THE TIDES OF TIME

by John Brunner

  “What?” Graumann was instantly affronted.

  “Well, after our success in Crete, he might be tempted to imitate our example, in which case shore defenses—”

  “We have air superiority throughout this region! Not a chance!” Graumann turned to the bosun. “I notice a shack on that beach, and what looks like a vegetable patch. That implies a larger community nearby, and from the map I deduce it’s on the eastern shore. Send a signal to say that’s where we’re making for. We’ll land, and give the locals a chance to get acquainted with their new masters.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the bosun grunted, and called for half ahead. As the diesels resumed their former pace, Graumann turned back to the ship’s commander.

  “It must be a remarkable experience, Herr Leutnant, to arrive as the rightful conqueror of a decadent folk, which is what we are about to do. Prepare to lodge in memory what may well be a unique event for both of us. The rate at which the Reich is expanding implies that it will not often be repeated, and certainly not beyond our own lifetimes, unless in outer space. Don’t you agree?”

  “Evgenos! Evgenos! Wake up!”

  The folk of Oragalia resented the dark-skinned stranger, because the adopted daughter of the island’s richest family had chosen him in preference to any of her other suitors, rejecting her old comfortable life for an existence like the humblest peasants’, with a shack for shelter, a cave to store their few tools and provisions such as flour, oil and dried fish, and a tiny patch of salty ground to scratch their living from. The men of the island, particularly her foster father, had had other plans for her. However, because when Greece was invaded so many of the fit young men had been summoned to die in places with unfamiliar names, the boat owners had lately begun to call on Evgenos for help by night… and pay him well. Strong arms for hauling in the net lines were too valuable to waste. This morning he had gone to sleep at cockcrow. Now here he was being roused, it seemed, almost before he had dozed off.

  Cursing, he opened his eyes, and discovered that it was in fact broad daylight. Under the slanting roof of the hut he had constructed out of scrap and flotsam when challenged to prove he could support her, Anastasia was shaking him by the shoulders.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded, sitting up on the rough pallet. He had been so exhausted when he came home, he had lain down in all his clothes except his boots.

  “A warship has arrived off the port, a German warship twice as big as Kaloyiannis’s caïque! They’ve sent a landing party. They have rifles and machine guns. Everybody has been told to assemble in the square at noon!”

  Completely alert now, Evgenos scrambled to his feet, rubbing his eyes, judging the time as late morning by the angle of the shadows beyond the unsquare door. “Have you seen the ship yourself?” he demanded.

  “No, Xanthe came to warn me”—meaning her foster sister, whose husband had reported to his army unit months ago and not been heard from since, and with whom she had contrived to get back on good terms despite the resentment of the rest of the family which had taken her in when she was orphaned. “But it’s fearful news! I’m scared!”

  “Haven’t we been expecting something of the kind ever since the fall of Crete? And it could have been worse. We might have been shelled, or bombed from the air.”

  “How can you talk like that?” Anastasia cried.

  “Because it’s no good talking any other way. Besides, there can’t be much here that they want. This is a very poor island compared with some.”

  She hesitated, eyes downcast.

  “They might want our land,” she said at length.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My uncle says this bay could make a strongpoint. He says our own army should have fortified it. You’ve heard him go on about it often enough, haven’t you?”

  “Oh, him!” Her uncle-by-courtesy Rhodakis was their ex-policeman, called out of retirement when his successor was ordered to rejoin his regiment, given to holding forth on subjects he knew next to nothing about. “In that case, we certainly would have been bombed and shelled! Get me a drink of water, please, and something to quiet my belly. It’s rumbling so much I can’t hear myself think.”

  Silently she brought the water, in a large, sand-scratched, but still sound glass preserving jar which they had found when digging land for their scanty crops, and a crust of bread moistened with olive oil. Watching as he ate, she ventured, “We should hurry if we’re to be in the square by noon.”

  “Go on ahead. And don’t look for me there.”

  “But everybody has to—”

  “What everybody has to do,” he interrupted, “is find out what their plans are, and lay plans of our own to frustrate them!”

  “Evgenos, you mustn’t say such things!”

  “Your government’s been beaten! All right! Do your people want it to stay beaten forever? There are still other countries fighting against the Germans. The war isn’t over by a long way!”

  “It is for us!”

  “For your spineless family, maybe. Not for me!”

  “But even if you hide, they’re bound to catch you, and then they’ll punish you, and—what will become of me?”

  Turning to set aside the empty cup, he shrugged. “Would you really have preferred someone who refuses to stand up against foreign invaders? You could have had your pick of men like that. But you chose me.”

  She caught his hand, gazing straight into his eyes. “I know,” she said. “And you chose me. But it’s no longer a matter of just you and me.”

  For a second he didn’t grasp her meaning. Then his face fell. Realizing he had caught on, she nodded gravely.

  “It’s certain now. I’m carrying your child.”

  There was a moment of silence. At last, his expression grim, he said, “All the more reason to resist. Do you want him to grow up in a world where he’ll be taught that he’s no better than an animal? That’s what the Nazis will say, you know. They’ll treat him like a mongrel dog.”

