‘Can you tell me more about this Cowl?’ Tack asked, between sips of steaming coffee.
‘Cowl is Cowl,’ said Traveller, something hard entering his voice. Then he shook his head in irritation. ‘I suppose it is best you know… Cowl is a genetically altered being from my own time, superior in intelligence, vicious, dangerous, unviable, and in our opinion not really human. He hates us because we are human, just as he hates everything else that is not of his own creation.’ Traveller stared into the flames, ‘And from beyond the Nodus he is trying to kill us all.’
Traveller made no attempt to hide the loathing in his voice. This man and Cowl had a history. Tack realized.
‘But… you said earlier you can’t travel beyond the Nodus?’ he said.
Traveller shrugged. ‘I don’t know everything.’
Tack decided not to comment on this particular first.
Traveller continued, ‘He shuffles the alternates, seeking to bring to the main line one in which the human race did not evolve and where only his kind is viable. He does this by adding his own DNA to the protomix in the seas. He is constantly experimenting and to test his results he samples the future. Tors, like the one worn by that female you were with, are the way he does that.’
‘She is a sample?’ Tack asked, thinking this explanation too pat.
Traveller met his gaze, and Tack saw that some of the colour had returned to the man’s eyes. ‘A sample, yes, and when Cowl has learnt what he wants, she will be disposed of as such,’ he said bitterly.
Tack was not sure how he felt about that. He had intended to kill the girl himself, but that some monster roosting at the beginning of time would do so, almost negligently, affronted him. He gazed at Traveller and again saw signs of irritation. Nevertheless, he risked one more question.
‘I don’t really understand. How can you travel back in time to stop him? If he succeeds, he has succeeded, and that is in the past. You would now be off the main line, so unable to travel back to him.’
‘Concurrent time,’ said Traveller almost dismissively, and lay back on his thermal sheet.
‘What is concurrent time?’
‘If Cowl succeeds in his mission, say, ten years after his arrival at the Nodus, we—my people—will be shoved off the main line ten years after he departed from us.’
‘But that won’t kill you.’
‘No, but we will no longer be able to travel in time. We’ll be somewhere down the probability slope in a prison of linear time, and closer to oblivion. That would be death to us.’
Tack had an entirely different idea about what was death; it involved horrible gristly sounds, blood and burnt flesh. He gave Traveller a final glance before spreading out his own heat sheet and sitting down on it with his seeker gun ready. At no point did he think to aim the weapon at his captor—it just wasn’t in his programming.
The three men wore trench coats and trilbies. Two of them looked to have been built in a tank factory, but the leaner one seemed to have been fashioned for a more vicious purpose.
‘You’ll come with us right now,’ said the lean man as soon as she stepped off the boat. He was taller than his two accompanying heavies, and good-looking in a cold sort of way.
‘Who the hell are you?’ asked Frank.
‘None of your concern,’ said the thin man, his gaze still fixed on Polly.
‘I’m making it my concern,’ growled Frank.
One of the heavies calmly took out a large revolver and pointed it at the boat captain. Perhaps seeing that things might get a little out of control, the leader turned his full attention to Frank. ‘Fleming, military intelligence.’ He displayed some paperwork from his pocket.
‘Oh.’ Frank backed off. ‘I suppose someone from Knock John got onto you. Look… she’s all right. We dragged her out of the sea…’
Fleming held up a hand to silence him. ‘I’ll get to your story in good time.’ He glanced at Toby and Dave as they too stepped off the boat, and slipped his hand menacingly into the pocket of his trench coat. Indicating the man who had drawn the revolver, he went on, ‘Garson here will return for your statements tomorrow, so I want the three of you here on this jetty at eight sharp. We will meanwhile take this young lady away and have a chat with her.’ He turned towards the shore, where a car was parked. The second heavy took hold of Polly’s biceps and guided her firmly in that direction.
See. What did I tell you?
Polly shot a look of appeal at Frank and the other two as she was marched off, but they just stood staring at her with growing suspicion.
I reckon it’ll be electrodes, and a body massage with a length of hosepipe, then a firing squad at dawn.
‘What about you?’ Polly subvocalized. ‘Will you die with me, or will you continue existing in the head of a rotting corpse?’
Oh… yes …
‘Take the coat off,’ said the unnamed heavy once they reached the car. She did as instructed and he took the garment and tossed it to Garson, who began to search it. ‘Take that off, too,’ the man then ordered, gesturing at her hip bag. ‘Carefully.’ Again she did as instructed and the item was passed on to Fleming this time. As the three men now studied her, their attention came to rest on the object on her arm.
‘Now what is that?’ enquired Fleming.
Polly glanced down at it and could think of no reasonable explanation. Nandru came to her rescue though.
Tell them it’s scar tissue. Tell them you were badly burned. The damned thing looks like part of you now, anyway.
That explanation was only accepted when it became evident to her captors that the strange covering would not be separated from her flesh, and was apparently part of it.
‘Now, hands up on the car.’ Glancing back she saw the still unnamed one pulling on tight leather gloves. She turned her face away as he did an intimately thorough body search and, wincing, she wondered if surgical gloves had yet been invented. The greatcoat was finally returned to her, then she was pushed inside the car, her searcher squeezing into the back beside her. Garson slid behind the wheel and Fleming got into the front passenger seat. Nothing more was said as the vehicle started up and they drove off, but Polly became aware of Fleming’s interest in the contents of her hip bag.
‘We have been expecting infiltration of our sea forts for some time,’ said Fleming, eventually closing the bag and placing it on the dashboard. ‘I have to admire the way you went about it. I suppose you intended to build up a relationship with Brownlow?’
‘I’m not a spy,’ said Polly grimly.
Fleming laughed quietly. ‘You’ll tell us everything eventually, so why not make it easy on yourself? Tell us all we want to know and I can promise you’ll go to Holloway rather than up against the stained and bullet-pocked brick wall in Bellhouse.’
‘I’m not a spy,’ Polly repeated desperately, realizing her story about a lover killed in North Africa would soon be proven untrue. Possessing no identification papers for Fleming and his kind—no history here whatsoever—she foresaw the questions would be never-ending because no answer she could give would ever be believed or confirmed. Her only option was to escape and hide, but how? She looked at the object clinging to her arm and realized that perhaps there was another option.
Immediately upon thinking this, she felt a tension of forces webbing through her body from the alien thing. For a second her environment seemed to grow dark and she had a deeper vision of a vast colourless continuum, over which all her present surroundings seemed a translucent moving watercolour. Then suddenly she panicked and clamped down on it all, somehow, and the world around her returned to normal.