PART ONE: Das Rheingold
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Fafner slithered through the door of his adopted home, an abandoned and damaged apartment building. He squatted on his eight tentacles while his eye stalks, sitting above a cruel beak, swiveled left then right making a rapid survey of the area. He wasn't surprised when he didn't spot any activity, he rarely did. Only a few mortals lived in the area. All he saw was a desolate and mostly destroyed urban street. A hundred yards away, the Rhine River reflected the morning sun. Buds about to burst into leaves covered the few widely-scattered trees.
He faced another day with nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to steal and that took a toll on his psyche. His criminal talents moldered without any felonious exercise. Who would have thought that he, the universe's most successful criminal, would spend endless days without committing a crime? His motto had always been, 'A day without a felony is a day wasted.' He desperately wanted something to do; anything to end the overwhelming boredom. Except honest work, of course; he had no intention of going that far, not when it would ruin his perfect record of never having worked on an honest project.
When Fafner had escaped from an Inter-Galactic Police ambush, his damaged get-away ship managed to make it as far as this benighted parallel universe. His ultra-sophisticated craft had been shot up and mangled in the chase. Just before the ship exploded, he transported to the desolate surface and now he was trapped. He had lived here for three solar rotations so far. With no hope of a rescue, he had what amounted to a life sentence and his race typically lived hundreds of years unless shortened by treachery or assassination. By now, the police must have assumed he had died. As a consequence, he would no longer be the most wanted criminal in fifteen galaxies, five of which he’d never been in.
Standing seven feet tall and weighing over four hundred pounds had disadvantages on this planet because he didn't fit through most doorways and the gravity, much heavier than on his home world Zaftan 31B, made movement difficult. The planet was so different from his cloud-covered home world: there was too much light here and it hurt his eyeballs. He ran a tentacle over his body to smooth the green-tinged slime that covered his gray-black, rubberish skin.
He moved down the rubble-strewn road to the nearest intersection and stopped to decide what to do. The deserted streets were expected because
the handful of mortals who lived here always hid when he moved about. He suspected his size and his personality — merely hostile when he was in a good mood — scared the puny creatures.
He sensed movement and rotated one eye stalk to the right. A small, hairless creature meandered down a side street. Fafner recognized an alien from the Nibelung System.
Normally reticence about dealing with an alien from a different race, he decided to speak with the creature. Perhaps, he could uncover information about a felonious possibility. "Halt! I have speech with you" Fafner said in the grotesque language of the mortals
The alien stopped and waited for Fafner to join him.
"Greetings. Come. I buy drink.” Since the Nibelung understood what Fafner said, he also must have lived here for a time.
Fafner shoved his bulk into a nearby tavern and squatted at an empty table. The pale-green Nibelung sat on a chair, an expectant look on his pinched face that featured red eyes with yellow irises and holes instead of ears and a nose. He wore a leather vest and denim pants without shoes.
Mortals always gagged and threw up in Fafner’s presence, but the nibelung didn’t seem to notice the smell. Perhaps his nose holes weren't as sensitive as a mortal's sense of smell. "My name Fafner. Known as Magnificent. Your name is what?"
"Mime."
"Let us drink wretched wine. Is better than putrid beer these mortals make."
He waved a tentacle at the innkeeper and bellowed an order. The mortal cringed in pain at Fafner's booming voice. The innkeeper pinched his nostrils closed with one hand and breathed through his mouth while he delivered the wine pitcher.
Fafner gripped the pitcher with the suckers of one tentacle and filled two glasses. He pushed one glass to Mime. "We drink to good friends.” He clicked his teeth, the zaftan way of grinning.
Over the next four glasses, the two exchanged information about their respective home planets. By then, Mime's speech had become hesitant and slurred.
"Why you come to Earth?” Fafner asked.
"I came with my brother, Alberich. He was exiled. Not that he wants company. He ignores me as if I'm too stupid to talk to him. But he is family."
"Why exile? What brother do?"
"He's a computer genius, and he designed some chips that allowed the masses to access and read government secrets."
"How long is exile?"
"As long as two-hundred-fifty cycles of this sun."
"Hmm. Long time. What does genius brother do now?"
"He spends all his time in his lab doing more chip designs."
"Genius brother has lab?” Fafner gasped. The planet's civilization had
been devastated at some point in the past. The scattered survivors eked out a living with subsistence farming in an economy based on barter. The lack of basic technology here made the existence of a lab very improbable.
