The Night's Dawn Trilogy (164 page)

At least he hadn’t suffered any nightmares; though Jenny was never very far from the surface of his mind. A final frozen image
of the mission: Jenny lying under a scrum of man-apes, datavising a kamikaze code into the power cell at her side. The image
didn’t need storing in a neural nanonics memory cell in order to retain its clarity. She’d thought it was preferable to the
alternative. But was she right? It was a question he’d asked himself a lot during the voyage to Ombey.

He swung his legs over the side of his bunk and ran fingers through hair that badly needed a wash. The room’s net processor
informed him that Guyana asteroid had just gone to a code three alert status.

“Shit, now what?” As if he couldn’t guess.

His neural nanonics reported an incoming call from Ombey’s ESA office, tagged as the director, Roche Skark, himself. Ralph
opened a secure channel to the net processor with a sense of grim inevitability. You didn’t have to be psychic to know it
wasn’t going to be good.

“Sorry to haul you back to active status so soon after you arrived,” Roche Skark datavised. “But the shit’s just hit the fan.
We need your expertise.”

“Sir?”

“It looks like three of the embassy personnel who came here on the
Ekwan
were sequestrated by the virus. They’ve gone down to the surface.”

“What?”
Panic surged into Ralph’s mind. Not that abomination, not loose here in the Kingdom. Please God. “Are you certain?”

“Yes. I’ve just come out of a Privy Council security conference with the Princess. She authorized the code three alert because
of it.”

Ralph’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, God, and I brought them here.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“It’s my job to know. Goddamn, I grew slack on Lalonde.”

“I doubt any of us would have done anything different.”

“Yes, sir.” Pity you couldn’t sneer with a datavise.

“In any case, we’re right behind them. Admiral Farquar and my good colleague Jannike Dermot over at the ISA have been commendably
swift in implementing damage limitation procedures. We estimate the embassy trio are barely seven hours ahead of you.”

Ralph thought about the damage one of those
things
could inflict in seven hours and put his head in his hands. “That still gives them a lot of time to infect other people.”
Implications began to sink through his crust of dismay. “It’ll be an exponential effect.”

“Possibly,” Roche Skark admitted. “If it isn’t contained very quickly we may have to abandon the entire Xingu continent. Quarantine
procedures are already in place, and the police are being told how to handle the situation. But I want you there to instill
a bit of urgency, kick a bit of arse.”

“Yes, sir. This active status call, does that mean I get to go after them in person?”

“It does. Technically, you’re going down to advise the Xingu continent’s civil authorities. As far as I’m concerned you can
engage in as much fieldwork as you want, with the proviso that you don’t expose yourself to the possibility of infection.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Ralph, I don’t mind telling you, what this energy virus can do scares the crap out of me. It has to be a precursor to something,
some form of invasion. And safeguarding the Kingdom from such threats is my job. Yours too, come to that. So stop them, Ralph.
Shoot first, and I’ll whitewash later if need be.”

“You’ve got it, sir.”

“Good man. The admiral has assigned a flyer to take you down to Pasto city spaceport, it’s leaving in twelve minutes. I’ll
have a full situation briefing datapackage assembled ready for you to access on the way down. Anything you want, let me know.”

“I’d like to take Will Danza and Dean Folan with me, and have them authorized to fire weapons on the surface. They know how
to deal with people who have been sequestrated. Cathal Fitzgerald too; he’s seen the virus at work.”

“They’ll have the authorization before you land.”

•  •  •

Duchess had risen above the horizon by the time Colsterworth came into view. The red dwarf sun occupied a portion of the horizon
diametrically opposite Duke, the two of them struggling to contaminate the landscape below with their own unique spectrum.

Duchess was winning the battle, rising in time to Duke’s fall from the sky. The eastward slopes of the wolds were slowly slipping
from verdant green to subdued burgundy. Aboriginal pine-analogue trees planted among the hedgerows of geneered hawthorn became
grizzled pewter pillars. Even the stallion’s ebony hide was darkening.

Duke’s golden glow withdrew before the strengthening red tide.

