Bitter Seeds mt-1

by Ian Tregillis

  Heike stood at the bottom of the obstacle course. The wind teased her hair. Then she disappeared, uniform and all. Reinhardt had been quite upset when she achieved this breakthrough. He'd spent hours watching her train, relishing the moments when her concentration lapsed and he could glimpse, ever so briefly, her naked body.

  The gunners opened up, releasing a hail of projectiles across the field every time a bell, chain, or flag indicated the passage of the invisible woman. Most of the bullets splattered harmlessly against the brick wall, but once or twice Klaus heard the “Hoompf” as a round clipped Heike. But she maintained her concentration and didn't reappear.

  “She's improving.” She'd be a formidable assassin. Nearly as good as Klaus when she came into her own.

  “Don't you think?” he asked, turning back to Gretel.

  The corner of Gretel's mouth quirked up, and the shadows returned to that place behind her eyes. Quietly, she said, “Heike has her uses.”

  Klaus sighed. There had been a time when that half smile filled him with dread. Now it just made him angry.

  Gott. She's going to fuck it up for me.

  “Don't do this, Gretel.”

  She looked up. She blinked. She turned for the house.

  Klaus grabbed her wrist and spun her toward him. Her arm was so thin and his grip so tight that his thumb and forefinger overlapped by more than a knuckle. Her skin was warm to the touch, though she'd spent the entire day outside. She stumbled, bumping into his chest. Her hair smelled of the purple bellflowers dangling from her braids.

  “What ever you're thinking, don't. Things are going well now. Don't ruin this.”

  “Are they? Are they truly?” She looked him in the eye. “Do you enjoy building coffins, brother?”

  He tried to hold her gaze, but flinched away. “I'm tired of getting swept along in your wake.” He let go of her arm. “Do something for me for a change.”

  Gretel cocked her head, looking him up and down. Then she linked her arm in his and rested her head on his shoulder as he escorted her back inside.

  “Twenty-one thousand. Four hundred. Seventeen,” she whispered.

  21,417. Klaus wondered if that was supposed to mean something to him. He didn't ask.

  nine

  10 September 1940

  Soho, London, England

  Will spent the afternoon at the Hart and Hearth, waiting to plant the W bomb in his briefcase. He stared at the empty pint in his hand, listening to how it rang as he slid it back and forth along planks of polished beech. The glass clinked when he tapped it against the brass rail and asked the barman for another.

  He wondered if the Nazis would commandeer the breweries when they arrived. He wondered if German beer differed greatly from British beer. Perhaps they'd build biergartens, too. That wouldn't be so bad.

  Then again, if things went well to night, the invasion would be postponed at least until spring. If not ... well, he'd have blood on his hands, no matter the outcome.

  The barman refilled his glass. Will nodded his thanks. Drinking made it possible to endure the wait. God bless you, Pip, for introducing me to the wonders of the pint.

  There had been a time when Will resisted such simple comforts. It seemed silly now. As much as he hated the man, he understood his grandfather differently these days.

  His new drink had a thick head of foam. Will imagined it was sea foam, and that if he listened, he could hear the crash of advancing surf. It wouldn't stop until he drowned.

  The Hart and Hearth that Will remembered so fondly had become a thing of the past. Gone were the roar of conversation, the clink of glasses, the shimmering firelight on the ceiling. The fireplace was dark. The drive to conserve fuel, even firewood, had trumped tradition.

  People still came, people still drank, but the atmosphere had changed. They greeted each other a little too enthusiastically. They laughed a little too loudly. And they drank—when there was drink to be had—a little too seriously. It was the cumulative effect of months of living with a siege mentality.

  These were the men and women who huddled in the shelters at night, got up the next morning, climbed over the rubble, and returned to work. Day after day after day. They came to the pubs for companionship, for the illusion of normalcy. But in truth, every person there was drinking alone, seeking the fortitude to make it through the night. Like Will.

  He did his best not to notice them, or to be noticed. Rubbing elbows felt a bit ghoulish to night.

