Cowl

9

Modification Status Report:

The biostatic energy generated by complex molecular interaction is inversely related to tachyon decay. Because this is a function of which I have little knowledge, I am wary of further complicating the genome, but this seems unavoidable, so further research into this ‘energy’ is required. Discarding parasitic DNA has made room for some additions: a strengthened endoskeleton, the growth of an exoskeleton, and increased muscle density to support these. However, this is not enough. The hostile environmental parameters I have input necessitate a more efficient sensorium and concomitant growth in nerve tissue, and then there are the brain alterations required to support all the above. Complication of the genome is, unfortunately, inevitable, especially if I am to give my child the direct brain-interfacing ability. I had hoped that my pursuit of perfection would result in a simplification of the blueprint. I had hoped my child would possess the straightforward utility of a dagger.

The racket started before dawn and grew steadily louder and more persistent. Polly awoke clear-headed and full of energy — rather how she remembered waking in those days before the alcohol and drugs. The moment she threw back the covers the two slave girls from the night before entered her tent, bearing a bowl of warm water that contained steeped bunches of lavender, some wash cloths, a dress and sandals. When they started plucking at her clothing, she shooed them away and stripped herself. They gaped at the alien scale on her arm, which was even now webbing tension through her body. But she ignored them and cleaned herself from head to foot.

Sufficiently clean, Polly donned the dress and sandals, then turned her back to the two slaves as she transferred all the items from the pockets of her greatcoat to her hip bag, before cinching it around her waist. She then ran a comb through her wet hair and tied it back with a scrunchy, and the two then watched in fascination while she applied lipgloss and eyeliner. And, thus fortified against the world, she stepped past them into the raucous daylight.

The camp was in turmoil on this bright morning. All around her, legionaries and slaves were taking down tents and packing away equipment. Carts were loaded, canvas backpacks filled, as horses were saddled and fires put out. Polly turned and walked over towards the Emperor’s tent, two of the Praetorian guards who had ringed her tent throughout the night falling in behind her. His tent flap was opened for her by yet another guard, but she ducked in to find the interior empty. She turned and looked queryingly at the guards. One of them bowed to her first, then indicated a horse being led over by a bearded old man who smelled as if he had rolled himself in dung. Mounting the horse was awkward in the long dress, but she managed it with some dignity. He then led the horse through the encampment, two guards walking on either side.

Gazing around, Polly felt a surge of happiness. This morning held great clarity for her: the smells of the encampment and of the summer seemed so utterly real to her, the cacophony seemed inclusive of her, and all the colours so bright and immediate. Outside of the camp she proceeded between ranks of legionaries standing neat and silent below the hum of bees flying over the surrounding heath and the high clear song of skylarks. Coming at last to an open-sided pavilion, she dismounted, and entered to find Claudius was seated at a small desk, surrounded by various senior commanders.

‘Quid agis hodie, Furia?’ he asked, sharpening a quill. All conversation in the tent ceased at this greeting.

I think he’s decided you’re a demon now. He just asked about your health or some such. Probably doesn’t want you to keel over before you reach the sacrificial block.

‘You are a cheery bastard, aren’t you, Nandru?’ Polly grinned.

All the men present listened to her with polite puzzlement, then turned their attention to an approaching party of soldiers escorting four men to the Emperor’s presence. These four were certainly not Roman: their hair and beards were long and braided, their clothing brightly dyed in clashing colours, what scraps of armour they wore were daubed blue. They were also wearing a lot of gold jewellery. Polly at first took them to be captives, but this could not be so for they all carried shields and weapons. Halting some ten metres away from the pavilion, they laid their armaments on the ground before approaching. As if taking part in a historical interactive, Polly prepared herself to be entertained.

Come to negotiate peace terms with him, I reckon.

‘I suppose those pyres we saw yesterday were for the bodies of soldiers who died in some battle the Romans just won,’ murmured Polly, crossing her arms.

Claudius glanced up at the four barbarians and smiled crookedly. Several of his soldiers stepped in between the men and their weapons, then grabbed the four and dragged them before Claudius, where they were forced to their knees.

