Neal Asher - Cowl

‘That finished it. It’s dropping back down the slope,’ said Palleque. ‘It can’t sustain this level of loss at the moment.’

‘How long before it hits us again?’ Goron asked.

‘Twenty minutes is the most we have,’ Palleque replied.

Goron stepped away from his controls and limped over to join Saphothere and Tack.

‘Engineer,’ said Saphothere, with a brief nod.

‘Can you manage a short-range shift?’ Goron asked abruptly.

‘I can,’ replied Saphothere, looking even more tired.

‘Then get him out of here.’ Goron pointed at Tack, then turned and headed to his controls.

Tack glanced at Saphothere, who with a second nod indicated the elevator shaft. There would be no time to rest here—it was time to go.

The breath of the allosaur hot in her face, Polly knew that not to act would be to die. Thumbing its charge wheel all the way over, Polly fired her taser straight at the dinosaur’s nose.

With a snarling roar the creature jerked backwards, losing its footing and collapsing on its hindquarters. It shook its head vigorously, sneezing and snorting, then swivelled round, throwing up a shower of pebbles with its tail as it accelerated away. The higher cliff on the further edge of the beach it only just cleared, sprawling on its chin as its hind feet scrabbled at the edge. Then it was off into the forest, still bellowing.

You are one lucky fuck.

Polly wondered at Nandru’s definition of luck. She had survived, that was all. Slumping with her back against the rock, she waited until she felt her shaking legs could bear her, then stood up and walked back towards the stream. She was desperately tired, but dared not sleep, so concentrated on the possibilities the container had raised. After washing it out, she inspected it closely, but found nothing that revealed its origin to her.

‘Perhaps there are other time travellers?’ she suggested.

That would now seem the most likely answer.

‘Then I must find them.’

Nice idea, but how would you go about that?

Still, the item had given her renewed hope that she might somehow escape from this insane journey. She looked around. Perhaps if she searched this whole area carefully, she’d come across some other indications of human presence. Just then a roar from the jungle discouraged that plan.

Can you shift again yet?

‘Yes, I think I so,’ she replied. With shaking hands she filled the handy container to its brim with water from the stream.

As she concentrated on the shift, Polly saw the strange structure growing around her once more, and the world sliding away. Jungle turned grey and black and she was weightless in a cage of glass bones over that midnight sea.

Engineer Goron:

The project is vast: to tap energies directly from the sun and use those energies to bore a hole back through time so that every age will become accessible, using a drill bit that will be a large fortified structure. And Maxell has agreed because this is the only way we will ever get to Cowl, or to those Umbrathane who escaped along with the preterhuman. Trying to establish bases piecemeal just does not work, as the torbeast hits them before they can be adequately defended. The only true way to establish any downtime base is to travel inside it as it moves back, as if in some vast armoured car. We will, in time, locate the preterhuman and make him pay for the dead of Callisto, but still I cannot help but feel that such a grand design is demeaned by pursuing such comparatively petty ends—so am I then guilty of hubris? We transferred our wars and exterminations from the surface of the Earth, and continued them in the solar system; how hateful it is that now we even carry them back through time as well. But, though I bemoan this, I will still go armed into that valley. Damnation! Am I a sentimental fool in that I just want to witness dinosaurs?

‘It’s gone,’ said Silleck.

Returning to his control pillar, Goron could feel the sweat sticking his shirt to his back, and in some deeper part of himself noted that he was trembling.

Have you really fucked up, Cowl—have you underestimated us?

It seemed unlikely that Cowl would make any mistakes and that a kill could be made now, but Goron had to try, for that possibility and for Vetross.

‘Is there enough energy available for short-jumping inside Sauros?’

Palleque glanced round. ‘Vetross?’

‘If we can,’ Goron replied. ‘But there’s an opportunity here that cannot be missed… so we have to try.’ He turned to Silleck and awaited her reply.

‘We’ll have capacitance up to a high enough level for someone to short-jump within ten minutes, just so long as that someone is not you. You were too close and the risk is too great of a short-circuit paradox getting out of control.’

Goron gazed at Palleque, who winced as if in pain and turned back to his consoles.

‘Who’ve we got available? What travellers?’ the Engineer asked generally.

‘Traveller Aron is rested, and here, and possesses the same facility as Saphothere for this sort of thing,’ said Palleque, his back still turned.

‘Send him to the location and meanwhile patch this through to his palm computer,’ the Engineer ordered, now calling up the recording he had been readying and watching it play out in one of the vorpal spheres. He saw an image of himself standing at one of the viewing windows, with Vetross at his shoulder, as behind them the incursion developed—a nacreous pillar splitting the air. Out of this pillar, like some demon sliding into the world, stepped Cowl—and Goron watched Vetross die. The recording now tracked Goron’s escape—then Cowl stepping away through a second incursion. The same recording repeated, and he watched Vetross die again and again.

‘Are you getting this, Aron?’ he asked.

‘Getting it,’ the voice of the Traveller confirmed. ‘How long will I have?’

‘Silleck?’ Goron asked.

‘The potential energy levels available to Cowl are huge, but what he will do with them we don’t know. I estimate Aron will have a minute at most.’

‘ Impressive preparations, but it is all a matter of potential energy. ’

Cowl’s words, but what did the being mean by them? Cowl must have known what Goron would try.

‘What weapons do you have, Aron?’

‘A launcher—the missile containing a displacement generator set for the Earth’s core. I’ll hit the incursion as he appears and with luck fry the fucker.’

‘Are you at the D-generator for yourself now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then be ready. Silleck will send you back the moment we have the capacity.’

Long minutes dragged by. Goron felt the sweat drying on his back and his wounded leg was now beginning to ache. He glanced down at the blood he had tracked across the floor. If they now succeeded, Sauros would be tipped some way down the slope, and all in the city would possess memories of two sets of events. But Vetross would be alive. He knew that if the blood disappeared it would mean a short-circuit paradox had developed, and the resulting cascade would drag them irretrievably down the slope. He was thoroughly aware of the dangers.

‘I’m sending him now,’ Silleck said at last.

The scene replayed, interfaced with the now. In the shimmer of displacement, Traveller Aron appeared to one side of Goron and Vetross. But something was wrong, as his appearance elicited no reaction from the other two. Aron raised his launcher to his shoulder, and it spat a missile towards Cowl as the being stepped from the incursion. The missile struck the edge of Aron’s still-operating displacement field, flinging out a spherical boundary. Aron lowered his launcher and faded—displaced back to his point of departure. The scene had been changed not at all: Cowl killed Vetross and pursued Goron, then was gone.