On the tenth day he turned down an invitation to sail with the three of them on a circuit of the nearby islands. Instead he spent the morning overhauling a mower tractor which he found in the cavernous shed used to garage Charmaine’s neglected agricultural machinery. After he’d stripped down and reassembled the gearbox, and charged the power cell from the tidal turbine, he got to work on the lawn. Driving round and round the house, grass cuttings shooting out of the back like a green geyser.
When Althaea emerged from the trees late in the afternoon she gawped at the lawn in astonishment, then whooped and hugged him. ‘It looks wonderful,’ she laughed. ‘And you’ve found the lily pond!’
He’d nearly driven straight into the damn thing; it was just a patch of emerald swamp, with a statue of Venus in the centre, concealed by reeds. If it hadn’t been for the frogs fleeing the tractor’s blades he would never have guessed what it was in time.
‘Will you get the fountain working again? Please, Eason!’
‘I’ll have a look at it,’ he said. Pressed against him, her lean body left an agreeable imprint through the thin fabric of her dress. Tisrella was giving him a stern frown, which he replied with a silent mocking smile.
Althaea took a step back, face radiant. ‘Thank you.’
*
That night, Eason jerked awake as Tiarella’s hand jabbed into his side.
‘Get up,’ she hissed urgently.
It was gone midnight; a storm had risen to batter the archipelago. Huge raindrops pelted the windowpanes; lightning flares illuminated the garden and its palisade of trees in a stark chiaroscuro. Thunder formed an almost continuous grumble.
‘They’re here,’ she said. ‘They’re docking at the jetty, right now.’
‘Who’s here?’ His thoughts were still sluggish from sleep.
‘You tell me! You’re the one they’re after. No one with honest business would try to sail tonight.’
‘Then how do you know anyone’s here?’
Tiarella had closed her eyes. ‘Orphée has a set of dolphin-derived echo receptors fitted under her hull. I can see their boat, it’s small. Ah, they’ve hit the jetty. It’s wobbling. They must be getting out. Yes . . . yes, they are.’
The Party! It couldn’t be anyone else, not creeping up in the middle of the night. Conceivably it was comrades he’d once fought with, although contract killers were more likely.
Eason’s training took over: assess, plan, initiate. He cursed violently at being caught out so simply. Ten days was all it had taken for Charmaine’s cosy existence to soften him. He should have moved on immediately, broken his trail into chaotic segments which no one could piece together.
‘There’s three of them,’ Tiarella said, her eyes still tight shut.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Three!’ she insisted.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘You’ll be safe. They only want me.’ He rolled out of bed and shoved the window open, climbing out on to the balcony, still naked. Retinal amps scanned the freshly cut garden. Nothing was moving.
At least the rain and wind would hinder them slightly. But it still didn’t look good.
Eason scrambled down one of the balcony pillars, rust flakes scratching his palms and thighs. He raced across the lawn, desperate to reach the cover of the trees, slipping three times on the sodden grass. Thorns tore at his legs as he sprinted into the undergrowth. There was no sign of the intruders yet.
He forced his way through the mass of clawing vegetation until he was ten metres from the path to the jetty, then started to climb the gnarled trunk of an orange tree. The branches were dense, unyielding, but he twisted and wriggled his way through them, feeling them snap and bend against his ribs. He finally stopped when he’d manoeuvred himself above the path.
Thunder and lightning swamped his senses. He was totally dependent on his retinal amps now, praying they could compensate for the storm. The infra-red function rewarded him with a large hot-spot creeping along the sombre tunnel formed by the overgrown trees. It resolved into a human shape, a man. He held his breath. If he could see the man, then he was visible, too. It had been a stupid move; he’d gambled on the attackers being closer to the house by now.
But the man was only a couple of metres away, and showed no awareness of Eason. He was wearing dark oilskins and a broad-brimmed hat, cradling some kind of rifle. Hick-boy out hunting.
This wasn’t any kind of professional operation. Which made even less sense.
Someone else was floundering through the undergrowth parallel to the path, making enough noise to be heard above the thunder and the rain. The man on the path walked directly under Eason, and kept on going. There was a commotion away towards the ocean. Someone screamed. It choked off rapidly, but not before Eason got an approximate fix.
