Peter F. Hamilton.

MY NAME IS David Lanson, and I was with the Metropolitan Police for twenty-seven years. When we got handed the Jenson case I was a Chief Detective, heading up my own team. Not bad going; from outside you'd think I was a standard careerist ticking off the days until retirement. You'd be wrong; I'd grown to hate the job with a pa.s.sion. Back when I signed on, the CID were real thief-takers, but by the time the Jenson case came up I was spending all my time filling in risk a.s.sessment forms. I'm not kidding, the paperwork was beyond parody. All good stuff for lawyers, but we were getting hammered in the press for truly dismal crime statistics, and hammered by the politicians for not meeting their stupid targets. No wonder public confidence in us had reached rock bottom; the only useful thing we did for the average citizen by then was to hand out official crime numbers for insurance claims.

I suppose that makes me sound bitter, but then that seems to be the fate of old men who're stuck in a job that's forever modernizing. The point of all this being, despite drowning in all that bureaucratic stupidity, I reckoned I was quite a decent policeman. That is, I know when people are lying. In those twenty-seven years I'd heard it all, and I do mean all-desperate types who've made a mistake and then start sprouting b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to cover themselves, the genuine nutters who live in their own little world and believe every word they're saying, drunks and potheads trying to act sober, losers with pitiful excuses, real sick ones who are so cold and polite it makes my skin crawl. Listening to all that, day in, day out, you soon learn to tell what's real and what isn't.

So anyway-we get the call from Marcus Orthew's solicitor that his security people are holding an intruder at his Richmond research center, and they'd appreciate a full investigation of the "situation." That was in 2007, and Orthew was a media and computer mogul then, at least that was the public perception; it wasn't until later I found out just how wide his commercial and technological interests were. His primary hardware company, Orthanics, had just started producing solid state blocks that were generations ahead of anything the opposition were doing. They didn't have hard drives or individual components, the entire computer wrapped up inside a single hyperprocessor. It wiped the floor with PCs and Apple Macs. He was always ahead of the game, Orthew; it was his original PCWs that blew Sinclair computers away at the start of the Eighties; everyone in my generation went and bought an Orthanics PCW as their first computer.

But this break in-I thought it was slightly odd the solicitor calling me, rather than the company security office. Like I said, the longer you're in the game, the more you develop a feeling for these things. I took Paul Matthews and Carmen Galloway with me; they were lieutenants in my team, good people, and slightly less bothered about all the paperwork flooding our office than me. Smart move, I guess; they'd probably make it further than I was ever destined to go. Orthanics security were holding onto Toby Jenson, as they'd found him breaking into one of the Richmond Center labs, which the CCTV footage confirmed. And I was right, there was more to it.

We read Toby Jenson his rights, and uniform division hauled him off; that was when the solicitor told me he was a stalker, a twenty-four carat obsessive. Marcus Orthew had known about him for years. Jenson had been following him round the globe, hacking into Orthew's systems, talking to people in his organization, on his domestic staff, ex-girlfriends, basically anyone who crossed his path-but they hadn't been able to do anything about him. Jenson was smart; there was never any activity they could take him to court for. He never got physically close, as all he did was talk to people, and the hacking could never be proved in law. The Richmond break-in changed all that. As it was Orthew making the allegations, my boss told me to give it complete priority. I guess she was scared about what his magazines and satellite channels would do to the Met if we let it slide.

I went out to Jenson's house with Paul and Carmen. Jesus, you should have seen the b.l.o.o.d.y place-I mean it was out of a Hollywood serial killer film. Every room was filled with stuff on Orthew; thousands of pictures taken all over the world, company press releases dating back decades, filing cabinets full of newspaper clippings, articles, every whisper of gossip, records of his movements, maps with his houses and factories on, copies of his magazines, tapes of interviews which Jenson had made, City financial reports on the company. It was a cross between a shrine and a Marcus Orthew museum. It spooked the h.e.l.l out of me. No doubt about it, Jenson was totally fixated on Orthew. Forensics had to hire a removal lorry to clear the place out.

