Freedom's Light: Short Stories Page 3

  The derogatory nicknames used to refer to Nazi leaders and generals are direct translations of their German equivalents at the time: Himmler (Treue Heinrich or Reichsheini), Keitel (Nickesel or Lakeitel), Goebbels (Reichskaulquappe), and von Kluge (Kluger Hans).

  The Zeughaus (arsenal) building where the events of March 21,1943 took place still stands on Unter der Linden boulevard in Berlin: it is presently the main building of the German Historical Museum.

  Gersdorff was not personally involved in further assassination attempts, but he did supply explosives and detonators for further coup attempts, including Valkyrie. Not even under the vilest tortures would his comrades reveal his name, and thus he became one of a handful of conspirators who would survive the war. As Schlabrendorff was awaiting a foreordained death sentence at the infamous People’s Court in Berlin, a daylight USAAF bombing raid on the capital took place, and the notorious presiding ‘judge’ Roland Freisler was killed instantly by a direct hit. After several additional adventures that defy the fiction writer’s imagination, Schlabrendorff survived and eventually became a judge on the new Germany’s Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court).

  Gersdorff himself offered his services to the Bundeswehr after the war, but was blackballed as a ‘traitor,’ as he had sworn personal allegiance to the man-monster he had tried to murder. By our lights, he had merely tried to defend ‘against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’

  Instead, he founded the Johanniter Unfall-Hilfe, or St. John’s Ambulance Service, under the auspices of the Protestant branch of the Knights Hospitaler — the Johanniterorden, as it is called in German, and of which Gersdorff was an Honorary Commander. It serves all, regardless of faith or origins. Thus he fulfilled the promise I imagined him making to himself.

  Gersdorff was no plaster saint: he loved the good life, particularly horseback riding, and appears to have taken the trappings of his aristocratic background for granted. On the other hand, noblesse oblige was clearly no mere phrase for him, but an ideal for which he was prepared to pay the ultimate price.

  He was not merely a nobleman in title. More importantly, he was a man noble in spirit.

  About Nitay Arbel

  Nitay Arbel is a mad scientist by day and an aspiring storyteller at night. He has lived and worked in many places, most recently Dallas and Tel-Aviv. His debut novel On Different Strings has been described as a “genre-busting love story” by one book blogger.

  @newclasstraitor

  nitayarbel.wixsite.com/site

  Martian Sunrise

  Matthew Souders

  Kay stumbled across the threshold in a blinding cloud of rust-colored dust, and pulled the airlock zipper taught above her head with her stiff, gloved fingers. She checked and rechecked the seal; though, in this sort of storm, she expected any leaks would be apparent on sight. When she was certain that the thick composite sheet was secure and free of leaks, she tapped a panel welded to the subterranean rock face, and the space became pressurized. Her wrist instruments quickly informed her that the atmosphere was breathable, and she was more than happy to unlock and remove her helmet and feel a rush of warm air on her face. She took in a deep, grateful breath.

  She choked. The dust storm had deposited a haze of fine ore regolith into the airlock at the mouth of the cave she’d been calling home for the last thirty-one days. Perhaps ‘cave’ was not an accurate term, since survey equipment had carved it precisely into the wall of an ancient crater to fit mission specs, intending to create a safe hiding place on days like today for future explorers.

  Still, despite the storm debris, she was glad to get out of her suit. No matter how insulating they made the outfit, no matter how much room temperature air got pumped through it, it was imperfect at keeping out the cold of Mars and she was always chilly in there when she was on the surface for more than a few hours. She pulled the body of the suit down and stepped out of it, hanging it on a peg drilled into the orange rock. The flexible, lightweight body suit was all she’d need now that she’d been grounded by this infernal storm.

  Through the inner hatch she went; and, once on the other side, she greeted her partner, who’d been monitoring atmospheric conditions from base camp. “Sergei, thanks for the heads up. Got back just in time.”

