Lee Allred installs fiber optic networks for the U.S. Air Force, which may involve high technology or pick-and-shovel work. He's also chaired university symposia on SF, and been named a finalist for the Sideways Award for Alternate History; he made his science fiction debut with "For the Strength of the Hills," a novella which won first place in the Writers of the Future contest for 1997.
Here the Eurasian War draws to a close, and the Draka bring methods honed in the colonies home to the heartland of Europe.
Late September 1944
St. Peter Port, Guernsey Island
Channel Islands
Admiral Hans Laban Verwoerd lay sprawled in the center of Cornet Castle's ancient courtyard. A heavy boot ground itself into his spine, pinning him to the rough stone flagging.
Banners, printed with motivational slogans, hung limp in the dawn air. Verwoerd turned his head, scraping his cheek against the rough flagstones. I want gremlins around me, the nearest one read, for I am courageous.
Verwoerd spat out a tooth chip.
The boot in his back shifted slightly. "Service to the State," the voice above Verwoerd barked.
"Glory to the Race," came the reply.
Verwoerd knew that voice well.
Brekenridge.
Five months earlier . . .
Late April 1944
Government House, Archona
Domination of the Draka
Verwoerd stood at attention for a long time before the Archon finally closed the manila folder marked MOST SECRET.
"An interesting proposal, Admiral. Totally unfeasible, of course, but interesting."
She slid it back across the desktop.
Verwoerd studiously let it lay. He was in his late fifties, of an age old enough for the years to turn his hair steel grey, line his craggy face; young enough he could still keep trim and fit if he kept to the strenuous Draka military regimen. Even so, the length of time he'd stood in front of the Draka ruler would have challenged even a younger man.
He continued to fix his gaze at a point centered on the window behind the Archon's desk. The window looked down the length of the Avenue of Armies. The view was distorted by the thick armorglass. Over six million serfs were in the Janissaries now. Far too many serfs had access to weapons for comfort these days. The war, of course.
Noor leed bid, as Verwoerd's old Afrikaaner grandfather used to say.
The Archon reopened the folder, then let it fall closed again. "I take it the Army's already turned you down. And Security."
The Army had told Verwoerd no; Security had told him Freya, no.
"So why bring it to me?" she asked him, half-rhetorically. "You used up a lot of favors getting here. The Navy doesn't have many favors to spare." Nor, she left unspoken, did the Rationalist Party.
Verwoerd knew fears of offending the Navy hardly kept the Archon awake nights. After all, Security Directorate's operating budget for their coastal patrol and brownwater flotillas was bigger than that for the entire bluewater Navy. But the Navy and the Rationalist Party did have close ties; most Rationalist politicians were former naval officers. Most naval cadets came from Rationalist families.
After four years of ever-increasing casualties, war-weariness was setting in. The Rationalist minority was gaining supportworrisome for the Draka League and the Archonship; they'd held an electoral lock for the last sixty, seventy years.
The Archon steepled her fingers.
Abruptly, she flipped a button on her intercom. "Please tell Dominarch Heusinger I'd like to see him at his convenience. East map room." She released the button.
She glared sharply at Verwoerd. "If you have something to say, Admiral, say it. I don't like having people cock their eyebrows at me." She paused. "Ah. My not inviting Security along?"
A chuckle. "Admiral, anytime I send for the Dominarch, somebody from Skull House invariably comes trotting along behind."
The projectamap showed the ongoing campaign in western Europe. Draka forces had smashed their way across the Rhine, ready to hook southward through the Low Countries towards France. Bilious green ovals marked the contaminated areas where atomics had been used in the Rhine and in Brussels. The amphibious thrust into southern Spain had fizzled out, but the beachheads were secure, if unfortunately stationary.
It was those Spanish beachheads that Dominarch Felix Heusinger pointed to. Heusinger had recently replaced John Erikssen as the DominarchDraka Army Chief of Staff. Ack-ack shrapnel over the Vistula had put Erikssen in the intensive care ward. The drive across the Rhine had been Erikssen's planning; the landings in Spain Heusinger's.
"We're simply spread too thin," he told the Archon. "We can't even scrape up enough troops for a breakout in the Iberian Peninsula. We certainly don't have spare resources for absurdities."
"Absurdities such as Verwoerd's proposal?" The Archon smiled. "Or such as the Navy?" She leaned back in her chair and fumbled in her jacket for a smoke. "You've of course already explained all this to Admiral Verwoerd?"
The Dominarch snorted. "Of course not. That's why we have lowly decurion clerks at Castle Carleton sitting at desks with rubber stamps." He slapped the back of his fingers on his folder. "To reject twaddle like this and not waste my time."
The Archon lit a thin brown cigar and drew on it until it caught. "So actually this is the first time you've seen this."
The army man flushed.
She blew a smoke ring. "Admiral?"
Verwoerd got up out of his chair and walked to the projectamap. He tapped his wooden pointer right on the Spanish beachheads.
"The Dominarch is quite right. We are stretched too thin." Verwoerd spoke in a clipped Oxford accent. The accent was quite genuine, the legacy of schooling and a youth spent abroad back when the Domination was still but a Dominion of the British Empire.
"That's precisely the reason for my proposal."
Heusinger muttered about circular logic.
Verwoerd ignored him and continued. "The Domination is trying to conquer the whole of Eurasia with an army of four million, roughly ten percent of our free population."
He nodded in the direction of the Security Directorate liaison, Brekenridge. Erikssen had rated a stategos for a liaison; Heusinger a mere cohortarch. "And that's not counting who knows how many Draka Security personnelthe Order Police, Krypteria, Compound and Camp Guards needed to pacify the areas we already have overrun."
"Or the Navy," added the Archon.
"Or Navy," Verwoerd nodded. "Or Air Corps personnel." He lowered the pointer. "There simply aren't enough Draka to go around."
" . . . Janissaries . . ." Heusinger muttered.
Verwoerd shook his head. "Ask Brekenridge if he wants a larger serf army."
It was Brekenridge's turn to snort.
"I'll take that as a no. Also, we're running short of free Draka to run the homefront. Key industries are limping along"
"Like shipbuilding?" Heusinger asked, mocking the Navy's perennial complaint.
"And it's only going to get worse."
No one in the room wanted to argue that. War production shortfalls were at near-critical level. And meanwhile the Americans were pouring out tanks and guns and planes in ever increasing numbers that the Draka could only dream of matching. They weren't at war with the Americans yet, but it was only a matter of time.
