But she saw Quinn take Paula’s rifle off the wall, calmly check the power level, and shoot Frank. He turned round, and aimed the barrel at her.
The recall whistle sounded sharply through the jungle. Scott Williams sighed and picked himself off the ground, brushing dead leaves from his threadbare jump suit.
The arseholes! He was sure that had been a danderil rustling through the undergrowth up ahead. Well, he’d never know now.
“Wonder what’s happened?” Alex Fitton said.
“Dunno,” Scott replied. He didn’t mind Alex too much. The man was twenty-eight, and he was happy enough to talk to an Ivet. He knew some good filthy jokes too. Scott had hunted with him regularly.
The whistle sounded again.
Alex grunted. “Come on.”
They trudged towards the sound. Several other pairs of hunters appeared out of the trees, all of them walking towards the insistent whistle. Queries were shouted to and fro. Nobody knew why they were being called in. The whistle was supposed to be for injuries and the end of the day.
Scott was surprised to see a big group of people lined up waiting at the top of a steepish earth mound, there were about forty or fifty of them. They must have come out from the village. He saw Rai Molvi standing in front of them, blowing the whistle for all he was worth. He was very conscious of all those eyes on him as he and Alex Fitton made their way up the incline.
There was a large qualtook tree straddling the brow of the mound. One of its thick lower branches overhung the slope on the other side. Three silicon-fibre ropes had been slung over it.
The group of villagers parted silently, forming an alley towards the tree. Definitely worried now, Scott walked through them and saw what was hanging from the ropes. Jemima had been the last, she was still choking and kicking. Her face was purple, eyes bulging.
He tried to run, but they shot him in the thigh with a laser pulse, and dragged him back. It was Alex Fitton who pulled the noose tight around his neck. Tears ran down his cheeks as he did it, but then Alex had been Roger Chadwick’s brother-in-law.
The run back to his homestead had nearly killed Gerald Skibbow. He had been returning anyway when he saw the smoke, tugging the errant sheep along on a leash. Orlando, the Skibbow family’s Alsatian, bounded about through the long grass in high spirits. He knew he’d done well following the sheep’s scent. Gerald smiled indulgently at his antics. He was almost fully grown now. Oddly enough it was Loren who was the best at training him.
Gerald had traipsed across what had seemed like half of the savannah that morning. He couldn’t believe how far the damn sheep had strayed in just a few hours. They had eventually found it bleating at the end of a steep-walled gully about three kilometres from the homestead. He was just grateful that sayce kept to the jungle. They had never had any trouble from the kroclions which were supposed to roam the grassland, a few distant glimpses of sleek bodies in the grass, some night-time roars.
Then when he was a couple of kilometres from home that terrible blue-white streamer of smoke twisted idly into the sky ahead of him, its root hidden beyond the horizon. He stared at it in cold fear. All the other homesteads were kilometres away, and there was only one possible source. It was like watching his own life’s blood pouring up into the cloudless azure heavens. The homestead was everything, he’d invested his life in it, there was no other future.
“Loren!” he called. He let go of the sheep’s leash and started to run. “Paula!” The laser rifle banged against his side. He slung it away. Orlando barked urgently, picking up on his master’s agitation.
It was the grass, the bloody grass. It clung to his pounding legs, hindering him. Rucks and folds in the ground kept tripping him. He fell headlong, grazing his hands, knocking his knee. It didn’t matter. He picked himself up and kept on running. Again and again.
The savannah sucked sounds away from him. The slashing of the grass on his dungarees trousers, his laboured panting, the grunts each time he fell. All of them soaked away into the hot, still air as though it fed on them, hungry for the slightest noise.
The last two hundred yards were the worst. He topped a small rise, and the homestead was revealed to him. Only the skeleton remained upright, sturdy black timbers swathed by shooting flames. The slats and roof planks had already burnt through, peeling off like putrid skin to lie in crumbling strips around the base.
The animals had scattered. Panicked by the heat and roaring flames they had butted their way through the stockade fence. They had run for a hundred metres or so until their immediate fear slackened, then wandered about aimlessly. He could see the horse and a couple of pigs over by the pool, drinking unconcernedly. Others were dotted about among the grass.
There was no other movement. No people. He gaped numbly. Where were Frank and Loren and Paula? And the Ivet work team; they should all be trying to put out the fire.
With legs like weights of dead meat, and breath burning in his lungs, he ran the last length in a daze. A bright golden rain of sparks swirled high into the sky. The homestead’s frame gave one harrowed creak, and buckled in on itself with a series of jerks.
Gerald let out a single wretched wail as the last timbers crashed down. He slowed to a halt fifteen metres from the wreckage. “Loren? Paula? Frank? Where are you?” The cry was snatched up with the sparks. Nobody answered. He was too frightened to go over to the remnants of the homestead. Then he heard Orlando whine softly. He walked up to the dog.
It was Paula. Darling Paula, the little girl who would sit on his lap in their apartment back in the arcology and try to pull his nose, giggling wildly. Who grew up into a lovely young woman possessed of a quiet dignified strength. Who had bloomed out here in this venturesome land.
Paula. Eyes staring blindly at the swarm of sparks. A two-centimetre hole in the centre of her forehead, cauterized by the hunting laser.
Gerald Skibbow looked down at his daughter, knuckles jammed into his gaping mouth. His legs gave way, and he slowly folded up onto the trampled grass beside her.
That was how Powel Manani found him when he rode up forty minutes later. The supervisor took in the scene with a single glance. All the anger and hatred that had been building up during the day crystallized into a lethal Zen-like calmness.
He inspected the smouldering ruin of the homestead. There were three scorched bodies inside, which puzzled him for a while until he realized the second male was probably Lawrence Dillon.
Quinn would want to move swiftly, of course. And Lawrence’s feet had been in poor shape even back when he killed Vorix. Christ, but Quinn was a cold bastard.
The question was, where would he go?
There were just six Ivets left now. Powel had arrived at the Nicholls’ homestead where the second Ivet work team was busy assembling a barn. His maser carbine had picked them off one at a time under the horrified eyes of the Nicholls family. He had explained why afterwards. But they had still looked at him as though he was some kind of monster. He didn’t much care. The rest of the villagers would put them right tomorrow.
Powel stared at the band of jungle a kilometre away. Quinn was in there, that much was obvious. But finding him was going to be difficult. Unless . . . Quinn might just head back to the village. He was a true bandit now, he’d need food and weapons, enough supplies to get well clear of Schuster County. A small roving band could elude the sheriffs and even a marshal (assuming the Governor sent one) for a long time out here.
Orlando nosed around his legs and Powel stroked him absently. He missed Vorix more than ever now. Vorix would have tracked Quinn down within an hour.
“Right,” he said to the Alsatian. “Back to Aberdale it is.” It was his duty to warn the villagers what had happened in any case. Quinn would have taken the homestead’s weapons. Thank Christ the colonists were only allowed hunting rifles, no heavy-calibre stuff.
Gerald Skibbow said nothing when Powel covered Paula with a canvas tarpaulin used to keep the pile of hay dry. But he allowed Powel to lead him away, and mounted Sango when he was told.
The two of them rode off across the savannah back to the Nicholls homestead, Orlando racing alongside through the thick grass. Behind them, the abandoned animals began to wander over to the pool to drink, nervous
