Drakas! Read online

  "So much for Nietzsche's Superman," Verwoerd spat.

  With the speed only another Draka could match, in one smooth movement Verwoerd reached in his sleeve and pulled out the tiny pistol, then pointed square between Brekenridge's eyes.

  The British commandos grabbed for their guns. They might as well as have been moving in slow motion. Verwoerd swung his tiny gun back and forth in an arc.

  "Drop your guns!" he barked.

  The commandos hesitated.

  "I said drop them!" Verwoerd shouted. "On the floor. Good. Now kick them towards me."

  Sten guns clattered across the floor.

  Sally glared at him with contempt. "You're one of them after all, aren't you? You're just like them."

  It tore his heart, but Verwoerd nodded.

  "You fight monsters, you become one," she said, tears welling.

  "Now you know what I learned spending those three days in Salt Lake City." He slowly edged over to the door and closed it, locking it shut.

  "There's no way you can escape, Hans. The courtyard is swarming with commandos."

  "Nietzsche was right all along," Verwoerd said as if he hadn't heard her. "Right about so many things. `Once I thought of little else but Nietzsche'—would that I had ever been able to stop!

  "Those three days I stared into the abyss—`thou heaven above me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—and it stared back at me."

  His words sounded crazy, but his voice was level, his face a cold stone blank.

  " `And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee!' "

  He edged back over to Brekenridge and pressed the tiny muzzle of the gun to his forehead.

  "Understand a thing to its depths, dear Brekenridge, and seldom will you remain faithful forever, for bringing the depths into the clear light of day reveals what is in the depths is not pleasant at all."

  The two commandos looked at each other and dove for their guns.

  Not fast enough.

  Verwoerd kicked the guns away from their outstretched hands. "Stand up," he told them. "You, too, Sally. I mean it."

  "You're crazy, Hans." she said, tears on her face. "You're raving."

  "Of course I am crazy—I'm a Draka! A cold-blooded kind of crazy. The kind that lasts a lifetime."

  But tears were trying to well in his eyes. He blinked them away.

  " `You must become what you are.' The Will to become the Superman, to rise above `slave morality'—that makes us the Superman. It was our Will that made us better than the rest of the world.

  "Then I visited that accursed city, saw that same Will channeled into their serf morality, their serf dreams. To `never never never' fall under the yoke, to be gods looking down in pity on mere superman. To will the absurd fantasies of religion into reality—entire nations that don't have to conquer or murder or . . ."

  He composed himself. "I knew then my people were too evil to let them continue to exist. I dedicated my life to destroying the Domination."

  "You've made a good start," Sally said. "Rescuing an entire population out from under the noses of the Draka will give conquered people all over the Domination hope—"

  "And don't you see how much like them that makes me?" He threw his head back and laughed, a horrible snake hiss.

  "Never again will the Draka attempt to soften a conquest. The Rationalist Party is through after this. They'll be lucky if they're all lined up and shot rather than forced under the yoke. I've knowingly and premeditatedly killed my friends, my family—killed the last vestige of decency in the Domination."

  Sally stared at him in horror, seeing what he was for the very first time.

  "I had to, don't you see?"

  He pressed the gun to Brekenridge again.

  "Better that one man perish. Better that an entire nation perish. Better that one man . . ."

  He spat on Brekenridge and shoved him backwards. Man and chair went tumbling onto the floor.

  Verwoerd wiped his eyes with the back of his free hand. His Will was no longer strong enough to stop them from tearing.

  "The greatest danger was that you would pity us. Now—now you will hate us. Now you will learn our hedgehog's trick. Now you will fear us."

  Verwoerd stared longingly at Sally, then fell to his knees in a supplicating posture known across half the world, known where ever the Draka ruled.

  "Now you can destroy us."

  He turned his tiny pistol with its single bullet around and pointed at his own heart.

  Home is Where the Heart Is

  William Barton

  William Barton writes things about human beings so unbearably true that they're difficult to publish; if you want to know what I mean, read When We Were Real . . . or this story about a German scientist making the best of it in a world he never made . . .