"We're teetering on a knife edge. The slightest reversal in Europe, the tiniest setback and" Verwoerd cracked the pointer on the table. "It could all come crashing down."
The Archon frowned. "Don't tell me the problems, Admiral; tell me solutions."
"The solution? Increase the free Draka population."
He thumbed a rotary switch on the projectamap. The slide mechanism clacked and slid in a new map:
Great Britain.
Brekenridge threw up his hands. "Sweet Land of Canaan, no! Not mo' Rationalist sennament for the Mother Country."
Brekenridge's drawl was sloppier than even the Draka norm. Like most Security headhunters, he was a descendant of bitterenders, poor white trash Confederates who'd fled to Draka rather than submit to Yankee rule. They'd arrived too late to join the hereditary plantation families' land grab, lacked the skills needed for the emerging technocratic class, but were just what was needed to fill the swelling ranks of the Security Directorate. The overseer's whiphandle had nestled comfortably in their palm.
"Don' know why y'all call yo'selves `Rationalist,' anyway. Anybody with half a lick of sense knows the limeys ain't never goin' a join us."
"I'm not here to comment on political platforms. This is a military proposal," Verwoerd said stiffly.
"Shore. Like everybody don' know the Navy ain't nothin' but an adjunct of the Rationalists"
"Would that be the same `everybody' who also knows Security is nothing but an adjunct of the Draka League party?" A slight Draka slur crept into Verwoerd's speech, overlaid with a touch of guttural Afrikaans. "Or is it the other way around? I forget."
The Archon tapped her fingernails on the conference table. "Gentlemen. Could we get back to the discussion at hand?"
Brekenridge lazed back in his chair and hooked his arm over the high back. "Oh, shore, shore. I got plenty of time to waste."
"Actually," Verwoerd said, "Cohortarch Brekenridge's objection is very germane to the discussion."
"I'll say it is," Brekenridge snorted. "We're some Frankenstein monster the limeys created for themselves. They hate us nearly as much as the Nazis."
"So." Verwoerd faced the security man. "Britain would be as likely to cooperate with us as they would the Nazis?"
Brekenridge, sensing a trap, kept silent.
Verwoerd turned the thumbwheel again. This time it showed a portion of the Bay of Biscay and France's Cherbourg peninsula. He pointed to a cluster of dots off the Cherbourg tip.
"These are the Channel Islands. The northernmost island is roughly sixty miles south of Britain, about eight miles west of France."
He switched to a close-up of the islands.
"Four main islands: Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Sark." He tapped his pointer as he named them. "A duke named William grabbed them in 933sort of a dry rehearsal for a conqueror named William in 1066. Part of the British Empire ever sinceeven before Britain proper, as the Islanders are fond of saying."
The next slide showed Wehrmacht troops marching down a city street, past a Lloyds Bank office. "Since the Fall of France, four years ago, the Channel Islands have been occupied by German troopsexcuse mePan-European troops."
Brekenridge feigned a yawn. "Y'all missed yo' callin'you shoulda been a h'stry profess'r."
"The sizable German garrison," Verwoerd continued, "is, in a word, starving. In fact, everyone on the islands is starving. Between the RAF, German U-Boats, and our own Air Corps, no supply ships have been able to reach them for months. A Red Cross ship, Swedish, in fact, did try last month. Ended up sunk by one of our planes."
Draka pilots joked that a Red Cross was really a red crosshair.
The Archon tapped ashes from her cigar. "If the garrison's so weak, why haven't the British tried taking it back?"
"Civilian casualties. One thing to bomb French ports and kill a few thousand Frogs. Quite another to kill your own people. Also, Hitler was fixated on defending the islands. Starving or not, Fritz has spent years fortifying them. Rather surprised the islands haven't sunk from all the concrete."
Verwoerd flipped to a map detailing the island defenses. He pointed out the extensive fortifications, shore batteries, minefields, and trenches.
Heusinger whistled. Maybe he had learned something from Spain after all. "Where did you get this information?"
"From the same person who can hand over the islands to us without a shot." The projector clacked again. "Admiral Canaris."
Brekenridge was on his feet, sputtering. Verwoerd smiled. "Yes, rather a shock, isn't it? It was to Naval Intelligence, too. That charred corpse in the recent newsreel must have been somebody else. Turns out Canaris has been a guest in one of Skull House's countryside inns."
The corner of the Archon's mouth turned up. "Most likely a simple clerical error on Security's part, wouldn't you say, Cohortarch?" Brekenridge glared at Verwoerd.
"It might be convenient to have Canaris placed in Naval Intelligence's care," Verwoerd said. "I'd hate to have him wind up dead again before he completes his bargain with the Navy."
The other corner of the Archon's mouth turned up. "I'm sure he'll be happy in his new lodgings. Continue."
A slide of a German officer asking a British bobby street directions. "The Germans have conducted a `model occupation,' a real kid-glove approach. Particulars are in your briefing documents, but simplistically stated, of all the Nazi conquests, the Channel Islands unique in never having had a Resistance movement. In fact, when the British attempted covert operations on the islands, the locals actively assisted the Germans in countering them. And this despite Cohortarch Brekenridge's assertion that Britons would never cooperate with Nazis."
Verwoerd brought up the lights.
"If they'll cooperate with Fritz, they might cooperate with us. We might just be able to find a way to bring the British in on our side."
He shrugged. "A long shot, I know, but it would cost us very little even if we fail. If we succeed . . ."
He let the myriad possibilities hang in the air.
"That small cost you mentioned?" the Archon asked.
"Initial resources would require a bribe for a French politician and a cargo ship full of food. If you will turn to the second tabbed section in your briefing . . ."
The Archon had insisted on taking Verwoerd back to his office at the Admiralty Building in her private autosteamer.
Light rain clattered on the roof and streaked the windows, adding to a sense of gloom the Archon carried along with her.
She took a long pull on her cigar and slowly exhaled. "Army and Security might squawk a while longer," she said, "but I'm approving your project.
"Not," she held up a hand, "because I think it has any hope in succeeding." She shook her head. "Huesinger's idiocy in Spain has gone on far too long. We'll have to take Gibraltar; when we do, we'll need some leverage on the limeys. Something a little less coarse, I think, than the threat of atomics."
"I . . . see."
"I'm sure you do. I really should have you running Skull House instead of this harebrained project. Or perhaps not. You're too clever by half; you know that don't you?"
She sighed. "Keeping those islands of yours, that's a given, no matter what. Too much mischief can be made that close to the French coast." She drew a last puff on the cigar. "The inhabitants will serve nicely as hostages, though. Might as well keep them happy with your silly project until we're ready to use them for Gibraltar."
