The Heirs of Babylon - Glen Cook

by harry

  Later, when his nerves had settled somewhat, Kurt eased through a hatch into the after fireroom, which had been secured since the damage to the port screw. Czyzewski had decided to use the space to store the last raftload of fuel, and Kurt’s men were to help stow it because the gunnery people were all on station.

  After having made certain his men were at their jobs and doing them, Kurt began prowling. The engineering spaces, with their webs of piping, of electrical cables, and with their huge, looming machinery, oil smells, odd catwalks, and such, had always intrigued him. He did not understand why a man would want to work down in the heat, stench, and filth of the place, though.

  He climbed a ladder to a high catwalk, to examine a control board with a vast array of valves and meters. Most were meaningless, as the ship no longer burned fuel oil, but he enjoyed trying to puzzle out their ancient functions. A short, half-open doorway caught his attention. He knew there was a small room behind it, inside one of the blower shafts which brought outside air to the fireroom. He thought the room might be a good place to store wood, if not already filled. He went across and opened the door. Empty.

  No, not quite. There was a damp, muddy uniform on the floor. He glanced at it, then examined the rest of the room. Perhaps by stacking the wood crosswise...

  His eyes snapped back to the uniform. Pieces of river weed clung to it. Something was wrong. He frowned. Why was it hidden here, as if someone had changed in secret? Then he grunted as if hit. None of the men who had gotten wet this morning had as yet had time to change. And there were no weeds in the river near the loading place. The nearest were a few hundred meters downriver, near the Norwegian camp.

  A picture popped into his mind, of a faceless man swimming ashore in the night, downstream, where the weeds grew, to see the Norwegians. Had someone recognized Franck and gone to see him, perhaps to arrange this morning’s disaster? He squatted over the damp uniform, looking for the name tag inside the waistband — and grew even more puzzled.

  IV

  LINDEMANN, G. A. it said. Gregor. And Gregor, if he remembered right, had once known Karl Franck well. Had they met last night? And then a new thought entered his mind. Had they been in contact while Gregor was stationed here in Norway? Indeed, just what had Gregor been doing in this country? He had run a salting station, he said, but would say little more. Kurt began to feel his cousin was deeper than he had suspected, and that something unusual was in the wind.

  But why wouldn’t Gregor share it with his own cousin? Once more he was on the outside.

  “You look like a regular snipe, Ranke,” said Erich Hippke, Quartermaster with the watch after Kurt’s, as Kurt climbed out of the fireroom. “You’re wearing enough grease.”

  Kurt chuckled. “Watch your language, sailor. Nobody calls me engineer and lives....”

  A boatswain’s pipe, shrill, cut across their conversation. “Now holiday routine for all personnel not otherwise directed,” Hans’s voice boomed over the public-address system.

  “Ha!” said Hippke. ‘The rack for me.”

  “Why? You’ve been aboard, loafing, the past three days.”

  “Carried too much firewood.” Hippke leaned on the lifelines, looking aft at a Damage Control party. “What’s Czyzewski up to?”

  “Bringing the bad screw aboard —”

  “Kurt!” He looked up, at Hans on the level above. “What?”

  “Meeting in the wardroom, after dinner. Mr. Lindemann wants you there.”

  “All right. Erich, let’s wash up. I’m hungry.”

  “I’ll pass. Smelt, ugh!”

  “You’ll love it someday.”

  All leading petty officers were at the meeting when it convened. Von Lappus expressed its purpose. “I want to know how we get out of here, now we’ve got our firewood.” Once he had uttered those cryptic words, the beefy man slid down in his chair, folded his hands across his chest, and appeared to fall asleep. Kurt wondered, for the thousandth time, why this particular man was in command. He never seemed to do anything.

  Haber expanded the explanation. “We’re now eight feet lower in the water and no longer able to turn the ship. And we can’t back out on one screw. Suggestions?”

  Time passed silently. No one asked why they had originally gotten in that position — the ship could not have backed upstream, either. No one, though, had thought of the problem until von Lappus had had men sound the river around the ship. Hurry had its price — in this case, time lost and labor expended.

