CHAPTER 7: Ostfriesland (Wednesday Morning, 5th of August 1914)
Beyond the confines of our troop compartment the airship's motors droned, rattling the battered sheet metal that sufficed for 'walls' in a manner egregiously unconducive of sleep. Despite having laid on the mattress for an hour or more, despite being fatigued beyond reckon…my mind would not rest. Save for the handful of men alongside me, everyone I'd known the last year was dead or gone.
And still when my eyes closed, I could think only of her.
From the fold-down cot I rolled, hand bare upon cold aluminum tubing as my boots kicked my rucksack. About our quarters the Eiffel's bloodied survivors slumbered, snoring blue and olive ranks strung out upon similar racks with their gear leant haphazardly to wall and floor. Beside Tommy Parson's supine figure, Eddie Delmachio's wide-open eyes found mine.
"You shouldn't have asked, Lieutenant." He growled, sitting hands in lap rather than laying. His breath frosted the air. "We've got numbers…us and the froggies…we should have put guns in their face and commandeered this crate."
"Even if Stern had gone along, which he wouldn't, I suppose you know how to fly an airship? How to land a…thousand-foot long bag of gas it in a city of…of Jack the Rippers just itching to make it go off like a Roman candle?" Eddie's face remained blank. "You know the Germans came for Tesla…not us. They got him. Like Strasser said, we should count ourselves lucky we were even invited along." I placed my head in hands, rubbing my temples, trying to avoid acting upon Eddie's incitement as the awful evening played out upon the inside of my eyelids. As much as I felt the very same, as much as I was willing to throw in with mutiny, I knew any piracy of mine wouldn't be for Farris or Thompkins or Blair…not even for Eddie.
And as I looked downward to the brown, blood-spattered ruck I knew that was something I could not allow to happen.
"But there has to be something we can do…we can't just leave them to die!" Eddie snarled, rising from his rack, pacing back and forth about the narrow space. "Not after we've lost so many!" He punched the thin metal of the wall, causing it to bow inward. Down the racks from him a Frenchman looked up…Montagnard…before rolling back over. In our months at the front the Italian had risen from a lowly private from just west of the Hudson to a bulwark of the platoon, promoted for bravery in battle and a steady head that always looked after his men. He'd done so because those above had looked after him. It shook a man to see their certainties crumble.
"I'm sorry, Eddie…the die is cast. All we can…all we can hope is that things will change once we make Wilhelmshaven. Maybe if we raise a stink there, they'll send us back."
"Wilhelmshaven?" He said angrily, brow a furrow. "I thought these airship types were out of Dusseldorf?"
"They used to be."
Outside that bowed metal approached the fall of boots, stopping before our compartment door out upon the chilly catwalk that ran stem to stern. A metallic rap echoed at the hatch. It opened to reveal the face of a thin-faced, dark-haired German Petty Officer, clad in one of those coats so blue bordering on black. "Lieutenant…" He studied our trio for a moment before expounding quietly in halting, thickly accented English. "Your presence is requested in Herr Tesla's quarters."
The pit of my stomach sank and my eyes cast to Tommy. He was asleep, and though they'd been acquaintances I realized that it would do no good to wake him. "Eddie, if the Sergeant wakes, fill him in. I'll be back when this is…" I paused, barely able to contemplate the word. "Done."
Reluctantly I followed the man from our bay, venturing through the compartment's claptrap metal door onto the catwalk, a thin grate of metal squares lit only by a procession of intermittently spaced light bulbs. Located in the midsection of the airship, our compartment was hung from its side along a great cylindrical metal frame in a procession of others. About us the vast majority of the ship's cavernous interior was filled with similarly enormous, encircling gas bags. Moving forward of the troop bays, only a thin railing precluded a fall from the footpath into the darkness below. I could see my breath in the air, and it was cold. A cold, bad dream.
"Your eyes wander, Lieutenant." The Petty Officer said as we began to walk, passing into the light of the next bulb as its illumination caught the flaking silver of the nearest bag. I remembered his name was Jurgen.
"Does this vessel have a sister ship?" I asked, arms about myself to keep warm as the catwalk drifted beneath our feet. From every corner, bad memories threatened. It had not gone well for me the last time I'd visited.
