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Authors: Neal Asher

BOOK: Cowl
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‘An impressive creature, but strictly speaking it has evolved only to exist within narrow parameters.' He looked at Tack. ‘You realize that people of your time were misguided in their belief that tyrannosaurus was merely a carrion
eater? That all came from their softening outlook on existence—a political correctness engendering the attitude that at their root all creatures are good. They were in fact right the first time: tyrannosaurus is a vicious predator that will rip apart anything that moves, usually to devour but sometimes for the fun of it.'
Tack grunted in understanding.
‘Another myth was that their front claws serve no purpose. Try telling a creature with a set of teeth like those that two handy toothpicks are useless. They like their meat fresh, not trapped decaying in their mouths.'
Gazing back at his companion, Tack noticed over his shoulder the tall woman he had earlier ‘bumped into' entering the viewing area and heading in their direction. She appeared distinctly irritated. Noting the direction of Tack's gaze, the big man looked round. Coming to a halt, the woman licked her lips nervously before starting to speak in the Heliothane language.
The man interrupted, ‘Tack here does not understand our language, Vetross, so to use it in front of him is impolite.'
The woman bowed her head. ‘My apologies, Engineer.'
‘So, tell me, what so urgently requires my attention?'
‘The spatial scroll extending … has will extend … stretch …' Vetross paused before saying, ‘This is not a suitable language for the subject.'
‘The mind, like the body, requires exercise,' said Engineer. ‘You are just using different muscles this time. Think about it for a moment, then continue.' He turned to Tack. ‘Have you seen enough of your dinosaur?'
Tack nodded. In truth he could have watched the beast for hours, but he did not think this was the answer Engineer wanted, so Tack wasn't about to argue.
Engineer continued, ‘When Vetross finally gets around to telling me her news, I suspect that Saphothere's departure, and yours, will be brought forward. Do you know where he is at present?'
‘In the recovery ward.' Tack removed from the pocket of his new coat the palm computer that had belonged to Coptic, and which Saphothere had reprogrammed specially for him. Once he opened it, the device—consisting of what appeared to be two sheets of smoked glass hinged together—displayed a map of the interior of Sauros. In one corner was a small icon of a control panel which, when touched, expanded to fill one half of the computer with a static virtual panel. Using this, Tack was able to confirm Saphothere's location.
‘Ah, simple but exclusive of some useful information,' said Vetross suddenly.
Both Tack and Engineer turned towards her.
She continued, ‘The energy dam in New London is functioning at full capacity and all abutments are field stable. We are ready for the shift. All that has to be decided is whether or not we maintain the one light-year span, or allow the one-third light-year extension.'
‘You see, it's not so difficult. I will join you shortly to begin the shift.'
Vetross nodded sharply and, without even looking at Tack, moved off. Engineer turned back to him. ‘Tell Traveller Saphothere that I require him at abutment three.'
Tack risked, ‘What was all that about?'
Engineer smiled. ‘The energy required to shift Sauros back in time a hundred million years is now available. And, while making that shift, the tunnel's span will become unstable, which is why you must go now.'
The big man turned and began sauntering away, adding over his shoulder, ‘Tell Saphothere not to delay A solar flare could crack the dam, which would put the project back months in New London time, if that place were ever to survive the event.'
Following his map, Tack negotiated the corridors of Sauros, by travelling ramps and walkways whose floors flowed like mercury but somehow maintained a surface solidity. In the vast interior spaces of the city he observed massive walls of balconied dwellings, around which travel hemispheres buzzed like insects; immense machines labouring to some unknown purpose, but which caused some sort of inductive tug at his skin; huge ducts and conduits, and spaces curtained with nacreous energy fields. Everything was composed of metal, plastic and other manufactured materials, and all served a definite purpose. There were no statues, nothing built for simple aesthetics, no gardens, yet the place possessed an awesome functional beauty.