  As the afternoon wore on toward evening, Will saw many people glancing at pocket watches or the brass-and-mahogany grandmother clock in the corner. The barman clicked on the wireless a few minutes before six. It gave the valves time to warm up properly.

  He rang the bell over the bar with two quick clangs on the hour. “Six o'clock!” he announced.

  The pub fell silent. Listening to the BBC six o'clock news was a national daily ritual. The patrons abandoned conversations and dart games to crowd the bar. A tradesman inadvertently kicked Will's attache case. Will held his breath as the case toppled over with a leaden thump. Nothing happened. Will, shaken but relieved, leaned the case against the bar, and shielded it from further offense.

  Frank Phillips read news of the war. Luftwaffe raids had leveled the foundries in Shropshire, Lincolnshire, and Dorset. In Africa, General O'Connor's offensive against the Italians had begun to falter. He might have had a fighting chance with reinforcements, but of course there would be none. Fighting continued in Greece and Italian East Africa. Admiral Decoux, the Governor General of French Indochina, had granted the Japanese basing and transit rights throughout his territory. The tonnage of lend-lease shipments from the United States continued to decline, owing to ferocious wolf packs and a flagging commitment overseas. President Roo se velt's impassioned arguments for increasing aid to Great Britain were increasingly unpopular with the American people and its isolationist Congress.

  Hitler's naval blockade was in some ways worse than the Blitz. Common knowledge said they'd stopped dyeing horse meat green. It was no longer unsuitable for human consumption. The Ministry of Food denied this vocally.

  Interest in the state of the outside world had been more keen in the spring, before Dunkirk, when Britain still believed it was in this war, and that victory could be had. These days, the state of the outside world was somewhat academic. The topic on everybody's mind, the subject of true interest, was the weather.

  But Will didn't need the wireless to tell him about the weather in the Channel. He'd helped shape it. The fog had lifted, and a stillness had come upon the sea. The Eidolons had returned to their demesne, receded into the crawlspaces around time and space.

  But the Met Office knew nothing of Eidolons and blood prices. It simply reported that the Channel was calm and clear. The unspoken corollary was that nothing stood between the south coast of England and the German invasion fleet in France. Will drained his glass and swallowed loudly, drowning out the gasps, the sobs of dismay.

  To night, of all nights, the Jerries would come in droves. And not just bombers, but paratroopers, too, if Milkweed's gamble worked. The first tendrils of invasion.

  The warlocks had concluded their marathon negotiation with the Eidolons; now they sought to begin anew from scratch. But the intervention would be costly. By unspoken agreement, none of the Milkweed warlocks worked near his home neighborhood to night. It was easier that way.

  Will had chosen the Hart and Hearth for two reasons. First, he knew he'd need the services of a public house before the night was through. Second, it had a shelter on the premises. This he knew through firsthand experience, having been stuck here during more than one raid.

  He called for another pint. The world had gone fuzzy at the edges. He wanted to keep it like that until the work was done and his share of the blood price paid.

  The barman left the wireless on after the BBC update ended. Jack Warner and Garrison Theatre filled the void in conversation. It was unnatural for a pub to be so quiet. As unnatural as a stove wi
thout a teakettle.

  A number of patrons filed out in ones and twos. Probably those with families. Will begrudged them the excuse to leave.

  It was a long wait spent keeping himself on the edge of numbness. But when the banshee wail of air raid sirens finally broke the monotony, he found they'd come too soon. He wasn't ready yet. He could still feel his fingers, his toes, the quickened beating of his heart.

  The barman flung open the door behind the bar. A narrow staircase led down to the cellar. “Right!” he called. “Everybody down here!”

  The patrons queued up behind the proprietor. Will tried to look natural as he lugged the attache case, but it was quite heavy and threatened to overbalance him. Another door at the bottom of the stairwell opened on the cellar proper. An overpowering latrine stink wafted out of the shelter when the barman cranked this door open. Men and women covered their noses as they filed inside. Somebody, probably the barman's son, had forgotten to empty the pails and coal scuttles from the previous raid.

