The Ocean of Time

by David Wingrove

  ‘Good,’ I say finally. ‘Be seated.’

  Kaunitz waits as I finish writing, and when I look up at him again, his eyes seem less defensive than they were. He thinks it’s almost over, and were I interviewing him in earnest, this is when I would ask my most damning questions. Now, when he’s most vulnerable and least on his guard. But I am done with Kaunitz. There’s nothing wrong with the boy. In any age he’d be a fine young man. It is the system, not him, that’s at fault, even if the poor boy cannot help but be part of it.

  So it was under the Nazis.

  I dismiss Kaunitz, then, feeling I need something less anodyne, decide to spice up my morning. Walking over to the door, I glance at Haushofer, then, pointedly turning away from him, face the eldest of those seated there.

  ‘Gerhardt Sanger. Come. It’s your turn now.’

  303

  It is late evening before I return to the room above the kitchens. I’m mentally tired and know I’ve put too much into the sessions. But, fake as they were, it was hard not to. Hard to buck my own nature and do only half a job.

  Fifteen interviews I managed. One third of those scheduled, and some of them – like those for Sanger and Gunsche – really hard work. Sanger I found particularly difficult, because, I suspect, he wrong-footed me at one point. I asked about his mother, and his face changed, as if I was deliberately taunting him. Anger flashed in his eyes.

  ‘My mother’s dead! If you read the file you’d know that! They tried to kill my father, but they got her instead. Fragments of bone were all they found, along with what remained of the flier … Russians.’

  The bitterness with which he said that final word remains with me even now. I apologised, of course. There was little else I could do. And while I still dislike the young man, I understand him a little better now. As all of them.

  For that, more than anything, is what this day has turned out to be. A day of understanding. I find I have learned far more about this age in this one day of private interviews than I’d ever grasped by studying the histories. Observing these young men – seeing them struggle with the questions I slowly, bit by bit, devised for them; questions which challenged their conditioning – I finally came to terms with what, on a human level, this age is about.

  Seated at my desk, looking out across the twilit courtyard down below, I find my mind making links across the ages. This ‘new’ scientific system of belief … how does it differ from the old workings of Faith? In what respect do the two diverge?

  In practical effects, not at all. Be they priests or geneticists, both exude a cast-iron certainty. They positively glow with belief, while their flock, be they ‘lost souls’ or ‘gene-machines’, display varying degrees of ‘faith’. Some – those boys in the middle age range, particularly – are troubled that they don’t believe enough – that they have vague, disquieting doubts. Can it really all be put down to blind chance and billions of years? Or is there some shaping force? Some conscious, underlying pattern to it all?

  It’s a curious reversal, and from such musings a new ‘faith’ will unfold in time. But not yet. Not for a century or more.

  Changing tack, I think of why I’m really here. Of Kolya and what he’s up to here. Kolya certainly knew what I was up to earlier, and that probably means he knows my every step while I’m here in 2343, even before I take it.

  Yes, but I’m not going to let that stop me. Because this leads somewhere. To Krasnogorsk, certainly, but not only to there. And he can’t know everything about me, surely? He can’t know every single move I make. Because to do so he’d have to be in the room with me, watching me, seeing what I do.

  The thought encourages me. Kolya may know the broad outline of events as far as I’m concerned, but he doesn’t know the fine detail. And maybe Phil Dick was right. Maybe Kolya was angry that time because he knew I’d found a way to stop him killing me. Time-dead, that is.

  But most of all I’m going to do this because I can’t sit on my hands, and because they won’t let me go where I most want to be: with Katerina and my girls.

  So I’ll find her, and kill him if I can. And if I can’t, at least I’ll know that for a fact. I will have tried.

  I stand and turn, and as I do, I see that someone has slipped a note beneath the door. I walk across and pick it up, then fling the door open, but the corridor is empty. For all I know the note has lain there this last twenty minutes.

  I unfold it and read.

  ‘Meet me on the walkway above the labs at midnight.’

  And that’s it. It’s not even signed. So it could be Kolya. Only I don’t think it is.

  Midnight is almost three hours off, and I’m of a mind to jump there straight away, to go in at a slight distance at five past midnight, and then – when I’ve seen who wants to meet me – to jump back here and then return naturally, by foot.

  If it’s safe. If it isn’t Kolya.

  304

  So that’s what I do. I slip out, moving unseen down darkened corridors, passing like a shadow across silent courtyards, down steps and out across moonlit lawns, until I find the place, located to the north of the main quadrant, between the massive rectangle of the labs and a long, windowless block. The walkway passes overhead, spanning the gap between the gym – which towers beyond the nearer buildings – and the fight school, concealed behind me, a long, straight length of softly lit kunstlichestahl, suspended eighty feet above the ground.

  Looking about me, I quickly find the right spot, secluded on three sides, but giving a clear view of the walkway. Then, looking all about me, making certain that no one’s watching, I jump: back first to Four-Oh, and then back again, to the same spot, only three hours further on.

  And see myself, standing in the moonlight on the walkway overhead, waiting patiently for the author of the note, turning casually as a cloaked figure approaches from behind me to my right – from the direction of the fight school.

