“I don’t know. I want to fight this; going means Grant has won.”

“It’s not a battle, it’s a matter of the heart.”

“Whose heart?” he whispered painfully.

“Excuse me,” Lionel said. “Have you considered that the people possessing your daughters might not be exactly welcoming? What were you planning on doing anyway? It’s not as if you can exorcise them and go walking off into a sunset. They’ll be as alien to you as you are to them.”

“They’re not alien to me,” Luca said. He sprang up from the chair, his whole body twitchy. “Damn it, I cannot stop worrying about them.”

“We’re all succumbing to our hosts,” Lionel said. “The easiest course is to acknowledge that, at least you’ll have some peace then. Are you prepared to do that?”

“I don’t know,” Luca ground out. “I just don’t.”

Carmitha ran her fingers along the woman’s arm, probing the structure of bone and muscle and tendon. Her eyes were closed as she performed the examination, her mind concentrated on the swirl of foggy radiance that was the flesh. It wasn’t just tactile feeling she relied on, cells formed distinct bands of shade, as if she was viewing a very out-of-focus medical text of the human body. Fingertips moved on half an inch, she pushed each one in carefully, as if she were stroking piano keys. Searching an entire body this way took over an hour, and even then it was hardly a hundred per cent effective. Only the surface was inspected. There were a great many cancers which could affect the organs, glands, and marrow; subtle monsters that would go unnoticed until it was far, far too late.

Something moved sideways under her forefinger. She played with it, testing its motion. A hard node, as if a small stone was embedded below the skin. Her mind’s vision perceived it as a white blur, sprouting a fringe of wispy tendrils that swam out into the surrounding tissue. “Another one,” she said.

The woman’s gasp was almost a sob. Carmitha had learned the hard way not to hide anything from her patients. Invariably, they knew of the spike of alarm in her own thoughts.

“I’m going to die,” the woman whimpered. “All of us are dying, rotting away. It’s our punishment for escaping the beyond.”

“Nonsense, these bodies are geneered, which makes them highly resistant to cancer. Once you stop aggravating it with energistic power it should sink into remission.” Her stock verbal placebo, repeated so many times in the days since Butterworth’s collapse that she’d begun to believe it herself.

Carmitha continued the examination, moving past the elbow. It was just a formality now. The woman’s thighs had been the worst; lumps like a cluster of walnuts where she’d driven away flab to give herself an adolescent glamour-queen’s rump. Fear had broken the instinct and desire for sublime youthful splendour. The unnatural punishment of her cells would end. Maybe the tumours really would go into remission.

Luca came knocking on the side of the caravan just as Carmitha was finishing. She told him to stay outside, and waited until the woman had put her clothes back on.

“It’ll be all right,” she said, and hugged her. “You just have to be you now, and be strong.”

“Yes,” came the dismal answer.

It wasn’t a time for lectures, Carmitha decided. Let her get over the shock first. Afterwards she could learn how to express her inner strength, fortifying herself. Carmitha’s grandmother used to place a lot of emphasis on thinking yourself well. “A weak mind lets in the germs.”

Luca carefully avoided meeting the woman’s tearful eyes as she came down out of the caravan, standing sheepishly to one side.

“Another one?” he asked after she went into the manor.

“Yep,” Carmitha said. “Mild case, this time.”

“Jolly good.”

“Not really. So far we’ve just seen the initial tumours develop. I’m just praying that your natural high resistance can keep them in check. If not, the next stage is metastasis, when the cancer cells start spreading through the body. Once that happens, it’s over.” She just managed to keep her resentment in check; the landowners and town dwellers were descended from geneered colonists, the Romanies had shunned such things.

He shook his head, too stubborn to argue. “How’s Johan?”

“His weight’s creeping back up, which is good. I’ve got him walking again, and given him some muscle-building exercises—also good. And he’s abandoned his body illusions completely. But the tumours are still there. At the moment his body is still too weak to fight them. I’m hoping that if we can get his general health level up, then his natural defences will kick in.”

“Is he fit enough to help run the estate?”

“Don’t even consider it. In a couple of weeks, I’ll probably ask him to help in my herb garden. That’s the most strenuous work therapy I’ll allow.”

Nothing he did could hide the disappointment in his mind.

“Why?” she asked in suspicion. “What did you want him to do that for? I thought the old estate was working smoothly. I can hardly notice the difference.”

“Just an option I’m considering, that’s all.”

“An option? You’re leaving?” The notion startled her.

“Thinking of it,” he said gruffly. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t. But I don’t understand, where will you go?”

“To find the girls.”

“Oh, Grant,” she laid her hand on his arm, instantly sympathetic. “They’ll be all right. Even if Louise got possessed, no soul is going to alter her appearance, she’s too gorgeous.”

“I’m not Grant.” He glanced round the courtyard, twitchy and suspicious. “Talk about having an inner demon, though. God, you must be loving this.”

“Oh yeah, having a ball, me.”

“Sorry.”

“How many have you got?” she asked quietly.

There was a long pause before he answered. “Some down my chest. Arms. Feet, for Christ’s sake.” He grunted in disgust. “I never imagined my feet to be anything different. Why are they there?”

Carmitha hated his genuine puzzlement; Grant’s possessor was making her feel far too sympathetic towards him. “There’s no logic to these things.”

“Not many people know what’s happening, not outside Cricklade. That trader fellow, Lionel: hasn’t got a clue. I envy him that. But it won’t last, people like Johan must be dropping like flies all across the planet. When everyone realises, things are going to fall apart real fast. That’s why I wanted to start the voyage soon. If we have a second wave of anarchy, I might never find where the girls are.”

“We should get some real doctors in to take a look at you. That white fire could be used to burn the tumours away. We’ve all got X-ray sight now. No reason why it couldn’t. Maybe we don’t even need to be that drastic, you can just wish the cells dead.”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not like you, either of you. Don’t just sit around on your arse, find out. Get a doctor in. Massage and tea won’t help much in the long run, and that’s all I can provide. You can’t leave now, Luca, people accept you as the boss. Use what influence you’ve got to try and salvage this situation. Get them through this cancer scare.”

He let out a long reluctant sigh, then tilted his head, looking at her out of one eye. “You still think the Confederation’s coming to save you, don’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

“They’ll never find us. They’ve got two universes to search through.”

“Believe what you have to. I know what’s going to happen.”

“Friendly enemies, huh? You and me?”

“Some things never change, no matter what.”

He was saved from trying to get in a cutting reply by a stable hand running out into the courtyard, yelling that a messenger was coming from the town. He and Carmitha went through the kitchen and out through the manor’s main entrance.

A woman was riding a white horse up the drive. The pattern of thoughts locked inside her skull was familiar enough to both of them: Marcella Rye. Her horse’s gallop was matched by the excitement and trepidation in her mind.