Ragnarok 03 - Resonance

by John Meaney

  The teams of guards were highly trained, with careful procedures ensuring only one prisoner was on the move at a time. With Roger and Nectarblossom present, there was the added advantage that any change in the quality of darkness would be apparent to them. And also to the recruits they were about to test, they hoped.

  Cells two and five contained guards who had been ‘volunteered’ to act as prisoners; the recruits were expected to detect their freedom from dark influence.

  ‘Time to start,’ said Nectarblossom, and summoned Crisp.

  Crisp was tall even among Haxigoji, straight-shouldered as he walked to the first cell, stopped and considered the enemy for a few moments, moved to the second – this time a twitch of those shoulders indicated his amusement at the deception – and on to the next cell and the next. The prisoners this time were well-behaved, or rather subdued – during the two earlier tests, some had become aggressive – and when Crisp stopped before the cell containing Morik, he seemed rapt in concentration due to Morik being a darkness-controlled Pilot rather than ordinary human.

  It took Roger over five seconds to realise that something was going wrong.

  Shit!

  Crisp shuddered as the darkness entered him.

  ‘Shut him down!’ Roger shouted. ‘Shut Morik down!’

  One of the guards gestured, and in his cell, Morik collapsed. But that did nothing to stop Crisp falling back onto the deck, where a tremendous shaking took hold of him, limbs thumping in some awful response to the twists of darkness around his head, and how could anyone prevent such an infiltration? If Crisp became a creature of the darkness then what did that mean for—?

  Stillness.

  The change had happened so fast.

  ‘We will honour him,’ came softly from Nectarblossom’s torc.

  ‘What?’ said Roger.

  Those amber eyes were matt-looking, no longer lustrous. Medical scanners opened up holo phase spaces all around, with textual annotations explaining the readings’ significance, summed up by three words: Crisp was dead.

  When Roger looked up, he realised that all of the cells’ occupants were unconscious, including the two unfortunate volunteers. Guards swarmed, taking up new positions. Total lockdown.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nectarblossom.’ Roger did not know what else to say.

  Morik had been careful, setting up whatever process he had used – perhaps it was similar to the way the Anomaly spread, perhaps it was something else: Admiralty analysts would be poring over data from the smartmiasma and other devices here – and aiming to influence one of the Haxigoji rather than a human, either because he thought the guards would be less likely to suspect what was happening, or because for the process to work, the intended target had to be an individual naturally sensitive to the darkness.

  That latter seemed more likely to Roger. He was trained to continue thinking while danger or potential danger threatened, but all the while, sour regret and mourning swirled through him. He had been with these recruits for half a standard year, and liked them all no matter how tough he was with them, and Crisp had been one of the best.

  Nectarblossom’s huge double-thumbed hand clasped Roger’s shoulder.

  ‘I’ll tell the others the test is cancelled,’ she said. ‘And explain why.’

  She went off, ceremonial tabard rustling against the silk garments beneath, dressed for a different kind of eventuality to this tragedy, poor Crisp’s body lying sightless on the deck.

  There’s always another way to look at things.

  Dad had drilled that dictum into him. When you had good reason to mourn, you must mourn: using cognitive techniques to bypass such a process would make one inhuman. But in perspective shifts lie the possibility of future resolution: as a heuristic, there are always three ways (or more) to view a situation.

  Crisp was dead, and Roger would mourn him.

  You were a good person.

  And if Roger could find a way to kill Morik undetected, he would do that too.

  You were—

  He realised what his subconscious had already noticed, the reason he had remembered Dad’s words about perspective shifts: because Crisp’s death had another implication.

  The Haxigoji could not be suborned by the darkness.

  Better than human.

  If they could not fight it off, they reacted at a deep cellular level – the evidence was in the shifting, coloured holo images surrounding Crisp’s body – shutting down all the way into death.

  Roger would have to fly to Labyrinth.

  But first he summoned the most experienced of the team leaders, explained his thinking about Crisp, and told her to pass the word on to the others, because if something happened to him, this news needed to reach the Admiralty.

