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 mental
ity 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.
<> Laton asked the house’s subsentient bitek processor network.
<>
<>
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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 silicon-fibre 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?”
“I paid you,” Marie said in a frail voice. “All the way to Durringham.”
“That won’t cover our costs, lovie. We told you, it’s expensive travelling this river. You have to work your passage.”
“No.”
There was nothing of the bumptious nature left in the huge woman. “We can put you off. Right here.”
Marie shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Course you can. Pretty girl like you.” Gail wrapped a weighty hand around Marie’s forearm. “Come on, lovie,” she coaxed. “Old Lennie, he knows how to treat his brides right.”
Marie put one foot forward.
“That’s it, lovie. Down you come. It’s all laid out here, look.”
There was a white cotton negligee on the galley table. Gail led her over to it. “You just slip this on. And don’t let’s hear any more silly talk about can’t.” She held it up against Marie. “Oh, you’re going to look a picture in this, aren’t you?”
She glanced down numbly at it.
“Aren’t you?” Gail Buchannan repeated.
“Yes.”
“Good girl. Now put it on.”
“Where?”
“Here, lovie. Right here.”
Marie turned her back to the gross woman, and began to pull her T-shirt off over her head.
Gail chortled thickly. “Oh, you’re a one, lovie, you really are. This is going to be a chuckle.”
The negligée’s hem barely came below Marie’s buttocks, but if she tried to pull it down any further her breasts would fall out of the top. She had felt cleaner when she was covered in dirt from the jungle.
Still chortling, and giving her little nudges in her back, Gail followed her into the cabin where Len was waiting dressed in an amber towelling robe. A single electric lamp hanging on the ceiling cast a halo of yellow light. Len’s mouth split in a jagged smile as he took in the sight of her.
Gail sank down onto a sturdy stool by the door, puffing in relief. “There now, don’t you worry about me, lovie, I only ever watch.”
Marie thought that perhaps with the sound of the lapping water and the close wooden walls she could pretend it was Karl and the Swithland again.
She couldn’t.
The Ly-cilph had been travelling for over five billion years when it arrived at the galaxy which was home to the Confederation, although at that time it was the dinosaurs which were Earth’s premier life-form. Half of its existence had been spent traversing intergalactic space. It knew how to slip through the wormhole interstices; a creature of energy, the physical structure of the cosmos was no mystery to it. But its nature was to observe and record, so it sped along at a velocity just short of lightspeed, extending its perceptive field around the outcast hydrogen atoms on their aeons-long fall towards the bright, distant star whorls.
Each one was unique, an existence to be treasured, extending the knowledge base, its history placed in the transdimensional storage lattice which provided the Ly-cilph with its identity focus. The Ly-cilph was the section of space through which it passed with less disturbance than a neutrino. Like a quantum black hole, it had almost no physical size, yet within was an entire universe. A carefully patterned universe of pure data.
After it arrived at the rim stars it spent millions of years drifting among them, categorizing the life-forms which rose and fell on their planets, indexing the physical parameters of the multitudinous solar systems. It witnessed interstellar empires that bloomed and failed, and planet-bound civilizations that were lost to the final night as their stars cooled to frozen iron. Saint-like cultures and the most bestial savagery; all clicking neatly into place within its infinite interior.
It progressed inwards on a loose line towards the scintillating glow of the galactic core. And in doing so, arrived at the volume of space populated by the Confederation. Lalonde, freshly discovered, and on the edge of the territory, was the first human world it en
countered.
The Ly-cilph arrived at the star’s Oort cloud in 2610. After it passed through the band of circling, sleeping comets, occasional laser and microwave emissions impinged on its perception field boundary. They were weak, random fragments of overspill from the communication beams of starships entering orbit above Lalonde.
A preliminary survey showed the Ly-cilph two centres of sentient life in the solar system: Lalonde itself with the human and Tyrathca settlers, and Aethra, the young Edenist habitat in its solitary orbit above Murora.
As always in cases of life discovery, it first performed analytical sweeps of the barren planets. The four inner worlds: sunblasted Calcott and the colossal Gatley with its immense lethal atmosphere, then skipping past Lalonde to review airless Plewis and the icy Mars-like Coum. The five gas giants followed, Murora, Bullus, Achillea, Tol, and distant Puschk with its strange cryochemistry. All of them had their own moon systems and individual milieux requiring examination. The Ly-cilph took fifteen months to classify their composition and environment, then swooped in towards Lalonde.
The search through the jungle took eight hours. Three-quarters of Aberdale’s adult population turned out to help. They found Gwyn Lawes fifteen minutes after Rennison had set below the horizon. Most of him.
Because it was a sayce which had killed him; because the ropes had been taken off his wrists and ankles, and the gag removed from his mouth; because his electromagnetic rifle and all his other possessions were accounted for, everyone accepted it was a natural, if horrible, death.
It was the Ivets who were assigned to dig the grave.
Chapter 10
The Udat slid over the surface of Tranquillity’s non-rotating spaceport as though it was running on an invisible wire. A honeycomb of deep docking-bays flashed past below the blue and purple hull; the spherical fuselages of Adamist starships nested inside, glinting dully under the rim floodlights. Meyer watched through the blackhawk’s sensors as a fifty-five-metre-diameter clipper-class starship manoeuvred itself onto a cradle that had risen out of a bay, orange balls of chemical flame spitting out of its vernier nozzles. He could see the ubiquitous intersecting violet and green loops of the Vasilkovsky Line bold across the forward quarter. It touched the cradle, and pistonlike latches engaged, slipping into sockets around the hull. Umbilical gantries swung round, plugging it into the spaceport’s coolant and environmental circuits. The starship’s thermo-dump panels retracted, and the cradle started to descend into the bay.