Killgrace and the Faithless

"Faithless! You die at dawn!" As Susan picked herself up from the dirt floor, the cage-like door of the cell building slammed shut with a rattle and the wooden bar locked into place. As the villagers walked away, satisfied she was contained, she reflected that there were three problems with pastoral paradises that everyone seemed to forget: the squalor, the disease, and the tendency to burn people who asked the wrong questions. They had not even bothered with a show trial, just several tiring hours of argument before they threw her in here. Those attitudes made a scientist's life much more interesting than it really needed to be. It was time to leave.

The clay walls and bamboo bars of the small building were surprisingly strong. Being jailed by the locals was an occupational hazard of exploration, but although Susan was unlikely to suffer the same fate as Captain Cook or other such unfortunates, she did not think it would be wise to remain for long. The primitives here had a society based on religion, and that rarely boded well for anyone different.

When she caught up with her colleague she wanted words: announcing 'Energy' and taking off at speed the moment the Capsule door was opened was not helpful. Her pager, meant to contact Cet if she was in difficulties, was not working. If she wanted to track down where the alien had gone, she would have to start by getting herself out of here.

The flickering torches that lit the wooden compound were dim, and the shadows and trees offered many hiding places once she was out of the cell. The technology level was extremely basic, almost stone age, with the inhabitants clad in homespun and little metal in use. Her cell was no exception, the wooden bars bound together with leather straps. It gave her an immediate advantage. Pulling a hat pin out of her hair Susan bent to the base of the door, looking round to make sure no one was looking at the front.

There was a knocking on the bars of the window behind her, and a faint shushing noise. Susan looked up sharply, hiding the hat pin along the line of her arm as she went to the low opening. A young man, little more than a teenager, crouched down as he peered in. A smaller boy was trying to hide behind him.

"They say you are of the Faithless. Is that true?" the youth asked, keeping his voice low. Susan stepped towards the low opening, ducking her head to look at them.

"I don't know what the Faithless are," Susan said, truthfully. The youth threw a frustrated glance at the boy, who stamped a foot indignantly. Instantly the youth clapped a hand over the child's mouth, hushing him before he could draw attention to them.

"Well they think she is," the boy whispered when he could speak again. "They've sent for the judge."

"The judge?" Susan asked, and the youth shook his head impatiently.

"He judges heresy. If you stay here, they'll have you whipped or kill you. I can break you out."

"What do you want in return?" It was a convenient offer, possibly too good to be true. Susan wasn't so worried about her own survival as the Cull's reaction when it realised that its only means to control the Capsule was in jeopardy. She did not like these people, but inflicting an angry killing machine on a tribe of semi-developed humanoids would be a massacre.

"If it is true, if you really are the Faithless returned, we need you."

"Who are you?"

"The Outcast." The youth cast a quick glance round and crouched back into the shadows as a man walked past. A moment later he was back at the bars. "We have no time. Will you come?"

"Yes," she said. If there was a counter-culture, she would need to contact it anyway once she escaped. For it to come to her just made things easier. The technology level of this planet seemed too low to be worth investigating, but while they were on the planet she could at least investigate the culture. The conflict of Faithless and True seemed potentially quite interesting, and she would be curious to discover how the other side saw it.

The youth nodded to the boy, who ran off. Silently the older youth vanished into the shadows. Susan braced herself, uncertain of their plan. For a moment there was nothing. Then, from the other side of the compound, a child's piping voice raised.

"Fire! Fire!" There were the sounds of chaos, and running feet. As pandemonium took over, the locking bar of the cell lifted, and then the door swung open. The youth grinned in at her.

"Come on!"

"But your friend - "

"He's the son of the village elder. He'll be fine." He reached up, jumping, and caught the nearest branch of one of the trees that filled the compound. Swinging himself up with ease, he flipped over and offered her a hand. She took it, scrambling up after him.

Trying to manage tree climbing in a skirt and leather-soled boots was tricky, and not for the first time she cursed the mores of her backwater base. Her shipsuit and boots would have been more practical, but when they were destroyed she had had no way to replace them.

He led her from tree to tree, to the top of the barricade that surrounded the compound and over, into the dark forest outside. Safely clear of the village he lowered himself down.

"Drop," he said, and did. Agile as a gymnast, his feet hit the floor silently. Unable to see where she was going, Susan was less graceful. As she sat on the branch and lowered herself, she felt the twigs catch her skirt, ripping painfully up her leg. Ignoring it, she let herself drop, trying to land quietly. Strands of silk fluttered free. Irritated, she ripped the remains of the stockings away and stuffed them in a pocket so the material could not snag further and reveal their trail.

"This way," his voice ordered, somewhere ahead of her in the darkness, and she gazed blankly into the night. Impatiently he snatched her hand and began to lead her. "Your nightsight will return soon. Dawn is near. We must move, before they track us. Come. Quietly." She followed as best she could, placing her feet carefully on the forest floor. Unable to see ahead, her free hand raised to shield her face from unseen branches, she had to trust her guide. After a few hundred yards she realised the forest floor was levelling out, fewer roots surprising her and throwing her footing. Behind them she heard the sounds of pursuit and cursed silently. She really should have thought to close the cell door to delay the pursuit.

"We're at the path. It will be easier from here," her guide said in a low voice, and speeded up. Susan was not sure, but for a moment she thought she saw a glint of light keeping pace with them through the trees. Her alien companion might be tracking them. She hoped so. Every step took her further from the Capsule, but the machine was safe enough. There was nothing the villagers could do to damage it even if they found it, and once Cet returned it would be simple enough to retrieve.

Cet had adjusted target priorities the instant the Capsule opened. A basic scan detected a distinctive energy signature identified as refined radioactive isotopes. Priorities were upgraded to locate and retrieve immediately: fuel levels were critically low. The life-signs on the planet were humanoid. Susan could investigate. It must increase its energy store. It had no fear of death, but being forced into hibernation to avoid slow starvation when its life support failed was worse and utterly unacceptable.

The thermal energy on this planet was higher, the larger stellar body emitting significant amounts of infra-red. Background radiation was higher than their residence, although tolerable to humans. Cet would still require its environmental suit. The detection of refined fuels implied a higher level of technical development than sensor readings of the inhabitants currently suggested.

The signal was coming from a construction, overgrown with organic matter. Assessment of the ruins as it approached indicated the primitive power generation methods of a species unfamiliar with degenerate matter and relying on nuclear fission. If the civilisation had once possessed power stations and infrastructure, there should be records; intelligence available to indicate what had happened, and where such peoples could be located. After recharging, tactical analysis would be required.

Her guide pushed Susan down, a faint whisper of breath passing for a 'hush'. Hoping it meant the same in both cultures she crouched and froze, forcing her breathing into slow, silent, breaths.

Between the trees she saw the first flickers of light. For a moment she thought her eyes, still adjusting to the dark, were playing tricks. Then it grew brighter, resolving itself into torches. The compound had turned out in force and, as she squinted, she could see they were armed.

"Which way?" She heard a shout. A few of the villagers, trackers certainly, had moved ahead of the group, sometimes ducking into the undergrowth. Surely the villagers could not identify their tracks, she thought furiously, and her breath caught.

Even leather soles would leave a distinctive trail. She caught her guide's hand and, as he looked round startled, she ran it over the sole of her boot. He caught on instantly, fingers tracing the heel ridge and nails, and he dug in his bag for a blanket.

As quietly as he could he hacked a piece of cloth into two pieces, and handed them to her, burrowing back in for something to fasten them with. Susan stopped him, wrapping the material quickly round her shoes to hide the distinctive tread, and tied the cloth in place with the remains of her stockings. The silk should be strong enough.

"You're good at this," he muttered, sounding surprised, and Susan grinned. In her many years in the resistance during the war with Cet's people she had done her fair share of forest work. It just took time for the old skills to come back.

"Bring the dogs!" She tensed as she heard the shout. Her guide pointed sharply into the undergrowth and began to move forward, as quietly as he could. Susan followed, testing the ground with her palms for sticks or loose stones; anything that could make a noise and give them away. To her bemusement he did not go far, vanishing into a shadow below a tree. She lowered her head, trying to follow him and found it was the low entrance to a grotto beneath the tree roots. It was a dark as the grave, and she crept inside with a hand raised to shield her head.

"Wait," her rescuer whispered, unseen in the dark.

"The dogs can track us."

"Wait."

Outside she could hear the sounds of pursuit, an animal perhaps more than one snuffling through the undergrowth. It came closer, closer, and she could hear it scraping at the tree roots above them. Then in the dark she saw the yellow glitter of two eyes peering in.

