Cowl (7 page)

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Authors: Neal Asher

BOOK: Cowl
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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.
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 …
 
T
HE 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 fatigue 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.'
How very interesting
, thought Tack, knowing that to voice such a thought would probably result in him getting a beating. He looked around and instantly realized that he was in no place that he knew, for in his lifetime he had never seen a landscape completely untouched by the works of man. Perhaps there had been such places in those portions of the Antarctic still not inhabited in his own era, but someone like himself did not get to travel there—his business usually involving very close contact with other human life, however briefly, not the shunning of it.
Traveller paused for a second to kick at a pile of dung before moving on. ‘Mammoth, probably. I brought us down in an interglacial period, so they've moved up while the ice sheet retreated. Some big animals around in this time—we definitely don't want to run into any of the predators.'
Tack noted the massive footprints in the snow, and suddenly it felt as if a huge emotional backlog had caught up with him. That the girl had dragged him back in time he had figured with stolid logic—which was understandable since U-gov programmed its killers for dispassion. Now he experienced a surge of emotion that flipped his stomach over and made the world grow vast around him.
Mammoth
, he remembered from his early schooling.
Smilodons
… As they walked, he turned away from Traveller to scrub tears from his eyes. Then, his voice catching, he brought the subject back to their immediate circumstances, ‘Is that mantisal thing alive?'
Without looking round, Traveller said, ‘It is alive in the only way that matters.'
‘I don't understand …'
‘Vorpal energy,' Traveller stated succinctly and by the man's mien Tack knew that to push him further might result in renewed violence.
More advanced, maybe, but certainly more bad tempered
, thought Tack. However, when Traveller now glanced round, his expression changed utterly. Tack registered frowning surprise in the man's face, then a hint of amusement. Traveller explained further, ‘Only life can travel in time and time travel is only possible in the time life exists. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Reality is patterned in circles, spheres, convolute and twisting dimensions. It is not required to be amenable to your logic. The linear mind finds this difficult to grasp.'

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