17

The Coogan’s battered prow was riding heavily over the steep wavelets the Zamjan tributary sent rushing down its length towards the Juliffe. Lori could feel the length of the light trader boat exaggerating each pitch as they drove against the current. After four and a half days nothing about the Coogan bothered her any more; it creaked continually, the engines produced a vibration felt throughout every timber, it was hot, dark, airless, and cramped. But enforced routine had made it all inconsequential. Besides, she spent a lot of time lying inertly on her cot, reviewing the images the eagles Abraham and Catlin provided her.

Right now the birds were six kilometres ahead of Coogan, gliding five hundred metres above the water, with just the occasional indolent flick of a wing needed to maintain their flight. The jungle on either side of the swollen river was choked with mist from the rain that had just fallen, swan-white wisps clinging to the glistening green trees like some kind of animate creeper. There was no understanding the jungle’s immensity, Lori thought. The sights she saw through the eagles brought home how little impression the settlers had made on the Juliffe basin in twenty-five years. The timorous villages huddled along the riverbanks were a sorry example of the human condition. Microscopic parasites upon the jungle biota rather than bold challengers out to subdue a world.

Abraham saw a ragged line of smoke staining the sky ahead. A village cooking pit, judging by the shape and colour: she’d certainly had enough practice over the last few days to recognize one. She consulted her bitek processor block, and the visualization of the Zamjan eclipsed the image from the eagles. A vast four-hundred-kilometre river in its own right, the broad tributary was the one which the Quallheim emptied into. Inertial guidance coordinates flicked round. The village was called Oconto, founded three years ago. They had an asset planted there, a man by the name of Quentin Montrose.

Lori, Darcy called, I think there’s another one, you’d better come and have a look.

The visualization withdrew into the bitek processor. I’m on my way. She opened her eyes, and looked out through the nearest slit in the side of the rickety cabin wall. All she could see was the grizzled water being lashed by the squall. Warm droplets ran along the inside of the roof, defying gravity before they plopped down on the cots where she and Darcy had spread their sleeping-bags. There was more room now a third of the logs had been fed into the insatiable hopper, but she still had to squirm out through the Buchannans’ cabin and the galley.

Gail was sitting at the table on one of the special stools that could take her weight. Packets of freeze-dried food were strewn across the greasy wood in front of her. “What would you like tonight?” she asked as Lori hurried past.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“That’s typically thoughtless. How am I supposed to prepare an adequate meal for people who won’t help? It would serve all of you right if I was to do nothing but boiled rice. Then you’d all moan and complain, I’d be given no peace at all.”

Lori gave her a grimace-smile and ducked through the hatch out onto the deck. The fat woman disgusted her, not just her size, but her manner. Gail Buchannan surely represented the antithesis of Edenism, everything her culture strove to distance themselves from in human nature.

Rain was pelting down on the little wheel-house’s solar-cell roof. Darcy and Len Buchannan were inside, hunched against the drops which came streaking in through the open sides. Lori dashed the four metres round to the door, drenching her loose grey jacket in the process.

“It’ll be over in a minute,” Darcy said. Up ahead, the end of the steel rainclouds was visible as a bright haze band surmounting the river and jungle.

“Where’s the boat?” she asked, screwing her eyes against the stinging rain.

“There.” Len raised a hand from the wheel and pointed ahead.

It was one of the big paddle-boats used to take colonists upriver, slicing imperiously through the water towards them. It didn’t pitch about like the Coogan, its greater mass kept it level as the wavelets broke against its side and stern. Smoke streamed almost horizontally from its twin stacks.

“Dangerous fast, that is,” Len said. “Specially for these waters. Plenty of foltwine about; catch a bundle of that in the paddle and she’ll do her bearings a ton of damage. And we’re heading into the snowlily season now as well, they’re as bad as foltwine when they stick together.”

Lori nodded briefly in understanding. Len had pointed out the thin grasslike leaves multiplying along the shallow waters near the shores, fist-sized pods just beginning to rise above the surface. Snowlilies bloomed twice every Lalonde year. They looked beautiful, but they caused havoc with the boats.

In fact Len Buchannan had opened up considerably once the trip started. He still didn’t like the idea of Lori and Darcy steering his precious boat, but had grudgingly come to admit they could manage it almost as well as himself. He seemed to enjoy having someone to talk to other than his wife; he and Gail hadn’t shared ten words since they cast off from Durringham. His conversation was mostly about river lore and the way Lalonde was developing, he had no interest in the Confederation. Some of the information was useful to her when she took the wheel. He seemed surprised by the way she remembered it all. The only time he’d gone sullen on her was when she told him her age, he thought it was some kind of poor-taste joke; she looked about half as old as he did.

The three of them watched the paddle-boat race past. Len turned the wheel a couple of points, giving it a wide passage. Darcy switched his retinal implants up to full resolution and studied the deck. There were about thirty-five people milling about on the foredeck; farmer-types, the men with thick beards, women with sun-ripened faces, all in clothes made from local cloth. They paid very little attention to the Coogan, apparently intent on the river ahead.

Len shook his head, a mystified expression in place. “That ain’t right. The Broadmoor ought to be in a convoy, three or more. That’s the way them paddlers always travel. Captain didn’t call us on the radio neither.” He tapped the short-range radio block beside the forward-sweep mass-detector. “Boats always talk out here, ain’t so much traffic as you can ignore each other.”

“And those weren’t colonists on the deck,” Darcy said.

The Coogan pitched up hard as the prow reached the first of the deep furrows of water which the wayward Broadmoor produced in its wake.

“Not going downriver, no,” Len said.

“Refugees?” Lori suggested.

“Possibly,” Darcy said. “But if the situation is that bad, why weren’t there more of them?” He replayed the memory of the paddle-boat. It was the third they had encountered in twenty hours; the other two had steamed past in the dark. The attitude of the people on deck bothered him. They just stood there, not talking, not clustered together the way people usually did for companionship. They even seemed immune to the rain.

Are you thinking the same as me? Lori asked. She conjured up an image of the reptile people from Laton’s call, and superimposed them on the deck of the Broadmoor—rain running off their green skin without wetting it.

Yes, he said. It’s possible. Probable, in fact. Some kind of sequestration is obviously involved. And those people on board weren’t behaving normally.

If boats are carrying the sequestrated downriver, it would mean that the posse on the Swithland have been circumvented.

I never expected them to be anything other than a token, and a rather pathetic one at that. If this is a xenoc invasion, then obviously they will want to subdue the entire planet. The Juliffe tributaries are the only feasible transport routes. Naturally they would use the riverboats.

I can’t believe that anyone with the technology to cross interstellar space would then be reduced to using wooden boats to get about on a planet.

Human settlers do. Darcy projected an ironic moue.

Yes, colonists who can’t afford anything better, but a military conquest force?

Point taken. But there’s an awful lot about this situation we don’t understand. For a start, why invade Lalonde?

True. But to return to the immediate, if we’ve already penetrated the incursion front, do we need to go on?

I don’t know. We need information.

We have an asset in the next village. I suggest we stop there and see what he knows.

Good idea. And Solanki will have to be informed about the aberrant river traffic.

Lori left Darcy to feed the furnace hopper and made her way back to the space in the cabin they shared. She pulled her backpack from under the cot and retrieved the palm-sized slate-grey communication block from among her clothes. It took a couple of seconds for the Confederation Navy’s ELINT satellite to lock on to the scrambled channel. Kelven Solanki’s tired-looking face appeared on the front of the slim rectangular unit.

“We may have a problem,” she said.

“One more won’t make any difference.”

“This one might. We believe the presence Laton warned us of is spreading itself downriver on the boats. In other words, it can’t be confined by the posse.”

“Bloody hell. Candace Elford decided last night that Kristo County has also been taken over, that’s halfway down the Zamjan from the mouth of the Quallheim. And after reviewing the satellite images, I have to concur. She’s reinforcing the posse by BK133. They have a new landing point, Ozark, in Mayhew County, fifty kilometres short of Kristo. The BK133s are lifting in men and weapons right now. The Swithland should reach them early tomorrow, they can’t be far ahead of you.”

“We’re approaching Oconto village right now.”

“About thirty kilometres, then. What are you going to do?”

“We haven’t decided yet. We’ll need to go ashore whatever the outcome.”

“Well, be careful, this is turning out to be even bigger than my worst-case scenarios.”

“We don’t intend to jeopardize ourselves.”

“Good. Your message flek was dispatched to your embassy on Avon, along with mine to the First Admiral, and one from Ralph Hiltch to his embassy. Rexrew sent one to the LDC office as well.”

“Thank you. Let’s hope the Confederation Navy responds swiftly.”

