by Ahern, Jerry
His rifle held easily in his left hand, in his right hand dm was inside his pocket he held his father’s lighter as he said, “Once we step off the base we’re no longer under the protection of New Germany. According to that asshole Dodd, Natalia’s wanted. That means we’re her accomplices, if I understand that sort of thing correctly. So, it’s likely anyone who’s in league with Dodd will have orders to shoot us on sight, as criminals.
“Once the election takes place and Akiro is installed in office,” Michael Rourke went on, “well have the Eden government on our side. But, until that time, we’ll technically be criminals. Assuming those were some of his neo-Nazi pals who did the actual dirty work, we’ll have them to contend with them, too. Dodd will know that the first place well come is after him.
“So, let’s not disappoint him.” Michael concluded.
“Will we need anything from the Retreat, Michael? I mean, eventually they’ll just blow the doors off if they have to, won’t they?”
“Annie’s right, Michael,” Paul nodded. “Now or never for the Retreat.”
Michael looked at Natalia again and smiled. “They’ll have to work at getting inside, but I agree that they will penetrate the main entrance. We can use one of the escape tunnels to get in or out until they do. If there were the time, yeah, I’d say go in, take what we need, then destroy the rest so Dodd can’t get his hands on anything, but there isn’t the time to do that and find the baby.
“Priorities,” Michael added.
“Agreed,” Natalia said. “Anything we might need, the Germans can make for us.”
Michael Rourke looked toward the fence. They were going to cut it (with the full knowledge and permission of Colonel Mann) in order to exit the facility, knowing that Dodd would have the entrances to the base watched for their exit.
There were irreplacable family photos at the Retreat, but
i memories were more than physical objects could ever be, and I this was what his father and mother would want them to do, find the baby.
And that was what they would do, or die in the attempt…
Natalia slipped out of her backpack, drew the Bali-Song from the pocket of her jumpsuit, then looked at Michael Rourke. How much like his father he was, she thought.
He was already out of his pack, a Gregory, like his father wore at times.
And he nodded toward her.
Together, they started along the edge of Eden Base, leaving Annie and Paul and Bjorn and his dog, ready to cover their exit if it came to that.
She reminded herself that most of the citizens of Eden would not know what to think. They had been told Dodd’s lies, that somehow she was responsible for the fire at the hospital, the deaths of seventeen patients outside the building, the death of Lieutenant Larrimore and her newborn baby and two night dun nurses inside, and the near deaths of John and Sarah.
And, she knew the story Dodd would tell, that finally she couldn’t take it any longer, her jealousy so intense that she lost her mind (after all, she had recently had a nervous breakdown, hadn’t she?) and she did all of this in order to get John for herself and Sarah out of the way, unaware that John was nearby and would himself be perhaps fatally injured.
The bullet that was buried in Sarah’s brain would doubdessly be a 9mm Browning Short, otherwise known as .380 ACP. It would not have been difficult to find a Walther PP series pistol at New Germany, so many of the people who lived there, possessing firearms from the World War Two period, which had been carried by their ancestors, and the museum at New Germany featured an extensive arms collection, from both prior World Wars and the post-War period.
It was good to have friends, who trusted and could be trusted.
As she and Michael dropped into concealment beside a massive piece of earthmoving equipment, she whispered to Michael, “Thank you.”
“For what, Natalia?”
“Believing in me. It never crossed your mind once that I might be lying, that Dodd might be right, did it?”
“No. It never did.” And his bare right hand closed over her gloved right hand. “Let’s go.”
They were up and moving again, Michael in the lead. And that seemed very natural.
After navigating a deep, partially dug out ditch where sewer piping was to be placed, they paused behind several sections of the pipe, Natalia looking to right and left, searching for some sign that they had been observed.
There was no such sign.
She carried the Bali-Song locked closed, mtending to use it only as a striking instrument unless circumstances were forced otherwise. These people of Eden might believe Dodd, but stupidity was not an adequate reason for killing.
And she suddenly wondered. What if Dodd were able to somehow turn this situation so to his advantage that he defeated Akiro Kurinami for President of Eden?
People could not be that stupid.
To vote in a free election and determine the fate of a nation was a responsibility and a privilege, and she could not fathom people misusing this wonderful gift, this freedom.
They were moving again, Michael’s four-inch barreled Model 629 .44 Magnum in his right hand, ready for use as a bludgeon if need be.
They reached the far edge of the solitary street which traversed Eden end to end. To her right, the still smoldering ruins of the hospital, and the sight sickened her.
Inside those ruins were human remains, of people who were not victims of war or anything so involved as that, simply
murdered because a man lusted for power.
To the left stretched the street, some considerable distance away a few lights from some of the tents, the shell for the permanent structures well beyond still, not visible from here.
Michael started moving again, and Natalia Timerovna ran beside him.
Five
Her knees were tucked nearly to her chin, and she sat stock still, her skirt pulled down as far as she could get it, against the bone chilling cold of the night.
