As they bloody well ought to, by damn. I sweated blood getting Cricklade back on its feet.
And now there was enough food for everybody, the coming harvest would enable them to see the winter months out without undue hardship. Stoke County had emerged from the transition exceptionally well. There certainly wouldn’t be any more marauders, not since the battle of Colsterworth station. Good news, considering the reports and rumours trickling out of Boston these days. The island’s capital hadn’t been so fast to embrace the old ways. Food there was becoming scarce; the farms immediately round the outskirts it were being abandoned as citizens roamed across the countryside in search of supplies.
The idiots weren’t capitalising on their existing industrial infrastructure by producing goods to trade with the farming communities for food. There was so much the city could provide, basic stuff like cloth and tools. That needed to happen again, and soon. But the indications he’d got from Lionel and the other traders weren’t good. Some factories were up and running, but there was no real social order in the city.
It’s actually worse than when the Democratic Land Union was out on the streets, agitating for their claptrap reforms.
Luca shook his head irritably. There were a lot of his thoughts roaming free these days. Some of them obvious, the ones he relied on to keep Cricklade going; others were more subtle, the comparisons, the regrets, odd mannerisms creeping back, so comfortable he could never drive them out again. Worst was that eternal junkie ache to see Louise and Genevieve again, just to know they were all right.
Are you such a monster, an anti-human, you would deny a father that? A single glimpse of my beloved girls.
Luca put his head back and yelled: “You never loved them!” The piebald horse came to a startled halt as his voice carried across the verdant land. Anger was his last refuge of self, the one defence which Grant could never penetrate. “You treated them like cattle. They weren’t even people to you, they were commodities, part of your medieval family empire, assets ready to marry off in exchange for money and power. You bastard. You don’t deserve them.” He shivered, crumpling down into the saddle. “Then why do I care?” he heard himself ask. “My children are the most important part of me; they carry on everything I am. And you tried to rape them. A pair of little children. Love? Do you think you know anything about it? A degenerate parasite like you.”
“Leave me alone,” Luca screamed out.
Shouldn’t it be me asking you that?
Luca gritted his teeth, thinking about the gas Spanton used, the way Dexter had tried to make them worship the Light Bringer. Building up a fortress of anger, so his thoughts could be his again.
He tugged on the reins, wheeling the horse round so he faced Cricklade. There was little practical point to this inspection tour. He knew the condition the estate was in.
Materially they were fine. Mentally . . . the veil of contentment furled around Norfolk was souring. He recognized the particular strain of forlorn resentment accumulating over the mind’s horizon. Cricklade had known it first. All across Norfolk, people were discovering what lay beneath their external perfection. The slow-maturing plague of vanity had begun to reap its victims. Hope was withering from their lives. This winter would be more than the physical cold.
Luca crossed the boundary of giant cedars and urged the horse up over the greensward towards the manor house. Just seeing its timeless grey stone façade, inset with white-painted windows, brought a peaceful reassurance to his aching thoughts. Its history belonged to him, and so assured his future.
The girls will carry on here, will keep our home and family alive.
He bowed his head, embittered by his deteriorating will. Anger was hard to maintain over hours, let alone days. Weary, weepy dismay was no defence, and those emotions were his constant companion these days.
There was the usual scattering of activity around the manor. A circular brush ejecting a puff of soot as it rose out from the central chimney stack. Stable boys leading the horses down to graze in the east meadow. Women hanging sheets out to dry on the clothes lines. Ned Coldham—Luca couldn’t remember the name of the handyman’s possessor—painting the windows on the west wing, making sure the wood was protected from the coming frosts. The sound of sawing drifting out through the chapel’s empty windows. Two men (claiming to be monks, though neither Luca nor Grant had ever heard of their order) were slowly repairing the damage Dexter had wrought inside.
There were more people bustling about in the walled kitchen garden at the side of the manor. Cook had brought a team of her kitchen helpers out to cut the shoots of asparagus ready for freezing. It was the fifth batch they’d collected from the geneered plant this year.
Johan was sitting beside the stone arched gateway, a blanket over his knees as he soaked up the warmth of the omnidirectional sunlight. Véronique was on a chair beside him, with baby Jeanette sleeping in a cradle, a parasol protecting her from the light.
Luca dismounted and went over to see his erstwhile deputy. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Not so bad, thank you, sir.” Johan smiled weakly, and nodded.
“You look a lot better.” He was putting on weight again, though the loose skin around his face remained pallid.
“Soon as they gets the glass finished, I’m going to start getting some seeds set,” Johan said. “I always like a bit o’ fresh lettuce and cucumber in me sarnies during the winter. Wouldn’t mind trying to grow some avocado as well, though it’ll be next year before they fruit.”
“Jolly good, man. And how’s this little one, then?” Luca peered into the crib. He’d forgotten just how small newborn babies were.
“She’s a dream,” Véronique sighed happily. “I wish she’d sleep like this at night. Every two hours she wants feeding. You can set your clock by her. It’s really tiring.”
“Sweet little mite,” Johan said. “Reckon she’s gonna be a proper looker when she grows up.”
Véronique beamed with easy pride.
