For what seemed like the nth time Queghan compared the RECONPAN report with the Archives’ record file and noted yet another inconsistency. He was covered in dust, his throat was parched, and his irritation was mounting. It was so bloody obvious and yet if Pouline deGrenier was such a fool that she couldn’t see …
He let the thought fade away and die a natural death. Why bother to convince her? The evidence was here for all to see. He didn’t need to explain or interpret the facts; the facts spoke eloquently for themselves. But he had tried. He had patiently explained about ‘projective myths’ and the ‘principles of acausality’ and ‘areas of uncertainty’ (it was difficult to discuss Myth Technology without resorting to jargon) and she had closed her eyes and shaken her head as if to say that he might just as well save his breath.
Pouline deGrenier was an intelligent woman with a bright and inquiring mind but she was unable to grasp the infuriating paradox that mythic events could be influenced before and after they had taken place. ‘Because,’ Queghan had said, ‘a mythic event exists in a region of probability. It is at the vortex of human consciousness and experience – a key to the past and the future.’
‘If it exists it exists,’ she had replied, not budging an inch. ‘And if it doesn’t it doesn’t.’
‘Then why does the brain in the RECONPAN laboratory insist that in the Second World War Germany and Great Britain were allies? Why does it talk of the Blackshirt Brigade when there is no historical documentation to show that such a unit ever existed?’
Her candid brown eyes didn’t waver from his. ‘Malfunction,’ she said crisply.
‘The system is in prototype. I didn’t expect one hundred per cent success and I wasn’t surprised when the system didn’t function properly on experimental trials.’ She hoped that God, whoever and wherever He was, would forgive her this whopping white lie.
‘So now you’re going to grow some fresh tissue cultures,’ Queghan said with a cynical smile.
‘Léon is preparing a cyberthetic program to investigate each of the major neurochemical circuits. Within two weeks we should know the results.’
Queghan tried another tack. ‘Doesn’t it strike you as odd that all these historical inconsistencies should be so consistent?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘For all its apparent haphazard selection of data the brain is constructing a valid and plausible mythic experience – it is consistent within its own terms.’
‘We would expect it to be. If one of the circuits is malfunctioning it will presumably give the same spurious information each time it is triggered. The same with paranoia in human terms: a wave of electrical energy in the brain which habitually follows a particular neuron pathway. Speaking psycho-medically this is what one would expect.’
She blocked every tackle, caught every spinning ball he threw at her and deftly tossed it back. And the annoying thing was that in terms of earthbound logic her beliefs were irrefutable. If you chose to deny – as Pouline deGrenier chose to do – the validity of mythic events, of the principle of acausality, of the paradox of probability, then the argument came to an abrupt dead stop. There was no more to be said. In the end they had each stared silently into space and listened to the pressing silence, until eventually Queghan had asked:
‘You have no objection to my using the RECONPAN facility?’
‘No objection as such.’
‘What does “as such” mean?’
‘Providing it doesn’t interfere with our investigation program.’
‘You’re most generous.’
Now he was determined to prove to this intractable female that the inconsistencies were not the result of malfunction in the system but the accurate projection of mythic events. Yet deep in the labyrinthine entrails of Archives, dust in his eyes and at the back of his throat, Queghan realized the futility of trying to prove anything at all by an endless rote of historical cross-references. To Pouline deGrenier they would have no relevance whatsoever to the main objective of getting RECONPAN to regurgitate slabs of ‘authentic’ history which tallied with official records. She wouldn’t be content until Hitler’s simulated brain told her precisely and in detail what she already knew.
Queghan replaced the sheets in their vinyl slip-cases and went up to Level 17. With people like Pouline deGrenier there was one way and one way only to prove that the world was round.
*
When he got home it was 1951 Pre-Colonization. The sleazy woman in the soiled slip said, ‘Siddown, Polack, and take the weight off.’
The groan he uttered was so realistic that she responded instantly by telling him to ‘Shaddap, punk. I’ve had enough of your slobbering to last me a lifetime. If you don’t like my company, take off.’
He said tentatively, ‘Blanche?’
She halted by the open window just as the harsh green glare of a neon sign gilded her profile, making a fluorescent halo of her blond hair before flickering off and leaving her in silhouette.
