Glass House: Climate Change in the Third Millennium

2007-02-17T02:01:00.000Z

Chapter 1

'That bloody, bloody wind really does get on my nerves, Dick,' sighed Lizzie. She punched the aluminium cap viciously into the milk bottle with her thumb and dribbled about a tablespoon into my tea. A brisk gale boomed around the house and rattled the kitchen windows.

I turned the pages over from the "Storms Lash South" headlines to the travel section. A tree must have blown over in editor's garden, I thought, to get that sort of coverage for just a storm nowadays. 'Well, you know what they say, my love, "March comes in like a lion",' I murmured.

'Richard,' she snapped, 'Don't be such an ass! It's the middle of June now and it's still blowing like hell.' She banged the cup down in front of me. A mahogany wave of steaming tea slopped over the rim and on to the counter. Lizzie ripped off three paper towels from the roll and threw them down in front of me.

'Oh, yes, so it is,' I replied with my best "startled academic" face. It's tough having a wife smarter than you are. I carefully mopped up the spilled tea with the fluffy thick paper towels, polished the top and tossed the towels casually into the bin. 'Well, you know what they say nowadays, love, "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lion some time after August". I beamed brightly at her. I took a loud slurp of the scalding tea.

'Bloody idiot,' Lizzie hissed. She slammed the refrigerator door and switched on the dishwasher. It howled like a demented thing, joining the clothes washer and dryer.

* * *

Now, look, I know I promised you a story, but the temptation to comment just keeps bubbling up to the surface. I know I haven't even really started the story, Lizzie, but I just can't help butting in. It must be all those years of teaching. They say it's terribly corrupting. Oh, all right, so I didn't teach very long. So I'm a natural-born interrupter. I'm only trying to help our gentle reader to understand, dear. All right, dear, all right. I'll make it short. I promise. Honest.

Refrigerators and chlorofluorocarbons and ozone. Paper towels, milk bottles and dishwashers. Can you believe it now? Those dishwashers used more power in a quarter hour than we can generate on the worst day now. Crisp, soft paper. And think of all that lovely water sloshed down the sewers. You just turned the tap and all that gorgeous, wonderful water came spilling out, clean and cold and utterly, utterly delicious. Gallons and gallons of lovely, sparkling water. You could drink it. You could wash in it. You could just sit there and admire it. Oh God, that water was so beautiful. We must have been totally screwball to have wasted it like that, to have pumped it full of nitrates, phosphates, garbage and shit. What on earth could we have been thinking about? OK, sermon over. Get back to the story.

* * *

'Look, Lizzie lovey, you can't live near to the sea and not expect a fresh breeze every now and again,' I said reasonably. 'Certainly not in Wales, my love.'

'I don't call a howling gale a breeze and you're the one who dragged us out here to the backside of beyond, Dick Turner,' snapped Lizzie. 'I was perfectly happy where we were in Richmond, thank you very much. Wales, my arse!'

'Well, you certainly might have said that before it was too late,' I replied as calmly as I could. 'You sounded happy enough about moving at the time; delighted, I thought. You always said you wanted a big house in the country, by the sea. Look about you, my lady.' I swept my hand grandly at the window. 'One stately pile in the Welsh hills. Real live sheep all over the place. Sea, sand, fresh air for the kids and all that sort of stuff. At least your snot doesn't turn black out here. You know, they say that if you cut a Londoner open, he's full of soot and lead. It's got to be a lot healthier here than living in London.'

'Oh, I suppose so,' Lizzie admitted unhappily. 'I just didn't think it would be, well, quite so desperately rural, Dick.' She stared moodily out the window at the sheep. 'Sheep, sheep, sheep, bloody sheep!' she snapped. They nosed through the flattened dry grass with their round grey rumps turned into the wind. The wind parted their heavy fleece in furry little wavelets. 'You're working all the time. I'm alone all the time and I'm bored.'

'Well, you seem to be busy enough, lovey,' I commented vaguely. 'What with the school and all that.' I gave "all that" a dead fall.

'Half a day of art class, twice a week, isn't much to do, Richard,' she said defensively. 'It's just dabbling, really. I'm mainly busy taxiing the kids around all day long. It isn't boredom, anyway. It really is that constant, bloody wind.'

* * *

Lizzie interrupted. 'I was not defensive!'

'Yes, you were! Definitely defensive.'

'I had nothing to be defensive about!'

'Maybe not and maybe not then. Anyway, it's not important now. We're together and you can't say a lot more than that these days. It really doesn't matter any more.'

* * *

'Oh, come on, Lizzie, that's an exaggeration,' I replied. 'The wind doesn't blow all the time.'

'No, I suppose not,' she admitted, 'It just seems like it does sometimes. Like it'll never, ever stop blowing.' She shivered and stared out the window again. Black ragged clouds streaked overhead. The red setting sun peeked out for a minute and reflected off the sea, way down in the valley.

'Red sky at night, shepherds delight,' I said. I pointed to the paper. 'And just look at all the storms they've been having down South,' I reminded. 'You'd have the wind down in Richmond, too.'

She turned to me. Her eyes looked suspiciously watery. 'I didn't think you'd be away so much of the time in this job, either, Ratty,' she said sadly. 'It's awful kind of creepy out here at night sometimes, you know.' She twined her arms around my waist and pressed her head against my shoulder. 'You're working too hard, Dicky. You're never home.'

'Well, dear, you know that everything interesting happens in London or anywhere else but up here,' I said, hugging her. 'The environmental committee work I'm doing with the Government is really pretty important. And it puts a bit of extra sugar in that old sugar bowl.'

'Oh, I know, Ratty. I suppose it's all really very good for us,' she sighed. 'But it just all gets on my nerves sometimes. It really does.'

'Look, love, why don't you take a day off and come on down to town with me on Monday?' I asked brightly. 'It's just for the day, you know. You could do some shopping while I'm over at Whitehall. After that we could have dinner together, maybe a show? We could even check into a hotel for a dirty hour or two afterward.' I waggled my eyebrows at her and flashed my soapiest smile. 'Just like old times, eh, my girl?'

'Oh, you know perfectly well that I can't go to London with you, Dick,' she said crossly. 'What would I do about the kids?' She pushed herself away from me.

'I hope they're too young for that sort of thing,' I joked. I suspected they weren't. At least the older one, anyway, bless her black little teenaged heart.

'You know exactly what I mean, Dick.'

'Oh, they're old enough to look after themselves,' I replied casually. 'They can sling some sausages and chips into the microwave, then douse it with ketchup. That's all they seem to want to eat, anyway. We'd be back well before midnight to turn off the TV and tuck the little darlings in.'

'Oh, don't be so damned stupid, Dick,' snapped Lizzie. 'I'm not about to leave the kids out here in the middle of nowhere, alone by themselves at night. Anyway, I've got other things to do. Sex isn't the answer to everything.' She twisted on the tap and started scrubbing and peeling potatoes viciously in the delicious sparkling, foaming water.

'Just asking, my dear,' I mumbled defensively. There wasn't a lot you could do when Lizzie went into one of her Red Queen moods. 'Things to do' gave me a nasty little twinge in the stomach. Sometimes I wondered about those things. Best not to think, really. Who would cast the first stone?

'You said you'd take Robert out and help him fly his new kite,' she growled.

A soft cheek turneth away wrath. 'I think it's a bit windy for kites, poppet,' I replied meekly. I turned over to the business section. Stock market gloomy this week: threat of world peace. Stock market gloomy last week: world peace threatened.

'You promised Bobby this morning,' insisted Lizzie. 'You promised him yesterday, too, but you didn't take him out. You had time to go to work, Richard; plenty of time for that, but not for him. So why did you promise in the first place if you had no intention to do it?'

Dick market very gloomy right now: home peace threatened. 'Oh, all right, dear,' I sighed. I finished my tea and folded the paper over. I set my cup down on the counter. I sidled up alongside Lizzie and gently bumped her lean flank with mine. 'Come on, lovey,' I coaxed, 'Give us a little kiss.' She pursed her lips sulkily and tilted her head towards me. I pressed my forehead against her lips. She kissed it lightly. I patted her backside and stepped out into the hall. 'Bobby!' I shouted.

'Yeah, Dad?' came the faint reply from upstairs.

'Bobby!' I shouted again.

His door opened. 'Aw, what do you want, Dad?' he moaned. 'I'm playing a game.'

'You still want to go out and fly your kite?' I asked.

'Oh, I guess so, maybe,' he replied.

'Hey, look, you don't need to do me any big favours,' I said. 'It's your kite. I'd just as soon lie back on the couch and watch TV. Or I've got work to do.'

'Aw, Dad, you promised,' he whined. 'You've been promising me for weeks.'

'OK,' I said airily, 'Here's your big chance then, kid. Let's go before I change my mind or something even worse.'

Bobby bounced down the stairs, two steps at a time. He threw himself on top of me. I flipped him over my hip and pinned him to the floor. I placed my bare foot over his neck. 'Give up, dog?' I growled.

'No!' he shouted, wiggling violently. He almost managed to escape.

I pressed him back down to the floor with my foot. 'Give up, kid stuff, or you're dead meat,' I threatened dramatically in my very cruelest cruel-voice.

'Mercy, master, mercy,' sobbed Bobby pathetically.

'All right, serf, just this once. But don't you forget it,' I snarled condescendingly. I let Bobby get up. He immediately seized my leg and nearly pulled me over on to the floor. He was really getting strong. He was like a frisky little bullock. 'Come on,' I growled, 'I thought you wanted to go fly a kite. If you don't hurry up, the wind may die down.'

'Fat chance, Dad,' laughed Bobby. 'It never stops blowing in this place.' He butted his head into my belly and nearly knocked me over again.

'Look, kid, it's blowing all over the country like this,' I said, getting a bit annoyed with the tussle, 'Come on. Let's get out and get that kite up and over with. There's something on the TV I want to see this afternoon.'

'Aw, not another one of those boring old global warming things, Dad. The Greenhouse Effect,' groaned Bobby in a hollow dramatic voice, lifting his arms zombie-like. 'Wooooh!'

'People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones,' I intoned portentously.

'Doom, gloom, doom, gloom,' he moaned. 'I wanted to watch the match, Dad. Honest, I did.'

'We'll see then. Come on, let's go,' I repeated. 'Get your kite.' Bobby ran out to the utility room and brought back the kite. It was a bit special, a shiny little blue Kevlar and composites job with two hundred metres of braided nylon string. 'It's going to need a lot longer tail than that,' I warned.

'What for, Dad' asked Bobby. He scrutinised the kite.

'It's to stabilise it in this sort of wind,' I replied. 'I'll see if your Mum's got an old piece of material or something like that.' I stuck my head into the kitchen. 'Lizzie, have you got any old rags we can use?'

'Now what have you spilled?' she demanded sharply. She didn't turn around from the sink.

'Nothing, Mum,' I piped. 'We just need to make a heavier tail for the kite, please.'

'Rags on the utility shelf, where they always are. And don't make a mess of them,' Lizzie warned. 'They're organised.'

'No, your majesty,' I replied. 'See you in a few minutes, your honour. We peons will just be out in the back field, sir, picking the cotton.'

'And don't get yourselves all mucky,' she added.

'Not much chance of that, possums,' I replied. 'It hasn't rained for months.'

'You two never needed mud to get everything mucky before now,' she replied heavily. 'Don't fall in the dust, then. I have to vacuum this house every day. And I've washed clothes twice today already.'

* * *

Lizzie says she wasn't really all that cross that day. I was acting like a moron, as usual, and that bloody wind was really getting on her nerves. At least she can't hear it much down here although she still has to listen to me all the time. She also says that I'm making it sound as if women single-handedly caused the environmental holocaust with their cleanliness and household appliances. "This is the way the world ends," she sings, "Not with a bang, but a dish wash." What can I say?

* * *

The little blue kite bounced all over the darkening sky. It dove straight for the ground and crashed with a burst of red dust. 'Bobby,' I bellowed, 'If you smash that bloody kite into the ground one more time, I'm going to come over and smash you into the ground!' I always used to get wound too much up by things like that then. You should have seen me with computer games. I was absolutely diabolical and usually very sorry for it afterward.

'Aw, come on, Dad,' Bobby shouted back cheerfully, 'It wasn't my fault. It was the wind that did it!'

'I've told you a thousand times, give that blasted thing more string!' I hissed through clenched teeth. I jogged over to the kite. It thrashed frantically against the ground like a wounded bird. I held it down with my shoe.

'Put the kite up again, Dad, let it go again!' cried Bobby excitedly.

'All right, but let the string out as fast as you can this time!' I lifted the kite and held it up into the wind. It was all I could do to keep a grip on it. 'Ready! Steady! Go!' I shouted. I launched the kite into the blast. 'Fast! Fast!' I yelled. 'Faster!' The kite shot up like a rocket. The string pulled taut with a quivering ping. Bobby yelped, the string went slack and the little kite disappeared over the top of the hill in what seemed like a second, trailing two hundred metres of string.

I raced over to Bobby and glared at him. 'God damn it, Bobby!' I roared. 'What the hell did you let the kite go for? It's totally bloody lost now!'

Bobby stood with his left hand clamped over his right palm, shoulders slumped. Big tears streaked down his quivering white face. 'I didn't mean to, Dad,' he sobbed. 'The string cut me. I tried to hold it, Dad, but the wind was too strong for me. I'm sorry.'

I looked down at his hand. Bright red blood welled between his sturdy little fingers. My stomach twisted. I dropped to my knees. 'Oh, my God, Bobby, let me see,' I croaked. I gently prised his fingers loose. The string had sliced deep into his palm. I caught a glimpse of bright white fat, just before his cupped palm filled with spurts of arterial blood. I clamped my hand tightly over his and ran back to the house, clutching him desperately close. I was crying, too.

2007-02-17T02:00:00.000Z

Chapter 2

Disaster slipped up on us almost unnoticed. It all happened so gradually, no drama at all. Well, at the beginning anyway. Yes, sometimes the weather definitely would seem to be changing. Then it would seem to go pretty much back to the way it had been before. But I guess it never really ever went right back to normal, whatever normal might have been. Don't you remember the first storms, the hurricanes? Do you remember those first hot, dry summers? All those strange, warm winters? The droughts? People thought it was an improvement when it really warmed up and there weren't any more dreary, rainy winters like we used to have. So we all adjusted to the new weather. We moaned and bitched about it a lot, as usual, but did nothing, as usual. But all the time, we were like lobsters being boiled to death in cold water over a slow fire.

Of course it was simply impossible to believe what was happening at first. The doom-criers crept out every once in a while, nagging us, bleating about their theories of disaster and begging for more money. A new ice age one week, a global Sahara the next, a giant meteorite rushing at us the other. The newspapers got hold of half-baked stories from ambitious academics with axes to grind. That improved circulation for a few weeks and everyone sane was worried sick; kids went sobbing to their beds with terror. Then we all forgot about the weather for a while when the media frenzy moved on to the next bonk'n'politics scandal.

A few people might possibly have suspected what really was happening. Governments didn't know much and they didn't particularly seem to want to know what they really did know; even if they’d known, they couldn’t have managed a piss in a public toilet. Maybe we geologists should have known better, though. Maybe we should have looked at those Old Red Sandstone deposits just a bit more carefully. Maybe millions of years of thick, wind-drifted desert sands might have been trying to whisper something to us that we didn't particularly want to hear.

Even now, nobody really seems to know what's happened or why. We get less and less news. It may not even have been we humans who caused it. You can be sure that there aren't that many hair sprays or cars being used today and the climate change continues to proceed full tilt. OK, maybe we did pull some sensitive little trigger for world climate change, fluttered the wrong butterfly wing. But maybe then it's all just a part of some gigantic natural cycle. We could just be flattering ourselves about our importance in the scheme of things. Maybe we're like the old joke about the flea and the elephant. You know that one? Flea climbs on elephant and starts humping it. Head elephant starts to run, for reasons totally and absolutely unconnected with fleas or bitten elephant. Flea's elephant follows the elephant leader. Flea hangs on for dear life, crying with delight, "Suffer, baby, suffer!". Well, maybe I'm not remembering the joke right. I'm sure you get the idea, though.

Lizzie, my wife, says that's not how the joke goes at all and that I'm crazy to even bother writing all this stuff down. She says that nobody will be around to read it after we're gone, so why bother with it? Even if there is somebody, she says, they won't know how to read it or give a damn what happened to the people who caused all this, except in the worst possible way. Well, maybe she's right. Civilisation proved to be very flimsy stuff, after all, when the chips fell. But I don't know, though. We're a hardy race. Look at how those poor Ethiopians used to hang right on in there through thick and thin; quite possibly they're still down there hanging on, though it must be jolly thin pickings for them if Britain's anything to go by. Still, I'd bet we humans will muddle on through this, somehow. As long as things don't get too much worse, I mean. Even then, we might evolve, if anyone’s up to breeding at the moment.

Well, anyway, I've got this thick, tatty old diary, or part of it anyway, to fill up and plenty of spare time to fill it up in. Really miss my computer. We have to stay down here underground so much. Time hangs awfully heavy on our hands when the winds blow. Writing's a better amusement than staring at blank walls. And maybe things will change back to the way they were. Who knows? Then my journal will be history, hooray!

* * *

Perhaps you didn't happen to see my name on the inside of the front cover. It's Richard Allen Turner, in case you missed it. Yeah, that's right, initials R.A.T.; my Dad was a bit of a card, hah, hah, hah - Canadian, actually, totally funny. If you got as far as reading down to here, then you must have figured out that my wife's name is Elizabeth. We're Dick and Lizzie to our friends. I'm Ratty to Lizzie when she's in a nice mood and Fucking Old Rat when she's not. And since you've gotten this far into the ledger, then you've got to be a friend or completely taken over The Bunker, anyway.

'Hi there, friend!' says Dick, trying out a bit of dialogue. Christ that looks bloody stupid! Still, I'm bound to get this dialogue business sorted out one of these days, so please bear with me. Years of academic writing killed my creativity, shrivelled it all up like an old man’s dick. I can never remember, even, whether the punctuation mark goes inside or outside the quotes. But at least this isn't like writing a thesis or some frigging scholarly article, thank God. Not by a long shot. For one thing, this is a lot of fun. You can smile a bit and maybe even let a quiet little chuckle slip out, every now and then. You could even, if you were inclined that way, exaggerate a little, twist things slightly, plump up the truth, make yourself sound a bit better than you were - maybe a whole lot better. Not that I have, of course. This is the plain, unvarnished truth, as they say - right between the eyes. Oh, love those metaphors and to mix 'em all up!

You may have picked up the idea that I'm a geologist. You know, a guy who looks at rocks and fossils, that sort of thing. Was a geologist, might be a better way to put it. But it should be really very interesting to be a geologist in geologically interesting times, I suppose. Homo sap might just leave a nice, interesting little marker horizon for some other geologists a few hundred million years from now; a black smear, a sort of knicker-stain in the rocks. Oh, I can hear those future geologists arguing bitterly among themselves; oh, I can just picture them: "We are absolutely positive, Dr Xlxlchch. This greasy streak must be the Human Horizon. Just take that sample in your anterior claw and hold it to your ventral sensor. You can smell the cadmium and lead concentrations quite clearly. We say that this is the place where we must drill for plastic!" All our hopes, passion, work and folly, scrunched up into a dark little smear of rock an three millimetres thick with two large bugs earnestly discussing how to harvest our garbage. Oh, my.

Well, I really was a lousy geologist, no matter what anyone else might have thought. I was too dumb in school to do something really interesting. Such a pity, too, I'd really have liked to have led a life of economic crime, I mean, I'd have liked to have been either a merchant banker or a stock broker. Anyway, all that striding around purposefully with those pointy little hammers sounded really cool when I was at an impressionable age with deeply underdeveloped social skills. So I picked geology as my subject for university: the rest was pure railroad: good student becomes research student and so on. The walking around was OK, when the weather was nice, but the subject never really fired me up all that much. The hammer was only useful for hanging up pictures or until civilisation fell. Now, of course, that hammer's useful all the time, one way or another.

Fortunately for my sanity at the time, I managed to dabble in a lot of other things I liked much better than geology. Stupid idea, really, expecting teenagers to decide how they think they're going to have to spend the rest of their lives. It may have been a mistake, but I managed to be a dedicated amateur in whatever I did and I did whatever I did pretty well, if not earnestly - better than most of your so-called professionals, anyway. The only difference between me and the professionals was that they did it for the money and would've done absolutely anything to have kept their jobs. I never cared that much. You might definitely call me a professional survivor, though. I think I've found my real vocation at last you know: staying alive. All my messing around in this, that and the other was great preparation for the great mess we all ended up in.

Like it or not, I guess I've got geology to thank for being alive today. Some people wouldn't call what we've got today much of a life, but it's the only one we've got, love it or leave it, and all evidence points to their only being one per person. So we might as well stick around and see how things poke along. If worst comes to worst, we can always die. That was a joke, by the bye. This is a stiff upper lip establishment, sort of, and we wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, the End-of-the-World-As-We-Knew-It hasn't been nearly as bad as expected, at least for those who survived. Sometimes, I think, I haven't ever had it all that much better, in a very, very crazy sort of way. Less stress, striving and worry, I guess is what I mean.

As I was saying when I interrupted myself, geology saved our lives. A few years back, I was doing very nicely, thank you, in fast moving consumer goods down in London; much too well, in fact. I was getting jolly bored. How I moved into academia via FMCG's from an oil exploration bubble in the Antarctic is a very long and faintly implausible story. Anyway, this sharp academic cove I met at some function or another must have smelled the boredom off me. I should have known better: he had this really slicked-back, thick silver hair. The next thing I knew, I was wined, dined and offered the chair of geology at the University of Cymru at Conwy. Stunned by the execrable food, excellent drink and their brazen impunity, I took their shilling. When I came to, I found myself chained to an oar in the Welsh countryside, instead of gently fleecing bleating A/B's in the Home Counties at three times the salary, plus bonus and choice of executive cars. On taking up the appointment, Lizzie didn't speak anything but Welsh to me for a month. And the only Welsh either of us knows, even now, is "Dim Parcio".

So we sold our London dez rez, standard suburban bliss, at the peak of some house feeding frenzy for millions, even after paying off the mortgage. We bought this enormous rambling pile of a place, high up here in the hills, for about as much as the garage would have sold for in town. Got about fifteen acres of prime scrub with it, plus small herd of sheep. The sheep were sort of a hobby for me and kept the grass down pretty well. The stately Victorian folly, architecturally vandalised in the 1970s, wasn't too far from the sinecure, but not too near, either. We got a faithful old Land Rover to keep the redundancy Mercedes company. You didn't think I was foolish enough to resign from FMCG, did you? They threw the car in with the golden boot up the backside fifteen minutes after I told my boss I'd been approached by one of our competitors and thought only it fair to warn him that I was giving the offer serious consideration. What they didn't know was that I would have left for nothing, just so long as I had an excuse to miss the Christmas Party.

I started with the notion of filling the old house with light and laughter, making it an oasis of hospitality for staff and students. Well, I spent the next three years trying to get to know my university staff and colleagues. Without a great deal of success, I must say. I finally trapped one of the more doe-like Senior Lecturers in the Senior Commons Room loo. He went to earth in one of the stalls but I just went and introduced myself from under the door. After the ice was broken, I had no real trouble with them at all. University people aren't really standoffish; they're just very, very timid. They even admitted they would have come around and introduced themselves, given a year or two longer to get used to seeing me around the place. Having them visit us at home was simply out of the question, of course.

Nevertheless, university life was such a hoot. You could wear, say or think anything you liked, nobody seemed to notice. The head of department used to show up to lectures in his slippers and spout absolute twaddle. The students were appealing in the way that kittens and puppies are when they're just beginning to walk; perhaps not nearly as cute, but house-trained in all but the most unfortunate cases. The work was so easy that I thought I must have been missing something. But, no, that was all there was to it: give a few lectures, red-line some scurvy essays, publish some tosh in learned journals, participate in opaque Euro-trough projects and cash your relatively generous pay check. So, I filled up my spare time tormenting research students, writing dull academic papers and consulting very lucratively for fat-cat oilcos. Eventually, I was invited to sit on learned committees and oozed around Whitehall quite a bit. That's really where my story starts, too.

* * *

Lizzie says this writing of mine is exactly the way I talk: rambling and circuitous. She says that if I don't get cutting along smartly with this extremely shaggy dog story, the next Ice Age may have started and the sabre-toothed cats will have to finish it off for me. That isn't too funny, Lizzie. We've got troubles enough as it is. You palaeontologists have no souls, of course. Everyone knows that. You're just sort of scientific undertakers.

* * *

Well, anyway, it was sort of a shame that it all had to end when it did, seeing as I was enjoying myself quite well. I got a good idea of what was happening a lot sooner than most people, as you'll see. Still, even if all you did was read New Scientist every now and then, you had to be an imbecile not to realise that something was about to come unstuck somewhere and PDQ. The public, however, quite naturally preferred to goggle at Page Three. You know, that's one of the few things that I really, deeply miss. Not tits, with the kind of nutrition we're getting you’ve got to be kidding, tits-wise, but newspapers. Newspapers, milk and bread. I can't really say why. The papers, Lizzie; it's certainly not hard to see why we'd want to sink our teeth into a fresh, warm loaf and wash it down with a glass of fresh, cold milk. Of course there's not a lot of trees around these days. I'd bet you'd be hard pressed to make up a one page Sunday newspaper with all the trees left in Britain. I suppose there's not a lot of what you could consider news any more, either. Unless you're really into wind, sand and slow death.

We've got some trees down here with us; sort of tropical ones, too. Yeah, I thought you'd sort of be surprised. They might just be the last of their kind. We've got apple trees, a cocoa plant, a rubber plant and half a dozen little grapefruit trees. The cocoa plant's almost dead, I'm afraid. I got it from one of the botanists at the University. He was doing some experiments for a big chocolate company and needed some business advice. The other trees are going great guns, though. I've got this sort of big, dug-in greenhouse. It doesn't get a lot of light in the winter, but it doesn't blow away, either. And those trees are worth every drop of precious water they use, too, even if some of them don't produce any food. I keep on hoping that the grapefruits might fruit one day. God, can you imagine that, a grapefruit for breakfast - you know, cut across and sprinkled generously with sugar? At least the dwarf apple trees do well enough. We took nearly a hundred pounds of apples from them last year. Nearly an apple a day. Otherwise, we don't try to grow much of our own food, takes too much water.

So how can we live if we don't grow our food? That's easy to answer. I could see what was happening from the government committees I was sitting on and I had a sort of hobby in paranoia. Disaster was staring everyone right smack in the face - we just closed our eyes to it, that's all. After our house blew in for the first time, I started to suspect that our world’s cosy little number might be coming up. Work it out for yourself. In those days, a few thousand quid would buy you a whole lot of food, lovely grub, even if a hundred thousand knickers might not have bought you a big closet in the centre of London. Today, ten tonnes of gold won't buy you a rotten apple core today, but anyone who can live underwater is welcome to all of London for nothing. So I went on this survival craze before it was too late. I stockpiled up enough food and water to last us for maybe fifty years, with good luck and prudent appetites. With our big house, out here in the country, we had plenty of room around to hide our food. We lost some of our supplies when the first really big winds came, but we were lucky. Then we got ourselves and our supplies down into the cellars pretty damn quick.

That food is a deadly secret, of course. We use it only as a last resort. Nothing on earth would be able to keep what few people there are left away from here if they knew there were tons and tons of yummy food stashed up here. So, if you're reading this, you've really got to be a friend. For the rest of the time, like most people, I do a lot of scavenging in the dead towns. Mainly, though, I'm a sort of up-market fix-it man for our local farmers and fishermen. I set up their wind generators and keep them running. I fix their radios. I fixed their TV's until the last satellite station went off the air last year. The Internet packed in almost right away. The telephone still works now and again, amazingly enough. Just for fun, I call numbers at random all over the world. I don't get any replies except from this old geezer in Iceland who can't speak a word of English. Mind you, my Icelandic's not so hot either, so I just say, "Wrong number mate, sorry", and hang up. Still, it is nice to call him now and then; it's nice to know he's still there.

We're not the last people on earth or anything so wildly dramatic like that. I've got a good short-wave radio. One of those dinky little jobs with full coverage of all the bands up to ultra high frequency. Sounds like a lot of the Scandinavians are still going pretty strong. I speak a bit of German, so I can make out a few words, now and then. They don't bother to broadcast in English, of course. They play a lot of music and it all sounds pretty normal there. Something funny's happened to radio reception, though. My theory, I mean guess, is that the ionosphere's totally buggered up. That could have had something to do with the weather change, too.

Lizzie asks, "If you're such a hot-shot, up-market Mr Fix-it, when are we getting our third generator?" The answer, Lizzie, is as soon as the wind drops below fifty. You wouldn't want me to go out there right now, would you? The last anemometer I put out pegged the scale at about 150 miles per hour just as a storm was warming up. It stopped working a few minutes later. I couldn't even find the stump of the post I put it on, let alone any of the pieces. You can figure, though, that if rocks the size of tennis balls, well, little tennis balls, get airborne in the exposed places, then that wind has got to be really moving along at a fairly good clip. I've got this sort of Mickey Mouse pitot tube thing up there on the surface now. It's marked 100 miles per hour as a very rough estimate. All that really means is that I won't be knocked flat by the wind if I have to go out. I still have to worry about getting hit by flying objects, but fortunately there's not too many loose things blowing around any more.

So how fast does the wind blow? I don't know: 250, 300, 350? Your guess is as good as mine, chum. I'll tell you what, though, even down in Antarctica with the Survey, I never saw anything like we've got up there now. And the winds in Antarctica used to hit 200 miles per hour, on occasion, too. In fact, that's just about how I'd describe what it's getting here now: a hot Antarctica with stronger winds. God knows how any plants or animals on the surface survive, but a few things seem to manage. Nothing's very tall, of course, but life keeps on hanging in there, where it gets half a chance.

Yes, well, about Mr Fix-it and generators. Since everyone spends so much of the time underground, we all need light. The wind's a pretty reliable source of power when we need the light most. We don't even need batteries because, once the wind starts, it just blows all the time. I'm pretty good with my hands and at improvising, especially improvising, so I make these wind generators and wire up people's houses. I don't really know if you can really call what we live in houses, any more. There's two schools of thought, as usual: bunkerers and undergrounders. I'm a sort of undergrounder, myself. It's darker underground, but you don't get so much noise. Maybe there's not a hell of a lot in it between the two. I suppose that I just feel a lot safer, six feet under than I do up there on the surface. Even after that nasty Underground business in London. Don't worry, I'll tell you all about that, sooner or later.

So where do we get the raw materials for these generators? Well, there are still millions and millions of cars knocking around out there, of course. We just go down to the car drifts during the calm season and pick out our favourite old models; I’m partial to German, myself. We pull out the electrics we need: lights, wires, alternators and hardware. Plus anything else that looks as if it might be useful some day. I try to keep a couple of dozen full wind generator installations and lots of spares in stock. Making the generator housings and propellers is the real trick. I copied a plan from some books about airplanes I took from the library before that drowned.

The generators work pretty well, but they don't last forever. Remember that I told you I once worked in FMCG? Honestly, there are a lot of technical problems up above. If the generators are too low to the ground, the sand scours them away. If they're up too high, the wind blows them away. A couple of feet can be too high. Car alternators were never intended to work at those sort of speeds, either. To make it worse, the other materials we've got are pretty substandard. We keep on plugging away, though, and we get our light most of the time.

Now most people have two generators, since one's almost certain to pack up during the winds. A third generator's just sort of a sign of upward social mobility. Seriously, though, we can use number three to give the plants some more light and it'll make a backup for our backup. Nobody wants to end up like the Joneses, you know. Their generator packed up during the middle of the winter. It was one Old Man Jones had made himself, fortunately for my reputation. They spent two whole months sitting down there in the dark. La Jones has never been entirely compos mentis after that. Between you and me, some people say she wasn't much upstairs-wise to start with. Nevertheless, that incident has been quite a good stimulus for my little business. After all, I’ve got qualifications, boy-o!

So the locals trade their surplus food, such as that might be, for my estimable services and that's how we live. Plus our food stash. I could well be the last technician left in Wales or maybe even Britain. That's how hard things are. Almost all back to primary producers now. Wouldn't the Hippies and hair-shirts just have loved it? What are we going to do when the cars run out or erode away? Well, I don't really think I really want to think about that right just now, if it's all the same to you.

* * *

Lizzie says this was pretty interesting at first but that all this prattling is getting a bit boring. Must be that nasty academic streak of mine, raising its ugly mixed metaphor. I think I'd better try switching to story-telling style, if I can hack it. I'd hate to lose you now, dear reader, dear friend. There are so few of us left now.

2007-02-17T01:58:00.000Z

Chapter 3

The dark-suited, bouffanted sales-gent faced the committee. 'Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake about it,' he warned dramatically. 'This is one of the major environmental and health problems facing the world today.' He had a warm, sincere huckster's voice. 'Just look at the facts, ladies and gentlemen,' he continued. His face looked as if he was straining on the toilet. 'Just here in Inner London alone, we estimate output at over 104.7 tonnes per day, 365 days a year. That works out to 11.4 pounds per year for every person in London.' A slide flashed on the screen, showing brightly coloured exponential graphs. 'By the end of this century, we expect this figure to have quadrupled.' The salesman gazed dolefully at his audience. 'Just how long can we survive this onslaught of ghastly pollution, ladies and gentlemen, how long?' Legislation and licensing alone will not be sufficient to overcome this terrible problem. Direct, concerted action must be taken now.' The members of the committee shifted their buttocks wearily in their chairs.

'Fortunately, ladies and gentlemen, a technological solution is at hand,' boomed the salesman triumphantly. 'The Piloti AK-9 is a specially adapted all-terrain, all-weather, 155-horsepower vehicle with a two-arm capability.' A slide showed a machine which looked like a miniature armoured personnel carrier with feelers. 'Each high-precision telescopic arm is equipped with an ultra-hygienic, computer controlled removal and cleaning facility.' A slide showed a detail of a gleaming robotic arm. A closeup of a neat coil of fresh, bright yellow turds replaced it on the screen.

'A liquid nitrogen spray cools the canine waste to -196.3 degrees Centigrade within 90 milliseconds,' cooed the salesman. The dog shit disappeared in a swirling white cloud of frost. 'An ergonometrically designed manipulator removes the solid frozen waste from the pavement and packages it in bar-code labeled, individual plastic containers for hygienically assured, totally quality controlled disposal,' husked the salesman proudly. 'GPS unambiguously identifies the scene of pollution and real time data are stored in a proprietary object oriented database, giving full management information. Under ideal conditions, each AK-9 can process up to 1.173 tonnes of canine waste per day.' The final slide showed thousands of small plastic packets of dog crap spewing into a land fill. The slide projector snapped off, leaving red suns dancing in my eyes.

Sir Anthony Bonod, Head Government Scientist, jolted himself from a light doze. 'Ah, er, thank you very much, Mr, ah, er,' he chirped brightly. His jowls wobbled under a lofty dome of forehead, half covered by long, slicked-over, salt-and-pepper hair. 'I say, most interesting, indeed. A very serious problem. Jolly good solution.'

'Thank you, Sir Anthony and members of the Cabinet Office Committee on the Environment,' replied the salesman with a slight bow. 'It is a great privilege for Piloti Waste Limited to have been invited to make a presentation to this august body. I have taken the liberty of bringing our brochure and price list. With your permission, Sir Anthony, I will leave these with you.'

'Oh, wonderful, Mr Piloti, absolutely splendid,' said Sir Anthony. 'Thank you so much for your effort,' he smirked. Sir Anthony had an overly subtle mind, doubtless finely adapted for solving crosswords by generations of commuting ancestors. He was the kind of person who, if you said "Good morning" might well take the rest of the day trying to figure out what you had really meant by "Good morning"; absurdly subtle. Sir Anthony turned to the committee's heavily acne-pitted little Permanent Under Secretary, appropriately abbreviated as PUS, who kept the minutes. 'Ah, Arthur, would you please be so kind as to add these items to the evidence.' He slid the papers along the table.

'Yes, of course, Mr Chairman,' replied Arthur seriously in a soft Welsh accent. He took the papers, numbered them carefully and placed them in a box file.

'Any questions from the members to the speaker?' asked Sir Anthony. The extraordinarily long and pointed lobes of his ears jiggled as he spoke. I could hardly keep my eyes off them. They were like upside-down elf ears. A treat to watch.

Mike Cole's arm shot up. 'Oh, yes, indeed I do, Mr Chairman,' he growled. 'As the representative of the local government services association on this committee,' he explained pompously, 'I would like to ask Mr Morrow exactly how much these AK-9 machines are supposed to cost.'

'The standard AK-9 is £39,950, plus VAT,' replied the salesman, 'The deluxe AK-9/B, with enhanced removal capability, is £54,950.

Cole fixed him with a fiery stare. 'Forty thousand quid each, for the cheap ones?' he cried incredulously.

'Well, yes, that is approximately correct,' answered the salesman apologetically.

'And maintenance?' demanded Cole hotly. 'What about that, eh?'

'Uh, well, sir, that's another 15%,' admitted the man.

'Per annum?' asked Cole.

'Per anum, more like it,' slipped in Sir Anthony. Several of the members, no doubt public school alumni, joined his hearty 'Ho, ho, ho's!'

Cole looked blankly at me. As the token academic on the committee, I was supposed to know everything. 'It's Latin,' I whispered, 'It means "through the anus". Cole looked blankly at me again; thick as a plank, poor fellow. 'Through the arse?' I tried. He got it that time.

'Yes,' replied the salesman, 'Maintenance is 15% each year. Of course, that includes all parts and materials under normal usage. We offer extended warranty programmes, as well.'

Cole started warming up. 'And just who do you think will be paying for these whiz-bang poop-scoopers, hey?' he snapped. 'Hey?'

'Well, I couldn't say, really,' answered the salesman hesitantly. 'Ah, the local authorities, I suppose.'

'Oh yes, the local authorities you suppose,' mocked Cole bitterly. He turned to face the committee. His face was set and pinched. 'This is just another straw on the local camel's back. Well, let me tell you, members of the committee. Let me tell you.' He shook his finger. 'This is a national problem, not a local one. Not one single penny will be spent on these machines by our long-suffering local authorities, unless full grants are forthcoming from Government. I warn you, not a single penny.'

'But surely, Michael,' drawled Sir Anthony, 'The dogs are owned locally are they not?' He pulled off his gold-rimmed, rectangular glasses and aimed the bows at Cole. 'These local dogs do their, ahem, business locally, do they not? Surely this is a local problem.'

'That's entirely beside the point, Mr Chairman,' said Cole. 'Local government simply cannot afford, I repeat, cannot afford to handle this problem on top of all the others it is now expected to take care of under this Government. The environment is a national problem, it is not a local one. This problem needs national funding.'

Jenny Shaw of the World Wildlife Protectorate flipped her hand up and shrilled stridently, 'Fat, over-fed lap-dogs shitting on local pavements is not the problem we should be worrying about here, anyway, Mr Chairman.' At the word "shit", committee members smiled or recoiled, according to their inclinations. 'What this committee should be considering is the wholesale extinction, the genocide of world wildlife. Does this committee know that twenty unique and precious species on this planet become extinct every week? Does this committee care that over one thousand acres of irreplaceable tropical forest are obliterated every fifteen minutes? What exactly is this Government going to do about this problem? That's what I'd like to know, Mr Chairman.'

Basil Irons, chairman of the Council of British Business stood and glared ferociously around the table. 'Now that is just the sort of thing we businessmen have come to expect from our non-profit-making colleagues,' he barked. 'Dog waste is a serious local and national problem, not some bleeding heart Ecofreak pie-in-the-sky green-out. Dog waste is a problem that British business can solve right here and now, today. British business is not looking for government handouts, but it needs active support today to compete in tomorrow's global dog waste markets. The French are overtaking us; the Germans are overtaking us; the Americans are overtaking us; and the Japanese are overtaking us.' He glared scornfully at Shaw and sneered, 'I suppose our esteemed lady colleague will suggest that we simply let everyone else snap up the entire world market in dog dirt disposal? I suppose she will suggest that we lie back and let yet another brilliant British invention languish while the rest of the world reaps massive profits from it? Well, I think not, members of the committee. I think not.' The salesman gazed at Irons with, what else, dog-like devotion.

Sir Anthony yawned covertly behind his puffy hand and peered ostentatiously at his watch. 'Well, this is all jolly riveting, I must say. But we simply must press on with our agenda. On behalf of the committee, thank you very much, Mr Waste. May I wish you all the best of British luck with your very splendid enterprise.' He rolled his pouchy, red eyes toward Arthur.

Arthur gazed sternly at the salesman over his thick half-moon glasses. 'I would like to take the opportunity to remind Mr Morrow,' he said, 'that all proceedings of this committee are covered under provisions of the current Official Secrets and Prevention of Terrorism Acts. You may not reveal any details of this morning's presentation or discussion unless duly authorised by a representative of Her Majesty's Government.'

The salesman looked suitably awed and bobbed his head in agreement. 'Well yes,' he said, 'Of course not, sir, certainly not.' He turned to Sir Anthony and smiled nervously. 'Thank you again, Mr Chairman.' He collected his slides hastily and backed out of the walnut-paneled committee room. The door closed with a gentle click.

I couldn't hold back any more. I won't say that valour took over, but my mouth certainly did; my discretion collapsed completely. 'Surely, ladies and gentlemen,' I snapped, 'Footpath fouling, global or local, and wildlife extinction could prove to be relatively trivial matters, in a global context.' Frowning heads turned towards me.

'You think that the wholesale destruction of the world's wildlife is a trivial matter? Trivial?' gasped Shaw. She looked around the room in apparent shock. 'Well, I never ...'

'What I mean,' I said quickly, 'Is that we could be facing total ecological disaster, not just soiled Guiccis or a permanent shortage of lizard skin out of which to make them.'

