November 10, 1918
Slingby spent the morning on Alan's phone. He'd borrowed Alan's office, as his own desk was in the Personnel bullpen; a noisy, busy place with far too many distractions. Alan had taken Bradshaw off to Bookkeeping and Supplies, leaving Eric to lock himself into as much privacy as the Branch could offer when all the meeting rooms were taken.
Moreau affirmed the signing of the armistice agreement in Compiégne, France.
"Early yesterday morning. Effective tomorrow, the eleventh day of the eleventh month at eleven AM local. They just can't forgo the drama, can they?
"It's exactly as you predicted at the beginning of all this. Both sides are at a standstill. The Germans can't win, but the Allies know that invading Germany to force a surrender would be far too costly. Therefore, an armistice to end the useless killing. The final peace treaty will be delayed because the winners have to agree upon its terms. Each country has its own agenda but all concur that they don't want Germany ever to be able to do this again. It's going to be nasty and counterproductive.
"Say hello to Gruber for me. Oh, and the winners are going to be celebrating. Mobs dancing in the streets and spreading the 'flu. Expect increasing death rates in the cities in the next couple of weeks."
Kaiser Wilhelm II and his Crown Prince, said Gruber, were out.
"Their abdications were announced yesterday without their consent. The Kiel Mutiny is now a German revolution. The Social Democratic Party has taken control.
"Wilhelm wanted to give up his Empire but remain King of Prussia, of course. Legally impossible even if the returning army would back him up. They won't. The country is going on without him.
"He's boarding a train for the Netherlands today. He's realized he can be arrested for war crimes if he stays where the Allies can get at him. He'll formally abdicate once he fully accepts that he can't go back. Meanwhile, Germany's declared itself a Republic and now has a civilian President. The citizens are tired of all the petty dukes, archdukes, princes and kinglets who led them off to war. Field Marshal von Hindenburg has stepped down and is letting Ludendorff take the blame. General Ludendorff is already insisting that the defeat is all someone else's fault. He'll invent a plot and pick a scapegoat. For more on Wilhelm, check with Peeters. He's in Amsterdam now. His number is…"
Peeters affirmed that Wilhelm had been granted asylum by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.
"The Dutch have maintained a strict neutrality throughout the war. The German army didn't commit atrocities there like they did in Belgium, so the locals aren't waiting to shoot him at the station.
"The Queen's not particularly fond of either Britain or Germany, both of whom tried and failed to bully her during the war. Did you know? Wilhelm once told her, 'My guards are seven feet tall and yours are only shoulder-high to them.' She replied, 'When we open our dikes, the water is ten feet deep.' Remarkable woman.
"But she'll protect him, especially after what happened to the Romanovs. For all his many faults, Wilhelm is family. He's a distant cousin of the House of Orange-Nassau. These noble houses are all related to one degree or another. He's forbidden to interfere in politics, of course. That might cause the Allied powers to accuse the Netherlands of violating their own neutrality. As long as he behaves, she'll refuse all demands to extradite him.
"Oh, Sayeed wanted to talk to you, but got swept into pandemic Reaping. Call his number and see who answers. Are you going to start up the London Gather again?"
Ben-Zvi in Palestine picked up the phone.
"Senior Slingby? Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. Sayeed speaks very highly of you. He said you might want a political update when the war came to an official close.
"Damascus fell last month. The Ottoman Empire will be carved up by Britain and France. Both are supposed to prepare their new possessions for self-rule. Both intend to remain in permanent command of the Suez Canal and Iranian oil. Perfide Albion has promised Palestine to the Jews, to the Arabs, and to themselves. This is going to keep us Reaping for decades. I suppose it's always nice to know you're needed.
"Sayeed says Russia is going to be in need of borrowed Reapers for years. He suggests you talk to Professor Sergei Drozdov at the Novgorod Academy."
Professor Drozdov, sounding exhausted:
"At the moment, civil war. The Germans wanted to end the fighting on their Russian front, so in 1917 they rounded up some political radicals living in exile and sent them back home to join the February Revolution. It worked. Russia dropped out of the world war and imploded. The Red Terror and the White Terror are killing thousands, mostly civilians.
