“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 spaceplane 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 Soebergs’ 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.