179.

The Peace Men were awestruck as beautiful things began to stir under the sand on the beach. Animals began to claw to stir under the sand on the beach. Animals began to claw their way up, pushing their way to the surface where they their way up, pushing their way to the surface where they breathed in the beautiful fresh air. Tall animals with breathed in the beautiful fresh air. Tall animals with ma.s.sive tails which hopped rather than walked, small furry ma.s.sive tails which hopped rather than walked, small furry ones with snouts and big eyes, wingless birds who waved ones with snouts and big eyes, wingless birds who waved their long necks as they sought out the smells and sights their long necks as they sought out the smells and sights with their newly created senses. Lizards of all shapes and with their newly created senses. Lizards of all shapes and sizes, more birds and mammals. sizes, more birds and mammals.

'These shall all be yours. Uniquely. No one else may have them and they will honour you if you love them,' she said. them and they will honour you if you love them,' she said.

'Treasure them and this world can be yours,' he said.

'Teach us,' said the leader of the Peace Men. 'Teach us to sing like you. To continue the beautiful life. To build homes, sing like you. To continue the beautiful life. To build homes, lives and roots for ourselves. Please.' lives and roots for ourselves. Please.'

Before they agreed the Walkers explained about the violent New Men. violent New Men.

'Show us how to sing and we will protect this beautiful land, these beautiful creatures, for the rest of time from the land, these beautiful creatures, for the rest of time from the evil New Men.' evil New Men.'

The Walkers, now accustomed to having lost their own roots, agreed - in the Peace Men, they had found purpose roots, agreed - in the Peace Men, they had found purpose and reason. 'This is your land - your aboriginal sites,' she and reason. 'This is your land - your aboriginal sites,' she said. 'The others are the invaders, who would be evil and said. 'The others are the invaders, who would be evil and desecrate the world. The animals we have given you are desecrate the world. The animals we have given you are G.o.ds for you to revere and honour.' G.o.ds for you to revere and honour.'

'It will be done,' said the Peace Man. Together the Walkers - Walkers - 'Tell me about the battles,' Dent giggled. 'Tell me the bit about the Aborigines wiping out those other evil ones and how beautiful they made this country.' He sat back in his wooden cart, staring at the endless expanse of white above, beside, behind and below them, rubbing his blunt nose and staring at Mrs Wilding in fascination.

'Another time,' she said. 'I have other patients to tend now.' Wilding ran a hand through Dent's scraggly black 180 hair, trying to disguise her fondness for him by pretending she was making him look tidy.

Instantly, they changed, re-adopting their Victorian appearances. Dent's brain improved. 'Tarwildbaning, I don't now how much longer I can keep rejuvenating my synapses.

One day I'm going to regress to our Walker state and lose it.'

He s.n.a.t.c.hed at her hand, a tear pushing its way down his face. 'I don't want to lose my mind!'

'We have to leave this world and get back amongst the stars where we belong. Only there, away from G.o.dwanna's plans; can your brain properly readjust. Unless. . .' Mrs Wilding straightened her pinafore. 'But until then I have to find a way. Remember - I love you.' With that she smacked the back of his head and he twitched, his giggling old-man personality instantly re-engaged. 'We must conserve your resources,' she said.

A tear, as desperate as his had been, fell down Mrs Wilding's face as she left him chortling at some insane private joke and went to tend her new charges.

'h.e.l.lo, Mrs Wilding,' dribbled one. 'Have you come to clean me?'

'Yes, Professor, I'm here to look after you. Always.'

'Is Mr Dent not well again?'

Mrs Wilding nodded mechanically. 'We keep trying to reach G.o.dwanna's hyper-reality. We could all be safe there, but she's still sealed the final nexus.'

Bridgeman nodded. 'I like this place. It's clean.'

'It's white. Is it heaven?'

Mrs Wilding looked across at a second man wandering aimlessly in circles, trying to keep his balance walking around an imaginary circle. 'No, Mr Simms. Not in the way you mean. But it's not exactly your home planet either.'

'So where are we?' asked Bridgeman. 'Nate and I have been wondering that for. . . oh, yonks and yonks and yonks.'

Nate walked over. He put his head on one side and stared up into Mrs Wilding's face. 'You've been crying. Do you love Mr Dent?'

181.

'Oh, Mr Simms, what a question! I do apologize for him, Mrs Wilding.' Bridgeman pulled at Nate's sleeve, trying to pull him to sit on the ground with him.

As he allowed himself to go down, Nate giggled. 'I can see right up your nose!' He pointed at Mrs Wilding. 'It's very dark up there!'

Bridgeman went red. 'Nate, please.'

Nate Simms suddenly looked at Bridgeman as if noticing him properly for the first time. He reached for Bridgeman's nose. 'You've got a nose, too.' Then he frowned. 'Do I know you?'

Bridgeman nodded. 'Yes. We were playing together earlier in the garden.'

Mrs Wilding stopped her ministrations. 'What garden, Mr Bridgeman?'

