1
Nobody knelt. Nobody prayed, nobody put a hand to a holster, nobody said anything about a god of war.
Polished wood, beeswax, cold metal. A parquet floor. On the wall two charts, the North Sea and the Atlantic, hung neatly at the same height. Before the light had finished withdrawing, a man with staff braid said to the man beside him:
"Record the phenomenon. Time, duration, luminosity, odour, sound. All of it."
Another answered.
"If it is a weapon, analysis."
From those two remarks he understood how this country worked. These men were startled. But they would not admit to being startled. A miracle has no form in this organisation's paperwork, and when something occurs for which there is no form, this organisation does one thing: it draws up a new form. Thirty minutes later his descent had been assigned a file number.
His right pocket rang. When he took out the phone, the air in the room changed for the first time. Ten general officers leaned forward.
"What is that?"
"A telephone."
"A telephone. There is no line."
"It needs no line."
"How far does it reach?"
He did not answer. That was the most dangerous ground of all.
2
Elite Battleship Squadron / Grand Carrier Force Available War Economy / Research Head Start / Accelerated Research Available Opening Diplomatic Mission Available Minor Power Handicap (Stage 1) Unlocked Campaign Chronicle / Victory Decorations / Ending Gallery / Admiral's Record Room / Flagship Title Unlocked ―――――――――――― Veteran Air Groups Requirements not met Seasoned Army Requirements not met Inherited Technology Requirements not met Industrial Mobilisation Requirements not met Theatre-Wide Reconnaissance Requirements not met Ironman Requirements not met Hell+ Requirements not met Battle-Honoured Hulls Requirements not met ―――――――――――――――― Admiral's Record Room Campaigns completed 3 Nations completed 3 Next Theatre Modern Fleet Requirements not met
Twelve lines black, eight grey. On a staircase in the previous world he had read the conditions on the grey lines for the first time. He considered whether there was anything here he could aim for. There was not. This country loses. He knew that. In a country that loses, not one line conditioned on victory will turn black.
He put the phone away and asked his usual question.
"May I ask the Chancellor's name?"
Grand Admiral Kessler, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, moved an eyebrow.
"Wilhelm Roth."
He nodded. Not a name he knew.
"You do not know it?"
"I do not."
The generals exchanged glances. Not surprise: classification.
"Then your world is not our world."
"That is correct."
"Very good." Kessler jerked his chin at the clerk. "Record it. We have one more premise."
3
Over the eighteen days he would see three faces of this country. The first was the navy.
That day, the Naval High Command was deliberating its own funeral: whether to break up the surface fleet and put the steel and the crews into submarines. The question had been raised and buried many times, and it was on the table again. This time it did not look as though it would be buried.
"Adviser" — they had settled on calling him that. Operational adviser, with a file number. "We ask you frankly. Does our surface fleet have a reason to exist?"
He remembered this question.
"It does."
"State it."
"Though it is not the reason you are hoping for."
He went and stood in front of the North Sea chart.
"If this fleet puts to sea it will be sunk. Their air umbrella is too thick. Every sortie costs you ships, and what is lost does not come back. So do not send it out."
"You would have us keep it in harbour."
"Keep it there. In a condition to move."
"That is not a fleet. That is scrap iron."
"No."
He pointed to the other side of the chart, north of the British Isles.
"For as long as your fleet is in harbour, they must keep battleships and carriers pinned here. Ships that are pinned cannot go to the Mediterranean and cannot go to the Atlantic. To tie down the enemy's strength without firing a round — that is the only work this fleet can do, and it is the cheapest work available to you."
Kessler looked at the chart for a long while.
"A threat made of steel, then."
"Yes."
"And how do I explain that to the crews?"
He could not answer. That was the ugliest thing about the advice.
4
The second face was the army. General Voigt, for the Wehrmacht, spread out a map of the east. West of Moscow. The heads of the arrows reached the outskirts of the city.
"The offensive is stalling. It will freeze. How far may we fall back over the winter?"
