Kill The Monster, Chapter 20

XVIII. THE FALL OF ATLANTIS

"- Time to wake up. You've a long journey ahead of you."

He was not taken by surprise this time.

"You've changed your hair."

She laughed. "I'm not Sam, I'm afraid. I'm Amanda. Your wife is over yonder supervising the loading."

He winked. "How about a quick one. You can claim you thought I was Pastore. No-one'll know." His arms were still bound behind him. He had no idea why.

He was in bed, or at least on a bed. He could hear the sound of a light field translator being used repetitively far more than it should be. A light canvas awning hung over his head. The fabric of the awning, and the frame of the bed underneath him, were shaking, he suspected, because gravity waves were shooting through it like ripples through milk.

"I'd know." She helped him to stand. "Besides, you're not as sensitive a lover as John. Did you think all the times you ever slept with Sam were all her?"

He fell silent. She nudged him playfully. "Hur hur, made you look, made you stare. It's okay. They were all her."

He spluttered out a laugh. "I'm impressed. You're authentically every bit as much of a pain in the ass as my wife."

"Don't laugh too hard, you'll bust your stitches." The awning disappeared from round his bed, taken down by two men who then started on the aluminium frame that had supported it.

"Time to wake up, sleepy head", she said. "We're moving out." A pack - the one he recognized from the previous evening - was thrown at him. He caught it clumsily. "Careful - you'll bust your stitches. They should hold, and if any bacterium sneaks into you now after all the stuff the medics injected you with I'll lose all faith in Nazi experimentation."

The tent had stood on a rock terrace cut into the inside of the Krakatoa caldera. Children's hands, stained red by volcanic dust, had been used to make finger painting collages on the wall of the cut. The settlement around him was as alive as an ant colony was the day new queens left the nest. Further down the slope, a tractor trundled past towing a matrix of wires that crackled like new frost. A tank on the back of the tractor had slabs of ice calving off it. Children were scampering past the cable grid, touching it with snatched-back fascinated fingers.

"The superconductor net to power your random jump", explained Amanda. "They like the cold. Most of them have lived in hiding in the Mesozoic all their lives. They've never known snow."

The caldera was vast - there had been eruptions here before, massive ones, large enough to gouge out a crater kilometres in diameter, which contained a lake blue as lapis, encompassing an entire perfectly respectable volcano at its centre. The lake looked too blue, in fact, to sustain life, but the slopes around the caldera were green amid the rubble of vulcanism. In the manner of the Incas, they had been carved into terraces to allow agriculture to take place here away from the prying eyes of the outside world. Reservoirs had been carved into the rock, surely at great risk - even to stick a spade in the ground hereabouts must be to risk a volcanic eruption.

Across the caldera, the Gate was flashing like a Vegas hotel sign. A steady line of men, women, children, even livestock was filing through it.

"We're nomadic", said Amanda. "We have to be. The Committee would follow us through Time and burn our fields if we were farmers. So we take our herds and drive them through the Gate, taking another disassembled Gate with us. Then we use the second Gate to come back and disassemble the first. Come. Walk with me."

He walked with her, down towards the massive sprawling tripod of the Gate. In one of the lines filing towards it, he saw knots of men straining under the weight of what had to be Gate components. He recognized the Siddiqui spindle, one of the main parts of the mechanism. To landward, he could see prefabricated houses being defabricated, and what looked like a geothermal power station being torn down.

He could see pastureland.

"Volcanic soil is very fertile", said Amanda. "And if you know precisely when the next eruption happens, farming volcanic soil is also very safe."

A sea eagle wheeled on the wind, watching the caldera water with beady ichthyivorous eyes.

"And once the top comes off the mountain", said Sean, "all this will be dust on the wind. Spread over a thousand miles of ocean. And history will never know you were here."

"Word got out from Santorini", said Amanda. "The Committee sent teams to investigate rumours of an anachronistically developed civilization in the Aegean in twelve hundred BC. Luckily, as soon as word got out, Leader Agnello gave orders to pack up and destroy the site to prevent us from accelerating local technology. We left it much the same way as here. The resultant explosion sent thirty metre waves inland and killed millions."

"Yes", said Sean. "I heard about that one. Via Plato. And me."

"I'm not sure", said Amanda, "that I could cope with that level of responsibility. And", she said, looking round to see whether she could be overheard, "that John can either."

"You know he can. He's me. I can. Has he had the transfusion to make him a Level Thirty-Three?"

