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Post By The Hooded Hood has no idea why he decided to write this at two this morning Wed Dec 28, 2005 at 07:47:47 am EST |
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Great Moments in Parodyverse History #6: No Man’s Land | |
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Great Moments in Parodyverse History #6: No Man’s Land It was ridiculous that the birds were still singing. Sir Mumphrey Wilton pulled himself off his canvas truckle bed and stamped his feet to get some warmth into them. It was unseasonably cold for July, and the sun hadn’t yet risen. He’d slept fitfully, disturbed by the pounding of the big guns. They’d been firing on the German positions for a whole week. More than a million and a half shells had been shot into the leagues of trenches that blocked the way a mere mile to the east. Mumphrey checked his pocketwatch by habit. He already knew it was 4.54am on the 1st of July 1916. He knew that today he was probably going to die. He decided that he wasn’t going to die before he’d had a cup of tea. He almost called out for Preston, his batman, but decided that just because he was awake was no reason to disturb the boy’s sleep. A man could heat up his own kettle. There wasn’t much firewood left, but it wasn’t as if they were likely to need it much longer. If the plan worked and the mines the sappers had laid collapsed the German trenches then the front lines would sweep westwards towards Bapaume and the occupied French territories. If the plan failed then there’d be enough provisions left for the few survivors. Mumphrey lifted his trunk out from under his bed and found the little caddy with the last few grains of Earl Grey in it. He coaxed the wood stove to burn a little brighter with the assistance of the latest manuals form general headquarters. Many of the common soldiers used the volumes in the latrines, since the pages were quite soft. That seemed disrespectful to Major Wilton, so he burned them instead. “You shouldn’t be here,” someone said to him from the corner of the room. Mumphrey didn’t jump. He’d been expecting the visitor. “Where should I be then, old chap?” he challenged. “Pretty much anywhere else,” the young man perched on Mumphrey’s trunk advised. “But not here. Very much not here.” Mumphrey shrugged. “Spot of tea?” he offered. “Can’t offer you milk or lemon, but I think there’s some Demerara knocking about in one of these tins up here…” “I’ll pass, thanks,” the visitor replied. “I just called to tell you that you have to go. Now.” “Desertion?” Mumphrey replied. “Don’t think so. Not done. Chaps need me.” “You shouldn’t be here. You should never have got involved in this stupid war.” “How could I not be involved?” the eccentric Englishman shrugged. “My country called.” “Your country ceased to be your first loyalty,” the young man reminded him, “when you elected to take up the office of Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity.” He gestured to the distinctive gold pocketwatch hanging from Mumphrey’s officer’s tunic. “And there are rules…” “Know the rules, old bean,” Mumphrey assured him. “I’m not allowed to use the timepiece to change history, or to affect the course of world events, except where there’s a cosmic or temporal force actin’ on ‘em. There’s even a sense comes with the office of where that line is, did you know?” “”I know. I created the sense,” replied the Shaper of Worlds. “The problem is, here you are and you have the Chronometer with you.” “Here I am,” agreed Mumphrey. “You say I should be somewhere else? I say there’s nowhere else I should be but here.” He pointed out into the muddy trench outside his billet. “There are chaps out there under my command. Chaps who’ve served in this terrible conflict for months, for years. Some of ‘em have seen everyone else they joined up with wiped out by the bombs or the gas or the bullets or disease. Some of ‘em have screwed the last of their courage up to stand firm here, and they’re holding by a thread. D’you really think if I didn’t stand beside them now at the end I’d be any fit sort of holder for this cosmic office of yours, what?” “We really don’t make that kind of moral judgement,” the Shaper said. “Then maybe you should. Anyhow, I’m expecting orders to advance any minute now. We’ll crawl out past the wire, over no-man’s land, try and mark out a safe route past the minefield. Then we’ll hide in the darkness until the mines are collapsed and try and overrun the trench in the confusion.” “How do you know that’s today?” challenged the Shaper of Worlds. “It could be tomorrow, or the day after.” “Today,” Mumphrey answered. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be poppin’ in now, Carrington. You’d be here tomorrow, or the day after.” “Very astute,” the young man nodded wryly. “Now use those sharp wits to see my problem. I have a Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity who’s about to lead his exhausted men into extreme danger. Now suppose the man next to you fumbles and trips and falls onto a land mine? He explodes, showering you in his guts and gore, and half a dozen other men fall down screaming, scattered with shrapnel, missing arms and legs, crying out for help, crying out for their mothers?” Sir Mumphrey looked pale in the dim lamplight. “So?” “So you carry a primal artefact that can rewind local time. You could push a stud and reverse events half a minute, then pull your soldier onto a different path so he never triggers the mine.” “Absolutely. Except that we’re at a critical juncture, aren’t we? One of those points where the timeline can’t be meddled with even for a single life.” “We are,” agreed Carrington. “What happens