Then, together, they climb the sharp steps of the diamond pile. The stones grind and crackle against the soles of her shoes. Jamais burrows in and out of the gemstones with glee, his slippery form dark and dramatic against their dazzling light. Chloe laughs, slips, cuts herself on the sharp lines and edges but keeps climbing.
When she reaches the top she cheers, and Jamais bursts out beside her, his big head telescoped up on his long neck.
Chloe tickles his ear. "Remember the first diamond? 800 BC. The Indian who won it from the riverbed... he gave it to me."
Jamais looks about, panting, as if hoping to find it. But Chloe knows he is not really listening. He likes having his ear tickled too much.
"And look how many we have now."
She turns Jamais"s head to face her. His shiny dark eyes seem to say, How come you"re not bored with diamonds, Chloe? How come you"re not bored with diamonds, Chloe?
"Because they"re magic," she breathes. "And they help me remember. Ancient peoples believed your soul could be reincarnated in a diamond as easily as in an animal or plant." She sighs. "Besides, I can never be bored with them. It says so in the book."
Once, long ago, Chloe sneakily tried to flick forward to see what happened at the end of the story.
But terrible things happen if you read the book out of order.
She blinks, feeling the tug on her twisted eyelids. Yes, now she is happy to love diamonds forever.
Chloe weighs a dozen of them in her hand. Jamais nuzzles closer, his eyes sorry and soulful. He coughs a sad second or two in her face; she turns away but her fear lingers like the stale smell of sweat and cologne.
Footsteps sound in the white hallway outside, getting closer.
Terrible things happen, all the time.
Seven.
Physical Anji, all wrapped up in her cuddliest velour dressing gown, shuffled into the kitchen to find a topless Guy sat on the table with the Doctor pressing a stethoscope to his hairless chest. The poor lad blushed, probably aware he made a pretty pasty specimen.
"It"s looking relatively normal right now," Guy a.s.sured her as he self-consciously smoothed his quite remarkable bed-hair. "You wouldn"t believe the gadgets he"s stuck all over me."
"Spare me the clinical details, please." Anji frowned to hide a smile. His hair looked sweet, all tousled. "So what"s the verdict, Doctor? Will he play the piano again?"
The Doctor took one of Guy"s hands and spread his fingers. "An octave"s span. Very good. Or you could"ve been." He looked at Guy earnestly. "You learned for a while when you were younger isn"t that so? But you thought, only fourteen notes and all those records in the Top Forty each week... all the best songs will"ve been used up by the time I"m any good. Why bother?" The Doctor patted Guy"s hand and let it go. "Never mind!" he said cheerily.
Guy had started clicking his tongue nineteen to the dozen. He gave Anji a long freaked-out look, and she shivered. The Doctor would do this party trick from time to time. She wondered what he saw sometimes when he looked in her eyes, but decided she was happier he kept it to himself.
The Doctor packed away his stethoscope into a battered old Gladstone bag br.i.m.m.i.n.g with equipment. "Well, you seem to be in fair fettle, Guy. A bit flabbier than you could be, a higher cholesterol level than is strictly speaking healthy, and some fairly unusual genetic aberrations but "
"Whoa!" Guy protested. "What do you mean, "genetic aberrations"?"
The Doctor pursed his lips. "You know, they made me sit up and take notice too when the DNA scanner highlighted them. But it"s nothing exciting. Some hereditary tic in your protein chains; bases and structures have done some shifting about." Guy looked blank. "I don"t think it"s much to worry about. And certainly not worth killing you for."
"Well, that"s good news, anyway," said Guy wryly.
"Your burns have cleared up well," Anji noticed. "Barely a scar."
Guy smiled tightly. "Not on the outside."
"Yes, that lotion"s very good," said the Doctor vaguely. "Do throw it away when you"ve finished with it though, won"t you?"
"Sure." Guy slipped off the table and padded past Anji without another word, back to the spare room.
"Were you telling the truth about this DNA thing?" she asked quietly.
