“Well you can’t just leave it like that, can you!” the authors internal voice declared.

Well, why not? asked the author, rather unsure of himself.

“You mean you’re going to let Mr. Povondra die like that?”

Well I don’t want to do it like that but, well, Mr. Povondra’s an old man after all, he must be well over seventy . . .

“And you’re going to leave him to die in a state of mental torture like that? Can’t you even say something like But Grandad, it’s not as bad as all that, the newts won’t destroy the world, mankind will save itself, just you wait and see? Surely there’s something you can do for him!”

I suppose I could get a doctor for him, the author suggested. Suppose the old man has had an attack of nerves; or at that age he could have had a lung inflammation, which, thanks be to God, he survives; and he could still sit little Marie on his knee and ask what she’s been learning in school. All the joys of old age, I could let the old man have all the joys of old age.

“Fine sort of joys of old age that is,” the internal voice sneered. “Hell hug the child with his ancient hands and all the time hell be thinking - thinking with horror - that one day shell be fleeing from the rush of water inexorably flooding the whole world; hell wrinkle his bushy brow and whisper in a voice of dread: That’s what I did, Marie, that’s what I did. Listen, do you really want to have the whole of mankind destroyed?”

The author frowned. Don’t ask me what I want. Do you think I wanted to see the continents where people live reduced to rubble, do you think I wanted it to end like this? That was just the logical course of events; what could I have done to stop that? I did everything I could; I gave people enough warning; what about that X, that was partly me. I warned them, don’t give the newts weapons and explosives, stop this vile trading in salamanders, and so on - and you saw how it all turned out. They all had a thousand good economic and political reasons why they couldn’t stop. I’m not a politician or a businessman; how am I supposed to persuade them about these things. What are we supposed to do; quite likely the world will collapse and disappear under water; but at least that will happen for political and economic reasons we can all understand, at least it will happen with the help of science technology and public opinion, with human ingenuity of all sorts! Not some cosmic catastrophe but just the same old reasons to do with the struggle for power and money and so on. There’s nothing we can do about that.

The internal voice was quiet for a while. “And don’t you feel sorry for mankind?”

Hold on, not so fast! Nobody’s saying the whole of mankind has to be destroyed. All the newts want is more shoreline where they can live and lay their eggs. Maybe what they’ll do is turn the continents into lots of long strings so that there’s as much shoreline as possible. What if there are still some people surviving on these strips of land? And there they can work metal and other things for the salamanders. As the newts can’t work with fire themselves, can they.

“So mankind will be put into the service of the newts.”

Yes, if that’s what you want to call it. They’ll simply be working in factories like they do now. They’ll just have different masters, that’s all. So that means it might not be so different after all . . .

“And don’t you feel sorry for mankind?”

Oh, just leave me alone, for Gods sake! What am I supposed to do about it? It is what the people wanted, don’t forget; they all wanted to have newts, they wanted commerce, industry and technology; civil authorities and military authorities, they all wanted it; even Povondra junior said so: it’s all of our faults. How do you think I could not feel sorry for mankind, anyway? And most of all, I felt sorry for them when I saw how, of their own free will and whatever the cost, how they were hurtling to their own perdition. It’d be enough to make anyone scream. He’d shout and raise his hands as if he’d seen a train going down the wrong track. And now it can’t be stopped. The newts are going to keep on multiplying on and on and on and they’ll go on demolishing the old continents on and on. Think what it was that Wolf Meynert said about the newts: that people would have to make way for them; and it would only be the salamanders that would create a world that was happy, unified and uniform . . .

“Oh come on, now! Wolf Meynert? Wolf Meynert was an intellectual. You think up something as vile and murderous and nonsensical as this and you think Wolf Meynert is going to save the world? Never mind, leave it. What do you think Marie might be doing now?”

Marie? I suppose she’s out playing somewhere. Don’t make a noise, they told her, Grandad’s asleep. But she doesn’t know what’s happening and it’s a very long time before . . .

“And what’s she actually doing?”

Don’t know. Maybe she’s trying to touch her nose with the tip of her tongue.

“There, you see? And you’d let something like a new Great Flood come along.”

Just stop it, will you. I can’t work miracles. What has to happen will happen! Things run along their inevitable course. And even that’s reassuring in its way: that everything that happens has its own necessity and follows certain rules.

“Couldn’t the newts be stopped in some way?”

No. There are too many of them. They’ve got to have room to live in.

“What about if they all died out in some way? Something like some kind of epidemic or degeneration . . . ”

No, that’s too cheap and easy. Why should nature have to put right what’s been done by man? See? - not even you think they could do anything to save themselves now. You basically think something will come along from somewhere else. I’ll tell you something: do you know who it is that still - even now when a fifth of Europe is already underwater - is still providing the newts with explosives and torpedoes and drills? Do you know who it is that’s working feverishly in all the laboratories, trying to find even more effective machines and materials for sweeping the world out of existence? Do you know who it is who’s lending the newts money, who it is who’s financing the end of the world, this new Flood?

“Yes, I know. All the factories. All the banks. All the countries in the world.”

Well then! If it was just newts against people it might be possible to do something; but when it’s people against people then there’s no way of stopping it, is there.

“Hold on, people against people! I’ve just thought of something. What if it was newts against newts?”

Newts against newts. How do you mean?

“Well what if for instance . . . if there are too many newts they might start squabbling about some tiny stretch of coast or some bay or something; then they can start fighting about bigger and bigger lengths of coast until they get into a big struggle about all the coastlines in the world, eh? Newts against newts! How’s that, wouldn’t that follow the natural course of events?”

Er, no, that wouldn’t work. You can’t have newts fighting with newts. That wouldn’t be natural. The newts are just one species.

“Well people are just on............