boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

Pelagic Spark 209
The captain nodded. “The English I picked up when I was Gauleiter in Des
Moines seems to be good enough to handle that. Only what does pelagic mean?”
“That’s the word that bothers me. It means ‘oceanic.’ Now ‘oceanic young spark’
doesn’t make any obvious sense —if anything, it’s a contradiction in terms. But it
makes just as good meter as ‘pelagic,’ so why was the exceedingly uncommon word
used instead of the obvious one? That’s why I’m hunting for an anagram in it. I’ve
been rearranging letters and I can’t get anything better than—” His voice stopped
dead. He stared at the captain, at his paper, and back at the captain.
“Well!” Captain Schweinspitzen barked. “What is it?”
“The best I can get,” Metzger repeated, “is ‘pig lace.’ ”
“And ‘pig lace,’ captain, means ‘Schweinspitzen.’ ”
The officer stared. The interpreter went on hastily, as details clicked into
formation: “You are of the East, have been here in Java for years. You were a telecast
operator once, weren’t you? Well, ‘spark’—or was it ‘sparks’?—meant wireless operator
in twentieth-century American dialect. “Pelagic young spark of the East—’ ”
“ ‘—shall plot to subvert the Blue Beast’,” the captain continued the quotation.
“In other words, Schweinspitzen, the ex-telecaster of Java, shall plot to subvert Hitler
XVI.” He smiled craftily to himself. “Well, Anton, we are all part of a design, aren’t
we? We can’t very well refuse to fulfill the prophecy, can we?”
Lyman Harding wrung out his dripping garments. You didn’t need clothes anyway,
here in the damp heat of the jungle. But they’d need these clothes later; they were
of bullet-deflecting soteron, and stealing that textile from the closely guarded plastic
factory had been the most perilous step in the plot—so far.
“The natives are with us,” Girdy reported to him. “They hate him and his rule
over them. Call him the Blue Beast.”
“If only we had planes—” Harding sighed. “Think how directly we could act
instead of this swimming in from a mile offshore and lurking in jungles and—”
“We’ll have planes soon enough,” Girdy said confidently.
“If it all comes off according to schedule. If our other men all over the world
manage to dispose of his followers according to the rule of succession. Then there’ll
be complete chaos in the Party, and those who still love freedom can strike.”
“But ours is the biggest job.” Girdy’s wide ugly face was alight with pride. “When
we knock off the Hitler himself— Only have you figured yet how we can crash this
inspection reception?”
“I’ve only got a rough plan—” Lyman Harding began.
* * *
Anton Metzger did not like the changes that were evident in Captain Schweinspitzen
after that momentous discussion of the American prophecy.
The captain had previously seemed unusually intelligent and unusually human
for the post which he held. Oh, he was given to ranting about his stifled abilities as
a leader of men, but he was a friend and companion. He understood the arts, even
in their neglected or forbidden aspects, and he understood people, even tolerating
Metzger when he talked in a tone that did not jibe perfectly with the tenets of the
Aryan World State.
For Metzger felt his Austrian blood more keenly than his Prussian. He was a