Read Online We Install by Harry Turtledove - Free Book Online Page A

German soldiers detraining at Kreshchatik Station—”
    The recorded announcement ran through again, then shut off. Sack turned to the other soldier. “There, you see what they’ve done? They’ve gone and automated the bastards.”
    Sure enough, signs with arrows pointed the way up Zankovetskaya Street. Sack and his new companion, whose name, he learned, was Bruno Scheurl, ambled toward the park with other weary men coming up out of the subway.
    He glanced over at the Moskva Hotel, which had taken shell damage when the Germans forced their way into Kiev. It looked as good as new now, all the rubble cleared away, all the glass in place. He wondered how long that would last. If Germany held the line of the Dnieper, it might survive intact a while longer. If not—if not, the hotel would be the least of his worries.
    The Palace of Culture was similarly pristine; the Museum of Ukrainian Fine Arts on Kirov Street had not been damaged when Kiev fell. Across Kirov Street from the museum lay Central Recreation Park. The trees, green and leafy when Sack last saw them, now were skeletons reaching bony branches up to the dripping sky. The grass in the park lay in dead, yellowish-white clumps.
    â€œUgly place,” Scheurl remarked.
    â€œIt’s nice in summer,” Sack said. “But I’m damned if I know how even Russians—excuse me, Ukrainians—live through winter hereabouts, especially when winter seems to run about eight months out of the year.”
    Near the entrance to Dynamo Stadium stood a granite monument more than twice the height of a man. In low relief, it showed four stalwart-­looking men in the short pants and knee socks of footballers. A nearby plaque told who they were, but its Cyrillic letters meant nothing to Sack. He jerked a thumb at it, asked, “Can you read what it says?”
    â€œMaybe. I did some Russian in school.” Scheurl studied the plaque, then complained, “Ukrainians spell funny. I think it says these fellows were part of a team of Russian prisoners who beat a crack Luftwaffe team in an exhibition match during the last war—and got executed for it. The death match, they call it.”
    â€œHa!” Sack said. “I wonder what really happened.”
    Shrugging, Scheurl headed into the stadium. Sack followed. Signs of all sorts in the stands and on the football field directed soldiers to their units. The rows of colorful seats were rapidly filling with field-gray. Military policemen served as ushers and guides. “What unit?” one of them asked Sack.
    â€œForty-First Panzergrenadiers , second regiment,” the lance-corporal answered.
    The fellow with the gorget glanced down at a hastily printed chart. “Section 29, about halfway up. Haven’t seen many from your division yet.”
    Sack believed him. Too many comrades hadn’t made it back over the Trubezh, let alone the Dnieper. He and Scheurl parted company, one of a thousand partings with brief-met friends he’d made since he came east.
    The people who made the signs hadn’t left a division’s worth of room for the Forty-First Panzergrenadiers . Maybe they knew what they were doing; only a company’s worth of men rattled around in the area, so many dirty peas in a pod too big for them. Sack found a couple of real friends here, though, men he’d fought beside for more than a year. They all looked as worn and battered as he felt. He asked after others he did not see. Most of the time, only shrugs answered him; once or twice, he got a grim look and a thumb’s-down.
    Somebody asked him in turn about Gustav Pfeil. “He took a leg wound, not too bad,” he said. “I got him to a doctor. He should be all right, unless”—he found himself echoing the Danish medical officer—“the field hospital gets overrun.”
    â€œHe may be luckier than all of us,” somebody else said. “If he does make it,