The Master of Time

by David Wingrove

  I reread that passage then sit there, wondering how I can use it. Oh, I know now where it was. But what use is that without knowing when? Or is that really a problem? I mean, what if I sent back dozens of agents, each to one segment of time, each waiting there, weeks, maybe even months, for Kolya to show up? After all, we know roughly when it was built, during Catherine’s rule, in the mid-eighteenth century, which narrows it a little. Only …

  Only wouldn’t that tip him off?

  He’s too clever to be got at so directly. No. We’ve seen how he does things. How he changes things. How – before we can jump right in and grab him – he is gone, no sign of him remaining.

  Like he knows what we’re about to do. And not just once but every time.

  My eyes return to the bottom of the page. ‘Love you, Daddy’ it reads, written in a spider-like scrawl with her left hand.

  I take a long, shivering breath, then place the letter on top of the others.

  Reasons, I think. Good reasons to stay on and see the job through. Only I’ve made my mind up in that regard. I can’t be Master.

  441

  Which seems to be the general consensus.

  The next morning, when I meet with them again, the veche vote to accept my resignation. Oh, there’s disappointment, but it’s no surprise to any of them and no one really fights to keep me. Which knocks me back a little. Was I that poor a Meister?

  I say they accept my decision, but at the last moment Ernst persuades me to think it over for a day or two, and I agree to do that – only it’s almost certain now.

  Afterwards, however, Old Schnorr comes to me and asks to speak with me alone. He tells me that it was only the fact that both Hecht and Yastryeb had wanted me as Master that had persuaded them to appoint me in the first place.

  ‘You were never made to be Master, Otto. At least, not in the old way of doing things. But “the Game” is over now. The War has ended, and when we’ve seen to Kolya—’

  ‘If …’ I say quietly.

  ‘Well … we may need a new kind of Master for a new age.’

  ‘Then find one.’

  ‘I think we have. Only the others don’t realise it yet. You don’t realise it. A new age needs new thinking, new ways, not the old ones. And you, Otto, you’re flexible enough mentally for that task. More than that, you’re morally competent.’

  Schnorr’s words surprise me. ‘Morally?’

  ‘Yes, morally. Take Cherdiechnost, for instance. That was a start. A whole new approach to things. And the slaves you freed. Only you must go further. You need to reforge things. Especially how we act in Time.’

  Surprise has given way now to astonishment.

  ‘Don’t act so hastily, Otto,’ he says, placing his hand on my arm. ‘Stay a while longer. At least until we’ve hunted the bastard down.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then we’ll reconsider things. But Kolya first. You won’t be safe, Otto, not until he’s dealt with. You want to retire, no? And spend your remaining days at Cherdiechnost?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then see this through.’

  442

  Ernst finds me in the fight school, in one of the small gyms at the far end of the central corridor, working out with knives and swords.

  It’s late evening and, as he changes into a combat suit then joins me in the fight-pit, it’s clear he wants to talk.

  ‘Are you afraid of him?’

  ‘Of Kolya?’ I laugh dismissively. ‘No. I’ve beaten him once, even if I don’t remember it. And I’ll beat him again.’

  Our swords clash. Ernst takes a step backward.

  ‘I’ve been thinking …’

  ‘Thinking?’

  He circles to the right. ‘About when you changed. And why.’

  I turn slowly, keeping face on to him, my body shadowing his every movement, my sword making shapes about the tip of his. ‘Is that important?’

  ‘Oh, crucial.’

  He taps my sword tip with his own, feints, then resumes his circling.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ he says, his blue eyes meeting mine. ‘When it first happened, I didn’t understand. I just thought you’d lost it. I didn’t think you … capable of love.’

  ‘No?’ I laugh. ‘Nor I. That whole part of me … I really didn’t think it possible. Love … it seemed such a trivial thing. So unimportant.’

  ‘And now?’

  He feints left, right, then lunges, even as I move aside, brushing my sword tip against his right shoulder. In battle I’d have drawn blood.

