Cowl

by Neal Asher

  Already the island town was filling up with foot traffic and those zero-carbon hydrocars allowed within the town limits. After her second cup of coffee and second cigarette, Polly decided it was time to go to work. She quickly left Granny’s and walked up the High Street with her hips swaying. Within a few minutes she had taken up her usual position outside the Reformed Church of Hubbard. There she stood with her hand on her hip and smoked yet another cigarette. She had been told that no one smoked a cigarette quite so provocatively as she did. Her first customer approached her ten minutes later.

  ‘I need a blow job real bad,’ he said. Polly recognized him from the week before. By his businesswear, he was an executive of TCC, and carried on a shoulder strap a laptop disguised as an old book.

  ‘Fifty,’ said Polly, upping her price by ten euros.

  ‘OK.’

  Polly led the way round the back of the church. As she went she sprayed spermicide in her mouth and left her hip bag open so she could grab the taser at any moment. The alley behind the church was scented by the blossoms of a jasmine sprouting wild up one synthewood wall. On the cobbles were used H-patches, the slimy remnants of degrading condoms, gum wrappers and a smashed VR helmet. Polly noted a splash of blood on the walls and on the leaves of the nearby vine before turning to her customer and taking a condom from her bag. He was already undoing his trousers. She knelt down in front of him, grateful for the padding in her knee boots. It didn’t take long, and after she’d cast the condom in a corner to degrade with the rest of them, he transferred the money straight across to her card.

  ‘See you next week?’ he asked, eyeing her almost possessively. She remained wary and noncommittal, and deliberately sprayed spermicide in her mouth while he was watching to bring home to him the basis of their relationship. She’d had hassle before with a guy who got too hooked into her and started causing problems. When he was on his way, she took up her station again. By midday she’d made seven hundred euros. Not bad, even though the last hundred had left her walking somewhat gingerly. She reminded herself not to forget her gel next time. And as she walked away she promised herself to give this all up before she turned sixteen. That still gave her six months’ leeway.

  WITH CUSTOMARY EAGERNESS POLLY headed back to her flat. She’d made good money this morning and turned half of it into DPs, an eighth of Moroccan, ten fifty-gram packs of rolling tobacco plus papers—her local smuggler had been out of packet cigarettes—and a litre of Metaxa. Niggling at her conscience was the thought that she should have put some of the money aside for the rent and taxes, but she’d worked hard providing for the pleasure of others and now it was time to provide for herself.

  Online tactical. Tech-com unavailable. Instruct?

  Polly whirled round from the door, groping in her hip bag for her taser, but there was no one standing behind her. She surveyed the street, her attention finally coming to rest on the customers sitting at the tables outside the bar across the road. A few men were looking at her, but that was nothing unusual: dressed as she was, there were few men who wouldn’t give her the eye. No one over there was laughing, so it likely wasn’t some joker there with a directional speaker. It also seemed unlikely that she’d been targeted by advertising com. Turning back to the door she used her keycard, and was quickly inside.

  Going mute until further instructions.

  ‘Fuck! Who is that?’

  There was now no one anywhere in direct line—no one to point a directional speaker at her. That meant there had to be a phone hidden nearby.

  Muse 184, came the toneless reply.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Polly asked, but something was nibbling at her memory. Hadn’t Nandru mentioned the word ‘Muse’? She tried to recall the conversation, but found there were blank and hazy spots, as there always seemed to be nowadays. Suddenly she remembered the gun he had carried: state-of-the-art hardware like in the interactives. And what were those other things they called ‘Little Buddies’? She touched the metal at the base of her throat. Shit, what the hell had he given her?

  ‘Who is that speaking to me?’ she asked.

  Muse 184, came the reply again.

  ‘What the fuck are you?’

  Adaptech AI Muse 184 tactical and reference system. Interdiction enabled. Note: tech-com is unavailable and should be reported to com central. Instruct?

  ‘Shut up!’

  Going mute until further instructions.

