"Six hundred years," said Jane, her face pale in the ruddy red light of the small cottage's fire. "Maybe a thousand years. Maybe longer."

Wilks and Gelda were dressing in warm clothes as they got ready for another day's work on their small farm. They'd opened the shutters across the tiny windows to let in a chilly breeze and Randall suppressed an impulse to move closer to the fire. Soon, the farmer and his wife would tell them they had to leave, and the former businessman didn't want the cold outdoor air to come as too much of a shock. It was still painfully early. Outside, the sun, still below the horizon, was painting the underside of the clouds an angry red, reminding Randall of the old saying his mother had been so fond of. Red sky in the morning. Sailor, take warning. There was bad weather ahead. He told his head phone to give him the weather forecast, just as an experiment, and got the expected message that there was no network connection available.

"I don't think we should place too much credence in the words of an illiterate farmer," said Loach, though. "These folk tales about orcs and the Old Ones were probably made up by his grandfather. I cannot believe that we've been asleep for a thousand years."

"I can," said Emily. "A mere century, even two, wouldn't account for that forest. It takes time for trees to grow that large, and that was a second generation forest at the very least. At least one generation of trees had already lived and died there. It looked like ancient forest to me. Forest that's been growing wild, untended and undisturbed by humans, for at least several centuries."

"Could the hypersleep cubicles keep us alive that long?" asked Jane.

Theoretically, from what I've heard," the older woman replied. "The gel stops all metabolic activity and removes all the free oxygen from the body. Without it, there's no oxidation, no deterioration of cells and tissues, and antiseptic chemicals in the bloodstream prevent opportunistic microbes from growing inside you. Your body becomes totally, chemically inert, as if it were made of marble. Theoretically, there's no limit to how long you can lie there and be safely revived so long as the machinery keeps you topped up with the antibacterials. The machines probably only woke us up when they did because they were running low on power."

"So why did all the others die?" asked Jane. "There were twenty of us in there. Only four came out alive."

"Because nothing's perfect," replied Emily. "They probably became infected with bacteria resistant to the antibacterial chemicals in the gel, or maybe their machines just broke down over the ages..."

"Who cares," Interrupted Loach impatiently. "What matters is, if the world we knew has gone, what are we going to do now?"

"Make new lives for ourselves in this new world," replied Emily.

"As farmers? Busting our backs tossing hay and mucking out pigs?"

"It's a good life, close to nature. I've mucked out pigs a few times in my life. It won't kill you."

"The farmer said there were cities," said Jane. "Perhaps there's a better kind of work to be found there. Political work, or academic. They probably do all their accounting longhand, writing on paper. With our headphones to do the arithmetic, we'd be accounting wizards!"

"Have you got any idea what life is like in a medieval city?" replied the former crime boss. "Smell, disease..." Then he paused as an idea came to him. Another thing cities had was crime. Lots of it. Maybe lots of small gangs just waiting for a strong leader to come along to unite them...

"I will be making for the nearest city," said Randall. "The idea of life as farmer is as unappealing to me as it is to Mister Loach. The kind of life I want can only be found in a large city."

And the inhabitants of a large city will probably know where the spaceships land, he told himself. If this planet was now lacking in any kind of civilised life, then he would be leaving. My new penthouse on Mars might already be waiting for me, he thought dreamily. And he still needed a hospital. He would have to endure the company of these people for a few days, though, because who knew what he might encounter on the way. Bandits, wild animals... He'd never been any kind of a fighter even in the days of his strong, healthy youth. In his current condition, fighting a terminal condition that sapped more of his strength with every passing day, he'd be a pushover for the first half starved wolf he came across.

He would need Loach's protection while he was forced to trudge through this miserable, backward world, he realised, but Loach was the kind of man who only looked out for himself. Randall would need to convince him that he needed Randall.. How would he do that?

The farmer and his wife, meanwhile, had finished their preparations and were looking at their house guests as if gathering their courage. Randall decided to spare them the necessity. If they had to leave, then they should do so with a modicum of dignity.

He turned to face them, therefore. "Thank you for allowing us to spend the night here," he said, and was amused by the looks of relief that appeared on their faces. "You have showed yourselves to be good Christian folk and God will surely repay you for your kindness."

