The philosophers war, p.32
The Philosopher's War, page 32
“This was all a diversion,” Synge said. “A twenty-five-mile-wide diversion. Tie up the Corps so that the best rauchbauers could attack Paris unopposed. The Germans have hardly any transporters, but they put them to good use. They succeeded beyond anything they could have hoped for.”
“They’re coming for us though, right? Blandings and Senator Cadwallader-Fulton and everybody in Belgium—they’ll get us out.”
“Paris has to be their priority. If they lose the city, the Germans can force peace on their terms.”
“Who’s left to come for us, then?”
I fired off messages to Blandings, Andrada, Macmurdo, Nampeyo. No one answered.
I needed half an hour for that to sink in. Eventually, we heard the drone of aeroplanes overhead and machine-gun fire.
I glanced at my wrist board.
I can’t see any mile markers, Miss Franklin had written, and we are being shot at. Can you mark your position? I could lower you a rope? Or a ladder if I had one.
Which was the most sensible thing I’d ever heard out of Franklin.
“I don’t have anything to mark with,” Synge said. “And we’d have to cut a hole in the shelter to get a rope in.”
N, I wrote. No way to mark.
Oh drat. The aeroplanes are back. Have to go.
The sky went quiet. We waited an hour. One of the other smokecarvers trapped in a shelter under the cloud wrote over the gossip glyph, trying to find out how many of us were similarly entombed. I answered, as did 148 others.
Then something else came across. My hand spasmed.
This is Ms. Hardin’s assistant. Danielle is currently occupied. May I relay a message?
I half cried, half laughed.
Synge reached over and squeezed my shoulder.
Situatn bad, I wrote. Can she come to board?
She is in a closed meeting. I will forward your request at the first opportunity.
Yet another hour. No word from Danielle. There was no sound but a pair of thrushes singing to each other without ceasing. My flare faded to nothing. The darkness beneath German smoke was total.
“Were you afraid of the dark?” Synge asked me. “When you were a child?”
“No,” I said. “I wasn’t afraid of anything as a kid. Not till I got older.”
The thrushes sang on, a new verse every minute, rising and falling.
“We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” I said.
“Unless we get a lot of help,” said Synge.
PART 3
THE VOLUNTEERS
Never did so many assemble so quickly with so little hope of reward.
Ms. Danielle Hardin, dedication of the American Philosophers War Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri, October 31, 1920
27
NO WEEKEND EDITION: AT THE WAR ’TIL MONDAY!
Detroit Defender, October 31, 1918
11:00 GREENWICH MEAN TIME
OCTOBER 31, 1918
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Freddy Unger had taken to sleeping on a cot in his laboratory, stealing an occasional hour of rest during the frantic string of experiments and rewriting of equations that had filled the past week. When the word came at last—today, now—he had only to roll out of bed and begin preparing the powder.
As he lit the burners on the melting furnace and took out his scale, weighing out five pounds of pure platinum ingots, Freddy couldn’t help but sing to himself, the same tune that had been running through his brain without ceasing for days:
“. . . the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, the drums rum-tumming everywhere . . .”
What a relief to step away from the books and chalkboards! Didn’t every theorist dream of a day like this? How exciting that his work might prove useful; how grand that he was doing his part; how worrisome that the stakes were so high. And then, right below the surface, a different feeling bubbled, ugly and gleeful. See if the generals underestimated sigilry after this! See if the practical philosophers still mocked the tweed-wearing, ink-stained theorists after they changed the world.
Not, Freddy reflected, that one ought to consider this a sure thing.
Indeed, the final round of tests had been highly concerning. It would have been prudent to run one more experiment with the latest improved sigil, but they’d nearly exhausted their supply of iridium-191. They had enough left either to make their attempt on Berlin or to do the experiment. That was hardly a choice.
Freddy poured the platinum ingots into a crucible then added the duller silver lumps of iridium. He put on a welding mask and insulated gloves, opened the door to the furnace, and used tongs to set the crucible inside.
