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“I don’t like this at all,” Carmitha said. “We’re too visible. And when they realize there’s four of us riding on it, your side is going to know you’re travelling with non-possessed,” she said accusingly to Titreano.
“We can’t turn around now,” Louise insisted, her voice high and strained. “We’re so close. We’ll never have another chance.”
Carmitha wanted to add that there might not even be a pilot at the aerodrome; come to that she hadn’t actually seen the distinctive shape of the aeroambulance itself yet. Could be in a hangar. But with the way their luck was turning out right now . . .
Both the sisters were obviously near the end of their tether. They looked dreadful, filthy and tired, close to breaking down in tears—for all Louise’s outward determination.
Carmitha was surprised to realize just how much she had begun to respect the elder girl.
“You can’t go back, no,” Carmitha said. “But I can. If I take the caravan back to the woods the possessed will think we’re all running away from Titreano here.”
“No!” Louise said in shock. “We’re together now. We’ve only got each other. There’s only us left in the whole world.”
“We are not all that’s left. Don’t ever think that. Outside Kesteven, people are going about their lives just like before. And once you get to Norwich, they’ll be warned.”
“No,” Louise mumbled. But there was less conviction now.
“You know you have to go,” Carmitha continued. “But me. Hell, I’ll be a lot better off by myself. With my lore I can lose myself in the forests; the possessed will never find me. I can’t do that with you three tagging along. You know us Romanies belong with the land, girl.”
The corners of Louise’s mouth turned down.
“Don’t you?” Carmitha said sternly. She knew she was still being selfish; just plain didn’t want to admit she couldn’t stand seeing their delicate hopes burnt to cinders when they reached the aerodrome.
“Yes,” Louise said docilely.
“Good girl. Okay, this section of road is wide enough to turn the caravan around. You three had better get down.”
“Are you sure of this, lady?” Titreano asked.
“Absolutely. But I’m holding you to your promise of guarding these two.”
He nodded sincerely and dropped down over the side.
“Genevieve?”
The little girl glanced up shyly, her lower lip pressed against her teeth.
“I know we didn’t get on too well, and I’m sorry we didn’t. But I want you to have this.” Carmitha reached behind her neck and unfastened the pendant’s chain. The silver bulb which glinted in the pink light was made from a fine mesh, much dinted now; but through the grid a filigree of thin brown twigs was just visible. “It used to be my grandma’s; she gave it to me when I was about your age. It’s a charm to ward off evil spirits. That’s lucky heather inside, see? Genuine heather; it grew on Earth in the time before the armada storms. There’s real earth magic stored in there.”
Genevieve held the bauble up in front of her face, studying it intently. A fast smile lit up her delicate features, and she lunged forward to hug Carmitha. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for everything.” She climbed down into Titreano’s arms.
Carmitha gave an edgy smile to Louise. “Sorry it turned out the way it did, girl.”
“That’s all right.”
“Hardly. Don’t lose faith in your father because of what I said.”
“I won’t. I love Daddy.”
“Yes, I expect you do. That’s good, something to hold on to. You are going to be facing a few more dark days yet, you know.”
Louise started tugging at a ring on her left hand. “Here. It’s not much. Not lucky, or anything special. But it is gold, and that’s a real diamond. If you need to buy anything, it’ll help.”
Carmitha eyed the ring in surprise. “Right. Next time I need a mansion I’ll remember.”
They both grinned sheepishly.
“Take care, Carmitha. I want to see you when I come back, when all this is over.” Louise twisted around, preparing to climb down.
“Louise.”
There was such disquiet in the voice that Louise froze.
“There’s something wrong about Titreano,” Carmitha said quietly. “I don’t know if I’m just being paranoid, but you ought to know before you go any further with him.”
A minute later Louise clambered gingerly down the side of the caravan, keeping hold of the pump-action shotgun, the cartridge belt an uncomfortable weight around her hips. When she was on the dirt track she waved up at Carmitha. The Romany waved back and flicked the cob’s reins.
Louise, Genevieve, and Titreano watched the caravan turn around and head back up the rucked road.
“Are you all right, Lady Louise?” Titreano asked courteously.
Her fingers tightened around the shotgun. Then she took a breath and smiled at him. “I think so.”
They struck out for the aerodrome, scrambling through ditches and over hedges. The fields were mostly ploughed, ready for the second cereal crop, difficult to walk on. Dust puffed up from each footfall.
Louise glanced over at Genevieve, who was wearing Carmitha’s pendant outside her torn and dusty blouse, one hand grasping the silver bulb tightly. “Not long now,” she said.
“I know,” Genevieve replied pertly. “Louise, will they have something to eat on the aeroambulance?”
“I expect so.”
“Good! I’m starving.” She trudged on for another few paces, then cocked her head to one side. “Titreano, you’re not dirty at all,” she exclaimed in a vexed tone.
Louise looked over. It was true; not a scrap of dirt or dust had adhered to his blue jacket.
He glanced down at himself, rubbing his hands along the seams of his trousers in a nervous gesture. “I’m sorry, little one, it must be the fabric. Although I do confess, I don’t remember being immune to such depredations before. Perhaps I should bow to the inevitable.”
Louise watched in some consternation as mud stains crept up from his ankles, discolouring his trousers below the knee. “You mean you can change your appearance whenever you want?” she asked.
“It would seem so, Lady Louise.”
“Oh.”
Genevieve giggled. “You mean you want to look all silly like that?”
“I find it . . . comfortable, little one. Yes.”
“If you can change that easily, I think you ought to adopt something which will blend in a bit better,” Louise said. “I mean, Gen and I look like a pair of tramps. And then there’s you in all your strange finery. What would you think of us if you were one of the aeroambulance crew?”
“Finely argued, lady.”
For the next five minutes as they crossed the fields Titreano went through a series of alterations. Genevieve and Louise kept up a stream of suggestions, arguing hotly, and explaining textures and styles to their mildly befuddled companion. When they finished he was dressed in the fashion of a young estate manager, with fawn cord trousers, calf-length boots, a tweed jacket, check shirt, and grey cap.
“Just right,” Louise declared.
“I thank you, lady.” He doffed his cap and bowed low.
Genevieve clapped delightedly.
Louise stopped at another of the interminable walls and found a gap in the stone to shove her boot toe in. Straddling the top of the wall she could see the aerodrome’s perimeter fence two hundred yards away. “Almost there,” she told the others cheerfully.
The Bytham aerodrome appeared to be deserted. Both hangars were closed up; nobody was in the control tower. Away on the other side of the mown field the row of seven cottages used by station personnel were silent and dark.
The only sound was the persistent clang of the church bell in the village. It hadn’t stopped ringing the whole time they had walked across the fields.
Louise peered around the side of the first hangar, clutching at the shotgun. Nothing moved. A couple of tractors and a farm ranger were parked outside a small access door. “Are there any possessed here?” she whispered to Titreano.
“No,” he whispered back.
“What about normal people?”
His brown face creased in concentration. “Several. I hear them over in yon houses. Five or six are malingering inside this second barn.”
“Hangar,” Louise corrected. “We call them hangars nowadays.”
“Yes, lady.”
“Sorry.”
They swapped a nervous grin.
“I suppose we’d better go and see them, then,” she said. “Come here, Gen.” She pointed the shotgun at the ground and took her sister’s hand as they walked towards the second hangar.
She really wished Carmitha hadn’t given her the weapon. Yet at the same time it imbued her with an uncommon sense of confidence. Even though she doubted she could ever actually fire it at anyone.
“They have seen us,” Titreano said quietly.
Louise scanned the corrugated panel wall of the hangar. A narrow line of windows ran the entire length. She thought she saw a shiver of motion behind one. “Hello?” she called loudly.
There was no reply.
She walked right up to the door and knocked firmly. “Hello, can you hear me?” She tried the handle, only to discover it was locked.
“Now what?” she asked Titreano.
“Hey!” Genevieve shouted at the door. “I’m hungry.”
The handle turned, and the door opened a crack. “Who the hell are you people?” a man asked.
Louise drew herself up as best she could manage, knowing full well what she must look like to anyone inside. “I am Louise Kavanagh, the heir of Cricklade, this is my sister Genevieve, and William Elphinstone, one of our estate managers.”
Genevieve opened her mouth to protest, but Louise nudged her with a toe.
“Oh, really?” came the answer from behind the door.
“Yes!”
“It is her,” said another, deeper voice. The door opened wide to show two men gazing out at them. “I recognize her. I used to work at Cricklade.”
“Thank you,” Louise said.
“Until your father fired me.”
Louise didn’t know whether to burst into tears or just shoot him on the spot.
“Let them in, Duggen,” a woman called. “The little girl looks exhausted. And this is no day to settle old grudges.”
Duggen shrugged and moved aside.