  Polly ran up the stairs to her flat, fumbling her card to get her through the door. As she dropped her shopping on the sofa and sat down beside it, she was shaking. After a moment she took out a foil-wrapped block of resin, opened a pack of tobacco, and began making a joint—the familiar action calmed her shaking more than the smoke she eventually took in. She tried hard to think straight. According to Marjae, Nandru had been hinting about an important job he’d got in Task Force, so he must have been into something a bit more serious than smearing a few Binpots. But it didn’t make sense. Why had he come here, to her, and fixed on her this … thing? Suddenly she had an idea.

  ‘Muse, er, I want to … take you off me,’ she said.

  Awaiting detach code.

  That was no good then. ‘Go mute,’ she said.

  Going mute until further instructions.

  Shaking her head, Polly stood and walked over to the the kitchen area, found a glass, then back at the sofa filled it to the brim with Metaxa. After draining half of that she began to think about the patches tucked into the secret compartment at the back of her hip bag. On another level she knew that none of this constant intake was helping her to think about her problem—she was just abandoning thought altogether.

  Polly, time to rock and roll.

  ‘I thought I told you to go mute,’ she said with irritation. Then she realized what she had just heard. ‘Nandru?’

  Yeah, your ever loving. You didn’t think I teched you up with forty grand of hardware just so’s you could look pretty? This is utterly untraceable.com. Anything else and they’d have zeroed me in seconds.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Nandru?’

  Within the next hour some serious scumbags are going to be paying you a visit. You see, your Muse was mine and it’s bugged, and thinking they’re tracing me they’ll find you. Shame I can’t do that myself with the monster, but at least I’ll be wiping up some shit.

  ‘You’ve done this because of Marjae,’ said Polly. She then downed the last of her brandy, shoved the cigarette makings into her hip bag and headed for the door—if someone nasty was going to find her she’d rather be out in the open and visible to lots of witnesses.

  You’re wrong there, my little slot machine. You’re my mouthpiece and my goat. When they find you, they’ll ask you where I am and where I stashed the fucking scale they want so badly. You’ll tell them the truth and lead them to our place, and through you I’ll talk to them.

  He was talking crazy again? Scale? She was halfway down the stairs before she asked, ‘And when you’ve given them what they want, what happens to me?’

  Don’t worry, you’ll live if you do just exactly what I tell you. Also, you don’t really have much choice in the matter: you cannot remove Muse, so they will find you. And if you don’t follow instructions, they’ll take you away and peel your skull until there’s nothing left.

  Outside in the blazing afternoon of the street Polly shaded her eyes and, once a gap appeared in the stream of hydrocars, headed across the road to the bar. The place had a reputation for being a bit retro, hence the sinister look of many of the alfresco patrons in their mirror shades and wrap-arounds. Finding a plastic chair that had been tucked under one of the outside tables, and so was not scalding to sit on, she took up a position with her back near the plate-glass window, where others gave her some cover and from where she had a view of the street. As soon as she sat down the table surface displayed a turning array of beer bottles and spirits. She tapped a bottle of Stella passing under her hand, then hit the edge of the display to turn it o
ff. The table’s appearance returned to its customary granite finish.

  The waitress who came out with her beer eyed her dubiously. ‘You know we don’t allow …’ began the girl, embarrassed.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Polly, dropping a five euro on her tray. ‘I’m only here for the beer.’

  The first swallow was rapture in that dusty heat. The breeze that suddenly began blowing was really nice as well. Polly tilted her head back to enjoy it and only then heard the low thrumming that accompanied it.

  ‘Willya lookit that!’ exclaimed the man at the table next to hers—the man who had been conspicuously not ogling her, since he was sitting opposite his wife or partner. A shadow drew across them and Polly opened her eyes to observe one of the new Ford Macrojets sliding across the sky above, its four turbines uncannily like eyes staring down into the street. The vehicle hovered for a while, then shot away to spiral down to the infrequently used connection platform up the hill and just off the High Street. It was predicted that in another ten years most traffic would have taken to the sky. This did not concern Polly as she had never accumulated enough money to afford even an electric scooter.

