The Master of Time

by David Wingrove

  Jumping back, I’m greeted at the platform by Ernst, who hands me a package.

  ‘Is this …?’

  He nods. ‘And spare keys … just in case you need them.’

  I jump back, and look about me, tense suddenly, alert. But it’s only nerves. If someone else was watching me, I’d know.

  Wouldn’t I?

  Unless, of course, Kolya is watching me watch myself. In which case, maybe this is some kind of mad experiment. Only I don’t believe that.

  I go back to my apartment and make myself some dinner. Then, on whim, I go out, walking past Joe’s bar, looking in to see, there in the corner by the bar, Kavanagh, sitting where he always sits. Only even as I watch, another guy approaches. Kavanagh turns and offers his hand, and the two of them shake, and I know, in that instant, that this is DeSario. The two of them working together.

  I walk on, wondering what they know of me, and how? Or is that wrong? What if I’m not part of their plan? What if I’m some completely new factor that they’re about to have to weave into their scheme?

  I drop my groceries off, then return to the bar, watching from a nearby doorway as Kavanagh leaves. I follow, using all my skills not to be detected. Across Manhattan and down Seventh Avenue, stepping back into another doorway as he stops and, looking about him briefly, goes into a building; a big, anonymous-looking building that might once have been a factory, but which has now, I’m sure, a very different purpose.

  I jump out of there, back to Moscow Central, where once again Ernst has anticipated me.

  ‘He’s part of a team of four,’ he says, handing me a rather slender file. ‘It’s not entirely clear what their mission is, but our best guess is that they’re attempting to track down the assassins of President Reagan.’

  ‘And Kolya? How’s he involved?’

  Ernst produces another file. ‘It’s not conclusive, but it seems Kolya was working with the local Mafiosi. What the deal was we don’t really know, but he’s met them on at least three occasions.’

  ‘So why didn’t we hit him?’

  ‘We did. Or rather, you did, when you first were here, when you took out their offices that time and killed the Big Boss. He was there. But the bastard slipped away, as ever. Disappeared without a trace.’

  I shake my head. ‘I still don’t understand. Why would Kolya want Reagan dead?’

  ‘He probably doesn’t. Or, at least, it’s of little concern to him. But think about it a moment. Placing you in that apartment – a man without any history, in effect, without an identity – was guaranteed to place you firmly in the frame. You’d be the number-one suspect, Otto. It’s only your past connection to the new president that saved you. Anyone else and you’d have ended up in the chair.’

  ‘The chair?’

  ‘The electric chair. It’s how they used to execute criminals back then.’

  I shiver at the thought. But I’m still not sure why Kolya would go to such lengths. If I were him I’d be far more direct. But then I’m not him. I don’t really have a clue what’s happening in his head. And that’s the problem. Only this other matter – regarding Reagan’s assassination – can be sorted.

  Jumping back and forth through Time, I find out just how Reagan was assassinated and, typing it all out, I deliver an anonymous note to the new president and leave it on the desk of the Oval Office, there for him to read.

  And not just the details of Reagan’s assassination. There’s also information about myself – that is, the Otto who was trapped in this timeline. And it’s this lengthy postscript that convinces President Dick, that time when he goes to visit me in DeSario’s apartment. I know that because I was there, listening through the door, realising that, without my intervention, I would probably have been arrested and incarcerated in this age. I would never have got out.

  Instead, I’m there to hear Dick’s final words to my earlier self. Words which reverberate in the depths of my soul.

  ‘Then find her again. And save her.’

  454

  Which, of course, I’ve done, the past being the future and the future the past.

  And Kolya?

  Of him there is no sign. No sign whatsoever.

  We’ve discussed this one a lot, and the most popular theory is that he’s trapped himself somewhere. Jumped to a place he can’t get out of. What else could explain his sudden disappearance throughout Time?

  Well … there are a lot of explanations actually, only none of them quite satisfy. None of them get close to suggesting how such an intelligent and ruthless man should make such an elementary mistake.