"I don't want Security forces anywhere in my jurisdiction. They can have Alderney island and play prison guard with any Germans we capture, but all locals are to be sent to me first."
"Security will have spies among your people, you know that."
"Fine. They can spy all they want. Just as long as they stay away, otherwise."
The Archon stubbed out the cigar and turned to face him. "Tell me, Admiral. Why do you Rationalists care so much what the rest of the world thinks of us? Why are you so desperate the Draka be liked?"
"The Superman shouldn't care what the ondergeskik thinks of him, you mean? `I teach you the Superman.' " He shook his head and fell silent for several moments.
"Maybe," he said at last, "in terms of education, physical training, wealth, eugenics, perhaps soon even geneticsmaybe by some standards we Draka have become Nietzsche's superman. We certainly like to flatter ourselves into thinking we have."
He shook his head. "But one would think that a superman shouldn't have to fear. And we do. We fear everybody else on the planet."
"With good reason," the Archon said. "Everybody else on the plant fears us. Hates us, too. It's destroy them first before they can destroy us. The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog only oneone big thing. Our fearand the ferocity it feedsis that one great thing we've learnt well. If we try to become a fox at this stage . . ."
The autosteamer hissed to a stop as it passed through the Admiralty compound gates. The Archon grumped. "If you want to be liked, Admiral, I suggest you get a dog."
Verwoerd gave a thin smile as he reached for the door handle. "I prefer cats myself. A dog will lick anyone's boot. When a cat shows affection, it means something somehow."
The Archon sniffed. "Cats are far too independent for me. Think themselves their own masters. They claim cats are domesticated, but most days I have my doubts."
Verwoerd opened the door and began to get out. The Archon laid a restraining hand on his arm.
"Admiral, remember: it's taken millions of years to domesticate cats," she said. "You've considerably less time."
Soon after that Draka armed forces fought their way into Flanders. Soon they would be rolling across France.
Time.
Verwoerd pulled out a thick stack of binders from his safe. The folders were delivered to Signal Ops. Encoded messages began to flash across the Domination. "Initiate Operation Hedgehog."
Verwoerd then went to dinner. He ate as usual at a restaurant frequented by Naval officers and Rationalist party officials. Verwoerd finished his meal and left. Tucked inside the used linen napkin he'd tossed on the table lay a handwritten note in no code the Navy used:
"Initiate Operation Fox."
Early August 1944
St. Peter Port, Guernsey Island
Channel Islands
The British airship R 100 settled over the airfield. A hundred Draka sailors manned the drag ropes, pulling the lumbering beast to the docking tower.
The old ship was barely airworthy. Her canvas cover sagged and drooped. Her covering rippled from stem to stern with the slightest forward motion Her aluminum-colored reflective paint had all but flaked away.
She was old and she'd been mothballed for twenty years, but she was all Britain had for the job. She could fly over the still lurking U-boats, and she could carry fifty-one tons of cargo: badly needed foodstuffs, medicine, clothing, blankets, shoes, and children's teddies.
Fifty-one tons of cargo, including the official British observer the Draka themselves had requested.
The R 100 finally settled into place. The gondola hatch opened up, and the airship's captain and its single passenger stepped out onto the tarmac.
Verwoerd, resplendent in his dress uniform, waited to greet them. Behind him, lined up along the airfield, were captured German flak wagons, their deadly barrels aimed at the giant hydrogen-filled airshipa gentle Draka reminder that they, not the British, were in charge of these islands now.
The airship captain, Nevil Norway, saluted Verwoerd. Norway, like his ship, had been taken out of mothballs. Most of the British airmen who had worked on the British dirigibles in the 1930s were long since killed in the war.
Beside him stood a young woman in her early twenties. She wore a Royal Air Force uniform. The ribbons on her jacket marked her a combat pilotBritain was running desperately short of soldiers, too.
"Good afternoon, Admiral." Norway said, frowning at each word. "May I present Flight Lieutenant Sally Perkins. She's to be our official observer, as per your request."
"Flight Lieutenant," Verwoerd saluted.
"Admiral."
"I understand you were born and raised here in St. Peter Port."
"Of course you do. Isn't that why you requested me?" Contempt dripped from her voice.
Verwoerd sighed and turned to an aide. "Would you please escort Flight Lieutenant Perkins to my staff car?"
"Shoving me out of earshot already, Admiral? Is this how I'm going to spend my time as an observer?"
"Goodbye, Lieutenant," he said.
He turned back to Norway. "Captain, if you would be so good as to remove your crew from the ship while we unload the cargo?"
Norway bit his lower lip, then turned and called out to his executive officer. Soon the British crewmembers marched off the ship to a designated spot several hundred feet away. Draka sailors began swarming aboard.
"You seem unhappy, Captain," Verwoerd said.
"She was a good ship," he said stiffly.
Verwoerd started, wondering as anyone familiar with Draka airships would how anybody could possibly think that British monstrosity a "good ship."
Then it dawned on him. "Oh," he said with a chuckle. "You think we're going to keep that bucket of bolts. Captain Norway, the Draka are not in the habit of keeping what isn't theirs."
Norway turned on him. "Really? I remember hearing about a little tea party called the Versailles conference. I remember a spot of land on the map called Turkey."
"So do I," Verwoerd replied. "I remember both of them quite well. I was there." Above his chest hung among all the Draka ribbons was a series of British Navy ribbons dating from the Great War, including one for Gallipoli. "Mesopotamia was bought with Dominion blood. It was only right we keep it."
"Just as it's only right you keep this?" Norway swept his hands to include the whole of the island he stood on. "You spilled no blood here. It isn't yours to keep; it's ours. It's British."
"The plebiscite"
"Null and void!" Norway shouted. "A fraud and you know it! How do you think starving people are going to vote with a freighter full of food in the harbor, the Frenchie who proposed the vote standing on the dock?"
"Nevertheless," Verwoerd shrugged, "the plebiscite took place. If the Channel Islands' inhabitants vote to sever ties with Britain, our ally, and vote to be annexed into the Pan-European Union, our enemywhat are we supposed to do?"
Norway fumed. "Trumped up legal technicalities"
"Trumped up they may be, technicalities they may be, but legal they are: your government has agreed to honor them until final ownership of these islands has been adjudicated by an international tribune."
Norway muttered something about atomics and blackmail.
Verwoerd shrugged. "You and Iwe're only simple soldiers. We just follow the orders we've been given."