"Several." He answered, breath frosting the air. The fall of our boots creaked and clattered upon the grating. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I was on one before. Two years ago, before America entered the war…a Bavarian they called Engels. I could swear that save for the chicken coops, this one's the same."
"The design predates the revolution." He said, not quite looking me in the eye as we walked along. "One of the later designs, you must know, of our Count Zeppelin. Or so we were taught at school. Unfortunately, the south retained our major factory in Bavaria." His brow furrowed. "I do not mean to call you a liar, but neither do I recall any of our designs having contingencies for the carriage of livestock. You were a guest on Engels?"
"An involuntary one." I answered, hand rapping the rafters as we passed. About us the gas bags wavered. "Like I said…'chicken' coops…for human chickens."
Half fearing that a contingent of Vik jackboots were lying in wait ahead, I trailed back. We arrived at the front terminus of the catwalk and he turned to discover my reticence, beckoning me forward with a puzzled face. Coming reluctantly into his company, I joined him in the square compartment we'd ascended to before, a hatch and ladder at its center leading down.
At Jurgen's encouragement I descended punched aluminum steps, alighting in the aft section of the German crew compartments. It was notably warmer here and the scent of breakfast hung heavily along the ten-foot wide passage forward. Bow ward we walked. To the left lay passages to quarters and a mess hall, gaunt German airmen looking up and outward from long tables where they took bacon, eggs and coffee for their breakfast. Alongside narrow passages others stopped to look as Jurgen escorted me through their rickety home. Shortly we came to the end of the walkway at a locked brown door. He rapped twice before an enlisted man opened it from within. Despite having never been here, I'd seen it before…the Navigation Compartment. By the plot on the central table and little metal airship upon it, we seemed just over halfway to the North Sea.
Passing the silent, watching blue-coats at the map, Jurgen brought us past the Wireless Compartment where airmen wearing headsets feverishly transcribed messages from glowing wireless stacks, transmitting in hasty dashes and dots their replies. One had sheets of paper before him, working on what seemed a strange puzzle. To his mate he looked and shook his head, before seeing me looking back. The other now stopped and looked, blond haired, blue-eyed.
The catwalk continued forward to nicer staterooms I could only figure to be the senior crew accommodations. After a hundred more feet we arrived at a small cabin labeled Geschäftsführer. Jurgen knocked twice. From within a thin voice bade us to enter.
Ensconced in a chair beside the cabin's lone fold down bed the black-haired scientist glanced upward, a stoic German officer in blue long coat at his side. Katharine lay before them, face pale beneath bandaged forehead and midsection, white sheets and blankets pulled about her. Nikola's disheveled gauntness held her limp hand. "I…did not…did not anticipate the release of electrical energy that would occur…when used so close to the aerial." He said solemnly. "There must have been some sort of grounding or excitation between the tower…the tower and the river."
"How…how is she?" I asked, ignoring the unsolicited confession of a man who'd suffered enough. Instead my eyes focused on her feeble form.
"She has not woken." He answered quietly, stroking softly her fingers. The German said something in his native tongue as he looked at me and Tesla nodded. "Herr Stolz, here, the ship's surgeon, worries she has lost too much blood. He fears she might not last until nightfall. For all the mysteries I have probed, over death my ideas and machines have no purchase."
I approached hesitantly, as if any effort I made might part her from this world. Looking down at her broken form, her red-gold tresses spilled from the white bandages across the pillow about her face. I knelt beside Tesla, brushing the woman's cheek with the back of my finger, trying to hold back the anguish that welled inside. I found Katharine chill, her breathing shallow. Leaning inward, I kissed her forehead.
"There is nothing anyone can do." Tesla continued, his delivery without hope. It is in God's hands now." I saw him wipe wetness from his cheek.
In the outer passage a sound horn crackled to life. "Unteroffizier Jürgen, melde dich bei der Kommandogondel. Unteroffizier Jürgen, melde dich bei der Kommandogondel."
After an aft-looking moment, the brown-haired German's eyes turned our way. "Gentlemen, it seems I am required. If you shall excuse me." Jurgen bowed curtly and with a click of heels was off.
