The Doctor nodded. "Yes. And the build-up of forces here is already causing problems in the Sidhe world."
"Because iron is dangerous to them " began Garcia.
"Yes, yes, exactly," said the Doctor, apparently losing patience. "The damage an engagement of any size out of phase would cause could be incalculable. The Sidhe would, of course, blame humanity."
"But it"s the Amadan Amadan"s fault!" protested Fitz.
The Doctor looked at Fitz. "The Amadan Amadan is paving the way. Chaos is his thing. It"s still the human war that will be blamed for the catastrophe. There could be open aggression between man and Sidhe." is paving the way. Chaos is his thing. It"s still the human war that will be blamed for the catastrophe. There could be open aggression between man and Sidhe."
"But they"re just elves primitives. What could they do against human technology?" Garcia asked.
"Primitive?" the Doctor echoed. "The Sidhe? Oh, they"re "primitive" all right: they like music and arts, they have royal courts, they live and love... Primitive!" He shook his head. "They have a sufficiently advanced knowledge of quantum homeostatics to re-edit Sam"s biodata. They can phase themselves in and out of your perceptions. They can go anywhere on Earth, no matter the walls or security. They can walk through time and interact with your past, change your att.i.tudes and experiences.... And if the worse comes to the worst they"re experts at poison and a.s.sa.s.sination. Those are your "primitives"."
"And they don"t like iron."
"No... Electromagnetism-based lifestyles come at a price."
"Oh, every time," deadpanned Fitz.
Garcia frowned. "So how do they do all that?"
"Magic," the Doctor said simply.
"Don"t insult my intelligence, Doctor. This is the twentieth century; surely you don"t believe in magic."
"Well, let me put it this way: I can call it "magic", with all the nice feelings of wonderment that that word inspires; or I can waste your time with half an hour of techn.o.babble that you could never possibly understand a word of anyway. Which would you prefer?"
Garcia thought about this, then nodded lamely. "OK, magic it is."
"Good, because I don"t think we"ve got half an hour to waste. I know how we can close the breach." That got everyone"s attention. "We need the TARDIS"s relative dimensional stabiliser, and a large metallic ma.s.s to act as a focus. Both the rift and its cause are electromagnetic in nature, so, if we can realign the dimensions on to a... well, in effect a circuit-breaker, the rift should implode into the metallic ma.s.s, and seal up."
"That"ll stop Lewis"s tanks?"
"Yes, I think so. It"s possible to phase them all the way into the Sidhe range of realities on their own, but it would take far more electrical power than they can possibly generate independently. So he must be relying on the Rift to ease the way through."
"Can"t the TARDIS transfer us into the levels the Sidhe originate from?" Fitz asked.
The Doctor shook his head. "It could support their environment inside, but trying to exist inside and out in all the levels would be beyond its design limits. If I tried to stretch the TARDIS that far, she"d almost certainly lose dimensional cohesion."
"And that would be bad?"
"Profoundly," the Doctor confirmed. "Imagine all of your senses each being trapped in a different room, and your body, having been simultaneously hanged, drawn and quartered."
"I"ll try not to, if you don"t mind." Fitz knew he inevitably would now, probably when he least wanted to, like while preparing breakfast. He wondered if the Doctor knew what effect his throwaway lines could have on people.
Sam tapped her foot on the floor. "Wait a minute," she said. "All you need is a large metallic ma.s.s, right?"
"Yes."
"So why not just use this this tank? It"d be better than sending it back to the war, and I don"t think much of it as a souvenir, either." tank? It"d be better than sending it back to the war, and I don"t think much of it as a souvenir, either."
"Fifty tons of steel isn"t enough."
"Then why didn"t you take a bigger tank?"
"Like a King Tiger, you mean?" he asked. Sam nodded. The Doctor shook his head. "Seventy tons of steel isn"t enough either."
This was exasperating, even for Fitz. "Then how much do we need?"
The Doctor frowned, and started counting on his fingers. "About two thousand tons ought to do it," he said casually.
"Two thousand? That"s, what...?" Fitz did some quick mental calculations of his own. "Forty tanks! How are we supposed to get forty tanks together?"
