Cowl

by Neal Asher

  The whole place was packed with service floors and ducts, and it seemed that much rebuilding was in progress. The next man Tack came upon was supervising two spider-like robots welding plates over a long gap in the pipe running down one side of a corridor. This was the main corridor leading to Tack’s destination, and by trying to circumvent him Tack knew he could get lost in this warren. With handgun levelled, he approached.

  The man did not even look round, but said, ‘It is going to take two hours—no less, no more.’

  Tack shot him through the back of the head, then picked him up and shoved him into the gap remaining in the pipe. The robots proceeded to plate over the corpse regardless. But such luck could not continue.

  Another male umbrathant, driving a small vehicle towing a trailer stacked with struts made of vorpal glass, came around a bend, suddenly catching Tack with no place to hide. Tack hit him with a fusillade of pulses, throwing the man backwards out of his seat. The vehicle swerved into the wall, then skidded along to crash into a pillar, the trailer shedding its load in a racket of clanging glass. Tack spotted no one ahead, but behind him three Umbrathane came rushing out of a side tunnel.

  Then it really started.

  Tack tossed a handful of mini-grenades behind him as he ran. Spots glowed on the wall of the turning ahead, and he felt the superconducting mesh of his suit absorb rapid heating. He dropped, rolled aside in the stink of burning plastic, fired back. The first of them came over the grenades as they blew, flinging him up into the air along with some floor panels. Tack next pulled one of the larger grenades, already set for proximity detonation, pressed it against the wall low down, and ran around the corner. Now, because he might not find another chance, he yanked up a floor panel and dropped the second tactical below—its setting again for one hour. Ahead of him, more Umbrathane. He fired at them with both carbine and handgun, seeing one turned into a jerking bloody rag while the other rolled away for cover. Into a side corridor, running as the big grenade went off, blowing a wall of fire towards his back. Then he found himself where he wanted to be: out on a platform, with the inner face of the citadel curving in below him towards the central sphere, which was supported between four cylindrical pillars, each nearly as wide as it, with tangles of broad pipes spreading out like a web from its underside.

  Tack dropped onto the curving slope below him and slid down it. A figure appeared to his left on another platform. Tack flung himself sideways as shattered metal erupted in a line along the slope, flung himself forwards, then siderolled again. Again that eruption. Then he reached one of the pipes and swung himself round it. More Umbrathane emerging on platforms. As they dropped down after him, he slapped a catalyser against the incline, set for full dispersement, and had the satisfaction of seeing them unable to stop their descent as the fire-rimmed hole spread up towards them. But no time to gloat: he hit the pillar with another catalyser, stepped behind a pipe for cover, firing at any movement he could see, while the device did its work.

  Shots were coming now from all directions, slamming into the pipe and hammering the metal floor behind him, metal splinters whickering and hissing past him. He was now pinned down, but only briefly. Tossing down a field generator, he dived for the growing gap in the pillar just as the generator flung up its electrostatic wall. He dropped inside it, caught at a briefly glimpsed rail, and hauled himself up an access stair before the fusillade followed him inside. Hearing movement below, he dropped the last of his mini-grenades then set another proximity device against the wall to take out any pursuers. He continued climbing fast, entering a corridor that accessed the sphere. Here on the wall he set another grenade, this one for proximity with timed delay. Then into the sphere, where huge machines loomed in darkness, walkways spiralling around its interior wall, others reaching in towards the machines.

  A dark figure was standing perfectly still on the floor below.

  Cowl.

  Tack felt a sudden stab of some unfamiliar emotion, which it took him a moment to identify as fear. He opened up with both weapons, turning the entire vicinity of the motionless figure into a chaos of explosions and smoking metal. But the figure just stood there, striations of rainbow light running all around it. Then a large, sharp-fingered black hand reached over Tack’s shoulder and snatched away his carbine.

  Tack dived to one side, came up firing his handgun. Cowl?

  But then his attacker was gone and Tack was firing only into the falling wreckage of the carbine. Glancing over, he saw that the dark figure was still standing below. Doppelgänger, was his first thought, then it hit him like lead: time travel. Why hadn’t they prepared him for this? But there was no time now for questions.

