'Jack Boswell. I just wanted you to know-'

'You'll want to speak to Q. Q, it's your sci-fi man.'

Sedgwick came on almost immediately, preceded by a creak of bedsprings. 'Jack, you're never going to tell me you've written your story already.'

'Indeed I'm not. Best to take time to get it right, don't you think? I'm calling to report they've given me the Wendigo Award.'

'About time, and never more deserved. Who is it gives those again? Carole, you'll need to scribble this down. Bren, where's something to scribble with?'

'By the phone,' Bren said very close, and the springs creaked.

'Reel it off, Jack.'

As Boswell heard Sedgwick relay the information he grasped that he was meant to realise how close the Ca.s.sandra Press personnel were to one another. 'That's capital, Jack,' Sedgwick told him. 'Bren will be lumping some books to the mail for you, and I think I can say Carole's going to have good news for you.'

'Any clue what kind?'

'Wait and see, Jack, and we'll wait and see what your new story's about.'

Boswell spent half an hour trying to write an opening line that would trick him into having started the tale, but had to acknowledge that the technique no longer worked for him. He was near to being blocked by fearing he had lost all ability to write, and so he opened the carton of books the local paper had sent him to review. Sci-Fi On The Net, Create Your Own Star Wars Character, 1000 Best Sci-Fi Videos, Sci-Fi From Lucas To Spielberg, Star Wars: The Bluffer's Guide...There wasn't a book he would have taken off a shelf, nor any appropriate to the history of science fiction in which he intended to incorporate a selection from his decades of reviews. Just now writing something other than his story might well be a trap. He donned sandals and shorts and unb.u.t.toned his shirt as he ventured out beneath a sun that looked as fierce as the rim of a total eclipse.

All the seats of a dusty bus were occupied by pensioners, some of whom looked as bewildered as the young woman who spent the journey searching the pockets of the combat outfit she wore beneath a stained fur coat and muttering that everyone needed to be ready for the enemy. Boswell had to push his way off the bus past three grim scrawny youths bare from the waist up, who boarded the vehicle as if they planned to hijack it. He was at the end of the road where the wall had inspired him - but he hadn't reached the wall when he saw Rod's car.

It was identifiable solely by the charred number plate. The car itself was a blackened windowless hulk. He would have stalked away to call the Aireys if the vandalism hadn't made writing the new story more urgent than ever, and so he stared at the incomplete wall with a fierceness designed to revive his mind. When he no longer knew if he was staring at the bricks until the story formed or the shadows did, he turned quickly away. The shadows weren't simply cast on the wall, he thought; they were embedded in it, just as the image was embedded in his head.

He had to walk a mile homewards before the same bus showed up. Trudging the last yards to his house left him parched. He drank several gla.s.sfuls of water, and opened the drawer of his desk to gaze for rea.s.surance or perhaps inspiration at his secret present from a fan before he dialled the Aireys' number.

'h.e.l.lo?'

If it was April, something had driven her voice high. 'It's only me,' Boswell tentatively said.

'Grandad. Are you coming to see us?'

'Soon, I hope.'

'Oh.' Having done her best to hide her disappointment, she added 'Good.'

'What have you been doing today?'

'Reading. Dad says I have to get a head start.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' Boswell said, though she didn't sound as if she wanted him to be. 'Is Mummy there?'

'Just Dad.'

After an interval Boswell tried 'Rod?'

'It's just me, right enough.'

'I'm sure she didn't mean - I don't know if you've seen your car.'

'I'm seeing nothing but. We still have to pay to have it sc.r.a.pped.'

'No other developments?'

'Jobs, are you trying to say? Not unless April's so dumbstruck with good fortune she can't phone. I was meaning to call you, though. I wasn't clear last night what plans you had with regard to us.'

Rod sounded so reluctant to risk hoping that Boswell said 'There's a good chance I'll have a loan in me.'

'I won't ask how much.' After a pause presumably calculated to entice an answer Rod added 'I don't need to tell you how grateful we are. How's your new story developing?'

This unique display of interest in his work only increased the pressure inside Boswell's uninspired skull. 'I'm hard at work on it,' he said.

'I'll tell April,' Rod promised, and left Boswell with that - with hours before the screen and not a word of a tale, just shadows in searing light: child holding woman's hand, man beside, another gesturing...He fell asleep at his desk and jerked awake in a panic, afraid to know why his inspiration refused to take shape.