The recovery ward lay at the rear of one of the residential blocks, its panoramic windows overlooking a well, at the bottom of which rested a machine consisting of what appeared to be randomly cut concentric gear rings shifting against each other, as if searching for some final combination. Every time they shifted it seemed as if the very air changed all its directions of flow and some force pulled at Tack's insides. Saphothere lay on a metal slab, pipes conducting his blood from a plug in the side of his chest to a wheeled machine nearby—which, so Saphothere had informed Tack, cleaned out the poisons and directly added nutrients along with complex enzymes that accelerated tissue repair and the growth of fat cells, so in effect Saphothere was being endowed in just a few hours with what would otherwise have needed days of rest
and sustenance. As soon as Tack entered the room, Saphothere opened his eyes and glared at him.
‘I told you to keep yourself occupied for five hours,' he said.
Tack told him of his encounter by the viewing windows.
‘Engineer?' Saphothere sat bolt upright, then leant over and made an adjustment to the revitalization machine. After a moment its pipes were clear of his blood, then one of them filled up with some emerald fluid. Saphothere gasped in pain, picked up a wad of white material from an inbuilt dispenser, waiting until the emerald fluid cleared, then yanked all the tubes from his chest, slapping the wad quickly into place to soak up any spill of blood. None of this surprised Tack now. His surprise had been earlier, when Saphothere, without assistance, had opened up his shirt, placed the plug against his chest, and explained through gritted teeth how its connection heads were now digging inside him, searching for his pulmonary and ventricular arteries. It seemed Saphothere had no time for anaesthetics or the ministrations of a nurse, had there been one in evidence.
‘I take it he is an important man?' asked Tack.
‘He's the Engineer,' said Saphothere, as if that was all the explanation required. He swung his legs off the slab, kicked away the wheeled device, which rolled back to the wall, sealed up his shirt and stood. ‘I would have liked more time here, but it seems your education will begin sooner than expected.'
‘What do you mean?'
‘I will not be flying the mantisal all the way to New London.'
 
EVEN YGROL, THE TOUGHEST and most dangerous member of the Neanderthal tribe, was tired and knew he was fighting a losing battle. The aurochs he had killed would keep his fellows supplied with food for some time yet, but no matter how much meat he brought to the encampment, his people were still weak and incontinent, blinded by the blisters around and on their eyes, still dying. Only Ygrol was still physically untouched by this terrible malady, though it hurt him in many other ways.
Inside the yurt he wrapped the dead girl in a tanned goat fur to keep her warm for the journey and began sewing it shut. He did this because it was always how the dead should be honoured, though he would not bury her, for the one on the mountain demanded the corpses. After dragging her outside the yurt, he first went over to check that the stew, in its hide pot over the fire, contained sufficient water, for without it soaking through the hide, the pot would
burn and the contents spill into the flames. From the other yurts he could hear the moaning and the demands for water and food, but ignored them—that they were making a noise meant they were still alive. Returning then, he threw the girl's corpse over his shoulder and walked back through the forest towards the mountain, where it awaited.
Nothing seemed to satisfy the monster, and Ygrol had tried every means at his disposal. It had taken the remains of the mammoth meat from the storage cave, and twice took his kill when he left it unguarded for but a moment. He thought perhaps to satisfy it with the gift of other sacrifices, and so began killing the flat-faced outsiders for it, and dragging them to the mountain. But that seemed to make no difference at all. Now all it seemed he could do was make his people as comfortable as he could while they died, then take their bodies to the mountain as offerings. But then what, when they were all dead?
The gift still rested on the stone where the tribe had butchered smaller carcasses and spread out hides for scraping and, sometimes, the need to go and take it up nearly outweighed Ygrol's duty to his people. But he knew that to do so would somehow take him away from them. He knew that the creature on the mountain wanted this of him. But he dared not leave the tribe with no one to provide for them.
Something thudded against the goatskin wrapping the girl, and he thought a carrion bird had just dive-bombed him. He pulled his bone club from his belt and looked around at the trees. Then he saw the two flat-faces running towards him, and glanced aside to see the arrow penetrating the sad parcel over his shoulder.
