Weaver

XX

There was bottled beer in the fridge.

Bathed, wrapped in a dressing gown, having eaten his fill and then some, and mildly drunk after sipping his first alcohol in more than a year, Gary sat before the television. Earnest German voices spoke over images of spectacular advances in the east and in Africa. Gary had no way of working out how much of it was true. Other voices spoke of gloomy news from the rest of Britain, of a hungry, cold and demoralised population, the famine to come in the winter, the flight of the people from cities like Birmingham and Manchester. There were even pictures of queues at the Winston Line, defeated English folk clamouring to come into the Reich protectorate, smiling Wehrmacht troops handing out cans of meat and chocolate for the children.

Now a documentary programme came on. Sponsored by the SS, it illustrated the cosmological ideas of one Hans Horbiger, an Austrian engineer. Gary understood little of the German commentary, but he soaked up the general ideas from the pictures.

Horbiger said the universe was driven by heat, like a giant steam engine. A cartoon sky filled up with tiny stars so cool they were clad in ice, and hot giant stars. When the icy stars fell into their hot neighbours there were spectacular explosions that sprinkled planets and moons, like sparks from a firework. That was how the earth had been born. Initially earth had had a whole family of moons, which were made of ice – as was the existing moon, the last survivor. One by one the moons fell to the earth, causing immense cataclysms. Gary watched as the earth was repeatedly plated over by ice, save for a central belt where giant tides were raised by the falling moon. The most recent of these disasters had been eleven thousand years ago, said Horbiger; life had survived only in a few refuges.

This amazing cosmology explained a lot, from the true meaning of the Scandinavian creation myths to the destruction of Atlantis. And it was the reason why, even after years of ardent searching, nobody had found a trace of proof that the primordial Aryan race, source of all high civilisation on Earth, had ever actually existed.

If he'd been watching this with friends, with his buddies from the stalag, Gary might have laughed. As it was he was chilled. Most Germans he had met were as sane as he was, more or less. But there must be somebody high up in the Nazi hierarchy who believed in this garbage sufficiently to have it researched and dramatised. They're crazy, Gary thought. And they are in control. I'm trapped in a world of the mad, as if the whole planet is a vast stalag run by lunatics-

There was a tap on the door.

Reflexively he hid the beer under his chair, as if he was in the stalag and a goon had called for a late-night inspection. He checked himself, deliberately picked up the beer, and set it on the coffee table. He stood, turned off the television, and wrapped his dressing gown tight around him as he walked to the door.

A young woman stood there. She was dressed plainly, in a knee-length black skirt and a modest blouse with a kind of neckerchief. She wore her dark hair pinned back in a bun. The whole effect was of a uniform, like a Girl Guide troop leader. She had a face that was more handsome than beautiful, he thought. She looked strong.

She grinned at him. 'What's wrong with you? Never seen a woman before?' Her accent was some English variant unfamiliar to him.

'Not hardly, for a year. Look, I'm sorry.' He stepped back, impossibly awkward. 'I guess I left my manners back in the stalag. Come in.'

She swept past him. 'You weren't expecting visitors.'

'Hell, no. I mean – sorry. I guess you know who I am, right?'

'Yes, Corporal Wooler.'

'Call me Gary.'

'Thanks,' she said, amused. 'I'm Sophie Silver. But you can call me Doris Keeler.'

That threw him completely. 'What did you say?'

She glanced around the room, at the beer, the empty food plates, the television.

'You've been making yourself at home. Good for you. Mind if I sit down?'

'I-'

'Have you got any more of those beers?' She sat confidently on one of the easy chairs. 'Needs a bit of colour, this place, doesn't it?'

'Um-'

'That beer.'

'Oh. Sure.' He went to the kitchen.

She called after him, 'I don't want to drink up your treat. But then again, I'm supposed to be your treat too, aren't I?'

Again he was thrown. He brought her a glass of beer, and sat on the sofa. 'Look, Miss Silver – or Keeler-'

'Doris will do.' She sipped her beer. 'Yum. Better than the shitty wine we get back home.'

'Where's home?'

'Colchester.'

'Colchester. Look, Doris, I've had kind of a bumpy day. You're talking in riddles here. Who are you? Did Julia Fiveash send you?'

'She sent Sophie Silver. She didn't know Doris Keeler was here for the ride too.'

'So start with Sophie Silver. Who is she?'

'She's supposed to be your, well, your mate is probably the right word. Did Fiveash tell you this show village is lebensborn?'

'I don't know what that means.'

'This is a love camp. Lebensborn means the fount of life. Another of Himmler's ideas. He wants to purify Aryan blood. The Fuhrer approves; he's named Himmler the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of the German Race. So Himmler's setting up a programme of breeding, where Aryan men, especially SS officers, can couple with suitably chosen females of the right sort. And if you and I successfully reproduce, there will even be a new sort of religion into which we can baptise our little Nordic runt.'

'Well, that's another bloody stupid idea of the Nazis.'

'True. But you've got to admit it's more fun than invading Poland.' She winked at him. 'They must like you.'

'I'll say. But I take it healthy Aryan copulation is out of the question-'

'Come near me and you'll be posting your balls home to America,' she said. 'No offence.'

'None taken. So that's Sophie Silver. Who's Doris Keeler?'

'Resistance.'

'Ah.' He took another drink of his beer. 'You must have taken a hell of a risk to get in here.'

'You don't need to know the details,' she said evenly.

'Then tell me why.'

'For you. Or rather, for your friend Ben Kamen.'

'Ben.' He sat up straight. 'They took him out of the stalag.'

'Well, he's alive. But the SS have him. They mean to use him.'

'For what? – No, I guess I don't need to know that.'

'I got a briefing through the Special Ops Executive – you know it supports the resistance. We, or rather the British military intelligence, are putting together a plan to get him out. We want you to help.'

'How?'

'Well, we don't know yet. But you're connected. You know Ben. And your mother is involved in the analysis of the situation.'

'My mother?'

'She sends her best, by the way. I've already spoken to George Tanner.' She looked at him; perhaps he was showing his shock. 'Your father-in-law.'

'I know who he is, damn it.' To have these names fired at him, the names of his family and friends in this extraordinary place, was very disconcerting.

'All these people,' Doris said, 'have a relationship with Ben Kamen, and can plausibly be positioned close to him as assets during the retrieval attempt.'

'You make us sound like pieces on a chess board.'

'Well, that's military intelligence for you. All you have to do for now is stay out of the stalag.'

He said immediately, 'I've been refusing release programmes and exchanges since the day I was brought to the stalag. I was a soldier; I am a POW; that's how I want to be treated.'

'All right. But the fact is you'd be a lot more use to the war effort if you stay here. Actually I'm not interested in your agonising,' she said briskly. 'I'll stay an hour, if I may, for form, and then you can do what you want.'

Well.' He sat back. 'Kind of business-like, aren't you?'

'Isn't it better to be?'

'So what shall we talk about? How did a girl like you finish up in the resistance?'

'It's best if we don't talk,' Doris said. 'What's on your television? I've watched a bit of it from the other side of the Winston Line. It's quite popular, funnily enough. Any more beer going begging?'