"Within ten days their counter-offensive begins."
"Ten days."
"Yes. And it will not be local."
Voigt set down his pencil.
"To fall back is to abandon equipment. Abandon it and we cannot recover the ground in spring."
"If you do not fall back, you abandon the men along with the equipment."
"Adviser. Are you recommending that this army retreat?"
"I am."
The generals shifted. He could feel the air harden. He thought then of the basement in Tokyo. Withdraw, hold back, avoid: precisely the orders an army will not obey. There, a submarine squadron had gone east on its own authority.
Here, nobody moved on his own authority. Instead, the advice was simply not carried out of the room.
"It goes into the record," Voigt said. "Whether it goes upward is another matter."
5
The third face was the Party's representative. The man wore no uniform. He attended alone and said almost nothing. But when he did say something, the conclusion of the meeting changed.
At the beginning of December the man spoke to him for the first time.
"A well-staged spectacle."
"…"
"The navy has gone to a great deal of trouble to get its power back. A glowing man appears and tells us to fall back. A prophet whose every prophecy is defeat."
"I —"
"Spare me the defence." The man smiled. "I believe you are genuine. That is precisely what makes you inconvenient."
From that month, the steel allocation to the navy began to fall. He learned it from figures in a report. Nobody wrote down a reason. There was no need to.
In Tokyo, orders had not reached downward. In Washington, politics had made them wait for the first shot. In Chongqing, there were no factories. Here, being right got in the way of politics. Of the four, this was the hardest. Point out an error and your opponent is not inconvenienced in the slightest.
6
The eleventh of December. That morning he was in Kessler's office.
"Four days ago Japan opened hostilities in the Pacific."
"So I hear."
"Today this country will declare war on the United States, of its own accord."
Kessler's hand stopped.
"How do you know that?"
"In the world I come from, that is what happened."
"You are telling me to stop it."
"Please stop it."
He put a sheet of paper on the desk with figures on it.
"In the Atlantic you are already fighting an undeclared war. Their destroyers escort the convoys and your boats are told not to shoot back even when fired on. I understand the wish to be rid of that restraint. But the moment you are rid of it, that country's industry formally enters this war."
"It has entered already, surely."
"The manner of entry is different. At present they are lending. Declare war and it becomes their own war."
"How different?"
He pointed at the paper.
"In one year they overtake this country's entire production. In two they are past double. For the third year I can only give you a range. But even at the bottom of the range, it is three times yours."
Kessler looked at the paper for a long time. Then, with his own hands, he folded it carefully in two.
"I cannot take this upward."
"Why not?"
"Because it is cowardly."
"Grand Admiral —"
"Adviser. What you say is probably right in every particular. I believe you. But I also know what the man who carries this paper upstairs will be called by that same afternoon."
That afternoon, the country declared war on the United States.
He could not stop it.
In those eighteen days there was not one thing he had been able to change.
7
The three and a half years that followed are a story of going downhill.
He did what he could. What he could do was little.
He kept them from being pushed into attacking escorted convoys. He knew when submarine losses would climb steeply and tried to have the boats pulled back before it. Half of it was accepted; half of it never arrived.
The twelve black lines he had brought with him — the elite squadron, the research head start, the additional stockpiles — none of them took physical form in this country until they had been converted into a steel allocation. He never used the fleet. To use it he would have had to explain where the ships came from, and the man who would demand the explanation was not the enemy but a man sitting across the table.
In the spring of 1943 the Atlantic figures went bad very suddenly: the boats stopped coming home. The reason was in the first report. The escorts had begun to hunt the packs. They no longer clung to the convoy to defend it; they placed separate support groups around it and came out to kill. And the detection gear was finding boats from further off than before. From beyond the northern sea came reports that anti-aircraft shells were bursting without striking.
He felt his hands go cold on the report. They had come down on this side of the world too.
