The Lost Prophecies

March 2135

Five hundred thirty years, then God returns to save

His chosen, once the sinful have been purged.

Their wicked cities flayed by burning sun and

drowned in purging flood,

And at the end a sun-bright fire of blood.

I

The news on the radio that morning was bad. Shiva listened to it as he dressed. The giant rivers carrying meltwater from the remnant Antarctic ice sheet had risen again; another metre rise in sea levels was predicted for the decade. Locally, the newscaster reported that changes in seabed currents around the drowned Sizewell B power station had brought increased radioactivity in the sea around the eastern English islands. Shiva thought ruefully that in coming to Yorkshire for his holiday he had only placed himself in a different kind of danger from that which he faced in his work. Like most English people, Shiva wore a radiation ring; Alice had given it to him, a heavy gold ring with a circle in the middle. The circle turned red if the radiation in the atmosphere approached dangerous levels. It was the usual safe dark green this morning, but he would avoid the fish tonight.

On the windowsill he had set his foot-high copper statue of Shiva, the Indian god after whom he was named, a young man dancing inside a circle of fire, keeping the world in existence, in balance. It was a thing of beautiful symmetry, brought by an ancestor from India. Although Shiva had no religion, he liked to sit contemplating it. The face of the four-armed god was enigmatic, with a secret smile.

There was a beeping sound from the computer on the table. Shiva frowned. The POWER OFF switch could be overridden only by an urgent official message. Hastily buttoning his kaftan, he crossed to his machine and opened it up. A single, short message in his receive-box, unsigned:

Please attend EU Commissioner Williams at Commission HQ, Victoria Square, Birmingham, today 21.3.35 at 9 p.m. Fast motorboat arriving to collect 10 a.m. Please confirm receipt.

Shiva hesitated, then pressed the ACKNOWLEDGE button. Ten a.m. – he had only an hour. He looked thoughtfully at the blank screen. A commissioner rather than his superintendent? And a motorboat, eating into the Commission’s petrol ration? This was something urgent.

He walked outside. A pair of canaries took off from the bush beside the chalet. The air was crisp and clear, the heat of the day hours off. A palm-shaded walkway led past the other chalets, the rising sun glinting at an angle on their solar panels. Nearby, dwarfing the young coconut palms with its steeple, stood a square-towered Norman church. There had been a village here for a thousand years and there still was, a cluster of low earthhouses, the blades of their little windmills clacking gently in the morning breeze, chickens and skinny goats poking for food in the dusty street. The space between the chalets was closely planted with vegetable gardens; every patch of fertile ground on earth was planted now.

A tall red-haired man, an inspector from Wales, stood in the doorway of the next chalet, cup in hand, enjoying the early cool. Shiva nodded and walked past him, down to the sea. He had spoken little to his fellow vacationers since his arrival a week ago. The hurt look Marwood gave him as he was led down from the dock kept coming back to him in the middle of conversations.

The sea was nearby; the island was small, only a few miles across. Warm surf splashed on the rocky shore, and the water, deep and blue, stretched westwards to the Pennines. A clipper passed in the distance, tall and stately. In the far distance was a vague white blob. Shiva fixed his eyes on it. A couple of days before, he had seen, through binoculars, the twin towers of York Minster rising sixty feet from the water. Most of the high twentieth-century buildings of London had collapsed as the sea rose around them; he had seen films of the toppled steel skeletons leaning against each other, a crazy giant latticework in the water. Yet the medieval minster still stood, resisting monsoons and hurricanes.

The Great Catastrophe of the Twenty-First Century. On the computer, the documentaries and discussion programmes were endless. Shaky footage of huge refugee boats being bombed out of the water as they crossed into European territorial waters; the migrant wars in the Alpine foothills; the mushroom clouds as Chinese missiles rained on Moscow, China’s reply to the Russian nuclear attack on the millions marching into Siberia from the flooded northern provinces. Watching these programmes, the human race endlessly scratched its great wound, assuaging guilt, perhaps, or simply seeking contact with the dead billions.

Many cursed the people of earlier generations for their refusal to act before the changes spiralled out of all control, and the worst, the very worst predictions of climate change came true. Scientists had warned that the great stores of methane hydrates on the seabed could erupt to the surface as the seas warmed, and in the 2040s they did, the oceans boiling, throwing millions of tons of methane into the air. Runaway chaos followed, worsened when the Antarctic icecap started to melt, destabilizing the tectonic plate on which the continent rested and causing huge earthquakes that sent hundred-mile sheets of ice sliding into the sea.

Humanity almost died. In the catastrophe that followed, whole regions disappeared as the seas rose nearly two hundred feet. The equatorial regions grew too hot for human life, while in most of the temperate zones the unstable rains finally stopped for ever and desert took over. Great waves of people moved north; the USA invaded Canada; China invaded Siberia; southern Europe invaded northern Europe. Populations ravaged by disease and hunger sought to make lake-strewn peat bogs of melted permafrost habitable. The world’s population shrank to a hundred million, less than in biblical times.

Now, after fifty years of stability, it was starting to rise again. In Canada and China there were advances every year in creating artificial soils for the Arctic regions; there were even experiments in laying artificial soil on the bare rock of ice-free Greenland. After years of chaos and authoritarian rule, the European Union and America had returned to democracy; even China had an elected government now, millennia of authoritarian tradition shaken out in the great flight north. Other than the three major states, a few small countries dotted the habitable regions of the earth; a residual Canada proudly maintaining its independence in Newfoundland; a relict Japan withdrawn into medieval obscurantism on Sakhalin Island. South of the equator, connected to the north by the internet but physically almost unreachable because of the unendurable heat in the tropics that made travel by boat impossible, were Patagonia and the Tasman Islands – Tasmania and New Zealand, where the surviving population of Australia had taken refuge. Everywhere, even in the refugee camps, disease was declining, and harvest failures were fewer as the climate stabilized. The seas still rose, but very slowly now; near the drowned nuclear power stations they were irradiated, but in most places to less than fatal levels. Fish stocks too were rising again in the traumatized oceans. Order had returned, as had police forces like the European Fraud Investigation Office for which Shiva worked.

In the distance he saw another smudge on the horizon. It grew bigger, and an unfamiliar buzzing sound became audible in the distance. The petrol boat, coming for him.

It was a small boat with a single boatman. It was not a true petrol boat; it had a fuel-cell engine and sails but also an old outboard motor, still allowed under licence when a trip required speed. It was a government boat, the burly middle-aged man in the stern wearing the blue badge with yellow stars of the European Union on his dirty cotton smock. He was surly; when Shiva passed him his suitcase he asked if he had bricks in it. No, Shiva wanted to reply, only a copper god. The man started the engine, and Shiva grasped the rail as the boat sped out to sea, the little island fading away to a green dot and vanishing.

It grew hot on the water. Shiva went into the little cabin to escape the heat, though the unfamiliar stink of petrol was nauseating. He lay down on a bench and presently slept.

He awoke to the sound of angry cries and something hitting the side of the boat. He jumped up and looked out of the cabin window. A large sailing boat was passing nearby, and a group of teenagers was hurling the contents of a compost-pail at the petrol boat. A rotten potato hit the window frame, its smelly inside spattering Shiva’s kaftan.

He went outside. Already they had passed the sailing-boat, but the cries of the youngsters followed them. ‘Stinking polluters! Petrol kills!’ The boatman, sitting at the tiller, stared back impassively, then suddenly shouted: ‘What about keeping compost? Think what they’d give for that in Siberia!’

‘They’re protesting a hundred years too late,’ Shiva said.

‘Kids always protest. You should see the hoops I have to go through to get my little drop of fuel. And I’m government.’ The boatman looked at him. ‘They must want you urgently in Brum. I’ve got a railway pass to give you at the other end. You police?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wish boatmen had their own holiday island.’

‘It’s for other officials too. I wasn’t enjoying it. I don’t mind getting back to work.’

The answer seemed to please the man. He reached beneath his seat and pulled out a basket. Shiva saw fruit and dried fish. ‘Want some lunch?’ he asked.

‘I’ll have some fruit.’

They sailed on, over drowned Lincolnshire, thirty fathoms below.

An hour later they passed Nottingham, with its crowded wharves, and entered West Midlands Bay, sailing past the towering Pennine hills and down the narrowing bay to the new port below Lichfield. The boatman steered the little craft expertly between the passenger and cargo boats and tied up at the big wooden wharf. He helped Shiva out on to the land. He handed Shiva his railway pass, then shook his hand warmly in farewell – to Shiva’s surprise, for they had scarcely spoken since their shared meal.

Shiva followed a sign to the railway station. Passengers were already boarding the train to Birmingham. He heaved his suitcase on board and glanced at his watch. Quarter to seven. He would be early.

On the journey he shared a first-class carriage with two young women wearing well-cut linen jackets who looked like officials. He took his suitcase to the lavatory and changed into his somewhat crumpled suit. When he returned, the women were studying a scientific report and looked up at him irritably. He sat and looked out of the window as they continued discussing drainage problems on Scottish mountain soils. The train clattered along the tracks, the electric motor humming softly. Outside the open windows, immaculately tended fields of rice and cotton, bananas and the new tropical wheat passed by; palm groves sheltered the villages of single-storey earth-walled houses, with solar panels, interspersed with little clusters of old brick buildings, windmills turning everywhere. Everything was suffused with red from the setting sun. The rusting hulk of one of the old combine harvesters stood in a field where it had been abandoned ninety years before, a relic of the Age of Extravagance.

Shiva remembered his last visit to the capital, for Marwood’s trial. He had not given evidence, because if his face appeared in the newspapers he could never do undercover work again, but he sat in the public gallery on the day of the verdict. It was the rainy season, and the courtroom was muggy and sticky. Rain lashed down outside, spattering the windows. The evidence of fraud was overwhelming, and though the trial had lasted for four weeks the jury took only half an hour to reach a verdict. Sentenced to ten years, Marwood had shouted from the dock that he was innocent, this was not justice. Staring around wildly, he saw Shiva and from his look Shiva saw that, despite all Marwood had done, all the evidence of lies and deceit, he somehow believed he was innocent and that Shiva, the employee who had become a friend, had betrayed him from some unfathomable, base motive.

The train slowed as they approached the city. More old houses now, though still interspersed with modern earthhouses, and fields and vegetable gardens where once industrial sites had stood. Then they were in the warren of the old city centre. Shiva hauled his heavy suitcase out into New Street, loud with voices and bicycle bells, the buzz of electric cars and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. Huge nineteenth-century buildings loomed over him.

Dusk was deepening into darkness, and behind the streets generators hummed as the dim streetlights came on. The passers-by were mostly white but with a heavy sprinkling of other colours, the English racial mix frozen when immigration ended in 2020. People looked hot and tired, waiting for the monsoon.

Shiva entered Victoria Square. Great pillared and porticoed edifices, monuments to nineteenth-century civic pride, still stood. The old Council House was now the administrative centre for the European Union.

One of the guards standing outside the Council House let him in. Inside, the building was crowded, cavernous old rooms partitioned into hundreds of small offices. A receptionist at the front desk made a telephone call, and an elderly clerk came and led him into the great warren.

Shiva was taken up a flight of stairs, blue-uniformed guards at the top and bottom, to one of the original offices where long-dead councillors once held sway. Behind a large battered desk strewn with papers, a white-haired man in a yellow cotton suit and black, wing-collared shirt sat reading papers by the light of an antique standard lamp. He was thin, his cheekbones prominent under sallow skin. He rose and shook Shiva’s hand with a cold, dry clasp. His eyes were blue-grey, piercing. Behind him on the wall was a map of Europe, a thin band of habitable land coloured green between the blue of the seas and the yellow of the deserts, the irradiated zone at the eastern border coloured dull grey.

‘Inspector Moorthy. You made good time. I am Commissioner Williams.’ He spoke in the clipped, military tones that officials had adopted to deal with the endless crises of the Catastrophe and which had now become an affectation.

‘Caught a train as soon as we landed.’ Shiva responded in the same manner.

‘Good, good.’ Williams waved him to a chair before the desk. ‘Moorthy, that’s a southern Indian name, I think?’

‘Some of my forebears came to England after Indian independence.’

Williams nodded, then glanced at his watch. ‘I’d like to talk now, got a meeting at 22.30. Afterwards you can rest; there’s accommodation for you here. Sorry to have interrupted your holiday,’

‘I was getting bored.’

The commissioner looked at him with interest. ‘I would have thought after the Green World trial you’d need a rest. Good to see Marwood go down, by the way. These people who say they’ve found magic solutions to all our problems waste a lot of time and money. Formula for a new type of artificial soil, wasn’t it? For greening the Norwegian mountains?’

Shiva was sure the commissioner knew the story, but Williams listened attentively as he told it again, the lamp making deep shadows in the lines of the old man’s face.

‘Green World said they’d made a breakthrough. A soil with a high ratio of sand to organic components, easy to produce in large quantities. They had apparent good results with experiments in Canada, and the Norwegian government gave them a contract. Science Office had doubts, but the Commission didn’t back them.’ He was criticizing the Commission, but there was no point in gilding the lily; it had all been in the press.

When he was finished, Williams’s face looked sad and tired. ‘So eager to solve our problems,’ he said. ‘Makes us vulnerable to tricks. Snake-oil salesman. The Norwegians want their mountains farmed, the Commission wants a Europe independent of Chinese soil technology. I argued against giving Green World a licence. Overruled.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Mr Marwood addressed the commissioners; he was very plausible.’

‘He had the greatest skill a confidence trickster can have.’

‘Which is?’