“Yes. I think you should know, Hiltch and I have dispatched a combined scout team upriver. If you want to wait in Oconto for them to arrive, you’re more than welcome to join them. They’re making good time, I estimate they should be with you in a couple of days at the most. And my marines are carrying a fair amount of fire-power.”

“We’ll retain it as an option. Though Darcy and I don’t believe fire-power is going to be an overwhelming factor in this case. Judging by what we gleaned from Laton, and what we’ve observed on the paddle-boats, it appears wide-scale sequestration is playing a major part in the invasion.”

“Dear Christ!”

She smiled at his expletive. Why did Adamists always appeal to their deities? It wasn’t something she understood. If there was an omnipotent god, why did he make life so full of pain? “You might find a prudent course of action is to review river traffic out of the affected areas over the last ten days.”

“Are you saying they’ve already reached Durringham?”

“It is more than likely, I’m afraid. We are almost at Kristo, and we’re travelling against the current on a decidedly third-rate boat.”

“I see what you mean, if they left Aberdale right at the start they could have been here a week ago.”

“Theoretically, yes.”

“All right, thanks for the warning. I’ll pull some people in and start analysing the boats that have come down out of the Zamjan. Hell, this is just what the city needs on top of everything else.”

“How are things in Durringham?”

“None too good, actually. Everyone’s starting to hoard food, so prices are going through the roof. Candace Elford is deputizing young men left, right, and centre. There’s a lot of unrest among the residents about what’s happening upriver. She’s afraid it’s going to spiral out of control. Then on Wednesday the transient colonists decided to hold a peaceful rally outside the Governor’s dumper demanding new gear to replace what was stolen, and extra land in compensation for the upset. I could see it from my window. Rexrew refused to talk to them. Too scared they’d lynch him, I should think. It was that sort of mood. Things got a bit rough, and they clashed with the sheriffs. Quite a lot of casualties on both sides. Some idiot let a sayce loose. The power cables from the dumper’s fusion generator were torn down. So there was no electricity in the precinct for two days, and of course that includes the main hospital. Guess what happened to its back-up power supply.”

“It failed?”

“Yeah. Someone had been flogging off the electron-matrix crystals to use in power bikes. There was only about twenty per cent capacity left.”

“Sounds like there’s not much to choose between your position and mine.”

Kelven Solanki gave her a measured stare. “Oh, I think there is.”

Oconto was a typical Lalonde village: a roughly square clearing shorn straight into the jungle, with the official Land Allocation Office marker as its pivot; cabins with trim vegetable gardens clustered at the nucleus, while broader fields made up the periphery. The normally black mayope planks of the buildings were turning a lighter grey from years of exposure to the sun and heat and rain, hardening and cracking, like driftwood on a tropical shore. Pigs squealed in their pens, while cows munched contentedly at their silage in circular stockades. A line of over thirty goats were tethered to stakes around the border of the jungle, chomping away at the creepers which edged in towards the fields.

The village had done well for itself during the three years since its founding. The communal buildings like the hall and church were well maintained; the council had organized the construction of a low, earth-covered lodge to smoke fish in. Major paths were scattered with wood flakes to stem the mud. There was even a football pitch marked out. Three jetties stuck out of the gently sloped bank into the Zamjan’s insipid water; two of them responsible for mooring the village’s small number of fishing boats.

When the Coogan nosed up to the main central jetty Darcy and Lori were relieved to see a considerable number of people working the fields. Oconto hadn’t succumbed yet. Several shouts went up as the trader boat was spotted. Men came running, all of them carrying guns.

It took a quarter of an hour to convince the nervous reception committee that they posed no threat, and for a few minutes at the start Darcy thought they were going to be shot out of hand. Len and Gail Buchannan were well known (though not terribly popular), which acted in their favour. The Coogan was travelling upriver, heading towards the rebel counties, not bringing people down from them. And finally, Lori and Darcy themselves, with their synthetic fabric clothes and expensive hardware units, were accepted as some kind of official team. With what mandate was never asked.

“You gotta understand, people round here are getting mighty trigger happy since last Tuesday,” Geoffrey Tunnard said. He was Oconto’s acting leader, a lean fifty-year-old with curly white hair, wearing much-patched colourless dungarees. Now he was satisfied the Coogan wasn’t bringing revolution and destruction, and his laser rifle was slung over his beefy shoulder again, he was happy to talk.

“What happened last Tuesday?” Darcy asked.

“The Ivets.” Geoffrey Tunnard spat over the side of the jetty. “We heard there’d been trouble up Willow West way, so we shoved ours in a pen. They’ve been good workers since we arrived. But there’s no point in taking chances, right?”

“Right,” Darcy agreed diplomatically.

“But on Monday we had some people visit, claimed they were from Waldersy village, up in Kristo County. They said the Ivets were all rebelling in the Quallheim Counties and Willow West, killing the men and raping the women. Said plenty of younger colonists had joined them, too. They was nothing but a vigilante group, you could see that, all hyped up they were, on a high. I reckoned they’d been smoking some canus; that’ll send you tripping if you dry the leaves right. Trouble they were, just wanted to kill our Ivets. We wouldn’t have it. A man can’t kill another in cold blood, not just on someone else’s say so. We sent them on downriver. Then blow me if they didn’t creep back that night. And you know what?”

“They let the Ivets out,” Lori said.

Geoffrey Tunnard gave her a respectful look. “That’s right. Stole back in here right under our noses. Dogs never even noticed them. Slit old Jamie Austin’s throat, him that was standing guard on the pen. Our supervisor Neil Barlow went right off after them that morning. Took a bunch of fifty men with him, armed men they were, too. And we haven’t heard a damn thing since. That ain’t like Neil, it’s been six days. He should have sent word. Them men have families. We’ve got wives and kiddies left here that are worried sick.” He glanced from Darcy to Lori. “Can you tell us anything?” His tone was laboured; Geoffrey Tunnard was a man under a great deal of strain.

“Sorry, I don’t know anything,” Darcy said. “Not yet. That’s why we’re here, to find out. But whatever you do, don’t go after them. The larger your numbers, the safer you are.”

Geoffrey Tunnard pursed his lips and looked away, eyes raking the jungle with bitter enmity. “Thought you’d say something like that. Course, there’s those that have gone looking. Some of the women. We couldn’t stop them.”

Darcy put his hand on Geoffrey Tunnard’s shoulder, gripping firmly. “If any more want to go, stop them. Have a log fall on their foot if that’s what it takes, but you must stop them.”

“I’ll do my best.” Geoffrey Tunnard dipped his head in defeat. “I’d leave if I could, take the family downriver on a boat. But I built this place with my own hands, and no damn Govcentral interference. It was a good life, it was. It can be again. Bloody Ivets never were any use for anything, waster kids in dungarees, that’s all.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Lori said.

“Sure you will. You’re doing what you tell me not to: go out in the jungle. Just the two of you. That’s madness.”

Lori thought Geoffrey Tunnard had been about to say suicide. “Can you tell us where Quentin Montrose lives?” she asked.

Geoffrey Tunnard pointed out one of the cabins, no different to any of the others; solar panels on the roof, a sagging overhang above the verandah. “Won’t do you no good, he was in Neil’s group.”

Lori stood at the side of the wheel-house as the Coogan cast off; Darcy was aft, heaving more of the interminable logs into the furnace hopper. Len Buchannan whistled tunelessly as he steered his boat into the middle of the river. Oconto gradually shrank away to stern until it was nothing but a deeper than usual gash in the emerald cliff. Smoke from the cooking fires drifted apathetically across the choppy water.

We could send one of the eagles looking for them, Lori suggested.

You don’t really mean that.

No. I’m sorry, I was just trying to save my own conscience.

Fifty armed men, and no trace. I don’t know about your conscience, but my courage has almost deserted me.

We could go back, or even wait for Solanki’s marines.

Yes, we could.

You’re right. We’ll go on.

We should have told Geoffrey Tunnard to leave, Darcy said. I should have told him; take his family and flee back to Durringham. At least it would have been honest. None of this false hope we left him with.

That’s all right, I think he already knows.

Karl Lambourne woke without knowing why. It wasn’t noon yet, and he hadn’t got to go back on watch until two o’clock. The blinds on his cabin’s port were still shut, reducing the light inside to a mysterious and enticing dusk. Booted feet thudded along the deck outside the door. Conversation was a persistent background hum, children calling out in their whiny voices.

Everything normal. So why was he awake with a vague feeling of unease?

The colonist girl—what was her name?—stirred beside him. She was a few months younger than him, with dark hair teased into ringlets around a dainty face. Despite his initial dismay with the Swithland carrying all those extra sheriffs and deputies it was turning out to be a good trip. The girls appreciated the space and privacy his cabin gave them; the boat was very crowded, with sleeping-bags clogging every metre of deck space.

The girl’s eyelids fluttered, then opened slowly. She—Anne, no Alison; that was it, Alison! remember that—grinned at him.