  ‘I’m getting old,’ Ernst laughs, moving his upper arm to ease the pain. ‘Back in the day you’d never have got close.’

  ‘No.’ And it’s true. Ernst was always the better swordsman.

  ‘But my question …’

  ‘Now?’ He looks at me, then lifts his sword again, shadowing mine. ‘I think it suits you, Otto. To have a softer side, I mean. All of this … it’s brought out what was always latent in you, from childhood. You were always kind, you see. Yes, and you always did what was fair. Only you had to look really hard to see it. You were so cold to those who didn’t know you. Indifferent. Or so it seemed.’

  Ernst is circling again, to the left this time. He lunges once more. There’s a sudden flurry of movement, ending in Ernst crying out in delight. ‘There!’

  I step back, feeling the painful stinging of the bruise, there in the middle of my chest, just above where my heart is.

  ‘Dead,’ he says, and laughs.

  ‘One less I owe you,’ I answer, and suddenly, for no reason, we’re smiling.

  ‘Old Schnorr came to me earlier on,’ I say. ‘Said I should stay on.’

  ‘Is that what he said?’ He lowers his sword a little, as if taking that in. ‘Well, he’s right. Only not in the old way. You need to come up with some new ideas, Otto. Ideas of your own. Constructive ideas.’

  ‘New ideas?’

  I lower my sword. I can’t fight and concentrate.

  ‘Precisely,’ I say. ‘Look … since the War between us ended, a lot of agents – German as well as Russian – have been sitting on their hands, wool-gathering, waiting for something useful to do, and they don’t like that. That’s why we’ve had so much tension. They’ve been drinking too much and getting into fights, and that’s not good. They need something to do. Something to keep them busy.’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’

  I put the practice sword away, then sit on the long bench, facing him.

  ‘We all know the problem. You and I especially so. It’s to do with how we’ve been bred. From children on, we’ve learned how to fight for our survival … to wage war without compromise, without mercy. But now we’re expected to respond to things entirely differently; to embrace those we were previously trained to kill. So the question is this – how can you possibly recondition people who have been soldiers all their lives? How can you give them greater satisfactions than they had? For there’s no doubting it, being a Reisende – a time agent – is the biggest high of all. And to give that up! No wonder there’s been trouble. We’re having to deal with people whose natural instinct is to kill rather than conciliate. To eradicate their enemy. And what can you give them in place of that? What emotion could get close to matching it?’

  ‘And yet we must.’

  I nod, but I can see Ernst agrees with me one hundred per cent. For he, remember, knows what it is like to have lost the freedom of operating in Time, of being one of the chosen ones who could step between the worlds. That was no small thing to give up.

  What, then, is the answer? To become time police? To use our powers to regulate the worlds we travel to? The truth is, I don’t know. Not yet. But something new must be attempted. Before we slip back into old habits and start with Rassenkampf again …

  Ernst pulls off his combat suit and walks over to the shower on the far side of the gym. ‘And Kolya?’ he asks.

  ‘Kolya will summon us, when he’s ready. That’s his way. It makes him seem comma
nding, like he’s in charge of things, but really it just shows how insecure he is.’

  ‘Insecure?’

  ‘Yes. That’s his weakness.’

  ‘And Martha?’

  I take a deep breath and then say it. ‘Martha’s lost.’

  ‘Lost?’ Ernst looks horrified.

  ‘I’m almost certain of it now. Why, I’ve been lucky as it is. But I keep thinking, what would I do if I were Kolya? What would I make certain of? And I think I know. I’d destroy something – or someone – my enemy loved. Just one of those he loves, not all of them. Not enough to make me rage like a man who has nothing left to lose, but enough to damage me. To make me ache inside. Just one would do the trick. Just one.’

  Ernst stares at me, not knowing what to say. He comes across and holds my arm, but I shake it off, my whole mood suddenly cold and distant.

  ‘That’s why I need to kill him this time, Ernst. Not with a breath, like Old Schnorr wants me to, but with cold steel. I can’t help it. I need to see his eyes go out – to see the spark of life die in him. For what he’s done. For all the things he’d done.’

