GENOCIDE.

by PAUL LEONARD.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

First and foremost I would like to thank the usual crowd who read and made suggestions about this book: Barb Drummond, Mark Leyland, Jim Mortimore, Nick Walters, Simon Lake and George Wills.

Then there are all the people who had to put up with my irritability, writer's panic, and general lack of availab-ility for the last six months or so: my mother, Hazel Bunting, and my stepfather, John; Nadia Lamarra; Barb Drummond (again); Jim Mortimore (again); Damon Burt. Patrick and Martine Walling, Helen Butterworth and Jim Dowsett (good luck at Oxford!). Many thanks to all these, and any I've forgotten to mention. And thanks to Frances Cherry and all the others at Victoria Wine for general niceness, swapped shifts, and a different sort of working environment!

Finally, I must thank Nuala Buffini and Steve Cole at the BBC for their extreme patience and understanding, as well as their many helpful suggestions concerning the plot, the text and continuity matters. Any remaining errors are mine... all mine... ha!

The alien figure on the low bed was little more than a skeleton. The skin was shadowed, pinched the eyes seemed welded shut. The tan-coloured fur on the alien's head was dull, listless. Its clothes hung loosely: velvet, satin, and a coarser artificial shut. The tan-coloured fur on the alien's head was dull, listless. Its clothes hung loosely: velvet, satin, and a coarser artificial fibre. fibre.

Mauvril watched the dying figure for a long time, shivering in the cold air of the cell. Finally she spoke.

'I know that you can't forgive me. I don't expect it. I know that you had a special relationship with humans, and to see them wiped out after all your efforts, and all your love that must be a tragedy for you. them wiped out after all your efforts, and all your love that must be a tragedy for you.

'And I know, too, that you're right not to forgive me. I haven't cleaned my soul, only made it dirtier. I don't even know whether I've succeeded in saving my people from slavery and extinction. If what you have told me is true, then I know whether I've succeeded in saving my people from slavery and extinction. If what you have told me is true, then I have failed. have failed.

'But I want you to understand me.

'We're both going to die here, so it really doesn't make any difference now, what we've done, whether we can forgive each other. I just want to know the truth: if you had been me if you had been in my situation, on my world, and the each other. I just want to know the truth: if you had been me if you had been in my situation, on my world, and the humans had done to your people what they did to mine would you have destroyed them? Would you have been without humans had done to your people what they did to mine would you have destroyed them? Would you have been without mercy, would you have destroyed all humans, for all time? mercy, would you have destroyed all humans, for all time?

'Please tell me. I need to know. I need to know if it was possible to have acted in a different way.

'Doctor? Can you understand me?

'Are you still alive?'

PROLOGUE.

The smell of the wind had changed.

Walking Man knew it as soon as he woke; perhaps even before that. Strangeness had haunted his dreams, lingered into his waking.

He stood, the movement as silent as he could make it. It was still night; no dawn stirred in the east. But something had disturbed him. He sniffed the dark, cold air blowing over the ridge.

An animal... No. It was more like the smell of the air before a thunderstorm. But there was no storm nearby: the steady wind and star-filled sky told him that.

A shuffling sound in the darkness. A faint, uneasy bleating. The sheep could sense it, too.

Walking Man took a cautious step on the soft grass. Whatever it was, this was a big big thing. Big enough to fill the air with its scent, and far enough away to be silent. As big as a cloud, perhaps. thing. Big enough to fill the air with its scent, and far enough away to be silent. As big as a cloud, perhaps.

Walking Man felt a cold, glassy touch of fear at his throat. But there was nothing he could do, nothing he could fight or run away from. In the darkness, he could only wait.

So he wrapped his buckskin cloak around himself tightly, and waited.

When it came, the first light of dawn showed him nothing. The pasture slopes, grey in the dimness, traced with pale silver dew. The sheep, light shadows, dark faces moving, slowly waking. The mountain a hunched back against the sky.

Everything was as it should be, but...

The sheep were uneasy.

And the scent in the wind was still there.

Alert, Walking Man stood, peering down into the valley. The wind had stilled, and a thin mist pooled there, its edges dappled with dark beadings of trees. The village...

There was a light in the village. A light that you could see through the mist.

