Entangled (44 page)

It wasn’t the cold.

She turned in the water to look behind.

Leoni was confused. ‘You mean the whole human race?’

‘Yes,’ agreed the Angel. ‘That’s right.’

‘But how can we be your children? There’re billions of us.’

‘I didn’t say I gave birth to you.’

‘You adopted us?’

‘No, not that either.’

‘It’s like a riddle. We’re your children, but you didn’t give birth to us and you didn’t adopt us. So what did you do?’

‘I created you,’ said the Angel. ‘I created all life on Earth.’

‘You’re beginning to sound like God again.’

The Angel laughed. ‘I already explained that no being exists across the whole of reality who is all-powerful and all-good like the god of the Christians.’

‘And I suppose I just have to take your word for it?’

‘The effects of the medicine will wear off soon, Leoni, and you will return to the Earth-plane. There’s much I still have to tell you, so for now, yes, it will be simpler if you just believe me when I say that the creative and destructive powers of the Totality, the authors of truth and lies, good and evil, are all beings like myself – intelligent, conscious, non-physical energy. Sometimes we’ve been called gods, even worshipped as such, but human notions of angels, spirits and demons are a better fit. We came into existence with the Totality but none of us have ever been able to discover with absolute certainty how or why we’re here. We have powers but we are by no means all-powerful at all levels of reality.’

‘If you can create life then you’re pretty powerful, Angel.’

‘Did I not tell you I perform miracles from time to time? Four billion years ago it was I who breathed the magic of spirit into the empty matter of Earth and wrote its code of life …’

‘You’re four billion years old?’

‘Much older,’ the Angel said. The screen of her laptop device displayed a kaleidoscope of swirling colours and Leoni found herself gazing down from the depths of space onto a fiery, barren, empty and lifeless world.

Then, slowly at first but soon speeding up, the character and colours of the planet began to change. Oceans covered it, land masses emerged, and Leoni zoomed in to see that life, in fantastic variety and abundance, was everywhere.

She could still hear the Angel’s voice: ‘After I manifested the first simple organisms, billions of years had to pass on the Earth-plane before creatures with sufficient intelligence to choose freely between good and evil could evolve. The first to do so was the human species.’

Abruptly, Leoni found herself seated in a classroom behind a wooden desk, looking at a big flatscreen monitor on the wall. It was displaying a graphic of a large tree with little shrewlike animals in the lowest branches, various kinds of lemurs and monkeys higher up, apes above them, followed by a number of progressively more human-looking creatures. At the top, the tree divided into two final branches, beside each of which appeared a superbly rendered three-dimensional human figure. One, labelled
NEANDERTHAL
, was stocky, heavily muscled, virtually neckless, chinless, big-nosed, beetle-browed and very ugly in a coarse, apelike way. The other, labelled
CRO-MAGNON
, tall, slim and well-muscled, with handsome sculpted features and a daring, intelligent glint in his eye, was a good-looking modern human being.

‘Two similar yet fundamentally different species of fully conscious humans evolved in parallel,’ the Angel commented. ‘Cro-Magnon is a name given by scholars to one – the anatomically modern humans who are your own direct ancestors. Though there were mystics and visionaries amongst them, many fell deeply into the physical plane and in time they forgot they were also beings of spirit. For them matter became everything. Evil angels mingled with them, and drew them towards wickedness …’

‘Evil angels?’ Leoni asked.

‘Demons, if you prefer.’

‘Like Sulpa?’

‘Yes. Sulpa is a demon, and one of my own kind, a being of intelligent, conscious, non-physical energy. But his purpose – his only purpose – is to magnify evil and send his malevolent presence out into all times and across all universes. The more pure and innocent the good he
destroys, the more horror and pain he inflicts in the process, the more his own power grows. That is why he hungers for the Neanderthals.’

‘The Neanderthals? I saw a story about them on Discovery Channel. Aren’t they supposed to have been stupid? And my kind of humans wiped them out?’

‘It’s true that the Neanderthals were less materially competent than the Cro-Magnons. In fact, they cared nothing for wealth and possessions. But they were highly evolved spiritual beings and they carried within them a quality of pure, innocent goodness that warmed the Totality. Their goodness was power, Leoni, raw cosmic power, but they used it only for healing, to communicate telepathically with one another, to live in harmony with the Earth, leaving almost no mark. Your species found them ugly, but beauty and truth shone forth from them like a beacon.’

‘I’m not surprised we wiped them out then,’ said Leoni. ‘We can’t stand too much beauty and truth.’

‘Well, now we approach the heart of the matter,’ said the Angel. ‘Because it is not at all certain you
did
wipe them out. Your scholars only know that the last population of Neanderthals survived in Spain until twenty-four thousand years ago and then became extinct. But they don’t know why this happened. They have no evidence. No observations. In such a case, where an event has not been observed, you may only speak of probabilities …’

‘OK, so it’s probable, not certain, we wiped them out.’

‘In which case it’s also probable but not certain that they became extinct in some other way …’

Leoni shrugged: ‘I suppose so – but why is this important?’

