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only way in which a man could say his piece to the nation was by buying millions of dollars of airtime. 
    He could make a difference. Only one difference in nine, perhaps; but a difference. Whereas what would Sissy do, if she were the one to survive? The man was chillingly perceptive. She would party all his money away; and the house and the family inheritance and the library that smelled like justice would be sold and scattered and dismantled. 
    It took John a splinter of a second to think this thought. But – like the splinter of shattered mirror in The Snow Queen, which flew into a young boy’s eye and perverted everything he saw – it made him almost mad with shame. Sissy was his daughter. Sissy was his child. She looked so much like Eva. Yet what had he done? In the very last moment of his life he had betrayed her. 
    ‘Take me,’ he said, in a thick, slurred voice. 
    ‘What?’ asked the man. The sirens were very close now, and the wind was getting up. 
    ‘Take me ,’ he repeated. 
    ‘Your choice, Your Honour,’ the man replied. 
    He came around to the side of John’s seat, placed his right hand between John’s shoulder blades, and pushed John forward, so that his face was pressed between his knees. Then he positioned the parrot-beak cutting-blades on either side of John’s neck. 
    John tried to think of nothing at all. He couldn’t think of a prayer. He saw in nitpicking detail the helicopter’s grey-flecked carpet, with a shiny black blob of chewing gum on it, and the dark rococo patterns of Dean’s arterial blood. He felt the metallic teeth of the cutting-blades pinching his skin, but they were more of an irritation than anything else. He saw the shadow of a cloud crossing the carpet, or perhaps it was smoke. 
    Then he heard a hydraulic hiss; and his whole being detonated into blinding white pain white white white – and he heard, he actually heard his own head tumbling on to the floor. 
    But he didn’t hear the parrot-beak snapping its way through the aluminum supports of Sissy’s seat. Neither did he hear the man clambering out of the helicopter; and the whooping sirens and shouts that quickly followed. 
    Nor did he hear the softly-rumbling whoomph of kerosene catching fire, as the helicopter exploded in a huge balloon of flame. 
     

Two 
     
    There was a cautious knock at the den door and Michael instantly flung away his copy of Mushing magazine and vaulted off the leather couch. By the time Jason opened the door and came inside, he was sitting at his desk in front of the window, his head resting on his hand, scribbling on a legal-size pad as if he had been scribbling for hours. 
    He kept on while Jason approached his desk. Jason trod softly because he knew Dad was busy and didn’t like to have his train of thought interrupted. Jason was thirteen, skinny and gentle and tall for his age. His blond hair was cropped like a scrubbing brush. He wore black-framed Clark Kent spectacles which made his ears stick out, but he had the most arresting blue eyes, clear as two lakes, and a lovely dry sense of humour. He wore a T-shirt with the red-lettered slogan Dyslexia Lures OK. 
    Michael swung around in his battered green leather captain’s chair and said, with exaggerated patience, ‘Yes, Jason, what’s the problem?’ 
    ‘There’s a guy outside wants to see you,’ said Jason. 
    ‘A guy, hunh?’ Michael inquired. ‘Did he say what he wanted?’ 
    Jason shrugged. ‘He just said, “Is Mr Rearden home?” ‘ 
    Michael leaned back in his chair and tapped his front teeth with his Pilot pen. ‘He didn’t mention Games Company?’ 
    ‘Unh-hunh.’ 
    ‘I’m expecting somebody from Games Company. You see all this stuff on this desk? All these hundreds of little pieces of paper? This is it, this is my latest money-spinner. Project X.’ 
    Jason glanced out of the corner of his eye at the heaps and heaps of notelets and Post-its and newspaper cuttings and legal sheets and