by David Brin
O’Leary persisted. “I still think we should have launched everything we had back in ’52.”
Chris knew how the man felt. Most Americans believed the exchange would have been worth it. A full scale strike at Hitler’s homeland would sear the heart out of it. The monster’s retaliation, with cruder rockets and fission bombs, would be a price worth paying.
When he had learned the real reason, at first he had refused to believe it. Chris assumed that Loki was lying… that it was an Aesir trick.
But since then he had seen the truth. America’s arsenal of bombs was a two-edged sword. Unless used carefully, it would cut both ways.
There was a rattling of keys. Three SS guards stepped in, looking down their noses at the dejected Allied raiders.
“The great Thor would deign speak vit’ your leader,” the officer said in thickly accented English. When no one moved, his gaze fell upon Chris and he smiled. “This one. This strayed sheep. Our lord asked for him especially.”
He snapped his fingers and the guards grabbed Chris by the arms. “Cool as glass, dad,” O’Leary said. “Drive ’em crazy, baby.”
Chris glanced back from the door. “You too, O’Leary.”
He was pushed through and the dungeon gate slammed shut behind him.
5
“You are a Dane, are you not?”
Chris was tied firmly to a beam pillar in front of a crackling fireplace. The Gestapo official peered at Chris from several angles before asking his question.
“Danish by ancestry. What of it?” Chris shrugged under his bonds.
The Nazi clucked. “Oh nothing in particular. It is just that I never cease to be amazed when I find specimens of clearly superior stock fighting against their own divine heritage.”
Chris lifted an eyebrow. “Do you interrogate a lot of prisoners?”
“Oh yes, very many.”
“Well, then you must be amazed all the time.”
The Gestapo man blinked, then smiled sourly. He stepped back to light a cigarette, and Chris noticed that his hands were trembling.
“But doesn’t your very blood cry out when you find yourself working with, going into battle alongside, racial scum, mongrels…”
Chris laughed. He turned his head and regarded the Nazi icily.
“Why are you even here?” he asked.
“I—what do you mean?” The fellow blinked again. “See here now, I am in charge of interrogation of—”
“You’re in charge of a jail detail,” Chris sneered. “The priests of the Aesir run everything, now. The mystics in the SS control the Reich. Hitler’s a tottering old syphyllitic they won’t let out of Berchtesgaden. And you old-fashioned Nazis are barely tolerated anymore.”
The officer sucked at his cigarette. “What do you mean by that remark?”
“I mean that all that racial clap trap was just window dressing. An excuse to set up the death camps. But the SS would’ve been just as happy to use Aryans in them, if that was the only way to—to…
“Yes?” The Gestapo man stepped forward. “To do what? If the purpose of the camps was not the elimination of impure stock, then what, smart man? What?”
There was a brittle, high-pitched edge to the man’s laughter. “You do not know, do you? Even Loki did not tell you!”
Chris could have sworn that there was disappointment in the officer’s eyes… as if he had hoped to learn something from Chris, and was let down to find out that his prisoner was as much in the dark as he was.
No, I wasted a question, and Loki did not tell me about the reason for the camps. Chris looked at the other man’s trembling hands—hands that had, no doubt, wreaked more hell on broken bodies and spirits than bore contemplating—all, apparently, in a cause that was no longer even relevant to the winning side.
“Poor obsolete National Socialist,” Chris said. “Your dreams, mad as they were, were human ones. How does it feel to have it all taken over by aliens? To watch it all change beyond recognition?”
The Gestapo man reddened. Fumbling, he picked up a truncheon from a table near the wall and smacked it into his gloved left hand.
“I will change something else beyond recognition,” he growled menacingly. “And if I am obsolete, at least I am still allowed the pleasure of my craft.”
He approached, smiling with a thin film on his lips. Chris braced himself as the arm swung back, raising the bludgeon high. But at that moment the leather curtains parted and a large shadow fell across the rug. The Gestapo officer paled and snapped to attention.
The red-bearded Aesir named Thor nodded briefly as he shrugged out of his furred cloak. “You may go,” he rumbled.
Chris did not even look at the Nazi as the interrogator tried to meet his eye. Chris watched the coals in the fireplace until the curtains swished again and he was alone with the alien.
Thor sat down, cross-legged, on a thick rug and spent a few minutes joining Chris in contemplation of the flickering flames. When he used his hammer to prod the logs, heat brought out fine, glowing designs in the massive iron head.
“Fro sends word from Vineland… from the sea thou callest Labrador. There has been a slaughter of many brave men.”
Thor looked up.
“Those cowards’ tools—’submarines’—did much harm to our fleet. But in the end, Fro’s tempests were masterful. The landing is secured”
Chris controlled the sinking feeling in his stomach. This was expected. Worse was to come, this winter.
Thor shook his head. “This is a bad war. Where is the honor, when thousands die unable even to show valor?”
Chris had more experience than most Americans in holding conversation with gods. Still, he took a chance, speaking without permission.
“I agree, Great One. But you can’t blame us for that.”
Thor’s eyes glittered as he inspected Chris. “No, brave worm. I do not blame you. That you have used your flame weapons as little as you have speaks well for the pride of thy leaders. Or perhaps they know what our wrath would be, if they were so cowardly as to use them wantonly.”
I never should have been allowed on this mission. I know too much, Chris realized. Loki had been the one to overrule High Command and insist that Chris come along. But that made him the only one here who knew the real reason the H-bombs had been kept leashed.
Dust from atom blasts, and soot from burning cities—those were what allied High Command feared, far more than radiation or Nazi retaliation. Already, from limited use of nuclear weapons so far, the weather had chilled measurably.
And the Aesir were so much stronger in winter! Scientists verified Loki’s story, that careless use of the Allied nuclear advantage would lead to catastophe, no matter how badly they seared the other side.
“We too prefer a more personal approach,” Chris said, hoping to keep the Aesir believing his own explanation. “No man wishes to be killed by powers beyond his understanding, impossible to resist or fight back against.”
Thor’s rumble, Chris realized, was a low laughter. “Well said, worm. Thou dost chastize as Freyr does, with words that reap, even as they sow.”
The Aes leaned forward a little. “You would earn merit in my eyes, small one, if you told me how to find the Brother of Lies.”
Those gray eyes were like cold clouds, and Chris felt his sense of reality begin to waver as he looked into them. It took a powerful effort of will to tear his gaze away. Shutting his eyes, he spoke with a dry mouth.
“I… don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The rumbling changed tone, deepening a little. Chris felt a rough touch and opened his eyes to see that Thor was brushing his cheek with the leather-bound haft of the great war hammer.
“Loki, youngling. Tell me where the Trickster may be found, and you may yet escape your doom, you may even find a place by my side. In the world to come, there will be no greater place for a man.”
This time Chris steeled himself to meet the hypnotic pools. Thor’s eyes seemed to reach out for his s
oul, as a magnet might call to native iron. Chris fought back with the savage heat of hatred.
“Not… for all the Valkyries in your fucking, alien pantheon,” he whispered, half breathless. “I’d rather run with wolves.”
The smile vanished. Thor blinked, and for a moment Chris thought he saw the Aesir’s image waver just a little, as if… as if Chris were looking through a man-shaped fold in space.
“Courage will not save thee from the wages of disrespect, worm,” the shape warned, and solidified again into a fur-clad giant.
All at once, Chris was glad to have known O’Leary.
“Don’t you dig it yet, daddyo? I don’t fucking believe in you! Wherever you’re from, baby, they probably kicked you out!
“You Aesir may be mean enough to wreck our world, but everything about you screams that you’re the dregs, man. Leaky squares. Probably burned out papa’s stolen saucer just gettin’ here!”
