Thermo-dump panels slid out of the hull, and the flight computer plotted a vector which would deliver the starship to a five
hundred kilometre equatorial orbit. Zaretsky triggered the fusion drive and the ship moved in at a tenth of a gee.
Santa Clara
was a large cargo clipper, paying a twice-annual visit to the Tyrathca settlements, bringing new colonists and shipping out
their rygar crop. There were over fifty Tyrathca breeders on board, all of them shuffling round the cramped life-support capsules;
the dominant xenocs refused to use zero-tau pods (though their vassal castes were riding the voyage in temporal suspension).
Captain Zaretsky didn’t particularly like being chartered by Tyrathca merchants, but they always paid on time, which endeared
them to the ship’s owners.
Once the
Santa Clara
was underway, he opened channels to the nine starships in parking orbit. They told him about the riots, and rumours of invaders,
and the fighting in Durringham which had lasted four days. There had been no information coming up from the city for two days
now, they said, and they couldn’t decide what to do.
Zaretsky didn’t share their problem.
Santa Clara
had a medium-sized VTOL spaceplane in its hangar, his contract didn’t call for any contact with the human settlements. Whatever
rebellion the Ivets were staging, it didn’t affect him.
When he opened a channel to the Tyrathca farmers on the planet they reported a few skirmishes with humans who were “acting
oddly;” but they had prepared their rygar crop, and were waiting for the equipment and new farmers the
Santa Clara
was bringing. He acknowledged the call, and continued the slow powered fall into orbit, the
Santa Clara
’s fusion exhaust drawing a slender thread of incandescence across the stars.
Jay Hilton sat on the rock outcrop fifty metres from the savannah homestead cabin, her legs crossed, head tipped back to watch
the starship decelerating into orbit, and mournful curiosity pooling in her eyes. The weeks of living with Father Horst had
brought about a considerable change in her appearance. For a start her lush silver-white hair had been cropped into a frizz
barely a centimetre long, making it easier to keep clean. She had cried bucketfuls the day Father Horst took the scissors
to it. Her mother had always looked after it so well, washing it with special shampoo brought from Earth, brushing it to a
shine each night. Her hair was her last link with the way things used to be, her last hope that they might be that way again.
When Father Horst had finished his snipping she knew in her heart that her most precious dream, that one day she’d wake up
to find everything had returned to normal, was just a stupid child’s imagination. She had to be tough now, had to be adult.
But it was so hard.
I just want Mummy back, that’s all.
The other children looked up to her. She was the oldest and strongest of the group. Father Horst relied on her a great deal
to keep the younger ones in order. A lot of them still cried at night. She heard them in the darkness, crying for their lost
parents or siblings, crying because they wanted to go back to their arcology where none of this horrid confusion and upset
happened.
Dawn’s rosy crown gave way to a tide of blue which swept across the sky, erasing the stars. Rennison faded to a pale crescent,
and the starship’s exhaust became more difficult to see. Jay unfolded her legs and clambered down off the rocks.
The homestead on the edge of the savannah was a simple wooden structure, its solar-cell roof sheets glinting in the strong
morning light. Two of the dogs, a Labrador and an Alsatian, were out and about. She patted them as she went up the creaking
wooden stairs to the porch. The cows in the paddock were making plaintive calls, their udders heavy with milk.
Jay went in through the front door. The big lounge whiffed strongly—of food, and cooking, and too many people. She sniffed
the air suspiciously. Someone had wet their bedding again, probably more than one.
The floor was a solid patchwork of sleeping-bags and blankets, their occupants only just beginning to stir. Grass stuffing
from the makeshift mattresses of canvas sacks had leaked out again.
“Come on! Come on!” Jay clapped her hands together as she pulled the reed blinds open. Streamers of gold-tinged sunlight poured
in, revealing children blinking sleep from their eyes, wincing at the brightness. Twenty-seven of them were crammed together
on the mayope floorboards, ranging from a toddler about two years old up to Danny, who was nearly the same age as Jay. All
of them with short haircuts and rough-tailored adult clothes which never quite fitted. “Up you get! Danny, it’s your gang’s
turn to do the milking. Andria, you’re in charge of cooking this morning: I want tea, oatmeal, and boiled eggs for breakfast.”
