Kill The Monster, Chapter 15

XIII. TWENTY-TWENTY VISION

"Governor, we have a tight schedule to stick to. The Press are expecting us outside in twenty."

The Governor was on all fours, crouched by the hotel room's ents station, facing towards a self-drawn pencil mark on the wall which presumably indicated the direction of Mecca. The Governor prayed five times every day, said Grace before meals, observed the Shabbat, and asked the Lord his soul to keep before he went to bed. He was, in all, the most conscientious man of religion who had not yet been beatified. He fasted during both Lent and Ramadan, and had been known to revere both Haj and Jah. He tithed, gave Zakah, and donated money to Bnai Brith, and gave his friends presents at both Chanukkah and Christmas. In return, he received perhaps more Christmas cards and gifts than any man on Earth, restoring belief in the essential goodness of human nature. And yet here he was, sleeping on a mat next to the hotel suite's emperor-sized bed, dressed in jeans, espadrilles, and a T shirt. The T shirt said ALL MEN ARE ONE TO GOD.

The Security man who had addressed the Governor waited patiently while the Governor performed his devotion. The Security man was a Level Eight, only two slots below the Governor, capable of questioning his orders but never of disobeying them. He wore a highly expensive suit, not out of personal vanity, but in order to throw his master's humility into sharp relief. There was a bulge at the suit's breast. Nowadays, there had to be, and the local captain of carabinieri had given special permission for it. In many people's opinions, security considerations did not apply in the Governor's case. No-one would plan to kill such a self-evident man of peace.

Yeah. Right. And the Hindus didn't waste Gandhi.

The Governor's running mate outranked the Security man. He interrupted.

"Adrian", he said, "the world is waiting for you."

The Governor looked up, like a small child disturbed in the middle of drawing the biggest spaceship ever. This small child, however, had a degree in Natural Science and a doctorate in International Law.

He smiled. "I'm sorry, Sean. Sometimes I get carried away."

"Me too", said Sean, raising Governor Adrian Lamb of California to his feet. "You have no idea."

Lamb dusted himself off, though the floor of the hotel suite looked to have been cleaned to surgical standards, most probably by Security. After the invasions of Turkmenistan and Libya, any American overseas had been fair game for anyone with a burnoose and a vial of anthrax. "Are our supporters in Congress still proposing the amendment?"

Sean nodded. "The latest exit polls make it fifty-fifty. It seems not to be being treated as a vote to decide whether a naturalized American can become President. Instead, it's a vote on whether they want you to be President. Luckily a lot of them seem to - with the world the way it is now, it's easy to see why."

"Your influence has done a good deal to cool tensions in Jerusalem and Gaza, sir", said the Public Relations lady at the Governor's other elbow. "Your visit to the Learning Centre last month was accompanied by a fifty per cent drop in recorded stonings, suicide bombings and flag burnings as recorded by Christian Network News."

"There's a hard core still clinging to the idea of a secular state, though", said Sean. "It's going to be a damned close-run thing." He took Pastor Lamb by the shoulder. "Come on. We only have thirty minutes left. before the power switches out in San Marco."

A look of panic spread over the Governor's face. "Oh dear! Oh my word. I'd better get a move on and stop escalating my issues upstairs."

The Audience had been scheduled to take place from an open balcony at the Riva Schiavoni end of the hotel. The rooftops, palazzi, and moored motor yachts adjoining the Riva been occupied for days in advance by camped-out security personnel, observing the comings and goings of thousands of holidaymakers, any one of whom could be casing the joint for a potential terrorist attack. Nobody but Press or Diet delegates was being allowed within magic-bullet-shot of the future President of the United States of America. For a man who always insisted on being heard out in public where any man might take a shot at him, the security was tighter than the grip of the Devil on Judas. Armed carabineri were dotted among the crowd, and the crowd consisted of perhaps twenty-five per cent Church Committee, CIA and SISMI staff. And yet, Sean knew, it would not be enough.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to make it easy for them.

In the corridor that led to the balcony, John Lang was waiting for them. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, sandals, and a Mexican hat of the sort no self-respecting Mexican would wear.

"A few reassuring words about Kashmir would be in order", he said to Lamb. "We've just heard on the BBC news stream that Pakistan has moved up nuclear-capable artillery to the border. President Gillani has made a press release saying that he pledges the entire Iranian air force to assist his Brothers in Islam. I spoke to the Indian ambassador this morning. The Indians believe at the very highest level that if you're elected, you'll throw in America's lot with World Islam."

Lamb nodded. "I'll take that on board."

One of the suited nonentities standing around the corridor said: "You could insert it in para 3 of the prepared speech, sir." Lamb turned and flashed a smile which made Sean certain the prepared speech had been consigned to the crack between Lamb's buttocks where it belonged.

The Governor walked down the corridor towards Golgotha. The sound of the crowd became rapturous.

