Weaver

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘What about all that tunnelling out of the POW camp?’

  ‘That was for the English,’ he said. ‘The public school types. Anyhow the Germans kept a close eye on me. A Prominente, remember.’

  ‘What a rotten excuse. We’re close, I think.’

  It hadn’t been hard to slip away from his mother’s group and out of sight of the various German guards. Once they were alone, in a kind of reading room, Doris had shown him the diagram the resistance spies had assembled of this Ahnenerbe facility. They knew that Ben was being held in a kind of laboratory tucked away in the basement. ‘Of course it would be the basement,’ Gary had remarked. ‘Nazis like basements.’ It had taken Doris only minutes to lift the carpet, prise up a couple of floorboards, and slip down into the space between the ground level floor and the basement ceiling.

  ‘Here.’ She came to a stop. With care she unscrewed a light fitting, pulled it back, and peered through the hole in the ceiling plaster. ‘Bingo. And there’s nobody around. Probably all watching the show upstairs ...’ She took a knife from under her skirt and briskly cut a circle in the plaster, a couple of feet across. She looked down again. ‘Only six or eight feet. Piece of cake.’ She grabbed a wooden joist and swung her feet down through the hole. She dangled by her arms from the joist. Then she let go and dropped, bending her legs so she landed without impact, and virtually no noise.

  Gary came to the hole. The room below was brightly lit. He glimpsed mechanical equipment, a glass wall. Doris stood directly beneath him. He could see plaster dust on her hair. ‘Now you.’

  He landed heavily, with a noisy clatter, and nearly stumbled over.

  ‘Idiot,’ she hissed.

  ‘Show-off.’ He straightened up, brushing the dust from his suit jacket, and looked around. The room was a box, brightly lit, the walls whitewashed. The central area was walled off by glass, a room within a room. There were desks, work tables and chairs, mounds of paper heaped up - and, incongruously, a big bookcase that contained mouldering history titles. There was a hum of fans; the air was dry, cool.

  But the place was dominated by a bank of mechanical gadgetry that covered one wall, side to side, floor to ceiling. It was as he imagined a telephone exchange might be, all relays and wires in an aluminium frame.

  Doris asked softly, ‘Is this Ben?’

  He whirled around. She was looking into the glass-walled inner chamber. There was nothing much in there but a bed, he saw, with white sheets, and a table and chair and a washbasin, a piss-pot on the floor. And on the bed, over the sheets, lay a man in striped prison pyjamas, small, hunched over with his legs up by his belly, his arms folded, mussed black hair dark against the pillow. He wore a kind of cap of silvery metal, connected by the wires to a metal cabinet beside the bed. He was bathed in brilliant white light.

  Gary hammered on the glass wall. ‘Ben. Ben!’

  The sleeping figure stirred resentfully, mumbling.

  ‘Keep it down, for God’s sake. Let’s get him out of there.’ The glass box had a door, a lock embedded in its transparent structure. Doris produced another tool, like a fine screwdriver, and began to work at the lock.

  At last Ben opened an eye. When he saw Gary, he lurched up to a sitting position. His shirt hung open, showing his belly. He got out of bed and ran to the glass wall. The metal cap was ripped off his head by the trailing wires. His crown had been shaved, like a monk’s tonsure, and his scalp was prickled by an array of crimson dots. He stood there flattened against the glass, his mouth open. ‘You came for me.’

  Gary was inches away, but could not touch him. ‘I told you I would, didn’t I? It’s OK, Ben. We’ll get you out of this fucking zoo. Christ, I think they’ve got him drugged up. His eyes—’

  ‘Gary! Gary!’

  Doris still worked at the lock. ‘Try to keep him quiet.’

  Gary made calming motions with his hands. ‘Ben, it’s OK, just take it easy.’

  The door swung back soundlessly, and Doris, tucking away her lock-picking tool, hurried into the glass room. When Doris reached for him Ben flinched back, hammering his head on the glass wall. ‘Christ,’ Doris said. ‘Gary, get in here, for God’s sake.’

  Gary pushed past Doris. Ben threw himself at him. ‘Gary, oh my word, you came, I thought I would never, I thought...’ He buried his face in Gary’s chest.

  Gary wrapped his arms around him. Ben felt almost podgy, with fat over his ribs and belly. ‘They’ve been feeding you up. Christ, what have they done to you?’

  Ben looked up, his eyes glazed. ‘It’s what they’ve done with me ... Drugged up, asleep most of the time. Dreaming. Past and future, past and future. We’re a bridge across time, a computing machine and my poor wandering psyche. You don’t want to know, Gary, I mean it. Although your mother knows, I think, she might understand by now.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ Doris hissed. ‘Come on. Out.’

  Ben didn’t want to let go of Gary, but they persuaded him to grab Gary’s arm so that the two of them could walk, awkwardly, with Doris’s help.

