the nude berserker and his piggybacking conscience start to gradually decrease their frightful pace when they are some three geographic days from the two well-dressed strangers, coming finally to a standstill, eye-to-eye in the miscoloured furnace of another post-organic dawn. The woman, short and shapely, wears a dress of shimmering viridian to her knees with dove-grey stockings and jade court shoes, hair an auburn tumble to her bare and handsome shoulders. Her escort has the appearance of a late Victorian dandy clad in just-discovered mauves and wistful violets, his immaculate frock-coat ensemble topped incongruously by a battered junk-shop bowler hat that looks like someone might have died in it. Against the tangerine effulgence of a compound sunrise their contrasting hues affect a lurid harmony of the kind sometimes found in dreams. Beside the duo, covering a gingham tablecloth unfolded on the petrifactive arcade floor is a mouth-watering heap of fresh-picked Puck’s Hats. “My name’s Marjorie Miranda Driscoll while this is my consort, Mr. Reginald J. Fowler, and I must say it’s a privilege to meet the pair of you. You’re in a book I’m writing — I hope that’s alright — and we’ve been tunnelling through the ghost-seam to keep you supplied with food. I don’t think we can do it anymore, though. There’s not much left of Mansoul beyond this point, so there’s no way of climbing up here. I’m afraid there’s no more rations after this, so I thought that we’d take the opportunity to introduce ourselves and tell you where the Bedlam Jennies have been coming from.” Her voice and her delivery, though adult and well-spoken, have a quality like that of a child playing dress-up or an actress who’s still settling into her role, so that Snowy surmises neither she nor her companion have been attired in their current semblances for very long. The young man seems especially discomfited by his well-heeled apparel, running a censorious finger round inside his high starched collar and occasionally expectorating a dismissive wad of ecto-phlegm, more as a statement than for any decongestant purpose. At their feet the barren stone is wet with citrus light where their stilt-walking shadows are stretched tight behind, like rubber bands nearing the limit of Hooke’s law. Having shook hands in formal introduction and with May dismounted, the unusual quartet arranges itself comfortably about the square of linen for a fungal picnic under skies abandoned save for blinding apricot. Convivially, they interrogate each other. May enquires after the seemingly ongoing dissolution of this upper realm, beyond the causeway’s distant and subsided bounding walls, and learns that there is nothing left: even the Works is a deserted shell, with its remaining crook-doors made progressively more inaccessible by the continuing collapse. Next, the demure Miss Driscoll asks if Snowy and his granddaughter, as the protagonists of her forthcoming second novel, are expecting to encounter the Third Borough anywhere between here and the end of time. After a thoughtful pause, the white-haired veteran replies that no, he’s not anticipating any such convergence. “Although if we haven’t stumbled over him by then, at least we’ll have a good idea of where he’s not.” Out of a satin cloche-bag that she carries the young authoress produces a slim tome with green cloth boards, inlaid with a gold illustration and the volume’s title, which is “The Dead Dead Gang”. This, as she explains, is a signed presentation copy of her debut that she would be deeply honoured were they to accept. Turning the offering over in his starved spider-crab hands Snowy admires the binding, wondering aloud if Mr. Blake of Lambeth was not in some measure an accomplice to its manufacture. Both their world’s-end guests nod eagerly at this and Mr. Fowler breathlessly recounts, with the excitability of a far younger man, how he and his intended have gone all the way along the Ultraduct from Doddridge Church out to the higher regions up above Hercules Road, soliciting advice on publishing from the pugnacious and inflammatory divine. “ ’E wiz a smashing bloke. I really liked ’im.” Equally enthusiastically, May tells how she and her bedraggled nag have called upon the roughneck visionary and his wife when they themselves essayed the dazzling overpass along its length from Chalk Lane to terrestrial Jerusalem. “When we met with them they were being Eve and Adam, reading Mr. Milton’s verses to each other in the nude. That’s really why we thought we’d go without clothes on this longer expedition. It just seemed like something that the Blakes might do.” Miss Driscoll scribbles something in an oyster-tinted notebook at this juncture, yet when asked about it blushes crimson and explains that she is merely jotting brief descriptions as to both the timbre and the colouration of the marvel-baby’s voice. “Melt-water trying to be serious” is all she’ll let them read. “It wizn’t very good. I’ll more than likely change it.” They trade anecdotes in the unwavering amber of the dead world’s daybreak and then load all the remaining Puck’s Hats into May and Snowy’s predatory haversack, along with the donated book, before making their last farewells. Sartorially splendid in the fires of Earth’s unmaking the young couple wander hand in hand towards the avenue’s far margins. Taking May once more onto his shoulders, Snowy reminisces about