And the poor bastard doesn't even know half of those cheers are chemically enhanced. We've had helotone blowers working in all four corners of Piazza San Marco all morning. But God help me, I produce as much turannone as Adrian does. And I love him.

Not in a dirty homosexual way, of course. But the pure honest Christian love one chap can feel for another, without need for beastliness.

The Governor bent forward meekly to the mike. The audience roared, huge sections of it waving banners saying GOD'S PRESIDENT and BEHOLD THE LAMB. Many of the banners were in Hebrew and Arabic; Sean had made sure of it. Native speakers of both languages had corrected the proofs, and the references were from the Koran and the Torah. Shutters clicked throughout the crowd like locusts in a field of wheat.

"HI", said Lamb. For reasons best known to students of the Italian psyche, the crowd went into paroxysms of rapture. For many, of course, 'hi' might be the only word of English they knew, yet this was hardly likely in Venice. Venetians, after all, claimed not to speak Italian, but Venessian.

"I GUESS IT'S ON", he boomed modestly. The crowd, crammed so tightly in to the front along the Canale Di San Marco that many of them were in danger of entering it, blew whistles and air horns. Sean had arranged the whistles and air horns. A flotilla of spectators was watching, like spectators of the Parables by the Sea in reverse, from squadrons of gondole and vaporetti bobbing in the water. More gondole than vaporetti; fuel shortages had made operating motor boats uneconomical nowadays. The only motorboats on the canals nowadays were huge municipal water buses. Apparently these no longer went to many of the outlying islands, such as Murano, Burano and Torcello; these services were no longer financially viable. Instead, sailboats had made a return to the lagoon, which, oddly, had increased the tourist trade.

"WELL", he said, "I SEE A GOOD FEW FISHERS OF MEN OUT THERE IN BOATS. BUT YOU'RE GOING TO BE DISAPPOINTED. I'M NOT JESUS."

The crowd fell silent. They seemed almost disappointed.

"HOWEVER", said Lamb, "I KNOW HIM WELL."

More air horns. Lamb could have dangled a small child over the stone balustrade and slit its throat for the glory of Satan for all this audience cared.

"I'D LIKE YOU ALL TO JOIN ME, BEFORE I OPEN MY BIG MOUTH, IN A PRAYER FOR ALL THE MILITARY COMMANDERS, ALL THE FIGHTERS FOR THEIR OWN FLAVOUR OF FREEDOM, ALL THE PEOPLE OF WHATEVER FAITH OR RACE WHO ARE CURRENTLY AFFECTED BY THE ONGOING SITUATION IN KASHMIR."

"It's good stuff", said Lang from Sean's elbow.

"It's bullshit", said Sean. "But when it comes from a man who actually believes it, bullshit makes the flowers grow."

"I think he is a very effective orator", said a short man in a white dress at Sean's other elbow.

"Who are you?" said Sean.

"The Pope", said the Pope. Sean nodded, mouthing a silent o. The poor little Pontifex had been unfortunate enough to become one of Lamb's first victims, acceding to a request for an audience from the Church. Possibly thinking he stood to acquire the support of a growing ecumenical movement currently boasting some hundred million followers worldwide, His Holiness had been hooked instead of doing the hooking. Letters soaked in helotonovirus had been Lamb's means of capturing his pontiff, and Leo IX had been croziered in without either man ever suspecting the true hormonal nature of their relationship.

Leo was the first Italian citizen to become pope for over thirty years. Swiss by birth, he had been blessed with the ability to speak French, German and Italian; he had also spent a good deal of his early career studying theology at various European universities, notably Liverpool. The world had therefore been treated, for the last two years, to a pope who spoke fluent English but sounded as if he was about to steal their car. Certain British TV comedians, indeed, still referred to him as Pope John Paul George and Ringo the First. Leo had had to be restrained from beatifying Lamb while he was still alive, a practice unheard-of in history. It would certainly have been unthinkable five years ago for a Roman pontiff to kick around in the entourage of an American presidential hopeful like a skullcapped groupie. Leo had reported to the Collegio dei Cardinali that he had felt 'deeply spiritually moved' on meeting Pastor Lamb, an accurate if poetic description of the endorphin kick delivered by exposure to a ten-milligram-a-day turannone source. The two men were currently discussing plans to reunify the Western church under a single Patriarchy based in Jerusalem. They anticipated resistance from the Israeli government. Senior rabbinical figures, and some in the Catholic Church itself, were already refusing to meet with Church of the Book dignitaries, claiming that those who did came back 'changed'. This did not bode well.

"I like your plane", said Pope Leo.

Sean looked out across the water.

"I also like my plane", he said. "Though strictly, it isn't a plane."