"It is the nibelung way,” Mime said. “Exiles take their possessions with them when they leave. Alberich packed his entire lab and shipped it here."
"Labs require power. Power grids not working.”
"The lab uses battery packs. Fission, I think.”
"Where is lab?” Fafner’s energy levels spiked upward. He smelled a
criminal enterprise, just what he needed to keep his felonious skills from atrophying.
"Secret.” Mime held a finger in front of his lips. "Can't talk about it."
"Excuse ignorant Fafner.” To control his excitement, he wrapped one tentacle around a table leg and squeezed. After a few seconds, he said, "Will not speak of it again.” He clicked his glass against Mime's. "Drink to genius brother.” He drained his glass and held the pitcher aloft to signal the innkeeper for a third refill. Mime had trouble gulping down the sour wine.
With the glasses re-filled, Fafner said, "Drink to family. Is good to have."
After Mime managed to finish the glass, Fafner asked,"Where does brother work?"
"Garage.” Mime waved a hand in the direction of the river. "Other side."
Fafner proposed another toast and sat impatiently while Mime struggled to finish the wine.
After three more glasses, Mime put his head on the table and started snoring. Fafner chuckled, stood and slithered towards the door.
"Hey!” the innkeeper shouted. "You didn't pay."
"Friend wake up, he pay."
Fafner moved to the Rhine, slid down the riverbank and entered the mud-
colored water.
He half-floated, half-swam to the other side. His slime interacted with the
river water to produce a toxic stew that bubbled and smoked. Fish floated to the surface belly-up. He climbed the far bank and searched among the abandoned buildings. Before long, he found a garage with a poorly repaired door. He paused for a moment to savor the high that thievery always gave him, then tried the door. It was locked. He hurled his weight against it and the thin plywood shattered inward.
Fafner slid into a room crammed with electronic gear, computers and machinery. His mind instinctively put a price on each object then calculated the re-sale value of the equipment. Unfortunately, there weren't any buyers on this world.
A small alien who looked and dressed like Mime sat in front of a computer screen. "Who . . . are you?
Fafner ignored the question. "You must be famous genius called Alberich."
"What . . . what do you want?” Alberich's forehead had a gray circular wafer stuck on it. Many gold wires, dots and bars were embedded on the dark material. Tiny red, green and blue lights flashed in mysterious patterns.
Alberich wore a beanie-like helmet of the same material. The cap was festooned with antennae, metallic bulges and more flashing lights.
Fafner clicked his teeth and slithered forward. ~~~
Wotan, Lord of Asgard and God of Death, wandered amid the concrete debris of an abandoned town. He hadn't visited Midgard in centuries and the changes shocked him. What was once a thriving village, now was a wasteland. Everywhere he looked, he saw the same destruction.
In the distant past, thousands of warriors had dedicated their battles to him every day. Shamans had offered sacrifices in his name. Alas, few remembered his name any more. Only the magical power of the Rhinegold kept Wotan from going the way of Horus, Baal, Zeus, Jupiter and countless others. Usurped by new gods and without worshippers, these old gods weakened, faded away, became historical footnotes and moved to the Old Gods Retirement Village. Just thinking about living in the Village made him shudder. That was worse than being destroyed.
Wotan stroked his long, black and gray beard while looking around. As far as he could see, concrete and asphalt had replaced trees and soil.
The god wore a blue cloak over tan trews and white linen shirt. A wide- brimmed hat concealed his missing eye, his broad nose and his full head of hair. For a walking staff, he used his spear, Grungir. Runes covered the shaft of the spear. Drawn so fine, the runes were almost invisible.
Two ravens, his messengers, squawked overhead and flew in circles.
Wotan's half-brother, Loki, walked a few paces away. "What's their problem?” He pointed to the ravens.
"Munin and Hugin are dismayed that there aren't any large trees to perch in."
"It is hard to believe this was once a dense oak forest, but the forest hasn't surrendered. It’s fighting back.” Loki indicated a sapling growing through a crack in the asphalt covered street. ”Hmm, I wonder where the women are hidden.” In case he met a toothsome one, Loki had dressed in his best clothing: a sky-blue tunic, red hose and a forest green cloak. He
was short and slim with wind-tossed red hair and a bushy mustache of the same color. His amber eyes had dark circles under them.
