"Mother?" Quilter peered at Ransom. Then he tittered softly to himself, apparently amused by this appeal to old sentiments. "Doctor, not now…"

He picked up the leash and jerked the cat backwards with a brisk wrench. "Come on," he said to Ransom, prepared to forgive him this gaffe. "Miss Miranda wants to see you."

Ransom followed him through the gateway. The garden was littered with burnt-out cannisters and the wire skeletons of catherine wheels. Several rockets had exploded against the house, and the black flashes discolored the white paint.

"My dear Charles…" The dapper figure of Richard Lomax greeted Ransom on the steps. He had exchanged his white suit for another of even more brilliant luminosity, the gleaming silk folds, as he raised his little arms in greeting, running like liquid silver. His pomaded hair and cherubic face, and the two jeweled clasps pinning his tie inside his double-breasted waistcoat, made him look like some kind of hallucinatory clown, the master of ceremonies at a lunatic carnival. Although Ransom was a dozen steps from him he raised his pudgy hands as if to embrace him reassuringly. "My dear Charles, they've left you."

"The Johnstones?" Ransom rested a foot on the lowest step. Behind him Quilter released the cheetah. It bounded away across the ashy surface of the lawn. "They were quite right to leave."

"Rubbish!" Lomax beckoned him forward with a crooked finger. "Charles, you look worried about something. You're not yourself today. Didn't you enjoy my firework display last night?"

"Not altogether, Richard. I'm leaving this afternoon."

"But, Charles-" With an expansive shrug, Lomax gave up the attempt to dissuade him, then flashed his most winning smile. "Very well, if you must take part in this madness. Miranda and I have all sorts of things planned. And Quilter's having the time of his life."

"So I've noticed," Ransom commented. "But then I haven't the sort of talents he has."

Lomax threw his head back, his voice rising to a delighted squeal. "Yeesss… I know what you mean. But we mustn't underestimate old Quilty." As Ransom walked away he shouted after him: "Don't forget, Charles-we'll keep a place for you here!"

Ransom hurried quickly down the drive. Quilter and the cheetah were playing about in the far corner of the garden, leaping and swerving at each other.

As he passed one of the ornamental fountains, its drained concrete basin half-filled with sticks and refuse, Miranda Lomax stepped out from behind it. She hovered beside the pathway, her white hair falling uncombed around her grimy robe, which trailed along the burnt earth. Streaked with ash and dust, as she gazed into the dried-up pool she reminded Ransom of an imbecile Ophelia looking for her resting-stream.

Her small rosebud mouth chewed emptily as she watched him. "Goodbye, doctor," she said. "You'll be back."

With this, she turned and disappeared among the dusty hedges.

To the south, the scarred ribbon of the highway wound off across the burnt land, the wrecked vehicles scattered along its verges like the battle debris of a motorized army. Abandoned cars and trucks had been driven off at random into the fields, their seats pulled out into the dust. To Ransom, looking down at the road as he crossed the hump of the motorbridge, it appeared to have been under a heavy artillery bombardment. Loose curbstones lay across the pedestrian walks, and there were large gaps in the stone balustrade where cars had been pushed over the edge into the river be- low. The roadway was littered with broken glass and torn pieces of chromium trim.

Ransom free-wheeled the car down the slip road to the river. Rather than take the highway, he had decided to sail the houseboat along the river to the sea, and then around the coast to an isolated bay or island. By this means he hoped to avoid the chaos on the overland route and the hazards of fighting for a foothold among the sand-dunes. With luck, enough water would remain in the river to carry him to its mouth. On the seat behind was a large outboard motor he had taken from a looted ship's chandlers on the north bank. He estimated that the journey would take him little more than two or three days.

Ransom stopped on the slip road. Ten feet from the houseboat the burnt-out hulks of two cars lay on their backs in the mud. The smoke from the exploding fuel tanks had blackened the paintwork of the craft, but otherwise it seemed intact. Ransom lifted the outboard motor from the seat, and began to haul it down the embankment to the landing stage. The fine dust rose around him in clouds, and after a dozen steps, sinking to his knees through the brittle crust, he stopped to let it clear. The air was in fever, the angular sections of the concrete embankment below the bridge reflecting the sunlight like Hindu yantras. He pressed on a few steps, pieces of the crust sliding around him in the dust-falls.

Then he saw the houseboat more clearly.

Ten feet from the edge of the channel, the craft was stranded high and dry above the narrow creek, its pontoon set in a trough of baked mud. It leaned on its side near the burnt-out cars, covered with the ash blown down from the banks.

