The Victor (Only the Right Hand Remains)

_ October 37 N.I.C., Phezzan _

The journalist was outside Wahlen’s house again that morning, standing in the bright Phezzani sun. It had rained the night before, and the sidewalks were still steaming, shrouding her in a kind of fog. But Wahlen knew she was there. She had been there since he woke up and looked out the window of his bedroom towards the street.

She always came alone, and she seemed harmless enough, never stepping closer to the gate than the sidewalk. But she stood there for hours at a time, doing nothing but looking up at his house. Wahlen would occasionally glance out his office window from the second floor and see her down there. She would be staring up at him, and he would have the sensation of their eyes meeting, but it was an illusion— there was no way she could see him through the privacy glass.

The first day she had come, she had rung the bell and spoken to his secretary asking to be allowed an interview. When pressed on what subject, she had said she wished to discuss Terraism and Wahlen’s campaign on Earth, and had provided a list of questions that she planned to ask. Wahlen had taken a look at them, and had decided that she was lying— there must be something else she wanted to discuss. The questions were too anodyne, and the answers could have been found in any public record of that time. He declined her request for an interview, but she kept showing up outside his house.

She was a young woman, probably no older than thirty, and she had dark hair and a searching face. He didn’t understand how she had the liberty to stand outside his house all day waiting for him to relent and speak to her— Phezzan was an expensive planet to live on, and if she was spending her time haunting him, she must not have a real job. It almost made him curious enough to allow her a chance to interview him, but he decided that anyone this persistent could not possibly have the best intentions of the Reich at heart, and so he remained firm. She would get tired of him eventually, and that would be all.

He didn’t go so far as to have her arrested— she wasn’t doing anything illegal— but he did, one day, ask if the matter could be looked into. Somehow, although the whole thing seemed like it should have been beneath his notice, the problem made its way to Kessler’s desk. And so Kessler invited him to lunch to discuss it. It never hurt to meet an old friend, so Wahlen agreed.

They met at an upscale rooftop cafe, overlooking a city park. The sky was clear and blue, all the morning’s mist having burned away. Kessler was already there when Wahlen arrived, leaning back in his chair and looking out at the scenery with his hands folded on the menu in front of him.

Both of the fleet admirals were semi-retired, these days. They had advisory roles, but had passed on their day to day duties to the next generation. Kessler’s hair, which had once been black streaked with grey, was now almost reversed, with just a little black remaining. His eyes were still sharp, however, and he smiled at Wahlen as he sat.

“Glad you could make it,” Kessler said. “Wasn’t sure if you’d find time for me.”

“I don’t have much else pressing on my schedule,” Wahlen admitted. “I figured you were the same, which was why you’re invested in such a small matter.”

“Guilty as charged, perhaps,” Kessler said.

“Though I feel like you have more claims on your time than I do, since you’re married. How’s Frau Kessler doing?”

“She’s doing well. But if I had known you would hold having a wife against me, I would have told you to get remarried years ago.”

“It’s too late now,” Wahlen said with a rueful smile

“I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but I understand.”

Wahlen laughed. “The years got away from me, I suppose.”

“They have for us all.”

There was a moment of silence in the conversation, as their thoughts mutually turned to the past. It never stopped being strange, Wahlen thought, to recognize that the things that felt most vital had all taken place half a lifetime ago.

He picked up his menu and studied it, then chose something at random to order.

“How’s the arm?” Kessler asked when the waitress had come and gone.

“It hasn’t grown back,” Wahlen said with a smile. “But it hasn’t caused me trouble in a while. You heard about the new prosthetics?”

“That’s good to hear. And yes— I had. Is it real sensation, with that brain implant?”

“Yes,” Wahlen said. “I’m considering having it done.”

“Why the hesitation? I’m sure it’s not dangerous.”

Wahlen shook his head and looked down at his artificial left arm, which rested lightly on the table. “No— I’ve been without feeling it for so long— it’s silly, but I wonder if having sensation back will make me regret the whole thing over again.”

