And also, quite recognisable among them, was the Kid.

They came slowly and unhurried across the plain and they brought their cargo with them.

“Please,” Zebulon said. “Wait.”

“Wait,” the other two said, in unison. “Wait. Wait. Wait.”

The Stranger withdrew his guns. The Hierophant opened and closed his graceful gunman’s fingers.

“What are you going to do,” he said. It was not exactly a question.

The Stranger turned again as the group of workers came nearer. He tried to cover both sides with his guns, arms spread, but he knew it was futile. The Kid was in amongst the workers. The Kid had the same dull look in his eyes as the others. The look of a person trapped forever in a passenger lounge, waiting for a train that would never come.

The Stranger shouted, “Kid!”

The Kid turned his head and looked at him. He carried a big grey cloth sack like the others. More of the eggs must have been inside.

The Hierophant said, gently, “There is so much coiled time inside of you, stranger. You alone are not yet affected. I can give you what it is you need. I can give you time.”

He moved his fingers in a complicated gesture. The Stranger felt the tingle of substance in his nostrils. The town faded, and for a moment he was standing in a clinically white room, where a large machine burped and hummed, two tiny legs sticking out from its cylinder. The boy was very brave to endure the procedure. What must he be thinking, trapped inside the scanner, seeing nothing but white walls?

Then it was gone. The Stranger shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, it’s not enough.”

“You seek a cure,” the Hierophant said. ”But time is running out. I can give you that much. I can offer you the time to wait.”

But the Stranger could not abide waiting. He could not abide the smell of hospitals and the shuffle of slow feet, the awful sense of time dripping away. He could not stand being helpless. He turned his gun and he fired, but not at the Hierophant.

He shot the Kid.

The shot merely grazed the Kid’s arm. It ripped through the sleeve and left an angry red welt on the skin, drawing blood. The Kid yelled and dropped the sack he carried. Animation returned to his eyes with the pain. At his feet, the sack opened. The clocks within shuddered and undulated as they tried to crawl away across the ground. The Kid looked wildly this way and that. The other workers turned as one and faced him. They took one step forward, and then another.

“Run, Kid!” the Stranger said. But the Kid didn’t need advice.

They chased him. They moved like automatons but they gathered speed. They seemed to the Stranger like a flock of dirty-grey seagulls. The Kid ran and the passengers followed. Bowler hats blew in the wind. The Hierophant, Zebulon, merely watched. The Kid ran until he was at the base of the clock tower, and when he saw they were almost upon him, he began to climb.