Transmission: Ragnarok: Book Two (2 page)

‘I met your father briefly, in fact. But I’m with the Med Centre, and we offer many services, including simply talking.’

‘You’re a counsellor?’ asked Jed. ‘You don’t look like one.’

Stilwell raised his hand. The knuckles were shiny and enlarged.

‘What do counsellors look like? I teach close-quarter combat in my spare time.’ He turned to Roger. ‘When you’re alone and feel like talking, call Med Centre and mention my name. At absolutely any time.’

‘Thank you,’ said Roger.

‘Then I’m off.’ Stilwell gestured for a fastpath rotation. ‘Take it easy.’

He stepped inside and was gone.

‘Counsellor, my arse,’ said Jed.

Beyond the boulevard, the shoal of autodocs continued to move, heading for the ships that would take the refugees away from Labyrinth, where no realspace menace could reach, but where ordinary people could never wake up to continue their lives, to experience joy or hardship or anything else.

The man who called himself Dak Stilwell exited the rotation at the centre of a long, clear chamber whose defences were invisible. In front of him, a holo figure stood.

‘Identify, please,’ it said.

‘I’m Zeke Clayton, beta team leader, section 7.’

‘Confirmed.’

As if loosening a heavy backpack, Clayton shrugged his ursine shoulders, then walked straight through the holo to the next chamber, where shielded doors curled out of existence, allowing him to pass inside. Pavel Karelin was waiting: narrow-bodied, narrow-eyed, quietly spoken.

‘I’m going in with you,’ he said.

‘It’s only Colonel Garber.’ With another shrug of Clayton’s big shoulders: ‘I’m not exactly scared of him.’

‘Of course not. You’re a loyal officer.’

Was that a faint stress on
you’re
? A hint about Garber’s loyalty? Clayton was trying to figure a way to frame an innocent-sounding question when a doorway folded in on itself, revealing Garber.

‘Come inside,’ he called.

Pavel entered alongside Clayton.

‘I’m sitting in,’ he said. ‘Given our overlapping areas of operational responsibility, Colonel, it seems best.’

‘Very well.’ Garber gestured for flowmetal chairs to rise from the floor. ‘Sit down, both of you.’

‘Roger Blackstone knows nothing.’ Clayton knew better than to begin with chitchat. ‘That’s the short version. Maybe Analysis can find something in my logs, but for my money, every indicator says Carl Blackstone kept his family separate from his work. Trained his son in a few good habits, kept him clear of operations.’

‘Uh-huh. Blackstone senior has already had the posthumous medal.’ Garber’s tone was tight and cold. ‘Now we can pick apart the reality.’

‘Understood, sir. But the son has made no attempt to contact anyone, and he’s said nothing to indicate special knowledge. Poor lad hasn’t got to grips with the basics of spatiotemporal manipulation, so even a simple dead-letter drop is out of the question.’

Pavel said, ‘That’s natural, for someone raised in realspace.’

‘Yes, but he’s not motivated to do anything about it,’ said Clayton. ‘That’s my point. It’s natural for someone who’s, er, grieving, but not for a clandestine operator. If the father cached anything in Labyrinth, it won’t be out in the open.’

Garber changed position, his chair adapting.

‘So you’re persisting in the notion that Carl Blackstone was clean?’

‘Sir, I’m not presenting an opinion either way. What I
do
think is Roger Blackstone lacks all operational knowledge of his father’s work.’

‘Very well. Present the full report now.’

‘OK.’ Clayton manipulated his tu-ring. ‘Done.’

Garber checked his own tu-ring, nodded, then looked at Pavel.

‘Molly-coddling your team is hardly to anyone’s credit, Colonel Karelin.’

‘I couldn’t agree more, Colonel. I’ve softened them so much, they can’t take the cut and thrust of memos and meetings in the dangerous corridors of power.’

No tightening of facial muscles betrayed Garber’s feelings, but his voice flattened.

