air had been sucked out so that as long as the package remained unopened the food inside would remain fresh. These machines too, he guessed, were being kept fresh. It did not surprise him. Metal he knew was capable of decay, and machinery was, in his limited experience, even harder to keep in good condition than livestock.
There was unfortunately no way to profit from his discovery. Even if it had been possible to recover one of these machines, what would he and his family do with it?
He turned to go, and the faint beam of his torch touched a crate rather smaller than the rest. A long metal cylinder had fallen across it, splitting it completely open, like a knife slicing a melon. It was the shape of its contents that caught his eye. Obscured by the cylinder resting on the broken crate, this lacked the angularity of the vacuum-packed machines. It was more like some kind of cocoon.
He put his torch down and, by using both hands and all his slight body weight, he managed to roll the cylinder to one side. It hit the floor with a crash that raised enough dust to set him coughing.
When he recovered, he picked up his torch and directed the ever fainter beam downward, praying it might reveal some treasure he could bear back proudly to his family.
The light glanced back from a pair of staring eyes.
He screamed in terror and dropped the torch, which went out.
That might have been the end for Khalid, but Allah is merciful and bountiful and permitted two of his miracles together.
The first was that as his scream died away (for want of breath not want of terror) he heard a voice calling his name.
‘Khalid, where the hell are you? Come on, or you’re in big trouble.’
It was his favourite brother, Ahmed.
The second miracle was that another light came on in the storeroom to replace his broken torch. This light was red and intermittent. In the brightness of its flashes he looked again at the vacuum-packed cocoon.
It was a woman in there. She was young and black and beautiful. And of course she was dead.
His brother shouted his name again, sounding both anxious and angry.
‘I’m all right,’ he called back impatiently, his fear fading with Ahmed’s proximity and of course the light.
Which came from … where?
He checked and his fear came back with advantages.
The light was coming from the end of the metal cylinder he had so casually sent crashing to the floor. There were Western letters on the metal which made no sense to him. But one thing he did recognize: the emblem of the great shaitan who was the nation’s bitterest foe.
Now he knew what had come crashing through the roof but had not exploded.
Yet.
He scrambled towards the fissure through which he’d entered. It seemed to have constricted even further, or fear was making him fat, and for a moment he thought he was caught fast. He had one arm through and was desperately trying to get a purchase on the ruined outer wall when his hand was grasped tight and next moment he was being dragged painfully through the gap into Ahmed’s arms.
His brother opened his mouth to remonstrate with him, saw the look on his face and needed no further persuasion to obey when Khalid screamed. ‘Run!’
They ran together, the two brothers, straining every sinew forward, like two champions contesting the final lap in an Olympic race, except that in this competition whenever one stumbled, the other reached out a steadying hand.
The tape they were running to was the Euphrates whose blessed waters had provided fertility and sustenance to their ancestors for centuries.
Time meant nothing, distance was everything.
The only sound was their laboured breathing and the swish of their limbs through the waist-high rushes.
Their eyes stared ahead, to safety, to their future, so they did not see behind them the ruins begin to rise into the air and be themselves ruined.
But they knew instantly there were now other faster competitors in the race.
The sound overtook them first, rolling by in dull thunder.
And then the blast was at their heels, at their shoulders, picking them up and hurling them forward as it raced triumphantly on.
Down they crashed, down they splashed. They were at the river. They felt its blessed coldness sweep over them. They let the current roll them at its own sweet will. Then they rose together, coughing and spluttering, and looked at each other, brother checking brother for damage at the same time as the impulses signalling the state of his own bone and muscle came pulsing along the nerves.
‘You OK, little one?’ said Ahmed after a while.
‘Fine. You?’
‘I’m OK. Hey, you run well for a tadpole.’
‘You too, for a frog.’
They pulled themselves on to the bank and sat looking back at the column of dust and fine debris hanging in the air.
‘So what did you find in there?’ asked Ahmed.
Khalid hardly paused for thought. He had no explanation for what he’d seen, but he was old enough to know he lived in a world where knowledge could be dangerous.
Later he would say a prayer for the dead woman in case she was of the faith.
Or even if she wasn’t.
And then a prayer for himself for lying to his brother.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just the rocket. Otherwise nothing at all.’
It was the last day of winter and the last night of Pal Maciver’s life.
With only fifteen minutes to go, he was discovering that death was even stranger than he’d imagined.
Until the woman left, he’d been fine. From the first-floor landing he had watched her come through the open front door, trailing mist. She tried the light switch. Nothing happened. Standing in the dark she called his name. After all these years she still almost had the power to make him answer. Now was a critical moment. Not make-or-break critical. If she simply turned on her heel and walked away, it wasn’t disastrous. Getting her there could still be made enough.
But he felt God owed him more.
She turned back to the open door. Winter, determined to show he didn’t give a toss for calendars, had rallied his declining forces. There had been flurries of snow on the high moors but here in the city the best he could manage was a denial of light, at first with low cloud, then as the day wore on with mist rolling in from the surrounding countryside. But still enough light seeped in through the narrow window by the door for her to see the stub of candle and book of matches lying on the sill.
His fingers touched the microcassette in his pocket. Without taking it out he pressed the ‘play’ button. Two or three bars of piano music tinkled out, then he switched off.
Below in the hall it must have sounded so distant she was probably already doubting she’d heard it at all. Perhaps indeed he’d overdone the muffling and she really hadn’t heard it.
Then came the sputter of a match and a moment later he saw the amber glow of the candle.
God might not pay all his debts, but he kept up the interest.
Now