“There are only a few mortals left. Diseases, wars, famine, all have taken a bitter toll on the mortals."
“So, why are we walking through this wasted area?” Loki kicked a loose piece of asphalt.
"Great events are afoot, and you must play your part in them."
"Such as?"
"I know where the Rhinegold is and you are to recover it.” Wotan used
his spear to push aside a clump of tall weeds that grew through the broken concrete.
"Good. It's only been missing for a few months, and already I’ve had to pull gray hairs out of my beard. I don't like the idea of aging."
"I too have tasted old age,” Wotan replied. "My knee joints hurt in the morning. The faster we recover the Rhinegold the better off we'll be.” Without the Rhinegold, he faced old age and the loss of power, but that danger would end shortly. He felt the presence of the magical gold. It was close by.
"Tell me where the thief is, and I'll make him regret being born. Then I'll seize the Rhinegold and bring it back."
"Listen to me. It wasn't stolen.” Wotan gave Loki a one-eyed glare. "The Rhine Maidens, irresponsible as always, didn't guard it. While they were away, someone discovered the horde and took it. That's not stealing.”
“Bah. You split hairs. Tell me where it is, and I'll bring it back.”
“It will do us no good if you steal it. The Rhinegold must be freely returned to us to circumvent its curse. You are to use your cunning and wiles to convince the present owner to give it to us."
"Ahh, a game. Some fun at last. Where is it?"
"Just on the other side of the Rhine. The one who found the gold is a creature from a distant world. Munin and Hugin will lead you to the location."
"Look.” Loki pointed to the river which looked like it had a silver surface. "I wonder what killed all those fish?"
Wotan ignored Loki's interruption. "Do your part and the aging will stop.” Wotan stood with his arms akimbo and his single eye ablaze. “With the return of the Rhinegold, I shall be restored to my former greatness. And this time, I won’t lose it to a rival."
After Loki and the ravens left, Wotan sat on a rock and recalled the old days. The Saxons, Angles and Jutes had all worshipped him when those tribes invaded and conquered Britain. Centuries later, Vikings sacked Paris in his name. They founded Dublin and harassed both sides of the Narrow Sea while dedicating their victims to Wotan. The Vikings who sailed east in
the Baltic Sea and ended up in Constantinople did so while praising his name.
And then it all had disappeared in less than a few centuries thanks to that upstart Christ; all Wotan’s worshippers had turned away to join the new religion. Only the Rhinegold prevented him and the other inhabitants of Asgard from joining the Old Gods Retirement Village. He grimaced thinking of spending his time playing checkers against Baal or Ra.
Now, the situation had changed. Religions had been destroyed along with civilization. He had confidence the ever-resilient mortals would regroup, spawn and rebuild. He would become the principle god in the newly reconstituted tribes and warrior bands once he regained the Rhinegold.
He stood and paced around. He knew the Rhinegold had been tinkered with by the alien. He could sense the enormous additional power the horde now possessed in the form of devices that seemed more than magical to him. He would use their power to overwhelm any new god who tried to usurp his worshippers. This time, any Christ-like god would be crushed. There would be no repeat of the past.
Wotan raised Grungir and hurled it at a boulder. The stone shattered sending shards in all directions. He snapped his fingers and the spear returned to his hand. Wotan laughed and hummed the Prelude to Wagner’s Das Rheingold, composed more than five hundred years ago.
~~~
Fafner, exhilarated by his criminal activity, hurried home with his loot. The puny Alberich, after a bit of persuasion, had disclosed how to use the artifacts. Now, Fafner had the tools to re-launch his criminal career. He hoped to contact a passing ship and convince it to transport him away from this irksome exile. Once he returned home, he'd use the devices to get news from across the galaxies and identify lucrative places to rob. He couldn't wait to see the reaction of the Inter-Galactic Police when they discovered he hadn't died.
He squatted on the ruined tiles in the building lobby and placed the Chip on his forehead as he had seen Alberich wear it. The Chip fell to the ground. He pondered the situation. His slime must be preventing the Chip from adhering to his skin. Fafner slithered out the door and looked up the block to where a laundress lived and spotted a rope filled with drying clothes.
Two mortals hastened to get out of his way as he headed for the clothesline where he grabbed two shirts.
The laundress, an old hag, cursed him. Normally, he would pass some time making her regret those comments, but today he had more important issues to deal with.
