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Human Nature - Chapter Ten
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What's Bigger on the Inside than on the Outside?
Major Wrightson was sitting in the front of the van, trying to compose a cable 
to HQ as the rain lashed down, visibly bouncing off the dome over the town. His 
own feeling about the barrier was that it was somehow divine rather than the 
work of the enemy, but he couldn't put that down. He had already called for 
reinforcements, without much idea of what they were to reinforce. All he really 
wanted was a general to come down here, see the barrier and make it into his 
problem. His men had been turning away civilians all day, and now it was 
approaching dusk. Tomorrow, they'd probably have the press to deal with. From 
inside the barrier, around teatime, had come the noise of machine-gun fire. That 
had dismayed the men. Machine-guns were the ultimate taboo for the private 
soldier, and the thought that they might be being used in there on civilians... 
Wrightson had walked round the barrier in the last hour, having a word with all 
the sentries shivering in their oilskins. 
There was still, of course, the matter of composing a letter about Torrence. 
A new figure appeared on the darkening road, a bicyclist in a long mac. He 
hopped off as Wrightson looked up, and wandered over to the van. He had a 
centre-parting and a grin that had been utterly unperturbed by the rain. 
'What's going on, Major?' 
Wrightson was pleased that somebody had recognized his rank. 'The area's been 
sealed off, sir. Nobody in or out, I'm afraid.' 
'But I live in Farringham. I'd just cycled over to see my aunt in Shellhampton. 
Not only that, I'm due to address a meeting in town tonight.' 

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'Sorry, you'd best make provisions to stay somewhere else for the night. How are 
you fixed for accommodation?'
'That's all right, I can just go back to my auntie. You can't tell me what this 
is all about, I suppose?' 
Wrightson shook his head. He hadn't been able to think of a story that wouldn't 
cause a mass panic. 'What's this meeting of yours, anyway?' 
'Labour group. I'm Richard Hadleman, hopefully the next MP for this town. 
Hello.' Hadleman shook Wrightson's hand. 
'You'll have some hope, won't you? No cotton mills in there.' 
'Plenty of underpaid farm-hands and shop boys, though. Here, have one of our 
leaflets.' Hadleman reached into his satchel and produced one of the newly 
printed red pamphlets. 
Wrightson smiled at it. 'The Ten Commandments Of Socialism? Won't please the 
clergy, will it?' 
'The opiate of the masses, according to Marx.' Hadleman smiled, but, seeing 
Wrightson's frown, he became serious. 'Anyway, I'm not here to win votes. If you 
can't tell me what's going on, can you at least tell me when it'll stop?' 
'I'm afraid not. Out of my hands, rather.' 

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'Sure. Tell you what, if you chaps would like it, I can have my aunt send over a 
pot of stew and some whisky.'
Wrightson nodded. 'Thanks, but hold the whisky.' 
'Oh, so it's that sort of - ' 
From the town, there came the sound of an explosion. Wrightson leaned out of the 
van window and called to the soldier standing by the barrier to his left. 
'Position and weapon!' 
'Position and weapon!' called the soldier to his comrade near by. 
Hadleman listened as the call was repeated into the distance. 'That wasn't a 
shell or a grenade.' 
'No,' Wrightson muttered, and then turned to Hadleman in surprise. 'How did you 
- ' 
'My friend Constance has an interest in the military. What the hell's going on 
in there, Major? Have you engaged an enemy?' 
'No, I wish I bloody - sorry, I wish I had.' 
'I'll leave you to it, then.' Hadleman started back up the road, hopping on to 
his bicycle. 
Wrightson instantly caught the falseness of the comment. 'Don't do anything 
rash! There's - ' But Hadleman was already out of sight. Wrightson sighed. He 
wasn't sure what kind of lie he could tell about the barrier anyway. 
'Excuse me, sir,' the soldier by the barrier to his right called. 'Do you really 
want to know the position of Rippon?' 

