Kill The Monster, Chapter 11

IX. ALL FLESH IS GRASS

Libraries nowadays were not what they used to be.

Around a quarter of the floorspace in this library, by Sean's reckoning, was taken up by bookshelves. Another quarter was taken up by DVD and CD rental racks, another quarter again by large, comfortable sofas where hoodie-clad twelve-year-olds lounged talking at deafening volume, and the final quarter by free internet terminals. It was this aspect of the library that had appealed to Sean. He had driven through London blindly, parked up in the first non-Residents-Only street he found, continued his wanderings on foot. The library had been open at nine, and the internet cafés around it hadn't.

He had now been on the free terminals for over five hours. Occasionally, he sent off one of the hoodie-clad twelve-year-olds to the neighbouring Costa for a strong espresso. Occasionally, they came back.

A small child was screaming at a pitch Sean had previously thought unattainable by the human larynx only two tables away. He was sure the child was of an age when mild violence could easily have been used to cow it, but its mother was doing nothing of the sort. Instead, she was sitting carrying on a conversation with a similarly scraped-back she-prole, surrounded by her day's groceries, fag in hand, as if the library were some sort of public gossiping house.

If I rule the world, I'd make the bloody trains run on time, and see if I wouldn't.

There were no books listed on Amazon by anyone with a first name of Pastor, and no likely-looking ones by anyone with a last name of Lamb. Googling the phrase "Pastor Lamb" seemed to mostly pull up a large number of desperate forum posts by a thinly-disguised George Edward Wilson, asking Anyone Out There If They'd Heard Of Anyone With That Name.

Lang showed no signs of moving to America. He had just let out a major press release announcing that he considered the spiritual centre of his church to be Jerusalem, 'where the world's main faiths meet', and that, with sufficient funds from his followers, he intended to build a 'learning centre' in East Jerusalem (possibly, imagined Sean, due to the cheaper property values on the Palestinian side). Sean also wondered how much of the funds contributed by cult members to the Learning Centre would actually go into building it.

Lang was described, on his church's website, as living a spartan lifestyle - having no fixed address, moving from friend's sofa to friend's sofa, travelling from meeting to meeting in devotees' cars or on an ancient sit-up-and-beg bicycle, often eating at soup kitchens. The lifestyle appealed to Sean.

He checked his email to find a message from a Sergeant Spink asking him to call in at the Penalverne Drive police station in Penzance to explain an unlicensed firearm found on his premises, another from Sam signed 'with love Sam and Mickey' asking him to come home, and three suggesting he could make big bucks in his own home by testing cosmetics on himself.

It occurred to him that the four Hirondelle employees he'd killed had been shot with the same gun the police now had. He googled 'murder gordano' and became reasonably confident that Hirondelle had not reported the murders to the authorities - at least, not yet. Why, he had no idea. Perhaps Wilson had issued an order not to; perhaps they were shy of the publicity an investigation might attract.

There was a mail from Wilson. It said:

Sean - checked your details. Truly sorry about your father; can order agni responsible to commit ritual suicide if you wish. Eager for us to continue to work together. Would like to start straight away, please inform us of your whereabouts by return so we can get in touch. Your wife and mother told us you had left home. They seem worried. You should call.

Best Regards

The Man You Know As George Edward Wilson

It hadn't occurred to Sean that Wilson's real name was probably not Wilson, but it made sense.

He clicked REPLY and tapped out:

No need for suicide, Hirondelle employees are no more sinful than a bullet is responsible for the sins of a sniper. I am sitting in a library in

He realized abruptly that he had no idea where the library was. He did not dare leave his seat; any departure from the row of terminals would be followed by the descent of a horde of bored council estate children on his vacated space, followed by an hour spent watching them Google celebrities.

He clicked HOME. The library home page came up. It supplied a library address and postcode. He typed the postcode into the email to allow Wilson to find the exact street. He clicked SEND, and was returned by the browser to the Incoming Mail page. As the screen refreshed, he pulled his mobile phone from his pocket, preparing to phone Wilson personally. He turned the phone on and waited for it to find a signal. As he waited, the screen repainted itself with his Inbox.

There was something wrong.

The list of invitations to test cosmetics on himself had changed. Previously, they had been listed as unread; now they were read. He never read spam emails. They could contain viruses.

Somebody had read his email. Was reading it, right now; the list had changed in the last couple of minutes. His machine at home had been set to remember passwords; he'd not imagined he'd ever need to keep secrets from anyone in his own family.

