by Ahern, Jerry
Sometimes, when she thought about children, her breasts ached. But the only man whom she had ever met, whose children she wanted to bear, was married to one of the two finest women she had ever met, that woman’s daughter, Natalia’s best friend. “I am happy it worked out, John. You would like the doctor the Germans have sent us to help with the Wild Tribe children, a very fine and patient man.”
“That’s marvelous. May I come and see your school sometime?”
“Ohh, I would love that, and the children would love to meet the hero of the War. They talk about you-they like to practice talking every chance they get-and the boys, especially, sometimes they play at war and I don’t like it, but all the boys want to be you. You are their hero, but then you are my hero as well.”
John looked embarrassed.
She started to laugh.
He asked, “What’s so funny?”
“You and I are very funny, aren’t we?”
And John reached out and held her hands and if she used all her concentration maybe she could keep them from trembling, keep herself from swooning like some silly girl in a romantic novel. “I wish I had something fresh to say, something new that would resolve-“
“We don’t have a problem, John. You live here and I live there. Sarah looks radiant. And very pregnant. You are the most fortunate of men.”
“I know that, at least sometimes I think I do.”
She bit her lower lip, leaned her head against his chest and he took her into his arms and she felt his breath on his skin and wanted to drown in it…
He could not count on support from the Neo-Nazis as long as there was the significant likelihood that Akiro Kurinami would be elected President of Eden. The election could be done away with easily enough, of course, but there was the matter of the damnable, Doctor John Thomas Rourke, his insistent interference in support of outmoded values, the critical factor that could not be dismissed.
The idea of people being sufficiently mentally fit to govern themselves had ended in disaster the last time, nearly wiping out all of humanity and could not be allowed to take control again under any circumstances now.
Commander Christopher Ignatius Dodd sat at the command console of Eden One, hands on the armrests of his command chair, his eyes peering at his own image reflected there in the windshield against the stormy darkness, the command compartment surrouaiing him. The effect was like that of a beacon in the night. He would be that beacon to the true people.
Five centuries ago, he had learned the truth, that the incipient weakness in the United States was the result of racial inferiors mbreeding with the Aryan people. And then, without knowing it, he became taxi driver supreme to the racial inferiors, helping the mongrels to return to Earth to destroy it again.
And John Rourke disgusted him.
That Rourke, as Aryan certainly as any man could be, despite his Irish surname, had allowed his only daughter, a beautiful white woman, to marry the Jew Rubenstein was nauseatingly indicative of the degeneracy which had caused the United States to be driven to destruction. And Rourke, all but singlehandedly, toppled the government of New Germany, giving the weakling, short-sighted fringe members of that once-glorious society, their disgusting democracy, deposing a man whose very essence so perfectly defined Aryan superiority as to make him godlike.
As long as John Rourke survived, to support the Japanese who had just married the black, the mongrelization of the new Earth would progress unabated. That a yellow man fucked a black woman by sanction of a pseudo-religion that had no resemblance to the true Christianity was of little concern, but that they should live to threaten the order which mankind so desperately required
was an abomination against nature.
And the power which he, Dodd, so justly deserved, based on ability and service and, perhaps, Divine Providence, would be unjustly denied.
Without his-Dodd’s-leadership and courage, not a single one of the shuttle fleet which had been launched on The Night of The War and travelled an eliptical course to the edge of the solar system and back while computers maintained life support and the crew of 120 slept, not a single vessel of the fleet would have returned, no one would have have survived. Not even John Rourke or Akiro Kurinami would have disputed that.
But how quickly that was forgotten.
Because of Rourke.
It could rightfully be said he-Dodd-had given life to the planet. Mid-Wake, with its blacks and Jews and orientals and mongrelized so-called whites was not a fit starting place for life, nor were either of the Soviet enclaves, on land or beneath the sea. Only New Germany had been a chance for humanity, but thanks to Rourke-With Rourke out of the way, Kurinami could be liquidated in a convincing manner and no one would be the wiser, he-Dodd-could step in, lead, eventually weeding out the racial inferiors, and bring about a new order on this reborn earth.
