by Anthology
“What do you want? The reward of the invaders?”
“Only the inevitable, Leader, only what will be because it has already been. Here!” Meyers tossed a small leather wallet onto the table with his left hand, flipping it open to the picture of a woman perhaps thirty-five years old. “What do you see there?”
“A damned Jewess!” The Leader’s eyes had flicked to the picture and away, darting about the room and back to it.
“Quite so. Now, to you, a damned Jewess, Leader.” Meyers replaced the wallet gently, his eyes cold. “Once though, to me, a lovely and understanding woman, interested in my work, busy about our home, a good mother to my children; there were two of them, a boy and a girl—more damned Jews to you, probably. We were happy then. I was about to become a full professor at Heidelberg, we had our friends, our life, our home. Some, of course, even then were filled with hatred toward the Jewish people, but we could stand all that. Can you guess what happened? Not hard, is it?
“Some of your Youths. She’d gone to her father to stay with him, hoping it would all blow over and she could come back to me without her presence hurting me. They raided the shop one night, beat up her father, tossed her out of a third-story window, and made the children jump after her—mere sport, and patriotic sport! When I found her at the home of some friends, the children were dead and she was dying.”
The Leader stirred again. “What did you expect? That we should coddle every Jew to our bosom and let them bespoil the Reich again? You were a traitor to your fatherland when you married her.”
“So I found out. Two years in a concentration camp, my Leader, taught me that, well indeed. And it gave me time to think. No matter how much you beat a man down and make him grovel and live in filth, he still may be able to think, and his thoughts may still find you out—you should have thought of that. For two years, I thought about a certain field of mathematics, and at last I began to think about the thing instead of the symbols. And at last, when I’d groveled and humbled myself, sworn a thousandfold that I’d seen the light, and made myself something a decent man would spurn aside, they let me out again, ten years older for the two years there, and a hundred times wiser.
“So, I came finally to the little farm near Bresseldorf, and I worked as I could, hoping that, somehow, a just God would so shape things that I could use my discovery. About the time I’d finished, you fled, and I almost gave up hope; then I saw that in your escape lay my chances. I found you, persuaded you to return, and here you are. It sounds simple enough now, but I wasn’t sure until I saw the legion. What would happen if I turned you over to the Army of Occupation?”
“Eh?” The Leader had been watching the door, hoping for some distracting event, but his eyes now swung back to Meyers. “I don’t know. Is that what you plan?”
“Napoleon was exiled; Wilhelm died in bed at Dorn. Are the leaders who cause the trouble ever punished, my Leader? I think not. Exile may not be pleasant, but normally is not too hard a punishment—normal exile to another land. I have devised a slightly altered exile, and now I shall do nothing to you. What was—will be—and I’ll be content to know that eventually you kill yourself, after you’ve gone insane.” Meyers glanced at the watch on the table, and his eyes gleamed savagely for a second before the cool, impersonal manner returned.
“The time is almost up, my Leader. I was fair to you; I explained to the best of my ability the workings of my invention. But instead of science, you wanted magic; you expected me to create some pseudo-duplicate of yourself, yet leave the real self-unaltered. You absorbed the word ‘plenum’ as an incantation, but gave no heed to the reality. Remember the example I gave—a piece of string looped back on itself? In front of you is a string from some peasant’s dress; now, conceive that piece of string—it loops back, starts out again, and is again drawn back—it does not put forth new feelers that do the returning to base for it, but must come back by itself, and never gets beyond a certain distance from itself. The coins that you saw in the pile disappeared—not because I depressed a dummy switch, but because the two-minute interval was finished, and they were forced to return again to the previous two minutes.”
Escape thoughts were obviously abandoned in the mind of the Leader now, and he was staring fixedly at Meyers while his hands played with the raveling from a peasant’s garment, looping and unlooping it. “No,” he said at last, and there was a tinge of awe and pleading in his voice, the beginning of tears in his eyes. “That is insane. Karl Meyers, you are a fool. Release me from this and even now, with all that has happened, you’ll still find me a man who can reward his friends: release me, and still I’ll reconquer the world, half of which shall be yours. Don’t be a fool, Meyers.”
Meyers grinned. “There’s no release, Leader. How often must I tell you that what is now will surely be; you have already been on the wheel—you must continue. And—the time is almost here!”
He watched the tensing of the Führer’s muscles with complete calm, dropping the automatic back on his lap. Even as the Leader leaped from his chair in a frenzied effort and dashed toward him he made no move. There was no need. The minute hand of the watch reached a mark on the face, and the leaping figure of the world’s most feared man was no longer there. Meyers was alone in the house, and alone in Bresseldorf.
