ROCK DAY

 

STEPHEN BAXTER

 

Stephen Baxter has some 35 novels to his credit and has won the Philip K. Dick, the John W. Campbell, the BSFA, the Sidewise, and the Locus awards. Stephen’s latest project has been the Northland trilogy: Stone Spring, Bronze Summer, and Iron Winter, a saga of a different prehistory. He is involved with the international SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) programme, and a study to design a starship with the British Interplanetary Society, both of which activities fed into the inspiration behind the story in this volume.

 

Matt woke that morning to the usual noises. The buzz of a lawn mower, probably Mister Bowden’s a few doors down. The soft pad of a dog’s paws outside his bedroom. That was Prince.

He rolled out of bed in his pyjamas, and walked barefoot to the door. But the door wouldn’t open. He almost walked right into it. He took a step back and tried again. The door was straightforward promat, it should have broken up at his approach and folded back into its frame. It remained a stubborn blank panel.

Matt was eleven years old. He rubbed his face, greasy with sleep sweat. Maybe he wasn’t quite awake yet.

Something smelled funny.

He looked around at his room. It seemed messy, the bed with the crumpled sheets, heavy cobwebs up on the ceiling, the smart-posters inert and peeling off the walls. He didn’t remember the room being this bad. He wasn’t that much of a slob. Dad would kill him, if he saw it.

And the Mist wasn’t working. Everywhere he looked stuff should have been sparkling with messages sent and received, his projects and games, reminders about school. Nothing. Maybe Dad had grounded him, shut it off. But for what? He couldn’t remember doing anything wrong, or at least no more wrong than usual.

He tried the door again. It still wouldn’t open. But there was always a backup system, as Dad would say, in this case a handle and hinges. He turned the handle, the door was sticky in its frame, but it opened with a tug.

And there was Prince, waiting outside Matt’s bedroom just like every morning. Prince was a blue roan cocker spaniel. He’d been lying there with his head between his paws. Now he got to his feet a bit heavily, as he was ten years old, and, tail wagging, jumped up for a tickle. Then he grabbed the toy he’d brought this morning, a chewed rubber bone, and Matt had to wrestle him for that for a bit. And then Prince curled up against the wall again and raised his front paw so Matt could stroke the soft hairs on his chest. The same every morning, just the way boy and dog liked it.

But the hallway light hadn’t come on, and the floor here was dusty too. Maybe Matt really was the slob his Dad claimed he was, if he didn’t even notice this stuff.

He walked down the short hallway, past his Dad’s bedroom where the door was Closed, a sign that Dad was asleep or working and not to be disturbed. He found the bathroom door stuck on open, whereas his bedroom door had stayed closed. He went in to use the toilet.

But he found he didn’t need to pee. He tried, but there was nothing there.

There was muck and mess in the bowl, however. He passed his hand over the flush panel, but it wouldn’t work. Another stupid thing gone wrong. Matt decided he’d come back up later with a bucket of water to flush it through, if Dad didn’t fix it first.

Prince was waiting, tail wagging, pink tongue lolling. “Come on, boy!” He ran down the stairs two at a time, and the dog tumbled at his feet.

 

In the downstairs hall there was more muck, he saw, and little pellets that looked like mouse droppings. Yecch! And the news panel by the full-length mirror near the door was frozen on a Liverpool EchoNet shoutline:

 

ROCK DAY!

4^th JUNE 2087!

DOOM OR JOKE?

WE’LL KNOW BY 3pm –

OR NOT!

PAGING ALL ALIENS...

 

Was it Rock Day today? He felt confused, as if he’d forgotten something. He tried thumping the panel, but the wording wouldn’t refresh.

He tried to let Prince out of the house, but the front door was another non-opener. He had to turn an emergency-exit handle and practically yank the door out of its frame.

