Cowl

by Neal Asher

  ‘Why would that happen? Why would New London be destroyed?’ Polly asked.

  Tack knew the answer to that one. Keeping under rigid self-control he said, ‘Remember I mentioned how interested Cowl was in what Saphothere said: “if the wormhole was independently collapsed, the energy surge would vaporize New London.” Sun tap and wormhole are inextricably linked, and the hole is drawing in so much energy that if it collapsed, that energy would have to go somewhere else. The life of New London, in such a case, would be numbered in seconds.’

  ‘Then what should we do?’ Polly asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Aconite, turning away. ‘It is not our concern.’

  Watching her go, Tack could not fathom the hint of amusement in her expression, but he knew how absolutely she was wrong. What he hadn’t told her confirmed this for him, but he had no wish to tell her now. He hoped that the Heliothane succeeded in whatever plan they were pursuing, if only it resulted in the death of this damned Cowl. That would be repayment for what the being had done to Tack himself, would end the slaughter of the torbearers, and maybe even end the war. His silence, now, best served that purpose, and anyway he had no trust of any sibling-on-sibling conflict—getting involved on any side of that was the way to find yourself branded the enemy, and have them both at your throat.

  But Tack’s most important concern had little to do with any of that. Turning to gaze back out into the storm he felt disparate memories still sliding together in his mind. Every mission he had carried out, though having its own limited emotional impact, had lost that impact each time he had been reprogrammed. With that framework now gone, however, all those mindless missions were coming together in his head and he was beginning to really feel. Past sins were coming back to haunt him.

  A ROW OF NACRE pillars, stretching from horizon to horizon, the incursions opened across the Triassic landscape. From a forest of low ferns and stunted ginkgos, a herd of browsing prosauropods rose onto their hind legs and started hooting in alarm. The big male charged out from the main group and, thrashing its tail from side to side, tore up the ground with its huge and lethal fore-claws, which were usually enough to drive away all but the most persistent predator. But these intruders were nothing he knew, and he began to back off as they advanced across the landscape like whirlwinds. Eventually he turned and, with his tail high in the air, charged after the more prudent females of his herd. None of them were to know that they were trapped inside a ring of the pillars, a ring eight hundred kilometres in diameter.

  19

  Modification Status Report:

  Pain inside. The boy grows at a phenomenal rate and the early scans show that his growth is optimal. I feel his carapace hard in my womb when he moves, and twice already he has interfaced through my spinal cord. Watching Amanita build her machines, the stunted tendrils moving on her face, I wonder what the relationship between the two of them will be. Will they be friends? Will he consider her his inferior, even though it was only through studying her that I was able to achieve him? Her mind is complex and quite evidently her intelligence is high, but she is very much a human girl. When he interfaced with me I glimpsed a mind equally as complex, but frighteningly alien. But my reaction I put down to my hormonal imbalance. I should not fear this perfection I have achieved.

  SAUROS, A METALLIC SPHERE drawing a tail of bright energy between grey and black surfaces—inverted through vorpal vision, it was poised in the flaw of a vast gem, infinite surfaces falling away from it, while it was supported by a fountain of energy and cut by the surfaces of a hypersphere. But Goron did not need this second view to know they were heading into deep shit. Like a bullet reaching the end of its ballistic arc, the great city was now ploughing down into the midnight sea in which awaited the organic Mandelbrot patterns of endless layers of beast.

  ‘We’ll have no fields! It’ll tear us apart!’ That was Theldon, playing his hands over his console like a virtuoso finding he has gone deaf.

  ‘All weapons systems are still enabled. We’re getting no energy loss there. I am reading organic mass on the other side.’ Silleck: grim, determined, fatalistic.

  ‘Put tactical nukes out ahead of us—as close as you dare. Have them detonate on the other side of the interface,’ Goron instructed, which was about the only instruction he could give in the circumstances, though he knew they were fleabiting an elephant.

