Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych)

by Ian Tregillis

  “Something about blood maps.” Will had gone pale from the exertion. His hoarse voice called to me over the din of Enochian: “I think it’s sampling blood. New blood.”

  A chill sweat percolated through my skin. I knew what that meant. My doppelgänger was in a fight. And every man he wounded or killed meant another blood map that widened the Eidolons’ beachhead into our world. I’d seen firsthand what could happen if they perceived enough of it.

  *

  Marsh killed the scouts. Their screams had driven the other Jerries to retreat a safe distance outside the Eidolon’s sphere of influence. It gave him time to strip the men of their weapons and, in the case of the smaller fellow, clothes.

  The fire had grown. Marsh tossed another armload of files on the fire, then doused the pile with the last of the schnapps. He changed into an SS-Schütze uniform by the light of burning medical records. But the fire cast no warmth, offered no relief to his cold, emaciated flesh. The crystalline flames and their impossible shapes sucked heat from the room. Serpentine darkness snapped at the gooseflesh stippling his legs and arms.

  More than half of the Reichsbehörde files had been reduced to ashes. Many of the files comprised films and photographs, too, which the fire had reduced to blackened slag. Marsh fed the fire as quickly as he dared while the Eidolon’s non-wind sculpted the ashes into impossible shapes that hurt to behold. If he worked too quickly, he risked smothering the fire. But he had to finish the task before the Jerries regrouped. They wouldn’t play it safe on the next assault. They’d come in force.

  And so they did. Marsh threw himself behind the arch at the first sign of new movement in the shadows. A barrage of gunfire winged through the flames and chiseled new gouges in the limestone. They’d brought machine pistols.

  Marsh leaned out, squeezed off two shots, ducked back. He didn’t hit anything. But the maneuver did enable him to confirm his suspicions. Guards advanced on the fire along all three aisles. Each carried an MP 34 submachine gun. Together, they probably had close to ninety rounds available, just in the current magazines.

  The pistol in Marsh’s hand held one remaining cartridge. The other Walther held a magazine of eight.

  He had to protect the fire. If he could hold on just a few more minutes, he’d have accomplished half of his mission in Germany. Except … it was a meaningless gesture. Burning the files was pointless without also destroying von Westarp’s farm. The farm produced new records every day.

  Marsh risked another shot. Deafening return fire kept him pinned behind the limestone arch. When the echoes died down, he heard urgent murmuring and the scuffle of boots. The Jerries weren’t bothering to hide their intentions from him. They knew he was alone and outgunned. He dropped the empty pistol and drew the second.

  Marsh’s thoughts turned, as they always did, to his wife and daughter. I’m sorry, Liv. I should have told you the truth. I hope you find a man who makes you happy. A man who’ll be a good father to Agnes. I love you both.

  Please tell her good things about me.

  The guards charged. The Eidolon engulfed him again. Marsh closed his eyes, firing blindly past the fire. His body peeled apart in myriad directions—

  *

  The Eidolon’s howls blew out the windows. Glass tinkled to the warehouse floor. I shoved Will under my makeshift desk before the worst of the shards rained upon us. Glass crunched all around, like hailstones.

  “What the hell is happening?”

  “I don’t know!”

  *

  —and then back again.

  Marsh opened his eyes. His gaze fell upon a trio of dead SS troops arranged around the dwindling sapphire flames. Each man had taken a single bullet in the back of the head. Like the other guards Marsh had killed. But he sure as hell had never shot like that, not even under controlled conditions.

  He couldn’t stop shaking. His lungs burned. The Eidolon had neglected to put air in his chest when it reassembled him. Marsh’s inhalation sounded like a long, shuddery gasp.

  The Eidolon had protected him. It must have deduced, perhaps by virtue of the blood it had already absorbed, that bullets brought life histories to an end. Apparently it found that perfectly acceptable as long as Marsh’s history wasn’t the one brought up short. Marsh suspected it had come to see him as a vehicle for receiving still more blood to sample.