  “But what can we possibly do against soldiers with machine guns, let alone a warship?”

  “Something! Even if it’s only making sure they never have a sound night’s rest as long as they’re here. Now run along to the village. If anyone asks where I am, say you don’t know—say I couldn’t sleep and went out early, or anything. But remember what I said: don’t look for me!”

  “If you’re not around, someone who hates us is certain to inform on you—”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t be around,” he answered in a wry tone. “I just said don’t look for me. Now go!”

  Embracing her briefly, he strode to make a hasty toilet at the edge of the sea.

  “You have nothing to fear from our garrisoning of this island! In general, you will be allowed to continue with your ordinary work, although under better administration!”

  Sullenly, but on time, the citizens had gathered in the town square, facing the miniature port, with the church on one hand and the taverna on the other.

  “Naturally, refusal to obey our instructions will be regarded as treason!”

  Kreutzer had assigned ten of his thirty-strong crew to ring the area with rifles and submachine guns, but such precautions seemed superfluous, for these people had the air of cowed dogs. There was a flagpole on the crude mole which sheltered Oragalia’s solitary harbor, used mainly to fly storm warnings; now from it fluttered the R34’s spare ensign, a black cross on white with the swastika at its center, the formal symbol of conquest.

  And the islanders had duly obeyed Graumann’s command to stand to attention, hats off, while it was hoisted. Maybe there was something to the theory of the Master Race, after all. Kreutzer himself had never enjoyed such a sense of dominance… but perhaps that was because he was a seaman, and the sea had never been totally tamed.

  Graumann, however, was in his element, and had spent the morning interrogating these new subjects of the Reich.

  In Greek, the language he was speaking now.

  “Treas
on in a double sense, moreover—a betrayal also of your glorious Aryan heritage, the heritage which has inspired me to study your language and your culture!”

  Here was another thorn in Kreutzer’s flesh, for he had to appeal to his oldest and lowliest sailor for a translation: as dedicated a racialist as Graumann, and as firm a believer in the German renaissance, which he associated with the German origins of the modern Greek royal family, to the point that although his birth in Thessaloniki disqualified him from promotion even to petty officer, he had willingly transferred from the Merchant Marine at the outbreak of war. He was able to give a fair rendering of the speech, though he admitted it was so salted with classical archaicisms that now and then he had to guess at what was meant.

  But Kreutzer had small trouble filling in the gaps.

  “Unfortunately, with the passage of the centuries, the Nordic blood of your ancestors has become tainted, especially by Jews and other Semitic half-men! But steps will be taken to repurify all the population strains now under the protection of the Reich!”

  One tall, fine-looking, but apparently frightened young woman, standing rather apart from the crowd, reacted to this last remark with a visible shudder, while a group of older people, much closer to Graumann and his companions, exchanged grave looks and nods. Kreutzer’s senses were alerted, and he started to pay serious attention.

  “On that subject, I’ve been told that some kind of blackamoor settled among you recently. I don’t know who he is or what brought him here, but I notice he’s conspicuous by his absence. I’m advised that he’s not popular, and that few of you care to associate with him—bar one disgraceful exception!”

  Kreutzer wondered whether Graumann could be referring to the young woman he had already noticed. From her tense expression and the glances cast at her from all sides, it seemed probable, although surprising. He foresaw trouble. He could guess only too clearly how his sailors might react to the presence of a woman shameless enough to give herself to a negro.

  “Therefore I will accept, this once, an assurance that no one told him about this meeting. There will be another tomorrow at the same time. If he is not present then, an example will be made of his—ah—consort. That is all for the moment, but this afternoon I propose to make a complete inspection of the island, and I shall require a guide. Arrange it.”

  The crowd started to disperse, and Graumann turned to Kreutzer with a thin smile.

  “I think they got the message, don’t you?” he murmured.

  “I’m sure they did,” answered the lieutenant absently, looking for the young woman. Somehow, though, she had contrived to disappear.

  If he had had a gun, or even a bow and arrow, Evgenos could—and cheerfully would—have shot Graumann during his speech. One wall of the church was formed of the living rock, and it was possible to scramble up to its roof among concealing scrub for a vantage point overlooking the square. By straining his ears, he had heard everything. Now, crawling away, he was desperately wondering how to live up to his earlier boasts about resistance. It was no use worrying about the person who had informed on him; there were a score or more of candidates.

  But was there anyone who might feel ashamed that that had happened? Conceivably, Kaloyiannis, who owned the largest fishing boat and had been the first to hire Evgenos as crew. He had hoped to see his own son marry Anastasia, so there was no love lost between the two of them, but he was a fiercer and sounder patriot than garrulous old Rhodakis. If the islanders were truly to be allowed to carry on with their normal work, then the fishermen would put out tonight as usual. Probably their caïques would be searched before departure, but there were too many of them for the enemy to keep them all under surveillance all night; besides, they could argue that the sound of diesel engines would scare the fish. Then suppose that a desperate man with a knife at the helmsman’s throat were to order him to call at the southern tip of the island, collect Anastasia, set course for—where? Oh, anywhere! Malta, possibly, or Alexandria, though the voyage to either would be long and dangerous. At all events, it must be tried!

