The Engineer Reconditioned

THE GURNARD

Either side of the door to this church of the Fish, two iron-scaled creations gaze down from posts of heather wood. They are representational of Gurnards only in that they are readily identifiable as fish. Church artisans, like the Clergy, have never allowed anything so irrelevant as fact to get in the way of their calling.

On the iron scaling of the door itself, Sirus Beck knocked with the butt of his gun, then holstered the weapon. Whilst waiting impatiently, he gazed out at hills like pregnant seals below the falling box of the moon. Beyond the hills, snow-clad mountains faded into green sky and could be mistaken for cloud. There flowed the Changing Waters. He knew this just as he knew so much else about the Church, for his teachers had driven it into him with a leather strap. It was his conceit that he would have fled this place even without the feel of the strap across his back. At an early age, he had learnt to read, and absorbed much from the church library that the other acolytes had missed. It was his conceit that he had left because he had not been stupid enough to believe, and he had not expected to come back. Returning his attention to the nearby hills, he noted a flock of sheep flowing across the land, and dropped a hand to the butt of his gun before turning at the sound of the view-hatch grating open.

“Yes?” asked the belligerent face beyond the grid of thick wires. Beck recalled that someone had ordered the grid fixed there after a sheep had knocked on the door then ripped off the face of the acolyte who had opened the hatch. This sort of thing often happened.

“I am summoned,” said Beck, not trying too hard to hide his irritation.

“Hah!” came the informed reply.

When there was no further reaction, Beck felt the impetus build. It frightened him. If this fool did not let him in on request, he would have to attempt bribery, or scale the lichenous wall, or pick the lock. The only other option would have him throwing himself against the door and clawing at the iron.

“Will you let me in or will you explain to the Wife of Ovens why you turned away a Baptiser?” That brought a frown to the bristly visage and Beck then saw, by the broken teeth and scars, that this man had already run contrary to Church law.

“You know what’ll happen if you’re lying?”

Beck nodded. Of course he knew. He did not want them to seal him in a drowning jar, but he had been summoned. Choice did not come into it, for the voice of the Gurnard had spoken to him on a cellular level and he did not have the knowledge to resist it. Bolts and latches clacked and rattled inside before the door was quickly drawn open. Scarface stood there in stiffened hide armour, a crossbow across his arm, cocked and loaded with a barbed quarrel. With a glance over his shoulder, Beck quickly stepped inside.

The inside of the church was all dank stone across which biolights crept in search of the bladders of blood that were hung to feed them, and as a consequence of that nourishment, the glow of the genfactored creatures was red. The algal life coating the floor in patterns as of frost on a window, was scuffed by the passage of many feet, but still regrowing in places it all but concealed the mosaics. On the ceiling these mosaics were clear behind translucent stone. They depicted strange hoofed animals with woolly pelts, the like of which Beck had never before seen — though their heads were similar to those of sheep. Other just as unlikely herd beasts crowded the ceiling along with birds and fishes, plants, insects. The doctrine of the Church had it that these were creatures of Earth. And as real, thought Beck.

“Come with me,” said Scarface, and led Beck down corridors he remembered from what he considered the most grey and miserable time of his life. As an orphan he had not been given any choices. As one of the Trindar Becks he had fled before they broke his will. Scarface led him into an area to one side of the entrance hall. He wanted to go straight ahead and down as he was impelled to do, but the pressure wasn’t so bad now he was inside the church and he could handle a detour or two. He immediately recognised the door he was brought before. Often he had stood outside it shivering with fear and anger. Scarface knocked and opened the door.

“We have one here who claims he is summoned,” Scarface said.

“Sirus Beck,” said Morage, looking up from the paperwork on his desk. Beck stepped past scarface into the office and the door was closed behind him. He walked to the desk, pulled out a chair and sat.

“I did not give you leave to sit.”

“I don’t really care.”

Morage glared at him. He has not changed so much, thought Beck. After ten years his beard was greyer and his red robes faded, but the man’s eyes were still the malicious focus of his face. Morage enjoyed power — enjoyed meting out punishments.

“I could have you beaten and hung from the walls.”

“You would do that to a Baptiser?”

Beck tried not to smile. He knew enough about Church structure and doctrine to know that, as a summoned Baptiser, he was the province of the Wife of Ovens only, not the Inquisition of the Church. Should Morage seek to exert authority over him he risked his own drowning jar. Thinking on this, Beck’s gaze strayed to the corner of the room where a spherical glass jar a metre in diameter contained the remains of Morage’s predecessor. The man was naked, his wrists tied to his ankles, his head lodged between his knees, his skin bluish and his eyes sunken away — the preservative he had been drowned in not being sufficient to prevent all decay. Baptiser or not, it wouldn’t do to push Morage too far. Beck stood.

