Asimov's Science Fiction: July 2013 (10 page)

Miroslav shrugged. "What is a warrior without his wounds?" he asked.

Berezovsky stood, his countenance as hard as if it were carved from stone. "Stronger," he said, and gestured for Miroslav to follow him out of the off ice.

Anastasiya was at her desk, radiant in a bright yellow blouse. "Miss Kozyreva, Captain Ponomarenko has selected Cadet Ortoff for early graduation. We are going to administer his final test. Please see that we are not disturbed."

Anastasiya nodded, but as Berezovsky strode by she looked Miroslav in the eye.
Sadness worse than he had seen at Pasha's funeral shadowed her face. She mouthed, "Don't," and glanced quickly at the administrator to ensure he hadn't seen. She reached out and took Miroslav's good hand, and the blood in his heart suddenly felt hot and thick; she squeezed his hand and shook her head, then released him and turned away.

Miroslav limped down the corridor, leaning hard on his walking stick, wondering how many times Anastasiya had seen officials leave with Berezovsky to administer a test, only to have them die in the process. She was always a smart girl.

She had reached out to him. Had she forgiven him? Or had she never condemned him? Had he done that to himself?

In a few hours the Miroslav she knew would be gone. Would she, could she care for a not-Miroslav, a Slava in a permanent disguise? Could he
be
the same Miroslav in his Teryosha body, or would he be another Rostropovich, a fearless fool who would get others killed? Would he end up with a real boy's body but a wooden heart?

Cadet Ortoff was waiting for them in the infirmary. Berezovsky greeted him with expansive praise, spoke of his exemplary performance and the very special test that would now be administered that, if he passed, would qualify him to graduate early. Berezovsky went on and on, but Miroslav did not listen: he watched the cadet's smile widen, his chest swell. Ortoff had no idea his future was about to be given to Miroslav.

Berezovsky clapped the young man on the back and ushered him into the ward. Miroslav followed, with each step coming to a new decision.

Once through the doorway, Miroslav brought his cane down on Berezovsky's head.

The administrator turned, shock in his eyes, and a quick blow to the temple broke the ferrule off the cane but knocked the administrator out completely.

Cadet Ortoff, after the initial shock, took a step as if to defend Berezovsky. Miroslav put the broken tip of his cane in the cadet's chest, and said, "By my authority as an officer, you will say nothing of this. Do you understand? I have just saved your life."

It was clear that Cadet Ortoff did not understand, but also that he would not defy this mad captain. Miroslav called through the open doorway, "Nurse Godina! I need you."

The old nurse bustled in from the anteroom and stopped short, surprise switching in an instant to professional detachment as she hurried to Berezovsky's side. "What have you done?" she asked as she checked his carotid pulse.

"Ortoff, help the nurse." Miroslav pointed at the bed with his cane.

"You've hurt him badly," Godina said.

"I don't understand," Cadet Ortoff said as he lifted the administrator up onto the bed. "What are you doing?"

"It is not your place to understand, cadet! You will neither understand nor remember. Am I clear?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Then you are dismissed."

As the young man left, Nurse Godina turned slowly to face Miroslav. "What are you going to do, Captain Ponomarenko?"

Miroslav did not know; he thought he had gone mad. He had not formulated any plan, and was operating blind; he had no wish to press on, but could not bear to have this unnatural charade continue. Berezovsky would have to be removed—

"You," he said, "are going to prep Berezovsky. Cadet Ortoff will not be graduating early, after all. It is time for the administrator to graduate."

Nurse Godina's eyes widened, then narrowed in suspicion and doubt. Miroslav wondered if anything he might say could convince her to help him. "Haven't there
been enough early graduations?" he asked. "And enough over-conf ident fools, enough Rostropoviches, as a result?" He raised his fake arm for emphasis, though she could not know the reference. "He will be gone, and as him I will put an end to this."

She glanced down at the administrator. "You always were quick to protect the underdog," she said. "And I didn't like him much back when he was Colonel Arsov.

"But I am not practiced in the procedure. You cannot take his place. If it turns out I cannot do it... it will break many promises, made to many powerful people. Who will be left to protect me, if I attempt this and you do not survive?"

Miroslav reached out and touched the nurse's arm. "If that worries you, you will just have to ensure that I survive."

