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bishop who preferred not to be named, “but if God decides to smite something, then we think He had probably very good reason to do so.” Atheists weren’t impressed by Kaine’s plans, nor that the cleansing of Oswestry was anything but an unlucky hit by a meteorite. “This smacks of the usual Kainian policy of keeping us cowed and afraid,” said Rupert Smercc of Ipswich. “While the population worries about nonexistent threats from a product of mankind’s need for meaning in a dark and brutal world, Kaine is raising taxes and blaming the Danes for everything.” Not everyone was so forthright in condemnation. Mr. Pascoe, official spokesman of the Federated Agnostics, claimed, “There might be something in the whole smiting thing, but we’re not sure.”

Article in The Mole, July 1988

It was night when I arrived at Swindon Airpark’s maintenance depot. Although airships still droned out into the night sky from the terminal opposite, this side of the field was deserted and empty, the workers long since punched out for the day. I showed my badge to security then followed the signs along the perimeter road and passed a docked airship, its silvery flanks shimmering with the reflected moon. The eight-story-high main doors of the gargantuan Hangar D were shut tight but I soon found a black Mercedes sports car near an open side door, so I stopped a little way short and killed my engine and lights. I replaced the clip in my automatic with the spare that I had loaded with five eraserheads—all I had managed to smuggle out of the BookWorld. I got out of the car, paused to listen and, hearing nothing, made my way quietly into the hangar.

Since the transcontinental “thousand-footer” airships were built these days at the Zeppelinwerks in Germany, the only airship within the cathedral-sized hangar was a relatively small sixty-seater, halfway through construction and looking like a metallic basket, its aluminum ribs held together with a delicate filigree of interconnecting struts each riveted carefully to the next. It looked overly complex for something in essence so simple. I glanced around the lofty interior but of Kaine there was no sign. I pulled out my automatic, chambered the first eraserhead and released the safety.

“Kaine?”

No answer.

I heard a noise and whipped my gun towards where a partly completed engine nacelle was resting on some trestles. I cursed myself for being so jumpy and suddenly realized that I wished Bradshaw was with me. Then I felt it—or at least, I smelt it. The lazy stench of death borne on a light breeze. I turned as a dark fetid shape loomed rapidly towards me. I had a brief vision of some unearthly terror before I pulled the trigger and the hollow thud of my first eraserhead hit home and the hellbeast evaporated into a flurry of the individual letters that made up its existence. They fell about me with the light tinkling sound of Christmas decorations shattering.

I heard the sound of a single slow handclap and noticed the silhouette of Kaine standing behind the partly finished control gondola. I didn’t pause for a moment and let fly a second eraserhead. In an instant Kaine invoked a minor character—a small man with glasses—right in the path of the projectile and he, not Kaine, was erased.

Yorrick moved into the light. He hadn’t aged a day since I had seen him last. His complexion was unblemished and he didn’t have a hair out of place. Only the finest described characters were indistinguishable from real people; the rest—and Kaine was among them—had a vague plasticity that belied their fictional origins.

“Enjoying yourself?” I asked him sarcastically.

“Oh yes,” he replied, giving me a faint smile.

He was a B character in an A role and had been elevated far beyond his capabilities—a child in control of a nation. Whether by virtue of Goliath or the Ovinator or simply by his fictional roots I wasn’t sure, but what I did know was that he was dangerous in the real world and dangerous in the BookWorld. Anyone who could invoke hellbeasts at will was not to be ignored.

I fired again and the same thing happened.