The Heirs of Babylon - Glen Cook, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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A RESTLESS couple sat on a blanket on a twisted, rustedgirder, holding hands sadly, occasionally glancing towardthe ancient ship at the pier in the distance, silent loveislanded in a forest of broken steel madness. The girlmoved nervously, stared through the bones of theshipyard, hating the ship that would take her Kurt away—Jager, a gray steel dragon specially evolved for thedealing of death, crouched, waiting beside the Hoch-und-Deutschmeister pier. Her hand tightened on his. She liftedit, rubbed her cheek against his knuckles, kissed them, andmoved closer. He slipped his arm around her, lightly. Herspassed around his waist. The cool, moist fingers of theirfree hands entwined in her lap.They were Kurt and Karen Ranke, married elevenmonths, two weeks, and three days, and about to beparted by the warship—perhaps permanently. Both weretall and leanly muscular, blond, blue-eyed, almost stereo-typically Aryan, alike as brother and sister, yet relatedonly through marriage. Their sadness was for the War, onagain.A snatch of song momentarily haunted the ruins totheir left. They turned. A hundred meters distant, besidethe shallow, scum-topped water-corpse of the Kiel Canal,sailors made their ways toward the destroyer; men withoutattachments, accompanied by no women. One sang abawdy verse. The others laughed."Hans and his deck apes," Kurt murmured. "Almosthappy because we're pulling out."Karen leaned her head against his shoulder, said noth-ing. Through narrowed eyes she searched the torn ironfingers surrounding them. Kurt ignored the question, un-spoken, in her eyes. He understood the need to createmore such ruin no better than she.A whistle shrieked at the pier, a foghorn bellowed—Jager testing.The warship had come through sea trials well, like agreat-grandmother proving capable of the marathon. Herofficers and men had once been delighted as children witha new toy. But their joy was fading. The toy was readyfor the War, for the Last of All Battles, as the PoliticalOffice had it. A pale specter on a far horizon dampenedall enthusiasms. The games were over, and death lay inambush on a distant sea.Kurt knew Karen doubted the Political Office, and borea grudge against the destroyer. Already the two wereresponsible for a dozen training separations. Her darkestfear, and his, was that this one might be permanent.Karen's fingers, teasing through his hair, quivered. Hetried to ignore it. He was going to the War—she said tono purpose. He repeated her questions in his mind. TheWar had managed without him for centuries. Why musthe go? He had been assigned a good position, and thesame wanderlust which had led him to spend three yearswith the Danish fishing fleets demanded he not refuse it.More than once she had called him a willing victim ofman's oldest madness. If gods there were, Ares was themost enduring.A murmur of low voices came from the direction of thecanal. Kurt stopped thinking of Karen long enough toglance at Chief Engineer Czyzewski and his group ofPolish volunteers. Then came the sound of small bellsringing. lager's gunnery and fire control people weremaking a last check of the gun mounts. The main batterytrained left and right. Flags rose to the starboard yard-arm. "Half an hour," Kurt observed. Karen said nothing.More clatter along the canal. They looked. Theofficers: Captain von Lappus; Commander Haber; Kurt'scousin. Lieutenant Lindemann; and Ensign Heiden, theSupply Officer. Other officers were already aboard—except one.He walked alone, a hundred meters behind the others.Tall, thin, pale, with cold eyes that seemed to stare out ofa private hell in a bony face with skin stretched taut,skull-like, beneath sand-colored hair, he wore a uniformunlike those of the others, neither naval, nor of the BalticLittoral. This was black, silver-trimmed, bore death's-headinsignia at the collars, grim imitations of an age longunremembered. A Political Officer."Beck," Kurt sighed, shivering.Karen stirred nervously, kicking a mound of rubble. Itcollapsed with a tiny clatter.Beck stopped, haunted eyes searching the steel bone-yard. The strangeness of the man projected itself through10the hundred meters of ruin. The couple shivered again. Hestudied them a moment, then walked on."That man ..." Karen sighed with relief. "He makesme freeze up inside, like a snake. Be careful, Kurt. He'snot old Karl."Karl Wiedermann was Kiel's resident Political Officer.He projected the same coldness, had the haunted eyes attimes, but did have a spark of humanness in him. He woreblack and silver only on military holidays, and seldominvoked his power. Kurt had happy childhood memoriesof his little shop