"Certainly…certainly we could put down at a city…a hospital?! I muttered as I closed the door. "First Blair and now her…these people don't give two shits about us."
Tesla whispered something in German and the medical officer replied. "With France crumbling, Herr Stolz here asks where that might be? He also reminds me that Katharine is not the only wounded aboard. Even now he deprives his own men of the care they require by being here. The nearest secure hope is Wilhemshaven."
"I'm sorry." I offered after a moment.
"Er sagt, es tut ihm leid." Tesla responded. The doctor nodded and proceeded to recheck her pulse with fingertips to the neck. "I did not bother to tell him the last."
"Not to him..." I said. Thankfully the German remained as obtuse to our language as I was his. "To you. I shouldn't have acted as I did at the Eiffel yesterday."
Tesla's eyes turned from the pair. "You have no need to be. Now I fear we soon shall be equal. I have known loss before, but not like this. But I do wish, hope, that you understand how I so wish that I could have helped you. Back then. I hope…hope you can forgive me." Again, he turned to Stolz and spoke softly. Adjusting his jacket, the physician stepped past me, the room tight such that we both had to draw back to the walls in passing. As he reached for the door latch, a clatter came of boots came outside. A hasty knock came at the door.
Looking our way, Stolz cocked an eyebrow and pulled the latch. Outside Jurgen stood intently, behind him a severe man with receding hairline, fading dark hair crowning a moustache and goatee. One could have been forgiven for thinking him the twin to angry, dead Lenin. About his neck he wore a blue cross. Stolz came to attention.
"Captain." I said stiffly, remembering our brief, bitter encounter when Stern's survivors and my men had come aboard.
"DeWitt, my man Jurgen says your name is, Lieutenant." His words came in slightly accented English, terse as I'd remembered before. "Booker DeWitt?" He asked. Seeing recognition in my face, his blue eyes narrowed and he turned to Jurgen. The two men seemed to share…something.
"What's this about, Strasser?" I asked, suppressing the sudden, heated desire to bust his teeth in.
"Ist es möglich oder nur ein Zufall?" Jurgen muttered.
Ich habe keine Ahnung, aber wir werden es herausfinden." Strasser answered, turning with eyes narrowed back to me. "Herr Tesla…Lieutenant DeWitt, I am sorry to inconvenience you, but your attendance is required in the wireless cabin, posthaste."
"I will not leave my Katharine." Tesla protested, attention now back upon his wife. "Not as she is. Were she to pass…"
"My surgeon Stolz shall ensure that does not happen, Herr Tesla." Strasser said, eyes unswerving from my gaze. "The matter we confront is grave and concerns the survival of this vessel and its crew, not to mention every passenger it now carries. This is not a request."
"I cannot leave her!"
"And I assure you, you shall." Strasser glanced at him, then to me.
"Why me?" I asked, feeling my temples hot and tight.
"That shall become apparent presently." Strasser answered with a nod and again that concerted look my way. "Please follow."
In dismay Tesla glanced to Stolz before his eyes sought solace in mine. I grimaced. The surgeon placed his hand on the man's shoulder and nodded out the door. After a final shared glance toward our mortally wounded companion, Jurgen beckoned us out onto the catwalk.
"What is this about?" I asked as we emerged, seeing Tesla wiping the tears from his eyes as we walked in involuntary procession.
Strasser seemed reticent as he strode headlong the catwalk, marching with hands clasped behind his back. "For days now our radiomen have been hearing a message, gentlemen…an signal that repeated itself every ten minutes on a handful of wireless frequencies."
"A message?" I repeated, walking with the inventor and Jurgen behind me out into the cold. "By wireless? From where? Who?"
"The first we are working on. The second, we do not know…only that whoever is sending this missive offers aid against the Bolshevik menace. Simple Morse code but with the most unusual accompanying sideband. In that associated signal lies the peculiarity, a signal of which my men had been unable to make neither heads nor tails. They have tried ciphers. They attempted mathematical variations…nothing helped our progress…not until you…" Over his shoulder Strasser turned to look at the distraught inventor. "You, Herr Tesla…heard it this as we welcomed you aboard." Strasser's eyes turned to me. "And observed in passing that it was not a carrier of code but an analogue carrier…of voice."
