The Empire of Time (36 page)

‘I call it the Game of Life,’ Rothaarige says quietly to my ear, ‘though the common herd know it as Spirals. You know it?’

I wonder what’s best, to bluff, or show my ignorance. But I’m curious now, and he seems willing to explain.

‘Each player buys his cards, one hundred a card, a minimum of five cards, maximum ten. Play progresses clockwise from the dealer. Each player chooses one card from his hand at each turn. And no huffing. If you
can
play a card, you
must
.’

I look about me, seeing how, in front of each player, there’s a tiny glade of plastic spikes, like miniature pines, stretching out from the dark cushion at the edge of the table, and how, just beneath my hand, the table is mottled with tiny holes. Some of the spikes are lit, others dark.

‘Should I buy my cards now?’

‘I’m afraid that’s not allowed,’ Rothaarige says kindly. ‘Not until this round is over. You see, the winner is the one who plays the last card. It would be unfair if you were to enter the game now, after so much has already been staked.’

‘I see.’ And I do, but only vaguely, and so he continues.

‘There are fifty-nine circles in all, but one hundred and eighteen cards … two packs, essentially. The idea is to match a card in your hand with one of the circles on the table. You slip the card into the slot just there. Any player who completes one of the four bases gets a reward – one twelfth of the existing stake. Similarly, a player who completes one of the pairings is also rewarded – only this time one sixth of the total stake. The greatest reward, however, goes to the player who plays the final card. He claims a full half of what remains.’

‘And the rest?’

‘Goes to the house, of course.’ Rothaarige smiles at me. ‘Though not all of it. One third of the house’s profit becomes the players’ stake in the greater game, though they must continue playing if they want to lay claim to it. If they drop out … well …’

My eyes trace the great, circular double helix and note, once again, how certain parts are lit, others dark.

‘I don’t follow you …’

‘It’s simple. Whoever finishes one of the base pair can claim a matching pair on the outer spiral. AT or CG, or their inverse pairings. If they can then complete a minor groove, or even a major, they are rewarded further.’

‘A minor being …?’

‘Four consecutive strands, a major six.’

‘Ah …’ And, looking once more, I see how far any of the players are from such rewards. But the night is young and the players keen. I make a quick calculation and begin to understand why the small man laughed at my thousand. It would go nowhere in this game, not with more than eight players at the table.

I watch, seeing how the circles light up, one after another. There’s a small cry of delight as one of the players, a stooped old greybeard, completes the Thymine base. A moment later, a dozen or so of the spikes in front of him – previously dark – light up, bringing a warm glow to his deeply lined face.

It’s twenty minutes before I finally get to play. Rothaarige’s gone now, but Burckel seems keen to help. He’s played before and, as I’m handed my cards, he tries to take them from me.

I bat his hand away.

Burckel frowns. ‘I was only …’

I glare at him, then sort my cards and look to the table. I have ten cards – ten options on the board. I can see already how tactical this game can be, how, if one kept back two matching cards, one might win. Given luck. Only the point is I
want
to lose. To get out of there as quickly as I can.

I play, ignoring Burckel, making him sigh with exasperation.

‘Otto, that was foolish …’

I say nothing. Watch my ten cards dwindle to two, realising that the meagre little copse of spikes below me are all dark.

‘You want to increase your stake?’ Burckel asks. ‘You can if you want, Otto. I—’

‘
Albrecht
.’

He falls silent.

I play my penultimate card. There are eight players, and though three of them are unable to play – their cards are doubles of cards already played and therefore worthless – there are still eight unlit circles on the table, evenly distributed, two to a base.

The fun starts here.

I watch as the play moves away from me around the table. Cytosine is quickly claimed. Other circles brighten. The player two to my right joins those unable to play, his two remaining cards doubles.

There are two circles unlit in Guanine and I have one of them, the rare N9. I hold my breath as my neighbour slips his final card into the slot. There’s the briefest pause while the machine registers the play, and then the unlit C1 atom on the Guanine lights and I know I’ve won.

Burckel whoops. This particular game may be over for us, but we’ve won back our stake. Not only that, but I’ve earned one strand in the greater game.

I speak to Burckel’s ear. ‘We have to go.’

