This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Alastair Reynolds

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Broadway Paperbacks and its logo, a le er B bisected on the diagonal,

are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This edition published by arrangement with BBC Books,

an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
a division of the Random House Group Limited, London.

Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One.

Executive producers: Steven Moffat and Caroline Skinner.

BBC, DOCTOR WHO, and TARDIS (word marks, logos, and devices) are
trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under license.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-385-34680-1
eISBN 978-0-385-34681-8

Printed in the United States of America

Editorial director: Albert DePetrillo

Series consultant: Justin Richards
Project editor: Steve Tribe
Cover design: Two Associates © Woodlands Books Ltd. 2013
Production: Alex Goddard

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 Prologue

The worst machine in the universe was a marble-grey box

no larger than a coffin or shipping trunk. Its base was wider
and longer than its lid, so that the sides had a slight cant to
them. Three of the sides were blank, save for that marbling.
The fourth, one of the two ends, had an angled console jutting
out from it. The console’s upper surface was set with a square
matrix of white controls, each of which had been embossed
with a precise black symbol in an alien alphabet. There were
169 controls, 169 different symbols, and the Red Queen’s
people understood about 75 of them. The rest had eluded
their best scientists for centuries.
The Red Queen regarded the machine as possessing a
quality of intrinsic malevolence. If anything could be said to
be evil, it was this device. Yet she could not afford to ignore
its transformative power. Of all the potent technologies
recovered from the Consolidator, the ghost ship that had fallen
into orbit around her adopted world, this was by far the most
important and seductive.
The machine was called the Infinite Cocoon.
It was fitting.
‘The volunteers are ready, ma’am.’
The Red Queen – her full title was Her Imperial Majesty
Uxury Scuita – nodded at the aide who had scuttled up to her

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 doctor who

throne to deliver this information. Like all Praxilions – like

all the native creatures of this world she ruled – the aide was
a furry caterpillar, a pipe-cleaner bent into an upright ‘L’. Its
canine head reached the level of her knees when she was on
the throne. The little Praxilions had many limbs, differentiated
for function, and red and white longitudinally striped fur that
made her think of toothpaste and seaside amusements. They
smelled like sweet shops and perfume counters.
‘Remind them again that they don’t have to do this.’
‘They know that, ma’am.’
‘Nonetheless, tell them again. Let there be no doubt.’
Without asking for assistance, the Red Queen pushed herself
to her feet. She reached for the sceptre she kept clipped to
the chair’s side, using it as a walking stick as she made her
hobbling way down the set of stone stairs at the throne’s base.
Praxilion aides skittered around her anxiously, ready to catch
her should she fall. ‘I’ll be all right,’ she muttered. ‘Allow me a
moment on my own, then bring the volunteers in.’
The evening air was cool on her private balcony. She waited
until the door was shut behind her, then made her way to the
ballustrade, sceptre clicking on the hard stone flooring. Her
right hand gripped the gold-crusted sphere screwed into the
top of the sceptre. She rested the other on the balcony’s rail.
It was a long way down, but she had always had a head for
heights. She thought of the sea, roiling far below, on a similar
evening. But there was no sea visible from the imperial palace;
they were too far inland for that.
Praxilion was a beautiful world, especially at twilight.
Gently rolling hills, purple in the gathering gloom, ferried her
eye to the pink-hazed horizon. Here and there, like clumps of
pale frogspawn, were Praxilion villages and hamlets. She had
grown accustomed to their alien architecture over the years,
with its blobby preponderance of domes and small, igloo-like
dwellings. It almost looked homely. They had been good to
her, the Praxilions.

