The general left, not trusting himself to speak. Is Harley quite sane any longer? he wondered as he strode along the corridor. Does he see himself as a rehabilitator of the country or as Genghis Khan?… And yet there's a horrible logic in what he says. Too few men to impose discipline on seventy or eighty times their own number -what other means is left but tenor? It might have been different if over the past months Beehive had shown a few 'signs of being helpful to Surface, even if the daily BBC bulletins had given useful advice to communities struggling to survive, instead of conveying nothing but a sense of detached, quarantined omnipotence, biding its time… It is too late now. I must play the hand I have been dealt.

Deeply depressed, General Milliard went to draft his Army's orders.

Harley had already forgotten him and was working his way through the morning's pile of documents that required his personal attention. Near the top was a note from Head of Intelligence, reporting that operative Gareth L. Underwood was missing, presumed killed, having failed to return from a mission in the Croydon area where gang warfare was rampant. Damned nuisance, that – Underwood had been a very useful courier between Beehive and Savernake Forest – he shouldn't have let the Section borrow him back for the Croydon mission. Now he'd have all the trouble of briefing a replacement.

Further down in the pile was a sealed envelope marked 'Personal'. Harley frowned, recognizing Brenda's handwriting. What now?… He slit open the envelope and took out the single sheet of private notepaper.

My dear Reggie, – I never thought I'd be writing you, or anyone, a suicide note. But here I am doing just that. I've got hold of a gun and I'm going up to Surface for a last look at the sky and the sun – and to save Beehive the embarrassment of disposing of my corpse. It's not just the ending of our long relationship that has brought me to this point, though it has, I will admit, contributed to my decision, because being involved with you helped to distract my attention from a problem that has since become intolerable. (Don't blame yourself for that – we were so careful from the start not to become dependent on each other.)

The real reason – which I hope I always managed to hide from you – is that almost from the beginning I suffered from Beehive claustrophobia. I used to dream about open skies and fields and rivers and wake up desolate. Waking up beside you, my dear, helped me to push these dreams aside. But in the past few weeks, they have become nightmares. I cannot suffer this troglodyte existence any longer. And since I am not equipped, by either temperament or toughness, to survive on Surface – nor in my present empty state particularly tempted to try – the quickest solution seems also the most desirable.

It's ironic, I suppose, that my access to the TSA room also gives me access to the list of secret Beehive exits! But don't hunt for my body. I shall walk it well away from, my escape hatch before I dispense with its services.

Good-bye, Reggie. Remember, if you think of me at all, the good times.

Brenda

Harley sat back, examining his reactions with some curiosity. Relief, yes; she was finished with, for him, and he preferred her out of his sight. Nostalgia? No; it was not an emotion he suffered from. Guilt?… No! He would not be blackmailed by those little barbed phrases – 'my present empty state', 'if you think of me at all' – revealing inserted among the sentences of pretended detachment. And she was no more claustrophobic than he was; of that he was certain. The whole letter stank of self-pity, of a determination to use her only remaining weapon – her own death – to punish him for rejecting her. Well, it wouldn't work. Let her rot, wherever she now lay.

He turned his attention to the next document on the pile.

Brenda's body ached in every muscle; she had not ridden a bicycle since she was a schoolgirl and even the fifty kilometres to which Gareth had considerately limited their daily target she had found heavy going at first. She had been driven, for the first two days, by an obsessive compulsion to get as far away from London as she could, as quickly as she could. Gareth, too had wanted to be away from the risk of any chance encounter with other agents who might know he was supposed to be going south not north-west. After that, she had pedalled doggedly, knowing that Gareth could have moved twice as fast and determined not to let him down. By the fifth day she was getting into the swing of it but net: body, so long deskbound, still protested.

Nevertheless she was happy. She realized that the Beehive claustrophobia which she had pretended in her 'suicide note' had been more real than she had thought. Aching and tired, she could still not keep a smile (no, a grin, a great big adolescent grin) off her face when she heard a bird sing, or resist calling to Gareth to stop for a moment when they crossed a river, or feel anything but pleasure at the smarting of her sunburnt forearms. The outside world – even fraught with danger and pockmarked with catastrophe -was a beautiful place.

Danger there was, though less than Brenda had expected. They both carried revolvers at their belts, and on their second day, during their mid-afternoon rest near Aylesbury, they had very nearly been surprised by four young men who tried to jump them and steal their weapons. Brenda had been overpowered, but had rolled on top of her gun long enough to keep her attacker from getting hold of it while Gareth knocked down one, evaded another and managed to draw his own gun and seize control of the situation. The attackers had withdrawn, shouting insults -Gareth had not needed to fire – and they mounted their bicycles and ridden away. Gareth had been furious with himself for such unprofessional carelessness, and Brenda only slightly less remorseful at the knowledge that she had been absorbing his attention at the time. After that, they had rested in places where they could not be approached unseen.

But all in all, Brenda was surprised and heartened to find how peaceable the decimated population was, how ready to be friendly once the first cautious mutual appraisals were over. Of their four nights on the road so far, one had been spent in a ruined and deserted house but three as guests of communities, the smallest being a family of six and the largest a village commune of more than fifty. One was already known to Gareth – he had a cousin in it, discovered by chance on an earlier mission – so there was no problem there. The other two they had approached with their hands clasped on top of their heads (this seemed to have become the recognized gesture for armed strangers seeking peaceful contact) and, after questioning, had been accepted. One had required them to hand over their guns till they left; the other had not even asked for them. At each place, they had paid for their keep with gifts from their rucksacks and pannier bags. Gareth knew from experience what was both easily portable and generally acceptable: tea, instant coffee, dried milk, chocolate, ballpoint pens, antibiotics, packeted seeds, concise medical and veterinary handbooks (which had quickly disappeared from library and bookshop shelves), clinical thermometers, batteries for digital watches, safety pins and other small treasures. He had smiled when Brenda, during their secret planning of escape in the TSA room, had announced her intention of bringing some lipsticks, compact refills, eyeshadow, and tights, but had been surprised to find how eagerly some at least of their hostesses accepted them.

It had been the evening talk that had been balm to Brenda's soul, and which made her memories of Beehive's daily preoccupations increasingly unreal. Talk of the practical problems of keeping alive, well, fed and warm; of big or little triumphs of ingenuity or determination; of the success or frustration of experiments in division of labour and inter-community barter; even in one place (Brenda could hardly believe her ears) of that perennial problem of Christendom, the repair of the church roof. Talk of human relationships, as absorbing, tender, foolish, astonishing, obtuse, splendid, farcical or transfiguring as anywhere, and yet, to Brenda, a world away from the hot-house pettiness and bitchiness of the equivalent talk in Beehive. Some talk of possible futures, mostly diffident, as though the speakers were afraid of being thought too hopeful too soon. And yet Brenda sensed this undercurrent of hope, this tentative dawn of confidence that what had been achieved so far could be built on – even if the achievement had been no more than survival and a wary friendship with scattered neighbours.