A line of dusty windows was the sole source of illumination inside. The aeroambulance was a hulking dark presence in the middle of the concrete floor. Three people were standing below the plane’s narrow, pointed nose; the woman who had spoken, and a pair of five-year-old twin girls. She introduced herself as Felicia Cantrell, her daughters were Ellen and Tammy; her husband Ivan was an aeroambulance pilot, the man who had opened the door. “And Duggen you already know, or at least he knows you.”
Ivan Cantrell took a vigilant look out of the hangar door before closing it. “So would you like to tell us what you’re doing here, Louise? And what happened to you?”
It took her over fifteen minutes to produce a patched-up explanation which satisfied them. All the time guarding her tongue from uttering the word possession, and mentioning who Titreano really was. As she realized, those two items would have got her ejected from the hangar in no time at all. Yet at the same time she was pleased with her white lies; the Louise who had woken to a normal world yesterday would have just blurted the truth and imperiously demanded they do something about it. This must be growing up, after a fashion.
“The Land Union with modern energy weapons?” Duggen mused sceptically when she was finished.
“I think so,” Louise said. “That’s what everyone said.”
He looked as if he was about to object when Genevieve said: “Listen.”
Louise couldn’t hear a thing. “What?” she asked.
“The church bells, they’ve stopped.”
Duggen and Ivan went over to the windows and looked out.
“Are they coming?” Louise mouthed to Titreano.
He nodded his head surreptitiously.
“Please,” she appealed to Ivan. “You have to fly us out of here.”
“I don’t know about that, Miss Kavanagh. I don’t have the authority. And we don’t really know what’s happening in the village. Perhaps I ought to check with the constable first.”
“Please! If you’re worried about your job, don’t be. My family will protect you.”
He sucked in his breath, blatantly unhappy.
“Ivan,” Felicia said. She stared straight at him, pointing significantly to the twins. “Whatever is going on, this is no place for children to be. The capital will be safe if anywhere is.”
“Oh, hell. All right, Miss Kavanagh. You win. Get in. We’ll all go.”
Duggen started to open the big sliding doors at the end of the hangar, allowing a thick beam of pink-tinted sunlight to strike the aeroambulance. The plane was an imported Kulu Corporation SCV-659 civil utility, a ten-seater VTOL supersonic with a near global range.
“It has the essence of a bird,” Titreano murmured, his face gently intoxicated. “But with the strength of a bull. What magic.”
“Are you going to be all right inside?” Louise asked anxiously.
“Oh, yes, Lady Louise. This is a voyage to be prized beyond mountains of gold. To be granted this opportunity I shall give full praise to the Lord tonight.”
She coughed uncomfortably. “Right. Okay, we’d better get in; up that stairs on the other side, see?”
They followed Felicia and the twins up the airstairs. The plane’s narrow cabin had been customized for its ambulance role, with a pair of stretchers and several cabinets of medical equipment. There were only two seats, which the twins used. Genevieve, Titreano, and Louise wound up sitting together on one of the stretcher couches. Louise checked the safety on the shotgun once again and wedged it below her feet. Surprisingly, no one had objected to her carrying it on board.
“This is all we need,” Ivan called back from the pilot’s seat as he started to run through the preflight checklist. “I’ve got half a dozen systems failures showing.”
“Any critical?” Duggen asked as he closed the hatch.
“We’ll survive.”
Felicia opened one of the cabinets and handed Genevieve a bar of chocolate. The girl tore the wrapper off and sat munching it with a huge contented smile.
If she craned forwards, Louise could just see the windscreen beyond Ivan. The plane was rolling forwards out of the hangar.
“There are some houses on fire in the village,” the pilot exclaimed. “And some people running down the road towards us. Hang on.”
There was a sudden surge in the bee-hum from the fans, and the cabin rocked. They were airborne within seconds, climbing at a shallow angle. The only thing visible through the windscreen were daubs of insubstantial pink cloud.
“I hope Carmitha is all right down there,” Louise said guiltily.
“I feel certain she will remain free from harm, lady. And it gladdens me that you resolved your quarrel with her. I admire you for that, my lady Louise.”
She knew her cheeks would be blushing, she could feel the heat. Hopefully the smears of mud and dust would be veiling the fact. “Carmitha said something to me before she left. Something about you. It was a question. A good one.”
“Ah. I did wonder what passed between you. If you care to ask, I will answer with such honesty as I own.”
“She wanted me to ask where you really came from.”
“But, Lady Louise, I have spoken nothing but the truth to you in this matter.”
“Not quite. Norfolk is an English-ethnic planet; so we do learn something of our heritage in school. I know that the England of what you say is your time was a pure Anglo-Saxon culture.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. And Titreano is not an English name. Not at that time. After that possibly, when immigration began in later centuries. But if you had been born in Cumbria in 1764 as you claim, that could not be your name.”
“Oh, lady, forgive me any mistrust I have inadvertently caused you. Titreano is not the name I was born with. However, it is the one I lived with in my latter years. It is the closest rendering the island people I adopted could come to my family name.”
“And that is?”
The dignity vanished from his handsome features, leaving only sorrow. “Christian, my lady Louise. I was baptized Fletcher Christian, and was proud to be named so. In that I must now be alone, for I have brought naught but shame to my family ever since. I am a mutineer, you see.”
Chapter 04
“We can’t turn around now,” Louise insisted, her voice high and strained. “We’re so close. We’ll never have another chance.”
Carmitha wanted to add that there might not even be a pilot at the aerodrome; come to that she hadn’t actually seen the distinctive shape of the aeroambulance itself yet. Could be in a hangar. But with the way their luck was turning out right now . . .
Both the sisters were obviously near the end of their tether. They looked dreadful, filthy and tired, close to breaking down in tears—for all Louise’s outward determination.
Carmitha was surprised to realize just how much she had begun to respect the elder girl.
“You can’t go back, no,” Carmitha said. “But I can. If I take the caravan back to the woods the possessed will think we’re all running away from Titreano here.”
“No!” Louise said in shock. “We’re together now. We’ve only got each other. There’s only us left in the whole world.”
“We are not all that’s left. Don’t ever think that. Outside Kesteven, people are going about their lives just like before. And once you get to Norwich, they’ll be warned.”
“No,” Louise mumbled. But there was less conviction now.
“You know you have to go,” Carmitha continued. “But me. Hell, I’ll be a lot better off by myself. With my lore I can lose myself in the forests; the possessed will never find me. I can’t do that with you three tagging along. You know us Romanies belong with the land, girl.”
The corners of Louise’s mouth turned down.
“Don’t you?” Carmitha said sternly. She knew she was still being selfish; just plain didn’t want to admit she couldn’t stand seeing their delicate hopes burnt to cinders when they reached the aerodrome.
“Yes,” Louise said docilely.
“Good girl. Okay, this section of road is wide enough to turn the caravan around. You three had better get down.”
“Are you sure of this, lady?” Titreano asked.
“Absolutely. But I’m holding you to your promise of guarding these two.”
He nodded sincerely and dropped down over the side.
“Genevieve?”
The little girl glanced up shyly, her lower lip pressed against her teeth.
“I know we didn’t get on too well, and I’m sorry we didn’t. But I want you to have this.” Carmitha reached behind her neck and unfastened the pendant’s chain. The silver bulb which glinted in the pink light was made from a fine mesh, much dinted now; but through the grid a filigree of thin brown twigs was just visible. “It used to be my grandma’s; she gave it to me when I was about your age. It’s a charm to ward off evil spirits. That’s lucky heather inside, see? Genuine heather; it grew on Earth in the time before the armada storms. There’s real earth magic stored in there.”
Genevieve held the bauble up in front of her face, studying it intently. A fast smile lit up her delicate features, and she lunged forward to hug Carmitha. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for everything.” She climbed down into Titreano’s arms.
Carmitha gave an edgy smile to Louise. “Sorry it turned out the way it did, girl.”
“That’s all right.”
“Hardly. Don’t lose faith in your father because of what I said.”
“I won’t. I love Daddy.”
“Yes, I expect you do. That’s good, something to hold on to. You are going to be facing a few more dark days yet, you know.”
Louise started tugging at a ring on her left hand. “Here. It’s not much. Not lucky, or anything special. But it is gold, and that’s a real diamond. If you need to buy anything, it’ll help.”
Carmitha eyed the ring in surprise. “Right. Next time I need a mansion I’ll remember.”
They both grinned sheepishly.
“Take care, Carmitha. I want to see you when I come back, when all this is over.” Louise twisted around, preparing to climb down.
“Louise.”
There was such disquiet in the voice that Louise froze.
“There’s something wrong about Titreano,” Carmitha said quietly. “I don’t know if I’m just being paranoid, but you ought to know before you go any further with him.”
A minute later Louise clambered gingerly down the side of the caravan, keeping hold of the pump-action shotgun, the cartridge belt an uncomfortable weight around her hips. When she was on the dirt track she waved up at Carmitha. The Romany waved back and flicked the cob’s reins.