  “Cutting it a bit close, yes?” he prodded in his characteristic thick Russian accent. Every time she heard it, she thought of the first day they’d met. She’d assumed he was lured away from the Russian Space Agency by SpaceX, and, wanting to feel out her competition for the Mars program, she’d asked him whether he’d been aboard the International Space Station before it was decommissioned. At which point, he had explained that he would have been fifteen when that happened. He never looked like a new recruit, not then at the ripe young age of twenty-two, and not now. Though, after ten years training for this mission, he was looking even more mature, with stress and age lines running across his face. Now they were a team – usually a jovial, competitive team – but something was wrong. She could see it in his eyes.

  “We might be grounded for days and we go home in just over a week. There’s a lot of work still to do,” she answered his prod despite her concern. “Sergei, what’s going on?”

  “It’s nothing, I…we lost communications. There is E.M. interference – possibly lightning discharges near the dish.” As if to underscore his theory, there came a low roar as the eerie sound of Martian thunder rolled over their hiding place. The sound was nothing like she’d ever heard in the mountains outside of Grundy, Virginia, where thunder crackled and shook the landscape like a great battle were taking place in the skies above and the sound competed with the rush of falling rain and the rustling of trees and shrubs in the wind. Here, it was more like the sound of a tin roof wobbling in slow motion. The thin, cold air made for a slower speed of sound everywhere except at base camp; and the distorted, long sound waves emanated from discharges that began and ended very close to the surface, the product of static electricity from friction in the fast-moving dust clouds. “Yes, it would seem that is so.”

  “I saw flashes before I headed back,” she nodded. She hopped in front of Sergei and tapped out a few commands on his computer terminal. “It looks like we’re still getting the cable feed, so the dish is fine. Communication should come back when the storm passes.”

  “Let’s hope,” Sergei answered. He still sounded distracted and nervous – it alarmed Kay as she eyed her colleague.

  “Sergei, what is with you tonight? You eat a bad protein bar? Stub your toe? See a Martian?” Kay expected him to laugh at the last suggestion, but instead his face seemed to collapse under its own weight and he turned away from her. “Tell me, you idiot! Maybe I can help.”

  “I am not the one needing help, I think.”

  Oh. He’s worried about me? Why?

  She sat in his workstation chair and tapped his ankle with her foot in an effort to jostle loose more information. Her heart crawled its way into her throat as she waited for him to give her some clue. “Before we lost communications, I received a message from SpaceX Command Center.”

  “And?” she demanded, her voice rising in fear. “Did something happen?” He nodded in the affirmative; his shoulders slumped forward after the effort. Terrified, she whirled him around with a forceful jerk of his arm. “Is it Ellen? Mark?”

  “I am afraid it is your mother. They told me that she died of liver failure.”

  Mars stopped spinning and time froze. Kay’s mouth dropped open just a little as she tried to comprehend his words. Died??

  “I am terribly sorry…” Sergei’s voice trailed off and, having decided that words would do no further good, he offered a hug. As they embraced, she was still racing to understand her new reality.

  Mom’s dead? She was fine when we launched. She can’t be…

  “Are you sure that’s what they said?” she said, her voice muffled a bit by Sergei’s shoulder.

  Sergei pulled back from the hug and admitted it again with a nod. “When commu
nications resume, you can contact Command and confirm it. In fact, you should.”

  Dumbfounded, she sat for a long moment; then a thought occurred to her that rocked her to the core. Thank God.

  Her heart sank. Had she really just thanked the Lord that her mother was gone? Impossible though it was to deny that this had been a long time in coming, she felt sick to her stomach for having such a callous reaction. Did she and her mother see eye to eye? Hardly. Did her mother struggle mightily with alcohol and sleeping pills? Most definitely. But nothing justified such a harsh, unloving rejection of her own kin as this.

  I didn’t mean that, Lord. I couldn’t have meant it. Of course I’m devastated!

  And yet, there she sat, surprised, but far from devastated at the news. She felt cold. She opened her mouth to speak; maybe if she could say something appropriately mournful, make Sergei see how much she cared for her mother, she could convince herself it was true. Maybe then she wouldn’t have to feel so guilty.

  The only words she could muster, though, were, “Sergei, I don’t know what to say.” That much, at least, had been honest.

  “I know this is a bad time for such news. I wanted to wait until the return trip.”

