This phantom SS command here is based not so much on the one the prisoners knew at Dora as on what they inferred to be the Rocket-structure next door at the Mittelwerke. The A4, in its way, was also concealed behind an uncrossable wall that separated real pain and terror from summoned deliverer. Weissmann/Blicero’s presence crossed the wall, warping, shivering into the fetid bunkrooms, with the same reach toward another shape as words trying to make their way through dreams. What the 175s heard from their real SS guards there was enough to elevate Weissmann on the spot—they, his own brother-elite, didn’t know what this man was up to. When prisoners came in earshot, the guards stopped whispering. But their fear kept echoing: fear not of Weissmann personally, but of the time itself, a time so desperate that he could now move through the Mittelwerke as if he owned it, a time which was granting him a power different from that of Auschwitz or Buchenwald, a power they couldn’t have borne themselves… .

On hearing the name of Blicero now, Thanatz’s asshole tightens a notch. Not that he thinks the name was planted here or anything. Paranoia is not a major problem for Thanatz. What does bother him is being reminded at all—reminded that he’s had no word, since the noon on the Heath when 00000 was fired, of Blicero’s status—alive or dead, powerlord or fugitive. He isn’t sure which he prefers. As long as the Anubis kept moving, there was no need to choose: the memory could have been left so far behind that one day its “reality” wouldn’t matter any more. Of course it happened. Of course it didn’t happen.

“We think he’s out there,” the town spokesman is telling Thanatz, “alive and on the run. Now and then we hear something—it could fit Blicero easily enough. So we wait. He will find us. He has a prefabricated power base here, waiting for him.”

“What if he doesn’t stay?” pure meanness, “what if he laughs at you, and passes by?”

“Then I can’t explain,” the other beginning to step backward, back out into the rain, “it’s a matter of faith.”

Thanatz, who has sworn that he will never seek out Blicero again, not after the 00000, feels the flat of terror’s blade. “Who is your runner?” he cries.

“Go yourself,” a filtered whisper.

“Where?”

“The gasworks.”

“But I have a message for—”

“Take it yourself… .”

The white Anubis, gone on to salvation. Back here, in her wake, are the preterite, swimming and drowning, mired and afoot, poor passengers at sundown who’ve lost the way, blundering across one another’s flotsam, the scrapings, the dreary junking of memories—all they have to hold to—churning, mixing, rising, falling. Men overboard and our common debris… .

Thanatz remains shaking and furious in the well-established rain, under the sandstone arcade. I should have sailed on, he wants to scream, and presently does. “I wasn’t supposed to be left with you discards… .” Where’s the court of appeals that will hear his sad story? “I lost my footing!” Some mess cook slipped in a puddle of elite vomit and spilled a whole galvanized can full of creamed yellow chicken nausea all over that starboard weather deck, Thanatz didn’t see it, he was looking for Margherita… . Too bad, les jeux sont faits, nobody’s listening and the Anubis is gone. Better here with the swimming debris, Thanatz, no telling what’ll come sunfishing by, ask that Oberst Enzian, he knows (there is a key, among the wastes of the World… and it won’t be found on board the white Anubis because they throw everything of value over the side).