The Coldest War

by Ian Tregillis

  Nobody had told him whether they’d continue the public fiction of William Beauclerk’s untimely demise. He saw no reason for it. Now that the children had unleashed Marsh’s Eidolonic counterattack on the Soviet Union’s Arzamas shock troops in Iran, the continued existence of Britain’s warlocks was no longer a secret.

  Will’s thoughts again returned to the film from Iran. He shuddered. The whole adventure called Milkweed had begun with another filmstrip back in 1939. Oh, for those carefree days.

  Milkweed had put Ivan in his place and the Queen was safe in her palace. And yet …

  He filled both cups, slid one to Gwendolyn. He sipped, then made a face. It was strong enough to wake the dead. And unpleasantly cool besides. But he drank it anyway.

  Gwendolyn tucked a slice of lemon on the lip of his cup. She partly read his thoughts. “And the prospect of reuniting with Aubrey makes you too giddy to sleep?”

  Will set his elbows on the countertop and stared into the cup he held beneath his chin. “Something’s wrong, Gwendolyn. Deeply wrong.”

  She frowned. “Tell me.”

  And so he did.

  At issue were the “taskings” Pethick had presented to the children before Will had come along. It was those tasks, those maps stippled with their damned pushpins, that kept Will up all night. Because in dealing with the Eidolons, one cannot simply point to a map on the wall. It was all the same to them: teacups, soldiers, dying stars. Human blood was the only map that carried meaning for the Eidolons.

  With a drop of somebody’s blood, the Eidolons could track that person’s trajectory through the universe, through time and space, like omniscient bloodhounds. Blood enabled them to see people. To see things at a human scale, so incomprehensibly limited compared to the vastness of the Eidolons’ purview. And with a bit of (expensive) coaxing, they could be made to see the places through which that person had traveled.

  Gretel had grown up at Doctor von Westarp’s farm. The Eidolons had seen Gretel, and thus the farm. And so Milkweed’s warlocks had been able to send commando teams there. For all the good that did.

  Marsh had been a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy. He’d sailed through the English Channel countless times. The Eidolons had seen him—

  (Why did they give him a name?)

  —and thus had seen the Channel. And so Milkweed’s warlocks had been able to conjure a blockade that held off the German invasion.…

  Will faltered. He covered by taking a long sip of cool tea. Gwendolyn squeezed his hand, knowing he was remembering the Hart and Hearth. She understood how “blood price” had become a euphemism for mass murder.

  Freezing the Wehrmacht had been the most difficult and the most risky. Marsh had traveled extensively in Europe, as had Will, Stephenson, and a number of the other Milkweed conscripts. But it was still a patchwork affair, overlaying their travels in the past with German troop deployments in the present. Hargreaves and the rest must have done some fast talking to pull that off; Will didn’t know the details, because he’d been drummed out, incapable of functioning without alcohol and morphine, before they’d made it work.

  He did know that Milkweed had paid the highest blood prices of the war effort in order to blanket Europe with ice. He also knew it was the closest they’d ever come to breaking the rules, to letting the Eidolons slip their leash. One misstep, one slip of the tongue, one piece of faulty grammar might have allowed the Eidolons to kill directly. To start collecting blood maps on their own.

  And then the war wouldn’t have mattered at all.

  Will shook his head, returned to the present.

  Without Middle Eastern oil, the British Empire would falter. And the Soviets had their own sprawling empire to fuel. So a strike at the oil fields had long been inevitable; the troop buildup had begun weeks ago. The USSR had intentionally tipped its own hand because it was ready and eager to unveil its elite Arzamas troops, to showcase its mastery of the same technology that had made Gretel and the rest. It didn’t take a master spy or a military prodigy to suss this out.

  It had been easy to anticipate the attack. But for the Eidolons to participate in the defense, they needed localized blood. Thus Milkweed had taken advantage of the troop buildup in the region to prepare relevant blood maps. The simplest thing would have been to send secret blood samples along with the supply shipments. Warlock blood would work best. Pembroke and Pethick, two peas in a pod, undoubtedly had generous stores of the children’s blood at hand for just these occasions. In fact, now that Will thought about it, the practice of keeping warlocks’ blood on file probably didn’t begin with the peas.