I interviewed Jenson the next day, which was when it started to get really weird. I'll tell you it as straight as I can remember, which is pretty much verbatim. I'm never ever going to forget that afternoon. First off, he wasn't upset that he'd been caught, more like resigned. Almost like a Premier League footballer who's lost the Cup Final; you know, it's a blow but life goes on.

The first thing he said was, "I should have realized. Marcus Orthew is a genius, he was bound to catch me out." Which is kind of ironic, really, isn't it? So I asked him what exactly he thought he'd been caught out doing. Get this, he said: "I was trying to find where he was building his time machine."

Paul and Carmen just laughed at him. To them it was a Sectioning case, pure and simple. Walk the poor bloke past the station doctor, get the certificate signed, lock him up in a padded room, and supply him with good drugs for the next thirty years.

I thought more or less the same thing, too; we wouldn't even need to go to trial, but we were recording the interview, and all his delusions would help coax a signature out of the doc, so I asked him what made him think Orthew was building a time machine. Jenson said they went to school together, that's how he knew. Now the thing is, I checked this later, and they actually did go to some boarding school in Lincolnshire. Well that's fair enough, as obsessions can start very early, grudges too. Maybe some fight over a bar of chocolate spiraled out of control, and it'd been festering in Jenson's mind ever since. Jenson claimed otherwise. Marcus Orthew was the coolest kid in school, apparently. Didn't surprise me, as from what I'd seen of him in interviews over the years, he was one of the most urbane men on the planet. Women found that very attractive, and you didn't have to look through Jenson's press cuttings to know that. Orthew's girlfriends were legendary; even the broadsheets reported them.

So how on earth did Jenson decide that the coolest kid in school had evolved into someone building a time machine? "It's simple," he told us earnestly. "When I was at school I got a ca.s.sette recorder for my twelfth birthday. I was really pleased with it, n.o.body else had one. Marcus saw it and just laughed.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed one of the ca.s.settes off me, a C-90 I remember and he said: State of the art, huh, d.a.m.n, it's almost the same size as an iPod."

Which didn't make a lot of sense to me. Paul and Carmen had given up by then, bored, waiting for me to wrap it up. So? I prompted "So," Jenson said patiently. "This was nineteen seventy-two. Ca.s.settes were state of the art then. At the time I thought it was odd, that 'iPod' was some foreign word; Marcus was already fluent in three languages, he'd throw stuff like that at you every now and then, all part of his laid-back image. It was one of those things that lingers in your mind. There was other stuff, too. The way he kept smiling every time Margaret Thatcher was on TV, like he knew something we didn't. When I asked him about it, he just said one day you'll see the joke. I've got a good memory, detective, very good. All those little details kept adding up over the years. But it was the iPod that finally clinched it for me. How in G.o.d's name could he know about iPods back in seventy-two?"

Now I understand, I told him-time machine. Jenson gave me this look, like he was pitying me. "But Marcus was twelve, just like me," he said. "We'd been at prep school together since we were eight, and he already possessed the kind of suavity men don't normally get until they're over thirty, d.a.m.n it he even unnerved the teachers. So how did a eight year-old get to go time traveling? That was in nineteen sixty-seven, NASA hadn't even reached the Moon then, we'd only just got transistors. n.o.body in sixty-seven could build a time machine."

But that's the thing with time machines, I told him. They travel back from the future. I knew I'd get stick from Paul and Carmen for that one, but I couldn't help it. Something about Jenson's att.i.tude was bothering me, that old policeman's instinct. He didn't present himself as delusional. Okay, that's not a professional shrink's opinion, but I knew what I was seeing. Jenson was an ordinary nerdish programmer, a self-employed contractor working from home; more recently from his laptop as he chased Orthew round the world. Something was powering this obsession, and the more I heard the more I wanted to get to the root of it.

"Exactly," Jenson said. His expression changed to tentative suspicion as he gazed at me. "At first I thought an older Marcus had come back in time and given his young self a 2010 encyclopedia. It's the cla.s.sic solution, after all, even though it completely violates causality. But knowledge alone doesn't explain Marcus's att.i.tude; something changed an ordinary little boy into a charismatic, confident, wise fifty year-old trapped in an eight-year-old body."

