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rational people you’re likely to meet, Julia. I don’t even believe in God. And yet others believe such powers of me. Isn’t that an irony?’
    ‘And so from all this,’ Julia said, ‘from hints of precognition, from Gödel’s speculation about travel into the past, you began to design a time machine.’
    ‘Not a machine,’ Rory said. ‘Though we gave it a machine-like name.’
    ‘The Loom.’

    ‘Yes. But it’s a method, really.’
    ‘A method for touching the past. For changing it. Is that right? And after Spain you came to this institute, where you worked together on realising your “method. You went so far as to wangle time on a calculating engine in Massachusetts. And you, Rory, began to work out, if you could make a change to the history that you found so unsatisfactory, exactly what change should be made.’
    Rory fell silent. Ben stared at him.
    ‘Oh, come now. If you don’t tell him, I can - and will.’ She patted her briefcase.
    ‘Very well,’ Rory blurted. ‘It was Nicea.’
    Ben was bewildered. ‘Nicea?’
    Julia smiled. ‘You’re clearly not as intimately acquainted with Christian history as your little friend here, Ben. Nicea, 325 AD. Where the Emperor Constantine convened his great Church council.’
    ‘Constantine!’ Rory spat. ‘It was all his fault!’

IV
    ‘Ah, the Romans,’ Julia said. ‘They were Aryans, you know, without a doubt. Hitler has the scholarship to prove it ... Before Constantine,’ she sneered, ‘Jesus was a god of the slaves. By establishing the Church as the state religion of Rome, Constantine saved Christianity for the future.’
    ‘Only by making it into a reflection of Rome itself! And it is that Roman autocracy and intolerance that has been at the root of the evil done in Christ’s name ever since.’
    ‘And so you had the temerity to cook up a plan. Didn’t you? A scheme to use your Loom of time to unpick a few threads of history.’
    ‘You told me none of this,’ Ben accused Rory.
    ‘Of course not,’ he said miserably, still avoiding his eyes. ‘Because you would have stopped me.’
    ‘He worked out a message to send to the past,’ Julia said brightly. ‘A sort of retrospective prophecy, yes? You meant to send it to the age of Emperor Claudius, I gather, and his invasion of Britain. It was going to contain news about the future - and a little comical nonsense about democracy—’
    ‘The republican age was the best of Rome,’ Rory said defiantly. ‘It inspired America centuries later. I wanted to give them hope.’
    ‘Who?’ Ben demanded.
    ‘You know how it works, Ben. We can’t target an individual in the past. We can only broadcast. And hope there are minds as receptive as yours - natural radio receivers, waiting to pick up news from the future.’
    Julia said, ‘You put in the prophetic stuff as a sort of lure, didn’t you, Rory? You sent it back beyond Claudius to the year of Christ’s birth, to catch the attention of the early Christians. You hoped to snag your dupe in the past by giving him a bit of foreknowledge that could make him powerful or rich, for instance about the building of Hadrian’s wall. And you hoped that that power would be used as you intended: to fulfil your ultimate command.’
    ‘To do what?’ Ben asked.
    Julia grinned. ‘Why, to kill the Emperor Constantine!’
    Ben found himself on the edge of panic. ‘Rory - we discussed the dangers - what gives you the right to make such choices?’
    ‘What gives us the right not to use such a gift?’
    Ben thought fast. ‘But this is just fantasy. Just talk. For Constantine was not cut down before Nicea, was he? And the Church was not restored to some state of innocence. The Pope still sits in Rome.’
    ‘Rory failed,’ Julia said.
    ‘Well, I can’t deny that,’ Rory said.
    ‘But he made the attempt , Ben.’
    ‘That’s impossible.’
    ‘No.’ She smiled. ‘I have proof.’
    Rory’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean by that?’
    ‘The Party has a