“We don’t need the slates that urgently,” Horst said lightly. “And I’m certainly not going to complain to Mr Manani if you
slacken off a bit.”
Ann’s hand moved with mechanical precision, guiding the slender blade in a rectangular pattern through the big sheet of glossy
ginger-coloured qualtook bark. She never bothered to mark out the shape, but each one came out more or less identical.
“Stops me thinking,” she said.
Horst started to pick up some of the slates. “I was sent here to encourage people to think. It’s good for you.”
“Not me. I’ve got Irley tonight. I don’t want to think about it.”
Irley was one of the Ivets; Horst knew him as a thin-faced lad, who was quiet even by their standards.
“What do you mean, you’ve got him?”
“It’s his turn.”
“Turn?”
Ann suddenly looked up, her face a mask of cold rage, most of it directed at Horst. “He’s going to fuck me. It’s his turn
tonight. Do you want it in writing, Father?”
“I…” Horst knew his face was reddening. “I didn’t know.”
“What the hell do you think we do in that big hut at night? Basket weaving? There are three girls, and fifteen boys. And the
boys all need it pretty bad, banging their fists each night isn’t enough, so they take it in turns with us, those that aren’t
AC/DC. Quinn draws up a nice little impartial list, and we stick to it. He makes sure it’s dished out fairly, and he makes
sure nobody spoils the merchandise. But Irley knows how to make it hurt without making it painful, without it showing. Do
you want to know how, Father? You want the details? The tricks he’s got.”
“Oh, my child. This must stop, at once. I’ll speak to Powel and the council.”
Ann surprised him. She burst into shrill contemptuous laughter. “God’s Brother. I can see why they dumped you out here, Father.
You’d be bloody useless back on Earth. You’re going to stop the boys from screwing me and Jemima and Kay, are you? Then where
are they going to go for it? Huh? Lotsa your good parishioners got daughters. You think they want Ivets prowling round at
night? And how about you, Father, do you want Leslie and Douglas giving your sweet little friend Jay the eye? Do you? Because
they will if they can’t get it from me. Get real, Father.” She turned back to the sheet of bark. A dismissal that was frightening
in its finality. Nothing Horst could offer was of the remotest use. Nothing.
It was there, right at the bottom of his pack where it had lain for six and a half months. Untouched,
unneeded
, because the world was full of worthy challenges, and the sun shone, and the village grew, and the plants blossomed, and
the children danced and laughed.
Horst took out the bottle, and poured a long measure. Scotch, though this thick amber liquid had never rested in oak barrels
in the Highlands. It had come straight out of a molecular filter programmed with the taste of a long-lost ideal. But it burnt
as it went down, and slowly lit up his belly and his skull, which was all he wanted from it.
How stupid. How blind to think the serpent hadn’t come with them to this fresh world. How obtuse that he, a priest, hadn’t
thought to look below the shining surface of achievement, to see the sewer beneath.
He poured another measure of Scotch. Breath coming in hot bursts between gulps. God, but it felt good, to abandon mortal failings
for a few brief hours. To hide in this warm, silent, forgiving place of sanctuary.
God’s Brother, she had said. And she was right. Satan is here amongst us, piercing our very heart.
Horst filled his glass to the very top, staring at it in abject dread. Satan: Lucifer, the light bringer. The Light Brother.
“Oh no,” he whispered. Tears filled his eyes. “Not that, not that here. Not the sects spreading over this world’s purity.
I can’t, dear Lord. I can’t fight that.
Look at me
. I’m here because I can’t.” He trailed off into sobs.
Now as always, the Lord answered only with silence. Faith alone wasn’t enough for Horst Elwes. But then he’d always known
that.
The bird was back again, thirty centimetres long, its plumage a tawny brown flecked with gold. It hovered twenty metres above
Quinn, half hidden by the jungle’s curving branches, its wings blurring in an intricate pattern as it maintained position.
He watched it out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t like any other bird he’d seen on Lalonde; their feathers were almost
like membrane scales. When he scanned it with his retinal implant on high magnification he could see it had real feathers,
Earth genealogy feathers.
