Cowl

by Neal Asher

  ‘ … Tap and wormhole are inextricably linked and neither, once created, can be turned off. There is, in fact, no physical means of turning off the sun tap as the antigravity fields that sustain its position also focus the beam—as I mentioned—but if you did, the wormhole would collapse catastrophically and Sauros would be obliterated by the feedback. Also, if the wormhole was independently collapsed, the energy surge would vaporize New London. The project was therefore a total commitment.’

  Cowl then spent an age with the image of Maxell before angrily dropping it.

  Back in Sauros Cowl observed the torbeast invade from the other side.

  Throughout all this the progressively ravaged elements of Tack’s mind dropped back into some mental abyss, devoid of motive beyond those any human is naturally born with, and devoid of programming. There they reconnected—first with the imperatives of survival, then with the untainted yearning for true freedom.

  Subliminally Tack felt a loop generated as Cowl found something important in a conversation and viewed it again and again.

  Palleque: ‘Three hours earlier and Cowl would have really fucked us over. The torbeast won’t be getting through now we’re up to power again.’

  Saphothere: ‘The push?’

  Palleque: ‘Yeah. Like riding the top of a fountain and everything gets scrambled. The constant energy feed can’t be switched, so the capacitors have to be drained to the limit before we can shut off and stabilize. Took us an hour this time before we could even get the defence fields back up.’

  Then Cowl’s vicious amusement at Saphothere’s reply: ‘I don’t think I need to hear any more of this.’

  Tack’s foot suddenly hit the floor, and pain howled up from his broken ankle, but he was too physically drained even to scream. He tumbled over on his side, the taste of blood in his mouth, as Cowl turned away, his face closing. On some unconscious level Tack realized the being now had what it wanted, as it left Tack’s mind to fall like snow through darkness.

  Escape was now an instinctive goal for Tack, where previously his programming had not allowed it. He pushed himself up onto one elbow, the inside of his head feeling sand-blasted and nothing making any sense. With blurred vision he observed that Cowl was back at his vorpal control, the air above which shimmered and split on a nightmarish living landscape. Operating on a wholly animal level, Tack dragged himself backwards, reached the slope in the floor and stared down at the tunnel. Pushing himself over the edge, he immediately slid down its frictionless surface, grunting with pain as his shoulder hit the rim of the tunnel and he plummeted into it. A brief descent through darkness opened into bright yellow light, and the golden glitter of the sea below. As Tack fell, he bounced on a ledge and groped for purchase, but found none and went over, finally hitting the sea flat on. The sharp pain in his chest he recognized as a rib penetrating his lung. Sinking, he had no breath to hold, so breathed sea water instead. His only coherent thought as he drowned was triumphant:

  I have escaped.

  ENGINEER GORON STARED AT the ‘CELL SECURITY SHUTDOWN’ signal in one of his control spheres, until it disappeared, then he removed his hands from the control pillar and gazed around the control room of Sauros, noting how his staff had been depleted. The loss of Vetross, irretrievably murdered by Cowl, had been unexpected, even though Goron had expected casualties. Two of the direct-link technicians had been pulled dead from their vorpal connect-ware after the subsequent torbeast attack. And now Palleque, formerly his most trusted aide, was in a cell awaiting an interrogation that Goron was apparently putting off. At least Silleck was still with him and the personnel replacements seemed competent enough. He returned his attention to the control pillar.

  The energy levels were already up to eighty per cent of requirement, and he calculated that they would be ready to shift Sauros very soon. All the field frequencies which Palleque had access to had been subsequently changed, and all weapons systems had since been moved to a separate circuit, so as not to be dependent on the power tap on the wormhole itself.

  ‘How long?’ he asked Silleck.

  ‘One hour and fourteen minutes. Are we going for an extension this time?’ asked the woman, who was enclosed in vorpal tech.

  ‘Yes: one third of a light year.’

  ‘Good. We were pushing it last time.’

  Goron turned his attention to the man now sitting at Palleque’s console. ‘Theldon, is everything stable?’

  ‘It is, Engineer,’ the man replied without looking round.

  ‘And everyone is now aware of the location of their nearest displacement generator?’