He moved to the Sent Items list. The mail he'd just sent Wilson was there, and it, too, had been read.

Faintly, against a background of Crazy Frog ringtones and the mating calls of the trainee unemployed, he could hear police sirens.

He snatched up the pile of papers he'd taken from Mahar's car, jumped up, and hurried out of the library, just as a black BMW saloon sped past the end of the street, driver side window shattered, theft alarm blaring. A tenth of a second later, a police car followed, grille in the Beemer's exhaust, blue light flashing. Pedestrians scattered to the sides of the road in panic.

He stood and watched pursuers and pursued speed away.

False alarm.

Of course, it changed nothing. Somebody had still read his email. Somebody currently sitting in his own home down in Cornwall knew where he was.

His hands were shaking. He was not sure whether this was from caffeine or panic.

Then the world went bright and white, and somebody twisted him round and hit him over the head with a hundred-yard slab of pavement covered in broken glass.

***

The lights came on again. His mobile phone was going off. His face was a mass of tiny points of pain.

He raised himself off the pavement. It hurt himself to push with his palms, which kept slipping; he was uncomfortably aware that they were slipping in his own blood. Somewhere, a woman was screaming. His mobile phone was still going off.

All his arms and legs and hands and feet still seemed to be in good working order. The whole front of the library building, however, had gone. The library had been a solid, modern concrete structure supporting a good deal of heavy glass. The concrete supports had been shorn clean through; he could see part of one lodged in a nearby car. The glass lay on the landscape like surreal snow. Perhaps a thousand or so pieces of it felt as if they were lodged in him.

His mobile phone was ringing. He realized that he ought to turn it off; the police might be able to trace it. With blood still drying on his fingers, he had difficulty accepting the call. The caller ID read WILSON.

He put the phone to his ear.

"You're still alive! Bastard!"

He decided to plead ignorance, and put on a mockney accent. "Eh? You wot?"

There was a brief pause.

"Is this your phone?" said Sean.

"No", said the phone. "The man whose phone this is, is he alive or dead?"

"Dunno mate. I jast faand it on the street. Not sure abaat your friend though, there's bin a big explosion ere, lots of people dead."

"His name is Sean Agnello. He's about one hundred and eighty centimetres tall, mesomorphic build, black hair, blue eyes -"

The siren was returning now. That made sense. A stolen car chase would have been called off for something this serious.

"- if you see him, living or dead, can you phone me back on this number? It's very important to me that I know he's, know he's okay -"

The siren dopplered closer. Two sirens?

I can hear the same siren on his end of the phone.

Sean shrank back against the wall of the building. He shrank back further than he'd anticipated; there was no glass in the window he'd thought to lean against.

"I'll tell you if I find aht anyfink."

Sean killed the mobile. Then he stood and thought for several seconds.

He thumbed down the list of numbers. He pressed CALL.

An answering Nokia ringtone, the most socially unacceptable tone after the Crazy Frog, sounded very faintly in the distance. He poked his head out between the concrete pillars, trying to locate the sound.

The tone cut off abruptly.

"Hello -?"

He switched his own phone off. No-one was going to find him back the same way. He slid the weapon, the incredibly big weapon he'd taken from Wilson in the lecture hall, from his jacket pocket, and began examining it for what might be a safety catch and/or cocking lever. He was convinced it was a slugthrower of some description, with a fat, short barrel, what looked like a magazine, what appeared to be laser sights. But there were still too many pieces he didn't recognize.

He'd stand more chance beating Wilson to death with a chair leg. He slid the weapon back into his coat and shuffled back out into the street, supporting himself on a handy pillar.

He saw his reflection in a rare intact shard of glass. He looked like a peeled tomato. He did not recognize himself. Based on this, he reasoned that Wilson would not recognize him either.

He shrugged himself out of Wilson's jacket. It seemed to have protected him to some extent - those parts of him that had been covered by it weren't bleeding. Thinking that Wilson might also recognize the fleece he'd been wearing underneath the jacket, he peeled it off and held it to the side of his bleeding head as if it were a bandage.

He thought further on the matter, then cast his eyes over the bodies lying sprawled across the pavement. Looking roun to check Wilson was not sight, he located a body that looked like him from a distance, picked up the mobile phone again, switched it on, walked across to the body, and slid the phone into its back pocket. As a final touch, he slid Wilson's jacket back over the body, reluctantly left the unintelligible handgun by the body's right hand, and melted back into the building. As a post-final touch, he walked out of the building again, beat a path from the building to the body by sweeping the glass shards away with his feet, and searched through the wreckage of the building behind him for a chair leg. The building was a coffee shop, and he found a splintered table. The table support had become detached from the top, and was easily unscrewed from the base. It was a good four feet in length, a solid piece of something tropical and unsustainable.

