The Truth

'Yes, but that's not very--'

Sacharissa glanced up and flashed him a smile. 'Sometimes they're the same person,' she said.

This time it was William who looked down, modestly.

'You think that's really true?' he said.

She shrugged. 'Really true? Who knows? This is a newspaper, isn't it? It just has to be true until tomorrow.'

William felt the temperature rise. Her smile had really been attractive. 'Are you... sure?'

'Oh, yes. True until tomorrow is good enough for me.'

And behind her the big black vampire of a printing press waited to be fed, and to be brought alive in the dark of the night for the light of the morning. It chopped the complexities of the world into little stories, and it was always hungry.

And it needed a double-column story for page two, William remembered.

And, a few inches under his hand, a woodworm chewed its way contentedly through the ancient timber. Reincarnation enjoys a joke as much as the next philosophical hypothesis. As it chewed, the woodworm thought: 'This is —ing good wood!'

Because nothing has to be true for ever. Just for long enough, to tell you the truth.