Prince trotted out into bright morning sunshine, and began sniffing around the grass, choosing a spot for a luxurious leg-raise. Matt followed him out and, in his bare feet, stepped to the end of the path. He pushed through patches of overgrown mod-potato plants, their big black leaves heavy. Dad wouldn’t be pleased they’d not been earthed up.

Luckily the gate was closed, Matt hadn’t thought to check, but even if Prince had got out there was no traffic. Or at least nothing moving. There was a pod bus that had come off the road a little way down the avenue of neat identical houses, the bulbous passenger pods empty and tumbled against the side of the road.

This was Wavertree, an inner suburb of Liverpool, only a few kilometres east of the city centre and the docks. It should have been buzzing with activity, the noise from the city a dull roar. But this morning there was only silence, save for that mower a few doors away. And things looked – shabby. The houses were dark, the big solar-power panels on their roofs mucky and peeling, their gardens overgrown. One house down the road looked burned out, that was the Palleys’, and he didn’t remember that happening and you’d think he would, you didn’t see a house burn down every day.

Mister Bowden came into view around the corner of his house, three along from Matt’s. Of course Mister Bowden didn’t need to be following his mower around the lawn, but he evidently liked the gentle stroll. Mister Bowden was a widower, about fifty. He’d always been friendly to Dad and Matt, especially after Mum had died, and it was as if he and Dad suddenly had something in common. Matt was less interested in him now he was growing up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to old Mister Bowden, in fact. But this was a funny morning.

On impulse Matt waved. “Mister Bowden!” His voice echoed off the blank faces of the houses.

Mister Bowden stopped dead, as the mower tooled on, and looked around. When he saw Matt he stared, as if he was surprised, or, oddly, as if he’d just woken up. “Matt? Are you all right?”

Yes. No. Nothing’s working. Matt said none of these things. Suddenly he felt as if he’d acted like a little kid. He ran back into the house, Prince at his heels, and slammed the door.

Covering his embarrassment he went straight to the cupboard under the stairs and pulled out the vacuum cleaner. “You! If you’re not cleaning the muck off the floor, go out and earth up the potatoes!”

The cleaner shuddered, gave a kind of burp, and lurched forward. After all that had happened this morning Matt was faintly surprised it responded at all. But it didn’t head for the garden, and it didn’t switch modes. It should have dissolved into a puddle of programmable-matter component parts, and then reassembled for its gardening function. Instead it lurched past Matt, heading back along the hall to a point on the wall where it began to bump its base against the skirting board. Matt saw what it was trying to do. There was a power outlet there, fed from the solar cells on the roof, but the wall wasn’t opening up. Thump, thump, thump. Matt was reminded of his own attempts to open his bedroom door. The longer it went on the slower the cleaner got – thump... thump... thump...

Matt couldn’t bear to watch any more.

He pushed on to the kitchen. But that was another disappointment.

This had always been the most Mist-dense, gadget-laden room in the whole house, where Mum and Dad used to have competitions cooking each other the fanciest meal, and Matt aged nine or eight or seven would be roped in to help one or the other, while the living room furniture noisily reassembled itself for dining. Since Mum had died Matt and Dad had enjoyed coming in here to work together, remembering her in a sweet and sour sort of way, as Dad expressed it.

Today the kitchen was dead. Every surface was flat, plain, inert. He couldn’t even open the big fridge, which had none of its usual scrolling updates on the freshness of its contents. In most of the cupboards there was nothing but rot and damp and mould, and cardboard packets chewed by hungry little teeth. But when Matt checked the cupboard where they kept the dog food he found it stacked high with cans – plain, no label, that was funny – and a manual can-opener on the door that he didn’t remember seeing before.

At least there was plenty of food for Prince, when it was his meal time later. But there was nothing at all in the kitchen for Matt to eat, or Dad, and it looked like there hadn’t been for a long time. That just baffled him. What had he eaten yesterday, then? He couldn’t remember.