  At this, Theldon looked round. ‘We are … you are expecting trouble?’

  ‘That last torbeast attack was a little too close to our vulnerable time. I think we managed to stop Palleque from passing on that we do have a vulnerable time, but it is best to be cautious.’

  ‘That’s all right for all of you,’ grumbled Silleck. ‘You don’t have to detach vorpal interface nodes before hitting the generator. Anything goes wrong and I doubt I’ll get the time.’

  Goron winced. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said, putting as much confidence in his voice as he could. ‘Now, keep an eye on things for the moment. I have something I need to do, but I shouldn’t be away long.’

  He turned away from his control column and headed for the lift platform, aware that his fellows were watching him curiously. Dropping down from the control room, he felt like a traitor.

  Via moving walkways and ramps he quickly reached one of the supply centres that dotted Sauros, observing as he went the city’s various citizens about their various tasks. He had a bitter taste in his mouth because what he had set in motion so long ago was now coming to fruition. Reality now bore a hard edge.

  The supply-centre door opened when he palmed the lock, without requiring further confirmation of identity. Inside he walked along the racks of replacement items needed for the many different systems the city contained, until he came to a rack of empty containers—empty all bar one. This, too, opened when he palmed it, and inside rested a single device. It was heavy, the shape of a transformer with rounded edges, and it fitted his palm. He took it out, weighing it in his hand, then slipped it into his belt pouch before exiting the supply centre.

  Further transit of walkways and ramps finally brought him to a residential section of the city. The door he sought was different from all those which opened automatically as soon as their residents approached, being heavily armoured and its frame recently welded into place. Reaching it, he again pressed his hand against the lock and to his satisfaction received no reaction. He took out a small key and inserted it into the manual lock beside the security lock. One turn and the door whoomphed off its seals. He dragged it open, stepped inside, and quickly closed it behind him, before turning to the apartment’s only resident.

  ‘I noticed the security system go offline,’ said Palleque, banging a fist against the mesh that covered the single window out of which he was gazing. Just an hour earlier the charge the mesh was carrying would have thrown him across the room. ‘I wondered if you expected me to try and escape.’ Palleque still did not look round. ‘Had I tried, I doubt I’d have survived long out there. It would seem a lot of my fellow Heliothane dislike me and they wonder why you are delaying the interrogation.’

  ‘Ostensibly I am too busy with organizing our push into the Triassic. Anyone not satisfied with that explanation would put my delay down to a certain squeamishness.’

  Palleque turned at last. ‘The push … it is imminent?’

  ‘One hour, even less now.’

  Palleque let out a tense breath. ‘Then it will soon be over.’

  ‘Not for you.’ Goron removed the device from his belt pouch, and put it down on the single table before Palleque’s couch.

  ‘Displacement generator. What location?’

  ‘The same as all others now,’ Goron replied.

  ‘That is risky and may give the game away.’

  ‘A risk I
am prepared to take.’

  ‘But am I? The torbeast swept up my sister as if she was nothing, and I am prepared to die to exact vengeance.’

  Goron stared at him directly. ‘Yes, I know your commitment.’ His gaze strayed down to Palleque’s arm, then his hand.

  Palleque glanced at the dressing, then held up his hand covered in a surgical mitten. ‘For veracity, as always, it had to be done. I’ll heal soon enough as I have the rejuvenation gene, though I never expected to have the chance to do so. Let’s hope you didn’t underdo things by not killing me outright.’

  ‘We are now not long away from that point when all such subterfuge will be irrelevant. I have no doubt that already Cowl has extracted the required information from the torbearer. Now all that remains is for us to perform our duty at this end.’

  Palleque came over and picked up the displacement generator. ‘I’m surprised you had any of these to spare.’

  ‘I made sure there was one,’ replied Goron. He waved a hand around Palleque’s erstwhile apartment—now his cell. ‘You deserve better than to die here.’ He turned to go.

  ‘Goron,’ said Palleque, halting the Engineer’s departure. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Let us hope that is something we don’t need too much of,’ Goron replied as he left the cell.

