“But we carry on,” Holland said. In fact he understood how Fames felt. He’d had to wrestle with this in his own demons, and he’d stiffened his resolve, and he’d come to believe every word he said now. “We do what we can. We keep on trying until the ground opens up under Whitehall.”

“Like Churchill. At the gates of Buckingham Palace, facing off the Germans with his tommy gun.”

“That’s the spirit. We save what we can. We govern. We let the country carry on in an orderly way, as long as we possibly can.”

“But what’s the point, Dave? What’s the point if this—” He waved a thin hand into the darkness. “—if this bloody black meteor is heading straight for us?”

Holland hesitated, considering a morale-boosting, upbeat answer. But Fames was clearly beyond that.

At last he said: “Dignity.”

“What?”

“Dignity. When you come down to it, what else is there, for any of us?”

Fames reflected on that for a long time.

Holland found himself shivering. The traffic noise was dying to its minimum, as the small hours approached.

Holland hated to be awake at such a time, the dead of night when the horrors arose, the fears of powerlessness and mortality which seemed to be overwhelming Fames now, which could be banished during the day with its illusions of light and movement and control…

Fames said, “I’m planning to resign, Dave.”

That startled him. “You can’t. Not now.”

“I must. This is all too—” He waved his hands again. “—too big for me. I’m done for, Dave. You take it, if you want.”

Despite himself, despite the circumstances, Holland felt a deep, atavistic thrill at the words.

Power, real power, at last. He became intensely aware of where he was, poised above the chambers he could soon command, surrounded by the machinery of state, as if he was the huge, ugly Victorian mechanism which drove Big Ben itself.

He tried to focus his mind on Fames, the suffering man before him.

“There will have to be an election,” he said.

“You must do as you see fit.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Holland said. “How could it have been?”

“But it was on my watch.”

There was a sound like thunder, or distant guns, far to the north.

Both men clung to the balustrade, staring towards Scotland, trying to pick out a change in the light.

13

To Ted’s surprise, they survived the night, the two of them crouched in the ruins of St Giles’. No food or water, but that scarcely mattered now.

And with the dawn came the sound of thunder. Ted went outside, with Hamish’s collar grasped in his hand — Hamish-Bran seemed passive, beaten — and he climbed a ruined wall, looking for a vantage.

The Moonseed was on the move. The Moonseed pool was spreading like a silvery stain across the ground. The remains of buildings, of homes, with whatever tokens and bodies and memories they held, were cracking and falling, subsiding into the glowing mass. Ash was rising in diffuse clouds. There was a stink of ozone.

Inexorable. The word might have been coined for the stuff.

Where Holyrood Road used to be, a man, a soldier, was running before the spreading, flaring pool, somehow separated from his mates. He was far enough away to be reduced to a stick figure, his face a white blur.

He wasn’t running fast enough. The Moonseed was faster.

Ted pointed. “Look.”

“What? For God’s sake, what?”

“Did you ever see anything like that? The fox that couldn’t outrun the hounds. The child caught by the tide. Jesus, Jesus.”

In the last moment, that white point of a face turned to Ted, as if imploring.

“Nothing I can do,” Ted murmured. “Not any of us. It’s a tide of death. Come all the way from the stars, to wreck our homes, and kill us… And there are always little bastards like you, out to make it worse for everybody else.”

The Moonseed pool, hissing, overwhelmed the soldier. It was mercifully brief, from Ted’s point of view. One minute he was there, the next, in a flail of limbs, he was falling, and gone.

And now Ted turned to face east.

It was coming, crackling, bursts of light like a second dawn, the sound of rock breaking open like eggshell, washing up Castle Rock in a tide of light. Seconds left, no more.

“What do you think?” Ted asked gently. “Still expecting a great beam-up to that party in the sky?”

Bran was begging now. “Let me go. Oh Jesus, oh shit, let me go.”

Ted tightened his grip on Bran’s collar. “Burning witches in the Highlands, eh. Good for them. Maybe the Highlands will survive. Maybe the Highlanders will come back down here, like William Wallace, and stuff the bloody Moonseed back where it came from. Eh?

The smell of ozone was stronger. Just like the beach, he thought. He remembered what Henry had told him, nuclear fusion or fission or some damn thing going on as the Moonseed spread. He smiled.

“Maybe we’ll get a sun tan,” he said to Bran.

Bran, panting, his trouser legs stained wet, turned a dirt-streaked, tearful face up to him. “What? You crazy old fucker. What?”

The tears made him look young, the calculation and cunning gone from his face. He was younger than Michael had been, Ted remembered suddenly.

But Michael would never get any older. And neither would this boy.

…And now, after all this, he suffered an instant of doubt. This is only a kid. What right have I got to be judge and jury?

But there was no time. For now the Moonseed swept on him like a wave, buildings cracking and bursting into debris and falling, that fusion light bright all around him. All choice was ended, and that, for Ted, was a huge release.

He had time to see the Cathedral collapse. Big sandstone blocks just exploded out of the walls, as the church’s structural integrity vanished at a stroke, nine hundred years of building and preservation wiped out in a few seconds. There were massive blocks flying through the air towards him — Bran was screaming again — the Cathedral would kill them both, if it got the chance.

But before the blocks arrived, the wall he was standing on crumbled and collapsed. He was dropping, into a surging, silver-grey pool.

He closed his eyes, and fell into Moonseed.

It was soft and warm. Not like rock at all; like something alive, moving over his skin, exploring.

Something was grabbing at his hand. Bran.

He shook him loose; a creature like Bran should die alone.

The pressure built up around him. He was trapped, a fly in amber.

He opened his mouth to breathe. Something forced its way in — softly scraping, neutral temperature — scratching his mouth and throat as it pierced him.

No more air, then.

If Bran was right — Christ, the pressure on my chest — if Bran was right after all, he would be with Mike in a moment.

There was light beyond his closed eyelids, shining pink through the flesh. Streaks like meteors in his vision.

Michael, Jane, Jack. He’d done all he could for them. There would be no room in whatever was left of the world for an old fool like him. His doubt was gone now; to rid the world of a blight like Hamish Macrae was a worthy price for the remnant of his life.

A single instant of heat, unbelievable pressure, as the ancient volcanic plug gave way, and the surviving Castle buildings were blown apart, the fragments hurled high in the air.