He stood in the shadow of the coffee shop window and waited.

His mobile phone began to sound in the back pocket of the dead man.

He heard a voice calling out to him; Wilson's voice. He heard feet crunching unsteadily over glass. Crunching closer.

He saw a red dot, the size of a Parma Violet, on the dead man's buttock. He reflected that the body might only be very badly injured, rather than actually dead; that the man he was using as a decoy might also have a wife and child.

He couldn't work himself up to feeling too bad about it.

The red dot was bouncing up and down, being projected by something in the hands of a walking man. It was bouncing very erratically, as if the hands of the man were also shaking.

Sean waited.

Wilson came into view. He was holding another of the baffling handguns. There were lights on it that Sean had been unable to make appear on his own weapon.

"Sean?"

First of all, Wilson moved towards the side of the dead-or-alive body where Sean's handgun lay.

"Sean, none of this is your fault."

He picked up the gun, operated a few catches on it, slid it into an inside pocket. Then, keeping his own weapon between him and the body at all times like a cinema vampire slayer holding Count Dracula at bay with a crucifix, he bent down to turn over the head of the dead man.

"It's your name, Sean. I didn't realize it at first."

He raised the gun.

"It's your destiny."

The sirens approaching were now deafening.

Sean ran out from the ruins of the coffee shop and swung with the table leg. Wilson went down. he gun in his hand span round and fired once into the air. Then a glass press slammed down from the sky and smashed Sean flat into the pavement.

***

He shook himself awake. That made two times he'd been close to high explosives today. Too close, and two too many times.

There was a police car burning on the pavement close by that had not been there before. The windscreen bore the spiderweb cracks of bulletholes - two, well-placed and accurate. The two policeman who'd been riding inside still hung there in their flak jackets, shot dead instantly. Sean nodded to himself. It figured.

He picked up Wilson's gun, the one with all the pretty lights showing on it, and shoved it into the waistband of his trousers. If what had just slammed him into the pavement had been an air burst from the gun, if he shot himself in the groin by accident he'd never know it.

Wilson seemed healthy enough. Sean grabbed him by the collar and began dragging him toward a nearby car that looked relatively undamaged. The process would be similar to dragging him over a cheese grater. Sean was happy with the process.

There was a CCTV camera high up on the angle of the street corner. The wires leading to it had been cut.

Sean located the car's owner lying nearby on the street, looking less damaged by the car, though apparently unconscious. He tipped the man into the recovery position and confiscated his keys.

A policeman ran round the corner, saw Sean propping his passenger up and fastening his seatbelt, saw the big, heavy-looking handgun on the bonnet of the car, drew a handgun of his own. Armed Response. Probably an antiterrorist officer. Probably a good shot.

"ARMED POLICE! MOVE AWAY FROM THE WEAPON AND PLACE YOUR ARMS IN THE AIR!"

Sean watched the policeman pityingly. He did not bother to either stand up or raise his hands. He watched the policeman topple over as someone shot him with an accuracy that would have made Sean's old sergeant major weep. The shot had probably come from the buildings above and behind, though Sean could see nobody up there.

Sean continued to secure Wilson in the passenger seat of the car, then turned the key in the ignition. The car, all six of its windows masses of shattered crystal, moved off. The tyres, surprisingly, did not burst immediately on the mass of shattered glass on the road surface.

This car would get him as far as the Hirondelle. If he could remember where he'd parked the Hirondelle.

Jesus, he felt so damned tired.

***

Wilson shook himself awake as the car was still moving. They had now passed three consecutive sets of CCTV cameras with severed wires. Half the faces on the pavement seemed to be Jakeses, Speights, Drakes and Chaneys, watching the car trundle past, chunks of shatterproof glass peeling from its windows, with apparent unconcern.

"Wh-where am I?"

"If you try to kill me again, I will kill you", said Sean. "You are in a car, which is explanation enough."

Wilson discovered that he was restrained by a seatbelt. "The explosions - the guns - the technology doesn't exist till 2035 -"

"Don't worry. Your Hirondelle monkeys are dealing with it. They won't let anyone who sweats turannone get taken in by the fuzz. I suspect they've handled worse before." He cast an eye sideways at Wilson. "Better do all your bleeding now. If you leave any on my upholstery, there'll be hell to pay. Now, why are you suddenly trying to kill me? And why aren't your employees doing likewise?"