  The real world rolled in around them, distorted over hypersurfaces. The triple flash of detonation momentarily blackened all screens, and Sauros resettled, groaning, to its bones in the midst of a firestorm.

  ‘Incursion right inside us!’ Silleck yelled, before even Theldon, who was supposed to be searching for such, could yell a warning.

  Goron called up a view, into the abutment chamber, and saw the huge flaw opening and the defence rafts moving in to attack. He saw a feeding mouth come out, like a gargantuan striking cobra, and slam itself closed on the stern of one raft, before the second raft opened fire and severed the neck. But then another mouth hurtled out, then another … then a second incursion began to open.

  ‘Bastard! It was local fauna—we got nothing!’ Theldon’s hands were now motionless on his console.

  Goron called up an external view, while with one eye he continued watching the battle in the abutment chamber. His people were dying in there, all due to him. Outside he observed a macabre landscape of seared dinosaur fauna. The torbeast had driven these creatures ahead of it to take the brunt of Sauros’s first defensive measures. Goron did not like the intelligence that revealed. Beyond the carnage he saw a line of incursions closing in.

  ‘Hit them with everything we’ve got,’ he instructed.

  ‘All of them?’ Silleck asked. ‘They are all around us.’

  More views, and Goron observed the ring as it closed.

  ‘Do what you can,’ he said, now operating controls that had been set in the control pillar ever since Sauros had been built, but had never been used. Now he watched missiles hammering out from the city, hitting the incursions—some of those nacreous whirlwinds collapsing, but always others moving into their place.

  ‘We’ve lost it, we’ve fucking lost it!’ Theldon protested, turning from his console and staring at Goron.

  Goron gestured to the rear of the chamber. ‘Get to the displacement generator. It’s set to drop us ten kilometres away, which should put us outside the beast’s immediate reach. I doubt it’s much interested in us, anyway—there’s a bigger prize at the other end of the tunnel.’

  ‘OK,’ said Theldon, turning back to his console.

  In a flash Goron understood why Silleck had picked up on that first incursion before Theldon had. Quickly he shifted virtual controls and saw that somehow Theldon had gained access, through equipment made for external and internal monitoring and some adjustment of internal systems, to the abutment controls. Using yet another control protocol he had never revealed to anyone but Palleque, the Engineer shut off Theldon’s console.

  Theldon turned. ‘Maybe, if we—’

  ‘Nothing we can do,’ Goron interrupted, his face expressionless. ‘We blow the abutments and New London goes anyway. Get out of here.’

  Theldon turned back to his console, stared at it for a moment, then slapping his hands against it, stood and, without meeting Goron’s gaze, headed for the generator. Goron watched the displacement sphere flick the man away from Sauros. Blowing the abutments would certainly close the mouth of the wormhole and prevent the beast reaching New London, and just as certainly the feedback energy, and that projected from the sun tap, would fry the city. Goron returned his attention to more exigent concerns now the man was gone.

  ‘This is Engineer Goron,’ he said over the public address system. ‘All personnel head for your nearest displacement generator and get out of here. We have lost Sauros.’

  He saw that many were not responding to his order. Some were fighting feeding mouths that were shooting up like trains from the corridors leading into the abutment chamber. Others seemed to be d
oing nothing at all, perhaps preferring to die with their city.

  ‘This is Engineer Goron. I am now leaving this city. You must all come with me.’

  This finally motivated many to head for the generator points. But, just then, most of them were thrown off their feet as the city lurched.

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘I can’t keep them out!’ from Silleck.

  An outside view showed Goron a wide-open incursion in which atomic fires burned and were swamped by the roll of megatonnes of flesh. From this extended the neck of a giant feeding mouth that was now chewing on the city wall. Lasers burnt grooves in it, and missiles blew away chunks of it the size of houses. Its neck broke then separated, the mouth end attached to the city crashing down and by its sheer weight causing Sauros to tilt. But then another of the giants hammered in from the other side of the city.

  ‘Put a tactical into it,’ Goron suggested, knowing Silleck’s answer even as he spoke.