I don’t think they’ve heard about the Geneva Convention.

Polly’s stomach tightened, and in a second she felt suddenly very vulnerable. This stuff was real—she must never mistake it for entertainment. She glanced aside to where the remains of yesterday’s pyres were now nothing but black smears in the trampled grass. Turning back, she watched as Claudius stood up from behind his desk and walked forwards. He glanced at Polly and beckoned her over. Walking with a suddenly leaden stomach, Polly moved to his side.

‘Taedet me foederum, ruptorum,’ Claudius said abruptly, and made a cutting gesture with the flat of his hand. Watching, Polly could only think that this should not be happening: horror proceeding so easily into a glorious day. The soldiers shoved the men down on their faces, both captives and soldiers yelling loudly. Short swords, glinting in acid sunlight, rose and fell, red now streaming from their blades. The condemned took a long time dying, despite the repeated hacking. With bile rising in her throat, and an urgency to escape pulling ever tauter that tension webbing through her body, Polly watched one of the groaning victims dragging himself across the blood-soaked grass, the back of his jerkin split to expose butchered flesh and shattered bone. He finally became still when one soldier caught him a blow that opened the top of his head.

The gladius is a stabbing weapon. They could have killed them more quickly …

All Polly could wonder was why the skylarks were still singing. Ignoring whatever it was the Emperor was now pronouncing, she turned and began walking back towards the main camp.

Barbaric times: an Empire based on enslavement and slaughter.

‘Shut up with the fucking moralizing, Nandru. I’m not in the mood.’

No one tried to stop her progress, though she was surrounded by a desperate babble as she walked. Back at her own tent, she found her clothing hanging outside it on a wooden pole, fairly damp but clean. She hauled it from the pole and into the tent with her, where she quickly donned it, soon stepping back out into a morning now bearing the taint of the abattoir. Claudius and his guards were coming towards her, their pace limited by the Emperor’s limp. She stared at them for a moment, then turned to head in the opposite direction. Suddenly guards were all around her, blocking her way. Walnut crusher was amongst them, staring at her with vicious satisfaction. An order stammered from the Emperor had his men closing in tighter. Unlike the rest, walnut crusher was furtively drawing his sword. Polly opened her hip bag and groped inside, her hand closing on the handle of the automatic this time, rather than the taser.

‘How do I say, “I must return to hell”?’

Mihi redeundum in infernos.

The Emperor uttered something else and limped nearer. Walnut crusher glanced briefly at his imperial master, then closed in, obviously intent on his own agenda. Polly took quick aim and shot him once in the chest, the impact hurling him back into several of his comrades, then crashing to the ground. All the soldiers froze where they were. Polly stared down at the dead man.

‘And how do you say, “He is dead”?’

Mortuus est… Polly.

She turned to Claudius and repeated both statements. The Emperor fought to reply, but couldn’t manage it. Polly turned away, straight towards a wall of soldiers, who reluctantly parted to allow her through. She had put some distance between herself and them before they finally came to their senses. As the silence turned to an outcry behind her, she turned briefly to watch the squads of men running towards her. Placing the automatic back in her hip bag, she shifted again—and folded that bloody world away.

Saphothere’s face looked ravaged by fatigue as it turned to Tack in the light of prehistoric dawn. Removing one hand from the mantisal eye, he pointed out of the glassy construct towards the distant horizon. It took Tack a moment to drag his attention away from the ground just twenty metres below—Saphothere had promised dinosaurs and he was damned if he was going to miss seeing them.

For a moment Tack reflected that the sun appeared very strange here, until he realized that the sun was actually behind him and what he was seeing on the horizon was a titanic iron-grey sphere, misted by distance.

‘Sauros?’ Tack guessed.

Saphothere nodded briefly and returned his hand to the constructs eye. The mantisal jerked forward and began drifting towards the horizon.

