Sol returned in baggy clothes, with damp hair, and slumped on the sofa next to Beth. She looked up from the newspaper, and smiled at him wanly. "How're you feeling?" she asked.

"Better."

"Oh," Beth glanced at the time, then switched the T.V. on. "From what they said in the trailer bit, it looks like you might be on the local news. Well, your house might."

The article was just being earnestly, if clumsily, announced by the local anchor when Isabelle walked in. Greetings were warm but brief, and then everyone's attention returned to the news. Apparently, there had been a gas explosion in a residential area. Fortunately, nobody was in the house in question at the time, and surrounding buildings escaped with minor damage."

Beth switched off the television with a derisory snort.

"Maybe we're being a little paranoid about this whole thing." said Sol, "After all, it could have been an accident, a gas explosion, like they said."

Beth and Isabelle stared at him incredulously, struck dumb. Beth was the first to regain the faculty of speech.

"Are you insane! Don't you think it's a little odd that on the day some millionaire megalomaniac threatens you're life, you're house blows up."

"What?" asked Isabelle, swinging round to look at Beth. "Faraday threatened his life?"

"Yep. He phoned up today. Sol's mobile."

Isabelle gulped, then turned back to Sol. "He must have thought you were at home! You've got to take this seriously; it's obvious he was trying to kill you."

Sol shifted uneasily; they were beginning to persuade him.

"Look," said Beth, leaping back in like the other half of a tag team, "We know that he's already arranged for at least one assassination. What makes you think he'd have any qualms about having you bumped off if you were getting in his way?"

"Well," he began, then hesitated under the steely stares of Isabelle and Beth. "Maybe it's just a coincidence." he finished lamely.

"You told Sherwood yourself, there aren't any coincidences!" Beth shouted, frustrated beyond belief that Sol wasn't taking this more seriously. "Things don't just happen at random!"

Sol sat there, not saying anything under Beth's glare.

"Well?"

Slowly, a smile crept onto his face. "You just gave me an idea. I think I know how to stop him."

Sol explained his idea to Beth and Isabelle, and the three of them went to find Sherwood, and Sol explain the idea again. Sherwood was sceptical at first, but they managed to convince him, and he began to put the plan into action.

Around the world, the managers of Sherwood's companies began to receive signed and encrypted e-mails, giving them very, very strange new orders. Each and every one of them phoned Sherwood on his private line, for use only in emergencies, and checked that the message was genuine. he assured each and every one of them that it was, and that there was a perfectly good reason for it, and that their jobs were perfectly safe, assuming they followed the instructions to the letter. He would be sending somebody to check. They all hung up, shook their heads in disbelief, and looked around for some suitable prop that would allow them to carry out the orders.

In Buenos Ares, the floor manager in a paper mill owned by Sherwood popped his head around the door of the boss's office. Shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the machinery, he explained that one of the machines had gone haywire, and chewed up most of a shipment that was due out the next day. He wanted to know if they should stop work and repair the machine, or try and fill the order using the machines they had left.

The boss grunted, then, as the floor manager watched in amazement, picked up a coin that was lying ready on the table, and flipped it, plucking it out of the air and slapping it onto the back of his hand. He examined the result. Heads. "Repair 'em." he told his baffled subordinate.

"Well," declared Sherwood, as he hung up on another in the long stream of confused managers, "I think that's the last of them. You're absolutely sure that this will work?"

"Yes," confirmed Sol, "As long as your companies keep running completely at random, then it should provide enough disruption to render Faraday's prediction engine completely useless. Of course, it will also affect WorldPulse and Crystal in exactly the same way. In fact, the whole field of holistic analysis will be, not to put too fine a point on it, completely buggered.

"Come to think of it," he concluded, "I'll have to start looking for another job."

"I don't think our positions at Jupiter are exactly safe." pointed out Isabelle, laughing.

"So," asked Beth, "when does it start to kick in? When will Faraday start seeing the effects?"

"In theory," Sol said after thinking about it for a moment, "The forecasts should start to diverge from reality give or take immediately."

Sat in his office, in the penthouse of a skyscraper overlooking the lights of a vast city, Faraday was watching the stock market with a smug expression. The prediction engine brought many benefits, and a preternaturally healthy portfolio of shares was one of them. He sipped his coffee and watched the two parallel windows, one displaying the current values of his shares, and another showing the values according to the projection. Both were moving in immensely satisfying synchrony. He took another sip of coffee, then sat back, smiling the satisfied smile of the cat that got the cream.

Then, something unimaginable happened. The two windows began to disagree. Faraday stood up and leaned on the desk, examining the screens. It was probably a glitch. However, as he watched, the values didn't return to conformity, but instead diverge all the more. With an inarticulate scream, he picked up his coffee cup and threw it against the window. The strong, thick glass held firm, and the cup shattered, spraying coffee all over the window and the floor.

