‘Umm, Donna,’ the Doctor cautioned, ‘what’s to stop them running away?’

Donna held up a little silver key and waved it in front of his nose. ‘Cos I’m brilliant and locked ’em in.’ She grinned. ‘Oh, but I sent the Carnes boys home.’

‘Good, good. Mandragora here was just telling me how he/she/it is going to create a whole new empire. Like the Byzantine Empire, or, um, what was that other one?

Greek? No… Oh, what was it?’

Donna opened her mouth to suggest ‘Roman’ but the Doctor stopped her.

‘Now, now, Donna, let Mandragora work it out. Come on, you’ve got all that information at your fingertips, what’s the empire I’m thinking of? Something to do with a Decline and a Fall, wasn’t it?’

Netty/Mandragora paused. Then: ‘Roman. The Roman Empire.’

‘Oh yes, very good. How many billions of computers are there on Earth now? What was the market infiltration of the M-TEK, by the way?’

Netty/Mandragora frowned, and turned to Donna’s granddad. ‘Wilf? Help me…’

‘Netty…?’

‘No, Wilfred,’ the Doctor said loudly, his voice suddenly like a gunshot. ‘Sit down, leave Netty to work it out. Now!’

And Wilf settled next to Donna, on the floor.

‘Where is Mandragora from?’

Netty/Mandragora smiled. ‘A nebula, Doctor. We escaped the Dark Times and created a new home in the heart of beautiful chaos.’

‘Of course you did. What was it called?’

‘The… it was… I can’t remember…’

Netty/Mandragora staggered slightly. ‘We can’t remember…’

‘Come on, focus,’ the Doctor yelled suddenly, and he was up, circling Netty/Mandragora, firing questions as he walked around.

‘Tell me the speed of light? How many years did the Carrionite-Eternals war rage? Where is the home world of the Judoon? What’s the Twenty-Third Convention of the Shadow Proclamation? Who won the Bendrome/Sendrome War? How many beans make five?

Come on, come on…’ he clicked his fingers impatiently. ‘I mean, you can hardly take over the universe if you can’t think for yourself, can you?’

‘Give me a moment…’ Netty/Mandragora spat.

‘Give you a moment? Well, I could give you a moment, I s’pose, I mean, I’d give Henrietta Goodhart a moment or two happily, because she’s not well, is she? Oh, didn’t you realise? Hadn’t you sussed that bit out?’ And the Doctor roughly grabbed Netty’s shoulders and swung her round so they were face to face, noses almost touching. ‘You’ve taken on the body of a rather amazing lady, Mandragora, and you’ve locked yourself away in her mind, spreading out into her synapses and everything. Trouble is, the synapses are failing her. Each and every day the neurons

and synapses in her cerebral cortex are atrophying. And you’re speeding the process up in your hurry to acclimatise yourself and, sadly, you’re already breaking up. I mean you can’t think of words – that’s a touch of paraphasia coming on. Unsteady on your feet? Well, I think that’s apraxia. Temporal lobe, parietal lobe, decaying around you.’

‘You… you did something… tricked… you tricked me…’

‘Well… yes, I think I did. And the more you fight it, the more Mandragora energy you spend trying to repair those bits of brain, the more you’re actually losing yourself, because this lady has Moderate Alzheimer’s and that’s not curable, even by you.’

‘Then I shall, you know, change… move, swap bodies with… I shall…’

‘Yes? What? What will you do? Go on, tell me.’

Donna joined in. ‘Or you could tell us all about the stars, all those marvellous constellations, all the things that Netty knows about. Tell us where the Dog Star is? Or how to find the Big Dipper. What direction will I see Venus in at this time of year?’

Wilf grabbed Donna’s arm. ‘Stop it, Donna, you’re confusing her.’

‘That’s the idea,’ she told him. ‘That’s what the Doctor’s doing this for, speeding up the confusion.’

‘But it’s Netty… you’re hurting Netty!’

Wilf couldn’t move. He knew that Donna and the Doctor knew what they were doing, but it didn’t stop him wanting them to stop. Wanting to do anything other than

have Netty used and abused in this way. But he didn’t.

Because, as he’d once read in a newspaper advice column, ‘sometimes the greatest good can come out of the smallest pain.’ Actually it had probably said ‘life’s full of hard knocks’, but that was how he’d chosen to interpret it.

He just hated it.

For one teeny tiny second, he almost hated the Doctor and Donna for doing it so… easily.

And then he made a decision.

‘When the stars begin to fall,’ he began to sing quietly, ‘Oh Lord! What a morning. Oh Lord! What a morning…’

His voice cracked slightly, so he cleared his throat and began again. ‘When the stars begin to fall, Oh Lord! What a morning. Oh Lord! What a morning. When the stars begin to fall…’

Gently, quietly, Netty’s voice responded. ‘Oh sinner, what will you do, when the stars begin to fall… Oh Lord!

What a morning…’

Wilf reached out and took her hand, trying to hide his tears as he did so.

This time the Doctor didn’t pull him away. Wilf started slow, stumbling dance steps with Netty, as the two of them sang quietly together the song that she so loved.

The Doctor eased Donna back. ‘It’s up to your granddad now,’ he whispered.

‘D’you remember where we first heard this song?’ Wilf said to Netty as they danced. ‘Who sang it? What was the name of the man who brought us dinner? Can you remember the car, all silver and shining? And was that the first time you’d ever been driven in a Rolls Royce? And

what I said at the end, as we drove through the streets, looking up at that clear, beautiful sky? And can you—’

‘I… I can’t… I can’t remember… I am Mandr…

Mandragora… I will rule the universe… somehow… I can’t…’

‘You are Henrietta Goodhart,’ Wilf said gently. ‘And you are ill, so terribly, terribly ill, and I’m so scared I’m gonna lose you and I don’t want to lose you. Please stay.’

‘Wilfred?’

The Doctor and Donna immediately perked up as Netty spoke his name.

‘You’re Wilfred… and I’m Netty… no, I’m the Mandragora Helix, and I… Oh Lord! What a morning…’

Wilf pulled her tightly to him, and hugged her more than he had ever hugged anyone since his beloved Eileen had passed away. ‘Oh sinner, what will you do,’ he sang back.

‘My head… I don’t understand… I can’t remember anything…’ Netty pushed him away. ‘Why can’t I remember? It’s not fair… It’s not fair! I can’t remember anything… it’s not fair!!’

Netty’s head dropped backwards and she looked up at the ceiling, bringing both her hands up to point in the direction she was looking. The others watched as screaming purple, blue, red light roared from her body, utterly vaporising a space in the ceiling as the Mandragora energy erupted from Netty’s human form and streaked up into the sky.

Then the noise and light cut off.

Mandragora was gone.

Netty’s hands fell limply to her sides, and her head lolled forward.

Wilf went to catch her, but Netty just shook herself and looked up at him, a huge smile of recognition on her face.

‘Wilfred?’ She looked around the hotel penthouse, saw the perfect hole in the ceiling, then spotted the Doctor and Donna.

‘Blimey O’Reilly,’ she said. ‘Have I been Sundowning again? Where on earth have I wandered off to this time?’

‘You, Henrietta Goodhart,’ the Doctor smiled, ‘just saved planet Earth. You’re brilliant.’

Donna nudged him. ‘Yeah. And you’re not so useless yourself, spaceman.’

A hundred miles. A thousand miles. A million miles.

Moving almost at the speed of thought, the fractured, disembodied Mandragora Helix shot across the universe, screaming inside, its mind falling apart, trying to find its way home.

But where was home? Surely it was… No, it was…

Where was home? Where was here?