He stood there. Why couldn’t he remember? Strangeness upon strangeness. And on Rock Day too, if the Echo was up to date, “the day those idiots in space are playing out their game of cosmic chicken with God,” as Dad described it, and the world ended or it didn’t. Matt started to get a panicky, fluttery feeling in his stomach. What was going on?

But here was the dog, wagging his tail.

Prince’s blue plastic water bowl was empty. That was one thing Matt could do. But nothing came out of the taps when he waved the bowl under them. He had to force open the back door, which was as inert as all the other doors, and he went out to the rain barrel and bent to fill the bowl at the tap.

“Hi again, Matt.”

Here was Mister Bowden, looking in from the street, leaning on the fence.

“Mister Bowden.” Matt felt oddly uncomfortable. He put down the dog’s bowl. Prince lapped up the water.

Mister Bowden was a little on the portly side, but with a round, fleshy, open face, big eyes, and a wide grin. “Everything all right this morning?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t mean anything by it.” He looked faintly confused himself. He had a strong, coarse Knowsley accent. “It’s just, you know… How was your breakfast this morning?”

“Breakfast?”

He nodded to the kitchen, through the open door. “What did you have, cereal, juice, toast, coffee? Water from the tap?”

“I…”

“What about your father? Is he around today?”

Suddenly Matt panicked again. “Prince, come.” He grabbed the water bowl, spilling half of what was left.

“Matt, I think we should talk –”

Matt dashed through the door back into the kitchen, and as soon as the dog was inside he slammed the door shut. He could see Mister Bowden through the murky window, standing patiently, leaning on the fence, looking in. Then, with the gentlest shake of his head, Mister Bowden withdrew.

Matt stood there in the dark, stuffy, smelly kitchen, heart thumping, breathing hard. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

Prince looked up at him, eyes wide, wagging his tail. It was time for the fetching game they always played before his morning walk.

But Matt had to see Dad, Closed Door or not. He ran upstairs. Prince followed, thinking he was playing, wanting his walk.

Of course Dad’s bedroom door didn’t fold away. Matt took the handle, and hesitated. Once, long ago, he had been the one who found his mother dead, lying in bed, of a heart attack. You didn’t forget a thing like that. Now he didn’t know what to expect on the other side of this door. Buzzing flies?

He turned the handle, and shoved the sticky door.

The room was dark, the curtains drawn. He avoided looking at the bed and went straight to the curtains, and pulled them back to allow in the daylight. Then, holding his breath, he turned around.

There was nobody on the bed but Prince, who had jumped up. The duvet was pushed back, as if somebody had just got up – or you might have thought that if not for the thick layer of cobwebs that lay over everything, and the smell of mould.

No bones, no rotting corpse. On the other hand, no Dad. He had that feeling of panic again.

He had to get out of the house. Anyhow, Prince needed his walk.

He ran to his own room and found jeans and a shirt, he didn’t recognise them but they were his size, and got dressed quickly. Then he went downstairs to the front door. “Prince! Walk!” The dog came running, jumping up at him the way he did at walk time. His lead was hanging by the front door, and Matt hooked it on his collar. He pushed open the front door, and out the two of them went. Matt shoved the door closed, but it wouldn’t lock.

“Don’t worry.” That was Mister Bowden. He was back in his own garden now, with the mower inert at his side. “I’ll keep an eye on the house.”

“Thanks.” Matt turned away and started walking, down the path and onto the road.

“If you need anything, Matt, just knock…”

Matt didn’t look back. Half-running to get away from Mister Bowden, he headed west towards town, with Prince trotting at his heels.

 

Everything was wrong, out here too.

There was nobody around. No people on the street, no traffic, nobody behind the blank windows of the houses and offices and shops. Not even any other dogs. Stuff was broken down, fences fallen, windows smashed, doors gaping open. In some places fires had taken out a house or two from the neat suburban streets, like gaps in a row of teeth. The pavements were in a bad way with the stones lifted and broken by tree roots. It was easier to walk on the tarmac of the road surface, but even that was potholed and cracked, broken up by weeds and roots, and he had to step carefully.