"Yes. It went well. They found your man, by the way, and killed him."

Sean could find nothing either to say or think.

"It was a mercy, in actual fact", she said, noticing his expression. "He'd removed the plutonium core from the warhead by hand, carried it all the way to one of the lava fissures that have opened recently, and thrown it into the flow. By the time he was found, the lava had solidified, and he was lying next to it shaking from CNS damage. The radiation from the core; he'd already absorbed a fatal dose. He'd tried to shoot himself a couple of times already - blown out his cheekbone, given himself a grazing wound across the skull - before the search team did it for him." She clapped a hand on the first rung at the foot of a maintenance ladder leading up towards the heart of the Gate. "We go up here. Avoid the rush."

It was hard to climb. The injury nearly ripped him in two every time he lifted his leg. He wondered if she would shoot him if he stopped climbing. "So now", he said, "that plutonium is trapped in the rock. And you can't get it out without blasting it, which would spread a cloud of radionucleides which could kill you all and spread the alarm to later generations anyway. So some time in the next two hundred years, someone will visit the remains of Krakatoa with a geiger counter, realize weapons-grade plutonium somehow existed in 1883, and..." he tailed off.

"It's in a part of the island that wasn't destroyed by the blast", she said. "In an outlying vent coming off the main caldera. He must have figured it all out very carefully."

He eased himself up a final stage, fists bunched hard around the handrail. "Not carefully enough, from his point of view." Up above, a group of men were dragging a field gun into the Gate aperture. The gun was an ancient French 'Fabulous 75'of World War One vintage. The revolutionary army evidently sourced its weapons where it could find them. He was of the impression that the three men pulling the 75 were all from the same family until he realized that two of them were effectively the same person. Old Mickey, Young Mickey, and John Pastore, all with variations on his ownface, pulling together. They nodded to him in unison.

"John's still a strong man", said Sean. He looked down at his own midriff. "He hasn't eaten as many big dinners as some people."

"He hasn't had the weight of the world on him as much as some people", said Amanda. "It worries me", she added.

It doesn't worry me. I'm handing over all the shit in the world. It's his problem if it slips through his fingers.

Sean smiled his first non-cynical smile of the decade as he climbed up onto the main approach ramp leading to the Gate, tens of metres above the ground. A cargo hovercraft, wheezing like a giant vacuum cleaner, came to a halt in front of him. The hovercraft was full of goats, packed in like New Delhi commuters, staring out at him out of both sides of their heads, waiting for him to make the next move.

The hovercraft driver waved a hand at him.

"You're next", said Amanda. "There's only an hour left before the Committee get here. It's time for you to leave."

He hesitated. "How do you know when the Committee get here?"

"We sent a scouting party forwards into time about twenty minutes ago. In one hour's time this position will be overrun." She took hold of his elbow. "The longer you hesitate, the fewer of these people get away and escape torture, execution, invasive rehabilitation therapy and so forth."

"That Gate won't work after you shunt me a million years backward in it. It's a model three, designed for short trips of a hundred years or so. You know that, and so do they." He looked the hovercraft driver in the goggles. "If I were him, I wouldn't have let me in."

"Perhaps that's the difference", said Amanda sourly, "between you and him."

"Hey, you married me, lady. Who's stupid now?"

She was maintaining politeness with extreme difficulty. "I know you don't believe in God, Pastor, otherwise you couldn't be the Pastor. But if you did, you'd believe all human beings have a choice between good and evil, whatever our nature or nurture. Believe me, Pastor, you're the evil twin, and my husband is the good one."

The hovercraft driver leaned on his horn impatiently.

"It's time for you to go", said Amanda Pastore.

Sean nodded and hoisted his pack onto his back. "Where's my travelling companion?" For some reaosn, the thought that Sam might not turn up suddenly made his heart clamour in his chest. I don't want to be alone in the Mesozoic -

But then he saw her, clambering up a ladder from another part of the structure. Wearing a pack just like his own. Hair tied back. No make-up; beginning to look old. She looked up at him, and he saw her smile at him for the first time in a year. He'd not seen an aurora borealis in over over a year either, but the smile was rarer and more spectacular. He had no idea how many months or years it had been for her. He didn't care. He felt genuinely happy for the first time since he'd come into a billion dollars.

"Take my goddamned world", he said to Amanda. "You're welcome to it."

