The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  Barbara slipped inside, peered around, and then motioned the others in. Peter handed her his bag and went next, then he and Barbara pulled Erich in, and finally Mark tumbled in and quickly shut the window behind him. Barbara remained on watch by the windows as the others moved stealthily through the main laboratory area. Mark took up guard by the door, leaving Peter alone with his brother to carry out their inspection. Peter pulled Erich past the benches and over to the office area. Several desks were set up against the wall, but Peter ignored those, heading instead for the single desk that was enclosed behind glass partition walls. It was the only desk with a computer and obviously belonged to the section chief.

  The door to the cubicle was locked. Peter glanced up at the height of the partitions and then, mumbling his disgruntlement, decided instead to pick the lock. His brother watched in silent fascination as Peter pulled out his elaborate lockpick and began work on the door.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Erich whispered as he glanced nervously first at Mark and then Barbara.

  “I don’t know,” Peter admitted. “Information of some sort. The information was received via computer, so it’s either on that computer in there, or there is a printed copy of the information somewhere in that desk or in the lab.”

  “That doesn’t narrow it down much,” Erich commented sarcastically.

  “Either you or I will recognize it,” Peter assured him. He found the right key and soon they were inside the small, extremely untidy office. Peter flicked the switch to the computer and the screen slowly came to life.

  Erich’s eyes widened as he watched the screen flash information at them in a confusing jumble of words and images. “Do you know what this machine is doing?” he asked, his voice conveying wonder at the technology before him.

  Peter snorted his derision. “This is an old piece of junk,” he replied with a certain satisfaction. “Of course, I know what it’s doing! Don’t tell me you don’t even have this level of technology in your laboratory?”

  Erich was shaking his head but he did not answer.

  “Shit!” Peter swore suddenly.

  “What?” Erich asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “It wants a password,” Peter groaned. He bit his tongue to keep from swearing and typed in a few likely tries, none of which worked.

  “What now?”

  “I’m thinking,” Peter murmured, trying to recall what Zosia had said about passwords. He had not expected Chandler to have one, and so that implied that someone else had set up the security on Chandler’s computer. Now, how would Chandler have handled that? He stood and inspected the back of the machine and under the desk, looking for a printed reminder of what the password might be. He did not find anything so he sat down and tried a few more simple ideas. Then he noticed the photograph hiding behind a stack of papers. It was a picture of the scientist with his wife and three children. Peter picked it up and removed the photograph from its frame. On the back of the picture the names and birth dates of each member of the family were noted in what looked like a tidy, feminine hand. Peter tried each name and date in turn without success.

  “Guess we should go,” Erich prodded.

  “Shut up,” Peter snapped. There was still the desk and file drawers. A printed document was likely to be somewhere. Plus he could try some clever tricks to get inside the machine if that failed. There were the other desks, too. Shit, there were hundreds of things they could spend hours looking at! Get in, grab the information, and get out, he had hoped; now that looked impossible. He glanced around the office again. What a pigsty! The implied laziness of its occupant was inspired. It gave him an idea and he called up the password screen again and tried simply hitting the enter key—it was the laziest possible password available to someone who did not even want security on his computer. To his utter astonishment, the trick worked, and the computer hummed into life, pulling up the last bits of software and preparing itself for use.

  “What’d you do? What’d you do?” Erich asked, convinced that he had missed some magic trick.

  “Telepathy,” Peter answered sarcastically. “I thought the correct answer at it.”

  The screen presented a single prompt and Peter typed a command asking the machine to list its files. It took several variations, but he finally hit upon the appropriate operating language, and the file names were listed for the two of them to scan. They stared at the screen for a few moments, then Peter pointed out a file name and said, “I bet it’s that one.”

  “What makes you say that?” Erich asked, shaking his head in confusion at the screen.

  “Well, dear brother, the date, the file type, and—lo!—the file name is in English.” Peter was hardly able to contain his laughter. He opened the file and read the first few lines; the text was in English as well. “I’ll print it up, then we can have an easier time looking at it.” He turned on the printer and typed in the appropriate command.

  “How do you know how to do all this?” Erich asked. “I’ve never seen anything like this and I work in a government institute! You’re not . . . Where have you . . . ?” he sputtered almost angrily.

  Peter rolled his eyes, then almost gently he explained, “It should not surprise you that the Reich is a technological backwater compared to America. After all, we have a habit here of killing our best and brightest, or at least driving them into exile. Nor should it surprise you that even when we steal the relevant new technology from America, we are unable to duplicate it en masse since we have an utterly demoralized workforce which tends to indulge in sabotage either deliberately or through drunken carelessness. So, when our dear leaders finally do manage to organize something as simple as a decent computer, do you really expect that the few good specimens available are going to be wasted on a treacherous colonial backwater like London? Do you?”

  “Well, then how does this laboratory have them?” Erich replied defensively.

  “It’s viewed as an adjunct to Berlin. Nearly everyone here comes from the old Reich and answers to their bosses there. Chandler is local talent, but he still answers to Berlin. Besides, this machine is definitely not state of the art. Believe me, if you want to see the good stuff, you have to go to Berlin.”

  “That still doesn’t answer how you know all this!” Erich snapped angrily.

  “No, it doesn’t.” Peter pulled the document out of the printer and began readingit, handing the pages to Erich as he finished each.

  They read in silence, then Erich asked, “What does this word mean?”

  Peter looked at the word. “Facilitate,” he replied. “You mean you didn’t know?”

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken this language,” Erich admitted sheepishly. “What about this word?”

  “Inconspicuous.”

  “And this one?”

  “Potable. Look, I’ll peruse the document and when I have a question, I’ll just ask you, okay?” Peter suggested, completely exasperated.

  “But, but . . . ,” Erich sputtered, somewhat confused. “I want to help,” he whispered finally.

  Peter was taken aback. “Really? Why?”

  “I don’t know, I just feel . . . I don’t know, I feel put down, angry even. This machine, this lab . . . My language, I don’t even know it!”

  “All right, all right,” Peter preempted Erich’s soul-searching. “We don’t have time for your thoughts on this right now. Just let me read what they’ve written and you can tell me if it makes sense or if I’ve stumbled upon somebody’s idea of an April fool’s joke.”

  The document was labeled “top secret” but was nonetheless written in the format of a completed, publishable research report. Peter read the abstract and introduction and then scanned the body of the paper. He read the conclusions carefully, then sat staring at the words, drumming his fingers nervously on thedesk. Erich was studying one of the loose sheets, but when he saw his brother stop reading, he said, “It says in the abstract that this is a sterilization program. Is that what you were looking for?”<
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  Peter nodded, perturbed by what he had read.

  “Is it some sort of replacement for surgery?”

  “Could be,” Peter replied, still distracted by the conclusions he had read. “Maybe somebody wants to lower the obscene number of abortions we have in this country.”

  “So it’s meant to be voluntary?” Erich asked hopefully.

  “I doubt it. The conclusions emphasize the fact that the drug is potable and tasteless. I think you can read between the lines on that.”

  “What’s wrong? I thought you knew what you were looking for?” Erich asked, perceiving Peter’s grim mood.

  “Not really. I mean, I expected it would be about this, I just didn’t expect . . .” He didn’t complete the thought. For some reason he felt an overpowering sadness, and all he could think of was Irena. He wondered what she looked like now and what she was doing.

  “Didn’t expect what?” Erich insisted in a harsh whisper.

  “They’ve finished the research,” Peter explained forlornly. “The fuckers took the information we gave them and finished the research.”

  “Who? What? What do you mean?”

  “The Americans. This research was incomplete, heading nowhere, in fact, when we handed it over to them. And they went and finished it. With their high-tech analyses and their supercomputers and . . . If these conclusions can be believed, they completed it, they got the finished product.” He stopped speaking. He could see Barbara glancing worriedly over at them. He lowered his head and rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to gain control of his anger. After a moment, he sighed deeply and looked up at Erich. “Look at the body of this report. Is there enough information in here for you to figure out what they’ve used?”

  Peter sat in silence as Erich worked through the formulae. Occasionally Peter answered one of Erich’s questions about the meaning of a word or phrase, but otherwise he did nothing. He knew he should sift through the mountains of files in the office or look through other files on the computer to find further information, but he could not bring himself to move. All he could think of was how he had felt when Barbara and Olek had shown him his number among the list of those tested. Now, with the research complete, would there be other numbers on a different list for Schindler to contemplate? He imagined the scenario: male prison laborers in a factory given the option of access to a brothel and all the doctored beer they could drink as a reward for exceeding some ridiculous quota. The poor bastards would work themselves to exhaustion, drink themselves into oblivious sterility, and then be allowed access to equally wretched women who would be watched to see if any of them got pregnant. “This society is sick,” he muttered to himself.

  “Huh?” Erich asked.

  “I said, is there enough there for us to work out exactly what they’ve done?”

  Erich glanced back at the document. “Er . . . It’s hard for me to say, I’m not really familiar with what they’re doing.”

  “Not many people are. Is there enough information for a nonspecialist?”

  “I’d say no. We need more details, their laboratory books or something.”

  “Fine, we’ll look for those.” Peter turned his attention back to the computer. “I’ll peruse what he has here, you get Barbara to help you unlock the lab table drawers and see what you can find out there.”

  “Look for handwritten notes,” Erich suggested. “If it’s at the stage where it can be entered into a computer document, then it’ll be too condensed for our purposes.”

