One Thousand Years

by Randolph Beck

  “Almost as bad,” said Dale. “We were thinking of keeping you in deep sleep until we return to Berlin.”

  “How long have I been out?” McHenry looked down, seeing that he was still wearing his Army uniform, but without the jacket. He knew that his mind was clear. He wasn't feeling groggy like the first time he awoke here.

  “It has been over two weeks,” said the doctor. “This ship is leaving soon. The Kommandant thought you should be awake for this. It is our last day over the Earth of your home time.”

  “Last day?” Feeling frantic, he saw his boots and jacket on another bed beside him. He reached over for the jacket, slipped it on, and checked everything was in place. He vaguely remembered the questionless interrogation session, and avoided looking at the pilot's wings on his uniform. He knew that he'd revealed handing the future technology to Donaldson. He could assume they got it back. But he had tried to forget that he and Donaldson had also exchanged wings. Had they been able to extract that? he wondered. He dared not think about it now.

  “I don't expect to be forgiven,” he said. “But I hope you'll understand I did what I needed to do.”

  “We do understand,” said Dale. “We understand duty and honor. I remember telling you, when you first tried to use the escape pod, that we expected you to try. It's in your favor that you didn't do anything stupid.”

  “Anything stupid?”

  “Such as firing on Berlin,” said Vinson.

  “You're right. I wasn't that stupid.”

  “We know about the device, Sam.” said Dale.

  He feigned a blank look.

  “We know you gave an advanced medical tool to your American comrade. The robots had inventoried the Tiger, and they knew what was missing from the medical kit you stole.” She smiled down at him. “It's pretty clever. Setting things up so that the Americans have future technology.”

  “Yes,” agreed Vinson. “They'd lose this war, but might win the cold war that came later after we'd gone. But I am sorry to say that your cleverness will cost you now. Your access throughout the ship may be more restricted when we resume flight operations.”

  “Resume? You stopped?”

  “Like the doctor said,” said Dale. “We're pulling out. We have what we need. There's no purpose in continuing to record a history that we want no part of. The next step will be announced after we're safely away in deep space.”

  “Can I assume that it's past D-Day?” he asked, putting his boots on.

  “What are you in such a hurry for?” asked Vinson. “You are not still fighting the war.”

  “I'd still like to know.”

  “You just missed it,” said Dale. “It's the seventh of June. The Allied commanding general just announced the invasion had failed. Except for some artifacts of the alternate Grauen, history is mostly progressing as it was expected.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Roosevelt is in hospital. He won't survive the day.”

  McHenry closed his eyes. The reality hurt, no matter how much he'd known it would happen.

  “My condolences,” offered the doctor.

  “Mine too,” added Vinson uncomfortably.

  “And mine as well,” said Dale. “We know that it is different for you. It might have been better if we had kept you under until we left your time.”

  “No, I appreciate you all waking me. I need to be up for this.” Then, turning, he called, “Rechner, Spiegel!” The nearest wall formed a mirror. McHenry looked at the fit of his clothing, which was, of course, still perfect.

  Dale smiled, then nodded to Vinson and Dr. Evers. “With primitive garments in the old times, people used mirrors to ensure their clothing was straight.”

  “It is interesting how quickly he is readjusting back into our world,” said the doctor.

  “And I still don't need a shave,” McHenry mused, feeling his face. He resisted the urge to fidget nervously with his uniform. The plan might still work out.

  *

  “Herr McHenry,” addressed the Kommandant. She looked down on him, like a teacher addressing a student. “Welcome back to your third chance at life. Do not throw this one away. There will not be a fourth. As this is the Earth of your times, this departure holds special significance for you. I thought it best that you had a view from Kontrolle.”

  “Thank you, ma'am.” McHenry stood stiffly, momentarily at attention. Vinson stood beside him and Dale, and then led them to a corner where they could watch the action but stay out of the way.

  They were again back in the stationary orbit. The Earth was still majestic, annotated with its grid marks of latitude and longitude, and the markings on the background and foreground. But the view was no longer incomprehensible, having learned what it all meant when he trained to fly the Tiger.

  That training was coming in handy now. Although McHenry was not yet proficient in German, he recognized many of the commands and responses as comparable terms used with the Tiger. After a while, he noticed the checklist was visible on a corner of the dome, each item's color changing from red to green as they were counted off. He wondered if he might have a better grasp of what was going on than Dale did, but they stopped at one item he didn't recognize. It was answered by one of the three other SS officers in Kontrolle.

  “It's about the satellites,” Dale whispered. “The SS needs to report a full accounting of satellites. They're still doing an inventory. We couldn't leave if we'd left something behind. Initially, there's the risk that the Grauen could come across one after we leave. Years later, when humanity advances technologically, there's the risk that they'd find one.”

  One of the SS officers called approval, and the Kommandant restarted the countdown, following the checklist. All appeared normal until, a minute later, an operator at one of the sensor stations called an alert.

  McHenry stepped closer to Vinson and whispered. “Do you know what's going on?”

  “There is something of interest on the surface.”

