• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Files and papers lay scattered across the desk and floor; pens, paperclips, and blotters lay in piles where they had been upended.

The overall effect of discarded machinery and trashed paperwork conjured in the Doctor visions of some futuristic, postapocalyptic bureaucracy gone haywire.

George Limb moved a pile of papers with his foot.

'I think our German friends must have been looking for answers among Peddler's notes. I don't think this office has been used since he left. Except as a junkroom.'

'Cybermen don't need offices.'

'From what I understand, Dr Peddler succumbed to certain... ethical qualms about the Cyber process, and resigned rather swiftly.'

'You have never seen the way they make Cybermen, Mr Limb. It's horrible. In London Dr Peddler was working on a method of harnessing Cybertechnology without the terrible human cost. Worthy but doomed. Cybertechnology can never provide any answers for the human race, Limb. Surely a man of your undoubted genius must see that.

'You flatter me, Doctor, but, as you surely realise, genius ultimately is not a function of the intellect but of the imagination. And my imagination is on fire at the moment.'

'The whole world is on fire at the moment.'

'In London you called me Frankenstein, Doctor. Mary Shelley called Dr Frankenstein the Modern Prometheus.

Prometheus, bringer of fire. Yet I alone am the bringer of fire!

It is I who am poised to give birth to the modern world. And, like Frankenstein, I am peopling that world with monsters!'

The Doctor tutted. 'I expected more of you,' he said. 'Just another mad scientist.'

Limb reached down among the pile of papers and extracted a small wooden box. He slid back the lid to reveal a set of chessmen.

'Apparently Dr Peddler was a player.' he said. He pulled a board from a drawer in the desk and laid it out, almost lovingly. 'I should deem it an honour if you would grant me a game, Doctor.'

Colonel Schott poured himself a stiff brandy. Not for the first time he wished he had retired before the war started.

Before Hitler. Hartmann and all his sort gave Schott a headache. Brave, certainly, but dedicated to the point of fanaticism. In Schott's day military service had been a noble career; the officer class had been a class above. An elite. Not any more.

Schott had served with distinction in the Great War. He had been at Tannenberg with General Hindenberg. He had been wounded on the Somme. The Iron Cross, First Class, now sat upon his chest. He was too old for this National Socialist nonsense. Everything was turned on its head. That a captain a mere captain should be able to get away with such insolence. But Hartmann was SS, while Schott was Wehrmacht. Regular army. Rank didn't come into it; everybody here Schott included was frightened of the SS.

This had seemed like an easy ride at first.

Secondincommand on some sleepy little island off the coast of France. Then they had discovered this place. Those silver giants. The news had shot up through the chain of command, apparently to Reichsführer Himmler himself. Himmler was sending someone. He loved this sort of thing. In the meantime he, Schott, was in charge, with instructions to liaise with the highestranking SS officer on the scene: Captain Hartmann.

Hartmann had spent the previous twenty minutes haranguing Schott about discipline and security. The entire complex was awash with enemy aliens, he had ranted. When Himmler's representative arrived he would put Schott on a charge.

To address a senior officer in such a way... It would have been unheard of in Schott's day. He downed the brandy.

There was nothing he could do, and he knew it.

The situation was getting more complicated by the day.

Schott recognised what was happening it happened all the time nowadays. There was the usual power struggle going on in Berlin over who was going to control this new discovery.

Everybody jockeying for position under the Führer. Goering vying with Himmler vying with Hess vying with God knew who. Which meant that,