The Ocean of Time (54 page)

– Friedrich Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil

I WANT TO
see Hecht’s body. I want to know
how
he died and
why,
and why it couldn’t be prevented. And I want to know how Katerina’s involved, because if she isn’t, then why send me the pendant? More than anything I want to know why I can’t go and see her now.

Right now.

I look about me at the four who are seated with me at the end of the long, gleamingly polished conference table. ‘Who’s Master here?’

‘You are …’

They say the words in unison, then look to each other awkwardly. Freisler and Old Schnorr, Zarah and, much subdued, my old friend Ernst, looking grey and old beyond his years. Gehlen is there, too, ‘looking on’ from a flat screen to one side. We’re in the Conference Room, the doors locked,
in camera
. A room designed for fifty or more. But there are only the five of us here. Five and a dead man.

‘Then why can’t I go back?’

Freisler looks to the others, then speaks for them all. ‘You just can’t. There’s too much to do.’

‘Then let someone else do it.’

‘That’s not possible.
You
are Meister now.’

I sense that it costs him something to say it, that he would like to be sitting in my place, at the head of the table. He’s about to say more, when Zarah touches his arm and intercedes.

‘Things must be maintained. The Game …’

Can go hang itself
. Only I don’t say that. Without the Game there’s no Katerina.

No girls. No Cherdiechnost.

‘How can it harm? I’ll be gone only seconds.’

‘Yes, but what if you don’t come back?’ Ernst says, surprising me. I thought Ernst would be on my side, knowing what he knows.

I laugh, as if the notion is absurd. ‘Of course I’ll come back. At the first sign of trouble.’

‘You’ll stay there,’ Zarah says. ‘You have before. That’s why we can’t risk it. Everyone depends on you now, Otto.
Everyone
.’

That’s hard to take in. That I’m in charge now. The Meister. Dealing with agents, making decisions, naming children …

‘What if Ernst went in with me? Then, if we got into trouble, he could jump out and you could pull
me
out.’

‘No,’ Ernst says.

‘But why?’

He looks up, meets my eyes. ‘Because I couldn’t trust myself. You might
persuade
me.’

‘Persuade you?
How
? If you were under strict orders.’

‘To the Meister, yes.’

I almost smile, seeing his point, only this is too serious to be amusing. ‘What if I order it?’

Zarah’s ready for this one. ‘Then we depose you. Appoint another Meister.’

‘Then what good is it
being
Meister?’

‘None,’ Freisler says coldly, ‘unless you take the role seriously. Unless you embrace the responsibility of the job.’

That much is true. I can’t act like a child. Not now. Only I must know what’s happened to her.
Must
.

‘Ernst?’

‘Yes, Meister?’

‘Would you go in for me? Find out what’s happened and report back?’

‘Yes, Meister.’

I look to Zarah, then to Friesler. ‘Is that okay?’

Both nod.

‘Then that’s what we’ll do. Ernst, you’ll report to me in an hour. Until then …’

But Zarah interrupts me again. ‘Not possible, I’m afraid. There’s to be a ceremony.’

‘A ceremony?’

‘For Meister Hecht. In the chapel.’

‘Ah … of course.’ And I feel suddenly very small and selfish. For a moment I’d forgotten. ‘Later, then, Ernst.
Afterwards
.’

‘Yes, Meister.’

Old Schnorr is watching me, strangely pensive.

‘Meister Schnorr? You have something to say?’

‘Not now,’ he says, and I note the curious glances that the others give him.

‘Then we’re done, I guess.’

Only we’re not. ‘I’ll bring in the first of the files,’ Freisler says, getting up.

I stare at him, confused. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘We ought to make a start,’ he says, looking to Zarah. ‘Don’t you think?’

But Zarah shrugs.

‘Make a start on what?’

‘Reviewing the files,’ she says. ‘Agents, projects. The whole thing. You’re responsible for it all now, Otto, so you need to know what’s going on.’ She smiles sympathetically. ‘That’s why we’re here. That’s why the Elders appointed us. To help you. To ease you in. We’re your council. Until you can cope. Until—’

I interrupt her. ‘But you know that won’t happen. I disappear …’

‘You forget the nature of Time,’ Old Schnorr says, seeming more authoritative, more commanding than I’ve ever known him. ‘You might appear to be with us only for a day or so, even a week, but that time might be
folded in
. You might jump back or jump out. Your time might be stretched. We just don’t know. Meanwhile the Elders have appointed us.’

I stand. For a moment they’re silent, watching me, looking to see what I’ll do. Only I know suddenly that I’ll do nothing. Nothing outrageous, that is.

‘Not now,’ I say to Freisler. ‘Later. After the ceremony. We’ll make a start then. And Ernst …’

‘Yes, Meister?’

‘Get me news. Let me know that she’s all right. I can’t function without knowing.’

Zarah is looking down. So too is Schnorr. Only Ernst and Freisler are looking at me, and I have the sense that Freisler is studying me as if to gauge just how reliable I am.

Not at all
, I think, and wonder at myself, because Freisler’s right. This is no time to be unreliable. No time to be selfish. Right now, the
volk
– the entire German nation, now and for all time – is vulnerable. If the Russians were to learn of Hecht’s death …

I turn, looking to Gehlen, at the flattened yet familiar face upon the screen.

‘Hans … what do the Russians know?’

Gehlen is tapped into the mainframe, you see. If anyone knows the overall situation, he – dead as he is – will know.

‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘They think Hecht’s alive and well and running things.’

‘Then let’s keep it that way.’ I look to Zarah. ‘No ceremony,’ I say. ‘Our agents aren’t to know anything. As far as they’re concerned, Hecht is still alive. He’s still the Meister.’

‘But …’

‘There’ll be time later to celebrate his life. But not now. Now we are vulnerable.’

I look to Freisler. ‘Jurgen, have we a project ready to launch?’

‘Not ready, Meister, but—’

‘Something we can improvise, then?’

He thinks a moment, then nods.

‘Then let’s do that. Let’s distract the bastards.’

Freisler likes that. He smiles. And Freisler rarely smiles. ‘Yes, Meister!’

But Zarah, I can see, is still unhappy. I need to placate her over the ceremony.

‘Hecht was a great man,’ I say. ‘We shall not see his like again.’

‘He was our Father,’ Zarah says. ‘Whenever we had a problem, he was there for us.’

I open my mouth, then nod, as if I agree. Only I don’t, because I know now what a father
is
and Hecht was never that. No. Hecht was our Meister, pure and simple. Through us he played the Game. And though the Game goes on, things have changed, for
I
am Meister now, and, looking round that table, I realise for the first time what that means.

I have the power to change things. The power to change the way the Game is played.

Only not now. Not yet.

‘Zarah, Jurgen, Ernst, leave me now. Meister Schnorr and I have things to discuss.’

And they leave, obedient to my wishes, for I am Meister now and this is my Game.

‘Well, Meister Schnorr? What is it?’

Old Schnorr peers at me a moment over his massive spectacles, then, turning aside, reaches down and lifts something from the floor beside his chair. It’s an old, satchel-like briefcase – a soft, brown leather bag, worn and ancient, bulging with documents. Setting it on the table in front of him, his fingers fumble at the old brass catches, even as he begins to speak.

‘We’ve been busy, Otto. Very busy. I drafted in two new students to help collate the stuff, but, well, my boys have done me proud. I thought there’d be gaps, even after all our best efforts, but—’

The document he lifts from inside the old briefcase is huge – a good two inches thick and dense with type. He pushes it towards me.

‘Kolya?’

‘Kolya,’ he confirms. ‘As complete as we could make it. Seventy-two generations on the father’s side. Potted histories, the lot.’

‘And no gaps?’

The old Master removes his glasses to polish them and smiles. ‘No gaps.’

He replaces his spectacles. His eyes once again look as large as gobstoppers.

‘Do we know—’

‘Where he’s taking them?’ Schnorr shakes his head. ‘Not yet. Only we’re certain he’s taking them somewhere. Seventy-two ancestors, and every last one of them disappears without trace the moment the direct descendant is born. Hardly coincidence, eh?’

Hardly. I flick through a page or two, then push it aside. ‘So what’s the way ahead? How do we
use
what we know?’

Schnorr’s smile broadens. ‘You’re the Meister now, Otto. That’s your job.’

‘But …’

Only he’s right. I have to think for all of them now. Come up with the answers. Decide what to do and how to do it.

I need to think this through, come up with a strategy. And not just any half-cocked scheme. Only I’ve not got a lot of time; not if I’m about to ‘vanish’ from the screens.

‘Meister Hecht wanted me to go in,’ I say. ‘2343. He wanted me to get some answers.’

‘Then go.’

‘But I thought you didn’t want me to go in.’

‘If it was the old Meister’s wish, then we’ll not oppose you. It was only if you went in … after her …’

‘Katerina?’

He nods, a touch embarrassed, and I sense that while he understands, he does not approve. Like Hecht, he thinks I’ve made a mess of things. And maybe I have, but I am beginning to think it’s for a purpose, that what I said to Hecht about it being ‘
meant’
is true.

Only how to prove that without passing through the loop?

Until I’m out the other side, I can only trust to instinct. And my instinct right now – stronger even than my need to see Katerina and make sure she’s safe – is to find and kill Kolya. Time-dead, so he can’t come back.

So why not start at the beginning of his story? Where supposedly he’s born. In the 2340s.

Old Schnorr has been watching me silently. Now he takes another package from his bag – the same envelope Hecht left for me – and pushes it across.

‘We had it analysed,’ he says. ‘And guess what? It’s made of DNA. Katerina’s DNA, presumably.’

I tip the pendant from the envelope and pick it up, closing my hand about it, like I have a living piece of her beneath my fingers.

My instinct was right, then. The smith was an agent, put there in Belyj, in that crap heap of a trading post, with the sole purpose of meeting us and getting the pendant into Katerina’s care.

Only how did they know what I would ask for? Who found that out and told them?

‘One further thing,’ Schnorr says. ‘We X-rayed it. It might look like an ash leaf, but beneath that superficial form is another.’

‘The lazy eight?’

‘Exactly.’

So it’s a portable focus. But linked to what?
Where does it jump to?

‘She was wearing it,’ I say. ‘In Cherdiechnost, the evening I left her, when Hecht brought me back here. The question is, how did Hecht get hold of it, and where?’

And there are other questions, too. Like what happened to Katerina when I left her in Krasnogorsk – when I was pulled out of there back to Four-Oh?

Old Schnorr sits there, silent, waiting, I guess, for me to dismiss him now that he’s delivered his little surprise. But I’ve one final task for him. Something to get his young men working on.

‘I want you to find her,’ I say. ‘I want you to trawl time once more for her face. Find out where she went and where she’s been.’

Schnorr seems surprised. ‘Katerina?’

‘Katerina.’ And, tearing off the first page of the report, I turn it over and begin to sketch her face.

Zarah walks round me, ‘inspecting’ me, straightening my cloak and making sure I look the part, then nods.

‘You’ll do.’

But for once I’m feeling nervous as I step up on to the platform, because if Meister Schnorr is right, this is the epicentre. If there are answers to be had, then they’re there, in 2343, and that could be dangerous. Especially if Kolya’s there.

They’ve set it all up in advance. Our agents have gone in and established an identity for me, given me a history and a status. Enough to convince anyone should they choose to pry.

I’ve been to the language lab and had a refresher in Mechanist ‘jargon’. Not that I’ll probably need it, because the circles I’ll be operating within consider it vulgar; just that it would be careless not to.

Everything else I need is in a case that will be delivered once I’m there. As is the custom. For a man of my status – an Inspector of the second rank – would consider it quite beneath him to carry his own luggage.

‘Strength,’ Zarah says, as she steps behind the screen, preparing to send me back.

I smile. ‘Strength,’ I say, even as Four-Oh evaporates about me.

And there I am, on a broad, white marble path between tall trees. It’s a perfect spring day in Germany and the tiered white façade of the Akademie looms close, beyond the trees, a hundred metres distant.

They are expecting me. Only not today. In the communication from my office, they were told I would be making an inspection on the fifth of April, but I am two days early. But that, apparently, is how we operate at the Ministry. We like to keep them on their toes.

‘Can I help you, Master?’

I turn, to find two boys, dressed in what looks like military uniform, their silks predominantly black, each outfit finished off with long leather boots and a sash. They are tall and blond, fourteen, maybe fifteen years old at most, yet they carry themselves with the assurance – nay, the arrogance – of adults.

Oh, and one further detail. On the left side of each of their necks is ‘tattooed’ what looks like an elaborate Chinese ‘chop’, in effect, a perfectly square and highly detailed ‘bar-code’. This is a ‘genetic indent’, containing an abbreviated form of the most important genetic details of each of their twenty-six chromosomes. More complex than any fingerprint, it is their distinct identifier in this world, and bears an almost heraldic importance in this society. I have a similar ‘indent’ on my own neck. False, naturally, for I’ve no wish to give anyone that kind of detailed information about me, but consistent with the ‘indent’ kept on the Ministry’s files. If anyone bothers to check up on me, that too will coincide.