'It isn't rock.'

She got up. 'How did you - what on Earth's that you've got there?'

'Portable spectroscope.' Among other things. 'j.a.panese. Still experimental.'

I crossed my fingers as I fibbed.

She nodded. 'I see. And your findings?'

'... Show this isn't rock. It's not even very similar to rock.'

'Well, what is it then?'

I hesitated, then decided to go for broke. 'It's changing.'

'Changing?'

'Disguising itself. At a molecular level.'

Dot scowled. 'You've been smoking one of Reefer's joints.'

I shook my head. 'It knows it's being scanned.'

Dot licked her lips. 'You mean it's alive?'

I shrugged. 'I don't know.' On a sudden hunch I stood up on tiptoe and peered through the hole drilled in the top of the stone. 'One thing's for sure: it might be old, but it's no meteorite.'

Dot placed her palm flat against the stone. 'Not a meteorite. Not from Earth.

Possibly alive. What the h.e.l.l is it?'

There was a long silence.

Into the silence a thought projected. I was looking through the hole and I could see Ararat. More specifically I could see the same outcropping that had caught my eye when peering through the first stone we had found.

Much more specifically - the outcropping was all I could see.

A thought struck 'me. 'Wait here. I'll be back.' Taking Dilaver and having temporarily relieved Reefer of his camcorder, I spent the next twenty minutes revisiting the sites of the other stones. I peered through each of the holes. I filmed what I saw.

The stones were all seated at different heights and varying depths in the ground. One was on its side. All were at different angles. Yet when I peered through each of the holes, I saw the same view I had seen through the first stone.

They were all pointing at Ararat. Precisely at Ararat.

Several tons of rock, spread over several miles of hills, six billion years old, all facing exactly the same place - as if they were aimed there. Like telescopes.

Or guns.

Guns aimed squarely at my husband.

Why do they make you care about them so much, the wretches?

I went back to the others, told them what I'd seen, showed them the video footage. Dot bit her nails. Reefer looked nervously up at the sky, as if expecting to see Martian cylinders appear over the rocky peaks.

I pulled out my hip flask. 'Anyone want a drink?' . Reefer looked at me with wide eyes. 'Abso-fragginglutely.'

I handed him the flask.

It was halfway to his lips when he fell over.

It took me a moment to register the sound of a rifle shot. By that time Reefer was motionless on the ground beside his still burning spliff, eyes wide and slowly filling with blood from the bullet hole in his forehead.

There was another shot. Dot fell over. Her foot twitched as she hit the ground, then she was still.

I moved towards her. At least I think I did. Everything seemed very distant.

Had I heard three shots or only two? Suddenly it was hard to remember.

I felt flushed. That was the shock of seeing two people I had just been talking with shot and at least one of them killed. I tried to look around, to see who. had done the shooting. It seemed to take a long time to turn my head. Then I saw a thin figure in black battle fatigues walking slowly towards me. His gun was aimed at me. I waited for him to fire. He didn't.

I fell over then, hand pressed to my side, surprise growing in me at the hot wetness there.

Oh, I thought as my face hit the ground. Three shots then. I thought I might black out but I didn't. Funny that, isn't it?

I remember all the old cliches but not very clearly and not necessarily in the right order.

I remember the man in black checking Reefer and Dot. I remember watching him turn them over and seeing the blood on their bodies.

I remember a salmon-and-avocado-and-goat's-cheese sandwich smeared across the ground.

I remember the soldier putting a bullet into both their heads for good measure.

I remember seeing my hip flask, hooch trickling out on to the parched rocks, a hand's breadth from my face.

I remember the man walking over to the camera, picking it up, rewinding the tape and peering through the viewfinder. I remember him grunting with astonishment, then irritation, then cursing in Iraqi.

I remember thinking, He shouldn't be here. He shot us because he thinks we caught him on tape. He shouldn't be here and - I must have made a noise. A laugh. A sob. Something that made him realize.

He's not on tape. That's why he's annoyed. He's made a mistake and committed himself and now he's going to finish the job.

I remember the man walking towards me, his feet shaking, the ground like giant's footsteps. I remember him pointing' his pistol at me when he realized I was still alive. I remember the thunderous click as he pulled back the hammer, how big the barrel looked as he knelt beside me and brought it towards my face.

I remember gripping my paintbrush as if it were the last thing in the world, thinking, I can't die. I ate the flower of Utnapishtim. The amomum. I'm going to live forever - I closed my eyes. The hammer fell. Nothing.

I opened my eyes. He was reloading the gun. The spent magazine was falling towards the ground. So slowly.

I kicked his legs, screamed from the pain in my side as I did so.

He looked surprised. He swung his arms for balance. The gun went flying, clattered amongst the rocks. He fell.

I struggled to my knees, crying with the pain in my side. It felt like my jacket was the only thing holding my insides in place. I crawled towards him.

He started to rise.

I slammed my paintbrush into his eye.

He fell, his one good eye locked on mine, his face indistinguishable beneath his black balaclava. He screamed. He began to thrash. Blood soaked into the balaclava.

I waited for him to die.

He kept on screaming and thrashing, his hands batting uselessly at the brush.

I struggled to draw breath. My lungs felt 'like I was breathing acid.

