Cowl

4

Astolere:

Upon seeing the creature in its growth tank I had to ask why it is now so large. Cowl informs me that the greater the mass of organic complexity, the greater the vorpal energy generated (that word again). This is self-evident, but it seems to me that our research requirements of this energy are small, while what the creature might generate is potentially vast. Even so, I have been informed that Engineer Goron, the de facto governor of Callisto, damn him, is to cancel further research until such a time as the full consequences of time travel can be ascertained. Palleque tells me that the real reason for this research halt is that the Engineer trusts the preterhuman not at all. When I asked Palleque why this was the case, he replied, ‘Sister, after their attack on the energy dam the Umbrathane escaped by displacing their ships. Work it out.’

Not much to work out really. I know because I built the first displacement generator, using an offshoot of Cowl’s research. The Engineer must think Cowl has passed on schematics to the Umbrathane and is therefore a traitor. Moreover, how did they know enough about the dangers represented by his research to risk such a suicidal attack? Of course doubt remains because, had their attack succeeded, Cowl himself might have been killed. Unless the attack was actually a rescue attempt…

The gunfire had ceased by the time Polly returned to the deck and the moon was up with its horns sinister. She made out structures like a squad of Martian war machines frozen mid-stride in the sea, and from one of these a searchlight speared down, as the boat decelerated and turned.

‘Red Sands army fort,’ said Dave. ‘Did a run out there a couple of weeks back, so it’s not the usual supplies we’ll be taking in. They’re stocked up until the next changeover.’

They moved back along the deck to the wheelhouse, where Frank stood by the helm, gently guiding it with one hand while puffing on a pipe. Polly stared at the thing in his mouth and remembered that the last time she had seen someone smoking a pipe, it had contained a cocktail of crack and an LSD derivative. She suspected, from the strata of strong tobacco smoke in the boat’s interior, that these drugs were not Frank’s particular penchant.

‘So, who are you then?’ he asked.

‘Seems she went to take a swim without any intention of coming back,’ said Dave, leaning back against the wall of the cabin. Outside, a metal chimney was belching steam as Toby put out the fire in the stove, as per Frank’s recent instructions.

Frank eyed her for a moment then said, ‘Now why would you want to do that?’

‘Because my husband died at El Alamein,’ Polly replied.

‘I thought you said boyfriend,’ interjected Dave, lighting up his nth cigarette.

Oops, now they’ll start getting suspicious. Tell them you called me husband out of habit, as extramarital sex is somewhat frowned on in this particular time.

Smoothly Polly explained, ‘Habit. Where we lived it was best for people to think we were married.’

You’re rather good at this. Had I known, I might have made different use of you.

Polly would have liked to explain to Nandru that, prior to putting the object on her arm, she would have had difficulty finding her backside with both hands. She was thinking an order of magnitude more clearly than heretofore and, as every moment passed, she could feel the crap being further cleared from her system. What worried her now was what would happen when withdrawal hit. It hadn’t yet, but she felt sure it must.

‘Do you still intend to take that swim?’ Frank eventually asked.

‘No… it would be a betrayal of his memory. He was a good man.’

Ha-de-fucking-ha. Because of Marjae I wanted you creamed. I can’t feel it now, but back then, when I was alive, I thought you a noxious insect that should be stepped on.

‘We loved each other,’ Polly added, and heard hollow laughter in her head.

Frank and Dave both looked embarrassed at this.

Frank said, ‘This will all have to be confirmed, you know. They don’t like any unexpected visitors on these forts, even if you hadn’t any intention of coming out here.’

‘I’ve no problem with that,’ said Polly, glancing out at Toby, who was now manipulating a hoist to raise a crate from the hold.

Frank brought the boat to a near halt below one of the constructs, his hands delicate on the controls to keep the vessel in position. Polly saw a net, attached to a line, thump down on the deck and watched as Dave went out to retrieve a small pack taped to the line, and then help Toby heave the crate into the net. A torch flashed from above and Dave returned the signal with his own torch. Polly did not need the clearness of thought she now possessed to figure that this particular delivery was unscheduled.

‘Likes his malt whisky, does Lieutenant Pearce,’ commented Frank as the other two returned to the cabin and they got under way again.

Conversation thereafter became muted and Polly felt herself fading into the background as the three men discussed a war that was not even a memory to her. She learnt that both Dave and Toby were still in basic training and anxious to join the fighting, and recognized Frank’s tired look when he heard this enthusiasm. And she wondered at such naivety.

In the next hour Dave pointed out another fort far to their left and announced, ‘Shivering Sands.’

Later, Frank said, ‘Knob Sand,’ gesturing to some half-seen marker buoys while swinging the boat to the port. ‘And there’s Knock John.’

Polly was impressed. The naval fort loomed like an old-style battleship raised up on two thick pillars. No lights were visible on it, but in silhouette against the star-studded sky she could discern guns and radio antennae.

‘Frank here. Coming in from the south,’ Frank spoke into his transceiver.

They drew into Knock John’s shadow and slowed by a wooden jetty being hinged down from a scaffold running up the side of the nearest pillar. Only then did Polly get a true impression of the size of the fort. Dave and Toby cast ropes to the men who came out onto the jetty when it was in position, before unclipping the deck hatches to access the cargo below. Above them a crane was swung across and it lowered a cargo net straight into the open hold.

‘Best you come with me. Feel up to climbing that ladder?’ Frank asked her.

Polly stared at the ladder, now made visible by the lights that had just been turned on within the scaffold, and wondered if she could manage it. She suddenly felt weak, slightly sick and incredibly hungry—more hungry than she had felt in years.

‘Brownlow should have the stew pot on by now and some tea brewing, and his tea is better for some additive.’ Frank patted the shoulder bag he had just picked up.

‘I can handle it,’ said Polly firmly, then something lurched inside her and she found herself closing her mouth on a welling up of saliva. What surprised her most was that it wasn’t a drink she wanted so much as the food. Following him down onto the jetty, then along to the iron ladder, she rolled up her dropping coat sleeves and cursed her lack of footwear… abandoned somewhere in this same sea. Someone at the head of the ladder rushed over to help her as soon as he realized she was a woman.

‘My daughter,’ explained Frank to those who had stopped to stare, then led her across, under the shadow of the crane, to an open doorway. Polly glanced up and noted the barrels of an antiaircraft gun before following him inside. They negotiated further stairs and ladders, and Polly received a blurred impression of somewhere crammed with men and equipment and fogged by cigarette smoke, until eventually she found herself in a canteen, where she could concentrate on nothing but the smell of cooking.

Soon all her attention was focused on a mess tin filled with unidentifiable lumps, which was thrust in front of her, and the hunk of bread plonked down beside it. Everything else faded into insignificance as she picked up a fork and began to eat. It seemed only moments later that the tin was empty and she was mopping up the gravy.

‘I take it you could do with some more?’ said Frank.

Polly nodded dumbly.

Three mess tins later, Polly glanced up into Frank’s amused regard. Huge fatigue then trammelled her, and she had time only to push the mess tin aside before her forehead hit the table and sleep dropped on her like a black eiderdown. Then, seemingly with no transition, someone was shaking her.

The sea of blackness turned to white and the sky took on a more familiar aspect of grey cloud split against cerulean blue, and gravity took hold of him and dragged him down against the hard bones of the mantisal. Tack stared at the colour, and took it in like a man starved. That was it about the between place: no colour at all. For a moment longer, though, everything seemed unreal, and Tack noticed Traveller warily scanning their surroundings. Then the man shifted one hand inside a mantis eye and they completely arrived.

‘Out. Out now,’ said Traveller, withdrawing both his hands from the two spheres.

Tack grabbed up the pack and pulled himself towards the gap through which he had entered the mantisal. He fell and, bracing himself for impact, was grateful to drop into a snowdrift. As he pulled himself out of this, brushing it from his ruined coat, Traveller dropped into a squat on some grassy ground nearby, which was only lightly dusted with snow, then stood upright. Tack glanced up at the mantisal and, seeing it dropping back into that ineffable dimension, quickly averted his gaze. When he turned back it was gone and all that remained was the sky, punctuated by the occasional bird silhouette. He took up the backpack, slung it on and turned to Traveller.

