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that the world over the horizon was seething with disease and crime and promiscuity and wars. Good news wasn’t news, he told himself, but the last girl he’d ever courted before he’d grown too set in his ways was out there somewhere, and the world must be better for her. Stil , it was no wonder that most readers came to the library for fiction rather than for the news. He supposed the smiling couple who were fil ing cartons with books would take them to the housebound, although some of the titles he glimpsed seemed unsuitable for the easily offended. He watched the couple stalk away with the cartons, until the smoke of a distant bonfire obscured them.
    The library closed at nine. Usual y Bright would have been home for hours and listening to his radio cassette player, to Elgar or Vera Lynn or the dance bands his father used to play on the wind-up record player, but something about the day had made him reluctant to be alone. He read about evolution until the librarian began to harrumph loudly and smite books on the shelves.
    Perhaps Bright should have gone up sooner. When he hurried round the outside of the building to the lobby, he had never seen the suburb so lifeless. Identical gray terraces multiplied to the horizon under a charred sky; a pair of trampled books lay amid the breathless litter on the anonymous concrete walks. He thought he heard a cry, but it might have been the start of the hymn that immediately was al he could hear, wherever it was.
    The lifts stil weren’t working; both sets of doors that gave onto the scribbled lobby were open, displaying thick cables encrusted with darkness. By the time he reached the second floor he was slowing, grasping any banisters that hadn’t been prised out of the concrete. The few lights that were working had been spray-painted until they resembled dying coals. Gangs of shadows flattened themselves against the wal s, waiting to mug him. As he climbed, a muffled sound of hymns made him feel even more isolated. They must be on television, he could hear them in so many apartments.
    One pair of lift doors on the fifth floor had jammed open. Unless Bright’s eyes were the worse for his climb, the cable was shaking. He labored upstairs to his landing, where the corresponding doors were open too. Once his head stopped swimming, he ventured to the edge of the unlit shaft. There was no movement, and nothing on the cable except the underside of the lift on the top floor. He turned toward his apartment. Two men were waiting for him.
    Apparently they’d rung his bel . They were staring at his door and rubbing their hands stiffly.
    They wore black T-shirts and voluminous black overal s, and sandals on their otherwise bare feet. “What can I do for you?” Bright cal ed.
    They turned together, holding out their hands as if to show him how gray their palms looked under the stained lamp. Their narrow bland faces were already smiling. “Ask rather what we can do for you,” one said.
    Bright couldn’t tel which of them had spoken, for neither smile gave an inch. They might be two men or even two women, despite their close-cropped hair. “You could let me at my front door,”
    Bright said.
    They gazed at him as if nothing he might say would stop them smiling, their eyes wide as old pennies stuck under the lids. When he pul ed out his key and marched forward, they stepped aside, but only just. As he slipped the key into the lock, he sensed them close behind him, though he couldn’t hear them. He pushed the door open, no wider than he needed to let himself in. They fol owed him.
    “Whoa, whoa.” He swung round in the stubby vestibule and made a grab at the door, too late.
    His visitors came plodding in, bumping the door against the wal . Their expressions seemed more generalized than ever. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Bright cried.
    That brought their smiles momentarily alive, as though it were a line they’d heard before. “We haven’t anything to do with