The Doctor didn"t seem hurt that she should ask. "Yes. The mutation is in the same prions that can cause mental disorders such as CJD and BSE." He raised a hand for silence before she could even open her mouth. "But relax, his codons haven"t altered for the worse, they don"t seem interested in creating anything nasty. They"re just different different. They seem to have been that way since birth."
He moved his bag from the table, and Anji noticed a small card had been lying beneath it. She craned her neck to read the name written across it in neat biroed capitals.
"Timeless? Where did you pick that up?"
The Doctor casually stuffed it into his bag. "Special delivery. Food for thought. Speaking of which, I bet you"d like some breakfast."
Anji watched him spring up and over to his designated change of subject, a miraculously full fridge. She smiled, letting it go for now, and gave him a brief round of applause. "Thanks for doing that."
"An army marches on its stomach." The Doctor pulled out three eggs and a bag of mushrooms and started hunting about for a frying pan.
"Where"s Trix? Packed her bags and gone for good?"
"Not exactly."
"And where"s Fitz? Sent him out for dessert?"
"He"s on an errand. With Trix." He discovered the pristine pan in a high cupboard and brandished it like a trophy before putting it on the heat. "They may be some time. Good eggs."
"But can you make an omelette without breaking them?" muttered Anji. "You know," she added more loudly, "I had some weird dreams last night. About a girl."
"Oh really?" The Doctor busied himself cracking the eggs with an impish glee.
"She had the strangest eyes... It was quite disturbing."
He brat the mixture to within a sticky inch of its life. "A vivid imagination is a wonderful thing."
"I didn"t make her up. She was waiting outside last night."
"Not all last night," murmured the Doctor as he poured the eggs into the pan. The pan sizzled smokily in the little kitchen.
Anji sat at her table. Fitz"s journal, the thing that had snagged time"s thread and set the whole cosmos unravelling, was lying open at the last page.
"What are you reading that for?" Anji tapped the battered old book. "We"ve made it, haven"t we? Made it home. How come you"re suddenly not bothered about returning this to its proper place in 1938?"
"Now that we"re here, I"m almost afraid to." The Doctor sighed as he chopped up the mushrooms. "Sabbath"s employers wanted a single, orderly reality but if Fitz"s journal isn"t returned to its proper place they"re left with a fundamentally unstable universe that can never reconcile its inconsistencies, one which will ultimately unravel. They"ll be trying to put things right through Sabbath, just as we"ve been trying to put things right ourselves."
"Right. So, Sabbath will be up to another of his dopy schemes, desperate to ally himself with the next nasty to come slinking out of the vortex with a bunch of hollow promises."
The Doctor looked up from his chopping. "Unless?"
Anji shivered. "Unless... he and they are waiting for us to do the job for them."
"That"s right. If we make it, if we win, Sabbath"s employers will feel the benefits too." He dipped a finger in the omelette mixture, s.n.a.t.c.hed it away quickly and added the diced mushrooms. "And I don"t work for anyone."
"I think you probably work for Everyone." She smiled. "You work for Life."
The Doctor shook his head, gave Anji the ghost of a smile. "No such things as jobs for life in the twenty-first century. You should know that."
Anji had a sinking feeling. "So you"re just going to wait around and let the universe unravel rather than be out-manoeuvred by Sabbath?"
"He"s here, you know. I can feel him." The Doctor stared gloomily out of the window, and opened it to clear some of the pan"s thick smoke. "Feel his footsteps drawing closer as sure as the beating of my hearts."
"Hearts often get a beating when you"re around. Doctor," muttered Anji.
He flashed her a smile. "And eggs. Do you have any herbes de Provence herbes de Provence?"
"Please, Doctor." This wasn"t cute any more. She was suddenly very tired. "For all we"ve been through... for all the people we know have died, for all those broken Earths we"ve seen, for everyone who"s sacrificed themselves for us just so we might win this one..."
The Doctor flipped over the omelette and spun round to face her. "I"m going to sort it," he snapped. "All right? Trust me. You don"t need to remind me me of all that"s..." of all that"s..."