Louise, Genevieve, and Titreano watched the caravan turn around and head back up the rucked road.
“Are you all right, Lady Louise?” Titreano asked courteously.
Her fingers tightened around the shotgun. Then she took a breath and smiled at him. “I think so.”
They struck out for the aerodrome, scrambling through ditches and over hedges. The fields were mostly ploughed, ready for the second cereal crop, difficult to walk on. Dust puffed up from each footfall.
Louise glanced over at Genevieve, who was wearing Carmitha’s pendant outside her torn and dusty blouse, one hand grasping the silver bulb tightly. “Not long now,” she said.
“I know,” Genevieve replied pertly. “Louise, will they have something to eat on the aeroambulance?”
“I expect so.”
“Good! I’m starving.” She trudged on for another few paces, then cocked her head to one side. “Titreano, you’re not dirty at all,” she exclaimed in a vexed tone.
Louise looked over. It was true; not a scrap of dirt or dust had adhered to his blue jacket.
He glanced down at himself, rubbing his hands along the seams of his trousers in a nervous gesture. “I’m sorry, little one, it must be the fabric. Although I do confess, I don’t remember being immune to such depredations before. Perhaps I should bow to the inevitable.”
Louise watched in some consternation as mud stains crept up from his ankles, discolouring his trousers below the knee. “You mean you can change your appearance whenever you want?” she asked.
“It would seem so, Lady Louise.”
“Oh.”
Genevieve giggled. “You mean you want to look all silly like that?”
“I find it . . . comfortable, little one. Yes.”
“If you can change that easily, I think you ought to adopt something which will blend in a bit better,” Louise said. “I mean, Gen and I look like a pair of tramps. And then there’s you in all your strange finery. What would you think of us if you were one of the aeroambulance crew?”
“Finely argued, lady.”
For the next five minutes as they crossed the fields Titreano went through a series of alterations. Genevieve and Louise kept up a stream of suggestions, arguing hotly, and explaining textures and styles to their mildly befuddled companion. When they finished he was dressed in the fashion of a young estate manager, with fawn cord trousers, calf-length boots, a tweed jacket, check shirt, and grey cap.
“Just right,” Louise declared.
“I thank you, lady.” He doffed his cap and bowed low.
Genevieve clapped delightedly.
Louise stopped at another of the interminable walls and found a gap in the stone to shove her boot toe in. Straddling the top of the wall she could see the aerodrome’s perimeter fence two hundred yards away. “Almost there,” she told the others cheerfully.
The Bytham aerodrome appeared to be deserted. Both hangars were closed up; nobody was in the control tower. Away on the other side of the mown field the row of seven cottages used by station personnel were silent and dark.
The only sound was the persistent clang of the church bell in the village. It hadn’t stopped ringing the whole time they had walked across the fields.
Louise peered around the side of the first hangar, clutching at the shotgun. Nothing moved. A couple of tractors and a farm ranger were parked outside a small access door. “Are there any possessed here?” she whispered to Titreano.
“No,” he whispered back.
“What about normal people?”
His brown face creased in concentration. “Several. I hear them over in yon houses. Five or six are malingering inside this second barn.”
“Hangar,” Louise corrected. “We call them hangars nowadays.”
“Yes, lady.”
“Sorry.”
They swapped a nervous grin.
“I suppose we’d better go and see them, then,” she said. “Come here, Gen.” She pointed the shotgun at the ground and took her sister’s hand as they walked towards the second hangar.
She really wished Carmitha hadn’t given her the weapon. Yet at the same time it imbued her with an uncommon sense of confidence. Even though she doubted she could ever actually fire it at anyone.
“They have seen us,” Titreano said quietly.
Louise scanned the corrugated panel wall of the hangar. A narrow line of windows ran the entire length. She thought she saw a shiver of motion behind one. “Hello?” she called loudly.
There was no reply.
She walked right up to the door and knocked firmly. “Hello, can you hear me?” She tried the handle, only to discover it was locked.
“Now what?” she asked Titreano.
“Hey!” Genevieve shouted at the door. “I’m hungry.”
The handle turned, and the door opened a crack. “Who the hell are you people?” a man asked.
Louise drew herself up as best she could manage, knowing full well what she must look like to anyone inside. “I am Louise Kavanagh, the heir of Cricklade, this is my sister Genevieve, and William Elphinstone, one of our estate managers.”
Genevieve opened her mouth to protest, but Louise nudged her with a toe.
“Oh, really?” came the answer from behind the door.
“Yes!”
“It is her,” said another, deeper voice. The door opened wide to show two men gazing out at them. “I recognize her. I used to work at Cricklade.”
“Thank you,” Louise said.
“Until your father fired me.”
Louise didn’t know whether to burst into tears or just shoot him on the spot.
“Let them in, Duggen,” a woman called. “The little girl looks exhausted. And this is no day to settle old grudges.”
Duggen shrugged and moved aside.
A line of dusty windows was the sole source of illumination inside. The aeroambulance was a hulking dark presence in the middle of the concrete floor. Three people were standing below the plane’s narrow, pointed nose; the woman who had spoken, and a pair of five-year-old twin girls. She introduced herself as Felicia Cantrell, her daughters were Ellen and Tammy; her husband Ivan was an aeroambulance pilot, the man who had opened the door. “And Duggen you already know, or at least he knows you.”
Ivan Cantrell took a vigilant look out of the hangar door before closing it. “So would you like to tell us what you’re doing here, Louise? And what happened to you?”
It took her over fifteen minutes to produce a patched-up explanation which satisfied them. All the time guarding her tongue from uttering the word possession, and mentioning who Titreano really was. As she realized, those two items would have got her ejected from the hangar in no time at all. Yet at the same time she was pleased with her white lies; the Louise who had woken to a normal world yesterday would have just blurted the truth and imperiously demanded they do something about it. This must be growing up, after a fashion.
“The Land Union with modern energy weapons?” Duggen mused sceptically when she was finished.
“I think so,” Louise said. “That’s what everyone said.”
He looked as if he was about to object when Genevieve said: “Listen.”
Louise couldn’t hear a thing. “What?” she asked.
“The church bells, they’ve stopped.”
Duggen and Ivan went over to the windows and looked out.
“Are they coming?” Louise mouthed to Titreano.
He nodded his head surreptitiously.
“Please,” she appealed to Ivan. “You have to fly us out of here.”
“I don’t know about that, Miss Kavanagh. I don’t have the authority. And we don’t really know what’s happening in the village. Perhaps I ought to check with the constable first.”
“Please! If you’re worried about your job, don’t be. My family will protect you.”
He sucked in his breath, blatantly unhappy.
“Ivan,” Felicia said. She stared straight at him, pointing significantly to the twins. “Whatever is going on, this is no place for children to be. The capital will be safe if anywhere is.”
“Oh, hell. All right, Miss Kavanagh. You win. Get in. We’ll all go.”
Duggen started to open the big sliding doors at the end of the hangar, allowing a thick beam of pink-tinted sunlight to strike the aeroambulance. The plane was an imported Kulu Corporation SCV-659 civil utility, a ten-seater VTOL supersonic with a near global range.
“It has the essence of a bird,” Titreano murmured, his face gently intoxicated. “But with the strength of a bull. What magic.”
“Are you going to be all right inside?” Louise asked anxiously.
“Oh, yes, Lady Louise. This is a voyage to be prized beyond mountains of gold. To be granted this opportunity I shall give full praise to the Lord tonight.”
She coughed uncomfortably. “Right. Okay, we’d better get in; up that stairs on the other side, see?”
They followed Felicia and the twins up the airstairs. The plane’s narrow cabin had been customized for its ambulance role, with a pair of stretchers and several cabinets of medical equipment. There were only two seats, which the twins used. Genevieve, Titreano, and Louise wound up sitting together on one of the stretcher couches. Louise checked the safety on the shotgun once again and wedged it below her feet. Surprisingly, no one had objected to her carrying it on board.
“This is all we need,” Ivan called back from the pilot’s seat as he started to run through the preflight checklist. “I’ve got half a dozen systems failures showing.”
“Any critical?” Duggen asked as he closed the hatch.
“We’ll survive.”
Felicia opened one of the cabinets and handed Genevieve a bar of chocolate. The girl tore the wrapper off and sat munching it with a huge contented smile.
If she craned forwards, Louise could just see the windscreen beyond Ivan. The plane was rolling forwards out of the hangar.
“There are some houses on fire in the village,” the pilot exclaimed. “And some people running down the road towards us. Hang on.”
There was a sudden surge in the bee-hum from the fans, and the cabin rocked. They were airborne within seconds, climbing at a shallow angle. The only thing visible through the windscreen were daubs of insubstantial pink cloud.
“I hope Carmitha is all right down there,” Louise said guiltily.
“I feel certain she will remain free from harm, lady. And it gladdens me that you resolved your quarrel with her. I admire you for that, my lady Louise.”