And none of it was smart any more. As he walked down these familiar roads there should have been icons crystallising out of the air all around him, as his buddies called, or he got updates from school on the day’s schedule, or ads competed to grab his attention, everything a riot of colour and constant communication. This was the Mist, a blanket of smartness laid over the whole world, the product of tiny instruments embedded in every surface, his own clothing, his skin, suspended as minute particles in the air. Today there was none of that. Everything was plain and flat and dead, and it was all kind of old-fashioned, like he was in some museum recreation of the 1990s.

After a few hundred metres Prince paused and squatted. Matt had bags ready in his pocket. Expertly he wrapped a bag around his hand, picked up the waste and tied off the bag. There was a bin nearby, and he popped the bag in there. He wondered who would ever come to empty the bin, then shut off the thought.

With no traffic around, he decided he could let Prince off his lead. The dog went darting around the tarmac slabs. It wasn’t long before he was chasing rabbits out of a ruined garden.

Matt passed a church with a gigantic stained-glass window facing the street. Every time he came this way Matt had an impulse to lob a rock at that window. Now he supposed he could do it. Who was going to stop him? He thought about it for a full five seconds, before moving on. With nobody around it would have seemed an odd and sad thing to do.

He turned onto Wavertree Road, one of the main roads heading west into town, and came to Mount Vernon. From this high point, the site of an open modern development, the ground fell away, and there was a view across the centre of the city all the way to the river, whose water pushed deeply into the heart of the city to lap at the feet of the buildings. Matt picked out the two cathedrals separated by no more than a kilometre or so, and the modern glass blocks of the shopping and business centre, and the tapering silver and green multi-storey city farms, and the older buildings of the docks. Had things changed? There was more green than he remembered, threading along the crumbling roadways and spilling out from the parks and public places. And many of the buildings were damaged. Some of the big glass blocks looked as if they had exploded, and the red sandstone mass of the Anglican cathedral was soot-smeared from fire.

Nothing moved, nothing but a flock of gulls flapping casually over the Pier Head. No sound but the rustle of the breeze in the trees. And no Mist, which from here should have been like a shining translucent dome hanging over the whole city.

Matt, feeling lost, sat on a wall. Prince wagged his tail and jumped up so his front paws were on Matt’s knees. Matt tickled his ear absently. The sun was rising, it was going to be a warm day, and in a deep blue sky Matt thought he saw a glimmering lens shape, like a very long, very high cloud. Probably a Sunshield. And there was a spark, brilliant as a bit of the sun, slowly tracking the horizon. A plane? No, there was no contrail, no noise. A satellite, maybe.

“Matt Clancy, welcome to Liverpool!”

Matt’s heart nearly stopped. He jumped up and whirled around. Prince backed off, barking ferociously.

The man was short, slender, in his twenties maybe, with a sad moustache. He wore a brilliant pink old-fashioned soldier’s uniform, complete with peaked cap. He was standing to attention and smiling.

“You nearly – oh, hush, Prince – you nearly scared me to death.”

“I’m Mister Mersey. Matt Clancy, welcome to Liverpool! Port of empire in the nineteenth century, hub of artistic creativity in the twentieth, as you can see,” and he did a sort of twirl, showing off his costume, “and pioneer of eco-adaptation and climate resilience in the twenty-first twenty-first the twen-twen-twenty-first –” He froze and glitched, blocky pixels scarring his face.

Matt saw that he was tilting slightly away from the vertical, and that his feet hovered a few centimetres above the broken road surface. A bit of the Mist still working then, just.

It never occurred to him to wonder how this virtual tourist guide knew his name. The Mist knew everybody’s name.

Mister Mersey recovered. He even straightened up a bit. “Matt Clancy, welcome to Liverpool! Ask me anything!”

