Bear, Greg - Through Road No Whither by Bear Greg

Author:Bear, Greg [Bear, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-30T15:42:10+00:00

“I’ve been suggesting that,” von Ranke said. Fischer made no move to leave. Von Ranke tugged on his arm but the SS

Oberleutnant shrugged free of his friend’s grip.

“Gypsies are few, now, hag,” he said. “Soon to be fewer by one.” Von Ranke managed to urge him just outside the door. The woman followed and shaded her eye against the misty light.

“I am no gypsy,” she said. “You do not even recognize the words?” She pointed at the letters above the door.

Fischer squinted, and the light of recognition dawned in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do, now. A dead language.”

“What are they?” von Ranke asked, uneasy.

“Hebrew, I think,” Fischer said. “She is a Jewess.”

“No!” the woman cackled. “I am no Jew.”

Von Ranke thought the woman looked younger now, or at least stronger, and his unease deepened.

“I do not care what you are,” Fischer said quietly. “I only wish we were in my father’s time.” He took a step toward her.

She did not retreat. Her face became almost youthfully bland, and her bad eye seemed to fill in. “Then, there would be no regulations, no rules-I could take this pistol”-he tapped his holster-“and apply it to your filthy Kike head, and perhaps kill the last Jew in Europe.” He unstrapped the holster. The woman straightened in the dark hut, as if drawing strength from Fischer’s abusive tongue. Von Ranke feared for his friend. Rash-ness would get them in trouble.

“This is not our fathers’ time,” he reminded Fischer.

Fischer paused, the pistol half in his hand, his finger curling around the trigger. “Old woman”-though she did not look half as old, perhaps not even old at all, and certainly not bent and crippled-“you have had a very narrow shave this afternoon.”

“You have no idea who I am,” the woman half-sang, half-moaned.

“Scheisse,” Fischer spat. “Now we will go, and report you and your hovel.”

“I am the scourge,” she breathed, and her breath smelled like burning stone even three strides away. She backed into the hut but her voice did not diminish. “I am the visible hand, the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.”

Fischer’s face hardened, and then he laughed. “You are right,” he said to von Ranke, “she isn’t worth our trouble.” He turned and stomped out the door. Von Ranke followed, with one last glance over his shoulder into the gloom, the decay. No one has lived in this hut for years, he thought. Her shadow was gray and indefinite before the ancient stone hearth, behind the leaning, dust-covered table.

In the car von Ranke sighed. “You do tend toward arrogance, you know that?”

Fischer grinned and shook his head. “You drive, old friend. I’ll look at the maps.” Von Ranke ramped up the Mercedes’s turbine until its whine was high and steady and its exhaust cut a swirling hole in the fog behind. “No wonder we’re lost,”

Fischer said. He shook out the Pan-Deutschland map peevishly. “This is five years old-1979.”

“We’ll find our way,” von Ranke said. “I wouldn’t miss old Krum-nagel’s face when we deliver the plans.

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