Julia looked in the full-length mirror and nodded contentedly. This was still the wedding dress she had dreamt of – a simple, plain white satin in the style worn by Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music. She had decided on that dress when she was twelve years old, when she knew that she would one day marry Chrístõ in a magnificent ceremony in the Panopticon on Gallifrey.

The dress was still simple. But she wore a veil of shimmering micro lace, thinner than a sheet of tissue paper but as strong as pure silk. The veil had diamonds actually woven into the fabric. The tiara that held it in place was crusted with diamonds.

The train that was fixed to her dress with invisible but easily detachable bonds was fully fifteen yards long, fanning out to eight feet wide at the end. It was made of the same tissue thin lace and three thousand diamonds were sewn on in what might have appeared to be random patterns except to anyone familiar with the star constellations in the southern hemisphere of Gallifrey. It was an exquisite detail that Julia was certain NOBODY was going to notice except, possibly, the Chief Astronomer.

“It really is ridiculously long,” she said as she turned and the train had to be moved by some of her attendants. “All to make a big statement in the Panopticon. I am the bride of an Oldblood heir.”

“Well, yes, you ARE, my dear,” Valena D’Arpexia said. “And as such, you should make all those stuffy senators catch their breaths at the sight of you.”

“Besides,” said Camilla, the Haollstrominan gendermorph who, in her female form, was one of her chief maids of honour. “I’ve seen how Time Lords dress for formal occasions. You want to outshine your husband-to-be.”

“You look like a princess,” Marianna told her. “And every bride should look like a princess.”

Julia smiled brightly, but she was still uncertain about the train that was on the verge of swamping her in a sea of foamy lace and diamonds. She was sure if she sat down she would disappear under it all.

The door to the bright, airy room opened. A female officer of the Adano-Ambradan Gardia Real stepped inside and glanced around at the women attending to the bride before stepping aside to admit the King-Emperor, Penne Dùre.

“Why the security sweep?” his Queen, Cirena asked. “I’m already in here. There’s hardly likely to be an assassin lurking under Julia’s train.”

“Although there is room for one,” Julia added.

“I wanted to be sure you were all ‘decent’,” he answered. Since Penne had a certain reputation for admiring women, decent or not, several replies could have been forthcoming, but there was an expression on his face that silenced them.

“What’s wrong?” Julia asked.

“Nothing…. At least… nothing much,” he answered, surprisingly disconcerted. “I came to tell you there is a slight delay to the ceremony. The… the groom is not yet in the Panopticon.”

“Why not?” Julia demanded. “What has happened?”

“Nothing for you to worry about,” Penne again assured her. “But it will be an hour… perhaps… no more than that. If you just sit quietly with your ladies… all will be well.”

“I can’t SIT,” Julia answered. “This dress is satin. Do you have any idea how satin wrinkles?”

“Gallifreyan satin doesn’t, my dear,” Valena assured her. “The ceremony includes several long periods where the bride and groom sit. That has been considered in the design. Do sit down and rest. And don’t be concerned. You have a king’s word that nothing is unduly wrong.”

“I’ll take this off, then,” Julia said, pulling away the train and casting it aside before she sat on a comfortable, padded chair. Penne nodded and withdrew, followed by his guard. Julia looked at her friends in complete bewilderment.

“It wouldn’t be a Gallifreyan Alliance without some hiccup,” Valena said as a nervous quiet settled over them all.

“I’ve waited twelve years,” Julia admitted as she looked out of the floor length window at the view over Gallifrey’s beautiful Capitol city with its envirodome slightly opaque to keep the early summer sunshine from dazzling the eyes of its citizens. “One more hour won’t hurt.

Penne Dúre slipped along the corridor to the room the groom ought to have vacated by now. His guard waited outside as he entered.

“Julia is not going to stop worrying until she’s at your side in front of the Lord High President,” he said. “But she’s all right for now.”

“Good,” Chrístõ answered. He swayed slightly as he stood, fresh from a series of baths, hot, tepid, then cold enough to cool his blood. Caolin, the Lœngb?rrow butler was rubbing him vigorously with towels.

His eyes looked unfocused, still. Penne moved close to him.

“Come on, wake up,” he said. “Or I’ll have to put your clothes on and go and marry Julia on your behalf.”

