The Bavarian Gate

by John Dalmas

  "Which way?" Macurdy whispered.

  Berta had recovered from her fright. "Beneath the north wing, I suppose," she whispered back. "It's a room the guards use when they smuggle in girls from town. They call it the 'party room.' I don't think they use it during the week. They have no way to bring girls then."

  Starting north from the stairs, they tried doors. Most were unlocked, the rooms empty. Macurdy could have opened those that were locked—their lever locks would be easy—but it wasn't the time for that. Then, beneath the north wing, he opened a door to a large room with a hodge-podge of furnishings. The thin light from the corridor showed sofas, a love seat, chairs, and on the floor, several large mattresses pushed together. There were even paintings on two walls. Macurdy decided that furnishings must be stored in some of the rooms, and the guardsmen had plundered them. They stepped inside, and he tried the light switch; a table lamp turned on, and he closed the door behind them. On the inside, the door had a 5 x 10 cm oak bar that pivoted on a lag screw, and screwed to the door frame was a hand-carved wooden bracket. Macurdy seated the bar.

  They examined the room more closely. At one side stood a table, with cards, bottle opener, and a box that held a bottle of brandy, two of schnapps, and several liters of beer. By one wall were two sets of large laundry rubs; over their rims hung several military-issue towels.

  Berta put a hand on his arm, and they kissed, lingeringly, then passionately, his hands stroking the small of her back. Within a minute they'd begun undressing each other, and within another were naked on a mattress, fondling, kissing. Soon Berta was on her back, knees drawn high, Macurdy on top, rocking slowly. When they'd finished, they lay tangled for a bit, then cleaned up, and opening two bottles of warm beer, sat naked together on the love seat, drinking and touching.

  "Why do you think the cellar is off limits?" he asked. "Could there be valuables stored here?"

  "I don't know. At first I wondered if there were people locked up down here, but I'm sure there aren't. There are plenty of prison and labor camps for that."

  She changed the subject. "Where did you learn to make yourself invisible? That's a valuable talent."

  "From my first wife." It wasn't strictly true, but close enough.

  "Do you ever think of escaping this place and going to Switzerland?"

  "Sometimes. But while I'm here, I'd like to see what this place is about. Perhaps learn new skills; something to help me make a living."

  She made a face. "I just want to be away from here. The Swiss know how to live: peacefully and democratically! I could get clients from doctors there, help their patients recover from surgeries." She shrugged. "Many I could heal without surgery, but doctors don't like that, so I compromise."

  She cocked an eye at Macurdy. "What would you do, if you were in Switzerland? A man who can make himself invisible could surely find people he'd be willing to rob."

  "In a decent country like Switzerland, I wouldn't care to be a robber. I've been a healer, too, though I don't have the experience you have."

  "Why do you pretend to be feeble-minded?"

  "It helps keep me out of the army. Even with my leg, they might take me for clerical work or a flak battery, but since I seem so stupid, they consider me unsuitable. So I worked on the docks at Lübeck, and got married there. For mutual convenience; there was no love involved."

  Berta told herself it would be easy to love a man who could screw like this one. "Lübeck is a long way from here," she said. "Why did you come so far?"

  "My wife is from Kempten. We came here so she could care for her grandparents."

  "I suppose you want to get back to her."

  "Not necessarily. As I said, it was a marriage of convenience. She was a barmaid and party girl. There were men who threatened her, for part of the money she made. I protected her, and we shared a place to live."

  Berta traced the large scars on his leg with a finger. "And this?"

  "An air raid on Lübeck, the same as my other scars. I would be much more crippled than I am, if I weren't a healer."

  Her aura indicated acceptance of his lies. Her reading of auras seemed less acute than his. And that was a dozen years past, a dozen years of observing people.

  "If we go to Switzerland together," Berta said, "we can do very well as healers. We can rent a nice apartment and live like real people."

  Her fingers had moved from his knee upward. Now she fondled him, felt him swell. After a little loveplay, they went back to the mattress.

  * * *

  Later they dressed, and returned to their rooms without incident. For a bit, Macurdy lay in bed contemplating. What had he accomplished, beyond adultery? He'd learned something, he answered, learned he could move around the building at night. The next time he'd go alone and find out what the locked rooms had in them.

  Meanwhile he'd avoid further trysts with Berta, so far as possible. He'd enjoyed it too much. Adultery as an espionage tool was bad enough; pleasure made it worse.

  * * *

  That night he dreamed of Mary. They were in Fritzi's getaway shack in the mountains, although in the dream, the shack wasn't really the shack. He told her about Berta, and they'd wept together. Then her lips moved, but there was no longer any sound, and he wanted so terribly to hear her words. Then Sarkia was there from his past, seeming ancient, and told him he was deaf from syphilis he'd gotten in his adultery.

  Mary wasn't there any longer, and he was looking for her in the cellar of the schloss—heard sounds from the party room and was afraid to look in—when he was wakened by a hand on his shoulder. "Montag! Montag! Wake up!" The whisper was Schurz's. Macurdy raised himself on an elbow, shaking the cobwebs from his mind. "Come to the washroom with me!" Schurz's aura glittered with vivid anger.