“I think it best I see the Wife,” he said.

Morage sat back. “What proof do we have that you are summoned?” He’s starting to play, though Beck. I should have been more circumspect, “You know the proof as well as I.”

“Yes, but perhaps before you are brought to the chamber I should hold you for a while. It would be easy for a potential assassin to claim to be summoned… ”

Beck felt a sudden surge of anger and fear. Petty — that was Morage. Beck rested a hand on the butt of his holstered gun and leant across the desk.

“A lot of years have passed, Morage, but I haven’t forgotten you,” he said. Morage glanced at the gun. He obviously had not seen it until then, and just as obviously the doorman would be in for a beating for not relieving Beck of this weapon. Morage tried to sneer as he waved his hand at Beck.

“Go to the Wife,” he said. “I have no time for this.” Beck went, the anger and fear slewing away as he was once again on course, and being replaced by faint amusement in that the gun made it even more likely he was an assassin. Even then he could feel the presence of the Gurnard in his emotions. In a moment he was on a main corridor leading into the centre of the church where the Wife of Ovens tended her fires. Already he could feel the increase in warmth and smell from flames of marsh gas. And as he walked the impetus took hold of him, drove him. He was vaguely aware that he was accompanied as the corridor he followed dropped down into the earth by sections of stairway, each marked by decorous drowning jars. At the end of the corridor he entered the huge central chamber, hot from the mouths of the ovens set in the walls. At the centre of this room, on a pedestal of heather wood decorated with sheep skulls, rested a wide glass pot, big enough to bathe in, and containing water the colour of bilge from an iron boat. Beck ran across the crumbling floor and thrust his hand into the pot. Something moved there. Spines entered his fingers and fire travelled up his arm. He vaguely noted two of the Clergy moving quickly forward to prevent him spilling the pot as he pulled away.

“He will have visions,” somebody said.

“Of that I have no doubt. The chemistry is complex enough,” said someone with an accent he did not know. He looked around as the fire hit his neck and branded the side of his face. The Wife of Ovens stood there in her robes and ceremonial apron. Next to her stood a creature with black skin, white hair, and blue eyes, and the strangest clothing. As he fell, Beck thought that the visions had already begun. On Earth sheep eat grass and gurnards are the most unassuming of fish. In Nuremar, the day before a Baptiser’s arrival at the church, a family was massacred by sheep, and in a hundred churches people prostrated themselves before pots of dirty water. Erlin considered these facts, recorded them, and made no comment. In a church of the Fish it was best to make no comments about anything — to remain the detached observer. When first she was shown to her room she thanked her escort and smiled, ignoring the threat of the empty drowning jar in the corner. She was here to observe and to study, not to judge.

“So anyone could be chosen to be a Baptiser?” she asked.

The Wife of Ovens, in her voluminous robes draped with a thousand amulets, and her thick hide ceremonial apron, nodded sagely and smiled her satisfaction. Erlin thought she looked precisely like a female Buddha; hugely fat, bald, and smug.

“Yes child, even you could be chosen.”

Erlin turned away for a moment in an attempt to keep her expression serious. Here, the Wife was very old — seventy years solstan. Erlin, being a member of the human Polity and a citizen of Earth, had access to technology of a civilization that now spanned one tenth of the galaxy. She was two hundred and thirty years old and was determined to live forever, barring accidents.

“Yet it would seem,” she said, “that no Northerners or island people are chosen.” The Wife showed a touch of annoyance. “That is so, but they could be chosen at any time.” Erlin nodded, her expression showing nothing but gratitude at having things so clearly explained to her. Of course she could have pushed it. She could have mentioned that in the entire history of this church no-one had been chosen who had not spent some time living in this building, eating the food, drinking the water. The same rule applied to every church of the Fish. Erlin irradiated her food and drink before ingesting it. She had no wish to get religion.

“So, please tell me again what now happens with this Sirus Beck.”

“Sirus Beck will carry out the task charged to him by our Lord. He will carry the Holy Fish to the mountains of the Waters of Change. There he will baptise the Fish in each spring as in the birth. The Fish, meanwhile, will be reborn here in the new year, two days before the drinking of the Eucharist.”

“Does anyone travel with him to the Waters of Change?”

“No, this is not allowed.”

“What about the sheep?”

“The sheep will not attack a Baptiser.”

There, thought Erlin, another dead giveaway. I’ll have to get a sample of that new year’s Eucharist. Loaded, sure to be. No coincidence either that the springs called the Waters of Change feed into every damned river on this continent. Erlin wondered how the Clergy got past the fact that each of the hundred or so churches had its own fish and its own new year.

