by Horst Pukallus
Translated by Mike Mitchell
Four weeks after the global Catastrophe the initial panic had abated; people had learned to concentrate on what was feasible. The brute facts had reduced the initial chaos to a status quo in which the irreversible had become bearable, a postmodern stalemate. The bewilderment and shock, the horror and disbelief that accompanied the initial crisis had given way to a widespread mood of calm resignation.
The Cosmic Cloud
As after all catastrophes, most people adjusted to making do with what was left before venturing on a new beginning.
Wencke was one of the minority whom the Cosmic Cloud had caused severe psychological problems. She had been to college and worked her butt off to get a job as an engineer with the maintenance service of the German Federal Post and now there was a fault that even the best maintenance engineer could not repair, the fault of all faults, a communications doomsday: one fine morning in June, shortly before 3 a. m., planet earth had sailed into a Cosmic Cloud which had brought all equipment using electromagnetism to a standstill. Wencke felt completely disoriented, hurt, cheated by life; she took the disaster personally and got drunk every day. Marten Tilbert’s incomprehensible attitude, the stoic calm he displayed, was the last straw, driving her to distraction and — fueled by alcohol — to irrational outbursts of aggression.
‘It’d be much worse if it had happened in winter,’ Marten kept saying. ‘This way we have enough time to prepare for winter.’
‘Huh!’ Leaning against the old cast iron pump, Wencke swayed in the sunshine, a wine glass in her hand, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She had become a chain-smoker. ‘And what are you preparing for, pray? You just sit around. For weeks you’ve just been sitting around. Could you perhaps tell me what you’re preparing for?’ She gestured wildly, strands of blond hair falling over her spectacles into her sweat-streaked face. The sun was beating down and the wine did its bit to make Wencke even more hot and bothered. ‘I thought you were a real man, but now I see you for what you are. Now I see you’re nothing but a wimp.’ The spitefulness twisted her lips in an ugly expression.
Martin gave a quiet sigh, the latest of many such sighs during similar quarrels. At the very beginning, when everything suddenly stopped, he too had been literally distraught with surprise and consternation. His sister Gerti had called — not for the first time – in the middle of the night from Kuala Lumpur, totally convinced she was being stalked by the pockmarked waiter who did room service and threatening to throw herself out of the hotel window the next time there was a noise outside her door. Marten was just wondering whether it would be reprehensible to encourage her to do that very thing, in order to put an end to these constant nocturnal calls, when the line abruptly went dead. No crackling, no hissing, nothing.
‘If you say so.’ Wencke was right. For two and a half weeks he’d been sitting in the garden doing nothing. When it became clear that the monetary system was not going to collapse, at least not in the immediate future, he had sold his house without further ado and sent Rutger off with the proceeds. Since then he’d been lounging in the sun, waiting. He had no choice but to wait, he’d put all his eggs in one basket. ‘You ought to give up smoking. Cigarettes are getting short. Most of the production’s going to the various military units.’
‘Huh!’ The filter of Wencke’s cigarette began to smolder; by now she was smoking every cigarette down to the filter. ‘I want to know what the point is, what you think you’re doing.’
Marten said nothing. As far as he was concerned, informing Wencke was out of the question and it had come to the point, after several fruitless arguments, where he had stopped even giving evasive answers. He was quite simply fed up with her. ‘We’re not married,’ he said with a brusqueness bordering on brutality. ‘I don’t have to account for my doings.’
As early as one week after the Catastrophe it had become clear that without the advantage of communications and the media, the central power of the state had suffered a catastrophe of its own. The Tsar was far away again, so to speak. A government which could no longer coordinate its various executive organs nor speak to its citizens by radio and television lost a considerable part of its influence and was, as became apparent, ultimately powerless. The formation of regional groupings of ambitious office bearers, politicians and civil servants — the composition of which differed from the outset from that of the parties in the Federal parliament — accelerated the fragmentation of political and state institutions and encouraged the development of a multitude of smaller centers of power.