Wilson hesitated, tried a lie. "I'm not trying to kill you."

"Are too. Something to do with my name, you said. Now either you've really got something against Sean, or it's my last name you're worried about."

"It means 'Lamb' in Italian", said Wilson.

Sean fell silent. The car hurtled like a raft down rapids, between canyon walls of other parked cars.

"You knew, didn't you. No-one doesn't know the meaning of their own name."

For several seconds, Sean was neither steering, nor braking, nor accelerating.

"Sean!"

He swerved aside to narrowly miss a parked SUV that was six inches wider than the cars parked on either side of it. The car returned to steady forward progress.

Sean's face ground into a frown fit to cut diamond. "I had hoped it wasn't true."

"It was what you said about the Agni", said Wilson sullenly. '"The word means sheep, and it's the same in Italian.' Uno agno, a sheep. Uno agnello, a lamb."

"Might as well be hung for the one as the other", said Sean.

"I'm sorry?"

"You probably don't have that saying where you come from, I imagine. All common proverbs involving lambs will have been very carefully looked at by the Committee for excision from the language." Sean turned into the street where he'd parked the Hirondelle. Naturally, it had a crowd of goggling onlookers around it. He'd forgotten the Hirondelle effect.

"So you believe I'm some sort of evil religious dictator", said Sena, pulling the car to a halt several driveways away.

"I believe you are going to become an evil religious dictator."

"Have the last few days we've known each other not taught you that I'm not the sort of man who murders millions of people indiscriminately?"

Wilson thought back. His hand moved to the pistol-whipping scar on his head. "Uh, not really, no."

The core of the group of onlookers round the Hirondelle consisted of three hooded youths in mock-designer sportswear who were lounging on the bonnet. A crowd of smaller children were gathered round the car; some of them were kicking the tyres. The neighbourhood he'd parked the car in looked considerably worse in daylight.

"Is there any way I can get the car to kill them without touching them?" said Sean.

Wilson wiped his face gingerly clean of blood and glass. "Sadly, no."

Sean walked towards one of the kids sitting on the bonnet.

"Hi", he said. "You live round here?"

The kid nodded, staring up at Sean in a way that seemed rather too cocksure. Perhaps he had something in his back pocket - a razor, maybe, or a knife.

"Which direction?" said Sean.

The kid pointed with an indolent finger, without unlocking his stare from Sean's.

Sean followed the finger down the street to a three-storey set of single parent flats.

"Those flats over there?"

The kid nodded with deliberate slowness. Another of the kids grinned and bounced up and down on Sean's bonnet, buckling the steel.

"Tosser", said a voice from somewhere in the crowd.

Sean nodded back, pulled the gun out of Wilson's pocket, took aim at the pent roof of the structure and fired. The gun coughed almost apologetically. The cough was eclipsed by a bang like a spent volcano as the top of the block blew off. Sean was particularly pleased at having managed to erase the roof without having apparently damaged the top two storeys.

"Fuck off", said Sean.

The kids fucked off. All his horrible little friends fucked off with him. They wouldn't get far. A gas main explosion or a terrorist bomb or a truck careering tragically out of control would end their brief existences. Sean blowing the top off their house would make no difference for or against. Hirondelle would follow Sean and Wilson across London, cleaning up everyone who saw them, anyone who might testify against them, anyone who might provide evidence to an investigation. He was the white-hot payload of a million-man weapons delivery system, tearing its way across time towards the year 2035. Nothing and no-one could be allowed to stand in his way, apart from himself.

"Shit", he said, settling into the driver side seat. Oddly, by now, most of the blood on him had dried; he left hardly a trace on the leather.

"Shit indeed", said Wilson.

"We are now going somewhere to discuss how we - that is, you and I together - are going to beat the future", said Sean.

The key turned neatly in the ignition. The car purred perfectly away like Time's winged chariot.

***

"It all makes sense", said Sean. "The Hirondelle employees killed Mahar. Logically, they should have killed me then as well. They certainly should have killed me once I walked in on their operation and shot four of them. I only did that because I'd already assured myself I was going to get away with it because I had. And because I was angry. But they stayed their hand."