"Voice?" I said, boots echoing upon the grating.
"And scratched out a…what did you call it?"
Tesla glanced to me, almost abashedly. "A Voxophone transcriptor."
"Yes, a Voxophone circuit to rig to our sound horns. This conception was a breakthrough. My man Donner was able to complete the miracle half an hour ago." Strasser stopped and turned to us, dead in his tracks before the compartment door. His eyes narrowed, again finding me. "It was only after Jurgen mentioned that he had delivered you to Herr Tesla's quarters, Lieutenant, that your name struck the chord."
"My name?" I said, utterly perplexed. "What 'chord?'"
We'd passed the wireless shack before. Now we entered its domain oblivious to what we were getting ourselves into. At their Captain's arrival both wireless operators stood, while on the desk a block and array of wires seemed jury rigged into their glowing stacks of equipment. Against the drone of the motors outside a message came across the twin sound horns mounted on the wood paneled wall, dots and dashes blithering forth in a dizzying cavalcade:
.-. - .- . .-. ... / - ..-. / - ... . / .- . ... - -..- / -.- - ..- .-. / -.-. .- ..- ... . / .. ... / -. - - / .-.. - ... - -.-.- / .- / -. .-. . .- - / .- .-.. .-.. -.- / .- -. -.. / ... . .-.. .-. / .- .- .- .. - ... / -.- - ..- -.-.- / ..-. - .-.. .-.. - .- / - ... .. ... / ... .. -. -. .- .-.. / .- -. -.. / -.. .. ... -.-. - ...- . .-. / ... - .-. . -.-.—
"Powers of the west…" Tesla translated with ease. "Your cause is not lost…a great ally and boon awaits you!" He turned to look at me. "Follow this signal and discover hope!" My brow turned even as Strasser and Stern continued to stare.
One of the men took his headset off, and from the earcups I could hear faintly a voice, squealing and hissing as if from somewhere…else.
"Booker, are you there?" Came her scratchy words, popping hissing through the static. "I miss you. You were the only one who ever…You were my only friend…"
"What is this, some kind of…some kind of sick joke?!" I bellowed.
"Beruhige Ihn!" Strasser bellowed and I felt Jurgen and the radiomen alike take hold of me. I was quaking, staring at the broken headphones in my hand, hearing her voice.
"No joke…" Tesla said, as he backed away from me with blanched face. "He glanced to the operator, the technician alarmed at the destruction of his equipment but seriously afraid I was about to do worse.
"Then you are this 'Booker'… the one she speaks of?" Strasser intruded. My stare was the only answer he required.
"The source of the signal…where is the source?" Tesla asked.
"Wo ist die Signalquelle?!" Jurgen commanded the frightened operator.
The brown-haired man looked to his similarly flustered comrade before speaking. "Es ist schwer genau zu sagen, aber die Peiler zeigen nördlich von Düsseldorf."
"Dusseldorf?" Strasser rasped, looking over the man's shoulder to a series of map plots on the desk between them. "Zuhause?"
"Nein, Herr Hauptmann, aber irgendwo in der Nachbarschaft." The blonde answered, hand clutching a wrench I surmised that had been discreetly lifted from his workstation's fold-down table.
To my pockets I went, searching until I drew the scrap of paper I'd saved from the trenches. Staring at it in hand, I met Tesla's eyes.
"Was is das?" I heard, noticing then Strasser looking at us.
"Something you might be interested in." Tesla answered, taking it from me to hold before himself. "Proof that what we about to tell you is no fable. We only ask one thing, Herr Captain…" He turned to Strasser. "How close is Dusseldorf to Moers?"
#
Upon the glass-enclosed wings of the command gondola Ostfriesland's scanners looked outward, peering from the airship to a brown and destroyed valley of the Rhine thousands of feet below. To the west the moon was low above the dark blue horizon, while to the east I held a hand up against the ferocity of a rising orange sun. Like me it caught the faces of men standing upon the deck, harsh and hard as if in an abstractly colored painting. I stepped toward the side to peer out the windows. Amid the cratered ruins below that had once been town and burgeoning city, I could make out the river running south to north, broad and oddly blue, another merging amid the ruins from the burning east. On the horizon flashed a non-stop barrage of artillery.
