“Definitely not,” Janne Palmer told him. “At least not any heavy-calibre hardware, anyway. She’s wearing a jacket, so she could be concealing a small pistol inside it.”

“Not that it makes any difference if she’s possessed. We’ve not seen them use a weapon yet.”

“Quite.”

“Dumb question, but is she alive?”

“Yes. We can see her chest moving when she breathes, and her infrared signature is optimum.”

“She’s some kind of bait, do you think?”

“No, too obvious. I’d guess some kind of sentry, except they must know we’re here. Several squads have skirmished while we were setting up the perimeter.”

“Hell, you mean they’re loose in the woods?”

“ ’Fraid so. Which means I can’t confirm that all the possessed are inside the cordon. I’ve requested some more troops from Admiral Farquar to start searching the locality. The request is up before the security committee as we speak.”

Ralph cursed silently. Possessed roaming around in this area would be nigh on impossible to track down. The Mortonridge countryside was a rugged nightmare. Pity we haven’t got any affinity-bonded hounds, he thought. The ones he’d seen the settlement supervisors use back on Lalonde would have been perfect for the job. And I can just see Jannike Dermot’s face if I make that suggestion to the security committee. But . . . hell, they’re what we need.

“Ralph, one moment please,” Colonel Palmer datavised. “We’ve run an ident check on our lady sentry. It’s confirmed, she’s Angeline Gallagher.”

“Hell. That changes everything.”

“Yes. Opinion here is that she’s wanting to talk. She’s not stupid. Allowing herself to be seen like this must be their equivalent of a white flag.”

“I expect you’re right.” Ralph gave the platoon’s lieutenant an order to halt their advance while the security committee came on line. The marines formed themselves into a defensive circle, scanning the trees and the nearby houses with their most basic sensors. Ralph let his automatic rifle hang at his side as he squatted in the middle of some thick marloop bushes. He had a terrible intimation that Gallagher (or rather her possessor) wasn’t about to lay out some convenient terms of surrender. There never can be surrender between us, he acknowledged gloomily.

So what could she want to say?

“Mr Hiltch, we concur with Colonel Palmer that the woman wants to negotiate,” Princess Kirsten datavised. “I know it’s a lot to ask after all you’ve been through, but I’d like you to go in there and talk to her.”

“We can set up SD ground-strike coverage to support you,” Deborah Unwin datavised. “Put you in the eye of a hurricane, so to speak. Any tricks or attempts to overwhelm you, and we’ll laser out a two-hundred-metre circle with you at the centre. We know they can’t withstand the SD platform’s power levels.”

“It’s all right,” Ralph told his invisible audience. “I’ll go in. After all, I was the one who brought her here.”

Strangely enough, Ralph didn’t think of very much at all when he was walking the last five hundred metres along the road. All he wanted to do now was get the job over. The road which had started at the mouth of a titanic river on a different, distant planet finished inside a pretty rural town on the rump of nowhere. If there was an irony to be had in those circumstances, Ralph couldn’t taste it.

Angeline Gallagher’s possessor waited calmly outside the cheap single-storey diner as he walked towards her. Dean, Will, and Cathal accompanied him for most of the way; then when they were still a hundred metres away from her he told them to wait and carried on alone. Nothing moved in any of the simple, elegant buildings which lined the link road. But he knew they were waiting behind the walls and blanked windows. The conviction grew inside him that they weren’t showing themselves because it wasn’t yet their time to do so. Their part in the drama would come later.

This was a surety he’d never known before, a kind of psychic upswelling. And with it his intimation of disaster grew ever stronger.

The closer he got to the woman, the less the electronic warfare field affected his implants and suit blocks. By the time he was five metres away, the security committee was receiving a full sensevise again.

He stopped. Squared his shoulders. Took off his shell helmet.

Her smile was almost pitying in its sparsity. “Looks like we’ve arrived at the crunch time,” she said.

“Who are you?”

“Annette Ekelund. And you are Ralph Hiltch, the ESA’s head of station on Lalonde. I might have known you would be the one they set on us. You’ve done quite a good job so far.”

“Could we cut the bullshit? What do you want?”