Amanda wandered over to the operator's console, separated from the Gate mechanism by a curved plane of lead glass. She began calling up translation algorithms on the Gate control software. Sean wished he had studied enough mathematics to understand it. Still, Truman had not understood the atom bomb, and it had done his bidding. And Faust certainly failed to understand Mephistopheles...

She was hauling herself up the rail now in front of the gate. Her pack looked heavier than his. She was a girl, less naturally disposed to build muscle than a man; the pack should have been twice as hard for her to haul as it would have been for him. She wasn't out of breath. Resisting the will of tyrants was evidently good aerobic exercise.

"Ready?" she said.

This is all a dream. I'm going to wake up still being King of the World.

"You have no idea", he said.

"Walk up to the line", said Amanda. The Gate platform was a mass of animal dung and tyremarks. The line was scarcely visible. From up here, he could see all the way across the caldera. In a hundred years' time, any reputable hotelier would lease out his children to a Bangkok brothel for the rights to build on land like this. The woods around the lake were green as malachite, the lake water as bright and blue as burning sulphur. Admittedly this was probably due to the concentrations of sulphuric acid the lake contained, but a hotelier couldn't have everything. He wondered what prehistoric South Africa would look like.

"Look right", said Amanda, working the controls. Contrarily, Sean looked left, to see techicians in asbestos suits standing at the water's edge, watching a set of spreading ripples. In the centre of the ripples, a nest of refractions flickered on the water surface, rainbow-coloured.

"There's a Gate down there", he said.

"Look right", repeated Amanda, "or you might be blinded. The Gate aperature is only just large enough for us to thread the superconductor through, but there's going to be a million-degree-C heat source hitting it very shortly. Hence our reason for putting it underwater."

The technicians waddled forward to help a miniscule cable-laying robot ashore, pulling a white spindle off its back and snapping it into a connector in the sand. Then, one of them turned and gave a thumbs-up to Amanda at the Gate controls.

A siren sounded. People all around the superstructure began donning brick-thick sunglasses. A second Gate opened in space in front of Mickey like an expanding snowglobe.

"Not yet", warned Amanda. "Shut your eyes, and step through only when I tell you."

Is this the point where they shoot me in the back of the head?

He shut his eyes. Sam's hand found its way into his. It was rougher than he remembered it. The light from the detonation was so bright he saw it inside his skull. Has someone shot me in the back of the head? Is this what it feels like? The structure beneath his feet shook; he heard people scream in pain.

"Now", said Amanda.

"Watch out for dinosaurs", said Sam.

He stepped through. It became instantly cold. Behind them, the Gate glowed like a compact sun. At his back was baking heat; ahead of him was cool air. He had a momentary impression of massive walls, of a space bigger than multiple cathedrals. Then, behind them, the Gate went out.

There was an evanescent cool breeze, then stillness.

"Did you see it?" said Sam.

He noded, then realized she couldn't see him nodding. "Yes."

"The floor", she said, from a low level. She had bent down to feel it. "It's smooth...artificial. Something's wrong."

"Maybe dinosaurs discovered concrete before they went extinct."

Suddenly, he felt a sharp stab of pain in his arm. He flinched defensively, slapped his hand to the wound. He could feel blood, and a tiny tender depression in his arm where skin should have been.

"OW", said Sam. "Something bit me."

"Some sort of animal?" said Sean. "It got me too."

He heard a whirring sound in the dark, growing fainter.

Some sort of very big mosquito?

"It's the Committee", she said. "The Committee intercepted the signal."

"You can't interrupt a dimensional translation. It shifts the coordinates of your body's constituent waveforms", he said confidently, knowing Mickey wasn't there to contradict him. "There's no signal to intercept. Besides", he said, hoping this was true, "the Committee can't hurt you anway. The Committee do my bidding."

But the dark didn't answer him to say Yes, Leader, this is true.

Instead, a dazzling beam of light stabbed into the back of his eyeballs, so powerful that he dropped to his knees covering his eyes to stop the light from coming in.

"STAY WHERE YOU ARE", said the light.

"DO YOU SEE ME MOVING?" yelled Sean. "WHO ARE YOU? WHO AM I SPEAKING TO?" He seldom became angry nowadays. He seldom needed to. He had lost the skill.

"BE QUIET", said the light. "TELL US WHO YOU ARE AND WHERE YOU CAME FROM."

