“Charen seems to think everything is in order,” said Rove, pocketing his phone. “We may need to move quickly when the moment arrives. And I have no doubt that some of our fellows here will get in the way.”

“I’m ready, sir,” Lucas confirmed. “You’re happy this Charen can deliver, though?”

“Charen is in deep with the ice-computer that these cavemen use to get from place to place,” Rove replied, closing his eyes. “She’s in so deep that she’s in suspended animation, at round about zero degrees centigrade in a secure facility back home. Has been for a couple of years now—but that just means she can communicate constantly with the ice-machine. It’s what she would have wanted, probably. But it gives her unparalleled access, and she’s tractable enough in that state. She doesn’t have any desires, really, little enough conscious volition. She just does what she’s told—because as far as she’s concerned she’s already achieved her nirvana, the thing she was always chasing. She thinks she’s found God, poor deluded soul.”

Lucas felt an unwanted kinship with Charen Volkovska, as witless stooge of Rove’s plans. “So she does what, exactly?”

Probably, had Rove not been so worn out, the man would have fobbed him off with some platitude. But instead, he said, “She’s saving a little piece of England for us, in a place I’ve picked out where we can start again. The rest can go to hell.”

Again, Lucas could have pretended to accept that. But play the thug as he might, that didn’t mean he was actually stupid. “Doesn’t that mean she screws herself out of her religion, though? I thought that the ice-computer thing was on one of the other Earths. The ones that will end up being destroyed?”

Rove snorted, half opening his eyes. “Your point, Lucas?”

He had nothing to gain by pursuing this line of enquiry. He owed this Volkovska woman nothing, after all. “None, sir.”

Rove’s phone buzzed, and he took it out again, a satisfied look already spreading over his face. But it was quickly replaced with a frown.

“Sir…?” Lucas prompted, and his breath ghosted from his lips, visible for an instant in the chilly air.

Rove was tapping at his phone screen, languidly and then with increasing urgency. And Lucas saw on the curved chamber wall behind him lines of frost flowering into existence. They formed one word in letters a metre high.

NO

Rove had his phone to his ear now and was speaking into it hurriedly. Then he hissed and dropped it. By the time it struck the ground it was so cold that it shattered into pieces. Lucas saw ice crystals actually forming in the air, and distantly he heard the cries of the others.