  The dream becomes the dreamer, as with mandarin and butterfly. Silly. Strange. Like the dreams you have when you're in the hospital and they've pumped your ass full of drunks . . . drunks. Ah, can't think. What the Hell . . . oh, drugs. That's what I meant. When they fill your ass with drugs.

  Two men talking, speaking some funny kind of English, nothing like the clipped Brits and twangy Yanks I'd known between the wars, the years between the wars, in Paris, when . . . Oh, Hell.

  Men with funny, muddy voices, language less like German than any English I'd ever heard before, men talking as if I were. No. Flinch away from that. Now.

  "Whyn't we jes kill this pony, suh? We'un got owah own engineeahs."

  The other, von Something? Von Frankenstein? Fading in and out now, sharper voice, a little less mud in it, "Not like these we don't. And most got away 'fore we could get 'em."

  One of them touched me, lightly, on the shoulder, smearing old, cold sweat, grease of fear sending a thrill from there to . . . Grüss Gott, making me shiver, stopping the breath in my throat. Von Somethingburg said, "There, there, Hans. All over now. You've told us what was needful . . ."

  Hans? Not my name. Is it? Hans . . . Hansel and Brutal . . . I started to giggle, feeling those warm fingers press into my shoulder, oh-so-reassuring, then I started to cry and . . .

  Morning. Rosy-fingered dawn lights the window.

  Some afterecho of a second dream, dream forgotten, surrounded by dreams of torture and redemption. Me, in a coffle, coffle led by dark, black men, men with guns, staggering on bare, bleeding feet down a bombed-out bleeding street. Boom! Flash of light, looking up just in time to see a rolling ball of fire, smoke, orange and black all mixed together, rising from the roof of the Reichstag, black swastika spinning like a galaxy as it tumbled to the street below.

  Pictured those famous faces, der Führer, der Dicke, stumbling in a coffle like mine, then moved on quickly, responding to a gentle tug on the neck chain, not wanting the black man's whip.

  Bed. My bed. My home. The home they've given me. Safe. My God. Safe. Rich, crumpled cotton sheets under my back, sheets better than anything I'd ever had in Germany, clammy with night sweat now. Night sweat and dreams. Plaster ceiling, lit by red dawn, stripes of light and dark picking out irregularities, color and shadow.

  I got up, sat for a minute on the edge of the bed, wishing. No. Not wishing for anything. Just looking down at my smallish gut, middle age settling in, round dome of hairy belly, black hair over fishbelly white. Well. Slippers and thin cotton robe, white with a pale print, ibises and river reeds, boy-slim Pharaoh knee-deep in Nile, bow well-drawn. Got up and walked to the kitchen, water from the tap, tepid but fresh, safe, just like this was Europe or America.

  Safe.

  Reached up to the little shelf over the sink and turned on the radio, little green Zenith, not new, not old, AM still staticky with night as I twisted the big plastic dial. Outside, the sky was turning blue over scrubby subtropical bushes, my neighbor's lawns, distant city buildings low on the horizon.

  Announcer's voice with the Brit-like accent you still hear from pe
ople down around the Cape. Something about ongoing border negotiations with the Allies. India. Christ. What do they think is going to happen?

  Well. Prepared the pot. Beans ground, water from the tap because that's what I had, put it on the gas ring, thud of ignition and hiss of gassy flame.

  There was another sound in my head. Same thud of ignition, swirl of orangy fire and greasy smoke on the ground, then the pumps would run up, and there would be that wondrous waterfall roar. Aggregat Vier. Beautiful spear of yellow-white fire in the sky, rising, tipping over toward the west.

  Fat man in the news. He never did get to piss in the Rhine.

  A moment suppressing hysterical laughter, keeping silent.

  Outside, the air was still cool, but with a sharpness promising the hot day to come, when the sun would burnish the sky, burning the wilderness lands around the base their tawny lion-colored shade of gold.

  Bottle of milk in the cooler, newspaper at the end of the driveway, near the rear bumper of the old prewar Ford steamer they'd given me.

  "Good morning, Mr. de Groot!"

  The soft, musical voice of my next door neighbor, probably put me here so he could keep an eye on me for the bosses, dark man with sharp, alert features, deep black eyes, shiny, oily-looking black hair falling over a broad deeply-tanned brow.