  The air was cool and damp down here, but not enough to suppress the smell. Several cords' worth of firewood were stacked along one wall. Pillows, blankets, and thin mattresses had been laid out between rows of metal shelves. The shelves themselves were bare but for dwindling supplies of tinned meat and withered, eye-studded potatoes.

  Will took a seat by the door. He counted nineteen souls in the shelter. Part of him was clinical, and obsessed over the mathematics. A simple calculation, he told himself. Dozens of lives for the sake of thousands. But most of him yearned to run away and drown in the surf.

  Several faces he recognized, regulars like himself. He imagined they recognized him, too, as he'd been coming here for tea and atmosphere since long before the war. Before everything changed. Will remembered the evening he'd introduced Marsh and Liv, right upstairs. He wondered how many married couples over the years had met right here at the Hart and Hearth.

  The ground shook. Tins rattled on the shelves.

  He propped the attache case on his lap. He waited for the others to hunker down for a long night. When it appeared they were settled and unlikely to surprise him, he cracked the case open, using the lid to shield the contents from casual onlookers. He'd already smeared his blood on the explosive charges, so that through him the Eidolons would gather new blood maps for nineteen souls: Will's share of the blood price. Will set the timer for ten minutes. Then he double-checked it, closed and locked the case, and slid it behind a pile of firewood.

  Will waited as long as he dared—less than two minutes, to be sure, though it felt like eternity—until a moment when it seemed he'd been forgotten. He slipped out through the cellar door as quietly as he could.

  He hoped that if anybody saw him, they'd presume he'd gone barmy and leave him to his fate. It happened on occasion; people went mad in the shelters. Above all, he prayed that nobody followed him outside. That would make for an awkward confrontation when the Hart and Hearth demolished itself. The blast would level the building. Tomorrow, the overworked rescue men combing through the debris for bodies wouldn't be bothered to notice that the damage pattern didn't match that of Jerry's bombs.

  Whether or not his departure went unnoticed, nobody came after him. Running about outdoors during a raid was a fine way to get oneself killed.

  Upstairs, he paused again to take in the pub one last time. He'd been sitting right over there, at the table under the stag head, when he first met Liv. The three of them, she and he and Marsh, had chatted there, one table over. Will shook his head, said his farewells, and pinched a bottle of gin from behind the bar. He'd earned it. He dropped the slender bottle into the deepest pocket of his coat. Then he stepped outside.

  Chaos. Sirens echoed across the city while the thunder of ack-ack guns rattled windowpanes up and down the street. Chuffchuffchuff. Chuffchuffchuffchuff. A fireball illuminated the skyline to the north. The ground rippled. Paving stones clattered beneath Will's feet.

  He took the first cross street, eager to put at least one street between himself and the pub. He tried to pick a direction that took him away from the heaviest concentration of bombing, but it was all around him.

  The blackout had become a jumble of flickering shadows. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky, blazing through the smoke and occasionally flashing across a barrage balloon. When that happened, the reflected glare shone on the streets below like a few seconds of full moon. Meanwhile, a flurry of tracer rounds from a nearby battery cast shadows that slithered underfoot. The sky glowed orange with fire.

  Will ran. The gin bottle knocked against his hip. The earth shook again, rattling the bones of London. When the bomb he'd planted became just another element of the pandemonium, he was several streets away and bounding down the stairs of the Tottenham Court Tube station. Several of the people taking shelter there looked up in surprise when they saw him. Clearly, said the looks on their faces, this latecomer was a madman.

  How right they were.

  Early the next morning, while the Hart and Hearth still burned, and while an invasion fleet sailed within sight of British soil, the Eidolons returned to the Channel.

  12 September 1940

  Reichsbehorde fur die Erweiterung germanischen Potenzials

  If you can spare a moment, Herr Doctor,” said Klaus, “there's an issue with the new incubators.”

  Von Westarp paced the length of the debriefing room. The breeze from his passage elicited a papery rustle from the dried wildflowers arranged in milk bottles on the sill.

  He paused at the window long enough to glance outside again. “She did this to humiliate me,” he said before launching into another circuit of the room. “Where are they?” he asked nobody in particular.