on Siegestrasse where he crafted finefurniture of imported Swedish oak. Old Karl was not abad man—for a Political Officer.Beck—Beck was no Kiel-born man. He had no ties withthe Littoral. He was from High Command at Gibraltar, sentto Kiel to summon Jager to the War. He appeared afanatic, cold as the devil's heart. Perhaps, as Karen hadonce opined, there was an association. Kurt, however,suspected he was as human as anyone, with loves, hates,hopes, and fears. He could not credit pure evil, as manybelieved Beck to be. He had seen strange men andstranger behavior while with the Danish fishing fleets, andalways, no matter how unusual, a man's actions had beenexplicable in terms of human needs.Kurt's mind, unhampered because Karen was unusuallysilent, drifted off to his years with the fishing fleets. Agreat adventure they had been, until he came home andfound Karen grown into a lovely woman. He had aban-doned the sea to court her, had won her, and had let hertalk him out of returning—until Commander Haberoffered him the post of Leading Quartermaster aboardJager because of his experience.More sailors passed in time. Many were accompaniedby tearful wives and lovers and mothers. There were fewmen. Kurt watched his sister, Frieda, as she and herfiance. Otto Kapp, passed, she clinging to his arm sotightly her knuckles were white. "We give so much to theWar," Kurt murmured. Karen nodded. Their families hadgiven for generations.Their fathers had gone to the last Meeting, aboardU-793, a salvaged submarine, and had not come back—those who went to Meetings seldom returned. Three oftheir grandfathers had sailed on the cruiser Grossdeutsch-land, decades gone."Let's walk," said Karen, rising from the girder, tuggingthe blanket. While putting his cap on and hoisting hisseabag to his shoulder, Kurt took a last fond, deep look at11the ruin surrounding them. This was his home, this brick,concrete, and steel desert that stretched a thousand kilom-eters to the east and south and west. Only the north,Scandinavia, had been spared the mighty bombs. Theplagues had raged through, but the survivors were leftwith livable land, and, in time, had developed a loose-knit, quasi-medieval, viable culture. Yes, Kurt lived inthe bones of a fallen Germany, but this was his homeand he was loathe to depart, albeit he had been thinkingmuch of Norway lately, especially the province of Tele-mark,They walked beside the canal. Suddenly, Karen revealedher own Norwegian thoughts. "Kurt, I'm going to Tele-mark."The seabag fell from his shoulder, thumped on theearth. No words of rebuke could he find, though heopened his mouth to speak. With dreamlike slowness heturned and took her by the shoulders, held her at arm'slength while staring into the bottomless blue of her eyes.They reflected the misery of the rusty wreckage aroundher, they reflected ruin she must escape—and a crystaltear. For a brief instant Kurt shared her soul's agony.Somewhere a lonely seabird called, a stormcari."To the colony," she said, her voice soft as meringue,yet with an edge of steel daring his reply. "I can't bearKiel anymore, Kurt. Look!" She swept an arm around,all-inclusive. "The Fatherland. The best part. We're mag-gots feeding on its corpse. We steal from the dead, createnothing new, waste what little we have on this endlessmadness—I'll not damn our baby to it! Not just to givethe Littoral another sailor to die at the next Meeting. ..."There were gray clouds rising, shadows moving, and awind come down from the north soughed among thegirders. Perhaps a storm was brewing. Perhaps not. Thesecould be omens."Baby?" Kurt exclaimed, still off balance from theshock of Norway."Yes, a baby.""You're sure?"She nodded."Why didn't you tell me?""Wouldn't've made any difference, would it?"Guiltily, he avoided her angry eyes—because it wastrue. The War was first in his life, even before babies."But Norway?"'Too much? No. When Kari Wiedennann calls therefugees traitors, do you have to break your neck agree-12ing? No one called you a traitor when you went toDenmark. Must I love Germany less because I go toNorway? And why do I want to go? Because there's got tobe something better than getting ready for the next battle—and I can't have it here. Only in Telemark. Yes, Tele-mark! Where the weird ones go, the dropouts, the pa-cifists, the turncoats, the ones who go where there're noPolitical Officers to make them think about killing."Go to your damned War! No, don't argue. You can'tchange my mind. When the shells fly there, wherever,remember me and tell yourself it's worth it."He suspected this was a prepared speech, so readily didher words come. Usually, she was as lame-tongued as he."But . . ." Exasperated, he ran a hand through ...
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