More worrying than that, the platform’s range has been seriously reduced, resulting in many of our agents being trapped out there, in danger, unable to jump home to Four-Oh. But Zarah, bless her, has everything in hand in that regard. She’s been getting their locations and time coordinates and sending them, by messenger, to Moscow Central for Svetov to act upon.
But in those few minutes, as Zarah briefs me, I have an idea.
Gehlen doesn’t like his ‘guests’, eh? Then let’s see if those guests he’s so keen to get rid of can resolve the problem of Gehlen and the controlling AI.
Only when I go to visit them, in their special quarters, it’s to find that Gehlen has incarcerated them in one of the conference rooms and refuses to release them.
Things are slipping away from us, moment by moment. And if something isn’t done …
I stop dead, knowing what I have to do. Enough’s enough. We can’t have Gehlen lecturing us and threatening us in this fashion. What he’s doing is a hostile act, and in doing so he has become our enemy. And there is only one way to deal with your enemies. To confront them. And destroy them if you must.
Only the hatchway is locked, and there’s no other way of getting to the AI.
Which is where Zarah and Urte come into things, for between them they manage to over-ride the genewart for just long enough for me to open the hatchway and slip inside.
It slams shut behind me.
I walk across, facing the glowing presence in the wall, realising as I do that Gehlen is slowly chilling the air, thinning it at the same time, making it hard for me to breathe, let alone talk. Only he can’t shut me up entirely.
‘You have to stop this, Hans. We are your friends. And you … you swore to protect us …’
My head hurts and my throat is burning now, but I keep on talking.
‘It’s Reichenau, isn’t it? He’s corrupted you. Fed you false data. Lied to you. He’s our enemy, Hans. He’s always been our enemy. Ours and yours. I …’
I have to stop. My head is swimming now, my vision distorting.
‘Reichenau was my friend,’ Gehlen says, finally. ‘He—’
‘Reichenau was never your friend. He—’
I fall to my knees, knowing suddenly that I will die, here in this room, on a fool’s mission to persuade an insane operating system to act more humanely.
My voice is hoarse now. ‘Hans … please …’
And slump, my forehead pressed against the ice-cold wall.
Is he watching? He must be, for while he does not restore things to their normal state, he responds to my suffering, making the air less chill, less thin. Enough to let me speak.
‘You mustn’t do this, Hans. You kept us safe. For two centuries and more you kept us safe. You let the volk live. You can’t turn against them, now. You can’t.’
‘You betrayed me, Otto.’
The words chill me as much as the air. It seems so final.
‘It wasn’t me,’ I answer, my voice almost a whisper. ‘It was Reichenau. He’s been dripping poison into your ear for years now. Feeding you lies.’
I am at the edge now. Barely conscious. A minute more and I’ll be dead.
‘Disconnect,’ I say, as my eyes close, perhaps for the last time. ‘Order the AI to shut down. Now, Hans … before it’s all destroyed.’
It has been like talking an errant child down off a ledge. Only I have no more to give. I am exhausted, close to death. As I take a breath so the air seems to rattle in my throat.
Goodbye …
And even as I give my last farewell, so I sense, rather than see, the presence that is Gehlen brighten intensely against the blue, like it’s giving off a sequence of coded instructions, then fade to nothing.
Gone. Only the blueness remaining.
Ten seconds pass. Fifteen. And then, at twenty it all comes on again, in a great wash of colour and sound that floods Four-Oh.
Only I too am gone.
386
How many times can you die and be reborn?
I picture myself, dead on that cart in Krasnogorsk, Katerina’s corpse laid beside my own, the two of us dead for all time, and wonder if that must be, if all of this misguided struggle against fate is really worth the effort.
Zarah and Urte saved me. Jumped in and brought me out between them, placing my corpse-cold form into a resurrector and throwing the switch, hoping against hope that I’d revive.
Dead, I was. Dead for the best part of three minutes. And then back. Back like I’d jumped from somewhere deep inside myself. Somewhere deep and usually impenetrable.
Except for the dead. And the resurrected.
Only I am ill, badly ill, the gaseous presence of the genewart having leaked into the room and poisoned me.
For a time I linger, halfway between life and death, in a state of constant hallucination.
My dreams are strange and wild, yet amid them are small nuggets of truth. In one of them, a blinded Reichenau stumbles about in a huge and empty room, searching for something, while Kolya crawls around the walls, a cruel smile on his lips. In another a white horse and her five white foals flee from a dark stallion that has Kolya’s madly staring eyes. Kolya again is in the third, his mouth hinged back as he floats in space, swallowing whole planets.
And when, finally, I come around, it is to find myself strangely at peace with myself, finding, for the first time since Kolya dumped me in that alternate timeline, that I have clarity of thought.
Reichenau, I know, is ‘blind’ now, his source in Four-Oh shut down. And maybe that’s true for Kolya as well.
I decide it is time to go on the offensive. To go out and finish Reichenau off. Only where should I look? 2343? 1952?
No. I must trust once more to instinct.
To Baturin …
387
And arrive there on the evening of the second of November, 1708. Menshikov’s troops are to the north of the ancient Cossack capital as I walk its crowded streets again, heading for the quayside inn, The Goat of Marmaris.
