by Ahern, Jerry
In the distance now, he could see a shape. The flap at the back of the truck parked just ahead of his SM-4 swung upward, a face appearing there. “Herr Lieutenant—it is the aircraft.”
“Keep scanning, Corporal—it is possible their flight has attracted some attention from the Soviets.”
“Yes, Herr Lieutenant!”
The flap dropped back down against the strong desert sun.
Milton Schmidt climbed down out of the SM-4 and to the sand.
It was one of the new J-7Vs, a dynamically rearswept wing with the jet driven propellers mounted to the rear of the wing surface, a low radar profile and the ability to fly mere feet over the surface, the terrain following ability radar defensive as well. The J-7V, it was rumored, would replace many of the helicopter gunships now diverted from combat roles and utilized for troop transport. Yet, armed as was this J-7V, the
new short take off and landing craft was nearly as useful in a military role as the combat gunships.
It swept in low from the west, already starting to climb, necessary he knew from the literature circulated concerning the J-7V, so the changeover from horizontal to vertical flight mode could be accomplished. Climbing—and then suddenly it seemed to stop, unlike a helicopter, more like—he didn’t know what. It was sand colored against the blue of the desert sky—there was a tongue of what looked like flame beneath each engine as the engines rotated into the vertical mode and the aircraft began to descend. Unlike a helicopter, it was almost straight up and down, like a plumb line being dropped.
Lieutenant Milton Schmidt pulled his goggles down from above the peak of his cap, against the storm of sand already rising to surround the aircraft.
Soon the true adventure would begin. It would be worth the wait, he somehow knew.
Chapter Six
The Soviet patrol had stopped—it seemed for the night. Natalia, crouching beside him, seemed bone weary. John Rourke folded his arm about her and she rested her head against his chest. Her breathing felt heavy but regular to him. In the mountains, the air was thinner than at the lower elevations and although their bodies had become more accustomed to the generally thinner atmosphere of Earth since the fires which had nearly consumed it five centuries before, the thinness of air still took its toll.
The sun was setting in the west—the direction in which he hoped Hartman had already moved the remainder of the search force.
Tents were going up—inflatable, it seemed, thickly insulated.
Such tents were available to Rourke and Natalia as well—but could not be used lest they be sighted by the Russians.
“We’ll have to sleep together,” he whispered to her—and suddenly he heard the sounds of her crying and he set down the SSG in a niche of rock and raised her face in his left hand and stared down at her. “What’s the—”
“Nothing, John—nothing—”
“What’s the matter?”
“What do you think is wrong?” and her eyes, in the half light, seemed flooded with tears. Their blueness hypnotized him as it always had.
“There’s, ahh—nothing—”
“When this is over—I have to go away, John. I don’t know what I want to do—hut I have to go away.”
“I know that. Maybe, ahh—at Hekla, with the Icelandic people—maybe—as a scientist, you could—”
She laughed, sniffing back the tears. “But until then we can warm each other, can’t we?”
His lips touched at her tearstreaked cheeks and John Rourke held her close against him for a long while, his eyes focusing in the gathering darkness on the Soviet encampment below them …
They had sealed together the mummy-style sleeping bags—the Germans had developed insulated padding to what almost amounted to an art. For a people who for five centuries had inhabited an almost perpetually warm climate, who had been on the surface for a comparatively short time, they had planned ahead— and Rourke admired that. The bags weighed virtually nothing, but lofted well above any sleeping bag he had ever used. They trapped body warmth so well that despite the ambient temperature of the night here in the thin air of the Urals, on a mountain peak surrounded on three sides by nothing but sky, the Soviet encampment below them, it was so warm inside the bags that he had stripped away his sweater and opened his shirt front, Natalia’s head was against his bare chest, only her nose exposed enough to breathe.
But he moved her gently aside now, buttoning his shirt while still inside the bag—he almost never wore undershirts, despite the climate. And he had chosen against a thermal insulated undershirt for several
layers of protective clothing instead—so far his judgment had proven out and he had been more than adequately comfortable against the cold.
He ducked his head into the sleeping bag, finding his sweater which had balled up at the foot of the bag near his feet—pulled it on, pulling on the ski toque as well and thrusting his head out of the joined bags, his bare right hand closed on the butt of the Python.
He found his boots and started into them, the boots freezing cold at first, but the insulation coupled with the body warmth he had brought to them already starting to work as he laced them closed.
He shrugged into the double Alessi rig for the twin stainless Detonics .45s, the shoulder holsters kept between the mummy bags and the ground mat, the guns almost warm to the touch. The coat, the special insulated pants. Before the coat was zipped, he had the hood pulled up.
He had heard something in the valley. Inside himself, he knew there would be no more sleep tonight. But Natalia slept and he would let her sleep until she had to be awakened. He had wronged her by loving her, letting her love him—loving her but never touching her as she wanted him to, as he had so long wanted to but never allowed to himself. He looked at her form as she stirred inside the bag—she would be warm. “I love you very much,” he whispered.