“It's no use,” he responded. “I can’t marry Julia. I can’t do that to her.”

“Do what?” Penne asked. “Christo... What happened to you last night?”

“I think we'd all like to know that!” Christo's father stepped closer, bringing a white linen robe that he fastened around his son’s trembling body. “Come and sit down, my boy. Let's get to the bottom of all this.-“

Lord de Lœngb?rrow looked around meaningfully at the groom’s entourage – less numerous than the bride's, but still a distracting crowd. They took the hint and quietly left the room, all except Penne. He was not somebody even a Time Lord could order to leave the room. Besides, he was Best Man and duty bound to get the groom to his wedding.

Christo sat looking out if the window across the magnificent city, but hardly seeing it. His father and Penne pulled seats closer to him.

“Three days ago you went up to the Brotherhood of Mount Lœng to meditate and prepare for your Alliance,” his father said. “Yesterday evening you came to the Capitol to spend the last night in further meditation within the zero room under the Junior Senate Hall. That is a place of such complete peace and tranquillity it is impossible to be anxious about anything. “

Christo nodded. That was the purpose of the zero room.

“Yet, first thing this morning, two Chancellery Guard found you wandering the lower basement corridors in a state of profound shock.”

Christo shook his head. He had only very vague memories of those hours.

But what happened before the Guards found him was still very vivid in his mind.

“Father... I had a vision while I was meditating. A precognitive vision. “

“You have never been any good at precognition,” his father told him. “Your one psychic weak point.”

“Not this time. Maybe the zero room enhanced it... But it was the strongest vision I have ever had.”

“About….”

“About… why I can’t marry Julia.”

“Tell me,” his father said, reaching out and grasping his son’s hands. He began, hesitantly, in words, but Lord de Lœngb?rrow could also see the memories played out in his head. Penne Dúre grew wide eyed in surprise as he, too, felt the powerful and frightening psychic images.

It clearly was the future. Chrístõ was the new patriarch of the Loengbarrow dynasty. Julia was mistress of Mount Lœng house.

But all was not well. A bitter argument raged between the couple. It was hard to understand what the original bone of contention was. They seemed to have descended to bitter recriminations on both sides.

“You never let me have any kind of life,” Julia was protesting. “I never see anyone. I can’t go out to see them, and they’ve stopped coming to see me. I’m here every day on my own.”

“We go out together. We were at the opera last week.”

“Yes… and I was standing there in silence while you talked to your friends. Even if I said anything, you cut me off and it became your thought, not mine. I had nothing to say”

“And why should you? What do you know about Gallifreyan politics? You’re just a human… a foreigner.”

“What?” Penne gasped in astonishment. “You would never say that… especially not to her.”

“But I did,” Chrístõ insisted. Foreign, Human tears pricked his eyes but he bit them back quickly. “It gets worse.”

His mind passed quickly over ever increasingly cruel and bitter rows in which, more than once, Chrístõ hit his wife, hurting her in horrific ways. Now his father drew back, unable to believe what he was seeing.

“No… never. You wouldn’t. You never would. You have loved that girl so long… and even if you hadn’t… to hit a woman… it is the lowest thing a man… any man… could do. No Time Lord of honour….”

This time he couldn’t help tears of shame falling down his cheeks. He pulled his hands away from his father’s grasp.

“No… don’t look… not at this bit… not at the part where I…. Where I kill her… where I strangle her with these hands.”

“No!” Both his father and his friend protested together.

“Chrístõ… no. THAT is impossible,” Penne told him.

“Utterly impossible,” Lord de Lœngb?rrow added. “I don’t know what happened in the night, or what you think you saw…. But I know you, my son. I know there are no circumstances where you would raise a hand to Julia… let alone THAT. It is not true. It is NOT a precognisance of the future. Not in this universe. I don’t believe it, and nor should you.”

“But….” Chrístõ began.

“I’m sure one of the tutors to whom I paid good money taught you not to begin any sentence with ‘but’,” Lord de Lœngb?rrow said. “There are no ‘buts’. I don’t know what this is… some kind of nightmare caused by pre-Alliance anxiety…. Though why you should have any such anxiety after waiting all these years to marry the girl of your dreams…. Everyone has some qualms. But this is beyond all reasoning. Chrístõ, put these imaginings out of your mind. Let’s get you dressed and ready to meet your bride.”

