Cowl

‘What’s a tor?’ he finally asked.

  ‘Tors are complex organic time machines: portable and biased towards the past they are sent from. Our machines, unfortunately, must push from the future into that past, against all Cowl’s traps and juggled alternates, and up the probability slope he’s shoving us down.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. You think linear. What you must be is the ultimate existentialist: only what you perceive is real. If you travel into the past and kill your father before you were conceived, all that happens is you cause an alternate to sprout from that point in time. That act, though, would shove you far down the probability slope, and you would be unlikely to be able to travel ever again. You would become trapped in the alternate you created.’

  ‘Probability slope?’ Tack felt as if he was trudging through treacle.

  ‘The parallels are in the form of a wave and the main line sits at the apex of this wave. The other parallels fall down from this apex in descending order of probability. The further down that probability slope you are, the more energy you require to time travel. Both our lines, from our perspective, are coming off the apex. Mine is further down than yours.’

  Tack discovered humour. ‘Thank you for clearing that up for me,’ he said.

  Traveller hit him and he spun and went down, overbalanced by the pack, blood spurting from his nose into the dirt. Traveller stooped over him, and yanked his head up by the hair. Tack found his hand on the butt of his seeker gun, but he was unable to draw it.

  ‘When we’re done with you,’ Traveller hissed, ‘I may yet kill you.’ He grabbed Tack’s arm and held it up so that Tack could again see clearly the band around his wrist. ‘Understand that this is all that’s keeping you alive at present, simply because the nutrients it is currently drawing from your body are keeping it alive.’ Traveller then hauled Tack to his feet one-handed, with the ease of a man picking up a rag doll, and shoved him towards the double doors of the barn. ‘Now, get moving.’

  The double doors opened onto a yard of compacted road scrapings, along the opposite side of which stood a Dutch barn sheltering a combine harvester, a tractor and the tractor’s various implements. Wiping blood from his face, Tack noticed a plough with its numerous shares polished bright by recent use, and wanted to throw Traveller at this tangle of iron and hear his bones break.

  ‘Turn to the right,’ said Traveller, and Tack could do nothing but obey his new master. Glancing back, he saw a farmhouse and wondered if it was the same one from which he had heard voices the night before when he had received his beating. Ahead lay a track leading out between fields of newly turned earth, glistening like brown scales in the morning sun. It was cold, his breath steamed in the air, and he noticed frost sugaring the nettles and elder that grew in the shade of the outbuildings.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked, hoping this would not be a punishable question.

  Traveller glanced at him. ‘Out to the sea wall along from where you came in. We got you located as soon as the torbearer broke away from you, but we didn’t act on that for many years. We had the tor located in your original time, but the beast was there guarding it, as it always does, until it was taken up.’

  Beast?

  Tack did not ask that question. He pursued his original query. ‘Why are we going there?’

  ‘There we use the mantisal that brought me here. It is presently sitting out of phase underneath the slope,’ replied Traveller, impatience in his voice.

  ‘Mantisal?’

  ‘Enough. I haven’t the inclination now and you haven’t the intelligence.’

  Tack realized the limit on how far he could push, so clamped his mouth shut as he tramped along beside Traveller. Evidently he was being dragged into a situation it would take him some effort to understand, but that there was a chance for him to understand it fully was an indulgence U-gov had never allowed him.

  They followed the track out between the fields and round to the left, where it finished against a gate and a thick blackthorn hedge. Beyond the gate was a field that had been left fallow long enough for brambles to take hold. After climbing over the gate they worked their way around the edge of the field to where a path had been beaten by frequent use through the vegetation. The far side of this field was bordered by a barbed-wire fence with a stile at one end. Climbing this, they then crossed a grass area as wide as a motorway, and finally mounted the sea wall.

