Randolf loped along behind, occasionally butting against Yuri’s calves.
According to Mansing’s guidance block they had travelled about three hundred metres when the sayce stood still, head held up, sniffing the humid air. The species didn’t have quite the sense of smell terrestrial canines possessed, but they were still excellent hunters in their own territory: the jungle.
“Peeeople,” Randolf grunted.
“Which way?” Yuri asked.
“Here.” The sayce pushed into the severed branches that made up the walls of the path. He turned to look at them. “Here.”
“Is this for real?” Mansing asked sceptically.
“Sure is,” Yuri answered, stung by the doubt. “How far, boy?”
“Sooon.”
“All right,” Mansing said. He started to hack at the jungle where the sayce indicated.
It was another two minutes of sweaty labour before they heard the voices. They were high and light, female. One of them was singing.
Mansing was so intent on cutting the cloying vegetation away, swinging the heavy machete in endless rhythm, that he nearly fell head first into the stream when the creepers came to an abrupt end. Yuri grabbed his jacket collar to stop him slipping down the small grassy slope. Both of them stared ahead in astonishment.
Sunlight poured down through the overhead gap in the trees, hovering above the water like a thin golden mist. The stream widened out into a rock-lined pool fifteen metres across. Creepers with huge ruffed orange blooms hung like curtains from the trees on the far side. Tiny turquoise and yellow birds fluttered about through the air. It was a scene lifted from Greek mythology. Seven naked girls were bathing in the pool, ranging from about fifteen years up to twenty-five. All of them were slender and long limbed, sunlight glinting on their skin. White robes were strewn over the black rocks at the water’s edge.
“Nooo,” Randolf moaned. “Baddd.”
“Bollocks,” Yuri said.
The girls caught sight of them and shrieked with delight, smiling and waving.
Yuri shouldered his laser rifle, grinning deliriously at the seven pairs of wet breasts bouncing about.
“Bloody hell,” Mansing muttered.
Yuri pushed past him, and scuttled down the slope into the stream. The girls cheered.
“Nooo.”
“Yuri,” Mansing gestured ineffectually.
He turned round, face illuminated with delight. “What? We’ve got to find out where their village is, haven’t we? That’s our assignment, scout the terrain.”
“Yes. I suppose so.” He couldn’t keep his eyes from the naiads sporting about.
Yuri was plunging on, legs sending up a wave of spray.
“Nooo,” Randolf bayed urgently. “Baddd. Peeeople baddd.”
Mansing watched the girls whooping encouragement to Yuri as the lad ploughed through the water towards them. “Oh, to hell with dignity,” he said under his breath, and splashed down into the stream.
The first girl Yuri reached was about nineteen, with scarlet flowers tucked into her wet hair. She smiled radiantly up at him, hands holding his. “I’m Polly,” she laughed.
“All right!” Yuri cried. The water only came halfway up her thighs; she really was completely naked. “I’m Yuri.”
She kissed him, damp body pressing against his sleeveless shirt, leaving a dark imprint. When she broke off another girl slipped a garland of the orange vine flowers round his neck. “And I’m Samantha,” she said.
“You gonna kiss me too?”
She twined her arms round his neck, tongue slipping hungrily into his mouth. Other girls were circling round, scooping up handfuls of spray and showering them. Yuri was in the midst of a warm silver rain with raw ecstasy pounding down his nerves. Here in the middle of nowhere, paradise had come to Lalonde. The droplets fell in slow motion, tinkling sweetly as they went. He felt hands slip the rifle strap from his shoulder, more hands pulled at his shirt buttons. His trousers were undone, and his penis stroked lovingly.
Samantha took a pace back looking at him in adoration. She cupped her breasts, lifting them up towards him. “Now, Yuri,” she pleaded. “Take me now.”
Yuri pulled her roughly against him, his soaking trousers tangling round his knees. He heard an alarmed shout that was cut off. Three of the girls had pushed Mansing under the water, his legs were thrashing above the surface. The girls were laughing hysterically, muscles straining with the effort of keeping him down.
“Hey—” Yuri said. He couldn’t move because of his stupid trousers.
“Yuri,” Samantha called.
He turned back to her. She was opening her mouth wider than he would have believed physically possible. Long bands of muscle writhed around her chin as if fat worms were tunnelling through her veins. Her cheeks started to split, beginning at the corners of her mouth and tearing back towards her ears. Blood leapt out of the wounds in regular beats, and she was still hinging her jaw apart.
Yuri stared for one petrified second then let loose a guttural roar of fright that reverberated round the impassive sentinel trees. His bladder gave out.
Samantha’s grisly head darted forward, carmine teeth clamping solidly round his throat, her blood spraying against his skin.
“Randolf—” he yelled. Then her teeth tore into his throat, and his own blood burst out of his carotid artery to flood his gullet, quashing any further sounds.
Randolf howled in rage as his master fell into the water with Samantha riding him down. But one of the other girls looked straight at him and hissed in warning, flecks of saliva spitting out between her bared teeth. The sayce turned tail and sprinted back into the jungle.
“Power’s going. Losing height. Losing height!” The BK133 pilot’s frantic voice boomed out of the command centre’s AV pillars.
Every sheriff in the room stared at the tactical communication station.
“We’re going down!”
The carrier wave hissed for another couple of seconds, then fell silent. “God Almighty,” Candace Elford whispered. She was sitting at her desk at the end of the rectangular room. Like most of the capital’s civic buildings, the sheriff’s headquarters was made of wood. It sat in its own square fortified enclosure a couple of hundred metres from the governor’s dumper, a simplistic design that any pre-twentieth-century soldier would have felt at home in. The command centre itself formed one side of the parade ground, a long single-storey building with four grey composite spheres housing the satellite uplinks spaced along the apex of the roof. Inside, plain wooden benches ran around the walls, supporting an impressive array of modern desktop processor consoles operated by sheriffs seated in composite chairs. On the wall opposite Candace Elford’s desk a big projection screen displayed a street map of Durringham (as far as it was possible to map that conglomeration of erratic alleyways and private passages). Conditioners hummed unobtrusively to keep the temperature down. The atmosphere of technological efficiency was spoilt slightly by the fans of yellow-grey fungus growing out of the skirting-board underneath the benches.
“Contact lost,” Mitch Verkaik, the sheriff sitting at the tactical communication station reported, stone faced.
Candace turned to the small team she had assigned to monitor the posse’s progress. “What about the sheriffs on the ground? Did they see it come down?”
Jan Routley was operating the satellite link to the
Candace studied the situation display projected by her own console’s AV pillar, more out of habit than anything else. She knew they were all waiting for her to rap out orders, smooth and confident, producing instant perfect solutions like an ambulatory computer. It wasn’t going to happen. The last week had been a complete nightmare. They couldn’t contact anyone in the Quallheim Counties or Willow West any more, and communications
