“I told you,” she said. “They lack nerve. You will be safer if I am with you. They know I can strike back.”
“Would you?”
“Perhaps. For the girl’s sake. But I don’t think we will find out.”
“Please, lady,” Jay said, “do you know where my mummy is?”
“With the others, the pernicious ones. But don’t look for her, she is no longer your mother. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she mumbled.
“We’ll get her back for you, Jay,” Horst said. “One day, somehow. I promise.”
“Such faith,” Ingrid Veenkamp said.
He thought she was mocking, but there was no trace of a smile on her face. “What about the other children?” he asked. “Why haven’t you possessed them?”
“Because they are children. No soul would want a vessel so small and frail, not when there are plentiful adults to be had. Millions on this planet alone.”
They had reached the fields, and the soft loam was clinging to Horst’s feet in huge claggy lumps. With the weight of the rucksack and Shona conspiring to push him into the ground he wasn’t even sure he could make it to the first rank of trees. Sweat was dripping from his forehead at the effort. “Send the children after me,” he wheezed. “They are hungry and they are frightened. I will take care of them.”
“You make a poor Pied Piper, Father. I’m not even sure you’ll last until nightfall.”
“Mock and scorn as you like, but send them. They’ll find me. For God knows I’ll not be able to travel far or fast.”
She dipped her head briefly. “I’ll tell them.”
Horst staggered into the jungle with Jay beside him, her big shoulder-bag knocking against her legs. He managed another fifty metres through the inimical vines and undergrowth, then sank panting painfully to his knees, face perilously red and hot.
“Are you all right?” Jay asked anxiously.
“Yes. We’ll just have to take it in short stages, that’s all. I think we’re safe for now.”
She opened the shoulder-bag’s seal. “I brought your cooler flask, I thought you might need it. I filled it with the high-vitamin orange juice you had in your room.”
“Jay, you are a twenty-four-carat angel.” He took the flask from her and drank some of the juice; she had set the thermostat so low it poured like slushy snow. They heard someone pushing their way through the undergrowth behind them, and turned. It was Russ and Andria, the first of the children.
Trudging across the savannah wasn’t quite the holiday Jay had told herself it would be. But it was lovely being away from the homestead, even if it was only going to be for a few hours. She longed to ride the horse, too; though there was no way she was going to plead with Father Horst in front of the boys.
They arrived at the Ruttan family’s old homestead after forty minutes’ walking. Untended, it had suffered from Lalonde’s rain and winds. The door which had been left open had swung to and fro until the hinges broke, and now it lay across the small porch. Animals (probably sayce) had used it for shelter at some time, adding to the disarray inside.
Jay waited with the two boys while Father Horst went in, carrying his laser hunting rifle, and checked over the three rooms. The abandoned cabin was eerie after the noise and bustle of their own homestead. She heard a distant rumble, and looked up, thinking it was approaching thunder. But the sky remained a perfect basin of blue. The noise grew louder, swelling out of the west.
Father Horst emerged from the homestead carrying a wooden chair. “It sounds like a spaceplane,” he said.
The grimed window-panes were rattling in their frames. Jay searched the sky frantically as the sound began to fade into the east. But there was nothing to be seen, the spaceplane was too high. She gave the distant mountains to the south a forlorn glance. It must have been going to the Tyrathca farmers, she thought.
“Have a hunt round,” Horst said. “See if you can find anything useful; you might try the barn as well. I’m going to the roof to cut the solar-cell sheets down.” He put the chair down under the eaves, and stood on it, squirming his way up onto the roof.
There was nothing much in the cabin; fans of grey fungus had established a foothold in the cracks between the planks, and greenish ripples of mould patterned the damp mattresses. She pulled a couple of clay mugs out from under one of the beds, and Russ found some shirts in a box below the kitchen workbench.
“They’ll be all right once we wash them,” Jay declared, holding up the smelly, soiled garments.
They had more luck in the barn: two sacks of protein-concentrate cakes used to feed young animals that had just come out of hibernation, and Mills discovered a small fission-blade saw behind a pile of old cargo-pods. “Good work!” Horst told them as he clambered down. “And look what I got, all three sheets. We’ll be able to heat the water tanks up in half the time now.”
Jay rolled up the solar-cell sheets while he lifted the sacks into the plough horse’s big saddle-bags.
Horst handed round his chill flask full of icy elwisie juice, then they set off again. Jay was glad of her hat. The sunlight was scorchingly hot on her arms and back, air rippled and shimmered all around. I never thought I’d miss the rains.
There was a river to cross before they reached the Soebergs’ homestead.
It was less than a metre deep, but about fifteen metres wide. A fast, steady flow from the mountains, winding in broad curves along the savannah’s gentle contours. The bottom was smooth rock and rounded pebbles. Snowlily plants were growing right across it, their long fronds waving in the current. Flower buds as big as her head bobbed on the surface, the first splits starting to appear in their sides.
Jay and Horst took their boots off, and waded across clinging to the side of the horse. The water was invigorating, numbing her toes. She could easily believe it must have come directly from the snow peaks themselves, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see nuggets of ice bobbing about.