“Do… you really think so, father?” Chrístõ asked in a voice tinged with hope after so much doubt.

“I’m sure of it.”

“Ok….”

“I didn’t pay those tutors for you to pick up sloppy expression like that, either. Come on, my boy. It is time for you to be a man before the Lord High President, the whole of Time Lord society and before Rassilon himself.”

Chrístõ dried his eyes and stood up. He still looked like a man with a lot on his mind, but he was making an effort. Penne went to bring the others back into the room.

Even without the terrible images deep still haunting his mind, Chrístõ was not happy about this part. He had dressed himself since he had dismissed the under-valet from his bedroom at the age of eight. But ancient and unbending rules dictated that a man of his rank and class, on his Alliance, should be dressed from the skin out by attendants. Penne Dúre took no part in this task, but laughed merrily at his friend’s discomfort, telling him that he ALWAYS had dressers. His queen had banished the female servants from the dressing chamber, but he still had at least five attractive young men to attend to him.

“Of course, they’re attractive!” Chrístõ answered. “I’ve always had some thoughts about that which don’t seem to have occurred to your too trusting queen.”

Penne’s only response to that was a lascivious grin. Chrístõ responded with a good natured one as he submitted to his dressing by both Caolin and his old friend, Morlen Kobhran, usually just known as Kobh. He had lived as an aristocrat on a distant world for many years, but on Gallifrey his father had been a servant of the House of Arpexia and he played the humble role today as one of Chrístõ’s chambermen.

His naked body had been anointed with perfumed oils, something he would happily have skipped even if it had been done by nymphs and dryads. Then a type of underwear that strongly resembled the hose worn by noblemen of Earth’s fifteenth century and then paper thin silk knee stockings. After that a silk shift, again so thin it was almost translucent, was placed over his naked body, relieving his worst embarrassment of being unclothed while everyone else was in their wedding finery already.

Next came a robe of pure white woven with silver and gold threads. Then an overgown of Prydonian scarlet with more gold glinting in the weave. Shoes of red leather with gold buckles were put onto his feet.

And then the worst part. A skull cap of the same red leather was fixed on his head, a tricky enough operation with his thick curling hair to be tamed beneath it. Then the high collar, deep red again, and stiff as a beaten metal breastplate was fixed to his shoulders and rising over his head.

And a further detail he really hated – the traditional cosmetics. His face took on a shine with the foundation and his eyes and lips glittered like a pop star from Earth’s eclectic 1970s.

Finally, Penne Dúre stepped forward and placed a gold coronet over the skull cap.

“Remember, as well as an Oldblood Time Lord, you are also my crown prince marrying a princess to honour my Court.”

“I’m honoured to do so, Penne,” he assured his friend.

“And we will be honoured to have the crown prince and princess to a state ball when you get back from your honeymoon,” Penne added. “Now… are you ready for your wedding?”

“Alliance of Unity,” Chrístõ answered artistically.

“Silly name for it,” Penne responded. “Did nobody on this planet ever notice that ‘alliance’ and ‘unity’ mean the same thing? It’s a shameless tautology.”

“I agree,” said Lord de Lœngb?rrow. ‘But we are stuck with it, so shall we proceed?”

Julia was getting worried, now. It was more like an hour and a half. What WAS happening?

“He IS here… In the Panopticon?” she asked. But none of her female attendants knew anything more than she did. There was nothing she could do but wait and worry.

Then Penne's young equerress - so she was called, though Julia doubted there was such a word – entered once more. This time the king-emperor didn’t follow her and Julia was alarmed.

“No, my Lady, there is nothing to fear. His Majesty is in the panopticon at the side of your Lord. All is ready for your entrance. “

“Oh... Thank goodness,” Julia cried out in relief. She stood and looked around at the train laid across three chairs. “Oh, I don’t want that silly thing attached again. If it must be seen, carry it along behind me.”

An attendant quickly freshened her make up and her veil was turned down. Now she was ready to go. Camilla went in front carrying a basket of gilded rose petals. Valena and her aunt Marianna went next, side by side. Then the bride walked, unencumbered by the train which was carried by the dozen bridesmaids behind her.