Sirus Beck saw the grey shapes of Gurnards in deep pools and in rivers and streams blunt-nosed against the current. He felt their power — the power of God in them, and he hated it, hated that he could not resist it. He saw sheep upon the hill feeding on bloody human flesh and the box moon opened and spilt writhing worms across the land. He saw his world and every part of it he saw was loaded with deep significance. The tangled branches of heather trees spelled out the glyphs of a secret language. A sugar dog defecating behind a rock was a sign from God, its every pant a holistic representation of the turning of the world. There was glory and there was terror. Beck, in some deeply buried and logical part of himself, thought it all too ridiculous. If this was holiness he wanted none of it. If there was a God then he should mind his own business. The resentment of that thought gave him pain, and the pain woke him. This is the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in, thought Beck. The mattress was soft. He was between clean sheets and heavy scented blankets were layered above him. He was warm and dry and he did not want to move, until something prodded him to move and he felt a stinging in his fingers. This is how it will be, he realised. For the rest of his life this prodding would move him on as soon as he got comfortable. Like every Baptiser before him he would die an old man trying to get to that one last spring. It was one of the inconsistencies that had destroyed his faith — that the Gurnard was reborn even before it died.

“You are awake,” said the Wife of Ovens.

Beck opened his eyes and gazed at the bulky shape standing at the foot of his bed. She smiled at him beatifically. He wanted to strangle her, but even a Baptiser would not get away with that. He glanced to one side of her, at the slim dark-skinned woman he had seen earlier. What was she? Some freak from the islands brought to entertain the Wife? Her clothes, he noted, were very clean and looked expensive. In fact he did not recognise the grey and orange material of her coverall. He sat up.

“Yes, I’m awake, and soon I have to be moving.”

“Of course. That is how it must be,” said the Wife.

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

The Wife gestured with one pudgy beringed hand. “This, Baptiser, is Erlin Tazer Three Indomial.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“It is the kind of name they give people from Earth.”

“Funny.”

“I must prepare the way for you. Dress yourself, Baptiser, then come at once to the tank room. The Gurnard awaits.”

The Wife swept out of the room, gesturing for the purported Earther to go with her. To Beck it looked as if Erlin wanted to say or do something else, but she went with the Wife. That was always the safest move. Beck got out of bed and washed himself with the water and soap provided, before inspecting the well-made travelling clothes that had also been provided. It would not do for a Baptiser to be seen in the clothes of a common tramp. Beck was glad to see that his belongings, other than his clothes, had not been discarded. He still retained his pack and his gun. Opening the weapon to check it over, he saw that all three shells were in place in their chambers. He would be safe from sheep yet. As he dressed there came a sharp knock at the door and the woman, Erlin, quickly stepped into the room. She had some strange instrument in her hand. Holding a pair of sheep-hide trousers before his genitals he glared at her.

“I’m a doctor,” she said quickly. “I need a blood sample.” Beck eyed the instrument.

“Then give one yourself,” he said.

“Please, it’s very important.”

“Yeah, you’re right, my blood is.”

She stepped toward him and he quickly stepped back.

“I bet the Wife of Ovens doesn’t know you’re here,” he said, and it was a threat. Erlin frowned at him then pocketed the instrument she had been holding. Beck peered with curiosity at the pocket she had put it in, at the cloth, the way it sealed, at the rest of her coverall. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. So was she.

“Are you really from Earth?”

“Yes.”

“Turn around.”

She looked askance at him. He nodded down at the trousers he was holding.

“I am a doctor you know.”

“That gives you no rights to my body, now turn around or get out.” Erlin turned and Beck finished dressing himself.

“Now why should you want a blood sample?” he asked.

Erlin was indecisive. “They say you were an acolyte, but that you ran away, that you are a heretic and unbeliever.”

“They say right,” said Beck with some viciousness.

“How does it feel then to come back as a Baptiser?”

“It feels like Hell.”

“How do you reconcile your—”

There came a rapping on the door before it was suddenly opened. Morage stepped into the room with a sneering grin on his face. Behind him came two priests obviously selected for their size rather than their piety.

“The Wife of Ovens awaits you, Sirus Beck. It would be better if you followed your calling willingly.” It was a mild dig. Morage’s attention was on Erlin rather than Beck. Beck stooped and took up his pack. He caught Erlin by the arm. “The Wife awaits the both of us, as it happens.” He led Erlin past Morage and his two thugs.

“Wait,” said Morage, angry, but unsure.

Beck turned and addressed the two thugs. “I am a Baptiser. Do you seek to delay me?” When this elicited no response he hurried Erlin down the corridor.

“Damnit, stop. Stop them,” Morage hissed, but the two thugs were too confused and scared to take any precipitate action.