Back in the apartment building, he ripped a shirt apart and used a strip to wipe his forehead. He touched the area with a tentacle. It was slime-free, but the discarded rag smoldered from his slime. He slapped the Chip below his eye stalks, and, a second later, he screeched in pain, sending the neighbors scrambling for an abandoned bomb shelter.
He pulled off the Chip and threw it to the ground while he gasped for breath. The pure terror of the experience faded slightly and he tried to analyze what happened. His central brain ached. So did the seven subsidiary brains located in every major muscle group in his body. Each of the eight processing unit had been overwhelmed by millions of datum, all trivial. One showed an image of a creature in an unheard of galaxy having a successful bowel movement. Another displayed a video clip of a rumor about the pending reunion of two pseudo-musicians from an unknown world. He saw a farmer worrying about the weather. Unless there was a way of controlling the information flow, the device was useless.
When his processors stopped aching, he tried out the other device. First, he wiped the slime from the back of his head then donned the Helm. He heard a faint humming noise, and his vision filled with a gray background and uncountable quantities of slim lines that rose from a baseline. Red lines predominated, but the display also showed yellow, green and blue lines. The red lines were so short as to be almost unnoticeable, except that their great numbers formed a red smudge. Fafner struggled to understand the information. What did the lines represent? Alberich had explained that the Helm would show the future for creatures in the area, but there weren't that many mortals around here. With a shock, Fafner realized the red lines must be insects.
He removed the Helm and tossed it aside. Alberich was an idiot, not a genius. Why did the nibelung develop useless stuff? More to the point, why did he, Fafner, steal this useless stuff? He slouched into a corner and beat two tentacles together. After his high expectations earlier in the day, his spirits sagged. Fafner thought about going back across the river to teach Alberich a lesson by destroying his lab, but even that didn't rouse or excite him. He faced an endless future of boredom.
~~~
The Valkyrie, Brunnhilde, rode her horse over the battlefield and examined the detritus of combat. She carried her helmet under her arm and her spear in her hand.
Armed with clubs, sharpened sticks and crude knives, two groups of mortals had slaughtered each other with great enthusiasm. Dead and dying warriors littered the ground. The fight had taken place on an abandoned farm and much of the level ground was now stained red.
Like all her dozens of sisters, she had a large, muscular frame and wore her blond hair in braids, curled up over her ears. Intense blue eyes peered at the warriors. The Valkyries, daughters of Wotan, roamed battlefields on their winged chargers searching for fallen warriors who had died heroically. The souls of these select few were picked up and taken to Valhalla in Asgard. Sometime in the future, these warriors would be called upon to fight on Wotan's side in a great battle.
Brunnhilde looked around the valley. Midgard was so much prettier than Asgard. Her home had few plants, no grass to speak off, had a black sky and no clouds. Here, the dead lay among flowers, brightly-colored shrubs and grasses.
She had missed taking trips to Midgard after Wotan decided that warriors who used gunpowder and electronic weapons weren’t destined for Valhalla. Only warriors who used old-fashioned edged weapons were eligible.
Because of Wotan’s edict, the Valkyries had nothing to do except watch Valhalla’s dead warriors play at combat. For over a millennium, each day at sunrise thousands upon thousands of armed warriors marched out of the halls, lined up and attacked each other. The combat went on until sunset. By that time only a few survived the carnage, mostly through luck rather than skill. Those survivors were proclaimed great heroes by the slain who recovered as soon as the sun dropped beneath the horizon. After the acclamation, the combatants searched for their missing body parts. Often, a mutilated warrior latched onto the firs tbody part he found. This led to warriors with mismatched arms or legs and some with three thumbs. Occasionally a warrior would retrieved a head that didn't go with his body.
After they set themselves right, more or less, the horde retired to the halls and gorged on boar meat washed down with horns of mead or ale. Meanwhile, they swapped lies about their prowess earlier in the day. The feast went on until eveyone toppled off the benches and fell asleep on the floor rushes.
In the morning, the warriors, hungover and grumpy with their bodies restored with the original body parts, broke their fast on cold boar meat and warm ale. The breakfast always cured the hangovers and the warriors marched out to enjoy another fine day of carnage.
Twice a month, the warriors didn't fight, but paraded through Asgard for the day. The weather on those days alternated between a hard rain and a warm, sunny sky. This was Wotan's method of cleaning up the heroes. While they marched, the halls were also cleaned of moldy floor rushes, boar bones, broken mead horns and other rubbish.