He seemed hardly to have slept in his bed when he was roused by a pounding of the front-door knocker and an incessant shrilling of the doorbell. As he staggered downstairs he imagined a raid, the country having turned overnight into a dictatorship that had set the authorities the task of arresting all subversives, not least those who saw no cause for optimism. The man on the doorstep was uniformed and gloomy about his job, but brandished a clipboard and had a carton at his feet. 'Consignment for Boswell,' he grumbled.

'Books from my publishers.'

'Wouldn't know. Just need your autograph.'

Boswell scrawled a signature rendered illegible by decades of autographs, then bore the carton to the kitchen table, where he slit its layers of tape to reveal the first Ca.s.sandra Press books he'd seen. All the covers were black as coal in a closed pit except for bony white lettering not quite askew enough for the effect to be unquestionably intentional. GERMAINE GOSSETT, Women Are The Wave. TORIN BERGMAN, Oracles Arise! FERDY THORN, Fight Them Fisheries...Directly inside each was the t.i.tle page, and on the back of that the copyright opposite the first page of text. Ecological frugality was fine, but not if it looked unprofessional, even in uncorrected proof copies. Proofreading should take care of the mult.i.tude of printer's errors, but what of the prose? Every book, not just Torin Bergman's, read like the work of a single apprentice translator.

He abandoned a paragraph of Ferdy Thorn's blunt chunky style and sprinted to his workroom to answer the phone. 'Boswell,' he panted.

'Jack. How are you today?'

'I've been worse, Quentin.'

'You'll be a lot better before you know. Did the books land?'

'The review copies, you mean.'

'We'd be delighted if you reviewed them. That would be wonderful, wouldn't it, if Jack reviewed the books?' When this received no audible answer he said 'Only you mustn't be kind just because they're ours, Jack. We're all in the truth business.'

'Let me read them and then we'll see what's best. What I meant, though, these aren't finished books.'

'They certainly should be. Sneak a glance at the last pages if you don't mind knowing the end.'

'Finished in the sense of the state that'll be on sale in the shops.'

'Well, yes. They're trade paperbacks. That's the book of the future.'

'I know what trade paperbacks are. These-'

'Don't worry, Jack, they're just our first attempts. Wait till you see the covers Carole's done for you. Nothing grabs the eye like naive art, especially with messages like ours.'

'So,' Boswell said in some desperation, 'have I heard why you called?'

'You don't think we'd interrupt you at work without some real news.'

'How real?'

'We've got the figures for the advance orders of your books. All the girls had to do was phone with your name and the new t.i.tles till the batteries went flat, and I don't mind telling you you're our top seller.'

'What are the figures?' Boswell said, and took a deep breath.

'Nearly three hundred. Congratulations once again.'

'Three hundred thousand. It's I who should be congratulating you and your team. I only ever had one book up there before. Shows publishing needs people like yourselves to shake it up.' He became aware of speaking fast so that he could tell the Aireys his - no, their - good fortune, but he had to clarify one point before letting euphoria overtake him. 'Or is that, don't think for a second I'm complaining if it is, but is that the total for both t.i.tles or each?'

'Actually, Jack, can I just slow you down a moment?'

'Sorry. I'm babbling. That's what a happy author sounds like. You understand why.'

'I hope I do, but would you mind - I didn't quite catch what you thought I said.'

'Three hundred-'

'Can I stop you there? That's the total, or just under. As you say, publishing has changed. I expect a lot of the bigger houses are doing no better with some of their books.'

Boswell's innards grew hollow, then his skull. He felt his mouth drag itself into some kind of a grin as he said, 'Is that three hundred, sorry, nearly three hundred per t.i.tle?'

'Overall, I'm afraid. We've still a few little independent shops to call, and sometimes they can surprise you.'

Boswell doubted he could cope with any more surprises, but heard himself say, unbelievably, hopefully 'Did you mention We Are Tomorrow?'

'How could we have forgotten it?' Sedgwick's enthusiasm relented at last as he said 'I see what you're asking. Yes, the total is for all three of your books. Don't forget we've still the backlist to come, though,' he added with renewed vigour.

