Cowl

  Then he saw the boy.

  For a moment Thadus thought he was seeing some ape that lived in the ruins with the people. Often there had been troops of macaques, chimpanzees and baboons—escaped from zoos and living wild for centuries now. But compound B was tailored to kill them as well, as they also carried the neurovirus. He gave chase to the figure darting amongst the ruins, realizing he was seeing the boy who had earlier hidden in the oak tree. How was it he was still alive? Thadus needed to bring this boy to Elone for study. He grimaced to himself, remembering his rifle had already acquired this youth. Elone did not need the boy to be alive for her tests. Finally getting a clear view, Thadus halted and raised his rifle to his shoulder.

  ‘Thadus, the tricopter is coming back,’ Elone told him over com.

  Thadus hesitated. The ’copter wasn’t due back until the evening. Then, just about to fire, he saw two of his men round a crumbling vine-cloaked pillar ahead of the boy.

  ‘Grab him!’ he shouted. And that shout seemed to unleash nightmares.

  Thadus looked up and saw the tricopter looming over the ruins, its bay doors opening. There was no confusion in him about that. Here was a neat solution for the enclave dwellers: exterminate inconveniences like himself, Elone, and their people, along with the last of the feral humans. But then he looked ahead and saw that behind the two men the air shimmered and distorted as a line of heat haze cut it vertically. Then that cut began to evert, exposing something monstrous.

  ‘What the hell?’

  Screams were now coming over com, not from the two who were after the boy, for they had yet to see the horror looming behind them, nor from his fellows who had seen the ’copter—Thadus knew they would not scream at that. He scanned to his right and saw a terrifying vertical mouth, three metres high, its inside turning like toothed conveyers, hoovering up corpses and running umbrathants, sucking the living and the dead into a meat pulverizer. More screams. To his left a similar mouth being propelled down a street by a huge tentacle, slamming shut on four umbrathants, then withdrawing to snap up at its leisure the scattered corpses of feral humans. All around, death. Above, incendiary cylinders tumbling down through the sky from the tricopter. Ahead his two men, torn apart and turned away into an organic hell, which then closed out of existence.

  Thadus stared at the feral youth standing there. He was naked, perhaps less confused about what was happening, having less expectation of the world. Something strange enclosed his right forearm: a weird thorny growth. Thadus did not know why he pulled the trigger, for they were both dead anyway. The boy seemed to turn away from the bullets and just disappear. Explosions all around, then. From beyond where the boy had stood, a wall of fire fell on Thadus. He rested his rifle across his shoulder, closed his eyes, burned.

  9

  Modification Status Report:

  The biostatic energy generated by complex molecular interaction is inversely related to tachyon decay. Because this is a function of which I have little knowledge, I am wary of further complicating the genome, but this seems unavoidable, so further research into this ‘energy’ is required. Discarding parasitic DNA has made room for some additions: a strengthened endoskeleton, the growth of an exoskeleton, and increased muscle density to support these. However, this is not enough. The hostile environmental parameters I have input necessitate a more efficient sensorium and concomitant growth in nerve tissue, and then there are the brain alterations required to support all the above. Complication of the genome is, unfortunately, inevitable, especially if I am to give my child the direct brain-interfacing ability. I had hoped that my pursuit of perfection would result in a simplification of the blueprint. I had hoped my child would possess the straightforward utility of a dagger.

  THE RACKET STARTED BEFORE dawn and grew steadily louder and more persistent. Polly awoke clear-headed and full of energy—rather how she remembered waking in those days before the alcohol and drugs. The moment she threw back the covers the two slave girls from the night before entered her tent, bearing a bowl of warm water that contained steeped bunches of lavender, some wash cloths, a dress and sandals. When they started plucking at her clothing, she shooed them away and stripped herself. They gaped at the alien scale on her arm, which was even now webbing tension through her body. But she ignored them and cleaned herself from head to foot.