Annie Rourke Rubenstein felt her father’s mind.
She sensed horror, outrage, anguish, despair.
And she felt this, too.
Paul had been talking a lot lately about a baby, and she wanted Paul’s baby very badly. But now-She exhaled, steam rising from her breath despite the scarf tied loosely over her mouth against the chill.
Despair, despair over a bright future dashed to darkness and ashes.
She wanted to ask God why it was that after all her mother and rather had endured, the Night of the War, the wandering in search of each other, the dangers, why couldn’t they now have some little time of happiness?
Instead of something that was worse than death.
The chances were very poor, Doctor Munchen had said, that anything would be able to be done for either of them. They would be placed in cryogenic sleep (risky in itself under the circumstances) and kept on the edge of life until, in some future time, something might possibly be done for her mother and (even more doubtful) for her father if he showed signs of emerging from the coma.
There was a limit beyond which people could endure. Natalia reached that limit and snapped, only because of her inner strength being able to survive it at all and return even
stronger.
Someday, that limit would be reached for Michael, for Paul and for herself.
It was her father having reached that limit and not ever knowing it which had brought this about, thrown him so deeply into himself that he could not be revived.
Maybe the German and Mid-Wake doctors and the Russian specialist would be able to do something, find some miracle.
But niiracles were not the province of men.
And what of the baby? Her brother? Assuming they found the child alive, she and Paul would raise him, of course, one day tell him about his real parents, teach him-Tears began to flow from her eyes and her nose began to run and she pulled away the scarf, searched for a handkerchief.
But Paul knelt beside her. handed her his handkerchief, and folded her into his arms very tighdy �
�
Dodd »as ax in his ent. That was clear without even entering it. because there were no guards.
“Where could he be^” Natalia whispered.
Michael Rourke looked along the street, past the new construction, toward the soft white shapes in the far distance. “There:
The Eden Project Shutde Fleet.
“Akiro said Dodds taken over one of the shuttles as his administrative headquarters, closed the cargo bays, had the interior changed around. He’s there. Waiting for us.”
Natalia, her face visible in the starlight, a sparkle in her very pretty eyes, said, “Then at least we do not have to worry about who we have to kill, do we?”
Michael Rourke didn’t disagree …
It was as if they’d been gone forever, but on the other hand it seemed as though they hadn’t been gone at all. Annie Ru
benstein welcomed the distraction from her thoughts, from her involvement with her father’s mind. Reaching him was impossible, but she could still ‘read’ his feelings. Confusion, anger, a sense of being lost.
Quickly, Michael and Natalia briefed them concerning where Dodd was not and logically had to be.
Then, as quickly as they could, they moved out, Bjom and his dog moving just ahead of them because Hrothgar might sense a trap, humans would not.
After more than twenty minutes of trudging through the snow drifts, they rested, Annie sinking down beside her husband in a cluster of low rocks, keeping her head down. She took the opportunity to re-tie the scarf that was over her bead against the cold, then made a last minute check of her weapons.
Anyone inside the shuttle with Commander Dodd would be fair game, except Dodd himself. He had to be taken alive.
And, although no one had said anything, there was the very real possibility that the baby would be there.
Both the necessity of keeping Dodd alive and the possibility that the baby might be there precluded going in shooting. She had worked over the computers aboard the shuttle fleet, knew the typical shuttle layout very well, as did her husband, her brother and Natalia.
Bjorn did not, but Bjorn and his dog would remain outside, to cover them, alert them to more of a trap than they already expected. Attacking the craft would be a tactical nightmare.
Annie was getting tired of nightmares …
Deitrich Zimmer looked down at the baby.
It was asleep in a packing crate cradle.
There were ample supplies of baby formula among the Eden stores and, basic creatures that they are, the baby was easily enough calmed.
With this baby, he could rule the world.
Zirnmer’s academic background lay in genetic surgery.
However important environment was, the genetic stamp was the key. Environment could not mold what was not there. Yet, with the proper environment, and judicious tampering with certain genes, the base material, the raw clay, could become something extraordinary-beneath the hands of the proper sculptor.
And he was such a man.
This child, so physically perfect, the offspring of a man he had never seen except in a moment of violence, of a woman he had shot in the head, this child had locked within it, a potential that was extraordinary.
The tendencies toward such things as academic brilliance, athletic sirperiority, creativity, inventiveness, all these were inherited, to be capitalized upon or suppressed within a given environment
His attempts to improve upon nature were what drew him into the Leader inner circle, what made him realize that there truly was such a thing as racial superiority.
But even that could be improved upon, and a race of true supermen created, not men who merely professed to be so.
With this child, that race would be born, would spread its seed over the planet would bring about an age like none in history, would someday spread its seed among the stars and eclipse the glory of this mystical force, the weak called their God …
He pushed back the hood of his parka, despite the ski-toque he wore, his head cold in the night air.
During the brief period of peace while he had tried to determine what he would do with his life, Michael Rourke spent much of the time in New Germany, trying to convince himself that Maria should be bis wife.
At last he asked her, then in nearly the same breath he walked away from her.
It was being a cad, to use an old word he’d heard first ■ one of the videotapes at the Retreat, had to look up in one of the dictionaries in order to ascertain its meaning, at that age been shocked at the implication.
He was certain Maria was not pregnant (her menstrual cycle had just begun), so he wasn’t being as rotten as that. Had she been pregnant with his child, he would certainly have kept his peace, said nothing, taken her as his wife.
But he had known real love, and although for a time, wbes there had been an absence of violence, he had convinced hia> self that he could setde for less.
Here, on the edge of life or death again, he realized it was better to have the real thing or nothing at all.
He looked down at the M-16 in his gloved hands. The cah-ber-5.56mm-was vasdy less than ideal, but he had settled for the rifle out of convenience; he would have preferred something better.
There was no comparison, really between an inanimate object and a human being, but the principle was the same. Maria was as fine a woman as a man could hope to meet, loving and, sometimes it seemed, devoted beyond credulity. To ha*e stayed with her would have been cheating her even more thai-cheating himself, because she desired the same fervor in return.
Beside him, Natalia asked, “What are you thinking about. Michael?” He looked at her. “My rifle.” She nodded approval at that.
And, he wondered, wondered if something that had touched at his consciousness fleetingly before, something he had shoved from his thoughts, was partially at work within him “My favorite rifle, before the Night of The War was the Heckler & Koch, the G-3 or the 91, the semi-, it didn’t really matter which. One rarely uses a rifle in the full-auto mode if one’s a decent marksman.”
“Yes.”
“So, the battle rifle or the sporting rifle, to me it was much the same. A solid cartridge in a solid action. I had a G-3 with a scope on it, once, and it was the most accurate rifle Td ever used. John likes his bolt action, which is fine-” And her voice caught.
Michael looked at her, told her, “My father will survive this. He’s that way. Sometimes I think he’s immortal.”
Natalia laughed softly. “No. He’s very mortal. For a time, I thought he was not, and then I realized he had to be, or I could not have loved him in the way that I did.”
“What are you going to do, now, I mean?”
“Live for the moment, Michael.”
“How do you see me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you still see me as a kid? Like I was when we first met? You know, chronologically, Fm a year older than you are, even though I was born almost two decades later.”
“Try explaining that to someone,” and she laughed softly again. “1 don’t see you as a little boy. I don’t think 1 did even then, although you were one. When I learned what you did the morning after the Night of the War, to save Sarah from those people who attacked your farm, I realized this was a man inside a boy’s body and the body merely had to catch up. But you are not your father.”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you read much tragedy, Michael?”
“Shakespeare, the Greeks, yes.”
They waited, just the two of them, because they had split into two units for better fire and maneuver function, and waited about two hundred yards from the shuttle, its lights yellow glowing against the palpable icy blackness, there beneath the stars. The shuttle, white, was matte-finished against the shimmering whiteness of the snow.
“The principal character in a tragedy always has a fatal flaw, like MacBeth’s ambition. Your fathers flaw is his perfection. He is beyond human. Or is it just that after all this time I
; never understood him.”
He was grateful she used Is’ rather than ‘was’ in reference ID his father. “Dad’s human,” Michael laughed, shaking his head, the smile staying after the laugh went. “He’s as uncertain as anybody, but he never shows it. I know I’m not my father. Fm part of each of them, mom and dad, and Fm both and neaher of them. Annie’s that way, too. She’s mom and she’s dad and she’s both of them at once and neither one of them at all because she’s herself.” And then he said something he had not planned to say at all. “Until my father’s back, you remember something, Natalia; you remember that you are not alone. Fm not my father, but Fll protect you just as he would have done*
And she looked hard at him. It was odd watching her eyes. He could not see their surreal blueness, but only a mercins darkness against the white of her flesh, precious litde of that visible beneath the black silk scarf which swathed her lower face, an identical scarf bound over her head and hair, leaving only a wedge of her face visible where one scarf stopped and the other began.
“I don’t think of you as a litde boy,” she told him, pushing back her hood now.
Michael said nothing.
He shifted his gaze toward the approximate position where Annie and Paul should be. After a moment, he saw a flash of red light, no more than a pencil thin pinpoint. It was Annie’s Taurus Pt-92 with the laser sight. She carried the gun as a special purpose weapon, and had used it when she and Natalia had defended the Retreat against another group of neo-Nazis.
Michael made his own signal, using the mini-Mag-Lite from his jacket pocket. There was an answering flash of red.
He looked at Natalia now. “It’s up to us.”
“Fm with you.”
Michael nodded, partially unzipping his German arctic parka, drawing out the Beretta 92F pistols from the double shoulder holster he wore beneath it, removing the fifteen-round magazines from first one then the other pistol, inserting
twenty-round 93R magazines in their stead after first striking the spine of each magazine against the palm of his hand to make certain the 115-grain 9mm jacketed hollow points were seated as they should be.
