‘I don’t think we’re going to be here long. Otherwise they would have put us in two cells.’
‘Ah.’ She looked around. ‘I’m not sure if the Neanderthals think like that.’
‘You’re right. I’m not sure what Neanderthals think at all.’ He hesitated. ‘Have you ever talked with one?’
‘Kingsley, until the last few days I’d never even seen one. They’re among the most elusive of Demimonders.’ She poured herself a cup of water and drank it all. ‘You’re right, of course. I have no idea what they’re thinking, apart from that they want to wipe us out or possibly eat us. And what we’ve just been through has shown that they can do what they’re planning. I’d say they simply don’t have enough power yet.’
‘If we can stop their plans to destroy humanity, I’d like to see what makes them tick.’
‘What makes a tiger tick?’
‘They’re people, not animals.’ Even as he said it, he wondered if perhaps the Neanderthals were closer to the wild than Sapiens were – and if perhaps this could shed some light on his particular halfway state.
‘Are they? Are they any different?’
Kingsley shrugged. ‘You’re different. I’m different.’
Evadne stared at him. She blinked, then stared again. Finally, she sat back and crossed her arms on her chest. ‘You, Kingsley Ward, have done something very rare: you’ve made me change my mind.’
‘I have?’
‘Do you know how many people have tried to make me change my mind? Grown men have given up in tears, professors have taken up holy orders, judges have become hermits.’
‘I realise that you’re strong-minded.’
‘My mind has had plenty of exercise. Of course it’s strong.’
‘But it’s also flexible.’
‘True. I see your point. I’m not sure where it gets us, but I see your point.’
‘Most people are different from ourselves,’ he said, ‘so difference actually makes us all the same, if you see what I mean.’
‘Now you’re just being confusing.’ She lifted her forefinger and tapped it up and down on her arm. ‘But if you’re saying that these Neanderthals are just as human as anyone else, I might agree. It’s just that anyone else, in this case, is a dangerous maniac.’
‘That’s fair. I’m not saying that they’re likely to be saints, no more than we are.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
‘I beg your pardon. I mean to say that I’d still like to know how they think.’
‘So that you can see how mass murder can be justified? No need to ask the Neanderthals. Look at history. The Crusades. Genghis Khan. The Inquisition.’
‘Now it’s your turn to be correct: it’s easy to find justification for mass murder, as long as you’re convinced you’re right.’ Kingsley put his chin in his hand. ‘Say what you like. I want to stop these Neanderthals, but I can’t bring myself to hate them.’
She paused and studied him again. ‘As a project, Kingsley Ward, you are by far my most interesting.’ Evadne reached behind her. ‘Would you like something to eat? We have fruit, bread, cheese.’
‘They’ve provided food for their prisoners? How very human.’
Later that day, when the six burly Neanderthals came to the cell door, Kingsley briefly amused himself by wondering if there was any other type.
It’d do me good to see a lanky Neanderthal with pipe cleaner arms.
One of the six was the black-bearded leader of the team who had pursued them across seventeenth-century London. Without a word they were marched to a room near the main workshop. Of course, this made it somewhat near the workshop that held the time machine, but Kingsley accepted that this was a moot point, guarded as they were.
The room wasn’t luxurious. Kingsley was puzzled by the manner in which everything was curved, even the pillars that held up the roof. The walls were painted with murals, scenes of forests and deserts, acutely realistic in detail, as if one could take a step and be there.
A single old female Neanderthal that Kingsley recognised as the one who had saved him from the Spawn – then set out in pursuit of him – put down a saw she’d been sharpening and hung it on a rack over the crowded workbench. She wiped her hands on the sides of her overalls. Kingsley saw her age in the way she limped – one hip was troubling her, even though she tried to hide it. Her forearms were still muscular, however, and her eyes were clear. She looked as old as the mountains.
She studied him for a moment, in the slightly distant way a farmer would look at stock. She barely glanced at Evadne, who managed an ‘I demand –’ before one of the Neanderthals clamped a hand over her mouth. She resisted furiously but her captor was impassive.
