by David Brin
But does that make sense? Could aliens have lost the ability to destroy such a crude spacecraft?
Chris shook his head.
Not that it matters all that much, he thought. Tonight the Atlantic fleet is dying. This winter, we’ll probably be forced to use the big bombs to hold the line in Canada… wrecking the continent even if we slow them down.
He looked at the figure in the boat’s prow. How can cleverness or industry or courage prevail against such power?
Those fur-covered shoulders were passive, now. But Chris had seen Loki tear down buildings with his bare hands. And Loki had admitted to being one of the weakest of these “gods”.
“Loki,” he said quietly.
As often as not, the Aes would ignore any human who spoke to him without leave. But this time the dark-haired figure turned and regarded Chris. Loki’s expression was not warm, but he did smile.
“Thou art troubled, youngling. I spy it in thy heart.” He seemed to peer into Chris. “It is not fear, I am glad to see, but only a great perplexity.”
Fitting their assumed roles as the fabled lords of Valhalla, courage was the one human attribute most honored by the Aesir. Even by the god of trickery and treachery.
“Thank you, Loki.” Chris nodded respectfully. You could’ve fooled me. I thought I was scared spitless!
Loki’s eyes were pools glittering with starlight. “On this fateful eve, it is meet to grant a brave worm a boon. Therefore I will favor thee, mortal. Ask three questions. These will Loki answer truthfully, by his very life.”
Chris blinked, for the moment stricken speechless. He was unprepared for anything like this! Everyone from President Marshall and Admiral Heinlein on down to the lowliest Brazilian draftee had hungered for answers. Imperious and aloof, their one Aesir ally had doled out hints and clues, had helped to foil Nazi schemes and slow the implacable enemy advance, but he had never made a promise like this!
Chris could sense O’Leary tense behind him, trying to seem invisible in order to be allowed to stay and listen. For once the beatnik’s mouth stayed firmly sealed.
Pine forests loomed above them as the boat entered shallows out of the evening wind. He could smell the dark forest. There was so little time! Chris groped for a question.
“I… Who are you, and where did you come from?”
Loki closed his eyes. When he opened them, the black orbs were filled with dark sadness.
“Out of the body of Ymir, slain by Odin, poured the Sea.
“Gripping the body of Ymir, Yggdrasil, the great tree.
“Sprung from salt and frost, the Aesir, tremble Earth!
“Born of Giant and man, Loki, bringer of mirth.”
The creature stared at Chris. “This has always been my home,” he said. And Chris knew that he meant the Earth. “I remember ages and everything spoken of in Eddas—from the chaining of Fenris to the lies of Skrymnir. And yet…” Loki’s voice was faintly puzzled, even hushed. “And yet there is something about those memories… something laid over, as lichen lays upon the frost.”
He shook himself. “In truth, I cannot say for certain that I am older than thee, child-man.”
Loki’s massive shoulders shrugged. “But make haste with your next question. We are approaching the Gathering Place. They will be here and we must stop them from their scheming, if it is not already too late.”
Reminded suddenly of the present, Chris looked up at the wilderness looming all around them on the shadowed hillsides. “Are you sure about this plan—taking on so many of the Aesir in one place?”
Loki smiled. And Chris realized at once why. Like some idiot out of a fairy tale, he had squandered a question in a silly quest for comfort! But reassurance was not one of Loki’s strong suits.
“No, I am not sure, impertinent mortal!” Loki laughed and the rowing sailors briefly lost their stride as they looked up at the ironic, savage sound. “Think thou that only men may win honor by daring all against death? Here does Loki show his courage, to face Odin’s spear and Thor’s hammer if he must, tonight!” He turned and shook c ham-sized fist toward the west. The dwarf whimpered and crouched beside his master.
Chris saw that the Marines had already landed. Major Marlowe made quick hand gestures sending the first skirmishers fanning out into the forest. The second row of boats shipped oars and were carried by momentum toward the gravelly shore.
He hurried to take advantage of the remaining time.
“Loki. What is happening in Africa?”