  ‘There it is again!’ said the man ten minutes later. ‘Just like Bluebird.’

  Polly didn’t know what that meant but, as she observed the huge vehicle turning down from the High Street, even she was impressed. Such transport spoke of wealth she was sure she herself would never own. When it drew up in front of the bar, her instinct was to try and get herself into the car and hopefully get some taste of the riches it represented. But when she saw the four men who climbed out of it, she just wanted to run.

  They were U-gov meat. Just like Nandru had said: they were straight out of the Agency in Brussels. They wore their grey suits and blue EU ties like a uniform, and what need had they of mirror shades when their eyes were mirrored? One of them, a blond-haired Adonis with an utterly blank expression, looked at the device in his hand, held it up for a moment, then abruptly pocketed it and walked over to Polly’s table. But for hair colour, the one who followed him was in appearance indistinguishable, as were the two standing by the car. Illegal net-sheets had men like this down as the product of some strange eugenics project involving cloning and augmentation. Of course all the official news organizations decried that as hysterical rubbish, but then they had to if they wanted to stay in business.

  Already other drinkers in the bar were finding their reasons to be elsewhere. The couple at the next table gulped their drinks and quickly grabbed their shopping. The blond man sat down opposite Polly. He blinked the mirroring from his eyes to expose calm grey. With an almost apologetic smile he reached inside his jacket and removed a short, ugly, seeker gun. Pointing it at her he flipped up the frame sight and clicked a button on the side of the weapon, before putting it down on the table. Polly observed the flashing LED, and she had played in enough interactives to know the gun had acquired her.

  Interdiction online. Tech-com unavailable, Muse informed her, leaving her none the wiser.

  Ah, I see our friends have arrived, said Nandru.

  See? thought Polly.

  ‘Where did you get that Muse?’ said the heavy sitting opposite, at last.

  Polly glanced around. All the other outside tables were now unoccupied. The waitress stepped out, then quickly ducked back inside when she saw her new customers. There were still people inside the bar, standing well back from the window and observing the scene. No help there. The only possible rescue in a situation like this would be to have a few hundred thousand to slip to a eurocrat, and even then …

  ‘It was given to me by a Task Force soldier called Nandru Jurgens,’ she said.

  The man nodded slowly then said, ‘And you’re linked to him now, I take it?’

  Polly nodded.

  ‘Ask him how much,’ said the man.

  Polly tilted her head as she listened to what Nandru told her. Her mouth went dry and it took her a moment to get enough spit to repeat his message, ‘Fifty million wired direct to Usbank account PX two hundred and three, two hundred and seven, forty. He also wants to know your name.’

  The man now tilted his head for a moment, and Polly had no doubt that he was listening to voices inside it much like her own, for there was a small grey pill of an ear stud in his left lobe, and she doubted it was there for decoration.

  ‘My name is Tack,’ he said eventually. ‘He must understand that the transfer cannot be authorized until I have possession of the item.’

  ‘I’m to take you to it,’ said Polly.

  Tack showed no change of expression and Polly thought: I’m going to die.

  ‘I find that unlikely,’ said Tack. ‘What is to stop us taking the item once we have it in sight?’

  ‘He says you’ll see when you see.’

  Tack picked up his gun, rose, and gestured with it to the Macrojet. Polly tried to seem casual by finishing off her beer, but it was warm now and she had difficulty in swallowing. She stood up and moved ahead of the blond man towards the car. Climbing inside, she found herself trapped between walls of identical muscle. The one called Tack sat in the front passenger seat, while the driver wound up the turbines to a howl and took the car into the sky. Polly doubted the traffic police would be hitting on this vehicle. Questions of legality with people like these remained that: questions only.

