Cowl

by Neal Asher

  Occasionally they passed khaki-painted military vehicles and clusters of armed soldiers. Twice they were stopped, but Fleming’s papers quickly got them moving again. Old propeller-driven aeroplanes frequently thundered overhead. The people in the villages were dressed for historical drama. Polly was feeling increasingly lost.

  ‘Here we are, Ramsden Bellhouse,’ announced Fleming at last.

  The village looked no different from any of the others they had driven through. They turned into a drive barred by a counter-weighted gate. A guard carrying a Sten gun walked over from the log he had been sitting on to enjoy a crafty cigarette. He peered into their car and after a moment nodded to Fleming, then went to raise the gate. Soon the vehicle pulled up beside a large old house that was ancient even in this antique age.

  ‘I’m told this place has an interesting history,’ said Fleming. ‘It’s about four centuries old and supposedly haunted by some headless woman, but then don’t all buildings that old have their resident ghosts? It’s ideal for us though: not too far from our bases or from the railway station, but just isolated enough so that the civvies don’t hear or see something they might not like.’

  Polly was hustled out of the car and into the building. She just had time to observe a large old-fashioned kitchen, a table scattered with ashtrays, empty cigarette packets and the detritus of terminal tea consumption before she was herded up some narrow stairs, along a drafty high-ceilinged hall, and into a wood-panelled room. It contained only a single patinated desk and two chairs, and looked cold and inhospitable. But then she had expected no different.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Fleming, as he closed the door. Polly noticed the other two men had not joined them, and heard the ominous clonk of the door being locked from the other side. She gazed through leaded windows across the surrounding trees and a patchwork of fields. Glancing lower, she noticed a low roof about two metres below the window, and wondered if, given the opportunity, she could scramble that way to the ground without breaking her neck. Sitting, as instructed, she observed stains on the desk’s surface: some were obviously teacup rings, but she wondered about some of the others.

  Fleming deposited a notebook and Polly’s hip bag on his own side of the desk, then walked past her to the window, taking out a packet of cigarettes. She saw that his brand was rather fancy—quite long and bearing three gold bands. He struck a match and lit up.

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke, too?’ she asked.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said nonchalantly.

  After a moment’s hesitation Polly reached over and pulled her hip bag closer. Opening it, she saw that her taser, her lighter, and some make-up items were missing. Taking out her pack of tobacco, she rolled herself a cigarette, all the time aware that she was being closely watched. As she brought it to her lips, Fleming’s hand shot round in front of her to light it with her own lighter. Once her cigarette was lit, he dropped the lighter on the table and walked round to his own seat.

  ‘Interesting little gadget that,’ said Fleming. ‘I haven’t seen anything quite like it, but then the Germans are quite clever at making interesting little devices.’ He reached across the desk and dragged the hip bag back in front of him. Taking out Polly’s purse, he flipped it open and examined the contents again. As he studied the chipcards, euro notes and coins his expression became increasingly puzzled.

  Watching him, Polly realized what was probably bothering him—all the coins and notes had dates on them.

  After a moment he said, ‘Do your masters in Berlin honestly think we would fall for such a silly ruse. Just because we haven’t made bonfires out of Mr Wells’s books does not mean we cannot distinguish between the fact and fiction of them.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  ‘I too have read The Time Machine.’

  ‘I still don’t understand …’

  ‘The Time Machine’ was a novel by a guy called H. G. Wells. It was about time travel. That’s what he’s referring to.

  Fleming turned his attention to Polly’s watch. He stared at it for a long moment, then said, ‘Give me that.’

  Polly slipped it from her wrist and slid it across.

  ‘I see I can’t fool you,’ she said sarcastically.

  He studied the LCD display, pressed some of the buttons and called up the miniscreen then the texting service, which was obviously offline. After a moment he obtained the calculator function and, using the buttons to control the cursor, actually got it to carry out some basic functions. This certainly seemed to unnerve him, so he inspected the strap, then turned the watch over. He then took out a penknife.

  ‘I see that a lot of preparation has gone into this. What was the idea?’