In the ante chamber her uncle Herrick stood ready to take her arm. She walked with him between a phalanx of Chancellery Guard to the great door. By tradition the door admitted the flower bearer and the mothers of the bride and groom before being closed before the bride. There was a pause before the commander of the Chancellery Guard knocked with the hilt of his sword and the doors were opened. A swelling chorus of voices sang a traditional Gallifreyan wedding lay as Julia stepped into the Panopticon.

She had been in the great hall of Gallifreyan government before and knew it was a magnificent space, but she had never seen it looking as it did today. Every surface possible was gilded. Even the obsidian floor was covered in what appeared to be gold leaves except for a path of silver rose petals strewn over them by Camilla.

Standing before the whole assembly of Gallifreyan nobility was the Lord High President, who Julia knew as Paracell Hext’s father. He was dressed in gold and blue robes and looked as if he was part of the gilding.

Before him, stood three men who looked magnificent in their own right. Lord de Lœngb?rrow, her soon to be father-in-law always looked every inch a noble figure. So did Penne Dúre. But Chrístõ, when she thought of him, was a handsome but ordinary young man in a leather jacket that was starting to look a little worse for the wear. His amazing Time Lord costume actually took her a little by surprise.

She hardly knew how she crossed what seemed like an endless floor, but somehow she reached his side. He turned and lifted her veil and smiled warmly. Then both turned to face the Lord High President as he began the formal words of the Alliance.

The ceremony was many hours long. Julia had often wondered how she was ever going to get through it. Somehow the time passed in a succession of solemn and ancient words, of stirring music and poetry, and vows of undying union with each other.

Chrístõ felt himself carried by the ceremony. The closer he came to making his solemn vows to Julia the more certain he was that the terrifying visions he had experienced last night were no more than the workings of an overwrought imagination.

Though he still wondered how his imagination conjured anything like that.

Just before one of the most important parts of the ceremony there was a piece of music chosen by the groom. It was a simple song in its original form, but the Cardinal of Music had arranged it for an orchestra and fifty voices. Across The Universe sounded very different than John Lennon could ever have imagined it.

As the music faded away, the Lord High President drew himself up to his full and magnificent height. He looked at the bride and groom as they faced him, hands clasped together.

“I am bound to ask you now, before you make the final vows and bind yourselves to each other, if there is a slightest doubt in your mind. The Alliance of Unity once made cannot be unmade except by death.”

He paused as custom required. Chrístõ felt himself tremble under the solemn gaze that was fixed upon him. Did the Lord High President see a doubt in his mind? Did he know what it was that had delayed the start of the ceremony? Would he halt the proceedings and declare the Alliance void?

Then the first fearful moment was over. Now there was another to be overcome.

The Lord High President glanced purposefully around the Panopticon, at the assembled Oldblood and Newblood Lords and Ladies of Gallifrey.

“I am bound to ask the company present, if any one among them has a doubt as to whether this Alliance of Unity should be made?”

The silence was broken by a sound from the upper galleries, high above the gilded floor. Chrístõ glanced up surreptitiously and thought he saw Paracell Hext moving swiftly between the tiered seats.

His father, the Lord High President looked up, too. Then, when nothing more happened he turned back to the ceremony.

‘Then make your vows to each other,” he said to Julia and Chrístõ.

Exactly what those vows should be had troubled Julia until her future father-in-law had advised her. Now she spoke the words she had memorised. Chrístõ didn’t know it, but they were the words his mother had spoken when she married his father in this very same place more than to hundred years ao.

“Chrístõ Cuimhne,” she said. “I give to you all that I am. I love you to the end of my days, never thinking of any other. Wife and soulmate, bearer of your children, ever by your side. My life is yours. I am a planet in your solar system, a galaxy in your universe. I am yours.” She paused and drew a breath and spoke his full name. “Chrístõdavõreen-diam?ndh?rtmallõupdracœfiredelunmiancuimhne de Lœngb?rrow, Time Lord of Gallifrey, I give myself to you, body and soul, heart and head, and take you as my Lord and my husband for all eternity.”

As she spoke, Queen Cirena took a gold trimmed cushion from a waiting attendant and presented it to Julia. She took the glittering gold ring that sat upon it and slipped it onto Chrístõ’s left hand.

Then he took a deep breath and began his vow. He, too, had been unsure what to say, and his father had advised him. His words were a version of those said to his mother when she became the wife of an Oldblood Lord.