‘I’m glad we share the same analysis. Thank you both for coming.’

Clayton stood up a tenth of a second before the flowmetal subsided to the floor. Pavel was already on his feet.

‘Always a pleasure,’ he said.

He led the way out, and Clayton followed.

Sitting in the study carrel, Roger found it impossible to concentrate. Around him the Logos Library contained effectively infinite knowledge; but the amount he felt capable of absorbing hovered between infinitesimal and zero.

‘This is impossible.’

He shut down the display, then gestured for the crystal array to fold back into its designated pocket of fractal reality. It took three attempts before the crystals were tucked away. At this rate, he would soon have the capabilities of an eight-year-old.

I’ll never have a place here
.

As he left the carrel, it rotated itself into a fist-sized holding-shape; but he could take no credit: the process was automatic.

‘Been studying?’ asked an olive-skinned woman.

‘Uh, trying.’

‘It never gets any easier, does it?’

She smiled, her face triangular and feline, then twisted away and was gone.

Bloody hell
.

Behind him, a young female Pilot said: ‘She
spoke
to you.’

‘Er— What?’

‘You’ve just been visited by a living legend. Don’t you get it?’

‘I don’t … No, not really.’

‘Oh, for—’

Her fastpath rotation tore the words away, leaving silence in the infinite corridor.

I’m getting out of here
.

But he would have to do it the hard way, by walking.

Roger considered Jed a friend; yet it would have been nice to utilize a route of his own devising instead of this one, constructed by Jed. It took him to a chamber off Poincaré Promenade. Once there he had only to stand still: the chamber itself moved fast, a bubble through flowmetal. By logical deduction and feel, he decided it was following a horizontal path across the cliff-like series of edifices that became Ascension Annexe. This was one of the most notable sections of Labyrinth, one that an observer might expect Roger Blackstone to view from a distance and admire, but not to enter.

Great panes of energy swivelling in mid-air, along with the golden lightning flickering across walls, indicated this was a secure area. Internal itching grew in every organ of Roger’s body as deepscan fields passed through him. Then they were gone, and he felt himself grinning as he walked fast through building-high doors that folded back, allowing entrance to a huge hangar space.

Far too vast for her.

I’m here
.

A small shape moved, some ten metres above the ground. Black, mostly: a convex triangle webbed with scarlet and gold that only emphasized how dark her body mostly was. She turned in the air.

Roger!

Warmth more than verbalization flared in his brain. He opened his arms as she flew towards him; then she stopped, quivering, to hang level with his face. She was growing bigger: no longer could he reach all the way across her triangular width. Twin differentiating folds were visible, where her lateral extremities would grow into delta wings.

When she became a big girl.

Play now?

For the first time since the catastrophe, he laughed without sadness.

Race you!

He broke into a sprint, moving in a fast straight line then dodging, breaking right then left, throwing himself through a shoulder roll and coming back to his feet, while she swooped around him, tumbling through aerobatics: never touching him at speed except to brush his clothing; and all they felt was warmth and love as they played until they were tired and then they stopped. Afterwards, Roger sat on the soft floor, and she settled beside him so her nose was on his lap, and his hand was upon her dorsal hull that felt so warm and strong. Though ships and Pilots alike possess a fine-grained sense of time, neither could have said how long they held each other like this, so fully absorbed, so filled with love and rightness.

Knowing they belonged together.

To be a Nazi in Tokyo was … interesting. The Reich and Imperial Nihon might be allies but their cultures were different; while to be a
pretend
Nazi, like Dmitri Shtemenko, meant every day was filled with pervasive threat, the good and the bad of it: nervous fear yet a sense of life on the edge. There were recurring icons: blades, blood and a fascination with suicide by sword, the hallmarks of the homosexual ultra-right-wing subculture that Dmitri continued to infiltrate.