  Stephenson would have foreseen this need.

  Oh, yes. The old man would have looked past the end of the war to see the Cold War taking shape. He would have anticipated great upheavals in the geopolitical landscape, upheavals with the potential to render Milkweed powerless unless it had the power to bring the Eidolons to bear whenever and wherever necessary.

  Oh, yes. Will had never considered this before, but now it seemed obvious. Stephenson had probably obtained blood samples from all the original warlocks. Will wondered if Milkweed still had his blood in cold storage somewhere.

  What a violation. Disgusting, arrogant, unacceptable.

  He’d take it up with Pethick.

  He paused while Gwendolyn refilled her cup, then his. She stifled a yawn and motioned for him to continue.

  “So now,” said Will, “let me ask you: Doesn’t it seem out of character for our dear Pip to leave things unfinished? Because at the end of the day, there will be no final, definitive victory as long as Arzamas-16 stands.”

  Even Will could see that was the next logical step. He’d braced himself for just such a demand from Marsh and Pethick. Yet it hadn’t happened. Why?

  Gwendolyn said, “But you’ve answered your own question, love. They would do it if they could. But they haven’t, so they can’t. Implying they have no collocated blood, to use your charming phrase, with which to guide the Eidolons.” She wrung another lemon slice over her cup. Moonlight silvered the dusting of gray at her temples when she shrugged. There seemed to be more gray in her hair these days. “Arzamas is probably more secure than Khrushchev’s knickers. More secure than the Baikonur Cosmodrome, apparently.”

  Will had to concede that it wasn’t impossible. Waltzing into the rocket facility was exactly the sort of thing a young Marsh might have attempted, had he been fluent in Russian.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But the maps, Gwendolyn. They’re full of pushpins. Or they were, before the tykes went barmy and tore the place to shreds.”

  “They’ve been busy.” She pursed her lips as she finished off her cup. Perhaps owing to too much lemon, overly strong tea, or both. She rinsed her cup with a trickle of water so as not to rattle the plumbing in the wee hours of the morning.

  But this was all beside the point. So Will repeated what Pethick had said, the first time they had gone to the cellar together.

  “‘This is odd,’ he said. ‘The children have been moving pins about.’ And then looked more closely. ‘We’ve never done any taskings here, or here.’”

  “Where?” Gwendolyn asked.

  “All over,” said Will. “Do you remember the last time we had dinner with Aubrey and Viola? There had been that terrible disruption to rail service in the Midlands. We clucked our tongues about it at length.”

  “Yes.”

  “The children had put a pin there.”

  “Oh.” She sat again. “It could be a coincidence.”

  “As I thought when I first noticed it. But as I said, that was before the children went barmy. Driven into a frenzy by the Eidolons.”

  “You believe the children weren’t moving pins about at random,” she said. “Something had happened there.”

  Will nodded. “I think the Eidolons have become worked up over something. And their agitation is leaking out like ripples from a stone tossed into a pond. Spreading across the world, backward and forward.”

&
nbsp; Gwendolyn sounded less and less convinced by her own arguments, but she continued to offer them. “But, love, you’ve spent a great deal of time in the Midlands. If they do have your blood on file, and if they’ve used it, this could be a side effect.”

  “Perhaps. But I am utterly confident no warlock has ever paid a visit to Tanganyika.” Will spread his hands widely to emphasize his point. “Or, for that matter, Santa Fe bloody New Mexico.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I believe Pethick when he says Milkweed hasn’t conducted such operations. But I also think the children sense something imminent. And the mystery events are echoes of something that hasn’t happened yet.”

  They both fell silent after that. Will held his wife while a cold, pink sun rose slowly over London.

