As if on cue, the Doctor came back into the room.
"I was hoping I"d see you again," Wiesniewski said. "I think in all the rush since we met, I forgot to say thanks. And to say sorry that Lewis didn"t let you go find your friends."
"I"ll find them." The Doctor shuffled his feet, looking a little embarra.s.sed at the attention. "You"re off to a new a.s.signment?"
Wiesniewski nodded. "Desk job at Lewis"s place. They want to check me out, I suppose, after I lost my squad." He understood why they didn"t trust him with a combat a.s.signment, but it still hurt to be considered suspect. He was as much disappointed not to be able to prove himself again, as he was relieved to be out of the firing line for a time.
"I think it"s pretty clear that wasn"t your fault."
Wiesniewski shrugged. "It"s the way things work."
The Doctor regarded him for a moment, then handed him his tie. "You"ll need that for an office job. Actually, I wanted to see you before you left. To ask for your help with something."
"Go ahead, shoot."
"I want you to keep an ear out for any stories similar to yours among the troops here."
"You mean weird mists, bodies vanishing...?"
"Yes, yes, I mean exactly that. I strongly suspect that you"re not the only one to experience this sort of thing, and if I"m going to get to the bottom of it I"ll need some idea of how widespread it is, and how long it"s been going on."
Wiesniewski nodded. Perhaps it would throw some light on what happened to him. If it had happened to others, then he could he sure he wasn"t just going crazy. "I doubt there"ll be any formal reports..." He himself certainly wouldn"t put the weirder elements in a formal report. That would cause too much trouble with his superiors.
"That doesn"t matter." The Doctor smiled. "Rumours and chat are all I need to go on."
Bearclaw had been staggering along for hours. He even managed to stow away on the back of a truck for a short while, though it had hurt like h.e.l.l when he jumped back out.
He had no idea where he was this morning, but he figured that if he kept heading west he"d hit some American lines eventually.
He didn"t feel cold any more, and instead just wanted to go to sleep. In spite of the tremendous urge to stop and rest, he forced himself to carry on through the fields. He had been brought up in the mountains of the southwest"s Four Corners area, and knew that he was feeling the symptoms of hypothermia and exposure. He also knew that, if he gave in to the urge to sleep, he would never wake up.
Ordinarily, even he wouldn"t have the strength to keep going, but the sounds of shooting in his ears and the look on Sam"s face that hovered in his eyes drove him on. What had happened back there at the Baugnez crossroads had to be reported, and avenged. He had no idea whether anybody else made it out. It was down to him.
His wife would think him crazy for taking on so much responsibility, but he had no doubt she would also love him for his stubbornness. She was like that. His kids would approve too. They all thought their dad was a hero.
Yeah, right. Being a hero just meant fate had screwed you over and you"d survived it. But you couldn"t survive it every time. All the heroes he knew were dead.
He realised that the landscape hadn"t moved in several minutes, and finally came to the conclusion that he had fallen over without even realising it. He hoped he wasn"t asleep. If he was he must be dead already, and he didn"t like the thought of spending eternity feeling like this.
His legs hurt like h.e.l.l as he stood, and didn"t ease up any when he got going again.
If nothing else, the overload of pain from that drowned out the pain when he stumbled and fell again. He must be falling asleep, he decided, as he was dreaming. He dreamed of faces hovering around him and hands lifting him into the air. Then he was floating, his whole body numb.
Weary before he even began the new day"s duties, Garcia returned to the former hotel and checked the incomings and outgoings at reception. While he had been out following that sergeant, two men had died and another five been brought in from the line.
He felt guilty, even though he knew those men would have died even if he had been at their bedside the whole time.
The sergeant he had followed had indulged in some pretty strange behaviour. He had visited several local shopkeepers, then gone and retired to a room in the local brothel. Garcia found it somewhat offensive that a brothel was considered so vital as to be allowed to stay open, but he wasn"t going to make waves about it. He indulged himself a wry smile. Well, if it gave the men an incentive to get out of his hospital...
He would think about this curious sergeant"s activities later, and then make a decision. He knew where to find the man when he was ready.
At this rate he wouldn"t have enough room for all the wounded coming in. Still, some of the men taking the beds would be dead soon enough. Garcia shook his head. He knew that you lost people sometimes, no matter what you did; but they still all took a piece of him with them. Making a note to check on the newcomers first, he went to his office to pick up a white coat.
Garcia paused in the doorway. The Doctor was sitting at the desk, with only a small table lamp illuminating the room. He was holding one hand under the light, scrutinising it closely, with an unreadable expression on his usually clear features. Garcia wondered what he was doing checking for sh.e.l.l shocks, maybe? Seeing whether his hand remained steady, or was getting shaky...?
