‘Go on,’ she says quietly, reaching out to take my hand as I sit beside her on the bed.
‘Then I’ll jump back. I’ll see Hecht. Explain things.’
And get his permission to act, I want to say, only I’m not half as confident as I’d like to be that he’d give it. That he’d understand. That’s why I keep hesitating. That’s why I’ve not laid it bare before him. Because I’m not sure what his response would be. And it matters. More than anything I’ve ever done.
We make love, and afterwards we sleep. And then, somewhere in the night, I wake to find a shadowed figure standing at the foot of our bed, looking down at me. Yet even as I sit up and cry out, it vanishes. But I know it was there.
Katerina sleeps on, sated, oblivious.
I get up and walk over to the window, then sit there on the sill, looking out across the moonlit fields. A cold sweat covers my body, and my heart is hammering wildly in my chest. It’s an awful feeling. Truly awful. For I was never taught how to cope with something like this; never bred to feel this much. And I realise I am frightened. For the first time in my life, I am scared stiff, because I don’t know what to do or how to act to preserve this life I’ve carved from Time.
Stolen, Hecht would say.
But why not? Why can’t I have this? What harm am I doing anyone?
Only I know Hecht’s answers without asking for them. I am changing things. Muddying the timestream. People are dead who should not be dead, while others are alive who never should have lived. And then, of course, there’s Nevsky. For what we’ve done here today will affect what Nevsky does, and Nevsky’s central to it all.
As ever, I have made too many ripples. I have been noticed. Just as when I fired the staritskii that time and blew a hole right through Krylenko’s forehead.
The memory of it sobers me. Hecht won’t be pleased. How could he understand?
I’ve broken every rule, after all. And me his Eizelkind …
Katerina stirs, then wakes. Seeing me at the window, she sits up and rubs her eyes. ‘Otto?’ she asks wearily. ‘What is it?’
I want to explain to her. To tell her what a mess I’ve made of things, and that none of this was meant, only even as I make to form the words, it hits me like a sudden storm centred on my chest, and the whole world dissolves about me. The last thing I recall is her eyes and the sweet roundness of her mouth as she stares at me in shock.
Back. Back to Four-Oh.
258
The room’s familiar, the shadows known from other days. Above Meister Hecht, the Tree of Worlds glows brightly in the dark, as his long fingers dance across the keyboard.
My hand goes to my neck, feeling for something that’s no longer there. Only I don’t know what.
Hecht is brusque, as if there’s too much playing on his mind for him to worry about my state of mind. Not that I really feel anything, unless this emotional numbness counts, this absence of feeling.
He looks up and his grey eyes narrow, noting my sunburned skin, the thick growth of beard.
‘I’ve a job for you, Otto. Mid-thirteenth century. You know the period and you know most of the major players, so that’s not a problem. As far as strategy’s concerned, it’s a simple infiltration, for reconnaissance purposes. Here.’
He hands me a file. I flick it open and read the opening paragraph, then look to him.
I find it hard to speak. For some reason my head is full of dialect Russian. Even so I frame the words with care, for all that the German feels strange on my tongue.
‘You want me to become a knight? A Teuton Knight?’
Hecht meets my eyes. ‘A Brother, yes. I thought it was time. Have you a problem with that?’
‘No, Master …’
‘Then go to.’
Zarah is waiting for me in my room. As I step through, she comes across and, taking my arm, looks deep into my eyes, like she’s a doctor, examining me.
‘Are you okay?’
I hesitate. ‘I’m not sure, I … What you gave me …’
‘Was just a blocker. To ease the transition. You had a hard time in there. I felt, well, I felt you needed a little help. To get over it.’
‘Over it?’
It’s all very vague. As I said, I feel numb. Not physically numb, but like there’s something I ought to remember, only I can’t.
‘How long will it last?’
‘A while. It’ll wear off, eventually. We’ve not erased anything, if that’s what’s worrying you.’
