End of the Century

by Chris Roberson

  Stillman left Alice on the couch, her backpack in her lap, and returned a short while later with a steaming pot of coffee and a pair of mugs. Alice wasn't much of a coffee drinker, but she was glad for something to wash the taste of stale smoke and beer from her mouth, and accepted the proffered mug with thanks.

  “So, wait,” Alice said, trying to get her bearings. “Why'd you say you're a spy? What's that about?”

  “Well.” Stillman shrugged. “I suppose it's because I am a spy.” He chuckled. “Or was, at any rate.”

  Alice tugged the pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket. She had one of the butts between her lips before she thought to ask, “Mind if I smoke in here?”

  “Those things'll kill you, you know.” Stillman smiled. “But I'll allow it if you'll spare one for me. It's been too many years since I indulged.”

  Alice shook a cigarette out of the pack for him and handed it over.

  “Might I trouble you for a light?” Stillman asked.

  It took a moment, but Alice managed to fish the match case from her pocket.

  “Mmm.” Stillman studied the case, his brows knit. “How oddly familiar.” Then he shook his head, struck a match, and held it up, first for Alice, then himself. Then, coffee and cigarettes in hand, the two of them settled back onto the couch.

  “So you're a spy,” Alice said, a statement and not a question. “Like James Bond?”

  “I hope not.” Stillman sneered. “No, we were of a different sort, I suppose you'd say. Didn't do all the regular sort of cloak-and-dagger cat-and-mouse like the lads and ladies of Five and Six—that's the Security Service and Secret Intelligence Service, if you want to be pedantic, but everyone always called them MI5 and MI6. Just like our lot was the Special Intelligence Directorate, but everyone called us MI8. We'd picked the name up during the war, back when Eight was just signals intelligence for the Special Operations Executive. MI8, or Military Intelligence Section 8, in charge of signals intelligence and cryptography. That's how we got in this business, you understand. See, the Y Services of the armed forces, along with the SID, began to intercept German wireless traffic encrypted with some new code. Ultimately, the SID and Alan Turing and the rest of the cryptographers at Bletchley Park were able to decode these transmissions, which turned out to be information about top-secret investigations carried out by the SS Ahnenerbe.”

  “The what?” Alice wasn't sure if it was the residual drunk, or if he was really just talking nonsense.

  “The Ahnenerbe. Supposedly some sort of cultural heritage group set up by Himmler and his goons, but they were much dirtier than that. The Nazis believed all sorts of crazy things—that the world was hollow and we lived on the inside, that the ancient Egyptians had nuclear power, that Atlantis was real and was where flying saucers came from, you name it—but the job of the Ahnenerbe was to go out and prove this malarkey. Well, these transmissions we'd picked up said that the mad buggers were attempting to establish communications with intelligences in another plane of existence. Another universe altogether.”

  “Another universe?” Alice wasn't sure they even had long-distance telephone calls back then, much less person-to-person in another universe.

  Stillman nodded. “It was all immediately classified Above Top Secret and put on a strictly need-to-know basis. And since we in the SID, along with Turing and the gang at Bletchley, already knew, it was quickly decided that no one else needed to know anything. Operatives of the SOE were dispatched to interfere with the Ahnenerbe's plans, and from that point on the SID was in the occult business.”

  Alice didn't believe a word of it. She was trapped in a hole, deep below the street, with a crazy man. Who, unless she was mistaken, was very definitely gay. So what did he want with her?

  On the other hand, she had recognized this guy from her visions, and even knew his name, kinda-sorta, though in a rebus-in-Highlights-magazine sort of way. A lake's still waters for Stillman Waters. So what did she know?

  There were three options, as she saw it. Either she was crazy, or he was crazy, or neither of them were crazy and everything he was saying was the truth.

  “So let me get this straight. Not only are there ghosts and ghouls and monsters and such, but there are secret agents who keep tabs on them?”

  “Well, not precisely, love, but that's the general gist of it, I suppose.”

  “And the secret agents got their start eavesdropping on Nazis’ phone calls?”