The light outside increased as the torches came closer. A man's legs dropped over the roots, and he crouched. The torch light lit the interior of the grotto.

For a moment Susan met the man's eyes in the dark, waiting for a shout. Instead he tapped a hand against his leg and pointed. The dog ran on. As he stood up, turning away, she thought she saw him wink.

"Good boy! Get the trail!" he shouted, to her surprise, and swiftly walked on. She looked at her guide, and the last of the fading torchlight showed he was grinning. They huddled in the hollow as the line of the search moved passed them and away.

"We have friends in the village," her guide said in the dark, and she heard him move. Carefully he began to climb out into the dark, pulling her after him. "Now, hurry, before they come back this way."

The radiation trace led directly to a subterranean concrete bunker within the ruined complex, cracked and ruined as time and nature exacted their toll. Fuel containers were stacked from floor to ceiling within. The content was assessed as Thorium: refined and prepared for fission reaction.

An extended probe tested a sample. The containers had begun to weaken, but the fuel within was not degraded and suitable for addition to its own reactor.

It extended manipulators, discarding the housing and extracting the fuel pellets directly into its inputs. The internal power core could pre-process them as required. Life support detected the changes and adjusted, reducing the recirculation of Cet's internal fluids via the reactor as the level of radiation in the environment reached healthier levels.

Its main reactor was functioning acceptably in the less-efficient fission-only mode. Onboard fuel reserves were partially replenished: sufficient for four years at minimal function, five minutes at full combat levels. Extending sensory range, it scanned for further refined fuel.

They had been moving for nearly an hour before her guide finally slowed. Gratefully Susan crouched and caught her breath. No matter how old she looked, or how old she might actually be, her body was physically nearing sixty and she could not move as fast as she once could.

"Stay here and still," the youth said, and vanished into the night. Unable to see, Susan's other senses had heightened. The forest was silent, quieter than she had remembered, and as she strained her ears all she could hear was her pulse and the occasional rustle of leaves. There was no breeze, nothing but the hot, stifling, air and nothing to give her direction in the dark.

A bundle of twigs brushed against her left hand and she held onto that feeling to fight off the disorientation. She caught the vegetation in her hand before they could blow away, focusing on the scratching feeling of wood, on the strip of her shoe cutting into her foot as she crouched awkwardly, anything to keep her senses out of total sensory deprivation. Minutes passed.

"Here," the boy's voice said from behind her. There was a rustle as he took the cover off something, and suddenly there was faint light. Susan's eyes adjusted gratefully to the glow as she realised she was not seeing things. A glass jam jar, with a metal lid and a string handle, and inside it glowing insects crawled.

"A firefly lantern," she said and he grinned.

"You really are a Faithless."

"Why? I used to make those when I was younger." He tapped the glass, and the insects jumped.

"Forbidden material. It is against the Litany."

"How can they ban glass?" she said quietly. She was beginning to suspect the Faithless were anyone who used technology.

"Just as they ban everything else against the Litany. Water?" he offered, but she shook her head, unwilling to take the chance on unusual water supplies if she did not know how long she would be on the planet.

"Not now, I'm fine thanks." Instead she took the opportunity to examine her leg, carefully pulling her skirt free where blood had stuck it to the wound. It was a light surface graze, but the light was not good enough to do more than fish out the worst of the dirt..

"Do you have any disinfectant – anything to clean wounds with?" she asked.

"You know healing?"

"I have a basic knowledge." Susan was not sure how well the phrase 'field medicine' would translate, and kept her answer deliberately simple.

"Then you are the person we need." her guide said, with a wide, relieved, grin. "But I have little with me to bind that wound. We can examine it at the village." He took a swig of water then gestured to himself.

"I am Huro. Lakai would have come herself, but she is with Antin." Susan blinked. The names, if names they were, meant nothing to her. As her eyes finally began to adjust, she found she could follow more easily and spared a glanced from side to side. There was nothing to see but trees, tall columns vanishing upwards into the darkness above.

"I'm Susan. Very pleased to meet you." She did not offer a surname, since it seemed the culture did not use them. He nodded. "What do you need me for?"

"One of ours is very ill. He is outcast and his time of exile is not ended, so the village will not aid us."

"The Outcasts. You've all been exiled from the village?"

"Some are exiled. Some left, like me, because we couldn't stand it any more. They are hypocrites." He spat the word contemptuously.

"So they just let you be?"

"We built close to the dead place. The villagers will not go there. They say it is cursed. They say everything is cursed." He rolled his eyes.

"How did you know I was there?"

"There have been fires in the sky for weeks," Huro said. "They say that is the sign of the Faithless." He gave a disarming grin. "I prefer fact. I slip Davish a rabbit a week to tell me things like this." Davish must be the boy, Susan guessed, but there was something else in his speech that caught her attention.

"The fires in the sky?"

"You will see them when we leave the forest. The leaves are too thick to see the sky in here." Huro stood up, putting the water bottle away. "Come, we need to reach the gap before sunrise."

With its own basic bio-functions restored, Cet detected 120.96 cubic millimetres of thorium remaining. Thoughtfully it extracted the one single remaining pellet, checked for contaminants and then passed it into its armour, its inner shell, and finally, securely, into its habitat. Mandibles held the pellet in place, passing it back within its jaws as its digestive enzymes began to work on purifying the metal. Cet resisted the urge to gorge. Extended duration on total life support made over-consumption unwise.

Scans indicated no further fuel was present, but signals consistent with waste containment could be detected deeper into the building. Activating drive, the alien set course to investigate. Limited amounts of transuranics were detected, expected with a thorium cycle, and several indicated high gamma emissions. Acquisition was necessary.

Constituents within the spent fuel reduced suitability for fission, however the amount of fuel provided a secondary option: its degenerate matter power reserve had increased to dangerous size as the mass and therefore its own inherent gravity dropped. It was taking consistently more energy to maintain the matter in that state: energy levels currently only available by burning further matter from the reserve as its thermal levels were nearly non-existent.

Marks on the walls and chemical analysis of the surface indicated the containment had once contained liquid hydrogen hydroxide. This had escaped as roots pierced the room, leaving the waste easily accessible in its concrete cells.

Concrete was not worth the energy required to cut it to size, but thorium, even thorium waste, was far denser. Cet extended manipulators, shucking the remaining fuel rods from their housing and cutting them into manageable strips for direct insertion into its reserve. The gravity would condense the already dense material automatically, adding it to the mass of the degenerate matter without additional energy expenditure.

"There." Huro pointed upwards as they came to a clearing. "The fires in the sky." Susan looked up, and stopped in wonder. Curtains of green fire swept across the sky, washing across each other in waves. The clouds glowed strange colours, oranges and blues as the lights slowly turned and whirled from horizon to horizon.

"Aurora..." she whispered. She had never seen a more spectacular display.

"It will fade as the night ends. It always does," Huro said, practically. As the rotation of the planet turns it away from the source, or full on and hides it with radiant light, Susan thought to herself, limiting her reaction to a nod. Either this star was much closer than Earth's sun or it was far larger.

"Come on. We are nearly at the edge of the trees. Once we're across the gap we are safe," Huro said, after a moment and began to move. Now Susan could see where she was going, they were making good time. She had questions but no spare breath to ask them, as Huro was rushing them, focused on getting to his home fast. Susan settled for following and hoping that she had made the right decision, saving her strength in case she had to run. The teen seemed to know what he was going.

Ahead of her she could see light, not the green of the fireflies, but a reddish blaze. Dawn was beginning to break, and light filtered through the trees ahead as the forest began to thin. Huro stopped, opening the jar and releasing the fireflies.

In the brighter light Susan checked her watch. They had been travelling for nearly six hours. It was three times that since she had arrived, and yet this was the first sign of dawn. If Huro had not referred to the end of the night already, she would have wondered if the planet was tidally-locked, frozen with one side always facing its star.

"I had hoped to reach here before the sun," he said, bringing her mind back to the practical. "We shall have to run." Susan peered between the trees ahead of them. It was hard to see beyond the edge of the forest. There was a sea of golden straw or dead grass, rippling in a heat haze that rose from the ground, and beyond it only a few hundred yards away the forest resumed. The horizon was hard to see between the heat haze and the aurora, but in the distance Susan thought she could see grey shapes looming above the forest.

Curious, she stepped forward, peering for a closer look and stepped out into the edge of the light. She stumbled, parched in the full blast of the sun, as the heat hit like a furnace. Huro pulled her back into the shade of the trees.

"Nothing lives where the trees don't grow," he said, and she could believe it. The bloated sun that was edging its way above the trees gave off far too much heat for life to survive without shelter. He pulled two homespun blankets from his pack, wrapping one over himself and passing the other to her.