“Hm,” Kessler said. “Well, if you do well enough without it then I can’t say there’s any reason to jump on the latest new thing.”

“There’s always something new.”

They talked for a while about current affairs— which for them perhaps was more gossip than policy these days, but if Kessler was willing to talk about Kaiser Alexander, then Wahlen was, too. They didn’t often get to see each other casually, so there was plenty to talk about before their food came. When it did, Wahlen finally brought up what he had actually come to talk about.

“So, you said you had looked into my ghost?” he asked, after having a few bites of his salad.

“Not a ghost, I’m afraid.”

“Well, of course.”

“I didn’t really do any looking,” Kessler said. “It’s funny— you’re not the first one she’s spoken to.”

“I haven’t spoken to her.”

“No, I know,” Kessler said. “I have, though.”

“Really?” Wahlen put down his fork with surprise, and he looked at Kessler studyingly.

“I think just before she started coming to you. I wasn’t aware that this was happening, or I would have put a stop to it sooner.”

“You don’t have to do anything, I’m sure she’ll give up soon enough. And it’s not illegal to stand on the street.”

“It’s illegal to harass His Majesty’s servants in the course of them doing their duty,” Kessler said. “And she’s not going to give up. I get the sense that she’s quite the persistence predator.”

Wahlen laughed. “Well I can respect that, at least. Did you give in to her standing outside your house? I wouldn’t have expected that kind of thing to work on you.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t realize it would go that far if I said no. I just spoke to her when she made her request initially. I didn’t see the harm in it.”

“Really?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t. I have always valued the Reich’s relative transparency. I thought that most of us did.”

“The list of questions she submitted to my secretary didn’t seem like the list of questions that she actually wants to ask,” Wahlen pointed out. “They’re too simple to be worth standing at my front gate for a month over.”

“That is probably true,” Kessler said, voice firm.

“What did she ask you about?”

“The Earth Church,” Kessler said. “She had questions about how they were dealt with after— well, after a lot of things.”

“And what did you say?”

Kessler gave him a look. “The party line,” he said.

“And she accepted that?”

“I don’t think she was really after answers. I’m sure she knew she wouldn’t get anything new out of me.”

“Then what did she want?”

“The same thing she thinks she’s going to get by haunting you,” Kessler said. “She thinks you should be made to feel guilty.”

“Guilty? What did she want you to feel guilty for?”

“I’ll tell you what she asked at the interview I let her have.”

“Please.” Wahlen gestured for him to continue.

“She had this list of names,” Kessler said. “She started right at the top, Aaron Aaronburg. ‘Do you remember this man?’”

“And did you?”

“Some of them. Any that I did, I said so. I told her what happened and why.”

“No graphic details, I assume?”

“What would have been the point?”

“Did she have any reaction to it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kessler said. “I think she prided herself on being professional.”

_ Like you, _ Wahlen thought. “And what did she say when you didn’t recognize the names?”

“She read out to me the information she had.”

“Accurate?”

“Enough. I’m not sure how she got all of it. There were some photos. Someone probably gave them to her— I’ve had a talk with people about finding and plugging leaks like that.”

“How long was her list?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It all faded together after she went on for a while.” He took a sip of his wine. “Our leak, wherever it is, isn’t that big. I’m sure that if she had more information, the list would have been ten times longer.”

Wahlen raised an eyebrow. “And you let her go through her whole thing?”

“Well, if I had sent her out of my office, she would have gotten what she was looking for,” Kessler pointed out. “I can sit there and listen to names. It’s not like they meant anything to her. She’s twenty-five— they were all dead before she was born. It’s some moral exercise for her.”

“I see.”

“Were you expecting me to tell you that I do feel guilty about it?” Kessler asked. They were totally alone on the restaurant rooftop balcony— able to speak freely.

“Do you?” Wahlen asked.

“No,” Kessler said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement. He took a sip of his wine. “What’s done is done— and we did what we had to.” He looked out over the view away from the restaurant, a park where children were chasing each other. “And we did well.”

