The Empire of Time

by David Wingrove

  ‘Katerina, Ka-ter-i-na …’

  Slowly she wakes, and as her eyes adjust so she sees me. She smiles, but then, as she remembers what has passed, her eyes fly open.

  ‘Otto … what …?’

  She sits up, reaching out to me, barely conscious of her nakedness beneath the cloth. There’s fear in her eyes, true, but I see it’s fear for me, that I might be discovered.

  ‘I must go,’ I whisper, thrilled by the touch of her hands against my upper arms, the womanly scent of her, her very closeness. ‘But I had to see you. Had to let you know I’d come for you.’

  Her eyes search mine a moment, looking for the truth of that, and, satisfied, she smiles. But then, once more, a sudden seriousness grips her, and she looks away.

  ‘Did you …?’

  ‘Kill Kravchuk, yes? It was he who did it. Who came between us.’

  She looks at me, then nods, no blame in her eyes. ‘Otto?’

  ‘Yes, my love?’

  ‘Take me away from here. Somewhere where no one can find us. To the ends of the Earth.’

  Or the end of Time …

  I swallow, moved by her words, then lean forward, brushing her lips with my own, fearing to do more, meaning to leave right there and then before I find I can’t, but she reaches up and, holding my face between her hands, kisses me softly, fully on the mouth … the sweetest, most intoxicating kiss I’ve ever had – sweeter than any she has yet given me. And I know, there and then, that she is mine for ever. Nothing can change that. Neither Time nor Death.

  Katerina. My darling Katerina …

  Part Five

  To Asgard

  ‘I agree that man is an animal predominantly constructive, foredoomed to the art of engineering, that is to the everlasting and increasing construction of a road – no matter where it leads, and that the main point is not where it goes, but that it should go somewhere.’

  – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground

  92

  Hecht is waiting for me at the platform. I make to step down, but he jumps up and takes my arm.

  ‘No time, Otto. Something’s happening.’

  And we jump. Back to the clearing in the forest. And there – the merest suggestion in the air; the palest, most spectral of presences in that moonlit space between the trees – is Ernst, suspended like a chrysalis.

  I stare, horrified, for the look of pain on his face is almost beyond imagining. It’s as if he’s been buried alive. Or crucified. Those eyes …

  ‘How long has he been like this?’

  My voice, in that strange, twilit place, is a whisper. We are alone there, except for the silver-grey boles of the trees and the stars and the full moon hanging over us like a watchful eye in that sable, cloudless sky.

  ‘A week or so. But it’s growing stronger by the day. I brought a team in …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’re not sure, but they think it’s because there’s not enough energy to sustain a genuine no-space.’

  ‘There’s a power source, then?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s anchored somewhere else.’

  ‘Have we any idea where?’

  ‘No, but Zarah’s doing the calculations. She thinks it’s up the line somewhere, possibly in the mid-twenty-eighth.’

  I look back at Ernst and shudder.

  So that’s it, is it? A man-trap, laid in Time. And every bit as savage as its ancient iron counterpart.

  ‘Why isn’t he dead?’

  Hecht’s voice registers his disgust. ‘They’re feeding him air – just enough to fill his lungs.’

  ‘Then he can move?’

  ‘No. They’ve paralysed his motor cortex. But his lungs and his heart are still functioning. They clearly want to keep him alive.’

  And in torment. I groan. Poor Ernst. Poor bloody Ernst.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  Hecht smiles. ‘I’m sending you in, Otto. Just as soon as we know where the power source is.’

  ‘The anchor?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘But what of Kravchuk? I thought …’

  But I leave it there. This is more important, I realise. Because if the Russians have found a way of trapping us – of doing this to our agents – then we may have lost anyway, whatever happens to Kravchuk and the Horde. Looking at Ernst, at his haunted, pain-filled, unblinking eyes, I know that he wants to be put out of his misery, that anything, even death, would be preferable.

  ‘You’ll say nothing, Otto, to the other agents.’

  ‘No,’ I say distractedly. ‘No, of course …’

  It’ll be our secret.

