The Heirs of Babylon Read online

  Beck turned his cold eyes on Kurt. Kurt understood why Haber was nervous and vague. The Political Officer hovered over the meeting like an eager hangman.

  “Sir,” Kurt replied, trying to ignore Haber’s neckscratching and Beck’s stare, “it shouldn’t be difficult, barring the steering problem. Wrecks in the Kattegat aren’t all that common —”

  “You have a chart of the Kattegat,” Beck interrupted. “The obstructions were marked, and you were to instruct the watchstanders. What happened?”

  Fright. Trying to blame someone? Kurt glanced at Gregor. Lindemann thoughtfully stared into nothingness, apparently unworried. Kurt realized the meeting was all for Beck’s benefit.

  They were much of the same appearance, Kurt and Gregor, tall, blue-eyed, fair, though Gregor’s hair was a shade darker than Kurt’s golden blond. They might have been taken for brothers in another age, but not in the present. The people of the Baltic Littoral all looked very much alike. They were descendants of a genetic type immune to a hideous weapon used early in the War, a virus which destroyed Caucasian chromosomal structures. Current physical differences were due almost entirely to environment. Von Lappus was fat because he ate too much. Haber was thin, small, and nervous because, as a child, he had been trapped in a collapsing building and had suffered prolonged starvation before being rescued. Of all those aboard only Hans and Beck were of truly different types, and for the same reason: they were from Gibraltar, where different weapons had been used.

  Lindemarm said, “Explain it, Kurt.”

  Kurt opened his portfolio and took out the chart Beck had mentioned. He spread it on the table, looked at the Political Officer. “Sir, this isn’t a chart. It’s a pre-War map of Denmark, southern Sweden, and southern Norway. It shows political features, not the sea bottom. Even if it was a chart, it’d be too small a scale. We should have the largest-scale charts possible when sailing close waters. But all we’ve got are old political maps, two ancient British charts of Scapa Flow, and the anchor chart for Gibraltar you gave me. I begged for better charts, but the Council planners...”

  Von Lappus snorted porcinely, shifted his bulk, opened his small blue eyes, fixed Kurt with his stare. “We’ve already heard it from Mr. Lindemann. We don’t have time for repeats just now.”

  The von Lappus twins, Sepp and Wilhelm, had been features of Kiel life for as long as Kurt could remember. Wilhelm was mayor, which was tantamount to being governor (or president, or king, or whatever) of the entire Littoral, and Sepp was commander of the military, such as it was. And, so Kurt remembered, the twins had always been fat and old. The only change in them was their common, increasing baldness.

  Kurt hurriedly continued, “The best charts we have were captured with the ship at Anambas, of Australian and Indonesian waters. They’re only forty years old. Yes, we can go on. The Kattegat and Skagerrak are safe enough, with care. Only the Channel should be dangerous. But I couldn’t guarantee there’ll be no more accidents....”

  “Ranke,” said Haber, shaking his head, “we all know the navigational situation is critical. You’ll just have to make do till we join the Gathering. The High Command’11 take care of us from there.”

  Kurt forebore telling Haber what he thought of High Command at that moment. The Beck look of icewater and doom was standard, but the man had a knack for making it seem personal.

  The Captain shifted again, nodded to Haber, who said, “All right, Ranke, that’ll be all. You said about what we expected. Oh, don’t bother the charts. We’ll want them later.”

  Kurt returned the portfolio to the table, looked at Gregor. He took a keyring from his pocket. “Sir?”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Kurt dropped the keys on the portfolio, quickly left, sighing once through the door.

  Hans was still standing outside. His presence surprised Kurt. Also, his apparent friendliness as he asked, “What’d they decide?”

  Kurt studied his face. Hans seemed frightened. “Nothing yet. But I’ll be surprised if we go home.”

  “Oh.”

  Kurt was two steps past the boatswain. The dull, flat, disappointed reply so astonished him that he turned back. “I thought you’d be happy, Hans.”

  “Kurt, there’s gung-ho, and there’s gung-ho,” Hans muttered, staring at the deck. Shadows veiled his expression. “There’s the kind you put on in Kiel because your father’s a Political Officer, and there’s the kind you feel inside. There’s the kind that makes you march on Victory Day, and the kind that makes you want to run for Telemark... oh!”

