Hour of Need tlom-6 Page 19

  ‘You’ll help me, sir?’

  ‘Help you? I’ll do what I can but you’re already well beyond my magical help. What do you need on a more mundane level?’

  ‘A lot of paper, some pencils, erasers, plenty of food, coffee, tea, water and some camp beds.’

  ‘Camp beds?’

  ‘For my friends here. They need it.’

  ‘Excellent, old man,’ George said from where Caroline, Sophie and he were sitting, watching the discussion. ‘I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about us.’

  ‘Never, George. Never.’

  51

  Aubrey gave up measuring the hours in any conventional way. Instead, as the night drew out, he understood that his working was marked by the number of times that Caroline or George put a cup of tea into his hands while he pored over maps, photographs and screeds of paper. Colonel Stanley and Sophie worked by his side, elbow to elbow. Early in the process, their contributions were important and saved him from knocking his head against the innumerable brick walls that constructing a revolutionary spell entailed, but gradually their suggestions grew less and less frequent until they mutely watched as he built magic of dizzying complexity.

  Stanley, at first, was horrified at Aubrey’s decision to use a number of ancient languages in the one spell, and argued against it with impeccable precedents on his side. Aubrey calmly presented his alternatives, with examples, and gradually won the colonel’s grudging acquiescence.

  Aubrey covered page after page in a large ledger, scrawling elements and operators, bringing together disparate variables that, at times, seemed to be surprised at finding themselves in the company they did. Dimly, he became aware that more lantern light was required in order to see his workings properly but, before he asked, George attended to the situation. Equally dimly, he knew that the dugout was a still centre in the middle of turmoil, with much hurrying and shouting just outside, and the more ominous noises of war – firearms, small and heavy, whistles and artillery – not far away.

  Aubrey sweated, particularly, over the elements meant to control location and time. He wanted the entire War Cabinet and the Central Staff to arrive together, and they’d be coming from vastly different starting points. Trying to restrain these factors into a single manageable area was like trying to catch a cloud with a colander. His head ached but he ploughed on with no thought of giving up.

  Enhancing the images of the men he wanted to transport was also the stuff of headaches, and once he had a solution to this he was then faced with the difficulty of splicing what was essentially a complete spell into the body of another. In what order should the components unfold? Was there one answer for this, or was it a matter of sorting through possible solutions for the one that was best?

  False starts came more and more often. Sophie and Colonel Stanley began to murmur encouragement until even that fell away. Stanley became more of an office boy, handing Aubrey paper and sharp pencils, brushing away the debris from furious erasing. Sophie took on a proofing role, gently correcting any basic errors of expression that were creeping in more and more often as Aubrey feverishly scribbled down the elements that captured the vista of his conception.

  His body became a distant thing, its discomfort shallow. Knots in his neck, pain in his fingers from gripping the pencil, twinges in the small of his back from bending over the table, trying to keep the spread of papers organised, but he ignored them all. They were insignificant.

  In the middle of these demands, Aubrey found himself in an odd frame of mind. Mired in the pressure of finding a solution to a formidable problem, he was enjoying himself. The density of brain work was exhilarating. He felt alive and invigorated. He was anticipating potential obstacles long before they emerged and so was able to sidestep them, or even turn them around so they became strengths instead of weaknesses. As this mood continued he began to look forward to difficulties, for he was sure that he would be able to resolve them, and each resolution was a moment of extra joy, a spike of satisfaction that made him glow all the more fiercely.

  Until he hit an obstacle that stopped him dead.

  At first, he smiled and tried recatenating some elements, then he substituted operators in the spell to approach his desired effect in a different way, but he still found the obstacle in his way. He went back a few steps and completely recast a significant section of the spell. He was pleased with this as it actually tightened up some aspects of the duration of the actual transference, but after he’d completed this recasting, the spell still wouldn’t gel.