“I never did like that one,” said Erlin, once Morage was out of sight. “Something sneaky about him.”

“Morage is a thief and a sadist. He strips the acolytes of their personal effects when they join the Church and he has been responsible for the deaths of many.”

“The Wife allows this?”

“He would have taken you for religious counselling. You would have been stripped of your belongings and part of your skin before the Wife found out. She would have forgiven him his fervour. Why are you here, Earther?”

“I can look after myself,” said Erlin, avoiding his question.

“Then do so!” he snapped, and left her as he took the most direct route to the tank room. They sang hymns while Sirus took up the small carry-pot containing his unwelcome companion for the rest of his life. The tempo of the singing changed as he walked to the door and he knew, that once the door was closed, the rest of the day would be spent in sermonising, for most of the Clergy anyway. There was one there, crouched coughing up blood in a corner, who would not make it through the day, let alone to the new year’s Eucharist. Not that the foul water of the new Gurnard would have saved him. Something had died inside him, too deeply imbedded to be ejected as was usual, and the smell of death was on his breath.

As the outer iron-scaled doors of the church closed behind him, Beck lengthened his stride. It wasn’t so bad really. The pot was not too heavy and wherever he went people would give him food and lodging for free. Some would resent it and others would make him welcome, but no one would dare refuse. He gazed at the hills, and at the mountains beyond, and strode on into his new life. Hanging at his left side, under his left arm, the Gurnard swirled in its opaque water reminding him that it was not his life. There were no more choices.

The church was out of sight and he was following a narrow path through a forest of heather trees sprung up through ground covered with blanket fungus, when a familiar voice called to him.

“May I join you for a little way, Sirus Beck?”

Erlin came toward him through the trees, her boots sinking into the blanket fungus. She had come prepared, carrying a large pack and wearing a rain cape. There also appeared to be some kind of weapon holstered at her hip. She was regarding the pot hanging at his side, not even trying to hide her fascination.

“You realise that if the Inquisition find out you are with me you’ll end up in a drowning jar?” he asked.

“Yes, I realise that, but I don’t know why.”

Beck continued walking and Erlin fell in at his side.

“Neither do I,” said Beck. “But then the Church has many rules that make no sense.”

“Yet here you are, a Baptiser, carrying a Holy Gurnard to the Waters of Change.”

“If I had a choice this pot would be smashed on the ground and I would be going my own way.” And even as he said it he felt a stab of pain in his guts. It was dangerous even to think like that. There was a long silence between them, which Erlin eventually broke.

“You wanted to know why I wanted a blood sample?” she said.

“Yes, I did.”

“I have an interest in parasites, and I have come here to study them.” Beck looked at her. The only parasites he knew anything about were sheep ticks. Erlin went on, “There is a parasite here with a very strange life-cycle. Its eggs hatch out in the mountain springs.”

“I don’t see the relevance.”

“Well, parasites have all sorts of strange strategies for survival, breeding… sometimes they use more than one host, though I don’t think this one does. There’s one on earth that actually gets into an ant, makes the ant climb to the top of a blade of grass and there cling on until a passing sheep eats it. The sheep is its next host you see—”

“On Earth sheep eat ants?”

“No, grass.”

Beck snorted his disbelief. “If you’re not going to tell me why you want a blood sample, just say so. I don’t need this bullshit. I had enough of it in the Church.”

“No, really, I’m not lying.”

Just then there came a coughing snort from the shade of the heather trees. This was followed by a low moan and a raspy panting. Erlin pulled her weapon from its holster and looked around carefully. Beck glanced with idle curiosity at little flashing red lights on the gun. After a moment he said, “No need to worry yet. That’s only a sugar dog. Save your worrying for when we get beyond the trees. It’s flockland there.” To himself he muttered, “Grass indeed.”

The sugar dog came out of the trees far to their right, paralleling their course. Erlin stared at it in fascination, took a device from one of her pockets and pointed it at the creature.

“What are you doing?”

“Recording images of it.”

Beck studied the glinting little device she held. It was just the kind of thing Morage would like to steal. How it must burn him that she had escaped him.

“Why?” he asked her.

“I’ve never seen one before. It looks like a cross between a bloodhound and a bull frog.” The words were familiar to Beck, but not in that combination. Bull he knew as a word for untruth, just as he knew of the little black frogs that lived in the southern swamps, that ‘hound’ was another word for dog, and that ‘blood’ was red in his veins and green in the translucent flesh of sugar dogs. So much was different about Earth. Perhaps if he had not been so wrapped up in his own concerns he would have been fascinated by this. Perhaps she hadn’t been lying about the sheep. The sugar dog huffed and wuffled through the leaves near them as they followed the trail, then it moved away to the West. In the distance, on the faces of the hills, flocks of sheep could be seen hunting, but they were no danger to sugar dogs. Sugar dogs were as poisonous as the plants they ate.

