To End All Wars

by David Tallerman

  “Has it occurred to you that perhaps there was no weapon, either German or British?”

  Caught off guard, Forrester replied, “It’s occurred to me.”

  “Have you asked yourself what the four incidents, the one in France and the ones here, had in common?”

  So Forbes was acknowledging the third blackout, the one that had taken place when Forrester was alone in his room. That was more forthrightness than he’d come to anticipate. “Mass unconsciousness,” he said. “The times I was free to observe, at any rate. I’d surmise that the duration was always about the same. Beyond that, nothing I can think of.”

  “You’re missing the obvious. All four incidents share one element. Or rather, one person.”

  Forrester saw belatedly what Forbes was driving at. “You mean me.”

  “I do.”

  “You mean that I was the only one awake.”

  “You were.”

  Forbes’s expression was utterly focused. Forrester remembered suddenly the major as he’d met him at the outset, the benignity he’d pictured in those depthless brown eyes. He was incapable of reconciling that version of Forbes and this. How could he have so misinterpreted the man?

  “You want the truth?” Forbes said. “Then I’ll give you it, Forrester. There were no captured German officers. Those extraordinary travel arrangements were to expedite someone back to England, but that person was you. An inexplicable event transpired in France, an anomaly, and so far as anyone can judge, you were its cause. What happened, you made happen.” He paused, relaxing a fraction. “That was the theory, anyhow. And four days ago, you proved it. ”

  Forrester was aghast. The story was preposterous, and yet Forbes had delivered it entirely earnestly. “That’s why I was tortured?”

  Was it his imagination, or did Forbes seem discomforted by that word? “We conducted an experiment,” he said. “Which, as I told you, was the director’s decision and not mine. He posited that your physical or mental state might be acting as a trigger. The first time, you’d just been shot, and must have been in a great deal of both pain and emotional distress. I’d already tried to stimulate the latter—“

  “That was why you brought up the business at Oxford. My friendship. The scandal.” Forrester regarded Forbes with disgust. “You were trying to provoke me.”

  “Yes,” Forbes said, “I was trying to provoke you.”

  “And when that didn’t do the trick, you thought you’d have a go at something rather more direct.”

  For an instant, Forbes appeared weary. “That’s it exactly.”

  “So now you think that hurting me makes this impossible thing happen. Do I have more iced water to look forward to? Shall I be strapped into more chairs? Or do you have fresh schemes in mind for next time?”

  “Definitely not,” Forbes said, “not if I can help it. Although, as you’ll doubtless have fathomed, that is the course the director is leaning toward. He is neither a medical man nor a very compassionate one. Moreover, he has explicit orders as to the results expected of him. As far as he’s concerned, the sole issue of importance is working out the correct stimulus, so that we can reproduce the effect under controlled conditions.”

  Forrester resisted a shudder. “But the second and third times I wasn’t in pain,” he pointed out defensively. “Or no more than usually.”

  Forbes looked pleased. “Yes, you’ve spotted that. Only, it did work, didn’t it? The ice, I mean. But I believe the director has this wrong, and lord knows I’ve told him so. I’m convinced that, whatever the mechanism is, it lies within you. And that, with practice, you might be able to exert your will directly, without any motivation from us.”

  Forrester sought to examine that. Had there been any clue to make him suspect the blackouts were his doing, that they might be within his power to control? “Even if this were feasible,” he said, “and even if it really was me, I’m plainly not doing anything deliberately. What makes you fancy I could?”

  “Simply put,” said Forbes, “the fact that you’re not the first person this has happened to.”

  “That’s absurd. If this had gone on before, I’d surely have heard.”

  “Oh, not on the scale of what’s occurred here, and not of its precise nature either. But abilities out of the ordinary, beyond the accepted purview of science? Absolutely, and more so than you might suppose. In the last half-dozen years, ever since it became apparent that war with Germany was inevitable, the government has been putting serious consideration into the matter. You’d be startled by some of what they’ve come up with.”