It wasn’t. In fact, right now pretty much nothing worries me. Even the thought of becoming a Knight-Brother, which at any other time would excite me is just, well, information.
Zarah smiles, then pats my shoulder. She’s looking at me strangely, and I don’t know why, but I let it pass.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I’ll help you get ready. Only listen … When it does come back …’
There’s a strange movement in her face, a hesitation, such that, even in my state of numbness I ask her, ‘What?’
‘Just that there are reasons. Explanations …’
I don’t know what she’s talking about. Reasons? Reasons for what? Only I’m not motivated enough to ask.
Blockers, eh? I think vaguely, as Zarah begins to help me dress. But that’s the beauty of blockers, they screen out everything, even the need to question what in Urd’s name I should want to forget.
Part Nine
The Gift of an Owl
‘Their view; it is cosmic. Not a man here, a child there, but an abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honourable men but of Ehre itself, honour; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Gute, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into the granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. And these – these madmen – respond to the granite the dust, the longing of the inanimate; they want to aid Natur.’
– Philip K. Dick, The Man In The High Castle
259
SMOKE DRIFTS ACROSS the battlefield, temporarily obscuring the scenes of carnage. For that briefest of instants only the sounds remain: the awful, hideous screaming; the pitiless roar of the cannons; the sound of metal clashing against metal, the shouts and the whinnied shrieks of horses.
Zorndorf. I am on the battlefield of Zorndorf, the scene of Frederick’s most disastrous defeat. But Frederick himself is safe. Thanks to us, the great man lives, and Nemtsov, Dankevich and Bobrov – Russian agents, sent in to prevent us saving him – are dead. Only Gruber now remains. Gruber, one of our own. A traitor.
Breathless, I look about me. Ernst is okay, and Freisler. And there, not twenty yards away, is Frederick, mounting von Gotz’s pale grey horse. Safe now.
I turn back, looking for Gruber. At first I don’t see him, but then I do. He’s also down, lying there on his back, groaning.
I walk across to him.
Gruber stares up at me, blood and spittle on his lips. The wound to his chest is a bad one. He’s been burned deeply, and he’s ebbing fast, but as he sees me he smiles, as if he’s won.
‘Here,’ he mouths, and I kneel, leaning close to make out what he’s saying.
‘Your Katerina …’ he says, then coughs. ‘The Russians know … Cherdiechnost …’
And so he dies. But I feel a fist of ice about my heart. They know? Urd protect me, let it not be true!
260
No more delays, I tell myself. It’s time to see Hecht. Time to tell him everything.
Only Hecht’s not in his room, and no one knows where he’s gone, so I go and see Ernst.
Ernst is bathing, washing the blood and sweat of the battlefield from his tired body, a happy man now t
hat he’s ventured out in time again.
I talk to him through the frosted glass. Or try to. Because Ernst wants only to speak of the battle we’ve just fought; of saving Frederick, and killing the Russians. It’s only when I raise my voice, repeating what I’ve said, that he finally takes it in.
‘Gruber said the Russians know. About Katerina. And Cherdiechnost.’
Ernst’s head appears around the glass, eyes shocked. ‘They know?’
‘Yes. That’s why I have to tell Hecht. I have to go back there and get them out of there.’
Ernst cuts the flow of water, then grabs a towel. ‘He won’t like that.’
‘Then I’ll persuade him. Make him see that it’s in our best interests.’
Ernst looks at me as if I’m mad. ‘He’ll ground you, like he grounded me. Then where will you be?’
‘Where will I be if I don’t?’ I can hear that I’m pleading with him now, but I can’t help it. ‘I don’t exist without her. And my girls …’
Ernst stares at me. ‘Girls? You mean you and Katerina had children, and you didn’t tell me?’