  He flipped off the back of the watch and when he saw the workings his face went white. ‘Very interesting,’ he said uncertainly.

  ‘You win the war in 1945,’ Polly said.

  I’m not sure this is the brightest idea you’ve had.

  Polly explained, ‘I come from about two hundred years in the future, as you can see by the dates on the coinage.’

  Fleming just stared at her, before clicking the back of the watch into place. He then began examining closely all the other contents of her hip bag: the wrapping of her tobacco, her cigarette papers, the condoms and even a packet of sweets. He took out the spermicidal spray and tested it on the air. Next he took her taser out of his pocket.

  ‘What is this?’

  When he clicked the charge switch, it whined up to power immediately and he quickly dropped it on the desk. The green ready light came on and after a moment he picked the device up again.

  ‘Some sort of camera?’ he suggested, studying it close up as he fiddled with it. With a crack the two wires spat out from the end of the device driving their needles straight into his forehead. With miniature lightnings flickering around his head, he jerked upright with a nasal groan, then crashed backwards out of his chair.

  Polly was round the desk in a moment. She grabbed up the taser, its wires winding back in automatically as she took hold of it. A key was clonking round in the door as the taser recharged its capacitor. Then one of the heavies was stepping through the door, drawing an automatic pistol. Polly fired, the two wires striking him in the middle of his chest. Making the same sound as Fleming, he slammed back against the doorjamb and slid to the floor.

  ‘No, not a camera,’ murmured Polly, moving to the door as the taser’s wires withdrew and it wound itself up to charge yet again.

  The second heavy was not out in the hall, or anywhere visible, but she dared not risk escaping through the house, as there were possibly others around. The taser would not have enough power to deal with more than one more assailant. Thereafter the device needed to be left out in the sunlight to recharge the lithium battery that powered its capacitor. With a struggle, Polly dragged the comatose heavy into the room, then closed and locked the door from the inside. Quickly she gathered up her belongings and, not inclined to let the opportunity pass her by, searched the two unconscious men. When she eventually stepped out of the window, she had acquired an automatic and a spare ammunition clip, a lethal stiletto, and Fleming’s wallet and cigarettes. A scramble down a sloping roof brought her to where the car was conveniently parked below her. She dropped onto its roof, and slid to the ground. Then she was up and running just as the startled second heavy piled out of the car.

  ‘Stop or I shoot!’

  Immediately Polly panicked. Always, in films and interactives, people could run while others were shooting at them and survive. This was reality—the reality of a heavy slug slamming into her back, snapping her spine before smashing through her. She stopped and turned slowly, her hands in the air. In that moment it seemed to her that she had tried all she could, but got nowhere. She allowed some internal grip to relax and that freed the tension which networked her body from the alien object on her arm.

  As the heavy stood with revolver aimed, and growing confusion on his face, Polly could see the vastness accumulating beh
ind him—a black rolling sea and endless grey sky.

  ‘Come back!’ the man shouted, and his revolver boomed, its sound oddly distorted and echoey, the bullet an ablating red streak over fading air. Then he was gone, the whole world was gone, and Polly was falling endlessly through dark and cold. She screamed, but the sound, along with her breath, was sucked away.

  5

  Astolere:

  It is quite probable that the Umbrathane fleet remains somewhere in the Fovian system. Even I know that the energy requirement to displace them out of it would have been detected. Their fleet is a large imponderable, and Heliothane forces remain on alert. Saphothere’s negotiations with the two Umbrathane leaders have gone surprisingly well. It seems that the particular faction comprising the ground assault force is always used in such risky missions because it is one whose beliefs are not so harsh as those of the Umbrathane majority. Apparently those leaders are prepared to accept imprisonment on Ganymede rather than face obliteration. Meanwhile I must return to the facility and supervise the temporary shutdown of Cowl’s research program. I have to say that this is something about which I feel trepidation, especially when I tell the preterhuman himself that the torbeast (his name for it, and mountainous it is—other staff at the facility have jokily named it ‘Jabberwock’, though I’ve yet to understand the humour) must be vented out on the surface of Callisto.