“I’m sure she will,” Luca said. It pained him to see the way the old man was looking at the baby; there was too much desperation there. Butterworth wanted confirmation that life carried on as normal here in this realm. It was an attitude that was growing among a lot of Cricklade’s residents, he’d noticed lately. The kids they were looking after had been receiving more sympathetic attention. His own resolve to stay at the estate and ignore the urge to find the girls was becoming harder to maintain. It was a weakness he could date back to the day Johan had collapsed, and then accelerating after the battle of Colsterworth station. Every step he took on the sandy gravel path around the manor seemed to press blister-sized lumps deep into the flesh of his soles, reminding him of how precarious his life had become.
Luca led his horse into the stable courtyard, guilty and glad to leave Johan behind. Carmitha was over by her caravan. She was folding up freshly washed clothes and packing them into a big brass-bound wooden trunk. Half a dozen of her old glass storage jars were standing on the cobbles, full of leaves and flowers, their green tint turning the contents a peculiar grey colour.
She nodded politely at him. He watched her as he took the stallion’s saddle off; she moved with a steady determination that discouraged interruption. Some thought had been finalized, he decided. The trunk was eventually filled, and the lid slammed down.
“Give you a hand with that?” he offered.
“Thanks.”
They lifted the trunk in through the door at the back of the caravan. Luca whistled quietly. He’d never seen the inside so tidy before. There was no clutter, no clothes or towels slung about, all the pans she had hanging up were polished to a bright gleam, even the bed was made. Bottles were lined up on a high shelf, held in place by copper travelling rings.
She shoved the trunk into an alcove under the bed.
“You’re going somewhere,” he said.
“I’m ready to go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I’ve no idea. Mig
ht try Holbeach, see if any of the others made it to the caves.”
He sat on the bed, suddenly very tired. “Why? You know how important you are to people here. God, Carmitha, you can’t leave. Look, just tell me if someone’s said or done something against you. I’ll have their bloody nuts roasted very slowly over a furnace.”
“Nobody’s done anything yet.”
“Then why?”
“I want to be ready in case this place falls apart. Because that’s what’ll happen if you leave.”
“Oh Jesus.” His head sank into his hands.
“Are you going to?”
“I don’t know. I took a ride round the estate this morning to try and make up my mind.”
“And?”
“I want to. I really do. I don’t know if it’ll make Grant back off, or if it’s going to be a complete surrender. I think the only reason I haven’t gone already is because he’s equally torn. Cricklade means an awful lot to him. He dreads the idea of it being left unsupervised for a whole winter. But his daughters mean more. I don’t suppose that leaves me with much choice.”
“Stop fishing for support. You always have choice. What you should ask yourself is, do you have the strength to make and sustain the decision.”
“I doubt it.”
“Humm.” She sat on the antique chair at the foot of the bed, looking at the despondent silhouette in front of her. There is no border any more, she decided, they’re merging. It’s not as fast as Véronique and Olive, but it’s happening. Another few weeks, a couple of months at the most, and they’ll be one. “Have you considered you might want to find the girls as well? That’s where your problem starts.”
He gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean?”
“All that decency Grant’s wicked little mind is eroding. You haven’t lost it yet, you’re still feeling guilty about Louise and what you tried to do to her. You’d like to know that she’s all right as well.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t think straight any more. Every time I speak I have to listen hard to the words to find what’s me and what’s him. There’s still a difference. Just.”
“I’m tempted to be a fatalist. If Norfolk isn’t rescued for a few decades, you’re going to die here anyway, so why not give in and live those years in peace?”
“Because I want to live them,” he whispered fiercely. “Me!”
“That’s very greedy for someone who’ll do that living in a stolen body.”
“You always hated us, didn’t you.”
“I hate what you’ve done. I don’t hate what you are. Luca Comar and I would have got on quite well if we’d ever met, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, right.”
“You can’t win, Luca. As long as you’re alive he’ll be there with you.”
“I won’t surrender.”
“Would Luca Comar really have killed Spanton? Grant would, without hesitating.”
“You don’t understand. Spanton was a savage, he was going to destroy everything we are, everything we’ve worked to achieve here. I saw that in his heart. You can’t reason with people like that. You can’t educate them.”
“Why do you want to achieve anything? It is possible to live off the land here. We can, us Romanies. Even Grant would be able to show you how. Which plants to eat. Where the sheep and the cattle huddle in winter. You can become a hunter, dependant on no one.”
“People are more than that. We’re a social species. We gather in tribes or clans, we trade. It’s the fundamental of civilization.”
“But you’re dead, Luca. You died hundreds of years ago. This return will only ever be temporary, however it ends: in death or in the Confederation rescuing us. Why do you want to build a cosy civilization under those circumstances? Why not live fast and stop worrying about tomorrow?”
“Because that’s not what I am! I can’t do that!”
“Who can’t? Who are you that wants a future?”
“I don’t know.” He started sobbing. “I don’t know who I am.”
There were fewer people in Fort Forward’s Ops Room these days, a barometer of the Liberation’s progress and nature. The massive coordination effort required for the initial assault was long gone. After that, the busiest time had been following the disastrous attack on Ketton when they had to change the front line assault pattern, splitting Mortonridge into confinement zones. It was a strategy which had worked well enough. There certainly hadn’t been any more Kettons. The possessed had been divided up, then divided again as the confinement zones were broken down into smaller fractions.
