“Just one of the techniques the scientists tried, I think,” Lantern-Eyes said. “Permanent juvenile states. There are some insects that are functionally immortal because they never mature.”

“So those children are insects?” That was worse than I’d imagined.

“No, the scientists just used an analogous technique to keep them young. Come on. Species 048 are just scavengers, but if they’re here, there might be manikins nearby.”

She kept herself lower than before, bent almost in half. The stained and faded color of her uniform was more visible in the sunlight, a deep rich crimson gone dull with dust. I followed her, mimicking her crouching stance.

I could just see, over the tops of the grain, the far wall of the farmlands approaching. We had almost crossed them.

The sunlight dimmed.

I grabbed at the back of Lantern-Eyes’ too-large jacket to stop her. “What’s that?” I whispered, peering up at the sky. The cluster of lights in the sky simulating the sun were growing darker. Were they failing?

“Scheduled rainstorm,” Lantern-Eyes whispered back, freeing my hand from her coattail. “Come on—” And then she, too, stopped short.

I could hear nothing but a soft shushing in the grass around us, like a wind. “What?”

“That son of a bitch,” the lieutenant breathed. I twisted to see what she saw, and there, across the fields: a dark figure with a star at its throat, glowing a dark and brilliant blue.

Somehow, the Indigo Minister had tracked us here.

“Son of a bitch,” I echoed.

Lantern-Eyes’ hand latched onto my elbow. “Let’s go. The Minister isn’t our biggest problem right now.”

I wished I’d recorded that, if only so I could play back Lantern-Eyes’ words and make sure she’d said what I thought she had. Indigo had his sword drawn, but his attention was on the field where the breeze bent the grass towards him, not on us. I found this strange until I remembered, with a sickening jolt, that there was no breeze in the farmlands.

Then I looked around myself and Lantern-Eyes and saw that the grass by us was moving, too, bending with the motion of something beneath, heading for us as straight and sure as an arrow.

“Sean, run,” Lantern-Eyes said, just as the first of the manikins burst out of the grass.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE:

The Minister, the Lieutenant, and I

The lieutenant’s club slammed into the manikin’s skull, cracking bone, black blood flying. The manikin collapsed back into the grass, twitching with the last firings of its crushed nerves. “Go!”

Overhead, the light dimmed further, and the ship moaned. A thousand small ports in the ceiling opening up at once, I realized, as the first drops of rain began to fall. I glanced back through the dim and found Indigo easily, a gleaming figure surrounded by pale, snarling shapes.

I saw, too, a manikin standing upright in the field, pale, dripping with water. It watched Lantern-Eyes and I run, then dropped down to hands and knees and vanished beneath the surface of the grass. The wheat where it had been now rippled, heading towards us.