“What happened? Where are all the people?”

“Ask me anything!”

“Is this Rock Day? What happened on Rock Day?”

That seemed to trigger a new routine. The virtual blinked, and came back looking a little more sombre. “Vote!”

“What?”

“Your opinion counts. What do you think’s going to happen today?”

“Today?”

“Rock Day! Is asteroid 2021 MN really going to strike the Earth? Do you believe the astronomers when they say we’re safe? Are they lying to keep us all calm? Do you believe that Singles, Park and Rossi really aimed that rock so it would hit the planet? The City of Liverpool values your opinion!”

“Why? What difference does my opinion make?”

Blink. A different tone again. “Background. 2021 MN. A rock that was coming close to the Earth anyway, within a million kilometres. Harmless! We’d never have known it was there. Not until Singles, Park and Rossi went out and redirected it. If you believe that’s what they did!”

Blink. Another voice. “Nearly half a century after the first manned mission to an asteroid, the encounter with asteroid 2021 MN was supposedly for scientific purposes, mineral evaluation and a test bed for asteroid deflection technology.” He pointed to a non-existent visual in the air. “The four Orion T-23 spacecraft, with their solar panels like butterfly wings, were launched from –”

“I know this. Go on.”

Blink. “The crew. Benjamin Singles. Passionate atheist, and believer that we are not alone in the universe. Jennifer Park, one of the first female Catholic bishops, but a fringe figure in the Church for her controversial views on Silentium Dei – the Silence of God. Mario Rossi, spacecraft engineer, who –”

“Go on!”

Blink. “Why deflect the rock at Earth? Singles believes there are aliens all around us, but they are hiding. ‘They will come out to save us. They won’t allow the rock to strike. It’s the ultimate SETI experiment!’ he claims.” Mister Mersey had shifted to the astronaut’s own voice. “Jennifer Park.” A woman’s voice now. “‘Ben and I make odd allies. I’m supporting his plan even though I’m expecting an entirely different outcome. God has been silent since the death of His only Son. We will welcome His return as an intervening deity, when He deflects this Wormwood from the sky.’ Good luck with that, sister! Mario Rossi: ‘So they locked me up in the cargo drone. If I’d known these assholes were planning this game of cosmic chicken I’d never have got on board this tub –’”

“Enough.”

“Vote, vote, vote! The City of Liverpool values your opinion!” The virtual held out a hand. “Please step forward for alternative identity verification.”

Matt had spent his whole life undergoing such processes. Automatically he held out his right hand.

Mister Mersey passed his own hand over Matt’s, scanning for fingerprints and running a remote DNA test. Then he stepped back. “Identity not confirmed.”

“What?”

“Identity not confirmed. Please step forward for alternative identity verification.”

“But I –”

“Please step forward – please step step step –”

“I’m going.”

“No! Please!” Mister Mersey suddenly looked directly at him. “Please. I am officially semi-sentient, Grade IV. But I’m only activated in the presence of a tourist. Otherwise –”

Matt, disturbed by his sudden desperation, backed away. “I can’t help you.”

“Otherwise otherwise I-I-I-I-” Blink. “The City of Liverpool values your opinion! Matt Clancy, welcome to Liverpool! Wel-wel-wel –” There was a pop. Mister Mersey burst into a shower of random pixels, which faded and died.

Matt, left alone again, stood staring.

But here was Prince, wagging his tail and looking up at him. Matt found a stick to throw, at the foot of a young ash tree pushing through the pavement. Prince bounded after the stick, and went off to bury it in the rubble of a burned-out house.

Lots of strange ideas were whirling around in Matt’s head. Scary ideas. But he knew where he had to go next.

 

They walked briskly down the hill. Every so often Matt whistled for Prince, but he knew the dog would follow.

