“Actually, yes, darling,” Tina said. “For once the ape man’s right. It’s a mild sedative, which is just what he needs right now.” Stephanie frowned suspiciously at the unaccustomed authority in Tina’s voice. “I used to be a nurse,” the statuesque woman continued, gathering in her black diamante shawl with a contemptuous dignity. “Actually.”
Stephanie took the reefer, and eased it gently into Moyo’s lips. He coughed weakly as he inhaled.
The bus groaned loudly. Its rear end shifted a couple of metres, sending them all grabbing for support. McPhee ducked his head to peer through the broken windscreen. “We’re not going anywhere in this,” he said. “We’d better get out before we get washed away.”
“We can’t move him,” Stephanie protested. “Not for a while.”
“The river’s nearly up level with this track, and we’ve got at least another kilometre and a half to go before we’re out of the valley.”
“Level? It can’t be. We were twenty metres above the valley floor.”
The Karmic Crusader’s headlights were out, so she sent a slender blade of white fire arching over the track. It was as if the land had turned to water. She couldn’t actually see any ground, slopes and hollows were all submerged under several centimetres of flowing yellow-brown water. Just below the flattish section which marked the track, a cavalcade of flotsam was sweeping along the valley. Mangled branches, smashed trunks, and snarled up mats of vegetation were all cluttered together; their smooth progress was ominous, nothing stood in their way. As she watched, another of the trees from the slope above slid down past the bus, staying vertical the whole time until it reached the river.
She didn’t like to think how many more trees were poised just above them. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Cochrane retrieved his reefer. “Feel better?” Moyo simply twitched. “Hey, no need for the downer. Just like grow them back, man. It’s easy.”
Moyo’s answering laugh was hysterical. “Imagine I can see? Oh yes, oh yes. It’s easy, it’s so fucking easy.” He started to sob, tapping his fingertips delicately over his ruined face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“You stopped the bus,” Stephanie said. “You saved all of us. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Not
“Get me the first-aid kit,” Tina told Rana. “Now!”
Stephanie had her arm round Moyo’s shoulder again, wishing there was some aspect of energistic power that could manifest raw comfort. McPhee and Franklin tried opening the door. But it was jammed solid, beyond even their enhanced physical strength’s ability to shift. They looked at each other, gripped hands, and closed their eyes. A big circular section of the front bodywork spun off into the bedlam outside. Rain spat down the aisle like a damp shotgun blast. Rana struggled forwards with the first-aid kit case, fiddling with the clips.
“This is no use,” Tina wailed. She plucked out a nanonic package, face wrinkled in dismay. The thick green strip dangled from her hand like so much wobbly rubber.
“Come on! There must be something in it you can use,” Stephanie said.
Tina rummaged through. The case contained several strips of nanonic package, diagnostic blocks—all useless. Even the phials of biochemicals and drugs used infuser patches, the dosage regulated by a diagnostic block. There was no non-technological method of getting the medication into his bloodstream. She shook her head weakly. “Nothing.”
“Damn it—”
The bus groaned, shifting again. “No more time,” McPhee said. “This is it. Out. Now.”
Cochrane clambered out of the hole, splashing down on the track next to the fallen tree. Keeping his footing was obviously difficult. The water came halfway up his shin. Rana followed him down. Stephanie gripped the seat straps holding Moyo in, and forced them to rot in her palms. She and Franklin hauled him up, and guided him through the hole. Tina followed them through, letting out martyred squeals as she struggled to find footholds.
“Lose those bloody heels, ye moron,” McPhee yelled at her.
She glared back at him petulantly, but her scarlet stilettos faded into ordinary pumps with flat soles. “Peasant. A girl has to look her best at all times, you know.”
“This is real you stupid cow, not a fucking disaster movie set. You’re no’ being filmed.”
She ignored him, and turned to help Stephanie with Moyo. “Let’s try and bandage his face, at the very least,” she said. “I’ll need some cloth.”
Stephanie tore a strip off the bottom of her saturated cardigan. When she passed it over to Tina it had become a dry, clean strip of white linen.
“I suppose that’ll be all right,” Tina said dubiously. She started to wrap it round Moyo’s eyes, making sure the stub remains of his nose were also covered. “Do try and think of your face as being normal, darling. It’ll all grow back, then, you’ll see.”
Stephanie said nothing, she didn’t doubt Moyo could repair the burns to his cheeks and forehead, but actually growing eyeballs back . . .
Franklin landed with a heavy splash, the last out of the bus. Nobody fancied trying to salvage their luggage. The boot was at the rear, and not even energistic power would help much clambering over the tree. Blasting the trunk to shreds would only send the bus spinning over the edge.
They spent a couple of minutes sorting themselves out. First priority was fending off the rain; their collective imagination produced a transparent hemisphere, like a giant glass umbrella floating in the air above them. Once that was established, they set about drying off their clothes. There wasn’t anything they could do about the water coursing across the track, so they gave themselves sturdy knee-high wellingtons.
Thus protected, they set off down the track, taking turns to guide and support a shivering Moyo. A bright globe of ball lightning bobbed through the air ahead and slightly to the side of them, hissing as raindrops lashed against it, but lighting the way and hopefully giving them some warning of any more falling trees. Apart from that, their only worry was making it out of the valley before the river rose up over the track. The driving rain and roaring wind meant they never knew when another tree slithered down the slope into the dark and battered Karmic Crusader, sending it plunging into the engorged river.
Billesdon was a cheery little town, tucked into the lee of a large granite headland on Mortonridge’s eastern coast. Sheltered from the worst of the breakers to come rolling in off the ocean, it was a natural harbour. District planners took advantage of that, quarrying the abundant rock to build a long curving quay opposite the headland, enclosing a wide deepwater basin with a modest beach at the back. The majority of boats which used it were trawlers and sandrakers, their operators earning a good living from Ombey’s plentiful fish and crustacean species. Even the local seaweed was exported to restaurants across the peninsula.
It also proved a haven for pleasure boats, with several sport fishing and yachting clubs setting up shop. With so many boats to service, the marine engineering companies and supply industries were quick to seize upon the commercial opportunities available and open premises in the town. Houses, apartment blocks, shops, hotels, entertainment halls, and industrial estates were thrown up all the way back along the shallow valley behind the headland. Villas and groves began to blossom along the slopes above, next to golf courses and holiday complexes.
Billesdon became the sort of town, beautiful and economically successful, that was presented as the Kingdom’s ideal, every citizen’s entitlement. Sinon’s squad reached the outskirts around midday. A trivial glimmer of light was penetrating the clouds, giving the world a lacklustre opacity. Visibility had risen to a few hundred yards.
Sinon wished it hadn’t bothered. They were poised just outside the town, not far above the sea. Cover was ostensibly provided by a spinney of fallen Fellots. None of the sturdy aboriginal trees remained standing; their dense fan-shaped branches had cushioned the way the trunks fell, leaving them at crazy angles. Rain kept their upper sections clean from the cloying mud, giving the cerise bark a glossy sheen. Choma was pressed up against a fat trunk at the edge of the spinney, waving a sensor block slowly ahead of him. The whole squad hooked in to the block’s bitek processor, examining the buildings ahead through a variety of wavelengths.
Not even the money lavished on Billesdon’s infrastructure had saved it from the rain. The terraces and groves above had dissolved, sending waves of mud slithering down into the prim streets, clogging the drains within minutes. Water raced along the roads and pavements, submerging tarmac and grass alike before it poured over