"They're conditioned not to attack the Pastor", said Wilson. "Even though your body doesn't produce turannone, they recognized you. You have no idea how deep that conditioning goes. Even though I'm a Level Thirteen, I was lucky they didn't kill me for trying to shoot you."

The car was sitting in the middle of a gently moving deck, its wheels secured, surrounded by other cars. Sean had an impression of being trapped in gently moving traffic. All the other cars, however, were deserted. Their drivers and passengers had long since deserted them for the delights of the on-board café.

"Where does this go to?" said Wilson.

"Jersey", said Sean. "We don't need our passports. I thought we could talk here without interruption. Even the most punctual service isn't going to make exactly the same trip every time. So if they try their usual trick of taking a mobile time machine to the exact place we were four and a half days ago, Hirondelle will find it hard to find us."

"They wouldn't listen in on you anyway", said Wilson. "You're the Pastor."

Sean threw up his hands in frustration. "How do you know I'm the Pastor?"

"I know it", said Wilson. "Put thirty years on your face, grow your beard a couple of inches, put a mealy-mouthed religious serpent in your head instead of a tongue. Do you remember I said Lamb had a scar on his left cheek, and that no-one really knew where it came from?"

Sean nodded. "Yes. Yes, I do."

"Check out your left cheek."

Sean flipped down the driver's sunshade. "Youch. That's gonna smart."

"Better get it stitched. Is there a hospital in Jersey? What is Jersey?"

"An island." Sean frowned painfully around the various shards of window embedded in his expression. "I think we'd probably better both get ourselves stitched right here. There'll be a surgery somewhere." He unclipped his seatbelt and opened the driver door.

The air outside smelt not of ozone, but of diesel oil and chip batter.

"I feel sick", said Wilson, getting out of the passenger door.

"Haven't you ever been on a boat?"

"No." Wilson's expression was panicked. "Why? Are we on a boat?"

Sean grinned and nodded, making his way past cars towards a door marked DECK 1. "That's what a ferry is. And the fact that we're on a boat and Hirondelle probably can't do anything about what happens on a boat means I can't kill you. Hirondelle couldn't cover my tracks for me. The police would take me in." He walked through the DECK 1 door into a sea breeze.

"You're wrong", said Wilson sullenly. "There are at least three Hirondellers here. I saw their faces in the other cars. But they're keeping their distance." He leaned on the rail next to Sean, watching the sea pitch up and down with dread.

"But it's only their ability to go back in time and correct exactly what caused a problem that makes them at all effective", said Sean. "And they can't do that here. Four and a half days ago this was a patch of open sea. Which means you're safe. So relax."

Wilson relaxed, to the extent that he threw up all the way down the ferry's clean white side, leaving a dirty orange streak down the paintwork. He was not alone. Similar dirty orange streaks were being made by equally creative passengers fore and aft.

"Feel better?"

Wilson nodded. Sean drew out a packet of tissues from his pocket and offered one to him. Wilson took it and wiped his nose and mouth. Sean turned to watch the sea rising and falling gently. He was beginning to feel seasick himself, but couldn't admit it. The feeling of inferiority Wilson was experiencing now could be useful.

"Put yourself in my position", said Sean. "What would you do?"

Wilson, too busy to do anything but scoop plugs of vomit from his nostrils, shrugged dejectedly.

"You know", said Sean, "that you are going to become tyrant of the world. You know you cannot change this. You know this because a man from 2035 has come back in time and told you it. You know that, because of you, millions, maybe billions of innocent people are going to die."

Wilson nodded forlornly. "I'm sorry", he said.

"Don't be. What you've told me", said Sean, "is that, up until 2035, up till the point where you go back in time, I have to follow the script of this man's life. But after 2035, I have a clean canvas. I can do whatever I want. Do you understand?"

Wilson blinked. He nodded again, and spat out a gobbet of vomit.

"I've got to get you to trust me, Mr. Wilson. What do I have to do, in 2035, to get that to happen? Do you want me to paint the Great Pyramid of Egypt purple? How about renaming the continent of Australia Wilsonia?"

Wilson stared at Sean. "The Great Pyramid was painted in 2034. Everyone thought it was proof the Pastor had gone mad."

Sean felt the razor stubble prickle on the back of his neck, rising like guard hairs on a nettle.

"Anything you want, Mr. Wilson. Anything."

Wilson leaned on the rail and thought.

Finally, he spoke up.

"There's an island", he said, "called Madagascar. Quite a large island. Off the coast of Africa."

"I know where Madagascar is", said Sean.