"WHAT, BOTH AT THE SAME TIME?" He was getting scared of the voice's total lack of subservience. Didn't it know it was addressing its Pastor? "IF YOU OCCUPY ANY DEGREE IN THE HIERARCHY OF GOD'S HOUSE, THERE IS GOING TO BE TROUBLE WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE -"

A sound shook the chamber, piercingly high. Sean felt his bowels churn. He needed to flatten himself out on the floor urgently, where he could feel no motion, where he could feel no nausea. The floor tasted of grit, though it had a metallic, salty quality.

"IF YOU BLASPHEME AGAIN I WILL BE FORCED TO USE THAT CONTROL AGAIN", said the light. Not subservient but nervous. As if he were handling something dangerous. "THE PASTOR IS DEAD. HE HAS BEEN DEAD THESE THREE YEARS."

Christ. So I'm dead now? This is going to be hard work.

"HOW DID HE DIE?" said Sean.

"GOD TOOK HIM TO HIM", said the voice catechismically.

"How was God's will manifest in our world?" said Sean, knowing how to deal with the religiously indoctrinated.

The voice hesitated. "HE FELL DOWN A MINESHAFT", it admitted.

"WITH HIS SON", said Sean. The light neither confirmed nor denied this. "SO I'M IN THE YEAR 2023, AM I RIGHT?"

Another pause. "YES", said the voice reluctantly.

Okay, here goes. "AND WAS OUR LORD NOT THREE DAYS IN THE TOMB BEFORE HE ROSE AGAIN?" Thank god it's been three years. That's a convenient religious magic number.

"YOU CANNOT DECEIVE ME, ENEMY. WE KNOW COUNTER-EVANGELICAL FORCES SAMPLED THE PASTOR LAMB OF GOD'S HOLY BODY IN THE PIT AND CLONED IT, STEALING HIS BLESSED BLOOD FOR THEIR OWN."

"WHO WARNED YOU?" shouted Sean. "DO YOU TRUST THIS PERSON?"

The voice hesitated.

"THAT IS NO CONCERN OF YOURS."

"THAT'LL BE AN 'I DON'T KNOW', THEN. BESIDES, I JUST STEPPED OUT OF A GATE FROM THE PAST. HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT MY GENETIC MAKEUP IS?"

"WE SAMPLED IT NOT ONE MOMENT AGO. WE ALREADY HAVE ONE ABOMINATION SUCH AS YOURSELF IN CUSTODY. WE ARE AWARE OF YOUR DESIGN. IT IS FOR THIS REASON THAT I TALK TO YOU ONLY VIA A RELAY. THE AREA OUTSIDE THIS CHAMBER IS A VACUUM. I HAVE ONLY TO THROW A SWITCH, AND YOU WILL ASPHYXIATE, AND THE BLESSED LEADER'S BLOOD BOIL IN YOUR VEINS AND KILL YOU."

That must mean they have Pastore.

"YOU ALSO HAVE WITH YOU THE SHE-SATAN, THE FIEND WHO LED HELL'S FORCES AGAINST US. YOU WILL PLEASE SEPARATE FROM HER, THAT WE MAY TAKE HER AWAY TO SEPARATE CONFINEMENT AND QUESTIONING." Though Sean still had his eyes closed, he could hear the blown-milkbottle hum of another Gate opening.

"I PRESUME", said Sean, "THAT YOU ARE REFERRING TO MY WIFE."

This was unwise. There followed another interval of stomach-sick pain. Sean flattened himself against the ground, dug in with his fingernails, and willed it to end.

It ended.

"MARRIAGE", said the voice, "IS A SACRAMENT OF THE HOUSE OF GOD. YOU HAVE NO WIFE."

"SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT", said Sean. "YOU'VE SAMPLED MY DNA, WHICH MATCHES THE PASTOR'S, SO THEREFORE I'M A COUNTERFEIT, WHEREAS MY WIFE'S DNA IS SAMPLED AND MATCHES THE PASTOR'S WIFE, AND IS THEREFORE UNQUESTIONABLY GENUINE."

I've got lucky here. I've stumbled through a Gate at random and come to grips with a minor flunkey. A senior Committee quaesitor would be pressing the Pain button repeatedly till I stopped asking the questions and started answering them by now.

Better take maximum advantage beofre the real interrogators arrive.

There was a long, long silence.

"THE OTHER ABOMINATION", said Sean. "IT ALSO CLAIMS TO BE ME, I TAKE IT."

"IT DOES", said the voice. "YOU CANNOT DECEIVE ME", it added. "I AM AWARE THAT YOU ARE THE FATHER OF LIES."

"AND DOES THE OTHER ABOMINATION ALSO HAVE A WIFE?"

