“She was strangled. It must have been very quick. Perhaps she didn’t even see them. I don’t think she had time for terror or pain.”
Julian said: “It could have lasted a second, two seconds, perhaps more. We can’t live those seconds for her. We can’t know what she felt, the terror, the pain. You could feel a lifetime’s pain and terror in two seconds.”
He said: “My darling, it’s over for her now. She’s beyond their reach forever. Miriam, Gascoigne, Luke, they’re all beyond the Council’s reach. Every time a victim dies it’s a small defeat for tyranny.”
She said: “That’s too easy a comfort.” And then, after a silence: “They won’t try to separate us, will they?”
“Nothing and no one will separate us, not life nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor anything that is of the heavens nor anything that is of the earth.”
She laid her hand against his cheek. “Oh, my darling, you can’t promise that. But I like to hear you say it.” After a moment she asked: “Why don’t they come?“ But there was no anguish in the question, only a gentle bewilderment.
He reached out and took her hand, winding his fingers round the hot, distorted flesh amazed that he had once found it repulsive. He stroked it but he didn’t answer. They lay motionless side by side. Theo was aware of the strong smell of the sawn wood and the dead fire, of the oblong of sunlight like a green veil, of the silence, windless, birdless, of her heartbeats and his own. They were wrapped in an intensity of listening which was miraculously devoid of anxiety. Was this what the victims of torture felt when they passed through the extremity of pain into peace? He thought: I have done what I set out to do. The child is born as she wanted. This is our place, our moment of time, and, whatever they do to us, it can never be taken away.
It was Julian who broke the silence: “Theo, I think they’re here. They’ve come.”
He had heard nothing but he got up and said: “Wait very quietly. Don’t move.”
Turning his back so that she couldn’t see, he took the revolver from his pocket and inserted the bullet. Then he went out to meet them.
Xan was alone. He looked like a woodman with his old corduroy trousers, open-necked shirt and heavy sweater. But woodmen do not come armed; there was the bulge of a holster under the sweater. And no woodman had stood blazing with such confidence, such an arrogance of power. Glittering on his left hand was the wedding ring of England.
He said: “So it is true.”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“Where is she?”
Theo didn’t answer. Xan said: “I don’t need to ask. I know where she is. But is she well?”
“She’s well. She’s asleep. We have a few minutes before she wakes.”
Xan threw back his shoulders and gave a gasp of relief like an exhausted swimmer emerging to shake the water from his eyes.
For a moment he breathed hard; then he said calmly: “I can wait to see her. I don’t want to frighten her. I’ve come with an ambulance, helicopter, doctors, midwives. I’ve brought everything she needs. This child will be born in comfort and safety. The mother will be treated like the miracle she is; she has to know that. If she trusts you, then you can be the one to tell her. Reassure her, calm her, let her know she has nothing to fear from me.”
“She has everything to fear. Where is Rolf?”
“Dead.”
“And Gascoigne?”
“Dead.”
“And I’ve seen Miriam’s body. So no one is alive who knows the truth about this child. You’ve disposed of them all.”
Xan said calmly: “Except you.” When Theo didn’t reply he went on: “I don’t plan to kill you, I don’t want to kill you. I need you. But we have to talk now before I see her. I have to know how far I can rely on you. You can help me with her, with what I have to do.”
Theo said: “Tell me what you have to do.”
“Isn’t it obvious? If it’s a boy and he’s fertile, he’ll be the father of the new race. If he produces sperm, fertile sperm, at thirteen—at twelve maybe—our female Omegas will only be thirty-eight. We can breed from them, from other selected women. We may be able to breed again from the woman herself.”
“The father of her child is dead.”
“I know. We got the truth from Rolf. But if there was one fertile male there can be others. We’ll redouble the testing programme. We’ve been getting careless. We’ll test everyone, the epileptic, deformed—every male in the country. And the child may be a male—a fertile male. He’ll be our best hope. The hope of the world.”
“And Julian?”
Xan laughed. “I’ll probably marry her. Anyway, she’ll be looked after. Go back to her now. Wake her. Tell her I’m here but on my own. Reassure her. Tell her you’ll be helping me to care for her. Good God, Theo, do you realize what power is in our hands? Come back on the Council, be my lieutenant. You can have anything you want.”
“No.”
There was a pause. Xan asked: “Do you remember the bridge at Woolcombe?” The question wasn’t a sentimental appeal to an old loyalty or the tie of blood, nor a reminder of kindness given and taken. Xan had in that moment simply remembered and he smiled with the pleasure of it.
Theo said: “I remember everything that happened at Woolcombe.”
“I don’t want to kill you.”
“You’re going to have to, Xan. You may have to kill her too.”
He reached for his own gun. Xan laughed as he saw it.
“I know it isn’t loaded. You told the old people that, remember? You wouldn’t have let Rolf get away if you’d had a loaded gun.”
“How did you expect me to stop him? Shoot her husband in front of her eyes?”
“Her husband? I didn’t realize that she cared greatly about her husband. That isn’t the picture he so obligingly gave us before he died. You don’t imagine you’re in love with her, do you? Don’t romanticize her. She may be the most important woman in the world but she isn’t the Virgin Mary. The child she is carrying is still the child of a whore.”
Their eyes met. Theo thought: What is he waiting for? Does he find that he can’t shoot me in cold blood, as I find I can’t shoot him? Time passed, second after interminable second. Then Xan stretched his arm and took aim. And it was in that split second of time that the child cried, a high mewing wail, like a cry of protest. Theo heard Xan’s bullet hiss harmlessly through the sleeve of his jacket. He knew that in that half-second he couldn’t have seen what afterwards he so clearly remembered: Xan’s face transfigured with joy and triumph; couldn’t have heard his great shout of affirmation, like the shout on the bridge at Woolcombe. But it was with that remembered shout in his ears that he shot Xan through the heart.
After the two shots he was aware only of a great silence. When he and Miriam had pushed the car into the lake, the peaceful forest had become a screaming jungle, a cacophony of wild shrieks, crashing boughs and agitated birdcalls which had faded only with the last trembling ripple. But now there was nothing. It seemed to him that he walked towards Xan’s body like an actor in a slow-motion film, hands buffeting the air, feet high-stepping, hardly seeming to touch the ground; space stretching into infinity so that
