Volk

by David Nickle

  Deutsch smiled. “An educated guess,” he said. “We know you were in Munich. We know you came to Wallgau. It was only a matter of time before you entered our sphere.” He poured coffee for Andrew, and then for himself. “We have no cream, I am afraid.”

  “I imagine it’s scarce,” he said. “This is the compound.”

  “I am sorry?”

  “The compound where the Juke was raised, before it went all to hell here.” Andrew sipped his coffee. It was strong, and dark, and it probably could have used some cream. “Another educated guess.”

  Deutsch laughed and clapped. “Yes, Doctor Waggoner! Very good. We are both excellent guessers today. We are in the compound where the German scientists were trying to contain the Juke, as you call it. I believe you named the Juke didn’t you?”

  “No,” said Andrew. “I didn’t.”

  “Ah. But you were there as it was named. In that little town of Eliada. They called it Mister Juke then, didn’t they?”

  “That’s right,” said Andrew. “The first one.”

  Deutsch nodded. “Named after something that was not it at all: a degenerate criminal family that may have been a figment of another’s imagination itself. That’s right.”

  “Mister Deutsch—Herr Deutsch. Who are you? What are doing here? This place is deserted. The Germans fled months ago.”

  “And my name cannot be more German. But I am not. I am from nearby, though—over the mountains, in Austria. Now who am I? I am like you.” He took a drink from his coffee. “Not a physician. A scientist. My speciality is chemistry. I have an interest in psychiatry.”

  “And who are you working for?”

  Deutsch took another drink from his cup, then set it down and poured more.

  “This is a Nazi project,” said Andrew.

  “It was once,” said Deutsch. “But as you yourself know, they were incapable of containing it.”

  “Who, then?”

  Deutsch looked into his cup for a moment. “You should eat your breakfast, Doctor Waggoner. Before it goes cold.”

  Andrew dipped his spoon into his oatmeal and took a mouthful.

  “Who are you working for, Mister Deutsch?”

  Deutsch pushed his chair back a few inches, and leaned forward with his forearms on the table, as though about to share a confidence.

  “We are Communists,” he said. “Does this shock you?”

  Andrew took a drink. “From Vienna?”

  “Amongst other places. It is a worldwide organization.”

  “It doesn’t shock me,” said Andrew.

  “Good!” Deutsch leaned back, rested his hands on his knees. The pose reminded Andrew of the one that Goebbels had struck, but seated—not standing defiantly. “We have taken up the research here, into the Juke phenomenon. It is a fascinating creature, yes? Such interesting behaviours . . .”

  “What behaviours? It’s dead.”

  “That’s what you believe?”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “By who? Orlok?”

  “You know about Orlok?”

  “We do indeed,” said Deutsch. “He killed one, didn’t he? That creature they have curing up the hill. It is certainly dead. But this compound is not as empty as you might believe, Dr. Waggoner. It is a prize.”

  “There are other Jukes here? Living Jukes?”

  “Not like that one, which is to say, not mature. But yes. We have been able to capture others.”

  Andrew pushed his bowl away. His appetite was suddenly gone.

  “What is my status here, Mister Deutsch? Am I a prisoner?”

  Deutsch started to answer, then stopped himself, and finally shrugged.

  “It is best that you don’t leave,” he said. “But you are not a prisoner. Indeed, I am anxious to confer with you. As a colleague.”

  “Where’s Dominic?”

  Deutsch narrowed his eyes and tilted his head.

  “Who?”

  “Dominic Villart,” said Andrew. “My companion. He was with me.”

  Deutsch’s head tilted the other way.

  “Why don’t you finish up?” he said, and for the second time, seemed to stop himself from saying something else. “Finish your breakfast, and we’ll see about that.”

  Arnold Deutsch left Andrew to himself for a few minutes, and by the time he was finished eating, returned with a change of clothes, tidily folded: grey trousers and a black sweater that both fit well, but had enough of a smell to them that Deutsch felt a need to apologize. They were borrowed from the only other researcher here Andrew’s size. “Not a lot of time for laundry here,” he said.