Ransom let the outboard motor subside into the dust, and then ploughed his way down to the houseboat. The sloping bank was covered with old cans and dead birds and fish. Twenty feet to his left the body of a dog lay in the sunlight by the edge of the water.

Ransom climbed up onto the jetty, and for a moment gazed down at the houseboat, stranded with all his hopes on the bleached shore. This miniature universe, a capsule containing whatever future lay before him, had expired with everything else on the floor of the drained river, cutting off all continuity with his past life.

Above him, on the embankment, a car's starting motor whined. Ransom crouched down, watching the line of villas and the dust-filled aerial canopies. Nothing moved on the opposite bank. The river was motionless, the stranded craft leaning against each other. Along the quays, the white bodies of the drying fish rotated slowly in the sunlight.

The car's engine resumed its plaintive noise, and masked the creaking of the gangway as Ransom made his way up the embankment. He crossed the empty garden next to Catherine Austen's villa, then followed the drive down to the road.

Catherine Austen sat over the wheel in the car, thumb on the starter button. She looked up as Ransom approached, her hand reaching to the pistol on the seat.

"Dr. Ransom?" She dropped the pistol and concentrated on the starter. "What are you doing here?"

Ransom leaned on the windshield, watching her efforts to start the engine. In the back of the car were two large suitcases a canvas hold-all. She seemed tired and distracted, streaks of dust in her red hair.

"Are you going to the coast?" Ransom asked. He held the window before she could wind it up. "You know that Quilter has one of the cheetahs?"

"What?" The news surprised her. "What do you mean? Where is it?"

"At Lomax's house. You're a little late in the day."

"I couldn't sleep. There was all that shooting." She looked up at him. "Doctor, I must get to the zoo. After last night the animals will be out of their minds."

"If they're still there. By now Quilter and Whitman are probably running around with the entire menagerie. Catherine, it's time to leave."

"I know, but…" She drummed abstractedly at the wheel, glancing up at Ransom as if trying to find her compass in his bearded face.

Leaving her, Ransom ran down the road to the next house. A car was parked in the open garage. He lifted the bonnet, and loosened the terminals of the battery. He slid the heavy unit out of its rack and carried it back to Catherine's car. After he had exchanged the batteries he gestured her along the seat. "Let me try."

She made room for him at the wheel. The fresh battery started the engine after a few turns. Ransom set off toward the motorbridge. As they reached the junction he hesitated, wondering whether to accelerate southwards down the highway. Then he felt Catherine's hand on his arm. She was looking out over the bleached bed of the river, and at the brittle trees along the banks, suspended like ciphers in the warm air.

He crossed the bridge and turned left into a side-road, knowing that sooner or later he would have to abandon the young woman. Her barely conscious determination to stay on reminded him of his own first hopes of isolating himself among the wastes of the new desert, putting an end to time and its erosions. But now a new kind of time was being imposed on the landscape.

"Catherine, I know how you-"

Thirty yards ahead a driverless car rolled across the road. Ransom pressed hard on the brakes, jerking the car to a sudden halt and throwing Catherine forward against the windshield.

He pulled her back onto the seat as a swarm of darksuited men filled the street around them. He picked up the revolver, and then saw a familiar hard plump face under its blond thatch.

"Get them out! Then clear the road!" A dozen hands seized the bonnet, and jerked it up into the air. A long knife flashed in the bosun's brightly scarred hand and cut through the top hose of the radiator. Behind him the tall figure of Jonas hove into view, long arms raised as if feeling his way through darkness.

Ransom restarted the engine and slipped the gear lever into reverse. Flooring the accelerator, he flung the car backwards. The hood slammed down onto the fingers that were tearing at the engine leads, sending up bellows of pain.

Steering over his shoulder, Ransom reversed down the street, hitting the parked vehicles as he swerved from left to right. Catherine leaned weakly against the door, nursing her bruised head with one hand.

Ransom misjudged the corner, and the car jolted to a halt against the side of a truck. Steadying Catherine with one hand, he watched the gang setting off after them. Jonas stood on the roof of a car, one arm pointing like a specter.

Ransom opened his door and pulled Catherine out into the road. She pushed her hair back with a feeble hand.

"Come on!" Taking her hand, he set off along a gravelcovered lane that ran down to the embankment. Helped by the sloping ground, they reached the slip road. Ransom pointed up to the motorbridge. Two men moved along the balustrade. "We'll have to wade across the river."