âI think I know what time we've arrived in,' she whispered.
And how do you ⦠? Oh.
âYou see him, too?'
Trapped amid debris, with water flowing over it like a transparent skin, lay a rotting human corpse. White bone and grinning teeth showed through where much of his face had slewed away, white fingerbones dotted the river bed, the remaining flesh was washed almost colourless. But the leather helmet, breastplate and one leather sandal remained. Tatters of cloth flowed about his hips. His eye sockets were empty.
Your leaps through time are indeed getting longer.
âHe's a Roman soldier, isn't he?'
A legionary, yes, so this time you've shot back over a thousand years. The Romans were here from about 100BC until around AD400.
Polly continued puffing silently on her cigarette. When the scale moved her backwards next, who could know
when
she would end up? How could she make any plans for her own future when she kept regressing further into the past? She stood and continued upstream.
âI don't know what to do. What am I supposed to do?'
All you've ever done, really: survive.
Â
THE ERA OF THE andrewsarchus was like balmy spring compared to this period. It seemed as if someone had just opened a furnace door, and Tack did not relish the prospect of stepping from the mantisal when they landed. Coptic, who was currently controlling the bioconstruct, remained where he was, as the mantisal slid on through the air, ten metres above the ground. Meelan began whispering urgently to Coptic and gestured to the structure encaging them. Coptic spat a reply, nodding ahead. Tack assumed this exchange was something to do with how the mantisal's glassy struts were becoming clouded, as if filling up with smoke, though he had no idea what this might signify.
Gazing downwards, Tack observed dense scrubland broken only by striated rock formations and red earthen tracks. Looking ahead, he saw that this arid landscape extended as far as distant misted mountains crouching above the flat shimmer of heat haze. Immediately below them, creatures resembling a cross between camel and deer went crashing into concealing scrub. Others, like
deer with elephantine snouts, spread honking along well-trodden trails. A lone beast like a rhinoceros, but with twin club-shaped horns on its snout, looked up, then stamped its feet, before lowering its head and charging away. Then, slowly becoming visible through the haze, appeared a sight that did not belong in this distant age at all.
Behind a high steel palisade rose a conglomeration of cylindrical structures like a chemical plant, but painted in various shades of burnt sienna, green and yellow, so as to blend into the landscape. To one side of this complex lay the gutted ruins of huge craft. These possessed stubby glide wings and bloated nacelles, now gradually decaying into the plain. Spaceships perhaps, but Tack wasn't to know, nor could he safely ask.
âPig City,' muttered Meelan, her attention focused on the newer structures rather than on the once-streamlined vehicles.
Tack noted a hint of contempt in her voice. She now turned her attention to her arm stump. He watched her pull away the strangely distorted dressing, as if it was a dried-out scab, and drop it out between the lower struts of the mantisal. An embryonic limb was revealed. She grinned at Tack triumphantly, and he quickly switched his attention elsewhere.
To clear the palisade, Coptic took the mantisal higher. Now the clouding throughout the construct's cagelike body was resolving into black veins, and its flight was becoming erratic. Tack suspected some problem. He returned his attention to their destination, where he observed, mounted on a tower set in the fence, some sort of gun tracking their progress.
âWhy is it called Pig City?' he risked asking, and received an irritated glare from Coptic.
Meelan was more forthcoming. She gestured to a herd of animals gathered outside the palisade. Though these battle-scarred monsters bore some resemblance to wild boar, their mouths were crocodilian and crammed with broken teeth, and they themselves were the size of a rhinoceros. âEnteledonts. I'm told the Umbrathane here regularly give them little treats and provide them with water, and in exchange can rest assured that no one is likely to approach on footâwhich is why we aren't.'
Two of the fearsome monsters were between them tearing apart a bloody mess of bones and flesh, and Tack assumed this must be one of those treats. When he glimpsed a boot nearby with some of its owner still inside, he swallowed dryly.
Coptic brought their transport in over the wall and down.
âOut,' he ordered, withdrawing his hands from the mantisal's eyes, which now were black at their core.
As Tack dropped to the ground, he observed four people walking over towards them. Two men and two women. They were Umbrathane he knew because he had been told, but otherwise he would never have been able to distinguish them as a different kind from Traveller. One of the women he recognized at once as Iveronicaâthe woman in the rock. Following Tack out of the mantisal, Coptic snared him by the collar and marched him forward. Behind them came a familiar rush of chill air as the mantisal began to disappear. Tack glanced back and watched it folding away slowly and unevenly, its structure beginning to evaporate. Coptic jerked him towards the approaching four. A harsh, staccato conversation ensued, Meelan sounding by far the most vocal. Listening intently, Tack recognized the name âSaphothere', and frequent use of the word âfistik' while Meelan gestured at her newly growing arm, but otherwise their exchange was lost on him. Glancing to one side, he spotted a grinning woman standing by the palisade tossing from a small tin what looked like sweets out to the enteledonts. The beasts fought amongst themselves as they gobbled them up, thick drool hanging from their jaws like glass rods. Tack now had no doubt where he would end up once he was no longer of any use to these people. At that moment he felt Coptic grab up his arm, to show Iveronica Tack's nascent tor.