  Deutsch waited outside while Andrew cleaned up and changed clothes. He had, he said, been thinking about what Andrew had said—about Andrew’s question.

  “Here is the trouble,” said Deutsch. “There is no Dominic Villart. Not here. We found you last night alone. You had hurt yourself, and you were against the fence. But you were entirely alone. Do you understand this?”

  Andrew said nothing. He clutched at the doorjamb to the room they’d put him in. Deutsch regarded him measuredly.

  “Do you understand this?” he repeated.

  “I heard what you said,” said Andrew. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Of course,” said Deutsch. “Nevertheless. It is so.”

  “He brought me from . . .” Andrew stopped himself from going on. “I would like to talk to Dominic, please.”

  Deutsch shrugged. “There is not much I can do for you. There is no Dominic here. You came alone.”

  Andrew swallowed. “I did not,” he said.

  “It’s all right. We have seen this,” said Deutsch.

  “This?”

  “This delirium,” said Deutsch. “Among ourselves . . . Not all of us, but those who were incautious in the beginning.” He clapped a hand on Andrew’s shoulder.

  “You were incautious,” he said. “You breathed the perfume of these things. You thought you could withstand a little, and when you failed to withstand a little, you somehow thought you could withstand more. And soon . . . you were lost.”

  Andrew shook Deutsch’s hand from his shoulder, and Deutsch took a polite step back, but he continued.

  “Your friend Dominic did not lead you here last night. This delirium did. It took you to the nest of the Juke. Or as close as you could get. Pressed against the fencing . . . If you hadn’t hurt yourself so badly, you might have scaled it.”

  Andrew shook his head no. “I hurt myself—Dominic hurt me—so that I wouldn’t be in a delirium as you call it.”

  “Ah,” said Deutsch. “That flagellation remedy.” He offered a pitying look. “Why not? It has worked for you before, so far as you knew. Pain. Adrenaline. It didn’t matter, really, so long as it was a distraction, am I right?”

  Andrew bristled. “It worked,” he said.

  “It comforted you so,” said Deutsch, and his tone sharpened. “Doctor Waggoner,” he said, “I swear to you that you came here alone. You believe otherwise: that you came here, accompanied by a young man, a friend yes? But you are addled. You do not know. And you know, I daresay, that this sort of delusion comes upon men who have smelled the flower of the Juke.” Deutsch put his hand on Andrew’s shoulder again and this time would not let go. “Pain might pull you free for a moment. But it is an escape. A respite. Not a cure. I would guess, based on our own research here, that you have never been cured.”

  “You would guess.”

  “I’m fairly certain, Doctor. If you were cured from your time in Eliada, truly free of the Juke, that you would never have continued to seek it out.” Deutsch smiled thinly. “You would have run, like any clearheaded man, and continued your work as a physician.”

  “This is absurd,” said Andrew. “I am a physician. But I’m also a scientist.”

  Deutsch released Andrew’s shoulder, stepped back and clapped once.

  “A scientist. Splendid,” he said. “So are we both. I am new to this field. You have studied the Juke wit
hin the limits of your capacity for two decades. We both know what it does; you ought to know better than I. You know that it incites delusion. A terrible certainty of delusion, yes? You have fallen into it before yourself. Is it not possible, that you remain in the throes of that delusion now?”

  Andrew thought about Molinare—the ghost that Dominic, and finally he himself had seen. Just days past. He nodded yes, it was possible.

  “Now tell me: which would you rather do right now? Pursue this likely delusion about Dominic Villart? Which I will continue to deny, and you have no capacity to meaningfully dispute? Or return to the roots of your science, see all that is known about the Juke—things which have now been beyond your reach? Which I am prepared to share, Doctor Waggoner, to the fullest extent.”

  Andrew had nothing to say. Deutsch’s smile broadened.

  “Would you care for a tour of our small facility?” he asked, and Andrew finally had to admit that yes—he would.

  The facility was not small.