‘He believed that what he was saying was true when he said it, and that somehow it became true because he said it.’ Again he remembered Marwood’s face at the trial, frantic and accusing.

‘How did your people get you into Green World?’

‘Marwood was looking for a head of public relations and I applied. He had an interest in nineteenth-century furniture – his house was full of the stuff – so I read up on it. He liked educated people working for him, giving him admiration. It took a year, but I managed to get papers out showing the Canadian results were doctored.’

The commissioner studied him closely. ‘What was it like? Working closely with him, when you knew what he was?’

Shiva smiled sadly. ‘I came to like him. He had a sort of infectious optimism. He came up from nothing, you know; he was brought up in an orphanage.’

‘So were many of us. But it must have made it hard, if you liked him.’

‘You always have to remember that the people you’re spying on are telling lies for themselves, while you’re telling yours for higher ends.’ He met the commissioner’s appraising gaze.

‘And fear? You must worry about what might happen if you are ever found out.’

‘You have to live with that. Some agents even enjoy it.’

‘But not you.’

‘No.’

There was silence for a moment. The sound of voices came faintly from the crowded street, the neigh of a horse.

‘Your ancestry is mixed Indian and English, I believe?’ the commissioner asked abruptly.

‘My father’s forebears were Indian. My mother’s were English. With a dash of something else.’

‘Most of us have a dash of something else, I guess. In you the Indian genes look predominant. Your parents are dead, I think.’

‘In the Guildford smallpox outbreak five years ago.’

‘Yes. We thought we had the disease under control; that outbreak was a shock. No other relatives?’

‘No.’ You must know this, Shiva thought. You’ve obviously seen my file.

‘Ever searched for ancestors on the internet?’ Williams asked. ‘So many do.’

‘No. You can end up building a bond with some distant relative you don’t like.’ Shiva paused. ‘And I don’t like looking at the records. Seeing how many billions died.’

The commissioner nodded. ‘That must be especially hard if you have ancestors from the destroyed nations. Like India. Though some people spend all their time researching their past these days. Becomes an obsession. Didn’t have time for that when I was young. Too busy trying to rebuild.’

‘Yes.’

‘In the last fifty years we’ve come very far. The main diseases are coming under control, and we no longer face a crisis after a bad harvest – in Europe, anyway. Relations with America and China tolerable if not close. The refugee camps are emptying, most going to Norway and Iceland. But there are still threats. The continued warming, the irradiated waters, the nuclear arsenals the three powers took north with them.’ He looked at Shiva. ‘And now another old danger is coming back. Religious fundamentalism.’

‘That hasn’t been a threat for a long time,’ Shiva said. He remembered his mother talking about the sectarian violence after the British left India; Hindus and Sikhs against Muslims.

Commissioner Williams raised his eyebrows. ‘So we thought. Religion’s mostly gone contemplative since the Catastrophe, Muslims turning to Sufism and Christianity with its little utopian communities contemplating God in the desert fringes. But something different is on the rise down south.’

‘The Black Book people?’ Shiva asked. ‘I thought they were a bit of a joke.’

‘In Europe they are, and in North America. But in the Tasman Islands their party’s the third largest in Parliament. The Shining Light Movement.’

‘I’ve heard a little about them. They sound mad.’

‘They are. They think the calamities last century were caused by God, fulfilling the disasters prophesied in the Book of Revelation. They see the survivors as God’s elect, waiting for His Second Coming. But they’re very disappointed that the elect aren’t living pure Christian lives, as the Bible prescribes.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Fornicating and sodomizing and denying God, and so on and so on.’ He sighed wearily. ‘It’s all happened before, of course, in America before the Catastrophe. They even got into government there at the turn of the last century. Some say that was the tipping point. If Bush hadn’t won those elections, the world might have been able to take real steps to avoid what was coming. Who knows, now? Some Christians in America then thought the End of the World was coming, God’s will revealed in the Book of Revelation. But there were people who thought that in the sixteenth century.’

‘Don’t the Black Book people believe there’s a second Book of Revelation?’

‘Yes. Prophecies by an Irish monk from the sixth century. What happened to humanity in the last century isn’t enough for our Black Book friends. They say the monk foretold that today’s remnant of humanity will be visited by another, final catastrophe, a last winnowing of the irremediably sinful, leaving – surprise – only the Black Book followers to be taken up to heaven.’

Shiva thought, What has this to do with me?

‘The wretched book was lost for centuries,’ Williams went on. ‘Then thirty years ago, when people began sorting the evacuated London archives in Derby, some bright spark found it in a seventeenth-century chest and put the wretched thing on the internet. Seems to have come from the private archives of the British secret service, which go back to Stuart times. Then the fuss started. Because the book’s supposed to have predicted various events that did happen, like the Black Death and the Gunpowder Plot.’

‘Why is the movement so big in the Tasman Islands?’

‘Who knows? Some say it’s to do with guilt; the Aussies and Kiwis were quicker than anyone to blow refugee boats from Asia out of the water. The man who uncovered the supposed truth of those prophecies is a Tasman. Their leader, Pastor Smith.’ Williams paused. ‘They’ve been after the original Black Book for ages, but we’ve got it in the National Museum here, across the square. Access allowed only to academic researchers. Incidentally, it does genuinely seem to be fifteen hundred years old. It’s a battered old thing. God knows how it’s survived this long. The Shining Light people say it’s a miracle.’ Shiva noticed that the clipped prose was gone, the commissioner’s evident anxiety making him discursive.

‘Some people wanted the damned thing destroyed,’ Williams went on. ‘Accidentally, of course.’ He smiled tightly. ‘Well, it’s gone now. A week ago someone broke into the museum, smashed in the watchman’s skull and stole it.’

Shiva’s mind clicked into investigative mode. ‘How securely was it kept?’

‘Very. Locked away in a combination safe. But the Black Book people probably have an expert on safe codes amongst their growing congregation. Recently they’ve been flying recruits from here and America who are specialists in all sorts of technical fields out to the Tasman Islands.’

‘They fly them there?’

‘As part of the Tasman Islands quota. The Black Book people have friends in government.’

‘Why do that?’

‘We don’t know. They’ve even brought some nuclear scientists, though there are no nuclear facilities or even uranium down there. The immigrants say they want to be near their leader. Pastor Smith. He keeps himself apart in some secret sanctuary, directing his political and religious activists. Incidentally, there seems to be an unusually high death rate amongst the foreign recruits. Sudden strokes and heart attacks. Usually with death certificates signed by a doctor who’s in the movement. The Black Book people are almost a state within a state down there.’

‘Maybe they think when the rest of humanity is destroyed, an educated elect would be useful.’

‘But they don’t believe anyone will be left. They think when the End comes they’ll be raptured, as they put it, up to heaven.’

Shiva did not reply. In the context of the struggles to survive humanity had faced, and still faced, the idea seemed unbearably repellent.

‘When they got going twenty years ago they formed a political party. The Shining Light Movement. Their support got up to twenty per cent in the 2120 election in the Tasmans, but no other party would go into coalition with them and since then support has dropped away. These days their campaigning seems half-hearted. But they are still bringing in scientific experts. They’re very wealthy, by the way: every member has to give ten per cent of their income to the Church. For poor people that takes them near the breadline, but they still do it. The Tasman government’s been wondering what they’re up to, where all that money’s going, and so have we and the Americans.’

‘A coup?’ Shiva suggested.

The commissioner shook his head. ‘They don’t seem interested in infiltrating the police or army. Although if they did take over the Tasman Islands, we could live with that. It’s very far away. But we can’t have them murdering an EU citizen and stealing that book. The End of the World, by the way, is prophesied for some time this year.’ He leaned forward, businesslike again. ‘But now a chance has come up. To infiltrate them.’

‘Me?’ Shiva asked.

‘You.’ Williams smiled tightly.

‘It couldn’t work, sir. I could never pretend to be a religious fundamentalist.’

‘You won’t need to.’ Williams bent to a file on his desk. He passed a photograph to Shiva. It showed a woman in dark clothes, wearing surgical gloves, disconnecting wires in a junction box on a wall. She was in her early thirties. Her long dark hair was tied back in a ponytail; her features, caught in an expression of fierce concentration, were the same light brown colour as Shiva’s.

‘She managed to disable the power system to that part of the museum. We also have a film of her working on the safe. She was there for three hours. We got the pictures because the museum surveillance system has a backup, a security camera with a battery that activates on movement. She missed the lens poking out of the wall. By then she’d already killed the security guard, a blow to the head from behind. The last photographs are of her taking the book from the safe and leaving.’

Shiva looked at the woman’s face. The eyes were narrowed with concentration, the mouth tight. In repose the face was probably attractive.

‘The Americans tell us her name is Parvati Karam. Family were Indian shopkeepers in San Francisco before it was inundated. Moved up to British Columbia, grandfather did well as a wholesaler. Young Parvati is a mathematical wizard; spent ten years designing security systems for the Federal Reserve. In the meantime she got herself involved with the Shining Light Movement, and two years ago they invited her to emigrate to the Tasman Islands. Government in Dunedin were happy to take her on as a security systems adviser. And so the Shining Light Movement gained another expert.’

‘Do we have back-channels to the Tasman government?’ Shiva asked.

‘A few. We’re wary. Not all the Shining Light people declare who they are when they take civil service jobs. But the Tasman government doesn’t know what they’re up to, though they think something is going on.’

‘I should say, sir, I’ve never done any political work.’

‘I don’t know if you’d call this political. We don’t really know what it is. A murder, to start with.’

‘Where is Karam now?’

‘Back home, I’m afraid. The monthly flight to Dunedin took off the night after the book was stolen and she was on it. By the time our internet systems identified her, she was back in Dunedin.’

‘Has the Tasman government been contacted?’

‘Yes. But meanwhile Hardacre at internet decided to run an ancestor search on Karam, just to see what came up. And the system flagged up a connection to you.’

‘But I’ve never done any ancestor research,’ Shiva said.

‘We have.’ The old man smiled. ‘On your behalf. We realized years ago that if we could find an ancestral connection between one of our undercover people and someone we were interested in, it would be a way of getting into their confidence. It’s happened a few times, and now it’s happened with you. Your great-great-great-great-grandfather and Parvati Karam’s were brothers in the same Indian village. Both families emigrated in the 1940s, during the troubles when the British left. They were Hindus in the Muslim area. We want you to go out there, get to know her.’

Shiva nodded. But he did not feel the frisson of excitement that a new case normally gave him.

‘We’ll fly you to Dunedin on the next monthly flight. A transworld flight – I envy you that. You’ll be a diplomat taking up a post at the EU embassy. Cultural attaché, tried and tested cover for spies. Contact her via her ancestor site e-mail, say you’ve been researching and found you were related, and ask to meet her.’ The clipped, peremptory tone was back.

‘When did she do her search?’

‘That’s interesting. Only a year ago, well after she joined the Shining Light. They discourage ancestor research. May indicate a vulnerability on her part.’

Shiva looked down at the photograph. ‘She doesn’t look vulnerable.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ve never gone undercover to trap a woman before.’

‘Will that be a problem?’

‘No. It’s just a question of… thinking around it.’

‘Do that.’ The commisioner nodded. ‘When Karam was in Birmingham she stayed at a guesthouse in the suburbs. Witton. See what you can find out from the landlady. She’s the only one we know who actually met her. I’ll give you her file, and over the next couple of weeks you’ll get some training about the Black Book and the Shining Light. I’ll see you again.’ He paused. ‘You were brought up a Hindu, weren’t you?’

‘I was brought up in the old traditions. But my parents weren’t really religious.’

‘You’ll have quite a bit to learn.’ He studied Shiva. ‘Yes, it’s hard to pretend serious faith. We think when you meet Karam you should be sceptical but not hostile.’

‘If she wants to meet me.’

‘It will be very helpful if you can make sure she does.’

‘And the Black Book? If I find it?’

Commissioner Williams’s face darkened. ‘Destroy it.’

Shiva had been given a guest apartment at the Commission. Tomorrow, books and papers would arrive, about Parvati Karam, the Black Book, the Shining Light Movement. His room was small, high up in the building. He had set the statue of Shiva on his dressing table. In the old days not many Indian boys had been called Shiva, but his parents had liked the statue. Shiva looked at his face in the dressing table mirror. It looked tired. It was a thin face, bony, clever – delicately pointed, Alice had once said. He looked at the statue. Sometimes he felt all the weight of India on him. Destroyed, massive inundations drowning half the Ganges valley in two years, while in the rest of the subcontinent the summer heat had risen to forty-five, forty-six degrees, more than humans could bear. There was no way out for the people; to the north lay only the bare Himalayas. What Indians were left now were scattered around the world, accepted or discriminated against in various degrees, depending on the country. Shiva thought of meeting this woman, another Indian. An enemy. He stared at the statue, trying to lose himself in its symmetry. The god’s face was enigmatic as he danced, protecting the world, his foot on a demon from the underworld.

II

A week later Shiva walked out to the inner-city suburb of Witton. He left early, dressed formally in a cotton suit and wing-collared shirt. Shopkeepers were opening their shutters, the arterial roads filling up with bicycles and horses and carts and the electric cars of the rich. With a quarter of a million souls, Birmingham, high above sea level, was one of the few populous cities left in the world. It had been chosen as the new European Union capital over Berlin, now a coastal city still threatened by the rising seas.

For all that it had shrunk to a cluster of islands half its original size, Great Britain had fared better than most countries. It had an abundance of fertile land, only the Scottish and Welsh mountains requiring serious soil enhancement. No need in Britain for intrepid parties to brave burning deserts to raid the old cities’ landfill sites for organic refuse to make artificial soils. Britain’s island status, too, had protected it from the worst of the migrant wars.