'Mr Chairman!' bellowed Shaw, 'I must protest ... '

I continued speaking over her roars and yelps. 'These are relatively minor problems, from a truly global viewpoint. Quite simply, these things are unlikely to precipitate a total environmental disaster.' Unfortunately, I said this with rather more warmth than was wise when sitting on committees of this sort.

Sir Anthony turned to me, smiling maliciously. 'Oh, I must say, Dick,' he fluted, 'You really do demonstrate a dramatic turn of phrase on the oddest of occasions.'

'I have said nothing dramatic, Sir Anthony,' I protested calmly.

'Well, I really must say that I have heard no evidence in this committee to suggest anything like,' he looked over at Arthur's notes, 'Ahem, "total environmental disaster". Whatever can you mean, Dick?'

I steeled myself to tell the truth. 'I am growing rather concerned, Mr Chairman, about what COCE haven't heard here,' I said. I pronounced COCE as "cocky".

'My dear chap,' said Sir Anthony with apparent surprise, 'Whatever can you mean by that?'

'I mean that I think we're not addressing the real problems,' I snapped.

Sir Anthony gazed with mock bewilderment at the committee and spread his hands. 'The very best brains in the country and the very best evidence available have been assembled before COCE.' He pronounced COCE as "cokey". 'Why only this morning, Dick,' he said, 'We have heard the most encouraging testimony from British Chemicals and Oils plc that they are deeply committed to reducing their pollution levels significantly by the turn of this century.' Sir Anthony nodded amiably toward John Hall, one of the more active members of the committee. He also happened to be Director of Research and Development for British Chemicals. Talk about foxes put in charge of hen houses.

Hall nodded back to him and burbled, 'Oh, that's absolutely correct, Sir Anthony. We have already achieved a 5.2% reduction in pollution over last year's seasonally adjusted levels. That's well ahead of target, too. All visible particles were eliminated early last year and tree planting is up 17.3%. That's 18.1 months ahead of schedule, Mr Chairman.'

'Oh, indeed, those are just utterly fantastic cosmetics, Mr Chairman,' I replied ironically. 'But what about British Chemicals' 300 mile long thermal plumes into the North Sea? What about the thousands of tonnes of invisible carbon and nitrogen oxides that they're still spewing into the atmosphere? Have you ever seen the countryside around one of their plants?' I asked.

'I can't say I really get around that part of the country terribly often,' replied Sir Anthony serenely.

Hall flushed deeply and interrupted. 'Just what exactly are you trying to imply, Professor?' he demanded.

My tongue was really in control now. 'I'm saying, without implication, that your company is a major polluter,' I snapped.

Hall had wisely let me stick my neck out further. 'Our emissions are well below both government and European Community levels. We're inspected yearly, as you very well know.' Hall spread his hands in supplication. 'Yes, I'll agree that our plants aren't necessarily scenic. But the people living around them seem happy enough with the money they make working for us in those plants. Nobody forces them to work there, you know. Our shareholders are happy with our efforts and our returns. The country benefits economically.'

I sighed unhappily. I liked John Hall. He was an amusing man over a pint or two. We had a lot of common interests. I backed down - too late. 'Look, John, I'm not singling out British Chemicals,' I waffled hastily. 'Everyone else is at it, too, I know. Your plumes are nothing compared with the ones that cross the Pacific from China. I just can't believe that we, meaning the world, can keep on pumping out all this waste heat and gas without something coming unstuck on a global scale, sooner or later.'

'Well, perhaps we will have to recommend cutting the Universities back a good deal more to prevent gaseous emissions, in that case,' chipped in Sir Anthony. There was a general joining in with his inevitable meaty, "Ho, ho, ho's"!' I could see that I'd made a lot of good friends on the committee.

Hall still was not placated. 'There's simply no evidence, Professor, that there is any global effect from our type of emissions or from any other industrial emissions,' he snapped. 'The earth's a very big place and it's been going perfectly well for a long, long time. I'm sure it's got mechanisms for cleaning itself.'

'Yes,' I said gloomily, 'That's precisely what worries me, John. Maybe the earth will correct us.'

Hall looked unhappily back at me. 'All right,' he admitted, 'There's been a few mistakes made in the past, but we've corrected most of those. We're doing everything we can.'

'It's not happening quickly enough, John,' I insisted.

'Look, Dick, Rome wasn't built in a day,' said Hall doggedly.

'No, but it probably burnt down in one or two,' I said wearily. The room was totally silent for about fifteen seconds.

Sir Anthony made a cryptic signal to Arthur. Arthur coughed, 'Uh, gentlemen,' he said, 'I'm afraid we really must interrupt your discussion at this point. Lunch is ready.' Several of the committee members rose immediately.

'No, no,' objected Hall, 'Our learned colleague has brought up an issue which I think must be answered.'

'Oh, pack it in, John!' cried Cole, 'That software committee's going to get their feet in the trough before us if we don't hurry up. They'll take all the prawn cocktails again.'

'Look, Mike, this is a good deal more important than a few prawn cocktails,' snapped Hall. 'Come on, Dick,' he insisted. 'Let's hear about your worries. Sir Anthony made another gesture. The members groaned and sagged down into their chairs reluctantly.

'All right,' I said, 'I'll make it as quick as I can. I looked around the room. Bored faces looked back at me. I ploughed on, regardless. 'I'm seriously concerned about what we don't know. What about all these storms we've been having? What do they mean, if anything? The Head Meteorologist may really have felt quite comfortable with the notion that all these storms have been within the theoretical range of statistical variation, but I'm not.' I slapped my hand on the table. 'The simple fact is that there haven't been winds in the South of England like there have been in the last few years. Or at least for two hundred years or so. Now, what does that mean, if anything? The mildest set of winters in recorded history. What do those mean? Why has there been near drought in Britain for decades now? Is it going to get worse? Is it true that the Gulf Stream might be changing its course? Are sea levels really rising abnormally or not? If they are, what will be the effect? Questions, questions, questions; all unanswered. We just don't seem to know the answers to any of these.'

'And you're saying this is all the fault of British Chemicals?' jibed Hall.

'Of course that's not what I'm saying, John, don't be silly,' I sighed. 'What I'm trying to say is that I'm getting pretty worried about some of the things I've heard in this committee. I'm worried because the best heads in the country don't seem to have a clue what's going on or even if anything is going on at all.'

'So what's the answer, Dick?' demanded Hall.

'I haven't got an answer, John,' I replied quietly. 'That's exactly the problem. No one does. We've had at least two dozen very eminent scientists suggest 57 plausible and mutually contradictory theories. Global climate change, if it's really happening as it seems, is a problem that needs the mobilised resources of the entire human race. What can possibly be more important? Instead, we've got more people in this country researching extruded meat products than the weather.

'So what does that matter,' snapped Hall belligerently.

I gazed at Hall sadly. 'So I'm bloody worried by it all, John, that's what. You have kids - they matter, don't they? Tell me that I'm stupid to worry about my kids' futures. Tell me you don't lie awake at night, listening to the wind prowling around your house. Tell me your wife isn't nearly on the verge of tears whenever the wind blows for days and days without stopping.' Hall bit his lip and didn't answer.

'Oh blast it, Dick!' cried Sir Anthony cheerfully, snapping his fingers. 'You always go moody on us just before lunch. Must be something to do with low blood sugar.' He was supposed to have been a pretty competent biochemist before he sold his soul, if he ever had one, to the Civil Service. 'Come on, committee,' he cried, 'Off to lunch now! Get some anti-freeze coursing through those lusty veins.' He made little shooing motions with his hands as though the members were chickens. The members stood and filed gloomily from the room.

Sir Anthony motioned me towards him. He adjusted his dark blue, college tie and scraped a crusty yellow scab of egg from it with a dirty gnarled thumbnail. He glanced at Arthur and then at me. He raised one bushy eyebrow. 'You sounded a bit extreme this morning, Dick. You're not going green around the gills, are you?' he laughed. He looked at either side of my head. 'Hope you're not thinking of putting anything lurid into the report of the committee.'

'The report will be submitted to you well before publication, Sir Anthony,' I replied stiffly. 'You'll be able to change anything you don't like in it.'

'Ah, well, we're under very considerable pressure from the Secretary to get this report out just as fast as possible, Dick,' said Arthur. 'The Secretary's under great pressure from the Minister and the Minister's being squeezed by the PM. The PM really does want to read our report a.s.a.p, you know.'

'A perfect ecology of arse-licking and back-stabbing, eh, Arthur?' I sneered. 'Got a bone for your nose yet?'

'Say what you like, Dick, but the government needs this report and it wants it at this point in time,' said Arthur levelly, ignoring the gibe. 'We can't afford to have a last minute rewrite or anything like that.'

'I'll just put down the evidence I've heard, Arthur,' I said. 'It'll be a lot easier than cooking up a pack of lies.'

'Nobody is suggesting that you present anything but the evidence you've heard here, Dick,' said Arthur.

'I've heard plenty of evidence in this room. Rather too much of it for my comfort,' I replied. 'In fact, I've been shocked. People who probably wouldn't ever dream of telling the truth anywhere else, even in church, seem willing to drop their trousers in front of us. Just because we're a Cabinet Office committee.'

'Everyone is telling the truth as they see it, certainly. So what's your problem, old chap,' asked Sir Anthony breezily.

'I told you earlier, Sir Anthony,' I said. 'We don't really know enough to know whether we're in serious trouble or not. There hasn't been enough of the right kind of evidence. Too much noise and not enough signal.'

'Too much evidence will just confuse the public about the real issues involved anyway, Dick. The report must be authoritative, concise and decisive,' said Sir Anthony. 'It must be totally convincing.'

'Convincing of what, Sir Anthony? Convincing of re-election?' I jibed.

'Look, Dick,' said Arthur evenly, 'You can put anything you want in the report, providing it's reasonable. We just don't want anything in it that's going to cause the public a lot of worry, cost the Government a great deal of money, curb economic growth or cause unemployment.'

'The Government would prefer an ecological disaster to an economic one?'

'Dick,' stated Sir Anthony firmly, 'We have been instructed that unnecessary public concern about the environment is not considered at all desirable.'

'You mean big dish of warm, bland pap is what's desirable,' I asked brightly.

Sir Anthony smirked and unleashed his sharpest blue gaze from within the dark bloody pools. 'Now Dick, you were specially picked to be our committee's Boswell,' he said. 'We knew that your heart's in the right place for this job. We also know that you can turn a very nice phrase, a very smooth phrase, out on to a piece of paper,' he murmured. They must have been thinking of my Antarctica oil exploration venture brochure. Only the absolutely greediest bastards in The City had been bitten by that one. Anyway, it was perfectly legal, only just a tiny bit sharp, that's all.

Sir Anthony smiled greasily at me. 'The government will be very, very grateful for a useful report, Dick,' he purred. 'Your name will be on the cover, right next to the Chairman's. The next Honours List is not far off, Dick.' He raised his eyebrows significantly. I said nothing but I still remember that my saliva ran to that bell.

'We know we can rely on you, Dick,' rumbled Sir Anthony, launching himself upright, 'Now lads, why don't we go get stuck into some lunch?' he asked affably. 'You know, Arthur, I really do think you must have one of the best cold buffets in the country here. Nothing fancy, mind you, but everything very, very sound. The lemon mayonnaise is simply brilliant. The white wines are not bad at all, either.'

'Maybe it should be privatised,' I sneered.

Sir Anthony smirked and glanced at me slyly. 'And do you know what, Dick?' he asked.

'No, what?' I replied.

'I made damn' sure those software committee chappies were fed somewhere else this time,' he crowed triumphantly. 'They're just a bloody sub-committee, after all! Ho, ho, ho!'

* * *

Well, I've managed to keep my present tense mouth shut for almost two whole entries. It's just about killed me, too. OK, reader, so you must be thinking, 'What a bunch of jerks, what wankers! How could they possibly not know they were killing the world with all their pollution?' Well, it's so very easy to sit back, ex post facto, and say that, with hindsight being as good as it is.

Sure, some scientists had been saying the same thing for years. But remember, just as many scientists, and very reputable ones, had been saying the opposite. The rest were like me: we just didn't know. We couldn't stop the world, anyway, just because we didn't know the answers. How could all those billions of people have been able to live in an ecologically sound way? In fact, could even a billion human beings ever have been ecologically sound, no matter how carefully they lived?

You see, even today in mid-disaster, I'm still not really convinced we caused whatever it is that has happened to us. There's no question that something dreadful has happened. It's just that there's no solid, scientific evidence that we humans caused it. Yes, I'm sure it seems probable that there were just too many people, living too well. But it might have happened just the same if there had been only a million people in the world, living in sylvan harmony. Without some hard scientific proof, it's impossible to know what to believe. Even if we'd been able to shut Britain down, I don't think it would have mattered all that much in the long run. We weren't the worst offenders, not by a long shot. We were pretty small beer. Isn't the west wind the one that always blows the hardest?

2007-02-17T01:56:00.001Z

Chapter 4

'Aw, lay off it, Dad. It's your bloody generation that ruined the environment and caused all those wars,' snarled Cathy. Her mouth drooped into a disdainful, bored pout. It was amazing the way her lower lip swelled visibly on these occasions - an erection of petulance. How quickly the sweet earnest baby-innocence faded; I could still sometimes remember that little face shining up at me with love, respect and admiration. The lovely milky baby smell, now replaced by a faint whiff of tobacco and period.

I carved into the lamb and grimaced slightly at the dull brown inside. It was seriously overdone for my taste. I was sure that Lizzie, well-meaning food fascist, had done it that way on purpose: prion disease, no doubt, perhaps salmonella, possibly bubonic. The roast potatoes looked good, though. 'I fail to understand, my dear young miss, how the discussion has moved from your studying for your GCSEs to my generation's wholesale plundering of Peace, raping plucky little Belgium and generally trashing the Universe and All Creation,' I said archly.

'They're called pre-baccalaureates now, Dad,' sniffed Cathy.

'Even if they're called that now, I still don't see how we strayed so far from the subject,' I said equitably. 'But while we are off it, I want you to know that, in actual fact, my generation was one that stood for love, peace and the environment, very early followers, anyway. We practically invented those things.' I put the deadest, most desiccated piece of lamb I could find on Lizzie's plate and passed it to her with an insincere smile. 'And vegetarianism, as well,' I added.

'Well, as far as I can see,' scoffed Cathy, 'All your generation ever managed to stand for was being dope soaked, sex crazed middle class hippies.' She stuck a quivering pair of fingers up and chanted goofily, 'Hey, like love and peace, man. Wow. Far out. Uhhhh.'

Bobby laughed hysterically until I silenced him with a savage glance. I suddenly had an inkling why all religions tried to instill some sense of obligation in children towards their parents. If someone or something didn't pry open those thick young skulls and ram some decency into what passed as a brain, you could bet it wouldn't be there naturally. 'You are welcome to think anything you may like about my generation, my dear, as long as you get good marks on those GCSEs. Your future depends on them,' I replied. I was totally incorrect, of course, as it turned out. Annoyed, I hacked a fatty, shrivelled hunk of meat from the shank and forked it on to her plate.

'What's a hippy, Dad?' asked Bobby. He held his fork clumsily in his white bandaged hand.

I winced inwardly when I saw the bandage. The stitches had only come out two days earlier. 'Hippies were innocent children who once believed that the world could be a better place if only people were nicer to each other,' I replied, giving Cathy a rough stare. I lifted a tender, pink slice of lamb onto Bobby's plate. ‘Then they became the people they were warning themselves about.”

'Yeah,' sneered Cathy, 'They discovered six-multiple mortgages, high value consumer durables and brazen greed.'

'They became caring, sacrificing parents and had exceedingly ungrateful children,' I retorted.

'I'm not ungrateful, Dad, am I?' piped Bobby.

'Creeper,' hissed Cathy.

'I am not!' shouted Bobby.

'Yes you are!' snarled Cathy.

I banged the table with the end of my knife. 'All right you two, just stop it!' I growled.

Cathy ran out of insults for the moment. 'Huh!' she snorted. She shoved her plate into the middle of the table. 'I'm not eating meat any more, Dad. I'll get some corn flakes later. Can I go?'

'No,' I said firmly. 'You'll stay right here at the table, miss, until we're all finished.' I took her plate. I never could stand waste. I'll eat just about anything, rather than waste food – even then. I gave her a plate without any lamb on it. 'Vegetables,' I said. I glanced over at Lizzie. She looked glum and shoved her food aimlessly around her plate. 'What's the matter, dear,' I inquired snidely. 'Meat not done well enough for you?'

Lizzie jerked her head towards the picture window. 'It's starting up again,' she sighed mournfully.

'What's that?' I asked, knowing perfectly well what it was.

'The wind,' she replied.

I looked out and nodded. 'Looks like it, doesn't it?' I agreed.

Lizzie gave me a pleading look. 'Do you really have to go to London tomorrow, Dick? You've been there almost every week for months.

'I'm afraid so, love, it's the COCE press launch tomorrow,' I sighed. 'The Minister himself will be there in all his pomp and glory. The report will be presented formally to the PM later in the day. It's our big moment. The Government will be grateful, I'm told.'

'And do you really think this report of yours will do any good?' she asked wearily.

I shrugged. 'I don't know,' I replied. 'I certainly hope so. Could be a gong in it, my lady,' I hinted.

'Well, I hope you're taking the train, Dick,' said Lizzie. 'It's hardly seems safe to drive any more.'

'You're not forgetting about the train that was blown over in Devon last month, are you?' I replied. I patted her hand. 'Anyway, it so happens, my love, that I am planning to take the train this trip. Driving into London's always such a horror. Then once you're there, there's just no place at all to park.'

'Good,' she said, 'That's a relief.'

'Dad?' piped Bobby.

'Yes, dear?' I replied, cutting my meat.

'Is there going to be a flood, Dad?' he asked.

I paused, forked lamb in mid-air. 'Why on earth do you ask that, Bobby?'

'Terry says that the greenhouse defect will put England all under the sea,' explained Bobby.

'And just who might Terry be?' I questioned archly.

'Oh, he's just one of the boys at school, Dick,' explained Lizzie. 'All the kids are absolutely terrified about pollution, deforestation and the ozone layer.'

'Yeah,' babbled Bobby with morbid enthusiasm, 'There's this great big huge kind of hole thingybob over the South Pole and we'll all get cancer from it and we won't be able to breathe the air because it's all being sucked out into outer space!' He clapped his hand around his throat and shouted, 'Arrgh!' He almost overturned his plate. Cathy sighed heavily and rolled her eyes in disgust.

'All right, young man,' snapped Lizzie, catching his plate at the edge of the table, 'That really is about enough for now.'

A terrific burst of wind almost doubled our apple saplings over. The blast slammed into the house and bowed the plate glass window inward. Lizzie flinched visibly. A twisting dust-devil swirled up the drive and engulfed the trees.

'Dad,' asked Bobby.

'Yes?' I replied.

'Where do the birds go when it's really windy like this?' he asked.

'Uh, that's a really good question, Bobby,' I replied. 'Maybe your Mum knows. She's a sort of zoologist.' I looked at Lizzie.

'Where do they go, Mum?' asked Bobby.

'Well, the big birds like seagulls just seem to ride on the winds forever,' said Lizzie vaguely. 'I don't know what the little birds do. They probably hide in trees and hang on with their little claws for dear life.'

'But don't the little birds get blown away when they have to sleep?' asked Bobby with a worried look outside.

'I don't think most animals sleep very much, dear,' replied Lizzie.

'Do you think the birds are all right, Mom?' asked Bobby.

'Oh, I'm sure they're just fine, love,' said Lizzie. 'You see, they've evolved over millions and millions of years to survive perfectly well in this climate. They'll get along just fine. Now why don't you eat up your nice dinner?' she asked. She smiled fondly at him.

Cathy simpered at Bobby. 'Eatums up your nicey dinner winner baby lamb and don't worry about the little birdy wordies,' she cooed facetiously. The wind howled and banged overhead.

Bobby scowled darkly at her. 'Why don't you ... '.

'Ah, chaps, look,' I interrupted brightly, pointing out the window. 'You can see right now what little birds do in the wind.' We all turned and looked out. A bright-eyed blackbird scuttled through the short dry grass of the garden. When the wind blasted, the bird faced into the wind and hunkered down. The wind seemed to have little effect on it, except for eddies ruffling up its dark feathers.

Another ferocious gust of wind slammed into the house. 'There, Bobby, you see,' said Lizzie, ‘The bird is streamlined so that the wind doesn't blow him off the ground, even though he probably only weighs a few ounces.'

The bird gave a little hop into the air. 'Don't try to fly, little bird!' cried Bobby. The bird hopped again. Bobby stood by the window and waved his arms. 'It's too windy, birdy!' he shouted. 'Don't do it!'

Startled by Bobby's sudden movement, the bird sprang up and fluttered a few feet. The wind caught it and slammed it with a reverberating thump against the picture window. Bobby jumped back with a shout. Cathy gave a little shriek. The blackbird smashed flat against the window, its bright yellow beak twisted awkwardly under its outspread wings. Its flattened, tortured pose instantly made me think of the well-known fossil of Archaeopteryx, the earliest bird. The bird's body, pinned to the glass by the wind, slid slowly towards the bottom of the window. There was a perfect grease-print where it had impacted and a thin bright smear of blood, bile and shit: a red, yellow and white banner. The bird was dead, of course.

Bobby buried his head in Lizzie's arms and sobbed. 'Oh, for God's sake, Dick!' she shrieked. 'Go out and scrape that bloody thing off the window! Do it now, Dick! Right now!' She folded her arms around Bobby and hurried him out of the dining room. I threw my napkin onto the centre of the table and stood.

'Ugh, Dad,' commented Cathy dryly. 'That was pretty gross.'

'For Christ's sake, Cathy, you make it sound as if it was my fault,' I snapped. 'Would you mind clearing the table, please, while I'm outside.'

* * *

As Cathy had implied, it had seemed like a pretty rough century from the start. Disaster always seemed to be lurking somewhere in our thoughts. I'd always thought that if the end came, it would be some sort of nuclear thing. You know, some loony President of one of the former USSR republics hitting the Red Button or a computer fuck-up. Kaboom! It was a bit ironic, really, that when we finally seemed to be really getting our act together, peace-wise, the earth rolled over and swatted us. It hardly mattered that the triumph of the West over the East was more of a victory for the forces of greed and materialism than for the forces of freedom and democracy. OK, there was terrorism, religious fundamentalism and lots of nasty little genocidal wars. It was still a real peace, more or less - even if it didn't do us any good in the long run or even in the short run. I guess there's not much point in trying to outguess the Cosmic Dicer, is there?

2007-02-17T01:54:00.000Z

Chapter 5

My train was very, very late. Then, it stopped for another train outside Hemel Hempstead. Leaves blown on to the tracks kept it from getting enough traction to start moving again; seemed a far-fetched excuse with all the wind; how could the leaves possibly stay on the track? Anyway, another engine finally came out from somewhere and jerked us up to starting speed. We arrived at Euston almost an hour late. I trotted up from Westminster tube station into a stiff gale and turned down Parliament Street. I hurried past the Cenotaph. The wreaths were wired down against the wind. I glanced through the gates of Downing Street, briefly wondering if She was really in today. At Number 17, Whitehall, I pushed open the massive oak doors to the Cabinet Offices. A porter had to help me push the doors open against the wind. 'Professor Turner,' I announced breathlessly to the civilian guard seated at the desk and handed him my pass.

The guard trailed his finger carefully down the list. 'Ah, right, sir, here you are,' he said. 'If you'll just sign here, sir.' He slid the book towards me and handed me a pen. I noticed names from all the big papers. Just the right sort of audience. The guard gave me a typed name tag. 'Room 100, sir,' he said. 'Right at the top of the stairs, sir.'

'Thank you,' I said. I skipped up the dark walnut staircase, two steps at a time, straightening my tie. A pert trim, white-bloused girl in a uniform of black shoes, stockings, skirt and tie was posted outside Room 100. I could hear soft droning noises from inside. They'd started without me, drat it. I supposed it couldn't have been helped. The girl peered at my tag. 'Oh, yes, Professor Turner,' she whispered. She ran her finger down a list and ticked it. She passed a bulky, sealed HMSO envelope to me. 'Would you please sit right in the back, sir?' she whispered.

'The back?' I asked quietly. I'd have thought the lead author would have been up in the front row, if not actually sitting up front, beside the Minister. 'Are you sure?'

'Yes, sir, the back,' she replied politely. 'That's what the note says on my list, sir,' she added apologetically.

I guessed they'd bring me forward for the questions, more dramatic that way. I nodded at her and slipped into the long, high-ceiling room. About fifty people were in the audience. A few curious faces turned towards me. An idle photographer sparked his camera at me. Arthur turned around in his front row seat and fixed me with a bleak stare. I smiled weakly at him. I thought he should have realised that anyone could be late these days, things as they were.

I looked up to the head of the room. A long table had been placed across the room and Sir Anthony addressed the audience from behind a low podium on the table. To his right sat the Minister, looking totally smug, as usual. To my utter surprise, however, on Sir Anthony's left sat John Hall. He glanced guiltily at me, or so I interpreted it later. I glided to the back of the room and sat on an empty chair.

I slid my thumbnail under the flap of the light brown official envelope and broke the seal. A thin, bright green HMSO paperback slid out into my hand. The glossy cover showed a bright yellow cartoon sun in an eggshell blue sky shining on a twee little cartoon robin. That wouldn't have been my choice of cover, I thought, but fair game. I opened the book hastily and folded back the cover. The spine cracked. The title page read:

Cabinet Office
Advisory Committee on the Environment

The Environment and Global Warming:

No Cause for Alarm

Professor Sir Anthony Bonod FRS
(Chairman, ACOE)
Head Government Scientist

Dr J Hall
Director of Research and Development
British Chemicals and Oils plc

London
Her Majesty's Stationary Office

I blinked my eyes in disbelief and frowned. The title was The Environment and Global Warming: No Cause for Alarm. That hadn't been my title. My title had been Cause for Alarm. Had there been a misprint? Something like that would be no bloody joke at all. Heads would be rolling down there at Her Majesty's Stationary Office, I thought.

I leafed hastily through the book. Where the hell was my name, anyway? About three quarters of my original text was still intact. In this copy, though, anything even slightly alarming had been replaced or dropped. I had carefully documented all the issues with separate pro and con sub-headings. Only the pro topics had been left in but without the header. There was just no message in the book at all now. It was a complete load of twaddle. A bloody capon. No wonder they didn't think there was any cause for alarm. I was totally, absolutely stunned. Even in The City, I'd never seen anything quite as incredibly impudent as this. And these sneaking bastards hadn't said a word to me. Not a fucking peep. I looked up to the head of the room and listened for the first time.

'And so,' throbbed Sir Anthony in an impressive low pitched voice I'd never heard him use before, 'British industry can be seen to have taken an enviable and farsighted lead in reducing industrial pollution levels during the past decade, solely through market driven forces. British research and innovation has demonstrated a track record of world stature. British local and national government have become seen as world leaders in environmental enhancement. British consumers have been market leaders in demanding high value, environmentally responsible products while at the same time observing practical conservation within the home. British volunteer groups have sparked the world's conscience on wildlife conservation matters. We have much in the environmental field of which to be justifiably proud.' He whipped off his glasses and made a jaunty wave with them. 'And so, ladies and gentlemen, the committee can only applaud the outstanding record of all sectors of the British economy in its environmental endeavours. Britain can truly be said to have been seen to have "beaten its derelict waste grounds into pleasant leisure areas".' Even that treacherous old shit could not suppress a sarcastic twitch at that unbelievably fatuous phrase.

Sir Anthony lifted his meaty head and slipped his glasses back on. He smiled benignly at the audience. 'Clamorous alarms have been raised about the supposed deterioration of our climate. There is, however, a distinct lack of clear consensus within the scientific community about unambiguous evidence heralding climactic change,' he rumbled. 'This can only lead our committee to accept and support the widely held and responsible scientific view that the conjunction of weather incidents over the past decade can be explained simply as a series of freak occurrences. Taken by themselves, each of these exceptional incidents, admittedly sensational when taken out of context, remain individually within the established range of normal weather pattern variations and cycles of the past several hundred years. It is quite clear, nevertheless, that it would be only prudent to continue to encourage careful and accurate scientific observation of these phenomena. The committee recommends that private industry should act to further encourage and support the reputable meteorological sciences within UK universities and research establishments.' Oh, great, I thought, private industry should fund it; what else?

Sir Anthony gestured dismissively. 'A great deal has been said over the years about the greenhouse theory. There is simply no evidence of historical correlation between levels of the so-called greenhouse gases and global warming trends. In the extremely unlikely event that there should ever prove to be even the slightest substance to this theory,' he read smoothly, 'Learned scientific opinion appears to be clearly on the side of there being a general climactic improvement as a consequence. The chief beneficiaries of a warmer climate would be British agriculture, the UK holiday industry and the British public in general. As the old saying goes, "It is an ill wind turns none to good". Indeed, our committee can envision significant business opportunities for British firms and research organisations during this period of temperature enhancement and global concern over the environment. We have both outlined these opportunities and have recommended enabling policies for the government to adopt in order to encourage British business to pursue these worldwide opportunities advantageously.'

Sir Anthony frowned seriously. 'We feel, however, that there has been an enormous amount of quite unnecessary public anxiety and upset generated over irresponsible presentation of environmental issues. Quite natural public concern and interest has been artificially stimulated by alarmist and sensationalist reporting within some sectors of the media,' Sir Anthony regarded the reporters coolly over the top of his glasses. 'There is clear evidence, furthermore, that the public is being cold-bloodedly manipulated by propaganda emanating from small groups of self-interested, radical political and environmental hyper-activists. There are even suggestions that some these groups are the witting or unwitting pawns of global terrorism.' Sir Anthony took a sip of water and looked steadily at the Minister. 'It is our recommendation that the Government, in the public interest, take immediate, active and effective steps to control the dissemination of irresponsible, inaccurate or misguided environmental information.' The audience buzzed angrily and my jaw went slack. They were just about going to make it illegal to talk about the weather!

Sir Anthony fixed the audience with a sincere gaze. 'And so, in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, the massive body of carefully collected and documented evidence has led the scientific experts of the Advisory Committee on the Environment to conclude that there simply is no sound scientific evidence to connect rare and random weather incidents with alarmist theories about global warming trends and general climatic deterioration. There simply is no cause for public alarm. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.' Sir Anthony beamed and sat down. I could have sworn that the old bastard smirked at me as he finished.

The Secretary stood and glanced at his watch. 'We have allowed ten minutes for questions before drinks and buffet lunch,' he piped. 'Are there any ... '

I gave no one else the slightest possible chance to ask a question. I bolted up out of my chair. 'This report is a travesty!' I bellowed furiously. I waved the book dramatically over my head. The reporters rotated eagerly in their seats. Strobe flashes blinded me for a second.

The Minister gasped like a landed carp. The Secretary angrily signalled the PUS, who hurried from the room. Sir Anthony smiled and stood. 'Ladies and gentlemen of the press,' he boomed dryly, 'May I introduce Professor Richard Allen Turner of the University of Cymru.' He emphasised the word "University" and smirked broadly.

I shouted over Sir Anthony's voice. 'Cosmetic conservation measures are not enough! The earth simply cannot continue to take shock after shock after shock without some effect. We are killing our planet.' Reporters scribbled wildly. A sound crew moved forward and a video camera homed in.

'Some of you may well remember Dirty Dick Turner from The City!' cried Sir Anthony. 'The "Oil Stripper Scandal", I believe it was called at the time!' The cameras zoomed away from me and back to Sir Anthony. He sneered, 'Professor Turner obviously thinks this is one of his famous shareholders' meetings. Ho, ho, ho!'

I glared at the old swine and shouted. 'We have plundered our planet, we have slaughtered its species and virtually buried our world in our own waste! If our policies do not change immediately, the earth, as we know it, cannot survive another fifty years! If the earth dies, man will die! Catastrophe is imminent!' I paused for a quick breath and spoke more quietly. 'The weather already is beginning deteriorate, as anyone can see. Sea levels are rising far more rapidly than anyone expected. Action can only be effective on a global scale.'

'Professor Turner may be angry because his evidence to the committee was refuted!' roared Sir Anthony. 'He was torn to shreds by the committee members! They made a fool of him!'

'What the hell are you talking about, you bloody old imbecile?' I shouted furiously. 'Evidence - I wrote most of that stupid report with your name on it. All you did was cut its balls off!' The reporters all grinned and scribbled.

Sir Anthony mimed shock. 'Whatever can you be talking about, Professor?' he asked quietly. 'You were invited to only one meeting. You complained because there was no vegetarian lunch. Don't you remember, Professor? Obviously, you presumed that our invitation meant a great deal more than it did.'

'That won't work, you bloody old toad!' I shouted angrily. 'I've got notes, drafts, letters, everything!' I dramatically ripped the book in two, as best as I could, and flung it on the floor. I faced the press. 'It's all a pack of lies, dammit! It's a stinking whitewash! I can tell you that we're all in very serious trouble. The climate's changing and we don't know what to do about it, not a clue!'

Sir Anthony looked totally unworried. 'All right, Professor, please do calm down,' he said amiably. 'Go ahead, Professor. Come on up here. You are most cordially welcome to present your evidence to the press.' He beckoned me forward with his hands. 'Come on.'

'I haven't got it with me now!' I shouted. 'It's at home, dammit!'

'Oh dear, left it at home, dog ate it, perhaps?' clucked Sir Anthony sympathetically. 'Well, I suppose that you wouldn't have it with you, would you?' Two burly, white shirted guards appeared at the door, followed by the PUS. 'Perhaps you would like to go on home and collect your evidence for us. These men will help you out, Professor.' He gave his most reptilian smile. You could almost hear the scales slithering.

The heavy men stood beside me and grasped my arms firmly. The camera strobing became almost continuous. The men lifted me until my toes just barely contacted the floor and swiftly glided me out of the room. The PUS collected my raincoat and bag.

'We're murdering our earth!' I bawled, a bit wildly now, hysterical really. No wonder, my diaphragm was all jammed up by those two blasted gorillas, making me giddy. 'We're killing ourselves! The government's covering it up!' The camera crew moved right up close. Sir Anthony shot me a thinly veiled look of triumph. The men hustled me through the doorway. The trim girl looked pityingly at me as she closed the doors firmly. The men carried me down the corridor and into a small office. They let me go and stepped out of the office. They closed the door with a firm click.

Panting from anger and excitement, I wiggled the wrinkles out of my jacket and smoothed down my tie. The door opened and a pale hand slid my bag and coat into the room. The door closed firmly again. I sat on the edge of an old bleached blond pine government desktop and straightened my tie. Now I could think of a thousand witty and crushing things to say, if I hadn't lost my rag utterly. I had to admit that the old boy was far from being as toothless old boffin that he looked. His had been a great improvisation. Sir Anthony could have graced any pack of liars.

There was a brisk tap on the door and a nondescript middle aged man in a grey pinstriped suit slipped into the room. He smiled thinly at me and offered his hand solemnly. 'My name is Peters, Professor Turner,' he murmured. 'I'm with the, umm, Home Office.' He was totally grey: grey cotton wool hair, broad grey striped shirt, grey ill-fitting suit and those ghastly grey loafers with the pleats on the tops of the toes. Even his shit was probably grey. In spite of the greyness, he had a really, really intimidating presence. I reluctantly shook his hand. It was like gripping a freshly killed frog across the body. 'Please do be seated, Professor,' he said, indicating a chair. I sat. He pulled up a chair and sat across from me. 'Would you care for a cup of tea?' he asked.

'No, thank you,' I replied sharply. Looking carefully at Peters, I couldn't see how I'd thought he'd been nondescript. He was simply ghastly looking, not a bit nondescript. He was barrel shaped and strangely round-backed. He had a broad sloping forehead and a fleshy nose. Worst of all, the skin on his hands was curiously loose. It swelled and lapped over his watch strap. The overall effect of Peters was that of an alien wearing a human's skin, fitted by an inferior tailor.

'Umm, well, I understand that there was some, ah, difficulty between you and the environmental committee, Professor,' said Peters in a soft rumbling voice.

'There certainly was,' I replied angrily, 'I wrote that book. They took it those ... those bloody swine and perverted it, totally.'

Peters put up his hands. 'Ah well, I'm not really all that interested in the committee's political wrangles, Professor,' he said. 'My area of interest, my speciality, is, umm, internal security.' He scrutinised me over his glasses.

'Oh,' I said. My stomach did a little twitch and double somersault.

'Ah, I'm told that you might be in, umm, possession of some of our Cabinet Office documents, sir,' said Peters in a near whisper.

'Those documents were given to me,' I protested. 'I was a member of the committee. I've got a letter from the Secretary inviting me to the committee. I was asked to write the report by the chairman.'

'Ah, well, sir,' said Peters with a friendly little smile, 'I don't think anyone has alleged that the documents were obtained unlawfully by you, sir.' He shot me a significant glance. 'Yet,' he added with a little pucker of his lips.

'So you want the documents back?' I asked. I knew from the way he'd said "sir" that he'd been, if he wasn't still, a policeman. I smiled at him.

'Umm, yes, sir, that would do nicely,' Peters replied without so much as a glimmer of humour. Perhaps he had passed that one by accident, somehow. 'I suspect that returning the document might very well help avoid a great deal of, umm, trouble for you, in the long run, Professor.'

'And what if I refuse?' I demanded, rather stroppily.

Peters looked surprised that I might ask such a silly question. 'Oh, umm,' Peters grunted softly, 'Well, I don't really think that would be very sensible at all, Professor. Not at all sensible, sir.' He took off his glasses and polished them briskly with the end of his tie.

'Why the hell not?' I demanded.

'Ah well, first of all, sir, Cabinet Office committees are covered by the, umm, Official Secrets Act, as you know,' he breathed. 'More recently, the Prevention of Terrorism Act. There could be a great deal of bother, sir. Ah, possibly even criminal prosecution, actually.' He rolled his big brown cow eyes toward me. 'Umm, a very dim view is taken about information leaks these days, sir, you must be aware. A very dim view indeed.'

I sat there glumly for a minute. 'I didn't sign anything,' I said, 'No Secrets Act, no contract, nothing.'

Peters cocked an eyebrow at me. 'Umm, are you absolutely sure that all your expense claims are square, Professor? Totally squeaky clean, sir? Got all your receipts for the last seven years, sir? No funny business with your income tax, sir? Your dog never fouls the footpath, sir?' he asked heavily.

'Of course, dammit!' I shouted, unclear myself for a second whether I meant "Of course not" or "it's a fair cop". I cleared my throat. 'My affairs are completely in order,' I stated, as firmly as possible.

Peters ghosted a sly smile. 'You would be entirely likely to say that, sir.' He slipped his glasses back on and thumbed open a manila portfolio. 'Now, it just so happens, Professor,' he said, 'That I have a, umm, warrant here to search your home and business premises, if I should need it.' He held up an official looking piece of paper. 'That sort of thing, umm, uniformed police crashing all over your place and all that, sir, might be awfully unpleasant for your family and colleagues. It would be terribly embarrassing all the way around, don't you think, sir?'

'Yes,' I said quietly, 'I suppose that it would.' My shoulders sagged.

'Anyway, those documents won't really do you any good at all, Professor,' Peters said brightly.

'Why's that?' I asked.

'The media wouldn't touch them with a bargepole, sir. Couldn't; we've been D-Noticing all this unpleasantness about the weather for a good long while,' Peters said brightly. 'No real point in the public getting all worked up and upset for nothing, is there now, sir? It's in everyone's interest.'

I knew they had me in a corner, the bastards. Trapped rats don't always bite. 'All right, dammit,' I snapped glumly. 'I'll send you the bloody papers when I get back home.'

'Well, actually, Professor,' said Peters, 'I've got a car ready to take us to Wales. I'd really like to, umm, collect those documents myself, right away. Save you having to post them and all that sort of bother.'

'You mean you want to snoop through all my stuff,' I snapped.

'Oh, I really think it's probably very much in your own, umm, best interests, Professor, that I make sure that everything's been returned to us as soon as possible,' Peters agreed smoothly. He stood. 'Now, if you'd like to collect your things, sir, we can set off right away. I'd guess it's going to take us quite a while to get there in this wind. And do you think I could trouble you for your pass, sir?' he asked politely.

2007-02-17T01:52:00.000Z

Chapter 6

Lizzie pressed up against me and rubbed her fluffy pink bed socks against my calf. 'Ratty want to tell Mummy what the cruel bad boys did to poor old Ratty-ums at school today?' she coaxed.

'No,' I snapped. 'I don't want to tell you.' I turned my back to her and inched away.

'Why not?' asked Lizzie with faintly hurt surprise. 'Was it as bad as all that?' She snuggled up against my back.

'It was worse,' I growled. 'It was totally fucking humiliating. I was set up and made a fool of. I lost my rag totally. In public.'

'Oh come on, Ratty-pie,' cajoled Lizzie, 'It couldn't have been any worse than that dreadful oil mess you were involved in.' She pulled me over on my back and put her hands on my chest.

'They didn't slap a D-Notice on that one, worse luck,' I replied sharply.

'A D-Notice?' asked Lizzie. 'You mean one of those security thingies they used to use all the time during the Cold War to keep the newspapers shut up about things everyone else in the world knew about?'

'Yeah, the very same,' I said, 'But now it's a security clampdown on ecological information. They called me everything but an ecological terrorist, dammit.'

'So is that what that creepy grey man was poking all over the house for?' Lizzie asked with a surprised laugh.

'That's right,' I replied. 'He was making sure I didn't have any Government papers about COCE stashed away.'

'You can't be serious,' said Lizzie with a muffled giggle.

'It's not so funny,' I rasped. 'You didn't have to spend all day with a bloody, ugly copper in tow.'

'I can't help it, Ratty,' giggled Lizzie, 'I keep on seeing that horrid little man going through my knickers drawer, looking for state secrets. Thank God they were clean. The knickers, I mean. I'm sure the state secrets are as filthy as they ever are.'

'Well, he was serious enough, I can tell you,' I said, completely failing to see the humour of it.