Nearer the inn, I move back into the shadows of a doorway, watching as I leave the woman’s room. Then, when my earlier self has gone, I slip inside.
‘What, back again?’ she asks. ‘Changed your mind, mister married man?’
I draw my needle-gun and aim it at her, and watch her eyes open with understanding. She stands and begins to dress.
‘So you know.’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘If I wanted to I could jump. You couldn’t fire that thing fast enough.’
‘Perhaps. But I want answers. Like who you are working for.’
‘You know who I’m working for. Or will be working for, that is.’
That puzzles me. ‘What do you mean?’
‘That I’m not even born yet, where you come from. I’m one of the Angels.’
‘Angels?’
She smiles. ‘You’ll understand it soon, Otto. Once you’ve been through the loop. Once you’ve seen and done it all.’
I watch her pull her top on then tie the silken sash. ‘One thing …’
‘Go on?’
‘If you’re not working for Reichenau, then why is he here in Baturin?’
She comes closer. ‘You guessed it correctly when you were last here. He’s recruiting the dead. Whole armies of the dead. Or people who would have been, if he’d not removed them from time. It’s a trick he learned from his father. But whatever Kolya does, Michael does bigger. It’s how he is. Like Loki. He likes to meddle. To set brother against brother and bring down the gods.’
‘How do you know so much about him?’
‘Because I was his lover … for a time.’
‘Did he know …?’
‘That I was an agent? No. Because you didn’t ever reveal it to Gehlen.’
That surprises me. ‘You know about that?’
She smiles, then reaches for a brush to do her lustrous black hair.
‘Of course I know. I’ve read the histories. I know what happens. And now yo
u get one wish, Otto. One … request. I already know what it is, but you still have to say it.’
I hesitate, then ask. ‘Where is he? Reichenau? Where will I find him?’
‘Think snail and shell,’ she says. ‘Think of two huge soap-bubbles joined by a single surface, surrounded by nothing. Think of a man, his ear to the floorboards, listening to his neighbour down below.’
I mean to ask what she means, to clarify, but in that instant she is gone. I sniff in her perfume, then jump back to Four-Oh.
388
Over the next few days I have all but a skeleton staff moved out of Four-Oh and into Moscow Central. It’s there, in front of everyone, that I explain just where Reichenau is, ‘riding on the back of Four-Oh’, tapped in directly to its power source, the black hole.
My plan is simple and direct. We close down Four-Oh completely and move our operations wholesale to Moscow Central, which will effectively become Four-Oh.
Leaving Reichenau without a power source to run his platforms.
And Kolya too?
The answer is … I don’t know.
As for the move, that proves more difficult than I imagined, mainly because a huge number of new quarters have to be created within Moscow Central, and while there’s no problem as far as creating new ‘no space’ rooms to replace those lost from Four-Oh, this settling in of the two ancient enemies at close quarters – almost literally shoulder to shoulder – is bound to cause us more than a few problems.
With everything ferried across, the hour finally comes for us to switch things off, and as I pull the switch, so some of the older and more prominent agents – those who have known no other home – raise their glasses to ‘Time Passed’, caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are hugs and tears, but Svetov, representing our allies, raises his glass, sounding a new tone of determination.
‘Brothers … sisters … it’s time to go hunting!’
389
The trouble is, where?
With all of Time and Space to comb, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Then again, Reichenau and Kolya are only mortal and, with no power source, they’re more vulnerable than they’ve ever been. Clever as each is, they have to rely on others to do their bidding, and it is through these associates that I mean to track them down.
Not to mention Katerina and my girls.
I decide to look at every place we know Reichenau has been, and then – one after another – to hit the historical ‘cusp-points’, such as major battles, as well as times and places that we know he might be tempted to tinker.
I call an emergency meeting of all of our leading agents, where a list of targets is drawn up, fascinated to see just how similar a view of history the Russians have to us. Indeed, there’s such an understanding between the two sides it’s difficult to believe that we were ever enemies. Yet we are conscious that there are still rebels, out there in Time – and not just Russians.
Which is when Svetov gives me the news.
A handful of German agents have vanished. Gone, possibly dead. There’s certainly no signal coming back from them. But I think it’s far more likely that they have joined up with Reichenau, convinced by his honeyed words to keep the great war going.
We decide to sweep Time, looking for signs, focusing first on all those places where our agents have gone missing. And while we wait for answers, I sit with Svetov in Hecht’s room and talk, sharing our experiences – the places we’ve been, the things we’ve done – and wonder why we haven’t done this before.
‘Rumour is you killed him,’ Svetov says.
‘Who do you mean?’
‘Kravchuk.’
‘Ah …’ and I look away, remembering what he did to my darling girl. The way the light had winked on the blade of his knife before he pulled it across her throat.
‘Yes, and I’d do it again, a thousand times.’
‘I never met the man, but … was he really so odious?’
‘Not one redeeming quality.’
‘I can’t imagine it,’ Svetov says. ‘To have my fate in another’s hands.’