  14 June 1963

  Croydon, London, England

  Marsh took his time preparing the reel-to-reel recorder. Not to provoke a sense of anxiety; he knew Gretel was beyond any form of intimidation. But the extra minute meant more time to think. More time to consider conversational gambits, opening volleys. More time to try to shake off incipient illness. The injuries, long days, and heavy burdens had caught him up. He’d awoken with a slight fever.

  The scents of fresh wood oil from the glossy walnut table and lubricant from the recorder mixed unpleasantly with the aftertaste of the tomatoes and sausages Marsh had fried for breakfast. He and Liv had eaten in silence, but at least they’d eaten together. It was a start. Her sharp edges and cutting wit weren’t on display, but it didn’t soften the blow when her gaze darted to the wounds peeking from beneath his beard, or when she flinched away from his touch. Liv had broken the silence to mention Gretel again; Marsh went to work before the discussion became an argument.

  It was a start.

  The glazing bars in the den’s window cast jumbled shadows across Gretel’s face. She stared at the ivy-covered wall outside with sloe eyes aglimmer. But she’d abandoned her usual air of cryptic amusement. No faint quirk of the lips today: she was smiling. She almost never did that.

  Will, slumped in the corner behind Gretel, looking like seven kinds of hell. Marsh might have suspected Will had taken up the bottle again, except he knew Will wasn’t nearly clever enough to pull that off under his wife’s nose. The man hadn’t slept. He’d given a long and animated explanation why.

  Which had jarred something loose. A long-forgotten and overlooked memory now stirred Marsh’s churning thoughts.

  And what would my assignment be? he’d asked Pembroke.

  I’ve already told you. Suss out Gretel’s intentions.

  The flimsy magnetized tape clung awkwardly to Marsh’s fingertips. He threaded it through the machine, pulled the free end to the hub of empty reel, and turned the reel just enough to take up the slack. Marsh adjusted the microphone so that it sat exactly in the center of the table between himself and Gretel. Needles on the recorder swung erratically in their lighted windows when he nudged the microphone closer to Gretel. The recording heads jerked into place with a solid thunk when he started the recorder.

  Gretel pulled her attention from the window. She looked at Marsh with eyebrows raised and the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her eyes.

  “The beard suits you. Very rugged.”

  Marsh ignored her. “We know you’re waiting for something. That much has been obvious since your arrival. Naturally we’ve obsessed over what it might be.”

  Her expression didn’t change. As of course it wouldn’t. He chose to make it easier on himself by pretending she wasn’t endowed with godlike precognition. Everybody slips, he reminded himself. She isn’t God.

  God? Marsh hadn’t set foot in a church since John’s birth. Nor had Liv. Their faith in the divine had withered in light of the overwhelming evidence of its absence.

  Gretel can’t be right one hundred percent of the time, he told himself. I refuse to live in a clockwork universe.

  He continued, “Why did Leslie Pembroke have to die? And why go to such lengths to inveigle cooperation from Reinhardt? That must have been quite a feat, since he despises you so.”

  “Is that what my brother told you?”

  “It’s what Reinhardt told us.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, Raybould. Lies do not suit you.”

  Marsh shrugged. “We’ll find him soon enough—”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “—and when we do, he’ll finger you for your part in Pembroke’s murder. In light of your defection, asylum, and newfound allegiance to the Crown, I’ll personally see that treason is added to the charges. That means the gallows for you.”

  Will chimed in. “He means every word of it, you know. He’s quite fond of nabbing people for treason. Bit of a crusade, you might say.”

  Gretel’s eyes didn’t leave Marsh, but she cocked her head to one side, making it clear she addressed Will. “Would you like to know your wife’s deepest thoughts and feelings about this entire affair? It would be no trouble.”

  Will mustered his dignity, but his voice quavered. He feared Gretel. “We share everything. There’s nothing you could tell me I don’t already know about Gwendolyn, and vice versa.”

  “Are you certain?” said Gretel. “It would be the easiest thing in the world to know if you’re right. People open up to me. Isn’t that right, Raybould?”

  “Leave Liv out of this,” Marsh growled.

  Will frowned, knowing he’d missed something.

