From Andromeda and Back

CHAPTER TEN

MARCH TO THE SCAFFOLD

That sweet smell, those sweet forms. Lempke stood before them now, the awful columns that bespoke dread and catastrophe. He wanted to call them his children, but as he stood before them, he felt that he should kneel. He was their child, and he trembled at their might. And yet, in the face of all their terror, he felt love. For in two days they would help usher in the New World, a Reich-controlled world where all would bow down and be made to crawl before the Führer and those whom that greatest of leaders deemed worthy to stand beside him. But tonight there would be a treat, a treat to stagger the mind and crush all hope of overthrow in any scientific mind, anywhere. That could wait until tonight. He turned his thoughts back to glory.

So there would be a podium: Göring, Bormann, Himmler, Goebbels and—dare he hope it?—Lempke. Glorious! He desperately wanted that foul Jew Einstein groveling beneath him. Indeed, he had plans to make Einstein his houseboy—imagine that!—and Einstein’s sister his cook. Oh, joy! Aged? Yes! Crumpled? Yes! But Einstein and his sister would be made to wash toilets and clean kitchens and, most importantly, extol Lempke as the greatest physicist who ever lived. Einstein would wear a uniform, a ridiculous uniform, gaudy, ostentatious even, and he would answer to a bell. Yes! Inspired! A bell! He would trot humbly out and be at his master’s beck and call. And what was most delicious was that the Führer had promised him this. Yes, the beloved Führer had promised him, Lempke, that Einstein would not be dealt with as other traitorous Jews would be dealt with. He would be Lempke’s to do with as he pleased!

The giant columns looked like omens in the darkness. Lempke reflected that the other end of the arc had strange shapes resembling toilet seats stood on end. Personally, he could not see how such shapes could induce terror as his columns did, but to each his own. As long as they worked, that was the operative consideration, and these worked. So, toilets or columns, it was best not to judge.

The wretched horn sounded. They were calling Lempke back to the operational headquarters. Fools! If only they could behold the majesty of these glorious constructions that would save the world and send the Reich off on its thousand-year journey. But most were gripped by terror. Their size, their darkness, the horror of beholding them in full had driven a few men mad. In this, he was truly sorry to lose Buckettize, his servant, who had put such a shine on Lempke’s boots. Indeed, such was his craft that Lempke was the marvel of the SS, for his boots shone like mirrors!

As he reflected on this, Lempke thought about how wrong he had been about the Führer and his stinking carcass of a person. The more he reflected, the more he came to understand that the Führer stank because he cared. He was a revolting pile of excrement because he warred for the German people. His stench, revolting as it might be, was, in the end, a nosegay of delight for those poised to conquer the whole world. And though the Führer’s stench blasted walls and air alike—damnable as it was—it was a healing agent, a purifying element that would lift the Reich to glory.

The horn blared again. Lempke seethed.

“Fools! You are not bellowing out to Roland! You are summoning the greatest physicist in the world! You are signaling a man who helped make the Third Reich!”

He shouted this, but nobody heard him, for he was in the deepest cavern, and he was glad of that. He had had his moment. The moment had passed. He was himself again.

The phone rang. Lempke sighed. He walked to it and answered.

“Yes, Assel? Tell them I will be there when I get there!”

He slammed the phone down, buttoned his tunic and steadied himself. He turned to the monsters, knelt before them and wept with joy. Then he gathered himself, rose and stood ramrod erect before them. He paused. He wanted to get this right. Satisfied, he let out a soul-filled, heartfelt “Heil Hitler!” with his arm snapping out, longing to be among those incredible monsters looming in the dark. Joy flooded his soul anew as he turned and walked back to the elevators. And as he did so, he walked with a lively step, tamping down—but just barely—the desire to skip.

* * *

In the waiting room of General Lempke’s headquarters, the lions of military combat logistics and calculations, the MGB, were already grumbling. The coffee, while tolerable, had been supplied with inadequate amounts of sugar, and the cookies tumbled out as a treat were crumbly and flat. The real test would be the wines. If these failed, it would cast a pall over the whole so-called miracle of Level 1757, the operation that would supposedly reset the world this very weekend. Level 1757 would unleash the wonder weapons to end all wonder weapons, and the Führer had staked everything on it. The wines offered would go a long way toward seeing in this weekend—if it was indeed that weekend.

Of course, much of this pique was professional in nature, for all the stalwart MGB men had seen Lempke’s theories proved correct. All had seen the transmissions and their triumphs, bringing that which had yet to be conceived into a reality that was. They had trembled and cast their eyes wildly about. Could it be? It was! Definitely! There it was! Their own eyes had beheld the miracle. Of course, this was no miracle, but pure, hard mathematics and rugged physics. These were the calculations of a giant, and when the weekend came, it would put Einstein himself in the shade by pushing his own theories to their outer limits. Delicious, by and large. But now a titanic question presented itself—a question that, to be truthful, had announced its presence near the very beginning of the project, when the giddy Führer himself signed off on it.

The question had first appeared humbled, nearly cudgelled, head bowed and obsequious, peeking up with doe eyes—a supplicant, really, but a presence nevertheless. Then, under Lempke’s suggestion, the MGB was formed, and here was a chance for great mathematical and scientific minds to have their moment. They would have their own shiny boots, snappy SS uniforms and such august rank as Himmler allowed. They would report to the Führer, offer crisp Nazi salutes and roar out to the stinking carcass himself: “Mein Führer, I have…”

But what did they have, these professors and theorists who, before Lempke’s breakthrough, had bulked large in the scientific circles of the greatest scientific country—Germany—that the world had ever seen? And now? In the face of such a triumph as Lempke’s, what did they have? Jokes flew around the smarter quarters of the Nazi hierarchy: “Here comes old Funck announcing to the Führer that he has just shined Lempke’s boots.” Or: “Is Goettle back again with tales of how he gave Lempke a back rub?” Or: “Have you noticed how Schnur parts his hair just like his hero Lempke? And Schnur is what, twenty years older?” The worst was saved for the “triplets,” Wackhiph, Hasselfist and Wincky. “Oh, here they come, noses and lips a shiny brown. You know where they’ve been.” The chuckling behind the august backs of such scientific titans was so immense that it broke out even among exalted company.

For a time this was tolerated, for what could Funck, Goettle, Schnur, Wackhiph, Hasselfist and Wincky do? Towering edifices before Lempke, they were now a collection of huts and barns beside his mighty achievements. Their assignment to the military arms preparing to fight the epic battle of Kursk salved some of the sting. The uniforms and SS rank of colonel—though Lempke was now an SS general—eased it a little more. Then there was this: transmissions took time, and with time came rising resentment and, better yet, opportunity. They would not simply be put on the shelf without a say, and their say would be important in bringing in the New World. So they gathered, steamed and nursed their grievances. They knew that to matter in the New World, they had to be, in this present world, a source of “wisdom.” The more “wisdom” they offered, the more likely they were to stand on the podium behind Lempke. Behind was, of course, the operative word. They understood and accepted that. The key was to be on the podium, visible nevertheless, extolled and celebrated by the Führer himself. They would be players in the New World, come hell or high water.

So they caballed and schemed. What Lempke had done was life-changing, world-changing even. The key was how to get “theirs.” Thus came the flood of “papers” based on “studies” that reached every Ostheer headquarters and the Nazi leaders themselves. They were not questioning Lempke, of course. His work was validated and sacrosanct, not to be touched in the main. But they could work the fringes, nibbling here and there, buttressed by their standing in the present world. They had to be listened to. If they were careful, they could dance along the outer ridges and be seen as enthusiastic yet sober minds—not trying to rein in the thunder Lempke had unleashed, naturally, but to focus it, to ensure it landed the most telling blows and that nothing was wasted. And so they got to Himmler, and from Himmler they got to the Führer.

Such was their “mice” work that Hitler even raised some of their “observations” at that vile repast Lempke had been forced to attend just two days earlier. As he wafted his odious aromas, the Führer carefully raised these “observations.” Careful to recognize that he was in the presence of a fellow great artist whose wonder weapons would devastate millions, even that murderous titan—who had already slaughtered his millions—felt it best to be tender in his approach.

For his part, Lempke, fighting off the wretched stench as best he could, tried to munch on his flattened beans and peas with a happy smile. He would look into these “observations,” he assured the Führer. With this promise in tow, the Führer spent the rest of the evening making jokes about Jodl’s bald, moon-sized head and Keitel’s great gift for falling asleep even during a Wagner concert. Everyone laughed and smiled and tolerated the awful reeking, and Lempke escaped the dinner without collapsing.

Wines were brought before the MGB as they sat around a table. The smell wafting up from below hit their nostrils with such fury that Schnur cried out, “These wines had better wipe away Funck’s farts!”

Everyone but Funck laughed, and the wines were sipped.

“Goodness!” Goettle exclaimed. “What excellent sweet wines! The coffee and cookies were trash, but this—this is magnificent! Assel, what region of the Reich are these from?”

Assel, Lempke’s aide, came forward. “It’s Jewish. From Hungary.”

“On this day I forgive the Jews everything!” Hasselfist cried.

“Perhaps a toast?” Schnur suggested. “To Lempke, perhaps?”

“Perhaps not,” snarked Funck.

