The Heirs of Babylon

by Glen Cook

  Still, Kurt told himself, this was the heart of his civilization. All Europe, he knew, lay wasted from Hamburg south. The descendants of Germans, Poles, Danes, Lithuanians, and Latvians lived in small, scattered settlements along the Littoral, the narrow remaining band of tillable coastal soil, scratching out a meager living. This new country had few cities: Kiel, Kolberg, Gdynia, Danzig, a new port city fifty kilometers southwest of ancient Riga. Kiel was the largest, the capital, with a population approaching ten thousand.

  Jager gathered speed as she nosed down the channel toward the sea, until she was making fifteen knots. Soon she entered the passage between Langeland and Laaland, occasionally sounding her foghorn as warning to the Danish fishing boats. The sailing craft scuttled from her path. Wide-eyed men in foul-weather gear watched the iron lady pass — Kurt leaned against a bulkhead and stared back through diamond raindrops on porthole glass, filled with happy memories — and shook their heads. Another one off to the War. “There, Gregor,” Kurt cried, pointing. “Dancer!” Near at hand was his own boat. He saw curious faces he knew. But, when he turned to his cousin, his enthusiasm died. Once again he had forgotten and let familiarity carry him across the line between officer and crewman. Eyes turned his way, anticipating. Kurt turned back to the sea, but the fishing boat had now fallen far behind.

  Much to his surprise, Kurt found the mess decks crowded when he went to supper. He had thought most everyone would be too queasy to eat. Perhaps they wanted to get a last fresh meal — without refrigeration, Jager could store only imperishables. Kurt sighed. He should have come early, to petty officers’ mess. He grabbed the seat of. a man just finished, settled down to his rough meal.

  Five minutes later. Otto slipped into the recently vacated seat opposite him, said, “Well, we’re finally on the way. It doesn’t seem real.”

  Kurt grunted an affirmative through a mouthful of strudel. Otto avoided his eyes.

  “It’s like I’ll wake up any minute and find myself at home.” Kapp nervously prodded his food with his fork. “Uh... about me and Frieda...”

  Kurt swallowed, said, “She’s your problem, not mine. You got troubles, settle them with her. She’s a big girl now.” He hoped Otto would understand that he was undismayed by the new deepness of Frieda’s commitment.

  Apparently, Otto did comprehend. The tension faded from his face. He smiled weakly. “Think we’ll catch that pirate galleon this time?”

  Kurt grinned broadly as he remembered raft-borne pirate chases on the ponds of the silted-up Kiel Canal. That had been his game, imagined into being after reading old books. Then as now. Otto had gone along because Kurt was his friend. Which thought killed Kurt’s pleasure at the question. He should not have talked Otto into coming. Frieda was right in being angry with him.

  “What we catch,” said Hans Wiedermann, assuming the seat beside Otto (which, Kurt saw by looking around, was the only one available), “may be a Tartar, like Hood catching Bismarck.”

  Kapp displayed puzzlement. Hans would not expand his cryptic comment, apparently feeling ignorance was inexcusable. Otto looked to Ranke. “Old-time battleships,” Kurt said. “An ancient war. Hood and Prince of Wales

  were after Bismarck. Hood went down almost as soon as the shooting started.”

  “History,” Kapp snorted. “You two live in the past.

  What good is it? Reading books about old times won’t put food in your stomach.” He launched a set speech long familiar to Kurt, who suspected Otto’s feelings were based in envy. He, like many Littoral children, had received only the rudiments of an education. He could read numbers and puzzle his way through the simplest primer, but all else was beyond him, which had to rankle when conversations went beyond his scope. And, if he were working with some machine and needed to know how to operate or repair it, he had to do so by trial and error or knowledge passed orally by someone more experienced. Yet, despite no knowledge of theory. Otto was a firstrate mechanic. Often, when not on watch, he worked in one of the gunmounts, deftly maintaining hydraulics and electrical servos whose physics he comprehended not at

  all. The whole of modern technology, Kurt supposed, was mirrored in Otto Kapp. Very few people knew why things worked any more, nor did they care. To bang on or fiddle with a machine until it worked was enough. It had to collapse. To maintain a technological culture

  on hand-me-down skills was impractical... it had collapsed already, he decided. Jdger was an anomaly, one of the few functional machines left to the Littoral. The culture as a whole there operated at the level of the

