The Bavarian Gate By John Dalmas

“Yessir, Herr Kronprinz!”

“How would you describe what you feel?”

Montag frowned as if trying to think: “There is a-feeling to it. It made my skin buzz at first.”

The red eyebrows arched. “Indeed! Do you find it unpleasant?”

“No sir, Herr Kronprinz!”

“Hmm.” It seemed clear to Macurdy that his answer was no surprise to Kurqosz, yet the intense green eyes looked as if they were trying to bore into his skull. Abruptly they disengaged, turning to Tsulgax, and the crown prince nodded dismissively without speaking.

And that was all there was to that. Tsulgax gripped his arm and returned him to class. Something, Macurdy told himself, was up, but he had no idea what.

After class that day, Schurz delivered him to Kupfer’s office, and Kupfer delivered him next door to Landgraf. The colonel looked him over with a gaze serious but mild.

“Herr Montag, Crown Prince Kurgosz tells me you have done well here. I am proud of you. You are a good German psychic.”

“Thank you, Colonel sir!”

“Herr Doktor Professor Schurz tells me that even your intelligence has improved, an entirely unexpected effect. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Yessir, Colonel sir!”

Landgraf looked as if he wasn’t fully convinced. “The Crown Prince,” he said, “believes you might progress further if you trained somewhere else. He will take you to his homeland, a place called Hithmearc, and work with you himself. You will like that. You will be well treated, a guest of the Imperial Family. When you come back, you will perform very important services for your Fuhrer and Fatherland, and be well rewarded.” He got to his feet then, and Macurdy expected the Nazi salute, with a sharp “Heil Hitler!” Instead the colonel shook his hand. “Congratulations,” he said.

He looked tired.

By that time Macurdy had a theory about this gate. Presumably, like the Ozark Gate, it had turned on once a month, at local midnight nearest the full moon. That’s why he hadn’t felt its field: he’d been asleep. Now it was activating daily, at whatever hour the moon crossed the local meridian. That would explain the daily shift in time.

As to why: It seemed to him the Voitar had caused it with their midnight ritual at the new moon. How that could be was hard to imagine, but certainly the timing fitted.

The next day Montag went to class in the morning as usual. After lunch, Schurz had him pack his few things in a military rucksack, then they went to class again.

Macurdy had realized for some time that he excelled the others in creating monsters, but still they were no more than three-dimensional, solidseeming images. Horszath seemed to see them well enough, but when he’d asked the others, they didn’t see them at all. Macurdy, on the other hand, could see theirs clearly, and felt confident his were better-more “real,” so to speak, more convincing. Manfred’s lacked a sense of solidity and mass, and the evil with which he imbued them was more perversion and cruelty than the raw essence that Horszath wanted and that none of them succeeded in giving him.

Montag’s version departed even further; it held grief, despair, loss. Horszath found it unacceptable.

At breaktime, Montag, with his rucksack, was delivered to Greszak’s office. Moments later, Kurgosz, with Tsulgax in tow, took him outside with them to a waiting military VW, and its SS driver. Almost as soon as they left, Kurqosz began to look ill, though the gate had not yet turned on. When it did, partway up the ridge, the Voitu looked no worse, while Tsulgax seemed unaffected. Nearing the crest, the crown prince stopped the driver and they got out, to walk the rest of the way, Whatever had been wrong with him, it eased quickly as they hiked. On the crest, the road became rougher, more rocky, and they followed it north a short distance.

Macurdy could feel the gate powerfully now, and wondered what the experience would be like. When he’d gated through on Injun Knob, he’d been in place before it turned on. Here he’d have to walk into it. Soon he could feel it pull on him as if by suction, more strongly as the approached, so that it was hard not to run toward it. For one arming moment, it threatened to suck him from his body, then darkness swallowed him –indigo-tinged nothingness with a bass resonance more felt than heard. For a gut-wrenching instant it was as if his body disassembled, then he was somehow spit out, arms flailing for balance, and sprawled into–straw! After a moment he got up and looked around, unsteady, shaking a bit. Kurgosz and Tsulgax were still down. Here darkness was simply night, a night much colder than the evening he’d just left. They were in a steep-roofed, ceilingless structure–a sort of pavilion perhaps a hundred feet long, open beneath the eaves to air and moonlight. Several Voitar had been waiting with spears and lantern, and one of them called in a language Macurdy didn’t know.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *