Black Chamber

by S. M. Stirling

  Stupid of them. When did Teddy ever back down from a challenge? He is like a bull moose! And he made speeches for full legal equality for women back when he was a freshman at Harvard thirty-odd years ago; they could have looked that up.

  The Inadvertent Sixteenth had been spinning off unforeseen consequences ever since, usually ones that elevated the vocal misery of its actual authors to hilarious proportions.

  On balance Luz supposed she approved of the idea. Conscription would have been a bloody nuisance for her, but few had the advantages she’d grown up with. It would get more girls out of the house and mixing with people from other classes and backgrounds in the fresh air, and the scholarships and settlement grants that went with national service were valuable enough that she’d be very glad not to see them limited to men. There would be unintended consequences from those, too; she didn’t know what all of them would be, but it would be entertaining to watch and find out.

  Ciara was looking at the sandstone cliff. “How will you get up there?”

  “Oh, the rock face doesn’t look too steep, and it’s not raining yet. I’d better be cautious, though. It’s leaving sign that’s the real danger here, either on the ground or on the tree or on me. People see what they expect, but not if you poke them in the eye with it. Stealth is the spy’s best friend.”

  She had a pair of her gloves in a pocket. She pulled them on, the smooth soft leather dusted inside with talc fitting like . . .

  A glove, she thought, said it aloud, and got a gurgling chuckle in response.

  They looked like an ordinary lady’s glove, specifically a two-button day glove for walking out, slightly old-fashioned but still wearable. But they were much tougher than those fragile creatures, essential if her hands weren’t to be suspiciously battered or worn after something like this. She looked up the slope, carefully noting cracks and unevenness, then sprang.

  “Huhhh!” she grunted softly as the weight came on her hands.

  Then she brought her right foot up and found purchase on the knob she’d seen. A warning tug at her groin reminded her to be more careful to keep up her stretching exercises—now that she was sleeping in the same room as Ciara it would be easier, since she wouldn’t have to worry about Horst wondering why a Mexican revolutionary was using an Asian-based limbering routine before coming to bed. She’d thought of passing it off as exotic Hindu sexual preparations from the Kama Sutra, and some of the positions in that did require you to be limber as a snake, but that would be a bit much even for male wishful thinking to swallow.

  Besides which, Position Ninety-Nine is exactly the same as Position Ninety-Eight, but with your fingers crossed.

  Careful pressure, and the weight came off her arms; left leg up and braced, and she was hugging the rock, resting an instant until her arms felt relaxed again, reach for the next hold, test that the rock wasn’t going to crumble . . .

  It went slower than it might have if climbing were her only care, since she was also being careful of her shoes—which were also much tougher than the standard street wear they otherwise resembled, but might be noticed before she could repolish them if they were terminally scuffed. There was only one moderately difficult part right at the top, where she had to reach up to an overhang, take her weight on her left hand and arm for an instant, then swing across and slap her right hand onto the sharp rock edge too and chin herself and throw a knee over and lever herself up.

  That left her panting as she crouched on the edge for a moment, exhilarated. Climbing rock faces was enough fun that she thought it might be a sport by itself someday, not just as part of being an Alpinist.

  There was a squeak of alarm from Ciara as she made the lift, and it had been plainly audible. She looked down; the other was standing looking up with her hands pressed to her mouth and her eyes wide. Luz made a vigorous shushing motion and then pointed both ways up and down the trail, and finished with an admonishing finger shake to keep the attention on essentials. Then she examined the branch, estimating weight and distance.

  This must weigh nearly as much as I do, she thought.

  A glance over the edge of the rock showed that Ciara was right and if the limb did fall it would certainly hit the power line, and would hit it right where the ceramic insulator was held on a bracket on the pole. Ciara had had an excellent idea of exactly how robust the mounting was—fruit of her conversations with Herr Böhm as well as her own knowledge—and that would short out the power line. Which in turn would cut the load to the Schloss for at least half an hour, or twice that at night in bad weather . . . and the weather would be bad. If it cracked the insulator, that would have to be replaced as well, which would take more time still, and first the hard-worked staff at the power station would have to wake up and dress and wade through the inky darkness and wet to find what had gone wrong.

  Pity to get that nice old Herr Böhm out of bed beside his mattress of a Hausfrau, but c’est la guerre.

  The problem was that the oak limb looked disgustingly healthy and sound. It would be easy enough to cut it partway through, but she couldn’t risk leaving the mark of metal on it. Another power outage because high wind brought down a limb would just be a matter for curses over extra work and lost sleep. One that looked to have been arranged would produce a fit of murderous suspicion. The German military here were on a knife-edge between triumph and disaster, and whoever had come up with that image of them as stolid and unemotional hadn’t met many of the breed. They were actually rather given to hysteria, but they—or rather, some of them by class, caste, and profession—controlled it very tightly.

