Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [137]
"Well, I can't talk about Hegel or Kant, if that's what you're waiting for."
"Something easier, then. How about your childhood?" Cray thought for a moment. "I knew I was going to be an engineer when I was very young. Maybe ten or eleven years old."
They passed a rolling pin, then stepped over wooden coat hangers. She nodded, encouraging him. "What made you think so?"
"Future engineers do one of two things. They play with radios or they play with chemistry sets. And they become either mechanical or chemical engineers."
"So what did you do?" Her voice was warming, and she walked a bit closer to him.
"Radios. I built them and I took them apart and I put them together again, when I was a kid. Endlessly."
"You had a childhood? Somehow I didn't think so."
"There wasn't a wire or a tube in a radio I didn't know. I rigged an antenna on our house, but it wasn't high enough, so I put one up on the barn. I could hear stations as far away as San Francisco."
"I thought you maybe sprang from the ground, fully formed, carrying a knife and a grenade and a pistol." His look was of crushed dignity.
"I'm teasing." Her voice was light and warm. "Go on. I like this."
"For years our house near Wenatchee had radio parts scattered throughout it. I made a transmitter, and bought a microphone at an auction of used police equipment. There was a while when San Francisco might've been able to hear me."
She laughed.
"It amused my mom and dad, having all those tubes and condensers and dials and switches all around." He paused. "Until one bad day. A very bad day."
"Yes?"
"I made a radio detonator."
She stiffened. "Aw, damn it, don't go ruining this little talk."
"And discovered—purely by accident, I told my dad—that match heads inside a length of pipe could be detonated at a distance, and would indeed destroy a tool shed."
"Weapons. Is that all you ever think about?"
"Shovels, hoes, planting pots, rakes, shingles, bits of windowpanes, the works, all blown into the air. Some landed on our lawn, some I don't think ever came down."
Katrin sighed heavily.
"Well." He brushed his hands together. "I do enjoy a nice chat, after all."
"Now you are just teasing me."
They worked their way around a tangle of roof rafters and collar beams that had fallen from a building.
She asked abruptly, "Have you ever examined your life?"
"Why would I do that?"
She waited, silently coaxing more from him.
Finally he said, "A person shouldn't look too closely at himself."
"Why not?"
He said nothing.
"You are a better person than you think, Jack," she said with emphasis.
That stopped him. He looked perplexed, but only for a moment. He smiled at her, an American grin, full of teeth. "I've always said so."
She added, "But that doesn't mean you aren't a moron."
Her hand was on his arm as they walked, and now Cray put a hand over hers. He said in a diminished tone. "I can get you out of here when this is over, Katrin. Out of Germany."
Her eyes shone with emotions he could not read.
He said gravely, "Even if the Gestapo doesn't find you, the Red Army will be here soon. The horrors have just begun for Berlin."
Her mouth moved, trying to find the right words.
"I can get you out," he repeated.
"You won't be able to get yourself out, much less me." She smiled to take the edge off of her words.
"I guess I've been too subtle around you."
"Subtle?" She laughed, a bright chirrup. "You? You're as subtle as a belch in church."
"You try to get me to talk, so you can examine me, figure me out." His mouth was still turned up. "But you still don't know me."
His face was abruptly as cold as a carving. His urbanity seemed suddenly stripped away.
Alarmed, she dropped her hand from his arm. "Why do you say that?"
"If you knew me," he said, "you'd know that once my mission is accomplished, I'm going to be like a horse turned back to the stable. I'll be coming hard, and those who try to stop me will fare poorly."
"I don't… I don't think I know what you mean." His gloss of civilization abruptly returned. His eyes became gentle again, and