Eschaton (The Infinity Engines Book 3) by Andrew Hastie

Author:Andrew Hastie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Here be dragons
Published: 2018-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

63

Ahnenerbe

[Werfen, Salzburg, Austria. Date: January 11.944]

Josh put Heisenberg’s journal down and looked out of the window. It was winter, and the view of the snow-topped Alps took his breath away. The steep-sided valley was covered in a blanket of white, and it was like looking at one of those Christmas cards his Gran used to send his mum.

‘Hohenwerfen Castle,’ Caitlin said, looking up at the heraldic symbols above the baronial fireplace. ‘This once belonged to the Hapsburgs.’

Josh’s breath clouded the window pane, and as he wiped it clean he could feel the age of the lead latticework that held the stained glass in place; the smell of the solder as they sealed them in the panes flowed all the way back to the eleventh century.

The castle was quiet, almost too quiet. It was hard to believe that just a few floors below him a garrison of SS soldiers were busy polishing their jackboots.

Heisenberg had converted the medieval room into his personal study and Caitlin was busy examining the blackboards that were lined along the wall at the far end. They were covered in chalk formulae, hastily scrawled into every available inch of the green-black slate.

Josh wasn’t surprised to find that Bartholomew’s team hadn’t followed them; they would stay on mission. Schumann was still the primary target, and the Augurs would focus on their original objective. He was impressed by their sense of duty; they were like an ultra-religious version of the SAS.

‘This is inspired!’ gushed Caitlin, tapping the board.

‘All his own work?’ asked Josh, the white squiggles reminding him too much of the painful maths lessons he’d endured at school. He loved numbers, but algebra and dyslexia did not mix well.

She traced her finger over the chalk marks. ‘Well, he certainly wrote it all. Whether someone was helping him, it’s hard to tell.’

‘What does it say?’

‘I’m not an expert, but you can see he’s using his theory of quantum matrices to map how the physical properties of particles evolve over time.’ She pointed to a bunch of symbols.

‘Obviously,’ agreed Josh, squinting at the tiny lines. ‘So what’s he trying to prove?’

‘It’s not nuclear fission, that’s for sure. This is closer to Schrödinger’s wave formulation.’

Josh was totally lost. He loved that Caitlin was so smart, so knowledgeable, but sometimes it made him wonder if she might think he was a bit thick.

‘Yeah, I must have missed that lesson.’

She laughed. ‘You don’t have to be good at everything,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘Do you want me to explain it to you?’

‘No, just work out what we need to do so we can leave,’ he said, and shivered. ‘This place reminds me of Dracula’s castle.’

She nodded and went back to the blackboard.

Josh wandered around the rest of the room, picking up random items of Heisenberg’s and browsing their timelines.

‘What’s Ahnenerbe?’ he asked Caitlin, flicking through a book.

‘An elite SS research unit that was trying to validate Hitler’s theory of an ancient Aryan race by using scientific methods,’ she answered, without taking her eyes off the formula.

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