The preparations took less time than Miroslav had imagined. The supplies had already been brought down from the chemistry storeroom; barely five minutes later he lay down on the empty bed.

As the nurse stuck him with the first needle, Miroslav said, "Please tell Nastas'ya that I am sorry."

"Nastas'ya?"

"Anastasiya. Miss Kozyreva."

"Sorry for what?"

"For everything," Miroslav said. And silently he berated himself for the tear he felt slide down his face, into his ear.

"Slava?"

Miroslav opened his eyes, but the light was too bright so he closed them again. Nastas'ya's voice sounded the same, which surprised him. Miroslav had expected Berezovsky's senses to be different... that he would hear things in slightly different registers, or perhaps perceive colors in new ways. It pleased him that Nastas'ya sounded as she always had. He smiled, and squeezed his fists tight.

His right hand closed around Nastas'ya's. The realization took his breath for a second, then he registered the fact of having two fists.

Miroslav opened and closed the fingers of his left hand twice more just to enjoy the sheer sensation of it. He opened his eyes again, a little at first and then enough to see the room around him. Nastas'ya sat on a chair to his right, holding his hand. She smiled at him, a little sadly.

Miroslav lifted his left arm to look at it, and it was his same prosthetic limb.

It moved in its usual clumsy fashion, barely following the path his brain directed for it—but it had just felt so
real.
My own mind turned against me, he said to himself. He said aloud, "It didn't work."

"No, Slava," said Anastasiya. "Nurse Godina said the administrator's... injury... was too severe. He... it killed him, Slava."

Miroslav's chest tightened, and he seized Anastasiya's hand as if to reassure himself that she was really there. Only after a moment did he realize that she was crying. Afraid she would pull away, he put his hand on her cheek and brushed away her tears with his thumb.

She covered his hand with her own, closed her eyes, and smiled.

A second later she looked at him again and asked, "What are you going to do, Slava?" When he did not answer right away, she said, her voice low and her eyes downcast, "Nurse Godina asked if she should summon Cadet Ortoff back."

"No," he said, and held Anastasiya's hand again. "Not that. Never that."

He levered himself into a sitting position, grateful that Anastasiya helped. The bed next to his was draped with a clean white sheet, covering Berezovsky. Miroslav thought of looking down at his own body on the bed, and decided that it was better this way: he likely would have found being Berezovsky unbearable. He would go on
as Miroslav; broken, but whole.

Though he would have to pay for his crime.

He stood, and called the nurse. Anastasiya put his shortened cane in his hand and he leaned upon it as best he could.

Miroslav recognized the resignation in Nurse Godina's face; it was the same expression his men had worn when they expected to hear their leave had been canceled, or they had been tapped for another dangerous patrol, or a comrade had died.

"What do we do now, Captain Ponomarenko?"

Miroslav reached for Anastasiya's hand, and grasped it with three fingers while still leaning on the cane. He felt stronger in that moment, from that touch, than he had in months.

"If you would, please contact the authorities and report Mr. Berezovsky's murder." Anastasiya made as if to speak, but Miroslav squeezed her hand so she would remain silent. "I am both recognizable and rather slower than I once was, so I will not f lee. Nor will I resist.

"I will swear that you went to great lengths to revive the administrator, and are to be commended. I am certain they will want to speak to Cadet Ortoff as well, who will be able to corroborate the crime."

"No, Slava," Anastasiya said.

"Yes, Nastas'ya. Someone must be held responsible—the greater powers will demand it. And who else but me? It must be so." He raised his false arm, and managed a weak chuckle. "
I
must be so."

Anastasiya pulled Miroslav's arm up and stepped in close to him. She pressed her eyes, heavy with warm tears, against his neck. "Please, Slava, do not leave me again."

Miroslav's heart drummed, wild and strong, and he felt as if the vibrations of it breaking might collapse him. Anastasiya—priceless, fragile Anastasiya—clung to him, and he silently cursed his damnable sense of duty. Feeling as if his very touch might damage her, he brushed his lips against her ear.

"I am sorry, Nastas'ya. Again, and always, I am sorry that you are the victim of all the good I try to do."

She did not look up at him, and spoke so softly he barely heard her. "Will you come back to me?"

