âAbas lo-an fistik trous,' the woman said, then shook her head. Abruptly she reached over to Polly's hip bag and neatly opened it with her twin-thumbed hand. Taking out Polly's taser, she inspected the device for a moment before returning it and sealing the hip bag shut. That reminded Polly the automatic was still in her coat, but she felt no inclination to go back for it.
The troll woman then spoke words in what sounded like Chinese, then Russian. Finally she said, âCentury human what is?' before going on to try another language.
When Polly finally figured she had been asked a question, she replied, âTwenty-second.'
The woman paused, then said, âYou are lucky ⦠to be alive. Few attain ⦠this ⦠location, or survive long after their arrival.'
âWhy ⦠?' Polly asked, not sure exactly what she was asking.
âCowl normally kills before discarding. He must have been distractedâeither that or he does not care any more.' Suddenly the woman's speech was totally lucid.
Polly stared at her rescuer in bewilderment.
âIt is complicated to explain. You will not be able to walk?' Testing her theory, the woman released her gripâthen caught Polly as she began to slump. âI see not.' Abruptly the strange female ducked briefly and, slinging Polly easily over one shoulder, she stepped to the insectile robot and dropped the girl down on her feet beside it, gesturing to the compartment revealed by the hinged-up wings.
âNot comfortable, but it is either that or on my shoulder.'
Polly nodded and the woman helped her into the cramped compartment, her legs dangling over the rear. Glancing round, she saw the robot's head turn to inspect her briefly, then tilt slightly, as if in query, before facing forwards again. As the woman moved off, the robot followed her dutifully, the sharp tips of its legs driving deep into the ground in sequence. It moved just like an insect, and utterly silently, with no hydraulic sounds, no hiss of compressed air. Polly had half expected to be thrown from side to side, but the compartment remained precisely level all the time.
The woman led them away from sand and out across a fragmenting lava flow. Orange-brown clouds now scudded across the yellow sky and, to Polly's right, the sea in which she had so nearly drowned reflected those colours. Wavelets foamed on a reef of jagged stones, and beyond, where the coast curved round, she now saw a huge flower-shaped citadel, from which she had obviously been ejected earlier.
Simulacra of lifeâexcepting Cowl and this one hereâand nothing else. Seems
you have finally reached your destination.
âAnd now what?
' Polly subvocalized.
Has anything really changed? You must just try to stay alive.
âMaybe that's not enough any more. Maybe I
'
d like to do something about that faceless bastard that fucked me over
.'
A fatal course of action, I would suggest.
Polly gritted her teeth in growing anger.
Â
Â
WITH THE PSEUDO-MANTISAL FIGHTING against ablation with an outpouring of energy, Tack knew this would be the last shift, so he prepared himself. The ultraviolet light baking the Earth would be no hazard for him, since part of his augmentation had been an artificial epidermis resistant to such radiation, but the lack of oxygen was a problem. He donned the hated mask, before closing up his pack and shrugging it onto his back. With his carbine dangling before him on its strap, and the Heliothane U-sound injector clasped in his right hand, he now concentrated on the vorpal view of interspace. Cowl's tor trap was likely to be automatic, so whether or not Tack was expected, it would try to drag him quickly down into Cowl's abode and that Tack must not allow. He wanted to reconnoitre, get the feel of his prey's location, then come at him from some unexpected direction. He no longer felt any great impatience or eagerness for his task, just a stolid determination reinforced by seeing the Elizabethan corpse back there. Above all, Cowl had to die because of the suffering he had already caused and because of what he intended.
The hyperspheres and infinite surfaces, the lines of light and impossible distortion appeared in Tack's perception and he saw, in 3D representation, the trap swaying towards him like the funnel of a tornado. With rigid will, he grasped control of the webwork inside himself and forced the tor and its generated mantisal aside from the approaching funnel and down into the real. The webwork fought him, like a horse being urged at too high a jump, but Tack's will was strong because, his physical being having been bolstered by food concentrates, the tor had not managed to weaken him with the lethal parasitism that became usual at this late point of the journey. The pseudo-mantisal evaded the funnel, folded out of interspace and bounced, splintering, onto a dusty plateau. Shattering all about him on its second bounce, it began to ablate as if hit by a molecular catalyser.
As the construct disintegrated, Tack tumbled out of it in a roll. Then he was up and running, the tor so tight around his arm it paralysed his hand. He dodged into a dried-out gulley eaten down through friable rock, then along its course and came up between butts of black volcanic rock. Glancing back he saw a white rocket flame curving out from the horizon, impelling a black polygonal container. The missile hit at his arrival point, and detonated, blowing up a pillar of fire that rolled out clouds of dust.
Tack allowed himself a nasty grinâin his paranoia Cowl had given away the location of his refuge. All Tack had to do now was track back along the missile's trajectory.
Tack now stripped off his pack and slid down, with his back resting against the black rock, then pulled up his sleeve and studied the tor. It was a boiled-lobster red now, having filled itself with his blood as it sucked in the energy to fling itself to its intended destination. Inside him he could feel the webwork hardening again quickly. He pressed the injector against the tor's hard surface, feeling a brief vibration, then removed it to see a spill of chalky powder around a cluster of pin-holes, through which the catalytic poison had just been injected. Slowly the tor began to change colour, veins of black spreading across its surface and its rubescence fading to white. Inside him, Tack felt the web was dyingâretreating from his extremities. Eventually the tor hung dead on his arm.
