by D. J. Gelner
I met the woman’s kind eyes and couldn’t help but break into an earnest smile of my own.
“Something on your mind, Doctor?” Violette asked.
“Pardon my manners, but it’s so refreshing to finally meet a time traveller who’s up to some good in the past.”
“What do you mean?” she responded.
“It’s just…our last several jumps have been filled with all manner of self-absorbed and downright nasty individuals, travelling through time for their own selfish ends. It’s nice to see someone so committed to doing good.”
“How? By condemning Nazis to death? Make no mistake, Doctor, I’m not terribly proud of that aspect of my existence in this time period. It’s a necessary evil to take the lives of a couple of them every now and then, but an evil nonetheless.
“And aside from that dreadful fellow you met in Jerusalem that you spoke of earlier, how can you say that none of the time travellers that you’ve met have done good? Victor Burnham was a con-artist and a drug addict, but did he not positively impact countless lives through his philanthropic pursuits? Your mother and her artist…boyfriend, or whatever; they travelled through time to be inspired by some of the greatest artists of all time. Will that not lead this ‘Manyx’ character to create new and wondrous works of art upon his return? Even Mr. Fleener is helping to advance humanity’s understanding of the sciences by mentoring young Newton. And that’s to say nothing of Trent Albertson, who—”
“Whose name will be invoked in the service of every major war from his death onward!” I interrupted.
“Who will set an example of love and mutual respect that will echo through the ages, and provide countless amounts of comfort and guidance for those most in need of it.” She narrowed her eyes at me somewhat. “None of us are completely free of faults, Doctor Templeton. And none of us, save perhaps that dreadful Kayoss you described and the unfortunate Fuhrer that I now face, are completely rotten to the core, though obviously they convinced a number of individuals that what they were doing was right, no matter how horrible and misguided they both were.”
“How can you say that at a time where evil is so prevalent?” I asked.
“And good more so!” Violette didn’t so much raise her voice as she did her tone.
“Tell that to the folks in the internment camps,” Corcoran offered.
“As I said before, nothing is perfect. Not even your beloved America,” Violette said.
“Don’t look at me,” I replied in my most affected aristocratic English accent. Everyone ignored my attempt at humour, so I waved it off. “Let me ask you this, though: if ‘what happened, happened’ is true, and the past is set in stone, why come back at all to help anyone?” Before I had finished asking the question, I already knew the answer.
“Who would help them otherwise? You don’t see me trying to assassinate Hitler; those fools—and they do exist—are condemned to be discovered or killed or God-knows-what by the Nazis before they accomplish their goals. No, far better to get a Jewish family to safety or help the Allies with intelligence from here than to try to influence larger events in history for that exact reason. I may not march into Berlin with the Allied forces, but I’ll know that I did my part, preordained as it may have been, to help these people through such a horrible time.”
“A far better answer than I could’ve ever hoped to provide,” I said. Though you may have divined that I have a penchant for speaking out of both sides of my mouth at times, I genuinely meant this. I would be lying if I said that an undercurrent of utter nihilism hadn’t slipped into my worldview over the course of this oddest of weeks (or had it been longer now? At some point I’ll have to sit down and figure out exactly how much time passed, to the hour). It was somewhat comforting to see someone as kind and bright as Violette confront that fact head on, disregard it, and try to improve things for those less fortunate.
“I have a question,” Bloomington raised his hand. I dreaded the next words to come out of his mouth. “We met a woman, a few years younger than you, out in Park Monceau earlier today. She’s the one who directed us here. Beautiful, smart, funny, with the most beguiling accent. Auburn hair, the cutest little button nose—”
Violette smiled, “You must mean Marie. She’s been taking long walks around that park ever since her husband—” the expression on Bloomington’s face indicated that if the next word out of Violette’s mouth was anything other than “died” or “left her,” he may well off himself.
“—Left her for another man. Helps her clear her head, she says. I hope she wasn’t too unfriendly.”
