Through the Eye of Time (23 page)

‘It is rather strong,' I said, ‘but extremely effective.'

I pushed him back against pillows and held the gauze pad to his face. His bloodshot eyes, the broken blood-vessels like cracks, stared straight at me for what seemed a long time, without fear or panic, and then crossed. The lids drooped and closed. He didn't struggle or twitch a muscle. I kept the pad there a while longer and put it away in my bag.

‘Is he out?' asked Eva.

‘Like a baby.'

‘Thank God for that.' She was humming to herself and examining the lines round her eyes. ‘He bores the arse off me, Theo.'

‘He bores the arse off most people,' I said, taking the Luger automatic pistol out of the bag and checking the clip. Eva was preoccupied with her face and didn't pay any attention as I put the barrel of the pistol into his mouth and with my other hand arranged the pillows over the top in a kind of soft white mound, like a snow castle, and pulled the trigger. There was a low dull thud, not terribly loud, and a few feathers flew into the air and floated about.

Eva turned and looked at me. She looked at the door. She said, ‘Did …?'

I smiled and shook my head. ‘Nobody heard.'

‘Is he dead?'

‘Of course he's fucking dead,' I said, withdrawing my arm
from the mound of pillows and dropping the pistol on the bed. The barrel was smeared with bits of red and grey stuff. ‘What do you think I used, a pea-shooter? The back of his head's gone.'

‘Oh Theo,' she said, running to me. ‘Theo.'

‘It's all right,' I calmed her, stroking her shoulders, ‘they'll think it's suicide. I'll make it look that way. No need to worry or get upset.'

‘I'm not upset. I'm not.'

I patted her and smiled reassuringly. ‘Just take this.' I reached down into the bag and took out a vial containing a dozen bluish-coloured capsules. Eva at once looked frightened. ‘Don't be afraid, there's no need.'

‘What are they? What are they for?' Her breathing was light and fluttery. She was staring at the vial.

I led her across to the small sofa and we sat down. ‘Now listen carefully. These capsules are a mild extraction of cocaine. When you take them you will lose consciousness for, oh, a couple of hours or so. While you are unconscious I will tell Guensche, Kempka and the others that you and the Führer have taken your own lives. However—' I held up my finger ‘—I will make an attempt to revive you by using Ultraseptyl and of course I will succeed. In that way they can't blame you for having survived when the Führer has perished. It will not be your fault that the drug didn't act swiftly enough.'

‘Oh Theo, do I have to?'

‘Of course you have to. How else can we explain the situation to them? And just think, mein kleines Entchen
*
, think of it – from tomorrow we shall always be together, you and I. Always and for ever'!

Eva pressed herself to me and I could feel her body trembling. She said, ‘Love me, Theo. I need your strength.'

‘There will be plenty of time for that later. We shall have all eternity together.'

‘You must love me now, then I'll know that you truly love me. Please, Theo!'

So I had to curb my impatience and waste precious time making love to her on the sofa. The fabric made my knees sore.
I knew that any minute Kempka or Linge or one of the others might decide to inquire if the Führer was in need of anything; they would not enter unless bidden but even so their suspicions might be aroused. Anyway, I thought, what the hell. What would a few minutes more matter to destiny?

We pumped away and sweated at it for a while and turning my head and brushing her damp hair out of my eyes I could see the mound of pillows speckled with red, the ones near the bottom soaking it up like dark heavy wine. The Führer's legs stuck out at ridiculous angles, the feet splayed, and I recalled that he always was flat-footed.

Eva clung to me and whimpered as I released myself inside her. She laid her head on my chest and told me she loved me.

‘I love you too,' I said, looking at my watch.

‘How did you get this?' she asked. ‘Is it a birthmark?' She touched the faint scar below my left shoulder, the pale indented tissue like that of a brand. ‘You've never told me what it is or how you got it.'

‘A memento of long ago. Nothing important. I'll tell you all about it some other time.'

‘Oh I do love you, Theo.'

‘So you keep saying.' I pushed her away and sat up. ‘Now you must take the capsules, there isn't much time.'

‘How many must I take?'