‘Don’t come whining to me, you drunken slob. Where’ve ya bin till now? I’m working my guts out trying to keep this place together and what do you do? What does he do?’ she asked the cracked and flaking plaster ceiling. ‘I’ll tell you what he does: spends every last goddam dime in the bar along the street. I ain’t even got a decent pair of shoes to my name.’
‘Take it easy, Blanche,’ said Queghan. ‘No need to get excited.’
‘Excited! D’ya hear that?’ she said to the blistered window-frame. ‘Me? Excited? Me get excited? What else is there to do around this lousy hole with nothing but a big dumb Polack for company? D’ya want I should thank you or somethin’? D’ya want my gratitude? Am I in your debt?’
‘I’m sorry I was late.’
‘He’s sorry,’ Blanche said, nodding her head and folding her arms. ‘D’ya hear that?’ she inquired of the washbasin in the corner. ‘How do you like this guy? He walks all over my life and then, calm as you please, tells me he’s sorry. How do you like that?’
Queghan took in the period detail and reckoned it was better than the acting. There was traffic in the street below (the sound of traffic) and the wail of a baby from the next tenement. Somebody in the apartment upstairs was brawling with his wife and there was the spasmodic splintering crash of breaking crockery followed by a thickly articulated oath or two.
The room itself was cheap and nasty. The furniture consisted of a ramshackle table and four broken-down chairs, a sagging armchair with the straw stuffing hanging out, a yellow lacquered wardrobe with fiery red roses painted in the corners, and a long mirror inset in the door with a jagged crack across the middle, an iron-framed bed with dented brass knobs at the corners, and the washbasin came complete with dripping tap and exposed plumbing. Beyond it, behind a partly drawn curtain on a drooping wire, the murky recesses of what he took to be the kitchen. It was a professional reconstruction; no detail had been omitted, not even the sour mingled smell of sweat, urine and boiled cabbage.
And it was hot. Queghan hadn’t realized till now but the temperature must have been in the nineties. He took his jacket off and draped it over the bedpost. Already his shirt was damp under the arms.
Blanche yelled, ‘That’s right, go ahead, mess the place up! Whad’ya think I bin doin’ all day, sitting on my butt? No respect, no consideration, I might as well be dead.’ She trudged across the room, scooped up the jacket, wadded it into a bundle and flung it in the corner behind the wardrobe.
‘That jacket cost me—’
‘Aw shaddap!’ Blanche said. ‘You big dumb ox.’ She turned and faced him, hands on hips. ‘I ain’t bin out of this dump in three days. Three days! Stuck here while you bin whorin’ all over town with some cute little trick you picked up out of the gutter. Whad’ya expect me to do? Plant a big fat welcoming kiss on your ugly mug? No chance, buddy boy. You can sit there till hell freezes over, see if I care.’
She turned away with a contemptuous twitch of her hips and went back to her favourite position by the window. The flickering neon sign lit her effectively, a good atmospheric prop. From the street rose the monotonous moan of a police siren.
Blanche had picked up a small ragged teddy-bear from amongst the clutter on the dresser and she cradled it to her bosom. Her voice became wistful. ‘We went wrong somewhere, I guess. I don’t know how or why, we just did.’
Queghan didn’t say anything.
‘No, don’t say anything,’ Blanche said, raising her hand. ‘I guess it was my fault as much as yours. I wanted too much. I wanted the world and you couldn’t give it to me. I guess we all gotta learn sooner or later that we can’t have what we want out of life.’ She clutched the teddy-bear tighter. ‘There’s a whole big world out there, you know?’ she crooned softly, looking beyond the neon sign into the night sky. ‘When I was a kid I wanted it all, I had a right to it. Nothin’ and nobody was ever gonna stop me. But now …’
She glanced down at the teddy-bear nestling close to her breast. ‘This little fellow’s only got one eye. What do you see with your one good eye, little friend? Is it still a big world out there? Can you see it all with your one good glass eye?’
‘Blanche—’ Queghan said.
‘Don’t say it. Don’t make it any worse than it has to be. We both of us tried to make it work, we did our best. But sometimes I guess the odds are just a little too high.’ There was a choking sob in her voice.