  Wiedermann apparently realized he was speaking dangerously. His eyes widened slightly — hard to see them in the dark — and he backed a step away. Then he whirled and hurried forward, to the head of a ladder which led down to his compartment. Kurt shrugged and started aft. Though he had been given a powerful weapon, he soon forgot. He was not one to carry damning tales.

  “Go away, dammit!” Kurt growled. It seemed he had just gone to sleep, yet here was the messenger, telling him to relieve the watch. And he would not go away. “Dammit again!” Kurt sat up, bumping his head against the rack above. Its occupant growled and rolled over. Kurt dropped to the deck, grimacing as cold steel met his feet. He yanked his work uniform off a hook nearby, donned it, then went up a ladder to the head, to shave. Minutes later he passed through red battle-light-interrupted darkness, to the mess decks for a quick cup of ersatz coffee before going to the bridge.

  Jager was underway, moving slowly, as he had known since awakening. She was rolling heavily, steaming parallel to the swells. What direction was she running? North, into the Skagerrak? Or south, toward Kiel? For one unpatriotic moment, he hoped they were sailing home — but, when he looked over the helmsman’s shoulder, that hope died. Course, 000°. He fought disappointment as he relieved his predecessor, Paul Milch.

  Hans arrived, relieved the boatswain of the watch. He too glanced at the steering compass and frowned. Curious, Kurt watched others of the oncoming watch. Otto showed the same momentary unhappiness, though Gregor, when he arrived to assume his duties as Officer of the Deck, merely shrugged. Of course, he had known already.

  Man after man, each reacted the same, with disappointment quickly hidden. It made Kurt wonder. Just one day earlier many of these men had been eager to sail. Now they wanted to go home. The adventure was no adventure at all, once begun. But turning back could not be. No one dared risk the wrath of the High Command, for High Command was a jealous god, believed capable of anything — including the destruction of an uncooperative member state.

  Kurt could see, in the battle-light-reddened faces of the watch, dread of High Command replacing patriotism and adventure as the forces behind Jager’s sailing. He wondered if the mood was similar aboard all ships bound for the Gathering. Would they go just for fear’s sake? Or because they felt there was some purpose in the War?

  He wanted to talk to someone, to discover others’ feelings, yet, as he looked around at men who were his closest friends, he realized they would not share. Time and circumstance had rendered null their closeness. He seized a cable overhead as the deck sank away, then rose shivering beneath him, listened to the sighs of the wind, to the crump of the seas hitting the bow — all the sounds of loneliness on a gray and forgotten sea.

  He wondered if this unhappy small sample of the crew were truly representative of the ship’s mood. His thoughts wandered to the engine rooms, the ammunition ready rooms. Combat Information Center. Would disappointment also haunt those places when men learned Jager was going on? What of the officers? The Captain? Haber?

  Why was Jdger sailing? Because of the High Command, that shadow organization at Gibraltar? No one really knew, except, perhaps, Beck, who had come from Gibraltar with platitudes, slogans, sentences with no meaning. Kill the enemy. Destroy. Why? According to Beck, to end the rampant savagery of the East, to drive a shaft of liberty’s light into the slaveholder’s darkness of Australia.

  Kurt reviewed the old catchwords, epithets, and emotion-laden argum
ents, and found no solace. Who cared? Who had ever seen an Australian, or been hurt by one? How could he hate someone he had never seen?

  He drifted back to his tenth summer, the day his father had sailed to the War. Years of slow, difficult work with makeshift tools, and a hundred men, had been invested in £7-793 — and she had sailed out of history as finally as if she had never been. Her story, for the people of the Littoral, had ended the moment she crossed the horizon. Why?

  Another year, another ship. Was Jager’s story already done? Was she a metal coffin staggering off in search of a watery graveyard?

  Gregor put a hand on Kurt’s shoulder, startling him. “Got a posit?”

  “Just an estimated.” He tapped the chart at Jager’s approximate position.

  Gregor nodded. “Come left to two seven zero,” he ordered.

