III – DREI
Wohin?
Most of the time, Hermann's arrival at Pride Rock was preceded by a vague note at his camp:
Left for the weekend. Back Sunday night.
~HWS
And occasionally,
PS. Whoever has been stealing my Scotch out of the pit, own up or I shall resort to beatings.
The others grew accustomed to seeing both the airplane and Hermann gone from the campsite. Hermann almost never missed a weekend visit, save for those days when the weather was bad on a biblical scale. But there had only been two Fridays when flying was out of the question: one that featured a thunderstorm that lasted so long and unleashed so much fury on the land below that Hermann found himself reciting the shema out loud, and another when the wind was turning everything that wasn't nailed down into a missile. Barring such apocalyptic conditions, Hermann was almost always in the air by six and touching down next to Pride Rock half an hour or so later. Luckily for him, the sleeping arrangements from his last trip to Africa had been left in place, leaving the extra seat in the airplane clear for whatever else he decided to bring along. Books were by far his most frequent travel item: he had an almost inexhaustible supply, ranging from photo books of the most famous cities in Europe to old, worn folios of Goethe's poetry, from the writings of the world's greatest thinkers to arias by Bach and Mozart. CDs of music made frequent appearances as well, depending on how the work week had gone—five days well spent could mean a calm evening spent listening to a set of cello sonatas, while days of endless number crunching in camp were just as likely to result in a subsequent education in just how angry and loud a pipe organ, backed by a full symphony orchestra, could actually sound. But none of these tag-along items were for Hermann's own benefit. He didn't need any refresher courses in European cities, German philosophers, or the classical masters…he already knew the continent quite well, being European himself; he had studied many of the famous thinkers in university; and as far as music was concerned, his voice and knowledge in that regard quite literally spoke for themselves. No, whatever Hermann brought along with him was almost always for Kopa, not himself. Kopa's curiosity eclipsed even Hermann's at that age; once introduced to all things bright, shiny and German, he could spend hours listening to his human friend talk about almost any topic imaginable. And Hermann was happy to oblige; as far as he was concerned, if Kopa wanted to learn about VCR repair and neurosurgery, then that would be the day's topic of conversation, albeit a very short-lived one: Hermann knew about a great many things, but how to repair video equipment was not counted among them.
Six in the evening. Hermann hastily scribbled a farewell-for-the-weekend note, complete with threat of corporal punishment to whoever had been stealing his precious reserves, and threw two books into his backpack—Practical Music Theory and One Day in the Life of an Emergency Room Doctor—along with his work laptop and some unlabeled CDs (pirated, of course) of movies and TV shows, subtitled in German just in case the dialogues moved along too quickly for Hermann to understand. He threw the pack over his shoulder, grabbed his cane from where he had leant it against a desk, and made for the bright yellow Cub parked a short distance from the tents.
"Off to visit family again, Hermann?" another researcher asked as he saw his colleague gimping along. "How's the leg treating you today?"
"Same as usual," Hermann replied. "Somewhere between nagging pain and wishing the rest of you would chop it while I'm asleep."
"Small world; I have a girlfriend back home who's rather like that. I was wondering, can I meet these relatives of yours some day? They must be a great group, seeing as you're gone almost every weekend to see them."
The question caught Hermann off guard. "You…so what you're saying is…you want to meet them?"
"I could say it in another language if German's not your thing today," the second man laughed. "Yeah, that's the long and short of it. I don't want to screw up any of your plans or anything, but if there's ever any room for one more in that plane, I'd love to tag along before we head back home. What do you think?"
"You're absolutely sure? I mean, you know what they say about how crazy extended families can get…"
"I don't have to 'know what they say'; I live with a bunch of crazy relatives! Trust me, after spending a week with my mother's parents, you could lock me in a room with ten hungry lions, and I'd not so much as—
"I'll see what I can do; we'll talk it over this weekend." Of course, Hermann had absolutely no idea how he was going to manage this discussion, but he did have every intention of following it through. Leading people down dead-end roads, except in cases where someone's personal safety was at stake, was not a practice he viewed with any sort of favor.
"Thanks, Hermann, that's real nice of you. You're not so bad, for a junior coworker that is."
"You have all of two weeks on me, pal. Don't let it go to your head."
"Oh, it doesn't. Your Scotch, on the other hand, has done so on more than one occasion."
"Werner Krieghoff, I'm going to kill you!"