In the second week AC (After the Catastrophe) it was obvious to everyone that the new situation was not a temporary blip, a nuisance that would pass, like a short power cut. Astronomers and astrophysicists had only noticed the Cosmic Cloud when it surrounded the lunar orbit and contact with the moon base broke off. They just had time to produce the hypothesis of ‘semi-material stellar plasma’ before the cloud enveloped the earth as well, paralyzing the machinery of information, manipulation and news reporting. Researchers and scientists might, with time, have been able to discover the nature of the Cloud and develop means of neutralizing it. The strange thing was that natural electricity continued to exist — as could be seen from the fact that there were still thunderstorms — so it must have been something specifically affecting electromagnetic processes in mechanisms. Since, however, the complicated machines and apparatus which would have permitted the appropriate investigations were no longer functioning, there was no prospect of things being put right. And Cosmic Clouds extended over many, sometimes hundreds of light years; the earth would stay in the zone of ‘semi-material stellar plasma’ for a very, very long time, perhaps for ever. Humanity had to accept that a new, completely different epoch in its history had dawned.
Wencke went to the summerhouse, presumably to open another bottle of wine. Marten relaxed, lay back on the lounger. She’s having a hard time of it, he admitted to himself. It’s not easy to understand what I’m up to. No one, neither among the neighbors nor his friends, could work out why he should suddenly move from a luxury house to the garden-plot-with-summerhouse that had belonged to his grandmother — who had been carried off by the Cosmic Cloud at the same moment as the majority of others with pacemakers — and despite having sold his house was completely without funds. He had not told anyone, apart from Rutger, but Rutger was away, so no one in the area could ask him. Not Wencke, and above all not Bosshard. Bosshard must not find out what Marten was doing until it was too late for him to sabotage his plan. Marten’s plan was complicated and involved high risk. It could have been less complicated if the banks had still been making loans, but because they had to pay half the people to chase up the other half — their defaulting debtors — they had given up lending; after all, things had become difficult enough since terminals, telephones and fax machines were gathering dust. The smart banker thought of the coming winter and invested in coal mines.
It was only August — at least it would be in a few days — and Marten Tilbert wasn’t thinking of the winter. If the project he had set in motion should fail, suicide was the best bet anyway; until then he preferred to retain his optimism. The sun was warm on his face and he was enjoying being idle after having spent twenty years in the city administration office block dealing with pettifogging nonsense under constant pressure. He drank cold tea (now and then a glass of Grannie’s homemade fruit juice) and waited. He was too comfortable to bother with disagreeable things such as a possible choice between suicide and a winter without money or fuel.
His sunglasses had slipped down to the end of his nose and he squinted over the top at his surroundings. Everything was so incredibly quiet, quieter than it had ever been before the Catastrophe. The garden plots were on a slightly higher piece of land between the railroad embankment — with no trains since the electricity had gone, perhaps someone could get a few old steam engines working — and the canal. Beyond the canal was a meadow, then, more or less parallel to the canal, the freeway, a gray line across the landscape, totally devoid of traffic since car ignitions had stopped working. To the south west, where the canal and freeway appeared to converge, the few high-rise and other tall buildings of a typical German small town could be seen: two church spires, several stores, a water tower, the council building, a ritzy hotel and grain silos. They looked like the symbols of an as yet confused redistribution of power, which was still in full swing — one more reason why Marten Tilbert preferred to wait. (The last head had not yet rolled.)
Since Bosshard, the director of council services, and his followers had won the shoot-out with the burgomasters and their supporters, they had taken over the town hall as the Law and Order Party (LOP), while a coalition of functionaries of the parties that had formerly run the town had made the administration high-rise building their headquarters. Independent activists had set up in an empty department store, which had been plundered, partly out of foresight, partly plain greed. A group of crazy fanatics, under the leadership of a so-called High Holist, who proclaimed a cult of the Holy High Energy with a quasi-religious militancy that came close to terrorism, had taken up residence in the now redundant telephone exchange. All the groups had built up considerable stores of schnapps, guns and ammunition as well as canned food, but for the moment were avoiding open armed conflict. By seizing all the carrier pigeons in the area, as well as all the local horses and donkeys and most of the bicycles and, in addition, recruiting long-distance runners, the LOP had secured a decided advantage in communications and a better tactical starting position, which far outweighed their opponents’ considerably larger stocks of high-proof spirits.
