The Empire of Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

least bit tardy …
    ‘Ernst isn’t well,’ he says, as he hands me the first item from the cart.
    ‘Oh? In what way?’
    ‘Look at his eyes. He hasn’t been sleeping. And his hands …’
    I nod. It doesn’t surprise me after all Ernst has been through. The only surprise is that he’s sane at all.
    I strip off the one-piece and begin to dress again. ‘He’ll be okay now that I’m back.’
    Jodl looks me in the eye. ‘Maybe.’
    ‘No, he will. He’s missed me, that’s all.’
    He looks away, then hands me another item, making no comment, but I know that behind that perfect mask of a face his thoughts are buzzing like a disturbed hive. Like all of them, he wants to know what I saw, what I did, who I met. And maybe I’ll let him see a copy of my report when it’s finished, only right now I don’t want to discuss it. Not with him, anyway. Jodl has a way of asking all the awkward questions. And I’m not sure I’m up to answering those kind. Not yet, anyway.
    As I pull on the rough woollen shirt, I look at him, reminding myself. If you look close – really close – you can see the odd grey hair among the black.
    Time. How slow time must pass for the occupants of Four-Oh.
7
    ‘What is Time
like
, Master Behr?’
    ‘Time is like the surface of a pond. And also like …’ I pause, then laugh gently. ‘Time has a thousand qualities, but mostly, mostly it’s the thread that holds the universe together. In Gehlen’s equations …’
    I stop, seeing how the boys are looking at me, glazed over suddenly. That’s the trouble with Gehlen’s Time equations, you can’t
visualise
them – they function on a totally abstract level – and the mind needs to be able to picture things before it can understand them properly. It needs to create workable metaphors. But Time … how can you explain Time? It’s pretzel logic.
    ‘Time,’ I begin again, ‘is like a river. There are many tributaries, but only one river.’
    Or a Tree, or
…
    They grin back at me, and I realise I’m being teased.
    I know these boys well. I’ve taught most of them now for two, maybe three years, since they first came out of the Garden. When we’re not in the field or researching, we teach, passing on what we know to the next generation. Ensuring that the fight is carried on in the best way possible.
    Matteus, the youngest of them, raises his hand.
    ‘Yes, Matteus?’
    ‘Did you kill anyone, Master Behr? Where you’ve just been, I mean—’
    It’s a good question. Because if
that
past doesn’t become
the
Past, then surely no one ‘real’ is killed at all? Only it isn’t so. The Past is
always
real, even when we make changes to it. As real as this.
    ‘Yes,’ I say, remembering.
Even one as young as you
. But I don’t say that aloud, because it disturbs me, this capacity in me to become a killer, back there in the Past. You see, at times we must be assassins. That is our job. There’s little room for moral qualms. Or supposedly so. Some find it easy, you understand. Myself? I find it the hardest thing to hate. Not for ideological reasons, anyway.
    ‘And were you ever in real danger, Master?’
    The questioner is a thirteen-year-old named Tomas, a big lad for his age, all muscle and brawn like a peasant’s son, only I know he is the brightest of them all.
    ‘You are always in danger, in the Past.’
    ‘
Always?
’
    ‘Yes, Tomas. For where we are, they are.’
    ‘The Russians?’
    ‘Yes.’
    And their allies
. For they, like we, are not averse to using whatever or whoever is at hand to further their cause.
    Which is?
    To annihilate us. To rid history of any taint of us, the German people. While we, in our turn, strive night and day to do the same to them.
    A game. But one with the most deadly of intents: a game called
Rassenkampf –
‘race war’. And don’t flinch at my words. Think. For
this
is the truth of humanity.
    Tomas’s eyes gleam as he watches me. ‘Did you kill any …
Russians
?’
    Ernst, sensing that