  Movement underneath the walkway, a beetle head coming up beside him. He fired at it and it disappeared. He slapped down a grenade as he leapt away in the opposite direction. But Cowl was suddenly coming over the rail ahead of him before the grenade exploded behind Tack. Shooting again, the new arrival going up the wall and along it above him, fast. While tracking it with fire, he glimpsed the one on the floor below him disappearing. Then a hand hard as iron slammed into his back, driving him over the rail.

  Tack knew then that he was dead. Cowl had supreme control in this place—possessing enough energy here to short-jump and avoid a short-circuit paradox. Tack spun around and fired as he fell, noticed the amber warning light on his gun but kept on firing until it flicked to red as it emptied.

  Over a rail further below, a hand reached out and caught him, pulled him in and flung him down on the walkway floor. Cowl walked towards him. Tack flung a shield generator out as he back-flipped to his feet and turned to flee. He drew his seeker gun and emptied its magazine, firing ahead. A second Cowl came over the rail ahead, while the other one was somehow walking round the shields behind Tack. Seeker bullets were homing in like a swarm of bees on the second figure. There followed a blurring motion of hands, and bullets were thwacking to the walkway, where they detonated. But one, just one, missile exploded on the black carapace.

  This ended the game.

  One black hand closed around Tack’s throat from behind, and he was slammed up against the wall while, with such viciousness it broke bones and tore skin, the other one ripped away his harness, suit and all his weapons. Then Cowl flung him naked onto the grated floor. Sharp fingers then descended, piercing Tack’s chest before closing, as Cowl picked him up like a cluster of empty milk bottles. Tack tried to fight back until Cowl swung his head against a wall and knocked all resistance out of him. As his consciousness waxed and waned, Tack thought it about time for him to die—but death was not a mercy Cowl intended to allow him.

  THE UMBRATHANE CAME AND searched the house while Aconite stood with her unequal arms folded, silently watching them. When the search was completed with concision and efficiency, the leader emerged to stand before Aconite. Makali was a sour woman and Polly supposed this was because both her arms were obviously prosthetic, which meant she did not possess the regenerative gene and was thus an inferior type of umbrathant. In Polly’s own time she would have been regarded as an exotic beauty, with her perfect white skin, black hair and lavender eyes; and also as a prize athlete with her future-human speed and strength. But in Umbrathane terms even Aconite was genetically her superior.

  ‘You are inviolable,’ said the woman in the Heliothane language.

  ‘That is my brother’s conceit,’ replied Aconite.

  To Polly, Nandru said, Those explosions. Something shook them up last night, but it certainly wasn’t an outright Heliothane attack, else we’d be sitting on a radioactive wasteland now.

  From where she was sitting, with her knees pulled up against her chest, Polly subvocalized, ‘Probably a little internecine conflict. The Umbrathane always want to sort out which of them can piss the highest.’

  The woman waved her stumpy carbine at Polly and her four companions, who sat in a tight group. ‘But these are not.’

  Aconite slowly shook her head. ‘What happened?’

  �
�An assassin: a twenty-second-century human coming in by tor.’ The woman turned and stared hard at Polly for a moment. ‘But a human with Heliothane augmentations. We can only suppose some tor fragment was regenerated, as all the active tors are accounted for.’

  ‘What about future tors?’ Aconite asked mildly.

  This really seemed to annoy the woman. Her face flushed and she looked ready to strike Aconite, but controlled the impulse.

  ‘You know that’s impossible. Concurrent future probability came under temporal interdiction the moment Cowl made the big jump. There is not enough energy in the universe.’

  Do you understand any of this?

  ‘You have to think shallow so as not to tie yourself in knots. I’m just not yet able to think in circles, but it’s like Aconite said: the rule of entelechy must be applied always.’

  Entelechy shmelecky. It just doesn’t make fucking sense.

  ‘We’re here, aren’t we?’

  ‘Was it Cowl’s idea for you to come and search my house?’ Aconite asked Makali.

  At this the woman showed discomfort. ‘He would never object to such precautions.’