Miroslav trembled. Precious Nastas'ya. Even the thought of her was more than he deserved, and he hesitated between truth and hope. He doubted he would ever be released, but even a false hope was still a hope.

"I will," he said. "If you will have me, I will come back to you, somehow, some day. And never leave."

Rick Wilber's interest in Moe Berg in all his various realities comes from a lifetime association with baseball and with science fiction. Rick's father was a Major-League player and coach and a pennant-winning manager in the Pacific Coast League, so Rick grew up in places like the old Comiskey Park in the Southside of Chicago and the PCL ballparks in California. In a long career as a science fiction writer he's so often touched upon baseball that he was asked to write the Baseball entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Rick's novel,
Sweepcast,
will be out in early 2014 from Tor. It's volume one of a trilogy based on his long-running S'hudonni Empire stories—most of which appeared first in this magazine.

September 30, 1943

Baseball is a game of constant disappointment. You swing and you mostly miss. You think it's an easy grounder and it bad hops you. You're called out at third trying to advance on a single. The pop foul to end the game drifts away from your glove as you reach over the rail. One thing after another, one game after another, one season after another; all of this in an endless progression of childish mediocrity.

No wonder he was depressed. Surely there were better things to do with one's life than catch and throw and swing a stick at baseballs.

Moe Berg, M.S., M.A, Ph.D., LL.D., was a well-educated man, a scholar, a man of great promise. Yet here he sat, a baseball player, in the dugout at Comiskey Park watching the rain fall and gather into puddles atop the tarp that covered the infield. All over the world Americans were at war, trying to turn the tide against the Japanese and the Germans, trying to keep the world free, fighting and dying with their allies. But Moe Berg, with f lat feet and a heart murmur, was still playing baseball, a kid's game. It was shameful.

The puddles rippled in the wind, tiny oceans getting wider by the second. It had been raining steadily for a half-hour and then moments ago there'd been a bright bolt of lightning and an immediate and massive crack of thunder. And now it was really pouring. Surely the game would be called in the next few minutes. Moe stood up from the dugout bench and walked up the well-chewed wooden steps that led to
the field. He held out his hand to feel the rain, then poked his head out to take a look at the stands. Nearly empty except for one woman in the box seats just to the right of the dugout. A real looker. Red hair, dark, under that black umbrella; she was staring at him, not ten feet away. Smiling.

He knew her, he thought, from somewhere.

The two hundred-inch Palomar mirror, fifteen tons of it in its wooden casing on a straining flatbed truck, was inching up the side of the mountain at two or three miles per hour. You could walk it faster, Moe knew, since that's what he'd done the day before, picking his spots, starting up at the observatory site and walking downhill a good five miles. Funny who he'd met on that walk.

In front of him, out over the f lat plains of the coast toward Oceanside and the ghost town of Camp Pendleton, he could see through broken clouds as both air forces circled warily. The Republic of Mexico's brand-new German jets, ME 262s nicknamed Muerte Rapida by the Mexicans, were armed to the teeth and hoping for a mistake by the Republic of California's old P-38s, which circled and waited patiently for the huge H-6 flying boats to arrive—a flock of spruce geese—for the supposed big flyover during the ceremonies. If things went wrong and one of those wooden f lying boats strayed into Mexican airspace, it was game over for the Californians.

Hell, it was a miracle, Moe thought, that the game wasn't long lost already. All this chaos and yet the Californians had somehow managed to finish the construction of the observatory building and get the mirror for the damn thing this close to being installed. All that despite the ease with which the Japanese took Northern California and Oregon, the collapse of California's allies with the ruination of New York City by the German superbomb and the surrender by the Federal States after the second bomb took out Boston; the rise of Mexico with the help of the Germans, the mobilization of everyone and everything in the Republic of California to try and hang on to independence.

And right smack in the middle of all this trouble the Caltech team kept working on the observatory, the great dome slowly rising like some Christopher Wren cathedral, a sort of St. Paul's to science, the dome a statement about who the Californians were and what they could create.

And the heart of their creation was the mirror. Even as Russell Porter and Fritz Zwicky worked atop the mountain to build the observatory, down in Pasadena, in a small warehouse, the key man to this whole thing, a guy named Marcus Brown, had been carefully, inch by inch, layer by layer, shaping and polishing that mirror to the required level of perfection.

