Michael regarded him. “God hath poured this confused nation from vessel to vessel, until He poured it into my lap. Perhaps it is divine providence that brings you here.”

McCann smiled. “Providence, by God’s dispensation. Indeed.”

Praisegod Michael turned to Malenfant. “And what of this one? His eye is defiant, his accent strange. What is your religion, man? Popish? Atheistical?”

McCann said quickly, “His faith is as strong as mine.”

Michael smiled thinly. “Then perhaps he will have the courage to say it for himself.” He seemed to come to a decision. “You are right. There are few enough decent men here. But can I trust you?… Tomorrow we hunt. Accompany me, and we will talk further.” He knelt before his altar, his eyes closed.

Sprigge motioned Malenfant and McCann to follow him out of the room.

Back in their crude hut, McCann seemed excited. “He is English — that is clear enough — but I would say that his history must have split off from our own no later than our seventeenth century… Perhaps you number your dates differently. Well, it looks as if the Zealots have been here since then. But they seem to have made no significant progress, socially or mechanically, since those days…”

Malenfant said sourly, “What difference does it make?”

“We understood each other, Malenfant. Don’t you see? Myself and this Praisegod. His is a faith which has much in common with my own. He spoke of providences. Through providences, you see, God intervenes in the world, to make His will visible. And I have no doubt that Praisegod will count himself among the Elect that is, those who are already destined to be saved — but he has surely been cast in a world of Reprobates, the already damned.” He smiled, and his eyes glinted in the dark. “I understand him. I can do business with this man.”

Malenfant frowned. “But his ‘business’ seems to be to enslave those he regards as lesser than him.”

“Ah, but that’s the delicious irony of it all, Malenfant — oh, but I forget, you slept and did not see — I spied a man coming out of the Runner bawdy-house, his trousers dangling around his knees. A more unspeakable wretch you never saw. But I could make out clearly that he had a tail. Malenfant, our grandiloquent Praisegod Michael, the saviour of the world, has a monkey’s tail!”

After a minute, Malenfant began to laugh. McCann joined in. Once they started, they couldn’t stop.

Joshua:

Joshua and Mary, breathing hard, stepped gingerly over crushed branches and uprooted shrubs. They reached the edge of the cliff and peered down. The sky seed still lay where it had fallen, when they had pushed it over the cliff: trapped well below the lip of the cliff, pinned by a ledge and a thick knot of shrubbery.

Joshua grinned. Every few days he had come clambering up the trail to this battered clearing, to see again what they had done to the sky seed.

The seed was safe here. The feeble muscles of the Zealots would never succeed in hauling this prize up from such a place — and the Nutcracker-folk, though good climbers, were surely too stupid even to envisage such a thing. Only the People of the Grey Earth, with their brains and powerful bodies, could retrieve the sky seed from where it rested, pinned against the cliff’s grey breast -

Voices screamed, all around them.

They whirled, shocked.

There were only trees and bushes and leaves, some of them shaking violently, as if in a wind, though there was no wind.

From nowhere a spear flew. It lanced into Joshua’s shoulder, neatly puncturing it through.

He was knocked back. He fell on the spear. It twisted, and there was savage pain.

And now something new descended over him, a thing of ropes and threads knotted together, that tangled up his legs and arms and head.

Leaves and twigs fell away, and suddenly there were people: men, all around them. They were Skinnies. They carried spears and knives that glinted. Still screaming, they threw themselves forward. It had all happened in a heartbeat, overwhelming, bewildering. The Zealots had just melted out of the trees: one instant they were not there, the next they were there, an overwhelming magic beyond Joshua’s experience.

Their blows and kicks were feeble, but there were many of them, and they clung to Joshua’s limbs while punching his stomach and chest and head. He heard Mary cry out, an angry, fearful roar.

“…Looks like Tobias was right. A fine old pair we trapped here!”

“Wrap up yon buck and give us a hand with the maid, will you? She’s struggling like a bear…”

Joshua lay passively, defeated by shock as much as the spear, peering up at the indifferent sun. He saw that the men had got Mary on the ground, and had ripped open her skins.

“By the tears of the Lord—”

“Get her legs. Get her legs.”

“The buck is for the minister. This one’s for us, eh, lads?”

“Face like a bear but the tits of an angel. She’s going to take a bit of stilling, though…”

Joshua came to himself. With a bellow he wrenched himself over, rolling onto his belly. Zealots, yelling, went flying. For a moment he was free of their weight and their blows. But the spear ground into the dirt, opening his wound wider, and he cried out.

But Joshua’s struggle had distracted Mary’s attackers, and she had got one arm loose. With a fist more massive than any Skinny’s, she pounded at the temple of one of her assailants. Joshua heard the crunch of bone; a Zealot went down.

“God’s wounds. Peter — Peter!”

“Get her, lads!—”

Mary struggled to her feet, her ripped skins swinging, her small breasts glistening with blood. She had her back to the forest. The men, all save the fallen one, made a half-circle to face her, wielding their weapons. Their lust had been replaced by caution, Joshua saw, for even a half-mature Ham girl, if free, was more than a match for any one of the Skinnies.

But she could not defeat them all.

With a last, regretful glance at Joshua, she turned and crashed into the trees. Though she made an immense racket, she had soon disappeared, and Joshua knew that the Zealots could not follow her.

He let his head slump to the blood-soaked ground beneath his face.

A shadow crossed him. “This is for Peter.”

A boot hurtled at his face.

Reid Malenfant:

The morning after their capture, Malenfant and McCann found their door was not barred, no guard posted.

They crept out into light still tinged grey with dawn.

Already the business of the day was starting. Runners and Hams were working silently to sweep the ground clear of yesterday’s debris, and to fill the water casks that sat outside each hut. It was strange to see specimens of Homo neandertalensis and Erectus dressed in crudely sewn parodies of clothing, their heads and bodies strikingly misshapen in the uncertain dawn light, coming and going as they pursued their chores. It was like a mockery of a human township.

Away from the Zealots, neither Hams nor Runners made any attempt to use human language; they simply got through their work with steady dullness, united in blank misery.

There was a specialized group of Runners who were used solely to carry passengers. Some of them wore primitive harnesses. But these unfortunates were stooped, with over-developed shoulders and necks, and what looked like permanent curves to their backs. Their shoulders and thighs bore bright red weals.

Malenfant said, “Look at those scars. These Zealot jockeys don’t spare the whip.”

McCann grunted, impatient. “Have you much experience in the husbandry of animals, Malenfant? None of them look terribly old, do they? — I would wager that under excessive loading their bodies break down rather rapidly once the flush of youth is over.

“But the whip is surely necessary. In Africa I knew a man who tried to train elephants. You may know that while your Indian elephant has been tamed by the locals for centuries, your African runs wild. My acquaintance struggled to master his elephants, even though he imported experienced mahouts from India; freedom runs in the blood of those African tuskers, and they are far more intelligent than, say, a horse.”