  ‘So it wasn’t his idea …’ Aconite now stared at her for a moment before going on. ‘My brother, not being the soul of patience or trust, has an automatic system set to obliterate any tor and its bearer who fall outside the trap. I saw the missile fired by that system two days ago. That usually means the tor has malfunctioned, or someone else has got through who should not have. I also saw the recent explosions inside the citadel. Obviously some assassin arrived and went in directly to carry out his task. So … why are you searching my house?’

  ‘You will not always be inviolable. One day Cowl will tire of your interference, and that will be a day I enjoy.’ The woman turned away abruptly, her companions falling in behind her as she marched back down to the river, where a hover-sled awaited.

  Aconite gestured to the four rescuees seated with Polly, indicating that they could go about their tasks. Polly she called over.

  ‘Go with Tacitus and watch the citadel. If anything is ejected, I have no doubt that it will be very dead, and possibly not even intact, but I want as much as possible of the corpse brought here.’

  ‘What do you expect to find?’ Polly had often brought back corpses for Aconite’s forensic inspection, for Cowl’s sister was looking for the same things as he was, though for different reasons.

  ‘Makali perhaps revealed more than Cowl would like when she talked of regenerated tor fragments and Heliothane augmentations. This is a great opportunity for me to assess the extent of concurrent Heliothane technology, and perhaps to learn what might ensue in the coming years.’

  ‘The Nodus?’ said Polly. The start of that pivotal time was approaching, and though Cowl’s huge geothermal taps were providing him with massive energy, they would not provide even one per cent of the amount required to jump him back behind the Nodus again. As Polly understood it, Cowl had used the torbeast to generate the vorpal energies required to push him behind the Nodus the first time, and that process had also required the energy from the fusion obliteration of Callisto, a moon of Jupiter.

  ‘Quite, the Nodus.’

  ‘What do you expect?’ Polly asked.

  ‘The city you saw during your journey. As we discussed before, it is no doubt the terminus of a wormhole and as such will be used as an energy source for the Heliothane, and a base from which to launch their attack against my brother. It is now a critical time. Thus far he has failed to discover the source of the omission paradox, and failed to affect the future in any way. At the Nodus this may change, and that is also the time the Heliothane will consider him the greatest danger to them. They will devote every resource they can to stopping him.’

  Thote had told Polly that Cowl was trying to destroy the future, thus promulgating the theory that Cowl wanted a time-line occupied only by his own kind. Aconite claimed not to know if this was what the Heliothane truly believed, or if it was a lie to excuse their aggression. The real reason for Cowl’s actions, Polly had since learnt from Aconite, was somewhat more complicated. She studied the Heliothane woman closely, realizing that something was being left unsaid—that Aconite knew more than she was letting on.

  ‘I see,’ Polly replied, then went to fetch Tacitus. As she walked away, she was also aware of how Aconite always made reference to ‘the Heliothane’ as if she herself was not a member of that race. And still, after all this time, Polly did not know in which camp Aconite’s loyalties lay.

  HIS ADRENALIN HIGH FADING, Tack began to realize just how badly injured he was and began to feel the pain. His right shoulder was dislocated; certainly some of his ribs were broken, since he could feel them shifting as Cowl carried him like a sack of shopping to the floor below, each of the preterhuman’s sharp fingers penetrating through Tack’s intercostal muscle. His left ankle had snapped as his boots were torn away, and his skull fractured when Cowl had slammed him against the wall. But unconsciousness did not result, since that was a luxury denied him by his Heliothane programming. Unconsciousness served no purpose, for they wanted him functional to the last moment of life. They had not seen fit to remove his ability to feel pain, however, as that did serve a purpose.

  When they reached the lower floor, Tack saw several armed umbrathants departing in response to a silent instruction from Cowl. It occurred to him then that the Heliothane, as well as not providing him with suitable weapons to take a distance shot at this monster, had not provided him with any way of taking his own life in the event of capture. He knew what was coming now, something invariably enacted in all situations of this nature: he would be interrogated mercilessly.

