The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds

by Ian Tregillis

  Von Westarp reversed his circuit of the room. His boots pulverized a handful of wild rose petals that had fluttered to the floor. The air became sweeter and oilier as his continued pacing crushed blossoms knocked loose from Gretel’s improvised drying racks.

  Nobody had objected when she’d decided to use a corner of the debriefing room for her craft project. Her advice had led the Luftwaffe to dominate the skies over Britain; tolerating her eccentricities was the price for access to her precognition. For much of the summer, the ground floor of the farmhouse had smelled like a perfumery.

  Reinhardt insisted it smelled like a Spanish whore house. He would know.

  Klaus said, “I confronted them. They claim to be working to your specifications.”

  At the window again: “I’ve been too lenient with her. Far too lenient.”

  “But I’m certain,” Klaus concluded over the doctor’s muttering, “that a few words from you would clear this matter up immediately.”

  The doctor squinted at him. “What are you babbling about?”

  “They’ve ordered the wrong equipment.”

  “They’ve done no such thing! Why must you and your sister turn everything into an ordeal? Second-guessing my every instruction.”

  The door opened. Standartenführer Pabst entered, pulling Gretel along with a strong grip at her elbow. Pabst shoved her toward a chair before joining the doctor at the window. They spoke in urgent whispers. Pabst and the doctor had been conferring much lately, though it seemed they agreed on little.

  Her damp hair had left a trail of dark moisture spots down the back of her smock. Watertight plugs made from rubber and ceramic had been fitted over the connectors at the ends of her wires. A trail of white salt rime dusted the edges of her face, tracing a line along her forehead, across her ears, and under her jaw.

  Pabst must have pulled her from the sensory deprivation tank without giving her time to wash. He and Doctor von Westarp had long since conceded, however reluctantly, that physical violence was of no use in controlling her. They’d resorted to more experimental punishments.

  She’d been in the tank for over thirty hours. Von Westarp had locked her inside minutes after learning of the invasion fleet’s destruction.

  Klaus took the seat next to her at the conference table. Under his breath, he asked, “How are you?”

  “Well rested. Have you solved your matériel problem?”

  He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her while Pabst and von Westarp argued. He motioned at the edges of his face. She licked an edge of the handkerchief, then dabbed it along her forehead. The tank used concentrated magnesium salts in the water to increase buoyancy and thus mimic the sensation of weightlessness.

  Left to his own devices, von Westarp would have left her in the tank much longer. Perhaps even a week, though she’d have succumbed to dehydration before that; rage made him careless. But General Keitel had called an emergency inquiry into her failure to warn the OKW of Operation Sea Lion’s doom.

  “What will you tell them, Gretel?”

  She said something in response to his question, but Klaus couldn’t hear it. Von Westarp announced, “They’re here.” Klaus glanced out the window to where a black Mercedes approached the farmhouse.

  Von Westarp stood at one end of the conference table, Pabst at his right. “Answer their questions and do as they say,” said the doctor. “I will not be made a fool again.”

  Gretel’s disobedience used to be a private matter. A family affair. Such as when Rudolf had died. But now the Götterelektrongruppe was plugged into the vast apparatus of the Reich’s war machine; privacy in failure and success did not exist. Gretel’s failure was the doctor’s failure.

  Three men stomped into the room. General Field Marshal Keitel, the Führer’s chief of staff on the OKW, was a silver-haired bull of a man. Klaus had never met the second man, but he wore the uniform of a Wehrmacht Heer generalleutnant. The toady man at Keitel’s elbow, Major Schmid, was an opportunistic lickspittle, and grossly unqualified to head Luftwaffe Intelligence.

  Also grossly outranked by his two companions, thought Klaus. How did he weasel his way into this meeting? Schmid was utterly dependent—almost pathetically so—upon Gretel for information. Who knew what might have happened had Schmid been forced to go it alone? If not for Gretel, Göring would still command the Luftwaffe. Oh. He wants to know what will happen to him if my sister is out of the picture.

  What have you done, Gretel?

  Keitel launched the inquiry as soon as he was seated. “At 0500 yesterday morning, an invasion fleet launched from embarkation zones across coastal France, bound across clear seas for the south coast of England.” He stared, unblinking, at von Westarp while he recited these facts. “At 0620, the advance forces sighted the coast. Spotters reported sudden heavy fog in the Channel at 0625. Contact with the fleet was lost at 0641.

  “As of noon, all ships and barges remain missing. They are presumed lost with all hands.

  “The combined losses to the Wehrmacht are incalculable.” He turned to face Gretel. “I am here, as the Führer’s representative, to know why this happened.”

  Gretel watched the general with wide, innocent eyes. She said nothing.

  “I demand to know why the OKW received no warnings.”

  Gretel stayed silent. The corner of her mouth quirked up. Keitel went quite motionless, like a coiled spring. He didn’t blink; he didn’t breathe. He stared at her.

  Oh, Gretel. What ever you’re doing, you have to stop. This is bigger than you and me. Klaus wished she could hear his thoughts. These men think you’re a traitor. These men will kill you. Even the doctor can’t stop that.

  Keitel’s face assumed ever darker shades of red as the silence stretched on.

  Finally, Gretel spoke. “In other words, you’re wondering why I didn’t save you from your own incompetence.”

  The room was silent. The only sound came from the doctor, who made gurgling noises.

  “What?” Keitel spoke so quietly that Klaus had to strain to hear him over the thudding of his own heart and the rush of blood through his ears. Klaus could see the general’s pulse throbbing in the hollow of his throat.

  “I can see the future,” she said in a conversational tone, “but I can’t perform miracles.”

  Oh my God. They’ll kill us all now, just for spite. Klaus risked a surreptitious glance at the gauge on his battery harness. It was low, but not so low he couldn’t grab her and yank her through the wall if Keitel pulled his sidearm. He plugged in, careful to keep his movements hidden under the table.

  Keitel stood. Klaus prepared to draw upon the Götterelektron. Von Westarp stood as well, imploring the general to, “Wait!” and Klaus to, “Make her behave!”

  Gretel continued as though nothing had happened. “Some things are inevitable, even to me. The destruction of the Reich doesn’t have to be one of them.”

  “The Ninth and Sixteenth Armies. GONE!” Wham. Keitel punctuated his statement with a fist to the table. “Eleven divisions. GONE!” Wham. The floor shook under Keitel’s rage. “Half a million tons of shipping. GONE!” Wham. Across the room, on the windowsill, flower stems rattled inside milk bottles. “Tanks. Artillery. Munitions. GONE! GONE! GONE!” Wham. Wham. Wham.

  “And as I’ve told you,” said Gretel, meeting Keitel’s fury with ice, “it couldn’t be helped.”

  “Your duty was to warn us,” bellowed the Wehrmacht generalleutnant.

  “What would you have done, had I warned you? I’ll tell you, because I’ve seen it: You’d have postponed the invasion for another day. And still it would have failed. But the long-term implications would have been far worse than they are now. Today it is a loss, yes, but not our destruction.”

  Keitel sat again. “That’s twice you’ve mentioned destruction.” A simple statement, testing the waters.

  “Something is coming,” said Gretel.

  “What is coming?” It was more an order than a question. Again, a simple
statement, testing the waters.

  “Our doom,” she said. The others fell silent while this prophecy sank in.

  “The warlocks. This is their doing?” asked Pabst.

  “Yes. They will destroy us all.” She shuddered, adding, “I’ve seen it.”

  “If this threat you describe is real,” said Keitel, “what can be done about it?”

  “There is a village in southwest England. Williton.” Shadows flickered behind her eyes when she uttered the name. “You must destroy it if you wish to avert our fate.”

  Schmid said, “I’ve never heard of any such village.” To his superiors, he said, “It’s not listed on the strategic bombing survey. I’d know.”

  Gretel acknowledged his presence for the first time since he entered. “Oh, yes, Major Schmid’s famous survey. You did such a fine job, identifying so many high-value targets all by yourself.” Gretel cocked an eyebrow. “One wonders how a former clerk achieved such brilliance.”

