very important murderers . . who’d attended a cocktail party at the Embassy. As quickly as he could he jettisoned Cranfield, the Scientific Adviser. . a spectacularly boring man, with the tall, crooked gait of a wader, for whom there were no minutiae so infinitesimally small he wouldn’t stoop to peck at them. The ambassador had commiserated: I flew by Mosquito over to Bermuda a few weeks ago, bloody bumpy ride — cold and cramped as well. Saw your pater there — probably shouldn’t say so, but what the hell. He was on good form, we got in a round of golf between meetings — incidentally, this might amuse you, it’s all true what they say about the PM. . What’s true? Michael obliged, and the ambassador delivered this: He’s had a special oxygen mask made so he can smoke his cigars in flight! Michael feigned amusement, but thought: I knew that already. — The ambassador’s lady, her head encased in lavender-coloured daisy-shapes, bade Michael to admire the flower arrangements. She said, One of the Negro pages shows a genuine sensitivity — at least in this regard. — Later, when everyone was blotto from the Martinis, a heavy-weight USAAF general backed Michael into the red velvet drapes: Not that we don’t ’preciate what you fellows have done to the goddamn Fatherland, but by the time we’re through the Japs’ll be performin’ their tea ceremonies with ditch water! The ambassador’s wife came sailing in to relieve Michaeclass="underline" Oh, General Stokely! she laughed gaily. You mustn’t upset the Group Captain with talk of tea when it’s impossible for an Englishman to find a decent cup the length and breadth of your otherwise splendid nation! — No, no tea — and only insipid coff ee, little better than ersatz. There were fruit juices and sickly varieties of pop — and of course plenty of liquor with which Michael could stun himself to sleep each night, the alcohol dissolving together the faces. . of the living and the dead. — Sonja had her troubles with liquor: her icy fantasia rattled around in a highball glass. She wanted to keep her brawling ex-hockey-star husband with her whatever way she could, and she implored him over the raucous heads of the A-bombers to. . quit drinking. The cockroaches wouldn’t quit . . chirring up into the projector beam, the sweat wouldn’t quit dripping from Michael’s armpits into the sodden sleeves of his shirt — and he couldn’t quit thinking about dirty bearded drunken Kins, dodging. . un-der-neath the ar-ches while the doodlebugs were rattling above! As for their night’s work, had it all been worth it for this: the chorus line’s lime-green elbow-length gloves whirling as they twirled across the glass pool, wending between the weepy willows, where light spangled their flesh-coloured tights. A feeble melo dramatic vehicle barely supported by Miss Henie’s double-axels . . was how the De’Ath Watch would probably have dismissed It’s a Pleasure, starring Sonja Henie and Michael O’Shea — nevertheless, despite his beer-brown studiousness, Kins would’ve acknowledged that. . the Technicolor was superb. — During the mission briefing the balding and thick-set intel’ officer who had introduced them to Little Boy also tried to show them a flick, but when the projectionist pushed the buttons the film mangled in the sprockets and odd globules fissioned on the screen. They never got to see the film of the test — only witness at first-hand of the first use of the A-bomb in war. If you could call it war: a camera-flash so hotly bright it transformed an entire city into. . a photograph of itself — the outlines of women, children and men left on the few remaining walls, the shadow of an incinerated hand marking the face it tried to shield. One angel . . Two angels . . Three . . an entire host had straddled the dizzying dark thermals that mounted towards the B-29. At first it was impossible to see them as anything but. . flung confetti at the wedding of nightmare to reason, but, as they gained altitude and came within range, Michael distinguished them from the swarming phosphenes by their curious morphology: the skin the great heat had flayed from their backs, legs and arms remained attached to wrists and ankles, so each damned creature was lifted heavenwards. . on wings of itself. The skin angels had this in common with ME-109s: having appeared to be at a safe remove well below. . they were suddenly upon us: their smoking eye sockets pressed against the Perspex nose-cone of the Superfortress, inside of which sat Tibbets, his co-pilot, Lewis, and Parsons, the intel’ officer, studiedly ignoring them. — It was Ferebee, the Group Bombardier, who’d beckoned to Michael as they sailed through the cloudless blue, led him aft, encouraged him to take up position on the jump seat, dip his head down. . for apples and stare into the crystal ball of his Norden bombsight. See there, Ferebee drawled, see the T-shape? That’s where two bridges meet at right angles, that’s our aiming point. . I saw the future — and it works: the bridge is gone, the outstretched hand is gone, everywhere great finned cars nose forward like fish, a savage servility slides by on grease. . — It had also been Ferebee, who, before the mission briefing, took Michael to the hangar where Little Boy lay beneath a grey rubberised tarpaulin. . completing his last few hours of gestation. When Ferebee had one of the ground crew remove this militarised swaddling, Michael saw a stubby and malformed infant. He found it impossible to join in the bombardier’s amusement as he pointed out the graffiti on the A-bomb’s flanks and fins: Greetings to the People of Japan from the Men of the Indianapolis, Kilroy’s phallic snout and flipper hands, and other, cruder messages — Take this up your Keister! — The Thirteen sat on the horizontal upright of the flying crucifix, its four massive Wright Cyclone engines screwing them through the sky. Tibbets had told Michael the fuel-injected units were electronically calibrated so their drive shafts. . could be reversed. — Michael hypothesised: might it be possible for the whole business to be. . undone, for them to circle anti-clockwise over the target, suck up Little Boy and return tail-first to Tinian, reversing in over the lava cliffs to make a perfect landing, while back in the Heavenly Kingdom the monstrous cloud that had risen over Hiroshima shrank down into the fertile ground. . with mushroom alacrity. But it was no bloody use . . towards the stern the noncompoops were whooping it up, their cries echoing in Missus Tibbets’s empty womb, while the steering column kicked against the autopilot and the Apostle Paul scratched, yawned and relaxed safe in the knowledge of a gospel well transmitted. . the resurrection of the American Dream. — He’s still preaching, Michael thinks, giving the sales patter for some corporation or other. . GOD IS WITHIN ME AND THEREFORE I AM MY OWN MASTER . . Ho! the noncoms cry, and Hee! and Ho! again. — Squirming round on the mattress, Kit manages a vintage ejaculation: The bloody swine! — The door crashes open and Claude marches in chanting, Ho, darkies hab you seen de massa, Wid de MUFF-TASH ON HE FACE! Followed by Clive, the two manage one circuit of the room — kicking tins, whipping up feathers — before Busner appears in the doorway, sporting an elaborately embroidered Victorian-style apron, and directs them both out again with a dripping dishcloth. Awfully sorry about that, he says, his polite tone wildly at odds with his eccentric attire, mussed hair and dinner-plate eyes. He then backs out, gently shutting the door behind him. The stamping retreats: Hup! Twoop! Threep! and Michael asks — as much of himself as of the boy — Why is he so very. . well, so very disturbed? Kit, up on one elbow, stretches to pull each word from the crowd of them swirling about in his head: It’s. . a. . fact, Uncle Mike — Claude. . Claude was the target-spotter for the Hiroshima bomb. . He flew ahead — ahead he flew. . I thought you knew: he murdered a million babies. . When the starship comes they won’t take him with them to Sector 6, and they won’t take me either because. . because I’m not an I any more —. Poppycock, Michael snaps. You know fine well, Chris, I was the British observer on the A-bomb mission — that’s why I set up the Lincoln Homes. . He pauses, listening to the shuffling of the Kid’s flares as his legs feebly bicycle, then,