“We’ll be over, we’re coming over . . .”
Really, it was impossible to interpret the news coming out of France. It sounded dire: the Corps crippled after their defeat outside Reims; Paris under attack; tens of thousands of women mobilizing for the relief effort. Or possibly the Germans had been stopped cold and were in the process of signing a peace treaty. It all depended which flavor of rumor you preferred.
He had his work, though. Once the metals had melted, he would cool the resulting alloy, mill it into powder, and take a sack to Belgium on the next transatlantic service. A weapon to change the world, but small enough to fit in a woman’s handbag. Equal parts theoretical breakthrough and brute-force philosophy. A sigil so powerful that Germany would have no choice but to surrender by this time tomorrow morning. Everything was ready: Gen. Blandings was in Ostend with her team, the reconnaissance flights over Berlin had been promising, Dean Murchison had been trundled off to Europe and had come out of his transporter-related psychosis. (Poor man—break a cartogramancer’s connection to the earth too violently and he lost his mind for a few days. Or lost it more than usual, as the case might be.)
The door to his lab banged open as Professor Brock entered. She had a look of worry instead of her usual expression of phlegmatic competence.
“It’s going according to protocol?” she asked.
“Indeed!” Freddy said. “It’s melting as we speak. It’ll be ready by noon and I’m already packed to go. It’s like that line in the song that everyone’s singing—we’re—”
“Karl Friedrich,” Professor Brock broke in, “is there any chance that your roommate might be missing? Any possibility?”
“Who, Robert?” Freddy laughed. “Oh, that’s preposterous! He’s in Belgium with everyone else.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Of course he is! He knows how essential he is to the operation. He wouldn’t jeopardize it.”
Brock wiped her forehead. “Because I heard from Jake, who heard it from Edith Rubinski, who heard it from one of Robert’s wingmates, who heard it from a friend that he went missing on the line outside Reims.”
“Now this is the trouble with rumors!” Freddy said with a click of the tongue. “That’s at least two too many ‘heard it froms’ to be credible.”
“I hope you’re right,” Professor Brock said. “Come find me when you’re done.”
She wandered back out to her own lab next door.
The very epitome of unnecessary worry! Freddy turned up the burners on the furnace as high as they would go, all the while contemplating which bow tie he would wear on the day that victory was declared. The red, white, and blue star-spangled one seemed unforgivably gauche; the red-and-black one with the Radcliffe seal, too self-promotional. Though the new mint-green one with pink and white stripes might do . . .
Oh, but this was going to be exciting!
After twenty minutes, he pulled open the door of the furnace to peek at the crucible. The platinum had melted into a silvery pool, with the iridium still standing in a stubborn lump in the middle. Everything was proceeding according to plan.
“And we won’t come back ’til it’s over over there!”
15:00 GMT
Ostend, Belgium
• • •
Three thousand civilian hoverers launched at the same instant, each carrying a pair of smokecarvers—the largest assembly of American military philosophers since the Civil War. Like a flock of starlings, they wheeled toward Paris, passing silently overhead, closely spaced enough to blot out the sun. Volunteers, every one.
Tommie Blandings only wished there were twice as many. Addams and her team of smokecarvers were scattered across Paris trying to counter rauchbauer attacks, but badly outnumbered. Their command post in the fourth arrondissement was surrounded; Addams was fighting on bravely but running low on smoke.
Given enough time, the volunteers would tip the balance. The National Transporter Chain back in the States had suspended regular service and was running transatlantic jumps every half hour to bring over more philosophers and supplies. In New York City, sigilrists were lined up for eight blocks around the arena, trying to push their way onto the next jump up to Maine; Denver had a ten-hour wait for east-bound service; Sacramento was turning away women and organizing a second wave of volunteers to come over in two days’ time. They could put a hundred thousand women in the field if they chose—though if they saved Paris only to see plague and counter-plague kill millions, that hardly seemed a victory.