“Do you know why they are called sugar dogs?” Erlin asked.

“Because they like sweets,” said Beck.

“Sugar kills them though.”

“Yes, it also kills anyone caught feeding it to them.”

Erlin waited for an explanation.

He told her, “They are protected by Church and civil law. Anyone caught feeding any form of sugar to a sugar dog is executed by posting.”

“Posting?”

“Chained to a flockland post.”

“Sorry, I don’t understand.”

“You will soon.” He pointed ahead to a distant object jutting up out of the leaves. They walked in silence until they reached it. Here was a steel post cemented into the ground, from which hung a chain and a steel collar. All around it the leaves were trampled and scattered with chewed human bones. At the base of the post lay half a human skull that had been scraped empty. Erlin quickly grasped what it meant to be posted.

“The sheep don’t attack Baptisers, so the Church tells us. I don’t believe everything the Church says.” With that Beck drew his gun and checked it, as he had done a number of times since leaving the church. He also made sure the shells in his belt were easily accessible, despite the Gurnard pot hanging at his side.

“Isn’t that a bit awkward?” asked Erlin, indicating the pot.

“The discomfort would be greater if I did not carry it,” said Beck. “Let’s keep moving.” He gestured with his gun and then kept it in his hand as they continued walking.

The sun was a blue-green ellipse on the horizon with the box moon in silhouette just beside it, when they saw their first sheep close to. A flock of twenty of them had trapped a ground skate and were levering up its wings with their claws and biting off chunks of fishy flesh.

“Sheep are nothing like this on Earth,” said Erlin, then regretted speaking when two sheep turned their curled-horned heads towards her and exposed yellow fangs.

“Quiet. Keep walking,” Beck whispered.

The sheep returned to their easy meal and did not pursue.

“Their heads are like the heads of Earth sheep and they have hooves on their feet, but on Earth, sheep are quadruped. They don’t have claws.” Erlin shivered. “They’re like something out of Christian fable: Satan, or satyrs.”

“You’ve never seen our sheep before?”

“No.”

“Surely, when you came to the church?”

“I was dropped off there by air transport directly from the port.” Beck was vaguely aware that somewhere there was a spaceport, and he had often seen the transports flying overhead and the occasional flash of a star drive starting up out beyond the moon. It had been his intention to find out about these things. Then the impulse had taken away all his choices. It made him sad and it made him angry. I am only just become a man, he thought, and my life is not to be used to my purpose. He considered suicide and awoke pain in his guts.

“Tell me about parasites,” he said.

“Will you listen?”

“I will there,” he said, pointing at a low stone sheep sanctuary — a building that in another place might have used for protecting sheep from predators, but not here.

Within the sanctuary, coke was provided for a fire but there was no kindling to set it burning. Erlin started the fire with something that flared red and left burning bars of afterimages in Beck’s eyes. He placed the Gurnard pot near the fire and removed the bung. A dead-fish smell filled the sanctuary, but movement in the pot showed that the Gurnard was not dead. Thankfully the smell of the burning coke soon displaced that smell. Beck and Erlin sat then before the fire and ate from their respective provisions.

“You know, any fish from Earth would have died in such a container.”

“Why?”

“Earth fish require oxygenated water. Your Gurnards require no oxygen whatsoever. Oxygen is in fact deleterious to them, which is why they seek out still water at the end of their journey.”

“Journey?”

“I was going to tell you about parasites.”

“Do so, then.”

“I am not entirely sure of some aspects. I don’t know why there is only one Baptiser for each church. I can only presume messages are passed by pheromones or some such.”

“This is about me,” said Beck.

“Yes.”

He nodded and Erlin continued. “I’ll describe to you a life-cycle. You know what I mean when I say that?”

“I am not a complete idiot.”

“Very well. As I said: The eggs hatch out in the mountain springs. After that males and females travel downstream, in water and on land, to the richer feeding grounds in the lowlands… where the churches are. After it has reached first maturity the female finds a pond — usually recently vacated by another female — and there starts laying unfertilized eggs out of which hatch the neuter parasites. These infect the water supply and end up being ingested by most life forms that drink from the pond. These neuters grow inside their hosts and can, to a certain extent, control them. The neuters are in turn controlled by the females, though I’ve yet to work out the mechanism of that… Second maturity for the female impels it to return to the hatching grounds to lay more eggs there. It is carried by a neuter-controlled host to do this. I believe that at one time the only hosts were sugar dogs, though I am relying on someone else’s research for that information.”