  She stood and reached up, putting her hands on the branch about six feet from its junction with the trunk and gradually increasing the weight until her feet were off the ground and her whole lithe but solid hundred and thirty-five pounds of body and clothes and gear were hanging from it. Luz’s mother had loved gardening and had accumulated a fund of knowledge of what her husband had called failure modes among branches and passed it on to her daughter, the more so as the grounds of their house in Santa Barbara included a good many live oaks that had been growing there when the only inhabitants were the Chumash tribe. Luz had picked up more while climbing trees herself, which had been her passion for a long time as a girl. It bent, but only a little; she jounced up and down and watched narrow-eyed as the limb flexed.

  Oak’s strong, she thought. Now, how would the grain go in a fork like that? Where would it split if the wind whipped it too far and torqued it beyond the breaking strain?

  The shape was a lopsided Y. So, logically . . .

  She swung up easily onto the top of the branch and bounced a little more. More sway . . . it would be easy to overdo . . .

  Luz moved out to get more leverage, which put her over a twenty-foot drop onto a charged power line, and began to rock the limb until each sway went a little farther up and down, pumping more kinetic energy into the oscillation in exactly the same way a child did on a swing. She was watching the fork, but mostly she was listening. After a while it began to creak, and then there was an ominous crackle in the middle of the downswing. More creaking, and popping sounds, and then there was a warning mushiness beneath her feet and lack of spring-back. She used what there was to launch herself back to the trunk, hit it fairly hard, and clung laughing for a moment.

  Beneath her the branch had split from the fork in the trunk of the oak, heartwood and sapwood blond and white and bristling with splinters, drooping down about halfway to the line. Luz worked her way around until she could look at it carefully, then braced a foot against the section beyond the break and pushed. There was a slight creak and crackle, and the tip of the branch fifteen feet out shivered and bent farther.

  ¡Bueno! she thought. Now I just have to hope that it comes down at the right moment.

  * * *

  • • •

  I miss you, meine Süsse,” Horst said.

  “Don’t make puppy ey
es at me, Horst. It looks ridiculous when someone your size with scars on his face imitates a six-year-old whose mother won’t give him a piece of pan dulce,” Luz said briskly. “Fun is fun, but duty is duty. Besides which, there’s no real privacy here and if I want to be taken seriously . . .”

  They were standing in a corner, with plenty of traffic streaming by; the two visiting warlords and their entourage, many of them considerable Pooh-Bahs in their own right, would be leaving in the morning. All the paraphernalia and documents they’d brought up to the Schloss had to be stripped down and packed up again, with suitable security precautions. She still thought rumors of what had gone on here would spread . . . which meant the Germans intended to strike soon.

  “I hope you’re not enjoying sleeping with the Irish girl more than you would with me,” he grumbled, probably half-serious.

  Luz laughed. “Sleeping in what sense?” she said. “So far all she’s done is cry on me, and anyway, you’ve got equipment she lacks.”

  Horst chuckled the way you did at a mildly bawdy joke. My, but literal truth really is the best way to deceive, she thought, and went on aloud.

  “But seriously, sweetie, she needs to be kept up to scratch . . . up to the mark,” she amplified when the remark didn’t translate well. “She needs reassurance and someone to help her over her doubts. She’s an amateur political enthusiast with a grudge who ran a bookstore, not a professional as we are.”

  “Well, we don’t have much time,” Horst said. His face went from play-petulant to wholly serious. “We will be . . . on our way, fairly soon.”

  “In a U-boat?” she said.

  She chuckled at his alarm; also it would keep his mind off feeling randy, if anything could do that for a healthy young male. In her experience very little could, even the threat of death.

  Especially after the transcendent experience which is rolling around naked with my own glorious and exquisitely sensual self. Which can be una jodienda, she thought, punning mildly. It’s one of my favorite things, but there’s a time and place!

  “Oh, come now, Horst, how else? Zeppelins would be at the extreme edge of their range with any sort of useful load, even going one way. And this Breath of Loki is very deadly, but to cause sufficient damage to big areas it’s still going to need tons per target. Albeit not many tons. How else to get it across the Atlantic when the American and English fleets control the surface? Though how you plan to deploy it from the U-boats to the target I cannot guess, I’m just presuming you have that thought out.”

  Horst looked either way down the corridor. “That is a brilliant deduction . . . and would cause great trouble if it came to the wrong ears.”

  Luz nodded. “Which is why I’m saying it to you, sweetie, and not to anyone else. And you and I and she are headed for Boston—also deduction.”

  Horst winced. “Yes, and I admit that this Whelan girl may need . . . very careful shepherding when we get there. Possibly disposal.”

  “Well, if you need someone to finish her off if she balks at the crucial moment, it might be easier for me, being a woman, to . . .”

  He exhaled with relief. “Thank you, Elisa. We will need her, though. Not so much for the mission, admittedly . . . but I would like to survive the mission if possible, and she can help a great deal with that. I do not think the Yankees will be in a mood to take prisoners after this.”

  “No need to say more,” Luz replied. “You can rely on me . . . though the thought of what we’re giving up for our respective countries makes me wish there were a medal for it. Think of how it would be, about the size of a soup plate and sculpted in gold and ivory . . . One version for women, another for men . . .”

  Horst gave another of his laughs, like a carefree boy this time. “I like your imagination, Süsse.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Luz put down the violin, and a little reluctantly closed the case. “This is a marvelous instrument,” she said.