Brunnhilde made a face at the memory of those incredibly long, boring days with nothing to do. Thank the fates the mortals had destroyed civilization or she and her sisters would still be trapped in Asgard.
With the collapse of Midgard’s civilization came the demise of modern weapons, rendered useless by the absence of replacement ammunition, fuel, batteries and all the other high-tech pampering those weapons demanded. Mortals once again had to use edged or blunt weapon, so Wotan permitted the Valkyries to resume their traditional role in fetching dead heroes to Valhalla. Brunnhilde was not surprised to discover some of these warriors had resurrected the worship of Wotan.
Brunnhilde watched her sister, Guth, scoop up the soul of the only dead hero from the recent battle. The Valkyrie flew off to deliver the hero to Valhalla.
Nearby, a wounded soldier rolled over on his back exposing a gaping stomach wound. Suddenly, the soldier cried out, "Bertha! Help me. I'm dying."
The hair on the back of Brunnhilde’s neck crawled. She couldn't recall ever hearing a dying warrior call out a woman's name. Always, they spent their last moments cursing the gods or the enemy or their bad luck. Others did nothing but scream or cry. What made this one call on a woman who must be his wife or his lover? Brunnhilde was intrigued. Why was this dying mortal different? What made him think of a woman in his final agony? She thought back on the unnumbered battles she had monitored. Brunnhilde couldn't remember another incident like this. Perhaps, other warriors had called a woman's name, but she hadn't noticed it. She was certain it wasn't a usual occurrence.
The other Valkyries followed Guth, leaving Brunnhilde alone. She thought back some more, but still couldn’t come up with any similar occurrences.
She decided to pay more attention to the dying in future battles. ~~~
Following Munin and Hugin, Loki walked to the bank of the Rhine, changed into a salmon and flopped into the river. Something in the water burned his scales. He darted to the opposite bank, leaped out of the water and changed back to his human form. Red, itchy blotches covered much of his body. Loki scratched and cursed Wotan for insisting they assume the guise of mortals for the trip to Midgard. Loki had pointed out that they could suffer injury as long as they used mortal forms, but Wotan dismissed his concerns with a wave of his spear.
The two ravens led the angry Loki to a small building with a smashed door. Boxes and crates blocked the opening. He gave a crate a tentative push. It didn’t budge. Looking around, Loki spotted a small opening beneath one edge of the door. frame After a moment’s thought, he transformed into a mouse and crawled through the opening. The mouse scampered around the room searching for the Rhinegold. At the far end of
the room, a scrawny creature sat in a chair looking miserable. Round, puckered sores covered his arms, neck and forehead.
Loki returned to his mortal form and cleared his throat.
"How . . . how did you get in?” The alien jumped out his seat and grabbed an edge of a lab table to support himself.
"Locked doors are never a problem for the wily Loki."
He walked around the lab searching for the Rhinegold. "I want the gold you took. It belongs to another. Give it back, and it will be as if you never touched it. Refuse and you will regret it for all eternity. What is your name, little one?"
"Alberich.” The alien sat down and put his head in his hands. "Well? Where is it?"
"You're too late."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"The gold was stolen a short while ago."
Loki's mouth dropped open; Wotan would not like this news.
~~~
Fafner retrieved the artifacts to try again. With so much at stake, he had to master them. He wiped more slime from his forehead and placed the Chip. As before, vast amounts of information threatened to overwhelm his processors, but this time he resisted the urge to rip it from his body. Instead, he focused his mind on himself. Slowly, the amount of data lessened and became a trickle of news about him and his tribe. According to a video clip, his brother had been incarcerated for trying to blackmail a politician. What an idiot! How many times had he, Fafner, told his younger sibling not to bother with politicians? They weren't reliable enough to stay bribed or blackmailed. Assassination was much simpler, and ultimately, cheaper.
Part of a newscast informed him that he was now hunted in three more galaxies, ones he had never visited. So, the police hadn't written him off as dead. That meant that either a wanna-be criminal imitated him or the Inter- Galactic Police blamed him for crimes they couldn't solve. Still another report told of an interview with his nest mother. She claimed her son was an unfortunate creature who was unfairly charged with crimes by the police. Her hatchling would never do anything criminal, she insisted. He clicked his teeth. Good old Ma.
Now that he could control the information flow, Fafner pulled off the Chip, wiped his skull and put on the Helm. At once, the humming began and thousands of lines filled his vision.
