“It’s hate, all right,” she said. “Stupid, stupid. The war’s over. It isn’t politics or fuck-your-buddy, it’s old-time, pure, personal hate.”

“Enzian?”

“I think so.”

They found the Brocken occupied both by American and by Russian troops. The mountain lay on what was to be the border of the Soviet zone of occupation. The brick and stucco ruins of the radio transmitter and a tourist hotel loomed up just outside the firelight. Only a couple of platoons here. Nobody higher than noncoms. The officers were all down in Bad Harzburg, Halberstadt, someplace comfortable, getting drunk or laid. There is a certain air of resentment up on the Brocken all right, but the boys like Geli and tolerate Slothrop, and luckiest of all, nobody seems to be connected with that Ordnance.

It’s only a moment’s safety, though. Major Marvy is gnashing about the Harz, sending thousands of canaries into cardiac episodes, dropping in yellow droves belly-up out of the trees as he marauds on by hollering Git that limey ’sucker I don’t care how many men it takes I want a fucking division you hear me boy? Only a matter of time before he picks up the trail again. He’s out of his mind. Slothrop’s a little daffy, but not like this—this is really unhealthy, this Marvy persecution. Is it possible… yup, the thought has certainly occurred to him—that Marvy’s in tight with those Rolls Roycers who were after him in Zürich? There may be no limit to their connections. Marvy is buddies with GE, that’s Morgan money, there’s Morgan money in Harvard, and surely an interlock someplace with Lyle Bland… who are they, hey? why do they want Slothrop? He knows now for sure that Zwitter the mad Nazi scientist is one of them. And that kindly old Professor Glimpf was only waiting down in the Mittelwerke to pick up Slothrop if he showed. Jesus. If Slothrop hadn’t snuck out after dark back down into Nordhausen to Geli’s place, they’d have him locked up by now for sure, maybe beaten up, maybe dead.

Before they head back down the mountain, they manage to chisel six cigarettes and some K-rations off of the sentries. Geli knows a friend of a friend who stays out on a farm in the Goldene Aue, a ballooning enthusiast named Schnorp, who is heading toward Berlin.

“But I don’t want to go to Berlin.”

“You want to go where Marvy isn’t, Liebchen.”

Schnorp is beaming, eager enough for company, just back from a local PX with an armload of flat white boxes: merchandise he plans to move in Berlin. “No trouble,” he tells Slothrop, “don’t worry. I’ve done this trip hundreds of times. Nobody bothers a balloon.”

He takes Slothrop out in back of the house, and here in the middle of a sloping green field is a wicker gondola beside a great heap of bright yellow and scarlet silk.