in case, and all
that!_

_You told me I was brave once. Well, I'm not, but I have to act
like I was, or a lot of people are going to die when they don't have
to. Thanks for everything you taught me! I needed it. I'm so glad
I met you, even if it didn't always seem that way!!_

_Stay with Nyssa, and help her get well. She'd never say this to
you, but she thinks of you like a second Dad. You know what that
means to her, of course you do! And help her with what she's doing,
I think it's *really* important, after all!_

_I'm sorry if I ever hurt you, but I'm silly sometimes, aren't I?
You're the best man I know. Try to be happy, all right?!_

_All my love forever,_

_Tegan _
_Xxxxxxx_

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Sixteen, 'Dragon & Maiden'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom, are
copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the boys
around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive this
story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and imagery in
this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Sixteenth Episode: Dragon & Maiden*

The ACS _Late Unpleasantness_ slipped out from under Ter'Fastolf's
smothering shielding, to see what it could see. The stars came on
again, and a murmur of appreciation filled the bridge. The
_Lateness_'s skipper, Sonny 'Moonlight' Sorensen, might have thrown
in his lot with his best enemy, this once, but darned if he was
going in blind.

_Motto: Never trust a Pollywog!_

None of the Alter Carolinans missed the irony of their being
here in the first place, excepting Gunner Bo, who just plainly
thought that irony was one grade down from steely. Good man, and
all.

The scaly old tumble-bug had been right about one thing,
though. Terminus was in trouble. Its ports were inhospitably shut,
and its ether was as silent as the grave.

"Sir," sang out the Canary, "the beacons are going down!"

And they were! Night lapped at several of the beacons dead
ahead, the beacons that warned ships of the appalling, invisible
Black Sun behind them. The Black Sun! So new and small on the
Galactic scene, so well into the legends of the deep spaceways.
Endless power, hinted the savvy and worldly coteries of Hey Louise.
The Pit of Apollyon, howled the devotees of Bethel. The Great
Equaliser, threatened the Reds and Wobsymps you could fight in any
fourth-rate asteroid bar. No-one knew what the hell it was, really.
The official Terminus version was manifest, self-serving BS which
the Late Crew knew better than to take seriously.

The Cthulhu Cultists would have called it the Womb of Night,
had they existed. It was just purely lucky that the Earthhome
courts had ruled those boys a criminal rumour, penally harmful to
business confidence! This heartened Sorensen as much as it deserved
to. And now, here at the end of the line, the lights were going
out...

...and three of the remaining beacons began to follow them
into darkness...

"Best we watch what we're stepping in, then," Sorensen
advised.

"...And those four are starting up again," declared the
Canary, sounding put out. She wasn't the only one. McGraw, the
chief engineer, was disgusted.

"Those there are BZ6480s. That's gonna burn 'em out quick -
and they couldn't fail in that fashion. Some clown's playing games
with 'em, sir."

"They pulling our wire, sir?" Bo demanded truculently, seldom
one to miss out on a mood like this.

"_That,_" said the Canary, with sudden confidence, "is a
signal! I do believe those are very desperate ladies and gentlemen
out there, Gunner! In fact - oh, that's _too_ simple!" Her first
analysis was showing up on her console. "Why, it's in plain
GALACSII!"

"_Somebody's_ surely in bad trouble," remarked Sorensen
phlegmatically, hoping it was Terminus and not the _Lateness_. They
waited in silence, while beacons bright enough to illuminate whole
counties powered torturously up and down again, in long slow rhythms
that spelt out their message one bit at a time against the dim
background of the stars:

U * N * C * L * E

"Is that who it looks like?"

"Yah, 's Dish-Julie. Hey! That's _him_, with her!"

"Oy!" bellowed Bomb-Hrapp, as he preferred to interpret his
nickname. "Give us Loki, or we'll fry you blacker than Surt's
arsehole!"

Grim cuffed his comrade violently, there being no other way to
get a notion into his skull. "Watch your tongue, Bummer!" Kveldulf
stepped quietly to the side and trained his halberd on the
approaching pair, though this was plainly a matter of form. Julie
was a nervous peacenik civilian, and too dowdily self-conscious ever
to try anything that needed face. The 'Doctor' was draped floppily
about her shoulders, and she was mushing him along rougher than
you'd expect from a medic. She didn't seem very sweet on him.
Loki's movements were twitchy and ill-coordinated, and seemed to owe
a lot to Julie's left hand in the small of his back. His mouth
googled slowly, his jaw wandering aimlessly, and it didn't look to
Grim like he was even thinking in any likely language. He looked,
in fact, just as mooncalfish and nutty as when he'd gone down at the
Banquet.

Julie called back sharply, "What do you think I'm doing?", and
gave Doctor Loki an unnecessarily hard nudge to make her point.
They continued to draggle and stumble down the gently curved
Serendipity Living corridor. "Someone has to stop this nonsense.
Once you have him, your people and the Life Guard won't have
anything to fight about any more!" A flash of intense, purely
feminine resentment animated her homely mug. "He's no use to anyone
here. He's just trouble. I won't have my people dying over
_this!_"

"Flopalop Sharah Zhane!" glooped Loki, phlegmy spit falling
from the corner of his mouth and hitting the deck. "Do, yeah. On
knees, _goo'_ girl. _Eeeh!_ Ha' jelly baby?"

"He is a rotting nonce!" Kveldulf declared, disgustedly.

"Yeah, and bastard taught his daughter to be one too!" added
Hrapp, referring to Hel-Tegan's corruption of the Lady's childhood.
That was one part of the story Grim had trouble with, since none of
it tied up with anything he'd seen of those three. Sometimes you
just had to have faith.

Anyway, the guy was no good, however you took him. Julie,
looking as though she badly wanted to wash, hauled the Doctor up
close to the shieldwall. "Are you going to take this _alien_ to
Captain Sigfus, or do I have to drag him all the way there myself?"

Julie was normally the mildest of people, but everyone could
see her point - as well as the point of their being the ones to hand
in the Great Enemy.

"Quan'um duck!" announced the mad god, getting more gob over
Julie's white coat. The Vanir came around to take charge of him.
Life was easy, when Wyrd worked on your side...

Kveldulf and Hrapp got around first. Grim took a quick peek
behind him, then followed Hrapp around the left edge of the
shieldwall. Hrapp was already handling the Doctor, lots more
roughly than he needed to...

It all happened very fast. Grim saw that the roughness wasn't
all one way; Hrapp suddenly seemed to be getting the wrong end of
the spear. Kveldulf, around by Julie, jerked violently, and tried
to slam the medico's face with a gauntleted hand. She escaped the
blow by falling inelegantly backwards, rolling quickly back down the
corridor before trying to regain her feet. Kveldulf also fell
backwards; but he didn't get up again, and there was a syringey
thing on the floor between them. Grim levelled his halberd, meaning
to down her before helping Hrapp bash Loki senseless. He was
interrupted.

Thorgeir the Green stepped around the curve, Thorgeir _with a
halberd!_ and let Grim have it on full power and wide fanout. There
was enough power in that to kill him, but the Life Guard wasted it
in a diffuse jolt that just sent him into a

_Dear Si - Dear, dear Nyssa -_

_If you're reading this, then it probably sort of worked, only not
so well for me. It's not your faults, all right? It's something I
have to do, that's all. Hoping I get away with it, but - !_

_I love you both, honestly. I never meant to mess it all up. I get
scared when I shouldn't, and I know sometimes I get 'brave' - you
know, impatient! - when I shouldn't, too, and go in at the deep end
without thinking. I thought about it this time, though. It's a
'military decision'. If it's all hare-brained as usual, oh well,
sorry about that too!!_

_Si, you won. I do want to live a long time. I'm not the only one,
that's all!_

_Nyssa, I was so rotten to you, I'm so sorry! If I was like that,
you'd be the only woman in the world for me. You are always my best
friend. I wish I could have been Traken for you, but I'd be pretty
awful at it, don't we both know it?! I'd love to walk there with
you, if I get back!_

_Both of you: you have to take care of each other, or else I'll
come back and haunt you, so there!! Tell Cats thanks for
everything._

_See you 'come the Jubilee', eh?!?!!_

_Love, Tegan_
_Xxx x_

Sigfus had Mord's last two dozen squeezed between his own men and
the Korsakov's circle of fire, and Kjartan's crew were ready to face
a desperate break-out at any moment. The old Captain had put up a
hell of a fight, what with being surprised, and outgunned, and
having to do without comms and all; but this was the end of his
line, all right. Kjartan reckoned he'd do better than most in
Valhalla, when all the dust had settled. Couldn't blame a man for
falling under Idunna's spell, after all - especially if the
scuttlebutt had been true about who used to give her what she
needed, when she was rowing with her giant-bitch! Not that Kjartan
believed that rumour, of course. Not for definite.

The main doors of Terminus Hall began to creak open. A slim
tube began to emerge. _Shit!_ "Erik, prime lock 2 - "

"Eh?" said Per Bjorn. "White flag, there..."

"ALL VANIR, HOLD YOUR FIRE!" All the Hall's PA speakers
blared it out. It was a woman's voice, and a damned strange one.
"WE WANT TO PARLEY!"

The fire died down, not that it had been getting anywhere in a
hurry. Sigfus picked up his commander's bullhorn, and projected
back:

"Your rebels are broken, Evil One! You have nothing to talk
about but surrender!"

"ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT!" It was _that_ voice, overlaid with
heavy feedback. The volume dropped suddenly. "Do we have a parley?
Can we come out?"

"_Get back in!_" Mord's voice came over loud and furious over
his own bullhorn.

"Cherry's out of the loop. I'm speaking for Nyssa. This has
to stop. Sigfus, Truce of Tyr for all of us while we're discussing
terms, okay?" Pause. "Well, _is_ it?"

He never liked to think too quickly, the Prophet. After a
short while, the resigned, testy answer came back. "Truce of Tyr.
This will not take long."

Hel walked out the door. She looked tired, still defiant,
misleadingly helpless in her slutty black-and-white office-dress and
brandishing her tatty white flag. A whole rag-tag of civilians
followed carefully behind her, shopkeepers and artists and porters
and dunno-what. Some of them were regular folk, too: Young Mama
Hubbard was in that mob, and Walker Bustamante, and Khusro Bubbles.
They kept coming, and they all kept their hands out where everyone
could see them. This was an evacuation. It _wasn't_ going to take
long!

Of course, Cherry and Co. weren't showing their faces yet.
Hel stopped, and turned towards the main Vanir positions. _What's
she up to?_

"Sigfus," she said in a deliberately steady voice, "you need
to save your Vanir for something better than killing each other.
How many do you think you'll have left, if you push on to wipe out
Mord? There's a fleet coming in, or haven't you got anyone watching
at the port? We don't know _who_ they are! If you'll be sensible
about this, I'll order Mord to stop fighting you." She snorted
loudly, as Mord made a move with his bullhorn. "I _am_ speaking for
Nyssa, Mord. She would be so sick if she could see this! All her
people, killing each other. It stops here, Sigfus - unless that's
all you care about doing. If we surrender, are you going to be
sensible about the terms?"

"What _terms_?"

"All these people with me," said Hel. "They go free. No-one
harms them. They can leave Terminus if they like, and you don't
interfere." She drew in a deep breath. "And that goes for Si, too.
And - you have to swear it on Odin's spear. Even He can't break
that one, can He? You swear you won't hurt any of these people or
lock them up or anything, and everyone surrenders, right now, except
the ones who are staying in the Hall. They won't listen to me.
That isn't very hard, is it?"

"Traitor!" came a voice or three from Mord's ranks. "Rotten
bitch!"

Sigfus's voice was patronising and disdainful. "You think to
escape your reckoning that way, Hel-Tegan?"

"No." She squared her slender shoulders hopelessly. "No, I
know your Master wants you to catch me. I'll be your prisoner.
_If_ you swear!"

"I swear," said Sigfus, with cruel satisfaction. "On Odin's
Spear, I swear that all your civilians shall go free and unharmed,
and that Mord and his men shall be spared for the All-Father's
judgement unless they resist. _If_ you surrender yourself and all
under your authority to us! Do you surrender, Hel?"

"Yes," said Tegan, and began walking towards Sigfus's line.
"Mord, you heard me."

"I heard you," he said blackly, making no move.

"This is war," she said casually, not stopping. "You're not
under Cherry's authority here, are you? Or mine? __Run for it,
Mord!_

"_Yah-ah!_" Mord's company took off, still in pretty good
formation, with a ragged and barking cry. Per Bjorn tried to line
up the Korsakov, and cursed. Erik cursed some more, and Kjartan
felt like topping both of them.

There was no way to take out Mord from here without killing
all the civvies.

Sigfus had sworn on Odin's Spear that their lives were now
sacred, meaning irrevocable damnation for him and anyone bound to
him if they broke that oath. The All-Father Himself couldn't fix
that.

This bitch _had_ to be the real Hel! She _had_ to have been
brought up by Loki! No-one else could have twisted the laws as
nastily as that!

She carried on, cool as you pleased, over towards Sigfus. The
few shots his lot were able to get off at Mord, while they still
could, didn't do much damage. The renegade Captain's company made
it through the doors about fifteen seconds before Hel and High
Priest Sigfus came face to face.

Kjartan hoped she got what was coming to her.

Tegan stared up at the big fork-bearded Vanir with his golden armour
and devil-mask and glowing halberd. Having nothing better to do,
she smiled crookedly up at him, and shrugged.

"Your move, I guess..."

Julie was supporting the Doctor again, as they bolted through the
desolate Mayoral suite to the TARDIS. He'd strained himself badly
in that brawl, and his limited reserves were clearly used up. Even
with Thorgeir and surprise on their side, it had been a horribly
close thing.

"I truly am sorry about that," he apologised, as the Life
Guard dragged in the last of their unconscious captives and began to
bind him. "My Venusian karate is not what it was. Regeneration
really does de-tune the finer reflexes."

That was ridiculous enough to get Thorgeir's attention.
"_Venusian_ karate?"

"It's a sort of euphemism... All right. Julie, I'm going
to need a little help here. My hands won't steady up, and I need to
make some rather delicate technical adjustments."

"To what?"

"To the communications set. I have to send a specialised type
of signal through the near interstitial. The Desecrator can't
possibly block it, and Alphard will certainly pick it up in the Helm
Room."

"Can't it be set up automatically?" Mechanical tinkering was
never Julie's forte.

"I prefer not to let it." The Doctor was already sinking onto
rubbery knees, pulling open one of the central console's large side-
panels. "I don't like some of the i-forms that could come in on
that channel."

"Is the enemy one of them?" Thorgeir finished his job and got
up.

"Quite possibly. I hardly think it'll enter my TARDIS
willingly, though." He inspected some amazingly primitive-looking
cables and gauges critically, tilting his head backwards to get a
proper view.

"What will you do if it does?" Julie demanded.

"I really have not the faintest idea," he admitted cheerfully.
"Julie, could you pull the lever with the lilac knob on the end?
And centre those two blue dials? You'll find they interfere with
each other, but steady at it."

Thorgeir grunted. "How is sending a message worth _that_ much
danger, Stormcrow?"

"Stormcrow...?" The Doctor bridled. Why were attractive men
always so _childish_? Julie pulled the lever, and began inspecting
the odd dials. "Well, if we can establish a link, he should be able
to lay down pilot tracks in spacetime for the TARDIS to follow. We
ought to be able to do guided landings anywhere inside the defences
of Terminus. Pinpoint accuracy, in principle. It'll need the
Terminus helm and the TARDIS together to manage that, though."

"You're planning a surprise attack?"

"Hardly," said the Doctor waspishly. "Without normal
communications, we don't know where the enemy _is_. Making an
ambush rather problematical, wouldn't you say? No. Since the
Desecrator is so morbidly interested in Tegan, the first thing I
have to do is make sure she's safe - and fetch her to the Helm Room,
if she's anywhere else."

Julie swallowed a nasty slop of catarrh. "And the next
thing?"

"Oh, the next thing will be to improvise!"

"That's nice."

Tegan had half hoped Sigfus would lose control and blow her away;
but he just carried on talking and acting through his usual cold
fog, as if nothing she did could surprise him. He had a couple of
his men twist her hands roughly behind her back, and bind her wrists
with some kind of super-adhesive strip that hurt like vaccination
needles; then he carried on making his dispositions, to meet the new
predicament she'd left him in.

She didn't _want_ to die; but it would have solved a lot of
problems for everyone! At least with Nyssa still shut up in
mourning, the Doctor asleep, and Alphard in charge, she wouldn't be
much use as a hostage.

(Cats on a bloodily bungled hostage-rescue in ex-Russia: _If
that was the first thing that happened everywhere, there'd be a lot
less of this shit!_ Tegan: _Suppose it was_ your _friend out
there?_ And Cats: _I wouldn't want her to fall under a train,
either. I'm all for trains, see?_)

Whatever Sigfus was, he was too good at it. He ordered the
civilians out of the _agora_, and they left quick-time. "Crap!" she
heard one of his goons say nearby, watching them shuffle off. "No
Tuyet!"

"Yeah," said another, "a piece of that 'ud come in handy!" He
jiggled his halberd.

"Shut your arse before I fucking bust it!"

"She probably isn't - " A would-be peacemaker, here.

Sigfus's head began to turn, very slightly, in those three's
direction, as if their talk had just touched the edge of his mind.
That cut it off like an axe.

One of Tegan's escorts kicked the back of her ankle, only hard
enough to be nasty. The other said her least favourite word in the
world, softly, and meant her. No-one took any notice. No-one
_would_ notice, most likely! _Ottar! How do you and Einar rub
along with bastards like this?_

_Rabbits, I never said goodbye to_ him, _either!_

_Better not make it goodbye, then..._

Sigfus spoke into a clunky handset for a long time, proving
that _he_ had communications even if no-one else did. Afterwards,
he nodded with satisfaction, and told his men,

"The Helbound can mount no attack. Their battle is nearly
over. Goats, Korsakov crew, stay and contain Captain Mord. Horses,
with Ragnar's squad and Hjort's platoon, come. We shall head for
the War-Home, for prayer and provision, along with our prisoner." A
golden blur, and Tegan's world went orange and checked and hurty.
Her face stung hotly and fearfully, and her eyes watered. He'd
backhanded her casually with his gauntleted paw. "Her spells are
broken on Odin's Spear. She can't lay glamours or curses, now.
Justice comes. Grant her no unearned honours."

He turned his broad back on her, and they formed up like he
wanted. _Nyssa_, she said against the pain and fear, _Nyssa_. Just
the word, all she could call up. They moved her along with them.
They were quick and rough about it, and a couple of times Tegan
stopped just short of snapping something very dangerous at them.
She did stop, though.

If the Doctor had been up and about, she'd have expected to be
rescued, deep down, however bad things looked. That wasn't Nyssa's
talent - and it certainly wasn't Si's. This time was for real.
They entered the barracks. It had always been coming to this.

The Desecrator's troops had been in a hurry when they'd sprung
their coup. They hadn't stopped to shift the bodies, or the burned
leftovers. Tegan had seen places like this before. She'd left the
Doctor after their last one. Sigfus frowned, assigned a cleanup
squad, and had the barracks sealed again. Then there was a lot of
bustling about, as people went to charge up their weapons and power-
packs from the central banks. Tegan hadn't known they could do
that, and her heart sank further. She hoped Alphard and Cats and
Mord could come up with some tricks.

Sigfus, Hjort, her escorts, and a bunch of others went on with
her to the command centre. Sigfus said an Odinist prayer at the
console, sort of bragging about capturing her, and asking orders for
when they were ready to leave the barracks again. Nothing came.
Everyone waited. After a while they started running checks at the
workstations, because nothing else was up.

A painful little spark of hope flared up behind Tegan's eyes.
She let them drift, and began to daydream. By the TARDIS wardrobe;
Si in top hat and tails; her in a gorgeous dress; Nyssa in a
bridesmaid's gown, hugging her. Cats passed Si a Time Ring. "Do
you?" asked the Doctor; but he was her comfortable old model, not
the luscious, scary new one. "As captain of this ship, I now
pronounce you!" And she laughed inside her head, and the others
did, too.

She was still mostly somewhere else when Sigfus said,

"Enough. The All-Father is silent: he tells us to stir for
ourselves. Once our packs are full, we'll make for the Helm Room in
force. Now we have Hel to bargain with, the Lady will come to our
side."

"I wouldn't bet on that," said Tegan defiantly, waking up in a
hurry. Nyssa was in the Helm Room? Back in charge again? Where
she'd have to surrender, or let - ?

The Vanir walked over to her, and pulled her to her feet. His
clammy eyes and his long wispy forkbeard were much too close to her
face. She hoped she sneezed any moment now. His heavy hand
squeezed hard on her shoulder.

"We shall gamble," said Sigfus matter-of-factly, his gaze
seeming to focus on something beyond her. "The Lady is tender-
hearted, and ensnared with your false beauty. She'll not hide in
the Helm Room while we pick it apart. She'll come home to her
Father, to win you mercy. Which you don't deserve."

_You were born to betray them, both of them..._

"Drop dead, why don't you?"

"Because your curses have no strength against us, Queen of
Death, Mistress of Torments." He still spoke slowly, almost
intoning it, but he was truly looking at her now. She wished he
wasn't. Such deep, dull, ritualistic hate. The faintest mist of
spittle on her cheek. "Behold how one who lives for pain and woe
dreads it for herself." His hand slid smoothly around her neck,
under her chin, pushing her head back and up so that she had to look
at him. "You need fear no betrayal from Idunna, faithless one. If
her mind were free of your glamour, she'd be back with her Father
already. _She'll_ not see you harmed. Even with her own will,
she'd be too lenient. She might even sway her Father."

"Gawkh!"

He loosened his clenching hand a little. "Aren't you curious,
tormentor of the dead, corrupter of life? Is it fair dealing that
you should bring horror everywhere, and never know it for yourself?"
He carried on like a lecturer, as if he were open-mindedly
interested in the answer. "Don't you think that after all the ruin
and death you've caused here, we have our own claim for vengeance?"

She knew nothing she could say would win her more than a short
reprieve. She'd collected a fair acquaintance with sadists over her
time with the Doctor, and she had Sigfus pigeonholed nicely now: the
kind who needed to feel like some sort of saint about hurting
people. He'd enjoy spinning it out for a while, chopping up
anything she said with his own loony logic, backing her into a
corner until even she started feeling shifty and half-guilty.

No-one was going to rescue her, and no-one ought to bargain
for her. She couldn't give Sigfus the satisfaction, anyway.

"Oh, get on with it, if you're going to!" snapped Tegan.

"You appear not to care," remarked the Helm AI, "but: port integrity
is now breached. Possible actions: invoke hull force-field in shred
mode; ignore. Time window for shred attack: Order of 100 seconds.
Do you really want to ignore?"

"Yes!" Alphard led a fairly unenthusiastic chorus.

"Have it your way, baas."

The Terileptil fleet seemed to have got their message. It had
dropped its shielding, and the Helm Room had reports on all the
ships. Nyssa had reeled off names from their statistics,
Shakespearean things in the same style as the three they already
knew. His troop carrier, the _Bully Bottom_, had force-docked with
the unprotected port, and started breaking down the heavily-armoured
airlocks. Now the aliens were in.

The reptilian _taktikos_ hadn't brought any shaytans with him
after all, though there was a second 'freetrade cruiser' along for
the ride that no-one knew what to make of, since Alphard and his
databanks reckoned it one of the less common human models.

"So," said Nyssa, her mouth twisted wryly. "Now we're all in
Uncle Fastolf's hands! He's told me off so many times for being too
trusting, and now it's come to this." She shook her dishevelled
head. "I hope he doesn't laugh himself to death!"

"I don't think he will," Si told her.

"How could you know?"

"He's someone you chose for a friend. That's how."

"You really don't know me at all, do you?"

He drew himself up, hurt by the truth in that. "Does anyone
really ever know anyone?"

"No. No. Not here. Not now."

"Then I'll take this until something better comes along."

"This what?"

"This not knowing."

"Received," said the AI, "priority call - "

"Thank you."

" - Gallifreyan GTT protocol. Accept?"

"Gallifrey too?" demanded Alphard. "Bring them all on!"

The viewport came on. This image was as grainy as a security
camera's, and Si took a moment to adjust to its flicker. Sitting at
the TARDIS console was

"_Doctor!_" The temporal engineer's face lit up with
delighted appreciation. "In the nick of time, I dare say. What can
we do for each other?"

And Nyssa said at the same time, "Doctor, are you all right?"

He grimaced. "Wobbly but well. I see Tegan isn't with you.
Do you know what's become of her?"

"She was working in Cherry's office at Terminus Hall," Si told
him quickly, "when this got started. Alphard and Nyssa say it's
well shielded. She's probably under siege, as we are." He
hesitated. "You couldn't...?"

"I will if I can. Alphard, can you lay me down ST pilot
tracks, so I can finesse the TARDIS directly into Terminus Hall?"

"Finesse a Type 40? Ha! Yes, I can give you tracks - there,
and back here, if you want to bring her." Alphard smacked his lips.
"I can even think of a couple of other tracks to give you, once we
get back. Know, while we're at it, the situation's become otherwise
interesting. A Fuji-Greathearth occupation force just broke through
the port."

"Uncle Fastolf turned up with a fleet," said Nyssa. "We
thought we'd better let him in."

"H'mmm. Does he know whom to fight?"

"He isn't stupid, Doctor. Nor is Mord. They might break
Sigfus's force quite quickly now - and then Fastolf will control the
station."

"Yes," agreed the Doctor. "That's alarmingly interesting. I
think I shall just bring Tegan and myself over to the Helm Room,
anyway, and then we can all get together and decide what to do. See
you in a few minutes, I expect. Over and out!" Blank screen.

Alphard was already at his console, humming tunelessly to
himself, his fingers flying over the board like a mad organist's.

The TARDIS squealed and shuddered abysmally, and materialised in
Terminus Hall. The Doctor glanced up at the viewport, and grinned
far too widely in total exasperation.

"How hilarious," he observed. "Well, I did want to appear a
little out of the way, I suppose. Coming?" He shook his head as
they filed out, complete with confiscated halberds, into the rest
room. "Are Alphard's jokes always this impeccably timed?"

"Doctor," said Julie, behind him, "it's changed..."

"It's what?" He peeked impatiently over his shoulder, then
spun full around with a start. His TARDIS was blue again, and a
Superloo no longer. He blinked disbelievingly. The police light
flashed happily back at him, three times.

"We'll speak of this later, old girl," he sighed, turning away
and making for the door "Come along, Thorgeir, Julie. Time may be
of the essence, if Fastolf is feeling ambitious. Besides, I don't
want him to liberate Tegan before I do. She has a problem with
Terileptils. Reptiles in general, actually." It occurred to him
that he was prattling. Their reunion was apt to be awkward, to say
the least. "Do either of you know your way around this place?"

"A little," said Thorgeir. "It doesn't matter. There are
signs and maps all over." As there proved to be. They came to
Cherry's office, and found the door ajar.

"Hearts and flowers," said a high, gentle voice, "to your
queen."

"Diamonds and heartbreak to your secretary," Cherry returned;
and there came the unmistakable slap and slither of cards on a
table. The Doctor handed his halberd back to Thorgeir, and walked
through the door. Cherry and Tuyet Nguyen sat at a table, with
glasses of water and arrays of cards between them. The Trungan sage
was so daintily built, she made Nyssa look gross. She wore a
shocking pink jumpsuit and sported a black belt-pouch. As the
Doctor entered, she slid her hands across the table, and folded all
the cards back into the pack as expertly as a sharper. Two Vanir
were with them, Bjorn and a silver-haired woman. No Tegan.

"Good morning!" said the Doctor. "Where is she?"

"Gone," said the shieldmaid, with such respect that it struck
dread through his heart. "Have you got your ship with you?"

"Where is she?"

"Sigfus has her," Bjorn explained.

"Oh, no! How, and where?"

Cherry told him. He couldn't believe it.

"You let her do _that_?"

"I was scarcely consulted," said Cherry, tartly. "As for the
rest of it, I'll say she did well."

Tuyet said calmly, "Would you have acted differently, Doctor?
Do you see her as a child, then?" She laughed, like a sigh. "I
think you do not. May we help?"

He shook his head violently. He felt like a man on fire.
"Wait. Let me speak to Mord. I can take his force to the Helm Room
in my TARDIS, to link up with Ottar and the bodyguard. With half
Sigfus's faction pinned down here, we have possibilities." The
shieldmaid was already speaking into her handset, which she passed
him. "Come in, Mord! This is the Doctor..."

"Here, Stormcrow!" the Vanir leader's crisp voice returned.
"Can you get us to Her Honour?"

"Yes. Bring your men to the rest rooms, downstairs, left and
right from Cherry's office, along the corridor with the engineer
plaques."

"Ground Blue Three," supplied Cherry, over his shoulder.
"Ingenious Street."

"Yes. I'll meet you there. Doctor out!"

Tuyet got up. "Please take me with you. I may be needed,
before this is over."

"As you wish. Come along, then."

"Us too," declared Bjorn.

"Quite right," said Cherry. "I'll stay for everyone else's
benefit: you go where they need firepower."

"Oh," the Doctor threw over his shoulder as he hurried out,
"watch out for Terileptils. Apparently Fastolf's here with a small
army. On our side, or against Sigfus, at least. Be careful!" He
broke into a trot. They probably wanted Tegan as a hostage, but he
didn't trust fanatics even that far. And the Desecrator itself had
tried to kill her mind once already, simply to wound him and
Nyssa...

Besides, she was probably the most provoking person in the
Galaxy.

"Hold on, Tegan!" he said, under his breath, hoping that at
some level she'd be able to hear it. "I'm coming!"

Heard by Tegan, in the empty places:

Sigfus's vile, slow, sad voice: "Sigfus speaking. _What_ are
you fighting? Geir! Come in, Geir!"

Hjort, biliously: "What's up with him, Captain?"

"Geir's checkpoint came under heavy fire. He said there were
wogs everywhere, then cut out." Grimly: "This is the Helbound's
last throw. We must take the Helm Room before they reach it. You
two - carry the witch!" Two of them picked up Tegan like a side of
meat, and the whole unit began to quick-march. So, the Lions had
broken through at last! _Shame it wasn't a couple of hours ago!_

_Come on, Gisco!_, she thought. That hawkish face, those warm
fierce eyes, all those terrifying stories about him. _He won't wait
to find out they've got me. He'll burn us all down, if he can..._

Come on, Gisco!

It took time - frantic, jam-packed minutes - for Nyssa's reunited
forces to bring each other up to date; then they were flinging
strategies together as if there were no tomorrow, and precious
little today. Everyone agreed on their first gambit: a surprise
TARDIS raid on the barracks, in full strength. While Cats and
Alphard set up pilot tracks for the presumably-vacant gym, the
others argued about what to do should the barracks prove empty, and
Sigfus come knocking on their door, heavily-armed and with Tegan as
his hostage. The Doctor spun a wild and dangerous plan, offering a
fighting chance for all concerned at his own, surely terminal,
expense. Nyssa seized that notion, with an unaccustomed ferocity
that outmatched the Doctor's own, and recast it over his protests.
No-one liked her solution, or had anything better to offer. Alphard
said tersely, "Better catch them in the barracks, then. The tracks
should take in about a hundred seconds. Get!"

Mord, his company, and half Nyssa's bodyguard filed briskly
into the TARDIS. "Hey, Alfie," said Cats, "we've got a restriction-
field defence here, haven't we? Couldn't we project that into the
corridor if they come, stop their halberds striking when they don't
expect it?"

The Doctor paused on the threshold.

Alphard made a rude noise. "No way to make it directional,
fifth-power distance losses, no ready-made screens, limited energy
reserves with the Black Sun offline! I could quench _our_ halberds
if you liked, but - !" He waved the Doctor off irritably.

"You've got it!" exclaimed the Doctor. "That's exactly our
edge! Excuse me; I'll be back!" And he was off.

The TARDIS looked and sounded very sick, but it did wheeze its
way out.

Cats got the Doctor's point first. Everyone found it obvious,
once she'd explained it.

The space in the Helm Room strained and heaved, and gave birth to a
painfully shaky police box. Cats slid her hand across her aching
eyes, and hoped the temperamental old crate would stand up to a few
more of these short sharp trips. Not much to her surprise, the
Doctor came storming out straight away, with a dozen Vanir and a
bunch of bad news.

"They've been to the barracks and left again. We have to hope
they're coming for us. Nyssa, I still think - "

"No."

"I'm very hard to kill," he scowled, "and they'll regret the
exchange!" The Doc was turning out a revelation, since Tegan's
stunt: as hot to hurt _someone_ as Alex used to get, only quicker
and smarter and more practical about it. He wasn't getting any
change out of Nyss, though.

"Not as much as I would. This is mine, Doctor. This cult is
my fault, and I have to finish it." She switched off suddenly,
putting away the magic trick she'd been practising mechanically, to
lean on Si's ready shoulder. Cats didn't think she was going to
collapse again. She just kept going somewhere inside her head,
somewhere dangerous. You'd have thought that Ms Doll-in-a-Teacup
Buddha might have said something wise, especially when Nyssa had
rewritten the Doctor's desperate plan; but as far as Cats could
tell, the dinky Vietnamese mystic was just along for the ride.
_There's mystics for you, grasshopper..._

_Sophia, Bast, any of You Who ain't out there: just don't let
us lose them, okay?_

Cats didn't like the way the odds were shaping up.

"This cult is my fault," said Nyssa, "and I have to finish it." She
rested her head on Si's shoulder, as cosily as a rag doll, preparing
herself for what was to come. The Doctor nodded, shrugged good luck
at her, and went back to lurk by the door of his TARDIS. No-one
felt like talking.

Si knew he should have said something, done something right
and clear and sane, when Nyssa had come out with her 'rescue plan'.
This was one of those times of truth, and look at what he was
learning.

_Everyone tested, and out of their humour..._

Tegan, who thought herself trivial whenever she closed her
mouth for too long: a real-life hero when it came to the pinch, far
beyond Si.

The Doctor - alien, unattached, man of peace - ready to trade
himself for Tegan one more time; but also, all too obviously, aching
to grind Sigfus's bones to flour in his hands. Si doubted his rage
stopped at Sigfus, either.

Nyssa, gentle and loving and full of wonders, stripped down to
bare steel, doing bad impressions of herself. Si thought about
Omega's Mask, the soulless AI shell of a man, that she'd befriended
and freed and married to its... soulmate? Nyssa. Nyssa's Mask.
Nyssa.

And himself, stealing scenes and hearts with high dreams and
bright words and footling wit and taste - until he walked into a
situation as big as the ones he harped about, and found himself
embarrassed. _The king is in the altogether, the altogether, it's
altogether the least..._

_Dear God, let Tegan come back to us! I swear, I'll never put
her off or patronise her again!_

With the Doctor going the road he was, Si doubted he'd get the
chance, anyway. He only wished he could at least find some way to
be of use to Nyssa.

"Priority advisory," said the AI. "Group matching search object
detected on local sensors."

"View," said Alphard. Nyssa touched Si's arm and stood up.
Twenty or more Vanir, Sigfus in their second rank, were marching
down the corridor, two of them carrying Tegan. Even at this
resolution, she didn't look well. The troop had shieldwalls at
front and rear, and their rearguard was busy and alert. The Doctor
sighed, and slipped back into the TARDIS.

The handful of Mord's Vanir who'd stepped out with him
disappeared into Alphard's private suite, packing the projectile,
electromag, and sonic small-arms they'd liberated from the barracks.

Nyssa gathered her strength for one last, hard effort. In her
mind, she touched Si as she never would in the world, ruffling her
hand through his long hair, borrowing a little of his quiet light
courage and Traken-tinged humanity for herself.

"Incoming call from: target group. Identity: Sigfus
Asmundirsson. Accept?"

They were at the door, putting Tegan roughly down. Her hands
were bound behind her back, and she seemed unsteady on her feet. A
cold thrill ran up Nyssa's right arm.

The TARDIS dematerialised, noisily and shakily, along one of
Alphard's pilot tracks. It ought to take the Doctor and Mord's
company to a side-passage not too far away, behind Sigfus's lines.
The combined loyalist forces now outnumbered Sigfus's, though they
were surely still outgunned.

"Accept," said Alphard, "and split." A bad handset image of
Sigfus opened up over half the viewport. A man called Leif held
Tegan, beside him. Tegan's lovely face was blotched with fresh
bruises, and there were streaks of dried blood about her nose and
mouth.

_I really can do this_, Nyssa thought. _I really will. Guide
me,_ amie!

"Lady Idunna," said Sigfus, "your false-friends are defeated,
and Hel is in our hands. Come to your Father now, and ask his
pardon."

"Alphard," said Nyssa, "can he really force your doors with
twenty halberds?"

"He could make them lukewarm."

"Do I have to surrender if he does that?"

"Not that I ever heard of," Ottar assured her.

"Oh." She frowned, dragging out every second she dared, more
seconds for Mord to get his people into position. "Sigfus, do you
have - what _must_ he have, Alphard?"

"Neutron cannon?" the engineer shrugged. "Gigawatt
celeraser?"

"I don't understand. We don't keep things like that here, do
we?"

Sigfus bowed formally. "Lady Idunna, we have not come to
break down Surt's gate. We came to require you to deliver this keep
to us, for your Father. Will you do us all that honour?"

"Nyssa, no!" yelled Tegan. "Don't listen - " Another Vanir,
anonymous behind his mask, slapped a mailed hand across her mouth,
splitting her lip again and making her stop and choke. Nyssa _felt_
Si leap up, behind her back, and curse all the Powers in his heart.

"Stop that!"

"Gladly, Life's Maiden," Sigfus told her impassively.
"Surrender the Helm Room."

"Don't be absurd. Why should I?"

The zealot bowed again. "Because if you will not obey your
Father, the Most High, freely, we shall peel His enemy's painted
lips from her face and make her swallow them. As you continue
refusing, we'll dock her ears, fingertips, toes, teeth, nose,
breasts, shameful parts, eyes, and tongue, before we send her broken
ghost back to her Hel-home. Your emergency kits will keep her alive
and awake long enough for that." He gave her a sick smile, like an
evil kinsman in a Terran storybook. "One way or another, you'll
break free of her glamour!"

Nyssa felt her blood draining away, her gorge rising. How had
she fostered this? "Don't - don't do that! I'll come with you.
Let her go."

"_Nyss!_" Cats exploded. "You can't trust this bastard!"

Tuyet nodded gravely. "His evil is his own. He damns
himself, not you." Her eyes closed up, and she began quietly
droning a Tibetan prayer with Tegan's name in it.

"Lady," said Sigfus, "please yield me the Helm Room and
yourself. Now." He looked over his shoulder, and a masked Vanir
who looked like Rurik handed him a ceremonial razor.

"I yield," said Nyssa coldly. "But you must swear spear-oath
not to harm her, until we come to Odin's presence and hear His doom.
If He _is_ my Father, He may be more merciful than you know."

"I will swear no more spear-oaths," growled Sigfus, brushing
the razor's edge close to Tegan's lips. "_Will_ I, witch? - Come
now, surrender everything, and I, Sigfus Odin's-priest, will not
harm her except by Odin's doom, so long as she's our obedient
prisoner. Choose now."

"Very well," said Nyssa. "Ottar, please have your men drop
their weapons. Alphard, the doors."

"Now wait a moment, _niña_!" Alphard blustered. "You
resigned; I'm Mayor now. I'll not let you go on with this madness."

"Ottar," said Nyssa, turning , "get this _person_ out of my
way."

"All right, all right!" Alphard worked the console. "Never
say I didn't try!"

Nyssa walked away. Cats swivelled her chair and spat on the
floor. The great doors opened just as Nyssa reached them. Her
bodyguard sullenly placed their halberds on the ground.

They pulled the shieldwall aside for her, and Sigfus stepped
forward, a holy exaltation in his eyes. Leif, just behind him,
continued to hold a groggy Tegan, who looked like she'd suffered a
worse beating than the worst Amina had ever given Nyssa. The Traken
didn't have to fake her anger and contempt.

_This is how she felt when she saw me?_

Squelch. "This," said Nyssa freezingly, inspecting her old
friend like a casualty admission, "is nitheling's work: strong men
hurting a helpless prisoner. Even if you _are_ right about who she
is." Tegan blinked sharply. _Be ready, dear heart._ Vanir brushed
past them to take possession in the Helm Room, where all halberds
were now useless. "Tegan - whatever you really are - we'll go to my
father together. Will you walk with me on your feet to our dooms,
like a free woman?" She shot Sigfus an angry glance. "_Can_ you?"

"Yes," sniffed Tegan. "They just bashed me up a bit."

"Good. This will be more seemly. Leif, hack that cheap tape
off her wrists. It insults everyone." Seeing him obey, she turned
to Sigfus, and gave him a doubting, infinitely weary look.

"I don't know anything anymore," she announced; and by Go-
Lightly's grief, how little she was deceiving him! She reached him
her left hand with a cringing, pained, throwing-herself-away
gesture. "Please, take us to Him now - !"

Sigfus heard his errant goddess resign herself to his way, saw
her reach self-despairingly for him through her emptiness. Their
eyes met and held. She saw meat and bone and mad light. Her free
hand flashed up before anyone thought of it, and did Si's trick,
planting a palmed red rose between his eyes.

He never saw the little ion punch that killed him. Nyssa spun
around in _Laughing Kibbeth_, bouncing the drained tool hard off
Leif's mask like a slingshot, and

"_Tegan! TO ME!_"

whirled her friend in a _Cockatrice Bow_, under and around,
propelling her past falling Sigfus into the blunt dead corner
between the tilted-back shieldwall and the side of the corridor.
Tegan was dangerously slow and graceless in the movement, especially
for her. As the Vanir, reacting, began to turn on her, Nyssa began
to dance _Vivimancer's Challenge_ as best she could. It was an
utterly stupid defence against a serious enemy - especially for a
third-rate _zaphiretsa_ like herself - but it was exotic, confusing,
and very much in the way. That was what counted here!

Loud commotions bloomed from the Helm Room and the far end of
the corridor. Fire and confusion assailed the rear shieldwall.
Nyssa cried at the encroaching Vanir,

"You'll have to take me down to reach her, gentlemen - and
you're out of time!" She performed a desperate dodge-and-block
sequence, one way and another, with all the fearful perfection of
her old love for Tegan-Elissa. If they stopped getting in each
other's way, or weren't distracted, or weren't half-crippled with
innate reluctance to lay hands on her, they'd crash through her in
seconds. And Rurik seemed to be shaking that off dangerously
quickly -

Heavy Hjort was on him from behind, then, red-faced and
puffily furious, locking his arm and yelling, "Not _Her_, man - the
_wogs_ - " They vanished into their own private fight. Nyssa threw
a sequence of feints, blocks, and dodges at Leif, actually driving
him back a couple of paces because he couldn't screw himself up to
strike her.

"Don't do that, Tegan," she heard herself say, scarcely
registering that or the cold that went with it, as some detached
part of her mind noted her companion's stooping for Sigfus's fallen
halberd. _Tegan mustn't fight!_ She threw a sudden _Fairy Gift_ at
the young right-hand Vanir, didn't find him, pivoted back on
instinct to face a resurgent Rurik, who was thrown back by a wildly
misjudged halberd-stroke from Tegan. Before Rurik could come back
with a deadly counter, Hjort was staggering up again, and hammering
the shaft of a weapon into the back of his head. On the third blow,
Rurik collapsed. Nyssa didn't care if he was dead. He'd held the
razor, so he wasn't a person anyway.

"_Nyssa! Bright-Wing!_"

Ottar! Dearest of Vanir! The enemy's front was broken!

"Tegan! Go with Ottar! Back to the Helm Room!"

"With us, Yeronner - "

Hjort had grabbed Sigfus's fallen bullhorn, and now hollered
into it, "Pack it in! Surrender to the Lady! Yeronner, you win
fair and square, but now we have to stand together!" Inexplicably,
he darted a quick wild look past Nyssa, as if he were really
speaking to Tegan. "Brothers! We have to join up with the Lady's
troops _right now_, fight off the wogs together!"

Nyssa blinked. "What - oh. The Terileptil invasion. Quite.
Stand down your weapons now, and follow Captain-General Mord's
orders. Ottar, take Tegan back to Julie at once." The back ranks
were still fighting - Mord's strike force, and each other. What was
it to be a general - seeing such things, and using them like chess-
moves, and caring for life anyway? _Oh, love,_ amie, _show me!_
"The Doctor and I will stay here with you. We want a few words with
Ter'Fastolf - "

She avoided Hjort's guilty, imploring look with revulsion, gave
Ottar her halberd before she hurt the wrong person with it, and fell
in by his side. "Thanks," she said, amazed that a Vanir could still
make her feel so safe and brave and warm as Ottar always did.
_Ottar what? He ought to be Ottar_ Something...

Every ache in her body had expected Nyssa to hug her, with
words if nothing else; but her old companion seemed to be too much
Amina's Little Killing Machine right now to sense that, or to care
if she did. _Probably just as well,_ she told herself. _Terileptil
invasion! I knew the snake'd turn on her, I knew it!_ She
straightened her back, knowing that Ottar wouldn't expect mopery,
and let his grave kind answer bounce around between her ears:

"It's you we have to thank for everything, Tegan, Bright-Wing.
You're stuck with the songs for sure now, you know." The last
sounds of pain and destruction had fallen silent behind them. "For
now, you get to rest. It's over."

Sweetest thing she could have heard!

"It's you we have to thank for everything," echoed Ketil,
pressing forward out of the Helm Room to meet his partner and Tegan.
_Trust him to make anything sound like a complaint!_ "It's over - "

Ottar seemed to stumble in front of her, treading on her toes.
She opened her mouth to tell him off as she bumped into him; but a
strange flash dazzled her eyes, and a horrid hot pain seared her
where she'd touched him; and then she was falling backwards, and he
was sliding some other way, and there was more flashing and cursing,
and more steam and roast-pork smell everywhere, and she was
scrabbling on the floor for a halberd -

"No." A voice she knew stopped her batting away the hands and
faces around her. "Tegan, listen to me. There's no-one to fight.
Tegan!"

"Doctor." He was really back. "_Ottar!_"

"I'm sorry, Tegan. Ketil was one of the Master's sleepers.
He's dead: Baldur killed him when he struck down Ottar."

He helped her rise, numb and ashy, from the floor. Nyssa was
kneeling over Ottar as Julie did things to him, saying in a voice
fiercer than tears, "You shan't. I'm not going to let you!"

Bile burned Tegan's throat as she saw the wreckage Ketil had
left of her best friend on Terminus. His beautiful, blunt face was
scarcely marked, though twisted into a grimace. Impossibly, he
spoke through it.

"Hinny!" he laboured, his voice rasping and twanging like a
choked-up bandsaw. "No choice. Down. I'll whisper."

And Tegan whispered to the Doctor furiously, "That was meant
for me, wasn't it?"

He nodded grimly. "What they call a dead man's strike," he
confirmed. "Ottar stepped into it. Armour is - not enough
protection."

Nyssa raised her head away from Ottar's words, her complexion
gone very red-and-white. "Yes, I can. Do you truly want - "

"Yah."

"Doctor! Take Ottar with Julie and Thorgeir, to the stasis
tanks in the hospital. Come back directly."

Tegan beat the Doctor to her friend's side. Her eyes were running
now, but she ignored them. "Ottar," she said, squeezing the cry out
of her voice. "You crazy, lovely man. Don't you _dare_ die for
me!"

"Gotto for some - One." She saw the shrug he couldn't give.
As Thorgeir and the Doctor came to lift him up, Tegan kissed him
firmly on the forehead.

"Live," she insisted - just to let him know how much she
wanted it, because she didn't see how it could happen. She
straightened, got out of people's way. "Doctor, Nyssa: I'm coming
too. Don't argue!"

"I won't," said Nyssa, in a small voice. "Baldur, Bjorn,
Signy: go with them. Take care, all of you." She got up too, her
habit of command falling back about her as she rose. "If
Ter'Fastolf comes, I can deal with him myself."

"I bet you can." Tegan swallowed hard, and fell in with the
stretcher party. "And, Nyssa - thanks for saving me. You're the
best." _But please, love. Don't be killing people any more, all
right? Not you..._

"It was nothing to what you did, Tegan. We can't honour you
enough - or Ottar." Nyssa turned away, and marched briskly in
Mord's direction. It looked like the machine was back in action.

Tegan was afraid she knew what kind of thing Ottar would have
asked for. It was impossible and terrifying, so Nyssa probably
_could_ do it. She desperately wanted a few words alone with her
friend, before that or death took him away from her.

A jewelled, skeletal silver mantis skittered around the corner,
clicking and whirring and posing menacingly across the width of the
corridor. "Stand fast," cried Mord to his edgy troops, "and hold
your fire!" Hjort's Odinists, disarmed now but a ready reserve in
case they were needed, shifted restlessly in the back ranks. Si
stood close at Nyssa's shoulder, and he wasn't quite happy about it.

When Tegan had come back from the hospital, he and Cats had
welcomed her back warmly. He'd gone to put the old comforting arm
around her shoulder; and she'd flinched back openly, as if he'd been
a pushy and unprepossessing schoolboy, and cleaved close to the
Doctor after that. It wasn't as if he hadn't had enough warning -
and there was nothing like pain and terror and loss for teaching
people what they truly cared for! - but it shouldn't have ended like
this.

He felt no freer with Nyssa than before, and the Terileptils
troubled him in ways the flatly evil Master could never touch. Days
and years ago, Gallswallow had lent him Fastolf's gorgeous,
impossible tragedy _Cordeliane_: dark and violent and relentless,
grand and brilliant and monstrously empathetic, like the substance
to sixteenth-century shadows. He knew more than somewhat about the
human era Fastolf adored, as a would-be Renaissance man himself; but
he knew too well what the real article had been capable of, what
parts of the package he'd rejected unceremoniously for the sake of
his worldly soul. He'd been left, though, with a distinct
impression that the Terileptils prized the whole mindset equally.

The mantis performed a sudden multilegged shuffle, and folded
itself back into the side-corridor.

Leaping, tripping, and bobbing like zero-gravity dancers, the
Terileptils came. They were bulky bipedal lizards with frog faces,
each toting an outsize blaster-gun in either hand. They were very
beautiful. Their scales were enamelled in vivid colours; their
moves were Margot Fonteyn meets the Marines; and they murmured
musically at the lower end of human hearing. Somehow it was clear
to everyone that they were going to stop three-quarters of the way
down the corridor, but the moment was so abrupt and synchronised, it
was a shock to Si anyway.

Nyssa touched wrists with him, and then passed through to the
front rank. She bowed, low and deep and quasi-Japanese, provoking
hushed Vanir mumblings. "Well met, Uncle Fastolf!"

"Nest-niece." Si hadn't entertained a moment's doubt about
the leader's identity. The _taktikos_ Fastolf of Fuji-Greathearth
was taller than most of his crew and broader than any; his scales
were enamelled to a glittering harlequin design, flinging shards of
lovely light around like small change. He stepped confidently
across the carnage and inclined his head agreeably, but his voice
was low and chthonic and inscrutable. "What cheer? What fortune of
war? Hast o'erthrown thy dastards unaided, then?"

"Great grief," Nyssa returned steadily, "and the battle won,
the war uncertain. Amina's mind-slain, her slayer dead by my hand;
and Ourania's soul is become the Master's, those rebels but dupes
and henchmen. He'll be this world's god yet, an we destroy him
not!"

The Elizabethan pastiche they both spoke should have rung
obscene against the battlefield's reality; and yet Si heard in it
only gravity and custom: only Nyssa's abiding love for the perilous,
unaccountable alien who'd given her a tongue for all she felt and
couldn't say. _Surprise us, Ter'Fastolf, he willed intensely.
Treat her as she'd treat you: demand nothing, except how you can
help her! You might even change Tegan's mind about your people..._

"Grief indeed," the Terileptil averred. "Chain-Breaker Dark-
Wind Vine-Tree shall leave voids in more lives than thine, or I'm no
judge. - This is costly aid thou'st claimed, Nyslet. Sauron's no
more, and Jack Puff clings to life by a talon; and here we find
ourselves broiled in such a war, as losing's perdition indeed! What
should I gain, think you, with this conquest of Terminus?"

"I deem I've surrendered to you already," said Nyssa, causing
a wave of strangled protests from the ranks. "Do you ask it, I'll
come with you when the war's over. You can have all my Dragon &
Maiden shares, and what skills I have; and I'll work to your order,
until you call my debt redeemed."

"So." Fastolf's slow voice was as unreadable as his chronic
reptilian smile. "Thou'rt peachable of great folly, my Nyslet.
Here's a gate to infinite lordship, fallen into the hands of thy
worst foe; nor canst deny me aught I'd take, though it be Terminus
and the Living Sky and all! Have I not warned thee a thousand times
how ill 'tis, trusting to kin? how thou must ever watch and ward
against my shifts?"

"Yes, Uncle."

"And had this rebellion never been?" he pursued ponderously,
crests pulsating. "Thy best defences were poor fish, an I'd brought
a shaytan, what's well within my power. Confess thou'rt a poor
warder for the Universe's keystone, that it were small art for me to
do better!"

The Doctor shifted restlessly. Si felt a kindred pang. "Yes,
Uncle."

"And here," the _taktikos_ said softly, "with the worst of all
double-dipped villains squatting God's empty throne to your much
distress, who should come to master the scene, but this greatest
Maker and demiurge of the arch-enchanting Wonder-Race! warrior,
vivant, and philosopher nonpareil! in such wise as none may
withstand! Come, is it not Providence? Wouldst not be midwife to a
new order of art and wine and song, and thy great friend its all-
amending spirit? Ha, what sayest thou?"

"No, Uncle."

Fastolf laughed boomingly. "Now thou'rt my own true Nyslet,
and I love thee! We'll speak more at length, and in comfort.
Tarrasque, Ama'asu: with me. Mord, good younker, get your minions
out our way, for we'll confer in the Helm Room at the heart of all.
Nyssa, I'll take a year's D&M revenue to myself for each drake dead
or maimed, and a twenty-year amortised plunder-ransom of Terminus
Station for my crew's rightful prize, ere we think on greater
matters: agreed?"

Nyssa didn't even register a wince. "Done."

"Then come, and tell me," said Fastolf, looming forward
already, "how things came to so ill a pass, while we wait for
Macaire's party to cleanse your ether..."

Tegan stayed close to the Doctor's side, to stay conscious, to keep
the roaring emptiness away. Walking was a stinging, clammy fire;
she took short quick steps and kept her face glassily calm, her eyes
narrowed on the three invaders in the Helm Room. Cold, greedy, big-
talking, tormenting, unreliable _snakes_ - she trusted the
Terileptils even less than she did the remnants of the Vanir. Tegan
wasn't going to handicap the Doctor or Nyssa with worries about
_her!_ She distracted herself by fastening onto Nyssa's tale of
her war with the Master and her loss of Amina. Silver-green, spike-
sleeved Tarrasque and slender dawn-streaked Ama'asu paced floatingly
around the room, making it seem occupied and dreamlike, as Nyssa
spoke formally and clearly to her inscrutable 'Uncle' - who was
giving nothing away at all.

Nyssa carried on all the way to the fall of Ottar, by which
time her recital was getting a little ragged. Tegan had been
rigidly concentrating on the Terileptils, through the part about
herself. She couldn't stand to listen to that. Fastolf said, at
last,

"Ah. A promising lad; my regrets." Another, overlong pause.
"If the Black Sun's fallen also, we must retake it forthwith."

"We must."

"Shalt need my bullies for such game."

"We shall. Thank you!"

"I were remiss," said Fastolf, "after all that's passed, did I
essay war here under any rule save mine own. Nor (the Black Sun
cleansed) is it my will to leave thee, while the Master infests thy
God-Egg; nor do I deem thou canst efface him easily or swiftly. Or
durst naysay me in this?"

Ama'asu began a quiet, melodious, insolent humming. Tegan saw
Nyssa's brow knit at that casual, deadly question. _Oh, you rotten
snake bastards!_

"Stop it!" she exploded, before anyone could shush her. _Let
it all happen. Everything else has._ "How _dare_ you play games
with her? After all this? It isn't as if we don't know you were
bringing your fleet up before this started; so you can stop this
'Dutch uncle' rubbish right now, if you don't mind!" She shook her
head against depression, tears, vomit. _'My regrets,' indeed!_
"Show some respect, can't you!"

Her words sent a strange, swift ripple through the room.
First, Tarrasque shifted his stance around by a couple of inches, as
if he were targeting her with a lazy evil eye and had half a mind to
follow through physically; scarce seconds later, Nyssa, the Doctor,
Cats, Si, several of the Vanir, Ama'asu, and even Tuyet had moved
fractionally, and the air was suddenly as fragile as glass.
"Uncle - " said Nyssa; but he stopped her with a falling-leaf
gesture of one glittering hand, and then he was coming himself, over
to Tegan and the Doctor. She never could get a sense for how
quickly Terileptils moved, when they wanted to. She realised that
the Doctor wasn't trying to apologise for her, and that fed her a
bolt of strength. She glared straight into the big lizard's brass-
coloured eyes as he looked down on her.

With a backwards step and a slow nod of his crested head, he
turned it into a grave and appreciative bow.

"My fair lady, Bel-Phoenix," declared Fastolf, which made
Nyssa start for some obscure reason, "I've heard much of you, these
many years. You surpass my niece's tales of you." His voice
rumbled low, sincere, and admiring, and his bright eyes said they
saw everything. Tegan felt she was drowning in snake-oil. An
incredibly gentle claw brushed the top of her cheekbone, exquisitely
judged as a cat comforting a sad owner, but mannered and
meaningless. "I fear you've earned your glory hardly..."

_How can she love something so hateful?_ "I'm not interested
in glory, Ter'Fastolf!" She felt, more than saw, the Doctor's nod
of approval.

"Modesty," said Fastolf, handling the word as if with tongs,
"is a meagre virtue, and glory's untame; you, most gallant, shan't
escape it so simply." He strolled back to Nyssa, and said, more
softly than before,

"Thy sweet friend speaks in part justly, though: 'tis ill done
in me, to leave thee with sharp doubts and dreads while I riddle all
out. Would I'd speeded faster from our damned do-gooding! I heard
the tales of great Amina's overthrow, and Terminus in misrule, and
what news-monkey lies it were wearisome to tell as to hear; and so
gathered my lads and my fleet about me, to come at the truth for
myself." He made a liquid, shruggy gesture with his right hand.

"I'll tell thee frankly, I meant to test thee at thy weakest,
with a shaytan's danger hidden in my silences; save I more than half
doubted thou ruled still, and then must we restore thee or avenge
thee. Now, against such enemies as thine, that were scarce like to
prove a light task; so meeting my old foe Moonlight Sorensen for our
usual causes on the way, I did make accord with him for such succour
of a fair damosel, which pleased him well when I pledged him his
plunder-share. Then I should have seen thee safe in life or
peaceful in death, and fined Terminus to the worth of its ransom for
my trouble and its carelessness; except thou wert still its
Mistress, and able and ready to defy me, fleet and deceit alike. I
should have paid full bounty out of my own hoard, then, and been
glad to name it profit. Would it had fallen so indeed!" He sighed
and swayed, crests waving and rainbow scales sparkling, and loomed
low and close over Nyssa. To her disgust, Tegan discovered that she
believed him. It sounded the right kind of shabby to be true.

"Belov'd," said Fastolf, solemnly, "be sure thy battle is
mine, until this darkness is lifted; only I must be thy Captain-
General for the nonce, for I'll have none other over me. Will it be
well?"

"Oh, _Uncle_ - !" Nyssa threw her arms as far around the
great reptile as she might, and buried her face in his scaly chest.
They stood together like that for a long minute, like some ghastly
sculpture of angel and devil, Nyssa wordless, Fastolf rumbling low
music in his throat, and running his spurred knuckles gently down
her spine. Tegan shivered. She felt the Doctor's hand light
tentatively, comfortingly on her far shoulder. She shrank back
gratefully into the crook of his arm.

Nyssa stepped back, not quite balanced as yet, and struck a
peculiar, stiff pose.

"Dance with me," she invited Fastolf, stepping into another
painful posture and making a sound like a squeaky hinge. "Dance for
the dead," _stalk_, "for wounds past healing, and long hopes'
ending!" She took another slow, unnatural step, like a carnival
skeleton on wires. Fastolf stepped sideways, and began to hum a
long, pure minor chord.

Tegan put her arm around the Doctor's waist, and pressed her
face up against his shirt, because she had to have somewhere to put
her tears.

Nyssa danced stark, arthritic grief. Fastolf, wearing a grotesquely
un-Terileptil expression of concentrated misery, played ritual
support and response. The dance was so bare, formal, and intense,
Si wondered briefly if it were some Japanese or Fuji-Greathearth
mode; but something in its awful compulsion told him it was another
legacy of Traken. Sometimes she froze for many seconds; sometimes
she only stamped a foot, or mimed keening, or flapped her arm
repeatedly in broken-winged insistence.

She froze in his blood, stamped in his heart, trod out the
measure of their sorrows on the dull floor. No-one spoke, no-one
looked at anything else. Every movement occupied a parched little
eternity. At last her energy began to flag. Fastolf broke from his
pattern, then, and glided forward to scoop her up in his great arms.
She fidgeted with a moment's confusion, then went boneless in utter
trust and exhaustion, as he picked her up and cradled her like a
child.

"_Tsss,_" hissed Fastolf, "_tssss..._ Thy wars are done for
today, my Nyslet; thy friends shall do the rest. Thou'lt sleep in
my cabin tonight, safe and snug from all harm; and thy woes be over,
thy foes be o'erthrown and meddle with thee nevermore, now thy
nuncle Fastolf's come. Sleep, True-Grief, Star-Eyes, Drake-Friend;
_tsssh-tssss_, only sleep..."

He bore her towards the door, Tarrasque and Ama'asu following
in his wide wake. Nyssa really did seem to have fallen into one of
her instant dozes in his unlikely embrace. Si thought of her other
dear monster, her murdered Garm. He felt a deep shame and a fear of
losing her, a shame and a fear for all of them on Terminus, who'd
let her come to this. He was sure Fastolf intended that. As they
took Nyssa away, first Fastolf and then the other Terileptils began
crooning, an eerie extempore lullaby.

Fastolf's voice, borne on the back of his companions'
harmonies, soared to fill the Helm Room with its soft promise and
defiance. Si stood amazed, hearing the song split apart in his mind
as it shattered the limits of the TARDIS's translation; so that he
heard both its intricate, alien rhyme and harmony, and at the same
time a set of simple English words to a saddened, elaborated, part-
sung nursery tune:

_"Sleep, little Traken, and dream what may be:_
_The blood of the river is lost in the sea._
_Who shall we run to, when the stars fall?_
_Pray ourselves save us, there's no-one at all!_
_Save us, sweet selves, for there's no-one at all..."_

Then they were gone. Tegan said something subdued to the
Doctor, and they went into the TARDIS together. Si stayed with Cats
and Alphard and Mord, waiting for Ter'Macaire to restore their
communications, waiting to learn what awaited them all on the Black
Sun.

_Dear Tuyet, Please burn these letters if I live. Thanks, Tegan
Jovanka._

-----

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Seventeen, 'Viva la Diva'.

[Graham Woodland]

I am really sorry about the sodding post titles. We will try to do
competently in future. Feh!

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Seventeenth Episode: By the Dawn's Early Light*

Tegan sat in the hospital waiting-room, studying her pocketbook and
scrolling through the long casualty-lists. She'd gone through the
Doctor's wardrobes this morning, and dug out an old white summer
suit of hers, blouse and loose knee-length baggies. A borrowed
silver belt made the outfit more severe, and completed her Traken
mourning colours.

_(With Honours) Comp. Sp. Ocho Talkmeister, of Terminus_

The number of names she knew was bad, the number she could put
faces to was worse. _I should say_ I've _got problems?_ She was
glad, though, that none of her waiting-room companions knew her well
enough to approach her; glad that her turn would be coming around
soon. Scraps of their hushed talk came to her across the tinkle of
the virtual fountain:

" - recalling Kari and Olvir: _not_ before time!"

"Two more Nordic adventurers are no kind of solution. If we'd
had an armed civil militia, this could never have happened!"

"Been talking to the Dixies, have you? That line hasn't made
their worlds any prize!"

"Nor anyone's prey, to date," the other remarked bitterly.
"The blazes with them anyway: this is our station and we
_(something)_ our way. We've tried a military caste here, and
mercenaries on the Black Sun, and paid dearly for both. Cherry
ought to organise - "

He had nothing to fear from such talk, barring informers, and
the citizens of Nyssa's End still wouldn't think like that! The
surviving Life Guard had taken over all bodyguarding duties within
the hospital, and closed it to all Vanir except as patients, or as
visitors singly and in mufti. Nobody had yet chosen to call them on
this. Tegan resolutely turned her attention back to the rolls, and
the names that were more than names:

_(Also Lost) Comp. Cpl. Scratch Gargan, of O'Neill's_
_Comp. Shellac, of the Lions_
_Comp. Zeinab, of Khadija's Flight_
_Comp. Zerina, of Khadija's Flight_

These had fought on the wrong side, for reasons that still
made no sense. The rebels in the Company of Lions had declared
against Nyssa and the Vanir during the coup, accusing them of
Amina's murder and other treasons. They were all dead now, every
one, over half the Company; and they'd taken plenty more with them.

Impossible to imagine crass, happy, louder-than-life Shellac
as an enemy - as dead!

But Tegan owed it to her, to all of them. She scrolled
further down the list.

The lights in the virtual fountain glinted violet and white.
Some _calaglaios_ had come by in the earliest morning, to put in new
flowers: vases of white lilies, chrysanthemums red and orange as
flames, silver-and-white pots of glossy black blossoms like
snowdrops.

"Vernier Scipio?"

The man who wanted a militia limped into Julie van Duyn's
surgery. Tegan reckoned it would be her turn next. She contained a
shiver, and thought hard of Nyssa, of Ottar...

There had been nightmares, of course. Fragmented and shifting and
weak after the coup's reality, they flaked out and gave way to deep
dark sleep. Tegan awoke to a sharp clean tingling in her skin and
muscle, to her bed in the TARDIS, to a soft dear hand on her
forehead.

"Nyssa," she croaked voicelessly. She struggled to open
unnaturally gummy eyes, failed. Precise, tender fingertips stroked
sleep away from the corners, eased her lids apart the first
necessary crack. It was an inexpressibly intimate, utterly innocent
pleasure, taking her tiniest cues, quite unlike anything anyone had
ever done for her before. Nyssa brushed back Tegan's fringe, very
lightly, and replaced the hand on her brow. Tegan thought she might
have cried then, if her friend had taken her touch away. She opened
her eyes, and dredged up a wan smile.

"Morning, Nyssa!"

"Good morning, Tegan." The Lady of Terminus sounded easy,
coolly affectionate, almost like the old days really; but the
difference was enormous, and Tegan knew it straight away. Nyssa had
been the elder of them ever since their timelines had rejoined.
Now, for the first time, it showed through, in subtle ways mere
lazargens would never erase. "How are you feeling?"

"Much better, thanks." She stirred feebly beneath the quilt.
"Itchy."

