The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds (32 page)

“Do you realize what you’re saying? Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me you believe the Luftwaffe conducted a raid specifically for the purpose of killing one infant? And that now you want us to reverse her death?”

“I don’t care how it sounds.” Marsh grabbed Will’s arm. “Bring Agnes back.”

“You should care, because you sound like a raving nutter. And as for Agnes, even if we went so far as to resurrect her body, I promise you, the thing inside it wouldn’t be
her.
The thing that was Agnes has gone somewhere else.” Will shook his head. “Ask the others if you don’t believe me. They’ll tell you the same, but they won’t frame it so compassionately.”

He continued, “I wish I had the power to undo things. I wish I had the power to breathe just one person back to life. To make up for . . .”

Click.
It felt like a cog slipping into place. Separate parts of Marsh’s mind came together and engaged.

Part of him still grappled with Will’s objections. Marsh put that aside in a special place where he could go back to it later; he wasn’t ready to consider that Will might be right. This was different, something new.

Cogs turned. And turned. And turned.

“Are you listening to me?” Will asked.

“I’m sorry, Will. What did you say?”

“Nothing at all. I was merely unburdening myself to you. It won’t happen again.”

“No, earlier. Before that. About Agnes.”

“She’s somewhere else now.” Will sighed again. “You need to accept that.”

“That was it. You said she’s gone somewhere else.”

“A figure of speech. What of it?”

Marsh cracked his knuckles against his jaw. “You’ve just given me an idea.”

“Oh, bother.” Will crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m listening.”

“You said yesterday that the Eidolons are omnipresent.”

“They are, insofar as nothing can be everywhere, I suppose. They don’t relate to things like we do. If you imagine points in space and time as bricks in a wall, the Eidolons would exist in the mortar between the bricks.”

“In that case, let me ask you,” said Marsh. “What prevents us from using them for transportation?”

Silence stretched between them long enough for another drip to become audible. Finally, Will said, “Are you suggesting we should regard the Eidolons as our own private Tube system?”

“Like a Tube system with no distance between stops.”

Will said, “This is the third mad thing you’ve said this morning. You need to start sleeping, Pip.” He stood. “I don’t like what happens to you when you don’t.”

Marsh stood as well, feeling animated for the first time in days. “Are you willing to tell me that nobody has ever thought of this before?”

Will’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a few seconds. “It—well—that is, there are
legends . . .”

“So let’s do something legendary.”

3 December 1940

Milkweed Headquarters, London, England

T
he window behind Stephenson’s desk afforded Will a grand view of St. James’ Park and the preparations under way there. Sleet pattered against the mullioned windowpanes, sounding like the impatient tapping of fingernails. It trickled down, slowly collecting along the sash like diseased hoarfrost.

The sleet had started out as a bone-cold drizzle within the fog that rolled off the Thames the day before. It was an unusual fog, but still a natural manifestation, rather than something wrought through prices and negotiations. Nobody complained. It kept the Luftwaffe at bay.

Down in the park, swaths of camouflage netting fluttered violently in a gust of wind. Moments later the same gust splattered a new layer of sleet against the glass. Will stepped away from the drafty window.

For the moment, he had the old man’s office to himself. It smelled of winter rain, stale cigarette smoke, and Stephenson’s brandy. Will helped himself to more of the last thing. He concentrated on pouring, but the liquid slopped over the side of his tumbler and trickled down the side of the desk.

“Oops,” he said to nobody in particular. “Opps.” He giggled. “Secret ops.”

He sipped again. The brandy burned on the way down, but the fire died when it reached the ice in Will’s stomach. Nothing could melt that.

Outside, across Horse Guards’ Road, a ten-foot privacy fence had been erected around two acres of royal parkland. Inside the rings of fences and sentries, under the camo, stood a jumble of tents. At least a dozen, but probably more by now. Will couldn’t see well enough through the thickening weather to count them. But they’d been popping up like toadstools since the fog rolled in. There were one or two Nissen huts down there as well.

