This ability, Goron reassured her, would prove essential in the coming years, as there were few dangers on this Earth that could slip past guards able to see into the future—if only for a few minutes. Because of this extended perception, and because her gaze kept straying back to the beast, she was the first to see it happen.
She stood and walked upslope to Goron, who sat Buddha-like on the mountainside, the section of control pillar resting on his lap. His eyes were closed, for he was either asleep or meditating. She eyed Palleque who, despite what Goron had told them all, she still distrusted as she did all fanatics.
‘It’s happening,’ she told Goron at last.
The Engineer opened his eyes and gazed towards Sauros. ‘There was always the possibility it would be endless, though not for us.’
Silleck and the rest of the survivors had been waiting for a feedback cataclysm that would have swept them away from this mountainside in an ashy wind. Now this was not to be.
Then it all ended as suddenly as it had begun. The flow of torbeast attenuated, the roar of its progress dropping away. It broke up into trailing tentacles of raw flesh and spills of putrid dead matter—and then it was gone.
‘And there it is,’ said Palleque, standing up.
Goron reached inside the control sphere and did what he had to do. Just inside the ravaged structure of the city, the three abutments began to slide towards a centre point, closing the wormhole entrance. As they drew closer, Goron shaded his eyes, though the light was not really so intense, being to the infrared end of the spectrum. Dull thunder echoed and what remained of the city deformed under an intense burst of heat.
Silleck felt the heat on her face—and in her dry eyes.
Relaying what Nandru was telling her, Polly said, ‘Aconite and Wasp were in the tor chamber when Aconite went charging out. Wasp followed her into the residential room, when suddenly some system inside Wasp cut in and it threw Nandru out. But he had time to see that Ygrol was dead—that you don’t display that amount of brain to the air without needing a body bag shortly after.’
‘Tell Nandru to describe exactly what else he saw,’ said Tack.
Polly tilted her head for a moment, and her eyes narrowed. ‘One of them held a gun to Tacitus’s head. Two were holding Ygrol down in a chair and it seems Makali had just beaten his brains out. He didn’t see the other two, though.’
‘They’re probably all dead,’ said Tack.
‘But if they are not, we have to do something for them,’ Polly replied.
Resting his carbine across his shoulder, Tack stared at her. He was sick of these Umbrathane and Heliothane eternally killing each other and dragging others into the conflict. He was his own man now and he wanted no more of it. He also did not want to be forced into a position where he himself would have to kill again. However, Aconite had arranged to have him dragged from the sea, and she had subsequently put him back together. He owed her. And, at the last, he now wanted to gain Polly’s respect—and whatever else she might be prepared to give. In that moment he felt, with a lurch, his life beginning again, and knew he could not renege on his new responsibilities. Fucking hero, he thought.
‘Whatever’s happened there, we’re too late to stop it. But let’s see what we can find out,’ he said, his stomach turning over at such a positive statement.
He led the way up from the river bed, circling round to come down on Aconite’s house from the mountainside. As they climbed, the rain turned to drizzle, then a wind picked up and blew that away. The cloud began to break, opening on stars and the first hint of topaz dawn behind the mountains. When the house finally came into view below them, lemon sunlight was already bathing the coastline beyond and flecking the sea with gold. The citadel, to their left, looked no different. Still, around its high points, bestial distortions crowded the sky.
‘Why does that happen?’ Tack asked.
After a moment Polly replied, ‘Aconite says Cowl’s energy source comes from thermal taps penetrating down to a geological fault running out from here. From that power source he feeds energy to the torbeast when he wants it to do his bidding, and that same energy feed opens a rift through to the beast’s alternate. The beast always attempts to come through here to access that source directly and what we are seeing is the result of that.’
‘But Cowl won’t let it through.’
‘No. I don’t understand the tech he uses, but he prevents the beast from coming totally into phase. It is only a few degrees out, but enough for it to produce no more effect than this.’
‘And if it came through?’
‘Cowl would end up as dead as us.’
Tack remembered those thick cables snaking out into the sea. Judging from them, he supposed the energy being utilized must be immense. However, it did not even compare to that transmitted by the sun tap, as no cables could ever carry that load. Glancing down at the house again, he abruptly caught Polly’s shoulder and dragged her down. They observed an umbrathant guard emerge and walk around the back of the house to urinate against the wall.
‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ Tack said.
Polly walked casually up from the river towards the house, as if she had just been out for a pleasant stroll. The Umbrathane woman by the door called inside, and a man quickly joined her. Polly kept her gaze level on them, not daring to look up any higher. She raised a hand in a friendly wave. When she was still five metres away, Tack, leaping down from the roof, brought his right foot down squarely on top of the Umbrathane woman’s head and, as she crumpled, snapped out his left foot to catch the man under his ear. By then Polly was flat on the ground—as instructed.
Tack forward-flipped off the woman, hit the ground on his feet, and rolled aside as shots splintered rock where he had been a fraction of a second before. Coming upright, he spun round, his foot coming up in an arc accelerated by the weight of his strange surgical boot. Straightening his leg at the last, he slammed the boot up into the man’s throat. To his horror, he glimpsed Polly bringing to bear her handgun in what to Tack seemed slow motion. The woman, having hit the ground on her shoulder, was coming upright again, her weapon swinging towards Polly. And then Tack realized he would not be able to do this without killing.
He swung his carbine round towards the woman, but shots from the man shattered the barrel of the weapon. The Umbrathane woman hesitated for a microsecond, assessing the greatest danger. She began to turn towards Tack just as he dropped his carbine and flung himself back. A hole opened up in the woman’s forehead and she began to drop. The man began yelling and swung towards Polly. But why was he moving so slowly? Then Tack realized the man had probably just seen his lover die. That did not slow Tack as he hurled himself forward. Closing in, the carbine swung back towards him. He caught the barrel, turning as he did so, its fire scoring his stomach. He jerked the weapon towards him, out of the man’s grip, spinning it up around his back and over his shoulder. Catching it in his other hand, he fired it, slinging the man backwards. It was over. It had taken less than six seconds. Not much time to extinguish two lives.
‘Accurate shooting,’ said Tack, as Polly walked over to him.
Coming to a halt, Polly holstered her handgun, then gazed down at the two dead umbrathants. She said, ‘Mortuus est. Mortua est.’
Tack looked at her queryingly.
‘They’re both dead,’ she said.
‘Yeah, certainly that,’ he replied.
Polly looked up, eyeing the carbine Tack held. ‘I knew a juggler once, called Berthold, who would have been impressed by the way you moved there.’