  He pulled down another armload of Reichsbehörde files. Three matches remained. But he lost two of those to the uncontrollable shaking of his hands. He gritted his teeth and clenched the muscles in his atrophied arms, forcing himself rigid while he lit the final match. Flames licked at the corner of a report written by Standartenführer Pabst regarding the death of a test subject named Oskar. The crystalline flames resumed their impossible dance.

  He took a gun and a spare magazine from the dead guards. Jerry would be hard-pressed to bring heavier armaments down here; anything much larger than a submachine gun threatened to destroy the archives they were fighting to protect. They probably had potato mashers upstairs, but explosives were right out. Likewise phosphorus smoke grenades, which had the potential to make a mockery of Marsh’s feeble fire by turning the entire archive into an inferno. They might have resorted to poison gas to flush him out, but not without first evacuating SS Haus.

  No. He reckoned they were waiting for him up top. There was only one way out of the archives, after all.

  On another guard, he found cigarettes and enough matches to finish the job. He made short work of the remaining files. After that, Marsh straightened his uniform, checked the MP 34, and headed for the lift.

  Tactically, in a world where the laws of nature hadn’t been shredded, stairs would have been preferable. But he didn’t know where they were, and couldn’t spare the time to look. Normally, the lift would have been a quick route to the firing squad. But it didn’t matter as long as the Eidolon escorted him. And if it abandoned him, he didn’t stand a chance regardless of how he tried to escape.

  The no-man’s-land of unreality moved with him. He addressed it, under his breath. “Stay with me. Just a bit longer. Please.”

  Ice crusted the walls. Black vines sprouted from the ice, topped with wet, pulsating blossoms.

  The lift still featured rosewood paneling, a vestige of the building’s previous life as a luxury hotel. The doors closed; the floor pressed against the soles of Marsh’s stolen boots. He leaned against the brass railing, trying but failing to control his breathing. He’d begun to tremble again. The walls of the lift pulled apart like soft caramel, a thousand leagues wide.

  Ding.

  The doors opened. Marsh had never seen the lobby of the former hotel because he’d had a bag over his head the previous time. But he doubted the line of gunmen was part of the usual arrangement.

  He emerged from the lift. The gunmen unleashed a hail of gunfire into his Eidolonic cocoon. The bullets ceased to exist before they touched him. The Eidolon howled, shaking the heavens with its demand for blood, but Marsh didn’t need to return fire. The Eidolon’s presence swept across the lobby like a tidal wave of crushing malice. The Schutzstaffel men collapsed to the bare marble floor. Some clutched their heads, others curled into fetal balls.

  Some screamed, some sobbed. The Eidolon swirled through a frieze of bas-relief plaster eagles, turning them into blazing phoenices. The world smelled of warm raspberry tarts, a wet dog, and poorly tanned leather. Marsh tasted bile not his own.

  The Eidolon withdrew.

  Reality snapped into place around him. Gone were the phantom smells, the impossible visions, the carnivorous shadows, the waves of incapacitating hatred.

  “Shit.”

  Marsh sprinted across the lobby. The most stalwart troops wobbled to their feet as he burst through the doors onto Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.

  Marsh used his uniform and gun to requisition the first passing vehicle. Once alone, he wept all the way to Weimar.

  twelve

  13 November 1940

  Walworth, London, England

&
nbsp; Liv took a blue pullover from the pile of clothes on the sofa, folded it, and placed it in the suitcase on the floor. She frowned. Then replaced it with a red one.

  Will said, “I thought you’d intended to stay.”

  “I did, Will. I really did.” The skin beneath her eyes had become dark and papery. As was the case, lately, with every Londoner. “But they say the Jerries might resume the bombing any day. I can’t take another night alone in the shelter with Agnes. I thought I could do it, but I can’t, Will. I simply can’t.”

  The Luftwaffe had taken to tossing bombs like confetti. They’d come for fifty-seven nights in a row. Stephenson said the raids had averaged over 150 bombers per night. The last several days had seen a reprieve, but nobody with a shred of sense expected it to last.

  Liv continued, “The commander’s company made it bearable. But he hasn’t come to visit in days.” She shook her head. “I imagine he’s quite busy.”

