Perhaps that was just natural paranoia arising because he didn’t understand everything. He could see that, before Pedagogue’s education of him, he would have been suspicious about things that he now understood perfectly. The length of this recent jump was a case in point. To reach this forest they had crossed a hundred and fifty million years whereas, before, half that distance had crucified Saphothere. Now Tack knew that, prior to their first violent meeting in twentieth-century Essex, Saphothere had been hunting down Umbrathane for a long time, and draining himself—and his mantisal—down to the limit continuously. Five days sitting on his butt in the Triassic had been the most rest he’d enjoyed in five years. And stuffing dinosaur meat, roast nuts and some sort of root like Jerusalem artichoke into his face had increased his physical bulk noticeably. Also Saphothere explained that the energy detritus from the torbeast’s attack on Sauros had, once the danger passed, provided a rich feeding ground for the mantisal. But, no, it wasn’t apparent inconsistencies like that. It was the simple idea of himself being the most effective assassin the Heliothane could send against Cowl. Yes, he understood how they could not get through without a tor but, surely, with their technology there had to be another way…
‘Admiring the view?’ Saphothere asked from behind him.
Tack turned and nodded as the traveller left his tent.
Saphothere went on, ‘Fossil fuels, that’s all it becomes. And your profligate society burnt it all up by fuelling uncontained growth without making any serious effort to get out of the container.’
Tack stared at him questioningly.
Saphothere gestured towards the vast forest. ‘You mentioned predestination, though I should think you are now beyond such ideas. But, if you really wanted to find it, there it is spread below you. For millions of years the Earth stored energy in the form of fossil fuels, as if making it ready for intelligent use by a future civilization. With such energy to hand, your people could have powered their civilization into the solar system long before mine. It could be said that this was their destiny. And they wasted it.’
‘What power did you use?’
‘Nuclear fusion, bought at great cost. For your people it could have been easy, for mine it was hard.’
Tack wondered quite what he meant by ‘mine’, for it was the Umbrathane who had taken that step. He turned away and proceeded to gut the big newt, while Saphothere opened one of the red pineapples. The minutiae of day-to-day existence pushed speculation to the edge of his consciousness. After they ate, Saphothere retired again. Tack dozed with his back against a rock, too lazy yet to bother setting up his own tent, even though it was hardly a difficult task. Vaguely he heard Saphothere speak, then later a breath of cold, washing across him, pulled him into full consciousness. He was staring dozily at the endless forest when something pressed against the back of his neck.
‘Not one word, one movement, or I cripple you now.’
She was supposed to be dead—incinerated in an atomic blast—but Meelan now sounded very much alive.
Again the air was growing stale and Polly had to fight a rising terror to look for the other place in which she could control the careering progress of the scale and of the cage that contained her. She did not want to see more because, at the edge of perception, she just knew that a nightmare lurked underneath the midnight sea, watching her. When she did reach out, brief chaos surrounded her and she glimpsed a vast torso curving above, its edges lost in spatial distortion: an endless tangle of necks and mouths like the one that had taken Nandru; and she felt the regard of some feral intelligence.
‘Oh Christ…’
She was groping for a way out, fear freezing her will and shoving her perception back to that of the black sea and grey void. Then something reached out, opening a surface at the end of which the coloured light of the real gleamed, and she fell down the slope into day, the cage smoking and dissipating as she hurtled out over cold desert and dropped down towards a rock field. She clung to the glass cage’s struts, willing them to retain integrity, feeling them grow thin under her touch. But it was enough. She dropped two metres to a boulder, slid down the side of it, and rolled in a scattering of yucca-like stems, snapping them over onto ground coated with the green buttons of other primitive growth.
What did you see? I couldn’t see anything.
‘That thing—I saw the thing that killed you.’
I saw only two surfaces: one black and one grey. That’s all I’ve ever seen.
‘Perhaps you’re lucky,’ said Polly, standing up and brushing green slime from her coat, before looking around.
The mountains rising up to her right were jagged, unrounded by the elements. From somewhere behind them a column of smoke rose into the sky, staining the clouds in shades of sepia, black and crimson. Between them and the rock field lay a gritty plain dappled with green. The few plants were simple: constructed from a child’s drawing by some inept god. In the stony ground there were occasional cracks filled with stagnant water in which miniature rainbow larvae wriggled and swarmed. Again the shift had brought her down near the seashore, for she could hear the hiss of waves beyond the rocks, though she could not yet see the ocean. Negotiating her way between some boulders, she headed in that direction, for despite her recent, near-lethal experience by the sea, it was at least something reassuringly familiar.
The shoreline was cluttered with the shells of sea creatures; water snails as big as human heads, crab things and lobster things, worm things and just plain things. Some of the shells were still occupied, and stank like a trawler’s bilge, but nothing was moving. Polly kicked over a ribbed shell resembling a knight’s shield and squatted down beside it to inspect the decaying creature it contained.
I don’t think there’s anything on the land that can attack you now.
‘What makes you say that?’ Polly asked bitterly.
I think you’re beyond any land animal other than insects… or their ancient relatives.
‘That’s a comfort.’
About to stand up to move on, she yelled with fright. A figure was looming over her.
Dressed in dark clothing like army fatigues, the man was rangy, hard-looking. His skin looked almost bluish-white and his close-cropped hair resembled a layer of chalk. At first she had the crazy notion that he was some sort of inhabitant of this same age, then realized he could be nothing other than a time traveller like herself.
‘Who…?’ was all she could manage.
The man smiled, though it was hardly reassuring. Polly’s hand strayed to her pocket and the comforting weight of the condom-wrapped automatic.
‘My name is Thote—if that is relevant. I’m here to help you.’
‘Now, lie face-down with your legs and arms outstretched.’
Tack considered going for her, but in this situation his new strength meant nothing and his reactions could not be faster than her trigger finger. So he obeyed, stretching out, but turning his head so he could just see Saphothere’s tent. With the barrel of her weapon still pressed against his neck, Meelan tossed a small silver sphere at the tent, which burnt through the fabric like hot iron through tissue paper. The interior was suddenly filled with a phosphorescent blaze, becoming a bright lantern for a few seconds before erupting from the fabric and consuming it. The heat was intense and Tack recognized that she had hurled a molecular catalyser, like the one Saphothere had used on the palisade of Pig City and like those still contained in Tack’s pack. Saphothere was not even given time to scream.