  sixteenth or seventeenth century. Kurt grew aware that Hans and Otto were engaged in a spirited argument over the value of studying history. Otto maintained that the past was dead and useless while Hans reiterated ancient notions of learning from others’ mistakes. Said Otto, “Avoid past mistakes? Hans, that’s stupid. If it’s true, why’re we here? This mistakes’s already two centuries old.” Otto was, probably, the most openly anti-War person Kurt knew — with the understandable exceptions of Karen and Frieda. “You think people’re sensible. That’s the silliest idea...” Kapp stopped in mid-career. Kurt had kicked him beneath the table. Beck had appeared. For reasons unknown, he was eating at crew’s mess rather than in the wardroom. The mess decks were silent as scores of breaths were held. Everyone waited for Beck to choose a seat. The groans at Kurt’s table were inaudible, but very real within, when the Political Officer selected the open place next to Kurt.

  “Good evening, men,” he said as he deposited his tray on the table, his voice sounding somehow distant and hollow. “Don’t let me interrupt.” He hazarded a smile which was more a grimace. Elsewhere, sailors resumed conversations, though in hushed, cautious tones.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Hans, half turning to Otto. “Hitler invaded Russia knowing Napoleon had failed. Yet the first failure didn’t automatically guarantee a second. All indications were for a swift German victory.”

  “Uhn?” Otto grunted. Kurt chuckled despite Beck’s inhibiting presence. Otto had only the vaguest notion who Hitler had been, and undoubtedly had never heard of

  Bonaparte.

  “History?” Beck asked, thin eyebrows rising. “An odd subject for seamen, though, perhaps, after living with the Wiedermanns, none too surprising in Hans. The Political Office has always been interested in history, especially unusual historical theories.” He looked them each in the eye, as if asking for such theories. No one spoke. Kurt was afraid to say anything lest Beck take offense. Otto was subtly insubordinate with a flash of expression, with a quirk of the lip. Even Hans, who had had to suffer Beck’s presence in his home for a year, and should therefore have been innured, seemed to suffer dampened spirits. Beck, who, Kurt felt, had been making an honest attempt to communicate, soon withdrew into himself, ate mechanically, and became his normal cold, faraway self.

  II

  SUNSET, lager, moving fast, was 250 kilometers north of Kiel, past most of the Danish islands. As day faded in t orange and violet riot, she slowed for safety’s sake. With no up-to-date charts by which to steam, she must navigate by notes Kurt and Lindemann had made while with the fishers. And those did little enough to help seamen traveling this modem strait by night. The bottom of the Kattegat had changed considerably during two centuries. Mudbanks had formed and moved. The tides and currents had shifted. And there were uncharted wrecks scattered everywhere. The Battle of the Kattegat had been a seafight to rival Lepanto in magnitude.

  The Danes, and Swedish traders at times, marked obstructions with lanterns and buoys, and all navigators kept notes much as had Kurt. Lindemann had also made a comprehensive list of the lights and buoys of the Norwegian coast, where the Danes maintained salting stations and trading posts. He had had charge of one of these, serving vessels working the Norwegian Sea, for two years.

  Kurt regretted their paths had crossed so seldom those days, for, as with Otto, young memories of his cousin made him fond of the man. Too fond. Once again, Gregor had had to remind him to
avoid over familiarity before the crew. Their relationship was rapidly growing distant and strained.

  But the lights and buoys, at the mercy of foul weather and inattention, were untrustworthy. Jager steamed slowly, with many lookouts.

  The Year of Our Lord 2193, and Jager was celebrating her 250th year. Like other ships which survived beyond their times, she was cranky. She could sail and fight, true, but with none of the vigor of her youth. Countless tens of thousands of sea miles had passed (beneath her keel, dozens of battles had been fought about her, from Iwo Jima to Anambas.

  Once, when she was young, she had been U. S. S. Co-well, and she bore the name fifty years, until Russians captured

  her aground in Cam Rahn Bay. Rechristened Potemkin, she served first in the Soviet, then in the Siberian Fleet, until Sakhalinski Zaiiv. There the Australians hauled her shell-crippled body off the Sakhalin rocks and rebuilt her into Swordftsh. Decades later, after expending all her fuel at Anambas, German sailors from Grossdeutschland took her in hand-to-hand fighting, and she became Jager, the Hunter.