  Then he braced himself for the painful part: rejoining Nectarblossom and the remaining recruits. For even with the strategic importance of what he had learned, these were his people and he had to mourn with them.

  THIRTY

  EARTH, 1956 AD

  Gavriela punished Rupert by insisting they meet at Imperial, where they sat in a lecture theatre in the Huxley building listening to her friend Jane talk about warfare among ants, Jane’s words being illustrated with bizarre and gruesome colour slides. The point was that Rupert wanted Gavriela to debrief while she wanted to go to Oxford to pick up Carl – she had flown into Heathrow from Tempelhof late last night – so she compromised by agreeing to talk but refusing to go to Headquarters on Broadway.

  Rupert sat with elegant legs crossed, his trousers steam-pressed with knife-edge creases, and gave every sign of enjoying Jane’s lecture, which had not been Gavriela’s intention.

  Several slides showed African termites, globitermes sulfureus, squirting sticky yellow fluid from their mouths. ‘They eject the nasty stuff,’ Jane told the audience, ‘pumped from two dorsal glands, and it snags up enemy soldier termites. The termites doing the ejecting are tangled up with the enemy. Guess what they do then?’

  A few grins showed among the biologists, while most of those from other disciplines looked intrigued, then half-amused, half-horrified when Jane pushed the next slide into projector. The camera had caught the termites in mid-explosion, fluid and guts everywhere.

  ‘They entangle themselves with the enemy, and blow themselves up,’ Jane went on. ‘Or to put it another way, there’s nothing unnatural about kamikaze behaviour. Here’ – she changed slides once more – ‘we have campanotus ants. I took this picture in Malaysia. Liquid explosive in their mandibles, and again they blow themselves up, usually taking out multiple enemy ants from other colonies. Everyone here knows that war is terrible, but compared to these chaps, human beings are amateurs.’

  Then she sidetracked, perhaps to give temporary relief from pictures of insectile gore.

  ‘One of the interesting theoretical questions,’ she continued, ‘is whether the behaviour of an individual ant or termite can be viewed as altruism, in the same sense in which a mother bird will die to defend her chicks, or a chimpanzee will fight to defend youngsters in the same group who are not her offspring. Does self-sacrifice in war spring from the same Darwinian imperative that gives rise to family love?’

  Everyone in the audience grew still, because no one had been untouched by the war that ended a decade before. For a few, it had been the making of them as determined and courageous adults; for all, the experience had involved tragedy.

  And Gavriela knew better than most how war results in scientific and medical advances, because nothing concentrates the mind better than an enemy determined to kill you; although without the subsequent peace, there would be no way to capitalise on new understanding.

  Jane finished with some cheerful thoughts and slides.

  ‘Here we see various weaver ants, genus oecophylla, who are nearly all female. Sorry chaps, but they only need a few males for the purpose of impregnating the queens. And when it’s time to go to war, they turn mature workers, not youths, into soldiers. In other words,’ she added, ‘it’s th
eir old women they send to fight, so you young gentlemen, consider yourselves warned.’

  Then she grinned at the audience, who laughed and gave louder applause than most lectures received. The subsequent questions were good-natured, and the answers informative, and Rupert paid attention until the end. Finally Gavriela and Rupert donned coats and left the building, because they could talk while walking.

  Yesterday she had still been in Berlin, and Rupert needed her considered opinion on what had happened during the meeting at the café on Alt-Moabit.

  ‘Colonel Dmitri bloody Shtemenko,’ she told him, ‘had no intention of coming over to us, in my considered opinion. He was trying to find out where Ursula is, so to that extent she’s a leverage point. But it’s as if . . .’ She considered her words. ‘As if we’ve stolen one of his possessions, not a person who’s precious to him. Campanotus might blow themselves up out of love for their fellow termites, but Shtemenko is a bit further down the evolutionary ladder.’