  And yet …

  It must be so. Because ahead of me lie years of peaceful and productive activity, back in Cherdiechnost. Long years spent fathering my girls and creating a humane environment in which they might grow up. Time which is guaranteed me. And how do I know that? Because it’s on the loop. On it and in it. A loop so strong that it has changed the very nature of Time.

  On the last day of the year, 2999, we throw a party, at the big farmhouse in Tannenberg. The majority of the inhabitants of Moscow Central are there, eating and drinking and enjoying themselves. Katerina and our daughters are there, along with many other children, such that it feels like one big family, its members chattering away in German and Russian and in the slang American of the thirty-first century – which, in an hour or two, it will be.

  I stand there, drink in hand, along with Ernst and Svetov and Old Schnorr, looking on, bearing witness to this historic day, for today is the day when we will shut down our operations in Time. There will be no more changes after this, no, and no more meddling either. Our agents will be allowed to settle where they will in space and time, and though they’ll be called upon, from time to time, to serve a period at Moscow Central, it will be to make sure Time is constant.

  For our role has changed. From being agents and soldiers, we are now to become watchers and guardians. Vigilance is to be our key word. Vigilance against Kolya and his like. Because I know, for a certainty, that he is still out there somewhere, hiding, scheming possibly, filled as he is with hatred for me.

  Yes, as long as I live, he will hate.

  And here, at the end of the old regime, another group of people arrive, these from Up River – future agents: proud, upright young men and women of indeterminate race, the products of the system we have only today initiated. I greet them, then, speaking to them all, tell them I must leave them now – that I have an appointment or two in Time – and I wink at Katerina and my daughters and then jump … to Cherdiechnost, to be there with Katerina at the start, and to make the first of my daughters.

  Part Fifteen

  The World Tree

  ‘Odin sat in his throne of gold listening through the stillness, unafraid, waiting for Ragnarok and his own doom. Waited he also for the song’s end and the promise of Time’s new morning, when evil would cease to be and Balder would come back.’

  – Donald A. Mackenzie,

  Teutonic Myth And Legend

  455

  And so here I am, home again. Here at the epicentre of it all; the place from where the loop derives. Cherdiechnost. I sit beside her on the bed, as, knees raised and legs parted wide, her brow sheened with sweat, she pushes one last time, her face contorted, her hand gripping my hand fiercely as she does, a pained groan escaping her. And there, suddenly, she is, the glistening crown protruding, pushing up and out into the world, the nurse helping her now, gripping the baby’s shoulders and drawing her out, the umbilical dangling in the wavering torchlight before it’s snipped, everything slick with blood and afterbirth. And even as the nurse lifts and cradles her, so she takes a breath and cries.

  I take her from the nurse, holding her close and warm against me, cooing softly to her, as if she’s the most precious thing I’ve ever handled. Which maybe is the truth. Tears are rolling down my cheeks now, and as I look to Katerina, I see how she too is torn by this moment, how she turns her back on us, looking away from her darling child, unable to bear it
.

  For this is Martha, our little lost one, whom we have never found, despite searching Time itself.

  Ernst is there, and Svetov, and they solemnly raise a glass to toast me as I step out into the kitchen where they are waiting. Sensing my mood, each in turn steps close to hold me briefly, as if to comfort me.

  ‘I didn’t think it would be this hard.’

  ‘No,’ Ernst says. He really has no words for any of this, yet there’s genuine grief in his pale blue eyes and a thorough love for me and mine.

  Svetov shows no such restraint, but pulls me to him in a great bear-hug, which takes my breath, but, meeting his eyes, I see he shares my grief, my awful sense of loss that places a dark shadow over my love.

  That evening, at the feast to celebrate the birth, many of the villagers are there, among them Iranov, the priest who, I know, will one day betray us all. But I must live with such knowledge. Live with the fact that, joyous as it is, it is only for a brief time before I am taken back inside the loop. Yet while I am here, at Cherdiechnost, I am living for the moment. Savouring my time here.