  Jager had to be backed downstream until she reached a place where she might turn. But how? Finally, after a long silence, Hans nervously offered an idea. “Sirs, I read somewhere that, on sailing ships, when there was no wind, they sometimes moved a vessel by ‘kedging’ her.”

  “And what might that be?” Haber asked. He looked hungry — for knowledge.

  “Well, a boat was put over to carry the anchor to the end of its chain and drop it. Then the ship was winched up to short stay.”

  “I don’t see...” Haber broke off in mid-sentence. He did see.

  But Hans explained anyway, for the others. “We could do it backward, alternating anchors, walking ourselves down.”

  “Damned slow,” someone muttered.

  “How much chain do we have?” Haber asked.

  “Five shot on the port anchor, six on the starboard,” Hans replied.

  “What’s that in meters?” someone asked.

  Haber penciled figures on the tabletop. “Roughly — and this is real rough — a hundred forty-five on the port, a hundred seventy-five on the starboard.”

  “We’ll be a long time getting out, then,” Lindemann noted, frowning. With his features tight he no longer looked much like Kurt. Older. Much older.

  Haber nodded. “Depends. Ranke, is there a place we can turn?”

  “There’s a wide place about three kilometers down. We’d have to sound first, though.”

  “What interests me,” said von Lappus, coming to life and folding his hands before his mouth as if praying, “is how Wiedermann plans to lift his anchors off the bottom. Our boats would be swamped by their weight. May I suggest rafts? We’ve got one already. Wiedermann, build another. Well, gentlemen, I’ve declared holiday routine. We’d better take advantage of it. I’ll want the crew at quarters before sunrise, fed and ready to work. Wiedermann, you and Ranke will forego your holiday. Gunnery Officer, issue the shore party sidearms.”

  Hans looked frightened. Kurt felt pique. He did not want to go to that place again.

  “Oh, Ranke,” said von Lappus as they rose, “take a shovel. Bury Beck and that other fellow.” Even in his dismay, Kurt noticed that Beck was no longer Mr. Beck. “And see you recover his weapon.”

  “Yes sir.” Greatly depressed, Kurt walked with Hans to the mess decks, for coffee. Afterward, he drew a shovel from the boatswain’s locker, joined Hans and his men in a boat, dully accepted the pistol the Boatswain offered him. He thrust it in his waistband, tried to forget it.

  The meadow he found peaceful again, yet Kurt could not keep his hand from straying to the gun. He was frightened by this haunted place. A pair of ghosts seemed somewhere near, mocking. The shell holes in the turf and the shattered trees beckoned him, like the War itself, to his own private little unremembered Armageddon. He threw the shovel across his shoulder, bit his lower Up, and determinedly walked toward the bodies.

  Flies buzzed in that part of the meadow. Franck had already begun to bloat in the hot Norwegian sun. As he paused by Beck, a small animal, lean and ratlike, scurried off through the morning’s trampled grass. A lonely bird mourned in the woods. Tears welled in Kurt’s eyes, his throat became tight and sore. Such peace and beauty this place had, and horror — like the world. He wanted to hurl his shovel and pistol from him and run shrieking into the wood, off to Telemark to wait for Karen....

  Sounds stopped him: Hans shouting at his men, axes striking trees, a groan.

  “Hans,” he called softly, “Hans. Hans!” This last was a scream.
The shovel fell to his feet. His mouth hung open, no articulate sounds coming forth. Hans came running, accompanied by two men with weapons drawn.

  “What?”

  The words came, though forcing them was next to impossible. “He’s alive. God, he’s still alive!” He pointed, and, as he did so, another weak groan fled Beck’s scabby lips.

  “He’s been here all morning, and we never came to help....”

  “Fritz, Jupp, get Commander Haber.” Hans’s businesslike tone sent the seamen hurrying off.

  “Don’t seem possible. Four arrows in him, one through the throat. He can’t be alive.” He was silent a moment. Oarlocks squealed on the river behind them.

  Then, thoughtfully, Hans said, “He can’t last much longer. Suppose he died before Haber got here?” He reached forward to cover Beck’s mouth and nose with his hand.