"Cross quickly, and keep your head covered." He paused and then ran, ducked down, out into the light.

Susan took a few breaths and followed. The heat hit her like a blow, even with the blanket. The grass was dead, dry and crackling underfoot as she ran and the ground felt like concrete, baked solid and parched. Each step hurt, heat building under her shoes as she ran. The glare was nearly too bright to see, and she could not risk looking up. With shock but no real surprise she recognised asphalt among the grass, and white patterns that took on the familiar form of road markings.

With relief that she staggered into the shelter of the trees beyond. Huro offered the flask again.

"Water?" This time she did not refuse.

The power station fuel possibilities were now fully depleted. Monitors indicated partial restoration of function: shields, weaponry and drive were all available for brief periods. As the degeneracy pressure and gravity came back into balance, the drain on its reactor had been reduced significantly.

It scanned for a secondary power source but no further substantial reserves were within range to obtain. Limited reserves constant with previous medical use could be detected inside the abandoned residential area. Tactical analysis could be undertaken in the same location. It set course. The pager trace faintly indicated the humanoid scientist was in the vicinity. It was convenient to combine priorities at once.

As it approached, scanners indicated that the scientist was unharmed and currently performing basic cultural investigation in the company of one of the primitives. Priority level for her retrieval was accordingly reduced to below tactical analysis. Cet ignored them, travelling further on towards the constructions it detected in the distance.

There was a sharp snap from the bush beside them. Susan turned, dropping into a crouch as Huro pulled a spear from his shoulder and took aim. Before he could cast it, there was a squeak from the bushes. A girl stepped out onto the path, hands held up.

"It's me, it's me," she said quickly.

"Tayli?" Huro asked, lowering the weapon.

"Lakai sent me. Antin is worse. Will the village help?" Huro closed his eyes, leaning on the spear for a moment before he continued walking.

"No, they refused. When I told them of the disease, they threw stones."

"The third day dawns. Without help -" Tayli trotted with them, shorter legs having trouble keeping up.

"I have help. This is Susan, a Faithless they were going to burn." Susan blinked, and realised she should not have been surprised. Burning women with knowledge seemed to be a tradition in human history. "I have freed her and she will help."

"A real Faithless?" The girl looked intrigued rather than scared. "Are you?"

"I don't know what a Faithless is," Susan said, and Tayli made a mocking noise, proceeding to instruct her with the arrogance of a child who has learned something by rote.

"It was the Great Schism in the time of our grandfathers, between the True and the Faithless. The True had faith in the land – " Huro cut her off with a snort, and Susan gritted her teeth, This was something that she would need to know.

"Save me the Litany," Huro said, with something approaching contempt. "I've heard that nonsense too often."

"Be careful. That attitude got you whipped."

"And? And it's still nonsense. Proof that something is true is that something didn't happen? Look, if I am a sky spirit, the sky will NOT turn green. The sky is still red. Obviously I am a sky spirit."

"Huro the Heretic. If you weren't the best hunter in the village they'd have stoned you for that."

"They wanted to." He looked cocky. "That's why I live here. Come on, it's just ahead."

The village was small, just two buildings of mud bricks and thatch. A little way apart from them stood another building of woven branches. As they walked up, a shout rang out and others emerged to greet them, warily. Only five people, and the tiny settlement could not hold many more. Huro ignored them, waving them back with a shake of the spear and made directly for the wooden hut.

"Lakai!" Huro shouted, and the curtain at the entrance to the wooden hut was pushed aside. Susan had been expecting an older woman, but the girl who stepped forward to greet them could not have been more than fourteen, but her eyes were much older, speaking of too much responsibility for one too young. Huro stood tall, trying to impress. "Lakai, I have rescued Susan, a Faithless, a holder of learning, and brought her to you."

"I am Lakai. Welcome." The girl spread her hands, bowing her head in what Susan guessed was a gesture of greeting.

"Thank you. What's the matter?"

"Antin went into one of the forbidden places, the dead places. When he returned, within a day the curse struck him: the Screaming Dying. Please, if you can, help him." The sounds from within the hut were disturbing, the harsh breathing of suffering and distress. Susan's first thought was poisoning or radiation. There would be little she could do in either case, but the least she could do was check. As she stepped forward, the girl handed her a knotted scarf. "For your mouth. The smell is bad."

There was another scream and Susan steeled herself and looked past the girl's shoulder as she held the curtain aside. Even in the dim light, Susan knew her first guesses had been horribly wrong.

It was unmistakeable. The agonised coughing, sending poisoned droplets into the air. The rictus mask grimace and the arms and legs forced outward by the grotesque dark buboes she could see under the skin.

"Black Death," she whispered.

Cet extended sensors to assess the area. Background radiation was confirmed to be far higher than their base. Gravity was lower. The slower rotational period, indicative of an orbital body entering tidal lock with a larger neighbour, extended days to an estimated thirty hours.

The background radiation particles in the atmosphere indicated the deployment of nuclear weapons. Secondary scans of nearby uncomplex organic lifeforms indicated detonations over a brief period fifty years previously.

Primitive humanoid life-signs were detected scattered across the hemisphere. Other biosigns indicated a standard carbon-based eco-system. What was not detected were any current indications of a civilisation developed enough to build a reactor.

The multi-level residential constructions indicated a pre-existing major population centre, a primary target in wartime. No major damage was detected. Zero carbonised organic residue. While the city was teaming with primitive organic life there was no organic residue from after the nuclear detonations fifty years previously. A neutron bomb could have had such an effect, but the static lifeform in the centre of the open recreation location within the city was multiple orbital cycles older. Offworld intervention was possible but a low probability. Reserves of refined thorium would have been acquired by any competent invader.

The remains of worldwide infrastructure could be detected. Invasive organic presence and decay had fragmented it. Secondary scans showed that the power grid was too incomplete to power the city from its own reactor. Remote interrogation of computer cores would not be feasible. It would have to gain physical access.

Susan stared. Black Death, bubonic plague, responsible for the death of one third of Europe's population in the 1300's. Modern antibiotics could cure the disease in a week, but without them he would die in screaming agony. She had no way to get the pills, and no idea if she herself was immune.

"Can you help him?" Lakai asked.

"I don't know," Susan admitted. The boy was choking and coughing, spraying infected bloody droplets with every breath. The disease was at a late stage, attacking the lungs for pneumonic plague and highly, highly contagious. She let the curtain fall back, considering the level of technology around the village, and saw nothing that could treat it at even a basic level. She needed that Cull.

"Have any of you seen an odd creature recently? Blue, shiny, about this tall, looks like it glides or floats?"

"Is that your car?" Lakai asked.

"Car?"

"Yes the old stories say that the Faithless rode around in vehicles of great speed that could fly and carry more than a horse."

"Ah...It's not my car, it's my companion's. He is better at curing diseases than I am." Their faces fell.

"We watched it entered into one of the dead places." Tayli volunteered. "It encountered us on the way from the village, but when it got to the edge of the dead place it left the ground and went in.

"I can go and see if I can find it." Huro volunteered. There was a mutter from Tayli of 'see, I knew it was a car' but Susan ignored it. What had the Cull found that would divert it instantly? Something scientifically fascinating no doubt, but she was left trying to remember how to treat bubonic plague with tools more primitive than the Middle Ages.

"No. You don't want to risk catching what Antin has." Huro nodded, courage tempered with almost infinitesimal relief. Susan turned back to Lakai. "How have you been treating him?"

"A willow-bark wash and bread poultice on the lumps until it grew too painful," Lakai volunteered. Susan hid a cringe. Aspirin and, hopefully, penicillin (and god only knew what had actually been growing on the bread) was not going to cut it against bubonic plague. She needed refined antibiotics or modern drugs.

"Do you have garlic?" If she could get garlic she could get allicin, a very strong naturally occurring antibiotic.

"Dried only. The season for it is over." Susan drew a worried breath. If it was dried, the allicin content would be limited, but she had no way to refine dried garlic further to produce the even stronger Diallyl sulfide. It did not matter how much allicin she could get from garlic, right now, she'd trade it for one refined course of tetracyline.

"Fine. Chop it in water, and make a cool broth. He needs to eat it. Wait!" She held up a hand as one of the girls jumped up. "Can you refine alcohol?" They looked blank. "Spirits, ale, beer, mead, wine?"

"Yes. We make mead."

"You have honey?" she asked, and they shuffled. One of the boys looked up.

"Yes, we find it – "

"Now isn't the time." The other cut him off, and squared up to her belligerently. "We lured the bees into nesting in a box where we can get at the honey."