  The sea did not come right up to the wall itself here, as between there lay an area of mudflats overgrown with sea sage and whitish grass, cut through with channels clogged with glossy mud and encroached by the marching growth of samphire. Traveller pointed out a wreck half sunk in the flats, its portals like blind eyes, and the mud all around stained with rust. Negotiating a course out to this, across tough grass on which crab carapaces seemed to be impaled, and avoiding the channels that might easily suck them down, they came at last to the edge of a muddy hollow containing the mass of black wood and corroding metal. Traveller stood there for a while with his eyes closed and his head tilted back, a salt breeze whipping loose strands of hair around his face.

  Observing the man, Tack was struck by just how different he appeared. It was not so much the albinism, but the bone structure underneath. Traveller was elfin … or demonic.

  ‘When it comes, you climb inside and make yourself as comfortable as you can. While we shift, you must not extend any part of yourself outside its structure or that part will ablate in interspace.’ Traveller opened his eyes and gazed at Tack, and his eyes were now brighter, more intense. Tack saw that they were almost orange in colour, and could not understand why he had not noticed this before. He nodded dumbly, not really understanding.

  Traveller gestured in the direction of the wreck and, in the empty air between them and it something began to phase into existence. It was spherical, at least five metres across, a vaguely geodesic structure formed of glassy struts ranging in thickness from that of a human finger to a man’s leg. As it slid closer to them, Tack saw that within its substance veins and capillaries pulsed, and that the thicker areas were occupied by half-seen complex structures that sometimes looked like living organs and sometimes tangled masses of circuitry. From the outer structure, curving members grew inwards to intersect below two smaller spheres, which were only a little larger than human heads. The curve of these members left enough space for Tack and Traveller to occupy, overlooked by the two spheres. Only when he gripped what felt like warm glass and hauled himself up behind Traveller into the cavity, did Tack realize just what the twin spheres actually were. They were huge multi-faceted eyes positioned above fused-together glassy feeding mandibles, a spread-thin thorax and the beginnings of legs that blended into the curving outer members, and thence into the surrounding sphere. He had just climbed inside some insane glassmaker’s representation of a giant praying mantis turned inside out.

  ‘It’s alive,’ Tack observed.

  ‘Where I come from,’ Traveller replied, ‘defining what life is has become a little problematic. Now be silent until I tell you that you may speak again.’

  Tack felt the power of this order operating through his new programming, and knew that were Traveller to abandon him right then he would never be able to speak again unless reprogrammed. Inside the strange creation he found a place to jam the backpack, a ridge on which he could seat himself and one of the internal struts to hang on to.

  Traveller stood before the mantis head and reached out towards the eyes. His hands sank into them as if into syrup, and the surrounding structure took on the tint of molten glass. Then the world departed and Tack found himself weightless in a glass cage flying through a grey abyss over a sea of rolling darkness. In this he saw a vastness beyond comprehension, combined with an impossible lack of perspective, and in trying to comprehend both of these felt something straining to break away in his mind. After a moment he closed his eyes and wished it would all go away.

  4

  Astolere:


  Upon seeing the creature in its growth tank I had to ask why it is now so large. Cowl informs me that the greater the mass of organic complexity, the greater the vorpal energy generated (that word again). This is self-evident, but it seems to me that our research requirements of this energy are small, while what the creature might generate is potentially vast. Even so, I have been informed that Engineer Goron, the de facto governor of Callisto, damn him, is to cancel further research until such a time as the full consequences of time travel can be ascertained. Palleque tells me that the real reason for this research halt is that the Engineer trusts the preterhuman not at all. When I asked Palleque why this was the case, he replied, ‘Sister, after their attack on the energy dam the Umbrathane escaped by displacing their ships. Work it out.’

  Not much to work out really. I know because I built the first displacement generator, using an offshoot of Cowl’s research. The Engineer must think Cowl has passed on schematics to the Umbrathane and is therefore a traitor. Moreover, how did they know enough about the dangers represented by his research to risk such a suicidal attack? Of course doubt remains because, had their attack succeeded, Cowl himself might have been killed. Unless the attack was actually a rescue attempt …

  THE GUNFIRE HAD CEASED by the time Polly returned to the deck and the moon was up with its horns sinister. She made out structures like a squad of Martian war machines frozen mid-stride in the sea, and from one of these a searchlight speared down, as the boat decelerated and turned.