"Alle aufhören! Schwenkmotoren halten Station!" Strasser barked, the wheels of his mind obviously turning. As the motors subsided, he glanced around the deck, looking at Jurgen and his Helmsman, another on the elevators and two scanners. Then outward…to something else.
"Good God…" Tesla said from my side, light from the sun blazing across his face. Burning white, a column of electrical fire writhed and dithered with the brilliance of the sun not a mile away.
"God…or quite possibly the Devil." Strasser stood resolute a few feet away, hands behind himself, looking stalwart toward the fiery spindle. From his helmsman's side Ostfriesland's Captain turned, the sun catching the glower of his eyes. Outside the power of the engines reversed and revved.
A mile up, Ostfriesland hung immobile in the sky.
"What is this, Herr Tesla?" Stern asked in silhouette, cross armed as he leant his weight to the metal frame of the glass enclosure. "This…apparition."
"You would not believe me if I told you." Tesla looked to me. "However, perhaps you would believe him?" Their eyes followed.
I felt the warmth of the morning sun hot upon the side of my face. "You left our men to die."
"You believe that you are the only man on Ostfriesland to lose comrades?! You must know that it was not within my power to save them…not without sacrificing this vessel to the rabble that had overtaken Paris." Though he'd spoken in English, a silence descended upon the gondola, the stilled conversation leaving only the sound of the idling engines behind us. With a nod he dismissed his Petty Officer, who, though reluctant to leave the spectacle, clicked his heels together curtly and retired above.
At the man's departure, Strasser removed thin leather gloves and placed a hand upon the wheel, drawing the briefest glance from the otherwise stalwart helmsman beside him. He didn't look to me now, instead remaining fixated upon the undulating white brilliance in the sky before us…but his gesture brought back sudden, unpleasant memory. "Should this emanation offer any chance at turning the tide of war, it is imperative we know and know now. Please, Lieutenant…what do you know about…this?"
I glared at Tesla.
"A scrap of paper? It is quite something else to see it for oneself." Strasser sighed. " 'The Angel'…we had heard of it through our intelligence apparatus…not that I nor any of my men, denizens of the cloud swept heights, for an instant believed such poppycock." With a sigh he looked to Stern and glanced downward. "At best, we the chatter the result of some sort of…nimbus, or delusional propaganda dreamed up by the British to frighten our wayward countrymen. Too much rum…" He chuckled. "None of us believed it. None us believed it, I should say, not until now…" His words rung shallow, as shallow as they had when Ostfriesland had spirited us from the wrecked mall east of the Eiffel, the city burning around us. And left Blair and everyone else I knew to burn with it.
Stern's voice came from the darkness. "Lieutenant, having heard this, I cannot help but remember the confidences Monsieur Tesla has revealed to me over the last days. The hand of fate is at play here! What are the…the odds that you might be aboard when this message is received and decoded?" My eyes remained upon the wheeling light, the electric orb tearing the horizon before us. "Betrayed by the red banners…hope is lost for thwarting the Bolsheviks in their march to the sea. And, if France falls…" His eyes carried outward across the lowlands north and furious horizon to the east. "I would not hold out long for the British Isles, its Empire nor what remains of the Peter's Confederation. Even your America…she shall soon be in range of the growing Red aerial armadas. Tesla intonates that this mystery before us is even more powerful than his creation. I ask you one thing...is this true?"
I stared at him but said nothing. It was all I could do to stay my tongue.
Nervously Strasser paced about the Helmsman. Toward the glass frontage he moved yet remained transfixed. "An unfathomable weapon…such a thing might turn the tide of the war. If only we had another Eiffel Tower." He turned. "Instead we have only…this. One last hope. Whatever it is. Help us, Lieutenant! Help us before the fight is lost! She spoke your name…tell us what you know, for it is obvious by the testimony of Herr Tesla and the ether that you do!"
I closed my eyes. "America is a long way across the Atlantic, Herr Captain. If they even make it that far. I don't give a rat's ass about France, Stern, nor your damned Kaiser or anyone else you serve. You can go to hell…the whole lot of you."
"It's a gateway." Tesla answered. "A passage to…somewhere else." Struck by the unwelcome words, I glared at the man even as his eyes insisted.