"Flu's just starting to spread, but we have cholera epidemics in several cities. Looking forward, I predict continuing political purges, terrorism, disease, famine, civil war, and wars of aggression against areas which have declared independence. By the Academy class sizes, there's no end in sight.
"Please warn your Director Spears that we may need to call upon him for Reapers after the influenza has passed. Not only for Reaping, but for mentors for the newly graduated. We may not have enough Seniors left to train our students properly. The Infernal Realm is very active here, treaties be damned. So to speak. Give my regards to Avram, please. Tell him the book he sent me is excellent."
To this, Eric added all that Grell had told him shortly before her deployment. They had shared a table and several drinks at the Scythe and Skull. She was annoyed at Will, who was not happy about having to allow her the foreign assignment she very much wanted, and was diverting herself by talking about changes in the Human Realm. She believed that it would be difficult to push the women back into the traditional roles centered on housekeeping, church, sickrooms and kids.
"We don't see it so much in our Realm, because gender doesn't limit our roles nearly as much. Because we don't breed like bunnies, we don't have enough Reapers to waste half of them by dismissing them as a lesser species. Ronnie, dear, can you get me another? Thank you, sweetie.
"In the human realm, male and female roles were strictly separated into spheres which did not intersect except at the table and the bedroom. The women were the property of the men. Anything they inherited, earned or owned passed into their husband's hands at marriage. The women were viewed by custom and law as helpless, unschooled dependents – and deliberately raised to be that way – who required masculine protection and direction in even the smallest decisions.
"Then the war began.
"Within a year the women were taking the jobs that men had left behind. One simply couldn't expect a woman to drive a car or ambulance while wearing skirts long enough to catch in the pedals. Hemlines rose. The Army nurses were given ugly boxy uniforms to make them unattractive to the patients and doctors, but those uniforms still had to be designed to allow the women to perform their duties. Then the manufactories had to permit women to wear overalls because skirts were dangerous on the assembly lines.
"The Army decided to create a Land Army to farm food crops on vacant acreage, completely forgetting that they had sent all the young farmers off to war. After a few outraged jeremiads, they had to grit their teeth and hire women. In trousers. Archconservatives, spraying spit and outrage, preached that the world would surely end. It didn't, darling, it never does; it only changes.
"Now pay attention, Eric dear, I know you're nodding off while I ramble. Do you need coffee? Because this is important. All of this signals a major social change in Britain. Other countries, too. You should include this in your next weekly report to Madame – you may not draw conclusions from it, but she will. It's going to affect politics in the coming years. The ladies want the vote. They've earned it. They feel they can hardly do worse than the men have done.
"The social contract has been broken. If the women have to be kept helpless, infantile and protected, then the men must provide that protection; that's always been the deal. But these men were not present to protect their families during very bad times. The women had to do all the 'unwomanly' things that only men were supposed to do, and discovered that they could do them well. They could earn money to support their children and dependent relatives. They could survive being bombed out of their homes. They could do business. They could earn respect and a voice in their own futures.
"The money a woman earns has been hers by law since 1870. Only tradition teaches that the women's property belongs to their men. That tradition is on its way out. The social contract is being rewritten. The genie is out of the bottle.
"The men who could not protect their women also could not confiscate their pay to spend on drink or gambling or whores or get-rich-quick investment schemes. Thousands of women are working for pay that stays in their own pockets. They like it. And that is fortunate, for nearly seven hundred thousand British men will never return to their sweethearts and wives. Those women will have to support themselves or they and their children will starve.
"The maid in the great manor who slaved nineteen hours a day and was forbidden to marry has gone to the city or the factories. She will get better pay for fewer hours, build a life and wed as she pleases. There has been a steady migration of employable women away from the rural areas. There is also going to be a servant problem in all households unwilling to compete in this new reality.
"The men returning from war have seen Paris. They may not want to go back to farming someone else's land or mining someone else's coal. And think of all the butlers and footmen who are returning as noncommissioned or even commissioned officers – will they be willing to go back to being servants? If so, what if the grand houses they left are now hospitals or schools or being sold for taxes after the master and his heirs all died in the war? The roads built for moving war matériels will also allow people who have never left their villages to widen their horizons and marry outside their tiny communities. There will be fewer village idiots; there may be fewer villages.