The next few months certainly promised to be very interesting and eventful, and Marten Tilbert was glad to be a mere onlooker, at least to remain so for the moment.
There was only one thing that occasionally clouded his calm and cheerful mood: he kept thinking — more often than he would have liked — of the poor sods on the moon base. They’d have had no chance once all their expensive technology broke down, they must have suffocated or frozen to death. Fortunately he didn’t dream of them. And at least Gerti couldn’t ring him up from Kuala Lumpur in the middle of the night.
The New Martyrs
While he was waiting, Marten lived on Grannie’s bottled fruit and vegetables, the apples and pears in the garden plot plus what was left of the rice and pasta he’d brought from his house. He cooked on an improvised barbecue, a metal grating, black with rust and soot, set on a few bricks. He read his collection of science fiction, always his favorite pastime, but he also read the local leaflets and little newspapers some people produced on their own mechanical duplicating machines.
By week 3 AC the lack of materials meant most were produced by the relatively simple process of transfer-printing; the age of the glossy magazine seemed an eternity ago and, given the impossibility of computerized setting, the eye no longer expected sophisticated formatting; plain information was what everyone wanted. As far as books were concerned, it would probably be some time before the old methods could be brought back on a large scale, but there were innumerable unread books and the libraries were crowded as never before.
The most successful newspaper was the artful Sewer Gazette, a four-page transfer-printed sheet the publisher of which, a certain Alfred E. Neumann (Marten had the feeling such a stupid name as ‘Newman’ must be a pseudonym), typed single-spaced on an evidently ancient typewriter. It not only provided relatively comprehensive — given the circumstances — information, it also commented on current political developments. Neither the Law and Order Guardian nor the Sacred Kiloword, the organs of the LOP and the Holy High Energy cult, could compete with it, either in quality or in popularity, and the distributors of the Sewer Gazette were well advised to deliver it solely at night, pushing it through letterboxes or dropping it on doorsteps. Bosshard and the Holy Holist had already started a vicious smear campaign against ‘Alfred E. Neumann’ and Tilbert expected daily to hear they’d set a price on his head.
It was only the Sewer Gazette that had reported the founding of two corporations in the northern industrial region. They were of a new type, though with similarities to commercial companies: the Freak/Tech Syndicate that was pushing the development of alternative technologies or, actually, ones that had long been regarded as out of date; and the Anti-Tech League which appeared to be promoting the transformation of society into a biotopic system of flora.
From its description this latter seemed not unattractive to Tilbert. Specialized plants that would perform all the tasks of the vanished twentieth-century technology without generating the same refuse or using the same amount of energy, seemed a goal worth aiming for, though he couldn’t quite see how such strains could be grown without recourse to genetic engineering.
Perhaps because they wanted to do what was best, the Freak/Tech Syndicate and the AntiTech League both pursued really aggressive policies; they needed raw materials and other resources — staff and means of communication, money and land — and it was clear that they were on a collision course with bureaucratic and religious bigwigs of the more southerly communities. Bosshard at least was very conscious of this danger and in his search for friends and allies he had clearly realized that Tilbert was conspicuous by his absence. One day he came looking for him.
