Cowl (28 page)

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Authors: Neal Asher

BOOK: Cowl
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AGAIN THE AIR WAS growing stale and Polly had to fight a rising terror to look for the other place in which she could control the careering progress of the scale and of the cage that contained her. She did not want to see more because, at the edge of perception, she just knew that a nightmare lurked underneath the midnight sea, watching her. When she did reach out, brief chaos surrounded her and she glimpsed a vast torso curving above, its edges lost in spatial distortion: an endless tangle of necks and mouths like the one that had taken Nandru; and she felt the regard of some feral intelligence.
‘Oh Christ …'
She was groping for a way out, fear freezing her will and shoving her perception back to that of the black sea and grey void. Then something reached out, opening a surface at the end of which the coloured light of the real gleamed, and she fell down the slope into day, the cage smoking and dissipating as she hurtled out over cold desert and dropped down towards a rock field. She clung to the glass cage's struts, willing them to retain integrity, feeling them grow thin under her touch. But it was enough. She dropped two metres to a boulder, slid down the side of it, and rolled in a scattering of yucca-like stems, snapping them over onto ground coated with the green buttons of other primitive growth.
What did you see? I couldn't see anything.
‘That thing—I saw the thing that killed you.'
I saw only two surfaces: one black and one grey. That's all I'
ve ever seen.
‘Perhaps you're lucky,' said Polly, standing up and brushing green slime from her coat, before looking around.
The mountains rising up to her right were jagged, unrounded by the elements. From somewhere behind them a column of smoke rose into the sky, staining the clouds in shades of sepia, black and crimson. Between them and the rock field lay a gritty plain dappled with green. The few plants were simple: constructed from a child's drawing by some inept god. In the stony ground there were occasional cracks filled with stagnant water in which miniature rainbow larvae wriggled and swarmed. Again the shift had brought her down near the seashore, for she could hear the hiss of waves beyond the rocks, though she could not yet see the ocean. Negotiating her way between some boulders, she headed in that direction, for despite her recent, near-lethal experience by the sea, it was at least something reassuringly familiar.
The shoreline was cluttered with the shells of sea creatures; water snails as big as human heads, crab things and lobster things, worm things and just plain things. Some of the shells were still occupied, and stank like a trawler's bilge, but nothing was moving. Polly kicked over a ribbed shell resembling a knight's shield and squatted down beside it to inspect the decaying creature it contained.
I don't think there'
s anything on the land that can attack you now.
‘What makes you say that?' Polly asked bitterly.
I think you're beyond any land animal other than insects … or their ancient relatives
.
‘That's a comfort.'
About to stand up to move on, she yelled with fright. A figure was looming over her.
Dressed in dark clothing like army fatigues, the man was rangy, hard-looking. His skin looked almost bluish-white and his close-cropped hair resembled a layer of chalk. At first she had the crazy notion that he was some sort of inhabitant of this same age, then realized he could be nothing other than a time traveller like herself.
‘Who … ?' was all she could manage.
The man smiled, though it was hardly reassuring. Polly's hand strayed to her pocket and the comforting weight of the condom-wrapped automatic.
‘My name is Thote—if that is relevant. I'm here to help you.'
 