'He's a professor, you know. A clever man. He went to university. He's got qualifications.'

'Lots,' agreed Bridgeman. 'Lots and lots and lots and lots and -'

Mrs Wilding put her hand on his shoulder. 'What garden?'

'What garden?'

'I asked you that. What garden were you in?'

'No garden. No garden. No garden.' Nate rolled on his back and kicked with his legs in the air, as if he was riding an invisible bicycle. 'No garden.'

'Nicky?'

Bridgeman looked at his knees and began picking at an invisible scab there, ignoring his trousers. 'He told me not to tell. Big people are bad. Tell us off.'

'I won't tell you off,' said Mrs Wilding. 'Look, tell you what - you tell me how you found the garden, and we'll go together. That way, it can't possibly be bad, can it?'

Bridgeman pouted. 'I don't know, Mrs Wilding . . .'

'Can I come?' called a voice. Pushing himself across the white nothingness in his Victorian wheelchair was Dent, his eyes alight with excitement. 'Oh, let me, please, please, please, pleeeeeeze,' he whined.

182.

Mrs Wilding shook her head. 'No! If she finds us there, she might do anything!'

Dent was suddenly back into his rational self: 'But they know where it is, how to get there. Tarwildbaning, what else can she do? She crushed my legs, she probed my brain and fudged it. What more harm can she do? Kill me? It might be a blessed relief!'

Mrs Wilding suddenly burst into tears. 'Don't you understand, any of you? What if she does something to me?

Who's going to look after you?'

The sudden outpouring of emotion spurred Dent on, knowing he had to be as rational as possible before the insanity kicked back in. He grabbed Mrs Wilding's hand.

'But that's the whole point - eventually she's going to do something. She's like that. We know that Thorgarsuunela has let us down and despite our meeting with Atimkos, I doubt he'll be much help. It is down to us.'

'Atimkos will. . . he must help,' murmured Mrs Wilding.

She knelt beside the chair. 'We spent so long looking for them both, they must help us.'

'Yes - we spent millennia looking for them, believing that they could solve our problems. They can't. We were wrong. Thorgarsuunela totally betrayed us. Atimkos simply hasn't got what it takes.'

'The Doctor?' Bridgeman shambled over. 'I remember a man once. Little chap with grey eyes. Or were they blue?'

'Purple?' suggested Nate.

Bridgeman sighed. 'Don't be a silly-billy. People don't have purple eyes - he had green eyes, that was it. Ah, he was clever.'

Mrs Wilding stared at Dent, mentally begging his sanity to stay longer. 'That girl with Atimkos mentioned the Doctor. Who is he?'

Was he in the garden with us?' asked Nate. 'Lots of people were there.'

'No,' said Mrs Wilding. She pulled away from them and walked a few paces. 'No, the only people in the garden are others like you two, like Udentkista, people whose minds 183 she has deliberately shredded to try to find her way home.'

She continued pacing, this time in a circle. 'But if you could get in and out, there must be a way. How did you get there?

Was it a nexus? Did you sing it? No, you couldn't have.

How did you manage it?' She rushed over to Nate Simms and sat with him. 'Please tell me, Nate. How did you get into the garden?'

'Easy.'

'Go on, tell her,' egged Bridgeman. 'Tell how we did it.

Then she'll love us more.'

'She already loves me,' said Nate proudly. He smiled at Mrs Wilding. 'You do, don't you? You do love me?'

'Yes, she loves you,' said Dent, but Mrs Wilding put her hand out to quieten him.

'Yes, Nate. Yes, I love you. Both you and Nicky. I love you lots.'

'But me more!' shrieked Nate, scrabbling away. 'Say you love me more!'

'No, she loves me best.' That was Bridgeman who dashed over and pushed Nate on the floor. Mrs Wilding looked at the two grown men - each minute saw them regressing further. Another day or so and they would be adults with totally undeveloped brains, nothing more instinctive than foetuses. Only Dent's power, his singing and the constant battle to produce peptides had stopped him going the same way.

She thought back to their one visit to the garden - a lush, green garden full of rose bushes, conifers and wrought iron gates. Behind the sculptured hedges loomed a marvellous hillock, with a magnificent Gothic folly upon it. Beautiful flowers grew around its base and by standing on tiptoe, you could see out of the garden and almost smell the flowers.

Once one of the poor idiots created by severe mental probing had climbed over the hedge, cutting himself and screaming in pain. Still, he had crawled to the folly, hauling himself up the steps inside. He had got to the top and looked back to where his fellows watched in awe. And where two 184 aliens, Tarwildbaning and Udentkista, had joined in the cheering as he waved.

Then the sky had darkened, the bird song vanished and the winds blew up.

And up.

Trees began to bow under the onslaught and the inmates began screaming, running in pointless circles trying to escape. Heads of flowers snapped off and rain began to fall, turning the ground to mud in seconds. Gra.s.s, instantly destroyed by the running feet, was replaced by swirling pools of muck and then the lightning exploded. Udentkista had bravely tried to calm the inmates while Tarwildbaning had attempted to entice the inmate in the folly to return. He had refused and started yelling about freedom.

