The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories [Anthology]

by Edited By Ian Watson

  But her master did come. Rolf had changed. He seemed older and fatter than since I quit the university. I too had altered for sure in the twenty years since that wonderful 1916 when both of us had journeyed across half of Europe from one railway to another!

  Rolf seemed distinctly unthrilled to see me. He forced a meagre smile and darted an anxious glance along the hallway before letting me in. He didn’t take me to the music room but to a closet where he would deal with tradesmen. Briefly I explained the help I needed; his features creased even as I spoke. Peals of laughter resounded; I thought I heard Gertrud’s voice.

  Rolf sighed. “No, Otto, I can’t. Truly I can’t.” Just at that moment I noticed his Party badge, half-hidden by the handkerchief in his breast pocket.

  “I understand,” I said disappointedly. “How’s Gertrud?”

  “She’s fine, thanks, and very busy with our guests.”

  Without asking after my own family or offering any other courtesy, he gripped me by the elbow and steered me to the door, which he shut smartly behind me.

  I felt like vomiting.

  * * * *

  I could have given up and told Albert that his papers had gone missing; but, I’m not sure why, it seemed vital to persevere. I tried to get help from two other colleagues, one of whom refused, wringing his hands and looking scared sick, while the other threw me out on the street before I even got a chance to explain the aim of my visit.

  So I turned to the Network - whose first reaction was lukewarm. Albert’s reputation was wobbly, and as for me, I’d only just joined them. They did appreciate that Albert hadn’t lent support to the new regime, and wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so, but at the same time they were scathing about him being so bound up in his research rather than taking an active stand against the political developments which the Emperor was condoning.

  I first mentioned the matter of Albert’s papers at a meeting following Hitler’s speech in Salzburg, where he made his intentions crystal clear: to rid the Austro-Hungarian Empire of all resident Jews and restrict the Slavs to menial occupations. “It goes without saying,” he’d thundered, “that Aryans aren’t savages,” and he’d specified that he personally would oversee the emigration of the Jews with full respect for rights and justice and especially “with no violence”. As if exile from one’s homeland wasn’t the worst sort of violence.

  Isaac Levinsky, the co-ordinator for our sector, adopted a defensive stance and my request was rejected. But as I was heading away from the meeting, I heard the quick patter of footsteps behind me. A young woman, whom I’d noticed earlier, though barely so, was trying to catch up. I stopped to wait for her.

  “What are those papers you want to recover for Mr Einstein? You seem to think they’re very important for our cause.” She was short of breath and hadn’t even bothered to introduce herself. Once I pointed this out, she said, “Pardon me. I’m Countess Ester Egerhazy.”

  “Are you Jewish?”

  “Does one have to be Jewish to fight injustice?”

  I couldn’t help but smile at this reply, which seemed a bit theatrical. She smiled too. What a superb woman this Ester was: in her thirties, with skin like milk, big almond eyes underlined with a touch of make-up, hair black as jet tied back in a bun on the nape of her neck, revealing single-pearl earrings dimpling her lobes.

  “I can help you.”

  “I beg your pardon?” For a moment I’d forgotten all about my quest, but her offer yanked me back firmly to reality. What a sad contrast between this elegant, perfumed young aristocrat and the filthy vagabond I’d become.

  “I can help you,” she said again. “I attended your final course.”

  “At high school, you mean?”

  “No, at the university. I’m older than I look. I can always get into places. If you’ll tell me exactly what you’re looking for, I can get it and give it to you.”

  I felt hesitant. The imperial secret police were well known for their efficiency. There was a high chance that Ester was one of their agents, now on a mission to gull me into revealing what sort of papers Albert was so keen to get back. What the hell. I’d have given anything for the chance of another tête-à-tête with Ester. So I described precisely what the papers were and where they ought to be.

  A week went by. Anxiety and impatience gnawed at me. Emma willingly believed this was only due to the mission with which Albert had entrusted me.

  On the appointed day, Ester was there. Discreetly she slipped me a package neatly wrapped in brown paper, and we strolled along together.

  “Are you going to meet Mr Einstein?” she asked innocently, and I failed to answer yes because I remembered of a sudden that my trip ought to be kept secret.

  “No, no,” I mumbled, “I’ll just have this sent to him.”

  “Maybe I might dare suggest. . . ?”

  “Suggest what?”

  “No, never mind. I was merely thinking that my husband has just been appointed Second Secretary at the Imperial Embassy in Paris. I could take charge of... “

  “Thanks so much, but that’s too much trouble to go to.”

  I’d hated her mentioning her husband. But equally, it came to me that I’d have a chance to see her again in France. I’d heard that President Pergaud loved to hold big receptions with a mixed guest list of intellectuals, diplomats, artists and politicians ... I took Ester’s hand and was about to kiss her fingers, but she stopped me and instead she hugged me and kissed me swiftly on both cheeks.

  She blushed in embarrassment. “I really loved your style of teaching...”

  Then she turned on her heel and vanished away into the night.

  * * * *

  Two months later, I reached Paris at last, for mine had been a tough journey. If I’d left Austria officially, no one would have hindered me; I’d even have been given an emigration allowance so long as I gave up forever the right to return. I wasn’t prepared to do so.

  Some nights, while I was shivering in the mountains, I imagined high in the sky the huge airships which could make the journey in a couple of days, airships such as Ester and her husband must have taken. Sometimes I heard trains rumbling through the night.

  That was just a nasty memory by now. I was safe, enjoying the comfort of the sofa in the lounge of the posh apartment on the Avenue du Maine where Albert lived with his family. While the maid served me a glass of port, Albert hastened to check the contents of the package which I’d had with me all that while.

  “What’s in there has something to do with the clock experiment, right? One of the clocks sent into the future ...”

  “Ah, you haven’t forgotten... So many things have happened in the meantime ...”

  Of course I knew what was in those papers. I wasn’t so daft as to transport that package halfway across Europe without the least idea what this was all about. I must admit that, apart from some pages referring to the experiment carried out on 6 February 1934, I couldn’t understand much - except that this surely wasn’t a hoax, and that Albert was one of the most brilliant minds in human history, so therefore there was a chance that travel through time was possible. I waited until the maid had left the room before asking what I was dying to know:

  “Albert? Time travel? Do you believe it can happen?”

  “Of course, since I sent this clock into the future, even if like everyone else that day you thought I was cinglé.”

  Albert had said the word for crazy in French. He seemed to have mastered the language marvelously. Now that he’d obtained French citizenship and been admitted to the Academy of Sciences, I wondered if one day he’d be a member of the Légion d’honneur. But that wasn’t my main concern.

  “And the past, Albert, do you think it’s possible to travel back into the past too . . . and return?”

  “In theory, that’s no great problem. But in practical terms...”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “What’s the practical problem?”

  “Well actually, what you’re describing wou
ld take more energy because you’d need to send a second machine to accompany whatever you sent into the past, in order to allow retrieval. A second machine, with enough stored energy to power it. So frankly I don’t think time tourism is on the cards any time soon.”

  I felt shattered. During those long nights spent under the stars or in some risky refuge, I’d gone over my notion again and again, considering every angle. But it would only work if travel into the past was doable. Now Albert had flat out squashed the idea. I decided to level with him.

  He listened to me attentively, as was his way, and needless to say brilliance sparkled in his eyes, but I couldn’t say that the basic idea enthused him. That his discovery could be used to shed blood didn’t please him one bit. And yet he had to agree that what I was suggesting might be the best solution. But the problem of the energy source remained. In Vienna he’d used the energy produced by the prototype pile, and that only sent a clock weighing a few hundred grams three minutes into the future. As for what I envisaged . . .

  Of a sudden he exclaimed, “We shan’t be able to transport a person any time soon, Otto - but, short-term, there’s an option you’re neglecting! You don’t need to go there yourself. All we need to do is open a window - quite a small one will do - and exchange the two objects, B for A. As for returning object A, I believe we could handle this with, well, let’s call it an auto-glider.”

  “Meaning—?”

  “Meaning it moves with its load and its own power unit, like an automobile.”

  “Can such a thing be made quickly?”

  “Alas, it’ll take several months since I’ll have to go about this discreetly. You do understand that from now on we’ll need to observe the utmost discretion?”

  * * * *

  The following months dragged. I kept in touch with Albert through Ester when she returned to Vienna with her husband - I too had gone back there as clandestinely as I’d left. Emma had thrown me out and the situation was getting worse by the day. Pogroms were reported in the regions of Salzburg, Timifloara, Lake Balaton and Carinthia. In Turkey, the progressive government of Mustapha Kemal’s successors, which had massacred the Armenians and forced the survivors into exile, were rattling sabres, seeing a chance to grab territory from the Empire in disarray.

  The situation was growing tense everywhere. Csar Michael had appointed old social democrat leader Kerensky as Prime Minister; so a united front was on the go from Saint Petersburg to Madrid, including Berlin where a revolutionary government had kicked out the old Kaiser and proclaimed a republic - which promptly went on to establish a long-term alliance with France in exchange for partial return of the areas confiscated in 1871 along with the breaking off of diplomatic and commercial relations with Franz-Ferdinand. Prince Otto, whom I liked not merely because we shared the same name, had publicly broken with his father and quit the country. All of this intensified my determination.

  * * * *

  Through the Network, with the help of the Slav Resistance Front, I was able to get photos and detailed notes about the room in Sarajevo which Albert would need to carry out the plan; fortunately it seemed the room was just as it had been.