  93

  ‘Are you ready, Otto?’

  I’m not, but I nod anyway. I’ve got everything I need in a small leather bag on my back.

  ‘Good luck,’ Zarah says, looking at me fondly. Behind her Urte and Marie are smiling, but their smiles are strained. They know what’s going on.

  So much for secrets.

  ‘Burckel knows you’re coming,’ Zarah says, handing me a small package. ‘These are his instructions. He’s to read them, then destroy them.’

  For once I’m surprised. Hecht said nothing. Nor do I know what’s in the package. But I take it and pocket it without a word.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, stepping up on to the platform. ‘Let’s get going …’ And in my head, I add: for the sooner Ernst is out of there, the better …

  I’m hoping Zarah’s right – that she’s pinpointed the precise location of the power-anchor. If so, and I can switch it off, then Ernst is free. And maybe, if the timing’s right, I can undo all of his suffering. Nullify it.

  Only there’s a paradox here. If Ernst has been trapped that long, then maybe I’ve already failed, because if I’d succeeded …

  I try not to think of that. Try to concentrate on my actions having some significance. On the urgency of my task.

  Zarah brings her hand down on the pad. There’s a moment’s bright intensity. My whole being seems to implode upon itself, every cell, every living atom of me falling inward.

  And I jump.

  Into a darkened room. Into silence and the smell of sweat and oil. I step across and, draw back one of the thick, heavy shutters.

  And stare out across the immense sprawl of Neu Berlin. It is the fourth day of June, 2747 ad. Night has fallen and the massive buildings of this energy-rich city sparkle like solid slabs of jewels against the dark, filling the skyline horizon to horizon.

  I turn, looking back into the shadowed room. To my left is a low pallet bed. Beyond it, in the corner, is a small writing table. Shelves fill the whole of the wall facing me, floor to ceiling, while to my right …

  ‘Light,’ I say, and at once a flattened globe lights and lifts from among the clutter on the floor, its growing illumination throwing my shadow across the room. I stare about me, astonished. The place is a mess. A real pigsty. The bed’s unmade, the shelves filled to overflowing. On the bare floor in front of them are piles of unwashed clothes and books and papers, while in a large crate in the right-hand corner are a jumble of assorted machines – broken, it seems – and a whole miscellany of objects. I walk across, then crouch, sorting through the mess, not sure what I’m looking for, or what instinct guides me.

  My eyes look along the shelves. It’s a curious mixture of ancient and modern, fact and fiction, but again I don’t really know what I’m looking for, so I straighten up and, stepping carefully over a precariously balanced stack of books, I go to Burckel’s desk.

  Burckel is a ‘sitter’. He’s been here in Neu Berlin these past eight years, never once jumping back. None of the locals would ever suspect he was a time agent. Burckel is just … Burckel. A scholar. Something of an eccentric.

  There’s an ancient ink pot here, made of carved crystal, and various papers, political pamphlets mostly, many of them in ge’not, the revolutionary language of this Age. The possession of a single one of them could lead Burckel to be put away for a long time, and there are dozens here. I
push them aside, then reach to the back of the desk where, beneath several slender volumes, my fingers discover a big, leather-bound book.

  It’s a diary – Burckel’s journal by the look of it – but I can’t read a word, and not only because it too is written in ge’not. The handwriting is tiny, minuscule, so small, in fact, that my unaided eyes can make out only the vague shape of the tiny, carefully crafted symbols. It makes me feel uneasy.

  Closing the book, I push it back beneath the clutter, then return to the window, looking out across the levels.

  We’re two miles up here, in one of the central stacks, facing south towards the Tempelhof.

  Low down there’s a steady stream of SWs – Schweben-wagen – the long black shapes of the flyers flitting along the air-paths, but the traffic’s relatively light this time of night. I’m about to turn away when there’s an explosion, loud yet distant. In its glare I glimpse figures on the rooftops of one of the massive apartment blocks across the way, maybe a mile distant.

  ‘Otto? Is that you?’

