he's very upset."

"Yes, Neil. His wife's died."

"Well, I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying I think you should think about it. And what on earth are we going to do about all this?" he added, re-addressing his attention to the Coca-Cola machine.

"I've said that I will make sure it's gone in the morning Neil," said Kate. "I'm quite happy to stand here and scream very loudly if you think it will help in any way, but - "

"Listen, love, I'm only making the point. And I hope you're not going to be making a lot of noise up there because I've got to practise my music tonight, and you know that I need quiet to concentrate." He gave Kate a meaningful look over the top of his glasses and disappeared into his flat.

Kate stood and silently counted as much of one to ten as she could currently remember and then headed staunchly up the stairs in the wake of the God of Thunder, feeling that she was not in a mood for either weather or theology. The house began to throb and shake to the sound of the main theme of The Ride of the Valkyries being played on a Fender Precision bass.

As Dirk edged his way along the Euston Road, caught in the middle of a rush hour traffic jam that had started in the late nineteen seventies and which, at a quarter to ten on this Thursday evening, still showed no signs of abating, he thought he caught sight of something he recognised.

It was his subconscious which told him this - that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.

"Well of course I've just seen something I recognise," Dirk muttered mentally to his subconscious. "I drive along this benighted thoroughfare twenty times a month. I expect I recognise every single matchstick lying in the gutter. Can't you be a little more specific?" His subconscious would not be hectored though, and was dumb. It had nothing further to add. The city was probably full of grey vans anyway. Very unremarkable.

"Where?" muttered Dirk to himself fiercely, twisting round in his seat this way and that. "Where did I see a grey van?"

Nothing.

He was thoroughly hemmed in by the traffic and could not manoeuvre in any direction, least of all forward. He erupted from his car and started to jost le his way back through the jammed cars bobbing up and down to try and see where, if anywhere, he might have caught a glimpse of a grey van. If he had seen one, it eluded him now. His subconscious sat and said nothing.

The traffic was still not moving, so he tried to thread his way further back, but was obstructed by a large motorcycle courier edging his way forward on a huge grimy Kawasaki. Dirk engaged in a brief altercation with the courier, but lost it because the courier was unable to hear Dirk's side of the altercation; eventually Dirk retreated through the tide of traffic which now was beginning slowly to move in all lanes other than the one in which his car sat, driverless, immobile and hooted at.

He felt suddenly elated by the braying of the motor horns, and as he swayed and bobbed his way back through the snarled up columns of cars, he suddenly found that he reminded himself of the crazies he had seen on the streets of New York, who would career out into the road to explain to the oncoming traffic about the Day of Judgement, imminent alien invasions and incompetence and corruption in the Pentagon. He put his hands above his head and started to shout out, "The Gods are walking the Earth! The Gods are walking the Earth!"

This further inflamed the feelings of those who were beeping their horns at his stationary car, and quickly the whole rose through a crescendo of majestic cacophony, with Dirk's voice ringing out above it.

"'The Gods are walking the Earth! The Gods are walking the Earth!" he hollered. "The Gods are walking the Earth ! Thank you!" he added, and ducked down into his car, put it into Drive and pulled away, allowing the whole jammed mass at last to seethe easily forward.

He wondered why he was so sure. An "Act of God". Merety a chance, careless phrase by which people were able to dispose conveniently of awkward phenomena that would admit of no more rational explanation. But it was the chance carelessness of it which particularly