The strange man’s face was lined with fatigue, and Tack noticed that his eyes were now brownish-gold in colour, as if dulled by the extent of his weariness.

‘Over there,’ Traveller said, pointing to a distant line of dense forest, and they began trudging in that direction. After a moment he went on, ‘You’re not curious about where, or rather when, we have come?’

Tack stared at him dumbly.

‘Ah,’ said Traveller. ‘You may speak.’

‘I am curious,’ admitted Tack, now free to speak again.

‘Welcome to the early Pleistocene,’ said Traveller, gesturing about himself with both hands. ‘Neanderthal man is dominant at present, but humans like yourself are appearing, and it will only be another hundred thousand years before their ascendence. The belief, in your time, was that your people drove the Neanderthals to extinction. The truth is that a disease crossed a species boundary, contracted from the animals they hunted as food, and killed most of them off. Many of those who survived mated with your own kind and their DNA still exists even in my time.’

How very interesting, thought Tack, knowing that to voice such a thought would probably result in him getting a beating. He looked around and instantly realized that he was in no place that he knew, for in his lifetime he had never seen a landscape completely untouched by the works of man. Perhaps there had been such places in those portions of the Antarctic still not inhabited in his own era, but someone like himself did not get to travel there—his business usually involving very close contact with other human life, however briefly, not the shunning of it.

Traveller paused for a second to kick at a pile of dung before moving on. ‘Mammoth, probably. I brought us down in an interglacial period, so they’ve moved up while the ice sheet retreated. Some big animals around in this time—we definitely don’t want to run into any of the predators.’

Tack noted the massive footprints in the snow, and suddenly it felt as if a huge emotional backlog had caught up with him. That the girl had dragged him back in time he had figured with stolid logic—which was understandable since U-gov programmed its killers for dispassion. Now he experienced a surge of emotion that flipped his stomach over and made the world grow vast around him. Mammoth, he remembered from his early schooling. Smilodons … As they walked, he turned away from Traveller to scrub tears from his eyes. Then, his voice catching, he brought the subject back to their immediate circumstances, ‘Is that mantisal thing alive?’

Without looking round, Traveller said, ‘It is alive in the only way that matters.’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘Vorpal energy,’ Traveller stated succinctly and by the man’s mien Tack knew that to push him further might result in renewed violence.

More advanced, maybe, but certainly more bad tempered, thought Tack.

However, when Traveller now glanced round, his expression changed utterly. Tack registered frowning surprise in the man’s face, then a hint of amusement. Traveller explained further, ‘Only life can travel in time and time travel is only possible in the time life exists. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Reality is patterned in circles, spheres, convolute and twisting dimensions. It is not required to be amenable to your logic. The linear mind finds this difficult to grasp.’

Tack felt the urge to make some sarcastic quip, but quickly repressed it.

Traveller added, ‘The limit, for life, of travel into the past is the Nodus. It is that point in the Precambrian when multi-cellular life first evolved.’

‘Why is multi-cellular life the limit? Why not single cells?’ asked Tack and waited, half-expecting to have his nose set bleeding again.

‘Ah, a sign of intelligence at last.’

Tack couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.

Traveller went on, ‘That point is much debated. The energy gradient steepens into those aeons, and time travel is possible but unfeasible. The answer is connected with the quantity of living matter extant on Earth, and the amount of vorpal energy that generates.’

Something dubious in that explanation, thought Tack. ‘I do not know what vorpal energy is,’ he said.

It seemed Traveller did not attack him when he asked questions, no matter how they were posed. The first beating must have been only to disable him for capture, and the second time he was struck was because of his voicing sarcasm.

‘I could give you the equations, but you do not have the weight of knowledge to absorb them. It is just a kind of energy generated by the slow interaction of complex molecules. It was discovered some hundreds of years after your time when separate sciences were beginning to meld together.’