And you worked out the answer, I guessed.

Jenson produced a secretive smile. "Information," he said. "That's how he does it. That's how he's always done it. This is how it must have been first time round. Marcus grows up naturally and becomes a quantum theorist, a cosmologist, whatever... He's a genius, we know that. We also know you can't send ma.s.s back through time; wormhole theory disallows it. You can't open a rift through time big enough to take an atom back a split second, as the amount of energy to do that simply doesn't exist in the universe. So Marcus must have worked out how to send raw information instead, something that has zero ma.s.s. Do you see? He sent his own mind back to the Sixties. All his memories, all his knowledge packaged up and delivered to his earlier self; no wonder his confidence was off the scale."

I had to send Paul out then. He couldn't stop laughing, which drew a hurt pout from Jenson. Carmen stayed, though she was grinning broadly. Jenson beat any of the current sitcoms on TV for chuckles. "All right then," I said, "so Orthew sent his grown-up memory back to his kid self, and you're trying to find the machine that does it. Why is that, Toby? "

"Are you kidding?" he grunted. "I want to go back myself."

"Seems reasonable," I admitted. "Is that why you broke into the Richmond lab?"

"Richmond was one of two possibles," he said. "I've been monitoring the kind of equipment he's been buying for the last few years. After all he's approaching fifty."

"What's the relevance of that?" Carmen interjected.

"He's a bloke," Jenson said. "You must have read the gossip about him and girls. There have been hundreds-models, actresses, society types."

"That always happens with rich men," she told him. "You can't base an allegation on that, especially not the one you're making."

"Yes, but that first time round he was just a physicist," Jenson said. "There's no glamor or money in that. Now though he knows how to build every post-two thousand consumer item at age eight. He can't not be a billionaire. This time round he was worth a hundred million by the time he was twenty. With that kind of money you can do anything you want. And I think I know what that is. You only have to look at his genetics division. His electronics are well in advance of anything else on the planet, but what his labs are accomplishing with DNA sequencing and stem cell research are phenomenal. They have to have started with a baseline of knowledge decades ahead of anybody else. Next time he goes back he'll introduce the techniques he's developed this time round into the Seventies. We'll probably have rejuvenation by nineteen ninety. Think what that'll make him, a time traveling immortal. I'm not going to miss out on that if I can help it."

"I don't get it," I told him. "If Orthew goes back and gives us all immortality in the Nineties, you'll be a part of it, we all will. Why go to these criminal lengths?"

"I don't know if it is time travel," Jenson said forlornly. "Not actual traveling backward. I still don't see how that gets round causality. It's more likely he kicks sideways."

"I don't get that," I said. "What do you mean?"

"A parallel universe," Jenson explained. "Almost identical to this one. Generating the wormhole might actually allow for total information transfer, and the act of opening it creates a Xerox copy of this universe as it was in nineteen sixty-seven. Maybe. I'm not certain what theory his machine is based on, and he certainly isn't telling anyone."

I looked at Carmen. She just shrugged. "Okay, thank you for your statement," I told Jenson, "We'll talk again later."

"You don't believe me," he accused me.

"Obviously we'll have to run some checks," I replied.

"Tape 83-7B," he growled at me. "That's your proof. And if it isn't at the Richmond Center, then he's building it at Ealing. Check there if you want the truth."

Which I did. Not immediately. While Carmen and Paul sorted out Jenson's next interview with the criminal psychologist, I went down to Forensics. They found the video tape labeled 83-7B for me, which had a big red star on the label. It was the recording of a kids' show from '83, Sat.u.r.day Breakfast with Bernie. Marcus Orthew was on it to promote his Nanox computer, which was tied in to a national school computer learning syllabus for which Orthanics had just won the contract. It was the usual zany garbage, with minor celebrities being dunked in blue and purple goo at the end of their slot. Marcus Orthew played along like a good sport. But it was what happened when he came out from under the dripping nozzle that sent a shiver down my spine. Wiping the goo off his face, he grinned and said: "That's got to be the start of reality TV." In 1983? It was Orthew's satellite channel which inflicted Big Brother on us in 1995.