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Smith led his class quickly through the corridors of the school to the library. 
'But this is mutiny, deserting our post!' Hutchinson was protesting. He was the 
only one who still carried his rifle. The rest had been left piled in a comer of 
the dormitory.
'Quiet!' Smith growled. 'I'm trying to save our lives. Bernice, the Doctor, how 
does he do what he does?' 
'It's hard to say. It's rather like judo, or Reversi. The opposition usually 
thinks they've won, and then he makes them see the situation in a different way, 
and it turns out he has.' 
'Hmm. Tricky.' 
'John,' Joan began nervously. 'You aren't labouring under the delusion that you 
really are this Doctor, are you?' 
'Of course not!' Smith held up his hand, and the troupe of boys halted in front 
of the library. From all over the school, the sound of small-arms fire could be 
heard. 'It's just a useful mental model. Now, something I've been wondering 
since I got here.' He gestured with his umbrella at an elaborately carved panel 
above the library door. 'What did you say that meant?' 
'Maius Intra Qua Extra?' Joan laughed. 'You mean you really didn't know what the 
school motto meant?' 
'No,' Smith mumbled, 'it's in a foreign language, isn't it?' 

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'Bigger on the inside than the outside!' Hutchinson snapped. 'It's about books. 
Now, don't you think we should - '
There came a vast explosion from one of the floors above. The boys all fell to 
the ground. Smith remained standing, tapping his teeth with the umbrella handle. 
'Yes. I see. How long's the school been in this building? Twenty years?' 
'Yes,' Joan picked herself up and took his arm. 'Eighteen, to be exact.' 
'Then how old's that inscription?' 
Somewhat self-consciously, Benny took his other arm. 'Older. The arch is needed 
to support the ceiling here, and you can tell the carving's not been added 
later, because it extends further out than the edges of the arch. That was 
planned from the start.' 
'So the motto was originally that of the building. Rocastle took it on. Is it a 
family motto?' 
'No coat of arms,' Alexander said. 
'It would be Rocastle all over to see it there and appropriate it,' Joan added. 
'And, being over a library, it is, as I said, about books!' Something inside 
Hutchinson snapped. He pulled back the bolt on his rifle and swung it to cover 
Smith. 'Take us back to our post, you're guilty of mutiny.' 

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Smith took a step forward, so that the muzzle of the rifle was pressed up 
against his chest. He held up a hand to stop Benny from making any sudden move 
on Hutchinson.
The other boys stared at the two of them. 
'If you don't return to your post, then I'll be forced -' 
'Forced?' Smith's tone was quite mild. 'To do what?' 
'To...' Hutchinson looked desperately around the other boys, looking for any 
sign of support. But all he saw were tired, frightened, sometimes tear-stained 
faces. Even Merryweather was slowly shaking his head, as if advising Hutchinson 
that this was a bad move. 'To report you to the Head!' 
'Really? Oh.' Smith turned away from the gun and started examining the 
inscription again. 'Off you go, then.' 
Hutchinson looked round his classmates. 'Well, which of you lads are coming with 
me?' There was a general turning away. Not one of the boys responded to 
Hutchinson's eager stare. 'Come on! There's adventure happening! A scrap! What 
sort of boys are you?' 
'Living ones,' Anand told him. 

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'All right!' Hutchinson snarled. 'If you prefer cowardice over honour!' And he 
ran off.
'Isn't it odd,' opined Alexander, 'how close masculinity is to melodrama?' 
'Only in an Irish dictionary,' said Joan. 
'Why an Irish one?' asked Benny. 
Joan stared at her. 'Why - it's a joke...' 
'Is it?' 
'Stop, stop, I need you both to think!' Smith put a hand atop each woman's head 
and turned them to face the inscription, flashing Alexander a mixture of grin 
and shrug. 'I think that's a joke. An architectural one. Let's go inside and see 
if it's true.' He shooed the boys into the library. 'The walls are marble, too. 
Very hard. Very sturdy.' 
'Doctor,' Benny began. 
Smith glanced at the look on Joan's face. 'Call me John. You know, I think that 
being covered in all that blood did something strange to me. I saw a dead cat. 
Is that normal?' 