"Clever." She smiled, and he looked shocked.

"But it's heresy."

"And it might have saved your friend's life. I will need a pot full of it, if you can get most of something that size full?" he nodded eagerly. Susan swallowed. Without the proper tools she was just going to throw everything she could at the disease and hope something worked. The worst thing was that she knew one specific treatment which should be performed with bubonic plague and she was dreading it. Squeamishness could not be allowed to overrule compassion, she reminded herself firmly. If she could not cure him, she could at least ease the pain.

"Do you have gloves, water and a metal knife?"

"Yes."

"Then boil water. I will need an assistant, and we will both need to wrap up completely, cover all exposed skin. Build a bonfire on the outskirts of town." Susan sighed. She would have preferred to do this outside away from the village, where the area could have been burned off, but moving the victim now could kill him from pain and shock. "When we are done, the clothes must be burnt, and the knife thrown in the fire. Do not use it again."

"What are you going to do?" Lakai asked, and Susan thought carefully about how to explain it. They weren't stupid, just untrained and unfamiliar with science.

"I need to lance the black lumps under his arms. They are where the plague is breeding."

"And if we don't get it out, he won't get better?"

"Yes, but the contents will be a poisonous spray."

"Pure plague." Lakai caught on quickly. "Then I will assist. I have been nursing him. I am already exposed."

"Logical." Susan nodded. "Then we need to prepare."

The computers within the residential area contained no information of value. Those in the largest conglomeration that could be accessed merely contained defunct fiscal information.

Travelling location to location within the area seeking individual computers was inefficient and wasted resources. A change of approach was required. Accessing geo-location data Cet isolated several core sites named as scientific centres. Extended scans revealed four still intact, two within easy travel. To acquire the necessary data should only require one.

"This is my skinning knife. It is the best in the village." Huro offered it to Susan hilt first.

"You know you won't get this back. It will have to be destroyed," Susan said. Huro glanced at the hut, and his eyes said what his pride would not allow him to speak out loud. Susan looked him in the eye. "Thank you."

Huro nodded stiffly and went to join the others by the woodpile, gently coaxing the fire to life. There was nothing left to do. She checked Lakai's wraps, making sure the girl was covered from head to foot, and then her own. Beside the entrance, clear in case the two women needed to run out quickly, a set of poultices and bandages were placed carefully. Garlic and honey paste was the best they could do. She stepped inside the hut, followed by Lakai.

To either side of the bed, old hides had been placed, pulled under the body where they could. Antin writhed and twisted, mouth too dry even to scream, and Susan knew for a certainty she was going to make the pain worse. He was too weak to fight them, for which she was grateful. As he thrashed, she caught a glimpse of his gaze, gone far beyond reason, and knew they would not be able to explain what they were doing. With the windows blocked to contain the contagion and the only light coming from the guttering torch and gaps in the thatch, she could just see enough to do what she needed to.

Cold and clinical, she gestured Lakai to the head of the bed.

"Kneel on his arm, and brace his chest. Keep his head turned away, he doesn't need to see this." Susan's voice was muffled by the wrap across her face, but Lakai nodded. Kneeling on the bed beside to his head, she used one knee to pin his chest down, forcing his head to turn, and trapped his arm under her other knee. Susan reached out a well-wrapped hand to touch the bubo. Immediately Antin convulsed, a tearing, bloody, sound coming from his throat. The lump was solid, bloated grotesquely with blood and infection, and even the slightest touch caused him agony. Dispassionately she gripped his arm and slid the point of the knife quickly into the lump, piercing the surface. Pus bubbled out and she heard Lakai choke as her grip loosened. Susan swayed. The smell was indescribable. She held her breath, trying not to choke herself as she pinned him to stop his convulsive movements spraying them both with pus. This was not the smell of natural decay, this was a living body that had begin to rot. Lakai looked at her, and there were tears in her eyes, but then the girl nodded determinedly and took her place once more. Ruthlessly Susan felt the infected area, forcing her fingers beneath the bubo and pressing upwards to squeeze the infection out. Blackened, crusted, blood trickled onto the hide beneath him, now coated in sticky fluid. Once the flow had stopped she used the knife to widen the hole, satisfying herself the bubo had emptied, and looked at Lakai.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Poultice," Susan croaked, sacrificing precious air, and moved to hold the patient. Lakai ran to the door, returning in an instant with one of the prepared honey poultices. While Susan held him, she bandaged it into place. Before Susan could protest, Lakai had grabbed the hide beneath the arm, pulling it free and wrapping it to contain the contagion before she ran outside, throwing it on the fire. She came back a moment later, nodded and took up her position on the other side. Susan let go of his arm to move round. Instantly Antin pulled it down, towards his side. The twisting convulsions had lessened, but as Lakai pinned his other arm and he vaguely realised what was about to happen he choked out what could have been a scream.

Susan ignored it. Dragging in a single breath to last, knowing what it would be like, she repeated the procedure until once again finally the pus flow stopped and a poultice was in place. She was lucky. The buboes had not rotted through to the arteries. She sat back, looking at the patient, trying to see where next to work. Lakai caught her eye and nodded, once towards his neck, and once, down. Susan nodded, gesturing to his neck first. Sanitation procedures were poor, and she would not risk cross-contamination. Unfortunately it would be harder to hold his neck still.

Cet had seen these before, primitive observatories housing the great mirrored telescopes humans used to observe space. The tube of the huge device was cracked and rusted, and the observatory housing broken wide open. Cet glided inside silently, surveying it. A cloud of birds rose disturbed. The Cull ignored them. Somewhere in the building there would be data stored, a simple code it could crack and perhaps information on what had happened to this planet that differed from their own. It moved through the silent overgrown rooms, crushing vegetation as he passed. The upper level provided no information. The ruined gantry had been open to the weather, the equipment rusted solid and too decayed for even Cet's technology to salvage. Instead it began to trace the wires and cables, following the route back to the ground floor, and into the rooms beyond. Spiderwebs tore as it pushed through doorways that had stood ajar until it finally found the metal door at the base of the collapsed stairs.

The doorway was locked and overgrown, but a scan revealed the power ducts and cables leading past it. The servers would be beyond. With a wrench of the manipulator arm Cet broke the lock, forcing the door open with steady pressure. It levitated slowly down the stairs, tracking the cables to find the devices required, great steel racks of antiquated computer technology. It suppressed a surge of satisfaction. The computers were still present, degraded and old, but that was only half the work. Cet assessed their condition, discovering that they were too decayed to risk powering from the case's own core. Instead it carefully scanned their data storage system. Identifying the electro-magnetic patterns held within, it created a duplicate in its own systems and began comparing them to known humanoid data algorithms. It would take time, but even this unfamiliar pattern would give up its secrets to the Cull.

Susan's internal clock insisted it should be almost dark by the time the women finished, leaving the hut in exhausted silence. Instead they stepped out into the blaze of full daylight, green-tinted by the canopy of leaves overhead.

Lakai led Susan down towards the fire, still burning at the edge of the village. Without speaking they threw the last of the contaminated hides on the pyre, and then, reluctantly, Susan threw the knife in. There was no way to save it. She began to peel off her wrappings, throwing them into the fire one by one as Lakai did the same. The rest of the group stayed away - if Susan's warnings had not convinced them to, the smell had. The horrific operation had been completed five times in all, and they were both drained.

They walked to the edge of the river, scrubbing themselves clean with sand and soap before making their exhausted way back to the bonfire.

"Will he live?" Huro demanded, and Susan looked at him, too tired to speak. Lakai stretched, trying to get the cramp out of her arms.

"I do not know. But he is better than he was."

"The screams - "

"The foulness did not want to leave him," she said and Huro nodded, "but I know the method, and what to do if another should be afflicted."

"He is still in danger," Susan added. "All we've done is ease the pain and give him a chance."

"And that chance is all he needs. Antin is a fighter," Huro said confidently. Susan said nothing. All Antin needed was a sterile environment, tetracycline, and intravenous fluids, but she did not have any way to get them for him.

"It is bad," Lakai said for her. The girl seemed to be struggling to find the term. "He has begun to rot within his body. It is like the injuries that turn foul."

"Gangrene," Susan said. "It means where part of the body dies but is still attached."

"Gangrene," Lakai repeated trying out the word. "Yes. It is in his fingertips, where they have turned black." Inwardly Susan kicked herself. She had forgotten to check for gangrene in the extremities. Amputation of an infected, rotten, area in these conditions with this equipment would be dangerous to patient and surgeon.

"We will need to watch that. How did he catch the disease?" Susan asked, as they walked towards the centre of the camp. A younger boy was dishing food into bowls from the communal cauldron, and her stomach reminded her she had not eaten in nearly twenty-four hours.

