When the gigantic formation was complete, the serjeants paused, reaffirming their commitment to the Liberation, celebrating the unity and accomplishment. Mortonridge was sealed off ahead of them, and now they were physically in place after all that had befallen, success appeared tangible. Doubt was banished.

“Go,” Ralph ordered.

The pattern started to waver as soon as the serjeants left the coast behind. Mountain roads and tracks had vanished altogether. Valley floors were now deep rivers of mud. No vehicles could plough through the broken remains of the forests. The AI began to guide them round obstacles, always keeping the reserves within optimum distance of the front line. Slowing some sections of the advance, directing extra serjeants to expand the line over steep terrain.

They had their first encounter with a possessed seventy-six minutes after they started. Sinon watched through another set of eyes as the serjeant up near the firebreak fired its machine gun at a heat corona coming from behind an upturned car. Sparkling bullets ripped straight through the composite bodywork. Tendrils of enraged white fire curved over the top in retaliation. Another serjeant opened fire. The entire line halted, waiting to see what would happen.

For a moment there was no effect. Then the white fire faded, turning translucent before the rain smothered it, drops steaming as they fell through. A man staggered out from behind the wrecked car, hands waving madly as the bullets thudded into him. Ripples of purple light blazed out from every impact, swathing his body in a wondrous pyrotechnic display. The serjeant upped the fire rate.

“Stop it!” the man screamed. He crashed to his knees, hands batting feebly to ward off the machine gun. “Stop it for fuck’s sake. I surrender, goddamn it.”

The serjeant eased off the trigger, and walked forwards. “Lie down flat, put your hands behind your head. Do not attempt to move or apply your energistic power.”

“Fuck you,” the man snarled through clenched teeth. His body was shaking badly.

“Down. Now!”

“All right, all right.” He lowered himself into the mud. “Mind if I don’t go any further? Even we can’t breathe mud.”

The serjeant took its holding stick from its belt, a dull silver cylinder half a metre long. It telescoped out to two metres, and a pincer clamp at one end opened wide.

“What the hell . . . ?” the man grunted as the serjeant closed the clamp round his neck.

“This restraint has a dead-man function. If I let go, or I’m made to let go, it will fire ten thousand volts into you. If you resist or refuse to obey any instruction, I will shove a current into you and keep turning it up until your energistic ability is neutralised. Do you understand?”

“You’re gonna die one day, you’re going to join us.”

The serjeant switched on a two hundred volt current.

“Jesus wept,” the man squealed.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes. Yes, fuck. Turn it off. Off!”

“Very well. You will now leave this body.”

“Or what, asshole? If you zap me too hard we both die. Me and my host.”

“If you do not leave of your own volition, you will be placed in zero-tau.”

“Fuck. I can’t go back there.” He started sobbing. “Don’t you understand? I can’t. Not there. Please. Please, if you’ve got an ounce of humanity in you, don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

“I’m sorry. That is not an option. Leave now.”

“I can’t.”

The serjeant pulled on the holding stick, forcing the possessed to his feet. “This way.”

“What now?”

“Zero-tau.”

The cheering in the Ops Room was deafening. Ralph actually grinned out at them from his office, the image of the captured possessed being led away lingering in his mind. It might work, he thought. It just might. He remembered walking out of Exnall, the girl crying limply in his arms, Ekelund’s mocking laughter in the air.

“Enjoy your victory with the girl,” she’d sneered. His only personal success in that entire frightful night.

“Two down,” Ralph whispered. “Two million to go.”

The fish were dying. Stephanie thought that the oddest thing. This rain should be their chance to take over the whole world. Instead the ever-thickening mud was clogging up their gills, preventing them from breathing. They lay on the surface, being pushed along by the leisurely waves of water, their bodies flapping madly.

“We should like hollow out some logs, man, use them as canoes. That’s what our ancestors used to do, and those cats were like really in tune with nature,” Cochrane suggested when they cleared the end of the valley.

They’d only just made it, the sluggish river was leaking over the top of the track. At times it seemed as if the whole surface of the valley was on the move. They stood above the gurgling edge of the flow, and watched the gargantuan outpouring spread out to surge on across the lowlands.

“Fat lot of use that would be,” Franklin muttered grimly. “Everything’s heading down to the coast, and that’s where they are. Besides,” he gestured round extravagantly at the denuded valley. “What trees?”

“You are such a downer. I want some wheels, man. I have like totally had it with tramping through this shit.”

“I thought cars were spawned by the capitalist Establishment to promote our greed and distance us from nature,” Rana said sweetly. “I’m sure I heard somebody say that recently.”

Cochrane kicked at the fish flopping about round his feet. “Get off my back, prickly sister. Okay? I’m thinking of Moyo. He can’t handle this.”

“Just . . . quiet,” Stephanie said. Even she was waspish, fed up with the pettiness they were all displaying. The ordeal of the bus and then the track had stretched everyone’s nerves. “How are you?” she asked Moyo.

His face had returned to normal, the illusion swallowing his bandage and shielding his scabbed tissue from sight. Even his eyeballs appeared to dart about naturally. But he’d taken a lot of cajoling and encouragement to walk along the track. His thoughts had contracted, gathering round a centre of sullen self-pity. “I’ll be okay,” he mumbled. “Just get me out of this rain. I hate it.”

“Amen to that,” Cochrane chirped.

Stephanie looked round the shabby landscape. Visibility was still pretty ropy on the other side of their protective umbrella, though it was definitely lighter now. It was hard to believe this eternal featureless mire was the same vigorous green countryside they’d travelled across in the Karmic Crusader. “Well we can’t go that way,” she gestured at the cataract of muddy water rumbling away into the distance. “So I guess we’ll have to stick to this side. Anyone remember roughly where the road is?”

“Along there, I think,” McPhee said. Neither voice or mind-tone suggested much confidence in the claim. “There’s definitely a flat ledge. See? The carbon-concrete must have held up.”

“Till the foundation gets washed out from under it,” Franklin said.

Stephanie couldn’t honestly see any difference in the mud where he was pointing. “All right, we’ll go for it.”

“How far?” Tina demanded querulously. “And how long will it take to get there?”

“Depends where you’re heading, babe,” Cochrane said.

“Well I don’t know, do I? I wouldn’t ask if I did.”

“Any kind of building will do,” Stephanie said. “We can reinforce it against the weather ourselves. I just want us out of this. We can think what to do next when we’re rested up. Come on.” Stephanie gripped Moyo’s hand and began to walk in the direction the road was supposed to be. Fish tails slapped pitifully at her wellingtons.

“Oh man, it don’t make no difference what we decide. We know what’s like gonna happen.”

“Then stay here and let it,” Rana told the miserable hippie. She started off after Stephanie.

“I didn’t say I was in a rush.” The edge of the invisible shield moved towards Cochrane, and he scrambled after them.