  18

  Palleque:

  As if he too would not sacrifice his life to that end, my brother Saphothere feels I too fanatically seek to avenge the death of our sister, Astolere. That I have become Cowl’s agent he attributes to Coptic and Meelan. But those two are not really accepted by the other Umbrathane. It is fortunate that my ostensible fanaticism prevents him from asking further questions. I was always Cowl’s agent, and have remained in communication with him. The destructive war between Umbra and Heliothane is an utter waste, and I considered the preterhuman the ideal candidate to rule us all. It was I who passed on the displacement technology to the Umbrathane, to enable them to escape Heliothane oppression, and much else have I done. Cowl was suspicious at first but, upon discovering that I supposedly did not know what had happened to my sister, concocted the story that she, along with the entire population of Callisto, is with him behind the Nodus. I was wrong: Cowl is too careless of human life to rule us. And at the least he must be made powerless—the very least.

  WHEN THEY GOT HIM ashore and Tacitus started work on getting the water out of his lungs, Polly stepped back, her hand dropping to her taser in its waterproof pouch at her hip, then sliding across to the sheath knife beside it. Tacitus did not notice this movement as the rescuee now coughed sea water and blood from his lungs and the Roman, as he had been taught, turned him into the recovery position.

  ‘It is surprising that this man is still alive,’ commented the Roman—in the Heliothane language they all now spoke after an instructive session connected to Aconite’s Pedagogue machine. Tacitus then grabbed hold of the man’s arm, putting a foot in his armpit then pulling and twisting, relocating his shoulder joint. The rescued man groaned, fell back into his prior position and curled up his legs.

  ‘His name is Tack. He is the man I told you about a while ago—the killer I dragged back with me for a few shifts,’ Polly told him.

  Speaking out loud through a link established to Wasp shortly after Polly’s rescue, Nandru interjected, ‘And now things become clear. You recollect that a piece of your tor, in its still nascent stage, was left embedded in this U-gov bastard’s wrist?’

  ‘I still can’t see what’s worth saving here,’ said Polly.

  ‘Things have changed and we all know so much more,’ said Tacitus, looking up. ‘I would even save enemies of Rome, here and now, should they survive Cowl’s ungentle ministrations.’

  ‘You hear that, Polly?’ Nandru asked. ‘I hope so, because I’ve just informed Aconite that friend Tack here is still alive. Come on, you know U-gov assassins aren’t my favourite playmates, but I damned well want to hear what this one has to say for himself.’

  Polly let her hand slip away from her knife, not exactly sure what emotion she was feeling. There was anger, yes, for earlier this man had been intent on killing her, but that anger was no longer a savage thing within her. Where, in the end, would she be now without Nandru and then this one? Rotting in her bedsit, and perhaps moving onto the needle like Marjae had, blowing U-gov officials in back alleys when not being screwed up against a wall, dropping her price as the goods became more shoddy. The more she thought about it, the more ambivalent her feelings became.

  ‘Come on, let’s get him onto Wasp,’ she decided abruptly.

  For Polly only, Nandru said, Of course, I don’t think he’ll live that much longer if Cowl or the Umbrathane realize he’s still alive. And if they don’t know yet, they can find out soon enough.

  Between them, Polly and Tacitus picked up Tack and dropped him into Wasp’s rear compartment. Studying him, Polly saw that his injuries were extensive. He certainly had a compound fracture of his ankle, for bone was sticking out of his flesh. Deep wounds in his chest were seeping blood, and the medscanner Tacitus had pressed against his neck showed his vital signs on the wane. But it was unlikely he would die irrecoverably because, even if his heart stopped, Wasp possessed the facility to plug into a person’s neck and keep an oxygenated haematic fluid circulating around the brain, which was all Aconite needed to maintain someone’s life—other repairs she could perform in her surgical facility.

  They headed back towards their hostess’s home, glancing back occasionally to check for any activity apparent in Cowl’s citadel, but all remained quiet out on the sea as if, having spat out the indigestible remains of some meal, the place was now contemplating what to eat next. As they reached her home, Aconite and the others came out to meet them.

  ‘Another man,’ snorted Cheng-yi, before heading back inside.

  Lostboy stared long and hard at Tack before something seemed to go click in his mind. He jerked his head up, pointing out to sea. ‘The beast.’ They all turned to look.