Fire!

The shock jolted through his body, set his heart jumping in his chest. He was running before he could even begin to think, running across the cold dewy turf, leaving his sheep, leaving rabbit furs he had prepared while watching his flock in the High Pastures, leaving his pack with his copper axe and his totem. Nothing mattered but getting to the village. Nothing mattered but reaching his wife, her sister, his brother-by-marriage, and their children. He imagined he could hear their screams as he ran, imagined the hut filled with smoke and terror, the wood burning in the wind...

I have to get there.

His feet found the stone of the familiar path down, the stone that was smooth because so many Walking Men and their sheep had used the path, season after season, as they moved from pasture to village and back again. The shoulders of the mountain rose around him, hiding the village.

About halfway, at Fern River Gorge, where there was a view of the Low Pastures, he stopped. The sun was clear on the slice of hillside he could see through the end of the gorge. There was no smoke in the air. The village was not burning.

But the smell was there. The hour-before-a-storm smell. The impossible smell, impossibly strong now.

He slowed his steps, slowed his breathing, trying to think. The boys should be here in the gorge by this time, setting their traps for the water rats and their nets for the fish in the slippery green water. But there was no one. Nothing. Only the river, talking softly to itself in the cold morning air.

Walking Man opened his mouth to call out, then changed his mind.

He advanced along the edges of the gorge, moving slowly, softly, as if he were hunting or tracking a stray sheep from the flock, using the narrow paths weaving between the scrub pines and steep rock walls, the wolf paths that smelled of pine and carnivore dung.

At the end of the gorge, the paths ended in the cleared ground, the goat meadows, the damp earth where the children gathered mushrooms in the mornings, the fields where the old people grew their grain and carrots. He could see the village at last, the low, dark roofs over the dew-silvered swathe of grass.

And he could see the source of the light.

It was was fire. And yet it wasn't. fire. And yet it wasn't.

It was like a tree, burning. But there was no smoke: only dim, cold flames creeping along the branches, lake-blue and summer-leaf green, moving around huge leaves that were bright orange, as if it were autumn.

But a tree tree?

There had been no tree on the morning he had taken the sheep to the High Pasture, not many days ago. No tree could grow so fast. And no tree he had ever seen before looked anything like this one.

And why were there no children in the fields, gathering the mushrooms?

For a moment, Walking Man wondered if he had entered the spirit world while he had slept. He looked up, checking the skies for the Eagle, his totem animal.

No. If the Eagle was guiding him, it was from far away. This was still the human world.

Silent as a hunter, he moved across the familiar meadow where he had played as a child, his eyes on the strange tree. As the curve of the land fell away, he could see the village, the rough circle of the lodges, the people kneeling in the open space between them.

He became aware of another smell, a smell like the hay he stored to feed the sheep in winter. And there was something dark beneath the coloured branches of the tree.

Something alive alive.

Walking Man crouched down, then stretched out and lay flat on the grass.

Was it Ox? It was the size of an ordinary ox, such as the hunters might find in the forest, but it was black, and its head was wrong raised up in front of it, with a long, thin snout like a wolf.

And it had arms arms.

His wife's totem was the Ox. Had she she died, then? But he could see her kneeling with the other villagers, the distinctive black wool trim on her cloak marking her as Walking Man's Woman. died, then? But he could see her kneeling with the other villagers, the distinctive black wool trim on her cloak marking her as Walking Man's Woman.

The Ox, or whatever it was, spoke.

At least, it seemed like speech it had the air of speech, the density of changing sounds but it was like the speech of a foreign man, like that of the strangers who came to trade copper and had to speak to the villagers in signs. Walking Man couldn't understand a word of it.

The speech became urgent, angry, like the grunting of a beast. Walking Man saw the gleam of metal in the Ox's hand, felt the danger in the air too late. Flame exploded around his wife's head. She gave one short gurgling scream, then fell to the ground. Her body thrashed for a moment, then was still.

Her head was black, like burnt meat. Walking Man could smell her flesh burning.

For a second, he remained frozen, then anger and grief got the better of his fear. He rose to a low crouch, darted forward, crossing the meadow, making for the nearest of the lodges.

He was only a dozen strides from the heavy wooden walls when the Ox saw him.