Shiva stopped at a roadside stall to buy a coconut from a vendor. The tanned young man expertly sliced off the top with his machete. Shiva drank the cool milk gratefully, for after an hour walking on the dusty road his throat was dry. He walked on to Witton, an area of old back-to-back terraces, with south-facing windows now converted to solar panels. There was a small lake in the centre to take the monsoon overflow of the river Lea. The water was low at this time of year and lines of chimneypots from submerged houses broke the surface. Children were swimming in the brown water, calling out to each other in Brummie accents.

Around the lake new earthhouses had been built, and Shiva headed for one of the larger ones, two storeys high, the thick walls and the frames of the solar panels painted bright blue. A sign was nailed to the wall by the door. GUESTHOUSE. VACANCIES. He knocked on the door and a small terrier began a frantic barking. A large, grey-haired lady opened the door. She wore a shapeless yellow dress, sweat-stained under the arms.

‘Good morning.’ The woman looked tense, worried. A Jack Russell ran up behind her, barking angrily. ‘Sit,’ the women snapped. The dog obeyed. Shiva stared at it; pets were an unusual luxury.

‘Mrs Ackerley?’ He gave her his most winning smile. ‘My name is Inspector Moorthy. Wonder if I could ask a few questions?’

Her broad shoulders slumped. ‘Come in. Sam, away!’ The dog walked obediently off. ‘It’s about that woman, I suppose,’ Mrs Ackerley said heavily.

‘Afraid so. Expect you’re tired of being questioned about her.’

‘I had three officers on different days, asking me the same questions. They won’t tell me what she’s done.’

‘Last time, I promise.’ He smiled at her again.

She sighed and led him into a lounge, where canvas chairs surrounded an old wooden coffee table. The shutters were open, large windows giving a good view of the lake. The computer was on, a documentary about Antarctica. Five-mile-wide rivers crashed through a landscape of stone worn as smooth as glass by vanished glaciers. Mrs Ackerley bent stiffly and turned down the sound. ‘You’d better sit down,’ she said.

Shiva looked at the screen. ‘Look at those rivers.’

‘We’ll all be drowned yet.’

‘No, the ice sheet’s nearly gone. The sea can’t rise much further.’

‘So the politicians tell us,’ she replied darkly. She sighed again. ‘Please, ask me what you want. The guests are out at work. I don’t want them coming back to find the police here again.’

‘Thought they would be out at this time of day. That’s why I came now. It’s mostly businessmen and officials visiting the city that you take in, isn’t it? It’s a nice house, nice view.’

She wasn’t mollified. ‘Aren’t you a bit young to be a police inspector?’ she asked.

‘Thirty-six. Older than I look. Now, I don’t want to trouble you by going over the whole ground again. I just wanted to ask what you thought of her. Miss Karam? As a guest. As a person. Your insight.’

The old woman seemed a little mollified. ‘She appeared nice enough when she arrived. Very polite. But private. Didn’t mix with the other guests.’

‘Self-contained, then?’

‘Guests have a right to be private. Though I would have liked to talk to her,’ she added regretfully. ‘Coming from so far away. I wanted to ask what the Tasman Islands were like. What it was like to fly, looking down on all the old dead places. But I could tell it wouldn’t be welcome.’ She shrugged. On screen a man in a jersey stood on the bank of a great river, a tiny dot, chunks of ice the size of houses sweeping by.

‘I may be flying myself soon,’ Shiva said, to engage her. Mrs Ackerley’s eyes lit up with interest.

‘How exciting. Is it to do with this case?’

‘No. Something else. Tell me, what did she say she was doing over here?’

‘A conference on computerized power systems. To help conserve the electricity.’ Mrs Ackerley settled back into her chair, relaxing. ‘The only real conversation I had with her was a few days later. She’d been working in her room and came down to make a cup of tea. I asked about her family. She said they were in Canada; she hadn’t seen them for years. I told her my family had lived in Brum since the industrial times.’ Pride entered her voice.

‘Did she wear a cross?’ Shiva asked. Most of the Shining Light people did, chunky wooden ones painted silver.

‘No. I would have noticed. I wondered what religion she might be, as she was-’ Mrs Ackerley flushed ‘-of colour,’ she concluded, using the currently correct phrase.

‘You said earlier that she seemed quite nice when she arrived. Did something make you change your mind later?’

‘Yes. Sam. My little dog. I know people say pets eat scarce food, but it all comes off my rations.’

‘People can be too strict sometimes.’

‘He makes a lot of noise but it’s only to protect me. He doesn’t bite. I wouldn’t have mentioned it, only one of the other guests saw what happened and told the police when they interviewed him.’

Shiva leaned forward. This hadn’t made it to the report. ‘What did happen?’

‘One evening I was in here and I heard a yelp from the kitchen. I went in and poor Sam was cowering against the wall, howling. I could see he’d been kicked. And that Parvati woman was standing against the opposite wall, glaring at him. I shouted at her that he’s only a helpless little dog. She was apologetic, said she’d been brought up in Canada and they have problems with wild dogs out there. One had bitten her once. But when I came in she’d looked angry, not frightened. I would have asked her to go but I need the money. One of the other guests heard us shouting and came down. Like I said, he told the police later.’

‘Thank you. That’s interesting.’

‘Is it?’ She fixed him with puzzled eyes. ‘If she’s done something bad enough to have the police coming here time and again, what does hurting a little dog matter?’

‘Everything matters,’ Shiva answered, retreating into his clipped official voice.

When he left he needed to think, to order what Mrs Ackerley had told him. He walked across to the lake and sat on a bench under a eucalyptus tree, out of sight of the house. Nearby, a little boy and girl stood in the shallows fishing. They wore dirty kaftans and broad-brimmed straw hats, like Tom Sawyer. Mosquitoes darted around, and he hoped the children had put on their repellent. These lakes were malarial.

Parvati Karam had been self-contained, Mrs Ackerley had said. That fitted with the information they had found on the databases. Her parents had been strongly atheist, like most people these days. Shiva’s own parents had kept up the old Hindu customs through respect for tradition rather than real belief. A loner at school, Parvati had shown great mathematical ability and had gone to university in Alberta at sixteen. The interesting thing, Shiva remembered, was that at university she had joined the dog-hunting clubs. It was not only people who had fled northwards from the deserts of the old United States but dogs too, millions of pets that had formed predatory packs, reverting to old instincts. They were getting larger, reverting to their wolf ancestry, and in the many isolated settlements they were a major problem. Hunting them was encouraged. The reports said that Parvati Karam had headed a student team, which won prizes for the number of dogs they killed. Had she gained a fear of them that had led her to kick Mrs Ackerley’s pet? Or was it hate?

The dog hunting had stood out because otherwise Parvati’s life seemed so bland. She had worked on electronic security systems in Winnipeg after graduating. Three years ago she had been converted to the Shining Light Movement, and in 2133 she had taken up a new job in New Zealand. Within the Church she seemed to be just an ordinary member, going to church, joining the party, paying a tenth of her salary to the movement. No record of any official position in Church or party, no active involvement in the campaigns against sodomy or abortion or eating pork. Yet a few weeks ago she had come up quietly behind the watchman at the Birmingham museum and expertly felled him with a blow to the back of the neck that broke it. Shiva had seen the photographs, the look of surprise on the old man’s face. She would have learned techniques of stalking and killing in the dog hunts, he realized. He wondered if she had killed the man coldly, as though he too were a dog.

Across the lake a group of men pushed a boat into the water, unfurling a white sail. They carried fishing rods. Ripples spread across the water, making tiny waves at Shiva’s feet.

‘Them blastid men’ll scare the fish,’ the little girl said to the boy. They were very alike; they must be brother and sister.

‘Na, they’ll drive ’em this way. ’Ere, I’ve got one!’ he shouted excitedly.

A struggle began with a small carp that had taken the bait and was struggling fiercely out in the water. The little boy gripped the rod tightly while his sister waded into the warm shallows, grabbed the line and began hauling in the fish.

Shiva envied their closeness. Like Parvati Karam, he was an only child. Large families had been officially discouraged since the Catastrophe, with so little good land to feed the survivors. He wondered: had her childhood been as lonely as his, had she too been driven to succeed by parents whose future she represented? Shiva had also been an outsider, a small thin dark child in the Surrey town on the edge of Thames Bay. But he had wanted more than anything to belong. He had found his way in by attaching himself to children who were natural leaders, popular and charismatic, for charisma begins early. But often those leaders of playground gangs were cruel, and Shiva had always recoiled from cruelty, perhaps because he feared them turning on him. When he was sixteen the group he hung on to attacked and robbed an old woman; the leader of the group, Starkey, had planned it carefully. Shiva watched them while they divided up the money, then went and reported the crime to the headmaster. Starkey, a promising pupil, was expelled. Shiva’s own part was kept secret; he was awarded detention with the lesser offenders to defray suspicion at his own request. His path had been decided then. Sometimes he wondered what had happened to Starkey. Perhaps he was in prison like Marwood.

‘Buy a fish, mister?’ A voice at his elbow startled Shiva. The two urchins stood beside him, the little girl holding up the carp, the sun reflected from its golden scales.

‘No, thanks. I’m staying somewhere where they give you food.’

‘Only one euro. Off the ration.’

‘No. Thanks anyway. I have to go.’

He stood up and walked away. The sun was hot now, so he took his canvas hat from his pocket and put it on. Behind him the children argued about where to sell their fish.

Tonight he would send Parvati Karam his first e-mail. He had already done a genuine search on genealogical sites to find her, in case somehow she retraced his steps on her computer.

There were demonstrators at Birmingham airport; the few airports left in the world had permanent pickets. Shiva, watching the banners beyond the fenced-off enclosure, could understand their anger. Most agreed that the explosion of air travel in the years before the Catastrophe had hastened the warming. Now it was strictly rationed, limited mostly to politicians and diplomats who needed to travel to the Tasman Islands or Patagonia, and the scientists monitoring Antarctica. One could not get to the southern hemisphere by boat, for like the land the tropical seas were too hot for human survival. Luggage was limited on the plane; there had been no question of bringing his statue.

He entered the little airport building. It was hot and muggy outside and worse indoors. As he waited to be searched he looked through the far window. The plane was sitting on the tarmac. It seemed a small and fragile thing to take him so far. He looked around at the other passengers, mostly middle-aged and prosperous-looking.

When they took off and Shiva looked through the window, he felt the clutch of fear in his stomach they had warned him about. The world was spinning away, the city transformed into a patchwork of miniature houses in a sea of green.

‘First time?’ the passenger next to him asked sympathetically. He was a spare man with a grey beard, dressed less formally than most of the other passengers, a jacket over a white kaftan. ‘It’s a bit disorientating. At first.’

‘Yes. I suppose it’s a privilege, an experience.’

‘I’ve done it nine times. It’ll get boring. The refuelling stop in Tibet will come as a relief.’ The man sounded weary. ‘I’m a hydrologist, going to have another look at the Antarctic icecap. I’ll be taking a second flight down from Dunedin.’ He smiled sadly. ‘It’s hard on my wife and children.’

‘Are they in England?’

‘Leeds. Name’s Bill Allen, by the way.’

‘Shiva Moorthy. I’m a diplomat. Joining the embassy at Dunedin. Cultural attaché.’

‘Long posting?’

‘Couple of years.’ He changed the subject. ‘I hear the Antarctic rivers are still rising.’

Allen nodded. ‘Inevitable now the icecap’s melting faster – its area’s a fifth of what it was. It’ll be gone in a few decades, and then the sea will stabilize at last. But as the seas warm up down there, the heat’s releasing more methane from the seabed, like we had in the north last century.’ He looked at Shiva seriously. ‘We’re still not safe.’

‘Will we ever be?’

‘I don’t know.’ The scientist paused. ‘I saw a methane eruption from the air once, miles of sea frothing and bubbling, even burning in places, throwing all that stuff up into the atmosphere.’

They talked a little more, about Antarctica and Dr Allen’s family and Shiva’s fictional job. Shiva used the scientist as a practice run for the story he would tell Parvati Karam, and related his fictional background in the civil service. After a while Dr Allen said there were papers he must study and left Shiva to look out of the window. They passed high over the fields of Germany, through a brief interlude of scrub, then into the great brown desert. Endless stony plains and mountains, the dried-up Danube and its tributaries visible as dry veins and arteries. He saw the jumble of an abandoned city beside it – Budapest, perhaps. Already it was hard to believe there were once great cities here. In time, as they crumbled away, perhaps people would forget they ever existed. He turned away.

Dr Allen had fallen asleep over his papers. Shiva reached into the bag he carried on his lap and brought out his copy of the Black Book. He had studied it carefully over the last few weeks, reading through the verses of prophecy. In the original book, which had been carbon dated to the seventh century, the verses had been in Latin. He was surprised that they still rhymed in English; surely the translator must have interfered with the verses’ meaning. Most of the prophecies related to events in medieval and Stuart England, and all of them, the believers said, had come true. The verses seemed to Shiva to be no more precise than the rambling incoherences of the Book of Revelation, which he had read as part of his preparation. He read once more the final verse of the Black Book, which the Shining Light people said applied to the present day:

Five hundred thirty years, then God returns to save

His chosen, once the sinful have been purged.

Their wicked cities flayed by burning sun and drowned in

purging flood,

And at the end a sun-bright fire of blood.

When it was first discovered, the book had been no more than a curiosity, until the Shining Light Movement had declared that the earlier prophecies coincided with real events, and that this showed that the book had been inspired by God. And this year, 2135, was five hundred and thirty years since the Gunpowder Plot that was the subject of the previous prophecy.

