Reality Dysfunction - Emergence

“How many of us stop by to look after Rachel and Jason? Oh, we were all such fine neighbours to her for the first week after Gwyn died, ten days even. But now . . . To keep on and on for weeks without end when you have your own family to nurture. People can’t do it, they lack the tenacity. Of course they designate the Ivets to help Rachel. Something is done, and conscience is saved. But I attach no blame for that. This place drains us, Ruth. It turns us inwards, we only have time for ourselves.”

Ruth bit back on what she had heard about Rachel and Qui

“I know!” Horst jabbed Judy Hoffman’s cross into the ground. Water oozed up around the edge of the wood. Like blood, he thought, filthy blood.

The jungle steamed softly. It had rained less than an hour ago, and every trunk and leaf was still slick with water. One thick stratum of swan-white mist had formed at waist height. It meant the four Ivets tramping down the animal track could barely see their feet. Fingers of sunlight probing down through the screen of overhead leaves shone out like solid strands of gold in the ultra-humid air. Away in the distance was the tremulous gobbling and cooing of the birds, the chorus they had long since learnt to filter out.

The ground here was rough, distorted by meandering hummocks twice the height of a man. Trees grew out of their sides at slapdash angles, curving upwards, supported by vast buttress roots. Their ash-grey trunks were slender in relation to their height, seldom more than thirty centimetres wide, yet they were all over twenty metres high, crowned by interlaced umbrellas of emerald foliage. Nothing grew on the trunks below. Even the vines and scrub plants around the triangular roots lacked their usual vigour.

“There’s no game here,” Scott Williams said after half an hour of scrambling over interminable hummocks and splashing through the water that pooled around them. “It’s the wrong sort of country.”

“That’s right,” Qui

They had done well from the Hoffmans that night a fortnight ago. Do

That had been the first time Qui

Two of them had been the weakest of the Ivet group, Irley and Scott, disbelievers until lovely Angie was offered to them. The serpent beast had awoken in each of them, as it always did, inflamed by the heat, and chanting, and orange torchlight shining on naked skin. God’s Brother had whispered into their hearts, and shown them the true way of the flesh, the animal way. Temptation had triumphed yet again, and Angie’s cries had carried far across the sava

It was something Ba

Soon there would be more ceremonies, and all the Ivets would undergo their initiation.

The ground began to flatten out. The trees were growing closer together now, with thicker undergrowth. Qui

Lawrence Dillon let out an exuberant whoop, and fired off his borrowed laser rifle. Qui

Lawrence fired again. A puff of smoke squirted from a branch where the ve

“Leave it,” Qui

“OK, Qui

Qui

“I want you to put your weapons down,” he said.

The others gave him puzzled glances. “Qui

“Now.” He unslung his laser rifle, and laid it on the wet grass. It was a tribute to his authority that the others did as they were told without any further protest.

Qui

The chameleon suit lost its bark pattern, reverting to a dark grey.

Lawrence Dillon took a pace backwards in surprise. “Shit. I never saw him.”

Qui

The man was standing with his back pressed against a qualtook tree eight metres away. He pulled the hood back revealing a round forty-year-old face with a steep chin and light grey eyes.

“Morning,” Qui

“Tell me why you should not be eliminated,” the man said.

Qui