"IT DOES."

"THEN ONLY ONE OF THE TWO CAN BE THE SHE-SATAN", said Sean.

"THERE ARE NO DEGREES IN REBELLION AGAINST GOD", said the voice. "WHETHER EACH IS THE LEADER OF HELL OR A MERE FOOT-SUCCUBUS IN HELL'S LEGIONS, THEY WILL BE PUNISHED EQUALLY."

"THEN WHAT'S THE POINT IN INTERROGATING THEM?"

"TO GAIN INTELLIGENCE ON HELL'S FORCES."

Logical.

"THERE WILL ALSO BE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ME AND THE OTHER PASTOR. I'M SORRY, USING YOUR TERMINOLOGY, THE OTHER ABOMINATION." Christ, this is difficult. First time in years I've had to try to order a subordinate without chemical assistance.

"THERE ARE MINOR DIFFERENCES. THESE CAN BE EXPLAINED AS A MUTATIONAL DIVERGENCE OF FORTY-ONE YEARS, NINE MONTHS. BOTH SUBJECTS HAVE THIS SUBJECTIVE AGE, AND MATHEMATICALLY, THAT NUMBER OF YEARS OF RANDOM MUTATION APPLIED TO TWO IDENTICAL HUMAN GENOMES WOULD PRODUCE THE STATISTICAL DIFFERENCE OBSERVED."

"IT WOULD PRODUCE THE SAME DIFFERENCE", shouted Sean, trying not to sound angry, "IF THE ONE WERE CLONED FROM THE OTHER. MY NAME IS JOHN LAMB. IT WAS SEAN AGNELLO. I WAS BORN AT YEOVIL DISTRICT HOSPITAL IN SOMERSET, ENGLAND, ON MARCH 13TH, 1972. THE MAN IN YOUR OTHER CELL IS A CLONE PRODUCED FROM GENETIC MATERIAL, UH, EXTRACTED FROM ME IN 2019. IF YOU TAKE A DNA SAMPLE FROM THE BABY BORN IN MARCH 1972 AND COMPARE IT TO BOTH OF US, YOU WILL INDEED FIND THAT I DIFFER FROM THAT BABY BY ONLY FORTY-ONE YEARS, NINE MONTHS. BUT YOU WILL FIND", he continued, hoping his knowledge of genetics was accurate, "THAT THE OTHER MAN DIFFERS FROM THE NEWBORN BY EIGHTY-TWO YEARS. HE WAS CLONED FROM ME, WHEREAS I ACTUALLY USED TO BE THE CHILD. YOU MUST -"

The pain hit again. This time it lasted for an eternity. He tried to hold on to his bowels, concentrating on that as a point of focus. It was difficult. When the pain finally released its grip, his worst fears were confirmed.

The voice had changed. It was calmer. It had all the answers. But it was going to ask the questions anyway.

"YOU ARE IN NO POSITION TO ISSUE INSTRUCTIONS. DO NOT DO SO AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE SAME PAIN. WHAT UNIVERSAL COORDINATES DID YOU TRANSLATE IN FROM?"

No harm in giving them. The Committee were there anyway.

He gave the coordinates, in years for all axes. The voice sounded satisfied. "AH, THE KRAKATOA CONCLAVE. A SHAME; MOST OF THOSE REBELS ARE ALREADY ACCOUNTED FOR. THE SAME POINT OF ORIGIN, HOWEVER, AS OUR OTHER ABOMINATION, WHO WAS ALSO TRANSFERRED HERE FOR HOLDING. OF COURSE, HE ALSO CLAIMS TO BE THE ONE TRUE PASTOR. YOU WILL ADMIT THAT YOU ARE CLEVER BLASPHEMIES CREATED BY GOD'S ENEMIES. YOU WILL ALSO ADMIT THAT YOU INDULGE REGULARLY IN SODOMY, DEMON-SUMMONING, CANNIBALISM AND DRINKING THE BLOOD OF CHILDREN."

Yes. If I'm in here any longer, I probably will. "MY LORD QUAESITOR, I FALL UPON THE GOOD GRACES OF THE CHURCH."

The voice sounded amused. "HOW CAN YOU TELL I'M A QUAESITOR?"

Best be honest. "YOU DO NOT HESITATE TO CAUSE ME PAIN."

