This ended the game.
One black hand closed around Tack’s throat from behind, and he was slammed up against the wall while, with such viciousness it broke bones and tore skin, the other one ripped away his harness, suit and all his weapons. Then Cowl flung him naked onto the grated floor. Sharp fingers then descended, piercing Tack’s chest before closing, as Cowl picked him up like a cluster of empty milk bottles. Tack tried to fight back until Cowl swung his head against a wall and knocked all resistance out of him. As his consciousness waxed and waned, Tack thought it about time for him to die—but death was not a mercy Cowl intended to allow him.
The Umbrathane came and searched the house while Aconite stood with her unequal arms folded, silently watching them. When the search was completed with concision and efficiency, the leader emerged to stand before Aconite. Makali was a sour woman and Polly supposed this was because both her arms were obviously prosthetic, which meant she did not possess the regenerative gene and was thus an inferior type of umbrathant. In Polly’s own time she would have been regarded as an exotic beauty, with her perfect white skin, black hair and lavender eyes; and also as a prize athlete with her future-human speed and strength. But in Umbrathane terms even Aconite was genetically her superior.
‘You are inviolable,’ said the woman in the Heliothane language.
‘That is my brother’s conceit,’ replied Aconite.
To Polly, Nandru said, Those explosions. Something shook them up last night, but it certainly wasn’t an outright Heliothane attack, else we’d be sitting on a radioactive wasteland now.
From where she was sitting, with her knees pulled up against her chest, Polly subvocalized, ‘‘Probably a little internecine conflict. The Umbrathane always want to sort out which of them can piss the highest.’
The woman waved her stumpy carbine at Polly and her four companions, who sat in a tight group. ‘But these are not.’
Aconite slowly shook her head. ‘What happened?’
‘An assassin: a twenty-second-century human coming in by tor.’ The woman turned and stared hard at Polly for a moment. ‘But a human with Heliothane augmentations. We can only suppose some tor fragment was regenerated, as all the active tors are accounted for.’
‘What about future tors?’ Aconite asked mildly.
This really seemed to annoy the woman. Her face flushed and she looked ready to strike Aconite, but controlled the impulse.
‘You know that’s impossible. Concurrent future probability came under temporal interdiction the moment Cowl made the big jump. There is not enough energy in the universe.’
Do you understand any of this?
‘You have to think shallow so as not to tie yourself in knots. I’m just not yet able to think in circles, but it’s like Aconite said: the rule of entelechy must be applied always.’
Entelechy shmelecky. It just doesn’t make fucking sense.
‘We’re here, aren’t we?’
‘Was it Cowl’s idea for you to come and search my house?’ Aconite asked Makali.
At this the woman showed discomfort. ‘He would never object to such precautions.’
‘So it wasn’t his idea…’ Aconite now stared at her for a moment before going on. ‘My brother, not being the soul of patience or trust, has an automatic system set to obliterate any tor and its bearer who fall outside the trap. I saw the missile fired by that system two days ago. That usually means the tor has malfunctioned, or someone else has got through who should not have. I also saw the recent explosions inside the citadel. Obviously some assassin arrived and went in directly to carry out his task. So… why are you searching my house?’
‘You will not always be inviolable. One day Cowl will tire of your interference, and that will be a day I enjoy.’ The woman turned away abruptly, her companions falling in behind her as she marched back down to the river, where a hover-sled awaited.
Aconite gestured to the four rescuees seated with Polly, indicating that they could go about their tasks. Polly she called over.
‘Go with Tacitus and watch the citadel. If anything is ejected, I have no doubt that it will be very dead, and possibly not even intact, but I want as much as possible of the corpse brought here.’
‘What do you expect to find?’ Polly had often brought back corpses for Aconite’s forensic inspection, for Cowl’s sister was looking for the same things as he was, though for different reasons.
‘Makali perhaps revealed more than Cowl would like when she talked of regenerated tor fragments and Heliothane augmentations. This is a great opportunity for me to assess the extent of concurrent Heliothane technology, and perhaps to learn what might ensue in the coming years.’
‘The Nodus?’ said Polly. The start of that pivotal time was approaching, and though Cowl’s huge geothermal taps were providing him with massive energy, they would not provide even one per cent of the amount required to jump him back behind the Nodus again. As Polly understood it, Cowl had used the torbeast to generate the vorpal energies required to push him behind the Nodus the first time, and that process had also required the energy from the fusion obliteration of Callisto, a moon of Jupiter.
‘Quite, the Nodus.’
‘What do you expect?’ Polly asked.
‘The city you saw during your journey. As we discussed before, it is no doubt the terminus of a wormhole and as such will be used as an energy source for the Heliothane, and a base from which to launch their attack against my brother. It is now a critical time. Thus far he has failed to discover the source of the omission paradox, and failed to affect the future in any way. At the Nodus this may change, and that is also the time the Heliothane will consider him the greatest danger to them. They will devote every resource they can to stopping him.’
Thote had told Polly that Cowl was trying to destroy the future, thus promulgating the theory that Cowl wanted a timeline occupied only by his own kind. Aconite claimed not to know if this was what the Heliothane truly believed, or if it was a lie to excuse their aggression. The real reason for Cowl’s actions, Polly had since learnt from Aconite, was somewhat more complicated. She studied the Heliothane woman closely, realizing that something was being left unsaid—that Aconite knew more than she was letting on.
‘I see,’ Polly replied, then went to fetch Tacitus. As she walked away, she was also aware of how Aconite always made reference to ‘the Heliothane’ as if she herself was not a member of that race. And still, after all this time, Polly did not know in which camp Aconite’s loyalties lay.
His adrenalin high fading, Tack began to realize just how badly injured he was and began to feel the pain. His right shoulder was dislocated; certainly some of his ribs were broken, since he could feel them shifting as Cowl carried him like a sack of shopping to the floor below, each of the preterhuman’s sharp fingers penetrating through Tack’s intercostal muscle. His left ankle had snapped as his boots were torn away, and his skull fractured when Cowl had slammed him against the wall. But unconsciousness did not result, since that was a luxury denied him by his Heliothane programming. Unconsciousness served no purpose, for they wanted him functional to the last moment of life. They had not seen fit to remove his ability to feel pain, however, as that did serve a purpose.
When they reached the lower floor, Tack saw several armed umbrathants departing in response to a silent instruction from Cowl. It occurred to him then that the Heliothane, as well as not providing him with suitable weapons to take a distance shot at this monster, had not provided him with any way of taking his own life in the event of capture. He knew what was coming now, something invariably enacted in all situations of this nature: he would be interrogated mercilessly.