Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych)

by Ian Tregillis

  Kammler chomped down on the spoon. His teeth clicked. Marsh’s mind had wandered; it caught him unprepared. The large man rocked backwards, easily yanking the spoon from Marsh’s outstretched fingers. Kammler giggled to himself. Clapped. Rocked back and forth.

  “Sp—! Sp-pu-p-p—”

  The spoon clattered across the table. He spat applesauce over himself and the people sitting beside him.

  Buhler flicked a speck of food from beneath his eye. He tossed his own silverware down on his tray. He stood.

  “Fucking idiot.”

  It wasn’t clear if he meant Kammler or Marsh. He departed without elaborating.

  Marsh had managed, with no small amount of effort, to clean the food out of his hair and to get most of the rest of it into Kammler’s mouth when a soldier entered the mess hall. Marsh chewed cold corned beef, watching him approach.

  “You’re wanted in the farmhouse.” The messenger didn’t bother to look at Marsh. He watched Kammler, who was now licking sauce from the table. His lip curled in distaste.

  “By whom?”

  “You’re wanted. Now.” Marsh was an enigma to everybody here, free only because fear of Gretel exceeded distrust of him. But he didn’t rate courtesy.

  More interminable debriefing. It had to be.

  Marsh stood. He touched Kammler’s shoulder. “See you later.” To the soldier he said, “Kammler must be cleaned prior to his training session this afternoon.”

  “That’s not my—”

  “I have been summoned by the doctor. Kammler hasn’t. He can’t be left alone.”

  The soldier shook his head. “I’m not—”

  “Really? I’ll tell the doctor,” said Marsh.

  He left the messenger and the telekinetic to sort themselves out.

  The trees had been almost bare on the day of Marsh’s arrival. But spring had brought green life to the forest in a very short time. Fresh leaves rustled in the breeze, a delicate susurration beneath the clatter of heavy artillery and muffled explosions. The nearby fields were a patchwork quilt of wildflowers. They perfumed the breeze with lavender. Gretel spent much of her time there. Blood-red corn poppies grew closer to the farmhouse. They made Marsh think of Stephenson.

  Marsh’s path from the mess to the farmhouse took him along the edge of the training field. He slowed his pace as much as he dared. He’d had precious few chances to watch the other members of the Götterelektrongruppe at work.

  Reinhardt stood in the center of a plot edged with sandbags and trenches. Marsh spied mundane troops crouching behind the revetments. Three technicians in laboratory coats watched from behind a blast shield. One called through a bullhorn: “Begin!”

  Whoosh. A corona of blue fire engulfed Reinhardt. A soldier popped up, tossed something at him, and immediately dived for cover. Reinhardt gestured at the incoming projectile with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. The dummy grenade flared into harmless vapor. It continued like that—soldiers popping up to toss things at him, Reinhardt vaporizing the projectiles in midair—until one quick soldier managed to land a throw at the salamander’s feet. Reinhardt incinerated the grenade, then reduced a row of sandbags into glassy slag as a warning.

  Jesus, God. Despair was ever close at hand when Marsh considered his mission. How in the hell …

  Closer to the farmhouse, Marsh passed a solid block of brick and steel. It was forty feet long, fifteen deep, and ten high, chalked with an elaborate pattern of circles, squares, crosshatches, and Xs around the perimeter. In other places, it was adorned with switches or levers. No doors. No windows. Its purpose escaped him.

  Until a ghostly hand emerged from the steel, just inside one of the chalked circles. It withdrew just as quickly. A finger’s width of mortar crumbled from between a line of bricks, roughly following a zigzag pattern traced in blue chalk. Klaus withdrew again into the immense slab, then his arm popped out further down. He emerged just far enough to engage a switch, then withdrew again. All this happened under the observation of two technicians. One held a stopwatch, the other a clipboard.

  Marsh had heard Klaus refer to an obstacle course. He’d wondered what that meant to a ghost. The training display wasn’t as impressive as Reinhardt’s, until Marsh realized that Klaus couldn’t see while inside. He must have been moving entirely by memory. Marsh also knew, by virtue of having chased Klaus through the Admiralty, that Klaus couldn’t breathe when he was insubstantial. Marsh wondered if there were other tricks, other obstacles, where only Klaus could encounter them.

