“The past has a light all of its own… and a smell!”
That was Dominika speaking. Or rather, thinking. She looked around her, dumbfounded, with tears in her eyes. Tess had never seen her this emotional.
“The smell of wood polish…”
It was true that after spending several months in an aseptic tin can in space, the memories aroused by this olfactory trigger were disturbing.
“I’m back home again…”
“Home? On a train full of Nazis?” James retorted out loud.
“I meant… back in my own time period.”
Tess understood what Dominika must be feeling, but for now she was too busy taking possession of her own receptacle to participate in the conversation. Ida Fromm, the communications operator, was frightened. And then there were all her memories to take on board and digest in a single gulp. Ida Fromm was like many Germans. For years, she had admired Adolf Hitler (he’d saved the country from the economic crisis, giving work and food to the people…), and then there were his first victories – in 1939 and 1940 – swift and spectacular. But… attacking the Soviet Union? Opening a second, Eastern front? Was this not an act of folly? And the rumours about extermination camps? Was there any truth to them? Yes, the regime had always been very hard toward the Jews, but if the camps were real, it would be… monstrous.
Tess massaged her temples. Transfers were not just taxing mentally. The process of physical and sensorial adaptation was also complicated. Fromm suffered from migraine headaches. Tess had the feeling that a drill was boring into her brain, and the throbbing pain was accompanied by bouts of nausea. She looked at her reflection in one of the corridor windows. A flattened nose. Short wavy hair. Everything matched the hologram she’d seen in Transfer Room 7. Tess touched her new face, exploring its features and contours, fascinated. Then a particularly sharp jab of pain made her grimace.
Her discomfort had not escaped the notice of Rr’naal, who asked her, “Are you OK?”
“Headache.”
“Shit!” James suddenly said.
“What?”
“We don’t have much time… only twenty-seven minutes!”
Oh yeah, the countdown. Tess blinked twice. The numbers displayed themselves, down and to the right, decreasing with relentless regularity. The schematic of the train appeared in the opposite corner of her field of vision. Tess imagined the train seen from outside, clinging to its tracks: a stubborn beast with a lowered snout charging across the countryside.
“We’re close to the end of the train,” the Time Captain observed. “Car 8. The cabins are reserved for the service personnel. I doubt we’ll find anything interesting around here.”
Tess examined the schematic quickly. There were two more cars behind them: car 9, also known as the “command car,” where her receptacle worked in the communications centre. At the very end of the train, in car 10, there was an assault team, armed to the teeth, as well as several 20mm guns mounted on swivel carriages.
A door opened at the forward end of the car. An SS officer came down the corridor toward them. He was tall, with a face like a knife blade and bleary grey eyes sunk deep in their sockets. He wore a fur-trimmed coat and his hat, decorated with a death’s head and the Nazi eagle, sat low over his forehead, the visor level with his eyebrows. The four temporal agents saluted him with a snappy “Heil!” to which he responded in a distracted, almost careless manner, his mind obviously elsewhere. The foursome moved to one side to let him pass. But suddenly noticing the presence of Tess/Ida, he halted and asked her, “Why aren’t you at your post, Fräulein?”
“I… I don’t feel very well.”
“Your migraines again?”
“Yes, that’s right. My pills are in my cabin. I’ll be back right way, mein Herr.”
The officer nodded and headed off towards the command car.
James, keeping his eye on the end of the car, waited until the Nazi had disappeared, and then turned to his teammates. “All right. We need to find the cabin belonging to this historian, Kuhn, and search it…”
“Car 5,” said Rr’naal, after consulting the schematic. “That’s the one reserved for guests.”
“Search it?” Dominika queried, addressing James. “Do you even know how to pick a lock?”
“No need,” retorted the Englishman. “As head steward on this train, I have… these!” He showed them a hefty bunch of keys attached to his belt, before continuing: “Rr’naal, Dominika, you come with me. Tess, I believe they’re expecting you in car 9. I’m afraid that if you don’t show up soon, it will arouse suspicion.”
Tess nodded, and even that slight movement provoked a series of sharp pangs within her skull.
Damn migraine!
“We’ll remain in telepathic contact,” James ordered.
Only twenty-four minutes remained before the end of the mission. The group split up.
Tess tottered toward the rear of the car. A jolt from the train threw her to one side. She banged her shoulder and swore. Did Ida Fromm suffer from a faulty sense of balance, or was this a side effect due to a rougher tachyonic transfer than usual? Tess would have liked to ask Bob about it. Each jolt sent mechanical shudders down the length of the car.
“We’re in car 7,” announced James. “Another car reserved for the service staff. Nothing to report…”
Tess reached the passageway between cars 8 and 9. It was guarded by two armed soldiers who apparently knew the operator well, because they smiled at her.
“So, those headaches of yours?”
“I… I’ll be fine…”
Tess entered the next-to-last car. In front of her, there was a small room where three officers were bent over an army map, moving pieces around like war gamers.
“All they need are some dice!”
“What?” the three other agents exclaimed simultaneously, and Tess realized that she’d accidentally leaked this last thought.
“No, nothing…”
Tess recognized the officer she had encountered in the corridor. He raised his head and asked her, “Are you fit for work?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
Then he went back to examining the map. The discussion with the other two officers was animated, not to say heated. It concerned troop movements on the newly opened Russian front. Tess told herself that if each token placed on the map represented a regiment, or even a division, these officers were playing with the lives of thousands of men. The mere thought made her feel dizzy.
