The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds

by Ian Tregillis

  “I mean all of them, together. All of you.”

  “We’ll hold on as long as we can.”

  “But how long is that? Stephenson told me what you found in Dover. That the barricade is moving inland.”

  It wasn’t a topic the warlocks discussed openly amongst themselves. But there was no denying they had exhausted their ability to keep the cost of intervention low. The Eidolons’ price grew with each renewal of the pact, like a tide rushing up the beach, quickly, terribly, and Will couldn’t see the tide line. They were drowning, an inch at a time, and he was running up and down the beach with a child’s toy spade and bucket.

  Will remembered the suicides, the damaged children. Ancillary blood prices. Enochian realpolitik.

  Will yanked at his tie to loosen the knot squeezing his throat. “Another week. Perhaps ten days.”

  They exited the Admiralty, passed the marine sentries and revetments. They crossed the courtyard beneath a cloudless ice-blue sky.

  Marsh turned up the street. “This way,” he said. Then he asked, “What happens after that?”

  “The Eidolons leave. The Channel reverts to its natural state.”

  “Will, it could be weeks before the natural weather makes invasion impossible.”

  “I know.” Will followed Marsh to a cream-colored Rolls. “This is Stephenson’s car.”

  “He’s up-country right now. Why let his petrol ration go to waste?”

  Will indulged himself with an exhausted grin. “You devil, you. He’ll have your head for a chamber pot.”

  “It was his idea.”

  “Ah. I’ve half a mind to take a car back from Bestwood, to have something in the city. I cut a rather dashing figure in the Snipe, if I do say so myself.” Will concluded, “Aubrey would have another fit, though.”

  “I imagine he would.”

  “He’s right, I suppose. The best I could do with the Snipe is junk it in the street as an obstacle for Jerry.”

  “You could become a tracker,” said Marsh. “Sleep in your car, outside of the city at night.”

  Will gave him another tired smile. They climbed in. “Pity Stephenson didn’t lend you his driver as well.”

  “I’ll tell him you said so.”

  Marsh made a U-turn there on Whitehall. He drove north, toward Trafalgar. It meant he wanted to talk; it would have been shorter to go south. They passed the strongpoint erected inside Admiralty Arch. The machine gun emplacement guarded the long approach down the Mall toward Buckingham Palace. Will tugged on his tie again.

  “We need more time, Will. We need new warlocks.”

  After weeks of crisscrossing Great Britain and Ireland, Will had identified and contacted fewer than a dozen warlocks. He’d done everything short of picking up the island and shaking it. Several of the men he’d found had been too far gone, too ruined, to contribute.

  “There are no more, Pip. We’ve turned every stone. I even went to the bloody Shetland Isles chasing the rumor of a legend of a folktale, but aside from some particularly bored-looked sheep, I found nothing of interest. I’m sorry, my friend, but there are no more.”

  The shadow of a barrage balloon flashed over the Rolls as they rounded the square. The balloons had sprouted up by the thousands across London. They blotted out the sun in places, yet still seemed tiny when the Junkers and Messerschmitts came.

  Marsh shook his head. “I didn’t say more warlocks. I said new warlocks. You and your colleagues need to start teaching Enochian to others.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “I’ve discussed it with Stephenson. We’ll recruit language savants from the other services. Perhaps they’ll pick up just enough to—”

  Will slapped his palm against the dashboard. The ever-present ache in the stump of his finger throbbed. “I said it’s not that simple.”

  “Tell me.”

  Will breathed deeply, fighting against the constriction in his chest. “I had this very same conversation yesterday. Can’t you have the old man explain it to you? Or one of the others?” By which he meant the warlocks.

  “Stephenson won’t understand it nearly so well as you do, and I don’t know the others so well as I know you. I want to hear it from you.”

  Do you know me, Pip? Lexicons and negotiations, actions and blood prices, there’s my life for the past few months.

  Will marshaled his thoughts. “The problem is this: Learning Enochian requires exposure beginning at an early age. Adults cannot begin to learn Enochian. Only children can. The younger, the better.”

