Oberheim (Voices): A Chronicle of War by Christopher Leadem (to read list txt) 📗

were used for that purpose. The German States could not care less. Any instability only allows them greater opportunity for profit and expansion. Play both sides against the middle, then pick up the pieces; that is their game. Whether the fascists win or lose, they will get their cut." The young man looked incredulous, opened his mouth as if to speak.

"I know, I know—-the ideologies. Ideology always seems the great motive to the young, the reason that nations rise and fall. It is time you learned that no one, except perhaps a few misguided knights, or here and there a religious fanatic, ever made war for anything other than personal gain. Though they may have told themselves otherwise." He relit his pipe, looking thoughtful. BUT DUBCEK DIDN'T SMOKE.

"I remember when I was young, the great heroes and villains of history seemed to play out their parts as emissaries—-the Churchills and Hitlers—-instruments of good and evil upon the Earth. This was central to all my illusions. It gave my life as a soldier meaning, and drummed me full of patriotism, and a lot of other high-sounding excrement. But the hard truth is, Brunner, men make war because they think they can get something out of it, whether money or glory, it hardly matters. They hope to take something by force, that is otherwise denied to them.

"Because when you reach my age you come to realize, as they have, that there are no rules. . .except survival of the fittest. The great aggressors of history, from the Greeks to the Roman to whoever, took what they took because no one could stop them. It is very difficult to explain unless you have lived through it…..

"MEN rule the galaxy, Brunner. Men. There are no unseen forces at work, shaping our destinies to some more perfect end. You must learn to be cynical: it is the key to all truth. Forget your fairy-tale notions. We live or die by our own devices."

A lull.

"Then what….. What keeps you going?" The aging colonel rose and went to a dark window.

"Life is a game of chess. And I don't like to lose."

Brunner struggle beneath the coverings, feeling smothered. Suddenly he burst forward, eyes open.

"But you lost! You LOST. You lost….." His temples throbbed and he could not remember where he was. For he was not yet awake. His dream had played on him the cruelest trick of all. Thinking to escape from the nightmare world, he had jolted himself insufficiently, and only dreamed of waking. It was all right now. But no. There was something wrong with the room. Though incredibly lifelike, it was not quite square—-the walls leaned and corners were uneven.

And then they were coming. Outside the dark window there was a sudden, blinding flash. THEY'RE COMING. His wife ran through the wall and disappeared. "Ara!"

COMING. The Americans. Nowhere to hide…..

His head shook violently. And finally, he was awake.

He lay on his back, his underclothes drenched with sweat. As if to reassure himself, he rolled over to embrace his wife and drive away the darkness. But she was not there: that much of the nightmare was real.

And then he remembered. He was not home on Athena II. Nor was he in his quarters aboard the Mongoose, waiting sleeplessly for the approach of the Alliance fleet. He was alone and on a Czech destroyer, one of several, escorted by a Soviet cruiser. Heading into Belgian space. To search for the prisoners, taken from the colonies. Dubcek was dead.

He cried softly, hugging his knees, hating himself for his weakness. "God damn the Americans for ever helping them. I wish I was dead." He pushed his forehead hard against his knees.

It will be all right, he told himself. The Alliance has gone too far and now the Soviets will help us. The colonies will be retaken. Schiller is gone, but Athena remains. My wife is alive. I will find her and we can go home again. She is alive. She must be alive!

He got up and checked the passage of time. It was still an hour yet before what men called dawn—-little brackets put around life to give it meaning and a mean understanding.

This was not what he wanted: four hours of sleep was not enough for him now, and his mind was dark again. Battle could come any day now—-he was spoiling, and being eaten by the spoiling, for a fight. And yet his energies continued to desert him. His strength grew less each day: no sleep. Not enough sleep. No appetite. Anxiety. HE MUST PRESERVE HIS MENTAL ENDURANCE! He was the second officer of the first destroyer, and the man taken into the confidence of Soviet Colonel Joyce, Commander of the Leningrad. Leningrad. He was the go-between, the link between unlike and alien worlds, that now must work together.

He lifted the picture of his wife from the bedstead, kissed the cold glass that kept him from her. His mind was calm again, his emotions flat and worn out. And he shivered, realizing unexpectedly that it was cold in the room. He felt his brow: burning, always burning. The wet underclothes he peeled off and flung away, went into the bathroom, released a stream of clear, watery urine, turned the heat on high and took a steaming shower.

Dried and warm but already sweating and a little chilled he returned to the room and sat down at a desk, and touched a button, and began studying charts of that quadrant. TRANSPORTS HAD BEEN REPORTED MOVING….. A WEEK AFTER THE TRANSPORTS BEARING THE PRISONERS….. His wife was not on Athena. LATEST INTELLIGENCE. SOMETHING CALLED DRACUS…..

