It was growing dark when they finally set out from the barn in their potato sack clothes and the makeshift shoes they'd made by tying straps of the itchy, powdery cloth around their feet. Emily had to be helped back to her feet by Jane, but the younger woman was feeling none too good herself and had to keep stopping to get her breath back. In the end, Loach had to take over the task of helping Emily while Wilks helped Jane with an arm around her waist. Randall was also feeling weak and trembly, but there was no-one left with a spare arm to lend him and so he struggled along on his own.
"Are ell felks where yezz comes frem as feeble as the four o yez?" asked Wilks as they staggered along the path back to the bridge across the river.
"No," said Loach, whose knife was now hanging from his waist by a length of twine tied around the handle. "We're all ill. We're dying, in fact. All four of us only have a few months to live."
Wilks stared at him. "Dying?" he said. "The four o yez?"
"We were in hibernation," the crime boss explained. "In hypersleep. Until a time when medical science had found a cure for our conditions."
"Hibernation? High par sleep? Ye speaks a let a strenge words, mester. Whet's medical science when et's feeding the sheep?"
Loach stared at Randall, who stared back, equally at a loss. "Surely you must have heard of such things," the crime boss said. "Even if you shun the use of such technologies, you must have heard of them."
"Ay've never heard o' high par sleep, or any of these ether strenge things ye speak of. Mebbe the felks in yez part of the world hev sech things, but we've got no use fer sech things hereabouts. We sew the creps, we gether and hairvest when the days grow short. We go tae the temple en holy day tae thenk God fer the gifts of life and the world. Thet be mestly all thet folke dae araind here."
"So what do you do when you're ill?" asked Emily. "When you get a sickness."
"A sickness?"
"Like the flu. You know, when you sneeze and your nose runs. When you ache all over and you just want to lie in bed all day."
"Ef I lay in bed all day, who'd feed the sheep and tend tae the crops?"
"But you must get ill sometimes. Iberian fever? Bacman 87?"
"Maybe they're vaccinated against everything in childhood," suggested Loach. "A few quick jabs and they never need to worry about diseases ever again. Even in a place like this, I imagine they must have a doctor who visits the place on occasion. Sets up a clinic somewhere for people to bring their children."
"What about things like dementia? Heart disease? Arthritis?"
"A place like this, they might think that it's the will of God and just learn to live with it."
"Mister Wilks," said Emily, who was making an effort to walk on her own now. "What do you do if you suffer an injury? If you break an arm, for instance?"
"Then I gang tee the priest, en he fexes it. Broke me leg a cepple a summers agae. Went tae the priest an I were back on me feet and wairking the farm the verra next day."
"He healed a broken leg in just a day?" said Jane in astonishment.
"Advances in medical science," said Loach excitedly. "Maybe their priest is also their doctor. The outside world gives these people the benefits of modern medicine under the guise of religious healing."
"Or it's a genuine faith healing," said Jane, eyeing him defiantly. Loach just snorted with amusement.
"If man comes back to God, maybe God comes back to man," said Jane with rising anger. "God is real! He works miracles! Maybe, when we go to see this priest, you will see the truth of that!"
"I'll believe that when I see it."
"I doubt that. You'll find some reason to doubt and sneer. Your kind always does." She gently disengaged herself from Wilks, having recovered enough to be able to walk on her own again. She gave him a smile of gratitude and he smiled back.
"So, tell me abet yesel," said the local man. "How long hev ye been ill?"
Randall tuned the conversation out of his conscious awareness and shivered with the cold. He searched his mind for something to think about that would take his mind off his discomfort. The sky was clear above them, a deep shade of blue as the sun approached the western horizon, and VIX was rising in the east. The former businessman watched the satellite as it shone like the lights of an approaching aircraft, but moving much slower. A creeping slowness that gave it a kind of majesty as if it were something vast and terrible, only appearing small because it was thankfully far away.
Wilks saw him looking up at it and smiled. "Aye, there He is," he said. "God Himself, wetching over es. Mekking sure we're safe. Who cen doubt the truth o God when He's reet there where even the mest sinful cen see him?"
They all stared at him, even Jane. "God is invisible," said the young woman. "And everywhere. God is not seen in idols, in man made objects. God is in the sunrise and the dew on the morning flowers. He is in tall mountains and thunderstorms and the crying of a new born baby."
"Whet are ye telking abet, lady?" said the local man, sounding genuinely confused. "There is God. Right where yez cen see Him. All the priests say so and so sez I anall."