here today determines the course of this war, and that determines the shape of the twentieth century and beyond.” “And what does happen here today?” asked the eccentric Englishman fiercely. “You have the script, don’t you? What’s the story today, Shaper of Worlds?” “You know it doesn’t work like that,” answered the Shaper. “I don’t twist these events into these paths. Even the Chronicler of Stories only acts to make sure the tangles get straightened out. There’s free will.” “What’s the story?” demanded Mumphrey. Carrington shuddered. “It doesn’t end today,” he answered. “By the time this battle is over, months on, there’s more than a million casualties. More men are lost in this one day than in any battle before in the history of this world. Some of it’s bad luck and some of it’s bad communication and some of it’s plain stupidity. And in village churches all across your country there’ll be solemn marble tablets mounted on the walls listing the dead who gave their lives for their country. Whole families will be named. A whole generation of young men gone.” “And you don’t think that warrants somebody interferin’?” asked the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity. “We can’t take mankind’s choices away from them,” Carrington declared. “Even the stupid choices.” “Well I am of mankind,” Mumphrey declared. “And my choice is to stand with my comrades in arms and fight for my country and keep as many of my troops alive as possible. I won’t be usin’ the pocketwatch for them or for me.” “The Chronometer protects you automatically,” the Shaper pointed out. “If you’re injured, even killed, it automatically halts time, rewinds events although leaving you alone knowledge of them, then stops the narrative around you so you can take measures to prevent the same thing happening again.” Mumphrey considered this. “You’re sayin’ it’s an unfair advantage.” “I’m saying that you’re not just another man, and you can’t conduct your affairs as if you were one.” “I’m askin’ chaps to follow me into danger and death. Not fair to expect them to take risks when I’ve got a get-out, what?” Carrington looked to the ceiling. “That’s not what I was getting at. I’m trying to show you that you can’t be part of things like this now. There’s an inherent conflict of interest.” “Been in wars before,” Mumphrey pointed out. “The Zulu campaign, Khartoum, second war against the Boers. And since this row started up I’ve served at Ardennes, Charleroi, Mons, Antwerp, Crackow, Galipoli, Verdun…” “And each time you’ve seen more death, seen more of your comrades die around you,” argued the Shaper. “How long until that snaps even your iron resolve? How long before you can’t resist making just one minor temporal flux, to slow a bullet or to speed up an ambulance? Or to shift barbed wire that’s pinning down your men where they’re being shot to pieces in no-man’s land?” “Yes, I take the point,” Mumphrey acknowledged. “So you’ve come to receive my resignation, old bean.” The Shaper looked shocked. “No. That’s not why I came at all. We don’t want you to step down. But we don’t want you dead, either. We don’t want you here.” “We’ve already covered that bit of the chat, Carrington,” Mumphrey pointed out. “So then, the problem is that I might be tempted to use the Chronometer – which also gives me something of a survival edge over the rank and file – when the goin’ gets rough out there on the battlefield. And the going will get pretty rough today.” “Rougher than you’ve ever seen it, Mumphrey. I can’t say more except that the Destroyer of Tales is going to be very busy today.” “Hmph. Well then, there’s only one thing to do,” decided the eccentric Englishman. He pulled the temporal pocketwatch out, pressed studs and turned the winder, them thumbed the activation knob. The Chronometer vanished. “Into the future,” Mumphrey explained to the Shaper of Worlds. “One day. It’ll reappear in my hands at 5.16am tomorrow assuming I’m alive. If not, then… well, you know the protocol for all that, don’t you.” “I do,” agreed Carrington. “But Mumphrey, that doesn’t address the point that there’s a very strong chance that you will die today if you lead that attack. The Germans have trained their sharpshooters to target officers’ uniforms.” “Dashed unpleasant Bosche trick, and typical,” snorted Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Yet another reason why they need potting into the corner pocket for the good of the human race.” The Shaper of Worlds rubbed his forehead. “So you’re still going into battle,” he summarised, “but now without the protection of the Chronometer? Oh, this visit has turned out so well.” “But it’s nicely illustrated the limits of the Shaper’s powers, don’t you think?” the eccentric Englishman smiled. “Anyhow, if by any chance I don’t happen to make it back, I’d like you to know that…” There was a scuffling of feet outside and a discreet knock on the battered metal door. “That’ll be the orders,” Mumphrey told Carrington; but the Shaper of Worlds wasn’t there. “Hmph,” said Mumphrey again. The messenger came in, with the command to advice. The Battle of the Somme had begun, and for eighteen weeks the bloodiest exchange ever yet seen in human warfare would forever change the destiny of the world. “Tell the men to stand ready,” Mumphrey ordered. “We’re going over the top in five minutes.” He took a last look round the room and pushed his trunk back under his camp bed. And then he snorted with amusement. He was about to lead his men out to massacre and probable death, but the Shaper of Worlds had filled his tea caddy for him; a promise for the future. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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