Toby Jenson's computer contained a vast section on the Orthanics Ealing facility. Eight months ago, it had taken delivery of twelve specialist cryogenic superconductor cells, the power rating being higher than the ones used by Boeing's shiny new electroramjet s.p.a.ceplane. I spent a day thinking about it while the interview with Toby Jenson played over and over in my mind. In the end it was my gut police instinct I went with. Toby Jenson had convinced me. I put my whole so-called career on the line and applied for a warrant. I figured out later that was where I went wrong. Guess which company supplied and maintained the Home Office IT system? The request must have triggered red rockets in Orthew's house. According to the security guards at the gate, Marcus Orthew arrived twelve minutes before us. Toby Jenson had thoughtfully indicated in his files the section he believed most suitable to be used for the construction of a time machine.

He was right, and I'd been right about him. The machine was like the core of the CERN accelerator, a warehouse packed full of high-energy physics equipment. Right at the center, with all the fat wires and conduits and ducts focusing on it, was a dark spherical chamber with a single oval opening. The noise screeching out from the hardware set my teeth on edge, and Paul and Carmen clamped their hands over their ears. Then Carmen pointed and screamed. I saw a giant brick of plastic explosive strapped to an electronics cabinet. Now I knew what to look for. I saw others, some sitting on the superconductor cells. So that's what it's like being caught inside an atom bomb.

Marcus Orthew was standing inside the central chamber. Sort of. He was becoming translucent. I yelled at the others to get out, and ran for the chamber. I reached it as he faded from sight. Then I was inside. My memories started to unwind, playing back my life. Very fast. I only recognized tiny sections amid the blur of color and emotion- the high-speed chase that nearly killed me, the birth of my son, my dad's funeral, the church where I got married, university. Then the playback started to slow, and I remembered that day when I was about eleven, in the park, when Kenny Mattox our local bully sat on my chest and made me eat the gra.s.s cuttings.

I spluttered as the soggy ma.s.s was pushed down past my teeth, crying out in shock and fear. Kenny laughed and stuffed some more gra.s.s in. I gagged and started to puke violently. Then he was scrambling off in disgust. I lay there for a while, getting my breath back and spitting out gra.s.s. I was eleven years old, and it was nineteen sixty-eight. It wasn't the way I'd choose to arrive in the past, but in a few months Neil Armstrong would set foot on the Moon, then the Beatles would break up.

What I should have done, of course, was patented something. But what? I wasn't a scientist or even an engineer. I can't tell you the chemical formula for v.i.a.g.r.a, and I didn't know the mechanical details of an airbag. There were everyday things I knew about, icons that we can't survive without, the kind which rake in millions; but would you like to try selling a venture capitalist the idea of Lara Croft five years before the first pocket calculator hits the shops? I did that. I was actually banned from some banks in the City.

So I fell back on the easiest thing in the world. I became a singer-songwriter. Songs are ridiculously easy to remember even if you can't recall the exact lyrics. Remember my first big hit in 78, "Shiny Happy People?" I always was a big REM fan. You've never heard of them? Ah well, sometimes I wonder what the band members are doing this time around. "Pretty In Pink," "Teenage Kicks," "The Unforgettable Fire," "Solsbury Hill"? They're all the same; that fabulous oeuvre of mine isn't quite as original as I make out. And I'm afraid Live Aid wasn't actually the flash of inspiration I always said, either. But the music biz has given me a b.l.o.o.d.y good life. Every alb.u.m I've released has been number one on both sides of the Atlantic. That brings in money. A lot of money. It also attracts girls. I mean, I never really believed the talk about backstage excess in the time I had before, but trust me here, the public never gets to hear the half of it. I thought it was the perfect cover.

