The success of the blows planned for today all over the world depended on the success of this venture here in destroying Hitler XVI. And the success of this venture depended absolutely on him, since each man had his duty and his was the prime one of disposing of the Führer.
The transport motor droned over the clatter of the banquet. Harding made his decision. The risks were the same whether he attempted to reach concealment or went on with his plan. He advanced toward the Hitler’s table, serving out the bowls of stewed shoat as he went.
A colonel raised his eyes from his plate to call for more wine. His eyes met the white face of a brown-bodied servant. He opened his mouth.
And at that moment a half dozen shouts went up from as many tables. Men were standing and pointing up. The colonel forgot even that astonishing servant as he raised his eyes to the sky and saw the dim shapes floating down.
The blue-black parachutes were all but invisible—perceptible only as vague shapes blotting out the stars, slowly descending with the deadly quiet of doom.
There was a shrill scream of terror, though there were no women in the gathering. There were barking shots from the officers’ sidearms, answered from above—futilely, at that distance and under those conditions of fire.
Then the rattle of the machine guns began.
Anton Metzger tore his eyes from what he knew must be Schweinspitzen, dangling on high while the “Ram’s in the sky,” and looked at the plump face of Hitler XVI, still aquiver from that terrified scream. Then he saw the unbelievable sight of a native with a gleaming knife charging at the Führer’s table.
The others at the table were staring and firing aloft. Only Hitler XVI, stirred by some warning of personal danger, and Metzger saw the servant’s attack. Metzger’s first thought was the stories of amuck. Then he saw the white face, and understood the truth even before he heard the half-legendary cry of the Tyrannicides: “Sick the tyrants!”
Hitler XVI had drawn his automatic. He handled it with the awkwardness of a man little accustomed to firearms, but he could hardly miss the large target charging at him.
For the first time in his malcontent life, Anton Metzger became a man of action. The action was simple. It consisted in seizing the Führer’s arm from behind and twisting it till the automatic fell, then in holding both arms pinioned while the knife carved into the plump flesh of the Führer’s throat.
The three-way battle had been furious and bloody, but its outcome was never in doubt. Schweinspitzen’s paratroops were rashly too few to achieve anything. The Hitler’s men might have put up a successful resistance by themselves even after their Führer’s death, but the disconcerting presence of two sets of enemies, one in their own uniforms, umnanned them. The Tyrannicides and the natives had won a total victory in the triangular confusion.
Now Metzger stood with Lyman Harding and surveyed the carnage. “I owe you my life,” Harding said. “The soteron garments I’d planned on for protection couldn’t be used with this servant-disguise scheme, and there was no other way of getting in. And the world owes you a hell of a lot more than I do.”
“I owe you,” Metzer said in English, “more than I could ever explain.”
“But look. Maybe you can tell me something. What went on with those the paratroops? They came just at the perfect time for a cover for us and I don’t know as we’d have made it without them; but who were they?”
“They were an attempt at a palace revolution, led by one Captain Schweinspitzen.” Metzger kept his eyes from the crumpled heap of blue-black cloth that covered the body of his one-time friend Felix. A machine gun had reached in the air and he had indeed dangled on high, a parachuting corpse.
“But it was crazy. He didn’t have a chance to get away with that attack. Why did he—”
“He believed that it had been prophesied. I’m afraid it’s partly my own fault for being overingenious in my interpretations. You see—” And Metzger explained about the American prophecy. “So,” he concluded, “the prophecy did come true in detail, all save the last line. And it was fulfilled because it existed. Without the prophecy, Schweinspitzen would never have conceived such a plot.”
Harding was laughing, a titanic Bunyanesque laugh that seemed disproportionate even to the paradox of the prophecy or to the nervous release following the bloody victory.
“It is a curious paradox,” Metzger said. “I wonder if that is the only true way in which prophecy can function, bringing about its own fulfillment. I wonder if the author of that prophecy—”
Harding managed to stop laughing and had to wipe his eyes. “That’s just it,” he gasped. “The author of the prophecy. You see, my friend, he was my greatgrandpappy.”
“What?”