  ‘I can’t—we’ve got nothing left.’

  ‘This is Engineer Goron. Everybody get out—get out now! This order includes all technicians vorpally interfaced. You must abandon this place. It is not worth your lives!’

  ‘Silleck,’ he said in quieter tones, ‘that means you too.’

  A display on the control pillar informed him that at least this latest order was being generally obeyed. The other controls there, having gone through their detachment sequence some minutes before, had freed a section of the pillar. He pulled the section away and stepped back, holding a control sphere and viewing sphere with all the vorpal tech that connected them together. Tucking under his arm this item, which looked like the severed head of a huge praying mantis fashioned of glass, he turned towards where the displacement generator was located. Then he heard the crashing hiss of monstrous progress coming up the lift shaft. Looking to those still trying to separate from their vorpal interfaces, he knew there was just no time left.

  ‘Silleck …’ he said, but could not go on. Abruptly he turned towards the generator.

  The sphere enclosed him instantly, flicked him out between nightmare incursions and deposited him on a denuded mountainside, along with many other citizens of the place he had ruled. He spotted Palleque walking towards him, the other escapees too shocked to even feel motivated to attack the man. When Palleque reached him, both he and Goron turned to look back at the city.

  Now some incursions were expanding and mating up, while others were closing. As further citizens suddenly appeared around the two men, they watched more of the beast’s mass flowing in towards the city, tearing out walls and boring through the superstructure. Those displacing from there were now arriving injured, sometimes dead, till their numbers dwindled and finally reached zero. Now they could see the beast like the forever-turning back of a sea giant, diving in between the abutments of the wormhole and attenuating—flowing away like sump oil draining into some huge invisible funnel. But this was a flow that seemed as if it would never end.

  ‘Palleque! Palleque you bastard!’ The heliothant who stumbled up the slope towards them was drawing a weapon from his belt.

  Goron held up his hand. ‘Palleque did his duty.’ He gestured towards the beast and the remaining skeleton of Sauros. ‘This is what we wanted to happen.’

  This news was spread gradually as the endless transit of the beast continued. Hours passed and the surviving citizens gathered around Goron to hear his explanation.

  ‘But that means we are trapped here now,’ someone managed.

  ‘It means the survival of all we hold dear, and that is all that should concern you,’ Palleque replied.

  That stilled them, while in shock, then growing horror, they saw the seemingly endless monster flowing through their temporary home towards what they truly called home: New London.

  Goron leaned close to Palleque. ‘Get some help and find Theldon.’ Palleque raised an eyebrow. Goron nodded to the heliothant who had earlier been intent on killing Palleque. ‘Take him with you, and any others like him.’

  ‘So my position as arch-traitor has been superceded,’ said Palleque. ‘What should I do when I find him?’

  Goron just stared at him.

  THIRTEEN SCREENS FLICKED ON, one after another, as the tachyon feed from the abutment chamber of Sauros caused vorpal sensors—spaced all the way down the wormhole—to come into phase. Talk ceased immediately, and it occurred to Maxell you could pluck a dismal tune on the tension stringing the air of the New London Abutment Control Centre.

  ‘It’s in,’ said one of the interface techs needlessly, for the first screen briefly displayed a giant feeding mouth flung out from an incursion in the abutment chamber of Sauros, before that particular sensor in the wormhole was knocked spinning through the air. All in the room now glimpsed the heaving roll of beast, its probing tentacles and glistening red caves, and one brief glimpse of a defence raft, with its back end sheered off, falling and burning, spilling screaming Heliothane into a tree on which every leaf was a mouth.

  ‘Anything yet from Goron?’ Maxell asked, walking over to stand behind the sensor operator’s chair and peering up at the view on his first screen.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Carloon, as he too gazed up at the chaotic image and tried to get his first sensor back under control. Abruptly the first screen blanked and the man swore, pushing his chair back from his console, then turning to Maxell.