They watched in silence as Verwoerd's men unloaded the cargo into waiting lorries.
"Captain," Verwoerd said quietly, almost in a whisper. "I give you my word that the Islanders will be humanely treated."
"As if the word of a Draka slaver meant anything!"
Verwoerd pointed to the Victoria Cross pinned above his battle ribbons.
"I served in the Royal Navy during the Kaiser's War back when we Draka were British subjects. The Islanders are our kin. How could we not treat them humanely?"
Norway refused to answer, but his face softened somewhat.
Soon the airship was emptied of all cargo. Her crew marched back inside.
"Will you require a Draka fighter escort until you reach British airspace?" Verwoerd asked.
Norway frostily declined.
"Very well, Captain. A safe journey home."
Norway saluted and turned about on his heel.
"Oh, and Captain?" Verwoerd called after him.
Norway looked over his shoulder.
"You may not want it," Verwoerd said, "you may not believe, but you still have my word."
"I apologize for the delay," Verwoerd told the British woman as he climbed into the staff car.
"Hardly a way to start out as an observer," Sally Perkins said, her voice ice. "Being shoved aside"
"Being shoved aside where you can't overhear one old man be forced to humiliate a proud younger man?"
The woman stared ahead stonily.
"Flight Lieutenant Perkins. You and I are going to have to learn to work together. Our good relationship, our trust in each other, are about all that stands between the Channel Islanders and the auction block."
"Is that a threat?"
"It's a plea. I'm begging you: help me save these people."
She stared at him closely, thoughts flickering across her eyes.
Slowly, she nodded.
A small crowd gathered behind Verwoerd as he set up his easel on a bluff overlooking Moulin Heut Bay.
The first weeks of Draka occupation had gone exceedingly well. Verwoerd's hand-picked naval gendarmes had been nothing but unfailingly kind. After the second day they even went about unarmed save for the same nightsticks carried by British bobbies.
The Draka had distributed great quantities of food, new clothing, shoes, medicine, and little essentials the islanders hadn't seen since before the German occupation. Things like sewing needles and toilet paper.
The Draka had initiated a spate of sporting events, musical concerts, and theatrical shows. What proved most popular was their bringing to the islands several new Hollywood motion picture films. For the last four years the only motion pictures to be seen were those that had been playing at the Gaumont Palace the day the Nazis had landedTop Hat and The Barretts of Wimpole Streetof which the islanders were thoroughly sick. The Dancing Cavalier, with Errol Flynn and Carole Lombard, had been a big hit, even if it was two years old.
But the biggest local attraction soon proved to be Verwoerd himself.
He'd put away his military uniforms and had taken to wearing smartly-cut Savile Row civilian suits, with his Victoria Cross pinned to his jacket lapel. He seemed to be everywhere on the island at once, to know all of the local children by name, and to be more British than the Islanders themselves.
He'd taken up headquarters in the old Castle Cornet and had immediately set out to repair the minor damage the old historic landmark had suffered during the brief German invasion. The regular Draka Navy forces on the island were barracked there or in other closed compounds, out of the eye of the local islanders.
Where Verwoerd went, Flight Lieutenant Perkins went with him: concerts, the cinema, and Verwoerd's strolls around St. Peter Port's Candie Park. Local wags began wondering just what the young RAF officer was supposed to be observing. But most of the islanders warmed to her; one of their own was a genuine war hero, and after four years of Nazi occupation, the islanders sensed that Draka good will depended in part on Sally's daily Draka-monitored reports to London.
Today Verwoerd had decided to watercolor and had imposed upon Sally as his model. He posed her so she was seated on a large rock, then returned to his easel.
Verwoerd painted for a while.
"You've lost your audience," Sally said.
"Hmmm?" The audience had been behind him. He looked over his shoulder. They were alone on the bluff.
"I rather suspect the novelty wore off," he said. "The first few washes of a water color do look somewhat random." He swirled a brush in a jar of water and dabbed it in an awful earth tone color.
"Renoir painted this bay, you know," he said. "If I had any talent, I'd try to capture some of what he saw here." He shrugged. "Oh, well. I have a much better model than he did."
Sally ignored that last comment. "Lots of famous people have lived here: Victor Hugo . . ."
" . . . Victor Hugo. Oh, and Victor Hugo." Verwoerd smiled. "Yes, I know. `The Channel Islands are little pieces of France dropped in the sea and scooped up by England.' " He took a step back to stare at his progress, then started painting again. "There's a statue of him in the park, and little plaques all over St. Peter Port, I imagine: `Victor Hugo Slept Here.' "
Sally looked at him. "You're an odd one. Out and about the city you act like a kindly old grandfather. Yet back at the castle you hang those dreadful banners all over the courtyard."
" `What is the best remedy? Victory!' Or `I want gremlins around me, for I am courageous'?"
"Yes. What ever does that one mean?"
"What do Nietzsche's syphilitic ramblings ever mean? `Courage creates gremlins for itself' is the rest of that particular quotation." He washed out his brush and dabbed a new color. "Just be glad I'm not hanging those banners all over town the way Security wants me to. They're supposed to remind my troops they're Draka supermen." He made a face.
"Are they? They don't act like it."
He set down his brush. "It may surprise you that there are actually a number of Draka like them. Not all of us are your Hollywood stereotype villains."
"Your men all seem to have Dutch names."
"Very observant." He selected another brush. He sucked on the bristles to form a hard tip. "When the British first started arriving in droves in the then Crown Colony of Drakia, they pushed the original Dutch Boer farmers right out of the way. The British expanded northeastward across the Orange and beyond into the power vacuum left by the difaqane."
He dipped his brush in a bright vermilion. "Millions slaughtering each other with stone age weapons, if you can imagine. Three million dead, thirty million deadnobody knows for sure." He swept the brush over the canvas. "Maybe if the difaqane had never happened . . ." He selected another brush.
"A Draka would say they brought their fate on them themselves."
"Some Draka would," he said quietly. "As I'm trying to point out, we're not all alike."
"No. Some are faster painters. I think my leg's asleep."
"Oh. Sorry." He got back to painting. "The Dutch, those few left who refused to be swallowed up by the British at any rate, struck out northwest into the Kalahari. Our Voortrek. Windhoek. Walvis Bay. A rough life, and one with few natives to lord it over." He shrugged. "We developed a bit differently. Rationalists and Navy men now, mostly."
Sally almost smiled. "Is that why you don't like Nietzsche banners like all good little Draka are supposed to?"
