"Yes, it will," Gentle said. "Because you'll be telling other people, and that way the stories will stay alive until the door to the Dominions is open."

"So we should tell people?"

"Anyone who'll listen."

There were murmurs of assent from the assembly. Here at least was a purpose, a connection with the tale they'd heard and its teller.

"If you need us for anything," Benedict purred, "you know where to find us."

"Indeed 1 do," Gentle said, and went with Clem to the gate.

"And what if anybody comes looking for you?" Carol called after them.

"Tell 'em I was a mad bastard and you kicked me over the bridge."

This earned a few grins.

"That's what we'll say, Maestro," Irish said. "But I'm tellin' you, if you don't come back for us one of these days, we're goin' to come lookin' for you."

The farewells over, Clem and Gentle headed up onto Waterloo Bridge hi search of a cab to take them across the city to Jude's place. It wasn't yet six, and though the flow of northbound traffic was beginning to thicken as the first commuters appeared, there were no taxis to be had, so they started across the bridge on foot in the hope of finding a cab on the Strand.

"Of all the company to have found you in," Clem remarked as they went, "that has to be the strangest."

"You came looking for me there," Gentle pointed out, "so you must have had some inkling."

"I suppose I must."

"And believe me, I've kept stranger company. A lot stranger."

"I believe it. I'd like you to tell me about the whole journey one day soon. Will you do that?"

"I'll do my best. But it'll be difficult without a map. I kept telling Pie I'd draw one, so that if I ever passed through the Dominions again and got lost..."

"You'd be found."

"Exactly."

"And did you make a map?"

"No. There was never time, somehow. There always seemed to be something new to distract me."

"Tell me as much as— Whoa! I see a cab!"

Clem stepped out into the street and waved the vehicle down. They both got in and Clem supplied the driver with directions. As he was doing so, the man peered into his mirror.

"Is that someone you know?"

They looked back along the bridge to see Monday pelting towards them. Seconds later the paint-smeared face was at the taxi window, and Monday was begging to join them.

"You've got to let me come with you, boss. It's not fair if you don't. I gave you my colors, didn't I? Where would you be without my colors?"

"I can't risk your getting hurt," Gentle said.

"If I get hurt it's my hurt and it's my fault."

"Are we going, or what?" the driver wanted to know.

"Let me come, boss. Please."

Gentle shrugged, then nodded. The grin, which had gone from Monday's face during his appeal, returned in glory, and he clambered into the cab, rattling his tobacco tin of chalks like a ju-ju as he did so.

"I brought the colors," he said, "just in case we need 'em. You never know when we might have to draw a quick Dominion or something, right?"

Though the journey to Judith's flat was relatively short, there were signs everywhere—mostly small, but so numerous their sum became significant—that the days of venomous heat and uncleansing storm were taking their toll on the city and its occupants. There were vociferous altercations at every other corner, and some in the middle of the street; there were scowls and furrows on every passing face.

"Tay said there was a void coming," Clem remarked as they waited at an intersection for two furious motorists to be stopped from making nooses of each other's neckties. "Is this all part of it?"

"It's bloody madness is what it is," the cabbie chimed in. "There's been more murders in the last five days than in all of last year. I read that somewhere. And it's not just murders, neither, it's people toppin' themselves. A mate of mine, a cabbie like, was up the Arsenal on Tuesday and this woman just throws herself in front of his cab. Straight under the front wheels. Bloody tragic."

The fighters had finally been refereed and were being escorted to opposite pavements.

"I don't know what the world's coming to," the cabbie said. "It's bloody madness."

His piece said, he turned on the radio as the traffic began moving again, and began whistling 3n out-of-tune accompaniment to the ballad that emerged.

"Is this something we can help stop?" Clem asked Gentle. "Or is it just going to get worse?"

"I hope the Reconciliation will put an end to it. But I can't be certain. This Dominion's been sealed up for so long, it's poisoned itself with its own shit."

"So we just have to pull down the sod din' walls," Monday said, with the glee of a born demolisher. He rattled his tin of colors again. "You mark 'em," he said, "and I'll knock 'em down. Easy."

The child, Jude had been told, had more purpose in it than most, and she believed it. But what did that mean, besides the risk of its fury if she tried to unhouse it? Would it grow faster than others? Would she be big with it by dusk, and her water ready to break before morning? She lay in the bedroom now, the day's heat already weighing on her limbs, and hoped the stories she'd heard from radiant mothers were true, that her body would pour palliatives into her bloodstream to ease the traumas of nurturing and expelling another life.

When the doorbell rang her first instinct was to ignore it, but her visitors, whoever they were, kept on ringing and eventually began to shout up at the window. One called for Judy; the other, more oddly, for Jude. She sat up, and for a moment it was as though her anatomy had shifted. Her heart thumped in her head, and her thoughts had to be dragged up out of her belly to form the intention to leave the room and go down to the door. The voices were still summoning her from below, but they petered out as she^ headed down the stairs, and she was ready to find the doorstep empty when she got there. Not so. There was an adolescent there, besmirched with color, who upon sight of her turned and hollered to her other visitors, who were across the street, peering up at her flat.

"She's here!" he yelled. "Boss? She's here!"

They started back across the road towards the step, and as they came her heart, still beating in her head, took up a suicidal tempo. She reached out for some support as the man at Clem's side met her eyes and smiled. This wasn't Gentle. At least it wasn't the egg-thief Gentle who'd left a couple of hours before, his face flawless. This one hadn't shaved for several days and had a brow of scabs.

She backed away from the step, her hand failing to find the door though she wanted to slam it. "Keep away from me," she said.

He stopped a yard or two from the threshold, seeing the panic on her face. The youth had turned to him, and the imposter signaled that he should retreat, which he did, leaving the line of vision between them clear.

"I know.I look like shit," the scabby face said. "But it's me, Jude."

She took two steps back from the blaze in which he stood (How the light liked him! Not like the other, who'd been in shadow every time she'd set eyes on him), her sinews fluttering from toes to fingertips, their motion escalating as though a fit was about to seize her. She reached for the banister and took hold of it to keep herself from falling over.

"It can't be," she said.

This time the man made no reply. It was his accomplice in this deceit—Clem, of all people—who said, "Judy. We have to talk to you. Can I come in?"

"Just you," she said. "Not them. Just you."

"Just me."

He came to the door, approaching her slowly, palms out, "What's happened here?" he said.

"That's not Gentle," she told him. "Gentle's been with me for the last two days. And nights. That's... I don't know who."

The imposter heard what she was telling Clem. She could see his face over the other man's shoulder, so shocked the words might have been blows. The more she tried to explain to Clem what had happened, the more she lost faith with what she was saying. This Gentle, waiting outside, was the man she'd left on the studio step, standing bewildered in the sun as he was now. And if this was he, then the lover who'd come to her, the egg licker and fertilizer, was some other some terrible other.