Somewhat less bothered by the stench they lived with daily, the cosslain — the superior normals — flanked the procession, keeping a modicum of order. Keeping order among the normals was half the reason for the flanking procession. The other half was to carry and load aboard ship individual weapons with which the normals could not be trusted entirely, aboard ship, given the stresses those normals were under.
A Kenstain[20] appeared at Ro’moloristen’s shoulder.
The God King gestured and a hologram of the globe appeared in midair. He gestured, again, with a claw and a section of the hologram, plus a route leading to that section, suddenly glowed brighter than the rest. “Guide this group down to here and get them into the stasis tanks,” he ordered.
Athenalras held fiefs on nine worlds. The first, despite a major evacuation of the People, was already plunging itself into Orna’adar, the Posleen Ragnarok. This was the last to be loaded. From here the People would move to the new world, the one they called “Aradeen,” though the locals called it “Earth.”
Chapter 3
Bad Tolz, Germany, 31 January 2005
Schultz is too clean, thought Krueger. In an exercise in mud crawling intended for little higher purpose than to accustom the boys to getting dirty — well, that and simple toughening to overcome their civilized sensibilities, the boy remained too clean.
Krueger bent over and picked up a clod of half-frozen mud. This he smeared into Schultz’s face snarling, “You little pussy. You smelly little fur-hole filled with nothing. You are nothing so good as a Jew-bitch camp whore. At least she would have known her job.”
Turning from Dieter to the rest of the platoon, standing in ranks, Krueger shouted, “The earth is your friend. Use it. Huddle up to it as if to your mother’s tit. Embrace it like the little sluts you used to waste your time with. Dig into it. Do not be like this ever-so-prissy little schoolboy, Schultz, afraid to get yourselves dirty. You can wash dirt away. Your own blood is a tougher stain. Dismissed.”
Without another glance Krueger turned away from his charges and walked to the NCO barracks, briskly and erect.
The platoon gathered about Schultz, standing there with his face dripping filth. No one said a word; they just stared. Schultz himself quivered with anger. By what right, by what right did this man who looked no older than did Dieter himself, treat him like dirt? And not merely today, but everyday, so it seemed to Schultz, Krueger — his platoon trainer, had some new heap of abuse for him.
One of the boys, Rudi Harz, put a calming hand on Dieter’s shoulder. “Mein freund, my friend… Krueger is an asshole, a Nazi asshole to boot. But he is also a Nazi asshole who knows. And he sees something useful in you. Bear with it.”
Around the two the others nodded somberly.
Schultz, grateful for the touch and the concern, cocked his head and shrugged, adding his own nod. Harz was a good comrade. So were they all.
“But that asshole, Krueger?” said Dieter, quietly. “He is a bad man, whatever he may know.”
“Yes,” agreed Harz. “He is the worst. If I hear even one more tale of his rapes in the old concentration camps I will vomit. Even so, use him for what he is good for: which may include how to keep ourselves alive.”
Silent, Schultz again nodded. Then to the rest he said, “Shall we march back then? Not crawl or amble? March back singing?”
Amid a general assent, and a wink from Harz in Schultz’s direction, the boys formed into four ranks. “You march us back, Dieter… that’s right, Dieter… show that bastard Krueger that he can’t break us up.”
Silently agreeing and taking a place on the left side of the platoon, Schultz gave the command, “Vorwaaaats… Marsch!”
Up in the front rank, Harz began the song, “Vorwärts! Vorwärts! Schmettern die hellen fanfaren…”[21]
At a distance, still walking away, Krueger smiled to himself and felt an enormous inner glee. He muttered, happily, “The old ways still work.”
Over the Rhein River, 13 February 2005
The steep banks of the river spoke to the Indowy with a voice hoary with age. He remembered; he remembered.
“We have been to your planet before, long, long ago,” Rinteel said, seemingly to the chancellor. “It is a story of sadness.”
“Really?” asked the chancellor. “Sad, how?”
“The same way all blighted hopes are sad,” answered the Indowy, distantly.
Off, too, in the distance, Rinteel saw a rocky hill. His mouth began to mime words in his own tongue. The chancellor had no clue what the words meant, yet something in the cadence touched a chord.
“What is that you are saying?” the chancellor asked.
The Indowy took a few moments, inexpressibly sad and weary moments, to answer. “It is a song of my people, an ancient song. It tells of an attempt at liberty from our oppressors, of an ancient stronghold, of trying to forge a weapon to defend those who might have become, in time, our deliverers.”
The Indowy sighed and pointed from the helicopter window. “It tells the blood-drenched tale of that rock over there.”
His interest piqued, the chancellor gave orders to the pilot, ignoring the scowls of his security detail. The helicopter veered sharply to the right. In the setting sun the rocky hill gleamed golden and beautiful.
The helicopter touched down flawlessly, despite the heavy crosswind atop the hill. The Indowy, seemingly in a trance, spirit walking, dismounted first. He was followed by the chancellor and his guards.
The helicopter had landed a scant three hundred meters from the summit. Over the steep and rocky ground the Indowy advanced, his chanting growing louder with each step. The Chancellor thought he could almost recognize some of the words: “Fafneen… Mineem… Albletoon… Anothungeen… Nibleen… Fostvol.”
At last the Indowy, and the others, stood before a sheer rock wall. “It was my clan, mine and mine alone, which made this attempt. We paid for it, heavily.”
“What attempt?” asked one of the BND guards.
Rinteel half ignored the question. Instead, speaking distantly, he said, “We wanted to make a holy order, a group of warrior heroes, to man the defenses we would build here. We had thought that under the protection of Anothungeen, an insuperable defense for your planet, your people might grow to mightiness. We could not defend you. Yet we sought to give you the means to defend yourselves.”
The humans of the group, swaying on the wind-swept slope, faced the unmarred cliff with boredom writ large upon their faces. And then the Indowy reached out a palm and uttered a phrase in a nonhuman tongue. A portion of the rock face disappeared, exposing a rough, archlike entrance. The humans, including the chancellor, gaped. Still in his half trance, Rinteel entered; in enclosed spaces the Indowy people were much less fearful than were the sons of Adam.
From just past the arch Rinteel said, “This place was chosen because it was on the fringe of your then dominant civilization. Here we could, so we thought, develop the systems, Anothungeen and Fafneen, in peace. From here also we could, so we thought, distribute it secretly throughout your then-dominant civilization, the one you humans call ‘Roman.’ ”