Then he realised that the Doctor"s eyes weren"t quite focused on the hand, but the desk beneath. It looked as if he was making shadow animals with his fingers, but there was something not quite right...
The Doctor stood up, giving an apologetic smile that was too rushed to be entirely genuine, in Garcia"s opinion. "Sorry, I didn"t realise you"d be coming in at this hour."
"I sleep here." He refined the statement. "At least, I sleep here for about half an hour between operations."
"Not a much of a nine-tofive job, this war business, is it?"
"I wouldn"t know: I"ve never really worked that way." He was quite proud of that fact actually. He enjoyed feeling just a little different from others. Not much, just a little. It was, perhaps, more interesting.
"What did you do before all this?" the Doctor asked.
"Much the same," Garcia said with a shrug, "but under better conditions. I was a surgical intern at LA County until I got drafted. At least I had skills too valuable to make me a GI. How about you? What"s your profession?"
"Me? I take stands. Oh, and cheat Death, of course."
"Cheat Death, huh? Interesting profession."
"Oh, no. Making things Right is my profession. Cheating Death"s just a sort of hobby... But I seem to be rather talented at it."
Garcia nodded absently. "The problem with cheating Death is that he"s a sore loser at the best of times."
"Yes," the Doctor agreed mildly, "she is."
"She? The trick cyclists have probably got a word for that sort of a.s.sociation. Probably start asking nonsense about your mother."
The Doctor sniffed. "I"m afraid they"d only get nonsense back, then. I don"t imagine they"d believe the truth even if I was in the mood to tell it."
"That bad, huh?"
Emil Metz tried without success to stop his boots from making any noise as his patrol moved through the woods near a reported American position on the Schnee Eifel. The whole ridge of the Eifel ran for miles and should be cleared of Americans by now, but there was always the chance that a small group had been overlooked or cut off.
While he still got scared from time to time, the ease with which their forces had advanced made him feel quite proud to be part of the German army.
Although he was a paratrooper, he had never had to jump out of an aircraft. He was glad of that. Facing enemy fire was one thing, but the thought of plummeting to Earth through miles of open air was just too scary. He would never have signed up for the paratroopers in the old days, when they did still jump. Come to that, he would never have signed up for them if he had realised how far their elite image had fallen.
Not only were they the b.u.t.t of the Infantry and SS jokes, but of the quartermasters" too. Metz"s Schmeisser had a broken firing pin when he was issued with it, and there were no replacements. He had had to wait for somebody to get killed, then take their gun.
It was quite a pleasant day, in spite of the snowy mud and the cold. The air was sharp and clean, and he remembered playing in woods just like this when he was a boy. He was thinking about those days more and more. He hoped there wouldn"t be any fighting for the unit today; it would spoil the atmosphere of peace around here.
"Listen," their corporal said. Everyone paused, straining their ears, just as Metz did.
"I don"t hear anything," Metz said. And what was wrong with that? Nothing, as far as he was concerned. Like he said, a peaceful atmosphere.
"Exactly," the corporal muttered. "No birdsong, no sounds of battle from the front... Not even our own footsteps."
Metz looked down, stepping on to a twig. He heard it crack. Then he noticed the others moving their feet, but heard nothing. That was very strange. He saw himself as a boy in the woods looking round, wide-eyed. Then a sound did come. Metz swallowed nervously, cursed, c.o.c.ked his gun. It was a low, persistent hum, like something trying to force its way through the air.
It wasn"t coming from above, but from all around. Everyone in the patrol was looking for the source, evidently as nervous as Metz suddenly felt. He didn"t see anything and turned back towards the others. He didn"t see them any more either a grey wall of mist was rising to obscure them. Between that and the hum, it was almost as if the snow was being melted to steam on a griddle. Despite that, it all still lay on the ground unchanged.
The humming suddenly ended, splintering into a chorus of low animal sounds, but like no animal Metz had ever heard before. They came from different directions and he had no idea which way to move.
When the gunfire started, it was both inevitable and shocking. Metz spun round to face its source, trying to work out what was being shot at.
Then something black coalesced out of the mist, and Metz never saw whatever his target was. He never saw anything again.
Garcia ran down the stairs at the same time as the Doctor emerged from the little office. A jeep had pulled up outside, with a casualty found in a small area of no-man"s-land, suffering from exposure.
The men who had found him carried him up to a room with a fire in it, having wrapped him in their topcoats for the trip back. "He should be OK. They caught him in time. He"ll need to be kept warm, given something hot to drink, but that should be about all."