The farmer and his wife shared a look of confusion as if he'd said something they didn't understand, but they didn't make an issue out of it. They were clearly simply relieved to be rid of their guests without any fuss or trouble.

"Yer kindly welcome," said Gelda, beaming across her rosy cheeked face. "Twas no more than we God fearing folk must do. We wish you well wherever you go and whatever you do."

"Yay, we do," Wilks agreed. "Good fortune to yez, and may God smile upon ya."

"If I may ask one more thing," said Randall, "Which way is the nearest large city, er, burg? Tettlehall, is it?" In fact, he knew very well that that was the name of the city they'd mentioned the night before. His head phone was listening. Recording and analysing everything anyone said within earshot and using the information to compile a database of knowledge about the new world he'd found himself in and about anyone he heard being talked about. His three companions from the twenty first century would be doing the same, he knew. The days when you had to remember a man's name or a woman's telephone number were long gone. The head phone did all the remembering for him.

"Yay, Tattlehall," replied Wilks. "I'd warn yez tae keep yer hands on yer purses in ye had any, but if ye go there ye may still get yer throats slit if ye come across the wrong man on the wrong day. A burg's nae place fer the weak or the careless. If I were yez, I'd go tae Joffey's farm. It's harvest season and he'll be looking for extra hands tae get the crops in."

"Joffey pays well," Gelda agreed. "And he offers room and board in his cow shed. Every meal paid fer and a warm roof ta sleep under. There's six weeks of good, honest labour waiting fa yez. Eighteen shillings each waiting to be earned. Ye could buy yeselves sem proper clothes and shoes an have a little put by to get ye through the winter. Winter can be cruel to a man wioot a penny to his name."

"I could do that perhaps," replied Loach, "but my companions are too ill for that kind of labour. We need a healer first. Myself included, or none of us will live to see the winter."

Wilks nodded his understanding. "Yay, so a burg, then. The priests'll take good care o' yez. The road, the great south road, passes by jest a cuppla miles west o' here, jest past five acre field. Ye go there an start walking south. Ye'll reach the burg in a cuppla days."

The hibernators must have looked crestfallen because the farmer looked away in shame and embarrassment. Two more days of trudging, almost naked, through the chilly air, on feet that were already painful and bleeding, possibly with bad weather on the way. Where would they stay the night? Could they count on finding another friendly farming couple willing to let them share their cottage for the night, or would they be reduced to hiding in a cow barn, cuddling up to the large animals as protection against the cold?

Randall saw Loach glance towards the spear again, mounted on the wall just a couple of paces away from where he was standing. To the businessman's relief, though, he turned away from it. Randall was right, the former crime boss realised. If they killed Wilks and his wife, they might enjoy the warm cottage for a while, but eventually the crime would be discovered and they would be hunted by whatever passed for the law in this new age. It would be a short sighted and ultimately suicidal move and Loach was too smart to try it.

"Well, we're not getting any closer to Tattlehall by standing here," he said, "We'd better make a move. I'd like to offer my own thanks, in addition to those already offered by my companion here."

"And ours as well," said Jane. "Without you, we might have frozen to death out there. You probably saved our lives."

"It was our pleasure to help," said Wilks, but there was a tone of impatience in his voice. If you're going, then go! Randall imagined him thinking. He nodded his head to the farmer, therefore, and then he went to the door and stepped out into the chilly morning air, followed by the others.

There was just enough light to see by as they left the cottage behind them and followed the narrow track that Wilks had said led to the road. The sky was an angry red above them, but everything else was just shades of grey that only became clear as their eyes adapted to the darkness. There were spider webs everywhere, glittering with dew. Emily crooned in delight at the sight of them but Randall only saw them as nuisances that he had to avoid walking face first into.

The air was a cacophany of birdsong. Again, Emily was delighted and named bird after bird as she identified them by their songs until Randall found himself becoming irritated by the sound of her voice. Who cares what they're called, he thought. Yes, they sound nice, but I'd rather be listening to them on my music system while I'm lying in a wide, comfy bed waiting for my service droid to bring me my breakfast.

Jane shared Emily's delight, though. "I never knew there were so many different kinds," she said. "I knew about pigeons and crows, you still get them in cities. Did, I mean. Back in our time."