  Cowl dumped him on the gridwork floor, then seemed to lose interest in him for the moment—walking over to a vorpal control and pressing his hand into its oblate shimmering surface. Tack peered down at his chest and watched blood trickling out. No artery had been severed so a welcome death would not come that way. Perhaps he could press a finger in, locate such an artery … but the thought dispersed like mist almost as soon as it arose. Instead he scanned his surroundings.

  There were closed doors all around, but he doubted he could ever manage to reach them, let alone open one. Nearby the floor sloped down to some sort of disposal tunnel cut down into darkness. He stared at this, confused by the conflicting impulses within him. The possibility of escape arose, but dispersed again.Then Cowl was back, standing over him, in one hand holding two objects: the tactical nukes.

  ‘They thought to kill me with you?’

  The voice was sibilant and seemed to issue from the air around the dark being. Then Cowl came forward in a movement so fast it deceived the eye, closed a hand around Tack’s throat and jerked him upright. Tack groaned in an agony of grating bones and bruised organs. Glancing down, he saw the two nukes bouncing across the floor, their casings breaking open. Looking up again, he watched Cowl’s face before him, glistening black, and utterly smooth until a dividing line appeared in it. Then the cowl split, and hinged open at either side, to reveal the nightmare underneath.

  The black eyes were lidless, and a double set of mandibles opened before a mouth containing rows of spadelike teeth. Between mouth and eyes, other organs spilled hair-thin tentacles, small grasping spatulae, and sliding scales of chitin briefly revealing red cavities and other soft, unidentifiable things that quivered eagerly.

  Tack tried to pull away, but he might as well have been fighting a moving iron statue. The horror pulled him closer, turned his head aside, and came down on the side of his face. He felt the mandibles sawing into his neck and cheek. With a sharp popping and grinding, something forced its way into his ear, adding a new hurt to the ever-growing waves of pain surging through his body. He screamed and tried again to struggle, but some hard probe hit a nerve, rolling out such incandescent agony that his arms and legs were paralysed. Tack screamed repeatedly until something ripped into the back of his neck and connected to his interface plug, switching off that ability
in him. Then the horror only increased as Tack felt his mind being taken apart, and each part of it thoroughly scrutinized.

  Memory after memory rose up for Cowl’s inspection. Tack relived the moment of first awareness: a child with the mind of a killer and a hard-wired loyalty. Mission after mission was replayed: the killings, the frame-ups, the interrogations and beatings, but to Cowl they seemed worth only a brief scan. All events concerning the tor were scrutinized thoroughly, however, and Tack sensed Cowl’s acid amusement over all that had occurred just before Tack’s first shift back in time. As this forensic study continued, Tack felt Cowl begin delving through his U-gov programming, and the subsequent Heliothane programming: ripping great holes through them, dumping large portions of them as irrelevant, studying some sections and breaking them down into their smallest elements.

  Traveller had initially beaten him into insensibility, this and subsequent events Cowl watched very closely. Flashes of black humour invaded Tack’s consciousness as some of the lies he had been fed were revealed. Tack began to see how he had been cunningly primed for this mission right from the beginning. How blackly painted were the Umbrathane and Cowl, and how saintly the Heliothane in their mission to save the world. A flare of anger shot through to Tack when the destruction of Pig City was observed. And then Saphothere’s subsequent history lecture was turned on its head as Tack absorbed Cowl’s viewpoint: the Heliothane pushing for dominance over the independent Umbrathane polities; Cowl being forced to use his immense abilities in the service of the Heliothane, under threat of being destroyed because of his genetic variance, even though that rendered him physically and mentally superior to all Heliothane themselves; Cowl then giving the Umbrathane an escape route; and his own escape to beyond the Nodus. But Tack did not understand the dark being’s hollow laughter in reaction to the Heliothane assertion that he was trying to eliminate human history.

  Later, in Sauros, Cowl replayed every conversation, every image; gathering useful data for attack, for a means to crush. In New London the same, where Tack felt the last of Pedagogue’s programming of him being pulled out by its roots and studied intensively. One conversation between Tack and Saphothere particularly held Cowl’s interest: