The Heirs of Babylon

by Glen Cook

  X

  IT was a terrible dream. He was in Norway, with Karen, running through the mountains of Telemark, fleeing, their limbs moving with dream-slowness, hand in hand, terror close behind them. Karen’s hair floated behind her like wind-blown pennons of thread-of-gold, like hair teased out in underwater currents.

  Wolf-howls, close. Behind them were black wolves with silver collars, with silver death’s-head eyes, dark wolves, hungry wolves, drawing closer as their prey ran with floating steps. One gray wolf with little form and no head ran before the pack.

  He did not understand. He asked Karen, “Why? Why?” He looked at her, and her young, fresh face changed, became that of his own mother buried these many years, corrupt.... He shrank away moaning.

  She cackled madly and said, “Because.” There never was a better reason. They fled the hungry wolves, knowing there was no escape. A malignant god would not permit it. He screamed as rank wolf-breath seared the back of his neck... and woke up shouting incoherently.

  Then a hand covered his mouth and another seized his shoulder, held him down. ‘Take it easy, Kurt!” someone growled in his ear.

  Kurt jerked free of the controlling grasp, eyes wide with terror. The^man who had awakened him was a shadowy figure beside his rack. He shrank against the metal partition at the rear of his bunk, his mind painting the shadow-figure with the pale face, cold eyes, and dark uniform of a Political Officer.

  “Kurt! Come on! Snap out of it!”

  Recognition at last, and a vast feeling of relief. “Oh. Hans. I’m sorry. Nightmare.”

  Somewhere nearby, someone muttered sleepily, “For chrissakes-shaddup-willya?”

  “My fault, maybe”, Hans whispered. “Come on. Get up.” Still shaking, Kurt asked, “What’s up?”

  “I’m not sure. They woke me and told me to get you. Deckinger on the quarterdeck said a group came over from High Command.”

  Kurt sat up on the edge of his rack, rubbed his temples. “Feels like a hangover, I’m so fuzzy. But I didn’t drink anything.” What time is it?”

  “About three.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Come on. Will you hurry?”

  Kurt dropped to the cold steel deck, slipped into the rumpled uniform he had worn the day before, and pulled his cap on over uncombed hair. “All right, let’s go.” They climbed the ladder to the lighted passageway above. “You look like hell!” said Hans. “Tough. That’s what they get for hauling me out at this time of night.”

  “Hostile this morning, aren’t you? Where’re you going now?”

  “Mess decks. I need some coffee.” He was still a little fuzzy, and the adrenalin in his system did not help. Exasperated, Hans started to growl something. Kurt growled first. “You could use a cup too. They’ll live without us for a couple minutes. Hell. Why don’t we take a pot and cups down with us?”

  “Good enough.” They went to the mess decks. Kurt drew the coffee while Hans found cups. Then they walked forward, to the wardroom.

  “Ah!” said the Captain as they entered. Kurt immediately sensed the tension in the room. Von Lappus was putting on his jolly old Father Christmas act, but it was doing little to conceal the tired, put-upon bureaucrat he was. “You see the resourcefulness of our ratings?”

  Kurt glanced at the man for whom the words were intended, a Political Officer at least eighty years old. The old man stared back, his gaze a sword of ice.

  “Over here,” said Commander Haber, indicating chairs at the end of the table. Kurt now counted five Political Officers, an unusually large gathering. He also noted, as he set the coffee pot on the table and took his seat, that they seemed ordered according to importance. The ancient on the right was obviously senior. Beck sat at his left, then the other three, all still in their teens, without the iciness of their elders (they seemed a little awed and frightened, as if in an unexpected situation), but trying to match it. A pity youth should be so warped....

  “Kurt Ranke,” the Captain said, making the introductions, “Leading Quartermaster. Hans Wiedennann, Leading Boatswain.” He did not add that Hans was by now virtual master of Deck Department, that Mr. Obermeyer had been relieved of the First Lieutenant’s duties because of his incompetence. Hans, Kurt felt, was now secretly bitter because no formal commission had come with the informal investiture of those duties. “Fill them in. Commander.”

  Haber coughed behind a shaky thin hand, said, “High Command has sent out an emergency directive. The fleet will get underway at dawn.” Hans’s eyebrows rose. Kurt found he was not at all surprised. High Command would want the fleet too busy to think about yesterday. But Haber... The man’s shakiness had increased to the point where he had difficulty holding a pen, and his uniform looked as though it had gone unchanged for days. The stresses must be overwhelming, Kurt thought.

  “The three younger gentlemen,” Haber continued, “will be working in Operations. They’re to handle signal traffic between ships....” Cunning, Kurt thought. Rebellions would remain localized if the Political Office controlled communications. He wondered what else they were to do. A little spying?

  Haber spoke on. “We’ve been given charts for the Mediterranean with our track laid out. Ranke, you’re to get with Mr. Czyzewski and determine anticipated fuel consumption. We’re lower than we should be. We may have to refuel underway. Make it during the stop at Malta, if you can....”

  Kurt stopped listening. He knew he could catch up later. Beck and the old Political Officer were more interesting. They were speaking English, softly, unaware they were being overheard.

  “What’s that dunderhead spouting off about?” the old one asked. “Just explaining about pulling out,” Beck replied.

  “Light a fire under them, will you? Sooner we’re done, the sooner I can get home and get some sleep. We wouldn’t be here if someone had passed on fleet reports off those Spaniards.”

  “Or if the Milhouse faction hadn’t gotten the upper hand,” Beck whispered back. His throat still bothered him some. “We need more people with common sense, and fewer idealists. If only that woman had seen what blocking the report would cost. She didn’t want anyone hurt, she told the interrogators. And now we’ve got five hundred casualties aboard Purpose. Someone’ll get hurt. Her. Milhouse’s throwing her to the wolves.”

  “Trying to save his own hide, eh?”

  “Indeed. But too late. Purpose’s half a wreck and the General Staff’s asking how the Political Office let it happen. Heads will roll. Milhouse’s whole lot, if we play it right.”

  Kurt fought to keep expressions from racing across his face. He was hearing the internal problems of the Political Office, at which Beck had hinted. The old man, he assumed, was a leader of that faction favoring extermination of the underground. He certainly seemed pleased that a less savage viewpoint had failed.

  Kurt’s ears almost pricked up. The subject had changed. He listened intently.

  “Did Milhouse decide what to do about those pilots?” Beck asked. “All the way to the opposite extreme. He’s having them shot. Another mistake that’ll help topple him. He lost six planes and sank only one ship, then talked too much — got angry — when the others came back. We’ll soon have a new chief. Our own man.”

  “Yourself, sir?”

  “Myself, Garfield, any of several others. Anybody, as long as there’s a change in policy. The Office’s falling

  apart under these idealists.” Beck shrugged. “If he won’t die, and he won’t step down?”

  “I think, after yesterday, the General Staff will insist. They’re interested in results, not methods, and the Milhouse system’s a disaster. We’ll be out of contact with Bermuda and Corregidor for at least six months, until they cobble together new radio masts. Oh, for God’s sake man, will you shut that fellow up? I can’t listen to these idiots all night.” He rose.

  Kurt kept his eyes carefully glued to Commander Haber, wondered who or what Bermuda and Corregidor were. People or places? Corregidor sounded vaguely familiar, though
he could not place it. Had he read it somewhere? He also wondered about the pilots. What had this Milhouse person let slip? Certainly something important, if he was willing to shoot trained flyers to keep it quiet. Kurt grew more and more curious — and suddenly wished he had avoided all this by going to Telemark with Karen.

  “Ranke?” He looked up hurriedly. “Sorry, sir. Sleepy.” Haber ignored the excuse. “You and Mr. Lindemann get started. You’ll have to be ready by sunrise.” He glanced at the departing Political Officers, then at the clock on the bulkhead near the door. “That’s not much time.”

  Kurt nodded and rose. He was glad to leave. More than enough questions were bothering him already. Gregor followed him from the wardroom.

  “Now, Wiedermann, Deck has to...” Haber’s voice faded behind them.

  The door to the charthouse slammed shut. Gregor visibly relaxed. “I never thought there’d be a man creepier than Beck. But that old one...” He shook his head.