“I’m a sugar dog,” said Beck. He wanted to explain to Erlin that it felt too dangerous to say outright that he understood.

She nodded and continued her narrative."Sugar dogs vomit food into the ponds. The Clergy bring consecrated offerings to the tank room. All are infected.”

Did that relieve them all of responsibility, Beck wondered, but he said nothing.

“All this while the males had been feeding in the same areas. The males have a higher resistivity to oxygen and feed mainly on land, on the various blanket funguses. When they reach maturity — they only have one kind — they head for the hatching grounds as well. Males and females from the same hatching do not return at the same time, which prevents interbreeding. Upon arriving at the hatching grounds, the females get their neuter carriers to place them in the waters. In those waters they lay eggs, usually attaching them to the bottom, to rocks, in the sand. The males, by the time they are mature, are usually averse to water and too big to get all the way to the hatching grounds. They release sperm packets which travel alone to the mountain springs to burst in the water in which eggs have been laid.”

“Water worms,” said Beck. “No one I know ever had a reasonable explanation for that. In some places they call them suicide worms. It never made any sense to me.”

“Well, you have the sense now. They have one purpose in their brief lives and that is it.”

“What are the males?”

“We saw one today.”

Beck nodded. “Of course — ground skate.” He felt slightly sick. So there was something inside him, jamming its spines into his guts. He realised some other things as well.

“The Eucharist, that’s when we get infected.”

“Quite likely.” Erlin slipped into her sleeping bag and rested her head back against her pack. “I imagine that right about now the Wife of Ovens is having the ponds around the church netted in search of the Reborn Gurnard. Of course it won’t be found until that one,” she pointed at the pot, “is out of the area. Adolescent Gurnards don’t encroach on a mature Gurnard’s territory. Perhaps in the past they were killed, or perhaps it is because the hosts are all used up. I don’t know.” Beck rolled himself in his blanket. He had the answer; the eighth moon netting of the ponds and the killing of the Gurnard Ghosts. That then was just the killing of immature Gurnards. He told Erlin about this.

“Yes, that makes sense,” she replied. “Once established in its territory the new gurnard sends out the neuter-controlled hosts to kill off the competition, and keeps killing off the competition. I take it this netting and killing is continuous?”

“Every eighth moon,” Beck confirmed. Then he asked, “What about the neuters left behind — from the old gurnard?”

“They die, their purpose served. Most of their hosts survive it, and survive to become hosts to the next Holy Gurnard.”

Beck thought about the priest coughing up blood in the church and it took him a long time to get to sleep. He lay there listening to the sheep sharpening their claws on the stone walls and tried to come to terms with harsh truths.

There were no windows for morning light, but it did filter through cracks in the walls. Beck was beginning to feel discomfort as the impetus to move on grew in strength, when the door crashed open and figures crowded into the single room. For a moment he thought that sheep had learned to operate the locks and in panic groped for his gun. A heavy boot came down on his wrist and the butt of a heather wood staff pressed on the centre of his chest to hold him down.

“Do not struggle, Baptiser. I do not wish to strike you.”

Beck recognised the two thugs from the church. One of them had Erlin pinned in her sleeping bag, the barrel of a gun, much like Beck’s own, pressed against her forehead. After them, momentarily silhouetted in the doorway, came Morage, grinning unpleasantly. Morage was a master of unpleasant grins.

“Oh Baptiser, you have a travelling companion. Even the Wife will not berate me for my actions now. The Baptiser must seek loneliness and purity in prayer,” he said.

“Sugar dog crap,” said Beck. The thug holding him pinned was uncomfortable with such blasphemous profanity. Morage turned his attention to the thug who was holding Erlin.

“Let her up.”

Erlin kicked out of her sleeping bag and stood up carefully, her gaze locked on the barrel of the gun.

“Now, Earther,” said Morage. “I want you to undo your belt and drop your weapon to the floor.” This Erlin did and Morage grinned his unpleasant grin again. “Now I want you to empty your pockets of all those wonderful gadgets.” Erlin began to do this also, dropping device after device on her pack.

“This is not about religion. This is robbery,” said Beck.

“Be silent, Sirus Beck, I will deal with you presently,” said Morage without turning.

“You would delay me?” asked Beck, expecting some result of his query, perhaps some wince of pain from their captors.

Morage turned and grinned nastily at him. “I suppose she has told you all about the parasites?” Morage’s grin got nastier when he saw Beck’s surprise. “Do you think such knowledge would be lost to us? The Wives know, as do all members of the Inquisition. It is best that we are the only ones to know. You see, we keep ourselves pure, and we never truly take part in the Eucharist.”

“You are free of neuter parasites,” said Erlin.