He daubed his brush in a mixture of colors. "There was a time in my life when I thought of little else but Nietzsche. I was a young man at the time; I'd spent my life in British boarding schools, thought of myself as British, but I was still Draka. I guess I was trying to discover who I was."
Sally rolled her head around, stretching her neck muscles. She resumed her pose. "He's almost your state religion, isn't he?"
Verwoerd snorted. "The Draka worship nothing but themselves. `Serfs look up because they wish to be exalted; the superman looks down because he already is exalted.' When you're the oppermans, it's rather hard to admit some entity might be superior to yourself. That's why the attempt to revive the Norse mythology, Naldorssen and all that, failed so miserably. Probably also why religion has always fascinated me so."
"I'm having a rather difficult time picturing you as a priest."
Verwoerd laughed. "Actually, before the warthe Kaiser's warwell, I intended to become a theologian."
"Then the war changed all that?"
He poured the dirty rinse water out of the jar and filled it with fresh, clear water. "Not in the way you imagine. Living, if you can call it that, in the trenches in the Dardanelles changed my intentions, true: it intensified them. Somehow the idea of somebody somewhere having the answers seemed more precious to me than any pearl of great price."
Sally nodded. She had seen combat, too. " `Thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!because they rob thee of my Yea and Amen,' " she said. "Only in your case, you were looking for your Yea and Amen."
Verwoerd smiled weakly. "Since when did you start reading Nietzsche?" he asked.
"Since you started hanging it up in courtyards."
He gave a truer smile. "After the war, I spent a year studying in the Vatican. Another year in Canterbury. Six months touring the American Bible Belt. Finally three days in Salt Lake City."
"Only three days? You seemed to have given the Mormons pretty short shrift in your studies."
"Sometimes three days are enough." He jabbed his brush once or twice, then set it aside. "There. Done."
Before he could stop her, Sally raced over to the easel. "Let me see."
Verwoerd's painting was a beautiful, intricate seascape of the bay below. Every detail, including the rock Sally had sat on, was in the picture. Sally, however, was not.
"You had me sit like a human pretzel on that hard cold rock for hours and you didn't even paint me?"
"My dear," he laughed, "I couldn't paint a portrait to save my life. Let's eat."
They sat down on a nearby grassy knoll. Sally opened the wicker basket. "Ploughman's lunch, I'm afraid. I'm a better fighter pilot than I am a cook."
Verwoerd sliced off a huge hunk of cheese. "I've spent all morning talking about myself. What's your story?" He broke open his loaf of French bread.
She shrugged. "Not much to tell. I was sixteen when the war started. Seventeen when they started evacuating women and children off the Channel Islands before the Germans came. Twenty when the RAF was desperate enough to start recruiting women fighter pilots. Twenty-and-a-half when I pranged my plane and banged myself up. Now I'm on the RAF dog-and-pony circuit giving hero speeches."
"That's all?"
"That's all." She rooted around in the basket until she found the sour pickled onions. "What made you leave Salt Lake City after three days?" Her eyes narrowed. "You didn't convert, did you?"
He laughed. "Those Mormons have the craziest ideas. They usually manage to get everything backwards. Take for example: the New Testament has the Pharisees use the excuse `it's better that one man die than a whole nation perish' to kill the Nazarene. The Mormons stick that same excuse in the front of their scripture, only they have one of their prophets use it as an excuse to cut off the head of an evildoer."
Verwoerd licked his fingers. "That wasn't their craziest saying, though. Try this one: `As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.' "
"Crazy is right."
"All I was struggling with was the concept of setting myself up as one of Nietzsche's supermen. Here were what I was supposed to think of as serfs, dreaming of themselves as Gods in embryo." He shook his head.
He brushed the crumbs off his clothes. "The belief may be absurd, the belief in it is not. I had the son of a friend tell me that a while ago."
"But what made you leave?" she asked again.
He paused before he answered. "In a way, I suppose I found what I was looking for."
She looked at him sharply. "No you didn't. You found something else. What?"
A longer pause. He fingered the Victoria Cross on his jacket.
"Something to be frightened of. Something that scared me so bad I ran away."
She waited for him to tell her, but he wouldn't.
"You'll know," was all he said. "One day you'll know."
Late that eveninglong past midnight, in factVerwoerd sat in his office in Castle Cornet with his intelligence officer. An American Williams-Burroughs tape recorder lay on the table. The aide rotated the chrome dial to Play.
" . . . your judgement's a bit suspect, dear," an old woman's voice said. "You're sweet on him."
"Nonsense." That was Sally's voice. "I am not. I"
"It's all right, dear. You're young and these things happen. Heaven knows enough of our girls fell for the Germans when they were here."
"Now wait just a minute"
"How long do you think they can keep up this act of theirs?" A man's voice now. Several voices murmured assent.
The aide switched the tape off for a moment. "We think there were at least a dozen present. Hard to be sure, even with telescopic lens. Too many ways in and out of that old abandoned factory. We have pictures of some of them."
Verwoerd impatiently waved his hand for the aide to start the tape again.
Sally's voice: " . . . I keep telling youI don't think it is an act. I think for the first time in their lives they don't have to be Draka supermen, they can be plain human beings. I think they're enjoying it."
"Sure, maybethe ones we see." A younger man's voice. "And what about the ones we can't see? What about the ones on the mainland? What about the ones back in Draka-land? The Intervention Squads, and the Order Police, and the Krypteria?"
An older man grunted in agreement. "At least the Germans saw us as fellow human beings. These Draka" he spat out the word like it was deadly poison "when they look at us they don't see anything but an animal to be tattooed and chained and worked in the fields until we drop in our tracks and die. I say we fight."
Choruses of agreement.
"Amateurs!" Sally said in disgust.
"Maybe so," the old man said, "but we're all you've got."
The aide clicked off the tape. "I also have a further report from the Uitdager."
Verwoerd snorted. The Uitdager lived up to her name, although she challenged her creators more than her opponents. The Domination was woefully behind in submarine and torpedo technology. Lurking and spying were about all Draka submarines could hope to do and survive.
"The Uitdager took up station in Rocquaine Bay as you suggested. Shortly after this meeting, they spotted a flashlight on shore blinking what could only be a coded message. Presumably to another submarine in the vicinity. Allied, undoubtedly. British, presumably."
"Presumably." Rocquaine Bay lay on the west tip of the island. A light flashed from there wouldn't be seen from the French coastline, or by the Draka Security troops on Alderney to the north. Verwoerd half-dreaded the next item of information.