"Don't!" I cried, knowing that he had no idea of what he was about to unleash.
"Calm yourself, DeWitt." Strasser ordered, even as his men took my arms. With one eye upon me, his attention turned back to a frightened Nikola. "Continue."
"A city. They spoke of a city, this woman and he. They called it Columbia."
"Columbia?" Incredulity tainted his voice, now taken aback as he was by my outburst. In the Germans' arms I squirmed. "There is nothing but ruin as far as the eye can see!"
"This thing…this maelstrom…it is a gateway…" Tesla continued, almost maniacally. "It is a Tear in reality, of which I have some understanding of. And the message…if that message is coming from it…on the other side is…" He paused, looking to me before continuing. "A city the likes of which you have never seen. A fl…" Catching himself, Telsa composed himself and continued. "If we pass through, it would be to…" He looked to me, hoping just hoping I might confirm his conjecture…or perhaps forgive him. "Nothing less than the stuff of dreams…and…quite possibly, a hospital."
Behind the helmsman the abandoned wheel wavered, and a bearded face crowded in from memory, taunting me…laughing and chiding like a madman. My hands clenched and once more I towered over him, fingers upon his throat, bashing his head against the wheel…throttling his very life away. And in the sea of lighthouses…Elizabeth…in her innumerable multitude…doing the very same to me.
I shirked the men off me. They had half a mind to be on me again, but with murderous intent I regarded them and tightened my fist. They saw something in my face then, for their countenance changed to fear and they backed off. "All right, so be it…" I said, glaring at the Serb. "You've been asking for this, so it's your funeral. Beyond the Tear? Yes, I think it's Columbia. If you can get into their good graces, they should more than deliver on those wireless promises. And Tesla, much as I'd like to wring your damned neck, you're right…Katherine…she just might have a chance there. They'll surely have a hospital and doctors. Maybe more than you can count."
"But a city?" Strasser questioned, eyeing Tesla and me, still uncertain whether what the man had said was truth or hyperbole. "Not a nation, only a…city? It seems far-fetched that any metropolis, no matter how advanced, might solve our problems."
Strasser's eyes narrowed. "This woman? The voice behind the Morse? Who is she to cause such rage?"
"She is the Lieutenant's daughter, Captain." Tesla again answered, his eyes questing for mine. About the gondola six figures stood frozen. "Her name is Elizabeth. There's much you have yet to know…more than who…who the woman is. Unfortunately, it is not I who know the sum of this matter…but the good Lieutenant does."
"And how, may I ask, is that?" Strasser added.
"They have travelled there."
"To this city? Your…daughter?" Stern asked in quiet awe. Behind him Strasser cocked an eyebrow.
"I'm going to make you a deal…I'm going tell you all there is to know about Columbia, and in return, when we're finished here…" I looked to Tesla. "When his wife is mended, and I have my…" I caught on the word. "Daughter…safe and sound aboard and back here…you are going back for my men, Strasser…you jack-booted Prussian son of a bitch. If it takes the whole fleet of the Northern Confederation and God damned Royal Air Corps thrown in, you're going to make it happen."
Strasser broke out in laughter. "You ask the impossible, Lieutenant…I have already told you…the Alliance is reeling. And if we tarry here long, Bolshevik Albatrosses shall surely find us! There is no way I could…"
"What if I swore to you that those dots and dashes were the God's honest truth? That those promises and every hope and dream you had was about to come true?" I pointed to the electrical maelstrom raging off the nose. "Like weapons that will help you win this war? You think what he did with the Eiffel was dreadful?" I looked to the Tear twisting and crackling to the north. "Not only do they have city that is a spectacle you can scarcely believe, but they have airships that make this prize of yours seem like tinfoil…and bombs that can burn entire cities to the ground…"
Strasser and Stern glanced to one another. Stern's brow tensed. "Then why, Lieutenant, if this place is the stuff of dreams and our veritable salvation, why are you so angry…so unwilling to aid us in the very cause you champion by wearing that uniform?!"
I hesitated before replying, the existential dread that had been gathering in the corners of my mind coalescing into eleven simple words. "Because the Devil himself is waiting for you beyond that gate."