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.
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 right 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.
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 …’
‘Is that what you believe?’ Zarah asks, from immediately to my left.
I turn and look at her. ‘He must be. How else would you know what’s yet to happen?’
Old Schnorr speaks up. ‘Our friend, Schikaneder … you said to me that Kolya stole his journal.’
‘Yes, but Schikaneder knows nothing about what’s happening
now
.’
‘True. Only think of the file we prepared. Kolya stole that. Maybe he’s stolen other things. Memoirs written by one or other of us. Journals documenting these times in detail. Reports we’ve made.’
‘It’s a possibility,’ I concede, ‘if only because we know that’s one of the ways he operates. But we still don’t know why he’s doing this, or what he’s trying to achieve. I mean, why show himself to me, knowing that I’m armed, unless to taunt me in some way? To show me how powerless I am.’
Freisler speaks up. He sounds a little subdued. ‘Is that what you think he’s doing, Meister? Taunting you?’
I look across at him, thinking it strange to be addressed that way by him, even if it’s my title now. ‘I could have shot him, and he knew that.’
‘Yes, but he would have changed it. He
knew
how you’d react.’
‘Maybe.’
And maybe I’ve grown soft. Maybe those months at Cherdiechnost have taken off my edge. In the past I’d have shot the woman immediately she was in my sights, and thereby ended Kolya. Far better that
she
should die than the
volk
be endangered by a madman.
‘You should go back,’ Zarah says. ‘Go back and finish what you’ve started.’
‘But it
is
finished.’
‘Is it?’ Freisler asks, leaning towards me, the Tree of Worlds reflected in his dark eyes.
‘But Kolya’s gone.’
‘Has he? Meister Schnorr … tell us when the records say he was born.’
Old Schnorr smiles. ‘April 2343.’
‘You mean …?’
‘What we mean,’ Zarah says, ‘is that we believe Kolya – the nine-year-old you met – was ‘adopted’ by his real mother.’
‘Why?’
‘So he could be there with her,’ says Schnorr. ‘Close to her. Protecting her and, by association,
himself
. As a grown man he couldn’t have done that. The servants are kept segregated as to sex. But as her son …’
‘Then he’ll have to come back. To keep an eye on her. To make sure I don’t harm her, and thereby
him
.’
‘Precisely,’ Freisler says.
‘Then I have no choice. I
must
go back. In fact, I’ll go now.’
‘Not so fast, Otto,’ Old Schnorr says, gesturing to me to sit down again. ‘There are things here you must attend to first.’
Freisler, across from me, nods and takes up Meister Schnorr’s comment. ‘That’s right. We’ve some reports we’d like you to study.’
‘What, now?’
‘You ought to,’ Zarah says. ‘As Meister you need to know the full range of what’s happening.’
I know that, and it’s one of the reasons why I don’t feel I make a good Meister. I’m an agent – perhaps the best we have – but being Meister is a different thing altogether. It demands different skills. Skills I don’t think I possess. But this is what they want. What Hecht – even knowing what he knew of me at the end – wanted.
‘You want me to look at them now, is that it?’
Old Schnorr and Zarah and Freisler all nod, as do several others about the seated circle.
‘Then you’d better let me see them.’
Meister Schnorr looks to Zarah. ‘Send him back, then we’ll resume here.’
‘Send me …?’
It is as if they vanish. But I am still there, in the same room, on the same chair, only I know it is hours – days? – earlier, and beside me on the floor are a stack of files and a silvered data card.
Reports …
Several hours into the task, I look up from the screen, realising that Old Schnorr was right. I needed to know this stuff. Much of it is composed of brief resumes of what projects are green-lit and running – a page to each, giving the salient details – together with similarly brief CVs of the main agents involved. But there are a couple of files which are much more interesting because they deal specifically with matters that override the concerns of individual projects.
For a start there’s a file on Reichenau and the platforms; another on Kolya and his abduction of his ‘selves’ through Time. Yet another deals with the quite recent phenomenon of agents coming back from up ahead. And the last, and perhaps most fascinating of all, is on me.