"I can hear birds that have been extinct in Britain for several decades," Emily added. "I'm pretty sure I heard a woodlark just then. The last woodlark died in an aviary back in sixty nine... There! Did you hear that? That's a skylark! An actual skylark! Before today, I only ever heard their song in old recordings!" She searched around, trying to spot it. There were plenty of birds flying to and fro in the sky above them, their forms silhouetted against the bright sky, but whether one of them was the skylark she couldn't tell.

Gradually the day grew brighter until they were able to see colours again. The various shades of green, turning brown, of the trees rising on either side of them. The red of berries growing on tangling dog roses and clinging brambles as they caught and tore at their potato sack clothes. The blues and yellows of the flowering weeds they trod on as they trudged onwards. Emily began to fall behind as she stopped to gasp at one flower or insect after another and Randall didn't look back. Let her stare at bugs and weeds as much as she likes, he thought. If that's what takes her fancy then she's welcome to it. He picked up his pace, cursing to himself as his feet, protected only by a thin layer of sacking, squelched through muddy puddles.

The rain started at around midday. Nothing but a few drips at first, stinging their faces as they were whipped up by a stiffening breeze, but then it became a solid downpour, the sky darkening again as if dusk was coming early. The four hibernators searched around for a place where they could take shelter, but there were only trees, standing too straight and thin to be of any use to them. The only comfort they had as they continued to trudge on was each other. The knowledge that there were three other people who knew what they were suffering because they were suffering the same.

It was still raining when they came to the road, if it could be called a road. It was little more than a wide, muddy track between rows of overarching trees. Two pairs of wheel tracks ran along it, through and between deep potholes full of rain-dancing puddles, and the impressions of horseshoes could be seen in the mud here and there, where they hadn't already been washed out by the downpour.

"Is this it?" said Randall, staring in disbelief as rain ran down his face in little rivulets. His potato sack clothes were thoroughly soaked by now and hung cold and heavy on him. He wondered if he'd feel better if he took them off and walked naked again.

"The farmer said it was a couple of miles away," said Jane miserably, her long, dark hair plastered to her head and shoulders, "and we've walked fifteen thousand three hundred and twenty five steps since leaving his cottage."

"Maybe it's a little further on. Maybe this is just a... Some kind of..."

"This is the road," said Loach impatiently. "This is what roads used to look like, before plascrete, before tarmac. Just muddy tracks through the forest."

"Back home, this would just be..."

"Well we're not back home, are we? And what passes for civilisation in this god forsaken place is two days walk that way, so we can stand here complaining or we can get going. Shall we?" He didn't wait for the others to reply but set off along the muddy road, seemingly not caring whether the others came with him or not.

They hadn't gone more than a couple of hundred metres before they heard the clattering and galloping of harnessed horses and they turned to see a carriage coming up from behind them. They moved to the other side of the road and waited for it to pass. The carriage looked like a stagecoach from the old westerns, Randall thought. It was pulled by four horses and had room inside for about six people. Two people were sitting up front, wrapped in dripping oilskins. One of them was holding the reins while the other held a loaded crossbow. Behind them was a pile of luggage strapped to the top of the coach.

The carriage made no move to slow down as it approached. In fact, the drivers slapped the reins to urge the horses to extra speed. They think we might be bandits, Randall thought. He raised his hands, showing them to be empty, and took half a step forward. Maybe they'd stop, offer them a lift...

Would I stop to offer a lift to a group of soaked, muddy beggars? he asked himself, and the answer, of course, was no. The driver evidently felt the same way because the carriage ignored the hibernators entirely, except for the man with the crossbow who aimed his weapon at Randall as they went past. They got a brief glimpse of the passengers as the wagon went by. A man and a woman dressed in fine, nineteenth century style clothes. The man glanced at them in idle curiosity but the woman ignored them completely, her eyes fixed on the carriage's opposite seat as if the mere glimpse of muddy peasants might leave her contaminated in some awful way. There was a spray of muddy water as the carriage splashed through a large puddle and then it sped away, the four hibernators watching in low spirits as it shrank in the distance.

"There was plenty of room inside," moaned Jane, turning her head as a sudden gust of wind blew a blast of freezing rain into her face. "They could have given us a lift."

"We barely existed as far as they're concerned," replied Emily. "They probably forgot we existed before we were out of sight behind them. Well, come on. Tattlehall isn't getting any closer."

She led the way, following the way the carriage had gone and, trudging dejectedly, the others followed.