LIGHT

'Ah,' he said.

He coughed.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said. Rows of white faces stared at him. 'The future. What is it?'

He couldn't think of anything to add to that, so he bent forward, picked up the fishtank, which had been placed on the floor between his feet, and set it on his lap. Ed's duty was to see. It was to speak. He had no idea if prophecy was entertainment or a service industry. Madam Shen had not been clear on that.

'Why don't I get my face in this?' he suggested.

Silver eels streamed out of him, something leaking out of his life, and Ed leaking after it like a current of warmer water in a cold sea. That night was no different to any other experience in the fishtank, except perhaps for an added, gluey distance to everything he saw. Everything in there was an effort that night. He woke up on the spaceport concrete perhaps an hour later. A salt night wind was blowing. He felt sick and cold. A

'There,' she said.

'Jesus,' said Ed. 'Hey,' he said. 'How was I?'

'It was a short show. As soon as you put the fishtank on your head, you had some sort of spasm. That was what it looked like.' A

'I don't remember that.'

'It didn't look much. You spoilt your tuxedo, rolling about in your own piss.'

'But did I say anything?'

'Oh, you told the future. You did that all right.'

'What'd I say?'

'You talked about war. You said things no one wanted to hear. Blue babies floating out of wrecked ships in empty space. Frozen babies in space, Ed.' She shivered. 'No one wants to hear that kind of thing.'

'There isn't any war,' Ed pointed out. 'Not yet.'

'But there will be, Ed. That's what you said: "War!"'

This meant nothing to Ed. After he had passed the part with the eels, instead of seeing his childhood in the house with the grey roof, he had watched himself step off his first rocket ship-a tubby little dynaflow freighter called the Kino Chicken-on to the parched soil of his first alien planet, with a broad sixteen-year-old leer on his face. The monkey was on his back. He was grooving on concepts of infinite travel and empty space. Always more. Always more after that. He stood at the top of the cargo ramp and shouted, 'Alien planet!' Never regret anything, he promised himself there and then. Never go back. Never see them again, mothers, fathers, sisters who abandon you. It was no distance at all from that position to the death of Dany LeFebre which had hurt him so bad. It all led so inevitably from the Kino Chicken, through hyperdip, to the twink-tank.

He told A

'I had another name then,' he said.

Suddenly he thought he was going to be sick again. He crouched down and put his head between his knees. He cleared his throat. A

'If I'm predicting the future,' he said desperately, 'why do I always see the past?'

TWENTY-TWO

Persistent Entities

It was late. People hurried in and out of the restaurants and cinemas, heads down into the wet and windy night. The trains were still ru

'You can follow me all you like,' Kearney told her. 'It won't help.'

She gave him a flushed, obstinate look, then pushed her way through the ticket barrier and down to the eastbound platform where-the light of a malfunctioning fluorescent flickering harshly across the upper half of her face-she challenged him: 'What good's your life been? Honestly, Michael: what good has it been?'

Kearney took her by the shoulders as if to shake her; looked at her instead. Began to say something ugly; changed his mind.

'You're being ridiculous. Go home.'

She set her mouth.

'You see? You can't answer. You haven't got an answer.'

'Go home now. I'll be all right.'

'That's what you always said. Isn't it? And look at you. Look how frightened and upset you are.'

Kearney shrugged suddenly.

'I'm not afraid,' he said, and walked off again.

Her disbelieving laugh followed him down the platform. When the train came she stood as far away from him as she could in the crowded carriage. He lost her briefly in the late-night melee at Victoria, but she picked him up again and struggled grimly after him through a crowd of laughing Japanese teenagers. He set his teeth, got off the train two stops early and walked as fast as he could for a mile or so, into the light and activity of West Croydon and out into the suburban streets the other side. Whenever he looked back she had fallen further behind: but she always kept him in sight somehow, and by the time he knocked at Brian Tate's door she had caught him up again. Her hair was slicked down to her scalp, her face was flushed and exasperated; but she blinked the rain out of her eyes and gave him one of those brilliant, strained smiles, as if to say:

'You see?'

Kearney knocked at the door again, and they stood there in an angry truce with their luggage in their hands, waiting for something to happen. Kearney felt a fool.

Brian Tate's house was situated in a quiet, hilly, tree-lined street with a church at one end and a retirement home at the other. It boasted four floors, a short gravelled (driveway between laurels, mock-Tudor timbering over pebbledash. On summer evenings you would be able to watch foxes sniffing about among the licheny apple trees in the garden at the rear. It had the air of a house that had been used mildly and well all its existence. Children had been brought up there, and sent on to the kinds of schools suited to children from houses like these, after which they had made careers in brokerage and then had children of their own. It was a modest, successful house, but there was something gloomy about it now, as if Brian Tale's occupancy had disconcerted it.

When no one answered the door, A

'Someone's in,' she said. 'Listen.'

Kearney listened, but he couldn't hear anything. He went round to the back of the house and listened there, but all the windows were dark and there was nothing to hear. The rain came down quietly on the garden.