Volk by Piers Anthony Page A

instruction!”
    â€œSo the Youth is not perfect,” she said smugly. “There is politics there too. You thought I was too stupid to know, didn’t you?”
    â€œWell, a girl as pretty as you doesn’t need to be smart.” There was an art to temporizing.
    Krista struggled with that statement, but finally decided it was a compliment. “
Now
will you tell me about Nuremberg?”
    â€œNuremberg is a famous city in the mountains of southern Germany, in Bavaria, some two hundred and forty kilometers east-southeast of here—”
    She hit him lightly with her small fist. “Will you stop that? You know I meant when you went there, four years ago.”
    â€œOh, that. Four years is a long time to remember.” Actually he owed it to her; the news she had imparted about Rommel was certainly of interest to him. What a lost opportunity for the Youth! If Ernst had to enlist in the army, he’d jump at the chance to serve under Rommel.
    Of course Krista hoped to go to Nuremberg herself, for the annual festivities, and she wanted the reassurance of his prior experience. He should be happy to tell her all about it; seldom would he have a more enthusiastic audience. Yet somehow he found himself holding back. Why?
    He figured it out in a moment. It was because a substantial part of Krista’s interest had to be in him, rather than in the subject. That was flattering, but it was time to begin distancing himself from her, if he didn’t want to be pushed into more of a commitment than he desired. It was obvious that both his family and hers thought that the two of them would be an excellent match, and so they had been put together and left alone. Krista already wanted him, and she was now the kind of girl any man would want. Propinquity was bound to have effect.
    But Ernst did not want to be managed. Perhaps he had indeed been corrupted to that extent by his stay in America. He wanted to choose for himself, especially in love. Also, he had become more discriminating. He now recognized in Krista certain limitations, a narrowness of outlook, that subtly repelled him. She was beautiful, but she was not the shadow of the woman that Lane’s fiancée Quality was. He did not want to be bound to her.
    But how could he avoid it? It seemed that everyone, including Krista herself, was determined to do it. He could not simply decline; there would be repercussions and unpleasantness.
    Then he thought of a way. He would answer her, but in a way that should discourage her from pursuing him. If he could cause her to lose her interest in him, not because of any suspicion about his patriotism but for unspecified reason, he would soon be free of her without blame.
    He moved closer to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “I will be happy to tell you all about it. The very memory thrills me.”
    She turned into him, surprised and pleased by his action. He hoped that this was a superficial reaction. “You can imagine the excitement of preparation, the constant drilling, the competition with other units, the hope and fear of success, and of the enormous satisfaction of having your troop chosen to go to the Nuremberg Rally.”
    â€œYes,” she breathed.
    He moved his hand down from her shoulder to her hip. “As you know, the city is almost three hundred kilometers by road from Wiesbaden, because the road follows the meandering river and the contours of the land, stretching out the distance. It was a longer journey than many of us had made before, which was part of the excitement.”
    â€œYes!”
    His hand moved slowly along her thigh. “It was a glorified camping excursion; we sang patriotic songs on the way. But in time boredom set in, for we were sixteen, with brief attention spans. The songs degenerated. Finally we got to the notorious ribald
Es Zittern die morschen Knochen
, ‘The rotten bones are trembling,’ only certain portions were changed so that it