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The chocolate had been rich and dark; Mike made it last a long time. As Mike grew up, Ratcliffe would talk to him. He told Mike about the world: how the bankers and communists were all in league together; how the government planned to ship in negroes from abroad to keep wages down and force decent white people out of their jobs.

Mike had absorbed it all.

Ratcliffe’s pronouncements had of late become less general and more accurate. Last Saturday, Ratcliffe had caught him in Harry’s Cafe. He had asked what Mike was doing in civvies. Mike had winked and told him it was a secret. Ratcliffe seemed to find that enormously funny, then he had leaned over the table and whispered in Mike’s ear: ‘There’ll be a new American President by this evening.’

With that, he winked hugely and left.

That afternoon in Dallas, Kennedy’s head jerked forward and then back.

‘Secrets,’ Ratcliffe had always said, ‘are the key to everything.’

‘Once we possess this Hand of Omega,’ said Ratcliffe, ‘what then?’

‘We shall be on the brink of great power.’

‘And our agreement?’

‘You too shall share this power, if you have the stomach for it.’

Ratcliffe licked his suddenly dry lips. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There will be casualties, many deaths.’

Ratcliffe relaxed, shrugged and said: ‘War is hell.’

Ace bit into a slice of toast.

The boarding house in Ashton Road was one of a row of jerry-built terraced houses that had survived the Blitz. To the north the big concrete mistakes of post-war planning still gleamed hopefully over Hoxton. It was a dying community: children had vanished into the new towns out of London, leaving parents isolated. Doors were locked during the day now; mistrust showed in hard looks and muttered curses.

In the dining room of the house, the carpet had worn thin in places and the covers of the stuffed chairs were shiny at the seams from a thousand washes. A faded picture of Mr Smith in naval uniform hung on the wall: he had been lost with his ship in the freezing Arctic Sea while running weapons to the Russians in 1943.

Under that picture Mrs Smith laboured to keep her home spotless for the people who stayed there and for the stubborn pride of the bereaved. Everyday Mrs Smith would dust the knick-knacks from abroad that littered the mantelpiece with memories. She dusted the new television that Mike had bought but she never watched; she laid out breakfast places on the gate-legged table under the window.

At this table on that morning Rachel nibbled toast and remembered Turing. Ever since Turing had compared the human brain to eight pounds of cold porridge, Rachel had always thought about him at breakfast. She has also gone off porridge for good.

Across the table Allison read the paper, with studied intensity, her face unreadable. A war baby, thought Rachel, who had trouble understanding the way her assistant thought sometimes. I wonder what kind of world her generation will create, Aldous Huxley or George Orwell?

She had a horrible suspicion that for an answer all she had to do was ask Ace: ‘It’s not your past, Ace,’ the Doctor had said. ‘You haven’t been born yet.’

I must be getting old, thought Rachel, because I really don’t want to know.

‘The Professor said he’d be back by now,’ Ace said suddenly.

‘What was he up to, anyway?’ asked Rachel.

‘Working,’ said the Doctor from the doorway, ‘unlike some people.’

Mike was grinning over the Doctor’s shoulder. ‘Have a good sleep?’

‘ ’S OK,’ said Ace. ‘You’re late.’

‘I found him wandering the streets,’ said Mike.

‘I was not wandering,’ the Doctor said testily. ‘I was merely contemplating certain cartographical anomalies.’

Mrs Smith handed Mike a note.

Mike read it. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘if you don’t mind I think the group captain is waiting for us.’

Ace sprang out of her seat. ‘Great! something to do at last.’

‘Ah,’ said Mike. ‘He specifically ordered that "the girl"

should remain here.’

That did not go down well with Ace. She appealed to the Doctor, but he merely shrugged and pulled the baseball