From above came a sudden crash of breaking crockery followed by a scream, a thud, and silence.
‘Whad’ya make of this crazy world, my little one-eyed friend?’ asked Blanche, rocking to and fro, her voice barely audible. ‘With your one glass eye do you see the wickedness, the hopelessness, the broken promises, the shattered dreams? Maybe you only see the half of it. That’s right, you see one side, the better side. No sense a little fellow like you taking in the whole big bad world, is there now? You see the bright side of things, the glittery success and the parties and the swell folk doin’ just as it pleases them to do. Well let me tell you that your good friend Blanche here ain’t never had a taste – not so much as a sniff – of that golden side. No sir. Blanche has bin down here all the time with the nigras and the goddam Polacks. That, I swear, is the ab-so-lute truth.
‘But I have dreamed dreams. Oh dreams so high and fancy I couldn’t tell you about without blushing. I do still blush, you know, though nobody in this here household would ever credit the fact. But I do. Blushin’ comes easy to my fair skin. I do have a fair skin, don’t I? You can see that, can’t you, even with your one good glass eye?’ She held the bear up in front of her, stretching out both arms. ‘Now isn’t that just like me? How rude of me. I never did ask how come you only got just the one eye. And for that I do apologize. Might I ask? Would it embarrass you? I’m askin’ as a friend, not as some pryin’ intruder. If you don’t wanna tell, just say so, come right out with it, I won’t be offended. Goodness me, it’ll take more than that to offend lil’ old Blanche here—
‘What’s that? You were born with only one eye? You never had a pair of eyes in your entire life? Well as they say, and I guess it’s the truth, what you ain’t had you’re never gonna miss. Two eyes ain’t such a good thing anyway, you can take my word.’ She said in a harsh whisper, ‘With two eyes you see everything. Every goddam thing. And some of it ain’t too pretty. I’ve seen a few things in my short young life that I wouldn’t wish anybody to see, not anybody, not even my own worst enemy. So you’re better off, little bear, take my word. With your one good glass eye you can see more than enough. And more than enough is plenty.’
Right on cue the baby’s cry sounded again, less strident this time, faint with tiredness. The neon sign made a fizzing noise, came on, went off, came on again uncertainly, bathing the room in an eerie green glow. Blanche leant against the window-frame, her hair a fluorescent halo, the curve of her neck and shoulders in black silhouette.
Queghan felt to be adrift in this green room. It was a fake (wasn’t it?), an elaborate charade, an authentic historical reconstruction. The whole thing was a put-up job. He tried to sit up in the chair.
‘Blanche …’
The neon light came on, went off, came on.
His senses were beginning to slide. Something about the light. His eyelids fluttered and the focal point of his consciousness began to recede, to become smaller.
He said more urgently, ‘Blanche,’ but she mustn’t have heard him, still lost in dreams, the green neon light washing over her.
His consciousness had shrunk to a point of black: the contracting pupil in a glassy golden eye. The eye grew large, filled the world and he was falling inwards into the empty black centre, surrounded by green light that flickered and fizzed … coming on, going off, coming on.
Someone cried out. It was a voice repeating over and over again the name Blanche and Queghan became aware that his throat was hurting and there was wetness on his lips. He then thought in a moment of absolute calm and rational clarity:
The frequency of the light.
It was too late. He had realized too late. The light had affected the temporal lobe in the roof of the brain and this was the onset of an epileptic fit.
*
Léon Steele had stars in his eyes. He stood with his forehead pressed against the angled window, cracking his knuckles and wondering if this, at last, was love.
For the past two weeks he had been eating very little, just pecking at his food and then pushing the plate aside – not because he wasn’t hungry but because he had been led to believe that love killed the appetite. The only flaw in this hypothesis was that he was ravenous at every mealtime and starving afterwards. But he pretended that he really couldn’t face it, his emotions were too caught up, his sensibilities in a whirl of frustrated passion and poignant longing. Just a fleeting glance from her dark-brown eyes was enough to make the fluid in his bowels gurgle; though the cause might have been as much gastrological as neurochemical.