“Hi,” she said.

He glanced along her body. The sheet was tangled up round her waist, affording him a splendid view of breasts, lean belly muscles, and sharply curving hips. “Hi yourself.” He brushed some of the ringlets from her face.

Shouts and a barking laugh sounded from outside. Alison gave a timid giggle. “God, they’re only a metre away.”

“You should have thought of that before you made all that noise earlier.”

Her tongue was caught between her teeth. “Didn’t make any noise.”

“Did.”

“Didn’t.”

His arms circled her, and he pulled her closer. “You did, and I can prove it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” He kissed her softly, and she started to respond. His hand stole downwards, pushing the sheet off her legs.

Alison turned over when he told her to, shivering in anticipation as his arm slid under her waist, lifting her buttocks up. Her mouth parted in expectation.

“What the hell was that?”

“Karl?” She bent her head round to see him kneeling behind her, frowning up at the ceiling. “Karl!”

“Shush. Listen, can you hear it?”

She couldn’t believe this was happening. People were still clumping up and down the deck outside. There wasn’t any other sound! And she’d never ever been so turned on before. Right now she hated Karl with the same intensity she’d adored him a second before.

Karl twitched his head round, trying to catch the noise again. Except it wasn’t so much a noise, more a vibration, a grumble. He knew every sound, every tremble the Swithland made, and that wasn’t in its repertoire.

He heard it again, and identified it. A hull timber quaking somewhere aft. The creak of wood under pressure, almost as if they had touched a snag. But his mother would never steer anywhere near a snag, that was crazy.

Alison was looking up at him, all anger and hurt. The magic had gone. He felt his penis softening.

The noise came again. A grinding sound that lasted for about three seconds. It was muted by the bilges, but this time it was loud enough even for Alison to hear.

She blinked in confusion. “What . . . ”

Karl jumped off the bed, snatching up his shorts. He jammed his legs into them, and was still struggling with the button when he yanked the door lock back and rushed out onto the deck.

Alison squealed behind him, trying to cover herself with her arms as vibrant midmorning sunlight flooded into the cabin. She grabbed the thin sheet to wrap herself in, and started hunting round for her clothes.

After the seductive shadows of his cabin the sunlight on deck sent glaring purple after-images chasing down Karl’s optic nerves. Tear ducts released their stored liquid, which he had to wipe away annoyingly. A couple of colonists and three deputies, barely older than him, were staring at him. He leaned out over the rail and peered down at the river. There was some sediment carried by the water, and shimmering sunlight reflections skittering across the surface, but he could see a good three or four metres down. But there was nothing solid, no silt bank, no submerged tree trunk.

Up on the bridge Rosemary Lambourne hadn’t been sure about the first scrape, but like her eldest son she was perfectly in tune with the Swithland. Something had left her with heightened senses, a suddenly hollow stomach. She automatically checked the forward-sweep mass-detector. This section of the Zamjan was twelve metres deep, giving her a good ten metres of clearance below the flat keel, even overloaded like this. There was nothing in front, nothing below, and nothing to the side.

Then it happened again. The aft hull struck something. Rosemary immediately reduced power to the paddles.

“Mother!”

She bent over the starboard side to see Karl looking up at her.

“What was that?”

He beat her to it by a fraction.

“I don’t know,” she shouted down. “The mass-detector shows clear. Can you see anything in the water?”

“No.”

The river current was slowing the Swithland rapidly now the paddles were stilled. Without the steady thrash of the blades, the racket the colonists made seemed to have doubled.

It came again, a long rending sound of abused wood. There was a definite crunching at the end.

“That was aft,” Rosemary yelled. “Get back there and see what happened. Report back.” She pulled a handset from its slot below the communication console, and dropped it over the edge of the rail. Karl caught it with an easy snap of his wrist and raced off down the narrow decking, slipping through the knots of colonists with urgent fluid movements.

“Swithland, come in, please,” the speaker on the communication console said. “Rosemary, can you hear me? This is Dale here. What’s happening, why have you stopped?”

She picked up the microphone. “I’m here, Dale,” she told the Nassier’s captain. When she glanced up she could see the Nassier half a kilometre upriver, pulling ahead; the Hycel was downriver on the starboard side, catching up fast. “It sounds like we struck something.”

“How bad?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll get back to you.”

“Rosemary, this is Callan, I think it would be best if we didn’t get separated. I’ll heave to until you know if you need any assistance.”

“Thanks, Callan.” She leant out over the bridge rail and waved at the Hycel. A small figure on its bridge waved back.

A screech loud enough to silence all the colonists erupted from the Swithland’s hull. Rosemary felt the boat judder, its prow shifting a degree. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. They were almost dead in the water, it couldn’t possibly be a snag. It couldn’t be!

Karl reached the afterdeck just as the Swithland juddered. He could feel the whole boat actually lift a couple of centimetres.

The afterdeck was packed full of colonists and posse members. Several groups of men were lying down, playing cards or eating. Kids charged about. Eight or nine people were fishing over the stern. Cases of farmsteading gear were piled against the superstructure and the taffrail. Dogs ran about underfoot; there were five horses tethered to the side rail, and two of them started pulling at their harnesses as the brassy scrunching noise broke across the boat. Everybody froze in expectation.

“Out of the way!” Karl shouted. “Out of the way.” He started elbowing people aside. The noise was coming from the keel, just aft of the furnace room which was tacked on to the back of the superstructure. “Come on, move.”

A sayce snarled at him. “Killl.”

“Get that fucking thing out of my way!”

Yuri Wilken dragged Randolf aside.

The whole afterdeck complement was watching Karl. He reached the hatchway over the feed mechanism that shunted logs into the furnace. It was hidden beneath a clutter of composite pods. “Help me move these,” he yelled.

Barry MacArple emerged from the furnace room, a brawny twenty-year-old, sweaty and sooty. He had kept indoors for most of this trip, and carefully avoided any member of the posse. None of the Lambourne family had mentioned that he was an Ivet.

The noise came to an abrupt halt. Karl was very aware of the apprehensive faces focusing on him, the silent appeal for guidance. He held up his hands as Barry started to haul the pods off the hatchway. “OK, we’re riding on some sort of rock. So I want all the kids to slowly make their way forwards. Slowly mind. Then the women. Not the men. You’ll upset the balance with that much weight forward. And whoever those horses belong to, calm them down now.”

Parents hustled their children towards the prow. A hushed murmur swept round the adults. Three men were helping Barry clear the hatchway. Karl lifted off a couple of the pods himself. Then he heard the noise again, but it was distant this time, not from the Swithland’s hull.

“What the hell—” He looked up to see the Hycel a hundred metres astern.

“Karl, what’s happening?” Rosemary’s voice demanded from the handset.

He raised the unit to his mouth. “It’s the Hycel, Mum. They’ve hit it as well.”

“Bloody hell. What about our hull?”

“Tell you in a minute.”

The last of the pods were cleared away, revealing a two-metre-square hatch. Karl bent down to unclip the latches.

That was when the second sound rang out, a water-muffled THUNK of something heavy and immensely powerful slamming into the keel. Swithland gave a small jolt, riding up several centimetres. Some of the more loosely stacked cases and pods tumbled over. The colonists shouted in panic and dismay, and there was a general surge for the prow. One of the horses reared up, forelegs scraping the air.

Karl ripped the hatch open.

THUNK

Ripples rolled away from the Swithland as it wallowed about.

“Karl!” the handset squawked.

He looked down into the hull. The log-feed mechanism took up most of the space below the hatch, a primitive-looking clump of motors, pulley loops, and pistons. Two grab belts ran away to the port and starboard log holds. The black mayope planks of the hull itself were just visible. Water was welling out of cracks between them.

THUNK

Karl stared down in stupefaction as the planks bowed inward. That was mayope wood, nothing could dint mayope.

THUNK

Splinters appeared, long dagger fingers levering apart.

THUNK

Water poured in through the widening gaps. An area over a metre wide was being slowly hammered upwards.

THUNK

THUNK

Swithland was rocking up and down. Equipment and pods rolled about across the half-abandoned afterdeck. Men and women were clinging to the rail, others were spread-eagled on the decking, clawing for a handhold.

“It’s trying to punch its way in!” Karl bellowed into the handset.

“What? What?” his mother shouted back.

“There’s something below us, something alive. For Christ’s sake, get us underway, get us to the shore. The shore, Mum. Go! Go!”

THUNK

The water was foaming up now, covering the hull planks completely. “Get this shut,” Karl called. He was terribly afraid of what would come through once the hole was big enough. Together, he and Barry MacArple slammed the hatch back down, dogging the latches.

THUNK

Swithland’s hull broke. Karl could hear a long dreadful tearing sound as the iron-hard wood was wrenched apart. Water seethed in, gurgling and slurping. It ripped the log feeder from its mountings, crashing it against the decking above. The hatch quaked violently.

A gloriously welcome whine from the paddle engines sounded. The familiar slow thrashing of the paddles started up. Swithland turned ponderously for the unbroken rampart of jungle eighty metres away.

Karl realized people were sobbing and shouting out. A lot of them must have made it forward, the boat was riding at a downward incline.

THUNK

This time it was the afterdeck planks. Karl, lying prone next to the hatch, yelled in shock as his feet left the deck from the impact. He twisted round immediately, rolling over three times to get clear. Pods bounced and pirouetted chaotically. The horses were going berserk. One of them broke its harness, and plunged over the side. Another was kicking wildly. A blood-soaked body lay beside it.

THUNK

The planks beside the hatch lifted in unison, snapping back as if they were elastic. Water started to seep out.

Barry MacArple was scrambling on all fours along the deck, his face engorged with desperation. Karl held out his hand to the Ivet, willing him on.

THUNK

The planks directly below Barry were smashed asunder. They ruptured upwards, jagged edges puncturing the Ivet’s belly and chest, then ripping his torso apart like a giant claw. A metre-wide geyser of water slammed upwards out of the gap, buffeting the corpse with it.

Karl turned to follow the water rising, fear stunned out of him by the incredible, impossible sight. The geyser roared ferociously, shaking Karl’s bones and obliterating the impassioned shouts from the colonists. It rose a full thirty metres above the decking, its crown blossoming out like a flower. Water, silt, and fragments of mayope plank splattered down.

Clinging for dear life to one of the cable drums as the Swithland bucked about like a wounded brownspine, Karl watched the geyser chewing away at the ragged sides of the hole it had bored. It was creeping forward towards the superstructure. The bilges must be full already. Slowly and surely more and more wood was eroded by the terrific force of the water. In another minute it would reach the furnace room. He thought of what would happen when the water struck all fifteen tonnes of the searingly hot furnace, and whimpered.

Rosemary Lambourne had a hard struggle to stay upright as the Swithland tossed about. Only by clinging to the wheel could she even stay on her feet. It was the sheer fright in Karl’s voice which had spurred her into action. He wasn’t afraid of anything on the river, he had been born on the Swithland.

That deadly battering noise was knocking into her heart as much as the hull. The strength behind anything that could thump the boat about like this was awesome.

How much of the Swithland is going to be left after this? God damn Colin Rexrew, his laxness and stupidity. The Ivets would never dare to revolt with a firm, competent governor in charge.

A roar like a continual explosion made her jump, almost sending her feet from under her. It was suddenly raining on the Swithland alone. The entire superstructure was trembling. What was happening back there?

She checked the little holoscreen which displayed the boat’s engineering schematics. They were losing power rapidly from the furnace. Reserve electron-matrix crystals cut in, maintaining the full current to the engines.

“Rosemary,” the radio called.

She couldn’t spare the time to answer.

Swithland’s prow was pointing directly at the bank sixty-five metres away, and they were picking up speed again. Pods and cases were scattered in the boat’s wake, jouncing about in the water. She saw a couple of people splashing among them. More people went falling from the foredeck; it was as tightly packed as a rugby scrum down there. And there wasn’t a thing she could do, except get them to the shore.

Off on the port side, Nassier was floundering about, paddles spinning intermittently. Rosemary saw a giant fountain of water smash through the middle of its superstructure, debris whirling away into the sky. What the fuck could do that? Some kind of water monster skulking around the riverbed? Even as the fantasy germinated in her mind she knew that wasn’t the real answer. But she did know what the roaring noise behind her was now. The knowledge sucked at the last of her strength. If it hit the furnace . . .

Nassier’s prow lifted into the air, shoving the afterdeck below the water. The superstructure crumpled up, large chunks being flung aside by the tremendous jet of water. Dozens of people were swept into the river, arms and legs twirling frantically. In her mind she could hear the screams.

There were just too many people on board the paddleboats. Rexrew had already increased the numbers of colonists they were made to carry, refusing to listen to the warning from the captains’ delegation. Then he dumped this posse on them as well.

If I ever get back to Durringham, you’re dead, Rexrew, she promised herself. You haven’t just failed us, you’ve condemned us.

Then the Nassier began to capsize, rolling ever faster onto her starboard side. The jet of water died away as the keel flipped up. Rosemary saw a huge hole in the planks amidships as it reached the vertical. That was when the water must have rushed in on the furnace. A massive blast of white steam devoured the rear of the boat, rolling out across the surface of the river. Mercifully, it shielded the final act in the Nassier’s convulsive death.

Swithland’s prow was fifteen metres from the trees and creepers which were strangling the bank. Rosemary could hear the sound of their own bedevilling geyser reducing. She fought the wheel to keep the boat lined up straight on the bank. The bottom was shelving up rapidly, the forward-sweep mass-detector emitting a frantic howl in warning. Five metres deep. Four. Three. They struck mud eight metres from the long flower-heavy vines trailing in the water. The big boat’s awesome inertia propelled them along, slithering and sliding through the thick black alluvial muck. Bubbles of foul-smelling sulphurous gas churned around the sides of the hull. The geyser had died completely. There was a moment of pure dreamy silence before they hit the bank.

Rosemary saw a huge qualtook tree dead ahead; one of its thick boughs was the same height as the bridge. She ducked—

The impact threw Yuri Wilken back onto his belly just as he was starting to get up again. His nose slammed painfully against the deck. He tasted warm blood. The boat was making hideous crunching sounds as it ploughed into the frill of vegetation along the bank. Long vine strands lashed through the air with the brutality of bullwhips. He tried to bury himself into the hard decking as they slashed centimetres above his head. Swithland’s blunt prow rammed the low bank, jolting upwards to ride a good ten metres across the dark-red sandy earth. The paddle-boat finally came to a bruising halt with its forward deck badly mangled, and the qualtook tree embedded in the front of the superstructure.

Screams and wailing gave way to moans and shrill cries for help. Yuri risked glancing about, seeing the way in which the jungle had shrink-wrapped itself around the forward half of the boat. The superstructure looked dangerously unstable, it was leaning over sharply, with tonnes of vegetation pressing against the front and side.

His limbs were shaking uncontrollably. He wanted to be home in Durringham, taking Randolf for walks or playing football with his mates. He didn’t belong here in the jungle.

“Are you all right, son?” Mansing asked.

Sheriff Mansing was the one who had signed him on for the expedition. He was a lot more approachable than some of the sheriffs, keeping a fatherly eye out for him.

“I think so.” He dabbed at his nose experimentally, sniffing hard. There was blood on his hand.

“You’ll live,” Mansing said. “Where’s Randolf?”

“I don’t know.” He climbed shakily to his feet. They were standing at the front corner of the superstructure. People were lying about all around, slowly picking themselves up, asking for help, wearing a numb, frightened expression. Two bodies had been trapped between the qualtook trunk and the superstructure; one was a small girl aged about eight. Yuri could only tell because she was wearing a dress. He turned away, gagging.

“Call for him,” Mansing said. “We’re going to need all the help we can get pretty soon.”

“Sir?”

“You think this was an accident?”

Yuri hadn’t thought it was anything. The notion sent a tremble down his spine. He put his lips together, and managed a feeble whistle.

“Twelve years I’ve been sailing up and down this river,” Mansing said grimly. “I’ve never seen anything like that geyser before. What the hell can shoot water about like that? And there was more than one of them.”

Randolf came lumbering up over the gunwale, his sleek black hide covered in smelly mud. The sayce had lost all of his usual aggressive arrogance, slinking straight over to Yuri and pressing against his master’s legs. “Waaterrr baddd,” he growled.

“He’s not far wrong there,” Mansing agreed cheerlessly.

It took quarter of an hour to establish any kind of order around the wrecked paddle-boat. The sheriffs organized parties to tend to the wounded and set up a makeshift camp. By general consensus they moved fifty metres inland, away from the river and whatever prowled below the water.

Several survivors from the Nassier managed to swim to the stern of the Swithland which was half submerged; the boat formed a useful bridge over the stinking quagmire which lined the bank. The Hycel had managed to reach the Zamjan’s far bank; it had been spared the destructive geyser, but its hull had taken a dreadful pounding. Radio contact was established and both groups decided to stay where they were rather than attempt to cross the river and join forces.

Sheriff Mansing located an unbroken communication block amongst the remnants of the posse’s gear, and patched a call through the LDC’s single geostationary satellite to Candace Elford. The shocked chief sheriff agreed to divert the two BK133s to the Swithland and fly the seriously injured back to Durringham straight away. What she never mentioned was the possibility of reinforcing the forsaken boats. But Sheriff Mansing was above all a pragmatic man, he really hadn’t expected any.

After making three trips to the camp, carrying pods of gear from the paddle-boat, Yuri was included into a small scout party of three sheriffs and nine deputies. He suspected they only included him because of Randolf. But that was OK, the other detail of deputies was now removing bodies from the Swithland. He preferred to take his chances with the jungle.

When Yuri and the scouts marched away, colonists with fission-blade saws were felling trees on one side of the camp’s glade so the VTOL aircraft could land. A fire was burning in the centre.

It didn’t take long for the groans of the casualties to fade away, blocked by the density of the foliage. Yuri couldn’t get over how dark this jungle was, very little actual sunlight penetrated down to ground level. When he held his hand up the skin was tinted a deep green, the cinnamon-coloured jacket they had issued him with to protect him from thorns was jet black. The jungle around Durringham was nothing like this. It was tame, he realized, with its well-worn paths and tall trees spiralled with thin colourful vines. Here there were no paths, branches jutted out at all heights, and the vines were slung between boughs either at ankle height or level with his neck. A sticky kind of fungal mould slimed every leaf for three metres above the ground.

The scouts paired up, fanning out from the camp. The idea was to familiarize themselves with the immediate area out to five hundred metres, search for any more survivors from Nassier, and verify that no hostiles were near the camp.

“This is stupid,” Mansing said after they had gone fifty metres. He was leading, chopping at the vines and small branches and bushes with a fission-blade machete. “I couldn’t see you if you were three metres away.”

“Perhaps it thins out up ahead,” Yuri said.

Mansing slashed at another branch. “You’re giving away your age again, son. Only the very young are that hopelessly optimistic.”

They took turns to lead. Even with the fission blade hacking out every metre of path it was tiring work. Randolf loped along behind, occasionally butting against Yuri’s calves.

According to Mansing’s guidance block they had travelled about three hundred metres when the sayce stood still, head held up, sniffing the humid air. The species didn’t have quite the sense of smell terrestrial canines possessed, but they were still excellent hunters in their own territory: the jungle.

“Peeeople,” Randolf grunted.

“Which way?” Yuri asked.

“Here.” The sayce pushed into the severed branches that made up the walls of the path. He turned to look at them. “Here.”

“Is this for real?” Mansing asked sceptically.

“Sure is,” Yuri answered, stung by the doubt. “How far, boy?”

“Sooon.”

“All right,” Mansing said. He started to hack at the jungle where the sayce indicated.

It was another two minutes of sweaty labour before they heard the voices. They were high and light, female. One of them was singing.

Mansing was so intent on cutting the cloying vegetation away, swinging the heavy machete in endless rhythm, that he nearly fell head first into the stream when the creepers came to an abrupt end. Yuri grabbed his jacket collar to stop him slipping down the small grassy slope. Both of them stared ahead in astonishment.

Sunlight poured down through the overhead gap in the trees, hovering above the water like a thin golden mist. The stream widened out into a rock-lined pool fifteen metres across. Creepers with huge ruffed orange blooms hung like curtains from the trees on the far side. Tiny turquoise and yellow birds fluttered about through the air. It was a scene lifted from Greek mythology. Seven naked girls were bathing in the pool, ranging from about fifteen years up to twenty-five. All of them were slender and long limbed, sunlight glinting on their skin. White robes were strewn over the black rocks at the water’s edge.

“Nooo,” Randolf moaned. “Baddd.”

“Bollocks,” Yuri said.

The girls caught sight of them and shrieked with delight, smiling and waving.

Yuri shouldered his laser rifle, grinning deliriously at the seven pairs of wet breasts bouncing about.

“Bloody hell,” Mansing muttered.

Yuri pushed past him, and scuttled down the slope into the stream. The girls cheered.

“Nooo.”

“Yuri,” Mansing gestured ineffectually.

He turned round, face illuminated with delight. “What? We’ve got to find out where their village is, haven’t we? That’s our assignment, scout the terrain.”

“Yes. I suppose so.” He couldn’t keep his eyes from the naiads sporting about.

Yuri was plunging on, legs sending up a wave of spray.

“Nooo,” Randolf bayed urgently. “Baddd. Peeeople baddd.”

Mansing watched the girls whooping encouragement to Yuri as the lad ploughed through the water towards them. “Oh, to hell with dignity,” he said under his breath, and splashed down into the stream.

The first girl Yuri reached was about nineteen, with scarlet flowers tucked into her wet hair. She smiled radiantly up at him, hands holding his. “I’m Polly,” she laughed.

“All right!” Yuri cried. The water only came halfway up her thighs; she really was completely naked. “I’m Yuri.”

She kissed him, damp body pressing against his sleeveless shirt, leaving a dark imprint. When she broke off another girl slipped a garland of the orange vine flowers round his neck. “And I’m Samantha,” she said.

“You gonna kiss me too?”

She twined her arms round his neck, tongue slipping hungrily into his mouth. Other girls were circling round, scooping up handfuls of spray and showering them. Yuri was in the midst of a warm silver rain with raw ecstasy pounding down his nerves. Here in the middle of nowhere, paradise had come to Lalonde. The droplets fell in slow motion, tinkling sweetly as they went. He felt hands slip the rifle strap from his shoulder, more hands pulled at his shirt buttons. His trousers were undone, and his penis stroked lovingly.

Samantha took a pace back looking at him in adoration. She cupped her breasts, lifting them up towards him. “Now, Yuri,” she pleaded. “Take me now.”

Yuri pulled her roughly against him, his soaking trousers tangling round his knees. He heard an alarmed shout that was cut off. Three of the girls had pushed Mansing under the water, his legs were thrashing above the surface. The girls were laughing hysterically, muscles straining with the effort of keeping him down.

“Hey—” Yuri said. He couldn’t move because of his stupid trousers.

“Yuri,” Samantha called.

He turned back to her. She was opening her mouth wider than he would have believed physically possible. Long bands of muscle writhed around her chin as if fat worms were tunnelling through her veins. Her cheeks started to split, beginning at the corners of her mouth and tearing back towards her ears. Blood leapt out of the wounds in regular beats, and she was still hinging her jaw apart.

Yuri stared for one petrified second then let loose a guttural roar of fright that reverberated round the impassive sentinel trees. His bladder gave out.

Samantha’s grisly head darted forward, carmine teeth clamping solidly round his throat, her blood spraying against his skin.

“Randolf—” he yelled. Then her teeth tore into his throat, and his own blood burst out of his carotid artery to flood his gullet, quashing any further sounds.

Randolf howled in rage as his master fell into the water with Samantha riding him down. But one of the other girls looked straight at him and hissed in warning, flecks of saliva spitting out between her bared teeth. The sayce turned tail and sprinted back into the jungle.

“Power’s going. Losing height. Losing height!” The BK133 pilot’s frantic voice boomed out of the command centre’s AV pillars.

Every sheriff in the room stared at the tactical communication station.

“We’re going down!”

The carrier wave hissed for another couple of seconds, then fell silent. “God Almighty,” Candace Elford whispered. She was sitting at her desk at the end of the rectangular room. Like most of the capital’s civic buildings, the sheriff’s headquarters was made of wood. It sat in its own square fortified enclosure a couple of hundred metres from the governor’s dumper, a simplistic design that any pre-twentieth-century soldier would have felt at home in. The command centre itself formed one side of the parade ground, a long single-storey building with four grey composite spheres housing the satellite uplinks spaced along the apex of the roof. Inside, plain wooden benches ran around the walls, supporting an impressive array of modern desktop processor consoles operated by sheriffs seated in composite chairs. On the wall opposite Candace Elford’s desk a big projection screen displayed a street map of Durringham (as far as it was possible to map that conglomeration of erratic alleyways and private passages). Conditioners hummed unobtrusively to keep the temperature down. The atmosphere of technological efficiency was spoilt slightly by the fans of yellow-grey fungus growing out of the skirting-board underneath the benches.

“Contact lost,” Mitch Verkaik, the sheriff sitting at the tactical communication station reported, stone faced.

Candace turned to the small team she had assigned to monitor the posse’s progress. “What about the sheriffs on the ground? Did they see it come down?”

Jan Routley was operating the satellite link to the Swithland survivors; she loaded an order into her console. “There is no response from any communicator on the Swithland or the Hycel. I can’t even raise a transponder identity code.”

Candace studied the situation display projected by her own console’s AV pillar, more out of habit than anything else. She knew they were all waiting for her to rap out orders, smooth and confident, producing instant perfect solutions like an ambulatory computer. It wasn’t going to happen. The last week had been a complete nightmare. They couldn’t contact anyone in the Quallheim Counties or Willow West any more, and communications with villages along the Zamjan were patchy. The reinforcement flights to Ozark were a stopgap at best; privately she had intended that the fresh men and weapons would simply safeguard an evacuation of settlers down the river. She had long since abandoned the idea of restoring order to the Quallheim Counties, confinement was her best hope. Now it looked like Ozark was inside the affected zone. Seventy men and almost a quarter of her armoury.

“Call the second BK133 back to Durringham right away,” she said shortly. “If the invaders can bring down one, they can bring down another.” And at least ten sheriffs with their heavy-duty weapons would be saved. They might need them badly in the weeks to come. It was pretty obvious the invaders were intent on complete domination of the planet.

“Yes, ma’am.” Mitch Verkaik turned back to his console.

“How long before the observation satellite makes a pass over the paddle-boats?” Candace asked.

“Fifteen minutes,” Jan Routley answered.

“Program it for an infrared overscan fifty kilometres either side of its orbital track, see if it can locate the downed BK133. It shouldn’t be too hard to spot.” She rested her chin in her hands, staring blankly at her desktop processor. Protecting Durringham was her priority now, she decided. They must hold on to the city until the LDC sent a combat force capable of regaining the countryside. She was convinced they were faced with an invasion, the hour-long briefing she’d had with Kelven Solanki that morning had put paid to any final doubts. Kelven was badly worried, which wasn’t like him at all.

Candace hadn’t told her staff what Kelven had said to her, about the possible use of sequestration and river-boats that might have already brought a preliminary platoon of invaders to Durringham. It didn’t bear thinking about. There were three chairs conspicuously empty in the command centre today; even the sheriffs were reverting to a self-protective mentality. She couldn’t blame them; most had a family in the city, and none had signed on to fight a well-organized military force. But she’d agreed to cooperate with the Confederation Navy office in reviewing satellite image records of river traffic for the last fortnight.

“We’re receiving the images now,” Jan Routley called out.

Candace stirred herself, and walked over to the woman’s position. Kilometre after kilometre of jungle streamed across the high-definition holoscreen; the green treetops were overlaid by transparent red shadows to indicate the temperature profile. The Zamjan leapt into view at the bottom of the screen, Swithland’s stern jutting out onto the water from under the bankside canopy of vegetation. Graphics flashed across the holoscreen, drawing orange circles around a glade close to the water.

“It’s a fire,” Jan Routley said. She datavised an order into the desktop processor to centre on the infrared source. The clearing expanded on the screen, showing a bonfire burning in its centre. There were blankets and the unmistakable white cargo-pods of homesteading gear littered about. Several trees had been felled on one side. “Where have all the people gone?” she asked in a small voice.

“I don’t know,” Candace said. “I really don’t.”

It was midafternoon, and the Coogan was twenty-five kilometres downriver from the abandoned paddle-boats when Len Buchannan and Darcy spotted the first pieces of flotsam bobbing about in the water. Crates of farmsteading gear, lengths of planking, fruit. Five minutes later they saw the first body: a woman in a one-piece ship-suit, face down, with arms and legs spread wide.

“We’re turning back now,” Len informed him.

“All the way to the mouth of the Quallheim,” Darcy reminded him.

“Shove your money and your contract.” He started turning the wheel. “You think I’m blind to what’s going on? We’re already in the rebel area. It’s gonna take a miracle to get us downriver if we start now, never mind from another hundred and fifty kilometres further east.”

“Wait,” Darcy put his hand on the wheel. “How far to Ozark?”

Scowling, Len consulted an ancient guidance block sitting on a shelf in the wheel-house. “Thirty kilometres, maybe thirty-five.”

“Put us ashore five kilometres short of the village.”

“I dunno—”

“Look, the eagles can spot any boat coming down the river ten kilometres ahead of us. If one does come, then we turn round immediately and sail for Durringham. How does that sound?”

“Why didn’t the eagles spot all this, then? Hardly something you could miss.”

“They’re out over the jungle. We’ll call them back now. Besides, it could be a genuine accident. There might be people hurt up ahead.”

The lines around Len’s mouth tightened, reflecting his indecision. No true captain would ignore another boat in distress. A broken chunk of yellow foam packaging scraped down the side of the Coogan. “All right,” he said, clutching at the wheel. “But the first sign of trouble, and I’m off downriver. It’s not the money. Coogan’s all I’ve got, I built her with my own hands. I ain’t risking the old girl for you.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m just as anxious as you that nothing happens to the boat, or you. No matter what we find in the villages, we’ve still got to get back to Durringham. Lori and I are too old to walk.”

Len grunted dismissively, but started feeding the wheel round again, lining the prow up on the eastern horizon.

The affinity call went out, and Abraham and Catlin curved through the clear air, racing for the river. From their vantage point seven kilometres ahead of the Coogan they could see tiny scraps of debris floating slowly in the current. They were also high enough for the water to be almost completely transparent. Lori could see large schools of brown-spines and reddish eel-analogues swimming idly.

It wasn’t until the sun was a red-gold ball touching the treetops ahead of the little trader boat that the eagles found the paddle-boats jammed into opposite banks. Lori and Darcy guided them in long spirals above the surrounding jungle, searching for the colonists and crew and posse. There was nobody on the boats, or in the camps that had been set up.

There’s one, Lori said. She felt Darcy come into the link with Abraham, looking through the bird’s enhanced eyes. Down below, a figure was slipping through the jungle. The tightly packed leaves made observation difficult, granting them only the most fleeting of glimpses. It was a man, a new colonist they judged, because he was wearing a shirt of synthetic fabric. He was walking unhurriedly westwards, parallel to the river about a kilometre inland.

Where does he think he’s going? Darcy asked. There isn’t another village on this side for fifty kilometres.

Do you want to send Abraham down below the tree level for a better look?

No. My guess is this man’s been sequestrated. They all have.

There were nearly seven hundred people on those three boats.

Yes.

And there are close to twenty million people on Lalonde. How much would it cost to sequestrate them all?

A lot, if you used nanonics.

You don’t think it is nanonics?

No; Laton said it was an energy virus. Whatever that is.

And you believe him?

I hate to say it, but I’m giving what he said a great deal of credence right now. There’s certainly something at work here beyond our normal experience.

Do you want to capture this man? If he is a victim of the virus we should learn all we need to know from him.

I’d hate to try chasing anyone through this jungle, especially a lone man on foot who obviously has colleagues nearby.

We go on to Ozark, then?

Yes.

The Coogan advanced up the river at a much slower pace, waiting for the sun to set before passing the two paddleboats. For the first time since he arrived on the planet, Darcy actually found himself wishing it would rain. A nice thick squall would provide extra cover. As it was they had to settle for thin clouds gusting over Diranol, subduing its red lambency to a sourceless candle-glow which reduced ordinary visibility to a few hundred metres. Even so the trader’s wheezing engines and clanking gearbox sounded appallingly loud on the night-time river where silence was sacrosanct.

Lori engaged her retinal implants as they crept thieflike between the two boats. Nothing moved, there were no lights. The two derelicts set up cold resonances in her heart she couldn’t ignore. The ships brooded.

“There should be a small tributary around here,” Darcy said an hour later. “You can moor the Coogan in it; that ought to make it invisible from anyone on the Zamjan.”

“How long for?” Len asked.

“Until tomorrow night. That should give us plenty of time, Ozark is only another four kilometres east of here. If we’re not back by 04:00 hours, then cast off and get home.”

“Right you are. And I ain’t spending a minute more, mind.”

“Make sure you don’t cook anything. The smell will give you away if there’s any trained hunting beasts in the area.”

The little tributary stream was only twice the width of the Coogan, with tall cherry oak trees growing on the boggy banks. Len Buchannan backed his boat down it, cursing every centimetre of the way. Once cables had secured it in the middle of the channel, Len, Lori, and Darcy worked for an hour cutting branches to camouflage the cabin.

Len’s dark mood became apprehensive when Darcy and Lori were finally set to leave. Both of them had put on their chameleon suits; matt grey, tight fitting, with a ring of broad equipment pouches around the waist. He couldn’t see an empty one.

“Look out for yourselves,” he mumbled, embarrassed at what he was saying, as they walked down the plank to the jungle.

“Thank you, Len,” Darcy said. “We will. Just make sure you’re here when we get back.” He pulled the hood over his head.

Len raised a hand. The air around the Edenists turned impenetrably black, flowing like oily smoke around their bodies. Then they were gone. He could hear their feet squelching softly in the mud, slowly fading into the distance. A sudden chill breeze seemed to rise out of the cloying jungle humidity, and he hastened back into the galley. Those chameleon suits were too much like magic.

Four kilometres through the jungle in the dead of night.

It wasn’t too bad, their retinal implants had low-light and infrared capability. Their world was a two-tone of green and red, shot through with strange white sparkles, like interference on a badly tuned holoscreen. Depth perception was the trickiest, compressing trees and bushes into a flat mantle of landscape.

