The homestead on the edge of the savannah was a simple wooden structure, its solar-cell roof sheets glinting in the strong morning light. Two of the dogs, a Labrador and an Alsatian, were out and about. She patted them as she went up the creaking wooden stairs to the porch. The cows in the paddock were making plaintive calls, their udders heavy with milk.
Jay went in through the front door. The big lounge whiffed strongly—of food, and cooking, and too many people. She sniffed the air suspiciously. Someone had wet their bedding again, probably more than one.
The floor was a solid patchwork of sleeping-bags and blankets, their occupants only just beginning to stir. Grass stuffing from the makeshift mattresses of canvas sacks had leaked out again.
“Come on! Come on!” Jay clapped her hands together as she pulled the reed blinds open. Streamers of gold-tinged sunlight poured in, revealing children blinking sleep from their eyes, wincing at the brightness. Twenty- seven of them were crammed together on the mayope floorboards, ranging from a toddler about two years old up to Danny, who was nearly the same age as Jay. All of them with short haircuts and rough-tailored adult clothes which never quite fitted. “Up you get! Danny, it’s your gang’s turn to do the milking. Andria, you’re in charge of cooking this morning: I want tea, oatmeal, and boiled eggs for breakfast.” A groan went up, which Jay ignored; she was just as fed up with the changeless diet as they were. “Shona, take three girls with you and collect the eggs, please.”
Shona gave a timid smile as well as she could, grateful for being included in the work assignments and not being treated any differently to the others. Jay had drilled herself not to flinch from looking at the poor girl. The six- year-old’s face was covered in a bandage mask of glossy translucent epithelium membrane, with holes cut out for her eyes and mouth and nose. Her burn marks were still a livid pink below the overlapping membrane strips, and her hair was only just beginning to grow back. Father Horst said she ought to heal without any permanent scarring, but he was forever grieving over the lack of medical nanonic packages.
Coughs and grumbles and high-pitched chattering filled the room as the children struggled out of bed and into their clothes. Jay saw little Robert sitting brokenly on the side of his sleeping-bag, head in his hands, not bothering to get dressed. “Eustice, you’re to get this room tidied up, and I want all the blankets aired properly today.”
“Yes, Jay,” she answered sullenly.
The outside door was flung open as five or six children rushed out laughing, and ran for the lean-to, which they used as a toilet.
Jay picked her way over the rectangles of bedding to Robert. He was only seven, a black-skinned boy with fluffy blond hair. Sure enough, the navy blue pants he wore were damp.
“Pop down to the stream,” she said kindly. “There will be plenty of time to wash before breakfast.”
His head was lowered even further. “I didn’t mean to,” he whispered, on the verge of tears.
“I know. Remember to wash out your sleeping-bag as well.” She caught the sound of someone giggling. “Bo, you help him take the bag down to the stream.”
“Oh, Jay!”
“It’s all right,” Robert said. “I can manage.”
“No, you won’t, not if you want to be back in time for breakfast.” The big table was already being pulled out from the kitchen corner by three of the boys, scraping loudly across the floor. They were shouting for people to get out of the way.
“Don’t see why I should have to help him,” Bo said intransigently. She was an eight-year-old, meaty for her age, with chubby red cheeks. Her size was often deployed to help boss the smaller children around.
“Chocolate,” Jay said in warning.
Bo blushed, then stalked over to Robert. “Come on then, you.”
Jay knocked once on Father Horst’s door and walked in. The room had been the homestead’s main bedroom when they moved in; it still had a double bed in it, but most of the floor space was taken up with packets, jars, and pots of food they’d taken from the other deserted homestead cabins. Clothes and cloth and powered tools, anything small or light enough to be carried, filled the second bedroom in piles that were taller than Jay.
Horst was getting up as the girl came in. He’d already got his trousers on, thick denim jeans with leather patches, a working man’s garment, requisitioned from one of the other savannah homesteads. She picked up the faded red sweatshirt from the foot of the bed and handed it to him. He had lost a lot of weight—a lot of fat—over the last weeks; slack bands of flesh hung loosely from his torso. But even the folds were shrinking, and the muscles they covered were harder than they had ever been, though at night they felt like bands of ignescent metal. Horst spent most of every day working, hard manual work; keeping the cabin in shape, repairing and strengthening the paddock fence, building a chicken run, digging the latrines; then in the evening there would be prayers and reading lessons. At night he dropped into bed as if a giant had felled him with its fist. He had never known a human body could perform such feats of stamina, least of all one as old and decrepit as his.
Yet he never wavered, never complained. There was a fire in his eyes that had been ignited by his predicament. He was embarked on a crusade to survive, to deliver his charges to safety. The bishop would be hard pressed to recognize that dreamy well-meaning Horst Elwes who had left Earth last year. Even thinking about his earlier self with its disgusting self-pity and weaknesses repelled him.
He had been tested as few had ever been before, his faith thrown onto towering flames that had threatened to reduce him to shreds of black ash so powerful was the doubt and insecurity fuelling them: but he had emerged triumphant. Born of fire, and reforged, his conviction in self, and Christ the Saviour, was unbreakable.
And he had the children to thank. The children who were now his life and his task. The hand of God had brought them together. He would not fail them, not while there was a breath left in his body.
He smiled at Jay who was as grave faced as she always was at the break of day. The sounds of the usual morning bedlam were coming through the door as bedding was put away and the furniture brought out.
“How goes it today, Jay?”
“Same as always.” She sat on the end of the bed as he pulled on his heavy hand-tooled boots. “I saw a starship arrive. It’s coming down into low orbit.”
He glanced up from his laces. “Just one?”
“Uh huh,” she nodded vigorously.
“Ah well, it’s not to be today, then.”
“Oh, Jay.” He pulled her against him, and rocked her gently as she sniffled. “Jay, don’t give up hope. Not you.” It was the one thing he promised them, repeating it every night at prayers so they would believe. On a world far away lived a wise and powerful man called Admiral Aleksandrovich, and when he heard what terrible things had happened on Lalonde he would send a fleet of Confederation Navy starships to help its people and drive away the demons who possessed them. The soldiers and the navy crews would come down in huge spaceplanes and rescue them, and then their parents, and finally put the world to rights again. Every night Horst said it, with the door locked against the wind and rain, and the windows shuttered against the dark empty savannah. Every night he believed and they believed. Because God would not have spared them if it was not for a purpose. “They will come,” he promised. He kissed her forehead. “Your mother will be so proud of you when she returns to us.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
She pondered this. “Robert wet his bed again,” she said.
“Robert is a fine boy.” Horst stomped on the second boot. They were two sizes too large, which meant he had to wear three pairs of socks, which made his feet sweat, and smell.
“We should get him something,” she said.
“Should we now? And what’s that?”
“A rubber mat. There might be one in another cabin. I could look,” she said, eyes all wide with innocence.
Horst laughed. “No, Jay, I haven’t forgotten. I’ll take you out hunting this morning, and this time it will be Danny who stays behind.”
Jay let out a squeal of excitement and kicked her legs in the air. “Yes! Thank you, Father.”
He finished tying his laces and stood up. “Don’t mention the starship, Jay. When the navy comes it will be
