Steve Tem - Ubo

She has overslept and she is going to be late for school. Her father is in a panic and is now speaking harshly to her, something he almost never does.

“Lazy, foolish girl, what is wrong with you? You’ve slept late again and now the entire family must pay!” And then he slaps her across the face. But she doesn’t cry out. She is too busy examining his face, trying to decide if this is some imposter who has taken her father’s place.

Her mother comes in and roughly strips her out of her bedclothes. Then her mother tries to dress her in her school uniform, but she is struggling, trying to explain to her mother that this is the wrong uniform—it is completely different from the one she is supposed to wear. But her mother speaks a different language from her and cannot understand. “Dakka dakka dakka,” her mother says. “Dakka dakka dakka.”

Her parents drag her into the school and up the stairs to her classroom. They stand in the doorway waiting for her to find her seat. The other students stare at her in her strange uniform. She says hello to several of her friends but they pretend they don’t know her. She is sure it is her strange uniform that is the problem and she tries to take it off.

“Wicked girl!” the schoolmaster shouts. “Only a sad whore takes off all her clothes!” In the doorway her parents cry out in shame.

She stops undressing, because of course the schoolmaster must be correct. She remembers that she is wearing nothing under the uniform.

Another girl is sitting in her assigned seat wearing the proper uniform. She doesn’t bother to ask her, but she knows she also has her name.

“Sit down! Sit down!” her father shouts from the doorway. “You have to find your place!” Her mother weeps and wrings her hands.

It is no use. There are no empty seats, and no one will get up to offer her one. She leaves the classroom in despair and walks out of the school with her parents.

Her family returns to their neighborhood, but when she starts up the walk to their home her father stops her. “It’s no use,” he says. “Now there’s no place for us here.”

“No, Father. It will be all right,” she says, but when she knocks on the door to their home a stranger answers. The rest of his family soon gathers behind him, gazing angrily at her.

“There must be some mistake,” she tells them. “My family and I live here.”

“No, no,” the father of the strange family tells her. “It is you who has made the mistake, Jew.”

They wander all night looking for a new place to live. Finally there is nothing more to do than to go to another neighborhood which was recently destroyed by fire. After much searching they finally find one wall still standing, and a soot-covered door in the middle of it.

She can feel her family standing behind her, anxiously waiting as she pushes and pushes on the edge of the door.

Finally it swings open, but there is nothing on the other side but wind and a distant light. “That’s all right,” she tells them. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. One by one they follow her in.

Abruptly Daniel felt himself snatched, pushed along so quickly and so far from any previous context he had no chance to gather himself. He had an odd notion of something failing, falling back and lost in the crevices between years, and then he’d landed.

Initially Daniel thought he might be playing a German schoolmaster this time, as in this mind’s idle play the most prevalent themes were discipline and pedagogy. Or perhaps he was a kind of administrator, as this was a mind filled with statistics, movements, logistics.

Die Weisen Könige wurden von einer Vereinigung von Asen abstammen und Vanir.

And a touch of madness, or at least a deep eccentricity. Irminenschaft. Wiligut had explained to Heinrich in meticulous detail how the Bible had been Germanic in its original state, how that ancient German god Krist had been stolen by the Christians for their own purposes. Wiligut claimed that German culture reached back at least as far as 228,000 BC, an idea that thrilled him and confirmed his own notions of the profound antiquity of the Aryan race.

It was simply undeniable that the inhabitants of Atlantis were Aryans who had descended from the heavens and settled on the continent. After the deluge they established a mythical city in a subterranean world below Tibet somewhere in the Himalayas.

This consciousness was flooded with these visions of color and light and dramatic gestures. The mouth became brutally dry as his excitement grew. It was the physical response to imaginative wonder typical of adolescent boys.

He had carefully filed notes from Wiligut elaborating on this buried city. He’d received the relevant letter in March, so it would be there. He could not recall the time the letter had been delivered into his hands, but that information would be noted on the front. And such a letter was significant enough that there should be a corresponding entry in his diary from that time.

In his diary he had precisely recorded everything he’d ever given anyone, how long he’d slept on any particular day, when he bathed, how many plums he ate, how many soldiers had been killed so far in this great war.

All they needed was additional proof, substantial evidence from more expeditions like the one he’d sent to Tibet. It was crucial to have something to show the Führer, something that would persuade him, and perhaps renew his hopes.

The Führer had not been the same of late. But Heinrich had hopes that this insidious deterioration in their savior would reverse itself. If not, perhaps they could persuade him to take a quieter role. Of course Heinrich was torn—his loyalty was pure—surely Hitler was ordained by the Karma of the Germanic world to lead them! Hitler was one of those brilliant figures who always appeared in Germany when it had reached a final crisis in body, mind, and soul.

But he could not bear the thought of anything lessening the reputation of their deliverer, even the Führer’s own actions.

Heinrich hoped he might persuade the Führer to see both the Germanic far past and far future as the endless unbroken stream that HeinrichHimmler—reincarnation of that pre-Christian Saxon, Henry the Fowler—had seen for himself.

“Pardon, Herr Reichsführer. Are you ill?”

In that ancient time there had been three suns and the Earth had been inhabited by giants, dwarfs, and the other creatures of legend. Truly there had been gods walking the earth in those days, and there would be again. He knew he was no god, but with the right breeding, the correct policies carried through by his SS, some day there would be.

“Reichsführer? Should I summon your doctor?”

Heinrich gazed up at the handsome blond officer and smiled faintly. He wondered if the man had fathered children. Perhaps the children, too, would be gloriously blond and handsome. If a man like that had multiple partners he might father many, many Aryan children. Heinrich would have a friendly chat with him after the speech was over. “Thank you for your concern. Dr. Kersten is in Sweden, I’m afraid. Felix cannot help me today. My stomach is bothering me, but I will be fine without his help, I assure you. I simply need a few minutes to collect my thoughts. Has the podium been inspected?” The Poznan town hall had not been his first choice for the speech—he had some security concerns. But it would do.

“Ja, Herr Reichsführer. Twice.”

“Then inspect it again.”

He should never have permitted Felix to go to Sweden. He needed him here. His belly had been much worse the past few days, and Felix’s massages were the only thing that brought him relief.

An unpleasant beer smell was in the room. Beer upset his stomach. There also seemed to be… a corpse smell. He did not know how else to describe it.