Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

not expect you back tonight. In fact, I thought you’d be passed out drunk by now.”

“That was the plan, but your movie upset me too much.”

“Oh. So, you have a soul after all?”

Nicolaus set the sack on the rare available horizontal space and began pulling out the food items that Halina, now back in her frock, came over to admire and coo over, finally selecting a banana that she shared with Buttercup as she walked away to resume her design work.

When out of range, Zerrissen turned to Nicolaus. “So. Halina is pregnant?”

“Yes. Didn’t I tell you? Probably not. Yes, Halina is pregnant.”

Zerrissen narrowed his eyes at Nicolaus, who laughed in response.

“Oh, no. Me the father? Thanks for the compliment, but that thought is beyond all reason. By the guy that gave her the black eye. Remember that?

“The guy you were going to bury in the duct?”

“Raynor. I promised Halina I would not kill him. I was merely going to leave him to his own devices in the duct. So, that guy, yes, but my plans for him changed.”

“So, she’s keeping the baby?” In Zerrissen’s mind, if anything were beyond all reason, it was a cripple who could not speak becoming a mother while trying to defect to an enemy country. How could that even work?

“Correct. It’s her choice. I support whatever she wants which at the moment is for the baby to be born on Western soil. The child will be a citizen of West Germany. It’s the right thing to do.”

Die Saugglocke29

With late night East Berlin tucked in for the night, including Zerrissen, passed out in vodka binge, Halina, and Buttercup, Nicolaus had no choice but to step out of his preferred role of mastermind and thinker, and dirty his hands with actual work, including filling the spare sewer pipe, now referred to as the saugglocke, with sand, scrap metal, and other forms of ballast. Based on what he had learned from watching Halina, welded plates of sheet metal to both ends, rather proud that the plates stuck fast. By the time the sun rose again, all gathered around to admire his work.

Halina, looking at the lumpy welds, full of gaps and dry spots, said nothing, but her grimace said volumes. Zerrissen, too hungover to care about esthetics, announced it was time to put saugglocke to work as it swayed above the duct opening held by chains through the blocks and tackle from the ceiling. Zerrissen and Nicolaus, unusually generous with this interested in this step, guided it through the hatchway so that it rested on the halo of wire scrapers added to its entire girth, like a crown of thorns. It would be irretrievably stuck if it fails and sink to the bottom of the Spree if it succeeds, and in any event, sacrifice itself for the salvation of others.

If the saugglocke failed to find its way through the hacking of roots, scraping of moss, shoving of rocks and debris along the way, then the schiff was not going to make it either. The project would be dead, and Zerrissen would return to being an anonymous drunk, at least until the KGB uncovered that he was Dr. Zerrissen of the Die Kuppel siege, or until Pyotr delivered his radioactive present to the world.

“This is meshuga of the first order.” Zerrissen stated to the room.

“Yes. Yes, it is.” Was the room’s response.

And with this christening ceremony, saugglocke was slowly lowered into the duct, wobbling on its own as if not wanting to take this journey.

Commenting on the unprovoked movement, Zerrissen quipped. “Saugglocke doesn’t want to go swimming today.” Then with a wry smile, added “Or it’s pregnant also.”

Nicolaus yelped as the pull chains slipped through his ungloved hands, sending one end of saugglocke a meter or two into the ditch with a heavy thud.

Zerrissen compensated using his body weight to slowly to wrestle control, cursing, then lowered the other end slowly until it was sitting on the bottom of the duct, fully immersed, only a few barbs of its scraper halos protruding from the black slime.

Wiping his reddened palms on his shirt, Nicolaus opened a petcock on the barrel labeled VINEGAR, emptying the entire contents into the duct behind it, while the others held their breaths in what smelled like the worst egg-dying accident in the history of Easter.

When the barrel finally drained itself of the odoriferous vinegar, the time came to start a chain of events that, once started, could not be stopped.

Zerrissen pushed the barrel of naked Alka-Seltzer tablets into the soup, expecting to see smoke like dry ice billowing out in a mountain of plop plop, fizz fizz. Halina shoved the manhole cover hatch lid on its hinges shut, but the combined weight of both Nicolas and Zerrissen were needed to keep it closed while Halina slid the dogging latches into place.

The flushing and scraping sounded like a gate to Hades had been rent open. The creation of and water vapor was noisy and violent. Jets of concentrated erupted around the perimeter of the hatch; it was not as airtight as Zerrissen had wished.

The three of them were too absorbed in the cacophony below to immediately realize that they were becoming lightheaded. With his remaining consciousness, Zerrissen recognized the signs of poisoning, its molecules bonding 250 times faster than the free oxygen molecules that mammals needed for life. He yelled above the heavy din for Nicolaus to run. Then he grabbed Halina, who was too stunned by his violent reaction to attempt to hobble away. He tucked her under his arm as he had done twenty years earlier, before they both noticed an astonished head-bobbing Buttercup flew to Halina and flapped its wings as he hobbled run bounced him around on her shoulder.

Zerrissen opened the garage doors to flood the workshop with the freezing December air full of life-restoring oxygen, even though this meant removing the precious coal-heated, but otherwise deadly, warmth.

As their heads cleared, they looked to each other for nonverbal signs. Had they