  Another crewman came to assist the operator while the Kommandant barked orders, and then called to her executive officer.

  “We're holding position,” Vinson translated.

  “Only for a little while,” said the Kommandant, in English. She then stepped back from the sensor station and looked upward as a tactical map was inset into the dome. McHenry recognized the English Channel. Arrows were pointing to the region on the water.

  “There's something unusual about the water,” Vinson whispered.

  It somehow reminded McHenry of what Vinson had said before they left Hawaii, that a few Tigers would be able to affect the weather. But before he could give it too much thought, new symbols appeared in the area. These were symbols that McHenry knew to mean the Grauen.

  He held his breath. Their proximity to the invasion beachhead could only mean the Grauen were interested in the war, after all. Might they be here to turn the war? Is it possible that his own intervention had tipped off the Grauen? Maybe Donaldson and Blanding had something to do with it. He wondered then what Blanding might possibly have done after they left him with the Tiger, even after he had agreed that contacting them would be dangerous — and well above his authority. But it was not to be.

  The Kommandant barked more orders. Weapons were readied. The number of Grauen increased as they watched the indicator, now understood to be surfacing from underwater. One frame on the left side of the dome showed a Grauen ship doing just that. She spoke again, and the dome center changed modes once more, now showing a close-up view of the ships ascending. There were fifteen of them, grouped together, but not evenly as in a military formation. They appeared to be the old-style Grauen of the type McHenry had seen all those months before. A call out from the sensor section confirmed it. Whatever it was, this was the same generation of Grauen.

  The Kommandant called out weapons.

  “They are planning a cover for Berlin,” Vinson whispered. “They are referring to a contingency plan.”

  They watched as the senior officers deliberate
d, conferring with the SS officers present, and then with Mtubo and Stern on the screen.

  Dale whispered, “The SS is confirming that the war was unaffected. The Grauen had not directly interfered.”

  The display shifted focus a few times, but it was soon obvious the Grauen were out of the atmosphere, passing deeper into space. They subsequently disappeared, preceded by a tone that McHenry had learned was a field wake alarm, which generally means they're going into interstellar flight. The Kommandant said something in German, and the displays went back to normal.

  There was another pause as everyone caught their breath.

  “Now we all see,” said McHenry.

  “See what?” Vinson whispered.

  “The invasion failed because the Grauen altered the weather. If not for them, Germany would have lost the war.” He didn't say it particularly loudly, but from the astonished silence that had permeated the room, he knew that they all had heard.

  *

  Chapter 23

  “In South America, it is our mission to make the leadership of Argentina not only possible but indisputable.... Hitler's fight in peace and war will guide us. Alliances will be the next step. We will get Bolivia and Chile. Then it will be easy to exert pressure on Uruguay. These five nations will attract Brazil, due to its type of government and its important group of Germans. Once Brazil has fallen, the South American continent will be ours. Following the German example, we will inculcate the masses with the necessary military spirit.”

  — Juan Perón, Vice-President and War Minister of Argentina, (June 10, 1944)

  Saturday, June 10, 1944

  “You were right, of course,” Dale admitted. They were again in their regular alcove at an SS officers' mess on the fifth-level. The mess was busier this time, but it wasn't crowded.

  McHenry looked up at her, not smug, but feeling something of a symbolic victory beside the real defeat. “We would have won the war,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” she said. She looked down at his smaller form, watching him cut the steak. “We can't be certain about Roosevelt's health, of course. The stresses of the defeat would not have been on him. But something else would have gotten to him. He would not have lasted another year.”

  “But another year is more than enough. And, after a victory across the channel, Wallace would not have given up the war.”

  “Quite true. And Roosevelt might have lived long enough to begin the next presidential term.”

  McHenry shook his head. “I don't think he would be running for a fourth term, especially if you say he has health problems.”

  “If they can hide the fact that he's in a wheelchair, they can hide anything. The system would have run him until he's dead.”

  He laughed, not taking the bait. “You're always thinking democracy is a cover for conspiracies. You were so sure of your mathematical history but you can't predict whether Roosevelt would have lived through his term.”

  She laughed, too, but more deviously. “Maybe you've heard the phrase, ‘the map is not the territory.’ In the sense that we're mapping history, our maps are much, much closer to the territory. They're good — really, really, really good — but they're not one hundred percent. We can only calculate the probability that, had Roosevelt lived, but the invasion still lost, he would still have been compelled to end the war. The English were quite ready to dispose of Churchill. That would have damaged the alliance. But it's less certain.” Her expression grew more tense. “And we never considered that the Grauen had plans of their own.”

  “You know,” he mused, “if they keep changing history, there was probably a first version when the Grauen did nothing, and the Allies won the war.”

  “Don't let that give you solace, Sam. We believe that, whether by happenstance or planning, they've been rewriting our history — probably over and over again. The people of the Reich will never have a real future while they keep meddling. There is only one decisive victory: The last.”

  “On that last point, at least, we can agree,” McHenry said. There was a touch of sadness in his voice.

  Dale stirred her spoon in her soup. “You almost had a victory, Sam.”

  He said nothing to that.