A groan went up, which Jay ignored; she was just as fed up with the changeless diet as they were. “Shona, take three girls
with you and collect the eggs, please.”
Shona gave a timid smile as well as she could, grateful for being included in the work assignments and not being treated any
differently to the others. Jay had drilled herself not to flinch from looking at the poor girl. The six-year-old’s face was
covered in a bandage mask of glossy translucent epithelium membrane, with holes cut out for her eyes and mouth and nose. Her
burn marks were still a livid pink below the overlapping membrane strips, and her hair was only just beginning to grow back.
Father Horst said she ought to heal without any permanent scarring, but he was forever grieving over the lack of medical nanonic
packages.
Coughs and grumbles and high-pitched chattering filled the room as the children struggled out of bed and into their clothes.
Jay saw little Robert sitting brokenly on the side of his sleeping-bag, head in his hands, not bothering to get dressed. “Eustice,
you’re to get this room tidied up, and I want all the blankets aired properly today.”
“Yes, Jay,” she answered sullenly.
The outside door was flung open as five or six children rushed out laughing, and ran for the lean-to, which they used as a
toilet.
Jay picked her way over the rectangles of bedding to Robert. He was only seven, a black-skinned boy with fluffy blond hair.
Sure enough, the navy blue pants he wore were damp.
“Pop down to the stream,” she said kindly. “There will be plenty of time to wash before breakfast.”
His head was lowered even further. “I didn’t mean to,” he whispered, on the verge of tears.
“I know. Remember to wash out your sleeping-bag as well.” She caught the sound of someone giggling. “Bo, you help him take
the bag down to the stream.”
“Oh, Jay!”
“It’s all right,” Robert said. “I can manage.”
“No, you won’t, not if you want to be back in time for breakfast.” The big table was already being pulled out from the kitchen
corner by three of the boys, scraping loudly across the floor. They were shouting for people to get out of the way.
“Don’t see why I should have to help him,” Bo said intransigently. She was an eight-year-old, meaty for her age, with chubby
red cheeks. Her size was often deployed to help boss the smaller children around.
“Chocolate,” Jay said in warning.
Bo blushed, then stalked over to Robert. “Come on then, you.”
Jay knocked once on Father Horst’s door and walked in. The room had been the homestead’s main bedroom when they moved in;
it still had a double bed in it, but most of the floor space was taken up with packets, jars, and pots of food they’d taken
from the other deserted homestead cabins. Clothes and cloth and powered tools, anything small or light enough to be carried,
filled the second bedroom in piles that were taller than Jay.
Horst was getting up as the girl came in. He’d already got his trousers on, thick denim jeans with leather patches, a working
man’s garment, requisitioned from one of the other savannah homesteads. She picked up the faded red sweatshirt from the foot
of the bed and handed it to him. He had lost a lot of weight—a lot of fat—over the last weeks; slack bands of flesh hung loosely
from his torso. But even the folds were shrinking, and the muscles they covered were harder than they had ever been, though
at night they felt like bands of ignescent metal. Horst spent most of every day working, hard manual work; keeping the cabin
in shape, repairing and strengthening the paddock fence, building a chicken run, digging the latrines; then in the evening
there would be prayers and reading lessons. At night he dropped into bed as if a giant had felled him with its fist. He had
never known a human body could perform such feats of stamina, least of all one as old and decrepit as his.
Yet he never wavered, never complained. There was a fire in his eyes that had been ignited by his predicament. He was embarked
on a crusade to survive, to deliver his charges to safety. The bishop would be hard pressed to recognize that dreamy well-meaning
Horst Elwes who had left Earth last year. Even thinking about his earlier self with its disgusting self-pity and weaknesses
repelled him.
He had been tested as few had ever been before, his faith thrown onto towering flames that had threatened to reduce him to
shreds of black ash so powerful was the doubt and insecurity fuelling them: but he had emerged triumphant. Born of fire, and
reforged, his conviction in self, and Christ the Saviour, was unbreakable.
And he had the children to thank. The children who were now his life and his task. The hand of God had brought them together.