  “Yes,” Kurt replied. “So what’re we supposed to do? I didn’t understand all that about getting ready.” More, he did not want to open the safe to get his gear. He was painfully aware of that dangerous book....

  “It was nothing.” Gregor rubbed his temples, then rolled his head in a circle. “Just talk-talk so the Political Officers think we’re doing something. We might as well crap out. I’ll match you for the table.”

  “All right.” Kurt took coins from a drawer, gave one to Gregor, nipped the other, held it against his wrist. Lindemann did the same, said, “Heads.”

  “Tails. You lose.” Kurt crawled onto the table and stretched out on his back. He stared at the ceiling awhile, finally forced himself to ask, “Gregor, what’d you do in Norway?”

  “Ran a salting station. You know the type.” He sounded displeased.

  “What else? How’d you get involved with Kari Franck and the Telemark people?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Gregor, Gregor, this’s me, Kurt Ranke. Family. Do you have to lie to me?”

  Lindemann seemed momentarily distressed. “Why do you spend so much time with Beck? Why’re you withdrawn and uncommitted? You take no stands.”

  This was Gregor’s reasoning? Kurt thought a painful moment. He did not like exposing his soul, putting his beliefs out as targets for any sharp-tongued marksman. “Beck’s a man, whatever else. My conscience wouldn’t let me shun him, or love him, to satisfy his or your politics.” He paused for more than a minute then, carefully, formally ordering his next words. “I am tolerance, I am moderation, I am the cautious man who weighs rights and wrongs before jumping into causes. Here I see no causes with rights.” High-sounding stuff, he suspected, but when were moral issues depictably mundane? “There’re more wrongs than rights in High Command, it’s true, yet there’s a right outweighing the others. High Command is a force binding the West, preventing the fall to bickering feudalism....”

  “An evil force!” Gregor’s exclamation sounded fanatical.

  “A force aimed in the wrong direction, but the one real power with a real means of dealing with real problems. From what I’ve learned of your party, it’s bound down the bloody-damnation road of most fanatic revolutions.”

  “What?” Now he was growing irritated.

  “The use of any means to an end is what I mean. You want High Command broken — even if the rest of the world has to tumble down with it. If you’d really known anything about High Command, you’d’ve realized you were better off as a force-in-being, ready to move in if they failed. You’d’ve known liberal forces were moving there, powers that may’ve favored your own objectives. Yesterday you killed them. You cunningly planned — your real enemies let you — and, as you thought you were winning physical and moral victories, you bought defeat. The liberals were discredited. The hard-liners take over tomorrow, or soon, with the avowed intention of exterminating you. And they’ll probably manage. They know the places and names, and have their agents in havens like Telemark.”

  (Here Kurt experienced a moment of fear. What if High Command mounted an operation against Telemark? What would become of Karen?)

  When Gregor gasped, Kurt rolled onto his side and looked down. His cousin, seated on the floor, was deathly pale, was beating his temples with his fists. Kurt had never seen him so bad.

  “Was it a game, Gregor? If you thought so, open your eyes. You’ve lost a pawn already. How’U I tell Frieda about Otto?”

  “I know!” It was almost a moan. “How do you know all this, Kurt? How do you knowT’

  “A mutual acquaintance, a crippled old weaver of webs, taught me English, which is the language of High Command. I eavesdropped on Beck and his superior, reasoned from what I already knew. They play no games, Gregor. It’s a deadly-serious business for them, and they’re watching you. You and Hippke. And your nemesis won’t be Beck himself, but the one called Marquis, who might have killed Otto.”

  “Marquis, yes,” Lindemann said softly. “Well, we have our unknown men, then, he his Marquis, me my Brindled Saxon.”

  “Brindled Saxon?”

  Lindemann shrugged, forced a weak smile against the pain of his headache. “Do you talk this frankly with Beck?”

  Kurt shook his head. “I talk to you now only because you’re my cousin. I don’t favor you. You’ve shut me out of your life, and I think it’s just as well. All I really want is to be left in peace.” He rolled onto his back again, closed his eyes and swore he would hear nothing more. But Gregor remained silent. Kurt fell asleep with his brain re-echoing all the high wonderful phrases he had meant as much for himself as for Gregor.