The Ribi Lyetanya purchased at great cost from Alsin Fischer, had been the Church's most controversial but lucrative acquisition. Capable of Mach One at sea level, it was the world's first commerical ekranoplan transport, travelling on ground effect - at sea! as the AF sales presentation had mystifyingly put it. Wingtips also unfolded from the Ribi at altitude at the cost of reduced fuel efficiency, and it used only half as much fuel as a turbojet of comparable mass. The Church currently owned three, which it called, inevitably, Faith, Hope and Charity; they allowed Church dignitaries to travel to virtually every city in the world without the logistical difficulties of landing at airports. Most world capitals, after all, were on coastlines. The Ribi bobbed on its floats only a hundred yards from the Diet venue, decorated with the cross-within-a-star-within-a-crescent of the Church.

Whilst Lang gazed out at Lamb with an intensity bordering on the sexual, Sean leaned in close to the security consultant and whispered: "How is our little problem coming along?"

The consultant displayed no sign of emotion. "Not too bad. All three of them have agreed to take the payoff."

"In cash?"

"Unmarked bills. We've washed the bills in a helotonovirus growth medium. This will be a one-time-only payoff. We'll probably get the money back in tithes eventually." Some irritation broke through the mask. The consultant's eyes drilled into the back of Lang's head. "I sometimes wish the Pastor could be more discreet."

"He has moments of weakness, Adam. We all do." Sean laid a hand on Adam's shoulder.

"Agnus tuus sum domine."

"Et pastor tuus ego. Did you get the three boys to supply blood samples, by the way?"

"Uh-huh. They're clean. No Hep B, no STD's."

"That's a relief. The last thing we want is a High Primate with HIV. The press would have a field day."

"Once The Word gets out into the general population, we won't need to worry about the press, magister."

"We certainly won't. Inshallah."

"Inshallah."

Opposite the line of hotels that faced St. Mark's Canal, Dorsoduro narrowed to a single bone-white tower. The laguna sparkled in the sun like a hammered sheet of diamond. This was the fiercest week of heat in Italy this year. Deaths from heat stroke were being reported all over the Mediterranean, particularly among hospital patients and the elderly. The hotel's air conditioning was running at full blast, and the air around the balcony was pleasantly cool now; most of the ristoranti and gallerie around San Marco were much the same. But when the power went out, as it shortly would, the outside air would pour in like invisible lava, making exposed skin smart, making the heartbeat throb in the arteries, preventing work, preventing play, preventing sleep. Jerusalem was the same. Power outages were killing every city outside the temperate zones.

Sean's mobile phone rang. He swore and walked back down the corridor to answer it, tailed by appropriate security.

"Hello?"

"Hello, sweet lumps. Do you like the room? I haven't seen it yet."

"I'll make sure they clean it, honey."

"I am not sounding American."

"My voice coach does not make me sound American. He's only trying to make me sound less English."

"We are on holiday."

"Sweetie, I moved the Diet from Brussels to here at a coast of over ten million dollars specifically so that we could be in Venice together." True, up to a point.

"Diet. It's a word for a congress of church leaders."

"Yes, of course. We'll go to that little Indian restaurant in San Polo, if it's still there. Best Indian restaurant in Venice -"

"- okay, so it's the only Indian restaurant in Venice."

"It was easy. The High Primates acceded to my demands once they realized that The Diet of Brussels would be a gift from God to a tabloid headline writer. The Diet of Venice sounds better."

"I know I didn't believe in Him, but I do now. Be reasonable. You know I never bring Him in the house."

"I'm here to support Adrian. He's making a very important address. This is the first Diet His Holiness has attended."

"No, I'm not talking about Adrian."

"No, I'm not going to be making a speech myself, I'm just doing the smily wavy thing. Press the flesh, kiss the baby, bless the house, all that rubbish."

"I suppose I could. It's only five minutes' walk away. Everything is around here. And yes, I do remember it's where we first met."

"Three p.m., July Fifth, 1993. You'd walked out into that little square. I was standing on that big bridge. We were seeing if we could snatch poles out of the hands of the gondolieri. One of them climbed up his own pole and chased Steve halfway around Venice. I had to explain myself to a policeman. You claimed I'd never seen Jon and Steve before, and you were my girlfriend. All your friends thought you were crazy."

"Ah, that was on the bridge too, about ten minutes later. I had to kiss you to prove you were my girlfriend."

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

"That was a whole nine months later, after my second tour in Kuwait. On a hotel bed in King's Cross. The King's Cross Novotel. Want me to tell you where I first did you up the shitter?"

"Okay, I'll prove to you that I have a romantic soul. Turn round and check out the middle post of the bridge. There may be something tied to it."

"That's right. They're for you."

"Okay, read the goddamned label already if you don't believe me."

"It was there. Right there, at the top post of the bridge. I bent you backwards over the balustrade. We nearly went into the water."

He looked up to see bemused expressions on the faces of Lamb's security detail. He put his hand over the phone.

"It's okay. We're back on to where we first kissed. I first did her up the shitter in a caravan in Bognor."

He took his hand off the phone. "Are you still there, dear?"

"Of course I know where it is."

He clicked the phone off and turned round to the man from Security.