‘Damnation!’ said Tack, when something he had first taken to be a lichen-covered boulder raised its shielded, horn-decorated head from grazing a low groundcover scattered with lush red flowers. It looked up with vague bovine curiosity, as it munched in its beak enough ferns to roof a jungle native’s hut.

‘Styracosaurus,’ explained Saphothere, glancing down. ‘They move into areas like this that have already been grazed down by the duckbills, and feed on the subsequent low growth. But this isn’t the time of the titanosaurs, so not every tree in sight gets flattened.’ He gestured to the many strange arboreal plants widely scattered across the landscape. Their trunks were very wide at the bottom, narrowing up to comparatively small heads of foliage.

‘What about tyrannosaurus rex?’ asked Tack.

‘Oh yes, he’ll be about somewhere.’

Tack returned to studying the ground below and realized that, after Saphothere’s latest comforting reply, the mantisal was descending.

‘Can’t you take us straight to the… city?’ he asked.

‘The mantisal’s natural environment is interspace. More than ten minutes in atmosphere would kill it.’

‘Coptic and Meelan flew theirs to Pig City,’ Tack told him. ‘Its structure became clouded first, then veined with something black.’

‘Nitrogen absorption,’ Saphothere explained. ‘Enough of that will kill a mantisal, but then the Umbrathane wouldn’t care about that—they regard mantisals as machines rather than living creatures.’

‘Do you consider this,’ he gestured at the hyaline cage enclosing them, ‘a living creature?’

‘I do. It is both manufactured and grown. Its genome forms the blueprint for most of its structure, but many other processes are involved. The final result is a living machine with about the intelligence of a dog, though that is not strictly true either, as the bulk of that intelligence is applied to dealing with senses and abilities no living creature on Earth has ever possessed.’

Tack reached out and touched the glassy structure. It was hard, yet there seemed a lightness to it. Deep within it he could see organic or advanced electronic complexity.

‘What’s it made of?’ he asked.

Saphothere glanced at him. ‘The main structure is a material manufactured since long before your time: aerogel—the lightest solid in existence then. It was originally used as an insulator. But, having a wide molecular matrix, there is room in it for the submolecular components you see. Underneath your hand is just one product of the unification of the sciences—call it bioelectronics or perhaps electrobionics. Maybe a good illustration would be for me to point out that Heliothane technological capabilities are of such scope that it is possible for us to grow a gun, an electric drill, or even a microwave oven.’

‘Oh,’ said Tack, unable to think of a more appropriate answer. He turned his attention back to the fast-approaching ground.

Seeing them close to, Tack realized that the red flowers were the product of vines spreading in a mat across the other ground-cover, and sometimes climbing the trunks of the trees. This vegetation was penetrated by cycads, tree ferns sprouting from wide stumps next to the decaying fallen cylinders of their original trunks, stands of more familiar shrubs, young giant horsetails spearing into the air, and dark green bushes like laurel but scattered with small yellow apples. Dropping from the mantisal, when it was low enough, he was glad to sink no further than to his ankles into a carpet of vines. Beside him Saphothere unshouldered his pack, while the mantisal fled back to its natural and chemically neutral environment.

‘So we walk?’ enquired Tack, fingering his seeker gun and scanning his surroundings suspiciously.

Saphothere merely glanced at him then squatted down and took from his pack a device that looked like a mobile phone fashioned of perspex, before being heated then twisted out of shape.

‘Your comlink?’ Tack asked.

‘No, my comlink is very similar to yours, though embedded in the bone behind my ear and with a subvocal transmitter linked into the temporal lobe of my brain.’

Tack reached up and touched his own ear stud. His comlink was solar-powered, so was necessarily external to his body. It operated by bone-induction, so any communication he received only he could hear, but any reply he made had to be spoken out loud in order to be picked up. He supposed he should be grateful this device had not been torn out of his ear lobe, considering all that had recently happened to him.

