Astronomy (16 page)

She thought they might get to the trucks. With the summoning of Azathoth going on in the center of the amphitheater, all eyes were on the array of sorcerers. The trucks were hardly guarded, hardly even watched. A couple of people dressed as
Einsatzgruppe
technicians would naturally be expected to wander around down there.

They studied the layout of the trucks as they approached the leader. They were arrayed serially, like lights on Christmas trees. Thick cables ran back from the first truck to the others. Susan guessed that the first truck in the line would begin gassing the people; all the other trucks in the line would begin their gas injections on the command of this driver, like a bomb group, keying off its lead bombardier.

Like the man said,
“As a weapon’s power increases, so does the precision of its components.”

As they stood figuring the best way to crack this thing, a man in a gas mask yelled down to them from the roof of the lead van. He was saying something about the cable. Susan couldn’t make it out for the mask, but he was pointing furiously toward the back of the lead van.

“He wants help with the electric cabling,” Charley said. “I’ll fix the cable. Maybe you can talk to the driver in the lead van.”

The driver was already hearing from Kriene as she walked up to the window.

“I don’t care if Azathoth is fourteen
hours
away!” Kriene was screaming. “We are minutes away from the crucial juncture. The sacrifices must begin on time. Azathoth has already found us. Our only hope for survival is in satisfying its lust.”

The driver was looking for a Zentralbund electrician to get him out of trouble with Kriene. When he saw the black uniform with the crossed lightning bolts coming up to his window, his face was transformed by heartbreaking relief.

Susan smiled. She had just the thing for this guy.

She glanced around once to ensure her privacy, and then slipped into the cab.

The driver started to complain—the problem was back there, with the cable.

He felt the muzzle of her Luger against his cheek.

“What is this?” the driver demanded. They were always so surprised.

“Tell Kriene the problem is worse than you first thought,” she ordered him. “They need to postpone the sacrifice.”

The soldier laughed. “Or what? You will shoot me? The world will be gone tomorrow anyway.”

“How about this,” Susan suggested. “What if the only thing missing tomorrow”—she chambered a round—“is you?”

The soldier snickered at this. Then he keyed the radio and relayed her message as he was told. They both winced at the response.

The driver glanced back just once. “You realize what happens if the sacrifice does not occur on time?”

Susan had heard Kriene say something about satisfying the hunger of Azathoth.

“We are set to survive the onslaught of Azathoth, so long as things happen as planned. Otherwise, Its fury is poured out on this island to the exclusion of all else.”

What he was telling her was good: All she had to do was hold on another few minutes and it would be over. Kriene’s target window would pass overhead.

But where was Charley Shrieve?

She looked for Charley in the truck’s side mirror, saw nothing.

She risked a glance out the window. Her hostage took the opportunity to reach for her pistol. She backhanded him across the mouth with the butt-end, and then clubbed him across the temple.

Charley was not back there, not anywhere.

The radio crackled to life: “Whoever is in the lead truck, we have your compatriot. Throw out your weapon and step out with your hands in plain view.”

In case she had any ideas to resist, a small squad appeared to her left. Charley was in the middle of them, twisted over by the collar, the better to have a Luger stuck in his ear.

Kriene came back on the radio. “You inconvenience us only momentarily. Your truck has the main triggering circuit, but we have redundant systems. It will take only a little longer to switch over to them than it will to kill your friend.”

Susan knew this was not entirely true. If Kriene had a secondary system to switch to, Charley would be dead now, and so would she.

Susan saw the man with the Luger pull back on the hammer. Charley closed his eyes. He didn’t look scared; he looked like he always looked—that is, mildly annoyed.

Someone she guessed to be the angel of her better nature whispered in her ear that the whole world was counting on her to sit tight and let Azathoth roll this place into the ocean.

Something deeper reminded her that Charley Shrieve had ridden up and down that elevator forty-five minutes waiting for her to be hauled down to a Zentralbund research lab. The world had been waiting on him too.

Sometimes, she sighed, the world just has to wait.

She eased the Luger over the windowsill. She stepped out.