  In the latrine, the man gripped Macurdy's shoulders and tried to shake him. "You were talking in your sleep!"

  Macurdy stared, confused.

  "In English!" The words, though little more than a whisper, were almost hissed. "If you must talk in your sleep, do it in German! Do you understand? It can mean your life!"

  Then Schurz left the latrine, an astonished Macurdy staring after him. After a minute he followed, but it was a couple of hours before he slept again.

  25

  Sorcery

  The next time Berta and Macurdy managed to speak privately was on Sunday, during the group walk. The air was thick with snowflakes, blurring vision and muffling sounds.

  "Kurt," she said, "let's go to the party room tonight. You are good, darling, the best ever. I ache to have you again."

  He touched her mittened hand. "It is too dangerous now. Schurz discovered me gone. He was angry, demanding to know where I'd been. I told him to your room, and that you'd rejected me. I'm sure he didn't believe me though. He said if it happens again, he'll report me."

  He peered earnestly at her; again her aura reflected—not belief, but not disbelief. His story had a major element of truth, he told himself: he had been discovered. "Maybe in a week or two," he added, "the Herr Doktor Professor won't be so alert."

  * * *

  The next night he sneaked to the cellar alone, this time with his "pocket knife"—in reality a small set of lock picks. The locks were old-fashioned lever locks, no challenge at all. He supposed they'd been there since the doors were hung.

  He began his snoop in the main, central section, where he found the furnace, as large, if not as tall, as a small ship's boiler, in an unlocked room loud with the sound of screw feed, grinder, blower, fire, and forced draft. He backed out and continued working north, finding nothing interesting until, beneath the north wing, halfway past the ell, he found a powder magazine— a room with a large and tidy stack of TNT in half-kilo blocks. He had no idea why they'd be stored there, but it could easily account for the cellar being so strongly forbidden.

  He was more surprised to find a similar stack in the next room. Beyond that, none of the rooms were locked, and none had anything of interest.

  The other major discov
ery was at the end of the corridor: the heavy exit door was locked only by a stout oak bar. This, he realized, was how the guardsmen brought girls in. Opening it, he found an entryway with a dozen steps. It seemed once to have had a covering door; now it was open to the sky. Snow had blown in, and been tracked by booted feet.

  This was a far safer way to get out of the building than opening the front door in the face of a guard.

  * * *

  In class he continued to improve. He developed the ability to make visualized movement smooth and realistic, like a movie in three dimensions. When he'd learned to create images he could hear, smell, and feel—images that seemed entirely real— he learned to judge their weight by mentally hefting the images! That phase went quickly, and apparently well enough to satisfy Nargosz, for he graduated to another classroom, joining Schurz and Manfred. How, he wondered, had the Voitar decided he was ready? Seemingly they read neither minds nor auras. The only explanation he could think of was not very convincing, but perhaps—while they might not read thoughts—perhaps they saw and otherwise perceived his created images.

  In his new classroom, the Voitu in charge—a gangling giant named Horszath—had them create images of monsters large and small, in three dimensions and fine detail. Monsters that stank. Monsters ugly, dangerous, indestructible—and as frightening as possible. Preferably terrifying.

  It seemed to him that all of this could have only one purpose: He and the others were to create such monsters in reality, monsters as real as Kurqôsz's hawk-bat, only more frightening. But a mental image couldn't move around and kill people. At least not en masse. And it seemed to Macurdy that even if they succeeded, all the monsters they might make would be less dangerous than a battery of flak-wagons from the Krupp Works. Certainly far less dangerous than a panzer battalion.

  And harder to create. Macurdy found himself unable to get the essence of raw horror that Horszath wanted. Which saved him from having to fake failure, for he had no intention of producing what Horszath wanted.

  * * *

  On his way to the rec room, one evening after supper, Macurdy met Berta in the corridor. "Kurt," she murmured, "I have learned why the cellar is forbidden us. If you'd like, I will tell you tonight. Privately somewhere."

  That evening he browsed Der Stürmer awhile—it reminded him what the war was about—then played two games of solitaire and went to bed early, trusting the arrival of the others to waken him. After lights out he lay there until the auras around him indicated sleep. Then he cloaked himself and crouched by the door. After the first hall patrol passed, he went to the latrine, relieved himself, checked auras again, and left. When he scratched at the women's door, Berta was prompt and saucy. He let himself appear nervous, whispering "I am in serious trouble if Schurz discovers I've snuck out again." Then they slipped quietly to the cellar without incident.

  This time there was no schnapps or brandy there, only beer. Macurdy wondered aloud whether there'd been any discussion among the blackbacks over who had been into the goods.

  But he set his concern aside when Berta wrapped her arms around his neck and began eating his face. This time there was more foreplay, and after sex, he suggested they skip the beer, to avoid advertising that the place was being used during the week.

  Berta laughed. "Let them think it was Robert and I, or Reinholdt and I." Macurdy looked surprised. "That's how I learned what I have learned," she said! "I came down here with Robert while Reinholdt was the foyer guard. The next night was Reini's turn. That also allowed me to ask each of them the same questions, to see if they gave the same answers."

