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the corruption and downfall of those species.
    In a sense, a genestealer almost represented cosmic love. A love that knew no boundary of species. That heeded no distinction between male and female. Between human and abhuman, human and alien.
    So this patriarch was love incarnate! Hideous, enslaving love. Almost...
    Its mission also demanded hair-trigger, homicidal fury in defence of its own destiny.
    And, at the same time, cunning restraint – intelligence.
    Its intelligence knew naught of machines, of starships or bolt pistols, of dynamos or windmills. Tools? Our broodkin can use those things for us! Yet its mind kenned much of glands and feelings, of hormonal motives, of genetic and hypnotic dictates.
    The patriarch’s rheumy, violet, magnetic eyes, set in that hideous magenta countenance, considered Meh’Lindi in her hybrid guise... Seeing... true kindred?
    Or seeing through her? About to turn down its claw? Loving you, she thought. Revering you. Admiring you utmostly. In the same fashion as she revered Callidus. As she honoured her omega-dan director... (No! Not that one. Not Tarik Ziz!)
    In the same way as she reverenced... the Emperor on Terra. This clever, loving patriarch was her Emperor here. Her great father-of-all.
    Did it possess a personal name? Did any genestealer? The patriarch grunted wordlessly.
    Beside her, the magus rocked to and fro, heeding the alien monster’s mental sendings. A hybrid from another star system need not be similarly attuned to those.
    ‘Granting refuge,’ murmured the magus at last. ‘Embracing you in our tabernacle, and in our crusade.’
    The patriarch closed its eyes, as if to dismiss Meh’Lindi. It folded its humanoid hands across its jutting, carapace-banded belly, and seemed to drift into a reverie. Its claws twitched rhythmically. Perhaps it was numbering its children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Of whom, Meh’Lindi of course was not one. So though it accepted her into the fold, or at least into the fringe of the fold, she was hardly a total communicant, as were all others in this subterranean stronghold.
    And how many there were! Brutishly deformed broodkin rubbed shoulders and preened and sang praise. They hissed intimacies to one another. They went about their cult duties. They kept watch and ward. They nurtured the juveniles of the clan, some of whom were marked with the taint, others of whom almost appeared to be sweet, comely children, save perhaps for bumpy brows and the eerie light in their eyes.
    As Meh’Lindi gazed at a nursery area, she wondered how many of the deadly, infected children she might need to kill before she could leave this place.
    If the patriarch – in the wisdom of its alien glands – had chosen to tolerate her presence, the quasihuman magus retained an edge of scepticism.
    ‘Most welcome refugee from far planet,’ he said, ‘how being speaking Sabulorbish so readily?’ He stroked one of the butterflies – of saffron and turquoise hue – upon his knobbly forehead, as if deep in thought.
    ‘After hiding on ship? After skulking in city? What opportunity of learning? Seeming remarkable to me! Knowing of the plurality of languages in the galaxy. Many worlds; many lingos and dialects, hmm?’
    The magus was sufficiently persuaded by her body; that passed muster. How could he disbelieve the evidence of the hybrid body that he saw before him? He could not. Yet he had come up with a question which she had hardly expected from a fanatic posing as high priest of a somewhat dodgy provincial cult devoted to miraculous Imperial fingernails.
    His question was cool and logical.
    Ought she to have burst in upon the genestealer clan inarticulately, unable to express herself at all? Incoherently? Babbling in some off-world tongue, without explanation?
    In that event, she might now be caged behind bars strong enough to hold even a genestealer, while her hosts investigated her at their leisure.
    Meh’Lindi’s mind raced.
    She was Callidus,