  Coming closer, the figure stops, and for the next minute or two they exchange words. Then, suddenly, there’s the faintest noise – a groaning, or maybe an animal lowing – and they both turn, looking down over the waist-high rail towards the labs.

  I move forward a step, trying to see just what they’re looking at, but as I do the wind blows up, rustling the leaves that surround me, and, unsettled, I turn to check there’s no one there.

  And when I look again they’re gone.

  I jump out, then jump back into the room above the kitchens, arriving the moment after I’d left, three hours back. And there I wait, until ten minutes to midnight.

  305

  I turn, watching the cloaked figure come towards me, just as I saw it from my hiding place below. They stop, giving the slightest bow, and I see that it’s a young man.

  ‘You came,’ he says, and smiles. ‘Good.’

  Only he looks wrong. Too young, for a start, and too … open. Whoever he is, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t work for Kolya.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Let’s just say I’m an intermediary. The thing is—’

  ‘Did Kolya send you?’

  ‘Kolya? Who’s Kolya?’

  ‘Then why are you here? Who sent you?’

  He’s about to answer, when a strange sound – a groaning – comes from below, from the direction of the labs. We both turn and go to the rail.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘One of the prisoners.’

  ‘Prisoners?’

  There’s a sudden gust of wind and he looks to me, his blue eyes flashing. ‘There’s a vent, above the room they’re kept in. You hear them sometimes, especially at night, when it’s silent. You want to see? I know the codes.’

  ‘The codes?’ I consider it, then nod.

  I follow him, back along the walkway and down a long, twisting flight of metal steps. At the bottom a door.

  He turns to me. ‘Speak quietly. They’ll be sedated, but … don’t lean over the pens. That sets them off sometimes. They’ll start braying, like dogs. And the
n the guards will come.’

  He turns, facing the door squarely, and taps a code into the keypad. At once a beam of purple light flashes out, reading his ‘indent’. A moment later the door irises open, and in we go, into a long, darkened room, the only light coming up from the ‘strips’ in the floor. I have a vague impression of work benches and of great, looming machines to the sides, against the windowless walls, but I’ve no time to stop and look.

  My guide moves swiftly, unerringly across the floor, following one of the faintly lit strips, and I hurry to keep up with him.

  On the far side there’s another door. Again he taps in a code, again the light flashes out, scanning the indent. And in we go, into a brighter, much colder space, the ceiling lower than in the main laboratory. As the door hisses shut behind me, I take it all in at a glance. The room is about fifty yards square, the walls a glinting white, like porcelain. In the centre of the space, in neat rows, on small, island-like platforms, are the ‘pens’, though they look much more like giant baths, or sinks, with their chest-high porcelain sides. The light comes up from them in a soft, pale blue-white glow.

  My guide touches my arm, then leads me out across the floor. I keep my voice low, like I’m in the presence of sleeping children.

  ‘You said prisoners …’

  ‘Political prisoners. Traitors, I’d guess you’d call them. The courts send them here. They used to execute them, but they’ve found a better use for them these days. The courts have ruled that they’ve no rights, you understand. Not even the right to breathe. So they end up here. The Doktor uses them for experiments. To teach the boys.’

  ‘And you …?’

  ‘Clean up after them. Wash out the pens.’

  We stop beside the first of them and, careful not to lean over the thick, chest-high porcelain walls of the glowing pen, look in.

  I don’t know what I expected, but it isn’t this. It’s a young woman, shackled at both wrists and both ankles, chained there on her back on the cold white floor of the pen, naked and emaciated, her head shaved, dark flecks covering her almost translucently pale flesh.

  ‘They’ve not started with this one yet,’ he says, matter-of-factly. ‘They don’t normally. Not until they’ve assimilated.’

  I look to him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They starve them a while. And cut them. Little cuts, but painful. You see.’ And he points to the flecks. ‘The idea is to break them. Make them more compliant. That way it’s easier.’

  ‘Ah …’ But I feel sick looking at her, imagining her as a child, cuddled up in her mother’s arms; see her through a father’s eyes – somebody’s daughter – and weep inside at her fate. Whatever she did, it could not have deserved this.

  ‘Are they all …?’

  He looks to me, waiting for me to complete my sentence, but I can’t. I’ve just seen what’s in the pen beside hers. I walk across and, ignoring his warning, lean in, looking closer.

  ‘Doppelgehirn,’ he says, with what’s almost an air of pride. ‘They’ve almost perfected the technique.’

  I swallow, then nod. I can see where they’ve joined the two skulls. The scars are fresh and raw, scabbed over, the stitches still in place. The skin is stretched tight across the bone, so that every vein is visible and raised, like a junkie’s legs.

  ‘I thought it would be more … sophisticated.’

  He smiles. ‘It is, generally. But the boys have to learn …’

  I notice that there’s the faintest trembling in the limbs. The creature’s eyelids flicker in disturbed sleep, and then the body spasms and kicks, and then it groans: a long, low, animal lowing. The same sound we heard from up on the walkway.

