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It wasn’t just him, was it? There were bright people in the Fellowship, from good universities and good families. Policemen, scientists, teachers, and lawyers. Respectable people. How could they go along with that alpha Fellowship nonsense, and choose to become killers? Is there so much evil in the world?’
    ‘Brainwashing,’ said Wartman, pointing to everybody. ‘Brainwashing.’
    The thin woman examined the dragon curled around her cup. ‘They did not specifically choose to become killers. They had chosen to abdicate their inner selves.’ I didn’t like her. Her voice seemed to come not from her, but from a nearby room.
    ‘I don’t altogether follow you,’ said Dungaree-woman.
    ‘Society,’ and from the way the thin woman said the word I knew she was a teacher, ‘is an outer abdication. We abdicate certain freedoms, and in return we get civilisation. We get protection from death by starvation, bandits and cholera. It’s a fair deal. Signed on our behalf by our educational system on the day we are born. However, we all have an inner self, that decides to what degree we honour this contract. This inner self is our own responsibility. I fear that many of the young men and women in the Fellowship handed this inner responsibility to their Guru, to do with as he pleased. And that,’ she flicked the newspaper, ‘is what he did with it.’
    ‘You sound like you have fairly entrenched opinions,’ I remarked.
    The thin woman looked at me straight in the eye. I looked straight back. Our sisters at Sanctuary are taught humility.
    ‘But why?’ The fisherman lit his pipe and bulged his cheeks in and out. ‘Why did his followers want to give him their will?’
    The thin woman looked at me as she spoke. ‘You’d have to ask them yourself. Maybe there are many answers. Some get a kick out of self-abasement and servitude. Some are afraid or lonely. Some crave the camaraderie of the persecuted. Some want to be big fish in a small pond. Some want magic. Some want revenge on teachers and parents who promised success would deliver all. They need shinier myths that will never be soiled by becoming true. The handing over of one’s will is a small price to pay, for the believers. They aren’t going to need a will in their New Earth.’
    I couldn’t listen to this any more. ‘Maybe you’re reading too much into it. Maybe they just did it because they loved him.’ I downed my tea in one gulp. It burned my tongue and it was too bitter. ‘Could I have my key now, please?’
    The old woman idly passed me the key. ‘You must be exhausted after your long walk. My nephew’s wife saw you out by the lighthouse!’
    Secrets on islands are hidden from mainlanders, but never from the islanders.

    I lay on my bed, and wept.
    My brothers and sisters, committing self-slaughter! Which of my co-cleansers had fallen at this last hurdle, and why? We were heroes! Just a few months before the end of the unclean world! Paradise had been so near for them! I was further surprised at the Minister of Defence allowing himself to be captured. He has a high enough alpha quotient to displace molecules and walk through walls.
    The spider in the jar had died. Why? Why, why, why?

    After my evening cleansing I walked around this fishing village. Squealing children were playing some incomprehensible game. Teenagers hung around on street corners in their trendiest gear, doubtless imitating the Tokyo teenagers they see in their magazines. Mothers stood gossiping outside the supermarket. I want to shout at them, The world is going to end soon, you are all going to fry in the White Nights! Okinawan music blared out of a bar, all twinky-twanky and jangling . . . And at the end of the street I reached the mountains, the sea and the night.
    I walked along the pebbly beach. Plastic buoys. A sea coconut, shaped like a woman’s loins. Junk, washed up with the driftwood. Cans, bottles, rubber gloves, detergent containers. I heard grunts and squeals from