In the minute that followed, the four other doctors not involved in the conversation all wondered simultaneously as to what the heck was going on between Hermann and Werner, the latter finding himself backed into a corner of Hermann's tent with nowhere left to run.
"Put the cane down!"
"Say it!"
"No!"
THWACK
"Say it!"
"All right, all right! 'Thank you, sir, may I have another?'"
THWACK
"You owe me half a bottle of Lagavulin."
"So uncivilized," the confessed thief mumbled as his assailant walked back outside and calmly adjusted his shirt collar. "That was completely uncalled for, Sterlitz!"
"I'll be the judge of that," Hermann called out. "Now get out of my prop arc before I chop you to bits, and don't call me by my last name either."
"Whatever…I hope you meet a bloody tornado up there!"
The journey to Pride Rock from the little tent city (Hermann had yet to think of a name for it) was quite short by air; the very top of the rocks could even be seen from the campsite, although nobody but Hermann was aware of the greater significance there. 'Take off and turn left' was the standard flight plan, then drop down as close as possible to the ledge, chop the throttle, and drop down onto the landing strip without losing the security deposit. Nothing about the landing was easy, and bad weather made it even worse: Hermann had always regarded bush pilot stories of the bad turbulence near Pride Rock as little more than fish stories woven by overzealous fliers, but he quickly realized that little about these accounts was made up.
As he flew along that evening, Pride Rock well in his sight, he could see a rain line coming toward him. This weather really does have a mind of its own, he thought as the sky got darker by the second. Maybe I'll get lucky and beat this thing to the runway. If only. By the time he was setting up to land, Hermann was fighting the airplane's every move. It seemed that the wind was determined to blow him everywhere but on course, the altimeter spinning through five hundred, four hundred, three hundred, two hundred…
From inside a cave, the pride heard the report and felt the vibrations from the motors overhead.
"He's late," Nala remarked. "He's almost always here earlier than this."
"Have you seen what's going on outside?" Simba replied. "I can't imagine even trying to walk upright in that storm, and Hermann's flying through it. I sure hope his plane has some lights on it so he can see."
"Well I didn't hear a crash-bang noise, so I think it's safe to assume he missed Pride Rock by a safe enough margin."
"What about the ground? What if he can't see that? Someone should go outside and make sure he's OK; he might need help with his things if he's brought any along."
"Are you volunteering then?" Nala said with a sinister grin.
"Well, I'm, uh..."
"Give it up, Dad," Kopa whispered. "You've lost."
"All right," Simba relented, "I'll go and find him. Anyone else want to come with?" Nobody responded; Wolfgang and Vitani went as far as to avoid eye contact by feigning fascination with the wall. "Don't all of you jump up at once. Is there any wood in here?"
"Wood?" Nala asked. "I think there might be some from when Hermann collected it last time, but what do you need a bunch of wood for?"
"I'll be a monkey's uncle I'm going out in this weather without something to dry off with afterwards. Hopefully our Executive Commandant has brought his fire sticks with him."
"Call him that, and he'll set you on fire. You know he only likes to go by Hermann; remember how crazy you got when he kept calling you 'Euer Majestät'?"
Nobody could deny that in the mind of Hermann Wolfgang Sterlitz, fancy titles and terms of high rank were only appropriate when used by himself to refer to another person, never the other way around. Trending towards humility had always been his fallback, sometimes maddeningly so; in describing himself, his brilliant abilities as a physician, breadth of knowledge in an almost inexhaustible variety of topics, and scores of other accomplishments almost never came through. But he had been working on changing that trend, slowly but surely, ever since his first trip to Kenya. He was nevertheless still wary of coming off as nauseatingly boastful—'Hi, I'm Hermann, and here's why I'm so damn great'— but what sounded like bragging to Hermann was still miles away from even the most liberal dictionary definition. In some respects, he shared the dislike of aggrandizing formalities with Simba, who was just as insistent that everyone, even the man who had saved his son's life, address him by name only, but the similarities ended there: Simba had no trouble stating that he was the King of the Pride Lands; for Hermann to refer to himself as Kommandant Führingskräfte der Königriech Priderländer Doktor Hermann Wolfgang Sterlitz (which took the crosswise length of a entire page simply to write out), on the other hand, would have come as a shock to everyone in earshot.