From his office, Ralph could look out directly at the big status screen on the wall opposite. For days after Ketton he’d sat behind his desk watching the red icons of the front line change shape into a rough grid of squares stretched over Mortonridge. Each square had gone on to fission into a dozen smaller squares, which became rings and then stopped contracting. The sieges had begun, 716 of them.
It left the Ops Room with supervising the mopping-up operation across open land. The Liberation command’s main activity was now managing logistics, coordinating the supply routes to each siege camp and evacuating the recovered victims. All of which were handled by different, secondary, departments.
“We’re redundant,” Ralph told Janne Palmer. She and Acacia had stayed behind after the early-morning senior staff meeting. They often did, having coffee together and bringing up points which didn’t quite warrant the attention of a full staff meeting. “There’s no fighting left,” he said. “No bad decisions that I have to take the blame for. This is all about numbers now, statistics and averages. How long it takes the possessed to finish eating their supplies, balancing our medical resources and transport facilities. We should just turn it over to the accountants and leave.”
“I’ve not known many generals to be so bitter about their victories,” Janne said. “We won, Ralph, you were so successful that the Liberation has become a smooth operation where no one is shooting at us.”
He gave Acacia a quizzical look. “Would you describe it as smooth?”
“Progress has been smooth, General. Individuals have of course suffered considerable hardship out on the front line.”
“And on the other side as well. Have you been monitoring the state of the possessed we’re capturing when those sieges fail?”
“I’ve seen them,” Janne said.
“The possessed don’t actually surrender, you know. They just become so weak the serjeants can walk in unopposed. We broke twenty-three sieges yesterday, that produced seventy-three dead bodies. They just won’t give themselves up. And the remainder—Christ, cancer and malnutrition is a bad combination. Once we’d put them through zero-tau, seven actually died on the emergency evac flight back to Fort Forward.”
“I believe there are now enough colonizer ships in orbit to cope with the casualty rate,” Acacia said.
“We can store them in the zero-tau berths,” Ralph said. “I’m not so sure about treating them. They may wind up waiting in stasis for quite a while until there’s a hospital place for them. And that’s even with all the help we’re getting from Edenist habitats and our allies. Dear God, can you imagine what it’ll be like if we ever manage to haul an entire planet back from wherever it is they vanish them away to?”
“I believe the Assembly President had asked the Kiint ambassador for material aid,” Acacia said. “Roulor said that his government would look favourably to helping us with any physical event which was beyond our industrial or technical ability to cope with.”
“And Ombey’s medical situation doesn’t count as a crisis?” Janne asked.
“Treating the de-possessed from Mortonridge is not beyond the Confederation’s overall medical capability. That would seem to be the criteria the Kiint have set.”
“It might be physically possible, but what government is going to let a ship full of ex-possessed into their star system, let alone parcel them out among civilian hospitals in the cities?”
“Human p
olitics,” Ralph grunted. “The envy of the galaxy.”
“That’s paranoia, not politics,” Janne said.
“It translates into votes, which makes it politics.” The Ops Room computer datavised a stream of information into Ralph’s neural nanonics. He glanced through the window to see one of the red rings up on the status screen turn a deep mauve. “Another siege over. Town called Wellow.”
“Yes,” Acacia said. Her eyes were shut as she eavesdropped on the serjeants actually ringing the clutter of sodden, mashed-up buildings. “The ELINT blocks monitoring its energistic field reported a massive decline. The serjeants are moving in.”
Ralph checked the AI’s administration procedures. Transport was being readied, with a flight of Stonys being assigned to the camp. Fort Forward medical facilities were notified. It even estimated the number of zero-tau berths they’d need on the orbiting colonizer starships, basing it on the last SD sensor satellite’s infrared sweep. “I almost wish it was the same as the first day,” Ralph said. “I know the possessed put up a hell of a fight, but at least they were healthy. I was ready for the horrors of war, I was even coping with sending our troops into action knowing they’d take casualties. But this isn’t what I expected at all, this isn’t saving them any more. It’s just political expediency.”
“Have you told the Princess that?” Acacia asked.
“Yes. She even agreed. But she won’t allow me to stop it. We have to clear them out, that’s the only consideration. The political cost outweighs the human one.”
The rover reporters assigned to the Liberation were all billeted in a pair of three-storey programmable silicon barracks on the western side of Fort Forward, near the administration and headquarters section. Nobody minded that, it placed them close to an officers’ mess, which at least allowed them to get a drink in the evening. But as far as providing them with an authentic experience of troop quarters went, you could take realism too far. The ground floor was a single open space that was intended as a general recreation and assembly hall, with a total furniture complement of fifty plastic chairs, three tables, a commercial-sized induction oven and a water fountain. It did at least have a high-capacity net processor installed for them to stay in touch with their studio chiefs. Beds were upstairs, in six dormitories with a communal bathroom on each floor. For a breed used to four-star (minimum) hotels, they didn’t acclimatize well.
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