âWe'll find out soon enough.' Polly set off after the half-seen figure. The light robe Aconite had provided him with was much more easily visible than the black skin-tight clothing Polly herself wore, but nevertheless she found what concealment she could. However, Tack did not look round once as he plodded stolidly into the night.
Polly tracked him down the hill, then up one bank of the river. She ducked down behind a low boulder when at one point he halted, turning his masked face up into the rain. She noticed that his fists were clenched at his sides, then she watched him bow his head and bring the fists up and crush them against his temples. Still he did not turn round, but after a moment moved on.
Migraine?
Nandru suggested.
Polly did not answer, for just then Tack abruptly turned aside and she lost sight of him. Hurrying up to the point she had last seen him, she spotted a narrow watercourse leading away from the river bed, cut down through stone. Following this, she kept catching glimpses of him ahead of her. For a second time he disappeared, but then a dim light ignited somewhere in the watercourse, and she finally came upon a tent lit up from the inside.
Perhaps he don't like company.
Much as she appreciated how much Nandru had helped her, she sometimes wished she had an antidote for his verbal diarrhoea. She studied the tent for long-drawn-out minutes, but no movement was apparent inside it. As she considered turning round and heading home, there came a muttered curse from the interior. Leading with the barrel of her handgun, Polly ducked down and pressed through the entrance.
Tack was sitting cross-legged at the rear of the tent behind a suspended chemical light. To his left lay an empty pack and on the ground to his right, rested a Heliothane carbine. He made no move for the weapon as she entered. When Polly moved to where she could more clearly see his face, she saw that his mask was off revealing a cold, blank expression. She removed her own mask to sample the air, and saw, down in one corner of the tent, some insectile oxygenating device.
âI'm sorry I tried to kill you,' Tack said emotionlessly.
He's sorry. Well, that cuts no mustard on my fucking beef.
âGo away, Nandru.
'
Well, excuse me.
Polly felt the presence of Nandru fade as he took the other option now available to him: shifting his awareness into Wasp.
âAre you really?' she sneered at Tack.
He looked confused for a moment, pressed the palm of his hand against his forehead, then went on, âI killed Minister LaFrange, Joyce and Jack Tennyson, Theobald Rice and Smythe. I cut off Lucian's fingers one by one until he told me the file-access code at Green Engine, and then I gutted the guard who tried to stop me breaking in there.' Then he looked up, staring past her as if at something beyond the wall of the tent and beyond this time. âThe bomb in the protest meeting against U-gov killed forty-eight people and maimed twelve.'
He fell silent, and she knew he was enumerating further killings and tortures in his mind.
âWhy did you come out here?' she asked, uncomfortable with the ensuing silence.
His gaze tracked across to her. âI needed to think.'
âNice thoughts you have,' she observed.
He flinched. âHow could they be otherwise? I've led such a nice life.'
âBut it wasn't exactly your fault,' Polly conceded.
His stare was blank. âYes, I accept that I had only as much control over my actions, before the moment Cowl took my mind apart, as any other machine. But that doesn't help. It was
me
who planted that bomb. It was
me
who raped the teenage daughter of a certain terrorist, to force him to come after
me
. It was
me
who led him into a trap and blew his kneecaps away,
me
who worked him over with scopolamine, a scalpel and pliers, until
I
had extracted the required information. And it was
me
who then tied a kerbstone to him and dumped him off the New Thames Barrier.'
âDid he deserve it?'
âShe didn't.'
Polly was at a loss. She had followed him here expecting the man to be involved in something nefariousâand perhaps to have the satisfaction of putting a cluster of explosive bullets in his back in repayment for past intended hurts. But this was something else, though what she did not yet know. Maybe he truly felt remorse, or maybe that was just what he wanted her to think.
âSo you have suddenly become such a moral human being?' she queried.
Tack snorted. âIt's not moralityâit's empathy. I cringe when I remember the things I did. I can still hear the sound of the wirecutters going through
Lucian's fingers and the sounds he made. I can remember the girl's fear, then disbelief, then pain, every word she said to me while she begged for mercy, and I can see how I destroyed something essential.'
Polly sat back and crossed her legs, wondering at her own reaction. She had never killed anyone, but she had caused pain because of her lack of empathy. As for morality, previously she had never known the meaning of the word.