  I turn, facing the figure in the doorway.

  ‘Albrecht?’

  Burckel lowers his gun, then steps across and embraces me. It’s some while since I last saw him, but he greets me like an old friend.

  ‘How have you been?’ I ask, noting how much older he seems than when last I saw him. He’s my age, yet he looks a good ten years older.

  ‘I’m fine, Otto.’ And as he says it I notice the excited gleam in his eyes. And little wonder. He has been waiting for this since he first arrived. These next few days are crucial to our history, for these few small days form a historical cusp, and both we and the Russians know it.

  ‘How are things back at Four-Oh?’

  ‘Nothing changes,’ I say, and we both laugh, knowing how untrue that is.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, remembering suddenly. ‘This is for you. From Hecht.’ And I hand him the packet, then watch as he sits on the edge of his unmade pallet bed and picks open the seal.

  I watch his eyes. See the surprise that comes into them. He glances up at me, as if he’s about to speak, then decides against it. He slips something beneath the mattress, then carefully folds the single sheet of paper and, taking a light-stick from his pocket, holds the flame beneath it. Then, when it catches, he lets the burning paper fall on to a patch of bare floor, stamping out the embers with his boot.

  Albrecht Burckel is a small man. He has a neat, rounded head, shaven and polished, so that it gleams in the soft light from the lamp. He is compact, muscular yet wiry, like a certain kind of dog, bred for its tenacity. That same smell that permeates this room, permeates him. He is wearing a black one-piece of rough cloth, and on his bare right arm there is a number: 145-G-774-ACGT 1133.

  He sees me staring at it, and gives a grin. ‘We’ll have to get you one of these, Otto. That is, if you want to get inside the fortress.’

  I roll back my sleeve, and show him. Hecht thinks of everything.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he asks, and when I nod, he grins again, a boyish, almost innocent grin. Looking at him, you’d never think him capable of killing, yet he has, more than a dozen men in all. Russians.

  ‘Leave your pack here,’ he says. ‘It’ll be safe enough.’

  We leave the room, turning right towards the lifts. At once the Mechanist world assails me. Both sides of that long corridor flicker and buzz with bright-lit images, images that, in their depth and clarity, seem as real as Burckel and I. Each panel seems a room, as if only the thinnest sheet of glass separates us from another, busier world. Yet that other world has no more reality, no more depth, than a picture drawn on the finest of silken screens. Creatures a pixel thick walk from panel to panel, keeping pace with us, like figures from an ancient bazaar, anxious to make a sale. Their clamour is muted this time of night – how else would people sleep? – yet my eyes, bombarded from all sides, seek refuge in the untenanted stairs beyond.

  We reach the lifts. There are fast-tracks for the execs, but we take the cage, rattling up the levels in a packed, malodorous box of steel and wire, glimpsing the miles beneath our feet through the mesh of the floor, two hundred or more of our fellows crammed in there with us, slowly ascending to the bright lights of the uppers.

  I’m conscious at once of how different Albrecht and I are; natural men, Naturlich, among the genetically sculpted people of this age. I try not to stare, to keep my eyes from meeting others’, but it’s hard. These people have been changed, adapted for their tasks. Such body shapes offend an eye accustomed to the normal human form. Yet it is we who are the odd men out. It’s their world now.

  As the lift halts at the topmost level and the crowd spills out, Albrecht takes my arm, holding me back until they’re gone. They turn right, heading towards the great bridge that spans the stacks, but Albrecht takes me left, through the flicker and buzz of another, shorter corridor, and up a winding set of steps.

  Neu Berlin is a city of two hundred and fifty million people, and nowhere is that more apparent than here, in the sprawl of the southern city. Yet it is not until we climb one final flight of steps, until, coming out on to a broad verandah, we turn and see the enclaves, directly north, there where the land has been raised and terraformed, that the real majesty of the place is revealed.

  I walk to the edge, a vertiginous drop beneath me, and stare.

