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Horst started to pick up some of the slates. “I was sent here to encourage people to think. It’s good for you.”
“Not me. I’ve got Irley tonight. I don’t want to think about it.”
Irley was one of the Ivets; Horst knew him as a thin-faced lad, who was quiet even by their standards.
“What do you mean, you’ve got him?”
“It’s his turn.”
“Turn?”
A
“I . . .” Horst knew his face was reddening. “I didn’t know.”
“What the hell do you think we do in that big hut at night? Basket weaving? There are three girls, and fifteen boys. And the boys all need it pretty bad, banging their fists each night isn’t enough, so they take it in turns with us, those that aren’t AC/DC. Qui
“Oh, my child. This must stop, at once. I’ll speak to Powel and the council.”
A
It was there, right at the bottom of his pack where it had lain for six and a half months. Untouched, u
Horst took out the bottle, and poured a long measure. Scotch, though this thick amber liquid had never rested in oak barrels in the Highlands. It had come straight out of a molecular filter programmed with the taste of a long-lost ideal. But it burnt as it went down, and slowly lit up his belly and his skull, which was all he wanted from it.
How stupid. How blind to think the serpent hadn’t come with them to this fresh world. How obtuse that he, a priest, hadn’t thought to look below the shining surface of achievement, to see the sewer beneath.
He poured another measure of Scotch. Breath coming in hot bursts between gulps. God, but it felt good, to abandon mortal failings for a few brief hours. To hide in this warm, silent, forgiving place of sanctuary.
God’s Brother, she had said. And she was right. Satan is here amongst us, piercing our very heart.
Horst filled his glass to the very top, staring at it in abject dread. Satan: Lucifer, the light bringer. The Light Brother.
“Oh no,” he whispered. Tears filled his eyes. “Not that, not that here. Not the sects spreading over this world’s purity. I can’t, dear Lord. I can’t fight that. Look at me. I’m here because I can’t.” He trailed off into sobs.
Now as always, the Lord answered only with silence. Faith alone wasn’t enough for Horst Elwes. But then he’d always known that.
The bird was back again, thirty centimetres long, its plumage a tawny brown flecked with gold. It hovered twenty metres above Qui
He watched it out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t like any other bird he’d seen on Lalonde; their feathers were almost like membrane scales. When he sca
He gave the hand signal, and they advanced steadily through the bush, Jackson Gael on one side of him, Lawrence Dillon on the other. Lawrence was the youngest Ivet, seventeen, with a slim figure, ski
Sex showed the others the power Qui
He had given them hope and power. All he demanded in return was obedience.
Demanded and received.
The big spongy leaves of the vines which shrouded the trees brushed lightly against Qui
Creepers were hung between the trunks like a net the jungle had woven to catch its smaller denizens. They crackled a
The light filtering down through the leaf canopy was growing darker. He spotted an increasing number of young giganteas interspaced with the usual trees. They resembled elongated cones, with an outer coating of mauve-brown fibrous hair rather than a true bark. Their boughs emerged in rings from the trunk, spaced regularly up the entire length; they all sloped downwards at a fifty-degree angle, supporting fanlike arrangements of twigs, densely packed as birds’ nests. Leaves grew on the upper surface like a dark green fur.
The first time Qui
Jackson clicked his fingers, and pointed ahead. Qui
The sayce they had been tracking was padding through the skimpy undergrowth ten metres away. It was a big specimen, a buck, its black hide scarred and flecked with blue spots, ears chewed down to stubs. It had been in a lot of fights, and won them.
Qui