The Russians were powerless now, their land forces demobilized and disarmed, their undersea forces so pacified that no submarine warships remained to them and their mini-subs were strictly monitored.
Eventually, the Russians-Slavs and, as such, racial inferiors-could be dealt with.
The new power would grow, Eden its center of energy, and New Germany, its first logical convert.
But it all hinged on Doctor John Rourke, strutting about in his Mid-Wake brigadier general’s uniform, courting the Communist Bitch, Tiemerovna, before the very eyes of Rourke’s pregnant wife.
Sarah Rourke was strong, so if he could liquidate her as well, all the better.
The Jew, Rubenstein, would protest, would accuse, but could be dealt with like any Jew.
The key was John Rourke, and tonight that key would-be turned. Forever…
She felt like a giant blue Easter egg, and standing still, hurt her back more than walking.
So, with her lined German field jacket over the bridesmaid’s dress she wore, she walked, alone along the single street which had formed between the shelters erected by the Eden Project Crew. She had slipped out of the reception, then slipped out of her Chinese shoes, into her combat boots.
She looked down at herself and laughed, thinking perhaps that although she felt like a giant blue Easter egg, she looked more like a fat man in drag.
It was cold, the street, the literal embodiment of the term “windswept.”
Sarah Rourke understood the symbolic meaning of Akiro’s and Elaine’s wedding being held in Eden, but it would have been a vastly more comfortable affair had it been held at the recently restored and expanded German base just outside Eden. The heat was better, the washrooms (pregnant women became connoisseurs of toilet facilities) better, too.
She considered the name, “Eden.”
Perhaps history did repeat itself, and perhaps the snake in the Garden had been less literal than figurative.
There was a logical candidate for snake here, the same man who was the candidate for President running opposite Akiro Kurinami.
Yet, if this cold, dreary place with its political uncertainty and petty jealousies were “Eden,” it would be hard to imagine why Adam and Eve would have be discouraged to be tossed out on their ear.
A hell in the making, perhaps, but not an Eden.
Of course, neither she nor John could vote, because neither of them was an Eden Project survivor. Up until 1920, of course, as a woman, she could not have voted anywhere in the United States, except the state of Wyoming.
About one hundred people, all the survivors remaining from
the Eden Project and only they, would determine what would certainly be the future of the United States, someday perhaps the destiny of this new world,
She had actually heard one of the Eden survivors, whom logic and common sense would have dictated to be too intelligent to harbor such thoughts, murmuring under his breath, ‘Think of the children” as Akiro, a Japanese, had married Elaine, an Afro-American.
Think of the children indeed, with brilliant and courageous parents who would love and nurture them, teach them, respect them, prepare them
to make this new world a better place than the old one had been.
Think of the children of the man who had made that remark, growing up to inherit a father’s mindless bigotry.
Sarah Rourke dug her hands into the jacket’s muff pockets, walking toward her husband’s hospital where, in a short while, she would deliver the baby she carried within her …
John Rourke smoked one of Natalia’s cigarettes, sitting beside her just inside the entrance to what would someday be the seat of Eden government. He was a little cold, but Natalia required his jacket, so he dismissed the cold, smoked the cigarette.
There were so many things he wanted to tell Natalia.
Yet there were so many reasons why he could tell her nothing.
He loved Natalia Tiemerovna and he loved Sarah Rourke, loved them equally. And Sarah was his wife.
Natalia leaned her pretty head against his shoulder. “Do you think there is anything to what the Hindus believed?”
He just looked at her, not quite taking her meaning because he had been into his own thoughts.
Natalia whispered, That perhaps in another life we-“
Transmigration of souls?” Rourke smiled. “I don’t know. I long ago taught myself to discount no theory until it had been thoroughly disproven, so I won’t discount the possibility. Why?”