  Keitel shook his head, still flushed with fury. “You did nothing to prevent the greatest defeat of this war. And now you insist we focus our efforts on an obscure, insignificant village. This is a waste of time.”

  Gretel said, “Williton is the key. Demolish it, leave nothing standing.”

  Keitel stood again. “We’re finished here.” He headed for the door, the others in tow.

  Klaus exhaled. They weren’t, it appeared, going to kill her outright. But the doctor might, when all was said and done.

  “Wait!” von Westarp followed them.

  “Her madness is too far advanced,” said Keitel. “She can’t be trusted. You should put her down.”

  While they argued, Gretel walked to the window. She pulled a few sprigs of the most well-preserved flowers from each bottle. She arranged the collection into a little bouquet of primrose and aster.

  “Herr General Keitel,” she called. “Your wife enjoys dried wildflowers, no?”

  Keitel turned in the doorway, looking alarmed and impatient. “What?”

  Gretel said, “Your wife.” She held the flowers up. “When you go home this evening, give these to her. Tell her all will be well again.” She crossed the room to place the bundle in Keitel’s hand. He towered over her. “Reassure her,” she said. “It wasn’t her fault.”

  He stared at her over the dried blossoms, as though taking the measure of her. Could he see the shadows behind her eyes as easily as Klaus?

  “What do you know of Lisa?” he asked.

  “All will be well again,” Gretel repeated. “She will recover.”

  He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but stopped. Then, without warning, he turned and exited. He didn’t speak. Nor did he discard the flowers. His colleagues followed him out the door. The doctor joined them, as did Pabst.

  Klaus waited until he and Gretel were alone. “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “His wife will miscarry this afternoon.” Gretel said it with the same bored disinterest she might have used to pronounce the day’s soup not to her liking.

  Klaus mulled this over. He was coming to understand that mad or not, Gretel did almost everything for a reason. He tried to see the world through her eyes, tried to think as she did. Cause and effect.

  “That’s why you’ve been picking flowers.” He didn’t ask, because it wasn’t a question. “You knew he’d balk. But you also knew about his wife, and you knew how to exploit that situation to convince him to heed your advice.”

  Gretel clucked her tongue. “Such a devious brother I have.”

  She blew loose petals and crumbled leaves from the table. Then she carried an armload of bottles from the windowsill to the table and began to rearrange the flowers.

  Cause and effect.

  “Why didn’t you warn them?”

  She concentrated on her wildflowers, saying nothing.

  Cause and effect.

  Klaus watched her try another arrangement, saying, “If I asked, would you tell me what you’re doing?”

  “I’m arranging flowers. Perhaps you aren’t so clever as I’d thought.”

  “You know what I meant. Tell me, Gretel.”

  “And allow you to be swept along in my wake? Never.”

  Klaus stomped out of the room. He slammed the door.

  The machine shop was a cacophony of drilling, hammering, welding, and sawing. It smelled of hot steel and oil. In addition to countermanding Klaus’s directives regarding the supplies, the doctor had also increased his order. Now he wanted thirty incubators of each type.

  Klaus remembered the day that the doctor first unveiled the devices. He had been perhaps eight or nine when the doctor first locked him inside his incubator. He’d screamed himself hoarse when the claustrophobia consumed him, pounded his fists raw. There was no room to move inside; it had been built especially for him, and modified accordingly as he grew over the years.

  In those days, von Westarp had kept them all in the same room. When Klaus had become too exhausted to scream and carry on any longer, he listened to Rudolf, Heike, Kammler, and the rest cry all night long. Except Gretel, of course. Of all the children, she and she alone never cried. Not once that he could remember.

  Klaus remembered something he hadn’t thought about in years. There had been many more test subjects back then. So many, in fact, that the field behind the house was—

  —And then Klaus knew why the doctor had ordered the machinists to requisition so much extraneous matériel. The gas lines, the lime, the earthmoving equipment. None of this was for building incubators. It was for the mass disposal of bodies.

  The doctor was planning for a massive influx of test subjects. Too many to bury one at a time, as he’d done in the old days.