‘And at the end a sun-bright fire of blood.’ It sounded like a nuclear holocaust. But as Commissioner Williams had said, there was no nuclear power in the Tasman Islands – old arsenals enough in the north, but none down there and no way of getting nuclear equipment. The only physical communication with the north was flights like this one, every passenger rigorously searched – but for explosives, not books, which was how Parvati Karam had got away with the original Black Book. The Shining Light Movement firmly believed that the world would end this year but claimed not to know exactly how. That would be for God to reveal. But then why recruit these scientists and engineers? What were they planning? Shiva looked down at the cover of the book.

They were over blue water now, the plane casting a tiny shadow on the sea. There was an island in the distance – the Crimea, an isolated desert crag in the centre of the vastly extended Black Sea. Shiva returned his copy of the book to his bag. He thought about the religious dogma he had had to read about in these last weeks. In the years before the Catastrophe, fanaticism had been everywhere, in Islam and Christianity and Hinduism and in a secular faith too: the blind belief in pseudo-scientific free-market theories that had succeeded Communism. The globalizers had believed in endless growth, that in some mystic way technologies to defeat global warming would appear. Like Marx, they had talked of the inevitable destiny of mankind. Their dogmas, like their world, were dead now, and they were hated for the blindness their ideas had brought. Humanity was tired of faith; the world today was a practical place; it had to be if humanity was to survive. But now Shiva wondered whether perhaps that practicality was only skin deep, perhaps always had been, the urge for the simplicities of faith always ready to surface. Outside, the colours changed, from blue sea to the grey moonscape of the Caucasus.

The face of the murdered old watchman came to Shiva’s mind. He had been a breadwinner, supporting two grandchildren in a crumbling Birmingham terrace. His life had been snuffed out like an ant’s. Shiva promised himself that whatever else transpired in the Tasmans he would see Parvati Karam arrested and tried for his murder.

It was getting dark when they landed to refuel in Tibet, on the airstrip that had once served Lhasa. Here, at the southern end of the vast desert that stretched to the Chinese settlements in Siberia, a group of guards drawn from all over the world kept permanent watch over stores of aircraft fuel. Ten years ago a group of eco-warriors had got on to a scheduled flight and had managed to blow up the fuel dump. Nowadays the passengers were herded into a secure outbuilding while the plane refuelled.

Walking from the aircraft to the building, Shiva was amazed by the clearness and coldness of the air. In the distance, between a dried-out riverbed and huge mountains, he saw the ghostly jumble of deserted Lhasa and, above it, the old Potala Palace, tier upon tier of empty windows. He felt a sense of wonder at the journey he was making and was conscious of the huge distance he was from England, from all that he knew. The sun set behind the mountains, and the long shadows merged into darkness.

‘Amazing sight, isn’t it?’ Dr Allen whispered beside him. ‘Makes me want to cry when I think what we’ve lost. Better hurry up,’ he continued gruffly. ‘Don’t want to catch a chill.’

The concrete building where they waited was another relic, faded pictures of drowned Chinese landscapes lining the walls. They sat on wooden benches, and a group of guards distributed rugs and bowls of soup.

‘I didn’t know it could be so cold anywhere,’ Shiva remarked.

‘We’re very high. Over three and a half thousand metres. Makes some people ill. I don’t envy the guards. A ghost city and no one else within two thousand miles.’

‘No.’

‘And we fly south over India next. The great jungles, all the new plants.’ Enthusiasm entered Dr Allen’s voice. ‘Tree ferns two hundred feet high, huge sprouting flowers we don’t even know the names of. The plants have adapted to the heat faster than anyone could have guessed. Pity it’s too hot down there to do any proper scientific surveys.’

‘What about animals?’

Dr Allen shrugged. ‘People say there are big creatures down there. They see the trees move from the air. God knows what they are. Some people say there are even people on the Himalayan slopes.’

‘Survivors?’ Shiva asked eagerly. ‘From India?’

The scientist looked embarrassed, no doubt making the connection to Shiva’s ancestry. ‘It’s just that some pilots flying over thought they saw smoke rising from the jungle, like campfires. On the upper slopes it’s not too hot for people to live. But condensation often rises from forests when they warm up in the mornings. It could be people, though, it could be. One day when things are more settled we’ll go down there and find out.’ He smiled uneasily. ‘We’re lucky in a way: we have a whole new world to explore.’

‘Yes.’ Shiva thought of people who looked like him, perhaps living a Stone Age life down there, cut off. If the Black Book was right, before the year’s end God would kill the lot of them.

‘What are the Tasman Islands like?’ Shiva asked.

Dr Allen laughed. ‘Prosperous. Busy. Old-fashioned. Very like the old world in a lot of ways. Dunedin’s pretty, nice view out across the bay.’

‘I hear they’ve got a big fundamentalist movement,’ Shiva said neutrally. ‘Gets a lot of votes in the elections.’

‘Less than they did, thank goodness. Maniacs.’

They talked a little about the scientist’s work, then he went to sleep again in his chair. Shiva looked out at the huge old palace, grey in the moonlight, high jagged mountains rising behind. He thought of the most recent message he had received from Parvati Karam: ‘Look forward to meeting you on Thursday. Mackenzie’s Café, George Street, Dunedin. 2.30.’

He thought of Alice, who had given him the radiation ring. It was two years since they had parted. She had loved him but he hadn’t loved her back, or not enough. He often disappeared for weeks at a time because of his work, but she was always waiting for him on his return. There was something smothering in her devotion and in the old-fashioned way in which she wanted him, as the man, to decide and initiate things, even their lovemaking. Shiva hadn’t wanted that sort of power himself. Strange, though, that it was always leaders – people who wanted or wielded power – to whom he had been drawn since school, mixed in somehow with a desire to bring them down, show their feet were made of clay. Like Marwood. He saw the fraudster’s face again, heard him cry out that he was innocent. The case had affected him more than any other. There had been something in the way the man actually believed his own lies that had made Shiva ashamed to deceive him. Marwood had been generous, had desired affection. Yet that did not make him any less wicked than any of the fraudsters he had brought to justice over the last ten years. Marwood had deceived farmers who were trying to scratch a living from thin mountain soils, surviving on the edge.

He felt a similar unease about Parvati Karam, about using their own shared heritage to deceive her. He shook his head. These qualms didn’t make sense in moral terms. He was just tired. Tired to the bone, he realized. He had spent sixteen years in the police, twelve in the fraud department. It was time to leave, he thought; he needed to change his life. But where would he go? An inspector he knew had retired early and gone to work in the refugee camps; a number of people did. But he didn’t want to do that. He wasn’t built for it, apart from anything else. He looked at his hands, thin and bony. His parents had called them Brahmin’s hands, though they weren’t Brahmins. A boy at school had once called them girl’s hands. He could kill a man with them if he had to; he had been trained to do so long ago. That ability, though, was about knowledge of anatomy and lines of force, not strength. He leaned back in his chair and slept, a deep and dreamless sleep until a guard shook him awake. The guard was tall and stocky, with high cheekbones and slanting Asiatic eyes. ‘Time to get back on board, sir.’

It was still dark when they flew over India, so Shiva saw nothing. There was turbulence that the pilot said was tropical storms below. He slept again and awoke, eyes sore, to find they had crossed the Indian Ocean and were above a red desert stretching endlessly to the horizon. Australia, once partly inhabited but now the hottest desert in the world. A few hours now and they would be there.

In his mind he reviewed his correspondence with Parvati. He had started with a tentative e-mail saying he had found they were distantly related. Her reply, his first words from her, had been equally tentative, but he fostered the correspondence, feeding her information about his family, a mixture of truth and invention. When he had said he was coming to work in Dunedin, where she lived, she had said that was a coincidence. Shiva had wondered whether there might be any underlying suspicion there but decided it was imagination. He sensed an underlying keenness to meet him. When he gave her the date of his flight, her next reply had been enthusiastic, asking about his life in England. She said her own was dull: ‘I work long hours, boring computer stuff for the government, but I have a nice house overlooking Victoria Bay and the islands. Work for my church takes up my leisure time.’ She suggested they meet in a café near the EU embassy once Shiva had settled in.

His first meeting with Alice had been in a café, set up through a dating site. He recalled sitting in the little café, batting off mosquitoes, sweating because it was just before the monsoon, annoyed that the pretty white girl opposite him looked quite cool. He wondered where she was now.

The engine note changed, the front of the plane tipping slightly forward. Dr Allen leaned across Shiva to look out of the window. ‘That’s Dunedin,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Nearly there.’

Below, Shiva saw a coastline. The plane circled lower, and for the first time since passing over Germany he saw a green, cultivated landscape, little fields marching up hillsides, mountains in the distance. Then, once more, houses again, perched above a bay with islands beyond. Humanity, clinging determinedly to its last fragments of the earth.

III

The old city of Dunedin lay beneath the waves, and a new town had been built on the hills behind. Most of New Zealand’s mountainous South Island had survived, though the Canterbury Plains were gone. As the bus from the airport drove into town, Shiva saw rows of colourful earthhouses with elaborately carved wooden frontages. It was the gardens that amazed him, full of roses and flame trees and carefully cultivated palms. In Europe there were few gardens, only endless vegetable plots. But the Tasman Islands were the richest nation in the world, with plentiful hydroelectric power, large areas of mountain land that was potentially fertile but had never been cultivated, and a homogeneous, highly educated population. As he watched the healthy-looking people, many wearing shirts rather than kaftans, their long hair often braided into elaborate designs, Shiva wondered how such a people could have turned to an organization like the Shining Light Movement in substantial numbers.

The bus dropped him in the town centre, near the embassy. Dunedin was built around a large eight-sided roundabout called the Octagon, a reconstruction of the one that had existed in the old city, and Shiva took a road named George Street. The new town had re-created the design of the old, just as the original Scottish colonists three centuries before had named the streets after those of Edinburgh. It was midday, but the heat was bearable. A cool breeze wafted up from the sea, whipping up dust. In England at this time of day, people would be hot and sticky, searching out vestiges of shade, but here they walked about in the sun, relaxed-looking. Shiva carried his luggage to the embassy, which stood in a street of four-storey wooden official buildings, rising high above the one- and two-storey earthhouses in the surrounding streets. The doorpost was elaborately carved with what Shiva guessed were Maori carvings, intricate designs surrounding grimacing faces.

He was taken to a room on the third floor, a large room with a wall of windows overlooking a sea dotted with little islands. The embassy intelligence officer was a dapper man in his forties, immaculately dressed in a dark suit and high-collared white shirt. He wore black-leather shoes, polished so they shone. Shiva knew his name was Rodriguez. He rose from behind a large desk, where papers stood in neat piles, and shook Shiva’s hand, his grip dry and strong. On the wall behind him was a map of the Tasman Islands; Tasmania and the South Island of New Zealand relatively little changed from their old coastline except that the North Island was now split into two. Above Tasmania, a corner of Australia showed at the edge of the map, the endless desert coloured orange in contrast to the green shading of the Tasman Islands.

Rodriguez poured Shiva a glass of fruit juice and invited him to sit down. ‘You look tired,’ he said in a strong Spanish accent. His own eyes looked deceptively sleepy.

‘Yes, sir. My body thinks it’s the middle of the night.’

‘Flying is not a natural way to travel. Once was enough for me.’ He smiled, showing white teeth. ‘We have a small house for you a few streets away. You can get some rest soon.’

Shiva noticed that though Rodriguez’ tones were formal, he did not use the clipped speech of the official classes at home. Was that only an English affectation? He had never been abroad, so he didn’t know.

Rodriguez smiled at him. ‘Well, what is your first impression of Dunedin?’

‘It seems prosperous, everyone looks well fed. They have space for gardens.’

He nodded. ‘Compared with most places last century they were very lucky. By the time the great inundations came, most Australians had abandoned the continent; it hadn’t rained there in thirty years. Those left went down to Tasmania, or came here. There were the usual refugee camps and starvation and disease. But the population’s up to eight million now – impressive when you think there are fewer than thirty million in Europe.’

‘It is.’

‘They’ve planted everywhere except the high peaks and the western fjords. They’ve been very successful. Of course, it helped that the islands were so isolated. And they had a navy. They blew refugee boats coming down from Indonesia out of the water.’ A trace of bitterness entered Rodriguez’ voice. Perhaps he was recalling when Spain turned to desert, the migrant wars in the Pyrenees.

‘It’s surprisingly cool,’ Shiva observed.

‘The water around the islands is cold. Ten years ago there were still icebergs drifting up here from Antarctica. In time, it’ll get hotter.’ He leaned forward and smiled, his eyes not sleepy any more. ‘Have you made an appointment to see that woman?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Good. Get some sleep before then. And watch your step. The Shining Light are tricky people. They show three faces. On the one hand the church services and the evangelization drives, on the other the politics, the pressure for religious laws. But the third face is the hidden one. They are very good at infiltrating key points in state and private institutions with people, hiding their allegiances. The civil service is full of them.’

‘I understand they’re not as powerful as they were. Politically.’

‘No. There was a movement here a few years ago to privatize some of the public services, like the railways and the water supply. People looking to make easy money out of facilities it took the government fifty years to re-create. The Shining Light people jumped on the bandwagon; their programme of going back to biblical morals hadn’t done very well, but taking the lead in the privatization campaign brought them votes. For a while.’

‘Only for a while?’

‘Yes. They privatized the railways and it was a disaster. No coordination, fares through the roof. The Shining Light people got blamed.’ He paused. ‘Companies they run still own several railway lines, though. Make a tidy profit. There are lines pushing everywhere into the hills as people settle them.’