John Rourke stood, buckling on his gunbelt and holstering the Metalifed and Mag-na-Ported Python, closing the flap on the holster, checking that the Gerber knife was in place on his belt. He had never removed the little A.G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome from inside the waistband of the Levis he wore beneath the arctic outerwear.
He was moving now, the SSG in his right fist, the scope covers removed to let the lenses adjust to the
temperature.
He had chosen a campsite at the height of a craggy precipice overlooking the valley in which the Soviet patrol had encamped, the campsite protected on one side only against the wind but beneath an overhang which would afford practical protection from inadvertent aerial observation. Using some of the Icelandic fuel blocks, he had built a quick hot fire to warm melted snow—it was not radioactive here—and used the melted snow as boiling water to warm the freeze-dried rations they carried. The rations were less imaginative than the Mountain House foods he had always carried prior to the Night of The War. No beef stroganoff, chicken tetrazini, but tasty and healthy and filled with vitamin and mineral supplements. They had eaten with their bodies partially inside the bags, then burned the packaging materials in the last flames of the fiery fuel blocks, letting the fuel blocks burn out naturally to avoid leaving anything too recognizable where they had been. He had made a mental note to cover the small fire pit in the morning.
John Rourke reached the lip of rock overlooking the valley, lowering his body into a prone position, the rifle at high port in both fists as he edged forward across the snow-packed rock, careful lest the snow jutted out further than the rock ledge which supported it, testing each few inches forward that he moved to be certain his weight would be supported.
And he could see now, into the valley.
His ears had not been mistaken. Mechanical noises.
It was something like a halftrack, visible under the half moon which was intermittently above him, one side of it bathed in the orange glow of the campfire which dominated the center of the tents.
There was wood in ample supply here—Rourke had
watched earlier as a team of the Soviet soldiers had us
ed some type of plastique to fell perhaps seven inch diameter pines and then hauled them with ropes toward the center of the camp. Periodically, through the earlier part of the evening, these men or others had put their backs to the logs, shoving them inward to the center of the fire—they would burn through the night and well through into the next night if they were not extinguished, Rourke had surmised.
There was activity near the halftrack, the moonlight combined with the firelight only sufficient to identify shadowy forms that were human, but beyond that, nothing.
But several things could be deduced from the activity nonetheless. It was not an expected visit and it was a visit of some urgency—the shadowy forms did not disappear from the evening’s cold into the shelter of any of the tents or the shelter of the halftrack itself.
He saw a light now—some type of flashlight or lantern, but a torch of some type. It seemed to waver about between some of the shadowy forms. A flashlight for reading a map or dispatch—and if it were urgent enough to be read in the night’s cold rather than in comfort, it was important.
He continued to watch.
There was more activity—he glanced skyward. The clouds which intermittently obscured the moon were scudding away now on the wind. The light grew more intense.
He brought the SSG to his shoulder, his cheek protected against the synthetic stock by the toque which covered almost his entire face.
He settled the scope on the flashlight beam, then with his left hand slowly stepped up the magnification ring from three power to nine power, holding the image tight and at the center of the reticle to guard
against losing it and having to lower magnification and start over again. He held the image.
And now he could barely make out faces in the firelight and moonlight, forms swathed in heavy cold-weather gear, assault rifles slung from shoulders, the orange light of the fire making the white snow smocks the men of the encampment wore almost demon-like.
The object on which the light was trained’ was too large for a dispatch—it was a map, Rourke decided.
And a map could mean that Hartman and his German military force were discovered.
There was no way to tell.
But suddenly there was movement in the camp, less than perfectly organized, but clearly a move to break camp.
John Rourke lowered the sniper rifle and rolled back the storm sleeve of his heavy outer garment—the Rolex showed the hour not yet midnight.
“Shit,” he murmured.
Natalia—he would have to awaken her.
If the camp was breaking, perhaps to accompany the halftrack-like vehicle, there would be tracks anyone could follow, even in the darkness.
And he had to follow them …
The marks of the halftrack in the moon-illumined snow, the footprints of the boots of the soldiers. With Natalia beside him, John Rourke followed them, his body weary from the lack of sleep and the effort it took just to move in this thin air, just to fight off the cold. But he carried Natalia’s rifle for her, to make her burdens slightly easier, her pack fully as heavy as his own. He loved her like he had loved no other woman and soon he would lose her. And despite the
love for Sarah, despite the child he knew Sarah carried inside her, when Natalia would be gone from him, there would be an emptiness that nothing could fill. Rourke held Natalia’s hand and kept walking, after the enemy …
The thing which the fire came out of rested in the far corner of the cave. He had watched it for many days. Maur had been the one with courage enough to piek it up, courage enough to bring it to the cave, courage enough to run his gnarled hands over it and keep it as his own. Maur had not the power of speech, but was clever. He, on the other hand, could form sounds which held a shared meaning with those few others like him, and sometimes, when the others were not around, he—Joe—would sit with those like him and they would begin the ritual.
These others in the huge black things which went through the air and had the power of speech, although their sounds were unintelligible to Joe and his soul-mates. After the first encounter with the beings who had the things which made fire and were carried along on the air in the huge black things, Joe had determined that it was not that he and the others like him were cursed that they could speak, but that rather this was the natural state of affairs and that Maur, Char and all the others were those who were cursed.