“Philosophically, to live for ever. Practically, I want you to call off the police and marines you’ve got circling this town along with the other three we’ve managed to occupy. Right now.”

“No.”

“I see you’ve already learned not to make threats. No or else. No if you don’t you’ll regret it. That’s good. After all, what can you threaten me with?”

“Zero-tau.”

Annette Ekelund frowned as she considered the response. “Yes. Possibly. It is, I admit, certainly frightening enough for us. But there’s no finality to that, not anymore. If we flee our possessed bodies to escape zero-tau, we can still return. There are already several million possessed walking upon the Confederation worlds. Within weeks, that number will be hundreds of millions, a few days later billions. I will always have a way back now. As long as a single human body is left alive my kind can resurrect me. Do you understand now?”

“I understand the zero-tau option works. We will put you in the pods; and we will keep putting you in the pods until there are no more of you left. Do you understand that?”

“I’m sorry, Ralph, but as I said, you simply cannot threaten me. Have you worked out why yet? Have you worked out the real reason I will win? It is because you will ultimately join me. You are going to die, Ralph. Today. Tomorrow. A year from now. If you’re lucky, in fifty years time. It doesn’t matter when. It is entropy, it is fate, it is the way the universe works. Death, not love, conquers all in the end. And when you die, you will find yourself in the beyond. That is when you and I will become brother and sister in the same fellowship. United against the living. Coveting the living.”

“No.”

“Do not speak about something you know nothing about.”

“I still do not believe you. God is not that cruel. There will be more to death than this emptiness you found.”

She laughed bitterly. “Fool. Know-nothing fool.”

“But a living fool. A fool you have to contend with here and now.”

“There is no such thing as God, Ralph. Only humans are stupid enough to create religions. Have you noticed that? None of the xenocs we’ve encountered need to bandage their insecurities and fears with promises of incorporeal glory that are every soul’s due. Oh, no, Ralph; God is merely the term an ignorant primitive uses when he wants to say quantum cosmology. The universe is an entirely natural structure, one which is exceptionally vicious in its attitude to life. And now we have an opportunity to leave it for good, a chance of salvation. We’re not going to let you stop us, Ralph.”

“I can, and I will.”

“Sorry, Ralph, but your intransigent belief in humanity is your principal weakness, one which you share with the rest of this Kingdom’s devout population. We intend to exploit that to the full. What I’m about to say might seem inhuman, but then, that’s what you think I am anyway. As I told you, the dead cannot lose this fight, for you have no lever on us. We cannot be threatened, coerced, nor pleaded with. Like death itself, we are an absolute.”

“What is it you have to say?”

“Am I talking to this planet’s authorities, the Saldana Princess?”

“Yes. She’s on-line.”

“Good. Then I say this: You almost managed to exterminate us last night, and if our fight continues along those same lines today then a great many people will be killed, a situation neither of us would welcome. Therefore I propose a standoff solution. We will keep Mortonridge for ourselves, and I pledge none of us will leave it. If you do not believe me, and I expect trust to be lacking on your part, you have the physical power to set up a blockade across the neck of this land where it joins the continent.”

“No deal,” Princess Kirsten datavised.

“The Kingdom will not abandon its subjects,” Ralph said out loud. “You ought to know that by now.”

“We acknowledge the Kingdom’s strength,” Annette Ekelund said. “And that is why we propose this ceasefire. The outcome of the struggle between the living and our kind will not be decided by what transpires here. We are too evenly matched. However, not every Confederation planet is as advanced or as competent as Ombey.” She raised her head, closing her eyes as she did so, looking blindly up at the sky. “Out there is where both our fates are being decided right now. You, like I, will have to wait for the outcome to be determined by others. We know that we will triumph. Just as your misplaced faith tells you that the living will be victorious.”

“So you’re saying we should just sit it out on the sidelines?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t even have to ask the security committee for their opinion on that one. We’re not the sideline, we’re the front line, we are a major part of the struggle against you. If we can show other planets that it is possible to stop you from spreading, banish you from the bodies you’ve captured, then they will have faith in their own ability.”

Annette Ekelund nodded sadly. “I understand. Princess Saldana, I have tried reason; now I must use something stronger to convince you.”