  Sufficiently clean, Polly donned the dress and sandals, then turned her back to the two slaves as she transferred all the items from the pockets of her greatcoat to her hip bag, before cinching it around her waist. She then ran a comb through her wet hair and tied it back with a scrunchy, and the two then watched in fascination while she applied lipgloss and eyeliner. And, thus fortified against the world, she stepped past them into the raucous daylight.

  The camp was in turmoil on this bright morning. All around her, legionaries and slaves were taking down tents and packing away equipment. Carts were loaded, canvas backpacks filled, as horses were saddled and fires put out. Polly turned and walked over towards the Emperor’s tent, two of the Praetorian guards who had ringed her tent throughout the night falling in behind her. His tent flap was opened for her by yet another guard, but she ducked in to find the interior empty. She turned and looked queryingly at the guards. One of them bowed to her first, then indicated a horse being led over by a bearded old man who smelled as if he had rolled himself in dung. Mounting the horse was awkward in the long dress, but she managed it with some dignity. He then led the horse through the encampment, two guards walking on either side.

  Gazing around, Polly felt a surge of happiness. This morning held great clarity for her: the smells of the encampment and of the summer seemed so utterly real to her, the cacophony seemed inclusive of her, and all the colours so bright and immediate. Outside of the camp she proceeded between ranks of legionaries standing neat and silent below the hum of bees flying over the surrounding heath and the high clear song of skylarks. Coming at last to an open-sided pavilion, she dismounted, and entered to find Claudius was seated at a small desk, surrounded by various senior commanders.

  ‘Quid agis hodie, Furia?’ he asked, sharpening a quill. All conversation in the tent ceased at this greeting.

  I think he’s decided you’re a demon now. He just asked about your health or some such. Probably doesn’t want you to keel over before you reach the sacrificial block.

  ‘You are a cheery bastard, aren’t you, Nandru?’ Polly grinned.

  All the men present listened to her with polite puzzlement, then turned their attention to an approaching party of soldiers escorting four men to the Emperor’s presence. These four were certainly not Roman: their hair and beards were long and braided, their clothing brightly dyed in clashing colours, what scraps of armour they wore were daubed blue. They were also wearing a lot of gold jewellery. Polly at first took them to be captives, but this could not be so for they all carried shields and weapons. Halting some ten metres away from the pavilion, they laid their armaments on the ground before approaching. As if taking part in a historical interactive, Polly prepared herself to be entertained.

  Come to negotiate peace terms with him, I reckon.

  ‘I suppose those pyres we saw yesterday were for the bodies of soldiers who died in some battle the Romans just won,’ murmured Polly, crossing her arms.

  Claudius glanced up at the four barbarians and smiled crookedly. Several of his soldiers stepped in between the men and their weapons, then grabbed the four and dragged them before Claudius, where they were forced to their knees.

  I don’t think they’ve heard about the Geneva Convention.

  Polly’s stomach tightened, and in a second she felt suddenly very vulnerable. This stuff was real—she must never mistake it for entertainment. She glanced aside to where the remains of yesterday’s pyres were now nothing but black smears in the trampled grass. Turning back, she watched as Claudius stood up from behind his desk and walked forwards. He glanced at Polly and beckoned her over. Walking with a suddenly leaden stomach, Polly moved to his side.


  ‘Taedet me foederum, ruptorum,’ Claudius said abruptly, and made a cutting gesture with the flat of his hand. Watching, Polly could only think that this should not be happening: horror proceeding so easily into a glorious day. The soldiers shoved the men down on their faces, both captives and soldiers yelling loudly. Short swords, glinting in acid sunlight, rose and fell, red now streaming from their blades. The condemned took a long time dying, despite the repeated hacking. With bile rising in her throat, and an urgency to escape pulling ever tauter that tension webbing through her body, Polly watched one of the groaning victims dragging himself across the blood-soaked grass, the back of his jerkin split to expose butchered flesh and shattered bone. He finally became still when one soldier caught him a blow that opened the top of his head.