The grotesque, barbaric spectacle of his arrival had brought Marten out in an even greater sweat. As the procession plodded its laborious way across the canal bridge he had ripped up the paper he had been reading — the latest edition of the Sewer Gazette, with headlines such as: SCHOOL-BOARD BULLIES PUSH PARENTS AROUND, BOSSHARD — BOSS OR BOOBY? and ACTIVISTS CHALLENGE FREAKTECH — dropped the shreds on the glowing embers of his barbecue and quickly smoothed out a crumpled copy of the Law and Order Guardian, placing it in clear view on the garden table next to his favorite book, Robert A. Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold. The torn-up scraps of the Sewer Gazette had burnt to ashes by the time Bosshard, escorted by guards armed with guns, rubber truncheons, knives, nunchaku and baseball bats, had descended the steps of his transport — he had gone so far as to have his official Mercedes converted into a Sedan chair. The Age of the Cosmic Cloud seemed to generate its own kind of madness.
‘What’s all this, Tilbert? What’re you doing sitting around here?’ Bosshard had grown plumper, but below the black hair combed straight back his forehead was furrowed by worry lines which were now cleft by a vertical crease of displeasure. ‘Don’t you know that you’re still in post, I’m still your boss? Do you know how long it took to find out where you were living? Don’t you know that I have more important things to do?’
Marten smiled like a man whose only thought was for sunbathing and a quiet life. ‘I’ve gone private. Don’t feel like going to the office any more.’
Bosshard gave an understanding nod. ‘Lots of people have the same idea. There’s no demand for many professions any longer, so they make a virtue of necessity. But we can’t do without administration. I’d even go so far as to say now more than ever.’ He scratched his double chin. ‘Actually I expected you to keep on working under me.’
Tilbert shook his head. (Fortunately Wencke was in the town exchanging her last jewelry for cigarettes on the black market so couldn’t stick her oar in.) ‘I sold off the house.’ He was sure the director of council services would have made inquiries and know, so being open without giving anything away was the best means of allaying Bosshard’s suspicions. ‘I’m going to invest the dough in a private museum for plastic bags.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the cardboard boxes beside the summerhouse with the hundreds of plastic bags his granny had, for some inexplicable reason, collected in the course of forty years. ‘A hobby just now, but I’ll make a living out of it once things are back to normal.’
Bosshard seemed amused, a smirk almost appeared on his thin lips. ‘The end of civilization as we know it has not yet been averted, Tilbert. You’re good at organization, I can use competent people like that in the LOP.’
Tilbert waved the offer away with a smile of imperturbable simplicity. ‘I know my limits. The world’s completely changed. I wouldn’t be up to it. In this kind of situation it’s men like you that are needed.’
Men like Bosshard were susceptible to flattery. The conversation went on for a while, but eventually the leader of the LOP gave up urging him to join them and left, remarking that he was happy as long as Tilbert wasn’t working for anyone else. Seated in his Mercedes on the shoulders of his poor bearers, he disappeared in the direction of the town, along the path on the other side of the canal, and Marten, for the first time since the Catastrophe, had uncorked a bottle of wine and drunk it all himself.
The Sewer Gazette was the only news-sheet to report the true extent of the wave of suicides, which began in week 4 AC, and to make some effort to analyze it. The people whose life had lost its meaning with the disappearance of modern technology mostly belonged to technical trades and professions: engineers, technicians in all areas, various tradesmen, computer specialists from programmers to hackers, media workers from sound mixers to newspaper editors, pilots, racing drivers, radio operators, motor mechanics, electronic musicians, any number of car-owners who simply could not live without the thrill of speed and singers who could not sing without a backing track. What was striking was the way the manner of death varied according to profession. The Sewer Gazette published a — probably incomplete – list:
Hanging
telephone technicians
computer freaks
radio operators
radar technicians
Self-immolation
racing drivers
welders electricians
air-conditioning specialists
radiologists physics
lab technicians
Drowning
presenters
editors
musicians
singers
Jumping
car fanatics
pilots
engine drivers
TV mechanics
Poison
sound mixers
newsreaders
genetic engineers
nuclear physicists
Other
engineers
various
By this time even in the local region the victims were in their thousands. In general people reacted to these acts of desperation with silent horror, though also with understanding and a certain respect. (No one liked to have the ground suddenly cut from under their feet.) The Holy High Energy cult, on the other hand, had the bad taste to exploit these unfortunates for their own obscure purposes, the High Holist promptly declaring them martyrs of the departed Divine Entity that had previously kept the world going at the press of a button, for which the sect now worshipped and adored it. Soon after it became known, this appropriation of the dead for occult purposes had set off a new wave of suicides, which was just abating. The loss of meaning and the feeling of helplessness combined with the lack of short-term alternatives appeared to have made this new ‘martyrdom’ desirable. The members of the cult chiseled the names of the new martyrs on all the concrete walls throughout the region. For miles around the area was marked with the stone membership list of a new elite of the hereafter.
