“Much!” Marie beamed a sunlight smile.
“It’s not the kind of place a girlie like you should be living in. You’ll be much better off downriver.”
“You don’t have to tell me. God, it was awful. I hated it. I hate animals, I hate vegetables, I hate fruit trees, I hate the
jungle. I hate wood!”
“You’re not going to be trouble for us are you, lovie?”
“Oh no, I promise. I never signed a settlement contract with the LDC, I was still legally a minor when we left Earth. But
I’m over eighteen now, so I can leave home any time I want to.”
A nonplussed frown creased the folds of spare flesh on Gail’s gibbous face for a second. “Aye, well you can stop loading the
hopper now, there’s enough logs in there to last the rest of today. We’re only sailing for a couple of hours. Lennie’ll moor
somewhere below Schuster for the night.”
“Right.” Marie stood up straight, hands pressed against her side. Her heart was racing, pounding away against her ribs. I
did it!
“You can start preparing supper in a while,” Gail said.
“Yes, of course.”
“I expect you’d like a shower first, lovie. Get cleaned up a bit.”
“A shower?” Marie thought she’d misheard.
She hadn’t. It was in the cabin between the galley and the bunks, an alcove with a curtain across the front, broad enough
to fit Gail. When she looked down, Marie could see the river through the gaps between the deck boards. The pump and the heater
ran off electricity from the thermal-exchange furnace, producing a weak warm spray from the copper nozzle. To Marie it was
more luxurious than a sybarite’s jacuzzi. She hadn’t had a shower since her last day on Earth. Dirt was something you lived
with in Aberdale and the savannah homesteads. It got into the pores, under nails, scaled your hair. And it never came out,
not completely. Not in cold stream water, not without decent soap and gels.
The first sluice of water from the nozzle disgusted her as it drained away. It was
filthy
. But Gail had given her a bar of unperfumed green soap, and a bottle of liquid soap for her hair. Marie started scrubbing
with a vengeance, singing at the top of her voice.
Gwyn Lawes never even knew the Ivets were there until the club smashed into the small of his back. He blacked out for a while
from the pain. Certainly he didn’t remember falling. One minute he was lining up his electromagnetic rifle on a danderil,
anticipating the praise he would earn from the rest of the hunting party. And the next thing he knew was that there was loam
in his mouth, he could barely breathe, and his spine was sheer agony. All he could do was retch weakly.
Hands grabbed his shoulders, and he was turned over. Another blast of fire shot up his spine. The world shuddered nauseously.
Quinn, Lawrence, and Jackson were standing above him,
grinning broadly. They were smothered in mud, hair hanging in soiled dreadlocks, spittle saturating their tufty beards, scratches
bleeding, dribbles of red blood curdling with the mud. They were savages reincarnated out of Earth’s dawn times. He whimpered
in fright.
Jackson bent down, teeth bared with venomous joy. A ball of cloth was thrust into Gwyn’s mouth, tied into place with a gag.
Breathing became even harder, his nose flaring, sucking down precious oxygen. Then he was turned again, face pressed into
the wet ground. All he could see was muddy grass. He could feel thin, hard cord binding his wrists and ankles. Hands began
to search him, sliding into every pocket, patting the fabric. There was a hesitant fumble when fingers found the inside leg
pouch on his dungarees trousers, tracing the shape of his precious Jovian Bank credit disk.
“Got it, Quinn,” Lawrence’s voice called triumphantly.
Fingers gripped Gwyn’s right thumb, bending it back.
“Pattern copied,” Quinn said. “Let’s see what he’s got.” There was a short pause, then a whistle. “Four thousand three hundred
fuseodollars. Hey, Gwyn, where’s your faith in your new planet?”
Cruel laughter followed.
“OK, it’s transferred. Lawrence, put it back where you found it. They can’t activate it once he’s dead, they’ll never know
it’s been emptied.”
Dead. The word cut through Gwyn’s sluggish thoughts. He groaned, trying to lift himself. A boot slammed into his ribs. He
screamed, or tried to. The gag was virtually suffocating him.
“He’s got some handy gear here, Quinn,” Lawrence said. “Fission knife, firelighter, and that’s a personal guido block. Spare
power mags for the rifle, too.”