“She was a delight. An absolute goddess.” Bloomington breathed a sigh of harried relief. “She said she’d maybe meet me here later for a drink, do you think—”
Violette nodded, “Marie will see the signal and know to meet up at the rendezvous point.” Violette’s sentiments must have averted what I thought was the very real possibility of Bloomington’s pending heart attack. I found it odd that he hadn’t been a fraction as nervous when he confronted the Nazi officers that had trained their guns on us mere hours before.
Just then, a rumble shook the ceiling of the underground chamber. Violette sprung into action with the vigor of a woman half her age.
“What’s that?” Corcoran asked.
“The signal,” Violette replied, nonchalant. “Come. Grab what you can and follow me through the tunnels. The bar is being torched to the ground—too risky to leave it standing.” I half-wondered whether the muttering Frenchmen would bother to get up from their booth, but thought the better of asking as much given the circumstances.
We each grabbed a large boxful of equipment and followed Violette down one of the longer tunnels that branched from the main chamber. Violette waited until everyone was clear and casually tossed something into the room behind her before she slid a door shut. Seconds later, we heard a loud “Boom!” followed by a “crash” behind us, and realised that she had destroyed the room with a grenade.
“No goin’ back now,” Corcoran nodded.
“Can never be too careful, Commander.” Violette responded.
Corcoran raised his eyebrows at me, but his thoughts were written all over his face: “You got that right.”
We carted the supplies for what was likely no more than a couple of miles, though in the darkness and dankness of the tunnel, and with the occasional rat that scurried past, it seemed much longer.
“All we do now is carry stuff and shoot people!” Bloomington said.
“Welcome to the resistance,” Violette offered.
“Come now, Steven, isn’t this what you had in mind when the sheet said we were headed to Paris?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Bloomington replied. “But I’d gladly trudge through ten rivers of shit for one evening to get to know Marie.” The oddest part about the man’s comment was that there was no smart-ass sexual undertone, no crude subtext. Bloomington genuinely wanted to spend time with this woman, rats and supplies and Nazis be damned. After how crass he had been, after all of the insults the man had suffered at my (and the Commander’s) expense, there was something touching about seeing his more human side, a selflessness that cannot be truly appreciated without first witnessing such overindulgent selfishness on the part of the same individual.
Eventually, one of the other resistance members came upon a large steel door (not unlike the one that cordoned off my laboratory from the rest of the world) and rapped several sets of rhythmic knocks on it. The door swung open to reveal a gaunt, extraordinarily French-looking fellow smoking a cigarette.
Now all he needs are a baguette and a beret, I thought.
The man locked eyes with Violette, who nodded at him, and he finally waved us all inside.
This room was similar to the previous one, if a bit more “lived-in” and well-lit. We placed the boxes along the side wall as more resistance members descended on them and began to unpack. Even Bloomington worked without complaint; he conversed freely in French with everyone else, his
usual temerity replaced by the good-natured, confident fellow I first saw in the park.
As I hoisted a large radio out of one of the boxes, someone tapped me on my shoulder. I instinctively turned around and found Bloomington’s mystery woman, presumptively “Marie,” staring at me.
I was so shocked that I dropped the wretched radio on my feet.
As I stood there, still in two of the three pieces of the suit, mind you, and grabbed at my spats, I let out a string of expletives that would’ve made Bloomington blush.
I finally composed myself enough to speak clearly, “Err…pardon me, madame, but—”
She was all business, “Where is your friend? The charming, powerful gentleman with the impeccable French?”
Before I could answer, Bloomington swooped in on one knee, grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips.
“Ah, young lady, so you return! Though this is quite a ways away from the Candlelight Cafe.”
“Apparently someone knocked over one of the candles,” she smiled, her expression already much brighter. “Pity—was always a favorite place of mine.”