  An old lady, she was proud and difficult, with her arthritis and failing organs, her bad eyes and deafening ears — but men would not let her retire. She must pass in line of battle. Her radars worked not at all, her sonar was sporadic, radio was out forever for lack of spares — although there were no technicians to make repairs, even had spares been available.

  She was cranky that night, steaming the Kattegat with her sonar and fathometer down. At midnight, while slowly crossing a sea spotted with lights like low-hanging stars — lights of fishing boats or warnings on hazards — still sounding foghorn warnings, she was betrayed. A sleepy lookout missed the death of a star.

  Kurt dreamed of Karen, and snored across memories of their courtship.

  Once again he came from the harbor, from his boat, to see Frieda, and again she was gone. A neighbor told him she was out with Otto Kapp. So he washed his face and left his bag, walked up the street toward Otto’s, mind on making two visits at once. And, while crossing the Brennerplatz, a hand caught his arm and a soft voice asked, “Kurt? Are you blind?”

  How had he missed her? he asked himself, resplendent as she was in a bright peasant dress of her mother’s weaving and her own sewing. “Karen. I’m sorry. I was daydreaming.”

  “You haven’t changed.” She smiled, meaning no criticism. “Will you come to dinner?”

  “I’m on my way to Otto’s, to see Frieda.”

  “They’ve borrowed a cart and gone for a picnic up the canal.”

  Ah, Kurt thought, the same Kiel. Everyone knows everyone’s business. But Karen had changed. The rather lanky, budding teen-ager of three years earlier had become something of a willowy beauty. “All right. What time?”

  “Now?”

  He learned of her engagement to Hans Wiedermann

  during the meal. “You don’t seem enthusiastic,” he observed.

  “Oh?” Her blond eyebrows rose questioningly.

  “No. You made a face.” And, to the side, Karen’s mother made another. Kurt then remembered she had been planning for him and Karen since before they reached their teens.

  “He’s too much his father’s son,” Karen said, and closed the subject.

  Two nights later, as he walked harborward from a third supper at Karen’s, he met Hans. Hans had little to say, merely asked if Kurt knew of his engagement. At Kurt’s affirmative reply, the smaller man started swinging. Strictly speaking, Hans won, for Kurt quickly withdrew.

  Yet, when Dancer’s fish were sold and she put to sea, Kurt was not aboard. He resisted pressure in his own way, taking his struggle to its goal, the battlefield of Karen’s mind. Two weeks later, he and Karen married. As the priest asked, “Do you, Kurt Ranke —”

  Metal screamed. Jager staggered as her sonar dome was torn away. The bhong-bhong-bhong of the collision alarm reverberated through the ship. She caught again, aft, more seriously, bucked, shuddered as screw blades chewed at the obstruction. Kurt bounced from his rack, hit another, crumpled on the cold steel deck. He woke during the fall, was out for a second after impact, then painfully regained consciousness. He struggled to a sitting position, groaned, grabbed his head. Then, with the suddenness of a startled cat, he scrambled from beneath a pair of descending feet. The compartment lights came on. Clutching one of the small overhead I-beams supporting the fantail weatherdeck, he stared down at his undershirt.

  Redness. Warm wetness. He was dumbfounded. Oh. His nose was bleeding. He snapped the shirt up and pinched his nostrils. It quickly stopped.

  The compartment grew crowded with sleepy, frightened sailors asking sleepy, frightened questions. A few panicked and scrambled up a ladder to the fantail. Here and there, unreasoning men scrounged through their lockers, seizing possessions to take when abandoning ship. The panic spread, feeding itself. Carried by it, Kurt climbed the ladder with his division. He wore a cap, but had forgotten his jumper and trousers.

  Metal screamed again. Jager groaned. Kurt tripped as he stepped through the hatch, but steadier men caught him. There was little fear on the fantail. It evaporated with freedom from tight, crowded living spaces, and as it became obvious the ship was not sinking. “Thanks, Ott. What’s happening?”

  “Hit something,” Kapp replied. “Now they’re trying to back her off.”

  “Here now, make a hole!” someone shouted. Chief Engineer Czyzewski, in his underwear, leading a Damage Control party, pushed through the crowd. “You men move forward!” the Pole bellowed, shooing them like unruly chickens. The sailors retreated, clearing the fantail, staggering as the ship again lurched.

  “Tell the bridge to stop engines!” Czyzewski thundered. “They’ll rip the hull open!”

  A man with head-surrounding sound-powered phones relayed the message. The boiling beneath the stern died.