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 harvest of time

There. Her eye caught the rising spark of the Consolidator,

climbing from the west. It was difficult to miss, being the only
large thing in orbit. A ship as large as a small country, older
than the very world it encircled – and one that her people had
barely begun to explore, despite six thousand years of trying.
They had done well, given the difficulties. The technologies
and materials they had already extracted from the Consolidator’s
less impregnable vaults had accelerated Praxilion’s industrial
revolution to a tremendous degree. But there was so much
more waiting to be brought down, if only they could get at it.
And yet each new item seemed to cost them more than the last.
The Axumillary Orb had taken a dozen lives to bring it into
her grasp. Dozens more had been lost trying to understand the
thing’s safety mechanisms, which had been carefully locked
when the fabled weapon was placed aboard the Consolidator.
No wonder she kept it close at hand. Twice as many Praxilions
had been lost bringing out the Infinite Cocoon – and many,
many more had gone to their deaths by volunteering to test
the machine itself.
It was late in the evening. The galaxy was old. Its stars
had been through many generations of birth, exhaustion and
rebirth. Praxilion astronomers had surveyed these ailing,
metal-clotted suns and found scant signs of intelligence
beyond their own world. But the records extracted from the
Consolidator spoke of a different era. A bright, teeming period,
when the galaxy held court to countless species, countless
cultures. A period when even the ultimate barrier, time itself,
had been shattered. The Epoch of Mass Time Travel, or the
EMTT.
A time of wonder and miracles.
The Praxilions were haunted by a terrible sense that they
had come too late to the party. But the Consolidator offered a
glimmer of hope. Somewhere in the ship, so their intelligence
led them to believe, was the secret of time travel – a fully
functioning time-portal device. The Praxilions dreamed of

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 doctor who

forging a connection between their world and the distant past

– a rejuvenating umbilical.
It was a good and noble ambition, the Red Queen thought.
It would have been even better if it had not required the use of
the Infinite Cocoon.
She returned inside. The volunteers were assembled next to
the waiting machine, together with a small cadre of nervous
technicians. The lid of the machine was open – it had slid
off to the side, appearing to support itself along one edge. A
greenish-yellow glow shone upwards from the open casket,
illuminating the high-flung arches of the imperial palace.
The Red Queen walked to the machine’s side. She leaned
her weight onto the sceptre.
‘I’m getting old,’ she said. ‘You all know this. I was younger
when I came to your world, but that was thousands of years
ago. Drugs and stasis have slowed the march of years, but
they have not stopped it completely. The Consolidator would
probably recognise me as a humanoid, were I to go aboard it.
But there is just one of me, and I am far too frail to be much
use up there. I am but a weak and feeble woman, as someone
once said. That is why we have called for volunteers. That is
why you are here, before the Infinite Cocoon. The people of
Praxilion thank you for your courage. But you do not have to
go through with this. There will always be others willing to
take your place, and there will be no shame in turning away
now.’
‘I am ready,’ said the first volunteer.
‘Good,’ the Red Queen said, studying the naked creature.
They all looked the same to her, Praxilions, and divested of
their belts and harnesses and armour were all but impossible
to tell apart. Furry, friendly looking tubes of red and white,
like draught excluders. ‘And what is your name?’
The Praxilion said: ‘We are Ver.’
They had three sexes, which even now the Red Queen had
difficulty in distinguishing. Females, males, and a gender that

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 harvest of time

translated, perhaps imperfectly, as ‘sculptor’.

‘Very well, Ver,’ she said. ‘Whatever happens from now
on, you have the thanks of your people, your world, and me.
We take none of this lightly. Are you ready for the Infinite
Cocoon?’
‘I am ready,’ the brave creature answered.
‘Do you understand the risks? That, even if the
transformation is successful, it cannot be guaranteed that the
process is reversible? You may have to spend the rest of your
existence shaped like me?’
‘I understand.’
‘We will of course do our best. You have that promise.’
‘Thank you, your Imperial Majesty.’
‘Then we shall begin.’ The Red Queen nodded at the
technicians. Four of them moved around Ver and lifted the
Praxilion from the ground, then deposited their charge in the
waiting interior of the Infinite Cocoon.
‘Good luck, Ver,’ she said.
The technicians shuffled back on their many legs. Two of
them moved to the console at the end of the machine.
‘We’re ready,’ one of them said.
‘Proceed.’
The technicians did something. The Infinite Cocoon’s lid
began to slide shut, squeezing the greenish-yellow light down
to a narrow bar, then eclipsing it completely. The box was
sealed.
It began to hum and gurgle.
‘Support medium entering the cavity,’ said one of the
technicians. ‘All indications nominal.’
The white buttons were lighting up and going dim, in
complicated fashion. The technicians responded to these
changes calmly, but with great haste and seriousness. It took
two of them, and they both needed to use three sets of upper-
body manipulators. It was like a cross between brain surgery
and speed chess.