“Leave it,” Quinn ordered. “If anything’s missing when they find him, they might get suspicious. We can’t afford that, not
yet. It will all belong to us in the end.”
They lifted Gwyn, carrying him on their shoulders like some kind of trophy. He kept drifting in and out of consciousness as
he jounced about, twigs and vines slapping against him.
The light was darker when they finally slung him down. Gwyn looked about, and saw the smooth ebony trunk of an old deirar
tree twenty metres away, its single giant umbrella-leaf casting a wide circular shadow. A sayce had been tethered to it, straining
at the unbreakable silicon-fibre rope, forelegs scrabbling at the loam as it tried to reach its captors, its snapping jaws
dripping long chains of saliva. Gwyn suddenly knew what was going to happen next. His bladder gave out.
“Get it riled good and proper,” Quinn ordered.
Jackson and Lawrence started throwing stones at the sayce. It keened in torment, its body jacking about as though an electric
current was being run through it.
Gwyn saw a pair of boots appear twenty centimetres from his nose. Quinn squatted down. “Know what’s going to happen afterwards,
Gwyn? We’re going to be assigned to help out your widow. Everyone else is busy with their own little plots of heaven. So it’ll
be the Ivets who get dumped on. Once again. I’m going to be one of them, Gwyn. I’m going to be a regular visitor to poor,
grieving Rachel. She’ll like me, I’ll make sure of that. Just like you and all the others, you want to believe that everything’s
so perfect on this planet. You convinced yourselves we’re just a bunch of regular lads who got a bad break in life. Anything
else would have cracked your dream open and made you face reality. Illusion is easy. Illusion is the loser’s way out. Your
way. You and all the others grubbing round in the dirt and the rain. In a couple of months I’ll be in the bed you made, under
the roof you sweated over, and I’ll have my dick rammed up inside Rachel making her squeal like a pig in heat. I hope you
hate that idea, Gwyn. I hope it makes you sick inside. Because that’s not the worst. Oh, no. Once I’m through with her, I’ll
have Jason. Your shiny-eyed beautiful son. I’ll be his new father. I’ll be his lover. I’ll be his owner. He’ll be joining
us, Gwyn, me and the Ivets. I’ll bind him to the Night, I’ll show him where his serpent beast is hidden within. He’s not going
to be a dickhead loser like his old man. You’re only the first, Gwyn. One by one I will come to you all, and very few will
be given the chance to follow me into darkness. Inside of six months this whole village, the only hope for a future you ever
had, will belong to God’s Brother.
“Do you despise me, Gwyn? I want you to. I want you to hate me as much as I hate you and all you stand for. Then you will
understand that I’m speaking the truth. You will go to your pitiful Lord Jesus weeping in terror. And you will find no comfort
there, because the Light Bringer will be the ultimate victor. You will lose in death, as you have lost in life. You made the
wrong choice in life, Gwyn. My path is the one you should have walked. And now it’s too late.”
Gwyn strained and wheezed against the gag until he thought his lungs would burst from the effort. It made no difference, the
shriek of hatred and all the threats, the curses condemning Quinn to an eternity of damnation, were left jailed inside his
skull.
Quinn’s hands curled round the lapels of Gwyn’s shirt, hauling him upright. Jackson took his feet, and the two of them swung
him back and forth, building momentum. They let go, and Gwyn’s tumbling body flew in a shallow trajectory right over the top
of the berserk sayce. He hit the loam with a dull thud, face contorted with insane dread. The sayce leapt.
Quinn put his arms round the shoulders of Lawrence and Jackson as the three of them watched the sayce mauling the man, its
teeth tearing out great strips of flesh. The power to bring death was equal to that of bringing about life. He felt enraptured
as the hot scarlet blood flowed into the soil.
“After life, death,” he chanted. “After darkness, light.”
He looked up, and stared round until he found the brown bird. It was perched up in a cherry oak’s branches, head cocked on
one side, observing the carnage.
“You’ve seen what we are,” Quinn called out. “You’ve seen us naked. You’ve seen we’re not afraid. We should talk. I think
we have a lot to offer each other. What have you got to lose?”
The bird blinked as if in surprise, and launched itself into the air.
Laton let the kestrel’s wonderfully clear sensorium fade from his mind. The sensation of air flowing over wings remained for
several minutes. Flying the predator via affinity was always an experience he enjoyed, the freedom granted to creatures of
the air was unsurpassed.