"It's almost a continent on its own. A splinter of Africa that split off millions of years ago. Containing animal and vegetable species that have stayed the same for millennia despite the far-reaching evolutionary changes on the mainland. When I left, Chuch planners were planning to 'utilize the land space'. That's Churchspeak for turning it into an All-Flesh-Is-Grass farm. Acre upon acre of transparent polymer cells growing genetically engineered proteins. The proteins are effectively human flesh, produced using genes transplanted from humans on the basis that human tissue contains everything you need to make human tissue. Plants that used to produce fruiting bodies made of plant protein, like nuts and fungi, don't need much adjustment to make animal protein."

"What does it taste like?"

Wilson grimaced. "All-Flesh-Is-Grass tastes like part of a human, if that part if Granny's fanny."

Sean burst out laughing, and Wilson laughed beside himself. "Every true believer on earth eats the shit, usually synthetically flavoured. The Church won't control population growth, so it's hard to find ways of feeding the population the planet now has." He stared at the sea through sunken eyes. Sean had the impression his attention was elsewhere.

"Can't you just...transmit them to one of the colony planets?"

Wilson shook his head irritably like a dog trying to shake off a collar. "The transmission would take up too much energy. It's easy enough to send a man, a survey team, a cobalt bomb. But twenty thousand million people..." he shrugged and threw up his hands in despair.

"You want me to save Madagascar", said Sean.

Wilson nodded. "My daughter, she's only six...there are animals in Madagascar called lemurs. They are fluffy and have big eyes, highly positive attributes for acquiring the affections of little girls. She cried when the Church said it was going to exterminate the lemurs."

Sean pulled out a notebok and pen, looked at his watch, and noted down the time.

"It's four p.m. on January the Second 2007. Assuming I am Pastor Lamb, I can make anyone come back in time to four p.m. on January the Second 2007, bearing whatever gifts I like."

Wilson nodded. He was breathing heavily, as if in some pain. Sean was not feeling pain. On the contrary, the stone-cold rail he was gripping had a light and fluffy texture.

"Okay. I'll now prove to you either that I'm not Pastor Lamb, or that I am Pastor Lamb but am a well-intentioned man who has your best interests at heart. Agreed?"

Wilson was gripping the rail so hard his knuckles were showing through his skin. This would have to be fast. He had not anticipated the depths of Wilson's dejection. He himself was feeling on top of the world.

"Agreed?" repeated Sean.

Wilson nodded. Sean licked his lips nervously.

"A man from 2040 carrying a ring-tailed lemur will come through that door about" - he raised his voice - "NOW."

He had not believed it would actually work. The man was impeccably dressed in a black single-breasted three-piece, totally inappropriate for a ferry deck. The lemur he was carrying, however, would have delighted Wilson's daughter - it was capering about on his shoulder, wore a diamond-studded collar, and was attached to his finger by a length of pink ribbon tied in a beautiful bow. It leapt from man to man as if Wilson were an old friend, and began trying to eat his collar.

Sean felt like a sorceror.

Wilson stared at the lemur-bearer in stark incomprehension.

"Mr. Wilson", said Sean, "meet Mr. Wilson."

Wilson nodded gravely. Shakily, Wilson bowed back. Wilson's suit was set off by a gold tie with a jet black motif resembling a cross and six pointed star set within a crescent moon. The same theme continued onto a pair of stylish gold cufflinks.

Wilson stared at Wilson.

All that could be heard was the plunge and suck of the ferry's hull in the ocean.

"Does it all come good?" said Wilson.

"It all comes good", nodded Wilson.

"Did they make you say this?"

Wilson shook his head. He pulled out a gun from his immaculate suit. The gun was an authentically early twenty-first century model, a nine millimetre automatic Browning. Sean was impressed.

Wilson cocked the gun, turned to a passenger standing inoffensively at the rail, took aim, and fired. The passenger collapsed forward as if vomiting uncontrollably, but the stain that spilled out of her as she slumped over the rail was not brown but a rich, vibrant red. Other passengers spilled away in both directions like leaves from a blower, yelling in panic.

Unconcernedly, Wilson turned to face the rail again.

"The gun", he said, "works."

"You could have fired the gun into the deck", reproved Sean. Wilson shrugged.

He looked at the earlier version of himself, nodded at Sean.

"I could shoot him just as easily", he said. "Try and figure out why I didn't."

Wilson blinked. "You couldn't shoot him. He's the Pastor."

"You felt able to shoot him. I'm protected by the very same armour as you."