I've been employing private agencies to keep an eye on Marcus Orthew since the mid-Seventies, with several of his senior management team actually on my payroll. h.e.l.l, I even bought shares in Orthogene, as I knew it was going to make money, though I didn't expect quite so much money. I can afford to do whatever the h.e.l.l I want, and the beauty of that is n.o.body pays any attention to rock stars or how we blow our cash, as everyone thinks we're talentless junked-up kids heading for a fall. That's what you think has happened now, isn't it? The fall. Well, you're wrong about that.

See, I made exactly the same mistake as poor old Toby Jenson; I underestimated Marcus. I didn't think it through. My music made ripples, big ripples. Everyone knows me, I'm famous right across the globe as a one-off supertalent. There's only one other person in this time who knows those songs aren't original-Marcus. He knew I came after him. And he hasn't quite cracked the rejuvenation treatment yet. It's time for him to move on, to make his fresh start again in another parallel universe.

That's why he framed me. Next time around he's going to become our G.o.d. It's not something he's going to share with anyone else.

I LOOKED ROUND the interview room, which had an identical layout to the grubby cube just down the hall where I interviewed Toby Jenson last time around. Paul Mathews and Carmen Galloway were giving me blank-faced looks, b.u.t.toning back their anger at being dragged into the statement. I couldn't quite get used to Paul with a full head of hair, but Orthogene's follicle treatment is a big earner for the company; everyone in this universe using it.

I tried to bring my hands up to them, an emphasis to the appeal I was making, but the handcuffs were chained to the table. I glanced down as the metal pulled at my wrists. After the samples had been taken, the forensic team had washed the blood off my hands, but I couldn't forget it, there'd been so much-the image was actually stronger than the one I kept of Toby Jenson. Yet I'd never seen those girls until I woke up to find their bodies in the hotel bed with me. The paramedics didn't even try to revive them.

"Please," I implored. "Paul, Carmen, you have to believe me." And I couldn't even say for old time's sake.

A Distillation of Grace.

Adam Roberts.

TWELVE GENERATIONS. THE sum is such that two thousand and forty-eight people reduce down to one person over twelve generations if, and only if, each couple have only a single child, and if the conceptions are controlled such that half of all children are of one gender and half the other. We can call twelve, in this context, a magic number, provided of course that we understand "magic" in its forceful sense of a miraculous divine intervention in reality, a sacramental thing. In this sense, Jesus Christ was a magician. Shad also.

HERE IS A conversation between Cole, a young boy of the eighth generation, and his tutor, the Patriarchus, or oldest surviving inheritor of the tradition of Shad. Though only ten years old, Cole was eloquent and intelligent. "Of course I understand," he said, "that our world is unusual in the Galaxy-"

"Singular," corrected the Patriarchus. "Unusual implies that there are some others like us, though few. But there are no other worlds like ours. This is our glory."

"Singular," said Cole, and bowed his head in acknowledgment of the correction. "And yet it seems to me," he continued, "that it is the rest of the cosmos that is unusual, not us. This matter of generations-surely it must be true on every world, just as it is true on ours, that every child has two parents, and every child has four grandparents, and every child has eight great-grandparents, and so on, backward in time..."

"Of course," agreed the Patriarchus.

"Therefore it seems to me that every world should have many more ancestors than present-day inhabitants. Everywhere there should be more inhabitants than descendents, just as it is on our world. And yet the archives say that on every other world," and he clucked with astonishment at this indigestible fact, "on every other world the opposite is true. There are many more descendents than ancestors. The pyramid is inverted! I cannot understand how that can be."

"These other worlds," said the Patriarchus, indulgently, "have not had the benefit of the wisdom of Shad, bless his memory. They breed prodigiously, such that each new generation outnumbers even the large number of ancestors. And they interbreed promiscuously, so that people share many of the same grandparents and great-grandparents, and a whole vocabulary of words is needed to describe the tangle, terms such as cousin and nepotism and three-times-removed." The Patriarchus was old, and tired, and here he paused.

But Cole was possessed of the impatient curiosity of a ten year-old. "And when Shad," he hurried, "bless his memory, brought the first of us to this world-"

"G.o.d had instructed him," said the Patriarchus, somberly. "The Bible had inspired him. The Holy Spirit possessed him. He brought a population of two thousand and forty-eight people to this world, and gave them his plan. Each was to marry once, and have one child. Each child was to be genetically determined, in utero, to be either male or female, with an exact balance between the two. The second generation would be half the size of the first, and each member of it would pair off, one-to-one. Medical science-since Shad, bless his memory-"

"-bless his memory-" Cole chimed in.