“Ah, indeed. Mine as well. Come, my dear—” Bloomington rose to his feet and offered her an elbow, “—I have something to show you. Did I mention that I almost went to medical school in my younger and more vulnerable years?” She wrapped her arm in his. Bloomington yanked in his elbow and brought her closer. For some damned reason, “Marie” found this to be particularly charming, and giggled like the world’s eldest schoolgirl. They left the room through one of the tunnels (which I would later come to find was the exit). We saw neither hide nor hair of them until the next morning.
When my foot had recovered from that damned radio and we had finished unpacking, I must say that the new resistance outpost looked downright professional. I asked Violette if there was anything else we could do to help.
“For now? No. You are free to stay here and I would ask that you confine yourselves to this room or the bar above us, but obviously I cannot hold you against your will. If you wish to return to your ship, you’re obviously free to do so. There is a tunnel that will lead you to the park where it sits. I can show you—”
“Now, just hang on a minute, darlin’,” Corcoran turned the charm up to “eleven.” “Here we are in beautiful Paris, the City of Lights, albeit with a honest-to-God Nazi occupation goin’ on, but still…we’re supposed to stay inside at some stuffy bar?”
“I assure you, Commander, you will likely find that the club upstairs is more than adequate for whatever diversions you may have planned. And if you require accommodations for the evening, we are happy to provide them down here, ” Violette answered. “But, as I said, if not, you’re free to leave.”
Corcoran raised an eyebrow at me, “Well then, Doc, shalln’t we?” As practised as his mocking British accent was becoming, I now failed to find the humour in the affectation.
We walked up the stairs, not quite knowing what to expect as we plunged through two more sets of false doors (conveniently triggered by false candelabras in both cases), and emerged into a rather raucous cabaret theatre, complete with a chorus line of shapely, full-figured women predictably performing the can-can to cat-calls and wolf whistles from the crowd.
Corcoran and I looked at each other.
“Well, Ricky, though you didn’t get your burlesque house in Leipzig—”
“I know, Doc. This oughtta make up for it.” The grin on the Commander’s face slowly morphed into a thousand-watt smile as his head bobbed with each extended leg.
“Careful, Commander,” I warned. I pointed out several of the tell-tale red arm bands of Nazi officers in the crowd.
“God damn Gerry fucks!” Corcoran hissed with genuine anger. “Ruinin’ all my fun.” For a moment I thought he was going to pull out both pistols and start shooting up the German officers like a real-life Yosemite Sam, but thankfully the Commander’s more civilised sense of decorum prevailed over his baser urges.
“Oh, I doubt we need to worry too much, Commander. Just don’t attract too much attention to yourself and you’ll be fine.” He nodded at me. I smiled a knowing grin. “Need anything from the bar?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sadly, there was to be no “Cynthia” at this particular place of if not ill, then “questionable” repute. Corcoran chatted up two rather lovely young French ladies for several minutes. I decided to have a bit of fun with him and pulled him aside.
“Oh, for Chrissake, Doc—”
“For Trent’s sake?” I corrected him with a sly grin.
“Fuck off. Can’t you just please butt the fuck out and leave me alone?”
“Yes, they are rather lovely young ladies, aren’t they?” I pretended to eye his targets. “Voluptuous. Beautiful. Not some little waifs who would fly away like so many sex symbols of your time, am I right?”
“Sure are. Now if you’ll excuse me—” he moved to push me out of the way.
“There’s just one thing that you may be interested to hear,” I said.
“What? That you’ve decided to tell Hans, Fritz and the gang over there that you’ve found their Jewish boyfriends?” He nodded at a particularly Aryan-looking circle of large, surly German officers.
Though I found his joke to be in poor taste, I still chuckled for effect, “Always the jokester. No, I was referring to the infamous Parisian syphilis outbreak of 1943.”
Corcoran stopped and turned to face me. “The what now?”
“Syphilis? Nasty business, that one. Can drive a perfectly normal man completely—”
“I know about syphilis, Doc. What’s this about an outbreak, though?”