Tack surprised himself by beginning to understand. He had forgotten nothing of their discussion in the barn and now a picture was building in his mind. He had a vision of time sprouting from that point called the Nodus, branching and multiplying between facing mirrors of probability, expanding from one point towards infinity. This vision carried emotional weight and it frightened him.

As they finally reached the forest, it became evident that, behind the clouds, the sun was setting. Here, once they had pushed a little way in, they found the ground thick with pine needles and dead wood, and only sparsely scattered with snow.

‘Here. You may take off that pack now.’

It was dark under the trees and Tack was very tired. His training and his superb physical condition had carried him this far, but even he could not sustain indefinitely the kind of punishment he had received over the last—he glanced at his watch — twenty-five hours.

‘We light a fire now, eat and rest. You will take the first watch for three of your standard hours, but understand that there are only beasts here, so it is likely that the most that will be required of you is that you keep the fire going. You understand?’

In this forest glade, sheltered from an icy wind that propelled flecks of snow as from a grit blaster, they built a cairn of wood, which Traveller lit with a weapon only briefly revealed to Tack. The gun itself looked quite silly and ineffectual, but focused enough energy in that instant to incinerate half of the woodpile and send a huge cloud of white smoke ascending into the trees. The two of them then piled on more fuel and huddled close around the blaze.

Polly opened gritty eyes, but her vision was blurred and it took a moment for her to discern Frank standing over her. She sat up slowly and looked around. She found herself on a bed in cramped sleeping quarters, with a blanket thrown over her.

‘There a toilet?’ she asked muzzily.

Frank stepped back as she sat up and put her legs over the side of the bunk. ‘Back there.’ He gestured to the door behind him. ‘But, first, I found these for you.’

He placed a bundle on the bed: army fatigues, a small pair of boots and a couple of pairs of thick socks because the boots most certainly would not be small enough. She accepted these gratefully, then stood and walked unsteadily to the door. Following her, he directed her down a short partitioned corridor to another door. Once inside she locked herself in, took off the coat, and found blessed relief on the toilet while she took off her hip bag and checked its contents. Luckily the waterproof lining was intact, the seal-strip had remained closed, and the inside was dry. She checked the contents and was not sure what she was most glad to find, her hairbrush, rolling tobacco or her taser. At the sink she cleaned herself up as best she could, brushed her hair and applied a little make-up. Then she pulled on the fatigues, up underneath her pelmet so it held them in place like a cummerbund, then pulled on the socks and boots. Thus fortified, she rolled a cigarette and put on the coat before stepping outside again. Frank was waiting for her, glancing impatiently at his watch.

‘The sun’s near up and it’s time we got back to shore,’ he told her.

Outside, in morning light, Polly observed the navy personnel starting about their business on the fort’s superstructure. Frank led her around the side, down a short ladder to the same door through which they had entered. Soon they were down on the jetty and into the boat and pulling away, Dave and Toby greeting her cheerfully.

Suddenly she was feeling very good—full of energy and anxious to be… somewhere. Turning to look back at the fort as they pulled away from it, she now had a perfect view of the structure, with its waves of camouflage paint undulating across the stocky pillars that supported it, with its radar tower and the guns.

Impressive, isn’t it?

In her head, Polly replied, ‘Yes, I never knew about things like this.’

Do you know anything about this war they’re fighting?

‘You can read my thoughts?’ she subvocalized.

No, only those ones that are on the edge of speech. Any deeper and things get a bit confusing. But tell me, what do you intend to do now? You are in an age you do not know, and I wonder what chances you have of going back to your own era.

‘I’ll survive—and maybe I’ll do better than survive. I made this thing on my arm take me back to here, so maybe I can make it take me forward again. If I can successfully travel in time, then there will be nothing I cannot do.’

Big plans from such a little whore.

But her plans did not take into account the three who awaited her on the jetty.