She knew her cheeks would be blushing, she could feel the heat. Hopefully the smears of mud and dust would be veiling the fact. “Carmitha said something to me before she left. Something about you. It was a question. A good one.”
“Ah. I did wonder what passed between you. If you care to ask, I will answer with such honesty as I own.”
“She wanted me to ask where you really came from.”
“But, Lady Louise, I have spoken nothing but the truth to you in this matter.”
“Not quite. Norfolk is an English-ethnic planet; so we do learn something of our heritage in school. I know that the England of what you say is your time was a pure Anglo-Saxon culture.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. And Titreano is not an English name. Not at that time. After that possibly, when immigration began in later centuries. But if you had been born in Cumbria in 1764 as you claim, that could not be your name.”
“Oh, lady, forgive me any mistrust I have inadvertently caused you. Titreano is not the name I was born with. However, it is the one I lived with in my latter years. It is the closest rendering the island people I adopted could come to my family name.”
“And that is?”
The dignity vanished from his handsome features, leaving only sorrow. “Christian, my lady Louise. I was baptized Fletcher Christian, and was proud to be named so. In that I must now be alone, for I have brought naught but shame to my family ever since. I am a mutineer, you see.”
Chapter 04
Ralph Hiltch was gratified and relieved by the speed with which Ombey’s senior administration reacted to what they’d taken to calling the Mortonridge crisis. The people at Hub One were joined by the full complement of the Privy Council security committee. This time Princess Kirsten herself was sitting at the head of the table in the white bubble room, relegating Admiral Farquar to a position adjacent to her. The tabletop mutated into a detailed map showing the top half of Mortonridge; the four towns which the rogue Longhound bus had visited—Marble Bar, Rainton, Gaslee, and Exnall—glinted a macabre blood-red above the rumpled foothills. Flurries of symbols flickered and winked around each of them, electronic armies harassing their foes.
Once the last of Moyce’s delivery lorries had been tracked down and eliminated, Diana Tiernan switched the entire capacity of the AIs to analysing vehicles that had left the four towns, and stopping them. In one respect they were fortunate: it was midnight along Mortonridge, the volume of traffic was much reduced from its daytime peak. Identification was reasonably easy. Deciding what to do about both cars and towns was less so.
It took twenty minutes of debate, arbitrated by the Princess, before they thrashed out an agreed policy. In the end, the deciding factor was Gerald Skibbow’s completed personality debrief which was datavised down from Guyana. Dr Riley Dobbs appeared before the committee to testify its provenance; an apprehensive man, telling the planetary rulers that they were being assaulted by the dead reborn. But it did provide the justification, or spur, necessary for the kind of action which Ralph was pressing for. And even he sat through Dobbs’s report in a state of cold incredulity. If I’d made a mistake, shown a single gram of weakness . . .
The expanded security committee decided that all ground vehicles which had left the Mortonridge towns were to be directed to three separate holding areas established along the M6 by the police AT Squads. Refusal to comply would result in instantaneous SD fire. Once at the holding area, they would be required to wait in their vehicles until the authorities were ready to test them for possession. Failure to remain in the vehicle would result in the police AT Squads opening fire.
For the towns, a complete martial law curfew was to be effected immediately, no vehicular traffic or pedestrians allowed. Low orbit SD sensor satellites would scan the streets constantly in conjunction with the local police patrols. Anyone found disobeying the prohibition would be given exactly one opportunity to surrender. Weapons engagement authorization was granted to all the police personnel responsible for enforcing the curfew order.
At first light tomorrow the operation to evacuate the four towns would begin. Now that Diana Tiernan and the AIs were reasonably satisfied that no possessed were left anywhere else on the continent, Princess Kirsten agreed to dispatch marine troops from Guyana to assist with the evacuation. All Xingu police reserves would be called in, and together with the marines they would encircle the towns. Squads would then move in to conduct a house-to-house examination. Non-possessed members of the population were to be escorted out and flown on military transports to a Royal Navy ground base north of Pasto where they would be housed for the immediate future.
As for the possessed, they would be given a stark choice: release the body or face imprisonment in zero-tau. No exceptions.
“I think that covers everything,” Admiral Farquar said.
“You’d better make it clear to the marine commanders that they’re not to use assault mechanoids under any circumstances,” Ralph said. “In fact, the more primitive the systems they deploy, the better.”
“I don’t know if we’ve got enough chemical projectile weapons in store for everyone,” the admiral said. “But I’ll see that all our current stock is issued.”
“It wouldn’t be too difficult for Ombey’s engineering factories to start production of new projectile rifles and ammunition,” Ralph said. “I’d like to see what can be done in that direction.”
“It would take at least a couple of days to set up,” Ryle Thorne said. “Our current situation should have been settled by then.”
“Yes, sir,” Ralph said. “If we truly have got all the possessed trapped on Mortonridge this time. And if no more sneak on to the planet.”
“Starship interception has been one hundred per cent throughout the Ombey system for the last five hours,” Deborah Unwin said. “And you were the first ship to arrive from Lalonde, Ralph. I guarantee no more possessed will escape from orbit down to the planet.”
“Thank you, Deborah,” Princess Kirsten said. “I’m not doubting the competence of your officers, nor the efficiency of the SD network, but I have to say I think Mr Hiltch is correct in requesting contingency arrangements. What we’ve seen so far is simply the very first encounter with the possessed; and combating them is absorbing nearly all of our resources. We have to assume that other planets will not be as successful as us in containing the outbreaks. No, this problem is not one which is going to go away in the near or even mid-future. And, as is likely, it is proved beyond reasonable doubt that there is both an afterlife and an afterworld, the philosophical implications are quite extraordinary, and profoundly disturbing.”
“Which brings us to our second problem,” Ryle Thorne said. “What are we going to tell people?”
“Same as always,” Jannike Dermot said. “As little as possible, certainly to start with. We really can’t risk the prospect of a general panic right now. I would suggest we use the energy virus as a cover story.”
“Plausible,” Ryle Thorne agreed.
The Home Secretary, the Princess, and her equerry put together a statement for general release the next morning. It was instructive for Ralph to see the Saldana body politic at work in the flesh, as it were. There was no question of the Princess herself delivering the statement to the news companies. That was the job of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. A Saldana simply could not announce such appalling news. It was the function of royalty to offer comments of support and sympathy to the victims at a later date, and people were going to need all the comfort they could get when that byte of official news hit the communications net.
The town of Exnall sat two hundred and fifty kilometres below the neck of Mortonridge, where the peninsula joined the main body of the continent. It had been founded thirty years ago, and had grown with confidence ever since. The soil around it was rich, the haunt of any number of aboriginal plant species, many of which were edible. Farmers came in the hundreds to cultivate the new species alongside terrestrial crops which thrived in the moist tropical climate. Exnall was a town dominated by agriculture; even the light industries attracted by the council produced and serviced farm machinery.
But by no means a hick town, Chief Inspector Neville Latham thought as his car drove along Maingreen, which ran straight through the centre. Exnall had amalgamated with the local harandrid forest instead of chopping it down to make way for buildings as other Mortonridge towns had done. Even twenty minutes after midnight Maingreen looked superb, the mature trees importing an air of rustic antiquity for the buildings, as if the two had been coexisting for centuries. Streetlights hanging from overhead cables cast a glareless haze of orange-white light, turning the harandrids’ dripping leaves a spooky grey. Only a couple of bars and the all-nighter coffee shop were open; their liquid glass windows swirling in abstract patterns, making it impossible to see exactly what was happening inside. Not that anything wild ever did take place; Neville Latham knew that from his days as a patrol officer twenty years ago. Terminal drunks and stim victims slummed the bars, while night shift workers took refuge in the coffee shop, along with the duty police officers.
The car’s drive processor datavised an update request, and Neville directed it off Maingreen and into the police station’s car park. Almost all of Exnall’s twenty-five-strong police complement were waiting for him in the station’s situation management room. Sergeant Walsh stood up as he entered, and the rest stopped talking. Neville took his place at the head of the room.
“Thank you all for coming in,” he said briskly. “As you know from the level two security datavise you’ve received, the Prime Minister has decreed a continent-wide curfew to come into effect from one o’clock this morning. Now, I’m sure we’ve all accessed the rumours streaming the net today, so I’d like to clarify the situation for you. First the good news: I’ve been in communication with Landon McCullock who assures me that Ombey has not been contaminated by a xenoc biohazard as the media has been hinting. Nor are we under any sort of naval assault. However, it seems someone has released an extremely sophisticated sequestration technology down here on Xingu.”
Neville watched the familiar faces in front of him register various levels of apprehension. The ever-dependable Sergeant Walsh remained virtually emotionless, the two detectives, Feroze and Manby, wary and working out angles, genuine disquiet among the junior patrol officers—who knew full well they’d have the dirty job of actually going out in their cars and enforcing the curfew order.