‘Whitley? Whitley, where the hell are you?’
That was the one Eason had heard blundering about, shouting at the top of his voice.
‘Come on, let’s get out of these bloody trees,’ the one on the path yelled in answer. ‘Now shut up, he’ll hear us.’
‘I can’t fucking hear us! And what happened to Whitley?’
‘I don’t bloody know. Tripped most likely. Now come on!’
The figure on the path started to advance again. Eason landed behind him as thunder shook the creaking trees. He focused, and punched. Powered by an augmented musculature, his fist slammed into the back of the man’s neck, snapping the spinal cord instantly, shoving fractured vertebrae straight into his trachea, blocking even a reflex grunt from emerging.
The body pitched forward, squelching as it hit the muddy path. Eason snatched up the rifle, checking it in a glance. His synaptic web ran a comparison search through its files, identifying it as a Walther fluxpump. Basically, a magnetic shotgun which fired a burst of eighty steel pellets.
The breech was fully loaded with twenty-five cartridges. Satisfied, Eason plunged back into the undergrowth, crouching low as he closed the gap on the second intruder.
The man was leaning against a tree trunk at the edge of the lawn, peering through the branches at the house. Eason stood three metres behind him, pointed the fluxpump at his legs, and fired.
‘Who are you?’
‘Jesus God, you shot me! You fucking shot me. I can’t feel my legs!’
It was another bovine islander, same as the first. Eason shook his head in wonder, and moved the fluxpump’s barrel slightly. ‘In three seconds you won’t feel your prick if you don’t answer me. Now who are you?’
‘Don’t! God, I’m called Fermoy. Fermoy, OK?’
‘Right. Well done, Fermoy. So what are you and where do you come from?’
‘I’m a shipwright over on Boscobel.’
‘Where’s Boscobel?’
‘An island, nine kilometres away. God, my legs!’
‘What are you doing here, Fermoy?’
‘We came for the man. You.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re wanted. There must be money for you.’
‘And you thought you’d collect?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who were you going to give me to, Fermoy?’
‘Torreya.’
‘Why her?’
‘You were running from Kariwak. We thought she must want you. You wouldn’t be running, else.’
‘Who told you I was running?’
‘Ross.’
Eason stared down at him, teeth bared in rage. That drunken shithead. He’d been safe on Charmaine, home dry. He made an effort to calm down. ‘When did he tell you?’
‘This morning. We were drinking. It came out. You know what he’s like.’
‘How many of you came?’
‘Three, just three.’
So Tiarella had been right about that. ‘And how many people on Boscobel know I’m here?’
‘Only us.’
‘Right. Well, thanks, I think that’s covered everything.’
The third bounty hunter, Whitley
, was easy to find. He lay, strangely motionless, in the centre of a broad circle of mangled undergrowth. Eason took a couple of cautious steps towards him, fluxpump held ready.
A vivid lightning bolt sizzled overhead.
Whitley was wrapped from his neck downwards in what looked like a spiral of tubing, thirty centimetres thick, jet black, glistening slickly. He was gurgling weakly, drooling blood. Eason squinted forward, every nerve shrieking in protest, and switched his retinal amps to infra-red. The coil of tubing glowed pale crimson, a length of it meandered through the broken grass.
‘Jesus!’
The snake’s head reared up right in front of him. It was a demonic streamlined arrowhead seventy centimetres long, the jaw open to show fangs the size of fingers. A blood-red tongue as thick as his forearm shot out, vibrating eagerly.
Training or not, Eason lurched back in terror.
‘Solange won’t hurt you,’ Tiarella shouted above the storm. ‘He’s affinity-bonded to me.’
She was standing behind him, her rain-soaked nightshirt clinging like a layer of blue skin.
‘That thing is yours?’
‘Solange? Yes. He’s another of my father’s designs. But I’m not sure he was supposed to grow this big. He does eat rather a lot of firedrakes, you see.’
The real horror was the lightness of her tone. So matter-of-fact. Crazy bitch!