"Well," the Doctor admitted, "there are a couple of hundred of them knocking around at the moment, but I doubt we could gather so many in one place. Besides, we"ve then got to get them into the rift."
"Then where...?"
"From Lewis."
"But you said using tanks isn"t practicable. And he"d never agree to it. So how do you expect to get any equipment out of him?"
The Doctor merely smiled. "That would be telling."
The TARDIS had materialised under the Rift, at a road junction atop the Skyline Drive. Kovacs emerged first, and couldn"t help glancing up. He knew the Rift the Doctor had told them about must be right here, but he saw no sign of it. Other, perhaps, than a few stray shadows in the woods on either side of the road.
Garcia, Wiesniewski, and Bearclaw followed him out, the Doctor bringing up the rear. "Remember. The Sidhe will meet you here at any moment. I need you to prevent either Lewis or Leitz from getting tanks into the Rift. Preferably through persuasion, but I doubt that"ll really be practical."
"You know what they say, Doc," Kovacs replied coolly, "you can get further with a kind word and a two by four, than you can with a kind word."
"Well, try the kind words first. I"d better get going; I have something to collect. Good luck, and stay in one piece."
"You too," Garcia told him firmly.
The Doctor merely smiled, and vanished back inside the TARDIS, which faded into thin air with a strange, rasping, groaning sound. "I wonder if he"s really going to fix things," Kovacs muttered, "or just showing more sense than us."
"He"ll keep his word," Bearclaw told him in no uncertain terms.
"Yeah, if you say so." Totally unconvinced, Kovacs leaned against a tree and rubbed his eyes with one hand. "What the h.e.l.l do you think you"re doing, Jeff?" he asked himself softly. "Since when did you put your life on the line for someone who isn"t one of your boys?" He sighed. "Since they got to thinking that a Hero was more than just a New York sandwich..."
He could really use a drink right now, but if he got drunk now he probably wouldn"t be sober before the Doctor and Garcia decided it was time to move out. And Kovacs had to get them all home safely. Only then could he go to the Pacific theatre and kill j.a.ps.
He opened his eyes again after a moment. "OK. Where are these Sidhe who were supposed to meet us?"
"Right here," a cheerful female voice said, stepping out of the trees. Shadows shifted behind her, and Kovacs got the impression of well-hidden men in there. Not wearing camouflaged gear, just very hard to see.
Easier to recognise was the speaker, though Kovacs still doubted his eyesight. It was Sam. "Wait a minute. How the h.e.l.l did you get back here? We just left you in there." He pointed to where the TARDIS had been, recalling too late that it was no longer there.
"Where?"
"In the TARDIS," Bearclaw said, sounding as baffled as Kovacs felt. "You joined us back at the bridge."
Sam shook her head, looking worried. "No," she said. "I didn"t. Whoever"s in there, it"s not me."
Kovacs knew that everybody was thinking of their favourite curse-word. "Well, there"s nothing we can do about that. For right now, we"ll just have to set up a perimeter around this junction."
A lithe and dangerous-looking figure with white hair emerged from the shadows behind Sam. "My people have already taken up positions on all four roads. We can deal with humans on foot, by clouding their minds and making them walk in circles so that they never arrive here. Those in vehicles, however, we cannot approach. You will have to deal with them."
"Oh, joy," Kovacs opined. "You can at least warn us when they get here?"
"Of course."
"Good." He pointed down one road to the south. "Most likely the Germans will have to come along from that direction. I want you to post a couple of your people there, a couple of miles along." He pointed to the western road. "Lewis"ll be coming that way. Same arrangement: a couple of your people a couple of miles along that road. When your people see tanks on the way, they"re to pull back and let us know. Got that?"
"I understand," the white-haired figure agreed, melting away into the afternoon shadows.
"OK," Sam said. "So what are we doing while Galastel and the other Sidhe are watching our backs?"
Kovacs smiled lopsidedly. "Becoming lumberjacks."
A few miles away, Leitz signalled his column to halt on the road towards the Eifel. His three armoured cars were flanked by a couple of Tigers and half a dozen half-tracks full of troops.
He spread out a map on the top of his armoured car"s turret, as Farber climbed up to join him. "This is where we divide our forces," Leitz told him. "Position the Tigers in this copse, ready to approach the rest of us if needed. I want a defensive perimeter around this area on the Eifel."