He shook his head. “I just refuse to believe in you, man.”
The icy gray eyes blinked once. Then Thor’s surprised expression faded into a deathly cool smile. “I did not ken your other insults. But for calling me a man, you shall die as you seem to wish, before the morning sun.”
He stood up and placed a hand on Chris’s shoulder, as if emparting a friendly benediction, but even the casual power of that touch felt vicelike.
“I only add this, little one. We Aesir have come invited, and we arrived not in ships—even ships between the stars—but instead upon the wings of Death itself. This much, this boon of knowledge I grant thee, in honor of your defiance.”
Then, in a swirl of furs and displaced air, the creature was gone, leaving Chris alone again to watch the coals flicker slowly and turn into ashes.
6
The Teutonic priests were resplendant in red and black, their robes traced in gold and silver. Platinum eagles’ wings rose from their top-heavy helms as they marched around a great circle of standing stones, chanting in a tongue that sounded much older.
An altar, carved with gaping dragons’ mouths, stood beside a raging bonfire. Smoke rose in a turbulent funnel, carrying bright sparks upward toward a full moon. Heat blazed at the ring of prisoners, each chained to his own obelisk of rough-hewn rock.
They faced southward, looking from a Gotland prominence across the Baltic toward a shore that had once been Poland, and for a little while after that had been the “Thousand Year Reich.”
The waters were unnaturally calm, almost glassy, reflecting a nearly perfect image of the bonfire alongside the Moon’s rippling twin.
“Fro must be back from Labrador,” O’Leary commented loudly enough for Chris to hear him over the chanting and the pounding drums. “That’d explain the clear night. He’s th’ god of tempests.”
Chris glanced at the man sourly, and O’Leary grinned back apologetically. “Sorry, man. I mean he’s th’ little green alien who’s in charge of weather control. Make you feel any better?”
I had that coming, Chris thought. He smiled dryly and shrugged. “I don’t suppose it matters all that much, now.”
O’Leary watched the Aryan Brothers march by again, carrying a giant swastika alongside a great dragon-like totem. The technician started to say something, but then he blinked and seemed to mumble to himself, as if trying to catch a drifting thought. When the procession had passed, he turned to Chris, a mystified expression on his face. “I just remembered something.”
Chris sighed. “What is it now, O’Leary?”
The beatnik frowned in puzzlement. “I can’t figure why it slipped my mind until now. But back when we were on the beach, unloading the bomb parts, Old Loki pulled me aside. It was all so hectic, but I could swear I saw him palm th’ H-bomb trigger mechanism, Chris. That means…”
Chris nodded. “That means he knew we were going to be captured. I’d already figured that out, O’Leary. At least the Nazis won’t get the trigger.”
“Yeah. But that’s not all I just remembered, Chris. Loki told me to tell you something for him. He said you’d asked him a question, and he told me to relay an answer he said you might understand.”
O’Leary shook his head. “I don’t know why I forgot to tell you about it until now.”
Chris laughed. Of course the renegade Aes had put the man under a post-hypnotic command to recall the message only later… perhaps only in a situation like this.
“What is it, O’Leary? What did he say to tell me?”
“It was just one word, Chris. He said to tell you—necromancy. And then he clammed up. Wasn’t much after that that the SS jumped us. What’d he mean by that, Captain? What was your question, anyway? What does the answer mean?”
Chris did not reply. He stared at the funnel of sparks climbing toward the Moon.
With his last question he had asked Loki about the camps—about the awesome, horrible, concentrated effort of death that had been perpetrated, first in Europe and then in Russia and Africa. What were they for? There had to be more to it than a plan to eliminate some bothersome minorities.
Moreover, why had Loki, who normally seemed so oblivious to human life, acted to rescue so many from the death factories, at so great a risk
Necromancy. That was Loki’s delayed reply to his final question. And Loki had told it in such a way that Chris might have his answer, but never be able tell anyone who mattered.