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'You had a cat. Chick. It died in a very bad way.'
'Chick...' Smith whispered. 'The name means something... something far away. And 
Gallifrey, you've mentioned that twice to me. I used it in one of my stories. I 
thought I'd made it up until I remembered - ' 
'John,' Joan touched his face with her hand, and wiped another tiny patch of 
blood away, 'you're frightening me. Are you in shock?' 
'I'm not sure. It's working though. Don't worry. I love you.' The last of the 
boys had been ushered into the library, missing his whisper by a second. Now he 
shouted to them, 'I want everybody to start combing the walls. Call if you see 
anything unusual.' 
Joan was smiling at him. 'I love you, also.' 
Benny took Alexander by the tie and dragged him away, her fists clenched. 'That 
woman!' 
'I think it's wonderful, loved one. Just because you and I have both lost our 
sweethearts, don't let's get bitter, eh?' 
'I am not bitter.' They began to search the bookshelves. 'It's just so obviously 
going to end in tears. When the Doctor regains his senses, is he going to be 
pleased to find that he's going out with a wrinkly racist? I think not. Hey, 
wait a minute, did you say that you'd lost your sweetheart?'" 

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Alexander froze. 'Oh, that was a long time ago...'
The library had an ornate plaster ceiling, which Smith stared up at, pointing 
his umbrella upwards and extending it at intervals in various directions, as if 
calculating. The only windows were a series of high panels to let in light. As 
she calmed down, Benny realized that she did, indeed, feel safer here. A number 
of small explosions were being heard at intervals throughout the school, hard to 
discern from the thunder outside. The boys were starting to look very stressed 
indeed, their little faces pinched up and their shoulders hunched. No wonder 
they hadn't gone with Hutchinson. Rocastle had hugely overestimated their 
interest in warfare. They desperately wanted to be rescued. 
Despite some bad life decisions he might have made, she felt a surge of pride as 
she looked at the little man in the middle of the room. He was going to do that. 
He was going to save the day, again. 
Then she caught sight of the look on Joan's face. She was also staring at Smith, 
unaware that she was being watched, and, caught unawares like that, she was 
terribly afraid. 
Perhaps sometimes you couldn't save everybody. 

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Serif was walking through the corner of the building, using a molecular 
redistributor to melt away the brickwork in front of him. From the other sides 
of the school came the noise of the others using their heavy weapons.
The corner masonry dissolved, and Serif walked into a kitchen area, through the 
remains of what had once been a stove, kicking aside the melting metal doors. 
Any staff had long since departed. This would make a good place to begin the 
search. 



Greeneye and Hoff were exchanging fire with a group of boys with rifles on a 
balcony outside Rocastle's quarters, ducking in and out of a row of ornamental 
topiary. 
'Fun, isn't it?' Greeneye grinned. 
'If you like that sort of thing.' Hoff clicked a button on his cuff. 'I'm 
getting tired of it, though.' 
He stepped out in the full view of the boys, and staggered back as a salvo of 
bullets bounced off the forcefield he'd erected in front of his chest. 'Good 
shot!' he called. 'My turn!' 
He aimed his gun vaguely in the direction of the balcony and squeezed the 
trigger. A heavy shell spiralled out of the weapon and landed in the centre of 
the kneeling boys. Some of them stood up in alarm. 

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The shell exploded and the balcony tumbled from the front of the building, a 
fiery mass of screaming, charring bodies. It landed with a crash, leaving a 
gaping hole in the masonry above it.
'Now,' Hoff turned to Greeneye as the latter emerged from cover, 'that's my idea 
of fun.' 



