âAnother hour,' said Saphothere finally. âWe'll stop off at Sauros while I recover my resources.'
Tack supposed that meant Traveller would once again be paying a visit to the Spartan hospital, there to be serviced like a car needing an oil change and new filters. The thought of delay frustrated him. Strapped inside the mantisal were enough supplies to take them a long way. But, in the end, this form of travel depended on the physical strength of the mantisal rider and clearly Saphothere was again exhausted, having brought them all the way down the tunnel. It was also apparent that Tack could no longer guide the mantisal himself, as his fully grown tor would conflict with its operation. For a while yet he must remain a passenger, though the temptation to take the implant offline
and allow his tor full rein was sometimes unbearable. He wanted to be about the task set for him; he desperately wanted to bring into play his new abilities and strengths.
The final hour dragged past as if on leaden feet, then abruptly, ahead of them, the triangular exit appeared, growing huge as the time tunnel opened out like a funnel. Then came that feeling of huge deceleration, yet without them being hurled forwards inside the mantisal. Then they were up and out of it, rising above the abutments into the exit chamber of Saurosâand chaos.
A blast of heat slapped the side of the mantisal and sent it tumbling through the air. Tack lost his grip but, with his reactions accelerated, managed to spin within the central space and come down with his feet safely on two struts, before the momentum of the mantisal's tumble threw him sideways, where he caught hold again. He glimpsed one of the distant abutments, and noticed a cloud of fire belching from it as from a chimney. Below, nacreous waves of distortion were rolling across the tunnel interface, to break at the edges in magnesium light.
âIt's attacking!' Saphothere shouted, bringing the mantisal under control and hammering it towards the chamber wall.
As the air distorted, a claw of fear twisted in Tack's stomach. A vertical pillar of heat haze opened up from roof to floor, and began to fold out, swelling at its centre. A flaw appeared in the tumescence, and broke open to expose vast rollers of living tissue endlessly revolving against each other. Then, from infinite distance, horror hurtled forwardsâa mouth impelled at them by a monstrous tentacle curling up out of the writhing flesh. It was vaginal, throated with glistening teeth that tunnelled down into darkness, its lips bone razors.
âFistik,' spat Saphothere, his eyes narrowed and his teeth clenched.
Tack knew that both of them were going to die; even his suit would not prevent it, and he had no time to reach his weapons. Then a grey raft slammed down on the approaching horror, splitting it like a head trapped under a press; pieces of bone, razor teeth and bloody saliva exploding in every direction. Twin Gatling cannons spun round in gimbals on the raft's deckâthe Heliothane gunner strapped in behind them. The raft then tilted towards the flaw and the cannons screamed, spewing twisted lines of fire that thumped the reeling-out tentacle into an arc before blowing a section of it away. Simultaneously two missiles sped out from underneath the raft, bucking it violently as they went. One entered that living landscape of flesh and detonated, throwing all that was in there into white and black. The second missile sped on as the
flaw slammed shut, then tumbled out of the air without detonating. Tack looked down. The severed tentacle and horrifying mouthparts were down in the tunnel entrance, drifting there as if in a deep pool, and leaving behind a misty trail of blood.
âIt bleeds red?' Tack managed.
âYeah,' said Saphothere. âDon't we all?'
Â
POLLY AVOIDED THE RIVER after she realized that an island, of apparently the same rock that constituted the shoreline, was in fact a crocodile big enough to supply handbags for the population of Britain. Heading some distance along the shore in the other direction, she came at last to a stream where the biggest predators were water beetles, each the size of a pack of cards, and whose diligent concerns were fortunately at the bottom of the deeper pools. Polly there drank her fill, then took off her blouse and bra and rinsed them out as best she could. She then sat down contentedly by the stream, occasionally splashing some cooling water over herself, but inevitably she soon felt hunger again. When she noticed a small carnosaur feeding on something at the tideline, she donned her damp clothing and went over to investigate.
Between plinths of rock, a small beach of pebbles had gathered. Jumping down upon it from the rocky lip, Polly was immediately assailed by the smell of things decaying. The carnosaur, hissed at her and moved away, its gait somewhat of a waddle because of its distended stomach. She moved closer to a drift of translucent white and saw it consisted of thousands of plump little squid.
She picked up one of the dead creatures, and contemplated biting into one of its tentacles, when she saw that there were others in the surf, still moving sluggishly. At least those would be fresh. She moved through the lapping waves and snatched one up, observed its little sheep eyes watching her, while it blew bubbles from its beak, then turned it over and took a bite.
Like chewing a slug I reckon?
âDelicious,' said Polly. Its taste was reminiscent of those oysters she had eaten with Claudius, but the flesh was firm and chewy. For her second one she took out her knife and by trial and error managed to squirt out the intestines and the bullet-shaped bone.
Belemnites, that's what they are! Belemnites! I used to find their fossils on the east coast when I was a kid.
Polly ignored him and continued eating, eyeing her surroundings. She
noted various other things in the tideline: large, flat, snail things with ribbed shells and protruding squid tentacles, big sealice scuttling over this bounty, a single fish with an armoured head and translucent body from which a chunk had been bitten, tangled piles of seaweed and a big-headed black newt that she thought was dead until it retreated with jerky strobe-effect back into the surf. But then, when she thought she was coming to accept her circumstances, and understand that it was just her-and-Nandru and a hostile prehistoric world, she noticed the container.
âOh Christ,' she gasped, in utter confusion, then stepped over to the object and picked it up. It was cylindrical, ten centimetres in diameter, twenty in length, and made of either plastic or metalâshe could not tell. Pressing an indented button on one side popped open the hinged lid at one end. There was nothing inside it.