"-since Shad reveals to us that G.o.d approves of all scientific and genetic research insofar as it is conducive to the benefits of His divine plan... medical science is recruited to guarantee the exact balance of the s.e.xes, to ensure that every couple will be fertile, and to preserve the lives of all offspring. Only in the event of a tragic death may another child be produced, and then only by the parents of the child who has died." And because this was a teaching session, and not a sermon, the Patriarchus paused here to look sternly at his pupil. "Define tragic death," he said.

But Cole knew this lesson. "A tragic death is one in which a person dies before pa.s.sing on their genetic material to their child."

"And other deaths?"

"-are called glorious deaths, since after one of the Chosen, one of us, has given birth, we are guaranteed a place at G.o.d's right hand."

"Very good," said the Patriarchus indulgently, but a little wearily, for he was tired, and the afternoon was a warm one. From where they were sitting, on the verandah of the Patriarchus's splendid house, he could see over his own ornamental gardens, with their perfectly circular pond, to the dark-green topiary beyond.

In the middle distance was a vast arable field across which an automated tractor rumbled along, its oO wheels pressing parallel lines out of the pink clay. Beyond that, purple mountains frayed the line of the horizon, enormously distant and yet vivid, jewel-brilliant, seemingly close enough to reach out and touch. The sky was a flawless mauve. The Patriarchus took simple pleasure in this vista. His charge, the young Cole, took it for granted, of course, as children do with such splendid facts of nature. Never looked at it. Perhaps he would appreciate it when he was older.

A wind puckered the surface of the pond briefly, and pa.s.sed on.

"Have there been any tragic deaths in your generation, Patriarchus?" Cole asked.

"None, thanks to G.o.d, and thanks to Shad-bless-his-memory," the old man replied. "And none in my child's, or my grandchild's, or in your generation either. We take good care of our people on this world. Every soul is precious, for each contributes his essential holiness to the final product, the road to the Unique."

"Will you tell me, Patriarchus," said Cole, after a pause, "about the Unique?" He asked this question tentatively, because he knew that the Unique partook of the nature of divine mystery, and as such it should not be the business of idle chatter.

"I shall tell you what you know already," replied the Patriarchus, "and that should suffice you. You are eighth generation, and your partner is decided."

"Perry," said Cole happily, for Perry was pretty, and Cole looked forward to their marriage with pleasure.

"You and Perry will have a child, a ninth generation. He, or she, will pair and have a child and that child, your future grandson or granddaughter, will be more blessed than us, for he or she will be the grandparent of the Unique itself. That child will give birth to one of the Unique's parents, and will be alive, should G.o.d will it, still be alive when the Unique is born!"

"And when the Unique is born...?"

"Then Shad's purpose will have worked itself out in this cosmos," said the Patriarchus. "A new grace will enter the universe. And this Unique, this he or she, will be the precise sum of all the holy people who have lived and worked and worshipped on Shad's World."

But this did not tell Cole anything new. This matter of new Grace was kindergarten theology. He wanted more precision-the Unique as a blast of spiritual flame, G.o.d like a pillar of light bursting from the planet's surface, something vivid and fireworky to feed the hunger of his ten-year-old imagination for spectacle. But the Patriarchus's eyes were closing, and Cole knew enough to leave the old man to his nap.

COLE, IN TIME, married and had his child, a boy called Parr. And Parr, in due course, married and had a son, called Medd. Cole, in due course, became the Episcopus, the second most senior position in the community of Shad's World. And then, when the existing Patriarchus died a glorious death, Cole himself became the Patriarchus.

Life continued in its divinely preordained groove. Every year brought the birth of the Unique closer.

THERE WAS A problem.

Medd was fourteen. He had been raised in the fullest knowledge of his holy position, for he would be one of the grandparents of the Unique. He would almost certainly be alive and hale when the Unique was born.