‘I was told their leader is reclusive.’

‘Ah, yes. Dr Brandon Smith.’ Rodriguez shook his head. ‘They have a hideaway somewhere in the mountains in the south-west. They bought a lot of land there, and no outsiders are allowed there. Smith disappears for months, then appears at the climax of some evangelization campaign. Seems to show himself less and less these days, but still turns up now and again standing on a box in a town centre somewhere. Promises everyone salvation if they join the Church, everlasting fire if they don’t.’

‘Have you ever seen him?’

‘Once, here in Dunedin. He’s very dirty and ragged, looks like an Old Testament prophet. But he runs everything from behind the scenes. He used to be a schoolteacher until God told him he was destined to be a great prophet.’

‘Why have they had so much success here? There are a few of them in the north, but they’re a joke, a little sect.’

Rodriguez shrugged. ‘Perhaps people here feel guilty about the degree of success and prosperity they’ve regained, feel it can’t or shouldn’t last.’ He leaned forward. ‘Whatever the reason, the Shining Light people feel they are special, chosen ones. That always makes people dangerous. And we’ve seen from the theft of the book how ruthless they can be. And this Parvati Karam-’ Rodriguez grimaced ‘-the Shining Light think women should be subordinate, stay in the home. To rise to a position where she was trusted with a task like stealing that book, Parvati Karam would have to be very good.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Be careful, Inspector Moorthy.’

He met her at a café near the Octagon two days later. He was tired; it had taken his body a long time to adjust to the experience of flying over the world. Unnatural, as Rodriguez had said. He was glad to get out of the small, bare house they had assigned him. Without his statue of Shiva, he felt curiously vulnerable and edgy. He had bought a shirt and light trousers like the locals, and as he walked to the café the wind from the sea was refreshingly cool, though the sun was hot.

The street was crowded, the faces nearly all white except for a few brown-skinned Maori. About ten per cent of the people wore white-painted wooden crosses that marked them out as members of the Shining Light Movement. He noticed more of the elaborate hair designs. It seemed to be the better-dressed people who had them; perhaps it was a sign of status. But the streets were like those at home, beaten earth. Pedestrians walked at the sides; bicycles and tuc-tucs and a few electric vans drove down the centre. For a moment he thought he saw Marwood in the crowd and jerked his head around, but it was only some man who looked a little like him. He thought, That’s never happened before. I’m getting burned out. This is the last undercover case I’ll do.

Mackenzie’s Café was a small place that sold coffee and drinks and little cakes. Most of the customers were elderly. He saw Parvati Karam at once, sitting at a table facing the door, looking straight at him. She was not as attractive as he had thought from the photographs, but it was a softer face than he had expected. Her long dark hair was drawn back in a severe ponytail. She wore a white-painted wooden cross at her neck. Her expression was expectant, slightly nervous, and when she saw him she stood up.

‘Mr Moorthy?’ There was eagerness and interest in her voice. She had a slight North American accent, softer than the hard Tasman drawl.

‘Yes. Miss Karam?’ Shiva held out his hand, and she took it. Her grip was light and moist. He looked into her brown eyes. They were unreadable.

‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ he asked. ‘Juice? A cake?’

‘Just a tea, please.’ She sat down again, and Shiva went to the counter. While he was waiting to be served and pay, he looked around. Parvati was staring back at him intently. She smiled.

When he sat down, she asked how he was adjusting after the flight.

‘Still a bit tired. There’s an insecticide they’ve told me I must wear in the evenings. Something about a new type of biting insect down here.’

‘Yes, they’re vicious and carry malaria.’

‘All the animals and insects are changing, aren’t they? Adapting, I suppose. They say that in India there are big animals no one’s ever seen. We passed over it on the flight.’

‘What did you see?’ she asked curiously.

‘Nothing, I’m afraid. It was dark. There was turbulence, big storms under the plane. A man I travelled with, a scientist going to Antarctica, said some people think there are survivors in the Himalayan foothills. But they’re not sure.’

‘Life for them would be very primitive, very hard.’ She shook her head. ‘Hardly worth living.’

‘Things seem good here.’

‘Everyone works hard. Planting is going on everywhere in the mountains. No one talks of anything but making better artificial soils. It is a materialistic place,’ she said with a sudden hardness.

Shiva looked around the shop. ‘We’re the only brown faces,’ he said.

‘Yes. There are few Indians in the Tasmans.’ She smiled wryly. ‘People take me for a Maori.’ She looked at him. ‘Thank you for getting in touch. I thought there wasn’t anybody left from my Indian forebears apart from my parents.’

‘I only did a search recently. Felt it was something I ought to do. We shouldn’t forget them, should we? Those civilizations only live on in people like us.’ He smiled. ‘Isn’t it a strange thought, those two brothers in that Indian village who went to England in – when was it? – the 1940s?’

‘They left because of the violence between Hindus and Muslims when British rule ended. The British were Christians. I think they tried to reconcile them, but they weren’t strong enough.’

‘I heard the British cut and ran, left them to it.’

‘They had to preserve themselves. They were Christians and that’s a Christian’s duty. It’s like the Great Catastrophe; it’s really only Christian nations that have survived in any numbers. It’s part of God’s plan.’ She spoke the hard words gently. ‘So my Church teaches.’

Shiva thought suddenly of the dead watchman. He looked at Parvati’s hands. Slim and delicate. Yet she had taken some blunt instrument and killed the man.

‘What about the Chinese?’ he asked. ‘They seem to be doing quite well.’

‘It can’t last. They won’t survive up there on the permafrost. And God won’t help them. Not heathens.’

‘That’s a very harsh doctrine.’ Shiva smiled to defuse the words.

Parvati smiled sadly. ‘I know. The truth is harsh. However you might wish it wasn’t.’

Shiva looked at her. He could not reconcile this rather sad, pensive woman with the killer. If it was her, and it had to be, her act was as good as Rodriguez had warned. Better than him. He thought about the dog hunting. She didn’t look as though she could have done that either, but she had.

‘If you believe India’s destruction was ordained by God,’ he asked, ‘why go back and look for ancestors? Why answer my e-mails?’ He still spoke gently, smiled again.

‘I don’t know. I’ve always had a sort of… sense of grief. I suppose I wanted to assuage it. Since my boyfriend died in a car crash. In North America.’ She frowned hard.

‘When was that?’

‘Four years ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’ A year before you joined the Church, Shiva thought.

‘Are you married?’ Parvati asked suddenly.

He looked at her, puzzled by the unexpected question. ‘No.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She smiled and nodded at his left hand. ‘I thought that might be a wedding ring.’

‘No, it’s a ring to measure radiation. It goes pink if the level is dangerous. Most people wear them in England. Because of the old flooded power stations.’

‘I see.’ She frowned again. Perhaps they hadn’t warned her to take that precaution when they sent her to Europe.

‘I just wondered if you had children,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever marry now.’

‘I nearly did once. Maybe one day.’

‘I hope you didn’t think me impertinent.’

‘Not at all. Which Church are you in?’ he asked. ‘You didn’t say.’

‘The Shining Light. They saved my life after Steve died.’

‘You believe the end of the world is coming, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘Yes, we do. You should read the Book of Revelation, Shiva, and the Black Book.’ She sighed. ‘There was such an opportunity down here, survivors with a Christian heritage in a plentiful land. But they’ve kept the old materialism, spoiled the last chance they had to be… pure.’

‘I’m not sure what I believe,’ he said.

‘That’s the same as unbelief. Belief isn’t easy, but it’s right, it’s true. And our leader, he’s a great man, a prophet.’ She spoke with quiet certainty. Then she looked at her watch and stood up. ‘Well, it has been nice to meet you, Mr Moorthy. But I think I ought to go.’

‘Already?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. I think coming was perhaps a mistake. My Church teaches that we should forget the past.’

He rose and followed her to the door, surprised to see how small she was. ‘Perhaps we could meet again some time?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know anyone in Dunedin…’ He heard his voice stumbling as they stepped out into the street, less crowded now as darkness fell. He turned to face her.

Then from further up the street came the frantic blaring of a horn, and shouts and cries. Before Shiva had time to react, Parvati grabbed him by the shoulders and, with surprising strength, swung him around and shoved him against the wall of the shop. The wood creaked and shuddered. He stared past her. A yellow van, its horn still blaring, had passed over where he had just been standing and was careering on down the street. Pedestrians leaped aside and cyclists wobbled away. The van struck the side of a blue tuc-tuc, knocking it over with a crash, then barrelled into a side street. People ran over to the tuc-tuc as the driver and passenger climbed groggily out. ‘Fetch the police!’ someone called. Shiva turned to Parvati, who stood breathing heavily, looking more shocked than he was. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I think you just saved my life.’

‘I saw it coming. You had your back to it – thank God.’ She leaned against the wall, shaking slightly.

Shiva looked at the tuc-tuc. People were helping the driver and passenger. The driver was looking miserably at his overturned vehicle. He was big and dark-skinned, a Maori.

‘The van driver must have lost control,’ Parvati said. ‘Pray Jesus he hasn’t knocked anyone else down.’ But Shiva was thinking that he had heard no electric hum; the van’s engine was off. But if it had broken down, that wouldn’t stop the driver from steering it. He meant to knock me down. And her? But for her quick reactions, Parvati would have gone down too. Where had she learned to react that quickly? The dog hunts in America, perhaps.

‘I think we could both do with a drink,’ Shiva said. ‘Is there a bar around here?’

‘I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to drink.’

‘This would be medicinal.’

She shook her head and smiled. ‘I can’t.’

He took the opportunity the narrow escape had provided, and said: ‘Well, at least let me take you out to dinner, to say thank you. Anywhere you choose.’

She lowered her eyes. ‘Thank you.’ It would have been rude of her to refuse now.

‘Tomorrow night, perhaps.’

‘Tomorrow’s Sunday. We don’t go out on the Sabbath. But perhaps the night after. There’s a place not far from here, in Charlotte Street. They serve nice food.’

‘My treat. As a thank you.’

She hesitated, then smiled again. ‘All right. Will you be able to find it?’

‘I’ve got a map.’

Two policemen on bicycles rode past them, halting by the overturned vehicle. Shiva shivered at a blast of cold wind from the sea.

‘Are you all right?’ Parvati asked. ‘Perhaps you should go and lie down.’

‘I think I will.’

‘I never asked anything about yourself, your work. I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m quite myself these days. It’s coming up to the anniversary, you see – Steve’s death.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘We can have a proper talk on Monday.’ She smiled. ‘About ourselves.’

Shiva looked at the policemen. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to get caught up in enquiries.’

Parvati looked at where the policemen were helping the driver to heave the vehicle upright. It looked badly dented. ‘Poor man,’ she said.

Lying on the bed in his house, he thought more about the van. It could have been an accident, but all his training told him it wasn’t. That meant that someone, somewhere, knew who he was and why he was here. Had someone betrayed him? Someone back in England, perhaps? He thought of the cynical, epicene old commissioner; he could hardly see him as a secret member of the Shining Light Movement. Perhaps it was someone in Rodriguez’ office. Rodriguez had said the Church had tentacles everywhere in the Tasman Islands. He thought about Parvati. She had been nothing like he expected, with her quiet, sad certainties. But it was her in the photographs. He thought again of the old man with the beaten-in head, the man he was determined to avenge. He would have to tell Rodriguez what had happened. He wished he had his statue with him.

IV

Rodriguez sat behind his big desk, considering what Shiva had told him, his fingers steepled together and his eyes half-closed. On the map behind his head the long, deep inlets of the fjords bit into the western coast of South Island.

He looked up. ‘I will send a message directly to Commissioner Williams. And I will have the security protocols here checked. But neither the European Commission nor the embassy would ever let a Shining Light sympathizer near a confidential post.’

‘Someone could have converted after joining the embassy, sir. You said yourself, sir, that sometimes they hide their membership.’

‘We do thorough vetting where sensitive material is involved.’ He looked at Shiva. ‘Of course, it might have been a genuine accident.’

‘What do the police say?’

‘They haven’t found the driver. And no one got a numberplate. But if it was a genuine accident, the driver would have every reason to keep quiet. He’d lose his licence, could even end up sorting waste in prison.’

‘It just seems too neat. She rescues me and that way builds a bond, gets me to trust her. And she was looking at her watch just before we left the café. She asked to leave quite suddenly. She said she felt guilty about coming, her Church wouldn’t approve.’

‘If the intelligence services have been infiltrated, we have a major problem. But I’m not convinced they have been yet.’ Rodriguez thought a moment. ‘Do you want a minder, someone to watch your back discreetly?’

‘No, thank you. If they’re as clever as they seem to be, they’d know. That would be the end of my cover.’

‘Don’t be too brave for your own good. Or ours.’

‘I’ll take care, sir. The next meeting should be safe enough. It’s in a public restaurant.’

Rodriguez nodded. He turned in his swivel chair and looked out of his window. In the bay, a large ship was winching a big net aboard, full of whitish material. Seagulls whirled and screamed.

‘They’re dredging the landfill site from the old city,’ Rodriguez said. ‘Organic material for the artificial soils. How we persist, humanity, how we struggle against extinction. Will we succeed, do you think?’

‘We’ve come a long way in the last fifty years,’ Shiva replied, echoing Commissioner Williams.

‘But no one knows when the temperature will stop rising. There are nuclear power stations under the sea. Populations rising, still not enough soil.’ Rodriguez smiled sadly. ‘Forgive me, I am a Spaniard, we have a fatalist streak. But, yes, things have been getting better, and I pray that may continue.’ He looked at Shiva. ‘Do not worry, Shiva, I am not a follower of the Shining Light, merely a rather puzzled Catholic. And we have eschewed politics since Rome was abandoned.’