  After logging the course change, Kurt went to Hans and whispered, “You ought to change helmsmen once in a while.” He nodded toward Otto. “Must be a job trying to balance the screw.”

  Hans grunted agreement, directed a man to spell Kapp. “Kurt?”

  “Sir?” He returned to the chart table. Gregor was examining the northern coast of Denmark.

  “Do you remember any shoals along here?”

  Kurt shuffled through his notes. There was little to be found or remembered. He shrugged. “None to bother us, that I know of. You?” When Gregor shook his head, Kurt continued, “You could send a lookout to the masthead.”

  “Right. Boatswain!”

  Kurt was at the psychrometer, working on a weather report, when Wiedermann returned. He grew aware of Hans’s presence as he closed the little wooden box. “What?”

  “Kurt... uh, would you forget last night? I mean... well, I guess I wasn’t thinking right.”

  Kurt studied him closely. Hans shuffled nervously, eyes fixed on the deck. This was out of character. Although small, thin, and physically weak, Hans had always been aggressive. For reasons Kurt did not understand, Hans was forever trying to better him. They had come to blows several times, especially courting Karen. But there had always been an unspoken agreement. No outsiders in their conflicts. Neither had run to parents when little, neither carried tales to authority now — yet Hans appeared afraid Kurt would denounce him to Beck.

  “Hans, I never heard a thing.” Kurt pretended to examine the seas while noting the nearness of lookouts. “We’ll stop in Norway to cut firewood, you know. Up the Otra River, they’ve decided. We’ll be only a few days from the Telemark colony.”

  Wiedennann’s eyes widened, then narrowed. He slowly shook his head.

  Kurt leaned on the rail and stared toward Norway, said, “Know what bothers me, Hans? I don’t think there’s anybody, except Beck, who wants to go on. Even the officers. But we’re going anyway, and I wonder why. I could ask Beck, maybe, but he’d give me the usual crap about Australia.”

  “Wonder if he believes, it?”

  “That’s bothered me for a long time. How does High Command know the Australians will sail against us next summer?”

  “We’ll find out when we get to Gibraltar,” Hans replied. “You know, Beck says every operable ship in the West will be there.”

  “They said the same thing when my father sailed.”

  “Well...”

  “That was the Final Meeting, the Last Battle, the Victory, too. And then there was Grossdeutschland — isn’t that a joke? She went to a Last Battle too.”

  “Maybe this time...”

  “Maybe Karen was right. Maybe there’s not supposed to be an end. Maybe, when we run out of steel ones, they’ll have us build wooden ships and cast brass cannons, or something,...”

  “That’s a lot of ‘maybes,’ Kurt. What bothers me, despite my father’s yak, is that I see no reason for this. Would the Australians notice the difference if we just stayed home?”

  The sun was sneaking up on the eastern horizon, speckling the sky with small orange clouds. Kurt mumbled, “I try not to worry about it, but I have to. Karen’s fault. She’s going to Telemark.”

  Hans shook his head, startled disbelief on his face. “Hey!” he suddenly hissed. “Don’t look, but snake-eye Beck’s watching us. On the torpedo deck. Bet he’s looking for a traitor to hang. Probably thinks we need an object lesson.”

  Kurt glanced that way quickly. Beck was indeed watching, and with the mesmeric predacity which had led men to call him “snake-eye.” Kurt grumbled, “He’d better not make a habit of strolling the weather decks at night.”

  “Quartermaster!”

  Kurt turned, saw Gregor at the door to the pilothouse. “Sir?”

  “I need a course for Kristiansand, with a turn in fifteen minutes.” As Kurt stepped through the door, Lindemann whispered, “Be careful, Kurt. Beck’s traitor-hunting.”

  Kurt nodded as he bent over the chart table, pleased that his cousin had expressed concern.

  III

  “SIR, lookout reports lights ahead,” said a phone talker.

  Kurt leaned out the pilothouse door, had a hard time finding the lights. Although the sun had set, twilight still confused the eyes. He finally found them almost directly over the bow, in a flat triangle which rose and fell slowly — the horizon appeared in constant motion while Jager seemed stable. Although he was certain he knew the lights, Kurt turned to his notes.

