âDo you have her?' Nandru asked. âI don't want to be premature in letting her go.'
âI have her,' Tack replied tightly.
Nandru-Wasp released his hold, then shot up into the air with the sudden lightening in weight. Polly leapt inwards, her feet coming down on the chute's lip, and her other hand clutching at Tack's weapons harness.
âOK?' he asked.
âOK,' she replied.
Tack started the winder hauling them up the slope. Because of the risks he would rather have done this alone, but he just did not have the will to push Polly away. The thought of being separated from her aroused in him a feeling he had not often experienced but easily recognized. But this was a fear of a different kind.
Reaching the attachment point of the harpoon, Tack located two of the adhesive mines to serve as footholds for both himself and Polly. Then he heard a scrabbling and droning noise in the chute's throat as Nandru-Wasp tried to find purchase there. He observed the robot finally gain a foothold, then with its four spiked legs begin to advance up the pipe. It covered four metres before, with a screeching of metal being peeled up by its foot spikes, it slid back down. This had been no part of any plan.
âStay there, Nandruâthe noise you're making might carry above,' he whispered urgently.
Nandru managed to drive his spikes into the metal and hold his position. Tack detached the harpoon and fired it further up the slope again.
Â
COWL RETURNED FROM STUDYING his vorpal controls, utterly unreadable. Aconite glanced across to where Makali stood, then scanned around the chamber to where the woman's pet killers were positioned. Having lost the source of his power to manipulate time inside this sphere, Cowl's paranoia was showing. Aconite then glanced over at the chute down which Cowl had been tossing human remains for the best part of a century. With the manacles around her wrists and ankles she stood no chance of reaching that escape route, but she was sure she had heard something â¦
Aconite now turned her attention fully on her brother. âIt has been a stupid and destructive conflictâUmbrathane and Heliothane killing each other over centuries in the solar system and now throughout time,' she said, pushing herself back so she rested on her knees. âI don't know which side could be judged the more guilty, as now most of them have been born to this conflict and know no different. But I do know who is guilty of most killingâand that's you, Brother dear.'
âOur war has been defensive!' Makali objected, stepping forward.
âYes,' Aconite hissed. âI've witnessed some of your defensive moves. I saw exactly how you defended yourself by beating a prehuman to death. What threat to you was Ygrol?'
Cowl halted before Aconite and crossed his arms. His voice then issued, as it always seemed to, from the very air around him, âWhere are the other two?'
âWhat do you think you'll obtain from them? A way of retrieving your creature? A way of instantly rebuilding your power sources? Face it, Brother, your run is over and now it's time to take yourself to the only place that will remain safe for you.'
âWhere are they?' Cowl snarled.
âWhat? Would you like Makali to do a bit more defending for you? Haven't you caused enough death already? In making you, our mother thought to create a human nonpareil. Instead she only made a killer of humans. I
know
you, Brother.'
Cowl's arms unfolded and dropped to his sides. It was coming now, Aconite feltânow he would kill her. Then suddenly the lights went out and the glow of
a catalyser ignited high up in one side of the sphere. On the opposing side a hole blew in through it, hurling an umbrathant off the adjacent walkway, his clothing on fire. Then two more catalysers ignited, their fuse-paper glow spreading out from a central point, incandescent dust billowing in from the burning edges. Momentarily, a glimpse of a big man diving through, a stuttering of fire, and two Umbrathane, struggling to don their masks, were slammed backwards through glowing debris. Another explosion and one of the heavy tubular transformers danced out of its support framework and began to topple. Cowl moved fast, half in a dive, towards his vorpal controls, and Aconite felt sinking dread. Then in a single bright flare a fast-acting catalyser opened a hole in the floor, and high in the sphere the bonding glow of a climbing harpoon was briefly visible. Then, rising up out of the floor on the harpoon's wire, came Meelan and Saphothere, back to back, each of them brandishing two carbines and spraying the interior of the sphere with fire. Aconite stared in horror at the holes growing in the sphere, and realized that snowing in was not the outfall of catalysis, but a white powder she recognized. And she knew what her brother intended.
âStop him!' Aconite bellowed. âHe'll take us all down!'
Several shots slammed into Cowl's leg, dropping him before he reached his controls. Saphothere and Meelan detached five metres above the floor, then dropped and rolled for cover as return fire tracked their progress. Saphothere dived behind the fallen transformer, spraying fire behind him without even looking, his shots spinning one of Makali's killers in a wheel of breaking flesh, then a shield generator he had dropped activated behind him a microsecond later to absorb other returned fire. Meelan paused to take out an umbrathant who was now targeting Saphothere, and didn't see the source of the projectile that smacked into the back of her neck, blowing most of it away and dropping her bonelessly to the floor.
âMeelan!' came the anguished shout from Coptic.
Yet another explosion separated a walkway from the dissolving wall and it swung out, Coptic standing on the end of it, shooting at the Umbrathane with both a carbine and his missile launcher. Returned sniping cut away one of his legs, and he shattered the source of that on the floor below. Other shots slammed into his torso, but he absorbed them and kept on firing. Umbrathane died one after another, explosions tearing them away from walkways or blowing them in tatters from whatever concealment they had found. He kept up this barrage until both weapons were empty; then the two remaining Umbrathane came out of cover and concentrated a fusillade on him. Eventually he
went down, then toppled from the walkway as it jerked to a halt at the end of its arc.
Aconite kept her head down and dragged herself towards the slope leading down to the disposal chute, but a hand grabbed the back of her jacket and hauled her upright, a prosthetic arm looping around her neck and the snout of a carbine now pressing against her cheek. Holding this human shield, Makali gazed over to where Saphothere had concealed himself.
âSaphothere, you're finished now!' she shouted.
