Robert Adams - The Memories of Milo Morai

“Sodon’t worry anymore about Judy, but still keep me informed of any odd or unusual things you notice in the conduct of any of the rest of the group over there.

“And as far as Hizinger is concerned, that’s not his name, of course. He was one of Erwin Rommel’s favorite young officers. He was ordered back to Germany despite his and Rommel’s objections in order to do the other thing he does well, which is said to be a certain realm of higher mathematics. It’s considered that if he does agree to work with us, he’ll be a real prize.”

Outside, in Barstow’s office, he pressed a bottle of Scotch and a handful of cigars on Milo, saying, “Don’t worry so much, major . You’re doing a splendid job. Operation Newhaven is progressing marvelously, and my superiors are very pleased. Didn’t I tell you, back in Germany, in Mlinchen, that if you stuck with me you’dhave a sky’s-the-limit future in the Army? By the way, I’ve already put in paperwork on your lieutenant colonelcy, Milo.”

But Milo did continue to worry. He felt a vague sense of unease. And he soon was to find that he had good reason.

With the dawning of Sacred Sun over the vast prairie, one of the young warriors, Djessee-Kahl Staiklee, set out with several spare horses to search out and bring back Clans Staiklee and Gahdfree to the rich treasure trove of metals that awaited them all in the ruined city of ancient times. He bore written messages from both Little Djahn Staiklee and Uncle Milo, as well as oral urgings from his peers to their own chiefs, sires and siblings.

Of course, he also bore his own eyewitness testimony to the lush verdancy of the well-watered prairie in the proximity of the ruins and of the profusion of the relatively unchary game animals thereabouts. All of these facts would constitute telling arguments in the favor of a movement of both clans, entire—women, children, horses, dogs, cattle, sheep, goats and all—rather than just a party of men to strip what they could from the ruins before rejoining families and moving on.

With plenty of food in camp, Milo took Gy, Djoolya, Little Djahn Staiklee and all but two of the other young warriors back to the ruins, this time with two carts and the proper tools for more thorough delving into those ruins. They hitched up the teams, loaded the carts, mounted and rode out in an icy drizzle borne on a strong but steady wind. However, by the time they came into the far-flung outskirts of the sometime city, the wind had weakened consider-ably, the drizzle had entirely ceased and Sacred Sun was again peeking here and there through the dissipating cloud cover.

All of the young men had seen other and larger ruins before, of course, for there were many of them athwart the main migration routes that served both wild herds and nomad clans, but all of these had been stripped and picked overyears agone. Gy and the young Teksikuhns were awed by the amounts and varieties of the riches of these ruins that had lain for so long untouched.

Milo shooed them all away from the automotive hulks, saying, “Save that scrap metal for the clans to hack apart. The traders give much better barter goods for made artifacts that still are sound and usable. Let’s see if we can finda hardware or a farm-supply store.”

They found one of each type of store a few blocks south of the tall building area and soon had both carts filled with hand tools, small items of hardware, pots and pans of steel and cast iron and copper, rolls of chain, some galvanized buckets, and two enamelware sets of cups and plates and bowls which caught Djoolya’s eye, as too did a large reflector oven. They loaded in yards of verdigrised copper tubing and hundreds of yards of copper wire of various gauges.

Remembering the contents of the sealed fallout shelter cum tomb they had stumbled across out on the prairie, Milo was more than a little relieved to find that sometime in the distant past, the hardware store had been thoroughly stripped of firearms and ammo. Either those same looters or others of a similar bent had taken all of the bows but, strangely, had left behind nearly five dozens of fine bowstrings—individually sealed in plastic and still fresh and usable as they had been on the day they had arrived at the store, at least two centuries before Milo’s arrival. He also found a plastic box containing two dozen hunting heads of tempered bronze, the three edges of each still razor-sharp.

Investigation of a small pharmacy showed them evidence of an individual or, more likely, a group interested in drugs and nothing else. The shelves of the prescription section had been stripped absolutely bare and even the nonprescription analgesics were gone, but the remainder of the stock of the pharmacy and the attached variety store was as intact as long, long years of baking heat and freezing cold and the incursions of rodents and insects had left it.

Djoolya came over beaming to show Milo her find of a handful of stainless-steel combs of various sizes, and Milo did not tell her that they had been intended for use on dogs and cats. The nomad woman was also beside herself with joy when she found a small cache of sewing supplies—fine needles, straight and safety pins, assorted buttons, thimbles and a full bucketload of spools of thread in shades and colors the like of which she had never before seen.

One of the rarer finds was that of an entire shelf of quart-size apothecary bottles, vacuum-sealed and containing still-edible dry-roasted peanuts, and just as many pint-sized jars of the same kind filled with cashew nuts or almonds; they could eat the nuts, then trade off the colored-glass jars to the easterners for less fragile merchandise.

Despite the amounts of meat already in camp, the young warriors delightedly vied with each other in knocking over squirrels, hares, rabbits and game birds on the way back to camp. Little Djahn Staiklee took the pot-hunter prize by neatly smashing the head of a purplish torn turkey with a shrewd cast of his carven throwing-stick, just as the torn had lifted from off the ground, big wings beating furiously. Under those circumstances, a head hit was not even to be expected, and Milo privately wondered just how much of the kill had been skill and how much pure, blind, stupid luck, but aloud, he joined fully in the praise of the young man’s expertise.

Back at the camp, the gleanings were, as usual, spread out and equally divided among each yurt—Milo’s, Bard Herbuht’s, Gy’s and that of the young warriors. Some would go into immediate use of the nomads, some would be wrought into decorations or useful purposes, the remainder would be traded off whenever they crossed the trail of the eastern traders.

The contents of one of the larger jars of peanuts made an exotic and tasty addition to that night’s soup pot. As soon as the rich soup, the assorted small fowl, and meat from yesterday’s kills and the turkey had been consumed, Milo was immediately pressed by all of the others—humans and cats alike—to once more open his memories that they might hear more of his life in that strange world of so long ago.

Alone in their shared bungalow bedroom, Milo sat buffing his cordovan oxfords, while Betty sat at an improvised vanity table combing her short hair.

“Milo,” she asked casually, “the doctors, have they yet reached any consensus as regards these three Germans?”

Holding up the shoe and examining it critically, Milo spat on the toe and once more went at it with the soft brush. “As a matter of fact, they have. Dr. Smith, who seems to be their spokesman, came to my office late this afternoon to give me the results of their conference. For him, he was quite excited, too. It seems that both Hizinger and Gries were connected with the buzz-bomb projects, both the V-1 and the V-2, from almost the beginning until right up to the bitter end.”