  The gladius is a stabbing weapon. They could have killed them more quickly …

  All Polly could wonder was why the skylarks were still singing. Ignoring whatever it was the Emperor was now pronouncing, she turned and began walking back towards the main camp.

  Barbaric times: an Empire based on enslavement and slaughter.

  ‘Shut up with the fucking moralizing, Nandru. I’m not in the mood.’

  No one tried to stop her progress, though she was surrounded by a desperate babble as she walked. Back at her own tent, she found her clothing hanging outside it on a wooden pole, fairly damp but clean. She hauled it from the pole and into the tent with her, where she quickly donned it, soon stepping back out into a morning now bearing the taint of the abattoir. Claudius and his guards were coming towards her, their pace limited by the Emperor’s limp. She stared at them for a moment, then turned to head in the opposite direction. Suddenly guards were all around her, blocking her way. Walnut Crusher was amongst them, staring at her with vicious satisfaction. An order stammered from the Emperor had his men closing in tighter. Unlike the rest, Walnut Crusher was furtively drawing his sword. Polly opened her hip bag and groped inside, her hand closing on the handle of the automatic this time, rather than the taser.

  ‘How do I say, “I must return to hell”?’

  Mihi redeundum in infernos.

  The Emperor uttered something else and limped nearer. Walnut Crusher glanced briefly at his imperial master, then closed in, obviously intent on his own agenda. Polly took quick aim and shot him once in the chest, the impact hurling him back into several of his comrades, then crashing to the ground. All the soldiers froze where they were. Polly stared down at the dead man.

  ‘And how do you say, “He is dead”?’

  Mortuus est … Polly.

  She turned to Claudius and repeated both statements. The Emperor fought to reply, but couldn’t manage it. Polly turned away, straight towards a wall of soldiers, who reluctantly parted to allow her through. She had put some distance between herself and them before they finally came to their senses. As the silence turned to an outcry behind her, she turned briefly to watch the squads of men running towards her. Placing the automatic back in her hip bag, she shifted again—and folded that bloody world away.

  SAPHOTHERE’S FACE LOOKED RAVAGED by fatigue as it turned to Tack in the light of prehistoric dawn. Removing one hand from the mantisal eye, he pointed out of the glassy construct towards the distant horizon. It took Tack a moment to drag his attention away from the ground just twenty metres below—Saphothere had promised dinosaurs and he was damned if he was going to miss seeing them.

  For a moment Tack reflected that the sun appeared very strange here, until he realized that the sun was actually behind him and what he was seeing on the horizon was a titanic iron-grey sphere, misted by distance.

  ‘Sauros?’ Tack guessed.

  Saphothere nodded briefly and returned his hand to the construct’s eye. The mantisal jerked forward and began drifting towards the horizon.

  ‘Damnation!’ said Tack, when something he had first taken to be a lichen-covered boulder raised its shielded, horn-decorated head from grazing a low groundcover scattered with lush red flowers. It looked up with vague bovine curiosity, as it munched in its beak enough ferns to roof a jungle native’s hut.

  ‘Styracosaurus,’ explained Saphothere, glancing down. ‘They move into areas like this that have already been grazed down by the duckbills, and feed on the subsequent low growth. But this isn’t the time of the titanosaurs, so not every tree in sight gets flattened.’ He gestured to the many strange arboreal plants widely scattered across the landscape. Their trunks were very wide at the bottom, narrowing up to comparatively small heads of foliage.

  ‘What about tyrannosaurus rex?’ asked Tack.

  ‘Oh yes, he’ll be about somewhere.’

  Tack returned to studying the ground below and realized that, after Saphothere’s latest comforting reply, the mantisal was descending.

  ‘Can’t you take us straight to the … city?’ he asked.

  ‘The mantisal’s natural environment is interspace. More than ten minutes in atmosphere would kill it.’

  ‘Coptic and Meelan flew theirs to Pig City,’ Tack told him. ‘Its structure became clouded first, then veined with something black.’

