Tack forward-flipped off the woman, hit the ground on his feet, and rolled aside as shots splintered rock where he had been a fraction of a second before. Coming upright, he spun round, his foot coming up in an arc accelerated by the weight of his strange surgical boot. Straightening his leg at the last, he
slammed the boot up into the man's throat. To his horror, he glimpsed Polly bringing to bear her handgun in what to Tack seemed slow motion. The woman, having hit the ground on her shoulder, was coming upright again, her weapon swinging towards Polly. And then Tack realized he would not be able to do this without killing.
He swung his carbine round towards the woman, but shots from the man shattered the barrel of the weapon. The Umbrathane woman hesitated for a microsecond, assessing the greatest danger. She began to turn towards Tack just as he dropped his carbine and flung himself back. A hole opened up in the woman's forehead and she began to drop. The man began yelling and swung towards Polly. But why was he moving so slowly? Then Tack realized the man had probably just seen his lover die. That did not slow Tack as he hurled himself forward. Closing in, the carbine swung back towards him. He caught the barrel, turning as he did so, its fire scoring his stomach. He jerked the weapon towards him, out of the man's grip, spinning it up around his back and over his shoulder. Catching it in his other hand, he fired it, slinging the man backwards. It was over. It had taken less than six seconds. Not much time to extinguish two lives.
âAccurate shooting,' said Tack, as Polly walked over to him.
Coming to a halt, Polly holstered her handgun, then gazed down at the two dead umbrathants. She said, âMortuus est. Mortua est.'
Tack looked at her queryingly.
âThey're both dead,' she said.
âYeah, certainly that,' he replied.
Polly looked up, eyeing the carbine Tack held. âI knew a juggler once, called Berthold, who would have been impressed by the way you moved there.'
Tack gazed down at the two corpses, and could not find it in himself to be so flippant. When they entered the house, they found more dead inside. First there was the Chinaman.
Tack stooped down by Cheng-yi, checked the pulse at his throat then attempted to remove the sword. The weapon was so deeply embedded in the composite floor, it would not have yielded without Tack's augmentations. Tossing the weapon aside, he turned the body over and studied it, before switching his attention to Ygrol. No need to check the Neanderthal's pulseâhis thick skull was broken open and most of his brain mashed.
âThey shot Lostboy, too,' said Polly.
Tack stood and walked over to stand beside her. Only half of Lostboy's head
remained, and on the floor nearby lay his cerebral augmentation. Polly picked it up and carefully placed it on a table. âPerhaps Aconite can save something,' she said.
Tack looked at her askance.
She tapped a finger against the blood-smeared device. âThey killed the animal part of him, but most of what was human is in here,' she explained.
Then a sound spun them both round, and they saw Tacitus slumped against a wall in a pool of his own blood. Polly rushed over and pressed her finger against his throat.
âHe's still alive, but we'll have to get him into the surgery,' she announced.
As Tack stepped over the dead umbrathant, he noted the wound in the man's upper chest. So Tacitus had not gone down without taking one of them with him. Passing the carbine to Polly, he stooped to pick Tacitus up and turned towards Aconite's surgery. Polly darted past him to inspect the fallen Wasp and the dead umbrathant beside it. Tack supposed the intruders had swaggered into this place as arrogantly as any of their kind, but encountered some nasty surprises.
âI don't feel safe about staying here,' he said. âThey must know we're still about, and those outside might have sent off some sort of call.'
âI'll not abandon him,' said Polly.
âThen I'll check things out,' said Tack, laying Tacitus on the surgical table. âDo you know how to operate this stuff?' He gestured to the surrounding equipment.
âWhat I don't know Nandru can tell meâhe uploaded a lot from Wasp's database.'
Taking the carbine, which Polly handed back to him, Tack watched for a moment while she cut open the Roman soldier's clothing, and placed a monitoring device against his neck. Then acknowledging that she seemed to know what she was doing, Tack went off to search the house.
Polly assumed that Aconite herself had been dragged off to the citadel, but Tack was not so sure. It seemed to him that the Umbrathane intruders had come here simply to eliminate a potential threat. The house was a big place, so it was likely that he would find Aconite dead in one of its many rooms. With methodical caution he began at the top of the house in the attic, wondering at the precise purpose of the exposed vorpal substructure of the building visible there, with all those linked-up machines and heavy power cables. On the next floor down he found mostly sealed rooms, but one door was open and in it he
thoughtfully eyed the racked carbines, catalysers, grenades and some other weapons he did not recognize. On the ground floor he checked all the living quarters, but ignored the many rooms that were sealed. The laboratories and research areas showed no sign of damage, so he did not spend long in themâjust checking that no more bodies were visible. It was in the cellar he found the tors, and now understood why there had been so few lying on the seabed along with the arm bones. Here he felt the subversive control emanating from these parasitic devices and noted how many of them lay on the floor. He realized that they were regrowing their thorns, and that this process had forced some of them out of the racks. But Aconite, or her body, was not here either, so he closed the door and returned to Polly.
âWe must save her,' Tacitus groaned, as Tack came back into the room.
Tack observed that plumbing and wiring now linked the Roman to several surrounding machines. He raised an eyebrow.
âAll I need is an affixed and internally linked carapace, then I'll be able to move â¦' the soldier croaked.
Tack turned to Polly, who shrugged, then reached out a finger to touch the device now attached to the Roman's neck. With a sigh Tacitus closed his eyes and slumped unconscious.
âWhat did he mean by “carapace”?' Tack asked.