"My men followed Flight Lieutenant Perkins out of the recorded meeting. They place her on the shore of Rocquaine Bay at the approximate time the coded message was sent."
Verwoerd nodded. None of the night's events were much of a surprise. Still, it was unpleasant to confirm as fact what could pleasantly be considered only a possibility.
"Initiate phase two," he said.
The intelligence officer picked up his own flashlight laying on the floor beside his chair.
He set out for Rocquaine Bay.
Four bodies were laid in a line side-by-side on a table inside the airport's hangar. A wool blanket had been draped over each of them to cover their faces.
Verwoerd looked down on them and sighed. "A British Catalina float plane was mistakenly shot down over the island early this morning. The bodies were recovered in the wreckage," he told Sally.
" `Mistakenly!' " Sally spat.
Verwoerd looked at her. "Do you want me to say I'm sorry? We're at war, still. Mistakes happen. How many times did you shoot at one of your own planes?"
Sally turned her face away.
"I'd like you to arrange a public funeral," he told her. "A very public funeral. Saying I'm sorry won't help matters any; showing I'm sorry, perhaps, just might."
Red, white, and blue bunting was hung in Candie Park. The white gingerbread-style bandstand where the coffins lay in state was festooned with Union Jacks. Portraits of the British king were hung in all the shop windows facing the park.
Nearly the entire island population attended the services. Over two thousand wreaths were laid.
Verwoerd had insisted every available man in his command attend as well. A few Draka gendarmes stood their post around the park, but the vast majority of Verwoerd's men were lined up beside him in their dress uniforms. Even Verwoerd himself wore his uniform, the first time in weeks.
The looks the islanders gave them turned from unease, to baleful stares, to bitter resentment. The Draka, too, were uneasy. The holsters hanging from their dress belts were empty on Verwoerd's orders.
Then, spontaneously, before the services were even finished, someone in the crowd started singing "God Save the King." The audience picked it up. Then, once that anthem was finished, they began singing Rule Britannia. With each verse, their voices grew louder.
Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves!
Britons never never never shall be slaves!
Over and over they repeated it until the very ground shook and the roar became a single voice, a chime, a chant:
Britons never never never shall be slaves!
Verwoerd's men fingered their empty holsters, helplessly waiting for the tumult and the shouting to die.
Verwoerd grabbed Sally by the shoulders and shook her until she stopped singing, until she finally stared up at him with tearstained eyes.
"You wanted to know what I was frightened of?" he shouted above the roar of the crowd. He pointed at the swaying crowd.
Britons never never never shall be slaves!
"Run," he told her. "Hide. Because when the Draka are afraid . . ." He shook his head.
She placed the tips of her fingers to his cheek, and stroked gently, cat-like. The first and last time they would ever touch.
She vanished into the crowd.
Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves!
Britons never never never shall be slaves!
The chant continued long after Sally had gone. And somewhere, Verwoerd knewsomewhere in the ranks of men next to himSkull House's spy was afraid. Very, very afraid.
Late September 1944
St. Peter Port, Guernsey Island
Channel Islands
It was soon after that Verwoerd found himself face down on the flagstone of Castle Cornet's courtyard.
He was surrounded by gremlins, all right. Gremlins wearing the dark green uniforms of Security and the cobra badges of the Intervention Squads.
Somehow, being surrounded by gremlins didn't seem to give him courage.
But then, he wasn't safe in the Swiss Alps sitting at a desk writing aphorisms.
"Hello, Hans, ol' buddy."
Brekenridge leaned lazily on the front fender of Verwoerd's own staff autosteamer. He was paring his nails with an SS ceremonial dagger, undoubtedly a souvenir from one of his Alderney playthings.
He clucked as he looked over the squad he'd sent to fetch Verwoerd. "That's shore a purty shiner you got yourself there, Yancy," he said.
She started to explain.
Brekenridge cut her off with a snort. "Didn't I warn you sweetlin's ol' Hans was pretty spry for a man pushing sixty?" He stuck his ring finger in his mouth and daintily bit off a cuticle. "An' what else do I see? Couple lips busted open? Bloodied noses? My, my."
He spat out the cuticle. "Let that be a lesson t'y'allstick to yo' regimen, and when you git to be as old a crock as Hans, you'll be in just as good a' shape."
The SS dagger went back in its sheath. He walked over and crouched down on his haunches to peer at Verwoerd. " 'Course, this mo'ning Hans looks a bit worse for wear. Right disappointed in you, Hans. Usually you's so impeccable. Shore waited long enough for you to roust yourself up outa yo' bed an' git shaved, showered, an' sissyfied 'fore we came knocking. Then you go an' almost fall in the mud."
Brekenridge got back to his feet. "Pick him up 'fore he gits all dirty."
Verwoerd was hauled roughly to a standing position. He shook himself free. He smoothed his hair back into place, then brushed at the front of his tailored Savile Row English-cut suit.
The courtyard was empty save for Security troops.
"What have you done with my men?"
"Shush now, don't you fret none. Your cute lil' old sailors are lazin' about their barracks in their purty lil' sailor suits, havin' a fine ol' time. Not like they's much use anyhow. My boys worked up a harder sweat fighting the Eyeties."
"Where's my staff?"
"Playin' cards with yo' sailors, I 'spect."
"Am I under arrest as well?"
"Now who said anything 'bout arrest? My boys just helping an old man down some stairs so'n we two can have a visit." Verwoerd chucked his dropped hat. "We gonna take a ourselves a little drive, Hans."
Verwoerd looked around at all the Tolgren machine pistols pointed his direction. "I suppose this is the part where I'm supposed to make a desperate leap like some Hollywood hero?"
"I'd shore like it if'n you was to try, old man. Less fuss for me in the long run."
Verwoerd calmly put his hat on. "Sorry if I disappoint you; I'm a little too old for Hollywood derring-do. Besides, I prefer the more cerebral approach." He nodded at one of the slogan banners. "After all, `victory is the best remedy.' " He got into the staff car.
Brekenridge unsnapped his pistol holster and walked around to the other side. "I 'spect I'm going to enjoy this. Yes, indeedy."
The leather dispatch pouch lay on the seat beside him. The typed orders with the Archon's signature lay neatly tucked back inside the pouch.
"So. It isn't entirely a coup. The Navy remains in charge herebut only as long as I do things your way."
Brekenridge ran his finger across the edge of his dagger and smiled. "That's 'bout the gist of it."
Verwoerd leaned back in his seat. "It still looks like a coup to me."
