Two Graves

81

THE LAUGHTER DIED AWAY. ALBAN LOOKED DOWN AT HIS brother, lying in the dirt. Then he turned slowly back to Pendergast. Reaching down, he removed his sidearm, a Walther P38 that he had lovingly restored by hand. He felt the cool, heavy weapon in his hands. It had been given to him by Fischer when he turned ten, and he had replaced the original grips with elephant ivory he had carved himself.

His twin, Forty-Seven, sat up in the dirt, staring at the pistol.

Alban said, offhandedly: “Don’t worry, brother, I’ve no intention of damaging my own personal blood and organ farm.” He hefted the gun. “No—this one’s for Father.”

Der Schwächling rose to his feet.

“Go back to your own kind,” Alban said. Meanwhile, the Nazi officers waited, expectantly. As did the brigade of superior twins. Waiting to see what he would do, how he—the one chosen for the beta test—would end this. This was the moment. His moment.

He would not make a mistake. Alban ejected the magazine to make sure it was full, then slid it back into place. With slow deliberation, holding his arm straight, he racked a round into the chamber.

His twin, however, did not move. He spoke in German, his voice loud and clear: “Is this good?”

Alban laughed harshly and, in return, quoted Nietzsche: “What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.”

“That’s sick,” said his twin.

Alban waved as if at a pesky insect, highly conscious of his audience. The only one missing was Fischer. “What are you, Forty-Seven, but a bag of blood and organs—a genetic garbage dump? Your opinions are as meaningless as the wind in the trees.”

This elicited another round of laughter from the soldiers. He couldn’t help but glance at his father, who stared at him with those strange eyes. He seemed unable, now, to read anything in that look. No matter: it was irrelevant.

His twin—who clearly didn’t know when to stop—spoke up again, but this time he spoke not to Alban, but to his own people. “You heard him. He called me and all of you my own kind. How much longer are we going to be treated like storage bags of blood and organs? How much longer are we going to be treated like animals? I am a man.”

And now a low murmur from the crowd.

“Don’t strain yourself, brother,” said Alban. “If you want to see the power of will, watch this.” He pointed the pistol at his father.

“Brother?” the twin cried, again addressing the crowd of defectives. “You hear that word? Can’t you see how wrong this is? Brother against brother? Son murdering his own father?”

To Alban’s mild surprise, the defectives responded. There was a sharp and growing murmur, more restless movement.

“Oh, ho!” Alban cried facetiously. “Speech, speech!”

This, to his relief, elicited a merry round of laughter from the soldiers. And he told himself it was, in fact, quite amusing, this crowd of pathetic imbeciles getting themselves all exercised with the pent-up frustrations and privations of many years. But he found himself shocked at the articulateness of Forty-Seven. That was not supposed to be allowed. And as he glanced around, he was unable to suppress an uneasiness developing in his forward-time sense, like an approaching storm. The ever-branching paths were narrowing, coming together and converging in his mind, leading toward a single future.

He looked back at his father, who was staring at him with glittering eyes. His finger moved to the trigger. It was time to get this over with.

“This is not right!” Forty-Seven cried out loudly, turning to the crowd. “Deep inside, you know it’s wrong! Open your eyes! We are all brothers—sisters—twins! We share the same blood!”

The world-lines whipped and curled about in Alban’s mind, a sudden five-alarm fire. He saw it, felt it: the great turning of the wheel. This couldn’t be happening, not with their careful indoctrination, their years of planning and refining… and yet it was happening, and he could already begin to glimpse, like the ghostly image of an underpainting, how all this was going to end. The murmur of the defectives was growing into a hubbub, then into a roar, and the crowd moved tentatively forward, their hoes and shovels and scythes raised, some picking up rocks.

“We can stop this!” Forty-Seven shouted. “Now!”

Alban took a step back, the pistol leveled at his father. Oberführer Scheermann rapped out an order and the soldiers—lined up and heavily armed—raised their weapons.

“Go back to your fields!” cried the Oberführer. “Or we shall fire!”

But Alban knew that they would not—could not—fire on the defectives. Except for a handful of the latest iteration of twins—the best and most advanced, like himself—the others could not, if push came to shove, actually kill their siblings with their own hands. And if the Nazi officers, their minders, tried to shoot the defectives… It was all coalescing in Alban’s mind with horrifying clarity. It would be the end of the program, the colony, an abrupt and shocking end to more than half a century of scientific research. The defectives, for all their hideousness, were essential. For the first time, he realized they were as essential to the project as he was. One could not exist without the other. Why had he not seen that before? Why had nobody seen that before? The whole plan had been based on a false hypothesis—a bluff. And now his own twin was calling that bluff.

This realization, this sudden reversal of fortune—unexpected and dreadful—left him stunned.

The crowd of defectives continued to jostle forward toward the line of soldiers, less tentative now, shouting, gesturing with their crude tools. Alban could feel the heat of their fury.

Now. He squeezed the trigger and fired at Pendergast.

But his father had anticipated it. Somehow, he had begun to move even before Alban fired, like a flash, incredibly quickly and unexpectedly—how did he do it?—evading the shot. Alban fired a second time but this shot was ruined by a volley of stones that came flying out of the crowd toward him, striking him and forcing him to fling up his arms in self-defense.

Pendergast had veered away and now lunged at him, launching himself in the air. Alban evaded with a pirouette, his father just striking him in the side. He fired again, but it was impossible to aim with the pelting rain of rocks and he was forced back, turning and hunching, his arms raised to protect his head. He could hear Scheermann crying an order to his regulars: Fire over their heads! With the lieutenants repeating it down the line, there came a massive volley of shots, and then another, like thunder.

It gave the defectives pause in their headlong rush. They halted in a kind of confused, chaotic milling, and the incipient fight abruptly turned into a standoff. Alban cast about and found his father, back up again, standing next to his twin, Forty-Seven, at the head of the crowd. Once again, he raised his weapon. But as he did so he saw in his mind the inexorable turning of the wheel, the crooked pathways of time growing straight… and he backed up, horrified by what he saw, as Pendergast stared at him with those terrible eyes. It was useless: every branch, every road of time led to a dead end, a checkmate at the end of every time line.

All at once he turned and fled, running through the line of soldiers, who parted to let him pass, as he knew they would. He needed to get to the lake and get a boat to the fortress, to find Fischer.

And to warn him of what was about to happen.