Cowl

  Eyes on her footing and her hand cupped over her mouth and nose, Polly began to run. Other lumps of hot rock came hammering down. She glimpsed something the size of a railway carriage drop down behind a rucked-up outcrop, raising a cloud of the black ash that lay in drifts and sooty lakes all about. Hot flecks settled in her hair, burning into her scalp.

  Shift, for chrissake, shift!

  But she couldn’t. There seemed nothing left—no strength, no will.

  The ground shuddered underneath her, and Polly glanced back as an eruption concealed everything behind her in a boiling cloud of red and grey, hurtling towards her with ridiculous speed, seeming to eat up the landscape as it came. From somewhere there was enough—the tor perhaps realizing that, in the face of this, it would not itself survive to take back even a fragment of her arm. She shifted, glimpsed grey and black which seemed only an extension of the vulcanism, the cage not even forming around her. She came out yelling in a roll across the surface of a lake of cold cinders, sunlight above, and only a hint of sulphur in the air.

  AGAIN THE PSEUDO-MANTISAL HAD been unable to form, but this time not due to any lack of will on his own part, nor lack of nutrition from his tor. Something had grabbed him from interspace and pulled him down, and he rolled out of it, releasing his packs and drawing his carbine from its holster—now positioned on his back. Rough shingle and broken shell gave way underneath him as, coming up onto his feet, he swung, sighting his weapon around him. No one nearby. Focusing on the rock field at the head of the beach, he advanced, weapon still ready, and checked the most likely places of concealment. Still nothing. Which meant that whatever had pulled him from interspace might not be nearby—nor whoever had used it. But certainly they would be coming along. His programming impetus was pushing him to shift again, but not very strongly. He fought it—rebelling on an almost unconscious level—and won. Slinging the two packs over one shoulder, while retaining his carbine in his right hand, he returned to the rock field and found cover, where he waited while tucking into his concentrated food supplies and gulping his bottled water. Leaden fatigue was eating into him as some hours later the man came limping down the beach, leaning on a strut of vorpal glass.

  Tack identified him as Heliothane or Umbra, but very old—something he had yet to see in either of their kind. The man paused by the trail Tack had left and looked up the beach to the rock field. Stepping out of cover, the butt of his carbine propped against his hip, Tack waited.

  The figure waved an arm and struggled up the beach. Tack observed how the old man’s decrepitude had seemingly increased of a sudden, and his own wariness increased. Even so, this man looked very ill. The clothing hung baggily on his thin frame and the skin of his pallid face was as near to the skull as was possible without him being dead.

  ‘That’s far enough,’ said Tack, when the oldster was ten paces from him.

  The man leant on his cane of glass and wheezed dramatically. ‘At last,’ he said and took a step forwards.

  Tack gestured with the gun and shook his head. The man took another step nearer.

  ‘One more step and I kill you,’ said Tack and he meant it.

  The man halted and held up a hand. ‘My apologies, Traveller. It has been so long since I saw one of my own kind I can hardly believe you are real.’

  ‘How long?’ Tack asked.

  ‘Fifty years, or thereabouts—I lose track.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘The name’s Thote. Poor Thote, stranded here; a casualty in a war that never ends or begins. Forgotten by those who sent me into battle.’

  Tack thought the guy was laying it on a bit thick.

  ‘And you are?’ Thote asked.

  Tack wondered to which of the two warring factions this old man belonged, and if that made any difference to any danger he might represent. Confident that, should he need to, he could take him down, he replied, ‘My name is Tack, twenty-second-century human, sent to assassinate Cowl.’ He watched for the other’s reaction.

  ‘Then we are allies,’ said Thote, suddenly standing more upright. ‘And I know about you, Tack. You are Traveller Saphothere’s protégé and perhaps our best hope. Join me at my camp for some food—since I have no doubt you are hungry. Tell me your tales, then be on your way.’

  Tack returned his carbine to its holster and took up his two packs. This provoked no reaction from the old man, so Tack guessed he would make his move, if any was intended, at some later point.

  ‘Lead on,’ he said.

  Thote turned and began to trudge back up the beach.