  Kurt slapped his arm aside. “No! I don’t like what he is either, but... well, he’s a human being.” Was this the Hans who had thrown up this morning?

  “He’d probably thank me, if he was conscious.” Hans’s eyes narrowed, his face grew ugly. “If he lives, he’ll be a burden for months, delirious, unreasonable....” He reached again.

  Again Kurt forced the hand away, the while wondering what was wrong with Hans. Why murder a dying man? “If he has to die, let him go by himself.”

  “It’d be so easy, Kurt. Nobody’d ever know....”

  “Too late, Hans.” Kurt nodded. Hans’s men were coming to see what had happened. They could not be ordered off without questions being asked.

  “Well, you want him to live, he’s yours.”

  Kurt tore his eyes from Beck’s contorted face, looked at Hans. The man was pale and shaking. Afraid? Of what?

  Commander Haber, carrying the ship’s medical kit, arrived shortly, accompanied by Lindemann. Kurt thought he saw momentary disappointment flash across Gregor’s face. He frowned, turned to watch Haber.

  Haber was Jager’s approximation of a doctor, though his skills were limited to knowledge crammed while the vessel was outfitting. His tools were limited, his anesthetics and antibiotics almost nil. He examined Beck quickly, said, “Looks hopeless. The arrows missed the major arteries, but he’s still lost a lot of blood. It’s a miracle he’s alive.”

  “Do something!” Kurt pleaded, unable to comprehend the calmness about him. But, outwardly, he was as calm as the others. Only his words betrayed his emotions.

  “Right. I’ll need help. First I’ll have to open his throat so it’s certain he can breathe. Kurt, open my bag and...”

  “Me, sir?”

  “You. All right, just hand it to me.”

  Despite his other emotions, Kurt was sheepish because of his queasiness, grew guilty because of a momentary regret at not having let Hans have his way, thereby sparing himself this.

  Haber’s cautious, uncertain work went on for an hour. First he removed the arrows from Beck’s legs and shoulder — he admitted fear of trying the shaft in the man’s throat. But it came to that eventually, once the other wounds were cleaned, packed, and bandaged. The last arrow he carefully cut to either side of Beck’s neck, then, with several men holding Beck firmly immobile, he drew the shaft with forceps. Luck attended him. It came free easily.

  But, for a moment, Beck’s weak, rasping, open-throated breathing ceased. With a frightful grimace, Haber bent to Beck’s throat and forced his own breath into the man’s lungs. The Political Officer soon resumed breathing. Haber finished his bandaging, wearily said, “That’s that, and probably a waste of tune. A thousand-to-one he’s dead by morning. But I had to try. He’ll need a nurse....”

  “I think that’s a job for Kurt,” said Lindemann. Kurt glanced at his cousin, was startled by the anger in Gregor’s face. Lindemann seemed to be thinking, “You want him saved? Then you do it.” Had he not been distracted, Kurt could have become very angry.

  “Get that stretcher over here,” Haber ordered men who had been standing by. “Wiedermann, will you please keep your men working? This isn’t a show. That raft has to be finished before dark. Ranke, go back to the ship with Beck. I’ll have someone take care of Franck.”

  Much later, having been relieved of his nursing duties — there were out-of-work sonarmen with nothing better to do, and Lindemann’s pique had apparently faded — Kurt stood leaning on the port bridge rail, watching Hans’s men as they put the finishing touches on their raft. Aft, the engineers were just swinging the ruined screw aboard. It hit the deck with a clatter. Two of the three blades were mangled almost beyond recognition. Briefly, he hoped the drive shaft had not been bent. Then he wondered why. Silly, worrying about it. It did not matter. There was no way to replace the screw.

  A mound of earth headed by a cross now marked the place where Franck had fallen. Kurt looked away, not wanting to be reminded, went down to the maindeck. After collecting a sandwich from the galley, he wandered aft, watched the Damage Control party cleaning up, then went to bed. Soon his mind wandered into a trap of thoughts of Karen.

  Although, from the day he agreed to join Jager’s crew, their marriage had grown increasingly stormy — and the final week had been a bickering hell as she strove to overcome his stubborn determination — Kurt wished he were home and in her arms. He wished there were a little less of the mule in him, a little more of the horse. Why did he, these few times he actually took a stand, always pick a place in the wrong?