‘Is this him, Rolf?’ the old woman said to blackbeard, ignoring Evadne’s performance. Her voice was like a barrel filled with stones.
Blackbeard – Rolf – looked sideways at Kingsley with a mixture of disgust and anger, and Kingsley wondered if he’d been friendly with the Neanderthal who had vanished into the Immortals’ Temporal Manipulator. ‘Looks like him. The girl did have the phlogiston.’
‘You had trouble?’
Rolf smiled. ‘We ran into those sorcerers. Immortals. We couldn’t resist the chance to do them some harm.’
‘Harm in the past? Good. They are back in their lair now, which is bad.’
‘What?’ Rolf’s eyes were wide. ‘We tore them apart.’ He looked puzzled. ‘Here, I mean. Not back then. ’
‘Magic,’ the old woman said sourly.
Kingsley felt as if he’d been hit with a brick. The Immortals? Alive? He’d thought his brain was safe from the Immortals seeing as they’d been torn to pieces, but now?
Evadne went rigid for an instant, then shook in a frantic effort to free herself. It was futile.
The old woman lapsed into silence. Kingsley went to speak, but she gestured and one of the guards clapped a hand over his mouth as well. Kingsley didn’t struggle. He was too busy trying to read her broad face.
‘Attend to me, young Invaders,’ she said. She didn’t look at them, which made Kingsley nervous. Her gaze was slightly over his shoulder, but he knew she wasn’t talking to the row of Neanderthal bravoes behind him. ‘Your fate has been determined. Make your peace.’
Kingsley struggled then, but was held tight by two pairs of hands either side. He jerked and managed to get in a good elbow jab, but it was like hitting a slab of well-seasoned timber.
‘We have heard from the Immortals. They will leave us alone if we trade you to them,’ the old woman said. Then as she turned away, she added in a mutter: ‘The old man will break soon. I don’t need you any more.’
Kingsley shook off the muffling hand and howled as fear and shock set his wild self free.
Panting and aching after regaining control, Kingsley remained impassive while they chained him up to take him to the Immortals, but inside he raged. The beasts! Torturing an old man! He wanted to rend the nearest savage apart.
But they had learned. This time, they used manacles, shackles and chains on Kingsley instead of ropes. They were of excellent manufacture, with every appearance of being bespoke. The linkages on the leg-irons, for instance, were significantly different from those on the manacles, while the finishing showed signs of hand polishing.
They wouldn’t be a problem, he decided, even if they were heavy enough to lead a rhinoceros on a walk. Just strike the manacles on a hard surface, preferably a corner, right there where the hasp entered, and he’d be free soon enough.
They had been rough with Evadne, and Kingsley vowed to make them pay for that. She had made the mistake of resisting – to no avail, given the superior strength of the Neanderthals. Her glares made no difference either. They were impervious.
While being transported, Kingsley tried to talk to his captors. Through
drains, shafts, a remarkably domed concourse, an overground stretch through a lane with merchants who specialised in Egyptian antiquities, and finally into a beautifully arched red-brick conduit with spectacular quoining, Kingsley strove to treat his captors as fellows. He put aside his rage and his embarrassment at being transported in a Neanderthal-sized wheelbarrow and asked them what they wanted, how they could be helped. They ignored him. Most did so with ease, as if he were simply a noisy farm animal, but a few of the younger Neanderthals had more difficulty restraining themselves. One finally burst out with ‘Shut your filthy face, Invader!’ and advanced before one of the more senior straight-armed him with a shove to the chest that would have put a hole in a stone wall.
Evadne, unusually, had been quiet during all this but soon after they reached a red-brick confluence of three tunnels, she mouthed, ‘My turn.’
‘Phlogiston,’ she said quietly, as if to herself, and immediately she had the attention of the entire band, even though they did their best not to betray it. ‘You’ve made some gains in phlogiston extraction.’
