‘I might need her later. Let her sleep now.’
George nodded and found a blanket for her.
Caroline was sitting on a packing case, tinkering with wireless equipment. ‘You should get some rest, too,’ he said to her.
‘I slept earlier.’
Aubrey had no idea whether she had or not, but immediately understood that arguing the point would be futile. ‘Nice capacitor.’
She held up the thumb-sized component she’d been polishing. ‘It’s a valve, Aubrey, but thank you for trying.’
He smiled, vaguely, and addressed his workings. He straightened some of the loose sheets of paper he’d torn from the ledger, and then reordered them. He screwed one up and discarded it.
Then he took a deep breath. Re-engaging with a spell of this difficulty was like standing on a high diving tower, readying for the plunge.
Only if the water was aflame with burning oil, he thought, and full of crocodiles. Flameproof crocodiles, with long snorkels.
He realised his mind was spinning off in peculiar directions and he admonished himself. He needed to use every possible brain function in the pursuit of an answer to his problem. Spinning was not to be tolerated.
The obstacle that had brought him to such an abrupt halt needed a very special solution and he now thought he had one. The trouble was, it required his casting the spell from the middle of no-man’s-land.
Since the reunification of his body and soul he had been acutely conscious of his whereabouts in a more than physical sense. Wherever he was, he was present in a very real and concrete way. Knowing this, he thought he could use his own location as a homing beacon. He could act as a human set of coordinates.
Drawbacks aplenty presented themselves, but as he looked for other ways around the impasse, he kept coming back to this one. It had the advantage of simplicity – and the disadvantage of acute personal danger. While he didn’t shy away from acute personal danger, he didn’t go out of his way to seek it, either. He was willing to entertain alternatives. In fact, he was willing to offer champagne, dancing and a night on the town to any useful alternative, but none presented itself, even with such entertainment on offer.
He also had an inkling that some people around about might want to have a say about whether it was a good idea or not.
The trench raiders managed it in their midnight excursions, he told himself. The barbed wire teams managed it when they crept out to stretch out more of the cursed stuff. No-man’s-land wasn’t an impossible place to be. It was simply extremely dangerous.
‘I have it, Colonel,’ he announced.
Stanley looked up from where he was working through a pile of papers. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose before replacing them. ‘Fitzwilliam, I only understand half of what you’ve done here – less than half – but from what I’ve seen, I think you do too.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘And if it’s true, I’m wondering if you’ve really thought this thing through.’
‘Sir?’
‘If you can bring the Chancellor and his friends to the middle of no-man’s-land to throw a scare into them, why not simply bring them here and we’ll shoot the lot of them?’
It was the colonel’s tone that shook Aubrey most. It said ‘I’m a reasonable man’ and ‘All things considered’, decidedly rational things like that. It was the tone used in lecture theatres and board rooms all over Albion.
In military terms, it was a sensible suggestion. Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley wasn’t a monster. He was a hard-working man, doing the best he could. He probably had a wife and family and a dog waiting for him at home in Albion.
Yet he was calmly suggesting a massacre.
In some ways, it made sense. Lop off the head and Holmland would be in trouble. It might run around for a while, squawking, but eventually it would realise the state of affairs and it would fall over.
Shoot a dozen to save thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Millions.
As arithmetic, it made perfect sense, but Aubrey had never thought that humanity could be reduced to a matter of counting. What sort of a world would it be if that sort of thing was considered a good plan? What sort of country would it be that endorsed such action?
He was sure it wasn’t the sort of world that he was trying to save – or to make. He was also sure that Caroline would agree, and George and Sophie.
So what if a superior officer ordered him to do it?
‘Sir, that would be extremely efficient,’ he said, carefully not agreeing with the suggestion. ‘We need to put some arrangements into place, however. What’s the time?’
Caroline had been following the exchange between Aubrey and Stanley carefully. ‘It’s just after eleven.’
‘I need some rest before I cast a spell like this. What if we aim for 0100 hours?’
‘The wee small hours,’ Stanley said, with a wisp of a smile.
‘And we follow it with an artillery barrage at 0200 hours, directly opposite our position here.’
‘Eh?’
‘A show of strength. Can you arrange it?’
Colonel Stanley frowned. ‘I’ll have to find a communications post.’
‘If we arrange it now, sir, I think it would be best.’
As soon as Colonel Stanley left, Caroline put aside her wireless equipment and buttonholed Aubrey. ‘And what exactly are you planning?’
Don’t lie. Tell the truth, he thought. Part of it, at least. ‘I can’t do this if it means shooting people in cold blood like that.’
‘Good. Although it’s always puzzled me why the temperature of the blood is important. Hot or cold, I don’t like it.’
‘You shot Dr Tremaine.’
‘A special case, but if you make me think too long about it I’ll be very annoyed because I’ll start to feel inconsistent.’
‘Can’t have that.’
‘No.’
A Gallian-accented voice broke in. ‘So you’re being sneaky again?’
Aubrey turned to see George and Sophie looking at him. Between them were notebooks they’d been sharing, working on another writing project. Sophie was sleepy-eyed but alert.
‘I prefer “clandestine”,’ he said.
‘We approve,’ George said, ‘however you want to describe yourself. So if you’re not going to slaughter the Chancellor and his friends, how’s all this going to play out?’
Aubrey outlined the plan, simply leaving out the necessity for him to be the locus of the spell. ‘And the artillery bombardment is icing on the cake,’ he concluded. ‘The Chancellor and his friends will see what it’s truly like out here. Being the people they are, they’re bound to try to take command once they’re safely in their trenches. I’m wagering that this will create all sorts of chaos.’
‘Should win some time for reinforcements to get here,’ George said.
‘Neat and precise,’ Caroline said. ‘And it has the virtue of not turning us into murderers. And I fully understand the irony of saying such a thing in the middle of a battle zone, but there you have it.’
‘“War is confusion” according to the Scholar Tan,’ Aubrey murmured. ‘I used to think that he meant in tactics and battle plans, but I’m starting to understand just how wise he was.’
‘To more practical things,’ Caroline said, ‘what about resting, as you suggested?’
‘I’d love to, but the best thing to do is to get this under way before the colonel comes back. I’d like to spare him any repercussions.’
‘You’re assuming there will be repercussions,’ George said.
‘Oh, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of repercussions to go around,’ Aubrey said.
‘Don’t worry, Aubrey,’ Caroline said. ‘We’ll take care of that.’
‘But before I start, I’ll need a large clear area in here. I have to work on the floor. And I need some powdered chalk for a restraining diagram.’