Natalia laughed. “Men are amazing.”
“I don’t think that was a compliment.”
“It wasn’t, John. Why would I be thinking about another life instead of this one?”
He thought that he might suspect an answer, but it would be such a terribly conceited sounding thing to say.
Natalia said, “Men can be so emotionally obtuse, at times, it is hard to comprehend. I meant that if there is another life in store for us, I hope that then, maybe, we will be able to be together. This life is no longer a viable proposition.”
“I really messed you up, and I’m sorry.”
“No, John, there’s nothing you should be sorry for. And the only person whose fault any of this is, is mine.”
” ‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves,’” Rourke whispered, exhaling smoke, but unable to see any stars through the doors at the end of this cold and dark corridor.
“Julius Caesar?”
“Yes,” Rourke nodded.
“You used to watch the stars a lot, John, on those nights out in the desert. What were you thinking?”
John Rourke extinguished his cigarette beneath his heel, held Natalia’s right hand in both of his, exhaled. “I was trying to convince myself that there was something better out there. I didn’t know about the Eden Project then, and I wouldn’t exactly say we’ve been touched by the finger of God in their return.”
“Are you that much of a cynic, or only on certain subjects?”
“Only on certain subjects,” he laughed. “For example, I think the New York Stock Exchange will never rebound.”
Natalia started to giggle like a little girl, saying through it to him, “Be serious, John.”
“Well, as an ex-Communist you should be familiar with the cyclical view of history.”
“And?”
“Well, I sometimes wonder if we came in at the end of one cycle and lived through into the next.”
“Do you think that years from now two people like us will sit here having this same conversation, John?”
“Maybe, or maybe two people already did,” Rourke told her.
Natalia hugged his left arm very tightly. “Would you tell me that you love me just one more time?”
He looked at her, touched his fingertips to her chin, raised her face, said, “I love you now and will always love you. But stop
loving me-“
“If I love you? Thaf s a logical absurdity, just like it would be to stop loving you.”
John Rourke kissed Natalia Tiemerovna, telling himself that he would never kiss her like this again, inside himself hoping that what he was tWnking would be a lie.
Four
Natalia Tiemerovna pressed her palm against it and pushed open one of the two exterior doors, passed through the foyer, then the inside doorway. “Heat,” she whispered to herself. But there wasn’t enough warmth that she was tempted to remove her coat, just let it fall open.
The coat was a relic of her past, and in that respect she detested it. But it was both very warm and very beautiful, and for that reason she kept it. Russian sable, the very best, ankle length, full enough that she could almost wrap it round her body twice, could have been wearing her double holster rig with the stainless L-Frame .357 Magnum revolvers beneath it and no one looking at her would have been the wiser.
The shawl she’d thrown over her head against the biting wind she now tugged down to her shoulders.
And her hands had been warm enough in her gloves.
But her toes were stiff with the cold, the Chinese silk shoes terribly ill-suited for the near arctic conditions here in American Georgia.
She had never been inside this hospital of John’s and she stood now just inside the inner doorway, looking around. “May I assist you, Fraulein?”
Natalia looked toward the desk at the far side of the hallway. Beneath a desk lamp’s light, she could see a woman’s face, plain but with a pleasant smile. “You must be Magda.”
“Yes, Fraulein-but-“
“John-Doctor Rourke, I mean. He said you might know where his wife was.”
“She’s in her husband’s office. I can show you-“
“It’s Fraulein Tiemerovna-Natalia. And if you’ll just point
the way for me, Fm certain FU be all right.” The nurse directed her down a corridor and Natalia told
her how John had spoken so highly of her, then started toward
John’s office.
There were lights burning inside and she knocked, hearing Sarah say, “Come in.”
Natalia entered and saw Sarah behind John’s desk, sitting there with a .45 in her right hand. “Hi.”