Anand was tapping along a section of wall in the library. He was worried about 
his friend. Tim had been missing ever since he'd been summoned to the Head's 
office. In all this trouble, he hadn't been able to ask about him. 
While he was thinking, his hand encountered a soft spot on the spine of a book. 
It was one of a whole panel of fake spines, a Victorian decorative device 
long-beloved of captains who would tell their bugs to go and fetch a particular 
non-existent title. The spine in question was that of Sir Gawain and the Green 
Knight and the soft spot was circular, and halfway up the binding. Anand pressed 
it. 
Something made a clunk and then a grind, and the whole panel of books swung 
open. 
The boys cheered and the adults ran over to peer down a flight of dank little 
stone steps. 'Open sesame,' said Anand. 

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Serif shot three boys who ran across the end of the corridor he was stalking 
down, and turned the corner a moment later.
He was in the central hallway where the bursar's office met the foot of the 
great stairways. 
A group of boys looked up from the sandbags they had piled against the great 
doors, which were secured with heavy bolts. They turned, swinging round their 
rifles awkwardly. 
Serif mowed them all down in a blaze of silent blue light. He broke step only to 
swing the bodies and the bags away from the doors, which he unbolted and swung 
open. 
'Come on,' he called to August and Aphasia. 'I'm sure I haven't killed the right 
boy yet.' 



Smith's party were running down a narrow brick-lined passageway. Smith himself 
hung back for a moment, noting that Captain Merryweather was always glancing 
behind him, biting his lip in panic, and tripping over his feet. 
Smith drew level with him. 'What's wrong?' 
'They'll come after us. They've got all those guns. They'll kill us.' 
'But we're cleverer than they are.' 
'That doesn't matter. That never matters. It's who's got the most guns that 
matters!' 

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'Trust me,' Smith murmured. 'I won't let you come to any harm. I promise.'
Merryweather looked up at him uncertainly. 'Can you promise that?' 
'Of course. You boys may know me as mild-mannered John Smith, history teacher, 
but secretly I'm the Doctor, universal righter of wrongs and protector of cats.' 

'Are you?' 
'So I'm told.' Smith smiled at Bernice as she hung back from the gentle jog to 
join him. 'How are you?' 
'I'm fine, I was wondering about you. You've changed your mind.' 
'So you say.' 
'No, I mean that you've started to act like yourself again.' 
'I just got fed up. This is all play-acting. I'm terrified. And mad. Like I'm 
too mixed up to care who I am. Who is this Doctor, then?' 
'A man from another planet who travels through time and space having adventures. 
He has two hearts.' 

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'I only have one.'
'That's because of the Pod. When we find it, you put it back to your forehead 
and you become you again. You grow your other heart back. Or so I assume.' 
'So why do the villains want it?' 
'They want to be like you.' 
'Let me ask you a question. Merryweather, cover your ears, I'm in love with one 
of your teachers.' 
Merryweather blinked and did so. 'That's all right, sir, so am I.' 
'Ah, wait, before you ask me the question, look at this.' Benny pulled the list 
of Things Not To Let Me Do from her jacket and showed it to Smith. At the bottom 
of the list, she'd added, in hastily scrawled biro, 'Don't let me fall in love.' 

'Interesting. My handwriting changes. Ah well, too late on that last point. The 
question is if in my original state I've got two hearts and two brains - ' 
'Just hearts.' 
'Well, if I'm so odd that I've got lots of everything, could I still love 
somebody?' 

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Benny grimaced. 'I've, erm, never known the Doctor to have any concern for the 
trouser department. He sometimes gets his snaps out and goes all moody, but I 
suspect that's more a sort of paternal bit. In short, no, I don't think he 
normally does that kind of thing.'
'I see, two hearts but no love. Well, that makes our plan easier. One, we get 
everybody to safety, and that includes going back for the other boys. Two, we 
find the boy who's got this Pod. And three - ' 
'You put it to your forehead, become the Doctor again and kick some alien 
bottom?' Bernice asked hopefully. 
'Ah, no. We give it to them and they go away.' 
Benny stared at him. 'I think it's becoming one of those days.' 