He cut through a complex of university buildings, as deserted as the rest, and then headed down Brownlow Hill to the Catholic cathedral, a great cone of concrete and glass set on the massive slab of its crypt. The cathedral seemed to have been spared the ruin of some of the city’s monuments, even the huge cylindrical lantern tower of stained glass seemed intact, but green streaks from the copper roof stained the pale concrete walls. Matt walked down Mount Pleasant and climbed the concrete steps up to the cathedral’s main entrance. The steps were littered with leaves and bird droppings. The doors were modern, they looked like wood but were surely promat, but they did not shift at his approach. When Matt tried a handle, one door creaked open.

“Wait.”

“Go away, Mister Mersey.”

“It’s me, Matt. Bob Bowden.”

Matt turned. Mister Bowden stood there a few steps below him. “What are you doing here?”

Mister Bowden still had that odd air of bafflement. “I’m not entirely sure.”

“Did you follow me? All the way from home?”

“I thought it was best.”

“That’s kind of creepy.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to come to any harm.”

“Well, I haven’t.”

“What are you doing here, Matt?”

“People come to churches, don’t they? For sanctuary. When the world ends. You see it in games.”

“So you think you’re going to find people here? Or are you looking for sanctuary yourself?”

Matt just pulled back the door and strode into the cathedral.

Pigeons, disturbed, fluttered up into the stained-glass lantern tower over the vast circular space of the cathedral’s main chamber. The grand altar on its platform at the centre of the floor still stood, but many of the rows of benches around it had been tipped over and smashed. Matt saw that there had been a fire in here, in one side chapel, but evidently it hadn’t spread too far. And there were what looked like bloodstains on one of the great concrete supports. Maybe there had been trouble here. A riot. There was nobody here now. No bodies, even.

Prince, wandering, found a puddle on the floor from some leak in the roof. He lapped noisily.

Mister Bowden laid a hand on Matt’s shoulder. Matt’s instinct was to shake it off, but there was something comforting in its presence, its warm weight.

“Nothing alive in here but those pigeons,” Mister Bowden said. “And not many of them. Maybe a few bats. But then the wild hasn’t really taken Liverpool back, yet. Too close to the plume from Sellafield.”

“Sellafield?”

“The nuclear plant. It went pop a few weeks after being untended. A few weeks after –”

“What?”

“After Rock Day.”

“Isn’t it Rock Day today?”

“No. That was some time ago. Some years. I know it’s hard to understand. Matt, let me ask you a question. Prince is thirsty, right? Are you?”

He thought about that. “No.”

“Have you felt thirsty all day? Do you feel like you’ll ever be thirsty again?”

“No.”

“Are you hungry? Have you been to the bathroom?”

“No. No!” Now Matt pulled away from him. He felt tears dangerously close to the surface.

Mister Bowden said gently, “What do you think is going on, Matt?”

The corners of Matt’s head were full of lurid possibilities. “Maybe I’m a ghost. A zombie. Dead after everybody else has been killed.”

Mister Bowden laughed. “I can assure you you’re not a ghost or a zombie. Prince still comes to you, doesn’t he? Would he come to a zombie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come to that, neither do I. I don’t know much about zombies.”

“I think everybody’s dead. I think the Rock fell. But if that’s so –”

“Yes?”

“Why is the city still here? It should all be flattened.”

“Good question. And why are you here?”

Matt had no answer.

Mister Bowden took a deep breath. “The thing is, Matt, you’re not Matt. Not really.”

That was so weird it wasn’t even frightening. “I don’t get it.”

“You know, I’m not sure I do either. Come on. Let’s sit down on one of these benches and try to work it out together.”

He sat down. Slowly, reluctantly, Matt followed suit.

Prince, his thirst quenched, went sniffing around the floor of the cathedral, on the trail of rats or rabbits.

 

Mister Bowden sighed and rubbed his face. “I tell you, I’m the wrong man for this job. Speaking to you, I mean. I always was a pompous old duffer, even before I was old. Never much use with kids, even my own. Or rather his own.”