"A dead dog in the dead place," Huro shrugged. ''He moved it. I dropped us both in the river and scrubbed us clean, but I am well and he-"

"He should not have broken the rules," Tayli said, as Susan drew a thankful breath that it was not rabies that they were dealing with. "You don't touch a dead thing you did not kill."

''Then you won't want stew. You didn't kill that rabbit." Huro filched the bowl away from her. Tayli jumped up incensed, and Huro held it out of reach. Lakai clapped her hands sharply and the bickering pair looked round. She gave them a long, chiding, look and, with an unrepentant grin, Huro handed the bowl back to Tayli. Susan hid a smile, remembering her own children at that age. Lakai turned back to Susan.

"If it progresses, I can do what is necessary," Lakai bowed her head again. For a moment Susan was silent. It was a hard reminder that the boy's survival was hardly guaranteed.

"Why are you suddenly so formal?" Susan asked, confused.

"I am the holder of learning for the tribe. You have provided knowledge for us. I show appropriate respect."

"Thank you," Susan said, "but where I'm from we're all students. People never stop learning, and everyone learns from everyone else."

"But that is heresy. Who teaches you what to think?" That question almost broke Susan's heart.

"No one teaches people what to think." She crossed her fingers as an image of mass media came to mind. "What we learn is how to think, how to examine ideas and the world around us, how to learn for ourselves."

"Strange. So you are a travelling healer?"

"No. My job-" Susan hoped the word she used conveyed the right meaning "– is to travel from place to place to discover new things. Then I tell others about what I discover."

"Sharing knowledge." Huro grinned, "The villagers are not fond of that." Susan chuckled ruefully.

"Would you like to discuss this over food? Tayli and Miru have it ready," Lakai said, and Susan nodded.

"Yes please, and thank you for the offer."

Download and decryption complete, Cet assessed the content of the data. The data it had collected was concerning, but Cet was a scientist first and foremost. Before believing the observations of an inferior species, confirmation would be required. To perform accurate research, a better location for data gathering would be necessary. Atmospheric interference was unnecessary.

The most efficient way to reach orbit would be to adjust inertial and gravity management and allow the planet to move away from it. At the planet's current trajectory however, this would merely cause the planet to spontaneously strike the environmental suit at orbital velocity. Cet tested its barely-used space drives, checking that the new energy sources were sufficient and initiated ascent.

Adjusting gravity compensation to assist its limited thrusters, it set course towards the stratosphere.

They sat round the fire, food dished into bowls from the large copper cauldron over the fire. Despite the circumstances, it was nice to sit and chat. Susan had not realised how much she missed company. The technological restrictions of her current base were frustrating – although she privately thanked merciful fate she had not been stranded on a world like this – but the social limitations were worse. To avoid risking harm to the world she was trapped on, she had to limit interactions with the inhabitants, and spending weeks stuck in the basement with only her worst enemy was beginning to wear her down. Cet was, for all his intelligence, not good company.

She had told them a few of her stories as they ate, about a world made of spirals where she could not stand up, which made them laugh, and a place where the air made the people ill. That one got a knowing look from Lakai, and a mention of 'bad water', that led to talk of cholera and cleanliness in the camp. It seemed Lakai did not tolerate anything less, and Susan was quietly grateful, but the odd mix of middle age and modern views surprised her.

There were an odd mix of items in use, some hand-crafted from grasses or leaves, others almost certainly the results of industry. As Susan looked at the familiar form of the cauldron, she recognised the re-purposed coal scuttle. Curiously she ran her fingers over the uneven bottom of her own bowl. There were letters smoothly raised and moulded into the surface. They were too smooth and rounded to be anything other than manufactured.

"Where did you get these?" she asked, hoping her stories had finished breaking the ice.

"From the dead place," Tayli said and Lakai shot a nervous glance at Huro.

"The dead place?" Susan asked. The phrase kept coming up.

"The grey buildings," Tayli said, and Susan remembered the buildings towering over the trees."They say nothing lives there, but I have seen birds."

"And rats and foxes and dogs," Huro said laconically, tossing a twig into the fire. "They lied. Again." There could be no doubt in Susan's mind: until relatively recently this planet had had industry. The question was what had happened to it.

"Do you know what happened to the people who made these?"

"They left," Tayli said. "It's in the Litany."

"Could you tell me?" Susan asked, ignoring Huro's snort. Tayli stuck her tongue out at him, stood up formally, and began.

"The Faithless held that there was an evil coming, a great fire that could not be escaped. The True disagreed, for they had faith in the earth. The Faithless built great ships and left in flames. When they departed the True cast down the folly of the Faithless, trading dead cities for living villages, and decreed that none should trespass on those dead places that the earth had cursed. Their faithfulness to the green was rewarded and the fire turned aside. The True have flourished in devotion to the soil." Tayli sat down with a triumphant look at Huro.

Susan frowned as she contemplated at this new piece of the puzzle. There was a cultural fascination with fire that disturbed her: the fire in the sky, burning heretics, the mention in the litany. It could be the increased thermal energy of the red sun, but something did not feel right.

A great evil could be anything from a natural disaster to a war or alien invasion. The 'fire that could not be escaped' was more specific. A volcanic eruption? The dust in the atmosphere would explain the red sky, and bloated appearance of the sun. Then again, a technologically advanced civilisation would be able to compensate for that.

"It's rubbish," Huro said. "I've seen the holes in the ground where they left." Susan's interest quirked. It was possible they had gone underground to escape the raised temperature. If there was a more advanced civilisation, self-contained complexes might preserve it. It raised the disturbing question of why people had been left behind.

"Did it say where the Faithless went?" she asked.

"No," Tayli said after a moment. Susan blinked, certain the girl was lying.

"You left a bit out," Huro said. "'The Faithless built great ships that sailed on air and left through the sky in flames.' They took it out of the Litany years ago."

"Because it's heresy. Only birds fly!" Tayli wailed.

"And you're here because you are so faithful," Huro said, and Tayli stood up and stalked away. Lakai gave him a look, and with a sigh he stood up and wandered after the girl. Susan shook her head, sharing a grin with Lakai. Huro might be a hunter and a heretic, but he was still a teenager.

"They cast children out for being curious?" Susan asked, lowering her voice. She could not quite stretch her mind to it. They were humanoid, and in conditions like this, children were essential for future survival.

"For asking questions," Lakai said. "Tayli asked what the stars were and whether the sun turned into them at night." Susan raised an eyebrow.

"And they threw her out for that?" she asked, and Lakai shook her head.

"They threw her out because she wouldn't stop asking," she said, as the pair rejoined them. Tayli gave them a puzzled look, and Lakai smiled. "Susan was asking about the sun."

"It's like a flock of birds, I think. In the day they all fly together and at night they roost so there's lots of little lights," Tayli said, as she sat down.

"So what's the moon?" Huro said laconically and Tayli frowned.

"I haven't worked that out yet," Tayli said. "Maybe it hunts them?" Susan frowned to herself. The villagers did not like people who asked questions or who displayed technical knowledge. An utter rejection of science following a nuclear war might have that effect, but the environment would not have recovered so quickly. And there was something about the way they reacted to questions about the sky...

"Huro, how did you know they changed the Litany?"

"My Grandfather. He couldn't leave with the ships, so he stayed. My parents hated him, but when they died from the coughing sickness he raised me. He taught me to read, how to look at things. Then he died." Given the villagers' attitude to science, Susan privately thought it was surprising Huro's grandfather had survived long enough to raise him. At least that gave her a second-hand account. A witness would be preferable, but there would be very few remaining who remembered the events first hand. After so many years, most would be two or three generations removed.

"Where did your grandfather say they went? The Faithless, I mean," Susan said, and Huro pointed upwards.

"He said the ships went up, and up," he pointed generally above him, "to another world. When I asked the fires, he didn't say much. He got very quiet." Huro's voice was almost wistful. Susan said nothing. Continental, even planetary, evacuation was possible, but the reasons that led to such desperate measures were never good. She could not get the information she needed here – even if the residents knew the facts they would not know the reasons. She had to get to the source.

"Is it possible for me to reach this 'dead place'?" Susan asked.

"But Antin?" Tayli protested. Lakai raised a hand and the girl quieted.

"Do you think we can find something there to make him better?" she asked, once more the village healer instead of the smiling girl.

"Yes." It was not a lie. Even if most antibiotics would have degraded by now, any equipment that had survived would be better quality than what the Outcasts had available. If glass containers had survived she might even be able to find a way to manufacture antibiotics and antisceptics for longer term use. Lakai nodded.