The encampment put Will in mind of a violent carnival. (“Carnival.” He giggled again. “Farewell to the flesh.”) Several tents had been erected to protect the machines that Lorimer and the science boffins had designed. One tent would soon contain a stone plucked from the lake in the center of the park.

All part of Marsh’s ill-conceived plan to attack the Reichsbehörde. Marsh and his crusade.

The door opened, sending warm yellow light across the darkened office. Will’s reflection appeared in the window. He looked like a haggard ghost hovering outside the Admiralty building, a revenant spirit condemned to wander endlessly through a landscape of winter fog.

“Beauclerk? What are you doing in my office?”

Will turned. Stephenson tromped in. Droplets of ice water sparkled in his graying hair. He shrugged off a sodden black mackintosh, flipped
it off his shoulder with his good arm, and hung it on the coatrack in the corner in one practiced motion.

“Watching the festivities,” Will answered. He jerked his chin toward the window. It made the room spin. He shuffled sideways.

“Don’t you and the others have more pressing issues to occupy you right now?” said Stephenson. The empty sleeve pinned to his shoulder flapped up and down as he kicked off his galoshes.

“I came to talk to you about that very thing.”

Stephenson turned on the light and joined him at the window. He looked pointedly at the bottle on the desk and the tumbler in Will’s hand. “Dozens of men down in St. James’, working their arses off in this weather, and you’re up here having a little party.”

“I’d offer to share, but . . .” Will took the bottle by its neck and waggled it upside down above the floor. Nothing dripped out. He set the bottle back in Stephenson’s drawer, where he’d found it.

Stephenson looked around the room, assessing his office for further indignities. Will knew he’d left several strewn across the old man’s desk. A finger’s worth of spirits seeping across the blotter. A bent letter-opener. Scrapes and gouges in the finish along the edges of the drawer.

It had surprised Will to discover that the old man had taken to locking his desk drawer. Apparently he’d noticed the bottle slowly going empty.

“You’re pissed. On my brandy.”

“Me? Heavens no. Empty stomach. Low blood sugar.” Will giggled again. “Blood. Yes. That’s the problem.”

“Beauclerk.” Stephenson shivered as he said it. Perhaps owing to the draft; perhaps not. “I am wet, I am cold, and I am hungry. I wanted to come inside, dry off a bit, down a bracer to warm me, then go home and eat dinner with Corrie. You will note that nowhere on this list of desires did I include chatting with a soused toff.”

The room wobbled. Will plopped down in the wide leather chair behind the desk.

“And get out of my chair,” said Stephenson. He gave the chair a
swift tug. It spun, and so did Will. Will lurched to his feet. Stephenson took the seat he vacated. “What the hell is wrong with you to night?”

“We need to talk. One Englishman to another.”

“Would knowing I’m Canadian born make you go away any sooner?”

Will waved away the objection. “We’re none of us perfect. Take me, for instance. Completely pissed.” He gulped from the tumbler. “Runs in the family, you know.”

Stephenson sighed. “How long have you been waiting?”

“I really couldn’t say.” Will pointed at the empty bottle. “How full was that when I found it?”

“Do I need to call a ride for you?”

“He’s quite mad, you know.”

“Who’s mad?”

“Your boy.” Will waved his arm at the window, slopping the remaining brandy with a gesture that encompassed the park and, by extension, all Marsh’s works, and therefore Marsh himself. “Marsh.”

“He’s not my boy.”

“Oh, but he is. He is, he is. Perhaps not by blood, but—Ha. There it is again.” Beads of liquid splashed across the desk when he set the empty tumbler down. “Can’t get away from it, can I.”

“I wasn’t jesting about wanting you out of here. Is this about Marsh?”

“It’s about this whole bloody project.” Will pointed outside again. “It’s a terrible idea. Sir.”

Stephenson said, “It’s a brilliant idea.”

“What ever it is that you and Marsh hope to achieve with this ploy, I tell you true, it will end badly.”

