However, that was not his intention at all. Almost impatiently he snatched her up by the shin and in one motion, turning to leave, tossed her towards the tunnel’s black mouth—like so much garbage.
Polly yelled as she slid down a frictionless slope, she flailed to grab at one side with her undamaged arm, but her hand slid off metal that had the feel of slime, and she plummeted down into blackness. In the brief, hurtling transit that followed, she coiled up protectively around her damaged arm. Then she shot out into yellow daylight, dropping to hit a ledge, to which she clung briefly, but seeing it occupied by skeletons and decaying corpses, screamed and released her hold. She then struck water, cold and salty, and began to sink. Polly still had some fight left in her — struggling weakly for the surface, her flayed arm burning in the brine—but in her weakness and confusion, she took in a breath, and the numbing water filled her lungs, curtailing her struggles like a body blow.
Polly, I am so sorry…
Drifting in golden depths, Polly now knew her ending. But then a beetle-black hand grabbed her under the chin, and some monstrous being began to haul her back to the surface.
The pseudo-mantisal completed around Tack on the next shift; then on the following one he observed the red filaments expanding in its structure as it pushed to its limits, hurtling for home. Each time-jump he estimated to be in the region of a hundred million years. At each barren destination reached he stuffed himself with food and drink, taking glucose and vitamin supplements to stave off that point when the tor, detecting his blood sugars had dropped below a certain level, would become truly parasitic on him. This, he knew from the study of numerous torbearers encountered by the Heliothane, was the point of dying for many of those not killed by carnivorous fauna earlier in their journeys—their decaying bodies, still dragged back to Cowl, being fed upon by their tors.
Arriving here in a time when no life yet existed on the land, not even smears of blue-green algae, he set up his tent in the shelter of a frozen lava flow sculptured like some vast wormcast and, while sitting in front of it, ate and drank his fill. Thereafter transferring the remainder of his rations to the pack containing his equipment, he walked away from the tent—and immediately came upon a fellow torbearer.
She was sprawled on the ground, and wore the tattered remains of a richly decorated Elizabethan dress. There was a net of pearls holding her once dark—but now bleached-ginger—hair in an elaborate style. It confounded him how she had managed to keep it secured this way throughout what must have happened to her. Then he realized she had likely died much earlier on her journey through time, to be fed upon by her tor as she decayed. This was perhaps why her tor and the arm it had once enveloped were both gone—breaking away from the putrefying remnants of her body. The desiccating wind here had mummified her, and her hollow eye sockets gazed up endlessly into the sky. Tack turned away from the corpse and headed back to his tent.
Spewing brine from her lungs, Polly returned to abrupt and painful consciousness. The troll who had been battering at her chest now turned her unceremoniously into the recovery position and reached out to touch something recently attached to the side of her neck. Polly felt something happening—then recognized a drug hit coursing through her bloodstream.
Coughing up the last of the sea water, she rolled over onto her back and lay gasping below the lemon sky. But no matter how hard she inhaled, she was simply not getting enough air into her lungs. Then her rescuer loomed over her, a grotesque insectile mask covering its face. Polly baulked when a six-fingered hand offered her a similar mask, but she was too weak to resist as it was pressed wetly over her face.
Blessed oxygen surged into Polly’s lungs. Within a moment she was feeling light-headed, but then, with a sound like a liquid kiss from inside the mask, the air mix changed to normal.
With her vision clearing, Polly studied her rescuer. The woman’s skin was a metallic grey, glassy veins inset in its surface just like Cowl’s. A wide and powerful body was contorted by a hunched back, and supported on bowed legs. Her arms were malformed: the left arm, grotesquely muscular, terminated in a three-fingered hand that looked strong enough to crush granite, while her right arm was of normal size, but possessed a hand with two opposable thumbs. This strange creature stooped closer and said something to her she did not understand.
‘It hurts,’ was all Polly could say in reply.
The other woman shook her head, muttering something that sounded foul, then stepped back towards some thing squatting behind her. Polly felt her skin crawling when she got a good look at it. The size of a pony, it rested on four spiderish legs, its jointed neck jutting forward from the thorax, then slanting back to support a wasp-like head the size of a football. The thorax itself was translucent green and packed with circuitry in which lights constantly glinted. The wasp-striped body behind was covered by nacreous wings which the woman lifted up, like the lid of a box, to delve inside. Removing something from the robotic insect’s body, the grotesque woman came and squatted down beside Polly, indicating her injured arm before holding out a cylinder that hinged open in two halves to reveal a moist interior that seethed. Polly instantly made to back away from it.
She’s trying to help you, Polly. That’s some kind of wound dressing, I’ll bet.
Reluctantly heeding Nandru, Polly held out her injured arm and the woman closed the cylinder round it. At first there was alarming movement and pain then, thankfully, her arm abruptly numbed. Grabbing Polly’s upper arm, the woman hauled her to her feet.
‘Abas lo-an fistik trous,’ the woman said, then shook her head. Abruptly she reached over to Polly’s hip bag and neatly opened it with her twin-thumbed hand. Taking out Polly’s taser, she inspected the device for a moment before returning it and sealing the hip bag shut. That reminded Polly the automatic was still in her coat, but she felt no inclination to go back for it.
The troll woman then spoke words in what sounded like Chinese, then Russian. Finally she said, ‘Century human what is?’ before going on to try another language.
When Polly finally figured she had been asked a question, she replied, ‘Twenty-second.’
The woman paused, then said, ‘You are lucky… to be alive. Few attain… this… location, or survive long after their arrival.’
‘Why…?’ Polly asked, not sure exactly what she was asking.
‘Cowl normally kills before discarding. He must have been distracted—either that or he does not care any more.’ Suddenly the woman’s speech was totally lucid.
Polly stared at her rescuer in bewilderment.
‘It is complicated to explain. You will not be able to walk?’ Testing her theory, the woman released her grip—then caught Polly as she began to slump. ‘I see not.’ Abruptly the strange female ducked briefly and, slinging Polly easily over one shoulder, she stepped to the insectile robot and dropped the girl down on her feet beside it, gesturing to the compartment revealed by the hinged-up wings.
‘Not comfortable, but it is either that or on my shoulder.’
Polly nodded and the woman helped her into the cramped compartment, her legs dangling over the rear. Glancing round, she saw the robot’s head turn to inspect her briefly, then tilt slightly, as if in query, before facing forwards again. As the woman moved off, the robot followed her dutifully, the sharp tips of its legs driving deep into the ground in sequence. It moved just like an insect, and utterly silently, with no hydraulic sounds, no hiss of compressed air. Polly had half expected to be thrown from side to side, but the compartment remained precisely level all the time.