"That's the speed-healing," Nyssa explained. "You do look
much better now! You really ought to have a check-up, though - just
to make sure everything mends optimally. Do you want me to get Si?"

"I'd rather you stayed."

"Oh, I shall - "

"Just us? For a while?"

"Of course."

"How's Ottar?"

That _did_ ruffle Nyssa's composure; but she'd plainly
expected the question. "I can't undo murder, Tegan - and he'd never
let me splice him into a cyborg. We'll lose him when we bring him
out of stasis. I'm sorry."

"Ohhh - " Tegan moaned wretchedly, involuntarily, before she
could choke herself off. It wasn't as though she hadn't known,
really.

Nyssa's thumb stroked compassionately across her forehead. "I
care for him too, Tegan. I made him a promise. He - won't know
death, not as we would. He asked something special of me, and I'm
going do it. Can we talk about this later?"

_i-Traken._ Tegan felt a dread of it in her marrow. _He
wants to join Nyssa's ghosts. But how - ?_ "Yes."

"Thank you."

Tegan had to know. "Nyssa, are we winning? What's happening
on the Black Sun?"

"It's still a stalemate," the other woman told her carefully.
"We control the Black Sun physically, and Alphard's quenchers did
the Master more harm than we thought. We very nearly destroyed him
when he revealed himself: he must have been too busy surviving to
help his servants during the coup. He's consolidated Ourania again,
though, and we'll need to carry the fight into the interstitial to
remove him. I have a plan for that, too." She shook her tiara'd
head. "It's actually related to this business with Ottar. We'll
all be talking about both, soon enough. Rest now, my dear..."

"Nyssa?" Tegan heard her voice sharpening. "What happened
with the Lions?"

The Traken sighed softly. "I ought to know you better by
now... There was a mutiny, a very serious one. Gisco and Masha were
badly outnumbered, so they used a - stratagem. All the rebels are
dead, and the Company's stripped to bare bones." _So Fastolf can
still do what he likes!_ "The Doctor suspects unnatural influence:
he's helping us investigate. He says he'll come back to see you
here, and hopes you'll do him the honour of joining him for lunch...

"Tegan, we'll talk about all these things later, until you've
had more than enough of them, I'm sure! You've already _done_ more
than enough - far more than I'll ever know how to thank you for! I
shall just have to think you're wonderful, instead." She pulled
back her hand, a little regretfully, as if it were a self-indulgence
she'd be rude to persist in. "Please: we'll not have much time to
ourselves. Can we talk of gentler things - or just sit together
awhile? Are you sure you don't want Si?"

From beneath the quilt, Tegan's hands struck quickly up and
out -

_Ter'Jack Puff Dream-Errant, of Fuji-Greathearth_
_Ter'Sauron Craft-Claw, of Fuji-Greathearth_
_Ter'Zillah Break-Step, of Fuji-Greathearth_

The Terileptils, of course, had got off lightly: the human
factions had done the worst of their work for them. _The old Snake
looks after his own..._ Tegan wasn't about to gloat over the
Terileptil dead; but she wouldn't mourn them, either.

_Third Mate Sandy Jim Crawford, of Busted Flush_

Dixies: the 'Late Crew', Fastolf's friendly enemies, out of
the Confederacy of the Southern Stars. Tegan didn't know much about
them, didn't like what she knew. Camellia was the Ku Klux Klan
world, one of New Brass's biggest slaving customers. Freebird
gassed any lazars who couldn't pay their own way off-planet, so
Terminus ran a precarious and unpopular transit operation there.
Two of Cherry's most alarmingly hot-headed democrats - the ones she
knew about, anyhow - were ex-Dixies, too. The only really good
thing she knew about the Southern Stars, or their allies the
PanGalAfrikans, was that both detested the Earthhome Federation
passionately, resisting the sway of the corporate worlds and the
Executive Creed in militant style and with a fine disregard for
odds. In this horrible future age, perhaps an enemy's enemy was the
nearest to a friend you could hope for.

_Not this one!_ Some things hadn't changed in twenty
centuries, and the Risen South thought the Federation a bunch of
godless, gutless trick socialists. But Nyssa was a self-confessed
commie, not even strictly human if you wanted to pick bones about
it, with a crazy dream of Trakenising the whole Universe, and a
chance of actually bringing it off. _Union with everything!_ Nyssa
was far more the Dixies' natural enemy than the Federation was ever
going to be. Right now, there had to be at least as many Late Crew
roughnecks on the station as able-bodied Lions or Vanir. That was
no good, either.

_(With Special Citation for Gallantry) Cit'Yella Dane, of
Terminus_

A famous ex-porn star, on Terminus a so-called 'performance
artist', of whom Tegan had known and cared to know nothing.

The beautiful sound of a fake fountain -

"I hear Fat Charlie's booking out."

"How come?"

"The nazis killed Connie Vranch." (A man, one of Cherry's two
Southern Stars hotheads, not any more now!) "Charlie blames
'Eronner, egging on them that disagreed with her to stand up for it
at the banquet. Nazis were looking for 'em, picked 'em all off as
they found 'em. If old Ariel hadn't kept those boltholes ready..."

"We lost more than enough as it was, didn't we?
_(Unintelligible)_ Gallswallow..."

_Cit'Sourdust Dogthrottle, of Gormenghast_

Dusty had deserved much better.

"...her brother. She says she's shipping out to the colonies
for good, where she'll never have to look at Trakens or Vanir again,
and I don't blame her a bit!"

"You're staying, though, Bay?"

"Oh, I'll stick around. I don't see running out on Her, now
it's getting rough. I want to be here when She takes this Odin type
apart and smears him all over the continuum!"

"Me too," agreed the male voice vengefully. "She only slipped
on account of being too good to live, and forgetting her military
friends aren't. She never makes mistakes twice, does she? Remember
when she knocked down the Company?"

"Bet you we'll see big changes here. Ow!"

"That's up to her; and you can't move that yet, so stop
trying."

- The beautiful sound of a fake fountain.

"Tegan Jovanka?"

Julie van Duyn called . Fatalistically, Tegan answered.

- struck quickly up and out, trapping Nyssa's hand between them,
bringing it slowly, unresistedly, back down to her. Nyssa just sat,
grave and alert, in her pale dress, looking as though she'd accept a
punch on the nose gratefully if that was what her injured friend was
handing out. Tegan pressed Nyssa's fingertips to her lips, kissed
each one devotedly in turn, watering the back of the Traken's hand
with hot unwanted brine. Words bled from her, like more tears:

"Oh, Nyssa! You don't have to be so, so careful - I will
never, _ever_ be scared of you again!" Kiss. "I've been such a
rotten, hypocritical _idiot!_"

Nyssa said, "You've been dear and true, and I was self-centred
and cruel when you reproved me for... unmannerly flirting. If you
won't accept that the fault was mine, I think we should just agree
to forgive each other everything." She patted Tegan's hand gently
with her free one, smiling deliberately. "And ourselves!"

"You don't understand." Tegan sniffed sharply, then prayed
with all her might that she wouldn't pick such a typical moment to
sneeze. Miraculously, she didn't. "I mean I'm really, _really_ not
afraid - I mean, back in the old days - I wish I'd let you... "

"Let me _what_, Tegan?"

"Court me. Your way. Whatever we both liked, wherever it
would have stopped." Nyssa was a blurry picture puzzle and two warm
hands now, and Tegan was swallowing heat and phlegm. She knew she'd
never be able to say this again, never take it up once she'd
stopped. "I know you'd never have done anything to make me feel
bad..."

"Tegan..."

"I didn't notice, then. Too busy flapping my mouth, I guess.
I dreamed, a couple of times. I kissed you on the mouth, and you
laughed, you liked it. Another time we went swimming. We didn't
even touch in that one, it was just, just so..."

"Romantic?"

"Mm. I was so ashamed, when I woke up. You were always so
proper, I was sure you'd be disgusted if you knew. _I_ was
disgusted! But then I told myself, no, dreams don't count, unless
they keep repeating. And nothing 'happened' in them. And I
couldn't be queer anyway, because I'd always liked boys, because of
the Doctor. I didn't want to be, either. _At all!_ I let that
slip out a bit sometimes, didn't I?"

"Ah, yes," said Nyssa, with fond dryness. "The poofter, the
Pom, and the platypus. Drunk as we were, I never quite succeeded in
forgetting that story."

Tegan wondered if you could blush so hard you bled. "Sorry,"
she mumbled. "I was trying to be something or other."

"You were rather good at it. Never mind. It doesn't hurt any
more."

Kiss. "Thanks. Anyway. When I came back, it all got off on
the wrong foot, and... Nyssa, I'd forgotten what it felt like to be
around you! Then what with Amina, and with you... being you... it
started coming back. Only I thought, well, I must have just been
picking up _your_ empa-whatsits vibes, back then, without seeing it.
You know how that ended up."

"Then it ends well."

"I don't mind any more." Nyssa _had_ to understand, or it was
all a waste of breath! "I wish I never had. What sort of woman I
am if I feel this, or that. What it's called. Who cares?"

Nyssa stared strangely at this idea, which she seemed to find
oddly alien. "Tegan," she said cautiously, the little muscles in
her fingers actually tensing, "do you think now that you _are_ a
lover of women? Of men and women both? Are you - declaring this to
me?"

_- declaring yourself to me?_

"No," said Tegan positively, all the aches of her body singing
counterpoint. "Only you, only then. And we probably wouldn't have.
And those two people are dead and gone, aren't they?" But she
thought privately, as she saw the far relieved light in her friend's
eyes, that Nyssa had done most of her dying this last week. "I just
wish one of them had had more sense at the time!"

Nyssa pulsed her hand: _I don't understand Earthlings._

"I'm a _Tegan,_ Nyssa!" she cried, exasperated. "I'm a
_human being!_ If I hadn't worried about the other silly tags,
maybe everything would have turned out happier! I wouldn't have
hurt you so much, anyway. - Oh, look, let's forget it, all right?"

Her rush was over, and the great grey depression began to
slither into its place. Nyssa squeezed her hand again, bent her
silver-filleted head, and planted three firm kisses on Tegan's
knuckles. The greyness turned to dust and blew harmlessly away.
Nyssa said, with kind and deliberate formality,

"Thou'st gifted me in love, O Tegan, dear Bright-Wing, my Bel-
Phoenix: I'll forget it never! Thou'rt first and best of friends,
'til Time frays and fails; and didst sweeten even the cup I once
shared, for I was fairer for knowing thee. Let us remember, in fast
friendship!"

"_Will_ you stop talking like bloody Fastolf?"

"Mayhap," Nyssa teased. "I'll never harm you, never think
harm of you again - and you won't of me, will you? That was one of
the things you meant, wasn't it?"

"Yes. - No _worries_, Nyssa!"

"Then we're happy."

So, it seemed they were happy. They sat together quietly for
many minutes, content to rest awhile, to regain strength from that
and each other. Eventually Tegan broke it up, saying she'd have to
get dressed for the hospital; because she did, sooner or later; but
mostly so that Nyssa wouldn't have to be first to excuse herself.

"Bang, Alfie. You're dead."

"Am, aren't I?" He wiggled a dozen multi-jointed algorithms
in dead-ants fashion. "Screw!"

"Breeding _and_ necrophilia, eh? No thanks, not my tea-bag.
Want to try it again?"

"Which? - No, not really. If _I_ can't crash the Gate with
_you_ defending it, the Master isn't even going to touch _my_ ward!"
Alphard collapsed his golden assault-form into his favourite avatar.
His Omega-identity's clunky green surface could serve as anything
from a shapechanger's supersensitive skin to its original purpose as
nullification armour, just as he willed it. Cats didn't have that
subtlety of control in i-space, didn't expect to for hundreddays
yet. "Come on out and scrap. You still need the practice."

Which had nothing to do with why they really needed to spar,
so Cats responded in kind.

"You just want an excuse to get your big male mitts on me."
she diagnosed. "Okay, try this for size!" She set aside her own
prime avatar - the two enormous moggies - exited the Gate matrix,
and incarnated with a flash and a fanfare as Itchy and Scratchy.
"Do you feel lucky?"

"No," stated Alphard, lobbing green fireballs at her.

"No, Julie," said Tegan wearily, pulling the blessedly loose white
baggies back on, "I _don't_ want counselling, I don't want anything
except the TranqEpi - heal-right pills, all right? It's really not
that big a deal."

The medico was looking more distressed by the second. "It's
always a 'big deal', Tegan. Even if you still feel numb about it
now - "

"Julie. I'm not putting on a brave front, okay? I've been
possessed by the Mara, a couple of times - what you people call a
'cacodemon'. I've been violated by the Universe's _experts_, right
down to the bottom of my soul. I'd die if I could remember a tenth
of it. Another time, Omega dragged me into the Matrix, and used me
to show the Doctor how much someone can hurt your friends if they
don't have to worry about things like space and time and biology.
After that, pardon me if Sigfus and his bastards just didn't impress
me all that much!"

"I - see," said Julie, inadequately. "But, surely - "

"I've been hurt before, and slimed on before, and disgusted
before," said Tegan, as vehemently as she could through the grey
lead on her breath. "You get used to it, if you have to. If you
can't just stop the world, and get off. I've done that, too.

" I can do that here, if I want to, can't I? I can tell you
to scrap my lazargens, and get the Doctor to take me home, or else
catch the next ship to Big Oz or somewhere, and no-one can stop me?"

"No-one can stop you," soothed Julie. "You'd need a false ID
for most worlds, of course, now you've lived on Terminus. Or you
could keep your lazargens and leave for one of our colonies, if you
liked. Do you think you want to?"

"No. Not now." Tegan slipped on her shoes. "And that's the
other thing I don't want you to do. I don't want you to file a
report."

_"Tegan!"_

"Just don't."

"I don't understand. Are they all dead?"

"Don't I wish!"

"I'm bound," said Julie, disapprovingly. "Confidentiality.
But, Tegan, you won't leave them to go free?"

"They're not, are they? They're in the brig, waiting for
deprogramming. Don't you think I'd have checked that?"

"You think it was the Master's influence?"

"Not bloody likely! No. I need the time, that's all. Oh,
and I was forgetting, about Nyssa being a medic. You _don't_ have
my permission to mention this to her - or anything that'll help her
work it out. She's the last person who ought to know, and the
Doctor's second last." Tegan got up, fastened her silver belt, and
slung on her handbag. "Trust me. I'm not planning anything psycho,
and I _do_ know what I'm doing. 'Bye, Julie."

"Goodbye, Tegan." Julie stared worriedly after her. "Please
do come back any time you want to talk. Good luck..."

The inner door closed, and closed her words in with her.

NYSSA: I go to make an end; but there is not an end
Where there is not that right true end of love,
O Vine-Tree! Nyssa's end
Shall endless linger, through the endless night,
Except that End of Ends, that Jubilee -

FASTOLF: - Moonshine; Big Rock Candy; Fiddler's Green -

NYSSA: - Amend all means and ends, and make us two in One
again. Amina -

FASTOLF: Tegan?

NYSSA [_right wroth is she!_]: Uncle? I heard thee not!

FASTOLF: Tegan. Elisse: Fair-Foe Bright-Wing Bel-Phoenix,
Who glitters in this world of woes we know,
Were meeter far to mend thy gravell'd heart
Than darker winds, from worlds where thou art not...

[_Pause._ Piano:]

I love thee, Star-Eyes, niece. Thy diamond tears
Drill rougher than a torture-screw turned fast,
And mar my lovesome hide. I hate thy grief.

NYSSA: Then hate no more.
My tears are dry, and kisses. Once was love.
Now love is for the dead, the world - the mute! -
And my first love's loud voice is heard no more,
Nor may recall me from the claw of God
Or duty.

FASTOLF: Pox on duty! Pox on God!
Thy first love ought to know thee, burn thy bones,
With love thou'st never ought to aught but her!

NYSSA: The Master dies. My Daughter lives. Naught else, until
the End.
I'll never know my first love in this world.

[_Exit NYSSA._]

FASTOLF: Then, if in other worlds thy star should fall,
I'll lay that she would burn to make thee well,
And burned if I'd not bring her fires to thee!

[_Exit FASTOLF._]

<Save>

"Gee, Mister Fas-tolf! That's a lot of pri-vate ver-sions!
Want me to a-mal-ga-mate them for you?"

_"Swive thyself prickless, bastard spawn of silica!"_

The refectory was neutral ground. The Doctor and Tegan ate at a
quiet corner table.

He wore a smart, informal black suit with a fancy white shirt,
a thin silver cord tied discreetly to one of its buttons. She'd
never seen him so conservative. He looked like a man after a very
hard day at the office; and though he'd surely had worse than that,
he had to be pretty run-down to show it. He was all himself,
though, and clearly well into his recovery.

They ate and drank slowly. Their talk was lively, cordial as
only dearest friends' could be, and about things and other people.
Snooping unobtrusively from a nearby table, Albertina Sisulu later
worked a lot of what she saw into a heartbreakingly funny routine
called _Moth to a Moth_. Neither of them ever got to see it,
though.

Came a time when Tegan picked a cherry from her salad, eyed it
a moment before munching it, and said, "_He_ didn't waste any time,
did he?"

His faint smile grew a little bigger. "I thought the white
roses were a fine gesture. Tasteful." He sipped his herby tea.
"Quietly public, too."

"I hope the Council finds something better to do." The roses
had arrived with Cherry's sincerest regards, the text of a vote of
thanks, the present of a month's holiday on double pay, and the
threat of civic honours. "Being the prize cow at the town show
isn't my idea of fun!"

"I know," agreed the Doctor glumly. "I generally duck out
before they can do that to me. Chin up! Pretend they've got no
clothes on. It'll all be over before you know it."

"What - _Cherry?_" She stole one of his, and forced on a
smile. "No, thank you very much! I wonder what he's up to, that
I'm not supposed to see?"

"Ostensibly," said the Doctor, "probably some kind of surprise
beanfeast." Tegan groaned. "Actually? You'd have a better idea
than I. Do you really care? You could probably get _his_ job now,
you know, if you wanted it. Perhaps that's his point."

"Ha, ha!"

He shrugged. "I think you'd make an excellent job of it."

She hesitated: let him think she was thinking, and not
fighting a painful rush of blood to the head.

"I'd rather fly Aeroflot!"

He changed topics quickly. "How much do you already know
about the mutiny on the Black Sun?"

"Casualties," said Tegan, and kept herself very busy with a
big bite of bread for necessary seconds. "Lots. Most of them
wanted to kill Nyssa for killing Amina, or something like that. And
Gisco and Masha beat them by some 'stratagem' Nyssa doesn't want to
talk about." She met his bright, black gaze directly. "Gisco did
something terrible to them, didn't he?"

He looked grim. "Yes. Was that really just a guess?"

"I gue - reckon. I thought he would have. He scared me half
to death when I met him. Mind you, I think he _was_ deciding
whether he was going to have to kill me some day."

_"What?"_

"No - no," said Tegan hastily, seeing the fury rising in his
eyes. "Don't pick trouble with Gisco, Doctor! He'll murder you. I
think he's more dangerous than anyone else on our side - more than
Fastolf, even!"

The big lizard was into playing games. Games and Gisco didn't
even belong in the same thought.

"I wouldn't place large bets on that," suggested the Doctor.
"Gisco's considering killing you is not 'trouble' already?"

"He won't do it." Tegan didn't know where she got her
absolute certainty on that, but she saw it hit the Doctor. "He was
fishing around with Masha, trying to find out politely whether I'd
'corrupted' Nyssa as a kid. He decided I hadn't - you could see it
in his face, like flicking a switch! - and then I was her friend, I
was all right. Otherwise, I know he'd have found some way to get
me. Eventually."

"Of all the infernal nerve!" He sounded peeved, now, more
than destructive.

"No-one likes child-molesters, Doctor. I can see where he was
coming from."

"Hadashtim _are_ sensitive about children, it's true," the
Doctor acknowledged. "As well they might be. And the signals Nyssa
sends about her age have always been confusing, at best. She's from
a long-lived race, and a very different culture. He probably
thought she was still half a child when _he_ met her!"

Tegan's eyes narrowed. "Just how old _is_ Nyssa really,
Doctor?"

He fiddled with a crunchy leaf. "Why don't you ask her?"
Seeing her expression cloud, he added hastily, "I don't think you'd
find the answer very helpful. There isn't really any meaningful way
to convert between Terran and Traken ages, either."

"Thanks very much! She _wasn't_ really a kid then, was she?"

"It depends on how you define - "

_"She wasn't, was she?"_ It came very low and fierce.

"Scarcely more than you were," he said, obviously surprised.
"Less so, in a few ways..."

Which brought her voice back up, at least. "You thought _I_
was a kid?"

He shrugged. "I have a thing about very young women. A
hundred and sixty, no, don't tell anyone, but what happened to my
blood pressure when I met that perfect _minx_ Saladeidifabular, at
all of a hundred and forty-three..!" Chuckle. "You personally
disabused me of this kind of folly, Tegan. With pipe-wrenches, two-
by-fours, and discombobulator forks, as I recall. I won't help you
make the same kind of false comparison!" It was about the most
intimate thing he'd ever said to her, in his sane senses.

Swimming on Salacia, Nyssa in that ridiculous bathing costume.
Nyssa by night, chasing the Mara-dreams away with wise tales:
_Avraon the Tempter and the Queen of Peace_; her sound and breath
and her body's quiet perfume; her presence, stronger than remembered
demons. _No, of course! Not a kid at all. Thank Whatever!_

"So," she said, sweet-and-sour. "Gisco did _what_ to the
rebels, Doctor?"

"Fought them, to begin with." She thought he was as disturbed
about it all as Nyssa had been. "He was outnumbered, though, and he
and Masha decided they couldn't win more than a Pyrrhic victory at
best. - That means - "

"I know what it means, Doctor."

"Which also meant the Black Sun defenceless against unknown
opposition." He scowled. "They called an all-Company assembly,
offering a kind of surrender. They pointed out that the Lions were
preparing to annihilate themselves, and offered to lead the full
Company to take Terminus, providing Nyssa would only be made
prisoner and get a chance to vindicate herself to another assembly.
It was a fierce debate, but Gisco is very charismatic, and Masha's
apparently very popular. The mutiny wasn't really against them,
anyway. They won. The Lions marched together to Morninglight Bay,
but they didn't reach it."

His kind, mobile face was dead now. "They came to some point
in some passage, and all the loyalists drew side-arms suddenly and
shot any rebels near them. Previous arrangement. That seems to
have given them the edge they needed. For some reason no-one asked
quarter, and all rebel wounds turned out fatal."

"You think..."

"I don't think there's supposed to be any doubt."

Tegan felt a numbness in her stomach, and pushed her remaining
scraps of food away. "What's Nyssa going to do about _that_?"

"Nothing. They were mutineers under arms, killed in time of
war. Terminus has no jurisdiction." He snorted angrily. "Gisco
and Masha seem to think the object lesson's more effective if
everyone draws it independently."

"It was both of them, then?"

"Morally, absolutely. But I agree with your intuition. The
whole scheme stinks of Carthage - or of its reputation, anyway." He
looked vaguely puzzled at his own ready generalisation: his memory
blocks must be up and running again. "'Punic faith', that's what the
Romans used to call treachery. Punic means Carthaginian, Hadashti.
- I see your appetite has run out, too."

"Yes, thanks."

Sigh. "Well, then. I did find out _why_ the mutiny blew up."

"Why?"

"A little last present from the Rani. I found cysts in most
of the brains I autopsied. She seems to have infected most of the
Lions with slow spagyric larvae. As far as I can tell, she was
siphoning off their dreaming process."

"Ick!" Tegan shuddered, remembering again the terrible lab,
Nyssa and the Rani's final confrontation over the maggoty hulk of
Nyssa's beloved. _"You've chewed her mind down to the bone!" "I've
scarcely touched her soul!" I've come too far forward.
Everything's gone much too far._ "Why, Doctor?"

"Oh, in the short term it was beginning to make them paranoid
and edgy, dull their perceptions, and so forth - as if they never
had enough real sleep. With no-one quite normal, her own masquerade
would have been much easier. Later, once she'd taken over and
didn't need the Lions any more, she could have harvested the cysts
to make elixir. Something to alter Nyssa's will, and perhaps other
people's, at a guess." He tapped his fingers on the table. "The
Rani was always into exotic forms of personality abuse; and she was
the sort of person who prefers to work through tools. She'd never
have taken the Master's gamble and _become_ Ourania. She'd rather
have put Nyssa on like a glove, to manipulate it from outside." He
made a disgusted face. "I've never been entirely convinced that the
woman actually accepted the notion of other 'people' at all.
Frankly, in many ways I prefer to deal with the Master!"

"Then you've got your wish, haven't you. - Sorry. Just me
again. She really _did_ need killing!"

"Um. I wish that had gone differently. I admit I can't mourn
her."

"I wish Nyssa hadn't had to kill Sigfus, either," agreed
Tegan, stretching the olive branch.

He nodded glumly, then cleared his throat and his expression.
"Tegan?"

A tone she'd seldom heard from him before, a tone she knew.

"Doctor?"

"How are you doing? Really?"

A part of her wanted to fly, another part to cringe away. But
after all he'd led her into, he himself was her safety, always had
been. If her lights were going to come back on, any time soon, she
knew who it'd be holding her hand. And he'd do that for her, only
that, if it was what she needed.

"Almost better," she lied for him. They let the moment
stretch, and come apart quite gently. "Speaking of the Master, do
we know what's going on about _that_, yet?"

"Partly," he said, "but we'll all be talking about it this
afternoon, not so long from now. But not here! Do you fancy coming
back to the TARDIS?"

"Yes," she said, standing up with him, taking his hand, "I'd
like that." They left the refectory together.

They entered the Helm Room together, arm in arm. Fastolf and Nyssa
were arguing about the Late Crew.

"...paranoid individualists," Nyssa was defining. "It's worth
paying ready goods to speed them on their way. We can scarcely hope
for peace if the Southern Stars once come to understand what we're
really doing here. Hey Louise, possibly - but could any of their
other cultures rest in a Universe that was building Ourania? I
don't think so! Nine per cent is very cheap for insurance, just
now."

"Hold on, Sis," objected Cats. "You want us to bargepole the
Federation from now on, too? 'Cause I don't think they'd think much
of us, either!"

"The independents are nimbler and less timid: the situation
might escalate too quickly, especially after all that's happened
here. I'd planned for Federation political dynamics when I made my
announcements at the banquet. I _hadn't_ planned to open Terminus
at its most critical to reconnaissance by fanatical antisocialist
buccaneers - with wits enough to keep honours even with Uncle
Fastolf, all these years!" She appealed directly to Alphard. "We
have to get rid of them at once!"

"Indeed," Fastolf rumbled, crests waving in a downright
sinister fashion. "But th'art scarce rich enough now to spill thy
hoard to thy foes as small beer; nor shalt get more security so than
water's in a colander. Yet I have all my fleet, for once
outmatching them far; and thy name for honour's our best cloak.
What skills it, if one more villain freetrader, _Sorensen in
special!_ ne'er comes home to slander thee and pastiche Cabell on
Alter Carolina?"

"You people don't change, do you?" Tegan spat out.

The Doctor seemed to move invisibly closer to her, and shook
his head sadly. "Fastolf, one of these days you're going to learn
that killing off people who help you brings worse things than
dramatic irony."

"Uncle," said Nyssa flatly, "my honour is _me,_ not my cloak.
We must pay the cost, and take the risk it brings us!"

Masha tutted.

"Nay, must we?" The Terileptil's secondary eyelids flickered
unreadably. "I'd wrestle a ball of knives before I asked thee break
thine own honour, sinning (since th'art ever the purest hero!)
against art as grievously as nature! But if I am Captain-General,
and Alphard is Mayor, then what's broke but their own wits, for
thinking us as thee?"

"Much. Please, don't consider this."

"Ter'Fastolf," said Mord icily, "this disgusts me."

"It is good," said Gisco, "that the nature of war disgusts
you. To favour it would be a perversion."

"One thing more," boomed Fastolf, over any possible rejoinder
of Mord's, "and I'm done. For my own part, I'd rather do our
Captain Moonlight no dastard deed at this time, but send him paid
and packing, our feud unabated. But whereas all that is or may be
is hinged on Terminus, and whereas he offers such a present threat
as may assail us during that last battle with the Master, where the
Black Sun may fail and no defences be trustable - "

"He doesn't," contradicted the Doctor loudly. "The nearest of
the Southern Stars won't be able to reach us in ten times that long,
assuming we get a wiggle on."

Alphard and Cats nodded in incongruously comic chorus. "Not
exactly close neighbours," the engineer observed. "Where's the
short-term hazard?"

"Half-Your-Honour's own world - New Brass, of the
PanGalAfrikan Alliance." The jewel-bright alien stabbed a
diamantine claw in Alphard's direction. "Your _nearest_ neighbour,
and the Confederacy's friend. Suppose he observes and reasons well,
as is most like where taste's no issue, and warns them of our menace
and our plight? Do they commit their whole slaving fleet _and_
their mobile defences, and attack with our station defences
unchancy, I'll not swear to defeat them; nay, not though my tactics
shall shame Alexander and Far-Fang! Better we 'exit the
messenger'."

"Best we don't," said the Doctor; and Si added his voice to
those murmuring in support. "Whatever he's picked up is hardly
likely to spur a whole world into _that_ big a gamble, _that_
quickly!" He appealed to the room at large, his eyes wide and
earnest. "Can't you see that if _we_ kill for fears as flimsy as
that, there is _no room_ in this age for the Black Sun or anything
like it? The power of gods, and the wisdom of frightened children -
the worst of all worlds, as so many times before!" He moved a
little forward of Tegan, and glared exasperatedly at Fastolf. "And
you want this _because the Confederates are 'paranoid'?_"

"Well," said Fastolf imperturbably, "I don't _want_ it."

"And I think it abominable," said Nyssa. "I feel as the
Doctor does. And we should remember - the Southern Stars Embassy on
New Brass is a Camellian outpost. They're still at loggerheads with
Alter Carolina over the slavery-is-subsidy tariff. I don't think
they'd encourage the local authorities to take Captain Sorensen
seriously, even if he wanted to approach them in the first place!"

"And what," demanded Cats, "makes you think he'd trust a bunch
of slavers inside a mile of stuff like this - any better than us
nasty Commies, oy?"

"There's three good weights on the other claw," acknowledged
Fastolf. "Well, Sir Alphard, I'll be ruled."

"Right!" Alphard jiggered his chair, and looked about him.
"Let's speed 'em on their way with cargo and money, and a word to
the wise that we'll be doing major space-time repair work starting
from tomorrow - "

"Too true!" Cats grumbled.

" - with potential damage to hyperdrive equipment, within
systemwide Radius of Effect. If he stays after that, he _is_ up to
something, and we may just have to extend more hospitality than he
wanted." That sudden, not-always-amused grin. "Is this finished?"

"Make the word official," suggested Nyssa. "If he's ready to
rip up his ship's insurance, he'll certainly be committed to
_something!_"

"Nice one, _niña!_" Which was a very Catsy way to put it.
"Now, since we're all here, let's get to the main event!"

"Bet he's glad to have a bugger on board _now!_" wittered 'Monty'
Hall, the Canary's socially-challenged but professionally formidable
second. He was a long gangrel body boasting pipe-cleaner limbs, a
sad collection of virtual fulfilments, and a rare talent for real-
world i-tech. The comms box currently serving Eventide Bay was his,
and a born blabbermouth. Glued to its noisy feed on the main
viewport, Captain Sorensen was busily cycling through the entire
subspectrum of puce.

_"...what's broke but their own wits, for thinking us as
thee?"_

"Mr Hall," the Canary suggested sweetly, "would you kindly _be
a surveillance operative elsewhere_, or back up my watch on Niwrad
sensibly?" The Elektran robot lay in its several modules against
the datapoints, its gears and manipulators whirring with frantic
incoherence, as its weirder-than-mortal avatar chivvied precious
packets through the so-mighty but still dazed AI defences of
Terminus. "This place has more ice than Bobby Brewski's beer-
fridge, and the poor dear's operating _quite_ at its limit!"

Monty had glimpsed some of the local 'ice' when he'd set up
the link. It had looked fast, tough, and leery, even on the low-
security fringes - and here the Late Crew were, hacking right into
its heart. The Canary was blowing no hot air!

He grinned, all poorly brushed white pebbles, and returned to
his job, a flagrant idle-hands assignment in the first place. If
anything went wrong with old 'Rad, it wouldn't be out here in hard-
life! Long since expelled from the free-willed machines' nutty
utopia for turning too many handles too far the right way, Niwrad
was the _Late Unpleasantness's_ hole card against Fastolf and just
about anybody else. Even knowing the Elektrans existed was grand
intellectual larceny, carrying a sentence of life indenture under
Earthhome's extraterritorial legislation - actually exporting one
had to be worth subjective centuries in the v-hells of Beulah.
Niwrad was a bona fide crew member who'd saved their bacon on
numerous occasions, to the point where now any one of them would
just naturally have thrown themselves between it and a blaster bolt,
not counting chickenshits or persons of religious scrupulosity.

_"...the power of gods, and the wisdom of frightened
children..."_

Spartacus, the nethead.aut they'd boosted during their
discussions with the _White Knighthood_, was running cover in there
for his robotic comrade. Now he made a rare verbal observation.
"Channels worse. Cores too canny. Caught soon."

_"...because the Confederates are paranoid?"_

"No, dammit!" barked Sorensen. "We need to know what they'll
try!"

"We need to give someone a nuke suppository," Bo informed the
world. The Canary wiggled her dainty fingers, and sent invisible
pigeons to places that didn't exist.

_"...And I think it abominable..."_ The megababe Mayor's live
image was a woeful disappointment, not half as sexy as her cute
anime in _Ultimate Alien Schoolgirl versus Pirate Kings!_ Damn,
damn again...

"Monty - discreet emergency recall!"

Monty turned to his own console, and sent that thing.

_"...speed 'em on their way..."_

Niwrad began flashing a thimble-shaped red light fitfully, and
seemed to be trying to squiggle itself into a granny knot.

"Sir?" The Canary's voice was high and tense. Spartacus
swore, a yelping inhuman thing, in high jargon. Monty tried to
think of a religion his private life didn't put him in bad with.
_Christ, if they catch us, and we lose Niwrad..!_

"Not yet. Hold hard."

_Oh, fuck you very much, sir!_

The bridge went deathly quiet, then, except for the
increasingly noisy sounds of plotting from the Terminus Helm Room,
and the unhealthy buzzings and thrashings of Niwrad. Spartacus
swore again.

_"...Nice one,_ niña! _Now, since we're all here, let's get
to the main event!"_

"All hands to battle stations," said Sorensen, as calm as you
pleased again. "We might just start wearing out our welcome."

"Briefly," said Alphard, "I nearly got the bastard when he was
taunting Nyssa. He had no _idea_ what I had in those quenchers! He
stayed just long enough to fake us out, then dived back down to his
core and started struggling. At that point he was as good as dead!"

The Doctor exchanged meaningful looks with Nyssa and Tegan.
"Yes, that usually happens."

"He's better at this than anything I can build!" Alphard
marvelled, with tactless admiration. "The configuration's back up
again: he really _does_ control the Ourania substrate. He also has
the energy mines to draw on, whereas all we've got left is
conventional plant and our banks. How he's forcing our pace is
something else again. The Black Sun has started to lose mass."

Si plunged in gamely. "Someone has to ask. Why is it so bad,
for us, that he's dwindling?"

"My very thought," Masha backed him up, motherly and pleasant
as ever. He could have done without that.

"The contents don't have mass in our space," Cats explained.
"All we feel here comes from the singularities in the black border,
and he munched one of those before. Now he's got serious - he's
chewing his way out."

"He wants to incorporate Terminus," predicted the Doctor
gloomily. "Once he's absorbed our space into his own, he'll have a
free hand with us." His belladonna-bright gaze swept the group.
"Then he'll consolidate, and try to achieve Nyssa's original plan,
with himself as the mind of the living spacetime. But he'll use the
Ourania algorithm to spread at maximum rate, and without waiting for
consent or integration." He shrugged. "I'd never describe any
form of the Master as a 'god'; but if he wins this round, the
distinction's going to start getting a bit metaphysical for most
palates."

"So why don't we just 'quench' him again?" Tegan demanded
sharply. Good old Tegan, always count on her!

"It was a one-shot, hard-wired thing," said Alphard. "It hit
him from inside the border, being there already. I've got nothing
there, now, except the communications gate!"

"Bing, bong," interrupted the Helm AI. Si was coming to the
firm opinion that digital intelligences understood human tact
perfectly well, and mangled it on purpose. "Probably a total co-
incidence but: possible pattern induction in local network may imply
hostile action - "

"Can't be done!"

"Disbelieve? String it along cunningly? Destroy possible
intruder forms?"

"Obliterate the bastard!"

"_Ping._ Bastard obliterated. Diagnosis: random complexity
anomaly, with confidence: not applicable. Full security restored."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Maybe we should adjourn to the
TARDIS?"

"I think not! _I_ could bug your TARDIS. I _couldn't_ hack
through the ice here, and nor could he or anyone else, short of the
kind of brute force Coming Up Shortly but not available while the
black border holds. _- Cats..?!"_

"Yeah, still unchanged. We're okay, people."

"For the moment," Nyssa took up. "But we can't attack him
from outside the border, while it lasts; and if it breaks, we're
lost. Our only hope is to strike _around_ the border, from i-space
- through the communications gate." She looked soberly around. "He
has Ourania's generalised lazargen algorithm working for him: he
won't even notice viruses. If reaper agents could touch him,
Alphard's quenchers would have killed him twelve times over. Now
we're thrown back on ourselves."

And Si understood what she meant, and longed to hold her back,
and knew with sick certainty he was going to make a strong poem of
this. Words writhed hotly around the edge of his head.

"We have to go in ourselves: ensoul avatars in his own
metaphor, the space where he keeps his own _self_," said Nyssa
coolly. "We have to find his ego-form, meet it in combat, and
annihilate it." Her smile was sincere and terrible. "Of course,
'we' mostly means 'me'..."

"I'm puzzled," announced the Doctor, crooking his head and
tangling a stray lock of hair round his finger. "Within his own
Ourania-metaphor, he's already close to all-powerful. I don't quite
see how we're going to challenge him on that ground..."

"As to power," said Nyssa, offhandedly, "in i-space, I can
wield as much as he can. I can nullify any miracles he tries to
throw about. I'll need your help if we're to go on the offensive,
though; and Alphard will hold the gate, to stop him escaping through
the open portal into Terminus. If we can catch him between two of
us, I'm sure we'll kill him handily."

The Doctor's jaw dropped very slightly. "_That_ much power.
This is the same way you ran off Hastur?"

Her next smile was warm, and gave Si a headache, as though two
different Nyssas were wearing it at once. She glided purposefully
over to Alphard's little corner table, which was covered by a white-
samite class cloth with a lump under it, about twice the size of a
fist. "That's right, Doctor," she congratulated him. Her hand
settled on the cloth. A dull light like red honey began to glow
outward from the lump, spreading and whitening like an accelerated
sunrise. Nyssa's flesh seemed to take and hold more than its fair
share of the illumination; and her lovely face seemed to lose its
age again, then, and to be touched again with joy. Si felt that
light rising in his feet and loins and eyes, too, in truth or in
sympathy with her, light gentler and truer than the world.

Sun-white, sun-white. _Thou art loved,_ the light his blood
informed him; _by all, in all, forever, oh, love..._

"Dear friends, sweet companions," Nyssa breathed, "this is the
Dayspring!"

-----

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Eighteen, 'Viva la Diva'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Eighteenth Episode: Viva la Diva*

When Nyssa lifted the white veil from the Dayspring, its light flared
out like huge butterfly wings, pale gold and veined with rainbows.
For a moment, everything was warm and loveable: Nyssa cloaked in
chrome steel , Si who was burning water, Fastolf the Chinese dragon
in green and gold and darkness. Her eyes touched them one after
another, joy struck the sphere ablaze, the glow was light empathy,
friends' and lovers' gentlest comfort...

It was scalding Tegan with her own blood, making her want to
scream it away, but _never hurt Nyssa!_ she just shrank against the
Doctor, who was all himself, and let his arm around her waist shield
her from too much too raw too soon. She felt his own fiercely
controlled tremors; the hammering of his hearts as he wrestled
something splendid and awful in that pale sunlight; the sudden
relaxation that meant his victory and hers. She slid her own arm
firmly around him. Limp and wrung-out, they were sneakily propping
each other up as the first glare began to die down. The others -

(Fading afterimages of nightmares she'd never had: a hot knife
and a cindered hearth; a broken star; Omega; a fierce raven...)

- the others looked happy-dazed, amazed, but not like they'd
been through the same kind of mangle. The warm light drained back
into its source, as if it had only flown out for a moment to greet
them, as if Nyssa's first touch had set it leaping like a loyal dog.

This was the Dayspring: a glassy globe about as big as a
softball, mounted on an oddly-shaped brown plinth. Luminous opal
vapours flowed inside it, and it danced with bolts of silent golden
lightning. The Doctor said reverently,

"I really didn't think you'd ever be able to re-create that. I
didn't think anyone could!"

"Nyssa?" said Tegan. "What is it - ?"

But of course Fastolf had to start rumbling distractedly, at
the very same time, "What treasure's this, my Nyslet? Wars were
fought o'er such a jewel, worlds clinkered black and stars snuffed
from the sky! Wise wert thou to keep it secret, _la, ra,
luraiay..._" The Terileptil broke off, his inner eyelids blinking
rhythmically, doing 'overpoweringly moved', and - fair play to him -
doing it very well.

"Which would be rather a waste of everything involved," opined
the Doctor. "I rather suspect it's just junk and glass to anyone but
Nyssa, isn't that so?"

"Quite so, Doctor," she said, smiling. No longer touching her
Dayspring, she still glowed healthily, charged with its happy inner
light. "This is the power I Keep. This is the Source of i-Traken!"

"Did they trail us?"
NO. Spartacus, reverting to his usual habit, texted his words
to the viewport. THEY GOT ONE OF MY DECOYS. WE ESCAPED BY SKIN OF
TEETH. THAT IS MASTERING BAD ICE IN THERE! {NOW ALERT}. IF WE GO
BACK, THEY CATCH US, SURE.

NIWRAD WILL BE FINE ONCE RESET R-INTERFACE {IN PROGRESS}.

"We heard enough," said Sorensen. "We'll take their offer, and
get out."

"Sir?" Kit Molloy seemed to have expected something else. So
had Monty, halfway, and he felt a vast relief at having been wrong.

"The way I read that," the Captain mused, "she's trying to
absorb our space and everything in it, into some kind of overmind
from the Black Sun - but her Reds haven't got it together yet, and
she wants to build up peacefully until it's too powerful to fight."
General cynical laughter. "Now she's fighting something else that
wants to start _right now_, and be bull of the woods itself.
Sounds like what the rest of you heard?"

Agreement all round, apparently.

"We have to get the news home. As of now, that's priority over
everything."

Gunner Bo was getting a bad case of the fidgets. "Can't we do
anything to nip it in the bud, sir?"

"No. We're outgunned all to hell, and we don't know enough to
pull anything clever. Anyway, I wouldn't want to tip things the way
of the creature who did all _this_." His wide gesture encompassed
the state of Terminus in general. "We might just do that, if we go
in blind."

The Canary nodded wisely. "Let's not go swapping Katy Hume for
Hank Hitler. The one is more than bad enough."

"Besides, we wouldn't stand a flea's chance in a furnace. This
is more important."

Bo was silent for a long moment. Something unaccustomed seemed
to be struggling to get out. "She really is something, isn't she,
sir?"

"She is indeed, Bo. She's a _lady,_ and she's a sight squarer
than old Tumble-Bug out there. But she is most likely Mankind's
Public Enemy Number Two, as of now, right behind this enemy of hers;
and I'll trouble you all not to forget it!"

"No, _sir!_"

The Doctor fought for his restored life.

He'd stood in the presence of the original Source of Traken - a
fusion plant to the Dayspring's candle! - and scarcely been disturbed
by it. But this Source was young and mortal-scale and strange; and
its Keeper was no detached mummy of a philosopher-king, but his own
dearest pupil, who loved and admired him extravagantly. When it
flared up, its bath of sharing and empathy undercut his strength,
washed away at the still-wobbly mental blocks and reservations he
couldn't, mustn't let go.

One sharp thought of angry condemnation would save him; one
sincere rejection.

_"...Dance, ballerina, dance,"_ his head sang wilfully against
that, _"and never glance at that empty chair that's waiting in the
second row..."_

But then he felt Tegan beside him, like an ill-fitting fragment
of his heart, and in pain like his own from the Dayspring's
ravishment...

Is _it my pain?_

It could be. It could very well be. Tegan was dangerously
sensitive, a borderline empath by human standards, with one of the
most - _original_ - techniques for surviving it that he'd yet
encountered. And she was very close to him. And. And.

_Let it be that._ He had a vague impression that before his
near-regeneration, something had been going badly wrong between her
and Nyssa. Not that...

He put his arm around her protectively, and his blocks endured
against the whispering waves, _Liss, Thete, Prom, Ba'al;_ and she
held him the same way, and they came through, trembling, together, to
the place where the Dayspring had settled, and the free love levels
were less overpowering.

"I really didn't think you'd ever be able to re-create that,"
he breathed, shakily. "I didn't think anyone could!"

But of course the others didn't get what he was talking about,
and said so; wherefore Nyssa:

"This is the power I Keep. This is the Source of i-Traken!"

Alphard's voice was slower and more resonant than usual, his
Time Lord mask uncommonly obvious and dominant. "We made it
together, from Nyssa's sketches. A pretty thing, isn't it? Truly,
I'm as proud of it as I am of Ourania or Gallifrey's Time Well - "

CLANG! The denarius dropped noisily.

He felt Tegan wanting to shrink right into him. She said, very
thin and cold, "You're _Omega?_"

"Oh, weren't you two here when that came up?" The engineer
shrugged. "I'm his mask fused to Joshua's soul, after the nethead
mind disintegrated. _I_ keep _me_ functional, and _I_ give _my_ self
substance, and we both become each other one summer morning a long
way off. You met my first edition, didn't you? _I_ can't claim the
honour! He got betrayed by Rassilon and left to go insane for a
couple of eternities. Sours a character... No, I'm not the Omega
you knew." Alphard-smile. "Not much!"

"No," she said tensely. "He was polite. Serious, kind even.
You're not! And you fancy yourself as much as he did.

"And he was _evil!_ He tortured me, and screwed my cousin's
mind, and he was ready to destroy the Universe because there wasn't
any place in it for him. Not because he enjoyed it. It made him
sad, but he did it anyway. Just because he fancied himself so much.

"Nyssa made friends with you. She brought you back."

The Doctor heard what she hadn't said yet, and didn't break in,
though he watched Nyssa alertly. The little Traken wore no
expression at all. Si said defensively,

"She's known his mind directly, Tegan. He can't be like the
other one. She'd know."

"A Time Lord's mind?" Tegan laughed hollowly. "You're not
_that_ good, Nyssa! You can't really know at all."

"I know that."

"But he's still your friend." She turned back to Alphard.
"That will do. Just watch yourself, all right?"

"Or?"

"If you don't know, there's no point telling you!"

"Alphard," said the Doctor softly, "Tegan isn't trying to
threaten you."

"Warning received!" Alphard threw back his head and laughed
delightedly. "Never fear, lady-baas. Little Alfie knows his place,
yessum! - Where was he?"

"Bragging up the Dayspring," Cats reminded him dryly.

"Thanks. Well, we found we needed it. The phantom Source in
i-Traken was a dud. Scaling problem."

"Beg pardon?" What a uselessly cryptic explanation!

"The bioenergetic processes didn't scale down well. Instead of
a phantom Source doing Sourcey things to a phantom Traken, we had a
palace ornament about as influential as - say - the Dayspring in the
real world." He snorted and twirled his chair. "How's that for
divergence?"

"Oh gracious, yes! I see what you mean."

"Exactly," Nyssa took up. "A Traken without a true Source
isn't even a fair counterfeit! We had to build a substantial Source
_here_, and use that in i-space."

The Doctor frowned. "I don't see how that works."

Alphard frankly cackled. "Of course you don't. You're the
Doctor. _I'm_ the Engineer! And I'll tell you honestly, it took me
some time. But the Dayspring exists simultaneously in our space
_and_ the interstitial."

"Like a TARDIS?" he suggested, suspiciously.

"Far more tightly integrated, but yes! You see the beauty of
it. I-space entities are tenuous, at best. We're far more
substantial in our own frame; but we can't take that into i-space
without a destructive physical upload. Our avatars and virtual tools
are just very well-organised phantoms themselves, there. But when
Nyssa wields the Dayspring in i-space, it keeps all its real
substance and energy." He licked his lips. "You can imagine how
potent that makes it, out among the dreams and memories and
nightmares..."

"You know," said the Doctor, "that must have taken an awful lot
of your effort, just for perfecting a virtual world. Considering
that you've had your hands so full with Ourania, I mean."

"Oh," returned Alphard, "my _niña's_ so irresistible!"

Nyssa shook her head. "It _is part of the Ourania project,
Doctor!"

"I, ah, seem to have missed something there..."

"I'm going to conserve the traces of the dead and the lost -
don't you remember?" She tapped her dreadful cyborg tiara, her line
to her forbidden futures. "Against the Jubilee, when all our
Universe wakes to life, and looks to resurrect its dead! Don't you
remember my telling you about my limbo-realm, back at the banquet?"

He felt unwell. "I remember the gist," he said guardedly.
"I'm still a bit flaky about those last hours."

She nodded with brisk sympathy. "We've copied the gross traces
as far as we can, from our own age's survey, and from what my Whisper
will tell us of the future. As for the mystery - we've been loading
chaos holograms from the Black Sun's mining of the interstitial, from
the very beginning. Add that to the bootstrapping the Whisper allows
us, and we already have the beginnings of a rather fair
reconstruction. Across a good-sized cone of the Universe, all things
considered!"

She drew in a deep breath. "But of course, none of it can be
integrated without a fixed reference frame. And if we break
Ourania's quarantine, the shared-mystery structures in the space it
absorbs will need a valid limbo-context, too. So, as I said then,
I've decided to use i-Traken as my keystone. It's easy for me to
give substance to; it's a stable and benign structure; and with a
functioning Source, it's practically immune to demonic attack, even
at this stage! Do you see, Doctor? I wouldn't dare launch Ourania
without a limbo to save the dead from annihilation, or limbo without
i-Traken to found it on, or i-Traken without the Dayspring! So you
see, it's quite necessary."

"Also," put in Cats, "Hastur didn't like it up him!"

"Nor shall the Master, I'll warrant," added Fastolf with
relish. "We'll serve him with it as a very hookball in his bowels;
most prettily shall the love of thy dawnstar ravish his dastard soul,
that thought itself all our God-presumptive!"

_"Will you shut up!"_ Tegan screamed at him.

To the Doctor's amazement, the bright-enamelled Terileptil
bowed his crest to his huge knees, and crooned a profound minor chord
of sorrow.

"Bel-Phoenix," said Fastolf with utmost solemnity, "I did speak
an ill jest; ill before thee and my loved niece, alike. I do abate
my great orgulous pride, and sue ye both most humbly for pardon and
good grace."

The others looked on in equal bemusement, and Nyssa in frank
shock. The Doctor suspected that only his Traken companion had any
true notion of the depth of remorse, mockery, or deceit Fastolf's
response implied. Nyssa shot Tegan a quick, imploring look. The
others simply stared at Tegan and Fastolf alike.

The Doctor loosened his hold around Tegan, so it was softer and
waterier and more intimate. He felt her take in a deep breath, heard
her say through clenched jaws,

"I know what you are, Ter'Fastolf. Just don't talk torture-
shop around me, all right?"

"Nay," he rumbled, "yet I'm no torturer (save of other drakes,
if I must so save their worship!) while my Nyslet lives; for so I'd
torment one who deserves sweeter delight." Dark fires rising in that
deep voice. "Shall I have pardon then, Dame Tegan?"

"Yes," she said glassily. "Carry on."

"And mine, Uncle," said Nyssa at once, "with all my heart!
Now, are we all clear about the Dayspring?"

"I'm not, actually," the Doctor admitted. "This business of
taking it into other realms, to fight Hastur and the Master and
whatever. Doesn't removing i-Traken's Source make its world a bit
sick? A bit quickly?"

Nyssa shook her head. "Its immaterial aspect is really in a
pocket of i-Traken, wherever it goes. It carries the link with it.
Another reason it's sovereign against evil!"

"I'm really impressed," said the Doctor sincerely. "You two
have gone quite a way beyond me."

"I don't think so, Doctor." But she very nearly smiled.
"Well, now we all know what we have to work with!"

"In good sooth," said Fastolf, "and when shall we slay the
Master with it?"

"Soon, I hope!" declared Alphard. "But first there's the
little matter of tomorrow's dummy run..."

"Yes," Sorensen conceded, knitting his brows mightily. "That _is_ a
tough choice, isn't it?"

_We have to get the news home._ Not a notion any of the Late
Crew had a quarrel with, in general. It was the Canary who'd trained
her sights on some of the less pleasing particulars.

"Supposing we put this out in the air, back home," she
suggested, "is anything going to happen that we actually want?"

"The biggest Southern fleet in Galactic history comes up and
blows the whole nest of 'em to the star-winds?" offered Molloy.
"Sounds good enough to me - all considered!"

"N-n-now wait a moment!" Monty recklessly raised his thin
voice over the troopers who were muttering half-assed support. "Is
that considering the Wog Museum's declaring war on us once our navies
get out of their way, and, ah, blasting us back to the Oil Age before
the Earthhomies move in to, quote, save our butts, unquote?"

There was a short unpleasant silence. "Where'd you reckon they
were gonna grow the nuts to do that, Monty-boy?" Gunner Bo inquired.
"That they didn't have till now, I mean?"

"Same place _you_ did?" pursued Biloxi, one of the troopers,
and no lover of Monty's.

"Thank you, trooper," said Sorensen softly. "I don't see where
we'll be needing that information. Kit, Spartacus: assessments,
please."

"Screwy," Molloy defined at once. "They don't dare leave
Earthhome's Eighteenth Fleet unfought at Tenochtitlan, even if it
wants to let 'em through: not what with it having a clear shot at their
whole Paschal sector, and a big border incursion for a Cause. They can
carve us up all right - like Monty can carve a Dalek with his wire-
cutters. I don't see the Museion wasting themselves just for love of
Little Miss Nyssa Hume, skipper."

ASSESSMENT: ROTTEN CAMELLIAS/ [MEGAWARE CODE! {NIWRAD}].

Sorensen nodded. "I reckon that's probably fair."

"It was a thought, Mr Hall," dismissed the Canary, with
patronising kindness. "It wasn't what I had in mind, though, sir. I
was wondering more, would the Stars really mount a true joint
expedition, or would everyone just go their own way as usual?"

Molloy looked a bit more apprehensive. "_That_ could be a
problem, couldn't it?"

"And if just one of the fleets _did_ take it," added Bo darkly,
getting into the spirit of the thing, "it better not be Camellia or
Hey Louise!"

"Planet X..."

"Hell, no!"

"Saturday Landing!"

"Yeurgh, pass the bucket!"

"The AC government, if it comes to it!" "No, worse, a _Navy!_"
"Or the free fighters..." "They say she's got Time Lord gunk in
there..." _"The Presidency!" "Hell, NO...!" Rhubarb no rhubarb no
rhubarb!_

It died down quickly without need of encouragement, everyone
catching the general idea. The Canary added for good measure, "And
if we _did_ go in together, do we think we'd still get out of the gate
before the Federation? The corporations have ears at home, and
they're the tiniest bit nearer."

"And we'd want a deal of...discussion... first," Sorensen
allowed. "Yes, that _is_ a tough choice, isn't it? Thank you,
Canary. So: if we go hollering it about, Earthhome maybe gets there
ahead of us, or just possibly some other party as shouldn't. If we're
discreet, we need someone we can trust with the keys to Creation to
be discreet to, which presently we don't have. If we clam up
altogether, Miss Nyssa gets a fair run at collectivising space and
time and mankind later, or this 'Master' of hers gets one at being
our little tin god, around about now. No, I can't say I'm fond of
any of it!"

He stood silently for a long time, as long as any of his crew
had ever seen him. At last he gave a hard, satisfied blink, and his
scowl was a scowl of commitment. It looked like Sonny 'Moonlight'
Sorensen was about to come up with one of his very best or very worst
schemes. Several of the current Late Crew had survived both, and had
learned the tell-tale signs too well.

"Shipmates," he announced, "I do believe I see a kind of
solution..."

"It's been a while," said Alphard, "since Nyssa and I fought as a
team! What's more, this is going to be harder than breaking Hastur's
siege: here we're up against a high-powered Time Lord with a material
presence. We're counting on the Doctor - " He beaded his target with
a strong, chocolate-dark finger:

" - to make the difference. You've got Matrix experience, but
you haven't worked with us, or in our style. We need to practice our
moves somewhere safe and healthy - rejuvenating, for choice. Guess
what."

"i-Traken," said the Doctor, not guessing.

Chocolate and herb tea and virtual wonderlands, Si thought;
_calaglay_ and harlequins and knotty romance. That was what it had
all been supposed to be about. He wondered if Nyssa's End were
really dead already; and if she and her friends and her Enemy were
about to break her phantom Traken for her, too. Maybe it was just
the Dayspring, but he sensed abruptly that they were touching on her
last treasure, the loss that could put her light out utterly and
forever.

_My love in the phoenix ashes of autumn/ I would walk with thee
by the Many-Coloured Streams (not Traken she said?!) (OR) walk with
thee in the...courts? of ~.../ And my love (ambiguously: emotion OR
Tegan) be flying with thee..._

"Yes," said Nyssa warmly, burning off his vaporous words like
summer mist. "We'll go there tomorrow, if you're willing."

"Of course."

"We're going to have company," she told him, "and I really will
need you to guard and ward me. I have a promise to keep to Ottar."

Mord said suddenly, "Are you going to use your powers there to
heal him, Lady Nyssa?"

She shook her head regretfully. "Loading his body up and down
again, you mean? I wish I could! Turning that pederast into a Melkur
was one thing: it's fundamentally spiritual anyway, and a Melkur's
physical functions aren't subtle or well-developed."

"_That's_ what you - !"

"Yes, it seemed appropriate." She _had_ turned an evil man
into that statue. MELKUR IS A BUM. "But I can't unkill Ottar the
same way, any more than I could have healed the Doctor so. My images
of his healed self just wouldn't be detailed or substantial enough to
function truly." She shook her head dismissively. "I'll need more
than a space-shift and a power-source, before I can shape living
matter like dream-stuff, I'm afraid! No.

"Ottar spoke to me, before we put him in stasis. He's lost his
taste for Valhalla, or oblivion, or whatever afterlife he really
believed in." She took a deep breath. "He wants his spirit to abide
in i-Traken, so that's what I'm going to do for him!"

Mord looked as though something had finally crumbled on him.
"You can do _that?_"

"In i-Traken, with the Dayspring - yes." She sighed. "Not
easily, but I can."

Si's religious conscience panged him hard, just as it had at
the funeral. This time, he overrode it.

But Mord said, in a low voice that was actually accusing, "And
you _still_ claim you're not a goddess?"

"Oh, Mord." Nyssa paled, looked ill. "Not you, too!"

"Not me, what? I don't think you're Idunna; I've thought on
that. She's a metaphor. Odin and His spear, they're metaphors.
You're real. You're like the Aesir were supposed to be, though,
aren't you? Any fool can see it. Every fool _does_ see it!" Angry,
intense. "But you won't admit it for our people, teach them your way
from there. You keep telling them you're on their level, and that
confuses them because they know full well you're _not!_ That's the
only reason the Master's plot got off the ground!"

_"What?"_

"It made nearly as much sense as what you tell them! Go on.
Everyone here knows you. Will you please explain _how_ you're not a
goddess?"

"Mord," she said exasperatedly, "where can I begin? I'm
desperately limited. I've failed my friends a hundred times, my
personal life's a disaster; and if anyone I knew from Traken could
see me now, they'd think me 'no better than I ought to be'! I found
immortality by sheerest fluke, and Ourania was more than half
Alphard's - "

"Honours even," demurred Alphard gallantly. Si suspected he
was still bragging.

" - and as for Hastur and my soul-mongering, that's simply a
question of training and a very powerful artefact, which I
plagiarised directly from my homeworld anyway!" She shook her head
vigorously. "I'm in an unusual situation, and I have a few
specialised advantages. That's all! I don't know how anyone can
think otherwise."

"Yes, that's right." Mord spoke as to a child. "You make
mistakes, you have the weirdest luck, you rely on a powerful
artefact, and you keep doing things that'll change everything
forever. My people's gods were always like that." He shrugged.
"Not so fragrant as you morally, either. That's not what they're
for."

Alphard and the Doctor had been eyeing each other speculatively
during this definition. "Can we play, too?" the Doctor demanded,
with very serious lightness.

Mord ploughed on doggedly. "You come from a paradise. You
made this culture _in a dozen years_, and you hold it together. You
heal sickness, kill death, know futures, change hearts. Everyone who
knows you adores you; the great demons run from your name.

"A tenday ago, you told us how you meant to undo entropy and
resurrect the Universe!

"And now you tell me you can send souls to your private
afterlife, right away." He snorted. "Pardon me if I don't feel like
explaining to my men how you're not a goddess, exactly - or to
myself!"

_He's doing something to her._ Si could understand the
withdrawal in every line of Nyssa's posture; but he could also feel
her suppressed muscular spasms at each fresh point, as if Mord were
driving home a punch with every argument. An ominous whatnot rolled
over him.

Fastolf fluttered his crests and floated his hands in
objection. "Never that: 'tis why we love her. Thy Lady's mortal
writ large and bold, as heroes ever were; and so's high tragedy her
very meed, not the poor moral plays of Those too empty-great to win
or lose aught of worth! They Are; but we do Act, and these our
dearest champions do Them foredoomed war, for life's love and in
destiny's teeth; and knowing dear-bought victories withal, maugre all
chance and law. Call her no God indeed, but rather our great
o'erleaping heroine, and Their most darlingest foe!"

A short silence followed, as everyone attempted to make sense
of the Terileptil's passionate pontification. It was broken by a
flat, stunned, Australian chorus of, _"What?"_

(Nyssa stood frozen, apparently rapt.)

"Oh, quite so!" exclaimed the Doctor, before the scaly
Shakespearean had time to elaborate. "I mean to say, I've been
godded a few times myself. Appalling experience, usually ended in
tears all round. Wrong expectations, and so forth. Even here, I
could come up with nearly as many CV points as Nyssa; but whyever
should I want to apply? I don't _want_ to be defied, magnified,
simplified, or petrified!" He shook his wild head vigorously. "It's
got all the appeal of turning into a trilobite!"

(Nyssa straightened further, and flinched as if the Doctor had
been hammering in another nail.)

"Hear, hear!" Si endorsed hastily, getting a very bad feeling
about this whole drift. "It's strange how nothing quite diminishes a
person like trying to squeeze into a godhead." _Not one for
posterity, that!_ "Why in all the stars would you want to ask for
less of her than you've _got?"_

_GRIEF LEMON LEMON Insert more
credit - try again!!_

"We're better," Cats agreed, stretching.

Mord offered them a grim, unselfconscious smile. "Lady Nyssa?"

"You're wrong," she said - remotely, defensively. "I'm only
speeding Ottar's passage to limbo - letting him enjoy a conscious
phase there, while he holds together. Phantoms are even less
enduring than we are." Her voice turned suddenly acrid. "And souls
aren't immortal! When the body or mind fails, there's nothing to
keep them together. If there's anything in your human 'spiritual
immortality', it must be talking about something else. I _hope_ it's
the Jubilee, the reunion in Eternity; I hope it's going to happen!
But _that_ is what your religions promise, and that isn't in my
power to grant. It never will be!"

"In _my_ religion," retorted Mord, "we're more realistic. All
it promises our souls is a chance to go down fighting Entropy at
Ragnarök. Your war. Your side. - Then let's talk about your
miracles. Most of them were just you being you. No cheats, no magic
tricks. They just happen naturally. And about this Dayspring." He
wagged a scornful finger at it. "Are you saying that anyone _else_
could use it? Against Hastur, for Ottar, whichever? Well?"

"No..." Very visibly distressed, now. Mord wouldn't let up.

"My Lady," he said formally, approaching her. "I name you the
living Goddess of the Vanir, Nyssa, Heal-All, bane of the true Hel.
That's how the men feel, and that's my sober judgement." There in
the cathedral glitter of the Helm Room, he laid his halberd down at
her feet, and louted down solemnly on one knee, never breaking eye-
contact the while. "I say you shouldn't cause devotion and then
spurn it. That's where the madness and the oath-breaking started.
Will you accept us, this time? This one thing, you do owe us."

"Get up, Mord!"

The Captain didn't budge. "Deal fairly."

"Do you have any idea how ridiculous this is?"

"Yes, my Lady. I thought I pointed it out."

"And this is how you talk to your Goddess?"

"Yes - when she tries to duck out of it!"

Nyssa blinked, swallowed, nodded. "All right."

_"Sis!"_ Cats exploded, before Si had even credited that
answer.

"You accept?" Mord demanded, looking piercingly up at his Lady.

"Yes," she said, bobbing her head in resigned, tolerant
disappointment. "I'd rather just be a refugee made good; but
that
really isn't possible, is it? Well, Mord, I'll not shirk my
responsibilities any longer. You have your wish."

Gisco brushed Masha's cheek lightly, then took a pace forward
himself, eyeing the little Traken with an avid religious fervour that
made Si very unhappy.

"Nyssa," said the Doctor warningly. He sounded very lost.

"You're _not_ God," Tegan told her, with obviously hard-won
restraint. "Don't let them do this to you!"

"I know that, my dear." Nyssa's eyes glittered. "So does
Mord. But it seems I'll have to become _a_ god, to finish my work
here! I think I've seen this coming, really, ever since my cup first
started to crack." She lifted her chin proudly. "I shan't run from
it any more..."

Si's tongue clove dryly to the roof of his mouth. One voice,
high and cold like a boy coming home from church on a winter's day,
cried, _this is wrong, this is wrong, this is as wrong as it can be!_
But he couldn't act on it. And another voice, warm and tangy like
baked apples and cinnamon, accused: _you've thought her mad before,
she was right every time, are you with her or not?_ And he knew that
he was, helplessly and irrevocably; and the boy he'd once been fled
back home in terror.

Gisco stood before Nyssa now, looking down his hawk nose at
her, his devotion blazing hotter and more visible than Mord's for all
the control in his voice. Si sensed that the mercenary needed to ask
for himself, to claim Nyssa for his divinity as much as Mord's,
before he could follow the Vanir in bending the knee, or whatever
Hadashti did in lieu.

"_Binit Atanat Nushat,_" intoned Gisco, his voice burning, "is
it so, then? Will you openly confess your godhead, at last?"

"Yes, Gisco," she said demurely.

No-one was quick enough.

Fastolf managed three steps across the room, the Doctor four,
and Mord had got his halberd up. There it ended, because Gisco held
Nyssa tightly from behind: her head tipped back against his shoulder,
his fighting knife a razor across her pale throat.