  ‘How is it you are here?’ Tack asked, as they walked.

  ‘The torbeast reared up from its lair, in its dead-end alternate, to attack Sauros and I was sent out as a spotter, and to delay it if I could. I used a displacement sphere and took out five per cent of its mass, dropping that into the Earth’s core. But it hit my mantisal when I was in interspace, damaging it and knocking me down in this place.’

  ‘You managed to pull me down here as well,’ Tack observed.

  ‘I did that.’ Thote glanced back at him. ‘My mantisal, though badly damaged, remains out of phase here. It can generate enough of a field to funnel travellers down into this time.’

  ‘Resourceful.’

  ‘Yes … I can do that, but I cannot leave here, or find sufficient nutrition to keep me alive for my full span.’

  Tack did feel sympathy, but knew there was little he could do. Should he try to drag the man along with him at this stage in his journey, Thote would end up with the pseudo-mantisal materializing in his body, killing him instantly. Soon Thote turned inland from the beach and led the way to his encampment in the rock field. He had built himself a small stone hut, which was roofed with large empty carapaces. Before the entrance was the remains of a fire scattered round with fish bones. To one side lay a basket woven from some of the tougher growths that grew in the area, which contained dried stems for the makings of future fires. In front of the hut, Thote eased himself down into a bucket chair, obviously carved from a boulder over a long period of time.

  ‘I’ll prepare some food shortly,’ said the old man.

  Seating himself nearby, Tack said, ‘No need—here.’ He opened his supply pack, took out one of the rations containers and tossed it over, noting the hand that caught it moved as fast as a snake.

  ‘There’s water over there.’ Thote gestured to where one of the collapsible water containers used by other travellers rested against a rock.

  ‘No need, I’ve drunk enough,’ said Tack, now increasingly suspicious of anything this man might offer him.

  Thote opened his rations and began to eat, fast, one thin bony hand pecking up the food like an albino chicken. Then abruptly he stopped eating, his face turning grey. He jerked out of his seat, grabbed up his glass staff and stumbled forward, retching. Too rich for him, assumed Tack, after fifty years on the meagre diet provided by this environment. Tack stepped forwards, and, only as the staff lashed out towards him did he spot the red line glowing inside it like a lightbulb filament. The staff merely brushed his chest as he pulled away, but the discharge of energy from it slammed into him like a spade, flinging him backwards through the air. Hitting the ground heavily, he fought against the paralysing shock, pulling his handgun just as Thote bore down on him with the butt of the staff. Thote halted as Tack levelled the gun at him.

  ‘Um … Umbra … thane?’ Tack managed, pushing himself up onto one elbow.

  ‘Everything I told you is true,’ said the man, his voice less quavering now.

  ‘Well … tell me what you were trying to do?’

  ‘Just take your supplies.’

  Tack realized that fifty years alone here had also impaired the man’s ability to lie convincingly.

  ‘No, that’s not it.’ Tack hauled himself up onto his knees. Thote’s gaze flicked to Tack’s left forearm and quickly away. ‘It’s my tor you were after. But surely you know you couldn’t use it—it’s genetically keyed to just me.’

>   Thote’s expression wrinkled with contempt. ‘Is that what they told you, primitive? Is that their explanation to you for sending you alone on your pathetic mission?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Tack growled.

  ‘Like the girl who passed through here fifty years ago, you’re just a piece of temporal detritus. In your case primed and filled with poison, then sent on its way.’

  Here was another one of those arrogant Heliothane, like others in Sauros and New London, who obviously thought Tack a waste of time and energy. With a kind of weariness he noted the old heliothant turning himself slightly sideways to present a smaller target. Any moment now he would try for Tack’s gun.

  ‘What girl?’ Tack asked, trying to forestall the inevitable attack.

  ‘She called herself Polly. Just another of Cowl’s uptime samplings.’

  Polly.

  Almost from the instant Traveller Saphothere had captured him, Tack had forgotten the girl who had been the reason for him ending up on this insane journey. He felt a sudden loneliness—a craving to be with someone from a more familiar era. Almost distractedly he watched Thote tensing to make his strike.