Ygrol considered fleeing. He did not have his spear, and he knew just how lethal were the flimsy-looking weapons these people carried. But to run he would need to leave the girl and, even though he was taking her to give to the monster, he would not leave her to these excuses for human beings. Pulling her lower, so she rested across his chest, he roared and charged. Another arrow thudded into his package, went through the girl's leg and just penetrated his chest. The bowman was down on one knee, struggling to string another arrow as Ygrol hammered into him, smashing him aside with one sweep of the club, his head split right open and his brain almost completely out of his skull. Not pausing, Ygrol continued after the other man as he fled. He threw his heavy bone club at the back of the man's legs to bring him down, then was on him in a moment, and did not put down the corpse of the girl as he stamped the life out of this upstart Cro-Magnon. On the mountain he left his two victims on
either side of the girl to assist her on her journey, then headed home, trying to figure out how to work the bow and arrows he had taken.
Back at the encampment it did not take long for the Neanderthal to know that something was badly wrong. First he smelt burning meat, then, upon walking into the clearing, heard no one moaning. The stew hide had been torn open and emptied and the smell arose from the few small pieces of meat in the fire. The yurts had likewise been torn open and emptied—all that was left inside them was the occasional bloody animal skin. Ygrol shrieked his rage and ran to leap up onto the butcher stone. He cursed the gods of sky, rock and earth and damned the spirits of all the ancestors who looked down from their fires in the night sky. And as if in reply, the very air over the encampment split and the mountain monster appeared, but this time nothing was hidden. Ygrol saw then the spirit of every animal he had slaughtered for the pot and knew some accounting was due. He looked down at the gift, where it rested between his feet, considered smashing it with his club, but then picked it up.
Deep in the forest the Cro-Magnon men heard a scream of defiance and rage from the Neanderthal encampment they were encircling. But they never found the one who had murdered so many of their tribe. Not even bones.
Modification Status Report:
Some sensory additions will form in an aerogel grid on the exoskeleton, similar in function to the lateral line of a fish, but sensitive to a wide spectrum of radiation. The presence of this grid negates the need for eyes. This is fortunate, as the interfacing organs, which by necessity must remain close to the child's brain, occupy much of its face and leave little room for much else. I have retained the mouth in position, along with those modifications required for the more efficient ingestion of food, but the nose and the eyes are gone. Also, it being the case that many of the interfacing organs are delicate, some sort of protection is obligatory. Serendipitously, I have discovered that only a small alteration to the gene controlling exoskeletal growth (this taken, along with the mouth modifications, from the genome of a scarabaeid beetle) causes growth of ‘wing cases' over the face. Already, I think, I know what my child's name will be.
 
H
E LAY FLAT ON the floor of his hut, his eyes rolled up into his head and his body rigid with ecstasy. The hut stank. The man stank. Polly grimaced down at him, then moved over to the duck skewered over the fire and tore off a leg. The two patches she had pressed against his chest, while running her hands up inside the stinking fur he wore, were taking him somewhere he had never been before. Wondering why she had chosen to do that rather than zap him with the taser, she supposed, after seeing the squalor he lived in, she had felt some pity for him.
As she sat eating, and washing down each mouthful with bitter sips from a wineskin, she could hear his woman still angrily moving about outside. He had yelled at her earlier when the woman had protested, whereupon the woman
had glared at Polly with both hatred and fear. Polly realized she had to leave now before he came to and wondered what the hell had happened to him. Tossing the duck bone in the fire she reached out for the rest of it, tearing away its stringy flesh with her teeth. The remainder of two flat gritty loaves she shoved into her pockets, then looked around. But there was nothing else here she wanted—no more food anyway. With one last look at the prehistoric man she had sent into a drugged coma, Polly stepped out of the hut. The woman looked up from a quern on which she was grinding some sort of grain. She babbled something Polly did not understand. Polly reckoned her to be not much older than herself, but she appeared terribly worn, like Marjae near the end. Behind her two naked brats were squabbling in the mud. Polly strode past them all to reach the coracle moored on the island shore. The woman shouted a protest as Polly stepped into the small boat and pushed herself away with the paddle. She did not look back.
The sunset was red on the sky when Polly finally moored at another island and crawled ashore. She prepared herself a bed of thick reeds and slumped down on it gratefully. Even as cold as she felt, she was instantly asleep. Night passed in a seeming instant, and as she woke to the dawn chorus of waterfowl and frogs, and then the sound of a man bellowing and threatening. She sat up and he saw her at once and cursed as he waded towards her as fast as he could. There seemed no doubt about what he intended to do with his serrated spear. Polly turned aside, the webwork inside her responsive to the slightest nudge. But there was the suffocation to face.