  An empty uniform stood downrange of a machine rifle. (The gun looked to be an MG 34. Marsh made a mental note.) It looked like the uniform had been arranged on a tailor’s dummy. The boots, the trousers, the shirt and jacket were filled out, yet the collar opened to thin air, as did the cuffs. The elbows bent, bringing empty cuffs to hover over the jacket buttons. The invisible woman disrobed.

  Now there appeared to be nothing except a pile of discarded clothing between the machine rifle and another obstacle course. A dozen numbered pennants hung from chains accessible only by traversing narrow pipes, or dangled atop rope ladders, or peeked from the ground past coils of barbed wire, or nestled in equally inaccessible locations.

  A technician clicked a stopwatch. “Begin!”

  Somewhere, bare feet slapped across the ground. Pennant number six flipped into the air and fluttered to the ground. Marsh inferred the purpose of this test: Heike had to pull all the flags without giving herself away. The gunners sent a burst toward where the downed pennant had hung. But they were too slow; now pennant number two was whisked from the ground by invisible hands.

  And then a chain jangled, nudged by something invisible. The gunners immediately swung the barrel of their rifle toward the disturbance and raked that section of the course. The rounds traced a line along the wall, the last few stopping in midair.

  The woman shrieked. “Ahh!”

  She reappeared, naked, already falling from the rail. She thudded to the ground. Marsh could hear the wind rushing from her lungs, even above the ticking of the MG’s barrel. “Hoomph.”

  She’d taken a direct hit. She should have been perforated. But her wounds were lime green. The splotches covered her thigh, belly, breast.

  Wax bullets. The color chosen to make the impacts distinct from bleeding wounds.

  He averted his eyes, realizing that he’d already seen Heike naked on the Tarragona filmstrip. He felt terribly embarrassed for her. But he reminded himself that she was an enemy soldier, and dangerous as hell. What if the SS released her into the field? Into Britain? How could Milkweed deal with an invisible assassin stalking the PM?

  “Gorgeous, isn’t she?”

  Marsh turned. Reinhardt stood behind him, still wearing his battery harness. He stared across the training field to where a medic kneeled beside Heike. And the look on Reinhardt’s face … it was raw. If Marsh caught a bloke staring at his wife like that, he’d knock the bastard’s teeth out the back of his head.

  Couldn’t do that with this one. The man could kill with a thought.

  Reinhardt said, “You want to look. And she wants you to. She does this to tease me.”

  Marsh stared at him, trying to figure if this was what passed for humor at the REGP. It wasn’t.

  “I’ll have her. Gretel has predicted it.”

  “Thought you didn’t put much stock in what she had to say,” said Marsh.

  Reinhardt said, “She is a gypsy charlatan. But you are the liar.” He poked Marsh’s chest with a hot fingertip. “You spread lies about me to the doctor. Told him I failed my mission. Now Klaus dines with him while I endure the incubator.” Air shimmered around Reinhardt. Marsh stepped back. “Can you understand the humiliation that causes? I am the best! But the doctor thinks me a failure.”

  He composed himself, tamping down the anger with visible effort. The shimmering aura diminished, then vanished. He stalked away.

  “I won’t forget this, Englishman.”

  Marsh smelled smoke. He lo
oked down. Reinhardt’s fingertip had charred a shirt button. Marsh patted his shirt. The button crumbled to ash.

  Marsh entered the farmhouse through the old servant’s entrance. Only special visitors, high SS, and members of the Führer’s staff used the main stairs. Salamanders, invisible women, telekinetics, psychics, wraiths, oracles, and suspected spies used the rear.

  A sentry, another mundane soldier, stood outside the closed debriefing room.

  “I’ve been summoned,” said Marsh.

  “Wait.”

  There was nowhere to sit. He leaned against the wall opposite the door. Gretel’s throaty voice was just audible from inside the debriefing room.