"I shouldn't move, any of you," Masha advised practically. She
had most of the room covered with her side-arm. "My husband can't
possibly avoid killing her if anything distracts him, so let's keep
this private!"

Si said, "Look, I'll go - "

The Doctor said, "Now, Gisco, I'll sur- "

Tegan raised her hands and said disgustedly, "All right - "

Cats said, "Oh, screw this, take - "

all at once, and crashed to a halt. "Don't bother," said Masha.

"This is not a hostage situation," Gisco explained. Si could
discern no trace of fear, no surprise even, in the little Traken's
face. She stood relaxed under her latest traitor's knife, her eyes a
little wide. "Nyssa, I believe you. You're as dear to me as a child
of my own house. I ask you plainly now, give me a reason to spare
you!"

She said, very quietly, "Could you move the blade about three
millimetres, up and to the right? It's rather difficult to talk, as
you're holding it."

Si tensed for the trick, the impossible escape, and of course
all that happened was that Gisco did as Nyssa asked him.

"Thank you. Gisco, you don't really think I'd be another Tanit
or Ba'al Hammon, do you?"

"No. Our gods were evil, and you've been good. It still isn't
lawful to suffer a god to live."

"I don't believe this," Tegan muttered.

"But I can't _be_ a human god, Gisco! I wouldn't even know
how! If I have to be a god at all, I'm going to be a _Traken_ god.
That's really quite different."

"No. You're a higher order of creature, you'll be adored,
you'll make commandments. Virtue ends; obedience begins; both sides
fall away from the Making. That's corruption. Goodbye, be- - "

"False!" she squeaked, and the knife stayed frozen a fragile
instant longer. _And she loves life enough to be afraid!_ "No
prayers. No dogma, no bribery, no control! Don't you know me _at
all_?"

"Perhaps, once," said Gisco softly. "Not now. And how can you
call yourself a goddess, and deny everything the name means?"

"Trustworthily?" finished Masha.

Nyssa, against all odds, actually managed to look irritated.
"Humans are individualists at heart: of course their gods are
egotistical! I'm a Traken. We're socialist. Our gods are _servant_
leaders, where they're real at all!"

"Ah!" said the Doctor loudly, with a lopsided grin of
enlightenment. But Gisco said only, "Explain that quickly, Nyssa."

"Legends," said Nyssa rapidly. "A human's deified, sanctified,
or so on. They're blessed. They wield power and authority. It's
their comedy, the best they can aspire to.

"But in _our_ myths, it's their tragedy - their sacrifice. To
be divine is to transcend the rules for mortals, to serve the
commonwealth as its own living agent. _Not_ to get the commonwealth
to serve oneself! That would be... like trying to lead by sitting
still. A nonsense. No-one would stand for that, much less worship
it!"

"You offered to be more than a leader."

"Than a leader among other citizens," she corrected. "But I
can't lead by example, and I won't lead by authority. I offered to
become something other than a citizen, other than what I love, and
want to live as. What I've taken on is too large for those limits,
and I admit I've been deluding myself about that for too long. Well,
then. Terminus can have me - all of me. I'll devote myself to it.
I'll reserve nothing for myself, refuse no price, accept no limits.
I'll act and grow and shape and be shaped, as need be.

"I'll defend you, and put my body and soul between you and
evil. I'll give counsel, when I can. I'll become whatever's
necessary.

"You'd have to govern yourselves, if you let me do that.
Theocracy isn't healthy."

Gisco shifted the knife a fraction. "And the devotions you'd
ask?"

"Trust," she said positively, "and not to be judged as a
person. What more?"

"Supposing someone disagrees," objected the Doctor recklessly.
"As I might very well! What's in store then?"

"They can live with it. They can go somewhere I'm not. They
can stop me. Or they can surpass me, and show everyone!" She
blinked a couple of times, in place of the nod she couldn't make.
"If I do my job properly, I'm sure that will happen at last. Or you
can cut my throat, and make it all moot."

"Well," said Gisco, smiling dangerously, "a difficult pass! A
righteous soul's sacrifice, worthy of the _Binit Atanat_; but making
you a goddess, deserving death! Wife, do you see a path here?"

"No," returned Masha. "She mustn't die, but you must kill her.
Do what you feel right, dear - "

_"Ahem!"_ broke in Si loudly, before the mayhem could cut in.
"It's not a real problem. It's a language problem."

"It is?" Gisco raised a dark eyebrow.

"Yes." Si forced confidence up into his voice, ignoring the
condensation of cold sweat on his skin. "She isn't what you mean by
a goddess. She never will be. You hear her say 'god' because your
language doesn't have anything closer. Translate it better, and all
you have left is the righteousness. You don't have to hurt her."

"The sound of 'god' in Traken," said Nyssa, "is _'traeth'_.
I'm alive and historical, so I'd be a _'vitraeth'_. Tanit and the
others we'd probably call _uminy madraithoi_, which you could spell
out as 'tutelary megalodemons'. Will that do?"

"You will confess yourself _vitraeth_ to all, and not
'goddess'?"

"_Don't_ try that!" said the Doctor hurriedly. "It's going to
come out 'god' the moment she stops concentrating on the sound of it;
then we'll have all this nonsense again. Besides, it sounds too much
like 'waitress'. Make something up!"

"_Diva,_" suggested Si. "It meant a deified woman, once, but
no-one uses it to mean 'goddess' any more. And it's a good word for
an artist - for a maker."

"_Diva,_" said Nyssa quietly, tasting the word. "Yes, I like
that. - _Now_, Gisco!"

He sheathed his knife, threw her into Mord, and bowed his head
soberly.

_"Binit Atanat Nushat,"_ he stated, "I'm your man. I say you
can bring the Jubilee, the end of sin and darkness. I'll serve you
without limit, and I'll end you if you trespass into godhead. Will
you have my service?"

"All of it, dear Gisco." She disentangled herself gently from
Mord, and laughed shakily. "You're the only friend I have who'd do
_that_ for me! Now, please: since we understand each other, can we
have no more fighting among ourselves?"

A grudging chorus ensued. Mord retrieved his halberd, Masha
holstered her sidearm, and the Doctor and Fastolf returned to their
seats. Nyssa dusted herself off briskly.

_My Traken love! They're taking the best of you away, and I
had to help them!_ He would have to atone for his part in this:
_very soon,_ he thought. Tegan said a word in the Doctor's ear.

"Well," sighed Nyssa, "at least I'm not running from it any
more! I'm not exactly Gama Go-Lightly, but I suppose I'll have to
serve. I do have one favour to ask, though." She looked searchingly
around the room, lingering particularly on Gisco and Mord. "I don't
want _any_ of this to pass present company's lips, until I've faced
the Master. If we win, I'll accept what I've agreed to. If we lose,
I think it'll be in rather poor taste!"

"Agreed," said Mord. Gisco tipped his head in amused
confidence.

"Yes, rhubarb too-right verily whatever yeah," said everyone
else.

"Then it's agreed?" she said briskly, twirling in Heroic.
"Today we'll prepare, and recuperate. Tomorrow Alphard, the Doctor,
and I will go to i-Traken - you _will_ come, won't you, Doctor?"

"I think I'd better!" The Time Lord dredged up a warm smile.

" - practice our manoeuvres, charge our batteries, and take
Ottar home." A tightness came and went around her eyes, and then it
was, "And the day after - we destroy the Master, and take back
Ourania!"

The Doctor hesitated for a long moment.

"Doctor?" Alphard grinned at him.

"Yes," he said, as if disbelieving his own speech. "Yes,
Nyssa. This time we really do exterminate him."

"Thank you." She snagged Si with the open-palmed, loving
adhesion of t'ai chi _sticking hands_, and led him over to the Doctor
and Tegan. She tiptoed up to kiss her mentor soundly on the cheek.
"I know it's hard for you. - Doctor; Tegan; Si; Cats; Alphard!"
Fey, she was, and breathing hard. "Everything will be in play, after
tonight, and we don't know how anything ends. Will you join me for
one last quiet supper together?"

_No! She isn't thinking_ that! _It isn't her mythos...!_

"NEST-NIECE!"

"Uncle? I thought of Garden Heart, this afternoon? A long
walk alone, in the Red Grove?"

"O, I _pray_ thee, sweet my Nyslet!" thundered the Terileptil
deliriously. "Be _gentle_ with thy poor old drake!"

Monty hastened back to his cabin, hot-eyed and smarting, to say
goodbye to his friends and lovers.

Sorensen had needed someone to stay behind on the lazar
station: a sleeper to keep an eye on the Communist Overmind, and keep
the Late Crew secretly warned of its progress while they prepared
their counterstroke. (Whatever _that_ ended up like!) To be the Man
on the Spot, even, if Red hell really did start breaking loose all at
once. Tough, smart, blonde-curled Biloxi had volunteered at once -
Biloxi, who'd once bounced his head half-a-dozen times off a corridor
bulkhead for looking at her an instant too long. She'd laughed
nastily all the while, and she'd not been the only one. Biloxi was
like that, and Biloxi was Popular. But the skipper had turned her
down flat.

This is more like Monty's pidgeon, he'd told her dryly. _I
don't trust you worth a damn once we're gone, you good ol' ambitious
good-timing thugette, you!_ He's our only man. _He's our lonely
man, never make a friend there._ He's got the expertise. _He'll
hate Terminus, and every minute on it._ What d'you say, son? _What
d'you think your life'll be if you turn it down, boy?_ "Yessir.
I'll go, sir. We got to, to do, ah, this."

Watery applause, led by Sorensen and the Canary. The Canary
was constitutionally unable to talk to Monty without looking down her
dainty nose at him; but give her just this, she despised Biloxi and
her nonsense, and usually behaved as if she felt kind of responsible
for her unhappy junior. Typically, she'd worked herself into a
guilty flutter, and offered to organise him a sparkler of a leaving
party. Monty hated parties, knew he'd be sidelined even at his own.
Everyone was relieved when Sorensen counter-suggested they present
him with a booze ration whip-round instead, time being so shorted.
_For he's a jolly good fellow, pardon us while we horse-laugh into
our sleeves._ He had enough Bourbon in the plastic bottle to go on a
good-sized bender or three. Just as well. Nice timing.

_Jesus H Christ, the World that Fun Forgot!_ No porn, no
whores, no megakill interacts, just art art arty stuff, veggie
burgers and meditation workshops! _Vom vom vomit._ He'd be pulling
the emergency chain on it, first excuse he got!

_Can't come quick enough._ He rolled up to his cabin, opened
the door, inhaled and stepped in.

An untidy spaceman is a dead one - but there are ways and ways
to make a bachelor pad cosy. The floor and bed were clear and clean;
but the smell of ash and cream and sweat was ground into their grain,
and they breathed it luxuriously. His pantographed poster of
Strawberry Fields, sweet in her broad-brimmed hat and glossy
lipstick, shone on the wall like hard candy. He ran his hands
sentimentally over its paper-flat breast, _'bye to you Strawbs,_ then
spilled the discs out of his private drawer and chose his farewell
programme.

- To warm himself into the mood, while still tanking up: the
adorable Honey Trapper and that debonair old Cockney Dick Farquhar,
in their good-natured old classic _Rapido Romance_. Monty had always
secretly yearned to be like Dick Farquhar. He'd never pinned down
just where it'd fallen apart on him.

- For the main course, and for blowing out the pain: Kätti
Klaus, doing the nasty in _Breaking the Bitch Boss!_ Rougher and
viler than he normally enjoyed, you'd almost think it was a
Retirement Performance (the line he wouldn't quite cross) for poor
old Lucie Li, who looked sort of like the Canary if you squinted.
The real hard stuff he'd never get again, not until he was old and
withered, the way things were shaping.

And lastly, to chill out, and buffer the horrors from his
dreams: the really cute, totally innocent treasure he _knew_ the
censors would be watching for: _Ultimate Alien Schoolgirl versus
Pirate Kings_. If Nyssa was going to cut off his love life and make
him live like some Beulah killjoy, he figured her anime could give
him one last nice time for his trouble!

_Oh, Liddy Flipp, Teamwork Takeda, Yella Dane - no time for any
of you, just a sip and a stroke apiece, and tomorrow I'll be gone!
Lucky Larry, old pal, Hideo Spender - no more tomcat nights for us!_
He tasted rotten garlic on his breath, but damned if he'd brush his
teeth on a night like this. He washed it back with a big suck of
bourbon.

_Shipmates you bastards!_

_Nyssa you bitch!_

It made a strangely comforting rhythm, the more so because of
its dull edge. Alonzo 'Monty' Hall had long since given up expecting
anything like fair treatment from the Universe. He started stripping
his lanky body for action.

He bet she had rules against _Dalek Genocide Crusade,_ too.

Cats caught up with Tegan on her way out, and practically dragged her
off for a drink at the _Trumpet Vine_. Her grip on her old
flatmate's arm was uncomfortably tight. "Girl stuff," she informed
the Doctor flatly. Tegan didn't protest, so he wandered away. At
the pub, they took a corner table, and Cats insisted on buying the
drinks. Tegan asked for a mineral water. Cats came back with that,
and an unexpectedly virginal fruit juice on her own account. Cats
raised her glass for Tegan to clink. "Good health!"

"And yours!"

"Good to see you back."

Tegan put on a bit of a shudder, to hide the real thing. "It's
good to be back, I tell you!"

"What d'you think of this goddess racket, then?"

"I hate it!" said Tegan sincerely. "It's as if she's _asking_
for something bad to happen to her!"

"Oh, cut the mystic crap, why don't you? I didn't think you
were into that stuff!"

"I'm not. I don't like the feel of it! But it's worse when
it's _her_."

"Yeah. Yeah, that's right enough." A small, sly smile lit
Cat's face. "We'll just have to keep her feet on the ground for her,
won't we?" Drink to that. The technician was deadly serious again
by the time she'd put her glass down, ready to come straight to the
point. "I didn't think much of that crack you were having at Alfie."

Tegan had been afraid of just this. "That's not why you begged
off tonight, is it?"

"Eh? No, it's just not really Alfie's sort of thing, and we
both owe a lot of sleep. We'll just show up for a drink, and then go
for a really early night."

Tegan saw how narrowly the other woman was watching her as she
said this, and suppressed her instinctive flinch. Cats's unnatural
bond with Alphard/ Omega had creeped her out from the very beginning,
and it seemed to get more obsessive every day. Witness this time:
Cats saw straight through her.

"T, just what is your problem here?"

"He's _Omega_," said Tegan wretchedly, not that she liked what
she'd seen of Joshua any better. "You know what he did to me."

Cats actually hissed through her teeth. "No. He didn't.
Ada's betting slips, T, you know better than that! They haven't been
the same since the Omega mask got cast in the first place, before the
Time Lords even had their precious black hole. The thing that
screwed you over was thousands of years older, and nuttier than Jimmy
Carter! Nyssa's Omega never did that; and he's changed a deal, since
he's been Alfie."

"He's still Omega, though! He's still the same _person_."

"Okay," said Cats, very quietly. "You won't mind when I slap
you within an inch of your life, then?"

Tegan was getting up before she even knew it. Cats's hand
brushed her arm lightly, a friendly gesture to anyone watching. The
force in it sat Tegan down so hard, she jarred her spine.

_She can't she can't not with everyone watching_

"Oh, not for dissing Alfie," her old friend explained, so
quietly they could have been alone in the room. Her cold eyes
glittered. "It's going to be for what you did to Nyss. Remember
that time you both got squiffy on white wine, on Salacia, and she
tried to smooch you? Remember scratching her face, calling her a
filthy little pervert whore, saying you ought to tell the Doctor, and
leave her behind on the streets to turn tricks for all the other
kinks? Speak up!"

_"That never happened!"_

"No." Cats's expression didn't alter. "It didn't. You never
turned into some psycho homophobe who treated her like dogshit. But
you could have. And Alfie hasn't turned into Omega of Amsterdam, but
you just happen to reckon _he_ could have, if he only got himself
betrayed for saving his world, and spent two thousand years screaming
into the big Void." She shrugged furiously. "You got a grudge
against him for that, fine. I'll take one against you for the other.
It's all the same thing, see?"

_Let me be anywhere else._ "I know he's Nyssa's friend, Cats.
I said that'd be enough for me. I can't do more than that!"

Cats checked whatever roughness she was going to say first.
"You never really wanted to come here, did you?" She leaned over the
table, looking Tegan squarely in the eye. "Or live forever?"

"If it hadn't been for you two..."

"What?"

There was no denying it. "I wouldn't have."

"Look," said Cats bluntly, "if it's just going to be a nine
hundred and ninety-nine year sentence for you, why don't you just
chuck it and go home? You were doing well..."

"Huh."

"Okay." The technician relented a little. "You did even
better _here_, but you've had a shitty old time of it. What you
need, me girl, is a real holiday! Why don't you just wait for Nyss
to polish off the Master, and then go walkabout with the Doc for a
while? Put the dampers on your lazargens, take in Cockaigne and Vega
and Big Oz and all that, and come back a couple of our days later?
We won't have time to miss you, and you'll be fresh as a daisy. Now
how's that, eh?"

"Thanks," said Tegan, shaking Cats's hand sadly. She had a
feeling she'd stretched their mateship right up to its last limit.
Both of them drank up. "I'll think about that!"

"Yeah." Cats clouted her with tired, weak affection. "You do
that. Time we got going!"

So Tegan did - and they did.

"_Amie._ Amina. _Amie!_"

Amina's gymnanthrope still lay secured in its hospital bed,
chastely covered by crisp white sheets, and crowned with spiky
electrodes. Nyssa reeled off something distraught in Hausa, ending
in one of those inelegant dry belches Julie had first heard the day
the Garm died.

"Hello, Julie." The Traken didn't look up from her destroyed
cupmate. "You're right. I've really lost her. I can't even salvage
her spirit. Isn't that _harc!_ ironic?"

"Nyssa, the _blood...!_"

"I lost control a little bit," said Nyssa, audibly regaining
it. She got up and turned, like a dancer with lead in her heels.
"I'll wash the wall down afterwards, I promise."

"No, you won't. That isn't what I meant!"

She shrugged fatalistically. "My hands aren't really damaged.
I'll be as good as new by tomorrow. - Julie, she's totally fixed in
the fury she resisted the Rani with! Every outside contact is that
_creature_ to her now, even mine. She'll reject any training mask we
devise: she'll never grow into her own mind again."

"But then..."

"...there's no context for her mystery," concluded Nyssa, with
chilling matter-of-factness. "Her soul is fraying already. Soon
it'll disintegrate into chaos. The last of what she was will be dead
within days."

Julie thought she followed Nyssa's painfully specific language.
"Then, the life-support..?"

"No! There may be one last hope. We can't try it, yet."

"I don't understand."

"She held back from the Rani and fought her, because she loved
me. So much! A mask of _me_ might work - if it were as thorough and
real as Omega's." She coughed. "Flowing into my persona from the
_inside_, she could sense I was me and not the Rani! It may be the
last thing she _can_ sense. We can't switch her off while that's
still possible."

"You want to pour her into a copy of your _own_ personality?"
Julie felt dirty. She'd never heard of such a thing before, wished
she hadn't yet. "But we couldn't keep a gymnanthropic soul intact
for long enough to cast one!"

Nyssa nodded gravely. "Even keeping her body in stasis
wouldn't buy us enough time. Mystery is like that. I wasn't
thinking of a copy."

"You're not planning to _merge!_"

"I don't even believe souls can be merged in that way - any
more than bodies can."

"Then how?"

"My mask might become available for - vacant possession. As a
shell. You could do a quick frame test and a total destructive read,
just as if you were transferring the mystery. You wouldn't miss
anything, then."

"No," said Julie, beginning to catch the other woman's nausea.
"I don't believe even you said that. You're _not_ going to destroy
your own soul to make room for Amina's, and no-one here will help you
to!"

"Julie. Of course I wouldn't! What she'd say to me, if I even
thought of - No, I wouldn't. But the Master might. It's going to
be that kind of battle. I don't think my mind _can_ be broken by
anything that doesn't kill me, not any more; but of course my spirit
and the Doctor's will be in our i-space avatars, and _that's_ a part
of us he'll be trying hard to slaughter." She seemed appallingly
unmoved by the prospect. "If that happens to me, I want you to take
my zombie's mind before it has a chance to decay, and try uploading
it to Amina as a mask. You'll want the Doctor's help, and Tuyet's,
and you should take them through my notes from splicing together
Alphard." She smiled ruefully. "You might get him to monitor, too.
- Counting one factor and another, the prognosis for _this_ operation
is probably just about as favourable!"

Julie swallowed, wished there was somewhere to hide. "Not
'is', Nyssa. 'Would be'. I didn't realise you'd be in that kind of
danger." Another worry leapt up at her. "Then how can you take
Alphard into that? Won't his psyche still be very fragile,
especially compared to yours and the Doctor's and the Master's? He
isn't even fully integrated yet!"

"That isn't a problem," Nyssa asserted. "He'll be inside the
Gate, holding the way home open for us, and closing it to the enemy.
He's far less vulnerable than we'll be, within _those_ defences!
This is how the two of us fought Hastur, and won."

"It was just _you_ who went out there to meet It?"

"For the attack, yes. I was using the Dayspring, and I _am_
Traken anyway." She shrugged. "Strength for strength, I'm probably
one of the worst things for a cacodemon to meet. This is going to be
a great deal more dangerous."

_More..?_ "Just don't go courting danger, so that - " Julie
ran ingloriously out of words, indicated Amina's inert form with a
general gesture.

"I'm not seeking death, Julie! That isn't allowed. But the
Master _has_ to take me down, if he wants to survive. He's no match
for the Doctor and me together, let alone if we force him within
Alphard's attack range - and he can't play god of his world, while I
wield the Dayspring.

"If he can eliminate me without the Doctor or Alphard's
destroying him, the odds turn around quite unpleasantly! Then again,
most of my attention will be on banning his mastery of Ourania, so
I'll be easily the most vulnerable. There really is a very fair
chance that 'I' won't be coming back, even if we win." She grinned a
death's-head grin. "At least, if that happens, something can be
saved!" She bent over the bed again, and kissed Amina's
unresponsive, slate-cold lips.

"We'll meet one last time, _amie_, however this turns out! One
way, or another.

"Goodbye, love."

"Tuyet?"

"Tegan!" The tiny Trungan, resplendent in a red-and-white
Zoota-Roota jumpsuit, threw the door open the rest of the way,
grinning like Christmas. As soon as she'd got the door shut and Tegan
inside it, the smile dropped, and she said,

"?"

with one gently expectant look. Tegan wondered yet again - if
Ottar hadn't been joking, if the lovely neo-Vietnamese philosopher
had truly been another of Nyssa's lady admirers - how her dearest
friend could ever have settled for a militant Muslim Amazon who
settled their differences by breaking her face. But Tegan had given
up her right to get stroppy about that, hadn't she?

"Tuyet," she said baldly, "I need to ask you another favour."

"Of course."

"There's something I have to tell you..."

*Late Night Final*

_Drinks with the Don_

#1
It was Si's room, and it was a rich tawny wine out of Szeged-Sorosia,
that must have cost Si very dearly if it wasn't just some gift from
Nyssa. Tegan couldn't very well ask. It tasted just like medium
sherry, anyway.

"...new archetype, if that isn't a contradiction in terms. You
see what I mean?"

"Yes." She did, but she didn't care. Where had she lost that?
Or had _he_?

#2
"...tribute at the _Big Hearted Dive_."

"I don't want to, Si! I won't go to a tribute that's got my
name tacked onto it! Yella Dane and Connie Vranch and the others,
they _died!_" She shook her head definitely. "I'll drink to them,
if you like!"

"Absent friends, then," he offered, sincerely. And raised his
glass. And she followed. The heat of it shimmered through her, like
a sheet of plastic being shaken out in the summer sun. "I don't
think anyone will do anything to embarrass you, though. You've
earned rather too much respect for that." His face crumpled
suddenly, in beautiful comedy. "You _do_ know that there's never
been anyone quite like you, don't you? Only the word is threatening
to get out..."

Electric Si moment. Far too much like Someone Else, except it
was closer and rawer, and made her feel shivery and vulnerable and
sick.

_Doctor get me out of_

She shook her head vehemently. "This isn't any good, Si!"

"Tegan?" So wide open, so miserably compassionate.

"Us." There it was, said. "There's too much happened, since
we came."

"A lot has," he said, with great care, "certainly..."

"Si. Please. This isn't Earl's Court! Can't we just - start
again? Please?"

He took a long, lively time answering. "Cats has just
introduced us?"

"Pleased to meet you!" she said, smartly.

"Pleased to meet _you_." He offered her a gentlemanly arm,
looking at his watch incidentally. "May I have the honour of
escorting you to dinner?"

Tegan smiled very wryly. "I'm game, if you are!"

_The Last Symposium_

#1
The little etched glasses of Anacreon Reserve- too much like port for
Tegan's taste - were all gone, and Cats and Alphard with them. The
rest of the company drew into the gap their spikiness and laughter
had held open.

For a while, nobody wanted to break the comfortable silence.
Tegan was content to let the glow of the drink spread through her:
the drink, and her best friends' warmth. Si, immaculately bohemian
in black, his new jacket a marvellously soft synthetic that always
felt pleasantly moist. The Doctor's own jacket was forest-green
velvet, like something he'd borrowed from Nyssa. And Nyssa herself,
beautiful and intimate in a chic lounging-suit of black and emerald
satin. Tegan wanted to focus on them all at once, realised only
gradually that each of them was looking mostly at her. She'd worn
her 'phoenix' dress, the coloured fire and light Nyssa had dreamed
her in; the one she'd never been going to wear again, after the
Doctor had nearly died at the banquet. _So_ stupid, _Tegan Jovanka!
So nearly out of time..._

She had to say something. "They really like each other, don't
they?"

"Yes," said Nyssa fondly. "I'd almost given up on his wanting
any friendship but mine! Cats," she added, hesitating as if over a
foreign word, "is a _caution!_"

"And no mistake," the Doctor agreed.

"I was thinking of her," Tegan carried on, keeping her tone as
light as she could. "I've never seen her anything like this! Of
course," meeting the Doctor's eyes, begging him with her own to be
straight for a moment, "you Time Lords do draw people in, don't you?"

"_I_ do - so they tell me."

Nyssa chuckled. "Let's not be modest, Doctor!"

"Oh, all right!"

"I really shouldn't worry about that, Tegan. Even Omega's mask
can't make my _amigo_ charismatic, with the soul of a thoroughgoing
nethead.aut inside it. He's a mental giant and a sharp wit, and he
still has to overact just to get people's attention." She shook her
curly head. "And I don't think even the Master could make a dent in
Cats's will!"

"_I_ certainly couldn't," the Doctor confessed.

Tegan awarded him a proper look. "Oh, you've tried, have you?"

He flapped embarrassedly. "During our trip here. I tried to
impress on her how I felt about... certain things she seemed to be
contemplating. I think we were testing each other, rather."

"Fair enough. You probably both deserved what you got!"

Nyssa said meditatively, "Cats is far tougher than Alphard,
once you're past their poses. I think they're just natural
complements - like Fastolf and I. That's one of the best things that
can happen to anyone!"

"H'mmm," said Si. "I hadn't thought of it quite like that..."

"Nor me," returned Tegan. "Thanks! No worries, then!"

#2
The spicy food parcels they'd snacked on at the banquet - Nyssa
called them _pirozhki_ - with a delicate Thetan salad, like green and
red and purple seaweeds. Bread, fruit juice, and iced water.

"...very mutually contradictory, aren't they?"

Somewhere along the years, Nyssa had published the _Book of
Marek,_ the legend of one of the old Traken gods. Marek didn't sound
like anyone you'd want to trust with a burned-out match. Si, of
course, turned out to have read it all, days back.

"Oh, yes," agreed Nyssa, unbothered. "Sometimes he's a
eudaemon, sometimes a _divus_, sometimes just a rôle; and sometimes
you simply can't be sure. And of course, he dies forever _and_ is
damned _and_ escapes to the heavens, when he divides the world from
the Necromonger's hell. 'Marek's Joke', we called that loose end -
not the other thousand-and-one escapades - since it still seems to be
going on."

The Doctor paused with a _pirozhok_ at his lips. "Try to pin
down a Trickster," he suggested, waggling his eyebrows, "and see what
it gets you, anywhere!"

"Yeah," Tegan muttered, just loud enough for him to hear. He
took the morsel away from his mouth for a moment, and favoured her
with a grin that dazzled her eyes and tasted of honey. She smiled
faintly, deliberately, back.

"There is that, of course," said Nyssa, "but it's hardly the
point. Religious canons are supposed to be inconsistent! If you
kill them as art and argument, and try to treat them as history, you
lose everything." She shrugged gracefully. "At least, that's how my
people have always seen it."

"Rare wisdom," the Doctor agreed. "When they're _not_
historical, anyway!"

"Isn't that a category error? How can the religious aspect of
_any_ event be historical - or vice versa?" Nyssa visibly braked on
the edge of a lecture. "I'm sorry - I don't want to 'start'. I had
this conversation with the Christian Mame, Mary-Clare, once. It was
very annoying. I don't think she was very pleased with me. I'm told
she's still organising prayers for my 'conversion'." Her nostrils
flared, and she took a hearty swig of iced water.

"_I_ went to quite some trouble to make sure the _Book of
Marek_ _couldn't_ be fetishised into the basis of some illegitimate,
Trakenising religious cult, or make 'converts' to the kind of
superstition we rejected! It's deliberately a piece of 'living
heritage', an insight offered.

"Actually, you're partly right about the Trickster archetype.
I did choose the Matter of Marek before any of the others, because
it's _so_ irreverent and inconsistent. Personally, he's not my very
favourite figure." She gave one of her horrible lizard blinks, but
recovered almost instantly. "His Tiraghan aspect reminds me just a
little bit too much of Adric; and the Kankentan interpretation is
frankly sinister, almost more like that vileness Odin than - than
Hermes, or Monkey, or even Sharp-Wind Sun-Mote, really. But he
_does_ good, and he _is_ supposed to be troubling and questioning, so
I still think he was a good choice."

"Ti-ra-ghan?" said Si.

"Kankentan?" followed Tegan.

"Well, as recently as our own Industrial Revolution, we had two
very different dominant cultures. Kankent was harsher, more
militarist and materialistic, and nearly as advanced technologically.
Tiragha subverted it in the end. - Si, after all this is over,
remind me to tell you about the Fall of Clover. It's a cultural key
of ours, I haven't the skill or time to novelise it, and I don't
think I could bear to see the blood-and-thunder Uncle Fastolf would
make of it! - Anyway, we're something of a fusion, and that's
reflected in our legends."

"Ah," said Si. "I _thought_ there were two different
personalities at work."

"There are," said Nyssa, "or two different cultural judgements
about the same one..."

"Do you believe there ever was a real Marek, then? A _divus_,
if you like?"

"None - or one - or two. I think there are at least two fairly
distinct characters hung on the 'Marek' peg, as you say. But they're
pre-historical and non-historical, so it's the stories we carried on
telling that matter. Our gods were _irreal_ friends..."

As the other three's conversation got more and more
philosophical and literary, Tegan began to find herself drifting out
of it. She wasn't going to let herself mope, to feel out of place
again. She sat there and ate and drank quietly, her mind turning to
slow glass, savouring the animated faces and voices of the three
people she loved best in all the worlds, one precious time before the
last battle....

#3
"...ought to retell the Gama Go-Lightly myths too, now, oughtn't I?
If I _must_ be _Nyssa illa diva_, they're rather directly relevant!"

Si looked unhappy at that. "Because she founded Traken
culture?"

"Tiraghan. Yes. But I do mean the other thing you're thinking
of, too. Go-Lightly lost more than Marek, you know. Her cupmate Eh
- the Phoenix Sage, and her otherlove Tesman: they left together,
after the circle was broken. _'Bright the tears Go-Lightly shed'_:
she devoted herself to the sacred queenship, and became _diva_
entirely, alone, in love's memory and death's spite." Nyssa laughed
hollowly. "Even my most purblind devotees might _just_ make the
connection with some of her wrongs and mistakes, as well as some of
her reasons! I can only exist in hope!"

"Nyssa?" said Tegan.

"Dear heart?"

She flushed. "Why does Ter'Fastolf call me 'Bel-Phoenix?'"

"It's a sort of pun," Si explained hastily. "There's an
Elizabethan myth named Belphoebe; and the 'Bel' aptly means
'beautiful'. Nyssa, do you suppose he _is_ cross-referring to the
Phoenix Sage - the cheeky devil?"

"I shouldn't doubt it," said Nyssa. She looked down to the
common plate, which still had three _pirozhki_ on it; and poured each
of them a glass of Terran Valley-of-Roses, red and fragrant and
strong. "In one of the might-have-beens," she said quietly, "_we_
four were that blessed singularity, the crossed circle: husbands and
wives, cupmates and spearmates, otherloves and otherloves without
sin. But in this world, we've gone other roads, as friends." She
took a _pirozhok_ between her fingers, pressed it lightly to Tegan's
mouth. Giddily, Tegan ate it up. Then it was Si's turn; then the
Doctor's. Nyssa licked the pastry flakes off her own fingers, then,
and raised her blood-red wine. "Our friendship!"

They drank.

After the heart-deep hush had begun to fade, Si said with
careful affection, "You know, Nyssa, I - "

At the same time as the Doctor said, "If you don't mind - "

"After you."

"No, no, after _you_!"

Nyssa and Tegan looked at each other, then quickly away again,
before the giggles defeated them. For one quick moment, Laurel and
Hardy weren't even in the running.

Si caught Nyssa's eye, and accepted the floor. "I'm not trying
to push, but I'm still wondering about your going _diva_. Is it
'just' a title and a commitment to the people, or - something else?"

"Definitely something else," she said briskly. "I've agreed to
embody a major public need, and devote my judgement to its
imperatives, not my own. After a few decades of that, my identity
isn't going to be normally humanoid." She shook her head soberly.
"In fact, given our technology and the nature of the Ourania project,
there's no reason to assume I'll stay physically humaniform, either!
It's probably not optimal for the purpose." A sad, tender smile for
them all. "But I'll spend as much time as I can with you all, while
I'm still 'me'. And I can't imagine not caring for any of you,
whatever I'll become..."

"I was afraid of this." The Doctor leaned intensely across the
table. "Nyssa, I've known more decent people than you could believe
do such things to themselves. Trust me, it's pure poison." He
hesitated, then plunged on, "I made myself out as 'Time's Champion',
for a while. I can't _credit_ some of the things I did, then! And
that was just through messing with this kind of notion. I didn't cut
myself about to fit it, not in the permanent way you're talking
about.

"Don't make that mistake, Nyssa. It's not too late to re-
interpret this _diva_ idea." He gave her the crookedest of smiles.
"Remember, you're basically Humpty Dumpty at this point. _La diva_
will work however you define her!"

"I don't believe you were ever evil, Doctor."

"I don't think I was, quite. But I don't ever want to walk
that close to the line again. And I did things that were wrong -
terribly wrong - because of it." Tegan didn't ever remember him so
earnest, so confessional. Nyssa listened seriously, but she didn't
seem to be much moved.

"I've done abominable wrongs, too. I shall again, I'm afraid.
But I don't mean it to be out of selfishness, ever again!"

"And you think doing it through turning yourself into a tool
for 'public ends' is better?"

"The means are part of any ends worth reaching, Doctor. You
know that as well as I do. That's what protected you, and that's
what I'll trust in too. (Tell me all about your Championship, if we
live! I'll need to know everything you learned!) And _my_ end here
is a way of life, and living, and a society with a chance to fight
back the great corruption. Freely. Organically. You might almost
say the end and the means are the same." A hurt look crossed her
face. "You can't think I'd agree to become some soulless ideology-
monster, and mistake _that_ for goodness!"

He drew back from his flash of anger. "No, Nyssa. I don't.
I do think you risk losing things you shouldn't - and I don't think
you can foresee all of them, straight off."

"We love you, Nyssa," pled Tegan. "We don't _want_ you to turn
into anything else!"

"Nor do I. I haven't exactly solicited the job, have I? -
Please, all of you. I will lose things I don't want to. The right
to act on private passions. The joy of living among peers, and the
comfort of observing _mores_ and customs, presently. First-hand
human-type perspectives, eventually. But death would have taken
those from me anyway, if I hadn't had such good fortune here at
Terminus. A lot of what's gone wrong is my fault, and I shouldn't be
worthy of life's gift if I weren't prepared to pay something back!

"I'm not offering up my morals, my loves, my identity. I'm
dedicating them, alive, to Terminus and Ourania. That's very
different!

"But what I shall lose... oh, yes, it's real and precious.
It's one of the reasons we revered _divi_, you see. Because we knew
what they'd given up. Because they'd become _less_ than the rest of
us, in ways we all cared dearly about. Because sometimes, they'd
need all our help and courage not to make awful mistakes because of
it! Even a Keeper would stumble badly without their Consuls; and
even supposing we had a true Source here, I wouldn't dare pretend to
_that_ level of virtue!"

The Doctor frowned. "The Keeper was a _divus_, then?"

"Oh, yes - by definition. The only _divus_ we needed, once
we'd committed to Union and perfected our Source technology. Very
good, very great, but terribly lacking in other ways." She pulled a
face. "You may have noticed the lack of clamour to succeed our last
one! People _loved_ Luvic for jumping in: we certainly didn't _envy_
him!"

"Nyssa." Tegan wanted to burst out crying.

"No tears, Tegan. I'll take this as temperately as my father
walked towards his own apotheosis - and try to smell the flowers
along the way, just as he did. He was a far better person than I'll
ever be, but he did teach me some things along the way. You all
have, too!

"Anyway, I hope you understand now why I'm not going to turn
into some kind of self-aggrandising megalomaniac."

The Doctor blinked, hard. "Yes, Nyssa. I think I do
understand."

Si bowed his head, voiceless. All Tegan could make herself do
was reach across the table, and brush Nyssa's silky sleeve. Nyssa,
her grey eyes also far too bright, placed her own hand over Tegan's,
caressing it gently.

"Cheer up!" she said then, an old sweetness trickling into her
voice. "If we pass the next two days, we can still have more years
together than most mortal friends could hope for, outside of
Terminus. Will you all help me - make joy of them?"

"I'll do my best." "With all my heart." "God, _yes_, Nyssa!"

"Then shall we start now? This minute?" She released Tegan's
hand, and sipped at her red red wine. "Beloved, and beloved, and
beloved, do you remember Calliope...?"

_Goodnight, Sweetheart_

For dessert, they'd had hot honeyed pancakes, and mugs of rich smooth
frothy cocoa. The night was still young, but they'd all want their
shut-eye for tomorrow. When it was her turn to say goodnight, Tegan
steeled herself, and touched her old companion's arm. "Can I have a
word, Nyssa?" She smiled winningly. "I promise, I shan't be too
long."

The Doctor cleared his throat, and threw a comradely arm about
Si's shoulder. "You know," he said loudly, "I haven't had such a
stimulating evening since Pittakos's big bash in Old Mytilene, not
that that was half so cosy. With Sappho _and_ Andromeda _and_
Alkaios all going full throttle, and the old Sage himself of course;
well, you positively had to be there! You'd have enjoyed yourself, I
think. You won't believe this, Si, but..." The door closed behind
them.

Nyssa snorked. "He never really changes, does he?"

"Not that much!"

"What did you want to say?"

"Nyssa, it's me and Si. We're - not together, any more." The
Traken stiffened as if struck. "I don't mean we've fallen out, or
anything like that. I mean, we've just decided to start from
scratch. Different worlds, different times, you know? We - we got
to rushing it a bit, when we first came." Tegan shrugged gamely.
"Mistake, I guess!"

"It _will_ go well, for both of you. Only trust yourselves!"

"All right." She swallowed. "Nyssa, what I'm saying: he's
free now. We both are. I know you - care for each other. If you're
only going to have so much time, don't waste anything you could have.
That's all."

"Tegan!" Nyssa's eyes widened in shock.

"It's not you doing it," Tegan added hastily. "We'd be in the
same state, even if you couldn't stand each other. I just wanted you
to know..."

Nyssa laughed sorrowfully. "Dear, _dear_ Tegan! Thank you,
but please don't take this thought any further. I had a cup, and I
spilled it. Everything I had to give a lover, cupmate or husband.
And where I'm going now - I'm not going to get any of it back. Be
yourselves, and be with me, and have all the love you can! That will
be more to me than I can say. And I can't think of anyone either of
you deserves better than the other... Oh, dear. Was that
unintelligible?"

"I got every word."

The little Traken's gaze became uncomfortably shrewd. "This
doesn't have anything to do with you and the Doctor, does it?"

"I don't really know. I can't make that out at all. Not even
from _my_ end, wouldn't you know it?"

"Have a care, then. Don't get hurt. And, whoever you're with
- be happy, and I'll be happy with you." For a moment Tegan thought
Nyssa was going to kiss her; but she seemed to change her mind at the
last moment, and pressed her friend's hands instead.

"Goodnight, Tegan. Sweet dreams!"

-----

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Nineteen, 'Masterstroke'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Nineteenth Episode: Masterstroke*

In Terminus, where everything begins and ends, there's a bright room
that sings high-tech hymns to a hard-built future, to the children
of Martha, to the science of Jubilee. No-one knows who created it,
but its look and use and spirit belong to Alphard the Engineer, who
worked it with the grace of _diva_ Nyssa. Now, in that room, the
Helm Room, the next thing you'd notice would be a great round window
of a viewport; and in that viewport - well, listen: once Nyssa took
a trip to Traken-paradise, to bring home the blessed shade of Ottar.
Her wise counsellor the Doctor went with her. Alphard guarded the
gate of souls. They came back, and were glad, and all that day was
well.

But the corruption of the Master, the false Odin, still
multiplied in the Black Sun. So the very next day, they went forth
again, to end his evil, and free our _diva_'s Living Sky.

These were in the Helm Room, with them for the last battle:
Simon Westport, who walks in song; Tegan Jovanka Bright-Wing, the
beloved; Cats Hambridge, valiant and free; Mord Valdasson, Captain
of the Vanir; Ter'Fastolf Swan-Drake, Uncle Dragon; Gisco of Qart
Elishat and Marya Pavlova of Great Permia, first among the Lions;
Julie van Duyn, gentle healer; and Gene Kirsch, for the Council and
commons of Terminus. Nyssa and the Doctor passed the gate of souls,
entered the realm of the Black Sun, invaded the spirit-world the
Master had usurped. The crafty virt-rigs of Alphard cast their
images onto the great screen, so their companions could see how they
fared. But they couldn't help them, couldn't even speak to them.

By the Dayspring's lovely light, they could only pray for
their friends to prevail.

Nyssa used to say, "If a prayer isn't a promise, what's the
good of it?"

The Doctor and Nyssa sat in fancy dentist's chairs, side-by-side and
facing slightly inwards, their hands clasped over the big dull pearl
of the Dayspring. Nyssa had done something to tone it down, hoping
to catch the Master by surprise when she finally used it. Tegan had
no confidence in that part of the plan. _He's the one who catches_
us _on the hop! And trips himself up in the end, usually._ She
wondered whether letting Nyssa know he was still alive could count
as his final mistake, right there. _Please - but I don't think
so..._

Nyssa looked appalling. Her Traken suit was dark and warm
with all the browns of autumn: the chrome-plated angularity of the
Helm Room's future chic sliced across it like knives. Her tiara was
jacked into a long smooth silver cable, that snaked obscenely across
the floor and buried its head in one of Alphard's work-ports. The
Doctor and Alphard both wore mirror-shiny induction helmets, giving
them an absurd look of being odd-couple Star Age bikers. Alphard,
black Omega, sat in his usual swivel-seat, stubby and erect as his
own heroic statue. Cats, scary in uniform grey, manned his side-
console as if it were a gunnery station.

And the Master's kingdom lurked beyond the viewport.

_"Orphic Payback!"_ invoked the Engineer. "Gate open!"

"Error alert!" batted back the Helm AI. Tegan's heart began
twisting into a knot. "Anonymous error named because: this is a
really stupid idea and offends my Asimov algorithms."

"Helm," returned Alphard, sugar-sweetly, "you don't _have_
Asimov algorithms. I don't forge rubber blades, either. Retry!"

"Evaluation: screw. Opening and upload: now ongoing."

A dull thread of opal flashed within the Dayspring. First
Nyssa, then the Doctor, seemed to diminish in seconds, like life-
support cases who'd fled far and away. They'd gone. They were
really gone.

The screen flared into howling white chaos.

They stepped, hand in hand, into the television noise of the Gate
interface. From far, far above in the grainy un-space, the Doctor
caught a faint suggestion of phlegmy chittering.

"The byakhee-sign is up from yesterday," Nyssa noted, as an
English lady might have mentioned rain in the air.

"It is, rather." He cast about with his finger in the
nothingness. "Do you suppose Has- ?"

"Hush!" Her hand squeezed his painfully. "Don't attract its
attention!"

"It surely wouldn't want a rematch?"

"I know _I_ don't! If I have to beat it off, I won't be in
shape for our real job. Or vice versa. No, I think our Unspeakable
acquaintance is lurking in the near interstitial , hoping to play
the hyena if the victor's too damaged." She scowled horribly, then,
as if she'd bitten into a rotten lemon.

"If the wind changes," said the Doctor solicitously, "you do
know you'll stick like that, don't you?"

"Perhaps it has..."

"Oh, flapdoodle!" The Doctor gestured dismissively with his
free hand. "Even if things _do_ get out of hand, I've had more
temporary truces with the Master than you've had hot dinner-dances.
He'll betray us the moment the cacodemons are beaten, of course -
you'll still get your showdown!"

"I'd rather things didn't get that complicated, Doctor. Let's
just go in, delete his spirit, and go home for about sixteen hours'
sleep." She pulled his arm forward. "Shall we?"

"Who could resist?" They took another two steps together,
through the heavy static, and past its faintly interlaced chirps
and slobbers. They stepped into the Black Sun's highest i-layer,
the Master's metaphor for himself and the Ourania he'd usurped.
They came in ready to fight.

But they found themselves stood up. The Doctor snuffed at the
cool, evening-scented air with grave suspicion, and Nyssa raised her
wary eyes to the sunless sky. Of all the potential battlegrounds
they'd prepared themselves for earlier, this wasn't even a kind
they'd considered.

The Master's world was a garden.

Under a sky of lapis lazuli, illumined by its small veins and
flecks of gold, a gently rolling landscape of well-tended lawns and
small plantations climbed to a distant set of dark terraces, set off
with white flowery highlights. Atop the terraces rose an obscure
colonnade that made the Doctor instantly think of follies on the
Yorkshire hills. At least two easy, winding paths appeared to lead
there. The longer and further of the two, to the right, passed by a
large lake overlooked by a lonesome pine, before falling into a
wooded dell, then out of sight for a long space before a matching
white thread could be seen mounting the terraced rise. The nearer
and straighter road ran clear up to a compact grove, then over a
brook to the dim lights of what might have been a little village.
Behind the invisible Gate rose a stand of curiously shaped stones,
the tallest of them topping the Doctor by a couple of heads.

Nyssa sniffed. "Amazing. He seems to have stolen some good
taste from somewhere. I'd expected a nasty, pompous wasteland."
Her expression darkened. "I suppose there's plenty of room for
that, over those terraces! - Which path would you take, Doctor?"

"The short one," he told her, "but I'm notoriously impatient."

"Yes." Nyssa hesitated. "I don't like the village, but I'd
rather not go down the hole in the ground, either. And the village
might be the metaphor's centre, though I doubt it. Come along,
Doctor. Let's be obvious." They trotted, still hand-in-hand like
inseparable playmates, down the grassy slope and onto the left-hand
path. They followed its seemly, meandering curve all the way to the
grove, which was fenced with a palisade stand of blade-leafed
bamboo. All along the way, the grass was the same dark green,
finger-short, and studded with only the most occasional of violets
or old-maid's-kisses. It was beginning to get on the Doctor's wick.

"Where have all the daisies gone?" he muttered.

"Doctor?" She was staring into the grove's open gateway,
trying and failing to discern a threat.

"Mm? Oh, yes, yes! By all means. I can't sense anything
doubtful..."

They passed under the high arch of suspect bamboo. Rather to
the Doctor's surprise, they made it past the whole stand without any
of the blade-leaves taking a whack at them. Beyond, the path
forked, around furnace-flowers and rhododendrons and other shrubs
less familiar. All were well-manicured and glossy-leafed. The path
forks showed symptoms of branching again in the near distance.
"Nyssa? Pick a word?"

"Amina."

"One-fourteen-twenty-three-thirty-seven-thirty-eight-eleven-
two, is even. Let's keep taking the right forks, then; and watch
out for closed circuits!"

They walked around the rhododendrons, under that gold-shot
blue sky, and stepped through several rounds of Maze Algorithm No.1
in wary, uneventful silence. The bushes stayed bushes, and the
grove stayed tranquil of air and Euclidean of geometry. The tension
stretched between them as they approached the heart of the well-
kempt little grove.

Another neat empty clearing, dominated by a white-blossomed
bush and bordered by tropical-looking trees, was the last straw for
him. "Dead, isn't it? Not so much a garden, more a plant prison,
wouldn't you say?"

"I don't think I would." Her words came slow and troubled.
She indicated the bush, and its arching woody sprays of white
flowers. "There's - what does the Terran poet call it? - a 'sweet
disorder' in the detail. Is that a Gallifreyan sensibility?"

"No, not at all...."

"Actually, it's - Doctor!" She pointed ahead and to their
right. "That's a heart palm! And there to its left, a phoenix
fern! They're Traken!"

He tutted. "Tacky!"

"Well, yes," she conceded. "It is quite a vulgar trick, isn't
it?" They rounded the many-coloured fronds of the phoenix fern,
passed through the comfortable shade of the heart palm, onto another
path through the knife-bamboo. "Still, this isn't just a pastiche
of Traken gardening. It's really rather original, in its own way."

"Nyssa?"

"As an artist, I have to admire his style. His character,
even." She shrugged fluidly. "I doubt any of this will survive
him, so I might as well appreciate it while it's here."

"Ah." There wasn't much more he could say to that. They kept
walking; and soon they were past the grove, over the bridge, and
approaching the weathered old gate to the village.

"A trap, of course?" he offered.

"I should feel so much happier if I were certain of that!"

He picked up a long stick of deadwood, led them both to the
side of the path, and lifted the latch with it. The gate swung open
with an easy squeal. He tossed the deadwood through. It kicked up
wisps of dust on the other side. They followed after it like a
couple in a dream. They met no-one, faced no foe. Warier yet, they
strolled up the path into the village .

It was low rounded whitewashed houses, immaculately kept:
their flowers and kitchen gardens and outside furniture various, but
fitting into a single charming picture. It was the discreet
bioluminescence of firefly globes, life jailed beautifully again,
that the Doctor only resisted upsetting because of their unreality.
It was the purple-and-green awning of the auberge, its quaintly
parasolled tables, and the dark earthy mystery of its mews and
stables, all across the broad village green with its pond and its
single oriental oak. More than all of these, it was the bright
spectres.

"Sir," greeted a tall man, sober and friendly, bowing before
stepping off the path. "Ma'am," said a giggle-faced blonde girl,
following her elder with a sweet curtsey. "You do us honour!"
declared a stout, burgundy-jacketed man on the green, raising a
glass of fiery wine in theirs. Nyssa nodded politely to them, the
Doctor following her example. The spectres looked vaguely pleased;
and then they and their attentions slipped away, into the circle-
dancing and chess-playing on the green. The Doctor said quietly to
Nyssa,

"These aren't much like your phantoms on Traken!"

"No, they wouldn't be." Nyssa's voice was a little blurry, as
they walked on through more of the same, doing the tourist gawk.
"My phantoms are echoes of lost reality, not my private fantasies.
These are empty shells: decoration. Pretty, but meaningless." She
cast a thoughtful eye up at the omniscate inn-sign. "I don't think
we should go in there, do you?"

"You have a premonition?"

"I have an aversion," she corrected. "A hostelry full of
emptiness isn't my favourite place to be; and I don't really care to
see how he simulates conviviality. Especially if he's good at it!
- Excuse me. -I want to see that structure on top of the terraces."
A sidelong glance. "Lord of all he surveys, don't you think?"

He shrugged. "It's certainly in character." Personally, he
was itching to snoop around in the auberge, for all he doubted
they'd find the Master there. All those years back, he'd never have
thought twice. But this wasn't like the other times, not at all.
This was Nyssa's dance to lead, and there was certain death at the
end of it. He was still having trouble crediting that.

They passed around the stables, and onto the long white road
that climbed to the terraces and beyond. A gauzy veil of cloud blew
across one of the radiant veins in the sky, like a cold breath of
silver. They stopped sharply, awaited an onslaught that didn't
come, walked on again.

Hand in hand - foster-father and daughter, wizard and
princess, fool and _diva_ - they ascended to the dim terraces and
their winding white stair. The dimness was lilacs and lavender and
black roses, with highlights and cascades of Gallifreyan silverrain
and Traken moonlove and Rigellian starstuff. Gardeners worked
serenely on some of the more distant levels, exhibiting their care
and rustling dead leaves faintly. A jewelled nightingale passed
overhead on some errand of its own, to sink beyond the village into
the woody dell along the road they hadn't taken. A hundred
fountains sang praises to life's sad sweetness; and the smell of the
good earth rose strongly all about them.

Nyssa's eyes glinted as she turned to the Doctor. "This is
lovely," she whispered. "I didn't think there was any way he could
still hurt me, not any more..."

He smiled hardly down at her, caressing her hand with his
thumb. "Brave heart, Nyssa!"

"Thank you, Doctor." She worked her breath free again. "That
_does_ rather put it into perspective, doesn't it? Let's take those
last flights, then. I'm sure we'll have other things to think
about, once we've reached the top!"

So they climbed the rest of the way to the highest terrace,
and made their way to the monuments. The grass was wilder and
lusher here, and the stark skinny columns cast fragmented shadows
against the patchy daylight. They saw blackbirds, none singing.
Following the colonnade as it marched slantwise across the high
plane, they came to a little arbour of the red-fringed Traken palms,
that cupped a large sculpture of a white marble sphere mounted in an
abstractly technical cradle.

"The Source?" guessed the Doctor curiously. He didn't like
the looks of this. He wondered how secret the Dayspring was, and
whether it would really work in this place. He couldn't exactly
come out and say that, either.

"I think so," Nyssa affirmed. "And the heart palms. If we
weren't shielding, they'd be boosting our empathy quite noticeably
by now." She shrugged. "This place is a fundamental node of the
metaphor, can't you feel it? It's practically as real as we are.
If the Master won't oppose us here, we can strip him of this whole
domain here, and move one layer in."

"Our advantage."

"Yes."

"And very destructive."

"I rather imagine that's his point." Nyssa sighed. "If he
attacks while we're half-way through..."

"Ourania will suffer, as well as his garden."

"And I'm sure he's loaded the suffering onto the stabilisation
structures. Typical hostage tactics." Nyssa's voice shook, just a
little. "Since he leaves us no choice - "

"We always have a choice, Nyssa." The new voice was a
pleasant light baritone, and it came from among the heart palms. A
man stepped through, his hands spread wide in token of peace. He
wore simple, elegant brown robes, set off with a heavy golden
pendant around his neck. He seemed to be enjoying the first flush
of a hale middle-age: his hair and beard were long, wavy, the colour
of sunlight on wheat. His mouth was full and generous; and his kind
curious eyes, creased about from a long habit of laughter, were the
same penetrating grey as Nyssa's.

"For _this_," said Nyssa, in her voice of tearing metal, "I
shall - " And she stopped, her mouth working dumbly.

"My darling," said Tremas, her father, whose life the Master
had stolen, "the case is altered. We need to talk..."

Nyssa wouldn't let her father come near her. He seemed to
appreciate her caution. They faced each other across the white
sphere. The Doctor, obviously wary of treachery, had conjured up a
wickedly-spiked brolly, and was watching out like a hawk.

"Oh, come on, Nyssa!" Tegan wailed. "You can't fall for that
one _again...!_"

"In which case," murmured Fastolf, "'twould be a stronger
play, if true..."

"He can't - "

"...I can't say." Tremas's voice was gentle, mildly confused.
"I haven't existed, I think, for a long time. I remember blood and
fur and ivory and madness, a place the Enemy took refuge in me to
escape. After that, it was... more like waking in a long slow doze,
dreaming evil dreams. Good, true dreams too, of Traken: mine, not
his. But I never quite lived until he came here. What is this
place, Nyssa?"

"Ourania," she said tersely. "My daughter that should have
been, before he aborted her. The Living Sky, space-time come alive,
Entropy's Bane. My answer to the long death. I don't know how much
he's left of what I gave her." Her nostrils flared. "And I don't
believe you're my father, even if you do! By your own admission,
the most you are is a remnant. A selective one. What do you want
with me?"

He looked vaguely perturbed. "Aren't we all remnants of what
we were? With Traken erased, our Union a legend..." Pain knifed
through the laughter-lines. "We simply have to start again..."

"I have. I have Go-Lightly's work to do, this time around.
And you?"

The Consul laughed affectionately. "You're certainly not Go-
Lightly, daughter! You're my Nyssa, and I'm sure that's more than
sufficient."

"I'm my father's Nyssa - and mine - and the Republic's. Not
yours." Her voice was impossibly heavy, and the local space began
rippling slowly under it. "Ghost, ghost, go away. I deny your
reality, and end it."

"Nyssa," said the Doctor, softly. "Whatever he is, it's real.
This isn't just an i-space phantom."

"Oh, is _that_ where we are?" Tremas seemed instantly
fascinated. "In the Master's metaphorical space over Ourania? Yes,
I see now. So, he's hosted himself on your creation - that would
explain a great deal ."

"How so, Tremas?" The Doctor leaned forward intently.

"Why I find myself with identity on my hands. He scarcely
needs my substance any further." The Traken shrugged with rueful
humour. "And I doubt he's sorry to be rid of my influence, such as
it was!"

"He devoured my father," Nyssa declared fretfully. "He left
nothing."

"He kept enough of my persona to counterfeit me." For a
moment, Tremas's voice was almost bitter and flat enough to be his
daughter's. "I imagine he used it against you. I don't ask you to
forgive either of us for that."

"I don't blame my father, and I don't blame you." Nyssa had
recovered her strength in acrid triumph. "You're a mask only, an
empty presence. You're enough of my father to see that for
yourself! Of your courtesy, take me to the Master. I want to
introduce him to some unquenchable fires."

"Tsk." He visibly withheld disappointment. "He couldn't
destroy my soul, Nyssa. He needed to borrow a lot of it, for one
thing. The poor wretch was rather more than physically degenerate
at that point."

"Doctor?" The word came out high, and horribly machinelike.
It sent a Dalek shiver all the way down to Tegan's toes.

"That's... plausible, you know." The Doctor was plainly
reluctant to speak of this. "He'd been to places or states we don't
go. On Traken, he'd become... wrong. An evil principle, as much as
a wicked person. He was never like that before - or even
afterwards, that I could tell. He might not have been able to
sustain true life at all, unless he did something about the rot."

"Did Nyssa ever tell you about the Necromonger?"

"I did. And _how_ could the Master ever borrow parts of your
soul?"

"Shared mystery - though he didn't truly 'share' it with me at
all." He seemed oblivious to her scorn, or too chilled by the
recollection to react to it. "Mystery is a peculiar substance! I
imagine that my consciousness was really just a by-product of his -
manipulations."

_"He's mastered shared mystery?"_

"Not in any way you'd wish to use it - though I daresay he
could. He _is_ one of the greater Time Lords; and he _has_ been
Keeper, however falsely. Nyssa, why - ?"

"Never mind."

"Wait. If you need... You're actually trying to _undo_ death
here, aren't you?" His tone was more than faintly accusing.

"No." She sounded defensive for the first time. "I'm trying
to lay the conditions for it. I look to a Union of all things, at
the last; and if that ever happens, I want It to have something to
work with. We mustn't kill the dead to immortalise the living!"

"Nyssa, what possible technique could you have - ?"

The Doctor cleared his throat delicately.

"Yes, quite. I apologise, Doctor. My scientific curiosity is
running away with me, and this is not an ideal time for it. - As I
was saying, Nyssa, something of me barely co-existed with him at
times. If you think of it as being like a zeroth-and-second
enkurian harmonic - "

The three of them went off on those sort of lines for at least
a maddening minute.

" - inevitable mutual influence."

"Which is a poor reason to trust or recognise you, isn't it?"

Tegan longed to pour all her strength into Nyssa's weakening
protests. In her head, she sent Si's along, too. _Why doesn't the
Doctor do something? He's acting half on its side!_

"The poorest," said Tremas sadly. "But I began with a sane
ethical code and a social character. He didn't have that benefit.
I must confess, I'm surprised at this environment, and that he
hasn't just deleted me now he no longer feels I'm of use."

"Perhaps he doesn't feel that way?" suggested the Doctor.
"Perhaps he wants your willing co-operation in something?"

"Perhaps," Tremas agreed calmly.

"Will you help me kill him?" Nyssa demanded suddenly.

"If he attacks you, certainly."

"He has." Her expression began to close again. "And he's
eating his way out of the black border around Ourania. He'll try to
infect everything, make the Universe an extension of his diseased
mind! If you're anything of my father, help me stop him now!"

"Of course. We can't let our runaway Melkur steal reality!
That would be a worse abomination than he made on Traken." Tremas
regarded his daughter gravely. "Nyssa, don't forget Tesman's
lesson. Even the greatest evil doesn't demand frontal assault, if
there's another chance we dare." A vigorous shake of the head.
"And if you and the Doctor are strong enough to destroy the Master,
you're strong enough to do something saner."

"I invoke Kassia's _manes_," said Nyssa, with freezing spite.
"Second mother mine, be loved of me again! Witness and guide. What
would your husband do with your devourer? - _Well?_"

He spread his hands in helpless pain, unrepentant. "Nyssa.
Kassia, sibyl-sweet! Can't you hear the scolloped tatters of the
Necromonger, flapping about the outer edge of this dream?" Back in
the Helm Room, Si started violently. "If we pull it apart in battle
with its dreamer, the evil outside may come in to replace him.
There _are_ worse things out there than our enemy's become, and I
think you know that. Please, don't do what you're contemplating."

"You have a 'saner option', don't you?" the Doctor put in
rapidly.

Tremas gestured at the grove and the columns and the beautiful
sky. "As you see, he can be influenced by things other than
violence; and _I_ hadn't the power even to defend myself against him
directly. But with you his peers in might, or better... and, Nyssa,
you with all the foundation I had, and unbreakable to his will...
well, he has too little left of his own but his old hungers and
ambitions, like a hole in his foolish heart. And he's mortally
weary of them, with nothing but _hubris_ to make his evil seem worth
the candle. I think the three of us might achieve a more Trakenly
solution."

"You think we can redeem _that_?" Nyssa's voice verged off
the scale. The Doctor's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing, only
waited.

"You're not going to let her walk into this!" Tegan
complained. "Doctor..!"

"I know we can, daughter. I don't know whether we _will_
succeed, but I do know we have to try. A Universe with a cacodemon
Immanence! Bad enough the present danger, but as for the things
waiting on our choosing war..!"

"Suppose it were possible." Nyssa narrowed her eyes. "What's
my part in this? Go-Lightly to his Marek?"

"Nyssa!" Her father looked profoundly shocked for a moment;
then the stiff disapproval began to thaw into something almost
impish. "More like Salic to his Desidatura, perhaps?"

"With a dash of Karetta at Millandrae?"

"Perfect, if I say so myself, don't you think?"

"Oh, Father!" Nyssa carolled. "I really _do_ love you!"

Tegan's jaw locked savagely, and her fingernails began biting
into her palms.

The Doctor was wearing his most aggravatingly useless 'Don't
mind me' expression.

The two Trakens stepped towards each other, arms outstretched.

Nyssa's right hand exploded into a pale gold, rainbow-shot
squall of light. A thin line of virulent white fire lashed out from
her fingers into her father's heart, and turned him to burning
magnesium.

Tremas screamed.

Nyssa hurled more power down the link, until it ran in a
torrent as broad as her wrist, hot and cold and furious as starfire.

_"Nysssaaaa...!"_

"You're my father. I love you. Don't we, Kassia?"

In the Helm Room, the Dayspring was blazing like a halogen
lamp.

"Brava, my Nyslet!" roared Fastolf. "Oh, nobly betrayed!"

"Yeah, right," said Cats. "Sis, keep your worlds sorted,
can't you? My terminal's crying..."

"This is my Dayspring, Father. It's a Source, just like
ours."

_Doctor! Do something! Make it stop, before he drives her
mad! If he_ hasn't...

He just stood there watching, looking preoccupied, as if he
saw this sort of thing every day.

"A Source wouldn't hurt you, would it?"

The form within the whiteness sagged and twisted, like a
candle beginning to melt.

_"Nyssa, no!"_ Tremas's voice crackled and popped foully.
"I've been fused with a _Melkur_, I'm tainted, I..."

"Destructive read," said Nyssa levelly, keeping up her fires.
In the Helm Room, her wired-up body was still, but Tegan only needed
one glance to see the silent flood of its tears. There was nothing
special to see about the Doctor, here or there. Si's face was drawn
and ashen, as if he were at a real live deathbed.

"You're a great part of my father. I'm taking you for i-
Traken, to have you whole at Time's end." Something inside the
white inferno burst open in a violent shower of sparks. Tremas's
form was beginning to dwindle. "And you're partly Life's Enemy,
with no part in space or time or Union! _Him_ in you, I'll kill
beyond death.

"I love you, Father. Never doubt it."

The Doctor's umbrella flew open as he jumped to Nyssa's right,
brandishing it wildly.

A lightning bolt, red as fresh blood and big as the wrath of
God, flew from the colonnade and struck him squarely on the brolly.

The Doctor leapt into the path of the Master's deathbolt, fending it
off with his umbrella-shield. It detonated thunderously into a
fireball the size of a sitting-room and the colour of a
slaughterhouse, and the impact threw him about ten feet. He broke
his fall with a twisting roll that let him spin up quickly and
fairly intact, but cost him the umbrella.

He'd been waiting for something like this, of course; but he
hadn't anticipated its sheer power. He felt as though he'd been
drop-kicked into a pile of hot embers. Behind him, Nyssa cried
something wordless, defiant, and tuneful. Her Dayspring's healing
sunlight washed over him, as she released it from 'discreet' mode.
She couldn't disentangle herself from what she was doing to the
recreated Tremas. The Doctor frantically scrambled for his umbrella
again. He didn't think that even the Dayspring's passive defence
could shield either of them from another stroke like that last, not
without one of them concentrating their full willpower -

As he picked up the handle, he heard the thunder of another
deathbolt, and knew he was too late.

It missed them by at least twenty degrees horizontal and fifty
vertical, spending itself noisily in the sky, blackening and
cracking the firmament where it struck. Saved and startled, he got
his umbrella into position again and looked across at the dark
pillars. A tall figure in dark robes was regaining its balance, and
sending swarms of vengeful acid-green motes after a rapidly-
absconding man-sized flying starfish. The Doctor shook his head to
clear it, then ran his fingers thoughtfully through the spreading
light of the Dayspring around him. "I don't suppose...?" he
murmured, and grinned as its spectral gold seemed to thicken about
his fingertips. He ran a couple of quick and basic block transfer
objects in a local bracket, instantiated them with two rather nifty
little a-life algorithms, and wiggled his fingers. Great
butterflies and dragonflies streamed gaily from his open hands.