Try hyperventilating.
‘What?'
Breathe quickly and deeply—more than you need to—until you're dizzy.
Polly started doing just that. Soon she felt a buzzing through her limbs and became light-headed. As she stepped beyond the bellowing man's furthest remembered ancestors, the swamp grew thin and it dissipated like fog, exposing a reality of infinite grey over a black sea. Terrible cold gripped her and it seemed as if the pressure of that was aiming to squeeze out her last breath. She was falling now, hurtling through that grey void—the sensation of speed more manifest than before. Briefly she glimpsed a silvery line on some impossible horizon. Surely it must end soon. But as the air bled out of her lungs she began to panic—the scale was going to carry her to the limit again, she was going to run out of breath. Her desperation to stop seemed to distort everything around her into glassy planes, vast curved surfaces, and lines of light. What she
needed was down there, and she pulled herself into it. Gasping but elated, she stumbled across frost-hardened ground into the blast of a snowstorm.
Then something growled behind her.
 
‘ABUTMENT THREE' BORE THE shape of a huge crooked thumb projecting over one corner of the triangular entrance that filled the bottom of this vast chamber. Tack had no wish to look down into the tunnel again, since some effect of perspective seemed to try and pull his eyes out of his head. In the distance he could see a similar abutment overhanging each of the other two corners, and it was a distance—looming through the mist filling the chamber, they stood at least a kilometre apart. Standing back from the edge of the platform mounted on the side of this abutment, and over the rim of which Engineer and various members of his staff were now peering, Tack turned to Saphothere.
‘He told me about the shift back in time, but what was all that about spatial elasticity and the unnecessary squandering of energy?' he asked.
Saphothere glanced at him. ‘At present the tunnel is one light year long, internally, and a decision must be made as to whether we maintain that physical length or extend it.'
‘But if they are going back a hundred million years, surely the tunnel needs to be extended?'
‘Distance,' said Saphothere tersely, ‘when equated to time travel through interspace, is only a function of the energy you need to expend. The shorter the tunnel's actual length, the greater the energy input required to maintain it. Had you sufficient energy you could open a doorway directly into the Precambrian, though you would probably put out the sun in doing it. Zero energy input would extend such a tunnel to infinity, attenuating it into non-existence. It's quite simple really.'
Tack snorted and returned his attention to Engineer. He and the others had now finished their discussion and rejoined them.
‘It is now decided,' said Engineer. ‘Take your mantisal through and inform Maxell that we shall maintain the tunnel at one light year. I feel that to extend now would be premature, and that we should wait for the shift into the Triassic.'
‘Yes, Engineer,' replied Saphothere, with a short bow. He turned, and almost immediately their mantisal appeared out of the hot humid air blowing across the platform.
‘And you, Tack,' continued Engineer, ‘I look forward to seeing again when you return, though you will be much changed.'
Tack did not know what to make of that, so he just nodded and followed Saphothere into the mantisal. Soon they were drifting out from the platform, out over the triangular well below and all its gut-churning distortion. Then the mantisal dropped like a brick, straight down into it.
The falling sensation continued until the mantisal turned, so that rather than dropping downwards as if into a real well, they were now travelling along an immense triangular tunnel. It was only a change of perspective, as the weightless falling sensation continued, but enough for Tack to get a grip on, and so not lose the contents of his stomach. Also, as they progressed, he began to feel acceleration, noticing what appeared to be faults in the silver-grey walls of the tunnel fleeing past faster. All of this was numbing, and just watching it dropped Tack into a weary fugue. He dozed, losing it until Saphothere spoke to him again. Checking his watch, Tack saw that only minutes had passed.
‘Come over here.'
Tack pushed himself away from the side of the mantisal, drifting over to catch hold of a strut, then hauled himself down to a standing position next to Traveller. Saphothere withdrew his left hand from one of the two spheres.
‘Place your hand in there,' he instructed.