Wilson stared despairingly at himself. "Still? Even now?"

The later Wilson shrugged. "I have to be. You wouldn't believe the Pastor."

Sean nodded. "Don't worry, I know about his addiction already. I confiscated his supply and stuck a needle of it into a vein in my arm just after getting him into the car." He winked. "That's why he's looking like death on ice and I'm talking thirteen to the dozen. He's feeling the pain from all those bits of glass in his own face and having to cope with cold turkey and seasickness at the same time."

Later Wilson nodded professionally. "I sought out addictive opiates as soon as I arrived back here. They have only a fraction of the effect of a jolt of turannone from a Church pastor, but it allowed me to break the conditioning I'd had since childhood. Otherwise I'd never have been able to point a gun at you."

"Heroin?" said Sean.

Later Wilson nodded. "Five years on I have a chemically purer supply obtained through Mother Church, but the highs and lows are just the same."

Earlier Wilson glared at Sean as if contemplating regaining possession of his own supply by force. He sagged back against the walls of the boat. he lemur scampered into his hair and began testing his ears for edibility.

"You've made your point. Throw away the gun. There's no need for anyone else to get hurt."

Later Wilson obliged. The gun arced into the sea. Sean watched it sink, and cackled hollowly.

"Oh my. I'm afraid I've just got the point and you haven't."

Wilson turned round to Sean. The lemur scampered round his head like a bijou Victorian hat adornment. "Don't get what?"

"Don't worry, I've only just realized it myself. Later Greater You over there just shot a passenger. I thought I'd made it impossible for the Church to find us here because we were on a ferry, but then I made it necessary for them to make a big deal of finding us by issuing an instruction to have your later self walk in on us."

Later Wilson nodded. "I had to buy a ferry ticket at the terminal and everything."

Sean nodded. "Which means they can't surgically erase any mistake we make, because they haven't got the precise coordinates of this boat."

Earlier Wilson frowned. "But all they'd need to do would be to send someone back with an inertial compass, then take the reading off him -"

Later Wilson nodded. "But we didn't. We knew we hadn't, because we hadn't. So we didn't. Ain't causality a bitch?"

"Which means", said Sean, "that the only way the Committee has left of preventing us from being arrested in connection with the murder of a passenger on this boat is to sink the boat and everyone on her."

"She went down on the second of January, 2007", agreed Later Wilson. "History records that there were only two survivors. The remainder all died very quickly either of drowning or of exposure in freezing cold seas. Or from the initial explosion."

"Explosion? What explosion?"

Later Wilson nodded at the dying passenger. "It was a mercy to shoot her."

"So you only shot her because you knew the ferry had gone down", said Earlier Wilson.

Later Wilson nodded.

"And you only destroyed the ferry because you'd shot a passenger", said Earlier Wilson.

Later Wilson raised a finger. "We destroyed the ferry", he cautioned, "because we knew we'd destroyed the ferry."

Earlier Wilson stared hopelessly.

"Two survivors", he repeated, without enthusiasm.

"I'm looking at 'em", said Later Wilson, winking roguishly.

"But we've just been involved with a series of major explosions in a city centre", said Earlier Wilson. "How are you going to cover up the fact that we've been followed by those explosions all the way to a ship taking us to Jersey?"

"It was a terrorist outrage", said Later Wilson calmly.

"Terrorist outrages do not follow people!", protested Earlier Wilson, pounding his hand on the rail.

"Ah, but they don't need to", grinned Sean maniacally. "I'm beginning to see how the Committee for Truth and Beauty thinks. Remember that Hirondelle are packing up shop to leave London for new premises in Canada? Mahar thought that this was proof that something bad was about to happen in England, and probably in London specifically. And it's going to. You see, no-one will bother to look for any pattern linking three explosions if there aren't just three explosions. In order to stop anyone noticing any pattern to the blasts, Hirondelle will plant so many duplicate detonations around London that no wood can be seen for the trees."

Two uniformed crewmen emerged from the door to the onboard restaurant and began dragging the bloody body of the wounded passenger into the superstructure. Sean greatly admired their courage. Had he still had a gun, Wilson could have shot either of them at any time.

Not, of course, that it would do them any good.

"But we're on a ferry", complained Wilson. "If this is the only explosion on a ferry, don't you think the police will get suspicious?"