  “No, Sergei, it’s better I know now.” She dropped her head and stared at the machine-packed red clay on the ground, then at her hands. They were shaking and she didn’t even know why. She didn’t feel sorrow; she wasn’t on the verge of tears. So why was she so unsteady?

  “Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”

  Throw me out there and end this nightmare? Her pulse pounded in her ears and her cheeks flushed with the shame of her betrayal. She’d wished her mother dead. How else could she explain that reaction? “No…I’ll be OK.”

  And, if she were truly honest with herself, she had to admit that she’d even wished that in her thoughts many times over during her formative years, and a few times she’d yelled that wish to her mother in the heat of the moment. Each time her mother didn’t show up for a soccer game or a recital at school because she was too drunk to remember her own name. Every time she had to clean up the vomit or wash urine soaked clothes and the stench had been so overpowering in that tiny lean-to that it made her physically ill. Every time she had to take odd jobs instead of reading or doing homework so she could get away from that awful place and make something of herself. Every time she looked at the stars and felt certain that her dreams of exploring creation were impossible because her mother wasn’t truly a mother. All those times and more, she’d felt the gut-wrenching twist of hatred.

  Hate – that was the word. And it struck her like one of those jolts of electricity outside the instant it appeared there, in her mind. Kay hated her. Hated how hard she’d had to work to be the grownup at age eleven and still go to school. Hated that shoddy excuse for a home she’d built while her mother was spending the insurance money from the fire she started on more whiskey. Hated those unforgiving mountains each time she rode her dilapidated bike the five miles into town just so she could learn something. Hated it all. Tears came to her eyes and she slammed them shut to hide her shame from Sergei.

  “I just need to be alone for a while. I’ll be in the bunks.” She got up from Sergei’s chair and passed through the lab and into the sleeping quarters, around a makeshift privacy barrier of foam in a plastic frame. Everything had to be modular, compactable, durable, and lightweight to prevent the payload from creating too much gravitational acceleration when they landed on Mars. The beds were simple hammocks hanging from metal spikes the two of them had hammered into the bedrock. The walls were collapsible poles held together with foam surrounded by mylar. They reminded Kay of the tent she made for when the weather cooperated enough to let her sleep somewhere other than in her mother’s cot at her side.

  She took refuge behind one such wall and rubbed her eyes dry, fighting back a surge of anger at herself. “Damn it,” she whispered. “Stop this.”

  Unsure of what to do to calm down, she pawed through the personal items she’d taken with her on this trip. Both of them had been allowed to carry up to five kilos of items in sealed bags stored with the rest of the mission payload. Her choices included: a tablet and memory stick with a selection of books and music for down times, her Mars journal, a digital camera, her crucifix necklace, and a New American Bible. This was day thirty-one, so, by now, she’d gone through her digital entertainment – she was always a voracious and fast reader. Besides, it didn’t seem like now would be an appropriate time for distractions – trying it would only make her feel worse. The camera and journal were for keeping a log of her experiences on Mars to write about them later and she didn’t think this was a ‘Kodak moment’. Some part of her was scared that if she touched the Bible, her hand might turn to salt; she didn’t feel much more pious than the city of Sodom, after all. Nothing but the cross seemed right. She picked it up and clenched her hand into a fist around the metal. Even that cross was a personal memory of hardship; she’d ‘borrowed’ it from a girl at school who made fun of her cast-off clothes and paid for the mockery with a black eye and the loss of a cross she didn’t deserve to wear anyway.

  She was sure that Sergei thought she was grieving, but that’s not what she felt. She wanted so badly to be sad like normal – it would be an overwhelming relief if she could get there. Instead, all she could do was smolder at herself for being consumed by such spiteful emotions, and clutch at the cross, thinking, I’m on my own; what else is new, as she listened to the alien thunder. Somehow, through all the random bursts of rage, the relentless guilt, and utter loneliness, the sound of the storm raging above carried her into a restless sleep.