Rocastle stood in the middle of the canteen, his pistol out and ready. The boys 
of 5B were clustered around him in a nest of sandbags. The explosions that 
they'd heard earlier seemed to have stopped, as had, worryingly, the Vickers 
gunfire. Quite a few of the boys who'd been sent out as scouts hadn't returned. 
Probably run away and hid; there was no indication that the defences had been 
breached. On a real battlefield, they'd have had the luxury of maps and hills to 
view it from, but here things would just have to be worked out as they happened. 


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The only OTC unit to have had actual combat experience. Damn it. The doors at 
the end of the canteen burst open. Several of the boys snapped up into firing 
postures, but Rocastle cut the air with his hands. 'Wait!'
It was Hutchinson, running wildly, his clothes and half his face blackened. 
'It's Smith, sir! He's deserted his post! He's taken Farrar down to the library 
to hide!' 
'Get into cover,' Rocastle told him. 'Brave lad. Plucky of you to come here. 
We'll settle Smith's hash when this is all over. Did you get into a scrape on 
the way?' 
'Yes, sir.' Hutchinson slumped behind the sandbags. 'They're inside the school. 
One of them pointed a sort of flamethrower at me and I caught the edge of it.' 
'Well done, Captain. Did you see where the enemy were going?' 
'They were heading for the gymnasium, sir.' 
'I see.' Rocastle stood up. 'In that case, I do believe that an exploratory 
mission is in order. The gymnasium has only one exit, and the southern stairs 
lead down there. We'll have height and they'll have nowhere to run. We may have 
a chance of settling the whole matter. Follow me.' 
The boys did so, shouldering their arms nervously. 

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'I like being me,' Smith was insisting to Benny. 'Besides, I'm engaged to be 
married.'
'You're what!' 
'If she says yes.' 
'You're marrying... her?' 
'She's very nice.' Smith tapped Merryweather on the shoulder and indicated that 
he could unblock his ears. Benny just glowered at him. 
Smith took a deep breath and began a chant matched to the rhythm of the jog. 'Do 
we want to fight and slay?' 
'We should all just run away,' returned Benny, remembering the form from grotty 
route marches around the Academy. 
'Do we want to all get shot?' 
'If we scarper, no let's not.' 
'Do we want to bathe in glory?' 
'It's overrated, dull and gory,' Benny continued, with a little grin of pride at 
that one. The gang of children and adults continued to run down the narrow 
corridor, repeating the verses. 
Smith tried to give Benny a reassuring smile, but the look she returned him was 
anything but reassured. 

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The family met outside the gymnasium, August's party almost bumping into 
Greeneye and Hoff.
'I gather we've come to the same two conclusions,' said August. 'One, a complete 
holographic scan reveals that the boy we're after isn't in the building, and - ' 

'Two, there's a dirty great tunnel around here somewhere. Three, shall we get 
after the little crukker? Please?' demanded Greeneye, and ducked into the gym. 
Hoff, August and Serif followed. 
Aphasia remained outside, her finger in her mouth, pondering something she'd 
read as the family had marched through the building. 'Maius Intra...' 
Rocastle's party rounded the top of the landing, and scattered down the 
banisters into pre-arranged firing positions, surprised to find that the only 
person they were aiming at was a little girl. 
'Miss!' Rocastle hissed. 'Miss! Would you please come here?' 
Aphasia turned and saw them. She smiled. 'Oh? Why?' 
Hoff poked his head out of the gymnasium doors. 
'Aphasia, come on, we - ' 
Then he noticed the boys. 