  The city is a high-rise sprawl, stretching away for miles on every side, a densely packed mass of gargantuan, slab-like buildings, contrasted here and there by a slender spike or two, thrusting up like the spears of giants. To the north the spaceport glows orange, like a furnace, while to the left – north-west of where I stand – is the dark, distinctive form of the Gefängnis, the Guild’s prison, its windowless outer walls the very symbol of abandoned hope. Just left of that, a half mile distant, are the ministries with their distinctive pyramidal shapes, and beyond them, in a belt that follows the river west, lies the industrial district, housing the unsleeping furnaces of Greater Germany.

  It’s an astonishing vista, and yet the eye only dwells on such details for an instant before being drawn to the fortress itself, to its mile-high adamantine walls, its massive central gate, its battlements and, soaring above it all, the nine great towers, the Konigsturm at the centre, dominating all.

  Nothing surrounds that massive edifice for a space of half a mile. Nothing, that is, except a huge moat, a hundred metres across and fifty deep. And into that moat, its motion never ceasing day or night, falls a great curtain of water, such that the fortress seems to rise from a pure white bed of mist, above which stretches a massive bridge, its single span arching a mile towards a second, equally massive gate that rises from a great dark mound, there at what used to be the Brandenburger Tor. Across that bridge, at every hour of every day, a mass of humanity flows, the servants of the King, uniformly dressed in black.

  Asgard. I stare at it and catch my breath, for there, beneath the waning moon, lies the dark fortress itself, the Dream made real, its massive heap of night-dark stone more like a mountain than a castle, thrusting up from the heart of the ancient city, tier after tier of its massive central tower climbing the star-studded blackness.

  I have been here once before, long ago, back in my youth, back when this massive edifice of sculpted basalt was brand new, the terror and envy of the world, yet seeing it now I am astonished once more by its size, by the physical reality of it.

  Like all else here it is made of Kunstlichestahl – ‘false steel’ – more plastic than metal, though equally tough. Yet fake or not, its solidity is undeniable. It is German in a way that few buildings in our history have been. A castle. A fortress. An embodiment.

  ‘There it is,’ Burckel says, coming alongside me. ‘Das Hornisse-nest.’

  A hornets’ nest, indeed. I laugh, then turn my eyes from those soaring battlements. Burckel is watching me, his eyes weighing and measuring me in a way that I might find offensive in another. But I am conscious of what Burckel has gone through here. The state’s spies are every
where.

  I follow, keeping close as we cross the bridge and descend into the Tempelhof. The steps and narrow alleyways are crowded now, the press of humanity increasing steadily as we near the Vergnüngungspark – the ‘pleasure-ground’.

  And suddenly, as we turn a corner, there, ahead of us, at the foot of a broad flight of steps, lies Von Richthofen Strasse, its broad avenue packed with pleasure seekers, throbbingly alive with music and the glare of lights from endless bars and cafes, their balconies cascading with flowers and greenery, like this is Babylon.

  The evening’s warm. Pushing through that densely packed crowd, my senses are once again assailed, this time by a hundred different smells, some sweet, some foul. There’s an air of intoxication, of dangerous excitement, but so it is in these places, whatever the century. My eyes, however, note the differences. These are, after all, a ‘sculpted’ people, hand-crafted, one might say, by the great geneticists of the King’s dark fortress. Some have longer arms, some heads that seem too thin or too broad. Some are tiny, like arrested children, while others have great muscular backs and chests. And though there is great variety, one notices immediately that such differences are differences of type, not of individuals. These people have been bred for specific tasks. Among them, Burckel and I are the exceptions. Not that we are alone, but Naturlich like us are in a distinct minority here. I see only three, maybe four others as we make our slow way through the press.

  We’re halfway along when I stop, my eyes caught by something. Burckel comes back and, taking my arm, speaks to my ear.

  ‘What is it, Otto?’

  I gesture towards a row of men and women dressed uniformly in black leather, their heads shaved, chained to the wall nearby – or not chained, I realise, but plugged-in, lengths of flex looping from sockets between their shoulders to a panel on the wall behind. It’s all very high-tech, yet they have the look of slaves.