But Joshua did not reply, and when she turned, she saw that he was facing a crucifix, gazing at the gentle, anguished face of a Messiah. Joshua cringed, but was unable to look away.
The yelling at the door was growing intense, and the first hints of organized battering were detectable. Emma couldn’t wait any longer. She cast around the little chapel, shoving aside furniture and a small, ornately carved wooden altar.
And she found a hatchway.
The hatch opened on a small, dark shaft, fitted with stubby wooden rungs. Emma clambered down hastily, to find herself in a short corridor. A single wicker torch burned fitfully in a holder. She grabbed it and hurried along the corridor.
The corridor led to two wooden doors. One door was swinging open, and Emma recoiled. The cell within was just a pit, with a filth-crusted floor and blackened, scratched walls; it stank of blood and vomit and urine.
The other door was shut. Emma hammered on it. “Malenfant! Are you there?” The wood was so filthy her hands came away smeared with deep black.
No reply.
Struggling to hold up the torch, she made out a thick bolt, just wood, a smaller copy of the one on the compound gate. She hesitated for a heartbeat, her hand on the bolt.
She reminded herself that she actually had no idea what lay on the other side of this door. But you’ve come this far, Emma.
She pulled back the bolt, dragged open the door. She held the torch in front of her protectively.
There were two people here. One was sitting on the floor, hands crossed over her chest for protection — her, for it was a woman, in a long dress that looked finely made. But despite the dress and the tied-back hair, that protruding face and the ridged eyes marked her out as a Ham.
The other was a man. He was wearing a blue coverall, and he was curled up in the dirt, folded on himself.
Emma hurried to him. Gently she lifted aside his arm, to reveal his face. “Do you know me? Do you know where you are? Oh, Malenfant…”
He opened his eyes, and his face worked. “Welcome to hell,” he whispered.
The Ham woman slipped her arms under Malenfant and cradled him, with remarkable tenderness. She said her name was Julia; her English, though slurred by the deficiencies of the Ham palate, was well-modulated and clear.
With Malenfant limp but seemingly light as a baby in Julia’s arms, they clambered out of the pit and back into the chapel.
Still the Zealots battered at the door. Joshua remained in his apelike crouch, his head buried in his big arms. He was whimpering, as if horrified by what he had done.
Gently Emma pulled his arm away from his face. His cheeks were smeared with tears. “No time,” she said. “Mary. Skinnies hurt Mary. Joshua help.”
It took an agonizing minute of repetition, with the hammering on the door turning into a splintering, before he responded.
He got to his feet with a roar. He ran to the door, dragged it open, and with a sweep of his massive arm he knocked aside the scrambling crowd of Zealot men. He forced his way outside, calling for Mary.
Julia followed, carrying Malenfant. Emma stayed close by her side, cradling Malenfant’s lolling head.
— IV —
WORLD ENGINE
Reid Malenfant:
“You always were a heathen bastard, Malenfant. No wonder Praisegod had it in for you. I remember the trouble we had when we chose a church. Even though it was a time when overt religiosity was a career asset if you wanted to be part of the public face of NASA.”
“I did like that chapel at Ellington. Kind of austere, for a Catholic chapel. Not too many bleeding guys on the wall. And I liked the priest. Monica Chaum, you could go bowling with.”
“Well, I liked the chapel too, Malenfant. I found it comforting. A place to get away from the squawk boxes and the rest, when you were in orbit.”
“On orbit. You never told me that.”
“There are lots of things you don’t know about me, Malenfant. I remember one Christmas Eve when you were up there, doing whatever you did. Christmas Eve, and I was alone. I was sick of it all, Malenfant. I wanted to go to church, but I didn’t want people gawping. So I asked Monica if she would open up the church for me. Well, she dug out the organist, and she went through the church lighting all the candles, just as they would be lit for the Midnight Mass that night, and the organist played the programme planned for the service. When I walked in and saw it was all there just for me — well, it was one of the most beautiful sights I ever saw.”
“I remember that Christmas. I asked Monica to get you a gift. It was a dress. I picked it out.”
“Oh, Malenfant. It was at least five sizes too big. Monica had to apologize; she knew. No wonder you can’t figure out the Fermi Paradox, Malenfant, if you don’t know your own wife’s dress size… I never liked being alone, you know.”
“Nobody does. I guess that’s why we’re here, why we swung down from the damn trees. Every one of us is looking for somebody…”
“Stop it. Even now, you’d rather talk about issues, about human destiny and the rest of the garbage, anything but us. Anything but me. When you’re gone I’ll be alone here, Malenfant — truly alone, more alone than any person I can think of to all intents and purposes the only one of my kind, on the whole Moon, in this whole universe… It’s unimaginable. I’m an accountant, Malenfant. It’s not supposed to be like this. Not for me. And it’s all your fault. Do you want to know what I’m afraid of — really afraid of?”
“Tell me.”
“Chronic reactive depression. You ever heard of that? I looked it up once. You can die of loneliness, Malenfant. Four months, that’s all it takes. You don’t have to be a failure. Just — outcast.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Bullshit.”
Shadow:
There was little food to be had on the plain. The Elf-folk had carried some food from their crater-wall forest, figs and bananas and apples. But now the sun was setting, the footsteps made by the people in the bare patches of dust were little pools of shadow, and most of the food was gone. Plaintively, as they trooped after Shadow across the dusty grass, many of them looked back to the forest they had left.
They came to the site of an old kill. The bones were so scattered and worn by the teeth of successive predators and scavengers that it was impossible to tell what animal it might once have been.
Nevertheless Shadow stopped here. She sat amid the bones and, with a grunt, passed water into the dirt. The fungal growth on her face was a thick mask over her brow and cheeks and nose, making her look alien, ferocious, and some of the more livid scars on her body seemed to glow as bright red as the dust at her feet.
The others followed her lead: first Stripe, the strongest of the men, then Silverneck and the women who followed her. Infants clambered down to the dusty ground and plucked yellow grass blades, stuffing them into their mouths with rust-red fingers.
The adults huddled together uneasily. On this vast table-top of a landscape the Elf-folk were a dark knot, easily visible, horribly vulnerable. Nevertheless Shadow seemed content to stay here, and so stay they must.
None of the people sat close to Shadow.
Some of them made small offerings to her: a fig, an apple they had carried in their hands. Soon a small pile of food built up. Without acknowledging the people. Shadow reached down and took pieces of the food.
The sun sank further, its edge dipping below rounded hills. A nervy young man, Shiver, emitted a hesitant, hooting roosting call. But there were no trees here to make nests, and the gentle, eerie sound only made the people huddle still closer.
Silverneck sat on the fringe of the group. She picked up a bone from the litter around her. It was a section of a skull. The face was almost intact: she pushed her fingers into eye sockets, nostrils. This might have been a person, an Elf, a Ham, a Nutcracker, a Runner. She ran her finger along it, picking out scrapes and notches, made by teeth or, perhaps, tools. She was almost naked of fur now, so frantically had she been groomed by the other women in these days of turmoil and doubt. Her remaining hairs clung in patches to her blue-black skin and stuck out from her body; the low reddening sunlight made her hair glow, as if she was surrounded by a soft cloud.