‘They were found to be unguidely and discovered in the practice of conjury,’ said Old Winnowner. ‘We placed them in the compter.’

‘You locked them up?’ asked Rory. ‘You locked the Doctor and Amy up? That’s a really bad idea.’

‘They are his friends!’ Vesta broke in. ‘He was travelling with them. Travelling here to well-wish us at the time of festival!’

‘They were miscreants sent to—’ Winnowner began.

‘Travelling from where?’ asked Bill Groan, cutting her short.

‘Rory and his friends come from a plantnation that we have not heard of,’ said Vesta.

‘That’s not possible!’ said Bill Groan.

‘It’s unguidely!’ cried Winnowner.

‘It’s the truth!’ replied Vesta. The voices around the hall had become quite a hubbub. ‘What is your plantnation called again, Rory?’

‘Leadworth. It’s called Leadworth.’

‘This is nonsense and it is against Guide’s way!’ said Chaunce Plowrite.

‘Look, I don’t mean to cause trouble,’ said Rory, trying to impose some calm. ‘Where I come from doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that there’s something out there. Something in the woods. And it’s dangerous. You’ve got to prepare to defend yourselves.’

‘What thing?’ asked Jack Duggat.

‘I got separated from my friends, and it attacked me,’

said Rory.

‘It has red eyes!’ announced Vesta.

‘It has red eyes,’ Rory agreed. ‘It attacked Vesta too.

It’s very dangerous. I ran away from it. I had to escape.

That’s when I met Vesta.’

‘Why should we believe you?’ asked Chaunce Plowrite. Several members of the congregation echoed him.

‘Because it’s dangerous!’ said Rory. ‘I saw it attack some men. I think they were from here. It attacked them. It hurt them.’

‘What were their names?’ asked Winnowner.

‘I don’t know! We hadn’t been introduced.’

‘What did they look like?’ Ela Seed demanded.

‘I… I… They looked like they came from here.’

‘Was one of them my husband?’ asked Lane Cutter.

‘I don’t know!’

‘It hurt them, you say?’ asked Bill Groan.

‘Did it kill them?’ asked Ela Seed frantically. ‘Are they dead?’

The clamour was becoming quite intense.

Morphans closed on Rory from all sides. They were angry and upset, reaching out to him.

‘Get back there!’ Sol Farrow told them. ‘Mind him!

Get away!’

‘Leave him be!’ Vesta yelled.

‘Calm yourselves! Calm yourselves!’ Bill Groan shouted over the din, pushing his way through the milling crowd. ‘This is unseemly! Be calm now or I will have the assembly cleared! This will not do!

Leave him be!’

The crowd would not be hushed. It was turning very ugly. People were pushing and shoving to get at Rory.

‘You should not treat him so!’ Vesta yelled at them.

‘He is our guest, and a friend! You should not treat a Nurse Elect in this manner!’

Bill Groan heard her over the row. ‘He’s what?’ Bill looked at Sol and Jack.

The two men nodded and grabbed Rory and Vesta.

They began to bundle them through the angry, mobbing crowd, heading for the rear of the assembly hall. People started to protest. They threw punches and grabbed.

Old Winnowner was waiting at the back for them.

She had taken out the key, which she wore on a ribbon around her neck, and used it to open the padlock to the back doors of the hall. Jack and Sol brought Rory and Vesta through, followed by Winnowner and Bill Groan.

Bill and the old woman bolted the doors behind them to keep the mob back. Morphans started shouting and banging at the doors.

Rory look around. They’d come through into a large wooden antechamber behind the main hall. There were clerestory lights high up by the roof, and rush matting on the wooden floor. On the far side of the room was an ornate door made of what the Morphans called shipskin. It was set in a complex frame, and reminded Rory of some kind of futuristic airlock or submarine hatch.

‘We can be calm here for a moment,’ said Bill Groan.

‘Where is here?’ asked Rory, shaking off Sol’s grip.

‘It’s the outer room of Guide’s place,’ said Old Winnowner.

‘What’s that?’ asked Rory, pointing at the metal hatch.

‘That’s the door to the Incrypt,’ said Vesta. That’s where Guide’s words live. Only the council go in there.’

‘Stop asking questions and answer some,’ said Bill to Rory. ‘She said you are a Nurse. Is that true? You are a Nurse Elect?’

‘Yes, I… yes. Yes, I am’ said Rory.

‘Then I greet you, one Nurse Elect to another,’ said Bill Groan with touching formality.

‘It is a lie or a trick,’ said Winnowner. ‘Those others, whom he admits to knowing, said they were from Seeside, and they bore conjury to convince us so - ‘

‘Maybe there are things we don’t know about!’

snapped Vesta.

The Morphans looked at her.

‘I’m saying, maybe there are,’ she said. ‘Don’t look at me so. I don’t hardly know what Rory is, except that he is nice and kind, and I don’t know about his friends either, but I do know there is something in the woods outside the plantnation that is most angry and dangerous, and I know it is not mentioned anywhere in Guide’s teaching. So what do we do about it? Do we just pretend it does not exist because Guide has no!

spoken of it?’

‘Guide gives us rules to live by for our own good, Vesta,’ Winnowner said.

‘The thing in the woods proves one matter, Winnowner,’ Vesta told the old woman. ‘It proves there are things in this world Hereafter that are more than are in Guide’s words. The thing is one, Rory may be one too, also his friends and whatever plantnation they come from. I ask you, do we stand there accusing them of being unguidely, or do we do something about them?’

‘We could prove it,’ said Bill Groan quietly.

‘What now?’ asked Winnowner.

‘You know that, Winnowner,’ he said. ‘We have both been taught it. We know Guide’s doctrines, and the schema of words that instructs the Morphans. Our Guide Emanual will recognise and identify those things that belong to Guide. Only the true unguidely will remain strangers and unknown. If… Rory here is truly a Nurse Elect, then Guide will know him. Guide knows his own.’

‘What are you suggesting, Elect?’ asked Winnowner.

‘You know what I’m suggesting,’ said Bill.

Winnowner shook her head. ‘Elect, this is the threshold of the Incrypt, our most precious place. Only the most worthy and maintained of Morphan kind can pass this way and be received of Guide’s words.’

‘My point exactly,’ said Bill Groan. ‘Let Rory prove himself.’

The knocking at the doors and the clamour of voices was not abating. Winnowner looked Rory up and down.

‘This isn’t going to be some kind of… trial by combat, is it?’ Rory asked warily. ‘Or, by sharks or spiders or something? If there’s a pit or a cage involved, or a choice of weapons, I’m really not up for it. Especially if there’s baying and jeering going on too.’

‘Nothing like that,’ said Bill Groan. He walked over to the metal hatch. ‘Come over here, Rory,’ he said, beckoning.

Rory walked up to him in a slightly unwilling manner.

Bill Groan pointed. There was a flat panel of matt silver metal set into the hatch frame on the right-hand side. It was about the size of a hardback book and it was built in at door-handle height.

‘That’s the chequer,’ he said. ‘It knows the touch of those that are worthy and, through it, Guide knows us.’

Bill placed his palm flat on the panel. A neon glow travelled up the metal under his hand. There was a click, and then a hiss, and then the hatch opened.

Clean, cool air breathed out at them. Through the open hatch, Rory could see some sort of chamber bathed in a bluish neon illumination.

‘The Incrypt opens to my hand,’ said Bill. He touched the panel again. The hatch closed as gently as it had opened.

‘It’s a palm reader,’ said Rory. ‘It’s biometric. It’s reading your handprint, or maybe your genetic pattern.’