He waited a few moments for the grumbles to subside. “Unfortunately, the bad news is that the Privy Council security committee believes several examples of this technology may already be loose here in Exnall. Which means we are now under a full state of martial law. Our curfew has to be enforced one hundred per cent, no exceptions. I know this is going to be difficult for you, we’ve all got family and friends out there, but believe me the best way to help them now is to make sure the order holds. People must not come into contact with each other; which is how the experts think this technology spreads. Apparently it’s very hard to spot anyone who has been sequestrated until it’s too late.”
“So we just sit in our homes and wait?” Thorpe Hartshorn asked. “For how long? For what?”
Neville held up a placatory hand. “I’m coming to that, Officer Hartshorn. Our efforts will be supported by a combined team of police and marines who are going to seal off the entire area. They should be here in another ninety minutes. Once they arrive all the houses in the town will be searched for any victims of the sequestration, and everyone else is going to be evacuated.”
“The whole town?” Thorpe Hartshorn asked suspiciously.
“Everybody,” Neville confirmed. “They’re sending over a squadron of military transports to take us away. But it’s going to take a few hours to organize, so it falls upon us to ensure that the curfew is maintained until then.”
DataAxis, Exnall’s sole news agency, was at the other end of Maingreen from the police station; a shabby, three-storey flat-roofed office module which made few creditworthy concessions to the sylvan character of the town. The agency itself was a typical small provincial outfit, employing five reporters and three communications technicians who between them combed the whole county for nuggets of information. Given the nature of the area their brief was wide-ranging, dealing in local human interest stories, official events, crime (such as it was), and the horrendously mundane crop price sheets which the office processors handled with little or no human supervision. Out of this fascinating assortment of articles they had managed to sell precisely four items to Ombey’s major media companies in the last six weeks.
But that had certainly changed today, Finnuala O’Meara thought jubilantly as the desktop processor finished decrypting the level two security datavise from Landon McCullock to Neville Latham. She’d spent a solid ten hours fishing the net streams today, digesting every rumour since yesterday’s Guyana alert. Thanks to the trivia and paranoid nightmares which every bulletin site geek on the planet had contributed she’d felt completely stimmed out and ready to pack it in. Then an hour ago things got interesting.
AT Squads had seen action in Pasto. Violent action by all accounts—and still no official media release on that from the police. The motorways were being shut down clean across the continent. Reports of SD fire on vehicles abounded, including a clear account of a runaway bus being vaporized not a hundred and fifty kilometres south of Exnall. And now, Xingu’s police commissioner, in person, informing Neville Latham that an unknown, but probably xenoc, sequestration virus was loose in Exnall.
Finnuala O’Meara datavised a shutdown order into the desktop processor block and opened her eyes. “Bloody hell,” she grunted.
Finnuala was in her early twenties, eleven months out of university in Atherstone. Her initial delight at landing a job within two days of qualifying, had, during the first quarter of an hour at the agency, turned into dismay. The Exnall agency didn’t deal in news, it churned out anti-insomnia treatments. Dismay had slumped to surly anger. Exnall was everything which was rotten with small towns. It was run by a clique, a small elite group of councillors and businessmen and the richer local farmers, who made the decisions which counted at their dinner parties and out on their golf course.
It was no different from her own hometown, the one over on the Esparta continent where her parents never quite made the leap to real money contracts because they lacked the connections. Excluded, by class, by money.
She did nothing for half a minute after the decrypted datavise slipped from her mind, sitting staring at the desktop processor. Accessing the net’s police architecture was illegal enough, owning a level two decryption program was grounds for deportation. But she couldn’t ignore this. Couldn’t. It was everything she’d become a reporter for.
“Hugh?” she called.
The communications technician sharing the graveyard shift with her cancelled the Jezzibella album he was running and gave her a disapproving look. “What?”
“How would the authorities announce a curfew to the general public, one where everyone is confined to their house? Specifically, a curfew here in Exnall.”
“Are you having me on?”
“No.”
He blinked away the figments of the flek and accessed a civil procedures file in his neural nanonics. “Okay, I’ve found it; it’s a pretty simple procedure. The chief inspector will use his code rating to load a universal order into the town’s net for every general household processor. The message will play as soon as the processor is accessed, no matter what function you asked for—you tell it to cook your breakfast or vacuum the floor, the first thing it will do is tell you about the curfew.”
Finnuala patted her hands together, charting out options. “So people won’t know about the curfew until tomorrow morning after they wake up.”
“That’s right.”
“Unless we tell them first.”
“Now you really are winding me up.”
“No way.” The smile on her face was carnivorous. “I know what that prat Latham is going to do next. He’ll warn his friends before anyone else, he’ll make sure they’re ready to be evacuated first. It’s his style, this whole bloody town’s style.”
“Don’t be so paranoid,” Hugh Rosler said edgily. “If the evacuation is under McCullock’s command, nobody will be able to pull a fast one from this end.”
Finnuala smiled sweetly and datavised an order into the desktop processor block. It accessed the net’s police architecture again, and the monitor programs she designated went into primary mode.
The results simmered into Hugh’s mind as a cluster of grey, dimensionless icons. Someone at the police station was datavising a number of houses in the town and outlying areas. They were personal calls, and the households they were being directed at were all depressingly familiar.
“He already is,” Finnuala said. “I know these people as well as you do, Hugh. Nothing changes, not even when our planet is under threat.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“What this agency is supposed to do: inform people. I’ll assemble a package warning everyone about the sequestration, but instead of just releasing it on the media circuit I want you to program the agency processor to datavise it to everyone in Exnall right away, coded as a personal priority message. That way we’ll all have an equal chance to get clear when the military transports arrive.”
“I don’t know about this, Finnuala. Maybe we ought to check with the editor first . . .”
“Bugger the editor,” she snapped. “He already knows. Look who was seventh on Latham’s list. Do you think his priority is to call us? Do you? Right now he’s getting his fat wife and their backwards brat dressed ready to take off for the landing site. Are your wife and kids being told, Hugh? Are they being made safe?”
Hugh Rosler did what he always did and offered no resistance. “All right, Finnuala, I’ll modify the processor’s program. But by Christ, you’d better be right about this.”
“I am.” She stood up and pulled her jacket off the back of the chair. “I’m going down to the police station, see if I can get a personal comment from that good man Chief Inspector Latham on the crisis facing his little fiefdom.”
“You’re pushing it,” Hugh warned.
“I know.” She grinned sadistically. “Great, isn’t it.”
Ralph knew he didn’t have anything to prove anymore. The AT Squads were alert to the terrible danger, they’d been fully blooded. So there was no practical reason for him to take a police hypersonic out to Mortonridge. Yet here he was with Cathal, Will, and Dean heading south at Mach five. His justification . . . well, the marine brigade coming down from the orbital bases would need to be brought up to speed. And he might have some advice invaluable to those on the ground.
In reality, he needed to see those towns cordoned off for himself. The threat contained, pinned down ready for extermination.
“It looks like your idea about zero-tau was on the ball,” Roche Skark datavised. “All six prisoners we captured at Moyce’s have now been placed in the pods shipped down from Guyana. Four of them fought like lunatics before the AT Squads could force them in. The other two were apparently cured before they went in. In both cases the possessors just gave up and left the bodies rather than undergo exposure to temporal stasis.”
“That’s about the best news I’ve had for ten hours,” Ralph replied. “They can be beaten, squeezed out without killing the body they’re possessing. It means we’re not just fighting a holding action.”
“Yes. Well, full credit to you for that one, Ralph. We still don’t know why the possessed can’t tolerate zero-tau, but no doubt the reason will turn up in debrief at some time.”
“Are you shoving the cured prisoners into personality debrief?”
“We haven’t decided. Although I think it’s inevitable eventually. We must not get sidetracked from neutralizing the Mortonridge towns. Frankly, the science of it all can wait.”
“What sort of state are the prisoners in?”
“Generally similar to Gerald Skibbow, disorientated and withdrawn, but their symptoms are nothing like as severe as his. After all they were only possessed for a few hours. Skibbow had been under Kingston Garrigan’s control for several weeks. Certainly they’re not classed as dangerous. But we’re placing them in secure isolation wards for the moment, just in case. It’s the first time I’ve agreed with Leonard DeVille all day.”
Ralph snorted at the name. “I meant to ask you, sir. What is it with DeVille?”
“Ah, yes; sorry about him, Ralph. That’s pure politics between us and our dear sister agency. DeVille is one of Jannike’s puppets. The ISA keeps tabs on all major Kingdom politicians, and those who are squeaky clean are nudged forward. DeVille is obnoxiously pure in heart, if devious in mind. Jannike is grooming him as a possible replacement for Warren Aspinal as Xingu’s Prime Minister. Ideally, she’d like him in charge of the hunt operation.”
“Whereas you had the Princess appoint me as chief advisor . . .”
“Exactly. I’ll have a word with Jannike about him. It’s probably heretical of me, but I think the problem the possessed present us might be slightly more important than our little internal rivalries.”