Lightning ignited over the horizon like the flares of a distant battle, and the low rumble of thunder was constant. Visible through the trees, another glow lit the opposite horizon, as red and ominous as a furnace. Tack guessed there must be vulcanism over that way, but did not consider it worth the risk of seeking confirmation. Soon they were eating from Traveller’s supplies of spicy food, which Tack did not recognize but did not dislike either, then they used melted snow to make themselves hot coffee, which he felt certain he would require over the coming hours. Traveller he noticed, laced his coffee with the contents of a hip flask, but none of its contents was offered to Tack. Shortly, Traveller searched through his pack and came up with a pair of slip-on boots, which he passed to Tack. While Tack pulled them on, Traveller also unearthed two thermal sheets. One of these he tossed over to Tack, and the other he laid out on the ground for himself beside the fire. However, he showed no inclination yet for sleep.

‘Can you tell me more about this Cowl?’ Tack asked, between sips of steaming coffee.

‘Cowl is Cowl,’ said Traveller, something hard entering his voice. Then he shook his head in irritation. ‘I suppose it is best you know… Cowl is a genetically altered being from my own time, superior in intelligence, vicious, dangerous, unviable, and in our opinion not really human. He hates us because we are human, just as he hates everything else that is not of his own creation.’ Traveller stared into the flames, ‘And from beyond the Nodus he is trying to kill us all.’

Traveller made no attempt to hide the loathing in his voice. This man and Cowl had a history. Tack realized.

‘But… you said earlier you can’t travel beyond the Nodus?’ he said.

Traveller shrugged. ‘I don’t know everything.’

Tack decided not to comment on this particular first.

Traveller continued, ‘He shuffles the alternates, seeking to bring to the main line one in which the human race did not evolve and where only his kind is viable. He does this by adding his own DNA to the protomix in the seas. He is constantly experimenting and to test his results he samples the future. Tors, like the one worn by that female you were with, are the way he does that.’

‘She is a sample?’ Tack asked, thinking this explanation too pat.

Traveller met his gaze, and Tack saw that some of the colour had returned to the man’s eyes. ‘A sample, yes, and when Cowl has learnt what he wants, she will be disposed of as such,’ he said bitterly.

Tack was not sure how he felt about that. He had intended to kill the girl himself, but that some monster roosting at the beginning of time would do so, almost negligently, affronted him. He gazed at Traveller and again saw signs of irritation. Nevertheless, he risked one more question.

‘I don’t really understand. How can you travel back in time to stop him? If he succeeds, he has succeeded, and that is in the past. You would now be off the main line, so unable to travel back to him.’

‘Concurrent time,’ said Traveller almost dismissively, and lay back on his thermal sheet.

‘What is concurrent time?’

‘If Cowl succeeds in his mission, say, ten years after his arrival at the Nodus, we—my people—will be shoved off the main line ten years after he departed from us.’

‘But that won’t kill you.’

‘No, but we will no longer be able to travel in time. We’ll be somewhere down the probability slope in a prison of linear time, and closer to oblivion. That would be death to us.’

Tack had an entirely different idea about what was death; it involved horrible gristly sounds, blood and burnt flesh. He gave Traveller a final glance before spreading out his own heat sheet and sitting down on it with his seeker gun ready. At no point did he think to aim the weapon at his captor—it just wasn’t in his programming.

The three men wore trench coats and trilbies. Two of them looked to have been built in a tank factory, but the leaner one seemed to have been fashioned for a more vicious purpose.

‘You’ll come with us right now,’ said the lean man as soon as she stepped off the boat. He was taller than his two accompanying heavies, and good-looking in a cold sort of way.

‘Who the hell are you?’ asked Frank.

‘None of your concern,’ said the thin man, his gaze still fixed on Polly.

‘I’m making it my concern,’ growled Frank.

One of the heavies calmly took out a large revolver and pointed it at the boat captain. Perhaps seeing that things might get a little out of control, the leader turned his full attention to Frank. ‘Fleming, military intelligence.’ He displayed some paperwork from his pocket.

