“That’s why we have sheep and cattle; we’re exporting meat. But I can pay your carriage costs in electricity, we have our
own heat shaft.”
“Our power cells are seventy percent charged.”
The haggling went on for a good forty minutes. When Susannah came in she found them on their third round of Norfolk Tears.
She sat on the side of Luca’s chair, his arm around her waist. “How’s it going?” she asked.
“I hope you like fish,” Luca told her. “We’ve just bought three tons of it.”
“Oh bloody hell.” She plucked the glass of Tears from his hand, and sipped thoughtfully. “I suppose there’s room in the freezer
room. I’ll have to have a word with Cook.”
“Lionel has some interesting news, as well.”
“Oh?” She gave the trader a pleasant, enquiring look.
Lionel smiled, covering a mild curiosity. Like Luca, Susannah was letting her host body’s age show. The first middle-aged
people he’d seen since Norfolk came to this realm. “We got our fish from a ship in Holbeach, the
Cranborne
. They were docked there a week ago, trading their cargo for an engine repair. Should still be there.”
“Yes?” she asked.
“The
Cranborne
is a merchant multitramp,” Luca said. “She just sails between islands picking up cargo and passengers, whatever pays; she
can fish, dredge, harvest mintweed, icebreak, you name it.”
“Her current crew have rigged her with nets,” Lionel said. “There’s not much charter work going at the moment, so trawling
has become their livelihood. They’re also talking about trading between islands. Once things have settled down, they’ll have
a better idea of who produces what and the kind of goods they can carry to exchange.”
“I’m happy for them,” Susannah said. “Why tell me?”
“It’s a way of getting to Norwich,” Luca said. “A start, anyway.”
Susannah looked hard into his face, now falling back into Grant’s familiar features. The relapse had been accelerating ever
since he returned from his trip to Knossington with the news that the aeroambulance didn’t work, its electronics simply couldn’t
operate in this realm. “A voyage that far would be expensive,” she said quietly.
“Cricklade could afford it.”
“Yes,” she said carefully. “It could. But it’s not ours any more. If we take that much food or Tears or horses the others
will claim we stole it. We wouldn’t be able to come back, not to Kesteven.”
“We?”
“Yes, we. They’re our children, and this is our home.”
“One means nothing without the other.”
“I don’t know,” she said, deeply troubled. “What’s to make the
Cranborne
crew stick to the agreement once we cast off?”
“What’s to stop us stealing their whole ship?” Luca replied wearily. “We have a civilization again, darling. It’s not the
best, I know that. But it’s here, and it works. At least we can see treachery and dishonesty coming a long way off.”
“All right. So do you want to go? It’s not as if we haven’t got enough troubles,” she said guiltily, flicking a glance at
the diplomatically quiet Lionel.
“I don’t know. I want to fight this; going means Grant has won.”
“It’s not a battle, it’s a matter of the heart.”
“Whose heart?” he whispered painfully.
“Excuse me,” Lionel said. “Have you considered that the people possessing your daughters might not be exactly welcoming? What
were you planning on doing anyway? It’s not as if you can exorcise them and go walking off into a sunset. They’ll be as alien
to you as you are to them.”
“They’re not alien to me,” Luca said. He sprang up from the chair, his whole body twitchy. “
Damn it
, I cannot stop worrying about them.”
“We’re all succumbing to our hosts,” Lionel said. “The easiest course is to acknowledge that, at least you’ll have some peace
then. Are you prepared to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Luca ground out. “I just don’t.”
______
Carmitha ran her fingers along the woman’s arm, probing the structure of bone and muscle and tendon. Her eyes were closed
as she performed the examination, her mind concentrated on the swirl of foggy radiance that was the flesh. It wasn’t just
tactile feeling she relied on, cells formed distinct bands of shade, as if she was viewing a very out-of-focus medical text
of the human body. Fingertips moved on half an inch, she pushed each one in carefully, as if she were stroking piano keys.
Searching an entire body this way took over an hour, and even then it was hardly a hundred per cent effective. Only the surface
was inspected. There were a great many cancers which could affect the organs, glands, and marrow; subtle monsters that would
go unnoticed until it was far, far too late.