  19 September 1940

  Williton, England

  nine hours of bombing had erased the road to Williton, rendered it indistinguishable from the surrounding countryside. The churned and cratered earth still smoked in places. Here and there broken macadam peeked from the mud, but this only suggested a road, inasmuch as a shattered dish suggested a family dinner.

  The undercarriage of the Rolls screeched as Marsh gunned the car over another hillock, causing debris to rake the belly of Stephenson’s car. Then the suspension groaned when he forced the car to bounce across another cleft.

  “What if she’s cold?” said Liv, kneading a blanket in her fingers. It was pink, it had elephants and baby stains on it, and it smelled like Agnes. “I hope she’s not out in the cold.”

  “She could be safe. They could be in a shelter.”

  In London, one heard tell of folks emerging from their shelters with nary a scratch, only to find their neighborhoods flattened. Sometimes they had to wait for the rescue men to clear away debris before the door could be wedged open.

  The little information doled out by the BBC suggested this would be unlikely. Luftwaffe . . . Carpet bombing . . . Williton. The details were hazy to Marsh. He’d been out the door on the way to beg, borrow, or steal Stephenson’s car before Alvar Lidell had uttered four sentences. In the end, he stole it. As well as the petrol canister that Marsh tossed in the boot while Liv urged him to hurry, God’s sake, Agnes needed them, why couldn’t he do it faster?

  “I hope she’s not hungry. What if she’s hungry? We didn’t bring her food. We should go back and get her food.”

  Marsh drove on, wishing for Williton to emerge from the smoke, whole and pristine. It didn’t. He stopped the car when he couldn’t cajole it over the debris any longer. He killed the engine. They climbed out.

  Rubble. They stood on the shore of a sea of rubble that stretched to the horizon. Here and there men in wide-brimmed metal helmets like sun bonnets scrambled over the mounds. Searching, or carrying stretchers. Sunset glinted on one man’s helmet, highlighting the letter R painted over the brim. But for the occasional rockslide of broken brick and masonry, the rescue men moved silently, like ghosts in somebody else’s graveyard.

  TNT and baby. Two scents that should never mingle.
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br />   Liv mumbled, “She’s cold. She’s hungry and scared.”

  “Where?” Marsh had never been to Williton, didn’t know the village, didn’t know where to find Liv’s aunt.

  They walked. Every block was a jumble of senseless images. Pulverized brick. A dented tea service. Shattered window glass. A Victorian fainting couch half-collapsed beneath a heap of charred timber. Jumbled masonry. A child’s shoe. A bathtub. A cracked chimney, the bricks pulling apart in a snaggletoothed grimace. A family Bible. A dining room wall. A teacup.

  What they didn’t see were the telltale mounds of Anderson shelters.

  That could have meant they’d sheltered in cellars. Cellars. Yes. Perhaps they were trapped inside. Underfoot, just feet away, waiting for somebody to free them. If he could find a cellar, find people alive and well and waiting to be dug out, then he’d know Agnes was safe somewhere, too.

  “She wants her blanket,” said Liv.

  The debris tore his trousers, gouged his knees. Window glass sliced his fingers. When he hurled the bricks aside, they landed with a crash and tinkle, oddly high-pitched for such heavy things. More bricks. More crashing.

  He found a rhythm. Lift, hurl, crash. Blood and dust caked his hands. Lift. Hurl. Crash.

  “Raybould.”

  He couldn’t spare Liv more than a glance. A trio of rescue men had joined her: one old, one pudgy, one pale. Good. More hands.

  “Raybould,” she said again, less quietly this time.

  They stood there, watching. Why weren’t they helping him? He wrestled a length of timber from the wreckage. It perforated his hands with splinters.

  Footsteps crunched through the debris. A hand rested heavily on his shoulder.

  “It’s over, son.”

  Marsh tossed aside another piece of timber.

  The rescue man crouched beside Marsh and squeezed his shoulder. “That’s our job,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  Marsh’s fingers wrapped themselves around something solid, a brick or piece of masonry. Lift. Hurl. Crash.

  The hand on his shoulder moved to his elbow and tugged. “Why don’t you come with me. We’ll get you some food.”