"Emmy, five more ales for the pounders."

Emily Turner winced with distaste. She'd served that table three times already this evening, each time enduring the groping hands and the ribald comments with as much dignity as she could muster. She tugged at the short dress the innkeeper made her wear, trying to make it cover more of her legs. Why someone of her age, who'd left the glow of youth far behind her, should attract that kind of attention when there were far younger and prettier girls serving drinks was beyond her, but the road workers seemed to have taken a shine to her and had asked that she be the one who attended their table for the whole evening.

Emily imagined someone trying to tell her that she should be pleased and complimented that people still found her attractive at her age, but that didn't help when grubby, calloused hands kept groping and slapping every time she came within reach. There was a knife on the table they'd used earlier in the evening to carve a joint of pork and the last time she'd taken them their drinks it had taken all her self control to keep herself from snatching it up and stabbing the man whose hand had just intruded under her dress.

She needed this job, though. Or at least she needed a job if she wasn't to starve in the streets. She'd originally been hired as a cook, a job that she'd kind of enjoyed as she got to know the other women who worked for the Majestic Hog Inn, one of the better, or rather least bad, taverns of Tettlehall's working class districts. It was only for a little while, she'd told herself. Just until she could find something better. She'd been considered an excellent cook back in her old life, and even though most of the more exotic ingredients she'd liked to use were no longer available she thougnt it quite probable that she was the best cook in this primitive city and that she'd be able to make a very good living providing meals for the aristocracy.

Once word got around that she was a survivor from the ancient world she fully expected to become a celebrity in this city. Someone with tales to tell and around which crowds would gather to listen. The aristocrats would want to know who she was, this woman who could cook in a style that hadn't been known for a thousand years. She would catch the eye of one of the unmarried men. Not one of the senior nobility, she knew that was never going to happen. If this society was structured the way she thougnt it was, they would marry for money or political advantage and she could offer neither. There might be older nobles, though. Branches from the main line of descent of less importance to the family's political fortunes but who still had money. Men whose first wives had died or left them and whom she could sink her hooks into. A man who had known the joys of a young woman's body and who was now looking for something more. An experienced lovemaker. A woman who knew how to please a man. A marriage to a man such as that, who could offer her what passed for comfort in this primitive society, was probably the most she could hope for in this new world.

first, though, she had to make her name as a cook and that meant start at the bottom and work her way up. A couple of years here, then move on to a higher class establishment in the city's inner circle where the aristocracy occasionally dined. She would bribe the serving staff to let her know when a member of the city's ruling elite came to grace them with their presence. She would cook an especially good meal for him or her. They would ask the management for the name of this cook and she would be hired as a member of the family's household staff.

She already had her whole strategy worked out in her mind, and it all started here, as a junior cook in The Majestic Hog. Unfortunately, on especially busy nights such as this one when the meals were done and the drinking began, the cooks were often required to serve in the tap room and the more ale the average man had inside him, the fewer civilised standards he seemed to have.

She had no choice, though, and so she nodded back at Dexter the innkeeper, her employer, and threaded her way across the crowded room to the tapped barrels where Jenny, Dex's daughter, was already pulling the drinks. She placed the five heavy tankards on a serving tray, picked it up and began crossing the room, careful to avoid being jostled by the other patrons who were growing increasingly boisterous as the evening went on. With her hands full she had no way to defend herself as hands slapped her bottom and tickled her under the arms and she could only grit her teeth and imagine the satisfaction she would feel stabbing the worst offenders repeatedly in the chest with a carving knife.

"Here come the cats heads again!" cried one of the road workers as Emily approached, the others roaring their approval. As every time before, she found herself acutely aware of her cleavage and of every mans' eyes on it where they were revealed by the scandalously low cut dress. When she had risen to her proper station in life, she promised herself, she would never wear such a revealing dress again. Long sleeves and a high collar for her. A sweeping dress that reached all the way down to the ground, to be replaced by ankle length trousers when she went outdoors. And gloves. No inch of skin revealed to the eyes of leering, lecherous men but her face.

She placed the tankards one by one on the table, bracing herself for the inevitable slap and tickle, but it didn't come. The men were sitting still, suddenly talking in low, serious tones and sipping at their newly delivered tankards as if they contained the finest wine. Emily looked around curiously and saw that everyone in the tavern was suddenly much more polite and civilised, the laughter and singing having abruptly stopped. Several pairs of eyes were looking towards the entrance, to the cause of the sudden shift in atmosphere, and Emily followed their gaze to see a priest standing there looking repelendant in his long, white robes, stained at the bottom by the horse manure and other filth that littered the street outside.

Emily ignored him, simply grateful to have escaped another molestation, and headed away from the road workers before the priest left again and the tavern returned to normal. What did he want? she wondered. From what she'd heard it was almost unheard of for a priest to leave his church. When he did it was almost always to visit another church. For one to come to a common tavern was unheard of! So why was he here? The only thing that marked this tavern out from any other was her. This was the one where the survivor from the past worked. The priest must want to to talk to her. Well then he'd made the journey for nothing, Emily thought savagely. After what they'd done to her she wanted nothing to do with them.

She couldn't help but look back towards him as she returned to the tapped barrels, though, and she saw him looking towards her. Their eyes met and the priest started walking purposefully towards her. Emily turned and hurried through the door back to the kitchens. She looked back once more before the door closed behind her to see Dexter striding across to cut the priest off. Emily went to the sink and began helping young Teena wash the tankards.