“Thank you, sir. It’d be nice to have him off my back.”
“I doubt he’d be much more of a problem anyway. You’ve done some sterling work tonight, Ralph. Don’t think it’s gone unnoticed. You’ve condemned yourself to a divisional chief’s desk for the rest of eternity now. I can assure you the boredom is quite otherworldly.”
Ralph managed a contemplative smile in the half-light of the hypersonic’s cabin. “Sounds attractive right now.”
Roche Skark cancelled the channel.
With his mind free, Ralph datavised a situation update request to Hub One. The squadron of Royal Marine troop flyers were already halfway down from Guyana. Twenty-five police hypersonics carrying AT Squads were arrowing across the continent, converging on Mortonridge. All motorway traffic had now been shut down. An estimated eighty-five per cent of non-motorway vehicles had been located and halted. Curfew orders were going out to every general household processor in Xingu. Police in the four Mortonridge towns were preparing to enforce the martial law declaration.
It looked good. In the computer, it looked good. Secure. But there must be something we missed. Some rogue element. There always is. Someone like Mixi Penrice.
Someone . . . who abandoned the Confederation marines in Lalonde’s jungle. Who left Kelven Solanki and his tiny, doomed command to struggle against the wave of possessed all alone.
All actions which were fully justifiable in the defence of the realm. Maybe I’m not so dissimilar to DeVille after all.
Twenty minutes after Neville Latham had issued his assignment orders, the station situation management room had settled down into a comfortable pattern. Sergeant Walsh and Detective Feroze were monitoring the movement of the patrol cars, while Manby was maintaining a direct link to the SD centre. Any sign of human movement along the streets should bring a patrol car response within ninety seconds.
Neville himself had taken part in issuing dispatch orders to the patrol officers. It felt good to be involved, to show his people the boss wasn’t afraid of rolling up his sleeves and getting stuck in there. He’d quietly accepted the fact that for someone his age and rank Exnall was a dead end posting. Not that he was particularly bitter; he’d realized twenty-five years ago he wasn’t cut out for higher office. And he fitted in well here with these people, the town was his kind of community. He understood it. When he retired he knew he would be staying on.
Or so he’d thought until today. Judging from some of the latest briefing updates he’d received from Pasto, after tomorrow there might not be much of Exnall left standing for him to retire to.
However, Neville was determined about one thing. Nonentity he might be, but Exnall was going to be protected to the best of his ability. The curfew would be carried out to the letter with a competence which any big city police commander would envy.
“Sir.” Sergeant Walsh was looking up from the fence of stumpy AV pillars lining his console.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Sir, I’ve just had three people datavise the station, wanting to know what’s going on, and is the curfew some kind of joke.”
Feroze turned around, frowning. “I’ve had five asking me the same thing. They all said they’d received a personal datavise telling them a curfew was being effected. I told them they should check their household processor for information.”
“Eight people?” Neville queried. “All receiving personal messages at this time of night?”
Feroze glanced back at one of his displays. “Make that fifteen, I’ve got another seven incoming datavises stacked up.”
“This is absurd,” Neville said. “The whole point of my universal order was to explain what’s happening.”
“They’re not bothering to access it,” Feroze said. “They’re calling us direct instead.”
“Eighteen new datavises coming in,” Walsh said. “It’s going to hit fifty any minute.”
“They can’t be datavising warnings to each other this fast,” Neville murmured, half to himself.
“Chief,” Manby was waving urgently. “SD control reports that house lights are coming on all over town.”
“What?”
“Hundred and twelve datavises, sir,” Walsh said.
“Did we mess up the universal order?” Neville asked. At the back of his mind was the awful notion that the electronic warfare capability Landon McCullock warned him about had glitched the order.
“It was straight out of the file,” Feroze protested.
“Sir, we’re going to run out of net access channels at this rate,” Walsh said. “Over three hundred datavises coming in now. Do you want to reprioritize the net management routines? You have the authority. We’d be able to re-establish our principle command channels if we shut down civilian data traffic.”
“I can’t—”
The door of the situation management room slid open.
Neville twisted around at the unexpected motion (the damn door was supposed to be codelocked!), only to gasp in surprise at the sight of a young woman pushing her way past a red-faced Thorpe Hartshorn. A characteristics recognition program in his neural nanonics supplied her name: Finnuala O’Meara, one of the news agency reporters.
Neville caught sight of a slender, suspicious-looking processor block which she was shoving back into her bag. A codebuster? he wondered. And if she has the nerve to use one inside a police station, what else has she got?
“Ms O’Meara, you are intruding on a very important official operation. If you leave now, I won’t file charges.”
“Recording and relaying, Chief,” Finnuala said with a hint of triumph. Her eyes with their retinal implants were unblinking as they tracked him. “And I don’t need to tell you this is a public building. Knowing what happens here is a public right under the fourth coronation proclamation.”
“Actually, Miss O’Meara, if you bothered to fully access your legal file, you’d know that under martial law all proclamations are suspended. Leave now, please, and stop relaying at once.”
“Does that same suspension give you the right to warn your friends about the danger of xenoc sequestration technology before the general public, Chief Inspector?”
Latham blushed. How the hell did the little bitch know that? Then he realized what someone with that kind of command access to the net could do. His finger lined up accusingly on her. “Have you datavised personal warnings to people in this town?”
“Are you denying you warned your friends first, Chief Inspector?”
Once the last of Moyce’s delivery lorries had been tracked down and eliminated, Diana Tiernan switched the entire capacity of the AIs to analysing vehicles that had left the four towns, and stopping them. In one respect they were fortunate: it was midnight along Mortonridge, the volume of traffic was much reduced from its daytime peak. Identification was reasonably easy. Deciding what to do about both cars and towns was less so.
It took twenty minutes of debate, arbitrated by the Princess, before they thrashed out an agreed policy. In the end, the deciding factor was Gerald Skibbow’s completed personality debrief which was datavised down from Guyana. Dr Riley Dobbs appeared before the committee to testify its provenance; an apprehensive man, telling the planetary rulers that they were being assaulted by the dead reborn. But it did provide the justification, or spur, necessary for the kind of action which Ralph was pressing for. And even he sat through Dobbs’s report in a state of cold incredulity. If I’d made a mistake, shown a single gram of weakness . . .
The expanded security committee decided that all ground vehicles which had left the Mortonridge towns were to be directed to three separate holding areas established along the M6 by the police AT Squads. Refusal to comply would result in instantaneous SD fire. Once at the holding area, they would be required to wait in their vehicles until the authorities were ready to test them for possession. Failure to remain in the vehicle would result in the police AT Squads opening fire.
For the towns, a complete martial law curfew was to be effected immediately, no vehicular traffic or pedestrians allowed. Low orbit SD sensor satellites would scan the streets constantly in conjunction with the local police patrols. Anyone found disobeying the prohibition would be given exactly one opportunity to surrender. Weapons engagement authorization was granted to all the police personnel responsible for enforcing the curfew order.
At first light tomorrow the operation to evacuate the four towns would begin. Now that Diana Tiernan and the AIs were reasonably satisfied that no possessed were left anywhere else on the continent, Princess Kirsten agreed to dispatch marine troops from Guyana to assist with the evacuation. All Xingu police reserves would be called in, and together with the marines they would encircle the towns. Squads would then move in to conduct a house-to-house examination. Non-possessed members of the population were to be escorted out and flown on military transports to a Royal Navy ground base north of Pasto where they would be housed for the immediate future.
As for the possessed, they would be given a stark choice: release the body or face imprisonment in zero-tau. No exceptions.
“I think that covers everything,” Admiral Farquar said.
“You’d better make it clear to the marine commanders that they’re not to use assault mechanoids under any circumstances,” Ralph said. “In fact, the more primitive the systems they deploy, the better.”
“I don’t know if we’ve got enough chemical projectile weapons in store for everyone,” the admiral said. “But I’ll see that all our current stock is issued.”
“It wouldn’t be too difficult for Ombey’s engineering factories to start production of new projectile rifles and ammunition,” Ralph said. “I’d like to see what can be done in that direction.”
“It would take at least a couple of days to set up,” Ryle Thorne said. “Our current situation should have been settled by then.”
“Yes, sir,” Ralph said. “If we truly have got all the possessed trapped on Mortonridge this time. And if no more sneak on to the planet.”
“Starship interception has been one hundred per cent throughout the Ombey system for the last five hours,” Deborah Unwin said. “And you were the first ship to arrive from Lalonde, Ralph. I guarantee no more possessed will escape from orbit down to the planet.”
“Thank you, Deborah,” Princess Kirsten said. “I’m not doubting the competence of your officers, nor the efficiency of the SD network, but I have to say I think Mr Hiltch is correct in requesting contingency arrangements. What we’ve seen so far is simply the very first encounter with the possessed; and combating them is absorbing nearly all of our resources. We have to assume that other planets will not be as successful as us in containing the outbreaks. No, this problem is not one which is going to go away in the near or even mid-future. And, as is likely, it is proved beyond reasonable doubt that there is both an afterlife and an afterworld, the philosophical implications are quite extraordinary, and profoundly disturbing.”