“His?”

“Me. The original Bob Bowden. I’m not him either! On top of that, I’m feeling a little groggy myself if you want the truth. I only woke up a few hours ago.”

“Woke up?”

“That’s not the right expression. A few hours ago I became fully aware of who I was and where I was and what I was supposed to do, for the very first time. It was more like being born than waking up. But not like either, really. That’s the limitations of human language for you.”

“What are you supposed to do?”

He smiled. “Why, isn’t it obvious? I’m here to keep an eye on you, Matt. I’m a backup system. Like a, a –”

“A handle on a promat door.”

“Exactly. That’s exactly right.”

“Why not my Dad? Why haven’t I got my Dad?” He was having trouble controlling his voice.

Mister Bowden sighed. “Well, I’m not sure about that, son. I’m sorry. Maybe they thought that would be too difficult for you. Maybe it was too difficult for them. You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.”

Prince trotted past them, a bit of wood in his mouth, intent on his own projects, utterly oblivious to the two of them.

“I always liked them, you know,” Mr Bowden said. “Spaniels. Grew up with them. Working dogs. You have to keep them busy, don’t you?”

Matt looked at his hand. He flexed his fingers. It looked like a hand, a human hand. Evidently it wasn’t. And here was Mister Bowden talking about dogs. He shrugged, unable even to frame a sensible question.

Mister Bowden said, “You see, they were right.”

“Who were?”

“Those astronauts, you know? Ben Singles, who wanted to make the aliens come out of hiding by throwing an asteroid at the Earth. And Jennifer Park, who wanted to call down God. They were both right – and both wrong. They did come. But they are neither ET nor Jesus.” He shook his head. “Those are human categories. They don’t fit any human category. Why should they? Any more than humans fit any category dreamed up by a chimp. And they don’t have morals like humans, or chimps come to that.”

“So they did save the world from the Rock.”

“That they did. They turned the Rock away. Oh, you might see it in the sky. It’s orbiting Earth now, like a space station. It was easy for them.” He lifted his own hand. “As you might guide a moth away from a flame. Trivial, you see. But still a compassionate act.”

“But the people –”

He said firmly, “They saved the world. They didn’t save the people. They let them die, as they would have if the Rock had struck. Even though the Rock didn’t fall. It’s complicated. Well, actually it’s not, not for them.”

“Why didn’t they save the people?”

“Because people brought this down on themselves. They threw an asteroid at their own planet! They would have destroyed themselves, and their world, and all the creatures they shared it with, and all for – what? Philosophical games? That’s not to mention other close calls in the past, with nuclear weapons and the designer virus that got out in 2043 –”

“Three people did that. The Rock. Just three.”

“Actually two. Rossi tried to stop them –”

“My Dad wasn’t on that ship. I wasn’t. We had no say in it. Nobody did! Why did they all have to die? Even little babies –” He felt those tears again, but he was determined not to give in to them. “Why did my Dad have to die?”

Mister Bowden seemed to be thinking of reaching out to him, but thought better of it, and folded his hands in his lap. “This is from their point of view, you understand. Look at it this way. I bet you have impulses to do stupid things, at times. I don’t know – smash things up. Jump off cliffs.”

“Break stained glass windows.”

Mister Bowden looked at him sideways. “You’re thinking of Saint James’s, aren’t you? I’ve always had my eye on that one. Like a great big target, begging for a rock. But you never did it, did you? Everybody has these impulses, and most of us control them.

“Well, intelligent races have their crazy elements too. Most races control them. Not us. We give them the power to do what they like, or anyhow we don’t stop them from taking it.”

“But all of them died. The ill, the old. The children too young to understand.”

“You have to draw a boundary somewhere,” Mister Bowden said. “And they drew it around humanity, around the whole species. I’m not saying I agree with it, myself. We had promise, I would have said. I think they’d say this was the most merciful way, in the long run.

