trying to see his tracks in the snow, but the storm had become so vicious they were obscured in seconds.
Picking a direction, he started walking. It became harder and harder to maintain any sense of time. He might have been walking for an hour, or a whole day.
He became aware that he had collapsed to his knees in the snow, but couldn’t recall just when he had come to a halt.
Forcing himself upright, he managed a few more feeble steps before feeling his legs give way beneath him once more. He collapsed, tipping forward onto the snow, the breath rattling in his throat.
Lights flickered through the darkened haze around him. To his astonishment, Luc saw that the storm was starting to clear. The stars were revealing themselves, one by one, between drawn-out wisps of snow and cloud.
Some of the stars broke away from the firmament and dipped down towards him, so that he could see they were attached to a dark outline that blocked out part of the sky. But before he could work out what it was, his thoughts had faded into darkness.
FOURTEEN
The journey to the well, the old man told Jacob, was likely to take the better part of a day, and quite possibly longer if the weather turned for the worse. For this reason they left not long after dawn the following morning, with Jacob once again hidden beneath a carpet in the back of Kulic’s horse-drawn cart.
At one point, as Kulic guided the cart out of the village, cajoling his horse with whistles and muttered grunts, he drew to a halt by the roadside in order to exchange a few words with a fellow villager. That proved to be the high point of what was otherwise a cold and desperately uncomfortable journey, marked by spine-jarring jolts and bumps that did little to improve Jacob’s mood. He hated everything about Darwin he had so far encountered; the early years of his life had been spent in Sandoz combat-temples amidst wild and tropical forests and, despite his training, he had never quite shaken his distaste for the cold and damp.
But what made it all so much worse was that the rag under which he was forced to hide for the first leg of their journey stank of shit and hay, while the only refreshment Kulic had to offer was a sealed clay jug of nearly intolerable home-brewed beer, alongside hard, unleavened bread that Jacob was forced to chew with grim determination before it became even vaguely digestible.
Jacob finally emerged from beneath the blanket an hour out of the village, but soon draped it back over his shoulders when it began to rain, a freezing drizzle that shrouded the hills and forest around them in shades of grey. Kulic had given him some of his father’s cast-offs – a rough woollen shirt and a pair of patched cotton trousers, along with a broad dark coat that swept against his ankles. Underneath it all he still wore his one-piece combat suit.
Kulic guided the horses along a dirt path that cut through the woods and ran roughly parallel with the course of a stream intermittently visible through the trees. Before long it became clear they were headed inland, towards a valley beyond which a Coalition city could be seen in all its shining technological splendour.
They stopped late that afternoon so they could both take a leak. When Jacob returned from the woods, he saw Kulic rummaging around in the rear of the cart, as if searching for something. As Jacob watched from amongst the trees, the old man glanced around with a furtive expression.
Jacob waited to see what the old man was up to, and watched as Kulic turned back to the cart, lifting out the case Jacob had earlier retrieved from his ship. Holding it carefully, Kulic turned it this way and that, as if trying to work out how to open it.
Jacob stepped out from his hiding place and quickly slipped up behind the old man without making a sound. Kulic was pressing dirty fingernails against the surface of the case, apparently trying to prise it open.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Jacob, from directly behind him.
Kulic let out a cry of shock, and span around to regard Jacob with an expression of terror. ‘I’m sorry, I . . .’ his mouth trembled, the case still gripped in his shaking hands. ‘I was just . . . just curious.’
‘Curious about what?’ said Jacob, coming closer, so the old man was forced up against the side of the cart. Kulic’s mouth trembled with fear.
‘I . . . I just wanted to know what was inside.’
Jacob stared at him in silence for several long seconds, then reached down to take the case from Kulic’s grasp without breaking eye contact.
‘It’s lucky you have no idea how to open this,’ Jacob said quietly. ‘It would have killed you even faster than I could. Now get back on that horse and let’s be on our way.’
Kulic regarded him in much the same way a rabbit might a snake with its jaws fully extended. He swallowed and slid past Jacob, pulling himself back onto his ageing nag.
Jacob stared at the back of the old man’s head, then climbed into the back of the cart. The case was unharmed, of course. It would open only in response to Jacob’s unique genetic signature. He kept a hold on the case as Kulic snapped the reins, and they began to move forward once more.
The sky reddened as the evening deepened, and the first stars began to show themselves before they next spoke.
‘You asked me to tell you about life in the Tian Di,’ Jacob said, calling over to Kulic as the cart juddered and bounced beneath him. ‘Why don’t you repay the favour, and tell me something more about the people in the cities?’
A minute or so passed before Kulic responded. ‘I said they came to visit us from time to time, in disguise.’