  443

  Svetov looks up from behind his desk, surprised. ‘What is this, Otto?’

  ‘A list,’ I say. ‘Things to keep our agents busy.’

  ‘But these …’ Svetov shrugs. ‘The changes …’

  ‘Will be good ones.’

  Svetov hesitates. ‘Then you’ve changed your mind?’

  ‘About not wanting to be Master? No. But if it must be, then I think we ought to start doing things my way, not Hecht’s. And not, with due respect, Yastryeb’s.’

  Svetov looks back at the list, then points out an item. ‘But this is—’

  ‘Madness?’ I smile faintly. ‘Hecht would have thought so, certainly, but who are we fighting? Ourselves? Or those who would have us fight? No, Arkadi … we have a chance here. A chance to make real changes.’

  But I can see that the big man thinks I am taking things too far and much too fast. He wants to take my list and discuss it with the others.

  ‘By all means,’ I say, when he suggests this, ‘only don’t take too long about it. Idleness breeds trouble.’

  To which Svetov gives me a curious glance before hurrying off to discuss things – and no doubt to debate whether their appointed Master has totally lost the plot.

  They come to me an hour later, in Yastryeb’s old rooms.

  Svetov, as ever, is their spokesperson. He hesitates a moment, then taps the sheet of paper on which I’ve written out my ‘list’. ‘On what basis did you compile this list, Otto? It’s rather … hit and miss, don’t you think?’

  ‘Things I felt bad about,’ I answer, not getting up from where I sit in Yastryeb’s chair. ‘Things I could never quite square with my conscience.’

  ‘But you have Frederick on the list. Frederick!’

  I am unfazed. ‘Think of how many he had killed. How much his people suffered for his grandiose ideas!’

  ‘Yes, but they loved him! He was their hero!’

  ‘Then let’s have done with heroes, eh? Let’s shoot them all between the eyes.’

  Some of them find this shocking, blasphemous almost, but I’m feeling in an uncompromising mood.

  Zarah interrupts. ‘Even if we accept what you’re saying, the fact is that if Frederick dies, then we surely cease to be as a people. I mean … kill Frederick and do we even exist?’

  I smile, amused for once by the idea. ‘Then let’s find out. Let’s see if we really needed him, or whether it wasn’t just vainglory.’

  ‘And if we do need him?’

  ‘Then I’m wrong and we can’t change a damn thing. Nothing worth changing, anyway.’

  ‘You sound like Burckel,’ Ernst says.

  ‘And is that so bad? You said yourself that I should come up with some new ideas. So what do you say now? Do you approve?’

  ‘Of all of it? No. But most of it … well, I say let’s try, only … slowly, bit by bit. See if it works. Let’s not rush into things. Besides, there’s still a war on, of sorts. We’ve yet to deal with Kolya.’

  And, as if to illustrate that fact, we are attacked within the hour, Kolya making several abortive attacks on Moscow Central, testing out our defences before withdrawing, the whole thing becoming a game of cat and mouse, with our agents chasing Kolya’s brothers back into the timelines from which they’ve come. Only Kolya is very good at covering his tracks and really adept at turning the tables and ambushing any agent of ours who goes through after Kolya’s.

  Keen to begin my own ventures, I find this new phase of the War frustrating as sin, and – to make some kind of meaningful response – agree to endorse others’ plans to hit out at what they’ve identified as Kolya’s weak points.

  Experienced in such ventures, I am to lead a team of two dozen heavily armed agents, while Svetov leads another team of equivalent size, while Ernst, Schnorr, Zarah, Katerina and others remain behind to ‘hold the fort’.

  But we are swiftly disillusioned.

  Within moments of jumping through, both forces are under intense fire, heavily outnumbered. Regrouped back at Moscow Central – and with seven agents missing – Svetov concedes that I might have been right after all. Maybe he has underestimated Kolya.

  444

  With things gone quiet again at Moscow Central, Zarah has arranged for Katerina and I to go back – far back – to somewhere no one, not even Kolya, could pursue us.