Lizzie convulsed with giggles. 'You mean,' she gasped, 'We're not even allowed to talk about the weather now?'

'Ha, bloody, ha,' I said gruffly. 'That's exactly what I thought when I heard COCE's recommendations. But you won't think it's so funny if I end up in the slammer.'

Lizzie tried to stop herself laughing. 'Oh, you've got to be kidding, Ratty, aren't you? You can be so dramatic.' She wiped her eyes with the corner of the sheet.

'No, I'm not kidding, goddammit,' I grated. 'It's no bloody joke, Lizzie.'

Lizzie propped herself up on her elbows and looked at me in the dim light. 'You're not kidding, are you, Dick?' she asked.

'No, I'm not kidding, Lizzie,' I replied. 'That's what I keep on telling you. Those bastards even threatened, in the very nicest possible way, to put me away if talked about it. I'm one hundred percent serious.'

'So what the hell's going on then?' Lizzie asked, suddenly frightened. 'What are they trying to hide, Dick? Is it about this wind? Is that what it's about?'

'That's only a part of it, I suspect,' I replied gloomily. 'The wind may only be a symptom.'

'What do you mean it's only a symptom?' Lizzie asked.

'Well, you know everyone used to talk about a global three degree increase in temperature and a two foot rise in sea level within the next hundred years?' I asked.

'That's what I've always read,' replied Lizzie. 'You don't think that's right, Dick?'

'From things that I heard in COCE, I think we could possibly see that amount of change in ten years,' I said, 'Maybe faster.'

'Oh, my God,' she said. 'How serious is that?'

'Well, it's not all that serious, if the rises just stop there,' I said. 'Naturally, it'll disturb weather patterns quite a bit. But if temperatures and sea level keep on rising at that rate, we'll start to be in really big trouble in just twenty or thirty years. I mean total Disasterville. That's London and most of the Thames Valley drowned for a start. Just get yourself a good topo map and see what a few meters does to the coastline of much of Britain.'

'But twenty years should be enough time to get ourselves ready for it,' said Lizzie. 'There's enough time to study the problems and maybe even reverse the effects. It's enough time at least to get people settled away from the areas that could be flooded.'

'Yeah, if anyone knows what's happening,' I said. 'But that's exactly what the Government seems to be trying to stop.'

'Why should they do that?' she asked.

'I don't know,' I replied. 'That's worrying me, too. I guess maybe they really want to believe it's another silly scare. They hope that it'll all just go away. They don't want a public panic, unemployment, inflation or an economic downturn. Spouting disaster's not exactly going to be a big vote-getter, is it?'

'God, Dick,' said Lizzie, 'Who the hell's going to care about the sodding rate of inflation if the country's being slowly drowned?'

'Maybe you'd better get on down to London and have a little chat with Herself, Lizzie,' I said sarcastically.

'Now don't get nasty with me, Dick,' she replied. 'I know you've had a bad day, but there's no point in taking it out on me.'

'Yeah, OK, sorry, love,' I said. 'There's not a hell of a lot anyone can do. I mean, look what happened to me and I was well placed to be able to do something.'

'But what on earth did you put in your report, Dick?' asked Lizzie. 'Was it really panicky or something?'

'All I wrote was that there appeared to be some serious indications that the rate of global warming and sea level rise appeared to be considerably greater than had been predicted in the late 1990s,' I quoted. 'I pointed out that the consequences of global warming were so potentially dangerous, especially for an island nation, that the slightest possibility of its happening required urgent large scale scientific study and serious government contingency planning.'

'That sounds pretty low key to me,' agreed Lizzie.

'Yeah, well that's not how they saw it,' I said. 'Instead they wrote a moronic song of praise for all sectors of the British economy and said that because the scientists couldn't agree on what was happening, if anything, then nothing serious could possibly be happening.'

'But, Dick, any fool can see that the weather's changing,' said Lizzie earnestly. 'All these storms and floods. We haven't had a normal winter for twenty years. Or a normal summer, if it comes to it.'

'Nonsense, my girl!' I fluted in my best Sir Anthony imitation. 'Mere random weather incidents in a non-significant pattern. I call your attention to the rapid warming trends of the 1920s. I would like to remind you of the hurricanes and widespread flooding in 1953. May I remind you, madam, of the Glasgow and Sheffield gales; the Fastnet disaster? Serious weather incidents, indeed, but precursors to absolutely no trend at all. All caused a great deal of bother at the time and all for nothing. Things settled back to normal. There is no cause for alarm, my little woman, simply no cause for alarm at all. Now just cut along back to your shopping, my dear, and don't worry your pretty little head any more.'

'Oh, Dick, that can't be what they're saying,' said Lizzie. 'They can't be that stupid.'

'That's exactly the problem, Lizzie,' I said glumly. 'They're not stupid at all. Grasping, frightened and unprincipled; but never stupid. That's why they're where they're where they are. That's how they stay there. They're for keeping the status quo, even if it's the earth itself they're fighting.'

'Well, maybe they're right then, Ratty,' said Lizzie. 'We haven't had any really big storms for a couple of months now and it's almost winter.' She rubbed her hands across my chest. 'Maybe it's all just a fluke.' She kissed my neck lightly. 'It's been beautiful all day here. Lovely and still.

'Yeah, maybe you're right,' I agreed. 'Maybe I'm just seeing bogey men in the dark.'

'Remember all that silver you bought in 1988 when you were convinced the Russians were just going to walk into Europe unopposed?' said Lizzie. 'You see any Russians in Europe today?'

'Yes, Europe's totally full of Russians,' I said.

'Peaceful, economically-motivated Russians helping enrich the country, not the Mongol Hordes you were blathering on about, not the raping, looting Red Army.'

'They looked pretty fierce at the time,' I replied defensively. 'Selling silver would have been better than peddling your delicious ass on the street to the passing Mongol Hordes. Anyway, we made a lot of money out of that silver.'

'Later,' reminded Lizzie. 'But that wasn't why you bought it, was it?'

'OK, OK,' I agreed. 'So maybe I'm just a bloody panicker, paranoid.' I slipped my hand under Lizzie's night gown.

'Panic doesn't seem to have harmed your libido a great deal,' giggled Lizzie.

'My name's not Dick for nothing, my dear,' I growled playfully, tugging at her gown.

Lizzie froze and tilted her head sideways. 'Shhh,' she hissed. I could hear it too. 'Oh shit,' she hissed. The wind blew up suddenly, with a chugging sound like a heavy locomotive, a panting animal. A sound almost too low in frequency to be heard. The house bumped and shook. The windows whistled thinly and the attic trap thumped out an irregular beat. The gale boomed and clashed around the house. Hail crashed against the window panes and pin-balled down the chimney, rattling off the hearth and spitting across the bedroom floor.

'Spoke a bit too soon there,' I said with glum satisfaction.

'Oh, Christ,' snapped Lizzie. She turned over and inched away from me.

* * *

Betcha thought I was going to get into some really steamy slap and tickle there, didn't you, boy? Well, you can forget all about that kind of stuff. Can't say I find the general atmosphere exactly sexy these days. There's plenty of slap, but not a hell of a lot of tickle going around at present. Some of the really young and stupid girls around here have managed to have babies, not mine you may be sure, and survive, but for a woman of Lizzie's age, and that's not exactly ancient, getting pregnant would probably be suicide.

"You can say that again, Buster," says Lizzie. She says that if the constant thought of a death sentence isn't enough, under a thousand calories a day and a pint of indifferent water isn't exactly oysters and champagne, libido-wise. I'll have to admit that my idea of a good wet dream now is one where I get caught in the rain. Lizzie and I just about manage a friendly cuddle, every now and again, and that's what post-disaster sex is like.

To get back to the story, you can see that we were living in a fool's paradise, even at that late date. Thinking that the sea level and temperature might just rise an inconvenient, but totally predictable, little amount every year. God, we were so linear, so almighty cocky in our feeble knowledge, totally Newtonian. We thought we were the Masters of the World. Well, we turned out to be just a bunch of jumped up monkeys prancing around in the green smear around the middle of the earth. Like mould growing on the skin of an orange. And maybe with about as much effect, one way or the other. We didn't have even ten years as it turned out. Events soon outstripped our ability to comprehend, let alone deal with them. We were just at the beginning of an non-linear curve.

Lizzie says I'm just being glum. Of course I'm glum. Who wouldn't be, dammit? My pet cocoa plant has gone and bloody died on me. Lizzie says it had been dead for months. It was just a dry stick using up water. That's not true, Lizzie, it still had a little green spot on it after its leaves fell off. It wasn't mould, Lizzie, I'm sure it was a tiny, beautiful little bud. Well, whatever it was, it's dead now for sure; I put it outside, it's gone. It may have been the last cocoa plant in the world, for all I know.

2007-02-17T01:51:00.000Z

Chapter 7

The phone bleeped and bleeped. I woke, startled and snatched at the receiver. 'Hello,' I mumbled. Lizzie stirred fitfully and groaned.

A snotty woman's voice whined, 'May I speak to Professor Richard Turner, please?'

'Dick, who the hell is that woman?' demanded Lizzie, sitting bolt upright. She snapped on the bedside light and grabbed at the clock. 'Oh, for Christ's sake!' she snarled, brandishing the clock, 'It's two bloody o'clock in the morning!'.

'Professor Turner, please,' repeated the woman.

'Speaking,' I mumbled. I smiled placatingly at Lizzie.

She jabbed the clock in my face. 'Who is that bimbo, Dick? Doesn't she know it's two o'clock!' She flung off the covers and jumped out of bed. 'I'm going down and getting a drink, damnit! You'd better finish that fucking call with that fucking woman before I'm back, Dick!'

I couldn't help admiring her shapely backside as she jerked her robe belt tightly around her waist. 'Look, Lizzie love, it's work,' I called.

'Piss off, Dick! Fuck work! Fuck your women! Fuck you!' She stormed out of the bedroom. I could hear her stamping down the stairs. I sighed sadly. She'd been very tense lately, maybe early menopause.

'I have Mr Arthur Summers of the Cabinet Office on the line for you, Professor,' the woman said officiously. 'Would you please hold for a moment.'

Arthur, that bloody little shit. What the hell did he want and at this time of night? 'Dick, hello. It's Arthur,' he said quickly. Good thing he did. I'd have hung up if he'd kept me waiting more than a couple of seconds. Plenty of people had hung up on me after the Cabinet Office debacle. A non-person overnight. I might as well have died.

'Arthur who?' I asked querulously. 'That name has a faintly familiar ring. Didn't I once know some PUS of that name? Don't you know it's 2AM, dear boy?'

'Arthur Summers of the Cabinet Office, Dick,' he replied evenly. His Welsh accent came across strongly on the telephone. Cardiff, I guessed. 'I'm sorry to wake you up, but this is important, Dick.'

'Oh, that Arthur,' I replied lightly. 'Yes, well, Arthur, how absolutely delightful to hear from you after such a long time, old boy. Now how long has it been? Years? Centuries? Millennia? And it's important, too, is it, boy-o?'

'It's been somewhat over a year, Dick,' replied Arthur blandly. 'Yes, and it really is important,' he added with rather more heat than one would expect from a Civil Servant.

'Well, goodness me,' I said acid-heartily. 'A whole year now, maybe two. Well, just fancy that. Almost a politician's whole lifetime, wouldn't you say? Maybe a generation of politicians? And how is everyone doing down there at the Cabinet Office?' I asked. 'The Minister? Sir Anthony? Still slithering purposefully up and down the twisted corridors of power? Lackeys still licking?'

Arthur was astoundingly resilient to gibes. 'Actually, Dick,' he said calmly, 'They'd like you to come down to the Offices tomorrow.'

'The return of Attila the Hun?' I cried in amazement. 'The son of Frankenstein's monster? As soon as tomorrow? I'll really have to think about that, yes I will.'

'They want you to co-chair an enhanced environmental committee for the Cabinet,' he continued unfazed. 'It's an executive committee now,' he said, 'Just three people on it.' There wasn't the slightest evidence of embarrassment on Arthur's part. Incredible balls really. This must have been the brand of insensitivity that had once fuelled the mighty British Empire for the benefit of the rich and powerful.

'Well, you know, I'd just love to, Arthur,' I said brightly, 'But I'm desperately afraid that I'm just totally booked up at the moment, especially tomorrow.' I'd hardly had any consultancy work for a year. I'd become a hot potato overnight. A man with no friends, no supplementary income.

'We'd be extremely grateful if you could make it, Dick,' Arthur insisted smoothly.

'Uh, and who exactly is that who would be so extremely grateful, Arthur?' I asked caustically.

'Well, Sir Anthony and the Minister, actually, Dick,' he replied stiffly. His cool was finally beginning to deteriorate ever so slightly.

'And just how grateful would they be, Arthur?' I needled.

'They would be most extremely grateful, Dick. Your contribution will be fully acknowledged at the earliest possible opportunity,' he said wearily.

'Oh, how extremely interesting,' I said with a flat fall. A weighty silence followed.

'Dick, the new Minister now recognises that Sir Anthony might possibly have made a few mistakes with the previous report,' continued Arthur doggedly.

I laughed uproariously into the phone. 'You might bloody well possibly say that, Arthur,' I crowed. 'It's a very interesting way to put it, too!'

'You may rest assured, Dick, that the powers-that-be are now totally aware of what has happened,' said Arthur soothingly. 'Your good name has been completely restored. You are most certainly, totally and utterly vindicated. That's why they would like you to co-chair the committee with Sir Anthony.'

'Oh, yes,' I replied sceptically, 'So does that mean I can have my papers and my pass back from the Security people?'

'Oh, of course, Dick,' replied Arthur, sensing victory, 'I can have them delivered to you any time you'd like.'

'I want to be Head Government Scientist, Arthur,' I demanded spitefully.

There was a brief pause. 'But, Dick,' protested Arthur, 'Sir Anthony is HGS.'

'So kick his flabby fat arse out,' I suggested helpfully.

'I'm afraid we really cannot do that, Dick,' said Arthur flatly.

'Knows where all the bodies are, does he, hey?'

'What about Deputy Head?' offered Arthur, ignoring the question.

'Joint Head,' I countered.

This really seemed to offend Arthur's sensibilities, for some reason. 'There can only be one Head, Dick,' he said sternly. 'I'm afraid not.'

'Didn't you ever see "The Incredible Two Headed Monster"?' I asked. This had been an incredibly B film of my distant and unmourned student-hood. No doubt Arthur had been too busy swotting to have bothered with such gems.

'Deputy is as high as I can go for now, Dick,' Arthur insisted firmly. 'Treasury has authorised a consultancy fee for you, Dick. It is really quite generous, plus expenses and perks, naturally.'

I had been missing their chicken mayonnaise for months, not to mention the prestige, and money, now, too. But I decided to make the rotten little sod squirm a bit more. 'You do make it sound awfully interesting, Arthur, but I'm not really sure I can spare the time,' I murmured vaguely. 'Look, old bean, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll think about it, talk to the wife about it in the morning. You know, chew it over a bit. Then I'll give you a call in a few days and let you know what we've decided.'

'Dick, please,' Arthur insisted urgently. 'This is important. Really very important. It's beginning to look like you might have been right about the environment business. We need you here tomorrow.'

'All I said was that we should keep our eyes and options open,' I reminded. 'That's all.'

'Well, we recognise now that we could be in big trouble, Dick,' said Arthur. 'Very big trouble. It's quite possible that things might be deteriorating badly; sooner than anyone thought. We need you here to help us, now. The Government is going to act on some of your original recommendations, really look into the problems. Work out some serious scenarios. We need you to coordinate the activity.'

I could tell that he wasn't just oiling me up. He was flat scared. 'Tell me something, Arthur,' I said softly.

'Yes, Dick,' he replied warily.

'Have you got kids?' I asked.

'Yes, Dick, I've got two little children,' said Arthur sadly. 'Little more than babies.' He knew what I was getting at. 'Please, Dick, help us.'

'All right, Arthur,' I replied, 'I've got two kids, too. So what time's the meeting?'

* * *

'One of your whores, Dick?' snarled Lizzie.

I was shocked. 'What whores, Lizzie? It was the Cabinet Office.'

Her eyebrow made it half-way to her hairline. 'At 2AM? More likely one of your popsies is knocked up.'

'They're going to double my salary. They need me back. Come on, baby, it's important.'

She ignored that. 'Are you going, Dick?' she demanded.

'Of course, it's important. Really important. They making me Deputy SO.'

Again, she ignored that. 'Oh yes? When are you going?' she demanded.

I was getting a bit pissed off with this. 'I'm going tomorrow, as early as possible.'

Her face was now almost unrecognisable. 'Who's more important, Dick Turner? The Cabinet bloody Office or me?' She slapped my face.

I flinched but didn't raise a hand to protect myself; boys don't hit girls. 'You are, Lizzie, you are.'

She slapped me again. 'Then don't go!' she hissed.

This time I moved sideways to minimise the force of the blow. 'I've got to, Lizzie.'

She moved closer and this time I deflected her hand before it hit me. 'If you do, then don't bother to come back, Mr bloody Professor.'

I let go of her hand. 'Of course I'll be back, love.'

She kicked my ankle.' Well, I won't.' She tried to kick me in the crotch but I fended off the blow with my knee. 'I've thrown away my career for you and wasted the best years of my life for you'

'What do you mean?' She kicked again but missed.

'I'll find someone else, Dick. Someone who's nice to me and your children, someone who cares about me more than anything else.' I was so startled that I couldn't defend myself. This slap landed home hard across my nose. I felt it give and warm blood trickled down into my mouth, filling it with a salty, metallic taste. Then she kneed me good and proper in the crotch. I didn't see her when I left and it was too early to wake the children to say goodbye.

* * *

Yes, Lizzie, that's exactly what happened. You totally over-reacted, love. I know and I'm still very deeply ashamed; sorry to you and the children. I thought we put all that behind us years and years ago. It was a terrible mistake. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. Can't we just forget it? But look, anyway, you took it well enough after you woke up properly, packed my bag early that morning and gave me a great send-off, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

2007-02-17T01:50:00.000Z

Chapter 8

Watching from the window of the train, I could hardly believe my eyes. It was the first time I'd been down to London since the press launch. There hadn't been any real information on the TV or radio. The countryside had a withered, scoured look. It looked dry, like Southern California but without the gardens. The grass was all brown. About every third or fourth big tree was down. And those trees hadn't just fallen over, either. They had been smashed flat, crunch! Like they'd been stepped on by a giant's foot; the brilliant white splintered trunks of the old smashed oaks looked like broken bones sticking out of a compound fracture.

The amount of storm damage on the way into London was really quite upsetting. The old church spire at Apsley lay on the ground, shattered. Even some of the big buildings along the line were heavily damaged. The old Ovaltine factory north of Kings Langley had half of its front and the digital clock knocked down. I think that was the sight that upset me the most. I can't really say why, exactly. Ovaltine gone; funny the way nostalgia can hit you in the strangest places. In the suburbs, about a third of the houses I saw had obvious new repairs to their roofs, missing chimneys or both. Almost all the TV aerials and satellite dishes were bent double, the few that were still there. That was one improvement, all right, but just about the only one.

I was met at Euston by an official driver in a shiny black new Honda. For the first time in years, London wasn't totally choked up with traffic. It was a really eerie. It reminded me of a Christmas Day I'd spent in London about twenty years ago. 'Not much traffic, is there?' I commented to the driver. We were already past University College London and well down Gower Street.

'Certainly not as bad as usual, sir,' he replied. 'This new no-parking scheme for civilians has helped a lot. But I hear that a lot of people just can't get in with cars these days because of the storms. They take the trains or the tube or they just stay home, sir. Lots of the old one-way streets have been opened up to both ways now.'

I glanced out of the side window. I couldn't see any damage. 'I don't see any sign of storms around here,' I commented.

'Hasn't been so bad up here in town, sir,' the driver answered. 'It's worse south London. One of my mates told me that a lot of the small roads down there are still blocked from last week's blow-up.' We crossed Oxford Street. It was thronged with people as usual, I noticed with relief.

'Funny. I didn't hear anything about a storm last week,' I mused.

'Warnings was on the radio, sir,' replied the driver. 'Come to think of it, sir, it wasn't on the BBC. Must've been on the local radio. Guess these storms're getting a bit old hat now, sir. It couldn't have been a real big'un neither if it didn't make the news.' Leicester Square was jammed with traffic. Half the road was blocked by lorries around St Martins. The driver pointed. 'Right old mess over there, sir,' he said, 'Blocked the road for days when that old place fell in last month.' We circled Nelson's Column, still standing, and dived down Whitehall. The driver muttered something into his radio microphone. The car turned in the broad road and stopped outside Number 17. The driver jumped out and held open my door. I thanked him and pushed open the heavy wooden door.

I was met at the door by the efficient-looking girl from the press launch. She must have been waiting for me to arrive. 'Good morning, Professor Turner,' she said nodding to the guards. She handed me a pass, with my photo already on it. 'If just you'll follow me, sir, Mr Summers is waiting for you.' We walked to the small lift and went up to the second floor. I followed her through a labyrinth of narrow corridors. The girl knocked on the door. Arthur's secretary opened it and showed me in.

Arthur stood up behind his desk and smiled. 'Well, I'm awfully glad you could make it today, Dick,' he said. His compact, cosy office faced out on to the Horse Guard parade grounds. 'Please do have a seat, Dick. Can I get you some coffee?' he asked.

'No thank you, Arthur,' I said, 'I had breakfast on the train.'

Arthur glanced nervously at his watch. 'Well, Dick, our meeting begins in about an hour,' he said. 'I have rather a surprise for you before then, Dick.'

'Not one of those already,' I groaned.

'This should be a pleasant surprise, Dick,' he said. 'The PM wants to meet you.'

'Oh,' I said, strangely shocked. The appointment hadn't seemed very real up until now. I still felt as if I might have imagined it.

'It shouldn't be too much of a surprise, Dick,' Arthur said. 'After all you are now her Deputy Head Government Scientist. Of course she will want to meet you. She is very concerned about this issue.'

'Well, yes, I suppose she is,' I said.

'And she is in the building right now, being briefed by the new Minister, our Secretary and Sir Anthony,' Arthur said. 'They'll call us down in a few minutes.' We sat there nervously, not talking. I was reminded of nerve racking job interviews of long ago.

Finally, the phone rang. Arthur snatched it up and said, 'Summers.' A flash of annoyance passed over his face. 'Sorry, Andy,' he said briskly, 'Can't speak right now. Waiting for the master's voice.' He clapped the phone back down. I stood up and looked out onto the Parade Ground, over to the Park. Many of the old trees were gone, of course; it looked a bit bare now.

The phone rang again. Arthur scooped it up. 'Hello,' he said eagerly. 'Yes, right away.' He jumped up. 'Come on, let's go, Dick. We slipped down a little staircase and threaded our way briskly along an intricate maze of corridors to the committee room. I'd have bet he didn't hurry like this very often, not even for the 5.17 from Waterloo.

One of several armed uniformed policemen stopped us outside the room. 'May I see your passes, gentlemen?' he demanded menacingly. He scrutinised them and frisked us carefully. He opened a wooden paneled door and we passed into a small office adjoining the committee room.

Another policeman in plain clothes blocked the committee room door. 'If you gentlemen would be seated, please,' he ordered us.

A secretary inspected me carefully. 'The Prime Minister will see you in one minute, Professor Turner,' he said. Arthur and I sat and waited for about five minutes. I couldn't believe how nervous I was.

Finally, the door opened and the Secretary stepped out. He beckoned me into the committee room. I walked down the long table to where the PM sat. The Minister and Sir Anthony flanked her. She stood and extended her hand. I pressed it briefly. It was cool and dry; leathery, really. 'Professor Turner,' she said briskly, 'How very, very good of you to join us here today.'

She looked a considerable deal older and smaller than I had expected. I guessed her comeback had taken a lot out of her; I'd thought she was dead. 'Thank you, Prime Minister,' I replied. My voice quavered slightly.

She stared sternly at me for a second. 'You know, Professor Turner, the pollution issue is a very, very serious one,' she said heavily. 'I shall always go on believing in and continue to form those policies which will protect our precious environment. Pollution is an issue which affects us all deeply. People deserve a clean and healthy environment. You can just imagine that this is an issue which is causing this country a great deal of concern.'

'Yes, Prime Minister, so I believe,' I replied, my mouth dry.

'It is the desire of this Government to settle discussion about this matter once and for all, Professor Turner,' she continued. 'We are most deeply distressed that concern about the environment appears to be greatly undermining public confidence and sapping national economic growth.' She turned and regarded Sir Anthony coldly. 'What is important is that you and Sir Anthony recommend, with all possible speed, an effective course of action to remedy this problem.' She looked at me expectantly.

I gulped. 'But, Prime Minister ...' I started.

'Yes, Professor?' she asked sharply. The men around her shot worried looks at me. They needn't have worried for her sake.

'P ... P ... rime Minister,' I stammered. She really did have the most exceedingly formidable presence I have ever experienced. 'B ... but there may well prove to be genuine and serious environmental problems, ma'am.'

'I would not exactly put it that way, Professor,' she said in a cutting tone. 'I firmly believe that the general pollution trend is down. However, if that should not prove to be the case, then it is the duty of you and Sir Anthony, as my Head Government Scientists, to propose effective measures to counter these problems.' She paused and glared almost ferociously at me.

It was quite clear that there was to be no further discussion of the matter. 'Well, y ... uh ... yes, of course, Prime Minister,' I stuttered eagerly. I gave a deep, involuntary bow and backed away. My hands were quivering, honest; I was sweating.

'I shall look forward to your early recommendations, Professor,' she said and smiled frostily at me. I hadn't felt so extraordinarily put down by anyone since Mrs Giles in Second Form had caught me picking my nose during the afternoon story.

What more can I tell you? We were all herded away from the Presence and taken straight down to the canteen. After a couple of glasses of well-chilled Liebfraumilch, I was feeling sufficiently rearranged to wax peevish about the luncheon provisions.

'I was really looking forward to that chicken mayonnaise again, Arthur,' I growled accusingly.

'Well, we had to stop having it after that last outbreak of H5M7,' replied Arthur placidly. He helped himself to a thick slice of ham. 'I'm just waiting for scrapie to hit pork,' he said gloomily. 'Mad pig disease is all we need.'

'Well, at least we've still got the rum babas,' said Sir Anthony consolingly. 'And they really are uncommonly good. Anyway, Dick, as you heard from the PM herself, we've got to get cracking on this Son of COCE.'

'You don't happen to remember "The Incredible Two Headed Monster, do you"?' I asked through a mouthful of salmon.

'Oh, why yes, of course I do, Dick. I do indeed,' replied Sir Anthony enthusiastically. He heaped his plate high with salad and cold meats. 'An absolute classic of schlock. Enormous great peaceful Latino chappie, a gardener, I think. With a psychopathic criminal's head grafted on by mad medic. Terrorises the California countryside. Ends up being blown away by the police or something like that. Circa 1970, as best I remember.' He regarded me craftily over his glasses. 'You wouldn't, by any chance, be alluding to you, me and the executive committee, would you, Dick?'

I told you that Sir Anthony was as subtle as all hell, didn't I. A crossword master? 'Umm, well, yes. Something like that, actually,' I murmured.

'Oh honestly, Dick, there's simply no point crying over spilt milk,' Sir Anthony said boldly. 'We're together on this one, for better or for worse, so we'd better make the best of it.'

I supposed he was right. I'm sure, too, that the evil head must have used a similar argument on the good one in that film. 'Umm,' I replied. I pushed my empty plate aside and deftly slid two lovely sticky rum babas onto a side plate. Sir Anthony eyed the remaining two cakes and hurried up eating his savories. 'What was the PM telling you this morning?' I asked to distract him. I wolfed down the first rum baba. He'd been right about at least one thing, it was delicious.

Arthur absent-mindedly took one of the two remaining rum babas. Sir Anthony's face set with grim determination. He gobbled even faster. 'Basically, she wants the problem to go away, Dick,' Sir Anthony said blandly. 'She wants us to make it go away with a minimum amount of fuss. This is not the sort of problem that the PM finds interesting.'

I finished my second rum baba and coolly lifted the last one on to my plate. Sir Anthony's blubbery chin fell with disappointment. Revenge was sweet, I thought as I cut the baba in two. 'Well what if there really is a problem?' I asked blandly.

'You mean like the end of the world?' asked Sir Anthony. He eyed the halves of my rum baba glumly, jowls drooping.

'Well, yes,' I said. 'Let's just try that one on for starters.' I wasn't about to give him one of them.

'Well, then,' he said, 'I guess we'll just have to convince the PM that there really is a problem with the environment and that it is seriously threatening the nation.'

'Do you think we can do that?' I asked. I pushed at one of the halves.

'No,' replied Sir Arthur curtly, 'I don't really think so. It's not the sort of problem she could ever really accept.'

'Oh, great,' I said rolling my eyes. 'So what do we do then?' My fork dropped its guard.

'I don't really know,' said Sir Anthony. He reached across the table with his fork, speared one of my rum baba halves and popped it straight into his mouth. 'I suppose we'll just have to find some way around her or something like that.' Then he speared the other.

2007-02-17T01:49:00.000Z

Chapter 9

The train barrelled through an indistinct and speed-blurred countryside. The railroad car swayed drunkenly from side to side. The racket of the train was godawful tremendous. I slumped in the last seat of the last carriage, alone. The car hurtled into a long black tunnel and my ears popped excruciatingly. Suddenly, the carriage door behind me banged open. There was hoarse coughing and hesitant, heavy footsteps clumped up the aisle. My heart tried to crawl up into my throat. A flabby hand grabbed my arm and I heard frantic screams. I woke with a start.

'Wake up, Dick!' screamed Lizzie. 'Wake up, you bastard!' She hammered my arm with her fist. 'Wake up!'

'Huh? Huh?' I woofed, sitting up groggily in bed, 'What ... what the hell is it, Liz?' I could hardly hear her for the roaring and whistling of wind through the room. Dawn was coming up and there was just enough light to see dark outlines.

'Oh, my God, Dick!' she shrieked. 'I think the bloody roof's gone!' Her hand went to her cheek and her mouth dropped open. She sort of jumped up and down, hysterically, on the spot.

* * *
Yes, you did too, Lizzie. Up and down, up and down. I know you were worried about the kids. So was I. It's not that I don't care, you've simply got to keep your rag in an emergency - you can fall apart afterwards.

* * *

'The kids, Dick!' she screamed. 'Oh dear Christ, Dick! Get the kids! Right now, Dick! Get them, get them, get them!'

At that moment, the kids piled into the room, shouting and bawling. 'Mom! Dad! What's happened?' They jumped into our bed.

Lizzie threw her arms around them and pulled the covers around them. 'It's all right darlings,' she cooed in their ears. 'It's all right. Something's just come off the roof, babies, that's all.' She glared at me and cried frantically. 'Well, don't just lie there, Dick. Do something! Do something!'

'Oh, bloody hell,' I murmured through clenched teeth. I suppose you wanted me to put the roof back on right then and there. Superman to the rescue, ta-dah!

* * *

Most unreasonable, honestly, Lizzie. Yes, you were. That's exactly how it was.

* * *

I groped around for the bedside light switch. The light was dead. Power must be cut, I thought. I jumped out of bed, bollocks bouncing, and slipped quickly into my shirt and trousers. I threw my robe on top of them. Best argument I ever heard for wearing some clothes in bed and I've certainly done so ever since. I stuffed my bare feet into my shoes.

I rummaged through a drawer for my little torch and turned it on. I pointed it at the corner of the room. A heavy wooden beam poked through the plaster and lath ceiling. Wind whistled and roared through the jagged hole around the beam. A steady trickle of rubble dribbled into the room. 'Oh shit,' I whispered. 'Lizzie, look!', I shouted. I shone the torch on the beam. 'Under the bed! Quick! I shouted. 'The ceiling could go any second!' She pulled the sheet around herself and rolled off the bed. She had to kick the junk out from under it to make room.

I pulled Bobby from the bed and pushed him wiggling under it while Lizzie pulled him. 'Dad,' he shouted, giggling. 'What are you doing?' He tried to get up. I slapped his face, hard, and pushed him back.

'Stay there!' I bellowed. I pulled the gently blubbering Cathy out of the bed and shoved her under it, too. First time I'd seen her without a sneer on her face for years, poor little lamb. I bent down and shone the torch at their white, frightened faces. 'I'm going to check what else has happened!' I shouted. 'You guys stay put under here unless absolutely necessary. Got that?' They nodded solemnly at me.

I shuffled carefully though the dark upstairs, playing the torch on the walls and ceilings. The house literally quivered with each buffeting of the wind. I heard more bits and pieces give way in the attic and splatter on the ceilings. The wind blew harder and harder until I was sure it just couldn't blow any harder. I thought the house would be blown inside out. I knew how the little pigs felt now. I flattened myself against the staircase wall until the clattering stopped. Then I continued my check through the upstairs. Fortunately, none of the other rooms appeared to be damaged.

I shuffled back to the bedroom. 'OK, you lot,' I shouted. 'Get up quick and get to Kathy's room. There's no damage there and it's away from the side the wind's hitting.' They crawled cautiously to their feet. 'Come on, come on!' I shouted. 'Hop it!' I filled my arms with blankets and followed them into Cathy's room. 'Listen, I think you'd better get under the bed again for now,' I told them. I rolled the blankets out for them. Cathy didn't need to be told twice to get under the bed.

'Aw, Dad,' complained Bobby. 'This is baby stuff. MegaRobot doesn't hide under beds, ever.'

Lizzie snapped at him, 'Do what your father says, Robert!'

'All right, all right,' he muttered and slipped under the bed.

I gave Lizzie a little kiss and squeeze. 'I'm just going downstairs now to turn off the electricity, lovey. There could be some exposed wires in the attic. I'll be back in a few minutes,' I said.

'Oh, for God's sake, Dick, be careful,' she said urgently.

'Don't worry, love,' I replied, 'I'll be all right.' I padded carefully down the dark stairs. It sounded as if the wind had calmed down slightly. At least there was no more crashing from the attic. I felt my way into the utility room and threw the main circuit breakers. The wind was definitely calming down now. It probably was only hitting fifty or sixty miles per hour. I pulled the utility door open and peeped out cautiously. There were only a few tiles fallen into that side of the yard.

I stepped out and moved quickly away from the house in case any more tiles decided to fall off on that side, the wind snapping my robe viciously. Curiously enough, the sky was cloudless. There was a lot of dust in the air, though. Sunrise is red, the sailors are dead, I thought. A couple of the big old pines were down in the north field. They'd fallen away from the garage, fortunately. I crabbed down the drive with the warm dry wind almost knocking me over. I turned and looked back at the house. One of the chimneys was completely gone and two others were half down. About a quarter of the roof had peeled away, exposing the dark wooden ribs of the house. It was going to be a tiresome couple of weeks for us, I thought, but very happy ones for the builders. I could hear them sucking their teeth already.

* * *

Big deal, huh? But that was just the start of the real storms. Pretty frightening, though, that first time. We got very well used to sleeping under beds before too long, I can tell you. And then in the cellar when it got worse. Fortunately, it was a pretty sturdy old house, although it couldn't last forever under these conditions, of course. Its cellar was its real prize, in the end. You didn't often see cellars like that in Britain, either. It was a real honey: four big rooms and a bunch of little ones. Maybe the people who built the house were paranoid, too. Lizzie says the poor servants used to have to live down here. Lucky them, I say. Lizzie says they weren't lucky. It would've been damp down here then. They'd have all had TB and arthritis. Not damp now, I reply, worse luck.

In fact, we're not really undergrounders at all. We're not bunkerers, either. We're kind of in-betweeners. The cellar was dug deep into the side of the hill, with one side opening to the garden. Fortunately, this side's oblique to the wind. I still had to make a kind of a stone and dirt blast wall in front of that exposed wall. I reinforced the cellar roof with beams and rubble from the house, bricked up the windows, put on the strongest door I could find and Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt. "House Beautiful", laughs Lizzie. Too right, my love, I reply. You ought to see the crappy dirt and stone warrens in which those less fortunate than we live. We've got plumbing, walls, floors, furniture and everything here. It's practically a palace. Plumbing's not a great deal of use, though, of course.

* * *

'Oh, thank God, you're back, Dick,' whispered Lizzie loudly. 'Those blasted builders are making the most appalling mess you can imagine up there.'

I rolled my eyes towards the roof. 'As the sparks fly upward, builders make messes,' I said wearily.

'Dick,' scolded Lizzie, 'Those stupid little men have been rambling around up there for three weeks. All they seem to do is slurp down endless cups of tea, three sugars. "Brewing up, love?"', she mocked. She stamped her foot with anger. 'They're tracking dust storms absolutely all over the place and knocking over everything in their path that isn't screwed down. It's simply frightful. I'm fed up with them. I want you to go up and tell them to be a bit more careful, Dick.'

'Oh, er, that'd likely be more trouble than it's worth, missus,' I rumbled in imitation of their boss. 'This here's real craftsman's work like, do you see missus? Not that cheap factory stuff.' I waved my hands spastically, smiled like a jackass and nodded my head jerkily. 'Now to tell you the truth, we're under very difficult conditions we are up here like, missus. We've been just that rushed off our feet. Now you can't expect these lads here, and very good lads they are too, missus, to do a good job like and to be clean, as well. Do you see that, missus? It's just not reasonable like. Anyway, missus, I think we've just about found your problem.'

'Oh, bloody hell, Dick!' she snapped angrily. 'Cut the jokes. Do something! Now!'

'Now calm down, love,' I said. 'I'll clean up after them when they've gone tonight. We really do need to get that roof patched up before the wind starts up again and takes it all off. We're lucky to have even got them up here at all and they're only charging us half the earth.'

'And where the devil did you slope off to, anyway?' scolded Lizzie. 'It's just like you to disappear when I need you most.'

'Now that's not really very fair, Lizzie,' I protested. 'I've been down to the cash and carry.'

'Oh for God's sake, Dick,' she cried, 'You're always thinking of your bloody stomach!' Well, there's a certain amount of truth in that statement, I'll have to admit it. Did I ever tell you about the time I ate eight bread and butter puddings in one sitting? Or the breakfast buffet where I ate seventeen Danish pastries? Lizzie says she doesn't want to hear those stupid old stories again. And anyway you spent the rest of the day on the bog, both times, too. Sorry, Lizzie. Maybe some other time, dear reader.

'Yeah,' I replied brightly. 'I bought a dozen gross of tinned baked beans. Great, huh? I got inside by flashing the University letterhead at the manager. I spun him a yarn that Geology was a new department of Student Union Catering.'

'You what and how many?' she asked incredulously.

'I just bought one thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight tins of Heinz baked beans,' I replied proudly. 'Fifteen and a half ounce size. It only came to,' I checked the receipt, '£345.60,' I said. 'You should see the Land Rover. It's fairly staggering from the weight.

'Richard, I'm fairly staggering from your stupidity,' gasped Lizzie. 'Have you gone entirely out of your teeny-tiny mind at last, you ass? What the hell do you think you're going to do with over a ton of bloody baked beans, you silly fool? Fart yourself to death?'

'Oh, I'll just pop them away in the barn, pet, in case we need them some time,' I replied cheerfully. 'They won't get in the way out there. Never know when those old supply ships may give us a miss. We could live for years on those beans. I mean, if we don't need them, we can always give them to the kids as wedding presents.'

Wedding presents, hell. I bet you could buy every farmer's wife in the valley, with their oldest daughters thrown in to boot, for a case of those beans. What Lizzie didn't know at the time was that I'd got another couple of load of beans ordered up, too, plus about three tons of other iron rations. So I popped a couple of thousand quid on grub. Once the end set in, of course, you couldn't pick up that kind of stuff for love nor money nor a serious house in Chelsea. You'll have to admit it was a pretty sound stroke. Yes, Lizzie, I know that I forgot the loo paper. Nobody can remember everything all the time. So we have to wipe our bums with sand? I don't really think I could bring myself to use that lovely paper now, anyway. Could you?

2007-02-17T01:46:00.000Z

Chapter 10

'In conclusion, gentlemen, our precious ecosystem is drowning in our garbage, toxic waste and pollution. It is still not too late to do something to counteract the black tide of technology and consumerism that is poisoning our world. I must emphasise urgently to you the totally pressing need for a swingeing environmental tax. This tax would be used to pay for environmental cleanup initiatives and to fund further research. It would serve as a form of punishment for destructive companies who commit environmental crimes against the earth. I would like to remind everyone here, too, that we need the earth a good deal more than the earth needs us. Something must be done. An environmental tax is the only way forward.' He face shone with almost religious fervour.

Sir Anthony shook himself out of a harangue induced trance. 'Um, well, thank you very much, Dr Aha,' he grunted. 'Awfully good of you to cycle over here today to give us this frightfully stimulating presentation.' He scratched the side of his head vigorously and glanced at me. 'Uh, any questions, Dick?'

'Well, Dr Germen,' I asked, 'How do you propose that this environmental tax should be assessed?'

'Oh,' Germen replied happily, 'I think, an independent monitoring agency within the Government must be created.'

'Don't you think "independent" and "Government" are oxymoronic?' I asked.

'Moronic, certainly,' gibed Sir Anthony.

Germen smiled thinly. 'The agency would have to have very considerable powers,' he said. 'On the input side, the agency would monitor industry's use of unrecycled raw materials and assess the charge according to the amount of ecological damage caused by the extraction of those materials. Part of this tax should be directed back to the countries of origin for repair of their ecosystems. On the output side, the agency would monitor waste material and thermal and chemical pollution. They could tax directly on the assessed cost of cleaning up. I am positive that this policy would reduce the amount of industrial pollution dramatically and in a very short time.'

'Well, I'm sure that it would,' I agreed blandly. 'We will give your proposal serious consideration. Now, Dr Germen, you stated that enough tropical forests are being destroyed each year to completely cover the British Isles. May I ask where you obtained these figures on the current rate of world de-forestation?' I asked. I don't really know why I bothered to bait the poor man.