  He took a step away from the table and rubbed his face with both hands. His vision blurred for a moment when he tried to focus on the entrance to the dugout, but he hardly noticed, so hard was he thinking.

  It’s the simple things that resist our efforts to manipulate them , he thought as he turned back to the offending section. Nearby, Caroline murmured something to Sophie. They may have been words in Albionish, but Aubrey was currently juggling Akkadian, Demotic and Phrygian so he couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

  The sticking point was the location point for the arrival of the Holmland warmongers. Aubrey had a neat area picked out. A hundred yards into no-man’s-land, almost directly in front of their current position, was a large double shell hole formed where two shells had exploded close together. From there, the Holmland trenches could be reached via a rough scramble through one of the rare muddy sections of no-man’s-land, then past the usual barbed wire emplacements, a shattered fence line, and the grotesque pock-marked landscape that had once been woods and farmland.

  Aubrey had chosen this location because he wanted the Holmlanders to arrive there and suffer the horror they had been insulated from. He wanted them to experience what they had sent so many others into – but he wanted them then to escape and, once they’d understood what they’d created, he hoped they might reconsider everything. He’d come to appreciate that reality had a bracing effect on plans and he was hoping that the shock the Holmlanders were about to receive might make them think again about the course of action they had chosen.

  A few hours in no-man’s-land should suffice, he’d decided, enough to make them think they were going to die. Perhaps he could organise an Allied military advance, or a raiding team or two, or even an artillery bombardment in the area. Surely this would inspire them to seek their own lines, no matter how difficult they might think the passage would be?

  After that, a renewed artillery bombardment of Holmland trenches would hammer home the point. Aubrey could imagine the politicians and the generals arguing about their lives versus military objectives. At best, Aubrey was hoping for a retreat. At worst, a halt in the planned Holmland advance. Whatever the outcome, time would be gained, precious time to bring up Allied reinforcements.

  So the location for the arrival of the Holmlanders was a key part of his plan – and here it was, proving more difficult than Aubrey had imagined. He wasn’t sure if was the necessary effect of bringing together a dozen people from widely spread origins, or if it was the difficulty alluded to by Colonel Stanley, the need for precise location elements in any transference spell, but nothing he tried addressed the issue of exasperating vagueness when it came to fixing the location point. When he ran through the most recent draft of the spell it had potential outcomes that included spreading all twelve men over a hundred miles or so, or having them arrive at daily intervals for nearly a fortnight. One hastily abandoned option would have had the Chancellor’s cronies appearing at different heights ranging from a few miles above the surface of no-man’s-land to a mile or so underneath it.

  Vagueness, uncertainty. He couldn’t excise it from the spell, no matter what he tried. He gnawed at the elements for location and tried to constrain them, elucidate them, enhance them and define them, but nothing worked.

  ‘Aubrey.’

  It took him a moment to recognise his own name. ‘Caroline?’

  She stood, neat and sublime in her uniform, managing to convey both concern and utter confidenc
e in his work. ‘George, Sophie and I agree. You need to walk away for a moment.’

  Aubrey worked his mouth a little before answering. It felt as if he’d been chewing on ashes. ‘I do?’

  ‘It’s obvious you’ve come up against something you can’t sort out. You need a break to refresh yourself.’

  ‘But how did you know?’

  ‘You’ve been clenching your teeth. You only do that when you run into a problem that you can’t solve straight away.’

  ‘Ah.’ His jaw was aching, now that she’d pointed it out. He rubbed it and reflected on the observational powers of his friends. ‘How long have I been at it?’

  ‘It’s just gone past 2200 hours.’

  ‘Seven hours.’ His eyes were smarting. ‘I think I’ll step outside for a breath of air.’

  George was immediately at his side. ‘Capital idea, old man. I’ll join you.’

  Sophie smiled bravely at him from the other side of a steaming mug of tea. On the way out of the dugout, Aubrey saw Colonel Stanley slumped in a corner, snoring, his head propped on some excess sandbags.