Saphothere opened out his phonelike device to expose two twisted screens, the lower of which switched on to show shifting virtual controls. He continued, ‘The defences of Sauros block external comlink communications because of the possibility of computer viral attack. This — ’ he held up the device—‘is an encoded tachyon transmitter imprinted to me. If anyone but me tries to operate it, they’d find themselves getting turned inside out through a vorpal singularity. The result is not pretty.’ His fingers followed the virtual controls, and the upper screen lit to show someone’s face. Saphothere addressed the face in the same language used by Coptic and Meelan, then he snapped the device shut.

‘What now?’ Tack asked.

‘Now we wait, if our friends over there allow us the opportunity.’

Saphothere pointed somewhere behind Tack, before returning the tachyon communicator to his pack. Whirling round, Tack saw three creatures approaching through the low vegetation, some hundred metres away. As these slim-boned dinosaurs moved, heads and tails extended horizontally, they stood no higher than a man’s waist, but every now and again they stopped to peer about them, raising their heads much higher. Their precise movements were reminiscent of herons, but their long hind legs were built for speed, their foreclaws for ripping apart living flesh, and though their heads were narrow and ophidian, they possessed mouths large enough to swallow the lumps they might rip from their prey.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Tack, remembering an interminable film series on dinosaurs. ‘Velociraptors?’

‘Wrong. The name for these in your own time is troodon, or wounding tooth. Velociraptors are quite smallish feather-covered egg thieves, so they would avoid us. Hopefully these will too, as they usually go for smaller prey.’

‘And if they don’t?’ Tack aimed his seeker gun at one of the advancing creatures, but the gun refused to acquire—its template being for human recognition only. Tack lowered it again and punched in the code to set a blank template. Flipping up the square sight he aimed at the leading one. A small grid flicked up in the square and froze the creature’s image, which told him that the template had been established and his target acquired. He then acquired each of the other two creatures in turn. Saphothere watched him with paternal amusement.

‘I never scanned that weapon of yours,’ he admitted. ‘How does the round guide itself into the target?’

‘The initial charge fires a cased round,’ said Tack. ‘The case is dropped when quite close to the target, then the explosive shell opens wings powered by synthemuscle. The target template is uploaded to a micromind in the shell—running a program that is a direct transcription from the mind of a wasp attacking a human.’

‘Interesting,’ said Saphothere, then raised his own little gun and pointed it at the vegetation between themselves and the approaching troodon. The weapon emitted a muzzle flash like that of a machine gun firing in darkness. Involuntarily, Tack staggered back, blinking away after-images, as a swathe of vegetation a couple of metres wide ignited as if soaked in petrol. Squawking and cawing, the hunting dinosaurs turned tail and ran.

Quickly holstering his weapon, Saphothere nodded towards Tack’s seeker gun. ‘You see, such surgical precision was not really required.’

Feeling foolish, Tack returned his weapon to its holster and, following the direction of Saphothere’s gaze, spotted an object approaching at speed from Sauros itself. Soon this resolved into a hemisphere of grey metal, its curved surface facing downwards. Soundlessly, it settled in towards them and landed. Running around the inside this object was seating, and at its centre a single column supporting a basketball-sized globe.

‘In,’ Saphothere instructed, and Tack clambered aboard.

Once seated, Saphothere reached over to the globe, which split like a flower head to reveal a hand-shaped indentation.

‘Wrong person puts his hand in this thing and the globe closes, snipping his hand off at the wrist,’ Saphothere lectured.

As the hemisphere rose into the air, he gestured over the side with his other hand. ‘Now a little fire would not have put him off.’

Looking over the side, Tack did not need anyone to tell him that he was seeing his first tyrannosaur. As the monster stepped delicately through the vegetation, tilting its enormous head from side to side to observe the rising pall of smoke, Tack felt a surge of joy at the sight, tempered with gratitude for not being at ground level. Here was a creature that even the andrewsarchus might flee.

‘Beware the jabberwock, my son,’ said Saphothere. ‘The jaws that bite, the claws that catch.’

Tack looked askance at him.

‘Beware the jub-jub bird, and shun,’ the traveller continued, ‘the frumious bandersnatch.’

Tack peered back at the ground, wondering if he might see such creatures.