But Joe and few others among all of them could read and to look in the thing which he had so much later learned was called a book was sin and meant death, so he spoke not at all of it, even to those who like him spoke.
The book had a name—he had learned many concepts in the book, and name was one of these. Before, a name had only been a sound by which
someone’s attention was gotten. But name—it held so much more meaning. There had been a cave, much like this one. Maur had struck him down for speaking and Joe had drawn back to the rear of the cave, hiding from Maur’s wrath. He had lain there for some time, this too a concept learned from that which had taught him so much. He had struck his head against something hard and gone to dislodge it—a rock. But it was not a rock. He had later learned that it was a box. He had toyed with the thing for some time, then finally found that the top of the small box opened and inside he had found the book. Pictures, like those some of his people drew on the walls of the caves. And dark lines in regular shapes, the shapes like those in the book which Maur as the leader possessed but could not read but which their tribe had possessed since time had begun. Joe had crept to the front of the cave where there was light in the air and studied from the book. For many periods of light, more than he could reckon. “Spiderman.” And this was the first of the words that he learned.
When they had moved to another cave, Joe had left the box behind in secret places and retrieved it each night, then carried it ahead of their line of march, this causing him to have little sleep, but allowing him to keep the book with its words and pictures. Keep Maur from destroying it. He had learned by committing to memory every word and every picture in the book. And he had learned to read the words without the pictures. At night, when Maur squeezed too many of the sleep berries into his mouth, Joe would crawl up to where Maur kept the special book and read it. It was like Spiderman but spoke of other things. A man, Adam and a woman, Eve. Of the making of the earth. Later, much later, it spoke of Jesus.
Because of this reading by the light when it was
night, his eyes had become very bad and he could not see well—at least he assumed this was the cause. One time, Maur had caught him, beaten him and nearly killed him, but not realized he—Joe—had been reading in the special book.
Only one other knew that he read—Jea—his son. His wife, Mur, had known, but like so many, she had gone and was no more.
Maur too had a son—Char—and Char was tall, strong, and evil, like his father. Jea now too could read.
Joe studied the thing which made fire—he was certain it was one of the things called a gun. And when the creatures who used these, men like himself, had used this gun, he had watched and remembered. A box beneath the gun was removable. New boxes could be put in it. A small latch was drawn back to make the gun shoot, and then a small curved piece of metal pulled with the finger. The gun would make much fire or little fire—it was presumably when much fire was made that a new box was used.
Jea lay beside him. And Joe elbowed his son into wakefulness, the boy rubbing his eyes. But he was not a boy, Joe thought, staring at him, rather a man. And Jea too could speak.
The light in the air at night was called the moon, and it was by this light that over the cycle of the seasons he had read, teaching himself. And when there was no moon, he would lie awake at night pondering what the words he read meant. That there had been others like him was abundantly clear, that for some reason his people were little more than wild creatures and other people had devices—he had learned the name of the machines which flew in the air to be helicopters. And they had guns. And they hunted his people and slew his
people and those they
did not slay they made into slaves and took away.
This cave they stayed in for many full periods of the moon, and they stayed now in caves all around here and did not go far as they had when Joe had had fewer seasons, fewer years, been himself a young man. And so, the box with the book he had buried in a small cave and in the daylight when the sun filled the air he would slip away with Jea and teach the boy. One night, when the moon had filled the air with brightness, he had taken the special book from Maur and Jea had read in it too.
Jea’s ability, Joe knew, outshone his own.
He walked silently with Jea, Jea aiding him in the walking as they stepped over the sleeping bodies of the men and women of their tribe, Joe’s eyes barely good for seeing in full light these last cycles of the moon.
They left the cave, walking some distance to the flat rocks beside the stream, the moon half full and Jea helping Joe to sit. Joe began to speak. “The moon full-less one more. When Jea be gone?”
Jea spoke. “Jea be gone, father die.”
Joe nodded. “Father die—Jea be gone, Jea no be gone.”
Jea folded his arms about Joe and Joe folded his arms about Jea. “Jea be gone,” Joe said, and beside him, he felt his son’s head nod yes …
Maria Leuden had emerged from the aircraft changed into desert clothing—but Michael Rourke had not considered it terribly practical. She still wore a skirt, khaki, high waisted, flared or gored or something at the sides—he didn’t know the terminology of female attire. And it buttoned at the left side. A plain-looking white shirt, long sleeved but with the sleeves rolled past the elbows, boots which reached to her
knees, their tops disappearing beneath the hem of the skirt, her hair bound back with the same silk-looking scarf.
The sun had been fading as they had driven with the young, rather unprepossessing Lieutenant Milton Schmidt, Schmidt’s hero-worship of Captain Hammerschmidt ill-disguised, all of them crowded into the Jeeplike vehicle that Hammerschmidt and the other Germans called an SM-4. After some exposure to the nearly non-existent springs of the vehicle, Michael Rourke concluded that the “SM” in the designation stood for sado-masochism. The inventor was the sadist, the persons riding in it the masochists.