These latter files – the non-project files – are all Hecht’s work, found among his ‘papers’ when they were clearing out his rooms. This, I learn from an appended note, is what they believe he was working on in those final thirty days of his life. Trying to make sense of things. Attempting to weave all of it into a coherent pattern. Much of it – and Hecht, true to his nature, takes great pains to say that this is so – is speculation, the filling of gaps with surmise. There’s not much that’s new, information-wise, but Hecht’s thinking on certain matters is worth consideration.
For instance, he thought there was a connection – perhaps even an intimate, familial one – between Reichenau and Kolya. Why? Because wherever we find traces of one, we find similar traces of the other. Instances? Back in 1952, and again up in 2343. Hecht’s belief – and my instinct is to agree with him – was that this was hardly likely to be coincidental.
On the subject of agents coming back from our future he was far less certain, perhaps because of lack of evidence. He had visited himself, certainly, but that was an isolated incident, and he had travelled only a relatively short distance into his own future. Overall, it was his feeling that, if it
were
happening, we would know for sure, because we would be flooded with agents coming back, and as that hadn’t happened … Even so, the possibility of it happening remained large. It was now, he asserted,
theoretically
possible for it to happen, and so it would. Given time.
And I agree with him on that, and what he writes in his conclusion: ‘
We are all living this segment of our history first time round, but next time – and the countless times after that – they will be here, changing things, making alternations, and we may not even know it’s happening.
’
Which brings me to the file I found most difficult to read, the file Hecht had compiled on me. I don’t want to speak of it here, only to say that it was remarkably clear-eyed and open-minded considering Hecht’s personal feelings on the matter, but I looked up from it finally with a mixed sense of shame and love, chastened by the experience of reading it.
No. One fact I will mention, something he said towards the end of the report. That he had asked the Elders to appoint me Meister
despite
my aberrant behaviour, because he knew I would, eventually, make a fine Meister. A Meister suited for new times and new circumstances.
Such faith in me he had, even after his disillusionment.
And, sitting there, I find my eyes welling with tears at the thought of his loss, finally –
finally
– able to grieve him. Accepting him once more into my heart, as he, in his final days, had accepted what I was.
An hour later I am back, seated once more in the circle of my peers. Old Schnorr looks to me and smiles. ‘Well, Otto? What have you to say?’
‘One question. Why didn’t Kolya try to kill
me
?’
I look up from the file and scowl at the boy sitting opposite me. He is by far the most unpleasant of them yet, a sneering, supercilious young man, not yet sixteen, who thinks himself not merely superior to me, but above being questioned by the Ministry.
His name is Paul Woolf and his father is the Chief Geneticist at the Institute in Vienna, and a very close friend of the Doktor – something young Woolf has dropped into the conversation on at least two occasions thus far.
‘Just answer the question.’
‘
Why
?’ he says, leaning back a little, hoping to wind me up even further by an act of casualness. ‘Both you and I know I’m not the student you’re interested in, so why maintain this ridiculous charade?’
‘You
know
, do you?’
‘Of course I know. It can’t possibly be me. I’m not a traitor. And besides, I object to the tenor of your questions. It seems to me like simple prying into what ought to be my own private concerns.’
‘As far as the State is concerned,
nothing
is private.’
Woolf just laughs. An insolent sound.
I stand. ‘Come round the desk. Stand before the viewer.’
He gets up slowly, sullenly and does what I’ve asked, and for a long while there is silence, while I make my observations and jot down my notes. Ironically, there’s nothing particularly special about our young friend’s chromosomes. They’re the same mish-mash of the good and the bad, dominant and recessive, the useful and the harmful. The Woolf clan are far from being supermen.
‘It must be difficult,’ he says, when I’ve finally done and he’s seated again.
‘Difficult?’
‘Knowing what you are. What –
genetically
– you’re capable of attaining. One day, you see, all of the subspecies will be identified. That’s what my father says.’
I stare at him dumbfounded. ‘
And
?’
‘What do you think? The lower kinds will serve
us
, of course. The Betas and the Deltas. Whatever we decide is necessary. Only they will be
glad
to serve us, because they’ll understand the evolutionary distance – the vast, unbreachable gap – between us and them. Why, eventually they’ll not even be able to breed with us any more. You see, that’s what it’s about, this society of ours. That’s what’s beginning here. We’re taking the first steps even now. But in the future …’