After blacking out again because of lack of air, Polly felt a creeping horror that this would happen to her again and again, until someone or something killed her. There was an aching weariness in her and the flesh felt loose on her bones. But, as was usual, the hunger impelled her more than the need for rest. Pushing herself to her knees, she looked around. The surrounding marsh was still and eerie, and even though the sun was shining the air was cold and damp.

‘Where and when the hell am I now?’ she asked, her voice rough. ‘And why didn’t I grab some food before I shifted?’

If you’d taken time to grab some food, I suspect you’d have received open-heart surgery without the benefit of an anaesthetic. As to when we are, I suspect that each jump you make takes you back a multiple of the previous one, so this is certainly more than a thousand years before Claudius came across the Channel to slaughter the ancient Britons.

By now she realized there was no going forward again. This time, as a sensation much like huge acceleration took hold of her, she’d been able to sense, somehow, the direction she must go in order to travel forward in time. At the root of her being she had known that the scale could take her forward, but all effort to shift in that direction had been thwarted—as for a swimmer fighting against a riptide.

Finally finding the energy to stand, Polly was alarmed by a nauseating movement, until she realized she was standing on a mat of reeds that ringed a small island. Moving inwards to firmer ground, she glanced from side to side and all she could see was an expanse of water dotted with more islands. Licking the water soaked into the sleeve of her greatcoat she found it salt, so it seemed that not only was there no prospect of food here, but nothing to drink either.

‘I wonder if I could get this thing off,’ she said, running her hand over the surface of the scale, which was now utterly smooth to the touch.

Why? Do you want to stay here?

The minimum she wanted was to be back in her own time, with access to the comforts of civilization, but with her head as clear as it was now. But she was ambitious for more. She wanted the advantages ‘Muse Nandru’ gave her and continued use of the scale, so she could choose exactly where to travel in time.

‘Somehow I have to learn how to control it,’ she muttered.

An unlikely possibility. Monitoring your blood sugars has confirmed that it is some kind of parasite, and that basically for it you are only an energy source powering each of its leaps through time. That’s why you feel so hungry on each occasion—it burns away every available resource inside you. On the plus side, you’ll never get to be a size twelve.

‘Fucking ha-ha.’

Uh-huh, here come the natives.

Looking through Polly’s eyes, Nandru had spotted him first, for on one of the salty waterways a coracle was coming into sight. As it drew closer, Polly noted that the man sitting inside it was short and squat, with dark oily hair and a knotted brown body. He wore breeches of some kind of animal skin, a sleeveless top of rank-looking fur, round his throat a necklace of shells. Once he saw her, he immediately stopped paddling and snatched up a spear with a long serrated-bone blade. Gazing at him Polly wondered if this time might be the Stone Age. She had found that mentioned in an encyclopedia disc left behind in her apartment PC by the previous owners—a disc she had studied for a little while till growing bored and using it as a coaster.

‘Stone Age?’ she asked.

Probably, so watch yourself. This guy probably hasn’t heard of female emancipation.

She watched the intruder put down his spear, a look of infinite distrust still on his face, and take up his paddle to row the coracle closer. Wondering if it might now be judicious to take another jump through time, she tested the webwork lacing through her body, but received only a sluggish response. Reaching her island, the prehistoric man took up his spear again, probing the mat of reeds with its tip before stepping ashore. He gabbled something, in which Polly could identify no single word.

‘What did he say?’ she subvocalized.

My best guess would be, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I’m getting nothing through my translation programs.

The man repeated it louder and more insistently, gesturing first at her with his spear, then towards the coracle. He was eyeing her in a way she recognized and was strangely reassured by. At least his intentions were not entirely hostile. She gave him a smile and after a fleeting frown he smiled back. Retaining a half smile, she stepped forward, clutching at his arm to steady herself over the carpet of reeds, and climbed shakily into his coracle. The primitive followed her, and the coracle dipped alarmingly as he took his place. When he spoke again, she merely smiled at him again, but this now seemed to annoy him. He reached out, yanked her towards him, then pushed her down into the belly of the coracle, where he pressed one filthy possessive foot on her.