“Quis salvet ipsas salvatores, Tommie?” asked old Gen. Rhodes, whose gravelly voice sounded like it had been quarried in an age when Latin was still spoken. She was buckling the chinstrap on her helmet. “Who will rescue the rescuers?”
“I will,” said Blandings, still watching the mass of women flying west. Like the heavenly host going to wreak divine vengeance—or the rebel angels streaming out of hell.
“You ought to have someone carry you,” Blandings suggested.
Gen. Rhodes spat on the ground. “I’m not so frail I can’t keep up with my own army. It would please me if you had good news by the time I get to Paris. I have to know: Your plan for Berlin has gone tits up or you’re going through with it?”
“I don’t have a flier,” Blandings said. “We lost Canderelli on the line. The postal hoverer from Iowa who we identified as our backup is refusing—his wife’s fighting in Paris and they have four children. He doesn’t want to risk them both not coming home.”
“You had others.”
“The Russian boy at Radcliffe hasn’t developed as fast as we’d hoped. There’s no chance he can cover the distance. The Japanese fellow does have the range, but he’s stuck in Tokyo—the trans-Pacific chain is shut down. We’re looking for alternatives.”
“Lord,” Gen. Rhodes said. “This is the trouble with relying on men! If you can’t find one, then we need the senator to hammer out a cease-fire before one side starts flinging plague at the other. There’s no way I can mount a credible offensive with an army of schoolgirls, retirees, and Sunday-morning sigilrists. We’ll be in a purely defensive posture. You either take Berlin or write me a pretty speech to deliver when they hang me. You’ve always been a good talker—you talked me into this.”
“You’ll have Berlin,” Blandings answered.
Rhodes sniffed. “Sure I will.”
She handed Blandings a sealed envelope with 41 penciled on it. “No bagpipes at my funeral and do not let them play ‘The Keel Row’ over me. I hate that song.”
“Don’t let it come to that, ma’am,” Blandings said.
“Then win.”
20:00 GMT
Mile 25
Near Reims, France
• • •
Edith Rubinski shielded her eyes. The civilian smokecarvers had put up sheets of incandescent smoke to work by, though the harsh blue light didn’t penetrate even an inch into the German cloud. The volunteers were driving tunnels into it, isolating and neutralizing the German smoke a few cubic yards at a time, then hauling it out in baskets and dispersing it into the night air in swirls of black ash.
The German cloud just sat there, inert and gray, like a wall or a gravestone: Here died the Corps’ finest.
An hour before, her women had found the remains of the American command post and had begun dragging bodies out. The German poison was a paralytic, the smokecarvers said. A breath or two and the diaphragm and muscles of the chest were paralyzed along with the rest—you suffocated, still awake. The corpses had expressions of terror frozen on their faces, their eyes bulging, lips curled. All women. When she’d seen the first one, Edith had broken down in her worst crying jag of the war, bad enough to frighten a few of the smokecarvers, who had otherwise gone about their work with grim, methodical competence. They’d recovered Gen. Fallmarch’s body and Gen. Witt’s.
The rescue teams farther south along the line had had better success, tunneling out a hundred survivors from improvised shelters. But all of those had been in communication with the rescuers by message board to help direct the efforts. They hadn’t found anyone alive by accident.
Teeny Millen landed beside her.
“Nothing?” Edith said.
Millen shook her head.
“Where are we sure someone saw him last?” Edith asked.
“We dug the whole southern flank out,” Millen answered. “The women there saw Canderelli fly over an hour before the German cloud hit. They’re sure it was him. They waved. Multiple survivors saw him at the northern flank fifteen minutes later. Then he messaged me, Andrada, Devereaux, and Vos in the space of a few minutes. Said he was trapped, but no location. Blandings had just called for the mutiny—I didn’t see his note till an hour later. Then messages to Danielle and his mother about fifteen minutes later. His mother forwarded hers to Blandings. The last ones sounded dire, like his shelter was failing.”
Edith set her jaw. “Tell me again: The last place someone saw him for sure?”
“Right here on the flank,” Millen said.
