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Authors: Neal Asher

BOOK: Cowl
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‘Those who did not escape, and did not accede to our solar empire, we exterminated,' Saphothere explained.
‘And when did time travel come into this equation?'
‘During that war. For centuries it was known to be a possibility, but that huge energies would be required. One of our own people finally worked out how it could be done, so it was used by us in a limited fashion as a weapon—shifts of a few hours or days only, for we understood how huge a threat this technology could pose to our very existence. Had we gone back to attack the Umbrathane at the period they destroyed the Mars mirrors, we would also have shoved ourselves far down the probability slope. Near the end the one who had first worked out how to use the tech gave it to the Umbrathane and they and he fled into the past. To pursue them, we needed larger energy resources and so laboured on the great project. Two centuries from the destruction of the Mars mirrors, we completed the sun tap.'
‘Cowl, you're talking about Cowl? This is why you could not kill him in his own past because to do that you would lose the whole technology he was responsible for.'
Saphothere eyed him. ‘You're not so stupid after all. Perhaps this whisky is loosening some of the knots in your brain. Now, have you worked out the origins of both the Umbrathane and the Heliothane?'
Tack said, ‘The Heliothane are direct descendants of the Umbrathane—if not Umbrathane themselves with a slightly different name and a different agenda.'
‘That is correct. Now consider the original Umbrathane maintaining a cerebral-programming technology for a thousand years. Tell me, how many of your genetically engineered and programmable kind exist in your own time?'
‘Hundreds … but not thousands,' Tack replied, getting an intimation of what Saphothere was telling him.
‘Perhaps only ten or so years on from when you were pursuing that girl, your own kind break their thraldom to U-gov and become able to choose their own programming. They then become an independent organization, selling their skills to the highest bidders in the wars that follow—as mercenaries. The Umbrathane are the descendants of your own kind, Tack. I am, too. Which is why, for so long in our own period, even though we knew about you being
dragged along in the wake of that torbearer, we dared not touch you. But now we are more frightened of what Cowl is doing.' Saphothere abruptly stood up, drained his glass, and slammed it upside down on the table. ‘Now I must sleep, and build up my own resources for what is to come. One long leap will bring us to Sauros. Then will come the easy journey through the tunnel, back along and beyond all this way we have recently come, to New London.'
As Saphothere ensconced himself in one of the bunks, Tack drank another glass of whisky and tried to fathom all he had just been told. The whisky didn't help though, so, after silently toasting Sauros and New London in whatever direction they lay, he headed for one of the bunks himself.
 
THADUS KNEW THAT, IN the terms of the people here, he and Elone were untypically old. His hair was grey, yet he did not drool or fall over, and was not dying. Which was why, he supposed, the naked youth up in the oak tree behind them, had not fled and now watched them with fascination. The boy had also probably never seen clothing like this, or the devices they carried, unless in pictures found in the ruins below. Thadus raised his unclipped rifle sight to his eye and scanned the ancient city. He could see one or two cooking fires so some knowledge must survive, despite the fact that everyone here was moronic by the time they reached their twenties and did not live beyond their thirties.
Elone blinked down her nictitating membranes to mirror her eyes. ‘The census figures from the satellite put the population in the region of three thousand.'
‘No sign of anyone developing resistance?' Thadus asked.
‘None; the opposite, in fact. The population has been dropping steadily over the last thirty years. And what with the new enclave being built a hundred miles north of here …'
Thadus snorted. It was, of course, sensible for those uninfected by the neurovirus, those umbrathants who just by living longer were becoming the rulers of the Umbrathane, to protect themselves from reinfection. He said, ‘I was just wondering if there were any who could be extracted before we cleanse.' He stabbed his thumb over his shoulder towards the oak tree. ‘The boy there seems pretty well coordinated.'
Elone turned and gazed up into the tree. ‘He's about twelve years old and malnutrition has delayed his puberty.'
‘Alpha strain, then?'
‘Yes. The hormones produced in puberty trigger the more destructive stage
of the virus. Right now only about a quarter of his brain has gone. After another ten years he'll lose half of what's remaining, before the virus starts targeting his autonomic nervous system and kills him.' Elone frowned. ‘But you know all this.'
Thadus turned to her. ‘And I want to hear it again and again. You're the umbrathant on the ground, and if you've any doubts I want to hear them. Do you know how many places like this I've cleared out?'
‘You were working on the south coast.'
‘Damned right. Eight old cities all with populations similar to this one, all alpha strain. I know there's no other answer, but I can still smell burning bodies.'
Thinking about the past, Thadus realized his memories were not so clear as they had been. He checked the monitor inset into the muscle of his forearm and saw that in another five days his mental template would need to be uploaded again to replace memories and abilities lost to the neurovirus he himself carried. By this, and by the cocktail of drugs developed over the last century, he kept the destructive virus at bay. But these only delayed the inevitable and at best two years remained to him. But, then, he was tired and after this last extermination would be unemployed. The rulers in their enclaves would no longer have any use for him and certainly he would not be allowed to live amongst them.
‘What will you use here?' Elone asked, surreptitiously checking her own monitor.
Thadus tilted his head to the now audible sound of engines. ‘The perimeter's closing in and any outside the ruins will run for home—that's what they usually do. We then drop compound B, and do a ground survey while your people collect samples. But we don't want too many delays. We drop incendiaries before evening.' He looked beyond her and pointed. ‘There.'
Further along the ridge to their right, overlooking the city, two individuals broke from cover. One was naked, the other wore rotting skins and carried a primitive spear. They bolted down the slope into low scrub before the buildings. Behind them a tree went over with a rushing crash and an armoured car emerged from the forest. All this activity became too much for the boy in the oak tree behind Thadus and Elone, and he scrambled to the ground. In one smooth motion Thadus clipped the sight back onto his rifle, aimed and acquired the boy as he scrambled past. Thadus then lowered the rifle.
‘See?' he said. ‘They run for home.'
In an unconscious gesture, he now pressed a finger to the comlink in his ear. ‘Dolure had to flame out a cave some were hiding in, but otherwise that's all of them. The bomber's on its way over.'
Both he and Elone detached masks from their belts and donned them. All around the ancient city troops and Elone's monitoring personnel were walking out of the surrounding forest, and other armoured cars were now driving into view. Then came a different engine sound as high up the tricopter bomber droned overhead and took up station above the city. There it shed its load like a sprinkling of black peppercorns. With his rifle sight back up against his eye, Thadus watched the gaseous detonations and the haze of compound B spreading between the buildings.
He checked his watch, gave it ten minutes. ‘Let's walk,' he said.
And as he and Elone did that, the Umbrathane perimeter also closed in on the city. It was only minutes later that they started seeing victims of the poison gas: family groups gathered around fires, some clothed in animal skins, others so far gone in cerebral breakdown that they had been unable even to maintain this primitive clothing; individuals who had run and been felled by the gas; older victims of the plague curled up in stinking cavities in the fallen masonry, where they had survived only if their kin remembered to feed them; others rotting in those same cavities. While Thadus walked with his rifle propped across his forearm, Elone went to rejoin her people—infected umbrathants like himself and his men—who were now spreading out to take tissue and blood samples. His own men checked for anyone alive, but in a desultory manner—Thadus had never found a survivor of the gas in all the cities he had cleansed.
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.
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.
 
T
HE 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.

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