Taking up his pack again, Tack strode through the billowing dust clouds from the explosion, and set off in the direction of the missile's source. After an hour he reached the edge of the plateau and there made his campâconcealed behind a boulder starred with large quartz crystals. Inside his tent, well sealed against the external atmosphere, he paused to eat and drink his fill, before stepping outside, safely masked again, and heading to the plateau's rim. Before him lay a plain veined with rivers, encroached on from one side by a field of frozen lava. Broken rock was scattered everywhere, the detritus of some ancient cataclysm.
However, down below lay the remains of other less natural structures, which Tack would not have recognized without Pedagogue's teaching. For here lay the remains of the entire research facility that Cowl had taken back through time, and across space, from Callisto. Witnessing this ruination, Tack recalled the gutted spaceships that lay decaying by Pig City. Clearly they were vessels from the Umbrathane fleet which Cowl had also dragged back through time.
The plain eventually narrowed into a peninsula projecting out into a golden sea, its water reflecting the lemon sky. To one side of this peninsula rested Tack's true destinationânot those ruins below him, for Cowl had built anew in the three centuries since his flight.
Supported above the sea on a forest of pillars, the citadel bore the shape of an open water lily. The structure was as beautiful as it was huge. Though still ten kilometres away from it, he estimated that the tops of its petals, glowing with lights, must pierce cloud. So that was where Cowl livedâand where Tack intended him to die.
Â
THE STRUCTURE SQUATTED ON a slab of basalt poised at the top of a slope leading down to the wide but shallow river they were currently crossing. It was
dome-shaped, closely arched all around, so that only narrow points of exterior wall between these arches actually reached the ground. Through most of the arches glinted windows, though Polly could just see that one of them opened directly into the interior. Too tired to keep turning her head round to look at it, she gave up and faced back down the way they had come. Realizing that they were now travelling in bright moonlight, Polly tried to remember some of the journey that had brought them here, but she had been fading in and out of consciousness so often that it remained a blur.
âWhat's your name?' she finally managed to croak to her travelling companion.
âBefore I was born, my mother named me Amanita because I poisoned her in the womb and had to be removed, completing my early growth in an amniotic tank. As soon as I could, I renamed myself Aconite.'
âWhy that?'
âBecause it seemed appropriate.'
Polly found she had run out of the energy to pursue this line of questioning, so bowed her head and lost it for a second. Coming to, she saw that they had now reached the other side of the river and were about to climb the slope towards what seemed likely to be some kind of house.
Aconite is an interesting word.
Nandru, who was walking alongside the robot, gazed across it with a twisted expression at the strange woman.
âHow so?' Polly asked out loud.
It is an alternative name for the poisonous plant also called wolfsbane or monkshood.
âAnd that's interesting why?'
I see you don't get it. You must try harder; since you'
re now so closely linked into Muse's reference library, the information is available to you.
âI still don't understand â¦' Then Polly did get it. âI didn't know what Cowl meant before. I see ⦠cowl is the name for a monk's hood.'
Abruptly she realized her robot transport had stopped moving. She glanced the other way and saw that Aconite was standing watching her. Turning back revealed that the illusory Nandru had disappeared.
âI realize now that your words are not entirely the result of delirium.' The troll woman stepped forward and reached down beside Polly into the back of the robot. Removing a square palm console, Aconite held it in her heavy three-fingered hand while running the nimbler fingers of her other hand over the machine's display. After a moment she looked up, reached over and pulled
aside the filthy collar of Polly's blouse. She touched first the muse device briefly, before reaching up to flick Polly's earring.
To Polly she said, âSpeak to your hidden companion.'
Oh-oh, looks like I'
ve been rumbled.
âThat is enough,' said Aconite before Polly could say anything to Nandru. âNow, are
you
AI?'
Polly tried to overcome her confusion, but her brain was washing around inside her head like dirty water.
Nandru's voice issued from the palm console. âWell, that's a moot point,' he said. âI guess that's what I am now, but I wasn't always like this. You've caught me on a bad day.'
âYou are a cerebral download,' Aconite said, disapproval in her voice. âYes, I see. A military log-tac computer with secure comlink, and the facility set for partial download of tactical information in the event of death. It would seem the level of redundancy was excessive and that you took advantage of that. So dead soldier, what is your name?'
âNandru. And I resent being addressed that way, that's ⦠thanatist.'
With a snort, Aconite switched off the console and dropped it back into the compartment beside Polly. Turning away, she snapped her fingers, and the robot began to follow her again.
I think she likes me.
Mounting the slope, the robot did not tilt in the least. With its back legs stretching down at full extension, its front legs bent double like a spider's, it maintained Polly perfectly level as it climbed the incline. Soon they reached the basalt slab and, as Polly twisted to look round, they began heading for the arched entrance. Close up, Polly saw that the building was huge.
Then through the entrance and crossing a wide room, with arched windows all around, containing the chaotic glinting of metal and glassâinsectile sculptures or esoteric machines, Polly could not tell. A whoomph as the entrance closed behind them, then a breeze stirring up Polly's hair. The mask coming away from her face with a sucking sound. Also unmasked, Aconite picked her up from the robot's container and briefly Polly glimpsed golden eyes amid lopsided but not unattractive features. Then bright aseptic light and a soft table underneath her, clothing cut away, something cold against her chestâthen a stabbing pain and a sense of movement inside her chest. Abrupt unconsciousness followed.
On waking, after long oblivion, to find some flesh miraculously back on her bones, Nandru told her,
He's her brother.