He tossed the gun on the table, patting the pocket containing his wallet, and moved toward the dead figure outside the door. Soon, if the Leader had been right, the Army of Occupation would be here. Before then, he must destroy his machine.
One second he was dashing across the room toward the neck of Karl Meyers, the next, without any feeling of change, he was standing in the yard of the house of Meyers, near Bresseldorf, and ranging from him and behind him were rows of others. In his hands, which had been empty a second before, he clutched a rifle. At his side was belted one of the new-issue automatics. And before him, through the door of the house that had been Karl Meyers,’ he could see himself coming forward, Meyers at a few paces behind.
For the moment there were no thoughts in his head, only an endless refrain that went: “I must obey my original implicitly; I must not cause trouble for my original or Karl Meyers; I must not speak to anyone unless one of those two commands. I must obey my original implicitly; I must not cause trouble—” By an effort, he stopped the march of the words in billhead, but the force of them went on, an undercurrent to all his thinking, an endless and inescapable order that must be obeyed.
Beside him, those strange others who were himself waited expressionlessly while the original came out into the doorway and began to speak to them. “Soldiers of the Greater Reich that is to be . . . Let us be merciless in avenging . . . The fruits of victory . . .” Victory! Yes, for Karl Meyers. For the man who stood there beside the original, a faint smile on his face, looking out slowly over the ranks of the legion.
“But I speak to myselves. You who come after me know what is to be this day and in the days to come, so why should I tell you? And you know that my cause is just. The Jews, the Jew lovers—” The words of the original went maddeningly on, words that were still fresh in his memory, words that he had spoken only twenty-four hours before.
And now, three dead Jews and a Jew lover had brought him to this. Somehow, he must stop this mad farce, cry out to the original that it was treason and madness, that it was far better to turn back to the guards in Switzerland, or to march forth toward the invaders. But the words were only a faint whisper, even to himself, and the all-powerful compulsion choked even the whisper off before he could finish it. He must not speak to anyone unless one of those two commanded.
Still the words went on. “Not victory in a decade, nor a year, but in a month! We shall go north and south and east and west! We shall show them that our fangs are not pulled; that those which we lost were but our milk teeth, now replaced by a second and harder growth!
“And for those who would have betrayed us, or bound us down in chains to feed the gold just of the mad democracies, or denied us the room to
live which is rightfully ours—for those, we shall find a proper place. This time, for once and for all, there shall be an end to the evils that corrupt the earth—the Jews and the Bolsheviks, and their friends, and friends’ friends. Germany shall emerge, purged and cleansed, a new and greater Reich, whose domain shall not be Europe, nor this hemisphere, but the world!
“Many of you have seen all this in the future from which you come, and all of you must be ready to reassure yourselves of it today, that the glory of it may fill your tomorrow. Now, we march against a few peasants. Tomorrow, after quartering in Bresseldorf, we shall be in the secret depot, where those who remain loyal shall be privileged to multiply and join us, and where we shall multiply all our armament ten-thousandfold I Into Bresseldorf, then, and if any of the peasants are disloyal, be merciless in removing the scum! Forward!”
His blood was pounding with the mockery of it, and his hands were clutched on the rifle. Only one shot from the gun, and Karl Meyers would die. One quick move, too sudden to defeat, and he would be avenged. Yet, as he made the first effort toward lifting the rifle, the compulsion surged upward, drowning out all other orders of his mind. He must not cause trouble for his original or Karl Meyers!
He could feel the futile tears on his face as he stood there, and the mere knowledge of their futility was the hardest blow of all. Before him, his original was smiling at him and starting forward, to be checked by Meyers, and to swing back after a few words.
“Proceed to Bresseldorf, then, and we follow. Secure quarters for yourself and food, and a place for me and for Meyers; we stop there until I can send word to the depot during the night and extend my plans. To Bresseldorf!”
Against his will, his feet turned then with the others, out across the yard and into the road, and he was headed toward Bresseldorf. His eyes swept over the group, estimating them to be six or seven thousand in number; and that would mean twenty years, at one a day—Twenty years of marching to Bresseldorf, eating, sleeping, eating again, being back at the farm, hearing the original’s speech, and marching to Bresseldorf. Finally—from far down the line, a titter from the oldest and filthiest reached him—finally that; madness, and death at the hands of himself, while Karl Meyers stood by, watching and gloating. He no longer doubted the truth of the scientist’s statements; what had been, would be.
For twenty years! For more than seven thousand days, each the same day, each one step nearer madness. God!