The evening (that night!) had been wonderful, a dream experience, but what had happened since had puzzled and upset him. It was almost as though she had never been to his apartment and they had not made love. His sly winkings and gentle smiles the day after had met with sharp admonitions to ‘Stop daydreaming, Léon. Keep your mind on what you’re doing.’
He thought: Was I so bad that she’s forgotten already? Perhaps it never actually took place. What if I imagined it all, a schoolboy fantasy which seemed so real that I was confused into mistaking the wish for the act? But if that were so he could have lived the rest of his life in fantasy and wish-fulfilment and been perfectly happy.
Léon sighed and cracked another finger joint. The sound made him start guiltily. Pouline detested the habit and he had resolved to break himself of it; also he was supposed to be compiling a program for the cyberthetic system which could be used to discover any gremlins lurking in the RECONPAN facility. As far as he could see RECONPAN was operating as per specification. What Pouline expected to find wrong with the germanium circuitry he hadn’t a notion. Perhaps she simply wanted to get back at mythographer Queghan; whenever he mentioned the man’s name her colour rose up and she became quite snappish.
Léon went into the booth and put the headphones on. The curved tinted screens surrounded him cosily and the contoured seat and headrest adjusted automatically to his posture, which was semi-reclining. A red winking light at eye-level confirmed that RECONPAN was on-line. He said into the microphone:
‘Datum point 27101944.’ There was a moment’s pause, a subdued chatter of ticking relays, and the illuminated panel changed from SEARCH to READY.
Léon pressed the RECORD tab. Balancing the clipboard with the list of cross-references on his knee he began:
‘State your geographical location on the day in question.’
‘Wolfsschanze,* Rastenburg.’
The voice was flat, impersonal, with a slight accent. Léon found nothing unusual in this; he believed he was conversing with a bunch of wires, a phalanx of silicon contact-breakers, a devil’s brew of germanium solid-state circuitry. He ticked off an item on the list.
‘State chronologically your movements and locations from the datum poi – from the day in question.’
‘I remained at Wolfsschanze until 20th November. Then to Berlin, where I stayed at the Chancellery until 10th December. From there I went to Adlershorst* at Bad Nauheim, and from there, on 16th January, returned to the Reich Chancellery. From there—’
‘One moment,’ Léon interrupted, ticking off the items.
There was a baleful silence.
‘Did you stay in the Chancellery itself or in the bunker?’
‘On the first occasion in the Chancellery; on the second occasion in the Führerbunker due to the fact that the Chancellery had been bombed by the Americans during the latter half of December.’
That tallies, Léon thought. Every date and location bang on the nail. Presumably it meant that the TCR circuit was functioning normally – though the dates could be accurate and yet the day by day summary of events wildly inaccurate. So was the facility functioning satisfactorily after all?
Léon tapped his fingers on the clipboard and cogitated for a moment. Although it had been explained to him more than once he had never properly understood what the mythographer was driving at. There were two conflicting series of events it seemed; very well: which was the true version and which the false? No, wait a minute – Queghan had said that neither was necessarily false – both could be true providing they were self-consistent. Now this was the part that confused him. How could two separate series of events covering the same period of time – and which clearly contradicted each other – both be accurate and true? Surely one of them had to give way in face of the other?
It was all to do with ‘probability’, he had been told, which followed as a direct consequence of Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty. This stated that the position and momentum of a sub-atomic particle cannot be simultaneously determined with complete accuracy. Any conceivable method which determines the position must automatically alter the velocity of the particle; and if an attempt is made to accurately measure the momentum this again automatically affects the position. Thus the two values of a particle at a specific worldpoint can never be known with certainty.
But Léon was not, and didn’t profess to be, a physicist. He felt more at home amidst the comparatively safe disciplines of electrochemical neurology and its associated bio-electric phenomena. He understood, for example, how RECONPAN could simulate the brain patterns of someone long dead (there had been talk of using the facility to recreate Shakespeare’s brainpan and have him write another masterpiece or two) because the technique could be quantified, the specification tabulated and the circuitry set down in blueprint. He was less used to – unwilling to accept – the nebulous uncertainties of Myth Technology and the flights of fancy to which it ascended. Like Pouline deGrenier he was a pragmatist born and bred.
The next item read: ‘Personnel in Führerbunker, 22nd April–1st May, 1945, inclusive.’