Germen fixed me with his earnest blue eyes. 'Those figures are widely accepted, Professor. Totally,' he said.

'Oh, yes, I've heard them before,' I replied casually. 'I am just trying to find out where they come from.'

'Well, I am sure that they were, uh, derived from timber export figures or some such completely reliable source,' he stated confidently.

'But did you derive those figures yourself, Dr Germen?' I asked blandly.

Germen looked extremely offended. 'They come from a totally reputable source, Professor,' he stated coldly.

'I'm sure they did,' I agreed. 'But from which source exactly?'

'Well, I'm sure I can't really say, off the cuff like this,' Germen said frostily. 'I will certainly look into it.'

'Yes,' I nodded. 'I would certainly appreciate that. Uh, well, those are my questions. Thank you.' Germen shot me a wounded look and collected his papers. Arthur read him the various Riot Acts and showed him the door.

'Oh, God,' sighed Sir Anthony heavily as the door closed. 'You know, Dick, it would almost be a relief to have some raving lunatic jump up on the table and argue the case for dumping raw sewage and nuclear waste in the middle of Hyde Park.'

I have to admit that I was beginning to get a bit tired of zealots, too, by then. All this eco-breast-beating might be fun, but it was really getting us absolutely nowhere we wanted to go. What I really wanted was some hard, irrefutable proof. I knew there was a problem, but I didn't have the facts. These people didn't have the facts, any more than I did. They seemed to be seriously confusing an admirable desire for personal asceticism with concerns about protecting the environment. 'They all mean well, Tony,' I said.

'I'm a really very delicately balanced ecosystem, too,' complained Sir Anthony. 'And I think I am going to shrivel up if I hear even one more plant-devouring do-gooder explain patiently how a butterfly farting in the Amazon can cause hail and thunderstorms in Kensington.

I snorted, stretched back in my chair and cracked my knuckles. 'Speaking of breaking wind, Tony,' I remarked, 'I saw an absolutely breakthrough study some while back about bovine methane emissions.'

'Indeed?' he murmured politely.

'Seems that cows let off about a billion pounds of methane each year,' I said.

'Good God, that's it!' cried Sir Anthony dramatically. He stood and planted his knuckles on the table. 'Something must be done immediately, Dick! We must inform the Prime Minister, at once. Farting cows are cause of all the world's problems. Arthur!' he shouted, 'Where's the Red Phone?' He collapsed, roaring with laughter, into his chair. 'Ho, ho, ho!' he bellowed.

That got a few laughs. 'But look, Tony,' I asked, 'Aren't you a bit worried?'

'Bloody worried, old boy, not half,' he replied solemnly. 'The FT100 Index was down 43 points by mid-morning.'

'Seriously, Tony,' I insisted, 'Aren't you the least bit worried by all these storms and droughts we've been having over the last twenty-odd years?'

Sir Anthony had one of his rare totally sober moments. 'Well, of course, I am, my boy. Worried sick. I'm not a complete buffoon, you know.' He shifted his belly nervously with his hands. 'The problem is that we don't know if all these things mean anything or not, dammit. We had those Met chappies in again and they wouldn't take a definite stand on it, would they? So, as scientists, how can we?'

'But surely, Tony, serious climate deterioration is much too big a problem to gamble the lives of five billion people on?' I asked. 'What harm would it do if we pull back on consumption of fossil fuels? If we insulate our houses better? If our cars use less petrol. If industries belch out less gas and heat? If we recycle everything?'

'Can anyone tell us with certainty what good will it do?' Sir Anthony asked wearily. 'What genuinely hard proof have we got? I'll tell you what we've got, Dick: absolutely none.'

'But cutting back on consumption and pollution certainly can't do any harm, can it?' I asked.

'Oh, it certainly won't, Dick.' He slapped his belly and grinned. 'And the Government will be simply delighted to toddle off to an irate electorate and tell them, "Stop the economy, we want to get off! The Government will be just overjoyed to go tell the Americans to get off their flabby backsides and walk around for a change. They'll be absolutely thrilled to tell China, India, the Third World and Eastern Europe that, after fifty-odd years of living the good life, we fat cats have decided it might possibly be very bad for our poor old earth if they have a little nibble of la dolce vita, too.'

'All right, Tony,' I said, 'I guess I can see your point. So why are we bothering to listen to all these concerned environmentalists? They haven't got any hard facts either.'

'No,' agreed Sir Anthony, 'But they want to tell someone important in the Government how worried they are about everything. And that's us, Dick.'

'In that case, what we're doing's just a waste of time then, Tony,' I protested.

'It's not a waste of time, Dick,' said Sir Anthony patiently. 'Most assuredly not a waste of time. It keeps trouble makers and us off the street. Anyway, who knows? Maybe one of them might even have the information we're looking for.'

'This isn't a time for cheap cynicism, Tony,' I snapped.

'I paid a very high price for my cynicism, my boy, you may be sure of that,' he replied glibly. 'And there's always a time for it, too.'

'So, chaps,' interrupted Arthur, trying to keep us on the straight and narrow as usual. 'Exactly what are we going to tell the new, new Minister this afternoon? He's going to expect to hear something new to pass along to the PM. The Government wants to do something visible. But remember, any proposal must be concrete, yet not cause public alarm.'

'So how about going for more research funding?' I suggested.

'Only if it comes from private industry,' reminded Arthur. 'You know the policy, Dick.

'That's getting to be a bit of a tired old recommendation by now, anyway,' objected Sir Anthony. 'It's certainly not one that's going to fire the Minister's imagination, in any event. Especially since it's not exactly delivering the goods for the Government now, is it?'

'God, you guys don't half creep to the Government,' I sneered.

'That's what we're paid to do, old boy,' replied Sir Anthony blandly.

Arthur looked hurt. 'It's our job to carry out Government policy, Dick,' he said. 'Whether we approve of it or not.'

'Isn't that just another species of "I vas chust following orders"?' I snapped.

'But, Dick,' said Arthur, 'The Government is the elected will of the people.'

'Letting the people give power to other people who spend their lives seeking it sounds totally fucking crazy to me,' I observed. Arthur looked as if he might well burst into tears, so I decided to change the subject. 'Well,' I asked heartily, 'What about this environmental tax thing, then? It seemed to make a good deal of sense to me.'

Sir Anthony rolled his eyes. 'The costs will be absolutely enormous, Dick. They'll just be passed straight on back to the consumer. Can you imagine what that'll do to inflation?' he asked.

'It's being passed on to their bodies now, Tony. Can you imagine what that'll do to their health?' I mocked.

Sir Anthony puffed his soft cheeks out to a remarkable degree, like a frog in mating season. He blew a wet plopping sound. 'Well, I'm telling you, Dick, an environmental tax is a lead balloon from the Government's point of view,' he said dismissively. 'That stale old idea's been kicking around for years and it's still just as half-baked as it was when it was fresh.'

'You're always so bloody negative, Tony,' I said.

'It's my job, Dick,' he replied loftily. 'I'm just like a solicitor. He'd probably rather not defend a red-handed-guilty child murderer, but if he takes the job, it's his duty to defend his client to the best of the abilities for which the client pays.'

I glanced sideways at him. 'I thought it was supposed to be to the best of his abilities, period,' I said.

'Well, I do think "period" is taking things rather a bit far,' countered Sir Anthony.

'Well, have you got any brighter ideas to trot before the Minister than an environmental tax, then?' I asked gloomily. I stared at the bushes being jerked around wildly by the wind.

'Nope,' replied Sir Anthony placidly, folding his hands upon his paunch.

'Sorry, Dick, but no,' said Arthur, wagging his head.

We sat and looked glumly at each other for a few seconds. 'Look,' I said, 'At the very least we could do something to prepare the public better for what to do in a natural disaster. I could have used it when the roof came off my house, I can tell you.'

Sir Anthony looked interested. 'Like civil defense, you mean?'

'Yes, something like that,' I said.

'Hmmm, yes,' Sir Anthony mused. 'Plucky little Britain with its back against the wall, yet again.' He slapped his hand down on the table. 'I like that.' He ripped off his glasses and pointed them at the ceiling. 'England alone against the Hunnish elements!' He intoned dramatically. 'Environmental defence measures, hmmm,' He nodded happily at Arthur. 'Oh, yes. The public might just go for that. Make them feel as if they're doing something. You know, like whitewashing the widows against radiation, crouching under tables with their heads up their bums.'

'Are you sure about this?' asked Arthur dubiously.

'Of course, Arthur, it's a fantastic idea,' he cried enthusiastically. 'Britain always thrives on adversity. It's the good times we really can't handle.'

'Well, I suppose there's some truth in that,' agreed Arthur.

Sir Anthony leaned back in his chair and spread his arms wide. 'Hold it, chaps, hold it. I've got it!' he yelped with delight. 'Look, we'll do this really crass TV advert. Fantastic! Here it is, chaps. Opening scene to this really voluptuous blonde, in a tight little red sweater. Her face is shining with terror.' He tilted back his head and let out a shrill, falsetto shriek. 'Aghhhhhhh! Run for your lives!' he shrilled in a panic-stricken voice. 'Run for your lives! It's the end of the world!' His voice pitched low, 'This advertisement was brought to you by the Friends of the Earth. Ho, ho, ho!' he bellowed.

* * *

I guess it probably doesn't sound all that funny now, but we nearly bust our guts laughing at that. Tony could be really droll, after you got over hating him at first sight. He could be an egregious old toad, of course, but he was full of a bizarre kind of fun, too. I'm pretty sure now that his only reason for shafting me on the Alarm report was to see me jump and make a fool of myself; like a little boy dropping an ice cube down someone's back. Thinking back, he must have been responsible for bringing me back to COCE or at least agreeable to it. Perhaps he was testing my metal a bit, too.

You could discuss the most outrageous topics with Tony by the hour: the bright side of genocide, the psychosexual effects of judicial hanging, the stock market and the like. But never anything personal. I worked with him, on and off for years, but I never had the faintest idea if he was married, if he was gay, if he didn't care or even where he lived, if anywhere. Funny, isn't it?

Oh, yes, Lizzie, we really did act like a bunch of silly schoolboys in the Cabinet Offices sometimes. It was our way of blowing off steam. Even dull old Arthur had his funny little Goon Show routines. It was only the women who were always serious. Painfully po-faced pains in the ass, most of them. Well, you can't really say it was all the fault of silly men pratting and posturing about, Lizzie. After all weren't our two top leaders women? Fat lot of good they did us. Isn't it dear old Mother Earth, not Father Earth, who's shafting us this very minute?

2007-02-17T01:45:00.000Z

Chapter 11

Blue and pink cartoon baby bunnies frolicked, laughing, rolling, in the bright yellow sun. Their wise grey parents watched over them benignly. Suddenly, a passing black cloud blocked out the sun. The parent bunnies stopped and looked up at the sky, worried. Their cute button noses quivered with alarm. A siren wailed thinly. Parent bunnies quickly shooed their baby bunnies down the bunny hole and dived in after them. They slammed their stout little wooden door shut and bolted it firmly. A shaggy, cruel grey wolf peeped over the hedge where, only seconds before, baby bunnies had played. The wolf scowled evilly and growled, 'Bah! Missed again!'.

A jovial, dark suited human with monolithic silver hair appeared standing in a comfortable, book-lined study. 'Civil defense is an important part of our national defense strategy,' she said, smiling. 'In the highly unlikely event of enemy attack or of natural disaster, you will hear this warning sound.' A wailing siren was heard. 'Immediately tune into a national radio or television station and listen for information and instructions.'

The scene cut to a cartoon office. A sombre, lion businessman heard the siren and immediately turned on a radio. 'If you are inside, take cover away from windows.' A zebra businesswoman sidled away from her office windows. 'Do not use lifts. Turn off all gas and electrical appliances.' A serious looking mother cat turned off her cooker. 'Shelter under a sturdy table, desk or bed. Cover your head with your arms.' The mother pig helped smiling piglets crawl under a bed. She cradled their heads with her trotters and smiled lovingly at them.

'If you are outside, move away from buildings, walls, trees and overhead lines.' A timid doe and her fawn scampered away from tall trees and looming electrical power pylons. 'Lie face down in the lowest spot you can find. Cover your head with your arms. Do not get up until danger is past.' Two robust little dog boys lay side-by-side in a ditch with their paws wrapped around the backs of their heads.

'If you are in a car, stop as soon as it is safe to do so.' An elderly badger couple pulled their toy car off the road and rolled into an open field. 'Park your car away from trees, buildings and overhead lines. Turn off the engine and set on the parking brake. Tune into a national radio station and wait for instructions. Stay inside your car.' The granny badger turned on the radio and took out her knitting.

'Be prepared for emergency at all times. Keep a first aid kit and learn how to use it.' A hen with glasses inspected a first aid kit carefully. 'Learn how to turn off the gas, water and electricity in your home. Always keep a torch and a battery powered radio near to hand. Discuss beforehand what you would do in an emergency.' A racoon family sat around their TV set, talking seriously. 'If you have time, prepare your home for emergency.' A ducky mummy smoothed masking tape over the windows of her tidy little sitting room.

The smiling announcer reappeared. 'And in an emergency, always remember. Stay calm. Stay where you are. Immediately tune your radio or television to a national broadcasting station for information and instructions. Follow those instructions carefully. Use your telephones only in the case of extreme emergency. Be prepared ahead of time. And, above all, do not panic.'

The safe bunny family sat snug and cosy next to their bright roaring fire. Baby bunnies played happily with their toys. Father Bunny winked wisely to Mother Bunny over a steaming cup of tea. She gave him a giant, liquid wink in reply. The happy scene faded quickly into a pink haze.

Lizzie snapped off the television set and turned in her chair to face me. 'For Christ's sake, Dick,' she demanded angrily, 'Now just what in the hell was that bloody thing supposed to be about?'

'Well, love,' I replied blandly, 'We're, uh, trying to gradually increase public awareness about emergency procedures. In a low key sort of way, of course.'

'Well, that's just about the most ridiculous thing I think I've ever seen,' sneered Lizzie. 'It's even more brainless than the average soap powder advert. Is this what you've been spending all your time in London for, Dick?'

'Well, the campaign's supposed to be rather low key, Lizzie,' I said.

She goggled. 'Low key? It's totally submerged. Absolute crap.' She gave a big stage wink at me and laughed raucously.

'Look, Lizzie, you don't really want the public frothing at the mouth with fear, do you?' I asked. I really was getting a bit cross with her.

'Fear?' she laughed. 'They'll think that emergency procedures only apply to bunny rabbits in Toy Town, after that stupid old load of cobblers.'

'Well, personally, I thought it was pretty effective, Lizzie,' I huffed. 'It worked for me.'

'Well,' mimicked Lizzie, 'I think you must have thought that little gem up personally, Dick.'

'Well, it so happens that I did, rather, Lizzie,' I huffed. 'So shut up about it. All right?' She might even have been right. The campaign had been pretty sotto voce, even if it had cost a packet. And the Minister had liked it a lot.

'Ohhh, nasty, big wolf,' cooed Lizzie. She clicked her tongue. 'Issums feelings hurt?'

'Look, dammit,' I said sulkily. 'That advert was damn sight better than doing nothing at all.'

'So why don't you put something on that'll mean something to people?' asked Lizzie. 'Stand up and tell them the real score for a change, instead of soft soaping them to death.'

'That's a good deal easier said than done,' I replied.

'Why?' demanded Lizzie. 'Just tell me one good reason, Dick.'

'I'll tell you two good reasons, Lizzie,' I said. I held up a finger. 'One: Prime.' I held up another finger. 'Two: Minister.'

Lizzie flipped up two fingers in a V sign. 'Oh, so She's in the way, as usual,' she sighed. 'So why don't you great big brave brutes just march right up to her boldly and say, "Look here, Madam Prime Minister, the earth is in heap big trouble. Someone has got to do something about it!"?'

I rolled my eyes. 'Crumbs, that's about all you know about the way things get done in the real world,' I said. 'This isn't the PTA or the Commons Room, for Christ's sake,' I added nastily.

Lizzie ignored the jibe. 'Well, why the hell not?' she asked. 'She's just a human being, like everyone else, isn't she? She can't be a lot worse than the Head.'

'If you'd met her you wouldn't be as sure as all that,' I replied. 'She's more of an institution than a human being by now.'

'Oh, Christ, Dick,' she said. 'Here we are with the wind just about blowing down everything in sight. Squashing people left, right and centre. And no one in Whitehall has the guts to tell a mummified little old woman that the voters need to be told more than not to stand under trees when the wind blows? Are you pulling my leg, Dick?'

'Look, Lizzie,' I said, exasperated, 'We've tried, again and again and again. Her flunkies all get in the way of anyone who wants to talk some sense to her. Our only conduit to her is the Minister. God only knows what he tells her.

'So ginger that old puff up a bit more,' suggested Lizzie. 'Wind him up. Get his ancient bowels in an uproar.'

'We've tried everything, Lizzie, but the Minister just doesn't seem to get worked up about anything,' I said helplessly.

'God,' she said with a shrug, 'You call yourselves men? Give me a women any time, they know exactly what to do.' She waggled her tongue suggestively. I was shocked to see her do that, she was normally so prim.

'Lizzie, that advert was a breakthrough, believe me,' I protested.

'A breakthrough in spinelessness,' sneered Lizzie. 'Limp dicks all round, eh, matie?' She slowly crooked her finger and giggled.

'It could happen to anyone'. I got up. 'I'm going to bed, Lizzie,' I snapped. 'Please turn off the lights when you come up.'

* * *

OK, OK. So we were spineless. Yes, we were all spineless. You just don't know what it was like there in Whitehall. It was a jungle.

Gosh, I suppose you're right, Lizzie, our readers probably won't know what a jungle was. Well, a jungle was a sort of hot, wet place where a lot of trees grew. Big trees, very green, full of animals. Very competitive, biologically but very diverse. Anyway, if you got out of place in our jungle, Whitehall, you were out on your arse, quick as a wink. Then you couldn't do anything ever again. Remember what happened to me when I didn't read the signals properly the first time? The amazing thing was that I ever got asked back. At least as long as you were there in that jungle, there was a hope, be it ever so faint, of doing something. If you weren't there, there was no hope of doing anything at all. And you can't say, Lizzie, that it would have all been different if women had been in charge. Women were in charge. So maybe we acted like a pack of old women, too, Lizzie. Do you really think you'd have done any better? Well, I don't think so.

Look, all the politicos, fatuous shits that they were, really wanted was some reasonable proof - they just had to be human. Just some good old solid scientific evidence that the environment really was coming unglued on us and that all the experts agreed on it. Then they probably would have acted. All right, maybe they might have or to some degree at least. I mean they weren't total idiots, contrary to appearances. But we scientists couldn't give them that proof. We just didn't have it. We couldn't even agree among ourselves categorically that there was a problem. And we didn't even have the balls to make up a really good lie to tell them. When the proof came, it was already too late to do anything effective. Maybe we couldn't have done anything effective, anyway. Maybe the PM was right to try to keep it all nice and quiet. Maybe it was best that the flock strolled calmly to slaughter, rather than bolting towards slaughter with their eyes rolling with terror. Maybe, maybe, maybe. And what good would it all have done, dear reader? Would it have made any real difference if they'd known? Oh shit, I don't know. You tell me.

2007-02-17T01:44:00.000Z

Chapter 12

The loudspeakers screeched, 'Britannic Rail regrets to announce that all scheduled services from Euston have been cancelled until further notice. These cancellations have been caused by high winds on the line. Travellers are advised to contact the Rail Information Office for further information.'

So what else is new except the excuse, I thought sarcastically. I took out my mobile and dialled home. The phone rang and was picked up. A violent burst of static sizzled in my ear. I hung up and tried again. This time the phone was busy. I tried again, got the static and gave up. I put my mobile back in my wallet, more worried than before.

A violent blast of wind shot wind-dried garbage high up into the vault of the station roof, drowning the roar of the public address system. The station was almost deserted. Only the usual gang of drunken tramps remained. A shrivelled, bearded hobo in an ancient greeny-black suit with bell-bottom trousers staggered by. 'Pay rises? Bonuses? You stinking sons of bitches!' he shouted. I could have sworn this guy was an exploration manager I had once worked for. He flailed the air wildly with his sherry bottle. 'Get back to work, you fucking bastards.' Very highly regarded at one time, too, as I remembered. He glared aggressively at some offending spectre in the deserted corridor. 'What the fuck are you staring at, Jimmy?' he shrieked. The exploration manager had been Scottish, too. The tramp flung his empty bottle against the wall. It bounced off, unbroken. He screamed incoherent filth. He fell drunkenly against the wall, cursing and slid slowly to the floor, joining the bottle and banging it with his head.

I crossed the wide open floor with an eye for falling glass. I needn't have bothered; all the panes were out long ago. I went down to the underground cab rank. There were perhaps fifty to sixty people waiting patiently in the queue, but no cabs. I saw my usual driver, sitting in the usual black Honda hybrid. I ducked under the barrier and slipped into the car, next to the driver. 'We're going to have to stop meeting like this,' I murmured.

'Pardon, sir?' asked the startled driver.

'Uh, when does the meeting start?' I improvised. My humour is usually inappropriate; salvaging post-humour situations has required some learning.

'I couldn't really say, sir,' said the driver defensively. 'I was only told when to come and pick you up here.'

'Good show,' I said cheerfully. We drove up the ramp into Melton Street. The roads were almost deserted. 'Powerful bit of wind isn't it,' I commented.

'Yes, sir,' replied the driver. 'Just started up about an hour ago. Force twelve warnings on the radio.'

'Twelve?' I asked.

'That's what they said, sir.'

'I was worried that the train would have to stop,' I commented. 'The closer we came to London, the worse it got.'

The car was rocked violently by a blast of wind by Gower Street. A gaudy plastic sign ripped off the front of the hospital and crashed on to the deserted pavement. The wind skidded the sign right out into the road. The driver glanced nervously at me, his mouth working. He steered skillfully around the sign. Newspapers blasted past us at impossible speeds. Thick dust made it difficult to see more than about fifty feet. We worked our way slowly down Gower Street, making slow progress against the headwind. An airborne large green plastic dustbin just glanced off our offside wing.

I shrank back from the windscreen. 'Don't you think we ought to stop?' I asked nervously.

'I think we'd be best to keep on moving along, sir,' the driver replied grimly. Suddenly, he swerved violently and jammed on the brakes. I was thrown hard against the seat belt. A deep horn bellowed and a red, double decker bus flashed in front of us. It careered, out of control, and crashed into a office front, not twenty feet from us. A glittering cloud of glass shards, propelled by the hurricane winds, showered our car. Both of us involuntarily covered our faces with our arms.

'Bloody hell!' shouted the driver.

We looked at each other, white faced. 'Jesus, sir, what do you think we ought to do?' gulped the driver. He jerked up the parking brake and stared at the crashed bus. Ominously, no one could be seen moving inside. If they had any sense, I thought, they'd be cowering under the seats.

'It'd be suicide to get out of the car now,' I said. I looked at car's radio phone and pointed to it. 'Can't you call in with that thing?' I asked.

'Well, sir,' he said doubtfully, 'It's supposed to be used only for emergencies.'

'Well, this certainly looks like an emergency to me,' I snapped.

'I mean it's only really supposed to be used for security emergencies, sir,' explained the driver.

'Go on,' I said. 'Call them.'

'I'm not sure, sir,' he said, licking his lips.

'Look, I'll carry the can if there's any problem about using it for this.'

He shrugged, picked up the microphone and clicked the red send button. 'Uh, hello, Bravo Foxtrot, this is four niner. Over.' he said nervously.

A reply came almost instantly. 'Your code, please, four nine. Over,' crackled the speaker.

'Negative security alert, Bravo Foxtrot,' he said. 'Uh, reporting possible serious civilian accident involving bus at Gower Street and Stephen Street. Over.'

'Ah, roger, four nine. Civilian accident at Stephen Street and Tottenham Court Road. Will inform uniform police. Over.

'Thank you, Bravo Foxtrot. Four niner, over and out,' said the driver. He put the microphone back and let off the hand brake. He moved back out into the road.

We worked our way south and turned west. As we passed Centre Point, I looked out and saw several of the third story windows blown out. A steady stream of papers spiralled up from the hole, like smoke from a fire. I remembered the time I'd seen a naked woman swimming in the pool outside Centre Point at ten o'clock in the morning. She hadn't been at all bad looking, either; I guess exhibitionism may depend largely on having something worth exhibiting. The policemen had rolled up their trousers and waded in, chasing her around the pool. When she splashed them, though, they had turned a nasty and bundled her roughly into the van. All the secretaries had tittered with excitement. There wouldn't be any skinny dipping in the pool or tittering secretaries today. The pool was dry. A grey metal office desk had crashed into it from on high, blown out, cracking the thick concrete.

Charing Cross Road was a total mess. A low brick building had slumped into the road, blocking it. We threaded our way south through Soho instead. Small dunes of broken glass drifted inches deep in many places. Finally, the car pulled up behind the Cabinet Offices, near the back of Downing Street. The driver picked up the microphone and spoke. 'Bravo Foxtrot, this is four niner. Over.'

'Your code, four nine. Over.'

'Code five, Bravo Foxtrot. Over and out.' I looked questioningly at him. 'Just letting them know that you're here now, sir,' he explained. 'They'll open that door there for us in a minute.' He pointed toward a heavy wooden door. After a few seconds, it swung open and an old guard beckoned the driver while another man held it open. The driver came up as close as he could and stopped. Short, almost rhythmic, gusts of wind drummed the car. 'I'd better give you a hand there, sir,' he said. He pushed the door open with difficulty and worked his way around the car. I slung the strap of my bag around my shoulder and gripped it tightly. I kicked open the car door with my foot as the driver pulled on it.

When I stepped out into the wind, the force of it caught me by surprise and I tumbled. Have you ever been knocked off your feet by the wind? It's the damnedest feeling. Your whole body flies forward, but your legs move even faster. It's like someone kicking your legs out from under you sideways. You have a tendency to pull your arms close to your body so that, when you fall, you always seem to fall right on your shoulder. That's what I did anyway. Gravel blown over from the Parade Ground slashed painfully at my exposed ankles and calves. The driver helped me up and I fairly staggered to the doorway and was pulled inside by the guards. It was a mercy when the door was banged closed. Quiet. I leaned against the corridor, drained.

'Bad out there was it, sir?' cackled the old guard.

'Terrible,' I replied. I handed him my pass. 'Absolutely unbelievable. A hurricane, I'm certain.'

'Worse to come still, they say, sir,' whined the guard with grim satisfaction. 'Worse than the storms of last year, sir. Much, much worse.'

'I can believe it,' I replied. I could see he was one of those plucky sort of buggers who are only really cheered up by disaster. I straightened my tie. I brushed my jacket and trousers with the back of my hand.

'Room 117 for you today, sir,' said the guard. 'I'll take you there now, sir.' I followed the man through the building. He knocked at 117 and held the door open for me. I stepped into the small, dark panelled room. It faced out into the courtyard. Even in such a sheltered spot, the bare bushes were being smashed flat by the wind.

'You had us worried, my boy!' boomed Sir Anthony. 'Rough trip?'

'Things turned a bit nasty when they ran out of clean antimacassars in second class,' I joked in stiff upper fashion.

Arthur stood. 'We heard you were involved in some sort of accident, Dick,' he said, real concern in his face. 'Are you all right?'

'The accident just missed us, really,' I replied. 'A bus ran into a building. It would have been insanity to have left the car and tried to help. There was glass blowing everywhere. I asked the driver to radio in the location of the accident.'

'Oh, the only possible thing you could have done, Dick,' agreed Sir Anthony.

'Look, before we get started, Arthur,' I said, 'I'd really like to call home. Would you mind?'

'Of course not, Dick,' said Arthur. He gestured towards the phone at the end of the room. 'Dial nine to get an outside line.'

I dialled my home number three times, with a similar result as before. 'Blast it,' I growled.

Arthur walked over. 'What's the matter, Dick?' he asked.

'Can't get through to home,' I said. I was really getting very anxious.

'I'll tell you what, Dick,' said Arthur. 'I'll get my secretary on to it for you. How would that be?'

'That would be very kind of you, Arthur,' I replied with mild surprise. 'I'd be grateful. Thanks.'

Arthur took the phone and dialled a short code. 'Mary,' he said, 'Would you please do your best to get through to Professor Turner's home number. Transfer the call here to 6117 when you do, thanks.'

Sir Anthony turned to me. 'I've got a, harrump, bit of a surprise for you today. We've had a major change of plan.'

'Oh,' I said with a dying fall to my voice. I always have hated surprises of any kind. Rightly so, too.

'You've heard that heavy flooding is predicted for the South Coast?' asked Sir Anthony.

'On the radio it said minor flooding was expected,' I replied.

'Well, that's a result of the decision to, er, reduce public concern about the weather for a while,' said Arthur.

'Lie, you mean,' I retorted.

'You could put it like that, if you prefer, Dick,' agreed Sir Anthony cheerfully. 'Anyway, unusually high tides are predicted for tomorrow morning. This wretched storm isn't supposed to get any better and its winds are piling heavy waves on top of already very high tides.'

'And?' I asked.

'And so the Met Office thinks the middle of Chesil Beach is likely to be swept away tonight,' said Sir Anthony. 'Weymouth is going to bear the full brunt of the tides in the morning. The Government has decided that the coast cannot be successfully defended there. They're going to let the area go. The population is already being evacuated from the area by the Army and emergency services.'

'What do you mean, "They're going to let the area go"?' I demanded.

'The Government has been advised that long term sea defense in that area is likely to prove technically challenging and economically infeasible,' explained Sir Anthony without expression. 'They're letting the sea have the area.'

'Dick, the Minister has expressly asked us to go down to Weymouth tonight and survey the situation there,' interrupted Arthur.

'But how the hell are we supposed to get down there in this weather?' I asked plaintively. 'And what possible good is our rubbernecking going to do if they've decided to let Weymouth drown anyway?'

'Go, Dick, go,' insisted Arthur, 'Not drown. Please.'

'They want a report from us about it, with implications and recommendations for handling future disasters of this sort,' replied Sir Anthony patiently.

The phone warbled. Arthur leapt from his seat and answered it. 'Oh, good,' he said. He held up the receiver. 'It's for you, Dick.'

I stepped over and took the phone from him. 'Hello,' I said.

'Professor Turner,' said the secretary, 'I have your home number for you. The trunk lines have been down. I've had to use an priority emergency re-routing. I'm afraid that you can only have two minutes of connect time.'

'Thank you,' I said. The line popped loudly.

'Dick? Dick?' came Lizzie's voice. I was suddenly limp with relief. It sounded as if she was speaking down a drain pipe or something, though. 'Are you, burp, there, Dick, Dick, Dick?' she gurgled and echoed. I won't try to duplicate the effect any more.

'Yes, Lizzie love,' I replied softly. 'I was just calling to see if everything's all right there. We've only got a minute to speak.'

'Oh, thank goodness you're all right, Dick,' she cried. 'I was so worried about you. It's such a shocking mess up here. A couple more of our trees are down and I'm pretty sure we've lost some tiles off the garage.'

'Jesus, don't worry about that,' I replied. 'Are you and the kids all right?'

'We're fine. I kept them home this morning, Dick,' she admitted. 'I just couldn't bear to see them go off to school this morning, it was so awful.'

'Good,' I said, 'You did the right thing.' That very good school didn't seem so awfully important after all. 'Look, love,' I said, 'I won't be able to get out of London tonight. We've got to go down to the coast for the Minister. The wind's terrible down here, so I don't think there'll likely be any trains running, anyway, until the storm's over and they've cleaned up the mess.'

'Oh, Ratty, where will you stay?' wailed Lizzie. 'I didn't pack any clothes or anything for you. You don't even have a toothbrush.'

'I know, baby,' I said, 'I'll just have to make do. I can pick up anything I really need at the shops. Look, love, I'm in a meeting right now. I'll call you later, if I can get through. Don't worry about me. Take care of yourself and the kids.' I smacked a quiet little kiss into the mouthpiece.

'Be careful, Ratty baby,' she replied. 'Take care of yourself now. Ratty, don't ... ' The connection was cut and the phone buzzed angrily at me. I set the receiver down carefully and walked back to my place.

* * *

Well, what can I tell you about the trip down to Weymouth that'll mean anything much to you? If you've seen one flood, you've probably seen them all; dirty swirling water creeping inexorably, inch by inch. We spent almost all night in a jolting official car, travelling south to an Army camp near Dorchester. We grabbed a few hours of fitful sleep on hard barracks beds. At dawn, we rode out with the sappers in their heavy, high lorries. We stood silent on Furzy Cliff with the bright morning sun behind us and the wind lashing our faces with mindless fury. Giant, dirty brown waves marched slowly over the town and its surrounding flatlands. A fierce southwesterly blast ripped the frothy tops off the waves and contemptuously spat the spray into our faces. Dry sand sizzled against our heavy boots and overalls. Morose, early morning dog walkers joined us on the cliff to watch. Even their dogs were silent and depressed.

Later that morning we walked respectfully, apologetically among silent, huddled refugees in camps near Broadway. We were told that there had been a fair amount of panic during the evacuation. The soldiers had been compelled to use an unpalatable amount of force to get people moving and to keep them moving. Hundreds of people, mainly the elderly, had simply refused to leave their homes because they didn't know what was happening. Some had been rescued from their roofs. A ragtag flotilla of small, private boats, a la Dunkirk, had joined the official lifeboats and helicopters to save people. An unknown number of people had perished, though. Now, the surviving, late residents of Weymouth seemed placid and orderly, even their children. Curiously, they didn't even look particularly English. They just looked like dirty-faced, shocked refugees from any other place, time or disaster; they had no nationality other than disaster. I wouldn't have been particularly surprised if they'd have broken out in Urdu or Chinese or some other language more normally connected with natural disasters.

The Minister got his report from us, of course. We mainly said that the public needed to know more about what was happening in advance. It was clear that the civil defense authorities had been ineffective. We also thought the Army needed a bit more training in restraint if there were likely to be more scenes of this sort. We never heard anything about our report, one way or the other. I suppose it had been sufficient that the Government's head scientists had been there on the scene. Maybe they didn't like the recommendations, but didn't want to string us up right then. Ministers once moved in pretty mysterious ways. Maybe they lost the bloody report or it blew away. Who knows or cares now?

* * *

Jesus, I just looked at my grapefruit trees. They've got some sort of really nasty looking grey things all over them. Like little flat woodlice or tiny chitons. No, Lizzie, I don't want to take my Triffids for a walk, very funny. Those bugs didn't seem to be doing any harm, but they looked disgusting and they're on my bloody trees and they shouldn't be there, dammit! I scraped every last one of them off with the back of my thumbnail and ate them. Exterminate, exterminate. Lizzie says that was disgusting. She's right too, as usual. They didn't taste nice at all, even though they might well be crustaceans. They'd picked up a strong citrus flavour, the oil that should have protected the little trees. Still, waste not, want not. Little bastards.

2007-02-17T01:41:00.000Z

Chapter 13

'Well, you can bet your boots that them there storms last week didn't do near as much damage to them Archers as it done to us.'

'Aw, Dad, don't be daft. You just didn't follow the instructions they gave us on the radio.'

'I tells you, Eddie, there ain't never no luck, for us Grundys. And that's the truth!'

Lizzie switched off the radio as the well known signature tune started up again. 'That another one of your brainstorms, Dick?' she asked, cattily I thought.

I opened my mouth to reply that it was, actually, but the phone rang in the hall. A hailstorm of footsteps sounded through the house. 'Dad, Dad!' bawled Bobby. 'Phone for you, Dad! Sounds posh, Dad! Daaad!'

I stepped up to the phone, glared at Bobby and tapped my finger on my lip angrily. 'Turner, here,' I said in my smoothest official voice.

'Dick, this is Arthur Summers,' crackled the receiver. 'You've got to get right down to London today. It's urgent.'

I groaned. 'But, Arthur, it's Sunday,' I complained. 'You must know that the roads and trains to London are still blocked from the last storm.'

'Yes, I know all that, Dick,' said Arthur, 'We're sending a helicopter to pick you up.'

'What?' I cried. 'Are you out of your mind, Arthur?'

'Dick, this is absolutely urgent,' said Arthur. 'You've got to come to London, no options. The aircraft's on its way already. It should be reaching you,' there was a brief pause and a hurried conversation in the background, 'In fifteen to twenty minutes. Met says the winds are only 40 to 50 miles per hour in your area at the moment.' Notice; only 40 to 50 miles per hour. That's how easily we got used to the winds. When I was a lad, that would have been a bloody storm. 'Peters says that there's a big field behind your house where it can land.'

That bloody Peters had been a right snoop, all right, or maybe it was the satellites. 'What can I say, Arthur?' I asked.

'Say goodbye to your family, Dick, bring a couple of good suits and be prepared to stay as long as you're needed,' ordered Arthur. 'I'll see you in about two hours.' He hung up without waiting for my reply.

I told Lizzie the news with an apologetic air. It did no good. She packed my bag silently, folding each item carefully and solemnly, then slamming each carefully folded item into the bag. A quarter of an hour later, a bulbous, bright yellow RAF Wessex bounced down on its fat wheels behind our house. Its beacon strobed ice white in the angled tail. My panicked sheep cringed together in the north corner of the dry field, jumping on each other in fear. Bobby was so thrilled by the whole thing that he literally wet himself. Cathy stayed up in her room after gracing me with a curt goodbye. Lizzie, for once, was almost speechless. She clung to me tightly for a minute and then kissed me fiercely. Urgency to leave gripped me suddenly. I ran across the field and clambered into the helicopter. A helmeted crewman pulled me in and efficently strapped me into a seat.

I waved at Lizzie and Bobby through the square door. She put her arm protectively around Bobby and shielded her eyes from the bright sun with her free hand. The crewman pinched his throat microphone and spoke. The engine roar increased suddenly and the craft lurched upwards and swung around. I caught my last glimpse of Lizzie, blowing a kiss, as the crewman rolled the door shut. It was an absolutely terrifying, stomach churning flight south. After about an hour we landed at Brize Norton. The crew and I waited on the windswept tarmac while the helicopter was refuelled. Extensive storm damage was apparent, even on the airfield. We raced straight on into London and, to my surprise, landed on the Horse Guards parade ground just after midday. Even the porters were impressed. They treated me with lavish respect and hurried me into the committee room without their usual delay and mindless chatter.

'Not bad time, Dick,' said Sir Anthony cheerfully. 'Well done.'

'Yeah,' I grunted, dropping my garment carrier behind the door. 'Only problem is that my stomach is still sporting with the sheep back in Wales.'

'We need to get cracking right away, Dick,' said Arthur with unusual directness. 'We've got a presentation on some new information from the Director of the Oceanographic Institute in a few minutes. I believe that this presentation demands our most immediate attention.'

'That sounds serious,' I commented. I wiggled around the chairs and sat on Sir Anthony's right.

'I believe this could be extremely serious,' replied Arthur decisively. 'But we must vet this material very carefully before pushing it on upstairs. We can't afford any more wolf crying. Especially not with what you're about to hear.'

There was a quick rap on the door. A weather-beaten, moustached man, of about Sir Anthony's age, limped briskly into the room. 'Afternoon,' he said.

'Good afternoon, Roger,' replied Sir Anthony. 'I don't believe you know Professor Richard Turner, our Deputy Head Scientist. Roger Hamilton, Director of the Oceanographic Institute.'

I shook Hamilton's proffered hand. 'A pleasure,' I murmured, 'I know your work'.

Hamilton unbuckled his briefcase, pulled out a laptop and connected it to the projector. 'I think I'd better get right down to the point, gentlemen. We received new material from the Americans two days ago and finished processing it last night. We think that the Government should see the results right away.'

He showed a light blue transparency on the projector. It looked like a world bathometric map. 'This is a false colour, sea surface topography map of the earth's oceans. It was made in the early '80s by Seasat, an oceanographical research satellite. Seasat had, for its day, a very accurate radar altimeter. This allowed waves and even the height surface of the earth's oceans to be measured. Until then, ocean topography measurements had never been possible.' He pointed to an area on the map. 'Surprisingly, the height of the surface of the world's oceans was found to vary by as much as 600 feet.'

'I didn't know that,' said Sir Anthony with surprise. 'Are you sure of that?'

Hamilton nodded. 'It's not particularly common knowledge, but it's been verified by other means now.' He showed another slide. 'This is a similar map, made by a later model Seasat, in the early '90s. Even more accurate laser altimetry technology was employed in this satellite. The topographic patterns appear roughly similar. At first glance, that is. Here is a map from the most recent generation equipment, which is an order of magnitude more accurate still.'

He gazed at us. 'One of our research assistants, a remote sensing specialist, recently carried out a complex computer analysis of these three maps. She took into account the differences in altimetry technology, scaling techniques and filtering frequencies used. To make a long story short, she corrected the earlier map and subtracted it from the later ones.' He slid a third film on the projector. 'Basically, the difference shows that there appears to have been a 50 to 100 foot sea level rise over three equatorial mid-ocean abyssal plains. This phenomenon appears to have taken place in just about ten years.'

'So, to what do you attribute this rise, Roger?' demanded Sir Anthony.

'Well, Tony, there's no evidence of sea level fall away from these Bulges, as we call them. On the contrary, there is a general, but all-in-all moderate, coastal increase in mean sea level, as you doubtless know already. This means that the rise cannot be the result of water being pulled away, as it were, from other areas,' replied Hamilton.

'So that means that there must be a lot more water, somehow,' I said. It didn't take a genius to figure that out. 'Do you think it could be the result of ice pack melting?'

'No, we don't think so,' replied Hamilton patiently. 'There obviously must be a considerably greater volume of water overall, but ice melt does not appear to have been sufficient to account for this amount of increase. Certainly not in such a short time, nor is there any way that the water have gone only to these particular tropical localities. Another indication is that there are no signs of general surface salinity decrease which would indicate large-scale dilution by fresh water.'

'So where's all this blasted water coming from then, dammit?' demanded Sir Anthony.