âAconite told me that's the true mark of a criminal,' she murmured.
âCruelty?' Tack asked.
âNo, lack of empathy. The true criminal cannot conceptualize the experiences of his victims. He cannot feel their pain, or in any way understand their trauma. The true criminal is not a social creature. We were discussing her brother at the time.'
Tack shook his head. âIn U-gov terms, I was not a criminal. I was merely their agentâthe ungloved hand of their justice.'
â
They
were the criminals,' said Polly. 'What they did to you was in many ways as bad as the things you inflicted on others. They suppressed your humanity and made you their absolute slave.'
âKnowing who to blame doesn't make me feel any better. There's a grey area ⦠Why didn't I kill that terrorist cleanly rather than let him drown?'
âPerhaps you felt his actions justified that punishment?'
âPerhaps.'
Polly gazed at him for a long moment as he stared at his hands. âTell me,' she said. âTell me all those things you did.'
He looked up at her, a faint smile twisting his features. âCatharsis?'
âMaybe.'
And so, in terse, leaden sentences, Tack told her. When he had finished, Polly reached out and pressed her hand down on his.
âWhere do we go from here?' Tack asked.
Confused by what she was feeling, Polly leaned forwards and kissed him on the lips. For a moment it appeared he did not know how to respond, then he reached out to press his hand against the back of her head, returning the kiss with a kind of desperation.
Sorry to break up this romantic moment, but a shitstorm just arrived.
Polly sometimes wished Nandru had a face she could slap.
Modification Status Report:
That pain again. Perhaps I should have removed him at the foetal stage and continued his growth in the tank as I did with Amanita, but in me there is the abiding instinct to nurture my creation. Perhaps it is only that I should have made some modification to my womb to withstand the abrasion of his hardening carapace. Blood tests have shown that, unlike his sister, he is not poisoning me. His prematurely developed immune system is so alien it does not seek to attack his mother, whereas hers was just human enough to recognize the vessel that contained it. But there's something ⦠I am reluctant to run another scan, as that process in itself can be damaging to delicate tissues, and truthfully I do not want to find out if there is anything going wrong.
Damn ⦠it's just not stopping ⦠getting worse ⦠must scan ⦠must â¦
Â
A
S HE RAN THE whetstone along the edge of his gladius, Tacitus could see that Cheng-yi was angry. The man was angry at Polly's continual rejection of him, angry at the low regard in which Aconite held him, and now he was angry that all his hard work to teach mahjong to the Neanderthal was paying offâfor Ygrol was beating him. But the Chinaman would not start getting openly offensiveâhe'd tried that once with Ygrol already and suffered concussion for the following three days. The Neanderthal tended to react either with smiling delight or with his club. There was no middle ground.
Living up to his name, Lostboy was sitting staring blankly into space, and Tacitus wondered if his own and Cheng-yi's addition to the boy's programming had been to the good. Aconite's Pedagogue had taught them enough to construct a program that would enable the boy to swim, and to load it, but
their knowledge was certainly not anything like as extensive as the heliothant's. Tacitus was even considering wiping what they had installed and going to ask Aconite what had gone wrong, when the outer door whoomphed open and the Umbrathane intruders entered, discarding rain capes and removing their masks.
Holding her carbine in readiness across her stomach, Makali marched to the centre of the room, her five fellows spreading out behind her as she scanned the surrounding area.
âWhere is the killer?' she demanded.
Tacitus merely continued sharpening his sword, while Cheng-yi and Ygrol quietly proceeded with their game.
âVery well, then tell me where that piece-of-shit heliothant is,' Makali spat into the silence.
Tacitus felt a familiar surge of anger, and the whetstone slipped. He put a bloody finger in his mouth and watched while the umbrathant marched over to the mahjong table and swept its pieces onto the floor.
âI asked a question!'
âI think you asked
two
questions,' Cheng-yi smart-mouthed.
Makali backhanded him and he went flying out of his chair to sprawl on the floor. Tacitus stood. This was bad, not because of Makali's violent behaviour, but because of the expression now on Ygrol's faceâhe had been about to win the game.
âYgrol,' Tacitus murmured warningly, stepping forward.
âFar enough, Roman.'
Tacitus had not even seen the Umbrathane male move round the room to come up behind him. He froze, feeling a hand on his shoulder and the barrel of a handgun pressed against his cheek.