For the first time in her life, Louise resented the primary’s retreat. Duchess-night was usually a magical time, twisting
the familiar world into a land of mysterious shadows and balmy air. This time the red stain had a distinctly ominous quality.

“Do you suppose Aunty Daphnie will be home?” Genevieve asked for what must have been the fifth time.

“I’m sure she will,” Louise replied. It had taken Genevieve a good half hour to stop crying after they’d escaped from Cricklade.
Louise had concentrated so hard on comforting her sister, she’d almost stopped being afraid herself. Certainly it was easy
to blank what had happened from her mind. And she wasn’t quite sure exactly what she was going to say to Aunt Daphnie. The
actual truth would make her sound utterly mad. Yet anything less than the truth might not suffice. Whatever forces of justice
and law were dispatched up to Cricklade would have to be well armed and alert. The chief constable and the mayor had to believe
what they faced was deadly real, not the imaginings of a half-hysterical teenage girl.

Fortunately she was a Kavanagh. People would have to listen. And please, dear Jesus, make them believe.

“Is that a fire?” Genevieve asked.

Louise jerked her head up. Colsterworth was spread out along a couple of miles of a shallow valley, growing up from the intersection
of a river and the railway line. A somnolent little market town with ranks of neat terrace houses set amid small, pretty gardens.
The larger homes of the important families occupied the gentle eastern slope, capturing the best view over the countryside.
An industrial district of warehouses and small factories cluttered the ground around the wharf.

Three tall spires of filthy smoke were twisting up from the centre of the town. Flames burned at the base of one. Very bright
flames. Whatever the building was, it glowed like molten iron.

“Oh, no,” Louise gasped. “Not here, too.” As she watched, one of the long river barges drifted past the last warehouse. Its
decks were alight, the tarpaulin-covered cargo hold puffing out mushrooms of brown smoke. Louise guessed the barrels it carried
were exploding. People were jumping off the prow, striking out for the bank.

“Now what?” Genevieve asked in a woeful voice.

“Let me think.” She had never considered that anywhere other than Cricklade was affected. But of course her father and that
chilling young priest had stopped at Colsterworth first. And before that… A midwinter frost prickled her spine. Could it all
have started at Boston? Everyone said an insurrection was beyond the Union’s ability to mount. Was the whole island to be
conquered by these demons in human guise?

And if so, where do we go?

“Look!” Genevieve was pointing ahead.

Louise saw a Romany caravan being driven at considerable speed along one of the roads on the edge of town below them. The
driver was standing on the seat, striking at the cob horse’s rump with a whip. It was a woman, her white dress flapping excitably
in the wind.

“She’s running away,” Genevieve cried. “They can’t have got to her yet.”

The notion that they could join up with an adult who would be on their side was a glorious tonic for Louise. Even if it was
just a simple Romany woman, she thought uncharitably. But then didn’t Romanies know about magic? The manor staff said they
practised all sorts of dark arts. She might even know how to ward off the devils.

Louise took in the road ahead of the racing caravan with a keen sweep, trying to work out where they could meet it. There
was nothing directly in front of the caravan, but three quarters of a mile from the town was a large farmhouse.

Frantic animals were charging out of the open farmyard gate into the meadows: pigs, heifers, a trio of shire-horses, even
a Labrador. The house’s windows flashed brightly, emitting solid beams of blue-white light which appeared quite dazzling under
the scarlet sky.

“She’s heading straight for them,” Louise groaned. When she checked the careering caravan again it had just passed the last
of Colsterworth’s terraced houses. There were too many trees and bends ahead for the driver to see the farmhouse.

Louise sized up the distance to the road, and snapped the bridle. “Hang on,” she told Genevieve. The stallion charged forwards,
dusky red grass blurring beneath its hooves. It jumped the first fence with hardly a break in its rhythm. Louise and Genevieve
bounced down hard on its back, the younger girl letting out a yap of pain.

A jeering crowd had emerged on the road behind the caravan, milling beneath the twin clumps of geneered silver birch trees
which marked the town’s official boundary. It was almost as if they were unwilling, or unable, to venture out into the open
fields. Several bolts of white fire were flung after the fleeing caravan—glinting stars which dwindled away after a few hundred
yards.