  Rupert gave a twist of the mouth at the comparison, and tapped the pavement with the tip of his brolly as they continued to walk, heading towards Hyde Park. A Vespa scooter burbled past, producing a farting noise from its exhaust, and Rupert surprised Gavriela with a passable Goons imitation: ‘Damn those curried eggs!’

  Then he added, ‘What about the factor we can’t write in the reports?’

  Gavriela knew what Rupert meant. ‘The darkness seems weaker in him, I think. But he’s as devious as ever. We should keep Ursula away from him.’

  ‘Do you want to look after her, your niece?’

  That surprised Gavriela enough for her to stop walking.

  ‘I would,’ she said after a moment, ‘except that would make it easier for Shtemenko to find her. An evil stepfather isn’t funny, not when he’s a KGB colonel, and never mind the darkness.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Rupert. ‘But I’ll keep you informed of her situation, perhaps minus the specifics.’

  ‘That might be best.’

  They walked on, and Rupert asked, ‘Do you think Carl would like to be a spy when he grows up?’

  ‘I bloody well hope not,’ said Gavriela.

  They smiled together, old frictions seeming irrelevant.

  ‘Fancy a spot of tea?’ asked Rupert.

  ‘Yes, I think I do.’

  Paddington Station was a cavern of steam, the engines black and powerful-looking; and once the journey was under way, Gavriela was content to let the rattle of the carriage lull her into a doze all the way to Oxford, where the chill evening air brought her awake as she waited for a taxi that would take her to Abingdon. It took her along the old streets, among sandstone buildings she knew well, and finally out to Rose and Jack’s house, where the new gas fire was hissing, warm and orange and friendly. Rose poured tea from a pot encased in a knitted cosy, and the three adults caught up on gossip while waiting for Carl to appear.

  Before the war’s end, Rosie Hammond, who had been such a good friend to Gavriela at Bletchley Park, had finally married her ‘Jaunty Jack’, who had survived the torpedoing of HMS Royal Oak unlike so many of his friends and comrades, helped take revenge in the strike against Narvik harbour that took out German destroyers and cargo vessels, not to mention Rear Admiral Bonte himself, and escaped the German reinforcements that sailed out of neighbouring fjords like long-boats of old, but after a millennium of progress, with so many better ways to kill.

  And as Mrs Rosie Gould, a little heavier but happy-looking, she was proud of her daughter Anna, and happy when Carl came to visit, and the two went off to somewhere like the theatre, as they had tonight.

  ‘Bloomin’ Macbeth,’ Jack said. ‘Poncey thing you’d know about, Gabs.’

  ‘It’s got sword fights.’ Gavriela grinned at him. ‘Plus the king of Scotland gets murdered. I thought you’d approve.’

  ‘And do they install a fair and classless society afterwards? Do they buggery.’

  ‘Jack . . .’ said Rosie. ‘So, Gabby, how was your conference?’

  Everyone else but Rupert called her Gabrielle these days.

  ‘As boring as I thought it would be.’

  It was easy to sound cynical. The reality was as unsuccessful as the imaginary conference, with Dmitri back in East Berlin and nothing different, except that Gavriela’s newfound niece was the right side of the Iron Curtain, and maybe some day they would get to know each other.

  ‘Anna’s school report was all As,’ said Rosie. ‘Trying to keep up with Carl.’

  ‘Except for a C-minus in R.E.’ Jack looked proud. ‘For proving God doesn’t exist, on the basis of Russell’s bleeding Teapot.’

  ‘Good for her,’ said Gavriela. ‘Did she mention Occam’s bloody Razor, and dispose of Pascal’s blooming Wager?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be bloomin’ surprised.’ Then, as if conversational momentum had allowed him to jump an obstacle, he added, ‘I’ve left the CP, you know. Bloody Hungary.’

  Gavriela put down her teacup.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, meaning it. ‘The Reds could never live up to your ideals.’

  Forty thousand dead Hungarians had caused a flood of exits from the British Communist Party.

  ‘He’ll join Labour,’ said Rosie, ‘and everything will be fine. You’ll stay the night, of course.’

  ‘’Course she will,’ said Jack.