“How about to our Führer?” Lempke said coldly as he stood in the doorway.

The shocked, exposed MGB rose as one man, saluted and cried, “Heil Hitler!”

Lempke stood before fools. Yet he reckoned he had to move carefully. These old gentlemen would have their say, and Lempke knew he must make that say as quiet as possible. They had somehow weaseled their way to Himmler and even to the Führer, so they must be reckoned with. The good news was that the Führer was in his corner, but this support was distracted, and Lempke knew it. With the war in the Atlantic turning against the once-unstoppable U-boats, with the North African desert lost to the British and, most awfully, with the mighty Sixth Army—“the army that could storm the heavens”—crushed and utterly destroyed at Stalingrad, the Führer was on shaky ground. It didn’t help that the Americans were in the war with all their might, and now Hitler faced the prospect of fighting on with his mightiest army, the Sixth, gone.

The Americans had turned the tide of the Pacific War at Midway and Guadalcanal, and now his strongest ally, Japan, was on the back foot. What was needed was a massive reset. A reset that would retrieve every fortune and right every wrong. Level 1757 would provide it. After this weekend, all would be made good, pure and German.

But one had to get to the weekend. And if this collection of jealous “furzers,” looking out for their own reputations and places in the New World, were not handled with skill, there might be consequences before one even got there.

Lempke watched them sip their wine and munch on the bread treats Assel had ordered the staff to bring out. They feared him, but justly so. Napoleon had observed that “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step,” and Lempke must be careful not to become the poster child for that dictum. He would alternate fear, as he had induced a moment ago, with wonder and joy that would tease and dazzle the eye and mind. He had to get to Sunday night into Monday morning unscathed. And he—yes, he—would be a master in the New World, while the geezers, the geniuses of the past, now walking about in SS uniforms and sipping his Jewish wine, would crawl before him.

He started. Assel was at his side with a glass of wine.

“General?”

“Thank you, Assel.”

The laughter in the room was obnoxious. Moments ago they had held him in scorn, supposedly behind his back. Now they were groveling and bathing in his largesse. The stench was just as bad, the situation unchanged, but the wine was flowing, and that, in itself, bulked large. Lempke took a sip of the excellent wine. He closed his eyes as he savored it, and his mind turned to her. Yes, very her. Beth. His Rebecca! Music forced itself into his heart. He tried to forestall it, for there was business to attend to. These gentlemen needed to be further routed and scattered so that he would have a free hand. He would give them something so awesome, so terrifying this very night that they would forever bow and scrape before him, doffing their hats and stepping aside when he passed.

But could he pass by with her? Yes, could he pass by with very she, her, herself? The music came through as verse and demanded attention:

“Oh Beth! What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then? If all the pens that ever poets held had fed the feeling of their masters’ thoughts, and every sweetness that inspir’d their hearts, their minds, and muses on admired themes; If all the heavenly quintessence they still from their immortal flowers of poesy, wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive the highest reaches of a human wit; If these had made one poem’s period, and all combin’d in beauty’s worthiness, yet should there hover in their restless heads one thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, which into words no virtue can digest; and that wonder is Beth.”

Lempke started, but only slightly, for Assel was there to steady him. Assel knew when the man he served with delight and utter devotion was wandering into a reverie. It was either Bach or Beth. And at this moment Assel guessed Beth.

“Sir?”

“Yes, um, thank you, Assel. Great wine. You have your glass?”

“Yes, sir. On my desk.”

Lempke looked at Assel and knew no finer aide existed anywhere.

Lempke sipped.

“You ever read Marlowe, Assel?”

“Marlowe, sir?”

Lempke sipped again. “Never mind.”

Both men looked at the MGB, who were now royally enjoying themselves.

“Assel!” Funck cried. “More wine!”

Assel looked at Lempke.

“Refill them, Assel. Oh, wait a moment before you do. I have something to announce.”

“Gentlemen, tonight you will witness, live, something that will stagger even your considerable minds.”

“But,” said Hasselfist as he munched on a piece of bread, “that’s for Sunday night into Monday morning, yes?”

Lempke fought off his rising contempt for the whole MGB.

“Tonight we’ll offer something up to you, and rumor has it that Himmler himself will join us for the event.”

“Ah, Lempke, you tease us, man! What can this great wonder be?” Goettle cried.

Lempke nodded to Assel, who nodded to the servers to refill all glasses.

“Have all been served? Then, gentlemen, I offer a toast to our glorious Führer! And to tonight, when you will see something that will spin your heads around forever!”

They saluted, and Lempke threw up a half salute. He smirked. They were in his hands.

Tonight, he knew, would alter them forever.

More The Long Form: The Long Form: Level 1757, Chapter 9: A Peak in Darien, Part Three

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