I am out of focus, distracted by the smallest thing. I am grateful to Hsue-Shen for his insight but muddled by his suggestion. I cannot go back in time, nor can I walk to the general store and order air by its vintage year. Perhaps some form of container, sealed shut and conserved for centuries… I am nowhere near a solution, and my train of thought keeps veering in a more existential direction.
I became interested in climate change because my mother did. She became involved for the same reason. My grandmother is the one who started it all, but why? Why would she choose to go down that path? I realize how important the outcome is for the future, ours and everyone else’s, but we are the Kibsu. Our path is to the stars. More puzzling is the fact that my mother stumbled upon her mother’s notes by accident. My grandmother abandoned her life’s work to pursue this inquiry, and she did not tell a soul. Take them to the stars. That is what we do. Preserve the knowledge. That is how we do it. Why did my grandmother break the rules? And if it was that important to her, why did she not want her daughter to know about it?
More questions and not a single answer. Mia is missing. The Tracker might be closing in on us.
I will pour myself a bath and read from the Enūma Anu Enlil. That should calm me down. I do not know why I like reading from it; it is nothing but the ramblings of ancient Akkadian fortune-tellers. Perhaps it reminds me of who I am. No one knows how we came to lose the knowledge that was once ours, but we did. At some point, one of us had to start from scratch, learn everything from nothing. I cannot imagine what it must have felt like for the Eleven, knowing there was so much beyond the sky but having no way to see it. Dreaming of civilizations a galaxy away, machines that can cross the heavens in an instant, yet stuck in the middle of the Iron Age. We were living in huts. Science was the domain of soothsayers. Somehow, we got our hands on these. The Enūma Anu Enlil was a series of tablets containing omens, some type of briefings for the king, warning him of things to come. Most of it is utter nonsense, but many of these omens were based on celestial phenomena: the way the moon behaves, the position of the sun, some stars and planets.
The tablet I am reading from is particularly grim. Whoever wrote it was not in a good place.
“If on the first day of Nisannu the sunrise is sprinkled with blood: grain will vanish in the country, there will be hardship and human flesh will be eaten.”
Human flesh will be eaten. It would take a severe drought, or perhaps a long siege, to reach that level of desperation. Even then, I doubt cannibalism as a means of sustenance was really a thing. What is more interesting is the idea that a red sky in the morning is a bad omen. There is some truth to it. In high-pressure areas where good weather is found, there is more dirt and dust in the lowest layers of the sky. That dust scatters colors with a shorter wavelength and lets the red shine through. Where most people live, the weather moves from west to east, and if we see the sun rise through good weather that has already passed, that good weather likely made way for some bad. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning.”
In these tablets, the red sky brings with it much more than bad weather. “If on the first day of Nisannu the sunrise looks sprinkled with blood and the light is cooclass="underline" the king will die and there will be mourning in the country. If it becomes visible on the second day and the light is cooclass="underline" the king’s high official will die and mourning will not stop in the country.”
Those first two days of the month of Nisannu must have been quite stressful. For the king, obviously, but also for the scholar who wrote it. If the sunrise did look bloody and no one died, there would be some explaining to do. Things get better for everyone on the third day.
“If the sunrise is sprinkled with blood on the third day: an eclipse will take place.”
It goes on and on. Some parts are more interesting than others. One of the tablets is a crude mathematical scheme to predict what the moon will look like on a given day. It all seems childish now, but this was information worthy of a king back then. For us, it was a place to start.
To reach for the stars must have seemed an unsurmountable task, like finding air from a thousand years ago, but here we are, closer than ever. We are the Kibsu. We will prevail.
13
Trouble So Hard
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
It won’t be long now.
Tick.
Tock.
They should have let me leave.
“I just want to go for a walk,” I said.
“No, ma’am. We have orders to keep you safe.”
Orders to keep me safe. What he meant is I’m a prisoner. We all are. Thousands of German engineers, wives, children, and nieces held prisoner by the Germans. The Third Reich is falling apart, and the Nazis are scrambling to keep it together any way they can. That includes holding their own people captive. Trust has never been one of Hitler’s strong suits. It won’t last, the Allies are nearby. It’s just a question of time before they get to Bleicherode. I suppose that’s good news, though the SS have orders to shoot us all when that happens. Sore losers. They’ll do it, I’m sure. The real prize isn’t here anymore.
Kammler sent them farther south, to Oberammergau, a small internment camp in the Bavarian Alps. Them. He sent them there. Von Braun and five hundred of his top people. No workers, no wives. No nieces. He had General Dornberger make the list. I guess he still doesn’t trust von Braun. I find the irony slightly amusing, but it doesn’t make up for the mess they’ve left behind. All those families we worked so hard to keep together, they broke them apart faster than they could say goodbye. I don’t know if I was more heartbroken by the crying children or pissed we did all of that for nothing. The SS shoved everyone of value into trucks and they drove away. Dornberger went with them. It’s so absurd, I don’t know why I’m doing this anymore.
Guarding your own people isn’t that hard. There are only a handful of soldiers left here to keep us company, and shoot us all if the Americans get too close. The rest of Dornberger’s men are busy dying in the mud somewhere. I’ve been lying in my bunk for… almost three hours now. I don’t know where everyone is. I have the whole room for myself. The light in here is something else. I opened all the windows to let the cool breeze in. The wind is picking up now. I can hear it whistle along the window frames. Inside there’s paper flying everywhere, posters flapping on the concrete walls. I don’t care. I’m burning hot.
Bombs are dropping all over Europe. Thirty, forty, fifty million dead—million—and I’m here trying to save a handful, or one. I’ve already killed someone doing it. All so I can hand them over to the Americans for them to make even bigger bombs. The craziest part is the Germans are doing the same thing. Kammler is trying to save the exact same people! And he’s doing it so he can hand them over to the Americans as well! You think this would be easy, right? Hell, they could make a deal with Kammler right now and be done with it. Maybe they will. I hope they don’t. I really do. I want to see that evil prick burn. I want to light the match myself.
Maybe it’s the absurdity of it all. Maybe it’s the notion that the Tracker could show up any minute. Maybe I’m still shaken by what happened with Dieter, or that nurse, but I can’t stop thinking about the people here. Ordinary people, expendable people. There are kids everywhere. There’s a boy, maybe seven years old. His name is Frank. He traveled with his parents from Peenemünde. Days cooped up inside a shitty transport truck on a bumpy road with a bunch of people in brown suits. He didn’t say a word, never complained. He played with a toy motorcycle—probably the one personal item his parents let him take along—a piece of twine, and some paper clips I stole from von Braun’s office. Now he’s here. He’s found a couple of kids close to his age. They play marbles all day in the yard. His parents weren’t on Dornberger’s list. They aren’t on anyone’s list. Dad is an accountant. I’m not sure about Mom. They don’t matter, to anyone. Kammler will have them rounded up and shot if the Allies make it all the way here. God forbid the enemy get their hands on another accountant. It might not happen. The SS might take to their heels when they see the Americans. These people aren’t worth dying for. Not Frank, anyway. Not his parents. Kammler wants them killed anyway. He has no idea who these people are, but there are too many folks here to sort through. Mom and Dad just aren’t important enough to justify the effort, and no one gives a shit about Frank.