  ‘Don’t try it,’ Tack warned. ‘Tell me about this Polly. What did you do with her?’

  ‘Drugging her was simple,’ said Thote. ‘I put just a bit in the food I gave her, since I needed to keep her alive.’

  ‘Why alive?’

  ‘Because at the moment of a torbearer’s death, the tor itself begins to feed directly on the substance of its host’s body and thereafter shifts unremittingly back to Cowl.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Thote looked momentarily puzzled. ‘She should not have been able to. The drug acts on the cerebrum first before paralysing the nervous system.’

  ‘She escaped?’

  ‘She …’ Thote fell forwards, his legs sagging, then abruptly he twisted round, the staff leaving his hand in a glittering wheel towards Tack’s head. Like a spring uncoiling, he then hurled himself forwards in a flat dive. It was well done, and had not time and bad diet left the man so weakened, he might have been a formidable adversary. But he was not quite fast enough. Tack ducked under the flying staff, sidestepped quickly and brought his gun butt down on the back of Thote’s neck. He stepped away as the man hit the ground, rolled and came up in a crouch.

  ‘No,’ warned Tack, but he wasn’t getting through. Thote had that look in his eye: he didn’t care. This was his last chance. Tack pulled the trigger as the man came at him again. Five rounds hit Thote square in the chest and flung him back. He collapsed in the cold ashes of his own fire, coughing blood from his shattered chest, then just tipped over into a foetal curl. Tack walked over to check his pulse; it was best to be sure. Confirming Thote was dead, Tack turned and picked up his packs, then went into the man’s hut to find somewhere to sleep.

  16

  Engineer Goron:

  The fusion explosion was contained within the temporal barrier, but even so a wash of radiation bled through the phase change. It did not take long to calculate that the bleed-over was not concomitant with the explosion that utterly erased Callisto. Had this been the case, the entire Jovian system would have been irradiated. It is certain that the bulk of the vast energy output from the explosion powered a time-jump no one believed possible. Cowl has taken himself all the way to the Nodus and, as far as we can ascertain, the Umbrathane fleet is scattered throughout the ages between then and now. The spatial shift, predictably, was towards Earth. I have to admit that what the Umbrathane might do does not bother me greatly, as I have little doubt that their ships will be unusably radioactive and so will need to be abandoned. But Cowl … a creature capable of snuffing out four hundred million lives so easily? Even the two Umbrathane prisoners, Coptic and Meelan, agree that something must be done now, probably because their troops also died when Callisto was obliterated.

  IN THE ROCK POOLS there were trilobites and white slugs with hinged shells on their backs. Feverish, and aching with hunger, Polly caught both types of creature by hand, and swallowed them still alive and kicking.

  Disgusting, Polly, absolutely disgusting.

  Nandru was standing right behind her, for she could see his reflection in the water. But when she turned, he evaporated. She gulped down more, stuffing the horrible creatures into her mouth, all briny and stinking while her teeth chomped through their green-packed innards. Eventually she forced herself to her feet.

  The sea had begun rushing back across the plain of frozen lava, and not wishing to be caught by the fast-approaching tide, she turned back towards the foothills. She was aiming for a patch of still-warm lava back there, where she had slept much of the previous night, but the tor would not allow her this luxury. Its webwork turned steely inside her and dragged her down like a claw. She shifted yet again through night, in a cage glowing incandescent, to a place barren and hammered by filthy rain. There she managed to drink her fill of bitter water, then was shifted again. In another place, duned with black sand, she staggered towards a horizon, where she hoped to find relief, something. Inside her greatcoat her ribs were now protruding. At her side walked Nandru, a frown puckering his brow.

  I think it knows you will find no food here, and thus nothing to nourish it with, so it is feeding on you—using you up, killing you.

  ‘Help me.’

  And how is he supposed to do that, young lady? He’s only a hallucination.

  The boat captain, Frank, was standing there, chuffing on his pipe, Knock John naval fort standing tall in the sands behind him. Polly supposed that the droning in her ears must be the sound of bombers flying over.

  ‘Stop it … make it stop.’

