This is not a good place.
Eyes on her footing and her hand cupped over her mouth and nose, Polly began to run. Other lumps of hot rock came hammering down. She glimpsed something the size of a railway carriage drop down behind a rucked-up outcrop, raising a cloud of the black ash that lay in drifts and sooty lakes all about. Hot flecks settled in her hair, burning into her scalp.
Shift, for chrissake, shift!
But she couldn’t. There seemed nothing left—no strength, no will.
The ground shuddered underneath her, and Polly glanced back as an eruption concealed everything behind her in a boiling cloud of red and grey, hurtling towards her with ridiculous speed, seeming to eat up the landscape as it came. From somewhere there was enough—the tor perhaps realizing that, in the face of this, it would not itself survive to take back even a fragment of her arm. She shifted, glimpsed grey and black which seemed only an extension of the vulcanism, the cage not even forming around her. She came out yelling in a roll across the surface of a lake of cold cinders, sunlight above, and only a hint of sulphur in the air.
Again the pseudo-mantisal had been unable to form, but this time not due to any lack of will on his own part, nor lack of nutrition from his tor. Something had grabbed him from interspace and pulled him down, and he rolled out of it, releasing his packs and drawing his carbine from its holster—now positioned on his back. Rough shingle and broken shell gave way underneath him as, coming up onto his feet, he swung, sighting his weapon around him. No one nearby. Focusing on the rock field at the head of the beach, he advanced, weapon still ready, and checked the most likely places of concealment. Still nothing. Which meant that whatever had pulled him from interspace might not be nearby—nor whoever had used it. But certainly they would be coming along. His programming impetus was pushing him to shift again, but not very strongly. He fought it—rebelling on an almost unconscious level—and won. Slinging the two packs over one shoulder, while retaining his carbine in his right hand, he returned to the rock field and found cover, where he waited while tucking into his concentrated food supplies and gulping his bottled water. Leaden fatigue was eating into him as some hours later the man came limping down the beach, leaning on a strut of vorpal glass.
Tack identified him as Heliothane or Umbra, but very old — something he had yet to see in either of their kind. The man paused by the trail Tack had left and looked up the beach to the rock field. Stepping out of cover, the butt of his carbine propped against his hip, Tack waited.
The figure waved an arm and struggled up the beach. Tack observed how the old man’s decrepitude had seemingly increased of a sudden, and his own wariness increased. Even so, this man looked very ill. The clothing hung baggily on his thin frame and the skin of his pallid face was as near to the skull as was possible without him being dead.
‘That’s far enough,’ said Tack, when the oldster was ten paces from him.
The man leant on his cane of glass and wheezed dramatically. ‘At last,’ he said and took a step forwards.
Tack gestured with the gun and shook his head. The man took another step nearer.
‘One more step and I kill you,’ said Tack and he meant it.
The man halted and held up a hand. ‘My apologies, Traveller. It has been so long since I saw one of my own kind I can hardly believe you are real.’
‘How long?’ Tack asked.
‘Fifty years, or thereabouts—I lose track.’
‘Who are you?’
‘The name’s Thote. Poor Thote, stranded here; a casualty in a war that never ends or begins. Forgotten by those who sent me into battle.’
Tack thought the guy was laying it on a bit thick.
‘And you are?’ Thote asked.
Tack wondered to which of the two warring factions this old man belonged, and if that made any difference to any danger he might represent. Confident that, should he need to, he could take him down, he replied, ‘My name is Tack, twenty-second-century human, sent to assassinate Cowl.’ He watched for the other’s reaction.
‘Then we are allies,’ said Thote, suddenly standing more upright. ‘And I know about you, Tack. You are Traveller Saphothere’s protégé and perhaps our best hope. Join me at my camp for some food—since I have no doubt you are hungry. Tell me your tales, then be on your way.’
Tack returned his carbine to its holster and took up his two packs. This provoked no reaction from the old man, so Tack guessed he would make his move, if any was intended, at some later point.
‘Lead on,’ he said.
Thote turned and began to trudge back up the beach.
‘How is it you are here?’ Tack asked, as they walked.
‘The torbeast reared up from its lair, in its dead-end alternate, to attack Sauros and I was sent out as a spotter, and to delay it if I could. I used a displacement sphere and took out five per cent of its mass, dropping that into the Earth’s core. But it hit my mantisal when I was in interspace, damaging it and knocking me down in this place.’
‘You managed to pull me down here as well,’ Tack observed.
‘I did that.’ Thote glanced back at him. ‘My mantisal, though badly damaged, remains out of phase here. It can generate enough of a field to funnel travellers down into this time.’
‘Resourceful.’
‘Yes… I can do that, but I cannot leave here, or find sufficient nutrition to keep me alive for my full span.’
Tack did feel sympathy, but knew there was little he could do. Should he try to drag the man along with him at this stage in his journey, Thote would end up with the pseudo-mantisal materializing in his body, killing him instantly. Soon Thote turned inland from the beach and led the way to his encampment in the rock field. He had built himself a small stone hut, which was roofed with large empty carapaces. Before the entrance was the remains of a fire scattered round with fish bones. To one side lay a basket woven from some of the tougher growths that grew in the area, which contained dried stems for the makings of future fires. In front of the hut, Thote eased himself down into a bucket chair, obviously carved from a boulder over a long period of time.
‘I’ll prepare some food shortly,’ said the old man.
Seating himself nearby, Tack said, ‘No need—here.’ He opened his supply pack, took out one of the rations containers and tossed it over, noting the hand that caught it moved as fast as a snake.
‘There’s water over there.’ Thote gestured to where one of the collapsible water containers used by other travellers rested against a rock.
‘No need, I’ve drunk enough,’ said Tack, now increasingly suspicious of anything this man might offer him.
Thote opened his rations and began to eat, fast, one thin bony hand pecking up the food like an albino chicken. Then abruptly he stopped eating, his face turning grey. He jerked out of his seat, grabbed up his glass staff and stumbled forward, retching. Too rich for him, assumed Tack, after fifty years on the meagre diet provided by this environment. Tack stepped forwards, and, only as the staff lashed out towards him did he spot the red line glowing inside it like a lightbulb filament. The staff merely brushed his chest as he pulled away, but the discharge of energy from it slammed into him like a spade, flinging him backwards through the air. Hitting the ground heavily, he fought against the paralysing shock, pulling his handgun just as Thote bore down on him with the butt of the staff. Thote halted as Tack levelled the gun at him.