Chris wouldn't have admitted it to her mother, but the salt creatures were even more interesting than a conversation about violence. They seemed to grow out of the giant crystal like stalks from a rotting potato, until their weight snapped them off with a crack and they detached themselves into the world. And that was sort of interesting, but it didn't really matter— because they were talking to her with a single voice about something that was far more important.
"Hello, Chris," the voice had said in her mind.
"You know my name," said Chris. "And you got it right!" she added, which shouldn't have been more impressive but was.
"I know lots of things, yes. I'm all outside of time. Whales and rocks and mouths all break out off of me, but they're not what I really am. I'm something much bigger, more so than you can imagine. I am the Kelest."
Chris looked frightened at that. Something huge and beyond her understanding had talked to her once before. She'd seen it as a man with a face like a skull, and it had almost burned everyone to death.
"Are you going to kill me?" she said. "Are you going to kill the world?"
"Oh no," said the voice, "I wouldn't be interested in that."
"That's good. Some boys in my class used to fill plastic boats with spiders and fill them up with water 'till they drowned. I thought we might be like spiders, to a thing that's as big as you."
"But there's no joy in death, when you live outside of time. Somewhere you're dead now, and always have been, and somewhere you've always been alive as well. Changing the when of it isn't so interesting, in the way that it might have been for your friends."
"I wouldn't be friends with some boys that killed spiders!" said Chris, then paused as something occurred to her.
"Wait," she said, "if you're outside time, then can you see the future? My friend's father always thought it was going to be terrible."
"Ah, but that's the thing. You come from just the wrong bit of it, I'm afraid."
"So it is terrible?" said Chris, surprised at how awful it felt to know for sure. "My other friend said there were lots of futures: that some were very bad, and that others were an awful lot better. But I'm not sure what she says is always true."
"There are always many possibilities. A whole mess of things that could happen, even in Ancient Rome. But there's a structure to it, all the same: things that are likely, the ones that never are. But that's no longer true, when it gets to a certain point. The place you're from, and everything after that. It's shattered like a mirror made of time."
"Because of us?" said Chris, horrified. "Because of something we all did at home?"
"No. There was a weapon. A beam, focused from one world into yours. A place that should never have existed, that bought all futures into existence. So that what comes next is a mystery, as much to me as to you."
"Time is broken," said Chris.
The voice in her mind laughed. "Yes, that's how the Doctor would have put it!"
Chris gasped. "You mean you know who the Doctor—"
"Of course I do. Flitting through time in the way she does; it gives me a massive headache. I'm with her now, as it happens. Or rather, a part of me is."
"She stole your mouth?" said Chris. "She can be very rude."
"She's with someone who is also a part of another. A slave to the richest man in Rome. One of my mouths stowed away with his master, when it first budded out from this rock."
"You shouldn't talk about people in that way," said Chris, "he's not a part of anyone. Whoever he is, he'll be worth as much as anyone else who's here."
"That might be what you think," said the Kelest, " but it's not what he does. He believes everyone has their place, here in Rome. He accepts his is where he belongs."
"But that's wrong!" shouted Chris.
"Well, why not tell him that yourself? My mouths and mind are joined, in ways you couldn't see. All you have to do is open your mind, and you'll find that you're with him, too."
"I don't know if that's something I'd want to do," said Chris.
"No. And you don't have to," said the Kelest. "But wouldn't it be better for him? To convince him of the way you saw the world. To show him he's worth more than whatever his head might say."
"Only if I know you're telling the truth," said Chris. "How do I know you won't eat my brain, or drink up my blood like a leech?"
"You don't," said the Kelest . "You shouldn't trust anyone, in a place like Ancient Rome. But you're from the point the future shatters. To see what you do, how any of you work; it might help me understand why. And help me see the whole of creation once more."
Chris wasn't convinced by that at all, and her mind drifted off to wondering about violence again. But as she did she felt pictures that shouldn't be there; the Doctor and a man arguing next to a man wrapped totally up in cloth. And somehow as she saw them she knew the man was called Thresu, and who he was and what he'd done and all of the things that he'd seen. She heard the Kelest whispering to him like it was whispering to her, and it felt like being in a small and uncomfortable room.
"Get out of my mind," she said to the salt creatures in front of her. "It isn't yours to play with."
"I'm not in it," said the Kelest, " but you're overhearing anyway. Your mother went away from this room, because there were things she didn't want you to know. But it's harder to keep your voice down, when it's in so many places at once."
"I could go away anyway, though," said Chris. "To the other room, and shut the door. I could throw away any mouths, if you tried to get some of them through."
"Yes. But then Thresu might be a slave for the rest of his days. And you'd always think about that, whoever's days you were in after now."
Chris sighed deeply. It was very annoying, to be outargued by a bit of salt. But then she could see how the Doctor was in danger, and the disordered thoughts tumbling through Thresu's mind made it clear how much trouble she was in. Without even realising it she wasn't listening to the salt or the man anymore, but was just caught up in the fight…