Shiva spent Sunday working in the embassy, answering letters for the cultural secretary, part of his cover job. There was a tiny air travel quota for cultural exchanges, and he had to field competing requests for Shakespearean actors, academics and musicians to be sent out. The Tasmans still revelled in their British heritage, more than ever in this age obsessed with history. He left at six so he could get back to his house in daylight. He walked carefully, alert for anyone following, but there was no one.

As he turned into a street near his, he heard voices from a long, low, earth-built building on the corner. A large sign, black letters on white, was fixed above the door: CHURCH OF THE SHINING LIGHT. A boy of around eighteen, neat in shirt and trousers, stood in the doorway. He smiled and nodded at Shiva. On an impulse, Shiva turned and went in.

The interior was a sparsely decorated hall. There were posters around the walls: stylized pictures of Jesus, a halo around His head, performing miracles. One poster showed a dark, tattered-looking book. Underneath, in large letters, THE BLACK BOOK, THE LOST PROPHECIES.

The hall was crowded, neatly dressed men and women of all ages sitting in rows of canvas chairs. Hairstyles were neat, unadorned. Nearly everyone wore crosses. They spoke in soft voices, glancing at a large empty platform where three chairs were set.

The boy who had been at the door had followed Shiva in. He was tall and thin, his face speckled with acne. Shiva quickly looked around, wondering if Parvati might be there, but could not see her. He thought, This is reckless; I shouldn’t have come in here.

‘Is this your first time, sir?’ The boy’s Kiwi accent turned this into thus. ‘Why don’t you take that seat?’ He indicated two empty chairs at the end of a row. ‘I’m Michael, by the way.’

‘Peter.’ The false name came to him instantly. He hesitated, then took the last seat in the row. Michael sat next to him. He realized that these arrangements had been planned; the boy had been placed at the door to encourage newcomers. On the floor at Shiva’s feet was a Bible. He picked it up. After Revelation, at the end, the Black Book was printed:

Five hundred thirty years, then God returns to save

His chosen, once the sinful have been purged.. .

All along the rows, the hubbub of conversation died. A door to the platform opened and three men stepped in. Shiva wondered if one might be the Leader, but there was nothing of the Old Testament prophet about any of the men, who took seats facing the audience. All were middle aged, well dressed in dark cotton suits, happy smiles above white clerical collars.

One of them got up to speak. He said how happy he was to see so many worshippers tonight, here in God’s house. The sermon that followed, about the works of Jesus and His Passion, could have come from any evangelist church at any time. Occasionally, someone in the audience shouted out ‘Yes!’ or ‘Amen!’ Shiva found his mind wandering. He was aware of Michael looking at him occasionally, but he avoided meeting the boy’s eye. The pastor sat down and they sang some hymns, Shiva forcing himself to join in. After the singing had finished, Michael leaned towards Shiva and said: ‘Pastor Henry is going to preach now. He has great truth.’ There was a catch of excitement in the boy’s voice.

A second pastor, a short, stocky man, got up to speak. His voice was loud and ringing.

‘St John of Patmos told us in Revelation that in the last days there would be great calamities. Earthquakes, plagues, great battles. And it did happen, just as the angels promised St John. The Great Catastrophe. The vials of God’s wrath have been poured out in full measure.’

‘Hallelujah!’ someone called out.

‘Yet is it not true that those left after the Catastrophe, in these islands and far away in the northern lands, remain as sinful as ever men were, breaking the laws God set down in the Bible, to his just anger? It is true, but God has set out their punishment, their final End. He has given us the prophecies of Brân, the Black Book that in fact contains the Shining Light of truth. The book that has proved its truth by prophesying many events that came to pass in history, and at its end we find the promise of the final catastrophe, bringing the End of the World and the Last Judgment; when the last sinners go to hell and the righteous are raptured up to heaven, to worship Jesus for ever and ever. And we have the date: 2135, this year.’ The pastor’s voice had grown gradually softer, more intense; now it rose again as he approached the climax.

‘We are the righteous. Our duty in these last days is to bring to truth those who will listen, but above all it is to know that we are the Saved, alone in this wasteland of sinners.’ His voice was shaking with emotion now. Triumphant joy, but also, Shiva thought, a callous fury at the disobedient world around him. ‘Any time now the world will end in the blink of an eye – and then we shall be in heaven!’ He ended with a shout, followed by a chorus of hallelujahs and amens.

Shiva had to resist the urge to get up and walk out, but that would have made him conspicuous. He sat through more hymns, a reading from the Black Book with explanations of how its previous forecasts had come to pass, of wars and plagues and rebellions. At the end Pastor Henry asked for people who wished to learn more about the Church to come forward. Two did, an old woman and a young man, and the pastor blessed them and said the Church would consider them for membership, for a place in heaven. Then there was a final hymn, and the service ended. Shiva walked quickly out of the hall. He caught a glimpse of Michael’s disappointed face.

The following evening he went to meet Parvati. He wore his suit – a white linen jacket and trousers – and a high-collared black shirt. It was raining, a heavy tepid rain that drummed on the solar panels on the town’s roofs. The restaurant was in a side street near the Octagon, down a little alley. Darkness had fallen, and Shiva looked around carefully. Still he had seen no sign that he was followed.

The restaurant was long and narrow, lit by candles, with a seagoing theme: nets hanging from the ceiling, fish in ancient glass cases. He was early; Parvati wasn’t there yet. The clientele was well dressed, mostly young, wearing shirts and kaftans with elaborate designs, hair piled up in loops or hanging down in plaited braids. No one here wore a cross. The manager, a coldly formal man in a dark suit, led him to a table for two. Shiva thought he looked at him dubiously and wondered if it was because of his colour. At the next table, two men with elaborately styled hair were eating, whispering softly to each other and laughing. One was short and dark, the other older, blond, his coiffed hair covering a bald patch that shone pinkly through.

Parvati arrived shortly after, wearing a plain white dress, her dark hair hanging loose and her cross conspicuous at her breast. The younger of the men at the next table glanced at it, frowning at her slightly as she sat down.

‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,’ she said to Shiva.

‘No. I was early.’

‘I haven’t been here before, but it’s supposed to be very good. I thought you might like it.’

‘Shall we order some wine? No, I’m sorry, you don’t drink. Shall we have water?’

‘Yes. Thank you for remembering.’ She leaned her elbows on the table and looked at him. She seemed more confident tonight, more settled. ‘Tell me about Europe,’ she said.

He told her about the big cities like Birmingham that had survived, how every speck of land was cultivated, the hard work and long hours people put in to grow food, the attempts to green the Norwegian mountains and the bare rocks of Iceland.

‘Are there many people from India?’

‘A few. There was a lot of violence against minorities during the wars of the last century, but things are better now. My parents followed Hindu ways, but it was just a matter of keeping the old culture alive, rather than from belief.’

‘Mine didn’t believe at all.’ Her face clouded. ‘I don’t see them now.’

‘Mine are dead.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘We’d grown apart too.’ That was true – all he had said so far was true – but he went on to relate his cover story: how he had joined the civil service from school, worked in administrative posts for years, then joined the diplomatic service in the hope of travelling to the continent of Europe, and had been delighted to be sent to the Tasmans. ‘I was never technically minded,’ he added. ‘Sometimes I feel guilty that I can’t work on something useful, like energy efficiency or soil enhancement. I just haven’t got that sort of mind.’ It was true: when he was training he had had to learn about the types of bombs and explosives that robbers and terrorists used; he had found it almost impossible.

‘It doesn’t matter how much technical skill you put into it,’ Parvati said, ‘or what systems you develop, northern North America will never be made fertile. Most of it is just peat bog, melted permafrost. People live on stupid dreams.’

‘You have to try.’

Shiva saw that she wasn’t concentrating any more. She glanced frowningly at the two men at the next table. A young waiter, a good-looking blond boy, had brought their main course, and the two men smiled at him suggestively as he served their food. ‘We’ll call you back if we want anything,’ the younger called after him as he left. The boy blushed and walked away faster. The man laughed. His voice had a drunken slur.

Parvati leaned forward and spoke in a low, angry voice. ‘It should be made illegal, what these people do. Yet here they are flouting it in public.’

‘Ignore them.’

The two men had heard and turned their heads towards them. Parvati took a deep breath, returning to their conversation. ‘And in the Rockies, some of the mountain land is just too steep. Like in Fjordland here. They can never cultivate there.’

‘I hear you have problems with dogs in North America.’

‘Filthy things. I hate them. A pack of dogs killed a young cousin of mine. They had a farm out in the wilderness. Just took her one day when she was out playing, tore her to pieces. We try to kill them, but there are millions of the things.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Some people still keep dogs as pets. Pretend that animals can give them affection. But they’re just things; they don’t have souls.’

Her anger was showing through now, Shiva thought. The blond young waiter came to take their order. They both asked for trout and sweet potatoes. As the waiter left, the younger man at the next table said in a loud, mock-hurt voice: ‘And I thought he was coming to see us again.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Parvati breathed. She gave the pair another nasty look but controlled herself. ‘There are animal problems here in South Island too,’ she said to Shiva. ‘Keas.’

‘What are they?’

‘Native parrots. When the kiwi went extinct they were made the national bird. They were protected for a time and the population soared. They’re a real pest in the countryside now.’

At the next table, one of the men made a little squawking noise, like a parrot. The other laughed and joined in. Parvati ignored them, and, leaning forward towards Shiva, said: ‘We try to kill them with traps,’ she said. ‘It’s starting to work. They’re intelligent, but they’re greedy too.’

‘What a bottom that waiter’s got,’ the younger man said loudly. The remark was meant to provoke; the two were looking at Parvati’s prominent cross.

She turned around and, suddenly furious, said: ‘Be quiet! You filthy animals!’

The men’s expressions changed at once to anger. ‘You watch your mouth, lady,’ one said.

Shiva stood up. ‘Let’s cool things down,’ he said quietly.

‘They’re filth!’ Parvati seemed to have lost control completely.

The older man stood up.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Shiva said.

‘We’ve nothing to be sorry for,’ Parvati said.

‘Fundamentalist bastards.’ The blond man stood, raised his arm and took a swing at Shiva. He dodged, grabbed the man’s arm and suddenly they were struggling. They both fell to the floor. Shiva could have dealt with him easily but dared not show it in front of Parvati; he was supposed to be a cultural attaché. The younger man stood up, egging his friend on. ‘Show him, Dave!’ Other diners stood up. A woman screamed. The manager appeared. ‘Stop this!’ he shouted. ‘Stop it!’ Shiva disentangled himself from the blond man and got to his feet, but the younger man grasped him around the waist, unbalancing him so they both fell backwards into Shiva’s table. Parvati took the jug of water and threw it over the younger man’s head.

‘Get out!’ the manager shouted. ‘All of you! Get out! This is a civilized restaurant!’

Shiva found himself released. The two men glared at them, then threw some money on the table and stalked out together.

‘I’m sorry,’ Parvati said.

Shiva was angry with her now. She had been provoked, but it was her outburst that had turned things to violence. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said coldly. He apologized to the manager and led the way outside.

The two men were waiting for them, one on each side of the door. They grabbed Shiva from behind, pinning his arms behind his back, and dragged him around the side of the building into a dark alley. Shiva struggled but realized that he was dealing with professionals, not amateurs. The younger man held him fast and the older stood in front of him. His expression was cold and clear; there was no sign of drunkenness now. He reached up and took something from his shirt pocket.

Shiva glanced around. He saw that Parvati was standing at the entrance to the alley, looking out on the street. She turned and stared at him with a blank face, then nodded to the man. Shiva looked fearfully at his hand, expecting to see a knife, but it was a cloth he held. He pushed it into Shiva’s face. When he breathed in it was as though a horse had kicked him. He was conscious of falling, then everything went dark.

V

Shiva awoke to find himself lying on a wooden floor, his hands bound behind his back. His left shoulder hurt badly. He became aware that his body was rocking gently to and fro. An electronic hum vibrated through the floor. He was on a train.

Painfully, he tried to sit up. A booted foot on his chest pushed him back.

‘Let him up.’ It was Parvati’s voice.

Strong hands lifted him into a seat. He almost cried out at the pain in his shoulder. He shook his head to try to clear it. He was in a small railway carriage, empty apart from him, the two men from the restaurant and, sitting opposite, Parvati. He glanced out of the window. Spectacular mountainous countryside, ploughed fields and olive groves outside the train. Some way off, in the foothills, he could see people working, clearing squares of land, laying new soil, creating fields.

The two men were wearing crosses now, and their elaborate hairstyles had been combed out, leaving scarecrow-like shocks of hair. He looked at their faces properly for the first time. There was a similarity in the cast of their features and their sharp blue eyes that Shiva had missed; he realized they were probably brothers. He turned to Parvati. She wore a confident expression now, her eyes fierce. It was as though a different person had taken over her body. She was a very good actor.

‘You were easy to capture,’ she said. Her voice was different, the enunciation slow and cold and clear.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Shiva’s voice came out as a croak, and he realized he had a raging thirst. His shoulder throbbed. They must have twisted something, hauling him about when he was unconscious.

‘The bottom end of South Island,’ Parvati said. ‘To meet the Leader.’

‘Your friend’s in for a surprise, isn’t he?’ the younger man said, and both laughed. Parvati shot them an annoyed look. ‘This is serious,’ she said. ‘We have to find out what he knows.’

Shiva glanced up and down the train. From the speed at which it was moving up a very steep slope, he guessed there was only one carriage. ‘You have your own train?’ he asked.