  She smirked. "Neither of them is the man you are, Kurt, in any respect. But when someone has a deep thirst and there is no beer, water will do. They told me why the cellar is forbidden us: Dynamite is stored in two of the rooms. In this wing! Enough to level the building and leave a hole in its place. They said it was brought here for the Voitar a year ago, but neither of them knows why."

  She fingered his nipple, then they kissed, and she began to fondle him. "Do not be jealous, dear Kurt. Next to you they are boys. You are the man. And I do not plan to come here again with them." They were sitting on the sofa, and now she pushed him down, straddling him. "I learned something else, too. The Voitar have women from time to time." She leaned over him, her hard-nippled breasts brushing his chest, and kissed him again.

  "Women?" he said. "The Voitar?"

  "That is more interesting than dynamite, is it not? There were three Jewesses last summer, or six if you believe Robert. They were brought here from a labor camp. Then, supposedly, the Voitar had them taken to the top of der Hexenkamm, where they were raped and sacrificed to the Devil at the full moon."

  She slid down onto Macurdy's thighs and began kissing his chest, then paused.

  "Two months later, or maybe only one, it was two German girls—Robert said two nuns—and a gypsy. And last Sunday night, they both told me, it was a German woman, tall and blond, a real aristocrat according to Reini, the sort of woman that might marry a general or a Reichsminister." She grinned. "Maybe der Kronprinz is screwing her this minute, having his fun before the moon is full. Although cooped in this rock pile, I don't know what phase the moon is in." She chuckled, her voice husky. "Have you seen the Voitar's ears? They remind me of goats, and you know what goats can do in their season." She slid down further, and purred: "But I prefer a German man with meat on his bones. And between his legs!"

  * * *

  When they'd finished, they cleaned up and went back to their rooms. Before going to bed, Macurdy went to the window and parted the heavy curtains. The clouds were broken, scattered. Through the gaps he saw stars but no moonlight.

  He knew the story about the explosives was true, or mostiy true. The explosive wasn't dynamite, but that was a detail. The story about the women might also be true, he supposed. But sacrifices on the Witches' Ridge? How would the guardsmen know that?

  He decided it was time to snoop the south wing. Tomorrow night.

  Then, on an impulse and despite the risk, he slipped into the corridor again, to the rec room, and looked at the calendar. It was past midnight, a new day so to speak, and below its date was the symbol not of the full moon, but of its exact opposite, the new moon.

  Nonetheless it gave him chill bumps.

  * * *

  The next evening he slipped into the corridor and went to the sorcerers' wing. On his own floor, the second. Third floor main was where classes were held, and he assumed that third floor south was where the Voitar were quartered. He'd never seen or heard of them being on any other floor. Nor was he prepared to snoop their living space. He was more interested in the other south-wing floors. If they lived on third, what use, if any, did they make of the first and second?

  As always, the ell was guarded. Beyond it no bulb burned. The only light encroached from the main corridor.

  Barefoot as usual in his nocturnal trips, Macurdy slipped past the sentry, wondering if the Voitar had an alarm system. It seemed to him they did; he could feel an energy. In the dimness three meters past the ell, he perceived a faint rose field, like barely visible pink cellophane blocking the corridor. He might well have missed it, had he not been looking for something like it.

  Stopping, he examined it, and as he looked, it became more visible, emanating from what seemed to be a gray line in the ceiling, as vague as the screen itself.

  How to get past? How might the sorcerers do it? On an impulse, he told it mentally to move aside—and it retreated upward into the gray line! Tentatively he walked through, then stopped and looked back. The screen was in place again, faint as before. The sentry, who faced away, had noticed nothing.

  Macurdy went on, pausing to listen at doors; there was no sound. Nor any light beneath them, except for the door at the end of the hall, which seemed to be an exit. Cautiously he turned its heavy handle and pushed. It opened soundlessly into the cylindrical tower that rose above the building's roof, with a helical stairwell lit only by a weak bulb at each lan
ding.

  Something raised chill bumps again—an energy like that from the security screen in the corridor, intensifying as he proceeded downward. The stairwell continued below the first-floor landing and its weak bulb, and so did he.

  At the bottom was a final door, of heavy oak, and carefully he opened it, enough to peer inside. Opening it had doubled the energy he felt, making his skin crawl, his hair stand on end. Inside was a small, thickly shadowed mezzanine, stone-paved and with no parapet, overlooking a stone-walled pit. Firelight danced on walls, as if from flames below, and the place smelled of charcoal smoke. There seemed to be no other light. On his belly, Macurdy crawled to the edge and looked down.

  The cellar floor was perhaps four meters lower, the flames in a large brazier near one end. In the center was a stone altar, with a naked, long-limbed blond woman lying on it, clearly the aristocrat the guardsmen had told of. She was not physically restrained, but motionless, as if waiting, hands folded on her abdomen. Her eyes were open, her limbs and features composed as if for burial. Her aura suggested a hypnotic trance, her torso and head resting on what seemed to be a silver tray. Kurqôsz stood at the head of the altar. To one side were seven tall Voitar, not robed now, but wearing blood-red breeches and tunics, blood-red slippers.