  Gavriela relaxed into her chair. ‘Can’t bloomin’ argue with that.’

  Next morning, after Jack had left for the factory but before Anna or Carl had risen, Gavriela told Rosie she needed to go for a walk.

  ‘Not a headache, is it?’

  ‘The start of one,’ said Gavriela. ‘But a brisk walk and it’ll disappear. Anything I can get you from the newsagent’s?’

  ‘Not for me. Maybe some Spangles for the kids.’

  ‘They’re getting too old for sweets.’

  ‘Probably,’ said Rosie.

  Outside, Gavriela walked the quiet streets until she came to a corner telephone box, and went inside. She extracted pennies and a brass-coloured thrupenny bit from her purse, thought about what she needed to say, then lifted the receiver, shoved the coins in, and dialled. Wrapping the braided brown cord around her forefinger – a nervous tic – she listened to the ring, and stood straighter when a voice answered: ‘Goodridge Haberdashery, Peterson speaking.’

  ‘I’m checking on order number ZK927. This is Mrs Woods.’

  ‘One moment, Mrs Woods.’ There was a heavy click, silence, then a second click. ‘Duty officer.’

  ‘Reporting on a BCP affiliation. Jack Gould, G-O-U-L-D, resident Abingdon, resigned membership. Reason is disaffection over Hungary action. Gould is working-class, and continues to have no contact, that is zero contact, with CP-oriented intellectuals in Oxford.’

  ‘All right, I’ve got that.’

  ‘End of report.’

  ‘Acknowledged, and thank you.’

  She pressed Button B for the change, and went out into the morning air, feeling lighter than before. Of the CP’s forty-three thousand members – the number before the recent haemorrhage – three thousand were named on a special list maintained by Five and Special Branch. On receipt of codeword HILLARY, police across the country would swoop, and if Jack were on the list – and living near Oxford intellectuals and attending Oxford meetings was a risk factor – he would end up with his fellow British internees in Epsom, the race course commandeered and transformed into a prison camp, while foreign-born Communists were imprisoned in Ascot, and those captured further north would end up in Rhyl.

  Spying on her friends was the only way to remain in contact with them: the alternative was to exclude them from her life; and she did not want that.

  Yet she wondered, as she walked past new council houses, heading for Rosie’s place, whether ants or termites, in their implacable aggression, ever spied on each other or caused an enemy to turn, to begin working for the other side; or whether it took sentience and civilisation to develop the concept of betrayal.

&n
bsp; THIRTY-ONE

  LUNA, 655003 AD

  Fenrisulfr woke from the dream of life, and stared down at his crystalline hands. It had been so long since he had voyaged in the spirit world this way, but there was a strange ease in the way he stood, accepted that breathing was unnecessary here amid these shining halls, and set off to find the war queen Kenna, assuming she still ruled.

  —You answered the call, brave Ulfr.

  She was in the war-chamber he remembered, where she and her fellow warrior-leaders planned the final battles. Now, though, she was alone.

  —You know better than to call me that.

  —But something has changed, has it not?

  He shrugged.

  —I slew Stígr.

  —And has killing him helped you?

  —Yes, it has.

  Kenna’s crystalline face shimmered. Perhaps he had not told her what she was expecting to hear. He added:

  —He might have welcomed death. I do not know.

  Had Stígr failed to fight back because of Fenrisulfr’s speed, coming out of nowhere? Or had the dark poet been slowed down by fatalism or the need to end his pain?

  —Where are the others, War Queen?

  She beckoned with one transparent hand.

  —Come and see.

  They walked through gleaming arched thoroughfares among giant halls, for this place had grown vast, until they finally came out on something like the balcony he had seen before. It overlooked the grey-black plain beneath the night sky, while the shining white disc, banded with scarlet, was the Middle World seen from this other realm . . . except that ‘realms’ meant something different here, and he would need to give himself fully to Kenna’s cause in order to understand.

  Silver specks moved against the night.

  —Those are our friends, good Ulfr. Flying vessels to the Middle World.