‘NOW, LIE FACE-DOWN WITH your legs and arms outstretched.'
Tack considered going for her, but in this situation his new strength meant nothing and his reactions could not be faster than her trigger finger. So he obeyed, stretching out, but turning his head so he could just see Saphothere's tent. With the barrel of her weapon still pressed against his neck, Meelan tossed a small silver sphere at the tent, which burnt through the fabric like hot iron through tissue paper. The interior was suddenly filled with a phosphorescent blaze, becoming a bright lantern for a few seconds before erupting from the fabric and consuming it. The heat was intense and Tack recognized that she had hurled a molecular catalyser, like the one Saphothere had used on the palisade of Pig City and like those still contained in Tack's pack. Saphothere was not even given time to scream.
As the fire died down, a filigree of solidifying black smoke fell through the air as from an acetylene flame. Tack felt the pressure of the gun barrel lift from his neck.
‘I have placed on your back a small mine, which, should you move abruptly, will detonate and drive into your spine fragments of glass coated with a paralytic. Do not move.'
Tack recognized that both Heliothane and Umbrathane possessed numerous varieties of explosives that could be programmed to detonate under varying circumstances—changes in temperature, humidity, position, whatever—so he did not disbelieve Meelan. His recent education had opened his eyes to just how dangerous her kind were.
Soon after she stepped into view as she went to inspect the ruins of the tent.
He watched her running the toe of her boot through the thin layer of ash. Her new arm, he saw, was now nearly the size of the other, there was some sort of brace extending down the forearm and dividing up to spread down each finger. This was clearly to prevent any deformation in the rapid growth of the limb. Unfortunately, such regenerative ability was not one the Heliothane had been able to impart to himself, along with his other augmentations. Tack then realized Meelan might not know about those. Maybe the mine's detonation was programmed to the slower movements of a twenty-second-century human, not for what he had become. Tack calculated that he had at least one and a half seconds.
With Meelan's back now towards him, he reached round, closed his hand on cold metal, and threw the object at her, whipfast. The mine blew only centimetres from where he had been lying, but by then he was rolling down the slope towards the forest, paralytic glass fragments thumping the back of his suit. In the flash's after-images he glimpsed Meelan spinning round and raising her weapon. Thrusting down with the flat of his hand, he changed the course of his roll as a series of explosions cut in a line down the slope towards him. Finally getting his feet underneath him, he sprang up, cartwheeled away on one hand while drawing his weapon with the other, and sent a spray of shots up the slope. A horsetail exploded into fibrous pulp right next to him as he dived headfirst into the cover of greenery. As plants continued to explode around him, he offered up thanks that both Umbrathane and Heliothane were so arrogantly self-assured of their fighting skills that they rarely relied on weapons like his seeker gun.
Deep in the jungle, the continuing explosions now behind him, he was caught unawares when a white hand snaked out from behind a giant club moss to grab his shoulder. He thrust his weapon up towards a white face, and was a microsecond from pulling the trigger before its identity registered.
‘I thought she'd killed you!' Tack exclaimed.
‘Apparently not,' Saphothere replied, staring up at the mountainside Tack had just left.
Tack turned to look and saw two mantisals had just appeared. Later, learning that Saphothere had left his tent briefly while Tack dozed, he was grateful that even superhumans like Saphothere needed to take a shit occasionally. The traveller began climbing the tree they were standing beneath. Tack followed him up and soon they obtained a better view of their ravaged campsite.
Their packs had been propped against a rock face behind Saphothere's incinerated tent. Even as they watched, the group of Umbrathane set their defences, then leaving behind only two, a man and a woman, the other six, including Meelan herself, began scouring the jungle below. Tack handed back the monocular Saphothere had passed him.
‘I recognize a couple more of them from Pig City,' he observed.
‘Well, there would have been some survivors,' Saphothere replied.
‘So what do we do now?' Tack asked.
Saphothere's face was locked in an angry grimace. Then he looked around. ‘It's turning dusk. We hit them in full dark. Then you grab a supply pack and your weapons, and just go on from here.'
He scrambled down from the tree and Tack followed, knowing that when the traveller said ‘go on from here' he meant the moment Tack grabbed those packs he must take his implant offline and allow the tor to take him back in time. From that point he would be on his own, if he survived the coming fight. Dubiously he considered their current collection of weapons. Saphothere had wisely taken a carbine with him into the jungle and had an assortment of proximity mines hooked on his belt, while Tack possessed only his hand weapon. Though containing a hundred-round clip of explosive ammunition, that was not sufficient if you went up against eight heavily armed Umbrathane.
‘What about you?' Tack asked, as they pushed through undergrowth.
‘I survive—or not. But your mission is vital and you must carry it out.'
‘Why not just summon the mantisal here and we could get supplies elsewhere? '
Saphothere looked at him. ‘We cannot afford the time.'
There it was: another of those pronouncements that just didn't make sense to Tack. Nevertheless, he nodded as if he understood.
Saphothere explained, ‘When Coptic and Meelan hit us first, I was prepared to accept that as just luck on their part. But her tracking us here and being so well-prepared, I am not inclined to accept as coincidence. They are getting inside help, but most importantly they are somehow securing the energy for accurate time-shifting.'
‘Cowl,' said Tack.
‘Maybe,' Saphothere replied. ‘Now, this is what you must do.'
Shortly afterwards Saphothere signalled that they should now proceed in silence, sliding through the foliage, stepping only on sure ground, utterly alert.
Even their comlinks were unusable in this situation as they could be detected. But their clothing shielded them from infrared detectors, and the natural motion of the foliage from motion detectors. This was to be dangerous and bloody.
When Saphothere motioned for Tack to now head off separately, he did so. It was only seconds later that the firing started.
 
‘WHAT IS YOUR NAME?'
Thote's voice was calm, soothing.
‘Polly.'
‘It is good to meet you, Polly.'
Polly felt herself getting lulled.
Don't go all slushy for the first dick you've encountered in a hundred million years, Polly. You can bet your arse he's not just your tour guide.
Nandru's words were iced water in her face and reminded her that always, in her past, whenever someone was being nice to her they wanted a piece of her.
‘If you're here to help me, then start by telling me what the hell is happening to me,' she suggested succinctly.
The man flinched visibly and got a distant look on his face. After a moment he smiled again and held out his hand to her.
‘Come with me to my camp and I'll try to explain.'
Polly took his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. She noticed how his gaze kept straying to the arm on which the scale clung, concealed by her sleeve. Pushing for some clearer reaction she could read, she released his hand, pulled up her sleeve, and held out her forearm before him.
‘Do you know what this thing is?'
‘It is a tor: an organic time machine that is dragging you back to the beginning of time—to the Nodus. You are one of Cowl's samples.'
Instead of asking the questions that clamoured for attention after such a statement, Polly said one thing only, ‘I don't want to go.'
The man nodded and slowly began to walk away from her. She could feel a tension in him; that he was holding something back. She had much practice in reading men's body language. She followed him across the rockscape to a campsite, where supplies were neatly stacked and a pot bubbled on a compact stove. Thote gestured to a blanket spread on the ground and Polly sat down, while he squatted by the bubbling pot and stirred it.
‘You are stretched out like elastic from your own time. There is admittedly
a small risk in removing the tor; it is a living parasite and made to cling to and draw its host back in time until removed and read by its maker, Cowl. I too can remove it, though, and once it is removed you will immediately fall back to your own time. I take it you want to return there?'
Now that sounds a little too easy to me. Watch out for this fucker.
‘When I left my own time someone was busy trying to kill me.'
But no, she had dragged the killer along with her … and what did that mean? Would he still be there on her return? Would he have never left? Thote looked at her as if reading her mind.

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