I feel ashamed. ‘I’m sorry. I should have told you. Before I went to Christburg. There just wasn’t a good time to raise the subject. And then there was Seydlitz’s Barbarossa project, and the fall-out from that …’
Ernst pulls on a long tunic, then turns to me again. ‘Urd save us, Otto! This changes things. Hecht will never allow you back there! It’s bad enough you had a woman – but children! It wouldn’t surprise me if he went in personally and erased the whole of that timeline.’
‘But that’s it. He can’t. I’m in a loop, and a long one, at that. I go back there, sometime in my future. That’s when I have them.’
Ernst whistles.
‘So what do I do? I can’t just leave it. You know I can’t. She’s my life, Ernst. You of all people should know that.’
Ernst sighs. ‘I know. Only Hecht won’t see it that way.’
‘But he must do. I mean, it was he who let me go there. To Cherdiechnost. To the estate. He sent me there, for a break.’
‘Hecht?’ Ernst stares back at me sceptically. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Well, Zarah was the one who actually sent me back. But she acts on Hecht’s instructions. He knows everything she does. It’s all in the record. If he didn’t know …’
No. It’s not possible. I’ve seen Hecht’s ‘Haven’ for myself. Seen how he keeps track of it all. He and his brother.
Ernst touches my shoulder ‘You’ve not told this to anyone else, have you, Otto?’
‘No one.’
‘Then let’s go and see Zarah. Take counsel with her. If there’s a way, she’ll know it. Besides, if you are in a loop, maybe she knows something about it.’
Maybe, I think. After all, they knew where to check for me. That figure at the end of my bed must have known the lay-out of my house extremely well to jump in so accurately.
‘What if she says, “see Hecht”.’
‘Then you go see Hecht. But not until you must. Not unless you’re really desperate.’
261
On my way, I remember something Zarah said to me, months ago, when I first came back from Cherdiechnost. Before Christburg and Operation Barbarossa and that whole bloody business at Zorndorf. Something about there being reasons. Explanations.
I want to know now what they are.
Zarah greets us and takes us through to a large room I’ve never been in before, an anteroom at the back of the platform. She seems to be expecting this, and that too is somewhat disconcerting. She makes us sit, then paces up and down nervously, talking all the while, like she’s giving a lecture.
‘I knew you’d come. I knew at some point you’d work it out.’
I make to speak, but she doesn’t let me. It’s like she has to keep talking or she’ll never get said what she has to say.
‘It must have become obvious to you long ago, but we’re sure of it now. At least, as sure as we can be.’ She pauses, glancing at me, then carries on. ‘It’s like this. The rules of engagement have changed, Otto. The Game itself has changed. It was little things at first. Things that didn’t quite make sense, perhaps because we were reading them as old-style phenomena, interpreting them under the old way of thinking. Why, even Gehlen missed it at first. But slowly, bit by bit, we began to glimpse what it was.’
She stops, looking directly at me. ‘Something’s happened, you understand. New equations, possibly, or new technologies, further up the line. Put simply, the ceiling has gone. Agents are coming back from the future. Hecht was the first, at least, the first we knew about, but there have been others since. Ours and theirs.’
‘So how does this …?’
‘Wait, Otto. Hear me out. That’s where Hecht is now. Up the line. Trying to work out just what’s going on.’
‘But if he’s already met himself … well, he must know, surely?’
‘Not everything. In fact, not much outside the bare bones, really.’
‘But …’
My mind spins, like all of the gears have come loose. They must come from no-space bunkers like this one, surely? Because nothing else exists up here at the end of Time. It was all destroyed. Or is that the old way of thinking?
‘Does Hecht know?’
Zarah meets my eyes. ‘About the estate? No.’
‘No?’
‘We thought it best not to trouble him. We thought …’ She sighs. ‘Okay. Here’s the bottom line. We’ve done a deal with you, Otto. Upriver. We help you and you … you help us.’
‘Impossible.’
‘No. It’s true. You help train us. The women, I mean. Show us how to operate in Time. For our part—’
‘Wait a minute,’ Ernst says. ‘You’re talking about going behind Hecht’s back. You’re talking about out-and-out treason.’