‘But you can’t,’ he answers openly, not caring if he’s overheard. ‘You have a
presence
now, on the outer spiral.’

‘That’s a loser’s game, Albrecht.’

‘I’ll stake you.’

‘That’s not the point. We need to go.’

Rothaarige appears at my elbow and gently touches my arm. ‘Well done, Otto. That was subtly played. Next time, perhaps, you’ll—’

He stops abruptly, turning, as we all do, to face the hammering at the outer door. He seems concerned, and I wonder for the first time whether this is legal. Then I notice how his hair seems to ripple. There’s the faintest light flowing through it, as if through fibre-optics, and as it does, so he seems to calm. Smiling his apologies, he walks towards the door, even as it opens.

Rothaarige is a small man, but he seems to make himself even smaller as he nears the door, cringing almost, apologetic. And then I see why. Coming through the door, literally having to squeeze through it merely to get inside, is a monster of a man, so big that I wonder how both he and the doorman managed to get into that tiny ante-room. He’s masked, yet even so, all there know who, or rather
what
, he is.

‘Welcome, Guildsman,’ Rothaarige says, his voice unctuous now, his whole manner suddenly, strangely servile. Or maybe not so strange. The Guild of the Teuton Knights is not to be messed with.

The Guildsman turns, scanning the room as if for enemies, then fixes the small man in his visored sight.

‘Is the room prepared?’

Rothaarige nods and bows low. ‘Of course, Guildsman. If you would come with me.’

But as I glance at those close by, I see how every eye is now averted, as if the Guildsman is not there, and though I’m curious to see one of them, I do likewise. Yet maybe I’ve seen enough. He’s like a piece of crafted metal, his armoured exoskeleton more insectile than human, his hands like massive instruments of torture. And his eyes …

Mechanical yet human. The nearest thing to a machine, and yet alive.

Beside me, Burckel shudders, and as the door shuts on the far side of the gaming room, he murmurs something.

‘What?’

Burckel looks to me, his eyes haunted. ‘I hate those bastards.’

But he says no more. He’s not allowed to. We both know what’s to come, but of it we are not allowed to speak, not even to each other.

‘Come,’ I say, now that Rothaarige has gone. ‘I want out of here.
Now
.’

A Teuton guildsman and a Russian agent, both frequenting the same club. As we walk back down the levels to Burckel’s apartment, I ponder whether there might be a connection, and if so of what kind. Was the Guildsman merely a player, or was he there to meet someone – Dankevich, perhaps? Or was it just coincidence? Whichever, I don’t mention any of this to Burckel. He, for his part, is annoyed with me for coming away before we’d had the chance to make a line of four, or maybe even six.

‘You’re a lucky man, Otto,’ he says, as he turns the lock and pushes open the door. ‘But you ought to trust your luck, not shun it.’

I follow him inside, making no comment, wondering just where the hell I’m supposed to sleep in this mess.

‘I’m sorry it’s so …’ And then he laughs. ‘I never was tidy. Even as a child, in the Garden. I—’

I stare at him, shocked. ‘
Albrecht!
Have you
forgotten
?’

‘Forgotten? No, I …’ And then he laughs again, but this time it’s in embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to speak of that, am I? It’s—’

Secret, yes
.

I contemplate jumping right out of there at once, but decide against it. Burckel clearly doesn’t know what he’s done and I’m not about to panic him. Even so, I change my plans. Hecht needs to know about this, and soon.

I look about me for the makings of another bed, but there’s nothing, only piles of clutter. Burckel, however, seems unperturbed. ‘You have the bed,’ he says. ‘I’ll make myself comfortable on the floor.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course. And look – you have to forgive me, Otto. I’ve not been myself tonight. If I’ve been a little
indiscreet
, well, I’m sorry, only it’s been so long since I’ve had company. Someone I can trust.’

It’s only a small glimpse, but suddenly I see how vulnerable he’s felt being here. And little wonder, really, for this is the most dangerous place of all. Here at the fulcrum. Here where it all begins.

‘That’s okay,’ I say, softening to him for the first time. ‘It must have been hard.’

‘
Hard?
’ Burckel sighs. ‘You just don’t know, Otto. You really don’t.’

