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‘Test number one,’ said one of the soldiers, and tried to force a pair of dark-lensed spectacles into Daniel’s hands.

‘Nothing wrong with my eyes,’ said Daniel. ‘What’s happening?’

The soldier looked surprised by his curiosity. That’s all right, thought Daniel, I’m surprised by it too. ‘We’re ready for the first test,’ the man said. ‘Bomb’s all set to go.’

‘Bomb?’

‘Three, two, one, hit it,’ said a whitecoat, and there was a flash of light that seemed to stick Daniel’s eyeballs to the back of his skull. Oddly, the explosion didn’t make a sound. A fist of fire pounded into the desert up ahead, turning the sands to glass. A cloud the shape of a mushroom sprouted from the burning earth, towering over them and raining poisonous dust down onto their heads.

The audience applauded. Daniel wondered how they could just sit by and watch as something like that happened. That thought seemed alien to him, somehow.

‘Cool,’ said a soldier with lots of stripes up his ann.

‘Prepare for live test.’

Live test? Daniel Tremayne shook his head. ‘People,’ he said, and thought of the soldiers he’d seen in the Revolution, wondering what they would have looked like if the English had used the Bomb instead of bullets. ‘What does it do to people?’

‘Like I said,’ murmured the soldier, lighting a cigar and stuffing it into an appropriately sized hole in his face. ‘Prepare for live test.’

No.

Daniel grabbed him by the collar of his uniform. ‘Why don’t they stop it?’ he demanded. ‘Why doesn’t somebody stop this?’

The soldier shrugged. ‘Who’d want to get involved?’ he said.

A sharp-winged flying machine landed nearby. The Bomb was loaded into its bay, and the machine took off again, buzzing happily. An expectant hush fell over the audience.

Daniel Tremayne made a decision, and the world turned accordingly.

Christopher Cwej concentrated...

No he didn’t. Christopher Cwej stopped concentrating, and let himself just be instead of trying to be something. Every now and then his brain tried warning him that this was stupid, that this was dangerous, that this was no different from what had happened to him on Yemaya. Even the way that all his senses were blurring together, with new ones occasionally popping up unexpectedly inside his nervous system...

Without warning, a gynoid erupted out of the ground with an almighty blunch. Chris jumped. The thing stretched, turning into a rectangle of quivering flesh with a protoplasmic limb at each corner. A stubby lump pushed itself out from its surface. Two deep, featureless pits were set into the lump, and the pits were staring at him

– Not bad, said the Carnival Queen. – You’re still trying too hard, though. Trying to force your children into shapes you can understand, oui? Look. Two arms, two legs, and a face.

‘Er,’ said Chris. The gynoid bowed gracefully, turned, and floated off across the desert, lifting itself off the ground like a kite.

– How do you feel?

‘Um... fine. Kind of funny.’

– Ahh, well. That’s only to be expected. The Carnival Queen closed her eyes, and sighed happily. – After all, you have just done something that’s scientifically impossible.

‘Oh,’ said Chris. ‘I wondered about that.’

Roz was running again. Not running away, though, not this time. She was wearing a uniform – she wasn’t sure where she’d found it – and there were others like her, men with flags and guns, covering her rear. Doc Amaranth was still with her, but he’d lost his body, and now he was just a little golden ball drilling a hole in her khaki pocket.

Roz wasn’t sure where she was running to, but she knew that wherever it was, the enemy would be there. She was in front of the U.S. Army, pushing back the frontiers again. She wasn’t even sure what country this was, but she could see a city up ahead, sparkling in the sticky yellow sunlight. Not an American city. The enemy capital, maybe?

There were explosions at her back. Instinctively, Roz ducked. Seen from outside space and time, the bangs and crackles would be spelling out