Neal Asher - Cowl

‘When we have rebuilt you, you will be more sufficient to your task.’

The disembodied words meant the same in every one of the many different languages now available to him, for Pedagogue was speaking to him in every language that he now knew. He thought of Heliothane weapons, realized he knew how to strip and rebuild a multi-purpose carbine, and how to program molecular catalysers. And these were just the tip of the berg of knowledge expanding in his mind.

‘I have questions…’

‘And I have answers,’ Pedagogue told him flatly.

Tack reached out, touched the screen, actually felt its warmth. ‘Cowl must overcome the temporal inertia of four billion years to succeed.’ He tilted his head. ‘I see, one billion.’ Now he knew the Nodus Cowl had travelled a few centuries behind was situated just before the Precambrian explosion—when complex life really began to take hold. ‘That inertia—to overcome it Cowl must do something… cataclysmic. And even if he succeeds he’ll just push himself and his new history down to the bottom of the probability slope.’

‘Cataclysmic… Nodus. What maintains the relative position of the alternates on the slope? Why does father killing confine you in the new time-line you have created by that act, down the probability slope, rather than make that line the main one?’

‘Cause and effect. The paradox shoves you down the slope.’

‘Correct. But that paradox can only come into being because you are contradicting what came before. You are acting counter to temporal momentum. Before the Nodus there is virtually zero momentum and therefore zero to contradict.’

Tack saw it then. He conceived the image of time as a sheet tossed over a table, against the surface of which already rested a long rod, the uppermost point on the sheet, where it was lifted along the length of the rod, being the main line. The rod was also tilted up from the edge of the table, so that the slope of sheet, down from it on either side, grew longer the further in from the edge of the table you went. The edge of the table was the Nodus itself, and the rod protruding from the edge was held in a hand that could, given sufficient pressure, swing the rod, thus altering the position of the high point in the sheet and the slopes on either side. That hand belonged to Cowl. Tack swallowed dryly, seeing that he had no choice but to believe what he was being told: if someone’s hand is hovering over the detonator switch of an atomic bomb, you do not hesitate to shoot them should you have the opportunity; you do not ask what their intentions are.

‘There’s more I need to know.’

‘Yes…’

In his mind he now sensed a wave of information, poised just at the edge of perception and ready to break over him. Before him the triangular screens turned black for a second, then came back on to show an entirely different display. He stepped forward, for a moment was submerged in viscous fluid again, and briefly glimpsed his raised arm, skin growing back across it like white slime, the material of his tor grown to the size of his palm. Pain was a brief suffusion, then he was standing on a walkway beside the glass of an aquarium wall behind which something shifted. A nightmare turned towards him.

Well, look at the pretty horses now.

From the start the place had seemed idyllic: warm balmy sunshine, wild plums scattered below the trees fringing the forest—fed upon by small lemurs who maybe preferred the slightly decayed fruit for its intoxicant effect—amid lush green grass scattered with giant daisies and enough dry wood with which to make a fire for the coming night. But before she had a chance to set about gathering some, a herd of miniature horses galloped into view—scattering the lemurs in panic. Polly knelt in the shadow of a tree to eat the plums she had collected while she watched the cute creatures’ antics. Then it had appeared, and now she crouched behind the same tree, the taser in her left hand and the automatic in her right.

You’re way back now. Bastards like that died out about forty million years back.

The monster hurtled in on the pastoral scene with a scream like a klaxon. Swinging and clashing its parrot beak, it eviscerated one of the little horses, then took the head off another, and stamped its talon down on a third, while the rest of the herd fled. It began eating the pinioned animal, tearing it in half and tilting back its head to gobble down the quivering hindquarters. In moments it finished the first horse, then it strode across to another, pecking up a decollated head on the way. Before feasting on its third victim, it paused and shat out a spray of white excrement.

I think it’s getting full now.

So it appeared, for the monstrous bird, after eating the head and forelegs of the third horse, was pecking at the rest in what now seemed a desultory manner. After a moment it gave up completely, scraped at the ground like a chicken, before letting out that klaxon squawk again and moving away.

And that was only a small one.

Polly was aghast, for the horrible creature had stood higher than herself and its killer beak was the size of a bucket.

It’s called Gastornis, Nandru explained.

Seeing the bird was now some hundred metres away, Polly began to move out from under cover.

Wouldn’t it be better to stay in the trees?

Ignoring this advice, she glanced all around to make sure there were no other unpleasant surprises in the offing, then ran over to where the bird had been feeding.

Are you insane?

Stooping, Polly grabbed a bloody chunk of the last little horse and ran for cover again.

‘Waste not want not, as my mother always used to say,’ she sang, running still deeper into the forest.

Later, with her stomach full of roast horse, she gazed out from her camp and noticed how her fire’s glow reflected on eyes out there. After throwing a bone out towards them, she could hear things squabbling in the darkness over it. But at least they sounded small.

The nightmare bore the shape of a man, but a tall, long-limbed man in whom the ranginess of the Heliothane had been taken to its extreme. It had no face—its head was a slightly beaked, utterly featureless ovoid, of the same shiny beetle-black appearance as the majority of its naked body. However, as if this was not strange enough, the black carapace revealed a network of hyaline veins and ribs, so that, when the light caught the network, it looked as if something horribly skeletal stood there.

‘A woman used a semi-AI prognostic program to predict the future development of human DNA, and on the basis of that started recombination experiments on her children. In her terms, her first experiment was a failure, though the offspring survived. Cowl was not a failure, so there is much speculation as to what those terms of hers were.’

Tack flinched as Cowl started to walk towards him, but the dark being was then frozen mid-stride as Pedagogue continued lecturing.

‘We don’t know what external pressures were input, because DNA has no purpose in itself other than its own survival and procreation, so intelligence or physical strength are only increased should they have a direct bearing on that. Should the survival of human DNA entail you needing to lose your big brains and filter food out of the soil, you would all become worms. It can only be supposed that her program posited a future where the highest levels of intelligence, ruthlessness, speed and strength were required. Cowl killed his own mother while in her womb, thereafter escaping by internal caesarean much like a chick escaping from the egg with its beak spur.’

‘But he became one of the Heliothane,’ Tack stated. The information was now just there, in his mind. He saw how Cowl’s survival had initially depended on the Heliothane, how he had deliberately become a very valuable member of that society. It was not so difficult—ruthlessness and intelligence being much admired. The misjudgment had killed many. One of them a top scientist called Astolere—Saphothere’s sister.