Anji met his gaze fearlessly as he trailed off. The pan crackled and spat behind him.
"Maybe you do. Maybe you"re right. You are are right." The Doctor challenged her with a small smile. "But are you hungry?" right." The Doctor challenged her with a small smile. "But are you hungry?"
"Since you ask ravenous." She smiled as he flipped the omelette out on to a plate and placed it before her.
"Guy?" he called. "Do you want any breakfast?" He picked up the pan and dumped it in a basin of cold water where it hissed and steamed in protest. "You can have cornflakes or muesli."
She raised an eyebrow, looking down at her steaming plateful.
The Doctor shrugged. "Bored with doing that."
Guy didn"t answer. A c.r.a.ppy cellphone rendition of "Delilah" piped up from the next room; his mobile had started ringing. It cut out and his low, m.u.f.fled voice sounded through the closed door.
Anji turned back to her omelette. It tasted good. The Doctor watched her eat in silence.
A few minutes later, Guy poked his head round the door, fully dressed. "That was Mike at work."
The Doctor gave him a sharp look. "Did you tell him where you are?"
"No. I rang off in the end." He ran a hand absently through his wild hair. "Jesus, this is all so screwed..."
"How did Mike sound?" asked Anji. "Still homicidal?"
"He sounded OK. The hospital"s called him and so have the police." Guy looked anxious, moving his hands about like they were out of control. "They all want to talk to me."
The Doctor straightened up. "Well, they can"t."
"Pete"s been calling for me, apparently."
"With a knife behind his back?" asked Anji.
"It"s fine for you, isn"t it?" he snapped. "Not you they"re after." Wide-eyed and sulky, he suddenly looked about sixteen. "I mean, I"ve done nothing wrong. They were trying to kill me, not the other way round! Why don"t I just talk to the police and clear the whole thing up?"
"You"ll tell them your gran, your girlfriend, your nephew and your work colleagues all want you dead," surmised the Doctor. "And yet they"ll all have mysteriously forgotten everything. And the police will point out that your gran nearly drowned, your nephew is in the hospital with third-degree burns and your ladyfriend had her lights punched out and you were standing next to each of them at the time."
"Julie was down to her her!" Guy pointed at Anji.
She nodded sheepishly. "How come Julie hasn"t phoned?"
"She has. I"ve set the phone to route her calls to the answering service." He blew out a long breath. "I have no idea what to say to her."
"Say nothing," the Doctor told him sternly. "Not to anyone. This force that wants you dead, whatever it is, has used as its instruments of execution people close to you."
"What, and we always hurt the ones we love?" Guy snorted.
"We often p.i.s.s them off," noted Anji.
"Exactly," said the Doctor. "Little resentments. Maybe you argued with this girl, Julie, yesterday morning..."
"A tiny disagreement," protested Guy.
The Doctor nodded. "And maybe your nephew and your grandmother both wish you"d visit more often..."
"I"m busy! They understand that!"
Anji shrugged. "And Mike was annoyed that you"d gone through the things on his desk, remember?"
Guy looked troubled. "But what about the girl in the tea bar? I mean, OK, we snogged after a night on the sauce, like, nine months ago, but since then..."
"She probably pined for you," said Anji seriously. "Every single night, she"s played those brief, drunken, heavenly moments again and again."
"You reckon?" Guy was incredulous.
"No, not really." Anji stuffed the last of the omelette in her mouth. "She just wishes you were out of her life so she doesn"t have to cringe from the memory every time you slouch by."
"I don"t slouch!"
"In any case," said the Doctor loudly "These negative feelings have been magnified by an external force to the point they motivate these people to murder. So steer clear of them, Guy. I need to find out more about what"s going on around here. About why this is happening." He looked worriedly at Anji. "This much I do know: Sabbath"s involved."
"And Timeless?" she asked innocently.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." He picked up the old journal from the kitchen table and shoved it in his pocket. "Now, if you"ll excuse me, there"s something I must do."
He barged past Guy and vanished from sight.