  Things were getting urgent. It was already April 1943, and Franz-Ferdinand had surprised everyone by declaring his support for the Pact of Ceuta, and in this very same month the two other signatories to the pact, Franco and Gamelin, rebelled against their respective governments.

  This didn’t suit the business we had in hand, not one little bit. Albert let me know, via Ester, that he’d been registered as a suspect person and suspended from teaching because he hadn’t spoken out clearly enough against the rebellions. Of course this delayed his work on our project.

  I must confess I felt so discouraged that I thought of throwing in the towel even though I was well aware that our plan was the only thing that could stop our twentieth century from becoming known to history as the era of a world war, which I could see fast approaching.

  With the shock of the Japanese landing in California in July, and the occupation of Provence by Gamelin a month later, matters became even more pressing. If we did nothing, the world was rushing towards doom. We absolutely had to succeed and there was no time to waste.

  * * * *

  Another problem was that Fermi was supporting Mussolini’s national fascist government in Italy. But Albert let me know, always by way of Ester, that he hoped he still had enough contact with the scientific community to be sure of access to the necessary energy when the moment came. Nevertheless, he had to decamp, this time to Germany, which meant more delay.

  Thus far, war was raging in Spain and in the French colonial empire as well as in the USA; the Americans were hard put to block the Japanese advance at the Rocky Mountains. Meanwhile, my own life was getting harder. We were totally at the mercy of Hitler’s gangs of thugs, abusing and assaulting us freely. I’d started attending the synagogue and became friends with the rabbi, Eliazar Ben Rahhem, with whom I studied the Torah twice a week. The rest of the time I spent struggling to survive, mostly by giving lessons to the kids of our community, who weren’t allowed into the state schools any more.

  Ester’s husband was now ambassador in Rio de Janeiro, at the cost of leaving his wife behind - there was some Jewish blood in her ancestry. She let me know that she was now under surveillance; contact between us was increasingly difficult.

  By the start of 1945 I was seriously thinking of giving up and going to join our people’s settlements in Palestine. Then the Emperor suddenly banned all emigration and decided to gather all the Jews into special camps. Happily for me, the Network helped me get out of Austria so that I could finally meet Albert and hand over the object which Ester had managed to get to me the day before her arrest. Namely, the very gun which the Crime Department of the Ministry of the Interior had kept stored in the capital. In Berlin a gunmaker friend, to whom I couldn’t of course spill the beans, quickly worked out why the pistol had jammed and supplied me with an identical, but functioning, twin.

  In September Albert and I both took up residence in Munich where we could now work together. At last Comrade Albert (as one needed to call oneself under Rosa Luxemburg’s regime) and I had almost reached our goal. Munich was the right place to be because of its close proximity to the German Energy Commissariat, which now had a Fermi-style pile in operation. Albert managed to get me a post as a secretary in the Physics department of the university, and in any spare time I worked on the necessary geographical co-ordinates while he was busy perfecting the autoglider. A wit once said that history is geography in practice, yet I had to be so exact with the maps and large-scale street plans.

  Even though I can’t go into too much detail, I think that I can safely say that with the help of the Network I managed to have a beacon sent to Sarajevo to be installed inside the wall just above the table, in the drawer of which the man had confessed during his pre-trial interrogation to having kept his pistol. Whereupon Albert installed the geographic co-ordinates, then proceeded to adjust the device “bite by bite”, as he put it, to the date that concerned us.

  I received news of Ester from a woman writer who’d been interned with her before being expelled, because of some quibblings about her national origin. This woman, Milena Jesenska, made no secret of how much worse conditions were in those special camps than anyone imagined. There’d been typhus epidemics. My poor Ester! I couldn’t help thinking that I was partly to blame for what had happened to her. We absolutely had to succeed!

  * * * *

  I can hardly believe it: the moment has come! Today, we did it. We met up at the nuclear lab at Dachau. The countryside was glorious in the May sunshine. In the morning I’d thought about Emma. Her birthday was on the 8 May .. . May the Lord (bless His name!) help me forget what she did to me. But in a few minutes that won’t matter and even the sheets of paper I’m writing on probably won’t have existed. Our task will be accomplished: Franz-Ferdinand will never have been the Emperor of Austria, never will he have called Hitler to
power, and the twentieth century will be known to history as the century which brought happiness and prosperity to humanity.

  I’m content. The involvement of a historian was essential to settle on the crucial moment as being the failed assassination attempt in Sarajevo, on the 28 June 1914. How often have we thought during the past years: “If only Prinzip’s pistol hadn’t jammed ...”

  Well, in ten minutes, that’ll be it. Gavril Prinzip will be known as the one who assassinated Franz-Ferdinand, the world will be at peace and I, here in Dachau, will enjoy the happy tranquillity of a nice spring day, not even knowing what I’ve escaped.

  Translated from the French by Sissy Pantelis and Ian Watson

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  * * * *

  Tales From the Venia Woods

  Robert Silverberg