"Let's not argue with our host and benefactor, shall we?" said Randall to Jane in a low voice. He took her elbow and pulled her back to walk a short distance behind the others so they could talk privately. "Even back in the days of religion, God was different things to different people. Why should things be different now?"
"You pray to a model Christ nailed to a model crucifix, don't you," added Loach, also dropping back to join them.
"We don't pray to the crucifix," Jane replied indignantly. "The crucifix is merely a symbol of the invisible, ever present creator of all. That's what we're really praying to. Nobody claims that the crucifix actually is God."
"But someone watching one of your sermons might get the mistaken belief that that was the case," the former crime boss pointed out. "Maybe it's the same with this guy. He knows it's not literally God, but it symbolises God for him, and why shouldn't it? It's a big, bright light up in the sky. Christians used to say that God lived up in the sky, right?"
"It was a metaphor. Only people with a simple, primitive concept of God actually believed such a thing."
Loach lowered his voice to make even more sure that Wilks couldn't overhear. "Simple primitive folks? Such as our new friend here?"
Jane grinned and nodded. "Yeah, you're right," she said. "And I'm sure God will forgive him his delusions so long as his motives are pure."
"I'm rather surprised it's still there," muttered Randall to himself, still staring up at VIX as it climbed higher up the sky. "It was never supposed to be there for more than a couple of decades and I think it's pretty clear we've been asleep longer than that. Just a metal rich asteroid. Hauled from its orbit inside the orbit of Mercury and parked in orbit around Earth so it could be mined. Completely automated. Completely self sufficient machinery with one of the most powerful computers ever created in charge. Powerful back then, that is. I would imagine the state of the computing industry has also moved on during the decades we've been asleep."
He stared at the satellite for a while, using his head phone to scan the images gathered by his eyes in order to measure its speed across the sky. That told him the altitude at which the satellite was orbiting. Its apparent brightness, along with an assumption regarding its surface brightness, then told him how big it was. Both figures correlated with data on the VIX satellite stored on his head phone. If he assumed he was somewhere in the south of England, as suggested by the climate, the wildlife he'd seen and the fact that Wilks spoke a kind of English, that told him that the satellite above him was also orbiting at the right inclination to the equator to be the VIX satellite. He nodded to himself. "It does seem to be the same satellite," he said, more to himself than to the other man. "I thought maybe they mined it out and replaced it with another Vulcanoid."
"Actually, I was expecting it to still be there for the long haul," said Loach, though. "I had shares in it and did a bit of homework. They were going to hollow out the middle first, then use the shell as a space habitat. Maybe that's what it is, now. There could be millions of people up there, looking down on us right this minute."
Randall nodded. He'd also had money invested in the Vulcanoid project. Vulcanoid Nine had been the ninth largest of the sub mercurial asteroids at around five kilometres across, but had been the first to be moved into Earth orbit because its original orbit was the most convenient. The fact that it had been owned by one of his competitors gave him mixed feelings about its success, but the money he'd had invested in it (and maybe still had invested in it) gave him a say in how the project had been managed. And then there had been the CRES code installed on the VIX mainframe. He smiled to himself. His secret knowledge of having the ability to shut the machine down any time he wanted had given him a great deal of satisfaction. They've probably upgraded the whole system by own, he thought regretfully. They'd probably done it several times already. His administrator level access to the machine's base code was almost certainly long obsolete.
Wilks's cottage turned out to be quaint and beautiful, reminding Randall of a picture he'd once seen on an old box of biscuits. It was thatched, with walls made of blocks of stone that seemed to have been carved out of the local bedrock. Smoke curled from a stone chimney that rose from one end. The windows were simple openings in the walls while the top half of the wooden door stood open allowing a chicken to perch on top of the closed bottom half. The chicken jumped down as Wilks and his guests approached, running over to join a group of half a dozen others that were cackling contentedly as they scratched at the ground with their feet.
There were three more chickens inside, they saw as Wilks opened the bottom half of the door and invited them in. There was also a cow and three sheep, one of which was nibbling at the pile of hay heaped in the corner. At the other end of the cottage was a stone hearth in which a number of logs were burning, and in the centre of the single room was a large bed with a straw mattress. The only other furniture was a closet made of logs, a table on which stood a copper pot and some clay pots, and a wooden chest, covered with woollen blankets, that stood at the end of the bed. A long spear was mounted on the wall opposite. Its wooden shaft looked old and worn, but the steel tip had been lovingly sharpened and gleamed like new.