Tack rested his palm against the surface, which felt glassy until he pushed into it, then it gave way and enclosed his hand in cold jelly. Immediately there came a prickling stinging as of numerous needles penetrating his flesh. A chill spread up his arm, across his back, then leapt up via his neck and into his skull. The mantisal suddenly appeared even more transparent than normally, and the tunnel itself changed. Now they were hanging in the flaw of a gem, in which they held their position against a waterfall of light. And beyond this, interspace was again visible—infinite grey underlined by the black roiling of that strange sea.
‘What's it doing?'
‘Connecting … and feeding as well.'
‘Feeding?' Tack repeated woodenly.
‘Mantisals draw energy from sources we provide for them within interspace, but that is not enough for a material creature. They separate out carbon from our exhaled breath and, in this manner'—Saphothere nodded towards Tack's hand—‘directly absorb other essential chemicals. Now, do you feel the connection?'
After trying to dismiss from his mind the fact that he was somehow being eaten, Tack did sense something. The mantisal was tired and wanted to rest. It
felt confined by the distortion of interspace around it, and was aware of that distortion in a way that—through it—Tack instinctively tried to grasp, but it defeated him. The flow of light now began to diminish, and the mantisal began sliding to the edge of the flaw.
‘Don't let it stop. You must keep pushing it.'
Tack tried to put the construct under pressure, but just did not know how. Mentally pulling back in confusion, he found the alien mind sticking with him, sinking into him, becoming one of his parts. Now its weariness was his, its need to rest becoming his own. Then he knew, and from that part of himself which enabled him to persevere through a particularly tough fight-training session, he now found the will to drive the mantisal on. It began to slowly draw back to the centre of the flaw and the flow of light began to increase.
‘Your other hand,' urged Saphothere, now seeming just a skeleton cloaked in shadow beside him—like an X-ray image. Tack watched Traveller withdraw his hand only so far that his fingertips still remained inside the eye, then inserted his own hand into its place. Upon doing this, he felt some strange species of feedback from the piece of tor embedded in the wrist of that hand, and saw it brighten under its enclosing bangle, glowing like a solid gold coin. From it, he felt resistance, as if from some infinite ribbon of elastic stretched into the far past. Only while feeling this did he realize that, in his head, time now equated to a distance, and that other elements of the mantisal's perception were becoming comprehensible to him. He remembered undertaking a simple perceptual test that involved viewing a line drawing of a cube and switching it about in his head, so that what he perceived as the rear surface became the front and vice versa. Doing the same with what he was seeing now, he brought the tunnel back into existence for himself, while maintaining an awareness of how the mantisal perceived it … and much else.
As the compressed ages fled by, he realized that the flaw itself was rising from Earth's gravity well, which in its turn was a trench cloven around—and within—the trench of the sun. And that they were falling towards the sun, for their destination did not lie on Earth. Reality now patterned around him in absolute surfaces twisted in impossible directions, spheres and lines of force, empty light and solid blackness, all multiplied to infinity down an endless slope. Glancing at Saphothere, who had now moved away from him, he saw just a man-shaped hole cut into midnight—but the traveller was also a sphere and a tube, both finite and infinite. Tack groped for understanding, something starting to tear in his head.
‘Start pulling yourself out now, else you'll never return.'
Saphothere was beside him again: skeletal, terrifying, fingertips back in the eye.
Tack pulled away and absolute surfaces slid back into place to form the walls of the tunnel, shapes curving away into nothingness, and soon he once again perceived his surroundings in simple three dimensions.
‘Now, take out your right hand.'
‘But … I can do this …'
‘You have done enough for now. You've been standing here for two hours and for fifty million years.'
Tack withdrew one hand and Saphothere instantly thrust his own into place. Taking out his other hand, Tack looked at his watch and confirmed that two hours had indeed passed. Pushing himself back through the cavity of the mantisal, he felt weariness descending on him like a collapsing wall.
‘But one light year?' he said, as he moved to his accustomed position in the mantisal.
‘Time and distance, Tack. Distance and time. You now know the answer: to fly the mantisal you had to build the blueprint of the logic in your mind.'
It was true. Inside himself Tack felt he had gained an utterly new slant on … everything. He thought about the tunnel and said, ‘It compresses the continuum and multiplies, by orders of magnitude, the distance the mantisal can normally travel. And, like the tunnel, the more energy the mantisal uses the shorter its journey. In how short a time, for us, could it traverse this tunnel?'

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