He gave the hand signal, and they advanced steadily through the bush, Jackson Gael on one side of him, Lawrence Dillon on
the other. Lawrence was the youngest Ivet, seventeen, with a slim figure, skinny limbs, and sandy blond hair. Lawrence was
a gift from God’s Brother. It had taken Quinn a month to break him. There had been the favouritism, the extra food, the smiles
and making sure he wasn’t bullied by the others. Then there had been the drugs Quinn had bought from Baxter, the gentle lifts
which removed Aberdale and all its squalor and endless toil, blurring away the edges until life was easier again. The midnight
rape performed in the middle of the A-frame with everybody watching; Lawrence tied to the floor with a pentagon drawn around
him in danderil blood, his mind blown out of his skull by the drugs. Now Lawrence belonged to him, his sweet arse, the golden
length of his dick, and his mind. Lawrence’s devotion to Quinn had evolved to a form of worship.
Sex showed the others the power Quinn had. It showed them how in touch with God’s Brother he was. It showed them the glory
of freeing the serpent beast that was trapped in every man’s heart. It showed them what would happen if they failed him.
He had given them hope and power. All he demanded in return was obedience.
Demanded and received.
The big spongy leaves of the vines which shrouded the trees brushed lightly against Quinn’s damp skin as he advanced on his
prey. After months of working under the brilliant sun he was a rich all-over brown, wearing just a pair of shorts cut from
his jump suit, and the boots he’d stolen in Durringham. He’d eaten well since the Ivets started fending for themselves, and
put on muscle weight from the work he’d done around the homesteads.
Creepers were hung between the trunks like a net the jungle had woven to catch its smaller denizens. They crackled annoyingly
as he waded through them, booted feet crunching on the spindly mosslike grass that grew deep in the jungle. Birds clucked
and squawked as they arrowed through the latticework of branches. He could see the distant movement of vennals high overhead,
spiralling round trunks and branches like three-dimensional shadows.
The light filtering down through the leaf canopy was growing darker. He spotted an increasing number of young giganteas interspaced
with the usual trees. They resembled elongated cones, with an outer coating of mauve-brown fibrous hair rather than a true
bark. Their boughs emerged in rings from the trunk, spaced regularly up the entire length; they all sloped downwards at a
fifty-degree angle, supporting fanlike arrangements of twigs, densely packed as birds’ nests. Leaves grew on the upper surface
like a dark green fur.
The first time Quinn had seen a mature gigantea he thought he must have been tripping. It stood two hundred and thirty metres
high, with a base forty-five metres in diameter, rearing out of the jungle like a misplaced mountain. Creepers and vines had
wrapped themselves around its lower branches, adding a colourful speckle of multicoloured flowers to its uninspiring leaden-green
leaves. But even the vigorous vines couldn’t hope to challenge a gigantea.
Jackson clicked his fingers, and pointed ahead. Quinn risked raising his head above the shoulder-high rall bushes and spindly
light-starved saplings.
The sayce they had been tracking was padding through the skimpy undergrowth ten metres away. It was a big specimen, a buck,
its black hide scarred and flecked with blue spots, ears chewed down to stubs. It had been in a lot of fights, and won them.
Quinn smiled happily, and signalled Lawrence forwards. Jackson stayed where he was, sighting the laser rifle on the sayce’s
head. Back-up, in case their attack went wrong.
The hunt had taken a while to set up. There were thirty of Aberdale’s residents spread out through the jungle today, but they
were all nearer to the river. Quinn, Jackson, and Lawrence had made off south-west into the deeper jungle as soon as they
could, away from the river and its humidity, into the country where the sayce lurked. Powel Manani had ridden off at dawn
to help one of the savannah homesteads track down the sheep that had wandered off after their stockade had failed. Most importantly,
he’d taken Vorix with him to find the scent. Irley had arranged for the stockade fence to fail last night.
Quinn put down the pump-action shotgun he’d bought from Baxter, and took the bolas from his belt. He started spinning it above
his head, letting out a fearsome yell. To his right Lawrence was running towards the sayce, his bolas whirling frantically.
Nobody knew the Ivets used bolas. The weapon was simple enough to build, all they needed was the dried vine to link the three
stones with. They could carry the vine lengths about quite openly, using them as belts.
The sayce turned, its jaws hinging wide to let out its peculiar keening cry. It charged straight at Lawrence. The boy let
the bolas fly, yelling with adrenalin intoxication, and it caught the sayce on its forelegs, stones twisting in ever-shorter
arcs with incredible speed. Quinn’s whirled around the animal’s right flank a second later, tangling one of the hind legs.