  George held out an arm and prevented him from leaving while a squad of sappers jogged past, shovels in hand and carrying slit lanterns, then he signalled for Aubrey that the way was clear.

  Aubrey stretched more than his legs as he wandered along the trench. He rolled his shoulders and swung his arms and felt as if his whole body was uncoiling.

  A flare bloomed in the sky, turning night into a ghastly sort of day. Aubrey found a step and carefully levered himself to the parapet. Finding a loophole in the sandbags, he surveyed the scene, reminding himself of exactly what he was doing.

  George joined him. ‘A scrap of land,’ he said softly. ‘Hardly worth fighting over.’

  ‘We’re not fighting for that scrap of land. We’re fighting for what it represents. Not fighting for it would mean we were giving in.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be happy with that,’ George said, ‘but I wish we didn’t have to. I suppose it’s stand up or be knocked down.’

  ‘Something like that.’ Aubrey sought for his location point and found it, unmistakable in the broken landscape. He thought it a perfect place to see how stupid war was. He could even worm his way out there himself, if he followed that chain of pot holes, and then worked his way under that forest of barbed wire someone had risked himself to set up. Aubrey traced the route with his eye, then the flare faded and left him thinking.

  Three closely spaced explosions erupted on the ridge behind the Holmland lines. ‘We’re shelling the hills, now?’ Aubrey asked.

  ‘Communications have been spotty, up and down the line, but we’ve been told that artillery commanders have been ordered to use their initiative. If they see a target up there, they can have a dash.’

  ‘Have a dash. Sounds jolly.’ Aubrey peered into the night for a moment, its blackness hiding the magnitude of his task.

  An idea jumped out of the darkness and hit him between the eyes. He stared, unseeing for a while, examining the idea from all sides, to see if its lunacy was simply ridiculous or if it was the special sort of outrageousness that he had come to value. ‘I have to get back to it, George.’

  ‘See? It did you good, getting away for a while.’

  ‘It did that,’ Aubrey said vaguely, his mind working elsewhere at a rate hitherto thought impossible. ‘Which way is the dugout?’

  When they entered, Stanley was at the makeshift table, yawning and doing his best to focus on the scattered papers in front of him. Aubrey noticed that his eyes were bloodshot. ‘Impressive stuff, Fitzwilliam. Damned impressive.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Sophie stretched out on a bench under a map of Stalsfrieden. George went to rouse her, but Aubrey shook his head. ‘Let her sleep.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I might need her later. Let her sleep now.’

  George nodded and found a blanket for her.

  Caroline was sitting on a packing case, tinkering with wireless equipment. ‘You should get some rest, too,’ he said to her.

  ‘I slept earlier.’

  Aubrey had no idea whether she had or not, but immediately understood that arguing the point would be futile. ‘Nice capacitor.’

  She held up the thumb-sized component she’d been polishing. ‘It’s a valve, Aubrey, but thank you for trying.’

  He smiled, vaguely, and addressed his workings. He straightened some of the loose sheets of paper he’d torn from the ledger, and then reordered them. He screwed one up and discarded it.

  Then he took a deep breath. Re-engaging with a spell of this difficulty was like standing on a high diving tower, readying for the plunge.

  Only if the water was aflame with burning oil, he thought, and full of crocodiles. Flameproof crocodiles, with long snorkels.

  He realised his mind was spinning off in peculiar directions and he admonished himself. He needed to use every possible brain function in the pursuit of an answer to his problem. Spinning was not to be tolerated.

  The obstacle that had brought him to such an abrupt halt needed a very special solution and he now thought he had one. The trouble was, it required his casting the spell from the middle of no-man’s-land.

  Since the reunification of his body and soul he had been acutely conscious of his whereabouts in a more than physical sense. Wherever he was, he was present in a very real and concrete way. Knowing this, he thought he could use his own location as a homing beacon. He could act as a human set of coordinates.