  Peter nodded noncommittally as he tapped some commands into the computer. Erich had no idea of the current state of computer software and was therefore unlikely to know how useful it could be; then again, Chandler was equally unlikely to be very up-to-date and would probably follow the same timeless routine that Erich used. After scanning the files for a few moments, Peter decided to follow Erich’s advice and turned his attention to Chandler’s office.

  He ignored the mounds of paper moldering in the corners and tried the desk drawers. All but one opened easily, and each contained useful office equipment: paper clips, staples, rubber bands, writing paper, pens, pencils, and so on, all inextricably jumbled in heaps and piles. The locked drawer took only a few moments to open; it contained a bottle of single-malt Scotch, two glasses, a candle, matches, and some high-quality chocolate. Peter smiled, and wrapping the whiskey in a rag he found on a nearby table, he placed it and the chocolate in his bag.

  He then went to the file cabinet and unlocked it. Labeled files were in each drawer and he quickly read the headings, hoping that Chandler had not been clever enough to indulge in disinformation. By the third drawer, the end of the alphabetical listing was reached, and a few unlabeled file folders were shoved in the back. He inspected these and found no papers, but there were several computer diskettes. Their size was the more compact form, common in the NAU but virtually unknown in all but the most advanced laboratories in the Reich. He glanced at Chandler’s machine and saw that the diskettes were incompatible with it. Intrigued, he pulled out his computer and inserted the first diskette.

  He felt a sudden shock of recognition as he examined the file list. He opened one of the files and checked it just to be sure, but he was not mistaken: they were his work. Every single one was a file that he and his team had decoded, translated, and sent on to the security agencies in the North American Union. This was not the muddled data they had stolen from the laboratory, this was no summary garnered from American press reports: what Chandler had was every detail that had been sent overseas in exactly the format Peter had sent it. Exactly. He scanned the file names and found the list that contained his entry, the list thatBarbara had tried to hide from him so long ago. He opened it and worked his way through until he found his own number. He sat stock-still staring at the entry as the burning sensation of having been betrayed spread through his limbs.

  His brother came over to him holding several journals. “Look, it’s all in here. We found them over there, and they even have the appropriate chemicals and equipment on the shelves nearby!” Erich waved excitedly toward a table that Barbara was still inspecting.

  “What’s it say?” Peter asked, his eyes still fixed on the words he himself had written months before.

  “Hey, where’d that come from?” Erich gestured toward his computer. “Wow, that’s small! Is it any good?”

  “It’s mine, and yes,” Peter answered deadpan.“Now, what do you have there?”

  Erich recognized something like anger in Peter’s voice, and deciding not to ask any more impertinent questions, he opened one of the books and indicated the handwritten notes. “They’ve been duplicating the work in that paper, I guess they’re checking the results. They refer to notes we haven’t seen, but I don’t think those will be necessary since it’s all laid out in detail here.”

  “How far have they gotten?”

  “Up to a few human trials. Nothing massive,” Erich answered, obviously uncomfortable with his brother’s inexplicable anger. “They must be volunteers, I mean, well, they have to be, don’t they?”

  “Volunteers,” Peter muttered disdainfully.

  “Look, I know you don’t like this regime and have had your problems with them, but, seriously, they wouldn’t do that sort of thing! I’m sure they’re volunteers. It’s easy enough to get people to agree to . . .” Erich stopped, confused by Peter’s actions.

  Peter had removed his jacket and had rolled up his left sleeve. There, on his arm, was what looked to Erich like a light cast. Peter carefully undid the clasps to reveal an undamaged arm underneath; he then rolled his arm under the light so that Erich could see the numbers printed there. “That was my name for some years. Now, check this list of ‘volunteers’ and you’ll see that my number is on it.”

  Erich read the numbers on Peter’s arm, and tracing down the screen with his finger, he located the appropriate entry. “You volunteered for this?” he asked, amazed and perhaps condescending.

  “No!” Peter hissed with suppress
ed fury.“No, I did not! So much for your volunteer theory!”

  “You were tested against your will?”

  “I wasn’t even told! The first I knew of it was seeing this list about a year ago.”

  Erich looked at him, his mouth open with realization. He ignored the implications of Peter’s lack of cooperation and asked instead, “Then you’ve been sterilized?”

  “No. Apparently not. Not if my wife’s been faithful.”

  Erich looked confused.

  “I guess they were testing a preliminary substance for something simple and obvious, such as toxicity,” Peter explained patiently. “It was enough, I would suppose, to see if we dropped dead. I was injected and left alone; I guess it didn’t have any adverse affects.”

  “You . . . You have a wife?” Erich asked stupidly.

  “Illegally. And a daughter, also illegal.”

  “I have a niece?” Erich asked even more dreamily.

  “Yeah, someday we’ll have a family reunion. Now snap out of it. We’ve got to get out of here. Do we have enough information?”

  Erich nodded, still obsessed by his new knowledge. “Yes, yes. That report, these books . . . It’s enough.”