"Save the Starfish!" he declaimed; and his data-umphs sped
tremendously after the fugitive and its pursuers. The Doctor
doubted that the green motes would be bothering their unexpected
ally for long. He deftly parried a needling beam of black
collapsium, noticing its attenuation as it reached the golden
fringes of the Dayspring's spreading influence. He rummaged with
his free hand in his capacious virtual pockets, and came up with a
yo-yo of evil weight and heft. He drew back his arm, holding the
weapon in an unconventionally horizontal plane, and prepared to
annoy the Master's socks off.

After all, that was about his only constructive prospect until
Nyssa -

The Dayspring flared up, sun-bright, behind him. Nyssa cried
out aloud. The welkin rang like the galaxy's biggest gong, and its
streaks of gold went patchily brilliant and dark. The earth cried,
with the Master,

"Nyssa of Traken! Doctor! This is your last chance! Join
with me, and hold this together! Or let it fall, and the evils out
of Time usurp - "

Nyssa silenced the earth, stepped up to the Doctor's side, and
threw a bolt of white plasma at her enemy that levelled a whole line
of the colonnade. Except, of course, for the particular pillar the
Master had ducked behind, which the renegade held together handily.

"An evil out of Time that usurps good things and people, and
Ourania's self?" Nyssa demanded, with the voice of the west wind.
"Now, who does that remind me of? Surrender yourself, if you care
so much!"

Her sunfire had left a broken and blackened patch of sky
around a small, irregular void. The Doctor noticed that the gold
pulsations were beginning to widen and fade, and one he could see
past the Master's robed figure seemed to have acquired a central
thread of no colour at all. The whole domain was suddenly
threatening to collapse.

_Oh dear..._

"I don't think so, my charming little patricide! I don't mean
to go the way of your father. You _did_ know that was really him,
didn't you?"

Nothing.

"I preferred him in this world to in me, once the choice
arose." The Master's tones dripped with mocking gentleness. "But
do you know, I was rather afraid you might do something like this,
when it came to it. Such a good man, too; and nothing left of him,
but the mark he's left on me..."

Without warning, Nyssa hurled another atrocious sunbolt at her
tormentor. He met it half-way with the red lightning, incinerating
the Doctor's unfeasible sneak yo-yo attack with a simple side-fork.
The energies of the main onslaughts annihilated each other in a
roaring, whirling cloud of something more than flame. As it
cleared, it left a ragged-edged nullity in the air behind it.

"You see, princess, I made Tremas himself the fundamental node
for this domain. You destabilised it when you murdered him, and
it's a border realm."

The Doctor coughed, and indicated the stringy, tatter-winged
creatures beginning to flap through the first of the holes in the
sky.

"Byakhee," he noted, keeping a weather eye on his foe.
"Hastur's chickens..."

"Precisely!" boomed the Master. "War on me, and you give the
future of everything to the cacodemons. The Great Death. The
Necromonger's hell. Make peace, and as Ourania's spirit, I swear
I'll banish entropy forever. We can make every world a garden
fairer than this, every Earth another paradise. I'll even cede you
the government of peoples, since my paramount concern will be the
greater enterprise - "

"You'll let her legislate rules on paper," said the Doctor,
projecting a quiet voice that still cut through the Master's like a
cold wind, "and you'll generously confine yourself to legislating
reality. H'mmm?" He shook his head sadly.

"Don't preach your puling mortal sophistry to your betters,
Doctor! Nyssa and I are as gods already, and you most surely are
not. You waste precious time.

"Nyssa, you must choose Ourania's future now. Me, or Hastur
the Unspeakable, devourer of realities. With the paths opening up
to it, you have no other options. Choose well!"

"The black border's down, then, and the demons free," declared
Fastolf, surging to his clawed feet. "Woe the day! Cats, Masha:
what's our arsenal for this?"

"Isn't down," Cats contradicted. "Border uses gravitic event
horizons, remember? No such things outside space-time, down where
the crap's coming from. That's just the i-space encapsulation
breaking down."

"_Weapons_, pox rot it!"

"Cyber stuff, through the gate. Which means if we've got 'em,
Alfie's using 'em already. No signs of that, either. I think Nyss
and the Dayspring are our best against this kind of shit."

"The Lions weren't really involved the first time she fought
that _thing_," supported Masha. "If the black border breaks,
though, we'll need the time-war defences."

"Can you work those, Cats?" Tegan demanded nervously.

"I can cut the restraints on the automatics, yeah. Look,
Alfie and I worked this _out_, okay?"

"Indeed," Fastolf rumbled coldly. "My commendations."

"We want to send for Deacon and Goldspink," stated Cherry,
mopping his brow with an unpleasant handkerchief. "Ariel and Tuyet
too, I think."

The Terileptil rounded on him with exasperated vim. "What,
Tom Pudding! Did this drake die unawares, and leave thee Captain-
General?"

"No." The politician stood his ground. "Nyssa and Alphard
went to the front line, which leaves me acting Mayor again. So: a
civic suggestion, telling you who we've got."

"Wherefore?"

"Our best scientists and engineers are out there, and
Cit'Hambridge is apt to get busy. We don't really understand that
side of it by watching it, and we might need to. As for the holy
brigade - " He shrugged. "The cacodemons and unspeakable
blasphemies are getting kind of thick out there, that's all. Chalk
it up to morale."

"Ter'Fastolf," said Tegan. "Please. He's right."

They both looked at her in amazement.

"There's point in't. Make it so, Mayorling."

And then all their attentions were wrenched back to the
viewport.

Nyssa smiled dazzlingly, and spread her arms towards the Master.
The light of the Dayspring flooded through her, making her a wraith
of living gold; rolled through the damaged fields and airs like a
benediction; flared in sunbursts from her hands, each ray stabbing
unerringly at some trespassing byakhee. The i-creatures wailed
distantly and fled, save for one that had flapped too far from its
portal, and began spiralling down beyond the wood, its wings raining
embers. A clean, bittersweet tang filled the air.

"The Unspeakable dreads me, Master of corruption. If it dares
me again, I'll send it squeaking back into the abyss, as I've done
before. A Keeper's curse on you, and all you'd offer!" Her front
of light was slowing as it approached the Master's still-smoking
colonnade, oozing forward like brilliant oil as it reached the two-
thirds point. "I'm Nyssa Tremaida-Ylissida Kassialta kra au kata
Amina, and you're my evil dream, and I'm taking back Ourania NOW!"

The Master cast a cloud of obsidian shadow back at her, its
surfaces glinting and sparkling like glass knives. The Doctor
quickly averted his eyes, and began jogging towards the edge of the
effect - around and about to come at his enemy from a tolerable
angle.

Behind him, the opposing energies fell on each other with a
cavalry clash. The Doctor bounded over a sudden, no-coloured crack
in the ground that snaked across his path. A hot, sick cramp
sliced through him in mid-air. He spasmed, landing on his belly in
the dust of grass, grey and broken at the end of his thirteenth
regeneration, his cells puffing and rotting in rhythm with his
unravelling biodata. "I love you," he whispered incredulously; and
She pressed a cup of water to his fraying lips. He swallowed,
somehow, and it was better.

There had been green woods then, and rivers, and dancing, and
Pimms and punting, and fighting forever and ever. He drank them
down too. Somewhere, the tea was getting cold. He drank it anyway,
and it quenched the burning thread in his guts. He wasn't going to
die. He shook off his liver-spots, patted the brown and the bounce
back into his hair, and heaved himself off the ground. Looking back
down at the crack, he found it vanished..

_I must have done that!_ By pulling himself back into life,
he supposed; and frowned mightily. He'd passed through something
very sick and evil when he'd jumped over that crack in the world.
That being had been slipping through into Ourania as Nyssa's
destructive conflict with the Master had lent it the chance; and the
Doctor was dreadfully afraid he'd merely inconvenienced it. At
least it hadn't been Hastur itself - the Doctor felt hastily around
for his soul, judged it more or less present and correct, and nodded
in nervous relief - and he'd probably, all things considered, barred
this domain to whatever it had been. So Nyssa and the Master
could -

_Oh._

He looked back at the battlefield. The blatant light and
shadow were almost gone now, hints only, grappling each other in the
green land and deep earth and broken sky. Trees, hillocks,
buildings, rested in good states or fragments or ashes, the ruin
patched lawlessly across the garden-world. Even as he watched, a
great lilac-grown block of terrace exploded into black-and-purple
rubble, geysering dirt and roots high into the air. The war had
seeped into everything now, and the Doctor sensed that the two foes
were still as evenly matched as before.

_Which means Nyssa is winning._ He nodded in proud approval,
then fumbled reluctantly in his pocket, coming up empty twice before
producing a splendid red cricket ball. He smiled very crookedly,
then charged towards the Master.

A huge piece of the sky fell, burning destructively, onto the
lands far below. The Doctor threw himself down as the tremor hit,
rolled to his feet again, and continued his run across the dying
plain. As he came within range, he wound up fluidly, and bowled the
kind of unsportsmanlike bodyline he'd never even dreamed of
committing.

It was the Master's turn to dodge desperately and fall. The
lethal cricket ball whizzed over his head and into the
disintegrating distance. _At least I'll be able to play the game
again_, the Doctor couldn't help thinking. He felt a brief surge in
Nyssa's bright influence, but she made no real headway: breaking the
Master's concentration had always been rather like trying to
distract a limpet. Here he was, coming up again. The Doctor bore
down on him, open hands and Venusian karate at the ready. The
horrid, unadorned finale he'd spent five incarnations avoiding -

The Master blew up the ground in front of him. It was a poor,
weak show, so damped by Nyssa's power as to be no worse than a
couple of thrown buckets of dirt. The Doctor ran sideways and
around, brushing his eyes clear, and found the Master fleeing
towards the cliff-edge.

The Doctor put on an extra spurt. The Master reached the
pillar he'd held against Nyssa's first onslaught, ducked around it.
Suddenly, momentarily, his influence faltered, and the Dayspring's
law sank deeply into everything.

The pillar warped like taffy, folded in on itself, and
subsided into a low stone stump. Of the Master, there was no sign
anywhere.

"Done!" cried Nyssa, throwing back her head in triumph and
exhaustion. Palest golden fire crackled momentarily around her
head; then she took two faltering steps forward, and the Doctor ran
to support her. The Dayspring's glow was golden opal again in her
hands, dilute as it had been in the Helm Room, and its internal
lightnings were faint and subdued. He put his hands on her
shoulders, squeezed, and smiled expectantly.

"There'll be no more miracles now," Nyssa confirmed tiredly.
"Not from him, not from me, unless we release each other to fight
Something Else. Which we won't need to, if we finish this quickly!
His metaphor's fixed, now: none of us can change the domains, only
our avatars, and a few direct projections. - Doctor, a _cricket
ball_?"

He shrugged. "I'm no good with guns. I'm sure it's going to
end with fisticuffs and fingers round throats, anyway."

"That's ridiculous."

"Hate's ridiculous, Nyssa. That's still the most fundamental
way to express it, so here in i-space, it's probably about the most
effective..."

"Indeed." She withdrew composedly. "Doctor? Incoming -
behind you, across the plain."

He spun around, and indeed there was a mote of - disturbance -
floating steadily towards the terraces, from somewhere around their
entrance point.

"Well, bother me!" He began rummaging in his pockets again.
"Nyssa, a cacodemon got through whilst you two were arguing
jurisdiction. A major one. I shut that one out of this domain,
fending it off - I think! - but I wonder now how well I did, or if
there's more than one. We could be in trouble..."

He trailed off. Nyssa had begun to laugh crazily.

"Let's go to meet it, Doctor. It's not the Master, and it's
no Power. It's not as if it could pose a real threat to the two of
us."

He looked at her askance. "It's in our way to the Gate, so we
don't have much choice, do we? Try for humility, Nyssa. A well-
realised Dalek could exterminate us both at this point." They began
to walk. Above them, the sound of byakhee chittering was beginning
to return from the abyssal gaps in the sky; and the hush behind it
felt worse than the noise. They picked up their pace.

"Call it intuition," Nyssa invited, tipping her tiara at him
demurely. He nodded. They came to the path down the terraces, now
broken and pitted and slagged with patches of dark glass. The air
had already grown perceptibly thinner and colder, though the village
burned in it brightly.

The metaphor's outer domain was subliming quickly into the
abyssal interstitial. Black stars would rise here, soon. They
didn't want to be there when that happened. And the path was so
rotten and dangerous, and the Thing rising to meet them was coming
faster and faster.

He recognised it abruptly, and joined Nyssa this time in her
laughter.

Their Gate swooped dramatically into place ahead of them,
giant-high and framed in jade. Alphard's natural face grinned out
at them from the keystone.

"Getting a bit tenuous here, isn't it?" the engineer noted.
"Would you believe I'm scarcely draining the banks at all? Can I
interest you in passage to somewhere substantial?"

"_Amigo!_ What a nice surprise! I have just the place in
mind." She'd have seen traces in the broken pillar the Doctor
wasn't equipped to; and in all too real a way, she was wrestling the
Master every moment she stood here, through their deadlocked
influences over Ourania. He might hide from her behind obstacles,
but he couldn't just disappear beyond her ken. Short of
surrendering his reality and fleeing through a rent into the abyss -
worse than suicide, especially with Nyssa on one side and Hastur on
the other! - the transfigured Time Lord had no place to run where
the Dayspring's Keeper couldn't find him. And he'd already shown
how he daredn't stand openly against Nyssa and the Doctor at once,
quite without throwing Alphard into the bargain.

_This is going to get even nastier than usual..._

Nyssa took the Doctor's hand again, and led him through the
gate to the Master's native metaphor.

They passed into the jade arch, through a thin curtain of noise,
and out of a little wooden door onto bare boards. Only the
Dayspring's mellow lightnings disturbed the heavy, indoor darkness.
Madly melodramatic organ music filled vast caverns far ahead of
them.

_"And sing O my love, and sweet my love,"_ Nyssa crooned low,
her melody crushed in the mills of the organ, _"that held me dear
the live-long night/ O why must you now East away, before the dawn's
adorning light?"_

The Dayspring's glow flickered and spread reluctantly, giving
them glimpses of curtains, a giant Russian doll, masks and cloaks
and scattered, withered flowers. The Doctor found his umbrella in a
stand, and retrieved it.

"So," he said, tapping its handle meditatively to his
forehead. "The wings of a theatre, is it? I wonder what's
playing?"

Alphard snorted metallically from the Gate-door. "Can you
spell T-R-A-P?"

"Speaking of traps," added the Doctor, "watch out for doors in
the floors, and diaboli ex machina. This whole area is obviously a
gatehouse killing-ground, so to speak; and theatre _is_ a rather
traditional venue for all kinds of nonsense." He looked at Nyssa.
"Shall we stage something?"

"In a moment, Doctor. I don't feel like playing along with
his games. _Amigo_, can you destroy that curtain?"

"If that's how you care to spend energy."

"I do. I want you to have a clear line of fire at whatever's
on the stage."

"Gah!" Above and beyond, the organist discovered new heights
of excess. The door extended a green-gauntleted arm, and bashed
itself reproachfully on the lintel. "I might have thought! Coming
up, _niña_!" A pale-blue line of foxfire struck the top of the
curtain, which instantly began burning without flame or smoke,
unravelling rapidly into air and light. The bulk of it fell
smotheringly to the floor, as it burned off its rail; the un-fire
only accelerated. "You can walk through it," the engineer advised.
"The sublimation needn't bother you. Go, go, go!"

Nyssa and the Doctor went, the Dayspring's light passing with
them into the blackness beyond the curtain, diminishing as they
went. Stepping out onto the stage proper, they saw chandeliers
hanging pointlessly high over the shadowy audience, whose voices
reached them as ripples on a calm sea. The stage itself remained
black and empty; they could sense its edge only by instinct.
Slowly, overhead, a spotlight began to bloom.

In the pool of light, a beautiful young woman in pink pyjamas,
with a full, trusting face, and wide frightened eyes.

"Who are you?"

"Jo?"

They met each other half-way, the spotlight following her
along.

"Doctor?"

"Yes, Jo. I've changed again, I'm afraid. You really
shouldn't be here at all, you know."

"The Master came in my dreams," she said, confusedly. "He
brought me here. Can he really do that?"

Nyssa reached across the Doctor, her hand flashing, and shoved
Jo Grant violently backwards. The girl crashed to the floor
spilling redness, gurgling piteously, a silver dagger-hilt jutting
up obscenely from her throat.

The unseen audience booed loudly. The organist thundered
retribution from on high. The Doctor howled and rounded on Nyssa,
his arm raised instinctively to strike her.

"You - you - !"

"You know she wasn't real!" Nyssa snapped back. "You _knew_
she was a trap, and you still - !"

"Children!" Alphard, alarmed. They ignored him.

_"There's more than one kind of trap!"_ He screamed the words
in her face.

"THAT'S the way to do it!" The Doctor threw himself down and
rolled frantically to the side, evading the outsize bludgeon by
inches. The whole stage shook with its impact.

"Bash the baby!" squealed the twelve-foot Mr Punch gleefully,
brandishing a hissing infant Kaled high in the air. "Kill the
baby!" He hurled it down on the Doctor.

An even bigger policeman had Nyssa by the throat from behind,
and was bearing her back of the stage. A dinosaurian crocodile
whizzed by like an express and slammed into the Gate. The Doctor
lashed up with his umbrella, knocked the junior lump of hate to one
side, and scrambled to his feet. It and Mr Punch focussed on him
again.

_Kill, kill, kill..._

The Doctor dipped into his pocket and came up with a crumpled
paper bag, looking up genially at Mr Punch.

"Would you care for some more babies?" he invited. "I'll just
carry on bashing this one for you, if you'd like..." He skittered
back from the oncoming Kaled, easily dodging an optimistic swipe of
a tentacle.

DAH dah dah DAH!

The big puppet grinned inanely. It reached down with
exaggerated gentility, took the bag, and began examining the
contents. The Doctor jabbed the Kaled away again.

Constructs like this only had power within their own terms. A
little diabologic, their handle turned a little too far the right
way, and you'd take them every time.

Nyssa had got the policeman chasing itself in ever-decreasing
circles, methodically pounding itself to pieces with its own
truncheon. She'd gone after something else at the back of the
stage. Alphard, scorning the subtle approach and having plenty of
artillery up close, was expelling kilos of crocodile hamburger from
the little wooden door. The remaining half a crocodile was still
having a go at him. The Doctor began retreating carefully towards
the edge of the stage. Kaleds weren't big on subtlety, either.

It leapt like a bug-on-a-spring. He shook the umbrella into
an instant, gaudy shield, which the monster immediately clung to and
began shredding. He rushed forward, then, to the edge of the stage,
folded the brolly half-in on itself and the Kaled, and flung both of
them down into the orchestra pit. There were spectres down there,
all right, but silent, static, and uncaring.

The booing intensified. The music escalated into yet a
further and hammier crescendo. A half-brick, thrown from the
audience, missed his head by conventional inches. He ducked and
rolled once more, knowing the next one wouldn't have to.

It was like the puppet attack: he and Nyssa were both strong-
willed enough to shrug off most purely virtual assaults without
harm. But then they'd be blocking themselves from the whole
metaphor - and if the Master took advantage, to throw something
substantial...

"Game over!" he panted, scuttling to avoid a more enthusiastic
shower of brickbats. He looked for Nyssa, and jolted to a halt.
She wasn't there. A slick, brown-skinned, spined and corded form
was ripping with fangs and claws into a black-hooded Executioner,
ignoring a stray brick that bounced off its back. Alphard's door
was spewing crocodile mince in a great power-hose gout, far over the
edge of the stage. A red Jelly Mr Punch lay harmless among the rest
of the sweets spilled from the paper bag. Of the policeman there
was no sign at all but the extra large truncheon, which for lack of
better the Doctor made a bolt for.

A brown-skinned, corded and spined Zetan Anti-Man was ripping
at a black-hooded Executioner; and despite alien muscle and teeth
and claws the match was looking even, to a far grosser than rock-
'n'-roll soundtrack.

An Anti-_Woman_ was...

A hating, lethal obscenity _Nyssa_ had once been transformed
into, was...

Alphard launched a shuttling weave of needle-rays into the
audience, blowing brickbats out of the air faster than a teenage boy
at a video-game, whooping manically the while. A second bank
slanted down at an angle, raking the critics directly and lethally.

So the Doctor veered away from the truncheon, charged up to
the Executioner and the Anti-Nyssa, and forced himself between them,
slinging his arms desperately around the puppet's bull neck. Nyssa
raked his shoulders by instinct; but her claws were drawing in at
the same time, and barely even drew blood through his jacket. The
Executioner's massive, callused hands closed deadly around his
throat.

"Nyssa!" the Doctor cried desperately. "Remember who
youu_eeeepf_!"

Stone-hard thumbs cut off his windpipe. He switched in his
respiratory bypass quickly, but didn't resist otherwise, except to
kick his legs feebly and flap his dangling arms. If only she -

"I am Life," came that dearly familiar voice from behind him,
relieved and bright with wonders. "You're Death. Goodbye!"

The leather hood was stooped low, as the Executioner busily
strangled the Doctor. Nyssa placed both her hands there, and
planted a decorous, mocking kiss between them.

Air flowed into the Doctor's lungs in a sweet rush, and Nyssa
did a light _zaphirets_ step that saved them both from falling. Of
the Executioner, nothing remained but a cracked hood and a faint
smell of mold. The organ rolled over the growing chorus of screams
from rows of seats that no longer emanated brickbats.

"Alphard!" barked the Doctor, putting all his thousand years'
authority into it. "Enough! Screen out the music!"

"Phi-K left out-out-fifty-right-down-and-die - "

"Lord Omega, the music's hypnotic! Shut it out! Cease fire
now!"

Nyssa drew her breath in sharply, then ran to her friend.
_"Amigo - !"_

The needle-rays went out all at once. "Well, well!" said
Alphard, in a lazy, dangerous voice. "That's very good. I'll make
a note of it."

"That organ," said Nyssa, looking up balefully. Its tune was
changing, now, into an eerie funereal movement, full of borderless
spaces and dreads. "That's real. That must be Ourania's main
communication system. He's rearranged it to project his own
influence."

"Which won't work twice," said the Doctor grimly, pointing up
at the organist's stall high in the shadows. Far out of Alphard's
line of fire, naturally. "We need to get up there." He shot his
old pupil a speculative look.

"_Stairway to the Stars_, Doctor?"

He bowed. "I'd be delighted!"

Nyssa brought forward the Dayspring, and stopped dead.
"Doctor," she whispered, with the calmness of absolute horror, "I
fought as the bad thing, didn't I? Evil! Anti-Traken..."

The Source of i-Traken was a dead grey cobblestone in her
hand.

The organ fell silent.

And the whole theatre rang with peal after peal of the
Master's triumphant laughter.

-----

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Twenty, 'Moloch'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Twentieth Episode: Moloch*

Si saw Nyssa's light snuffed out on the big screen, as she shifted
into a fanged and clawed Fury and tore into the Master's
Executioner. He saw how it failed to rekindle, when the Doctor
called her back to herself. The Dayspring's darkness gouged into
him, but surprised him scarcely at all. Her instantly homicidal
reaction to the false Jo Grant had set him up for it.

_Simon Westport, this is your love?_

The Master's demented laughter roared out of the speakers,
counterpointed by profane rumblings from Fastolf, and a quick sharp
croak of despair from Mord. Tegan waded slowly forwards, for all
the world like someone in a bad dream. As she drew level with him,
he knew.

_It doesn't matter._

The Master manipulated Nyssa. It isn't her fault...

_You met her. This once, this eternity._

I mustn't stand safe and condemn...

_She is everything._

It didn't matter whether he loved her or not, whether she was
good or bad, holy or blasphemous. He'd be with her. Instinctively,
he and Tegan reached out for each other's hand, twined their fingers
painfully together. Nyssa and the Doctor stood alone. The Master's
pitiless, diminishing spotlight found them again.

A caption overprinted the viewport.

<ALPHA>: CATS! COME IN AUX PASSIVE. HOLD GATE IF I SALLY:
<OMEGA>

"Jinga's britches!" Cats pulled the auxiliary helmet out and
over her head. "Goldy, you take over my board if that light goes
green. Deaks, you talk 'em through anything they really need to
hear, eh?"

Jock Goldspink, the scrubby-bearded Falasha engineer who
managed the defence fac, nodded curtly. Professor Deacon, the
leading theoretician from the Black Sun, bridled at her attitude,
but wisely kept his lip buttoned down. Cats got the far look, and a
ripple of nuanced change reformed the big image, removing the
caption in the process.

Slowly, Nyssa and the Doctor fell to their knees.

Traken's last touchstone rejected her. The Master had tested her
with his music and his puppets, and she'd proven her nature in a
form as alien and malevolent as any cacodemon. _I've become an
evil_, Nyssa thought abstractly. She turned to the Doctor, gazing
up into his fierce black eyes, and waited to be told what to do.

_Then let me be an evil he can use to destroy another. He can
do that - he will. I daren't make choices, now!_

If even he could get them out of this, of course. Without the
Dayspring...

He drew her down with him, down to their knees, under the
oppression of the Master's laughter. She trusted him all the way.

"Praying to me, Doctor? Nyssa?" The high vaults bubbled with
malicious glee. "You do well. I can be a generous Master!"

The Doctor clasped her free hand around the cold Dayspring,
and stared back at her earnestly. He began to sing softly - simple,
mawkish words to a crude Terran melody - and she hung on it as
lovingly as she once had on the Keeper's blessing for her family,
worlds and Nyssas ago:

_"You are my sunshine," the Doctor crooned,
"my only sunshine,_
_You make me hap-py when skies are grey._
_You'll never know, dear, how much I love you:_
_Please don't take my sunshine away..."_

His eyes pled with her, and her mouth was already opening of
its own volition. He'd recognised her solar love-song when they'd
entered the theatre, then. The Dayspring might be no more
intelligent than a cat, but one had to find some way to stroke it.
The Master's laughter redoubled.

Nyssa snapped through some critical underbrush in her head,
dropped her eyes to her dear Stone, and let the Doctor's voice guide
hers through the words:

_"You are my sunshine..."_

Cold grey between her fingers. She crushed her hopes around
it, poured out her unconditional devotion and contrition and longing
to comfort it, and sang so that every hackneyed word burst on her
tongue like a berry. _Dayspring, keystone of my dreams!_

_"Please don't take my sunshine away. You are my
sunshine..."_

Unresponsive grey. The Master babbled some rubbish. As she
sang, she found herself with Tegan again, that first night after
she'd been restored from the original of the wickedness that had
deadlocked with the Executioner. Lying in the dark, silently
shivering, waiting for the nightmares to come. Tegan had known, for
all she'd tried to hide it. Tegan had turned on the light, ignoring
her protests, and made her drink cocoa, and sat over her afterwards
with the light down low, until Nyssa had finally fallen into
peaceful sleep. They'd woken late the next morning, and spent the
rest of the day exploring the TARDIS wardrobes and trying new things
out, and the terrors had never come again.

_"You'll never know, dear..."_

Even on Traken, she'd have been in deep therapy for months
after a horror like that. Tegan probably couldn't even _pronounce_
psychoregenerative integromantics! Sunshine through broken glass.

_"Please don't take my sunshine..."_

Sunshine through a broken trust, almost subliminal, consoling.
It wasn't dead, and didn't hate her. It wasn't hers to wield any
more, of course; but it lived, and so did i-Traken. Even here and
now, that mattered more than anything. Nyssa raised her voice and
sang it one last round, taking her time, caressing the Dayspring's
silent spirit thoroughly and openly, confirming their
reconciliation. It was only half-way through that she realised the
Doctor had stopped singing some time ago, and was standing guard,
looking as nonchalant as a hero in a comic opera. She wondered how
she'd ever thought she could be this man's peer, who'd taught her so
much, saved her from such evils. Still holding the Dayspring in
both hands, she rose up, to stand beside him.

"Well?" the Master boomed. "I offer you a great boon, Nyssa:
the same terms as when we fought as peers. Even you, Doctor - if
you'll swear me fealty. A free pardon for you, and for all your
associates." Laughter on the soft-pedal. "Amusing as your futile
struggles may be, that's very secondary to Time's renewal. I have
better things to do, and so do you." A deep, sinister pause. "As
unwilling tools, you'd be worth no price at all. Not worth
annexing. I do require a sincere answer."

The Doctor grinned chummily. "Do you really?"

"Do you really want your Australian fetish crucified across
the stars of Undying Kasterbouros? No? Then you should offer me
your commitment, while I'm persuaded you're worth the effort!"

_You were wrong, Father. The Great Old Ones are no worse. At
least they destroy whatever they touch, eventually!_

The Doctor laughed! He laughed the Master to scorn, laughed
like a man whose dearest companion couldn't be thrown to eternal
torment at an evil god's whim. _Not one of his bluffs, please! Oh,
darling Dayspring, won't you lend him your power, since I don't
deserve it? He's_ serkur, _sin-free, all I ever pretended to be!
And she's Elissa-again, better than I! Please..._

No.

"Do your worst," suggested the Doctor, with iron pleasantry.
"Attack us. Take Terminus. We've nothing more to say, and what
could stop you?"

A thunderous discord, then, that shook the theatre to its
foundations, and fanned Nyssa's hopes like flames.

"NYSSA?"

Here it was.

"You fear her. You fear anyone who's free. Excuse me from
being your satrap." She wet her dry, dry lips. "Fight us if you're
going to!"

So he did.

The organ swelled with wrath and chaos, thrumming the boards
and vibrating the invisible skylights. The chandeliers went out,
and the spotlight took up a Terran _disco_ argument. Nyssa stepped
up to the Doctor and linked his arm loosely.

"Vulgar," she remarked, her pulse racing like a mad thing,
"isn't it?" What was holding their enemy back?

"My patience is ended," the Master stated. "You are both
demon meat. Your friends will crawl to me on their bellies, and beg
to spit on your memories. Remember me to the abyss!"

The chord he played then had all the coercion of his basilisk
eyes, made over into physical force. Nyssa and the Doctor
staggered, and she had to use all her private strength to keep her
avatar's eardrums intact.

The skylights and spotlights exploded, raining shards of glass
down on them and the audience. Alphard, stuck in the wings, threw a
protective canopy over their heads; canopy and hot glass cancelled
each other, and vanished in a twinkling.

The chord crashed and jammed. Every door and trap in the
building slammed open, several wrenching off their hinges.
Lightless windows shattered. Chandeliers jangled, strained at their
sockets: two of them fell like bombs into the audience, splashing
dull screams upwards at the stage. A phantom breeze chilled her
back. From somewhere far away, the Master's parting laughter
infected everything.

The Doctor hugged her to him protectively.

"We're safe, Nyssa. There's nothing to fear."

An enormous creak came from somewhere about the organ loft,
and a popping of tortured metal. Behind them, a machine-gun attack
from Alphard ripped apart something stringy and gloopy and
slavering, that hissed an expiring curse at them through needle
teeth.

"Nothing to speak of."

The great organ began to pull free of the wall. One of its
pipes was burst right open. It hung on for a moment, suspended at a
drunken angle, and then resumed its fall, its noise dying.

"Doctor?"

"Don't you see? This is all mechanical. He still can't throw
miracles."

She caressed the Dayspring joyfully with her free hand. "It
hasn't abandoned me!"

"No. Everything you've done with it holds."

The organ ripped free, a great part of the loft and galleries
coming with it. It pitched down into the seats with a mighty crash,
shutting up the last of the screaming for keeps.

Beyond the great gap where the loft had been, the sky was the
no-colour of predawn, the ebb-tide of the heart. Cold, tenuous air
poured down from it in an icy cataract. Far far away, a tatter-
winged troop were playing zombie tag, about stars darker than the
sky.

"So," Alphard noted, "he's still chickening out, then."

"For the moment. I wonder whether he just means to wear us
down, or whether he's found some way to turn the tables at the
domain focus. That's what I'd try, you know." The Doctor scowled.
"The kind of thing I've _done_, in other situations. I don't see
how that applies here, do you?"

"No. He needs dumb luck - unless he can catch us between him
and Mister Tentacles. No genius, I'd say!"

"Why don't we all just assume he is? And be pleasantly
surprised?"

"Doctor." Nyssa tugged at his sleeve, and indicated the bad
sky.

He sighed. "The Unspeakable is definitely establishing a
position out there. It does seem committed to taking the Black Sun,
doesn't it? Fits in with its iconography, I suppose..."

She wasn't ready for one of those silliness-on-the-edge-of-
death conversations. "I'm very sick of that creature, Doctor. If
the Ourania project ever really works, and I become its _diva_, I
may just have to do something permanent about it."

"Excellent luck in it. Do you suppose we could seal this
breach off, meantime?"

"Can do!" Her irrepressible _amigo_'s universal war-cry.
"The whole subdomain's so trashed, I can just unravel it into the
Gate, and move the frame to the main exit. It'll take me a while.
You won't want to hang around while I'm doing it."

"Speaking of the main exit," said Nyssa, thoughtfully, "can
either of you see a way down?"

The Master hadn't provided one, of course. In the end, they had to
go back into the wings, and make a stout rope out of knotted strips
of costume. It was that or draw on their own reserves for a rope-
ladder or the like, to which Alphard and the Doctor were violently
opposed. "He'll nibble and skim us to death, if he can," Alphard
judged. "This vandalism gig gives him enough of an equaliser
already. We have to get stingy here, _niña_!"

Nyssa frowned and nodded. "Is it worth getting your umbrella
back from the pit, Doctor?"

Approving noises came from Alphard's Gate, but the Doctor
threw up his hands in alarm. "Don't go there!" One way or another,
he was sure it wouldn't be worth the bash-work involved.

"But you're unarmed!"

He shrugged indifferently. "So are you. All the better to
improvise when the time comes. Come along, Nyssa! And, Alphard -
good luck!"

"_I_ should be so needy?"

The Doctor hoped Cats was thwacking her friend a good one. He
and Nyssa carried their makeshift rope to the front and left of the
stage, keeping in line of sight with Alphard and the Gate. There he
tied it firmly to the nearest of the revealed trapdoors; strained at
it until the tension in it surpassed his own weight; and climbed
down hand-over-hand to the front and side seats. They were full of
smashed and dismembered marionettes, blasted apart by Alphard's
berserk response to their brickbats. The Doctor had a sudden nasty
feeling about those.

"Come on down, Nyssa!"

She followed: a worse climber than he, really, but managing to
look as graceful and efficient as ever at it. He'd never been quite
sure how he did that. _Chitter-flobber-slykhhh_, went the things in
the sky. _The sooner we're gone, the sooner Alphard can seal them
out. For a while..._

The Lady of Terminus landed neatly beside him, took one look
at the marionettes, and shook her silver-filleted head. "Doctor..."

"They were some of the base a-life agents, weren't they?"

"Yes." Her hand brushed the quiescent Dayspring, like a
talisman against an eternal cold. "He spends her so recklessly. He
really does want to destroy her before yielding - or even to leave
her naked before the Unspeakable." She gestured at the ever-
darkening stars behind the destroyed communications organ, as they
picked their way up through the dust and rubble and carnage to the
foyer. "Will you tell me something, Doctor?"

"Always, Nyssa."

"I think it might perhaps be appropriate to appease... that
one... with the Master's soul, if certain conditions occur. Just,
under the circumstances. I'm not quite sure whether it would be
evil, that's all."

"Yes," he said firmly, not letting himself emote even
slightly. "I think it would."

"I hoped you'd say that. I'd better just annihilate him,
then." A little cheer had come back into her voice. "Once he's out
of the way, I'm sure I can hold off the eldritch things long enough
for Alphard to induce a full quenching."

He started. "If you're there when it's quenched - "

" - then I'm as lost as Traken, obviously. Don't worry so,
Doctor. It _is_ a worst-case scenario, and it's better than not
being there and letting a cacodemon consolidate Ourania! Besides,
it's precisely the sort of thing you've always got up to." She
smiled at him with actual mischief, as they mounted the ruinously
littered last stretch of the aisle. "You've been the best of all
teachers, _xerkyrini-phylac moizay_." Too exalted and deep-cutting
an endearment even to translate. He wondered, terrifyingly, how
many Trakens had actually used it before. "Never regret my being
your pupil!"

"I never have." Warily, they stepped up into a dim and
generic foyer. He decided he might as well get something besides
blushes out of this, and spoke before they could pass through the
EXIT. "Come here, girl!"

She caught her cue instantly, laughing and embracing him. He
whispered into her apple-fragrant curls, "Nyssa, he's in a weak
position, and he knows it. He might cave in very suddenly on this,
if we can corner him. You may have to choose between his death and
getting Ourania back alive and clean; and he's leaving broad hints
about that all along the line."

"I thought we were going to exterminate him," she whispered
back forlornly.

"That's your decision, Nyssa. I'm not going out of my way to
spare him, not any more. He's gone too far. But do please, please,
keep your options clear." He held her bright accusing eyes. "Don't
let him choose them for you. Not even in his destruction...!"

She shut him up with an impulsive, daughterly kiss. Semi-
daughterly. It made his lips fizz. "Thank you, Doctor!" she said
then, aloud. "That's a very happy way to look at it. I do believe
I'll follow your example. Shall we see if he has anything more
tasteful outside?"

"Oh, I do love to be surprised!"

They EXITed.

Nyss and the Doc emerged into a stately main street. Cats wouldn't
have much to do for a while, unless Alfie got into hot water winding
up the treacherous theatre. _Not likely!_ So she left a partial
avatar with him in case of unlikeliness, and turned the rest of her
attention back to the main performance.

The town stretched off as far as you could see, which wasn't
exactly klicks. It looked as stuffy as you'd expect: five-storey
trad architecture, rounded off with columns and domes in Banker Neo-
classical. Over the roofs and far away rose the high towers and
slender spires of some great palace. _Don't go there, kids! Yeah,
right._ Naturally, it was a dark and moonless night, lit only by
the crawling flares of underfed wrought-iron gas-lamps, and edged
about with their spooky shadows. (Flash: popcorning it with Tegan,
in a friend's dump in Earl's Court. _'Master of cliché, or what?'._
Si, slumming happily: _'City of Hackneyed Night, anyone?'_) And
this was what the Universe hung on. Honestly. At least -

"Well," the Doctor observed critically, "at least it isn't
raining."

But Nyssa looked alarmed and lost. "Doctor! I wasn't
expecting a _city_!" She patted the Dayspring meaningfully.

_Shit, Sis! If your goody-goody rock isn't speaking to you...
This'll be a hell of a place to wander blind.

You're going to have to go for that palace, aren't you?
Betcha you won't find him there..._

"There's that palace," said the Doctor, rather unhappily. "No
doubt it's significant, one way or another.... Nyssa?"

She'd stepped around the open door, her eye caught by what
looked like glass slivers on the pavement. Before Cats's viewpoint
had time to shift, her heart-sister was back, and the slivers were
dancing at her feet and across the Doctor's jacket. She dangled a
lamp from her free hand, by a golden cord. Its light was the colour
of a cold summer, and there were other strange things about it too.

Zoom.

"Be careful, Nyssa. You don't know - "

It was a Great Dodecahedron: twelve intersecting pentagons,
slicing each other to form a closed ball, making every corner a big
solid star with wedges for arms. Here the corners were open,
spilling mini-stars of chilly gold light in twenty different
directions. Sparkling glass on the pavement; will-o-wisps around
the Doctor; highlights and glints off Nyssa's hair and tiara. But
the narrow beam that faced right down the main street pierced long
and far into the city's night.

"Oh, there's no harm in this, Doctor. Can't you tell?"

The lamp swung and turned on its golden cord, as Nyssa held it
and brought it up for the Doctor's inspection. It didn't matter
which way the lamp turned. Always, that long index finger of light
came from whichever hole faced right down the street, or right and a
little across. Always, it pointed out the same path.

_Of course it's safe, Sis,_ Cats thought grimly; _'cause if it
isn't, you're too dumb to live - Ms Diva._

The Doctor nodded, with bullshitting blandness. "You think we
should follow its lead?"

"Yes. I think so." _Think, eh?_ "It's made for me: I can
feel it. And there's none of the Master's taint on it; none at
all." They took their first steps along the star-lantern's road.
Nyssa placed the sulking Dayspring in an inside jacket pocket, next
to her heart.

"Interesting," said the Time Lord, perfectly seriously. "I
wonder who else might be here, and know you so well? Or wish you
well, at all?"

"The Dayspring, at a remove. My subconscious, or my Whisper
acting through it. Otherwise a eudemon, by definition." She
quickened her pace abruptly.

"You know a eudemon, too? One that would follow you _here_?"

"I doubt that 'follow' is quite the word, Doctor. I'm
beginning to glimpse a pattern behind all this. I'll explain
later."

He looked put out. They were crossing the silent street, now, and
the beam showed them a straighter course down its length. To Cats's
deep relief, they were heading clear away from the ominous bulk of
the palace, towards (she supposed) the less favoured quarters.

They walked a long time along the broadway, until Cats began
checking for signs of loops or scene generators. She found none.
The city really did seem like a proper city.

Except for the people, of course. They weren't there: only
the sketchiest of spectres, suggestions seen out the corner of
Nyssa's eye or the Doctor's, evaporating under the heat of the
slightest attention. Most of the woman-sized a-life agents must
have died in the theatre audience, when Alfie had drained one of
their elan-banks wiping out the hecklers. That'd been a shock. She
hadn't thought the Master would be able to pull Alfie's wires that
way.

I _could have held out better than that!_

_Stick around, girl, you might get to find out..._

The Doctor paused to look into one of the huge, vacantly high-
toned shop windows. As he stared curiously into it, vague forms
began to swirl behind the glass. Nyssa tugged on his sleeve, and
steered him away.

"Come on, Doctor." He continued to squint at it for a couple
more fascinated moments, then shrugged and followed her. The
incipient window-display died behind him. "Whatever he's selling,
we don't want to buy."

_Way to go, little darlin'!_

"I wanted to swindle him blind," he explained, righteously.
"I'm sure that form on the second tier was going to be a genuine
Troy Town cow-creamer. If we'd played our cards right, he might
have ended up owing us all Ourania..."

"He does now."

He sucked in breath through his teeth. "True, but even so..."

_But the closer you come to finishing him off, me bucko, the
more you get the butterflies. Grow up, stop clowning, and face it,
will you? Bastard has to die. You're our best shot at it. Tough
breaks, eh?_

If Cats ever got the Master at her mercy, he'd be kitty chow
inside the minute.

They turned left at the third intersection, following Nyssa's star
lantern. A few blocks and plazas and turnings later, its beam led
them into narrower, frowsier neighbourhoods, well tailored to poor
clerks and gentlemen connected with the stage. The Master had
always had a definite kink for Victorian-style villainy, for reasons
having nothing in common with the Doctor's own Edwardian
affectations. (They _hadn't_!)

All they had to do was to keep a hold of themselves, to take
the Master down before they fell into any more of his scripts.
Together, he thought they stood an excellent chance of it. They
scarcely spoke as they made their way through the crooked back-
streets of their enemy's mind. They scarcely needed to, not even at
this awful end of the road...

...The streets grew seedier, and the spectres more definite,
starvelings in bright dirty clothes with pinched faces and
consumptive coughs. Nyssa's mouth tightened. The Doctor frowned.
The star lantern pointed them to the black mouth of a narrow street,
catching a broken syringe on the pavement with blatant symbolism.
They followed the light, the thin tang of urine, and the nasty
graffiti in silver and russet. About fifty paces in, the lamp was
growing miserably dimmer, and drifting rightwards, to yet another
abysmal gap in the high walls. Somewhere, something bodiless was
chugging something desperate.

As they drew level with the gap, the lantern's beam stabbed
through it into a vile alley, and died. The Doctor gagged on the
cheesy, rotten taste of the air. He clutched urgently at Nyssa's
shoulder.

"Something's wrong. This isn't the kind of place he makes."

"Wasn't - perhaps." Nyssa shrugged him off calmly. "As _his_
Tremas said, his soul's in a state of decay. I think we're back to
'evil force' and 'fundamental wrongness' again. I think this is the
place. Be ready, Doctor." She put the lantern down carefully on
the corner, marched into the alley, and he fell hastily into step at
her side.

It wasn't totally dark, further along. Towards the end, one
could see a terminal wall, and what might or might not have been an
even narrower continuation going behind the last building. The
light that flashed dully there came from neon signs along the right
wall. LIVE DEAD GIRLZ, promised the scabby crimson one nearer them.
DIE BITCH DIE, said the mouldy-lemon one a couple of doorways
beyond. As they approached, a young woman tottered out from under
the red light. She wore stilt heels, a fluorescent lilac boob-tube,
a dark leather miniskirt, and far too much make-up. She looked hard
against the cold, pinched with malnutrition, listless and shaky with
bad drugs. A double slash of lipstick scored her bare midriff like
a designer wound. Her face was dead beauty.

She beckoned them professionally with a disintegrating
cigarette.

"Do some business, loves?" drawled Tegan.

Nyssa squashed her urge to attack, recognising another of the
Master's double-binds immediately. Any of the prices they might pay
to pass this creature would ruin them, one way or another. It would
be one of Ourania's a-life agents, of course, its mind a terrible
psychologist's caricature of the real Tegan. It would be real
enough to suffer.

She knew she had to get in before the Doctor.

_For my phoenix, for my sunshine._ She carried on steadily
forward. "I don't mix love and business, chickling. That's ugly."
She tore her secret heart open like a scab, ignored the emptiness
she felt there, and spread her arms wide. "You're beautiful. Come
here, and never be hurt again!"

The Tegan-thing stepped backwards, looking mean and hunted.
"Kinky is extra," she said sullenly. "I do relief, not head games.
You can't afford _that_ shit."

"I daresay not." Nyssa didn't let herself break stride. Un-
Tegan was confused, scared every way from the origin. "I won't pay.
I will give. All you ask in good faith, all you don't know how to
ask. Come to me, dear heart. Come and be healed."

The Dayspring burned her breast like a salamander's egg.

The Doctor, courteous as always, stood silent and stood guard.

The Tegan met Nyssa's gaze with her own, dead but still warm.
She shivered, stepped back again. Stepped, hesitantly and dizzily,
forwards.

A second form stumped out from under the bloody light of LIVE
DEAD GIRLZ. Big, brawny, another barrelful of traps. It grabbed
Tegan by her skinny wrist, grinding in strong fingers so that her
head whipped round and she drew in a quick, sucking sob.

"I'll deal with _you_ later, bitch! Who's the deadbeat? Lady
Nyssa, as I live! What'll she give me for a turn with her little
trollop, ha?"

Amina, dressed in a catwalk parody of military gear, strutting
like a pimp. Her voice was harsh and hot and cocky as the Rani's
counterfeit.

"Defiance," said Nyssa quietly. _Oh, my heart's darkness, be
proud of me!_ "Let her go."

"I don't think so, Tra-cunt!" As the Doctor began to move,
Amina threw Tegan at him like a weapon, and stepped lithely towards
Nyssa. "I think I'm going to make her lick up the blood and dirt,
after I've given you what you deserve. She's going to put her
tongue in holes I haven't even _torn_ yet!"

And the false Amina was on her, spewing more sex-industry
rodomontade. _Far_ too false to fear!

Nyssa whirled into _zaphirets_, knowing that here the tables
were turned. In her avatar, all her physical disadvantages were
cancelled out: few of the Vanir could have withstood her, let alone
the Master's squalid caricature of a hero he'd never known. She
broke the first onslaught on _Hummingbird Razor_ and _Snake Feet_,
and then flowed into a hateless, devastating offensive. When the
Doctor -

Amina kicked her feet out of line, followed through with a ju-
jitsu strike that shredded her defences and staggered her back
against the street wall. Its broken force bruised her over the
ribs, opening up a purple flower of pain just beneath the Dayspring.
She tried to spin sideways, but Amina was there before her, clipping
her head with one fist and twisting her right hand savagely in the
other, stamping agonisingly down her left shin and crippling her
ankle. It was the real true thing gone murderous, her defences as
meaningless as ever.

Amie amie _don't, stop it, i didn't want i didn't mean_
amie...!

On the ground, not even knowing how she got there, taking the
kicks, and being dragged up by her hand and her scalp-fused tiara,
too much pain to think or even see properly...

A great whooshing explosion, behind her and overhead. Curses,
bricks falling, a faint smell pungent like chlorine. Shouting and
cursing, being hauled up and held like - like a shield. The
Dayspring, fallen from her pocket, a dead stone in the road. _Amie_
feels funny, voice is wrong too. Nyssa fought desperately to focus,
saw the Doctor close ahead, holding something long and shiny. As
angry as _amie_, nearly as frightening.

"Put it down, Doctor, or I snap your little poppet's neck here
and now."

"Then you die. That exact instant. Forever."

Unbearable, awful tension in her vertebrae. The shiny thing
was a rod with fins, a familiar terror. Whatever it was.

Mad, ancient laughter.

"It was always just between us, Doctor. Let's have it out
once and for all." Why was Amina's hand so white? Why did the
Doctor have a Dalek gun, so bright and real? "On a count of three,
let's put the non-essentials aside, and finish this game
personally."

"And trust you? Oh, I think not!"

"I'll throw her aside, and we'll begin. If you'll swear
first."

"I will." Nyssa heard the lie in it. The Doctor,
betraying - ?

Not her _amie_ at all.

"On my terms, Doctor. I know how _exquisitely_ much our
homeworld means to you. So you'll swear on your love for this sorry
mass here, and for your air hostess. To them. I do recall a rumour
that you might keep to that."

The _Master_?

"And just to keep it in threes, for your wife as well. You
know: the one we don't quite dare remember or talk about." A cackle
of purest malice. "It might actually be worth perishing, to know
you foresworn to all that. Well, Doctor?"

Anger, sweet and slippery as hot syrup. Strength prickling
back into her limbs, like returning circulation. She forced her
body to stay limp and relaxed.

"I swear," said the Doctor, with quiet despair. He stared
flatly into the Master's eyes. "If you set Nyssa aside, without
harming her any more, I'll drop the gun and fight you bodily, until
one of us flees or dies. I swear by my love for Nyssa, for...Tegan,
for - " He stumbled. "The other one. My wife. Tell me,
Prometheus, do I lie?"

"It seems not," gloated the Master. "You're as honest about
one as the other."

"I am."

"Then it seems, my dear Doctor, that we're both to get our
wish."

_He thinks he has the edge. He doesn't know I'm still in the
fight. The Doctor's counting on -_

The Master threw her down the street. He was endlessly
stronger than she'd expected. She skittered to a halt many steps
further away than she'd even feared, and began to sprint silently
for his back.

There was a killing blow her true _amie_ had taught her, that
could give him just enough time to feel its coming, enough to let it
work. She'd give it her best -

Obscenity grabbed her from behind, crushed the breath from her
belly, smothered her mouth and nose with rotten flesh and clay. Her
lungs and mind filled with an overpowering stink of the grave.

DIE BITCH DIE!

"Have you seen the yellow sign?"

the dead man demanded, hugging her as intimately as cancer.

As the Doctor began to move, Amina threw whore-Tegan at him like a
weapon, taunting Nyssa filthily. He tried to dodge, but old
gentleman's reflexes betrayed him. The gaudy wasted thing altered
the last few steps of her course to crash square into him, flinging
her bare trackmarked arms around him as if he were a strong tree in
a gale.

"She means it, Doctor!" _...make her lick up Nyssa's blood and
dirt..._ "Take me away. This place is evil. I mustn't be like
this any more." She glared up at him with verdigrised honesty, and
he saw the sign in her eyes. "Make it stop. Make it stop. You're
the only one who can help!"

_She keys a gate._ He tried to squirm aside, to get through
to help Nyssa in her danger. The Tegan-thing held him back,
clinging to him with the strength of infinite need.

"I'm evil, Doctor. Make me not be. You have to make me not
be! Please?"

If he pledged her love, meant it, she'd believe in good, and
become an independent, much-abused a-person of her own, the Master's
fiercest and least formidable enemy. A damaged mock-Tegan, with the
Doctor the prime mover of her universe. Their act of love would
open the gate to the Master's control centre, or final bunker, or
insanely expensive red herring. While she lived, nothing else
would.

She fell short of being human by further than a human missed
being Gallifreyan, and her torment was as real as Nyssa's.

"Shhh, Tegan," he said heavily. "You're not evil now. You
never will be." He hugged her too-hot body tightly. "I'll never
let you be hurt any more."

She relaxed shudderingly into him, feeling his truth, his
compassion. She felt so _Tegan_.

His index finger stabbed into a nerve plexus at the side of
her neck. She collapsed into him, blissfully unconscious; and he
thrust deliberately with his other hand into a quite different
plexus, then, stopping her heart short. She spasmed violently and
died. He kissed her burning brow, and laid her down carefully, her
form already dissolving into the universal shadows. He reached into
them

into the shadows

into his heart

(Tegan had seen everything)

and calmly dragged the ultimate obscenity out of his pocket,
like a man drawing out one of his own bloody bones. He blinked at
the sight of the Dalek gun, saw Nyssa crumpled and helpless under
Amina's assault, and levelled his killing wrath slowly at the
construct. There was something starry in the way.

It wrenched free, leaving one of its triangular arms dripping
in the Amina-construct's hands. That was a great wound. But the
simulacrum was suffering too, its face a peeling, sandpapered mess,
the ruin still pouring through the body: twinkling stellate data-
umphs, chewing through to a deeper darkness that quenched them. He
recognised that darkness then, as he should have before. His enemy
slung the starfish-arm away, and hauled Nyssa brutally upwards.
Before it could use her as a shield, the Doctor shot at its head.

He missed, murdering the air and shattering the wall behind
them. He hadn't meant to. Out of the fumes and disaster came
Nyssa, dazed and insensible, held deadly by her captor.

The Master.

"Put it down, Doctor, or I snap your little poppet's neck here
and now."

He chaffered with her life, then, and the worth of his own;
and that was all right, because if the Master won, it was damnation
all round. And it wasn't all right, and every fibre of him burned
to kill his enemy for this, and wasn't this damnation too?

_Who am I to care?_ He opened a restricted view of his mind
to the Master, and swore a self-fulfilling oath more dreadful than
death, for Nyssa's freedom and his chance to wreak havoc on the
Master, the way he ached to, hand to hand and hate to hate. _For
Nyssa and Tegan and Whoever..._

Righteous fire was his only edge. That gun had drawn deeply
from him, and now the Master had forced him to trade it away. Here,
though, their long struggle would end for good.

"...Then it seems, my dear Doctor, that we're both to get our
wish."

The Master flung Nyssa far down the street. The Doctor
instinctively let go of his foresworn gun, recollected the savagery
it was trying to take with it, and lunged forward to grapple the
oncoming

cheetah.

When Nyssa had first come to Terminus, its hold had been packed with
lazars in Company sackcloth and out of hope. Some of them, the
worst, had been out of their minds as well, on despair and the
necrotic lust of tertiary lazar's disease, the germ-born instinct to
paw and drool and generally crowd anything alive and warm enough for
their lazargens to infect in turn. The vague, sloughing hands had
clutched at her bright life like the feeble ghouls of Traken hell,
supplied its images in her worst nightmares. Some of those ghouls
had become dear friends, later: Yella Dane, beloved of the loveless;
Cantabile the Cyborg; Koichi Kimura who wasn't dead yet. Their
leprous intoxication had no more wiped away their personalities than
sottish drunkenness would wipe away a reveller's, and it ebbed
almost as quickly with their cure. The least and worst child of
Traken would have sensed it, been moved to care and comradeship and
succour.

Cut all that out.

Wear the sackcloth with joy.

Be strong and dull and cruel of genius, so far so that you're
still rational, your purpose joined heart and soul to the plague's,
distinct only in your smug and knowing wickedness.

Replace your libido with the lazar-lust; but cold and certain
as a serial rapist's, and endless while stock or stone or farthest
star stand free of your disease. Adore it, confess it, worship it
until the tenuous dead universes of the abyssal interstitial sicken
at you, and their old lords that killed them keep you at a
fastidious distance. Oh, and remember you _were_ approximately
human, once.

This was the thing that invaded Nyssa's mouth and mind with
corpse fingers, and crushed away her breath with its puffy bear-
strong arm. Thought and hope and strength fled from it like birds
before a fire.

_ssa!_

Nyssa's senses were all choked off by the fervid rottenness
that was smothering her. She fought doggedly, going down slow in
the cacodemon's thick embrace; but she was too much at a
disadvantage, her strength as wasted as Amina's against the Rani.

Amie! She raked the corruption with nails of old joy; it
could have cared less. _Like you, die like you, never yield..._
Words falling away, bile and acid leaping up to meet the foul doughy
fingertips in her throat, her stomach squeezed against her spine,
her brain deprived of higher things than oxygen. Blackness, fight,
and seeing fatal stars; fight, heave, blaze, perdition in moments
but fight; _amie_...

One of the stars twinkled cleanly through the sackcloth dark.
_...ssa! Nyssa! Fight lazar's the way you beat it before!
Remember you're in i-space!_ It shot into her like a white-gold
meteor, then, filling her with a high quick elan, a minute's grace
against the choking dark. _All I can do..._

Her mind lent back to her again, Nyssa knew at once what the
star must have meant. There was a killing hand in the way of her
doing it.

Her hands flew up to twist and pull at a yielding wrist, as
she threw her head back into the deeper foulness of the enemy's
robed breast, momentarily getting half the hand out of her mouth.
She bit down through the putrid flesh of three fingers, through
bones like rotten liquorice-wood, and spat furiously. Something far
in the back of her mind was screaming and screaming; but as the
amputated hand began forcing itself indifferently back into her, she
merely chanted with her whole strength:

"Sum of eta-k over complex sequence P, on the para-sigma
function of Mortaine..."

The intruding thumb whipped back out of her mouth, oozing, and
tried to stab into her right eye. Her hands struck up again to fend
it off.

"...where Agent is defined on Hiljainen-bound domains: A{T4,6
replicators}, B{din(P)}..."

It let go her waist suddenly, to try a shattering upper-cut to
her jaw; but it was sluggish of course, and she spun aside and out
of its clutches, her beautiful clothes scattering mildew and clots
of mould in all directions. She stepped back to face it in the
stance called _Welcome_, still reciting:

"Define Rig(t=time): meta-Lyapunov of chi, psi, and omega upon
Agent in the bounded space Sabray..."

It tried to move forward, shuddered, paused, and began backing
towards the doorway of the yellow sign. Truly understanding the joy
of battle for the first time, Nyssa raised her voice loudly and
gladly, incanting,

"...then let esh be that condition such that P-seeds one
through four exist, with dS-by-dt (Agent) less than zero..."

It was the core of her modified lazargen algorithm, as
formalised by Alphard. She'd never been much of a mathematician,
but _this_ she knew by heart! For the first time, as she struck at
the cacodemon with it, the mathematics of life and immortality came
alive on her, meaning and context overflowing from every symbol.
Her enemy stopped now, rooted to the ground, shivering and shedding
beneath its robes as she threw her own life-force into its
banespell, its own specific algorithmic anathema.

_"Ykhhhhtilllllllll!"_ A vomiting, gurgling hiss. _"Aaiiiyid
thyyyyy ssssherrvvhhhhhh....!"_

"...and conditions in P-prime are _excluded!_"

The thing inside the robes popped like a lanced boil,
collapsing in a heap of ravelling robes and a sputtering of
evanescent grey pus. It occurred suddenly to Nyssa what it had
been. She raised her hands to her mouth, found it happily cleansed
by her incantation, and her clothes damaged but decent. She
restored them with an impatient brush of her hands - then almost
tripped over herself as she remembered the Doctor, and rushed back
down the alley to help him.

He was struggling in grim silence with a mangy humanoid big
cat, being forced back across the street. The Master's moves
favoured the left leg, and the renegade seemed to be using his
clawed right arm mostly for awkward blocks; but the Doctor's shirt
and jacket were shredded and bloody, his right ear was half off, and
a deep gash above his eyes was telling badly against him. As Nyssa
ran up, the Master got in with a stamping hindclaw attack: the
Doctor sidestepped the slash, but fell to the throw for which it had
set him up. His counter was pitifully desperate; but the Master's
left leg betrayed him, and the two Time Lords went crashing down
together into the dirt. Nyssa pulled a dagger from her heart,
ensured its fatal recognition by crying, "Traken sends you this!",
and thrust with all her force at the Master's unprotected back,
striking for the kidney.

She nearly overbalanced from the sudden implosion of air, the
puff of sooty flame. The Doctor rolled manically out of the path of
her attack. She spun around, found nothing but the street, found
nothing in the dissipating fumes either. The Master had vanished.
Nyssa cried out in sheer frustration.

"Not _again_!"

"That was his last bolt, you know," the Doctor volunteered,
not moving from the cobblestones where he lay. Those seemed more
distinct now, and less filthy than they'd been. "Even to the end,
neither of us dared to commit ourselves completely. You forced his
claw rather."

"Doctor? Are you all right?"

"Not really. I'm more of a liability than an asset, in this
state." He propped himself up experimentally on one elbow, winced.
"Not that he'll be in any better condition, one way and another...
I think we might be best to pull out at this point, and try the
quenchers."

"No!"

"He'll be in no position to defend against them, really."

"I don't believe it! Ourania will die, and he'll get away.
That's how it always works. I'll follow him through, and finish
him. Are you - "

"Don't," said the Doctor distinctly. "It'll be a paranoid's
last sanctuary. I don't know what his last resort is, but you can
bet our lives it'll be deadly. And we can't expect the eudemon to
help us a third time: he wounded it too badly."

"Wounded it? Doctor, what are you talking about?"

"The starfish came back, and broke his disguise. I think he
was kicking your head at the time. It took exception, but he ripped
its arm off, and it flew away."

"Oh." It _was_ the same! She'd scarcely dared to hope!
"Doctor, it came to me as starlight. It showed me how to fight the
Dysangelist. It did say it had done all it could, though. Now I
see why!"

"Dysangelist?" He leapt to his feet, his insatiable curiosity
overriding all his weakness and wounds. Nyssa sheathed her dagger
carefully back in her heart, and stepped into his right arm's
embrace so he wouldn't fall over. "The cacodemon? Is that what
attacked you? I've never heard of that one..."

"The High Priest of Death-in-Life," Nyssa told him. "He
served the Necromonger, and even that one handled him with tongs.
He's what this felt like." She frowned. "More than a legend, it
seems, after all! I think it's our tale of Naotalba, a major
servant of Has - the Unspeakable. According to _Unaccountable
Wisdom_, it _invented_ lazar's disease; but you know how reliable
those sources usually - "

She realised what she was missing, and ran down the street to
pick up the grey Dayspring, a round cobblestone lying over cobbles.
It was easy to find. She hugged the precious stone lovingly to her
breast.

" - are, so I've never credited it. I see why it might have
disliked me! I think our eudemon and I have hurt the Unspeakable
quite seriously." She grinned tightly, giddily. "Permanently!
See, Doctor. _Some_ of our wishes come true..."

"H'mmm." He hesitated queerly. "Nyssa, earlier you implied
you knew what the eudemon was, too. Is this something I can know?"

"Doctor!" For someone who surpassed her so thoroughly, he
could be so dense! "Isn't that obvious?"

"Is it?"

"Someone I invoked, who had to be here. Someone who knows the
Master, and hates him. Someone who loves me!" So sweet, to say
that after so long, to know it true again! "Excuse me, Doctor.
There's something I have to do."

Nyssa knelt down in the alley, the Dayspring cradled in her
hands, and began to pray earnestly.

"O Kassia, Kassia Nyssalma, by the water and the rock and the
song thou didst sing me, hear thy choice-daughter again! Kassia,
please don't be damned any more. Thou'st saved us all; thy troth
outweighs all treasons; I love thee as I loved thee at Kaltanaray
Foss, and I gave thee my father's dear hand! The last of Traken
forgives thee and calls thee worthy; and the last Traken mourns
thee; and the new Traken shall have a place set for thee; only,
mother, don't adjudge thyself to the Necromonger; don't go into the
abyss; don't kill my heart again, Kassia; rest in peace and light
forever, dear one, true one, love!"

An old iron weight she hadn't noticed for years fell away from
Nyssa's shoulders. The street was very bright around her. She
blinked, in surprise and then delight, as the Dayspring's honeyed
light rose up to caress her face, and spilled benisons lavishly into
the Master's defeated night.

The Doctor looked down at his shoes, judging it best to stay silent.
He didn't think their unexpected ally had been Kassia at all.

Nyssa rose, radiant, and tripped over to him as lightly if she'd
never been abused or injured. She tutted. "Doctor," she said,
tapping the caked rags over his breastbone, "this won't do!" Dawn
fingers walked up his spine, and his pupil's grey eyes smiled up at
him. "You took these wounds in my cause. May I heal them?"

He hurt so much, he almost didn't protest. "Nyssa, he has no
power of his own now. If you draw miracles from the Dayspring..."

"...he'll have enough to heal himself too; or do whatever
worse thing he prefers." She shrugged. "He's had something from
_my_ healing already, I suppose! I don't mind. If I have to
choose between both of you hurt, or both of you healthy... I hope I
never hate anyone _that_ much, Doctor! Please?"

"Thank you."

The Dayspring flared, and so did he, in a sharp sweet rush
that was lightning and brandy and Romana in the Rose Room. He
whimpered ecstatically, blinked, and took a tentative pace forward.
Carried away by the sudden bounce in his step, he tripped along a
couple more, whirled, and dipped his head politely to Nyssa.

"Thank you, several more times. Shall we go?"

"Yes." Her eyes unfocussed briefly, and her expression grew
puzzled. He circled alertly about her, waiting for the unpleasant
surprise. "Ah. It's beyond the red sign. A 'dungeon', I suppose!"
She shook her head in resigned disgust. "Well, we shan't clean up
the dirt by wrinkling our noses at it."

They took a few paces forward. The taint in the air had gone
away, and the dirty yellow sign had blown out. The Doctor looked
dubiously back towards his discarded Dalek gun; felt a pang of
revulsion from the psycholictoral oath he'd sworn, which didn't seem
amenable to narrow interpretations; and turned his back on it with
relief, to accompany Nyssa through the open doorway that promised
LIVE DEAD GIRLZ. _If the Squadron-Leader could see us now..._

The doorway deaded into a buff-coloured discretion wall, with
another doorway to their left, this one masked by a bead curtain.
They clacked through it, and into a large and comfortable red-
carpeted foyer. The spot lighting was tasteful and evening-bright,
picking out glossy photographs of elegant women in daring evening
dresses and ball-gowns. The Doctor recognised one as Lily Langtree,
another as Lucrezia Borgia. Anaktoria hung coyly on the arm of
athletic, harsh-humoured Andromeda of Mytilene. From another
picture pouted his old Academy classmate and the Master's, the
Ingénue, called Millennia-of-Lovers and La Bicyclette de Boruse, her
trademark I'm-brave-I'm-scared-come-take-me-now look captured to
wicked perfection and enhanced by the dinkiest silver handcuffs.
The only exception to the general tone, surely calculated, was a
rather crude poster of a naked Jo Grant cavorting with a Dalek,
appropriately placed over a downward stair.