  Drawbacks aplenty presented themselves, but as he looked for other ways around the impasse, he kept coming back to this one. It had the advantage of simplicity – and the disadvantage of acute personal danger. While he didn’t shy away from acute personal danger, he didn’t go out of his way to seek it, either. He was willing to entertain alternatives. In fact, he was willing to offer champagne, dancing and a night on the town to any useful alternative, but none presented itself, even with such entertainment on offer.

  He also had an inkling that some people around about might want to have a say about whether it was a good idea or not.

  The trench raiders managed it in their midnight excursions, he told himself. The barbed wire teams managed it when they crept out to stretch out more of the cursed stuff. No-man’s-land wasn’t an impossible place to be. It was simply extremely dangerous.

  ‘I have it, Colonel,’ he announced.

  Stanley looked up from where he was working through a pile of papers. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose before replacing them. ‘Fitzwilliam, I only understand half of what you’ve done here – less than half – but from what I’ve seen, I think you do too.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘And if it’s true, I’m wondering if you’ve really thought this thing through.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘If you can bring the Chancellor and his friends to the middle of no-man’s-land to throw a scare into them, why not simply bring them here and we’ll shoot the lot of them?’

  It was the colonel’s tone that shook Aubrey most. It said ‘I’m a reasonable man’ and ‘All things considered’, decidedly rational things like that. It was the tone used in lecture theatres and board rooms all over Albion.

  In military terms, it was a sensible suggestion. Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley wasn’t a monster. He was a hard-working man, doing the best he could. He probably had a wife and family and a dog waiting for him at home in Albion.

  Yet he was calmly suggesting a massacre.

  In some ways, it made sense. Lop off the head and Holmland would be in trouble. It might run around for a while, squawking, but eventually it would realise the state of affairs and it would fall over.

  Shoot a dozen to save thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Millions.

  As arithmetic, it made perfect sense, but Aubrey had never thought that humanity could be reduced to a matter of counting. What sort of a world would it be if that sort of thing was considered a good plan? What sort of country would it be that endorsed such act
ion?

  He was sure it wasn’t the sort of world that he was trying to save – or to make. He was also sure that Caroline would agree, and George and Sophie.

  So what if a superior officer ordered him to do it?

  ‘Sir, that would be extremely efficient,’ he said, carefully not agreeing with the suggestion. ‘We need to put some arrangements into place, however. What’s the time?’

  Caroline had been following the exchange between Aubrey and Stanley carefully. ‘It’s just after eleven.’

  ‘I need some rest before I cast a spell like this. What if we aim for 0100 hours?’

  ‘The wee small hours,’ Stanley said, with a wisp of a smile.

  ‘And we follow it with an artillery barrage at 0200 hours, directly opposite our position here.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘A show of strength. Can you arrange it?’

  Colonel Stanley frowned. ‘I’ll have to find a communications post.’

  ‘If we arrange it now, sir, I think it would be best.’

  As soon as Colonel Stanley left, Caroline put aside her wireless equipment and buttonholed Aubrey. ‘And what exactly are you planning?’

  Don’t lie. Tell the truth, he thought. Part of it, at least. ‘I can’t do this if it means shooting people in cold blood like that.’

  ‘Good. Although it’s always puzzled me why the temperature of the blood is important. Hot or cold, I don’t like it.’

  ‘You shot Dr Tremaine.’

  ‘A special case, but if you make me think too long about it I’ll be very annoyed because I’ll start to feel inconsistent.’

  ‘Can’t have that.’

  ‘No.’

  A Gallian-accented voice broke in. ‘So you’re being sneaky again?’

  Aubrey turned to see George and Sophie looking at him. Between them were notebooks they’d been sharing, working on another writing project. Sophie was sleepy-eyed but alert.

  ‘I prefer “clandestine”,’ he said.

  ‘We approve,’ George said, ‘however you want to describe yourself. So if you’re not going to slaughter the Chancellor and his friends, how’s all this going to play out?’