"Something between seventy-three hundred and seventy-four hundred. Difficult to count a shifting mob of chapped-hand yokels in poor light. I counted legs and divided by two."

Finnegan was listening to the exchange. "Wait a fucking minute," he began. "If there's a total..."

"Keep your voice down," J.B. snapped. "We get the picture, Ryan. Total population eight and a half thou. Man seven and a half thou. Take off some male babies. Can't leave more'n a few hundred women in the whole ville."

All four of them pondered that. The chatter around them had subsided, and the great granite bowl was silent, with only the whistling of the wind to break the stillness. As on the previous evening, it had become bitingly cold, and a chem-storm was raging away to the north, the crimson clouds torn apart with golden curtains-of forked lightning.

There was a ramp that led to a raised podium near the middle of the quarry. The sec men were climbing it, with someone or something at their center. Jak Lauren had the keenest eyes.

"Cripple. They're wheeling."

Ryan saw him then: a tiny, frail man with a head, fringed with silvery hair, that looked too large for his body and a skin almost as pale as Jak's. They were only about fifty yards off, and Ryan could see the little hands, soft and pink, decorated with chunky rings and a golden bracelet. The legs trailed, wasted, in neat, highly polished shoes of black leather. The man wore a tailored suit of light cream cloth. As he was wheeled up to the platform, his head jiggled and rolled on his shoulders.

"Silence for Mayor Theodore Sissy," one of the sec men bellowed unnecessarily, since the crowd had fallen quiet the moment the leader of Ginnsburg Falls had appeared.

There was a microphone at the front of the stage, already adjusted to the height at which Mayor Sissy could speak into it comfortably from his chair. His voice was soft and trembling, like a nervous child.

"Bring them before us."

The stillness was broken by a murmur of sound that slithered around the quarry like some great rustling reptile.

A half-dozen sec men, including the leader of the patrol in the jeep, moved into the center of the quarry with two people in their midst.

"Let there be light," the cripple on the platform breathed. There was the sharp sound of a lever being thrown, and the whole place was flooded by arc lamps that stood on pylons circling the stone arena.

The stark glare made Jak's white hair stand out like spun magnesium. All round them the men and boys backed farther off, muttering and pointing. Fortunately they were distracted by the events at the middle of the quarry.

"Here stand Jolyon Manscomb and the whore. Taken in the act of adulterous lust. It is admitted that the whore lured him, as Eve lured Adam, with her cunt filled with honey. But both pay the price."

The woman was slightly built, with dull brown hair cropped raggedly at shoulder level. She was dressed in a short robe, like a shift, of some coarse material that looked as if it had been used as sacking. It was dyed a vivid, sickly yellow. The man, whose head was bowed and balding, was wearing a similar robe, colored flat ocher. Both of them were barefoot and both had their hands tied in front of them with a thick rope.

Ryan had noticed that he stood on uneven ground. It was covered with a thick layer of stones, ranging in size from pebbles to jagged chunks of granite as large as a man's fist. There were similar piles of stones all about the floor of the quarry, the nearest only a dozen paces from where he waited with J.B., Jak, Finn and Doc Tanner. He licked his lips, finding them suddenly dry as he realized what the stones were for.

"Outworlders, step forward," the little man in the wheelchair commanded, reading slowly from a creased piece of paper that one of the sec men had handed him. "Cawdor, Dix, Finnegan, Lauren and Tanner. All come to stand before me."

Conscious of every man's eyes upon them, the five stepped across the uneven ground, picking their way around the piles of stone. Ryan noticed that the woman in the sack robe watched them, but the man at her side remained with his head bowed, mumbling to himself, shoulders shaking as he wept.

"Welcome, outworlders, to Ginnsburg Falls." The little man had a face reminiscent of pictures Ryan had once seen in an old book of maps — chubby cheeks, pursed as though to blow a great wind across the quarry, eyes twinkling coldly in the flat light.

"Like a damnably evil cherub," Doc Tanner whispered.

That had been the word Ryan wanted. Cherub. But with a darker side of power and evil.

"When we have men in from beyond our borders, we allow them the privilege of aiding our rituals. You are blessed that you have an opportunity to prove your worth on your first night among us."

"Do he mean what I think he fucking means?" Finn said, looking around in disgust.

"Can the talk, Finn," Ryan hissed. "You'll get us all chilled."

Mayor Sissy had stopped, the merry glitter vanishing for a moment. When he resumed, the voice was a shade or two less amicable.

"The punishment of Jolyon Manscomb and the whore is now to begin. The shame is made worse by the help of the outworlders. By their actions shall they also be judged. Sec Commander?"

"Sir."

"Begin. Remember, all present, that you may share the stoning only when one full minute has passed on the counting of the sec commander here. To begin too early would disappoint me."

Ryan reached up and eased the patch over his left eye socket. He rubbed his cheek and found that he was sweating despite the cold.

"Are you ready, outworlders?"

Obviously an answer was required. Ryan coughed to clear his throat. "Yes. We're ready."

"Then begin."

Ryan didn't move. The others at his side tensed like hunting dogs. Without looking, he knew that fingers would be questing for the butts of blasters. He also knew that if they made one wrong move, death was a dozen heartbeats away.

"Begin, outworlders, or join the fool and the whore." Bending slowly, Ryan reached down with his right hand and picked up a large, jagged stone, his fingers tightening around it.

Chapter Ten

All five of them had picked up stones and were waiting.

"Now!" Mayor Sissy snapped.

"It were well done quickly," Doc Tanner said, surprisingly taking the lead. He threw his rock with a clumsy roundhouse motion, like a young girl attempting to pitch for the first time. The stone bounced yards short.

"Go closer," the cracking voice from the loudspeakers urged.

Ryan threw next, aiming at the man. The stone hissed through the chilled evening air, hitting Jolyon Manscomb high on the right side of his chest. He cried out, more in surprise than protest or pain, and staggered a little. His head remained bowed. The woman looked across at Ryan and his friends, shouting something flavored with disgust and anger.

J.B. and Finnegan threw together, both aiming at the man. Both their rocks struck home, one on the thigh, the other gashing Manscomb's cheek, sending blood flowing over his neck to dapple the yellow robe. In the brightness of the artificial light, the blood was almost black. There was a murmur of excitement from the watchers, like the sound Ryan had heard in gaudy houses when a pesthole slut was stripping, the moment when she would ease her satin skirt down over her hips, showing the dark vee of hair, revealing the spread lips of her sex.

The sound was the same — a tongue-smacking anticipation of what had been glimpsed, coupled with the knowledge there was much more to be seen.

Jak Lauren threw his stone underhand, like a child playing ducks and drakes on a town pool. It hit the woman on the forearm, just above the binding of the ropes. There was the clear, brittle crack of a bone snapping, and she screamed very loudly once, which brought a wave of laughter from the watchers.