"How far are they behind you?" she asked him. "The Iad?"

"Iad?" he said.

"The giants."

"There are no giants. Just darkness."

"How far?"

"Very close."

When she looked back towards the schism she understood what he meant by darkness. Clots of it were emerging, carried out on the waves like gobs of tar the size of boats, then rising up into the air above the desert. They had some kind of life, propelling themselves with rhythmic motions that ran down through the dozens of limbs arrayed along their flanks. Filaments of matter as dark as their bodies trailed beneath them, like coils of decaying gut. This was not, she knew, the Iad itself; but they couldn't be far behind.

She glanced away from the sight towards the steel tower, and the platform on top of it. The bomb was her species' ultimate idiocy, but it might justify its existence if it was quick in its detonation. There was no flicker from the platform, however. The bomb hung in its cradle like a bandaged baby, refusing to wake.

Kissoon was still alive; still holding the moment. She started back towards the rubble in the hope of finding him, and in the vainer hope of stopping his life with her own hands. As she approached she realized the clots had purpose in their upward movement. They were assembling themselves in layers, their filaments knotting so as to create a vast curtain. It was already thirty feet in the air, and each wave that broke brought more clots, their number rising exponentially as the schism widened.

She searched the maelstrom for a sign of Kissoon, and found both him and Jaffe on the far side of the rubble that had been the rooms. They were standing face to face, hands at each other's throats, the knife still in Jaffe's fist but held from further work by Kissoon. It had been busy. What had once been Raul's body was covered in stab wounds, from which blood was freely running. The cuts seemed not to have impaired Kissoon's strength. Even as she came in sight of them the shaman tore at Jaffe's throat. Pieces of his flesh came away. Kissoon went back for more instantly, opening the wound further. She directed him from his assault with a cry.

"Kissoon!"

The shaman glanced her way.

"Too late," he said. "The Iad's almost here."

She took what comfort she could from that almost.

"You both lost," he said, taking a back-handed swipe at Jaffe which threw the man off him to the ground. The frail, bony body didn't land heavily; it had too little weight. But it rolled some distance, the knife going from Jaffe's hand. Kissoon offered his opponent a contemptuous glance, then laughed.

"Poor bitch," he said to Tesla. "What did you expect? A reprieve? A blinding flash to wipe them all away? Forget it. It can't happen. The moment's held."

He started towards her as he talked, his approach slower than it might otherwise have been had he not sustained so many wounds.

"You wanted revelation," he said. "And now you've got it. It's almost here. I think you should show your devotion to it. That's only right. Let it see your flesh."

He raised his hands, which were bloody, the way they'd been in the hut when she first heard the word Trinity, and glimpsed him daubed with Mary Muralles's blood.

"The breasts," he said. "Show it the breasts."

A long way behind him, Tesla saw Jaffe getting to his feet. Kissoon failed to notice the motion. His eyes were all for Tesla.

"I think I should bare them for you," he said. "Allow me to do you that kindness. "

She didn't retreat; didn't put up any resistance. Instead she dropped all expression from her face, knowing how much he liked the pliant. His bloody hands were repulsive, the hard-on pressing against the soaked fabric of his trousers more disgusting still, but she succeeded in concealing her repugnance.

"Good girl," he said. "Good girl."

He put his hands on her breasts.

"What say we fuck for the millennium?" he said.

She couldn't quite discipline the shudder that ran through her at the touch and the thought.

"Don't like it?" he said, suddenly suspicious. His eyes flickered off to his left as he understood the conspiracy. There was a glint of fear in them. He started to turn. Jaffe was two yards from him, and closing, the knife raised above his head, the glint on its blade an echo of the glint in Kissoon's eyes. Two lights that belonged together.

"Don't—" Kissoon began, but the knife dared to descend before he could forbid it, sliding into his wide right eye. Kissoon didn't scream this time, but expelled his breath as a long moan. Jaffe pulled the knife out and stabbed again, the second stab as accurate as the first, puncturing the left eye. He drove the blade in to the hilt, and pulled it out. Kissoon flailed, his moan becoming sobs as he fell to his knees. With both his fists wrapped around the knife Jaffe delivered a third blow to the top of the shaman's skull, then went on stabbing, the force of the blows opening wound after wound.

Kissoon's sobs stopped as suddenly as they'd begun. His hands, which had been scrabbling at his head to ward off further cuts, fell to his sides. His body stayed upright for two beats. Then he fell forward.

A spasm of pleasure ran through Tesla that was indistinguishable from the highest pleasure. She wanted the bomb to detonate at that moment, matching its completion with her own. Kissoon was dead and it would not be bad to die now, knowing the Iad would be swept away in the same moment.

"Go on, "she said to the bomb, trying to sustain the bliss she felt until the flesh was burned off her bones. "Go on, will you? Go on."

But there was no explosion. She felt the rush of pleasure start to drain from her, and the realization appear in its place that she'd missed some vital element in all of this. Surely with Kissoon dead the event he'd sweated all those years to hold at bay had to come? Now; on delay. But there was nothing. The steel tower still stood.

"What have I missed?" she asked herself. "What in God's name have I missed?"

She looked towards Jaffe, who was still staring down at Kissoon's corpse.

"Synchronicity," he said.

"What?"

"I killed him."

"It doesn't seem to have answered the problem."

"What problem?"

"This is Point Zero. There's a bomb, just waiting to detonate. He was holding that moment at bay."

"Who was?"

"Kissoon! Isn't it obvious?"

No, babe—she told herself—it's not. Of course it's not. The thought was suddenly clear in her head that Kissoon had left the Loop in Raul's body intending to come back to claim his own. Once out in the Cosm he hadn't been able to hold the moment. Somebody else must have done it for him. That somebody, or rather, that some-spirit, was still doing it.

"Where are you going?" Jaffe wanted to know as she started in the direction of the wastes beyond the tower. Could she even find the hut? He followed after her, still asking questions.

"How did you get us here?"

"Ate it up and spat it out."

"Like my hands?"

"No, not like your hands. Not at all."

The sun was steadily being blocked out by the mesh of clots, the light only breaking through in patches.

"Where are you going?" he said again.

"The hut. Kissoon's hut."

"Why?"

"Just come with me. I need help."

A cry in the gloom slowed progress a moment.

"Poppa?"

She looked round to see Tommy-Ray stepping out of shadow into a patch of light. The sun was strangely kind to him, its brilliance bleaching out the worst details of his transformed state.

"Poppa?"

Jaffe stopped following Tesla.

"Come on," she urged him, but she already knew she'd once more lost him to Tommy-Ray. The first time it had been to his thoughts. This time it was to his presence.

The Death-Boy started to stumble towards his father.

"Help me, Poppa," he said.