  “I mean the medical device that you tried to pass along. It was a clever solution, sacrificing this war for a greater victory in the future, long after we leave.”

  “I don't see it as that clever at all,” he said. “It was the very least thing I could do. I couldn't figure out how to win this war. I couldn't figure out how to save the Jews of Europe. And I couldn't figure out how to save my president. I wasn't nearly clever enough.”

  “It's not your fault that you're outmatched, Sam. I mean no offense by that. We have some of the finest minds on this ship. We are all genetically enhanced. All the SS personnel here have rechner support implanted into our brains. We have powerful rechners aboard this ship. And when we got the Tiger back, we had very intelligent robots able to quickly search and inventory everything. You got much further in your plot than anyone expected. You did the best that anyone could do. As they used to say in your times, don't sell yourself short.”

  Someone around a corner had shouted, “Achtung!” Hearing a whirl of the clicking of heels, McHenry rose to attention when Dale did. He didn't mind the military formality. He loved it, in fact. But he remembered thinking, those two months ago, that he didn't want to spend the rest of his life heiling the Führer. Not Hitler, and not this one. Then quickly, they heard Mtubo telling everyone to sit down until he stood before Dale and McHenry.

  “May I join you?” he asked, perfunctorily.

  “Certainly, Oberführer,” Dale replied.

  After they sat down, Mtubo, still towering over him, continued what might have been Dale's earlier response. “The Grauen may think they're being benevolent. You do not know the dangers that the future will bring.”

  “I know what the dangers are today,” McHenry replied.

  Mtubo shook his head. “We live in a society where any fifteen-year-old may have the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon. Any small group of teenagers has the capacity to create biological weapons that would kill half the people in a city. It takes a well-structured society like ours to control that. By ensuring that national socialism is victorious, the Grauen may have been working to keep humanity from destroying itself.”

  “You don't think democracies could survive?” McHenry asked, more as a reaction than a question.

  “They could not survive without becoming something else. Only nationalist governments — one-party nationalist governments — can impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward beyond your century.”

  “Free societies can adapt.”

  “They will adapt. They will become national socialist.” Mtubo relaxed his posture ever-so-slightly, and eased his tone. “Do not misunderstand me, Herr McHenry. I do admire your tenacity. You have inspired me.”

  “Inspired you?” McHenry was flummoxed. “How?”

  “Your plan to have history change after our departure was superior. We had not expected that of you.”

  “Really?” McHenry's eyes narrowed. “Even had it worked, I thought it was insufficient. I just didn't think there was any other way.”

  “We are almost at the transit point. We will make an announcement there, but the Kommandant has already been informed, and I will tell you now. Our next destination will be the future: an altered future. Our analysts project a national socialist future, and a good one, but not our future. While there we will make a reference survey and then take supplies for a much greater expedition.”

  A smile was forming on Dale's lips.

  Mtubo continued: “And here is the key: My oath, and the oaths of the men and women on this ship, are with our Führer, Katrina Renard — not with whomever will be leading the Reich at that future date. After our servicing, we will then be going much further back in time. You see, Sturmbannführer Dale has confirmed something in an experiment s
he conducted.” He turned to Dale.

  “We can correct the timeline,” she said. “Once the Grauen have been removed from our history, we will come back and nudge events back into the sequence we want. It was only a small experiment, but Göring can carry it out on a larger scale. We could, potentially, restore the Reich to ninety-eight percent of the way it was when we left.”

  “Wait a sec,” McHenry said. “What do you mean, removed from history?”

  “Surely, you must have considered this was our goal,” said Mtubo, now flashing a smile McHenry had never before seen. “We will eventually be going back further in time, deeper, to a point when the Grauen had not yet evolved. We will end their existence before they end ours.”

  *

  After lunch, McHenry made his way down to the hangar section. What Mtubo said didn't matter, he told himself. It was an interesting plan, but he assured himself it would never happen anyway. Not if they're going to the future first.

  The Tigers were packed and clamped down for interstellar flight. Nevertheless, McHenry was able to climb aboard. If anyone had asked, he'd have said he wanted to reminisce, but no one did. He didn't quite know why, but they had long since accepted his misadventure.

  He had two sets of wings on his uniform. One on his “Ike” jacket, and the other on the shirt beneath it. With a flip of one switch, he opened the garbage disposal in the cargo bin. He removed the wings from his shirt, and gave it one quick look. Tossing it from one hand to the other that he might feel the weight, a greater weight came off his shoulders. These were, indeed, the sterling, U.S. Army Air Force issue that he had traded with Donaldson. He placed them into the disposal, and allowed the system to close and cycle, destroying the evidence.

  Donaldson had the ones made from a future metal. He wondered how soon he could notice the difference; how long it might take to remember something from his dreams; and then, ultimately, to find what that metal was made from, and exploit that knowledge. That last step may take a couple of generations, he pondered, but that was plenty of time. This war may be lost, but the larger one against a world conquest was not. The United States was going to have one advantage it didn't have before. Göring will face a significantly altered future when they arrive. It should be a free people that fight the Grauen.