The behemoth twisted some kind of lever on the torpedo. There was a whoosh of air and a small hatch opened. He turned, waved me to come over to have a look.
Sure. What the hell.
I lurched to my feet, every muscle and joint protesting. I went to the tube, looked inside the open hatch. It was filled with so many good things I wanted to cry. Boxes of fine cigars, bottles of wine and brandy, cans of smoked oysters, jars of olives, cured meats, and the list went on. Some very high-end scavengers had been hard at work. What all this treasure was doing in a big tube I couldn’t guess. Maybe this was supposed to be a hiding place.
I turned back to the behemoth, the question plain on my face.
The behemoth gestured to the hatch. “Get in.” His voice rang like something from the depths of a mine shaft.
“Get in?”
He nodded.
“Like hell.”
Before I could move he picked me up and began to stuff me though the hatch and into the tube. This time I struggled—to no effect.
There’s nothing more discouraging than realizing the man currently trying to manhandle you into a torpedo is actually trying to be gentle. I might as well have been an intemperate kitten he was trying to ease into a pet carrier. He shoved me inside and with one hand held me down between the cigars and a crate of champagne.
With the other hand he put some kind of inoculation gun against my neck and pulled the trigger. Where he’d been keeping it I had no idea. There was a sharp phump as something was shot into my bloodstream. Instantly a soothing warmth spread through my entire body, and everything very slowly began to grow dim.
“Oh… yeah.”
He leaned in, his face inches from mine, fetid breath like someone had suddenly hit me in the face with a mallet.
“There’s been a change,” he said.
I wanted to ask what change, but the only sound my mouth could make was “Whaaaa… uhhh…”
“Word came in an hour ago.” His voice echoed inside the tube like we were deep inside some ogre’s cave. “They don’t want to risk it. The girl has to die,” the ogre said.
He closed the hatch, and I heard the hiss of air as it sealed shut.
I hate this job.
TWENTY-FOUR
Floating was almost like flying. I glided through a dreamscape of pure darkness, gently turning and bobbing and drifting into a darkness of a deeper kind. Finally there was nothing and nothing and nothing until…
…my eyes…
…popped open.
Everything clean and white. Was this the afterlife?
Would the afterlife smell like antiseptic?
I looked down and saw that I was wearing a white and perfectly starched hospital gown. Lying on clean white sheets. Across the white room was a white door in a white wall. It was like living inside a light bulb.
But I was comfortable and clean and my various aches and pains had faded enough that I could almost ignore them. I took stock. I’d been bathed and shaved, given a neat haircut. There was a tube hooked into one of my arm veins—probably keeping me hydrated. Feeding me nutrients.
The white door opened in the white wall, and a very white woman entered the white room.
She wore a white, form-fitting nurse’s uniform, white hose, white shoes. Her skin was so white and clean, it almost glowed. White lipstick and white fingernail polish. She was pretty by default in that her skin was so clear and smooth, there wasn’t a single crease or wrinkle or defining feature of any kind. Her hair was a startling contrast to the rest of her. It was a glossy black, slick, and cut short like a boy’s. The whole look was so severe it bordered on admirable.
Nazi girl. Should have been on a recruiting poster.
“And how are you feeling, Agent Sloan?” Her voice was crisp and precise. She bit off each syllable like she was trying to punish it for escaping her mouth.
“Better than I deserve,” I said. “Last I remember, a naked giant was shoving me into a torpedo.”
“That’s Rudy,” she said. “He procures for us.”
“So I discovered,” I told her. “I had a first-class ticket between a box of cigars and a crate of champagne.”
“Please don’t think us spoiled here, Agent Sloan,” the nurse said. “He also smuggles in medical supplies and information. This time he smuggled you.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Not long,” she said. “Not quite twenty-four hours. We’ve taken good care of you.”
“I’m sure.”
“Is there anything I can get you?”
“That depends,” I said. “Where exactly am I?”
A raised eyebrow. “Probably best if I let Professor Mueller answer your questions.” Leaning over, she removed the tube from my arm, then looked me over with an expert eye. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
She gestured at another white wall and a panel slid aside revealing a line of men’s clothing on hangers. “These are all your size. Please select whatever pleases you. When you’re dressed, exit the room and take the hall to the left, through the door at the end. Professor Mueller will meet you there.”
She smiled tightly, nodded, turned, and left.
Getting out of bed slowly, I expected weak legs and a light head, but actually felt okay. Rested. They had, in fact, taken good care of me. Whoever the hell they were. And they knew my name. I had the annoying feeling I’d ended up exactly where the Reich had intended all along. It was foolish to think anything else could have happened. I was a tool in their hands, to be used as they willed.
I picked a double-breasted gray suit off the rack. It was an old style that had been brought back and recut to look modern. A black silk shirt and a matching black tie. Highly polished black ankle boots that zipped on the side. I felt human again.
Following the nurse’s directions, I stepped through the door. The hallway was different from the stark white of the infirmary. Metallic, industrial, like a corridor in the bowels of some space freighter. I walked to the end of the hall and entered through the door there.