The Heliothane here were all beautiful, but in the same way as tigers—they were endowed with a grace and symmetry best admired from a safe distance. In one of the many narrow corridors leading outwards to the viewing windows, Tack encountered a goddess over two metres tall. Her skin was the colour of amber and possessed some of that gem’s translucence, her yellow hair intricately braided, and her eyes utterly weird—gold irises set off by black sclera. She wore clothing much like Saphothere’s: a long coat of black leather, loose trousers tucked into spear-toed boots, and a shirt of rough red canvas. What jewellery she wore—in her ears, around her neck, and threaded in her hair—was of polished bone. Gaping at her, Tack did not realize he was blocking her path, until, showing a flash of irritation, she slammed him into the wall and strode past. Winded, Tack continued on towards the windows, as directed by Saphothere, where thankfully there was more space to move.

Gazing out over the vista below, Tack first located the dying fire, then the tyrannosaur. The controls, set low in a corner of this particular window, were not so simple as Saphothere had suggested. Trying to track the moving virtual buttons, Tack managed to flick the window to infrared, which only worsened the view.

‘What are you trying to do?’

Tack froze. Thus far no one but Saphothere had spoken to him in his own language. Thus far he had found it prudent to avoid all other Heliothane. Apparently it had taken much persuading on Saphothere’s part to prevent some of these people from just cutting off Tack’s arm and lodging it somewhere safe. He turned round slowly.

Whereas most of the Heliothane that Tack had seen were tall and rangy, this man was of a more normal height, which he more than made up for in breadth, for his shoulders had to measure one full metre across. He wore a loose shirt and trousers of a material resembling thick white cotton. His skin in contrast was jet black, features negroid, and eyes mild brown. Tack also noticed that much of his exposed skin was laced with fine scars.

‘I’m trying to get a closer view of a tyrannosaurus out there,’ Tack replied.

The man humphed and reached out an arm as thick as Tack’s leg, which terminated in a boulder-crushing hand. Half expecting to receive a blow, Tack jerked back, but instead the man ran his fingers over the virtual controls, and the window flung up the required view of the creature outside, tracking it as it moved in its endless search for prey to chew on.

‘An impressive creature, but strictly speaking it has evolved only to exist within narrow parameters.’ He looked at Tack. ‘You realize that people of your time were misguided in their belief that tyrannosaurus was merely a carrion eater? That all came from their softening outlook on existence—a political correctness engendering the attitude that at their root all creatures are good. They were in fact right the first time: tyrannosaurus is a vicious predator that will rip apart anything that moves, usually to devour but sometimes for the fun of it.’

Tack grunted in understanding.

‘Another myth was that their front claws serve no purpose. Try telling a creature with a set of teeth like those that two handy toothpicks are useless. They like their meat fresh, not trapped decaying in their mouths.’

Gazing back at his companion, Tack noticed over his shoulder the tall woman he had earlier ‘bumped into’ entering the viewing area and heading in their direction. She appeared distinctly irritated. Noting the direction of Tack’s gaze, the big man looked round. Coming to a halt, the woman licked her lips nervously before starting to speak in the Heliothane language.

The man interrupted, ‘Tack here does not understand our language, Vetross, so to use it in front of him is impolite.’

The woman bowed her head. ‘My apologies, Engineer.’

‘So, tell me, what so urgently requires my attention?’

‘The spatial scroll extending… has will extend… stretch…’ Vetross paused before saying, ‘This is not a suitable language for the subject.’

‘The mind, like the body, requires exercise,’ said Engineer. ‘You are just using different muscles this time. Think about it for a moment, then continue.’ He turned to Tack. ‘Have you seen enough of your dinosaur?’

Tack nodded. In truth he could have watched the beast for hours, but he did not think this was the answer Engineer wanted, so Tack wasn’t about to argue.

Engineer continued, ‘When Vetross finally gets around to telling me her news, I suspect that Saphothere’s departure, and yours, will be brought forward. Do you know where he is at present?’