  ‘The attack hit them too quickly, so maybe he didn’t get out,’ he said. ‘We’ll know soon enough.’

  On the second screen a tiny speck grew into a distant darkness, at the centre of the triangular tunnel.

  Already?

  Maxell made a rough calculation: ten thousand million kilometres, and no sign of closure from Sauros. Of course, inside the wormhole, the distance the torbeast extended itself through and its speed were a function of the energy it could expend, nevertheless …

  ‘Any mass readings yet?’

  The interface tech who had first spoken said, ‘Nothing yet, we can’t get that until it’s all entirely in the wormhole, where we can calculate then subtract its energy level.’

  ‘Mother of fuck,’ said Carloon.

  Now, in the second screen, the image had grown and was becoming clear. Maxell considered this view similar to what the prey of a piranha shoal might see in its last moments. The wormhole was filled with a great triangular plug of flesh that consisted almost entirely of mouths. This was the sharp end of the torbeast—that which was the essence of its ferocity and voracity. There was something wolfish about this mass, but with everything else but teeth and jaws stripped away. There could be no doubt, seeing this, that the torbeast’s intentions were not benign.

  ‘It’s pressed right up against the walls. I’ll not be able to get my sensor out of the way of that,’ said Carloon.

  ‘Can you take it out of phase?’

  ‘I can, but how will I know when to bring it back in?’

  ‘When I tell you.’

  As the torbeast completely filled the screen, Carloon put that particular sensor a hundred and eighty degrees out of phase, folding the picture into black, speckled with the flashes of potential photons generated by the beast’s energy front.

  Maxell considered her options. If they left bringing the sensor back into phase until the last moment, and then saw that the beast was entirely inside the wormhole, this would indicate that Goron had failed. If it revealed, however briefly, that the beast was still pouring in, they could drop the structural energy feed and thus extend the tunnel by perhaps another third of a light-year. After that, without closure at Sauros, they must act. It meant catastrophic feedback to Sauros and the certain deaths of any survivors there, along with most of the life existing on that past Earth. It was still a matter for conjecture whether this might shove the Heliothane Dominion down the probability slope just as firmly as anything Cowl might achieve.

  On the third screen the beast came into view, eventually filled the screen, then folded away as Carloon put that sens
or out of phase too. Maxell felt her body growing damp with perspiration.

  Damnation! Twenty thousand million kilometres?

  At fifty thousand million kilometres the sweat was actually trickling from her armpits.

  ‘How big is that damned thing?’ asked Carloon.

  Maxell didn’t try to formulate a reply. There was a contention amongst Heliothane chronophysicists that the creature was potentially infinite—and it was a contention she didn’t want to think about.

  ‘I’ll bring the third sensor back into phase,’ said Carloon. ‘It doesn’t matter if we lose that one.’

  The sensor operated for less than a second. Carloon froze the view, displaying a blurred image as of a torch shone through someone’s cheek from inside.

  ‘Coming up on number seven,’ said Carloon.

  Maxell noticed how the man’s hand was shaking as he poised a finger over the virtual icon that would put this next sensor out of phase. Three more sensors went the same way and when Carloon got the same view from number four as he had from number three, she knew there was no point in saving any more of them for a hoped-for rear view of the beast.

  ‘Cut the structural feed to minimum sustainable,’ she instructed the interface techs.

  The immediate energy surge caused the floor to vibrate, and she knew the Heliothane population would be feeling this all across the city’s disc. Now microwave projectors and terajoule lasers were pumping the energy excess out into space, but this was an emission the city could not sustain. Eventually something would burn out, and then systems would begin to break down. If that happened the wormhole extension would have to be cut, else the microwave beam transmitted from the sun tap would create a molten sea in the centre of their fine city.

  ‘Coming up on eleven,’ said Carloon. ‘It’s taking longer.’

  ‘When it hits twelve, we do it,’ said Maxell. She looked around, seeing that most of the superfluous control-room staff were now standing in a semi-circle behind her. ‘And then we see if we survive.’