  Marsh frowned. On a brief straightaway, he cracked his knuckles against his jaw, taking one hand at a time from the steering wheel. “What happens when somebody does come to it as an adult? ‘Acceptable risk’ doesn’t mean what it used to, Will.”

  “I’m bloody well aware of that. But I didn’t say they shouldn’t learn it. I said they can’t.”

  Marsh risked a sidelong glance at Will. “Why?”

  “We’re surrounded with language, human language, from the moment we’re born. Earlier, in fact, if you believe sound penetrates the womb. It . . . corrupts us. But Enochian is the true universal language, truer and more pure than anything remotely human. Getting a fingerhold on it requires a certain amount of purity.”

  “But you’re learning from the others. Why isn’t that impossible?”

  “You can always widen or deepen a fingerhold, once you have that. The trick is getting that hold in the first place. And that can only be done as a child. I’ll never amount to anything more than a journeyman, myself. Though I’m improving, thanks to the others. Grandfather started my lessons when I was eight—far too old. It’s a miracle I absorbed any of it.”

  “Stephenson told me about the children on the coast.”

  Will nodded sadly. “Proximity to Eidolons has been rumored to do that. But don’t get your hopes up, Pip. Those children have been surrounded by human language. They’re too tainted to learn Enochian without guidance. We don’t have fifteen or twenty years to raise them into warlocks. And if you’re considering stopgap measures, as I know you are, forget it.” He held up his hand, wiggled the stump of his missing finger. “I will not expose children to blood prices. Full stop.”

  They drove in silence for a few minutes. London had become a foreign city to Will. It was the collective effect of many little things, like the way ornamental wrought-iron railings around stairwells and gardens had disappeared into the foundries, and the X’s taped across windowpanes. Not to mention the blocks where the Blitz had rendered homes and businesses into scrap heaps of construction debris.

  “Will, there’s something I don’t understand.” Marsh maneuvered the Rolls through the narrow opening in a makeshift barricade of fence posts and sewer piping. Barricades like these would be closed off when the invasion came. Two middle-aged men, volunteers for the Home Guard, stood on either side of the barrier. Their denim overalls were too long; too-small steel helmets sat on their heads like forage caps; their rifles predated the Great War.

  After they accelerated again, Marsh continued. “If only children can learn Enochian, where did the lexicons come from? I know they’re passed down the generations, but how did that begin? How did anything ever get transcribed?”

  “Ah. You’ve grasped the very root of the matter. As I knew you would.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well. The story goes that at some point in the Middle Ages—nobody can say exactly when—certain Church scholars and intellectuals of the day decided to trace the history of humanity back to its origin in the Garden of Eden. And so they sought the Adamical, pre-Deluge language.”

  Marsh nodded. His eyes didn’t leave the road, but Will knew he had Marsh’s complete attention.

  “Setting aside the medieval metaphysics for a moment, they reasoned that the oldest language would also be the most natural. Which is to say that in the absence of other influences, a person would naturally speak this language.”

  “The absence of other influenc
es?”

  “Yes. So they did the obvious thing. They rounded up as many newborns as they could—it’s best not to ask how—and raised them in strict isolation from all human contact and interaction.”

  “Good Lord. That’s barbaric.”

  “Quite. But it worked. The only flaw in their experiment, of course, is that the ur-language isn’t a human language at all.”

  “My God,” said Marsh. Will knew he was thinking of his daughter.

  They were nearing Will’s flat, skimming along the south edge of the green expanse of Hyde Park along Kensington Road, when the light traffic slowed to a halt. Marsh idled Stephenson’s Rolls into a queue of several other cars.

  “Damned Jerries,” said Will. Bomb craters, the rubble of collapsed buildings, and unexploded ordnance were common traffic hazards of late.

  They inched forward a bit at a time. Will expected to see a troop of sappers from the Royal Engineers setting up, as was often the case with bomb damage. Instead, a policeman directed the queue around a traffic smashup.

