Bitter Seeds

“You wouldn't, if you knew him.”

The stranger looked surprised. “Oh. That's a shame.” He gestured at the empty chair. “May I?”

Klaus's fork tinked against his dish when he set it on the table. “Do I know you?”

“Nein. But I know you.” The other man untied the oyster blue muffler about his neck, unbuttoned his coat, and hung them on the hooks on the wall behind him. Under the coat he wore work boots, denim coveralls, and a flannel shirt over a thick white turtleneck sweater. “I saw you in Augsburg several weeks ago. And your impressive friends.”

It was possible. That had been over a month ago, when the weather had still carried the potential for spring. They had drawn large crowds, large enough that Klaus wouldn't have remembered individual faces, even if they hadn't been on the road for so damnably long.

The man sat. “Ernst Witt,” he said, hand extended.

Klaus took it. “Klaus.”

“A rare honor, Obersturmfuhrer Klaus.”

Klaus cocked his head in surprise. This man was dressed as a civilian laborer, yet he'd identified the insignia on Klaus's collar. Few civilians knew the Waffen-SS well enough to correctly address an officer by his rank.

“How—?”

“I work for IG Farben. We do a lot of business with the Wehrmacht... . It's my job to know the military.” Witt's lips peeled back to reveal a gap-toothed smile.

That's one explanation, thought Klaus. But there are others.

“So you saw us in Augsburg, and followed us here?”

Witt laughed. “No. Like you, my work sends me on the road. I saw flyers advertising a visit from the elite Gotterelektrongruppe when I arrived yesterday. I hoped I'd get to see you and your companions in action again. Perhaps even meet you. One doesn't often meet such greatness.”

Klaus nodded at the fawning man. “And why are you on the road?”

“What we sell to the Wehrmacht, we also fix for the Wehrmacht. That is to say, I fix. And with weather like this, many things need fixing.”

No, you're following us, Klaus decided. “Is that so.”

“Oh, yes. You'd be surprised how brittle certain alloys can become, under the right conditions.”

“Really.” Are you keeping an eye on us for the Sicherheitshauptamt? If morale and discipline had declined at the Reichsbehorde after Doctor von Westarp's death, the SD Hauptamt, the SS Security Department, would want to know.

“Most people don't realize that a well-cast metal is actually composed of tiny crystals,” said Witt, warming to his subject. He spoke of atoms and dislocations and still other things Klaus neither knew about nor cared for. His eyes never lingered on Klaus's face, flicking instead to Klaus's collar and scalp whenever Klaus turned his head.

Witt trailed off. “I've bored you. I apologize.”

“I lack your passion for science,” said Klaus.

“But German science made you the man you are today,” said Witt.

“I'm a soldier,” said Klaus, because it sounded true and needed no elaboration.

“And quite a soldier at that. You must be, to have been among the first recruits for such an elite project,” said Witt. His inflection might have breathed a subtle implication into the words, or perhaps not.

Klaus chose to let a heavy silence suffocate any implied questions. Witt didn't offer up anything else to fill the growing pause in the conversation.

“Things were different in the early days,” Klaus said, and left it at that.

“Yes, I suppose they were. You'll have raised an entire army soon! An army of men like you.”

“Perhaps.”

“I'm sure you've inspired many eager recruits.” Again, it might have been a question, and it might not.

“It varies from town to town. And with the weather.”

Witt nodded. “I imagine so. You've been traveling for many weeks, it seems. Will you be returning home soon?”

“Soon enough.” Klaus drained the last of his cider, which had gone cold. “And speaking of travel, I may be in for a long day tomorrow.” Witt again looked surprised. “If you'll excuse me, I think I'll turn in early.” Klaus rose, shook Witt's hand again, and donned his wool overcoat.

As he buttoned it, he said, “A question, Herr Witt?”

“Of course, my friend.”

“You said you entered Bielefeld yesterday. Yet the roads have been closed for the past two days.”

“I did? Well, then, I'm sure I meant Monday.”

“That explains it.”

“Yes. With weather like this, who can keep track of the days?”

“Safe travels,” said Klaus.

“Heil Hitler,” said Witt with a wave and another flash of his gap-toothed smile.

The cobbled walkway along the street had been reduced to an iced footpath trampled into thigh-deep snow. Wind sliced through the buttonholes of Klaus's coat and the seams of his shirt. It raked his skin, stippled him with gooseflesh. He hadn't gone twenty meters before his chest muscles ached with the effort it took not to shiver. A gust eddied around the side of the inn. Klaus slipped, landing painfully on the ice.

“To hell with this.” He stood, shook himself off, and embraced his Willenskrafte. The copper taste of the Gotterelektron erased the last remnants of his drink, which was regrettable because he had enjoyed the hints of cinnamon in the cider. Armored in willpower, Klaus became a wraith untouched by the demon wind.

The change in his surroundings, in his personal microclimate, was immediate. The twin bulbs of a glass streetlamp shattered. Window shutters wrenched free of their hinges and exploded into matchsticks on the frozen street. The boles of the gingko trees along the boulevard cracked open.

The weather had been ferociously cold, but now it was nothing short of furious. By expressing his supreme volition, Klaus had enraged the elements.

He stood at the center of a maelstrom that tried in vain to assail him. Nor could the ice underfoot make him slip if such contradicted his Willenskrafte. He ran through snowdrifts and crashing icicles, impervious to one and all.

He ran because his invulnerability would last only so long as he could hold his breath. When he did rematerialize, just long enough to exhale and gulp down air, the arctic fury zeroed in on him. It savaged his throat, reached into his chest and attempted to freeze his lungs. He raced past the trucks parked outside, ghosted through the front windows of his inn, and released the Gotterelektron before an ashen-faced desk clerk.

Klaus ascended the narrow stairs to his room on the second floor. Static and the high-pitched warble of a radio came through the wall; their LSSAH radio operator had the adjacent room. This arrangement suited Klaus. Anything was better than sharing a wall with Reinhardt.

When Klaus turned on the light over the washbasin, he discovered that his mouth and chin were caked with frozen blood. Inhaling the smoke from a British phosphorus grenade back in December had done minor but permanent damage to his sinuses. It left him susceptible to nosebleeds. Drawing a single breath from the blizzard outside had been more than enough to provoke one.

The blood had begun to thaw, but he was too numb to feel it trickling down his neck. The image in the mirror was that of a ravenous beast, an insatiable carnivore. Not a man.

He fell asleep in a chair, still in his uniform, holding a damp towel to his face.

He woke some time later to a commotion outside his window. Familiar voices, shouting, down on the street below. Klaus's hip twinged as he stumbled to the window; sleeping upright in a chair, with his battery harness still attached, had made for hours of awkward posture.

Though the sun rose early this time of year, most of the light on the street came from the few streetlamps that hadn't been destroyed during Klaus's sprint home. The wind had receded for the time being, allowing fresh snow to fall placidly from a charcoal sky.

It might have been a serene picture, if not for the echo of Spalcke's nasal voice as he yelled, “Who are you?