The ordinary world rushed back in on him.
He was in his study, sitting in the lotus position on a black velvet cushion. It was an unusual room, an ovoid, five metres
high, its curving walls a smooth polished wood. A cluster of electrophorescent cells were fitted flush with the apex, supplying
a glimmer of jade light. The single cushion on the cup of the floor was the only thing to break the symmetry; even the door
was hard to see, its lines blending with the grain.
The study possessed a unifying simplicity, freeing his mind of distractions. In here, his body motionless, his affinity expanding
his consciousness through bitek processors and incorporated brains, his mentality was raised by an order of magnitude. It
was a hint of what could be. A pale shadow of the goal he chased before his exile.
Laton remained sitting, thinking about Quinn Dexter and the atrocity he had perpetrated. There had been a lurid flash of gratification
in Dexter’s eyes as that helpless colonist had been thrown to the sayce. Yet he must be more than a brainless sadistic brute.
The fact that he had recognized the kestrel for what it was, and worked out what it represented, was proof of that.
Who is God’s Brother?
Laton asked the house’s sub-sentient bitek processor network.
Satan. The Christian devil.
Is this a term in wide use?
The term is common among Earth’s waster population. Most arcologies have sects built up around the worship of this deity.
Their priest/acolyte hierarchy is a simple variant on that of the more standard officer/soldier criminal organization. Those
at the top control those at the bottom through a quasi-religious doctrine, and status is enforced by initiation rituals. Their
theology states that after Armageddon has been fought, and the universe abandoned to lost souls, Satan will return bringing
light. The sects are unusual only in the degree of violence involved to maintain discipline among the ranks. Because of the
level of devotion involved, the authorities have been generally unsuccessful in eradicating the sects.
That explains Quinn, then, Laton thought to himself. But why did he want the money in the colonist’s Jovian Bank credit disk?
If he was successful in taking over Aberdale no trading boat would ever stop there; he couldn’t buy anything. In fact, the
Governor would be more than likely to send in a posse of sheriffs and deputies to stamp out any Ivet rebellion as soon as
word leaked out. Quinn must know that, he wasn’t stupid.
The last thing Laton wanted was for the outside world to show an interest in Schuster County. One marshal digging around was
an acceptable risk, he’d known that when he took the colonists from their homesteads. But a whole team of them scouting through
the jungle in search of renegade Devil worshippers was totally out of the question.
He had to know more of Quinn Dexter’s plans. They would have to meet, just like Quinn had suggested. Somehow the idea of agreeing
to his proposition was vaguely disturbing.
The
Coogan
was moored against a small sandy spit an hour’s sailing downriver from Schuster town. Two siliconfibre ropes had been fastened
to trees on the shore, holding the tramp trader secure against the current.
Marie Skibbow sat on the prow, letting the warm evening air dry the last traces of water from her hair. Even the humidity
had fallen off. Rennison, Lalonde’s largest moon, was rising slowly above the dusky-grey treetops, adding a glimmering oyster
light to the gloaming. She sat back against the flimsy cabin wall and watched it contentedly.
Water lapped gently against the
Coogan
’s twin hulls. Fish made occasional ripples on the glass-smooth surface.
They’ve probably realized I’ve gone by now. Mother will cry, and Father will explode; Frank won’t care, and Paula will be
sad. They’ll all worry about how it will affect them and the animals not having an extra hand at their beck and call all day
long. Not one of them will think about what I want, what’s good for me.
She heard Gail Buchannan calling, and made her way back to the wheel-house.
“We thought you’d fallen overboard, lovie,” Gail said. A splash of light from the galley shone out, showing the sweat beading
on her blubbery arms. At supper she had eaten more than half of all the food Marie prepared for the three of them.
“No. I was watching the moon come up.”
Gail gave her a lopsided wink. “Very romantic. Get you in the mood.”
Marie felt the hairs on the nape of her neck rising. She was cold despite the jungle’s breath.
“I’ve got your night clothes ready,” Gail said.
“Night clothes?”
“Very pretty. I did the lacework myself. Len likes his brides to have frills. You won’t find better this side of Durringham,”
she said generously. “That T-shirt’s nice and tight. But it hardly flatters your figure, now does it?”