A boat. One of the grotty traders on the Quallheim, little more than a bodged-together raft. Speeding downriver.
A town of wooden buildings. Durringham in the rain.
A girl.
He knew her. Marie Skibbow, naked, tied to a bed with rope.
His heartbeat thudded in the silence.
“Yes,” said the voice he knew from before, from the clearing in the jungle, the voice which came out of Night. “I thought you’d like this.”
Marie was tugging frantically at her bonds, her figure every bit as lush as his imagination had once conceived it.
“What would you do with her, Quinn?”
What would he do? What couldn’t he do with such an exquisite body. How oh how she would suffer beneath him.
“You are bloody repugnant, Quinn. But so terribly useful.”
Energy twisted eagerly inside his body, and a phantasm come forth to overlay reality. Quinn’s interpretation of the physical form which God’s Brother might assume should He ever choose to manifest Himself in the flesh. And what flesh. Capable of the most wondrous assaults, amplifying every degradation the sect had ever taught him.
The flux of sorcerous power reached a triumphal peak, opening a rift into the terrible empty beyond, and so another emerged to take possession as Marie pleaded and wept.
“Back you go, Quinn.”
And the images shrank back to the dry wispy beams of flickering light. “You’re not the Light Brother!” Quinn shouted into the nothingness. Fury at the acknowledgement of betrayal heightened his perception, the light became brighter, sound louder.
“Of course not, Quinn. I’m worse than that, worse than any mythical devil. All of us are.”
Laughter echoed through the prison universe, tormenting him.
Time was so different in here . . .
A spaceplane.
A starship.
Uncertainty. Quinn felt it run through him like a hormonal surge. The electrical machinery upon which he was now dependent recoiled from his estranged body, which made his dependence still deeper as the delicate apparatuses broke down one by one. Uncertainty gave way to fear. His body trembled as it tried desperately to quieten the currents of exotic energy which infiltrated every cell.
It wasn’t omnipotent, Quinn realized, this thing which controlled his body, it had limits. He let the dribs and drabs of light soak into what was left of his mind, concentrating on what he saw, the words he heard. Watching, waiting. Trying to understand.
Syrinx thought Boston was the most delightful city she had seen in fourteen years of travelling about the Confederation, and that included the sheltered enclaves of houses in the Saturn-orbiting habitats of her birth. Every house was built from stone, with thick walls to keep the heat out during the long summer, then keep it in for the equally long winter. Most of them were two storeys high, with some of the larger ones having three; they had small railed gardens at the front, and rows of stables along the back. Terrestrial honeysuckle and ivy were popular creepers for covering the stonework, while hanging baskets provided cheerful dabs of colour to most porches. Roofs were always steep to withstand the heavy snow, and grey slate tiles alternated with jet-black solar panels in pleasing geometric patterns. Wood was burnt to provide warmth and sometimes for cooking, which produced a forest of chimneys thrusting out of the gable ends, topped by red clay pots with elaborate crowns. Every building, be it private, civic, or commercial, was individual, possessing the kind of character impossible on worlds where mass-production facilities were commonplace. Wide streets were all cobbled, with tall cast-iron street lights spaced along them. It was only after a while she realized that as there were no mechanoids or servitors each of the little granite cubes must have been laid by human hand—the time and effort that must have entailed! There were trees lining each pavement, mainly Norfolk’s pine-analogues, with some geneered terrestrial evergreens for variety. Traffic was comprised entirely of bicycles, trike scooters (very few, and mostly with adolescent riders), horses, and horse-drawn cabs and carts. She had seen power vans, but only on the roads around the outskirts, and those were farm vehicles.
After they had cleared Customs (altogether more rigorous than Passport Control) they’d found the horse-drawn taxi coaches waiting by the aerodrome’s tower. Syrinx had grinned, and Tula had let out an exasperated groan. But the one they used was well sprung, proving a reasonably smooth trip into town. Following Andrew Unwin’s advice, they had rented some rooms at the Wheatsheaf, a coaching house on the side of one of the rivers which the town was built around.
Once they had unpacked and eaten a light lunch in the courtyard, Syrinx and Ruben had taken another coach to Penn Street, the precious coolbox on the floor by their feet.
Ruben watched the traffic and pedestrians parading past with a contented feeling. Starship crews strolling about were easy to spot: their clothes of synthetic fabric were curiously bland in comparison to the locals’ attire. Bostonians in summer favoured bright colours and raffish styles; this year multicoloured waistcoats were in vogue among the young men, while the girls wore crinkled cheesecloth skirts with bold circular patterns (hems always below their knees, he noted sadly). It was like stepping back into pre-spaceflight history, though he suspected no historical period on Earth was ever as clean as this.
“Penn Street, guv’nor,” the driver cried as the horse turned into a road parallel to the River Gwash. It was the commercial sector of the city, with wharves lining the river, and a lengthy rank of prodigious warehouses standing behind them. Here for the first time they encountered powered lorries. A railway marshalling yard was visible at the other end of the dusty road.
Ruben looked down the long row of warehouses and busy yards and offices, only too well aware of Syrinx’s gaze hot on his neck. Mordant thoughts started pressing against his mind. Drayton’s Import wasn’t in Penn Street, it was Penn Street. The name was on signs across every building.
“Where to now, guv’nor?” the driver asked.
“Head Office,” Ruben replied. The last time he’d been here, Drayton’s Import had consisted of a single office in a rented warehouse.
Head Office turned out to be a building in the middle of the street, on the waterfront side, sandwiched between two warehouses. Its arched windows were all iron rimmed, and a large, brightly polished brass plaque was set in the wall next to the double doors. The cab pulled to a halt in front of its curving stone stairs.
“Looks like old Dominic Kavanagh is doing all right for himself,” Ruben said as they climbed out. He handed the driver a guinea, with a sixpenny piece for a tip.
Syrinx’s stare could have cut diamond.
“Old Dominic, one of the best. Boy, did we have some times together, he knows every pub in town.” Ruben wondered who his bravado was intended to reassure.
“Exactly how long ago was this?” Syrinx asked as they walked into reception.
“About fifteen or twenty years,” Ruben offered. He was sure that was it, although he had a horrible feeling that Dominic had been the same age as himself. That’s the trouble with crewing a voidhawk, he thought, every day the same, and all of them squashed together. How am I supposed to know the exact date?
The reception hall had a black and white marble floor, and a wide staircase leading up the rear wall. A young woman sat behind a desk ten yards inside the door, a uniformed concierge standing beside her.
“I’d like to see Dominic Kavanagh,” Ruben told her blithely. “Just tell him Ruben’s back in town.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “I don’t think we have a Kavanagh of that name working here.”
“But he owns Drayton’s Import,” Ruben said forlornly.
“Kenneth Kavanagh owns this establishment, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Can we see him?” Syrinx asked. “I have flown all the way from Earth.”
The woman took in Syrinx’s blue ship-tunic with its silver star. “Your business, Captain?”