The Night's Dawn Trilogy (290 page)

Annette Ekelund grinned. “What exactly were you before? They told me you were just a housewife.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Stephanie said, impatient with the whole charade. “Will you let us through?”

“If I didn’t, you’d only find another way. Of course you can go through. We even have a few children scooting around the town
that you can take with you. See? I’m not a complete monster.”

“The buses need recharging first.”

“Naturally.” Ekelund sighed. She beckoned to one of the tank guards. “Dane will show you where a working power point is. Please
don’t ask us for any food, I haven’t got enough to spare. I’m having trouble supplying my own troops as it is.”

Stephanie looked at the tanks; if she concentrated hard she could make out the fantasm shapes of the farm tractor mechanoids
behind the armour. “What are you and your army doing here?”

“I would have thought that was obvious. I’ve taken that responsibility you prize so highly. I’m protecting Mortonridge for
you. We’re only thirty kilometres from the firebreak they slashed across the top of the ridge; and on the other side, the
Saldana Princess is preparing. They’re not going to leave us alone, Stephanie Ash. They hate us and they fear us. It’s a nasty
combination. So while you go gallivanting around doing your good deeds, just remember who’s holding back the barbarians.”
She started back for the tanks, then paused. “You know, one day you’re really going to have to decide where your loyalties
lie. You said you’d fight to stop them throwing you back; well if you do, it’ll be at my side.”

“Ho wow, one iron-assed lady,” Cochrane muttered.

“Definitely,” Stephanie agreed.

Dane climbed into the Karmic Crusader with Cochrane and showed them the way to a line of warehouses which served the wharf.
Their long roofs were all made from solar collector panels. When the buses were plugged in, Stephanie called her people together
and told them what Ekelund had said.

“If any of you want to wait here while the buses go to the firebreak, I’ll understand,” she said. “The Kingdom military might
get nervous about four large vehicles heading towards them.”

“They won’t shoot us out of hand,” McPhee said. “Not as long as we don’t cross the line. They’ll be curious.”

“Do you think so?” Tina said anxiously. A large lace hankie was pressed to her lips.

“I’ve been there,” Dane said. “It was a scout mission. I watched them watching me. They won’t start any trouble. Like your
friend said, they’ll be curious.”

“We’re almost there.” Stephanie’s fixed smile betrayed her nerves. “Just a few more hours, that’s all.” She glanced back at
the buses, putting on a cheerful expression as she waved at the children pressed up against the windows. They had all picked
up on the gloomy aura of the darkened clouds overhead. “McPhee, Franklin; give me a hand with them will you. We’ll let them
stretch their legs here and use a toilet.”

“Sure.”

Stephanie let Moyo hold her for a moment. He planted a kiss on her forehead. “Don’t give up now.”

She smiled shyly. “I won’t. Can you take a look in the warehouses for me, see if you can find some working toilets. If not,
we’ll have to make do with tissues and the river.”

“I’ll go check.”

The big sliding doors of the closest warehouse were open. It was used to store tubing, row after row of floor-to-ceiling stacks.
All its lights were off, but there was enough pink-tinged sunlight coming through the doors for him to see by. He started
checking around for an office.

Silent forklift mechanoids were standing in the aisles, holding up bundles of tubing that had been destined for urgent delivery.
It wouldn’t take much effort to start them up again, he thought. But what would be the point? Did a society of possessed need
factories and farms? Some infrastructure was necessary, yes, but how much and of what kind? Something simple and efficient,
and extremely long-lasting. He was quietly glad that kind of decision wasn’t his.

A pyramid of tubing shielded the man from Moyo’s perception. So he convinced himself later. Whatever the reason, he didn’t
notice him until he had rounded a corner and was barely five metres away. And he wasn’t a possessed. Moyo knew his own kind,
the internal glimmer of cells excited by the energistic overspill. This man’s biolectric currents were almost black, while
his thoughts were fast and quiet. He was excessively ordinary in appearance; wearing pale green trousers, a check shirt, and
a sleeveless jacket with DataAxis printed on its left breast pocket.

Moyo was chilled by a rush of panic. Any non-possessed creeping around here had to be a spy, which meant he’d be armed, most
likely with something potent enough to terminate a possessed with minimum fuss.