  ‘Red Sands army fort,’ said Dave. ‘Did a run out there a couple of weeks back, so it’s not the usual supplies we’ll be taking in. They’re stocked up until the next changeover.’

  They moved back along the deck to the wheelhouse, where Frank stood by the helm, gently guiding it with one hand while puffing on a pipe. Polly stared at the thing in his mouth and remembered that the last time she had seen someone smoking a pipe, it had contained a cocktail of crack and an LSD derivative. She suspected, from the strata of strong tobacco smoke in the boat’s interior, that these drugs were not Frank’s particular penchant.

  ‘So, who are you then?’ he asked.

  ‘Seems she went to take a swim without any intention of coming back,’ said Dave, leaning back against the wall of the cabin. Outside, a metal chimney was belching steam as Toby put out the fire in the stove, as per Frank’s recent instructions.

  Frank eyed her for a moment then said, ‘Now why would you want to do that?’

  ‘Because my husband died at El Alamein,’ Polly replied.

  ‘I thought you said boyfriend,’ interjected Dave, lighting up his nth cigarette.

  Oops, now they’ll start getting suspicious. Tell them you called me husband out of habit, as extramarital sex is somewhat frowned on in this particular time.

  Smoothly Polly explained, ‘Habit. Where we lived it was best for people to think we were married.’

  You’re rather good at this. Had I known, I might have made different use of you.

  Polly would have liked to explain to Nandru that, prior to putting the object on her arm, she would have had difficulty finding her backside with both hands. She was thinking an order of magnitude more clearly than heretofore and, as every moment passed, she could feel the crap being further cleared from her system. What worried her now was what would happen when withdrawal hit. It hadn’t yet, but she felt sure it must.

  ‘Do you still intend to take that swim?’ Frank eventually asked.

  ‘No … it would be a betrayal of his memory. He was a good man.’

  Ha-de-fucking-ha. Because of Marjae I wanted you creamed. I can’t feel it now, but back then, when I was alive, I thought you a noxious insect that should be stepped on.

  ‘We loved each other,’ Polly added, and heard hollow laughter in her head.

  Frank and Dave both looked embarrassed at this.

  Frank said, ‘This will all have to be confirmed, you know. They don’t like any unexpected visitors on these forts, even if you hadn’t any intention of coming out here.’

  ‘I’ve no problem with that,’ said Polly, glancing out at Toby, who was now manipulating a hoist to raise a crate from the hold.

  Frank brought the boat to a near halt below one of the constructs, his hands delicate on the controls to keep the vessel in position. Polly saw a net, attached to a line, thump down on the deck and watched as Dave went out to retrieve a small pack taped to the line, and then help Toby heave the crate into the net. A torch flashed from above and Dave returned the signal with his own torch. Polly did not need the clearness of thought she now possessed to figure that this particular delivery was unscheduled.

  ‘Likes his malt whisky, does Lieutenant Pearce,’ commented Frank as the other two returned to the cabin and they got under way again.

  Conversation thereafter became muted and Polly felt herself fading into the background as the three men discussed a war that was not even a memory to her. She learnt that both Dave and Toby were still in basic training and anxious to join the fighting, and recognized Frank’s tired look when he heard this enthusiasm. And she wondered at such naivety.

  In the next hour Dave pointed out another fort far to their left and announced, ‘Shivering Sands.’

  Later, Frank said, ‘Knob Sand,’ gesturing to some half-seen marker buoys while swinging the boat to the port. ‘And there’s Knock John.’

  Polly was impressed. The naval fort loomed like an old-style battleship raised up on two thick pillars. No lights were visible on it, but in silhouette against the star-studded sky she could discern guns and radio antennae.

  ‘Frank here. Coming in from the south,’ Frank spoke into his transceiver.

  They drew into Knock John’s shadow and slowed by a wooden jetty being hinged down from a scaffold running up the side of the nearest pillar. Only then did Polly get a true impression of the size of the fort. Dave and Toby cast ropes to the men who came out onto the jetty when it was in position, before unclipping the deck hatches to access the cargo below. Above them a crane was swung across and it lowered a cargo net straight into the open hold.

