‘I think you have disobeyed me.’ He adjusted the controls on his weapon. ‘Now, tell me why I should not cut off your limbs, leaving only the arm we require.’
‘I’ll die of shock,’ Tack managed, crawling backwards.
‘No, we can keep you alive in that condition, and you’ll not be a burden to us safely strapped inside the mantisal. Once at Pig City your arm can be removed to be preserved in a nutrient tank, and the rest discarded.’
Tack looked wildly about himself, to try and find some way out of this. Then he saw it. He pointed up the beach. ‘There, you can see the tracks it left.’
Coptic glanced up the beach with a look of bored irritation, then he abruptly did a double take. ‘Remain exactly where you are,’ he said, walking up to inspect the trail left by the andrewsarchus. After a moment he returned. ‘Get up.’ Tack obeyed. ‘Pick up the water container and proceed.’
Walking ahead of him, Tack was thoroughly aware that though multiple amputation might not be imminent, there could still be further punishments for disobedience.
Shortly they regained the encampment, where they found Meelan crouching by a fire over which a large fish was spitted. After a brief exchange between her and Coptic, she stood and stepped forwards, glancing up and down the beach. Then she took out an instrument similar to the one Traveller had been using. Tack set the water container down by the fire, and when Meelan returned to her previous position, he presumed andrewsarchus was no danger to them at present.
After Meelan and Coptic had eaten their fill of the roasted fish, Tack was allowed the remains. Such was the sheer size of the thing that he found plenty of flesh left on the bones, and inside the armoured head, which he managed to crack open with a stone. While Tack snacked on parboiled brains, Coptic unrolled his sleeping bag and lay on top of it, while Meelan prowled, keeping half an eye on Tack, but mostly her attention was focused on the instrument she held. Coptic was asleep in an instant, snoring gently. Feeling revived by a full stomach, Tack stood and walked down to the shore, strolling up and down a section of beach that did not take him out of Meelan’s view.
As well as the debris left by the feeding andrewsarchus, the remains of the shark and the piles of seaweed, he saw other things that apprised him of how very far from home he was. Here were green mussel shells like the split horns of cattle, scallop shells the size of dinner plates, and a multitude of spiral shells decorated with Mandelbrot patterns in primary colours. He found a shark’s tooth that covered the entire palm of his hand, and pocketed it in case it might provide a handy substitute for the knife Meelan had taken from him—though he doubted he had the proficiency to use it against her.
‘There are bivalves buried in the shallows. They will serve as bait.’
Tack whipped round to see Meelan standing right behind him. Observing her closely now, he noticed that the dressing over the stump of her arm looked inflated and oddly distorted. Seeing the direction of his gaze she merely glared at him, then tossed him the fishing rod Coptic had been using earlier. Catching it, he inspected it more closely. The rod itself was telescopic, and the short length of line extending from its tip was as fine as a hair and terminated in a barbed hook, which was intrinsic to it rather than attached separately. Halfway along the line were a slidable bubble float and two weights. The reel itself was a cube with curved edges and no winding arm, only a small console on one side.
‘You will now catch more fish for us to eat before we depart.’ She turned away.
Tack was damned if he was going to ask her how to operate the console, so began pressing at random. After a while he found the button for extending the rod—in an eye blink—to its full three-metre length. He next found the button to release line from the reel—sliding frictionlessly from the far end of the rod into a tangle on the ground—then the button to wind it in again. Contenting himself with using only these three controls, for there were many others, plus a small screen displaying pictographic script, he laid the rod down and went to dig up some bait. Quite soon he found himself fishing on a prehistoric shore, hauling in an armour-headed fish with broad scales as bright as mercury. And for that brief time he realized he had never before enjoyed himself so much—not once in his entire life. But it ended all too soon, when Meelan announced that he had caught enough.
After Coptic had slept for a straight six hours into twilight, Meelan woke him up and took her turn on the sleeping bag. Without a word Coptic cooked and ate one of the three fish Tack had caught, then sat down in the lotus position to keep watch over the instrument Meelan had used earlier. Tack, weariness catching up with him, and on receiving no contrary instructions, curled up on a mound of pine needles in the bowl of a tree, and fell asleep. It seemed only an instant before Coptic was kicking him awake. But already it was dawn and, checking his watch, Tack discovered he had been oblivious to the world for a full eight hours.
‘Pack up the supplies. We’re moving on,’ ordered Coptic.
Looking around, Tack saw Meelan down on the beach gazing out to sea. Gathering their equipment, he followed Coptic down to join her. Both of them, he saw, were well rested now, for their eyes glowed like embers. He did not see how they summoned it, but instantly the mantisal folded out of the air ahead of them, cold mist pouring off it to dissipate above the warm sand. Tack followed the two of them aboard and took up his accustomed position. Again they shifted.
One has to wonder if it matters at all to that thing on your arm whether you arrive at your eventual destination alive or dead. It seems parasitic — so perhaps it will continue feeding on your corpse as it drags it back through time.
Polly’s head was aching abominably, her mouth felt terracotta dry, and her body felt battered. Her hands and face were stung all over, not as a result of time travel but of landing in a patch of nettles. Still gasping on welcome air, she rolled over and sat upright, then wished she had not been so hasty as her vision darkened and a wave of nausea washed through her. After a moment this was supplanted by that familiar gnawing hunger. Glancing down at her hand clenched white around the neck of the food bag, she eased her grip and delved inside it, retrieving a large pork pie, but it was frozen as solid as granite.
You have to wonder if you have an eventual destination, or if there is any purpose at all to your journey. Maybe you’re just a piece of temporal flotsam?
‘Nandru, I don’t suppose you could tell me where to find your OFF button?’
Touchy. I was only trying to make conversation.
After staring at the inedible pie for a moment longer, Polly cursed, returned it to the sack, then sat upright. She was sitting in patch of vegetation at the edge of woodland, and it all looked little different from the countryside of Henry VIII’s time. Getting unsteadily to her feet, she gazed around.
The nettles grew in a band along the edge of forest, separating it from grassy heath scattered with patches of teasel and thistle and dotted with wild flowers. This open heath extended some hundreds of metres to a wall of parsleys, displaying glimpses of reeds and more forest beyond. Nowhere visible was there any sign she recognized as from the hand of man.
‘How far back have we gone now?’ she wondered aloud.
Oh, speaking to me again are you?
‘Yes, I’m speaking to you,’ she snarled.
That’s good, for after a few more of these jumps back through time, I’ll be the only one left you can speak to.
‘What do you mean?’ Polly carefully trod a path through the nettles, as she made her way out into the open.