  THE PROBE, CARLOON THOUGHT, resembled a barbed arrowhead he had once seen in a museum, but one from an immense arrow. Mounted on the launch platform that hung geostationary above equatorial Africa, it now stood separate from the gantries and maintenance pylons, supported only by the fuelling towers that were pumping in the deuterium oxide used in its initial fusion burn, and personnel were leaving the platform in stratocars and supply ships. Suited against vacuum, Carloon floated high above the platform on a line attached to a control tower on the first giant displacement ring. He wanted to see this as directly as possible and there was nothing more to do inside the tower now. The launch would either be successful or not. The ‘not’ case was the reason his personnel were leaving the platform. He looked up to where he could just see the second ring a thousand kilometres out from Earth.

  ‘If we could use time travel, we could get the probe back before it went,’ Maxell observed laconically over com.

  Carloon glanced across to the second figure floating a few metres away from him. That she had come to see this showed the importance of the project to the Heliothane Dominion.

  ‘But we can’t,’ was all he replied.

  ‘Explain to me the reason for that,’ Maxell instructed.

  Carloon sighed. He himself was only just beginning to understand the possibilities and limitations inherent in the new science. Phasing matter and matter displacement he did understand, but such things as temporal inertia, short-circuit paradoxes, and the vorpal energy generated by life, were a little beyond him. ‘As I understand it, time travel is easiest on Earth and becomes increasingly difficult the further you get from that centre of … vorpal generation. We can use it within a limited sphere, which encompasses most of the solar system surrounding Earth; beyond that the energy levels required climb exponentially.’

  ‘But you are using an offshoot of that technology here?’

  ‘Yes. We’re using spatial displacement to shift the probe back to its launch point as it accelerates on its antigravity engines, while feeding it the energy to accelerate—which we couldn’t do if it was heading out of the solar system. If we complete twenty successful displacements, the probe will be travelling at ninety-three per cent light speed when we finally let it go. We could have used temporal displacement between the rings as well, but that would only have reduced the mission time by less than one-hundredth, and would have used over four-fifths of the Earthgrid energy output.’

  ‘That mission time being?’

  Carloon repressed his irritation: Maxell knew all this. Rather than reply, he observed, ‘The probe is launching.’

  They both turned their attention to the geostati
onary platform, where the fuelling towers were rolling back under a haze of heavy-water vapour. Then the fug was lit by the bright burn of fusion engines igniting and the probe began to rise towards them on two spears of white flame. Behind it, on the platform, structures glowed and flared in the back-blast. This was a one-off launch. Carloon found his body tensing and his mouth going dry as the probe accelerated rapidly. In a minute it was close, then it passed through the displacement ring, travelling at five thousand kph, in eerie silence. He watched it rise high, accelerating for the next ring. When it was almost invisible, the fusion flames flicked out.

  After taking a drink from the pipe by his mouth, he said, ‘It now accelerates on AG only.’

  ‘How long until the first displacement?’ Maxell asked.

  ‘Minutes, but we won’t see much.’

  ‘And how long before it arrives at its destination?’

  ‘Sixteen years before it reaches Proxima Centauri. But before we get any results …’ Carloon shrugged.

  Minutes later the probe reached the second displacement ring a thousand kilometres out. Space distorted in that ring and the probe just disappeared. Instantaneously it reappeared inside the first ring and continued to accelerate—its AG motors working against the gravity of Earth. Again and again it ran that course, energy being fed into it by microwave transmitters in the displacement rings themselves, enough energy to power a solar civilization for years. Finally that civilization let it go. The probe headed out into darkness, to confirm or deny a theory about the existence of life on Earth.

  2

  Astolere:

  It was a move of desperation to attempt a ground assault on the Callisto facility, and one for which the Umbrathane have paid dearly. But we have yet to learn the full extent of the payment we might make in using this infant technology. My brother Saphothere’s venture into the past, using one of the bioconstructs, we knew would have unforeseen consequences in itself. That he took with him an atomic weapon to place at the point of the assault force’s arrival, we knew could only make things worse. Eight thousand of those ground troops died in the conflagration—and as for the rest of us? We now all have memories of two parallel events, while living in the future of only one. And we all now know that such manipulation of events, so close to us on the time-line, has pushed us down off the main line, and that we are one step closer to oblivion.