“But you don’t enjoy it.”

“I think I’ll enjoy it tonight.”

Suspecting that Vicky was trying to atone for the scene in the garden, but gratified nonetheless, Hutchman left the room. He spent an hour in his study tidying up loose ends of correspondence. When he judged dinner was almost ready he went into the lounge and mixed a long and rather weak whisky and soda. David was at the television set, working with the channel-selector buttons. Hutchman sat down and took a sip from his glass, allowing himself to relax as the greens of the poplars outside darkened slightly in preparation for evening. The sky beyond the trees was filled with dimension after dimension of tumbled clouds, kingdoms of pink coral, receding toward infinity.

“Bloody hell,” David muttered, punching noisily at the channel selectors.

“Take it easy,” Hutchman said tolerantly. “You’re going to wreck the set altogether. What’s, the trouble?”

“I turned on ‘Grange Hill’, and all I got was that.” David’s face was scornful as he indicated the blank, gently flickering screen.

“Well you’ve got lines on the screen so they must be broadcasting a carrier wave — perhaps you’re too early.”

“I’m not. It’s always on at this time.”

Hutchman set his drink aside and went to the set. He was reaching for the fine-tuning control when the face of a news reporter appeared abruptly on the screen. The man’s eyes were grave as he read from a single sheet of paper.

“At approximately five o’clock this afternoon a nuclear device was exploded over the city of Damascus, capital of Syria. The force of the explosion was, according to preliminary estimates, approximately six megatons. The entire city is reported to be a mass of flame, and it is believed that the majority of Damascus’s population of 550,000 have lost their lives in the holocaust.

“There is, as yet, no indication as to whether the explosion was the result of an accident or an act of aggression, but an emergency meeting of the Cabinet has been called at Westminster, and the Security Council of the United Nations will meet shortly in New York.

“This channel has suspended its regular programs, but stay tuned for further bulletins, which will be broadcast as soon as reports are received.” The face faded quickly.

As he knelt before the blank, faintly hissing screen, Hutchman felt the newly familiar sensation of cold perspiration breaking out on his forehead.

Avoiding his son’s perplexed gaze, Hutchman walked slowly into the kitchen. Vicky was standing with her back to him as she prepared the meal. She was singing and, as usual, looking slightly out of place in a role of such utter domesticity. He hated having to destroy the evening they had wrested from the day’s misery.

“Vicky,” he said, almost guiltily. “Something has happened. I just heard a news flash on the television. They say Damascus has been wiped out by a hydrogen bomb.”

“How awful.” Vicky turned, her hands full of diced cheese, and nodded toward a glass-fronted cupboard. “How ghastly. Be a darling and reach me down the small casserole. Does it mean there’s a war?”

He found the Pyrex dish mechanically and set it on the counter. “They don’t know who’s responsible yet, but there could be half a million dead. Half a million!”

“It was bound to happen sooner or later. Shall I make a salad?”

“Salad? I… Do we still want to eat?”

“What do you expect us to do?” Vicky examined him curiously. “Lucas, I do hope you’re not going to go all egotistical over this.”

“Egotistical?”

“Yes — your famous seeing-every-sparrow-fall bit. There isn’t one person in the world who would benefit from your having a nervous breakdown, but that doesn’t stop you assuming responsibility for things happening ten thousand miles away.”

“Damascus is more like two thousand miles.”

“It wouldn’t matter if it was two hundred miles.” Vicky slammed the casserole down, sending a flat, ghostly billow of flour along the counter. “Lucas, you aren’t even concerned with what happens next door, so kindly do us all a favour and…”

“I’m hungry,” David announced from the doorway. “And what time are we going out?”

Hutchman shook his head. “I’m sorry, son — we’ll have to call it off for tonight.”

“Huh?” David’s jaw sagged theatrically. “But you said…”

“I know, but we can’t go tonight.”

“Why not?” Vicky asked. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to sit in front of that television set all evening, listening to Robin Day and a band of experts who have no idea what’s going to happen next telling us what’s going to happen next. We promised David we were going to the stock-car racing so we’re going.”

A mural of shattered, tortured bodies pulsed momentarily in Hutchman’s vision. He followed David back into the lounge, where the television set still exhibited its slow-rolling flickers, and sat down. David punched the channel selector, got a vintagecomedy film and squatted contentedly to watch it. Amazed and slightly reassured at finding a normal program on the air, Hutchman picked up his drink and allowed his consciousness to sink into the screen. A frantic motor chase was taking place along the sparse, sunny avenues of Hollywood in the Twenties. Hutchman ignored the central characters and studied the inhospitable frame buildings blistering in the lost sunshine. To his eyes they resembled sheds more than houses, yet they had been real, and by watching them closely he sometimes observed fragments of real lives recorded in the ancient celluloid. Anonymous lives, of dripping iceboxes and giant radios with fretted wooden cases, but filled with the security of a past in which the worst that could happen to one was a few years on the breadline or, in wartime, a comprehensible death from machine-gun fire.

I’ve got to do it, Hutchman thought. I’ve got to make the neutrons dance.

Following the vintage movie was a string of commercials, more normality chopped up small. He was beginning to relax when the television screen went blank and abruptly came to life again. A mushroom cloud, roiling but motionless, sculptured, the white cubical buildings of Damascus hidden under its billowing fronds. The picture juddered and swung, obviously taken from a helicopter not equipped with camera mounts. Music filled the room, strident and urgent. That damned apocalyptic jangling, he thought. Couldn’t they have left it out for once? This isn’t a dock strike or one of those eternal gray trade-union conferences. A news reporter appeared and began to speak, quickly and soberly. He repeated the basic known facts, adding that the death roll was estimated at 400,000, and went on to sketch the feverish diplomatic activity in various capitals. Further down the story came an item which, in Hutchman’s estimation, should have been one of the major headlines: “It is now believed that the nuclear bomb was not delivered by a missile or by a military aircraft. Reports indicate that it was on board a civil airliner which was passing over the city, making its approach to Mezze airport seven kilometers to the southwest, when the detonation occurred.

“The seat of Syrian government has been transferred to Aleppo, where offers of immediate aid and messages expressing shock and sympathy have already been received from all Middle Eastern countries, including Israel and the members of the League of Arab States, from which Syria withdrew in April last year.

“All branches of the Syrian armed forces have been fully mobilized, but in the absence of any obvious aggressor no military action has yet been undertaken. The entire country is in a state of stunned grief and resentment. …

Vicky passed between Hutchman and the screen. “What’s the latest? Is there going to be a war?”

“I don’t know. It looks as though the bomb was on a civil airliner, so some guerrilla organization could be behind it — and there’s a dozen or more for the Syrians to pick from.”