“Which brings us to our second problem,” Ryle Thorne said. “What are we going to tell people?”
“Same as always,” Jannike Dermot said. “As little as possible, certainly to start with. We really can’t risk the prospect of a general panic right now. I would suggest we use the energy virus as a cover story.”
“Plausible,” Ryle Thorne agreed.
The Home Secretary, the Princess, and her equerry put together a statement for general release the next morning. It was instructive for Ralph to see the Saldana body politic at work in the flesh, as it were. There was no question of the Princess herself delivering the statement to the news companies. That was the job of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. A Saldana simply could not announce such appalling news. It was the function of royalty to offer comments of support and sympathy to the victims at a later date, and people were going to need all the comfort they could get when that byte of official news hit the communications net.
The town of Exnall sat two hundred and fifty kilometres below the neck of Mortonridge, where the peninsula joined the main body of the continent. It had been founded thirty years ago, and had grown with confidence ever since. The soil around it was rich, the haunt of any number of aboriginal plant species, many of which were edible. Farmers came in the hundreds to cultivate the new species alongside terrestrial crops which thrived in the moist tropical climate. Exnall was a town dominated by agriculture; even the light industries attracted by the council produced and serviced farm machinery.
But by no means a hick town, Chief Inspector Neville Latham thought as his car drove along Maingreen, which ran straight through the centre. Exnall had amalgamated with the local harandrid forest instead of chopping it down to make way for buildings as other Mortonridge towns had done. Even twenty minutes after midnight Maingreen looked superb, the mature trees importing an air of rustic antiquity for the buildings, as if the two had been coexisting for centuries. Streetlights hanging from overhead cables cast a glareless haze of orange-white light, turning the harandrids’ dripping leaves a spooky grey. Only a couple of bars and the all-nighter coffee shop were open; their liquid glass windows swirling in abstract patterns, making it impossible to see exactly what was happening inside. Not that anything wild ever did take place; Neville Latham knew that from his days as a patrol officer twenty years ago. Terminal drunks and stim victims slummed the bars, while night shift workers took refuge in the coffee shop, along with the duty police officers.
The car’s drive processor datavised an update request, and Neville directed it off Maingreen and into the police station’s car park. Almost all of Exnall’s twenty-five-strong police complement were waiting for him in the station’s situation management room. Sergeant Walsh stood up as he entered, and the rest stopped talking. Neville took his place at the head of the room.
“Thank you all for coming in,” he said briskly. “As you know from the level two security datavise you’ve received, the Prime Minister has decreed a continent-wide curfew to come into effect from one o’clock this morning. Now, I’m sure we’ve all accessed the rumours streaming the net today, so I’d like to clarify the situation for you. First the good news: I’ve been in communication with Landon McCullock who assures me that Ombey has not been contaminated by a xenoc biohazard as the media has been hinting. Nor are we under any sort of naval assault. However, it seems someone has released an extremely sophisticated sequestration technology down here on Xingu.”
Neville watched the familiar faces in front of him register various levels of apprehension. The ever-dependable Sergeant Walsh remained virtually emotionless, the two detectives, Feroze and Manby, wary and working out angles, genuine disquiet among the junior patrol officers—who knew full well they’d have the dirty job of actually going out in their cars and enforcing the curfew order.
He waited a few moments for the grumbles to subside. “Unfortunately, the bad news is that the Privy Council security committee believes several examples of this technology may already be loose here in Exnall. Which means we are now under a full state of martial law. Our curfew has to be enforced one hundred per cent, no exceptions. I know this is going to be difficult for you, we’ve all got family and friends out there, but believe me the best way to help them now is to make sure the order holds. People must not come into contact with each other; which is how the experts think this technology spreads. Apparently it’s very hard to spot anyone who has been sequestrated until it’s too late.”
“So we just sit in our homes and wait?” Thorpe Hartshorn asked. “For how long? For what?”
Neville held up a placatory hand. “I’m coming to that, Officer Hartshorn. Our efforts will be supported by a combined team of police and marines who are going to seal off the entire area. They should be here in another ninety minutes. Once they arrive all the houses in the town will be searched for any victims of the sequestration, and everyone else is going to be evacuated.”
“The whole town?” Thorpe Hartshorn asked suspiciously.
“Everybody,” Neville confirmed. “They’re sending over a squadron of military transports to take us away. But it’s going to take a few hours to organize, so it falls upon us to ensure that the curfew is maintained until then.”
DataAxis, Exnall’s sole news agency, was at the other end of Maingreen from the police station; a shabby, three-storey flat-roofed office module which made few creditworthy concessions to the sylvan character of the town. The agency itself was a typical small provincial outfit, employing five reporters and three communications technicians who between them combed the whole county for nuggets of information. Given the nature of the area their brief was wide-ranging, dealing in local human interest stories, official events, crime (such as it was), and the horrendously mundane crop price sheets which the office processors handled with little or no human supervision. Out of this fascinating assortment of articles they had managed to sell precisely four items to Ombey’s major media companies in the last six weeks.
But that had certainly changed today, Finnuala O’Meara thought jubilantly as the desktop processor finished decrypting the level two security datavise from Landon McCullock to Neville Latham. She’d spent a solid ten hours fishing the net streams today, digesting every rumour since yesterday’s Guyana alert. Thanks to the trivia and paranoid nightmares which every bulletin site geek on the planet had contributed she’d felt completely stimmed out and ready to pack it in. Then an hour ago things got interesting.
AT Squads had seen action in Pasto. Violent action by all accounts—and still no official media release on that from the police. The motorways were being shut down clean across the continent. Reports of SD fire on vehicles abounded, including a clear account of a runaway bus being vaporized not a hundred and fifty kilometres south of Exnall. And now, Xingu’s police commissioner, in person, informing Neville Latham that an unknown, but probably xenoc, sequestration virus was loose in Exnall.
Finnuala O’Meara datavised a shutdown order into the desktop processor block and opened her eyes. “Bloody hell,” she grunted.
Finnuala was in her early twenties, eleven months out of university in Atherstone. Her initial delight at landing a job within two days of qualifying, had, during the first quarter of an hour at the agency, turned into dismay. The Exnall agency didn’t deal in news, it churned out anti-insomnia treatments. Dismay had slumped to surly anger. Exnall was everything which was rotten with small towns. It was run by a clique, a small elite group of councillors and businessmen and the richer local farmers, who made the decisions which counted at their dinner parties and out on their golf course.
It was no different from her own hometown, the one over on the Esparta continent where her parents never quite made the leap to real money contracts because they lacked the connections. Excluded, by class, by money.
She did nothing for half a minute after the decrypted datavise slipped from her mind, sitting staring at the desktop processor. Accessing the net’s police architecture was illegal enough, owning a level two decryption program was grounds for deportation. But she couldn’t ignore this. Couldn’t. It was everything she’d become a reporter for.
“Hugh?” she called.
The communications technician sharing the graveyard shift with her cancelled the Jezzibella album he was running and gave her a disapproving look. “What?”
“How would the authorities announce a curfew to the general public, one where everyone is confined to their house? Specifically, a curfew here in Exnall.”
“Are you having me on?”
“No.”
He blinked away the figments of the flek and accessed a civil procedures file in his neural nanonics. “Okay, I’ve found it; it’s a pretty simple procedure. The chief inspector will use his code rating to load a universal order into the town’s net for every general household processor. The message will play as soon as the processor is accessed, no matter what function you asked for—you tell it to cook your breakfast or vacuum the floor, the first thing it will do is tell you about the curfew.”
Finnuala patted her hands together, charting out options. “So people won’t know about the curfew until tomorrow morning after they wake up.”
“That’s right.”
“Unless we tell them first.”
“Now you really are winding me up.”
“No way.” The smile on her face was carnivorous. “I know what that prat Latham is going to do next. He’ll warn his friends before anyone else, he’ll make sure they’re ready to be evacuated first. It’s his style, this whole bloody town’s style.”
“Don’t be so paranoid,” Hugh Rosler said edgily. “If the evacuation is under McCullock’s command, nobody will be able to pull a fast one from this end.”
Finnuala smiled sweetly and datavised an order into the desktop processor block. It accessed the net’s police architecture again, and the monitor programs she designated went into primary mode.
The results simmered into Hugh’s mind as a cluster of grey, dimensionless icons. Someone at the police station was datavising a number of houses in the town and outlying areas. They were personal calls, and the households they were being directed at were all depressingly familiar.
“He already is,” Finnuala said. “I know these people as well as you do, Hugh. Nothing changes, not even when our planet is under threat.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“What this agency is supposed to do: inform people. I’ll assemble a package warning everyone about the sequestration, but instead of just releasing it on the media circuit I want you to program the agency processor to datavise it to everyone in Exnall right away, coded as a personal priority message. That way we’ll all have an equal chance to get clear when the military transports arrive.”
