‘I told you to keep yourself occupied for five hours,’ he said.

Tack told him of his encounter by the viewing windows.

‘Engineer?’ Saphothere sat bolt upright, then leant over and made an adjustment to the revitalization machine. After a moment its pipes were clear of his blood, then one of them filled up with some emerald fluid. Saphothere gasped in pain, picked up a wad of white material from an inbuilt dispenser, waiting until the emerald fluid cleared, then yanked all the tubes from his chest, slapping the wad quickly into place to soak up any spill of blood. None of this surprised Tack now. His surprise had been earlier, when Saphothere, without assistance, had opened up his shirt, placed the plug against his chest, and explained through gritted teeth how its connection heads were now digging inside him, searching for his pulmonary and ventricular arteries. It seemed Saphothere had no time for anaesthetics or the ministrations of a nurse, had there been one in evidence.

‘I take it he is an important man?’ asked Tack.

‘He’s the Engineer,’ said Saphothere, as if that was all the explanation required. He swung his legs off the slab, kicked away the wheeled device, which rolled back to the wall, sealed up his shirt and stood. ‘I would have liked more time here, but it seems your education will begin sooner than expected.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I will not be flying the mantisal all the way to New London.’

Even Ygrol, the toughest and most dangerous member of the Neanderthal tribe, was tired and knew he was fighting a losing battle. The aurochs he had killed would keep his fellows supplied with food for some time yet, but no matter how much meat he brought to the encampment, his people were still weak and incontinent, blinded by the blisters around and on their eyes, still dying. Only Ygrol was still physically untouched by this terrible malady, though it hurt him in many other ways.

Inside the yurt he wrapped the dead girl in a tanned goat fur to keep her warm for the journey and began sewing it shut. He did this because it was always how the dead should be honoured, though he would not bury her, for the one on the mountain demanded the corpses. After dragging her outside the yurt, he first went over to check that the stew, in its hide pot over the fire, contained sufficient water, for without it soaking through the hide, the pot would burn and the contents spill into the flames. From the other yurts he could hear the moaning and the demands for water and food, but ignored them—that they were making a noise meant they were still alive. Returning then, he threw the girl’s corpse over his shoulder and walked back through the forest towards the mountain, where it awaited.

Nothing seemed to satisfy the monster, and Ygrol had tried every means at his disposal. It had taken the remains of the mammoth meat from the storage cave, and twice took his kill when he left it unguarded for but a moment. He thought perhaps to satisfy it with the gift of other sacrifices, and so began killing the flat-faced outsiders for it, and dragging them to the mountain. But that seemed to make no difference at all. Now all it seemed he could do was make his people as comfortable as he could while they died, then take their bodies to the mountain as offerings. But then what, when they were all dead?

The gift still rested on the stone where the tribe had butchered smaller carcasses and spread out hides for scraping and, sometimes, the need to go and take it up nearly outweighed Ygrol’s duty to his people. But he knew that to do so would somehow take him away from them. He knew that the creature on the mountain wanted this of him. But he dared not leave the tribe with no one to provide for them.

Something thudded against the goatskin wrapping the girl, and he thought a carrion bird had just dive-bombed him. He pulled his bone club from his belt and looked around at the trees. Then he saw the two flat-faces running towards him, and glanced aside to see the arrow penetrating the sad parcel over his shoulder.

Ygrol considered fleeing. He did not have his spear, and he knew just how lethal were the flimsy-looking weapons these people carried. But to run he would need to leave the girl and, even though he was taking her to give to the monster, he would not leave her to these excuses for human beings. Pulling her lower, so she rested across his chest, he roared and charged. Another arrow thudded into his package, went through the girl’s leg and just penetrated his chest. The bowman was down on one knee, struggling to string another arrow as Ygrol hammered into him, smashing him aside with one sweep of the club, his head split right open and his brain almost completely out of his skull. Not pausing, Ygrol continued after the other man as he fled. He threw his heavy bone club at the back of the man’s legs to bring him down, then was on him in a moment, and did not put down the corpse of the girl as he stamped the life out of this upstart Cro-Magnon. On the mountain he left his two victims on either side of the girl to assist her on her journey, then headed home, trying to figure out how to work the bow and arrows he had taken.

Back at the encampment it did not take long for the Neanderthal to know that something was badly wrong. First he smelt burning meat, then, upon walking into the clearing, heard no one moaning. The stew hide had been torn open and emptied and the smell arose from the few small pieces of meat in the fire. The yurts had likewise been torn open and emptied—all that was left inside them was the occasional bloody animal skin. Ygrol shrieked his rage and ran to leap up onto the butcher stone. He cursed the gods of sky, rock and earth and damned the spirits of all the ancestors who looked down from their fires in the night sky. And as if in reply, the very air over the encampment split and the mountain monster appeared, but this time nothing was hidden. Ygrol saw then the spirit of every animal he had slaughtered for the pot and knew some accounting was due. He looked down at the gift, where it rested between his feet, considered smashing it with his club, but then picked it up.

Deep in the forest the Cro-Magnon men heard a scream of defiance and rage from the Neanderthal encampment they were encircling. But they never found the one who had murdered so many of their tribe. Not even bones.

Modification Status Report:

Some sensory additions will form in an aerogel grid on the exoskeleton, similar in function to the lateral line of a fish, but sensitive to a wide spectrum of radiation. The presence of this grid negates the need for eyes. This is fortunate, as the interfacing organs, which by necessity must remain close to the child’s brain, occupy much of its face and leave little room for much else. I have retained the mouth in position, along with those modifications required for the more efficient ingestion of food, but the nose and the eyes are gone. Also, it being the case that many of the interfacing organs are delicate, some sort of protection is obligatory. Serendipitously, I have discovered that only a small alteration to the gene controlling exoskeletal growth (this taken, along with the mouth modifications, from the genome of a scarabaeid beetle) causes growth of ‘wing cases’ over the face. Already, I think, I know what my child’s name will be.

He lay flat on the floor of his hut, his eyes rolled up into his head and his body rigid with ecstasy. The hut stank. The man stank. Polly grimaced down at him, then moved over to the duck skewered over the fire and tore off a leg. The two patches she had pressed against his chest, while running her hands up inside the stinking fur he wore, were taking him somewhere he had never been before. Wondering why she had chosen to do that rather than zap him with the taser, she supposed, after seeing the squalor he lived in, she had felt some pity for him.