a worried look. “The Atlantisans, I mean. Because—”
“I’m fed up with the ole Atlantisans and Tibetans,” snapped Adam.
They stared at him. They’d never seen him like this before.
“It’s all very well for them,” said Adam. “Everyone’s goin’ around usin’ up all the whales and coal and oil and ozone and rainforests and that, and there’ll be none left for us. We should be goin’ to Mars and stuff, instead of sittin’ around in the dark and wet with the air spillin’ away.”
This wasn’t the old Adam the Them knew. The Them avoided one another’s faces. With Adam in this mood, the world seemed a chillier place.
“Seems to me,” said Brian, pragmatically, “seems to me, the best thing you could do about it is stop readin’ about it.”
“It’s like you said the other day,” said Adam. “You grow up readin’ about pirates and cowboys and spacemen and stuff, and jus’ when you think the world’s all full of amazin’ things, they tell you it’s really all dead whales and chopped-down forests and nucular waste hang-in’ about for millions of years. ’Snot worth growin’ up for, if you ask my opinion.”
The Them exchanged glances.
There was a shadow over the whole world. Storm clouds were building up in the north, the sunlight glowing yellow off them as though the sky had been painted by an enthusiastic amateur.
“Seems to me it ought to be rolled up and started all over again,” said Adam.
That hadn’t sounded like Adam’s voice.
A bitter wind blew through the summer woods.
Adam looked at Dog, who tried to stand on his head. There was a distant mutter of thunder. He reached down and patted the dog absentmindedly.
“Serve everyone right if all the nucular bombs went off and it all started again, only prop’ly organized,” said Adam. “Sometimes I think that’s what I’d like to happen. An’ then we could sort everythin’ out.”
The thunder growled again. Pepper shivered. This wasn’t the normal Them mobius bickering, which passed many a slow hour. There was a look in Adam’s eye that his friend couldn’t quite fathom—not devilment, because that was more or less there all the time, but a sort of blank grayness that was far worse.
“Well, I dunno about we,” Pepper tried. “Dunno about the we, because, if there’s all these bombs goin’ off, we all get blown up. Speaking as a mother of unborn generations, I’m against it.”
They looked at her curiously. She shrugged.
“And then giant ants take over the world,” said Wensleydale nervously. “I saw this film. Or you go around with sawn-off shotguns and everyone’s got these cars with, you know, knives and guns stuck on—”
“I wouldn’t allow any giant ants or anything like that,” said Adam, brightening up horribly. “And you’d all be all right. I’d see to that. It’d be wicked, eh, to have all the world to ourselves. Wouldn’t it? We could share it out. We could have amazing games. We could have War with real armies an’ stuff.”
“But there wouldn’t be any people,” said Pepper.
“Oh, I could make us some people,” said Adam airily. “Good enough for armies, at any rate. We could all have a quarter of the world each. Like, you”—he pointed to Pepper, who recoiled as though Adam’s finger were a white-hot poker—”could have Russia because it’s red and you’ve got red hair, right? And Wensley can have America, and Brian can have, can have Africa and Europe, an’, an’—”
Even in their state of mounting terror the Them gave this the consideration it deserved.
“H-huh,” stuttered Pepper, as the rising wind whipped at her T-shirt, “I don’t s-see why Wensley’s got America an’ all I’ve g-got is just Russia. Russia’s boring.”
“You can have China and Japan and India,” said Adam.
“That means I’ve got jus’ Africa and a lot of jus’ borin’ little countries,” said Brian, negotiating even on the curl of the catastrophe curve. “I wouldn’t mind Australia,” he added.
Pepper nudged him and shook her head urgently.
“Dog’s goin’ to have Australia,” said Adam, his eyes glowing with the fires of creation, “on account of him needin’ a lot of space to run about. An’ there’s all those rabbits and kangaroos for him to chase, an’—”
The clouds spread forwards and sideways like ink poured into a bowl of clear water, moving across the sky faster than the wind.
“But there won’t be any rab—” Wensleydale shrieked.
Adam wasn’t listening, at least to any voices outside his own head. “It’s all too much of a mess,” he said. “We should start again. Just save the ones we want