“Ralph, our satellite sensors just came back on-line,” Deborah Unwin reported. “We can see a lot of movement down there. Oh, Christ, they’re swarming out of the houses. Ralph, get out of there. Now. Do it now! Run.”

But he stood his ground. He knew the Ekelund woman wasn’t threatening him personally. This was to be a demonstration. The one he’d anticipated, and dreaded all along.

“Do you want ground-strike support?” Admiral Farquar datavised.

“Not yet, sir.” His enhanced retinas showed him doors opening all the way along the street, people emerging onto the pavements.

At Ekelund’s invisible signal, the possessed were bringing out their hostages. The illusory bodies on display were deliberately gaudy, ranging from historical warlords to fictitious creatures, blighted monsters and necromantic demigods. Fantasies chosen to emphasise the impossible gulf between them and their frightened prisoners.

Each of the sorcerous apparitions was paired with one of Exnall’s surviving non-possessed residents. Like their captors, they were a cross section of the community, young and old, male and female; dressed in nightgowns, pyjamas, hurriedly thrown on shirts, even naked. Some struggled, the diehards and the fatalists; but most had been tyrannized into obedience.

The possessed restrained them with the greatest of ease as they hustled them forwards, their energistic ability giving them a mechanoid’s strength. Children wailed fearfully as they were gripped by hands and claws as hard as stone. Men grimaced in subdued fury.

A symphony of cries and hopeless shouts laid siege to Ralph’s ears.

“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled at Ekelund. His arm swept around. “For Christ’s sake, you’re hurting them.”

“This is not all,” Annette Ekelund said impassively. “Tell your people to look four kilometres south-west of the town at a lake called Otsuo. There is an abandoned offroad camper there belonging to one of Exnall’s residents.”

“Hang on, Ralph,” Deborah Unwin datavised. “We’re scanning now. Yep, there’s a vehicle parked there all right. Registered to a Hanly Nowell, he works at an agrichemical plant in the town’s industrial precinct.”

“Okay,” Ralph said. “It’s there. Now tell your people to ease off those hostages.”

“No, Ralph,” Annette Ekelund said. “They will not ease off. What I am trying to make clear to you is the fact that we have spread beyond this town. I could only know where the vehicle was if I ordered the driver to leave it there. And it is not the only one, not from this town nor the others. We have escaped the clutches of your marines, Ralph. I organized the four towns which the Longhound bus visited very carefully; we were busy last night while you were chasing after the possessed in Pasto. My followers spread out along the whole peninsula; on foot, on horseback, on bikes, in manual control vehicles. Even I don’t know where they all are any more. The marines barricading the towns are worthless. Now you will have to block off Mortonridge in its entirety to prevent us from contaminating the rest of the continent.”

“No problem.”

“I’m sure. But you’ll never retake this land from us, not now. You can’t even claim back this single town, not without committing genocide. You’ve already seen what a single one of us can achieve when we have to defend ourselves. Imagine that destructive power focused with evil intent. Suburban fusion plants ruptured, hospitals incinerated, day clubs crashing down on their young occupants. So far we have never killed anyone, but if we chose to do so, if you leave us with no alternative, this planet will suffer enormously.”

“Monster!”

“And I’ll do it, Ralph. I’ll give the order for my followers to start the campaign. It will come right after my order for every non-possessed in Exnall to be murdered. They’re going to be killed right here on the streets in front of you, Ralph. We will crush their skulls, snap their necks, strangle them, cut their bellies open and leave them to bleed to death.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“No, you don’t want to believe me, Ralph. There is a difference.” Her voice became smooth, taunting him. “What have we got to lose? These people you see around you will join us one way or the other. That is what I’m trying to tell you. Either their bodies will be possessed, or they will die and possess in turn. Please, Ralph, don’t allow yourself and others to suffer because of your stupid beliefs. We will win. ”

Ralph wanted to kill her, hating and fearing the serene way she talked about slaughter, knowing she wasn’t bluffing. The most basic human urge, to wipe out your enemy hard and fast, came firing up from his subconscious. His neural nanonics had to reduce his heart rate. One hand moved fractionally towards the pistol holster on his belt.