The relationship between Marten and Wencke had already started to cool off seriously months before the Catastrophe. Marten’s favorite pastime was reading science fiction and clearly at some point Wencke had started to get bored with the company of a stay-at-home bookworm. In the spring he had realized she was having an affair with another man. Since then he hadn’t touched her. In certain matters Tilbert, an official and offspring of a family of officials, could be very particular. He had given up bothering with her or what she got up to.
It was in week 5 AC that a violent argument broke out between them for the first time since the beginning of the summer. The cause was a trivial matter, namely matches.
‘My lighter’s empty.’ Wencke came stomping across the garden, one cigarette between her lips and one in her fingers. Both were unlit. ‘Where’re your matches?’
Marten slowly raised his eyes from the book he was reading, Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. ‘Why?’ He kept his last three and a half boxes in one of the pockets of his sports jacket which for some time now he’d always been wearing over his bare chest.
‘Why?’ Wencke squinted at him, her face ravaged by strain and alcohol. ‘Stupid question. Because my lighter’s empty, of course.’
Marten gave her a look of absolute astonishment. ‘You don’t seriously believe I’d sacrifice one of my matches for your coffin nails, do you?’
‘What?’ Wencke stood beside his lounger, rigid with outrage. ‘What? And why not? Why ever not?’
‘Each match means one hot meal a day,’ he replied in contemptuous tones, as if Wencke were unbearably slow-witted. Yet the simple fact was that she hadn’t started to adapt. She continued to live as if nothing had changed, or as if the old affluent lifestyle would be possible the very next day, as if the Cosmic Cloud were just a dream. ‘That’s why it goes without saying that I will not waste a single match just so you can light up.’
Thrown off balance, Wencke took a step backward. Marten’s response had clearly taken her breath away. ‘You won’t give me a match?’ she asked incredulously.
‘Not a single one,’ Marten said, unable any longer to conceal a certain spiteful pleasure. It was a cheap, petty revenge but it gave him a disproportionately deep sense of satisfaction.
Wencke swallowed audibly, gasped for breath, then hurled a torrent of abuse at him. ‘Idiot! You bastard! You shit! That really is the limit! You’re the limit! You —”
It was not a loss of control when Marten Tilbert shot to his feet and slapped her across the face with the back of his hand. On the contrary it was maliciously calculated. She had provided the excuse he had been more or less consciously waiting for. With a shriek, Wencke and sank to her knees, pressing her hands to her mouth and nose. Blood was running down over her chin, seeping through her fingers.
As she took herself off, sobbing, to the summerhouse, Marten made himself comfortable in the lounger and picked up the Heinlein. He was already feeling ashamed. Wencke was unhappy because she’d never be able work at her profession again. Her career with the German Federal Post was over for good. That was why she behaved the way she behaved. And what had just happened was the ultimate nastiness in the process of drifting apart, of mutual estrangement. True, she no longer stood by him, she was most despicably unfaithful to him and he despised her attempts to get him to wallow in self-pity with her. Yet he felt ashamed. There were limits below which one’s self-respect should not let one fall.
‘Sorry,’ he shouted at the summerhouse. No answer. After a few minutes Wencke’s whimpering stopped. Presumably she was once more seeking comfort in alcohol.
