“That’s better,” Quinn said. “Imran, put Lawrence down in the chair, then search out the boots in this house, as many pairs as you can find. We’re gonna need ’em. Got a long way to go.”

Loren saw the young Ivet with the ruined feet being lowered into one of the chairs around the square kitchen table. His face was grey, sweating profusely.

“You just find me some bandages and some boots, I’ll be all right,” Lawrence said. “Really, Quinn, I’ll be fine.”

Quinn caressed his forehead, fingers teasing back the damp strands of blond hair. “I know. That was a hell of a run out here. You did great, Lawrence. Really. You’re the best.”

Loren saw Lawrence look up at Quinn, reverence in the lad’s eyes. She saw Quinn slide a fission blade from his shorts. She tried to say something as the blade came alive in a burst of yellow light, but only a gurgle emerged from her throat.

Quinn sank the blade into the nape of Lawrence’s neck, angling it upwards so it penetrated the brain. “The very best,” he whispered. “God’s Brother will welcome you into the Night.”

Paula opened her mouth in a silent wail as Lawrence’s body slid down onto the floor. Loren started to sob quietly.

“Shit, Quinn!” Irley protested.

“What? We’ve got to get out of here, yesterday. You saw his feet; he would have held us up. That way we all get caught. That what you want?”

“No,” Irley mumbled lamely.

“It was quicker than what they would have done to him,” Quinn said half to himself.

“You did the right thing,” Jackson Gael said. He turned back to Paula and grinned broadly. She whimpered, trying to push herself further back into the corner. He grabbed her hair and pulled her up.

“We don’t have time,” Quinn said mildly.

“Sure we do. I won’t be long.”

Loren tried to pick herself off the floor as Paula’s screams began again.

“Naughty,” Quinn said. His boot caught her on the side of the temple. She flopped onto her back like a broken mechanoid, incapable of movement. Her vision was fuzzy, shapes were obscured behind blotches of grey. But she saw Quinn take Paula’s rifle off the wall, calmly check the power level, and shoot Frank. He turned round, and aimed the barrel at her.

The recall whistle sounded sharply through the jungle. Scott Williams sighed and picked himself off the ground, brushing dead leaves from his threadbare jump suit.

The arseholes! He was sure that had been a danderil rustling through the undergrowth up ahead. Well, he’d never know now.

“Wonder what’s happened?” Alex Fitton said.

“Dunno,” Scott replied. He didn’t mind Alex too much. The man was twenty-eight, and he was happy enough to talk to an Ivet. He knew some good filthy jokes too. Scott had hunted with him regularly.

The whistle sounded again.

Alex grunted. “Come on.”

They trudged towards the sound. Several other pairs of hunters appeared out of the trees, all of them walking towards the insistent whistle. Queries were shouted to and fro. Nobody knew why they were being called in. The whistle was supposed to be for injuries and the end of the day.

Scott was surprised to see a big group of people lined up waiting at the top of a steepish earth mound, there were about forty or fifty of them. They must have come out from the village. He saw Rai Molvi standing in front of them, blowing the whistle for all he was worth. He was very conscious of all those eyes on him as he and Alex Fitton made their way up the incline.

There was a large qualtook tree straddling the brow of the mound. One of its thick lower branches overhung the slope on the other side. Three silicon-fibre ropes had been slung over it.

The group of villagers parted silently, forming an alley towards the tree. Definitely worried now, Scott walked through them and saw what was hanging from the ropes. Jemima had been the last, she was still choking and kicking. Her face was purple, eyes bulging.

He tried to run, but they shot him in the thigh with a laser pulse, and dragged him back. It was Alex Fitton who pulled the noose tight around his neck. Tears ran down his cheeks as he did it, but then Alex had been Roger Chadwick’s brother-in-law.

The run back to his homestead had nearly killed Gerald Skibbow. He had been returning anyway when he saw the smoke, tugging the errant sheep along on a leash. Orlando, the Skibbow family’s Alsatian, bounded about through the long grass in high spirits. He knew he’d done well following the sheep’s scent. Gerald smiled indulgently at his antics. He was almost fully grown now. Oddly enough it was Loren who was the best at training him.

Gerald had traipsed across what had seemed like half of the savannah that morning. He couldn’t believe how far the damn sheep had strayed in just a few hours. They had eventually found it bleating at the end of a steep-walled gully about three kilometres from the homestead. He was just grateful that sayce kept to the jungle. They had never had any trouble from the kroclions which were supposed to roam the grassland, a few distant glimpses of sleek bodies in the grass, some night-time roars.

Then when he was a couple of kilometres from home that terrible blue-white streamer of smoke twisted idly into the sky ahead of him, its root hidden beyond the horizon. He stared at it in cold fear. All the other homesteads were kilometres away, and there was only one possible source. It was like watching his own life’s blood pouring up into the cloudless azure heavens. The homestead was everything, he’d invested his life in it, there was no other future.

“Loren!” he called. He let go of the sheep’s leash and started to run. “Paula!” The laser rifle banged against his side. He slung it away. Orlando barked urgently, picking up on his master’s agitation.

It was the grass, the bloody grass. It clung to his pounding legs, hindering him. Rucks and folds in the ground kept tripping him. He fell headlong, grazing his hands, knocking his knee. It didn’t matter. He picked himself up and kept on running. Again and again.

The savannah sucked sounds away from him. The slashing of the grass on his dungarees trousers, his laboured panting, the grunts each time he fell. All of them soaked away into the hot, still air as though it fed on them, hungry for the slightest noise.

The last two hundred yards were the worst. He topped a small rise, and the homestead was revealed to him. Only the skeleton remained upright, sturdy black timbers swathed by shooting flames. The slats and roof planks had already burnt through, peeling off like putrid skin to lie in crumbling strips around the base.

The animals had scattered. Panicked by the heat and roaring flames they had butted their way through the stockade fence. They had run for a hundred metres or so until their immediate fear slackened, then wandered about aimlessly. He could see the horse and a couple of pigs over by the pool, drinking unconcernedly. Others were dotted about among the grass.

There was no other movement. No people. He gaped numbly. Where were Frank and Loren and Paula? And the Ivet work team; they should all be trying to put out the fire.

With legs like weights of dead meat, and breath burning in his lungs, he ran the last length in a daze. A bright golden rain of sparks swirled high into the sky. The homestead’s frame gave one harrowed creak, and buckled in on itself with a series of jerks.

Gerald let out a single wretched wail as the last timbers crashed down. He slowed to a halt fifteen metres from the wreckage. “Loren? Paula? Frank? Where are you?” The cry was snatched up with the sparks. Nobody answered. He was too frightened to go over to the remnants of the homestead. Then he heard Orlando whine softly. He walked up to the dog.

It was Paula. Darling Paula, the little girl who would sit on his lap in their apartment back in the arcology and try to pull his nose, giggling wildly. Who grew up into a lovely young woman possessed of a quiet dignified strength. Who had bloomed out here in this venturesome land.