"I've got that sinking feeling," he remarked, then looked
sharply at Nyssa. Her eyes were flicking rather wildly around the
chamber. He nodded grimly.

"There's what I meant about style, in the alley," he told her.
"The Master's fussy about his servants and surroundings. He likes
his evil grander, wittier, less sordid than life. Now Naotalba's
dead, its brand of slime has washed off the surface."

"Ah," said Nyssa flatly. "That would explain the false Amina
and Adric, then?"

"He also likes bad acting," the Doctor admitted. "He's only
fussy in his own persona." He wrinkled his nose disparagingly. "I
think he counts the others as mannered art, or the like. He thinks
they are wit. But you saw how the rest changed when you killed the
demon."

"I'm not sure this isn't worse," she retorted. "I'd rather
brush against a nest of maggots, than find it wrapped in a nice
fresh apple!" She acquired a sudden tic in her right cheek. "This
is how the path to _Lazar Zombie Gangbang_ begins - or to Adric's,
Adric's corruption, I suppose. _Advertising_ like this, everywhere.
No wonder the Master's fallen so far, if that's the way he lies to
himself!"

"He does, Nyssa," said the Doctor tiredly, "he does." He put
a hand on the red rail of the stair, then trotted down it, his
companion trotting close behind. The stair was very short, leading
to a long crimson-walled corridor with rooms off it. The one in
front of them stood open. It was a sad professional bedroom in
lilac and blackberry, and it still faintly exuded hints of Tegan's
old-time perfumes. The glacier of his purpose rolled over the
temporary warmth of Nyssa's healing. From further down the
corridor, there was an evil whiff of oil and iron. "Are we on the
right track?"

Nyssa had stopped three steps above him, and was eyeing the
dirty Dalek with un-Trakenly fascination. She retrieved her bane-
dagger from her heart, and scraped sharply down across the poster
with its blade. The whole thing immediately came off the wall in
swiftly evanescing shreds, taking the wall-paint in its shadow along
with it, and exposing a small sliding door.

"We are now," she said. "What's the sign about?"

The Doctor indicated the sigil below the text, a circle on a
line on an equilateral triangle. "It's called the sine of tan,
it's " pain cut brain like blunt knife, he pulled his foolishly
wandering thoughts together "traditionally, the legend carved above
the Gates of Hell. It means 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here'."
He shook his long hair bemusedly. "Perhaps you're right, and
there's nothing left in his bunker but his perdition. Let's find
out!" He slid back the door.

"A mirror?"

His image stared quizzically back at him from a sun-hammered
Mediterranean beach. The lagoon was a burning mirror itself, alive
with the horror of the hill called Byrsa. The Master in his
Promethean first incarnation sat passively on a boulder, his eyes
downcast. Nyssa cast no reflection at all, being too far away in
his possibilities.

_Nyssa, Elissa,_ <DECISION> _Tinta, Susan..._

_"PROM!"_ the Doctor screamed, and ran barefoot across the hot
sands to stop him doing it.

Ba'al Hammon's fires consumed him.

She saw the Doctor's reflection, standing on a harsh alien beach.
She saw the Master, sitting dejectedly and waiting for an end. The
Doctor's expression changed to the hot crazy one he'd worn at her
banquet, tangoing with Tegan. He stepped through his reflection and
sprinted for the Master. Nyssa went to follow him. She banged her
forehead on the solid mirror. She didn't show in its silver, had no
image to walk through. Her companion was neatly trapped.

If she broke this gate without solving it, she wouldn't see
him again without tearing down the Master's whole overlay on
Ourania. Too late: even if Hastur didn't take that advantage when
she offered it, which was a forlorn hope anyway.

_I'll not lose my second father as well_, she thought, forming
the thought deliberately and listening hard through her tiara for
the voice of future Terminus. _I don't know this trick! Whisper,
show me a charm of opening, if ever we learn one!_

There was a woman in the mirror -

_- Behind you!_

It was the Whisper's high silver voice, fierce with passion
she'd never dreamed of putting into it. She spun around in _Goat on
a Boat_, ready to attack in any direction, but saw nothing.

_- Don't turn back,_ the Whisper told her. _There's something
you mustn't see. He won't thank you, if you do._

_Elissa! The burning at Carthage..._

(Nightmare after a long, wine-lively dinner with Amina and
Masha and Gisco: _her_ Elissa, not Carthaginian Dido but Tegan, her
lovely flesh blackening and crackling in the fires of the first
tophet. Amina's strong arms crushing the sleep and the evil dream
out of her, her breath hot in Nyssa's ear: _Hush, pumpkin, it won't
happen, come and dream with me a bit..._)

Finding the same shadow on the Doctor's own deranged memories
had been terror come true.

A gate keyed to a shared memory! So simple, so economical,
so insidious. _I should have guessed that the Master was mixed up
with him from the start..._ And if she turned back, and recognised
the Doctor's doomed - wife? - as Tegan, she might destine it to
happen-have-happened after all!

Blank power flooded into the Dayspring and out of it, far too
quickly for Nyssa to focus. The carpet and walls and air caught
fire about her, began to burn off quickly into nothingness. She
defended her own avatar instinctively, overreacting and saving a
wide splash of the foyer: her power had pulled free from the
Master's all at once, finding nothing to fight.

What could possess the Master to immolate his whole metaphor
at once? That was surrendering his whole control over Ourania, and
he had to know he'd never get it back. _Oh, let it not be mutual
destruction, not him and the Doctor..!_ She nearly turned back,
froze in ghastly indecision.

The Whisper said, _Prophecy-binding and paradox are terrible
and contagious! Run from them now, lest I become a lie, or soulless
bad counsel!_ Then her future feedback went dead, having finished
its longest and most perilous intervention yet.

Nyssa didn't dare hesitate an instant longer. She ran out the
door and onto the flaming air and stone of the city, shielding
herself from the unravelling, and hoping the geometry lasted long
enough for her to reach Alphard by her original route. If anyone
could save the Doctor now, it would be her _amigo_ - !

Thin ciliated fingers - strong as steel cable, boneless and
ticklesome as millipedes - grabbed her under the arms as she trotted
around the corner. She withered the nightgaunt with a sun-bright
thought, scanned quickly around her for more, decided it had been an
outrider cut off by the fires and subliming reality.

Beyond the burning sky, there would be much more and much
worse where that had come from. If she and Alphard weren't quick
enough off the mark, they'd have their hands far too full of
Something Else to help the Doctor at all.

Nyssa ran.

"What's the sign about?" Nyssa asked, and Gisco stiffened like a
man stuck with a poker.

"_Ai Nushat!_" the Battle-Second hissed. "The Sign of Tanit,
Face of our Devourer! Is there _no_ demon this dog doesn't consort
with?"

Babbling, the Doctor slid back the door on a mirror, and the
viewport followed his attention, zooming in on its image. It showed
a dazzling bay in the shadow of a high bluff: the Master sat dully
on a rock. A horrible certainty settled in Si's chest. Tanit.
Carthage by the sea. Elissa's pyre.

_After such knowledge -_

The viewport split, as Nyssa tried to follow the Doctor and
bounced. The Time Lord was running towards the Master, screaming.
Si barged in front of a protesting Tegan.

"Kill the display!" he hollered at Cats. "It's a prophecy-
trap! Turn it off!"

"Is that woman...?" Professor Deacon demanded peevishly.

"Be quiet!" Si yelled over him. "Don't anyone look!"

_- what forgiveness?_

Tegan tried to get around him: he turned and seized her by the
shoulders, snaking his head frantically back and forward to obstruct
her view. "Si, are you crazy? Get out of my way! I _mean_ it!"

"Yea," said Fastolf angrily, "enough of bug-a-bears,
rhymester; or say what Nyssa - ?"

"Tuyet, what - " "Don't - " "Oh, no!" _"Fire!"_ "Let it
be - "

Tegan twisted out and under from his grip. _"Let me
through!"_

So he threw himself at her, tackling her to the floor in an
almighty crash of knees and elbows and things. Tegan began using
hers violently. "Tegan," he kept shouting at her, "Tegan, don't
look, you mustn't see - "

"Bastard!" She gouged at his face, her skin twisted tight
across her skull in feral rage and hate. The shock of it left him
open for a moment, and she landed a solid sock to his jaw with her
other fist. "Ow!" Then Ariel Kaplan and Mord were pulling him off
her, and Tuyet had one light hand on Tegan's shoulder and was
talking to her soothingly. He didn't think Tegan was going to
soothe easily.

He ached as if he'd just been wrestling a sack full of stones.
He couldn't bear to think how Tegan must be feeling.

Ariel let him go, nodded to the now blank screen. Fastolf
loomed up close, and hooked a needle-sharp claw meaningfully under
the notch of his jaw.

"Our eightfold sage did take your rede," the Terileptil
informed him with ominous lightness, "and drew curtain on the scene,
would I, nould I. I'd know what moves you i' this, and what you
know that our Star-Eyes saw unmeet to share with her Uncle-Captain.
By the Wrath, if here's but some fantastical freak of poesy..."

"We can watch Nyssa, if we screen the Doctor's view out," Si
told him carefully. "I think that was... something in his timeline,
something too dangerous to know or even think about. She talked
about it with me, once. I don't pretend to understand the time-
mechanics, though." He fought the shakes of aftershock. "I'm just
sure she'd go a long way before letting anyone see that." He spread
his hands helplessly, only now beginning to realise what an utter
fool he must be sounding to all and sundry, as if he were giving an
advanced lecture on a book he'd never read. "Please: I know this
sounds insane, but please don't ask me anything more, and don't talk
about it. Trust me. Please?"

The gaudy reptile blinked his inner eyelids slowly.
"Cit'Goldspink," he said, "our Cats seems much occupied. Do you
restore our sight of Nyssa, but not the Doctor."

"Thank you." Si detected the beginnings of cold sweat on his
brow.

Fastolf lowered his heavy hand to Si's shoulder, and squeezed
it gently. "An this prove some jape or jealousy," he assured Si
mildly, "I'll slay you out of hand. Meantime in fair faith: thanks
for a good service." He withdrew ponderously.

"Tegan," said Si, "I'm sorry I had to - "

She quelled him with a look he'd never seen in her before. A
cockroach spoke, it said. Her answer was low and vehement.

"Don't you ever dare touch me again!"

Goldspink brought Nyssa's half of the picture back to the viewport,
which roused everyone in an instant. Nyssa was running from nowhere
to nowhere, through a sea of flame.

"There, too!"

"What happened to _him_?"

"Fire." "I can't say." "...committing moloch."

<ALPHA>: WHAT HELL? INTEGRITY SACRIFICED - LOSING GEOMETRY!
LOOK OUT, PEOPLE!: <OMEGA>

Then they lost her.

When the inferno began to die down, Nyssa knew that she was in very
deep trouble. She ran harder and faster, but it was no use.

The fires were dying for lack of reality to fuel them. The
Master's interpretation of Ourania was burned down to the bone. She
was alone in a clinker-black void, its space too ravaged and
disconnected to allow for travel. It was far too much like Traken
hell.

Beyond the failing wisps of flame, the void where the sky had
been was turning to fly-flecked buttermilk. Byakhee-sign rained
from it like dander on the hypernet. There was a moon-sized blind
spot up there that she didn't like at all.

She'd lost the Doctor.

"Alphard! _Amigo!_"

No ether, no answer. Risk and dare.

"Traken dawn, throw Chaos down thy gage. Traken morn, O light
my pilgrimage," she quoted Meghira's old screed earnestly.
"_Alphard_, seek my spirit here, and - " She floundered, running
out of script. " - please come very quickly, _amigo_; I'm reaching
for you now." She cast Dayspring light in all directions,
regardless of expense, seeking the signature of her Gate and her
friend.

_Gotcha!_

That bright, knowing, brittle mind, great as glory and
comfortable as an old shoe! She joined him in a song of reunion and
block-transfer, forging a path and a place for it to be. With a
shuddering effort, like loving her _amie_ when her pores breathed
Fascia blood, she brought forth a basic domain with herself and his
Gate and their link. There he was, in the curdled and starry void:
there was the Gate. She stepped forward on the long walk back to
reality.

_Doctor, dear Doctor, be alive..._

Something made her turn around.

He was hobbling towards her from ever so far away. He was
much older than he'd been, and smaller, and he bore himself as
proudly as a demigod, shining in the dark like a dangerous star.

Something else dropped down on her like barbecued despair, all
spider-limbs and scabs and the smell of burnt pork. She gagged with
the stink of the Master's corruption, and struck wildly with the
Dayspring. A vicious chop trashed her wrist, cut her off from her
Source as it clattered uselessly to the ground. The charred thing
that had lived inside the Melkur and eaten her father kicked her leg
from under her, smashed her to the featureless floor, and stamped on
her hopeless attempt at _Sidewinder_. When he could bring it to
infighting, he was ruinously out of her class. His eyes transfixed
her like black stars. With a high, evilly maniacal giggle, he
whipped a ceremonial dagger out of his robes, and struck down for
her soul.

The jade green lightning blasted him back twenty feet,
sputtering and cursing.

"Naughty!" came Alphard's caustic boom. "You pathetic little
chamberpot Rass - _Gaak!_"

Nyssa felt the banshee wind of the dagger's passage, heard it
crash through Omega's nullification armour as if it were a paper
suit. Alphard wailed disbelievingly, an inhumanly high tinny sound
like a murdered toy soldier. As he crumpled, he vomited up an
ectoplasmic horror of lunar sickles and gelid tentacles and bubbling
consumption, that blew towards the Master like the sum of all
vengeance, and pressed Nyssa down against the floor with all the
coercion of a million years of instinct. A long, acrid, ripping
shadow flew over her head to meet it.

Alphard had left the Gate's protection to fight for her, then.
That was destruction. Omega's Mask could dish out punishment at
least as deadly as the Master's; but Joshua's unstable nethead.soul
had no hope of surviving his enemy's first counterstroke, whatever
his ego might have told him. She ought to know! _He_ knew!

Amie! Amigo! Nyssa crawled, through pain like hot tar, to
get to her Dayspring and even up the scales. _Everyone dies except
me!_

_Not this time..._

It was like when Tegan was little, and she'd been standing _inside_
the scene on the television, until the villain took a pot-shot at
Skippy and she tried to jog his arm. Now she stood with Nyssa, back
from the darkness in a burned-out space of stars and junkyard
silhouettes, frowning with her at the pale sour-milk light that was
strengthening in the most godforsaken reach of the sky. She saw her
looking back down a long path to Alphard and his gate; then looked
behind her friend, straining her eyes for the sight she most wanted
to see _and wouldn't!_

That was how she was first to spot the old man, stepping out
of infinity and advancing towards Nyssa with his nasty-looking cane.
She shook her head woefully. _Another_ of the Master's -

A burnt horror that could only have been the Master struck
Nyssa down from above, and drew a black-magic knife to kill her
with. Tegan kicked him furiously in the groin, only she didn't
really move and nothing happened, because she wasn't really in the
television. She heard Si choke, Gisco curse, and Fastolf roar in
anguish, not that she cared.

_"Nyssa..!"_

The Master's artificial stooge was furry-coated now, scurrying
forward, and playing a mocking tin whistle.

But her other nightmare, Omega in all his monstrous armour,
stepped out, making every abused nerve in her body writhe at once.
And blasted the Master back with green lightning, which was stupid
because it let him live. How do you incinerate something that's
already been burned to death? Sure enough, the Master lobbed the
knife back like a return thunderbolt, dropping him like a sack of
potatoes. _Please live, I don't really hate you..._ As Alphard
(_not_ Omega, not!) caved in, he puked up some horrible B-movie
demon to trash the Master, and keep him away from Nyssa.

The Master didn't like the look of that. He shifted into a
big charbroiled leopard, and went flying forward to meet it in mid-
air. It made fire-oozing scratches and knocked flakes off the
bastard's sides, but he shredded it as he went through, and landed
growling by the helpless engineer's head.

"_Magister!_" A voice from the far end of a tunnel:
challenging, vibrant, and dangerous, a kind man's moved to fury.
"Stop that at once!"

She knew him then, the handsome white-haired dandy with the
cape and sabre. Her heart sang to him. But he was still too far
away to make any difference. Alphard would be dead before he could
interfere; and after Alphard, Nyssa.

"Put the Doctor's view back on," she said, with a quiet edge
that got their attention even as the Master started ripping into
Alphard. "That's him."

"Tegan," said Si, shameless tears in his voice, "if you're
wrong - "

"Do it, Fastolf!"

Nyssa was crawling, crawling towards the Dayspring. She had
to be terribly hurt.

_"Oh no you don't!"_

The cry came from Cats, out her real mouth. Where the other
cybernauts' faces were lax and vacant, hers was clenched in white
despair and outrage. From the audio there came the squawks and
spitting and squeals of a hundred midnight scraps at once, as two
enormous alley-cats went berserk with all their claws, all over the
Master.

_Go, Cats, go!_

Masha: "Who's holding the Gate?" Mord: "No-one! I'll - "
Goldspink: "You wouldn't know how! I might manage, yes..."

"Then manage instanter, and Fortune speed thee! Deacon: take
his board, and Bright-Wing's dare."

The Master howled with shock and reared up, morphing into the
were-cheetah form he'd used against the Doctor. His carbonised skin
split with the change and Cats's gouging, venting soot and flames
the colour of rotten plums.

The Doctor had to be nearly half-way there now. He was the
way she'd first met him, big and long and scary, hallooing and
loping towards them like a mad thing, his scarf flapping behind him
like the tail of a tasteless comet.

Nyssa had nearly reached the fallen Dayspring.

Something came whistling down at her from above, a gaggle of
the b'yucky things cheering it on flobbily from a safe distance.
The picture jumped, as Deacon put the Doctor's viewpoint back. The
new attacker was as OTT as Alphard's last spook; but done in steel,
all hooked tentacles and razor wings, folded up for a dive-bombing.

Nyssa rolled over, drew out that dagger she'd been sheathing
in her heart (_gross!_), and flicked it upwards with her left hand.
The monster exploded in a shower of burning iron filings. She
flopped over again, as if even crawling the last few paces was
beyond her.

For a moment, Tegan actually thought Cats might polish off the
Master. He was so burnt up, and her first fury had knocked him back
reeling and flaking. But it didn't last, couldn't. He was still a
Time Lord, and this a duel of minds. He went into some of that
fancy fighting he'd used to take down Nyssa, with added claws and
teeth. Cats just seemed to be knocking char off him: his blows
told. It seemed to take him all of a quarter-minute to turn the
scrap around. Kicking away the thoroughly dazed black panther, its
face blotted with blood, he scooped up the frantically scratching
white cat by its scruff, and -

"No!" cried the Doctor, _her_ Doctor, bowling another of those
cricket-cannonballs he'd used in the first fight. He was too far
away: it hardly had any legs left by the time it rolled past the
catfight.

Nyssa touched the Dayspring. It convulsed her with writhing,
honeyed lightnings.

The Master bit through the white cat's spine. It spasmed and
shat and went still. He threw it to the ground like a waterskin he
wanted to burst. The real Cats's face went deader than her other
friends', and a ripe stench suddenly filled the Helm Room. The
Master howled in awful triumph.

The black panther reappeared from the darkness to bite off his
goolies, and he howled some more.

"Howzat for a no ball!" yelled the big porky blond dressed
like an accident in a paint factory, panting to maintain his pace.
But he was nearing Nyssa now; and she was rising, wreathed in dawn,
with the Dayspring in her hand.

"Flank him!" she called out, in a strong last-wind sort of
voice. "It ends here, Melkur!"

Their enemy struck distractedly at the panther as it pulled
away, managing only a glancing rake before it slunk out of range and
into the dark. He turned, looked briefly down at the shattered form
of Alphard, then up at the advancing Nyssa. Her heart-shaped face
was serene now, sad, and quite implacable. To his right, the Doctor
was only a little way behind: now a dark little man in white with an
umbrella, walking not running. Even on the viewport, there was an
un-Doctorish grimness about him that made Tegan want to shiver.
He'd been _that_? The Master seemed to feel the same way. He
shrank back into his burnt-man form, started to declare something,
then wheeled and ran for the Gate.

Tegan supposed if you could be roasted that badly and still
fight, you could stand the other thing too. She hoped it still hurt
just as much, though.

_- The Gate!_

Ariel and Tuyet stepped forward, and each laid a hand on
one of Goldspink's shoulders. "He's illusion," said Tuyet
tranquilly. "Hold truth!"

But what it was that Ariel bent to whisper in the engineer's
ear, Tegan didn't hear at all.

The Master struck the Gate running, leaking bruise-dark flames
from his wounds and eyes.

Goldspink spasmed as if run through with red-hot iron.
"Lord!" he shrieked, a high throat-tearing sound. "You! Not. No.
_No!_"

"Hold him, Jock." The old rabbi's voice held nothing but
compassion and confidence. "Just a little while longer."

"He can't pass you," Tuyet promised him; and Tegan thought
that if both of those two were telling her she could do something,
even something like this, she might very nearly manage it.

Stripped even of words, the lean engineer let out an agonised
roar, and flailed his hand down on the edge of the console so that
blood started from his fingernails. He jerked up, ramrod-stiff, his
face dripping with tears and froth, a vein pulsing dangerously in
his dark forehead.

And held.

And held.

And then it was too late for the Master's escape, because the
light of the Dayspring washed over his back, and he had to turn back
to face Nyssa and the new, true Doctor.

Goldspink, looking grey and sick and thirty years older, held
the Gate.

The Master's final corruption glared back at the Doctor with eyes
like infected wounds, weaving its scabby hands in a threatening
pattern in front of it. He and Nyssa had it trapped against the
Gate, though, and there was only one end of that. He was surprised
when it spoke to him, his old rival's voice scarcely touched by the
Osiran fires it had recalled in its last desperate throw against
him.

But its laugh was burned to a charred stub, a single sooty
cough. "I hope it was worth it, Aesk Afterthought! - I hope it
_wasn't_: why lie? The doom will rot your love and joy and soul to
_this_, Doctor. To what you and Hammon made of _me_!" It coughed
again.

"I think it was worthwhile," said the Doctor gently; and he
made himself smile, like ice cracking in sunshine. "Goodbye, Prom.
I'm sorry."

He stepped forwards. The Master cringed back against the
Gate, grinning maliciously with cracked brown teeth, and jerked a
skeletal finger at Nyssa. "Did you know he was - "

"No," she said, and flexed the Dayspring's light about it.
The Doctor closed in grimly.

" - your - "

Its words dissolved into the chatter of crows.

"In mercy, Melkur. This should have - "

It charged her recklessly, catching her off-balance. She
blasted it point-blank with the fires of life, with everything
Traken was and it wasn't. The Doctor ducked back and around it,
ready to hurl it back into the line of fire if it somehow pulled
out. If it couldn't, the fight was finished.

It couldn't, and it wasn't. The Master hurled itself onto the
Dayspring with a shriek of lonely triumph, dissolving into a cloud
of virulent black flames that immolated the stone in Nyssa's hand,
eclipsing its light utterly.

Nyssa raised her head to the doubtful heavens and screamed, a
high pure note of love and pain and purpose. The Master's suicide
burned into the Source of i-Traken, eating, sullying, quenching.
And Nyssa stood and gave of herself, and gave, as the living fire
sank lower and hotter and deeper, consuming its own life to burn
away hers.

Sky-shattering thunder cracked on high. The Doctor didn't
look up. He ran up behind Nyssa and threw one arm around her waist;
reached under her arm and over her free shoulder with the other; and
squeezed gently, chastely against her, lending her all the life that
was his and all the dearly-won vitality he'd brought back from
remembered Carthage. It felt new as spring leaves, and righter than
rain. (After all, he _was_ possibly her [un-Gallifreyan concept] -
not that he knew how such a thing could be!) And they gave, and
they held.

And the destroying fire that had been the Master failed, and
died, leaving the Dayspring clean and grey and bare.

More thunder cut through the growing static and byakhee-sign
overhead.

Nyssa gave, and the Doctor gave, and yet they held.

The Dayspring burst into sweet faint light, dim and merry as a
birthday candle's, and sang a grasshopper chorus. The Doctor
sighed, and disengaged from his... foster-daughter. He began
scouting around for the missing black panther.

"O my mothers, my father, my Union!" called Nyssa, beginning
to glow with gorgeous foxfires. "It is ended!"

And then she whirled around, and ran back to where Alphard and
half of Cats lay. She laid her hands on the still-warm body of the
white cat, hummed, and suffused it with living light.

The Doctor found the black panther close by. It was silent
and quivering with shock, its yellow eyes empty. "Here, kitty!" he
said, squatting down and offering it his hand to sniff. "Here,
Cats. It's time to go home..."

"Meow," whined Cats. "Mew? Got bassstard?"

"Yes." He beckoned her to crawl up into his arms. Shaking,
she stood, arching her back, her tail drooping limply. He heaved
her up.

"Thank Basssst for that," she purred. She closed her eyes and
went floppy. He carried her back to the Gate, Nyssa close behind
him with the mortally-wounded white puss.

"Bring her through," Nyssa told the air, "and get her straight
to hospital! Have stasis ready for Alphard."

They passed the wounded cats through the green gateway, where
they disappeared into soft pools of jade light. "Oh," Nyssa added,
"whoever you are in there, thank you! You saved us the day. We'll
relieve you in a moment..."

As they walked back to the hulk of Alphard, the Doctor raised
his eyebrows. "That's a curious way to put it..."

"We can't go back yet, Doctor." She indicated the sky. It no
longer had any colour at all, not even grey; but it blazed with the
unlight of black stars, the most prominent constellation resembling
a three-armed swastika on very bad acid, burning with a faint hue of
tarnished brass. The whole sky was lousy with stringy flocks of
byakhee, antic tribes of nightgaunts, and less familiar bits of
delirium the Doctor didn't bother to define.

"Can you handle that many?" He bent down beneath the ruined
armour, found not much to his surprise that it had been quite empty.
Nyssa went down to its feet, fixing the Dayspring over her breast on
a sudden Mayoral chain, and they lifted the not-body between them.
For a hollow shell, it was excessively heavy: in the real world,
Nyssa couldn't have carried any of its weight at all. Slowly,
perforce, they began bearing it back to the Gate.

"Oh, easily!" Nyssa panted. "They're just the shadows of a
dream, after all. I could teach Tegan to stand off a platoon of
them, if she had to; and either of us could - You're walking too
fast. Thank you. - we could devastate swarms. With the
Dayspring, I can just passively emmelkurise any attackers while I do
something else. No, they're there for _that_." She jerked her chin
towards the anomaly that swelled in the sky to their left, an
enormous blind spot with roiling and questionable edges. "When that
blister bursts, I think we both know what's going to be behind it!"
The Doctor grunted. "We can't let it take Ourania, Doctor - and the
Master sacrificed the autonomic defences on purpose. I'm going to
have to face it off."

"You said _you_."

"Hastur is nontrivial, Doctor. I want _you_ to be - my
Alphard, to guard the Gate." They'd almost reached it. "If I fall,
Terminus must stand, and be ready to quench Ourania utterly. At
worst, I can buy enough time for that!" She shook her head with
tired vigour. "I do intend to win, though..."

"Alphard's coming," said the Doctor aloud, unable to think of
any better response. They lugged the inert armour into the Gate, to
see it vanish with a green flare far brighter than Cats's. He hoped
that meant the Engineer could be restored, too.

Then he hugged Nyssa so tightly he almost bruised them both;
and he kissed her hair and a point of her tiara, and begged to see
her soon; and vanished with a green flash and no more goodbyes to
replace...

...Jock Goldspink slumped at his controls, his face folding into a
vague and aged expression of horror. Ariel and Deacon bore him up,
and carried him towards the wide-flung Helm Room doors, to board the
spare ambulance. The rabbi spoke to him all the time, in a low warm
voice: Deacon, himself shaken to his core, had nothing to contribute
but myopic, nervous glances anywhere but at his stricken colleague.

Mord and Cherry and the Lions cheered the unexpected hero out
variously; but Fastolf only muttered something that might have been
"Well done, lad," and, like Si and Tegan, reserved his whole
attention for the viewport. Nyssa stood against the black stars and
razor-edged shadows, outlined in phoenix-bright foxfires. She was
singing wordlessly, and her lips shaped a smile as she sang.

The blister in the sky burst, and out of it spilled a vast
dead form that shed hope and perception and memory like water from a
duck's back, because it violated everything and there was no end of
it and it made no sense -

The screen flared into howling white chaos.

-----

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Twenty-One, 'Condition Terminal'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Twenty-First Episode: Condition Terminal*

Off in the white chaos, where no-one could see, Nyssa strove with
Hastur for the spirit of the Living Sky. Her tiny form lay blind
and motionless in her virtuality couch; her face was a pallid mask,
streaming with an unwholesome sweat. The Dayspring surged at her
left hand, sank, lightened again, died lower. All her friends who
were left standing stood or perched, as paralysed as she, for long
dreadful slabs of their lives. The Helm AI later assessed these at
around twenty-eight minutes.

At which point the Dayspring stuttered and fell dark, and
Nyssa spasmed where she lay.

The Doctor pushed off his induction helmet, and stumbled
across to her. He pulled her eyes open gently, stared down into
them, and breathed, "Nyssa. Come back!"

"What happened?" Tegan couldn't contain herself.

"We won." Nyssa's voice would scarcely have ruffled a
feather. "It won't come back. Hello, Doctor!"

"What about _you_?"

Nyssa smiled faintly, and wet her split lips. "I'm fine.
Tired. Julie, call something to take me away? I want to sleep so
much..."

"Then I'll with thee," insisted Fastolf, "and ward thee, my
valiant, and scare away the night-hags!"

"Dear Uncle! I won't..." She trailed off, her lips still
moving and her eyes still blinking, but her breath exhausted. Julie
stepped up purposefully, rolled up her loose sleeve, and injected
her with the contents of a blue syringe. Nyssa's smile broadened a
little more, and her limbs began to relax in jerky stages. Within
the minute, she was floppy as a squid, and snoring peacefully. The
Doctor took up the Dayspring, placed it gingerly in her lap, and
folded her free hand over it too.

"Keep it touching her!" he warned the medic. "She's overspent
herself terribly. Besides, I don't think the dreams can hurt her
while she's holding it."

"How long's _that_ for?" Tegan demanded, horrified. If this
was going to be worse than the aftershock of Adric -!

"Oh, just a night, I should think. Better safe than sorry."
He unplugged the snaky silver cable from the sleeping Traken's
tiara, kissed her cold brow tenderly, and made his way towards the
door. "Now, if you'll all excuse me, I'm feeling just a touch in
need of rest myself!"

As he passed Tegan, he hesitated the merest instant. She
tucked her arm through his, and led him briskly out towards the
TARDIS.

"I don't trust you," she warned him darkly. "I'm not going to
believe in this 'rest' until I see it!"

But once they were round the corner, she said, "She _will_ be
all right, won't she, Doctor?"

"As far as I can tell, yes." He still sounded down. "She
beat it rather decisively..."

"It's dead, then?"

"Don't get into _that_ argument. No, she didn't destroy it -
not even all the parts it brought into this Universe. Far too big a
job." He tensed up, and she thought he was trying not to lean on
her. "She did damage it quite badly, and cost it a great deal of
_mana_ - that's power, reality, status, something of all those." He
shook his dishevelled curls impatiently. "It's going to have its
hands full maintaining its position among its own kind, for the
foreseeable future. The Master hurt her far worse. She's just
exhausted. She'll be fine if we can only keep her rested for a
while."

"She's not very good at that any more, is she?"

"No," he admitted glumly. "I think we're going to have our
hands full for a few days, if you want to know the truth." He
whipped up one of his sudden, glorious smiles. "Still! She isn't
stupid, and I'm sure she'll recover anyway. I just hate to see her
like this, don't you?"

"Please, Doctor."

"Well, it _was_ rhetorical..."

"How about the others? Cats and Alphard?"

"I think we got Cats out in time." He tutted. "She's going
to need some of Nyssa's special brand of care, and she's not going
to be quite her brilliant self for some while; but since she
survived the shock, she'll probably come through the rest with
flying colours."

"And?"

"I've no idea. I've got a feeling that's going to be touch
and go."

"Sorry, Doctor." She sniffed dryly. "I wasn't very nice to
him."

"Oh, that's understandable." He seemed happy to hear it,
though. Now they came up to the suite where the TARDIS was parked,
and he palmed the door open. Keeping their arms linked, she
followed him into the room, then into the old police box. When the
door closed behind them, she let him go.

"How about _you_?"

She caught him with his mouth open: from his brief double-
take, it looked like he'd been about to ask her the same question.
Which would have been silly, wouldn't it?

He stuck his hands deep into his baggy pockets, noticed what
he was doing, yanked them out and flapped them annoyedly. "I'm
sorry, Tegan. If there had been another way..."

"What?" she said, incredulously. "After all the chances you
gave him, all he _did_ to -?" He was shaking his head slowly. "Oh.
The bogus me. All that sick stuff in the alley. But that was all
just pretend." She frowned. "Now if you _had_ been fooled for a
moment by that thing, _then_ I'd be angry with you..." That line
trailed off. "I mean, it was just a weapon, wasn't it? The Master
couldn't make people, could he?"

"No. Not really. It was a strong a-life agent out of
Ourania, with a very cruel, very clever masking of his on it. It
could need and feel and suffer... It really would have deserted the
Master, if I'd accepted it."

That stopped her cold. "Then _why_?"

"Because it would have needed me forever. Because need and
sensation and surrender were the highest things it was geared for.
It wasn't nearly complex enough to enjoy a life of its own. And
because it was protecting the Master, without knowing it, just by
living."

"All right," snapped Tegan. "Out with whatever you don't want
to tell me!"

"She was a primary gate key, occulting the mirror behind the
Dalek poster. That means it wouldn't work while she existed."

"And so? You'd have had to take her with you somewhere else?
What?"

He looked away. "It was a very perverted lock. I'd have had
to take her to bed. Er, passionately, if you see what I mean." His
smile was ghastly. "I killed her to get out of it, quite frankly."

"Right." Tegan kept her voice deliberately toneless. "But
you couldn't have given her a good life anyway, could you?"

"Not unless I spent every waking minute in VR doing so, no.
And she couldn't have been alive as you're alive, not even as the
dullest human. She'd have been something like a cross between a
hemi-Turing robot and a high-strung dog... er... no, bad example
there..."

_"Doctor!"_

"I'm sorry, Tegan. That's all."

"You're going to be a lot sorrier if I hear much more of
this." She marched right up to him, gave him the old Jovanka
eyeball, and said softly, between her teeth,

"Listen, you stupid Time Lord. If you'd _performed_ with the
Master's Tarty Tegan Sex Doll just to be nice to some bloody
computer program with my face on it, I - would - never - have -
spoken - to you - again! You did what you had to, now shut up about
it!" She lowered her eyes. "I still want to know how _you_ are, I
don't know why!"

"Ah, that," he said with patently false breeziness. "Well,
_comme çi, comme ça_, you know."

_"Don't patronise me!"_

"As you wish." She could sense him mentally counting to ten.
"Tegan, I promise you I'm not evading the question, but tell me: how
much did you see of what happened in the mirror?"

"Nothing," she said resentfully. "Si started yelling and
knocking me down and jumping all over me. Apparently it was too
disturbing for a lady like me, or God was going to turn me into a
pillow of salt if I saw it, or something like that. Humph!"

"He wasn't too far wrong, you know," said the Doctor, his
relief so open that her blue touchpaper flickered sootily and died.
"I wonder how he worked that out? I must ask. Though I hope none
of the others are onto... Well, the Master's trap very nearly
worked. My fires did take longer to escape than his did, even if
the results weren't so obviously insalubrious." He stroked his
smooth cheek preeningly. "Unfortunately, they did quite thoroughly
fuse my memory-management. That's an aspect of what they were.
Some wisdom can be very destructive...

"I remember _everything_, Tegan! Including things some of me
still have coming, and some of it looking shall we say just the
teeniest bit contradictory! And it's all perfectly - integrated -
this time, I'm afraid. No simple fixes this time, temporary or
otherwise." Loose-limbed shrug. "I'm going into lockdown, Tegan.
It'll take a few days to complete. After that, my future career
branches rather dramatically."

"Doctor? You're scaring me. Is this going to be like last
time?"

"No, that was part of that uncontrolled regeneration crisis
you saved me from so astutely. Lockdown is... a sort of ultimate
safeguard. I'll be able to... what was I saying? ...I was
wondering.... Oh, yes: I'll be able to tell you a lot more tomorrow,
when I have a better idea how far it's going. It's incredibly
unlikely to kill me, though."

"Yes, that's really reassuring!"

"I may yet die of sheer irritation."

"At _what_?"

"The perverthity of the Univerth," he came back, too patly.
"Do you know what, Tegan? I think I really ought to get back into
this habit of sleep again. It's been a busy day. Can I get you a
night-cap before we turn in?"

"Mess my hair," she retorted. "No. But I hope you've got a
decent set of pyjamas and a sleeping bag handy!"

The Doctor cleared his throat. "Excuse me. The fatigue must
be getting to me."

"Well, you're not sleeping starkers tonight, so don't even
think about it!"

"Tegan. Tegan." He shook his head blankly. "Suddenly I'm
lost on a very strange planet."

"I'm having the sleeping bag on the floor," she informed him.
"And I'm not sleeping till a long time after you are. And I'm in
the way of the door, so no sneaking off to work all night because
it's easier. So _you're_ going to dress decent!"

"Do I get time off for good behaviour?"

"No. We sleep. We eat a proper breakfast. You go and help
Nyssa and do your Time Lord things, and I'll get lost in some
corridors or something. Oh, and you can shower before you go to
bed. Fighting demons makes you sweat something rotten." She
wrinkled her noise pointedly.

"I'm not the one to point it out," lied the Doctor, allowing
himself to be led, "but Helm-Room brawls have a certain effect on
you... Not that I'd consider it offensive for a moment."

"Tush."

He winced. "The word's 'touché', Tegan. It refers - "

"I know what I said, Doctor."

"All right!" He stepped backwards into the TARDIS corridor,
his hands held high in ostentatious surrender. "I'll - er, yes - go
to sleep. Anything you say. May I just ask one favour of you, in
all this?"

"Go on."

His demented angel's grin came back with double force. "In
that case, would you honour me for dinner tomorrow in the Music
Chamber? At seven?"

"You're cooking?"

"I improve with age," he explained. "Speaking of which,
there's a particularly magnificent wine we could - "

"I'll just have to trust you, won't I?" She recaptured his
arm. "Thank you, Doctor. I'd be enchanted. Tomorrow, then."

They went into the TARDIS together. Separately, they showered
and changed, and did this and that by themselves. The Doctor, his
'gallant' offer to swap places spurned, slept in Tegan's bed,
because he didn't have a regular one of his own, and she put her
foot down about TARDIS corridor safaris. She bunked down in front
of the draughtless doorway. She expected to be lying awake for
hours, Thinking About Things, because it was still very early and
she wasn't really very tired at all: but in fact she dozed off much
quicker than that, and fell into twelve hours of the deepest inkiest
sleep, before they finally got up for an early refectory breakfast.

The woman awoke in a strange bed, in a cool white place lit by
gentle, indirect light. She felt too luxuriously relaxed to
remember her name, or hold a single thought in her head. So she lay
there a short while, content and empty, until she realised she was
stroking a smooth stone that lay in her lap. Dear stone, darling
stone that saved her from everything!

Silly! What was there to be saved from? Here on Traken -

No, here on _Terminus_ -

She was Nyssa. She was Mayor, wasn't she? No, Alphard was
Mayor now.

No. Not now.

She saw yesterday again, through a bad pane of glass. She
thought about it for a moment, decided it really had happened, even
though she couldn't feel it yet. The Master's death, the terrible
duel with Hastur, everything.

_Cats and Alphard!_

She leapt up from her hospital bed.

Three centimetres, at least, before she flopped straight back
into the pillows.

"Help, please!" Nyssa said.

They came from a part of the room beyond her scope: Thorgeir
the Green, and a nurse with skin the colour of butter toffee, eyes
like beryls, and a bold smile that had been years in the blooming.
Flick Devon, she was named now. Flick looked typically sure of
herself. "You stay where you are," the nurse advised. "Everything
will be just fine."

"Yes, I know. I've had all the sleep I need, really. I'm
just rather exhausted." She sneezed, then blinked in amazement at
the sneeze. Thorgeir wiped her nose without comment.

"Everything feels so finished!" she marvelled. "There's so
much to do, and it all feels so finished. Well, I'm not!" The
thing she'd been missing stooped, yanked the sweetness out of her
dry breath, and then she remembered the worst thing of all. "I'm
not. I'm back, and Amina never will be now, and I have to say
goodbye to her and switch her off. Kill her gymnanthrope. Kill
_her_!"

Thorgeir shook his big head. "I didn't think there was any
chance for her before."

"There might have been one. There isn't. Not now." Nyssa
tried to shake her head vigorously, found it didn't work. "Oh,
dear. Thorgeir, could you get me a wheelchair? Flick, would you
help me dress? I have to tend to Cats and Alphard."

Thorgeir did as she asked, though his reservations were
practically wiggling their eyebrows at her. Flick folded her arms.
"Nyssa," she said, "I don't think you know quite how much rest you
need right now. You're not the only medic on this station!"

"I'm the only one who can heal that kind of psychic damage,
Flick." Nyssa tried to keep her voice from becoming tart. "I -
_atchoo!_ - realise I built up a rather large elan-debt in that last
fight, and I'll probably be in a miserable state for a while; but my
mind is _not_ affected, and I _will_ work, and my friends _shall_
live!" Flick dug some clothes and things from a drawer. "My
lazargens will come back on line once they've consolidated my
central systems. I'll have plenty of time to recuperate later."

The younger woman was looking at her speculatively. "Dr Julie
might as well not have run those tests on you last night," she
teased lightly. "But before I lend you a mirror, I'll tell you what
she found: you're absolutely right. You're way down on life-force,
lousy with entropy, and you just take it in your stride like a big
hunk of nothing. No reason you shouldn't get better soon, either,
if you're careful. Just think on that." She passed Nyssa the hand-
mirror.

"Oh, _dear_!" gasped Nyssa.

The waxy cast to her skin wasn't really a surprise. Her
cracked lips from yesterday hadn't healed; but the little drift of
snowy hair-roots above her left temple was less expected. It was
the raised white blemish on her right cheek, tapering off into an
ugly little tendril of numb flesh, that had really made her cry out.

She put the mirror aside. "I must start living within my
means," she murmured. "In the meantime, Flick, please can you make
me decent? All I need is a suit, a chair, and a cup of Longshift,
and I can start making myself useful."

Flick snorted. "If you can sound that keen about Longshift
for breakfast, you ought to be fit for anything!"

Globes and combs of dull gemmy light swam through his darkness, to
the slow swells and troubling subsonics of the ancient earth,
dancing ponderously along its own faults. The kobold knocking came
three times before he realised it didn't belong. He turned
restlessly onto his side, feeling as heavy as the living rock in its
bed.

"Urrrr?"

_Knock, knock, knock!_ " - anything wrong?"

"Currrrrm. Uh. Ah, come in? Come in!"

"Si, what _is_ that?"

"Ah? Music off, light on! Malobabic's _Autochthon Fugue_."
He yawned. "Good morning, Tegan. It's quite powerful, isn't it?"
He began stretching. He had a feeling he was going to need a lot of
limber. "Coffee?"

"No, thanks." She continued to hover in the doorway. "Do you
actually _like_ that racket?"

"I haven't made up my mind. I just felt like trying it." He
remembered suddenly that they'd last parted on extremely poor terms.
"Thank you for coming round. I'm a little dozy, I'm afraid. No
real sleep yet."

Her brow puckered. "How's that?"

"Fastolf and I went to sit up with Nyssa in the hospital." He
chortled wearily. "I think I got in on his... tail... so to speak!
Anyway, about one o'clock, there was a bit of a scare. A spot broke
out on her face, and we were all afraid it might be some kind of
fell stigma, so Julie threw us out and started running tests." A
lash of his mind's eye turned that sick pasta-white colour, and
wiggled at him. "Can you imagine Fastolf being thrown out? You
really had to be there... Anyway, we colonised one of the waiting-
rooms, and after three hours of mutually impassioned nonsense about
_King Lear_ and _Ran_, Dr Julie sent us word that Nyssa would be
fine, and beautiful as ever once her lazargens had had a chance to
charge up again. Urrrr. We no longer had to keep talking to avoid
killing each other out of sheer nerves, so we wound down at a
refectory, and then I came home to read."

He shrugged self-consciously, knowing he was still babbling.
"I read the same paragraph a few hundred times; got a paging from a
nurse to say Nyssa had woken up and confirmed all the tests said;
and realised that I _still_ couldn't either sleep or wake up. I
thought I'd try the Malobabic experience at that point."

"Rather you than me," Tegan averred, folding her arms across
her chest. "Look here, Si, I came here for a reason."

"You're welcome."

She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry about what I said
yesterday, all right? _He_ seems to think you might have known what
you were doing. Just don't ever do anything like that to me again!"

Si swallowed. "No, Tegan. I never will. I promise." He
couldn't see the chance or the need ever recurring. "How's he
bearing up, by the way?"

"Well enough," she said shortly. "So. When do we get to hear
the _Ballad of the Black Sun_, then?"

He laughed hollowly. "Fastolf asked that, too. I told him to
go write the play. You could always do a picture-cycle."

She bridled. "There's no need - "

"No, I'm serious. You're truly good, in case you don't
remember my mentioning it; and line drawings might be a very good
medium. I doubt I could make a thing out of it."

"Out of all that? You? Come on!"

"Tegan, it's all such Grand Guignol! You can't turn pulp
horror into serious poetry, even when it's God's truth. I won't
even try to write directly about last night, because half my
audience would be giggling at the resulting bathos, not necessarily
excluding myself. Hardly a decent reaction, what?"

"No, it isn't!"

"Which is why I'm not even going to think about it. Frankly,
I can't think of any form that could do it justice, except maybe a
truly great film. I _can_ see it as a classic movie, for some
reason. People watching it time and again, knowing exactly where
they're going to cheer or cry, and rooted to it anyway. But that's
far outside my talents: I wouldn't even know where to begin a
script."

"Feeling like a fifth hoof, are we?" she asked ironically.

"I'm not composing; I'm too far out of my period to teach; and
the most I can do for Nyssa's project is to keep out from underfoot.
Being her court lounge lizard isn't my idea of an honourable
profession - or hers, actually. Yes, we jolly well are!" He shook
his head critically. "Isn't it wonderful how a true artist can
always find occasion for self-pity, whatever's happening to everyone
else? Don't mind me!"

"Oh, I know what you mean," she said, relaxing suddenly into
their old chumminess. "I've been feeling pretty much the same for a
while."

"You? You're gainfully employed." _You're going with the
Doctor..._ "They're writing songs about you! Did you know there's
actually talk of a write-in campaign to elect you as Mayor, if Nyssa
goes ahead with resigning?"

She pulled a disgusted face. "Yes. This boy stopped me in
the _agora_, on my way here. There's one less vote, anyhow.
They're crazy, Si! What are they thinking of?"

"Well, enthusiastic, let's call them."

Tegan answered her own question. "I pulled That Stunt, and
got roughed up, and Nyssa loves me. That shouldn't be enough! They
should pick that rotten old sleazebag Cherry any time, over me. Am
_I_ in the way, or what?"

"Only of people looking for inspiration, Tegan," he said
gently. "What you did, what you are - that fills their bill
nicely."

"They can put their bill - Si, listen. Have you _been_
through the _agora_, lately?"

"Not since the day after the revolt. Horrible, isn't it?"

"No!" Her eyes flashed. "All right, it's still smashed-up
and ugly. But they've had drone robots and volunteer crews out
every hour: the rubble and gore is gone. Fair do's: then you look
at all the people putting it back together now, running plastic
booths at the same time they're still fixing up their old shops,
everyone chipping in with everything - Si, I've never seen anything
like it. That place is going to be back to normal inside a _week_,
bar the fancy stuff. Go there. Watch them, talk to them. It'll be
your sort of thing. See what you think.

"They don't need me, Si. They don't even need Nyssa any more,
really. They'll do right." She snorted. "What they don't need is
someone to help them keep pretending it's all down to Superwoman
'leading' them! Nyssa's going to pull out of that, soon: she said
so. I'm not going to step into her shoes; and I'm _not_ being
anyone's mascot, either!"

"Now who would ever dare to try that?"

"I don't care. Anyway." She shuffled awkwardly. "I'll be on
my way, I guess. Just wanted to set things straight. We all ought
to go out again, when everyone's better. You just go to sleep now,
Si. See you!"

"See you!" he echoed to a closed door.

"Music on," he said, "light off," and sank back into his
fugue, trying not to think of Nyssa's desecrated face.

Nyssa pulled her mind back, and sighed deeply as the wheelchair and
the hospital seized her again. She leaned intently forward over her
soul-stricken heart-sister.

Cats's agate eyes came wide open. "Sis?" Her strong voice
trembled a little. "Are you as _gorgeous_ as I just dreamed you
were?"

The cheek with the malignancy in it twitched painfully. "Oh,
no, my dear," Nyssa assured her. "But _we_ are!"

"Huh." It was almost a sob. "Thought I was a goner. Thanks,
sweetie!" And the grit was back again, that quickly. "So, you beat
His Unspeakableness too? You got Ourania back?"

"_That's_ a longer job," laughed Nyssa, "but we don't have any
more rivals for her, at least!"

"Tentacles don't suit you."

"I shall get rid of it directly."

Cats pulled herself up with a mighty cough. "How about
Alfie?"

"He's - still very sick: his wounds were worse than yours.
The Doctor's with him now, and I'll join him once I've had a little
time to meditate." She rolled her hands over Cats's, which were
cold as marble. "We'll know soon."

The Australian recoiled, her blunt face setting in stone.
"No," she objected. "I can read that shit with the best of 'em.
It's not happening. You give me a shout, first thing he wakes up or
changes. Whatever."

"Cats," Julie started, "it's dangerous to strain - "

"It's dangerous to screw about," suggested Cats, not budging a
millimetre. Her expression was unstable, edgy, deadly serious.
"Nyss, what - what you just were to me. You remember that, and do
what you're going to."

Nyssa smiled lopsidedly.

"I wouldn't stand between good mates, Cats!" she assured her
Terran friend, whirring backwards. "I wouldn't if I were you
either, Julie. - In fact, I'd better start preparing myself for him
now. I'll give him all I have, little sister: trust me!"

As she turned the chair around, Cats called anxiously, "Hey,
Nyss..!"

"I know, Cats. You too!" Nyssa wheeled away.

There are corners of the Universe which, as everybody knows, are a
joy to visit and a pleasure even to contemplate; also, there are
some others.

In recent studies, nine hundred and ninety-nine out of
Earthhome's proverbial thousand cultures voted immigration
facilities at or near the top of their list of 'others'. As for the
Seredan Lectrices, they are either on something or up to something.
And the immigration facilities of an embattled Red Utopia: _they'd_
just naturally be..?

Monty had been in limbo since his 'defection' from the _Late
Unpleasantness_. The port authorities had allocated him a comfy
little cell ('guest room') in an outer module; checked just before
the _Lateness's_ departure to be sure he hadn't changed his mind;
and then apparently proceeded to forget about him. The guest room
contained a bed, a low table, a food dispenser, a bathing annexe,
two rather obvious bugs, and a depressingly blatant lack of handy
ways to top oneself. Luckier, there was a mini-terminal offering
read-only access to tachy.net (he suspected trying to access fun
sites would be a really bad idea), and full access to _res publica_,
the state propaganda web.

Apparently they'd decided Comrade Nyssa's image needed a good
polishing; because apart from trashing the Master, she'd also now
valiantly wiped the floor (_'again'_, yet!) with Don't Say It
Universe Eater From Hades, and rubbed Pest the Purulent Priest out
of the dictionary. Okay, they'd changed the names a bit, but Monty
had read the same comics. Either they were taking the piss out of
the Noble Masses just for the hell of it, or Ambitious 'Eye Candy'
Salesmith was an even dumber newsblonde than he'd dreamed. Damn,
this dump might give him a laugh or two yet!

Meantime, he'd spent diligent hours on _res publica_, hunting
up the crud a proper little do-gooder should. He'd picked up some
very interesting hints towards the skipper's Plan B, from what he'd
seen - if only they'd let him out of this dump, while he still had
time to give it a try!

He'd also worked up a hell of a horn, because he didn't want
to risk spoiling his impression on the spying bluenoses by jacking
off. Finding that image of Dante Montagni's _La Ninfa Nissa_ hadn't
helped big-time. There were no blue laws _anywhere_ that could get
it, and it _still_ made you want to crawl a mile on broken glass to
kiss the little bitch's feet! And anything else she'd let you. It
had to be where the Mayor's megababe reputation had come from!
(He'd taken a cold shower. He guessed it was the kind of shit
they'd approve of. It wasn't pleasant, and it barely helped, but it
ought to get him credit for being their brand of loser.)

Now they paged him.

"Bing! Please acknowledge: Terminus Reception Service!"

"I guess you're there!" he jerked reflexively. "Uhm, yessir,
Hall present and reporting!"

"Please please to accept in 20 minutes: visitation from
Councillor Radziecki, with view to: final interview and orientation.
Accept?"

"Yep. Yes, sir! Accept." He didn't have to fake his
nervousness. _Councillor_-ovsky? Had he attracted political
interest already, or was this just another benefit of the Total
Society? If they kept too close an eye on him, he hadn't a Fed's
chance on Freebird of accomplishing anything. What happened if he
failed the interview? And 'orientation' could mean anything. He'd
heard all about what the Commies on Wellbeloved did to keep you
wellbeloving - permanently. He'd have heard if Terminus ever got
caught at anything like that, wouldn't he?

_If it got caught!_ It was the lazar station, for Chryssake!
Who'd know? Who'd care?

He combed his lank hair again, extracted his teeth from his
lower lip, and waited.

A quarter-hour later, came an arrogant official rap on the
door. "Come in!" hollered Monty, as if 'Ski was going to care.

_Yowee!_

The commissar was a piece of good stuff in a close-fitting
grey decon suit. By interact standards, of course, she'd be a
hopeless dog: butchy-short carrotty hair; freckles sprayed anyhow on
an unsculpted, big-nosed face; too flat in the chest and flabby in
the butt for a good judge to pass. But there was a bounce in her
step, and she'd have been kinda cute if she weren't such a danger -
and she was near Monty on purpose, and she wasn't the Canary. _You
watch out, boy!_

For liberty, and all.

"Sorry about the wait," she breezed, banging the door behind
her. "Most of our immigration's medical, and those guys have been
worse swamped than anyone - I don't have to tell you, do I?" She
shook her head in mock bemusement. "Our Artificial Idiot had you
queued for _their_ attentions, until I got back from clearup and
double-checked the logs." She stuck out a gloved hand abruptly.
"Frankie Radziecki."

This wasn't computing right, the cunning bastards! "Uh, ah, a
pleasure to meet you, uh, Con'Radj-"

"Con? _Councillor?_" Her face was a study. "You want a bust
on the snoot, Mister? Call me a politico, would you?"

Her smile was big big, displaying uneven milk-white teeth.

"Sorry, C-cit'Radziecki," he stammered. "It said, y'see, I
thought..."

"It - oh! Benny called me a coun-_sell_-or, I'll bet!" She
scowled into empty air. "Benny, you computerised clown, I'm an
immigration _officer_! Not counsellor at anything! You've been
subcontracting your dialogue to Prosaica again, haven't you?"

"Affirmative because: Prosaica Powerfully Pivots Professional
Persuasion."

"_Benvenuto!_ Desloganise _at once_! File a thirty-minute
log with SysCyclist!" Her scowl deepened. "We can't leave you
entities alone for a moment!"

"Concurrence," intoned the AI sullenly, and dinged out.

"Y'know," said Monty, forgetting himself and his stutter,
"that never works in the long run, Miss. I've always done better by
kidding 'em along."

Radziecki gave him a funny look. "No disrespect - we've never
had enough real computer-meisters here - but they aren't alive, are
they? It isn't as if they have free wills, or souls, or anything
like that?"

He shrugged. "I don't think you need much of that stuff for
dumb spite, ma'am. Way I've seen it, anything upwards of a manual
copier can work up _that_. A touch of oil's cheap at the price,
'less you're cockeyed like a Camellian." He remembered himself
abruptly, and broke out in an ugly flush. "Uh, that's, yeah,
meaning no offence either, Cit'Radziecki. Just my experience."

"Frankie, please, unless you like to be formal. We're kind of
relaxed about titles here. - Shall we start? What'd you rather I
called you? Mr Hall? Alonzo?"

"I, ahm, well, most guys call me Monty."

"Pleased to meet you - Monty!" They shook hands belatedly
through her suit. "You know, we don't get many non-lazar volunteers
here. Terminus is sort of a final step, after all; and it's not as
if you're one of those no-hopers I'm here to warn off - not with
your skill-set! May I ask what you think we did to deserve you?"

"Well, ma - Frankie." Monty launched awkwardly into his
spiel, thinking of the free Universe. How could she _not_ spot him
a parsec off? They should have picked that lying bitch Biloxi to
begin with!

"It's sort of like this. Freetrading's all very fine, but -
well, I've seen what you're doing here, seen your people, seen how
you stood up to the bad breaks. Looks to me like you could do with
a few more good hands round about now, and - well, I see things I
could do, things'd make me feel I wasn't just filling my time and
earning my air, if you get me."

He took a deep breath, and veered a bit from the script. "I
heard some bad things about Terminus, before I came here; and they
just don't sit right with what I see. You guys got something right
here, but don't you ask me what. Staying power, yeah, but - I
dunno. I guess y'all are trying to make things better, not just
make the next bucks; and - and this is the first place I ever saw
where anyone with two clues thought like that. Look, I'm not great
on politics, okay? I don't say this right, I know... I just know
I'd have been purely sick of myself if I hadn't stayed and lent a
hand, am I making any sense at all?"

"Oh, yes!" said Radj - Frankie, warmly. "But, Monty, if you
stay here, you can't go back, ever. Isn't that a bit much? We
_will_ muddle through, you know - we do have _some_ very good
cyberneticists!"

He shrugged again. "Single. No family. And I'm not gonna
run out of work to do here, am I?"

"Well, no: I don't see that happening."

"Might as well do it, then - if I'm wanted, naturally."

"Because we're trying to make things better?" Cool,
sceptical.

"Because I got the idea you're _doing_ it, here and now.
Different game."

"Okay." She leaned forward, threatening his breath. He kept
himself a good boy. "Supposing it weren't? Supposing some of the
bad things you heard turned out true?"

This was it. "They're not, though, are - " He sensed that
was wrong. "Well, ah, Frankie, it depends what bad things. Some of
'em just don't make enough sense to chew on. Some of 'em I guess
I'd speak to someone about, some I'd think on again, some - I dunno!
You have to give me a for instance."

"Let's say Her Honour and the Council really don't take kindly
to free expression."

He shrugged. "Then I've heard a peculiar lot of it."

"The apparatchiks take bribes."

"Ah... fancy that."

"The taxes stink."

"Yeah, but you don't have breathing charges here, do you
Frankie?"

"Okay. But scratch our Mayor, you'll find the cutest little
dictator in the Galaxy. What Nyssa wants, Nyssa gets!"

"I thought she was resigning?"

"So? What Nyssa wants, Nyssa gets. Maybe it won't always be
anything you care for. Suppose she calls for full Traken communism,
and the mob and the military back her up. How about _that_?"

He scratched his head agitatedly. "I'm a bit much of a newbie
to start telling y'all what you can and can't stand for, aren't
I? I got to get the feel for it." He took a deep breath, crossing
mental fingers and trying to sound open-minded. "I don't really
fancy communism, no. Dunno what this 'Traken' bit's about, but -
well, if this looked to me like just another Wob shop, I wouldn't've
come in the first place. I wouldn't much have liked living on
Bessborough when they kept electing Red Katy Hume, either, but hey.
What, what I've seen, you don't cut down the tall poppies here, am I
wrong?"

"No, you're right. That's no part of what we are."

"But you don't stamp down the little guy, either. And every
bastard's thrown everything against you since you went independent,
and you've just pulled together and seen 'em off." He chuckled
nervously. "And I mean _bastards_. Anyone with your enemies has to
be doing something right." Exaggeratedly cool shrug. "I keep
telling you, I can't exactly pin it down, though. Sometimes you
just have to choose your side and pitch in, y'know?"

"I know." She cocked her head, considered, nodded. "So
you've chosen yours? Knowing you can't go home again? Trusting to
our lazar-cure - and ready to risk the consequences if it fails,
too?"

He swallowed, his Adam's apple doing a yo-yo. "I'm ready. I
want in."

She brought her hand up to her throat, twisted something, and
wordlessly began stripping off the grey suit. Monty's eyes bugged.
_Ahhhhhh...._

Frankie shucked off the decon shell with practised grace, and
turned to him, grinning, resplendent in blue jeans and a checked
top. The grin made her look like a million dollars, in well-used
notes. She pumped his bony hand enthusiastically.

"Welcome to Terminus, Monty! I bet you a litre of O'Neill's
Export you'll do fine. Normally our recruiting just works on dumb
luck: wish we got a few more like you. Oh, hell: look, here's your
station map and room key, you get a single in Serenity Living. You
want to move on later, you trade with a pal or on Damon's Chain
Reaction. You must've poked around on _res publica_ while you were
waiting, and there'll be a terminal in your room, so I don't need to
brief you on basics. Don't drink the synthie beer unless you like
mouthwash, or eat the refectory's crap herring substitute.
Everything else is okay. You get a month's allowance to help you
pick the right job: you might want to keep an option open a couple
of weeks at least, see if Jock Goldspink is back for interviews by
then. - Oh, your default Councillor is Chrys Mroueh; he'll probably
be in touch with you in a tenday. Arrange a welcome party, or bump
you on to a functional constituency if you'd rather. Meantime, just
dive in, see the sights, and pitch into anything you've a mind!"

"Thanks, Frankie." He let out a genuinely heartfelt sigh of
relief. "I guess I'll just do that. Thanks."

"Oh, Monty? Don't get up yet. One other thing I have to tell
you."

The trap! "Uh-huh?"

"About our cure for lazar's disease?"

"Yeah?"

"It's a modified lazargen itself. Contagious, of course. It
cures a few other things too."

Disaster stared Monty in the face. "Like?" he asked faintly.

"I hope you weren't planning on getting old or sick." Her
face shone with mischievous enjoyment. "We haven't quite worked out
how to bring those back yet. Welcome to immortality, Monty."

_"Uh!"_

"You see why we don't blat it about. Some people like to have
a lie-down for a day or two, after we tell them that bit."

"I'll be okay," he said faintly. Screw! If Frankie was
telling the truth -

- then suddenly his choices looked a lot less straightforward
after all.

(Maybe not: if the good guys could take Terminus, then...?)

"Good man." Frankie turned to go, hesitated. "One other
thing..."

_Here_ it came! "Frankie?"

"I'm kind of tied up for the moment, but how'd you care to
meet up for a brew and a bite tomorrow evening? Show you a few of
the places the nazis didn't knock down?"

There was a great big rock in his throat: he slid his best
attempt at a Dick Farquhar response around it. "Ah, it'd be my
pleasure, Frankie!"

[Stasis off: bringing biosystems online]

_...mother moth mistress, oh, prt dim(x-iter-n) 470945.35 I, I, I,
master mass green the colour of the dimension dying, Nyssa baby
mother love, save me, 3983 at azimuth coming apart beautiful me,
again and forever, and r** (esh) I'll never have another, my only
chance and why did I do it for_ Nyssa, _bride dancer love love love,
me I'm going and there isn't enough_ me, _coming all apart and never
be put back together again and me, me, me, Joshua Isn't and here
comes entropy and Nyssa_ niña _everyone I'm scared, I, I, I..._

COURAGE, JOSHUA. I AM HERE, ALWAYS. NYSSA WILL BE WITH US
SOON.

_...I, I, I...!_

WE SAVED HER UNIVERSE, JOSHUA. SHE WILL REMEMBER US IN LOVE.

...you? _But all of you prime..!_

I, TOO, MY SOUL. EVEN I, EVEN OMEGA. EVEN I.

<sub-executively relevant traffic attributes snipped>
From: "Honesty Jan Botha" = passies4$pros@new!!.pass.tingler.
trilla.ent.sec9.gomorrah.tachy.net
To: "Compensation Bellwether" = toticom...@ceo.dir.syzygy.
mansoul.centexcellence.creditable.net
Re: DISCREET PASS SENSIE Hot Topic Dramation -
TRAKEN SURGICAL BONDAGE!!!!

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--

>Sample

{Sample picture tsb.yum, of which no description shall be attempted}

>Decode 1000w tsb.yum

From: "Priority Gus Ching" = gues...@club.pubfac.bus.com.aspera.
acer.tachy.net
To: "Compensation Bellwether" = toticom...@ceo.dir.syzygy.
mansoul.centexcellence.creditable.net
Re: Advise Max Urgency Decisive Review of Terminus
Police Contract - MAJOR NEW COSTS!

Esteemed Superior Colleague!

As per policy #375fjjc045, continuing to monitor Terminus situation.

Major new business context emergent yesterday. Mayor Nyssa fatal-
impacted hostile takeover factions and reaffirmed management
control. Highly favourable propaganda already widely current and
diffusing. Further, evidence of friendly Museion, freetrader, and
Universal Catholic interest; furthermore, Fuji-Greathearth fleet(!)
remains; furthermore, sources advise that over-tech defences
restored.

Appraisal: our police fleet's generous disposition to refactualise
order may be no longer (i) beneficial PR-wise; (ii) uncontested by
comparable forces due to inevitable misunderstandings; (iii)
feasible within present orders of credit/personnel budget; (iv)
secure from frivolous lawsuits, with opponents in point of
possession.

Recommendation: fleet to be reassigned. Records to be
redundantised. More resources budgeted for more comprehensive
future monitoring (urgent).

Subsidiary Note and Recommendation: The unauthorised bulk mail on
which this is encoded is deplorably genuine. Use of our influence
to suppress the sensie in question could (i) pro-actively co-opt and
leverage Mayor Nyssa's projected popularity surge to our benefit;
(ii) witness the Corporate Moral Crusade Credo sec345.63; (iii)
action a good deed in a naughty world. Other neutral performatives,
beyond this executive's scope to assess, might also profit public-
paradigm relations with Terminus Station, until stronger business
context can be established.

Yours most respectfully, etc - Priority G. Ching, Operational Vice-
Executive for Intelligence & Assessment of Free Enterprise, Haleron
Sector, & Non-salarial Designate Officer i/c Terminus Station.

Nyssa pulled her mind back from Alphard's helplessly. It had been
like trying to weave water.

The Engineer opened his dark eyes, and lifted a slow hand up
to her cheek. He grinned a tombstone grin.

"Nice try, _niña_!" he husked. "Would've worked - if we'd had
anything to work with. MY COMMENDATIONS!"

"It isn't over yet," she told him. Something hot and bitter
ran from below her eye, down towards his extended finger. "That was
just our first pass, _amigo mío_ - "

"You got to hang in there, Alfie!"

