Neal Asher - Cowl

‘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 antiaircraft 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.