The room opened on another corridor, with windows on the right and a partition to the left. She passed in front of a first compartment in which teleprinters chattered. Bands full of figures spewed out in a jerky fashion and coiled up on the floor. From time to time, operators tore off strips covered with cryptic data after giving them a brief glance. Tess thought she recognized an Enigma machine, one of those famous coding devices that were the pride and joy of the German intelligence until a certain Alan Turing discovered their secret.
One of the technicians looked over his shoulder and stared at Tess. She ventured a timid smile. Not receiving any response from the man, she decided to continue onward.
“We’ve just passed through car 6,” James announced. “Incredible! They have bathrooms, and a sauna! We’re now entering car 5, the one for guests… And you?”
“I’m in the command car. Everything is going OK, at least I think so…”
She reached the next small compartment, still on the left: Tess immediately recognized the communications centre, even though she had never seen it before. One of the benefits of tachyonic possession. A small brown-haired woman was plugging and unplugging cables linked to a switchboard. She wore a set of headphones over her ears. Her face lit up when she saw her colleague arrive.
“Ah, so you’ve come to relieve me? It’s about time…”
She stood and handed the headset to Tess.
“I’m taking my break.”
“I… All right… fine.”
“You look dreadful. Don’t tell me your migraines are tormenting you again, are they?”
Tess nodded. Once the small brunette left the compartment, she sat on the stool left vacant. It wasn’t very comfortable.
“How can people work like this for hours on end?”
“What?”
Tess bit her tongue. She’d been thinking again on the “shared channel.” With this damn headache, she was really having more trouble than usual controlling her thought flow.
She looked at the switchboard in front of her. The jack plugs and outlets, the cables… Would she be able to manage? She could feel her stress mounting. She started to sweat, and she could picture the graph of her heart rate going through the roof. She tried to access Ida’s memories to draw upon the operator’s professional reflexes and know-how, but the migraine prevented her attempts to concentrate. This receptacle had definitely been a bad choice!
“That’s it… We’re in Kuhn’s cabin!” James declared triumphantly. “Ah… shit!”
“What?”
“There’s a safe.” That was Dominika who made the last remark.
“Rr’naal, can you deal with this?”
No response.
Then there was something like a hiss of static on the mental link…
“What’s going on?” asked Tess.
Her sweat suddenly turned cold. She stood up and removed the headset she had just put on.
“We’ve been discovered!” Rr’naal exclaimed, and his thought conveyed a sense of panic.
“Shit, shit, shit…”
Tess remained frozen in place, unable to make up her mind. What should she do? Stay here? Move? Try to help her companions?
Nineteen minutes left…
She left the compartment, her heart beating like mad. It accelerated further when she heard the first gunshots.
“Damn!”
The noise came from the middle of the train…
“Caught in the act–” Rr’naal had time to think, just before Tess suddenly lost contact with him, as if the channel had been cut off.
Tess understood instantly what that meant: her friend’s receptacle had been killed.
“James? Dominika?”
There was no answer, and the sound of shots was still coming from four cars ahead of her.
“Too many of them!” James cried.
Tess headed back up the corridor. Heads with frightened faces popped out of the teleprinter compartment before quickly ducking back inside.
She reached the small meeting room. The two guards had left their posts, no doubt summoned to the middle of the train as reinforcements, and only one officer remained. Standing at the side of the table, he was folding up the map.
When he spotted Tess, he shouted, “Go back! Return to your post!”
Seeing that the young woman was not moving, he advanced toward her, giving her a rough shove.
Not a good idea.
Old reflexes came into play. Old demons. Tess-goes-berserk was on the loose, today!
She swung her forearm at the Nazi’s throat. The man’s Adam’s apple was hard beneath the edge of her hand, but she struck it with all her might and he collapsed with a strangled gargle. Tess bent over and removed the Mauser pistol from the holster on her victim’s belt.
“Achtung!”
The barked order came from behind her. A squad of soldiers had arrived at a trot, machine guns hanging from their straps. The first of these elite commandos observed that the young woman was armed, and then he saw the boots of the officer stretched out on the floor.
“Terrorist!”
He raised his weapon. Tess dropped him with a bullet to the chest. The shot cracked loudly in the confined space of the train car. Tess’s ears were ringing and her hand trembled. She smelled the peppery odour of gunpowder, stinging her nostrils. Her migraine had become the least of her worries.
The Nazis progressed in single file, the narrow corridor hampering them. Tess wounded a second soldier in the belly. She was about to dive to one side when the third member of the squad opened fire…
And hit her.
The bullets were like bolts of fire, burning hammer blows…
She just had time to think: So, this is what dying feels like?
And then she was projected into a white, luminous universe. Ethereal. She was floating, weightless.
Her three teammates were also there. She couldn’t see them, but she sensed their presence.
“Ah, bravo!” thundered Bob’s voice, like some mocking spirit. “All four of you dead in under ten minutes… You’ve just broken a record, for worst performance ever on a first run! When I said, ‘flying colours’, I didn’t mean spilling blood everywhere! Just where did you think you were? At the shooting gallery? With a giant teddy bear for every Nazi you mowed down?”
“They surprised us. We didn’t have time to–”
Bob interrupted James: “I couldn’t care less about your excuses and justifications. Next time, post someone as a lookout in the corridor. You’re going to start over. And do me the favour of getting things right this time. No more screw-ups!”
“Wait!” cried Tess. “I… I want to change receptacles!”
“What?”
“The migraines, they’re unbearable…”
Bob sighed. “We’ll see what we can do. Which one do you want?”
“The… the waiter!”
Silence in the ether. Tess’s soul floated, disembodied, drifting in unpredictable quantum currents. Then, suddenly, she felt herself being sucked up. She slid along an interminable cosmic slide, passed through the eye of a tachyonic needle, and found herself in the body of–