  An omnibus on a side street had blasted through the intersection with Kensington and smashed into the Victorian guard house at Alexandra Gate. It had clipped two cars, nearly flipping one, and pinning another to the guard house. The omnibus had ripped a deep furrow through the flowerbeds. Three of the four pillars on the guard house portico had come down, littering the grounds with chunks of granite. Will glimpsed two more policemen carrying a stretcher covered with a sheet away from the site of the pinned car just as Marsh cleared the congestion and sped up again.

  Blood prices.

  Will wondered who had arranged this one. He clawed at his necktie. He yanked his collar open, too. A shirt button plinked into his lap.

  “Not far from your doorstep,” said Marsh. “Perhaps it’s for the best that you haven’t driven the Snipe down from Bestwood.”

  Will concentrated on breathing, the ebb and flow of air through his lungs. He wasn’t drowning just yet. Not yet.

  “You know, Pip . . . I rather think I will take you up on that pint.”

  Marsh looked at him sidewise. “Honestly?”

  “Please.”

  Will didn’t say anything else until Marsh found a pub with PLENTY OF BEER, BOTTLE & DRAUGHT chalked on the door. Marsh had to point it out twice. Will didn’t hear him the first time, because he was too distracted by the crash of surf and an advancing tide.

  1 September 1940

  Reichsbehörde für die Erweiterung germanischen Potenzials

  On Sundays, Klaus took breakfast with Doctor von Westarp.

  His parlor on the third floor of the farmhouse overlooked the grounds of the REGP. The treetops of the distant forest shimmered green, yellow, and red in an early autumn breeze. Over the susurration of leaves, one could hear the stutter of a machine gun, the whoosh and crackle of fire, the whumpf of muffled land mine detonations, Buhler barking orders off in the distance. Gravel pattered against the windowpanes. It came from the immense sand pit that had been constructed on the west side of the complex.

  It was quieter inside. The doctor demanded strict silence during meals. Extraneous noise caused indigestion, he insisted. Silence during the meal, followed by a symphony and one cup (precisely eight ounces) of coffee. That was the doctor’s recipe for a vigorous constitution. But now Mahler’s Sixth had ended, and the gramophone hissed while the needle skipped around the center of the disc. Klaus used a toast point to mop up the last of his breakfast. Today it had been quail eggs, salty Dutch bacon, lemon curd, and bitter coffee mixed with real cream.

  The doctor commanded such esteem in the eyes of the Reich’s leadership that he enjoyed the first pick of many spoils of war. And Klaus, having single-handedly rescued Gretel from enemy territory (therefore making possible the chain of successes that had inflated the doctor’s prestige over the summer) enjoyed von Westarp’s favor.

  Skrreep. Von Westarp raised the gramophone needle, put the arm on its cradle, and gently lifted the disc with his fingertips. He tilted it this way and that, peering at it through his thick eyeglasses, inspecting it for dust and scratches with the same concentration he applied to subjects in his laboratory.

  “I have a new task for you,” he said.

  At last. A frisson of excitement ricocheted through Klaus, banishing the usual lethargy brought on by a fulfilling meal. He sat up. “I’m ready.”

  Emboldened by his success in May, Klaus had been agitating for another mission to England. Gretel’s report regarding her experiences in enemy custody—though hard to believe at first—pointed the way to the conquest of Great Britain. Kill the sorcerers, and the island would fall. Klaus could do that easily.

  But the high command had disregarded his suggestion. Gretel’s advice had guided the Luftwaffe through the systematic elimination of Britain’s air defenses. The island nation faced a deficit of fighting men, armaments, and morale. The OKW felt that Britain’s final defenses would collapse under a sustained bombing campaign.

  It was slow and inefficient. Klaus could fix the problem in a matter of days.

  Von Westarp exhaled forcefully in short little bursts, clearing the gramophone disc of dust. The motes danced in the sunlight slanting through the tall windows. Between exhalations he added, almost as an afterthought, “You must do this, or my reputation will suffer.”

  “I would die to prevent that,” said Klaus. He was pleased with how genuine it sounded. Perhaps it was true.

  “You will oversee the construction of new incubators.”

  Incubators. The excitement disintegrated. Cold panic filled the void it left behind, as though Klaus had been stabbed with an icicle. The buzz of the Götterelektron filled his head. Klaus wanted to dematerialize, to become ephemeral so that he couldn’t be imprisoned.