‘We do,’ Parvati replied. ‘A private company run by our nominees controls all the railways in the southwest. And we built this one for ourselves, out to the far west where nobody goes. Our Leader is a great strategic thinker,’ she added in her new, didactic voice.

‘This is the train we bring the scientists on.’ The dark-haired young man had the air of someone enjoying telling a secret.

‘The scientists you got to emigrate here? Where do you take them?’

‘Same place you’re going. You’ll see.’

‘What happens when we get to this mysterious place?’ Nobody replied. Shiva swallowed. ‘Can I have some water?’

‘We’ll be there in an hour,’ Parvati said. ‘You can have some then.’

The train rattled on, the engine humming. It slowed as they climbed higher into the steep mountains. In the far distance Shiva saw men labouring like ants on what looked like a new hydroelectric project. Then there were no more people, only bare, impossibly steep mountainsides rearing high above into the blue sky.

Shiva must have been still groggy from the drug they had given him, because he slept. He was jerked awake by the train coming to a halt, clanking and jolting. His thirst was terrible now. He was hauled to his feet and cried aloud at the pain in his shoulder. The two brothers walked him down the carriage and out of the door. He saw what was outside and his jaw dropped. The two men let him stand and look. Parvati stood next to them, arms folded, a sardonic smile on her face.

They were standing on scrubby grass, near the edge of an enormous cliff falling perhaps a thousand feet to a sheet of still blue water. They were at the head of a long fjord, huge mountains rising sheer out of the water on both sides, some far higher than the cliff where they stood. The peaks were reflected in the water. The fjord was perhaps two miles across, running in a straight line to the distant blue line of the ocean. The almost sheer sides were nearly bare, brown scrub clinging to ledges here and there.

Shiva had seen Milford Sound in documentaries, a landscape formed aeons ago by giant glaciers. In the old days it had been a place of tourist pilgrimage. Shiva remembered that it was in Fjordland, where Parvati had told him the land was too steep to cultivate. Once Milford Sound had been a wet place with vegetation clinging everywhere to the cliffs, but now it was bare, the air hot and dry.

There were gaps here and there in the cliffs, circular depressions cut into the hillsides by ancient ice, inaccessible except from the water. On the edge of one of these Shiva saw a little complex of wooden buildings, some of them little huts but others the size of warehouses. A big wooden jetty had been built out on to the water. At the end of the jetty an enormous, dark grey metal thing, three or four hundred feet long, lay half-submerged. It was shaped like a cigar, a projecting tower near the front and a fin at the back. A submarine.

One of the brothers reached into his pocket and pulled out a large army knife. Shiva thought for a moment they were going to kill him now, but the man reached behind him and cut his bonds. Shiva gasped with relief and brought his hands carefully in front of him. His shoulder throbbed.

‘We’ve got a bit of a walk, Parvati said. ‘It’s steep. You’ll need your hands to balance. Don’t think of running – there’s nowhere to go.’

But Shiva was looking at the ring on his right hand, where inside the gold setting the disc had turned pink and was growing darker, edging towards red. He looked at Parvati. ‘This place is irradiated,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said simply. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

They went down a steep narrow path, little more than a ledge. One of the brothers walked behind Shiva and the other went ahead, behind Parvati. They needed to hold on to the nearly sheer cliff to their left. To the right was a drop to the still waters hundreds of feet below. A warm breeze rose from the sea, making Shiva’s suit jacket, dirty now, flap around his chest. The other three were wearing shirts.

A pair of stocky grey parrots eyed them from a small ledge above. As they approached, the birds took off and flew around them, dangerously close, showing the brilliantly coloured underside of their wings.

‘Take your jacket off!’ the man behind Shiva ordered. ‘It’s the movement that’s attracting them.’

Shiva pulled off his jacket and threw it over the side of the cliff. It spiralled down to the sea, and the two birds flew after the strange object, calling loudly.

‘Wretched things!’ Parvati’s face was angry. She looked around at him. ‘That’s a pair of keas.’

They scrabbled along, moving slowly downwards. ‘How deep is the water?’ Shiva asked the man in front of him.

‘Couple of thousand feet,’ he replied over his shoulder.

Shiva could see the submarine more clearly now. People were climbing in and out of it; a group was studying a large chart laid on boxes on the jetty beside it. A pile of small torpedoes stood on the jetty. A group of men appeared to be taking them apart, removing the detonators. He saw a name painted in large white letters along the landward side of the hull: Patriot. Beside it was a small Union Jack. He knew now what the craft was: one of the nuclear submarines from the last century which had disappeared during the methane hydrate eruptions. Several were presumed to be lying on the ocean bed. He looked again at his ring: a light red; not immediately deadly, perhaps, but a dangerous dose.

They came to the end of the path and walked on to the jetty. Shiva saw more of the keas flying around, people shouting and waving at them to go away. One stood on a nearby post, picking at coils of rope wound around the top. It looked thin and hungry, its plumage ragged. Probably dying from radiation poisoning.

They came to a halt near the pile of torpedoes. The men studying the chart and the others on the jetty looked at the little party curiously. The giant submarine loomed ahead. One of the brothers said, ‘I’ll get some water,’ and walked off.

A kea landed on the pile of bombs, and one of the white-suited men shouted angrily and waved his arms until the bird took off.

‘They should shoot them,’ Parvati said.

‘Can’t risk that with those bombs opened up,’ the remaining brother said.

‘How long before we die of radiation poisoning?’ Shiva asked Parvati bluntly.

‘A long time. The Leader will tell you more. Perhaps you’ll even understand, though I doubt it.’ She gave an angry little laugh.

The man brought back bottles of water and passed them around. Shiva was so thirsty it hurt to drink. When he had finished he looked at Parvati again. ‘Who betrayed me?’ he asked.

‘Mary Ackerley is one of our people,’ she replied stonily. ‘She’s been one of us for a long time. We got her to open up a guesthouse for visiting officials; it is a useful way of finding things out. And somewhere for me to stay, where I knew I’d be secure.’ She inclined her head. ‘And she’s an old lady; people don’t suspect old ladies of being spies. You told her you were going to be making an air journey soon. Then you contacted me. We put two and two together.’

She broke off then, looking behind Shiva. He saw that all the people on the jetty had stopped work. Many wore hats, and now they took them off and stood, silent, looking at a man approaching from one of the large buildings. He was large and roughly dressed, with an untidy white beard, and he walked with a stick, a heavy rolling gait. A canvas bag was slung over one shoulder.

‘Back to work,’ the man called as he approached. His voice was deep and loud, with a North American accent. He walked right up to Shiva and looked him in the eyes. His face was lined and weatherbeaten. His eyes were blue-grey, intense and alive, seeming almost to glitter. He smiled. ‘Inspector Moorthy.’

‘I’ve told him how we got to him,’ Parvati said.

The bearded man nodded. ‘Yes, God was with us that day.’ He looked hard at Shiva. ‘Well, Mr Moorthy. Do you know who I am?’

‘The Leader? Brandon Smith?’

‘That’s right. Now, first question – it’s been on my mind. How did you find out that it was Parvati who took the book? Was it a camera she missed in the museum?’

He did not reply. Smith smiled, showing bad teeth. ‘Not talking? You will.’

‘You realize you’re all slowly dying of radiation poisoning?’ Shiva said.

Smith nodded. Like Parvati, he did not seem to care. ‘There was a small leak in the reactor. It’s closed now, but it polluted the area badly. We’re all dying, I guess, like the birds, but we’ve time for what we need to do.’ His look at Shiva was cold and hard.

Shiva took a deep breath. ‘There are others waiting for me to report back, in Dunedin. My movements were being watched. They’ll know where I am.’

Smith smiled again. ‘Don’t try to fool me, son. Have you any idea how remote this place is? There’s only one way in, on a train we own, on a line we own. No one saw us put you on it. And we have watching-posts all along the way. We’ve had only three visitors in the five years we’ve been here, wanderers who wanted to see the Sound, and even they were captured a few miles off.’

Shiva said nothing.

The big man nodded slowly. ‘We need to find out just how much you do know. That’s why we brought you here. And we will. You’d be best to cooperate, son,’ he added in a heavy, paternal voice.

Shiva looked at the great bulk of the submarine behind Smith. It was so big and so close he had to bend his neck to look up to see the conning tower. He decided to ask a question of his own. He had already guessed that they would not allow him to leave here alive; he saw only one slim possibility of escape.

‘How did you get the submarine?’ he asked.

Smith smiled heavily. ‘We didn’t get it, son. God led us to it. The first man to come here in decades was one of us. He felt called to come out into the wilderness to listen to the voice of God. He found the submarine beached just where it sits now. It’s an old British one. It must have been caught in a methane upwelling in the last century. All the crew were killed – just skeletons when we found them – but the hull wasn’t breached.’ Smith looked down the fjord to the sea. ‘The sub just drifted here and sat here for eighty years until God brought us to it. Isn’t that something? The crew managed to close down the nuclear reactor inside before they died, but it’s still functioning, the missiles and warheads intact. Four Trident Five missiles that can reach a target eight thousand miles away, each carrying a warhead that’ll atomize everything for miles around the impact site.’

Shiva felt his face tighten in horror. ‘But I thought you were dismantling them.’

Smith laughed. ‘Hell, no.’ He glanced at the bombs on the jetty. ‘Those aren’t the missiles; the missiles are huge. Those are just a few conventional torpedoes they had on board. We don’t need those – hardly likely another submarine will attack us, now is it?’

‘You… you’ll kill millions.’

For answer Smith reached into his canvas bag and pulled out a small black book. It looked incredibly old; the covers were wood, battered and stained and peppered with nail holes. The Leader held it up. A ragged clapping sounded from the workers who had been watching. Smith held the book up so they could see it.

‘We’re nearly at the climax now,’ he told Shiva. ‘In a few weeks we’ll be ready to sail the submarine away. As far north as we can go. Then we’ll fire the missiles, at Birmingham and Berlin and Winnipeg. The Europeans and North Americans will think the Chinese are making a pre-emptive strike, like they did at Russia during the Catastrophe, and they’ll fire back. Then the prophecy will be fulfilled, and in the midst of the last war Jesus will return and we will be raptured up to heaven. So you see, son, the radiation doesn’t matter.’ He raised the captured book above his head again and the people clapped and cheered. So these scientists and engineers were willing to go all the way, Shiva thought. The others, the ones who died mysteriously, must have refused.

Smith opened the book carefully and turned the thick, ancient parchment pages covered with handwritten Latin script. He placed a thick, grimy finger on a passage near the end, then read aloud to Shiva. ‘“A sun-bright fire of blood”,’ he intoned. There was something in his hard, passionless delivery that made Shiva despair, made him realize that nothing and nobody could move this fanatic from his course.

‘We wondered how the end would come about,’ Smith went on quietly. ‘Then we found the submarine and realized what the prophecy meant. Sometimes God requires men to act, to bring His wishes to fulfilment. When the Jew Oppenheimer exploded the first nuclear bomb, he quoted your namesake, the pagan god Shiva: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” He was afraid of what he had done, but we are not.’

‘That was Vishnu, not Shiva.’

Being corrected seemed to annoy Smith more than Shiva’s pursuit of them or his lies about others coming. He frowned. ‘All these Hindu gods are aspects of each other, don’t you know that? You skinny little heathen thing.’ He returned the book reverently to his knapsack and turned to the two brothers.

‘Have him questioned. Don’t worry about the methods. We need to know if we have a real threat here.’ The Leader turned and walked away without a backward glance.

They took Shiva up the jetty to the wooden buildings set against the cliff. Looking up, he saw more of the sickly-looking parrots sitting on ledges. The brothers tied his hands in front of him with more rope, then opened the door of a small, solid-looking shed and hauled him inside. The floor was of bare rock with an iron ring bolted into it, the end of a length of rope secured to the ring. The brothers bound Shiva’s hands again with a thin but strong rope, binding them separately, a strand of rope about an inch long connecting them, like handcuffs. Then they tied the strand to the length of rope connected to the iron ring. He cried out as they jerked at his shoulder, but they paid no attention. They tied his feet together, then left without looking at him again, shutting the door and turning a key.

He sat up painfully. The shed was dim, with only a tiny unglazed window less than a foot square at the back, facing the cliff. Shiva leaned against the wall to give his hurt shoulder some support.

He knew they were leaving him to reflect before the interrogators came. Don’t worry about the methods, Smith had said. He took a deep rattling breath. He considered his story about people in Dunedin ready to follow him. With practised speed he developed it in his mind, building it up to sound consistent, true. Even if they believed him, he realized, they were hardly likely to delay the project; they might even speed it up. But he had to try to scare them. His life didn’t matter. Even if by some miracle he did get out of here he might be badly affected by radiation already.

He had one hope of escape. In the restaurant he had deliberately concealed that he was trained to fight. Even with a strained shoulder, he thought that if he could get free of these bonds and into single combat with one of them he might have a chance. But they were well tied. He struggled with them for a while before giving up. Even if he could escape, he realized, he could never make it across these trackless mountains with people who knew them in pursuit. But he had thought of something else he could do, if he could get free. He thought about it hard and sweat ran down his brow, because he knew that if he succeeded he would certainly die.

He jumped and whirled around as a sound came from the barred window and a shadow fell over the room. One of the grey parrots was there, its clawed feet on the sill, looking in with bright beady eyes above a sharp, hooked beak. It glanced at Shiva, then peered over the floor. Shiva realized it was looking for food; the keas must live by scavenging the camp. When the bird saw there was nothing to eat it flew away. It had looked sick and scrawny, like the one on the post. Shiva glanced at the circle in the centre of his ring again. It seemed red now, though it was hard to tell in the dim light of the shed.