“I don’t think that precludes anyone from feeling guilty.”

“I’m sure that’s what she thinks, too,” Kessler said.

There was a moment of silence.

“We don’t live in a perfect universe, August,” Kessler said. “And what I did for Kaiser Reinhard and Alexander was no worse than under the last dynasty. In a perfect universe I wouldn’t have had to do it, but no, I don’t regret it at all.” The continuation made it seem like Kessler was trying to convince himself more than he was Wahlen.

He wanted to ask something else, to get to the core of it, but Kessler wouldn’t want that. Even for two old men who had seen something of the same horrors, maybe there was no need to say it out loud. Maybe it was better to just know what the other was thinking.

“And she believed you when you said that?”

“I’ve spent my whole career looking at photographs like hers with a straight face,” Kessler said. “If she thinks she read my mind from that, she’s wrong.”

There was something in the mind to read, then. But of course there was. “Should I speak with her?”

“No, of course not.”

“You don’t think I can keep a straight face?”

Kessler looked up at him. “Go home and look at the photos of Earth yourself, then, if you want to test yourself.” He shook his head. “There’s no point in letting someone else do it to you.”

“It would make her go away.”

“ _ I _ can make her go away,” Kessler said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No,” Wahlen said. “I’ll take care of it. We don’t need to make it all something that it isn’t.”

“As you like.”

It was Wahlen’s turn to let the silence fall over the conversation, and then to break it with something more confessional. “I remember it all very well. There’s nothing new in any photograph that could surprise me.”

“Yeah. I understand.”

The conversation had grown too heavy to bear, even for both of them accustomed to bearing it. Of all of Reinhard’s staff in the old days, at least of those who were still alive, they had borne the brunt of the worst assignments. Perhaps because they had been some of the most steady, and trusted. Kessler’s police had to stifle dissent from within, and Wahlen went to subdue the enemy of the Earth Church. These had been dirty tasks, not the kind of honorable battles that others had been given.

Even Mittermeyer’s deployment to crush Reuenthal’s rebellion— that had been an honest fight, and the survivors among the Reuenthal fleet had been given clemency. And that was what stuck in the mind when people thought about the most difficult tasks to which Kaiser Reinhard had set his admirals— Mittermeyer. That was for the best, that people saw Mittermeyer as bearing that burden, rather than anyone else. For everything else, it was better if no one thought about it at all.

There had been no clemency from Wahlen— that had been his explicit order. And Kessler had gone after people who were already traitors of some sort. There was no need for mercy there, either.

Neither of them could find anything else to speak of, so they finished their lunches more quietly. At least they understood each other. That was something that Wahlen felt so rarely, these days.

He said goodbye to Kessler, and his driver took him home. As he approached his house, looking out the window of his car, he saw the woman standing there. He was almost glad. There was a part of him that worried on the drive home that Kesser might have already dispatched her in some manner, and used the time that they were out at lunch to do so without Wahlen seeing. But he should have trusted his old friend more than that— he was an honorable and honest man, despite it all.

“Stop at the gate,” he said to his driver. “I want to talk to her for a moment.”

“Yes, sir,” his driver said, and the car slowed to a stop right before the wrought iron gates that were swinging open automatically to let him through. Wahlen rolled down his window.

The woman was startled to see him, eyes wide and mouth opening like she had a question, but had lost it in her shock. Wahlen looked at her steadily.

“You can ask me one question, and then you need to leave,” he said. “There’s no reason for you to stay here anymore.”

She almost reached for the papers that were surely in the messenger bag at her side, but she caught herself and straightened to look at him, right in the eye.

“Do you ever have nightmares about it?” she asked. “What you did on Earth?”

“No,” Wahlen said. He looked into her face as he said it, keeping his expression totally calm and still. “I don’t.”

Then he rolled up his window and motioned for his driver to take him through the gates. She watched him go, but that was the last that Wahlen saw of her.