It looked as if the act of laziness, simplemindedness and restraint he had put on had convinced Bosshard and he was going to make sure that the surveillance under which he had been placed him would not suggest differently. At least Bosshard did not return and Marten did not see anything which made him fear the LOP leader’s suspicions had been aroused.
One evening, as it was getting dark, a priest walked past on the opposite bank of the canal. ‘Do you need any pastoral advice, my son?’ he asked, just before night fell.
Marten grinned. ‘Too late as usual, padre’ he shouted across the canal. Then he couldn’t see the man any mor. The black figure was swallowed up in the darkness.
All around, as far as the eye could see, flames flared up. The people, deprived of almost all means of communication, lit fires on all the hills, hummocks and mountain tops, signaling their solidarity with those they could no longer reach by letter, telephone or telegram, fax, Fleuropa or UPS: we still exist. We’re here. You’re not alone.
The Coming Man
It was the realization of how completely the loss of communications technology had cut ordinary people off from contact with anyone outside the area they could reach on foot from their residence that had inspired Marten Tilbert’s great plan. As a result of the Cosmic Cloud the masses were suffering from communications deprivation. Now the neighboring town was as far away as it had been at the time of the stagecoach — and there weren’t even stagecoaches any more.
Using a liberal interpretation of emergency laws, the politicians, ministries, police and other bureaucrats had immediately taken over what was left of the Federal Postal Service in order to provide at least a messenger service among themselves. Bicycles, horses and carrier pigeons had either been commandeered by them or ‘requisitioned’ by individual Army units, the new parties, organizations, syndicates and their guards or, more precisely, their militias. The search for long-distance runners was taken to absurd extremes. Individuals, families, ordinary people had no way of sending even the briefest message to their grandson in Flensburg, their brother in Passau or their aunt in Oer-Erkenschwick. And mobility was as good as non-existent. Here was a yawning gap in the market that cried out to be filled, though with no indication of the how, who or when.
For the moment the population accepted this isolation. Since most no longer had any occupation, they initially went back to basics. The hot summer weather encouraged a permanent street-party atmosphere: day in, day out, groups of people gathered in the open air to cook, argue, laze around and moan. But the grumbling about the lack of any long-distance communication gradually grew louder and louder.
That was the point at which Marten Tilbert saw his great, once-in-a-lifetime chance. If he could provide a service that was faster than horses, almost as fast as carrier pigeons and more accessible than long-distance runners, in brief, a way that would allow them simply to send letters to relatives and friends again, it would not be long before he was the most popular and therefore influential of the newcomers on the gravy train of power. First of all he had to set up the infrastructure, but if he managed that, his fortune was as good as made.
As time passed, the hectographed local news-sheets published reports from other regions. An almost uniform picture emerged of the disintegration, fragmentation of public life, the formation of city states, private organizations, syndicates and completely new parties. The threat of conflict loomed on the horizon, though its precise nature could not yet be determined. The general mood of cheerful acceptance could not hide the fact that winter was approaching inexorably. Marten was often struck by the fear that the true catastrophe was yet to come. At such times he felt depressed and disheartened. Despite his career as a civil servant he had largely, as Erich Fromm formulated it, ‘remained a person and not become a thing’ and was therefore capable of ‘suffering himself at others’ suffering.’ But these moods were only a result of vague feeling. What he saw clearly was that if he was to survive, his enterprise had to be firmly established when the time came.
Of course, he wasn’t the only resourceful person in the world. On the Tuesday evening of week 6 AC drums sounded and he realized that the competition had not been idle. The drums had a particular, unmistakable rhythm.
After the drumming had continued through the Wednesday, Marten had a further cause for concern on the Thursday. Signals were being flashed from several higher landmarks — tower blocks, church spires, hilltops.
From then on the signaling was a daily occurrence. The new powers were improving their communications infrastructure. With every day that passed Marten had to look on as they consolidated their advantage which would make it all the more difficult for him to compete with them later on.
