“No more singing, Gerald,” Harry Earnshaw said. “We’re going to play a different game. Dr Dobbs and I are going to ask you some questions. We want to know what happened to you on Lalonde—”
The apartment exploded into a blinding iridescent swirl. Every sensory channel splice into Gerald Skibbow’s brain thrummed from overload.
Riley Dobbs shook himself as the processor array broke the direct linkage. In the seat next to him Harry Earnshaw was also stirring.
“Sod it,” Dobbs grumbled. In the room through the glass, he could see Skibbow’s body straining against the webbing. He hurriedly datavised an order into the physiological control processor for a tranquillizer.
Earnshaw studied the neural scan of Skibbow’s brain, the huge electrical surge at the mention of Lalonde. “That is one very deep-seated trauma. The associations are hotwired into almost every neural pathway.”
“Did the AI pull anything out of the cerebral convulsion?”
“No. It was pure randomization.”
Dobbs watched Skibbow’s physiological display creep down towards median. “Okay, let’s go in again. That trank should take the edge off his neurosis.”
This time the three of them stood on a savanna of lush emerald-green knee-high grass. Tall snowcapped mountains guarded the horizon. A bright sun thickened the air, deadening sounds. Before them was a burning building; a sturdy log cabin with a lean-to barn and a stone chimney.
“Loren!” Gerald shouted hoarsely. “Paula! Frank!” He ran towards the building as the flames licked up the walls. The roof of solar cell panels began to curl up, blistering from the heat.
Gerald ran and ran, but never got any nearer. There were faces behind the windows: two women and a man. They did nothing as the flames closed around them, simply looked out with immense sadness.
Gerald sank to his knees, sobbing.
“Wife Loren, and daughter Paula with her husband Frank,” Dobbs said, receiving their identities direct from the AI. “No sign of Marie.”
“Small wonder the poor bastard’s in shock if he saw this happen to his family,” Earnshaw remarked.
“Yeah. And we’re too early. He hasn’t been taken over by the energy virus yet.” Dobbs datavised an order into the AI, activating a targeted suppression program, and the fire vanished along with the people. “It’s all right, Gerald. It’s over. All finished with. They’re at peace now.”
Gerald twisted around to glare at him, his face deformed by rage. “At peace? At peace! You stupid ignorant bastard. They’ll never be at peace. None of us ever will. Ask me! Ask me, you fucker. Go on. You want to know what happened? This , this happened.”
Daylight vanished from the sky, replaced by a meagre radiance from Rennison, Lalonde’s innermost moon. It illuminated another log cabin; this one belonged to the Nicholls family, Gerald’s neighbour. The mother, father, and son had been tied up and put in the animal stockade along with Gerald.
A ring of dark figures encircled the lonely homestead, distorted human shapes, some atrociously bestial.
“My God,” Dobbs murmured. Two of the figures were dragging a struggling, screaming girl into the cabin.
Gerald gave a giddy laugh. “God? There is no God.”
After nearly five hours of unbroken and mercifully uneventful travel, Carmitha still hadn’t convinced herself they were doing the right thing in going to Bytham. Every instinct yelled at her to get to Holbeach and surround herself with her own kind, use them like a fence to keep out the nemesis which prowled the land, to be safe. That same instinct made her queasy at Titreano’s presence. Yet as the younger Kavanagh girl predicted, with him accompanying them nothing had happened to the caravan. Several times he had indicated a farmhouse or hamlet where he said his kind were skulking.
Indecision was a wretched curse.
But she now had few doubts that he was almost what he claimed to be: an old Earth nobleman possessing the body of a Norfolk farmhand.
There had been a lot of talk in the last five hours. The more she heard, the more convinced she became. He knew so many details. However, there was one small untruth remaining which bothered her.
After Titreano had spoken about his former life to the fascination of the sisters, he in turn became eager to hear of Norfolk. And that was when Carmitha finally began to lose patience with her companions. Genevieve she could tolerate; the world as seen through the eyes of a twelve-(Earth)-year-old was fairly bizarre anyway, all enthusiasms and misunderstandings. But Louise, now; that brat was a different matter. Louise explained about the planet’s economy being built around the export of Norfolk Tears, about how the founders had wisely chosen a pastoral life for their descendants, about how pretty the cities and towns were, how clean the countryside and the air were compared to industrialized worlds, how nice the people, how well organized the estates, how few criminals there were.
“It sounds as though you have achieved much that is worthy,” Titreano said. “Norfolk is an enviable world in which to be born.”
“There are some people who don’t like it,” Louise said. “But not very many.” She looked down at Genevieve’s head, cradled in her lap, and smiled gently. Her little sister had finally fallen asleep, rocked by the gentle rhythm of the caravan.
She smoothed locks of hair back from Genevieve’s brow. It was dirty and unkempt, with strands shrivelled and singed from the fire in the stable. Mrs Charlsworth would have a fit of the vapours if she saw it thus. Landowner girls were supposed to be paragons of deportment at all times, Kavanagh girls especially.
Just thinking of the old woman, her sacrifice, threatened to bring the tears which had been so long delayed.
“Why don’t you tell him the reason those dissidents don’t like it here,” Carmitha said.
“Who?” Louise asked.
“The Land Union people, the traders flung in jail for trying to sell medicine the rest of the Confederation takes for granted, the people who work the land, and all the other victims of the landowner class, me included.”
Anger, tiredness, and despair spurted up together in Louise’s skull, threatening to quench what was left of her fragile spirit. She was so very tired; but she had to keep going, had to look after Gen. Gen and the precious baby. Would she ever see Joshua again now? “Why are you saying this?” she asked jadedly.
“Because it’s the truth. Not something a Kavanagh is used to, I’ll warrant. Not from the likes of me.”
“I know this world isn’t perfect. I’m not blind, I’m not stupid.”
“No, you know what to do to hang on to your privileges and your power. And look where it’s got you. The whole planet being taken over, being taken away from you. Not so smart now, are you? Not so high and mighty.”
“That’s a wicked lie.”
“Is it? A fortnight ago you rode your horse past me when I was working in one of your estate roseyards. Did you stop for a chat then? Did you even notice I existed?”
“Come now, ladies,” Titreano said, uneasily.
But Louise couldn’t ignore the challenge, the insult and the vile implication behind it. “Did you ask me to stop?” she demanded. “Did you want to hear me chat about the things I love and care about the most? Or were you too busy sneering at me? You with your righteous poverty. Because I’m rich I’m evil, that’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“Your family is, yes. Your ancestors made quite sure of that with their oppressive constitution. I was born on the road, and I’ll die on it. I have no quarrel with that. But you condemned us to a circular road. It leads us nowhere, in an era when there is a chance to travel right into the heart of the galaxy. You shackled us as surely as any house would. I’ll never see the wonder of sunrise and sunset on another planet.”
“Your ancestors knew the constitution when they came here, and they still came. They saw the freedom it would give you to roam like you always have done, like you cannot do on Earth anymore.”
“If that’s freedom, then tell me why can’t we leave?”
“You can. Anyone can. Just buy a ticket on a starship.”
“Fat bloody chance. My entire family working a summer cupping season couldn’t raise the price of one ticket. You control the economy, too. You designed it so we never earn more than a pittance.”
“It’s not my fault you can’t think of anything other than grove work to do. You have a caravan, why don’t you trade goods like a merchant? Or plant some rose groves of your own? There’s still unsettled land on hundreds of islands.”
“We’re not a landowning people, we don’t want to be tied down.”
“Exactly,” Louise shouted. “It’s only your own stupid prejudices which trap you here. Not us, not the landowners. Yet we’re the ones who you blame for your own inadequacies, just because you can’t face up to the real truth. And don’t think you’re so unique. I want to see the whole Confederation, too. I dream about it every night. But I’ll never be able to fly in a starship. I’ll never be allowed, which is much worse than you. You made your own prison. I was born into mine. My obligations bind me to this world, I have to sacrifice my entire life for the good of this island.”