Tack swallowed dryly and tried to shove his mangled history away from himself. He considered not telling Aconite anything, but decided he did not owe his silence to those who had sent him to this time. No matter how he felt about Saphothere, the traveller had sent Tack on a suicide mission. Tack managed to admit, ‘Inside my mind… Cowl found a way to attack Sauros.’
‘Sauros?’ Aconite asked mildly, unsurprised.
Tack concentrated on the now, and found that by doing so he could control the horror growing between his ears. While the other three in the small group moved over, Tack told of Goron’s project, of the city and the wormhole, how it fed energy for accurate mantisal jumping, and how the Heliothane were pushing backwards in time finally to get to Cowl. He then repeated, verbatim, those particular segments of conversation that had been of such interest to Cowl, and had now caused this reaction. He did not tell them what Thote had said, however, or of his own thoughts about distance weapons and sacrificial goats. That was for himself.
After a long silence, Aconite said, ‘This Sauros is what you saw, Polly.’ She turned back to Tack. ‘I somehow doubt that either Goron or Saphothere would be so negligent, but it appears to me that this Palleque might not have been entirely in their employ.’ She looked thoughtful and bowed her head, supporting her chin on her heavier hand. Musingly she continued, ‘I can think of only two possibilities: if the information Cowl extracted from you is true, then Sauros will become vulnerable when it shifts, and the torbeast my brother is now summoning will kill everyone in it. Thereafter, it being impossible to shut down the wormhole without catastrophe, the beast will then push through to New London and to the Heliothane Dominion.’
‘They’ll be able to deal with it there, won’t they?’ asked Polly.
‘That I very much doubt,’ said Aconite. ‘It will kill billions and destroy New London, thus causing that catastrophic shutdown. Most likely resulting vacuum will then kill it, but it is tough and, should it survive to somehow reach Earth or the solar colonies, billions more will die.’
‘Option one don’t sound so good,’ said Nandru. ‘You got anything better?’
‘Maybe this is a trap. Perhaps, having lured the beast out fully, the Heliothane will use some sort of nuclear conflagration to destroy it. Even so, I don’t see how the destruction of Sauros can be avoided, followed by the consequent collapse of the tunnel, which in turn would result in the destruction of New London — so achieving the same result. This leads me to think that maybe option one is the only one—no Heliothane plot, just my brother winning this battle at least.’
To Tack the second option seemed the more likely, and he wondered why Aconite was so dismissive of it.
‘Why would that happen? Why would New London be destroyed?’ Polly asked.
Tack knew the answer to that one. Keeping under rigid self-control he said, ‘Remember I mentioned how interested Cowl was in what Saphothere said: “if the wormhole was independently collapsed, the energy surge would vaporize New London.” Sun tap and wormhole are inextricably linked, and the hole is drawing in so much energy that if it collapsed, that energy would have to go somewhere else. The life of New London, in such a case, would be numbered in seconds.’
‘Then what should we do?’ Polly asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Aconite, turning away. ‘It is not our concern.’
Watching her go, Tack could not fathom the hint of amusement in her expression, but he knew how absolutely she was wrong. What he hadn’t told her confirmed this for him, but he had no wish to tell her now. He hoped that the Heliothane succeeded in whatever plan they were pursuing, if only it resulted in the death of this damned Cowl. That would be repayment for what the being had done to Tack himself, would end the slaughter of the torbearers, and maybe even end the war. His silence, now, best served that purpose, and anyway he had no trust of any sibling-on-sibling conflict—getting involved on any side of that was the way to find yourself branded the enemy, and have them both at your throat.
But Tack’s most important concern had little to do with any of that. Turning to gaze back out into the storm he felt disparate memories still sliding together in his mind. Every mission he had carried out, though having its own limited emotional impact, had lost that impact each time he had been reprogrammed. With that framework now gone, however, all those mindless missions were coming together in his head and he was beginning to really feel. Past sins were coming back to haunt him.
A row of nacre pillars, stretching from horizon to horizon, the incursions opened across the Triassic landscape. From a forest of low ferns and stunted ginkgos, a herd of browsing prosauropods rose onto their hind legs and started hooting in alarm. The big male charged out from the main group and, thrashing its tail from side to side, tore up the ground with its huge and lethal foreclaws, which were usually enough to drive away all but the most persistent predator. But these intruders were nothing he knew, and he began to back off as they advanced across the landscape like whirlwinds. Eventually he turned and, with his tail high in the air, charged after the more prudent females of his herd. None of them were to know that they were trapped inside a ring of the pillars, a ring eight hundred kilometres in diameter.
19
Modification Status Report:
Pain inside. The boy grows at a phenomenal rate and the early scans show that his growth is optimal. I feel his carapace hard in my womb when he moves, and twice already he has interfaced through my spinal cord. Watching Amanita build her machines, the stunted tendrils moving on her face, I wonder what the relationship between the two of them will be. Will they be friends? Will he consider her his inferior, even though it was only through studying her that I was able to achieve him? Her mind is complex and quite evidently her intelligence is high, but she is very much a human girl. When he interfaced with me I glimpsed a mind equally as complex, but frighteningly alien. But my reaction I put down to my hormonal imbalance. I should not fear this perfection I have achieved.
Sauros, a metallic sphere drawing a tail of bright energy between grey and black surfaces—inverted through vorpal vision, it was poised in the flaw of a vast gem, infinite surfaces falling away from it, while it was supported by a fountain of energy and cut by the surfaces of a hypersphere. But Goron did not need this second view to know they were heading into deep shit. Like a bullet reaching the end of its ballistic arc, the great city was now ploughing down into the midnight sea in which awaited the organic Mandelbrot patterns of endless layers of beast.
‘We’ll have no fields! It’ll tear us apart!’ That was Theldon, playing his hands over his console like a virtuoso finding he has gone deaf.
‘All weapons systems are still enabled. We’re getting no energy loss there. I am reading organic mass on the other side.’ Silleck: grim, determined, fatalistic.
‘Put tactical nukes out ahead of us—as close as you dare. Have them detonate on the other side of the interface,’ Goron instructed, which was about the only instruction he could give in the circumstances, though he knew they were flea-biting an elephant.
The real world rolled in around them, distorted over hyper-surfaces. The triple flash of detonation momentarily blackened all screens, and Sauros resettled, groaning, to its bones in the midst of a firestorm.
‘Incursion right inside us!’ Silleck yelled, before even Theldon, who was supposed to be searching for such, could yell a warning.
Goron called up a view, into the abutment chamber, and saw the huge flaw opening and the defence rafts moving in to attack. He saw a feeding mouth come out, like a gargantuan striking cobra, and slam itself closed on the stern of one raft, before the second raft opened fire and severed the neck. But then another mouth hurtled out, then another… then a second incursion began to open.