'Well, we're not really sure,' admitted Hamilton. 'We think it could be caused by some kind of temperature or chemically related water volume change at depth. We suppose it could possibly be related to global warming, particularly since the effect seems to be confined to the equatorial regions. After all, in the abyssal plains where depths may reach four miles, as little as one percent increase in water volume could easily result in a sea level rise of over 100 feet. Changes of water volume at great depth also might explain why expansion seems to be taking place only in those particular localities, deep ones. The great depths involved could explain, too, why no one has detected these Bulges during their usual oceanographic survey programmes.'

'I thought water was supposed to be inelastic, Dr Hamilton,' I said inanely. I suddenly realised that I really knew very little about this incredibly common substance, water.

'Well,' he replied patiently, 'Pure water very nearly is inelastic, Professor, but it still expands and contracts with temperature. I don't really think, though, that elasticity has any particular relevance to this change in volume. In any event, sea water is a complex mixture of dissolved gases and minerals. It can exhibit peculiar, almost unpredictable, physical behaviour under certain conditions, especially at great depth, even can form complex gels and aerosols. Frankly, we don't really know as much about sea water as we should. It's quite possible that methane hydrates or hydrates of carbon dioxide could be involved. GOK, god only knows.'

'Theories, smearies, Roger,' bluntly dismissed Sir Anthony. 'What's the bottom line to all this bloody Bulging?' he demanded.

'If the discovery of these Bulges was all I thought there was to it, I wouldn't be up here on a Sunday, Tony,' growled Hamilton. 'I'd be finishing off a classical scientific paper and sloping off down to Nature instead. This could be Nobel Prize stuff, if they gave them for oceanography.'

Hamilton showed another slide. This image was only a complex series of geometrical grids, without colouring. 'This transparency is a hastily processed aggregate of the last several months data from Seasat XXII altimetry,' he said. 'It only shows a spiral swathe of about one quarter of the earth. We persuaded the Americans to release the data to us early and unprocessed so that we could run a check to verify the presence of the Bulges and to see if they were spreading.'

'And?' I asked.

I'm sorry to say that, as far as we can tell, the Bulges do appear to be spreading quite rapidly,' replied Hamilton.

'Oh, Jesus Christ,' I breathed. 'How much?'

'The Bulge which concerns us most immediately is the one originating within the Cape Verde Basin, about 1500 miles west of Dakar. The Cape Verde Bulge is now nearly 500 miles at its widest diameter. It is now approximately 85 feet high. At present, it appears to be spreading by perhaps as much as four or five miles per day.' Hamilton paused. 'This is a rough estimate, but is fairly typical of the speed of water body movements in the oceans, in general.'

'Yes,' prompted Sir Anthony. 'So go on, Roger.'

'Well, we have two scenarios, at present, Tony. The first is that the Bulge is like a mountain, caused by the rapid expansion of a very large, but still relatively localised, body of water. Somewhat like the formation of a giant bubble. Assuming that the epicentre of the Bulge does not rise higher than 100 feet, mean sea level probably will commence rising off the West African coast in somewhat less than two months. It will peak at around 50 feet about a month later.'

'What will that mean to Britain?' I asked nervously.

Hamilton sighed heavily. 'In this scenario, we think that a maximum 10 to 15 foot rise in sea level will occur on the Southern English coast in approximately one and a half years from now.'

'I guess we can just about cope with that,' I said confidently. 'That's about as much as a bad storm at spring tide.' Suddenly remembering Weymouth, I wasn't so sure about coping.

'You haven't heard the second scenario, yet, Professor,' said Hamilton gloomily. 'In this one, the Bulge is a sort of spreading plateau, not a localised bubble,' said Hamilton. 'In this case, the plateau is the result of imperfect thermal conductivity, or whatever the causative agent may be, of oceanic water volume expanding as an entire body. In other words, the volume of the entire ocean is increasing, although at an irregular rate. In this case, Bulge height is not likely to exceed its present 85 feet, but sea level height at the margins is primarily a function of depth. Therefore, Bulge margin height does not diminish appreciably until shallow water is reached.'

'Well, Roger,' urged Sir Anthony, 'What the hell is that supposed to mean to us?'

'Well, spreading rates are similar to the plateau scenario, Tony, except that West Africa is hit by a very rapid and permanent, 75 foot rise in about two months. Practically speaking, there will be a wall of water smacking right into that coast, like a tsunami. There is almost certain to be a massive loss of life in the low lying regions of West Africa.'

'And us?' I asked hollowly.

'Basically, we calculate that the European continental shelf will be hit by a very rapid 40 to 60 foot sea level rise in about one year and a few months,' Hamilton said flatly. 'The continental shelf and our irregular coastline will make it difficult, however, to predict the exact magnitude of sea level changes to Britain.'

'What's your worst guess, then?' I demanded.

'Our very worst guess is that a gigantic swell will pile up in the confines of the English Channel and the Irish Sea,' replied Hamilton grimly. 'That could result in initial surges considerably in excess of 100 feet above present mean sea level.'

'Holy shit,' I breathed. Beads of sweat stood out on Arthur's forehead. Sir Anthony looked as if he was almost dozing.

'That's not all, either,' added Hamilton. 'We expect a pretty heavy weather front to accompany the wall of water, in any event. I guess the weather boys should be able to tell you more about that later.' He paused and looked at us angrily, as though this was somehow our fault.

'Will the water go back?' asked Arthur.

'The waters should recede back to the new sea level after a few weeks, of course,' replied Hamilton.

'And what would that new sea level most likely be, Roger?' asked Sir Anthony.

'Well, that's hard to say exactly,' replied Hamilton. 'It really depends on the nature of the volume changes. I would guess it might be perhaps as much as 50 feet higher than present, maybe more, maybe less.'

'And what about this weather business?' I asked. I kept on thinking about Lizzie and the wind.

'It's impossible to say when, if ever, the weather will return to normal, whatever that might mean,' grunted Hamilton.

'Which of these two Bulge scenarios, mountain or plateau, do you think is the more likely?' asked Arthur in a strangled voice.

'Unfortunately, the most recent data seem to favour the second scenario. Certainly, a great deal more study is indicated and chop-chop, too.' Hamilton switched off the projector light and sat down. His right leg poked out stiffly. 'So that's what I have to say, gentlemen,' he finished.

'Do you have any other proof of this theory than these satellite pictures?' rumbled Sir Anthony.

'Well, Tony, the proof of this little pudding is that we expect St Vincent and the Cape Verde Islands to virtually cease to exist some time within the next,' Hamilton glanced at his wristwatch, 'Eighteen to twenty days, at the present rate of spreading.' His right eye fluttered rapidly. There was silence in the room except for the whirring projector fan and the throbbing wind outside.

And that, gentle reader, is how we heard about the end of our world. Now you probably are going to think that we were totally out of our skulls when I tell you this, but do you know, we argued for two whole days before deciding to take even that much information to the Minister. We were terrified of giving the politicos information that turned out to be wrong or exaggerated.

In the end, we decided that it would be considerably more embarrassing to have the Cape Verde Islands disappear without us having told the Government anything about it beforehand, than for us to warn them and for it not to happen, if you see what I mean. We decided, though, to hold back the information about the Bulge hitting Britain until Cape Verde happened, if it did. A similar logic must have bedeviled the Minister, although he didn't know about Britain, because he sat on the information for ten days before deciding to tell the Prime Minister. Then, of course, absolutely all hell broke loose.

2007-02-17T01:40:00.000Z

Chapter 14

I listened to his puling drivel for nearly 45 seconds before my diplomacy switched to war. 'Well, sir, with all due respect,' I growled at the Minister, 'Ten days warning might just have been adequate to have at least shown we were on the ball scientifically, even if it might not have helped save very many lives.' Arthur and Sir Anthony cringed on either side of me; I felt a foot frantically kicking me under the table. I ignored the pain.

'Don't you dare you speak to me like that, Turner!' the Minister barked. 'I am the Minister, young man! You will treat me with the respect due to this office!'

Flattered as I was to be called "young man", I rose slowly. I placed my knuckles firmly on the glossy walnut table top and slowly tilted my body forward. Being woken up early in the morning does not exactly do wonders for my disposition. A very long time away from home didn't help, either.

'Now you listen to me, you fucking old baboon,' I snarled. 'I don't give a shit who you are and I've got no respect for you or your office. All I know is you're the one who sat on his big fat ass until it was too late. Not us. You're the one who's responsible for maybe fifty thousand people being drowned in their fucking sleep, you senile old fart. So don't try to shove the blame off on us, dammit.' Arthur's pale skin flashed the deadest of dead whites. Sir Anthony inspected the rosy dawn through the window with deep interest and a faint smile scampering upon his ample lips.

The Minister jumped up from his chair, overturning his fancy pen set. His wattles throbbed crimson. 'You can't speak to me like that, Turner! I'll have you thrown out of here on your bright green backside again!' he gibbered. 'And this time, by God, I won't rest until you're hounded right out of this country.' He grabbed for his phone.

Sir Anthony's hand snaked across the highly polished desk and calmly seized the Minister's wrist in a vice-like grip. 'Leave off, Freddy,' he said calmly.

The Minister spluttered, 'What! You, too, Tony?' He angrily tried to shake Sir Anthony's hand loose. He couldn't even budge Sir Anthony's arm. The Minister's bottom lip quivered. 'Let go, Tony, you're hurting me, dammit!' he cried plaintively. 'Let go!'

'You were always like this in school too, Freddy. "He did it, sir"', mocked Sir Anthony. He squeezed the flabby wrist even harder. The Minister paled. 'Now this time you've cocked up good and proper, Freddy. You're going to have to take your caning like a man this time, mate,' he growled. He opened his hand. The Minister jerked his wrist away. 'So sit down, shut up and listen to us.'

The Minister slumped back into his chair and massaged his wrist sulkily. 'All right,' he snapped, 'Let's hear what you've got to say.'

'First thing, I want to know is what do we know about what happened to the islands?' asked Sir Anthony.

'According to British Telecom, all communications to the islands were cut dead at 0148 this morning, our time,' said the Minister. 'They alerted MOD who scrambled a photoreconnaissance mission from Gibraltar about two hours later. It arrived over where Mindelo should be about two hours after that. It couldn't find the town, only some rocks sticking out of the water and a lot of garbage in the water. It took pictures of those and sloped back home. That's all we know.'

'And when she got there, the island was bare, and so the poor doggie had none, had none,' I sang. I was in pretty good voice that morning, too.

'Have you told the PM about our warning yet?' asked Sir Anthony, ignoring me.

'I was going to tell her today, Tony,' said the Minister petulantly. 'I was!'

'You what?' I yelped. 'You mean you haven't told her yet?'

The Minister lifted his nose in my direction. 'I have an appointment with her this morning, Turner, if you must know.'

'Got your plastic pants on yet, mate?' I crowed.

'All right, Dick,' warned Sir Anthony, 'That's enough'. He wasn't pissing around, either, I could see. So I shut up. He turned back towards the Minister. 'Now, Fred,' he said, 'I'm sure you'll appreciate that your news is now, umm, somewhat anti-climatic.'

'Well, dammit, Tony,' whined the Minister, 'You scientific johnnys are always jumping at shadows. How was I to know you just happened to be serious this time? I needed to weigh the evidence carefully before alerting the PM.' He turned a hurt face toward Arthur. 'Besides, you told me we had two weeks.'

Shutting up was impossible, after all. 'Minister, we told you 16 to 18 days, at the current spreading rate,' I hissed with commendable restraint.

'It was still almost a week early,' he accused.

'Listen,' I said slowly through tightly clenched teeth, 'This is an unknown natural phenomenon, not a bloody TV programme schedule. Nobody really knows how fast this thing's moving. Understand?'

'Moving?' gulped the Minister, alarm registering on his bland face. 'You mean it hasn't stopped?' He turned and appealed to Sir Anthony. 'I thought you said that the Cape Verde Islands would have some sort of tidal wave, like Weymouth only much worse, and that would be the end of it, Tony.'

'No, Freddy,' said Sir Anthony, 'That's not what we said. We explained about the Bulge to you. We told you that the Cape Verde Islands would be hit by an 85 foot swell in 16 to 18 days.'

'And you mean this Bulge thing is still moving?' he gasped.

Sir Anthony nodded deeply. 'We estimate that it'll hit the West Africa coast in just over a month.'

'Like a ton of bricks,' I added.

Unexpectedly, the Minister's face brightened. 'Whew,' he breathed. His face became noble. 'Naturally, gentlemen,' he said in a deep, politician's voice, 'This tragedy undoubtedly will cause terrible hardship to the people of West Africa. But they may rest assured that Britain cares deeply about them. Britain will be among the first of the world's nations to come to their aid. To share with them.'

I pursed my lips and shook my head sadly. Perhaps we really did deserve this scourge, I thought. God must have gone back and read the small print in his contract to Noah. Who could blame Him, either? Maybe the planet would be a cleaner place, in every way. 'Not quite, Minister,' I said.

'What do you mean, Turner, "not quite"?' he asked haughtily.

'I mean, that's not quite the end of it, Minister,' I replied. 'Not by a long shot. We'll be sharing a lot more with them this time.'

The Minister looked at Sir Anthony in confusion. 'Oh, what on earth is this fellow talking about now, Tony?' he fretted tiredly. 'That'll be the end of it, of course, won't it?'

Sir Anthony cleared his throat. 'Well, umm, predictions are, Freddy, that this Bulge will hit Spain and Portugal in about eight months, at the present rate of spreading,' he explained.

'Oh, those poor chaps!' cried the Minister, still not getting it.

'And it'll hit Britain about six months later, Minister!' blurted Arthur before the Minister could launch into another "Caring, Sharing Britain" speech.

Do you remember that old photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot in Dallas? You know, the guy who was supposed to have killed Kennedy. Oswald's doubled over in agony and there's a cop in a Stetson and white suit chained to him. Somebody must've forgotten to tell the cop what was going to happen. His face is a classic. The Minister looked just like Oswald's poor copper. To a tee. He even stopped spluttering and spouting rot for a few seconds.

I knew exactly what he was going to say. He said it. 'Are you sure, Tony?' he whiffled. 'Absolutely sure?'

'No, of course not,' I rasped. 'It's all a big joke, Minister. Hah, hah, hah!' I shook a playful finger at him. 'But we're not letting on how we got the Cape Verde Islands to disappear, Minister. That's for us to know and for you to find out. Look,' I said, pulled back my cuff, 'Hey presto, nothing up this sleeve ... '

'Dick, now that's really enough,' snapped Sir Anthony, 'Let's not make things any more awkward than they already are.' I flushed and clamped my mouth shut. He looked at the Minister. 'The PM will find out about the islands, even if it's D-Noticed, won't she?'

The Minister's adam's apple bobbed up and down. 'Oh, yes, of course, she will, Tony,' he agreed. 'She knows everything. Absolutely everything. She probably knows about the islands already from MOD or who knows where.'

'Who knows that we told you about the Bulge last week?' asked Sir Anthony.

'Well, no one, Tony,' said the Minister stiffly. 'It was a confidential matter. My secretary wasn't even there. I took a few notes myself.'

'No one knows?' demanded Sir Anthony. 'No one at all?'

'Well, I might have mentioned it to my wife,' he admitted. 'But she's a jolly discreet old girl, of course. Why do you ask, Tony?'

'Hem,' murmured Sir Anthony. 'Well, look, here's the problem, Freddy. If we admit that we knew what was going to happen, and you didn't tell the PM, then you're going to get the chop and maybe us, too. If say we didn't know what was going to happen, then the PM's going to chop us up and maybe you, too.' He pulled the tuft of woolly hair sticking out of his bald spot. 'I really don't think we can hide it, Fred. It's a bit of a dilemma, rather.'

'Oh, Tony,' the Minister pleaded, 'You're not going to throw me to the wolves, are you?'

'Looks like it, Freddy,' murmured Sir Anthony. He settled back in his chair and gazed sadly at the Minister.

'But, Tony, I got you this job,' he whimpered. 'It's not bloody fair.'

I snapped my fingers. 'Look, I've got this absolutely, totally wigged out idea, chaps!' I cried. All faces swung towards me, eager. 'Let's ... let's tell the truth!' Their faces dropped with disappointment.

'Oh, I say,' lisped the Minister with evident disgust. 'We can't do that.'

'Well, why not?' I demanded.

'Well, well ... it's just not done, Turner,' protested the Minister indignantly. 'It's not right. And nobody'll believe us, for a start.'

Sir Anthony pulled his pointed ear lobes and nodded. 'Hmmm, now that's a pretty canny game, Dick,' he mused admiringly. 'If we tell the truth, emphasising our natural caution, our careful on-going evaluations, of course, and point out the Oceanographic Institute's seriously under-estimated spreading rate, we might just get away with it. Everyone'll spend their time looking for some sort of cover-up which simply doesn't exist. That's not bad, Dick. It's not really bad at all. Very deep.'

'Yeah,' I added heavily, 'Besides, announcing the end of the world might just sort of distract people's attention from finding someone to blame, too, huh?'

Sir Anthony chose to take the comment constructively. 'Yes, of course, it will, Dick,' he said. 'We'll be able to hammer home our West African coast prediction and hint about the longer term, but urgent, implications for Europe. Worst comes to worst, we can lay Britain's risk on them. Minor details are bound to get lost in the shuffle.'

'Sure, minor details like a couple dozen islands, 50,000 lives and some very weak-gutted sods,' I rasped. I was having quite a bit of trouble with myself about our having argued the toss for two days. Of course we never let on to anyone about that.

'Oh, I do wish you wouldn't always be turning holy on us all the time, Dick,' murmured Sir Anthony. 'We made no worse of a mess out of this business than anyone else would have under similar circumstances. Our flayed hides, pegged out to dry in the sun and wind, aren't going to bring those unfortunates back, now are they? And a new crew is bound to make a lot more mistakes than we will, anyway.'

* * *

Amazing, isn't it really? The Bulge had claimed its first victims and was headed merrily in our direction. Our fate was sealed. So there we were, gouging, scraping and blaming away like mad. It was almost exactly like that, too, when they used to drive my sheep into the slaughterhouse vans. Herded off to their deaths, there they were, mounting each other and butting furiously to be head sheep. Well, I guess that's just life, isn't it, really? I shouldn't be so harsh on us, should I?

2007-02-17T01:36:00.000Z

Chapter 15

'What the fuck is he doing here, Tony?' I hissed.

'Shhh, Dick,' whispered Sir Anthony. 'He'll hear you.' He glanced nervously over at the grey suit in the corner of the committee room that was Peters.

'Fat lot I care whether he hears me or not,' I growled. I raised my voice. 'What the hell's that snooping bastard doing here?' I demanded, glaring at Peters. Peters affected not to notice our conversation or my hostility.

'He's been assigned to COCE, Dick, as you very well know,' replied Sir Anthony placidly.

'But what for, exactly?' I demanded. I turned my baleful stare towards him again. 'He's no scientist.'

'Neither is Arthur,' countered Sir Anthony, 'And you have never objected to his presence.'

'Arthur sorts things out for us,' I said. 'He's part of the Cabinet Office. He's been in COCE from the start. What's Peters think he's going to do for us?'

Sir Anthony rolled his eyes in exasperation. 'Oh, please, Richard, don't always be playing the bloody egg.'

'What do you mean?' I asked.

'I mean you know perfectly well what sort of thing Peters sorts out,' replied Sir Anthony sternly.

'Yeah, I know, all right,' I snapped. 'He's a bloody snoop. A fuzz.'

'An MI-fuzz, if you please, Dick,' said Sir Anthony in a low voice. 'And do keep your voice down, old chap.'

Nothing makes me shout like being told to keep my voice down. 'So then tell me bloody why a bloody secret policeman's bloody here on this bloody committee, dammit!' I roared.

With that bellow, Peters couldn't act any longer as if he wasn't hearing at least a few snatches of this conversation. He looked straight at us over the files he'd been riffling through. 'Oh, Jim, old boy,' called Sir Anthony happily, beckoning energetically to Peters. 'Do come over and introduce yourself properly to our Dick.'

Peters ambled over towards us and extended his hand to me. 'Umm, Jim Peters,' he said softly. His blubbery, mobile lips crawled into an ingratiating smirk.

I ignored the loose-fitting, rubbery hand. 'We've already been introduced, Peters,' I drawled snidely. 'Perhaps you've forgotten?' Peters shrugged and dropped his hand. I suppose he could recognise hate at first sight as well as I could.

'Jim's been asked to come along and look after COCE for us,' explained Sir Anthony gaily, 'as our security manager.'

'Oh, yes?' I asked, cocking my head sideways. 'And by who, exactly?'

'Umm, by the Prime Minister, Professor,' said Peters. 'Ah, personally, sir.'

'And what has she done that for?' I snapped.

'Well, the PM is extremely worried over potential information leaks about the Bulges, Dick,' said Sir Anthony.

'At the risk of becoming repetitive, I'll ask again: what for?' I demanded.

'In case there's damage to the national interest, Professor,' explained Peters patiently.

'I suppose you lot think that no one in Britain travels, has the Internet or access to foreign news?' I asked hotly. 'You think they won't hear about it from somewhere else? Somewhere else possibly less "responsible" than we?'

'Oh, you'd be surprised how extremely cooperative world governments have been over this whole unfortunate situation, Professor,' said Peters happily.

'You mean they've all gone and put the screws down on it together?' I asked.

'Umm, yes, I guess you could put it like that, if you want to see it like that, Professor,' murmured Peters.

'So you mean that untold millions of people have drowned or are displace all along the West African coast and nobody knows anything about it at all?' I demanded incredulously.

'Let's just say that governments and the international media are cooperating actively in preventing widespread panic,' murmured Sir Anthony smoothly. 'It really is in no one's interest if that happens, Dick. Panic won't do the slightest bit of good to anyone. Those poor people have no where to run to, anyway.'

'And I suppose that's why I'm not allowed to go home?' I asked.

'I'm afraid that is certainly part of the reason, Professor,' said Peters flatly.

'And that's why an outsized gentleman with large feet follows me where ever I go, I suppose?' I asked.

'Umm, well, frankly, yes, Professor,' confirmed Peters slowly. You could tell he really didn't like admitting the truth about anything, even if it was as obvious as that.

'And why my telephone calls are monitored and my post is opened coming and going?' I continued.

Well, Professor,' said Peters evasively, 'You know, the phones and mail aren't really working all that well for anyone since the last storms.' He paused and looked at me. 'And by the way, Professor, is it possible that this Philip Germen person might have been able to find out about the Bulge somehow?'

I shook my head vigorously. 'Not from here,' I said firmly, 'No way. We only saw him once and that was before we knew about the Bulge.'

'What about Hamilton and his people, Professor?' he asked. 'What about them? How much do they know about it?'

'They only discovered the Bulges. And I only know Roger Hamilton through COCE,' I replied. 'I've never met anyone else from his establishment. You'd have to ask Hamilton that question yourself.'

'You do know Mark Buntrack, Professor,' stated Peters blandly.

'Buntrack, Buntrack,' I murmured. 'Oh yes, he and I were in the same post-graduate department. So what?'

'You and he were good friends once,' stated Peters.

'Why shouldn't we have been?' I asked. I nearly asked Peters for my inside trouser leg measurement but I was afraid he might just happen to know it.

'He works for Hamilton,' said Peters. 'I thought you said you didn't know anyone at the Institute.'

'Oh, for Christ's sake, Peters,' I protested, 'You've been seeing too many of those dreary Colombo films. I didn't even know Mark Buntrack worked at the Institute. It's been ten years since I even saw him last, maybe longer.'

'Hmmm,' grumbled Peters. He shot a funny look at Sir Anthony and shuffled back to root through his files again.

Sir Anthony leaned towards me: hot dog breath. 'Look, Dick, old boy, Arthur and I are in exactly the same boat as you are, you know. Admittedly we have different large, flat footed gentlemen following us around,' he said with a friendly smile.

'Well, I had noticed that I've been seeing a lot of you two lately,' I said with heavy sarcasm. 'I mean it's not that I'm not exceedingly fond of you, Tony, but being locked up in a Whitehall flat with you and Arthur for a month isn't exactly the same calibre experience as a weekend of bliss in Brighton with Miss Boat Show's sister.'

'Well, really, Dick,' placated Sir Anthony, 'We have been awfully busy with our briefing groups and advanced planning committees, anyway. It would hardly have done for you to have been nipping back home every weekend to your loved ones, even if it were physically possible with all these storms and whatnot.'

'Look, Tony, I've got a job at the University, too, you know,' I said plaintively. I knew the University was likely to cease to exist in a year, but I was going to try absolutely everything I had on him.

'Now that's all been squared away, Dick, as you very well know,' explained Sir Anthony patiently. 'They know that you're doing extremely important work for the Government. They're getting paid for it. You're getting paid for it. You've even been formally seconded to the Cabinet Office for the duration.'

'The duration of what?' I asked, 'The rest of the 21st century?'

An amused twitch crossed Sir Anthony's face. 'The duration of the work you're doing for us, Dick,' he evaded adroitly.

'I'm losing an absolute bundle on missed consultancy work,' I complained glumly.

'That is and will continue to be all be made up to you, Dick,' soothed Sir Anthony. In fact,' he said, laying a finger along his ample nose, 'I think that some species of official gratitude could very well be shown to you any day now.'

'I'm beginning to think that official gratitude could jolly well get stuffed,' I huffed.

'Dick, Dick,' chided Sir Anthony. 'Whatever am I going to do with you?'

'Let me go home for a few days,' I said quickly. 'This is destroying my marriage. My children hardly remember me.'

'No,' he said firmly.

'Please, Tony.'

'No, Dick. Absolutely not.'

Finally, I decided to try a bit of honesty as a shock tactic. 'Tony, things aren't going well with my wife and me. I want to get things squared away at home before the Flood hits us.'

'We all do, my boy,' replied Sir Anthony softly. 'But we just can't take a chance with anyone, Dick. Not you, not Arthur, not even me.'

'For God's sake, Tony, I'm absolutely worried sick to death about my wife and kids,' I begged.

'You know that your family will be taken care of when the time comes,' Sir Anthony stated. 'You're doing far more for them here than you could do for them there.'

'But, Tony, I don't like what we're doing,' I whined.

'You know that what we're doing makes sense, Dick,' he replied.

I shook my head and blinked back real tears. 'I know that, Tony, but it's absolutely fucking monstrous,' I said. 'It really is.'

'Dick, it's the only sensible course of action,' said Sir Anthony soothingly. 'The only option.'

I looked him straight in the eye. 'Tony, look. We're likely to go down into history as the biggest mass murderers of all time, if there is any history after this is finished. I mean Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan are going to look like The Three Stooges beside us.'

'We've been through this a hundred times, Dick,' sighed Sir Anthony. 'It's the only thing that can be done. And, anyway, it was your line of thought, in the first place.'

'Just because I could think of it, doesn't necessarily mean that I approve of putting it into action,' I retorted.

'I can appreciate that, Dick,' replied Sir Anthony, 'But you know there really is no alternative. No sensible alternative solution. You know that.' My shoulders slumped. I said nothing. There was nothing to say. He put his head close to mine and whispered, 'And you know, Dick, it really isn't very sensible for you to wind Peters up the way you do. He could make an awful lot of trouble for you, if he puts his mind to it.'

'But I don't like him, Tony,' I protested.

Sir Anthony shook his head sadly. 'Personal feelings have no place here in the Cabinet Offices, Dick,' he said piously. 'We all are here pulling towards the same goal.'

'But he's creepy, Tony,' I insisted. 'I don't want to work with him, even for the same goal. Especially this one. If I'm going to be a mass murderer, I want to be among people I like.'

'Be reasonable, Dick. Besides, a man who raises budgerigars as a hobby can't be all bad, can he?' replied Sir Anthony.

'Peters raises budgies? You're making that up? I asked, amused. It seemed unlikely enough to be true.

'I have had it from reliable sources,' replied Sir Anthony firmly.

'The Bird Man of Whitehall,' I joked.

Sir Anthony ignored the joke; he must have been very serious. 'Peters comes to us most highly regarded, too. But nobody's patience is infinite, Dick, except God's - perhaps not even His, considering everything at the moment. So please do remember, my boy, that Peters really can make an terrific amount of trouble for you if you keep on knocking him about the way you've been doing.'

* * *

Well yes, Lizzie, it's exactly what happened, just like that. I suppose I would say this, but I wasn't away in London all that time by choice, lovey. That's what I was doing, really. Planning and evaluating Retreat sites all day long and locked up in the flat of a safe house all night. Yes, that's what we called it, the Retreat. You know, a retreat from the sea. Well, it may sound silly now, but it sounded a hell of a lot more dignified than "Run for Your Life" or "Last Helicopter from Saigon".

No, the Miss Boat Show bit was just a joke, Lizzie. It's just the kind of macho thing men say to each other when they're locked up together without women. Honestly, I was too lonely and depressed to think about that sort of thing at all, dear. No, safe houses did not come with elegant, gorgeous keepers; smelly male policemen just locked us in at night. It was a drag, pure and simple. All I wanted to do was go home and stop having to make up lies for them. I missed you every minute, baby. They just wouldn't let me go, Lizzie. Honest, they wouldn't. Couldn't you have waited?

2007-02-17T01:34:00.000Z

Chapter 16

'Glad you could make it up to London today, Roger,' said Sir Anthony quietly. Like my own, Tony's usual cheerfulness had evaporated over the last few months. Boisterous ho, ho, ho's were few and far between these days.

'Rather a bit of bother getting up here, Tony,' complained Hamilton. 'Practically all the roads were blocked. Usual rubbish blown into them. Think we could get all that sort of thing sorted out by now. We should have had enough practice.'

Sir Anthony smiled thinly at the complaint. 'So what do your weather boys think about the situation now?' he asked.

'They think this and then they think that and finally they think the other again. Sometimes I think they don't think anything at all,' huffed Hamilton. 'Bloody meteorology always was a confidence trick, as far as I'm concerned. Those chaps couldn't find a thunderstorm lying dead off their backsides with both hands, let alone predict general climate change.'

Sir Anthony smiled more firmly at that, but couldn't raise so much as a single "Ho-ho-ho". 'Let me introduce you to Jim Peters, Roger,' he said, 'Jim, Roger Hamilton. Jim's attached to the Cabinet Office. He's helping us with certain planning details for the emergency.' I rolled my eyes and inspected the carpet in minute detail.

Peter's fishy eyes slid over in my direction and met mine on the way back up from the carpet. 'Very pleased to meet you, Dr Hamilton,' he said. He stood and offered his hand. Hamilton shook it briskly.

'We'd like to get your views on several problems today, Dr Hamilton,' said Arthur firmly. After the initial shock, Arthur had seemed to gain confidence and strength over the last few months, even while Tony and I had lost ours.

'Of course,' replied Hamilton, 'How can I help?'

'Please, tell us about the current status of the Cape Verde Bulge, Dr Hamilton,' asked Arthur.

'Well, gentlemen, our best available information is that the feature is still expanding at approximately five miles per day,' replied Hamilton. 'It's currently rolling up along the West African coast. We predict it'll hit the Canary Islands at the beginning of next month. We expect the effect to be much the same as the Cape Verde Islands. More people there, of course, so higher casualties.'

'What about the height?' asked Arthur.

'Bulge height, as far as we can tell, is not increasing appreciably at the centre. There does seem to be some reflection and interference with the African coast.'

'So what's that doing?' asked Sir Anthony.

'Nothing much, really,' he answered. 'It's imposing a plus or minus 10% modulation on the margins of the Bulge; interesting, really.'

'But the plateau theory is still the current runner?' I asked.

'Yes, that is correct,' replied Hamilton. We all looked desolately at one another.

'Any new theories on the origin of the Bulges?' I asked.

'No,' replied Hamilton crossly, 'Because of the weather here, we've been unable to mount any sort of oceanographic research expedition into the area. We really know very little more about the Bulge than we did five months ago. Some of our geology chaps are looking at your tectonic plate buckling theory, but there's nothing to either support or refute it.'

'What about remote sensing data?' I asked.

'The blasted Americans have clamped off our high quality information sources from Seasat,' growled Hamilton. 'They're still giving us images from the area, but they've smoothed most of the relevant features. We're almost blind now. They've somehow managed to penetrate our own satellites and degrade quality very significantly.'

Peters smiled a little; a ghastly sight. 'So much for the special relationship. Don't you have any other sources of information about this feature then, Dr Hamilton?' he asked quickly.

'Well, we have received some indirect chemical data from Woods Hole in America and have examined routine oceanographic survey reports from institutions all over the world,' replied Hamilton. 'It's not much use, frankly. We suspect that most of that's being tampered with, as well as the satellite images.'

'But what about tracking the edges of the Bulge?' asked Sir Anthony. 'How do you know where it is then, Roger?'

'Oh, one of our bright young sparks at the Institute has had a rather ingenious idea. He mathematically combines NOAA polar orbiting weather satellite infrared time series images with Meteosat and GEOS images. This produces a sort of synthetic aperature, side-scanned 3-D image of the sea surface,' explained Hamilton.

I knew roughly what Hamilton was talking about. 'But isn't the resolution of weather satellites fairly crude?' I asked.

'It's not all that bad, actually. The main problem is that geographical location of weather satellite images is imprecise over open ocean areas, even with satnav. Meteorologists depend on coastline features to give location, normally.'

'So how have you managed to get around that?' asked Arthur.

'Well, since we knew where the Bulge was in the first place, from Seasat, it wasn't all that difficult to locate its position from images in the weather satellite archives. That served as our calibration image. I don't think we could confidently have detected the Bulge using this weather satellite technique, but it is sufficient to track height and position once we knew that the signal was there.'

'Well, that's very interesting, Dr Hamilton,' said Peters. 'Do you think other scientific organisation are doing this sort of thing?'

'It's quite possible,' replied Hamilton. 'Weather satellite images are available to anyone with the radio equipment to receive them. Many schools have satellite receivers. Even some hobbyists have them.'

'Is the equipment needed for this highly specialised?' asked Peters, making a note.

'Not particularly,' said Hamilton. 'Schools often make their own weather satellite receivers and aerials. Recording and hard copy output quality usually is low, however; and amateurs normally only receive one satellite at a time.'

'So this technique of yours requires a professional installation, then?' questioned Peters.

'Yes, I suppose that's right,' answered Hamilton. 'We need to receive and record at least three different satellites nearly simultaneously. The computer animation and time-space series matching software are the really difficult bits, though. You'd need some fairly hefty computers and a few very capable programmers to do that.'

'And who exactly is this bright spark that's doing this work for you?' asked Peters.

'He's one of Frank Powell's new lads,' replied Hamilton.

'Do you think you could you let me have his name, please, sir?' asked Peters.

'I can't actually remember the chap's name at the moment, Mr Peters,' replied Hamilton off-handedly.

'Could you telephone us his name as soon as you get back, Dr Hamilton?' persisted Peters.

Hamilton glared at him with annoyance. 'Mr Peters, why are you asking these strange sort of questions? I thought this was supposed to be a scientific committee.'

Sir Anthony coughed loudly. 'Ah, what exactly is the current status of the English Channel modelling project, Roger?'

'Well,' replied Hamilton sulkily, 'The work was going extremely well, but it's been severely set back by the death of one of the key project members'.

'A great loss,' murmured Sir Anthony. He lowered his head.

'Who was that?' I asked.

'Lydia Broakes,' replied Hamilton. 'She was the research assistant who discovered the Bulge. She was setting up the computer simulations for the 3-D modelling project.'

'What happened to her?' I asked. I always had a sort of morbid fascination for hearing details about accidents - not any more, of course.

'She was electrocuted in her bath,' said Hamilton.

'What?' I asked incredulously. 'Electrocuted?'

Hamilton shrugged. 'Apparently, she was taking a bath during a storm. The ceiling collapsed into the bathroom and some wiring fell into the water.'

'Zzzt,' buzzed Peters quietly. Hamilton stared frostily at him. Peters put his head down and scribbled into his notebook.

'So what's happened with the project?' asked Arthur.

'We're trying to get in someone to take her place and get things going again,' replied Hamilton. 'But it's not easy to find someone with her skill and background. Especially at the moment.'

'Since you are recruiting, Dr Hamilton, may I remind you of ... ' said Peters.

'Of the Official Secrets Act, Terrorism, et cetera,' I interrupted. Peters shot me an absolutely filthy look. Obviously, he'd wanted to break the news to Hamilton himself. I'd spoiled his fun. I grinned happily at him; I nearly stuck out my tongue.

'That is correct, sir,' resumed Peters. 'Any replacement staff member will require positive vetting before they can be assigned to the Bulge project.'

'Lydia Broakes wasn't PV'd,' protested Hamilton.

'I did hear that was causing some concern in certain circles,' mentioned Peters casually. 'Inappropriate environmentalist connections.'

'That's rubbish!'

'Well, as I said, that issue is causing some very real concern in certain circles, Dr Hamilton,' insisted Peters.

'That's absolutely ridiculous,' snapped Hamilton. 'And why should it?'

Peter's eyebrows rubbered halfway up his forehead. 'I suppose you are aware that some of your staff are members of the Friends of the Earth, the WWF and similar environmental activist groups?'

Hamilton looked down his nose at Peters. 'That wouldn't surprise me very much,' he replied.

'Oh, really, Dr Hamilton?' asked Peters, raising his eyebrows.

'It's only natural that scientists should take a responsible interest in what's happening to our earth,' said Hamilton.

Peters eyes become hooded. 'Ah, would you say, then, that you are, umm, personally sympathetic to the aims of certain environmental activist groups, Dr Hamilton?' he asked.

'I don't really see how anyone could not be, Mr Peters,' replied Hamilton stiffly. 'We're about to pay a terrible reckoning for our abuse of this planet. It's a pity that the people in power didn't think about the consequences of our greed many, many years earlier.'

Peters' eyes slitted. 'Dr Hamilton, are you or have you ever been a member of an environmental group?'

Hamilton's mouth set and he stood. 'Well, I think I've made just about as much contribution to this committee as I care to make, gentlemen. Please excuse me. Good day.'

'Dr Hamilton, please,' I said urgently, 'We need your advice badly.'

'I'll see myself out, thank you,' he said, ignoring me. He slid his papers under his arm, turned and marched out of the room. Sir Anthony and Peters looked at one another. Arthur lifted his telephone. Sir Anthony shook his head and Arthur set it down again.

I stood. 'Excuse me, I need to have a pee.' I left the room without waiting for their reply and hurried after Hamilton. I caught up with him in the corridor. I took hold of his sleeve. 'Please hold on, Roger,' I said. 'Wait a minute.'

Hamilton stopped and glowered at me. 'Oh no, you just hold on, Turner,' he growled. 'I'm not having anything more to do with you and your blasted Thought Police.'

'What do you mean?' I asked.

'The Government, and your committee is one of its tools, are doing their dead level best to make sure that the Bulge is kept as quiet as possible. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if permanently quiet is what they have in mind, too.'

'Look, Roger, what are you talking about?' I stammered.

'What I'm talking about, Turner, is that people like Lydia Broakes don't take baths in the middle of storms. Anyway, there were no storms the night she was supposed to have died.'

'You've got to be joking,' I gasped.

'That would be a joke in exceedingly poor taste, indeed, Turner,' replied Hamilton. 'And I suggest that you watch the obituary pages in Nature, Professor. There seems to be some very serious disease going around among earth scientists.'

'You're saying that the Government is killing people to suppress knowledge about the Bulge?' I whispered incredulously.

'I'm not saying anything more to your committee and I'm not saying anything more to you, either, Turner,' he snapped. He pulled my hand loose from his sleeve and limped briskly down the hall.

I shrugged and turned back down the corridor. I opened the door to the lavatory. I unzipped my flies and stepped up to the urinal. I unlimbered and aimed at the polished brass plughole.

Suddenly, I was jerked violently away from the urinal and slammed against the wall. Large rubbery hands seized my collar and Peters' angry face pushed up against mine. 'What were you two talking about?' he snarled.

'What ... what the hell are you talking about?' I grunted. I didn't know what to do. I hadn't been handled like this since I was a schoolboy. I was embarrassingly conscious that my penis was poking out of my trousers.

Peters lifted me up against the wall. I didn't think anyone could possibly be that strong. I didn't even try to struggle. He bumped me gently against the wall twice. 'What were you two talking about?' he repeated.

'I just ... I just sort of ran into Hamilton on the way here to the loo,' I said feebly.

Peters banged me harder against the wall. My head bounced off it and I saw bright flashes of light. Up until then, I had thought that "seeing stars" was just a figure of speech. 'Stop it, Peters, stop it,' I protested wildly, 'You can't go around beating up people in the Cabinet Office toilets.'

Peters didn't even bother to reply. He punched me in the stomach. I'm sure it wasn't very hard, but it really was a terrible shock to me. 'Uhhh!' I puffed. Hot tears brimmed in my eyes. I felt like I couldn't breathe for a minute or two.

'Want another?' he growled. 'Tell me what he said.'

* * *

I wish I could tell you, gentle reader, that I kneed that bastard Peters in the groin and left him grovelling on the hard floor, but it didn't happen like that. Yes, sometimes I still dream that I nailed him right there. I can feel that hot, happy adrenalin coursing through my veins, even now. But no, no, I didn't do it. I didn't know how, then. I didn't even try it. Instead, I spilled the beans.

'Hamilton told me that he thought the Government was killing people to shut them up about the Bulge,' I blurted. My God, how I've made myself pay for that shameful moment; over and over and over. Peters smiled, really smiled for once, and let me drop back to the floor. He turned on his heel and stalked out of the lavatory. I looked down. My poor little dicky was still peeping out of my trousers. It had turned dark blue and had shrivelled to about the size of an acorn.

* * *

That night, I was in bed, in my pyjamas, reading a report on my laptop. There was a brisk triple rap and my door was unlocked. Peters poked his ugly head into the room. I couldn't help recoiling after what had happened, but I'd had plenty of time to get angry. 'You call that a knock? Is this a prison? What if there's a fire, how will I get out?' I blustered.