"Where the fuck is the Ponte dell'Accademia?"

***

Despite the heat, the bridge still held a handful of diehard camera-clicking tourists. Arching high above the Grand Canal, it looked down on twenty-four metres of deep green water, looking invitingly cool in the heat. Sean's expensive shirt was already ruined, soaked with sweat despite the fact that his entire body had been painstakingly pre-basted with deodorant. All the deodorant seemed to do was make his sweat smell better.

She was standing at the exact apex of the bridge and, somehow, had contrived not to sweat even a drop. She smiled at first, then frowned as she saw the trail of security analysts Sean was leaving in his wake. Sean turned, saw he had company.

"Shoo", he said. The lead Security man, a level six, was obdurate.

"We're needed for your safety, sir", he said.

"You are needed for Pastor Lamb and Pastor Lang's security", said Sean. "I am not going to die for a long time yet. I saw it in a dream. Shoo. Vamoose. Scat."

Professionalism and hormonal control vied for dominance on the Security man's face. Finally, almost in tears, he nodded curtly and left, signalling to his colleagues to do likewise.

He walked back up the bridge to his bride.

The flowers were beautiful, tied to the centremost post of the balustrade, and so extensive that they made the bridge look lopsided. People were stopping to take pictures.

"There's been a terrible accident here", she said, nodding at the flowers.

"A terrible three-gondola pile-up", he said. "There was Walls' Cornetto everywhere."

"Who's up there?" she said. "Adrian?"

Sean nodded.

"And John Lang?"

Sean nodded again; she shuddered. "Lang gives me the willies. Though not as often as he gives underage boys the willies, if what I hear is true."

Sean leaned back against the rail. The wood was as hot as an iron bar in a furnace. "I wish I didn't have to look the other way with that. But I do."

"Why do you? What if it was Mickey?"

"I know. I can't stand for him to be anywhere near Mickey at public events."

"If he ever touches Mickey, I'll kill him."

"That won't be necessary."

"How do you know he won't touch Mickey?"

"You misundersand me. I said it won't be necessary for you to kill him."

Sam turned to face out to sea. "I particularly can't stand the sanctimonious evil hypocritical crap he comes out with about not suffering homosexuals to live."

Sean frowned. "In a way, I think he's trying to pass judgement on himself. He expects to be found out at some point, and he wants the consequences to be as terrible as possible. He wouldn't even care if they brought down the Church."

"Yes. Well. We're on common ground there."

"He never hurts them, you know -"

"What, except insofar as buggery hurts?"

"I really wouldn't know whether it hurts or not. I was in the Army, not the Navy."

She smaned. "Seriously, though. Something should be done about it."

"Something will be done about it. Sooner than you think. Speaking of Mickey, how's he liking it?"

"He hates it. He's sitting in his room with the aircon turned up to maximum, playing Serial Killer Three. I believe he's up to the third level where he gets to abduct nurses, amputate their limbs, and box them into filing cabinets."

"Easy storage", said Sean. "I'm surprised I never thought of filing all my many wives and mistresses in a similar manner -"

She kissed him. She did not often kiss him nowadays. He was not expecting it, and nearly lost his grip on the balustrade. It took some seconds for him to break the grip. He had come to a decision now.

"I've got something to tell you", he said. "Something I should have told you years ago."

"If it's about the double life as a gay cabaret waitress thing, I know all about that. I found your ultra-wide slingbacks in the closet."

He looked into her eyes with the deepest sincerity he could muster.

"You", she said, "are trying to hypnotize me."

"In twenty-two years' time", said Sean, "I will be a monomaniacal world dictator. Every nation shall bow down to me. My face will be on billboards one hundred metres high, and inserted subliminally into television broadcasts with the message: Love this man. I will also have the entire population of China exterminated."

She looked at him sternly. "You've been reading those motivational self-help books again, haven't you."

He threw his hands up in the air and stomped on the wooden surface of the bridge. "No! No no no! There is no punchline to this one! I have known all about it for years, but I've never been able to tell you. How can I tell the woman I love that I know my next twenty years on earth are going to be spent ordering little children into death camps?"

She was concerned now. "Sean, how do you know all this? Was it angels talking to you in your head?" Her tone became carefully level; she looked him straight in the eye. "Have you conceived a desire to dress up as a mediaeval peasant girl and lead a holy war to liberate France at all?"

He stared back at her. Why not say it all? "Messengers from the future come back to me through gates in time and tell me. It's all an accident, the result of a long distance matter transmission procedure that went badly wrong. The upshot of it is that I have to live the life of some sordid megalomaniac for the next two decades, even if I don't want to." He was actually sobbing as he leaned against the balustrade now. "I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to."

Two elderly venessiane were watching him with concern.

"I due amanti giovani stanno discutendo", one said to the other.

"Pah! Quello è il vice presidente futuro degli Stati Uniti d'America. Non leggete il vostro giornale?"

