'You're on your own from here.' said Chloe. 'About turn, Floris! Andflyl'

The rickshaw was turned.

'What happens to me?' said Cal.

'You're a Cuckoo,' Chloe shouted back at him, as Floris hauled the rickshaw away. 'You can simply walk out the other side!'

She shouted something else, which he failed to catch.

He hoped to God it wasn't a prayer.

XII.

A VANISHING BREED.

1.

Despite Chloe's words, the spectacle ahead offered little comfort. The devouring line was approaching at considerable speed, and it left nothing unchanged. His gut feeling was to flee before it, but he knew that would be a vain manoeuvre. This same transfiguring tide would be eating in from all compass points: sooner or later there would be nowhere left to run.

Instead of standing still and letting it come to fetch him, he elected to walk towards it, and brave its touch.

The air began to itch around him as he took his first hesitant steps. The ground squirmed and shook beneath his feet. A few more yards and the region he was walking through actually began to shift. Loose pebbles were snatched into the flux; leaves plucked from bush and tree. 'This is going to hurt,' he thought.

The frontier was no more than ten yards from him now, and he could see with astonishing clarity the processes at work: the raptures of the Loom dividing the matter of the Fugue into strands, then drawing these up into the air and knotting them - those knots in their turn filling the air like countless insects, until the final rapture called them into the carpet.

He could afford to wonder at this sight for seconds only before he and it met each other, strands leaping up around him like rainbow fountains. There was no time for farewells: the Fugue simply vanished from sight, leaving him immersed in the working of the Loom. The rising threads gave him the sensation of falling, as though the knots were destined for heaven, and he a damned soul. But it wasn't heaven above him: it was pattern. A kaleidoscope that defeated eye and mind, its motifs configuring and re-configuring as they found their place beside their fellows. Even now he was certain he'd be similarly metamorphosed; his flesh and bone become symbol, and he be woven into the grand design.

But Chloe's prayer, if that it had been, afforded him protection. The Loom rejected his Cuckoo-stuff and passed him by. One minute he was in the midst of the Weave. The next the glories of the Fugue were behind him, and he was left standing in a bare field.

2.

He wasn't alone there. Several dozen Seerkind had chosen to step out into the Kingdom. Some stood alone watching their home consumed by the Weave, others were in small groups, debating feverishly; yet others were already heading off into the gloom before the Adamaticals came looking for them.

Among them, lit by the blaze of the Weave, a face he recognized: that of Apolline Dubois. He went to her. She saw him coming, but offered no welcome.

'Have you seen Suzanna?' he asked her.

She shook her head. 'I've been cremating Frederick, and setting my affairs to rights,' she said.

She got no further. An elegant individual, his cheeks rouged, now appeared at her side. He looked every inch a pimp.

'We should go. Moth,' he said. 'Before the beasts are upon us.'

'I know,' Apolline said to him. Then to Cal: 'We're going to make our fortunes. Teaching you Cuckoos the meaning of desire.'

Her companion offered a less than wholesome grin. More than half his teeth were gold.

There are high times ahead,' she said, and patted Cal's cheek. 'So you come see me one of these days,' she said. 'We'll treat you well.'

She took the pimp's arm.

'Bon chance,' she said, and the pair hurried away.

The line of the Weave was by now a good distance from where Cal stood, and the numbers of Seerkind who'd emerged was well into three figures. He went amongst them, still looking for Suzanna. His presence was largely ignored; they had more pressing concerns, these people, delivered into the late twentieth century with only magic to keep them from harm. He didn't envy them.

Amongst the refugees he caught sight of three of the Buyers, standing dazed and dusty, their faces blank. What would they make of tonight's experiences he wondered. Would they pour the whole story out to their friends, and endure the disbelief and contempt heaped on their heads; or would they let the tale fester untold? The latter, he suspected.

Dawn was close. The weaker stars had already disappeared, and even the brightest were uncertain of themselves.

'It's over ...' he heard somebody murmur.

He looked back towards the Weave; the brilliance of its making had almost flickered out.

But suddenly, a shout in the night, and a beat later Cal saw three lights - members of the Amadou - rising from the embers of the Weave at enormous speed. They drew together as they rose, until, high above the streets and fields, they collided.

The blaze of their meeting illuminated the landscape as far as the eye could see. By it Cal glimpsed Seerkind running in all directions, averting their eyes from the brilliance.

Then the light died, and the pre-dawn gloom that followed seemed so impenetrable by contrast that Cal was effectively blind for a minute or more. As, by slow degrees, the world re-established itself about him, he realized that there had been nothing arbitrary about the fireworks or their effect.

The Seerkind had disappeared. Where, ninety seconds ago, there had been scraggling figures all around him, there was now emptiness. Under the cover of light, they'd made their escape.

XIII.

A PROPOSAL.

1.

Hobart had seen the blaze of the Amadou too, though he was still two and a half miles from the spot. The night had brought disaster upon disaster. Richardson, still jittery after events at Headquarters, had twice driven the car into the back of stationary vehicles, and their route, which had taken them all over the Wirral, had been a series of cul-de-sacs.

But at last, here it was: a sign that their quarry was close. 'What was that?' said Richardson. 'Looked like something exploding.'

'God knows,' said Hobart. 'I wouldn't put anything past these people. Especially the woman.'

'Should we call in some back-up, sir? We don't know their numbers.'

'Even if we could -' Hobart said, switching off the white noise which had swallowed Downey hours ago, '-1 want to keep this quiet until we know what's what. Kill the headlights.' The driver did so, and they drove on in the murk that preceded daybreak. Hobart thought he could see figures moving in the mist beyond the grey foliage that lined the road. There was no time to investigate however; he would have to trust his instinct that the woman was somewhere up ahead.

Suddenly there was somebody in the road ahead of them. Cursing, Richardson threw the wheel over, but the figure seemed to leap up and over the car.

The vehicle mounted the pavement, and ran a few yards before Richardson brought it under control again.

'Shit. Did you see that?'

Hobart had, and felt the same aching unease he'd felt back at Headquarters. These people were holding weapons that worked on a man's sense of what was real, and he loved reality more than his balls.