Two Zentralbund soldiers were on her immediately. She was frisked with a bracing indifference to gender, picked up under the arms, beaten generously, and deposited, hands behind head, next to Charley Shrieve. She couldn’t decide if it hurt or not. It was sort of like being tumbled around in the bottom of a giant wave.

Kriene sat before them, somewhat stunned. “You!” he cried. “You are supposed to be communing with Yog Sothoth! Where are my men?”

How does one answer a question like this? She shrugged.

An officer came forward with his Walther P-38 in his hand. He intended to make a quick end to this business. Kriene would not hear of it.

“No, no,” he chided. “No death for you.” He could have been holding a cookie out on a vexing child. “Not till Yog Sothoth has had its use of the young lady. And
you
—” He tapped his finger to his lips as he studied Charley. “You will provide many hours of valuable and intensive anatomical study for the great Nyarlathotep. Certain entities have provided valuable technical assistance to me. You both will help me square accounts with them, yes?”

Kriene turned his chair around to face the dais. He dipped his head close to the microphone in his collar. He croaked at his men to proceed.

The summoning dropped into its deepest and most unnerving register.

“Yngaiih . . . Ygnaiih . . . thfthk’ngha . . . Azathoth . . .”

The voices found some sympathetic vibration with the very bedrock of Totenburgen Island, so that the floor tremored slightly to their every whisper.

The crush and crash of steel girders reverberated through the walls, as if the apocalypse waited right outside.

Even so, all was not well. Electricians were hunkered between the first and second trucks, trying to undo the damage Charley Shrieve had done. No doubt it was nothing serious; they could have fixed it in half an hour, if only they had a half-hour to use.

Susan sensed the panic mount as the sorcerers proceeded through the arguments for the Daemon Sultan’s arrival. Electricians ran back and forth between the trucks. Men in gas masks checked and re-checked their work. The images of Sirius became ever more bloated and surreal as Azathoth’s shadow moved closer.

—And here was this kid again, this little doily.

Where exactly did he fit in? Susan looked around and saw an amphitheater full of people, all of whom had some role in the end of the world.

And here was this kid.

The kid smiled at her. He mouthed the words, “Pop, pop,” meaning, she supposed, the sound of her shoulders being dislocated.

She did the mature thing—she stuck out her tongue at him.

Jürgen Kriene was getting some unpleasant news of his own. She saw him talking into the little microphone in his collar. He was agitated.

He rolled forward to get a better view of the trucks. He made a sound of disgust.

Susan glanced back to see the electricians holding up their hands in a helpless gesture.

“No,” Kriene seethed, “we cannot perform the sacrifices one truck at a time. Azathoth has been promised three hundred souls. It will not receive fifteen or twenty and understand that more are on the way.”

Kriene rolled up to them in a nasty mood. “You did this,” he said to Charley.

Charley shrugged; he didn’t know what Kriene was talking about.

“I am not going to have you shot,” Kriene informed them. “You may have condemned us all to a rather terrible end. I see a certain justice in sharing that end with you, if it comes to that.” He smiled unpleasantly. “If it doesn’t, you two get to share an unpleasant end with each other, yes?”

He rolled back to get a better look at the trucks. The electricians were frantic, but the word was not good. Whatever Charley had done to the coupling from the lead truck, he’d done it well. Susan heard the crack of pistol fire. Kriene’s electricians had failed their chance at redemption.

“Too bad,” she called after him. “You get Azathoth’s attention and then you can’t come through for him.”

Kriene wheeled around on her. He’d had just about enough from both of them. “Perhaps,” he said, “I will change my mind about you.”

A couple of SS men were all too happy to oblige Kriene’s changing moods. A pistol muzzle rammed into Susan’s ear.

“If I might suggest an alternative?” she said quickly. “Azathoth won’t accept fifteen or twenty human sacrifices, but It might accept
one
—if that one represented perfection.”

Susan felt the Walther pull back from her head slightly as its hammer was cocked. She closed her eyes, waiting for the end.

She opened them to see Kriene hold up his hand. “A moment,” he said. “You know these things? The Summoning protocols of Azathoth?” Kriene was just desperate enough to listen.

“I am the Allies’ leading scholar in the black arts,” she told him. This may have stretched things a bit, she knew.