  I cannot, and if I could, how would you live here?

  That was Nandru, really speaking to her. She stared at the great maunsel fort and realized she was only seeing memory, not reality. When Fleming, the man from military intelligence, eyed her, seeming about to ask a question, she turned away from him. And in doing that she saw her own footprints stretching ahead of her, and realized she had been walking in a wide circle. As if impatient with this impasse, the tor shifted her again. And the nightmare not only continued—it grew worse.

  Polly was too exhausted, too utterly depleted to care any more, and knew that the future span of her life encompassed maybe this shift and one more, but no more than that. Her clothes were now as baggy on her body as her skin was on her skeleton. She was like a fleshless waif staggering out of Belsen, whom food would probably not prevent from dying. Around her the glassy cage glowed incandescent, as if she had been trapped within tangled rods of white-hot steel, and she could see little beyond it. The shift back into the real she felt as a violent sideways motion, reminiscent of that preceding her arrival in Thote’s time. Around her the world bled back into existence, in shades of iron and glass, but the cage did not dematerialize. Instead it dropped to a flat metallic surface, deforming on impact as if made of dough, while vapour began to pour from it. Within the vorpal struts the glow faded down to red filaments, as the glass itself began to splinter and crack. Polly weakly nudged at one strut and it snapped like a sugar stick. Just then a figure loomed over her and began tearing open the rest of the cage.

  ‘Oh God …’

  I suspect you have arrived, said Nandru.

  Polly did not have the energy to scream as a skeleton wrapped in shadow was revealed through the shattering struts of the cage. Then, after a moment, she realized that this was not what she was really seeing. But still the rangy dark figure terrified her. Even some evil demonic face might have been more acceptable than the featureless ovoid that was his head. The skeletal impression, she now saw, was created by a network of hyaline ribs and veins inlaid into his black carapace.

  Cowl, I would guess.

  Too weird, far too weird, Polly thought.

  Cowl grabbed her, one long hand closing round her thigh, and jerked her up out of the wreckage of the cage. The blood-rush to her head, as she was held suspended, made the
world fade in and out of focus for Polly, but she saw that blank face tilt as she was inspected like some interesting bug. Then, with one swipe of his free hand, he tore away her greatcoat, pulling it down and over her head and off her arms. Then he caught her flailing arm, long fingers closing doubly around the tor. Inside her she felt the webwork jerk, then sensed the horror of it withdrawing, pulling back—its elements coiling up like the tentacles of an octopus dropped in boiling water. Then Cowl released his hold on her hip and she dropped, her arm wrenching painfully as she was suspended only by the tor. Cowl now gripped her elbow and pulled the tor closer to his blank face for inspection. It was as if Polly herself was utterly irrelevant—a pendulous piece of rubbish attached to the real centre of his interest. With vision now blurred, she saw him probing at the edge of the tor with one sharp finger, then drive the digit in. Polly howled.

  The tor loosened, peeled up and she slid out of it like a mollusc discarded from its shell. Hitting the floor on her boots, consciousness fled her for only a moment, then she found herself lying over on her side, her arms stretched out before her face. The one from which the tor had been removed was now a flayed mess of tendons and exposed muscle.

  You have to move, Polly. You have to escape.

  Easy enough advice from someone who had probably forgotten what it was to be at the limit of endurance. From where she lay, Polly could see Cowl squatting, with his knees projecting way above his head, running long fingers around the inside of the tor, before abruptly sending it skittering across the floor. Gasping from an agony that just went on and on, Polly became subliminally aware of her surroundings—of curving walls of ribbed metal inlaid with esoteric circuitry, seemingly fashioned of other coloured metals and polished crystal. Above her, yellow light beamed down from a circular skylight; while, opening at intervals around the wall, were doors revealing a gleaming chaos beyond; and beside her, at the bottom of a slope, an intestinal tunnel dropped down into darkness, into which the now-discarded tor had fallen. But mostly her attention was fixed on Cowl himself as he stood, with a motion both abrupt and fluid. The man—the creature?—was about to stride away, but then turned and stepped back towards Polly. This was it—he was going to kill her.