The voice laughed. "YES, DEMON, AS YOU ARE AN EXCRESCENCE OF SATAN, I HAVE NO COMPUNCTION IN THAT REGARD. BUT GRACE IS NOT EXTENDED TO SUCH CREATURES, AS I'M SURE YOU ARE AWARE. ALL YOU CAN HOPE FOR FROM ME IS AN END TO TEMPORARY PAIN BY CONFESSING, AFTER WHICH YOU WILL OF COURSE BE EXECUTED AND BURN ETERNALLY IN GOD'S HELL. IN FACT, AS HELL'S EVERLASTING TORMENTS WILL BE FAR MORE EXQUISITE THAN ANYTHING I COULD EVER ADMINISTER, YOU WOULD DO BETTER TO RESIST AND NOT CONFESS, AND REMAIN IN THE FAR LESSER PAIN YOUR BODY IS CAPABLE OF SUFFERING ON EARTH. BUT YOU ARE WEAK AND HUMAN, AND YOU WILL BREAK AND CONFESS ALL TO ESCAPE THESE RELATIVELY TRIFLING DISCOMFORTS. I HAVE SEEN THE SAME DRAMA PLAY OUT MANY TIMES, THE TRAGICOMEDY OF THE FLESH. AND SO WE BEGIN. ARE YOU OR ARE YOU NOT A CLEVER BLASPHEMY CREATED BY GOD'S ENEMIES? I MAY REMIND YOU THAT YOU ARE UNDER QUESTION, ANDTHAT ALL YOU SAY IS BEING RECORDED, CONCEIVABLY TO YOUR DETRIMENT."

Sean shook his head, with difficulty. After the last wave of pain, his muscles were reluctant to answer the call of his nervous system. "I AM THE ORIGINAL PASTOR LAMB. I CAN PROVE THIS BY STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF MY GENOME IN COMPARISON TO THAT OF THE NEWBORN CHILD SEAN AGNELLO, BORN IN YEOVIL ON MARCH THIRTEENTH -"

The pain hit again. This time it did not end. He had to let go of his vomit reflex to lessen it. He wasn't sure whether or not he'd let go at the back end too. He didn't care. Vomiting flooded his system with endorphins. It was possible to ride out the pain.

When the pain stopped, he was lying face-down in a puddle of his own puke, and felt as if he were in heaven.

"THAT WAS THIRTY SECONDS", said the voice calmly. "I AM AUTHORIZED BY QUAESITORIAL GUIDELINES TO GO UP TO ONE HOUR. WE DO NOT WISH TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR GENETIC STRUCTURE, EXCEPT INSOFAR AS IT COMPRISES AN ADMISSION OF GUILT. WHEN WERE YOU MADE AS A COPY OF PASTOR LAMB, PEACE BE UPON HIM BENEDICTUS SIT IN SAECULO SAECULORUM?"

Not a technical man, this. A religious one. Sean did not answer this time. The pain racked him again, though this time only momentarily.

"YOU MUST ANSWER WITHIN TWO SECONDS. THAT WAS A WARNING. WHEN WERE YOU PRODUCED AS A COPY OF OUR BLESSED PASTOR?"

How can I reason with a religious fanatic?

"Answer him", Sam croaked. He had forgotten she was there. "They can only kill us. Even death would be better than this."

"AH, THE WEAK WILL OF THE WOMAN", gloated the voice. "AND A WOMAN WITHOUT THE STOLEN AND SUPERIOR GENES OF OUR PASTOR. IT WAS TO BE PREDICTED YOU WOULD BREAK FIRST."

"I don't mean the pain", growled Sam, "I mean having to listen to your parroted Church drivel -"

The pain began again, and this time Sean had only a dry stomach to puke on. Prisoners went downhill, he knew, after vomiting the first time. They could rupture their stomach muscles through dry heaving. He had himself approved the commission and installation of the CTB18332 infrasound interrogation suite. It had increased apprehension-to-confession ratios by over twenty per cent.

How to get out of this? Stop heaving, start thinking. You're dealing with a churchman. A man who would put out another man's eyes in the name of God. You have to get him to believe he's speaking to God's own anointed servant, to a great and good man, a wise and just, an angel in human form.

You need a miracle.

He might be able to pull a miracle from the pack. Scrabbling with his hands, his eyes still closed against the light, he searched for it onthe floor, pulled it to him like a child's comfort blanket, tried hard to remember how once-simple straps and buckles opened as the pain mounted and the voice bellowed on top of it.

"YOU WILL ANSWER THE QUESTION. YOU WILL CEASE TO CONCERN YOURSELF WITH WORLDLY BELONGINGS." The voice broke off and lowered in volume. "Technician, why does the prisoner still have that backpack?"