After she sat on the bottom of the bank and dried her feet she thought she could walk for another hundred kilometres. Her skin was still tingling delightfully when they started up the bank.
They had been walking for another ten minutes when Horst held up his hand. “Mills, Russ, come down off the horse,” he said with quiet insistence.
The tone he used set up an uncomfortable prickling along Jay’s spine.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The Soebergs’ homestead. I think.”
She peered over the tops of the wavering grass stems. There was something up ahead, a white silhouette against the indistinct horizon, but the sun-roiled air made it hard to tell exactly what.
Horst fished his optical intensifier from a pocket. It was a curving band of black composite that fitted over his eyes. He studied the scene ahead for a while, his right forefinger adjusting the magnification control.
“They are coming back,” he said in a soft murmur.
“Can I see?” she asked.
He handed her the band. It was large and quite heavy; the edges annealed to her skin with a pinching sensation.
She thought she was looking at some kind of AV recording, a drama play perhaps. Sitting in the middle of the savannah was a lovely old three-storey manor house, surrounded by a wide swath of tidy lawns. It was made of white stone, with a grey slate roof and large bay windows.
Several people were standing under the portico.
“How do they do that?” Jay asked, more curious than alarmed.
“When you sell your soul to Satan, the material rewards are generous indeed. It is what he asks in return you should fear.”
“But Ingrid Veenkamp said—”
“I know what she said.” He removed the band from her face, and she blinked up at him. “She is a lost soul, she knows not what she does. Lord forgive her.”
“Do they want our homestead too?” Jay asked.
“I shouldn’t think so. Not if they can build that in a week.” He sighed, and took one final look at t
he miniature mansion. “Come along, we’ll see if we can find a nice fat danderil. If we get back early I’ll have time to mince the meat, and you can have burgers tonight. What do you say?”
“Yeah!” the two boys chanted in chorus, grinning.
They turned round, and started to trek back across the heat-soaked savannah to the homestead.
Kelven Solanki floated through the open hatch into the Arikara’s bridge.
The blue-grey compartment was the largest he’d ever seen in a warship before. As well as the normal flight crew it had to accommodate the admiral’s twenty-strong squadron-coordination staff. Most of their couches were empty now. The flagship was orbiting Takfu, the largest gas giant in the Rosenheim star system, taking on fuel.
Commander Mircea Kroeber was stretched out along his couch, supervising the fuelling operation with three other crew-members. Kelven had seen the cryogenic tanker as Ilex docked with the huge flagship. A series of spherical tanks stacked on top of a reaction drive section, and sprouting thermo-dump panels like the wings of a mutant butterfly.
The squadron of twenty-five ships was in formation around the Arikara, holding station five hundred kilometres away from Uhewa, the Edenist habitat which was resupplying them with both fuel and consumables. It was just one of the priority operations Ilex’s arrival in the star system had kicked off ten hours ago. Rosenheim’s planetary government had immediately placed a restriction on all starship passengers and crew wanting to visit the surface. They now had to go through a rigorous screening process to make sure Laton wasn’t amongst them, creating a vast backlog in the low orbit port stations. The system’s asteroid settlements had swiftly followed suit. Reserve naval officers were being called up, and the 7th Fleet elements present in the system had been put on alert status along with the national navy.
Kelven was beginning to feel like a plague carrier, infecting the Confederation with panic.
Rear-Admiral Meredith Saldana was hanging in front of a console in the C&C section of the bridge, his soles touching the decking’s stikpads. He was wearing an ordinary naval ship-suit, but it seemed so much smarter on him, braid stripes shining brightly on his arm. A couple of his staff officers were in attendance behind him. One of the console’s AV projection pillars was emitting a low-frequency laser sparkle. When Kelven looked straight at it he saw Jantrit breaking apart.
Meredith Saldana datavised a shutdown order at the console as Kelven let the stikpad claim his shoes. The Rear-Admiral was six centimetres taller than him, and possessed a more distinguished appearance than the First Admiral. Could the Saldanas sequence dignity into their genes?
“Commander Kelven Solanki reporting as ordered, sir.”
Meredith Saldana gave him a frank stare. “You are my Lalonde advisory officer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just been promoted, Commander?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It always shows.”
“Sir, I have your orders flek from the First Admiral.” Kelven held it out.
Meredith Saldana took the black coin-sized disk with some reluctance. “I don’t know which is worse. Three months of these ridiculous ceremonial fly-bys and flag-waving exercises in the Omutan system, or a combat mission which is going to get us shot at by unknown hostiles.”
“Lalonde needs our help, sir.”
“Was it bad, Kelven?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I suppose I’d better access this flek, hadn’t I? All we’ve received so far are the emergency deployment orders from Fleet headquarters and the news about Laton showing up again.”
“There is a full situation briefing included, sir.”
“Excellent. If we run to schedule we should be departing for Lalonde in eight hours. I’ve requested another three voidhawks be assigned to the squadron for liaison and interdiction duties. Is there anything else you think I need immediately? This mission’s code rating gives me the authority to requisition almost any piece of hardware the navy has in the system.”