"Not at all. You're still baas around hereas long as you play the game. And the word's not `koo,' it's `koop,' " he said, giving the Draka pronunciation. "You know what yo' problem is, Hans? You dress like a limey," he flicked his dagger point at Verwoerd's suit, "you tahk like a limeyrawhthawh" he mimicked Verwoerd's accent, "and some say you even think like a limey. Dangerous habits, Hans. Start dabblin' in dragons, better take care les'n you want to turn into one.
"An' they be dragons here, yes indeedy." They passed a store with a faded picture of the British monarch taped in the display window. "St. Georges a'plenty, too. Question is, which'n are you?"
The autosteamer slowly wound its way through the narrow streets of St. Peter Port.
Little bits of England flashed past the windowsa Toby The Chemist shop, a Lloyd's Bank, even billboards for Guinness beer and Players tobacco. A glimpse of England that now would soon vanish.
Out in the harbor, Verwoerd could see the hazy smudge of the French coastline scant miles away. He could see the fires from the looting still going on there. That was St. Peter Port's future now, too.
The autosteamer hissed on. The city streets were deserted.
Verwoerd was just about to ask Brekenridge what he'd done with the locals, when suddenly he knew.
He saw rows of open lorries parked along Candie Park, packed full of people. Security troops were yelling for the dazed, frightened Channel Islanders to get out of the truck, herding them by gunpoint into the park where bunting and Union Jacks still hung. The pigeon-stained statue of Victor Hugo looked down at the tangled curls of concertina wire beneath its feet.
Holding pens.
Blood roared in his ears and he turned.
"I wouldn't try it, Hans."
The point of Brekenridge's dagger pressed against Verwoerd's Adam's apple. Verwoerd realized he'd been tensing himself to leap at the security man.
The dagger point pressed harder. "G'wanlive dangerously, like yo' precious Neechee says."
With an effort, Verwoerd relaxed and sank back into his seat. Brekenridge lowered the dagger. "Tsk. I thought we were goin' to use the more c'rebral approach."
"The Archon said nothing about rounding up locals into serf pens."
"But Skull House shore did." He pulled a slim leather wallet from his jacket pocket and wiggled it.
"We wuz only grudgin'ly allowing yo' lil' pet experimentprovidin' you started t'show the results you promised. An' providin' it don't endanger the state."
Brekenridge leaned back. "The other day your pet limeys nudged up agin that line in the sand, if'n they didn't jump right over it with both feets. Time now to pay the piper."
"The yoke?"
Verwoerd's voice was barely audible. Courage did create its own gremlins: the courage to hope.
Brekenridge shook his head sadly. "Not the yoke. 'Least, not yet."
The car slowed in the middle of the block, then pulled over to the curb and parked outside the Gaumont Palace cinema.
"Jus' the next best thing."
A circle of Security troops waited outside the Gaumont.
They pulled Verwoerd out of the car. Brekenridge slid out behind him, hand resting lightly on his holstered pistol. His eyes, however, were on the Gaumont.
The Gaumont was a tiny thing, not even as big as the lobby of the average London cinema, not even big enough to have a lighted marquee above its entrance.
"Imagine this dinky ol' island having a palace like this. This is bigger than any showhouse in Alexandria."
Letting serfs watch movies or even run the projector was dangerous. The might get ideas of the outside world. Most Draka theatres were really small private screening rooms in plantation homesone of the many reasons Virconium studios lagged far behind Hollywood.
Verwoerd looked at him and clucked his tongue. "See what you're missing? You need to travel more, Brekenridge. Broaden your horizons."
"The only horizons I'm interested in broadenin' are the Domination's. An' when I visit a foreign country, it ain't foreign no more; it's conquered." He waved a hand at the cinema. "Serf nations squanderin' their resources on frippery like this, that just makes the job easier."
"I wouldn't discount it too fast. That's the stuff dreams are made of. And serf dreams are dangerous things."
Brekenridge snorted. "You'd know, wouldn't you? Dreams of rulin' the waves an' escapin' the neck collarand boastin' about it in song! That's the reason all your limey friends got one foot on the auction block today: dreams like that. Well, we're just going have to give them some nightmares instead."
He turned. "G'wan, paste it up there, Benning," he snapped.
A security trooper smashed the glass door of the poster box with the butt of her Tolgren's collapsible stock. She ripped out the poster for The Dancing Cavalier and slapped up in its place a plain white sheet of paper with Initial Orientation Film printed in plain block letters.
"Little training movie Security whipped up in Denmark," Brekenridge explained. "Seems to have worked wonders up there preventin' any uprisin'." He squinted at the stenciled movie title. "Hmm. Do believe the title lost sumthin' in the translation. In Danish it's Slaves' First Day." He chuckled.
"I'm to round up every limey on this island and show them this lil' cinematic masterpiece. Some of 'em are hiding yet, like that girlfrien' of yours, but we'll find 'em, never fear."
He plucked a bit of lint off his shirt. " 'Long as your limeys behave themselves, this is as close as they git to going under the yoke, an' you kin continue with what's left of Project Hedgehog. They misbehave, though," his white teeth flashed a shark's smile, "they's mine."
"But that will kill whatever chance . . ." Verwoerd shook his head. "You can't be serious!"
"Serious as a shockstick, `old bean'an' it just keeps gittin' better. It's you who's gonna stand here taking their tickets personally, letting 'em know their preciously nice, humane, decent Hans Verwoerd is a part of all this. They'll remember you as the one forcin' this film upon their poor unsullied sensibilities."
A security detail began unloading sandbags out the back of a lorry. They starting stacking them into the beginnings of a machine gun nest.
"Jus' in case the natives git restless."
"Vieslik!" Verwoerd spat in his birth tongue. "I want no part of this."
"Oh, but you's already a part of this, whether you like it or not, Hans: you's Draka and this is what bein' Draka means. We's Draka. They's serfs. Ain't nothin' in between. Yo' ain't gonna change that, don't care what the Archon said you could try here."
A heavy machine gun, its tripod, and several boxes of ammo were placed behind the sandbags. Another lorry with a squad of Security troops arrived.
Brekenridge's face almost softened into something human. "I'm just speedin' up the process, Hans. Kindlier in the long run, not givin' these po' souls any hope."
Brekenridge's men began stringing barbed wire.
"Pity's the greatest danger, Hans. That's what Neechee says, an' it's true. Dangerous for them. Dangerous for us."
