MICHAEL was thunderstruck. He had no idea he had put out this idea as a thought-shape, but there was no getting away from it: he had indeed been contemplating: how on earth to persuade these people to embark on a hazardous journey with them, merely to suit Rachel’s and his purpose in trying to secure a ship to take them—where? But evidently he had broadcast the thought at large. He could think of nothing to say. Nor could Rachel. Peter had some sympathy for them:

“I sense that this is painful news for you, my friends. I guessed that you were going to ask at least some of us to join you on your quest. Let us just say: the whole idea of us abandoning our houses, of coming with you, on a 200-mile journey to Rigo—and there to help you secure a ship to take you East—East to places very little is known about—perhaps even to board ship with you! When we are safe and secure here. Surely you must see that the whole idea is quite preposterous…

“But we’ll leave that matter for now. At least until Tim and Rachel—sorry, Big Rachel—arrive; they need to at least have a say. They’re busy at present, but should be here around mid-day. We need to listen to the rest of your story—how you got away from that place of death.”

“What do you do for a living?” asked Rachel, speaking from the first time.

Justin took this as his cue, glad to get away from the awkward topics they’d been discussing up till then. “I go out hunting; Dad writes books,” he replied laconically.

“Eh?” said Rachel.

“Oh—I suppose you want more than that? I go out with some of the others in the village: we go after moose, caribou, seals, bears, that sort of thing. For food, furs and the like. I’m often away for some days at a time. With the weather closing in, it’ll be seals on the next trip. Dad collects data and writes books, mostly about Labrador and its history, as far back as it goes. Almost certainly, he’s written stuff you won’t have seen back in Waknuk or Kentak.”

“And Tim and Rachel?”

“Tim comes with me on some of the hunting trips, but he also spends time at home stretching the skins we bring back. Rachel sort of looks after the house, both at their place and here. Does the cooking and all.”

They asked a bit more about the ‘family’ they had found. It was all very peaceful and well-ordered. Once again Michael was wondering whether they’d be better off staying here, in a ‘safe’ part of Labrador, now that it seemed pretty certain they’d shaken off the pursuit. Indeed it seemed unlikely that their pursuers had even found their turning off towards Kipalup, where they had first met Beth. And she could be relied upon to put them off the scent. The chances of them discovering two fugitives hidden away in a tiny community like Ragnarok seemed—well, remote.

But Rachel—his Rachel—was still not convinced. She seemed determined that they should at least take on Rigo and enquire about ships, come what may.

Just as they were still arguing about it, the door opened and Tim and Big Rachel came in. Tim started off by apologising for his unfortunate turn the evening before. “Sorry about that. Here am I, all used to dressing up and curing skins and all that, handling dead animals all the time, then I hear about what Michael’s told us about, it just made my skin crawl and then I couldn’t help myself…”

After mutual expressions of commiseration, Big Rachel proclaimed that lunch was ready to be served, so could they possibly hold back on further discussions until later? To this they all agreed.

Afterwards, Peter said, Michael should continue the story, starting from the point where the flying ‘ship’ had settled in the clearing. “But we’ll leave out the spiders’ webs. Once is enough!”

So Michael began, hesitantly: “Well, I probably had a better look at that flying ‘ship’, as it was finally taking off, with the others aboard. I mentioned those four wind-making wheels on top: but they couldn’t have made the ship fly by themselves: certainly it couldn’t have been lifted off the ground by them—not if I still know any of the mech­anics I was taught at school! I think they were only for propulsion: to move the machine fore and aft. The ‘lift’ was evidently supplied by hydrogen bags within the body: that way the ship could probably coast long distances without re-fuelling. I learnt all about hydrogen—how light it is, how bags could be filled with the gas and then made to lift into the air—back at school we learnt this. I don’t see any other way a machine like that could reach us from Zealand. But there’s much I don’t understand here.”

“I know what hydrogen is,” put in Peter. “Doesn’t it catch fire very easily, and burn very fiercely? Wouldn’t that be a hazard to the ship?”

“I’m sure the Zealanders must have considered that risk. I suppose they’d taken special measures to minimise it.

“Anyway, I went down to the river and was sick. Then I forded the river at a place where it was fairly shallow, and followed the path away from the clearing, about a mile. To my great relief, I found a horse abandoned by its dead rider, that seemed to be uninjured. I returned to the river, and then we both mounted and—”

Peter interrupted him at this point. “‘We’? You said nothing about another person until now. You were the only survivor, were you not?—apart from those carried off in the flying ship. So who’s this ‘we’?”

Michael realised that he had slipped up. Of course, using thought-shapes, it would have been impossible to conceal Sophie’s existence for long—that’s simply not possible in thought-shapes. But in words, he’d been trying to keep Sophie out of the equation—mainly because that would enable him to steer clear of stuff he still found embarrass­ing, like the ‘washtub’ incident. But how he was going to work out the return journey to Waknuk as a solo traveller? He had no idea.

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After a long period of silence, Peter came to the rescue. “Look, Michael, we already know there’s more to your story than what you’ve told us. You picked up someone in the Fringes and took him or her back with you. Clearly that person wasn’t a thought-shaper, or you wouldn’t have been so cagey about it. But it looks like they came from the Fringes. That makes them a Mutant. We’ve already established that your community comes down heavily on Mutants—far more so than we do. That would explain things. Right so far?”