The huge Pyrex disk had first emerged from a daring pour at the Corning Glass Works in upstate New York in the Federal States in March of 1934. From there a special train took it along the south shores of Lakes Erie and Michigan and then across into the Western Republic and through the Mormon Territory and, at last, over the Sierras and into what was then the most prosperous nation in all of North America: The California Republic, which stretched northward from Tijuana all the way to Coos Bay.

The world went to war in 1936, but Marcus Brown didn't care. He shaped. He polished. Japan's Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere succeeded at Pearl Harbor and then the First, Second, and Third Yokosuka SNLFs made their landings at Eureka and Arcata in California, and held on and grew inland to Redding and north to the border with the Republic of Oregon, before settling down to occupy and tame their winnings—and through all that Brown kept polishing. Drained by the battles to the north, the California Republic gave Mexico the port it wanted in San Diego and redrew the southern border. And Brown kept polishing. The German superbomb
was anchored to the bottom of Jamaica Bay, in sight of the Empire State Building, by the U-365; and when it went off and that mushroom cloud enveloped Gotham, Brown kept on polishing. Same for Boston Harbor, only this by the U-545. And Brown polished.

By then, in Occupied New England the Corning Glass Works were focused on camera lenses and baby bottles for the fraus of Aryan Europe and only tiny, worthless Ireland remained free of the fascists while, in Pasadena, in the warehouse at the edge of the Caltech campus, Brown, yes, kept polishing and shaping. What began with the huge grinding machine and a slurry of carborundum and water became, over the years, tiny, careful swipes with the small polishing tool, a process so delicate that after a few minutes of work Brown would have to sit back and wait for a couple of hours for the heat from the polishing to fade before taking a measurement and then doing it all over again. And again, getting the great mirror to one-millionth-ofan-inch precision.Infinitesimal corrections and improvements. Polishing. And polishing. Until today, when in the pre-dawn hours the perfect mirror, the two hundred-inch disk, was carefully, carefully, carefully loaded onto the wooden bracing on the back of the Aerocar flatbed truck and started on its way to Mount Palomar, to the top of the mountain, where the great telescope's machinery, all gimbaled and balanced and ready, waited for it.

The Chicago rain washed out the game with the Yankees in the third inning. From the White Sox point of view this was a good thing. Babe Ruth was on the mound for the Yanks, and you don't spot the Babe a four-run lead and expect to come back and win the damn thing. It would have been Ruth's twentieth win for the season. Damn Yankees.

Moe had showered and was putting on his clothes—straight-legged trousers, a nice drape-cut suit-coat, white shirt with cuff links, a blue tie, all of it very Cary Grant—when Wild Bill Donovan showed up, walking into the clubhouse like he owned the place. Moe remembered Donovan as the U.S. Attorney in Buffalo, a straight-shooter who'd made his name during Prohibition in that shootout with Machine Gun Kelly in Black Rock, the place in Buffalo where the Erie Canal meets the Niagara River. The perfect place for smuggling Canadian whisky across the river from Fort Erie and onto a barge canal, and from there, all the way to New York City.

Kelly ran that smuggling business. William Donovan was determined to stop him. Kelly had a Thompson submachine gun and, that night, so did Wild Bill. Kelly stepped out of the warehouse for a smoke. He'd been watching his men load the canal barge with the whisky and the work was boring. It would be another hour before the barge was full and could start heading toward Albany and the Hudson and, ultimately, New York City. As Kelly stood in the shadows of Niagara Street and lit his cigarette, Donovan got out of his car and made a point of slamming the door of the Hudson.

Kelly looked up, saw Donovan, and brought his submachine gun up to point in the G-man's direction. Donovan stopped, brought his Thompson up the same way, and the two men, without saying a word, paused for a few long seconds and then let it rip. When it was over, Kelly's body had thirty-six holes in it. William Donovan was untouched and untouchable, and had himself a new nickname.

Moe was playing for the Buffalo Bisons back then, so he sure knew the story. He'd been honored when Donovan had taken him out to dinner a few times at Lorenzo's on Pearl Street, right around the corner from the ballpark. Pretty funny dinner, too, with that steak and potatoes and, surprise surprise, some good, solid Canadian whisky in that private back room. Moe liked the guy.

