‘Where?’

‘In this room. And right now, it’s looking for a new home. I reckon we’ve got about three minutes.’

‘It won’t choose me, that’s why you kept me here. I heard what you said. I have a heart condition. I’m gonna die.’

‘What?’ The Doctor frowned, then remembered what he said earlier to Madam Delphi. ‘Wilfred, I have no idea

about the condition of your heart one way or another.

You’ve could have a couple more decades in you at least, for all I know. I was just saying that because – well, doesn’t matter right now.’ He glanced at the missing chunk of wall where Caitlin had been standing. ‘Now, I doubt it can bring back the dead, so I’m hoping it goes for the easiest target, the path of least resistance.’

Wilf followed the Doctor’s point of view to Netty, stood smiling serenely beside him.

‘No…’

‘It’s the most likely vessel.’

Wilf was shaking with sadness. ‘But it’s my Netty. We were going to see the world, go on a cruise, do South America, Canada, the Indian Ocean. Doctor, she’s my life.

I never thought anyone could replace my wife, God rest her soul, but Netty Goodhart came along and showed me that there’s more to living than sitting in a vegetable patch listening to Dusty Springfield. I can’t lose her. I can’t lose another lady from my life. I love her!’

‘I know you do, and I’m really sorry to ask this of her, but I have to.’

‘You can’t ask her, she’s… she’s shut off right now. It’s the illness, the dementia. She can’t speak for herself.’

The Doctor reached into his pocket and took out a piece of paper.

Wilf looked at it.

My Darling Wilfred.

You told me once you trusted the Doctor with Donna’s life. Now trust him with mine. I don’t know what he’s going to do, nor what state I’ll be in when he does it, but if

you trust him, that’s good enough for me.

HG

‘It’s your special paper,’ Wilf said. ‘Shows me what I want to see. Donna told me about it, ages ago.’

The Doctor mouthed a silent ‘oh thank you very much, Donna’, then produced his leather wallet with the real psychic paper in it. ‘No, Wilfred, the letter’s genuine.

When we were at that burger place I explained to Netty what might be needed. Why she was a potential target and a potential—’

The Doctor broke off, and Wilf saw a momentary purple flash of fire shoot through his eyes. He then screwed them tight and opened them again. Brown. As always.

The Doctor blew air out of his cheeks. ‘That wasn’t fun, but it won’t try me again.’

‘No need,’ said Henrietta Goodhart, quietly but with a familiar menace to her tone. ‘I have a new home. A new body. One that can move, and talk, and feel.’

‘Get out of my lady-friend,’ Wilf snapped.

Netty just laughed. ‘You poor pathetic deluded man.

This is my vessel now. Mandragora lives. I shall reign down destruction upon this world, I shall have my revenge. This entire cosmos will fall into ruin and chaos and I shall feed off it for centuries. Beautiful chaos!’

Wilf took a step towards Netty, but the Doctor pulled him back, gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

‘Wait.’ The Doctor looked over at the burnt wall where Caitlin had died. Then at the computer, now useless and dead. At Callum Fitzhaugh’s body, so consumed by rage

and despair once upon a time, he had given succour to a universal blight that was about to destroy Earth, given a chance. And at Henrietta Goodhart’s body, inhabited now by an alien power so great, it had survived since the Dark Times and was now ready to wreak a wave of annihilation across the known galaxies.

Unless he had got his calculations right.

Netty walked around the room, as if nothing were wrong with her, a strong, fit woman in her late sixties, who should have been yomping across the Yorkshire Dales or sunning herself on a Caribbean cruise, Wilfred Mott as her companion, at her side.

Instead, she coughed. She staggered.

Wilf went to help, but the Doctor yanked him back.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t begin to imagine how hard this is for you,’ the Doctor told him, ‘but you have to let it play out.’

Netty, or rather the alien life force currently inhabiting her mind and body, grinned at them. It was a grin neither of them liked much. It twisted Netty’s face in a way that demonstrated absolutely that this was not Netty at all.

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she gloated. ‘You have given me a whole new lease of life. I always knew the computer was a means to an end, that one day the right host would come along. Having studied this ridiculous planet, I’d rather hoped it’d be a young, sexy, male body. Like a TV soap star or a sportsman. But hey, little old ladies will do for now. When this one is burned up, I’ll move on to another.’

‘Burned up?’ Wilf looked at the Doctor, but the Time Lord’s gaze was firmly fixed on Netty. Whether this was for a reason other than not being able to deal with Wilf’s

accusatory stare, Wilf had no idea.

‘Oh, didn’t your alien mate here tell you about that side of things? I wonder if he told Henrietta Goodhart when he made the deal with her. You see, Wilf – I may call you Wilf, mayn’t I? Only Netty is terribly fond of you, and I think it makes things easier if we communicate casually.

Mr Mott is terribly formal.’ The rictus grin got wider.

‘Anyway, the human body can only withstand Mandragora energy for a short time before it evaporates and I have to find a new repository. Ultimately, it will be the Doctor.’

‘Will it? Oh joy.’

‘You know it will.’

‘But you need to weaken my defences first, of course.

Batter me down, break my spirit. How’re you going to do that, then?’

Netty laughed – it was a sound utterly devoid of warmth or genuine mirth. ‘By destroying everyone you know.’

She suddenly looked unsteady on her feet, and reached out to Wilf for support. He was about to supply it when the Doctor bounded across the room, knocking Wilf’s arm away.

‘Oi!’

‘Oh, don’t you start,’ the Doctor muttered. ‘Let her stand on her own two feet.’

Netty was steady again. ‘Starting with this old man with the bad heart.’

Wilf was about to speak – and then it dawned on him why the Doctor had made up the stuff about his heart.

He’d wanted it to take Netty’s body, not Wilf’s.

Why?

‘Once upon a time, Doctor, we saw this world as a threat, it had so much potential. We tried to stop it developing, hold back its early sciences. But look at it now! We were wrong, we should have encouraged it further. It has the ability to communicate. With one tiny computer virus, Mandragora can touch the world. There are almost seven billion people on Earth, Doctor. In a couple of years, two billion homes will have a personal computer within them, accessed on average by three people. Add to that infiltration into the workplace and it will take Mandragora less than an hour to effectively dominate the majority of people in this planet, to use human technology to spread Mandragora across the galaxy far more efficiently than I can do it alone. In twenty years, I could have humanity building farms on Mars. In a hundred years’ time, we could colonise Alpha Centauri. A new Mandragoran Empire, combining Helix energy, human physicality and communications science.

And then… then…’

‘It’s impressive, I’ll grant you. Then what?’

‘What does any species do? It flourishes, it dominates it… sort of… keeps going.’

‘Oh, “sort of keeps going”, that’s very scientific.’ The Doctor sat on the chair in front of the now useless Madam Delphi set-up. ‘And? Tell me more of your plans. Wilfred here is desperate to know. So am I. And Donna, she’s just outside the door – hello, Donna, come back in – I’m sure she wants to know, too.’

Donna showed herself. ‘I thought I could be more help up here. All those weirdos, I ushered into the staff restaurant, told ’em I’d be back in a minute.’