'Good luck to it.' Boswell had no idea how much bitterness was audible in that, nor in 'I'd best be getting back to work.'

'We all can't wait for the new story, can we?'

Boswell had no more of an answer than he heard from anyone else. Having replaced the receiver as if it had turned to heavy metal, he stared at the uninscribed slab of the computer screen. When he'd had enough of that he trudged to stare into the open rectangular hole of the Ca.s.sandra carton. Seized by an inspiration he would have preferred not to experience, he dashed upstairs to drag on yesterday's clothes and marched unshaven out of the house.

Though the library was less than ten minutes' walk away through sunbleached streets whose desert was relieved only by patches of scrub, he'd hardly visited it for the several years he had been too depressed to enter bookshops. The library was almost worse: it lacked not just his books but practically everyone's, except for paperbacks with injured spines. Some of the tables in the large white high-windowed room were occupied by newspaper readers. MIDDLE EAST WAR DEADLINE EXPIRES ... ONE IN TWO FAMILIES WILL BE VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE, STUDY SHOWS ... FAMINES IMMINENT IN EUROPE ... NO MEDICINE FOR FATAL VIRUSES...Most of the tables held Internet terminals, from one of which a youth whose face was red with more than pimples was being evicted by a librarian for calling up some text that had offended the black woman at the next screen. Boswell paid for an hour at the terminal and began his search.

The only listings of any kind for Torin Bergman were the publication details of the Ca.s.sandra Press books, and the same was true of Ferdy Thorn and Germaine Gossett. When the screen told him his time was up and began to flash like lightning to alert the staff, the message and the repeated explosion of light and the headlines around him seemed to merge into a single inspiration he couldn't grasp. Only a hand laid on his shoulder made him jump up and lurch between the reluctantly automatic doors.

The sunlight took up the throbbing of the screen, or his head did. He remembered nothing of his tramp home other than that it tasted like bone. As he fumbled to unlock the front door the light grew audible, or the phone began to shrill. He managed not to snap the key and ran to s.n.a.t.c.h up the receiver. 'What now?'

'It's only me, Dad. I didn't mean to bother you.'

'You never could,' Boswell said, though she just had by sounding close to tears. 'How are you, April? How are things?'

'Not too wonderful.'

'Things aren't, you mean. I'd never say you weren't.'

'Both.' Yet more tonelessly she said 'I went looking for computer jobs. Didn't want all the time mummy spent showing me how things worked to go to waste. Only I didn't realise how much more there is to them now, and I even forgot what she taught me. So then I thought I'd go on a computer course to catch up.'

'I'm sure that's a sound idea.'

'It wasn't really. I forgot where I was going. I nearly forgot our number when I had to ring Rod to come and find me when he hasn't even got the car and leave Gemima all on her own.'

Boswell was reaching deep into himself for a response when she said 'Mummy's dead, isn't she?'

Rage at everything, not least April's state, made his answer harsh. 'Shot by the same freedom fighters she'd given the last of her money to in a country I'd never even heard of. She went off telling me one of us had to make a difference to the world.'

'Was it years ago?'

'Not long after you were married,' Boswell told her, swallowing grief.

'Oh.' She seemed to have nothing else to say but 'Rod.'

Boswell heard him murmuring at length before his voice attacked the phone. 'Why is April upset?'

'Don't you know?'

'Forgive me. Were you about to give her some good news?'

'If only.'

'You will soon, surely, once your books are selling. You know I'm no admirer of the kind of thing you write, but I'll be happy to hear of your success.'

'You don't know what I write, since you've never read any of it.' Aloud Boswell said only 'You won't.'

'I don't think I caught that.'

'Yes you did. This publisher prints as many books as there are orders, which turns out to be under three hundred.'

'Maybe you should try and write the kind of thing people will pay to read.'

Boswell placed the receiver with painfully controlled gentleness on the hook, then lifted it to redial. The distant bell had started to sound more like an alarm to him when it was interrupted. 'Quentin Sedgwick.'

'And Torin Bergman.'

'Jack.'

'As one fictioneer to another, are you Ferdy Thorn as well?'

Sedgwick attempted a laugh, but it didn't lighten his tone much. 'Germaine Gossett too, if you must know.'

'So you're nearly all of Ca.s.sandra Press.'

'Not any longer.'

'How's that?'