Looking round, she saw her two comrades aiming their weapons down at the fallen transformer.
Aconite directed her attention to her brother, and saw the bullet holes through his carapace and that he was up by his vorpal controls, trailing his shattered leg. In one hand he held a small remote key, which he now pointed towards Aconite and activated. Then he discarded the key and plunged his hand into a glistening sphere.
âNo!' Makali exclaimed, her attention swinging towards Cowl.
Aconite felt the magnetic lock snicking open. She looked up into the fall of white powder, then, as the manacles dropped away, drove her elbow back hard into Makali, and as the umbrathant bowed over, snatched away her weapon and sent it skittering across the floor. Now someone fired up from the chute, and one of the two Umbrathane went down on his knees, smoke pouring from his front. Saphothere stood up and tracked the second one in his flight across a walkway, blowing away pieces of himâso he never made it to cover. Aconite turned and drove her knee up into Makali's face, flinging her upright, her face a ruin. She turned back to her brother.
From the surrounding air his voice issued in a hissing whisper, as shields activated between him and Saphothere. âGo'
She could see his hand in the vorpal spheroid, manipulating, moving. Aconite turned to where Tack stood beside the chute with his back against the wall, his weapon directed towards Cowl, and Polly on the other side of the chute, her handgun pointed at Makali. Almost casually, using the back of her larger hand, Aconite struck Makali, sending her sprawling, then stepped down towards the slope. She slid down and caught the edge, her bigger hand closing vicelike on the lip.
âWe have to get out of here, fast,' she said. âHow did you get here?'
âWasp-Nandru,' Polly replied.
âCarries the weight of two, at a push,' muttered Aconite.
Â
Â
TACK OBSERVED THE CURRENT scene: Makali crawling brokenly along the floor; Cowl at his vorpal controls, operating shield generators set in the floor; Saphothere walking around outside the shields as they were flung up, then moving closer as their generators burnt out. Their number had to be finite and Tack knew that Saphothere was a tenacious killer.
âYou two first,' said Tack, nodding back at the chute.
Aconite did not give Polly time to protest: she reached out, grabbed the girl's ankle and tugged her yelling towards her, then sent her down the chute.
âWe've got twenty minutes at most, then this place is gone,' said Aconite. âI'll send the dead soldier back for you.' She dived into the chute after Polly.
âSaphothere!' Tack yelled. âThere's no time!'
The man who had hunted and killed Umbrathane most of his life and who, Tack realized, must have dreamed of this moment for much of that period, did not even look round.
âDamn,' said Tack, firing his harpoon into the floor at his feet, then himself dropping down the chute, a friction setting on the winder controlling his descent. When he reached the opening above the sea, it was just in time to see Nandru-Wasp carrying a heavy load to the shore, sometimes skimming the surface of the water, then rising up again.
Twenty minutes before what?
Tack supposed Cowl had placed some kind of destructive device inside the citadel, probably atomic, probably powerful enough to vaporize the citadel right down to the bedrockâlunatics always provided that kind of an out. Tack was now standing balanced on two adhesive mines with his harpoon wound back into its launcher, wondering if the wasp-robot would return for himâwhen Makali slid down the chute and slammed into him.
One mine gave way, spinning off out into the air, but this was enough to absorb Makali's momentum, so that when they both fell it was down to the ledge below rather than out past it. Scrabbling to gain traction, they sent stray bones spilling down into the sea. Tack dropped his harpoon launcher and tried to bring his carbine to bear, but Makali successfully knocked it aside and stabbed her fingers at his eyes. He ducked, sliding out a leg to drive his boot into her shin. She toppled, but forwards onto him, driving her forehead into his nose. He then hook-punched her in the gut, but she drove down with her prosthetic arms, demonstrating their mechanical strength. He felt his carbine ripped away from him, and through tear-filled eyes saw that his launcher had fallen to
lodge itself next to a half-crushed skull. Makali now tried to turn the carbine on him, but her feet slid out from under her, her shoulder thumping against the pillar as she fell towards Tack, shots punching a line of holes through rusting armour beside him. Tack rolled, grabbing up the launcher and firing it in one move. This close, the harpoon punched straight through her, bonding with a flash to the pillar behind. Still she tried to bring the carbine to bear on him. Tack hit fast wind, and let go of the launcher, which wound itself up to her torso, its flat snout crushing into the open wound the harpoon had already made. She shrieked as she was dragged back against the wall, yet managed to fire the carbine again. Tack rolled off the ledge with her shots scoring the air above him. He had no time to turn his fall into a diveâas sharp metallic legs closed around him in mid-air.
Â
RUNNING ALONG THE SHORE, Polly looked back up, but, unable to see either Nandru-Wasp or the citadel through the dustfall, she hurried to catch up with Aconite. The dust now fell so thickly it formed conglomerated flakes. Polly glanced over at the water, at the slow roll of the waves humping up the beach, and in the confusion of the moment it took her a second to understand that there was something strange about these waves: they seemed too sluggish and produced little foam; they had the appearance not of sea water waves but of ripples in a thickening soup. Along the strand there now accumulated a mound of gelatinous fragments.
âWhat is that?' She pointed, as she came up beside Aconite, who did not seem in good shape.
âHydroscopic,' Aconite said, pausing to press one hand against her blood-leaking ear.
The meaning of the word flowed easily to Polly from the Muse 184 reference, access to it, she had soon discovered, now so much easier without Nandru in the way. She stooped, picked up a handful of the dust, raised her mask, and spat into the gritty substance. The dust quickly absorbed her saliva; single grains expanding into gelatinous blobs a hundred times their original size.
âWhat is it?' she asked.
âThe basis of Metazoan lifeâof us, too, eventually,' Aconite replied, as she set out again.