Eason took another couple of steps back. The snake had been on the island the whole time. She could have set it on him whenever she wanted and he would never have known. Not until the very last instant when it came rustling out of the thick concealing undergrowth.
‘Do you want to question this one?’ Tiarella asked, gesturing at Whitely.
‘No.’
Her eyes fluttered shut.
Whitely started screaming again as the coils round him flexed sinuously. The sound was swallowed up by the crack of snapping bones, a sickeningly wet squelching. Eason looked away, jaw clenched.
‘I’ll take their boat out and scuttle it,’ Tiarella said. ‘Everyone will think the storm capsized them. You can bury the bodies. Somewhere where Althaea won’t find them, please.’
*
‘She asked me how old I thought you were,’ Rousseau slurred, then burped. ‘I said thirty, thirty-five. Around there.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ Eason said. He was sitting with the old man, their backs against a fallen tree trunk on the lagoon’s beach as the gloaming closed in. A bottle of Rousseau’s dreadful home-brew spirits had been passed to and fro for over an hour. Eason wasn’t drinking any more, though he made it look like he was.
‘You’re a good man. I see that. But Althaea, I love her. The two of you together, it’s not right. Who knows how long you’re gonna stay, eh? These people, your enemies, they could find you. Even here.’
‘Right.’
‘She would cry if you left her. She would cry more if you were taken away from her. You understand? I couldn’t stand to see her cry. Not my little Althaea.’
‘Of course. Don’t worry. I like Tiarella.’
‘Ha!’ He coughed heavily. ‘That’s a mistake, too, my friend. She’s a harsh, cold woman, that Tiarella. Cracked up completely after her Vanstone died. Never shown a single emotion since, not one. She won’t be interested in you.’
Eason grunted his interest and passed the bottle back. A sheet of low cloud hid the stars and moons. Balmy warmth and serenity were a profound contrast to the storm of the previous night. ‘She loves Althaea, that’s an emotion.’
Rousseau took a long swig, his eyelids drooping. ‘Crap. Loves nobody else, not even her own children.’ He took another swig, the liquid running down his stubble. ‘Gave one away. Said she couldn’t afford to keep it here. I pleaded, but she wouldn’t listen. Damn ice woman. Never thanks me for what I do, you know. Kept Charmaine going, I have. All for my little Althaea, not her.’ He started to slide over, the bottle slipping from his fingers.
Eason put out a hand to steady him. ‘Gave one what away?’
Rousseau only mumbled, saliva bubbling from his mouth. His eyes had closed.
‘Gave what away?’ Eason shook him.
‘Twins. She had twins,’ Rousseau sighed. ‘Beautiful twins.’ Then every muscle went limp; he sprawled on the sand as Eason let go.
Eason looked at him for a long moment. Pathetic and utterly harmless. But he was a liability.
He scanned his retinal amps round the edge of the lagoon, searching for the tell-tale rosy glow that would reveal Solange watching him. All he could see was the black and grey of the tangled trees.
Rousseau was so drunk he didn’t even react to having his head immersed in the water. Eason held him under for two minutes, then waded out and started to sweep away the incriminating tracks in the sand.
*
They held the funeral two days later. A dozen people attended from the neighbouring islands, staid men and women in sturdy clothes gathered round the grave. Althaea leant against her mother the whole time, sobbing softly. The ceremony was conducted by Lucius, a forty-year-old deacon from Tropicana’s Orthodox Church, an archipelago-based sect which had split from the Unified Christian Church a century and a half earlier. He was a broad-shouldered, powerful man who captained the Anneka, one of the Church’s traders.
Along with three men from the islands, Eason lowered the coffin he had built into the hole while Lucius led the singing of a hymn. The coffin came to rest on a bedrock of coral one and a half metres down.
After the mourners departed, Eason shovelled the rich loam back in, two of the men helping him. Nobody questioned his presence. He was the new labourer Tiarella had taken on, that was enough for them.
It started him thinking. He’d only possessed the most generalized notion for the future when he stole the Party’s antimatter. Dump it harmlessly in interstellar space, start over somewhere else. No destination in mind, simply a place where he could live without ever having to watch his back.