‘In the recovery ward.’ Tack removed from the pocket of his new coat the palm computer that had belonged to Coptic, and which Saphothere had reprogrammed specially for him. Once he opened it, the device—consisting of what appeared to be two sheets of smoked glass hinged together—displayed a map of the interior of Sauros. In one corner was a small icon of a control panel which, when touched, expanded to fill one half of the computer with a static virtual panel. Using this, Tack was able to confirm Saphothere’s location.

‘Ah, simple but exclusive of some useful information,’ said Vetross suddenly.

Both Tack and Engineer turned towards her.

She continued, ‘The energy dam in New London is functioning at full capacity and all abutments are field stable. We are ready for the shift. All that has to be decided is whether or not we maintain the one light-year span, or allow the one-third light-year extension.’

‘You see, it’s not so difficult. I will join you shortly to begin the shift.’

Vetross nodded sharply and, without even looking at Tack, moved off. Engineer turned back to him. ‘Tell Traveller Saphothere that I require him at abutment three.’

Tack risked, ‘What was all that about?’

Engineer smiled. ‘The energy required to shift Sauros back in time a hundred million years is now available. And, while making that shift, the tunnel’s span will become unstable, which is why you must go now.’

The big man turned and began sauntering away, adding over his shoulder, ‘Tell Saphothere not to delay. A solar flare could crack the dam, which would put the project back months in New London time, if that place were ever to survive the event.’

Following his map, Tack negotiated the corridors of Sauros, by travelling ramps and walkways whose floors flowed like mercury but somehow maintained a surface solidity. In the vast interior spaces of the city he observed massive walls of balconied dwellings, around which travel hemispheres buzzed like insects; immense machines labouring to some unknown purpose, but which caused some sort of inductive tug at his skin; huge ducts and conduits, and spaces curtained with nacreous energy fields. Everything was composed of metal, plastic and other manufactured materials, and all served a definite purpose. There were no statues, nothing built for simple aesthetics, no gardens, yet the place possessed an awesome functional beauty.

The recovery ward lay at the rear of one of the residential blocks, its panoramic windows overlooking a well, at the bottom of which rested a machine consisting of what appeared to be randomly cut concentric gear rings shifting against each other, as if searching for some final combination. Every time they shifted it seemed as if the very air changed all its directions of flow and some force pulled at Tack’s insides. Saphothere lay on a metal slab, pipes conducting his blood from a plug in the side of his chest to a wheeled machine nearby—which, so Saphothere had informed Tack, cleaned out the poisons and directly added nutrients along with complex enzymes that accelerated tissue repair and the growth of fat cells, so in effect Saphothere was being endowed in just a few hours with what would otherwise have needed days of rest and sustenance. As soon as Tack entered the room, Saphothere opened his eyes and glared at him.

‘I told you to keep yourself occupied for five hours,’ he said.

Tack told him of his encounter by the viewing windows.

‘Engineer?’ Saphothere sat bolt upright, then leant over and made an adjustment to the revitalization machine. After a moment its pipes were clear of his blood, then one of them filled up with some emerald fluid. Saphothere gasped in pain, picked up a wad of white material from an inbuilt dispenser, waiting until the emerald fluid cleared, then yanked all the tubes from his chest, slapping the wad quickly into place to soak up any spill of blood. None of this surprised Tack now. His surprise had been earlier, when Saphothere, without assistance, had opened up his shirt, placed the plug against his chest, and explained through gritted teeth how its connection heads were now digging inside him, searching for his pulmonary and ventricular arteries. It seemed Saphothere had no time for anaesthetics or the ministrations of a nurse, had there been one in evidence.

‘I take it he is an important man?’ asked Tack.

‘He’s the Engineer,’ said Saphothere, as if that was all the explanation required. He swung his legs off the slab, kicked away the wheeled device, which rolled back to the wall, sealed up his shirt and stood. ‘I would have liked more time here, but it seems your education will begin sooner than expected.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I will not be flying the mantisal all the way to New London.’