  A knock at the door, not much later, woke them. Both bounced up and tried to put on wakefulness. Kurt scattered papers on the chart table to give it a workaday appearance. “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “Executive Officer. You ready?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Get some breakfast. We’ll be starting soon.” Haber’s feet clunked on the ladder outside as he climbed to the bridge.

  “Get squared away while you’re at it,” Gregor said. Kurt’s uniform was rumpled and his cheeks were covered with blond stubble. Lindemann avoided his eyes.

  Kurt left when he heard the bridge door clang shut. He breakfasted, showered, shaved, got into a fresh uniform, and returned in time for Sea Detail, which was piped late. It need never have been. Beck, working on the signal bridge with his three young underlings, despite his incapacity, passed down the word that Jager had to wait until all the vessels to seaward had gotten underway.

  Von Lappus secured Sea Detail and ordered holiday routine. Kurt took the opportunity to go for a cup of coffee.

  He had been sitting in the mess decks fifteen minutes, brooding about Karen, High Command, pilots to be shot, and what was the need of it all, when Erich arrived.

  “Got a minute, Kurt?”

  “Got all the time in the world, Erich. All the time in the world. Got a year till my dying.”

  “Hey! Why so glum?”

  “Nothing, really. Just thinking about Karen.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know her well. Pretty, though.” He looked around. “What do you think of Beck now?”

  Kurt shrugged. “He’s alive and looking for trouble,” said Erich. “He might have more luck than before.”

  “Only good one’s a dead one, eh?”

  “You might say. I wanted to ask you what happened yesterday. You were over. What was the fuss?”

  Kurt wondered how much he dared tell. Why not the truth? He would get it from Gregor anyway. “Some ships tried to go home.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.” Hippke was elaborately unconcerned.

  “High Command sank them.”

  Hippke’s eyebrows rose, his face paled the slightest. “How’d it happen?”

  Kurt described what he had seen from high on the Rock.

  “Kurt, you ever feel High Command’s evil? Like the Devil runs it, or something?” Hippke’s voice was lower, cautious.

  “I
doubt it. Evil’s a matter of viewpoint, of what side you’re on. We’re probably black-hearted villains to Australians.”

  “No. I mean... I guess so. High Command probably believes in what it’s doing. But the world would be better off without it.”

  “Maybe, Erich. But the job’s to stay alive. Dead men make no changes.”

  “You think there’re changes needed?”

  “Some. Maybe a new direction for High Command.”

  “A new direction? Sounds like a good slogan. Kurt, did you ever think about what you could do?”

  In a rare flash of insight, Kurt saw what Erich was after, read his future words, and retorted, “There’s no point trying to recruit me. I can’t see anything your group has to offer.” This was true enough, yet Kurt was unable to analyze the emotions founding his statement. Fear for Karen was there, fear for himself, belief that High Command was the only stabilizing power in the West, knowledge of the corruptness of historical revolutions, a love for his country and peace which wanted no rebellious devastion there. Yes, the War needed ending, but not at the cost Gregor and Erich thought needed paying. “Can it! Beck!”

  Kurt looked up. Beck had come in, was surveying the mess hall. This was his first day afoot. He leaned on a table for support. The place grew silent. Only Beck could have had that effect.

  The Political Officer walked the length of the mess decks, nodded to Kurt, and drew himself a cup of coffee. He took a seat to one side, alone.

  The mess decks soon emptied themselves. Kurt departed, wondering what it was like to have people leave when one entered a room. Did it bother Beck? Did it give him a feeling of power? He had never probed the matter in his meetings with the man.

  Outside, as they moved to a lazing place on the fantail, Erich asked, “How much longer do you think he’ll last?”

  “What?”

  “Beck. How long before someone gets him?”

  Kurt stopped. “Erich! Be careful what you say — and who you say it to. Beck’s looking for an excuse to hang you. Be careful around those kids, too. They’re not supposed to speak German, but don’t bet on it. Not your life.”