The sixth week passed without any progress in turning his plan into reality. Rutger did not appear. Sometimes Marten began to suspect that Rutger might have abandoned, double-crossed him, but he put all thoughts of such an unholy mess, such an absolute disaster out of his mind. Rutger was a man of action, not an organizer, a planner. It must be obvious to him that he was incapable of doing anything on a large scale without Marten’s brain behind it, which meant it was more or less out of the question that he would set up on his own. That he would be so stupid as to simply blow all the money Marten very much doubted. Naturally there was always the possibility that Rutger had been robbed, or the money confiscated. Whatever the case, Marten had no choice but to wait.
His anxiety increased as he waited. Wencke’s whining, fits of temper and unpleasant scenes were a further strain on his nerves and there were occasions when he, too, could not resist the temptation to drown his sorrows in drink. But he made sure he had one hot meal a day, drank tea and fruit juice and forced himself to exercise self-control, almost as if he following some ascetic practice.
It happened in week 7 AC, on Monday night. Unable to sleep — his disquiet had become serious concern — Marten was staggering round the garden when he heard a steady rumbling and the clatter of horses’ hooves approaching. The previous day’s edition of the Sewer Gazette had reported that Bosshard was selling 100,000 cans of liverwurst from an old Army depot to the Freak/Tech Syndicate. Bosshard’s motive may have been to gain time and put off open warfare, but it could also signify a pact between or even the partial fusion of the LOP and the FT Syndicate. Marten was worried he might be overtaken by events before he had the chance to play his trump cards in the power game.
Marten stood stock-still under the pear trees, straining to see in the pitch-dark night. The sounds were approaching from a roughly southerly direction. Then the moon appeared, revealing the shapes of vehicles, horses and people heading along the canal towards the garden plots.
There was a shrill whistle such as Rutger normally gave and Marten’s heart began to pound. He dashed off toward the canal bridge. His sandals thudded on the planks, but the noise didn’t worry him, as no one else was living permanently in the garden plots or spending the night there. — It seemed as if, in a time when long-distance communication was impossible, people preferred to crowd even closer together in the towns and villages. — And Wencke was in the summerhouse sleeping off another session on the bottle.
‘I don’t believe it!’ Two wagons stopped on the canal bank. There was a creak of wood and leather, the draft horses snorted, figures jumped down from the boxes. They were closed wagons, not dissimilar to those used for circus animals. Torches blazed up, there was a mutter of voices. More figures, men and women, descended from the second wagon and gathered round Marten and Rutger. Several riders, the rearguard, dismounted and led their horses to the front of the column. Moonlight glinted on rifle barrels and axes. ‘Did anyone see you?’
Rutger shook his head. ‘The handover was always done in secret and we only traveled by night. I’m quite sure no one noticed anything special.’ He raised his hand, then grasped Marten’s arm. ‘We’ve made it, guys,’ he said, turning to the men and women. ‘This is Marten Tilbert, the boss.’
Torches shone on his face. Marten assumed an expression which he hoped combined affability with authority.
‘This is Dombrowitz, boss, our specialist for the animals.’
A stocky, middle-aged man stepped forward and Marten shook his hand.
‘And that is …’ Marten made no effort to remember the mercenaries’ names. He intended to leave them under Rutger’s command. From now on he wouldn’t have time to deal with minor matters.
He drew Dombrowitz to one side. ‘Are the animals OK?’
‘They’ve been a bit neglected recently, boss. But they’re tough, and they come from zoos and safari parks where they were well looked after. They’ll need a short time to settle in, then we can start the training.’
‘Excellent. Tomorrow we’ll make arrangements to recruit suitable riders. Marten climbed onto the front mudguard of the first panel truck and peered inside through a window reinforced with wire netting. He was staring into the cold, pale, boot-button eye of an ostrich.
The African ostrich (struthio camelus), Marten had read in an encyclopedia, is a long-necked, long-legged, flightless bird that lives in the savannas, steppes and semi-deserts to the south of the Sahara. Up to eight foot tall and often weighing over three hundred pounds, they can reach speeds of forty mile per hour. The ostrich has a small head, but its powerfully muscled legs can kill a person with a single kick. It lives in flocks (sometimes large ones of up to 600). It mainly feeds on leaves, fruits and some small animals. It can live up to thirty years, sixty in captivity.
