Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych)

by Ian Tregillis

  The commander said, “Olivia and Agnes mustn’t leave London.”

  “Her husband would want her to leave,” said Will.

  “Since when does she do everything her husband wants?”

  “I happen to know,” Will said, “from several conversations with him, that he’s always felt she should leave the city if and when the Jerries started bombing. Which, if you haven’t been paying attention, they have.”

  “She isn’t—”

  “She would like to say something!” Liv looked back and forth between Will and the commander. “It’s my decision. I’ll evacuate if absolutely necessary. But I’m not having Raybould come home to an empty house if I can avoid it.” She looked down, and just for a moment her resolve faltered. Liv bit away the trembling of her lower lip, though not before Will and the commander both saw it. “He’s been gone long enough. I want to know the moment he’s back.”

  She collected the tea service, the commander’s cup, and herself. “I can see I was wrong about the both of you. You’re getting on like a pair of caged badgers. I hope you get it worked through by the time I return or I’m putting you both out on the street. Especially if you upset Agnes.”

  She went to the kitchen. Will rounded on the commander. His whisper came out like a hiss.

  “What on earth have you done? You’ve poisoned her against all reason.”

  The commander started to rise from his chair. But, with visible effort, he stopped himself. He looked to Agnes. His own whisper was like the grinding of rocks. “I’m trying to help her. Help them both.”

  “Then for God’s sake, man, tell her to leave!”

  “Why must you be so pigheaded?”

  “Are you completely mad?” Will said. “They’re safer outside London.”

  “You don’t know that!” said the commander. His attempted whisper had become a low rumble; Will had got under his skin. “You’re guessing! You don’t know what may come.” He paused, shaking his head. “Nobody does.”

  His gaze went inward. Very far away. “You don’t understand,” he said.

  Will started to respond, but just then the commander did something quite unexpected.

  He cracked his knuckles against his jaw.

  *

  I caught my mistake a half second too late. I pulled my hand away from my face, but Will had already seen it. My tick, the thing I did unconsciously when I was agitated, or deep in thought. As at that moment, when I was both.

  Will had known me for years. He’d seen me do this—seen his friend Pip do this—a hundred times.

  His eyes went so wide it seemed there was nothing left to keep them in. I saw the wheels turning. Yes. He knew.

  Our eyes met.

  His mouth fell open, but no sound came out. I must have looked much the same. Liv returned before I could corral my scattered thoughts.

  She said, “Well. You’re not biting each other, so I gather it’s safe to return.”

  I stood. Shakily. “Indeed. It’s been a pleasure, but I must be off.”

  Will leapt to his feet. It knocked his bowler to the floor. It rolled along the brim, came to a rest behind the bassinet. “I’ll share a taxi with you.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Liv asked, “Commander, will I see you tomorrow?”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Will watching me with Liv. Now his eyes narrowed.

  “I … can’t say. I don’t know. Thank you for the tea. Good day.”

  I was out the door before Will had gathered his hat. Behind me, I heard Liv say, “Are you certain you must go? You’ve only just arrived.”

  “I’m afraid I must,” he said. I didn’t hear the rest because I was already on the pavement, heading for a taxi parked up the street. Behind me, Will bid Liv good afternoon. I picked up my pace. Practically hurled myself into the taxi. It woke the driver, who had been snoring.

  “Bermondsey,” I said.

  The driver craned around to look at me. “Can’t, mate. Already waiting on a fare.”

  “He changed his mind.”

  “No, there he is. See? Just coming along now.”

  Will’s shoes crunched along the pavement, louder with each step. I fished in my pocket, tossed a few coins to the driver. Don’t know how much. “Just drive, man!”

  He collected the cash. Added it together. “The other bloke paid me a flimsy just to wait.”

  My fingers felt around for more coins, but by then it was too late. Will opened the suicide door and settled in beside me, just as calmly as though we hadn’t been on the hairy edge of a footrace moments earlier.