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She knew she wouldn't escape so easily, though, and sure enough a moment to later Dexter followed her in. He went straight over to her. "There's a priest wants to talk to you," he said in an amazed tone of voice. "What do you know about that?"

Emily thought she could make a pretty shrewd guess. "Nothing," she snapped, however.

The innkeeper waited for her to elaborate, but Emily remained stubbornly silent. "Is it about those stories you keep telling?" he demanded. "Those stories of the ancient world with their machines? If you've been spreading blasphemies..."

"Of course not! I hate machines just as much as they do. The stories I tell are about how the machines almost destroyed the world, aren't they?"

"Yay," the innkeeper replied, staring at her suspiciously.

"I'm spreading the same message they are, that machines are bad. Why would they think that was blasphemous?"

"So what does he want with you then?"

"How would I know?"

"Well go find out, and get rid of him. He's bad for business. Nobody's buying drinks while he's here. Go down to the cellar, I'll send him down to you."

Emily grimaced with resignation and trudged to the stairs leading down into the damp smelling darkness. The place reeked of mold and stale ale and the only light came from the cracks between the boards of the loading shutters in the ceiling where barrels of beer and other supplies were lowered down from the street. The boards gave the occasional creak as someone up above walked over them and the sounds of traffic came drifting down. She thought about lighting an oil lamp but she was too angry to go to the bother. The dark didn't bother her and if the priest wanted to see her face that was too bad. He could probably see her perfectly well in the dark anyway, she realised. Night vision eyes or something.

The wooden steps from the kitchen creaked as the priest followed her down. "Emily Turner?" he asked.

"What do you want?"

"We need your help."

"Go to hell."

"I realise that you may be unhappy with what we did to you, but if you are willing to help us we would be willing to reward you for your efforts."

"I want my head phone reactivated and a million crowns in gold."

"Agreed, if you agree to help us."

Emily stared in astonishment. "Seriously? After that speech your colleague gave about how dangerous a head phone might be in this society you're created?"

"You will need your head phone if you agree to undertake the task we have for you, and as my colleague told you, gold is easy to supply."

"I want to keep my head phone when I've finished this task. You can't just take it way again."

"Does that mean you agree?"

"It's Randall and the others, isn't it? You can't find them."

"We have detected no phone signals in any city or large town. We assume that they have put their head phones into flight mode. Without an accurate description of their physical appearance, that means that we will need additional resources to detect them, which will take time to create. We are concerned that they may find another way to strike at us before then."

"So you want me to go looking for them."

"You know what they look like. You can just go to a city, walk the streets and look at people's faces. All you have to do is get a single glimpse. Your head phone can continually record everything you see so you don't even have to make the conscious decision to take a photograph. You can walk through a crowd, let your head phone record the whole thing and look through the images later, at your leisure. Once we have an image of their faces the drones we will be placing in every large human community will be able to find them."

"They may not be in a large town. If they're smart they'll be hiding out in some tiny, out of the way village."

The priest could see in her face that she didn't believe it, though. All three of the other hibernators were too used to their creature comforts, and Randall and Loach were also too used to power. If all they wanted was to survive they could have accepted the priests' original offer of money in return for the information on their head phones. No, the priests were right, Emily knew. They'd be in a big city somewhere trying to build power and influence, and if all the priests needed were photos of their faces then all they had to do was fill every city with cameras with face recognition software. Even growing beards and shaving their hair wouldn't save them. They would be spotted the moment they stepped out into the street.

"I assume you'll be looking for anyone new in town," she said. "New visitors to the city."

"The trouble is that there are so many of them," the priest replied, though. "As luck would have it, the latest cull has just begun. Orc armies are on the march attacking small towns and villages all across the country. Every city is full of refugees seeking refuge behind their walls. Thousands of new faces. Asking long time residents for the names of new arrivals is hopeless. We need their faces. You have already tried to describe them to us, given us photofit impressions, but you saw for yourself how poor they were. No criticism of yourself is intended. We know fully well that humans of your century became dependent on their head phones to remember faces for them. Your own biological memories have atrophied to near uselessness, at least as far as describing them to other people is concerned, but we are confident that you would still recognise them if you saw them again. That is what we are depending on."

"So you want me to roam the country going from city to city and just walk the streets in the hope that I'll bump into one of them?"

"Essentially, yes."

"And what if I run into one of your orc tribes?"

"The chieftains are being instructed not to attack you."

"That won't protect me from the other orcs, though, will it?"

"We have increased the number of chieftains so that even small bands will be led by one of them. You will be given a bodyguard of human soldiers in case you run across any individual orcs. You will be as safe as we can make you."

"And if I do this, I'll get the use of my head phone back permanently?" asked Emily, aware that the priest had dodged the question last time.

"Yes. It will be given additional software that will allow you to disable your former companions if you meet them. Commands to deactivate their head phones and fill their visual fields with white, effectively blinding them."

"And then you'll give me money? A lot of money? Enough for me to buy a title. Duchess, perhaps. Lands. Servants. Power."

"You have my word."

Emily stared at the priest, trying to read in his face whether his word could be trusted. Pointless, of course, she knew. He was a robot. He could give his face whatever expression he wanted. Even if he was lying, though, she would still have played a part in foiling whatever plan Randall and his cronies were planning. A way to re-industrialise the world. Destroy the ecosystem again. She would do whatever she could to prevent that even if it meant the end of her own life. The natural world was everything. She was nothing.

She nodded, therefore. "You've got a deal," she said. "When do we start?"

"There's a carriage waiting outside for you now."

He waved a hand towards the way back up to ground level. Emily gave him one last questioning glance, then walked back to the stairs.