Léon fed the datum point into the facility and when the panel changed from SEARCH to READY yawningly put forward his query. Back came the methodical answer:
‘Reichsjugendführer Arthur Axmann, Rittmeister Gerhard Friedrich Boldt, Chef Luftwaffenführungsstab Eckard Christian, Frau Gerda Christian, Reich Chancellor Joseph Goebbels, Frau Goebbels, Wehrmachtattaché Major Willi Johannmeier, Frau Gertraud Junge, Revieroberwachtmeister Hermann Karnau, GeneralFeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, SS Sturmbannführer Erich Kempka, Fräulein Else Krueger, Heinz Lorenz, Baron Major Freytag von Loringhoven, SS Hauptscharführer Erich Mansfeld, Dr Theodor Morell, Otto Willi Mueller, Heinz Matthiesing, Hilco Poppen, Flugkapitän Hanna Reitsch, SS Hauptsturmführer Guenther Schwaegermann, Baroness von Varo.’
Down the page a row of neat red ticks. Pouline would be pleased at this. She was fanatical so far as RECONPAN was concerned; indeed he wondered what else in life motivated her or brought a sparkle to her eye.
‘Certainly not sex,’ he said aloud. ‘She couldn’t be less interested.’ He bethought himself. ‘Unless it’s just me she’s not interested in.’
‘You have problems of that kind too?’ said the simulated brain of the Führer, a response generated from the electrically-charged tissue cultures and transmitted at 350 feet per second along the branches of the axon fibre, passed electrochemically through the synapse, converted from charged sodium and potassium atoms into differential wave patterns and thence via the germanium circuit to the headphones.
‘Yes,’ said Léon morosely. ‘One minute she leads me on and the next she doesn’t want to know. It’s been the same all my life. I suppose women don’t find me attractive.’
‘Is there something the matter with you? Physically?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Léon said, trying to give an honest answer. ‘I’m not handsome, I know. I’m not the kind of man women dream about; but looks aren’t everything, are they?’ He made himself more comfortable in the contoured chair. ‘To be truthful, women have always disappointed me. Even the intelligent ones like Pouline seem to be taken in by surface show. Do you know what I mean? You’d think they’d see through all that to the person underneath, the real person. I have a very loving nature, my mother always said so, but women don’t seem to find that important. Oh they say it’s important, they say they prefer a man to be gentle and considerate and understanding but they always go for the other kind, the selfish bigoted louts who treat them like dirt. I find that very confusing.’
‘I only ever loved once – the one woman.’
‘All your life?’
‘Yes.’
‘That would be Fräulein Braun.’
There was a perceptible, a significant, pause.
‘Frau Hitler.’
‘Ah yes. Yes of course.’ Léon nodded, his eyes caught and held by the winking red light. It seemed to be a time for meditative reflection, for confession even. He wished he smoked a pipe, it would have completed the image. Red lights – two of them – were glassily reflected in his wide dreamy eyes.
He said, ‘The trouble is, between you and me, I don’t like women. I mean I fancy them sexually, I’d like to sleep with the attractive ones – I’m not ambiguous in that sense – but I don’t really like them. I feel uncomfortable in their company. It’s as if I can only think of them in one way, as sexual objects, and they seem to sense this and it frightens them off. It’s only with ugly women that I can talk easily and because they’re ugly I’ve no interest in them. I can talk to Karla Ritblat but that’s only because she’s old and I don’t think of her in a sexual way at all.’
‘Ritblat,’ said the voice of the brain in his ear. ‘Is she by any chance Jewish?’
‘Not sure,’ Léon said vaguely. ‘Could be, I suppose. She prepared the tissue cultures.’
‘Explain to me.’
‘The living tissue which provides the interaction between the data-processing function in the cerebrum and the generation of conscious thought. They allow you to think.’
‘They allow me to think?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Ritblat prepared these tissue cultures?’
‘Yes.’
‘Urglhhmaaach!’
It was a sound approximating to the slow and infinitely painful strangulation of a small furry animal by barbed wire.
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ Léon said, irritated. ‘It gives me a headache.’
‘What do you suppose it does to me?’ asked the brain of the Führer. ‘I have memories.’