He was still alive.

I couldn't leave him like that. I had felt the crunch as the brush had gone in.

Maybe his eyeball had stopped it before it reached his brain.

I looked around for the gun and crawled towards it.

I hoped the magazine hadn't fallen out. I was in no state to find that as well.

I found the gun, crawled back to the soldier, placed the gun against his head.

I told myself it would be a mercy killing. My finger tightened on the trigger.

Then I stopped.

He was already dead.

I collapsed. The gun fell from my hands. I lay on the ground for a long time.

I suppose I must have cried, because when I managed to struggle to my feet my face was wet. I suppose it could have been the hooch from my hip flask, or blood. It didn't taste like either. It tasted the way tears taste; the kind of tears you get when you're so angry or upset that you cry until you are physically exhausted.

I looked down at the man. The soldier. My side hurt like h.e.l.l. My jacket and only clean shirt were soaked with blood. It trickled warmly under the waistband of my trousers.

I looked at Reefer and Dot. Both dead. I looked at the camera. Destroyed.

I put one hand on the soldier's face and pulled my paintbrush free.

letting you keep that you son of a Had I said the words or merely thought them?

Then I lost my balance, fell over and lay bleeding on the ground until I lost consciousness.

Chapter 4.

I was staring at the long straight gash across Major Raykal's throat when Mehmet Ozer threw Kuresh on to the fire. I jumped half out of my skin. Until then the camp had been cloaked in a kind of stupefied silence. Now that was all gone. Kuresh screamed, rolled clear of the flames, beating frantically against his smouldering clothes. I tore my eyes from the dead officer and the dreadful, fascinating wound in his throat. Right across the campsite, other expedition members were doing the same thing. Allen was already moving forward to prevent Ozer's next move. He was too late by long seconds. Ozer drew his pistol and aimed it at Kuresh: By now the farmer had rolled clear of the fire and was beginning to stagger to his feet. When he saw the pistol Ozer was aiming at him he froze in a kneeling position. He screamed angrily at the soldier in Turkish while thumping at his robe to put out the last few smouldering patches of cloth.

Ozer shook his head slightly, as if shrugging off a light rain. The pistol stayed fixed on Kuresh.

To my mind it was all too clear what had happened. Ozer blamed Kuresh for the major's death. Whether he was right to or not was immaterial to the soldier. I had already seen there was no love lost between the soldier and the farmer. Now that conflict had come to a head, driven by an entirely separate issue.

a.s.suming, of course, that Kuresh was innocent. For all I knew Ozer could be right in his a.s.sumption.

Kuresh got slowly to his feet. Ozer frowned. The knuckles of his gun hand whitened in the dim glow of the firelight. He took a step closer to Kuresh, raised the gun to point right between Kuresh's eyes.

Kuresh had fallen silent by now. He knew what was coming.

So did I; I'd seen it before. Too many people on too many planets.

At that moment the second soldier - named Kazan - moved up behind Ozer and placed a hand on his shoulder, gently forcing his arm down so the gun pointed to the ground. Ozer swung around, his frown turning into a scowl.

I listened to the two soldiers speaking in Arabic, the one calm, the other angry. I tried to decide what to do if things were to turn nasty again. Half of me was saying, Jump in; the other half was saying, Run like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Then beside me there was another movement. Slow. Careful. It was Candy, moving not towards the soldier but towards the major's body. As I watched, she bent across the body and began to examine the wound in his throat. I couldn't think what else to do so I moved slowly towards her. I don't know what I hoped to achieve if things went pear-shaped - but I'd been in enough situations where I wished after the event I'd done something different that I decided to ignore the voice of common sense that was telling me to find a big hole, crawl into it and pull it in after me. As I moved - even more slowly and carefully than Candy herself - I tried my d.a.m.nedest to look in seventeen different directions at once. They say you never know where the bullet that kills you comes from. I was going to prove them wrong or die trying.

The camp was tense. You could almost feel everyone in the grip of that flight-or-fight effect. I imagined muscles bunched hard with fear. I imagined cold sweat, the sensation of a bullet entering my body.

Then one of the mules snuffled quietly and the tension broke. I couldn't help a glance in the direction of the animals. Lucky sods. They don't know when they've got it good.

Ahadi, the other farmer, was sitting quietly by the mules. He was watching the soldiers closely, cold, dark eyes following their every movement.

Especially Ozer. As I looked at him, Ahadi stood. His hand travelled to his belt. Did he have a knife there?

I froze.

Something was going to happen. Stop him. Shout. Do something. I couldn't move.

Why didn't I try to stop him? Why?

For a moment it seemed very much as if Kazan was getting the situation under control. He was talking quietly, but quickly. Ozer was listening to his words. I couldn't understand what was being said, but it was clear Kazan's quiet, persuasive tones were having an effect on Ozer.

I decided nothing was going to happen after all. I relaxed.

That was when Kuresh drew his knife and lunged towards Ozer, screaming obscenities.

Ozer turned, raised the gun, fired at Kuresh in one smooth movement.

One shot. That was all it took. Kuresh took the bullet in the face, fell back on to the fire, rolled off, clothes smouldering again, the back of his head gone in a mess of blood-clogged hair.