  Yes, and that is what we decide to do with baby Martha. To cherish every waking moment with her. That night, when we lie down in our huge bed, I lay our darling girl, there, between us, her small, warm body between our own, and I feel blessed. Even for the short time we will have her. Loving her with an unlimited love that even death cannot take from us. For she was made from the powerful love that this German boy has for his Russian girl.

  Our lost girl. Our little beauty, Martha.

  456

  Six months pass, and with it comes the harvest. These are golden days, when the sun beats down from a perfect cloudless sky and winter seems a million years away.

  I am working in the fields, alongside my good friend Kebba Puskarev, the big African from the Gambia, whose freedom I purchased in Novgorod’s marketplace eight summers back. As we cut and bundle, so we talk, of places we have been and people we have met, good and bad. Kebba’s dark skin glistens as he swings the scythe, while mine, my upper body tanned by the sun, is a different shade of dark.

  It is something I have never fully understood, this matter of skin colour. Why it should determine what a man is in life and how he is to be treated by his fellow men. Kebba, after all, is Kebba, and as he laughs, throwing back his head, his perfect teeth revealed, I am amazed that there are those who cannot see what he is. Cannot recognise how warm and kind and fair the man is. How good a man. And yet most of his life he spent in chains, owned, like a mule or any other beast of burden. Twenty years and more he lived that way. But now he owns himself. Skin and bone. Soul and intelligence.

  ‘So where have you been, Otto? You say you liked to travel …’

  That’s a hard one to answer without making it all up, so I decide to tell him half the truth.

  ‘Home is Germany,’ I say. ‘Or was, before I came to Novgorod. Berlin, to be precise. A big, sprawling city, where one might hear a dozen languages and more spoken on the streets and in the markets.’

  Kebba rests a moment, his chin on the handle of his scythe. ‘Was that where you spent your childhood?’

  I hesitate. The truth is I spent my childhood in a nichtraum – a no-space – called Four-Oh, and in a place we called ‘the Garden’. But I can’t tell him that. He’d think me mad. And so I lie, as I’ve so often lied in the past. ‘I lived in a big house, with lots of other boys. Boys who, like me, had lost their parents.’

  Or didn’t know who exactly they were.

  ‘An orphanage?’

  ‘Of a kind. Only one that taught us how to survive in the world.’

  Kebba nods exaggeratedly as if he understands that only too well. ‘That’s where you learned how to fight, yes?’

  I smile and nod. ‘Yes, and by the very best of teachers. And then they sent me out, with others, older than me – men who had experience of the world – and that’s when I began to travel. That’s when I began to see the world.’

  ‘The world is a dangerous place, no, Otto?’

  ‘A very dangerous place indeed. But tell me, Kebba … where did your travels take you?’

  Others are gathering about us now, sitting on the bundles, or leaning on their implements, keen to hear what we have to say.

  ‘Oh … many places,’ Kebba says, his eyes looking back. ‘From Bergen in the far north, to Antioch in Asia. I have seen the great Middle Sea … rather too much of it, if the truth be told.’

  I meet his eyes, a query in mine, and he laughs.

  ‘I was a rower for a while, shackled to the oars. Many a time we made the crossing to Africa. To Alexandria itself. That was a sight. And then – in another life, it seems – I crossed the desert.’

  ‘The desert?’

  ‘What they called Arabia. Many died on that trek. Only I and three other slaves survived that. The slave master … that was a cruel one. If I ever meet him again … Well, let us say I have no love for the man.’

  ‘And how is it you came to Novgorod?’

  Kebba is silent for a time, then he looks up at me again. ‘Fate chose it, I suppose. There were two of us, you see. Prime slaves, there in the slave market of Salonika, being auctioned. The other … what his name was I never asked for fear of being beaten … he was bought by a master from Thebes, which was to the south, while I … I was to be taken to Polotsk. Only by the time I got there, the new master had already taken on two new slaves, and I …’ He grins. ‘I was superfluous. The agent who had bought me was given me in settlement. He, in his turn, was heading north, to Novgorod … which is where I was blessed to find you, Otto.’

