Hawaii, stranded in mid-Pacific, was surrounded by deep water, submarine trenches outside its harbours. The water shallowed rapidly near the land, and the waves, coming out of the western ocean, would pound down on the islands with virtually no warning. The sun was high; the destruction must already be over there. Scoured down to the bedrock, he thought.

But even the tsunami would not be the end of it, no matter how destructive.

A major earthquake was, said some of the experts, overdue for Japan. Statistical projections said it would be on the scale of the great 1923 quake which killed a hundred and forty thousand people. Hitting modern, crowded Japan, such a quake would destroy industrial production, and lead to a massive worldwide recession.

That was the projection, the common understanding. Declan knew that the calamity that was coming would far exceed such measly predictions.

Perhaps the approaching tsunami would trigger it. Or perhaps it would be the destruction of Nantai, fed by the Moonseed: perhaps it would be necessary for the Moonseed to work deep into the magma under Earth’s skin here, as it appeared to have done in Scotland. Perhaps, even now, other great calderas — even Fuji itself — were opening up, feeling the ghost touch of the Moonseed, the stirring of the magma in the deep chambers within.

Eventually, though, it would all let rip.

He imagined the near future, when the whole ring of fire went up: tracing down the western seaboards of North and South America, scrawled over the ocean past China and Japan and Australia, almost a perfect ring around the Pacific. What a sight it would be, from space! It would be as if the Pacific, the world ocean, was trying to pull itself free of the poisoned and battered Earth which spawned it, perhaps to sail free into space to join the Moon.

He would like to live long enough to see that. But it wasn’t essential.

Probably Declan hadn’t needed to do anything to speed the decline of Japan. It was all, really, inevitable; you only had to glance at the polluted sky to see that, the poison that had wrapped itself around the planet.

But it pleased him to have played his part.

He was destroying his home by his own actions. Just as he had destroyed one earlier home, lost his wife and baby daughter because of what he’d done, and the awful revelations he hadn’t been able to forestall or buy off.

But this time, he would have nowhere to flee. Nowhere to shelter his sorry soul; nowhere to eke out the days, as he imprisoned himself.

He smiled. Call it time off for good behaviour.

There was a wind from the ocean. A spattering of rain. It was salty and muddy.

Declan Hague laughed, celebrating his freedom. He let the salty rain run into his open mouth.

Scoured down to the bedrock.

17