“Oh, there’s probably no need to worry. I’m sure cabaret workers are generally a ‘low-risk’ group. And whatever medieval prophylactic devices they may have here surely will protect you, despite their somewhat spotty track record.”
For a moment, I thought I had taken the jest a step too far when Corcoran leaned toward me and sneered. A second later, though, he brought his hand to his face and whispered.
“You…uh…have a rubber on ya?”
“I’m afraid—”
“Right…in the ship.”
“In the ship,” I confirmed his guess a half-beat after he had said it. Corcoran frowned and marched toward the secret entrance to the resistance’s lair below.
“Where the devil do you think you’re going?” I asked.
“Seein’ if Violette has any medigel to go along with those holotrans.” He started to walk again, stopped, and turned back toward me, “Who woulda thought I would be sayin’ that when I got in that time machine a coupla’ weeks ago?” He asked.
“Who would have thought you would say that sentence, either?” I replied.
Corcoran shook his head and continued on toward the secret entrance. I actually admired his ingenuity; why wouldn’t a nurse from the future have a stash of medigel from which to draw? The true question was whether or not she was willing to allow Ricky Corcoran access to her supplies just so he could enjoy some French companionship for the evening, even if there was, in hindsight, a good chance that the women were Violette’s own spies.
I ordered a scotch and found that one thing that the Germans allowed in clubs that their officers frequented was fine scotch. It was something else, really; German officers recreating not but twenty feet above a major resistance hub. Spilling God-knows how much intel to these well-trained cabaret girls in exchange for what? Sex? Maybe with some, but probably the vast majority were not, in fact, prostitutes.
Love? Could these Germans be so naive? No, they did so for the reasons any red-blooded man will tell a remotely attractive girl anything: acceptance. A desire to please. Demonstrating social proof, et cetera and so forth. That innate human want to be adored by another, or even many others, so deep as to betray awful national secrets, horrifying truths that the Nazi state held so dear.
I generally kept to myself and enjoyed the show, though
please dispel any visions you may have of a lecherous older scientist bent over in a drunken stupor, tongue unravelled on the table while ogling the beautiful women onstage. No, after about my third or fourth scotch, my eyelids grew heavy, and I could only down another drink or two before I retreated to the relative security of the resistance bunker. I hadn’t seen Corcoran either in the club or in the hideout, but I assumed that he was still trying to figure out a way around the mythical syphilis epidemic about which I had informed him earlier.
The “mattresses” that Violette had prepared for us were little more than large canvas sacks stuffed with straw, but I was so exhausted that it may as well have been a room at the Waldorf, albeit if that room happened to be the least-disturbed corner of the hotel’s wine cellar.
I drifted off to what would prove to be the last good bit of restful sleep I would have for a while. I dreamt of that wonderful New Year’s Eve I had spent with Cynthia, yet it wasn’t New Year’s Eve again. There was still a big to-do, and a countdown to something, but I couldn’t discern what the devil it was. Any time I asked anyone, Cynthia, Burnham, even the Commander and Bloomington, they responded with sly, knowing smiles that threw me for a loop. A figure stood in the doorway of the room, and though I couldn’t tell who exactly it was, as the count continued, “3…2…1…” the person took one step forward, and immediately the room descended into chaos, as the ceiling and walls began to crumble and fall around me.
I shot out of bed. Corcoran rubbed his head and sat up on the straw bag next to me. Bloomington was nowhere in sight. The sound of machine gun fire rattled around the stone walls of the room, and instantly snapped me out of what remained of my groggy reverie.
Corcoran had already unholstered both of his sidearms and scanned the room for any potential threats. I reached for my laser pistol, but Bloomington must’ve still had it, as I was forced to grab my Baretta from its spot nestled against the small of my back, which ached from bearing the force of the weapon as I slept.
As neither of us picked up any immediate threats, we rushed to the main chamber only to find Bloomington, of all people, at the bottom of the staircase leading to the cabaret, laser pistol in one hand, machine gun in the other like some kind of damned fool action star.