The sayce fell, skidding through the grass and loam, its body bucking in epileptic frenzy.
Quinn ran forward, tugging the lasso off his shoulder. The sayce was thrashing about, howling, trying to get its razor-sharp
teeth into the infuriating vine strands binding its legs. He twisted the lasso, working up a good speed, studying the sayce’s
movements, then threw.
The sayce’s jaws shut between cries, and the lasso’s loop slipped over the muzzle. He jerked back with all his strength. The
jaws strained to open, but the loop held; it was silicon fibre, stolen from one of the homesteads. All three Ivets could hear
the furious and increasingly frantic cries, muted to a harsh sneezing sound.
Lawrence landed heavily on the writhing sayce, struggling to shove its kicking hind legs into his own loop of rope. Quinn
joined him, hugging the sayce’s thick gnarled hide as he fought to coil another length of rope round the forelegs.
It took another three minutes to subdue and bind the sayce completely. Quinn and Lawrence wrestled with it on the ground,
getting covered in scratches and mud. But eventually they stood, bruised and shaking from the effort, looking down at their
trussed victim lying helplessly on its side. Its green-tinted eye glared back up at them.
“Stage two,” said Quinn.
It was Jay who found Horst late in the afternoon. He was sitting slumped against a qualtook tree in the light drizzle, virtually
comatose. She giggled at how silly he was being and shook him by the shoulder. Horst mumbled incoherently then told her to
piss off.
Jay stared at him for a mortified second, her lower lip trembling, then rushed to get her mother.
“Ho boy, look at you,” Ruth said when she arrived.
Horst burped.
“Come on, get up. I’ll help you get home.”
The weight of him nearly cracked her spine as he leant against her. With a solemn-faced Jay following a couple of paces behind
they staggered across the clearing to the little cabin Horst used.
Ruth let him fall onto his cot, and watched impassively as he tried to vomit onto the duckboard floor. All that came out of
his mouth was a few beads of sour yellow stomach juices.
Jay stood in a corner and clutched at Drusilla, her white rabbit. The doe squirmed around in agitation. “Is he going to be
all right?”
“Yes,” Ruth said.
“I thought it was a heart attack.”
“No. He’s been drinking.”
“But he’s a priest,” the girl insisted.
Ruth stroked her daughter’s hair. “I know, darling. But that doesn’t mean they’re saints.”
Jay nodded wisely. “I see. I won’t tell anyone.”
Ruth turned and stared at Horst. “Why did you do it, Horst? Why now? You’d been doing so well.”
Bloodshot eyes blinked at her. “Evil,” he groaned. “They’re evil.”
“Who are?”
“Ivets. All of them. Devil’s children. Burn down the church. Can’t consecrate it now. They built it. Evil built it. Herit—here—heretical.
Burn it to cinders.”
“Horst, you’re not setting fire to anything.”
“Evil!” he slurred.
“See if there’s enough charge in his electron matrix cells to power the microwave,” Ruth told Jay. “We’ll boil some water.”
She started to rummage through Horst’s gear looking for his silver-foil sachets of coffee.
Right up until the moment the electric motors began to thrum, Marie Skibbow hadn’t believed it was actually happening. But
here it was, bubbles rising from the
Coogan
’s propeller, the gap between the boat and the jetty growing.
“I’ve done it,” she said under her breath.
The ramshackle boat began to chug its way out into the middle of the Quallheim, the prow pointing downriver, gradually picking
up speed. She stopped dropping logs into the thermal-exchange furnace’s square hopper-funnel and started to laugh. “Screw
you,” she told the village as it began to slide astern. “Screw all of you. And good fucking riddance. You won’t ever see me
again.” She shook her fist at them. Nobody was looking, not even the Ivet lads in the water. “Never ever.”
Aberdale disappeared from sight as they steered round a curve. Her laughter became suspiciously similar to weeping. She heard
someone making their way aft from the wheel-house, and started lobbing logs into the hopper again.
It was Gail Buchannan, who barely fitted on the narrow strip of decking between the cabin and the half-metre-high gunwale.
She wheezed heavily for a moment, leaning against the cabin wall, her face red and sweating below her coolie hat. “Happier
now, lovie?”