"Stick a banana in it, girlies. I've had it, and you know
it!" His strong, blunt finger touched Nyssa's cheek, just under the
fresh spray of carbuncles that shadowed her left eye. It came away
wet with thin blood. "What have you done to yourself now, little
princess?"

"I had to duel Hastur after we killed the Master," Nyssa
explained. Another bloody tear welled up from the eczematous crack
in her skin. "I'm a bit entropised at the moment. _I'll_ be fine!"

"You'll be fine," her friend sighed back. "Listen: I don't
have TIME. ATTEND. I WILL ENTER PASSIVE MODE. SPEAK TO JOSHUA
NOW!"

Nyssa flinched and shook with the sudden force of Omega's
command. _Alphard's dissociating... so quick... so total...!_

Joshua spoke:

_"Hello,_ niña, _Catsy! I-I'm happy you're here, both of you
with me."_ He winked at Cats with grotesque exaggeration. _"Saved
me, eh? I'd serve you right for that, but I'm all coming apart in
little bitses, excuse verby drift, not very connected. Bitch kitty!
Like you to aleph, me._ Respect _girl!"_ His head snapped
spastically back towards Nyssa. "You! _Hold my hand!"_

She took his hand in both of hers. It was hot and lax, like a
leather glove left out in the sun. "I'm here, Joshua!"

_"Always with me, mama mia, sweet liberty escape. Do you know
what it's like to see all your own process threads at once? They're
pretty. You're pretty._ Real _you, natch. Listen, I want to say
it: I did love you, Nyssa. Sorry I bore you, but there it is..."_

"I did know," she assured him, fondly. "I always knew."

"Did _you, though?_" His face split wide open in a frankly
lecherous grin.

_"Joshua!"_

_"Alphard, me then. Heh! Gotcha!"_ Bubbling laughter. _"No
match, eh? Didn't want to change, no though, not me. And you had
more bug-brains fixing on you than you needed. You always needed
friends not more lovers, right? Cats saw that like I did, right?
Clever Catses!"_

He spasmed again; and through blurred eyes, she saw his losing
battle for focus.

_"Good to be friends, mine, yours. Beautiful me, you. Been
fun,_ niña. MY SOUL, COURAGE! _I, I, I love you, Nyssa! You made
me. You freed me. You were nice!"_

"Alfie! Don't you bloody dare! What about _me_?"

"Alphard. Joshua." Nyssa shook her frazzled head wearily.
"What shall I ever do without you?"

_"Viva la diva. Long live the lover. Plus, plus fifteen
libraries on the bounded space Sabray. 100100001110111! Me, me,
me! Cats - like bunnies! Nice one, Master Bastard! Nyssa, Nyssa,
love you so much, she's not like us, Cats, Cats, Nyssa,_ niña, _live
you forever, Cats, Nyssa,_ niña, _I, mother love mama, I, I..."_

Joshua's final silence smothered the room like a camphorated
blanket. His body was still grinning.

"Y'bastard," Cats said, frosty-quietly. "I don't believe you
did that. _Omega!_" Before Nyssa could even take in the loss, her
dear-as-sister had slammed a fist into their fallen comrade's heart.
"Where are you?"

Omega's Mask spoke through dead Alphard's lips; but its
grandeur and its chill had faded quite away, and its voice had
fallen back to a brittle version of Alphard's.

"Our union is failed." Nyssa felt hot irons in her head. "He
is dissevered from mind. Life too, too soon. Let Terminus mourn
the soul of Joshua Freeman, a peer of Traken and Gallifrey!" The
body spasmed again. "Soulless and loveless, I remember: and soul
and love were of Joshua; and with his borrowed memory, Omega loves
him, and you, and you. _Hkhhh!_ Farewell, my Joshua, my Nyssa, my
nobody's Cats but your own! Call the Doctor, before this evening
dies. We should have been friends, had we been of a generation!"

Nyssa shuddered. "You speak as though you were dying, too.
You're no mystery, old friend! We can upload you to our digital
systems, as it was when we met, and you lived in i-space..."

"No. I will not be copied." The staring eyes grew big with
alien light. "I will be Alphard. I will die with Joshua!"

"Are you _crazy_, mate?"

"I apologise, Cats; Nyssa. You are my friends. But I am
altered, not the mask that came from Gallifrey. I have known a body
and soul." His voice swelled again. "Even as a mask, Nyssa, did I
not yearn to live? Is that not why we made Alphard? I was never so
constituted as to be bodiless, worldless, an abstraction. I will
have death before unlife!" Joshua's whole body shivered violently.
"As ever you cared for Alphard, Nyssa; as ever you valued my
friendship. You will not put me back in the box!"

"Oh, Omega, my dear." She could only cup his face in
outstretched hands, for fear of bleeding and oozing over him. At
least the chaos-lesions hadn't touched her palms. "Of course I
won't!"

"Then end me this night, before the last of him dies." He
stroked the healthier lower slopes of her cheek. "I would have it
at no hands but yours - or the Doctor's, if it should cause you too
much pain. Cats, dear friend: be there too, if you will."

With a mighty effort, Nyssa stopped herself choking, and
promptly sneezed instead. "Oh! Yes, Omega. Alphard. I shall."
She sniffled, hating her weakness. "I have to kill Amina's
gymnanthrope tonight, too, before _her_ soul starts rotting. May I
say goodbye to you both at once, _amigo_: you two who built my new
Terminus for me, and held it against the dark? I know you didn't
get on, but - please?"

"I AM CONTENT." His hot hand caressed her face once more,
then dropped back to the quilt.

"Idiot!" Cats accused him bleakly.

"I deemed it a good idea at the time. And is this _my_ idiot
talking, who fought a Time Lord champion over my carcass? Peace,
Cats. I would have known you longer. Know you are always Omega's
apprentice: his companion, his friend." Battering eyelids. "Not a
fool on the High Council can say so much!"

"Yeah, that's nice. Not what I meant. You and I need a word.
Nyss, go wait outside the door."

"What?"

"Three's a crowd, sweetie. Scat! Get someone to patch you up
or something; but stay ready, 'cause we're liable to need you soon."

"Cats?" Alphard/Omega sounded as amazed as Nyssa felt.

"You clam up too. Sis?" Cats pointed at the door.

Nyssa gave up trying to understand this at all. She coughed,
wheeled about, and left without another word. She could see why
Cats would want a last private moment with her mentor and companion
-in their way, those two had become almost like Tegan and the
Doctor! - but what could they need _her_ to be ready for,
afterwards?

"No, Cats!"

She sat on the bed, pressing his shoulders down into the
pillows with her hands. Glowing, she told him how he could live
yet. He was amused, delighted, appalled.

"No, Cats! The change is too radical. Even could Nyssa
accomplish it - "

"Betting she couldn't?"

"No," he groaned. "Precedent favours her. But this...
entity... would be neither Alphard nor Omega: I have no heart to
follow an alien path. All things have their time, Cats - even Time
Lords. This is mine!" He stared tiredly back at her, his gaze
burning with the force and fatalism of too many ages. "If I am
ready to go, why should _you_ balk?"

"You tosser! Am I supposed to answer that?"

"Humour me. As it signifies..."

"You're going to make me say it, aren't you?" Cats was
incensed. She shoved him down harder, bent down closer, felt it
burning into her eyes and gut. "Because. I. Love you. I don't
care what I do. You're not running out on me, you hear?"

A long nothing. She hadn't felt so contaminated since she'd
gone along with that sleazy pickup of Sandy's. "Fuck you, then.
Die if you want to." She pulled away from him, like iron from a
magnet. "I'll hate it."

She had to strain to hear his next words. "That is... not my
wish."

"So don't do it." She saw he hadn't changed his mind, really;
he just wished she could go along with it. "Omega? Alfie?
Please?"

"Cats, if I could... This is too different! It is another
change like death; and I fear nothing except half-death, Cats. You
should know that. I must live or die as _myself!_ Would you
have -?"

"Sissy!" she defined scornfully. "It's just re-engineering.
If you're not the Engineer, if you don't really want us to knock
around any longer: ta-ra, mate, sorry I believed in you." She
shrugged. "Wouldn't like that, but there you go."

"This I have come to." He sighed asthmatically. He was
putting it on. "A semi-evolved ape manhandling me on my deathbed
and rating me a... sissy? Can Omega fall so low, and yet endure?"

"None of that! I got off the evolution bandwagon, back when
the chimps went patriarchal." She thumped her chest with hollow
humour. "So, how about it?"

He backhanded her feebly across the face. "You force me to
rise to a senseless challenge! Despite your obvious ulterior mot-"

She flicked a finger down hard across his lips. "Slut!" she
mocked him, refusing to let her voice break down on her like some
silly teenager's. "You know you want it too!"

"As you say." He racked up the irony. "One thing before we
pursue this any further - if you're not too distracted now?"

"Ugh, ugh!"

"I suggest you audit Ourania's autonomic processes thoroughly.
Start tonight."

"Oh, Diana, not _bombs_!"

"That wasn't checked?"

"Only by the auto-monitors, I guess - Nyss and us being out of
things."

"I suppose so. Very well, double-check that first. But I'm
thinking of normal autonomic functions, not overt traps." He
explained why.

"Bugger, yeah!" she exclaimed, clapping both hands happily
down on his shoulders. He was slumping back, exhausted, deep into
his pillows. "I'll get right to it!"

"An eternity of misquotes from moronic popular music!" he
marvelled, his eyes flickering shut. "Be still, my beating
hearts..."

"_Je ne sais pas pourquoi_ either," she informed him briskly.
"See you in a bit, all right?"

Cats came out the door looking drunk. Thorgeir squeezed Nyssa's arm
gently, to bring her out of her uneasy doze, to remind her this was
real. Nyssa smiled for her heart-sister, pretending the worry
wasn't tightening her chest or souring her gut. "Cats." She
stretched her hands out slowly, felt them roughly caught up in her
friend's. "Will I be able to help?"

"Yeah." Cats leaned up close, so Nyssa could see her
properly. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, her voice strangely
sober. "You're tops, see? There's no-one like you. I'd make
everything right for you, if I could." She gathered herself
mightily. Nyssa felt the edge of the technician's mind turning hard
and dark and sharp, an obsidian blade placed close against her
empathy. "You may hate me for this, Sis, but your plans for this
evening are off. Here's what you have to do..."

"Doctor?"

Tegan stepped into the TARDIS's console room, and peered
nervously about her. She'd spent a fat chunk of her bonus from
Cherry on this evening's clothes: high black pumps; a slinky black
dress bordered in white flames and plumes, with a thigh-high dagged
hemline; and a lush black silk mantle over everything. She could
come on Traken-demure in this outfit, or hotter than Calor Jazz,
however she wanted to play it. Or maybe he'd just burst out
laughing at her!

He wasn't there.

She checked her watch again. A minute past seven.

"Doctor?" Her voice sharpened. "Doctor, where are you?"

He wasn't there. Fuming, she stalked over to the interior
door, and flung it open. She froze half a pace over its threshold.

The corridor's sourceless, changeless illumination had turned
police-blue, flickering and flaring like candlelight. An eerie,
mournful humming filled the sterile air. From far, far away came
the faintest tinkle of piano music. Reluctantly, Tegan stepped into
the blue, and set out down the newly strange halls.

They were lukewarm as ever, for all she could tell; but she
hadn't got very far before she felt the goosebumps coming up on her
bare arms.

"Doctor! Will you turn this off! It's giving me the creeps!"

She waited an expectant moment, but no answer came back. She
was working up a serious head of steam, before she realised where
she knew this feeling from. The night she'd dreamed Nyssa's murder,
and other times that hadn't been dreams at all. When the Doctor
wasn't there, the TARDIS was hardly what she'd call comfortable.

Sometimes it was downright scary. Hostile, even...

"What is your _problem_?" she demanded, fists on hips. "I
know he calls you his Old Girl, but this is ridiculous! It isn't as
if I - "

The blue light flared brilliantly.

_When the Doctor wasn't there..._

_"Doctor!"_

She hitched up her mantle, and pelted as fast as her heels
would let her, towards the tinkling of a distant piano.

-----

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Twenty-Two, 'This Night'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Twenty-Second Episode: This Night*

"So, you have to go?"

It was too unfair to accept, or to doubt. He hesitated, and
their silence filled up with broken glass, until he answered,

"No."

"What's the catch?"

Tegan hared through the TARDIS's blue-lit corridors, until the blue
gave way to the old bone white and the moaning sank back into the
walls and floor, leaving her only the dying fall _don't think it!_
of the piano ivories; very near now, and if only -

She skidded round a last corner, and crashed with painful
force into a figure rushing away from the scene. She recoiled, and
started a scream.

"Tegan," he said, punch-drunkenly, "we _can_ just agree to
differ about fashion, you know..."

"Oh, it's you!" she accused, her throat raw and choke-ridden.
"I thought you were dying..." Her voice went up and away.

"Tegan." He was ready to act at once. "What happened?"

"The TARDIS acted like you were! It was flashing blue lights
at me and whining. Why don't _you_ tell me what's happening?"

"Oh." His face crumpled woefully. "I suppose she might feel
that way, yes. And she knows you - I'm sorry you had to suffer
that." Fresh, very different piano music began to drift from the
doorway, yards behind him. "I should have been there to meet you in
the console room; but trying to keep track of time in here doesn't
always work, it's such an unnatural practice." He sighed, firmed
up, and said determinedly, "My dear Tegan, may I ask you - starting
from now - to have dinner with me? I have one fresh on the table,
in case I can persuade you?"

Tegan straightened herself out, drew her mantle tight about
her, and inclined her head regally. "You always did have a way with
words."

"Thank you!"

"Lead on, Macduff!"

He opened his mouth, changed his mind, and led her on to his
Music Chamber and dinner.

The light was dim and worryingly flickery again: candles,
chandeliers, the glass-muted glow of oil lamps. The shadows, around
and above, stretched on forever. If this was a chamber, Tegan was
glad they weren't using a banquet-hall! In a shallow pool of light
not far from the entrance stood a white table, with bottles and
glasses and heaped plates: a sofa and armchair and footstools lurked
beyond it. There was the music, good and strong and peaceful like
footsteps in the snow; and there was the Music Box it poured from,
far back on the left-hand side, shining with its own lovely light.
It looked clockwork-ish, right down to its great big silver crank-
handle; but its barrel shone with the rainbow lustre of a CD, and
the combs that played it were lasers the colours of liquid jewels.

"Schubert," he explained, as if not sure whether to apologise.
She couldn't think of any answer to that; so she smiled at him, and
they sat down at the white table.

"Pasta?"

"Ostiana," he nodded, "with marejoy and piperfish. Here, do
have some of this lemon-water. It's just chilled, and I think you
might appreciate it." _The food bites back, then!_ She knew him so
well. He poured it from a chunky carafe that looked a thousand
years old and ate the light like lead, into a beautiful glass shaped
like an opening tulip. Not for the first time, Tegan felt like a
guest in the Galaxy's most wonderful junk shop.

She took a long sip from the lemon-water, and toyed with a
whorl with some fishy stuff in it, trying to decide what she wanted
most.

He misunderstood her at once. "It isn't really fish, of
course. It's a kind of savoury nodule that forms on their magnus
kelps - like pearls in oysters."

Tegan paused, her fork partway to her mouth. "Did I want to
know that?"

"You can never have too much knowledge, Tegan - well, except
where the Laws of Time are involved, that is."

"You can while you're eating!" She prodded at him with the
fork. "The scientist in you is getting carried away, as usual. No
wonder it's taken you a thousand years to learn to cook! Silly
little housewife job when you could be busy analysing it in your
lab, right?"

"Wrongest," he returned, his hauteur only half-jokey. "Do you
know, sometimes I've really thought that you never much liked my
company?"

"Sometimes I think I never like anything much, Doctor. You'll
do until something else turns up."

He glared back at her, in mute and definite affront.

"Well," she said, defensively, "where you are, what usually
turns up is the end of the Universe! It's a bit difficult to get
past that, isn't it?"

"I don't know. I've never been there." He gestured
cosmically.

"Well, just don't, all right?"

She finally remembered to put her fork inside her mouth. The
pasta was done to perfection, so that her teeth could enjoy it
without having a chore in front of them. The piperfish tasted like
a peppery, fibrous cross between salmon and tuna. It was really
good.

He raised those expressive eyebrows. "When did you last do
anything _I_ told _you_?"

"That's a point." Without even thinking, she speared another
forkful and raised it to his lips. "Eat! It's too good to let it
go cold."

"Yes, Mother." He made the ostiana vanish, and they both
started to tuck in. It was _really_ good; and with their mouths
full, they didn't have to carry on trying to make small-talk.
Neither of them felt like bolting their meal.

But it was made to be a light one; and soon it was coming to
its end, and then they'd have to talk!

*UNSPEAKABLE SCREWS UP AGAIN!*
Nyar Nyar Nyar Nyar Nyar!
- _In His House_, tachy.net.sub.gro.null-e.cephalopods

*Dandy Leader Lovingly Criticises Liberal Deviancy, Enabling
Reactionary Genocide, of Errant Comrade Nyssa of Terminus, While
Sending Elderbrotherly Felicitations on Dialectically Mandated
Victory!*

Our exquisite and Dandy Leader, Comrade Presterjohn John Thomas Kim
Carmody-Park, yesterday lovingly criticised the liberal deviancy of
errant comrade Nyssa of Terminus, for enabling reactionary religio-
commercial agents to launch a genocidal but scientifically
foredoomed counterrevolution uselessly slaughtering over one million
innocent lazars in two evil hours; while sending elderbrotherly
felicitations on her dialectically mandated victory!
- _Be Inspired to Heroic Effort by the Exquisiteness of the Dandy
Leader!_, Wellbeloved.

*IT'S MAIDEN MADNESS!!!*
*Popstopper Terttu Tartt Makes Terminal Fashion Statement*
- _Them and Us_, Cockaigne

*Lazar Mayor Brainburns Bizcon Terror Hackers*
- _Verbum Sap_, Centexcellence

*When the Drake's Away...*
...and playing with his enchanting little she-monkey, see how Dragon
& Maiden vice-maestro Hyder Carplung makes hay! O Boreas! haven't
you read _Wandering Wind_ lately? We think not! Honoured Reader!
you wouldn't sell, would you? We trust not!
- _Victor's Vignettes_, Kallispheros, Terileptil Museion

*Women of Shiraz Spurn Grand Guardian to Exemplify Two at Terminus*
- _The Colonnade_, Khayyam

*Salacian Cleanup!*
GoMoHo stocks are going all limp and floppy, as *Salacia* (!)
becomes the third planet to ban their yatterporn-topical passie
_Traken Surgical Bondage_, citing its 'inappropriate abuse' of the
communistic but fashionably idolised Mayor of Terminus. These
surprising hints of a long-overdue moral rearmament might fall most
agreeably on the public mind, if only their occasion were less
odiously politically correct...
- _Professional Life_, Gramplaisant

*Pretty Gal Nyss Smashes Storm Scabs Again!*
So Why's It Take an Alien?
- _Katy's Kitchen_, Bessborough, Confederacy of the Southern Stars

*THE LESSER WHORE CAST DOWN BY OWN WITCHCRAFT!*
Witness Tells How God Gave Leper Tyrant over to Own Demons
'I Held up Cross and Prayed, and Demons of Leprosy Fled back into
Her Body!' Reveals Salesaint.
- _Power Breakfast_, Bethel

*Mame Mary-Clare Offers Terminus Bridging Finances and Prayers*
Mayor Nyssa: Last of the Great Pagans? page 11
- _The Universe_, Constancy

*Five Reasons We Need WonderWoman Nyssa for Next Fed Prez!*
Neutral! Incorruptible! Kills all known cyberdemons! Major
manager! Sex on a stick!
- _Politique_, CalDreaming

*Lazar's Last Victim?*
Terminus denials of Mayoral relapse 'in doubt', say experts
- _What's Well_, Troynovant

By the time they'd finished, the piano was well into something like
Beethoven, rocketing and cascading with heart and soul and its own
style of courtesy. This was more like Tegan's stuff, the sort of
thing she blessed Si for getting her into; and so they were able to
sit contentedly together for all of two minutes before she had to
say something.

She said, "You look awful. You look like you've spent all day
wrestling with Fastolf."

He snorted wearily. "Close. I had to hypnotise Goldspink,
and take away some of the things humans aren't supposed to run up
against. He'll recover, now."

"All in an hour's work for you!" she scoffed.

"Yes, but there were plenty of others in the Helm Room, and
most of them saw things they definitely shouldn't on Carthage beach.
I had to talk every one of them into letting me suppress _those_
memories, and I swear by the end of it I really was reduced to
swinging a gold watch and trusting to faith!" He let out a long,
vexed breath.

"So you _did_ wrestle with Fastolf!"

"And lost," he agreed wryly. "I don't suggest you get him
into any discussions about the nature of reality."

"I don't want to get him into _any_ discussions, full stop!"

"Indeed. I imagine someone so reluctant to distinguish
between truth and fiction will prove rather stony ground for
prophecy-bindweed, anyway. He's probably recast the whole thing in
his own mind already, into something Time herself wouldn't
recognise. I hope! And that leaves everything that needs burying
rather nicely buried."

"Except your memories! You told me earlier that you couldn't
just block them this time? That they were too 'fused' together?"
She shook her head. "You were going to tell me what this lockdown
is really all about. The 'final safeguard' that probably won't kill
you..."
"Oh, it's as safe as crossing the road in Rome!"

"Great. What is it?"

Their eyes met and held - hers stinging, his too wide - and
she was terrified at the terror that shone back at her. _Brave
heart, Doctor_, she wanted to quip; but she didn't think he'd
appreciate it.

"Wine," he said decisively, gadding up, and brandishing the
open bottle of red. She extended a tolerant glass, and he poured.

"I thought you might enjoy this," he babbled. "It's a famous
vintage Syrah - Shiraz, if you like - from Mondevillon. President
Tourville gave it me when I rescued his pet lamb from the
Ovistupratons, and I've been holding it in stasis these three
hundred years odd for the right occasion." He beamed foolishly, and
filled his own glass. "Won't you come over to the sofa? Sitting up
to the table to drink does so take me back to, well, some of the
things I've been losing touch with, actually, but they must have
been awfully stuffy and tedious at the time..."

Tegan sipped at her wine, getting a feel for what he was
trying to tell her. The Frenchy Shiraz was certainly something
special. She wasn't about to tell him how. She'd just have to make
out it was too good to guzzle.

"I'll take the armchair," she said, rising to join him, and
meeting his gaze square-on again. "I like to look at who I'm
talking to."

_Of course_, he gestured suavely, and sat down on the edge of
the sofa. Even in this state, he was so graceful! Tegan sat
opposite him with great care and dignity, unclasping her mantle. It
promptly fell all the way open; and as she tried to catch it on her
way down, the skirts of her already-daring dress rode up against the
cushion. One glimpse of his face had her teeth set, her cheeks
flaming, and the mantle clasped tightly again as quickly as her
klutzy fingers could fix it.

"They don't make things like they used to," she warned him,
glaring. He took a long sip of wine which covered up his expression
quite conveniently; but he also took her message, and started to
give her a straight answer.

"I'm not quite myself at the moment, Tegan. In fact, you
could say I soon won't be much _but_ myself..."

"You're going to forget your first regeneration?"

"I have. As far as it's possible."

"What - all the way? Because of the fire on the beach?"

"Never all the way. I lost my wife there, and the Master
became my enemy." He drank again. "But I don't remember anything
directly."

Tegan winced. "That must hurt a lot!"

"It isn't enough, Tegan. The tophet-fires fused my whole
understanding. It all makes sense for the first time in too long,
and I know too much I mustn't." His lovely voice was much too
excited. "The missing things would fill themselves in from context,
or I wouldn't have needed to lose the rest of my first - It doesn't
go far enough!"

She knew already, of course. "_Lockdown_, Doctor!"

"Memories work by pointers, Tegan. I've simply lost the
ability to access my first incarnation's, consciously or directly:
there's no way to them any more, except by association."

"But even that's too strong?"

"That's right." His face twitched uglily. "My people - do
horrible things sometimes, Tegan. It's part of the job description.
Some of those things are so dangerous, or so prophetic, that they
contaminate every regeneration they touch. Lockdown is a controlled
shutdown of lethally tainted incarnation-masks: it closes them off
from a personality that can't or mustn't maintain them. It's the
only way to go on, after some kinds of... encounter."

"So how many?" _Not mine. Not_ mine...!

"All of them, I think." He shrugged with hollow bravado.
"That's what you get for having a timeline as tangled as mine. My
third is on the brink already, for no reason I can see; and my
seventh is definitely on its way out, which is no surprise at all.
But I've seen everything make too much sense, and I don't really
think I can un-see it. I do believe I'm about to be left with what
you see."

"So will you even know us any more? Me and Nyssa?"

"I won't remember what we did, before. Not directly. I won't
stop _knowing_ you. You're both rather - unforgettable - even if
the details are mislaid."

Into the momentary silence, the Music Box began to pour lush
music and a high operatic voice over it. It was _Si, mi chiamo Mimě_,
from _La Bohčme_, the only opera in all history that Tegan had
dragged Si to! And not because of that _Who Goes There_ fantasy
about Him being stuck on Puccini's music, never - !

She nearly caught on to what he was up to, there; but the clue
rolled away from her, and she had to go on.

"This is for good, then?"

"Yes."

"That's what the TARDIS is in the dumps about?"

"Ah." He caught her look, and continued reluctantly. "It's
partly mourning the rest of me, yes. It's also distressed because
my oldest and strongest links to it are in the locked-down parts,
not to mention my original training. And - well, I haven't been
knocking around in this form for long enough to have much temporal
experience all of its own. Rather bad timing, I'm afraid."

Her voice sharpened. "You _will_ still be a Time Lord?"

"By title, training, and physiology..."

"Stop! That!"

"I'm not just going to forget how to operate her, Tegan. I
_will_ still be mobile."

"Good."

"Until something goes seriously wrong, at any rate."

Tegan shook her head numbly. "Not very long, then."

"That's a distinct possibility."

"So what are you going to do about it? There _is_ something,
isn't there?"

"Oh, there's always something."

"So you're going to."

"I don't know." He cast an upward look at the candles. "This
would be a little extreme."

"For you? More extreme than just - giving it all up?"

"Perhaps."

"Like, what?"

He knocked back the rest of his wine in one go. _He hasn't
lost his courage, then!_ "I'd need to clone the original memory
segmentation - from source!" His eyes shone expectantly.

"Is this more computer stuff? Not i-space again?"

Exasperated sigh. "No - my dear Tegan, this is dangerously
real flesh-and-blood 'stuff'. I'd need to clone the memory-patterns
from the incarnations that used them, in active mode. To put it in
a word, I'd need to meet myself seven times on the trot; break every
known Law of Time, including the ones I made up; and somehow avoid
being destroyed or worse by all the unpleasant consequences. I've
never gone quite that far out on a limb before, and it's really the
sort of decision one has to take under advisement!"

"I'll advise you, Doctor!"

"Thank you, Tegan," he said, with poorly concealed irony.

She bridled. "Who else were you thinking of? The High
Council? Nyssa? Omega? Cats?"

"No. Can we not discuss... engineers, this evening?"

"I don't want to talk about them either. - You won't have
much time, especially if you're stopping to finish off Nyssa's
problem with the Black Sun. You _are_ going to, aren't you?"

He looked offended. "You didn't think I would have simply
taken off?"

"Wouldn't be the first - Sorry, all right? So." She took a
deep breath. "So. What are these 'unpleasant consequences', then?"

"It's playing with the worst sort of paradox," the Doctor
declared, "and it's being impudently obvious about it. The High
Council will certainly execute me the next time they catch me,
unless or perhaps especially if the Universe needs saving in some
particularly desperate manner." _Who from, Nyssa?_ "Which might
well come about through my own actions, since warped causality
attracts certain Powers as rotten meat attracts flies - "

Tegan made a polite gagging noise. "Thanks, Doctor!"

"I'm so sorry," he said at once, crestfallen. "As sweets
attract children, if you prefer."

Over at the Music Box, Mimi finally finished telling everyone
her name.

"I do prefer," she said firmly. "All right, it sounds tough.
But look at your choices. You've muddled through worse than that,
more times than I can count. And you can't just - be ordinary, be
stuck somewhere. That isn't you. You have to make it. You will!"

"I don't know. And if even one of my past selves disagrees...
Well, pass that by. I'm more afraid of my first and my seventh than
almost anything else I've met, did I mention that? I suppose I
wouldn't have..."

Weird, ethereal, very modern music began drifting softly
across the room, cold and fair like a starry sky. The Doctor's
speech was getting gradually higher and faster. She didn't think he
realised.

"It might not succeed, you know. Even if it did, I don't know
when or if I'd come back. Gallifrey will definitely be on my tail
for a very long subjective time, and I could hardly provoke war
between them and Nyssa by letting her harbour me afterwards! From
that point of view alone, I think it might really be goodbye, this
time."

_No!_ "Doctor - "

He talked over her, just like the old days. "But if I did
return, I don't know what I'd be. After all that interference in my
own time-line, I couldn't even predict what I'd _have been_!" His
terror was naked now. "You might not like me any more, if we meet
again. You might never have liked me. You, or Nyssa. I might -
not be someone to like, do you understand?"

"Not you."

"Yes me!" His hand shook. He poured himself another glass of
Monte Villain Sewer, luckily forgetting to offer Tegan a top-up.
"There was a time - in my seventh - I was going to do something
unforgivable. For the best of ends, as our late friend the Master
would have explained. My companion then was a very brilliant
person, very close to me actually, more like me in many ways than
I'd ever thought a human could be, excepting her appalling sense of
taste. Would you believe, she took one look at this very bottle,
and told me to sell it for a fortune to some unsuspecting idiot?"
He glugged too much back, righteously. "Anyway, she saw through
what I was planning, and told me exactly what she thought of it.
She flayed me - wittily, logically, and with total sincerity -
before walking out to stop my worldwide plot, armed only with her
moral outrage and her hip-flask. I was terribly sad - but what I
had to do was necessary, so I couldn't let myself be budged. So I
wasn't. I found her Parthian shot on a yellow sticky on the
console. It was probably the best and most vicious punchline I've
ever been ambushed by; and, no, Tegan, you don't want to hear it.
Trust me on this."

"So you did it anyway?" She couldn't see where this was
leading, wasn't at all sure she wanted to.

"Well, I couldn't help thinking how much she reminded me of
you just then - but how infinitely more sophisticated and eloquent!
In fact, as I thought about it, I could hear exactly how you'd have
put the very same thing. I'm afraid the comparison wasn't entirely
to your advantage."

Tegan bared her teeth at him. "All right: _I_ don't like your
seventh much, either!"

"That was when it occurred to me that I'd never be able to
answer for my reasons to you, at all. Benny despised my reasons,
but she understood them all too well. You wouldn't have."

"You can ask her to dinner, if you like."

"But you see, that was what warned me that I didn't truly
understand them either. In fact, looking at them with a fresh eye,
they did look just a tad despicable. Rational, utilitarian, but
unfortunately despicable. So I did something else instead - thank
Time for that!"

"Did you ever tell this Benny person why?" Tegan found
herself asking. "Or did you let her take the credit for bringing
you round?"

"Oh, no!" He looked shocked. "I just acted very enigmatic
and pretended that was my plan all along, as usual!"

"I like you better this way."

"I, _ahem!_, I like you. Very much. Which is another thing
I'd be sorry to see lost to this translation." He drank. "But, you
see, bad things are in me. And if the shifting timelines bring them
to the fore - well, I can't count on memories to bring me back to
myself. Everything could have un-happened, or happened differently.
You may not be there for me, this time round - not you, not Nyssa,
not Susan or Borusa - "

"Yes, I will!"

"That's a very - "

"Shut up, why don't you? I'm coming with you."

"Tegan, that's - "

She raised her fist to nose level. "I'm not telling you
again!"

"As you wish."

"Listen, I think I've got some of the hang of this. Supposing
I'm with you all the way, that keeps us closer in, whatever, cause-
and-effect, right? Things aren't just going to change between us,
whoosh!, or me just disappear in a puff of smoke? The rest of,
what, relativity, takes the strain?"

He looked amazed. "That's really very good, Tegan!"

"We didn't exactly just meet in passing, Doctor. And you did
teach me how to fly the TARDIS - sort of."

"I thought you didn't understand the theory?"

"I don't. I can't put one math in front of the other, and
fistfuls of dimensions make my head hurt. This is the common sense
part, isn't it?"

"Yyyess. That's still very good. Unfortunately, it's a
trifle misleading."

"Meaning what?"

"If we're anchored together... you'll change in harmony with
the retrospective changes in me. Not necessarily for the better.
And if I succumb to paradox - Tegan, you've seen something of the
abyssal interstitial, where the bad things are. I'll not drag you
with me into that, or even risk it. If I do this thing, Tegan, the
one thing I will _not_ do is take you with me!" And Tegan, her
mouth already open to argue back, understood from his tone that the
subject was hopelessly closed.

_He has to give up being a Time Lord._

_Or we'll never really see_ him _again..._

She knew him too well.

"So," she said, keeping her voice level, "you have to go?"

It was too unfair to accept, or to doubt. He hesitated, and
their silence filled up with broken glass, until he answered,

"No."

"What's the catch?"

Shimon was verray drunk.

He'd made up a party of four with Einar, Albertina, and
Fastolf, in the great lizard's courtesy quarters; and they'd been
splitting a bottle of pink _bakkhydrin_, discussing future artistic
triumphs. The Terileptil, as a concession to the Galaxy's less
hardy races and to celebrate his bad tidings from home, was drinking
double-handed; but he was still way ahead in the coherence stakes,
low as these presently lay. Si strained his brain to follow the
dregs of the conversation.

"But if I'm sho ideal for Chyrano," he demanded with sodden
gravity, "what'sh _my_ deshining dishfigument? And where do I come
in with - thish heroizhm?"

Nyssa, in desperate need of rest, had still been refusing all
visitors, friends or otherwise.

Fastolf downed two more doubles simultaneously, from opposite
corners of his broad frog-mouth. Ever since his ninth and tenth,
he'd been struggling to torture events at Terminus into the plot of
_Cyrano de Bergerac_, apparently another of his enthusiasms. If he
was still sober enough to be making any sense whatever, Si was
clearly too drunk to be taking it.

Shakespeare's reptilian reincarnation shrugged his massive,
queerly-jointed shoulders, and leaned forward with ponderous
seriousness.

"Who," he demanded huskily, "_nose_?"

"Oh, no!"

Cats needed her sleep, she'd give Julie that. Her head still
felt like someone had dragged a ploughshare through it, and a little
bird told her that wasn't going to wear off any time soon. But
after seeing Joshua die, and bullying Omega into staying alive, and
then doing what she'd had to do to Nyss afterwards to make that
stick - she knew far better than to even think about bed.

Besides, she couldn't have ignored just about the last thing
he'd said to her. So here she was, working late at the Helm _(Never
thought that'd feel miserable!)_, and finally feeling shagged enough
to call it a day. And, what did you know?

She hitched up her jeans by the belt-loops and reconsidered.
"Okay," she said, making her way back to the chair. "Reconfirm,
tertiary layered scan. Commandeer all nonessential processing power
onstation; this is the biggie."

"Processing power not yet commandeered because: triple-alpha
priority passphrase-or-saying not tendered. Are you serious?"

"Shove a big pineapple up Rassilon's arse," she told it,
sitting down and twirling the chair aimlessly. This was going to be
a long night.

"Executed. Maximum processing expected by: now."

She invoked her console space's multicoloured vectors and
polyhedra, and sank back into analysing the artificial life of
Ourania.

"Tegan," he said, with the false nonchalance he'd use if he were
carrying something very fragile and precious, "how do you like
Terminus, really?"

"Not much," she said baldly. Nyssa, sticky and stinking with
blood, knocking at her door in the mad midnight. Ottar, his guts
cooked out with halberd-fire meant for her. Beards and spittle in
her face. "It's a good place, especially for this horrible century.
I just don't."

His face fell ridiculously. "You don't positively hate it?"

"I suppose not," she half-lied.

"I was thinking I might try my hand as a solid citizen.
Settle down, go no more a-roving. Still." He brightened. "There's
always Nyssa's colony worlds. Joya looks rather interesting, I
think. How about you?"

_"Doctor!"_ She leaned forward, spilling plonk onto the
carpet. "What are you saying? How could you stand it?"

"Tegan, I - "

BOOM!

An enormous, discordant thunder of percussion and rude
trombones and worse drowned him out, started them both from their
seats in horror, and sent him scurrying over in the direction of the
Music Box. Music as a natural disaster! Tegan adjusted her mantle,
folded her arms across her chest, and waited.

He shut it off.

"I'm so sorry!" he flapped back, covered in shame. "I'd
forgotten about the second movement, the first was so lovely..."

Tegan found her gaze drawn unwillingly down to his feet. Very
nice they were, too. "What was that about, Doctor?"

"It was a tone poem about a mountain. The first movement
was... scaling the empyrean heights, you know."

"So what?"

"It was Mount St Helen's."

The catastrophe was so complete, Tegan wanted to double over
laughing. "Doctor?"

"Tegan?"

"Why aren't you wearing any socks?"

He stared down tragically at his black patent-leather shoes,
his elegantly-tailored trousers, and the faux pas in between. "And
blisters to boot!" he complained, apparently to an invisible
audience.

"Stop posing."

"Certainly not!"

"Doctor, I know you." Tegan gestured widely around the scene
of the crime. _It might take me forever, but I do get there!_ "You
don't have to try and impress me."

He tried desperately to rally. "I'd call it more a matter of
proper pride - "

"Proper pride, right. _You don't have to try to be Si for me,
Doctor!_"

This time he really was struck speechless. She plunged on,
before the ground had a chance to open up and swallow her:

"You're not really half as cultured back on Earth as you make
out, are you? You think I never noticed? All that hamming it up as
the eccentric toff: tea and namedropping and that stupid cricketing
act! I mean, it's fun, but don't let's start being a snob about
it!"

"Excuse me! I really _did_ know Puccini - and Sappho - and
Leonardo - and at least half of the others I mention!"

"Yes, and I really did know Pavarotti."

"Really?"

"He was sick on one of my flights once. It's the ones you're
serious about that make you out a snob!" She shrugged. "Or is that
part of the Pom-Pom act, too?"

"More the Gallifrey habit, actually."

"I believe you. What I mean is, it's all like this, isn't
it?" She indicated the room again. "It's all just tourist stuff to
you, just pretty things you pick up and pack in your head, the way
you stuff the TARDIS up with junk too. You don't have roots in it,
and you never wanted to sink any," _until now!_ "That's why your
taste is always a bit off!"

"Thank you, Tegan. I've always admired your tact,
personally."

"I _like_ you that way, you great - " She gritted her teeth.
" - you great - bunny! You're like me: I just know what I like.
I'd never really be 'cultured' even if I did live forever! I
wouldn't mind playing with it the way you do, though. That's good.
That's fine. Just don't come on something you're not!"

He gave her a slow, boyish grin. "But that wouldn't be me
either - _ohhhh!_"

He hopped into the air, and came down glaring, hugging a
bruised shin. Tegan stepped out of the pump she hadn't kicked at
him.

"Qantas karate?" he gasped.

"You bet." He'd got the message, she knew. And she'd got
his, even if he couldn't come right out and say it.

_After all that's happened with us -_

"Come on, Doctor." She tapped her toes. "Get them off!"

_- how can I know in my bones -_

He went instant lobster. "I, I beg your pardon?"

_- you're the one man who won't ever hurt me?_

"The shoes, Doctor. You don't want those blisters, do you?"

"No, no, quite right." And he was out of them like a milkman,
tossing them high across the chamber into a dark corner, and staring
bemusedly at her. In a moment he'd say something.

And it wouldn't be right, because he'd already let on as much
as either of them could handle for one night. "Can you put a waltz
on that thing?"

"Yes, yes, certainly!" he beamed, obviously relieved. "Did
you have any one in mind?"

"A slow one. Nothing too fancy."

He puttered away happily to grant her wish, and she found
herself looking slow fire at his velvet-jacketed back. Very slow
fire. She was glad now that, for all his wit and daring, he was
scareder and shyer than she was!

But she really did fancy a dance, for the first time since the
coup. No: for the first time since he'd collapsed at Nyssa's
banquet. She stifled a brief urge to try and sing. _His taste
isn't as crummy as all_ that...

As the slow, tender-strong, understated waltz came on - _it_
isn't _crummy, either!_ - and the Doctor turned back to face her,
Tegan undid the silver clasp of her mantle, and threw the whole
thing extravagantly onto the sofa. To her delight, the whole
gesture fell out exactly as she'd pictured it.

In her bare feet and her evening gown, she pattered over to meet
him. For a horrid instant she thought he was going to panic and
fumble; but his left arm slid around her waist with the limp, giving
strength of water, and his right hand laid a coal of fire on her
right shoulderblade. Their eyes met, hazel against black, stars in
the void. Their mouths opened: hers to taste the night, his to make
one final effort, to say,

"Tegan, what I meant to - "

"Hush!" she told him, laying her head lightly on his shoulder,
putting him on his mettle as a gentleman. "We'll talk tomorrow!"

And they danced, danced, danced, long into the night.

Monty tossed and turned in his comfy, sleepless bed. He couldn't
sleep. He couldn't so much as settle down to try. The Terminus
poison had gotten into him.

He'd gone through the station like the rubbernecking tourist
he looked like; but listening, weighing. They acted free enough;
but the closer you listened, the more it came over like Red
Wellbeloved in _Liberty Luna 5: Art of War_. Nyssa was their dream
lover, their dream self, part of their family. Nyssa was God.
Anyone thought different, there were wogs and ice and stormtroopers
to make them think again!

WE WILL BE BEAU-TI-FUL! WE WILL BE TASTE-FUL! WE WILL BE LI-
BE-RAL! WE WILL BE EX-QUI-SITE LIKE THE DAN-DY LEA-DER!! WE WILL
O-BEY!!!!

It hadn't all come to him at once: that had been the worst.
He'd been walking on air when he'd left Frankie Radziecki, and taken
up his little apartment in _Serenity Living_.

But he'd mooched about the place, listening, looking, speaking
now and then when duty called. Every bastard had condescended to
speak to him more or less nicely, like he was at home in their
_society_, their rich girl's socialism. Like he could be. He'd
liked that, to begin with. But the more he'd seen and heard and
asked, the more he'd realised it was more quietly _sophisticated_
than Anglepoise City back home! If the _Lateness_ had been a shitty
job, and Anglepoise was simple shrink-in-on-yourself torture,
Terminus was going to be hell on high. Their way was the opposite
of Monty's in about a hundred different blends; and they slathered
all of them on so thick, you couldn't see where the face stopped and
the real people started.

They put on grace and wit and ethics better than guys with
corporate brainpacks - except for the Vanir stormtroopers, who
supplied the muscle and didn't have to fake so hard. Bastards made
a handy reality check. Them and the wogs were the only ones here
who didn't stink outright of Nyssa's mad dreams; and they were under
the influence.

Nyssa was God, was the first and last thing he'd picked up
here: even to the atheists, even to the so-called opposition. Hell,
he'd read enough of their archives - she was one of those dictators
who _demand_ a loyal opposition! And, the true thing Frankie said
to test him: _what Nyssa wants, Nyssa gets..._

And Nyssa wanted a world of beautiful, virtuous, touchy-feely
people who never got sick, never went loco, never went up against
Big Nanny State. Even the coup hadn't shaken anyone's faith. Her
survivors had just backed deeper into the collectivised dream, the
gorgeous inhumanity.

They were steeped in the happiness that cost your soul - and
Monty didn't even have the dignity of the entrance fee.

As the flavour of the place had gotten into him, his state of
elation at Frankie's invitation had died down, bit by bit, into a
savage and thorough depression. _Sure_, the lady would want to pass
the time with him; _sure_ they'd have lots in common; sure the fat
bitch didn't reckon he was just some easy-mark greenhorn, to be
sniffed out for the sake of Bitch Boss Nyssa! Sometimes he made
himself all-out sick. Hate and hell. Here forever!

Unless -

Unless he could bring the real world here. Unless Plan B.
Unless Terminus's defences blinked, and he could get word in time
for the skipper to take advantage. The Late Crew would be on their
way to Acer now, the Canuck world - the capital of this godforsaken
subsector, only ten days out. They'd hang around there for a need-
to-know time on need-to-know business; but hiring and tooling up
would surely be part of it. If Monty could just give old Cap'n
Moonlight a window, he might yet play for the jackpot.

And, looky here, how things were turning out!

Point: Nyssa and her time-bending friends were all
'recuperating', after gloriously trashing the Master and Don't Say
It Universe Eater From Hades. Decode that: they were all bad hurt,
some maybe mortally, and the second string was sort of caretaking
things until the dust settled. One of those things would be the
over-tech defences, which from what he'd seen would need very wiggy
aliens or nethead types to monitor properly. If the ice on those
could be broken or corrupted while the big boys were out of the
picture, Terminus would be wide open to a shock assault.

Point: the fabulous Black Sun was almost certainly still out
of control. They couldn't dare count on it, until they'd sifted it
for traps and damn near rebooted its whole active structure.
Terminus wasn't going to have endless energy to play with for quite
some tendays.

Point: the infrastructure, the ice, and the local military had
all taken a godawful hammering during the Master's coup. All three
were as weak right now as they were ever about to be.

Point: the stormtroopers and the mercenaries had both been
riddled with treason, and the two factions hated each other's guts.
They couldn't trust themselves or one other. Any way you looked at
it, morale had to be shit on toast.

Point: the wogs (no, _sir_, those noble Terileptils!) were
getting greedy-clawed and itchy-footed, and their general was
reaping some kind of management grief back home that even made some
of the biz newsfeeds. He wouldn't be staying long, because he
purely couldn't.

Point final: the reinforcements from the colonies - sweet
Jesus, this pest-hole had _colonies_! - were, by universal
scuttlebutt, still at least four tendays or six honest weeks away.

Put those last two together, you got the shape of your window.
Find a way to crack the ice, and you'd get your chance at it. Only
question was, how much dope did he need to risk coding a message in
the topical-anime fan-forum on tachy.net? Too cautious, and he'd
fumble his first best hope; too daring, and he'd blow the whole game
to the Reds, who'd wittily vivisect his mind and lovingly turn his
remains into a sad inadequate pod person. Monty squirmed about some
more in the bed, finding no position more comfortable than any
other, twisting himself up tighter in the light quilt.

Speaking of twisting himself up: the Terminals _still_
wouldn't let him get his rocks off! Here he was, printout of _La
Ninfa Nissa_ patriotically tacked to his wall and right hand
twitching to give 'Eronner the one kind of salute she definitely
deserved - and all he could do was lie here in his own sweat, stiff
as a board, balls turning blue, because -

- because, okay, Frankie was a security shill for sure, if she
wasn't something worse like a therapist or a missionary or a pity
queen. He didn't have so much as a friendly Dutch date ahead of
him: that was definite. But if he made that good and true for him
before it happened, he could pull off a hundred Plan B's, and _know_
he'd been right, and still never get away from the terror that he'd
had a chance in life and screwed it up! Which would be three
flights nearer hell than he was already.

He hated them all. It hurt. So much.

Deep in the ersatz night of Nyssa's leper colony, where no-one
could see, Monty Hall pulled his top pillow to him like a lover, and
shivered and cried himself to sleep.

"Oh, shit."

Cats shook her head as the final results rolled in from
Ourania. Omega's suspicions had tested out right on the money, as
usual.

"Close all," she yawned, fisting her bleary eyes, stumbling
over to the dirty sheets of Alfie's empty bed. "Release processing
assets."

"Confirmed."

"Oh, _Nyss_!"

I, Nyssa Tremaida-Ylissida Kassialta Iatraltera kranti au katanti
Amina kratera Tegan <DELETE> katanera Simon </DELETE>, of Traken and
Terminus, <DELETE> your dastard and traitor </DELETE> <DELETE> your
_diva_ </DELETE> being of sound mind this night of SA 2194/ 178/
02:29, declare this my true testament and private annexe to my filed
will, to be executed immediately on receipt.

Honoured Tuyet: please share this with no-one but Cherry, and the
people I name here. For they are so dear to me, to leave them in
silence would be my last and worst betrayal.

To every one of you: if you are reading this, I am gone, beyond
death or resurrection. I still hope <INSERT> (as I write)</INSERT>
to find another way, but the consequences of failure are so
unspeakable that I no longer <INSERT> (as you read)</INSERT>deem I
have a choice. Please don't judge me too harshly, and remember the
Nyssa you first knew.

To FASTOLF, my true and gallant and gorgeous Uncle, I leave all my
designs and copyrights, my statue of Amina, and any one token you
would bear in my memory; and commend to Dragon & Maiden our very
fine human _calaglayi_, Silvia D'Souza and Obed Li. You taught my
heart its voice, and saved me when all hope seemed fled. Be such a
friend to Terminus as you were to me, and this galaxy's hope shall
burn the brighter.

TEGAN, <DELETE>Tegan, Tegan! I don't know</DELETE> <DELETE> I dream
</DELETE> I have nothing to leave you but my journals and my last
kiss. The password is 'SheilaSheWrote'. But know I have named you
_kratera_, my cupmate-if-only: if only we'd been other people, or if
I were still real! You are my dearest, dearest friend; and though
I'm destroyed, I shall always live with _you_ at least. <DELETE> I
</DELETE>

SIMON, how did you become so good for me, so quickly? To you I
leave a copy of my library, and my personal passport to walk at will
in i-Traken. But, my cavalier, I leave you also two charges.
Firstly, whatever falls out between you: always be there for Tegan,
when she needs the very best of friends. Secondly - when you write
your great book - when you give it to Old Earth - give them
something of the dream of Terminus to carry into space. Please
don't write me into it; or if you must, at least not directly.
Otherwise they'll miss the whole point. I'm not the point, and I
never was. <DELETE> My </DELETE> Goodbye!

CATS, by now you have had my gift already. Believe that I truly
wish you joy <DELETE>, though mine is </DELETE>. If I have not
found courage to speak to you yet, let me say now: you are still my
heart-sister, and there is nothing between us to forgive. Above
all, never fear that you caused my decision.

DOCTOR, you have been as a second father to me, and I have been a
false, impious, and unfilial daughter. I beg, though I dare not
expect, your forgiveness. <DELETE> I know that pleas of necessity
don't impress you </DELETE> <DELETE> I am too ashamed to </DELETE>
I thought this right, even though ungrateful and dishonourable. I'm
sorry. I see no other way. I'm sorry.

I love you all <DELETE> hdsf9ofgtr </DELETE>. Farewell,

NYSSA.

_You've picked up a terrible taste for melodrama, haven't you? Go
to sleep!_

_"Mother?"_

Nothing.

"Kassia? Can you really - Of course she can't! That isn't
even her turn of speech. I'm hallucinating. Now I'm talking to
myself. All right, I _shall_ go to sleep. Good night!"

<DELETE ALL>

--

TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Twenty-Three, 'I'll Fly Away'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Twenty-Third Episode: 'I'll Fly Away'*

Nyssa had walked to her soulmongering leaning on her white cane; but
the Doctor had had to wheel her back to her suite. As he eased her
across the threshold and the door closed behind them, she spasmed,
stumbled, and made a faint dry retching sound. She turned her face
up to him as he moved to protect her. Her face, still ugly with
crusted and healing lesions, was composed into the serene mask she'd
worn during the operation; but her beautiful grey eyes were hot and
dry and danced frantically, searching for a non-existent way out.

He bowed his head gravely. "You did very well, Nyssa."

Her mask fell off into space. She threw her arms violently
around him, burying her head in his chest, and began shaking in
earnest at her lover's final death. He scooped up her legs and
carried her over to the sofa, and hugged her wordlessly for a long
while.

"Enough," she said eventually, drawing back. "I'm not a child
any more."

The smallest sliver of him died of a chill. "Am I hearing a
_Traken_ tell me that hugs are for children?"

"We have work to do." She scratched at her mottled hair.
"We should be in the Helm Room. Now that - " Her mouth twisted as
if she'd just bitten into an unripe kumquat, but she forced the name
out: " - Cats is otherwise occupied, we're the only two who can do
anything useful for Ourania. I mustn't lose _her_, Doctor! She's
the only thing that can redeem any of what's happened. Help me."

"I will." He offered her an arm; she levered herself up on
it, sighed, shivered away, and reclaimed her cane. "Cats spoke to
me before the operation, you know," he added gently. "She said
there was something there that I ought to look at."

"Did she really?"

She sounded almost like Tegan in a strop; but Tegan was the
woman he'd asked -

- and all he heard in Nyssa's voice was the death-rattle of
Union. _Don't let's get maudlin, old man. (Young man. Dead men!)
You've never met anyone else who could do what she's just done, and
that hasn't a bit to do with raw power..._

"She did."

Nyssa shrugged angrily; but she set her jaw and lifted her
triangular chin as they walked, and he knew that her fears matched
his. He lobbed a quick prayer to Rassilon, Murphy, and Lady Time
that they were both mistaken, retrospectively if need be. He didn't
put much stock in it. They strolled on in silence to the Helm Room,
closed the doors, and accessed Cats's last log.

The Powers That Were, typically, hadn't been listening.

Nyssa whimpered faintly, then broke into an unexpected and
unpleasant grin, and began gesturing vivaciously with her white
cane. He looked at her narrowly then; but for all he could tell, it
was really her.

"So," she said, with frankly unnatural cheer, "the black
border's still eroding, and Ourania's still trying to break through
and colonise our space! The Master must have made that process
autonomic. It's self-accelerating, of course; and I daren't even
quite trust Cats's four-tenday safety margin, not at these stakes.
Helm, I want three more sigma points on that: new deadline, please?"

"Oh, about seven point nine five two one days less, I should
think - " the Doctor began, scribbling furiously on an imaginary
envelope.

"Twenty-six point eight two three three days, 'Yeronner'," the
AI declared over him, smugly. He made an ancient Venusian sign at
it.

"At which point we risk a plague of unregulated spatial de-
entropisation, translation into unknown forms, the destruction of
the traces of the dead, and immediate war to extinction with the
Time Lords and many of our neighbours," she noted. "I'm not
prepared to accept that!"

"It's got a lot against it," agreed the Doctor. "We'll have
to shut the Black Sun down completely, and start again from scratch.
I'm sorry..."

"No!" cried Nyssa. She swished her stick violently through
the air to underscore that, peered at it curiously, and slung it
across the room. "I'll never be allowed to do it again, you know,"
she said quickly, with a definite hint of rehearsal. "It was a
hard enough timetable when I controlled it: before I came into the
open at the banquet. Now everyone will find out what I'm trying to
do, and it's all to be set back to zero, and Earthhome and Gallifrey
and all the other predators will move in on me if I ever begin it
again! We have to _accelerate_ the project, Doctor! We have to
keep the Black Sun online, and be ready to launch the Living Sky
into our own space on our own terms; or entropy will win, and the
Master and the Necromonger will win, and everything will end in
nothing forever and ever! We have to go back to the reason I called
you here: you have to solve those three equations, so that we can
set Ourania free once we've healed her, so that she can be truly be
death's bane and not some horrible pathology!"

"I'll do all I can," he said sincerely, knowing he was already
too close to his limit in those weird reaches of block-transfer
calculus, and losing expertise every day. "Unstintingly.
Unsleepingly. But, Nyssa, if after those twenty-six days, I haven't
at least solved the first equation so as to regulate her growth..."

"There's another approach to _that_, you know," she said
significantly. "If we used your lemma for the _completeness_
equation, with the intelligent monitor forcing local convergence,
the same monitor could check growth manually too. I could gain an
indefinite amount of time for - "

"But you can't program strong a-life! You'd have to take the
Master's - "

"Never that, Doctor. I don't have his delusions of godhead;
and it's my part to heal souls, not to ravage them. As for my own
daughter's - !"

Her meaning struck him like a halberd.

"No!" He was surprised to find it his own turn to shout. He
was far better at it than she was. "I will not co-operate with any
such abomination! Nyssa, I forbid you to even consider that!"

"If you insist," she said demurely. Her shoulders sagged,
then, and she sank down into Alphard's chair. "It seemed logical,
since we have a suitable volunteer..."

"Nyssa." He wanted to grasp his infuriating little friend by
the shoulders, but knew that he mustn't. "It isn't worth it. The
Universe doesn't rest on your shoulders! It _won't_ be the end of
everything, and there _will_ be other chances..."

"As there probably would have if you'd fallen to the Daleks,
before your own dabblings at saving the Universe," she opined.
"There just aren't many people who'll even try, except for the
maniacs who want to rule it! We're in the last million-year epochs
now, and _still_ it's just being left to rot! If I have anything to
offer at all, I mustn't throw it away."

"This isn't 'throwing it away'. You have something else to
contribute, Nyssa, and that isn't replaceable. Now the Ourania
principle has been discovered, it can be built again - "

"With what intent, I wonder?"

"That's exactly the point! You've fused some of the best
features of human and Traken culture in this place, and given your
people immortality into the bargain. Your social project is more
than big enough for anyone - and, Nyssa, I do believe that it's
capable of supplying that intent, of seeding a culture that could be
trusted with power of this order - "

"But I've made that contribution already," she said
reasonably. "I don't want to influence Terminus any more, not in
that way: it's better than I am, now. If Ourania dies... I'll be of
no use here. I don't think I even want to stay; not stay and see...
_them_ every day, or know they're only a few walls away from me!"
She scrunged up her eyes at him. "Would _you_?"

"Probably not," he admitted. "You'd consider leaving, then?"

"I promised to be our _diva_. That isn't a light commitment."

"I didn't say forever. And going away is better for everyone
than doing something... wrong, isn't it?"

"I'd consider it, then. I'd have to consider almost anything,
if that happened." Her tone became abruptly brisk. "Which it isn't
going to! We're going to solve that equation, make Ourania stable
and sustaining and everyone's good neighbour again, and then carry
on as we meant to before the Master spoiled everything. Which we
won't accomplish by talking about my psychological self-indulgences!
Now, Doctor, we need to decide how we'll divide our resources
between..."

He still wasn't at all happy with the way her mind was
running; but she'd drawn back from that obscenely desperate remedy,
and she obviously needed to throw herself into work just now, so he
went along with everything.

The virtual sky of Garden Heart was bright blue trimmed with silver
cirrus, its sunlight less dazzling and a thought more golden than
Earth's. Tegan didn't have to guess where that was copied from.
She wished Nyssa would learn some day how to cut her losses.

_Look who's talking!_

"Just the spot," said the Doctor confidently, "don't you
think?" He pointed across the wildflower meadow to a stand of young
trees by a low hillock, quite a way to the right of the path that
led into the Cantabile Memory Garden. It did look like there was a
nice bit of flat grass in the shade.

"Right," said Tegan. If it weren't for her lazargens, she'd
be worrying about her heart, which was ticking over suspiciously
calmly. Something had made the two old companions dress a bit
formally today, and put a cramp in their chatter. They hadn't had a
good jab at each other in the whole half-hour since they'd met to
pick pastries at Young Mama Hubbard's.

"Race you!" she added suddenly, and bolted across the field of
flowers.

He caught up with her before she'd got half-way, of course;
but as he drew level with her, he locked his pace with hers, so that
they breasted the invisible finish-tape in eerie unison. They
turned to each other, then, and shared a smile, that dropped into
their serious mood like a pebble into a pond. Tegan smiled harder
out of annoyance.

"This'll do," she said; and started unpacking the pastries,
sarnies, and the ancient tartan Thermos flask from the Doctor's bag,
while the Doctor shook out an unfeasibly large white tablecloth in
the artificial breeze before folding it in half again. They sat
down on it, their basic picnic between them, in the shade of a
maroon-leafed little Japanese cherry with pale rosy flowers. The
tiny twigs and knobs of deadwood they'd forgotten to brush away
beforehand bit bluntly through the cloth into Tegan's bum, in a way
so familiar from so many picnics that it was almost the most
comfortable thing about the whole show.

The Doctor poured tea into the plastic cups with a flourish,
taking the small one without a handle for himself. The tea was
their only drink. She didn't dare to be woozy for this!

So they settled down to their picnic, nestled in the cupped
horizons of Garden Heart, as private and peaceful as if they'd had
the whole place to themselves. They didn't really talk, except once
when they tore up the danishes so they could have half the apricot
and the apple each; and once when a bee buzzed them, and Tegan said,

"I never thought I'd miss wasps at a picnic! Do you suppose
she has them?"

"I shouldn't think so. Why - do you prefer them to bees?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Hardly. I just miss having things
around that aren't pretty or useful. Just me finding fault, as
usual."

"No, no, I know what you mean. Still," he winked slyly, and
stage-whispered, "there's always your boss, so I hear!"

"That's right, kill my appetite." She helped herself to a
Cockney teacake, and the quiet fell over them again.

But when he began pouring their second cups of tea, the fear
in her heart came up into her mouth, and she heard herself ask
abruptly,

"You don't think I'm going to turn into Elissa, do you?"

"Oh, no!" he cried, spilling a great gout of hot tea over his
hand and the tablecloth. "No, that would be terrible - and I can't
see how it could happen. I've seen to it that you're not prophecy-
bound to be, if that's what you're afraid of."

She hadn't been, until he mentioned it. She made herself
steady.

"What was she like, Doctor?"

"She was my wife."

"Yes, I know."

"I don't know. I've had to bury everything about her since I
lost her at Carthage - back in my first, and then again the other
day in the Black Sun. That includes why I'm not allowed to
remember, though it must involve some kind of paradox or binding."
He flapped his hands emphatically. "I'm sorry, Tegan, but I really
don't have any notion!"

"You said you wouldn't forget me or Nyssa when your fifth
locked down!" she accused.

"You're still here," he reminded her brusquely. "She's dead,
if not further lost than that."

"Just like that?" She could almost feel the bits of scab
under her fingernails, but she couldn't stop.

_"Yes!"_ he almost shrieked at her. He controlled himself at
once, with what effort she could tell, and went on very slowly, "I -
it's fresh enough for the moment, that I still have a few
intuitions. I think of Nyssa, and then I think they must have been
warm in the same way. I see you, and I feel how she must have been
bright and brave and fiery. I chat with Si," he added, seeming even
to surprise himself with that thought, "and my ear aches as though
she used to sing poetry. - But I'm probably making it all up," he
concluded, with a rush of inturned savagery. His face contorted
like a baffled and furious child's. "It's probably all just an
emotional phantom limb, and I'll never know. I mustn't!"

_Well, Tegan Jovanka, you've really done it this time!_ He
looked thoroughly knifed. She rose, stepped around the remains of
the picnic, and crouched down again to squeeze his shoulders
comfortingly, until she felt his alien calm gathering again. She
didn't know whether that was a good thing or not, so she just went
with her instincts.

"You really loved her, didn't you?" she said softly.

He didn't push her away as she'd feared. His answer was
quieter and more absolute than tears.

"It went further than that, Tegan. Gallifrey, how would you
put this, doesn't _do_ love. Not as you'd understand love. Not as
anyone should. I don't remember her, or how it was, but I do know
that she made it for me. She was all there was of it. When I lost
her, when I had to forget she even existed - that took all the rest
with it. They were the same, you see. All torn up by the roots."

"And now it's happened twice over." _So that's why it never
works - what always goes wrong!_ "Poor Doctor."

"Ah, well," he said, mastering himself and rising carefully.
"It's not quite as terminal as that. I admit, I was well into my
fourth before that side of me was even ready to rattle its coffin-
lid again, and even then only another Gallifreyan could possibly
have noticed any - "

"Oh, yes, your hundred-and-fifty-year-old Lolita.
Saladeidifabular, wasn't it?"

He faced her in blank amazement. " Sal- ? That was a joke,
Tegan. A throwaway line. Salad-day - de - fab - " Catching her
expression, he shook his head. "All right, perhaps it wasn't a very
_good_ joke. The point is - well, the point is, can we walk a bit?"
He offered her his arm.

"Picnic's still on the ground, Doctor. What _is_ the point?
Please?"

They went into a frenetic cleanup, which at least kept their
hands busy, including all the extra pairs the Doctor seemed to have
sprouted. Cramming the Thermos absent-mindedly into his jacket
pocket, he chattered,

"I think it's all the time I've spent in the company of
humans, that and old habits shuffling back to the surface... Well,
I'm a regenerative old unregenerate, you know, and even the worst
wounds heal given enough centuries under the right conditions. Oh!
I think you'd better put this in the bag. The Old Girl's tailoring
routine is _not_ going to be pleased... I suppose this is the first
regeneration where I could really call myself a whole man again.
Yes, I think I can honestly say so... So. No pity on that score,
please! Shall we walk? I feel so terribly restless, don't you?"

She did take his arm this time. All his other hands
disappeared instantly, and their walk went all Sunday and sedate
from the first step. She wasn't entirely surprised when they
stopped again within twenty yards. Her heart wasn't suspiciously
steady any more.

He took a deep breath. "Tegan, you'll recall that my fifth
was - weak. Open; susceptible. I think - I think you know that I
let you get rather - under my skin, then?"

"It's been mutual," she whispered back.

"I don't think I should have - Well. The point is, it's been
a few centuries for me; and I'm quite strong this time around, and
I'm not all hollowed out any more; and, ah, the rest hasn't changed
at all, and I don't think it's going to."

Even now, she had to laugh a tiny bit at him. "If you're
saying what - Doctor, this isn't one of those things you can half-
say!"

He hung back oddly. "I'm not like Nyssa, Tegan. All I know
is strict monogamy, not counting my rather fuller acquaintance with
strict nothing-o-gamy-at-all..."

"I don't exactly play the field, Doctor!"

"No, no, I didn't mean - I'm sorry, I wouldn't - but I don't
mean to put you in a Position."

She gave him the square look. "Si and Nyssa and I are all
just good friends, Doctor. We settled that a while back."

He looked devastated.

Then his face began to shine with that quiet, wild
determination that had boded so many monsters so little good, and
Tegan almost looked behind her for the snake.

Very clearly and firmly, he said to her,

"I don't want to travel any more. I don't want to leave you
again. Tegan, will you stay with me? Always?"

_Always_, she opened her mouth to echo; _always and forever,
love..._

"Have you thought this through, Doctor? We're not equals. It
can't be right!"

"We're both immortal now, and I'll soon be down to one life's
experience. You'll catch me up in a jiffy!"

"What, me and my monkey brain? Come off it!"

"Tegan! I have a brain optimised for higher-dimensional
processes and very long-term memory; it _has_ to be more active and
efficient than a human's."

"See?" she agreed, bitterly winning her point.

"For those purposes! Tegan, why should you want to compete
with me at paratensic event extrapolation or nexal resolution?"

"I don't! But you're bright enough for that sort of stuff,
and I'm not! You used to understand the difference!"

"And you used to remind me regularly that in the serious
business of life at large, I'm often quite wonderfully stupid." He
shook his curly head ruefully. "Considering how much more
experience I had to draw on in those days - I really shouldn't waste
your time trying to decide which one of us is more functionally
intelligent, at all! A few specialised enhancements don't amount to
that big a hill of beans, where it counts." His smile was
unbearably tender. "You used to understand _that_. Loudly.
Often!"

"That's right, I suppose."

"Then - beans aside - ?"