She went on as if they had answered, even though none of them had uttered a word. ‘I thought so. The purity looked outstanding. I’ve had to triple refine to get that concentration.’
The silence of the Neanderthals was considerably strained.
‘Of course, that would mean you’d have to double-baffle the fractionating column to avoid explosions,’ she said.
A few furtive glances among their captors.
‘Ah. You’ve learned that? I could have saved you the trouble if you’d asked.’
‘We use ammonia-based refrigeration to get over the problem,’ one of the younger Neanderthals muttered. At the disgust of his fellows, he looked down, abashed.
‘Good idea,’ Evadne said, nodding as much as she could with ropes up to her chin, ‘but my approach means a more compact unit.’
‘Enough,’ growled Rolf. ‘We’re here.’
Evadne jerked. ‘I can double your extraction rate!’
‘After we hand you over, we’ll have all the phlogiston we need.’
Soames knew Rolf, the leader of the Neanderthals, as one of Damona’s trusted underlings. Rolf hadn’t been happy at Soames’s having half a dozen hastily grown Spawn with him, but after some patently ritual objections, his phlogiston greed took over.
‘Is it all there, Soames?’ Rolf growled.
Soames waved at the handcart. ‘Two gross vials was the price agreed upon, but I managed to round it up to three hundred for you. Think of it as a gesture of good will.’
‘Good will. Hah!’
Soames was interested in the attitude of the Neanderthals to their prisoners. He’d expected the disgust and anger – the typical Neanderthal reaction to humans – but as they left, was that a lingering look backward, at the girl, from some of the Neanderthals? Remarkable.
The girl struggled as the Spawn took her, but the boy’s attention was on the Neanderthals. He waited until they had disappeared. ‘Don’t take us to the Immortals,’ he said to Soames.
Soames sighed. It was so predictable. ‘Do you know how much pleading I’ve heard from people in your position? I’ve had offers of money, threats, prayers and promises. I haven’t relented to any of them.’
‘A man of principle,’ the girl said. She’d stopped struggling. Her spectacles were dislodged, hanging from one ear in rather delightful disarray.
Soames straightened them. He admired the neatness he’d brought about, and her singularly beautiful face. ‘We all have principles,’ he said to her. ‘Mine are rather more pragmatic than most, and they mean you won’t be going to the Immortals, my dear. They’re not interested in you.’
‘But you are?’ the girl said with no fear at all, which Soames found most extraordinary.
‘You are my way of ensuring a nice profit out of this escapade. I know several slavers who’ll be willing to bid for you.’
She laughed. ‘And here I was, imagining that you had a lofty purpose in mind for me. Human sacrifice, some sort of ghoulish ritual.’
Soames adjusted his cuffs. ‘Hardly. I’m not a sorcerer, I’m a businessman.’
‘If you’re a businessman, then you’ll want to talk to us,’ the boy said. Husky as he was, he was no match for the Spawn and had realised it. He wasn’t struggling.
Soames appreciated it when someone was resigned to their fate. It made things much easier.
‘I doubt it.’ Soames motioned to the Spawn. Without speaking, a pair took the prisoners head and foot. The girl looked angry, but the boy was strangely calm.
The boy waited, and just before the Spawn entered the tunnel he craned his neck and looked directly at Soames. ‘If you don’t talk to us,’ he said, ‘you’ll miss an opportunity.’
Opportunity. Soames couldn’t help reacting – hesitating, leaning slightly in the boy’s direction – and he cursed himself for it.
Kingsley summoned his stage presence and charged his words with sincerity. With as much conviction as he could summon he spoke to the oleaginous man. ‘The Neanderthals are planning to exterminate all humanity.’
The man’s face fell. ‘It that all? The Neanderthals have been trying to do that for centuries. They always fail.’
‘They’re desperate now,’ Kingsley said with as much composure as someone who was confined by a hundredweight or two of chains could, ‘and they’re staking everything on an ultimate effort.’