âThe heliothant you with that want?' Iveronica said. Before he could begin to formulate a reply another staccato exchange ensued between them. Tack's attention was drawn back, by the roaring grunts and a crashing, to the woman at the palisade. As she rattled her tin against the bars, the creatures beyond it were going wild, chewing on the metal, trying to force their way through, even biting at each other. Abruptly Coptic shoved Tack down to his knees and stepped back. The woman who had just asked the question stepped forward and walked all around him.
âAre you a Heliothane agent?' she demanded.
She unhooked something from her belt and held it up. After studying it, she turned to Coptic and spat some command at him. The big man jerked Tack back to his feet and began probing his scalp with iron-hard fingers. They finally located the base of Tack's skull, where Traveller had inserted an interface plug in order to reprogram him. A finger drove in, and Tack groaned as something was levered from the cavity. Coptic tossed his pink and gelatinous discovery on the ground, and Meelan drew her weapon and fired once, turning the object into a puff of black smoke.
Be ready
, came Traveller's voice over Tack's comlink.
Tack felt a surge of adrenalin. He reached into his pocket with his one free hand and closed it around the shark's tooth. Iveronica was now barking instructions to her fellows, who obediently moved away. Pausing to gaze contemptuously at Tack, she then gestured to one of the cylindrical buildings behind her.
Then it hit.
There came a vivid flickering as of numerous flashbulbs going off in sequence. The woman clanging at the palisade dropped her tin and stumbled backwards. Bright lines travelled across the fence's surface like flame on ignited fuse paper, so it was eaten away and fell to dust. With the root of the tooth braced against his palm, Tack turned and drove it up hard, slicing into Coptic's neck and up under his chin. Next twin explosions took out a couple of towers. A huge gun barrel entangled with debris dropped away and crashed to the ground. Staggering wildly, Coptic scrabbled with bloody fingers at the tooth embedded in his neck. A woman screaming briefly, an enteledont shaking its tormentor like a red rag. More of the creatures piling in behind. Meelan, yelling as she points her weapon at Tack. Shots dogging his steps as he runs. Another explosion nearby, and out of it a ragged figure cartwheeling through the air, then a red man-shape, peeled from head to foot, bellowing as it drags itself along the ground. Over the rampaging enteledonts a mantisal hurtles in, and it slams to a halt right above Tack, instantly shrouding him in cold mist. Tack reaching up and grabbing, hauling himself inside as the construct ascends.
âPush that out,' said Traveller, nodding to a pumpkin-sized mirrored sphere attached loosely to one of the struts. Tack pulled it free and slipped it out through a gap in the structure. Glancing down he saw other mantisals appearing all round, and people running to board them. Then they were up and away from Pig City, hurtling out over the scrubland.
âDon't look back. It will blind you,' warned Traveller.
Tack turned away just in time from the burst of harsh white light, which refracted through the body of the mantisal and threw midnight shadows beyond rocks and trees on the landscape below. Momentarily he glimpsed the familiar shape of a nuclear explosion, before the mantisal folded them into between space.
But even then it was not over. Against the surrounding blackness he saw a spreading cloud of escaping mantisals.
âDon't look,' Traveller warned again.
Fire bled through and painted red light across colourless space. Immediately after, they flew on through the vorpal and human wreckage evaporating in a place unable to sustain it.
âI saw you get the one called Coptic,' said Traveller.
Tack merely nodded, too stunned still to speak.
âMy given name is Saphothere,' Traveller conceded.
Engineer Goron:
The energy dam still functions, but with the orbit of Io perturbed I don't know how long this will last. We assumed there was to be another attack when the Umbrathane fleet displaced into orbit around Callisto, and in response missiles were launched from Station Seventeen. They didn't impact, for the fleet shifted inside the temporal barrier englobing the moon. What readings we were able to take showed us that the entire moon was a few degrees out of phase. Attempts at tachyon communications failed. Luckily Seventeen did not orbit Callisto, since, like the rest of the stations that were there then, it would now be drifting erratically in the Jovian systemâthe phase change having negated the moon's gravity-well before the final apocalyptic event. It seems stupid to ask how we could not have predicted this when we have access to time-travel technology. But who would have thought only a month ago we would have needed to look to the immediate future? It is certain that the entire population are all dead. It was only the Umbrathane fleet and the research facility that shifted.
