Leaving the capture and nursing of the sturdy calf and the skinning and butchering of the bison and the cow to others, Milo and Harry and a hurriedly formed party saddled horses and set out for the site on which the yurt had been situated. They rode, not at all certain that even the intrepid Dr. Bookerman could have survived such hellishly cold and windy weather in so flimsy a habitation, and their worst fears seemed thoroughly justified when, coming within sight of the yurt, they could none of them espy even a wisp of smoke emanating from its peak.
But their fears were proved utterly groundless. When they were invited into the yurt, they all immediately began to sweat in the cloying heat. Bookerman had wisely and long since stripped down to boxer shorts, T-shirt and thick socks, yet the ashes in the firepit were cold and the only heat sources were the lamp and Bookerman himself. That was when Milo and the others began to truly appreciate the concept of the yurt and the degree of assured protection it would offer them and their dependent people from the savage elements of the prairies and the plains.
“So that is how you adopted those curious circular homes,” beamed Arabella Lindsay. “But how can anything that your mind tells me is so warm in winter be so very cool and comfortable in hot weather, Milo?”
“Simple, my dear,” he beamed back. “Just remove some of the outer layers of felt, then roll up those that remain for a foot or so from the ground; this provides plenty of air circulation, flushes out the heat and such smoke as doesn’t go up and out the peak hole, and, with the doorway coverings removed as well, provides plenty of light, even while the roof layers protect from direct sunlight and rain or hail. As I later learned, that old—that very, very old—man Bookerman had done some very terrible things in his long, long lifespan, but his pioneering of the yurt for us did, if anything, at least partially redeem him. I am only thankful that he was on our side, those long years ago, for as ruthless and cruel and brilliant as he was, as he proved himself over and over again to be, he would have made a most deadly and sinister enemy.”
She wrinkled her freckled brow in puzzlement, beaming, “But Milo, what made you think the doctor to be sinister, ruthless and cruel? Yes, he did torture the prisoner by the removal of one of his eyes, but had he not done so, how many more lives do you think that the aggressions of his cohorts would have cost you and the rest? As for the other thing that seemed to so upset you, I cannot understand why his wish to breed out any remaining scrubs from your people was so abhorrent to your mind. It’s as your memories tell me he said—such a process has been employed for thousands of years in breeding up horses, cattle, dogs, sheep and any manner of other dumb beasts; why should it not have been used to improve the strain of man?”
Milo sighed audibly, then beamed, “Arabella, it was not just that one point that so repelled me, it was the philosophy that clearly showed, that particular night, beneath his surface. I had suspected him, on the basis of things he had said and done and not done, for a long time, and that night’s conversation convinced me that I was right. Arabella, Bookerman was a Nazi, the worst kind of Nazi, an international criminal who had somehow managed to escape his just deserts—trial and execution or long imprisonment—and assumed a new identity and lived long and well in the United States of American for who knows how many years before the War.”
Once more, the freckled brow wrinkled. “I’ve seen that word before, Milo—read it, I believe, in some of the older works of military history kept in the fort library. But isn’t ‘Nazi’ just another word for ‘German’?”
“Oh, no, Arabella, you’ve apparently misunderstood that which you read. ‘Nazi’ no more means ‘German’—although most of the Nazis were German nationals—than ‘Communist’ means ‘Russian’ or ‘Felangist’ means ‘Spanish’ or ‘Fascist’ means ‘Italian’ or ‘Socialist’ means ‘Swedish.’ Although these groups led, dictated to, the bulk of the populations of these countries, the actual membership in the groups was always a very small percentage of the populations.
“Just how much do you know about what was called the Second World War and the events that led up to it and succeeded it?”
She shrugged. “Not very much, I confess, Milo. I believe that some of my ancestors fought in it, that some were slain and that others were injured, but then there were some of my ancestors in every war that Canada and Great Britain fought for at least a millennium … or so Father attests.
“How long ago was this war, Milo?”
“Something over a hundred and fifty years, Arabella.”
“And … and you truly fought in it, Milo?”
“Yes,” he beamed. “Yes, I did.”
“Then … then just how old are you? Are you human?”
“So far as I know my dear, I’m perfectly human, just … different, in some few ways from other men and women. As regards my age, I don’t know for certain, not my exact chronological age, anyway. But I have reason to believe that I’ve roughly two and a half centuries of life and living behind me, although, as I do not perceptibly age, I have no way of telling for sure. I looked no whit different from the way I look today when I soldiered in the United States Army before, during and after the Second World War, and I had just the same appearance during the periods that I just have shared the memories of with you, Arabella.”
“What made you the way that you are, Milo?” she begged.
“I have no idea why I differ in the few, but important, respects that I do from the general run of humans. Perhaps I was born different; I don’t know. You see, I have no memory at all prior to a point in time a few years before the Second World War. I was found by a policeman one late night in the alleyway in an American city called Chicago. Near my unconscious body he found a wallet—expensive of make, but empty of money or anything else. However, the name Milo Moray was stamped in gold inside it. It appeared to him that I had been struck on the head and robbed, and whoever struck me down hit me hard enough and in just the right place to rob me forever of my memories of my life up until then, a loss of far more real importance than a few paper bills might have had. But I’ll tell you more of myself at another time. Let us now get back to the original subject: World War Two and the Nazis and Dr. Bookerman.
“The seeds of World War Two and Nazism were sown in the wake of an earlier war, called World War One. Although the Germans did not really start that first war, they lost it, and then their enemies—notably the French—punished the entire German nation and king and people cruelly hard. The Kaiser—their king—was banished to live in and soon die in a foreign land, then a new form of government was imposed upon the people and nation, a government with which few of the people were ever really happy. Their military forces were disarmed and disbanded; they were occupied by foreign troops and forbidden to have more than a few thousands of men under arms. Their richest mining and industrial areas were taken away from them, as too were all of their overseas colonies. Large chunks of their traditional lands were taken away and given to other countries, some of them very artificial countries, places that never before had been sovereign or enjoyed an independence.
“All of their warships and merchant ships were taken from them, all of their aircraft, armored vehicles, rail transport and even many of their trucks and motorcars.
“As if they had not been sufficiently beggared, it was declared by the winners that Germany must recompense all of the costs of the war, and therefore all of the gold that backed the German currency was taken away, making the German mark not worth the paper that it was printed upon.”