From the corner of one eyeball, he saw rat scurry across the floor. Fafner lashed out a tentacle, grabbed the animal and stuffed it into his beak.
Immediately, one yellow line flashed and terminated with a black X. Ahh, he thought, the yellow lines represented animals.
Fafner concentrated on his own fate and the device shed the insect and the animal lines. Only a few dozen remained, all green except for three blue ones. He concluded the green lines represented mortals, and the blue ones were himself, Alberich and Mime. He focused more intently on the blue lines and watched the image change until there were only the three blues and a single green. One blue line thickened. Fafner grunted. That must be his line. Finally, he was getting somewhere. As the fatter blue line unspooled, it collided with another blue one. Both lines rebounded and diverged. That happened a second time.
It must mean that he and another alien came together for some reason. How far into the future did these events occur? There was no time scale shown in the vision.
After further unspooling, the green line meshed with his blue line and only the green line emerged. Fafner felt a shock of disbelief! A mortal killed a zaftan? Impossible! A mere mortal would have no idea how to kill him. Zaftans have eight brains. A primary, located at the top of the torso, controlled and communicated with the other seven brains located inside major muscle groups. To perform complicated maneuvers such as slithering, the primary established links to one or more secondary brains and issued commands. To kill a zaftan, all eight of the brains had to be destroyed. If even one survived, it would regrow missing body parts and reestablish the other brains. In ancient times, an assassin would hack his target into small pieces to ensure a death. Nowadays, poisons and explosives were commonly used.
Fafner ripped off the Helm. Who was this green-line creature? Could it be a local inhabitant? He dismissed that fanciful idea. The locals were puny and pathetic and mostly weaponless. No, this dangerous mortal must be from outside of this area.
He slithered to the doorway and peeked out. Nothing moved except the Rhine.
~~~
When Loki emerged from the Rhine and changed from salmon to mortal, he stomped back to Wotan. Scratching his sores, he seethed to the point that his wet clothes and hair steamed.
Wotan sat on a pile of rubble with two fingers extended.
Munin and Hugin stood on adjacent piles and watched the god. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Caw,” Munin replied.
"Caw, caw, caw,” Hugin said.
"On average, you have the correct answer. Individually, you're both wrong.” Wotan sighed.
"Teaching the ravens to count is hopeless,” Loki snarled.
Wotan raised an eyebrow. "Where's the Rhinegold?"
"It was stolen before I got there.” Loki felt a bit of satisfaction at Wotan's
stunned look.
"By the Yggdrasil! Do you know who has it and where it is kept?"
"A fool's mission is what you sent me on. An alien named Fafner has the
Rhinegold now."
“The aliens must be as treacherous as the mortals.”
Wotan closed his one eye, raised his spear Grungir and slowly turned it in
a circle. When the spear pointed south-west, he stopped. "There he is.” Wotan gasped. "He resembles a giant squid. A real monster.” Wotan, his eye good still closed, remained silent for a time. Finally, he opened his eye and said, "He'll never give us the Rhinegold and I suspect he is too cunning to be tricked by you. Alas, his race is also very long-lived. With the devices in his possession, he is even more formidable.” He tugged at his beard and frowned.
"Wonderful! How do we recover the Rhinegold?"
"I must think on this problem.” Wotan staggered and used his spear to steady himself.
“What happened?” Loki asked.
“I had a strange sensation. Deja vu, it’s called. It was like I had experienced this situation once before. I don’t understand why I got that felling.”
Wotan paced around piles of rubble piles bouncing Grungir's butt on the ground. After a time, he ceased walking and turned to Loki. "We need an old-fashioned hero. One strong of arm and weak of mind."
"Where are we going to find him?"
"We aren't.” Wotan pursed his lips. "I'll have to breed him. It will take at least generation before we have our hero. Once he defeats Fafner, it'll be child's play to convince him to give us the Rhinegold."
"A generation!” Loki spit on the ground. "I can't wait that long. Already I have arthritis in one elbow."
"We will have to tough it out until I can get a suitable hero. It'll be worth the wait."
Loki didn't think Wotan sounded very convincing. ~~~
Stomach cramping and head pounding from cheap wine, Mime sat on the ground across from his dispirited brother. Alberich sat with his back against
a partially collapsed brick wall. He took a gulp from the wine skin. Wine stains dotted his leather vest.