Even Ygrol, the toughest and most dangerous member of the Neanderthal tribe, was tired and knew he was fighting a losing battle. The aurochs he had killed would keep his fellows supplied with food for some time yet, but no matter how much meat he brought to the encampment, his people were still weak and incontinent, blinded by the blisters around and on their eyes, still dying. Only Ygrol was still physically untouched by this terrible malady, though it hurt him in many other ways.

Inside the yurt he wrapped the dead girl in a tanned goat fur to keep her warm for the journey and began sewing it shut. He did this because it was always how the dead should be honoured, though he would not bury her, for the one on the mountain demanded the corpses. After dragging her outside the yurt, he first went over to check that the stew, in its hide pot over the fire, contained sufficient water, for without it soaking through the hide, the pot would burn and the contents spill into the flames. From the other yurts he could hear the moaning and the demands for water and food, but ignored them—that they were making a noise meant they were still alive. Returning then, he threw the girl’s corpse over his shoulder and walked back through the forest towards the mountain, where it awaited.

Nothing seemed to satisfy the monster, and Ygrol had tried every means at his disposal. It had taken the remains of the mammoth meat from the storage cave, and twice took his kill when he left it unguarded for but a moment. He thought perhaps to satisfy it with the gift of other sacrifices, and so began killing the flat-faced outsiders for it, and dragging them to the mountain. But that seemed to make no difference at all. Now all it seemed he could do was make his people as comfortable as he could while they died, then take their bodies to the mountain as offerings. But then what, when they were all dead?

The gift still rested on the stone where the tribe had butchered smaller carcasses and spread out hides for scraping and, sometimes, the need to go and take it up nearly outweighed Ygrol’s duty to his people. But he knew that to do so would somehow take him away from them. He knew that the creature on the mountain wanted this of him. But he dared not leave the tribe with no one to provide for them.

Something thudded against the goatskin wrapping the girl, and he thought a carrion bird had just dive-bombed him. He pulled his bone club from his belt and looked around at the trees. Then he saw the two flat-faces running towards him, and glanced aside to see the arrow penetrating the sad parcel over his shoulder.

Ygrol considered fleeing. He did not have his spear, and he knew just how lethal were the flimsy-looking weapons these people carried. But to run he would need to leave the girl and, even though he was taking her to give to the monster, he would not leave her to these excuses for human beings. Pulling her lower, so she rested across his chest, he roared and charged. Another arrow thudded into his package, went through the girl’s leg and just penetrated his chest. The bowman was down on one knee, struggling to string another arrow as Ygrol hammered into him, smashing him aside with one sweep of the club, his head split right open and his brain almost completely out of his skull. Not pausing, Ygrol continued after the other man as he fled. He threw his heavy bone club at the back of the man’s legs to bring him down, then was on him in a moment, and did not put down the corpse of the girl as he stamped the life out of this upstart Cro-Magnon. On the mountain he left his two victims on either side of the girl to assist her on her journey, then headed home, trying to figure out how to work the bow and arrows he had taken.

Back at the encampment it did not take long for the Neanderthal to know that something was badly wrong. First he smelt burning meat, then, upon walking into the clearing, heard no one moaning. The stew hide had been torn open and emptied and the smell arose from the few small pieces of meat in the fire. The yurts had likewise been torn open and emptied—all that was left inside them was the occasional bloody animal skin. Ygrol shrieked his rage and ran to leap up onto the butcher stone. He cursed the gods of sky, rock and earth and damned the spirits of all the ancestors who looked down from their fires in the night sky. And as if in reply, the very air over the encampment split and the mountain monster appeared, but this time nothing was hidden. Ygrol saw then the spirit of every animal he had slaughtered for the pot and knew some accounting was due. He looked down at the gift, where it rested between his feet, considered smashing it with his club, but then picked it up.

Deep in the forest the Cro-Magnon men heard a scream of defiance and rage from the Neanderthal encampment they were encircling. But they never found the one who had murdered so many of their tribe. Not even bones.