The Coldest War

by Ian Tregillis

  Reinhardt laughed. That’s when the screaming started.

  The children tried to run away, to escape, fleeing in a dozen directions. But Reinhardt herded them together with geysers of flame conjured from the damp earth. He took his time, toying with the children, running them in circles until they doubled over in exhaustion.

  More than once, a passerby or somebody from the estate witnessed the fire and tried to help. Reinhardt cut short that interference. This was his celebration and it would last as long as he wanted. He expected witnesses to call the local fire station, but no fire trucks ever arrived.

  It wasn’t quite so fun once his tormentors were too exhausted to run and scream. Reinhardt picked them off one by one while they tried to crawl away. Sometimes he ignited their clothes, letting their panic fan the flames for him. Others he surrounded with slowly contracting rings of fire.

  Every punishment he could imagine. Every punishment they deserved.

  Reinhardt was down to the final pair of children when his rucksack stopped working. The gauge he’d rigged still showed plenty of charge, and he could still feel the tingling Götterelektron surge into his skull. But it was as though he aimed his Willenskräfte into a bottomless hole.

  Something absorbed it. Quenched it. Devoured it.

  He’d never encountered this problem before.

  And then he felt it: a titanic malevolence. His fires ebbed and flowed, moaned and howled. The flames assumed impossible shapes. Angular, crystalline, non-Euclidean geometries.

  Reinhardt remembered the unnatural winter that had hastened the war’s end. The wind had shrieked with supernatural anger; the snowdrifts had sculpted themselves into shapes that hurt the mind to behold. Similar reports had come from the weather spotters in the Channel during the run-up to the failed invasion of Britain. It had all been the warlocks’ doing. They had sent their demons to barricade the sea and, later, to freeze the Reich.

  But it was different this time. In the past, that undercurrent of malice had always snarled and growled from a safe distance, like the pacing of a caged tiger.

  There was no cage today.

  Reinhardt forgot the children. Forgot about revenge. He shrugged off his rucksack and started to run.

  But it was too late. He had marked himself, and something had seen him. It was drawn to his Willenskräfte, like a moth to his flame.

  But this was no moth. It was a horror.

  Reinhardt’s final thought, the instant before demons erased him from existence: That bitch.

  thirteen

  14 June 1963

  Walworth, London, England

  John’s eyes shone like rifts in a blackout curtain before a full moon.

  Marsh retreated from the pale, unblinking gaze. He grasped for words, struggled to force each breath past the ice in his chest. Why didn’t his breath come out in a cloud? It was so cold.…

  “John?”

  “You call us that,” said the thing wearing his son’s body. Its breath tasted like starlight.

  It looked Marsh up and down, moving John’s head with awkward, inhuman motions. Insectile motions. It studied the room, staring randomly at various elements: the carpet; the mantel; the molding over the doors; Liv. All just objects.

  “Limited,” it said. “This realm where you—” It paused, as though looking for a concept. “—exist.”

  Its voice sounded so normal. So human. But the inflections were wrong, the emphasis random. Like music written by a spider. And its presence carried the same pressure, the same sense of something vast and terrible that accompanied the Eidolons. Marsh’s repulsion, the urge to run and hide, hit just as urgently here, now, as it had during any negotiation he’d ever witnessed. This thing standing here in the form of his son was just the tip of a dread reality.

  Will stumbled into the den after Marsh. Liv’s eyes, already wide with fear, opened further. Her lips parted.

  “You’re dead,” she whispered.

  Will managed an inelegant bow. “Olivia, my dear. It’s been much too long.”

  But Marsh focused on John. Slowly, carefully, fearing the answer, he asked, “To whom am I speaking?”

  “You cannot say our name. Even your—” Another pause, more alien body language. “—warlocks cannot.” The thing in John’s body managed a decent approximation of a sneer when pronouncing “warlocks.” Air hissed through Will’s teeth as he inhaled.

  Liv looked from Marsh to Will and back. She said, “What is this? What is he talking about?”

  Marsh asked her, “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” She stared up at their son and hugged herself. Her teeth chattered.

  She didn’t appear to be bleeding. Marsh wondered if that would buy her any time.