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He slapped his weapon up to head height.
The wall exploded with gunfire, splinters bursting everywhere. Hoff ducked back 
inside. 
Aphasia spun as the bullets caught her and slapped her to and fro, her chest and 
limbs erupting with bloody debris. 
'Cease fire' screamed Rocastle. 
The little girl fell to the floor, and struggled to right herself, her balloon 
lying burst across her shoulder. Only one arm seemed to be working, and her eyes 
were blinking at a tremendous rate, like a clockwork toy winding down. She put 
her teeth to her wrist, and pulled open the pouch there. 
Rocastle noticed that a couple of his boys were standing up, about to go to her. 
'No! Wait for - ' 
Aphasia gazed at the black capsule inside her wrist, and a sweet smile crossed 
her face. 
Then her head hit the floor, dead. 
Hoff stepped out into the corridor, looked down at the body, almost casually, 
and turned to face Rocastle and his boys. 

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They were staring at what they'd done, appalled.
Hoff looked for a moment like he was going to say something, but then he just 
shrugged. 
He raised his gun and ran a burst of blue light up the stairs. 
A row of boys screamed, dissolved, were blasted sideways, tried to run, cannoned 
into each other, threw their guns aside, separated, exploded, bled. The 
banisters before them steamed away into a cloud of ugly smoke. 
'Retreat!' screamed Rocastle. 'Retreat!' 
Amidst the smoke, a few boys did just that, running to his voice. 
Hutchinson collided with him as they both sprinted up the stairs. 
'We got one!' the boy laughed, clutching at his headmaster's lapels. 'Did you 
see, sir, we got one!' 
Rocastle could only stare at him as the others bundled past. 

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'Aphasia!' Hoff stumbled back into the gym, dragging the body with him. 
'Aphasia!'
The family had been scanning the floor for the hidden tunnel their earlier scans 
had revealed. They all ran to the body, Serif shoving the others aside to bend 
quickly to the child, putting a gloved hand on either side of her face. 'If 
there's a chance, any neural activity at all- ' His expression froze and he let 
out a long hiss. 'No...' His white teeth clenched and he closed his eyes. 'She 
is dead.' 
'Why didn't she put up her field?' Greeneye howled. 'Kill them all, every single 
one of them.' 
'Close the doors,' August told Hoff. 'Put a field across it. Prepare a fusion 
bomb. This building will be her memorial. Now, quick as we can, let's be about 
the ceremony.' 
Steaming tears were dropping from Serif's eyes, hissing as they fell on to 
Aphasia's dress. 'This one who was our mother and daughter, flesh of ours, let 
her be our flesh again.' 
'Let her be our flesh again,' the others chorused. 
Together, they bent to the body to feed. 

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The old wooden door gave way after a couple of shoves. Benny looked around the 
cellar. 'Yes, that makes sense.'
There were casks of beer, racks of bottles and metal pipes all around. 'It's a 
secret route to the pub. The Lord of the Manor must have told the missus that he 
was studying.' 
The boys filled the cellar and closed the door after them. 
'Fascinating,' Joan said to Alexander. 'I've never been in a pub.' 
'It gets better,' he told her, 'the higher up you get.' Smith hopped up a flight 
of stone steps and listened to the door at the top of them. Suddenly he took a 
step backwards and waved at the others to get down. 
The door opened. 
A surprised-looking landlord stared down at them. 
'Thirty-eight lemonades, please,' Smith told him. 
'And a pint of bitter,' Benny added. 

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They marched out into the beer garden with their drinks. It was getting dark now 
and the storm was passing. The regulars had stared at the parade of schoolboys 
filing up out of the cellar. 'School outing,' Smith had explained as he paid for 
the round. It turned out that the landlord was quite aware of the passageway, 
and that the bursar had been an occasional customer through it.
Several of the locals muttered about the noise from the OTC being loud today, 
and one who claimed he was a Boer War veteran who'd 'drunk his fill of Bovril' 
cornered Smith and tried to row with him about it until the little teacher 
wriggled out. 
'Well, what happens now?' Benny asked once they were in the garden. She'd had 
the awful feeling that she had been getting disapproving looks from locals who 
remembered her fleeing from Greeneye. 'We can't stay here long.' 
'No, you can't.' 
'You?' 
'I've got to go back and let the others know there's a way out.' 
Joan gripped him by the arm. 'Can't we communicate with the school in some way, 
let them know?' 