Even though he had his rain gear on and was in little danger of getting soaked through, Hermann was in such a hurry to get inside the cave at Pride Rock and away from the weather that he broke away from Simba's escort far too early and wound up in a series of unbalanced, misplaced steps, culminating in a highly unattractive face-first arrival. "I hope that's not how you land that airplane of yours, Hermann," Nala said, trying not to laugh as she saw that the wool cap on her guest's head had nearly traversed the whole length of the room prior to impact. "You OK down there?"
"I think so; just give me a minute while I scrape together what's left of my dignity. At least Vitani and Kopa didn't see—
"That was great!" a young female voice exclaimed from somewhere out of view. "Do it again!"
"I liked the part where he fell over," agreed another familiar face.
"Oh, damn…never mind, then," Hermann mumbled in German before switching back to English. "Laughing at face planting cripples, that's very grown-up of you kids." He shrugged his trench coat off his shoulders, which was rather easy, considering it was only being held in place by one sleeve as a result of the spill. "Hey, who's got my cane? Come on, guys, this isn't funny."
"Vitani," Nala chided, "give it back to him. No games tonight."
"But I don't have his cane, mom," Vitani confessed. "Honest. Someone else must have it."
"Kopa? Did you take it?"
"Not me," Kopa replied.
"Well it's got to be someone in—
"Looking for this?" Simba interrupted, with an all-too-well-known object in his mouth.
"Simba, really! I wouldn't expect that kind of thing from you…"
"Actually, Nal', I wasn't hiding it. The cane went flying when Hermann here decided his face would work better for walking than his feet; I'm just bringing it back to him."
"Well I'll be…I guess there's a first time for everything. Hermann, have you brought something good for dinner?"
"What kind of guest would I be if I hadn't?"
"You haven't got to supply us every time you visit; you're family, after all."
"I know, but who can argue with these?" Hermann rooted around in his backpack and pulled out a large plastic bag.
"What is it?" Vitani asked. "Did you shoot us something before you came?"
"Better than that! These things are Stuttgart's finest; nothing better made in the entire world!" Hermann turned the backpack upside down and shook out a few bags full of long, tube-shaped items. Nobody knew what these things were, but given their country of origin, Simba and Nala were happy enough that they weren't bottles of German beer. "They're veal sausages," Hermann explained. "You cook them for a few minutes, and there's no better taste in the world. Just give me a moment or two to light this fire, and we'll have ourselves a feast worthy of the gods."
Hermann struck a match, and then another, but the firewood didn't seem willing to burn any hotter than a slow smolder. "I don't think it's catching," Simba said. "Forget cooking; it'll take days just for the two of us to get dry at this rate."
"Here, use this." Hermann tossed a towel out of his backpack. "That ought to do." Hermann turned his back to the fire, which he could feel getting hotter as he laid out his things.
"You're right, that helped quite a bit." Hermann was still turned away. "I'll be dry in no time."
"Good, good. Hmm, that's odd…"
"What's odd?"
"Do any of you happen to smell burning fabric?"
Hermann spun around to have his suspicions confirmed. "I meant for you to dry yourself with the towel, not to throw it on the fire! Now I'm going to have to go begging to Hans for an extra!"
"Sorry," Simba said sheepishly, "I didn't—
"I know, I know, I should have specified. At least it wasn't a total loss; we managed to get our fire going nicely." Hermann's sat down and let his shoulders sink. "God, am I ever tired; I don't know how I got through this week."
"Tough few days?"
"You have no idea. Treating patients nonstop, getting all our data into the computer logs, and then trying to sleep with Karl snoring like a madman in the other tent. The hard work I can take—I'd be doing the same thing in Stuttgart—it's the sleep deprivation that's going to kill me!"
"I've got news for you, Hermann: there's someone else in this cave who snores as well. And he hasn't got four legs."
"Say what you will about me, but at least I don't hold conversations with people while I'm asleep. Simba, I don't know what you're dreaming about these days, but—
"What am I saying?"
"Just a few words here and there, but you move your head back and forth like you're looking for something and your feet move around all over the place; if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were having visions of yourself as a football referee."
"What…kind of words am I saying?" Simba seemed strangely interested in what seemed, for all intents and purposes, like an unimportant quirk.
"Nothing I can understand much of," Hermann said, "but there's almost always this long, drawn-out groan after all the head and foot motion stops. Come to think of it, you almost sound like you're saying the word 'no'…from inside a vacuum cleaner filled with bees, that is. I even timed it once; I thought there was something going on with you and didn't want to leave anything to chance."
"How long did it last?" Simba had gone from curious to almost embarrassed.
"How long did what last?"