Since ’49 the Dark Continent had been dark indeed. From Tunis to the Cape of Good Hope, fires burned, and rumors of horror flowed.
Loki whispered softly.
“Surtur must needs have a home, before the time of raging.
“There, in torment, men cry out, screaming for an ending.”
The giant shook his great head. “In Africa and on the great plains of Russia, terrible magics are being made, and terrible woe.”
Back in Israel-Iran Chris had seem some of the refugees—Blacks and high-cheeked Slavs— lucky escapees who had fled the fires in time. Even they had not been able to tell what was happening in the interior. Only people who had seen the earlier horrors—whose arms bore stenciled numbers from the first wave of chimney camps— could imagine what was happening in the silent continents. And those fierce men and women kept their silence.
It struck Chris that Loki did not seem to speak out of pity, but matter-of-factly, as if he thought a mistake were being made, but not any particular evil.
“Terrible magics…” Chris repeated. And suddenly he had a thought. “You mean the purpose isn’t only to slaughter people? That something else is going on, as well? Is it related to the reason why you saved those people from the first camps? Was something being done to them?”
Chris had a sense that there was something important here. Something ultimately crucial. But Loki smiled, holding up three fingers.
“No more questions. It is time.”
They scraped bottom. Sailors leaped out into the icy water to drag the boat up to the rocky shore. Shortly, Chris was busy supervising the unloading of their supplies, but his mind was a turmoil.
Loki was hiding something, laughing at him for having come so close and yet missing the target. There was more to this venture, tonight, than an attempt to kill a few alien gods.
High in the dark forest canopy, a crow cawed scratchily. The dwarf, laden under enough boxes to crush a man, rolled its eyes and moaned softly, but Loki seemed not to notice.
“Reet freaking hideaway, daddyo,” O’Leary muttered as he helped Chris shoulder the bomb’s fuse mechanism. “A heavy-duty scene.”
“Right,” Chris answered, feeling sure he understood the beatnik this time. “A heavy-duty scene.” They set out, following the faint blazings laid by their marine scouts.
As they climbed a narrow trail from the beach, Chris felt a growing sense of anticipation… a feeling of being, right then, at the navel of the world. For well or ill, this place was where the fate of the world hung. He could think of no better end than to sear this island clean of all life. If that meant standing beside the bomb and triggering it himself, well, few men ever had a chance to trade their lives so well.
They were deep under the forest canopy, now. Chris caught sight of flickering movements under the trees, marine flankers guarding them and their precious cargo. According to prewar maps, they had only to top one rise, then another. From that prominence, any place to plant the bomb would be as good as any other.
Chris started to turn, to look back at Loki… but at that moment the night erupted with light. Flares popped and fizzed and floated slowly through the branches on tiny parachutes. Men dove for cover as tracer bullets sent their shadows fleeing. There was a sudden gunfire up ahead,-and loud concussions. Men screamed.
Chris sought cover behind a towering fir as mortars began pounding the forest around him.
From high up the hillside—even over the explosions—they heard booming laughter.
Clutching the roots of a tree, Chris looked back. A dozen yards away, the dwarf lay flat on his back, a smoking ruin where a mortar round must have landed squarely.
But then he felt a hand on his shoulder. O’Leary pointed up the hill and whispered, goggle-eyed, “Dig it, man.”
Chris turned and stared upslope at a huge, man-like being striding down the hillside, followed by dark-cloaked, armed men. The figure carried a giant bludgeon which screamed whenever he threw it, crushing trees and marines without prejudice. Giant conifers exploded into kindling and men were turned into jam. Then the weapon swept back into the red-bearded Aesir’s hand.
Not mortars. Chris realized. Thor’s hammer.
Of Loki, there was no sign at all.
3
“There there, Hugin. Fear not the dark Americans. They shall not hurt thee.”
The one-eyed being called Odin sat upon a throne of ebony, bearing upon his upraised left hand a raven the same color as night. A jewel set in the giant’s eyepatch glittered like an orb more far-seeing than the one he had lost, and across his lap lay a shining spear.