  “Ah, there’s a good chap,” he said to the driver. “Thank you for waiting. Take us to Kensington, if you please.” He recited his address.

  I considered jumping out. But I knew it would have been a pointless and foolish gesture.

  The taxi pulled onto the street. Will relaxed into his seat. He looked at me. I mean, really looked at me. But I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t bear it.

  “It seems an odd thing to say,” he said, with a quick glance out the rear window to Liv’s house, receding in the distance, “but I suspect you’re quite a long way from home.” His attention snapped back to me, and it had an intensity I hadn’t often seen in Will. Not in the early days.

  “Aren’t you, Pip?”

  interlude: gretel

  The fog does not dissipate. How curious.

  It exists in every future, like a pearlescent shroud; every sequence of choices leads to the impenetrable primordial chaos. The birth cries of the new time line and its universe have yet to wreak a coalescence of discrete future possibilities. This is not the enraged oblivion of the Eidolons. Of that she is certain. It is the dull homogeneity of a trillion indistinct maybes.

  Sometimes, late at night, if she strains her Willenskräfte in a way not done since those first feverish glimpses of the future, she perceives movement in the fog. She lies awake at night, watching it swirl, watching it engulf the distant threads of gossamer possibility. She drains whole batteries this way.

  It is not moving closer. She is not worried.

  She wants to see the entire web again. Wants to watch it glisten and sparkle, infinite in all directions. But the fog is opaque. She wants to watch the glorious coruscations as the future reconfigures itself. Wants to make it dance to the music of her whimsy. It does, but only as far as the fog. The fog does not succumb to her Willenskräfte.

  She examines it merely to sate her own curiosity. She is not revisiting Raybould’s return from Berlin. She is not wondering what has taken so long. She is not wondering when they will be together again. He will be back soon. Of course he will. Because she planned it so.

  The warlocks try to find him. She recognizes their work because the Eidolons’ attention makes the lines of future possibility thrum like electrified violin strings. They vibrate and bifurcate and tangle and thrum with the terrible music of uncreation until the entire tapestry threatens to shred into disparate pockets of unreality and she is cast into the void screaming screaming screaming into the between place outside the time lines where dark things lurk and they see her ohGodtheyseeher—

  She must prepare for Raybould’s return to the farm.

  He will return in six days four months two weeks. She will bring him lunch in the flower field breakfast at dinner in the forest. He will be furious violently enraged angry at her for sending him to Berlin. He will call her a bloody miserable bitch a bloody miserable bitch a bloody miserable bitch. He will be ravenous and she will take care of him. They will picnic among the butterflies huddle in the dark. She will bring him a coat because he is cold. He will be grateful and lay her down among the wildflowers shiver in the snow and ask about Olivia.

  Olivia, freckled tart.

  Olivia, who laughs like an overpriced courtesan.

  Olivia is the most upsetting problem of all. But dealing with her is straightforward. That particular course is well charted.

  Olivia will not be a problem fore
ver.

  eleven

  12 October 1940

  Kensington, London, England

  Though he didn’t partake of it himself, Will had often found it worthwhile to keep a bottle on hand at the Kensington flat. The sherry proved useful when visitors dropped in. Such as his brother, or a time traveler.

  Marsh had drained a glass and had started on another, sinking deeper into the green baize armchair with each sip. Will let him take his time. His own thoughts were twisted about like myriad strands in a ball of twine and he couldn’t untangle them. He’d always been rubbish with knots.

  This aged man sitting before him. This scarred, battered, and aged man sitting before him. It was Marsh. And yet, it wasn’t. Clearly it wasn’t.

  Finally, Marsh spoke, mostly to himself: “Damn.”

  “I don’t even know where to begin with my questions.”

  “Let me start, then. Yes. I am Raybould Phillip Marsh. Whom you call Pip.”

  “But … you’re clearly not the Marsh that I know. You’re not the fellow I met at Oxford.”

  “Oh, I am. But that was much longer ago for me.”