Something moved sideways under her forefinger. She played with it, testing its motion. A hard node, as if a small stone was
embedded below the skin. Her mind’s vision perceived it as a white blur, sprouting a fringe of wispy tendrils that swam out
into the surrounding tissue. “Another one,” she said.
The woman’s gasp was almost a sob. Carmitha had learned the hard way not to hide anything from her patients. Invariably, they
knew of the spike of alarm in her own thoughts.
“I’m going to die,” the woman whimpered. “All of us are dying, rotting away. It’s our punishment for escaping the beyond.”
“Nonsense, these bodies are geneered, which makes them highly resistant to cancer. Once you stop aggravating it with energistic
power it should sink into remission.” Her stock verbal placebo, repeated so many times in the days since Butterworth’s collapse
that she’d begun to believe it herself.
Carmitha continued the examination, moving past the elbow. It was just a formality now. The woman’s thighs had been the worst;
lumps like a cluster of walnuts where she’d driven away flab to give herself an adolescent glamourqueen’s rump. Fear had broken
the instinct and desire for sublime youthful splendour. The unnatural punishment of her cells would end. Maybe the tumours
really would go into remission.
Luca came knocking on the side of the caravan just as Carmitha was finishing. She told him to stay outside, and waited until
the woman had put her clothes back on.
“It’ll be all right,” she said, and hugged her. “You just have to be you now, and be strong.”
“Yes,” came the dismal answer.
It wasn’t a time for lectures, Carmitha decided. Let her get over the shock first. Afterwards she could learn how to express
her inner strength, fortifying herself. Carmitha’s grandmother used to place a lot of emphasis on thinking yourself well.
“A weak mind lets in the germs.”
Luca carefully avoided meeting the woman’s tearful eyes as she came down out of the caravan, standing sheepishly to one side.
“Another one?” he asked after she went into the manor.
“Yep,” Carmitha said. “Mild case, this time.”
“Jolly good.”
“Not really. So far we’ve just seen the initial tumours develop. I’m just praying that your natural high resistance can keep
them in check. If not, the next stage is metastasis, when the cancer cells start spreading through the body. Once that happens,
it’s over.” She just managed to keep her resentment in check; the landowners and town dwellers were descended from geneered
colonists, the Romanies had shunned such things.
He shook his head, too stubborn to argue. “How’s Johan?”
“His weight’s creeping back up, which is good. I’ve got him walking again, and given him some muscle-building exercises—also
good. And he’s abandoned his body illusions completely. But the tumours are still there. At the moment his body is still too
weak to fight them. I’m hoping that if we can get his general health level up, then his natural defences will kick in.”
“Is he fit enough to help run the estate?”
“Don’t even consider it. In a couple of weeks, I’ll probably ask him to help in my herb garden. That’s the most strenuous
work therapy I’ll allow.”
Nothing he did could hide the disappointment in his mind.
“Why?” she asked in suspicion. “What did you want him to do that for? I thought the old estate was working smoothly. I can
hardly notice the difference.”
“Just an option I’m considering, that’s all.”
“An option? You’re leaving?” The notion startled her.
“Thinking of it,” he said gruffly. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t. But I don’t understand, where will you go?”
“To find the girls.”
“Oh, Grant,” she laid her hand on his arm, instantly sympathetic. “They’ll be all right. Even if Louise got possessed, no
soul is going to alter her appearance, she’s too gorgeous.”
“I’m not Grant.” He glanced round the courtyard, twitchy and suspicious. “Talk about having an inner demon, though. God, you
must be loving this.”
“Oh yeah, having a ball, me.”
“Sorry.”
“How many have you got?” she asked quietly.
There was a long pause before he answered. “Some down my chest. Arms. Feet, for Christ’s sake.” He grunted in disgust. “I
never imagined my feet to be anything different. Why are they there?”
Carmitha hated his genuine puzzlement; Grant’s possessor was making her feel far too sympathetic towards him. “There’s no
logic to these things.”
“Not many people know what’s happening, not outside Cricklade. That trader fellow, Lionel: hasn’t got a clue. I envy him that.