The 18332 could be switched to killing intensity, he knew. He had only limited time. What he was looking for would be there. Mother would not have sent him back in time to a land of dinosaurs and thirty-foot crocodiles without the means to defend himself.

It was not loaded! He had to load it! Trying to force his fingers to remember how one part fitted into another was like trying to play the piano in thick fur mittens.

"Those are explosive rounds, Quaesitor, I should lower the blast shutters -"

"Turn up the encouragement! Maximum intensity -"

Shaking, he turned the barrel round on his own head, booted up the target acquisition system. The gun grew cold in his hand to tell him it was combat-ready. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it also informed him it had a target.

The moment of truth. Do I actually believe I end up being the Pastor Lamb who still exists in 2035, or do I believe it's Pastore?

Or do I actually care any more?

He pulled the trigger. The gun failed to fire.

He turned the gun blindly on the light. It kicked in his hand, bruising his wrist, and the world filled with sound. The light died. The pain died with it.

I took out their speaker.

The sound of the explosion continued to echo round the chamber. He turned the gun back on his own head, pulled the trigger. The gun failed to fire. He turned the gun back up into the dark, fired, and was blown backwards by the detonation. He turned the gun back on himself -

"PLEASE DESIST". The voice was now fainter, and issuing from a different corner of the chamber. It also seemed far meeker than previously. "THE BLAST SHUTTERS ARE NOW DOWN. YOU ARE ONLY DAMAGING PERIPHERAL ELECTRONICS. PLUS THERE IS A NERVE GAS RESERVOIR IN THE WALLS OF YOUR CONFINEMENT CELL WHICH, IF RUPTURED,WILL KILL BOTH OF YOU IN UNDER TWENTY SECONDS. IT IS DESIGNED TO BE TRIGGERED REMOTELY, THOUGH THAT WILL NOT NOW HAPPEN, PASTOR."

Sean searched round the dark for points of reference. "SO YOU'RE NOW CONVINCED I'M GENUINE?"

"YOU PERFORMED THE MIRACLE OF THE LARGE-CALIBRE HANDGUN, PASTOR. ONE OF THE MAIN ARGUMENTS USED TO ELEVATE YOU TO SAINTHOOD. GOD IS GOOD. HE HAS RETURNED OUR LEADER TO US." The voice sounded as if its owner would have cheerfully killed himself rather than suffer the continued agony of knowing it had tortured the Pastor.

"He might not be the Pastor", whispered the wall speakers urgently.

"Be quiet. Isn't a miracle enough for you?"

"All I'm saying is, it can be explained by a simple trick of causality. If we could simply carry out the DNA comparison he described, we could arrive at a more informed conclusion -"

"Have faith, brother technician. Faith will inform you better than science."

"Why are you pointing that weapon at me?"

"Have faith that God will not allow a good servant to be headshot."

Anxious to interrupt, Sean thumbed the pistol safe and yelled up at the ceiling. "I'VE BEEN CANONIZED?"

"THESE TWO YEARS AND ELEVEN MONTHS, PASTOR."

Curiosity struck him. "WHO'S BEEN RUNNING THE CHURCH IN MY ABSENCE?"

The victim's reply was faltering. "UH, PASTOR - YOU HAVE."

"PARDON?"

"YOU RETURNED TO US FROM THE FUTURE AND INSTRUCTED US THAT YOU HAD NOT TRULY DIED, AND WOULD RISE AGAIN. AND INSHALLAH IT HAS COME TRUE AS PROMISED. HALLELUJAH!"

Sean considered dates and times. "WHEN I RETURNED FROM THE FUTURE, WAS I WEARING A HIGH CAMP GENERALISSIMO'S OUTFIT, OR A BIG ECCLESIASTICAL BATHROBE AND CARPET SLIPPERS?"

The voice pondered the alternatives. "UH - THE FORMER, I IMAGINE, PASTOR. WHAT IS YOUR COMMAND?"

"YOU CAN OPEN THE GODDAMNED DOOR TO THIS PLACE FOR A START. AND FOOD. FOOD WOULD BE GOOD. AND BEER."