  I smile. How can I not smile. Only now I’ve got him talking of his past I want to hear more. And besides, it’s a good excuse not to speak of my own; of battles in Time and meeting Christ and … oh, so many things he’d think me mad to mention.

  ‘Was there ever anyone, Kebba? A woman, maybe?’

  ‘Oh, there were many women. The slave agents encouraged it. Making new slaves, we called it. But there never was a woman I was close to. You simply didn’t dare. Not if you wanted to keep sane. They play dirty games, those men. Yes, and they treat you like you are farmyard animals. So no … there was never anyone … not until I came here.’

  And as he says it, he wipes a tear away. And I am both moved and amazed by his words. There I was, thinking my life was rich – the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done – but Kebba’s life is just as rich … as are all men’s. It’s all determined by how you approach life.

  As evening falls, I feel that tell-tale tingle in my nerves, and Katerina, recognising my brooding mood, takes me aside and asks me if it’s tonight. And I say I don’t know, but that’s not true. I’m almost certain. That, after all, is what the tingling is. A warning in my nervous system that I am about to be taken back once more, into the loop, to fulfil some other part of it.

  It might only be days, subjective, but the next time I’ll be here years will probably have passed, and Katerina, knowing this, takes my hand and leads me upstairs, where we make love, the whole house listening – unable not to, there is such passion in our parting. And when we come down again, there are knowing smiles and nudges and, when we come into the kitchen, gusts of open laughter.

  ‘Is Daddy going away?’ young Natalya asks, and Katerina nods, as her other hand wipes away the tears that come unbidden.

  ‘Be strong,’ I say. ‘I will be back.’

  ‘I know,’ she says, but her eyes are welling once again, and there is little I can do than bid them to prepare my cart. But they are used to that now. To me ‘vanishing’. One day there, and the next …?

  Gone. Off on another of my trading journeys.

  And so it proves. That night I am taken back – stolen from my bed, my hand seeming to vanish in her hand, my naked body taking on form as it emerges onto the platform at Moscow Central.

  What I’ve come from seems like a dream – a dream I can return to once this small fulfilling of the loop is done. Yes, and
I know that there’s no other option, for Time cannot be changed – not this part of it anyway.

  ‘What is it now?’ I ask Svetov, who throws a cloak over my nakedness then hugs me, there among the dozen or so who have come to welcome me back.

  ‘Baturin again,’ Ernst says, handing me another of his meticulously prepared files.

  ‘Baturin?’ And I want to ask what in Urd’s name are we doing going back to Baturin, only Ernst’s eyes suggest I look at the file before I begin sounding off. And he’s right, of course.

  And so I find myself in what were once Yastryeb’s rooms, sat beneath the Tree of Worlds, the contents of Ernst’s file digested.

  Baturin. It’s Hecht’s suggestion. Yes, Master Hecht who’s long dead. But this was in his notebook, awaiting discovery, and so I go to find out what he did, what he saw in Baturin that made him seek to warn us.

  But not yet. Not necessarily yet. I have to go, but the timing’s up to me. And so, for once, I choose not to. To complete one other chain of this loop before I venture out to Baturin again.

  Because this once things are different. This time Katerina has written to me. A long letter, telling me about how it feels when I am gone. It was Zarah who gave it to me, the message sent through the women. And why them? Because the men don’t want to ‘upset’ me. And part of me understands that. It’s not easy knowing how vulnerable she feels when I’m absent, because one of these days – within this very loop – I will return to find that Kolya’s taken them.

  And yes, I know that that has happened, but it also still lies ahead. For this is pretzel logic, remember?

  But right now?

  Right now I want to go back to the one place in all Time and all Space I wish to be – Cherdiechnost after it was rebuilt, in the time after the loop. And it is there, now, that I go, reunited with Katerina and my four remaining daughters, who have come directly from the new millennium party at Tannenberg.