fruit fields as well, and there's the machinery, too. So Blake had come to live with her and Guy. He was twenty- two, and too quiet to be hot-headed, though he could be astonishingly stubborn. Of course, her biggest mistake was letting him into her bed. He'd interpreted that as some kind of partnership offer to give him an equal say on the way the farm was run. But the nights out here in the countryside were achingly long, and it had been nineteen months since Arthur's funeral. It wasn't even the sex she wanted, just the warmth and touch of having him there, the comfort she could draw from a warm body. So far she'd managed to contain and deflect any potential clashes over his new attitude, but this folly could not be overlooked.
«Well?» Blake insisted.
Amanda glanced at Jane and Lenny, who were waiting for her to take the lead. The stranger's blood was dripping onto the hard bare soil of the back yard, turning to black spots.
«All right. Lenny, stop the bleeding and patch him up as best you can. As soon as he's conscious again, Blake, you drive him over to Knightsville. Leave him at the station or the hospital, whatever he wants. After that he's someone else's problem.»
She didn't dare look at the two pickers in case it triggered a rebellion. Don't give them the chance to refuse, she told herself. «Lenny, you and Blake take his legs, you'll need to be careful. Jane, help me with his shoulders. We'll take him into the kitchen, put him on the table. It'll be easier to treat him there.»
The pickers moved hesitantly, expressing their reluctance through complete silence. Amanda climbed up into the back of the pick-up and crouched down beside the injured man. As she slid her hands under his back ready to lift him up she felt a hard lump inside the waistcoat, larger than a fist. Her hand reached automatically towards it.
The stranger's eyelids flipped open. His hand caught her wrist. «No,» he grunted. «Do what you said. Patch me up. Then I will go. It is the best for us both.» He glanced round at the figures clustered over him. A sharp frown appeared as soon as he saw Lenny's black and silver skull cap.
Jane and Lenny exchanged a knowing glance at that.
«I cannot help with you crushing my wrist,» Amanda said levelly. It was everything she'd dreaded: his reaction to the pickers, his injuries, his weapon. What must he have done to have dogs set on him? The thought made her afraid for the first time. He wasn't an inconvenience any more, he was an active threat, to the farm, to Guy.
Between them, they hauled him into the kitchen. He made no sound during the whole process, not even when one of his legs was knocked against the doorframe. Amanda knew she would have cried out at such pain. Such control made her wonder at what electronic implants he was using. Nerve fibre regulators were not cheap, nor did ordinary citizens have any use for them.
«I'll fetch my bag,» Lenny said, once the stranger was lying on the big old wooden table. He hurried out.
Amanda looked down at the man again, uncertain what to do, his eyes were tight shut again. Even Blake's confidence had ebbed in the face of such robotic stoicism.
«If I could have some water,» the man said huskily.
«Who are you?» Amanda asked.
His eyes fluttered open as she filled a glass at the sink.
«My name is Fakhud. I thank you for bringing me into your home.»
«I didn't.» She handed him the glass.
He took a sip and coughed. «I know. But I still thank you. I have many friends in the city, influential friends, they will be grateful to you.»
«I bet you've got friends,» Jane muttered softly.
«It's the bank we need help with,» Blake said with a dry smile. «Those bastards are bleeding us dry with their interest rates. Not just us, all the farms are suffering.»
«Blake,» Amanda said. He scowled, but kept quiet.
Fakhud grimaced, and took another sip of the water.
«What happened to you?» Amanda asked.
«I fell from my horse.»
«And the bite wounds? Lenny said it was probably a dog.»
«Your pardon, but the less you know of me, the less involved in my affairs you will be.»
«Sure,» she said in disgust.
Lenny returned with his bag. He started to stick small sensor disks on Fakhud's legs.
«Stay and help Lenny,» Amanda told Blake. «Then come and tell me when he's ready to leave.» She and Jane walked out into the heat of the farmyard. «I'm sorry,» she said it so fiercely it was almost a hiss.
Jane sighed. «Not your fault.»
«I can't believe Blake was so thoughtless. To put you and your friends in this position, it's . . . it's . . .»
«In a way it's rather admirable, actually. He's only interested in the farm, getting your fruit picked and the trees pruned and fertilized. Politics, race, and religion aren't part of the equation for him. That was the whole point of Nyvan, wasn't it? Our parents came here to escape their past; they wanted a land where they could put all their energies into their farms and their businesses. And your Blake, he's still living there.»
«He's a fool. Times change.»
«No, time doesn't change, it just goes backwards. That's the thing to be sorry for.»
«I'll have Fakhud out of here by this evening, whether he's on his feet or not.»
Jane gave her a sad smile. «I'm sure you will.»
«Will Lenny be able to patch those wounds up? Some of them looked ugly to me.»
«Don't worry about that. Lenny completed three years at medical school before we all decided to leave Harrisburg. He's as good as qualified. And he's had a lot of experience with the kind of injuries you get from clashing with the authorities.»
«I can't believe you were forced out.»
«Nobody can, until it happens to them. Oh, it's not that bad, not yet. But we Jews have a long history of persecution we can reference, in fact it is our history. We can see the way Harrisburg is going. Best we leave before it does spiral downwards.»
«Where will you go?»
«Tasmal, most likely. A lot of our people have drifted there over the last decade, and to hell with the Settlement Ministry quotas. We're almost a majority there, the newest of the New Jerusalems.»
«But that's on the Dayall continent; it has to be six thousand kilometres away at least.»
Jane laughed. «The promised land is never over the next hill. Also our history.»
«I'm sorry.»
«Don't be. Me and the rest will be OK. We were smart enough to start the journey early. The stubborn ones, those that stay, they'll be the ones who suffer.»
Amanda glanced round the familiarity of the farmyard. The burroughs trees that waved slowly in the warm breeze were an easy five metres taller than they had been when she was a girl. Over in the eastern corner, the well pump was making its usual clatter as it topped up the cisterns. The red clay tile roof of the long barn was sagging deeper as this year's growth of purple-flowering joycevine added another heavy layer of branches.
It isn't just Blake whose mind is closed to the outside, she acknowledged reluctantly. I'm so comfortable here I share the same illusion. The only thing which matters to anyone who lives at the farm, is the farm. Until today.
«You'd better get back to the orchard,» Jane said. «The apples still need picking, nothing's changed that.»
«Right.» Amanda took a last uneasy look at the kitchen door. «What are you going to do?»
«Tidy up here.» Jane was studying the splashes of blood in the back of the pick-up van. «I'll get the hose out and wash away all the traces. Best to be careful. The Harrisburg cops are going to be searching for him, and we don't know what happened to the dogs.»
Amanda didn't even feel resentful that she was being told what to do on her own farm. She walked back to the orchard, and told the pickers that Blake had found a victim of a riding accident that Lenny was now treating. They seemed to accept that with only mild curiosity.
It was another hour before Blake came out to tell her Lenny had finished. Jane had done a good job