"Then once we have eaten, we shall go. There are hours left in the day."

Susan tried to stifle a yawn as they walked. She had done a full day's work before she and Cet had left in the Capsule. With the disastrous first contact, the rescue, and the surgery it had to be nearly forty-eight hours since she had slept. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off and, while the sun was still up, her internal clock was telling her it was the middle of the night.

"I forgot – you are an elder. You require rest." Laki exclaimed as Susan stumbled slightly. The girl's surprise was amusing, and Susan chose to take the term as a mark of respect. After all, Lakai was young enough to be her great-granddaughter many times removed.

"I'm not that old. It's just - " Susan stopped, remembering they would not understand jet-lag. " – the heat."

"Oh. Most elders sleep half the day and half the night." Susan tried to focus. That spoke of a sudden shift in rotational patterns of the planet, too sudden for the older population to really adapt to. It would have caused massive devastation. Possibly a comet impact or prolonged volcanic activity or...she dismissed the thought. If the rotational period changed so quickly human sleep patterns could not adjust, the forces exerted would be devastating to life, oceans flooding land, storms, tides. Fires perhaps? The thought nagged at her and she put it aside.

"Really? Aren;t you an elder?" Susan teased slightly. "Tayli looks up to you."

"Only of the Outcasts. I mean real elders." There could be no doubt, the girl was definitely, and very earnestly, calling Susan old. Lakai stopped at a low bush, harvesting small red berries into the bag she was carrying and Susan stopped to help.

"It's still your village, and you are the oldest inhabitants," Susan said, and Lakai's slight nod confirmed her suspicions. "I still don't understand how anyone can cast a child out to stop them asking questions. I think mine had a never ending supply."

"They don't throw us out to learn not to question. They threw us out expecting us to starve." Huro's voice was harsh. Susan shooked her head, wondering what could drive people to treat someone knew, someone they had grown up with like that, but she already knew the answer: Fear. Even the nicest person could do dreadful things when they thought their life was on the line. When it was friends, family, their children? If they thought the questions would bring something terrible, who would they not burn to save their children that fate?

"They threw out the best hunter in the village and expected him to starve?" Susan guessed trying to lighten the mood, and Huro grinned widely. "They didn't think that through."

"They threw me out for using logic," Huro said with a chuckle. "They didn't mind the science when it helped me hunt, but when I point out lies and problems in the Litany? They threw me out, and told me not to come back. So I did anyway."

"They told you to stay away from the village." Lakai said in mild reproof.

"They threw me out, why should I do what they say?" Huro chuckled. "And you'r one to talk, Miss Selfish." Lakai flushed, and Susan forced her jaw not to drop.

"Selfish?" she said incredulously. That was not the word she would use for someone who personally nursed a plague patient. Lakai nodded, tying the string of her bag as she finished with the berries.

"I found a bottle in the woods," Lakai said as they walked on. "It was a flexible thing of fine clear material. You have seen them, I am sure. They seal better than the water jugs or leather. The year of the famine, my mother was stricken with sickness, and could not help with the planets or the duties, or even weave indoors for lack of light. I noticed that the light glowed through it, so I filled it with water and wove it into the roof. We had light within the hut for a week before my mother recovered. The other families did not have one and we could not share it, so she named it selfish and ripped the bottle. I was cast out for a year to learn selflessness."

Susan frowned to herself. A rule that no one could possess anything different made sense only it you were going to stifle innovation utterly. In a world were technology was obviously present once, yet now people contracted the Black Death and suffered without antibiotics, such decisions seemed nonsense.

"So, how do you manage with their village so close to yours?"

"They don't know about it." The girl smiled slyly. "We are Outcast, unable to work together, after all. All the True know that."

"And not all the village are True. We have friends, allies, in the village. They told us of you." Huro smiled. "There are few now, but in time there will be more. The children listen."

"So you - " Susan stopped as Lakai and Huro both froze. Their heads turned, but Susan could hear nothing. After a moment she risked a quiet whisper: "What is it?"

"People. A little way from here, across the gap," Huro said, lowering his voice.

"They have named another Outcast?" Lakai asked.

"I do not know." He ducked down into the undergrowth and moved forward. Lakai gestured Susan to follow, crouching to keep herself hidden by the bushes.

On the other side of the gap a group of villagers stood in the shade, peering across the grass as best they could. They were in no haste to try to cross, and with the heat haze now higher than her head Susan could not blame them. Their voices however carried.

"Hail, Outcast."

"They know we're here." Huro said in an urgent whisper. Susan tensed.

"They will not cross the gap. Stay here." Lakai ordered, standing up and walking forward to the edge of the trees.

"I am here," she called.

"Outcast," the man shouted back. The group on the other side made no move to leave the shelter of the trees and cross the grasslands. With the air rippling in a heat haze as high as their heads, Susan did not blame them. "We hunt a Faithless."

"I have seen none," Lakai replied, with utter honesty. The man stared at her, but one of his companions said something to him that Susan could not hear. He nodded.

"Then tell any you meet. Those Outcast who aid us will have their exile ended."

"Should I meet another Outcast I shall tell them." Lakai shouted back. Apparently satisfied, the man turned and walked off into the forest on the other side of the gap, followed by the villagers. Lakai stepped back, ducking into the undergrowth and making her way back to Huro and Susan. Huro vanished into the bushes, and the group retreated to a safe distance.

"Aren't you tempted to turn me in?" Susan asked as they stood up.

"No," Lakai said shortly.

"And Huro?" Susan said, looking round for him. It was Lakai who answered.

"He is now too old to go back. If he did, he would ask a poor question again, and this time they would..." she tailed off.

"I am too old to be Outcast," Huro said from behind them. "Next time I will be named Faithless. I hold it an honour." Susan tried not to reel as the implication of the words hit home: the reason why there were only children in the Outcast village.

"Only children are Outcast," Lakai said, in hideous confirmation. "Those grown are declared Faithless. They are burned." She looked at Huro. "I shall to return to the village and tell the others to hide the paths. They may cross when it gets to dusk."

"Understood." Huro nodded and stood up. "We shall go on to the dead place. While it is light, it is safe."

Taking station sixteen miles up, Cet began data gathering as it surveyed the surface of the planet. There was one significant crater example in what would have been the primary continent, two smaller sites in a second, and another almost out of view in the edge of the third. There were probably further on the other side of the planet, currently obscured. The craters were still emitting radiation and would for millions of years. The evidence suggested harnessed atomic power, gigantic blasts aimed and focused towards the earth to achieve escape velocity quickly. Such a method would allow no means for return. The lack of care for the resources destroyed supported that hypothesis. The launch operations had been of significant size.

Troubled, it compared the recovered data to its own findings. Something had triggered panic in humanoids, a species type known to be persistent and aggressive. Worse, it seemed their concerns, primitive though their equipment was, had been valid. For confirmation, higher altitude was needed. Patiently it set course for the thermosphere, fifty miles up.

The sun burned above the ruined city nearly at midday height, but as bloated and red as it would be at dawn. It hurt the eyes to look at it. Long, oddly cast, shadows lay across the landscape, and the faint reddish tinge to the light set the hairs on the back of Susan's neck on end.

Beyond in the distance she could see something else she had missed since arriving here: water. Shimmering in the light, the ocean stretched to the far horizon. As she brought her gaze closer, enjoying the high vantage point of the hill, she could see it stretched right into the far side of the grey buildings, waves lapping gently at cracked buildings and tattered walls.

The city before her must once have been huge. Now it was shattered, ruined. Grass grew between the cracks in the pavement and tree branches reached through houses to puncture windows the other side. A street, an entire city, cracked and broken down, and yet as Susan looked the damage seemed due to time. Whoever had left had known they were leaving. Signs had been placed inside shops, benches and even rubbish bins cleared. It was a planned departure not a panic: the steady, unhurried movement of people who knew they were not coming back.

She looked up, wondering what the view must be like from the top of one of the empty skyscrapers. It was too dangerous to try climbing one - the cracks and wear told her that they were home to nothing more than birds now.

"There aren't many animals here," she said. Huro nodded.

"Wait until dawn or dusk. There's no shelter in the open around here. The streets become hot. Watch your step." He started to scramble down towards the city, grasping leaves and branches to stop himself sliding on the smooth dirt. Awkwardly Susan followed. On the outskirts of the city he ducked down into the long shadow of a building.

"What are you looking for?" he asked, while she caught her breath.

"A building with medicine in." She kept the answer deliberately simple. "It might have a symbol of the front, for healing or health?"

"If you mean a pharmacy, there's one two streets over, or a larger one a little further in." Huro said, and Susan's jaw dropped.