  Someone muttered, “We’re taking water forward. The sonar dome’s gone.”

  But, before the disclosure could incite new panic, the telephone talker shouted, “Mr. Czyzewski! Ziotopolski says he’s got the patch on forward!”

  “Tell him to get it welded.”

  “We moving?” someone asked.

  Kurt sensed the slight change in the roll of the deck. Jager was free, drifting.

  “Well, Kurt,” said another voice, “what happened with those notes you’re so proud of? Looks like you sold us worthless paper.”

  Kurt gave Hans Wiedermann a poisonous stare. “It’s more likely the deck ape at the helm screwed up, not knowing right from left when a steering order was given.”

  Hans laughed bitterly, teeth glistening whitely in the glare of newly rigged emergency lights.

  Another engineering party arrived, driving the spectators farther forward. Kurt, Hans, and others who thought quickly enough scrambled up a ladder to front-row seats atop the aftmost gunmount. Difficult seats. Dead in the water, Jager was unable to keep her bows to the swells. She slowly turned parallel to them and began rolling. The back and forth was hard on some stomachs.

  “My, Hans,” Kurt said maliciously, “you look green. How’11 you feel when we hit real waves? Be like Mr. Obermeyer?” Obermeyer was First Lieutenant, Hans’s division officer, and had been confined by seasickness to quarters almost constantly since Jager had cast off mooring lines at Kiel. Hans had been carrying the man’s workload for him and, though he kept it well hidden, Kurt had begun to see in him a quiet bitterness at not having been given Obermeyer’s billet in the first place. Hans, Kurt decided, was a greener-grass man, always disgruntled by not being one step beyond his attainments. In fact, he recalled, he had felt some of the same distress on discovering that Gregor, with less sea experience, had been chosen navigator over himself.

  He decided the engineers would manage quite well without his kibitzing, so scrambled down from the gunmount and returned to his compartment, to his rack where, in sleep, the throbbing pain in his nose might gradually fade.

  He had hardly fallen asleep when Hans shook his rack. “Out, smart boy. Mr.
Lindemann wants you in the wardroom, with your charts.”

  Kurt opened one sleepy blue eye and stared, daring Hans to be lying. He was not. His sadistic little smile proved it. Kurt reached out and mussed his curly black hair. “Yes, dear.”

  The smile vanished. Hans lifted a fist waist-high, dropped it. “Five minutes. In the wardroom.” He stalked away rigidly.

  Sighing, Kurt rolled out and pulled on a dress uniform, considered shaving, decided against it — no time. After quickly combing his hair, he hurried forward to the charthouse and bridge.

  He reached the wardroom a minute past his five, found Hans glumly waiting in the passage outside. Kurt studied his dark features closely. Nothing. He knocked on the wardroom door. It opened and he entered. Hans did not. Kurt felt mildly frightened on seeing he was the only enlisted man present.

  Commander Haber met him a step inside. The Executive Officer’s brownish-blond hair was disarrayed, his uniform was tacky. Unusual. He was fussy about his appearance. And he was more nervous than usual, Kurt saw. His thin hands quaked.

  Beck was there, cold as ever and angry red. Had there been a scene?

  “Come in, Ranke. Take the seat beside Mr. Lindemann. We’ve a few questions for you.” Haber paused while Kurt seated himself. “To sum up, we’ve been discussing our loss of the port screw and sonar. The latter we can do without. It was touchy at best. The screw, though...”

  “No hope, sir?” He felt pain each time he called Haber “sir.” Haber was another old friend who had become distant since Kurt had joined Jager’s crew. Once the man had been almost a second father, when courting his mother. Everyone seemed drifting away, leaving him out of their lives.

  “None. Mr. Czyzewski says it’s bent dangerously. We’ll warp the drive shaft if it’s used. It tangled with the masthead of a wreck. The light on the warning buoy had gone out.

  “Now we’ve a decision to make, to go on or to turn back. If we do continue, we’ll be crippled. If we return to Kiel for repairs, we may not reach Gibraltar in time for the Gathering. We’d like to go on, if possible.” Haber paused briefly, touched the thin line of his mustache with shaky fingers while glancing toward Beck, watchful in a comer. Kurt had the feeling Haber’s last words were for Beck alone, that Beck was the only man there who actually wanted to go on. “You’re here, Ranke, because you know Danish waters better than anyone else. How likely is it that we’ll encounter more of this sort of trouble?”