Shortly after, the brothers returned. One carried a large leather bag. With them was a tall, craggy-faced older man who walked like a soldier. Shiva was surprised to see that he held a bowl of food in one hand, a spoon sticking out. He could smell something like chicken. In his other hand the man carried a bottle of water. He laid both beside Shiva.

‘Hungry?’ he asked. He had a Tasman accent. ‘I guess you’re thirsty too?’

Shiva picked up the water, drank it, then took the bowl clumsily on to his lap. It was difficult to hold the spoon in his bound hands, but he managed, though he spilled some food down his shirt. He ate the meat and started on the thin, fatty stew underneath, but after a few mouthfuls he felt nauseous and had to put the bowl down. He wondered if it was a sign of radiation sickness.

The man turned and nodded to the brothers. They left the room, the one who carried the leather bag putting it on the floor. They locked the door behind them. The soldierly man sat on his haunches in front of Shiva. His eyes were calculating. ‘My name is James,’ he said. ‘I want to ask you some questions.’ His voice was gentle. ‘How are you feeling? They said you hurt your shoulder on the journey?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK.’ James nodded, then turned and picked up the bag. He pulled out a rope and a knife. He used the knife to cut the bonds on Shiva’s left hand, then quickly and expertly, giving him no time to react, he hauled Shiva’s left arm up behind his back, looping a second length of rope around Shiva’s neck and securing it to his wrist, fixing his left arm up behind his back. He cried out at the pain in his left shoulder.

James leaned back on his haunches. ‘An incentive to answer my questions,’ he said in the same quiet tones. ‘Now, how did you find out about Parvati Karam?’

Shiva had been taught about dealing with torture. The main point was that in the end nearly everyone gave in. The pain in his shoulder made it hard to catch his breath as he told the story he had formulated. To begin with, what he said was true: how Parvati had been seen through the camera at the museum, how he had been picked because of their shared ancestry to start an internet correspondence with her, his journey to Dunedin.

James’s face twisted with contempt. ‘Shared ancestry. When I was young I was in the police in the refugee camps, when rations were so short some of them turned to cannibalism. Don’t think they bothered much about shared ancestry. I saw what people without God are like there. It’s finished, it’s all finished. Don’t you understand that?’

Shiva took a deep breath. ‘The Tasman government have suspected for some time you were planning something big. There were people tracking me everywhere I went. They knew what they were doing. They’ll follow that railway of yours. The best thing you and anyone else in this place who still has a foot in the real world can do is run.’

James looked at him steadily for a long moment, then he shook his head. ‘It’s not a bad story, but I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘We were watching you carefully all the time you were in Dunedin, and we saw no one following you. We don’t think anyone there has the faintest idea of what we are planning. We’re better organized than you seem to think. You probably think since we’re Christians we’re naive and badly organized, but we’re not.’

‘And you go in for torture and murder,’ Shiva said, gasping at the pain in his shoulder.

‘Read your history,’ James said contemptuously. ‘And don’t try to distract me. I think you came here to hunt down Parvati Karam. I think you’re pretty much alone.’

Shiva did not reply. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ James asked, then rose to his feet. Shiva flinched. ‘I’ll leave you for a while. When I come back I’ll have you standing with both arms tied up behind your back. That’ll be worse.’ He looked at Shiva intently. ‘So have a good think about whether you want to stick to that story.’ He untied the cord around Shiva’s neck and tied both hands back to the rope fixed to the ring in the floor. Then, without another word, he left the shed.

An hour passed. It began to get dark, the light coming through the little window fading. Shiva twisted and manoeuvred to find a position that would ease the pain in his shoulder. He knew that when James came back, before long he would tell him the truth. He thought about the ancient monk who had written the verses. If he had not written that wretched book, none of this would have happened; he would not be here. ‘Couldn’t you see people would do something like this with your book, you fool?’ he asked aloud.

He heard a fluttering sound. One of the mangy-looking parrots was at the window again, perhaps the same one. It stood on the sill and looked at Shiva, then at the bowl on the floor. It must have smelled the congealing remains of the stew but was obviously frightened to fly into the shed. Shiva looked at the hooked, sharp beak and remembered the one on the post that had been chewing at the rope. Very slowly and gently, so as not to startle the kea, Shiva edged painfully over to the bowl and, gritting his teeth, put his bound wrists inside it. He dipped the piece of rope connecting them into the watery mess. The kea watched intently.

Shiva hoped its hunger was stronger than its fear. He lifted his hands out again and managed to pick up the bowl. He shuffled back against the wall. He put the bowl on his lap, held his roped wrists beside it. The bird twisted its head from side to side, assessing what was going on. Parrots, Shiva knew, were intelligent birds.

‘Come on,’ Shiva said encouragingly. ‘Come on.’

It hesitated, then fluttered down to the floor. It stood there out of reach, studying him without moving. Shiva closed his eyes and leaned his head wearily against the wall. This wasn’t going to work.

He felt a wind, then sharp little claws on his thigh. He opened his eyes. The parrot was perched on his leg and had put its head into the bowl. A dark little tongue flickered out of the open beak, greedily licking up the remains of the stew in the bottom of the bowl. He saw how thin it was. The bird kept one eye beadily fixed on Shiva. When it had finished, it jumped into the empty bowl and looked at Shiva’s bound wrists. There was a little of the stew on his fingers, and he feared the bird might bite them. The kea looked up at his face uncertainly for a moment, then stretched its head forward and began picking at the rope.

Some instinct to grub and peck had been stimulated, for the kea bit and tugged, swallowing pieces of rope as well as the stew smeared on it. Shiva sat as still as a stone, enduring his pain. The bird bit his wrists several times and blood began to flow, but he gritted his teeth and made no sound that might startle it. After about fifteen minutes the bird suddenly stopped, then flew up, perched on the windowsill for a moment, and was gone.

Though it brought pain to his shoulder, and to his wrists too now, Shiva tugged at the ropes. The strand linking his wrists was almost severed, and the kea’s pulling and pecking had loosened the others. He felt something give, and pulled his right hand free. He looked at his wrists; his hands and wrists were dotted with sharp little cuts, many bleeding. With his free hand he began picking at the ropes until both hands were free, then his legs. He arranged the ropes so it looked as though his limbs were still tied, then leaned back against the wall, breathing hard, trying to pull himself together. He arranged his hands in his lap so it looked as though they were still tied. Then he leaned back against the wall again, grateful for the dim light. The trousers of his best suit were dark with grime and dust now.

This time it was only a few minutes before he heard footsteps approaching the hut. The key turned. But it wasn’t James who came in, it was Parvati. She carried a gun, a large old revolver that looked huge in her little hand. In her other hand she carried an olive-oil lamp which she laid on the floor. She stood looking down at him. Her expression was annoyed, irritated.

‘Did he hurt you?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

She looked at his bloodied hands. For a second Shiva was afraid she might guess the truth, but she must have thought James had cut him, for she said: ‘So I see. He doesn’t think you’ve told him the truth. You should, or he’ll hurt you badly.’

Shiva laughed. ‘Have they sent you to play nice policeman to James’s nasty policeman?’ He looked at her. ‘Bad choice. Nice is the last thing you are. I thought that ever since I saw the photographs of that murdered watchman in Birmingham.’

‘Everything I’ve done has been for the Shining Light. That old man would have died soon anyway. He just went to hell a little early. The end is almost here.’

‘You’re bringing it.’

‘We’re fulfilling the prophecy. It’s God’s plan.’

‘Your God. How cruel and vile He is.’

She laughed contemptuously. ‘Who are human beings to set themselves up as more moral than Jesus Christ and Almighty God? He led Pastor Smith to the Black Book. Many others have had the book in the past, and none realized its significance. We are the instruments God has chosen to bring His plans to pass. The whole purpose of the prophecies was to give us, here in the Last Days, proof of what God wished us to do. And it was He that brought us to the submarine.’

‘There were several nuclear submarines never accounted for. I bet there are others washed up on uninhabited shores around the world.’

Her voice took on a note of cold intensity. ‘You’re saying it isn’t strange that an undamaged, fully armed submarine should be washed up on the remotest shores of the country where the Shining Light burns strongest, where one of us found it? No, this was meant.’

For a brief moment Shiva wondered if they could be right. But even if they were, it didn’t matter. Shiva knew what he must do now. Looking at Parvati, he knew he could kill her and do it with little feeling. And then he gave a long, shuddering, involuntary sigh.

She misread what the sigh meant. ‘You’re afraid of James coming back?’ she asked. She made her voice gentle. ‘There’s no shame in that. Tell me the truth, Shiva. Nobody’s coming after us, are they?’

Her body had taken a relaxed, unthreatening posture, and Shiva saw her hold on the gun relax a little. He kicked out with his right foot, the ropes flying away, knocking it from her hand. Parvati gave a cry of astonishment. He launched himself from the floor and butted her in the stomach. The gun dropped to the floor as Shiva’s weight toppled her over. She gagged and gasped for air as he pressed his elbow on her windpipe, but she still struggled fiercely, trying to get her arms free. Shiva reached for the gun, picked it up and smashed the butt down on her forehead. She gave a little grunt and went limp. He brought the gun down on her head twice more, until he was sure she was dead.

He stood up shakily and leaned against the wall. While attacking Parvati he had felt no pain, but now it washed over his shoulders and cut hands in waves. He felt faint and sank to the floor again, allowing himself a few seconds’ rest. Then he got up, walking around the room a couple of times to test the strength of his legs. Not looking at Parvati’s face, he bent and felt in her pockets for the key to the shed.

Now he must be quick, not hesitate for a moment. He took a few more deep breaths and felt himself fill with purpose, certainty. Hold this feeling, he told himself, hold it to the end.

He put out the lamp and opened the door quietly, just a crack, holding Parvati’s gun behind him. Lights shone out into the darkness from the buildings around. Though he had feared James might be coming back, the complex seemed deserted. The night air was warm and still. From somewhere he heard singing, hallelujahs, God’s elect preparing themselves for the End. He looked down the length of the jetty, the submarine visible as a black shape in the moonlight against the beautiful vista of Milford Sound at night. A full moon was reflected in the still water. The missiles the men had been dismantling had been covered by a tarpaulin. He made out two guards standing there, wearing dark kaftans. One looked young, slim and slight. The other was larger, older, and carried a rifle.

Shiva closed the door again and stood thinking. Somehow he had to disable the guards without shooting them, for the sound would bring people running. Then he would fire the gun at the detonator of one of the torpedoes. The whole lot would go up, and so would the missiles on the submarine. This corner of South Island would probably be devastated, but there were few people here and he hoped that the gigantic natural funnel of Milford Sound would absorb much of the energy. And the whole world would not go up in a nuclear war that devastated, shrunken humanity could surely not survive. And if God meant that he should fail, at least he would have tried, and if he found himself at some seat of judgment and an angry God thundered at him and asked if he believed that his morality was greater than God’s, Shiva would answer ‘yes’ and go proudly down to hell.

He opened the door again, just a crack. The guards looked bored and listless. Shiva slipped the gun into his belt behind him, then opened the door and stood in full view. He raised his hands above his head and started walking slowly towards them.

They looked at him in astonishment. The one with the rifle raised it and pointed it at Shiva. He was in his fifties, fit-looking. The other guard was just a boy. He reminded Shiva of Michael at the church in Dunedin. He felt sorry for what he must do.

‘Stop right there!’ the older guard called. Shiva slowed his pace further, to a shuffle, but still walked on. ‘I want to confess everything,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen the light.’

He was still too far away for the guards to hear properly. ‘What?’ the older one asked.

‘I have to tell you. God himself has visited me. See, my bonds are gone. See the stigmata, the blood running on my wrists.’ He made his voice tremble with emotion. The guards looked at each other. Shiva knew he sounded convincing; he had always been able to sound convincing. Even his clothes, ragged and dirty and torn now, added to the image. It was enough to throw the guards off balance. He came to a halt, perhaps twenty yards from the tarpaulin. He had walked at a slight angle, taking him near the water. He stopped and the two guards came slowly up to him.

‘How’d he get out?’ the young guard said. He sounded afraid. They both stepped right up to him. Shiva was in great pain, but he turned quickly and threw all his weight against the older man. He gave a shout and toppled into the water with his rifle, hitting it with a loud splash. Shiva pulled the gun from his waistband and pointed it at the young guard. ‘On your knees,’ he said. ‘Hands on your head.’

The boy obeyed. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’m not ready. I’m not prepared yet. This isn’t the time.’

Shiva swiped him across the side of the head with the gun and he went down with a groan. Shiva rolled him over and over until he too fell into the water. He could hear splashes and gurgling cries from the other guard, but there was no way for him to climb up again.

Shiva walked over to the tarpaulin and pulled it away. The pyramid of ugly, snub-nosed bombs lay there. Shiva picked one up and laid it on end as he had seen the technician do earlier. He had a momentary fear that he would not be able to unscrew the top, but it was surprisingly easy. He looked at the complex mechanism. The guard in the water was shouting now, loudly, his voice carrying far in the clear night. Shiva heard the singing stop. It must be now. He hesitated, then out of the blue remembered the two children fishing in the lake at Birmingham and felt a sudden overwhelming love for poor, fractured, weak, helpless humanity. God help them all, God should help them all if He existed.

He stood right above the bomb, aimed downwards and fired.

He saw a red light and then a blinding white light and in the middle of the white light the figure of Shiva, dancing in his circle of fire to keep the world in being, his face impassive.

1 Now Preston Street

2 7 July 1325

3 The robbery was April/May 1303

4 Monday 17 June 1348