Duggen and Ivan went over to the windows and looked out.

“Are they coming?” Louise mouthed to Titreano.

He nodded his head surreptitiously.

“Please,” she appealed to Ivan. “You have to fly us out of here.”

“I don’t know about that, Miss Kavanagh. I don’t have the authority. And we don’t really know what’s happening in the village. Perhaps I ought to check with the constable first.”

“Please! If you’re worried about your job, don’t be. My family will protect you.”

He sucked in his breath, blatantly unhappy.

“Ivan,” Felicia said. She stared straight at him, pointing significantly to the twins. “Whatever is going on, this is no place for children to be. The capital will be safe if anywhere is.”

“Oh, hell. All right, Miss Kavanagh. You win. Get in. We’ll all go.”

Duggen started to open the big sliding doors at the end of the hangar, allowing a thick beam of pink-tinted sunlight to strike the aeroambulance. The plane was an imported Kulu Corporation SCV-659 civil utility, a ten-seater VTOL supersonic with a near global range.

“It has the essence of a bird,” Titreano murmured, his face gently intoxicated. “But with the strength of a bull. What magic.”

“Are you going to be all right inside?” Louise asked anxiously.

“Oh, yes, Lady Louise. This is a voyage to be prized beyond mountains of gold. To be granted this opportunity I shall give full praise to the Lord tonight.”

She coughed uncomfortably. “Right. Okay, we’d better get in; up that stairs on the other side, see?”

They followed Felicia and the twins up the airstairs. The plane’s narrow cabin had been customized for its ambulance role, with a pair of stretchers and several cabinets of medical equipment. There were only two seats, which the twins used. Genevieve, Titreano, and Louise wound up sitting together on one of the stretcher couches. Louise checked the safety on the shotgun once again and wedged it below her feet. Surprisingly, no one had objected to her carrying it on board.

“This is all we need,” Ivan called back from the pilot’s seat as he started to run through the preflight checklist. “I’ve got half a dozen systems failures showing.”

“Any critical?” Duggen asked as he closed the hatch.

“We’ll survive.”

Felicia opened one of the cabinets and handed Genevieve a bar of chocolate. The girl tore the wrapper off and sat munching it with a huge contented smile.

If she craned forwards, Louise could just see the windscreen beyond Ivan. The plane was rolling forwards out of the hangar.

“There are some houses on fire in the village,” the pilot exclaimed. “And some people running down the road towards us. Hang on.”

There was a sudden surge in the bee-hum from the fans, and the cabin rocked. They were airborne within seconds, climbing at a shallow angle. The only thing visible through the windscreen were daubs of insubstantial pink cloud.

“I hope Carmitha is all right down there,” Louise said guiltily.

“I feel certain she will remain free from harm, lady. And it gladdens me that you resolved your quarrel with her. I admire you for that, my lady Louise.”

She knew her cheeks would be blushing, she could feel the heat. Hopefully the smears of mud and dust would be veiling the fact. “Carmitha said something to me before she left. Something about you. It was a question. A good one.”

“Ah. I did wonder what passed between you. If you care to ask, I will answer with such honesty as I own.”

“She wanted me to ask where you really came from.”

“But, Lady Louise, I have spoken nothing but the truth to you in this matter.”

“Not quite. Norfolk is an English-ethnic planet; so we do learn something of our heritage in school. I know that the England of what you say is your time was a pure Anglo-Saxon culture.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. And Titreano is not an English name. Not at that time. After that possibly, when immigration began in later centuries. But if you had been born in Cumbria in 1764 as you claim, that could not be your name.”

“Oh, lady, forgive me any mistrust I have inadvertently caused you. Titreano is not the name I was born with. However, it is the one I lived with in my latter years. It is the closest rendering the island people I adopted could come to my family name.”

“And that is?”

The dignity vanished from his handsome features, leaving only sorrow. “Christian, my lady Louise. I was baptized Fletcher Christian, and was proud to be named so. In that I must now be alone, for I have brought naught but shame to my family ever since. I am a mutineer, you see.”

Chapter 04

Ralph Hiltch was gratified and relieved by the speed with which Ombey’s senior administration reacted to what they’d taken to calling the Mortonridge crisis. The people at Hub One were joined by the full complement of the Privy Council security committee. This time Princess Kirsten herself was sitting at the head of the table in the white bubble room, relegating Admiral Farquar to a position adjacent to her. The tabletop mutated into a detailed map showing the top half of Mortonridge; the four towns which the rogue Longhound bus had visited—Marble Bar, Rainton, Gaslee, and Exnall—glinted a macabre blood-red above the rumpled foothills. Flurries of symbols flickered and winked around each of them, electronic armies harassing their foes.

Once the last of Moyce’s delivery lorries had been tracked down and eliminated, Diana Tiernan switched the entire capacity of the AIs to analysing vehicles that had left the four towns, and stopping them. In one respect they were fortunate: it was midnight along Mortonridge, the volume of traffic was much reduced from its daytime peak. Identification was reasonably easy. Deciding what to do about both cars and towns was less so.

It took twenty minutes of debate, arbitrated by the Princess, before they thrashed out an agreed policy. In the end, the deciding factor was Gerald Skibbow’s completed personality debrief which was datavised down from Guyana. Dr Riley Dobbs appeared before the committee to testify its provenance; an apprehensive man, telling the planetary rulers that they were being assaulted by the dead reborn. But it did provide the justification, or spur, necessary for the kind of action which Ralph was pressing for. And even he sat through Dobbs’s report in a state of cold incredulity. If I’d made a mistake, shown a single gram of weakness . . .

The expanded security committee decided that all ground vehicles which had left the Mortonridge towns were to be directed to three separate holding areas established along the M6 by the police AT Squads. Refusal to comply would result in instantaneous SD fire. Once at the holding area, they would be required to wait in their vehicles until the authorities were ready to test them for possession. Failure to remain in the vehicle would result in the police AT Squads opening fire.

For the towns, a complete martial law curfew was to be effected immediately, no vehicular traffic or pedestrians allowed. Low orbit SD sensor satellites would scan the streets constantly in conjunction with the local police patrols. Anyone found disobeying the prohibition would be given exactly one opportunity to surrender. Weapons engagement authorization was granted to all the police personnel responsible for enforcing the curfew order.

At first light tomorrow the operation to evacuate the four towns would begin. Now that Diana Tiernan and the AIs were reasonably satisfied that no possessed were left anywhere else on the continent, Princess Kirsten agreed to dispatch marine troops from Guyana to assist with the evacuation. All Xingu police reserves would be called in, and together with the marines they would encircle the towns. Squads would then move in to conduct a house-to-house examination. Non-possessed members of the population were to be escorted out and flown on military transports to a Royal Navy ground base north of Pasto where they would be housed for the immediate future.