  To John, he said, “Why are you here?”

  Another voice joined John’s. “WE ARE EVERYWHERE.”

  “What have you done to my son?”

  John paused again, surveyed its body with the same disturbing awkwardness. But its motions were becoming more fluid, its speech less halting. The things in John’s body were becoming accustomed to it.

  “WE EMPTIED THIS VESSEL. FOR US.”

  Marsh and Will shared a look. The soul of an unborn child.

  “Why?”

  “TO SEE THIS PLACE. IT DIFFERS FROM THE OUTSIDE.”

  Each time it spoke, another voice joined the chorus. More monsters looked through what had once been John’s eyes. Marsh was fairly certain that if he’d had anything to drink in the past few hours, he’d have pissed himself right then.

  “Stop it, John! Stop it!” yelled Liv. “Stop talking like that.” She stood, faced Marsh. “Both of you!”

  Liv’s flour-pale features blushed red with fear and frustration, dark enough to hide her freckles. There were new lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth that he hadn’t noticed before. Terror widened her eyes, ringed them with white. She trembled as she hugged herself, violently, as though a cyclone blew through the forest of her soul. Perhaps it did—John possessed, Will back from the dead … Liv deserved to understand this.

  But Marsh knew he couldn’t risk an explanation. He had to engage John. He didn’t know how long the Eidolons would inhabit John, but it seemed that as long as they did, they weren’t eradicating Liv, or Britain, or him. And if there was any hope of preventing it, Will needed to hear this.

  “Why do you need to see us?”

  “PERSPECTIVE. DEMARCATION.” Another pause. “WE SEEK YOUR MAPS. BUT YOUR EXTENT IS LIMITED.”

  Will sat on the ottoman, hard enough to elicit a creak of protest from its wooden legs.

  Marsh’s bad knee flared with pain. He staggered, slumped against the wall. In the moment before impact he found himself suspended in the gap between sterile knowledge and abject terror, like the moment between touching a hot stove and feeling the pain.

  Will was right. Marsh had shattered the deep structure of the cosmos. Unleashed something. But there had been no other way. He’d had no choice. Had he?

  Liv’s voice, impossibly small, said, “Raybould?”

  Marsh struggled to continue the conversation, to keep trying. “That wasn’t our agreement.”

  Liv said, “Agreement?”

  “ERASE THE VIOLATIONS,” said the infernal choir. “WE SEEK THEM, ERASE THEM, READ THEIR MAPS. FIND MORE MAPS. THE CYCLE GROWS.”

  “You’ve completed the task we asked of you. You’ve found them all.”

  John didn’t respond. Instead it stiffened and turned on its heels. It faced into the northeast corner of the room. John’s choir voice swelled with legion presences. It reverberated with undertones of Enochian when it said, “ANOTHER.”

  Liv clamped her hands over her ears. She leaned over and released a wet, burbling cough. The sour stink of vomit permeated the room.

  Marsh took her in his arms. The corner of her mouth glistened with dark spittle. She huddled against him, turned away from John. He asked, “Another what, John?”

  “VIOLATION. ERASED.”
/>   Marsh looked at Will. Will shrugged.

  “That’s it, then. You’ve found them all.”

  “NO. WE KEEP LOOKING.”

  “Why?”

  “YOUR EXISTENCE IS LIMITED YET YOU EXPRESS INTENT. YOU SHOULD NOT.”

  We are a stain upon the cosmos, thought Marsh. And now they’re going to fix us.

  “I think—” Will cleared his throat and tried again. His voice still came out quietly: “I think they’re looking for something specific.”

  Something, or someone?

  Liv wept into her hands. “Make it stop,” she moaned.

  Marsh asked, “Are you looking for somebody in particular?”

  “THERE IS ONE WHO HURTS US MOST. UNLIKE THE OTHERS. MORE POWERFUL. MORE SUBTLE. MORE PAINFUL TO US,” said the Eidolon-thing in John’s body. It sniffed, sampling the air with a machine gun burst of short, sharp inhalations, just as John sometimes did. “WE CANNOT SEE THAT ONE. BUT WE SEEK IT.”

  “Raybould,” Liv moaned, “what is he talking about?”

  Gretel.