Tarwildbaning remembered that he was once a soldier, from an era when the planet was dominated by its people, called Romans. He had shouted something about Jupiter and then vanished as lightning struck the tower. Tarwildbaning was sure that for a brief second she had seen a blackened skeleton standing in the same pose as the lightning faded and almost instantly serenity returned to the garden.

The trees righted. The flowers grew new heads and gra.s.s shoots pushed their way through the solidifying ground.

Udentkista and she had stared in astonishment as the inmates began laughing and cheering. Udentkista had pointed at the hedges - they had grown three feet in height - the folly hidden from view.

Then she had arrived. No one saw her come but she was there, amongst her mentally crippled flock, like some grand mother-figure, touching their hands and foreheads as if that made up for their condition.

Udentkista had said what they both thought. 'If you hadn't been so quick to meddle with their brains, they wouldn't be like this.'

She had smiled. 'I like them like this. They are controllable. One day I shall learn their secrets - learn the paths created by Atimkos and Thorgarsuunela. Find what you two failed to do. One day.'

185.

'One day,' Udentkista had continued, 'one day you will have eradicated all sentient life on this planet and still we'll be trapped here. Be patient - our people will return for us eventually.'

And she had frozen, and then sprung forward, sending disturbed humans flying, weeping and wailing like hurt children. 'You are not recon-leader. I am. What I say is law here.'

'What I say, G.o.dwanna, is that you are totally and utterly insane!' spat Udentkista.

'No . . .' Tarwildbaning had begun, desperately wanting to sing time back, erase those words, but knowing their powers would not work on each other.

Not the useful, constructive powers. Not like the ones used to create the animals, tame the savage men and create a society of trust and belief as they had done thousands of years before.

No, but they could be affected by the darker, s.a.d.i.s.tic, untapped powers of their minds. And before either she or Udentkista could say a thing, G.o.dwanna had lashed out with her hand and poked intangibly into Udentkista's brain, solidifying the tips of her fingers and causing him to scream with more primal, unreasoning anguish and hurt than Tarwildbaning thought it possible for a thinking, rational sentient to manage. He was still shrieking as G.o.dwanna removed her hand, and as Udentkista fell on his face, his mouth chewing into the earth and gra.s.s in autonomic shock, she rammed both intangible hands into his calves, solidifying slightly and moving down both his legs.

Tarwildbaning heard every crack and splinter as G.o.dwanna shattered both his legs, moving her hands slightly sideways every few inches to ensure the breaks were savage and unmendable.

'Never, ever, argue with a recon-leader, Udentkista.

Constructionists are replaceable. Recon-leaders are not.'

And with that she had moved away from him.

G.o.dwanna waved at two of her whimpering r.e.t.a.r.ds. One was a dark-skinned woman from what Tarwildbaning could 186 only guess was the twentieth century (her clothes were clearly synthetic), the other was a man, an Oriental. She hugged them and they smiled. She smiled as well. And with a soft moan, made not only her hands intangible but their heads. She rolled the heads together and then solidified them. The humans barely had more than a few seconds to scream before they died of ma.s.sive internal haemorrhaging but the effect on the others in the garden was instant. They went silent. 'No more badness,' G.o.dwanna said simply and dropped the bodies to the floor.

Eagerly, like admonished children seeking approval, they nodded and darted in different directions to play - the Roman outside, the two corpses and the slowly moaning Udentkista forgotten. The sun was shining again, the birds began singing.

Tarwildbaning never saw G.o.dwanna again.

But she swore that if she ever did, she would kill her.

Then she found herself dressed in rags, her skin darkened and her face feeling differently formed, standing amidst nothing but red sand under a scorching sun. Beside her, still moaning, physically changed but just recognizable through the distorted features, was Udentkista. She knelt beside him and rolled him on to his back.

And his eyes cried insanity.

The ship was a ma.s.s of activity. When the shuttle's reappearance in s.p.a.ce and time had been reported, engineering officer Aall, second-litter, first-sired, was third in command of the ship; but as both Queen Aysha and first-litter, first-sired Chosan had gone to the planet, Aall was given the responsibility of running the ship and crew.

She was also aware that some members of the crew, notably the more aggressive members of the third-litter, were openly disrespectful of their mother. Aall was no fool - she knew that queens could not always curry favour with their litters, but it had been tactical officer Lotuss that had stirred up the problems. Litter-runts from any litter were renowned for their unsuitability for senior tasks, but as a 187 fighter Lotuss had proved herself again and again. Queen Aysha clearly admired that but in Aall's opinion, that admiration might be a mistake. Even members of the first-litter, such as Jayde, had gone over to Lotuss's way of thinking. Aall decided to await their return before making any hasty decisions about her loyalties. Queen Aysha and first-sired Chosan may already be fur-bagged, and if Lotuss had been responsible she would undoubtedly proclaim herself a new queen.

'Shuttle approaching, engineer,' said the helm, Nypp.