The Bursar rather doubted it. He had never actually thought of the Bible as having been written by one person but he supposed it was just conceivable. With Kudzuvine around anything was conceivable. The bloody man had moved on to helicopters and long shots.

'Okay, so we swing in over that church…'

'Chapel,' corrected the Bursar.

'Okay, chapel and we grab the lot with wide-angle like you've never seen and then head round by that tower and get the kids all dancing and the bands playing and…No, that isn't it. Chopper'd blow them all over the fucking place. We got to get something else. I'll give it some thought.'

'I'm not sure all this…What are those people doing on the roof of the Chapel?'

Kudzuvine turned and looked. Several people with polo-necks and blue glasses had climbed onto the lead roof of the Chapel and appeared to be measuring it. 'I guess they're looking for angles. Technicians. Difficult to tell who they are at this distance.'

The Bursar gazed at him in wonder. It was impossible for him to tell who any of these people in Hartang's clothes were at any distance. That was part of the horror. 'I really don't think they ought to be there just now,' he said. 'They are having Sung Eucharist in the Chapel this morning.' Again it was an unfortunate statement.

'Sung what? Sung You Christ? What, right now? This I've got to see.'

'No, don't, please don't. Please,' the Bursar begged. But Kudzuvine was already striding off along the Cloisters hoping, the Bursar had little doubt, to see some more fucking monks in costume. He followed miserably, his mind functioning only vaguely and mostly in pictures of fearful genies and bottles. Or was it Pandora's Box? Something like that. Kudzuvine wasn't just one of the four horsemen of the Bursar's Apocalypse, he was the whole damned lot.

Inside the Chapel the full extent of the Transworld Television team's activities was only just beginning to be known. Only the Chaplain, deaf to the world, was unaware that something very odd was going on. The Praelector certainly knew. And the choir, who were singing 'Oh God our help in ages past, Our hope in years to come' in what had been an almost uplifting manner, were all staring at the ceiling. It had always been the weakest part of the Chapel and lack of finances had prevented its timbers being replaced or properly treated. Under the weight of Kudzuvine's angle technicians-several more had clambered up to have a good look round-the rafters seemed to sag and bounce slightly and, while the moccasins didn't thump or make much noise, in the silence that followed the end of the hymn they did sound as though a flock of extremely large birds-the Praelector thought of ostriches except that they didn't fly-had landed on the roof and were stalking about seeking what they might devour.

'Let us pray,' said the Chaplain, 'for all those sick and unhappy people who at this moment-' He stopped. A large plaster moulding had broken away and had crashed into the aisle, but the Praelector wasn't waiting any longer.

'I think,' he shouted as another beam groaned above his head, 'I think we should all leave the building now.'

Another large piece of fine plaster moulding, this time of a vast cherubim, detached itself and slid down the wall, taking a marble memorial of Dr Cox (1702-40) with it, and almost killed an undergraduate in the pew underneath. Even the Chaplain was now conscious that something very like an earthquake was taking place. As the choir and the small congregation headed for the door-'Now don't panic. Move slowly,' someone shouted-they were stopped in their tracks by the sudden appearance of Kudzuvine. He stood in the doorway, a menacing figure in his dark glasses and polo-neck, and held up a hand.

'Hold it,' he shouted. 'Hold it.'

For a moment the Praelector looked round for something to hold. He had spent too many hours in the Rex and the Kinema in Mill Road not to know a gangster when he saw one, and Kudzuvine had all the hallmarks of a Mafioso about him. But the stoppage was only temporary. Another chunk, this time of solid masonry, dislodged by the end of a roof timber, hurtled down and landed on the lectern. No one was waiting any longer. The congregation surged forward, completely ignoring Kudzuvine's demand for a replay, and Kudzuvine himself, who was knocked to the ground and trampled on by some extremely large rugby players and a girl with a half-Blue for hockey. By the time they were clear of the danger zone only the Chaplain remained entirely calm.

'We must all pray for forgiveness,' he told the supine Kudzuvine, whose nose was bleeding profusely and who didn't know what the hell had hit him though it felt like a herd of steers in a movie he'd once helped make in Texas. In any case he had hit his head on the flagstones and had no clear idea where he was.

The Chaplain helped him to his feet. 'You come along with me, dear boy,' he said, and with the help of two undergraduates Kudzuvine was helped up the stone staircase to the Chaplain's rooms and laid on the bed. He was only partly conscious.

9

The Senior Tutor, on the other hand, was intensely conscious. In fact, in a long life devoted in the main to remaining unconscious of just about everything except rowing and food and ignoring as much of reality as he could, he had never been more unpleasantly conscious. Like the Bursar, he wished to God he wasn't. He had dined in Corpus the night before and while not exactly wisely-the port had been particularly good but a whole bottle of a '47 crusted port had put him in a state where two large Benedictines had seemed a good idea-he had dined extremely well. As a result he had woken late feeling not so much like death warmed over as hell heated up. It wasn't only his appalling headache, it was his stomach. He didn't want to know what was going on down there but whatever it was he wished it would stop. Or come up. The desire to vomit was both overwhelming and impossible to satisfy. And he could only imagine that he had developed galloping hobnail liver, one with spikes on. But it was his eyes that were troubling him most. When he finally got up-'got up' was wrong-when he managed to get to his feet, he had to sit on the edge of the bed for ten minutes alternately clutching his stomach and his head, and had slowly crawled along the wall to the bathroom, the face that he could barely see in the mirror was not one that he had any desire to recognize. It seemed to be covered in floating spots which moved across its purple surface or hung like strands of some sort of detached and rather thick spider's web about the place. In fact everywhere he looked he seemed to be darkly mottled, and when he could focus sufficiently to look more closely at his eyes they resembled strawberries that had something the matter with them. For a moment he thought he must have caught a particularly virulent form of pink eye. Except of course that they weren't pink. The bloody things were scarlet and crimson and to talk about the whites of his eyes would have been absolutely meaningless. But it wasn't what he saw in the bathroom mirror that worried him most. As he went back along the wall towards his bed and, hopefully, death he passed the window overlooking the Court and…It was at that moment that the Senior Tutor knew he was suffering from the DTs and swore for the first time that, if he lived-not that he wanted to-he would never drink anything faintly alcoholic ever again.

There was a man in a polo-neck with a black blazer and white socks and dark blue sunglasses standing gazing up at the Bull Tower. That was fine in its way, though the Senior Tutor disliked tourists intensely. What really appalled him was that there was another man similarly dressed over by the Screens and yet another apparition-or was it two more?-gazing at the fountain. In fact, they were all over the place. The Senior Tutor clutched the sill in front of him and tried to count the swine. He'd got to about eight, though he wasn't sure there weren't sixteen, when he raised his eyes to heaven and caught sight of some more on the Chapel roof.