One of the old venessiane was leading a mongoloid boy twice her size; he was holding her hand like a five-year-old, and although Sean understood little Italian and no Venetian, he could tell from the boy's swagger that he believed he was there to look after his grandmother, rather than the other way round.

"That's why I've been doing all of this Church thing", he confessed as she moved back beyond range of any sudden violent movements he might make. "I don't believe in any of it, I didn't want to move to Canada and the US, I didn't want to uproot you and Mickey, but most of all I wanted to tell you, to explain all of it, but it's all so ridiculous I never thought you'd believe me and if you did believe me it'd mean I was the most evil man in the world, and that'd mean you wouldn't love me any more -"

"Ssh, ssh", she said, moving forward and taking hold of his wrists gingerly. "Slow down. Look, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. You are aware that these sort of, uh, voices from the future can be caused by, I'm taking a wild stab in the dark here, paranoid schizophrenia?"

He blinked. "But I can make them happen. I am in charge of them." He pulled out a battered, dog-eared notebook from his breast pocket. Its original cardboard cover had been replaced by a metal one, and the cover's two leaves now closed with a combination-locked clasp. He began turning the lock frantically.

"If I write things down in here", he said, "people from the future make them happen for me."

She nodded, staring at him as if he'd insisted he could fart himself to the moon. "Uh-huh."

"Let's say", he said desperately, realizing he was losing her, "let's say someone comes back from 2035, right here, right now at the Ponte dell'Accademia. What's the time, right now? Humour me, I'm a harmless lunatic."

She shook herself out of the horrible realization that she'd married a psychotic, looked down at his watch. "Uh, two fifty-nine, Italian time. One fifty-nine GMT."

"Date, fifteenth of January, of course." He scribbled this down, as legibly as possible under the circumstances, in the notebook. "It'll have to be more than just a man, of course. A miracle, to keep the Church cover. An angel stepping out of a glowing hole in space. Yes, that'll do." His hand scratched frantically on the paper. "An angel will walk out of time onto this bridge in", he thought, holding the pen to his lip, "thirty seconds' time."

He clapped the book shut and worked the combinations.

"I thought that book was your diary", said Sam, her expression strained.

He winked. "It is. It's a diary of the future."

She shook her head as she stared at him, like a dog trying to rid itself of a troublesome collar.

"Look up there", he said, pointing toward the eastern end of the bridge. "That's where I've decided it'll happen."

She looked mesmerised, despite herself. Seconds ticked by, embarrassingly. He licked lips which were suddenly, unaccountably dry.

Then, gradually, a patch of air on the eastward side of the bridge began to shimmer and squirm, as if being distorted by a bad screen saver. The distortion grew and swirled. Sean watched, fascinated, not having seen a gate in the process of creation before, as reality finally rolled back, revealing soaring, pearl-white marble arranged into columns, balustrades and porticoes, minarets, buttresses and pilasters, looking like the outer ramparts of Heaven. A gentle wind blew in their faces - the Future Wind, often spoken of by Hirondelle employees. Sean had already worked out that the Future Wind was bound in with catastrophic global warming. The world of twenty years ago was insanely, dangerously hotter than today's. Hence, any gate opened between the same spatial points in 2013 and 2035 would have a warm breeze blowing through it from the future to the past. He was not entirely sure this particular breeze was natural, however. For one thing, it smelled of strawberries and roses. He was also almost certain that the skyline behind the time gate was a set. According to Wilson, a good hundred Chinese missiles had found their mark in the Consolidation Wars, destroying several major American cities, London, Rotterdam, and Venice. The Chinese had followed a strategy of water-based detonations, reasoning that inundating several enemy cities with a radioactive tsunami placed in the sea between them would cause more chaos than vapourising one city alone. Sean could see the logic - wounding an enemy soldier did more damage to the enemy in the short term, as it removed not one, but three men from combat; the man who was wounded, and the men who stretchered him off the front line and cared for him until he could return to battle.

Venice, then, had been wiped off the map in twenty-twenty. He had been foolish to insist on meeting himself here. But the Chinese strategy had backfired in the long run. It had left American, Rusian and EU cities largely intact, still able to produce goods for the war effort once the floodwaters had subsided and fresh population had been ferried in. The Veneto had been repopulated from Africa, Seattle and Vancouver from Mexico, London and Rotterdam from Brazil.

The Angel, who had stepped through the gate, was so white-skinned as to be positively luminous. His hair was not simply straw-blond, but peroxide white. His eyes, meanwhile, had no pupils and seemed to glow from within. The wings were beautifully done, but hopelessly underpowered, swan-sized things hanging useless from inadequate musculature at his shoulders. They were, however, clearly part of him - they twitched and fluttered under their own power as he walked. There was even a halo, which Sean imagined must be holographic, though he could see no projector. The halo only seemed to be visible due to the fact that a smoky vapour was issuing from the crown of the Angel's head. Possibly his hair was soaked in a compound that evaporated rapidly in air.