  Polly had wondered at the earlier stillness and now realized why. The Umbrathane customarily ceased their constant maintenance of the citadel and fled to its interior safety chambers whenever Cowl summoned all the energy from the geological taps for the purpose of linking to the torbeast. Now, the very air around the citadel seemed full of distortions and hints of nightmarish shapes, where the beast encroached upon the real.

  ‘Coming after him?’ Ygrol asked, stabbing a thumb towards the unconscious Tack.

  Aconite shook her head. ‘Cowl would not expend such energy. He’d just send Makali out here, or fire a missile direct from one of the citadel’s emplacements.’

  From Wasp, Nandru said, ‘But not a coincidence, I’d warrant.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Aconite replied. ‘Cowl is no doubt acting on information obtained from this newcomer.’ She was studying her palm screen. ‘Our friend here has been comprehensively mind-fucked.’

  They carried Tack inside and laid him down on Aconite’s surgical table. Polly was the last to leave the room as Aconite began pulling her medical machines into place.

  ‘He’s the one I dragged back … the one who tried to kill me,’ she said.

  ‘So Nandru has informed me,’ Aconite replied. ‘Be assured, though, that this is not the same individual. The one who attacked you was a human automaton programmed by your controlling government. That automaton has since, unless I am mistaken, been reprogrammed by the Heliothane. And since then, again, has had his programs and much of his mind ripped apart by Cowl. I don’t know how much there will be left of him—he might be another Lostboy by the time I’ve finished.’

  Polly gave a small nod and exited the room.

  ITS HUNGER WAS IMMENSE, but each time it fed it pushed itself even further down the probability slope, yet it knew that if it could somehow feed enough, things would change for it. Thinking, as it perpetually did, in five dimensions, it was aware that oblivion lay in both directions on this temporal line. Allowing its consciousness to fall int
o the past, it dropped back to its secondary inception—from when its consciousness had materialized in the Precambrian. Pushing into the future, it found long slow starvation in a world in which it was the only life form, resulting, at its death, in the truncation of that alternate in vorpal and thus temporal terms. Only here, holding its position in what it defined to itself as the now, where up-slope energy was being fed down to it, could it maintain temporal life. Now, and always now, the energy being fed to it was huge—and growing.

  The Maker wanted something of it, as he always did, but the torbeast was never anything less than utterly grateful and adoring. Every time he wanted something, the opportunities given for feeding far outweighed any concomitant pain. On many occasions the beast had suffered loss of its mass through attacks from the enemy, but with side-branched feeders it hoovered up biomass from alternates further down the slope, and this, though not commensurate, satisfied sufficiently its endless urge to feed. But this time there was something different. The promise this time was of unrestrained feeding on the enemy, the life system of a whole alternate to denude, without consequence—billions of human lives and vast biomass, with which it could achieve … all.

  Drawing on the energy font, the torbeast shoved its mass over those alternates it had previously denuded, and which had been the cause of its fall down the slope. It manifested thus in the skies of barren Earths—a glimpse of organic hell—then shifted on. On a world where the sea was occupied only by single-celled organisms, it flooded out around another energy font, drawing all of itself through as, over the span of millennia, the first font died.

  The beast’s substance drew in from its secondary inception point, and in from that future of its own death. In a wave of living tissue, kilometres high, it flooded across a barren continent, ripping aside mountain chains and tearing up the plains before it. Storms dogged its progress, cloud formations boiling across the sky above it, and lightning walked across its flesh. Then, reaching the ocean surrounding the continent, this wave broke into a chaos of filter-feeding mouths like stalked whales, plunging into the waters and driving a second tsunami ahead. Spreading out into the oceans, it fed, sucking up biomass by the kilotonne, digesting lakes of organic slurry, driving on in a global apocalypse. Only the heat of volcanic vents diverted this progress, as did the steam explosion from a volcanic island chain now swamped by the wave. At the font its substance poured in slower then slower. Then, with a thunderclap that blew hurricanes across the beast’s heaving landscape, the flow ceased. But by then the torbeast had met itself on the other side of the planet, and it now wholly occupied this alternate Earth.