Oberheim (Voices) Part 43

"NO! Be careful."

He approached slowly, and the creature did not draw away. He drew very close. Then for all the pain it cost him, and the torment of his soul, Brunner put a hand on his shoulder, and looked him full in the face.

He was certain. The old man wished them no harm, but was trying desperately to remember some last purpose he clung to.

"My friend," he said gently, cursing himself again for his weakness and tears. "I am trying to find my wife..... I have to know if she was here. May I please go inside and check your records?"

His words were only half understood; the greater impact was made by the pa.s.sion in his tearing eyes. A cloud seemed to lift from the old man's mind, and in some last pool of consciousness he remembered. He was a librarian. Guarding to the last the books and doc.u.ments entrusted.....

In case anyone came. . .to search for proofs..... Of the Holocaust.

A gleam of something enduring and undefeatable came into his half-buried eye. This man was not deformed.

He raised his head and arms above the elbow in a gesture almost of triumph, and his throat made a sobbing sound..... As Brunner stepped back the man made a pus.h.i.+ng 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 h.e.l.l. 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 doc.u.ments 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 bypa.s.s, 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sably 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 doc.u.ment.....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 att.i.tude 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 s.h.i.+elded 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