He saw the huge eye in the side of its head open, saw the blood-hatred there. What had his people done to offend the Ox? Had the hunters not killed oxen with proper respect? Had the traps been set wrongly?

There was no point in wondering about that now. The gleaming metal that had killed his wife was still in the spirit-animal's hand, and Walking Man could sense it readying the fire to kill him as it had killed his wife. He ducked, then dodged sideways, knowing he could not avoid a magical fire but not knowing what else to do.

The fire exploded behind him. He felt its breath, heard the curse of the Ox.

He stopped dead for an instant, waited, saw the fire explode ahead where he would have been if he'd kept running.

Then he ran, ran as he hadn't run for seasons, ran until he'd put the wood and hides of the lodge between him and the spirit-animal. He lay on the damp leafy earth behind the lodge for a moment, gasping with anger and terror. he ran, ran as he hadn't run for seasons, ran until he'd put the wood and hides of the lodge between him and the spirit-animal. He lay on the damp leafy earth behind the lodge for a moment, gasping with anger and terror.

There was a flicker of the killing fire, and the short, choked scream of another death.

I have to do something to prevent this.

It was madness to fight the Ox, but what else could he do?

He closed his eyes, called out to the spirit of the Eagle, felt the great totem-wings spreading in his soul.

Yes. He could do it.

He crawled along the dark earth to the hunter's door of the lodge, the one that faced out to the forest. Cautiously, he pushed aside the flap of skins and peered inside.

Red lights glittered in the dark interior, and the alien smell, the before-a-storm smell, was strong, too strong, stronger than the human smells of the lodge, the flesh and sweat and leather. Walking Man withdrew slowly, in absolute silence.

The Ox was outside, waiting for him, the metal thing which had brought the spirit-fire in its hand.

With its other hand, it beckoned.

Walking Man looked at the three alien fingers, shook his head, then jumped. Straight up.

His hand found the rough end of a roof-beam; his body fell against the wall of the lodge. He kicked, struggled, heaved himself up. He ran up the sloping roof, the dry turf that insulated the lodge soft under his heels. He crouched down in the hope that the Ox's fire wouldn't be able to reach him.

Then he was at the crown of the lodge, above the open chimney, smelling the faint smoked-flesh aroma of the cooking fire.

He dropped inside.

There was a movement, light at the doorway Walking Man could see Ox Hunter's spear, fallen across the floor of the lodge. Ox Hunter must have taken up his spear when the Ox came, and Walking Man saw the charcoal form that had once been human, realised it wasn't the cooking fire he'd smelled at the chimney.

His body burning with a rage he hadn't felt since early manhood, he grabbed the spear, charged the door of the lodge.

But when he got outside there was nothing, only deep prints of cloven hooves in the mud.

Walking Man ran, circling the village behind Ox Hunter's lodge and that of his neighbour, Deer Dance Woman, the shaman. Through the gap between the huts, he saw two more of the huge black Oxen standing on either side of the kneeling villagers. He thought he saw Walks-with-Moonlight, his eldest girl, kneeling with the others. But he couldn't stop to be sure.

Behind Deer Dance Woman's lodge, he stopped. The meadows were only paces away. He could run. He might make it.

He could hide in the woods. He could go to the people of the Marsh Meadow and ask for their help, perhaps offer them a sheep in return for shelter in one of their lodges, if he could find his flock in High Pasture.

There was another flash of fire, and from beyond the lodge came the sound of people screaming, and high, strange calls, unlike any animal that Walking Man knew. He crept around Deer Dance Woman's lodge until he could see what was happening. Smoke was drifting across the Dancing Place, half obscuring the tree. The bulky black form of one of the Oxen moved in front of him, facing away, towards the alien glow of the tree.

The fire was everywhere. His people were dying.

He couldn't leave them to die. He had to attack now. The Eagle would make him strong.

Walking Man charged, silently, spear in hand, towards the Oxen. The spear glanced uselessly off the black flank of the beast. Walking Man saw the legs kick out, but the spirit of the Eagle protected him: somehow he managed to move aside in time.

He rolled on the hard ground, was brought up against something strange.

Something alien, crawling with glowing light.

The tree.