“Last message from him was . . . ?”
“Ten hours ago.”
Edith had only a hundred smokecarvers with which to conduct search and rescue for the entire line—the situation in Paris was becoming more tenuous by the hour. They couldn’t spare any more. She called one of her team leaders over.
“Our group at mile six is struggling to get their tunnel through,” Edith said. “They have at least four known survivors there. Take your women to assist. Rescuing the living takes precedence over recovering the dead. If any of your women find a male corpse in a Corps skysuit at any location, I’m to be notified immediately.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the smokecarver said and began withdrawing her philosophers.
Millen looked like she was on the verge of bursting into tears. Instead, she yanked off her helmet and hurled it at the German cloud.
“That shithead!” she screamed. “He only had one job! He told me he was going to Belgium. Fuck!”
01:30 GMT
NOVEMBER 1, 1918
Ostend, Belgium
• • •
Danielle wiped the back of her neck with her handkerchief. The classroom that they’d commandeered in Ostend’s secondary school was unbearably warm. The walls were hung with charts and maps next to crudely drawn wax crayon pictures of the Virgin Mary that a grade-school class must have made before the city was evacuated.
Don’t think about him. Hopeless. They would try for his body in a day or two; for now, they were racing to save the last handful of survivors. His body. Don’t think about him.
The senior aide, standing at the chalkboard, cleared her throat and cut her eyes toward Danielle.
Sen. Cadwallader-Fulton had fallen asleep in her chair again.
“Ma’am?” Danielle said to the elderly woman next to her.
The senator woke with a snort. “Excuse me,” she said. She scrubbed at her eyes. “Composition of the next regiment—” she announced. She stifled a yawn. “This is regiment . . . eighteen.”
“Twenty-one,” Danielle corrected gently. “We put the chart up to help with this.”
Danielle pointed at the wall.
“I can’t see it without my glasses,” the senator said.
“You’re wearing them, ma’am.”
The aides shared a look. To Danielle it said, you’re the favorite—you suggest it.
“Would you like to lie down?” Danielle asked. “We’ll finish up. You can go out first thing in the morning, give them a speech as they come off the transporter field.”
“Lovely idea,” the senator replied. “It’s a wonderful problem, to have so many of them. Wake me if there’s trouble. In the meanwhile, Danielle will speak for me.”
One of the young girls who’d snuck over with them on the first transport helped the senator find her cane and shuffle out of the room.
The other women were looking at Danielle. She couldn’t afford to show weakness in front of them. She knew she was speaking more softly than usual, less forcefully, less often. Perhaps they credited her behavior to the same worries they all had: fatigue, Josephine’s health, reports of the failing defenses in Paris. But enough. Don’t think about him. She couldn’t afford to have feelings right now.
“Miss Hardin, if you would?” said the senior aide.
“Regiment Twenty-One will go to Gen. Rhodes on the western defensive perimeter in Paris,” Danielle said. “We’ll make it a standard thousand-woman regiment. Six companies of a hundred smokecarvers each, three companies of hoverers to move them, and one command company—ten messagists, ten short-haul transporters, eighty Logistics fliers. They’ll be due in at 03:00.”
The women nodded their agreement.
“We have adequate personnel waiting in Maine to fill that,” agreed the woman with the tally of available philosophers.
Then came a lull of a few seconds, which was deadly.
When Robert’s shelter failed, it would only have been forty-five seconds before he blacked out from lack of oxygen. A few minutes more before he died. Not painful, everyone kept whispering. Danielle didn’t believe it. Was drowning painful? Being smothered? Don’t contemplate it.
“Regiment Twenty-Two,” said the woman at the board.
“That’s a relief division going to Belle Addams in the forward staging area in Paris,” Danielle said, her voice wavering as she balled up her handkerchief in her hand under the table and squeezed. “She liked the last one, so let’s do a repeat of that. Nine maneuver companies each with fifty smokecarvers, forty fliers, five short-haul transporters, five messagists. One command company as above. Due in at 03:30.”