âPerhaps you don't think I'm serious.' Without even looking in the direction she was pointing her carbine, Makali pulled the trigger. Lostboy's head blew open, flowering around the blockish cerebral augmentation, which clattered onto the floor as he slid from his chair. âI'm serious.'
Flinging the games table aside, Ygrol came up with a roar, his bone club raised. Tacitus felt his mouth go dry as he saw how fast two of Makali's fellows shot in front of her, one of them stamping on Cheng-yi's head in passing as the Chinaman tried to rise. The first to reach the Neanderthal knocked away his club, then both umbrathants dragged him to his chair and forced him down into it. No matter how Ygrol strained he could not get up, and bellowed as
Makali strolled forward to pick up the bone club and inspect it. She turned to Tacitus.
âWhere is the killer? And where is Aconite?'
Aconite almost certainly knew about the arrival of these intruders, Tacitus supposed, but perhaps she was taking needed time to prepare, so he kept his mouth firmly shut. Without taking her eyes off Tacitus, Makali brought the bone club up hard to smash into Ygrol's face. Still seeing no reaction from the Roman, she turned on the Neanderthal and began to lay into him. As blood spattered her face and prosthetic arms, Tacitus realized that any answer he might give would not alter the outcome of what was happening here. Cowl had let Makali off the leash.
It was over in a minute, Ygrol's broken head lolling to one side.
âWell now,' said Makali. âI guess we'll have to see what I can do with that sword of yours.'
âI'm here,' spoke a new voice.
Aconite had entered the room from her research area. Tacitus could see her rage and he prepared himself to do whatever was required of him.
âI think you're a little late for this party,' said Makali, inspecting the blood runneling in the circuit patterns on the bone club she held.
Aconite clicked her fingers and a sudden deep droning filled the room, along with a blast of air. Wasp rose vertically into view, its wings a blur behind it, and a glistening sting extruded into view. It drove forwards as one of the umbrathants turned towards it. He bowed over as it slammed into him, the sting going in through his chest and out of his back. Then the sting flicked and discarded him. Tacitus reversed his sword, its blade alongside his ribcage, and thrust back into the umbrathant behind him, turning as he did so. There came a gagging crunch from the man, and muzzle fire skinned the Roman's cheekbone. The bone club became a blurred wheel in the air, before it was caught and shattered in Aconite's massive hand. Pulling his gladius free from his dying captor, Tacitus threw it underhand, spearing its way towards Makali's back. Then a shot smacked into his chest and he staggered back, stumbling over the umbrathant he had impaled. He saw Makali whip round, impossibly fast, catching the gladius by the handle, bringing it over her head and almost casually squatting down to drive it through Cheng-yi's back to pin him to the floor. With teeth bared she pulled some device from her belt and aimed it at Wasp. The room whited out for a second, then the robot dropped out of the air and crashed to the floor.
âYou think we didn't know?' said Makali.
The same white-out again. Now Aconite falling like an oak tree.
Tacitus slid down, with his back to the wall. He stared down at his shattered bodyâhe had done his best.
Â
SILLECK WAS ONE OF the few interface technicians who had survived, and like all of them only because she had torn herself away from her vorpal controls. Now, with open wounds in her scalp and undetached nubs of vorpal glass embedded in her skull like little windows into her brain, she suffered a headache that just would not go away. Only time would cure that, as the damaged tissue of her meninges healed around the vorpal fibres entering her brain. But she would never be rid of the facility to slide into a perception that stepped one dimension above that of her fellow, un-interfaced Heliothane. Gazing across the mountainside, she observed the survivors setting up their camps for the coming night; while, sliding into further perception, she saw them preparing to do this, and their camps already made. Watching also the endless flow of the beast into the wormhole, she saw images that both repelled and fascinated her.
This ability, Goron reassured her, would prove essential in the coming years, as there were few dangers on this Earth that could slip past guards able to see into the futureâif only for a few minutes. Because of this extended perception, and because her gaze kept straying back to the beast, she was the first to see it happen.
She stood and walked upslope to Goron, who sat Buddha-like on the mountainside, the section of control pillar resting on his lap. His eyes were closed, for he was either asleep or meditating. She eyed Palleque who, despite what Goron had told them all, she still distrusted as she did all fanatics.
âIt's happening,' she told Goron at last.
