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

made a sobbing sound….. As Brunner stepped back the man made a pushing motion with the forefinger of his right hand, then moved the head forward as if to study the place he had fingered. He repeated the gesture, then turned to face the doors.

"What's he saying?" The nurse.

"There's a computer terminal inside." Again Brunner felt his heart pump wildly. He took the girl's hand and started for the door, yet again the old man cut them off.

But there was no longer fear of War in his eyes; he only had one more thing he wished to communicate. He tapped his hip with the knife-arm, pointed to Brunner, then shook his forearm back toward his chest.

Now it was Olaf who didn't understand. The woman pointed at the pellet-pistol, forgotten, at his hip.

"I think. He wants you to shoot him." Again the movements of confirmation. Though this time, if it were possible to interpret such gestures, he moved the limbs more slowly, with great sadness.

Brunner unclasped the pistol, and with a shaking hand, pointed it at his chest. "Is this what you want?" The same gesture.

The one unbroken eye remained in sunlight, filled with tears that could not escape the well of tortured flesh around it. A low gurgling noise sounded in his throat. Brunner closed his eyes and shot.

The body fell partially across the entrance, so that they were obliged to move it. "This one at least, we bury." The words resounded with the hollowness of hell. They pushed past the right-hand door, and went inside.

After a time of searching for light and the terminal, Brunner at last sat before the fingerboard and smallish screen, trying to summon forth what was wanted, praying to the point of distraction for his wife, and for himself. He had asked the nurse to be alone for a time and she consented, was off looking elsewhere for any hard-copy documents that might be useful.

The man knew enough about computers to read the instruction codes and key out the information wanted, but the terminal kept fighting him. Several times he had entered, OCCUPATIONAL RECORDS OF RELOCATED PERSONNEL, sub-heading, DEMOCRATIC GERMAN, NON-MILITARY. But each time he did so the screen would read 'Pending', then flash one line at a time, at a reading pace, a dialogue from the Nuremburg Trials of 1945-46, and lock up at any attempt to clear it. He tried to bypass, used different keywords, but always the result was the same: he got the dialogues, or nothing at all. Close to frenzy he threw off the chair and paced wildly back and forth.

"I know all about the Holocaust and the Nuremburg trials! They have been required reading at the Academy for two hundred years!" He gradually calmed himself, if such words may be used, realizing there was nothing else for it. He set right the chair and keyed in the initial combination, only wishing that he could strap himself in place, denied all movement and all choice. The screen began again its silent dissertation, waiting after each six lines for him to verbally acknowledge.

Olaf Brunner read the following, trying to suppress the gasoline in his veins, the endless ache of his affliction, and the unnatural swelling of the diaphragm that made it difficult to remain still and digest the excrement before him.

COL. AMEN: You speak English pretty well.

VON RIBBENTROP: I spoke it well in the past and I think I speak it passably well today.

Col. Amen: Almost as well as you speak German?

VON RIBBENTROP: No, I would not say that, but in the past I spoke it nearly as well as German, although I have naturally forgotten a great deal in the course of the years and now it is more difficult for me.

COL. AMEN: Do you know what is meant by a 'yes man' in English?

VON RIBBENTROP: A 'yes man'—-per se. A man who says yes even when he himself….. It is somewhat difficult to define. In any case I do not know what you mean by it in English. In German I should define him as a man who obeys orders and is obedient and loyal.

COL AMEN: As a matter of fact, you were a 'yes man' for Hitler, isn't that correct?

VON RIBBENTROP: I was always loyal to Hitler, carried through his orders, differed frequently in opinion from him, repeatedly tendered my resignation. But when Hitler gave an order, I always carried out his instructions in accordance with the principles of our authoritarian state.

At the conclusion of this there was a pause, then the following.

VON RIBBENTROP: Without ever taking any steps or doing anything myself in the SS, yes, that is correct.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Just look. It is a document…..GB-294. The correspondence is 744B. That is your application with all the particulars. I just want to ask you one or two things about it. You asked to join, did you not, the 'Totemkopf', the Death's-Head division of the SS?

VON RIBBENTROP: No, that cannot be true.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Don't you remember getting a special
Death's-Head ring and dagger from Hitler for your services? Don't you?

VON RIBBENTROP: No, I do not remember. I never belonged to a
Death's-Head Division.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: And the ring, too. Here is a letter dated the 5 November 1935, to the Personnel Office of the Reichsfurher-SS: "In reply to your question, I have to inform you that Brigadefurher von Ribbentrop's ring size is 17….." Do you remember getting that?

VON RIBBENTROP: …..I do not remember precisely. No doubt it is true.

And that was all. The screen then showed an old and dusting black and white photograph, with letters in white across the bottom:

A MOTHER AND CHILD EXECUTED IN THE UKRAINE

The computer waited for him to acknowledge, but the young East German stood mute. Twenty times that day he had thought he could be brought no lower. And yet the picture froze his heart.

The woman, dark-haired and young, stood clutching her child in the attitude of a protective Madonna. But for the field, the German soldier, and the mother and child, there was nothing to be seen. A moment frozen in time. The soldier, legs spread and planted in perfect firing form, without the slightest sign of hesitation, had aimed his rifle and fired at her head. He must have fired because the woman's bare feet were lifted an inch or two above the ground. The woman still shielded the tiny child….. Apparently he had opted not to try to kill them both with a single bullet, though it might have been done with a shot through her back. This way was surer.

Brunner looked closer. Was there a hint of doubt in the soldier's face? No. He had only closed his eyes in reflex to the gun's recoil. Equivocation, splitting hairs. It didn't matter in the least. The terror and death of the innocents were the same.

He began to feel sick again, and his task was not yet completed.
"Acknowledge," he said, almost swooning. The terminal read clearly:

DEMOCRATIC GERMAN NON-MILITARY PERSONNEL

Enter

There was no horror left inside him, and yet still the prayer was heard, repeating its endless cadence. NOT HER, OR IF IT MUST BE HER THAT SOMEHOW SHE DIED QUICKLY. NO PLEASE, TAKE ME INSTEAD. Till in his delirium he spoke to the soldier, and pleaded with him not to shoot.

He had to hold one hand with the other to make it work, but on his third attempt punched in correctly: Ara Heidi Brunner, DOB 12/10/89. The networked computers responded.

Brunner, Ara Heidi- 12/10/89

                                CC#: 320-557-877-666
                                Sex: Female
                                Eyes: Blue
                                Hair: Black
                                Height: 5'6"
                                Weight: 110 lbs

                Born Badenberg JCFv Schiller Educated Berlin University
                Masters Degree Environmental Science Married Olaf
                Augustine Brunner 6/20/10 Residence Black Forest
                Province Currently Assigned NorthWest Geological
                Title Agricultural Technician Current Status *

Having thus filled the display box the lighted asterisk began to flash, waiting for the signal to advance. Here Brunner hesitated, as his lips tried to mumble some words.

"You have to be alive, I won't let you." Or was it, "Our father full of grace if I mean anything to you dear God if my efforts mean anything."

He pushed the continuity icon.

                Detained Non-Essential Personnel Designated Prison
                Planet Dracus IIa Late Change Retained Under Order
                Gen. (Classified) Current Location (Classified)

And it was indeed his lucky day. For whether she lived or died, she was not there.

"Lieutenant," came a voice through thick layers. "Lieutenant. I've found a boy and he's unhurt. I don't know why but he's unhurt."

And turning, he saw there was in fact a boy, perhaps eleven years old, physically unscathed but for a look of bitter hopelessness in his dark eyes that went far beyond his years.

It seemed from the nurse's expression that he should say something so he pronounced, What is your name?

"Elie." WIESEL, he thought. SEVEN TIMES CURSED AND SEVEN TIMES
SEALED.

Then Night fell completely in his soul, and he felt no more.

……………………………………………………………… …………………………….

ACT FOUR

Ardennes, Balthazar and Scimitar Sectors
Months I through IV
International Year: 2212

REVERSAL I

The Chinese colonies, the fences of Dark, endured. Though pressed to their last utmost need, many times beyond despair, the Chinese could not be broken. Help arrived as all courage failed, and the Enemy was driven back.

The assassination of Stone did not, if that had been its purpose, intensify the Constitutional crisis under which the Commonwealth labored. Its citizens, for the most part, knew Plant to be an intelligent and experienced politician. And if anything, after the disillusioning of recent events, and slow reawakening of the national conscience (though still riddled with blind-spots), most felt that their dilemma now rested in more competent hands.

But more than that, some intangible quality of the people themselves, indefinable, led the Americans at such times of crisis to rally around their leaders, united and prepared to act. Ironically, bitterly (to those who still remembered the evils of World War II), this was a German trait as well.

The entire military and intelligence-gathering forces of the nation were now mobilized to head off Hayes' disastrous charge, which had left such horrors in its wake. For now a full account of the Dracus incident had been received, and those with any conscience at all, realized that they had been party to a catastrophe that could never be set right, and whose wounds would fully never heal. And while the Americans were no more eager than any other nation to admit such atrocities—-the slave trade, and the genocide of the Native Americans spring to mind—-truth IS a naked sword, and its hard won freedom of the press made it impossible to deny. But the rogue (war criminal, psychopath) had not been caught, and the Pandora's Box of chaos and violence which he (along with others) had opened, was far from contained.

II

Somehow Hayes had kept the fantasy together. Though there were stirrings of discontent among his men, and an ever diminishing number were free of a doubt that bordered on bewilderment, no word of their true position had yet reached