"And the blood?" one of the men asked.
"Seems to be someone else"s. Aside from some cuts and bruising from some hard falls, he"s pretty much unharmed."
While Garcia escorted the men out of the door, the Doctor checked the new patient"s dog tags. "Daniel Bearclaw."
At the sound of his name, Bearclaw"s eyes flicked open, staring but not seeing, if Garcia was any judge. The GI grabbed the Doctor"s wrist. "Nayenezgani," he said in a tone of wonderment. "Nayenezgani, and Kachinas. I saw the Kachinas. Examining the dead... They were examining the dead..." His face contorted. "Murdering n.a.z.i b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" He slipped away again, as if exhausted by the effort of his last shout.
"Best to let him sleep it off while we patch up those cuts," Garcia suggested.
The Doctor absently handed him a needle and some suture thread. "You heard what he said, though?"
Garcia nodded. "Didn"t understand a word of it, mind you, but I heard."
"Kachinas," the Doctor murmured softly. "In Hopi mythology, the "cloud people". Yet Nayenezgani is a Navajo word..."
"And what does it mean?" Not that it was likely to be important.
"It means he seems to recognise me."
"You"ve met before?"
"Not personally, no. Unless it was in my future, of course."
"Wha"
"But actually the really important part of his story was the part about the Kachinas examining the bodies of the dead."
Garcia hadn"t been the least bit surprised by that part of Bearclaw"s tale. "Yes... It definitely helps prove how near death he was. Between the shock and the temperatures out there, I"d have been more worried if he hadn"t had a few hallucinations."
"A few hallucinations," the Doctor echoed. He smiled faintly. "No no no. Whatever injuries he"s sustained, I think they may have caused him to see something real... What if he"d fallen into an altered state of consciousness, his brain flooded with emergency chemicals? That"s as likely to open new neural pathways as to shut off the usual ones."
Colonel Lewis walked into Wiesniewski"s office without knocking. "Lieutenant."
Wiesniewski stood, saluting. "Sir."
"At ease." Lewis watched Wiesniewski thoughtfully. "I just wanted to welcome you to the unit. I know it can"t be easy for a combat man to take on a desk job."
Wiesniewski looked quite sanguine about it. "I pledged to do my duty, sir, whatever that might be."
Lewis nodded. "Glad to hear it." Both he and his nebulous companion would be glad to hear it, in fact. He resisted the urge to look towards where his partner would be.
"There is one thing, though. I"ve been hearing some odd rumours lately. Nonsense stories about... I dunno, ghosts or phantoms. Bodys.n.a.t.c.hers."
Wiesniewski looked uncomfortable. "People under combat conditions are also under a lot of stress "
Lewis grinned broadly. "Correct. I"m glad you agree with us. With me. I don"t want to look like a martinet, but I"d like these stories to stop. They"re just spooking people, and it"s bad for morale."
"I"m afraid we can"t stop people from thinking about what they... think they saw."
"I"ll settle for stopping them talking about it. I want it known that if someone really wants to get it off their chest, they can write it up in a confidential report. If not, then they should keep it to themselves. If I hear any man gossiping about such nonsense, there"s always the chance that he will be written off as a Section Eight at best. Possibly court-martialled for cowardice, if he"s just trying to get home on a Section Eight rap. You"ll see to that?"
"Yes, sir, I will."
"Good. I"m glad we understand each other. Carry on." Lewis left Wiesniewski to his work. In reality, of course, the person most afraid was Lewis himself; he knew that. He was afraid of things getting out of hand, and out of his personal control.
He didn"t mind any of the things that were happening, so long as he was in charge. And whatever his partner might think, he was was in charge. in charge.
Bearclaw could hardly believe his luck. When he had felt himself lifted into the air, his brain had never entertained the possibility that it was a jeep crew lifting him on to their jeep. He had his priorities in his mind when he awoke and had insisted on dictating a report on the ma.s.sacre he had escaped.
A nurse was taking it down. Maybe it wasn"t the sort of revenge he had hoped for, but at least he was doing something towards it. The more people who knew, the more chance that somebody would do something.
There were others listening too; Garcia, and Nayene The Doctor, he corrected himself. Apparently those two had worked on him when he"d been brought in. He wouldn"t forget that.
"They shot forty or fifty of our guys. Some civilians too; the cafe owner, the English girl we"d picked up..."
"English girl?" the Doctor asked. "What English girl?"
"She said her name was... Sam, yeah, that"s it. Samantha something."
"Jones?" the Doctor whispered, his face pale.