But it won’t last, people like Johan must be dropping like flies all across the planet. When everyone realises, things are
going to fall apart real fast. That’s why I wanted to start the voyage soon. If we have a second wave of anarchy, I might
never find where the girls are.”
“We should get some real doctors in to take a look at you. That white fire could be used to burn the tumours away. We’ve all
got X-ray sight now. No reason why it couldn’t. Maybe we don’t even need to be that drastic, you can just wish the cells dead.”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not like you, either of you. Don’t just sit around on your arse, find out. Get a doctor in. Massage and tea won’t
help much in the long run, and that’s all I can provide. You can’t leave now, Luca, people accept you as the boss. Use what
influence you’ve got to try and salvage this situation. Get them through this cancer scare.”
He let out a long reluctant sigh, then tilted his head, looking at her out of one eye. “You still think the Confederation’s
coming to save you, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“They’ll never find us. They’ve got two universes to search through.”
“Believe what you have to. I know what’s going to happen.”
“Friendly enemies, huh? You and me?”
“Some things never change, no matter what.”
He was saved from trying to get in a cutting reply by a stable hand running out into the courtyard, yelling that a messenger
was coming from the town. He and Carmitha went through the kitchen and out through the manor’s main entrance.
A woman was riding a white horse up the drive. The pattern of thoughts locked inside her skull was familiar enough to both
of them: Marcella Rye. Her horse’s gallop was matched by the excitement and trepidation in her mind.
She came to a halt in front of the broad stone stairs leading up to the marble portico and dismounted. Luca took the reins,
doing his best to soothe the agitated beast.
“We’ve just had word from the villages along the railway,” she said. “There’s a bunch of marauders heading this way. Colsterworth
council respectfully requests, and all that bullshit. Luca, we need some help to see the bastards off. Apparently they’re
armed. Raided an old militia depot on the outskirts of Boston, got away with rifles and a dozen machine guns.”
“Oh, this is fucking brilliant,” Luca said. “Life here just keeps getting better and better.”
______
Luca studied the train through his binoculars (genuine ones, handed down to Grant by his father). He was sure it was the same
one as before, but there had been changes. Four extra carriages had been added, not that anyone travelled in comfort. This
was an iron battle wagon whose armour plates (genuine, Luca thought) ran along its entire length, riveted crudely around ordinary
carriages. It clanked along the rail track towards Colsterworth at an unrelenting thirty miles an hour. Bruce Spanton had
finally managed to turn the concept of an irresistible force into a physical entity, putting it down straight into Norfolk’s
Turneresque countryside where it didn’t belong.
“There’s more of them this time,” Luca said. “I suppose we could roll the rails up again.”
“That monstrosity isn’t built for reversing,” Marcella said grimly. “You have to turn the minds around, their tails will follow.”
“Between their legs.”
“You got it.”
“Ten minutes till they get here. We’d better get people into position and dream up a strategy.” He’d brought nearly seventy
estate workers with him from Cricklade. The announcement by Colsterworth Council had resulted in over five hundred townsfolk
volunteering to fight off the marauders. Another thirty or so had gathered from outlying farms, determined to protect the
food they’d worked hard to gather. All of them had brought shotguns or hunting rifles from their adopted homes.
Luca and Marcella organized them into four groups. The largest, three hundred strong, were formed up in a horseshoe formation
surrounding Colsterworth station. Two outlying parties were hanging back from the cusps, ready to swarm across the rail and
encircle the marauders. The remainder, three dozen on horseback, made up a cavalry force ready to chase down anyone who escaped
from the attack.
They spent the last few minutes walking along the ranks, getting them into order and making sure they had all hardened their
clothes into bullet-proof armour. Real gunshots were harder to ward off in this realm. Carbosilicon-reinforced flak-jackets
were the popular solution, making the front line take on the appearance of a police riot brigade from the mid-Twenty-first
Century.
“It’s our right to exist as we choose that we’re standing for,” Luca told them repeatedly as he walked along, inspecting his
troops. “We’re the ones who’ve made something of these circumstances, built a decent life for ourselves. I’ll be buggered
if I’m going to let this rabble wreck that. They cannot be allowed to live off us, that makes us nothing more than chattel.”