Robert had merely enlarged and refined his father's scheme until it embraced a world.
He laughed softly to himself, then looked across at his father, wondering if he saw it, too, or whether the connection existed in his mind alone.
Nearer the cottage the soldiers had set up an infestation grid, the dull mauve light attracting anything small and winged from the surrounding meadows. Ben stood and watched as a moth, its wings like the dull gauze of an old and faded dress, its body thick and stubby like a miniature cigar, fluttered toward the grid. For a moment it danced in the blue-pink light, mesmerized by the brightness, its translucent wings suffused with purple. Then its wingtip brushed against the tilted surface. With a spark and a hiss the moth fell, senseless, into the grid, where it flamed momentarily, its wings curling, vanishing in an instant, its body cooking to a dark cinder.
Ben watched a moment longer, conscious of his own fascination; his ears filled with the brutal music of the grid—the crack and pop and sizzle of the dying creatures; his eyes drawn to each brief, sudden incandescence. And in his mind he formed a pattern of their vivid afterimages against the dull mauve light.
"Come, Ben. Come on in."
He turned. His mother was standing in the doorway, beckoning to him. He smiled, then sniffed the air. It was filled with the tart, sweet scent of ozone and burnt insects.
"I was watching," he said, as if it explained everything.
"I know." She came across to him and put her hand on his shoulder. "It's horrible, isn't it? But necessary, I suppose."
"Yes."
But he meant something other by the word: something more than simple agreement. It was both horrible and necessary, if only to prevent the spread of the disease throughout the Domain; but it was just that—the horrible necessity of death—that gave it its fascination. Is all of life just that? he asked himself, looking away from the grid, out across the dark, moonlit water of the bay. Is it all merely one brief, erratic flight into the burning light? And then nothing?
Ben shivered, not from fear or cold, but from some deeper,
more complex response, then turned and looked up at his mother, smiling. "Okay. Let's go inside."
THE CAPTAIN of the work party watched the woman and her son go in, then signaled to his men to complete the sealing off of the cottage. It was nothing to him, of course—orders were orders—yet it had occurred to him several times that it would have been far simpler to evacuate the Shepherds than go through with all this nonsense. He could not for the life of him understand why they should wish to remain inside the cottage while the Domain was dusted with poisons. Still, he had to admit, it was a neat job. Old man Amos had known what he was up to.
He walked across and inspected the work thoroughly. Then, satisfied that the seal was airtight, he pulled the lip mike up from under his chin. "Okay. We're finished here. You can start the sweep."
Six miles away, at the mouth of the estuary, the four big transporters, converted specially for the task, lifted one by one from the pad and began to form up in a line across the river. Then, at a signal, they began, moving slowly down the estuary, a thin cloud—colorless, like fine powdered snow—drifting down behind them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Augustus
IT WAS JUST after ten in the morning, yet the sun already blazed down from a vast, deep blue sky that seemed washed clean of all impurities. Sunlight burnished the surface of the gray-green water, making it seem dense and yet clear, like melted glass. The tide was high but on the turn, lapping sluggishly against the rocks at the river's edge.
In midstream Meg let Ben take the oars from her, changing seats with him nimbly as the boat drifted slowly about. Then she sat back, watching him as he strove to right their course, his face a mask of patient determination, the muscles of his bare, tanned arms tensing and untensing. Ben clenched his teeth, then pulled hard on the right-hand oar, turning the prow slowly toward the distant house, the dark, slick-edged blade biting deep into the glaucous, muscular flow as he hauled the boat about in a tight arc.
"Are you sure it's all right?"
Ben grimaced, concentrating, inwardly weighing the feel of the boat against the strong pull of the current. "She'll never know," he answered. "Who'll tell her?"
It wasn't a threat. He knew he could trust her to say nothing to their mother. Meg looked down briefly, smiling, pleased that he trusted her. Then she sat there, quiet, content to watch him, to see the broad river stretching away beyond him, the white-painted cottages of the village dotted against the broad green flank of the hill, while at her back the house grew slowly nearer.
Solitary, long abandoned, it awaited them.
The foreshore was overgrown. Weeds grew waist high in the spaces between the rocks. Beyond, the land was level for thirty yards or so, then climbed, slowly at first, then steeply. The house wasn't visible from where they stood, in the cool beneath the branches, and even farther along, where the path turned, following the contours of the shoreline, they could see only a small part of it, jutting up, white between the intense green of the surrounding trees.
The land was strangely, unnaturally silent. Meg looked down through the trees. Below them, to their right, was the cove, the dark mouth of the cave almost totally submerged, the branches of the overhanging trees only inches above the surface of the water. It made her feel odd. Not quite herself.
"Come on," said Ben, looking back at her. "We've not long. Mother will be back by two."
They went up. A path had been cut from the rock. Rough-hewn steps led up steeply, hugging an almost sheer cliff face. They had to force their way through a tangle of bushes and branches. At the top they came out into a kind of clearing. There was concrete underfoot, cracked but reasonably clear of vegetation. It was a road. To their left it led up into the trees. To their right it ended abruptly, only yards from where they stood, at an ornate cast-iron gate set into a wall.
They went across and stood there, before the gate, looking in.
The house lay beyond the gate; a big, square, three-story building of white stone, with a steeply pitched roof of gray slate. They could see patches of it through the overrun front garden. Here, more noticeably than elsewhere, nature had run amok. A stone fountain lay in two huge gray pieces, split asunder by an ash that had taken seed long ago in the disused fissure at its center. Elsewhere the regular pattern of a once elaborate garden could be vaguely sensed, underlying the chaotic sprawl of new growth.
"Well?" she said, looking up at him. "What now?"
The wall was too high to climb. The gate seemed strong and solid, with four big hinges set into the stone. A big thick-linked steel chain was wrapped tightly about the lock, secured by a fist-sized padlock.
Ben smiled. "Watch."
Taking a firm hold of two of the upright bars, he shook the gate vigorously, then gave it one last sharp forward thrust. With a crash it fell inward, then swung sideways, twisting against the restraining chain.
Ben stepped over it, then reached back for her. "The iron was rotten," he said, pointing to the four places in the stone where the hinges had snapped sheer off.
She nodded, understanding at once what he was really saying to her. Be careful here. Judge nothing by its appearance. He turned from her.
She followed, more cautious now, making her way through the thick sprawl of greenery toward the house.
A verandah ran the length of the front of the house. At one end it had collapsed. One of the four mock-Doric pillars had fallen and now lay, like the broken leg of a stone giant, half buried in the window frame behind where it had previously stood. The glass-framed roof of the verandah was broken in several places where branches of nearby trees had pushed against it, and the whole of the wooden frame—the elaborately carved side pieces, the stanchions, rails, and planking—was visibly rotten. Ben stood before the shallow flight of steps that led up to the main entrance, his head tilted back as he studied the frontage.