"But how? I thought -?"

"I can read. They didn't throw me out that young." Huro laughed at the look on her face. Susan cringed inwardly, grateful he had taken her comment well. Assuming that because the culture corresponded to a certain technology level in earth's history their education system must be at that same historic level was a stupid slip. She must be more tired than she had thought, especially since she was fairly sure he had mentioned that earlier.

"Of course, your Grandfather taught you. So how are Tayli and Miru learning?" she asked, to cover the slip.

"Antin is teaching them." There was a faint catch in his voice on the word 'is'. Huro swallowed and looked her straight in the eye. "Can you cure him?"

"I don't know," Susan said, honestly. Something in his voice said that he wanted facts, not reassurance. "I will try everything I can, but..." She made a small, helpless, gesture.

"I need to plan." He swallowed. "It will be hard if he dies, with only two of us to keep the village together. The others try, but they are young."

Orbit was not empty. Space debris, the remains of tools and manufactured components, indicated a formerly advanced civilisation. Artificial satellites could be detected in higher orbit. Three still had power, but their erratic transmissions were not directed to the planet below. Cet shielded sensors from the glare of the star and followed the transmission beam. As suspected a secondary orbital body could be detected, far larger than that they had arrived on. It was a secondary system in its own right, with smaller satelite bodies orbiting it. Enclosed habitats could be detected on those satellites, and humanoid life-signs. Cet scanned wider. This far out the radio signals could be clearly detected, from a planet far further out in its orbit and moving away.

There was a steady radio pulse from the secondary planet, controlling and directing the satellites here. The encoding was identified as comparable to that from the observatory records and immediately decrypted. Intrigued, Cet increased power and focused its scanners on the star.

As the heat of the sun baked the concrete to burning point, Huro pressed ahead darting shadow to shadow. Susan followed his lead to a metal shutter. Binding his hands with cloth, Huro lifted it, nodding for her to go through. As he followed he pulled the shutter down. Light still filtered in through the mesh, but the cool shadows inside were a relief.

"You've been here before," Susan said and Huro nodded.

"With Lakai. We hoped to find something to treat him, but we can't read the labels." The frustration in his tone was palpable.

"Where are the medicines?"

"Through the white door," Huro said, and Susan stepped forward cautiously, over the debris and rubbish on the floor. Someone had cleared a path, but the floor itself was twisted and broken. She glanced up, trying not to think of the weight of the delapidated skyscraper above her. They needed to get in and out, quickly.

The 'white door' led to what had once been a sealed room, but the door had been jemmied long before. On the walls inside were rows and rows of tiny, sealed, white plastic pots. Proof, in case she had ever doubted it, that these had been a developed people. The labels were worn and loose, the glue long since gone, but the lids had symbols embossed into the plastic. She took one down for a look.

The written language was hard to read, but the chemical formula pressed onto the lid was not, despite the different notation. Swiftly she looked along the rows for tetracyline, and picked up a vial with a surge of hope, only to put it down, brushing her hand clean hastily. The plastic had cracked, and she was not going to risk contaminated medicine. Looking further along the row she tried to see if anything else had a symbol she recognised.

There were three pots of penicillin, and one still seemed entire and unswollen. Carefully she cracked the seal, which gave with the pop of a broken vaccuum. The medicine had no unusual odour, and she tipped a few of the tablets into her hand. Satisfied, she nodded. After all this time, the antibiotics would retain anywhere between fifty and ten percent of their usual effectiveness. It did not matter: they still were Antin's best chance.

Looking at the size of the tablets, she tried to gauge roughly the normal dose and work out what allowance to make for their age. She knew some pills became poisonous as their active ingredients broke down., but toxic byproducts would not kill him as fast or as painfully as the disease. Decision made, she tipped the pills back into the bottle, screwed the lid on, and handed it to Huro.

"Take these back to Lakai, as quickly as you can."

''But what about you?"

"I can't run as fast as you. Just get these to Lakai, and come back for me when you can." He nodded, starting to lift the shutter to the pharmacy, when he paused.

"I will be back before dark, but what do we do with these?" He rattled the bottle.

"One tablet with breakfast, lunch and dinner. One in the middle of the night. Crush another one and mix it with the honey when she changes the poultices. Just go. I'll wait for you here." He let them out, pulling the shutter down behind him, and looked at her.

"Susan? Will you be - " She cut him off.

"Go. Time matters." With a swift nod he turned and ran, extending himself in a long stride that Susan could not match. Once he was out of sight, she relaxed and looked round. There had to be some clues left about the fate of technology on this world, and here was the place she should find them.

Checking her watch, she guessed she had over two hours before Huro returned, even if he made the trip at a run. Absent-mindedly she wound it as she set off into the city. She did not want to lose track of time.

"...vacu..." the sign read. With one letter missing at the start it was not hard to guess the rest: "Evacuation." The mass produced nature of it confirmed her guess: the move had been planned, not panicked.

At some point in the comparatively recent past something had led to the evacuation - or attempted evacuation - of the population. Despite Huro's contempt, the Litany might be no more than the truth; the truth cloaked in myth to hide something the older generation would sooner forget. The reason, however, still eluded her. It would be a massive overreaction to volcanic instability unless that was going to destroy the environment entirely.

The burning question remained: if a known disaster was coming why were people left behind? Were they refused access? Was there a lack of space of the ships? Huro had said his grandfather was unable to go. Had they stayed by choice, in denial of the coming disaster? Had there been plans to return for them?

She could just make out an arrow on the sign, and the sign was attached to the side of a building, not bent or distorted so the direction would still be correct. Susan looked at the buildings, the crumbling skyscrapers, and picked up her pace, looking round for another sign. They were not hard to find – each city block had one or more, all pointing in the same direction.

As she walked, keeping a careful eye on her route since she did not want to get lost, she turned the problem over in her mind.

A comet impact could have been seen in advance and destroyed or redirected using explosive force. A falling satellite perhaps, but then when she had been escaping from the camp she remembered that whenever she had glimpsed the sky, she had seen no moon. Were they concerned about a solar flare? A superflare from a star that size could destroy the ozone layer, but the planet itself would likely survive. Susan dismissed the idea. Solar flares were usually only a threat to technology and not easy to predict even with her homeworld's technology level - at these people's they should have had less than a day's warning. The evacuation had been well planned.

A supernova? Nothing their system would survive the blast. Even if they had predicted it, assuming they were using rocketry from the "ships on pillars of fire" comment, it would take almost a century to get far enough outside the system to escape.

Stopping for a moment to catch her breath, Susan wiped her forehead with her handkerchief, staying in the shade of the building. It was getting hotter as the day wore on, but she could not risk looking up to check the angle of the sun. Even a sidelong glimpse of that glowing white orb would risk permanent blindness. Instead she looked at the shadows, cast as precisely as a spotlight. If she remembered her trigonometry she could work out the angle from there. Then she could work out the rotational period of the planet from the shadow's movement...she shook her head. Investigating the star, with what crude instruments she could fashion here, could wait. For now she needed to find out where the Faithless went and why.

The door lock had never been fastened, but everything of value had gone. Susan brushed the cobwebs aside with a branch in case the weavers were poisonous and ventured inside cautiously. It might have been looted but there was no damage she could not put down to time. This was the home of spiders and ivy now. The desk faced her, in a lobby full of computers and a tree that had sprouted through the floor, leading to large double doors beyond that should hold the library itself.

One look at the tangled mass of weeds growing into and through the computers was enough to confirm they would be no use, but there were other resources. Choosing a shelf larger free on vegetation she lifted a book down carefully and opened it. The pages felt strange between her fingers: a polymer weave rather than wood-pulp. The text itself had not survived much better than paper though, the ink flakes between pages all that remained of words. Susan put it back on the shelf, wondering if the book deeper in would have fared better. Cautiously she walked towards the large pair of double doors, one half off its hinges, at the end of the lobby.

She backed away quickly as she heard the buzzing from inside. If this world had creatures like wasps or hornets, and they had discovered paper books or wooden shelves...Susan quickly decided against going close enough to perform a proper taxonomic classification and retreated hastily.

Outside the library the only clue she had left was the signs. Susan hoped they would not lead to a tube station – she would not risk going underground, where larger animals would have retreated from the heat. She started walking again, sign to sign, shadow to shadow, through the quiet, empty, streets.

It was an eerie feeling, a city not dead but utterly desolate. No matter how quietly she walked she could still hear her footsteps in the silence, but there was absolutely nothing else. If anything did happen out here, she knew there was no help nearby. Stopping by a bench, she wrapped her hand in her sleeve and picked up a length of broken iron. It gave her a weapon of a sort, and she was not foolish enough to trust her defense solely to a hat pin on this world.