‘Haven’t we all?’ Léon sighed.
‘Your memories are nothing compared to mine.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Your life is nothing compared to mine.’
‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ Léon said, nettled. ‘Just because you’re an historical figure, somebody who made his mark, doesn’t mean to say that your life is more important than mine. Every life has its own unique significance.’
‘Scheisse!*’
‘Pardon?’
‘I said “unquestionably”.’
‘You agree?’
‘I do, I do.’
‘Do you know?’ An opinion had formed in Léon’s head. ‘I think history misjudged you.’ He folded his arms and gazed at the winking red light. ‘The record files in Archives make you out to be a raving madman but you’re nothing of the sort. In fact you’re a very sympathetic person. I really feel I can talk to you, confide in you. You’re the kind of person, I should imagine, who was misunderstood.’
‘Oh I was,’ the brain of Hitler agreed readily. ‘Definitely misunderstood. History has been distorted, the truth has been suppressed and lies put in its place. Treachery and deceit and evil plots – everything which surrounded me all through my life has been allowed to pervert the true picture. I have been slandered by destiny.’
‘You had problems just like everyone else.’
‘Hundreds of problems. Insurmountable problems. Nobody knows the half of it. Except Eva and Theo.’
‘Theo?’
‘Mein Leibarzt, Dr Morell. He was one of my closest companions for many years.’
Léon consulted the list. ‘Your personal physician. Which reminds me, we never did manage to research him thoroughly for the Subject Profile. The records were incomplete. We could only feed in the barest details of his life.’
‘He was a strange man,’ the brain said. ‘Secretive. He kept a diary, I believe, though no one ever saw it. His theories on the vital forces at work within the human body were fascinating. Pity about the diary, it would have made interesting reading.’
‘It should be on file somewhere,’ Léon said, making a note. ‘I’ll have a look for it in Archives.’
‘Tell me,’ said the brain of the Führer, a note of casual inquiry in the bland emotionless voice.
‘Yes?’
‘Is this Ritblat person to be trusted? You say she developed the tissue cultures which provide me with conscious thought. There is no doubt as to her … loyalty?’
‘Karla Ritblat is a dedicated and experienced psychomedical research scientist. Are you questioning her professional integrity?’
‘You have no doubts at all?’
‘None. Why do you ask?’
The relays hummed, the red light winked. Léon listened intently to the soft simulated voice in the headphones.
‘I wouldn’t like to think that somebody of an inferior race has been tampering with the dynamic metabolism of my brain. Do not forget that I am the greatest military strategist of all time!’
*
Blanche came away from the window, saying, ‘Shaddap, ya drunken bum.’ She stood by his chair.
‘Oh my sweet Christ,’ she said, falling to her knees.
Queghan was unconscious, his eyeballs upturned into his head, saliva running freely down his chin. He was slowly choking to death with his tongue. Blanche was transfixed. In her terror and numbed panic she tore one of the arms off the teddy bear. The big dumb Polack was going to die. Right here in front of her eyes.
His limbs were rigid, the legs sticking out like wooden stilts. The neon light gave his face the appearance of a greenish death mask. His eyes were blank staring white.
She thought, I can’t let him die, he’s my husband … and then, You stupid bloody fool, the Dilantin.
For a frozen eternity of time she couldn’t remember how to get out of the apartment. Two of the doors were false, leading nowhere, and her mind refused to make a decision. When she finally moved it was with the agonizing slowness of a dream; things got in her way and hindered her and she saw her own snail-like progress from above, her mind distanced from the inept fumbling body below trying to open doors and stumbling headlong into objects. This detached part of her mind thought, If he dies because of my childish daydreams …
The syringe in the vinyl pouch was ready-charged. She extracted it carefully from the sheath, rolled up his sleeve and injected the full amount directly into the vein. His face was the colour of chalk and running with perspiration.
What next, what next, what next? She couldn’t think. He had told her, very exactly, what had to be done. Now she remembered, and reaching into his mouth uncurled his tongue, with the other hand tearing the hem off her dress and folding it into a pad and, still holding his mouth apart, pushed the wad of material between his teeth.
What if he dies? Oria thought, kneeling helplessly by the side of the chair. What if he dies?