  "Ah, good morning Dr. Groening . . ."

  Why the Hell would an Anglo-Indian chemist, product of the finest British schools want to be here, and work for these . . . these . . . Shut up. Those white buildings poking over the horizon. Archona. Remember just where the Hell you are, Helmut . . . no. It's Hans. Hans de Groot. Don't forget.

  He walked up, grinning, and said, "Well . . ." Having as much trouble with W's as me, though English was certainly his native tongue, that special accent making it come out a bit like vwell, "today's the big day, eh? I'm sure you're looking forward to getting busy?"

  A slow nod. "I . . . I am. Yes, I am, Dr. Groening."

  He said, "Please, you must call me Apu . . ."

  "Apu . . ." I remembered seeing his work under a very different name, before the war, gracing the pages of every chemical journal you could name. The Draka were our allies. Why shouldn't he have gone to work for them?

  A soft hand on my forearm. "And you must remember, they say `Grooning' here, not `Grehnink.' "

  "Sorry."

  "Well, we all know who we are, Hans."

  * * *

  Closer to the equator, the midday sun is always high in the sky. Always summer here. Mad dogs and Englishmen. Well. I'm sure as Hell not an Englishman. I guess mad dog will have to do.

  The sky seemed too dark a blue for all this heat. Too dark and too low. I remember back in the early Thirties, honeymooning with my young wife in the American southwest, seeing the haze of the Grand Canyon, making it looking like some cartoon canvas, more a work of art than a work of nature, under an impossibly high sky, pale blue so terribly far away, hinting at the depths of the planeteraumen beyond . . .

  Planetary space. And that young wife . . . No will to wonder where she . . . Here, the sky seemed flat, as if there were no beyond. Flat blue sky over a sea of pale brown grass, amber waves rolling in the hot, dry wind. Far way, closer than the horizon, were the tiny figures of elephants walking.

  Nearby, muscular black men, men burnt the color of coal by the sun, shining like anthracite, sweating in the heat, sang as they worked, snatches of Swahili and English, tribal chanteys and popular prewar radio tunes mingled as they took the crates from the backs of flatbed drags, breaking the straps and pulling them down, piling them in orderly arrays.

  "No, dis vun over hier, Sambo . . ." says Hartmann, who can't remember his new name, and can't get the story straight. Verdammt idiot. No tigers in Africa, Hartmann. The story of little black Sambo comes from Dravidian India.

  I remember how Apu laughed when I said that. Little black Hindoos . . . Funny. I expected our workers would be Frenchmen or something, excess labor being run into the ground, but . . . Right. Mad dogs and Englishmen.

  The medium-brown overseer, toasty skin dressed up in white linen, had shrugged, running the whip between his fingers, assessing his line of workmen. These boys, sah, will get the job done. They's good men, these boys.

  They worked like machines, glittering in the sun, sweat beading on black skin as lovely as a healthy horse's hide, singing, taking turns with the water barrel, bringing the crates on down.

  "This one first," I said.

  A black man came with a crowbar and opened the lid, nails squeaking as they pulled from wood. Shine of sunlight on silvery chrome, gray steel, golden brown copper. Not a bit of corrosion. Not a bit.

  I reached out and touched the A-4 motor, running my fingers over the peroxide turbine's casing, feeling the edges of the stamped-in serial number . . .

  Magic.

  Magic that will take us to the stars.

  I remembered a big, dark cavern. Bridge cranes rumbling overhead, conscript labor down in the squalor and darkness. Nordhausen. I remember how they starved and died. But they worked, and built these wonders for us, working by the numbers, dying in turn, so the missiles could spear up from Holland and Normandy, crawling away into the sky, on their way to holdout England.

  Vergeltungswaffen too late. Jets too late. Maybe if we'd had the industrial organization of the Americans, the utter, all-consuming confidence of the Draka . . .

  Common sense Draka knew how not to waste serf labor, unlike our fat engineers and kränkliche politicians.

  These blacks now, working, singing in the sun.

  I remembered being at some country estate, in the hill country north of the Zambezi, the day they took off my collar, the day . . . Handsome man with tawny brown hair, sun-streaked hair, casting the collar aside.