‘All of them,' I said, emptying the dozen capsules into the palm of my hand. She took them, one by one, washing them down with water, and I laid her on the sofa, arranging her limbs neatly. Three tablets wouldn't have done her much harm, five would have knocked her out, but all twelve would produce a toxic effect of palpitations, vomiting, convulsions, rapid pulse rate, circulatory collapse, crawling of the flesh, and eventually death. The whole process took about ten minutes.

While I waited for the end I took out my special brand, manufactured only for me, and at the same time remembered the crumpled piece of paper in my pocket: setting fire to it I inhaled deeply on the Nexus-T and watched the paper burn itself to flimsy grey ash.

Karla Ritblat was satisfied with the patient's progress and on the seventeenth day he was transferred from Psycho-Med to one of the seclusion rooms into which sunlight could be introduced at any time of the day. Sometimes it was too much of a good thing and the omni-directional reflectors were turned away so that the room was bathed in cool pleasant shade.

He was less pale now, though his eyes still shone with a curious translucence; it would be at least a week before his metabolic rate returned to a level which could be regarded as normal.

On his first day out of intensive care Karla Ritblat told him that he would be allowed visitors but warned that if the Neuron Processor registered any abnormal activity, no matter how slight, she would have no hesitation in putting him straight back into hyper-suspension.

‘Another fortnight in the jelly bag,' Queghan said, winking at her. ‘You'd like that.'

‘It's for your benefit, not mine,' Karla Ritblat responded primly. ‘You don't suppose I do it for my own amusement.'

‘You're all heart,' Queghan said, watching her as she went to the door. Karla Ritblat set her lips so as not to smile. She went out of the room without looking at him, saying over her shoulder:

‘And no smoking. Those dreadful tube things upset the EEG and they're positively bad for you.'

‘No ma'am. Yes ma'am.'

During the morning Karve came down from Level 40 and brought with him Pouline deGrenier and Léon Steele. The Director glided into the room and brought his chair to the foot
of the bed, saying with a small cryptic smile, ‘Returned to the land of the living, I see.'

‘How long have you been ill?' Pouline said. She couldn't understand why he was in bed. ‘Did you know?' she said to Léon.

Léon shook his head, and his eyes were so large and appealing, fully upon her, that Pouline had to turn away. She found it embarrassing to look at him: his entire manner implied a special intimacy that she herself didn't feel. It was even rather insulting, for she had never given him cause to expect or hope for anything on a deeper, more personal level.

‘Chris suffers from a complaint that doctors used to call epilepsy,' Karve said. ‘It can be controlled – sometimes – though it's rather an erratic affair. In its controlled state we call it mythic projection.'

‘You've been into mythic projection?' Léon Steele said, moving nearer to the bed. He studied Queghan closely.

‘So they tell me.'

‘Don't you know yourself?'

‘It's all rather vague, a bit dreamlike. Some details are clear while others are shadowy and unreal.' He looked at Pouline. ‘Professor deGrenier knows what I mean.'

‘Do I?' she said, startled.

‘Sometimes it's difficult to separate what actually happened from what might have happened. You know the feeling.'

‘Yes, I suppose so,' Pouline said uncertainly. She was frowning. ‘How long have you been here – in Psycho-Med, I mean?'

‘Couple of weeks.'

‘
Weeks
?'

‘Doesn't time fly?' Queghan said. His eyes, oddly illuminated from within, were fixed on hers with a peculiar intensity; so intense that for a moment the room swam inside her head and the slats of sunlight seemed to slide down the wall.

Léon broke in to say, smiling brightly, ‘Just as well we didn't need your help.' He held up a thick folder encased in a vinyl wrapper. ‘We sorted out the problem with RECONPAN.'

‘I'm glad to hear that,' Queghan said, careful not to catch the Director's eye. For the moment they avoided looking at each other.

Léon went on eagerly, ‘It wasn't the hardware to blame at all, it was the program. I spotted it at once when I checked the Subject Profile. Some of the research input was wrong – the file on Dr Morell. You remember him?'

‘Vividly,' Queghan said.

Léon sat down on the side of the bed. ‘What I did was this: I asked the facility to list the personnel in the Führerbunker from 22nd April to 1st May, 1945—'

‘And it missed someone out.'

