“Tow them,” Sewell said. “Slap together a couple of rafts, and tow them back up the river. All you need is planks, we can get them from the homestead itself if need be.”
Ariadne nodded her rounded head. “Might just work. The hovercraft could handle that. We could certainly get back here by the middle of the afternoon.”
“Then what?” Jalal said. “Look, I’m not being a downer. But just getting them back here isn’t the solution. We have to keep going. Wallace says the cloud is going to cover the whole planet, we have to find a way to outrun it, or this will all be for nothing.”
Reza turned to look at the possessed man who had kept silent and unobtrusive up until now. “Mr Wallace, will your kind know if we return to the homestead?”
“Aye, Mr. Malin,” he said sorrowfully. “That they will. The cloud and the land are becoming one with us. We can feel you moving inside us. When you pass back under the cloud the sensation will be like treading on a nail.”
“How will they react?”
“They’ll come after you, Mr. Malin. But then they’ll do that anyway if you stay on this world.”
“I think he’s speaking the truth,” Horst said. “One of them came to the homestead two days ago. She wanted me and the children. Our bodies, anyway.”
“What happened?” Kelly asked.
Horst forced a vapid smile. “I exorcised her.”
“What?” Kelly blurted in greedy delight. “Really?”
The priest held up his bandaged hand. The dark strips of cloth were stained with blood. “It wasn’t easy.”
“Shit Almighty. Shaun, can you be exorcised?”
Shaun Wallace had locked his gaze to that of the priest. “If it’s all the same to you, Miss Kelly, I’d be obliged if you didn’t try.”
“He can,” she subvocalized into her neural nanonics memory cell, “he really can! You can see it in his eyes. He fears the priest, this ageing worn-out man in shabby clothes. I can barely believe it. A ceremony left over from medieval times that can thwart these almost-invincible foes. Where all our fantastic technology and knowledge fails, a prayer, a simple anachronistic prayer could become our salvation. I must tell you of this, I must find a way to get a message out to the Confederation.” Damn, that sounded too much like Graeme Nicholson’s recording.
For a moment she wondered what had happened to the old hack.
“Interesting,” Reza said. “But it doesn’t help our present dilemma. We have to find a way of keeping ahead of the cloud until Joshua comes back for us.”
“Christ, we don’t even know when he’s coming back,” Sal Yong said. “And taking a bunch of children through these mountains isn’t going to be easy, Reza, there are no roads, no detailed map image. We’ve got no camping equipment, no boots for them, no food supplies. It’s going to be wet, slippery. I mean, God! I don’t mind giving it a go if there’s even a remote chance of pulling it off, but this . . .”
“Mr Wallace, would your kind consider letting the children go?” Reza asked.
“Some would, I would, but the rest . . . No, I don’t think so. There are so few living human bodies left here, and so many souls trapped in the beyond. We hear them constantly, you know, they plead with us to bring them back. Giving in is so easy. I’m sorry.”
“Shit.” Reza flexed his fingers. “OK, we’ll take it in stages. First we bring the children back here, get them and us out from under that bloody cloud today. That’s what is important right now. Once we’ve done that we can start concentrating on how to get them through the mountains. Maybe the Tyrathca will help.”
“No chance,” Ariadne said flatly.
“Yeah. But all of you keep thinking. Mr. Wallace, can you tell me what sort of opposition we’ll be facing? How many possessed?”
“Well now, there’s a good hundred and fifty living in Aberdale. But if you race in on those fancy hover machines of yours you ought to be away again before they reach you.”
“Great.”
Shaun Wallace held up his hand. “But there’s a family of ten living in one of the other homesteads not far from the children. They can certainly cause you problems.”
“And you believe him?” Sewell asked Reza.
Shaun Wallace put on a mournfully injured expression. “Now then, Mr. Sewell, that’s no way to be talking about someone who’s only doing his best to help you. I didn’t stick out my thumb and hitch here, you know.”
“Actually, he’s right about the homestead family,” Horst said. “I saw them a couple of days ago.”
“Thank you, Father. There now, you have the word of a man of the cloth. What more do you want?”
“Ten of them on open ground,” Reza said. “That’s nothing like as bad as Pamiers. I think we can take care of them. Are you going to add your fire-power to ours, Mr. Wallace?”
“Ah now, my fire-power is a poor weak thing compared to yours, Mr. Malin. But even if it were capable of shifting mountains, I would not help you in that way.”
“That makes you a liability, Mr. Wallace.”
“I don’t think much of a man who asks another to kill his cousins in suffering, Mr. Malin. Not much at all.”
Horst took a pace forwards. “Perhaps you could mediate for us, Mr. Wallace? Nobody wants to see any more death on this world, especially as those bodies still contain their rightful souls. Could you not explain to the homestead family that attacking the mercenaries would be foolhardy in the extreme?”
Shaun Wallace stroked his chin. “Aye, now, I could indeed do that, Father.”
Horst glanced expectantly at Reza.
“Suits me,” the mercenary leader said.
Shaun Wallace grinned his wide-boy grin. “The priests back in Ireland were all wily old souls. I see nothing’s changed in that department.”
Nobody had noticed the balmy smile growing on Kelly’s face during the exchange. She let go of Russ, and slapped her hands together with surefire exultation. “Yes! I can get Joshua back here. I think. I’m sure I can.”
They all looked at her.
“Maybe even by this afternoon. We won’t have to worry about going through the mountains. All we’ll have to do is get clear of the red cloud so that Ashly can land.”
“Spare us how wonderful you are, Kelly,” Reza said. “How?”
She dived into her bag and pulled out her communication block, brandishing it as though it were a silver trophy. “With this. The LDC’s original geosynchronous communication platform had a deep-space antenna to keep in touch with the Edenist station orbiting Murora. If the platform didn’t get hit in the orbital battle, we can just call him up. Send a repeating message telling him how badly we need him. Murora is about nine hundred million kilometres away, that’s less than a light-hour. If he leaves as soon as he receives it, he could be here inside three or four hours. Lady Mac might not be able to jump outsystem, but if she can jump to Murora she can jump back again. At least we’d be safely off Lalonde.”
“Can you get the platform computer to send a message?” Reza asked. “Terrance Smith never gave us any access codes for it.”
“Listen, I’m a bloody reporter, there’s nothing I don’t know about violating communication systems. And this block has quite a few less than legal chips added.”
She waited for an answer, her feet had developed a life of their own, wanting to dance.
“Well, get on with it then, Kelly,” Reza said.
She ran for the hole in the door, startling Fenton and Ryall lying on the grass outside. The sky over the savannah was split into two uneven portions of redness as the cloud band clashed with the dawn sun. She datavised an instruction into the block and it started scanning across the dissonant shades above for the platform’s beacon.
Joshua dozed fitfully in his cabin’s sleep cocoon. The envelope was a baggy lightweight spongy fabric, big enough to hold him without being restrictive. Sarha had offered to sleep with him, but he’d tactfully declined. He was still feeling the effects of that eleven-gee thrust. Even his body hadn’t been geneered with that much acceleration in mind. There were long bruise crinkles on his back where the creases on his ship-suit had pressed into his skin, and when he looked into the mirror his eyes were bloodshot. He and Sarha wouldn’t have had sex anyway, he really was tired. Tired and stressed out.