  ‘Nitrogen absorption,’ Saphothere explained. ‘Enough of that will kill a mantisal, but then the Umbrathane wouldn’t care about that—they regard mantisals as machines rather than living creatures.’

  ‘Do you consider this,’ he gestured at the hyaline cage enclosing them, ‘a living creature?’

  ‘I do. It is both manufactured and grown. Its genome forms the blueprint for most of its structure, but many other processes are involved. The final result is a living machine with about the intelligence of a dog, though that is not strictly true either, as the bulk of that intelligence is applied to dealing with senses and abilities no living creature on Earth has ever possessed.’

  Tack reached out and touched the glassy structure. It was hard, yet there seemed a lightness to it. Deep within it he could see organic or advanced electronic complexity.

  ‘What’s it made of?’ he asked.

  Saphothere glanced at him. ‘The main structure is a material manufactured since long before your time: aerogel—the lightest solid in existence then. It was originally used as an insulator. But, having a wide molecular matrix, there is room in it for the submolecular components you see. Underneath your hand is just one product of the unification of the sciences—call it bioelectronics or perhaps electrobionics. Maybe a good illustration would be for me to point out that Heliothane technological capabilities are of such scope that it is possible for us to grow a gun, an electric drill, or even a microwave oven.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tack, unable to think of a more appropriate answer. He turned his attention back to the fast-approaching ground.

  Seeing them close to, Tack realized that the red flowers were the product of vines spreading in a mat across the other groundcover, and sometimes climbing the trunks of the trees. This vegetation was penetrated by cycads, tree ferns sprouting from wide stumps next to the decaying fallen cylinders of their original trunks, stands of more familiar shrubs, young giant horsetails spearing into the air, and dark green bushes like laurel but scattered with small yellow apples. Dropping from the mantisal, when it was low enough, he was glad to sink no further than to his ankles into a carpet of vines. Beside him Saphothere unshouldered his pack, while the mantisal fled back to its natural and chemically neutral environment.

  ‘So we walk?’ enquired Tack, fingering his seeker gun and scanning his surroundings suspiciously.

  Saphothere merely glanced at him then squatted down and took from his pack a device that looked like a mobile phone fashioned of perspex, before being heated then twisted out of shape.

  ‘Your comlink?’ Tack asked.

  ‘No, my comlink is very similar to yours, though embedded in the bone behind my ear and with a subvocal transmitter linked into the temporal lobe of my brain.’

  Tack reached up and touched his own ear stud. His comlink was solar-powered, so was necessarily external to his body. It operated
by bone-induction, so any communication he received only he could hear, but any reply he made had to be spoken out loud in order to be picked up. He supposed he should be grateful this device had not been torn out of his ear lobe, considering all that had recently happened to him.

  Saphothere opened out his phonelike device to expose two twisted screens, the lower of which switched on to show shifting virtual controls. He continued, ‘The defences of Sauros block external comlink communications because of the possibility of computer viral attack. This—’ he held up the device—‘is an encoded tachyon transmitter imprinted to me. If anyone but me tries to operate it, they’d find themselves getting turned inside out through a vorpal singularity. The result is not pretty.’ His fingers followed the virtual controls, and the upper screen lit to show someone’s face. Saphothere addressed the face in the same language used by Coptic and Meelan, then he snapped the device shut.

  ‘What now?’ Tack asked.

  ‘Now we wait, if our friends over there allow us the opportunity.’

  Saphothere pointed somewhere behind Tack, before returning the tachyon communicator to his pack. Whirling round, Tack saw three creatures approaching through the low vegetation, some hundred metres away. As these slim-boned dinosaurs moved, heads and tails extended horizontally, they stood no higher than a man’s waist, but every now and again they stopped to peer about them, raising their heads much higher. Their precise movements were reminiscent of herons, but their long hind legs were built for speed, their foreclaws for ripping apart living flesh, and though their heads were narrow and ophidian, they possessed mouths large enough to swallow the lumps they might rip from their prey.