Reality Dysfunction - Emergence

The hunt had taken a while to set up. There were thirty of Aberdale’s residents spread out through the jungle today, but they were all nearer to the river. Qui

Qui

The sayce turned, its jaws hinging wide to let out its peculiar keening cry. It charged straight at Lawrence. The boy let the bolas fly, yelling with adrenalin intoxication, and it caught the sayce on its forelegs, stones twisting in ever-shorter arcs with incredible speed. Qui

Qui

The sayce’s jaws shut between cries, and the lasso’s loop slipped over the muzzle. He jerked back with all his strength. The jaws strained to open, but the loop held; it was silicon fibre, stolen from one of the homesteads. All three Ivets could hear the furious and increasingly frantic cries, muted to a harsh sneezing sound.

Lawrence landed heavily on the writhing sayce, struggling to shove its kicking hind legs into his own loop of rope. Qui

It took another three minutes to subdue and bind the sayce completely. Qui

“Stage two,” said Qui

It was Jay who found Horst late in the afternoon. He was sitting slumped against a qualtook tree in the light drizzle, virtually comatose. She giggled at how silly he was being and shook him by the shoulder. Horst mumbled incoherently then told her to piss off.

Jay stared at him for a mortified second, her lower lip trembling, then rushed to get her mother.

“Ho boy, look at you,” Ruth said when she arrived.

Horst burped.

“Come on, get up. I’ll help you get home.”

The weight of him nearly cracked her spine as he leant against her. With a solemn-faced Jay following a couple of paces behind they staggered across the clearing to the little cabin Horst used.

Ruth let him fall onto his cot, and watched impassively as he tried to vomit onto the duckboard floor. All that came out of his mouth was a few beads of sour yellow stomach juices.

Jay stood in a corner and clutched at Drusilla, her white rabbit. The doe squirmed around in agitation. “Is he going to be all right?”

“Yes,” Ruth said.

“I thought it was a heart attack.”

“No. He’s been drinking.”

“But he’s a priest,” the girl insisted.

Ruth stroked her daughter’s hair. “I know, darling. But that doesn’t mean they’re saints.”

Jay nodded wisely. “I see. I won’t tell anyone.”

Ruth turned and stared at Horst. “Why did you do it, Horst? Why now? You’d been doing so well.”

Bloodshot eyes blinked at her. “Evil,” he groaned. “They’re evil.”

“Who are?”

“Ivets. All of them. Devil’s children. Burn down the church. Can’t consecrate it now. They built it. Evil built it. Herit— here— heretical. Burn it to cinders.”

“Horst, you’re not setting fire to anything.”

“Evil!” he slurred.

“See if there’s enough charge in his electron matrix cells to power the microwave,” Ruth told Jay. “We’ll boil some water.” She started to rummage through Horst’s gear looking for his silver-foil sachets of coffee.

Right up until the moment the electric motors began to thrum, Marie Skibbow hadn’t believed it was actually happening. But here it was, bubbles rising from the Coogan ’s propeller, the gap between the boat and the jetty growing.

“I’ve done it,” she said under her breath.

The ramshackle boat began to chug its way out into the middle of the Quallheim, the prow pointing downriver, gradually picking up speed. She stopped dropping logs into the thermal-exchange furnace’s square hopper-fu

Aberdale disappeared from sight as they steered round a curve. Her laughter became suspiciously similar to weeping. She heard someone making their way aft from the wheel-house, and started lobbing logs into the hopper again.

It was Gail Bucha

“Much!” Marie beamed a sunlight smile.

“It’s not the kind of place a girlie like you should be living in. You’ll be much better off downriver.”

“You don’t have to tell me. God, it was awful. I hated it. I hate animals, I hate vegetables, I hate fruit trees, I hate the jungle. I hate wood!”

“You’re not going to be trouble for us are you, lovie?”

“Oh no, I promise. I never signed a settlement contract with the LDC, I was still legally a minor when we left Earth. But I’m over eighteen now, so I can leave home any time I want to.”

A nonplussed frown creased the folds of spare flesh on Gail’s gibbous face for a second. “Aye, well you can stop loading the hopper now, there’s enough logs in there to last the rest of today. We’re only sailing for a couple of hours. Le

“Right.” Marie stood up straight, hands pressed against her side. Her heart was racing, pounding away against her ribs. I did it!

“You can start preparing supper in a while,” Gail said.

“Yes, of course.”

“I expect you’d like a shower first, lovie. Get cleaned up a bit.”

“A shower?” Marie thought she’d misheard.

She hadn’t. It was in the cabin between the galley and the bunks, an alcove with a curtain across the front, broad enough to fit Gail. When she looked down, Marie could see the river through the gaps between the deck boards. The pump and the heater ran off electricity from the thermal-exchange furnace, producing a weak warm spray from the copper nozzle. To Marie it was more luxurious than a sybarite’s jacuzzi. She hadn’t had a shower since her last day on Earth. Dirt was something you lived with in Aberdale and the sava