  THROUGH THE FOLIAGE ABOVE him Tack could see that the sky was a cloudless pale blue. A new day, in this unfamiliar time, had begun. Moving his arm up out of the covering fold of his heat sheet, he checked the time and saw that he had slept a further two hours since his second spell of watch ended. Traveller was moving about the campsite, but Tack did not want to turn over yet to see what the man was doing. He wanted to keep still for a little longer and get a chance to contemplate what he had thus far learnt.

  Traveller wanted the tor that was growing on Tack’s arm as, somehow, this device would enable his kind to get to a creature called Cowl, who was trying to destroy the entirety of human history. There were so many holes in that explanation, and so many questions to ask, Tack could not even think of where to begin. The simple fact of time travel being a reality raised an insuperable wall of questions. However, lying there, Tack realized there was one question he had yet to ask: to where, or rather when, was Traveller taking him?

  When Tack smelt coffee brewing and the mouth-watering aroma of roasting meat, he finally flipped back his sheet and sat up. He saw Traveller squatting by the fire and poking at it with a stick. A coffee pot rested on the hot embers, with skewered next to it the gutted body of a small animal.

  Traveller gestured at the carcass with his stick. ‘Wild pig. I’m surprised the racket didn’t wake you.’

  Tack looked at him queryingly.

  ‘Something got its mother back in there.’ He gestured with his thumb into the deeper forest. ‘This one was hiding in bushes nearby.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bring the mother?’

  ‘Not much left of her. Cave lion, I think. Best not to remove what was left of its kill in case it comes back for more of it.’

  As Tack absorbed this, he noticed that Traveller’s eyes had returned to that weird orange colour and that he seemed to possess more energy this morning than on the night before. Transferring his attention to the roasting flesh, he discovered in himself a touch of squeamishness, as the only meat he had ever eaten had come out of numerous layers of plastic—disassociated from its true source. He stood up then and moved away from the fire to urinate behind a tree. When he returned he found his squeamishness disappearing under the onslaught of growing hunger. Soon he found himself stuffing greasy roast pork into his mouth.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked eventually, cleaning his hands in the snow.

  Traveller stared at him through the steam rising off his cup—his eyes now demonic. ‘If you look upon time as a road, then in the wrong direction at present, we need you back in New London, where we have the technology to ensure the survival of your nascent tor. But that thing embedded in your wrist attracts the notice of Cowl’s particularly nasty pet and it is, on our time, very active in proximity to your … natal time.’ Traveller paused, his expression pained. ‘I find your language particularly unsuited to any sensible discussion of time travel.’

  ‘How do you finally intend to get back to this New London?’ Tack asked, realizing he must keep doggedly to just one line of thought at a time, for every answer that Traveller gave him promulgated a whole new set of questions.

  ‘We have an outpost called Sauros based in the Mesozoic, and between it and New London, a sub-temporal wormhole—a time tunnel.’

  Tack sipped his coffee and considered. ‘Mesozoic?’

  Traveller grinned over his coffee. ‘Think of dinosaurs,’ he said. ‘But we have some trips yet to make to get there. I was already tired before the one we just made, so I possessed only enough energy for limited symbiosis with the mantisal. That means we only managed about a million years. This next jump should take us back at least fifteen million.’

  Tack felt his mouth go dry and suddenly, despite the hot coffee, he felt cold. With a hand that trembled only a little he placed his cup on the ground, took up his heat sheet and draped it around his shoulders.

  ‘And this is the coldest it will be for us,’ Traveller added. ‘From now on things start getting hotter—in more than the literal sense, too.’

  Tack waited for the punchline.

  Traveller gestured about them. ‘This is about as restful as it gets. Between us and Sauros lie about eighty million years of appetite.’ Traveller stood up and gestured meaningfully to the backpack. Tack finished his coffee and folded the cup, inserting it into a compartment inside the coffee pot. This and the heat sheets went into the pack, which Tack then shouldered. As they emerged from the trees, Tack noticed dry grass showing through where the snow had melted away. Far to his right he saw a huge elephantine shape standing still as a rock before it turned back into the trees.