  “I’m sure I would.” The idea that the government was so credulous as to waste resources on this stuff and nonsense at a time when the nation’s coffers were under exceptional strain was enough to beggar Forrester’s belief.

  “I’ve been advised,” Forbes continued, “that there are a handful of factors in common among those small few who’ve exhibited abilities of the sort we think you possess. For example, all of them have said that, once they’d grown familiar with their abilities, they began to perceive them as something other —something outside of their self. It was as if they were in communion with a distinct entity and were issuing commands. I know it sounds like a lot of hocus-pocus, but have you ever had an experience of that kind?”

  Something outside of himself? It sounded like hocus-pocus, all right. So why had Forbes’s description struck such a nerve? Then Forrester understood. “My dreams—“ he muttered, and broke off, not certain of what he was trying to say, or whether it would be anything he was willing to confide.

  Sure enough, Forbes was already more attentive. “You’ve dreamed something like that?”

  “Not specifically.” Forrester strained for the details, but they were so splintered and surreal: a riven landscape akin to the one he’d left behind in France, and equally beyond his ability to piece together. Yet he must offer Forbes a morsel to chew on. “A being or beings, in an underground space. Somewhere huge, like ... a subterranean ocean.” Now that he was speaking out loud, he realised the details were coming into focus. “But so vast as to feel boundless. And the presence, I ... I recognise it somehow.”

  Forbes’s countenance had closed up altogether, giving nothing away. However, Forrester could not have missed the moment before that, when his attention had peaked. It had been at the word underground . “I won’t insult your intelligence,” Forbes said. “I assume you know that dreams are a gateway to the subliminal self, and that their stock in trade is metaphor and allegory. This space you spoke of may be the subconscious in general, or an isolated enclave of safety that your mind retreats to under stress. But one feature is clear: this other you’ve imagined must assuredly represent your latent power.”

  Could his dreams truly have been leading him toward some revelation within himself? “That would make sense,” Forrester admitted. As much as any of this does , he thought.

  “With that established,” Forbes said, “I think you can predict what I’m about to ask of you.”

  “You want me to try and access this power. While I’m awake.”

  “Or to explore it, at least.” Forbes smiled, with surprising warmth. “Obviously we would be grateful if you could make progress without knocking everyone in the place out cold.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can,” Forrester said.

  “I do wish you could have told me of these dreams earlier,” Forbes noted. “I might have managed to deter the director. But we finally have something to work with. And in return, I’ll do what I can to keep him off our backs.”

  So it was our backs, was it? How quick Forbes was to offer his allegiance, and how quick he would be to withdraw it given half an excuse. “Yes,” Forrester said, “there’s a chance now, isn’t there? I’m sorry, Forbes, I’ve been quite the fool. If only I’d known this theory of yours previously.”

  “Would you have accepted it? But perhaps you’re right. At any rate, you have the truth, and it’s up to you what you do with that knowledge. I’l
l come to see you again tomorrow. Let’s hope by then that we’ll have some success to report to our mutual friend.”

  Forrester’s thoughts were awhirl.

  Could any of what Forbes had said be true? Was it possible he was the cause of all that had happened, that there were others who could do the same? The very notion was ludicrous—and the more he pondered, the more a part of him yearned to be back in the war. To face death every day was a simple burden; horrendous, yes, and nerve-destroying, but not difficult as such. For a moment, he longed wholeheartedly for the terrible, benumbing peace of mind the front had offered.

  Yet the unlikeliness of Forbes’s claims wasn’t entirely what was bothering him. Forrester was prepared to believe in what he’d witnessed with his own eyes, and there could be no question but that these episodes of mass unconsciousness were real. Accepting that, was there any great leap in imagining he might be the cause?

  No, what troubled him most was a different possibility: that fate might have gifted him precisely what he’d been seeking. He’d determined to escape, and here was Forbes telling him he had an aptitude that couldn’t be more perfectly suited to that end. All he’d have to do would be to get free of this room, and then he could put everyone to sleep and walk out at his leisure. The prospect seemed too good to be true.