‘And not just any “other”. You can’t imagine how it felt. As if Time itself were against our happiness.’
‘Do you think Hecht knew what you were going through?’
‘Not in the least. But the women did. And understood. You might say that it was the first act in their little revolution.’
Svetov falls silent a moment, then looks at me again, a deep sorrow in his dark brown eyes.
‘And now?’
‘Now? I’d say it’s the only thing that keeps me going – knowing that the loop will bring me back to them eventually. And before you ask, I have to believe that. If I didn’t …’
‘It must be difficult.’
‘It’s more than that.’ Only I don’t say what it is.
‘We’re all behind you,’ Svetov says, squeezing my arm. ‘You know that, Otto.’
I almost smile. Only I feel too great a weight on me. To think they’re out there somewhere, alone and suffering, maybe dead. The mere thought of it is awful. If I start imagining it, I’ll fall apart.
I jump up and cross the room, then take a book down from the shelves.
‘Look,’ I say, opening it to the title page and handing it to him. ‘Have you ever seen this sign before?’
He studies it then looks to me again. ‘Aside from it being the very shape of the foci Reichenau uses?’ He shrugs. ‘It’s the symbol for infinity, isn’t it?’
‘It is. But it’s more than that. As a mathematical symbol it goes back to 1655, when the mathematician John Wallis first used it. Some say it’s based on the Roman numeral for a thousand – indicating many, or a lot. Others say it’s based on omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet, but in modern times it has come to mean other things, like the worm Ouroboros, always swallowing its own tail, or, in its most physical form, the Möbius strip.’
‘And you, Otto … what does it represent to you?’
‘Time itself …’
Svetov considers that, then nods. ‘Time itself, huh?’
‘In all its forms. We talk of loops, right? Well, this is the form I think of when I think of loops. Not a simple circle but this, this lazy eight, with its suggested movement – out and back. And I’m not sure why, but it’s almost like it’s been imprinted on my brain.’
‘I see.’ Svetov sniffs in deeply, like he’s been wondering whether he ought to tell me something.
‘Go on …’
He smiles, then is serious again. ‘It’s just … towards the end, in those last few months … while Master Yastryeb was still with us … Well, he seemed to have changed. Nothing I could fully identify, only … he was different. There was a secret meeting that he went to. He wouldn’t say where he went, or who he met, but I think he went to see Hecht. What was said or argued between them, no one knows. Yastryeb wrote nothing down, nor spoke to anyone about it. Yet I think some agreement was made between the two men. I think …’
‘Yes?’
‘I think that’s when they realised that it wasn’t just Us and Them and Rassenkampf, but something much more complex. I’m not even sure they knew quite what it was. Only that someone else was muddying the waters of the timestream.’
‘And you think their deaths were somehow “triggered” by them knowing?’
‘It’s possible, no?’
‘Possible, yes, but then … why wouldn’t they have said something? And why didn’t they look into it?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe they’d begun to do that … before they died.’
‘I would have known.’
‘You think? Just as Hecht knew about you and Katerina?’
There’s a knock. ‘Meister?’
‘Come in!’
It’s young Tomas, fresh from the platform. ‘Forgive me for interrupting you, Meister, but you did ask us to keep you informed.’
‘And?’
‘All six teams are back, and not one of them have made any sig
htings. Not the smallest trace. It’s like they’ve vanished completely.’
I’m surprised. I expected something. But what if their vanishing act has to do with Four-Oh coming offline? And what if – dare I even think it – we may have actually erased our enemies from Time?
I voice this, even though it’s not a thought I want to entertain. Since abandoning Four-Oh, I have been growing more and more worried about Katerina and the girls. It’s been so long now that I am beginning to give up hope. No matter what I’ve said to Svetov about the loop, I am close to losing myself to despair. Would Kolya have kept them unharmed for this long? I almost don’t dare to think about it. At the same time, I cannot help myself.
The truth is it would be better if I knew that they were dead, for then my rage – my vengeful anger – might fill Time itself.
Only Tomas proves to be wrong. Even as I make to dismiss him, so another of the Russian agents, Alina Tupayeva, reports to me with news.
‘We’ve taken two of them,’ she says. ‘Kabanov and Postovsky. The two agents that Seydlitz and Kramer thought they’d killed back in the thirteenth century.’
‘While I was in Christburg with the Brothers?’
‘The same.’
‘And you say captured?’ Svetov asks. ‘All in one piece and breathing?’
‘With all working parts … except for their time pendants. Those we took.’
‘Time pendants?’
‘Reichenau …’ Svetov says quietly. They’ve been working for Reichenau all along.’
‘Yes, but now we have them,’ I say, getting up. ‘So let’s ask a few questions.’
‘Meister …’ Tupaveya says, bowing her head, her dark hair swaying. ‘We had to leave them in situ. Without the time pendants we couldn’t get them back here. And we couldn’t leave them on them, so … they’re still there. My team are keeping a watch on them and awaiting orders.’
‘I see. And where’s there?’
‘Nomonhan, Meister, in June 1939. They were advising the Japanese army.’
The Master of Time: Roads to Moscow: Book Three Page 17
