‘The King congratulates Berthold on his skilled and entertaining performance…’
The King showed signs of anger, and Polly surmised that Cromwell was not relaying the royal sentiments with any precision.
‘The King wishes Berthold to accept this purse…’
Cromwell picked one up and tossed it to Polly, who expertly caught it in her open prop bag, then curtsied.
‘The King now wishes to retire.’
Evidently that was not precisely Henry’s intention because he was still giving Polly a look that should have been censored. Then Cromwell helped King Henry to his feet, and away to his bed.
After the royal departure the party swiftly dissipated—spreading to some of the tents pitched outside for those who wanted to continue.
‘God’s blood!’ Berthold exclaimed, counting out the money collected, and eyeing the sack of leftover food Mellor had collected from the tables. ‘We could go right now and live on this for a year or more!’
‘But not yet,’ insisted Mellor.
‘Two more nights at most,’ Berthold replied. ‘By then they’ll start losing interest.’ He unstoppered a jug from a nearby table, and took a deep slug of its contents.
Between the layers of black and grey something was becoming visible; glittering like nacre and expressing rainbow hues at the edge of the visible.
‘Fistik,’ spat Meelan, now much recovered.
This word being one Tack now identified as a curse, he more closely studied what was angering her. The thing extended as a line between the two surfaces, stretching in either direction to far-off dimensions beyond where Tack could easily focus without feeling as if his brain was tearing away inside his head. Occasionally this object drew close enough to take on substance—the only apparent solidity in this place beyond the confines of the mantisal itself. As he stared at it, Tack felt a growing frustration at knowing he could not ask. But time spent gazing into this etiolated infinity took its toll as his vision blurred and weariness descended on him like a brick. He dozed off, coming half-awake later to see Meelan thrusting her remaining arm into one of the mantisal’s eyes. Meanwhile, Coptic withdrew and turned away, his eyes suddenly dead black.
Then a brightly coloured crowd was feasting nearby and throwing food at a man who was juggling clocks… while, with the insane logic of dream, Tack collected up the shattered amethysts into which the dropped timepieces had transformed. All was now colour and that colour became the smell of heated sand, then a boot inserted under Tack’s side rolled him rudely into wakefulness, falling onto that sand.
Coptic’s laugh was hollow as he too dropped down beside Tack, its humour buried in weariness. Meelan also seemed weary, her eyes turned black like her partner’s. Lying there, Tack observed the mantisal disappear, folding itself away in exactly the same manner as when viewed side-on. He stood, taking up the pack that had dropped beside him, and panted in the sudden heat.
Again they were on a shore—only this time it was a seashore. Scattered along the strand were turtle shells, mounds of fly-blown weed, and nearby the desiccated remains of a shark being pecked at by birds like raggedy miniature vultures. Behind the shore lay a coniferous forest, its trees gigantic. A constant din issued from amid the trunks, some of it identifiable but much of it utterly strange. The singing of the birds was harsher here and possessed an angry immediacy. Occasionally a mournful hooting crescendoed and somewhere a sonorous groaning bemoaned the constant racket.
‘What age is this?’ Tack asked, forgetting himself.
Coptic’s huge hand caught him hard on the side of his head, knocking him to the ground, with lights flashing behind his eyes.
‘Did I permit you to speak?’ the big man asked.
Tack said nothing more, waiting for the inevitable beating, but Coptic was disinclined to take things further and turned to Meelan, who was studying a device she held. After a moment she gabbled something obscure and gestured disgustedly at the forest. Coptic spat a brief reply and pointed out to the sea, whereupon Meelan nodded. More conversation ensued as both of them inspected the instrument, then eventually Coptic turned to Tack.
‘We must rest here and recoup. You will go that way.’ He pointed along the beach. ‘In about three kilometres you will come to an estuary. Walk up it until you find fresh water.’
Coptic took the pack and squatted down to open it. After emptying it of most of its contents, he passed the collapsible water container to Tack. Tack then paused for a moment to observe the big man assembling what, futuristic as it might be, was still identifiable as a fishing rod. He saw no more than this, for Coptic glared at him and gestured him away.
When Tack came to the desiccated shark, he expected the miniature vultures to take off, but the birds ignored him and continued feeding, their pecking beaks making sounds like pencils beating against cardboard. Amid the empty turtle shells he saw the bones and beaked skulls of the armoured reptiles, and noticed that all the shells had been broken into, and bore large teeth marks. Moving closer to the forest, he nervously eyed the sea, wondering what kind of creature out there had the jaw strength to crack open living turtles like sherbet lemons. Perhaps the dinosaurs Traveller had mentioned? This seemed unlikely to Tack, as he did not see how his two captors could cover a distance through time which Traveller had said would need many separate shifts. Most likely this current era was some ten or twenty million years before that of the deinotherium, which meant perhaps forty million years preceding Tack’s own time. He shivered at the thought, despite the warmth.
As the beach curved round, Tack’s two kidnappers were soon out of sight, and he realized that he was turning into the wide mouth of an estuary, its further shore now visible to him. He estimated that he had covered just over a kilometre so far. The forest to his right now included the occasional white-barked deciduous tree, bearing autumnal leaves and translucent fruit. Below one such tree he spotted two large animals resembling cats, but which were squabbling over fallen fruit. He picked up his pace, not wanting to discover if they might turn out to be omnivores. After a few hundred paces, he heard their squabbling grow louder—then suddenly cut off. Glancing back, he witnessed a nightmare stepping out onto the beach, and understood why the cat creatures no longer wanted to attract any attention.
Fear closed its leaden claws around his guts.
7
Traveller Thote:
The attempt to remove the tors from the two Russian hunters, who actually remained together through a number of time-jumps, was a failure that killed both of them and Traveller Zoul when we tried to transplant one tor onto him. It seems these organic time machines genetically encode to their hosts. Zoul was dragged back by the next shift, but the web of temporal energy the tor created in him did not match his physiognomy and what arrived at the shift’s end died, thankfully, very quickly. We need to get to torbearers earlier in their journey, before the jumps accelerate, to give us more time to complete our task. Our chances of doing this are good, as more and more torbearers are being detected every day.
It was leopard-skinned and it was gigantic. Comparing it against the trees it had just emerged from, Tack estimated it to stand nearly two metres at the shoulder, and be five metres long. Though doglike, its movement was feline, its sinuosity only hampered by its huge weight. But this thing was to the family pet dog what a great white was to a goldfish. And no animal should have jaws of that size: they seemed unnaturally out of proportion, like some cartoon depiction of Father Wolf.
Tack considered just keeping on walking, in the hope that the beast wouldn’t notice him; he would, after all, provide only a snack for it. But it swung its huge head in his direction, paused for a moment, then began loping along the strand towards him. Tack turned and ran just as fast as he could.