The Angel’s reply was baffling: ‘For the sake of every human alive today it is a matter of the utmost importance that the Neanderthals are
not
exterminated by Cro-Magnons twenty-four thousand years ago. In fact, the fate of the human race depends on it …’

They were being hunted by more Illimani swimmers, still a bowshot behind but closing fast. Ria squinted through the freezing spray. Just six of them. But they were all big men with flint daggers gripped between their teeth.

Beside her she heard a growl of anger as Driff saw them.

Bont had seen them, too. He was on his back, using the handle of his axe to hold Grondin and Brindle against him and keep their heads above water. Ligar, Jergat and Oplimar were struggling just to stay afloat.

Driff shook his soaking mane of black hair out of his eyes. There was a crazy intensity there that Ria had seen in other Illimani braves, and she didn’t like it. But whatever Brindle had done to turn him against his own people, she hadn’t seen him waver for a heartbeat since he’d saved her life on the meeting ground.

She looked back.

The pursuing swimmers were fast and determined. They’d already halved the distance. But behind them on the bank, the treacherous swamps, overgrown thickets and dense stands of trees that lay across the great bend of the Snake had slowed the Illimani horde almost to a halt. Yelling with frustration, many more of them, perhaps a hundred, now gripped weapons between their teeth and dived into the water.

Suddenly Ria saw Sulpa. His lean blood-drenched body and long red-gold hair were unmistakable. He sauntered to the bank, brought his hand up to shade his eyes, and seemed to be looking directly at her. Then his arm snaked lazily forward and he pointed his finger.

Ria glimpsed some fast-flying object coming her way. It seemed no bigger than an insect but it threw up a burst of steam when it entered the water beside her and smacked into her thigh with the force of an arrow, causing her to scream out in shock. The pain was sharp and agonising, as though the projectile was tipped with fire, but when she
put her hand down to explore she found no wound, only a lump under her flesh.

Sulpa pointed at her again. But before he could shoot her with another little dart she and her companions were swept round the curve of the Snake and shielded from him by a rank of tall willows growing close to the water’s edge.

Ria heard Grondin’s thought-voice. ‘We are saved.’ And an instant later she understood why.

The current was carrying them towards a barren little island in the middle of the river. There, out of sight of the Illimani, the other Ugly braves had beached their jaalas and stood with arms outstretched, some holding spear shafts, others coils of rope, waiting to rescue them from the water.

Ria was allowing herself to hope she might make it when one of the Illimani swimmers gripped her ankle. She just had time to take a gulp of air before her whole body was dragged beneath the surface.

She didn’t panic. After their parents had drowned, Hond and Rill had taught her everything there was to know about swimming. She’d learned to hold her breath and swim underwater in ice-cold rock pools in the mountains. She prided herself on being able to stay down for the count of two hundred. So she kept her eyes open in the cold blur. Her attacker had a dagger in a sheath at his waist but didn’t reach for it. He was still holding her ankle, jerking her under, and his free hand snaked out, scrabbling for her throat, leaving his flank vulnerable. Ria stabbed him hard and fast, driving the blade deep between his ribs. She heard his scream, muffled by the water, a cloud of bubbles burst from his mouth, and she was free.

Even before she could reach the surface and fill her lungs another Illimani swimmer was all over her, pale legs thrashing, hairy armpit in her face. He had a knife clamped between his teeth but, like the first man, he didn’t use it and tried to grapple with her instead. Ria slashed her blade across his belly, releasing a huge wash of blood, and broke loose, surging upwards, desperate for breath, shaking her hair out of her eyes as she surfaced.

The four surviving Illimani were ignoring everyone else, converging on her, and Ria guessed why they weren’t using their weapons. Sulpa wanted them to capture her and bring her back alive.

With her last reserves of strength she thrashed across the current
towards the island. Brindle, Grondin and Bont had already been pulled ashore by the Uglies, and Ria saw Ligar, Oplimar and Jergat being helped from the water. She’d become separated from Driff in the struggle but he caught up with her now, just as the four Illimani reached her. One wrapped his arm around her head, another grabbed her thigh, another her hair, as Driff flailed into them, biting and pummelling. Then the river tumbled them all in a heap against the island where the Uglies were waiting. Ria and Driff were hauled to safety and the Illimani were hacked to death in the shallows.

There was a swirl of activity as the crews rearranged themselves amongst the remaining jaalas, and Ria was quickly back on one of the little vessels with her companions beside her. But the next wave of Illimani swimmers was almost upon them, and more than twenty splashed close enough to swarm the jaalas as they were launched. Ria reached over the side and stabbed one of the attackers in the eye as he tried to climb aboard. Another brave swam up and she slashed at him, screaming defiance, forcing him back. She saw Bont and Grondin laying about with their axes, cutting a way through, saw Uglies on the other jaalas doing the same, until at last the little fleet broke clear and surged into the mainstream, scudding over the surface.

Ria didn’t look back; the men in the water couldn’t match the speed of the jaalas.