On both sides stood fur-clad figures nearly as imposing, one blond, with a great axe laid arrogantly over his shoulder, the other red-bearded, leaning
Guards in black leather, twin lightning strokes on their collars, stood at attention around the hall of rough-hewn timbers. Even their rifles were polished black. The only spot of color on their SS uniforms
The being called Odin looked down at the prisoners, chained together in a heap on the floor of the great hall.
“Alas. Poor Hugin has not forgiven you, my American guests. His brother, Munin, was lost when Berlin burned under your Hellfire bombs.”
The Aesir chief’s remaining eye gleamed ferally. “And who can blame my poor watch-bird, or fail to understand a father’s grief, when that same flame deluge consumed my bright boy, my far-seeing Heimdallr.”
The survivors of the ill-fated raiding patty lay on the dry stone floor, exhausted. The unconscious, dying Major Marlowe was in no condition to answer for them, but one of the Free British volunteers stood up, rattling his chains, and spat on the floor in front of the manlike creature.
“Higgins!” O’Leary tried to pull on the man’s arm, but was shrugged off as the Brit shook his fist.
“Yeah, they got your precious boy in Berlin. And you killed everyone in London an’ Paris in revenge! I say the Yanks were too soft, lettin’ that stop ’em. They should’a gone ahead, whatever the price, an’ fried every last Aryan bitch an’ cub…”
His defiance was cut off as a Gestapo officer knocked him down. SS troopers brought their rifle butts down hard, again and again.
Finally, Odin waved them back.
“Take the body to the center of the Great Circle, to be sent to Valhalla.”
The officer looked up sharply, but Odin rumbled in a tone that assumed obedience. “I want that brave man with me, when Fimbul-Winter blows,” the creature explained. And obviously he thought that settled the matter. As black-uniformed guards cut the limp form free, the chief of the Aesir chucked his raven under the beak and offered it a morsel of meat. He spoke to the huge redhead standing beside him.
“Thor, my son. These other things are thine. Poor prizes, I admit, but they did show some prowess in following the Liar this far. What will thou do with them?”
The giant stroked his hammer with gauntlets the size of small dogs. Here, indeed, was a creature that made even Loki seem small.
He stepped forward and scanned the prisoners, as if searching for something. When his gaze alighted on Chris, it seemed to shimmer. His voice was as deep as the growling of earthquakes.
“I will deign to speak with one or two of them, Father.”
“Good.” Odin nodded. “Have them cast into a pit, somewhere,” he told the SS General nearby, who clicked his heels and bowed low. “And await my son’s pleasure.”
The Nazis hauled Chris and the other survivors to their feet and pulled them away, single file. But not before Chris overheard the elder Aesir tell his offspring, “Find out what you can about that wolf-spawn, Loki, and then give them all over to be used in the sacrifice.”
4
Poor Major Marlowe had been right about one thing. The Nazis would never have won without the Aesir, or something like them. Hitler and his gang must have believed from the start that they could somehow call forth the ancient “gods”, or they’d surely never have dared wage such a war, one certain to bring in America.
Indeed, by early 1944 it had seemed all but over. There was hell yet to pay, of course, but nobody back home feared defeat anymore. The Russians were pushing in from the east. Rome was taken, and the Mediterranean was an Allied lake. The Japanese were crumbling—pushed back or bottled up in island after island—while the greatest armada in history was gathering in England, preparing to cross the Channel and lance the Nazi boil for good and all.
In factories and shipyards across America, the Arsenal of Democracy was pouring forth more materiel in any given month than the Third Reich had produced in its best year. Ships rolled off the ways at intervals of hours. Planes every few minutes.
Most important of all, in Italy and in the Pacific, a rabble of farmers and city boys in soldier suits had been tempered and become warriors in a great army. Man to man, they were now on a par with their experienced foe, and the enemy was outnumbered as well.
Already there was talk of the postwar recovery, of plans to help in the rebuilding, and of a United Nations to keep the peace forever.