Looking around, he didn’t think he could find a more Arcadian location than the archipelago to live. It was just the lifestyle which was the problem, this vaguely sanctimonious poor-but-proud kick which the islanders shared. That and a snake which even hell would reject.
But changes could be made, or paid for, and snakes were not immortal.
The wake was a mawkish, stilted ordeal. Conversation between the islanders was limited to their fishing and the minutiae of large family genealogies. Althaea sat in a corner of the lounge, her mouth twitching in a kind of entreating helplessness if anyone offered their condolences. Even Tiarella allowed her relief to show when it limped to its desultory conclusion.
‘I’ve arranged with Lucius for a picking team to visit us next month,’ Tiarella told Eason after they saw off the last of the boats. ‘They’ll be coming from Oliviera, that’s one of the Church’s parish islands about twelve kilometres away. They usually come about twice a year to pick whatever fruit is ripe. Some of the crop is handed round to other parishes, the remainder is sold to a trader in Kariwak and we split the proceeds.’
‘Couldn’t you find yourself a better partner than the Church?’ he asked.
She cocked her head to one side, and gave him a derisive look. ‘It was the Church which looked after Vanstone when he was a boy, he grew up in their orphanage.’
‘Right.’ He gave up. Rousseau had been right, she was too odd.
‘I don’t accept their doctrine,’ she said. ‘But they make decent neighbours, and they’re honest. Oliviera also has several parishioners who are Althaea’s age. Their company will be good for her; she deserves something to cheer her up right now.’
*
Both moons were in the sky that night, casting an icy light that tinted Charmaine’s trees and foliage a dusky grey. Eason found Althaea arranging a garland of scarlet flowers on Rousseau’s grave, a quiet zephyr twirling her loose mane of hair. The dark blouse and skirt she had worn for the funeral seemed to soak up what little light there was, partially occluding her with
shadows.
She stood up slowly when he arrived, making no attempt to hide her dejection. ‘He wasn’t a bad man,’ she said. Her voice was husky from crying.
‘I know he wasn’t.’
‘I suppose something like this was bound to happen.’
‘Don’t dwell on it. He really loved you. The last thing he’d want was for you to be unhappy.’
‘Yes.’
He kissed her brow, and began to undo the buttons on her blouse.
‘Don’t,’ she said. But even that was an effort for her.
‘Shush.’ He soothed her with another kiss. ‘It’s all right, I know what I’m doing.’
She simply stood there with her shoulders slumped, as he knew she would. He finished unbuttoning her blouse, and pushed the fabric aside to admire her breasts. Althaea looked back at him, numb with grief.
‘I can’t make you forget,’ he said. ‘But this will show you your life has more to offer than grief.’
He led her, unresisting, back through the unruly trees to his chalet.
*
The parishioners from Oliviera were a chirpy, energetic bunch. There were twenty of them, trooping down the jetty from Anneka’s deck: teenagers and adolescents, loaded up with backpacks and wicker baskets. After Charmaine’s usual solitude they were like an invading army.
Eason had prepared a section of the island ready for them, determined the harvesting arrangement would be a prosperous one for both sides. It’d been a hectic, happy time for him since the funeral.
After the sun fell, Althaea would slip away from the house, returning night after night to the darkness and heat of his chalet. She was a sublime conquest – youthful, lithe, obedient. Taking her as his lover was sweet revenge on Tiarella. Replaced by her own daughter. She must have known, lying alone in her own bed as Althaea was ruthlessly corrupted in his.
By day, the two of them set about righting Charmaine. Eason renovated a rotary-scythe unit which fitted on the front of the mower tractor. He and Althaea took it in turns to drive the vehicle through the grove of citrus trees which was fruiting, blades hacking at the thick tangle of vines and low bushes, terrorizing the parrots and firedrakes. The chips were cleared away and piled high, making bonfires which burned for days at a time. Now they were left with broad clear avenues of trunks to walk down. That one section of island, two hundred metres long, stretching right across the saddle of coral between the lagoon and the ocean, was almost back to being a proper grove instead of a wilderness. Crooked branches still knotted together overhead, but all the fruit was accessible. Pruning could wait until later; his synaptic web didn’t have any files on that at all.