Necromancy…
The word stood for the performance of magic, but magic of a special, terrible kind. In legend, a concentrated field created by the death agony of human beings to drive his spells.
But that was just superstitious nonsense!
Light-headed, Chris looked out across the sand at the hulking Aesir, seated on their gilded thrones, heard the chanting of the priests, and wished he could dismiss the idea as easily as he once would have.
Was that the reason the Nazis had dared to wage a war they otherwise could never have won? Because they believed that they could create such concentrated, distilled horror that ancient spells would actually work?
It explained so much. Other nations had gone insane, in human history. Other movements had been evil. But none had perpetrated such crimes with such dedication and efficiency. The horror must have been directed not so much at death itself, but at some hideous goal beyond death!
“They… made… the Aesir. That’s what Loki meant by thinking that, maybe, his own memories were false… when he suspected that he was actually no older than I…”
“What was that, Cap’n?” O’Leary leaned as far as his chains would allow. “I couldn’t follow…”
But the procession chose that moment to stop. The High Priest, carrying a golden sword, held it before Odin’s throne. The father of the “gods” touched it and the Aesir’s rumbling chant could be heard, lower than human singing, a hungry sound like a growl that trembled within the Earth.
One of the chained Allies—a Free Briton—was dragged, numbed with dread, from his obelisk toward the fire and the dragon altar.
Chris shut his eyes, as if to hold out the screams. “Jesus!” O’Leary hissed.
Yes. Chris thought. Invoke Jesus. Or Allah or God of Abraham. Wake up, Brahma! For your dream has turned into a nightmare.
He understood clearly now why Loki had not told him his answer while there was even an infinitesmal chance that he might ever make it home again alive.
Thank you, Loki.
Better America and the Last Alliance should go down fighting honorably than even be tempted by this knowledge… to have its will tested by this way out. For if the Allies ever tried to adopt the enemy’s methods, there would be nothing left in the soul of humanity to fight for.
Who would we conjure, Chris wondered. If we ever did use those spells? Superman? Or Captain Marvel? Oh, they’d be more than a match for the Aesir, certainly! Our myths were boundless.
He laughed, and the sound turned into a sob as another scream of agony pierced the night.
Thank you, Loki, for sparing us that test of our souls.
He had no idea where the renegade “trickster god” had gone, or whether this debacle had only been a cloak for some deeper, more secret mission.
Could that be? Chris wondered. He knew that it was possible, still. Soldiers seldom ever saw the big picture, and President Marshall did not have to tell his OSS captains everything. This mission could just have been a feint, a minor piece in a greater plan.
Lasers and satellites… they could be just part of it. There might be a silver bullet… a sprig of mistletoe, still.
Chains rattled to his right. He heard a voice cursing in Portuguese and footsteps dragging the latest prisoner off.
Chris looked up at the sky, and a thought suddenly occurred to him, as if out of nowhere.
Legends begin in strange ways, he realized.
Someday—even if there was no silver bullet—the horror would have to ebb at last, when humans grew scarce, perhaps, and the Aesir were less plump and well-fed on the death manna they supped from charnel houses.
Then there would come a time when human heroes would count for something again. Perhaps in secret laboratories, or in exile on the Moon, or at the bottom of the sea, free men and women would work and toil to build the armor, the weapons, maybe the heroes themselves…
This time the scream was choked, as if the Brazillian ranger was trying to defy his enemies, and only broke to show his agony at the last.
Footsteps approached. To his amazement, Chris felt feather-light, as if gravity were barely enough to keep him on the ground.
“So long, O’Leary,” he said, distantly.
“Yeah, man. Stay cool.”
Chris nodded. He offered the black and silver-clad SS his wrists as they unchained him, and said to them softly, in a friendly tone of voice, “You know, you look pretty silly for grown men.”
They blinked at him in surprise. Chris smiled and stepped between them, leading the way toward the altar and the waiting Aesir.