"How you doing, Moe?" Donovan asked as he walked up to him.

"Fine, Mr. Donovan"—who liked to be addressed that way—"and how is it with
you? Sorry about this rainout today, but the way Ruth is pitching we're probably lucky we didn't have to play."

Donovan pulled over a wooden folding chair and sat down, cap in hand. He leaned forward, talked in low tones. "Moe, I'm not here to talk about baseball."

Funny, but Moe had a good idea what this was about. There was a thought, a wisp of memory, niggling at him. Come to think of it, hadn't he seen Donovan pretty recently? Something about the war?

"Moe," Donovan was saying, "I know you were turned down for service."

"Twice, Mr. Donovan. Flat feet and a little heart thing. And I'm a professional ballplayer, mind you, and my feet haven't bothered me there. It was damn embarrassing. Hell, I even appealed."

"I know, Moe. I've seen your records. The appeal was turned down."

"All right, so I can't enlist. So what, Mr. Donovan?"

"Here's what, Moe. I have an offer for you. A way to get involved in this war. A way to fight the Nazis."

Damned if this all didn't sound familiar. It was coming back to him. He and Donovan had talked about this before. But years ago, in a restaurant in Buffalo? Not possible.

Donovan rose from his chair. "We need you, Moe. It's important. It's likely to be dangerous work, but you're a patriot, I know it, and this is something that has to be done. I'm hoping you're the man for the job."

Moe smiled. This was all a little familiar. But damn right he was the man for the job. No more kid games. No more balls and bats and running around. "Sure, I'm in, Mr. Donovan. You know I want to do my bit."

Donovan reached into his front lapel pocket and pulled out a business card. "All right, then, Moe," he said, handing him the card. "Tonight, eight o'clock, at the Drake Hotel. You'll find out everything you need to know. I hope to see you there."

The card said "William Donovan" on it and nothing else. There was a room number—PH1—scribbled on it. So a penthouse at the Drake.

"Okay, Mr. Don..." Moe was starting to say as he looked up; but Donovan's back was turned to Moe and he was walking away, back toward the clubhouse door. All right then. This was it. The chance to get into the fight. Finally.

Moe quietly finished dressing and then put Donovan's business card in his front pocket. There was another card in there, one the batboy had delivered from that woman in the stands. "Piccadilly Hotel. 5 P.M. in the bar," was written on it in blue ink, nice handwriting. Good timing, actually. A couple of hours, a few drinks with that woman and maybe make some arrangements for later, and then take the El north from the Piccadilly to the Drake. No problem. No problem at all.

Miriam Ruggiero was tapping Moe on the shoulder. "Say," she said, "you the reporter?"

Moe turned up the collar on his coat and nodded. It was getting colder and darker, a few clouds drifting over this side of the mountain. It might rain in a few minutes. Hell, at this altitude it might even snow. "Sure," he said, "I'm the reporter."

She was wearing a light blue jersey knit dress with a jacket over the top and carrying a beaded clutch purse. Very sporty. Moe knew about her, and suspected she knew about him, so this was all a sort of inside joke before all hell broke loose. But Moe played along when she smiled at him and said, "I thought so, just from the way you're looking things over. But I don't see any notepad, or a pencil or a pen. Or a camera for that matter."

He reached into his inside coat pocket and there, right next to the little Beretta he'd aimed at Werner Heisenberg and then, later, more successfully, at Carl
Weizsäcker during the last assignment, was his reporter's pad, narrow and with the paper hinged at the top so you could scribble and f lip and scribble some more. He'd spent a little time every day over the past week, since he got out here, taking notes and working on his scribbling skills, so he'd act like a real reporter when it mattered. It was no sillier a thing to learn, he thought, than swinging a thirty-three ounce piece of lumber at a moving fastball, or figuring out how to get the first-baseman's mitt into the right place to pick up a short-hop ball thrown by the acrobatic Luke Appling from deep in the hole. Moe wondered if there was a Luke Appling in this place, and if there was, would he recognize Moe if he met him?

Moe decided to scribble and f lip some for her, pretending he didn't already know her name, playing along. He opened the pad and grabbed his pencil stub from his shirt pocket and looked at her. "I'll get the photographer later, but as long as you're so interested, let's start with this. What's your name?"