“Believe,” he whispered. “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name.”
The Brigitte/Ingrid woman bowed her head.
Horst asked the question that should never be asked: “Where? Where, damn you!”
“Nowhere. There is nothing for us. Do you hear? Nothing!”
“You lie.”
“There is nothing, just emptiness. I’m sorry.” She took an unsteady breath, seemingly gathering up a remnant of dignity. “You
must leave now. They are coming back.”
Horst shut the flap on his rucksack and sealed it. “Where are the rest of the villagers?”
“Gone. They hunt fresh bodies for other souls trapped in the beyond, it has become their quest. I haven’t the stomach for
it, nor have the others who remained in Aberdale. But you take care, Father. Your spirit is hale, but you could never withstand
one of us for long.”
“They want more people to possess?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Together we are strong. Together we can change what is. We can destroy death, Father. We shall bring eternity into existence
here on this planet, perhaps even across the entire Confederation. I shall stay as I am for all time now; ageless, changeless.
I am alive again, I won’t give that up.”
“This is lunacy,” he said.
“No. This is wonder, it is our miracle.”
Horst pulled his rucksack onto his back, and picked Shona up. Several adults had started to gather around the church. He walked
down the steps pointedly disregarding them, Jay pressing into his side. They stared at him, but no one made a move. He turned
and headed for the jungle, mildly surprised to see Ingrid Veenkamp walking with him.
“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 space-plane 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 Soe-bergs’ 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 the 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 re-supplying 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.”