Twice they came across sayces on a nocturnal prowl. The animals’ hot bodies shone like a dawn star amongst the lacklustre vegetation. Each time, Darcy killed them with a single shot from his maser carbine.

Lori’s inertial guidance block navigated them towards the village, its bitek processor pumping their coordinates directly into her brain, giving her the mindless knowledge and accuracy of a migratory bird. All she had to watch out for was the lie of the land; even the most exhaustive satellite survey couldn’t reveal the folds, rillets, and gullies that hid below the treetops.

Two hundred metres from the edge of Ozark’s clearing, their green and red world began to grow lighter. Lori checked through Abraham high overhead, keeping the bird circling outside the clearing. There were a number of fires blazing in open pits outside the cabins.

Seems pretty normal, she told Darcy.

From here, yes. Let’s see if we can get in closer and spot any of the sheriffs and their weapons.

OK. One minute, I’ll bring Kelven in. We’ll update him as we go. In case anything happens and we don’t get back, that way they’ll have some record—but she tried not to think that. She ordered her communication block to open a channel to the naval ELINT satellite. The unit had a bitek processor, so the conversation wouldn’t be audible.

We’re at Ozark village now, she told the navy commander.

Are you all right? Kelven Solanki asked.

Yes.

What’s your situation?

Right now we’re on our hands and knees about a hundred metres from the fields around the village. There are several fires burning in the village, and a lot of people moving round for this time of night. There must be three or four hundred of them outside, can’t be many in the cabins. Apart from that it looks pretty ordinary. She wormed her way forward through the tangle of long grass and creepers, avoiding the bushes. Darcy was a metre to her left. It had been a long time since her last fieldcraft training session, she was moderately pleased by how little noise she was making.

Kelven, I want you to datavise a list of the sheriffs the BK133s landed at Ozark, Darcy said. We’ll see if we can identify any of them.

Right away, here they come.

Lori pressed the twigs of a low-hanging branch to the ground, and slithered over them. There was the trunk of a large mayope four metres ahead, its roots sloping up out of the soil. Light from the fires fluoresced the bark to a lurid topaz.

The list of sheriffs streamed into her mind; facts, figures, and profiles, most importantly the holograms. Mirages of seventy men shimmered over the vapid low-light image of Ozark. Lori reached the mayope trunk and looked out over the lines of seedy cabins, trying to match the visual patterns in her mind with what she could see.

There’s one, Darcy said. His mind indicated one of the men squatting in a circle of people around a fire. Some kind of animal carcass was roasting above the flames.

And another, Lori indicated.

They swiftly located a further twelve sheriffs at various fires.

None of them look particularly concerned that their communications with Candace Elford have been cut off, she said.

Have they been sequestrated? Kelven Solanki asked.

There’s no way of knowing for sure, but my best guess is yes, Darcy said. Given their current situation, their behaviour is abnormal. They should at least have posted a perimeter guard.

The bitek processor in Lori’s back-up communication block reported a power loss in the unit’s electron-matrix crystal. She automatically ordered the reserve crystal to be brought on line, the thought was virtually subconscious.

I concur, Lori said. I think our original primary goal of verifying Laton’s presence is irrelevant in these circumstances.

Seconded. We’ll attempt to seize one of these people and bring them back to Durringham for examination. The mimetic governor circuitry on Darcy’s chameleon suit indicated a databus glitch in his right leg; alternative channels were brought on line by the master processor.

Our best bet will be that cabin there, it’s reasonably isolated, and I saw someone go in just now. Lori evinced a five-room building standing apart from the others. It was a hundred and twenty metres from the edge of the jungle, but the intervening ground was mostly allotments, providing as much cover as the trees. She took an image enhancer out of a pouch on her waist, and brought it up to her eyes. Bloody thing’s broken. Try yours, we need to know how many are inside.

Darcy’s chemical/biological agent detector shut down. It hasn’t broken, he said in consternation. We’re in some kind of electronic warfare field!

Damn it! Lori’s back-up communicator and target-laser-acquisition warning sensors dropped out. Kelven, did you hear that? They’re using highly sophisticated electronic warfare systems.

Your signal strength is fading, Kelven said.

Darcy felt his affinity link with his maser carbine’s controlling processor vanish. When he looked at the gun its LCD display panel was dead. Come on, move it! Back to the Coogan.

Darcy!

He twisted round to see five people standing in a semicircle right-behind them. One woman, four men. All of them with strange placid smiles; dressed like settlers in denim trousers and cotton shirts, the men with thick beards. Even with shock paralysing his nerves he retained enough presence of mind to glance at his own arm. Infrared showed him a faint pink outline, but low-light simply revealed long blades of grass. The chameleon circuitry was still functional.

“Shit!” Kelven, they can see chameleon suits. Warn your people. Kelven? The hardware units he wore round his waist were all failing in rapid succession, affinity filling his mind with processor caution warnings. They started to wink out. There was no reply from Kelven Solanki.

“You must be the pair Laton called,” one of the men said. He looked from Lori to Darcy. “You can get up now.”

The power supply to Lori’s chameleon suit ebbed to nothing, and the fabric reverted to its natural dull grey. She rolled to one side and stood in one smooth motion. Implant glands were feeding a gutsy brew of hormones into her blood supply, hyping her muscles. She dropped both her maser carbine and the image enhancer, freeing her hands. Five wouldn’t be a problem. “Where do you come from?” she asked. “I’m talking to you that’s in charge of them. Is your origin in your memory?”

“You’re an atheist,” the woman replied. “It would be kinder to spare you the answer.”

Take them out, Darcy said.

Lori stepped forwards, turning, arms and legs moving fast. Left ankle swinging into the man’s kneecap with her full bodyweight behind it—satisfying crackle of breaking bone; right hand chopping the woman’s larynx, slamming her Adam’s apple into her vertebrae. Darcy was wreaking similar mayhem on his targets. Lori spun round on one foot, left leg kicking out again, back arching supplely, and her boot’s toecap caught a man just below and behind his ear, splitting his skull.

Hands gripped at her arms from behind. Lori yelped in shock. Nobody should be there. But reflexes took over, a fast back-kick which connected with a thigh, and she completed the turn with her arms locking into a defensive posture in time to see the woman staggering back. She blinked in incomprehension. The woman had blood pouring out of her mouth, her throat was severely disfigured from the first blow. As she watched, the skin inflated out, Adam’s apple reappearing. The gush of blood stopped.

Sweet shit, what does it take to stop them?

The two men Darcy had knocked over were regaining their feet. One had a shattered shin bone, its jagged end protruding from the flesh just below his knee; he stood on it and walked forwards.

Electrodes, Darcy ordered. The first of the men was reaching for him, the side of his face caved in where Darcy’s boot had impacted, eyeball mashed in its socket, shedding tears of syrupy yellow fluid, but still smiling. He deliberately stepped inside the groping embrace, bringing his hands up, fingers wide, and clamping his palms on either side of the man’s head. The long cords of eel-derived electroplaque cells buried in his forearms discharged through organic conductors that emerged from his fingertips in the form of tiny warts. The man’s head was crowned with a blinding flare of purple-white static accompanied by a gunshot crack as the full two-thousand-volt charge slammed into his brain.

A vicious tingling erupted across Darcy’s hands as some of the current leaked through the subcutaneous insulation. But the effect on the man was like nothing Darcy had ever seen before. The discharge should have felled him instantly, nothing living could withstand that much electricity. Instead he lurched backwards clutching at his mangled head, emitting a soprano keening. His skin began to glow, shining brighter and brighter. The shirt and jeans flamed briefly, falling away from the incandescent body as blackened petals. Darcy shielded his eyes with his hand. There was no heat, he realized, with a light so bright he ought to feel a scorch wave breaking across his chameleon suit. The man had become translucent now, so powerful was the surge of photons, revealing bones and veins and organs as deep scarlet and purple shadows. Their solidity dissolved, as if they were different coloured gases caught in a hurricane. He managed one last wretched wail as his body gave a massive epileptic spasm.

The light snuffed out, and the man fell flat on his face.

The other four assailants began to howl. Lori had heard a dog lamenting the death of its master once; their voices had that same bitter resentful grieving. She realized some of her hardware units were coming back on-line, the disruption effect was abating. Her chameleon suit circuitry sent psychedelic scarlet and green fireworks zipping over the fabric.

“Kelven!” she shouted desperately.

Alone in his darkened office a thousand kilometres away Kelven Solanki jerked to attention behind his desk as her static-jarred voice crashed into his neural nanonics.

“Kelven, he was right, Laton was right, there is some kind of energy field involved. It interfaces with matter somehow, controls it. You can beat it with electricity. Sometimes. Hell, she’s getting up again.”

Darcy’s voice broke in. “Run! Now!”

“Don’t let them gang up on you, Kelven. They’re powerful when they group together. It’s got to be xenocs.”