  The doctor had put his dressing gown aside long enough to squeeze back into his SS-Oberfuhrer uniform. It didn't fit as it once had; the past year had been good to him. Klaus made a point not to look at the paunch straining at the doctor's belt and buttons.

  “There is confusion regarding the equipment,” continued Klaus. “I gave specific instructions to the machinists. Still, they've wasted time and resources requisitioning unnecessary supplies.”

  Von Westarp reversed his circuit of the room. His boots pulverized a handful of wild rose petals that had fluttered to the floor. The air became sweeter and oilier as his continued pacing crushed blossoms knocked loose from Gretel's improvised drying racks.

  Nobody had objected when she'd decided to use a corner of the debriefing room for her craft project. Her advice had led the Luftwaffe to dominate the skies over Britain; tolerating her eccentricities was the price for access to her precognition. For much of the summer, the ground floor of the farmhouse had smelled like a perfumery.

  Reinhardt insisted it smelled like a Spanish whore house. He would know.

  Klaus said, “I confronted them. They claim to be working to your specifications.”

  At the window again: “I've been too lenient with her. Far too lenient.”

  “But I'm certain,” Klaus concluded over the doctor's muttering, “that a few words from you would clear this matter up immediately.”

  The doctor squinted at him. “What are you babbling about?”

  “They've ordered the wrong equipment.”

  “They've done no such thing! Why must you and your sister turn everything into an ordeal? Second-guessing my every instruction.”

  The door opened. Standartenfuhrer Pabst entered, pulling Gretel along with a strong grip at her elbow. Pabst shoved her toward a chair before joining the doctor at the window. They spoke in urgent whispers. Pabst and the doctor had been conferring much lately, though it seemed they agreed on little.

  Her damp hair had left a trail of dark moisture spots down the back of her smock. Watertight plugs made from rubber and ceramic had been fitted over the connectors at the ends of her wires. A trail of white salt rime dusted the edges of her face, tracing a line along her forehead, across her ears, and under her jaw.

  Pabst must have pulled her from the sensory depr
ivation tank without giving her time to wash. He and Doctor von Westarp had long since conceded, however reluctantly, that physical violence was of no use in controlling her. They'd resorted to more experimental punishments.

  She'd been in the tank for over thirty hours. Von Westarp had locked her inside minutes after learning of the invasion fleet's destruction.

  Klaus took the seat next to her at the conference table. Under his breath, he asked, “How are you?”

  “Well rested. Have you solved your materiel problem?”

  He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her while Pabst and von Westarp argued. He motioned at the edges of his face. She licked an edge of the handkerchief, then dabbed it along her forehead. The tank used concentrated magnesium salts in the water to increase buoyancy and thus mimic the sensation of weightlessness.

  Left to his own devices, von Westarp would have left her in the tank much longer. Perhaps even a week, though she'd have succumbed to dehydration before that; rage made him careless. But General Keitel had called an emergency inquiry into her failure to warn the OKW of Operation Sea Lion's doom.

  “What will you tell them, Gretel?”

  She said something in response to his question, but Klaus couldn't hear it. Von Westarp announced, “They're here.” Klaus glanced out the window to where a black Mercedes approached the farmhouse.

  Von Westarp stood at one end of the conference table, Pabst at his right. “Answer their questions and do as they say,” said the doctor. “I will not be made a fool again.”

  Gretel's disobedience used to be a private matter. A family affair. Such as when Rudolf had died. But now the Gotterelektrongruppe was plugged into the vast apparatus of the Reich's war machine; privacy in failure and success did not exist. Gretel's failure was the doctor's failure.

  Three men stomped into the room. General Field Marshal Keitel, the Fuhrer's chief of staff on the OKW, was a silver-haired bull of a man. Klaus had never met the second man, but he wore the uniform of a Wehrmacht Heer generalleutnant. The toady man at Keitel's elbow, Major Schmid, was an opportunistic lickspittle, and grossly unqualified to head Luftwaffe Intelligence.