It was clear now that the technologically-based had left the planet, not merely the continent.

The logical view was that technologically advanced had left their world, leaving behind the unwanted, and yet something about that was not right. The population drop, from a planet of skyscrapers to the small settlements the Outcasts spoke of, was too great for many to be left on the planet. It seemed more likely they had left the ones who chose to stay, and those who did had created their own world, returning to nature. Susan thought of Antin and her lip curled. Nature could be very unforgiving.

Anything electronic had a positive and a negative, but whether it was alternating or direct current and what voltage and amps it took could vary widely and she had no way to tell. She out it aside, looking through the papers.

"The sixth is safely aware, but last night...caught the saboteurs at the launch site...no choice...stay to make sure the launches are safely performed."

"More than enough time to get everyone...they don't want anyone to go...first they weren't a problem but as the launches..

"...my own daughter...asked them not to hang her...last ship leaves..." Susan swallowed as the voice faded out, her pager battery too low to keep it going. The words painted a hideous picture of the last days of an inhabited world, the technologically developed fighting against the doomsday cults who felt that not only should they stay on their world, but that no others had a right to escape.

There would be very few who remembered these events. After fifty years, the majority would be one or two generations removed. They had created their own culture, based on the ideals of the ones who chose to stay, with a religion based around the suppression of science. They would have had to, Susan knew. Humanoids were naturally curious, and with the remains of technology all around them, without restrictions and strictures forbidding it at least one of their children would have picked up an item and asked "How does that work?". As it was, they looked at the stars and asked "what are those?" Even now the structure was breaking down as people like Huro and Lakai insisted of thinking for themselves. Within a decade or two, they would start to rebuild. Susan smiled to herself. She saw no reason not to give them a hand.

Internal stellar processes were isolated and identified. The degenerate carbon core was assessed as suitable for recharging. Access would be difficult. The helium shell surrounding the core was undergoing fusion. The outer layer of hydrogen was too diffuse to fuse. Insufficient deuterium was detected for efficient collection. Hybrid fusion/fisson reactions were still unattainable within its reactor.

The remains of previous helium flashes could be detected. Thermal currents within the star indicated instability, commencing within the last twenty solar cycles. Previously such flashes had swelled the star to its current size, weakening the bonds holding the outer layers together. Threat detection alerted: there was a pattern identifiable within the thermal behaviour of the star. Reacting instantly Cet adjusting sensor locations to receive and relay instantaneous information on the star, eliminating the light-speed delay. For three nanoseconds it remained in orbit, confirming readings: the reaction had already occurred.

The ionised ejecta would not arrive at the planet for five further hours. The heat and light would reach it in four minutes. It boosted receivers, trying to locate Susan's pager. It was not detected. Threat priority increased immediately. Alternative scans for her bio-signature performed on the last known location could not locate her. Scan widened, locating the subject forty miles from expected location.

Cet re-entered atmosphere at full thrust.

A second flash of light in the sky caught Susan's eye and she forced herself to look away. A second later there was a sound like thunder and the ground shook as a blast of hot air swept across her. As she clutched her ears she heard glass shattering, and concrete falling. Water exploded upwards from the sea beyond as something ploughed into it, as bright as the sun. A great roiling cloud of steam rose into the sky above the skyscrapers, but she had no time to think about it. Huddled back as the last of the glass fell from the building above, Susan looked out carefully for the cause. It was approaching, crushing the debris as it went.

"RETURN!"

"Cet? I'm over here." Susan stepped forward onto the cracked road as the Cull advanced. "What's-?" The primary manipulator shot forward, engulfing her upper arm with painful force as the metal burned her skin.

"Retreat!" As the Cull took flight, her whole weight swung from the shoulder. She felt it dislocate, and yelped, grabbing the manipulator with her free hand, wrapped in a sleeve and pulling her legs up to try futily to find a foothold to brace against on the smooth armour.

"Cet?" she shouted, but the wind muffled her words. The alien landed roughly in front of the Capsule, releasing her. She stumbled, catching her breath. The air felt warmer.

"Open!" it screeched. The note of urgency in the tone was unmistakeable. She pulled out the keys with her good hand, shoving them into the lock. Her skin felt tight, as if she had had too much sun, and she flung a hand up to shield her eyes.

"What's-?"

"Shell Helium Flash!"

"But that would never - " Susan protested as she turned the key wrong-handed.

"STELLAR CORONA EJECTION!"

As the door opened, the Cull barged her inside. She turned to catch her balance as the Cull rotated, pulling the Capsule door closed. The last thing Susan saw as it shut was the world outside turning to fire. She pulled the lever.

There was nothing, no noise, no sound, no thunder. She looked at the Cull blankly. It was scanning the instruments. Finally her gaze fell to the positional dials, showing their old familiar location. They were home. She sank down on the bench, hands in her lap. The Cull didn't seem to be in any hurry to open the door.

A week later with Cet out of the basement laboratory for a rare external experiment, Susan took a chance to access the prototype scanner. She put the co-ordinates of the trip into the crude device and waited. The screen remained obstinately black. As she tried narrowing focus, nothing happened. Frowning, she widened it, to continents, planets and then finally onto its maximum setting. A red giant burned slowly in space, surrounded by the nebula that it had ejected, and the few broken asteroids still in orbit. The Wolf star had devoured its children. Alone, staring at the monitor, Susan wept.

Aftermath

Four weeks later, time for the next trip offworld, and Susan could hardly bring herself to look at the Capsule. She knew the risk to their treaty if she did not travel, but some wounds were too fresh. An impatient Cet hovered, almost literally, by the door of the machine.

"Travel risk is known to be non-negligible."

"I know," she swallowed, looking at the device. Non-negligible to the travellers physically perhaps, but to lose people so quickly after coming to know them had been a dreadful shock.

"You should not grieve. The deaths need not occur." It was not a statement she had expected from the alien, and Susan's guard went up. Even if she had been subdued for the last few weeks, the creature should not know enough about humans to notice.

"Explain."

"The Capsule is a dimensional transport device. Time is a dimension. Adjust the co-ordinates and retrieval is possible."

"Cet, the Capsule is not capable of that kind of precision." Susan looked at the device, very aware the controls were nowhere near refined enough to manage a targeted jump within the same solar system. There were not enough bearings in the database to even indicate which co-ordinates, relative to their own location, she should change to create such an effect and how many tiny decimals would need to be amended for planetary movement.

"On future jumps we may locate technology enabling greater precision." The alien's flat tones cut into her thoughts.

"And then I go back to rescue them?" She knew she sounded bitter, but she did not care.

'High probability such technology can be located within five hundred years."

"And if I don't survive that long?" she said softly. "If I don't remember them?" Who would she be in that time? What friends and family would replace the ones she grieved today? What concerns might have supplanted them? "Cet, understand me. Whatever may happen in the future, here and now they are dead. Nothing shot of directly influencing causality to a degree that could cause a supernova will recover them."

She lowered her head. At least it would have been quick, the temperature reaching levels beyond endurance long before the expanding corona had engulfed the planet. The Outcasts, unlike the True, had not believed that the return of the Faithless would bring the Fire. Had they died cursing her, blaming Huro for bringing her to them?

"Temporal effects cause novas?" The creature was either disturbed or fascinated.

"An easy way for causality to retain consistancy - spawn a hole in space time to contain the paradox." Contain was a more pleasant way to say obliterate.

"The star is unlikely to go supernova. It is shedding its mass in stages." Susan swallowed. The star had ejected the layer of burning hydrogen from its surface, possibly triggered by a thermal flash and its own weak surface bonds. Whether the second society Cet had mentioned on the outer world survived depended on how much and whether it was a full or partial sphere.

"Causality adds its own energy," she replied, too worn to go into details.

"Then rescue would be inadvisable."

"I know!" She actually snapped at the alien. That was the problem: she did know, and even after four weeks she really was not prepared for another trip. The risks, the loss, seemed far too high.

"If you do not assist in offworld transport, there is no reason to spare this one." There was no spite in the creature's voice, just fact. Cet's words brought her back to herself.

If Susan had access to her own technology, or a way to contact her people and ask for help, she could destroy the alien, but she would still lose. The conflict would devastate the planet they were on and kill Cet's unknowing, unprotected, hostages: the entire civillian population. She could not bring herself to consider that now, far less be the cause. Defeated if only for the moment she nodded slowly, stood and walked towards the Capsule.

End

Author's Note:

For people interested in the model for the star and the shell helium flash, I suggest examining Sakurai's Object, a white dwarf star that appeared to swell back into a red giant over a period of five years.