The Engineer opened his eyes and gazed towards Sauros. âThere was always the possibility it would be endless, though not for us.'
Silleck and the rest of the survivors had been waiting for a feedback cataclysm that would have swept them away from this mountainside in an ashy wind. Now this was not to be.
Then it all ended as suddenly as it had begun. The flow of torbeast attenuated, the roar of its progress dropping away. It broke up into trailing tentacles of raw flesh and spills of putrid dead matterâand then it was gone.
âAnd there it is,' said Palleque, standing up.
Goron reached inside the control sphere and did what he had to do. Just inside the ravaged structure of the city, the three abutments began to slide towards a centre point, closing the wormhole entrance. As they drew closer, Goron shaded his eyes, though the light was not really so intense, being to the infrared end of the spectrum. Dull thunder echoed and what remained of the city deformed under an intense burst of heat.
Silleck felt the heat on her faceâand in her dry eyes.
Â
RELAYING WHAT NANDRU WAS telling her, Polly said, âAconite and Wasp were in the tor chamber when Aconite went charging out. Wasp followed her into the residential room, when suddenly some system inside Wasp cut in and it threw Nandru out. But he had time to see that Ygrol was deadâthat you don't display that amount of brain to the air without needing a body bag shortly after.'
âTell Nandru to describe exactly what else he saw,' said Tack.
Polly tilted her head for a moment, and her eyes narrowed. âOne of them held a gun to Tacitus's head. Two were holding Ygrol down in a chair and it seems Makali had just beaten his brains out. He didn't see the other two, though.'
âThey're probably all dead,' said Tack.
âBut if they are not, we have to do something for them,' Polly replied.
Resting his carbine across his shoulder, Tack stared at her. He was sick of these Umbrathane and Heliothane eternally killing each other and dragging others into the conflict. He was his own man now and he wanted no more of it. He also did not want to be forced into a position where he himself would have to kill again. However, Aconite had arranged to have him dragged from the sea, and she had subsequently put him back together. He owed her. And, at the last, he now wanted to gain Polly's respectâand whatever else she might be prepared to give. In that moment he felt, with a lurch, his life beginning again, and knew he could not renege on his new responsibilities.
Fucking hero,
he thought.
âWhatever's happened there, we're too late to stop it. But let's see what we can find out,' he said, his stomach turning over at such a positive statement.
He led the way up from the river bed, circling round to come down on Aconite's house from the mountainside. As they climbed, the rain turned to drizzle, then a wind picked up and blew that away. The cloud began to break, opening on stars and the first hint of topaz dawn behind the mountains. When
the house finally came into view below them, lemon sunlight was already bathing the coastline beyond and flecking the sea with gold. The citadel, to their left, looked no different. Still, around its high points, bestial distortions crowded the sky.
âWhy does that happen?' Tack asked.
After a moment Polly replied, âAconite says Cowl's energy source comes from thermal taps penetrating down to a geological fault running out from here. From that power source he feeds energy to the torbeast when he wants it to do his bidding, and that same energy feed opens a rift through to the beast's alternate. The beast always attempts to come through here to access that source directly and what we are seeing is the result of that.'
âBut Cowl won't let it through.'
âNo, I don't understand the tech he uses, but he prevents the beast from coming totally into phase. It is only a few degrees out, but enough for it to produce no more effect than this.'
âAnd if it came through?'
âCowl would end up as dead as us.'
Tack remembered those thick cables snaking out into the sea. Judging from them, he supposed the energy being utilized must be immense. However, it did not even compare to that transmitted by the sun tap, as no cables could ever carry that load. Glancing down at the house again, he abruptly caught Polly's shoulder and dragged her down. They observed an umbrathant guard emerge and walk around the back of the house to urinate against the wall.
âHere's what we'll do,' Tack said.
Â
POLLY WALKED CASUALLY UP from the river towards the house, as if she had just been out for a pleasant stroll. The Umbrathane woman by the door called inside, and a man quickly joined her. Polly kept her gaze level on them, not daring to look up any higher. She raised a hand in a friendly wave. When she was still five metres away, Tack, leaping down from the roof, brought his right foot down squarely on top of the Umbrathane woman's head and, as she crumpled, snapped out his left foot to catch the man under his ear. By then Polly was flat on the groundâas instructed.