But he wondered if they really understood what today would bring.

There would, of course, be no-one to help. For, as the flickering TV images showed, the Moonseed was surging in many places, and the world was, evidently, starting to come apart.

He had no desire to sleep again. He pulled on his habit, slipped out of the main hall, and walked through the soft quiet to the staircase cut into Mount Nantai.

He took nothing but the clothes on his back, the sandals on his feet. Not even a light, a lantern or a torch, to guide his way on the rocky steps. The sky was so bright now, glowing a thin red like a sunset, all the way through the night — thanks to the volcanic dust being injected into the air, from Britain and Italy and the Philippines, and a hundred smaller eruptions — that he needed no light anyway.

It would have been nice to see the stars, he thought. But then in an hour or so the baleful countenance of Venus was due to rise, and he had no desire to witness that ill omen again; let the dust blot it out for good.

He reached the caldera rim, and was greeted by the stink of sulphur and ash and chlorine. There seemed to be new fissures in the ground here, and he suspected he could see the vent of steam.

Here and there, the rock burst into subdued silvery light. It was the mark, he had learned, of Moonseed growth. His creation.

He smiled.

He found a place where he could sit in comfort, with his back to the subtle warmth of the reviving volcano. Here he could look out over the lake, to the south and east, towards the ocean, and Tokyo.

There were twelve million people in Tokyo, an incredible number. One quarter of the population of the country lived within thirty miles of the Imperial Palace there.

He wondered how many had already fled. But, as the light of a new dawn seeped into the sky, many more would even now be making their way into the city, by car and train and bus, for another day’s work, regardless of the warnings.

The Japanese were used to tsunamis, after all.

The sun was high, but it was a pinprick, a wan disc in an ugly grey sky. He was cold, despite the thickness of his robe.

Unseasonal weather.

Declan knew he would have to wait most of the day, until perhaps the early evening, before the wave arrived.

By now, Hawaii must already have suffered.

Hawaii, stranded in mid-Pacific, was surrounded by deep water, submarine trenches outside its harbours. The water shallowed rapidly near the land, and the waves, coming out of the western ocean, would pound down on the islands with virtually no warning. The sun was high; the destruction must already be over there. Scoured down to the bedrock, he thought.

But even the tsunami would not be the end of it, no matter how destructive.

A major earthquake was, said some of the experts, overdue for Japan. Statistical projections said it would be on the scale of the great 1923 quake which killed a hundred and forty thousand people. Hitting modern, crowded Japan, such a quake would destroy industrial production, and lead to a massive worldwide recession.

That was the projection, the common understanding. Declan knew that the calamity that was coming would far exceed such measly predictions.

Perhaps the approaching tsunami would trigger it. Or perhaps it would be the destruction of Nantai, fed by the Moonseed: perhaps it would be necessary for the Moonseed to work deep into the magma under Earth’s skin here, as it appeared to have done in Scotland. Perhaps, even now, other great calderas — even Fuji itself — were opening up, feeling the ghost touch of the Moonseed, the stirring of the magma in the deep chambers within.

Eventually, though, it would all let rip.

He imagined the near future, when the whole ring of fire went up: tracing down the western seaboards of North and South America, scrawled over the ocean past China and Japan and Australia, almost a perfect ring around the Pacific. What a sight it would be, from space! It would be as if the Pacific, the world ocean, was trying to pull itself free of the poisoned and battered Earth which spawned it, perhaps to sail free into space to join the Moon.

He would like to live long enough to see that. But it wasn’t essential.

Probably Declan hadn’t needed to do anything to speed the decline of Japan. It was all, really, inevitable; you only had to glance at the polluted sky to see that, the poison that had wrapped itself around the planet.

But it pleased him to have played his part.

He was destroying his home by his own actions. Just as he had destroyed one earlier home, lost his wife and baby daughter because of what he’d done, and the awful revelations he hadn’t been able to forestall or buy off.

But this time, he would have nowhere to flee. Nowhere to shelter his sorry soul; nowhere to eke out the days, as he imprisoned himself.

He smiled. Call it time off for good behaviour.

There was a wind from the ocean. A spattering of rain. It was salty and muddy.

Declan Hague laughed, celebrating his freedom. He let the salty rain run into his open mouth.

Scoured down to the bedrock.

17

Debbie Sturrock was actually coming off duty when it happened; that was the irony of it. And strictly speaking she wasn’t even a firefighter at all, since she hadn’t yet completed her training in the Scottish Fire Service Training School, down the road at Gullane.

She just happened to be in the way.

Torness, the modern nuclear power plant just outside Dunbar, meant little to Debbie. She drove past it every day on her way to her training assignment at the fire station in North Berwick. Torness was just an anonymous, slightly sinister collection of blue cylinders and boxes and piping, hiding behind a row of immature fir trees.

But today, as she drove towards it on the crowded road, alarms were sounding, and people were fleeing out of the gates, and there was black smoke billowing from the big structure of steel and glass at the heart of the compound.

She pulled over to look more closely.

A pillar of flame. Sparks. Bits of concrete, metal structures, tumbling in the air.

She drove up the broad main drive and got out of the car. She had her yellow hard hat and her jacket in the boot; she pulled them on, running to the gate.

A security man was here, holding his position despite his obvious fear, directing others, office workers and engineers and managers. Debbie approached him.

“I can help. Which way?”

He looked her over, evidently recognized her as a firefighter, and pointed. She hurried into the compound.

The big, box-like building at the heart of the compound seemed to have exploded; the thin metal frame was ripped open at the roof, like a tin can. Above the damaged building there was a bluish glow, and pockets of fire on the surrounding buildings.

She found herself walking across a neat lawn that was littered with glowing debris.

Despite herself, her pace slowed. This was, after all, a nuke plant. Dear God. What have I walked into here?

Well, she’d already been in a lot of fires, and she’d never hesitated before.

Without thinking, she pushed herself forward, towards the blue glow.

The heat was enormous, like a wind, crowding through the layers of her clothing.

She came to a maintenance crew, trapped in a tool bunker maybe five hundred yards from the explosion’s core. The bunker wouldn’t last long; Debbie Sturrock could see a blood-red liquid seeping from the walls as they started to melt in the massive heat. The maintenance guys had no protective gear.

A fire crew was pushing in towards the tool bunker with a fire hose. They were trying to keep the water playing on the door.

Debbie joined them. The crew leader waved at her, miming at her to piss off out of here. She ignored him, and lent her strength to the efforts of the crew as they kept the hose directed at the door.