  The Germans had marshalled considerable resources to purpose-build the facilities. There were vaults, separately ventilated and otherwise sealed from the main compound, where juveniles were to be kept, and fed in a way that was entirely voluntary. They could be observed through thick glass windows, and Deutsch showed Andrew two of these. The rooms were much like Andrew’s bedroom, absent furniture, and there was no way to enter them from within; there was a door that opened to the exterior.

  There was an operating theatre—equipped for childbirth, of course. It was sky-lit, and did have a door to the interior as well: heavy and sealed, with an airlock between.

  “At the beginning, the Germans here had at least an inkling that the Juke needed to be contained,” said Deutsch, “or at the very least kept separate from the researchers. But that protocol was a thin line for them, and by no means permanent. Direct intervention was inevitably a part of the research, and with that, human subjects . . . and so . . .”

  Deutsch was leading a new set of researchers—without the same imperative, with entirely different objectives. Interaction now, he said, was less of a risk.

  “How many?” asked Andrew.

  “Nine in the bunker,” said Deutsch. There were more, he said—between fifteen and twenty—stationed on the southern slopes of the valley, guarding a pass that led into Austria.

  “That’s a lot,” said Andrew, and asked how it was that they were able to operate undetected. Deutsch laughed.

  “Undetected by who? The Nazis were long ago driven from the valley. Or do you mean Orlok? The children who look to him as their leader? That is not difficult.”

  “I find that difficult to credit,” said Andrew. “It seems as though Orlok has the valley under his control.”

  “He inhabits it, with his children,” said Deutsch. “But it is as difficult to hide from them as it is from a flock of birds. They might fly past you or over your head, but unless they have identified you as prey . . . as food . . . they will miss you. And right now, Orlok’s flock is looking elsewhere.”

  “That’s an interesting description,” said Andrew. “A flock.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “The Juke’s a parasite. A flock of geese doesn’t form a triangle because of a worm in their gut.”

  “Likely not,” agreed Deutsch, “although who knows? I recall reading a paper seriously suggesting that geese are telepathic, and that is how they maintain their formations.”

  “You believe the Jukes are telepaths?”

  “I do not believe anything about the Juke one way or another. But of course . . . Orlok is not a Juke.”

  “No,” said Andrew. “Not exactly.”

  Deutsch smirked. “He devoured one. Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s what he says,” said Andrew. “How do you know that? He tell you?”

  Deutsch shook his head no. “We’ve had time. And other resources. The Germans keep such complete records. We have retrieved some of them from that chateau . . . notes, photographs, and a collection of Dictaphone cylinders. Orlok is a much older project than the Juke, did you know that?”

  Andrew said he didn’t, and Deutsch told him that he doubted that.

  They continued down a corridor and a wide set of iron stairs. Here, they finally met some of those researchers. One, a woman with thick Slavic cheekbones and a mouth that rested in a smile, was on her way from a room that Deutsch said had been purposed as an archive. There was another—a small balding man with thick spectacles who wore a fur-lined jacket, despite the heat—who was at work in the room, seated at one of three long tables, poring over one notebook and marking new notes in his own. He said something in a language that Andrew didn’t understand, and when Deutsch answered back in the same language, he looked at Andrew and smiled. “Welcome, Doctor Waggoner,” he said. “I hope this place meets with your approval.”

  Andrew started to answer but the man returned to his work, and Deutsch took Andrew’s arm and drew him to the shelves, which were filled with journals—and to a glass-topped display case. In here were photographs and artefacts. Deutsch flipped a switch on the side of the case, and electric lights illuminated it. The photographs were in colour—records of a dissection . . . the subject splayed on a board, with pins holding four limbs and a tail. It measured twenty-five centimetres according to the legend at the bottom. Andrew looked at it, then back at the man going over the notes.

  “He’s Russian, isn’t he?” asked Andrew. “The woman we passed too, yes?”

  “You are an astute observer,” said Deutsch. “Most of the workers here are, indeed.”

  “Most, but not all,” said Andrew. “Albert Zimmermann, for example, is not.”

  “Oh dear,” said Deutsch. “No.”

  Andrew stepped back from the display case.