Louise wanted to weep in frustration when she saw people walking out of the farmhouse and start down the road towards Colsterworth.
The Romany woman still hadn’t noticed the danger ahead.

“Shout at her! Stop her!” she cried to Genevieve.

They covered the last three hundred yards bellowing wildly.

It was to no avail. They were close enough to the caravan to see the foam coating the nose of the piebald cob before the Romany
woman caught sight of them. Even then she didn’t stop, although the reins were pulled back. The huge beast started to slow
its frantic sprint to a more reasonable trot.

The stallion cleared the hedge and the ditch running alongside the road in an easy bound. Louise whipped it around to match
the caravan’s pace. There was a tremendous clattering coming from inside the wooden frame with its gaudy paintwork, as if
an entire kitchen’s worth of pots and pans were being juggled by malevolent clowns.

The Romany woman had long raven hair streaming out behind her, a brown face with round cheeks. Her white linen dress was stained
with sweat. Defiant, wild eyes stared at the sisters. She made some kind of sign in the air.

A spell? Louise wondered. “Stop!” she begged. “Please stop. They’re already ahead of you. They’re at that farmhouse,
look.”

The Romany woman stood up, searching the land beyond the cob’s bobbing head. They had another quarter of a mile to go until
they reached the farmhouse. But Louise had lost sight of the people who had come out of it.

“How do you know?” the woman called out.

“Just
stop
!” Genevieve squealed. Her small fists were bunched tight.

Carmitha looked the little girl over, then came to a decision. She nodded, and began to rein back.

The caravan’s front axle snapped with a prodigious crunching sound.

Carmitha just managed to grab hold of the frame as the whole caravan pitched forwards. Sparks flew out from underneath her
as the world tilted sharply. A last wrenching
snap
and the caravan ground to a halt. One of the front wheels trundled past her cob horse, Olivier, then rolled down into the
dry ditch at the side of the road. “Shit!” She glared at the girls on the big black stallion, their soot-stained white blouses
and grubby desolate faces. It must have been them. She’d thought they were pure, but you just couldn’t tell. Not now. Her
grandmother’s ramblings on the spirit world had been nothing more than campsite tales to delight and scare young children.
But she did remember some of the old woman’s words. She raised her hands
so
and summoned up the incantation.

“What are you
doing
?” the elder of the two girls yelled down at her. “We have to get out of here. Now!”

Carmitha frowned in confusion. The girls both looked terrified, as well they might if they’d seen a tenth of what she had.
Maybe they were untainted. But it if wasn’t them who wrecked the caravan…

She heard a chuckle and whirled around. The man just appeared out of the tree standing on the other side of the road from
the ditch. Literally out of it. Bark lines faded from his body to reveal the most curious green tunic. Arms of jade silk,
a jacket of lime wool, big brass buttons down the front, and a ridiculous pointed felt hat sprouting a couple of white feathers.

“Going somewhere, pretty ladies?” He bowed deeply and doffed his hat.

Carmitha blinked. His tunic really was green. But it shouldn’t have been, not in this light. “Ride!” she called to the girls.

“Oh, no.” His voice sounded indignant, a host whose hospitality has proved inadequate. “Do stay.”

One of the small kittledove birds in the tree behind him took flight with an indignant squawk. Its leathery wings folded back,
and it dived towards the stallion. Intense blue and purple sparks fizzed out of its tail, leaving a contrail of saffron smoke
behind it. The tiny organic missile streaked past the stallion’s nose and skewered into the ground with a wet thud.

Louise and Genevieve both reached out instinctively to pat and gentle the suddenly skittish stallion. Five more kittle-doves
were lined up on the pine’s branches, their twittering stilled. “In fact, I insist you stay,” the green man said, and smiled
charmingly.

“Let the girls go,” Carmitha told him calmly. “They’re only children.”

His eyes lingered on Louise. “But growing up so splendidly. Don’t you agree?”

Louise stiffened.

Carmitha was about to argue, maybe even plead. But then she saw four more people marching down the road from the farmhouse
and the fight went out of her. Taking to her heels would do no good. She’d seen what the white fireballs could do to flesh
and bone. It was going to be bad enough without adding to the pain.