“This spreading your mind around gimmick, would I have to give up my belief?” he asked.

Laton gave him a thin smile. “Your belief would be amplified, safeguarded against loss in your multiple units, and carried down the centuries. You could even step out of the shadows to exhort your belief. What difference would it make if individual units were flung in jail or executed? The you that is you would remain.”

“And sex, I’d still have sex, wouldn’t I?”

“Yes, with one small difference, every gene would be dominant. Every child you sired would be another of your units.”

“How far along are you with this parallel-processor brain? Have you actually grown one to see if it works?”

“A numerical simulacrum has been run through a bitek processor array. The analysis program proved its validity. It’s a standard technique; the one Edenist geneticists used to design the voidhawks. They work, don’t they?”

“Sure. Look, I’m interested. I can hardly deny that. God’s Brother, living for ever, who wouldn’t want it? Tell you what, I won’t make any move to get back to Earth until after these clones of yours have popped out the exowombs. If they check out as good as you say, I’ll be with you like a shot. If not, we’ll review where we stand. Fuck, I don’t mind waiting around a few years if that’s what it takes to perfect it.”

“Commendable prudence,” Laton purred.

“Meantime, it’d be a good idea to bugger up Supervisor Manani’s communicator block. For both our sakes. However it turns out, neither of us wants the villagers shouting to the capital for help. Can you let me have a flek loaded with some kind of processor-buster virus? If I just smash it, he’s gonna know it’s me.”

Anname walked in carrying a tray with Quinn’s steak, and a half-litre glass of milk. She put it down on Quinn’s lap, and glanced hesitantly at Laton.

“No, my dear,” Laton told her. “This is definitely not St George come to spirit you away from my fire-breathing self.”

She sniffed hard, cheeks reddening.

Quinn grinned wolfishly at her round a mouthful of steak.

“I think I can live with that arrangement,” Laton said. “I’ll have one of my people prepare a flek for you before you go.”

Quinn slurped some of his milk, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Great.”

There was something wrong with Aberdale’s church. Only half of the pews had ever been built and installed, though Horst Elwes occasionally worked on the planks of planed wood the Ivets had cut ready for the remainder. He doubted the three pews he had already assembled in the occasional bouts of shame-induced activity would take the weight of more than four people. But the roof didn’t leak, there was the familiarity of hymn books and vestments, the paraphernalia of worship, and he had a vast collection of devotional music on fleks which the audio-player block projected across the building. For all its deviant inception, it still symbolized a form of hope. Of late, it had become his refuge. Hallowed ground or not, and Horst wasn’t stupid enough to think that was any form of protection, the Ivets never came inside.

But something had.

Horst stood in front of the bench which served as an altar, hair on his arms pricked up as though he was standing in some kind of massive static stream. There was a presence in the church, ethereal yet with an almost brutal strength. He could feel it watching him. He could feel age almost beyond comprehension. The first time Horst had seen a gigantea he had spent over an hour just looking up at it in stupefaction, a living thing that had been old when Christ walked the Earth. But the gigantea was nothing compared to this, the tree was a mere infant. Age, real age, was a fearful thing.

Horst didn’t believe in ghosts. Besides, the presence was too real for that. It enervated the church, absorbing what scant ration of divinity had once existed.

“What are you?” he whispered to the gentle breeze. Night was falling outside, waving treetops cast a jagged sable-black silhouette against the gold-pink sky. The men were returning from the fields, sweaty and tired, but smiling. Voices carried through the clearing. Aberdale was so peaceful, it looked like everything he had wanted when he left Earth.

“What are you?” Horst demanded. “This is a church, a house of God. I will have no sacrilege committed here. Only those who truly repent are welcome.”

For a giddy moment his thoughts were rushing headlong through empty space. The velocity was terrifying. He yelled in shock, there was nothing around him, no body, no stars. This was what he imagined the null-dimension that existed outside a starship would look like while it jumped.

Abruptly, he was back in the church. A small ruby star burnt in the air a couple of metres in front of him.

He stared at it in shock, then giggled. “Twinkle twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are.”

The star vanished.

His laughter turned to a strangled pule. He fled out into the dusky clearing, stumbling through the soft loam of his vegetable garden, heedless of the shabby plants he trampled.

It was his singing which drew the villagers a few hours later. He was sitting on the jetty with a bottle of home-brew vodka. The group that had gathered looked down at him with contempt.

“Demons!” Horst shouted when Powel Manani and a couple of the others pulled him to his feet. “They’ve only gone and summoned bloody demons here.”

Ruth gave him one disgusted glance, and stalked off back to her cabin.

Horst was dragged back to his cot, where they administered one of his own tranquillizers. He fell asleep still mumbling warnings.

The Ly-cilph was interested in humans. Out of the hundred and seventy million sentient species it had encountered, only three hundred thousand had been able to perceive it, either by technology or their own mentalities.

The priest had clearly been aware of its identity focus, although not understanding the nature. Humans obviously had a rudimentary attunement to their energistic environment. It searched through the records it had compiled by accessing the few processor blocks and memory fleks available in Aberdale, which mostly comprised the educational texts owned by Ruth Hilton. The so-called psychic ability was largely dismissed as hallucinatory or fraud committed for financial gain. However the race had a vast history of incidents and myths in its past. And its strong continuing religious beliefs were an indication of how widespread the faculty was, granting the “supernatural” events a respectable orthodoxy. There was obviously a great deal of potential for energistic perception development, which was inhibited by the rational mentality. The conflict was a familiar one to the Ly-cilph, although it had no record of a race in which the two opposing natures were quite so antagonistic.

What do you think?laton asked his colleagues when the door closed behind Quinn Dexter.

He’s a psychopathic little shit, with a nasty steak of sadism thrown in,said waldsey, the group’s chief viral technologist.

Dexter is certainly unstable,camilla said. I don’t think you can trust him to keep any agreement. His revenge obsession with this Banneth person is the dominant motivator. Our immortality scheme is unlikely to replace it; too cerebral.

I say we should eliminate him,salkid said.

I’m inclined to agree,laton said. Pity. It’s rather like watching a miniature version of one’s self.

You were never that gratuitous, Father,camilla said.

Given the circumstances, I might have been. However, that is an irrelevant speculation. Our immediate problem is our own security. One can reasonably assume Quinn Dexter has informed most, if not all, of his fellow Ivets that something wicked lurks in the woods. That is going to make life difficult.