The Angel smiled. He was a consummate actor; he had to be in some pain, with many pounds' weight of foreign grafted tissue hanging off his shoulders. He was also, Sean realized, a negro, with characteristic African facial features despite the alabaster skin. Sean wondered if he had been deliberately bioengineered as an albino.

"Un' angelo", shouted the mongoloid boy, pointing at the apparition. Sean turned to check the effect the Angel had had on the crowd; every single little old lady within a hundred yard radious had dropped to one knee and crossed herself. Well, why not. They are studying for their final exams, after all. The Special Needs boy was gawping at the pretty sparkling lights at the edges of the gate in space. He had the look of a greyhound in a trap. Sean groaned inwardly.

He sneaked a look at Sam. She had her hand clapped over her mouth in shock.

He nodded back to the Angel. That'll do; she's bought it. The Angel nodded back, made a method actor's sign of peace, and departed

The mongoloid boy lurched forward suddenly, arms and legs flailing, and pelted through the portal bellowing incoherently like a knight screaming a battle cry. Sean was glad to see that he didn't trip over the threshold; the interface between universes was razor sharp. It would have left a severed foot in one decade, the stump of an ankle in another.

The hole in space healed over. The old ladies screamed and began gabbling in venessian. Sean began breathing again. He had not been conscious of the fact that he'd stopped.

"I'm sorry", he said, "about the boy."

"These things happen", said Sam without thinking.

"I can bring him back", said Sean, hoping this was true. As he said it, another gate opened on the westward side of the bridge. The Down's Syndrome boy wandered out of it in a daze, holding what Sean could only presume to be an angel's feather in one hand. He hoped the boy had not held the angel downand plucked him. The boy ran up to his grandmother, waving his prize.

"Sono stato nel cielo", he announced.

"You're going to exterminate millions of people", said Sam woodenly. Sean nodded.

Sam nodded back. "I'm sure you have a good reason for it."

She stood in silence on the bridge as little old ladies cringed in front of Sean, acknowledging him as their personal intercessor with the Godhead.

"I don't understand", said Sam. "Adrian is the presidential candidate, not you. He's the one who'll become leader."

"He gets assassinated. Quite horribly, I believe."

"Who'd want to assassinate Adrian?"

"Me. I kill him. I send men back in time and kill him." Sean half-turned away from her, staring out to sea, hoping none of the old ladies understood English. "I have told myself that I will kill him. But I'll be damned if I'm going to make it easy for me."

Her eyes widened in wonder. "That's why you doubled Adrian's security detail. That's why you formed this", she tried to remember the words, "Committee for Security."

He nodded. "Which becomes the secret police force around about twenty-twenty."

"What if you end up killing yourself with your extra security?"

He laughed harshly. "I don't come back in time personally and get my hands dirty. The worst that'll happen is that some poor bastard middleman gets caught in the crossfire."

"And Adrian is one of those poor bastard middlemen. Sean, he's your friend."

He hung his head. "I know." Should I tell her about turannone? Not even Adrian and John know about turannone yet.

"Can't you make a decision not to do it? Change the future?"

He shook his head slowly. "Can't be changed. Can't you see? A man has come back in time and told me that, as far as the future is concerned, Adrian's murder has already happened."

"It hasn't already happened! It's in the future!"

"It has from his point of view. You can't go back in time and change stuff. Causality cannot be denied, Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, Oedipus loves his mother. That's the way it works."

"Then call off your security detail. Leave Adrian unprotected. That way nobody but Adrian gets hurt."

He shook his head, flustered. "I can't. What would I look like, what would the Church look like, if I left Adrian to get shot?"

Her eyes popped open indignantly. "Sean, you FUCKING ARSEHOLE. You're going to be bloody president whatever happens. You're going to let men die, just because you care what you look like?"

He couldn't meet her gaze, or anyone else's. "I hadn't thought of it like that."

"Then start thinking. Call off the security detail."

He searched for possible avenues of escape; unassailable feminine logic was waiting for him at the end of all of them. Reluctantly, he reached up to his ear, opened a channel to the Committee.

"Hello? Uh, this is Pastor Agnello. Withdraw all security from the Doge's Palace."

"You heard me, Adam."

"Uh, I want you to concentrate on the route for the walkabout. I've received a tip-off that an attack is planned in that location, around the Ponte delle Gondole." It was planned for Pastor Lamb to walk, kissing flesh and pressing babies, through the streets of Venice in a manner the Pope had adopted for decades, processing from the Basilica di San Marco to the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa. The area around the Rialto had been identified as a potential trouble spot, where large crowds would approach from all directions; accordingly, a gondola pontoon had been arranged with Venice's boatmen, who would manoeuvre themselves surreptitiously into position just before the Pastor arrived at the Grand Canal, just downstream from the Rialto bridge. A walkway would then be unrolled across the boats by carabineri. The Rialto, along with St. Mark's Square and the Campo Dei Frari, was one of the route's three identified bottlenecks; an assassin could wait in any one of these three locations and be sure of a shot at the Pastor. The gondola bridge created an alternative way to cross the Grand Canal, doing away with one bottleneck. Lamb would also be accompanied by Pope Leo, Imam Hamadi of the Dome of the Rock, Belzer Rebbe Israel of the Beit Hamidrash HaGadol, and Patriarch Athanasius VI of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Any Wahhabist assassin would have to risk hitting an imam, and any Zionist a rabbi.