  Doris, all business, shepherded them to the heap of plaster dust under the hole in the roof. ‘Out the way we came. Gary, get back up there. Use that chair. I’ll give Ben a boost back up. I’ll follow, after I’ve done a bit of business in here. And then—’

  ‘No.’ Ben had been passive for a few seconds, but now he started panicking. He twisted away from them both and ran to the bank of mechanical gear at the back wall. ‘I must see if they’ve done what they threatened, if they’ve done it ...’

  ‘We don’t have time for this,’ Doris snapped.

  Gary grabbed her arm. ‘Look, Doris, take it easy. He’ll be a lot easier to get out through that roof space conscious than unconscious.’

  She bit her lip. ‘All right. But quickly.’

  Ben found a paper-tape punch. He scrolled through its output, and pawed through heaps of notes, handwritten in German, some technician’s orderly journal.

  Gary stood by him. ‘We have to go, pal.’

  ‘Not before I know if they’ve used this thing.’

  ‘For what?’ Gary looked up at the bank of gleaming equipment, the relays and wires, rods and gears. It was beautiful, he thought, a beautifullymade machine in the midst of all this madness. ‘What is this, Ben?’

  Ben snorted. ‘Actually it’s a Z3. An electromechanical calculating machine. The pride of German engineering. They use it to calculate the Gödel trajectories, you see, the paths back to the past. They come here, you know. Technicians from the Zuse Apparatebau in Berlin. Zuse sends technicians from Berlin to service it! Can you believe that? They get paid. And I, I must dream ... Unh.’ It was a grunt, as if he had been struck in the stomach.

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘They did it.’ He held up a length of paper tape. ‘See? There’s the proof, right there. And the date stamp.’

  ‘They did what?’

  ‘They sent it back in time. The Menologium. Just two days ago. Tell your mother. Make sure she understands, that she knows. Tell her I signed it.’ He grinned. ‘I signed my name in their fucking Menologium. Now my name must be in the history books. Think of that! But if only you’d come earlier - it’s too late, they did it again, like Rory, and I died, I died again—’ And he slumped into the corner, his back to the shining machine.

  ‘Enough,’ Doris said. ‘Help me, Gary.’

  They each grabbed an arm and began hauling, but Ben was limp now, just a burden. He said, ‘To wipe out all of history, at the push of a button, the close of a relay - billions upon billions of lives, snuffed out and swapped for a whole new set - the close of a relay - what could be more fascistic than that?’

  Gary could hear noise coming from above, shouting, heavy running footsteps - the thump of an explosion somewhere, a rattle of gunfire. ‘It’s coming apart,’ he said.

  ‘You surprise me,’ Doris said. ‘We might still get out of this. Up you go.’

  Gary hopped on a chair, jumped so he got his hands onto the joists, and pu
shed himself up. ‘Pass him up.’ Sitting with his legs dangling through the ceiling, he reached down with his arms.

  The door slammed open. SS troopers burst in, six, eight, ten of them, all with automatic weapons or pistols. Julia Fiveash was at their head, waving a silver pistol of her own. The SS troopers screamed German phrases that Gary knew well from the stalag: ‘Down!’ ‘On your knees, on the floor!’

  Doris looked up at Gary. Ben was slumped in her arms, almost unconscious. She mouthed, ‘Go!’ And suddenly she had her knife at Ben’s throat.

  Gary lifted his legs out of the hole and scrambled back.

  Doris turned to face Fiveash. ‘Back off, you traitorous bitch, or I cut his throat!’

  The troopers hung back uncertainly.

  Fiveash advanced, step by step, her pistol held out straight before her in her two hands. ‘I knew there was something wrong with you people. The way the Woolers greeted each other - that was more than a mother greeting her prisoner son - I knew there was an agenda! I admit I didn’t spot you, Silver—’

  With a grunt Doris shoved Ben at Fiveash. He fell against her, tangling her up. And Doris ran at the big calculating machine, the Z3. Fiveash yelled at the troopers.

  Suddenly Gary saw what Doris was going to do. He ducked behind a roof joist for cover.

  The explosion was a pulse of light, the concussion a punch in the gut. Over the Z3 the roof plaster blew upwards, and Gary tried to shield his face.

  XXVII

  He could feel himself rock back and forth, and the breeze on his face was fresh and cold and salty. He opened his eyes. Uniforms, all around him, at odd angles. A grey sky above, heavy with cloud.

  He was in a boat. He sat up with a lurch.

  ‘Gary?’

  His mother was beside him. He had been lying with his head on her lap. She stroked his forehead, but he flinched, his skin tender. The boat was small, and full of marines. One older man, an officer, sat opposite him, peaked cap, trenchcoat, watching him steadily.

  His mother asked, ‘How do you feel?’

