Part 4 (1/2)

'Listen. Most of our universe is made up of dark matter, stuff that neither absorbs nor reflects light, but which exerts a gravitational force. And more than half the energy energy in our universe is dark, practically undetectable, not generated by matter or radiation. Yet these are the concepts, the metaphysical facts that explain our expanding cosmos.' The Doctor peered down at the readouts on the console. 'I reckoned as much,' he murmured. 'In this universe there's no trace.' in our universe is dark, practically undetectable, not generated by matter or radiation. Yet these are the concepts, the metaphysical facts that explain our expanding cosmos.' The Doctor peered down at the readouts on the console. 'I reckoned as much,' he murmured. 'In this universe there's no trace.'

'If it's dark matter and energy,' reasoned Fitz, 'maybe you just can't see it?'

'Fitz. You know what's out there right now? What accounts for ninety-nine per cent of matter?' He looked searchingly at Trix as if daring her to answer. 'Plasma. Hot, electrically conducting gases. A universe strewn by vast electrical currents and magnetic fields ordered by electromagnetism as much as gravity where galaxies have formed in ultracl.u.s.ters that have taken scores and scores of billions of years to form.'

Anji's brain felt like mush. 'So where did this this universe begin?' universe begin?'

'It didn't. It has no beginning and no end. It has always been always been growing slowly, agglomerating matter in giant strands twisting across s.p.a.ce.' growing slowly, agglomerating matter in giant strands twisting across s.p.a.ce.'

'But everything has a beginning,' Trix protested. 'Where did all the matter in s.p.a.ce come from if not from the Big Bang?'

'The Big Bang doesn't explain where all that matter actually came from, does it?' Anji happily scored a point to herself. 'And it doesn't explain what gathered it all together into a little ball, what made it explode, or what was there before.'

'They're both impossible to understand,' Fitz said wisely, 'so who cares? Life's too short to worry about it.'

'But it's incredible, isn't it? Just imagine.' The Doctor was staring out, enraptured by the starfield on the scanner. 'No boundaries. Worlds without number, knowledge without limits. I could explore forever and ever and never reach the end.'

Fitz cleared his throat meaningfully. 'How does all this help us?'

'What?' The Doctor seemed to drag himself back to them. 'Well... if the TARDIS can go back in time to just after the Big Bang in our universe and hold hold that point while we slip through the dimensions...' that point while we slip through the dimensions...'

Trix finished his sentence: 'We'll know that if we're ripped apart by the primal forces of creation, we're back in our own universe. Great!'

'There's a risk involved, of course there is,' snapped the Doctor, suddenly angry. 'I don't know if the TARDIS can stand those forces, but I I can't stand to be lost any longer. We've can't stand to be lost any longer. We've got got to get back before there's nothing to get back to get back before there's nothing to get back to to.'

Fitz, Anji and Trix all looked at each other nervously. Until Fitz, reliable as ever, changed the subject.

'Trix, why are you wearing a dress?'

'What, this old thing?' Trix smiled. She knew she looked good, all dolled up to impress the boys. 'Why not? Dress up nice, something nice'll happen to you. That's what my poor old mum used to say.'

'Right,' said Anji, unconvinced. Trix was one hundred per cent fake. You couldn't believe a word she said.

'And it worked, didn't it?' She placed a hand on the Doctor's shoulder and beamed at him. 'Looks like we're going back home, thanks to our resident genius!'

'It's a fetching design,' said the Doctor stiffly. 'But you'll remember to replace it in the TARDIS wardrobe before you leave us, won't you?'

Trix's smile faltered. 'Whatever.'

Anji was glad the Doctor wasn't taken in by Trix the way Fitz seemed to be. Of course, he was a sucker for a pretty girl with a sob story, and Trix had a million different ones at her fingertips: hints of a tragic past, a loveless childhood, uncaring partners... all ready to spring on him the moment she wanted something.

Trix's hand slipped from the Doctor's shoulder as he moved round the console, flicking switches and yanking levers. 'To pull this off,' he said, 'we'll have to push the TARDIS to its limits...'

The breakthrough didn't happen straight away of course. They may have found the key, but the door it opened remained as lost and out of reach as ever. It was going to take time. Fitz suggested to Trix that they dramatise this latest development for his film. Anji went back to her room and loaded Fitz's latest tape. She looked at the latest entries in his cheerful montage of dead and dying Earths, and wondered how the movie would end.

Anji was asleep when the TARDIS broke through into...

No. There were no words for it, none that could hope to do justice to the seething force of that very first recorded second of existence, the obliterating moment of creation.

Like Fitz and Trix, Anji had been drugged.

The time s.h.i.+p had thoughtfully dimmed its lights a little before midnight, suggesting sleep to its occupants. With the warm-up complete, the Doctor came round with a mug of laced cocoa for everybody. He sensed the time of discovery was near very possibly the time of his own ending. The crucial point had slithered sluglike, closer and closer. Now he wanted to face it alone, not with the tiring chatter of the children about him. If they didn't make it through, their little lives would end without fear.

Anji would never know this, for Chloe would take the knowledge to the grave. She was good at keeping secrets, and the Doctor had many.

She had pa.s.sed through the twisted, buckling walls of his blue box and watched him play among the debris of his s.h.i.+p's controls.

'Nothing works!' he was shrieking over and over, wild haired and terrified, the captain sinking with his s.h.i.+p.

Jamais had barked, the sound stretching the moment into minutes. The Doctor glanced up at them, recoiled in shock; then composed himself once more as he breathed the healing seconds, careful time like air restoring the console, coaxing life back into its shattered motors.

The Event washed the big little craft forward 80 million years. The first stars hadn't switched on yet. The universe was dark, hatching possibilities.

'Thank you,' said the Doctor. Chloe watched him come cautiously closer.

'We've helped you,' she explained. 'So now you have to do some favours for us.'

'Favours?' the Doctor looked oddly at her.

'Make me a promise,' she announced with a crafty smile. And they talked for a little while, and she showed him some pages from her special book.

'We'll be meeting you again,' she told him by way of farewell, and patted the heavy leather volume wistfully. 'It says so in here.'

She could feel the Doctor's eyes on her as Jamais took her away, out into the darkness in silence.

Five.

The week before today 'Hi.' Jacqui smiled at the couple on her doorstep. 'You must be friends of Daniel.'

'Ralf Canons.h.i.+re,' the man announced. He was tall and lean in an expensive suit, clean-shaven, his thick hair plastered with gel and combed back from his forehead. 'This is my wife, Susan.'

Susan nodded bored acknowledgement. She wore an elegant dress as black as her long hair with a scoop neck that left little to the imagination. Jacqui felt her nerves buzz as she checked out the woman's green eyes. There was something catlike and dangerous about them.

Jacqui checked their names on the list and beckoned them inside.

'Is Daniel here?' asked Ralf, as they followed her into the kitchen.

'He's due any minute.' A couple Jacqui didn't know were kissing and groping furiously up against the wall. Susan acted like they weren't there; after a couple of moments so did Ralf.

Jacqui beamed at them both. 'Please, may I fix you a drink?'

Susan was looking at her, scrutinising her at least as critically as Jacqui did herself in the mirror morning, noon and night, and clearly reaching no nice conclusions. Jacqui knew she was ugly. Knew her straight fine hair flopped about as lifelessly as the rest of her, knew her nose was too big and her teeth like tombstones, and her chest as flat as her conversation. But Daniel liked her place Mum's old place in Holland Park, and so sometimes he let her host his little parties. They were glamorous and wild, a place where like and dirty minds could meet. Daniel made the world seem such a wicked place Jacqui could barely stand the thrill of it.