  He had tried it once, years ago. His battery had lasted just long enough to whip the doctor into a frenzied rage. Two days later, Klaus had emerged from his box feeble with dehydration and sobbing for clemency.

  A moment passed while the rest of the doctor’s statement sank in. Klaus released the Götterelektron, ashamed of his weakness. He hoped the doctor hadn’t noticed the way the dust had eddied through the space occupied by Klaus’s body.

  Klaus drained the last drops of coffee from his cup to wash away the taste of copper. He set it back on its saucer with the characteristic clink of fine Dresden porcelain.

  “I don’t understand.” Also genuine. Also true.

  Von Westarp turned his attention to Klaus, eyes narrowed in irritation. “The continuation of my work requires new incubators. You will see they are constructed promptly. You do remember your incubator, don’t you?”

  The doctor called it that because it incubated the Willenskräfte, willpower. Klaus called it a coffin box.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell the shop to build several of each type,” said the doctor. “You have firsthand experience, so you will instruct them on the proper methods.” He slid the music disc into its sleeve. “And note their progress closely.”

  Klaus’s incubator had been filled with hydraulic plates for squeezing the occupant. Reinhardt’s incubator had been fitted with compressors, pumps, and coils of liquid refrigerant. Heike’s incubator had been made of window glass, and ringed with lamps, mirrors, and lenses. Kammler’s had been the largest, lined with knives and needles, with a single lever out of reach of the restraints.

  Von Westarp shuffled across the room in the threadbare dressing gown he’d taken to calling his “uniform.” He poured a new cup from the porcelain carafe on the table and scooped six heaping spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. He took the coffee to the bay window overlooking the empire he’d built.

  “They envy my success. They covet my standing with the Führer. You must watch them, lest my enemies sabotage me. You’re the only one I trust.”

  It was common for the doctor to change subjects like this. Such was the mark of a great mind, seeing connections that others found opaque. Common wisdom at the REGP.

  Bu
t seeing him there at the window . . . Klaus wondered if many great men shuffled around in their dressing gowns and obsessed over their bowel movements.

  He was silent for too long as he considered this.

  “Does this please you?” snapped von Westarp. “The plotting of my enemies?”

  “No, Herr Doctor!” The words came automatically. “They won’t dare act against you. I’ll see to it.”

  “Good. See the work is completed quickly.”

  “It will be.” Klaus stood. He saluted. “Thank you for breakfast, Herr Doctor.”

  “Fetch your sister before you speak to the machinists,” said von Westarp, still gazing outside. Klaus recognized the black Mercedes coming up the long crushed-gravel drive. It belonged to General Field Marshal Keitel, the Führer’s chief of staff on the OKW.

  “At once.”

  Von Westarp slurped at his coffee, waving him away with an impatient flutter of his free hand.

  Klaus took his leave of the doctor and went downstairs. He passed the debriefing rooms on his way outside. From one of the rooms came a rhythmic panting and the squeak of wooden table legs across a tile floor as Pabst “interrogated” one of the Twins. Her sister had been deployed to the Baltic states. Everything she learned about the Soviet occupation there would go straight to her double, unimpeded by the threat of Allied and Soviet listening posts intercepting the transmission.

  The autumnal smell of wet leaves wafted across the training grounds. It would rain to night. The grounds also smelled of diesel fuel and hot sand, from where Reinhardt trained for his mission to North Africa.

  Britain’s piddling deployments in Egypt and Sudan would fall quickly now that the Italians were on the move; their reinforcements had perished on the beaches of France, after all. But an Italian North Africa would put the Mediterranean in Mussolini’s control. Reinhardt’s talents—perfectly suited to the desert—would go a long way toward ensuring that didn’t happen. He would also spearhead the inevitable advances into the oil fields of the Middle East.

  News of the assignment had eased the foul mood that had enveloped Reinhardt since Klaus’s elevation to von Westarp’s favorite. For months, random objects had developed a tendency to erupt into flames in Klaus’s presence.