  Will’s speculations had been inching in this direction. But to hear it confirmed so straighforwardly … It was too abrupt. He had to come at it sideways, from the edges, lest it send him reeling. Well, it did that anyway.

  The tension lay so heavy it threatened to suffocate them both. Something had to be done about that; this promised to be a long conversation.

  “I see,” said Will. He made a show of looking Marsh over. “Did you come back a hundred years?”

  Marsh scowled. But Will allowed himself a little laugh, just to test the ice, and the scowl faltered. Became laughter of a sort. Sharp, gulping laughter, just this side of weeping. Will let him have his space. Marsh regained himself, and when he did, his grimace touched the corners of haunted weary eyes. And thus the ice was broken.

  Marsh said, “Feels like it some days.” He shook his head. “Twenty-three. I departed from the summer of nineteen sixty-three.”

  “You used the Eidolons, I presume.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who sent you back?”

  “You did.”

  Will started. To think he’d still be speaking Enochian decades from now. Would he be conducting negotiations for many years to come? What a horrifying thought. “That’s a surprise. Am I … well? In the future?”

  Marsh gave a little nod. (Tinged with sadness, or was that Will’s imagination?) “Happily married.”

  “Pull the other one.”

  “Things were good for you in sixty-three,” said Marsh. It looked like he was about to add something, but stopped.

  “Quite an extreme measure, sending you back.” Will paused, afraid to say it. “We lost the war.”

  “No. We won. In large part owing to you and the other warlocks. But it was bloody expensive, and the victory changed everything. Changed the way Britain fought wars, changed the way it defended itself.”

  “Why, then? I can’t imagine what forced you to this.”

  “Your one unbreakable rule. We broke it … I broke it. I’ve seen what happens when the Eidolons extract their own blood prices. You’re right to say you can’t imagine it. The end of the world,” said Marsh.

  He drained his glass. His hand shook. He turned inward again, gazing at some atrocity that only he could see. Will turned away, to give Marsh a bit of privacy while he contemplated private horrors.

  He said, “You know, I’m tempted to join you in that. Normally I wouldn’t, of course. But perhaps an allowance can be made, just this once.” He rose to fetch a glass for himself.

  “Don’t!”

  Will paused, halfway to the sideboard. The tone of Marsh’s voice prickled his scalp. Beneath the ruined croak, there was a hint of desperation. Warning.

  “You shouldn’t,” he said. “You have … I mean, he had…” Marsh sighed. Collected his thoughts. Nodded toward the bottle. “The Will I knew had problems.”

  “Oh dear.” Will sat. “Well, then. Perhaps you should start at the beginning.”

  Commander Liddell-Stewart melted away while Marsh told his tale. With the help of a generous amount of sherry, the stiff, abrasive mannerisms became the maudlin storytelling of an old university chum. The burden of being somebody else had been lifted from Marsh’s shoulders. With no small amount of relief, evidently. By the time he concluded his long, incredible exegesis of future history, he’d become Marsh again. Older, sadder, and lonelier, but still the same man.

  “For what it’s worth,” Marsh said, “you were right, and I should have listened. I’m sorry I didn’t. And I’m sorry I hit you in the park.”

  No. Perhaps not quite the same man after all.

  Will sensed that Marsh had skipped or simplified great swaths of his story. In places, his storytelling became vague, and they stood out because he told the rest of his story with such passion. But mostly Will suspected he was omitting details because his own name barely entered the story until the end. What was Marsh not telling him? He’d have to get the full story someday.

  “Why the charade, Pip? You know you could have come to me in confidence.”

  Marsh laughed. A looser, more relaxed laughter than earlier. The alcohol had done its job. “I mean no offense by this, honestly, but telling you a secret is a bit like printing it in The Times.”

  “I’m not that bad.”

  “I was there at the police station. I heard you hinting around about Milkweed.”

  Will wished he could deny it. But this was the truth. “I suppose that’s fair. But if not me, why not tell your younger self?”