“No, sir. But you will have a fourth extra voidhawk, Ilex has been assigned to the squadron as well.”
“You can never have too many voidhawks,” Meredith said lightly. There was no response from the young commander. “Carry on, Kelven. Find yourself a berth, and get settled in. Report for duty here to me an hour before departure time, you can give me a first-hand account of what we can expect. I always feel a lot happier being brought up to date by someone with hands-on experience. Meanwhile I suggest you get some sleep, you look like you need it.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”
Kelven twisted his feet free of the stikpad, and pushed off towards the hatch.
Meredith Saldana watched him manoeuvre through the open oval without touching the rim. Commander Solanki seemed to be a very tense man. But then I’d probably be the same in his place, the admiral thought. He held up the flek with a sense of foreboding, then slotted it into his couch player to find out exactly what he was up against.
Horst was always glad to get back to the homestead and greet his scampish charges; after all, when all was said and done, they were only children.
And profoundly shocked children at that. They should never be left on their own, and if he had his way they never would. Practicality dictated otherwise, of course, and there had never yet been any major disaster while he was roaming the savannah for meat and foraging the other homesteads. To some extent he had grown blasé about his trips. But this time, after encountering the possessed out at the Soeberg homestead, he had forced the return pace, stopping only to kill a danderil, his mind host to a whole coven of thoughts along the theme of what if.
When he topped a small rise six hundred metres away and saw the familiar wood cabin with the children sporting around outside he felt an eddy of relief. Thank you, Lord, he said silently.
He slowed down for the last length, giving Jay a respite. Sweat made her blue blouse cling to her skinny frame. The heat was becoming a serious problem. It seemed to have banished the hardy chikrows back into the jungle. Even the danderil he’d shot had been sheltering in the shade of one of the savannah’s scarce trees.
Horst blinked up at the unforgiving sky. Surely they don’t mean to burn this world to cinders? They have form now, stolen bodies; and all the physical needs, urges, and failings which go with them.
He squinted at the northern horizon. There seemed to be an effete pink haze above the jungle, dusting the sharp seam between sky and land, like the flush of dawn refracted over a deep ocean. The harder he tried to focus upon it, the more insubstantial it became.
He couldn’t believe it was a natural meteorological rara avis. More an omen. His humour, already tainted by the Soeberg homestead, sank further.
Too much is happening at once. Whatever polluted destiny they are manufacturing, it is reaching its zenith.
They were a hundred metres from the cabin when the children spotted them.
A scrum of small bodies came running over the grass, Danny in the lead.
Both of the homestead’s dogs chased around them, barking loudly.
“Freya’s here,” the boy yelled out at the top of his voice. “Freya’s here, Father. Isn’t it wonderful?”
Then they were all clinging to him, shouting jubilantly and smiling up with enthusiasm as he laughed and patted them and hugged them. For a moment he revelled in the contact, the hero returning. A knight protector and Santa Claus rolled into one. They expected so much of him.
“What did you find in the cabins, Father?”
“You were quick today.”
“Please, Father, tell Barnaby to give my reading tutor block back.”
“Was there any more chocolate?”
“Did you find any shoes for me?”
“You promised to look for some story fleks.”
With his escort swirling round and chattering happily, Horst led the horse over to the cabin. Russ and Mills had slithered off its back to talk with their friends.
“When did F
reya arrive?” Horst asked Danny. He remembered the dark-haired girl from Aberdale, Freya Chester, about eight or nine, whose parents had brought a large variety of fruit trees with them. Kerry Chester’s grove had always been one of the better maintained plots around the village.
“About ten minutes ago,” the boy said. “It’s great, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It certainly is.” Remarkable, in fact. He was surprised she had survived this long. Most of the children had turned up during the first fortnight while they were still camping in a glade a kilometre away from Aberdale. Five of them walking from Schuster. They had said a woman was with them for most of the journey—Horst suspected it was Ingrid Veenkamp.
Several others, the youngest ones, he had found himself as they wandered aimlessly through the jungle. He and Jay made a regular circuit of the area round the village in the hope of finding still more. And for every one they did save he suffered the images of ten more lost in the ferocious undergrowth, stalked by sayce and slowly starving to death.
At the end of a fortnight it was obvious that the messy, hot, damp glade was totally impractical as a permanent site. By that time he had over twenty children to look after. It was Jay who suggested they try a homestead cabin, and four days later they were safely installed. Only five more children had turned up since then, all of them in a dreadful state as they tramped down the overgrown track between Aberdale and the savannah. Dispossessed urchins, totally unable to fend for themselves, sleeping in the jungle and stealing food from the village when they could, which wasn’t anything like often enough. The last had been Eustice, two weeks ago when Horst skirted the jungle on a hunting trip; a skeleton with skin, her clothes reduced to tattered grey rags. She couldn’t walk, if the Alsatian hadn’t scented her and raised the alarm she would have been dead inside of a day. As it was, he had nearly lost her.
“Where is Freya?” Horst asked Danny.
“Inside, Father, having a rest. I said she could use your bed.”
“Good lad. You did the right thing.”