“If you are their leading scholar, why are you here?”

“Where else would I be?”

Kriene allowed himself a tiny smile. Susan noticed, almost as an afterthought, that she had not yet been shot. She didn’t waste time gloating. “Azathoth is mindless, but not undiscerning. Offer up perfection, you may buy your way out of this.”

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

Susan glanced over at Karel. “How about Nature Boy over there? What’s he done for you lately?”

“Karel?” Kriene barked and barked. He would have slapped his knee but for the hoses in the way. “Karel? Do not be ridiculous. He is closer than a son to me.”

Karel had been chatting up one of the blonde
Einsatzgruppe
guards when he heard his name on an ill breeze. Instantly, he was lounging by Kriene’s elbow, nodding at her in a petulant way.

“Pop, pop,” he repeated. That just cracked him up.

Kriene patted his arm. “Not to concern yourself,” he assured the youth. “Adults are talking here. Things will work themselves out,” he chuckled. “Trust me.”

Kriene was still chuckling to himself. He waved the SS men away from Susan. “Give us a moment,” he told the disappointed executioners. “Have patience; this will not take long.” He leaned toward Susan in a confidential way. “Let us not be disingenuous, Fräulein. Even if I were to consider such a desperate and outlandish action, it would gain us nothing. For us to do such a thing would require altering the basic spell my sorcerers have been using for the past eight hours.”

“Ask your wizards over there,” she said. “They’ll do it for you. Or, if they don’t know how . . .” She lowered her eyes as if modesty prevented her saying more.

“If you are lying,” Kriene promised, “I will have my wizards send you to the bottom of the Atlantic with one mouthful of air.”

Kriene rolled off to speak with them.

Shrieve frowned at her. “Can you really do that?”

“Do what?” She was busy hyperventilating. “Oh, that? I’m sort of hoping we’ll come up with something before he gets back.”

Karel saw the worry on her face. He smiled the smile of a wicked child with a kitten. He had tales to tell, stories of what his mentor did to people who thwarted his ambitions.

“Put you at the bottom of the ocean?” he laughed. “Maybe after he flays you alive. Maybe I will suggest that to him.” Karel had the insecurity that comes with being the prettiest one in the room. He did not like Susan at all.

“If I were you,” Charley Shrieve suggested, “I’d be thinking about what he’s getting ready to do with
you
.”

Karel turned a lambent gaze over his shoulder. Kriene was in close consultation with a couple of gray-faced men at the edge of the dais. One of the sorcerers looked his way. He might have been smiling.

Karel stepped back. His eyes got a little frozen.

Susan offered a word of advice. “Don’t count on your looks to keep you out of trouble,” she said. “Nothing fades faster than lust.”

Karel sneered. “You mean after you turn twenty-five,” he said.

Spiteful little twerp.

“I mean,” Susan said icily, “after the second morning.”

This had a gratifying impact on the young bravo. That shook the sneer right off his face.

“I’m talking about familiarity, satisfaction . . .
boredom
.”

Karel reached for some sarcasm worthy of the moment, but nothing funny came to mind. “He destroyed Berlin,” he said, “just to vanquish his rival. He would never . . . not with . . .”

Susan gave him an amicable shrug. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you do mean more to him than the culmination of his life’s work.”

“Hey,” Charley chimed in. “You two have that kind of relationship, I think that’s wonderful. But me, I’d be asking myself what Jürgen Kriene can come up with to beat three hundred human sacrifices. He’s in a lot of trouble if he can’t come up with something real high-quality, real close to hand.”

Karel laughed along with their jibes. His eyes were locked on Jürgen Kriene. Kriene was looking this way. He saw Karel and waved, but his face was a frieze of calculation.

Karel was still laughing as he stepped away from them. Susan heard him laughing all the way across the floor of the amphitheater. He paused once, at a small repair portal near the last of the black vans.

Susan motioned him thataway, toward the west-facing door. She mouthed the words
“No guards.”

Charley nudged her. Kriene was on his way back from the lectern. The little Nazi could barely hide his satisfaction. Already, Susan could hear subtle changes in the sorcerers’ invocation.