Sarah smiled, lowered the pistol. “Sorry.”
“You’re like John, still carrying a gun,” Natalia noted.
Sarah shrugged her shoulders, a German arctic parka draped across them. “Aren’t you?”
Natalia moved her left leg forward, then lifted her dress, revealing the Walther PPK/S, sans its usual suppressor, in the black fabric Galco thigh holster. As she let her clothes fall back in place, she gestured to the small beaded bag she carried “My Bali-Song. I guess old habits-“
“Not just old habits,” Sarah told her. “John hasn’t been elaborating on what’s going on here, has he?”
Natalia didn’t wait to be asked to sit down, merely did, opposite Sarah. “What do you mean? I know that the election between Dodd and Akiro is-“
“Bitter? Maybe that’s too mild a word. John refuses to take it seriously, but I think Dodd sees John as a threat and wouldn’t stop at trying to kill him.”
“That is the reason for the gun, then” Natalia nodded. “No. John said nothing about things being that bad.”
Sarah turned the gun around on the desk blotter. “He thinks Fm being a worrier. Maybe I am funny” Sarah smiled, still looking at the gun. “before The Night of The War, I wouldn’t touch a gun except to move it so I could dust. God, how things change us.”
“Maybe events merely awaken us to necessity,” Natalia suggested. “Will it bother you if I smoke?”
“So long as it’s not one of John’s cigars,” Sarah laughed.
Natalia took cigarettes and lighter from her purse, fired the
lighter, looked at Sarah as she exhaled smoke. “How are you feeling?”
“Fat.” Natalia was momentarily taken aback. But then Sarah laughed. “You remember Michael and Annie when they were little.” There was a slight catch in Sarah’s voice, but then she went on. “You should have seen me when I was carrying Michael. He weighed nine and a quarter pounds at birth. I looked like the Goodyear Blimp. I don’t think this little guy’s gonna be as big.”
<
br /> “Then it will-“
“Amniocentesis? Me? A needle in my navel?”
Natalia laughed, remembering the reason she had come here. “Akiro and Elaine will be getting picked up in a little while. John wanted to know if you’d like to come and see them off.”
“My back was killing me, just standing. Not used to even a little heel like these things anymore,” Sarah said, gesturing toward her shoes as she stood up …
They moved along the street now, walking side by side, Natalia walking more slowly than she would have liked, but terrified that Sarah would slip on the icy road surface and fall and hurt herself or the babv.
“Ever hear the acronym D.R.E.A.D.?”
Natalia had heard it. “I assumed it was just disinformation.”
“John said he assumed the same. By the way, thanks for being a friend, especially now.”
“What do you mean?” The wind was blowing stronger, colder, Natalia huddling her shoulders deeper into her coat, her feet starting to go on her again. But it wasn’t that far a walk to the Eden headquarters, so she told herself her toes would be fine. “What do you mean?”
“About which?”
“Being your friend. I mean, I think we are, friends.”
“I mean with John, now, then. He’s a strong man, but he could have been pushed.” And Sarah laughed “Did you see a lot of American movies?”
“Every one I could. I had to pretend to be American often enough and they helped a lot.”
“Ever notice, with rare exceptions of course, women were never shown to be buddies?”
And then Natalia laughed. “You and I should have been fighting over liim?”
“Yes, scratching each other’s eyes out and that sort of dumb stuff.”
“I couldn’t see either of us doing that.”
“But if we were really buddies, just like guys,” Sarah smiled, laughing again, “we would have flipped a coin over him, letting the best ‘man’ win.”
“I suppose. I don’t know. You are the best Vnan’, and you have nun already. I am happy for you both.” She wanted to change the subject. “What did you hear about D.R.E.A.D.?”
“I can’t see how you ever passed the spy school course in lying, Natalia, because you’re terrible at it. But you’re nice to try,” and Sarah reached out and took Natalia’s hands in hers. “You are a good friend.”