The Japanese had been shaped by their landscape. It seemed to him you just couldn’t build a giant Gothic cathedral in the middle of all this. Japan was about continuity and reflection and calm. The Japanese even had two religions, Buddhism and Shinto, working side by side without a hint of conflict, which was quite a contrast with Ireland.

And that sense of calm had been what he’d sought when he’d come out here.

He felt a sense of that old panic, of enclosure, as unwelcome memories of the past stirred in his hind brain. But he had done those things, hurt those children, and, even a decade later, he could never remove that scar from his soul — as they would, surely, never forgive or understand, and as those in authority would never hesitate to punish him, if they could identify and trap him.

But then he was already trapped, by his own addled personality. For he knew he would do those things again, given the opportunity, the chance of secrecy. Even as he encountered the schoolchildren in Tokyo, he had felt his ageing loins stir, unable to dispel the endless calculations, the intricate maze of actions that might lead to a new release of his lust.

So he must never give himself such opportunities again.

He took out his little vials of Edinburgh dust, and smiled.

He descended a little way into the caldera, past the trodden paths and platforms, until he was walking on bare volcanic rock. Then he opened his vials of Scottish dust — they smelled, he thought, of autumn bonfires — and he spilled them, carefully, on the ground. Delicately, with his fingertips, he rubbed the ash into the rock, as if applying some gentle unguent.

The ghost touch of the Moon, brought to Mount Nantai.

When it was done, he felt a great peace. He stayed for a while, as the evening gathered, and the spectacular volcanic sunset crept over the sky.

Perhaps this offering would propitiate whatever gods resided here. Or perhaps it would destroy them.

Perhaps it would destroy him.

And that would not be such a bad thing, if it reduced the number of future days he would have to face, the days he would have to wrestle down the monsters that lay inside him.

In the caldera, where he had delivered the dust, the rock surface glowed softly.

5

In his London hotel room, waiting for transport to the US, Henry tried to nail down the thought that Blue’s remarks had sparked.

Okay, address the worst case. The Moonseed was already spreading globally. What if it couldn’t be stopped? What then?

Eventually we will run out of planet. But not, he thought, of planets.

What was he thinking of? Evacuating the world, when they ran out of planet? Like When Worlds Collide?