  Kay stood on the Martian surface in a brown and sienna maelstrom. She panicked for just a moment when she realized that she didn’t remember how she’d gotten there and was not wearing a spacesuit – or any clothing for that matter. Instinctively, she held her breath, but the air was not cold and she soon realized that she had no trouble breathing. The landscape was familiar when she could see it through the sand; she was looking east across the crater in which basecamp had been established and seeing the ridges on the far side against the dark red sky of early morning. But when she turned back, there was only an untouched wall of rock behind her, no sign of their encampment.

  Alarm rising again, she jogged up to the rock face and touched it with both bare hands, then scanned along the ground thinking the airlock cover might just be buried by dust, but there was no sign of it. She got down on her hands and knees and dug frantically through the fine, pulverized sand where the plastic sheet should be. She found only more sand. Her naked body didn’t seem to feel much of anything; not the sand blasting across her skin, not the extreme cold, not the lack of atmosphere. It was as if she weren’t there, even though she could move the sand. She swiveled her head this way and that, looking for anything other than barren rock and not finding any comfort.

  But she wasn’t alone. Her eyes spotted movement in the distant east – a shadow of a figure – and she ran for it. She felt like she was running through five feet of sand, not several inches; she just couldn’t move quickly enough. Yet the figure drew closer. As she approached, she saw that the figure was veiled and dressed in a flowing white gown, and when she was able, at long last, to reach this strange vision, the woman lifted the veil and smiled. She was young and beautiful – an unrecognizable version of Kay’s mother – especially since she was glowing with joy. How could this be the same person? The Morgan McCoy with whom Kay was acquainted had stringy, lifeless brown hair, sunken eyes and drooping, yellowy skin. She bruised easily and she stared into space often, even when sober. She wore tattered jeans and carried a rifle for shooting anything with fur or feathers for dinner. She was not a pretty young bride in a clean white dress, her hair done up in elaborate braids, her cheeks touched with rouge and her eyes glistening with tears of joy. She looked like an angel there – like a modern day saint. No, she looked like a mother.

  Kay reached out for her, tried to t
ouch her face, and got only air. Her hand passed right through the apparition. It seemed cruel that she should see this version of her mother, the one she never knew, and yet could never connect with her. She stepped toward her and her entire body passed right through; when she turned, the vision was gone. She collapsed to her knees and wept at the injustice – she’d lost her mother a long time ago, and now she’d never get her back.

  The air suddenly felt unbelievably cold and thin and the sandstorm pelted her skin to the point of searing agony. She screamed out her final breath and threw herself face first into the soil, not caring that this would be her end.

  Kay’s eyes sprung open and she gasped for air. Sergei had joined her in the bunks and was snoring along the opposite wall, blissfully unaware of her hammering heart and aching lungs. She tried to escape the hammock in one motion and failed, her leg becoming entangled in the fabric, sending her to the ground chin first and hard.

  “GORRROWW!” she yelped through gritted teeth. She spit blood; she must have bit her tongue. “Son of a bitch! OW!!” She scrambled to her feet and dusted off her jumpsuit. She was still rubbing her jaw and muttering obscenities when Sergei awoke, annoyed.

  “So much noise!”

  “Sorry,” she hissed, still unable to fully open her mouth. “I had to hit the head and fell out of bed.” It wasn’t a complete fabrication, although it was not the reason she had been in a hurry to get up. Now that she mentioned it, she did have to pee.

  “Two years of coordination drills in light gravity and she still can’t get out of bed in one piece,” Sergei grumbled.

  “Shut up, Sergei,” she growled on her way out of the bunks. They stored their waste even further back in the ‘cave’, right up against the crater wall behind a pair of foldable barriers. Solids, they boxed in airtight metal drums and buried offsite; liquids, they captured in bags specially fitted for the water filtration system they brought with them, since every drop of the stuff was precious when none could be mined locally. Any remaining chemicals, they buried outside. Despite their efforts to control the smell, it still stunk behind those barriers, and she swore that the water they got from the filtered urine still tasted a bit like ammonia. They made recruits drink their own filtered urine for two months as a part of their training at SpaceX Command – they had to get over the ‘ick factor’. She held her nose while doing her business and exited as quickly as possible, all the while still reeling from the dream.