"Reckon they don't like our trainin' film none." Brekenridge said. He was sitting with Verwoerd in the back of the theater, watching the audience more than he was watching the movie.
The sour stench of vomit and urine fouled the air in the cramped theatre until Verwoerd choked on it.
Security troops stood in the aisles and at the exits. Levelled weapons kept the locals in their seats.
"But," Brekenridge went on, "I reckon they'd like it a whole lot less findin' themselves in it rather than just watchin' it," he said for effect, his voice carrying across the theatre.
Stark images of black and white danced across the screen. The screams from the original Danish soundtrack and the sobbing and retching from the audience at times drowned out the dubbed English narration.
The narrator was obviously a fresh-caught Danish serf. She stumbled through the script in clear, but highly accented English. She was also clearly frightened out of her wits. A terse Draka voice prodded her on when she faltered.
At one point, the scene shifted to a expensively furnished stable. A group of people were dragged in by their collar chains. They were bruised and bloody, their clothing nothing but shreds.
The narrator's voice started sobbing, then pled rapidly in Danish. The Draka voice barked once, twice. The Danish voice only grew more desperate. The audience heard the meaty sound of a slap. The narrator sobbed hysterically.
A gunshot, then the thud of a heavy object hitting the ground. The clank of chains, and a new voicemale this timeidentified the people on the screen: "L-ladies and gentlemen, the Danish Royal F-family."
The camera zoomed in on the once proud faces, then panned to what awaited them in the stalls.
"Enough," Verwoerd growled. He stormed out the back of the theatre into the lobby. Brekenridge sauntered behind him, smiling.
"Bit squeamish are we?" he asked. "From the film? Or just from the aroma of eau de serf?"
Brekenridge ran his fingers over the lobby's faded wallpaper. The wallpaper had started to peel from neglect in the four years of Nazi occupation. He poked his finger into a fresh bullet hole, one of several peppering the walls from the four hours of Draka Security occupation. Security called firing automatic weapons over prisoner's heads to get them to take their seats "gentle persuasion."
"You might be able to walk away, Hans, but them poor souls in there can't." He dug deeper. The plaster crumbled until his whole fist punched through.
"These past few weeks, you've been the carrot. T'day, I'm the stick." He pulled out his fist. "Never did put much stock in carrots. Seein's is, there ain't an animal in the world who remembers they're a vegetarian when they're pushed into a corner."
They waited in the lobby until the movie ended. The guard started herding the audience out of the theatre, back through the lobby.
The faces of some of the islanders were sullen, others terrified. A few were white with rage. Those were the faces Verwoerd could feel Brekenridge memorizing.
A number of them had voided themselves, or had vomited on themselves, or both. That only made Brekenridge laugh.
"Don't bother breakin' out the mops, sweetlin's," he called after them. "Havin' each of yo' groups muck in through the swill of previous ones adds a certain . . . ambiance to the film."
As the last of them filed out, Brekenridge called one of his men over and told them to distribute handfuls of each group that had seen the film into the holding pens of those groups they wouldn't get to until tomorrow or the next day.
"That should have the desired effect," he told Verwoerd.
Yes, thought Verwoerd. It will indeed.
Brekenridge had made a mistake. Actually, he had made several, but this particular mistake could prove fatal. Verwoerd would see to that.
Verwoerd was locked in his own office. The office had been stripped bare. Everything was gonedesk, chairs, books, fileseverything down to the paperclips. Everything in the room had been taken, every possible hiding place searched.
Except one.
Verwoerd cradled the tiny pistol he'd retrieved from its hiding place. It was hardly larger than a cigarette lighter. It held but a single bullet.
Sometimes, a single bullet was all you needed.
He slipped the pistol up his sleeve.
Verwoerd was curled up on the hard wooden floor asleep when he was awakened by the chatter of machine guns.
Screams and the sounds of boots running across the flagstones below echoed in the once quiet night.
Footsteps pounded up the staircase.
Sally Perkins, her face blackened with burnt cork, dressed in a black sweater, slacks, and stocking cap, and carrying a Sten gun, burst into his room.
"I was afraid you weren't coming," Verwoerd said calmly.
She stared at him. "You knew?"
"That you were an SOE agent? Of course." His smile was thin. "Who do you think your `Agent Fox' was?" He gave the code phrase that confirmed it.
Two more commandos entered into the room. One of them was Captain Norway.
"Area's secured. They're starting to load up the islanders now."
Verwoerd cocked his eyebrow at Norway. "I was wondering how you were going to evacuate them."
Norway snorted. "On the old R 100? You've gone potty, old man. Hardly room for sixteen thousand. Besides, the old girl crashed on the way back from here. She wasn't a very good ship after all." He looked down at his commando uniform. "That's why I had to look for another line of work."
Sally tilted her head at the window. "The Americans loaned us some troop carrier subs from the Pacific. They're in the bay now." She pulled off her stocking cap and shook her hair. "You know, I really must get around to thanking Brekenridge. We couldn't have pulled it off without his unwitting helpstripping your men off the defenses, rounding up all the locals in one place."
Verwoerd shrugged. "Security's first instinct is to shoot anything that moves. Anything that survives afterwards gets herded behind barbed wire."
"We've got him downstairs. All trussed up like a Christmas goose."
Verwoerd got to his feet. His muscles were stiff from the hard floor. "Would you mind taking me to him? I've my own thanks I'd like to deliver."
Verwoerd almost didn't recognize him. Brekenridge's face was crisscrossed with white surgical tape. The tape was holding in place a specially-designed gag. The device prevented any nasty episodes with cyanide pills, hollowed teeth, and other assorted Skull House toys.
"Hmgghf! Ggmmphrnnf!" Brekenridge mumbled through the gag, thrashing on the floor in his straight jacket.
Verwoerd squatted down beside him. "This seems to violate the Geneva convention, somehow. Get up off the floor. I'd like to have a little chat."
Brekenridge was lifted up and set in the chair.
"Much better," Verwoerd said. He stood inches in front of the chair. "I don't think he's enjoyin' our little trainin' restraints," he said in the same Draka drawl Brekenridge had used that day at the Gaumont. Verwoerd tapped his finger on the gag. "This is special equipment we got from all the way up in Denmark. We call it `Slave's First Gag.' " Before the British could stop him, he backhanded Brekenrdige in the face. The security man toppled to the floor.
"Get him up!" Verwoerd's voice was hard, not to be disobeyed.
They sat Brekenridge up. The man was crying, almost hysterical.
"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 crazyI'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 realityentire 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 familykilled 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. Nownow 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.