Morage glanced at her.

“Yes, as are my friends here,” he gestured at the two thugs, “which means there are things we can do that so many others in the Church cannot do.”

Erlin shot a warning look at Beck, but he did not need it. He knew that Morage intended to kill the both of them. He noted that the thugs were uncomfortable with what was just beginning to occur to them. Well they might be; there probably had not been a Baptiser in their lifetimes, and now they might be told to kill one.

“Strip that garment from her,” Morage instructed the one who held Erlin at gunpoint. “I don’t want to have missed anything before she goes to the post.”

Lying where he was Beck had a view of the door and realised that no-one else was looking in that direction. He swore at his captor to keep his attention. The thug became even more uncomfortable. The other thug was reaching for Erlin when Morage screamed.

The sheep had come in quickly and sunk its yellow teeth into Morage’s upper arm. Beck knocked the staff from his chest, caught the foot of his captor and shoved him off-balance. There was a flash of red between Erlin and the other. A hand, severed and smoking at the wrist, thudded on the floor still clutching a gun. Beck came up onto his feet holding his own gun as he was grabbed. He sunk the barrel deep into a fat belly and pulled the trigger once. With a muffled boom and a horrible grunting sound, his attacker went up off his feet before thumping face down on the floor. Beck turned, saw the sheep fleeing from the sound of the weapon, saw Morage on his knees cradling an arm from which all the flesh had been stripped between shoulder and elbow. He was screaming. Beck pulled the trigger again and Morage flipped backwards out of the door, most of his head left on one of the door posts. One shot left. White shapes beyond the door baaing and snarling over Morage’s corpse. Time. Beck turned. Erlin was back up against the wall, her face pale. The one left was trying to take his gun from his severed right hand with his left, while the stump of his right wrist squirted blood. He looked up, began to yell, the bullet went into his chest then out from his back, folding out one shoulder blade like an escape hatch. The impact threw him at Erlin’s feet where he made bubbling sounds and died. Time. Beck cracked open his gun, pulled hot shell cases from their chambers, the skin of his finger-tips sizzling, put in three fresh rounds. He did not allow himself to think of anything else until he had done this. Then he stepped towards the door, shooting the first sheep as it came in, trapping the head of the second in the door as it tried to follow, shooting it through the eye then managing to get the door closed against the rest of the flock. Locking the door.

“Sirus… Sirus.”

The thumping and battering against the door was shortlived. Beck rested there with his forehead against the wood, trying to get his breathing under control. Shit, that had been close. When sheep went into a feeding frenzy, God help anyone who got in the way.

“Sirus.”

What the hell does she want now? Look after herself. Hah.

Beck turned and regarded Erlin. She stood in the middle of the room, distaste writ on her features. She pointed down by the fire. It hit him at once; the wrenching tearing in his gut. The pot was spilled, and the Gurnard lay on the stone, bulbous stalked eyes blinking, mouth gaping occasionally, spines fanned out around its head. Before he knew what he was doing Sirus scooped it up and put it in its pot, oblivious to the spines piercing his fingers. He then emptied his water canteen in it. It wasn’t enough. He took up the pot and headed for the door.

“They’ll kill you if you go out there. I’m sorry about this,” said Erlin. What is she talking about?

As he reached the door something hit him like a falling wall and a bright and painful light took him away. Having filled the pot with water Beck corked it. As he did this he felt himself coming back to normality, gaining some control over his actions. He put the pot aside and knelt there with his hands resting on the fronts of his thighs. He felt tired and his head ached.

“I’m back now. I’m in control,” he said.

“Then you can carry your own pack,” she said, and his pack thumped down next to him. He’d woken still under the same powerful impetus. He’d picked up the pot, opened the door, and taken the Gurnard to the nearest source of water. He shivered at the thought of what would have happened had he gone out the door the first time, when the sheep were in feeding frenzy. He’d noted but had not been concerned about the blood, the few fragments of bone, clothing, and one chewed sandal which was all that remained of Morage. He turned to face Erlin, who was sitting wearily on the near-petrified stump of a tree that had fallen when this area had been forest, and when the sheep had walked on four hooves.

“You can have your blood sample,” he said.

“I already took it,” said she.

“What did you learn?”

“Not much, I merely confirmed.”

“Can you free me?”

“Possibly. Are you sure you want to be free?”

“Yes,” said Beck vehemently.

“Let’s eat,” said Erlin. “Then we can move on.”

Beck agreed. They unpacked their supplies and ate their food. When it came to drink, Erlin filled a small container with water in which it boiled in moments.

“You drink boiled water from now on,” she said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know how long the neuter parasites encyst for.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You could be rid of one only to be already carrying its successor inside you.”

