The Nazi song, Horst Wessel, drifted through the module like smoke. It sounded from the surviving speaker system and bounced off the walls and floated down the corridors. The only person who was listening to Horst Wessel with any degree of eagerness was Ziegler. He had remained alone in the sickbay to watch over Stahl’s body and like a familiar childhood memory, the Nazi music relaxed the prisoner. Laziness had played a part in his decision to remain with Stahl. This was partially due to the legacy of his previous bureaucratic life working for the Party and to the work-shy life he had managed to develop back at Neu Magdeburg where he had worked in the Commandant’s office, safe from the foundries and the guards. In fact, the only time that Ziegler had ever volunteered at the camp was when he lobbied the Commandant to be selected for the Odin. It may have seemed irrational at the time given his own history, but then Ziegler was far from the bosom of the Party with no prospect of rehabilitation, so in his eyes, there was nothing to lose by stowing aboard the spaceship and starting a new life. He may have still been a prisoner, but at least he was far from the sense of shame he felt every moment he was in the prison-camp, and more important to him, he was far away from his failure to obtain his ultimate goal. But that was in the past, a million years in the past as far as he was concerned, because there was another reason why he had lingered in the module. A reason he couldn’t divulge to his fellow prisoners. His love for the swastika, his love for the Nazi party, for so long forsaken and forgotten, had stirred once again. The sense of duty he had felt towards these symbols of power, for so long dormant and suppressed by his anger and sense of betrayal had once again come to dominate him. This urge to obey had already started to re-emerge like debris from a drained lake ever since their disastrous arrival upon Vanaheim, but now it consumed him like an insatiable lust. Perhaps it was lust – a lust for power. In Ziegler’s mind, it was as if the force of the crash, its violence and horror, had freed this submissive compulsion from its prison, the most blatant demonstration of its freedom being his proud Nazi salute at the flag-raising ceremony. Strangely, Ziegler had sensed this duty grow stronger and stronger the longer he remained in the presence of the comatose Nazi. He could have left this glow of obedience, but he remained, revelling in the sense of power that invisibly fogged the area.
As Ziegler sat in the gloom humming along to the Nazi anthem, fond memories were pulled from him, their shape and form coalescing vividly before his eyes. His office overlooking the lush greenery of the Tiergarten in Berlin. Standing on the podium at the annual Nuremburg rallies, first in the sunshine, then at night, the hordes of troops, officials and dignitaries illuminated either by the bright spring sunshine, or by the famous cathedrals of light. He remembered walking through these vast crowds as he made his way across the floor of the stadium, the unceasing and deafening cries of “Sieg Heil!” or “Heil Hitler!” ringing in his ears, and to him, ringing in his soul.
But a more vivid and stronger series of images then filled Ziegler’s vision. The vision was from a time when he first tasted the power he once so took for granted and which he secretly still sought. He remembered entering the Reich Chancellery in the capital for the first time as an eager, naïve party official. One by one, he slowly climbed the steps outside into the columned entrance to enter the endless marble-lined halls. He passed ambassadors from various client states and administrators from the far-flung corners of the Reich. It was like a scene from an exotic court of some long forgotten Roman emperor or a medieval king. Black dress-uniforms mixed with gold-braid, while riding-crops swung side by side with ivory batons. Some paced anxiously back and forth rehearsing what they were to say to their Führer, while others laughed and gossiped. But outside the Führer’s office at the heart of the building it was unnervingly quiet like the interior of a church. Only hushed voices spoke here. It was as if the inherent power that lurked beyond the tall wooden doors stifled all emotion like some suffocating blanket. The stifling atmosphere was policed by two Nazi praetorian-guards, the Leibstandarte-SS. They snapped to attention as the doors parted to allow Ziegler into the Nazi holy of holies.
At the far end of the grand office was the exalted Führer himself. Upon seeing Ziegler, he slowly rose from behind his desk and beckoned Ziegler toward him. Ziegler remembered being frozen on the spot by the unbelievable sense of anticipation he felt. Eventually he crossed the seemingly endless room like a moth to the flame. The same sense of anticipation he had felt that day so long ago refilled Ziegler as he cast the vision to one side.
But something had changed in the sickbay during that time.
The cot at the centre of the room was empty. Stahl was gone.
The screens that had monitored the Nazi were now blank and mute, the life-lines as flat and featureless as the landscape outside. Ziegler reached out and brushed his hand across the bed as if unsure what he was looking at as if perhaps the empty bed was still a vibrant element of his visions, but once his hand touched the white leather upholstery, his own life-signs were displayed on the monitors. His growing sense of dread was visualised on the screens as a series of jagged peaks. Turning, he saw that Lang’s cot inside the isolation-room was empty too. The thick leather straps that had restrained him hung loosely from the bed, chiming as they swayed against the bed’s metal frame.
Ziegler turned once again and sensed that someone, or something, resided in the darkness with him.
He stepped away from the empty cots, then, much to his amazement, he heard someone singing along with the tinny Nazi anthem. The voice was hoarse, barely above that of a whisper, but to Ziegler’s ears the voice possessed a rasping, malevolent quality, its sound imbued with a palpable sense of power. It sounded like the voice of the Devil, the tones scarred by his descent from heaven. As he listened, all his senses told him to escape from the darkness and seek safety in the bright daylight outside, but something about the voice drew him closer. But what struck the former Nazi was the fact that he experienced the very same sense of anticipation he felt as he crossed the Führer’s office all those years before.
In front of Ziegler were two figures, their outlines highlighted by a bank of blinking monitors. One stood, while the second figure appeared to be kneeling before the other like a supplicant receiving a blessing. And much to the astonishment of Zeigler, the standing figure was revealed to be Stahl, and it was Lang who grovelled at his feet. Stahl’s hands clung tightly to Lang’s face, whose loving gaze remained upon the seemingly resurrected Nazi. The priest’s eyes were full of adulation, like that of a lover staring at a long lost love.
Stahl was seemingly oblivious to Ziegler as he continued to coo over the holy man, but in the weak light, Ziegler could see the change in Stahl’s appearance. His skin was deathly pale, while his hair, which before the incident inside the spire, was a natural golden blonde now appeared to be drained of all its colour. It was as if the Nazi had passed through the hands of an alchemist. But the biggest change was the Nazi’s eyes. They had already transmuted from his natural blue to a sickening tar-like black inside the spire, now they shone a bright azure-blue, their gaze feral and cold. He was now a caricature of the perfect Aryan, the aspects previously thought to be perfect and pure – the blonde hair, the blue eyes, the fair skin – all had been stretched and warped to their absolute extreme, in fact, he was no longer Aryan, but an Über-Aryan.