Leitz had drawn a circle on the map, enclosing all the points at which the detection equipment in his armoured cars had registered Elven activity. Lines drawn between them all crossed through a central point in the southern half of the Schnee Eifel, at a crossroads on the road the Americans had nicknamed the Skyline Drive. "According to Lewis, the Americans will try to take and hold this area."
"And we have to stop them?" Farber asked.
"No. We let them in, then enclose them, and make sure they never get out."
"It would be easier just to mine the road here, and "
"Easier, but not as useful in the long term. We and here I speak for Wewelsburg also " he lied "want to test whether a battle can be fought inside the Marchenland Marchenland, the Sidhe realm. So, we let the Americans go there, then we follow them in and destroy them. If the experiment is successful, then we know we can engage enemy forces from there in such a way as to leave undamaged those resources in the areas they occupy. Then we can move in and take the spoils."
Sweating despite the cold weather, Sam and the four men had been using their entrenching tools to cut down trees a mile along both the southern and western roads. The fallen trees had been stretched across the road, braced by those that had been left standing. Large tanks like Tigers would be able to roll over them, but any half-tracks or armoured cars would be held up, at least for a short time.
Even a short time was better than none at all.
Kovacs had also strung some grenades about ten feet off the road, a few yards on the far side of the fallen trees. Their pins were pulled, and the safety levers held on by thread tied to one end of the fallen trees. If someone tried to push a tree aside, anyone waiting in an open-topped half-track, or sitting out of the hatch of a tank turret, was in for a nasty surprise. Sam hadn"t been happy about it, but Kovacs had overruled her.
Now Kovacs and Bearclaw withdrew into the undergrowth just within the boundary of the southern roadblock, while Garcia and Wiesniewski were positioned to watch the western approach. None of them had any illusions about how well two men, even with Sidhe help, could hold up an armoured column.
The Doctor had a time machine, so surely he would have the sense to come back to a point as soon after he left as possible? Kovacs hoped so, anyway. Just as much as he hoped the shadowy presences around him were on his side.
Back at the crossroads, Sam paced nervously, watched by a calm Galastel. "Be at peace," he suggested. "What happens, will happen."
"That"s not very rea.s.suring."
"The Evergreen Man will do what is necessary."
Sam grimaced. "I"m the one who should be telling you that." She was the one who should be doing something, anyway. Not sitting waiting for news.
"You probably will," he said enigmatically.
"They we are so outnumbered."
"Numbers mean little in such things," Galastel said. "Heart matters. Soul matters. Those things have infinite capacity. Numbers are finite, and therefore nothing."
He solidified, and she knew he had discovered something.
"They are here," he announced. "Leitz is approaching the south road."
Kovacs had received the same news, and was now alert. He could hear tank engines and tracks in the distance, but the only sign of life so far was a small patrol of maybe half a dozen camouflaged SS troops, who were examining the roadblock.
Kovacs cursed again. He didn"t want them to discover the grenade trap, but nor did he want them to trigger it. Not before there was a better target.
There was only one thing to do. Pressing himself against a tree-trunk, Kovacs opened fire with his Tommy gun. One of the SS troops fell, but the rest ducked under cover, and started laying fire down the road.
"What"s happening?" Leitz demanded as his column halted. If the elves had returned, some ought to be taken alive.
A Waffen-SS corporal on foot saluted. "The Americans. They"ve set up a roadblock about a mile from the crossroads. We need armour support."
"How many Americans?"
"I don"t know, but they"re on both sides of the road, and have us pinned down."
Leitz considered this. "Send the two Tigers to flank them and run northeast through the woods to the crossroads. We"ll charge them directly."
Lewis sat in the turret of a modified Sherman, studying the roadblock of fallen trees. Surely the Germans would have gone for something more sophisticated, like concrete tank traps, or mines, or ant.i.tank guns?
No, this must be the Doctor"s work.
He looked around carefully, and spotted the grenades strung above. He was surprised, horrified, but also harboured a faint sense of admiration. Who"d have thought the Doctor had such a devious trap in him?
"b.u.t.ton up," he ordered, sinking into the turret and closing the hatch.