  “… timing is critical. Everything depends on this. Kleist’s panzer group must halt its advance to the coast. It must do so tomorrow … Yes, both of them. Guderian’s corps as well.”

  Marsh couldn’t make out the other voices as easily. He strained to listen; he hadn’t had any news of the war since coming to the farm, and it was driving him barmy. It didn’t help, knowing that the German High Command and the Führer’s staff regularly received strategic advice from a clairvoyant. He caught a reference to the British Expeditionary Forces and a town on the coast: Dunkirk.

  To another muffled reply, Gretel said, “Irrelevant. This is a task for Herr Göring and his Luftwaffe. You will want to keep the heavy armor in reserve for Case Red.”

  That must have been the code name for an upcoming offensive. Now her questioners sounded more animated. But she was unaffected, or unimpressed, with their objections.

  “Herr General von Runstedt.” Gretel spoke with exaggerated patience. “If the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe do as I advise, there will be no British soldiers left fighting in Europe within two weeks.”

  Her questioners sounded mollified by this.

  She said, “Remember. Explain to the Führer that the panzer divisions must stop on May 24. And they must not resume before May 26.” She paused. “I’ve seen the futures where they don’t. I’ve studied them quite closely, Herr General. There is no Thousand-Year Reich in those futures. There is nothing in those futures.”

  Gretel’s pronouncement raised the hairs on Marsh’s arms. It reminded Marsh of something Commander Liddell-Stewart had said. It’s one thing to see the future. Quite another to like what you see.

  Most of the time, Gretel sounded like she didn’t take anything seriously. Like she didn’t give a good God damn about anything. So it was chilling when she did become somber. What could possibly frighten her? Only the Eidolons, as far as he could tell.

  Gretel’s meeting ended soon after that. Two men of extremely high rank filed out, followed by Pabst.

  Gretel sauntered out behind the men. She had ditched her uniform soon after their arrival at the farm. Now she was back in her peasant dress, and barefoot again. She had tucked a cornflower into each raven-black braid. Her wires spiraled around the braids and connected to the battery at her waist. She touched Marsh’s arm.

  She did that often. Put her feverish touch upon him.

  “Hello, Raybould. How is Kammler?”

  He didn’t flinch away this time. Instead he tipped his head closer to her. Should any of the officers look this way, it would look like they were flirting.

  Marsh nodded almost imperceptibly toward the men conferring with Pabst farther down the corridor. Quietly, he said, “Friends of yours?”

  “Admirers. It’s very flattering.”

  He whispered, “What the hell were you telling them?”

  “You look troubled.”

  “Troubled?” Marsh stopped himself. When he was sure he could continue at a whisper, he said, “I’ve had a good look at this place. The commander expects me to pull off a bloody miracle.”

  She squeezed his arm. “You’ll think of something.”

  “And then there’s the little matter of Berlin.” Marsh hadn’t yet formed a plan for dealing with the farm. The thought of dealing with the REGP files in Berlin was an overwhelming complication.

  “Trust me,” said Gretel. Something dark moved behind her eyes, like a shadow upon her soul. “I know what to do.”

  Marsh started to ask, but the visitors had left. Pabst called to her.

  “Get away from him.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Standartenführer.”

  Gretel released Marsh’s arm and traipsed down the corridor, trailing flower petals in her wake.

  Marsh followed Pabst into the briefing room. Pabst ordered him to sit. Pabst took a seat across the table and started a wire recorder.

  “Tell me about the demons,” he said.

  Marsh’s mission, and his survival, relied upon his ability to convince his hosts of his sincere desire to join their cause. But he hadn’t had the time to prepare a cover for his knowledge of Will’s family and those creatures called Eidolons. The only way to guarantee consistency across multiple questionings was to tell the truth. And he hated himself for it.

  It was a gamble. And a damn dangerous one at that. Marsh could envision scenarios where the knowledge Will carried could become the crucial hinge upon which Britain’s fate turned. What if he gave the Jerries the insight they needed to overcome Britain’s supernatural defense?

  Would Gretel tell him if he had? The commander had been vehement about not trusting her.

