The Bavarian Gate

26

A Peculiar Gate

The next morning the psychics weren't taken to their instructors. They weren't even wakened for breakfast, but instead rousted out for an early lunch. It seemed to Macurdy that the psychic "power surge" of the night before must have left everyone, except Tsulgax and probably the Voitar, in a state of collapse.

About the time they'd finished lunch-rye bread, margarine, cheese and sausage-Macurdy became aware of a hum of energy; a different energy than he'd felt the night before. The others felt it too; he could read it in their auras, and by the way they looked around.

Not long afterward, a haggard Lieutenant Lipanov and an entire squad of equally haggard guardsmen took the psychics for a walk; all but the old woman. And if that wasn't remarkable enough, Greszak went with them, long legs like swift scissor blades. The Voitu's vigor startled Macurdy.

This time they didn't stay on the country road, with its mild ups and downs, but in just a short distance turned off on a truck trail that angled up the side of the Witches' Ridge. Built by the military for four-wheel-drive vehicles, Macurdy decided. He wondered why.

The day was sunny and mild, somewhat above freezing, and the upgrade unrelenting, so that despite frequent short breaks to catch their breath, most were soon sweating. The middle-aged gypsy complained of chest pain, and a guardsman took her back to the schloss, but everyone else kept hiking up the stony road until, two-thirds of the way to the top, they stopped. By that time the energy field was considerably stronger, oppressing all of them except himself-himself and Greszak who'd been scanning the psychics continually.

On the way back down it suddenly cut off. By then Macurdy knew what kind of energy field it was, knew it well from Injun Knob: Somewhere on the Witches' Ridge was a gate, if not to Yuulith, then to some place like it-an activated gate, though the hour was far from midnight. The realization, when it hit him, had given him chills.

And the Voitar? The Voitar were definitely not from Mars. They were-they had to be from the other side of the gate.

Neither Landgraf nor Kupfer nor the Voitar explained the unusual walk. Nor Schurz, who almost surely didn't know. It was not a coincidence though, Macurdy felt sure. Perhaps a test, to see which of them were affected, and how much.

The next day the psychics returned to their class routine, but something had changed. The gate field turned on for something approaching an hour, but at roughly an hour later. It repeated the next day, an hour or so later than on the day before.

Later that day, the glowering Tsulgax took Montag from the classroom to Kurqosz's office.. "Herr Montag," said Kurqosz, "have you felt anything unusual in the air, lately? In the afternoons?"

"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, solid-seeming 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 break time, 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, ceiling-less 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.

Kurqosz answered, then rose unsteadily to his feet, Tsulgax rising with him, and gave orders. The Voitik men-at-arms wore bulky fur cloaks and carried others, putting them over the shoulders of the arrivals. Hands, non-threatening, helped them from the shelter, on a path shoveled through snow too deep for Macurdy to see over.

Ahead was a building, two-storied and steep-roofed, with walls of broad overlapping planks. Its entrance was marked by something like the kerosene lamps he'd grown up with- an oil lamp with an open-topped globe of glass that shielded its flame from the wind. One of their escort raised a bar and held the door open. They went into warmth, and it was closed behind them.

Kurqosz gave more orders. Two guards, these without spears but carrying scabbarded swords, took Macurdy down a lamplit corridor, a smell of fragrant smoke overlying the smell of wood-cedar of some kind, he thought. They stopped at a door. One of the guards opened it and gestured him in, the motion brusque but not hostile. The room was lit by another oil lamp, this one open: in one wall was a window tightly shuttered, in a comer a built-in ceramic stove, flames visible through a window that might have been isinglass. A long low bed stood by one wall. The guard, whom Macurdy judged at about seven feet, said something unintelligible-a single word-then stepped back into the corridor and closed the door, leaving him alone.

Macurdy checked the bed. The sheets resembled flannel; the covers were fur. A small table held a washbasin, a bowl of soft soap, a large pitcher of water and a mug. A towel hung by it.

He wondered if they always had quarters ready like this, or if someone had come through from the schloss the day before, with instructions. Meanwhile he wasn't sleepy, but it seemed he was to stay there. Someone, he hoped, was seeing to supper for him, though here it was probably nearer breakfast time. He decided he might as well wait lying down.

He did, atop one fur blanket and beneath the other, and before he realized what was happening, fell asleep.