‘He still wouldn’t talk about his hand, but I know he hurt himself. I’ve never seen anyone punch so hard! He kept saying how sorry he was he had hurt you. That was more important to him than the fact he had saved your life. I think he was more shocked than anyone else by what had happened, but he repeatedly said he was going to be OK. I made him some coffee, and then he said he was hungry. By this time I was feeling so fond of him I said I’d fix him something. I found some eggs in the fridge.’

‘So you made him an omelette.’

‘Yes, of course. Then I called a taxi for him.’

I held her as tight as I could, while we both giggled about our dear friend.

Our revels now had ended. The story was told, the puzzle explained. The antagonists were reconciled, and melted away into the warm air of a Raba summer. The involuntary sleuth was thought dead, but was miraculously alive. No one else had to die, but two unread paperback thrillers remain forever unread. The weapons were disarmed, the cat was safe and well. The author’s saviour and hero was tucking into an omelette and a cup of coffee.

A perfect conclusion, one anticlimax leading into another. It would never make a book.

Two days later I was discharged from the hospital, as fit as possible if not entirely recovered. I had a hell of a stiff neck, and I was convinced Spoder had accidentally cracked a couple of my ribs. It hurt to breathe deeply but one of the doctors advised me to try breathing shallowly.

My desktop computer, although looking in some indefinable way different, appeared to be working normally. I went into the mutability program, and deconcatenated the one remaining project. Then I uninstalled the whole program, rebooted to be on the safe side, and dropped the hotel’s key card into an envelope, ready to be returned whence it came.

An hour later my watch was showing the correct time. My bank re-opened for business.

The next day I was sprawling on a recliner on the patio, with Barmi sleeping warmly on my lap. The door to my office had swung closed. I was once again looking at my manuscript in progress, working on the next chapter. Jo brought me an envelope that had just arrived in the mail. It was addressed to Dr Todd Fremde. Inside was a cheque from Professor Wendow’s Revisionist History Department, for the refund of my expenses and my honorarium.

Also by Christopher Priest from Gollancz:

Also by Christopher Priest from Gollancz:

Indoctrinaire

Fugue for a Darkening Island

Inverted World

The Space Machine

A Dream of Wessex

The Affirmation

The Glamour

The Quiet Women

The Prestige

The Extremes

The Separation

The Dream Archipelago

The Islanders

The Adjacent

The Gradual

An American Story

Episodes

Copyright

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Gollancz