Indeed, there is no fact, for this investigation, like my presence there, is a complete fraud: an imaginary peg on which to hang an imaginary coat. But it will suffice. It will allow me access, and access is what I need.
Access to Kolya’s mother. For she is here. I have only to find her.
Shutting the door, I walk over to my case and, lifting it, place it on the bed. Crouching, I study the lock, relieved to see that it’s untouched, the smear-seal untampered with. Then, taking the pulse-key from my pocket, I touch it and the mechanism springs open with a double-click.
There’s an unused notepad, made, like everything else, of my DNA, together with a detailed list – running to eighteen pages – of the students at the Akademie. Beneath those are a single change of clothes and a basic dictionary of twenty-fourth-century ge’not. Tucked into a pocket at the side is a detailed map of the locality and, in a small, sealed box, are various drugs. Right at the bottom – and it’s the bulkiest item by far – is the file on Kolya, which I’ve yet to properly look at. And other, personal things, Katerina’s pendant among them.
Five days, I’m giving myself. Time enough, I hope, to find some clue as to who Kolya is and why he’s doing what he’s doing.
I remove the notepad and the list and place them on the desk, then fasten the case again and slide it beneath the bed. Then I make the bed and, that done, go to the door and call for the guard.
The man comes at once, bowing low before me. ‘Master?’
‘Where do I wash?’
He shows me and I shower. But, returning to my cell, it is to find a stranger there – an adult, not a boy, wearing a meister’s robe.
‘You’ll need a chair,’ he says, before I can ask his name. ‘I guess you didn’t ask for one.’
And he smiles, which confuses me, because he seems so unlike his superior, the Doktor, and yet so similar.
‘I forgot,’ I say, ‘Herr …’
‘Haushofer,’ he says, offering his hand. ‘Klaus Haushofer. And before you ask, I’ve been assigned to you as your liaison officer.’
He seems on the surface of things a pleasant man, his charm expressed physically in the soft roundness of his face, the bluff ordinariness of his features. He seems a man without airs. Only this is an age of ‘airs’, of precise – one might say exact – social placement, and I wonder just how real his jovial nature is.
He looks about him and shakes his head disapprovingly. ‘No, no. This won’t do. They take the Doktor’s instructions far too literally. Something basic, he said. But this isn’t basic, this is spartan.’ And again he looks to me and smiles. ‘I’ll arrange something. But tell me, are you hungry?’
Which is why, five minutes later, I find myself in the refectory, beneath a high ceiling of ancient wooden beams, several hundred students seated at tables nearby, as Haushofer arranges for a servant – a mute, I note – to bring us our meals.
He is sat beside me, leaning in towards me conspiratorially as he speaks in a half whisper. ‘I would have taken you to the masters’ dining room, only I thought you might like to see how the boys live. Get an idea of how social – how regimented – their lives really are.’
And so it seems, for there is very little noise, very little of the boisterous behaviour one might expect from such a large gathering of young men. Oh, there is talk at the nearby tables – mostly, I should think, of who I am and what in Urd’s name I could be investigating – but it is restrained, kept within limits.
I turn and look about me, conscious of how uniform they all look. Some have black hair, some red, but the predominant colour is ash blond, cut in the same close-to-the-head style, like the brother knights.
Eyes meet mine briefly and look quickly away, for they know who I am and what power I might have over their lives. Only they don’t look scared. Hostile is what they look, like a family having to put up with an unwelcome guest.
Haushofer is watching me, even as he chews his bread. He smiles, then nods to indicate the insignia on my arm.
‘You’re not one of the Bremen crew, then?’
I could take exception to that word, ‘crew’. It is, after all, a kind of slur on my profession, only I sense that that’s perhaps what he wants. To exude friendliness while sniping at me all the while. I let the insult pass.
‘No, I’m from Breslau, actually. And before you ask, I’ve not been sent because of any local connection. We take turns to investigate such matters. It prevents favouritism.’