“Fact. I know that prophecy. The family managed to save some of Greatgrandfather de Camp’s stuff—he was a writer—from the great book-burnings and it’s sort of a tradition that all of us should read it. Swell screwy stuff it is, too. But I remember the prophecy, and it’s all a gag.”
“A gag?”
“A joke. A hoax. Great-grandfather wrote an article to disprove prophecy, and made his point by writing a limerick of pure nonsense so vague and cryptic that it’d be bound to be twisted into prophetic fame sometime in the course of history. In fact, it’s saved history. Gosh, would this slay the old man!”
“Pure nonsense,” Metzger mused, “and fulfilled in every detailed word, except for the last line.” Suddenly he said, “Tyrannicides! Is that just what people call you or what you really call yourselves?”
“Well, we mostly call us the Tyros, just for the hell of it. But the full name is Canadian-American Tyrannicides—sometimes just the initials— Oh!”
Comprehension lit his face as he followed Metzger’s eyes. In the shambles of the banquet a couple of his boys had started a crap game.
The CAT. were throwing dice at the feast.
Lyman Harding whistled. “Great-grandpappy didn’t know his own strength.”
NOTE: The de Camp “prophecy” is an actual one; see Esquire, December, 1942. The lines quoted from Nostradamus are, of course, also actual; those cited by Hitler are from the Nazi propaganda pamphlet, “Nostradamus Prophecies About the War,” by Norab.
The Other Inauguration
From the Journal of Peter Lanroyd, Ph.D.:
Mon Nov 5 84: To any man even remotely interested in politics, let alone one as involved as I am, every 1st Tue of every 4th Nov must seem like one of the crucial if-points of history. From every American presidential election stem 2 vitally different worlds, not only for U S but for world as a whole.
It’s easy enough, esp for a Prof of Polit Hist, to find examples—1860, 1912, 1932 . . . & equally easy, if you’re honest with yourself & forget you’re a party politician, to think of times when it didn’t matter much of a special damn who won an election. Hayes-Tilden . . . biggest controversy, biggest outrage on voters in U S history . . . yet how much of an if-effect?
But this is different. 1984 (damn Mr Orwell’s long-dead soul! he jinxed the year!) is the key if-crux as ever was in U S hist. And on Wed Nov 7 my classes are going to expect a few illuminating remarks—wh are going to have to come from me, scholar, & forget about the County Central Comm.
So I’ve recanvassed my precinct (looks pretty good for a Berkeley Hill precinct, too; might come damn close to carrying it), I’ve done everything I can before the election itself; & I can put in a few minutes trying to be non-partyobjective why this year of race 1984 is so if-vital.
Historical b g:
A) U S always goes for 2-party system, whatever the names.
B) The Great Years 1952/76 when we had, almost for 1st time, honest 2-partyism. Gradual development (started 52 by Morse, Byrnes, Shivers, etc) of cleancut parties of “right” & “left” (both, of course, to the right of a European “center” party). Maybe get a class laugh out of how both new parties kept both old names, neither wanting to lose New England Repub votes or Southern Demo, so we got Democratic American Republican
Party & Free Democratic Republican Party.
C) 1976/84 God help us growth of 3rd party, American. (The bastards! The simple, the perfect name . . . !) Result: Gradual withering away of DAR, bad defeat in 1980 presidential, total collapse in 82 congressional election. Back to 2-party system: Am vs FDR.
So far so good. Nice & historical. But how tell a class, without accusations of partisanship, what an Am victory means? What a ciestruction, what a (hell! let’s use their own word) subversion of everything American . . .
Or am I being partisan? Can anyone be as evil, as anti-American, as to me the Senator is?
Don’t kid yrself Lanroyd. If it’s an Am victory, you aren’t going to lecture on Wed. You’re going to be in mourning for the finest working democracy ever conceived by man. And now you’re going to sleep & work like hell tomorrow getting out the vote.
It was Tuesday night. The vote had been got out, and very thoroughly indeed. In Lanroyd’s precinct, in the whole state of California, and in all 49 other states. The result was in, and the TV commentator, announcing the final electronic recheck of results from 50 state-wide electronic calculators, was being smug and happy about the whole thing. ( “Conviction?” thought Lanroyd bitterly. “Or shrewd care in holding a job?”)
