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Gillian held me, hugging me, and put her hands on my forehead. She

was so close she could feel the beating of my hearts.

'Then do it, or I'll twist Susan's head off!'

My mind cleared, suddenly.

Everyone looked at Gillian and me. Her hands were over my ears, in a firm grip. She was strong. She probably couldn't twist my head off, but she might well be able to break my neck.

Her eyes were grim. I believed she would do what she said.

Grandfather peered down his nose at us.

'Why ever would you want to do that, girl? Sheer perversity? It just goes to illustrate what I've been saying about your species. Murderous barbarians, for the most part.'

'Susan's my friend,' said Gillian. 'But she's not like me. You're not like me. If you don't help us, there won't be anyone like me left. No one like John or Zack or Malcolm.'

I foresaw several futures branching from this point. In most of them, I wasn't alive.

'She doesn't mean it,' said Zack.

'That's all you know, Flash,' said Gillian.

'This is most irregular, most irritating,' said Grandfather.

'Kill it,' ordered Gillian. 'End the Cold Knight.'

'I doubt if I can do that. You can't ask me to choose between the survival of two vastly different but essentially equivalent terrestrial species. Threatening murder is hardly likely to persuade me that the human race is the worthier contestant.'

'Then put it to sleep then, turn it off.'

Grandfather thought hard.

Gillian kinked my neck, stretching.

'No,' said Grandfather, at last. 'Mustn't meddle.'

The shutters had come down in his mind. I could follow his thought processes. I was the only person in the universe to whom he had anything like an attachment (a human attachment!), but the law against meddling took precedence, overriding his feelings. His (our?) conditioning was so extreme that the crime, even the contemplation of the crime, invoked its own punishment – creating the fog-patches, blotting memories, shutting down whole aspects of personality.

I've always feared Home. Now, at the point of death, I had learned to hate Home. Not for what would happen to me, or even the Earth, but for what had been done to Grandfather.

'Aren't you even sorry?' asked Gillian. 'If not about us, about Susan?'

'It doesn't work like that. You wouldn't understand.'

Gillian let go of my head.

'I'm glad I don't understand,' she said. 'You're a monster. You're worse than the fanatics who wanted to sacrifice Malcolm. You're worse than ... than my old man. You'd let your own granddaughter die rather than throw a switch. You're worse than anyone in history ever. Don't you have feelings at all?'

Gillian was crying. My neck still hurt, but I tried to comfort her.

For the first time, Grandfather was bewildered.

Certainties in his mind were breaking down.

I knew he does have feelings. If I have them — and I certainly do, to the point of being driven mad by the irreconcilable emotions swarming through me every minute of the day — then so does he. We aren't human, but we are people.

'You broke all the other rules, Grandfather,' I said. 'And you were right to break them. Break this last one. Nothing stays as it is forever, except at Home and that's not really a part of this universe. The Earth has changed since the Great Ice Age. It's not suited to the Cold. It'd be happier somewhere else, with a more congenial climate. There are colder planets.'

Grandfather thought a while, then said, 'Pluto.'

'There's ice on Pluto,' said John.

'Not much else, my boy. And Nitrogen ice too. Next to that, hydrogen ice is just pretending to be cold.'

'If you helped the Cold emigrate to Pluto,' I said, 'everyone would be happy.'

'It wouldn't be natural, though. We'd be meddling.'

'Have you never wanted to meddle? We watch so many things. We could change them, you know. For the better.'

'And once we started down that road, where d' you think we'd end up?'

'A part of things, not apart from them.'

'Indeed.