Yet Medd was a contrary boy. He repudiated his holy calling. He absented himself from school, and ran wild in the woodland, making huts for himself, climbing trees, killing fish in the rivers and cooking them, caked in mud, inside the ashes of an open fire.

He had been allotted his wife at birth, of course, and being of the tenth generation, there was a simple choice of two-for his generation was only four strong. So close they were to the Unique! Bless the memory of Shad. He was to marry a girl called Rhess, exactly his age, a devout, dark-faced little girl, who looked disdainfully as Medd threw one tantrum or another, in schoolroom or in church. She did not like Medd. Yet she accepted her holy destiny, and was reconciled to the notion of becoming his wife.

He, however, was not reconciled. "I do not love her," he said.

He had fitted up a transceiver from various tech-parts, and had narrowbanded a connection to a Flatship pa.s.sing not far from their system, sweeping for Gateways. From a friendly AI upon this ship, Medd had downloaded a bundle of old literature, old Earthly poems and plays. These he read avidly, memorizing large portions, such that when the church elders found and deleted his cache he still had great swathes of poetry in his mind.

It was, the Patriarchus thought, from these forbidden poems that he had learned the notion of s.e.xual love. "I do not love her," Medd declared, with the absolute certainty that is often characteristic of the young adult. He was fourteen years old and knew everything, past, present and future, without embarra.s.sment of uncertainty. "I never will. I cannot marry her."

Then, later, when the absolute necessity of this marriage was pressed and pressed upon him, he changed his tack. "It would be a sin," he announced. "A sin to marry a woman I did not love. G.o.d is love, as it says in the Bible. Wouldn't it go against the nature of G.o.d to enter into such a marriage?"

"And you believe," countered the Episcopus, "that you, at fourteen, understand the nature of G.o.d better than the whole of Shad's holy Church?"

"Yes!" cried Medd, fire in his eyes.

"You will marry this girl," said the Episcopus. "It is the will of Shad, bless his memory."

"You do not know the will of Shad!" Medd declared, fiercely.

"If you do not marry her and have your allotted child," said the Episcopus, angrily but with tears of frustration and fear in his eyes, "then the whole of Shad's divine plan will come to nothing!"

"I don't care," yelled Medd. "I don't love her!"

Every attempt to persuade him broke upon the anvil of this fiercely spoken statement. But is she not comely? Is she not devout? I don't love her! Do you want to be responsible, you alone in your selfishness responsible for bringing the whole plan crashing down? I don't love her! Do you want to live a life of celibacy and barrenness?

"No," said Medd, becoming calmer. "No, I shall leave this world, somehow. I shall travel the stars, and find my lover there. My true lover." But why travel from home, when you have a wife already chosen for you? I don't love her!

This cussedness on Medd's part rather spoiled the mood of the New Year's party. You see, as the year AD twenty-seven-hundred dawned, there was a special ma.s.s, and afterward a gathering, dance, and chess tournament. But the mood was subdued, and several members of the congregation cast sorrowful looks at Medd, as he was absorbed in his chess game. "Twenty-seven-hundred is only a number," he said. "An arbitrary number, after all. It is not intrinsically more special than twenty-six-ninety-nine, or twenty-seven-oh-one." n.o.body was disposed to discuss the point with him.

IT WAS NOT unprecedented that members of the congregation of Shad's World sometimes wrestled against their destiny in this way, especially at that emotionally volatile period we call teenage. Still, it was the Patriarchus's fundamental duty to guard Shad's holy plan, this distillation of twenty thousand and forty-eight holy people into one Unique person over twelve generations, and so it fell to him to talk to the boy, to explain to him the consequences of so terrible a decision. He summoned Medd to his house, and waited upon his porch for his arrival.

It was a mild morning. The wind rummaged in the leaves of the fat-headed oak tree in the garden-a tree grown from a conker brought by the first settlers. The tree was a symbol of the connection between the newest generation and the first. The sound of the wind in the leaves was exactly the sound of rushing water. Medd contemplated the precision of this aural echo.