Zarah stares back at us. ‘That’s not so. We were always loyal. Loyal beyond the call of duty. But things are about to change. You could say they have changed, already. You see, Hecht …’ She swallows, then forces herself to say it. ‘Hecht is about to die.’
262
We travellers are used to change. It is the medium in which we exist. We work night and day to promote it. Only …
Some changes are much bigger than others. Harder to accept.
Hecht’s death, the thought of it fills me – fills all of us, I’m sure – with dread, for Hecht is our ‘Father’, our Helmsman. He steers our no-space ship through the timestreams. He is the Guardian of the Tree of Worlds. Our Master, and not just in name.
Was that what he came back to tell himself? That he was going to die? If so, what preparations did he make? Or is that a paradox? Can one ever be prepared for death?
Not only that, but … did he tell himself how futile it would be to try to evade his fate? Was that why he broke his own rule and met himself?
And what significance does it have for us?
A new Master, for sure. But who? For who, of all of us, could possibly step into his shoes? Who, for Urd’s sake, has been trained?
Freisler, perhaps. Only Freisler would be a disaster. For a start he’s not got the respect of the Reisende, many of whom hate the man. No. There would be war – civil war – if Freisler took command.
Who then?
No. Don’t even say it. I’m not ready. I don’t know enough, not a tenth enough, to step into his shoes. Besides, after all I’ve done – after all the rules I’ve broken – it would hardly do for me to put on the Master’s cloak. How, after all, could I look a fellow agent in the eye and tell him he has strayed, when, I know for a certainty that my very existence in the future flouts those same rules I would be sworn to uphold?
It can’t be me. Not Master in Hecht’s place. Not now. Not even if, perhaps, he meant it ultimately.
Then who? For there’s no other candidate.
‘Do we have much time?’ Ernst asks, breaking the long silence.
Zarah looks to him, her face pale and troubled. ‘A month. Thirty-
seven days, to be precise.’
‘But if he knows …’ I begin. Then, with a shock, I understand the relevance of the timing. ‘New Year’s Day,’ I say quietly. ‘New Year’s Day, of the year 3000.’
‘That’s right,’ Zarah says. ‘The new millennium.’
We both know that it isn’t. Not technically. But someone does. Someone thinks the date significant enough to kill Meister Hecht on that day.
‘Do we know …?’
‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Hecht won’t say. Only that he can’t prevent it.’
‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Ernst says. ‘Anything can be changed. That’s what we’ve been taught, haven’t we? And if we know in advance …’
‘He won’t allow it,’ Zara says, something in her face telling me that she’s already argued this one out fiercely with Hecht himself.
‘Then do it anyway!’ Ernst says fiercely. ‘Thor’s teeth! Are we to stand here, hands bound and weapons sheathed, while the finest of us is taken?’
‘You’ll do as the Master says,’ Zarah answers. ‘It is his explicit order.’
‘But—’
I know how Ernst feels. It feels like giving up, like, well, like a kind of suicide. Because if he knows and doesn’t act …
I stand up abruptly, throwing my chair back away from me, sheer exasperation propelling me to the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Zarah asks.
‘I’m going to find Hecht, and I’m going to ask who killed him.’
‘And if he tells you?’
‘Then I’ll track him down and kill him.’
263
Only it’s not that easy. I wait there by the platform for two hours, and then a third, and still he doesn’t come.
Eventually I go back to my room, but only after making Zarah promise to summon me the instant he returns. I don’t want to sleep, but, lying there, tiredness overwhelms me and I succumb.
I wake, to darkness and to silence, thinking about what Zarah said. And not just about Hecht, but about the ‘deal’ I’m supposedly going to make – no, that I have made – up the line somewhere. The rest of it doesn’t surprise me quite so much, because for some time now I’ve suspected that things have changed. It’s only the how that bothers me.
The Ocean of Time Page 32