‘No, no,' Léon said. ‘It included someone who shouldn't have been there: Theodor Morell.'

‘Morell wasn't in the Bunker?' Queghan said.

‘According to Archives he left the Bunker in the middle of April, the seventeenth I think it was.' He held the folder aloft, gleeful as a schoolboy. ‘And this confirms it!'

‘Oh yes?' Queghan said. ‘What is it?'

‘You recall how we couldn't get the cyberthetic system to give us any biographical information on Morell? It occurred to me that what had actually happened was that somehow or other the system had become confused with real-life historical Morells and fictional Morells. Somehow a circuit had cross-connected itself and as a result we'd fed a lot of spurious and misleading data into the RECONPAN facility. Little wonder the brain was confused.'

‘Little wonder,' Queghan agreed.

‘So what did you do?' asked Karve.

‘Simple,' Léon said, his face alight. ‘I asked the cyberthetic system to give me a
fictional
account by or about somebody called Morell. And it came up with this, no problem at all, pages and pages of it.'

‘Of what?' said Queghan and Karve together.

‘The Diaries of Dr Morell.' Léon took the folder from the vinyl wallet and opened it. ‘It's all here, the missing information. I fed it into the facility and it all fits perfectly. Isn't that right, Pouline?'

Pouline deGrenier was looking at Queghan as though expecting the answer to a riddle to appear suddenly on his face.

‘May I see?' Queghan took the folder and glanced at the first page. He almost smiled.

‘What does it say?' Karve asked.

Queghan read:

‘“Berlin, July 1938. The trees looked lovely this morning as I walked along the Wilhelmstrasse on my way to the Chancellery. The city gardeners perform an excellent service in keeping the place neat and trim and shipshape. It was a pleasure to be abroad on such a fine morning.

‘“A tedious incident which took the edge off my good humour and benign disposition: one of the guards, presumably new on the duty roster, stood in my way and asked to see my papers. He obviously didn't know who I was and remained obdurate when I informed him that I was a member of the Sanctum.”'

‘What do you think?' said Karve. ‘Is it authentic?'

‘Absolutely.' Queghan glanced through several pages and said to Léon, ‘Is there any mention of the atomic bomb?'

‘The Germans never got anywhere near testing it. They knew how to produce a radioactive material called
U235
but they hadn't the technology to make it in sufficient quantity for a bomb. It wasn't till thirty years later that the technique was developed on a commercial scale.'

‘I'm glad that you're convinced,' Pouline said to Queghan.

Queghan handed the folder to Léon. ‘History is full of surprises. The reality is never how you imagine it to be.'

‘Do you mean the probability of history?' Pouline said. There was a ghost of a smile on her face. ‘Isn't it true to say that your being in Psycho-Med for the past two weeks is as much a probability as a fact? You might have been here and you might have been somewhere else. The number of places you
might
have been is infinite.'

‘I don't follow that,' Léon said, frowning. He absently pulled at a finger-joint. ‘Either he was here or he wasn't here. A thing happens or it doesn't happen.' But even as he was saying this he thought of the night he had spent with Pouline. Had it really taken place or was it just his imagination? Sometimes fantasy was more vivid than reality. He wasn't at all sure any longer.

Karve turned his chair towards the door. ‘Do you have the original RECONPAN report on file – a complete record of everything the facility came up with?'

‘We never destroy anything,' Léon said. ‘Would you like to see it?'

‘I'm curious as to how far the mythical Führer got with his plans to drop an atomic bomb on New York.' The Director smiled. ‘Should make a good story by the sound of it.'

Queghan said, ‘He was probably foiled in the end by the hero.'

Karla Ritblat came into the room and paused in mid-stride. She said warningly, ‘Remember what I told you. If the Processor registers the slightest shift you're back in Psycho-Med.'

‘Yes ma'am.' Queghan lay back against the pillows. He did look tired and washed out, Pouline deGrenier thought. His hands were like alabaster.

‘Karla can't wait to try her new wonder remedy on me. Dr Koester's Antigas Pills. Guaranteed to cure everything under the sun.'