“Shit, the whole village is swarming after us,” Darcy called.

Static roared along the satellite link like a rogue binary blitzkrieg, making Kelven wince.

“Kelven, you must quarantine . . .” Lori never finished, her signal drowning below the deluge of rampaging whines and hisses. Then the racket ended.

TRANSPONDER SIGNAL DISCONTINUED, the computer printed neatly on Kelven’s desk screen.

“I told you we shouldn’t have come up here, didn’t I?” Gail Buchannan said. “Plain as day, I said no, I said you can’t trust Edenists. But you wouldn’t listen. Oh no. They just waved their fancy credit disk in front of your eyes, and you rolled over like a wet puppy. It’s worse than when she was on board.”

Sitting on the other side of the galley’s table, Len covered his eyes with his hands. The diatribes didn’t bother him much now, he had learnt to filter them out years ago. Perhaps it was one of the reasons they had stayed together so long, not from attraction, simply because they ignored each other ninety per cent of the time. He had taken to thinking about such things recently, since Marie had left.

“Is there any coffee left?” he asked.

Gail never even glanced up from her knitting needles. “In the pot. You’re as lazy as she was.”

“Marie wasn’t lazy.” He got up and walked over to the electric hotplate where the coffee-pot was resting.

“Oh, it’s Marie now, is it? I bet you can’t name ten of the others we ferried downriver.”

He poured half a mug of coffee and sat back down. “Neither can you.”

She actually stopped knitting. “Lennie, for God’s sake, none of them had this effect on you. Look at what’s happened to us, to the boat. What was so special about her? There must have been over a hundred brides in that bunk of yours down the years.”

Len glanced up in surprise. With her bloated features rendering her face almost expressionless it was difficult to know what went on behind his wife’s eyes, but he could tell how confused she was. He dropped his gaze to the steaming mug, and blew on it absently. “I don’t know.”

Gail grunted, and resumed her knitting.

“Why don’t you go to bed?” he said. “It’s late, and we ought to stay awake in shifts.”

“If you hadn’t been so eager to come here we wouldn’t have to mess our routine up.”

Arguing just wasn’t worth the effort. “Well, we’re here now. I’ll keep watch until midmorning.”

“Those damn Ivets. I hope Rexrew has every one of them shot.”

The lighting panel screwed into the galley’s ceiling began to dim. Len gave it a puzzled glance; all the boat’s electrical systems ran off the big electron-matrix crystals in the engine-room, and they were always kept fully charged. If nothing else, he did keep the boat’s machinery in good order. Point of honour, that was.

Someone stepped onto the Coogan’s deck between the wheel-house and the long cabin. It was only the slightest sound, but Len and Gail both looked up sharply, meeting each other’s gaze.

A young-looking teenage lad walked into the galley. Len saw he was wearing a sheriff’s beige-coloured jungle jacket, the name Yuri Wilken printed on the left breast. Darcy had told him about the invaders using sequestration techniques. At the time he’d listened cynically; now he was prepared to believe utterly. There was a vicious wound on the lad’s throat, long scars of red tender skin all knotted up. A huge ribbon of dried blood ran down the front of his sleeveless shirt. He wore the kind of dazed expression belonging to the very drunk.

“Get off my boat,” Len growled.

Yuri Wilken parted his mouth in a parody of a smile. Liquid rasps emerged as he tried to speak. The lighting panel was flashing on and off at high frequency.

Len stood up and calmly walked over to the long counter fitted along the starboard wall.

“Sit,” Yuri grated. His hand closed on Gail’s shoulder. There was a sizzling sound, and her dress strap ignited, sending licks of yellow flame curling round his fingers. His skin remained completely unblemished.

Gail let out an anguished groan at the pain, her mouth yawning open. Wisps of blue smoke were rising from below Yuri’s hand as her skin was roasted. “Sit or she’s dead.”

Len opened the top drawer next to the fridge, and pulled out the 9mm, semi-automatic pistol he kept for emergencies. He never had trusted lasers and magnetic rifles, not exposed to the Juliffe’s corrosive humidity. If anyone came aboard looking for trouble after a deal went sour, or a village got worked up about prices, he wanted something that would be guaranteed to work first time.

He flicked the safety catch off, and swung the heavy blue-black gun around to point at Yuri.

“No,” the lad’s malaised voice croaked. He brought his hands up in front of his face, cowering back.

Len fired. The first bullet caught Yuri on his shoulder, spinning him round and pushing him into the wall. Yuri snarled, furious eyes glaring at him. The second was aimed at Yuri’s heart. It hit his sternum and the planks behind him were splashed with crimson as two of his ribs were blown apart. He began to slide down the wall, breath hissing through feral teeth. The lighting panel jumped up to its full brightness.

Len watched with numb dismay as the shoulder wound closed up. Yuri squirmed round, trying to regain his feet with slow tenacity. He grinned evilly. The grip on the pistol was growing alarmingly warm inside Len’s hand.

“Kill him, Lennie!” Gail shouted. “Kill, kill!”

Feeling preternaturally calm, Len took aim at the lad’s head and squeezed the trigger. Once. Twice. The first punched Yuri’s nose into his skull, ripping through his brain. He sucked air in, warbling frantically. Blood and gore slurped out of the hole. The second shot caught the right side of his temple, driving splinters of bone into the wood behind like a flight of Stone Age darts. His feet began to drum on the deck.

Len was seeing it through a cold mist. The punished, mutilated body just refused to give up. He yelled a wordless curse, finger tugging back again and again.

The pistol was clicking uselessly, its magazine empty. He blinked, trying to pull the world back into focus. Yuri had finally fallen still, there was very little left of his head. Len turned aside, grasping the side of the basin for support as a flush of nausea travelled through him. Gail was whimpering softly, a hand stroking the terrible blisters and long blackened burn marks that mottled her shoulder.

He went over and cradled her head with a tenderness he hadn’t shown in years.

“Get us out of here,” she pleaded. “Please, Lennie.”

“Darcy and Lori . . .”

“Us, Lennie. Get us out of here. You don’t think they’re going to live through tonight, do you?”

He licked his lips, making up his mind. “No.” He brought her the first aid kit and applied a small anaesthetic patch to her shoulder. She let out a blissful little sigh as it discharged.

“You go start the engines,” she said. “I’ll see to this. I’ve never held you back yet.” She started to rummage through the kit box, hunting for a medical nanonic package.

Len went out onto the deck and untied the silicon-fibre cables mooring the Coogan, slinging the ends over the side. They were expensive, and hard to come by, but it would take another quarter of an hour if he went stumbling round the banks coiling them all up properly.

The furnace was quite cool, but the electron-matrix crystals had enough power to take Coogan an easy seventy kilometres downstream before they were drained. He started the motors, shoving the trader boat out from under the lacework awning of cut branches veiling it from casual eyes. As if there were any of those left on the river, he mused.

Getting underway was a miraculous morale booster. Alone on the lively Zamjan amid the first tinges of dawn’s grey light he could almost believe they were trading again. Simple times, watching the wheel-house’s basic instrumentation, and enjoying the prospect of milking another batch of dumb dreamers at the next village. He even managed to keep his mind from the macabre corpse in the galley.

They had gone six kilometres almost due west, helped by the broad river’s swift current, when Len saw two dark smudges on the water up ahead. Swithland and Hycel were steaming towards him. A great cleft had been made in the Swithland’s prow, and the superstructure was leaning over at a hellish angle; but neither seemed to be affecting her speed.

The short-range radio block beside the forward-sweep mass-detector let out a bleep, then the general contact band came on. “Hoi there, Captain Buchannan, this is the Hycel. Reduce speed and prepare to come alongside.”

Len ignored it. He steered a couple of degrees to starboard. The two paddle-boats altered course to match. Blocking him.

“Come on, Buchannan, what do you hope to gain? That pitiful little boat can’t out-race us. One way or the other, you’re coming on board. Now heave to.”

Len thought of the burns the lad had inflicted with his bare hand, the flickering lighting panel. It was all way beyond anything he could hope to understand or resolve. There was no going back to life as it had been, not now. And in the main it had been a good life.

He increased the power to the motors, and held the course steady, aiming for the Hycel’s growing prow. With a bit of luck Gail would never know.

He was still standing resolutely behind the Coogan’s wheel when the two boats collided. The Hycel with its greater bulk and stalwart hull rode the impact easily, smashing the flimsy Coogan apart like so much kindling, and sucking the debris below its hull in a riot of bubbles.

Various chunks of wood and plastic bobbed about in the paddle-boat’s wake, spinning in the turbulent water. Thick black oil patches welled up among them. The current slowly pushed the scraps of wreckage downriver, dispersing them over a wide area. Within quarter of an hour there was no evidence left to illustrate the trader boat’s demise.

Swithland and Hycel continued on their way upriver without slowing.