This room was different again. Thick exotic rugs. Wall-to-wall shelves with leather-bound books. An antique desk to one side. A crystal chandelier loomed overhead. The most eye-catching thing in the room was the long red banner hanging down behind the desk. A large swastika was in the middle of the banner, and perched atop the swastika was a fierce dragon, wings spread, scales of polished brass.
The Brass Dragon. A piece of Reich history thought long forgotten.
A small round table waited for me in the center of the room. It was covered with a white tablecloth. White cloth napkin with a gleaming silver spoon on it. A bowl of steaming soup. A single chair.
I sat in the chair, shook out the napkin and draped it across my lap. I assumed the soup was for me. If not, too bad—I was too hungry to resist. I tasted it. Chicken and rice. It was excellent. It would have been easy to slurp down the whole bowl in thirty seconds, but I refused to rush. I felt civilized again and wanted to stay that way.
“We can do better than soup for you later,” a new voice said. “The doctor said go easy at first.”
I looked up and smiled. “It’s delicious. Thank you. Professor Mueller, I presume.”
He stood in the opening of one of the bookcases that swung back to reveal a secret passage. He stepped into the room and shut the bookcase behind him.
“A pleasure to meet you, Agent Sloan.”
Mueller wore an olive suit with a muted red vest and bow tie—no glitter. Blonde hair shaved close and flat on top. Square jaw and pale blue eyes. Tall but slightly stooped, wide shoulders. Apple cheeks. A wide grin full of long horse teeth.
“Please. Keep eating.” He pulled the chair away from the antique desk and sat across the room from me.
I kept eating.
“You have questions?”
I spooned in another mouthful of soup, then shrugged.
“Please. It’s okay. You’ve had a long trip. Through both space and
time.”
I made a point of not eating the last few spoonfuls of soup. Pushing the dish away, I sat back and wiped my mouth with the napkin.
“Is there something to drink?”
Mueller laughed. “Of course. Sorry for not offering sooner.” He stood and gestured at a shelf of books. The book covers were a façade which slid to one side, revealing a small bar. “Gin and tonic? Scotch? Borealan ale? We have a fair selection.”
“I could handle a scotch rocks.”
Mueller stepped over, clinked ice cubes into a tumbler, then poured scotch over them. He approached me, but stopped short, fully extending his arm to hand me the scotch. I had to stretch my arm to take it. He returned to his seat. It was as if he was trying to stay out of my reach, like maybe he thought I was a coiled serpent that could strike at any time.
He wasn’t wrong.
I sipped the scotch. Good stuff. Expensive. I sipped again. What was left of my aches and pains faded a little bit more. I lifted my drink to Mueller, in gratitude.
“Help yourself if you want another.”
“Thanks. I will.” I sipped again. “I’m curious. Am I a prisoner or a guest?”
Mueller smiled. “That depends on how this goes, I suppose.”
I drained the scotch and headed to the bar for more. “Walk me through it.”
Mueller tsked, leaned back in his chair, and scratched his chin.
“Where to start?”
“I take it this is the island of the naturalist cult,” I said.
“That’s not what we call it, but yes.”
“I was taken out of stasis by the rebels and ordered to infiltrate.” If my cover story still held, he might not know the truth. “You must have discovered this, since you know who I am.”
If Mueller knew I was really working for Gestapo Mars, then I was likely in real trouble.
“The rebels who broke you out of stasis were operating under a ruse concocted by me and my associates,” Mueller said. “You’ve found your way here by design, because the daughter of the Brass Dragon wishes it.”
That was an eye opener, but I didn’t show it. At least he didn’t seem to know that it was really the Reich holding my leash.
“Sounds like I’d better have another one of these.” I splashed fresh scotch over the half-melted ice in my tumbler.
“Yes, perhaps you’d better,” Mueller said, “and perhaps I’d better explain.”
“Please.”
“We knew we needed an agent everyone could trust, and you, sir, are someone the Reich will trust when we send you back on a very special errand,” Mueller began. “That’s not to say we thought your loyalty was going to be automatic. There were risks of course. But you’d been in stasis for more than two centuries. You were uncorrupted by the status quo.”
“I was loyal to the Reich when I went into stasis,” I said. “Why would it be any different when I came out?”
“The fact they forgot about you, and left you in stasis for more than two centuries, would seem to me a good reason to question if they deserve your loyalty at all.”
He didn’t need me to tell him he was right.
“Additionally, the Reich to which you gave your loyalty no longer exists,” Mueller continued. “We were once bold leaders and explorers, expanding out into the galaxy. Ever we looked to the horizon, to the next planet, the next star, but now…” He shook his head, frowned. “The once glorious Reich—the explorers, the heroes—have been reduced to a lazy, complacent bureaucracy. It is time for the Reich to be great again.”
“And you’re the man to make that happen.” I swirled the scotch and ice in my tumbler, not wanting to drink this one so fast.
“Me, and others of a like mind,” Mueller said. “We have labored three generations to bring events to their climax. There are enough of us who believe the Reich can be great again, and now the final, key element has fallen into place.”
