Ian Tregillis - Bitter Seeds

Klaus climbed in, weighing his words carefully. He opted for the shortest possible conversation. “Admiralty,” he said.

The driver glanced over the seat, white eyebrows cocked high on his forehead. A tangle of spidery red capillaries etched his gin-blossom nose. “Beg pardon, sir?”

Klaus enunciated every letter: “Admiralty.”

The driver cast a glance over the seat. “You all right, sir? You don't sound well.”

Scheisse.

Unlike Reinhardt, Klaus hadn't perfected his English.

Klaus glared at the driver and gestured through the windshield. “Go,” he commanded.

The driver shrugged. He put the car in gear. “Very good, sir. Next stop, the Admiralty.”

Though he had long since committed the contents to memory, Klaus took advantage of the ride to review his sister's note once more. He unfolded the paper, leaning against the acceleration as the cab sped around a corner.

... Come for me on the thirteenth of May—

The cab stopped. “There we go,” said the driver over the clunk of the parking brake.

Klaus looked up. “—What?” He barely caught himself in time, and phrased the question in English.

“We're here, sir. The Admiralty, like you asked.”

“Already?” The word slipped out before he could stop, before he could concentrate on pronouncing it like a Briton.

The driver's face creased in confusion. “Yes, sir.”

And indeed, they idled across the street from the front gate of a U-shaped brick building. A taller addition farther down the road was a jumble of white stone and dark red brick. The complex was larger than he'd expected.

The entire ride hadn't taken two minutes. Yet in that time Klaus had branded himself as a stranger who spoke with an accent and as a sailor who didn't know the location of the Admiralty. He'd made more work for himself. But it couldn't be carried out right here.

Klaus pointed down the street. “Please let me off there, around the corner,” he said. He didn't obsess over his accent.

The driver looked confused, but didn't object. “As you wish, sir.” The car lurched to another stop a few moments later, this time out of sight of the Admiralty complex.

Klaus pretended to go through the motions of pulling out a billfold. He counted bills, stalling until the driver turned forward again. When he did, Klaus reached through the seat to squeeze the man's heart still. Klaus leaned the body against the door so it wouldn't topple forward and bump the horn.

Fuck Reinhardt, anyway.

He climbed out and closed the door, trying but failing to spit the taste of electrified metal from his mouth.

The drizzle had seeped into his uniform by the time he crossed the street and hurried back to the Admiralty on foot. The taxi had saved him neither time nor discomfort.

A sentry saluted as Klaus passed through the gate. Klaus traversed a courtyard toward what appeared to be the main entrance. After returning another salute to the sentries flanking a sandbag revetment, he entered the Admiralty unchallenged. Nobody asked for his identity card; they took the uniform at face value. That wouldn't have happened at a Schutzstaffel building.

Britain was a stupid, backward place.

... Find me in the cellar. They will keep me locked in a storage room... .

Klaus strode the corridors, searching for a stairwell. But if the Admiralty complex had seemed large and imposing from the outside, it was far more confusing inside. It gave the sense of having come together organically, without any overarching plan. Narrow corridors kinked with senseless doglegs meandered through the building; some were lined with doors down both sides, while others sported none. Some of the panels in the walls looked like doors, but were not. And there were doors that didn't look like doors at all, and which caught Klaus by surprise when they opened suddenly to discharge sailors and bureaucrats.

The need to pretend he belonged here, that he knew where he was going, hindered Klaus's search. A man with a single lieutenant's bar on each shoulder saluted as Klaus passed. Klaus returned the salute, a moment late and not nearly so crisply. The younger officer didn't react; perhaps he was accustomed to contempt from his superiors.

The first stairwell Klaus found went up, to the floor above, but not down to the cellar.

Gretel had this all planned out because she'd foreseen it. Naturally, she hadn't bothered to draw a map or give him specific directions.

Klaus considered forgoing stairs altogether, instead dropping straight through the floor into the cellar below. Assuming there was a cellar directly beneath him. If he was wrong, there was a very real chance he'd end up falling through the earth. He'd use up his one lungful of breath long before he popped out in some other part of the globe. He'd suffocate, die, rematerialize, and perhaps fossilize deep underground, a puzzle for future archaeologists.

He abandoned the notion. The search resumed amid mounting frustration.

“ ... You don't get it, Pip. The Eidolons don't do that. It's quite unheard of.”

“They must have names for things, Will.”

Two men—civilians, by their dress—turned the corner at the far end of the corridor. The taller and better-dressed one, a pale fellow with red hair like Rudolf, wore a gauze ban dage wrapped about one of his fingers. Seepage had stained the pristine white cotton with blotches of rust. The sight elicited a sympathetic throb from the phantom ache in Klaus's missing fingers.

The shorter one was a coarse fellow, judging by his face. A pugilist, perhaps. He looked up momentarily as Klaus passed. Klaus nodded at him, hoping it would pass for a companionable gesture between countrymen. The man turned to his injured companion, listening to his response.

“Names for things, concepts, yes. But not for people. That's akin to naming the individual ants in an anthill.”

“Who was that bloke? Did he look familiar to you?”

Klaus called up his Willenskrafte to chance a shortcut.

“New recruit, perhaps. Look, getting back to the point, I can't impress upon you enough how peculiar ...”

Klaus released his breath when he rematerialized around the corner.

“I'm not inclined,” said Marsh, “to put stock in the pronouncements of something so malevolent. Just look at how it toyed with you.” He frowned. “Sorry, Will, but it did.”

Nausea and light-headedness welled up again when Will nodded. Merely blunting the worst edge of the pain in his hand had required filling his stomach with aspirin. Any more, and he was bound to sick up. The naval medic had wanted to ply Will with something stronger, but Will had insisted that the troops needed every ampule far more than he did.

“Your distrust is well-placed. But there was no price associated with the name. The Eidolon stated it as fact, rather than as a ploy. And that's what makes it notable.”

“What does it mean? The name, I mean?”

“I haven't a clue.” Will shrugged, instantly regretting it. The pain redoubled its efforts, lancing from the missing tip of his finger all the way up his arm. “There's nothing similar in Grandad's lexicon.”

Marsh stopped. His eyes widened. “Bloody hell.”

Will added, “Relax. That by itself isn't cause for alarm. Even the best lexicons are notoriously incomplete—”

Marsh spun, looking back up the corridor from where they had come. “How could I be so dim?”

“What?”

“Of course he looked familiar. I've seen him in the sodding film!”

“What are you talking about?”

“It's one of them. They're here.”

Will whirled around to look, but the corridor was empty. He staggered. His knees still felt soft, watery from the previous day's ordeal. “Are you certain? Perhaps it's just a residual oddity, a phantom leftover from our little experiment yesterday.” Will didn't believe it either as the words came out of his mouth. He wished he did. The Jerries on that film were downright terrifying customers.