He finally glanced over at her. ‘Can you blame him? Look at Fairhurst – he’s probably already convinced himself our meeting never even happened, and both of them are cut from the same cloth.’ He studied the glass in his hand. ‘Even so, the heads of all three Republics have agreed to making some kind of joint public announcement.’

‘When?’

Fowler shrugged. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? My guess is they’ll wait until it’s obvious to everyone else that something terrible is happening.’ He thought of some of the atmospheric phenomena recorded by the probes studying the devastated future Earth: bright twists of light that some interpreted as distortions of space and time, and others considered as evidence of some non-material intelligence.

He noticed her shiver. ‘Maybe there’s a chance it isn’t too late,’ she said. ‘Maybe we can still stop this from ever happening. Maybe that’s why someone left us that warning, because they knew there was still a way.’

‘How?’ Fowler shook his head. ‘By going back into the past and changing things? Can’t be done. Remember your Novikov.’

‘Yes, I know.’ She sounded irritated. ‘If an event can bring about a paradox—’

‘Then the probability of that event taking place is zero,’ he finished for her. ‘Or were you thinking about alternate timelines? They’re a fiction, and there’s nothing we can do to change the inevitable.’

He quickly drained the last of his whisky; no telling when he’d next get the opportunity for another. To his irritation, the glow of the alcohol failed to chase away the clamminess of his skin.

‘Now for some of that news I’ve been saving,’ he said. ‘We’ve identified your survivor – the one your people brought back from the near future.’

She gripped her glass in both hands, the knuckles turning pale. ‘And?’

‘His name is Mitchell Stone. He used to be under Hanover’s command.’

They’d found him preserved inside an experimental cryogenics unit on Luna, ten years in the future. He’d been the only living thing left alive, and there were many, many questions they wanted to ask him.

‘But he’s—’

‘The same Mitchell Stone who suffered what should have been a fatal accident at Site 17 just a few weeks ago,’ he agreed. ‘And now,’ he arched an eyebrow, ‘thanks to the vagaries of time travel, we have two Mitchell Stones in existence at once, both recovering from separate incidents.’

‘Oh, for . . .’ Amanda put her glass down on a small side table next to her chair, and covered her face with two carefully manicured hands before letting them slide down to cover only her mouth and nose. She peered over her fingertips to regard him with a mixture of horror and awe. ‘The one you brought back here from the near future? The one who was frozen? Is he awake yet?’