  The only saving grace, to Marsh’s mind, was the fact that he knew damn little about any of it. Just bits and pieces Will had dropped about his grandfather from time to time, and what Will had told them on the strange afternoon they attempted to show Gretel to an Eidolon.

  “Tell me everything you know about these warlocks,” said Pabst.

  And so Marsh did. Again.

  eight

  30 May 1940

  Walworth, London, England

  I don’t know how he did it, but two weeks after my doppelgänger arrived in Germany, history changed.

  Clever, clever bastard.

  Well, I liked to think he had something to do with it. But I couldn’t deny Gretel’s hand lay heavy over the events described daily on the wireless and in the papers.

  The defense of France was failing. The Wehrmacht had outmaneuvered the British Expeditionary Forces and their French allies. They’d been routed. Completely. Utterly.

  Same as last time.

  Now the allied soldiers were holed up along the coast. Hundreds of thousands of men on the beaches of northern France, all waiting for rescue. Waiting for evacuation. Waiting to see if friendly ships would come to take them across the Channel before the Jerries finished them off.

  Same as last time. But.

  This time, they were holding out. This time, the ships were coming in. Tommies were coming home by the thousands. By the tens of thousands.

  Last time, they’d died on those beaches. Jerry had slaughtered them to the last man. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Britain had lost an army.

  But now, several days after the Dunkirk evacuation had been expanded to include civilian boats, the flow of rescued soldiers showed no sign of abatement. The Miracle, some folks had begun to call it.

  I’d never been a student of the details of history. Living through the war, fighting in it, had been more than enough. Never felt much need to reexamine it. So I couldn’t begin to guess which troop movements and armored column maneuvers were holdovers from the original history and which were fresh alterations, carefully chosen by Gretel for this new time line. Detailed information of that nature was too sparse anyway, and would be for years. But I could see the general shape of how she was doing it.

  The Germans relied heavily on the Luftwaffe to pound the encircled refugees and prevent ships from approaching the beach. I’m sure it seemed like hell on earth to the men trapped there, but it was a damn sight better than it could have been. Last time around, they’d forgone the aircraft and moved in with heavy armor. At least one entire panzer division had arrived at Dunkirk before the first rescue ship could begin hauling waterlogged Tommies aboard.

  Last time around, Göri
ng hadn’t been in charge of the Luftwaffe. Gretel had had him removed early in the war. I wondered how she would sell the evacuation to her superiors. They couldn’t be pleased by it.

  Liv set our tea service on the low table in front of the sofa. The service was new, but it had been a chipped and battered thing when last I saw it.

  “Thank you.” It was weak, brewed from twice-or thrice-used leaves. But the company made up for it.

  She sat across from me, within reach of the wireless. Close enough to touch.

  “Do you take your tea with sugar, Commander?”

  A formality, of course, and I declined. My first experience with rationing had forced me into the habit of taking my tea without sugar. A habit I’d never broken; it served me well now that I was stuck with rationing again.

  “Raybould hates his tea without sugar. I think the rationing might drive him mad.” She unfolded a cloth serviette to reveal a treasure: a whole sugar cube, glittering in the afternoon sun.

  I coughed. Sat upright, narrowly avoided spilling tea all over myself.

  “Where on earth did you get that?”

  Liv had a particular smile. It could make you feel like you and she had just shared something deeply private, deeply important. Something funny, dire, sexy, frivolous, and momentous all at the same time.

  She flashed that smile at me now as she gently scraped her teaspoon along one edge of the cube, dusting her tea with sugar. “Raybould thinks he knows all my hiding spots.”

  I did. I could have sworn I did.

  “I think perhaps he has underestimated you.”

  “Oh, he’s clever in his own way.” She sipped. Fixed me with a sly look. “I suppose that’s why you chose him.”

  During the course of my afternoon visits I’d managed to give Liv the impression that I was responsible for having Raybould Marsh tapped for another protracted Foreign Office errand. She couldn’t come out and say how much she resented it, of course—that would have been unpatriotic—but she had been a bit frigid at first. She supported King and Country and husband but that didn’t prevent her from being brusque, all sharp edges and cutting wit at first. But it didn’t last. I knew the woman. Knew her so well.