  Marsh remembered his first conversation with Pembroke. A month ago he’d said, She pulls these things off long after her battery has been removed. So rather than gaping in wonderment, you should be wondering how long she’s been planning this.

  Gretel worked according to memory, following a plan she’d devised years ago. Why? Because she was hiding from the Eidolons. She knew they’d break free, and she didn’t want to be caught actively using her ability when they came a-knocking.

  Except. They slipped the leash because of her doing. It made no sense. But he saw an opening, a thread of hope:

  “I know the one you mean,” said Marsh. “If I give her to you, will you leave?”

  “WE ARE EVERYWHERE.”

  “Will you abandon this,” he said anxiously, waved one hand at John’s body, “perspective? Stop taking maps?”

  “NO.”

  Liv sobbed. The demon in her den had just declared it would never return to hell. Marsh struggled not to sob along with her.

  Will released a long, ragged sigh. “You already have her map,” he said, referring to Gretel. “We gave it to you long ago. Why haven’t you erased her?”

  “LONG AGO.” John tilted its head again, as if confused by the suggestion that twenty years was somehow significant. Did Eidolons know amusement? Or was it merely annoyed? “IT HIDES. ITS MAP IS A WEB. TANGLED. WE CLEAVE IT.”

  Gretel wasn’t using her power, which meant she didn’t stand out to the Eidolons. And though they had sampled her blood in the past, unraveling that map through the tangled web of her machinations, through all the futures she had decided, all the fates she had discarded, was slowing them down. But they did have her blood, and they’d find her eventually.

  Which raised another sickening question. How long until they snuffed Marsh? They’d also had his blood map since 1940.

  How were they still having this conversation?

  Marsh ushered Liv behind him, placing himself between her and John. A meaningless protective gesture, should the Eidolons decide to end this. But even after everything they’d said and done to each other, he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Liv naked to the Eidolons like that.

  “Why haven’t you taken us yet?”

  John swiveled again. Its movements were perfectly fluid now. Still unnatural, but no longer awkward. It fixed Marsh with chalky eyes. “YOUR MAP DIFFERS. IT FASCINATES US. YOUR MAP IS A CIRCLE. A BROKEN SPIRAL. NONLINEAR. NOT LIKE THE OTHER LIMITEDS.”

  “What do you mean, nonlinear?”

  “YOU ARE DISTINCT. WE RENDER YOUR DISTINCTION IN LANGUAGE. TO KNOW IT.”

  “Ah…” Will hugged his knees to his chest. He rested his chin on one knee, staring intently at John, eyes narrowed in concentration.

  In other words, Marsh knew, you’ve given me a name.

  John brushed past them to approach the window. Liv trembled. Its physical body still smelled of musk and sour milk; their son had been overdue for another bath when the Eidolons put him to the purpose for which they had created him. Marsh wondered if the things inside John noticed.

  An empty child. A vessel for the Eidolons to see the world through human eyes. A scout of the human scale, directing the apocalypse for beings who couldn’t perceive the distinction between a humble house in Walworth and the churning heart of a star ten million years dead.

  “I SEE AS YOU DO,” said John, holding aside a curtain with the back of its wrist. “I SHARE WHAT I SEE. HOUSES. STREET.” It dropped the curtain. “BEYOND THAT, NEIGHBORHOOD. CITY. NATION.” It turned. “YOUR WORLD.”

  They were getting what they sought. A clear view of the human world. Soon, the view would be clear enough for the Eidolons to start eradicating en masse the human stains that offended them so very much.

  Would death happen quickly? Painlessly? All at once, like blowing out a candle? Or would the end come as a creeping shadow?

  Marsh tried to prolong the conversation with John. But the enormity of what had happened—of what he had done; of what Gretel had deftly manipulated him into doing—left him too tired for ideas. No amount of cleverness could fix this. Fever simmered in his brain; hoarfrost coated his veins. Marsh hadn’t shit himself yet, but that seemed a miracle. The faint odor of urine joined the smell of Liv’s vomit.

  John’s chorus-voice hit a crescendo. “WE SEE,” it said. And then it vanished.

  Liv gasped. Marsh caught her.