  “So this is where the nigger and his woman live,” said Graumann, uprooting with the toe of a dusty boot one of the ill-doing tomato plants that stood in a row before the shack. “How appropriate. Like the animals they are.”

  He turned to survey the seaward view.

  “Just as I thought: an excellent spot for our permanent garrison. Don’t you agree, Herr Leutnant?”

  Sweating, thirsty, footsore, but unwilling to show any sign of weakness in Graumann’s presence, Kreutzer nodded. “Though the rock is less fractured than one might have expected. Your rampart of boulders might call for quite extensive blasting.”

  Graumann waved that aside. “A minor matter! We can send for a shipload of concrete, and either cast it on the spot or have pillars brought in prefabricated. But this will certainly be the highlight of my next report.”

  “I suppose I should post guards here in case the black man comes back.”

  “Oh, yes. Make one of them that fellow who speaks Greek. And I want a lure staked out. Track down his woman and make sure she’s here by sundown. Let it be known that she has neither food nor water. While on the subject of food, we might as well commandeer the supplies up in that cave. They’re probably of dreadful quality, but every little helps.”

  Anastasia sat rocking back and forth in the dark, dry-eyed because she would not give her captors the satisfaction of hearing her weep. There were two: one thickset, about fifty, graying and much lined, the other half his age. The former had a pistol and the other some sort of machine gun, such as she had only seen before in pictures.

  They had neither tied nor gagged her. Perhaps they hoped that if she tried to warn off Evgenos by screaming, that would make him still more likely to come to the trap for which she was the bait. They were lying out in the open atop the twin headlands, one covering the trail from the village and the other the beach. They both seemed quite calm, as though their prey were indeed an animal instead of a human being.

  Well, that was what they believed, just as Evgenos had warned. Now she had heard the truth for herself. She pressed her hand to her belly, as yet barely starting to swell with the new life it bore, and suppressed a groan of despair at the fate in store for her firstborn.

  Was that a noise outside? She was on her feet before she could stop herself. For a moment she stood trembling. When she had half convinced herself she was imagining things, she heard a voice at the edge of audibility… and recognized whose it was.

  “Good evening! Aren’t you the sailor who speaks Greek? Yes? It must be dull for you out here. All your friends are busy inspecting the fishing boats before they put to sea. There’s no sign of the black man, by the way—he’s keeping well out of sight, I’m sure, because he knows how glad we’ll be to see the back of him, the bastard! Look, I brought a bottle of wine. Wouldn’t you like a drop?”

  There came a whispered answer, too faint to make out. Anastasia bit her lip and clenched her fists so hard the nails dug hurtfully into her palms.

  “Oh, go on! Call your pal over! The nigger won’t dare show himself. I bet he doesn’t care enough about the woman to risk one of your bullets through his hide!”

  A pause; then a reluctant word of thanks, and the Greek-turned-German sailor translated to his companion in a soft voice. In a moment there were eager scrambling noises.

  What in the name of the Almighty was going on?

  The guards each carried a powerful flashlight, and she was terribly afraid they might use them. But they abode by their instructions well enough not to, and all three men came together in the dark.

  “Here, you first! You’re a fellow countryman, after all!”

  And, about as long after as it would take to raise a bottle to one’s lips: a smash of glass, a cry, a thud, and the sound of a violent struggle. Anastasia could control herself no longer. She rushed out of the hut.

  On rocks below the eastward headland lay the elderly ex-Greek, groaning fro
m the pain of his fall. Up above, two men were fighting, one trying to bring his gun to bear, his opponent clutching him in a desperate wrestler’s hug—and in the dimness both their faces showed pale.

  She cried out in amazement. It was right. The German was distracted for a precious fraction of a second. Evgenos let go his grip, falling back and sweeping one leg around. Caught by surprise, the younger guard fell beside his companion. Evgenos jumped after him, landing on his chest with feet together. He uttered a gurgling sound and blood burst darkly from his nose and mouth.

  The winner wasted no time. He kept his balance, drew a knife, and stabbed both his victims in the throat.

  “Anastasia, are you all right?” he panted. “If they hurt you, I’ll be sorry they enjoyed such a quick death!”

  “Y-yes!” she forced out.

  “Then help me drag them to the water and set them afloat! We can cover up the traces afterward!”

  “How did—did you?…” The words wouldn’t come.

  He looked at her directly. Even now she almost failed to recognize him.

  “How did I get to be white? I painted myself with Xanthe’s Sunday makeup. Since they were looking for a black man—Or did you want to know who helped me? It was Kaloyiannis. I was pretty sure he’d swallow his dislike of me long enough to feel ashamed of the easy time the Germans are having in their occupation of the islands. He’s promised to bring his caïque around and pick us up as soon as he can. But we need to dispose of this lot first.”

  When the job was done, they hid, wet and shivering, not in the hut or the cave, but among scrub on the higher ground, where they could keep watch both for the boat and for any sign of a patrol coming to check on the trap. But there was small risk of that; Graumann would not want his quarry frightened off.