That was when Marten Tilbert had had his brilliant idea.
‘How many have we got?’ he asked as a couple of mercenaries opened the trucks and let the ostriches out, first of all pulling hoods over their eyes, as if they were falcons. Other mercenaries led them into the garden plot. A third group had already started making a pen with fence posts and a fourth mounted guard. In the initial stage the garden plots were to be their operational base.
‘Sixteen, boss.’
Sixteen ostriches. In the near future a postal service could be set up between sixteen cities. For riders he needed lightweight adolescents between ten and sixteen and that was what he intended to recruit. There wouldn’t be any problem. In the town he had seen how they were bored out of their skulls with no videos, computer games, TV, stereo systems or mopeds and just hung around, chewing their fingernails or beating each other up. And he could offer them excitement, privileges and good pay. When they were older they could take up other posts in his organization. He would turn them into an elite who would stand by him, come what may, because he’d look after them so well they’d think it was Christmas every day. The general public, ignored since the Catastrophe as far as communications were concerned, would be willing to shell out to be able to send letters to their far-off loved ones again. It was natural that the new postal service would be more expensive than the Federal Post had been, but Marten definitely intended to make his prices affordable. In this case it was quantity that counted. It secured the business and it could only increase his popularity into the bargain. And the ostriches would breed …
And the mercenaries would come down hard on anyone who attacked his couriers. Very hard. They must begin as they meant to go on. He rubbed his hands in satisfaction.
‘Woz goin’ on?’ Wencke came tottering over the canal bridge. Puffy eyed, she stared at the ostriches the mercenaries were leading past her. ‘Wozzat?’ She clung on to the railings.
Marten smiled. ‘The future. This is where the future begins.’
‘Don’t believe it.’ Wencke came right up to him, peered at his face. ‘Why’d you not tell me?’
‘Because I know you’ve been carrying on with that shit Bosshard for months. And because Bosshard would have had me liquidated had he heard of my plan.’ Marten’s smile froze. ‘He mustn’t find out now, either. I’m going to have the whole area cordoned off. No outsider must get wind of it before the training’s complete.’
Wencke rubbed her eyes. She still didn’t understand what was going on. ‘Training … ?’
Rutger, on the other hand, understood Marten as if he could read his thoughts. ‘What d’you want us to do with her, boss?’ he asked.
Marten hesitated. He could duck out of the responsibility, leave the decision to Rutger. Rutger would know what he had to do. But Marten Tilbert had read his Heinlein. He rid himself once and for all of his humane instincts and adopted the manly virtues. When the right thing had to be done a man could not shirk responsibility. ‘Do you know,’ he said to Wencke, ‘lately the statistics have been saying that telephone engineers tend to hang themselves. You will be no exception.’
Rutger waved some mercenaries over. After a brief tussle they dragged Wencke over to the trees along the now overgrown freeway.
Marten went into the summerhouse with Rutger and tore open a bottle of champagne he’d kept hidden specially for that day. ‘I’m afraid it’s not chilled,’ he said as they clinked glasses, ‘but, boy, are things going to hot up here in the near future.’
Horst Pukallus was born in Düsseldorf in 1949 and lives in Wuppertal today. Initially an insurance clerk, he became involved with the science fiction scene in the late 1960s, first as a critic and then a short story writer for fanzines and magazines and turned a full-scale professional in 1975. He gained a massive reputation as translator of significant writers such as John Brunner, Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick and others and was repeatedly awarded the Kurd Lasswitz Preis as best translator of the year. Even more important were his highly original, stilistically brillant novellas and short stories that marked him as one of the leading writers of a new wave of German science fiction from the late 1970ies onwards. Still active today, his latest book is the collection Am Abend kamen die Schnecken.