Neal Asher - Cowl

The glassy cage surrounding him was uneven in its formation, and in the dark interspace it reminded Silleck of some vastly expanded translucent plankton travelling above a shifting, but dead, sea bottom. The man was braced inside it and though he could not possibly understand what he was doing, she could see that he was willing himself back into the real before his tor took him to the limit of suffocation. And it worked. Turning the sensor slowly back into phase with the real world, Silleck followed him out of that dark realm, between a brightly starlit sky and a sea turned silver by moonlight.

Silleck observed his panic, but his mantisal did not fade away and drop him into the moonlit sea—tors possessed enough of their own mind or instinct to try and keep their hosts alive during the bulk of the journey. Instead it slid sideways to where dense forest formed another sea, then drifted down to an apparently rocky shoreline. Then finally the cage began to fade as it approached the ground. The Neanderthal braced himself for a bone-jarring impact on rocky ground, but instead hit pliant mud and bounced, as the glass-like structure faded and passed through him into the ground. He rolled and came up onto his knees, pulling a bone club from his hide clothing, then he stood and looked around. When no danger was immediately apparent, he scuttled to a sandy space between edifices of the dried mud, curled himself up in the most protected niche he could find and was still. Silleck tracked ahead.

The sun had begun to peak around one of the monoliths of mud, and was warming the Neanderthal’s feet before he awoke, which he did as if someone had touched him with a hot iron. He stood and headed towards the forest. Twenty feet from the trees, he hesitated—perhaps having already had some nasty experiences in other forests. Silleck noted the colourful fan-shaped leaves of the trees and realized they must be early ginkgos. Expanding her vision, she saw that the man had arrived on an island and was lucky in that, for there seemed to be no big reptiliomorphs in evidence. Not that such a primitive needed a great deal of luck. Observing the stains on the club he held, Silleck surmised he would be more able to survive the trials of these past times than many others. Though, of course, like the girl he would be unlikely to survive all the way. Cowl wasn’t interested in his samples surviving.

Other stations similar to their own hung geostationary above the planet like barrage balloons, while white ceramic ships moved in constant transit between them and the installation built on the dark side of Mercury. That installation resembled a metallic mosaic imprinted on black, though occasionally blotted out under the shadows of passing storms, which in turn were lit up as if by interior flashbulbs, as those storms discharged their electric power.

‘So the sum purpose of the beast’s attack was for Cowl to ride in on its energy front just to get to you?’ Maxell asked.

‘So it would seem. Cowl knows from previous experience that he cannot break our defences in one all-out attack. That he managed a limited penetration at all is due to the fact that he had been provided with our defence frequency at that time. And he has yet to learn that our defences are not always so well maintained.’

‘Risky—allowing such an attack,’ said Maxell.

‘For veracity,’ said Goron. ‘A gambit to give him the confidence to commit when he hears the greater lie.’

Maxell nodded and was silent for a moment before saying, ‘I’m sorry about Vetross.’

‘She knew the risks.’

Again a longer silence, Maxell changed the subject. ‘The storm cycle will be impossible to maintain once the “greater lie” achieves its purpose.’ She was gazing at the main screen. ‘We’ll lose most of this, which means a refugee population of twenty million to transship back to Earth Station.’

‘If all goes well,’ Goron replied, as he casually manipulated the image on a screen before him. This showed a transparent computer diagram of the sun tap, with the locations of thousands of points within it.

‘Timing is everything,’ said Maxell.

‘Now there’s a statement that can never be contested.’

‘It will work?’ she asked him.

‘The sun tap was not designed for this. The excess of redundancy was built in, and many of the autorepair systems operate faster than anything less than catastrophic failure. But, yes, it will work—the displacement generators will do what is required of them. That, however, is not why you asked me here.’

Maxell did not look round. She continued, ‘And Mars?’

‘You know the new mirrors will work better than the old and that now we do not need the energy to create an environment but only to maintain it. Our loss will be great but sustainable. When are you going to get to the point?’

Maxell turned towards him. ‘Only a select few of you on Sauros know what is going to happen. How do they feel about this? And, most importantly, how do you feel?’

‘Three hundred years and you’re asking me how I feel?’

‘I am.’

Goron stood up from his console and walked over to stand beside her, his hands clasped behind his back as he gazed out at the view. ‘We few who know, know the consequences of our actions: the ending of the greatest threat the human race has ever encountered, and as a result the survival of the Heliothane Dominion. Those who will die… I mourn them already, as I mourn Vetross, but their sacrifice is unfortunately necessary. Veracity permits it to be no other way.’

‘But the Dominion’s survival may not be something you’ll see. You know that, without an adjacent interspace source of energy, mantisals cannot jump accurately. We’ll have perhaps two hundred years of concurrent time. I’ve calculated the chances of us getting a mantisal to you—one mantisal, not the hundreds that may be needed.’

‘As have I, and it’s roughly one in a hundred thousand. And that’s discounting our slide down the slope.’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ll do well enough.’ Goron shrugged. ‘And there’s always the chance Saphothere could bring us tors, if he survives making his kill.’

‘There is also a chance that the technology will become available…’

‘I know. But I know too that every day we exist after the event, and every day Saphothere does not come, will push us further down the probability slope. And things will change here. We’ll be praised as dead heroes and quickly forgotten.’

‘I’ll not forget.’

Goron turned to her. ‘So really all this was about was saying goodbye?’

‘Yes, that’s all.’

‘Then goodbye, Maxell.’

Traveller Thote:

It was a close-run thing with the Roman. Keeping him on life support, we nearly managed to remove his tor and interface it with a mantisal. I subsequently see that it is just a question of using a quantity of the old bearer’s genetic material as a buffer, plus some method of fooling the tor’s propensity for pattern recognition. However, it seems I am not going to get a chance to try out my theory as Maxell has cancelled all energy allocations for this kind of work, and it seems Goron’s project now has prime status. I am now to return to other duties subordinate to the Engineer. I do not mind, for we must choose the best option we can find… to kill our enemies.

Endless seashores. It appeared that the vambrace was intent on bringing him back into the world in the same sort of location each time. The gods were casting him into places to fight battles he did not understand at their whim. He just kept himself honed and focused on survival. He hated his gods.

The jungle was a dense wall of green, spilling into mangroves to the Roman’s left as he faced seaward on the strip of sand on which he had been deposited. To his right weird trees, and other strange plants he could not identify, halted their march towards the sea at the beginning of a rocky promontory. Resting his hand on the pommel of his sheathed gladius, he headed towards that, assuming that wherever rocks were bathed by the sea there would be shellfish, which had served him well enough thus far. As he walked he suddenly felt ebullient, light-headed. The air here had a strange clarity and was as intoxicating as wine.