  “That’s what you did,” he said. “You sent Albert Zimmermann here . . . or rather, he ended up here, when you had him following Jason Thistledown to Africa. And when he told you about this work here, the Juke and Orlok and the rest, the Nazi Party project . . . you came here, to see for yourselves.”

  Deutsch cleared his throat and made eye contact with the scholar at the table. He nodded, gathered his notes, and left.

  “Albert Zimmermann is in Munich,” said Deutsch when they were alone. “With your wife, and Miss Ruth Harper. They arrived there by train from Paris yesterday morning. He is not among the people working here.”

  “But he is working for you.”

  “Of course. He told you that he deserted us, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  Andrew sighed and shook his head. “I guess I did.”

  Deutsch smiled and nodded sadly. “It is understandable. And your instincts were largely correct. He did desert us. He also . . . avoided consequences.”

  “He saved his family you mean. From you.”

  Deutsch’s smile vanished. “It is not so bad, Doctor Waggoner. He brought you Ruth Harper, and protected her from the others. And in so doing, he has brought you here. To the culmination of your life’s work.”

  Andrew Waggoner and Arnold Deutsch spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon in the archive, and not much later, Andrew would lament the time spent there. That was not to say the hours were uninformative. They were very informative.

  But they were also a distraction that Andrew found he could not resist . . . the room was like a tide pool where he was shut off from his past, and what might come. He remained there, until it was done with him.

  The dissection photos in the display case were just a sample. There were files with dozens of photographs—of the same dissection, but also from microscopic slides—and also, of the living specimen that in its maturity Orlok would slaughter. Here, it was shown through its successive forms. First, a juvenile, just separated from its host—a creature like a lizard, like a cat, like a possum . . . but with slits up and down its torso, vestigial mouths such as Andrew recalled observing on the Juke he ex
tracted from Lou-Ellen Tavish in the hills beyond Eliada. Another one, dated just six weeks later, as it occupied a different form—now vaguely bipedal, with long articulated legs and arms that hung about its side . . . a face that caused Andrew to recall that day in 1911 when he, along with the specimen Mister Juke, was awaiting a lynching on a hillside not far from Eliada. Even though it was only a photograph, Andrew felt he saw a different image each time he regarded it. Another, similarly configured, but larger—the notation at the side indicated a scale that would have put it at nearly four metres tall, even as it sat in a pool of water, three pairs of spindling arms, draped over thick legs with something like musculature, that twisted as tree trunks. Its face bent down, as though searching the shallow water for food.

  Although it was in water, it was not outdoors. It seemed to inhabit a cavern, rather, or a large space that was for the most part dark. Light shone on it from above and from the front, casting long shadows across the pool, and against the nearest wall.

  All of the photographs until the last were inside—the first two in the chambers that Deutsch had shown Andrew on the way to the archive—the final, in that great cavern that must have been the size of a cathedral.

  The last one was outdoors, and at first, it might have been difficult to apprehend the Juke. The photograph appeared as nothing but a landscape, a riverside whose banks were closely encroached by trees under a brilliant blue sky. Not precisely a landscape—the river ran fast and shallow here, and there were two dozen figures standing in it, young men and women. They were naked, and they were beautiful: smooth sunburnt flesh . . . the men, lean and strong, standing straight, and all of them—judging them against the women—very tall. There were fewer women, but they were similar specimens according to the criteria of their genders—wide of hip, of ample of bosom. And all of them yellow-haired. Although by the angle of the photograph it was impossible to tell, Andrew speculated and Deutsch agreed, their eyes would all be blue. Übermensch.

  It seemed as though they stood in the water, looking at a particularly bent tree on the bank. But that wasn’t so.

  It was the Juke.

  All resemblance to a human form gone: where there had been a face, arms, now there was just a tangle of limbs and throats, something like a thorax that rose from the side of the bank and curved back over the water in a kind of crescent. The branches that extended over the heads of the beautiful German children flowered with mouths such as the one that Andrew had examined in death. This was the Juke living, hungry. A God, and its worshippers. Its Volk.