  Marsh leveled a flat gaze at him. “You know me. You know him. How would we handle something like that?”

  Will thought aloud. “I suppose you’d suspect it for a Jerry trick.” He chuckled. “Yes, I can see it now. First you’d fly into a rage. Then you’d attack yourself. And then, after you’d beaten each other silly, you’d have yourself arrested.” He paused to wipe his eyes. “I’d like to see which one of you would win that fight.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Marsh frowned. “I didn’t expect it to take this long. Not with Gretel helping him.”

  “We tried to find him, using the Eidolons. But—” Will’s eyes grew wide. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Ah. Look. About that—”

  “I knew it!”

  “Listen. If Stephenson had learned that my younger self was in Germany, he’d have no choice but to blame it either on abduction or defection. He’d see both as a grave threat to Milkweed. I know him. He’d have ordered the warlocks to find a way to silence my counterpart.”

  “I can’t believe he’d do that to you.”

  “He’s a hard man, Will. But this is beside the point. Didn’t matter what you fellows were doing. I had to sabotage that negotiation to undermine Whitehall’s faith in the warlocks. They must never become an instrument of foreign policy.”

  “It’s hard to argue with your point about the warlocks,” said Will, “given what you’ve told me about the future.” He stood, stretched his legs, and crossed to the sideboard. His shirt stuck to his back; the tale of Marsh’s plight had him sweating. Pouring himself a tonic water, he continued, “But I can’t help but notice that I’m still drawing breath. As are the others, or so they were until quite recently. And that seems out of character for you.” He swished the water in his mouth, swallowed. “If the warlocks are such a threat, there’s a very simple way to counter it. So I can’t help but wonder why we haven’t expired yet.”

  A truck rumbled down the street with a detachment of Home Guard volunteers. It backfired, loud enough to rattle the china in Will’s kitchen. Marsh waited until it had receded into the distance.

  He said, “Unless and until the younger me has completed his task on the Continent, I don’t dare do anything permanent to the warlocks.”

  “You’re trying to have it both ways. Saving the world, but only on your terms.”
Will took another swallow. “It’s good to know you’re the same old Pip. Stubborn as always.”

  “What would you do in my situation?”

  “I’m not saying I disapprove.”

  “Good. Because I need your help.”

  Will set the empty glass down, then held up his hands. “We still have quite a lot to talk about. But I, for one, am famished. When is the last time you had a real meal?”

  Marsh shrugged. “I’m not sure.” He looked away. “Not so long. Sometimes Liv invites me…”

  It was hard to tell if the man could still blush, under the beard and scars.

  “I thought so,” said Will. “At some point we’ll have to talk about Liv, as well. But later. Because right now I’m buying you dinner. I happen to know a fine little place that serves—”

  “Circus animals. I remember the joke, Will.”

  “Your younger counterpart found it amusing.”

  “I know. I was there.” Marsh tossed back the last traces of his sherry, then set the empty glass on a side table. He gritted his teeth and winced as he rose to his feet, but waved off the hand Will offered.

  “Just my knee. My advice? Don’t get old.”

  “It must beat the alternative.”

  13 November 1940

  Berlin, Germany

  Himmler questioned Marsh three more times in the months after his first encounter with the Reichsführer-SS. The head of the Schutzstaffel liked things neat and orderly, and he did not care for offensive odors, so Marsh was cleaned and groomed before each session. Marsh kept his eyes downcast while being questioned, as expected of any obedient prisoner. He memorized a dozen filing numbers.

  Himmler had read the report from Gretel’s debriefing after her escape from Milkweed custody, and so, to a certain extent, Marsh had to play it straight. Himmler’s eyes shone at the thought of eldritch powers and dark summonings. He wanted to see an Eidolon, yearned to witness its power. But Marsh didn’t know how the warlocks had come by their lexicons, nor could he speak a single word of Enochian. There was little to say about the warlocks that Himmler didn’t already know or suspect based on Gretel’s report.