  “I find Gwendolyn in the kitchen, while she fixes a salad for dinner.” Will paled as Gretel began to rattle off her nonchalant prophecy. “I begin by asking her to pass a—”

  Marsh rapped his knuckles on the table. The needles jumped again. “That’s enough.” To Will, who was visibly shaken, he said, “Don’t let her get under your skin. She’s toying with you. She’s not wearing a battery.”

  “Yes.” Will paused. He looked chagrined. “Of course.”

  Marsh tried to swallow a growing ache, and winced. His injuries had become a caltrop lodged in his throat. He braced himself, then forced his words out, flogging them like cavalry crossing the no-man’s-land of his broken voice.

  “I think it was a mistake for us to wonder what you’ve been waiting for. Rather than concentrating on what you’re doing, we should be asking ourselves why you’re doing it.”

  He leaned across the table. “You forget that I’ve seen behind your mask.”

  At this, Gretel frowned.

  “You present a front to the world, an air of imperturbable serenity. And you play it well, I’ll give you that. So everybody accepts it. Even Klaus.”

  Gretel said, “I hope Madeleine looks after him.”

  Marsh ignored the deflection. “But it’s all just an act, isn’t it? You’re not fearless. No. Because I know one thing that terrifies you. The Eidolons.”

  Was there the tiniest shift in the set of her jaw? A minute hardening in the lines around her eyes? A stillness?

  “Back in ’40, when Will and I put you in front of that Eidolon—naïvely assuming the Reichsbehörde was a haven for Jerry warlocks—you clenched my arm tight enough to draw blood with your nails.” He gestured at her hands; she kept her nails short. “Gretel, pale and trembling. No longer an oracle. Just a girl again. That’s what I remembered after all these years.”

  Marsh rolled back his sleeve, peering at his forearm. There, faintly visible under the graying hair, were three pale crescent-shaped marks where Gretel’s nails had bitten deep. “But I thought nothing of it in that moment. Because my blood ran freely, which of course meant the Eidolon could see me as well.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Gretel. “Your mysterious name.”

  Will sat up. “Do you know what it means?”

  “Haven’t your children translated it for you?”

  The men shared a look. “They can’t,” Will muttered. “Or won’t.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. She glanced at Will over her shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll find it enlightening.” />
  Marsh pulled the conversation back on track. “I’d forgotten all about that incident until today.” Marsh nodded at Will. “Will tells me the Eidolons have gone halfway round the bend. Like somebody has lobbed a bloody great boulder into their quiet little duck pond.

  “Now, who, I wonder, could do a thing like that?”

  Gretel yawned. She made a show of stretching, arching her back like a young woman trying to catch a lad’s attention. He realized she was doing exactly that, for his benefit. Marsh shuddered with revulsion. Gretel craned her neck to look at the clock ticking atop the empty bookcase.

  “Well,” she said. “I’ve stalled you long enough.” She stood. “We must leave now.”

  Marsh and Will shared another look. For his part, Will looked perplexed, and even a bit indignant. Which was more or less how Marsh felt.

  “We’re not done here,” said Marsh. He made his point by reaching under the table with one leg to kick Gretel’s chair toward her.

  “If we don’t leave now, we’ll have a terrible time making it to the Admiralty.” She nodded, as if to reassure him. “But you’ll have my help, of course.”

  Marsh frowned. It came as nausea, the sick dread that he’d been outmaneuvered again. This warred with the anger and loathing he always felt in Gretel’s presence. Fever sweat made the world slippery. He couldn’t grab it, couldn’t wrestle it down, couldn’t force it to make sense. “Oh, I see. So I’m taking you to the Admiralty now, am I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she said just as Roger burst breathlessly into the room, “it has fallen under attack.”

  Roger said, “Boss! Just got a call on the blower. Sounds like half of Whitehall is up in flames.”

  “What? When did this happen?” Marsh was already on his feet, clenching Gretel’s elbow with one hand and beckoning to Will with the other.

  “Just now! All at once! Coordinated attack.”

  “By whom?” said Will, scrambling out of the chair.