‘Who can blame them, after we hunted them to the edge of extinction?’ Soames signed to the Spawn. ‘It’s of no matter. I’m sure I’ll survive whatever attack they’re planning and be there to pick up the pieces.’ He put his hands together. ‘There’s money to be made in ruins.’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t quite explained myself adequately.’
Soames leaned and peered at him. Kingsley thought he could squeeze a few pints of oil from the man’s hair alone. ‘I must say, it’s a pleasure dealing with you, young man, especially after some of the types I’m forced to associate with. You’re so polite.’
‘You beastly man,’ Evadne burst out, ‘you’re dooming everyone if you don’t listen to us!’
Soames raised his eyebrows. He straightened and examined his cufflinks. ‘And there you have it. I think we need to be off.’
Kingsley shot Evadne a glance. She subsided, smouldering.
‘A last word, if you don’t mind,’ Kingsley said carefully. ‘You see, the Neanderthals are about to make every single human being disappear, including you.’
‘What did you say?’
‘It’s the phlogiston, you idiot!’ Evadne cried. ‘The Neanderthals are powering a time machine with it and you’ve given them enough to complete their goal.’ She grimaced. ‘Sorry.’
‘Put them down,’ Soames said to the Spawn. ‘Wait at the Hall. Now,’ he said to Kingsley and Evadne after producing a nasty-looking little pistol, ‘tell me more.’
Kingsley watched the man grow graver and graver as he stood in front of them and listened to Evadne’s description of the time machine. She used their 1666 mishap to impress on him how advanced the Neanderthals’ planning was. ‘All that they need, really, is some calibration, some coordinates and enough phlogiston.’ She shook her head. ‘Why on earth did your masters give away so much?’
‘They’re not my masters,’ Soames said quickly. He was sweating, Kingsley noted, despite the cool of the grotto. ‘They’re my clients.’
‘I’m sure that’s an important distinction to you.’
‘Business is business. It also means that I need to decide how I can find a profit here.’ He tapped the barrel of the gun against his cheek. ‘What is the best way to use this information you’ve just given me?’
‘What about by trying to stop them? If they’re not stopped, you won’t be around to cheat and cozen the likes
of us, because we won’t be either.’
‘This is a wonderful story,’ the man said. ‘I must congratulate you. It’s diverted me more than any I’ve heard for years. It hasn’t worked, mind you, but it has drawn things out.’
Enough was enough, Kingsley decided. He could see that the man was hardly likely to be straight with them, not when he had them at such a disadvantage.
While Evadne had been talking, Kingsley had been readying himself, trusting to Evadne’s urgency and the man’s obvious fascination with her to hold his attention.
Firstly, misdirection.
Kingsley’s hands were behind his back, something he’d managed to make sure of when the Spawn had bound him. Now, with his unobserved hands quite free, it was a simple matter to find a lock pick that he’d hidden in the sleeve of the jacket Evadne had given to him. After years of exercise, he knew his wrists and fingers were strong, but his next manoeuvre needed more than just strength: it needed timing and dexterity as well.
Without moving his shoulders, solely relying on his wrists and fingers, he flipped the lock pick up and over his head in an arc that took it across the cave. It struck the far wall and fell, tinkling all the way.
No-one human could ignore it. Kingsley was glad for confirmation of Soames’s species status when his head whipped around to see what had caused the noise.
Secondly, effect.
Kingsley stood and already his manacles were falling away. He had his hands ready. He grasped the chains, then swung them at the ghastly man.
Soames staggered back. The chain whistled past his shocked face, and Kingsley was already in position. He knocked the man’s arm upward, seized it, struck him hard in the armpit and then in the midriff.
Soames’s eyes went wide. He made to cry out but, as Kingsley had hoped, the blow in the midriff had winded him. He doubled over and his knees gave way.
Thirdly, the flourish.
Kingsley squeezed Soames’s wrist until he dropped the pistol. Kingsley caught it in his other hand. ‘Now,’ he said, his mind already leaping ahead to what needed to be done next. ‘Are there any other tables that need turning?’
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