Polly pointed at his surgical boot. âIt supports both internally and externally while accelerated repair takes place, but it can only be used for minor injuries. Tacitus could have one placed on his chest, but only if he was prepared to move around very slowly and I do not think that was his intention.'
âSo Cowl has Aconite,' said Tack.
âYes.'
âWhat do we do?'
âWe have to get her back. We need her.'
Tack absorbed the thought. They did not know how the mechanisms of the house operated and so could not survive here. But he did not think they stood much chance up against more Umbrathane and the last thing he wanted to do was face Cowl again.
âWe have to get her out of there,' Polly affirmed, staring at him.
Tack swallowed dryly. âOK,' he said.
Â
THE MANTISAL CLIPPED WAVETOPS, the vapour of its ablation giving it the appearance of hot glassware just cast out of the furnace. It rolled across the
sea's surface and broke apart, the three Heliothane ejecting as if thrown from a car wreck, but controlling their descent at the last and each entering the sea in a perfectly orchestrated flat dive. Pieces of the mantisal skittered across the water and settled, floating, on the surface, as the final glowing ember extinguished in them. One of the three Heliothane resurfaced, cast a package out before him and watched as it unfolded into an inflatable raft. By the time it was fully expanded, the other two had surfaced and all three scrambled aboard.
âNothing yet,' said Meelan, collapsing on her back and spitting out sea water as she studied her detector.
Saphothere started up the small engine mounted inside the back of the inflatable and got them moving. Coptic folded up a scope on the hand-held missile launcher he clutched, and watched the skies.
As soon as the raft was moving, Saphothere asked, âWhere are we?'
âAbout ten kilometres from the citadel itself and about an hour from the Nodus,' Meelan replied.
âLook,' said Saphothere, nodding ahead. The three of them gazed at the torbeast distortion wavering in the sky like a heat haze. Below it they could just about discern the spiky peaks of the citadel. Saphothere went on, âWe probably won't get any missiles heading this way. No doubt the attack on Sauros is in progress, and I'd guess Cowl won't spare attention to such minor matters as a tor falling through his trap and going into the sea. Probably thinks another torbearer just drownedâif he noticed at all. Then, when we get closure at Sauros, Cowl will be in a world of shitâno short-jumping inside his citadel and no way to dodge the bullets.'
âShame we can't send some missiles from here,' opined Coptic.
âThey would be detected,' Saphothere replied, âespecially if they were likely to be in any way effective.'
âLike atomics, you mean,' said Meelan acidly.
âYeah, like atomics. Cowl probably detected those two I handed to Tack when he was within a kilometre of his destinationâand no doubt had a double displacement fixed on them all the time.'
âPoor idiot,' said Meelan. âAt least Tack would have died believing that his assassination attempt was to prevent Cowl destroying human history.'
âIn a roundabout way he was, actually,' said Saphothere. âAnd, anyway, many Heliothane have died believing the sameâso he was not unique.'
âUmbrathane believe that's Cowl's intention, too, and they die just the same.'
âYeah,' said Saphothere.
âSaphothere,' Coptic interrupted, âwe've got company.'
The three of them turned their attention to the sky and the object becoming visible there: distant still, but growing closer.
âAnother reason for him not sending a missile against us,' Meelan observed.
âThat's it, then,' said Saphothere. âLet's go and kill the bastard before he can do anything about it.'
âSounds reasonable to me,' said Meelan.
Â
THE SKY WAS GROWING dark and the effect was something like silt boiling up from the bottom of a deep pool. Wave after wave threw dark bands of shadow across the landscape. Polly looked up, feeling her mouth grow dry. This simply did not happen hereâafter a downpour like last night's, the sky usually remained clear for many weeks, and Polly had yet to witness any true extremity of weather. But this had an immensity: the bands of cloud spreading out from that central boiling point seemed almost solid. And that there was no sound as yet made it all the more threatening.
âWhat now?' asked Tack, as he too stepped outside Aconite's house.
âThe Nodus,' said Polly. âWe knew it was close.'
Makes a kind of insane sense for it to arrive now. Makes you wonder if the Heliothane haven't unified everything yet. Perhaps there's still much they don't know
.
âDoes this mean Cowl has failedâor is he about to succeed?' Tack asked. Polly turned and stared at him. âSucceed at what?'
Still gazing at the sky, Tack said, âAt shoving human history down the probability slope and creating his own time-line at the top of the slope.'
âYou still believe that?' Tack returned his attention to her, as she went on. âThat's just the great Heliothane lie told to justify continuing their extermination of Umbrathane. Admittedly their attempts to get to Cowl are in themselves justified because of the many Heliothane lives he has taken. But that doesn't make it any less of a lie.'
âWhat?'
He looked confused, and Polly realized she was pulling another bulwark of belief from underneath him, but it had to be done.
âCowl is working to prevent the omission paradox,' she explained.
âAnd I thought I was confused,' said Tack, rediscovering the sense of humour for which Saphothere had once beaten him.
Polly went on, âCowl escaped Heliothane persecution, and he gave the Umbrathane an escape route too. The energy he carried in the big jump took him back before the Nodus and do you know what he found?'
âTell me.'
âHe found life without DNA. He found life that bore no relation to anything he knew, with minimal probability that it would develop into the life we know in the few centuries he had before the Nodus arrived.'
âAnd that means?'
âYou have to be as utterly arrogant as Cowl to believe that you are the source of such a critical omission paradox.'
âYou said that before and I still don't get it.'