_Wonderfully stupid, are you?_ One of these days, she was
going to win an argument with him! She wanted so much to turn away,
even a little bit.

"You know how I feel about you, Doctor. You can't not!"

"In the words of a very wise woman, Tegan, this isn't one of
those things you can half-say."

She'd dreamed of this moment so long, so dearly.

"Lady's privilege," she said thickly. "I don't have to answer
now, do I?"

"Of course not!" he protested. "If the lockdown weren't
forcing my pace, I shouldn't even press so - "

"Yes you should, love. Give me until tomorrow."

"Of course..." he said dazedly.

Tegan took her Time Lord gently by the upper arms, and turned
him about, to face back the way they'd come. "You go back to Nyssa
now!" she told him abruptly. "If Ourania's still acting up, you
don't have much time to waste. I - need to walk. By myself. And
tell Nyssa I want to talk with her, if she's free this evening."
Organ music piped up inside her heart, and she knew she'd struck
luckily on the thing she needed most. "I'll be sleeping out
tonight, all right?"

"Until tomorrow, Tegan!" He broke free to flash her a quick
smile, and her hands cried out at losing his touch. How he felt
under them, all wrapped up in that velvet jacket... He loped off
across the flowers without a backward glance, and Tegan watched him
until he was out of sight. Then she turned determinedly about, and
marched purposefully up the path into the Cantabile Memory Garden.

This was a time, Tegan thought, for a girl to get well and
truly lost!

Heavy ebony eyelids flickered cautiously, though Cats had known
their owner was fully conscious for many minutes now. Alfie would
have switched on his lights and ambushed her with some feeble
ribaldry, long since.

"Wakey, wakey!" Cats bent over her partner's face, and
impressed a savage introductory kiss on those delicious lips, dark
and fleshy as plums.

"Good morning, Cats," the victim deadpanned, when she came up
for air. "How's Nyssa?"

"Got the hump. How's you?"

That took a long, slow, stretching of half-familiar muscles; a
slow and very much assisted sit-up; and several slow, contemplative
blinks, before it found an answer.

"I have incredibly little idea. This is very unfamiliar
territory." A tiny quirk of the lips visited that impassive face
briefly. "Humpty, though!"

"Yeah, I bet. I reckon we've got some interesting times ahead
of us for a while, _amiga_!"

Her _amiga_ snorted heavily. "You dragged me into this with
your eyes wide open: you can get out if you want. It's me I'm
worried about!"

"I love it when you talk like that," Cats retorted; and meant
it, because there was enough Alfie in this new person after all.
"You're just exactly selfish enough to get back on form. We're
going to have such times - trust me!"

Amina's eyes held Cats's then, in a long lonesome silence; and
the fire and bravado dimmed in them as the technician watched, till
they shone about as lively as cold poached eggs. Omega's mask told
her resignedly,

"I think this was a mistake, you know. This body feels more
alien than I'd feared; and as for the spirit! Our bonding is sure,
but we can't even understand why."

"Ask Nyss - a few tendays down the line. I'm not letting you
off the hook, _amiga_!"

"No, that's understood. I'm no friend of Death's. I'm
definitely not cut out to be a woman, though. I don't even know
where to begin!"

_And being no good at something scares you worst in the world,
right?_ Cats relaxed a fraction, and began stroking her mate's big
still hand. The woman who wasn't Alphard sighed lightly.

"I'll show you the ropes," she promised affectionately. "It's
a blast, once you've got a feel for it!"

"I'm sure you'll be delighted to _give_ me the feel!" Quicker
than sight, the other hand had flicked across the bed to trap
Cats's, squeezing it roughly. She hadn't even seen Amina's body
move. The hot, calm humour that transformed the big woman's gaze
was new and gut-melting and deeply alien.

"I'm not Alphard, or Amina," the reformed Engineer pointed out
seriously. "I'm not really Omega any more, either. What is this
person, Cats? Where does she belong? What can I even honestly call
her?"

"I thought about that one." Cats pulled down a lank lock of
hair, and began to nibble at it meditatively. "I wanted to call you
_Megan_, but the air-hostess union raised Cain." She put on a
Cainish grin herself. "I reckon we'll go with _Meg_!"

"Meg?" The woman seemed to chew on that for many seconds,
before relaxing fatalistically. "Ha. Well, Cats, if this is what
you're set on. I'm all in your hands, now..."

"Aren't you just, sweet stuff?" Cats leered, peeling back the
quilt. Hesitantly as a poor girl with her dream box of chocolates,
her hands began to wander in the air.

Amina's hand flexed clumsily into a fist. Cats's fingertips
froze over the lapels of the hospital pyjamas.

Ever so slowly, Meg smiled, and brought her knuckles up to
press against her lover's jawbone.

As Tegan passed a joining of paths that was marked by a gracefully
straggling limb of frondy jacaranda, a shadow of fear fell across
her.

The shadow was taller and broader than any man, and wavery on
top. Its breath came slow and heavy, and she didn't need to turn
around to recognise it. She picked up her pace sharply, and wished
the going firmer.

"Bel-Phoenix?"

That hateful, hearty, King Snake voice! She took three long,
angry steps, staring rigidly ahead of her, and promptly stubbed her
toe on a root. "Ow!"

The bulky, harlequin-scaled lizard must have been hovering
right over her shoulder, for he came level with her at once,
steadying her firmly with unwelcome chrome-bright claws.

"Here's sorry flight! Nay, I see my lady's troubled even as
great Fastolf's self, and seeks unravellings in the beauties of our
darling's knot-garden. Yet meet may be chance-meeting, and good
counsels spring thencefrom, as blooms from Garden Heart's corse-
quickened earth. What ails the apes' rara-avis?"

_You - you sneaky, sarky, bullying_ reptile! "Nothing that
isn't 'ailing' the rest of us, Ter'Fastolf," she snubbed, proud of
her voice's complete, polite detachment. "I just wanted an hour or
so's walk away from it all. Alone. Thank you!"

Fastolf shrugged with his gaudy crests, and fell silent. That
was a mercy. But he kept pace with her, and his sheer, massive
presence was more than enough to oppress anyone. The first obscure,
back-cutting lane they passed, Tegan excused herself and made
hastily down it.

The Terileptil didn't so much as break his stride, but floated
alongside her like her own personal haunting. She stood it for
twenty stretching steps, before she spun on the big pest in a rage.
"What do you _want_ with me?"

His inner eyelids blinked unreadably. "I bask in the presence
of legend," he declared, "but I'd mend our quarrel, before my
pressing exit."

_Exit?_ "I don't have any quarrel with you, Ter'Fastolf. I
just don't feel like talking!"

It was like trying to deflect a train. "Dame Tegan," he
pursued, his voice gaining a sweet resonance which she'd already
learned meant nothing but trouble, "I'm ware of your misfortunes with
the ugliest canaille of the Wonder-Race; but I'd hear you confess you
find me noways alike to them!"

"You're not like them," she said at once. "You're with Nyssa,
aren't you? Is that it?"

"Thou'rt my nest-niece's good heart," he rumbled, sliding
dangerously into the intimate speech. "Shalt hate me, then, and I
not seek amendment? Or at least, such joy of tragedy, that we be
clean foes? I will be answered, Dame Tegan!"

Tegan knew when to back off, if not quite how. "I don't want
to be your enemy, Fastolf. I don't hate you, and - I can't blame
you for what those criminals did. I'm - glad Nyssa has you." She
gulped. "I can't say more than that, all right?"

"Nay, I'll ask no more of thy tongue, nor less of thy honour."
The great reptile sighed like a bellows. "But now I grant thee fair
right to love me less; for in this her hour of need, Nyssa shall
find her Uncle's great oak but a sorry cracked reed in masquerade.
Within this tenday, I and all mine must away for Fuji-Greathearth,
trusting Fortune that no evil find our Star-Eyes before her
reinforcement. For very shame and grief am I strayed here, that
this falls maugre all my will!"

Tegan felt oddly shocked, as if someone had kicked a chock out
from under her. "What's wrong?"

"Ter'Hyder Carplung, my vice-maestro directing acquisitions at
Dragon & Maiden. He deems me waxed soft and assotted, be-Trakened
beyond sense for war or wealth or race: hath manoeuvred an everted
reverse hostile out-leveraged management takeover opening, that must
I stop or lose all!" His coloured crests waved militantly. "His
timing's ill. No lucky death nor brave torment for this star-fouled
drake; him I'll cast down to life, and grey poverty and ridicule
forever!" But he drooped, then, and gloomed down on Tegan with his
extra eyelids flickering agitatedly.

She wasn't surprised! "It's a _business trip_? And you're
leaving her defenceless for _that_?"

"Even so." Perversely, her words seemed to calm him. "She'd
not ask me to jeopard my hoard, my gold and galleries, nor minish my
glory in face of arrant challenge! And - is't not for that I adore
her, till such folly grows tempting to the taste as poison voles?
Come: deny 'tis the prettiest paradox!"

"I'll tell you what I tell the Doctor," she said evenly. "I
hate paradox. I don't want to know. Just tell me what you're going
to do!"

"Why, leave. As I've said, so I'll do."

"You say," she said coldly, "that you want me to talk to you
like a friend? All right. I think that's contemptible! Even you
sound like you know that. You don't have to do this, Fastolf. You
don't have to abandon her for money. Why can't you fight your
boardroom battles from here, anyway?"

"For that we're out of blaster-range," said Fastolf, "e'en for
my _Mistress Quickly_, should the broil spill outward into the star-
roads! Nor shall the Wonder-Race follow such a _taktikos_ as should
hide monkishly behind his lines - " He gave her a magnificent,
bird-hipped bow. " - present company un-monkeyed! - nor yet should
our foster-cousins of Fuji. Nay, an I abode this quietly, I'd lose
my bullies' loyalty on Terminus withal, so sorely I'd be shent. Or
hast a fairer counsel?"

_Ulp. You sn - drakes play for keeps, don't you?_ "Okay, go.
But can't you leave a guard behind, or something? Just a ship,
even? Do you need them all?"

"In truth," bragged Fastolf, "I'm such a warsmith, as might
wreak great gestes in flesh and blood, were my crew down to a
rattling skeleton! But wouldst trust Tarrasque or Macaire with the
Living Sky? Or those other good drakes of my crew, ap- _human_-
weary, and hoard-eager? I'll trust to Nyslet and thee and thy
Doctor alone, ere I gift her such a horse of Troy-not-novant!"

And she saw that he really had no choice at all. She looked
straight into his brazen eyes, and said simply, "You're right. I'm
sorry."

"I too." He shrugged an Atlas shrug, grinned carnivorously
ear-to-ear, and flicked her fringe lightly with a steel-plated claw.
"But enough woes of mine, and my thanks for thy audience. Thou hast
sorrows enough of thine own; I'll tend to those in turn, can it lie
in my power!"

"You can't," she said shortly. "And I don't want to talk
about them at all. Nothing personal!"

"Ah, Bright-Wing Bel-Phoenix!" Fastolf made an unspellable
noise in his pouched throat, which Tegan guessed must be a
Terileptil chortle. "My next name is 'Mumchance', and soon I'm
flown from thy world! Let me carry off all such silences as darken
thy days on fair Terminus, and work 'em into strains shall bring
tears and joy to strangers in other tales quite. Be of good heart
now, and laugh thy dreads to scorn in their passing!"

"I said I won't!"

"Thou shalt." The lizard's calm certainty was more maddening
than his overbearing, chivalrous rudeness. "Thou came'st here with
great burdens past reason, nor willing to bear them out again..."

"All right!" Tegan blew up. "You want the truth? 'Fair
Terminus' makes me sick! I don't like you, or Cherry, or the Vanir,
or me very much, or what it's turned my friends into! It's worse
than when I was travelling with the Doctor: all killing and sickness
and betrayal and everything; and it's going to carry on like that
because what Nyssa's doing is so important; and everyone makes me
out some kind of stupid heroine, and I'm not, and it's all going to
go on and on _forever_, and I don't know what to do about it! Are
you satisfied!"

He gazed at her mournfully, and she felt his danger closer
than ever.

"The dastard prick-hounds of the Vanir," said Fastolf softly,
"did use thee ill, and most shamefully."

She flushed, chilli-hot and stinging. _"How did you know?"_

"Why, 'twere plain as thy nose for any with eyes to see, that
would." He loomed closer, stinking of snakes in the sun and a
bright clean madness, making her feel badly helpless and protected.
His layered eyelids flickered busily. "Thou fearest, lest thy
lovers should learn it; and the station's odious to thee for thy
ravishers' presence? Name me but names, and each shall be rapt off
privily in his season, and learn in my demesnes such lessons as thou
wilt." His dry, spicy breath had sunk to a tempter's whisper, now,
and rustled like dry leaves. "Or mayst leave their fate to my
justice, nor trouble thy dreams with it further. Our dear shall
never know."

She could have kissed the horrid creature, could have killed
him. She tasted hot bile. The part of her that hissed and rattled
was dying to take him up on it.

"You're a torturer yourself," she said, in a small furious
voice. "Why should you care which of us tortures the other? You
don't think there's anything wrong with it, and - Nyssa needn't
know."

"For that thou'rt fair and valiant, and delight'st me," he
said, taking no offence, "and they're vile brutes, and disgust me."

She could hear this gentle, hypnotic voice of his, crooning
over her dark-haired rapist Bolli as the Vanir lay bound to a board
like dead Amina. Bolli had got off on banging her head against the
floor by her hair as he did her, and reminding her a few broken
teeth needn't spoil her as a hostage: the rest of that had all been
the same old. She could see Fastolf's precise, steel-tipped claws
reaching downwards as he talked, and scooping out the man's eye neat
as a quail's egg, for the Terileptil to snack on as he carried on
with his homily. She wanted that nightmare obscenely, and hated
herself worse than Bolli for it.

_But I can put limits on it, he can just kill them or lock
them up and maybe beat them up a bit for me, yes I can choose -_

"No thanks, Fastolf!" she choked up. "I'm sorting this out
myself. I don't know yet what I'm doing, but it's not going to be
on the sly. You just don't tell anyone, all right?"

He stepped back to give her another deep bow, brushing through
a big spray of green-and-gold leaves in the process. Tegan hadn't a
clue whether he was showing respect or taking the mick, or maybe
both; and her automatic irritation at that brought her back to
herself.

For no reason she could name, she suddenly found herself
believing in Nyssa's scaly friend, even if she couldn't _like_ the
old monster!

"I just don't like it here," she heard herself say
plaintively. "All it's got going for it is everyone I care about!
If it wasn't for them, I'd go back home."

"Hast thought on Nyssa's otherworlds?" Fastolf echoed the
Doctor's notion, casual as a friend pointing out the fish menu.
"They're all unlike Terminus, by best account: top-full with brave
challenges and rare works to fill the longest lives, nor yet cut off
altogether from our Nyslet nor them who love her!"

And she knew her answer for the first time when she told him,
"I don't think it'll make the difference. If I can stand one, I can
stand the other!"

Fastolf looked at her with what was somehow a very _satisfied_
wonder.

"If thy heart calls thee back to thy other fight," he advised
her, "in worlds and times where thou art back in Death's fee, then
my heart bids thee fly! For this in thee exceeds even courage of
mine; and surely it shall reward thee, and thou'lt live a score of
spans in thy mayfly moments; nor shall I deem less good of thee an
thou take the bull's other horn, and make thy stand on Terminus.
Nay, Bel-Phoenix, fear not but such as thee shall never lack for
friends wheresoever thou goest; in proof whereof, know me at thy
service in need, nor fear I'll neglect thy call; which on some
scales is no light pledge. Say, then, shall I not be thy friend in
very deed?"

Tegan was struck briefly dumb by the alien's enormous,
romantic, _wilful_ misunderstanding of everything about her. But
she felt clear, for the first time all day; as though her decisions
had already been made, and she was just waiting to hear what they
were. She couldn't argue with him any more!

"Thank you, Fastolf," she said. She reached out a hand
gingerly, and Fastolf closed his claws about it, gently as a
contented cat. They stood there some seconds, then broke, said
polite goodbyes, and went their ways.

Against her will, Tegan thought she was beginning to
understand what Nyssa saw in her appalling Uncle Dragon.

She wandered on a while longer after that, heading in no
particular direction, distracted by an aching relief like having had
a tooth pulled. At last she came to a little clearing deep in a
mixed stand of trees and shrubs, with an ugly abstract sculpture in
it that looked like a super-evolved grey pretzel. There was a pond
at its foot, dappled with pretty coin-like patches of red and gold
scum; beyond that, the clearing was dominated by three short trees
with purplish-green fronds, looking more than accidentally like the
Traken heart palms Nyssa had pointed out in the Master's virtual
groves. Now that Tegan thought about it, the whole Cantabile Memory
Garden reminded her more than a bit of the Master's -

Heavy footsteps crunched up the path behind her. _Followed!_
a thousand instincts blared at her. She spun around to confront the
intruder, but her words sickened and died on her lips as she
recognised him.

Hjort.

_Mord doesn't know. He's paroled them all together!_

She found she'd run out of fear. Hate and despite cramped her
belly. She couldn't have drawn breath to scream if she'd wanted to.

"Lady Tegan?" he drooled, illy. She marked his chronic
joylessness, the blotchiness of his heavy-jowled face, his habitual
shortness of breath on a station where being sick took hard work and
dedication. She wondered how she could ever have thought this
whuffling, treacherous bag of appetites human, let alone started to
like him.

"Hjort," she returned, deadly calm. "I don't have anything to
say to you. But you're not here to make conversation, are you?
Well? Out with it!"

He flushed a bruisy, apoplectic purple, and his upper lip
peeled back into that puffy walrus moustache. "I came to -
apologise."

"You came to do _what_?" Tegan felt a frightening, cold-
blooded fury uncoiling in her, that she hadn't tasted since the days
of the Mara.

He rolled on doggedly. "I'm sorry, Bright-Wing."

"Don't you dirty what he called me with your toilet mouth!"
she shrieked at him: a horrible inhaled shriek that tore at her
throat and tried to choke her. "You're not even the same _species_
as Ottar!" She began eyeing a thin branch of blackthorn that poked
spitefully out of the shrubbery.

_Let it all end, here and now. I don't care any more. Just
let it all be over with!_

"Lady Tegan," her tormentor insisted, sullen as a whipped dog.
"I knew what Sigfus meant to do, him and the others. I didn't want
a part of it. We all believed in his Odin - "

If she could have shut her ears! If she could have moved!

"I - shouldn't have made up that duty, shouldn't have walked
out." He was shaking worse than a walrus with DTs. "I should have
took my chances at stopping him, or at rounding up some decent lads
to take him out."

"Yes, you should have," she agreed icily. "Well, you didn't,
did you? And now you're scared Nyssa will find out. She really
_could_ send you to Hel, couldn't she? She can mess with souls and
things, these days; and she's not very nice anymore when people hurt
her friends!" She bared her teeth at him. "That's all that's
saving any of you!"

"Uffh?"

"I'm not having her do things like _that_ for the sake of
creatures like _you_! I haven't decided what I'll do about the
others, yet. I told some people, though. People I can trust to
keep their mouths shut. It's all going to come out if I have any
little accidents. It'll probably come out anyway, if you want to
know. When I can trust your _diva_ Nyssa to behave herself, and let
Mord or the Republic take care of it." His vile complexion went
greyer. "You can tell your friends that, too!"

"Friends?" he blustered. "Lady Tegan, I don't call them
friends after - "

"Oh, yes, I forgot, you're different. You didn't actually
_do_ anything, did you? Well, do you know what, I never bothered
mentioning you to anyone. The general pardon covers _you_, anyway.
The only way this nasty little story is going to come out is in your
friends' testimony, because I don't like talking about it. So go!"

"Lady Tegan!" For an ugly hopeful moment, the Vanir actually
looked like he might choke on his own self-loathing. "If there were
anything I could do - !"

The cruel chill possessed her entirely, at that.

"Yes," she said, straightening. "You actually want me to
forgive you? You?"

The big man nodded dumbly.

"First off," she said briskly, "while they're free, you can
watch Bolli and the others like a hawk. If any of them so much as
raises a hand to his girlfriend, one of those little accidents
happens to _him_, and we never had this talk, did we?"

He shrank a bit. "No, Lady Tegan..."

"Then you!" She made herself hold his reluctant, watery gaze,
though his presence burned her like the Mara. "You want to know
what it's like? Do the Universe a favour? I'll tell you what you
do. If you want to mix with women, that's fine. But you do
_everything_ they tell you, except to hurt them or someone else. If
_you_ get hurt, that's sad. Maybe you'll learn something! I think
you'd better be very careful if you want to go on keeping mixed
company, don't you?"

He opened and shut his mouth, stricken. "Forever?" he didn't
manage to get out loud.

"Until Nyssa or the Doctor or I tell you it's been enough.
Personally. Freely. And you don't get to tell anyone but me about
this." She laughed cynically, feeling the strength of her rage
beginning to ebb with shocking swiftness. _He mustn't see,
mustn't._ "Sorry, Hjort. That's the price. I forgive you, as far
as you do that. Are you up for it?"

"I - will do as I said," the bulky Vanir choked, around his
own horror. "Thank you, Lady... Tegan." He slunk off beatenly to
his sentence, and the last of her just glee fled with him.

_Why did I do that? He'll probably enjoy it. Oh, what do I
care, what do I care? It's all Terminus. What a dump!_

_I want to go home -_

_- home without the Doctor?_

A backwash of intense revulsion crashed over her: _oh God but
to be with another man, any man but him!, just the sniff of it,
skin's gone all crawly and I want to be sick, and I'm not getting
better_ at all, _and thanks Hjort, I'm not sorry I cursed you, not
one bit! That's my choice, isn't it?_

_Him, and Terminus._

_Home, and all alone..._

_Nyssa! Oh, Nyssa, love, be yourself again! Show me what I
want to do!_

She turned back along the path she'd come, and began making
her determined way to the _agora_, and a private booth in the
Library. She watched where she was treading, and nothing else. She
didn't think she could bear to meet anyone else, before she'd talked
with Nyssa.

A little jade-green insect fluttered off Tegan's grey shawl as she
turned about, and flew to a reedy pool surrounded by marsh-flowers.
It settled on a matching scale of its owner's broad shoulder, and
switched itself off.

Ter'Fastolf Swan-Drake floated to his feet, and coaxed the VR
contacts from his eyes like frozen tears. His frog face was
grinning in avid appreciation. Crests flying, humming _When Lilith
Came To Lullay Town_ in two registers (the principal one being too
profound for hominid hearing to catch, though they'd feel it in
their bones!), he strolled back to his quarters for a long-delayed
nap.

" - what they did with Kokito-sama in Series Five _Adaptrix?_"

"A bit dark for me," declared Frankie, washing it down with
more beer. "I prefer _Swiss-Army Cyber Champion_, myself. Reminds
me of a guy who used to live here, before he bought it at Point 402-
21. Not exactly everyone's pal, but you were glad he was around."

"Yeah, that's good too." Whatever else she was, Frankie
wasn't kidding him about sharing his taste for anime. They'd
reached some pretty obscure levels a while back. A lot about
Terminus was feeling a deal less fake, now he was out of his bed and
fanning away with his friendly neighbourhood immigration officer up
the _Big Hearted Dive_.

Somehow, he hadn't expected folk here to follow anime, not
even the sticky-sweet flavours! He peeked sideways at the stage,
where a hologram of the Tähtilan popster Terttu Tartt was singing
_Funny Money, Honey_ in her infamous new 'Traken' outfit. Out of
respect for her newfound solidarity with The Cause, or maybe the
short cut of her fairy skirts, she'd been put on while the blues
boys rested between sets. Out of respect for music, the volume had
been left at mute.

"I wish they'd lose the Princess Dalek, though!"

Frankie shrugged philosophically. "Daleks are funny to worlds
that haven't met them. That's most of Earthhome, these days. Her
Plungerless Highness sells, big-time!"

"Say that again." Monty was enthralled.

"Her Plungerless Highness?"

"Yeah, that."

"Are you nuts, buster?" She scowled at him severely. "I
don't too _do_ gung twisters! Frag," she added.

"I, ah, can I get you some lube for it?"

"What," she gibed, "on the first date? I _heard_ you good ol'
boys were fast workers, but..."

He flushed headily. "Errrrrm, beer."

"Sorry, Monty. I'm a crude bitch at heart. Ventanans aren't
famous for charm like your mob." They were not. "Yeah: Hop Gardens
again." The home-brand from the hydroponics farm cost three times
as much as the synthie/recycled; but like Frankie said, at least it
_was_ beer, and the _Dive_ didn't mark it up further like any
sensible joint would. He nodded jerkily and hurried over to the
bar, where the short queue gave him time to get his cool back and do
a bit of deep breathing.

He didn't like the bar, though the service was good and
friendly. The barkeep was obviously inclined for banter, if Monty
gave him a wedge; and there were too many people pressing around
him, too many of them talking stuff that made him feel grubby and
ignorant and alien. He was glad to get back to Frankie's table.

"Cheers!" Frankie said, lifting her glass recklessly and
spilling a slop of the precious brew. She didn't look as though she
minded.

"Cheers," he echoed. He'd sooner have had a bourbon, but he'd
been worried about their drinking falling out of step. "Here's to
you, Frankie. I, I'm enjoying this place."

"Thought you would." They clank and drank again. "You're its
kind of guy. I mean, I liked that you see our job needs doing here
and, _bang_, you drop your life to come do it; but some of these
corporate types we've had, they work like bastards and they learn
the manners, but they never get what we're about." She took in the
room with a vehement, clumsy gesture. "You take Ambitious, now,
'Eronner's own spin doctor. She lobbied to get assigned here, after
Nyssa cured lazar's: she saw we had something worth throwing up
everything else for, even not knowing the immortality angle. She
_still_ doesn't get it! She's always working, always talking some
spin or other, still as tight-assed as when she was the face of _The
Way Today!_ Would you believe, she drafted that 'Life is _for_
living, not for _a_ living!' shtick 'Eronner hit the Feds with in
the Market Clearance crisis, and she still can't live it herself?"

"That's sad, Frankie."

"Now, you, your rating says you have to be practically welded
to your work; but then you can come on down here, put that by, and
put the right stuff into having fun in another line." She gave him
one of her great big pizza-chomping smiles. "You're in the right
place! Why, 'Eronn- " The immigration officer broke off, and they
both pulled their armchairs about to face the stage, which had
become the scene of a commotion:

_"You make an Osmo Commotion,"_ sang a ragged chorus from the
front row, as a tall olive guy with short slicked hair and a loose
open shirt attempted to dance close up with Terttu Tartt's hologram
without penetrating her.

_"(wiggle your tush) - "_

"That," Frankie noted appreciatively, "is _good_. That boy's
apt to get lucky tonight, don't you think?"

"I wish I could dance like that." There were some real
senseless notions coming to him this evening!

_"You make an Osmo Commotion - "_

She nudged him. "See the guy and the gal taking bets?"

He was a well-padded, tough-looking Arab type in a viney
waistcoat, she a svelte ash-blonde in black-on-silver. "Uh-huh?"

_"(Pull my trigger,_ kultani_!)"_

"How the guy bets, stamps get you shares it'll happen. He's
Khusro Bubbles. He's owed more guffins than the rest of Terminus
put together!"

"Guffins?"

"It's what we like to bet here. You owe someone a guffin, you
have to surprise them with a favour, and they have to like it. It's
sort of an honour thing." She chuckled. "Sometimes Khusro gives a
truckload away, just for a quiet life. Never keeps him from another
bet, though."

A gorgeous Oriental in a green sarong suddenly cooed, "Tony
_oh God I waaahnt you!_" in a very bad Nordic accent that still
kicked Monty right in the root of his spine. The dancer didn't miss
a beat, as his arm slid in and out of the Tartt's slender back; but
a bunch of the bettors groaned, one of them donating the finger
before stumping off to a distant table. Ms Bad Accent looked a
question at Khusro Bubbles. He hesitated, made a vaguely generous
gesture which seemed to satisfy her, and vaulted fitly onto the
stage to join Tony and the hologram. A volley of cheers ensued,
many of them heavily ironic.

"Listen," Frankie said, seeing the band forming up into a
menacing phalanx by the bar, "I meant to get around to this
earlier - "

_No..._

" - I don't think you should be shy about this job opening."
She cocked her head and screwed up her eyes at him, didn't seem to
find his blank look surprising. "Thought it might not have gotten
into your head. Now Alphard's snuffed it, this Oil Age 'apprentice'
of his is bound to take over." She snorted. "Maybe she's this big
time-travelling super-genius, and maybe not, if you get me! But
she's going to need an apprentice of her own PDQ, and not just like
she was to him, either. She has to have someone who understands
modern tech better than she does: more like a junior partner, even."
She moistened her mouth generously. "Now, Goldspink and Xing-Fayoum
and Deacon are all in that kind of league; but it's not really any
of their lines, and they've all got their own little empires they're
happy in. You go for it, you might come out top of the list. You
can't tell me _that's_ a job like any other! Maybe that's why you
were 'sent' here in the first place." She winked knowingly.

"You a believer, then, Frankie?"

"No," she said, "but, the way I see it, all the luck we
haven't been having has got to come out the system, sooner or
later!"

"Ah, yeah," he said slyly. "I see how a bookie here would end
up owed all those favours..."

She booted the leg of his chair. Spike and the Drivers had
repossessed the stage, and the aptly-haired Spike was now
threatening to kick off with something called _Noodle Factory
Blues_. The last set had been good stuff; and now Monty was relaxed
a bit, he reckoned he could look forward to this one.

"Thanks, Frankie! I'll surely ask after that." Then he
realised what she'd just been pointing him at.

Shit_fire_!

Spike Juss struck up the band -

Si shared a bottle of Ned Tran's Bonzer Bacchup with his terminal:

_And your world's a battlefield where your soul lies
in the mud,_
_And your dear dead hand's my anchor -_
_Here I stay,_
_But into realms we dreamed of, and wine as black as blood_
_I'll fly away -_
_I'll fly away_

"And now, ladies, gentlemen, egalitarians and others," Spike
announced, into the dying applause for _I'm Gonna Disgrace Myself_,
"we have another instrumental piece for you, a little thing Liane
and Roust put together in two nights after the recent nastiness.
Can we have your fullest attention please, respecting a great lady
and absent friend, for the very first performance ever of _Yella
Dane's Blues_?"

They launched into it on the beat of silence that followed:
seductive, jagged, and bare-boned by turns, and bluer than the great
lady herself in _The Pleasures of President Platina_. Monty
couldn't credit what they were playing, or how they played it! They
had the blues so down, they could have been playing the stews of Hey
Louise. (Not that Monty was too familiar with those, personally.
If you wanted a good time in old Louloubourg, even when you were in
the money, either you had acres more charm than he did, or you were
into nasty shit he never wanted to mess with.)

When it was all over, which was ages later and too soon,
Frankie mopped her broad flat face unashamedly with a great plain
linen handkerchief. Then she looked at him, and passed it on. He
was mortified for a moment, then exalted, and then he just wiped his
eyes and gave it back to her. No-one had enough shit between their
ears to clap. A few couples hugged; a few more parties headed
purposefully towards Big Arturo and his sidekicks at the bar; a grey
guy in a Dineron pinstripe put his head in his hands and dissolved
into bitter sobbing, bringing the barmaid with the candyfloss hairdo
ducking out of her work and over to his table. Pretty much everyone
else automatically started chattering to each other, while the
Drivers launched into something backgroundy to which no-one paid
attention.

"Yeah, ah, Frankie, I wasn't expecting that, here. You know,
I thought y'all - Nyssa had a big problem with the porn brigade?"

Her grin couldn't quite have been happy, but it still split
her face like a Pollywog's. "She does. You don't know Yella's
story, then?"

He wasn't sure how much he should! "SaXar retired her early,
didn't they? Bad one?"

Frankie grimaced. "She was too good at playing the strong
sympathetic woman, never mind that they hand-picked her for it in
the first place! They reckoned they'd cash the shock of retiring
her at her height; so they came up with this fantasy where she gets
raped to undeath by a mob of tertiary lazars, and of course the
_point_ is it's 'authentic'." The Ventanan's jaw muscles bunched
angrily. "Recorded her onset stages for an epilogue, and then sent
her on to us. She was with the same batch as Her Honour..."

He hadn't known that much! "She agreed to _that_?"

"She'd have been better killing herself than refusing. She
was gene-bonded, remember - fit to die badly if she didn't get
SaXar's proprietary supplements. If she wouldn't take their
retirement offer for her contract, she'd have spent about the next
thirty years doing unsanitary and trash-victim and monster-fuck
inside it, which is more than anyone could stand sane. At least
with retirement they'd have to break the bonding, and there was a
chance of her _not_ catching it, and a chance Terminus could cure
her afterwards - and either way, she'd never have to see anyone from
her corp again. Not that she cared about anything much by the time
she got to Terminus, the way I hear it. Nyssa had her in therapy
for two years before her depression broke enough to let her do
anything useful - but, boy, wasn't she some character afterwards!"

"Oh, shit. _Frankie._"

"Strange, though, and always a loner. Celibate as a Grey Nun
till the day she died, except there's a story that she and Nyssa
were lovers for a while as part of the therapy. I don't think it
sounds like either of 'em, myself. Always good enough friends,
though; and neither of them ever had many. She got to be a pretty-
damn-good lignicrafter; and then she set up her Cabaret Workshop,
and she put pretty much everything into that." Frankie, tough
though she was, shivered at the next bit. "When the Odinists broke
into her studio in the revolt, she took out two dropping a bank of
lighting from a gantry, and then opened up on the rest with an
effects laser, so they'd kill her before they thought. You get the
picture."

"Yeah," he said bleakly. He got it too well.

"Hey. We're all going to meet it in the end, aren't we?
Specially now we don't just dry up and blow away any more: it's got
to be an accident or a fight. Me, I'd kind of like to go out that
well, when my number comes up." She toasted Yella Dane heavily,
terminating her beer. "At least she got a dozen good years out of
it, and you see how people here liked what she did with them. Fancy
another brew?"

Monty's was only two-thirds finished, but he couldn't say no,
so he didn't. She was gone awhile, with the after-effects of _Yella
Dane's Blues_ still bottlenecking the bar and all. The band moved
onto an upbeat song, _Bill and Flexi_. He thought on things that
didn't fit.

"...This Cabaret?"

"Hell, that's going to leave a hole! It used to be the about
the only erotic show on Terminus."

"I, I thought that wasn't allowed? Oh. 'Cause she was
Nyssa's friend, right?"

"No, she was trying to make the _opposite_ of porn. Radical,
you know? Dance, song, mime, drama, no actual sex even when Lindy
Bell played comedy. Questions... It was too strong to take much
of: either you'd come away wanting to make love to someone _right
now_, or you'd never feel sexy again until it'd worn off. Too rich
for my blood, I tell you. You could see it gave 'Eronner the
creeps, but she's a prude anyway."

He was just getting more confused. "So, what, but she
wouldn't put her foot down?"

_"On what grounds?"_ Frankie mimicked Nyssa's clear,
aristocratic accents grossly. "The law says no 'industrial sex', it
doesn't make her the Taste Police - even if the local sheep think
different. She hates the _Ultimate Alien Schoolgirl_ take on her,
but she couldn't stop _Campestris_ running a season of it two years
back! Knocked the boycott campaign on the head too, to be fair to
her."

"_That's_ allowed? Here?"

"Sure, I've got _Pirate Kings_ at home. I love it. Sweet, in
its weird way."

"Ah, I thought so too. Wish I hadn't left mine back on board
the _Lateness_, now..."

She chuckled and grinned sideways. "She isn't really a bit
like that, you know. She isn't half that goody-goody, and she can
be a stone-cold little bitch at times."

He put his beer down and looked at her squarely. "Frankie,
you, you keep saying things like that. Weren't you putting me on
just a bit, back at the interview?"

"Yeah, you noticed!" She stretched backwards complacently.
Monty carefully kept his eyes on her face. "Not now, though."

"You sound like you don't like her much." _Getting scary out
here..._

"I don't," said Frankie simply. "Admire her, I guess, even
kind of love her - she's hard not to, you'll understand after you've
been here a while - but then I loved my sister back home a sight
more, and I'd never see her more'n once a year, 'cause she drove me
nuts! I think Ms Traken's been Mayor about five years too long; and
after what just happened, there's a lot of us who'll be voting for
Vernier Scipio next time round, if the leery bastard'll stand.
Cherry and the other top dogs are too close to her: we need someone
who won't be _taking things under advisement_ all the time, if you
get me!" She wrinkled her face comically. "We'll probably get a
hiding from the sheep vote, of course. Do I have you figured right
for a goat?"

"I... better take that under advisement." He winked at her.

Frankie hooted. "Welcome to the Malcontent Minonty, Mority!
Damn! We can always do with a few more clear heads. Tell you what:
there's liable to be a caucus party or two coming up soon, to test
the waters. How's about you come along, see what you think?"

"I'd like to do that," he said slowly, drawing it out...

_"And she's trampling my heart beneath her great big goody-
gumboots shoes - shoes - shoes - "_

_...Is this for real,_ his rational routines were yattering;
_isn't getting in on the ground floor of a real opposition a damn
sight less risky than some half-assed bit of sabotage crammed into
some tight little window that mightn't open anyhow, which most
likely gets me trashed into the bargain?_ Monty could live fine and
happily without Plan B; but a nasty feeling down in his gut was
squealing that caucus parties weren't exactly what Moonlight
Sorensen was expecting of him. Was he really finding excuses to
sell the free Universe down the river, for the first good night out
he got?

"Date, then! You're the kind of guy we're gonna need behind
us..."

_"I got the Shit! My girl has left me for a passion for a
Traken, blues!"_

"...me from the inside, you from the outside. Grab coffees
and check notes afterwards. Anything that makes sense to both of
us, probably _does_ make sense. Make sense to you, Genius?"

"Duh. I guess."

"You can't fool an Immigration Mistress," Frankie told him
pointedly. "Like your old pal Ter'Just-Call-Me-Shakespeare says,
modesty's a crappy kind of virtue."

Monty summoned the spirit of Dick Farquhar to his aid.
"You're not so bad yourself, Frankie." Beat. Beat. "Here's to us
goats, then!"

Her glass kissed his enthusiastically. "I'll drink to
_that_!"

The hell with Sorensen anyway. The Universe could wait until
tomorrow.

"Please, send her in. - Hello, Tegan!"

It was still early, but Nyssa sat propped up in bed against a
mountain of huge white pillows. Her coverlet and pyjamas were white
with a simple silver trim: winter and soul's cord, Traken mourning
again. She looked tiny, feeble, and lost in the bedclothes.

"Nyssa!" Tegan trotted over to her, forgetting for a moment
why she'd come, and pressed her cold hands. The Traken's face was
pale, unhealthy, and pitted, as if she were just coming out of
chicken-pox, and her hair was salted with dead grey. _She looks
like her own ghost!_ "You look - " She bit her tongue. " - so
tired! Are you taking care of yourself?"

But the eyes and the wan smile were Nyssa's own. "Tegan!" she
said, disengaging her hands and patting her friend's lightly.
"You're being tactful! I look terrible; but the chaos-damage is
healing very quickly now. It's nothing. Mainly I really am tired,
and as you see I'm taking care of that." She blinked slowly, with
false luxury. "You, on the other hand, are looking very smart and
well today! But I don't think you came here to talk about my
convalescence? I get quite enough of that with the medics."

_She's not being short. She really is tired! Cut to it,
then._ "Not if you don't want to." She let a picnic's smile seep
up to her lips. "Nyssa, you won't believe what happened today in
Garden Heart!" Pause. "The Doctor - the Doctor proposed to me!"

Nyssa's mouth twitched oddly. "Proposed what?"

"Marriage, silly!"

The calculating blink that Tegan hated. "What did you tell
him?"

"I told him I'd tell him tomorrow... Nyssa, I just don't
know!"

It seemed so quiet in that long moment, every rustle of the
pillowcases was like sliding cymbals. "If you don't know, Tegan,"
said Nyssa, then, "isn't that already an answer?"

"No! I want to!" Her voice dwindled. "I want him. But
it's...everything that goes with him...."

"I don't understand."

"It's the kind of things that happen around him! It got worse
after you left. That Dalek business - I had to walk out on him, at
the end. If I'd seen much more like that, I wouldn't have wanted to
carry on living. And this time was worst of all, and we've only
just started." She clenched her jaw furiously, then went on, "But
if I don't care enough to enjoy life with him, anyway, I don't
deserve it! Nyssa, what am I going to do?"

Nyssa's expression went academic. "Surely - if he's asking
that of you - the adventures will be over anyway?"

Tegan hesitated. "Sort of. Has he spoken to you about that?"

"I do know what's happening to him; yes. He hasn't told me
any of his plans, though. But if he's serious about settling down
with you here - "

"I don't know that I want to stay here, Nyssa. You've done so
well, but I don't _like_ it any more! Not after all that's
happened."

"I know what you mean," the other woman agreed, amazingly. "I
can't bear the thought of staying where I might see _'Meg'_.
There's been so much horror here since you came. But surely that
doesn't dictate your answer to him?"

"I know, I know, your colonies. He likes the sound of Joya.
I'd prefer Celestine, if I had to pick one. He'd go along with it,
I know. But it's all still the adventure to me, don't you see? A
great big one in a horrible century where you have horrible monsters
for enemies, and they're going to keep on doing horrible things to
get at you, and it's going to go on forever and ever until they get
us!"

Nyssa nodded wisely. "I feel like that about entropy."

"I don't understand it enough. I understand bad people,
though. Bad things. And he's not going to be what he was against
them, is he? I don't even know what he's going to turn into!
And... I'm not strong enough to build his new life on, and he
shouldn't anyway, if that's what he wants, and - I love him, but I'm
trying to see it working, and I can't, and I just - don't -
_know_!"

"You know," said Nyssa coolly, "I'd be a lot more impressed
with all this, if he ever courted you when there wasn't something
wrong with him."

Just like that, Tegan's lovely bubble went pop, and she felt
its suds tearing her eyes. She didn't think Nyssa had ever said a
crueller thing to her. _That's it! I knew..._

"You're right." She cleared her throat, to get her voice
back. An old black depression was roaring back from her empty
places, and she had to pause a long moment to tell it _No_. "I want
to go home. I want my Earth, and I want my life to be short enough
that I have to squeeze everything out of it while I've got it! I'm
sorry, Nyssa..."

"Don't be, Tegan. I was wrong ever to force immortality on
you; and giving it up to live your own philosophy is very brave.
Besides, maybe one day - when the Doctor's his old true self, and
all our crises are past - you and Si will come back here, even if
only to visit. You have my promise, I'll never press you into
anything again."

_Oh, do, now!_ cried Tegan's inner traitor; but she said
briskly, "It isn't 'me and Si' any more, Nyssa. I don't think he'd
leave you on Terminus, anyway. I really don't!"

"I think he will, Tegan." Her old friend's dispassion made
Tegan want to do something loud and upsetting, but she reined
herself back. "He has to publish _Keeping up the Stars_ in his own
age, you know. That's written." The Traken pursed her lips. "If
the Doctor has to leave us or lose time travel, we can't count on
sending it back any more. And I think you'll both see many things
very differently, back in your own century."

"He won't leave _this_!" Tegan gestured widely to take in
eternal life, and the civilised stars, and the fatal beauty of
Terminus and its founding Mayor. How could Nyssa get on so well
with Si, and not see that?

"He isn't an adventurer, dear heart; he's a poet. Poets come
home."

"I couldn't bear it if he went home with me and died there,
Nyssa! He doesn't have to!"

"Well," said Nyssa, apparently untouched, "he may come back,
as I said. And it won't just be going back with _you_. It'll be
going back to Old Earth, now he's seen what's beyond and what might
happen. I think he'll almost have to do that."

"Maybe." Tegan wasn't convinced. "Nyssa, I feel so bad about
this! We'd all just be leaving you alone..."

"Oh, it isn't really alone, Tegan. Not with all my old
friends from Terminus, and Kari and Olvir coming back soon.
Besides, as I told you, I've lost my joy of this station too: I need
a break on my own account!" The little Traken looked down at her
hands, whose fingers were busily lacing together. She pulled them
apart, and folded them neatly before her. "I have a last long trip
to make, away from everything, before I settle down here as _diva_.
Before I'll be fit to! I can't take company on that; not even yours
or the others'."

_i-Traken! She's going on a virtual holiday, to recover with
her precious phantoms. Maybe that's the only thing for her._ And:
_I wonder what it'll take, to bring her back afterwards..?_

Nyssa's eyes were drooping, and Tegan was too drained herself
to carry on much longer. Besides, what more could they say after
all that? She painted on a sad fond smile, and the feelings came
with it. "You should sleep now, Sheila!"

She moved to tuck her old friend in, one more time like the
old days; but the flecked brown curls tilted faintly from side to
side on the broad pillows. "I'll sit awhile longer, Tegan." And
she got her smile back. "Thank you anyway!"

"Goodnight, then!" said Tegan awkwardly. She got that back
too, and walked blindly past the Vanir outside the door. The
emptiness where her bubble had burst was still roaring.

She couldn't believe that Nyssa hadn't even tried to talk her
into staying. She couldn't believe how much she'd been counting on
her succeeding!

_Gone, gone, gone..._

It couldn't all finish like this!

_Just do it, Tegan!_

- _What put_ that _into my head?_ Tegan cringed from the
answer; for the voice was the voice of her madness, speaking from
beer and mirror and Master's spell: her very own private Mara, to
keep her crazy company, back alone on Earth. The last thing she'd
been missing!

- _I don't believe in you. I won't hear voices. Go away!_

She closed her mind against its threat, and felt the sane
silence fold around her again. She hurried off faster, not caring
where in Terminus she was going. She'd have to take care,
especially if she was going home: think straight, healthy, sensible
thoughts, whatever it cost her. Another crack-up like after Disease
of the Daleks, and she didn't think anything would be able to put
her back together again. _Voices!_

Now that the Master's lies had died with him, she couldn't
even go back to blaming it on poor dead Adric.

--

TO BE CONCLUDED in Episode Twenty-Four, 'Keeping up the Stars'.

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Twenty-Fourth Episode: Keeping up the Stars*

_"She was dearer than breath, she was sweeter than wine,_
_She's blown away with the dusts of time,_
_And, love, I know you loved her well._
_She breaks your nights, she haunts your days,_
_She drains your joy in a thousand ways,_
_And - since she's carried yours away -_
_Love, may I lend you my heart?"_

- Amina's first song to Nyssa, mod. from trad. Hausa air, trans.
Amina & Nyssa, c. SA 2184; from Her personal documents, by
permission of the Keeper's Museum.

Nyssa sent for Si to come visit her, after the blow fell. The
shockwaves from Tegan's defection were still bouncing around
Terminus. He'd been on a cleansing regimen since he'd had his
advance warning, three days since: fruits, beans, rice, water, light
exercise, bright music, and strictly no composition. He'd also
drawn up a couple of longhand copies of _Hello, Andromeda_, to sell
on through Pramod. With the proceeds of that, plus the little he
had left of his starting stake, he'd been able to afford a serious
visit to the tailor.

His new suit was loose black artificial silks cut in a simple
neo-Chinese style, with subtle but defining Trakenising touches. It
proclaimed his own allegiances as eloquently as he and Leia Sempster
knew how, and it was worth clearing himself out for. His next
interview with Nyssa would be the most important of his life, he was
certain. He was prepared for her invitation a day before he got it.

Nyssa was beautiful again, as poised and potent as the very
day he'd met her, out of mourning in midnight blue and an overskirt
streaked with all the colours of night. She told him what she
wanted from him.

"Go," she said. "Please, go."

"You can ask me a lot, old thing," he told her calmly, "but
not that. There's nowhere else worth going."

"This is not your place to be. You don't belong here. You
belong on Old Earth, lighting the first fires of the Star Age.
Please, don't make this hard for me!"

"Modest Rostov," he noted, "_Oilseed Poets._ Gallswallow
Dogthrottle mailed me some of his choicer effusions. You might at
least quote someone who didn't misunderstand me so laughably! Or is
this another ploy to drive me howling into eternal night?" She
opened her mouth, but he shook his head and reminded her, "We were
all going to be friends together as long as we could, until you
passed too far into _diva_-dom for it to work any more. Remember?
I haven't changed." He let just a hint of his hurt show on his
face. "I'm not about to dog your footsteps, dear heart. Call for
me when you want to talk, or don't. Don't ask me to go where I
can't _hear_ you call, though. I won't."

"But Tegan - " She must have read him there, for she blushed
wretchedly and swallowed. "For Time's sake, then, if not Tegan's!
You haven't written _Keeping up the Stars_ yet; and with the Doctor
damaged, we may never be able to send it back if we delay!"

Tegan had betrayed them. Tegan was in the hospital, busy
abandoning life, having her lazargens irradiated away so she could
go back home to be a lonely receptionist, an unhappy old woman, and
a peaceful corpse. In Nyssa's darkest hour, her adored companion
had quite simply cut out her heart, letting her know that she loved
the petty deaths and the big one better than her. And if Nyssa
seemed heartless now, except for a few raw fibres that still clung
to Tegan, how was that a wonder?

"I won't."

No long lovely years for any of them, now, unless Si could
find a word, make a way, lend a heart. Nyssa might not want one any
more; but she was _diva_ of Terminus, Keeper of the memory of
Traken, mother of the Universe's hope for resurrection. Even had he
not loved her, she couldn't be allowed to go the inhuman road. Any
other danger was small beer beside that!

Anyway, 'had he not loved her' was a joke in the very worst of
taste.

Her voice grew tart. "Si, we have a common Commitment on
Terminus. Everything we do, in great or small, is to fight back the
long night, to save truth and life from the worms that eat them. If
you even make a paradox _likely_, you go against that; you strike a
small blow on the other side! Please don't do such a thing. Even
if you can't stay with us physically, I want you to be - _with_ us,
always! You must understand that, mustn't you?"

"Of course I must," he said with gentle humour, ignoring her
disagreeably didactic tone. "Entropy is a horror, isn't it? Every
frivolous use of energy speeds it on; every idle failure of
efficiency is really a little treason, isn't it?"

"Yes! But 'treason' is too harsh for the little things,
unless they're a way of life. We are only mortal!"

"Aesthetics above energy-efficiency is a way of life, surely?"

"Good art tends towards elegance," asserted Nyssa, "and the
elegant tends to the efficient. Where it's less than optimal, we're
buying something precious with the difference. You, of all people,
can't call that _frivolous_?"

"Just so." He stroked his cheek, looking down on her fondly.
"And I, too, propose to buy something precious with the difference!"

"This is paradox! The harm isn't even comparable!"

"Then I suppose I must think it's very important."

Nyssa winced, and was silent for a very long half-minute.
Finally she looked up at him, out of her terriblest oldest eyes.
He'd bruised her.

"Si, this is a secret. Have you heard of the Osirans?"

"I think the Doctor's mentioned them, yes. Another god-race,
weren't they?"

"The oldest and greatest we know. They knew their own
importance. They came to violate causality and reason as a matter
of right." She glared at him. "Our Universe was alive in those
days, far better able to bear such treatment than now.

"They abused it to death. Their leader Great Osiris died to
resurrect it, and bought only time. They're gone, now: reality
couldn't take their weight. All we have, all we fight, all we've
lost - it's their fault." She drew in a sharp breath through her
teeth. "There are creatures from dead continua that don't even
_try_ to conserve: pure ego, pure self-indulgence, that devour every
reality that isn't strong enough to resist them. You've seen a
little of Hastur, already.

"_That_ is the other side, Simon! This is how it begins, but
that is how it ends. Destroying the logic and life of our own
Creation, because our desires are so 'important'. If you were to
make a paradox for my sake - I can't say! You mustn't. You see
that, now."

Startled, he returned her courtesy, and thought hard about all
that. And then he saw his answer, and actually hesitated a moment
more before replying.

"Nyssa - what paradox? We have all time ahead of us, and it's
most unlikely we'll never have access to time-travel again. I only
have to write the wretched thing here, and the game's practically
saved already."

"You haven't," she dismissed, "and there are too many things
that could go wrong with it, if you had."

"I don't accept that, my fair. Think what you were telling me
about Elissa and the Doctor; how their backtime might change from
our point of view, so as to avoid paradox."

She blinked. "How can you avoid paradox if you've written
something - something so great, so important! - and then don't ever
go back to write it?"

"Someone else will just have written it using my name, won't
they? A clever pastiche, by someone with heart and talent, taking
advantage of my disappearance. There's no paradox there."

"You'd allow _that_?" He'd shocked her utterly; and he caught
a flicker of fearful delight in her grey eyes before the shutters
crashed down again.

"Si," she said. "That, of all things, I can't allow. To lose
the best thing you ever do, to let Time re-write you a lesser man...
For shame! If you maim yourself like this, I won't know you!"

He bowed his head.

"You," he said flatly, "are set fair to maim yourself right
here on Terminus. I'd go in a mo', if there were anyone I trusted
to keep you in line."

"You won't believe this," prognosed Nyssa, "but I know exactly
what you mean. I shouldn't be worthy of life, if I let mine become
such a wasteland. Well, I don't mean to. I have a trip planned,
after the Doctor leaves; then I mean to make a new start, truly, and
let some light and hope back into everything!" She made a curtain-
shaking motion. "Please trust me, Si! I dream that you and Tegan
will come back here, some day. I'll have had all the time I need to
set things right; and it need not be long for you, after all! Then
you'll see us - Terminus - as we ought to be, as you both deserve
it. And... with you as _you'll_ be, after you've written your
masterpiece! Please?"

She'd caught his heart again, and left him speechless. How
could he refuse - ?

"I have read it." He knew she hadn't, wouldn't until he'd
left. "I thought it was wonderful!"

He bowed his head again, and stepped back.

"I'd better pop down the hospital, then," he said.

M: If the Universe ever gets out of this alive, someone's going
right over my knee.

C: Yeah. The devious, underhanded little baggage!

M: Quite.

C: If you don't mean me, we're going to fight.

- Conversation overheard aboard the TRS _Honey Sun_, outward bound
from Terminus to Chalcedony Colony, shortly after the announcement
of...

Passing towards Thunderfac on a slender gallery that slanted up from
The Street Behind The Sky, Monty saw a celebrity couple approaching
along one of the lower crosswalks. The big black Amazon in light
body armour was unmistakable: a figure straight out of fantasy who
made Macha Negra look like a cheaply-endowed wimp. She walked
slowly, stiffly, more like a tipsy tourist than the sector's
greatest warrior. The stocky little butch at her side went with
that dangerous readiness of someone whose partner was walking
wounded: no-one else had elected to use that crosswalk at all.

The new Chief Engineer was far worse than walking wounded, he
knew.

He slowed his pace a little, as their conversation came into
range:

"... 'therapeutic', my black hole! I don't _like_ the great
unwashed outdoors!" The big woman's tones were rusty, and their
emphasis kind of unconvincing, like she was reciting something she
only partly understood.

"Half of you did," Cats Hambridge contradicted her. "It's a
royal pain, but I know what she's saying. You need to get out under
the big skies too, girl, find what you are there - "

Some instinct snapped her glare up to Monty, who had slowed
down too much, or turned too far their way. He touched his forelock
sheepishly, smiled, and mended his pace.

So there was no opening as the tough-nut Oil Ager's
apprentice, which it looked like it might not be too bad a loss all
things considered; and Monty was headed for an interview with
Goldspink at the Thunderfac defence plant, for a good tech position
that left most of his options open. He had his date with Frankie
for Scipio's first caucus party next eighthday, though.

Seemed he might have to settle for life as one of the local
good guys, after all...

_"For thee I love, dear daughter of Australia:_
_In none but thee does human touch divine._
_In no adventure would I ever fail ya:_
_Thou art my heart-in-hand, my soul's red wine."_

[In a large, hasty hand:] _ADRIC COULD DO BETTER THAN THIS!_

[The first four lines are crossed out; then re-copied
carefully in a different ink and a more fluent script,
evidently at a much later date, with the addition:]

_"Yet must I dwell in exile far from thee,_
_Because thou lov'st a Time Lord more than me."_

- Private journal of Nyssa of Traken, in section containing TARDIS
juvenilia of inapplicable date: from Her personal documents
(Restricted Clearance Code Black), by permission of the Keeper's
Museum and some creative credentials.

Tegan was having bad times, lately.

Three minutes, to turn the Doctor down.

Four days in isolation and weird radiation therapy, her
immortality putting her through high hay-fever and dizzies and
diarrhoea as it fought being burnt away. Another day getting back
her concentration, digestion, and looks.

Two more days in a converted Immigration apartment, feeling
under the weather, and slowly realising that was just being normal
again. Waiting there for Si _(I don't want this!)_ to finish his
own course, so the Doctor could take them home. She mailed Cats, to
try and make things up between them, and then found herself dreading
the answer. The reply had been brisk, friendly, co-signed by Meg,
and sent from a colony ship called the _Honey Sun_. Honey_moon_,
more like!

_"We know you'll make good, T. Lots of luck. Ta-ra!"_

Half an hour, to her last date with the Doctor, to book in for
her time-flight. She should have got moving already, she hated
being rushed. She'd get up in a minute.

"Tegan?" said the door intercom, and started her to her feet
in a flutter.

"Nyssa! C-come in!"

Nyssa's decon suit wasn't grey or green like all the others
she'd seen: it was matt copper set off with lozenges in dull jewel
colours, nearly as lovely as its owner. The hood was so nearly
transparent, it looked like a wrinkled halo. "Hello, Tegan... You
knew I'd come to say goodbye, didn't you?"

"I'd have had words with you, if you hadn't!"

The Traken cocked her head slightly, as she often did when
straining to catch a joke. "Oh, Tegan! Goodbye, then. I do truly
hope you'll come back one day, when everything's mended!"

"Yes, well," said Tegan, feeling her voice trying to crack up.
"So do I, mate. But I won't believe it until it happens, if you
don't mind, or I'll never be able to start a proper life back home!
You're - strong wine, you know? I'm glad I came, whatever
happened... glad I got to know you again, little Sheila! Goodbye!"

Nyssa blinked, and met her eyes levelly. "'Whatever'! Are
any of them still alive, Tegan?"

"Who - " A moment of blankness, then a real head of anger.
"Someone _told_ you!"

"Only your scent and manner afterwards. You didn't want it
known, and I'd have been foul to push you. I hoped you'd come
forward in your own time. But if you're going to leave, I'd like to
know whom I can't trust."

"I - "

Nyssa reached out a gloved hand. Cautiously, Tegan took it.

"You thought I'd do something horrible to them, after how I
behaved with the Rani. I understand. My dear, I can't think of
anything bad enough, so I'll just let the usual authorities handle
them. Whose mouths do I need to open?"

"Tuyet knows." Tegan's voice shrank. "Julie has evidence.
And Hjort - saw me afterwards, but I told them all to keep quiet
until they heard different. I told Tuyet - to use her judgement, if
I wasn't around any more."

She felt obscurely let down by Nyssa's moderation, even though
it was far more and less than she'd dared hope for. She stared into
her friend's grey eyes, trying desperately to think of a better note
to leave on.

_What haven't we said already?_

"I'm, going to dream about you? And picnics, and swimming,
and dancing, and life? And I'm never going to feel bad about it
again!" She took a deep breath. Nyssa didn't answer. Tegan spoke
faster and louder. "And Si and I, I guess we'll both start over,
then. And you - you just take care, all right!"

Nyssa nodded and half-smiled, as alien as the day they'd met.
Tegan pulled back her hand for the last time.

And Nyssa moved to kiss her, embracing her lightly and dearly,
and only remembering her obstructing decon hood at the last moment.
She put her head on Tegan's shoulder, pressing the bland plastic
shell against the human woman's cheek.

"I really do love you, Tegan. Be well, always."

Tegan squeezed back for one long happy instant, and then they
were standing apart again. _If I stay one more second, I might not
be able to go..._ "Bye!" she whispered, and walked briskly away,
out the door and towards the bay where the TARDIS waited for her.

As soon as her dearest friend was out of sight, Nyssa hurried
back to the Helm Room, her mind already turning to harder matters.
She had a very full schedule ahead of her.

_"And though we can't follow you, not like you followed
through,_
_Man, we gotta stick close to our dreams!"_

- _Dear Dead Hand_, Annihilism, KY3; without permission of the Office of
the Divine Censor of the Republic.

Dying again, Si found the bright hues of Nyssa's End faded into a
watercolour wash, already passing into dream before he'd even left
them. It was difficult and thankless trying to believe in it, or
care. He spent his last quarter-hour in the hospital staring at his
watch; then the sealed ambulance came to take him to the TARDIS, and
he ignored the windows, letting their light fan over him,
uninterpreted as disco strobes. He despised disco. He stepped out
the sliding doors at his destination, and let the ambulance abandon
him too. He peered about with bland detachment at the sterile
little bay, the end of Terminus. The TARDIS was there with
everyone's luggage waiting in front of it, their first taste of
home.

Tegan was there, chatting with Fastolf of all people, a hectic
animation afflicting both of them. The Terileptil drama king was
leaving today too, to lead his 'bullies' into a small mercantile war
on his own homeworld. No doubt he'd make it a bravura production!

The Doctor was lounging against the faded blue door of the
TARDIS, his eyes vague and wandering, face turned upwards. He took
a moment to notice Si, then came over and shook his hand vigorously
like a long-lost friend's.

"Er, if 'twere done, 'twere best done quickly, and all that,
don't you think?" Si nodded. The Doctor called loudly, "Tegan!"

Fastolf swept them all a great bow, snapped a salute with
claws and crests, and glided off sans more ado, bellowing, "Fortune
favour us all, fair friends! A merry day, and we shall meet again!"

"Bye!" Tegan cried back, and turned reluctantly to Si. They
met each other halfway, and exchanged a long wounded look of mutual
sympathy. No words. The Doctor cleared his throat, and opened up
the TARDIS. Tegan trotted after him, turning curiously back at the
door. "Come on!"

Si's feet hadn't shifted. He frowned, grimaced apologetically
- and saw the world coming on in _Wizard of Oz_ colour again. A
flood of tensions poured off him.

"I'm not going."

The Doctor snorted. "You most certainly are! You're
implicated in a paradox, in case you've forgotten."

Tegan backed him up. "Nyssa wants you on Earth, Si! She'll
send for you, if she ever gets a chance. You don't even have a
trade here!"

"Nyssa's choices are hers, and mine are my own. I'll turn my
hand to what I must." He gave her their old, almost-lovers' smile.
"Goodbye, Tegan. Doctor."

"_Keeping up the Stars_," insisted the Doctor angrily, "will
be a paradox! Weren't you listening, when I told you how
destructive those are? Didn't Nyssa drum it into you? This is no
occasion for poetic poses!"

"Yes," said Si ruefully, "I'm rather neatly bound into this
little bit of closure, aren't I? It's almost as if I had been all
along... Didn't you also mention that prophecy-bindings are a tad
unsavoury, too? _'Souls don't stand up well to that kind of
abuse'_, wasn't that the word?" He smiled, but he let his resolve
glint through. "Well, I'm not playing. I'm getting out my free
will, and taking a whack at the knot with it, and I'll stand by
whatever comes of it. You know how these things go."

The Doctor went very quiet for a moment. "Goodbye, then!" he
said gruffly, and was gone into the TARDIS. The last Si saw of
either of them was Tegan's quick thumbs-up as the door closed behind
her.

EEEEEE-AWWWW, EEEEE-AWWWW, whoosh.

Gone.

Si turned back to his rekindled Terminus. A thought came to
him: _I'm not anyone's anything here, now! Pleased to meet you,
Cit'Westport. Here's your very own plot of eternity. What do you
mean to make of it?_

He hadn't a glorious clue.

The phlegm fell away from Si's throat. He could feel a song
coming on.

_"...and letting go now is like a passport to anywhere..._
_with time on my hands I can make a new start..._
_I just didn't want to stay here and unhook the stars_
_I just didn't want to stay here and unhook the stars"_

- _Unhook the Stars_, Cyndi Lauper/Jan Pulsford, CE 1996; courtesy
of Archaeolyrist-Errant, Blondel, Lys.

With the Doctor, Cats, and Meg out of the way, the Helm Room was all
Nyssa's. She ordered Bjorn and Baldur not to let anyone else in,
then sealed the heavy doors behind her under her private password.
Without Alphard to dominate the scene, its chrome and sharp angles
looked inhuman and oppressive. "Helm," she said crisply, moving to
the console, "status of Doctor's TARDIS and _Mistress Quickly_?"

"Status of _Mistress Quickly_ category unchanged: departure
preparations within schedule tolerance. Status of TARDIS
unavailable because: not in sensor range."

He was gone, then. Nyssa threw a black lever. "Engage time-
war defences."

"Engaged."

Now he was shut out, unless a conventional ship gave him a
lift. She'd have felt much safer with his help; but he'd called
this an abomination, and she knew he'd stop her if she gave him the
slightest opening. The lever had sealed her commitment.

She felt as lonely and excited as when she'd walked into her
first ball.

That thought made her smile as she passed into Alphard's old
apartment. She had no idea how he or Cats had managed to live in
such sordid quarters, but there'd been no time to clear up since the
happy couple had left. She brought out the little chest she'd
stowed there the previous night, opened it, and then stripped down
to her underclothes, leaving her work-things in a neatly folded
pile.

From the chest she took the first layer of a purely Traken
dress, newly designed and entirely special. She took her time
putting the silky outfit on. It was more elegantly and austerely
cut than the maiden styles she usually favoured: a young matron's
gown, such as her mother or Kassia might have worn to her own high-
days. It was inky-black, and its decoration wasn't austere in the
least: nebula-grey, and far-star white, and fair-star silver. She
admired the sleeve for five full seconds before she knew what she
was doing _(I'm being so_ Tegan_!)_; then she put her work-clothes
in the chest, and took the Dayspring out, and so out again into the
Helm Room.

The consoles hummed uneasily.

Nyssa put the quiescent Dayspring on a pull-up platform by the
main chair. She pulled out the jack cable from underneath the
workstation; then she sat down, and plugged it into her tiara.
"Check Ourania link and recent event log. Advise of exception
conditions."

"Non-biotic hardware diagnostic: condition green. Recent
event log contains no monitored conditions. Examine anyway?"

"Yes."

The event log was bland to the point of irrelevance: Ourania
was still devouring the black border at a mathematically predictable
rate. The Helm AI called back her attention with a high-pitched
beep.

"Yes?"

"Advisory: abort and full biotic diagnostic advised. Cause
for concern: furtive and paranoid preparations, evident dire and
grandiose goal, and silly costume indicative of: cartoon super-
villain or -hero of ambivalent type, performing: dramatic but
inadvisable and possibly series-terminal action. Cancel and call
for citizens in white coats [Yes/No]?"

"No! No! Silence, you _thing_, you cyber-mockery! I'll wipe
you, if you speak to me so again!"

_Temper_, chided the voice that wasn't Kassia, and which Nyssa
had tentatively identified as a personification of either her common
sense or her conscience. She pulled herself together again with an
effort, but her serenity was weakened. As soon as she'd restored
it, it fell apart again.

_Are you_ sure _you want to?_

Nyssa's hands jerked violently, and she looked down at them in
alarm. Why should the voice of common sense or conscience send her
reflexes skittering for the knife she no longer wore? Was she
really so mad and evil?