Â
A
S THEY THAWED, THE apples became pulpy, but Polly still managed to eat four of them. Then she gnawed her way through to the frozen core of her pie as she walked some miles along the watercourse. Finally stopping to rest with her back against an oak tree, she slept until what was, in her estimation, midday. When she woke her mind seemed a lot clearer.
âI don't want to just survive. I want a life as well,' she abruptly stated.
Nandru's reply was some time in coming, as if he too had been dozing.
You are alive.
âI want to understand, to experience. So I should view this ⦠journey as an opportunity. There is so much I can learn.'
All you ever wanted to experience before was as many highs as possible with the fewest hangovers.
Polly unbuttoned her coat to check the contents of her hip bag. It still contained some heroin patches and pearlies.
âNo, I've changed,' she insisted.
She ignored the patches, taking out only her tobacco to roll herself another cigarette. It occurred to her that she only had enough for a few more days. Not having experienced withdrawal from the other drugs she had used before placing the scale on her arm, she might avoid tobacco withdrawal as well. She had no intention of getting hooked again on patches though, so considered throwing them away. However, they would serve as analgesics should she be injuredâwhich was now looking increasingly likely.
So your plan is?
âTo learn, to experience. I need to see things in this time before I get dragged back again.' She assessed the food bag. âI have enough supplies here for a few more days, but what after that? I'm hardly equipped for this kind of life.'
You've done pretty well so far. You've acquired rather more suitable clothing than that you started out withâas well as a gun and a knifeâand, of course, you've still got your taser.
Reminded of this last item, she removed it from her hip bag and studied it. It was not yet recharged, so she moved back to the open area by the river and rested the taser on a log, where its solar cells would benefit from direct sunlight.
Yours seems an admirable aim, but surely, in a such a barbaric age as this, you'd do better to keep your head down and wait for the next time-jump.
âBut then I'd continue doing nothingâjust existing.'
Then, when your taser is fully recharged, we must go and look for whatever passes for civilization here.
When later she came upon it, the military encampment was undoubtedly the work of man, but whether civilized or barbaric was still to be seen. Polly had entered an area at the forest's edge where some trees had been felled, coming in sight of a tented city surrounded by an abatis and earthen banks. Outside these, soldiers stood in neat ranks facing funeral pyresâRoman legionaries burning their dead. Seeing heads already turning in her direction, and word being passed along, she sat herself on a stump and started chewing on another pie. Shortly after, a small group of heavily armed legionaries was approaching her, their cloaked commander riding along behind. She noticed how clean-shaven and neat these people were, how polished was their steeped-leather armour,
how their short swords gleamed. She also noticed how frequently their attention shifted to the forest behind her.
They suspect an ambush.
âWell, I'm not going to ambush them, unless they get nasty,' Polly replied out loud.
The men gazed at her in puzzlement as she finished the last piece of pie crust.
âQuis's, pro Ditem?' asked the legionary now closest to herâa brutal-looking man whose clean-shaven skin only revealed more clearly an ugly scar across his face.
âI haven't the slightest idea what you said just then,' said Polly, standing up and sliding her hand into her pocket to grip the comforting weight of the automatic.
He said, âWho the hell are you?'
âYou can understand what they're saying?'
Just about. In here Muse has dictionaries for about a hundred languages. By simultaneously accessing all European languages, I can get a rough translation, as many of them have Latin as their root.
âFugite,' said the mounted officer, urging his horse forward. The men parted to let him through. He dismounted and tossed the reins to Scarface. âQua loqueris? Certe nil horum barbarorum.'
âSorry, I'm just an ignorant savage and don't understand what you're saying.'
I think he just said you don't sound like an ignorant savage.
âWhat's he saying now?' Polly asked. The officer had turned to Scarface.
He's pointing out that you are talking in your strange tongue to someone apparently unseen, so you are either fifty men short of a cohort or touched by the gods. I suggest you continue talking to me out loud, so that they may retain that opinion of you and not think to satisfy their curiosity by means of the numerous sharp objects they seem to favour.
âA cohort is one tenth of a legion, and usually consists of between three and six hundred men,' said Polly, shivering.
Yes. So what?
âThat's something I never knew before. So how do I know it now?'
You haven't figured that out?
âApparently not.'
When I put Muse 184 onto you, it immediately established a nanonic linkage through to your spine and up into your head, where it has since been making numerous connectionsâan example of this being that you no longer really need the inducer in your earlobe to hear me. Its libraryâand something of me tooâhave
been bleeding over into your mind ever since. You didn't notice it at first because the heroin abuse kept you on the edge of moronic most of the time. Then the scale cleaned out your system and ever since you've been growing continually more knowledgeable. Besides that, Muse has also been upgrading your linguistic ability in English, so that you would become more able to communicate with it coherently.
The Roman commander turned and gestured towards the encampment. Scarface reached out to take hold of Polly's arm, but desisted when the commander spat another order at him. Looking round, Polly saw awe in the faces of the soldiers, and something like fear.