He would not fail them, not while there was a breath left in his body.
He smiled at Jay who was as grave faced as she always was at the break of day. The sounds of the usual morning bedlam were
coming through the door as bedding was put away and the furniture brought out.
“How goes it today, Jay?”
“Same as always.” She sat on the end of the bed as he pulled on his heavy hand-tooled boots. “I saw a starship arrive. It’s
coming down into low orbit.”
He glanced up from his laces. “Just one?”
“Uh huh,” she nodded vigorously.
“Ah well, it’s not to be today, then.”
“When?”
she demanded. Her small beautiful face was screwed up in passionate rage.
“Oh, Jay.” He pulled her against him, and rocked her gently as she sniffled. “Jay, don’t give up hope. Not you.” It was the
one thing he promised them, repeating it every night at prayers so they would believe. On a world far away lived a wise and
powerful man called Admiral Alek-sandrovich, and when he heard what terrible things had happened on Lalonde he would send
a fleet of Confederation Navy starships to help its people and drive away the demons who possessed them. The soldiers and
the navy crews would come down in huge spaceplanes and rescue them, and then their parents, and finally put the world to rights
again. Every night Horst said it, with the door locked against the wind and rain, and the windows shuttered against the dark
empty savannah. Every night he believed and they believed. Because God would not have spared them if it was not for a purpose.
“They will come,” he promised. He kissed her forehead. “Your mother will be so proud of you when she returns to us.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
She pondered this. “Robert wet his bed again,” she said.
“Robert is a fine boy.” Horst stomped on the second boot. They were two sizes too large, which meant he had to wear three
pairs of socks, which made his feet sweat, and smell.
“We should get him something,” she said.
“Should we now? And what’s that?”
“A rubber mat. There might be one in another cabin. I could look,” she said, eyes all wide with innocence.
Horst laughed. “No, Jay, I haven’t forgotten. I’ll take you out hunting this morning, and this time it will be Danny who stays
behind.”
Jay let out a squeal of excitement and kicked her legs in the air. “Yes! Thank you, Father.”
He finished tying his laces and stood up. “Don’t mention the starship, Jay. When the navy comes it will be in a mighty flotilla,
with their exhaust plumes so strong and bright they will turn night into day. Nobody will mistake it. But in the meantime
we must not pour cold water on the others’ hopes.”
“I understand, Father. I’m not as dumb as them.”
He ruffled her hair, which she pretended not to like, wriggling away. “Come along now,” he said. “Breakfast first. Then we’ll
get our expedition sorted out.”
“I suppose Russ will come with us?” she asked in a martyred voice.
“Yes, he will. And stop thinking uncharitable thoughts.”
The children already had most of the bedding off the floor. Two boys were sweeping up the dried grass from the sack mattresses
(Must find a better replacement, Horst thought). Eustice’s voice could be heard through the open door, yelling instructions
to the children airing the linen outside.
Horst helped to pull the big table into the middle of the room. Andria’s team were scurrying round the kitchen corner, tending
the equipment and the meal. The big urn was just starting to boil, and the three IR plates were heating up the boiling pans
ready for the eggs.
Once again Horst gave a fast prayer of thanks that the solar-powered equipment functioned so well. It was easy enough for
the children to use without hurting themselves, and most of them had helped their mothers with the cooking before. All they
needed was some direction, as they did in every task he set them. He didn’t like to think how he would have coped if the homestead
hadn’t been empty.
It took another fifteen minutes before Andria’s cooking party were ready to serve breakfast. Several of the eggs Shona brought
back were broken, so Horst himself scrambled them up in a pan on a spare IR plate. It was easier to feed Jill, the toddler,
that way.
The tea was finally ready, and the eggs boiled. Everyone lined up with their mug and cutlery and eggcup, and filed past the
kitchen bar which doubled as a serving counter. For a few wonderful minutes the room was actually quiet as the children drank,
and cracked their eggs open, and pulled faces as they munched the dry oatmeal biscuits, dunking them in the tea to try and
soften them up first. Horst looked round his extended family and tried not to feel frightened at the responsibility. He adored
them in a way he had never done with his parishioners.