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contented adult.
    And perhaps that’s what happened.
    Let your mind dwell on his junior school prize for spelling; his unremarkable although quite pleasant time at university; his job in the payroll department of the Tadfield and Norton Building Society; his lovely wife. Possibly you would like to imagine some children, and a hobby—restoring vintage motorcycles, perhaps, or breeding tropical fish.
    You don’t want to know what could have happened to Baby B.
    We like your version better, anyway.
    He probably wins prizes for his tropical fish.
    IN A SMALL HOUSE in Dorking, Surrey, a light was on in a bedroom window.
    Newton Pulsifer was twelve, and thin, and bespectacled, and he should have been in bed hours ago.
    His mother, though, was convinced of her child’s genius, and let him stay up past his bedtime to do his “experiments.”
    His current experiment was changing a plug on an ancient Bakelite radio his mother had given him to play with. He sat at what he proudly called his “work-top,” a battered old table covered in curls of wire, batteries, little light bulbs, and a homemade crystal set that had never worked. He hadn’t managed to get the Bakelite radio working yet either, but then again, he never seemed able to get that far.
    Three slightly crooked model airplanes hung on cotton cords from his bedroom ceiling. Even a casual observer could have seen that they were made by someone who was both painstaking and very careful, and also no good at making model airplanes. He was hopelessly proud of all of them, even the Spitfire, where he’d made rather a mess of the wings.
    He pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, squinted down at the plug, and put down the screwdriver.
    He had high hopes for it this time; he had followed all the instructions on plug-changing on page five of the Boy’s Own Book Of Practical Electronics, Including A Hundred and One Safe and Educational Things to Do With Electricity . He had attached the correct color-coded wires to the correct pins; he’d checked that it was the right amperage fuse; he’d screwed it all back together. So far, no problems.
    He plugged it in to the socket. Then he switched the socket on.
    Every light in the house went out.
    Newton beamed with pride. He was getting better. Last time he’d done it he’d blacked out the whole of Dorking, and a man from the Electric had come over and had a word with his mum.
    He had a burning and totally unrequited passion for things electrical. They had a computer at school, and half a dozen studious children stayed on after school doing things with punched cards. When the teacher in charge of the computer had finally acceded to Newton’s pleas to be allowed to join them, Newton had only ever got to feed one little card into the machine. It had chewed it up and choked fatally on it.
    Newton was certain that the future was in computers, and when the future arrived he’d be ready, in the forefront of the new technology.
    The future had its own ideas on this. It was all in The Book.
    ADAM, THOUGHT MR. YOUNG. He tried saying it, to see how it sounded. “Adam.” Hmm …
    He stared down at the golden curls of the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness.
    â€œYou know,” he concluded, after a while, “I think he actually looks like an Adam.”
    IT HAD NOT BEEN A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.
    The dark and stormy night occurred two days later, about four hours after both Mrs. Dowling and Mrs. Young and their respective babies had left the building. It was a particularly dark and stormy night, and just after midnight, as the storm reached its height, a bolt of lightning struck the Convent of the Chattering Order, setting fire to the roof of the vestry.
    No one was badly hurt by the fire, but it went on for some hours, doing a