"So the big alien stole your work. Make new stuff.” Mime grabbed the wine skin and filled his mouth.
"You don't understand.” Alberich waved a hand at his brother. "I had special gold to make those devices and there's none of it left. I used it all."
"What's so special about the gold?"
"The gold had powerful magical qualities. I combined those qualities with the latest quantum computer technology and my own software code. Once I retrieve them, I'll have the power to rule the galaxy. I must get the devices back. I must."
Alberich ruling the galaxy? The concept struck Mime like a thunderbolt. It was preposterous. Alberich was a genius when it came to technology, but a complete dolt when it came to life. No, it would be much better if he, Mime, ruled the galaxy. "Well,” Mime finally replied, "I don't think that slime bag will just hand them over to you."
Alberich puckered his lips and stared at the ground.
After several seconds, he gave Mime a woeful look. "No, I'll just have to force him to give them back."
"If these devices are so powerful, won't the alien know what you are about to do?"
"They're prototypes and need more work, so they may not be all that useful to Fafner."
Mime decided on a plan. Once Alberich recovered the devices and made the improvements, Mime would take the devices from him. After that, there was no reason for Alberich to continue living. He mentally composed a list of folks who had insulted him. They would be the first to pay.
~~~
Around midday, Brunnhilde entered the Second Troop's hut and plopped down on a cot. The four Valkyries who lived in the hut looked at Brunnhilde.
The single room was in a state of messiness that didn’t happened by accident. Shields, spears, hairpins, mirrors, brushes and an occasional animal pelt were strewn everywhere. From wall-mounted iron hooks hung breastplates, kirtles and helmets. The only wall decoration was a paper filled with tally marks indicating the number of heroes each of the three troops had brought back to Valhalla during the month. The Second Troop was in a keen rivalry with the other two and the lead changed hands daily.
"Why didn't you come back with us?” Slogul asked. "What happened?" Guth looked up from polishing her helmet and raised an eyebrow.
"I have a question,” Brunnhilde said. "Have you ever heard a dying
mortal call out a woman's name?"
Hild guffawed. "Of course not. All they do is curse or scream in pain."
"Not much value in listening to a dying mortal,” Olrun said. "Why do you ask such a strange question? You must have a reason?"
"After this morning's battle,” Brunnhilde said, "I heard a wounded warrior call out a woman's name just before he died. Bertha, he called her. I don't think I’ve ever heard that before. At least, I can't remember hearing it before. I wondered if anyone else has heard this happen."
"Maybe it happened when I wasn't paying attention,” Hild said. "Why are you so interested in it what the dying mortals say?"
"It's so odd.” Brunnhilde shook her head and made a face. "There he was, dying from a horrible wound. His guts were spread out all over the grass, and still he thought of a woman instead of himself."
"Have you asked the other troops?” Olrun asked. "Or just us because we were down there with you?"
"I've already asked the First Troop, but none of them had ever noticed this either. I’ll ask the Third next."
"I know you,” Slogul said with a grin. "You expect us to do something now, don't you?"
Brunnhilde nodded. "I'd like you all to pay more attention in the next battles. See if any other dying mortals do this."
"Why are you so interested?” Guth asked. "It's not like we don't have other duties when we're down there. If we have to bring heroes back to Valhalla, we can't stick around waiting for some nithing warrior to die."
"I know, but I'm intrigued by how powerful that mortal's love must have been. Think about it! He overcame his fear of death to call out to his lover. We have never experienced anything like that."
"Huh?” Slogul frowned. "If it's a choice between loving and dying or living forever, I'll choose living, thank you."
"Me too,” Hild said. "I'll stick to living in Asgard rather than Midgard."
"Hey!” Olrun snapped her fingers. "Let's keep score on how many of these strange mortals we find. We can have a contest over it with the other two troops."
"Yeah,” Slogul said with a sly grin. "But we don't tell them about it until we win.” She looked at Brunnhilde. "We'll do what you ask provided you don't tell the other troops we're keeping score."
Brunnhilde tutted. "This isn't a game, you know."
"Of course, it is,” Hild replied. "I just made it into a game. One that we're going to win."
Slogul folded her arms. "Well? Are you going to help us win this contest? If you do, we'll help you with your silly game of mortal love."
Brunnhilde made a face at Slogul. "All right. I’ll ask the other troops to watch out for me, but I won't tell them the Second Troop is keeping score."