Page 24 
   

'No. They've been cut off from the outside world. I have to go back. I'll be 
careful. The rest of you must search for this Pod thing. Bernice, what did the 
boy who had it look like?'
'He was quite old, but still a bit small. Fair hair. Looked like he'd been 
dragged across a field.' 
'Tim!' Anand said. 'You saw Tim!' 
'Dean?' Smith asked, putting a hand on Anand's shoulder. 'Yes, he fits the 
description. And he's been very secretive lately. Who saw him last?' 
'I saw him running out of school,' Alton murmured. 'He seemed intent on getting 
away. That was near teatime.' 
'We saw him afterwards,' Benny told Smith. 'He's out there in the forest.' 
Joan squatted down beside Anand. 'Where does he like to go? What are his 
favourite hiding-places?' 
'There are several. He used to walk on his own quite a lot. He liked going to 
the teashop, and looking around the library in town. They have better books 
there than at school. And he always liked the orchard. We used to go picking 
apples there.' 
Alexander nodded. 'As I said. We should send out people in all-' 

Page 25 
   

The skyline suddenly went white.
The shadows stretched negative black and long. 
'Oh my God!' Benny shouted, the only one of them that understood it. 'Get - ' 
The sound cut her off, hitting like an enormous clap of thunder. 
The blast knocked Smith's party off their feet, blasting the wooden pub tables 
into the field beyond the garden. 
Benny, Joan and Smith grabbed the children and fell in a sprawling mass. 
Alexander wasn't so lucky, rolling over and over down to the bottom of the 
garden, finally flattening against the hedge. He looked up and yelled, 
astonished at what was coming towards him. 
Through the blazing sky, a tree trunk was spinning straight at him. 
It shot over his head, just clearing the hedge and bouncing off down the field. 
Splinters flew from it as it hit. 
The wind roared past, thousands of tiny objects battering across the humans as 
they lay there. The hedge became a mass of glasses, foliage and stones. 
Alexander shielded his face with his arms. 

Page 26 
   




Page 27 
   

The blast thundered through the town, signs flying from buildings, shop windows 
disintegrating, the cockerel being torn from the top of the church spire. The 
market traders, turned back from the roads by the frantic shouts and gestures of 
the army, had reassembled in the square, and their carts were hurled all over, 
skidding and smashing across the cobbles.
People ran out of their houses, crying about the end of the world, and were 
blown off their feet in the wind, wailing as they skidded down the streets. 
Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the sound ceased. 
A fine grey dust began to descend. 



Joan was curled in Smith's arms. 'What... what was that?' she cried. 
'Some sort of explosive,' Alexander called from the hedge, trying to shout over 
the ringing in his ears. The boys were all shouting and openly sobbing, finally 
giving in to the fear that had pursued them for so long. 

Page 28 
   

'A fusion bomb.' Benny spat to get the dust out of her mouth. 'High blast, very 
low radiation yield.' She stood up, and shivered at the spectre of the mushroom 
cloud that was rising above the slight valley that had once contained the 
school. 'I had hoped that I would never get to see one of those.'
Smith got slowly to his feet, pulling Joan up with him. The first people were 
staggering, shouting and screaming, out from the still-intact pub. 
'All those boys...' Joan whispered. 'And the teachers...' 
Smith held her tight, marvelling at the terrifying shape in the sky. 