Michael could only nod.

“OK. Now I’ve been careful not to mention the sex of this sup­posed person so far, but I’m guessing it’s a woman?”

Once again Michael nodded: he realised he was no match for Peter’s insight.

“So—I’m guessing here, but I’m thinking there might have been something between you two—something you wished to keep secret—too embarrassing perhaps: you and a Mutant—?”

“NO!” cried Michael, interrupting, thankful that at last he had caught Peter out in a wrong assumption. “No! It wasn’t like that at all. OK, I’d better tell the whole story over again, filling in the gaps. Rachel already knows,” for Rachel was blushing prettily, “so it won’t embarrass her too much. I hope!” Rachel winked. “I really need to go right back to my childhood—well, David’s childhood really, because I didn’t learn the details until some time later. It starts with David, as a ten-year-old boy, playing at a place we called the Bank…”

And so Michael continued, telling of David’s chance meeting with Sophie… “that’s not her name now, but I’ll continue…” He told how Sophie, a little girl a bit younger than David, got her foot stuck between some rocks, she made strenuous but fruitless efforts to extricate herself without David’s help; eventually she gave in and implored him to keep her big secret.

She had six toes on each foot.

David accompanied Sophie back to her parent’s house, where he was made to promise not to reveal her secret—and where he discovered that Sophie’s mother had some of the thought-shaping powers herself—though very primitively and she could not communicate using them. “At that time David, and the rest of us, didn’t really understand the phenomenon ourselves. So we weren’t as cautious then, as we’ve become since.”

Anyway, David and Sophie became fast childhood friends for a while after that. Until they were found out. By pure chance, another boy came upon them when they were playing barefoot in the stream, and he noticed the six-toed imprint. David and Sophie fled to Sophie’s parents, who immediately decided to pack up everything and flee the district; at the same time begging David to cover for their flight as long as possible by staying in the house overnight.

David did that, but next morning on returning to his own house he was waylaid by his father and the Inspector, who already knew something of the story. David did his best to keep the secret, despite enduring a savage flogging: but to no avail: later that day the fugitives were caught. They were taken to Kentak where Sophie was separated from her parents, taken to Rigo for the sterilisation operation, then banished to the Fringes. Of her parents no further word was heard.

“And so, it appears, this Sophie then drops out of the story, until she is re-discovered by the thought-shapers, some years later,” suggested Peter. “Am I right?”

“Yes, more or less,” admitted Michael.

“Hmmm. Interesting. You say David was very attached to Sophie, when they were together? Despite knowing she was a Deviant; despite all the warning notices in his own household?”

“It certainly looks like it.”

“And when she was captured, David suffered a flogging—a very brutal flogging by all accounts, if I’ve understood his father’s character here. Yet he still didn’t betray the fugitives. You say they were caught purely by chance, many miles away. Then the next thing David does is tell his thought-shape companions the whole story—a story he’d carefully concealed from them up till then. Why just then?”

“I suppose he reckoned, there was no point in keeping it secret any longer,” suggested Michael.

“I think there’s more to it than that… I think up to that point, David was head-over-heels in love with Sophie. As far as ten-year-olds can be ‘in love’, of course. Then when she was cruelly snatched from him, he felt some remorse, of course—but it soon became supplanted by a stronger instinct: that of survival. Sophie could conveniently be sacrificed. From then on, the needs of the thought-shapers suddenly became the prime imperative. For David, and for the other people in his group—including Rachel and yourself—”

Michael could contain himself no longer. “How can you possibly make assumptions like that? How dare you! You, who have never met any of the others: just Rachel and me… I, who have known David ever since we were children … I who met Sophie and escorted her back to Waknuk … dammit, I even slept with the woman…”

“I thought that would come out,” said Peter. “It was obvious from what you said up till now. Don’t worry, we shan’t press for details: we aren’t running an Inquisition—but it’s certainly far better that that sort of admission comes from you, rather than being forced out of you by us.

“Suffice to say, you accompanied Sophie to Waknuk, and at some point there was a romantic liaison. But clearly it was not a lasting relationship. Listen, Michael, and you too Rachel—the more we know about you, the better we can decide how best to help you.

“So—apart from the dalliance with Sophie, was there anything else of import during your return to Waknuk?”

“Not much—except that we had to kill a man just before we got to Waknuk itself. Dammit, he shot our horse first—and the bullet would have come straight at me if the horse hadn’t got it first. And it was Sophie who actually killed the man. I reckon she’s had practice—which I haven’t…”

“All right. I’ll say no more. So you came to Waknuk—and I’m guessing that’s where you were reunited with Rachel. And by that time Sophie had more or less informed you that it was all over between you and her. Remarkably resilient, that girl! First David, and now you…”

“As I’m sure you understand, there couldn’t have been anything between David and Sophie. Dammit, they were only ten years old! Why the innuendo?” Peter said nothing. “But I think there were others before me,” added Michael. “Sophie mentioned someone called the Spider-man—Gordon—whom she said she slept with, back in the Fringes. When he was killed, she sort of latched on to me…”

“We’re learning quite a lot about Sophie, aren’t we? Are there any more details you’ve left out? Like—say—Sophie beginning to acquire the power of thought-shapes herself?”