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 doctor who

‘Commencing metabolic breakdown,’ reported the other

technician. ‘Digestion proceeding along normal pathways.’
‘Compensating for variance in absorption equilibrium,’
stated the other. ‘Stabilising… confirmed. Outer tissue and
muscle mass now losing coherence.’
‘Skeletal structure growing diffuse. Peripheral nervous
system now fully attenuated. Tracking core neural functions.’
There was a question she had always meant to ask at this
point. Was the subject conscious? Was the subject aware
of what was happening to them, what might yet happen?
The relatively few volunteers who had endured the Infinite
Cocoon came through with puzzlingly different reports. Some
were adamant that there had been a continuity of experience,
an unbroken chain from the moment the lid closed to the
moment it opened. That they had maintained a thread of
narrowing awareness even as they were reduced to a kind
of soup. Others spoke of no such continuity. It had been like
falling asleep, or drowning, or being smothered in warm wet
clay. Then there had been a nothingness, a kind of death,
before the emergence, harrowing or otherwise. Sometimes
they remembered their past lives. Not always.
Perhaps it was best not to know.
‘Phase one metabolic breakdown complete. All indications
normal. Beginning morphic patterning.’
The machine kept up its humming and gurgling. Beneath
the lid was now nothing that resembled a Praxilion. A thing,
in other words, not unlike the Red Queen herself.
‘Growth symmetries established. Tissue differentiation
proceeding normally. Ready to accelerate patterning.’
One of the technicians raised a two-fingered hand. ‘Hold.’
The other technician glanced at the control matrix.
‘Phenotype template’s drifting. Try and lock it down.’
‘What do you think I’m doing, for Praxil’s sake?’
Haste now became panicked urgency. There had been a
coordination to their efforts before; now their six pairs of hands

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 harvest of time

threatened to become tangled up, like pianists fighting over

a grand piano. The buttons were lighting and dimming at a
quickening rate, almost too fast for the Red Queen to track. The
Praxilions had speedy reflexes, but even they had their limits.
‘Switch to procedure six!’
‘I have! It didn’t work! We’re on seven now!’
‘Not working either. Switch to eight.’
‘Too risky!’
‘You must! We’re already past the point of no return!’
The Red Queen’s grip on her stick tightened. The knot in
her stomach had become a dark coiling horror. She had seen
things go wrong before. It was very, very unusual for there to
be a good outcome once this point was reached. The Infinite
Cocoon was almost maliciously unforgiving.
‘Stabilising,’ one of the technicians reported. ‘I think we
can bring it back!’
‘Perhaps.’ The other sounded a cautious note. ‘Re-imposing
initial contours.’
The Red Queen whispered at an aide. ‘What are they trying
to do?’
‘Trying to bring Ver back, I think. The morphic patterning
failed, but if they can re-impose Praxilion anatomy…’
‘I thought they were past the point of no return.’
‘They were. A little. But if they can’t go forward…’
‘We have it!’ called one of the technicians. ‘Partial morphic
lock reacquired. Lock firming up! Praxil be blessed! Ver, hold
on in there! We’ve got you!’
‘Hold on,’ the Red Queen whispered. And in that moment
her eyes met those of the other two volunteers, still waiting
near the Infinite Cocoon. She nodded at them, sharing their
concern. For an instant the barriers of species and rank were
irrelevant. They were all thinking creatures and they wanted
Ver to come through this. No matter if the attempt to impose
human anatomy had failed; they just wanted brave little Ver
to survive.

