“Perhaps we could be trying out a mascot?” one of the cyclists asked Doktor Lauter, the head coach and manager of the Funkrad.
“No, make a space for him in the van. Throw some sleeping mats down. We can put him just behind the seats. We will simply take precautions, many precautions, every time we stop to have a piss.”
That sort of earthy practicality marked their week with the Funkrad. They quietly buzzed through village after village on back roads as they headed east. Ahn-Kha suffered, having to stay in hiding, but the rest of the group relaxed and regained the camaraderie that had been lost with the death of Stamp and the wounding of Alexander.
The only one who seemed ill at ease during their time with the Funkrad was Pistols. Where the Germans were all sleek and graceful, he was awkward and waddling, a cowboy among ballerinas. They joked, she suspected, about the number of guns he carried (she knew the German word for gun: pistole, not that different from its English pronunciation). Pistols might be a tough enough man, but he was no cyclist or athlete, and he made no friends among the Germans.
Duvalier was no hand holder by nature, but at night she made an effort to socialize with Pistols. Sometimes she played cards with Ahn-Kha and him, or they patched their clothing. They fell asleep together in the back of the van, Ahn-Kha’s bulk warming them like a hot stove, talking quietly about whatever drifted across their minds.
She’d made many journeys in her life, but she remembered the trip with the bike team as one of the best.
It was even fun. Fun was a stranger to her, or at best an acquaintance of limited contact.
Once in open country, flat and a mixture of woods, pasture, and field so that it resembled, to her, some parts of the Midwest, they began to really make time. The team’s management knew which towns held one or more Kurians, which had tougher Quislings and which didn’t, and they zigzagged through, heading mostly west, with little turns to the north.
One of the professional cyclists, a shaven-bald German named Horst who had leg muscles like oak roots wound around a boulder, took her out on a few trips on one of the coaches’ road bikes.
She’d been watching him practice, quietly enjoying the view. Before she knew him, she’d just mentally named him Fritz; he reminded her a little of a German shepherd she’d known by that name.
She was comfortable on bicycles, and they were a simple, inconspicuous way to get around a Kurian Zone. But she’d never ridden to race, just to get from point A to point B or to disappear quickly.
Of course she couldn’t match Horst’s power. So when they rode, she took off cross-country or through the woods, where her reflexes gave her an edge against those legs of his. She led Fritz on a merry chase, turning frequently so he couldn’t take advantage of his muscles to overtake her.
About the time she decided he was just lagging behind because he liked the view of her bottom bouncing above the bike saddle, she skidded to a halt.
“I’m lost,” she said. “I hope you can find your way back to the rest of the team.”
“They are south of us, heading for the Kiel Canal,” said Horst. “We will follow it to the Baltic.” Then he took a step closer and went on with “I would like to explore your canal.”
Yeesh. Leave it to a German to put it like that. Much of the fun went out of the day. She’d have to deal with either hurt feelings or anger. And who knew how much of it would transfer to the rest of the team?
“Down, Fritz,” she said, then realized with horror that she’d said it aloud.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry, Horst. Horst. I’m not in the mood for that right now. You know? Wrong time of the month,” she lied, but it would be a lie that wouldn’t hurt his ego.
He shrugged. “I am not bothered by such matters.”
“Well, I am. Red rain check, okay?”
“As you like.”
They came to the Kiel Canal, a shipping lane that allowed the great former naval base access to the North Atlantic rather than the Baltic. It looked like a very well-maintained river, wide enough for large ships, with even banks and working locks and dams that allowed the flow to be controlled.
The wind blew relentlessly in this part of Germany and there were windmills for power generation everywhere. Only about a third of them seemed to be working, which struck her as strange for the efficiency-driven Germans. Some even had anti-Kurian graffiti written on them, but you could make out the letters only by getting off the roads and really close to the windmills, or by using binoculars, of course.
There were excellent paths and roads bordering the canal. And a heavy police presence, but they just applauded or cheered the Funkrad, or made obscene gestures, depending on the affiliation of the particular officer. Some of the barges on the water recognized them as well and honked their horns in appreciation.
Valentine joined her in cycling with the Germans, tucking his hair up into the little helmets they wore, in brief training runs, riding in the middle of the pack of Germans where they wouldn’t be noticed and others could speak for them just in case. As they ran along the canal, it felt more and more like the pleasure jaunt they’d been promised, especially as the weather grew less foggy and more summery.
They dined on good hard bread, ham, and bacon. The people in this part of Germany ate very little flesh that wasn’t pork. Even chickens didn’t seem to thrive on this rain- and windswept coast.
They said good-bye to the team on the salty shore of the Baltic.
It was a foggy morning, and the bike team built two bonfires and had a good old-fashioned Germanic cookout. They purchased a year-old pig from one of the market towns and spit-roasted it with honey, produced huge green bottles of beer, and relaxed on the beach. Some of the braver souls swam in the chilly water. During breaks in the fog, they could just see barrier islands that sheltered the coastal shipping channel, but there seemed to be precious little shipping to be protected.
A small boat with two men in it rowed toward their fire. The oarsman and steersman hung on their oars for a moment, then pulled hard for the beach.