Still, the man Sean was talking to could tell a lie when he heard one.

"DO IT, Mr. Hamed." He clicked the communicator off, sweating, breathing in gasps. He opened his eyes. Sam was watching him. Weighing him in the balance. Finding him wanting.

"Happy now?" he said.

"You're the one who's murdering him", she said, pursing her lips prissily, "not me."

He wondered how many of the growing crowd now forming around them could understand English. Fewer than in summer, possibly; this was the off season.

"You don't understand", he said. "I know all this is going to happen; I cannot stop it. Believe me, I have tried." But have I? How hard have I? "But the dictatorship only lasts till 2035. At that point, I am king of the world. I can make a difference. I can reverse the damage I have done. I can reduce poverty, I can stop population explosion, I can stop reliance on unrenewable energy sources. I can abolish nuclear weapons, armies, disease, famine, anything you care to mention. I just have to do this twenty-two-year deal with the Devil to achieve it -"

Comically, this last outburst produced a ripple of applause from the crowd. So they did understand some English, at least. He was glad they hadn't understood the part about the Devil.

The clatter of automatic weapons fire sounded down the calli and canali. Coming from the direction of St. Mark's Square.

Then the wooden bridge around him became a mass of flying splinters, as if it had remembered its previous existence in the sawmill. It was a whole long heartbeat before he realized blood and flesh were flying through the air as well. Somebody high up in the buildings on either side was chopping the bridge apart with a heavy machine gun.

His first impulse was to shield Sam. He threw as much of his body as possible round her, in the certain knowledge that it was invulnerable to gunfire. By so doing, he became one half of an almost completely immobile four-legged entity, incapable of fight, flight, or finding cover.

A section of balustrade with uprights a man's arm thick had already been blasted away by gunfire. He swung Sam round in an arc, using his greater weight, and managed to hit the missing section. The pair of them tumbled seven or eight metres into the Grand Canal.

The water closed soundless over his head. Flotsam tumbled past him; he could see virtually nothing beyond arm's length. Canal water was close to opaque, and his eyes would not focus underwater. Sam was a dimly identifiable mass of colour to his left, but was not going up again towards the surface - instead, she had kicked off underwater to the west. Was that the west? And which way was up, again?

All the world was sepia. A clearly recognizable human arm spiralled past him in a galaxy of bubbles. He moved off to follow Sam. Occasionally, stray bullets, pierced the glass ceiling up above him like unlucky shooting stars, reminding him, too, of the need not to surface under any circumstances, no matter what the pressure on his lungs.

Sam, as someone wearing clothes the same colour as Sam, was making for a set of wooden pilings, a vaporetto jetty next to the Accademia. It made sense. There would be air under the jetty, and they'd not be easily visible.

Assuming, of course, that the machine gunners weren't using infrared sights, in which case they'd both stand out like road flares in the dark.

His hands gripped wood, and forced his head up until he was certain his mouth and nose had broken surface. He gulped in air in a dark, dank space. Next to him, he could hear Sam breathing.

"I thought you said", he gasped, "that they weren't trying to kill you."

"They should be", he said. "But they tend to be enthusiastic about the whole killing issue." He took a moment to gulp in air. "And even if they aren't really trying, that is an HMG out there, probably an American M2 by the sound. That is not a weapon you aim. It is a weapon you wave in the general direction of the enemy. And finally", he said, "you're making the assumption that these guys here are from the future. I'm afraid the world is also full of very real terrorists, and these guys could be they." He made a decision and moved a hand up round the pilings onto the surface of the jetty itself. "You stay put. I'll deal with this."

"Sean, NO!"

"Relax, I live for another twenty years, remember? But I don't have the same assurance regarding you. Which is why you're going nowhere." He pulled himself up out of the water onto the jetty. All about the little piazza behind the landing stage, people were huddled behind walls, café tables, and the bodies of other people. Even the walls, he knew, were probably not substantial enough to provide protection against M2 rounds, which were made to penetrate APC armour.

He was the only man in the square standing up. Look for the field of fire, he remembered. The points where the damage starts and stops, especially in an urban environment, could give you some idea of the limits of the enemy weapon's traverse. Of which buildings or obstacles are in their way. Of which direction they are firing from.

All the bulletholes are in the front of the Gallerie, on the western side of the square. So they're somewhere east of here, across the bridge. And there's a definite bullet shadow formed by the walls to those gardens over there - there are chips in the cobbles, but nothing immediately behind the walls. Firing down, then.