"The groan, the word 'no'. How much time?"
"I don't know, I think four and a half seconds. It's hard to be very precise when you're half unconscious; I just wanted to make sure you weren't stroking out on us. Can't be too careful, after all."
"Ah. I see."
Hermann looked at Simba, and then at Nala, who appeared to share her mate's concern for reasons known only to the two of them. "Is there…something you'd like to tell me?"
"No, nothing. I'm fine," Simba assured.
"You're sure? If there's something wrong, I'd be—
"Really, I'm fine. Don't worry yourself over it."
"As you wish. Now then, who wants a sausage?"
Hermann passed a paper plate around, and waited expectantly for a general consensus.
"These really are good!" Kopa exclaimed after a bite or two. "Can you bring these every time?"
"I'll look into it," Hermann laughed, relieved that his cooking had gone over well. Lied tried to echo Kopa's enthusiasm, but only gabbled something indiscernible with a full mouth, affording Hermann a most unappetizing glimpse of what was inside. "That's just wonderful," the latter remarked, "bratwurst with a side order of seafood."
"What?" Lied said, having swallowed what was in his mouth.
"Mouth closed when you're eating, Liedchen. A gentleman never speaks until he's swallowed what he's chewing."
Hermann had resolved, before he ever arrived for the weekend at Pride Rock, not to overindulge on the sausages. It was a noble effort that never had a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. Four, five or six bratwursts later—he lost count after the third—Hermann was laying stomach-up on the floor, staring at the ceiling and looking as if he were drugged to the eyeballs. "I can't…believe…I just did that," he groaned. "No self control…whatsoever." Then he looked around him, and realized that the rest of the pride wasn't faring much better. "You'll understand if we skimp on the music lesson tonight?" he wearily said to Kopa.
"Can't…sing…a note," came exhausted the reply. "Gonna explode."
"Thanks for the visual."
"I'll try and keep quiet this time," Simba said with a nervous laugh. "We don't want you to miss out on your beauty rest, even if it is on an old mattress in a cave."
"It's better than what I've got to sleep on in the tent." An idea suddenly sprang into head that was both ingenious and macabre. "Don't fret over me; I've got to write down a few things before going to sleep anyway, just some random work items. I guess this is gute Nacht then."
"OK. Goodnight, Doctor Sterlitz," Nala said teasingly. "Sleep well."
"Ugh, don't call me that," Hermann mumbled into his mattress. Nala couldn't understand him even though the words were technically in English, but she could tell from his voice that she had ruffled his feathers just a bit, much to her rather mischievous satisfaction. All the while, Hermann was desperately racking his brain for a few bits of information from physics class long since stored away.
Simba, Kopa, Nala, and everyone else retired to their usual sleeping spots. Hermann changed into some night clothes and went to his own place as well. Most of the time, Kopa and Hermann were glued together at nighttime, but as there were 'random work items' to attend to this evening, Kopa decided to leave his friend in peace. Once the others were asleep, Hermann quickly pulled a pen and paper out of his bag and started doing some calculations on a suspicious hunch:
t = (2d/g)^1/2
He remembered the equation as one of the Newtonian formulae, an old physics algorithm that he never thought would ever come in handy. As he punched figures into his calculator, he hoped that he would get a number other than 4.5. Here goes nothing…
4.52
That has to be a mistake; maybe I entered a number wrong. I'll try it one more time for consistency. OK, d is equal to one hundred meters—I thought it was only fifty last time I was here, but I miscalculated—g is 9.8 meters per second squared; we multiply the former by two, divide the product by the latter, square root the result, and we have…
4.52. Identical. There could be no doubts now. Hermann shuddered as he thought about what this number meant: the time, expressed in seconds and rounded to the hundredth, that an object of any given weight would spend covering a distance of one hundred meters. Still, the oddly coincidental time span was only half of what gave Hermann chills; equally disturbing to him was that this particular set of numbers only expressed one kind of motion in just one possible direction. "So this is what's been bothering him," he said aloud. "Those four and a half seconds are what you get when you use the freefa—
"What are you saying, Hermann?" Simba asked sleepily. "You need something?"
"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you; I was just talking to myself. Crunching some numbers in my head." Simba fell back asleep, assuming that these numbers were something related to medical matters that he would have known absolutely nothing about.
"Four and a half seconds," Hermann repeated in a whisper, finally lying down himself. "Four point five two seconds...I think we're going to have to revisit a few unpleasant memories."