“Julia, my Princess, my Lady, my Earth Child, as you consent to be my wife, I promise to love you to the end of my life, to treasure you in my hearts, to bless each day we have to share, to honour and respect all your thoughts and all your words, never taking any of them for granted. I give you my own hearts to do with as you will. I beg you to treat them with care and with love. I will protect you from all harm and strive to make you happy every day of your life. Julia Elizabeth Marie Sommers, Child of the blessed planet, Earth, I give myself to you, body and soul, hearts and head, and take you as my Lady and my Wife for all eternity.”

Penne took a cushion proffered to him by an attendant and in turn offered it to Chrístõ. He took the slender gold band made to fit Julia’s hand. He first removed the diamond engagement ring and placed the wedding ring, then slid the white point star back onto the same finger.

Now Penne Dúre passed the empty cushion back and accepted instead a great, heavy book brought to him by the Commander of the Chancellery Guard. One of his subordinates stood beside him with a rectangular plate of gold on which a fountain pen and ink rested. Chrístõ picked up the pen and inscribed his full name in the Register of Alliance. Julia’s name took rather less space on the line below.

Then the Register and pen was taken away. The Lord High President stepped forward and took the hands of the newly married couple, turning them to face the assembly.

“Let it be known, to all within these walls and within this hearing,” he said. “That these two have been joined this day in Alliance of Unity. Let them go forth from here as one soul in two beings, in love and in duty and in honour.” He put their two hands together and said the final words of the ceremony before he stepped back.

“I present to you the Lord and Lady de Lœngb?rrow of Gallifrey and Earth.”

Julia was almost giddy with happiness. Chrístõ, too, trembled a little as they held hands. Then they turned to each other and Chrístõ embraced his bride. He kissed her long and lingeringly, without any hesitation or fear of embarrassment about such intimacy before so many people.

Then the choir and orchestra struck up again with an extract from the Pazzione Gallifreya. Camilla took up her basket of silver flowers and walked ahead of the happy couple. Chrístõ clung to Julia’s arm as they stepped out of the Panopticon. They headed towards the wide staircase that would bring them to the grand ballroom where the wedding reception would be held very shortly.

As they reached the upper landing, Paracell Hext stepped forward out of the shadows.

“Julia,” he said. “Pray let me detain your husband for a short while. I am sure Madame Camilla will happily escort you into the hall.”

Madame Camilla smiled and instantly transformed into a handsome man wearing a silver-grey silk suit and took her arm. Hext waited until they were both out of earshot before he spoke.

“I thought you should know some things about last night,” he said. “First of all, you didn’t spend it in the zero room under the Junior Senate. Somehow you were redirected to the Matrix….”

“The Matrix?” Chrístõ queried. “You mean the repository of all Time Lord knowledge….”

“It may well be that,” Hext remarked. “In the wrong hands it is also a diabolical psychic tool that could be used to convince the strongest mind that black is white and white is cerulean.”

“Do you mean….” Chrístõ began.

“I mean that you were subjected to a very potent set of delusions calculated to upset you and perhaps delay or even prevent your Alliance.”

“Why… who… would do that?”

“It should hardly surprise you, Chrístõ, to discover that there are Time Lords who don’t want to see an Oldblood heir marry a Human. They especially don’t want a Time Lord whose blood is already watered by an inferior race producing another generation of ‘mongrels’.”

“It does not surprise me,” Chrístõ answered tersely. “Who was it this time?”

“Nobody you need worry about. Interfering with the matrix is enough to get him a prison sentence. By the time I’ve applied my electronic whips to his sorry carcass for an hour or two I dare say there will be further charges. But by then you and Julia will be off on your honeymoon.”

“You always had funny ideas about entertainment,”

“Oh, it can wait,” Hext added. “I intend to enjoy your reception first before a night of torture. After all, my kid brother and his leading lady are dancing extracts from something called Swan Lake as the after dinner entertainment. I wouldn’t miss that for worlds. By the way, where ARE you going for your honeymoon?”

“That’s for me to know,” Chrístõ responded. “And all your torture devices won’t get it out of me.”

“Quite right, too,” Hext agreed. “Come on, then. Don’t leave your bride too long with a gendermorph and his pheromones.”