  “What was that?” she whispered. “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know.” He lowered Liv to the sofa. A small wet spot had formed on her dress.

  “John spoke,” she said. Her breath made his eyes water.

  Marsh didn’t know what to say. He nodded.

  “He was talking nonsense, but you understood him.” She shoved him away. She was crying. “You understood him!”

  “I—”

  “I’ve gone mad.” Liv ran her hands through her hair. One lock came free of the hairpins and bobbed over her forehead. “My son is a monster.” She glanced at Will. “And I’m seeing ghosts. I must be mad.”

  “I assure you, I am not a ghost,” said Will, his voice shaky. “Yet.” He stared at where John had disappeared.

  Marsh took her gently by the shoulders. “Liv—”

  “Don’t touch me!” She shoved him away more violently. He banged his shoulder against the mantel, ringing the chimes of a wound-down clock. Shrieking left her voice hoarse. “You spoke to that, that thing, as though you knew it. As though you understood.” Liv dodged his outstretched fingers. “Stay away from me.”

  “Olivia,” said Will, still distracted.

  “Don’t speak to me,” she sobbed. “You’re not real.” She ran up the stairs. The bedroom door slammed.

  The fever redoubled its efforts to burn Marsh’s brain to a cinder. He staggered to the sofa. It was as good a place as any to die. Perhaps, if he could muster the energy later, he’d go out to the garden shed. That had been his home as much as anywhere these past twenty years.

  Liv pounded down the stairs a few minutes later. She’d changed her dress, done her lips, put her hair back in place. She carried her handbag, too. Had she not heard about the disasters in the city? All across Britain?

  “Liv, please stay,” Marsh called.

  But she didn’t pause before throwing open the front door and heading outside. Even now, at the end of the world, she couldn’t spare a word for him. It cut more deeply than anything else she’d ever said or done. Worse than what the fire had done to his face and throat. He’d have given anything for her to stay. Just a little longer. He didn’t want to die alone. But she didn’t want to die in his presence. So much for their fragile, tentative reconnection. If it had ever existed. He’d been a fool to think it had.

  Marsh listened to the creak of the gate. Soon, Liv’s footsteps receded into the din of the sirens and alarms still echoing across the city. He wondered if she might have stayed had she understood what was happening. Probably not, h
e decided. Liv wouldn’t have chosen to die alone any more than Marsh did, but that’s effectively what would have happened if she had stayed at home with him. Dying alone was his fate, and the knowledge wearied him.

  With John gone, she might have been inclined to spend more time at home. If only the world wasn’t gut shot and rapidly bleeding out.

  So this is it, then, thought Marsh. Sleeping alone at the end of the world. A final insult for a wasted life. What a fitting send-off.

  Minutes passed while Will and Marsh sat in silence. They shared the understanding of doomed men. The amity of the condemned.

  A small part of Marsh wrestled with the question of Gretel. Like a dog gnawing a soup bone down to splinters, he couldn’t let it go. Why? Why work so patiently for so many years solely to bring events to this point? Why engineer history to bring about this apocalyptic finale? Decades of nudging, wheedling, watching, correcting, adjusting—just to take the world down with her when she died? There were easier ways to commit suicide. Marsh would have happily strangled her a dozen times over.

  It didn’t make sense.

  But the rest of Marsh didn’t care any longer. He’d done everything he could for his country. Perhaps it had been too much, perhaps too little, but he had nothing more to give. He had strived his best, but he had failed. His heart was weary, his body old, his head light, his face ruined. He had no fight left in him. And there was no fighting the Eidolons.

  His stubborn refusal to admit defeat had doomed everybody. The enormity of that failure was too much to swallow. Too much to digest before the end came.

  He only hoped it would be painless. He’d had enough of pain. He was ready to stop hurting.

  Marsh stood. “Come on. I’ll take you to Gwendolyn. Before it…” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Before it starts.”

  He decided he couldn’t face another night—one last night, the last night of anything—alone in the garden shed. Marsh considered a stop at the pub after dropping Will at the safe house. If the world lasted that long. It had been weeks since he’d been tossed out for fighting. They’d probably let him in if he kept his fists to himself this time. Easy enough. He was too weary for rage.