But there's no substitute for on-the-ground intelligence.

Calmly, adjusting his sodden tie and cuffs, he strode out towards the bridge, looking upwards for likely-looking windows. The machine gunner opened up as soon as he put his foot on the woodwork, and splinters were blasted from around his feet like shrapnel. But somehow, all of them seemed to miss. Ricochets zipped across the hot stone enclosure like angry wasps, and some passed through his clothing; but none of them hit.

He could see the point the machine gun was firing from now, a narrow black rectangle of shattered glass up near the eaves of one of the big palazzi. The gunners had not even bothered to open the window before firing out of it.

And then the bullets stopped, and he heard the repetitive CHINK of the gunner frantically trying to squeeze the trigger on a misfire. Somebody swore within the building in English. The voice sounded familiar, though Sean could not place it.

"Bollocks."

Not only the voice, but even the accent was English. Now he was beneath the gunner's effective field of fire, Sean walked up to the palazzo and tried the door. It was locked. He punched a fist through the nearest window. His fist bled terribly, but he managed to reach the window catch and climbed through into a well-to-do hallway. He walked around bleeding on the carpet until he found a a staircase leading upwards.

"Bollocks bollocks bollocks!"

He heard an urgent muffled moan from ground level. By the side of the stairs, he saw an African girl in a maid's uniform, gagged with her hands tied behind her back. Either the inhabitants of the palazzo engaged in complicated sex games, or the maid had been overpowered and restrained by whoever had turned the building into a military strongpoint. He bent down and loosened the girl's gag. She began to scream and gabble, half in African, half in Italian. He put her gag back on.

He could hear scampering feet upstairs. He looked up.

"You're not Committee", he said. "Committee would have killed her. Who are you?"

By way of answer, a hand grenade dropped down from the balcony. He caught it. It appeared to be an M67 fragmentation grenade - American-made, but a version he was unfamiliar with. The M67 was a defensive grenade, designed to have a killing range greater than a man's ability to throw it. He threw it away through a side window. It exploded, and shards of glass shot round the room like razorblades, but none of the thousand or so steel fragments the grenade casing was designed to shatter into found their way into him; they had been stopped by the marble-clad wall outside.

"Now why don't we just sit down and talk about this like civilized human beings?"

He stepped onto the staircase and began to climb. Bulletholes opened in the oak panelling of the walls as he climbed higher; all very near misses, fired from a large calibre handgun by the sound. After five shots, the shooter stopped. Using a revolver, wanting to make his final round count.

He rounded the final corner before the first landing, neck craned upwards, looking for the shooter.

The shooter stepped down into the light. Sean could think of nothing to say. He searched the features, subtracting years mentally to arrive at a face he recognized.

"Gosh", he said. "It's you."

The gun, a six shooter, was aimed precisely at the centre of his chest. It would do to his internal organs what a piledriver would to a pat of butter.

The gunman raised the gun and threw it in Sean's face, then ran away sobbing into the upper storeys. Sean picked up the gun, examined the workings, clicked the cylinder out of the frame, found the final bullet. Forty-four calibre hollow point, fired from a weapon which described itself as a COLT HYDRA MANSTOPPER. It would have killed him and made a terrible mess of the wall behind him.

Rainbow rays reflected down the stairwell from above; a four-dimensional transmitter. Probably quite a powerful one. How many years' range?

Five or six, at least, from his face.

He walked back downstairs with the six shooter, into a squad of carabineri toting automatic weapons. Of course, it was necessary to remember that the police carried submachineguns in this country. Helotone penetration wasn't wide enough yet to allow policemen to walk around with nothing but a baton and a cheery smile as they could in Detroit. He raised his hands, holding the weapon by the barrel.

"I am Pastor Agnello", he said. Would they recognize his face? Did they read Time? "He ran away over the rooftops."

"I've seen your face in Playboy", said the lead carabinere.

Sean raised an eyebrow. "A political article? In Playboy?"

The carabinere shook his head. "An article on if power is sexy."

"I sincerely hope", said Sean, "that you don't find me sexy."

The carabinere laughed. "This is Italy. There are no homosexuals in Italy." He put his own gun to his head. "We shoot them."

He nodded to his squad, who ran upstairs to check the rooftops. The leader accepted Sean's revolver and unloosed the gag on the maid, who began babbling anew in Afritalian. Sean walked back out of the palazzo. His hand grenade, he noticed absently, had killed a small child.

Sam was standing outside at great risk to herself. However, he contented himself with the sudden remembrance that she, too, could not die today. She still had to leave him for Craig. This, among other things, made him laugh as he embraced her outside.

"Don't ever do anything like that again", she said.

"Not until 2019 at least", he agreed.

"Did the carabineri get them? Who were they?"

He grimaced. "Well, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that our son grows up to be a highly moral man fighting on the side of right. The bad news is that he's a lousy shot."