  ‘Mammoth,’ he breathed.

  ‘Mastodon, actually,’ Traveller corrected him. ‘Mammoths customarily move around in family groups.’ He paused and studied the spot where the creature had disappeared. ‘Though there are the rogue males, of course.’ With that he set off, quickly following their own tracks in the snow, back to where they had disembarked from the mantisal. Tack hurried along behind, scanning all about himself for something significant, since he felt sure this was a time—if not place—that he would never see again. But all he saw here was snowy grassland and forest, and earlier that one enigmatic shape, before the mantisal folded out of thin air before them, and they climbed aboard.

  THE NIGHTMARE DARKNESS RECEDED into memory and it seemed she had been in this forest for an age, with nothing to accompany her but the sounds of birds and the wind in the trees. But now she heard bells tinkling, the murmur of conversation and an occasional burst of laughter. Somewhere nearby there were people, and in Polly’s mind that meant the possibility of food, for she was racked with a hunger that had already compelled her to chew and swallow a handful of acorns before vomiting up the whole bitter mess. Drawing hard on her second hunger-quelling cigarette, she then discarded it and moved on eagerly. Pushing through the bracken below towering trees, she soon lost any sense of where the sound was coming from and began flailing forwards in a panic, then stumbled down a slope onto her knees. Before her, like an epiphany in the damp leaf-litter, grew a single yellowish-white toadstool. She reached out for it.

  What the hell do you think you are doing?

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Polly replied, her mouth still full of nauseating bitterness.

  Well, that would certainly cure any future hunger. Muse has it listed as Amanita virosa or the Destroying Angel. I thought it was a death cap, but that’s only a small disagreement of memory and acquired memory. Either way the results would eventually be the same.

  ‘You don’t really know that,’ said Polly, reluctant to deny herself this potential sna
ck.

  Muse 184 has a hundred terabytes of reference, remember. I’m living in its damned RAM, so I’m not taking up any space. Do you know what that means?

  ‘No … no I don’t.’

  Put it this way, it knows more than any single human is ever likely to know on any subject you could think of And being as its purpose is military, it particularly has everything in here you’d want to know about poisons and other causes of death. You want me to detail what will happen to you if you eat that thing?

  ‘No, I don’t need that.’ Polly stood up and moved off, irritably kicking the toadstool to snowy fragments across the leaf litter as she went.

  It’s that damned scale on your arm. By my clock you ate four tins of pilchards and half a loaf of bread only six hours ago on that boat. It must be sucking you dry somehow. They knew it was parasitic … alive in its limited way.

  ‘Why do you call it a scale?’

  Where it came from, my little slot machine. You saw the … creature that killed me? Well that thing on your arm is a scale from its back—if back it had.

  ‘You said something about all this, but nothing made sense then.’

  What’s to tell? We raided a suicide bombers’ school in Kazakhstan, and that creature hit at the same time. Fucking chaos. It chewed four of them down, and shed that thing on your arm in the process. It was just one of many arranged like scales on its surfaces, though whatever the creature is, we never saw enough of it to … just call it a monster, something vast from another place.

  ‘What other place?’

  I haven’t got a clue.

  Polly looked around her. There, the bells again … somewhere over that way.

  ‘What happened then?’ she asked.

  One of the Binpots wanted to put it on his arm. Leibnitz put a clip into him before he got a chance, then the monster hit Leibnitz and Smith. I bagged the scale and ran with it—I knew it was important—and Patak and the others covered me. The monster took him when we got back to HQ. Next thing the last of us were in a U-gov facility with the big brains talking temporal anomalies. I was interrogated under VR with drugs I’d never heard of, then was sat out in a compound with the rest as bait for the … monster. Wired up like lab rats, we were. I knew it wanted me, see, from the moment I killed that guy who had been about to put the scale on himself, like you did. It attacked—chaos again. I was able to escape, grabbing the scale and some other tech as I went. The scale tried to get me to put it on, but it left me alone when I wrapped the fucking thing in plastique …