“We can hobble the Reichsbehörde in one stroke. We stand to obtain the research as well. Britain needs us to do this.” Stephenson looked outside, down at the park. The fingernail rattle of sleet against the window had tapered off; a handful of cottony snowflakes blazed in the office light as they eddied past the window.

“It’s a brilliant idea,” he repeated. “It’s Milkweed’s chance to balance the scales. And we have to take it now. At present they can’t have more than seven or eight, perhaps a dozen at most, of von Westarp’s
creatures running around. But how long will it be until they number seven hundred? Seven thousand?”

“Have you forgotten that we don’t even know what the woman, Gretel, can do? We had her, right here, and we still have no idea.”

“Marsh suspects she’s some sort of mentalist.”

“All the more reason not to do this. If she is as he says, they’d only have to capture a few squad members to get a complete picture of the state of Milkweed.”

“Which is why every member of the team will be issued a cyanide capsule. Including you.”

Will rubbed his face. “Look. Sir. You and I both know that on a typical day he’s the smartest chap in the room. But what’s escaped your notice is that he’s
not
the smartest fellow right now. He’s not thinking clearly. Hasn’t been since Agnes died.”

“He’s mourning.”

Will ran a hand through his hair. Too late he realized his fingers were sticky and smelled of very good brandy. “Of course he is. But it’s not just that. Did you know he’s been sleeping down in the storerooms?”

Stephenson frowned, his head jerked back in surprise.

“They had a falling out. Liv and he.”

“When did this happen?”

“As best as I can determine, soon after they returned from Williton. He’s fanatically private about his home life, you know.” Will shook his head. It hurt, getting cut out of somebody’s life. “It wasn’t always that way.”

“They lost a child. Tragic? Yes. And yes, their marriage may falter. But he’ll get the job done.”

Will said, “You coldhearted bastard. We stood there in your garden, you and I, while they said their vows.”

“I have larger concerns right now. And so do you. I recommend you go dunk your head in a bucket and pull yourself together.”

“I’m telling you, sir, he’s not himself. And if you let him, he’s going to take us so far off the fucking map that ‘Here be Dragons’ will be a quaint memory.”

“Jesus, Beauclerk. You’re raving—”

“He wanted us to resurrect his daughter. Bring her back to life. It’s true. Practically fell to his knees and begged me to make it happen.”

“Can you
do
that?”

“Oh, not you, too. Of
course
not. The best result, the very best, would be nightmarish. But that’s just it, sir: Marsh doesn’t care.”

The outburst left Will feeling lightheaded again. He took the chair across the desk from Stephenson. More snowflakes glittered past the window behind the old man. It was getting dark outside.

As if reading Will’s thought, Stephenson rose and pulled the blackout curtains. “He is very focused. Always has been. I’ll grant you that much.”

“Focused? Was that your reaction when he pinched your motorcar?”

Stephenson scowled. “That was understandable, given the circumstances.”

“And yet you say he’s not your boy,” Will muttered to himself. To Stephenson: “You’re not listening to me. He’s fixated on one thing and can’t be bothered to think past that result or the consequences of getting there.”

Stephenson turned. He pursed his lips, staring across the desk with narrowed eyes. “You’re frightened.”

“Of course I’m frightened. I’m not an imbecile.”

The old man sat again. “Your colleagues are rather excited about this.” The unspoken word danced through the space between the two men like a snowflake:
teleportation.

“They’re eager to see whether or not it actually works. To them, it’s an experiment. But they won’t be the ones traveling piggyback on an Eidolon.”

“If it works, it will change the war overnight. We’ll have the ability to send men and matériel anywhere we want, and to retrieve them just as easily. Without the Eidolons, this raid would be impossible. It would be a one-way trip for those men, assuming they made it as far as the farm in the first place,” said Stephenson. “But with the Eidolons, nothing,
nowhere, is beyond our reach. Imagine inserting a squad directly into the Berghof. Or sending a half ton of explosives to the OKW.”