  Just what do the two of you think you’re doing? Will wanted to say. Marsh’s duplicitous re-courtship of his own wife—for that’s what it was, regardless of his refusal to admit it—curled Will’s toes. When confronted about it, he pleaded honorable intentions and having missed his dead daughter for so long. He knew it was impossible for him and Liv to be together, and yet …

  Marsh refused to stop seeing Liv. He claimed it was to protect her from Gretel, but that was only part of it. He’d fallen in love with his wife all over again. He couldn’t fool Will on that front, who had already seen them fall in love once before. His friend had become an old man not because he was burdened by the passage of time, but because he carried an unrelenting weight of sorrow and loneliness. One only had to look into the man’s eyes to see that.

  “I’m certain he’d be here if he could,” said Will. “He’ll be back soon, no doubt.”

  And Will supposed it might very well be true that Marsh’s proximity was keeping his wife and daughter safe. Marsh, the older Marsh, knew far more about Gretel than anybody else. And if just a fraction of what he’d said about her were true …

  Agnes gurgled in her bassinet. Will wrinkled his nose. She had wet herself.

  Liv took a blouse from the pile on the armrest. The blouse brushed a newspaper that lay folded open on the end table; it fluttered to the floor. Liv had circled a piece about the presidential election in America, where Roosevelt had won reelection over his opponent, Willkie.

  “I was saving that for the commander,” she said. “He follows news from the States. But I suppose I can toss that paper in the bin. It was on the wireless.”

  Will suppressed a shiver. Sweat trickled from his armpits. He had to stop her from leaving.

  He said, “The commander was dead set against Williton, as I recall. He probably had good reason.”

  “I haven’t broken my promise, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’m not taking Agnes to Williton.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Coventry. Auntie knows people there. She made introductions for us.”

  Will had to bite his tongue. The most sensible thing would have been to invite Liv to Bestwood. But Marsh had forbidden it. They had to assume Gretel knew about the family estate. They also had to assume, based on Marsh’s final conversation with her in the original time line, that she no longer had a need to keep Will or any other Beauclerk alive. The estate was a viable target.

  “Unless I’m mistaken, the Führer has been known to send his hounds to Coventry, too.”

  “Not since summer. And never so terribly as here. Any place is better than London,” said Liv, her voice cracking.

  “Well. Don’t worry on your husband’s account. I shall take it upon myself to keep him informed as to your whereabouts, the very moment he returns.”

  Liv fidgeted with the buckle on the suitcase. “Oh, Will…” Her shoulders slumped. “He’s never coming back.”

  And then she was shaking, struggling to gulp down air and force the words past the sobs at the same time. “He’s gone … forever … and our daughter … won’t…”

  Will crossed the den to stand beside her. Liv pressed her head against his shirt. Awkwardly, uncomfortably, he put an arm around her. He’d wished for a chance to hold her for such a long time, but he’d never wished for this. But she needed a friend. And he could be that.

  “Shhh, shhh, Olivia. Don’t give up on our Pip just yet. He’s still out there. And we’ll see him again before long. I have a nose for these things.”

  He hoped that were true. The younger Marsh had certainly been alive when Will had bade the Eidolon to hover near him. And he’d been on the move. And, apparently, engaged in some rather vicious fighting. But as to the state of affairs when the Eidolon departed on heartbeat seven thousand and one, Will couldn’t say.

  14 November 1940

  Weimar, Germany

  Marsh arrived in Weimar before dawn. He ditched the truck in a cobbled alleyway not far from the local Schutzstaffel garrison. Autumn had put a chill in the air, glazing the cobbles with frost. Marsh’s chest ached from the effort to suppress his shivering. The lure of warmth and a chance to bathe, perhaps even a chance to pinch an overcoat, made it tempting to enter the garrison.

  But that would have been suicide. By now the word of his escape had been flashed to every corner of the Reich. So instead, he took a mildewed tarpaulin from the truck bed, folded it under his arm, and set off through the side streets and alleyways of Weimar. He needed to put at least a couple of miles between himself and the truck before he secured transportation for the next leg of his journey. He left a trail of sparkling breath in the still autumn air and hurried past the darkest shadows. He stuck to pavement where he could, lest he twist an ankle on the uneven, frost-slick cobbles.