âBut I'm talking like I've always talked,' argued Polly.
Another soldier now moved in beside her, while the commander remounted. Scarface gestured towards her food bag. She handed it over and he peered inside, wrinkled his nose at its contents, then tossed it to the other man to carry. Whatever happened now, Polly was determined not to hand over any of her weapons. But Scarface baulked at the prospect of searching her further, after nervously eyeing her clothing. Perhaps he thought she might put a curse on him, or perhaps he thought she had fleas. After a moment he ushered her on ahead of him.
Polly returned to her exchange with Nandru. âCan you control my upgrading? Can you ⦠teach me things?'
Not at present. The Muse element of myself follows a program originally designed to supply necessary information during battle. It operates mainly when you are under stress, and opens sections of its library to certain connections in your brain only when specific types and quantities of neurochemicals are present. Believe me, it's complicated enough in hereâI don't want to interfere recklessly and end up lobotomizing you.
The smell of burning pine wood and burning flesh became stronger now. Perversely, the aromas caused her further pangs of hunger. The pyres were burning low and the legionaries beginning to march back to their tented city beyond. But a grey-haired old man wearing elaborately chased armour awaited Polly and her escort. This personage was obviously someone most important, for a gilded litter with bearers in attendance awaited his pleasure, and a cohort of men in splendid armour stood by. As they drew closer, the mounted commander hissed warningly to Scarface.
Well, you certainly seem to be receiving the grand tour.
âWhat's that supposed to mean?'
The old fellow waiting there is the Emperor Claudius no less. I'd advise you to take your cue from others in showing due signs of respect. The Romans weren't exactly distinguished for their record on human rights.
Finally they reached the Emperor's presence and, though bows and salutes were exchanged, she noticed there was no outright grovelling. Polly remained standing meekly where she was while the commander dismounted and explained the situation with numerous gestures and puzzled frowns. At an imperial signal, two of the Emperor's personal guard approached her. Both possessed a polished Teutonic look: one of them as slim as a whippet, while the other appeared capable of crushing walnuts with his eyelids. They had no reservations about laying hands on her and half carried her before their master to thrust her down on her knees before him.
âAll right, no need to get tetchy!' she protested.
Walnut eyes seemed about to strike her, but desisted when Claudius raised a finger. He then crooked the same finger at her.
âSurge.'
âWhat did he say?'
I think you can stand up now without getting thumped.
Polly stood and waited in silence. The guards stepped back a little way as the Emperor folded his hands behind his back and limped one circuit around her. Stopping in front of her again, he reached out and felt the fabric of her greatcoat, touched each of its brass buttons in turn, then stared at her boots. After a moment he gave voice to some drawn-out utterance, stammering his words, and smearing his chin with spittle.
âWhat was that?'
I'm not entirely sure. Translation is difficult enough for me with clearly spoken Latin. I think he wants you to take off your coat, but maybe it would be better if you pretended not to understand too much.
She addressed the Emperor, âSorry, I haven't a clue what you're talking about. You see, I'm a time traveller, and your language died out quite some time before I was born. I'd like to oblige you, but no way are you getting your mitts on my gun.'
The Emperor tilted his head, listening to her closely and frowning in puzzlement as he wiped the spittle from his chin. In a circular gesture he indicated her coat, then putting his hands together, parted them and moved them each to one side, clearly indicating that she should remove it. Polly considered pretending
further that she didn't understand, but Walnut Crusher was staring at her with alarming hostility. She slowly undid the buttons then opened wide her coat. The Emperor's puzzlement increased when he saw what she wore underneath. He again made that removing gesture. When she did nothing, he flashed irritation and pointed at her hip bag.
âI guess I'm going to have to act now before they strip me of everything. You said they might be thinking I'm touched by the gods?'
Be very careful, Polly. I would hate to lose you nowâwhat with all you mean to me.
Polly grinned at the Emperor, pointed up to the sky, then held out her hands in some strange gesture of welcome. She then reached into her hip bag, removed the taser, turned quickly to one side and fired at the walnut crusher. The result couldn't have been any more spectacular. He went up on his toes, with small lightning flashes zipping around his inlaid breastplate, then down flat on his back like a falling log. Weapons were drawn all around, the soldiers shouting and moving in. The whippet had his sword poised to stab her, and looked terrified. Calmly putting the taser back in her bag, Polly surveyed them all in her most queenly manner, then returned her attention to Claudius, going down on one knee before him and bowing her head.
Oh, fucking wonderful, and there I was thinking you were getting brighter.
The uproar all around continued, as Polly waited for the sword stroke that would take off her head, and almost not caring. When it died down, she glanced up to see the Emperor had raised his hand again. As he addressed his men, it was evident some of them found him incomprehensible, so badly was he stammering. When he gestured Polly to rise, she did so quickly.