Peters leered at me. 'Evening, Professor. Seeing you with your prick out today and knowing you're missing your wife, my superiors decided to provide you with a little relief for your personal problem. Maybe you're not completely gay, after all.' He tossed a DVD on the bed. 'Sweet dreams,' he said mockingly, stepped out of the room and locked the door.

I picked up the disk. It was unmarked, not even any serial numbers on it. Government issued pornography, I thought; government cuts, no hookers, not even telesex. I popped it in the drive and the computer brought up the video player. There was a yesterday afternoon timestamp for about 15 seconds then the camera zoomed onto a partly undressed couple in a car entwined. There wasn't much definite to see, branches and the pillar were in the way and the light reflecting off the windscreen but I could feel myself rise immediately. The couple dipped down out of sight except for an occasional flash of an arm rising up as clothes were removed. This went on for a few minutes, then nothing could be seen at all. Nice start, I thought, but there's not a lot to see; I began to droop. You could hear blackbirds whistling, but nothing more than the wind rustling and perhaps a little shriek or two. The car began to rock; ah, that's more like it, I thought, beginning to rise again. Then two very shapely legs rose up; one gently bouncing foot slid out the open side window, the other planted itself against the windscreen. After a few minutes the lady's legs stiffened and, as she came, so did I. A moment later what I thought was the man sat up, wiping his mouth with a tissue; it was butch Monique Fairweather, our doctor's wife. The camera panned out. The car was a Land Rover pulled into a field. The camera zoomed onto the licence tag; it was mine, ours.

2007-02-16T23:14:00.000Z

Chapter 17

I screwed a memo into a tight ball and flicked it at the window. Idly, I picked up my phone. I was surprised; it purred a normal dialling tone. They usually had my phone turned off at this time of day. I didn't waste a second. I dialled 9 for an exchange line. I was outside! I quickly punched out my home number. The phone rang five times. I swear that my heart was going pitty-pat! It rang twice more and clicked.

'Hello,' answered Lizzie. She sounded really sad.

'Baby, hi, it's me,' I said happily. I could feel the insides of my eyes pricking.

'But, Ratty!' she cried, laughing. 'This isn't the time you normally call. Where are you?' Are you back?'

'Still in London, worse luck,' I growled. 'The minders must have left my phone on by mistake. I'm going to make the most of it, too.'

'Oh, Dick, when are you coming home?' she asked, sad again. 'Dick, I'm in trouble, I need you home. We need to talk.'

'They won't let me go yet, love,' I said quietly. I didn't ask what she meant.

'But they can't keep you there against your will, Dick,' protested Lizzie. 'I need to see you and I need to see you now.'

'Unfortunately, they can, love,' I said gloomily, 'Official Secrets Act, Emergency Powers Act and all that sort of stuff.'

'Oh, Rattykins, the children miss you so much. You've been down there for months and months and months. We need you here at home with us,' she sighed. 'I've got to talk.'

'Yeah, I miss you guys, too, lovey,' I answered sadly. There was a long pause as we swallowed down our lumps together. 'So what's been happening at home?' I asked.

'Oh, it's been just terrible here, Dick,' replied Lizzie. 'All our trees are down now and the rest of the garage fell in last week. A lot of the house tiles are off again, but I just can't get anyone up to fix them. We moved the beds downstairs after the garage went. Oh and it's so terribly dry too; I've been having to carry buckets of water to your sheep. There's only a few of them that haven't wandered off.'

'Listen, Lizzie, you'd better get yourselves right on down into the cellar,' I said. 'You'll be a lot safer down there.'

'But it's not very comfortable in the cellar, Dick,' she protested. 'It's dusty and it smells.'

'It's not very comfortable with a couple tons of roof, beams and ceiling on top of you, either,' I replied sharply.

'Oh, I'll wait until you get home, Dick,' said Lizzie. 'You've got to come home.'

'Don't wait, lovey, I don't know when they'll let me go,' I insisted. 'There's just no telling how much longer I'll be here. Things seem to be getting worse and worse.'

'You mean it's bad down there, too?' she asked, surprised.

'Oh, God, yes, it's absolutely terrible,' I said. 'Aren't you getting any news in Wales? I can't really tell you what you shouldn't know.'

'Of course, Dick,' she said. 'But there's been nothing on the radio or TV about London having storms. They've even stopped running your dopey rabbit adverts. So London's getting it, too?'

'Christ, yes, there's hardly a tree left standing and most of the buildings have been damaged,' I said. 'A lot of flooding. I really don't know ... '

The receiver crackled, gurgled and burped. I hit the re-dial button, but got only got intermittent popping sounds. I keyed out the full number again; nothing. And then again. I tried three more times; nothing. I slammed the receiver down and gritted my teeth. I pulled out a telephone list of my old earth science mates from my briefcase and dialled the first number. Much to my surprise, the phone rang.

'University College,' sang the switchboard operator.

'Could I have the Geology Department, please?' I asked.

The extension rang and a woman answered, 'Good morning, Geology Department.'

'Good morning,' I replied. 'Could I speak to Bob Wallace, please?'

'Oh, dear,' she said. There was a tense pause. 'I'm afraid not.'

'Well, that's all right, I'll try again later,' I said. 'Could you tell me when he'll be in, please?'

There was another heavy pause. 'Do you think I could ask who's speaking, please?'

This was getting a bit tedious. 'I am Professor Richard Turner of the Cabinet Office,' I said briskly.

That line nearly always wowed them. 'Oh my goodness,' replied the woman with surprise.

'Now, do you think that I could speak with Bob, please?' I said.

'I'm terribly sorry, but Professor Wallace had a heart attack early last week, Professor Turner,' she said.

'Oh good God,' I breathed. 'I had no idea. Is he all right?' I was really bloody surprised. Bob was a good five years younger than I.

'Well, I'm afraid not, sir,' she said. 'It was very severe.' Her voice quivered slightly.

'You mean he's ... ?' Now I was really shocked.

'I'm afraid so, Professor,' her voice caught. 'The funeral was on Monday.'

'Oh, I am terribly sorry,' I said. 'Please excuse me for bothering you. Would you please give Ruth my condolences.' I hung up before the secretary could answer. Jesus. Bob Wallace dead. A heart attack at his age. Great strapping Kiwi brute. Rugger man. "Fit as a bleeding fiddle!" he used to boom at us. Christ, what a shocker. That really made you feel your age. That was a damn sight worse than finding a wad of hair in your brush each morning or your first grey pubic hair.

I jotted a note to myself to write a condolence letter to Ruth. I quickly dialled the next number on the list. It rang right away.

'Good morning, Ipswich University.'

'Hello. Could I speak to Professor Bondell, please.' I said.

'I am sorry, caller, but Professor Bondell is no longer at the University.'

'Oh?' I asked. 'Well, look, ...'

'One moment, caller, I'll connect you with the Personnel Department.' The line clicked and then beeped.

'Personnel Department here.'

'I'd like to speak to Professor Bondell,' I explained. 'Your switchboard say that he's no longer at the University.'

'Could I ask who's calling, please?'

'My name is Professor Turner. I'm with the Cabinet Office,' I said.

'Just one moment, sir, I'll connect you to Mr Foggett, our personnel manager.' More clicks and beeps.

'Foggett speaking.'

'Good morning, my name is Turner. I'm with the Cabinet Office.'

'Oh indeed?' replied Foggett. I was sure there was the hint of a sceptical tone in his voice.

'Yes, that's right. I'd like to get in touch with Professor Bondell. Could you possibly let me have his forwarding address, please?' I asked.

'Well, I'm sorry, but I can't do that, Mr Turner,' said Foggett.

'Professor Turner,' I corrected snottily. 'And this is official business, Mr Foggett.'

'In that case, I'd be glad to oblige. If you'll just pass your request through the normal channels,' he said calmly.

'Look,' I said, 'That will take a lot more time than it's worth. Can't you just tell me where Ralph's gone?'

'Well, actually, we don't know where he's gone,' admitted Foggett. 'I suppose there's no harm in telling you that.'

'What do you mean, you don't know where he's gone?' I demanded.

'Well, Professor Bondell just called the Meteorology Department secretary one morning last month and said he was going abroad indefinitely. He couldn't say when he'd be back or even if he'd be back at all.'

'Well, that's strange ... ' I replied. There was a hollow click and my phone went completely dead. I tapped out a few numbers, but there was nothing: not a snap, crackle or pop. In a way, I was relieved. I think I was afraid of what I might find out if I kept on calling. I slipped the list back into my briefcase and gazed out the window for a moment. The wind was whipping a small dust-storm up and down the road. I picked up the phone and idly tapped a few keys. It was still dead.

There was a perfunctory rap on the door. Peters slid his head into the office. 'Are you going to be coming to the meeting, Professor?' he purred.

'Yes, Peters, I'm coming,' I snapped, 'It's another ten minutes before the gate, anyway.'

He glanced at the phone in my hand and gave me his slimiest lizard smirk. 'I think you'll find that the phones are none too reliable at the moment, Professor,' commented Peters. 'Especially yours, sir.' His loathsome head disappeared and I thought I heard a faint snorting giggle. Sometimes, you'd have to be crazy not to be paranoid.

I slammed the phone back down on the hook. 'Bastards,' I hissed, 'Bastards.' Yeah, OK, so they were messing around with my phone. Stopping it, bugging it, shutting it on and off whenever they liked. Playing with it. Hoping I'd lead them to some fiendish environmental activist plot. Bastards.

There was another rap on the door. Bastards back for more, no doubt. 'All right, dammit, I'm bloody well coming!' I shouted. Arthur peeked through the door, a hurt look on his face. 'Oh, gosh, I'm sorry, Arthur,' I said meekly, 'I thought it was Peters hassling me again about the meeting.'

Arthur grinned. 'Well, I'm afraid that I'm on a similar sort of mission, Dick. I'd like for you to give a quick look-over the minutes.' He slid a typed sheet in front of me. There was a yellow note slip gummed to it. The note said:

Dick,

Don't look surprised or say anything. Your room is sound and video bugged. I need to talk to you. Follow me, please.

Arthur.

'Does that agenda look all right to you, Dick?' he asked.

'Yeah, I guess it looks OK,' I grunted and shrugged.

Arthur glanced at his watch. 'We've got a few minutes before the meeting starts. Fancy a cup of tea?' he asked casually.

'Sure, why not?' I replied. I stood and folded the sheet to conceal the note. I tucked the minutes into my jacket pocket and followed Arthur down the hall.

Arthur stopped beside a tall stained-glass window, facing towards Downing Street. He looked around carefully before he spoke. 'Sorry to have to use such a dramatic device, Dick, but I needed to talk to you privately,' he said in a low voice.

'What's the matter, then?' I asked with concern. This wasn't much like Arthur, sneaking around like this.

'Roger Hamilton's dead,' he blurted. His lips were set in a grim slash.

An icy trickle slid down my back. 'Jesus Christ, how?'

'Heart attack,' said Arthur.

'Awful lot of heart attacks going around these days,' I commented sceptically. 'Practically an epidemic, in fact.'

'So what have you heard, then?' asked Arthur.

'I just managed to call two of my earth science colleagues on my very heavily bugged phone. One of them is dead from a heart attack, the other has disappeared to nowhere on no notice,' I said.

Arthur looked even more grim. 'Well, there's even more, Dick. A good deal more. I heard this morning that Hamilton's wife committed suicide, pills, the day after his fatal heart attack.'

'Crumbs,' I whispered.

'And the Minister's wife died in a car crash three days ago,' he finished.

'Shit,' I hissed. 'Maybe that's not exactly a statistically significant sample, but it looks like a pretty heavy-duty coincidence to me.'

'My thoughts precisely,' replied Arthur. He pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. 'That's not all that's worrying me, either, Dick.'

'No?' I asked.

'You know these evacuation lists?' asked Arthur.

'Of course I do,' I replied.

'Have you looked at them carefully?'

'They're not really my job, Arthur,' I said. 'I thought Tony was handling that.'

'You know that, except for senior government personnel, it's being done totally on the basis of income levels,' he said.

'Well, I suppose income might be a sort of simple minded indicator of merit,' I said, shrugging. Arthur looked sick. 'I mean it's probably better than random selection,' I explained.

'That's bollocks, Dick,' whispered Arthur hotly. 'It's only a simple minded indicator of greed and privilege. There are plenty of people who don't make two hundred thousand a year who are well worth saving!'

'Well, if that's the only threshold that's being applied, then I see your point,' I said. 'So what are we going to do about it?' I asked.

'I don't know, Dick,' admitted Arthur. 'I really don't know. I just know that I don't think I can condone what's going on any longer. That's why I've come to you. I know you're not their tool and that you're normally pretty resourceful.

Yeah, well, it was really very flattering of Arthur to say that, and all, but this non-tool was just about at the end of his famous resources by then. What with working twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for months on end and no conjugal visits, I was just about totally whacked. I was beginning to get the shakes if I even looked at a woman.

So why the hell didn't I just leg it home to the hills and happy family, all resourceful-like? Here's why: coppers on my back, 24 hours a day, and no working transport out of London. Not to mention, of course, the threat of being detained at HM's pleasure, and ending up under very much less salubrious conditions, if I tried on the great escape. Getting away was just not as easy as it sounds, old son. It wasn't just a case of saying "ta-ta" at the door and catching the 1705 to Crewe from Euston. Besides if I scarpered, they'd just come to my house and fetch me back. Or do something very much worse than that. Sure, I was scared. I'm sure that they wanted me to be scared, too.

2007-02-16T23:05:00.000Z

Chapter 18

The TV screen faded to a soft green blur and drifted into salt and pepper fuzz. The video recorder clicked off and the screen went black. 'And that, gentlemen, is Plan Canute!' barked General Cappell. He grasped the lapels of his heavy tweed jacket with obvious pride. 'Any questions?' he asked.

Peters shot me a steely warning. I glared back at him but kept my mouth shut. Sheer cowardice. 'I shouldn't think so, Tom,' preempted Sir Anthony. 'That was a most comprehensive briefing; most enlightening, thank you.'

Arthur twitched nervously and straightened up. 'Ah, excuse me, General,' he said. His right eye fluttered noticeably.

The General glanced nervously at Sir Anthony. Sir Anthony smiled and inclined his head almost imperceptibly in assent. 'Yes?' replied the General.

'Exactly how does the Army intend to keep the population,' Arthur glanced quickly down at his notes, 'Quote, "calm and in situ", unquote, once it is obvious that sea level is rising rapidly?'

'I think the film explained that perfectly well, Arthur,' interrupted Sir Anthony.

Arthur raised his chin. 'What if the "psychological pacification" techniques mentioned in the video prove to be inadequate?' he asked softly.

'Barriers currently are being erected, Mr Summers, at constriction points within the low ground. These are designed to impede population flow and migration into the restricted areas,' replied the General. 'Strategically placed bridges, tunnels, flyovers and motorway accesses will be made inaccessible by controlled demolition charges on signal. Access into the high ground itself will be directly controlled by Army personnel.'

'What if those measures cannot contain large crowds of panic-stricken people trying to escape the flooding?' questioned Arthur.

'You will remember that getting people moving from their homes was the main problem at Weymouth, Arthur,' reminded Sir Anthony. 'It was the same at Southwark; some of them are still living in the upper stories and pottering about in makeshift rafts.'

'Yes, but what if they decide to move this time?' he insisted.

'Then the Army personnel will contain the high ground, my dear chap,' explained Sir Anthony.

'Yes, but exactly what will that containment entail?' persisted Arthur. Sir Anthony was silent. Arthur stared at the General. 'What exactly will that entail, General?' he repeated.

'That means that our troops will employ the minimum amount of physical force necessary to exclude unauthorised migrants from gaining access into the high ground,' replied the General.

'Will your soldiers be armed?' asked Arthur.

'Naturally,' replied the General.

'Will they be authorised to fire upon these "unauthorised migrants" if necessary?' he asked.

'Under carefully defined conditions, yes,' said the General

Arthur coughed jerkily. 'And what conditions might those be?'

'If, in the judgement of their officers or NCO's, there is no other means possible to achieve containment, they will be instructed to fire,' explained the General.

'Do you have any idea of the size of crowds which might attempt to rush your barriers?' asked Arthur.

'We anticipate that they could be quite large in certain areas,' agreed the General.

'Then how can crowds that large be stopped?' demanded Arthur, more aggressively now.

'You may be assured that modern small arms and antipersonnel weapons are extremely effective, Mr Summers,' said the General.

'Effective enough to stop crowds of 10,000 people or more?' he snapped.

'Armoured vehicles and tactical air power will supplement our containment measures, where necessary,' said the General grimly. 'Non lethal chemical agents will be available to support our troops.'

Peters gave Sir Anthony a warning look. 'I think we really might prefer to submit any further questions in writing, Arthur,' Sir Anthony murmured.

Arthur ignored him. 'But surely, General, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to use the tanks and planes to hit the low ground before the crowds form?' he asked. Peters relaxed and flicked his hand at Sir Anthony to allow Arthur to continue.

'Preemptive strikes have been modelled by our planning staff, Mr Summers,' said the General, relaxing slightly. 'Models suggest that premature tactical intervention is more likely to create panic situations and, thereby, to stimulate migration of unauthorised population than it is to reduce the potential for it.'

'Even napalm?' asked Arthur brightly.

'Yes, I'm afraid it would not be entirely effective,' admitted the General.

Arthur nodded his head sagely. 'And what about nuclear weapons?' he asked.

'The destructive power of nuclear devices, even the lowest yield ones, is far too great for suppression of unauthorised migration on the local scale expected. In the highly populated urban areas, simple constriction of transportation routes is expected to be sufficiently effective to contain the bulk of possible migration,' explained the General seriously.

'Poison gas? What about that?' suggested Arthur tensely. Even the general was beginning to suspect he was taking the piss. Just as well, too, I was beginning to get pretty hot under the collar from all this megadeath crap for the unlucky ones.

'Again, gas is really very difficult to control in close tactical situations, especially in bad weather. Also, it creates serious operational difficulties for our personnel,' replied the general sedately. 'Full CBR kit reduces mobility and time-in-field.'

'And so you think your soldiers will be able to just shoot down enough of these poor people down to stop them coming through your barriers, hey?' hissed Arthur, his voice cracking slightly and both eye lids fluttering.

The General lifted his head in warning. 'We are primarily talking about a crowd control situation here, Mr Summers. The use of firearms is only anticipated as a very last and extreme measure.'

'And do you really think that British soldiers will just mow down their own people, General? Gun down women, children and old people, who are doing nothing more disorderly than trying to save their lives?' shouted Arthur. 'Do you, hey?'

The General recoiled in disgust and glared at Sir Anthony. 'Look here, I ... I didn't come here to be treated like this by your staff, Tony,' he huffed indignantly. 'I'm going.'

Peters was already standing. 'Now that's enough, Mr Summers!' he snapped. 'Enough!'

'You're too bloody right it's enough!' howled Arthur. 'This is total insanity, by God! You've all gone out of your sodding tiny minds, you lot! Do you really think 40 million people are going to sit calmly in front of their dead tellies, eating defrosted fish fingers and chips, while the sea washes gently over them? Do you?'

'Psychological pacification techniques will work, Mr Summers!' protested the General.

Arthur pushed over his table and jumped over it. Pens and papers spilled all over the thick beige carpet. He stepped up to the General. He just about came up to the General's granite chin. 'You fucking military moron,' he screamed, his Welsh accent thickening. 'So you think you'll push a bloody little red button and your men will cheerfully murder millions of innocent civilians like robots, hey? People who's only crime is not making enough money to be let through the gate? They'll be a lot more likely to turn and kill the fat bastards like you, boy-o!' Arthur pushed the General on the chest with the flat of his palm. 'Like this, see!'

The General shoved Arthur back, hard. Arthur pushed him again. 'You're damned right they'll do it, Mister!' shouted the General. He pushed Arthur again, harder. 'They're good troops and they'll do exactly what they're told to do and when they're told to do it and how they're told to do it. They'll do the job and they'll sleep like babies afterward.' Arthur doubled up his puny fists and took a swing at the General. The General ducked and bobbed forwards aggressively, his fists up.

Peters came around the table and pinioned Arthur from behind. 'All right, Mr Summers,' he growled, 'Just calm down.' The General surged forward and briskly jabbed Arthur twice in the chest. Arthur wheezed and doubled over - or as much as he could under the circumstances.

I jumped up, upsetting my chair. 'You bloody rotten sneak!' I cried, 'Stop that, right now, General!'

Even Peters looked appalled by this cowardly attack. He half twisted Arthur to protect him from another blow. 'All right, sir, that's enough, now, please,' he commanded. Only Sir Anthony was unperturbed by all of this.

'The blighter hit me first, dammit,' snarled the General, panting. He lowered his fists. 'Always hit the enemy when he's down, dammit.' He reluctantly stepped back to the podium and straightened his regimental tie.

'He's not the enemy, you red-striped idiot,' I shouted, 'He's a Cabinet Secretary.'

'Permanent Under Secretary!' cried Arthur. Tears streamed down his face.

Peters half-carried Arthur to the door. 'I'll just lock him in the interview room until he cools down a bit, Sir Anthony,' he grunted.

Arthur grabbed the door jamb and pushed his head back into the room. 'Coward!' he shouted at the General. 'Murderer! Fascist beast!' Peters pushed forward and Arthur's head disappeared.

'Well, Tom,' asked Sir Anthony cheerfully, as if nothing had happened, 'Do you think we've covered just about everything?'

I broke in. 'I have a question, if you don't mind,' I said quietly.

'There's been quite enough trouble already, Dick, thank you,' warned Sir Anthony.

I waved my hand at him. 'It's nothing at all like that, Tony,' I protested, 'Just a few things I'd like to clear up. Honest.' Sir Anthony fluttered his hand in tired defeat. I turned to face the General. 'You are doubtless aware, General, that a great many environmentally sensitive installations, such as nuclear power stations, chemical plants, chemical weapon dumps and the like, are located near the sea.'

'There are exceptions, but that is generally correct,' agreed the General.

'I understand that the Army is in control of dealing with these installations,' I said.

'Yes,' replied the General. 'These are being deactivated, proofed against marine submersion or relocated into safer areas. The weather, I need hardly say, is making these operations extremely difficult.'

The door flung open and Peters stalked back to his chair. He sat and fixed his most baleful stare on me. Discretion high-jacked my tongue. 'Well, that certainly sounds most satisfactory, thank you, General,' I finished unctuously.

'Everything all right, sir?' rasped Peters.

'Yes,' replied the General nastily. 'I hope you've put that horrible little man where he can do no more damage.' Peters just smiled; smirked, really.

'Oh, just a bit of high jinks, Tom,' laughed Sir Anthony. 'Our chaps here are getting jolly pent up after simply months and months of being caged up here, thinking and planning and whatnot. Nerves, just nerves. Pay no mind to it. Arthur was just letting off a bit of well-earned steam.'

'Well, if that's all you want, Tony, I'll be off,' said the General coldly. 'I've got things to do.'

'Thanks and remember to hang onto your hat in this wind, Tommy,' warned Sir Anthony jovially.

'I'm in civvies, Tony,' replied the General curtly, 'I'm not wearing a hat.' He picked up his coat and marched from the room.

Sir Anthony made a wry face as the door closed. He turned to Peters. 'How's Arthur?' he asked. 'Has he calmed down? I say, I've never seem him lose his bottle before. It really must be nerves.'

'Ah, he's very much quieter now, sir,' murmured Peters. He looked at me. 'You can go let him out, Professor. Room 112.' He threw me a key.

I rose and hurried out of the room and down the corridor. I tapped on the door of 112 with the key. There was no answer. I opened it, somehow already knowing what I would find. Arthur dangled limply from a thick green heating pipe. His head rested, skewed oddly, along his chest. One of his shiny black loafers had fallen off. His big toe showed through a hole in his bright blue sock. I couldn't bring myself to touch him or even bear to look at him again. I just stepped back into the hall, closed the door gently and began to weep.

* * *

Pretty pathetic, huh? I'll bet that's what you're thinking. Right? Here's these bureaucratic monsters planning to administratively murder about two-thirds of the population of Great Britain so that the other third can survive in relative comfort. All for the good of the Realm, employment and the economy. And one of them's snivelling because his mate's gone and topped himself. Or gotten himself topped; whatever.

Yeah, well, that's how it is, you know. Even in the midst of great events, we're only really, affected, deep down inside, by what's right around us, what's a real part of us. Everyday, trivial crap, not grand schemes and ideas and theories. Hitler kills off a good part of Europe: he's worried sick because his poor doggie can't do his pooh-poohs; angry, he orders his divisions forward. Stalin's terribly upset because the film projector's broken and he can't see the cowboy film tonight: he signs another couple hundred death warrants instead. The pile of skulls just doesn't seem as pretty as it was yesterday and so we're sad: we sack another city and make the skull pile bigger, we feel happer for a moment.

Well, that's how it is, dear reader, and that's how it always has been - even for mass murderers like us.

2007-02-16T22:46:00.000Z

Chapter 19

My office door burst open and Sir Anthony danced in. He stopped, smoothed an imaginary tutu with his fat hands and stood up on his toes. He did a dainty pirouette, a careful spin and tip-toed towards me, his arms bowed outward. He stopped in front of me and squatted in a grotesque curtsey. All this while shrilly whistling the "Flight of the Bumblebee". He burst into his merry old "ho-ho-ho" and slapped his knee. 'What do you want first, Dick? Shall I give you the good news, Dick, or shall I give you the better news?' he asked.

'Why not give me all of it?' I snapped sullenly. 'I could do with a lot of that sort of stuff for a change.' I was about a low as you could get without ending up on the other side. The lines to Lizzie were down. I hadn't talked to her for a week. And the last time I'd called, we'd squabbled bitterly about some stupid fucking thing and she'd hung up on me. She said she was leaving me if I didn't get home right now. If I wouldn't look after her and the children, there were those who did care and would. My fault, too. All my fault; always my fault.

'Cocky's being wrapped up,' said Sir Anthony. Even he called COCE "cocky" now, not "cokey". 'We've done our job. You'll be able to go on back home next week.' He beamed benevolently at me.

I leapt up. 'You're pulling my leg,' I asked, frowning. I hardly dared believe him. I thought we'd be here up to the last day, D-Day, D-for-Drowning-Day.

Sir Anthony grinned from ear to ear. 'Nope,' he said, 'I'm definitely not pulling, Dick. You'll be free to go next week. As a bird is free, free to fly home to your nest at last.'

'Yippee!' I shouted, 'Yip-yip-yippee!' I did a couple of little capers like a kid. 'But when, Tony, when? When can I go?' I demanded eagerly.

'Well, that's part of the good news, too, Dick,' he said and smiled that sly little smile of his.

'What do you mean?' I asked, suddenly very much less happy. 'I suppose there's some catch, isn't there?'

'No catch, my dear!' he cried. 'There is gratitude, too, my dear.' He cleared his throat, straightened and grasped the lapels of his jacket. He looked around wildly. 'Where's my soap box?' he cried, 'Where's my soap box?' He scouted around the room, found the imaginary box and stepped on it. 'Ahem,' he grunted. 'My noble and trusty Dick,' he started. 'My sword, dammit, my sword. Where the hell is it?' He groped wildly about his trousers and pulled out an imaginary sword. 'Kneel, plain Dick, kneel. And rise, Sir Dick, rise up.'

'You're kidding,' I gasped.

'Would I kid about something like that?' he asked.

'Yeah,' I said, 'You certainly would.'

'Well, I'm not kidding about this. Even I have my limits, old boy.'

'But ... but.'

'Didn't I tell you that gratitude would be shown?' he asked.

'Yeah, but, ...'

'Yeah, but you've been a total pain in the arse?' he asked.

'Yeah, well, I guess so,' I admitted.

'And somebody had to be one, Dick. All committees need a pain in the arse. It might as well have been you as anyone else,' said Sir Anthony graciously.

'Yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'I ... I really don't know what to say, Tony,' I stammered.

'Then, say, "yes, thanks",' suggested Sir Anthony.

'Yes,' I said, 'Yes, thanks, of course. Of course, thank you, yes, Tony. Yes, thanks!'

'Good,' murmured Sir Anthony. 'Now let's go and get ratted, Sir Dick. I've got a brace of bottles of bubbly cooling in my office. Let's go and put those blighters out of their misery.'

'No Peters?' I asked hastily. 'No more coppers?'

'Oh, good grief, no, Dick,' he said, 'No Peters, no more police, please, no.'

'Then, lay on, Macduff,' I cried, drawing an imaginary sword.

Sir Anthony squared off to me with his. 'And damn'd be him that first cries "Hold enough!"' We fenced and duelled, laughing wildly, down the hall to his office. A haughty secretary sniffed at us as she passed. Boy playing, dirty little boys. Outside his door, Sir Anthony placed his hands on his chest, fell into his office and collapsed onto his settee. His hand immediately fell to the dull silver champagne cooler, dripping with condensation. 'Shall I do the honours, Dick?' he asked.

'Why, yes, thank you very much,' I replied.

'See how easy it gets with practice?' he asked. '"Yes", "thanks"; those magic words that hardly hurt a bit.' Sir Anthony popped the cork expertly and poured the tawny, frothing wine into a thin flute. He handed the glass to me and filled his own. We clicked the glasses and quickly sank a couple without speaking. He smacked his lips. 'Ah, not too dry. I do like it a bit sweet. Frogs are welcome to all that sec rubbish. At least Champagne, even Cava too, should be spared the Flood. But, alas, how sad.'

'Not too fussy about wine myself,' I said, 'But I must say, this is uncommonly good, Tony.'

'Only the best for our chaps,' he said, smiling broadly at me. 'Guess you thought this business would never end, eh, Dick.' He filled our glasses again. We clicked glasses again and tossed them off.

'Seemed like it never would some times,' I admitted.

'I suppose you think I'm an egotistical prick, don't you?' he asked smiling.

'Always calm. Occasionally egotistical, like all of us,' I demurred politely.

Sir Anthony snorted, 'Well I don't mind your saying that, Dick. I'm sure you'll understand that having a big ego is rather like having a big prick. It may cause pain on occasion, but it gives better results, all in all. Oh, and of course people do get envious, too.' He drained the bottle into his glass and swirled it thoughtfully. 'Still, some terrible decisions have had to have been made, Dick,' he said seriously. 'A weakling couldn't have done it.' He twisted the wire from the neck of the second bottle and eased out the mushroom-shaped cork expertly and without a wasted drop. 'A terrible price still will have to be paid, too. It's just starting now, really.'

I wasn't at all sure I knew what he was talking about, but I'd decided that my pain-in-the-arse days were over. At least for a while. 'Too true, Tony,' I muttered sagely, 'All too true.'

'And this is only the beginning, Dick, only the beginning,' he added sadly. He filled our glasses and we sipped them quietly. 'You could well be the last knight knighted in London, do you know, Dick.'

'Really?'

'You're supposed to be taken down to the Palace for a quick tap with the old blade on Thursday,' he said gloomily. 'Then the Royals will be dashing off to the high ground during the weekend. Locking themselves up in their high fortresses and waiting for the Deluge to finish.'

'When will the PM leave?' I asked.

'I've heard, reliable source, that The Boss has decided to go down with the ship of state,' he said. 'In the bunker, Blondi and all, so to speak'.

I shrugged: it couldn't happen to a nicer person. 'So I guess the Bulge is still on for the night of the 21st?' I asked unnecessarily.

'The 21st at the Lizard,' he sighed unhappily. 'The sea's piling up in the western Channel approaches already and the Bulge is beginning to accelerate rapidly. I'm afraid that we lost touch with the Channel Islands this afternoon. All those poor little tax havens lost. It should all be over for Britain by the end of the month, more or less. The end of the world, my boy.'

'As we know it, old chap,' I finished. We finished off the bottle in silence.

'At least the wind's calmed down for a bit,' commented Sir Anthony. 'For now, anyway.'

'That's a blessing,' I said. 'I guess it'll make the shutting down operations a lot easier.' The Chief Meteorologist had told me the week before that winds peaking at 175 miles per hour had been recorded in south London that month. The waves had fairly crashed over the Oval, he'd said.

'Thank God,' breathed Sir Anthony. 'I just hope the Army doesn't balls this one up. I hate to think what might happen if all those nuclear stations along the coast aren't deactivated in time.'

'We've got quite enough problems as it is. That hardly bears thinking about,' I said. 'Do you think everyone else'll have time to close their reactors down?'

'I most sincerely hope so,' he said heavily. 'As you say, it hardly bears thinking about if they don't manage that.' Sir Anthony heaved himself upright and poured out the last glasses of wine. 'And now, my dear boy, I am empowered by Her Majesty's Government to invite you to dinner at the Ritz.'

I flushed with pleasure. They certainly were trying to make up for the shitty wicket they'd handed to me over the last two years. They were succeeding handsomely, too. 'Why, thank you, Tony. Thank you most kindly,' I said with surprise. 'I'd be most honoured; honoured again.' I held up my glass and Sir Anthony clicked it. I was beginning to think that I'd just had one of those silly attacks of paranoia.

'We may as well enjoy it while we can. They're closing the Ritz tomorrow,' Sir Anthony mentioned gloomily.

'Word's getting out, is it?' I asked.

'Discreetly, in certain circles, I suppose so,' he admitted. 'The Queen-in-Exile, the Ritz-in-Exile; who'd have thought it? Even the Huns couldn't manage that, even if they took out the luxury car market for Britain.'

I opened my mouth to rail against the injustice of a certain class of people being told and another class not, but shut it instead. No more pain-in-the-arseness until I was shot of this place, shiny new K gleaming merrily on my chest.

'Shall we get along?' he asked. I nodded and stood. He reached for his phone and tapped out a quick sequence. 'Mary, Sir Dick and I are off to an early dinner at the Ritz.' I really burned with pride at the "Sir Dick". 'No, we'll be taking the Tube at Charing Cross. The weather's good and it's only a couple of stops. Enough trains are still running. Good night, Mary.' He hung up and lurched out of his chair. 'I must say, I'm feeling pleasantly squiffy,' he laughed. 'What about you, Dick?'

'Just tingling very nicely, thank you, Tony,' I replied. Actually, I was pissed. We strolled out of his office. My stomach quivered as I passed 112. We walked in silence to the station. The early evening air was unnaturally hot and oppressive. Things looked more-or-less normal around Whitehall and Trafalgar, except for the lack of rush hour crowds, trees or protrusions from buildings. The most noticeable missing protrusion was the top of Big Ben and Nelson's Column. The Government had tried to keep this area in as good nick as was possible. Couldn't have the seat of Government looking like a Third World bomb site, could they?

We slapped the gates with our oysters and descended into the Tube. The station was packed, absolutely packed, with defeated-looking, grubby little shadow people. Like the Blitz, only more morose. They were obviously living down there. Smoky little cooking fires burned and grey washing hung all over the once smart stainless steel. Babies squalled lustily. Gangs of small, dirty children played merry hell all over the station. A boy Bobby's age bumped into me. 'Sorry, mister!' he cried. He pushed away and dashed off. I felt a sharp pain of loneliness. I should be home with my family, not on my way to the Ritz.

'What on earth are all these people doing down here?' I whispered to Sir Anthony. Remember, I hadn't been allowed outside for almost a year by then.

'They're homeless from the storms and whatnot,' he replied in a low voice. 'It's better having them down here than roaming around on the streets or, worse still, getting themselves out of London.'

'But couldn't something more be done for them?' I asked, looking in disbelief.

'You know very well, Dick, that the Government do not believe in interfering with people's lives in that way,' he replied. 'Self=help is its policy'.

'Oh, for Christ's sake,' I whispered, 'What possible harm could it do to make their last few days a little bit more comfortable? It's all going to be lost anyway.'

'It's the principle of the thing, Dick. These people simply must learn to help themselves if they want something doing for them,' said Sir Anthony sternly, apparently without irony for once. 'It's quite enough that they're permitted to stay down here without charge.' He scanned the station nervously and glanced at his watch. He moved towards the front of the platform.

I'd never seen Tony looking so jumpy. Usually he acted as if his life support system could use cranking up a notch or two instead. 'What's the matter with you, Tony?' I asked. 'I'd almost swear that you're nervous.'

'Oh, nothing, old boy,' he replied casually. 'I just never have liked being down in the Tube all that much. You know how it is, a touch claustrophobic, eh? Silly, really, but there you are. I always take taxis, you know, if the driver's off.'

'Well, we won't have to worry about the Tube much longer, will we?' I asked consolingly. 'It'll all be underwater by the end of the month.'

Sir Anthony looked around again nervously and sidled right down to the tail of the platform. I tagged after him. 'Yes, well, I suppose that's something to look forward to, at least,' he agreed. He peered down the platform and his eyes went calm. I stared down the platform with him. It was Peters and two of his biggest goons. They pushed through the shabby campers and spread out on the narrow platform, walking straight towards us in a purposeful manner.

I turned on Sir Anthony. 'What the hell is this about?' I demanded. 'You asked me to come out with you, Tony. So what the hell's going on, then?'

Sir Anthony cleared his throat and stepped away from me. 'I am truly sorry, Dick,' he said sadly. 'I'm afraid this one really can't be helped.'

I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him towards me. 'What do you mean, "It can't be helped", you fat old fuck?' I hissed.

'No point in making a fuss this time, Dick,' he said placidly. 'There's just too many of them to fight.'

'What in the hell's going on?' I repeated.

He smiled pityingly at me. 'It was the K, old boy, She wanted it. That finally sealed your fate,' he explained. 'There's been a great deal of pressure to terminally process you for some time, Dick. I kept them from doing away with you for as long as I possibly could.' He shook his head sadly. 'You really do have a way of irritating dangerous people, Dick, and I must say that you were warned, definitely warned. But there was just no way we could let you get anywhere near the Royals at the moment. They don't really have much of a clue what's really going on, you see. Potempkin villages and flowers at public openings keep them happy. Can't have you letting any of our nasty, secret little cats out of their secret little bags, can we? Not in front of them. Certainly not right now. I'm really sorry, Dick, I really am.'

Peters grabbed me and pinned me back against a battered old sand box. Sir Anthony straightened his jacket sleeve. The faint wind from the approaching train could be felt and then its clacking, louder and louder. Sir Anthony stepped back from us and stood to a sloppy attention. 'Well, this is it. Good bye, Dick,' he said. His face was full of sympathy, possibly genuine.

Peters nodded curtly to his two men. They stepped to either side of Sir Anthony and gripped his arms. A look of absolute horror eclipsed his bloated face. His jowls simply collapsed and his temples turned green with terror, literally green. The train's bright white headlight reflected dimly off the yellow band along the side of the platform. The men lifted Sir Anthony and smoothly moved him backwards, right up to the edge of the track; do not stand forward of the yellow line. Sir Anthony's eyes rolled back into his head and the train's light glittered briefly off their whites. The big men casually pitched Sir Anthony off the platform and on to the track. The train rolled past. There was no scream, no unusual noises, no nothing. Not even a thud or a bang. Then, the two big men grabbed me.

* * *

So what did I do then? Well, gentle reader, quite simply, I pissed myself. One second my bladder was full, post-champagne. The next second it was empty, post-terror. The legs of my trousers were hot, wet and clinging. Even my shoes were squelchingly full of hot piss. Not very elegant, was it? Funny, though, how your body can let you down at times when it really matters. I felt like a baby again. Perhaps nappies should be issued. I suppose one shouldn't complain; much, much greater indignities are probable, even in the fullest of lives.

Of course I didn't piss myself on purpose, Lizzie, and it's not "bloody typical" at all. I do resent that. I was under tremendous stress, I'll have you know, and it just happened involuntarily. It could have happened to anyone. Don't be so smart, Lizzie. It's a perfectly natural thing to do under those circumstances.

2007-02-16T22:18:00.000Z

Chapter 20

Peters simpered sarcastically. 'Well, I suppose you're smart enough to guess what happens next, Prof, aren't you?' He smiled broadly at the two men holding my arms.

'No, wha ... what?' I stammered. I didn't really want to know.

'Next train comes along, cockie, and you're under it, too,' Peters chortled. He made a nasty squelching sort of noise, 'Paarp! Choo-choo peanut butter.' The two apes holding me rumbled with silent laughter.

I shivered. The hair on my body literally stood on end; my body felt twice as big as usual. 'No, Peters, don't do it, please,' I pleaded. 'Look, please, don't.' Yeah, I know I should have been more dignified or, at very least more original, but it's not all that easy in real life when some very, very bad chappies are about to toss you under the next train that comes along. It's always after you walk down the stairs, as the Frogs say, that all that bright, clever patter springs glibly to mind.

'Hey, Prof, you forgot to mention your wife and kids,' mocked Peters. 'Nice hot-looking little piece she was, too.' He winked and leered knowingly at his men. They sniggered appreciatively. 'Shame she didn't seem to be all that hot for men.'

'Look, Peters, my family really do need me, especially right now,' I begged in a quivering voice. My guts gurgled energetically as they liquified.

'Oh, goodness, you're absolutely breaking my heart, Prof,' sneered Peters. 'And I saved this little number just for you, too. Now you don't want it.' He pouted his lips in mocking disappointment. 'Ahhh, too bad. Anyway, your family are doing just fine without you, having a ball, really. They don't need you any more.'

'Look, Peters,' I tried desperately, 'There's loads and loads of witnesses here right now. Look.' I jerked my head in the direction of a couple of tramps on the platform. The most interested one was probing his nose and looking more or less in our direction.

'That lousy bunch'll never manage to get their act together enough to scrape up a dustbin dinner, let alone call the police and testify in court, if they even give a toss!' scoffed Peters. 'Station's deserted of real people, otherwise.' He looked at his watch. 'Just a couple more minutes and you can go play with Lord Tony, down there on the dog food factory floor.'

Amazing what strikes you at a moment like this. 'Lord Tony?' I asked, a startling little kick of envy stabbing me - even at a moment like this. The bastard; late bastard, I corrected.