There! A tiny dig back. A suggestion – if only slight – that they might try to influence things here at the Akademie. To use their connections to pull strings.
And what connections they have. Why, there is barely a senior official in the whole of Greater Germany who has not passed through the Akademie.
But Haushofer does not react. Unless his smile is a reaction, which I doubt. His tactic, it seems, is to be as pleasant to me as possible – to seem to be my friend, to act informally in my company, and by that means to elicit information. Only it won’t work. Because I haven’t any information. And because I’m not here to play his games. I’m here to find Kolya.
To that end, I study the women who are working behind the counter. As far as I know, Kolya’s mother wasn’t a cook or a serving woman, yet what we know of her is sufficiently vague to make it worth my while to check. Haushofer notices the direction of my glance and, leaning closer, asks me if I would like one of them sent to my room.
I don’t answer, merely stare back at him, and after a moment he shrugs, as if it is my loss, and I begin to understand just how they operate here.
Corrupt, yes. Of course they are corrupt. Because power is corrupt. And what they teach here – what they live and breathe and, so it seems, eat here – is power.
When the meal comes, I eat in silence, letting Haushofer make the small talk. I learn he has a wife and two sons, oh, and a daughter. He almost forgets the daughter, for what use is a daughter in a world such as this, except to be a hausfrau and bear children? Male children, preferably. And little by little I come to hate the man with an intensity that I daren’t show, even though I know he expresses merely the common opinions of his age.
Mechanist opinions. Views from a Mechanist world.
Yes. But what do I mean by that?
Mechanism is the philosophy of this age. It is a belief that destiny is genetic. That individuals are not important of themselves, only as an ‘expression’ of race. Just as each separate gene is integral to the chromosome of which it is a part, so each individual, they argue, is integral to the race. For the Mechanists, people are simply gene-machines, to be fine-tuned and brought towards the ‘median’, which is the ultimate goal.
That fine-tuning begins within the womb, and continues throughout childhood and, in some cases, through to old age. For some, like the early Guildsmen, it involves physical alteration – the beginning of that painful system of surgical adaptation that finds its final flowering, if it can be called such, in the twenty-eighth century. For most, however, it is a slow and complex process of genetic ‘shaping’. Of modest alterations to what is already – as they see it – good genetic stock. Aryans, of course, for we are talking eugenics here, after all. And here, at the Akademie, we are at the very epicentre of that process. Here, in the Herr Doktor’s skilful hands, young men of promise are engineered into perfect specimens of the volk, shaped both in mind and essence. Enhanced, as the terminology would have it, their chromosomes cleaned up.
And while the men are bred for excellence, the women are bred to produce more men, the best men they can. That, according to the Mechanists, is their role in this life. As it was under Hitler. As it is – and I recognise the flaw – in Four-Oh. The German way, you might say. Not Mother Russia but … the Fatherland.
Only now, with girls of my own, I have a different view.
I push my plate aside and am about to take a sip from my glass when an alarm begins to sound – a pulsing buzz that has an immediate effect on the boys. As one they rise
and, in a silent, orderly fashion begin to troop out of that great hall. Haushofer touches my arm, and we make our way out too, the boys giving way to us. Out into the great open space of the main quadrant where already the boys are lining up in their years and classes, boys and masters spilling out into the sunlight in a leisurely yet businesslike manner.
As Haushofer and I walk across, I look about me, seeing how the surrounding buildings go up into the sky, tier after white sunlit tier, like gigantic steps leading up to Heaven. All except the building behind us – the administrative building, from which we’ve just emerged – which squats beneath the others, topped by its huge, almost Byzantine dome.
We climb a short flight of steps that leads up on to the raised stage-like area, joining the massed ranks of the masters. As we do, I look up, beyond the long ranks of boys, to the great leaded window in the far building, and see the unmistakable figure of the Doktor, standing beside his desk, looking out over the scene.
The alarm pulses and pulses and then stops.