  Stillman laughed and took a sip of his coffee. “You think that's bad, you Yanks have your own bunch who muck about in the dark corners, but they were originally part of the post office!” He set his coffee cup down and took a long drag of his cigarette. “My hand to God, if you believe that sort of thing. The offices of Bureau Zero are still under the old Post Office Building in Washington. And the French Cabinet Noir, come to that, got their start snooping in people's mail, so were postal, too, of a sort.”

  Seeing Alice's expression, Stillman crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray he'd dug up, and continued, somewhat more seriously.

  “Look, don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about fantasy here. What I'm saying is that there is often a verifiable phenomenon behind supposed supernatural occurrences. If you dig deep enough into myths and fairy tales and legends, like as not you'll come up with something really going on back there that doesn't fit with the everyday view of things. And it is supernatural, but only in the dictionary definition of a realm or system higher than nature. There are worlds beyond this one, love, other planes of existence that sometimes intersect with our own. And it's guys like me who see that those intersections don't mean curtains for the rest of you.”

  “And it was the Nazis that discovered this, I take it?” Alice was sobering by the minute, but finding this no easier to swallow.

  “Well, no. That is, they did, but others already knew. See, there's always been guys like me, standing at the borders. Back in Queen Elizabeth's day there was the School of Night, John Dee and that crowd, that had worked it out from first principles. They had their own agents, Lord Strange's Men, who came to be known as the Strangers further down the line. There's your Bureau Zero over in Washington, who've been knocking about since the early 1800s. The Soviets had a mob of them, as did the Japanese in the old days. As did the Chinese. There've never been too many, you understand, on-the-job mortality being pretty high in this business, but we've always been around.”

  “So why don't people know about this stuff?”

  “Well, it was my job to see that they didn't, wannit? Which isn't to say that stories don't leak out, here and there. But most people just believe what they want to believe, so it's pretty easy to pass off a projection from a faster universe as swamp gas, or a probe from another continuum as a weather balloon, if need be.”

  Alice narrowed her eyes. “So what's this Huntsman about, then? Is he one of you guys?”

  “See, perfect example!” Stillman snapped his fingers. “Near as we can figure, he's a regular human who was affected by exposure to a reality incursion, long time ago.” He took in Alice's confused expression. “By a little bit of another universe impinging on our own. Happens from time to time. Scientists are starting to talk about it in the open, nowadays. About quantum interactions between different universes. Happens all the time but we hardly notice, since most of the encounters are with universes too small to make a difference. But if our universe were to collide with a much bigger one, we could all find ourselves living in a world where the boiling point of water had dropped to zero, or gravity was the strongest force, or some such.” He mused. “Course, when I was D and in charge of MI8, we'd put a stop to scientists publishing talk like that. Hell, when I was a Rook the old D authorized sanctions, a time or two, on just such an occasion. But after I put myself out to pasture, years ago, they moved the shop across the river, and I guess they're using a different playbook nowadays.”

  He grew silent for a moment and glanced around the room. Alice felt her lids growing heavy. She hadn't had
a good night's sleep in days, and instead of perking her up the coffee was just counteracting the effects of the drunk enough to make her aware of just how tired she was, really.

  Stillman took a deep breath and shook his head, as if dislodging memories stuck to the sides of his skull.

  “Anyway, the Huntsman, right? He was a human affected by a reality incursion, like I said, who subsequently gave rise to legends about the Wild Hunt. A rational event become a myth. He's been around for years, but has to spend half a century hibernating for every couple of years he's awake. When last he was abroad…” He fell silent for a moment, and a cloud passed over his face. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, as if remembering some old pain. Then he opened his eyes and continued. “His dogs, on the other hand? The Gabriel Hounds, as legend remembers them? They can stay awake and active all the time, more's the pity. Usually they stick near where the Huntsman sleeps, though, which is far enough away not to bother the rest of us. They're damned hard to kill, they are. I saw one of them put down back in the forties, but I'd not want to try that again myself any time soon.”