Peters pointed in the direction the tracks. 'To have been elevated to the peerage, life peerage I believe, at the same time as your good self was to have been knighted,' he said. 'Now isn't it a pity that honours aren't posthumous or life very long.' His men brayed right in my face, the bloody gorillas. They must have used the same brand of bad breath spray as Peters; probably secret police special issue.

A light breeze fanned my sweating face. It was the next train. Why did they always come when you didn't need them? I crabbed wildly back away from the tracks, my feet sliding on the tiles. 'Peters,' I cried desperately, 'Look, nobody's going to believe that two men, from the same office, fell on the tracks like this, a few minutes apart.' His two men just held me tight and grinned.

'Two pissed boffins falling under a train?' smirked Peters, looking at my trousers. 'Get serious, Prof, they'll most likely wet themselves laughing about it,' he glanced at my trousers again and chuckled, 'Pun intended, sir. Besides, this place is going to be Davey Jones' undersea station a week from now. Who's going to bother about two silly old drunken farts and a useless Tube accident when tens, maybe hundreds, of millions are dying tragically?'

Now we could hear the train crashing down the tunnel towards us. If I could've grown roots into the wall, I would have. I was literally trying to dig into the dirty white bricks with my fingernails. Peters flicked his hand lazily and the two big men began to drag me forward. When I saw the train's light glinting on the wall and the rails, I went berserk. Some crazy instinct caused me to leap the only direction they weren't expecting: forward. Peter's men were caught off-balance and fell off the platform with me. I landed smack on top of one of the buggers. I heard him sizzling on the live rail for an instant and then I bounced off into the gravel strip between the tracks. The other man landed on the side near Peters. Over the rush of the oncoming train, I heard Peters bellowing at him to get me. The stupid ass jumped forward blindly, straight into the path of the train. There was a tremendous thump-splat and, this time, a deafening fury of banging and squealing brakes. Always stop for a policeman.

I knew that Peters would cross over the bridge and be around on the other platform in no more than a minute. God knows what he would have done if he'd have gotten his hands on me then. He probably was armed, although I didn't think about that at the time. Nothing fancy was going on in my head; I just didn't want to see his rotten face again, ever. So I did the only sensible thing: I went to ground in the Tube itself. I didn't muck about cerebrating about that decision, either, I just bolted straight into the tunnel like a terrified rabbit. It seemed a whole lot better than waiting there for Peters to show up and do something nasty to me. I didn't walk, either, I bloody well legged it. I didn't really stop to think about it, I just ran like bloody hell, right into the darkness. Last thing I really remember seeing was the colour TV screens flickering beside the cavernous entrance to the tunnel. I wasn't on them.

It seemed like I ran in a blind panic for a long time. Lucky I didn't fall across a live rail in the first couple of seconds, too. If I had, I would have fried myself on the hot rail. Zzzt. I couldn't have run too long, though, in the poor physical nick I was in after being cooped up with a bunch of civil servants for a year. Maybe five or tem minutes at the very most. I was panting when the pain in my side was so bad that I had to stop and lie down for a few minutes.

It's funny; when you used to be on a train down there in the Tube, you rarely ever saw the tunnel walls or thought about them at all. You could ride around for years and never see them. The reason for that was simple. It was dark, pitch dark, in the tunnels. Not a speck or glimmer of light, except from the trains and an occasional red or green signal light. When I felt the sides of the tunnel, I had a pretty good idea why it was kept dark, too. The walls were wet and slimy in places. Dry and rotten in other places. Organic feeling and smelling. God knows what the tunnels looked like in the light. Not at all nice, I suspect. Not the sort of thing you'd want your mother or servants to see if you wanted to keep them riding the Tube.

Once you gave up trying to see where you were going in the dark, though, it wasn't all that difficult to keep moving, after a fashion. You couldn't walk between the tracks because you couldn't see. You had to keep a hand on the filthy wall, or on the racks of pipes and cables, and slide your feet along the side of the outer rail. You could hear, too. The echoes coming up and down the tunnel gave you some sense of direction, after a while. Which direction was the problem.

Then I started worrying about what I'd do when the trains came. There would be not a foot of clearance between the wall and the carriages; I would have to lie down beside the track. When would the next one come? How long would they stop the trains for a body, bodies, on the line? Would Peters realise that I'd headed into the tunnel? Would he call for help or would he try to finish me off by himself? The first big crisis wasn't long in coming. I never figured how long they stopped the trains for bodies on the line, but they certainly didn't stop them forever, worst luck. I thought I'd die of terror the first few trains. After I got used to them, I just felt sick. Maybe as much from thinking that Peters might be on one and see me crouching down there beside the track.

First, you felt that little breeze tugging at the light hairs on your neck. You tried to figure out which direction it was coming from. Then, the crashing and clattering grew louder and louder, but it was all around you and you got no directional clues, only disorientation. A faint, dancing light let you have the train's direction at last. Finally, that incredible crashing noise, amplified and magnified within that squeezing, crushing confinement. The dazzling light. The burning sparks. A hot metallic stink. You just lay in the filthy stinking gravel, plastered tight up against the slimy wall. You squeezed your eyes tight and prayed and prayed and prayed, total unbeliever and all, as the train blasted by, trying to suck you down the tunnel with it. Every few minutes another deafening, blinding monster would try to suck your life away. I still have nightmares about it. I guess it's not too hard to tell.

Finally, fatigued beyond belief by the noise, terror and betrayal, I fell asleep. Yes, I took off my tie, rolled up my jacket into a lumpy little pillow and fell asleep in the tunnel, even with the trains roaring right past me. When I woke, I had no idea of what time it was. I guessed it must have been late, though. There didn't seem to be any trains running. I had left my watch at the office and I wouldn't have been able to see it, anyway. I was jolly thirsty and pretty well hungover from that blasted champagne. A pounding head and a withered tongue to add to my troubles. Something quick and furry darted over my face. I could feel its hot little paws on my skin. Rats or mice; at least I wasn't frightened of those little buggers.

I kneeled in the oil stinking gravel and pulled my jacket back on. Another problem: when I went to sleep I didn't think to mark the direction I was travelling. Natural, but stupid. I just hoped that I hadn't turned around in my sleep and went sliding along the way I thought I was pointing when I woke. Fortunately, I was right. After all there was only a 50% chance of being wrong. After what seemed like hours, I began to see a faint light ahead. I wasn't half bloody thirsty, too. I could hardly think of anything else but a long, cold lager, sort of frosted with beads of condensation on the side. I hadn't lost all my caution, though. Just before the tunnel opened out into the station, I froze and listened carefully. Although the trains weren't running, the tunnel wasn't quiet by a long shot. There were plenty of metallic hammerings, squeaks, moans and whatnot. I was pretty sure that I'd heard voices up ahead.

I dropped on my belly and inched forward. I poked my head out of the tunnel like a scared turtle peeping out of his shell, except I didn't have so much as a shell. I definitely could hear two men talking in low voices. I tried to make out what they were saying, without luck. They might be Peters' stooges or they might have been maintenance workers. I didn't dare take a chance on it. I backed down the tunnel about 50 yards and lay there. After about half an hour, I heard someone jump down to the tracks, crunching on the gravel. I rolled my face flat against the oozing side of the tunnel. Fortunately, I was wearing a dark suit. A feeble torch beam shone down the tunnel, hardly more than a flicker where I was lying.

'Nobody down here, Fred, nothing at all,' a voice echoed. 'I'll go down and check the other end.' I heard his radio hiss and gabble faintly in reply. I crawled forward to the mouth of the tunnel again and peeked out. The station was dimly lit. For the first time, I saw the Leicester Square sign. Until then, I wasn't sure which direction I was going in. Tottenham Court next stop - if I could get past here. I heard heavy footsteps echoing down the platform and pulled back inside the tunnel. 'Naw, nothing that side neither,' the man said, 'I'm going up for a cuppa.' God, I wouldn't have minded one, two sugars and a lot of milk, maybe a biscuit. The walkie talkie squawked back at him. I heard the guy clumping up the stairs. I didn't know how long he'd be gone or where the other man was, if there was one.

I took a chance and, bent double, darted as quickly as I could along the track without making a lot of noise. I could have done without the gravel here, I was sure I sounded like a herd of elephants on cobbles sneaking past in the empty station. It seemed like I was out in the open and under the dim lights for hours. My stomach jumped for joy when I glanced at a Cadbury's machine on the platform. I couldn't stop, though, and maybe chocolate would have just made me more thirsty. The clock, if it was working, said 2.25. I'd been underground since about nine hours if that clock was right. I'd only gone about a quarter mile in that time. I guessed it would take me at least an hour to make the quarter mile on to Tottenham Court.

I guessed wrong. It must have been something about creeping along in the dark tunnels, sensory deprivation, but it took me well over two hours to Tottenham Court. I pretty well felt like I was dying of thirst, every crabbed little creep of the way. I came on a little drip from the ceiling, or I should say that it came on me, a long way down into that tunnel. God, was I tempted to stand there and stick my tongue out to that cool wet drip. A bit of thinking about where the leak might be coming from put me off that notion, though. It could just as well have been a cracked sewer as a nice clean little spring, more likely, maybe. Just say "no" to cholera, I told myself and trudged on grimly.

The hot wind buffeted me, even down here I could hear the wind; the walls were cold though. I got a bit mixed up in one of the side tunnels coming into Gower Street, but I kept my head and didn't get lost. I did find a water tap by the switch and took a chance with that. Lovely stuff; ten times better than the champers I'd had the evening before and a damn sight more honestly earned, too. I drank my fill and felt ready for almost anything. Even my hangover had subsided a bit, even if I could have done with a pair of aspirin and a strong cup of coffee. I crawled into Warren Street at about 4.40. This platform was pitch dark, except for the clock. There didn't seem to be anyone in the station, but I lay doggo at the tunnel mouth anyway until 5.00, just listening. Anyone there probably could have heard my stomach grumbling and gurgling.

Then, satisfied that no one was there, I stood and slithered up the ramp to left side of the dark platform. I took a few cautious sliding steps and found the smooth-tiled wall. A few more steps and I banged my knee viciously on the sharp corner of a bench. A few more careful steps and my foot connected with a soft bundle. I don't remember exactly what I was trying to do, but to make a long story short, I tripped. Torches snapped on and tunnelled the darkness. Large hands grabbed my arm like steel traps. A booming voice cried out, "Gotcha, matey, I've bloody well gotcha!"

2007-02-16T21:55:00.000Z

Chapter 21

Torches shone in my face and blinded me. I screwed my eyes tight until the dancing red spots faded. I slit them open cautiously. Half a dozen hairy faces, cavemen, pressed close. Their smell assaulted me brutally. More hairy bodies lurked and jumped behind them. A light blinded me again. 'All right, OK!' I shouted. 'So you've bloody well got me! Turn off the flaming lights, will you?'

'This here's our platform, feller, the Northern Line platform,' growled the owner of the large hands constricting my upper arm. The torch was turned from my face. I was given a good rattling shake instead. 'So whatcha doin' sneaking up on us like that, huh, guy?' he demanded.

'Hey, look, I wasn't sneaking up on you,' I squeaked. 'Honest!'

A gold tooth gleamed in the partial darkness as his face moved closer. He gave me another shake, rattle and roll. 'Well, you're sure as hell not one of us. So where'd you come from, mate? Hey? What're you doing down here on our platform? Hey?' he demanded. He and the others bloke made Peters' men seem practically human by comparison.

'I got lost in the Tube!' I cried plaintively. I didn't dare tell them I was on the run from the cops, sort of cops, even though they didn't much look as though they'd care.

'What d'you mean, you got lost in the Tube?' the caveman demanded suspiciously. He turned and shouted to a slightly smaller Neanderthal. 'Martin,' he grunted, 'Get that fire going. Real hot.' Talk about menacing looks, this guy had them in spades. He spoke like a brain-damaged cowboy. There was no doubt, though, that he was the boss of whatever it was that was going on down here. His flunky heaped bundled newspapers on top of a great splash of ashes and embers at the edge of the platform. The newspaper flared to a flickering red glow. The other hairy people scrabbled to the side opposite us and squatted down to watch across the smoky fire. They pushed and shoved one another silently for the best spots.

'Ah, well, look, I've been lost in the tunnels since yesterday afternoon,' I explained lamely.

'Now that's just bullshit, feller!' the ape shouted angrily. 'No one goes into the Tube any more!' The rosy glow of the fire lit his rosy eyes. 'What you been doing in that tunnel, mister? You ain't no Tube guy, no maintenance man!' He raised a menacing paw towards me. Some of his pals across the fire shook clubs and umbrellas at me.

'My train stopped,' I whined. 'I got out and walked for the station. It was a power cut that did it. I got lost in the dark. Honest. I didn't even know where I was going. Honest!'

His bearded face curled into a scowl, but his hand lowered. The audience lowered their clubs. 'Hmm,' he grunted. He looked me over carefully. 'You ain't from that Victoria Line platform bunch down there, are you, a spy?' he growled, eyes slitted.

I shook my head earnestly. 'Oh, goodness, certainly not!' I protested with all the revulsion I could summon up. 'I told you the truth, believe me. I've been lost, alone, in the tunnels, just wandering.' I decided to try to tap into his protective instincts, if he had any. 'Look, I haven't had a thing to eat or drink in a day or more. Have you got anything at all you could spare for me?' I asked as plaintively as I could manage, without laying it on too thick.

'We take good care of our people on this platform here,' growled Martin, looking at the Boss for approval. The ones behind the fire nodded their heads solemnly in agreement.

The Boss's lips curled in smug self-satisfaction. 'Yeah, sure, man, we got stuff to eat and drink. Good stuff, real good hospitality. Right, team? Hey?' He stared ferociously at the ragged figures crouching beside the fire.

'That's right, Mick!' cried Martin, bobbing his head, 'Great stuff, all the time.' The others nodded eagerly with Martin. Nodding dogs in the back of the car.

'Well, you know, I'd be extremely grateful if you could possibly share some of it with me,' I replied in what I hoped would be my most ingratiating manner. All right, dear reader, I know you're probably thinking I'm the biggest poltroon of all time, an absolute paragon of poltroonery. But look, I was tired, hungry, thirsty and scared. These guys were really terrifying. They certainly hadn't come out of the right drawer, if they'd crawled out of any sort of drawer at all. It was only sensible to play it their way. All right?

'Yeah, well, maybe,' said Mick, pursing his lips. 'What you got to share with us then, mate?' he asked speculatively.

'Well, not a great deal, I'm afraid,' I said. 'I'm from out of town, you see.' Mick's face shifted back towards an unpleasant expression. 'But I'd be absolutely and totally delighted to contribute very generously towards my expenses, whatever they might be,' I added quickly. I dipped into my jacket and took out my wallet. There was a glimmer of interest. I opened the wallet in his direction. 'Help yourself,' I burbled cheerfully. 'Please, take as much as you need, whatever you want.'

'Naw,' grunted Mick magnanimously, taking my wallet, 'Money don't matter down here any more, feller.' He riffled through the notes and took them out. 'It's all on us poor, stranded commuters, mister. We got plenty of everything we need, practically.' He tilted his chin towards the fire and slipped my banknotes into his pocket. 'Trace, get this guy a can of lager and something to eat.' A small bundle lurched up from the fire and staggered off to a corner.

Mick gestured towards the fire. I sidled gratefully closer to it and squatted. I held my hands up to the flames. I hadn't realised up until then that I was so cold. 'Thanks,' I said, 'Thanks a lot.'

'Hey, don't sweat it, feller,' rumbled Mick indulgently. 'So what's your name, man?' he asked.

'It's Dick,' I replied.

'Well, hey, I'm Mick,' he said jovially, pointing to himself, 'CEO.' A dirty thumb flicked towards his 2IC. 'Martin there's deputy chairman.' He pointed at the hairy bundles around the fire. 'And this here's our senior management team.' They nodded as he named them. 'Andy, Greg, Jimmy, Little Martin, Steve, Johnny, Mike, Jon, Debs, Beck and Trace's what's getting your grub.'

I beamed my most sincere smile. 'It's a real pleasure to meet you,' I said brightly. They all bobbed solemnly back at me. Johnny slipped a nearly empty fifth of scotch out from under his rags, took a goodly pull at it and quickly stuck it back. One of the girls, Debs, snatched the bottle and capered around the fire with it. That got some grins. She guzzled the bottle as she danced. Johnny closed in and grabbed at her. Debs smashed the bottle over his head, spraying everyone with glass fragments. That got a really big laugh. Johnny staggered a few feet, blood pouring down his face and collapsed heavily. Debs ran back to the circle and sat down, looking like a cream-eating cat.

Mick turned his attention back to me, grinning. 'What you do, mister?' he asked.

'Oh, I'm a sort of a civil servant,' I replied. 'A geologist. Guy that studies rocks.'

'Oh yeah?' asked Mick. It was obvious that he didn't think that much of geologists, if he thought anything about them at all. 'Rocks.'

'Uh, and what do you do, Mick?' I asked.

'I trade futures,' he replied enigmatically.

'Oh, really? What kind?'

'Other people's,' he grunted. He probed his crotch briskly with his hand.

I could easily believe he'd been in the City. This was just another form of feeding chain. Best not to pry too much on early acquaintance, however. 'You sheltering down here from the storms?' I asked conversationally.

'You might say that,' replied Mick with a sly grin.

'So how long have you been down here?' I asked.

'Dunno, exactly,' said Mick, 'Maybe two, three, four months, could be longer. Kinda easy to lose track of time down here. No night, no day. Time flies when you're having fun.'

'You was here before me, Mick,' chipped in Debs, 'And I been stranded down here since May, I think. Hmmm, maybe June, July or August.'

'That long?' I gasped.

Mick looked curiously at me. 'Yeah, sure, nobody stays up on the ground now, not full time, anyhow. Where you been, mister, Mars?'

'Well, yes, sort of,' I agreed hastily. 'I mean I haven't exactly been in London for some time. I've been down south on work, you see.'

'So, how'd you get into London then, mister?' asked Debs, mystified. 'There ain't been no trains in nor out of Victoria for well on to three months. We've all been waiting for them. Nothing runs through here now, except for some Tubes towards Richmond. I heard there was some trains into Euston once in a while.'

'Well, I drove into London, you see,' I said. They looked unbelieving. I prayed they wouldn't become suspicion again. 'I used a Land Rover. Good for getting over and around things, you know.' I didn't want to say helicopter, not to this bunch, no, no.

'Oh,' mumbled Debs. She shrugged. 'January, February, March or July,' she crooned.

'I got stuck before Waterloo Bridge and took the Tube from the station,' I improvised.

Greg scratched himself and inspected the offending area carefully. 'Chap last week told me Waterloo Bridge was half down into the Thames,' he commented. 'And nearly all south London under water - except Richmond, of bloody course.'

'Oh, that's absolutely right,' I agreed. 'That's why I took the Tube. No other way into Town any more, really.' Fortunately, Trace returned with the beer and some unidentifiable hunks of rather smelly meat before I could dig myself any deeper into it. 'Thanks,' I muttered gratefully. I crammed the meat into my mouth as fast as I could and yanked the ring off the can.

'You sure do look hungry, mister,' commented Trace. She sat down next to me and wrapped a heavy coat tightly around herself. 'The meat's none too fresh now.' The fire was so low that I couldn't really see her face.

I nodded my head but gobbled the meat anyway. It was no worse than Parma ham or the like. It probably was old ham, I guessed. Not bad, really, given the context. A bit of good Brie and a baguette under the sun and it'd be a treat. I washed it down with the lager and belched softly. 'Thanks a lot,' I repeated. 'I really needed that.'

Mick nodded happily. 'Well, that's all right, mister. I'm sure you'll be able to share with us soon, too.'

I didn't really see how I could share, but I thought it best to agree with anything this guy had to say at the moment. 'Well, I certainly do hope so, Mick,' I said enthusiastically.

'Oh, you will,' Mick replied happily, standing. 'All right, everyone, let's get on back to sleep. Martin, you and Greg take the exits. I'll cover the stairs down to the Victoria Line.' He smiled wolfishly at me. 'Can't have that lot from down there coming up and thieving off us while we sleep, the dirty toerags.' He kicked some cloths towards me in a not unkindly manner. 'These should help keep you warm, mister.' He slipped into the dark after nudging the unconscious Johnny with his foot. The bundles around the fire shifted and quickly formed into still mounds on the concrete of the platform.

I scraped together a nest of trash, wrapped some rags around myself and wadded up a pillow from a couple of discarded jackets. One of them had a wallet in it. I made a mental note to tell them about it tomorrow. I lay down and tried to make myself comfortable. A few minutes later, there was scuffling and a soft whistle. A body bumped gently against me. 'Psst. Hey, mister, you got a lighter on you, huh?' I guessed it might be Debs.

'No, sorry,' I whispered. 'I don't have one.'

'Got any cigarettes?' she asked. She bumped up against me again.

'No, I'm sorry, I don't smoke,' I replied.

'Look, chum, I'll let you do it, if you give me your lighter,' she hissed urgently. Her rags rubbed my rags.

'Look, I really don't smoke,' I said.

She rubbed against me again. 'Come on, pal, give me your ciggies, too, and I'll let you do anything you like, anywhere you want. Know what I mean, hey, big boy?'

Randy as I was after a year of abstinence, I wasn't in the least bit tempted, Lizzie. You're the only one for me, my love. It's true. 'Look,' I hissed, 'You'd be welcome to have my cigarettes and matches for nothing, except I haven't got any, all right?'

'Well, then suit yourself, keep 'em to yourself and fuck yourself, too, squire,' she snarled spitefully, rolling away. 'We'll get them all soon, any road.'

I didn't stop to think what she might possibly mean by that. Stomach grumbling happily over the meat and relaxed by the alcohol, I just fell asleep on the cold platform with no further ado.

2007-02-16T21:37:00.000Z

Chapter 22

Soft light, urgent squabbling and vivid stenches woke me slowly but firmly. I grudgingly poked my head from out of the bundle of filthy rags and gazed over at the clock through cruddy eyes; I didn't want to wipe them clean with my filthy hands. Well past eight; morning or night, I had no idea. I gazed up at a tattered Tube advert for "The Mousetrap, It'll Run Forever!" and rolled over to look along the platform. Some of the station lights flickered dimly. Filthy, ragged people glided sluggishly around the station, occasionally stopping to argue and tussle with their fellows.

A small bundle not far away from me shifted. Debs sat up. She scratched her matted blonde hair furiously and shot me a filthy look. She staggered upright and crabbed her way over to the edge of the platform. She peeled her frayed jeans down to her ankles. She squatted wide and swung her scrawny pale bottom over the side of the platform. I turned away quickly to miss any further visuals; the audio track was bad enough. I was glad I hadn't managed to crawl that far down the tracks last night, much less had my way with her, as offered.

Trace crawled over to me and flicked her cropped head towards the tracks. 'Dead elegant down here, ain't it, mister?' she giggled. 'A right old holiday camp, a right old Butlin's.' She gave me a big smile, 'Hey, look, can you spare me a smoke or two, mister?' she whined.

'Sorry, Trace, I don't smoke,' I replied, shaking my head.

'Oh,' she said, as if she didn't believe me. She tugged at the spiky ends of her short brown hair.

'Look, call me Dick, huh?' I said. 'And I really don't smoke. OK?'

'Sure, Dick, whatever you say,' she replied uncertainly. 'But have you got a lighter on you I can have, then?' she asked eagerly.

I shook my head and made a regretful face. 'Sorry, I don't smoke, so no need for one, see.'

'Not even a few matches?' she wheedled pathetically.

'No.'

'A torch?'

'Look, Trace, what's all this business about cigarettes, matches and lighters?' I asked crossly.

'Well, you see, we run out of ciggies down here ever so long ago, mister, haven't we?' said Trace. I had a suspicion she was putting on the coarse accent and grammar for the show. 'Lighters and matches is in real short supply, too. Natural, enough here in the dark, to want to have anything that'll make a light, inn't it?'

'Yeah, I guess so,' I agreed.

She reached into her filthy red bomber jacket and took out a small chocolate bar, wrapped in deep red. 'Martin dug up a chockey machine this morning. You want some?' she asked. 'It's part of my share.'

I nodded eagerly. 'Oh, yes, please.'

She broke the chocolate bar across her dirty knee and handed me half. 'You sure you got no lighter, mister? Please?'

I shook my head again. 'I suppose I can see it makes sense to want lighters,' I agreed. 'But the lights are on now, aren't they?' I crammed the chocolate into my mouth and crunched it up. I let it melt to a sticky mass in my mouth and sucked it down slowly. God, it tasted good.

'Yeah, well, anyway, you never know when the lights'll go off down here or when they'll come back on, do you?' Trace replied. 'I mean one day, maybe they'll just go off and stay off, won't they? Huh?' She nibbled her chocolate daintily. 'Then we'll need lighters, see?'

'Well, look, why don't you just get yourself out of here, then?' I asked.

'Well, where would I go?' Trace asked plaintively. 'There's no place that's safe up above, is there?'

'Debs said there were some trains were going out of Euston,' I suggested. 'You could take one to somewhere else. Up north.'

'Yeah, well, maybe some of the trains are running, but how do I know I'd be better off somewhere else than I am now in London, like?' she asked sceptically.

'Believe me, Trace, you'll be better off getting out of London as soon as possible. No matter where you end up,' I advised sincerely. Poor girl, she wasn't much older than my sweet Cathy. I'd have liked to have warned her properly, but long-practised secrecy is a very hard habit to break. Even when there's no serious reason for keeping it going any more.

'Naw,' she said shaking her head, 'I guess I'll see it out through here in London, mister, thanks anyway. These storm's will just have to stop soon and then everything'll be all right again, won't it?' Her face brightened with the hope. 'I mean, those storms can't last forever, can they?'

'No, maybe not,' I agreed helplessly. I suddenly realised, with suppressed panic, that I only had a few days to get myself out of London and north up to high ground. I remembered the wallet in the jacket I'd made as a pillow. I picked it out. There was no money, but there were credit cards and a driver's license. 'Hey, Trace, you know there's a wallet in this jacket?' I said, gesturing with it.

'Sure, big deal,' she replied carelessly. 'There must be a million of them lying around down here in the Tube, so what?'

'But what about the owners?' I asked, mystified. I slipped the wallet back into the jacket.

Trace shrugged. 'They won't be missing them,' she said, offhandedly, but finally. 'Money's just a sort of bad old habit. It's no real use to us down here, is it?'

'Why not?' I asked.

'Nothing to buy, is there, guv?' she replied. 'Everything wrecked up above, inn't it?'

'But how did you start living down here, Trace?' I asked.

She shrugged. 'Like everyone else, right? I commuted into London every day from St Albans to the office. One night, I commuted home, except it wasn't there any more. So I commuted back down to London, except London wasn't really there any more, either. So I just stayed down here in the Tube with the other commuters. Where else could I go to get away from the storms, huh?'

'What about the others?' I inquired.

Trace looked confused. 'Who?'

'You know, Mick, Martin, the others here,' I said.

'What about them?' she asked.

'Where do they come from?'

'Oh, same as me, I guess, commuters,' she replied vaguely. 'Why shouldn't they be here?'

'They don't really sound English,' I explained. 'They, well, they sound sort of American.' This was true. They all sounded as if they came from Texas and not a socially superior part of it, either.

'I dunno, really,' she mused, 'Maybe they seen too many cowboy films as kids, Chainsaw Massacre. Know what I mean?' It made sense, I suppose, if they were reverting back to Nature - trailer trash - Nature's lowest common denominator. Suddenly, Trace pricked up her ears to a distant rumble.

Turning, I felt the faint breeze of a train against my face. 'Christ almighty!' I cried with surprise, 'There's a train coming!'

'Oh, yeah, sure,' said Trace casually. 'There's still some of them running, sometimes. It won't stop here, though.'

I could hear it coming now. I had to get on it. I looked at her. 'Why not?' I demanded, jumping to my feet.

'They're dead afraid to stop here, mister,' she said flatly. 'No one to pick up or let down here. That's why, isn't it?'

'That's ridiculous!' I snapped. Bloody hopeless girl. 'Of course it'll stop!' I jumped up and darted over to the edge of the platform. The train moved slowly through the station. I signalled frantically at the driver to stop. He shook his head grimly and looked straight ahead. There were only a few people on the train. They ignored me totally, one of them was reading a paper. The train just kept on rolling past until it disappeared. 'Stop, you bastard!' I shouted after the train. 'Stop!'

A hairy, squat man appeared at my side. It was Martin. He seized my arm roughly. 'What's the matter, feller? Our hospitality not good enough for you or something?' he growled. 'You thinking of changing platforms on us, mister? You gonna do something like that to us, huh?'

I turned and smiled widely. 'Oh, gosh, nothing at all like that, Martin,' I babbled enthusiastically. 'It's just that I really do need to get moving on along on my way again. I want to catch a train up north. Get back home. Family and kids, you know, that sort of thing.'

'Yeah, well, you're staying right here with us, feller,' snarled Martin glumly, pressing even harder into my arm. 'Whether you like it or not. You got to share. So you're not going nowhere, no how.'

I was getting a bit fed up with this stuff by now. 'Look, dammit,' I snapped, shaking his hand loose, 'I've offered you my money already.' I held up my wrists and shook them. 'I haven't even got a watch on or you could have that. If you want more money than I've got on me, then you'll have to take me to a bank or a cash point or something like that. Otherwise I've got absolutely nothing worth having.'

'Oh, I wouldn't be so sure of that now,' said Martin menacingly. I braced myself in case he decided to have a go at me. The confrontation was stopped by a sudden uproar down at the other end of the platform.

'Martin!' boomed Mick. 'Hey, Martin! Look at what I got here, Martin!' he bellowed happily. 'Lookit, lookit here, lookie!' He swaggered up to us and held up a stubby black pistol in his great, grubby paw. 'Got me a shooter, Martin! How about that, huh? Got me a real six-gun! We're gonna clean up around here, boy, kick ass. Bang, bang. Gonna scrag some assholes down here, for sure!' He crouched low. 'Pow, pow!'

Martin's eyes bugged with admiration. He whistled loudly through his wide-gapped teeth. 'Fuck a bleeding duck, Mick,' he breathed softly, 'Where'd you get that beauty?'

Mick laughed and reached into the crowd following him. 'Well, now, I caught me a copper, I did, Martin,' he crowed. 'Sodding plainclothes copper, he is. Armed, too. Nasty, nasty.' He jerked a bulky man forward by the collar and slammed him down on to the platform. 'A bunch of them bastards was nosing around our patch. Up to no good. His bloody mates got away, but I collared this sneaking old twat.' Mick gave the cop a solid, cracking boot in the ribs.

I flinched inwardly. But far better this poor, doomed chap than me, I reasoned. I caught a glimpse of handcuffed arms, tightly and painfully pinioned behind his back. I winced. A bloody face raised itself from the filth-caked concrete. My sympathy vanished instantly. I wouldn't have minded stepping right in and giving that copper a couple of vigorous kicks myself. It was Peters, the sneaking old twat!

2007-02-16T21:23:00.000Z

Chapter 23

'Hey, Mick,' whined Beck, 'This bloody meat's gone off completely. It's absolutely disgusting. It really is.' If they could smell it, then I could believe it was off, too. The pong down here was just unbelievable ... you felt like your lungs were being pulled inside out.

'Are you sure about that?' inquired Mick vaguely. 'That stuff had to be fresh no more than a couple of days ago, best I remember.'

'It's way over ten days ago since that stuff was fresh, Mick,' complained Greg. He held his nose. 'Phew! That meat's been stinking for days. It's enough to make a rat puke, Mick, it really is. It's time we had us another barbecue.'

'Yeah, Mick,' breathed Andy, 'What we need is a lovely, lovely barbecue. Fresh, juicy meat. Can't you just taste that crisp, golden crackling skin, Mick? Crunch, crunch, crunch. Yum, yum, yum.' The guy must have been an ad man in days gone past.

'Don't you lot think of nothing but your fucking bellies?' growled Martin crossly. 'And what about them ones that's downstairs, waiting to get at us? What about them, huh? Victoria Line platform, that's our biggest problem right now, not your fat guts. It's about time that lot was done, but real good and proper like. Martin's got a shooter to do it now, too. There'll be plenty to eat once those bastards been put down.'

'Yeah, sure, Martin, I know all about them,' wheedled Steve smoothly. 'But we need a good old nosh every now and then to keep up our strength, don't we? Right, Mick? Hey? How can we get 'em if we're like weak?'

Mick clapped his hand against the leg of his jeans. 'Martin's right. You lot seem to think that meat grows on trees or something like that,' complained Mick. 'We gotta conserve our precious natural resources, like.'

'Aw, Mick,' cajoled Beck, 'We got two of them. Couldn't we spare just a little teeny one?'

'Crunch, crunch, crunch,' murmured Greg, sniffing the air, 'Ahh, Bisto!'

'Hmm,' said Mick, jaws working slightly. He stared over in our direction. 'That lot over there eating much?' he asked.

'Oh, Christ, Mick, just loads and loads,' cried Debs. 'Especially that one.' She pointed at me haughtily. 'Him with the big mouth.' I felt that comment was really very unfair. I had done my dead level best to keep a civil tongue in my head and I certainly wasn't eating any more than anyone else. Spiteful little bitch.

Mick looked as thoughtful as he was able to. You could tell he was thinking because he was scratching his head. 'We got much beer left?' he asked Martin.

'Yeah, I suppose so,' replied Martin grudgingly, 'I mean like I guess we got about enough for one more pretty good blow out.' He shook his thick finger at Mick. 'Mind you, Mick, I don't know where we'll get any more after that's gone.'

'Oh, them lot downstairs are bound to have loads and loads stored away, beer, beer, beer!' chipped in Andy eagerly. They all looked expectantly at Mick.

'Well, guys, ... ' teased Mick, scowling. 'I really just don't know ... '

'Oh, please, darling old Micky,' begged Debs, 'Please-please-please, honey?' She knelt in front of him and grasped his knees. She nuzzled her head between his thighs and bit his cock through his jeans, winking at the audience.

Mick laced his fingers into her hair, pushed her face deeper into his crotch and grinned cheekily. 'OK, just for you, baby,' he agreed huskily.

'Yippee!' shouted the bundles. 'Barbecue, barbecue, bar-be-cue!' They danced spastically and chanted, 'Pig roast, pig roast, long pig roast! Yay!'

Debs jumped up, ran over and pinched my arm viciously. 'Bags I the wing!' she shouted gleefully.

'Ow, dammit!' I shouted and lashed out at Debs with my foot.

She jumped back lightly and stuck her tongue out at me. 'Oh, how charming!' she simpered.

I jumped up, furious. 'If you had any balls, I'd bloody well smash them flat for you, you fucking little bitch,' I growled. My temper was getting a bit frayed, I'll be the first to admit; fallen into bad company, I suppose. Debs just laughed brassily and scampered quickly behind Mick.

When I jumped at Debs, I almost knocked Peters over. He was still handcuffed. They'd lost the keys, naturally. His hands had turned a lovely pastel blue. Tsk, tsk. They couldn't have been on that tight if he hadn't got gangrene yet.

'Hey, Turner,' whispered Peters softly. It was the first time he'd spoken to me down here.

'What do you want, Peters?' I snarled.

'Sit down,' he whispered gruffly.

'Piss off,' I replied.

'Turner, please sit down, dammit,' insisted Peters. Since he asked so nicely, I sat.

'So what do you want, then?' I demanded.

'You caught their drift yet, eh, Turner?' he asked, nodding his grey head in their direction.

'What do you mean?' I asked warily.

'You know what all this, ah, barbecue business means, don't you?' he asked.

'Well, I guess they get a pig or an ox from somewhere and roast it over a fire,' I said curtly. 'What else?'

'A pig or an ox,' sighed Peters heavily. 'Why not a camel or an elephant or a dinosaur? Where do you think they're going to get any fresh meat down here, Turner?'

'I suppose, they'll just go up above to a butcher shop or some place like that and loot it,' I replied carelessly. 'So what?'

'When I came down here yesterday, Turner, the winds were up to a hundred and thirty-five and still climbing,' he said. 'Don't be a fool, man. Those fleabag's aren't going up above into any storm to get any fresh meat, no way.'

'Well, then where do you think they're going to get it, then?' I demanded sharply.

Peters snorted. 'I thought you were supposed to be the big brain box, Turner,' he chuckled. 'Try to figure it out for yourself, why don't you? What's the only abundant source of fresh meat down here in the Tube, besides rats? You've got fifteen seconds.'

My stomach jumped like a startled rabbit; a big kicking hare. 'Oh, no, you're joking, Peters, you've got to be,' I whispered in disbelief.

Peters shook his head grimly. 'Isn't population control the sort of thing all you greeno's approve of? Not eating cute little animals?'

'That's sick,' I said with growing belief.

Peters looked at me. 'Not ecologically sound, hah?'

'But this is England, Peters,' I gasped foolishly. 'I mean, that sort of thing's just not possible here.'

'Oh, yeah?' sneered Peters. 'Well, believe it or not, Prof, cannibalism's widespread practice down here. We've known about it for months.'

'So why didn't you lot do something about it then?' I demanded.

Peters shrugged. 'It's not going to make any real difference, even in the short run, Turner. A fewer number of people might just as well drown with full bellies as more with empty ones,' he said.

I thought for a moment. 'But we've been eating that meat,' I gasped with new horror. I sort of retched. I didn't think I was all that squeamish, up until then.

Peters nodded his head again. 'That's right, Turner, we've been eating it and that's a good thing, too. 'We've got to keep our strength up, as the man said.'

'My God, Peters, that's absolutely disgusting,' I hissed weakly. 'I mean we could get CJD!' I looked at him angrily. 'So why are you telling me this?' I demanded.

'So haven't you figured out who's going to be the next guest of honour, Sir Prof?' he asked, grinning.

'I thought you wanted me dead anyway,' I snapped sulkily. 'So what difference does it make to you if I'm first? You'll just be the next one, if even that lot can stomach you.'

'I don't want you terminally processed now, Turner. You were considered a problem, I'll admit. But security leaks don't matter any more. It's too late for anyone to do anything effective against Canute now.'

'I never intended to anything about it, anyway,' I growled.

'No matter,' dismissed Peters. 'What we've got to do is get ourselves out of here and out of London. And bloody quick. We've only got a two days left.' He lifted his arms behind him and knotted his fists. 'I can't get away by myself like this and you won't be able get away by yourself.'

I lifted my chin. 'Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that,' I snapped. 'I could just run for the tunnel and leave you behind. I got away from you and your goons easily enough, didn't I?' I looked at him angrily.

'That was just beginner's luck,' dismissed Peters. 'Our hearts weren't in it. These guys have got a much bigger stake in you than my guys did. They'll go after you and bring you back for sure. Maybe not in one piece, either. As long as that Mick's there to lead them, that is,' he added.

'So what are you proposing?' I asked, suddenly a good deal more interested in Peters' proposition.

'We're going to have to jump Mick and put him out of action,' said Peters decisively. 'Then we'll make a dash for it.'

'Extremely subtle plan,' I scoffed. 'And how do you suppose that two men, one of them with his arms handcuffed behind his back, are going to be able to overpower Mick and the apes?'

'We can if we're armed,' said Peters confidently.

I pointed my finger at him and said, 'Bang!' I lifted the finger and blew imaginary smoke from it. 'Now Mick's next. Just like that, huh?'

Peters ignored the sarcasm. 'Do you know how to use a handgun?' he asked.

'No, of course not,' I admitted.

Peters shrugged. 'I thought you were Canadian once, your father was in the Forces. Well, don't worry about that. It's pretty much like using a toy one. You just get as close as you can, point mid-body at the target and pull the trigger a couple of times,' he said. 'There's no safety, cocking or anything like that to worry about. It's really not difficult to use at all.'

'You may not have noticed, Peters,' I rasped sarcastically, 'But Mick's got your lovely little toy.'

'Oh, we can get it back from that arse easy enough, the way he's flashing it around. He's just an amateur, anyway,' stated Peters confidently.

'A pretty gifted one, I'd guess,' I replied sardonically. 'And so you suppose that Mick's just going to give the gun to me, the lucky beginner. I'll say, "Please, Mick, can we have the gun, please?" and he'll hand it right over to me. That right, huh?'

'That's where we'll have to work together,' said Peters. He outlined his plan. Basically, we lured Mick over here, Peters bowled him over and I grabbed the pistol away from him. Really professional, yeah?

'I think that's a pretty desperate plan, if you ask me,' I commented sceptically.

'I think we're in a pretty desperate situation, Turner,' countered Peters.

'And what if it goes wrong?' I asked.

'So they'll end up picking us out of their teeth a bit earlier than they expected,' shrugged Peters. He gave me a fierce look. 'At least we'll have tried to do something, rather than sitting here like sheep waiting to be slaughtered.'

'I don't know,' I mused, scratching my stubble. 'Your plan sounds pretty bloody daft to me. I'll have to think about it.' Peters sighed disgustedly and slumped against the wall.

I settled down and nervously watched the preparations for the feast. The ragged ones were putting away beer like there was no tomorrow and they could have been right. They stoked up the fire with newspapers and old wooden escalator steps. Mick and Martin gathered a couple of his men together and they had a brief huddled consultation. Martin broke away, strolled over and gave me a casual nudge with his foot. 'Up, cock, up,' he snapped.

My bowels went absolutely icy cold. Fortunately, I'd become constipated from not wanting to shit in public. 'What's the matter, Martin?' I demanded in a quivering voice. A pity that the body isn't always a bit more in tune with the rather more heroic mental intentions. It's really just too humiliating sometimes.

'Get up, feller,' he growled curtly. 'We need you now. It's time for you to share with us.'

I scuttled back away from him. 'Listen, Martin,' I cried, 'I know what you've got in mind.'

'Yeah, so what?' He moved forward and grabbed my arm. I knew how a chicken might have felt when the cook closed in on it. Peters watched with amused interest.

I shook Martin's hand away. 'Hey, look, man, I know something that will save your lives,' I gabbled. I had decided that I wasn't going to try the Peters plan. Too risky.

'Turner,' warned Peters savagely, 'Keep your fucking mouth shut or I'll shut it for you.' So much for the amnesty on security leaks.