âWell, say something, then,' she said.
I'
m just as confused as you. That is clearly a manufactured product, and nothing will be manufactured forâas far as I can judgeâover a hundred and forty million years.
âCould it be alien?' Polly asked.
If you'
d asked me that before this shower of shit happened, I'
d have laughed in your face. Now I don't know.
Polly stood and stared out across the sea, and observed in the distance flying creatures that she doubted were seagulls. Tossing the container down where she had left her greatcoat, she decided to sideline this puzzle until the growling in her gut had ceased, and fell to gnawing on raw squid. Finally, as the little creatures became less appetizing, she walked back, gathering up her coat and the puzzling container, and headed up to the rocky margin of the beach. Pausing there to shake out her coat thoroughly and dislodge the sealice that had crawled inside, her gaze wandered back towards the stream.
The monster loomed over two metres high, though stooped forward so its hooked foreclaws hovered just above the ground. Standing still as it was, its green-and-black-striped body blended into the vegetation behind it, but its numerous bright-white teeth were all too visibleâas were its yellow catlike eyes. Polly ducked down instinctively and pulled out both the automatic, now getting a little rusty, and the taser. Huddling close as she could to the rock face, she slung her greatcoat over herself and kept very still.
I don't think your automatic will do the job, Polly. But then I don't suppose its designer had allosaurs in mind. I suggest you time-shift right now.
Polly concentrated on getting the scale to do her bidding, but the webwork seemed logy and slack within herâas exhausted as she herself felt.
âI can'
tâit won't work
,' she subvocalized.
Nandru said nothing for a while, and when he did speak there was no reassurance in his words:
It's been fun, then.
Polly could feel a vibration in the rock as the allosaur approached, then suddenly it loomed above her, and then crashed down onto the beach, spraying pebbles in every direction. The tip of its massive tail whipped past her face as it continued on down the strand to the tideline, where it sniffed at the piles of squid, decided they were good, and started gorging. Frozen in terror, Polly watched it feed. Perhaps she should try to get away while it was distracted, but she was so terrified she couldn't trust herself to stand upright. Once the creature had emptied the tideline of squid, it turned to head back the way it had comeâand came straight towards her.
The allosaur was about to leap up onto the small cliff behind her, but paused and tilted its head from side to side as if to check the view with each eye. Closer now, with its nose only a metre away from her own and its fishy breath huffing warm all around her, it took a long sniff.
Â
PANTING FROM EXHAUSTION, SAPHOTHERE led the way to an escalator composed of that strange flowing metal, then to an open cylindrical elevator shaft containing a circular platform one step up from the floor. As soon as they mounted this, it accelerated upwards till the platform finally came level with the floor of a domed chamber, which Tack surmised must be at the very top of Sauros. The moment they stepped off it, the elevator dropped away, leaving an open well.
For the very first time, Saphothere seemed at a loss as to what to do next, and stood clenching and unclenching his hands and looking around him.
Goron was standing by a wide pillar of twisted vorpal glass from which sprouted transparent spheres containing multiple interior and exterior images of Sauros, as well as complex shapes: three-dimensional flow-charts and scrolling formulae which Tack now recognized as representations of ten-dimensional Heliothane technology. The Engineer's right hand was pressed inside a sphere as his left manipulated a virtual control panel. Tack saw at once that Goron's trouser leg was soaked with blood and that he had tracked bloody footprints around the column. Other personnel manipulated consoles, while
still others were enclosed in other bizarre constructs of vorpal glass, and were standing at the edges of the chamber like the gods of a civilization of glass spiders. Saphothere glanced at Tack, then nodded to one side. They walked over to the windows surrounding the chamber.
âHow did Cowl do that?' asked someone nearby.
âThere's only one explanation,' Goron replied. âSomehow he knew our field frequencies. That's not enough for an all-out attack, but enough for assassination attempts. He simply rode in with the torbeast.' Goron surveyed all those in the room meaningfully before returning his attention to his controls. Another man, throwing off virtual gloves in disgust, stood up and walked over to stand beside Tack and Saphothere.
âPalleque,' Saphothere acknowledged.
Tack studied the newcomer, who was tall, white-haired, and tough-looking. Though this individual had reptilian yellow eyes and a twisted mouth, he could have been Saphothere's brother.
To Saphothere the man observed, âIt would seem Cowl is somehow receiving inside information. He came through and killed Vetrossânearly got Goron as well.'
Saphothere nodded dumbly, seeming too tired to reply. Palleque glanced at Tack disdainfully and looked about to make some comment.
âIncursion. One-seventy, two-ten and lateral.' Tack presumed the voice came from one of those enclosed in vorpal tech.
Palleque grimaced. âThree hours earlier and Cowl would have really fucked us over. But the torbeast won't be getting through now we're up to power again.'
âThe push?' Saphothere asked.
âYeah. 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.'
âI don't think I need to hear any more of this,' said Saphothere and Tack could see that he was angry, gazing at Palleque with suspicion. Palleque shot a further contemptuous glance at Tack before returning to his console.
âSilleck,' Goron said abruptly, to the speaker who was warning of the incursion. âDon't use the D-generators this time. Take a direct power-feed from one of the abutments and put a laser into the flaw.'
âLevel?' asked Silleck, the woman with her head and shoulders concealed in insectile technology.
âMegajoule rangeâI want to monitor. Should the incursion move in, I want the level to rise comparatively,' Goron replied.