“As real as you,” says Toby. “You’d better tie them up,” she says to me. “Do a good job. When they come out of it they’re going to be very angry.”

Amanda wipes her face on her sleeve. Then we start knotting the two of them together, the hands behind the backs, a loop around each neck. We could use more rope, but it will do for now.

“Is it you?” says Jimmy. “I think I’ve seen you before.”

I walk towards him, slowly and carefully because he still has his gun. “Jimmy,” I say. “It’s Ren. Remember me? You can put that down. It’s okay now.” It’s how you’d say it to a child.

He lowers the spraygun and I wrap my arms around him and give him a long hug. He’s shivering, but his skin’s burning hot.

“Ren?” he says. “Are you dead?”

“No, Jimmy. I’m alive, and so are you.” I smooth back his hair.

“I’m such a mess,” he says. “Sometimes I think everyone’s dead.”

SAINT JULIAN AND ALL SOULS

YEAR TWENTY-FIVE.

OF THE FRAGILITY OF THE UNIVERSE.

SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.

My dear Friends, those few that now remain:

Only a little time is left to us. We have used some of that time to make our way up here, to the site of our once-flourishing Edencliff Rooftop Garden, where in a more hopeful era we spent such happy days together.

Let us take this opportunity to dwell, for one final moment, on the Light.

For the new moon is rising, signalling the beginning of Saint Julian and All Souls. All Souls is not restricted to Human Souls: among us, it encompasses the Souls of all the living Creatures that have passed through Life, and have undergone the Great Transformation, and have entered that state sometimes called Death, but more rightly known as Renewed Life. For in this our World, and in the eye of God, not a single atom that has ever existed is truly lost.

Dear Diplodocus, dear Pterosaur, dear Trilobite; dear Mastodon, dear Dodo, dear Great Auk, dear Passenger Pigeon; dear Panda, dear Whooping Crane; and all you countless others who have played in this our shared Garden in your day: be with us at this time of trial, and strengthen our resolve. Like you, we have enjoyed the air and the sunlight and the moonlight on the water; like you, we have heard the call of the seasons and have answered them. Like you, we have replenished the Earth. And like you, we must now witness the end of our Species, and pass from Earthly view.

As always on this day, the words of Saint Julian of Norwich, that compassionate fourteenth-century Saint, remind us of the fragility of our Cosmos – a fragility affirmed anew by the physicists of the twentieth century, when Science discovered the vast spaces of emptiness that lie, not only within the atoms, but between the stars. What is our Cosmos but a snowflake? What is it but a piece of lace? As our dear Saint Julian so beautifully said, in words of tenderness that have echoed down through the centuries:

… He showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand… as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, What may this be, and I was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last. For I thought it might fall suddenly to nothing, for little cause; and I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so has everything its being, through the love of God.

Do we deserve this Love by which God maintains our Cosmos? Do we deserve it as a Species? We have taken the World given to us and carelessly destroyed its fabric and its Creatures. Other religions have taught that this World is to be rolled up like a scroll and burnt to nothingness, and that a new Heaven and a new Earth will then appear. But why would God give us another Earth when we have mistreated this one so badly?

No, my Friends. It is not this Earth that is to be demolished: it is the Human Species. Perhaps God will create another, more compassionate race to take our place.

For the Waterless Flood has swept over us – not as a vast hurricane, not as a barrage of comets, not as a cloud of poisonous gasses. No: as we suspected for so long, it is a plague – a plague that infects no Species but our own, and that will leave all other Creatures untouched. Our cities are darkened, our lines of communication are no more. The blight and ruin of our Garden is now mirrored by the blight and ruin that have emptied the streets below. We need not fear discovery now: our old enemies cannot pursue us, occupied as they must be by the hideous torments of their own bodily dissolution, if they are not already dead.

We should not – indeed we cannot – rejoice at that. For yesterday the plague took three of us. Already I sense within myself those changes that I see reflected in your own eyes. We know only too well what awaits us.

But let our going out be brave and joyous! Let us end with a prayer for All Souls. Among these are the Souls of those who have persecuted us; those who have murdered God’s Creatures, and extinguished His Species; those who have tortured in the name of Law; who have worshipped nothing but riches; and who, to gain wealth and worldly power, have inflicted pain and death.

Let us forgive the killers of the Elephant, and the exterminators of the Tiger; and those who slaughtered the Bear for its gall bladder, and the Shark for its cartilage, and the Rhinoceros for its horn. May we forgive them freely, as we may hope to be forgiven by God, who holds our frail Cosmos in His hand, and keeps it safe through His endless Love.

This Forgiveness is the hardest task we shall ever be called upon to perform. Give us the strength for it.

I would like us all to join hands now.

Let us sing.

THE EARTH FORGIVES

From The God’s Gardeners Oral Hymnbook