It was warm in the cottage, and Randall felt his body drinking in the heat like a dry sponge soaking up water. His hands and feet immediately began to tingle with a pleasant kind of pain as the circulation began to return to them and he felt his body give a great shudder as if he'd been simply too cold to do so before. He heard a gasp of relief from Emily, and Jane whispered a prayer of gratitude to God. All four of them took a lurching step towards the fire, eager to warm themselves before it, but they stopped when they noticed the figure standing before it.
It was a dumpy, rosy cheeked woman who was stirring a large cauldron that hung on a chain above the fire. The smell of a vegetable stew rose from it, and Randall felt his mouth watering as he suddenly realised how hungry he was. It took all his self control to keep himself from rushing over and pushing the woman aside, grabbing her ladle to help himself to the bubbling hot contents.
"Pour sem wetter in the pot, woman!" said Wilks as he entered. "We'ze get guests."
"Guests, ye sez," said the woman, turning to stare at the four hibernators. "Mair guests, Henry? Ye'z elwez bringing guests hem! Whet ez we, honest farmers or beg burg lendlords?"
"They wez wendering around near Yarley's field, as nekkid ez the day they wez bern. Whet wez I supposed tae do? Leave em tae freeze?"
"Nekkid, ye sez?" said the woman, eyeing Jane suspiciously. "Whet wez a pretty gel like her doing wendering nekkid? Ye breng a bawdy girl ento mai hoose, Henry?"
Jane was still struggling to understand the accents of the farming couple, but the woman's meaning was made quite clear by the suspicious look she was giving her husband. "It's not what you think," she said, taking a step closer. The farm woman responded by raising the ladle as if it was a weapon. Jane hurriedly stepped back again. "We are unfortunate victims of circumstances and your husband was good enough to help us. I'm sure the Lord will reward him well for his generosity, and you as well."
The woman stared in astonishment. "Lesten hae she speaks! Ye breng a Gree woman enta me hoose, ye foolish man?"
"Yez the foolish one, woman, ef ye thinks she's of the Gree Felk. Aint the Gree Felk tell en thin wiz hair the colour o' geld? Dae she look Gree tae yez?"
"En hae de yez know whet the Gree Felk look like? Yez ever been tae the Gree Lands?"
"Please, good woman," said Loach, stepping closer. He also had the ladle raised at him but he stood his ground. "It wasn't our intention to cause trouble. All we ask is a place to spend the night. We can go back to the potato barn if we're not welcome here."
There was something in the set of his body that disturbed Randall. He'd turned so that his body was hiding his knife from the woman's view and his hand was hovering near the hilt, his fingers open, ready to grasp it. Randall woke up his head phone and told it to send a text message to the crime boss. *Loach! What are you doing?*
The crime boss started to speak a reply but stopped himself just in time. He sent a text message back. *We can't survive outside. We'll freeze. Even in the potato shed, we'll freeze. We can't let her send us away.*
*If we kill them, everyone in the area will know it was us. We're strangers here. Newcomers. We'll be obvious suspects.*
*I'll take my chances. It's either that or freeze.*
*Give her a chance. She may let us stay.*
Loach didn't reply, but his body relaxed and his hand moved away from the knife. The farmer and his wife were looking at them strangely, though, and Randall realised that they must have looked a bit odd, standing in silence while they exchanged text messages. Back in their own world, any bystander would have known what they were doing. People standing as if in a trance while they did something on their head phones were a common sight, but this couple with their primitive lifestyle might never have seen it before.
"Yez ell reet?" asked Wilks with concern in his voice.
"I was searching for the right words to persuade you to let us stay," Loach replied. "You say you worship the one true God. Would he want you to turn us out to freeze to death?"
"Nay, he wed net," said Wilks, giving his wife a meaningful look. "Yez cen stay, reet, Gelda?"
"Yez the man o the hoose," said the woman sulkily. "Ay swore tae lev an obey yez when we jemped the broomstick. If yez sez they stay, then they cen stay." She turned to the four hibernators. "Yez stay with the goots, though. Stay en thet side o' the hoose en keep tae yezselves. Ye savvy?"
"We sevvy," said Loach, trying not entirely successfully to conceal a smile. "We sleep with the goats."
"So," said Wilks, clapping his hands happily. "Pet sem wetter in the pot, Gelda. Wez'll hev wetttered-doon stew toneet en sleep wiv rumbling bellies ne doot, but God will be pleased we us. A bemper hairvest for sure cem spring!"
The woman glared at her houseguests balefully, but then she reached for a clay water jug and poured the contents into the cooking pot.