White fire punched out of Moyo’s palm, an instinctive response.

The seething streamer splashed against the man’s face and flowed around him to strike the tubing behind him. Moyo grunted
in disbelief. The man simply stood there as if it were water pouring over him.

The white fire dimmed, its remnants retreating into Moyo’s hand. He whimpered, expecting the worst. I’m going to be blown
back into the beyond. They’ve found a way of neutralizing our energistic power. We’ve lost. There’s only the beyond now. For
always.

He closed his eyes. Thinking with fond longing: Stephanie.

Nothing happened. He opened his eyes again. The man was looking at him with a mildly embarrassed expression. Behind him, molten
metal was dribbling down the side of the stacked tubing.

“Who are you?” Moyo asked hoarsely.

“My name’s Hugh Rosler. I used to live in Exnall.”

“Did you follow us here?”

“No. Although I did watch your bus leave Exnall. It’s just coincidence I’m here now.”

“Right,” Moyo said carefully. “You’re not a spy then?”

The question was one which Rosler apparently found quite amusing. “Not for the Kulu Kingdom, no.”

“So how come the white fire didn’t affect you?”

“I have a built-in resistance. It was thought we should have some protection when this time came around. And the reality dysfunction
ability has proved inordinately useful over the years. I’ve been in a few tight corners in my time; completely inadvertently
I might add. I’m not supposed to be obtrusive.”

“Then you are an agent. Who do you work for?”

“Agent implies an active role. I only observe, I’m not part of any faction.”

“Faction?”

“The Kingdom. The Confederation. Adamists. Edenists. The possessed. Factions.”

“Uh huh. Are you going to shoot me, then, or something?”

“Good heavens no. I told you, I’m here purely on observation duty.”

What was being said, apparently in all sincerity, wasn’t helping to calm Moyo at all. “For which faction?”

“Ah. That’s classified, I’m afraid. Technically, I shouldn’t even be telling you this much. But circumstances have changed
since my mission began. These things aren’t quite so important today. I’m just trying to put you at ease.”

“It’s not working.”

“You really do have nothing to fear from me.”

“You’re not human, are you?”

“I’m ninety-nine per cent human. That’s good enough to qualify, surely?”

Moyo thought he would have preferred it if Hugh Rosler had launched into an indignant denial. “What’s the one per cent?”

“Sorry. Classified.”

“Xenoc? Is that it? Some unknown race? We always had rumours of pre-technology contact, men being taken away to breed.”

Hugh Rosler chuckled. “Oh, yes, good old Roswell. You know I’d almost forgotten about that; the papers were full of it for
decades afterwards. But I don’t think it ever really happened. At least, I never detected any UFOs when I was on Earth, and
I was there quite a while.”

“You were…? But…”

“I’d better be going. Your friends are starting to wonder where you’ve got to. There’s a toilet in the next warehouse which
the children can use. The tank is gravity fed, so it’s still working.”

“Wait! What are you observing us for?”

“To see what happens, of course.”

“Happens? You mean when the Kingdom attacks?”

“No, that’s not really important. I want to see what the outcome is for your entire race now that the beyond has been revealed
to you. I must say, I’m becoming quite excited by the prospect. After all, I have been waiting for this for a very long time.
It’s my designated goal function.”

Moyo simply stared at him, astonishment and indignation taking the place of fear. “How long?” was all he managed to whisper.

“Eighteen centuries.” Rosler raised an arm in a cheery wave and walked away into the shadows at the back of the warehouse.
They seemed to lap him up.“What’s the matter with you?” Stephanie asked when Moyo shambled slowly out into the gloomy light
of the rumbling clouds.

“Don’t laugh, but I think I’ve just met Methuselah’s younger brother.”

•  •  •

Louise heard the lounge hatch slide open, and guessed who it was. His duty watch had finished fifteen minutes ago. Just long
enough to show he wasn’t in any sort of rush to see her.

The trouble with the
Jamrana
, Louise thought, was its layout. Its cabin fittings were just as good as those in the
Far Realm
, but instead of the pyramid of four life-support capsules, the inter-orbit cargo craft had a single cylindrical life-support
section riding above the cargo truss. The decks were stacked one on top of the other like the layers of a wedding cake. To
find someone, all you had to do was start at the top, and climb down the central ladder. There was no escape.