That night he sat a long time with the lights off, working out why. What had he done in this world? Recommended retreat. Tried to prevent a declaration of war. Kept a fleet in harbour. Pulled submarines back early. Every one of them an inconspicuous move. And still they came. Even an inconspicuous move, once it changes something, is visible from the other side.
In the fourth world he finally got that far. Traces are not decided by how spectacular a thing is. They are decided by how far one departs from what actually happened. And in this country he had spent three and a half years trying to depart and being unable to. Only the trying had reached the other side. It was the worst possible way to stand.
Next time I do it better. Three worlds ago that had been bravado. In the fourth it had become procedure.
8
The war ended in the spring of 1945. They lost. He had known it. He had known it from the morning of the eighteenth day. For three and a half years he worked without once saying it aloud, because saying it aloud would have made him disappear.
In the northern harbour the fleet remained, untouched. It had fought no major action. He had not sent it out to a sea that cost it ships every time. For three and a half years the crews chipped rust, turned the engines over, drilled at the guns — and never fired. For as long as that fleet went on existing there, part of the enemy's main strength stayed pinned in the North Sea. In figures, it was the only entry in this country's ledger that stayed in the black to the end.
On the day of the surrender of the ships he stood on the wharf with Kessler. The grey hulls lay quietly in a row in the morning light.
"Not one round fired," Kessler said.
"No."
"What am I to tell the crews?"
He had spent three and a half years looking for the answer. He had not found one.
"That they were not sunk."
Kessler did not laugh. But he nodded.
"Adviser. The record will read: on the advice of the operational adviser."
"The name?"
"There is none. You never had a name to begin with."
9
In the summer of 1945, it came. He was in quarters under British control by then, in the position of assisting with the interrogation of officers. Whatever he was asked, he never said "in the world I come from."
The newspapers arrived two days late. Not a distant atoll this time. This time it was a city. He read the article three times. The fourth time.
He took out the sheet of paper and wrote the fourth line.
Summer 1945 — completed. Four.
Four worlds. Four completely different wars. The country he made win, the country he brought to a negotiated end, the country that could make nothing, and the country he made lose.
Only that summer had stood in the same place all four times.
He looked at the paper and thought. There is a great deal I can move. There is only one thing I cannot. Then what am I being dropped here to move?
10
That autumn, in the courtyard of the quarters, his right pocket rang.
There was no celebration. A defeated country has no celebrations. It was an ordinary afternoon between interrogations.
ATLAS Operations in this world are concluded. Your decisions have changed this world. Choose what you wish to take to the next one.
Concluded, it said.
The previous three times it had said complete. This time it said concluded. He looked at that single difference for a long while. Somebody is marking this, he thought. And having thought it, he was slightly angry at whoever that was.
He opened the app.
Not one line had been added.
…… Admiral's Record Room Campaigns completed 3 Nations completed 3 ―――――――――――――――― Next Theatre Modern Fleet Requirements not met Remain in this world Requirements not met
Still three.
It took him a while to notice. When he did, he laughed without making a sound.
Lose, and it does not go up.
An obvious thing. An obvious thing had never gone into him so deeply as it did that day.
After four worlds, the first solid thing he had acquired was a record of defeat.
And then he read the eight grey lines again from the top.
Destroy a fleet with aircraft. Take a capital by land. Win decisively. Complete five campaigns. Get through at Historical difficulty or above. Get through on Hell. Win with a battle-honoured ship still afloat.
Eight lines demanding eight different ways of winning.
He read the list three times.
And then, for the first time in his life, he made a plan.
The two lines below the rule were still grey. One cannot remain. Not even in a country that lost.
He closed the screen.
After he closed it, the light came up around his feet. This time he watched it to the end.
The smell changed. Not beeswax: tobacco tar, damp paper, oiled paper. Under his soles, a cold stone floor.
A conference table in green baize. Seven ashtrays. On the wall chart, a red pencil line from the South China Sea down to the Malay Peninsula.
And fourteen men were there.
Nobody stood up. No chair went over. No papers went up.
The old man at the head of the table said quietly:
"Again."
The next world was Japan. For the second time.