  ‘Best you come with me. Feel up to climbing that ladder?’ Frank asked her. Polly stared at the ladder, now made visible by the lights that had just been turned on within the scaffold, and wondered if she could manage it. She suddenly felt weak, slightly sick and incredibly hungry—more hungry than she had felt in years.

  ‘Brownlow should have the stew pot on by now and some tea brewing, and his tea is better for some additive.’ Frank patted the shoulder bag he had just picked up.

  ‘I can handle it,’ said Polly firmly, then something lurched inside her and she found herself closing her mouth on a welling up of saliva. What surprised her most was that it wasn’t a drink she wanted so much as the food. Following him down onto the jetty, then along to the iron ladder, she rolled up her dropping coat sleeves and cursed her lack of footwear … abandoned somewhere in this same sea. Someone at the head of the ladder rushed over to help her as soon as he realized she was a woman.

  ‘My daughter,’ explained Frank to those who had stopped to stare, then led her across, under the shadow of the crane, to an open doorway. Polly glanced up and noted the barrels of an anti-aircraft gun before following him inside. They negotiated further stairs and ladders, and Polly received a blurred impression of somewhere crammed with men and equipment and fogged by cigarette smoke, until eventually she found herself in a canteen, where she could concentrate on nothing but the smell of cooking.

  Soon all her attention was focused on a mess tin filled with unidentifiable lumps, which was thrust in front of her, and the hunk of bread plonked down beside it. Everything else faded into insignificance as she picked up a fork and began to eat. It seemed only moments later that the tin was empty and she was mopping up the gravy.

  ‘I take it you could do with some more?’ said Frank.

  Polly nodded dumbly.

  Three mess tins later, Polly glanced up into Frank’s amused regard. Huge fat
igue then trammelled her, and she had time only to push the mess tin aside before her forehead hit the table and sleep dropped on her like a black eiderdown. Then, seemingly with no transition, someone was shaking her.

  THE SEA OF BLACKNESS turned to white and the sky took on a more familiar aspect of grey cloud split against cerulean blue, and gravity took hold of him and dragged him down against the hard bones of the mantisal. Tack stared at the colour, and took it in like a man starved. That was it about the between place: no colour at all. For a moment longer, though, everything seemed unreal, and Tack noticed Traveller warily scanning their surroundings. Then the man shifted one hand inside a mantis eye and they completely arrived.

  ‘Out. Out now,’ said Traveller, withdrawing both his hands from the two spheres.

  Tack grabbed up the pack and pulled himself towards the gap through which he had entered the mantisal. He fell and, bracing himself for impact, was grateful to drop into a snowdrift. As he pulled himself out of this, brushing it from his ruined coat, Traveller dropped into a squat on some grassy ground nearby, which was only lightly dusted with snow, then stood upright. Tack glanced up at the mantisal and, seeing it dropping back into that ineffable dimension, quickly averted his gaze. When he turned back it was gone and all that remained was the sky, punctuated by the occasional bird silhouette. He took up the backpack, slung it on and turned to Traveller.

  The strange man’s face was lined with fatigue, and Tack noticed that his eyes were now brownish-gold in colour, as if dulled by the extent of his weariness.

  ‘Over there,’ Traveller said, pointing to a distant line of dense forest, and they began trudging in that direction. After a moment he went on, ‘You’re not curious about where, or rather when, we have come?’

  Tack stared at him dumbly.

  ‘Ah,’ said Traveller. ‘You may speak.’

  ‘I am curious,’ admitted Tack, now free to speak again.

  ‘Welcome to the early Pleistocene,’ said Traveller, gesturing about himself with both hands. ‘Neanderthal man is dominant at present, but humans like yourself are appearing, and it will only be another hundred thousand years before their ascendence. The belief, in your time, was that your people drove the Neanderthals to extinction. The truth is that a disease crossed a species boundary, contracted from the animals they hunted as food, and killed most of them off. Many of those who survived mated with your own kind and their DNA still exists even in my time.’