“I don’t know about this, Finnuala. Maybe we ought to check with the editor first . . .”
“Bugger the editor,” she snapped. “He already knows. Look who was seventh on Latham’s list. Do you think his priority is to call us? Do you? Right now he’s getting his fat wife and their backwards brat dressed ready to take off for the landing site. Are your wife and kids being told, Hugh? Are they being made safe?”
Hugh Rosler did what he always did and offered no resistance. “All right, Finnuala, I’ll modify the processor’s program. But by Christ, you’d better be right about this.”
“I am.” She stood up and pulled her jacket off the back of the chair. “I’m going down to the police station, see if I can get a personal comment from that good man Chief Inspector Latham on the crisis facing his little fiefdom.”
“You’re pushing it,” Hugh warned.
“I know.” She grinned sadistically. “Great, isn’t it.”
Ralph knew he didn’t have anything to prove anymore. The AT Squads were alert to the terrible danger, they’d been fully blooded. So there was no practical reason for him to take a police hypersonic out to Mortonridge. Yet here he was with Cathal, Will, and Dean heading south at Mach five. His justification . . . well, the marine brigade coming down from the orbital bases would need to be brought up to speed. And he might have some advice invaluable to those on the ground.
In reality, he needed to see those towns cordoned off for himself. The threat contained, pinned down ready for extermination.
“It looks like your idea about zero-tau was on the ball,” Roche Skark datavised. “All six prisoners we captured at Moyce’s have now been placed in the pods shipped down from Guyana. Four of them fought like lunatics before the AT Squads could force them in. The other two were apparently cured before they went in. In both cases the possessors just gave up and left the bodies rather than undergo exposure to temporal stasis.”
“That’s about the best news I’ve had for ten hours,” Ralph replied. “They can be beaten, squeezed out without killing the body they’re possessing. It means we’re not just fighting a holding action.”
“Yes. Well, full credit to you for that one, Ralph. We still don’t know why the possessed can’t tolerate zero-tau, but no doubt the reason will turn up in debrief at some time.”
“Are you shoving the cured prisoners into personality debrief?”
“We haven’t decided. Although I think it’s inevitable eventually. We must not get sidetracked from neutralizing the Mortonridge towns. Frankly, the science of it all can wait.”
“What sort of state are the prisoners in?”
“Generally similar to Gerald Skibbow, disorientated and withdrawn, but their symptoms are nothing like as severe as his. After all they were only possessed for a few hours. Skibbow had been under Kingston Garrigan’s control for several weeks. Certainly they’re not classed as dangerous. But we’re placing them in secure isolation wards for the moment, just in case. It’s the first time I’ve agreed with Leonard DeVille all day.”
Ralph snorted at the name. “I meant to ask you, sir. What is it with DeVille?”
“Ah, yes; sorry about him, Ralph. That’s pure politics between us and our dear sister agency. DeVille is one of Jannike’s puppets. The ISA keeps tabs on all major Kingdom politicians, and those who are squeaky clean are nudged forward. DeVille is obnoxiously pure in heart, if devious in mind. Jannike is grooming him as a possible replacement for Warren Aspinal as Xingu’s Prime Minister. Ideally, she’d like him in charge of the hunt operation.”
“Whereas you had the Princess appoint me as chief advisor . . .”
“Exactly. I’ll have a word with Jannike about him. It’s probably heretical of me, but I think the problem the possessed present us might be slightly more important than our little internal rivalries.”
“Thank you, sir. It’d be nice to have him off my back.”
“I doubt he’d be much more of a problem anyway. You’ve done some sterling work tonight, Ralph. Don’t think it’s gone unnoticed. You’ve condemned yourself to a divisional chief’s desk for the rest of eternity now. I can assure you the boredom is quite otherworldly.”
Ralph managed a contemplative smile in the half-light of the hypersonic’s cabin. “Sounds attractive right now.”
Roche Skark cancelled the channel.
With his mind free, Ralph datavised a situation update request to Hub One. The squadron of Royal Marine troop flyers were already halfway down from Guyana. Twenty-five police hypersonics carrying AT Squads were arrowing across the continent, converging on Mortonridge. All motorway traffic had now been shut down. An estimated eighty-five per cent of non-motorway vehicles had been located and halted. Curfew orders were going out to every general household processor in Xingu. Police in the four Mortonridge towns were preparing to enforce the martial law declaration.
It looked good. In the computer, it looked good. Secure. But there must be something we missed. Some rogue element. There always is. Someone like Mixi Penrice.
Someone . . . who abandoned the Confederation marines in Lalonde’s jungle. Who left Kelven Solanki and his tiny, doomed command to struggle against the wave of possessed all alone.
All actions which were fully justifiable in the defence of the realm. Maybe I’m not so dissimilar to DeVille after all.
Twenty minutes after Neville Latham had issued his assignment orders, the station situation management room had settled down into a comfortable pattern. Sergeant Walsh and Detective Feroze were monitoring the movement of the patrol cars, while Manby was maintaining a direct link to the SD centre. Any sign of human movement along the streets should bring a patrol car response within ninety seconds.
Neville himself had taken part in issuing dispatch orders to the patrol officers. It felt good to be involved, to show his people the boss wasn’t afraid of rolling up his sleeves and getting stuck in there. He’d quietly accepted the fact that for someone his age and rank Exnall was a dead end posting. Not that he was particularly bitter; he’d realized twenty-five years ago he wasn’t cut out for higher office. And he fitted in well here with these people, the town was his kind of community. He understood it. When he retired he knew he would be staying on.
Or so he’d thought until today. Judging from some of the latest briefing updates he’d received from Pasto, after tomorrow there might not be much of Exnall left standing for him to retire to.
However, Neville was determined about one thing. Nonentity he might be, but Exnall was going to be protected to the best of his ability. The curfew would be carried out to the letter with a competence which any big city police commander would envy.
“Sir.” Sergeant Walsh was looking up from the fence of stumpy AV pillars lining his console.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Sir, I’ve just had three people datavise the station, wanting to know what’s going on, and is the curfew some kind of joke.”
Feroze turned around, frowning. “I’ve had five asking me the same thing. They all said they’d received a personal datavise telling them a curfew was being effected. I told them they should check their household processor for information.”
“Eight people?” Neville queried. “All receiving personal messages at this time of night?”
Feroze glanced back at one of his displays. “Make that fifteen, I’ve got another seven incoming datavises stacked up.”
“This is absurd,” Neville said. “The whole point of my universal order was to explain what’s happening.”
“They’re not bothering to access it,” Feroze said. “They’re calling us direct instead.”
“Eighteen new datavises coming in,” Walsh said. “It’s going to hit fifty any minute.”
“They can’t be datavising warnings to each other this fast,” Neville murmured, half to himself.
“Chief,” Manby was waving urgently. “SD control reports that house lights are coming on all over town.”
“What?”
“Hundred and twelve datavises, sir,” Walsh said.
“Did we mess up the universal order?” Neville asked. At the back of his mind was the awful notion that the electronic warfare capability Landon McCullock warned him about had glitched the order.
“It was straight out of the file,” Feroze protested.
“Sir, we’re going to run out of net access channels at this rate,” Walsh said. “Over three hundred datavises coming in now. Do you want to reprioritize the net management routines? You have the authority. We’d be able to re-establish our principle command channels if we shut down civilian data traffic.”
“I can’t—”
The door of the situation management room slid open.
Neville twisted around at the unexpected motion (the damn door was supposed to be codelocked!), only to gasp in surprise at the sight of a young woman pushing her way past a red-faced Thorpe Hartshorn. A characteristics recognition program in his neural nanonics supplied her name: Finnuala O’Meara, one of the news agency reporters.
Neville caught sight of a slender, suspicious-looking processor block which she was shoving back into her bag. A codebuster? he wondered. And if she has the nerve to use one inside a police station, what else has she got?
“Ms O’Meara, you are intruding on a very important official operation. If you leave now, I won’t file charges.”
“Recording and relaying, Chief,” Finnuala said with a hint of triumph. Her eyes with their retinal implants were unblinking as they tracked him. “And I don’t need to tell you this is a public building. Knowing what happens here is a public right under the fourth coronation proclamation.”
“Actually, Miss O’Meara, if you bothered to fully access your legal file, you’d know that under martial law all proclamations are suspended. Leave now, please, and stop relaying at once.”
“Does that same suspension give you the right to warn your friends about the danger of xenoc sequestration technology before the general public, Chief Inspector?”
Latham blushed. How the hell did the little bitch know that? Then he realized what someone with that kind of command access to the net could do. His finger lined up accusingly on her. “Have you datavised personal warnings to people in this town?”
“Are you denying you warned your friends first, Chief Inspector?”