  Alice's head dipped, her chin touching her chest, and she jerked her head back up, trying to make it look like a nod. It felt like her brain was sloshing around in her skull, and she felt dizzy as her eyes rolled.

  Stillman's gaze was on the crest on the far wall, his thoughts somewhere far away.

  “What about the raven?” Alice said, slurring.

  “It's a rook,” Stillman said, still looking at the crest. “As is the tower, if you get right down to it. The legend goes that the continued existence of England depends on the presence of at least seven ravens in the Tower of London. I suppose that's where they got the idea for calling MI8 field operatives ‘Rooks,’ what with our headquarters being here beneath the Tower and all.” He turned and took in her bewildered expression. “Oh, you meant the ravens on the road, didn't you?” He shook his head. “Can't help you there, love. Don't have a clue what that was about.”

  Alice tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn, and with her voice rising and falling with the yawn, said, “If this is so secret, why are you telling me?”

  “What's that?” Stillman cupped his hand to his ear. “Couldn't quite make that out.”

  Alice shook her head and, as clearly as she could manage, said, “Why are you telling me all of this, if it's so secret?”

  Stillman smiled, sadly. “I'm tired of secrets and mysteries, love. I gave all that up a long time ago. But why I'm telling you? Well, you're something of a mystery yourself, aren't you? Like how you knew my name when I've been careful to be off the books and out of sight for a long, long time. And just what the Huntsman and his dogs want with you, anyway.”

  Alice opened her mouth to answer, to say she had no idea, but only yawned again.

  “That's enough for one night, I think,” Stillman said, standing up and taking the half-empty mug from Alice's hand and the smoldering cigarette from between her fingers. “Get some rest, all right, and maybe tomorrow we can find some answers together.”

  Alice woke early, as she always did after a night of heavy drinking. It never seemed fair that just when her body most needed the rest, it just couldn't seem to get it. She'd fallen asleep on the couch, right where Stillman had left her. The lights were all off, except for those under the cabinets on the walls of the kitchen, streaming dimly into the living space.

  Alice's stomach churned. She felt like she needed to eat, or to vomit, or both. Best to try some food and hope for the best.

  In the kitchen, she found what looked like some kind of cinnamon roll in the fridge, and the remains of a pot of tea on the stove. The tea probably belonged down the drain, but while it smelled a little bitter, it tasted all right poured over ice with a few generous spoonfuls of sugar.

  With the pastry and iced tea in her, Alice felt marginally better. She turned on a lamp near the sofa, and by its light fished her toiletries out of her backpack. A short while after she emerged from the bathroom, freshly showered, teeth brushed, and dressed in a clean white T-shirt, jeans, and fresh bra and panties. From the looks of the bathroom, there must be another shower in the place, since this one clearly hadn't been used in some time. Probably behind the closed door at the end of the hallway, behind which Stillman was presumably still asleep.

  The whole place had a makeshift look to it, as though spaces intended for other uses had been repurposed. The furniture in the living room, for example, must have been the height of fashion in the sixties or seventies, and was still in good enough repair that with the rug underneath it was cozy enough, but on closer examination it was clear that the room had originally been some sort of work space. The kitchen had the look of a filing room into which someone had just added a sink, stove, and refrigerator.

  The door to the right of the bathroom was open and led to a narrow hallway. Padding quietly on her bare feet, Alice ventured into the gloom, curious.

  At the end of the hallway was another room, and when Alice flipped on the light switch, she saw it was nearly as large as the living space. Aside from a door in the far wall, the rest of the room was covered in shelves, crammed full of leather-bound books and piles of loose-leaf paper and folders, or framed pictures and paintings.

  One painting in particular had a place of prominence, on the left-hand wall. It was hung high with a pair of small spotlights trained on it. It was a portrait of a man in Victorian evening dress, with a red orchid in his lapel. He had an unreadable expression on his face, at once wistful and sad and strange. Alice thought he looked something like Jeremy Irons in Brideshead Revisited, which her mother had insisted that they watch every time it was replayed. Where Naomi Vance had a weakness for Michael Caine, for Samatha Fell it was all Jeremy Irons, all the time. Alice, of course, thought they were both crazy; as if any actor could be better than Johnny Depp.