"The soldiers are expecting to come home to the same world they left. Instead, they will find destruction, disease and rationing. They will also find self-sufficient wives and sisters and girlfriends who will reject their governance and go out dancing if they damn well want to. In its way, it is another revolution."
Eric gathered his notes, laid them out in order, rearranged them and rearranged them again. He gazed out Alan's window at the ice-slicked wall of the building next door. This report he would type at his own desk, in full view of all, just another of his weekly reports to Madame Administrator. He'd deliberately shared a few of the old ones around, to demonstrate that they were utterly boring synopses that interns could be trusted to handle.
He knew that there was a rumor going around about Alan wanting a new start somewhere else. Best not to feed it by appearing secretive.
With Grell on foreign duty, the rumor would not reach Spears quickly. Anton Wójcik was strictly business. The other likely source, Knox, had recently received a thundering scold from Spears when Alan had not been around to defuse him. It had put a cool distance between the two for the last few days.
The war would be officially over before noon tomorrow. Very important to the humans of course, but barely noticeable to the Reapers. It would be lost in the overwhelming pandemic. The deaths from illness outnumbered the war dead already.
If the war was over, did his agreement with Madame Administrator still hold? If thousands were dying in a place that was not a battlefield, could Alan be sent to serve? If thousands were dying along an expanding front that was not a battlefield, even if the death rate was comparable or greater, would she withdraw her protection from a man who had already given her all the insights she needed?
Would it matter? This, Alan could handle. He had handled it in the flu epidemic of 1899, quite well actually. As long as they came together at the end of the day, they would both be fine.
Eric would have trusted Madame, before she used him to stop an enemy. Used him in a way that was harmful to Alan and himself. Used them both. Risking their lives and sanity without warning. Necessary, she said; vital, not to her but to the Realm. Perhaps that would count in Alan's favor, the next time he did something the Realm didn't like. Which would be soon, inevitably.
Will was—hah. Will was almost as crazy as Eric would be if Alan was away on a foreign assignment. Will was Reaping with Eric now, patrolling around the big hospitals. Their primary duty was to Reap the humans who did not reach the hospital before expiring or were turned away for lack of room. These places attracted the predatory demons, but were heavily enough defended to keep most of them outside in the streets. Will was targeting these prowlers while Eric Reaped. Will tended to rush his attacks, not pausing to check for demons in hiding. Eric had bailed him out of two fights with apparently single demons who had actually been roaming with larger groups. It did seem to make him a wee bit more restrained in the office. But only a bit.
Eric reminded himself twice daily that he and Alan owed their lives to Will, who had sold himself to save them. But as things were going, he and Alan needed to get out before Will killed them both.
Therefore, until such time as Alan was ready to leave, or was forced to leave, these reports would continue. He would follow the peace process, which looked like an undeclared war among the Allies. Eric thought it would lead into another major war in twenty years – it would take that long to raise and train a new generation of soldiers while the governments formed and settled and switched alliances back and forth.
That should keep Alan safe for as much as a year while negotiations continued. In a week he and Alan would use their day off to visit the Branch and its nearby Academy which had offered them jobs. There they would leave the manuscript for Alan's book, copies of all of his lecture materials, and most of their spare cash.
The Pawnbroker had given them a letter of introduction to a colleague there who was expanding into safe deposit boxes. "He thought about banking, as well, but says it's too dangerous to get into the Human side of that business. No investing there either, unless you have the time to pay close attention. You have to be ready to pull out fast when the market starts looking a bit overripe. He's expecting a peacetime bubble which will end badly. Ten fat years, ten lean years. He reminds me of you, Slingby, predicting trouble in the future. I suggest you listen carefully to anything you can get him to say. Never invest more than you can afford to lose."
Eric thought about that for a moment. The next twenty years were going to be…interesting. From a safe distance. Ten fat years to get over the war. Ten lean years to make the next war inevitable. Twenty years altogether, to let people forget what the last one was like. Different experiences in different countries to make different theories of national advancement.
Suddenly he was very tired. But then Alan came back from his meetings, and the room was somehow brighter.