The Ekwan docked at Guyana’s non-rotating spaceport amid a tight security cordon. Royal Marines and port personnel worked a straight five-hour shift to bring the Ekwan ’s three thousand grumbling, bewildered colonists out of zero-tau and assign them quarters in the navy barracks. Ralph Hiltch and Sir Asquith spent most of that time in conference with Pascoe Farquar and his staff. After he accessed sensorium recordings Dean Folan made during the jungle mission, as well as the garbled reports of Darcy and Lori claiming Laton was on Lalonde, the admiral decided to raise the alert status to code three.
Ralph Hiltch watched the last of the fifty armour-suited marines floating into the Ekwan ’s large zero-tau compartment. They were all muscle boosted and qualified in free fall combat routines; eight of them carried medium-calibre automatic recoilless projectile carbines. The sergeants followed Cathal Fitzgerald’s directions and started positioning them in three concentric circles surrounding Gerald Skibbow’s zero-tau pod, with five on the decks either side in case he broke through the metal grids. Extra lights had been attached to the nearby support girders, beams focused on the one pod in the compartment which was still encased by an absorptive blackness, casting a weird jumble of multiple shadows outside the encircling ring of marines.
Ralph’s neural nanonics were relaying the scene to the admiral and the waiting specialists. It made him slightly self-conscious as he anchored himself to a girder to address the marine squad.
“This might look excessive for one man,” he said to the marines, “but don’t drop your guard for an instant. We’re not entirely sure he is human, certainly he has some lethal energy-projecting abilities that come outside anything we’ve encountered before. If it’s any comfort, free fall does seem to unnerve him slightly. Your job is just to escort him down to the isolation area that’s been prepared. Once he’s there, the technical people will take over. They think the cell they’ve prepared will be able to confine him. But getting him there could get very messy.”
He backed away from the pod, noting the half-apprehensive faces of the first rank of marines.
God, they look young. I hope to hell they took my warning seriously.
He checked his own skull-helmet, and took a deep breath. “OK, Cathal, switch it off.”
The blackness vanished from the pod revealing the smooth cylindrical composite sarcophagus. Ralph strained to hear the manic battering which Skibbow had been giving the pod before the zero-tau silenced him. The compartment was quiet apart from the occasional scuffling of the marines as they craned for a glimpse.
“Open the lid.”
It began to slide back. Ralph braced himself for Skibbow to burst out of the opening like a runaway combat wasp with a forty-gee drive. He heard a wretched whimpering sound. Cathal gave him a puzzled glance.
God, did we get the right pod?
“All right, stay back,” Ralph said. “You two,” he indicated the marines with the carbines, “cover me.” He pulled himself cautiously across the grid towards the pod, still expecting Skibbow to spring up. The whimpering grew louder, interspersed with low groans.
Very, very carefully, Ralph eased himself up the side of the pod, and peeked in. Ready to duck down fast.
Gerald Skibbow was floating listlessly inside the curving cream-white composite coffin. His whole body was trembling. He clutched his shattered hand to his chest. Both eyes were red rimmed, blood was still oozing from his mashed nose. The smell of jungle mud and urine clogged in Ralph’s nose.
Gerald continued his weak gurglings, bubbles of saliva forming at the corner of his mouth. When Ralph manoeuvred himself right over the pod there was no reaction from the unfocused eyes.
“Shit.”
“What’s happened?” Admiral Farquar datavised.
“I don’t know, sir. It’s Skibbow all right. But it looks like he’s gone into some kind of shock.” He waved a hand in front of the colonist’s filthy, bloody face. “He’s virtually catatonic.”
“Is he still dangerous, do you think?”
“I don’t see how he could be, unless he recovers.”
“All right, Hiltch. Have the marines take him down to the isolation area as quickly as possible. I’ll have an emergency medical team there by the time you arrive.”
“Yes, sir.” Ralph pushed himself away, allowing three marines to pull the still unresisting Skibbow from the zero-tau pod. His neural nanonics informed him the asteroid was being stood down to code six status.
I don’t understand, he thought bleakly, we brought a walking nuke on board, and wind up with a pants-wetting vegetable. Something wiped that sequestration from him. What?
The marine squad departed the compartment noisily, joking and catcalling. Relieved they hadn’t been needed after all. With one hand holding idly on a girder, Ralph hung between the two decking grids long after the last of them left, staring at the zero-tau pod.
Three hours after Guyana’s alert status was reduced to code six, life inside had almost returned to normal. Civilians with jobs in the military-run cavern were allowed to resume their duties. Restrictions on communication and travel were lifted from the other two caverns. Spaceships were permitted to dock and depart, although the spaceport where the Ekwan was berthed was still off-limits to anything but navy ships.
Three and a half hours after the marines delivered a virtually comatose Gerald Skibbow to the isolation cell, Captain Farrah Montgomery walked into the small office Time Universe maintained on Guyana and handed over Graeme Nicholson’s flek.
It was an hour after the maids had served Cricklade’s breakfast, and Duke was already rising across a sky that was ribbed with slender bands of flimsy cloud. Duchess-night had seen the first sprinkling of rain since the midsummer conjunction. The fields and forests glimmered and shone under their glace coating of water. Aboriginal flowers, reduced to wizened brown coronets after discharging their seeds, turned to a pulpy mess and started to rot away. Best of all, the dust had gone from the air. Cricklade’s estate labourers had started their morning in a cheerful mood at the omen. Rain this early meant the second crop of cereals should produce a good heavy harvest.
Louise Kavanagh didn’t care about the rain, nor the prospect of an impending agricultural bounty. Not even Genevieve’s playful enthusiasm could summon her for their usual stroll in the paddock. Instead, she sat on the toilet in her private bathroom with her panties round her ankles and her head in her hands. Her long hair hung lankly, tasselled ends brushing her shiny blue shoes. It was stupid to have hair so long, she thought, stupid, snobbish, impractical, a waste of time, and insulting.
Why should I have to be preened and groomed like I’m a pedigree show horse? It’s a wicked, filthy tradition treating women like that. Just so that I look the classic-beauty part for some ghastly clot-head young “gentleman’. What do looks matter, and especially looks that come from a pseudo-mythical past on another planet? I already have my man.
She clenched her stomach muscles again, squeezing her guts hard as she held her breath. Her nails dug into her palms painfully with the effort. Her head started to shake, skin reddening.
It didn’t make the slightest difference. She let the air out of her straining lungs in a fraught sob.
Angry now, she squeezed again. Let out her breath.
Squeezed.
Nothing.
She wanted to cry. Her shoulders were shivering, she even had the hot blotches round her eyes, but there were no tears left. She was all cried out.