The Doktor turns abruptly and leaves the window, emerging a moment later at the top of a set of broad marble steps that lead down into the quadrant. As he does, so total silence falls.
He moves slowly yet purposefully between the ranks, a small man, dwarfed by these fine specimens of German youth, yet there is an authority to his manner that is unmistakable. As he joins us on the platform, every eye is on him, every one of us in that quadrant waiting to hear what he, the Doktor, will say.
I watch him from a distance of no more than ten feet, and see the pride that’s in his eyes as he surveys his protégés: four thousand of them in all, from the vulnerable-looking, almost babyish six-year-olds to the eighteen-year-olds, whose confidence and physical perfection makes them seem like statues turned to flesh.
There’s a long pause, while he surveys his domain, and then he turns and looks to me and, to my horror, puts out an arm to indicate my presence. And in that instant I realise that all of this has been contrived for this purpose – so that the Doktor can address me, publicly, before the whole Akademie.
‘Gentlemen,’ he says, his voice booming across that packed space. ‘As you know, we have a guest from the Ministry staying with us for a day or so. Herr Scholl. Inspector Scholl, should I say. I just want to take this opportunity of asking you all to cooperate fully with the Inspector while he’s here. After all, we have nothing to hide.’
It’s hard to convey the disdain with which he utters those final words, only it surprises me that laughter – mocking laughter – doesn’t follow. But there is only silence. Conscious that every eye is on me now, I bow low, as if the Doktor has somehow praised me, yet I know that I make the gesture only because I am at a loss this once, and that some kind of response is called for.
For a moment the Doktor’s steely gaze remains fixedly on me, and then he turns away and, lifting his hands, claps them once, at which signal the boys turn and begin to file back into their buildings, as if this has all been rehearsed.
Which no doubt it has.
I turn and look to Haushofer and find him watching me thoughtfully.
‘Okay,’ he says quietly. ‘Your room should be ready now.’
297
Haushofer is as good as his word. My new room is bigger and better furnished than the last, only there’s one snag: it’s situated in the servants’ quarters, directly above the kitchens, which means that not only is there noise, all day and a good part of the night, but that everything in the room is permeated by a stale cooking smell.
It is another insult, of course, and not a subtle one, but I ignore it. Besides, poor as my quarters are, they are – though Haushofer doesn’t know it – perfectly situated. Where better, after all, to begin my search for Kolya’s mother?
Haushofer leaves me, surprised that I’m content. There’s no lock on my door, but my case is locked and I can’t believe any of the servants would intrude, and so I decide to tour the servants’ quarters.
Walking down the great stairwell I am glanced at by passing servants, but nothing more. They can see who I am, and assume I am on official business. And so I am, in a sense. Serving the volk.
And when you find her?
I’m not sure what I’ll do. Question her, probably. Find out what she knows of Kolya and his father. If she’ll talk. But that’s where the drugs come in, to make her talk. If she’s reluctant.
And then?
The object, I guess, is to kill him. Time-dead. Only if he’s as clever as Schikaneder claims he is, then that might prove more than a little difficult.
I go from corridor to corridor, up stairs and down, looking in rooms and nodding to myself, as if satisfied. Only there’s no one who resembles her. But then, as I’m about to give up and go back to my room, I glance out of a window and think I see her, walking slowly across a courtyard between buildings, carrying a pile of fresh white linen. Yet even as I make my way towards the door, about to pursue her, the two young men who first greeted me out on the great marble pathway – Gunsche and Sanger, I have learned – appear as if from nowhere and, intercepting my course, beg me to accompany them. Haushofer, it seems, needs to see me again, to discuss something.
And so, leaving my quarry, I go with them, not without looking back – in time to see her disappear beyond a door that’s swinging closed.
Kolya’s mother, blithely unaware of her own significance in Time, carrying my nemesis in her belly.
298
Haushofer’s room is close to his master’s, the Doktor’s – within hailing distance certainly – and I notice that even though he wishes to talk to me ‘in confidence’, his door remains open, no doubt to answer any summons from the great man.