It all ran together in his mind, into a crater-pool of formless gray mud, edged with hard dark flecks. They were making for the Morannon system. They would be there in seventy. . .eight hours. Others must do the thinking now, he was tired. Too tired. He lay down again and forced himself to remain there until he fell asleep.

He woke two hours later, feeling better but for a slight headache. He recalled briefly as he rose the half-dream from which his consciousness had climbed. He was lying on the floor of a public bar, asleep, when a large rough man had seized him by the shoulders of his jacket and lifted him rudely, shook him, and told him to be gone. At first it seemed just another foolish night episode, until he remembered that the initial feeling of the strong, angry hands upon him had been pleasurable.

He wondered lamely if this were some sign of latent homosexuality—-he often feared what might be revealed to him of his subconscious through dream—-but the thought could not seriously upset him. A new day was at hand and he felt a little better. He dressed himself, performed the morning rituals of the bathroom and made his way to the bridge, feeling as he walked only a slight hollowness and queasiness of the stomach. Captain Mandlik greeted him flatly, the small black eyes in their fleshy face neither kind nor cruel.

"You are up late this morning."

"Yes, forgive me. I didn't sleep well last night."

"You don't look well. Have you been to see the doctor?"

"No, there is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing he could do."

"Very well, but look after yourself. We cannot have you fading out on us." The captain looked more deeply into his face. "Colonel Joyce has been asking for you. He seems to take a special interest in you—-believes you have some potential or understanding the rest of us lack."

"Yes. It seems my curse to have lonely old men confide in me."

"Listen to me Brunner," said the captain sternly. "Don't be that way. We need him. We need his firepower. Whether you like it or not, we need you to listen to his every word, and learn what you can from him. Account yourself as befits the situation! We are in enemy Space now, and the Soviet detection screens won't hide us forever."

"Captain. They are not going to turn and leave us now."

"You must not count on that! And I am still your commanding officer, however vague the current status. Remember that."

"Yes, sir."

He performed officiously the duties of a long day, with growing impatience, but simultaneously fearing for the time to pass. For at least now he still had hope. He could still imagine the happy reunion with Ara, still picture the moment of finding her: the tearful embrace and releasing of pent-up, brutalized emotions—-the lonely hours of anguish, always fearing the worst, listening to the battle rage inside him.

And yet in the end came the thought, the realization, that he NEEDED TO
KNOW. Sixty odd hours, then the battle. Then the landing on Dracus.

When his shift was over he went to the officer's mess and partook, what little he ate of it, of the evening meal. He sat alone at an empty table and spoke to no one, but the others were used to this. With different words they all realized that he had sunk very deep into himself, and did not wish to be disturbed in his reverie. And they were right. Almost he feared to take comfort in the company of other men, as if this might somehow lessen the prayerful necessity of finding his wife.

He returned again to his room. Taking out a pen and pad of paper he made some notes for the following day, then picked up his copy of A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, and began to read. Dragged down after a time by its minute detail and understated hopelessness, he placed a marker in the book and set it down, scrawling idly some verses that came to him then. Weary and lethargic he lay back on the bed, though he did not yet wish to sleep.

Nevertheless he felt his eyelids drooping heavily. To block it out. . .to shut off the day….. Even for a little while. But he could not sleep now, or he would be unable later.

He tried thinking of his mother and brother, grateful that she had escaped from the destruction of Schiller, and that he, still in training, would not see combat for some time. But he was forced to admit that these meant little to him. His brother's life (until very recently, when he had joined the space navy after the fall of Athena), had taken a different path. Tomas was an artist, he a soldier. They were no longer close, as in childhood. And his mother, too, was like a distant figure, his affection for her a dying ember that the fearful walls of her religion kept any living breeze from ever fanning. He cared for nothing and no one, but Ara.

The thought came to him again of his own existence without her. His stomach crawled. He got up and paced back and forth in nervous agitation. This restlessness was maddening! His mind raced, but could seize hold of nothing concrete to calm it. At length, the mock energy expended, he lay down again and covered his eyes, not caring…..

He woke two hours later, feeling stifled in his clothes. And checking the clock he saw that deep night was only just beginning. And knew that he would not be able to sleep for many hours. He sat on the edge of the bed and took off his shirt. His arm started for the light switch, but something drew back the hand. Moved by what he could not say, he reached instead into the drawer of his dressing cabinet and pulled out from it the thick tallow candle, brass capped, that had been given him by his wife. Taking out also the metal igniter, he touched a flame to the wick and set it before him.

For a