  “Those are the Lillesand ranges, Kurt,” Gregor said. “The legs of the triangle, extended seaward, mark safe channels into harbor.”

  “Thought so. What’s there?”

  “Salting station, trading post. Let’s see, we’re about fifty kilometers northeast of the Otra now. Give me a new course to Kristiansand.”

  “Two one zero.” Lindemann ordered the course changed, and the vessel slowed until she was just making steerage way. She dared not hazard the river until she had morning’s light. “You know anything about shoals or wrecks there?” Lindemann asked. “Can’t recall anything myself.”

  Kurt shook his head. “Not about the Otra. It’s strictly a Norwegian river. Never been there.”

  “When’s sunrise?”

  Kurt glanced at a note left by Paul Milch of the previous watch. “Four forty-eight, sir. Milch thinks we’ll have a flood tide.”

  “Thinks?” Gregor smashed fist into palm, grumbled, “I’m repeating myself, I know, but how the hell’re we supposed to sail a ship without charts or tables?”

  Kurt smiled. If nothing else, Gregor would share their professional problems. But with that thought he grew reminded of his alienation and the loneliness came crashing in. Things had been better with the Danes, professionally and personally. He had had tools and friends in plenty. Tools. Here his complaints were always answered with tales of famous navigators who had sailed on less than what Jager had available. Fine, he thought. So Columbus steered by astrolabe and the wind behind his ear. He had known no better.

  Such thoughts depressed him. He left the watch feeling low, and tossed for an hour before sleeping.

  Two pasts haunted Kurt’s dreams. Awake, he often daydreamed; sometimes dwelling in medieval glories, not at all aware the age had been as bitter as his own; sometimes in the middle decades of the twentieth century, just before the War, when all the machines and people had been alive, not just mysterious, rusted, fallen djinn, and bones found in ancient ruins. By night, his own past plagued him, his sorrows, errors, and triumphs. While Jager’s bridge watch trolled the Norwegian night for landmarks, Kurt’s soul wandered to a day that had been a little of each....

  At the Ranke home, a month after the wedding, he, Karen, and Frieda lingered over a late breakfast of salty pork. Kurt grew aware of Karen hopefully staring — he felt he should say something kind, yet he had arisen in a restless, impatient mood, and the meat had been overdone....

  “Well?”

  “It’s okay, I guess.”

  Hurt appeared on her face, quickly departed. Kurt opened his mouth to soothe her, but there was a call from another room.

  “Kurt? Frieda? Karen?” A mom
ent later, Heinrich Haber walked in. “Let myself in,” he said. “Hope it’s all right.” Such liberties were common in Kiel.

  Kurt’s eyebrows rose. Haber wore strange clothing, yet familiar. Then he recognized it. It was a uniform such as his father had worn on going to sea in U-793.

  “No!” Karen gasped. Kurt tamed, found her pale, on the verge of tears. He was dumbfounded.

  “Can we talk privately, Kurt?” Haber asked. His lean body seemed somehow fuller, more manly in the uniform. And his shakes, which were always with him, were much less pronounced.

  “Of course.” Kurt always had time for Haber, a man he and Frieda wished had successfully gotten their mother to remarry.

  As they took seats in an upstairs room, by a window looking out on the harbor, Kurt discovered the reason for his morning’s mood. He had a restless, urgent need to get aboard a ship and reclaim the feel of the sea.

  “Briefly,” said Haber, getting straight to the point, “I came to ask you to join Jager’s crew.”

  “Jager?”

  “I keep forgetting you’ve been away, and too busy lately to notice what’s happening. Jager’s the old destroyer. High Command has ordered us to outfit and man her, and bring her to a Gathering next summer.”

  “Oh.” He had heard something of it from Otto, had seen the High Command representative about the city, but had not been much concerned. “I don’t think so. Karen wouldn’t like it.”

  “None of our wives like it. But there’s a job that has to be done. And I’m not asking you just to be a deckhand. Your Danish experience counts for more than that. Leading Quartermaster, top enlisted billet in Operations, is still open. You’re the only qualified man in Kiel. Your cousin Gregor has agreed to be navigator. He’s on his way home from Norway now.”