Neal Asher - Cowl

‘That still bothering you?’ Saphothere asked.

The big man touched the gnarl of scar tissue starting at his throat and running up under his chin.

‘It bothers me,’ Coptic agreed.

The brightly coloured acanthostega, a small amphibian that had been feeding voraciously on the the bony-headed fish of the swamp, fled as fast as it could through mud and decaying tangles of vegetation, and into the nearby forest. The looming cliff, rising over all, cast a shadow into the amphibian’s small domain, and in its simple brain it sensed the danger of its extinction. Behind it, the swamp was boiling, and tonnes of reed mat were being sucked up as if by some vast combine harvester, fast disappearing into red slits that were giant maws. Then the same monstrous cliff reached the edge of the trees, and something began wrenching the forest giants from the ground, juggling them up into the air, where they, like the reed mat, were chomped down. Wriggling up the ramp of a decaying log, the acanthostega ignored swarming termites, disturbed from their abode by the shaking of the ground—creatures which otherwise would have made it a tasty meal. At the summit of the log, with only a headlong drop ahead of it, it froze, instinct promulgating this reaction now flight was no longer an option.

As the cliff advanced, things began pushing through the undergrowth all around. Not far from the amphibian, slimy lungfish were hauled from their shallow pool by snakelike extrusions of the same cliff—only these snakes were without eyes, possessing only mouths that were vertical slits lined with incurving teeth. One such snake was squirming along the forest floor towards the small amphibian, and in response, the acanthostega arched its back, more prominently to display its bright poisonous coloration. The slit mouth rose above it and opened, then abruptly snapped shut. Then the snake things withdrew from the forest and the devastation immediately ceased. The earth still shaking, the cliff began to withdraw. Now the amphibian, sensing that the danger had passed, moved downwards along the log and began lunching on the termites.

Eventually the acanthostega returned to its little swamp but there found only a muddy cavity. Its vision was not sufficient to see the utterly denuded landscape beyond, and its mind was not sufficiently sophisticated to comprehend such concepts as ‘luck’. It could not comprehend what vast beast had come to feed in its world, or how that feeding must necessarily be limited. That the beast had to cease before being forced back down an incomprehensible slope as a result of its destruction of this history.

‘I’m not so sure I’m glad to see you well.’

That came from Polly, the girl he had tried to add to his list of victims millions of years in the future. So she had not been a hallucination earlier and he was glad she was alive. Though all those others before her were most definitely dead. He had killed them. Made mute by what he was suddenly feeling, he moved on past her to one of the arched windows and gazed out into darkness, trying to blink the strange after-images there from his eyes. In a moment he realized these were no after-images; he really was seeing shimmering hints of nightmarish shapes, as of open mouths and snakelike bodies, beyond the rain-beaded window.

‘What is that out there?’ he eventually asked, his voice dead.

‘Something you caused.’

Tack surveyed the occupants of this strange room. That familiar voice had not come from the Roman soldier, the Chinese man, or the boy, for they were all over on the other side of him — the first two working on something inside the back of the boy’s head. Tack tried to take sights like that in his stride: the boy with the back of his head open like a hatch, and two men who should have no conception of such work, probing inside with various finely polished tools, discussing in low voices what they were doing. Perhaps the boy was an android or something. Nor did the voice issue from the Neanderthal, who was sitting carving circuit patterns into a club fashioned from the rib of a large animal. Tack’s attention then strayed to the wasp robot squatting beside the sofa Polly occupied.

The robot spoke again, ‘It is the incursion overspill from the torbeast—that always happens when Cowl summons it up from the bottom of the slope and establishes a communication link, but not normally intruding to this extent. Perhaps, Mr U-gov facilitator, you can explain exactly what fuck-up you have caused.’

Polly, sitting with arms crossed, flicked her gaze to Wasp, then brought it back to Tack. ‘You have to understand that Nandru may be even less glad to see you than I am.’

Tack stared at the robot, then looked at Polly, who pointed to the Muse 184 at her throat.

‘Nandru?’ he said, even more confused.

Polly just stared at him silently, a hint of a smile twisting her mouth.

‘The dead soldier uploaded to the device Polly wears—and which now speaks to you through Wasp,’ explained Aconite as she entered the room. ‘But however he speaks, his questions are still pertinent.’

Tack was not even sure he cared, for moment by moment he could still feel elements of his mind knitting together. All those missions for U-gov, all that facilitation … even the Heliothane reprogramming had not brought him to this level of consciousness.

‘So what have you caused here? Why is my brother reacting in this way?’ Aconite asked.

Tack swallowed dryly and tried to shove his mangled history away from himself. He considered not telling Aconite anything, but decided he did not owe his silence to those who had sent him to this time. No matter how he felt about Saphothere, the traveller had sent Tack on a suicide mission. Tack managed to admit, ‘Inside my mind… Cowl found a way to attack Sauros.’

‘Sauros?’ Aconite asked mildly, unsurprised.

Tack concentrated on the now, and found that by doing so he could control the horror growing between his ears. While the other three in the small group moved over, Tack told of Goron’s project, of the city and the wormhole, how it fed energy for accurate mantisal jumping, and how the Heliothane were pushing backwards in time finally to get to Cowl. He then repeated, verbatim, those particular segments of conversation that had been of such interest to Cowl, and had now caused this reaction. He did not tell them what Thote had said, however, or of his own thoughts about distance weapons and sacrificial goats. That was for himself.

After a long silence, Aconite said, ‘This Sauros is what you saw, Polly.’ She turned back to Tack. ‘I somehow doubt that either Goron or Saphothere would be so negligent, but it appears to me that this Palleque might not have been entirely in their employ.’ She looked thoughtful and bowed her head, supporting her chin on her heavier hand. Musingly she continued, ‘I can think of only two possibilities: if the information Cowl extracted from you is true, then Sauros will become vulnerable when it shifts, and the torbeast my brother is now summoning will kill everyone in it. Thereafter, it being impossible to shut down the wormhole without catastrophe, the beast will then push through to New London and to the Heliothane Dominion.’

‘They’ll be able to deal with it there, won’t they?’ asked Polly.

‘That I very much doubt,’ said Aconite. ‘It will kill billions and destroy New London, thus causing that catastrophic shutdown. Most likely resulting vacuum will then kill it, but it is tough and, should it survive to somehow reach Earth or the solar colonies, billions more will die.’

‘Option one don’t sound so good,’ said Nandru. ‘You got anything better?’