  Because, of course, it was. Even if he chose to believe in this mysterious power, even if he should accept that he possessed such an implausible gift, he hadn’t the faintest inkling how to make use of it.

  Forrester forced himself to be calm. Perhaps pain and anguish had been the triggers before, but if there was any value at all in what Forbes had told him, he had to find a way of achieving the same results by less traumatic means. He closed his eyes and peered at the dark inside his eyelids. Maybe if he could recollect his dreams—but they were a blur, as thrown together from mental bric-a-brac as dreams always were, and all he could recall were pieces devoid of logic or context.

  He knew he had returned to the trenches. Well, that wasn’t so strange. They had been, in one place or another, his home for the past two years, and their mazy channels were carved into his brain. Then there had been Middleton. Again, nothing odd in that. Middleton had been a dear friend and his death an awful blow. Also, Forrester felt guilty for his failure to have the letters delivered, and while he’d consciously forgotten Middleton’s locket, no doubt his subconscious had suffered over its absence.

  What had they discussed? He remembered Middleton knowing himself to be dead. Presumably that was only Forrester’s own rationalisation of how they could be meeting. Other things he’d said, though, had made even less sense. One phrase in particular...

  You’ll need to go deeper.

  Yes, that was it. Funny how the words his psyche had put in Middleton’s mouth tallied with what Forbes had been saying. However, in the dream, the phrase had been meant literally: there had been a passage, leading farther beneath the earth. Yet when he’d investigated, the place he’d come out in hadn’t been underground at all...

  It was no good. That last part he couldn’t grasp, and never had he felt any tingling of intuition that might indicate he was approaching some internal reservoir of power. This was absurd. Forbes was having him on, that was all. The man had done nothing except lie since they’d first met, so why should this fantasia be any truer? Probably what Forrester had witnessed was a new Allied weapon and Forbes was intending to throw him off the scent. Perhaps the man simply concocted nonsense for his own amusement.

  Where did that leave him? He was back where he’d started that morning, with escape once more an impossibility. And maybe that was Forbes’s true motive: to offer hope, just to let Forrester discover in his own time how empty that hope was.

  Still, Forrester kept trying. He chased remembered fragments of dream, pursued associations, and probed loose scraps of memory. It even struck him that, through concentration, he might reproduce the uniquely violent headaches that had preceded each blackout. But it really was no use. If he had any secret ability, it was secret from him also.

  In despair, Forrester resumed his reading. That, too, proved frustratingly beyond him. So much of his mind was engrossed in his prospects for escape and in mulling over increasingly drastic ideas. Most distracting of all was the recognition that, by his pretence of being too weak to see Forbes, he had severed himself for the foreseeable future from the common room, from Major Morgan, and so from any likelihood of company or conversation.

  Abhaya’s arrival with his lunch reminded him that Morgan wasn’t the only avenue of companionship he’d succeeded in cutting off. He would have been glad by that point if she’d talked about the weather, or even of the war. Anything would have been preferable to her silence.

  Forrester muddled through the remainder of the day as well as he could, trying to read, trying to plan—trying to tap latent psychic powers he no longer believed for an instant that he possessed.

  By the time Abhaya returned with his dinner, Forrester was scarcely cogent. All his energy of the morning, all of his optimism, had evaporated. He couldn’t recall ever feeling as defeated as he did then, not even in the trenches, not during the worst of it. Driven to ground like an animal by heavy shelling or walking at a crawl across No Man’s Land, he had never been this helpless. He felt as if the desperation of his circumstances was a miasma sinking upon him, and he could see no way from under it. When Abhaya set the tray on his lap, he mumbled a reply and ate mechanically. As she came back into the room, Forrester realised he hadn’t noticed her absence. He’d managed barely a third of the food she’d brought.