Chris had been only a child in knee pants, back in ’44, devouring Chet Nimitz novels and praying with all his might that there would be something half as glorious to do in his adulthood as what his uncles were achieving overseas right then. Maybe there would be adventures in space, he hoped, for after this, the horror of war would surely never be allowed again.
Then came the rumors… tales of setbacks on the Eastern front… of reeling Soviet armies sent into sudden and unexpected retreat. The reasons were unclear… mostly, what came back were superstitious rumblings that no modern person credited.
Voices on a street corner:
Damn Russkies… I knew all along they didn’ have no stayin’ power… Alla time yammerin’ ’bout a “second front”… Well we’ll give ’em a second front! Save their hash… Don’t fret, Ivan, Uncle Sam’s coming…
June, and the Norman sky was filled with planes. Ships covered the Channel Sea…
Sitting against a cold stone wall in an underground cell, Chris pinched his eyes shut and tried to crush away the memory of the grainy black and white films he had been shown. But he failed to keep the images out.
Ships as far as the eye could see… the greatest armada of free men ever assembled…
It was not until he joined the O.S.S. that Chris actually saw photographs never shown to the public. In all the years since then, he wished he had not seen them, either.
D-Day… D for disaster.
Cyclones, hundreds of them, spinning like horrible tops, rising out of the dawn mists. They grew and climbed until the dark funnels appeared to stretch beyond the sky. And as they approached the ships, it seemed one could see flying figures on their flanks, driving the storms faster and faster with their beating wings…
“Marlowe’s come up aces and eights, man.” O’Leary sighed heavily as he sagged down next to Chris. “You’re the big cheese now, dad.”
Chris closed his eyes. All men die, he thought, reminding himself that he hadn’t really liked the dour marine all that much, anyway.
He mourned nonetheless, if for no other reason than that Marlowe had been his insulation, protecting him from that bitch called command.
“So what gives now, chief?”
Chris looked at O’Leary. The man was really too old to be playing kids’ games. There were lines at the edges of those doe-like eyes, and the baby fat was turning into a double chin. The Army recognized genius, and put up with a lot from its civilian experts
. But Chris wondered—not for the first time—how this escapee from Greenwich Village ever came to be in a position of responsibility.
Loki chose him. That was the real answer. Like he chose me. So much for the god of cleverness.
“What gives is that you damp down the beat-rap, O’Leary. Making only every third sentence incomprehensible should be enough to provide your emotional crutch.”
O’Leary winced, and Chris at once regretted the outburst.
“Oh, never mind.” He changed the subject. “How are the rest of the men doing?”
“Copasetic, I guess… I mean, they’re Okay, for guys slated for ritual shortening in a few hours. They all knew this was a suicide mission. Just wanted to take a few more of the bastards with them, is all.”
Chris nodded. If we had another year or two…
By then the missile scientists would have had rockets accurate enough to go for a surgical strike, making this attempt to sneak in bombs under the enemy’s noses unnecessary. The Satellite was just the beginning of the possibilities, if they had had time.
“Higgins was right, man,” O’Leary muttered as he collapsed against the wall next to Chris. “We shoulda pasted them with everything we had. Melted Europe to slag, if that’s what it took.”
“By the time we had enough bombs to do much more than slow them down, they had atomic weapons too,” Chris pointed out.
“So? After we fried Peenemünde, their delivery systems stagnated. And they haven’t got a clue how to go thermonuclear! Why even if they did manage to disassemble our bomb—”
“—God forbid!” Chris blinked. His heart raced, even considering the possibility. If the Nazis managed to make the leap from A-bomb to fusion weapons…”
The tech shook his head vigorously. “I scoped—I mean I checked out the destruct triggers myself, Chris. Anyone pokes around to try to see how a U.S. of A. type H bomb works will be in for a nasty surprise.”
That had, of course, been a minimum requirement before being allowed to attempt this mission. Had they been able to assemble the weapon near the “Great Circle” of Aesgard, the course of the war might have been changed. Now, all they could hope was that the separate components would melt to slag as they were supposed to when their timers expired.