  He grabbed her hand. ‘Like one big bruise. And I’ve a head that’s ringing like the Liberty Bell.’ He touched his ears; his hearing was muffled.

  ‘I’ll get you some water.’ She passed him a canteen.

  He glanced down at himself, at plaster dust, blood, rips. ‘I’ve ruined my suit.’

  ‘You’ll answer to Moss Bros for that,’ said the officer, his voice very cultured British.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind. Bad joke.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘I’m Tom Mackie. Captain, RN. Seconded to military intelligence for the foreseeable. I know your mother, and I’ve heard all about you, Gary, but it’s the first time we’ve met. Apart from when I slung you over my shoulder to get you out of Richborough.’

  ‘I’m embarrassed,’ Gary said. ‘Um, where am I?’

  ‘The English Channel, old chap. Don’t worry, you’re quite safe.’

  His mother said, ‘The doctor who looked at you on the shore said you had concussion, you were suffering from shock. It’s amazing you found your way back out of that roof space at all.’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Gary admitted.

  ‘What, none of it?’ Mackie asked drily. ‘The marine assault on Richborough, perfectly timed incidentally, the gun fight with those SS goons, the dash to the beach?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Ah, well. Just your average Christmas Eve, really.’

  Gary shivered. A marine threw him a green blanket. ‘Here you go, chum.’ He wrapped it around his body gratefully, and let his mother embrace him; he supposed she deserved that. The day was darkling, he saw, the light seeping out of a leaden sky.

  Mackie leaned forward. ‘Are you up to a little debrief?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Ben Kamen?’

  ‘We found him. He was sleeping. Wired up to a machine, an, um, electromechanical calculating machine“, he called it. A Z3, yes.’

  ‘All right. Good. You didn’t manage to get Ben out?’

  He shook his head. ‘Last I saw of him, that SS officer came - Fiveash. I was looking down into the cellar room from the roof space. Doris challenged her. They could all be dead by now.’

  ‘We’ll have to assume they’re not, until proven.’

  ‘I think Doris must have done for the Z3.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Mackie said, nodding. ‘She’ll get a medal for this, if posthumously. But it may not do a lot of good,’ he said to Mary. ‘Not if they still have Kamen.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Gary said, ‘is how Doris managed to smuggle in that much explosive. I mean, we were all searched on the way in.’

  His mother said, ‘It was George.’

  ‘George?’

  ‘That wooden box containing the spear - it wasn’t as solid as it looked.’

  Gary shook his head. ‘I never knew. What happened to George?’

  ‘Sergeant Tanner kept out of the fighting,’ Mackie said. ‘Sensible chap. Now he’s stayed behind to help clear up the mess. He’s on our side, fundamentally, of course. Look, you did all you could, all that was asked of you. But the operation will be judged a failure, I think.’

  Mary said, ‘Why? They have Ben Kamen, but Doris destroyed the Z3.’

  ‘Yes, but they can rebuild. We’ve been receiving reports of paratroop raids on high-technology establishments. Bletchley Park. Radar research sites. Places like that. We’re pretty sure they are planning a Loom Mark II - were, even before the events of today. Bigger and better. We haven’t stopped them, just slowed them down a bit. Of course that’s something. But the fact that we acted against the Loom might, paradoxically, convince Trojan’s SS superiors to take it more seriously. Ben was the key, really. We hoped to save him. That was a mistake. Should have gone in specifically to kill him.’ He sighed. ‘May be a while before we get a second crack at it.’

  ‘The Menologium,’ Gary said suddenly.

  They both looked at him sharply. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I remember. Ben talked about something called the Menologium. He was terrified.’ He stared at his mother. ‘Look, what’s going on here? What are you mixed up with, Mom?’

  ‘We’ll brief you properly in a secure environment,’ Mackie said. ‘But for now, please - if you are beginning to remember—’

  ‘He said it had been sent back“. This Menologium. He showed me a paper tape to prove it. As if I’d understand...’

  His mother looked at Mackie. ‘It had to have been sent back. I mean, I found traces of it in the literature. Records of it going back to the fifth century. With Kamen’s name embedded in it.’

  Mackie asked, ‘Gary, when was this Menologium sent back? Did Ben say?’

  ‘Two days ago. He was clear about that. He said the bit of paper tape confirmed it. He said I had to be sure to tell you, Mom.’

  His mother grabbed the side of the boat, her face white.

  ‘Mom? Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, yes. It’s just - Tom, two days ago. But I was finding evidence of Ben’s tampering with the Menologium, I held it in my own hands, I copied it out, months ago. The evidence existed, in a sense, even before the Menologium had been sent - perhaps even before Kamen did his bit of coding in the acrostic - perhaps even before any drafts of the Menologium had been prepared at all. Now you tell me, how is that possible?’