“But they did save the rest of the ecology. All the other minds on this world who, even if they can’t build rocket ships, are capable of feelings just as deep and meaningful as ours. You know that. You have Prince. You understand what’s going on in his head, as well as anybody does. All those others didn’t deserve extinction.”

Matt nodded slowly. “So why am I here?”

“Because there were loose ends. Ragged boundaries. Look – the wild things will take back the Earth, and it won’t take that long. But in the meantime –”

“Loose ends.” He guessed, “Like Prince?”

“Like Prince. The world was full of creatures that had become utterly dependent on humans. In some cases on individual humans. All the domesticates – the cows needed to be milked –”

Matt started to see it. “And somebody would be there to milk them. Not somebody. Some thing like me.”

“Well, you’re not a thing. Yes. As long as it was needed. It won’t be for long, the domesticates weren’t encouraged to breed. Most of them have gone already. You’re not likely to see anyone else. As for Prince –” Hearing his name, the dog came trotting over. “The rest of the world can go away. But Prince needs you.”

“We grew up together.”

“I know. I was there.”

“And so I was given back to him.”

“That’s the idea. It’s another trivial bit of kindness. Why not do it, if you can?”

Matt leaned forward and scratched Prince behind the ear, and then the back of his head where he liked it. Prince sat and closed his eyes, submitting to the touch. “I’m like Mister Mersey, then. He thinks he’s real too.” And, Matt thought, he’d backed away when Mister Mersey asked him for help.

“A bit like that.”

“Something went wrong, though. I woke up. I came here.”

“Yes. Matt, you’re not a whole human. But there’s just enough of Matt in you for the dog. You’re supposed to go through the cycle of each day, with the dog, without you, umm, noticing that anything’s missing, that anything’s wrong. And then at the end of each day you are – reset. You retain just enough trace memory to look after the dog.” He rubbed his face again. “Oh, this is coming out all wrong. It’s more subtle than that. But anyhow –”

“My reset button broke.”

“Yes. Yes, it did. You became aware, well, too aware. There are lots of categories of consciousness, degrees of awareness. Something like that. It’s as if you woke from a dream. Look, it was a glitch. They were trying to do something pretty subtle if you think about it, and a long way from their own experience. But all with the best of intentions.”

Matt grunted. “Very nice of them. So what now?”

“You’ve been fixed. But, given what you’ve been through and the distress it must have caused you – and will cause when it all sinks in – they’ve decided to give you a choice. You can have your, umm, reset button pressed.”

“And go back to the dream.”

“Yes.”

“Or?”

“Or you can stay awake. Here, like this.”

“With Prince.”

“That’s the point. But when Prince dies – well, that’s it.” He bent to stroke Prince’s face with his finger. “He’s not a young dog, is he?”

“He may have a couple of years.”

“That’s all they can offer you, Matt. That or the dreaming.”

“Where I didn’t even notice Dad was gone.”

“Yes –”

“I’ll stay awake. Tell them.”

Mister Bowden smiled. “Well, they already know. Good choice, by the way.” He stood and stretched. “I’d better get back. That lawn won’t cut itself. Actually, it will, sort of, but you know what I mean.”

“I’ll see you around, Mister Bowden.”

“That you will, Matt. Take care now.” He walked away, his steps echoing.

Prince, still submitting to the stroking, was falling asleep, his head heavy, his eyes closing. With a last burst of energy he jumped onto Matt’s lap, turned around a couple of times, and then slumped down, curled up, his head resting on Matt’s arm.

Matt had just found out his father was dead. That he was dead. That he wasn’t real, he was some kind of copy. Maybe he was in shock. It didn’t seem to matter. After all, at least Prince was real. And there was always Mister Mersey to call in on.

He sat quietly, working out where the two of them could go for their long walk that afternoon. As the day wore on the rich light from the lantern tower shifted across the cathedral’s deep, empty spaces.