“Hello, Louise.”

She reached for a polite smile. “Hello, Pieri.”

Pieri Bushay had just reached twenty, the second oldest of three brothers. Like most inter-orbit ships,
Jamrana
was run as a family concern; all seven crew members were Bushays. The strangeness of the extended family, the looseness of
its internal relationships, was one which Louise found troubling; it was more company than any family she understood. Pieri’s
elder brother was away serving a commission in the Govcentral navy, which left his father, twin mothers, brother, and two
cousins to run the ship.

Small wonder that a young female passenger would be such an attraction to him. He was shy, and uncertain, which was endearing;
nothing like the misplaced assurance of William Elphinstone.

“How are you feeling?”

His usual opening line.

“Fine.” Louise tapped the little nanonic package behind her ear. “The wonders of Confederation technology.”

“We’ll be flipping over in another twenty hours. Halfway there. Then we’ll be flying ass…er, I mean, bottom backwards to Earth.”

She was impatient with the fact it was going to take longer to fly seventy million kilometres between planets than it had
to fly between stars. But at least the fusion drive was scheduled to be on for a third of the trip. The medical packages didn’t
have to work quite so hard to negate her sickness. “That’s good.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to datavise the O’Neill Halo to see if there’s a ship heading for Tranquillity?”

“No.” That had been too sharp. “Thank you, Pieri, but if a ship is going, then it’s going, if not, there’s nothing I can do.
Fate, you see.”

“Oh, sure. I understand.” He smiled tentatively. “Louise, if you have to stay in the Halo till you find a starship, I’d like
to show you around. I’ve visited hundreds of the rocks. I know what’s hot out there, what to see, what to miss. It would be
fun.”

“Hundreds?”

“Fifty, at least. And all the major ones, including Nova Kong.”

“I’m sorry, Pieri, that doesn’t mean much to me. I’ve never heard of Nova Kong.”

“Really? Not even on Norfolk?”

“No. The only one I know is High York, and that’s only because we’re heading to it.”

“But Nova Kong is famous; one of the first to be flown into Earth orbit and be made habitable. Nova Kong physicists invented
the ZTT drive. And Richard Saldana was the asteroid’s chairman once; he used it as his headquarters to plan the Kulu colonization.”

“How fabulous. I can’t really imagine a time when the Kingdom didn’t exist, it seems so… substantial. In fact all of Earth’s
prestarflight history reads like a fable to me. So, have you ever visited High York before?”“Yes, it’s where the
Jamrana
is registered.”

“That’s your home, then?”

“We mostly dock there, but the ship’s my real home. I wouldn’t swap it for anything.”

“Just like Joshua. You space types are all the same. You’ve got wild blood.”

“I suppose so.” His face tightened at the mention of Joshua; the guardian angel fiancÉ Louise managed to mention in every
conversation.

“Is High York very well organized?”

He seemed puzzled by the question. “Yes. Of course. It has to be. Asteroids are nothing like planets, Louise. If the environment
isn’t maintained properly you’d have a catastrophe on your hands. They can’t afford not to be well organized.”

“I know that. What I meant was, the government. Does it have very strong law enforcement policies? Phobos seemed fairly easygoing.”

“That’s the devout Communists for you; they’re very trusting, Dad says they always give people the benefit of the doubt.”

It confirmed her worries. When the four of them had arrived at the
Jamrana
a couple of hours before its departure, Endron had handed over their passport fleks to the single Immigration Officer on
duty. He had known the woman, and they’d spoken cheerfully. She’d been laughing when she slotted the fleks into her processor
block, barely glancing at the images they stored. Three transient offworlders with official documentation, who were friends
of Endron… She even allowed Endron to accompany them on board.

That was when he’d taken Louise aside. “You won’t make it, you know that, don’t you?” he asked.

“We’ve got this far,” she said shakily. Though she’d had her doubts. There had been so many people as they made their tortuous
way to the spaceport with the cargo mechanoid concealing Faurax’s unconscious body. But they’d got the forger on board the
Far Realm
and into a zero-tau pod without incident.