Later Wilson turned his wrist over and consulted a sophisticated-looking timepiece. "To the east of us, you'll see the Condor Ferries service from Portsmouth to Guernsey. Meanwhile, to the west, you can see the Brittany Ferries service from Portsmouth to Cherbourg -"

The sea was momentarily illuminated by two great pillars of flame. Sean hugged the rail, giggling hysterically.

"You see? Blow up all the ferries, and no-one will bother to check what was odd about one of them." He blinked back tears of laughter. It really was very funny. "Of course, you realize that, logically, a very big bang will make them ignore any minor ones."

"That's happening in about twenty seconds' time", said Later Wilson calmly. "As regards how you become the only two survivors, there is one lifeboat to port and aft that hasn't been sabotaged. Can I have my lemur back now?"

Wilson extended a hand, and the little prosimian scampered from Wilson to Wilson.

"How do I know you're from 2040?" said Wilson.

Wilson frowned and paused for thought.

"Well", he said, "I could cut my head off and count the rings."

Earlier Wilson snarled. "I could kill you and have your corpse uranium dated."

Later Wilson grinned. He raised his hand and clicked his fingers. Two stick-thin coloured girls ran onto the deck, moving awkwardly in high-heeled 2007 trainers, and threw themselves on Earlier Wilson.

"DADDY!"

"Daddy, it's us!"

"Daddy, you have to do what daddy says." The taller of the two girls giggled. They each took one of their father's arms.

"Look at us", said the smaller girl, "all growed up."

Sean noticed tears both in Wilson's eyes, and in Wilson's as he watched quietly from the rail.

"I'm taking my Third Level Advancement on Saturday", said the elder girl.

"And I'm learning the Second Level Mysteries", said the younger. "I know that there is no -"

"Whisht, silly!" cautioned the elder sister, digging the little girl in the rib. "There's one present whose level we don't know." She jerked her hand pointedly at Sean.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about me", said Sean. "I figure I know just about all of them."

"Such as?" said the girl, with the rudeness of innocence.

Sean extemporised wildly. "Uh, the Second Mystery is that there is no, uh, no death. The angels take our spirits and make fresh bodies for them."

"Jesus." Earlier Wilson spat over the side in disgust. "You just made that up, didn't you? But that's it apart from the final line."

"Uh, we are all one under the rainbow", added Sean.

"Bastard", said Earlier Wilson.

"Daddy", reproved the younger girl, "that's pottymouthing the Catechism."

The girls noticed the presence of the lemur and squealed simultaneously in delight. Wilson's eardrums rang in protest. Not for the first time, he was glad Sam had had a boy.

"Come now, girls, we haven't got long", said Later Wilson. "Remember, portside aft."

"Where are you going?" said Earlier Wilson.

"We", said Later Wilson with huge satisfaction, "have our own submarine."

"Where? And why can't we use it?"

"It's only a three-man submarine. It was welded into the ballast when the ship was first built, so I'm told, somewhere in the bows." He pulled out a tiny device resembling a compass. "I'm picking up its location signal, at any rate."

He bowed curtly to Wilson, and the girls said tearful goodbyes, before all three of them left through the door back into the car deck.

A crewman's head poked round the onboard restaurant door.

"He's gone", said Sean. "The man with the gun."

The crewman nodded, without poking his head any further into a potential line of fire. "Which direction?"

"The car deck."

"Are you hurt?"

"No." Sean ad-libbed. "You shouldn't approach him. He has two girls as hostages. He said all three of them were wired to explode." He was particularly proud of this final lie. It had a minimalistic elegance that protected Wilson's children whilst anticipating the explosion that would shortly provide proof for it.

"You look hurt."

"I had an accident before I came on board. We both did."

"I see."

The crewman withdrew and closed the hatch.

"I think", said Sean, "that we'd better get going. I don't think he believed that last one."

Wilson shrugged. "He's going to die anyway."

Sean nodded. "There's probably nothing we can do about it."

A sudden bright flash lit up the horizon, drawing a momentary silhouette of the North and South Downs on the sky in glittering silver.

"What was that?" said Wilson.

"The Really Big Bang", said Sean. "London. Either a small atomic bomb or a fuel/air explosion of some sort, I imagine. Let's get to those lifeboats before the shockwave."

Wilson nodded and accompanied Sean down the deck to the port side. A small girl in a fluffy pink parka and battery-powered illuminated footwear was toddling down the deck unaccompanied. The parka had a happy blue elephant on the front; purple letters on the parka proclaimed it to be a HAPPY BLUE ELEPHANT. Sean grabbed her by the hand and led her aft.

Three survivors, by God.