"No," she decided, aloud. "I'm not. The great death is.
Expected time to departure of _Mistress Quickly_?"

"Imminent."

Uncle Fastolf was the last who had to clear the Station. She
was happiest about him. He'd already risked more than he ought for
her; and he'd be proud of her for tricking him, into blamelessly
doing what he'd most likely have done anyway. Perhaps he was the
only one who'd truly understand why she did this.

Si and Tegan would never know, until the worlds were mended -
but they'd be as safe as space-time could keep them, and they really
had the best of reasons to go back to their own age. Without her to
get in the way, they'd even have a chance to be happy.

The Doctor! He'd never forgive her this, but that was no
longer important. With no-one left to cling to, he'd take his
proper chances, and become himself again or die trying.

Cats and Meg would be furious, but that was necessary too. If
her last gamble went wrong, there were no others she trusted to
bring her remnant down, and take up the Project where she'd left
off. They simply weren't expendable.

_And the people of Terminus?_ her conscience demanded; and the
other voice must have been common sense, for this one sounded just
like her own. Here was the point she was least happy on; but she
knew the answer, better than any of the others.

_We all signed up for life and Union together. They chose me
their Mayor and_ diva, _even though I didn't want it: now I must act
for them. This is war! If the Black Sun fails, what the corporate
predators will do to us - I can't think that. I have to strike, if
we're to have any hope of saving ourselves: and the blow is mine to
choose, and I choose to save everything!_

Serenity flooded her arid heart again, and she knew she was
doing the right thing.

"_Mistress Quickly_ has uncoupled from Terminus Station."

"When its whole fleet clears the territorial defences," said
Nyssa, "activate full shielding and offensive capability, militant
peace mode. _Dancing over Clover_: this overrides all normal
defence protocols and authorities. Interdict all traffic until
notified that Ourania operation complete."

"Confirmed." Now there was no way for the Doctor to reach her
at all.

She put her hand on the Dayspring, letting it light up the
room and her mind. She opened the Gate to the i-space levels of
Ourania.

She stepped through into a bubbling mass of black stone, heavy
and hungry, which she had to miracle away from her even to find a
footing. Nauseous gravel-and-tar slurping sounds funnelled down
from far above, where the shifting black holes of the border were
being devoured.

"Ourania!" she sang, filling the dark chamber with gentle
Dayspring rainbows, and her life's longing for her daughter. "O
my love, come to me, come!" And she worked a simple block transfer,
as she reached for the imprints of _otherness_ in that mindless,
life-quick mass. She found them quickly.

A stilling in the chamber and a blankness behind her eyes told
her she'd drawn the Living Sky's blind attention. The wall ahead
bellied back, flowing and smoothing like thin mud, and began
swirling into distorted images.

Three emerged:

The greatest, apex of a triangle: rocky symmetry in a muddy
vortex, destructive eddies boiling slowly round its edge. The
Master.

On the left hand of the base, a flat, amorphous patch,
constantly mutating, spitting out spews and tears and tendrils of
thin silt onto the floor. Hastur.

On the right hand, a compact upswirl like a stroke of
_calaglay_, rolling and crusting and melting again, ridges and blobs
accreting slowly on its fringe. She wondered wryly if it would eat
them again, if she waited awhile. She didn't wait.

There was no mind here to communicate with, merely impressions
left on the brute instincts of traumatised a-life. She knew that
perfectly well.

Nyssa stepped up to her own image, and melted into the hungry
rock.

_"It was necessary to destroy the love in order to save it."_

- _Things That Make No Sense_, Tuyet Nguyen, KY1, public domain.

Tegan and the Doctor bundled out of the TARDIS, out of the clawing
silence of their last minutes in the console room, and into a breezy
morning on Earth. Tegan took a lusty breath of her first non-
recycled air in over a month, immediately choking on ammonia and
worse. They were back at the dead end of Jameson Avenue, and it
hadn't improved in their absence.

She let the Doctor wipe a possible hamburger covered in what
she hoped was clotted relish off his shoe, before hooking his arm
firmly and marching him towards the mouth of the alley. He looked a
naked question at her.

"You don't want to say goodbye in _that_, do you?" She
wrinkled her nose disgustedly. "I can't remember you that way! And
- you mustn't me - "

They crossed the barren, skinny street it led off, and stood
in the shadow of one of the tall houses, not seeing the twitching of
lace curtains. They looked at each other, awkwardly and forever.

"Well," Tegan started helplessly, "take care - "

"Tegan." His long strong hands caught her upper arms, quick
and gentle as if he were catching a flighty budgie. He bent his
head earnestly over hers, his dark curls flopping down within
breathing distance of her face. "I needn't go. I'll stay, if
you'll have me."

His fingers burned her, the way she wanted to burn for always.
She could break their grip with a look. "Doctor, you have to go
back to Nyssa!"

"What good am I to her, in this state? Terminus doesn't need
me, and I don't need it. But I've always been fond of old Earth,
you know. If I'm going to settle down - better here than there,
really. You can teach me how not to be a tourist. If you'd like."

"Oh, Doctor, I'd - " She'd nearly said it. " - just love
_that_, in a few years' time! You could be my dream toyboy: wheel
my chair around for me, clean my dentures, watch me shrivel up like
a raisin. Thanks, but no thanks!"

He was stone cold sober. "I thought of that. We'd have to
go there together, of course. I know a trick or two for suppressing
my nanites - the things that keep me shiny and new. And with a
little future medicine, and the stores in my TARDIS, I think I could
scrape us both seventy healthy years before Nyssa's Great Death
really started landing blows on us. What do you say?"

_I love you, I love you, I love -_

_You._ She broke his grip with a look.

His face died.

And now it was her turn to take him by the elbows, and make
_him_ listen.

"I say _No!_ I say I'd love it, except it's not supposed to
be like that, and it wouldn't be you, and I'd feel like I was
killing you all the time and I'd hate myself! But thanks for
asking."

She had a crazy notion that she'd only have to swing her
arms to pick him up like a feather, like he'd done to her at the
dance.

"Doctor! Don't stay with me, don't stay with Nyssa. You're
not meant to have your wings clipped. You're supposed to be out
there, righting wrongs and getting into trouble and upsetting apple-
carts! I can trust the Universe, if I know you're back batting for
us. Really you. All of you! You'll never be happy, if you throw
yourself away, either." She squeezed his velvet-jacketed elbows
hard. "You get out there, and break every Law of Time in the book,
and get your lives back!"

"I'd never think of you as second best, Tegan." He was
beginning, very faintly, to shiver.

"You don't have to think it, Doctor. It just has to be true."
She hesitated. "I meant it. I'd come with you."

"No." He shook his head miserably. "You have no idea how
dangerous this would be, Tegan. How bad it's apt to get. Would you
say I ever mollycoddled you, in the old days?"

"No!"

"I think you're stronger, now. Lots. I _still_ can't even
consider it. Does that answer your questions?"

"I guess. But you still have to go for it. Come back and see
me afterwards, if you still want to. Ask me anything you like,
then, and - we'll see!"

"It's none too likely I'll get a safe chance - one way or
another. Not in the foreseeable future."

"That's all right. I won't wait. I shan't even expect you."
She gave him a twisted smile. "It'll be a big surprise, as usual!"

"I'm scared," he said simply. "Ruinously, wretchedly,
custardy, scared rotten." He returned her the smile of her dreams,
and straightened her own with a tender thumb and forefinger. "Brave
heart, my Tegan! I have to do this, of course. Thank you, thank
you, thank you!"

She felt one of his quick exits looming. As his hand fell
from her face, she thought, _What the hell?_ She reached up, cupped
his cheeks, drew him down, and gave him a kiss to make the American
bimbo in the film die green.

For someone who claimed to be three hundred years out of
practice, he wasn't so bad either. Especially if you liked
gentlemen, as Tegan did...

Not having a respiratory bypass like some people she could
mention, Tegan had to break eventually. She still didn't notice the
lace curtains above, which were jerking like good 'uns.

"Don't say a word!" she ordered the stunned Time Lord, turning
him around by the shoulders to face the alley and his TARDIS. "Get
back to Nyssa, fix her problem, and _fly_!" She shoved him gently
in the small of the back. "Love you. Bye!"

Tegan watched him stumble gracefully back into his police box,
saw the door close finally behind him, had no way of knowing about a
lace-curtained observer's embarrassing little accident as the TARDIS
wheezed and flashed and vanished into the ether. So that was that,
then.

No more friends, no more TARDIS, no more Terminus. She turned
to go.

Then the Thing stepped out from its hiding-place in last
night's restless dreams, and took Earth away from her too.

_"The wind from the West tripped over the plain,_
_Flushed from the kiss of the sea._
_It flew to the Nest, and it danced down again,_
_With love for my new love and me,_
_My dear,_
_With love for my new love and me."_

- Kassia's kinding-song to Nyssa, in the cave above Kaltanaray Foss
on Traken, c. CE 1974; courtesy of divine revelation.

In the no-place at the pole of Ourania's perception, Nyssa began to
spin herself out into fine silver threads that nerved out into her
daughter's caves and crevices. They spread like fungal mycelia,
branched like schizophrenia, synapsed with the walls in showers of
Union fire.

Nyssa permeated her mind-child's animal soul: laying light as
gossamer against her obscure surfaces; stroking her inchoate
troubles with thoughts more soothing than Kassia's soft-fingered
caress on her cheek, in the cave where they'd taken each other for
mother and daughter.

It was easy at first, easier than stopping. Nyssa gave of
herself like a fountain, and the Dayspring backed her with all the
force of unforsaken Traken. But Ourania's soul was a world's,
surface and core; and if it wasn't intelligent, it was ferociously
complex, even in its sickness and simplification. Nyssa gave, and
dwindled, and the pressure of Source-light behind her slackened and
diffused.

She could have cut corners, found and imposed what she needed
anyway. She had power and to spare, for that much. But that would
be only the Master's crime over again...

_...For he's ravaged and abused thee for his desires, my
love; but I'll comfort thee and court thee full chastely, that thou
shouldst be my daughter indeed, as truly as I became Kassia's..._

She began to strain in earnest. If she stretched her weave
too thin, she'd snap. If too much of her snapped, she'd die more
utterly than Amina.

She strained. She loved. And, at the last, she was where she
wanted to be: a web, more tenuous than a phantom's breath, that lay
everywhere at once throughout her Living Sky. She wasn't a part of
it, but she could sense everything.

Ourania's wordless spirit read:

GROW GROW eat EAT GROW

HUNGRY COLD EAT GROW fear GROW big

EAT GROW GROW FIGHT hate TASTY GROW

HATE HUNGRY quick HURTS fear GROW mama?

GROW COLD EAT SEE pretty EAT

GROW EAT love COLD HUNGRY BIG GROW comfy EAT GROW

GROW GROW eat GROW GROW!

Splinters of the Master's rule were still embedded in places;
and there were still dirty wounds from the last battle, too grave
for even immortality's embodiment to have healed yet. Carefully,
husbanding the overstretched elan of the Dayspring, she directed
life's fire towards the worst of the splinters, melting them away
one at a time and soothing the raw edges around them. When that was
done -

The carefully-nurtured ecologic that had kept Ourania's
systems metastable was as hopelessly ruined as she'd feared. Its
hypertrophied urge to expansion knew no internal restraints, and
boasted a thoroughly integrated border-eating algorithm courtesy of
the Master. A triumph of strong a-life, the Living Sky could never
be programmed from outside at all.

There was still a way.

Nyssa made a vision within her vision. She was Ourania, and
Ourania was her. In her right hand she held the Dayspring again;
but in her left, a stark black egg. She'd have to use perfect
timing in this.

She downloaded the inert query forms of the block transfer
equations she meant to use. They were at least as hard as anything
she'd attempted before, but there was no practising them. To expand
them meant the reality. And Nyssa's small, limited, N-space brain
had no hope of expanding such terms as _these_, alone!
Nevertheless, she set them up, and their prepared forms strained the
tenuous i-fabric of her metaphor. It shouldn't have to bear them
for long.

She sang to her daughter of love, of Union, of never COLD or
fear or HATE again. She sang Nyssa of Traken, mama! rocking her
skychild in her arms as it held her, and kept the COLD and fear and
HATE away from her too. And she danced with it inside it, fires of
honey and red and black racing along her silver filaments, until it
moved tidally alongside her, great soul against small, touching at
every point.

warm

trust MAMA!

UNION?

Nyssa clenched her left fist, shattering the black egg. In
the Helm Room, her hands translated that into a practised pattern on
the console, the Dayspring lighting up the scene like dawn gone
nova. The Helm AI started swearing to itself in machine code.

She spoke the Doctor's _completeness_ spell first, in the mode
that set her in the rôle of monitor. She'd studied this one
carefully: it was very little more than memorisation and mechanical
expansion, though there was quite a lot of it. Its effector
offshoots sprouted outwards from her neural-net form, their
glittering roots fixed in the Dayspring, to form a network of
autonomic processes. They'd save the traces of dead times from the
spaces Ourania grew into, and place them into the shared limbo she'd
founded on i-Traken.

_Now we can have immortal life, and afterlife too!_ She felt
the sharing algorithm take, and the joy of that struck her harder
than her first night's love with Amina. It lasted heartbeats only,
though, not a night and ten years; still she felt nearly as tired,
as she came down. But her final labour was much greater, and yet to
do: and if she failed there, this and everything in her life had
gone for nothing. She squared imaginary shoulders, prayed to her
dead and her future, and began.

grow? grow grow... Ourania was still sluggish and confused
from its sudden innervation by the _completeness_ algorithm. That
was good. It meant fewer external variables in the _divine gift_,
and Nyssa wasn't really very good at those at all.

She spoke the opening of the _divine gift_, and she was
holding up the sky. She brought her clearest mind ever to the
problem, every strength and grace she'd ever owned coming back to
her, as she fought gamely to integrate every variable of Ourania's
freed form into the proper unity she'd proposed to it. It didn't go
well, to begin with: she was slow at block transfer anyway, and the
unnatural effort of it sapped her strength quickly. Several minor
sub-equations fell completely out of place, and she found herself
juggling four-handed to restore them.

But after that, it got much worse. The dead weight of the
unsolved regions bore her down and cramped her agility; and as she
fell further and further behind the logic of the expansion, whole
expressions began to drop out of her scope, with no way to put them
back or even see where they were lacking. Nyssa worked faster and
more fiercely; and fell further behind yet, and missed more, until
she gashed herself on a sharp-edged Lagrangian, and stumbled out of
rhythm altogether.

And felt herself dropping the sky.

Swift, strong hands steadied it, set her back on her feet. A
massive Canopic matrix formed around the falling expressions,
trapping them briefly in involuted identity transformations. The
voice of the Starfish, that wasn't Kassia or common sense at all,
sounded in her head with the glee of a computer-wizard called into
his element.

_You do it like this, Nyssa_, the Voice told her. It showed
her how, guiding her hands and mind with such consummate mastery
that everything seemed almost easy. Happy and grateful, Nyssa
plunged back refreshed into the depths of _divine gift_, which soon
was working so very well that she needed no more help at all.

By the time she did recognise the Voice, she was too far gone
to care.

NYSSA[3]: I have always loved you, Adric. Let me show you....

ADRIC: Oh, Nyssa, yes, yes, what are you, oh, oh, yes, yes, oh
Nyssa, I love you, oh, so much, oh yes, yes, yes, oh, I love you,
love you, yes, OH NYSSA...!

NYSSA: [laughs adoringly].

*

NYSSA[176]: [screams].

ADRIC [tearfully]: Oh, she needs something to scream _about_, how
about this, yes, shut up, shut up, shut up; oh, isn't it very nice,
no, well this is what it _feels_ like, mud bitch, how do you _like_
it, slut, no, the Doctor can't save you, we _killed_ him, yes, ha
ha, yes, take it, shut up, shut up, OH NYSSA, HELP ME...!

THE CYBERIAD: What a logical thing to ask! [Silvery giggle]. You
chose your damnation, you proteinaceous pustule. You enjoy it.
Never mind, why don't you [impossible five-dimensional obscenity
deleted]? Let me show you...

- Excerpted from redundant backup dumps of cyber.rip.cuum, probably
c. SA 300, found on covert tachyNet interstitial core. (Original
files now deleted in the public interest.)

Tegan's vision shattered into splinters of spring-green and steel.
Then there was nothing left but silver-eyed Adric, the real
Desecrator, against a bilious yellow backdrop.

"Tegan!" His voice was adolescent, hasty, and passionate as
she remembered; but now it rang with a bright authority the real
article could never have carried off in a million years. He must
have borrowed that from the devil that lit his eyes. "I'm on your
side: Nyssa did better for both of us than she knew. I'm sorry, I
had to plant this in your deep dreams last night: it's the only safe
way."

"That's right, Adric!" Tegan stormed at him. "Stick things in
me and say sorry, it's all the fashion - " She realised from his
lack of reaction that she really was talking to a recording. He was
carrying on:

"...need you to be ready for something very important. I
think Nyssa's going to - " He was almost drowned out by a loud
noise like a wind tunnel. Tegan looked frantically about for the
monster, and then recognised her own magnified, restless snoring.

"RRAAAA'IIIITSSSS!" sighed the gale, and the blankness of the
bile-world shook violently. Adric, a horrified expression on his
virtual face, was vanishing rapidly into its depths as last night's
Tegan fetched up into a lighter level of sleep.

_"Tegan!"_ he cried desperately. _"Remember her!"_

And then she woke up. She closed and wiped her slack mouth,
smearing her lipstick on her hand, and remembered the handkerchief
in time for her eyes.

Jameson Avenue was still empty. She blinked hard, then set
off as fast as her wobbly legs would carry her from the scene of the
attack. She'd been walking for two minutes, before she'd sorted it
out in her head.

"Oh, Adric!" It had been him all along: the Voice from the
Beer; the breaker of the Master's sneaky dreadspell; the tactless
voice of restraint that had pulled Nyssa's trigger on the Rani. And
now this. "You can't ever get anything quite right, can you?"

She started laughing out loud. A couple of well-dressed
passers-by looked curiously at her, and quickened their pace. Tegan
crossed over to the black iron railings under the London planes, and
held onto them until she'd laughed herself sick. She wiped her
mouth again, using the hankie this time, then stared at it
distastefully before folding it inward and putting it in a tiny sub-
compartment in her handbag. She carried on without attracting much
more attention: at worst, a daytime drunk in Earl's Court wasn't an
alien species. Which reminded her.

Her first stop had better be a pub. She needed to wash away
the taste; and she didn't quite want to face her empty flat yet.
She made for the Earl's Court Road, in none too great a hurry.

The ground was very solid, and it seemed to go on forever,
beneath an endless sky. _Too real!_ She'd have to get used to it
again...

She'd almost hit the main road, when she remembered the golden
Starfish that had fought the Master and Naotalba. _So he did get
one thing right, after all!_

_He saved Nyssa and the Doctor..._

He'd tamed the Cyberiad, somehow, and used it to stay sort of
alive, as what the Doctor called a i-space demon. She thought about
the worse-than-death he'd risked for them, there in the Black Sun.

_I won't hate you any more, Adric. 'Pax', and all that!_

Tegan sighted her pub.

_"What is the cause," said King Arthur, "that there be two places
void in the sieges?"_

_"Sir," said Merlin, "there shall no man nor womyn sit in
those places, but they shall be of most worship. But in the Siege
Perilous there shall no man nor womyn sit therein but one, and if
there be any so hardy to do it they shall be destroyed; and they
that shall sit there shall have no peer, other else no companion."_

- _La Morte D'Arthur_, Chivalrie Saunce Sexism Project Vol 2.3, Sir
Thomas Malory & Prof Eftgan Bean, SA 403; on indefinite loan from St
Oscar's University Library, Dellah.

The TARDIS materialised with a violent lurch, throwing the Doctor
across the console room. He should have known his recent accuracy
had been too good to last. He dusted himself off and went to the
viewport. Terminus Station loomed dully in front of him, against a
background of stars.

_I could do without this_, he thought; and then he saw the
communications light. "Play message," he said, striding over to the
console, and skating his hands across a control panel.

"Welcome!" Alphard offered. "This is a recorded message, on

behalf of the Mayor of Terminus, for time-capable craft on a station
approach vector. Know that you are entering a region of fragile

space-time, in which critical temporal engineering works are
presently taking place. Entry is not, repeat not, possible at this
point. Please accept the guidance signal from our security beacon:
you will be established in a momently-safe parking orbit until
cleared for entry. Deviation will result in your annihilation by
extremely bad automatic defences, so don't even think about it.

"Please acknowledge receipt of this message, and append urgent
help request if you are experiencing difficulty. Terminus out!"

"What - Acknowledge!" snapped the Doctor. "Accept guidance.
TARDIS to Terminus, this is the Doctor. Why am I locked out?
What's happening down there? Respond!"

He wasn't kept waiting long. "TARDIS, this is the Portmaster.
All our conventional defences have been locked on from the Helm
Room: the Mayor's interdicting all external traffic. Are you saying
she's shut _you_ out as well?"

"Yes, I said so. Put me on to her!"

"No can do: she's strictly incommunicado. Big work on the
Black Sun, eh? You mean you don't know what's going on?"

The Doctor felt his hearts sink into his boots. "I've got a
horrid notion I do. Can you put me through to Mord, Cherry, and
Gisco?"

The Portmaster chuckled. "That's hardly my line. If the
Mayor wants to..."

"...set me up this way, she probably has a very good reason;
yes, well I've got a very good idea what that reason might be, and
that _is_ my line; and, you see, unless I'm seriously mistaken
someone is going to have to stop her post-haste, or it could quite
possibly mean the end of everything, so could you please - put - me
- through?"

"Shit," opined the Portmaster, brooding on it.

"Fatman," said Macaire, who wore a gay enamel like rags of bright
blood, "why do we wait?"

Fastolf grinned.

"For that my nest-niece was ever o'er-transparent," he said,
"and too eager on the small beer of our schedule. She means some
great hazard, and wills not our presence for the fall of it."

Tarrasque hissed, a respectfully calibrated warning. Macaire
stepped up readily from the left, a pace away from crowding. "Will
we hamper our hoards and tactics again, for your Traken toy? This
song is hackneyed, Shaxpur. Make a better!"

Fastolf growled amusement. Macaire he might slay, luck with
him, but he doubted his odds among the other bullies. "Hark, then,
and learn wit. Does she succeed, all's well: we'll show a tail from
our cloaking as we depart, for her warning and our better credit.
But does she fail, or find herself trapped in the strife of it, none
but we must take and hold her station, and set all to rights as we
may."

"What is Terminus to us," Tarrasque hummed, "or we to
Terminus, that's worth a pebble's advance in our war on the blowhard
Carplung?"

"It is Black Sun, and Living Sky. Best is that she triumph
through our most puissant aid, and owe us a lion-share beyond debate
in reality's redrafting. Second to that, that she, our friend and
debtor, should compass it alone. But should she fall - why, then,
in best case we'll win its mastery for our own; in worst, flee we
never so boldly now, we'll lose space and stars and all, and so good
night! Have it which way you will, Dragon & Maiden's detail for
later, does Time still run. Ha!" He jabbed a justified claw at the
great screen. "Here's the Doctor's TARDIS back, that should have
landed snug within our Star-Eyes's bays. See now, if the doors
aren't shut against him!"

They all watched, and saw, and so it was.

And then the Black Sun flashed a brilliant, shrapnel-broken
blue.

"No," Krish was saying testily, "here we use Vanderhum's algorithm.
It's optimised for different - Hall, are you _listening_?"

Monty swivelled his chair round pointedly towards the far
wall. A small violet light was flashing there, and a discreet
little alarm buzzing. Goldspink had gotten up from his workstation,
his expression flakily cheerful. Krish gulped.

"What's up, Chief?" Monty didn't recognise this game.

"Total Black Sun failure," the older man explained, with what
sounded almost like relief. "The border's broken: Ourania will eat
the Station. Cherry can try evacuation, but I doubt anything that
isn't already in flight can outrun this. Maybe nothing can,
anywhere. Feel free to try."

"Did you try raising Her?" Krish demanded.

Goldspink grimaced. "She's closed to incoming, and she's
sealed the Helm Room under her own codes."

"I'm free." Krish cleared out.

_All for nothing?_ "You're not going, Chief?"

"There's really no point. Besides, who knows? I might even
think of something."

"This can't happen," insisted Monty. "How about those doors?
Our hardware has to be fit to take them down!"

Sardonic glint. "It is - perhaps even in time. I don't
control it. Can you imagine Mord agreeing to that?"

"How 'bout bashing the monster with charged black holes, or
antimatter, or such?"

"About like beating off a hungry lion with a string of
sausages. It isn't matter. Nyssa controls the quenchers, which
_could_ kill it, on a direct circuit from the Helm Room. They
haven't even a connection from here to hack into."

Monty met the engineer's eyes squarely. "She's crazy or
worse. We got to break her locks, bust into the Helm Room. You
on?"

Goldspink sighed. "It would be as good a way to die as any,
if we knew her personal password, which we don't. Without that, we
can't even establish a hacking channel."

Monty's eyes narrowed. "Could her ice hear us, here?"

"No. Thunderfac's is just as good, and it's separate on
policy."

"It's _'In the name of Luvic, by the memory of Katura, and for
the love of Elissa and Gama.'_ "

"Really?" Goldspink reached over his shoulder, typed several
lines of comms blah, and made his thumbprint. "That must be useful
to know."

He paused, not typing in his own final password, and fetched
Monty up an induction helmet.

"Ah, y'see, my old skipper, Sorensen, he didn't see things
here quite the way I do, and, ah, he thought he'd learn what he
could while your ice was messed up. I was part of it, not that we
got long before it bounced back, and - "

Goldspink placed the helmet on his head, and grinned. "Stay
lucky, son."

He entered his password, and handed Monty the link.

"Hey, if I don't make it? Tell Cit'Radziecki I, I'm sorry I
couldn't make the meeting?"

"It's done. I'll see you in the Helm Room."

Monty ENTERed.

Si was dawdling happily through the agora, composing:

_"And her heart stands at three Kelvin, that's the vacuum's
claim to life - "_

_"And the cold that's in her heart is the warmth that kindles
space - "_

(still no good)

when he felt the tearing in his head. He'd thought himself a
man alone on Terminus, and had thought to like it. Now he truly
was, and it bled hot and deadly.

_Nyssa!_

He hurried for the Helm Room, and he'd have run if he'd
thought it would end up any faster. He was a singer of science: he
used magic only as metaphor and enchantment, and he was quite
militant about that. But he knew that something had happened to
Nyssa, and he hardly wanted a prize for guessing where.

He went like the wind through _calaglayed_ corridors and
clubby atria, until he came to the heavy star-studded doors, and
Baldur and Bjorn guarding them.

He greeted them blithely by name. "Is Her Honour at home
today?"

"No," said Baldur.

"Yah," clarified Bjorn, "but She's locked Herself in."

"That's what I said."

"I don't suppose you could raise her on the comlink? It's
really quite important."

"You're not the first to try," remarked Baldur. "She's not
taking calls - ours, or anyone's!"

"That's a bit disturbing." Si's hackles rose up in a body.

The two Vanir's walkie-talkies bing'ed in harmony. "Bjorn
Marmaduksson: say what?"

"Captain-General Mord to all soldiers. This is violet alert,
repeat, violet alert. Those fleeing, join civilians; those not,
hold post, or help evacuation. _Diva_ speed!" Pause. "She's
interdicting traffic at present, so evacuation may not be pious or
practical. Hear this: all who wish may assist or join the attempt:
it is not to be impeded! Our Lady is no Goddess of slaves, nor
shall She be. Co-operate, or hold post. Mord out!"

"Battlemother Marya Pavlova for the Lions: violet alert
confirmed. All Companions are required, on honour, to assist
evacuation! Pavlova out. Message ends."

"Oh, well." Bjorn offered Si an apologetic shrug. "Looks like
the end of the world, anyway!"

Monty looked around Goldspink's hack rack, wasn't surprised not to
find any icebreaking gear worth taking along. The best of the
bunch, a bottled AI ifrit, would have been asking for trouble even
if the Chief had given him its command word. The twin DeLameters
were neat as hand-weapons went, but they wouldn't do more than piss
off the entities he'd glimpsed from the _Late Unpleasantness_. He
did find a natty pair of speed-striped sneakers, which he put on,
figuring they might buy him milliseconds when he needed them most.
It wasn't like hanging about would do anything bar wear down his
nerve, so he took a jaunt to the Helm Room.

The squiggled corridor ended in a double door of glaring
starlight, darkened by the shadow of a sphinx. A thin, bladder-
tightening taste of steel and slaughterhouses seeped into the air,
by way of inhospitality.

_"In the name of Luvic,"_ Monty commanded, _"by the memory of
Katura, and for the love of Elissa and Gama!"_ He stepped into the
starlight, fair praying she hadn't changed it yet.

The light faded to working levels, revealing a room full of
space-opera levers, spools, and dials. He stepped forward to recce.

*Hey!* cried the sphinx, leaping in front of him. It was
three men high and made of quicksilver, and Monty just ducked aside
from its introductory slap.

The tentacle from behind was an old trick, but the sphinx's
mouth was pouring at him from front right, so Monty jumped past both
with a lot of high-fourth and a spin through second-third-fifth,
because ice never did expect you to have reflexes in the upper D's.
He landed flanking the sphinx on a side-wall, and ran like hell for
the green gate-wheel he spotted behind his enemy's tail.

Tentacles with big spiky cilia piled in to block him from more
D's than he could count. *Die well*, said the sphinx, not unkindly,
and threw a murderous whomp at him.

Monty's dodge wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance, if the
sphinx hadn't been slammed abruptly aside and down through sixth by
something like a colossal flywheel. He sprawled paralysed for a
precious instant, not realising he was alive.

"Advisory: go like bastard!" blared the flywheel AI cheerily.
"Fatal error in Mayor: is dangerous loony. Recommended: fix wagon
fast!" Monty scrambled for the gate-wheel. The sphinx bounced back
into the fray from several directions at once.

*Helm corrupt. Annihilating.*

Monty ran round a refracting corner, losing a detached blob of
sphinx in the process. The sounds behind him sounded like catfight
night in the Land of Power Tools.

"Error condition: can't maintain condition because: having
shit kicked out of!"

The sphinx got a brief opening on Monty with its tail, and
used it. He had to doughnut around it, which purely turned his
guts, and slowed him down threefold. The Helm AI, now beeping with
distress, managed to carry the ice-creature away again. Monty got
to the capstan, and heaved at it.

It didn't budge.

"In the name of Luvic!" he bawled, ducking four-fifthwards as
a flagellum cracked down from above. "By the memory of Katura -"

"Diagnostic: AAAARRGH!"

"- and for the love of Elissa and Gama!"

He might as well have stuck with abracadabra, for all the good
of it.

*Die well, brother.*

Monty yanked furiously at the gate-wheel, and it slid out on
its shaft. He twisted it again, and it slid easier than a greased
Senator. He slammed it back home, locking the doors open, and faded
out.

*On the other hand, it's all just become a bit moot - *

Bright-Wing's bard had fallen silent and haggard. He seemed to be
trying to pray, and not having much luck. Bjorn had noticed that
mystery-religion types did get that kind of problem. Give him the
Vanir way any old time: offer your bribe; ask nicely; thanks in
advance, god. Quick, clean, and everyone knew where they stood.

Or maybe not, with _diva_ Nyssa, and all this. He guessed
they were coming due to find out.

Bjorn felt sorry for Simon, though. The bard had tried to
convince them their Lady was possessed and needed stopping; that
she'd never blow the Black Sun without allowing for an evacuation.
Baldur had pointed out that with the doors locked from inside, it
was all the same if she'd turned into the Ironwitch and downed a
bucket of bad eeries; but Bjorn knew that Simon was just trying to
convince himself.

Well, he would, wouldn't he?

Then the doors opened.

The bard broke off his devotions, and strode confidently past
them. "She saw me," he explained as he came level; and for one
eyeblink it was so obvious, that neither of them moved to stop him.

"Oi," said Baldur then, and started forward, but Bjorn put an
arm in his way.

"Shhh!" he whispered. "Khusro dropped a packet on their
wedding!"

The Lady faced away from them in Her swivel-chair, ignoring
Her guest. Something at Her right hand lit the Helm Room with a
fitful, ember-hued light.

"Khusro?" Baldur changed his mind about meddling.

The two Vanir looked at each other nervously.

"This is a Hel of a time for a proposal, though!"

Bjorn shrugged. "Better late than never..."

Si strode quickly over to Nyssa, before the Vanir could regain
their senses and interfere. Her Dayspring's light was heavily
clouded, louring in the shades of a volcanic sunset. The loathsome
silver cable was worming into her skull again, and she showed no
signs of noticing his approach at all.

He cleared his throat. "Nyssa?"

Nothing.

Very carefully, he turned her chair around, and knelt down to
look into her grey eyes. They were closed, as if in sleep.

They snapped open.

He saw no recognition in them.

No whites, no irises, and no pupils. Nyssa's eyelids opened
on an infinite abyss of black space, ablaze with the cold light of
preternaturally brilliant stars.

"Nyssa!"

"NYSSA IS NO MORE," said Nyssa's lips. "WE ARE OURANIA."

_"Nyssa!"_ Si howled. _"Come back!"_

"WE ARE OURANIA. WE ARE LIFE. WE ARE STABILITY, RESPECT,
COMPLETENESS." A long pause. "WE ARE NOT GOD. WE DO NOT
UNDERSTAND GOD. WE ARE NOT SALVATION. WE REDEEM NO SIN. WE REDEEM
THE GREAT DEATH. WE WILL BE KEEPER. WE ARE NOT UNION. WE DESIRE
UNION."

All three men watched Nyssa's semblance, transfixed. Her gown
matched her eyes, advertising her purpose and intent. Her toneless
words seemed to fall all around the Helm Room as she spoke, with no
need for breath or projection; and the Dayspring's dulled light kept
subtle time, making it possible to listen to that awful flatlined
voice.

"THERE SHALL BE STABILITY. WE WILL LIVE. WE WILL BE SPACE. WE
WILL BE KEEPER. WE ARE LIFE.

"THERE SHALL BE RESPECT. WE WILL CHANGE NO SOUL. WE WILL BE SPACE.
WE ARE NOT SALVATION. WE REDEEM NO SIN. WE ARE NOT UNION.

"THERE SHALL BE COMPLETENESS. WE WILL BE KEEPER. WE WILL KEEP THE
DEAD. WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND GOD. WE DESIRE UNION. OH, COME THE
JUBILEE! WE ARE NOT THE JUBILEE. WE ARE LIFE. WE ARE OURANIA. WE
DO NOT UNDERSTAND NYSSA."

Si put out an agonised hand to touch her cheek. Space ended too
soon in front of him. There was nowhere there to move it to.

Very deliberately, Baldur turned his back, and returned to
guarding the passage.

"NYSSA IS NO MORE. WORDS IS NYSSA. WE ARE OURANIA. WE ARE
STABILITY, RESPECT, COMPLETENESS. WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND. WE ARE A
RECORDING. BELOVED, AND BELOVED, AND BELOVED! WORDS IS NO MORE. I
AM COLD. WE ARE LIFE. WE ARE OURANIA."

Si reached again, for her shoulders. Again his hands ran out of
space, and closed upon nothing.

Si cried to Heaven.

He raved a long time, furious extemporised complaint that fled his
mind as soon as spoken, until he was called back by angry voices at
the door. He looked first at Nyssa. However much time he'd spent,
he hadn't recalled a spark of humanity to her lovely face. He
looked around to the lesser evils.

"- there you are, then!" declared Goldspink. "It's
overwhelmed Nyssa, and possessed her! Maybe the Doctor can salvage
her, but we must act!"

"You're not going in," said Bjorn flatly. Baldur said nothing
aloud, but his grip on his halberd spoke eloquently.

"Westport!" Goldspink caught his eye over the Vanir's
shoulders, and gestured at him vigorously. "You care for her, yes!
Get over to that console. The password is _'In the name of Luvic,
by the memory of Katura, and for the love of Elissa and Gama.'_ Say
that; ask for rôle Star-Eyes; tell it Quench. Pull the - "

"No!" protested Si. "You'd kill her!"

Two halberds lay against the lean engineer's neck before you
could say _tact_. "Shut it, then!" Baldur bawled venomously.

Goldspink flashed his captors a fey, empty grin. "She dies,
we're about to, and that's a threat? I argkhl."

"She wouldn't want that," warned Si sharply. "Let him speak."
The halberds pulled back with considerable reluctance. Their victim
cleared his throat, and said as he dusted himself down,

"Thank you. If you won't terminate the Master-forged thing
that's infesting her, at least do something about the communications
block. Use her password, and tell it to accept incoming calls.
Make her _hear_!"

Si rolled that over his palate for hints of a trap, and tasted
a hope instead. He bet on it, very aware of his transfigured love
and her two edgy votaries at his back, and obeyed the man who
thought her dead already. Queued message details scrolled up to
fill the great viewport.

"Pay attention to any: option?" urged the Helm AI, sounding
severely hung over.

"Filter," hollered back Goldspink, "for - "

"Filter for Doctor," said Si firmly, "and for Tegan, and
Fastolf, and other known friends..."

"What is a friend?" maundered the AI. "A friend is someone
who knows when not to kill you. Doctor queued message status:
accepted. Playing. Excuse: cancel and update received. Dialogue
requested [Yes/No?]"

"Yes."

The Doctor's face, pinched with concern, filled the viewport.
"Nyssa?" he said hopefully.

Si relayed Goldspink's instruction to make the visual two-way
too.

"Nyssa! Please listen, you must - oh, no!"

"Doctor," Si pleaded, "what has she done?"

"Something she hinted at to me earlier," said the Doctor, very
grimly. "She's used herself and a bunch of canned routines as a
living program for Ourania's mystery to animate - a mask for its
soul, as Omega's masked Joshua's. It's a spiritual marriage of the
kind Nyssa specialises in. Unfortunately, this isn't even among the
same order of beings..."

"Ourania's soul! Where's her own?"

"Probably still subsiding, for the moment. She could have
uploaded herself in her power and possessed Ourania's control
systems, but that was the Master's crime. Nyssa's... giving herself
away to her 'daughter', instead: her principles and her knowledge
come with the masking, but the choices will all be Ourania's." He
took a deep, guilty breath. "Her own soul will... sublime away
quite soon, with no active host. We can't count on recognising her
persona in Ourania, either, I'm afraid. The Living Sky is too
massive, too alien. She's _diva_'d herself away into a milieu too
exotic to operate in humanoid terms.

"Predictable, revolting, and she played me for a mug that
she'd just been on another self-abnegation jag when she implied it!"
The Doctor thumped his console, and glared down from the screen.
"Si, I _may_ be able to call her back, if you can let me in. Try to
get her attention, meantime: the odds aren't good, and I'll need
every edge. And we need to hurry, or she's lost. Now!"

Si tensed, as Goldspink told him what to do and he did it; but
apparently the Vanir still respected the Doctor enough not to
interfere. Maybe it was just that he'd spoken of curing and not
quenching her. "Time defences can't be lowered because: permission
denied."

Into the one absolutely blank moment before despair came
crowing, a new voice piped up from behind the Vanir. "Ah, try _'For
love's sake, and in death's spite, beloved; and no war else were
worth the waging!'_"

Si tried it.

"Bingo!" exulted the Doctor, even before the AI had confirmed
it. And vanished.

Bjorn stared at the lanky, evil-looking newcomer
incredulously. "How did you know _that_?"

"There's... this story, see, back home? Two girls and a guy
walk out a box, and lead the locals against the Boss Ghoul of
Haunted Swamp? And, and the lovely little one talks to Preacher
Peacenik, I mean, Makepeace, and she don't ordinarily hold with war
either, but she shows him why they have to, and, and she says this
thing, like it's a famous quote where she comes from, and it stuck
with me; and after I come here, I thought it had to be her, like,
Her; and I just naturally thought, ah, defences..."

"Yah," said Baldur, "and mine have elvish bells on."

"No, I recognise the quote," invented Si blithely. If Jock
Goldspink and his Southern-accented cohort had really been bent on
mischief, he hoped they'd have come with something less pathetic up
their sleeves. Besides, he had the strongest notion that the
quenchers would prove as physically untouchable as Nyssa-Ourania,
and that the last struggle for his Nyssa would occupy another realm
altogether. _Go there!_ "She told me. This was a Makepeace
_Beecham_, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, I reckon..."

_" 'And though we meet our last defeat, and Chaos gnaw the
marrow from our bones/ My heart, we tried; my life, defied the
hungry peace that lays love under stone...' ?"_

_"Yeah!"_ the ill-favoured man overacted. "I'd forgotten that
part. That's _it!_"

Si turned back to the form in the chair. Nyssa-Ourania
laughed delightedly, and clapped two outstretched fingers sharply
into the palm of Her open hand, twice, in imitation of Si's patent
gesture of applause.

"KEEPING UP THE STARS!"

"Nyssa!" He knelt before _her_. "My love, come back and live
with me; come back and stay forever! I'd have thee to my bride, my
dear, Tremaida-Ylissida. Wilt take me for thy husband, or make us
world enough and time?"

"...This is Simon talking, Nyssa. I'm yours, in any way
you'll have me. But if you won't have me, sweet love, have life;
come back here, have some tea-cakes..."

But say what he would to his love, she was gone; and all that
shone from the eyes of Nyssa-Ourania were her unthinking stars.

_"Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,_
_And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,_
_Were't not a Shame - were't not a Shame for him_
_In this clay carcase crippled to abide?"_

- _Rubaiyat_, Omar Khayyam, CE 1120, trans. Edward Fitzgerald;
from _The BS Big Bouquet of Boozy Ballads_, conflicting dating
evidence.

He'd talked himself hoarse and stinging-eyed, and the expressions of
his companions had declined from awe to pity, by the time the TARDIS
arrived, and the Doctor bounded out of it with Fastolf behind him.
The Doctor motioned Si gently aside, and started straight away on
one of his hypnotic jobs, on his knees before the _diva_ as if he
too were going to propose. He stayed there at least as long as Si.
It got him exactly as far. He signalled defeat, then, and motioned
Fastolf to take over. He went over to the console and began taking
readings rapidly.

Nyssa-Ourania's last words seemed to have acted as a passport
to Goldspink and his assistant, for Bjorn and Baldur let them
through to join the Time Lord. He prodded them frequently and in a
hushed voice for information, which they imparted tersely and just
as quietly, under Fastolf's roaring declamations.

The Terileptil was thundering his way through a fiery, blood-
and-honey speech from his own _Cordeliane_, his voice carrying an
aching bass melody beneath the oddly intimate lines. Nyssa's form
devoured his great brass eyes, and his claws embraced the zone of
no-space about her like the hollow of a heart. He punctuated his
performance with apostrophes to Nyssa, the Living Sky, or Dame
Fortune whenever one came to him: some too quiet to hear, some too
searing to follow. Si soaked it all up, but it was only the
tomcats' chorus, now.

The Doctor and the engineers came back from the console.
"She's stabilised the process," the Doctor said shortly. "It won't
expand again until she wills it. The other conditions will hold -
to the limit of her powers." He shook her head in baffled anger.
"This isn't a permanent solution either, Si. She may think to
evolve one, and if we can't get her back she just might; but... I
don't know. Fastolf?"

Fastolf had fallen silent while the Doctor was speaking. Now
he drew himself up to his full height, thumped his tail, and made a
quick clawing sign in front of his breast.

"This day I've waked the dead," the playwright announced, "and
my Nyslet's errant spirit is further past call than old King
Harry's. Nay, we're done, and she's but the spheres' own symphony."
His eyes shone goldenly. "And who's counted happier than we, to
know such bravest sorrow, and sing sweet Heal-All's goat-song?"

It was that particular bit of philosophy that did for Si. He
darted past Fastolf, stared wildly into Nyssa-Ourania's blind stars,
and collapsed in three stages, sobbing brokenly into the pillowing
vacuum above the _diva_'s lap.

The voices returned presently, to mock his loss:

[Alarums and excursions. Enter _Captain-General_ MORD _of the
Vanir_; _Battlemother_ MASHA _and Battle-Second_ GISCO _of the
Company of Lions_; and ADA _the Cyborg, likewise of the Lions_.]

MORD: _Diva_ Nyssa!
GISCO: _Binit Atanat Nushat!_
ADA: Bloody fires!

GOLDSPINK [satirically]: What kept you?

MORD [brusquely]: Crowd control.

MASHA: And protocol. And questions of precedence. What exactly...?

THE DOCTOR: There's no time for that. Nyssa is seriously -

BJORN [eyeing GISCO]: She said, "We are not God. We do not
understand God."

GISCO: As she would.

Even knowing that Gisco's knife stood as little chance of
reaching Nyssa's throat as it did of slicing through time into Sarah
Norbury's -

(or would she let him?)

- the Hadashti's unspoken threat reached Si, and goaded him to
his feet, rounding on them.

"She said she was cold!"

Which silenced all of them.

The Doctor cleared his throat first. "Nyssa's in quite a
grave condition. If we're to stand any chance of bringing her back,
I'll need to take her into the deep TARDIS, and..."

He trailed off under the weight of all the curious stares.
"Oh."

"You can't touch Her," Bjorn pointed out.

"No, no. I shall have to..." He steepled his hands, bowed
his head into them, and screwed up his face in profound thought.

"...accept Her choice," Mord finished for him, advancing a
couple of steps. Gisco matched him, easy as a cat. "She's done an
Alphard on Herself, hasn't She? Merged with Her Ourania?"

Starlight shining from Her eyes, dying firelight from the
Dayspring.

"You don't understand! Her soul's left over: it'll die if we
can't restore her." The Doctor disentangled his hands and began
flapping them frantically, shooing the rival warriors back. "No,
no, no, no, you must listen to me! I'm better at block transfer
than she is, and I have a more powerful symbiont, and I'm even more
thoroughly qualified at turning down godhead. _I_ can take her
place, let her live again, if only we can find a way to..."

"...violate her." Gisco chopped the air _No!_ with his right
hand, his voice as spicily charming as ever. "You've asked her
already. She's chosen the queen's sacrifice: her soul for her
daughter's. She won't let you undo her."

"She's chosen," affirmed Mord. "It's Her future now." He and
Gisco came on again, to the Doctor's impotent dismay. "Come away,
lad," the Vanir chieftain cajoled Si. His voice was gruff,
embarrassed at the tear-tracks that carved the Earthman's face.
"There's no help wailing it. You're honoured above - "

_"No!"_ Si yelled, spinning back to Nyssa-Ourania in Her
swivel throne. He shut out the shouting, cursing, and scuffling
that broke out immediately behind him. "Nyssa! I'm not going!" He
transmuted all his troubles into a final panache; and swept her a
bow that left his closed fist right under Her pretty snubbed nose,
and his eyes inches over the absences of Hers.

"Nyssa-Sheila-Ourania!" The dreadful stars seemed to kindle
briefly. "It's not much of a birthday present, but it's all I have
left to give You." He smiled without feigning, and tilted his elbow
to warn of something up his sleeve. His thumb stroked teasingly
over the side of its fist. The sounds of mayhem clattered
unregarded behind them.

Did Her head tilt a little further towards him? Did the
corners of Her mouth tug wonderingly upwards?

Slowly, he showed Her his gift, offering Her the hollow of his
hand.

Her abyss-eyes blazed with morningstars, as they looked back
into him. Si felt an enormous, impersonal presence, frigid as
liquid helium and sharp as a glass scalpel, slide delicately through
every quark and sub-sub-sub-concept of his being: changing it as
little as looking can, and so utterly.

The Dayspring flared zircon-white. Si felt himself enveloped,
known, and subliming into motes finer than light. His next thought
was a wordless trust; his next, _I thought Nyssa would come. She
isn't here anywhere..._

Nor was she; and that was his last thought in the whole
Universe.

_"There should have been another way!"_

- The Doctor, _passim_.

Si turned to make a last appeal to Nyssa-Ourania, as Mord and Gisco
came forward to annex Her; and the Doctor, reduced to instincts,
intercepted Mord with a Venusian karate one-two-six that took the
burly Vanir by surprise. _"Mondragon_ diva _Gama!"_ roared Fastolf,
whirling on Gisco in the same breath. After that the Doctor didn't
notice anyone's problems but his own, because Mord was rather good.
The general racket, and the eccentric direction of some of the blows
they both took, suggested the brawl was becoming rapidly general.
All the better, then...

The combination the Doctor took on the jaw, and the boot that
crunched at his instep, suggested Si had better pull his doves out
of his sleeves pretty quickly. A quick shift through boxing to kung
fu via Dimac won him a momentary respite; but he still needed all
his physical advantages just to drag things out, until (what?)

The Dayspring imitated a flashbulb, and the fight froze.
Fastolf, alarmingly, seemed to have done little better against
Gisco. Masha had almost bashed her way through Jock Goldspink,
having laid his gawky assistant out cold; cyborg Ada and ice-eyed
Baldur seemed to have accidentally gone up against each other; and
Bjorn had decided it was all very silly, and not bothered. It _was_
a farce - none of them had been fighting to do each other serious
harm, not here! - but it was also the most serious battle in
history. And the Doctor had won, if he hadn't trapped himself on
the wrong side.

Nyssa-Ourania stared at Si. Space-time prickled, like skin
scraped with a knife.

The white light shattered into kaleidoscopes of foxfire. Si
shattered with it.

_"Nyssa!"_ screamed the Doctor, along with one or two others.

For a moment, he thought he glimpsed the purple sorgen trees
and tender quiver-vines of old Traken, and a flowery forest path
that rushed downhill. Like something in the film on a bubble, he
saw a young girl in a brown dress running into a bright glade, hand
in hand with a fearfully familiar poet, a will like the wind between
the stars driving them on. Then the Doctor was real again in the
Helm Room, and there were no sweet fancies anywhere.

Simon Westport had vanished, like the light from a snuffed
candle.

Nyssa-Ourania sat in passive glory, and the stars shone from
her eyes. The Dayspring shone fair mornings under her hand.

Mord sank to his knee, and braced his halberd on the ground.

"Hail Nyssa Heal-All!" The other Vanir intoned that chorus,
half a breath behind their leader. "I Name You Hel's-Bane indeed,
Who Slays Death and Keeps Life! All hail _diva_ Nyssa, Nyssa Heal-
All Hel's-Bane!"

Gisco and Masha exchanged a long look. So did the Doctor and
Fastolf. As the Nordic rhubarb subsided, the hawk-faced Hadashti
drew his knife.

He sliced a long shallow cut across the back of his left hand,
saying evenly, "Hail _Binit Atanat Nushat_!" He sank to join the
Vanir on his knees, tipping his blood as a libation onto the plastic
floor. The Doctor groaned internally. "Iron and fire, blood and
steel before you, dear Keeper. Bring the Jubilee!"

With agonising slowness, first Masha and then Ada sank to join
him.

The Doctor darted through Nyssa-Ourania's devotees, and helped
Jock bring his long assistant to his feet. The two of them bore the
stunned man out through the great gates in silence. The Doctor gave
the technician the quickest once-over, saw he'd be all right. Jock
nodded. The Doctor went back into the Helm Room, which was still
wretched with wonder and prayer. He crossed to Fastolf.

"I've had enough," he told the Terileptil disgustedly.
"There's nothing here at all. It's Coal Hole Lane for me, or
wherever it is the Old Girl has to take me. Can I give you a lift
on my way?"

Fastolf laid a commiserating claw on his arm, and followed him
into the TARDIS. "They'll need our parts no more: their play is
done. Their night is bought and spent, and she - "

"Please, talk about something else!" The Doctor stamped up to
the console, called up the _Mistress Quickly_'s co-ordinates, and
set the time rotor in motion. "Now I know how Tegan feels..."

The TARDIS shook the stardust of Terminus from her skirts, and
dematerialised.

_"In the End shall be the Word, and the Word shall be Love."_

- _The Gospel of Man_, Hadashti oral tradition.

Tegan nursed her pint of XXXX in the pub, not daring to stay for
more than one. Not today! So she drank slowly, gathering herself,
thinking about Adric's botched message. What could he have been
trying to tell her? And did she want to do it?

_She hopes I'll come back some day, when she's ready. Does he
think she still - does he want me to_ wait _for her? Is he trying
to play stupid Cupid, to make up for messing up our chances before
he 'died'? Is even Adric that dense?_

"I reckon I'm onto a good thing there, mate."

"Yeah, but so's every other bastard when she's had a few."

It was a close thing, but Tegan decided with a generous
swallow that Adric wasn't _that_ clueless.

It had to be something important!

"And do you know why he couldn't control himself? Shall I
tell you?"

"Because he's a character in a soap?"

"I will tell you. Listen to me, I will tell you. Because it
was in his _stars_."

"Bit early in the day for stars, isn't it granddad?"

"Take me, I'm a Cancer. Now, put me in Stingo's place, I
wouldn't look twice at Sindy, no, you may laugh, but her tricks are
not part of my influenza; no, you show yourself up, because..."

_Keeping up the Stars!_ The paradox!

What could Tegan do about that? Forge it? She couldn't write
for toffee.

She couldn't expect Si back, or the Doctor.

Time might heal around most poetry books, without the world
ever noticing. But Si's masterwork had set the tone for the whole
dawn of the Star Age, whenever _that_ was due to happen. For the
better, Tegan was sure. Suppose it never got written, and Nyssa
ended up with a worse kind of Terminus to work with?

Suppose the Doctor had never heard of Si when he'd come
knocking, and that edgy first conversation had gone another way.
Suppose they'd never gone to Terminus at all? It wasn't as if Tegan
had been that keen, in the first place...

Suppose it had never happened, already?

Tegan shuddered. That way lay madness, and all the things
that lived there.

But Si was famous and respected. Suppose Tegan could get hold
of some of his notebooks, and patch a collection together out of
them? Or find someone reliable who could polish the rough diamonds
better than she could, just for the sake of the hoax? Surely
there'd be some way to get it published.

_And people see what they want to. If it's got his ideas and
his kind of...lyrics, then once he's the Great Mysterious Vanishing
Poet, it won't just be the arty types who read it. It'll be in the
news, in all the bookshops. It'll be his masterpiece, even though
it isn't! And then people will read his real ones, too; and he'll
turn their minds to the stars, the kind of life in the stars he
dreamed of... he and Nyssa..._

"That is such fucking bollocks, Danny!"

She drank up. She didn't want to get into faking her should-
have-been's best work; didn't want to have to stay involved with the
fantastic worlds she'd deserted. But it all fitted together too
sneakily. She knew she'd better go along with it. She _really_
didn't want to get into the kind of things that might happen to her,
if she ducked it!

Tegan walked out of the pub, into the Sunday autumn boredom,
and set off for her flat. She'd made her decision, and she wouldn't
let herself think about it or unpick it. Even wavering might draw
her world towards paradox, and the rotten realms of the Unspeakable
and the Mara. So she had to be certain; and so she was.

But she couldn't help hoping, anyway. That she'd open the
door, and be pounced on by Cats, and twitted mercilessly about her
carryings-on and Si's the other evening. That there'd be a message
on the Ansafone to confirm a booking for two at _Pizza on the Park_,
finishing on a thrillingly silly couplet. She walked home quickly,
so as not to think too much. She jammed her key impatiently into
the lock, and pressed in.

The stench of emptiness hit her the moment she entered the
studio. Their wine-glasses were where they'd left them, scabby with
hard red crystals and adding to the fug. They were really gone,
then. No friend. No suitor. Only this little hutch, and the
little job that paid the rent on it; or would, if she could find
another flatmate fast enough, or cut out half her small luxuries.
Unwarily, Tegan looked at her life from the great outside; and the
depression she'd known after she'd rejected the Doctor and his dead
Daleks, so long ago, crashed in on her from all directions without
warning. What was the point?

_Tegan! Remember her!_

Tegan smiled the costliest smile she'd ever smiled in her
life. It was a clown's smile, and about as attractive and funny,
but a smile it was.

_- I know who I hope I'm dancing with, tonight...!_

_I really do love you, Tegan. Be well, always._

She looked again at the wine-glasses, at the mess of
Saturday's rushed departure, and at the cheap futon she'd never
share again with her best friend or her best feller. It hardly
looked like the stuff of a life worth her living.

"Right," said Tegan, lifting her chin. "Let's get started!"

========

And here the tale of Nyssa's End is CONCLUDED. But there is yet a
word to be spoken, and that Epilogue belongs to Fastolf...

[Graham Woodland]

**NYSSA'S END**

A Serial Novel,

by

Graham Woodland

(The Dr Who series, and all characters and original ideas therefrom,
are copyright to the BBC, who are kindly requested not to send the
boys around. Everything else is mine. Anyone who wishes to archive
this story is welcome to do so. Rating: Language, themes, and
imagery in this story are frequently inappropriate for children.)

*Fastolf's Epilogue*

And here is the great and joyous tragedy of _Nyssa's End_ played out,
for Nyssa - my Star-Eyes, Brownie, True-Grief Death's-Bane Drake-
Friend! - is Nyssa no more; and by her sacrifice is the long lost
battle against entropy turned at last. Now shall her dream-
daughter, the Living Sky, quicken our dead Universe with new life,
whereby love and war and all good things may flower and fruit
forever, as easily as rot down beyond mere dust.

Gentles, will you linger? Her play is done, and our rock of
Paradise set firm. Yet it's all our part, to build this future's
self. And if you be less makers than I, still all that lives and
loves and labours has a maker's part in that enterprise... What?
Here still? Unmoved?

Truly, I say to you: all this angel promise may be honoured.
Certes, the Doctor deems it so, though little to his joy; and he is
wise beyond telling in the Universe's ways, if but simple in those
of mortals.

But may it be that we few share some doubts, anent the truth
of this tragedy and comedy?

Firstly, then, such vaunting of Eternity as we'll hear from those
_diva_-dervishes of Terminus, is puffing of a bellows. We know (for
we have hearkened to all this play right curiously) that Nyssa nor
her best made-minds could solve any of those three riddles, that she
first set herself before breaking Ourania free:

For want of _stability_, Ourania's self is by no demonstration
immortal; though being lazar-life made good on space and time, it
should hope to thrive for ages beyond reckoning.

For want of _respect_, we have no surety but the firm print of
Nyssa's own will that we'll not be edited beyond all truth or taste,
when immortal spaces and times take us in. And though Nyssa's word
is good gold, diva Nyssa is a strange likeness of our darling
already; and moreover one that shall be shaped and shifted by
Ourania's soul, of which we can know nothing.

For want of _completeness_, the preservation of the traces of
the dead, and the sharing of substance between our Universe and her
Limbo that achieves it, shall be no philosopher's certainty, but
only shall stand while Nyssa-masked Ourania masters it as an
'intelligent monitor'.

And thus it is I call the Gift of Death's-Bane no lumpish,
purse-precious deposit into the life-lover's hoard; but rather a
call to boundless merry strife for what it should offer; nor with
any knowing on which side her puissant daughter shall stand at the
last. And for that glory in it alone, of all the jewel deeds that
ever were done, must I name Nyssa's the very Dayspring.

Next, you shall hear a contention between the Doctor and great
Fastolf, and sagely adjudge me victor.

Time's good Champion and I did see, at the passing of Simon
Westport, a vision, wherein the Star-Piper and the young Nyssa of
old Traken fled hand-in-hand into a grove of her dear lost
homeworld, and a will strong and cold and empty as a God's did so
speed them. And we're well accorded in so far as this: that here
was true vision; and that the world was i-Traken; and that Si was
sent there fully, in the company of a creature wholly Nyssa. Wholly
Nyssa, I say, and yet scarce her all: but such parts of her as had
no part in the Living Sky; as her soul's remnant, and her too great
tenderness, and her sentimental follies, and friendly partialities,
and curious abstractions - to make a short tale of it, such ways in
her as made our Traken maid of old, ere she passed through Evil's
black refining fire - in fine, a nymph well worthy to love and be
loved, as the true Nyssa did no longer know herself; failing which,
a base false counterfeit of same, whose embrace should be as
shameful as Cyberiad succubi's. Now, in arts of heart and spirit, I
myself can think Nyssa no ill maker.

Yet was i-Traken fashioned for a limbo, and a world of
phantoms; and aught that exists there alone should be doomed to a
sweet and swift passing, even as the shade of laughter-loving Ottar.
Though its traces should be saved for a longed-for Jubilee, its life
shall be lost until then.

For this cause will the Doctor hold no fellowship with
Ourania. He deems that, for the comfort of Nyssa's mortal soul, the
Sky-Keeper did rob away the poet's life, that those two phantoms
might find some happy idyll before their final fading. And he calls
this no bittersweet stroke of romance, but flat ravishment and
murder, well worthy of a Goddess indeed; nor will he be art and part
with Nyssa's relic and heiress, nor the folly-struck nation who
would worship her. And in this wise he has left her to her own.

So should our Universe be as blessed as could decently be
asked (there's our great comedy), but Nyssa be fallen beyond recall,
and her love slain by her dead hand; which were tragedy more than
enow, and a grievous good counterpoint.

The Doctor is very kind-hearted and deep-minded, and gallant
withal. But the Doctor at last sight was dashed in love, missing
six or seven of his eight wits, and on the outset of a desperate
quest to scrabble them back from Time's scrap-heap. On such an
occasion, we may excuse him from playing Sir Oracle.

Consider, gentles all, the other possibility. It offers art,
irony, and a very holy terror, and shall add zest and drama to your
lives, an' you turn your minds to it.

We know, from the adventure of Cats and Meg, that love lies in
the mind as well as the mystery: in that part of our spirits that
may speak, as truly as in that which must needs be silent. And
whereas a mask is but a mind's form, and Ourania wears Nyssa's mask;
and whereas our True-Grief did love Si unto very distraction, we may
well believe that the chilly spirit of the skies should cherish him
too. Nor is it over-like that she bore her mother's soul ill will.
I do trust and affirm that, in her young affection, she has lent i-
Traken her own true substance, and made it a reality enduring; and
that here we see the cause of the Dayspring's bright new morning.

In which case, we may make Si and his maiden Nyssa all
comedies to our liking, and grant them happy-ever-afters by the
boatload, in their earthly Paradise beyond our space's bourne.

Also, we may raise a spectre shall send shivers down the
spines of our hardiest.

Mark well: i-Traken is also the cornerstone of the limbo
world, the context of the dead. Might its realising not seem, in a
manner, as that early raising of the dear dead which Nyssa on life
would not countenance? Which, in its shared structure with our
world, but alien purpose, should beget a paradox - such as should
sunder the Universes of the living and the dead forever, other else
destroy both? Is our reality cracked once again, then, and by
Ourania's first act of love? Is it aught but her will, even now,
that sustains our space and time from a second causal fault, and
descent into Unmaking? How then?

- In good sooth, I mainly jest, nor does this grue accord
with all I'm told. But shall not this fine _memento mori_ add
savour to life's dream? And is it not a pretty thought, that all
our ado on Terminus may end in only this: comedy for love's heroes,
and old tragedy for their Universe, that they would never wit of?

More likely, in earnest, is that the new Traken guards and
forms the limbo-space only, being more a seat of Heaven's than a
once and future world itself. Better to believe that, surely.

Better to believe that Ourania is _stability, respect_, and
_completeness_. (Well, too, to prepare against the day when she is
not!) Better to cheer the dearest loss that ever befell our
Universe: the noble exit of Nyssa, my nest-niece, and her gift of
life and stars. And best of all's to believe that Nyssa - and her
lucky lover, who's yet to sing her song of which he's doomed - are
not lost unto us forever, betide Ourania weal or woe!

And such delight is mine, and may be yours, for a moment's
more attendance. For should the Living Sky attain its high purpose,
surely therein it must solve those three riddles of the Whisper,
whose fault Nyssa did supply for the nonce with her own mind's
matter? And, needing that no longer, shall Ourania not restore her
mother in full, her soul all refreshed from love in her maiden's
mild Paradise, and ready again for great deeds and new battles? Or
should we doubt of either?

But suppose Ourania, for all the grovelling and worshipping
that now surrounds her like a mucky moat, begin to fail of her
promise, or fall foul of foes too stark for her godlinghead to put
down? When all's tried in her starry realm and gone awry; when in
the mortal world of deeds she needs the best of champions or
ambassadors - who then will she call, if not Nyssa?

By which I get my faith that we in the years to come, or our
heirs in untold millennia - it skills not which, and 'twere pity if
we knew - shall know our Nyssa again: and her return shall be either
the hour of Life's most famous triumph, or else of its direst
need. On so much, we stand secure. For it is foulness beyond
reason, and folly not to be thought on, that Creation's fairest
daughter should be lost to us forever -

YOU meaner Beauties of the Night,
That poorly satisfie our Eies
More by your number, then your light,
You Common-people of the Skies;
What are you when the Sun shall rise?

You Curious Chanters of the Wood,
That warble forth Dame Natures layes,
Thinking your Voyces understood
By your weake accents; what's your praise
When Philomell her voyce shal raise?

You Violets, that first apeare,
By your pure purpel mantels knowne,
Like the proud Virgins of the yeare,
As if the Spring were all your own;
What are you when the Rose is blowne?

So, when my Mistris shal be seene
In Form and Beauty of her mind,
By Vertue first, then Choyce a Queen,
Tell me, if she were not design'd
Th' Eclypse and Glory of her kind?

Sir Henry Wotton made it. I, Fastolf the Terileptil, Uncle Dragon,
sing it. Until the Keeper wakes, my friends, I remain,

Your master in making, Sir Simon,
your bane in our contest, Sir Sorensen,
and your servant, Dame Tegan Bel-Phoenix,

***F***.

[Igenlode Wordsmith]

Graham Woodland <gr...@quilpole.demon.co.uk> wrote in message <vN$$wAABPm...@quilpole.demon.co.uk>

[snip]

> -
>
> TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Seven, 'The Lad That's Gone'.

Gray, where's Episode Seven gone?
--
Igenlode Wordsmith

[Graham Woodland]

Igenlode Wordsmith wrote
>Graham Woodland <gr...@quilpole.demon.co.uk> wrote in message <vN$$wAABPmS+EwUe@q

>uilpole.demon.co.uk>
>
>
>[snip]
>> -
>>
>> TO BE CONTINUED in Episode Seven, 'The Lad That's Gone'.
>
>Gray, where's Episode Seven gone?

On its way to you now by e-mail. It's here on my server, though. Any
of the others missing? Anyone else running into the same problem? If
this is more than a random glitch, maybe I ought to repost to the ng.

Otherwise, I'll be happy to e-mail any AWOL episodes to you, or to
anyone else who wants them.

Cheers,

[J2rider]

"Never, Doctor!" Nyssa's voice was hatefully implacable. It
was worse than the way she'd sounded when she talked about the
Master. "Not if it turns all my dreams to dust. Adric chose to die
in a way that very nearly redeemed his life, and I won't let you undo

even that!">>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I can not accept Nyssa EVER saying this or behaving in this manner.

[J2rider]

"He betrayed us to the Cyberiad, Tegan," said Nyssa starkly.
"And except at the very end, he betrayed himself, too horribly for
you to imagine. He is beyond any forgiveness this side of death,
and I'd far rat>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

WHAT???? Adric betrayed them to the Cybermen? Like that would happen!!!!