'It's something you need to know, Martin!' I cried desperately.

'Turner, you'll be for the high jump if you leak that information!' bellowed Peters. He was really getting worked up about this. He rolled over and tried to get between Martin and me.

'You'll all die if you don't find out what I know, Martin!' I shouted. I batted Martin's hand away again and kicked desperately at Peters. I think Peters was going to try to tear my throat out with his teeth.

'Keep your mouth shut, you traitor!' roared Peters. His normally grey face was mottled with crimson blotches.

'Oh, yeah, sure you do,' said Martin with total disinterest to my warning. He got a better grip on my arm and started to drag me away from the wall.

'Hey, Martin!' called Mick. 'Those old guys giving you a hard time or something?' The oiks loafing around him bellowed with laughter. Peters lurched to his feet. He tried to butt Martin with his head.

Martin's face flushed with anger. He knocked Peters down and kicked him hard in the stomach. He heaved me about ten feet away from the wall in one jerk. I tried to scrabble back to the wall. I looked pleadingly at Mick. 'Listen to me, Mick, listen!' I shrieked. 'You're all going to die if you don't listen to me.' Mick roared with laughter. 'Mick, just give me a minute!' I begged. 'You'll be sorry if you don't!' Mick laughed even harder, his beefy face turning brick red. I played my last hand. 'London's going to drown, Mick, drown! The sea's coming in! It'll fill up the Tube. You've only got a couple days left to escape!'

That got Mick's attention, for some reason. Maybe he was a non-swimmer. 'Hey, wait a minute there, Martin,' he said sternly. He strolled over, hand caressing the cross-hatched butt of the revolver. 'Now what's that you said about us all drowning, mister geologist?' he asked.

I pulled away from Martin and gave Peters a triumphant glare. 'London's going to drown in three days, Mick,' I babbled urgently. Peters managed to get up on his knees and gave me a truly frightful look. 'A tidal wave's coming, Mick. The sea's going to cover all of southeast England, drown it.' Strictly speaking, it wasn't a tidal wave that was coming. Drama was the point of the statement, however, not scientific accuracy.

'Oh, yeah?' sneered Mick. 'And how come we ain't heard nothing about this important bit of news, mister?'

'It's a big secret, Mick,' I said quickly. 'The Government's been hiding it to stop a panic. I'm a scientist, an expert. That's how I know.' I pointed at Peters. 'This guy's a secret policeman, a spook. He's been killing people to keep the secret covered up. I escaped from him. He came down here after me.'

Mick nodded approvingly at Peters. 'He sounds like our sort of guy, don't he?' he commented. Martin snorted appreciatively. Mick turned to me. 'So now you've told us this very important news, feller, exactly what do you think we ought to do about it, huh?'

'Well, look, you can escape from London,' I said quickly. 'Move up north where the sea won't reach. There's still time, Mick. I can show you how to get away. I know how. I can take you to a safe place.'

'You fucking bastard traitor, Turner!' spat Peters. He staggered to his feet. 'You scum!'

'It's true, Mick,' I said. 'It's absolutely true. Every word of it.'

'This is one right old con, Mick,' said Martin in a bored voice. 'It's just a load of old cobblers, the turkeys cackling, chickens squawking. Come on, let's get this guy spitted over the fire and stop all this bleeding pissing about. I'm getting hungry. And that lot over there, they're hogging down all the beer.' He nodded towards the ragamuffins capering drunkenly around the fire.

Mick's face registered annoyance. He turned sideways and roared, 'Hey, you fucking scumbags! Leave off that there fucking beer!'

At that moment, Peters sprang forward and head-butted Mick in the midriff. Mick fell heavily back against the wall. A second later, Peters side-kicked his right foot viciously against Martin's knee. The knee buckled inward; Martin shrieked thinly and fell backwards off the platform. Mick tried to snatch the pistol from his waistband, but Peters kicked him full in the throat. Mick fell back, belched loudly and collapsed, his feet and hands fluttering weakly. The pistol slipped from his waist and clattered to the concrete floor.

'Get that firearm, Turner!' ordered Peters. Automatically, I scooped it up. It was heavier than I thought it would be and toasty warm from Mick's body.

I stared down at Mick with amazement. I was pretty sure he wasn't breathing. His long red tongue lolled out, almost down on to his chest. I'd never seen a dead person before then, I mean not freshly dead, alive a minute before and not close up like this. The rag people stood and gasped. A minute passed, then they buzzed angrily and started towards us in a determined body. Most of them had knives and clubs of some sort or another. My finger tightened around the trigger of the pistol and I gestured dramatically at them with it.

'Armed police! Stand back or we'll open fire!' shouted Peters in his best voice of authority.

The group hissed and moved back a step or two. 'They've gone and killed our poor, dear Mick!' shrilled Debs indignantly. 'The bastards! The swines!' I wouldn't have minded potting her right then and there, I can tell you. The others started yelping along with her.

'Disperse or we'll fire!' bellowed Peters officially. The group hushed and milled about in place, undecided. A few empty beer bottles were heaved at us, but they didn't move forward.

'Move back,' Peters whispered to me. 'Slowly, now, don't show your back to them.'

We inched back towards the edge of the platform. We took a few more steps backward, trying to stare down the rag people. It was working, too. They moved back a bit from us. Suddenly, I felt a powerful hand grasp my ankle. I shrieked wildly and pivoted. Peters must have overestimated the damage he'd done to Martin, because there he stood, looking a good deal meaner than usual. It was reflex, pure and simple, on my part - I just pointed the snout of the pistol in Martin's general direction and clamped back on the trigger. The recoil and roar was quite unexpected, simply amazing. Martin just disappeared; blown away, as I believe they used to say in the detective films of my youth.

I'd have thought that the cannibals would've scampered away when the gun went off. Instead, they charged across the twenty five or thirty feet between us, howling with fury. It must have been the drink or something.

'Fire, Turner, fire!' shouted Peters into my ringing ear.

I held the pistol tightly in both hands and squeezed the trigger wildly. The damned thing jumped all over the place, like a big dog straining against its lead, but in the wrong direction. I jerked and jerked and jerked at the trigger until the gun stopped jumping. The roar was continuous in the confined space of the station. Two bundles of rags flopped onto the platform floor and lay twitching. The rest of the rag people vanished into the exits by the time the firing stopped.

Peters looked at the dead or wounded raggies. 'Beginner's luck, again, Turner,' he grunted with satisfaction. He nudged me off the edge of the platform. In shock, but still gripping the empty pistol, I helped him jump down. He butted me gently down the track with his head.

I don't think I've ever stepped in so much shit in all my life, not even if I had a dozen lifetimes to live and spent them walking the pavements of Paris blind. Certainly not cannibals' shit. Utterly disgusting. And so, sustaining the scatological context, once again I disappeared into the bowels of the Tube.

2007-02-16T20:51:00.000Z

Chapter 24

Peters and I backed quickly down the tunnel until the light gave out. Fortunately, the rag people showed no inclination to follow us. We could still hear their wild howls and curses quite plainly for some time, though. Finally, I slipped the pistol into my jacket pocket. I sighed with relief and faced Peters. 'Peters, there's something I've been wanting to ask you for some time,' I said.

'What's that?' he asked cautiously. He must have thought I was going to try to rape the Official Secrets Act again.

'Is your hobby really raising budgies?' I asked. This had genuinely been troubling me for months.

Peters was genuinely indignant. 'Certainly not,' he snapped, 'I paint landscapes; water colours, actually.'

That was a relief. I just couldn't believe that a man who raised budgies could be as evil as Peters. Landscape painters, yes; budgie breeders, no. Another joke on the part of his late Lordship. 'Well, Peters,' I said cheerfully, 'I want you to know that it's been very interesting knowing you. I won't offer to shake, though,' I added.

'Look, Turner, you know I can't get around down here with these bloody handcuffs on,' gasped Peters. 'You're not going to just leave me here like this, are you?'

He must have thought we eggheads had absolutely no street savvy at all. 'Yeah, sure. Why the hell not?' I started to stroll off into the dark.

Peters hopped after me. 'Oh, come on, Turner, play fair. I helped you get away just now,' he cried. 'You'd never have got away without me.'

I turned. 'Why should I? I'd never have been here in the first place if it wasn't for you,' I growled. 'Play fair? You of all people have got to be kidding!'

'Look, Turner, terminal processing was nothing personal against you,' he said. 'I was just responsible for carrying out Government policy. I'm just a civil servant.'

'Bollocks,' I snapped. 'I've been hearing that line of civil servant crap just a bit too often for comfort lately. Well, it didn't wash at Nuremburg and it won't bloody well wash with me any more, Peters. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just leave you here to rot or to wander on back to the cannibals for high tea,' I demanded.

'Because I can help you get out of London, Turner,' replied Peters intently. You had to give it to the man. He didn't flap easily, even smack dab in the middle of the frying pan. He knew all the right hooks, I'll say that for him, but this trout wasn't biting.

'Oh yeah?' I sneered.

'Look, every copper on the beat in Britain is looking out for you, Turner,' explained Peters calmly, 'You're a known ecoterrorist. But when we get to Euston, I can make sure you get on a train. No police, no hassles. You'd never be able to get on one by yourself, even if the police weren't looking for you. I've got the authority to just walk through the barriers with you and put you right on the next train out of London.'

'Oh, sure you will,' I scoffed.

'And I'll be right on that train with you, too, Turner,' he added.

'I'm sure that would be an absolutely delightful holiday experience, Peters,' I rasped.

'Think about it, Turner,' urged Peters. 'You know I can do that for you. Think about home, Turner. Think about your wife and children.'

Now I believed that the police were after me, all right. But I jolly well knew that Peters wouldn't want to see me in the hands of the uniformed police, either; not alive, anyway. I also certainly didn't believe I'd ever get on a train, either, if dear old Mr Peters had anything to do with it. So I had this cute idea, as you'll see. I decided to play along with his game for a while. I cleared my throat nervously and glanced at him. 'Would you really do that for me, Peters, even after I told them about the Bulge back there?' I asked fearfully.

'Look, Turner, I know I got angry when you spilled the beans to those apes back there,' admitted Peters amiably. 'But my experience told me that wasn't the best way for us to get out of there, that's all. You know?'

'I suppose you were right, anyway,' I agreed sheepishly, 'Your way did get the gun back.'

'I mean all the shouting was just, ah, to distract them,' added Peters. He must have thought me a total maroon.

'You promise you'll get me on a train?' I begged eagerly. God, it was all I could do to keep a straight face. I could hardly believe he was gulping it down like this.

'On my mother's grave, I swear it,' said Peters earnestly. I didn't bother to ask if his mother deserved a grave or even if he had a mother at all.

'All right then,' I said, 'I'll help you get through the Tube. It's not going to be easy, though. It took me hours to get this far from Westminster and I wasn't dragging someone along with me.' I pulled off my belt. 'Now, look, I'm going to tie my belt to your arm and lead you,' I explained as I took off my belt and looped it around his arm. I had to hold my trousers up with the other hand. They hadn't exactly been fattening us up back there, in spite of their ultimate intentions towards us. I led Peters slowly into the tunnel towards darkness. Eventually, I had to hold the end of the belt in my teeth while I felt my way with the hand not holding up my trousers. We made slow progress, but at least we didn't fall.

'Turner?' asked Peters after a while.

'Yeah?' I grunted, mouth full of belt.

'What happens if a train comes while we're here in the tunnel?' he asked fretfully. I think he was a bit freaked-out by the idea, for once. Maybe all his pushing of people under trains was something deeply rooted in his psyche; a bad childhood experience being endlessly relived. Frankly, I didn't give a toss, except that I was pleased to know that something might just be able to terrify Peters, even if it probably weighed a hundred tons.

I dropped the belt into my free hand and giggled. 'Keep a very tight pucker, Peters, and lie down next to the wall, really close. You'll have plenty of warning when one comes, don't worry.'

Peters' worry wasn't completely unfounded. About ten minutes later we got some practice with a real live train. 'There,' I said, once I could hear again, 'Not so bad, was it?' Oh, revenge can be so sweet.

Peters' mumbled something incoherent at me. I hoped he'd been scared shitless. I certainly didn't want to be this near to him if he hadn't been. 'Come along, Peters,' I called cheerfully, 'Only a few more hours to go!'

We stumbled along in silence for what seemed like ages. I fell twice and scraped my arms up badly. I lost count of the number of times Peters tripped. Too bad, really, that he didn't fall across the live rail. Zzzt! Eventually, I remembered that I had a tie in my pocket and used that instead of my belt as a lead. I least I had my trousers up securely and another hand to grope around in the dark with. Fortunately, Euston wasn't too far from Warren Street so it didn't take all that long to get there, surprisingly uphill though. Better still, the platform wasn't inhabited, so there were no Captain Cook problems this time. We walked up the ramp to the brightly lit station. It almost seemed normal.

'Well, here we are,' I commented unnecessarily. 'I guess we'll just wait here and see if a train will stop and pick us up. 'I do hope you've got a valid ticket, old boy.' Peters just grunted. The tunnel tour seemed to have knocked the wind out of his sails a bit. The platform floor was heavily tracked and splattered with what looked suspiciously like dried blood. I pointed at the splashes and Peters nodded glumly. We sat in silence for a few minutes. 'Tell you what,
Peters,' I said brightly, 'I'm thirsty and hungry. I'm going up to see if I can find some sort of vending machine that's working. Have you got any change?'

'No, of course not,' replied Peters in a tired voice, 'Don't be silly.'

'Well, I'll just have to see what I can find, lying around,' I continued brightly. 'Don't go away, now.'

'Look, Turner,' growled Peters, 'We need to get the hell out of here. Can't it wait?'

'No, it can't wait,' I replied crossly. 'I happen to have been down here quite a bit longer than you have and I'm bloody well hungry for something other than my fellow man.' I turned abruptly and followed the "Way Out" signs. I could have followed my nose, just as well. There was the faint stench of rotten meat. I wasn't so green now that I didn't realise that there must be bodies up ahead. At least no one was eating them, if my nose told me correctly.

The escalator was dark and partly blocked with debris. I climbed over the first pile of rubble and stepped on the partly buried body of a man in a dust-powdered suit. A dark starburst of small shapes fled from the body. If human flesh was good enough for people, why shouldn't it be good enough for rats, too? I calmly looted the man's pockets of change. The body sort of squished and farted as I moved it. Build up of gases from decay I guess. Amazing what a few hours of uncivilised reality can do to dull one's fine sensibilities, isn't it? I encountered several more corpses, women's, as I climbed. Obviously part of the ceiling had collapsed on the escalator. It looked safe enough now, though. I quickly learned that looting bags was a good deal more pleasant and profitable than intimate male body searches. I found sweets in several bags. The absolute find of the day was a tin of Coca-Cola and two chocolate bars in a shopping bag: a memorable meal. I certainly didn't save any for Peters, I can tell you.

At the top of the escalator, I could feel strong air currents, but it was too dark to see much. Probably just as well if the stink was anything to go by. I guessed that the wind must have blown something big, like a small skyscraper, on top of the station and covered it up. The survivors from the station must have fled through the platform below. It was obvious that the emergency services hadn't bothered themselves with cleaning up in here, if they'd been here at all.

A dimly flickering florescent lamp caught my attention. Under it was a rank of pay telephones. I climbed over the litter to the phones. I lifted the receiver of "Good Rubber Times, 7583-4705". It was dead. The second one, "Big Blonde", worked. I fed a pound coin into the slot and dialled home. The line clicked and cut off. I tried again. Cut off again. I lost my pound. I tried the third phone and fed it another pound coin. This time my number rang and was immediately picked up.

'Hello?' she said. God, I could hardly believe it. It was Lizzie. The connection was so clear she could have been across town.

My voice was a tinny strangled quiver. 'Lizzie? Lizzie, is that you, love?' I frantically fed all the change I had into the phone.

'Oh, hello, Sue,' she replied breezily. 'I was just getting the kids off to bed.'

I wasn't quick to catch on. I was never one quarter as sharp as she was; not in real time, anyway. 'Lizzie, it's me, baby. It's Ratty, not Sue,' I protested. This call wasn't turning out the way I'd imagined. Tears of frustration sprang to my eyes.

'Oh, I know that, Sue,' she chattered. 'We're all fine here, though.'

I still didn't get it. 'Lizzie-kins, it's Dick, love, speak to me, please!' I cried.

'Of course, Sue,' she stressed "Sue", 'I know that, dear.'

At last I caught on. Sue was my sister's name. 'Lizzie, is there someone there with you?' I demanded urgently.

'That's so right, darling,' she laughed gaily.

'Is it the police, Lizzie?' I asked.

'Well, I'm not exactly sure,' she said, giggling inanely. 'You can never tell these days.'

I saw that my change was counting down to nothing. 'Baby, are you and the kids OK?'

'Oh, we're just fine. Don't worry about us,' she laughed. God, I'd have given every penny I'd ever made to have fed it into that blasted phone right at that minute. 'How about you, Sue? How are you?'

'Lizzie,' I cried desperately, 'I'm trying to get out of London, love. I'm trying to get home. I'll get there, baby. Wait for me, love. Wait for me.' The horrid beeps cut in.

'Well, be very, very careful coming over here, dear, and have a good ...' The phone clicked and hummed. My coins crashed down into strong box. I hung the receiver up glumly. I suppose I could have looked for more change, but it would only have alerted whoever it was with her. I'd try to call again.

2007-02-16T20:47:00.000Z

Chapter 25

Peters had no Tube ticket and I'd lost mine somewhere. Can you imagine it? The end of the world, the deluge, and a poxy little ticket taker stops us from climbing over the Underground turnstiles to safety? Well, I was over them and would have made clean away if it hadn't been for that bloody Peters. The scrawny little old bugger tackled him and absolutely hung on for dear life.

'Sir,' the collector called after me, 'Come back! This is a serious offense, sir! You're only making things worse for yourself and your friend! Come back, sir!'

In spite of Peters having been referred to as my friend, I returned reluctantly. Unfortunately, I still needed Peters. I stood impatiently across the hurdles from Peters and his aged captor. The ticket taker's black plastic glasses had been knocked askew in the struggle. He pushed them back up and brushed off his blue jacket irritably. 'Here,' I growled to Peters, 'Let me just show him your warrant card. Where is it?'

'Shirt pocket,' rumbled Peters, leaning forward.

I reached across and slipped the plastic-laminated card out, carefully avoiding contact, even through cloth, with Peters' doubtlessly rubbery flesh. 'Police,' I said and handed it over to the ticket collector.

The collector studied the card slowly and carefully. 'Now, young fellow, I've never seen one of these cards before and there's no picture on it, neither,' he mused dubiously. He stared frostily at Peters. 'And anyway, if this here bloke's a policeman, then what's he doing locked up in cuffs like that?' He handed the card back to me.

'Well, that's a very long and complicated story,' I said pleasantly. I showed the man my Cabinet Office pass. 'We're on official business, you see,' I whispered confidentially, 'It's very hush-hush.'

He still wasn't impressed in the slightest. 'Did you have tickets when you entered the Underground, sir?' he demanded sternly.

'I did, yes, but I lost it,' I replied testily. 'I don't really know about him,' I said, indicating Peters.

'I came in with uniformed police on a raid into the Underground,' snapped Peters indignantly. 'Of course we didn't have tickets. Do you think we'd stop to buy tickets in the middle of an operation?'

The collector clucked loudly, made a sceptical moue and handed me back Peter's warrant card. 'Well, sir, that'll be £2 for the two of you, please,' he said.

'Look, we haven't actually got any cash on us at the moment,' I apologised. 'Couldn't we just give you an IOU or something like that?'

The ticket taker regarded us sceptically. 'I suppose I could do a 1014 for you, sir,' he sighed. 'That's a voucher for lost tickets. But the real problem is that this gentleman here openly admits that he never had a ticket. I can't issue him a 1014 because of that. It just wouldn't be worth my job, see.'

I hadn't heard that old chestnut for ages. 'Oh, good grief,' I sighed impatiently. 'Do you take credit cards?'

The guard's thin face brightened and then eclipsed with worry. 'Yes, but only major ones, sir,' he warned.

I pulled out my Visa, American Express and Access cards. 'Pick a card,' I said eagerly, 'Any card, please.'

The man pointed humourlessly toward the ticket counter across the hall. 'I'm afraid you'll have to pay over there, sir,' he said.

'Oh, sure, all right, thanks,' I said. Officious little tick, I thought, hanging on down here wouldn't be worth his life, either. Damned if I'd say anything to him, after this, even if I thought he'd believe it.

Peters sighed heavily, rolled his eyes and stamped across the floor to the counter. I met him at the other side. The window was smashed in and the gate hung drunkenly open, derelict. We looked back. The game little ticket man had disappeared; probably official tea time. Peters shrugged and walked right through. We hurried up the stalled escalators. Euston station was full of prowling police. Huge queues of despondent-looking travellers snaked out of the doors of the station and out of sight. A pair of policemen, fifty feet away, regarded us suspiciously and whispered furtively into their radios.

'Well, that was a pretty close call back there, hey, Peters?' I joked. 'I mean, you could've ended up with a criminal record for fare jumping. You could lose your eyes only clearance for something like that, you know.'

Peters smiled wanly. 'Could I have it back, please?' he asked.

I regarded him quizzically, taking good care to move well out of striking distance from him. 'I beg your pardon?' I replied.

'My warrant card,' grunted Peters nervously. I guess he suddenly realised how extremely foolish he'd been to let me have it. I'd been wondering for hours how I was going to get it away from him without getting killed in the process. It had been unbelievably easy. Peters seemed to have been losing his edge as the fatigue built up.

'My dear chap,' I burbled calmly, in the best late Sir Antony style, 'Whatever can you be talking about?' I took out my Cabinet Office card and deliberately tore it across the photograph. I dropped the photograph portion down a crack in the escalator.

I stepped away from Peters and staggered dramatically towards the two coppers, clawing at my abdomen. 'Help! Help me!' I shouted. 'It's Turner! Get him! Help!' I cried. The two policemen rushed towards us. Peters sized up the situation and bolted down the stairs. A serious mistake, really, he should have stood his ground and talked them around. Maybe it was that fatigue. Hardly surprising, really, under the circumstances and with his arms pinned back like that, too.

I waved the warrant card at the policemen and pointed down the staircase. 'It's Turner, lads, get him!' Get him!' I don't really think they were that primed up about me at all. They probably just reacted to the situation of someone running from them in the way they'd been trained to react. They rushed down the escalator after Peters, whistles shrilling.

I turned and marched briskly towards the other police converging on the stairs. I stepped up to a beefy uniformed sergeant and displayed the warrant card boldly. He goggled at it with amazement and snapped to attention. That card must have been pretty hot stuff. 'Don't worry, sergeant,' I stated confidently. 'They'll get him. He won't get far. He's in cuffs.'

The sergeant nodded confidently. 'Oh they'll nab him, sir, all right. They're good lads, they are.'

I handed the sergeant the torn Cabinet Office card. 'It's Turner of the Cabinet Office down there, Sergeant. Official Secrets Act, terrorism and other very serious offences against the Crown. You must have had the squeal.' Not bad for spur of the moment stuff.

The Sergeant must've watched the same sort of TV stuff I had. He swallowed it down whole. 'Oh, yes, sir,' he replied stoutly. 'It's been up on the board for almost a week now, I think. We've been keeping a sharp eye our for Turner, sir.'

I drew the sergeant close to me. 'Turner's accomplices are on the next train out of London, sergeant,' I explained urgently. 'We're in hot pursuit. They must be followed. When is the next train and what platform is it leaving from, sergeant?'

The sergeant's face contorted. 'Train to Manchester, sir! Oh, crumbs, sir! It's just leaving now!' he cried. 'Platform 5, sir!'

I sprang back dramatically. 'Quick, sergeant, you and your men, follow me!' I shouted, best Boy's Own style. I bolted for the platform, shoving heavily laden people out of my way as I ran. The sergeant whistled, windmilled his arms at his men and pounded along behind me. The queues parted obediently to let us pass. Half a dozen whistling policemen followed after us. We raced down the deserted ramp to the train. The red clamshell steel platform gates were shut and locked. I could hear the train beginning to squeal its way out of the station. There was only one way possible in time left. 'Sergeant! Boost me over that wall!'

'Right-oh, sir!' he cried. The burly sergeant obediently laced his fingers together and braced his back against the high wall. I stepped my foot into his hands and he boosted me right up and over the wall. I dropped heavily down on the other side, recovered my balance and then pounded down the platform, waving wildly at the slowly moving train. It didn't slow.

I ran to an electric baggage cart and jumped up on it. I jammed my foot down on the pedal and jerked down the platform after the train, carts slamming and jerking wildly behind. Well, I'd like to say that I John Wayned myself from the moving cart to the train, but I didn't have to do that. The drivers just stopped the train for me. They were probably laughing so hard they couldn't keep their feet on the pedals, or whatever they used to make trains go. Anyway, they stopped and let me get on board. This time I did get to use my credit cards and for the last time, too. First class, don't you know? That will do nicely, sir, as they used to say. Especially with the warrant card. Anyway, you should have seen the state of second class. It was like the commute at rush hour in Calcutta. Even in first, it was standing room only. At least there was a better class of standee in First, even if everyone on the train was probably a VIP of some description or another.

* * *

Pretty clever, wasn't it, Lizzie, getting away like that? What's that, dear? Speak up, lovey, I can't hear you. Lizzie? Lizzie, where the devil are you? Lizzie? Blasted woman, always going off without saying a word to me! Lizzie, where the hell are you? Oh, there you are, my dear! I was looking for you. Yes, that's very true, love, everyone has to, once in a while, even without a lot of water to drink. Well, I do wish you wouldn't go off like that though, love, without telling me. It really does upset me, Lizzie. You gave me such a turn there for a minute, dear heart, such a turn.

2007-02-16T20:45:00.000Z

Chapter 26

I couldn't stay on the train all the way to Manchester, of course. I'd have had to get off at Crewe, anyway, but I didn't dare stay on it half as long as I would have liked. I knew that it wouldn't take Peters long to talk his way of his problems in London and he would quickly find out that I was on the Manchester train. I really didn't want to see that ugly mug greeting me at any of the stations. Perhaps they wouldn't have been able to get ahead of me in time. Maybe I was just getting paranoid. That's easy enough when the bad guys really are shooting deadly rays at you.

So, just outside of Rugby, I was really very naughty. I pulled the emergency cord and jumped off the end of the train. A £50 fine and a bullet in the head if they'd caught me. I knew from our models that the sea would stop short of the Chilterns. I'd be safe here; at least from the sea. I'd have liked to have gotten a whole lot close to home. If I had, things might have turned out differently. Who knows? Anyway, that's where I bailed out and for the best of reasons: viz, staying alive. I lay in the wind-lashed bushes until the train moved on again.

Stupid move, really, jumping off there the way I did. Looking back, I realise that Peters would've figured out almost immediately that I was the guy who'd pulled the cord and scarpered. Had he chosen to do so, he'd probably have had a good deal less problem rounding me up in the countryside than from off the train or at a station. But no, Peters was even more clever, and more vicious, than that. He knew exactly where I was headed. No pain, no strain on his part. Just sit down on his backside and wait for the rat to come scuttling home to its hole. Then, wham, snap! Gotcha! Well, said rodent hadn't figured all of that out until a good deal later. At the time, rodent was sure he was running for his life, Peters hot on his trail.

As soon as the train started up again, I lit out like a scalded dog. I ran until I vomited and then I ran some more. The only good thing I can say for myself is that I had enough sense to keep moving in the direction of the setting sun. Even now I don't remember all that much about how I got home. It's a hell of a long way from Rugby to Conwy and the weather seemed rotten every step of the way. Boiling hot and the wind in my teeth every step of the way.

Renting or buying a car was absolutely impossible, even if I had dared to try. There was practically no petrol by then, anyway. I didn't have any money and nobody would take credit cards from a ragged, bearded bum without photo ID. So I slept rough. I stole food when I couldn't cadge or scrounge it. Early on, I hopped an open lorry, begged for lifts and mostly walked. A nicked bicycle did me a good turn of speed, too, until it broke down in the hills and I had to ditch it. I made pretty good time for all that, considering everything. Sometimes ten miles a day. To think that I used to dread the four hour train trip from London to home!

The trip would have been bad enough, even without the attending civil disaster. That turned a death march into a total nightmare. The Bulge must have hit Britain while I was somewhere between Birmingham and Telford. The roads soon filled up with panic-stricken refugees very slowly going nowhere. Hundreds of miles of traffic jams, it looked like. The cars soon ran out of fuel or broke down, blocking the roads even more. Everything quickly ground to a halt in just about every way possible. So much for the Army's psychological pacification campaign and containment of the high areas. I still don't know if those bozos managed to deal with all the nuclear power sites or not. I hope we never will find out, not the hard way, anyway. The only Army I saw was when their tanks tried to clear the clogged M54 of refugees' cars. Their beetle brown tanks whirred forward, flat turrets swivelling smoothly from side to side, ploughing the cars off the road; occupied or not. They opened fire when the mob attacked them. They didn't need to fire a shot at me; I ran like a bunny as soon as I saw what was up. I could hear the machine guns pop-pop-popping for an hour afterward, though.

Once the chips were really down, the strong took what they wanted from the weak and the weak perished beside the roads in their hundreds of thousands. As the countryside began to dry out, even the strong began to die. I survived because I stayed away from people as much as I possibly could. The empty pistol helped a good deal, too, on two occasions. Fortunately, I met no one prepared to find out if it had bullets in it or not. The food situation was about what you'd expect. I'd had practice enough at that already and so I survived by scavenging. I'll say no more about that except that burned people smell mouth-wateringly like roast pork. I'm a confirmed vegetarian now. Water became a serious problem, but I wasn't fussy as long as it was wet. No one was, in the end, if they survived.

Thirty-seven days it took me to get home, I think. Since the weather was very warm, I stuck to the high hills as much as possible, even though the wind was worse there. That strategy probably didn't do my health any harm, since I met very few people up there. I only had one big shock, really. That was when I stood on the last ridge above the Bay and saw the sea again. It's funny how you can know something intellectually, but still be totally surprised by the reality. The coastline was completely changed. The estuary was a small bay. Puffin Island was gone. The town was gone. The castle was gone. The trees were gone. The houses still left were heaps of rubble, if anything was left at all. Everything was utterly changed and all was utterly desolated. The sand already was beginning to drift across the land. That was my homecoming view, be it ever so humble.

It's almost impossible to describe my jumbled feelings as I came closer and closer to home. What can I say that's not a total cliche? Maybe it was just a cliched situation. The weary traveller's hopeful homecoming, his apprehensive homecoming. My heart leaped up with joy, my heart was in my mouth with fear of what I might find. I wanted to break into a mad run, to fall straight into Lizzie's soft open arms. I wanted to hold my kids tight and laugh it all away with them. But I tried not to get my hopes up too much. There'd been no contact with home; I hadn't been able to find a working phone all that way. Over a month without word from me while the world came apart at the seams. It would be hard for a woman and two kids to hold a big place like that all by themselves at a time like that. I'd seen plenty since the Underground to give me little enough hope of anything.

I slipped off our lane about a quarter of a mile from the house. It was a sort of reflex action. It seemed so improbable that Peters might still be in pursuit of me after more than a month, especially with law and order, so-called, almost totally disintegrated. Still, I wasn't taking any chances. I'd been through plenty to get home and I wasn't about to get careless the last few hundred yards. I scurried around behind the dusty hill, the wind screaming in my ears, dust lashing into my eyes. As I reached the rise, I dropped to my belly and crawled over the dustpit of a field where Bobby had cut his hand with the kite string just two years earlier. No sign of my poor old sheep, of course; that would be a bit much to expect.

Creeping cautiously up behind a blasted, leafless hedgerow, I caught my first view of the house for almost a year. Welcome home, wanderer. There was no sign of a roof and the upper story was tumbled down. All the windows were broken out; the doorways doorless. The Mercedes lay slewed across the driveway. The trees were gone, even the stumps, and the grass was dead stubble. Streamers of khaki dust shot around and through the house. It looked like a house from the Blitz, or worse. There was no sign of movement inside. That didn't mean a thing, though. Lizzie was a smart cookie, no Dizzy Lizzie, my old girl. She and the kids would've quickly learned to lie low and not attract any undesired attention.

I made up my mind not to move closer to the house until late afternoon, a few hours at the most. Then, shadows would help cover my advance. I watched the house tirelessly, in spite of the driving wind, the burning sun and my thirst. I soon finished the last of the liquid mud in my trusty old Corona bottle. Later, driven by thirst, I crawled to the north corner of the sheep field where a little spring had trickled into a concrete trough. The trough was dry. I hammered my fist through hard, cracked mud and dug deep down into the sticky muck until a small pool of reddish, muddy silt collected. I gulped the earthy slime down with relish and crawled back to my station.

As the sun moved around the house, though, I became convinced that I was being watched. I slithered to a new position, one where I could see better into the kitchen. I was certain now that I could see the distorted shadow of face projected against the outer wall. I squinted and strained my sore eyes to make it out. If it was a face, it certainly wasn't Lizzie's. I watched another 30 minutes and the shadow only shifted with the sun. I moved again, lost sight of the shadow and then slid back to my original spot. The impression persisted. It was a face. I was convinced that someone was in the kitchen.

Only one person in the whole world would have the insane persistence to wait motionless for so long for his prey to appear: Peters. Only he would hunt when there was no long any point to it except carrying out the sick, decayed policies of a drowned Government. He'd probably been tracking me all the way to Wales, letting me grind my balls down to nothing and laughing himself sick while I did it. Oh, yes, that would be his dirty, rotten game, for sure. Zzzt! Let me struggle all this way and then be waiting to rub me out in my own kitchen. Just his style, the grey bastard!

Without really thinking about it, I slipped through the withered hedge and scuttled down to the ruins of the old barn. The heavy slate roof had caved in between thick stone walls. There was a good three to four feet of space between the massive wooden rafters and the ground. I knew what was holding them up: cases and cases of baked beans. My hand brushed against a tin and my mouth instantly flooded with saliva. I stove in the lid of the tin, as quietly as I could, with the barrel of the pistol. I lifted the battered tin to my parched lips and sucked the savory contents out. Pure bliss. My salivary glands ached with the sheer pleasure of it. The best food I had eaten in over a month. I gulped and bolted the better part of three cans that way. Then I barfed up the bulk of it up, of course. Too much rich food on an empty stomach, but I couldn't stop myself from gorging.

A sudden thought stabbed my heart after I finished the third can. If that shit Peters was sitting there in the kitchen, where were Lizzie and the kids? Was he holding them hostage? Probably; almost certainly. They'd be in the basement, one of Peter's flunkies would be guarding them. Of course, that would be their lure, all right. Using a woman and her kids as bait, the creeps. What else? Despair slapped me down. Jesus, what could I do? If only I had some bullets for the gun, I'd burst in and shoot the bastards down like sick dogs. Thick tears tracked down my dirt-packed cheeks. To come so far and go through so much - only to be stopped at my very doorstep by that bastard Peters, that grey, rubbery cunt.

The pent up rage and frustration of the long, hard journey flooded me with a white hot fire. A father and husband's instinctive and murderous anger jolted through my body. No doubt some high class food in my belly might have had something to do with it, too. Whatever, it was, I crawled over to my tool bench. The smooth strong wooden shaft of my old geology hammer slid comfortably into my hand. A lovely kilogramme lump of steel with a nice, sharp chisel point. A strong feeling of pleasurable anticipation pervaded my body. Peters' skull and this hammer were going to be very, very intimate friends, if I had anything to do with it. They were just made for one another. I'd mash his fucking skull like an egg shell; shatter and splatter it like a rotten old egg. I could hardly wait. I left the empty pistol in the top drawer.

I slapped the solid hammer against my open palm. So two could play at this man-hunting game, then. I'd made it this far and I'd finish what I'd started, by God. Sneak in through the patio door and rush the kitchen. The hammer would make no noise, except cracking open that rotten skull. Pop! Plop! Then I'd have Peters' gun to take care of the guy watching Lizzie and the kids. I'd call the guy up from the cellar and shoot the bastard right in the belly. Only too bad that Peters would get off fairly easily. I was sure that a pair of nice, personal murders would make me feel a whole lot better about a whole lot of things. The end of the world had made me a pretty good hater. Academic to caveman in less than sixty days!

I slid out from under the wreckage of the barn roof and rolled behind the car. The wind had sand blasted most of the paint away from the underskirts. The scoured steel gleamed under the brilliant sun. Keeping an eye on the kitchen window, I sprinted across the drive and pasted myself against the back wall. I edged along to the patio door. The aluminum frame was still intact but the glass had been blown into the dining room. I peeped in cautiously. No sign of anyone. The furniture had been blown into a smashed jumble, almost blocking the door into the hall. I wouldn't be able to get through without making a racket, even though the wind might cover small noises. I would have to get in somewhere else.

I tiptoed across the patio and tried the front door. The only door left standing in the house and it was locked. I'd lost my keys, along with everything else, worse luck. I circled all around the house. The windows were either too high or the broken glass still too jagged to get in. Finally, I came around to the open back door. It was close to the kitchen, but also was the most obvious entry point. It was where they'd be watching, I was sure. I couldn't chance it. I'd have to rush the cellar first and then take my chances with Peters afterwards. I circled back around the house. I crawled stealthily under the kitchen window and around to the back of the house on the other side.

I silently levered the padlock off the coal chute door with the hammer and slipped between the stout wooden doors. I slid noiselessly down the chute into the coal bunker. The filth and cobwebs almost choked me, but this had turned out a lot better than I'd thought, so far. I'd hammer this guy, take his pistol and then gut-shoot the old twat upstairs; an unexpected bonus. I moved cautiously across the small room. I listened carefully at the flimsy wooden door. No light, no sound in the cellar. Maybe they'd heard me and had frozen still. I waited, nervous sweat trickled down my neck. The noise of the wind was a good deal less down here, but it might cover a mistake or two. Still no sound. Maybe they were asleep.

Well, I'd waited long enough. I'd have to take a chance now. Holding the hammer in my right hand, I slowly pushed at the door with the palm of my left. It wouldn't budge. I could feel it sticking at the top. I pressed my shoulder against the door and pressed harder. It warped, but it still wouldn't push out. It creaked loudly, but wouldn't give. This was it, I couldn't piss around forever - my wife and kids were in there, in danger. I had to make a move and it had to be now. I stepped back and lunged at the door with all my weight. The door ripped off its hinges and crashed flat into the room. I staggered into the dimly lit cellar, hammer raised high.

The cellar was completely empty. No one was in it at all. I just couldn't believe it. I searched the big room frantically, tears streaming down my face. I scattered and overturned the dusty cardboard boxes in a fury. No one was there. I only found one of Bobby's toys, an old teddy. I had been so sure they had been down here, so bloody certain, that I just couldn't come to terms with it. I went absolutely berserk. I stormed up the wooden cellar stairs and kicked the door open, real hero stuff. 'Peters, you fucking cunt! Where are they, you bastard? Where are they?' I shrieked. I lurched into the kitchen, hammer raised high, not caring if he shot me or not. Just as long as I could feel that hammer crushing that ugly head open, smashing it, pulping it.

A flurry of black feathers shot out of the kitchen window, warbling angrily: a blackbird. Peters sat bolt upright on Lizzie's favourite kitchen stool, in the far corner of the kitchen. His eyes were deep, eyeless black pits. His face was shrivelled rags of leather with polished white skull glistening through. The wind tirelessly wrapped long wispy grey strands of hair around his face and unwrapped them again. Peters was quite dead. The hungry birds had begun to pick his corpse clean. My fury evaporated instantly. I threw myself on the dusty tiles, arms outstretched, and burst into bitter, bitter tears.

Later, I examined Peters' body. I could seen no obvious indication of what had killed him. He didn't even have a pistol on him. I can only hope that it had been an exceedingly painful death but it probably hadn't, what with him still sitting like that. I searched the house carefully, but there was no sign of Lizzie or the kids. No notes, nothing missing from the house except them, precious them, and all their things. My dam and chicks, all gone, oh God.

2007-02-16T20:40:00.000Z

Chapter 27

And so, dear reader, that's about it. Pussy's out of the sack. You expected a happy ending? Long lost Ratty falls into loving Lizzie's arms and lives happily ever et cetera? Something really improbable like that, eh? You've got to be kidding. I shouldn't have to tell you that life's not like that - not if you've survived long enough to read this happy little journal of mine.

That's right, I don't know where the hell Lizzie and the kids are. I don't know if they ran off somewhere with Lizzie's girlfriend or if Peters did away with them. I don't have a fucking clue where to start looking for them and I'd probably be dead in 24 hours if I left my cellar to go out looking for them. It's not that I don't care; I do, desperately. It's just that I don't have a clue where to start. I'd go in a second if I thought it would make a jot of difference, but it won't, you know. They're gone and that's all there is to it.

Yeah, this story is total bullshit. Or at least the part about how we live now is. There just isn't any we, as far as I can tell. The local farmers, fishermen, wind generators and cosy agrarian societies are just a little game I play in my head, like talking to Lizzie and calling telephone numbers at random. Of course, there's no cosy underground retreat, either; it's just a crappy little black cellar.

And so what if I talk to my dear old Lizzie and she's not actually here with me? You just can't imagine how lonely it is. Nothing to keep me company but the wind and the sand and the sound of my own voice. I'm not nuts, you know. It might be easier if I could just let go and lost my mind totally, utterly, barkingly. Give in to despair. Slash my throat. Instead, I just sit down here, sane enough, in this bare dusty cellar as the winds get stronger and stronger, waiting to die and thinking about how we got to where we are now.

Oh, I guess the rest of the story is true enough - for all practical purposes. I mean about how the Government farted around while Rome was doused in petrol and matches given to every child. Well, let's be really fair. We all farted and fiddled around until it was too late to do anything worth doing. And now, only the tins of beans are real, crates and crates of them. Those, and the red sand and the sea. And the bloody, bloody wind.

_____