  It was a moment of lucid, honest self-criticism’ stimulated by the morning’s disaster and the hard realization that in days to come others would join Karl Franck in dole and foreign graves. Until today Death had always

  48 r been a remote acquaintance, more often a visitor to others’ lives than his own. But now, with fresh earth mounded in a meadow nearby, he knew that pale rider had promised him closer attention. And he was afraid, afraid of a thousand things, things not of the world beyond, but of this, all the grim milestones along the road to his own dread appointment, all the things he would lose if he went too young.

  The greatest loss would be Karen and a child as yet unborn. Karen, who had a harpy’s beak and talons one minute, who was his warm Juliet the next, who was his Ruth and his Delilah, his Lysistrata and Helen. He was an Odysseus bound for the arms of a Penelope through a thousand Homeric terrors, by an equally circuituous route (his mind wandered in a maze of ancient images, the Peloponnesian War, the thousand ships and Illium, the horse, those who fell, the small reasons why, and he wondered at the lack of change in Man over the millennia) — but Odysseus was a hero and inveterate cutthroat. Kurt could not picture himself the same, a bloodthirsty swashbuckler eager for perils and plights....

  As Karen had said one day, three months past, when Dancer had again put in at Kiel and Kurt had dragged her down to meet his Danish friends, he was not the type. She had had a tongue of bitterness that day, was still plaguing him for having talked Otto into going to the War. After a quick tour of the boat, she had said, “I can see why you felt at home. It’s a lot like you, small, antiquated, with no real goals or purpose, and a rotten stench inside. Real heroic.”

  And he had thought, This’s the woman I love? Naturally, he had grown angry, there had been a scene, and he had accused her of being a bigger bitch than her mother, which had led to one of those arguments about mothers-in-law.

  Yet he missed her. The harsh times quickly lost their hurting edges and he yearned for good times better remembered, the hand-in-hand days, the arm-in-arm days. He wished he could have yielded, could have stayed.

  At last, sleep came.

  Kurt rose muttering when reveille sounded. He rushed through his shower, shave, and dressing, and was on his way to the mess decks in minutes, determined to get one good meal that day. It would be a long one, with dinner and supper served on station.

  Dawn was but a hint of light in the east, over the shadowy bones of low mountains. The Captain had kept

  49

  his promise of an early start. Already the rafts were being maneuvered into po
sition. Tripods mounting blocks and tackle had been rigged aboard them. The starboard anchor chain began paying out as the sun first broke over the spine of the mountains. Jager swung slightly when she neared its end, the current pushing her inshore just enough to make her officers nervous. Commander Haber, who had the conn, ordered the port anchor dropped. Once it was holding, he had the starboard winched in.

  Slowly, slowly, alternating anchors, Jager kedged downriver. A few hundred meters, a kilometer, two, and, toward sundown, three, into the wide place Kurt remembered. Before she ceased operations for the day, men put out in boats to take soundings. There was room to turn.

  Kurt and Hans, with Haber and Lindemann, watched from the port wing as the deck force rigged the damaged propeller for use as a stern anchor, to hold the vessel while the current turned her end for end. On the forecastle, another party waited to up anchor. The sun had not yet risen. Wan light, filtered through clouds over the eastern mountains, barely illuminated the vessel, gray light on gray, with gray ashore — the perfect world for the warship. The propeller, attached to a heavy mooring line, splashed over the stern.

  “Take in the bow anchor,” Haber directed.

  A boatswain shouted, his words ripping the fabric of the quiet Norwegian morning. Men scurried around and disorganization resolved itself into disciplined cooperation. The hook was up in minutes, was seated and secured.

  Haber called into the bridge, “Tell the engine room to stand by.” Then, “Wiedermann, get your leadsmen in the chains.” Hans hurried off.

  Slowly, slowly, Jager swung with the current. Tense minutes passed. Soon she was beam on to the flow, then past with sighs of relief.

  The ship shuddered, heeled over a few degrees, moved a little, shuddered again. “Mudbank,” Kurt said softly, hoping the bow would find nothing more solid.