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 doctor who

‘Reconsolidating,’ one of the technicians said, the dance of

lights on the console beginning to ease.
‘Biochemistry approaching Praxilion norms,’ said the
other. ‘Ver is coming back!’
The Red Queen let out a sigh of thanks. So the Infinite
Cocoon had chosen to be merciful today. It was nothing that
could ever be counted on, but she was grateful. Even if her
hatred of the thing only deepened, that it could be so viciously
unpredictable.
‘Support medium draining away. Subject has regained full
biological integrity.’
‘Get the lid open,’ she called. ‘Now!’
Reluctantly, perhaps, the technicians hastened the process
to completion. The machine stopped humming and gurgling.
The lid began to slide aside. Yellow light flooded out of the
widening gap. The Red Queen risked a step closer to the
open machine. The technicians were peering in over the
sides, straining their pipe-cleaner bodies to their maximum
extension. She caught a flash of red and white within the box,
a moving mass of bright coloured fur. A living, breathing
form.
Ver was back.
Something sprang out of the box. It was a thin, tapering
tentacle, striped like a barber’s pole. It curled itself around one
of the technicians and hauled them into the air, over the lip
of the Infinite Cocoon, into the box. The technician screamed.
The others, for a moment, were too shocked to move. Then
another tentacle shot out, and a third, and the Red Queen
halted, knowing that something had gone appallingly wrong,
as it so often did.
Whatever had come back, it wasn’t Ver.
A second technician was in the grip of the monster now,
emitting a shrill note of pure terror, like a boiling kettle, even
as its colleagues tried to grab onto it. And then a detachment
of armed guards arrived, carrying gold stun rods that crackled

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with purple and lilac electrical discharges, and they looked to

the Red Queen for her orders.
‘Kill it,’ she said.
And so they did, plunging their stun rods down into the
machine, poking and prodding, the thing in the machine
making its own terrible sounds, a kind of protracted slurping,
and after a few seconds of that the technician that had been
caught was hurled out, visibly dead, and the second was
released, sprawling back, its body twitching like an accordion,
legs and arms thrashing in the air.
It did not take long to kill the monster; it usually didn’t.
Confined within the machine, disorientated, they were
seldom able to put up much of a fight. But even now, the Red
Queen could not say for certain which were the worse sort:
the monsters that wanted to break out and kill everyone, like
this one, or the ones that wanted only to die.
‘That was a bad one,’ she said, when the technicians had
finished recording the remains and cleaned what had once
been Ver out of the machine. ‘Almost the worst we’ve seen. I
want a full report as to what went wrong, of course.’ Then she
added, though it hardly needed to be said: ‘Poor Ver.’
‘It will take some time to compile the report,’ one of the
technicians said. ‘And even then, there probably won’t be
much we can say for certain.’
‘Do what you can. In the meantime, all volunteers are to
be released from their obligations. No one should have to go
through that.’
‘And the time machine project?’ asked the other technician.
‘Suspended, until we can be sure of not doing that to anyone
again.’
‘We’ll never have that certainty,’ the first technician said
glumly.
‘Your Majesty?’
It was one of the other volunteers speaking, one of the two
that had been waiting.

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 doctor who

‘You are excused,’ she said, with a generous sweep of her

hand. ‘You’ve proven your courage by coming this far. Go,
return to your families. You owe Praxilion nothing.’
‘We’d still like to go through with it,’ said the other. ‘We’ve
been studying the statistics, and…’
‘Technically, there’s an improved chance of success after a
major failure,’ said the first volunteer.
‘And by anyone’s reckoning,’ the second said, ‘that has to
count as a pretty major failure.’
‘Did you know Ver?’ the Red Queen asked.
‘Ver was our friend. Ver would not have wanted Ver’s
death to dissuade us,’ said the first. ‘Ver understood what a
difference the time machine could make to Praxilion. We must
have that technology. No matter the costs.’
‘Ver’s bravery mustn’t be wasted,’ said the second forcefully.
‘The technicians aren’t to blame. We trust them. We are ready
to take our chances with the Infinite Cocoon. We are ready to
become like you.’
‘And risk becoming something worse?’ she asked.
‘For Praxilion,’ they said in unison.
The Red Queen looked down. Her instinct was to turn
them away. They were courageous, it was true. But they also
craved the glory that would come to anyone who managed
to get far enough into the Consolidator to find the fabled time
equipment. Fame, fortune, prestige beyond measure.
For now, she suspected glory had the upper hand.
The inescapable fact, though, was that sooner or later
someone was going to have to get into the box again.
‘Your names?’ she asked.
‘We are Hox and we are Loi,’ they answered in unison.
‘Very well then, Hox and Loi. I commend your dedication.
Which one of you wants to go first?’

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