  ‘It takes a while to meld,’ he says. ‘The two brains. They fight at first. One has to be dominant, you see. You can’t have both in charge. Hence the spasms, that faint trembling in the limbs. They all get that. Some never quite lose it. You see, that’s where they fight it out – in the muscles. They both try and send signals to control the muscles. Each tries to colonise, if you like, different parts of the body. But only one can win.’

  I look to him. ‘Is this the only one?’

  ‘No. There’s seven of them in here right now. They’ve been trying to perfect the technique. The Doktor is very proud of what’s been achieved these past few years.’

  ‘Can I see the others?’

  ‘Sure.’

  None of them proves to be Reichenau, but it makes me feel that maybe this is where he came from. From this cold, underlit hall, and maybe even from this time.

  Only how to find that out? Would there be records here?

  ‘Have you seen enough?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  We go out, and as the door closes behind us, so I find myself shivering, part from the cold within, but also from the memory of the young woman.

  It ought not to surprise me, yet it does. How often in the past, after all, has a civilising force depended on such barbarities?

  I look to him again. ‘Were you specifically asked to show me that?’

  ‘Only if you wanted to.’

  I take that in. So somebody wanted me to see, wanted me to make connections.

  I’m about to ask him more, when he touches my arm again.

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘She’s here. Come, quickly now, before we’re seen.’

  We cut across the grass, beneath the walkway, and as we come into the shadow of the facing building, so I see her, standing in the self-same spot I stood. A small, heavily pregnant woman with familiar eyes.

  The staritskii is in my pocket. I could burn her before she said a word, before she had a chance to call out, and kill the living foetus. Only is it really Kolya there in her belly?

  Just seeing her there makes me think this is a trick of some kind, or a trap. I look about me, expecting figures to materialise out of the air, only it’s just us three, and as we stop before her, a little breathless from hurrying across the space, so my doubts grow.

  Would Kolya have let me get this close?

  I stare at her, searching her pale blue eyes, trying to see some sign of the madness that’s in her son, but she seems just an ordinary woman, unaware of her significance to me.

  ‘You came,’ the young man says. ‘I wasn’t sure …’ He looks to me. ‘I was told only to bring you two together. I …’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say, slipping my hand into my pocket. ‘I’ve only a few questions.’

  She looks to the young man then looks back at me, clearly lost as to why she’s there.

  ‘The child, in your stomach, whose is it?’

  She looks down sharply. ‘I don’t know …’

  I don’t believe her, but now she’s here, I know I can find her any time I want. Go back to my room and jump back in. Waylay her and drug her and ask the question again, confident of an answer.

  I reach out with my left hand and hold her chin, forcing her to look up at me. ‘Do you have any other children?’

  Her eyes resent my touch. ‘One. A boy.’

  I move my hand away. ‘Can I meet him?’

  She hesitates, then. ‘Yes. But he comes. I don’t trust you.’

  ‘You don’t …’ I almost laugh.

  But she’s right not to trust me. After all, I could kill her in a second.

  306

  Her room is small and sparsely furnished, but I’m barely aware of it, because he is there. Kolya, I mean. Or if it isn’t Kolya, it’s his twin. Nine years old he is, and as he sits there on the bed, so his eyes watch me with a smouldering hatred that I can’t explain nor understand. Has he always hated me? Or has he been taught to? Schooled to?

  He looks past me at our guide. ‘You can go now.’

  And that, too, surprises me, for it’s said with such authority that one might think that this ill-dressed child was a prince, born to rule.

  The young man nods curtly and backs out, leaving us alone – the three of us. Me, Kolya, and Kolya’s mother.

  Then I was rig
ht not to shoot her …

  He waits as she takes off her shawl and then settles in a chair in the corner. Then he focuses his attention once more on me.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to know who you are.’

  ‘I am Kolya.’

  My hand rests on the staritskii, trembling slightly. A bead of sweat rolls slowly down my brow.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  He laughs coldly. ‘You call yourself Scholl, but your real name is Behr. Otto Behr, and you are Meister of the Germans.’

  I draw the gun, aim it at him.

  ‘There,’ he says, and smiles. ‘What did I say? I warned me about you.’

  And, even as the beam arcs across the room, he’s gone, leaving only a searing after-image in the air, the sound of the woman screaming as I jump right out of there.

  307

  Back at Four-Oh I call a council of war.

  The experience with the boy Kolya has shaken me. Once again he seemed to know precisely what I’d do and how I’d act. But it’s not just that. It’s the hatred in his eyes, the authority he exuded. As a father, I know just how angry – how dogmatic and petulant – a nine-year-old can be, but this wasn’t that. What I saw in the boy was an arrogance born of certainty. An arrogance beyond any of the cadets at the Akademie.

  What I saw was a boy who thinks himself almost god-like. Unafraid to face a laser. Smiling at death.

  When we’re gathered – and there are twelve of us this time, crowded into Hecht’s room, the lights dimmed, the tree glowing in the semi-darkness – I put it to them bluntly.

  ‘How exactly does he know? What is Kolya doing that allows him to anticipate our every move?’

  One of the Elders, Meister Kempner, speaks first. ‘He knew you were Meister? He said that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And who else knows that, apart from us?’

  ‘Right now, nobody. But if he’s looking back, from up the line …’