  “And not that I haven’t enjoyed the duet, but hearing two people playing for such a long while makes a good . . . alibi, would you say?” Ciara said.

  “Not quite. If it ever comes to a serious suspicion, there won’t be any beyond-reasonable-doubt formalities. But it does establish that we were both here, which may prevent suspicions from arising in the first place. I doubt even Colonel Nicolai’s twisted mind could suspect you of being able to play a Bösendorfer Imperial 290 with your toes, lithe and delicate though they are, while you lie on your back on the floor sawing away at the violin.”

  Ciara laughed aloud. “Luz, your sense of humor is completely mad!”

  “So is the rest of me, dear, or I’d be in Santa Barbara swinging in a hammock on the terrace of my house, watching the ocean with no worries except whether to put grilled shrimp in the luncheon salad. I suddenly feel an abundance of la añoranza for California.”

  The noise of the rain on the roofs and windows was a white hiss. Luz opened one and extended a hand out. It was raining hard, all right; and it was cold, just a little this side of being sleet. A gust flicked stinging drops into her face, and she slid the window closed again. Apart from the watery gleam of electric lights from various places in the Schloss, the night was as dark as the inside of a closet. One by one the lights vanished as she waited; the one in Colonel Nicolai’s office had gone out promptly at eight, as it always did. She cocked an ear at the sound of the wind.

  “Rising,” she said. “Good. More likely to bring the branch down, and the worse the weather, the less likely people are to move around. And the more sentries tend to find someplace dry and light a cigarette. There’s nothing more futile than a sentry at night with a lit smoke in his mouth; no sirve para un carajo, but you’d be surprised at how many do it.”

  Ciara pursed her lips. “The books of adventure are full of useless sentries. Faith, they’re there to be hit over the head or made to look foolish or to run about bumping into each other and shouting turn out the guard!”

  “That’s exaggerated, but a lot of them are like that—spear carriers. I suppose because sentry-go is so completely boring most of the time. It’s a real strain staying alert hour after hour when you know that probably nothing will happen. Though I’ve worked with people who took it very seriously indeed, generally ones who knew their lives depended on it.”

  The Philippine Rangers came to mind, and the specialist regiment of Regulars who’d revived the name of Roger’s Rangers, complete with carrying tomahawks; they didn’t pace around on guard advertising their presence; they hid instead . . . and listened and watched and even smelled the air very carefully indeed. She’d learned a number of useful tricks from them.

  She turned to the two customized trunks and began removing bits and pieces, putting them on the table behind her or into a small rucksack of oiled black leather. The last was a much longer length of the knotted silk rope, disguised as a woven net for holding garments but easily stripped out and shrugged over her shoulder in a coil. When she turned around Ciara was examining the metal parts she’d removed with interest, then fitted them neatly together, using her hands and the little socket wrench. Luz opened her mouth to object, then held silence when her fingers moved unerringly and everything went in the right order on her first try.

  “Why, that’s a clever piece of work!” she said with delight, holding up the result. “And this part with the jointed lever is an air pump, I do believe.”

  The result looked like a skeletal metallic rifle with a bulbous tube acting as the forestock, and as Luz checked it over she realized it had been assembled at least as well as she could have done it.

  “It’s an air rifle,” she explained. “For throwing grappling hooks and line, among other things.”

  The other things included quietly driving short pointed metal rods into human bodies, usually the skulls. Luz wouldn’t be using it that way here in any case. She was here for stealthy work.


  “Designed to be quiet,” she finished.

  “And all the little pieces made to look like something harmless when they’re in the trunks,” Ciara marveled. “Very clever indeed.”

  Then: “But you’re going to go in those pajamas? They’re thin for this work.”

  “They’re actually designed for this, and to look like pajamas,” Luz replied. “It’s not going to be comfortable, but there’s no way to climb around in cold rain in complete darkness and make it a pleasurable experience. Still, it would be less so in a wet wool skirt.”

  “What . . . what if you don’t come back?” Ciara said after a moment, and took her hand.

  Luz sighed and met her eyes. “If they capture me or kill me, I’d advise you to jump out of the window when they come for you,” she said, squeezing Ciara’s fingers and then releasing them. “I’m sorry I can’t say anything more comforting, particularly since you’re in this situation because you took a risk to save me, but that’s the fact of the matter.”

  Ciara smiled; it was a forced expression, but gallant. “Thank you for not padding the truth, Luz, and I did get myself into this. I’ll try to be as brave as you!”

  A genuine chuckle. “You’ll just have to succeed for my sake too, then, won’t you?”

  Luz nodded, smiling herself. “There are times when only gallows humor suits . . . but it’s then you most need to laugh.”

  Luz ate a bar of chocolate for the energy and slid on a hood that covered her head except for an eye slit, and lacework across the ears so as not to block sound. She looked at her wristwatch, fashionable enough to be unremarkable now, since military men had taken to them. Especially this type with the radium numbers and the hinged snap-on cover that was also a compass. Then she concentrated on keeping relaxed and waiting in that peculiar hunter’s state of mind where time passed quickly without dulling your perceptions.