“I see.”

After eating, drinking, and resting for a while they moved on. They reached the next sanctuary in darkness, watched by the night-glow of sheep eyes.

“Did you leave the door to the other sanctuary open?”

“Yes.”

Erlin understood him perfectly. There would be nothing to incriminate by the time anyone else came to that place. She spoke with Beck for a little while about parasites and ways to get rid of them, then she watched him while he slept. It was her turn to find it difficult to sleep. What was she? Ten times older than him, yet she had never experienced such violence. She had frozen back there and it shamed her, shamed her so much she was now prepared to interfere, prepared to do something about the parasite he carried. She owed him at least that.

“Why are the sheep like they are here?” asked Beck when the mountains were in sight.

“I don’t have all the answers. Don’t make that mistake.”

“Perhaps your guess would be better than mine though.”

Erlin smiled before replying. “Livestock was brought to worlds like this, worlds with indigenous life, in what was called genetically plastic form. That means that they are able to adapt to environments very quickly. From what I have seen, grass did not take here and most of the other plants are highly toxic. The sheep adapted. They became carnivores rather than herbivores. As to the details… ”

“I see… what did you hit me with?”

Erlin slapped her hand against the weapon she carried at her belt. Beck looked at it and rubbed the back of his head.

“I didn’t physically hit you. This weapon has a stun setting.” Yes, Beck had read something about that, but he was so used to weapons that created huge holes in his enemies that it was a difficult concept to grasp. He chewed that one over as they set foot on one of the mountain trails and as stone and snow loomed above them. When they came to a defile jammed with ground skate and crawling with water worms he remembered her life-cycle lecture, and watched for a while until he saw one of the skate extrude a worm, and that sperm-carrying secondary life form wriggle away. With a bit of rock-scrambling they rounded the defile. On the other side, where some of the ground skate had got through and were flopping up the trail, Erlin squatted by a water worm and inspected it.

The worm was as long as an arm and twice as thick. It was green, translucent and segmented. It inched along like a maggot.

“I find these fascinating,” said Erlin. “There is plenty of genetic justification for them but I’ve never come across anything like them before.”

“Careful,” said Beck.

Erlin shook her head in wonderment and prodded at the worm with the instrument she was holding. After a flaccid clapping sound, Erlin yelled and leapt back, with a sheet of creamy green sludge over the front of her coverall. Beck might have laughed then but something more urgent was calling him up the mountain. He walked on ahead, leaving her swearing and scraping the sludge from her body with a piece of slate.

The mountain was high, but Beck had the energy of that impetus and strode up the trail with the pot clutched close to his side. As he got higher he heard the sound of waterfalls to one side, and a damp mist gusted all about him, cooling his face. Soon he came to an area where thick bromeliads housed chirruping frogs, and ferny plants crawled across damp stone in search of soil-filled crevices. The spring gushed up in a wide pellucid pool where flat stones lurked like giant crabs. Beck knelt in the wet reddish shingle on a crescent of shore only just large enough for him. He uncorked the pot. He was here. At last he was here. He tipped the pot and the Gurnard slid into the water without a splash. The jolt of pleasure felled him and had him writhing in the shingle; stones in his mouth and in his boots, one arm in the water. He shit himself and he didn’t care. The experience was too intense… religious.

“Sirus.”

He wondered how many times she had said his name before he heard it.

“I hear you.”

“What do you want, Sirus?”

“Get this fucking thing out of me.”

“I can do that now. I think.”

“Good,” said Beck, and he slid into the water to wash himself. They sat on slabs warmed by the sun and watched worms inching to the pool and dropping in. As soon as they hit the water they burst and turned it cloudy. Beck could see their remains being jerked about in the water as the Gurnard fed — taking on protein for its next session of egg-laying.

“Here, this is you,” said Erlin.

They watched then as a sugar dog came to the shore, knelt as if to drink, then spewed a Gurnard and its water from one of its mouth pouches. As the dog fell and began to jerk about Beck turned away.

“This could kill you, you know.”

Beck studied the boxlike affair with its glinting ruby lights, strange chrome things she had pressed against his flesh, and a screen across which marched an army of black ants. The pain in his guts had grown and grown and was now almost unbearable, almost.

“Now,” she said, and held out the strange chrome gun-thing. He nodded. She pressed it against his arm and it spat fire into his biceps. For a moment the pain went away. She watched him. Then the pain came back so hard he screamed and set the sugar dog moaning. Later, he puked blood then something hard and chitinous. She shot something else into his arm and told him he was strong, that he would win. He kicked the pot then and it rolled off the edge and smashed down below.

“I will win,” he said and he knew it to be true. Some people do. The sugar dog howled.