And I can’t do it. Can’t kill her. Can’t end it all with the one act of barbarism which we’ve always resorted to. Dear God, she’s already dead.

Annette Ekelund’s eyes followed the tiny motion of his hand. She smiled and turned to beckon one of the figures that had emerged from the diner.

Ralph watched numbly as a mummy wearing a peaked police cap shuffled forwards. The girl held in its solid embrace couldn’t have been more than fifteen. All she wore was a long mauve T-shirt. Her bare legs were grazed and streaked with dirt. She’d been crying profusely. Now she could only whimper as she was dragged towards him.

“Nice-looking girl,” Annette Ekelund said. “A fine body, if a little young. But I can alter that. You see, if you blow big chunks out of this body of Angeline Gallagher’s, Ralph, the girl will become the one I possess next. My colleague here will break her bones, rape her, rip the skin from her face, hurt her so terribly she’ll make a pact with Lucifer himself to make it stop. But it won’t be Lucifer who answers her from the afterlife, only me. I shall come forth again; and you and I will be right back where we started, except that Gallagher’s body will be dead. Will she thank you for that, do you think, Ralph?”

Nerve impulse overrides prevented Ralph’s hands from tearing Ekelund’s head from her shoulders. “What do you want me to say?” he datavised to the security committee.

“I don’t think we have any choice,” Princess Kirsten replied. “I cannot allow thousands of my people to be killed out of hand.”

“If we leave, they’ll be possessed,” Ralph warned her. “Ekelund will do exactly what she described to this girl, and all the others. Not just here, but right along the whole length of Mortonridge.”

“I know, but I have to consider the majority. If the possessed are outside the marine cordons, then we’ve already lost Mortonridge. I cannot lose Xingu, too.”

“There are two million people living on Mortonridge!”

“I am aware of that. But at least if they’re possessed they will still be alive. I think that Ekelund woman is right; the overall problem of possession isn’t going to be solved here.” There was a moment’s pause. “We’re cutting our losses, Ralph. Tell her she can have Mortonridge. For now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he whispered.

Annette Ekelund smiled. “She agreed, didn’t she?”

“You may have Mortonridge,” Ralph relayed imperturbably as the Princess started to outline the conditions. “We will instigate an immediate evacuation procedure for people from areas you have not yet reached; any attempt to sabotage vehicles will result in SD strikes against areas where we know you are concentrated. If any of you try to pass the cordon we establish between Mortonridge and the main body of the continent you will be put into zero-tau. If any of you are found outside the cordon you will be put into zero-tau. If there is any terrorist assault against any Ombey citizen or building we will send in a punitive expedition and throw several hundred of you into zero-tau. If you attempt to communicate with other offplanet possessed forces, you will again be punished.”

“Of course,” Ekelund said mockingly. “I agree to your terms.”

“And the girl comes with me,” Ralph declared.

“Come come, Ralph, I don’t believe the authorities actually said that.”

“Try me,” he challenged.

Ekelund glanced at the sobbing girl, then back to Ralph. “Would you have bothered if she was a wizened old grandmother?” she asked sarcastically.

“But you didn’t choose a wizened old grandmother, did you? You chose her because you knew how protective we are towards the young. Your error.”

Ekelund said nothing, but made a sharp irritated gesture to the mummy. It let the girl go. She floundered, trembling so badly she could hardly stand. Ralph caught her before she fell. He winced at the weight that put on his injured leg.

“I’ll look forward to the day you join us, Ralph,” Ekelund said. “However long it takes. You’ll be quite an asset. Come and see me when your soul finally obtains a new body to live in.”

“Fuck you.” Ralph scooped the girl up and started to walk down the road. He ignored the hundreds of people standing in front of the prim buildings, the indifferent possessed and their wailing distraught victims, the ones he’d failed so completely. Staring resolutely ahead, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. He knew if he took it all in, acknowledged the magnitude of the disaster he’d wrought, he’d never be able to carry on.

“Enjoy your magnificent victory with the girl,” Annette Ekelund called after him.

“This one is only the beginning,” he promised grimly.