The man he shared his twenty-tatami apartment with, Sergei Alegeev, had no sexual interest in men, but was not bothered by anything Dmitri got up to. Perhaps it was Sergei’s navy background that kept him broad-minded.

I haven’t given in to all my needs
.

Before starting this mission, Dmitri had thrown his collection of human fingers into the Moscow River; since then, he had made no attempt to replace them. Personal safety, more than mission security, motivated him. Torture was fine, but not with him as the subject.

‘Another evening’ – Dmitri raised his third cup of saké – ‘spent rolling around on the floor with brawny men. You must have enjoyed yourself.’

He was sitting on the straw mat opposite Sergei.

‘I did, Chief.’ Sergei spoke German, as they both did in the apartment, though they had checked yet again today for microphones or human eavesdroppers. His fluency came from his mother, for he was far from the image of a studious linguist: never pretty, he had developed true cauliflower ears during their sojourn here, and broken his nose twice. Tonight, his left cheek was raw, reddened with the ongoing condition he called mat-burn. ‘I strangled one of the bastards unconscious,’ he added, reaching for his own saké. ‘So yes, a good evening.’

‘Next you’re going to tell me how you once got choked out by what’s-his-face himself.’

‘Oshchenkov.’ Sergei lowered his voice. This was not a name he would want overheard, by their current hosts or by their masters. ‘Well, I did. A cross-collar choke, and I’m proud I fought him. So long as you don’t tell those bastards back home.’

He refilled his cup from the porcelain flask.

‘I won’t.’

Dmitri meant it. For all that he knew was wrong with him, betraying the closest he had to a friend was unthinkable. Sergei was able to train with the local judo men because of his background in grappling, in civilian clubs in Moscow and in the navy. The man Sergei admired, Oshchenkov, had been a judo great: practising at Tokyo’s Kodokan where Sergei trained now, then transforming the discipline back in Mother Russia. Under official orders, Oshchenkov had taken the various indigenous wrestling styles of the Soviet republics, and aggregated them around a skeleton of judo.

But Stalin was paranoid and foreign contact was suspect, so five years ago, the NKVD had snatched and killed Oshchenkov. The term
judo
was now illegal; the transformed discipline was called
sambo
, and Sergei – as much as Dmitri could judge – was pretty good at it.

‘Anyway’ – Sergei tossed back the saké and went for the flask again – ‘I lined up a treat for you tomorrow. A young Lieutenant Kanazawa wants to show us, that’s you with me tagging along, something special.’

Sergei’s features became sharp and full of depth in Dmitri’s vision, as saké-induced vagueness vanished. ‘What kind of special thing?’

‘
Todé
.’ Sergei beamed. ‘You’ll love it. Also called China Hand, or Empty Hand since the buggers here got as paranoid as Uncle Joe himself.’

Dmitri, translating in his head, realized that China Hand and Empty Hand would sound the same in Japanese.

‘This
kara-té
,’ he said. ‘It’s not another kind of wrestling, is it?’

‘Not wrestling, but it is fighting.’

‘Oh.’ Dmitri took the saké flask from Sergei. ‘And I’m going to be interested why, exactly?’

‘Because Lieutenant Kanazawa is on Admiral Yamashita’s staff, and he’s unhappy about something.’

‘Ah.’

‘Perhaps you can console the poor man. And perhaps’ – Sergei leaned over to peer into the flask – ‘you could get more saké, Chief, since I’ve been doing my patriotic duty while you’ve been polishing off the booze.’

‘I’ll get right on it.’ Dmitri rolled onto his knees, then made himself stand. ‘Since we’re all equals in the great workers’ paradise.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

‘Yes, wouldn’t it just?’

But he fetched the saké anyway, because it was precious, this concept of having a friend; and besides, they both knew who was in charge.

And we both despise our masters
.

Except that in Dmitri’s case, it was not just Stalin and the political apparatus he served: there was a darker force that he believed existed in the world – not just inside his head – with goals he could never know; and his feelings for that force were ambiguous and always had been.