The Belly of the Bow

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The sergeant was pulling at his sleeve. ‘Get out of here, Father,’ he said urgently, only just audible over the shouting and the nearby clatter of weapons. ‘They’re coming. You’ll be killed if you don’t get out now.’

Doctor Gannadius stared at him and grabbed his wrist. It felt solid enough. ‘This is wrong,’ he mumbled. ‘I can’t be here.’

‘Get out!’ the sergeant screamed; then he pulled his wrist free and set off at a clumsy skidding run down the corridor, crashing into a book-case as he went and scattering book-rolls on the floor. In the other direction, far away but getting nearer, Gannadius could hear more shouting – orders, by the sound of it, yelled by an officer at the end of his tether, but he couldn’t make out the words or tell whether it was the enemy or his own side.

‘This is wrong,’ Gannadius repeated softly. ‘I was never here. I left before this happened.’

A few yards away from him, a shutter flew open and a man’s head appeared through the window, backlit in orange. It was a nightmare face, foreign and dangerous, and Gannadius instinctively shrank away. Logically, he should be running. Very far back in second place was the notion of grabbing one of the discarded weapons that lay on the floor and trying to kill this intrusive stranger before he got through the window. Gannadius couldn’t do either. In the back of his mind, he was making a note on the effect of blind terror on the unwarlike, sedentary individual: paralysis, involuntary bladder activity, an apparent extension of the moment, as if time was frozen or no longer applied.

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