The Quaesitor's voice became meek again. "REGRETTABLY, LORD, WE CANNOT CURRENTLY OPEN THE CHAMBER. YOUR EXTREMELY ACCURATE AIM HAS DISABLED THE DOOR MECHANISM. AND THIS IS A MINOR TRANSLATION DEPOT ON LAMBDA AURIGAE FIVE, FORTY LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH. THE SORT OF RATIONS WE EXPERIENCE HERE WOULD HARDLY SUFFICE FOR YOU -"

Lambda Aurigae Five. No wonder I felt light-footed when I stepped out of the translator. "I'M IN SPACE?"

The voice was at once kindly and terrified. "NO, PASTOR. TECHNICALLY YOU ARE ON A PLANETARY SURFACE."

"HOW DID I GET HERE?"

"VIA A PROCESS OF DIMENSIONAL TRANSLATION. THE BASIC CONCEPTS -"

"I KNOW ALL THAT", lied Sean, who did not understand the basic concepts. "WHY HERE AND NOW?"

The technician broke in, possibly risking summary execution. "PARDON MY IMPUDENCE, PASTOR, BUT COMMITTEE AGENTS RECEIVED INFORMATION THAT REBEL FORCES WERE MAKING USE OF CERTAIN LOW-LEVEL RANDOMIZATION ALGORITHMS ON OLDER-MODEL TRANSLATORS, SOMETIMES COUPLED WITH OVERLOADING THE POWER TRAIN, TO COVER THEIR TRACKS IN TIME. COMMITTEE ENGINEERS WERE ABLE TO INSTALL SECRET CODE AT THE MACHINE LEVEL TO RE-ROUTE RANDOMIZED TRANSLATIONS TO A SERIES OF SPECIAL COMMITTEE HOLDING BAYS, EACH AT A SAFE REMOVE FROM OMPHALOS -"

"I BEG YOUR PARDON?" The phrase sounded uncannily like 'phallus'.

"PARDON ME, PASTOR. OMPHALOS, MEANING 'NAVEL', IS THE COMMITTEE'S MNEMONIC FOR THE CENTRE OF ALL TIME AND SPACE, CENTRED ON YEOVIL DISTRICT HOSPITAL, MARCH 13TH, 1972 COMMON ERA -"

"YES, YES, MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED THAT. AND WHAT HAPPENS TO PEOPLE WHO'VE TRIED TO TRANSLATE RANDOMLY THEN?"

"THEY ARE INTERROGATED AND DISPOSED OF."

"NOT THE OTHER PRISONERS", said Sean quickly. "JOHN AND AMANDA PASTORE. THEY ARE", he thought quickly, "TO BE SENT BACK IN TIME TOGETHER TO THE MESOZOIC. THERE IS AN ISLAND", he thought desperately for the name, "HATEG ISLAND, IN THE ROMANIAN CRETACEOUS, WHERE THE DINOSAURS ARE NOT QUITE SO LARGE. THEY ARE TO BE SENT THERE. WITH TWENTY YEARS' PROVISIONS."

"And a cat", said Sam from behind him. She knew best, of course. She was Amanda after all.

"AND A CAT. TWO CATS, ONEMALE, ONE FEMALE, UNNEUTERED. AND SMALL ARMS, ENOUGH WEAPONRY TO DEFEND THEMSELVES."

The voices from above faltered. "WE WOULD NOT DARE TO QUESTION THE PASTOR'S JUDGEMENT, BUT WOULD THAT NOT RISK OVERRUNNING THE CRETACEOUS WITH CATS?"

"THAT'S RIGHT. CATS AND PEOPLE. MAYBE IT WAS THEM WHO WIPED OUT THE DINOSAURS, HEY. REMEMBER, WHATEVER WE DO HAS NO EFFECT ON THE PAST, CAN HAVE NO EFFECT ON IT. IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED."

The Quaesitor and the technician discused this. Sean could hear them whispering.

"AND WHILE YOU'RE ABOUT IT", said Sean, "IF YOU CAN'T OPEN ME A DOORWAY OUT OF HERE, YOU CAN AT LEAST TRANSLATE ME OUT. YOU CAN DO GATES OUT AS WELL AS IN, RIGHT?"

This, at least, they could do. "WHERE TO, PASTOR?"

Sean considered his options. "I'VE ALWAYS HAD A HANKERING TO VISIT", he thought carefully about the date and location, "ALL SAINTS' CHURCH IN ORPHINGSTONE, SURREY, AT 2 P.M. ON JANUARY 11TH, 2007."

"IT WILL BE DONE, HOLINESS. WE WILL DISPOSE OF THE SHE-SATAN FOR YOU -"

"NO YOU WON'T. SHE'S COMING WITH ME."