  Back to the Haven.

  Katerina has brought the girls, but they are sleeping now, under canvas, exhausted from an afternoon exploring this distant Eden, of inhaling this rich, sweet, wholesome air. No better playground in the known universe.

  And so it is that we spend the evening with Albrecht, beneath those ancient stars, the peaks of the Alps catching the last of the sun as it sets in the far west, painting the treetops crimson.

  We are up on the great stone platform, overlooking the valley where the Neanderthal settlement once was. Albrecht has built a fire and brought food to cook, and for the first time in months I relax, knowing I am safe. And the thought of that makes me wonder if this – much more than Cherdiechnost – might not be a final resting place for Katerina and me. A place to live out our days and raise our girls. Only I’m loath to ask Albrecht; loath to spoil his idyll. And in any case, it could never be, for to introduce such a powerful alternate timeline, with the intelligence and knowledge my girls and their mates are certain to possess, and which, with equal certainty, they’d pass on down the generations, would, in all likelihood, change destiny’s course. So I don’t raise the issue. Don’t spoil this perfect day.

  We talk, and as the hours pass and the wine flows, so I have the sense that Albrecht is keeping something from us. There’s a light-heartedness, almost a playfulness about him that I haven’t seen since before the death of his brother.

  Eventually I ask. ‘So what’s new? What have your researches thrown up?’

  ‘New?’ Only he’s smiling now, and I know he must have been researching something, because that’s what he does. That’s how he spends his days. He warms his hands in the fire’s flames, then looks up at me. ‘I’ve been looking at all the different strands, Otto. All of those worlds you two brought into being.’

  ‘And?’ Katerina asks, reaching out to take my hand.

  ‘And in over ninety-seven per cent of them you married Kravchuk. Like it was fated.’

  Just the mention of that name makes me bristle. ‘Then how did we get to this?’

  ‘Because you wanted it so,’ my darling girl answers, and Albrecht nods.

  ‘Katerina’s right. We’re here because you willed us to be here. There’s no other explanation for it. Time and again you came back to tackle the problem.’

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘Yes, of how to keep the woman you loved while at the same time being loyal to your Master, my brother.’

  ‘Only the universe, surely, doesn’t work that way?’

  ‘No.�
�

  ‘Then …?’

  ‘Kravchuk’s the key,’ he says. ‘A man largely unknown to history, yet whose existence or non-existence was of central importance. There must be others like him, only this was the first one we’d encountered. He’s there, in every world we looked at, like some great over-ride switch. Kill him and the map turns red. Let him live …’

  Albrecht is silent a moment, then. ‘I’ve been looking at something else, too. Something much more personal.’

  He reaches back, into the darkness just behind him, then turns back, holding out a bulky file to me.

  ‘Handwritten,’ he says, before I can comment on it. ‘Just in case the computer file got hacked somehow.’

  I meet his eyes. ‘What is this?’

  ‘It’s the story of your life, Otto. And of all the other lives you might have lived. Oh, and I made up a small album with photos from the different timelines, only …’

  ‘Only it went missing, no?’

  Albrecht nods, a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘How was it you didn’t know?’

  ‘Those images … they wouldn’t have been stable outside of the Haven. They would have slowly faded. Or disintegrated. They wouldn’t have lasted long, anyway.’

  ‘They didn’t.’ And I tell him what I know about the album and its history, and see from his expression that he’s puzzled. He doesn’t know who could have taken it from there, far less how it got into Reichenau’s hands.

  Hecht, I think. It had to be the Master himself who took the album from here. Only why? To show me? Then why didn’t he? Why was it in Reichenau’s hands first time I saw it?

  I look away a moment, out into the darkness that surrounds our bonfire. The warm, Palaeolithic darkness.

  ‘Did they never come back?’ I ask.

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘The Neanderthals.’

  ‘Ah …’ And he too stares out into that blackness. ‘One or two. But not to settle. I think they lost trust in us, after what my brother did. It was for their safety, only he never got to explain that to them. They only saw what he did, not why.’