Weaver

XIV

6 July

Ben woke to a symphony of gunfire: the boom of heavy artillery, the angry cough of mortars, the popping of small-arms fire. Was it 1940 again, had he finally come unstuck in time and drifted into the past?

But he felt the bed under him, the prison-camp pyjamas that covered his nakedness. He was still here, still in the laboratory. Still embedded in the Loom, a Jewish fly caught in a Nazi spider-web.

His mouth felt sour, and there was an edge to his consciousness, a brittleness – a kind of false colouring to his sight, a high-pitched ringing in his ears, a scent of antiseptic in his nostrils. He knew these signs. Julia had made him sleep again. She had put him under and brought him back with opiates and stimulants, controlling him with a smooth expertise that had grown over the months, and yet left Ben with a sense of fizzing disorder each time.

And just as every time he woke, he felt a gathering dread of what Julia Fiveash might have used him to achieve while he slept.

One big crump, a shell landing nearby, was enough to make the bed shudder. That gunfire was real enough, then. The war had come to this place of horror, at last.

He opened his eyes.

The hard light of the electric lamps above him glared into his head. The glass wall of his cage was only a foot from his face. It wasn't as pristine clean as it used to be; a patina of dust covered it, plaster shaken from the roof. He could see his own reflection, a face half-buried in a pillow.

And he saw another face beyond his. Beautiful, hard, on the other side of the glass, it was Julia. He remembered how in Princeton he had woken to see that lovely face looking back at him, blonde hair tousled, how his helpless heart had hammered. In the end it had been just another supine seduction by a monstrous figure who had sought only to use him, in a long line of such seductions, such monsters. But even so he would never have imagined then that the two of them would be reduced to this, that she would use him so.

'He's awake,' he heard her say. 'I think it worked. So that's Aethelmaer's Codex sent back, Josef.' She glanced away; Ben saw the curve of her neck, the supple muscles above the collar of her uniform. 'Step one complete. Come on, man, show a bit of enthusiasm. We have changed history – again!'

Ben's vision was misty, blurred by drugs and dusty glass. Beyond Julia he could see the calculating machine, a wall of glistening metal and wire, and the hunched figure of Josef Trojan before a flickering grey screen. There was another man too, in a dark blue uniform, sitting silent in a chair Ben was shocked to recognise George Tanner.

'You might explain that to the Allied units who are even now besieging Richborough,' Trojan said. 'Whatever we've done hasn't made a blind bit of difference, any more than the Menologium did.'

'You know very well this is a two-part process. We have sent back the weapons; we must still send back the motivator, the Testament of Eadgyth. Then it will be done – America defeated before it is spawned. Kamen just needs a bit of time to get the drugs flushed out of his system and a brush-up from the mnemonic tapes before we send him under again.'

'We may not have the time.' He sounded panicky. 'We have rushed this programme, rushed to complete the research, the calculations. And now it comes down to this, the last hours, and still it is not done-'

'I can't believe you're drinking. At a moment like this!'

'It is our last bottle of the Fuhrerwein. A gift from the Fuhrer to Himmler on his birthday, and from Himmler to me. Drink, drink! Do you want to leave it for the English? Maybe your pet policeman lover-hostage would like some too. Or Ben Kamen!'

'Try to conceal your cowardice,' Julia said. 'You know, Josef, the only thing I ever admired about you, the only thing, was your brashness. The way you used to bully your brother pointlessly – I liked that. I saw something of me in you, I suppose. Now you merely disgust me. Ah, let us work; we still have that in common.' She turned back to Ben, looking into his eyes. 'The work! How marvellous it is, how intellectually bracing. Don't you agree, Ben Kamen?'

Ben, restrained and drugged, barely able to move a muscle, did his best to meet her stare. He knew what reaction she was looking for.

She knew that Ben remained convinced that changing the past was an all-or-nothing affair. Every time he was put into his drugged sleep – if the Loom worked, and he still wasn't prepared to concede that it did, that this wasn't all some foolish illusion – then he died, as all of history folded away like a crumpled bit of paper. And the Ben who had just woken had, in a sense, existed for only a few minutes, since the implementation of the change, and all his memories were of a history that was entirely new, a fabrication. This was his conviction, and it filled him with a deep existential horror.

And this hellish woman knew this. As she peered now into Ben's head she was looking for the terror that penetrated his soul. She relished it, a connoisseur of pain.

But the lab shuddered again. She still had Ben in a cage, but now it was Julia and all her projects who was under threat. He met her stare and grinned. Her face twisted into a snarl, and she turned away.

'Look at this,'Trojan said. 'The television broadcast is back! The Allies have taken over the Promi station.'

'How enterprising of them,' Julia said. 'Ah. American and British soldiers shaking hands. How convenient that there was a camera there to record the historic moment when their twin thrusts met north of Hastings… Oh, and here's Churchill, walking the cliffs of Dover – of course he would be there. The great opportunist stands amid the ruins of his country, celebrates a victory that is not his, and looks out to sea towards his next conquests. And they call Hitler a warmonger!'

'Do you think all this is a foretaste of what is to come, Julia? The resources assembled against us – is this the pattern we must endure for the rest of the war, until Americans shake hands with Russians in the ruins of Berlin?'

'You are a fool, Josef Trojan. A fool and a coward. Just remember, now that we have got this far I can finish the job myself. I don't need you. Not any more.'

'I do not forget that,' said Trojan. 'Not for a minute. Oh, look – a flyby by Spitfires. Such a pretty aircraft, don't you think?…'

Julia checked the dials on the monitors by Ben's cage. 'The specimen is ready. A few more minutes with the tapes and we can send him off on his final journey into the past.'She grinned. 'Listen well, little fellow.' Out of Ben's sight she snapped a switch.

A recorded voice began to speak in his ear. He tried not to listen, to think of other things, to empty his head. But he felt a mild sedative slide into his veins, washing away his determination, as the Testament of Eadgyth poured into his head:

In the last days

To the tail of the peacock

He will come: The spider's spawn, the Christ-bearer

The Dove…

Send the Dove east! O, send him east!

Another shuddering crash as a shell fell close, and the small-arms fire grew louder.