Right now, Haushofer sits at his desk, signing some papers. On the wall behind him hang three portraits, the President, the Guild Master and the King, the last of which depicts that same long-limbed and pale, despairing creature I last saw four centuries from now, encased in glass.
King in name alone, I think, wondering what Haushofer would make of where that particular genetic experiment would lead. That is, to Manfred and the Adel. And I find myself feeling sorry that I won’t have a chance of meeting Manfred’s ancestor, because it might have been interesting to learn just what it felt like to be the first of such a line.
Gunsche and Sanger leave, having delivered me, but not before I glimpse an exchanged look between them, a kind of smirk. I ought, perhaps, to be above it all, but I find that their arrogance – their naïve assumption of superiority – gets under my skin, and I decide, even before Haushofer has said a word, that the two boys will be on my list of interviewees.
‘Well,’ he begins, pushing the papers away and sitting back lazily in his chair, his fingers laced together behind his neck, ‘now that you’ve settled in, I thought we’d have a word about procedure.’
‘Procedure?’
‘Yes. As you intimated to the Doktor, this is a delicate business and we’d prefer it if we could make it as minimally disruptive as possible. The Doktor suggests – only suggests, mind – that twenty boys be chosen, from a range of years.’
‘It is our usual practice—’
‘—to question more than that, I know. Only there have been a number of recent investigations and they have had the effect of … unsettling the boys. Of undermining them, one might almost say. And not just the boys. The families, too, have been affected. The stress of having their children under suspicion.’
‘There is only one boy under suspicion—’
Haushofer raises a hand, palm outward, in a conciliatory fashion. ‘I understand that, Herr Scholl, only we have had to use our not inconsiderable influence to prevent some of the parents taking the matter up directly with the Ministry. Now, you and I are both realists, Otto. We understand that the relationship between Ministry and Akademie is, well, let us say strained and leave it at that. But I feel it would be in both our interests to come to some more amicable arrangement.’
I almost laugh, because Ha
ushofer wants to make some kind of deal, and, though he doesn’t know it, I am the last person he ought to be approaching, fake that I am. But I can’t tell him that. I have to act as if I do have influence, however small. That is, until I have what I’ve come here for.
I lean forward slightly. ‘You talk of undermining, Herr Haushofer. Have you ever thought what would happen if we acted as you suggest and accommodated such … deals? It would be chaos. Germany would rot and fall. And then what? Where would the Akademie be then? No, Herr Haushofer, we must not relax our standards one iota, nor for a single second. It is our duty. To the race. To the volk.’
Haushofer sighs, then changes his tack. ‘You have a list?’
‘A list?’
‘Of the boys you wish to speak to.’
‘I will provide it. Tomorrow, first thing.’
‘Good. But Otto … be careful how you tread.’
I look surprised. ‘I am safe here, no?’
The question takes him aback. ‘Of course. I wasn’t suggesting …’ He pauses, then, leaning closer, says. ‘It is not the Akademie you have to fear, Inspector, but, well, as I hinted before, there are those who feel that the Ministry is exceeding its authority … being too zealous.’
I am curt, my voice cold. ‘The powers of the Ministry are granted by the President himself.’
‘Yes, yes, but—’
‘But nothing,’ I say, standing, bringing the discussion to a close. ‘Now forgive me, I must begin my preparations.’
Only back in my room I find myself pondering what Haushofer said. It wasn’t clear, but he seems to be suggesting that a group of influential men – men with sons at the Akademie – are, in some fashion, plotting against the Ministry. How that affects me I’m not sure, but it might be best to find out a little more. To jump back to Four-Oh and find out what we know. Only I’m not going to try to kid myself that that’s the real reason. I want to go back because I need to know what Ernst has to say. Whether Cherdiechnost is safe, and Katerina … I stand, then look about me. The case lies open on the bed. I ought to close it, perhaps and lock it, only I’ll not be gone more than a few seconds.
The Ocean of Time Page 44