  Below the portrait, in a display case, was a silver chalice of some kind. It had a large bowl with letters or runes engraved around the rim, sitting on top of a conically shaped foot, with a round bulb where the bowl met the base.

  “Quite the liberty taker, aren't you, love?”

  Alice whirled around, her heart in her throat.

  In the open door stood Stillman Waters, wearing a silk dressing gown, leaning casually against the jamb. His hair was out-of-the-shower damp, and his face was clean shaven.

  “Helped yourself to the last of my Chelsea buns, I see. And used the shower in the bargain.”

  “The knob for the cold water sticks in the shower.”

  Stillman smiled. “That's why I never use that one, myself. Put it in for visitors, didn't I? But doesn't do much good if no one ever visits, which they don't.”

  Alice turned and looked up at the portrait. “Who is that?”

  Stillman came to stand beside her. It was a long moment before he spoke. “A…friend…of mine. He died in Iceland, a long time ago.”

  “Ah.” Alice nodded. She could tell by the way he'd said it that “friend” really mean “more than a friend.”

  “Ah?” Stillman looked at her with an eyebrow cocked.

  “Sorry,” Alice said, flustered. “I mean…I just wasn't sure, you know?”

  She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans, her elbows tucked in tight. “I apparently have difficulty telling the difference between English and gay.”

  Stillman smiled. “Well, I don't make it any easier on you being both, do I?” He looked up at the portrait. “But he wasn't even English. Was one of the original Americans, I suppose you might say.”

  Alice looked back at the young Jeremy Irons with the strange, far-off look and the red orchid in his lapel. “He doesn't look much like a Native American.”

  “Oh, not a Red Indian, love. I meant…” He shook his head. “Oh, never mind.”

  Alice shrugged and drifted on down the wall. Next to the portrait in its place of prominence was a black-and-white photograph in a gold frame. There were two men and a woman in the picture. One of the men was
clearly the same as the one in the portrait, but Jeremy Irons a few years on, Lolita, maybe, or even older. The other seemed to be a younger Stillman Waters, a Michael Caine somewhere between Alfie and The Ipcress File. And the woman?

  “Hey!” Alice leaned in close. Sure enough. “That looks just like the chick I met last night in the bar. Her name was Roxanne…Roxanne Something-or-other.” She turned to Stillman. “A few years older, though. And it couldn't be the same woman, of course. Maybe her mother? Or grandmother even?”

  Stillman looked from the photo to Alice, head tilted to one side. “Roxanne, you say?” He glanced back at the picture. “Interesting.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, puzzling something out. He moved to stand before the chalice and squinted at the figures engraved around its rim.

  “What's it say?” Alice asked.

  “Never could make heads or tails of it. It's Old Norse, but nonsense.” He leaned closer, raising his eyebrows, and began to read aloud, “Vetki, tveir, vetki, sjau…” He left off, straightened, and turned to look at Alice. “‘Nothing, two, nothing, seven…’ Just goes on like that. If it's a poem, it's an exceedingly poor one. It was a gift from a friend a long time ago. But…” He trailed off and glanced at the portrait. Then he clapped his hands and brightened. “But enough of these moldering memories. Come on, let me fix us a proper breakfast.”

  Alice sat on the couch with a fresh mug of coffee, watching television while Stillman stood over the stove, a frying pan's handle in one hand, a spatula in the other. The room filled with the smell of toasting bread and bacon and made Alice's mouth water. The cinnamon roll—or Chelsea bun, as Stillman called it—had staved off the worst of the hunger pangs, but she was still absolutely starving.

  Lighting a cigarette, Alice moved the ashtray onto the cushion next to her, propped her feet up on the coffee table, and flipped through the channels with the remote. On one channel there was something called Blue Peter, which seemed to be about a group of extremely friendly people who couldn't stop smiling, their pets, and crafts. Another channel was showing American cartoons. Another was running some sort of newsmagazine. Another sports highlights. And so on. Alice settled on the newsmagazine.