I hear his breathing change, and when the pattern of his snoring becomes regular, I get up and, careful not to knock anything over in the dark, make my way to his desk and find the journal.

I’m sure the answer’s here. And so, clutching the heavy volume to my chest, I jump. Back to Four-Oh. Back to Zarah and Urte – and Hecht.

Hecht is surprised to see me. He asks me what I’ve got, and so I show him, and, because this is not a specialty of his, he calls in Lothar, our expert in
ge’not
, and, throwing up an image of the last page on a screen, Lothar reads a passage aloud.

The translation sounds awkward, the words like an ill put-together poem, but when I query this, Lothar just smiles.

‘What you’re hearing is just one level of it, Otto. In
ge’not
the words are paired, like the genetic bases they derive from – “twisted together”, you might say. I would need to work on this a while to get the full meaning of it. It’s heavily concept-based … it works at a higher level than normal everyday language. I liken it to Chinese poetry. It doesn’t have one single, defined meaning.’

‘I see. Then to translate this whole volume …?’

‘Oh, I’ll have it back to you within the hour. Our machines can do the basic stuff. But what are you looking for?’

I tell him and he hurries away, even as Hecht looks up at me again.

‘What’s happening, Otto? Why did you jump back so soon?’

‘I think Albrecht’s cracking up. His conditioning has gone. He … mentioned the Garden.’

‘Loki’s breath!’ Hecht rarely curses, so the words have added force. ‘Wait here, Otto. Make yourself at home. I’ll not be long.’

I watch him go, then turn, looking about me at the shadowed room. I have been here many times, but I’ve never been alone here and, more from curiosity than anything, I walk across and, calling for light, pour myself a coffee, then turn back, studying what’s on Hecht’s shelves. He might be back at any moment, but I’m certain he wouldn’t mind. After all, he trusts me. I am his
Einzelkind.

It takes but a glance to realise that the books here are sorted into four distinct sections. The first of these is familiar to me – classics of Russian and German literature, from that brief flowering of the novel, that Golden Age of literary endeavour. They’re first editions, by the look of them: Pushkin and Lermontov, Gogol, Chekhov, Turgenev and Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pasternak and Gorky, Zamatin, Solzhenitsyn and Pelevin; Fontaine and Schiller, Goethe, Holderlin and Kleist, Nietzsche and Rilke, Mann, Hesse and Grass. There are others too, lesser writers, forgotten by the tide of history, yet not a single great work is absent, and, taking one from the shelf – Hesse’s
Magister Ludi –
I open it and read the handwritten dedication:

‘
To Hecht, with profound thanks and in eternal friendship, Hermann Hesse.’

The ink seems fresh as yesterday, the book just off the press.

I smile, then pluck another from the shelves. They’re all the same. In each one is a personal dedication.

Hecht
has
been busy.

To their right is a second section. There are novels here too, and histories, of individual men and of nations, yet not a single book is familiar. These are from alternate timestreams, documents from cultures that have ceased to be: that blinked out of existence as some
Zeitverandern
– some Time-Change – swept it all to dust.

The books here are mainly in German or Russian – the lives of so-called ‘great men’. And so they might have been, but not in our time. No, in
our
world, these died, or never were, or were deflected from their paths to ‘greatness’ by some chance event.

I take one down – a study of Charles the Bountiful – and, flicking through, begin to read, then laugh with surprise. This is my period, my century –
Frederick’s
century – and yet there’s no sign of him anywhere in this account. In this world, Prussia does not exist, nor any of the minor German states. No, all is Frankish here, from the shores of Portugal to the Urals. The heirs of Charlemagne are rulers in
this
world. Or should I say
the heir
, for in this reality Charlemagne’s son, Charles the Bold, had his brothers Lothar and Louis killed, and so there never was a division of the kingdom into three, no Kingdom of the Germans east of the Rhine.

I slip the book back, then move on. This next section – the third – is perhaps the strangest of all, for here are endless volumes written, it seems, in gibberish, or in code, or what might pass as code if I didn’t recognise one or two of them from my travels. These once again are from alternate time-lines, only these are in strange, hybrid languages that only Lothar and his team could possibly read; worlds so far from the central flow of Time that our agents have but touched upon them briefly and withdrawn, bringing these trophies back.