A common exhilaration seized all the travellers now, and they began to sing along with H.G. They were singing so loudly that Gomm couldn't hear Mottershead inform him that the road ahead seemed to disappear. Indeed H.G. was not aware that he had driven the car over the cliff until the vehicle took a nose-dive, and the sea came up to meet them.

'Mrs Jape? Mrs Jape?'

Vanessa woke unwillingly. Her head hurt, her arm hurt. There had been some terrible times recently, though it took her a while to remember the substance of them. Then the memories came back. The car pitching over the cliff; the cold sea rushing in through the open door; the frantic cries around her as the vehicle sank. She had struggled free, only half conscious, vaguely aware that Floyd was floating up beside her. She had said his name, but he had not answered. She said it again, now.

'Dead,' said Mr Klein. They're all dead.'

'Oh my God,' she murmured. She was looking not at his face but at a chocolate stain on his waistcoat.

'Never mind them now,' he insisted.

'Never mind?'

'There's more important business, Mrs Jape. You must get up, and quickly.'

The urgency in Klein's voice brought Vanessa to her feet. 'Is it morning?' she said. There were no windows in the room they occupied. This was the Boudoir, to judge by its concrete walls.

'Yes, it's morning,' Klein replied, impatiently. 'Now, will you come with me? I have something to show you.' He opened the door and they stepped out into the grim corridor. A little way ahead it sounded as if a major argument was going on; dozens of raised voices, imprecations and pleadings.

'What's happening?'

They're warming up for the Apocalypse,' he replied, and led the way into the room where Vanessa had last seen the mud-wrestlers. Now all of the video-screens were buzzing, and each displayed a different interior. There were war-rooms and presidential suites, Cabinet Offices and Halls of Congress. In every one of them, somebody was shouting.

'You've been unconscious two full days,' Klein told her, as if this went some way to explaining the cacophony. Her head ached already. She looked from screen to screen: from Washington to Hamburg to Sydney to Rio de Janeiro. Everywhere around the globe the mighty were waiting for news. But the oracles were dead.

They're just performers,' Klein said, gesturing at the shouting screens. They couldn't run a three-legged race, never mind the world. They're getting hysterical, and they're button-fingers are starting to itch.'

'What am I supposed to do about it?' Vanessa returned. This tour of Babel depressed her. 'I'm no strategist.'

'Neither were Gomm and the others. They might have been, once upon a time, but things soon fell apart.'

'Systems decay,' she said.

'Isn't that the truth. By the time I came here half the committee were already dead. And the rest had lost all interest in their duties - '

'But they still provided judgements, as H.G. said?'

'Oh yes.'

They ruled the world?'

'After a fashion,' Klein replied.

'What do you mean: after a fashion?'

Klein looked at the screens. His eyes seemed to be on the verge of spilling tears.

'Didn't he explain,? They played games, Mrs Jape. When they became bored with sweet reason and the sound of their own voices, they gave up debate and took to flipping coins.'

'No.'

'And racing frogs of course. That was always a favourite.'

'But the governments - ' she protested,' - surely they didn't just accept -'

'You think they care?' Klein said, 'As long as they're in the public eye what does it matter to them what verbiage they're spouting, or how it was arrived at?'

Her head spun. 'All chance?' she said.

'Why not? It has a very respectable tradition. Nations have fallen on decisions divined from the entrails of sheep.'

'It's preposterous.'

'I agree. But I ask you, in all honesty, is it many more terrifying than leaving the power in their hands?' He pointed to the rows of irate faces. Democrats sweating that the morrow find them without causes to espouse or applause to win; despots in terror that without instruction their cruelties would lose favour and be overturned. One premier seemed to have suffered a bronchial attack and was being supported by two of his aides; another clutched a revolver and was pointing it at the screen, demanding satisfaction; a third was chewing his toupe. Were these the finest fruit of the political tree?; babbling, bullying, cajoling idiots, driven to apoplexy because nobody would tell them which way to jump? There wasn't a man or woman amongst them Vanessa would have trusted to guide her across the road.

'Better the frogs,' she murmured, bitter thought that it was.

The light in the courtyard, after the dead illumination of the bunker, was dazzlingly bright, but Vanessa was pleased to be out of earshot of the stridency within. They would find a new committee very soon, Klein had told her as they made their way out into the open air: it would be a matter of weeks only before equilibrium was restored. In the meanwhile, the earth could be blown to smithereens by the desperate creatures she had just seen. They needed judgements, and quickly.

'Goldberg is still alive,' Klein said. 'And he will go on with the games; but it takes two to play.'

'Why not you?'

'Because he hates me. Hates all of us. He says that he'll only play with you.'

Goldberg was sitting under the laurel trees, playing patience. It was a slow business. His shortsightedness required him to bring each card to within three inches of his nose to read it, and by the time he had got to the end of the line he had forgotten those cards at the beginning.

'She's agreed,' said Klein. Goldberg didn't look up from his game. 'I said: she's agreed.'

'I'm blind, not deaf,' Goldberg told Klein, still perusing the cards. When he eventually looked up it was to squint at Vanessa. 'I told them it would end badly ...' he said softly, and Vanessa knew that beneath this show of fatalism he felt the loss of his companions acutely.'... I said from the beginning, we were here to stay. No use to escape.' He shrugged, and returned to the cards. 'What's to escape to? The world's changed. I know. We changed it.'

'It wasn't so bad,' Vanessa said.

'The world?'

They way they died.'

'Ah.'

'We were enjoying ourselves, until the last minute.'

'Gomm was such a sentimentalist,' Goldberg said. 'We never much liked each other.'

A large frog jumped into Vanessa's path. The movement caught Goldberg's eye.

'Who is it?' he said.

The creature regarded Vanessa's foot balefully. 'Just a frog,' she replied.

'What does it look like?'

'It's fat,' she said. 'With three red dots on its back.'

'That's Israel,' he told her. 'Don't tread on him.'

'Could we have some decisions by noon?' Klein butted in. 'Particularly the Gulf situation, and the Mexican dispute, and -'

'Yes, yes, yes,' said Goldberg. 'Now go away.'

' - We could have another Bay of Pigs -'

'You're telling me nothing I don't know. Go! You're disturbing the nations.' He peered at Vanessa. 'Well, are you going to sit down or not?'

She sat.

'I'll leave you to it.' Klein said, and retreated.

Goldberg had begun to make a sound in his throat - 'kek-kek-kek' -imitating the voice of a frog. In response, there came a croaking from every corner of the courtyard. Hearing the sound, Vanessa stifled a smile. Farce, she had told herself once before, had to be played with a straight face, as though you believed every outrageous word. Only tragedy demanded laughter; and that, with the aid of the frogs, they might yet prevent.