  Abhaya took the tray from him, and he expected her to go. Instead, having rested the tray on the chest of drawers, she returned to stand by his bedside. “You mustn’t despair,” she said.

  Forrester looked at her properly then for the first time. There was concern in her face, compassion. Neither could aid him. “Why not?” he asked. “If the war taught me one thing, it’s that some situations warrant despair.”

  “Not this one.”

  How could she be so certain? Perhaps she’d seen enough of Forbes to know he wasn’t to be trusted, but she hadn’t been witness to their parley earlier in the day. She couldn’t appreciate the trap Forrester was in. “Forbes is convinced I can do something,” he said, “but I can’t. I simply can’t. And the moment he finds me out, I’ll be back in that damned chair, or worse.”

  “No,” Abhaya insisted. “That won’t happen.”

  She sounded so wistful that Forrester began to regret his own misery. If he gave in to self-pity, they really had beaten him, body and soul. “I’m sorry, Abhaya,” he told her. “What must you think of me?”

  “I think you’ve been brave,” she said. “I think you’ve fallen into the hands of cruel men.”

  Forrester gazed at her in bewilderment, unsure if he’d heard rightly.

  “And,” she added, “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

  He wanted to question what she could possibly have to apologise for, when she’d done nothing except take care of him. But already she was turning to leave. As she did so, however, Abhaya slipped a hand into her pinafore and set a small glass jar on his bedside. “For the pain,” she said. “They won’t make you sleep.”

  Forrester reached for the jar in curiosity. By the time he had his fingers around it, Abhaya had reclaimed the dinner tray and was gone.

  He was back in the trenches.

  The hour belonged to late evening, the sun was a haematoma on the horizon, the desolate earth stretched beyond the scope of his imagination—but this was home, a home that would always be waiting, and for that he was grateful. He ducked beneath the gas blanket, descended the stairs.

  Middleton was still sitting at the little table. “You keep coming back,” he observed.

  “Yes,” Forrester agreed. Where else would I go? Yet he needn’t say that. Surely Middleton must understand.

  “It’s good to see you, Raff. A chap can get dreadfully lonely down here. But t
he thing is...” And suddenly Middleton’s expression was almost severe, making him not like Middleton at all. “You need to go deeper.”

  Forrester felt chastised. But what was he supposed to do? There was no way onward. “I don’t know how.”

  Middleton glanced over his shoulder. “We were just discussing that. She’ll show you.”

  At the prompt, Abhaya stepped from the shadows. Forrester saw that, where she’d appeared, there was a fissure in the wall, past the foot of Middleton’s bunk.

  “Did you make this?” he asked her.

  Abhaya nodded.

  “Thank you.”

  He wanted to say goodbye to Middleton, but when he looked round, Middleton was gone. And Abhaya had vanished too, so that he was alone, and there was nothing besides the narrow opening in the crushed dirt.

  Forrester stepped into darkness. The passage curved immediately, and dipped, and soon after began to widen. Absolute as the obscurity was, he could somehow find his course, as though an unaccustomed other sense was guiding his motion.

  And now he was no longer alone. They were around him, everywhere around him, a multitude amid the void. He was not alone, and finally he knew that he was safe.

  Forrester woke abruptly, as if a noise or a movement had startled him. But there was no sound to be heard and, for all that he strained his eyes, nothing to see .

  It was still night. Though he couldn’t say what clued him in, Forrester felt positive dawn was some way away. Perhaps his evidence was only a property of the light; he could tell from the cold radiance pouring into his window that the sky was cloudless.

  Whatever the hour, he was wide awake. He got up, hobbled through to the bathroom, and relieved himself. Then, as he was about to go back to bed, some impulse held him, and he stood there, immobile, staring into the gloom. He couldn’t quite make sense of what he was looking at, or looking for.

  As if an optical illusion had resolved itself, his confusion faded. Forrester stepped to the second door, the one opposite his, and tested the handle. It turned, and the door opened a crack.