I tilted the tumbler back and swallowed. The scotch was too good to resist. If I was a prisoner, then this was the best jail ever.
“Key element?” I asked absently.
“The Coriandon, of course.”
It was enough to turn my attention from the scotch. “The aliens?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see how a hostile alien invasion force is a good thing,” I said, watching him closely.
“Do you know how the Reich originally rose to power, so many centuries ago?”
“Every school kid knows that.”
“Do you know what was so dangerous about the Jews?” Mueller asked. “Or the gypsies, or the homosexuals?”
I didn’t answer. He already knew where he was going. I let him get there.
“Nothing,” Mueller said. “Not a damn thing. The notion of them is the most unifying concept ever created. In order for the idea of us to mean anything, there must be a them. The vast majority of people are content to be left alone, and go about their business. But whisper in their ears that somebody else wants them to live their lives differently, and suddenly you’ve roused a sleeping tiger.
“The people will stand and shout and fight. Why? Because they are coming. It doesn’t matter who—a different race, sexuality, religion, philosophy. All that matters is that those people are coming. And who will protect us now? Who will protect the good people against the bad people? It has been this way for all of history. Vote for us, fight for us, stand with us. Because we are the ‘good’ people, and they are the ‘bad’ people—and how can the good tolerate the bad?”
“So what are you saying? That every cause in history was just made up to manipulate the masses?”
“History is the story the old tell the young to explain all the mistakes they made.”
“That’s jaded.”
“That’s reality,” Mueller said. “I don’t want the story of history to be that the Reich faded away like a sigh from a tired old man. I want to make the Reich young again. I want our people to feel they can do anything, go anywhere, that the galaxy is ours for the taking.”
“The Coriandon,” I reminded him. “Right now they think the galaxy is theirs for the taking.”
“I’m disappointed, Agent Sloan,” Mueller said. “I thought you’d been paying attention.”
“I’ve been paying attention to the scotch.” I refilled my glass again.
“We of the Dragon Society arranged a revolution and plunged the Reich into disarray,” Mueller explained. “A fat and happy population will always find something to complain about—food prices are too high, the press isn’t free enough, too much red tape for abortion vouchers. The slightest inconvenience can be made to seem like the greatest injustice.
“But tell people the problems are the fault of some villain, and you’ll win them over every time.”
I drained the tumbler, filled it again. It might have been the best scotch I’d ever had. I was vaguely aware that Mueller was still talking.
“These same people will come running for the government to save them when the chips are down,” Mueller continued. “That’s where the Coriandon come in. When confronted with godless aliens, the populace will demand protection, and a panicked and ineffectual Reich will have little choice but to accept new leadership. Leadership provided by me, and my compatriots. The failed, gutless, sluggish bureaucrats will make way for a new Reich, reborn in fire and blood. A Reich that will sweep aside the alien scum of the galaxy in favor of human rule.”
Scotch. If I kept drinking the scotch, Mueller’s voice would fade to smug background noise. The chattering squirrel who meant to take over the galaxy with speeches and propaganda. It was ridiculous.
Then again, maybe it was working. The planet had fallen, and I was light years out of the loop. For all I knew, planets were falling the same way all over the Reich. Armand was dead. There was trouble even back on Mars.
I turned back to the scotch for answers. It was worth a try.
Mueller continued as if I were hanging on his every word.
“The pe
ople need only one thing more,” he said. “A symbol. A focus for their hopes.”
“The daughter of the Brass Dragon.” I guess I was listening after all.
“Just so,” Mueller said. “From the lost line of the original men who tamed Mars. The hardest of them, the most fearsome. A man who spilled oceans of blood to keep the Reich strong and pure. The daughter is a direct descendant.”
I gulped scotch, sighed.
“What’s all this naturalist stuff anyway?”
“That’s what they call us on the mainland.” Mueller said mainland as if it were a place where the tribal savages lived. “The galaxy is meant for humans. The Reich has let far too many alien species settle within our borders. They bring corrupt ideas.”
I had no idea what he was worried about. It wasn’t as if we could mate with them and produce bug-eyed half breeds.
“And there’s more,” Mueller said. “A kind of purity that’s far more important. For nearly two centuries, men have been augmenting themselves. Adding metal to their arms and legs to make them stronger and faster. Computers in their heads to make them think better. Humanity is turning itself into one big connected machine, all plugged into the central computer. So what does that mean?
“I’ll tell you. It means men and women don’t have to try anymore. If they want to be better, they don’t have to work for it, don’t have to achieve. They can just buy a little trinket and plug it in. If a man wants to learn Italian or Chinese or Martian trader dialect, they can just download it right into their brain. Everyone can be equally superior, which means nobody can be anybody, really. Soon there will be no such thing as failure, and that renders success meaningless.
“We’re going to give humans back their humanity.”
“That’s a nice speech and a pretty philosophy.” I finished the last of the scotch in my tumbler. It had gone weak with the melted ice. “But you’re out of scotch, and now I’m bored.”
Mueller chuckled. “So you won’t join us?”
Gestapo Mars Page 12