Tim had been wandering in the forest, wondering when the time would feel right 
to do anything. He'd felt suddenly certain when he'd happened upon the barrier 
and rescued that soldier. That had been like following lines in a play, 
remembering his cues. Now, he was back in the wings, waiting to be called again, 
hearing the faint whispers that seemed to come from the Pod in his hand. 
He'd been startled by a noise in the bushes and come upon Wolsey, staring up at 
him from his hiding-place in annoyance. 

Page 29 
   

'Hey, come on, boy, come on.' Tim dropped to his knees and crawled towards the 
cat, clicking his tongue. Wolsey decided that the smell of the boy was 
interesting and strange, and not really frightening, and so edged up to him, 
rubbing his neck against Tim's hand. 'That's a good cat. Now where - '
That was what saved Tim from the explosion. Suddenly, all the trees on the hill 
were flat, and he was lying under one of them, the weight of its fall broken by 
the shrubs that Wolsey had been playing in. 
As the roar rumbled away, the cat leapt off, jumping from tree trunk to tree 
trunk very fast. 
Timothy clambered out from under his particular tree, holding his ears. He 
counted the descending note of the sound, wondering what he was doing as he did 
it, and came to some startling conclusions about distance and explosive force. 
'The school!' he whispered to himself. 'What have they done?' 

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The family opened their eyes, blood still on their lips. They were standing in a 
small force dome, in the centre of the school. Beneath their feet was a circle 
of unharmed tiling.
Above their heads stood the school. 
Only now it was made of fused glass. Patterns of light from the shimmering cloud 
scattered through it, rain bowing the gym and the library and the kitchens. 
Multiple lenses twisted the images and magnified them, the fiery brightness 
flickering through the Upper School and along the dormitories. 
Inside the building there were glass statues, boys captured as they were caught 
in postures of running or hiding, their bones burst into glass and their flesh 
fused away. 
In the silence, silver dust began to fall. 
Around the building, the grounds had been flattened by the blast of transforming 
energy. Trees and bushes had been ripped out of the soil and flung off into the 
sky. The circle of destruction only stopped at the distant boundary wall, still 
half upright, and the tree line along the top of the nearby hills. The gate 
lodge had been torn in half, the struts of its roof opened and the brickwork 
dashed into the road. 
The family had followed the ceremony to the letter, walking out of the gymnasium 
when they had finished feeding, and locating the precise centre of the building, 
underneath the old clock tower. Serif had dedicated the transformation to the 
soul of Aphasia, which had now returned to the place from which it had come, the 
belly of her family. 

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They'd set the fusion bomb on top of the force dome and closed their eyes, 
beginning the litany that they'd only just finished. The actual detonation had 
been almost unnoticed amongst the emotion of the words.
They looked at each other and licked the blood from their lips. Not a scrap of 
their daughter and mother remained. The ceremony was over. 
'Now,' August said after a moment's appropriate silence. 'Let's find what we're 
after, shall we?' 
'Yes,' Greeneye agreed. 'And along the way, we'll make them pay for Aphasia. 
Blood for blood.' 
'Blood for blood,' the family agreed. 
'Not much chance of finding this tunnel,' Hoff noted, looking around. 
'No,' August agreed. 'Well, we can always follow the line of it overground. 
Still, who knows...' He tapped the keypad once more. 'The Pod's transmitting 
again, it's - ah, no its gone. It was somewhere over there...' He gestured over 
the hill. 'Why does it keep doing that?' 
'It is transmitting information,' Serif hissed. 'Perhaps to the boy who is 
carrying it, perhaps,' he glanced at Greeneye, 'to others. Perhaps both. We can 
only detect it when it is processing information.' 
'In that case, we'd better treat this more urgently,' August ordered. 'According 
to Laylock, the Pod's made of pretty strong stuff. So, as soon as one of us sees 
the boy-' 
'We shoot the annoying little crukhead?' Greeneye asked. 
'Precisely.' 
'Good.' Greeneye slapped the power on his gun up a few notches. 'I was starting 
to think that we were planning to adopt him.' 