Almost blind with rage, he set punched one of the speed dial buttons, then the speaker button. He paced the room, waiting for it to be picked up, and then there was a click and a voice appeared on the other end of the line.

"Hello, Mr. Faraday. I imagine this is..."

"Maxwell!" Faraday cut him off with a scream from the far side of the darkened office. "What in the name of hell is going on with the forecasts?"

"I'm sorry, sir, I didn't quite catch that."

"I said," shouted Faraday, running over to the desk and leaning over so that his mouth was inches from the microphone. "What the hell is happening to the predictions? Why are they suddenly going to shit?"

"I'm not sure yet; I've only just noticed the problem myself."

"Davies!" bellowed Faraday, "This is him! He's done this!"

"Possibly," conceded Maxwell, "Solomon might be responsible, but I don't know how he would achieve these effects. Now," he went out on a limb, "if you would just calm down, we can..."

With a final, deafening scream, Faraday swept everything off the table with both arms. Expensive computer equipment, executive toys, and the phone crashed to the floor. Standing, hunched and alone, breathing heavily in the otherwise silent office, Faraday muttered to himself. It was something about Solomon Davies.

Sol, Beth, Isabelle and Mr. Sherwood stood, wrapped up against the wind, next to a small, but perfectly formed, jet. Aside from this select group, the small airfield was deserted.

"Well, I guess this is it."

"There really is no other way. Faraday may have lost his prediction engine, but he's still a very dangerous man, and I imagine that he will be non too pleased when he realises what has happened. It's safest for you to disappear, at least for a while."

"What about you? Aren't you in danger too?" asked Isabelle.

Sherwood laughed. "I'm well protected enough. I doubt that he would try anything against me. In any case, I have to stay, in order to make sure my business are run correctly." They all smiled at the thought of managers rolling dice and cutting cards, all over the world.

"I'll be fine. In any case, I doubt I'll be around for very many more years." (He silenced the protests with a wave of his hands. "It's true. I've set up trusts for the businesses, though, so there shouldn't be any cause for concern on that front for quite a while."

"We'll be O.K. to keep in touch with each other, won't we?" asked Beth.

"I don't see any harm in that; try to limit the contact you have with your families, though, to avoid them becoming a way for Faraday to find you. The less they know, the less danger they're in."

They finished off saying their goodbyes, and then three of them got onto the private jet and flew off to start the new lives that Mr. Sherwood had kindly provided for them. Sherwood himself watched the plane until it was out of sight, and then turned and wistfully walked back to his car, He had to get back to work.

Beth was born on New Years Eve, at the stroke of midnight. When she grew up, this would give her an added excuse to have even more fun than everyone else at at least one party a year, but until then, all it meant was that her birthday was near to Christmas, and hence (she believed), she ended up getting fewer presents.

Her father died when she was young, but she grew up surrounded by a loving extended family. She always remembered how the house was constantly bustling with cousins, grandparents, friends and neighbours. There was always something to do. Sometimes, she wished she had a bit of quiet, or a bit of privacy (especially as she grew into a tomboyish teenager), but for the most part she wouldn't give it up for anything.

She eventually flew the nest to pursue a degree in Maths, by far her favourite subject at school. The university she chose was only an hour's drive away, and her grandparents clubbed together and bought her a car for her eighteenth birthday, so she could come back at the weekends. Still, it was a wrench, but she slowly got used to being away from home.

She fell into working with computers after she had graduated; it was indoor work, the pay was good, and everyone else was doing it. She had a couple of jobs in companies she loathed, then she found somewhere she fitted in. She made friends, and for the first time since she had moved out of her mother's house she felt truly happy.

Over time, she realised that she was falling in love with one of these friends. At first, she was reticent to act on these feelings, as she didn't want to ruin the friendship they already had. However, she soon decided that they were both mature enough to deal with it should things not work out, so she began to make subtle advances. He completely failed to notice, and hence the advances became progressively less subtle, until at last he got with the programme and fell into her arms.

After their run-in with Faraday, Beth and her closest friends had to move away from their homes, and begin new lives. This was an almost intolerable wrench for Beth, given how close she was to her family, but with the help of her new boyfriend she learned to cope. As the months and years rolled by, her boyfriend became her fiance, her fiance became her husband, and her husband became the father of her child.

Then, one day, Sol was suddenly taken away from her. Nobody could ever tell her why. At the funeral, she saw Isabelle for the first time in years, and she learned that Mr. Sherwood had died. That was sad, but at least he had had a full life; her Sol was barely fifty, and he shouldn't have left her for a long time yet. It wasn't fair.

She stood by the graveside, looking down at the dirt-strewn coffin, for a long time, until her daughter, and her friend from years ago, came and gently led her away.