  Minding each footstep took too much mental effort. His brain had been stuffed with cotton, doused with schnapps, ignited, snuffed, and buried as a pile of cold ashes. The Eidolon’s cries of rage had become physically painful toward the end, and now Marsh’s ears were clogged with coagulated blood that muffled the sounds of the real world.

  Real?

  As much as he feared recapture by the SS, he feared even more what he’d see inscribed on his eyelids when he tried to rest. The Eidolon had departed hours ago. Yet the world still lacked the plausibility of a Christmas pantomime. When Marsh had driven through the city center, he’d flinched with disgust because a pair of men inside a bakery had appeared to be grotesque parodies of paper dolls—until Marsh had realized they weren’t dolls animated into a semblance of life, but flesh and blood human beings.

  The rising sun tinted orange the clouds of the eastern sky. He had to hurry. The SS uniform was good for deflecting people who weren’t inclined to look further, but no more than that. Anybody who saw him boosting a car would stop to watch, and from there it was a short hop to noticing the stubble, long hair, dirty fingernails, and bloody ears.

  On the next street, Marsh found an Audi, an Opel, and a Mercedes. He approached the driver’s door of the Opel, grabbed the handle, and waited for the shifting currents of reality to loosen the lock enough for him to work it free. His breath fogged the glass. The ache in his chest spread into his back, neck, and shoulders. Still he waited. Nothing happened.

  And then he remembered how the world was supposed to work when the Eidolons weren’t paying attention to the affairs of men. The world where solid objects remained solid. Where cold fire didn’t twist itself into impossible shapes. Where shadows didn’t burn unprotected flesh.

  “Are you well, sir?”

  Marsh spun. A lady stood on the stoop of a block of flats. She wore a brown wool overcoat two sizes too large for her. For an instant, Marsh saw her lying on the pavement, her coat gone, sapphire flames illuminating the bullet hole in her temple while a demon howled for a taste of her blood. He flinched.

  “Sir?” She frowned. Stepped closer.

  Marsh forced himself to focus. “Good morning. Yes, I’m well. Thank you for your concern.” He smiled, but not too widely, for fear of how
she might respond to his teeth. They had to be yellow.

  “You looked confused,” she said.

  “Merely tired. I’ve been on patrol all night.”

  “They work you boys so hard,” she said, shaking her head. She descended the stairs to the pavement. Her attention shifted to her footing. “Even when the war is so many miles away.”

  False memories called to him: Spill her blood. Take her coat.

  Marsh said, “It’s my duty.”

  “That’s what my nephew says, too. We’re proud of him.” She set off in the direction of the city center. Probably headed for the bakery he’d passed.

  “I hope so,” he said, to her retreating back.

  As soon as she’d turned the corner, he wrapped the tarp around his elbow and jammed it against the window. But the glass held. A flare of pain shot through his forearm and numbed his hand from wrist to fingertips. He’d overestimated his strength again.

  He discovered, on the third try, that the car was unlocked.

  The drive from Weimar took Marsh past the turn for a place called Buchenwald. From there it was a short drive to the forest on the outskirts of von Westarp’s farm. Autumn had stripped the trees, coating the forest floor with a mulch of desiccated oak and ash leaves. He pulled off the farm track and parked the car behind an overgrown embankment. A nearby thicket of wild blackberry bushes provided a passable blind. The thorns tore his hands open. Marsh braced himself at the sight of the blood welling from his cuts, but this time there was no Eidolon to shake the cosmos with its dissatisfaction.

  Back in the car, wrapped in the tarp, he fell asleep.

  14 November 1940

  Kensington, London, England

  I paused in the act of filling a glass at Will’s sideboard. “What in the hell do you mean she’s gone?”

  Will said, “I’m sorry, Pip. I gave it my very best, I assure you. But Olivia was quite determined.”

  A nauseating dread hit me so hard I thought I might sick up then and there in Will’s parlor. They had slipped away, out of my reach, to where I couldn’t protect them. It was exactly the kind of momentary lapse that Gretel could exploit. It was exactly the waking nightmare I’d struggled to avoid. And this time I was going to lose them both.