  "You're a lucky man, Hans. Most landed immigrants had to have come over before the war started, or come over to our side before we got into Europe proper. Some of your old friends did, and they've asked for you as a coworker."

  Humble. Oh, so humble, "Thank you, sir . . ."

  "Don't thank me, Hans. If we'd had the reach to take America, there'd be no need for your kind. No need at all."

  In the background, carefully sprawled on a brocaded divan, there was a naked woman, long, shiny black hair and pale white skin, maybe French or Italian, pretty like a movie star, half-reclining with her legs just slightly apart, staying the way he'd left her when they brought me in the room.

  He saw where I was looking and smirked. "Get out Hans. There's a car waiting that will take you to Archona."

  * * *

  Hand on my shoulder in the here and now, under a sun so bright its rays seemed to punch through white clothing, through my tropical helmet, ultraviolet light cooking the substance of my brain. Musical voice, "Beautiful work you did. Incredible precision."

  I nodded. Nothing to say. Still looking at the workers, so tireless.

  Apu said, "Like's Rossum's machines, eh, Hans?"

  I wonder where Karel Capek is now. Escaped to America? Slaving on a plantation somewhere? Or just dead?

  Apu said, "They hardly look human."

  These workers. Here and now. I said, "You surprise me, Apu. I mean, black . . ." I guess I nodded at him, all the dark tropical tan of him, before glancing back at the workers.

  His lip seemed to curl for a moment, then he laughed, that same genuine-sounding chuckle that never changed. "These hubshi, Hans? Vwell." Another little titter. "My people were the ones who first called themselves Aryans, Hans, not your pathetic Hyperborean lot!"

  He must have seen the surprise on my face.

  "Look at him, Hans," pointing at a young Draka officer standing with the mulatto overseer, overseer who might be his half-brother for all he or we knew, going over some paperwork. "Look at him. See? Sahib Log must earn the right to their name."

  Sahib Log's Hindi. I know that much from Kipling. It means Master Race.

  And the British adopted Nigger for the Hindoo, who might well have been lighte
r than your average Sicilian, long before it was given over to the Guinea Men, whose own name, English pronunciation Portuguese spelling for native Ghana, became a pejorative for Italian . . .

  * * *

  Home again, with another day's sunburn crackling on my skin. Outside, I could hear dogs barking, children playing, no more than a distant chatter and clang, African sun staining the sky a vermilion-shaded red, sun already set, light fading fast. Soon it'll be quiet, children gone to bed, adults indoors, only the Night Watch abroad.

  Dinner was a lead-acid battery sitting in the pit of my stomach, greasy fried Hamburger-sausage and stale bread with sauce mayonnaise and a clumsy slice of already-sprouted Bermuda onion . . . Gott verdamm I've got to learn how to cook. Figure out where to get some German-style food . . . nothing but curry around here it seems . . . What if I'd run the other way? Would I be sitting in some concrete bungalo in Arizona, sick from a meal of greasy fried tacos and . . .

  I looked at the bottle of kirschwasser in my hand, lacking even the will to pour it in a glass. Another little swig? No. I put it on the floor, unfolded the paper across my lap, and started picking through the English. Newspapers are always the easiest read in a foreign language, vocabulary-limited, English so close to German, with so many loan words from a French I'd studied in gymnasium.

  African news, lots of sports, non-classified military-interest pieces, foreign affairs . . .

  There was a big picture on one of the tech-piece pages, Willy Ley, looking every inch the little fat Jew, head of the America's new ballistic missile agency, greeting an exhausted-looking but still richtig Wernher von Braun, formerly with the Wehrmacht, broken arm supported at shoulder height . . .

  I remembered Ley all right, from the Verien für Raumschiffahrt days. Remember how hard it was to convince the registry court that raumschiffahrt was a real word? We got a good laugh over that one, eh, Willy? Space-ship-flight. Yes, sir. Not just raumfahrt. That could be astral projection as well. Yes, sir. As in Anthroposophy. The Götheanum and . . .

  I remembered Ley from those days, but not von Braun, who'd been some teenager hanging about, older than Krafft Ericke but . . . but he remembered me, when the time came for us all to go to Peenemunde. Those who hadn't already gone to America.