‘Oh.’ Frank backed off. ‘I suppose someone from Knock John got onto you. Look… she’s all right. We dragged her out of the sea…’

Fleming held up a hand to silence him. ‘I’ll get to your story in good time.’ He glanced at Toby and Dave as they too stepped off the boat, and slipped his hand menacingly into the pocket of his trench coat. Indicating the man who had drawn the revolver, he went on, ‘Garson here will return for your statements tomorrow, so I want the three of you here on this jetty at eight sharp. We will meanwhile take this young lady away and have a chat with her.’ He turned towards the shore, where a car was parked. The second heavy took hold of Polly’s biceps and guided her firmly in that direction.

See. What did I tell you?

Polly shot a look of appeal at Frank and the other two as she was marched off, but they just stood staring at her with growing suspicion.

I reckon it’ll be electrodes, and a body massage with a length of hosepipe, then a firing squad at dawn.

‘What about you?’ Polly subvocalized. ‘Will you die with me, or will you continue existing in the head of a rotting corpse?’

Oh… yes …

‘Take the coat off,’ said the unnamed heavy once they reached the car. She did as instructed and he took the garment and tossed it to Garson, who began to search it. ‘Take that off, too,’ the man then ordered, gesturing at her hip bag. ‘Carefully.’ Again she did as instructed and the item was passed on to Fleming this time. As the three men now studied her, their attention came to rest on the object on her arm.

‘Now what is that?’ enquired Fleming.

Polly glanced down at it and could think of no reasonable explanation. Nandru came to her rescue though.

Tell them it’s scar tissue. Tell them you were badly burned. The damned thing looks like part of you now, anyway.

That explanation was only accepted when it became evident to her captors that the strange covering would not be separated from her flesh, and was apparently part of it.

‘Now, hands up on the car.’ Glancing back she saw the still unnamed one pulling on tight leather gloves. She turned her face away as he did an intimately thorough body search and, wincing, she wondered if surgical gloves had yet been invented. The greatcoat was finally returned to her, then she was pushed inside the car, her searcher squeezing into the back beside her. Garson slid behind the wheel and Fleming got into the front passenger seat. Nothing more was said as the vehicle started up and they drove off, but Polly became aware of Fleming’s interest in the contents of her hip bag.

‘We have been expecting infiltration of our sea forts for some time,’ said Fleming, eventually closing the bag and placing it on the dashboard. ‘I have to admire the way you went about it. I suppose you intended to build up a relationship with Brownlow?’

‘I’m not a spy,’ said Polly grimly.

Fleming laughed quietly. ‘You’ll tell us everything eventually, so why not make it easy on yourself? Tell us all we want to know and I can promise you’ll go to Holloway rather than up against the stained and bullet-pocked brick wall in Bellhouse.’

‘I’m not a spy,’ Polly repeated desperately, realizing her story about a lover killed in North Africa would soon be proven untrue. Possessing no identification papers for Fleming and his kind—no history here whatsoever—she foresaw the questions would be never-ending because no answer she could give would ever be believed or confirmed. Her only option was to escape and hide, but how? She looked at the object clinging to her arm and realized that perhaps there was another option.

Immediately upon thinking this, she felt a tension of forces webbing through her body from the alien thing. For a second her environment seemed to grow dark and she had a deeper vision of a vast colourless continuum, over which all her present surroundings seemed a translucent moving watercolour. Then suddenly she panicked and clamped down on it all, somehow, and the world around her returned to normal.

What happened then? Muse 184 has the facility to monitor your biorhythms, and they just went crazy. It is now transmitting a ‘wounded soldier’ warning.

‘I have my way out of this situation, but I’m too scared to take it. The thing wants to take me through time, but I don’t know where to,’ she subvocalized.

Perhaps you’d better save that option for when they apply the electrodes.

‘Thank you for your comforting words.’ Polly winced.

Including the car she rode in, every machine she now saw would have been classified as a serious antique in her own era. The few tractors on the fields were small machines, grey or dull red, pulling ploughs little bigger than were once pulled by a team of horses, but of a suitable scale for the little fields they occupied. There were many laid-over hedges, and many other fields contained livestock. The roads they drove upon were unmarked by lines and never wider than double-track.

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 nipped 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 behind 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.