“. . . Yessir,” the commentator was repeating gleefully, “it’s such a landslide as we’ve never seen in all American history—and the American history is what it’s going to be from now on. For the Senator, five . . . hundred . . . and . . . eighty . . . nine electoral votes from forty . . . nine states. For the Judge, four electoral votes from one state.
“Way back in 1936, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt” (he pronounced the name as a devout Christian might say Judas Iscariot) “carried all but two states, somebody said, As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.’ Well, folks, I guess from now on we’ll have to say—ha! ha!—As Maine goes . . . so goes Maine.’ And it looks like the FDR party is going the way of the unlamented DAR. From now on, folks, it’s Americanism for Americans!
“Now let me just recap those electoral figures for you again. For the Senator on the American ticket, it’s five eighty-nine—that’s five hundred and eightyn i ne—el ecto r al—”
Lanroyd snapped off the set. The automatic brought up the room lighting from viewing to reading level.
He issued a two-syllable instruction which the commentator would have found difficult to carry out. He poured a shot of bourbon and drank it. Then he went to hunt for a razor blade.
As he took it out of the cabinet, he laughed. Ancient Roman could find a good use for this, he thought. Much more comfortable nowadays, too, with thermostats in the bathtub. Drift off under constantly regulated temperature. Play hell with the M.E.’s report, too. Jesus! Is it hitting me so bad I’m thinking stream of consciousness? Get to work, Lanroyd.
One by one he scraped the political stickers off the window. There goes the FDR candidate for State Assembly. There goes the Congressman—twelve-year incumbent. There goes the United States Senator. State Senator not up for reelection this year, or he’d be gone too. There goes NO ON 13. Of course in a year like this State Proposition #13 passed too; from now on, as a Professor at a State University, he was forbidden to criticize publicly any incumbent government official, and compelled to submit the reading requirements for his courses to a legislative committee.
There goes the Judge himself. . . not just a sticker but a full lumino-portrait. The youngest man ever appointed to the Supreme Court; the author of the great dissenting opinions of the ’50s; later a Chief Justice to rank beside Marshall in the vitality of his interpretation of the Constitution; the noblest candidate the Free Democratic Republican Party had ever offered . . .
There goes the last of the stickers . . .
Hey, Lanroyd, you’re right. It’s a symbol yet. There goes the last of the political stickers. You’ll never stick ’em on your window again. Not if the Senator’s boys have anything to say about it.
Lanroyd picked up the remains of the literature he’d distributed in the precincts, dumped it down the incinerator without looking at it, and walked out into the foggy night.
If. . .
All right you’re a monomaniac. You’re 40 and you’ve never married (and what a sweet damn fool you were to quarrel with Clarice over the candidates in 72) and you think your profession’s taught you that politics means everything and so your party loses and it’s the end of the world. But God damn it this time it is. This is the key-point.
If. . .
Long had part of the idea; McCarthy had the other part. It took the Senator to combine them. McCarthy got nowhere, dropped out of the DAR reorganization, failed with his third party, because he attacked and destroyed but didn’t give. He appealed to hate, but not to greed, no what’s-in-it-for-me, no porkchops. But add the Long technique, every-man-a-king, fuse ’em together: “wipe out the socialists; I’ll give you something better than socialism.” That does it, Senator. Coming Next Year: “wipe out the democrats; I’ll give you something better than democracy.”
IF . . .
What was it Long said? “If totalitarianism comes to America, it’ll be labeled Americanism.” Dead Huey, now I find thy saw of might . . .
IF
There was a lighted window shining through the fog. That meant Cleve was still up. Probably still working on temporomagnetic field-rotation, which sounded like nonsense but what did you expect from a professor of psionics? Beyond any doubt the most unpredictable department in the University . . . and yet Lanroyd was glad he’d helped round up the majority vote when the Academic Senate established it. No telling what might come of it . . . if “independent research had any chance of continuing to exist.
The window still carried a sticker for the Judge and a NO ON 13. This was a good house to drop in on. And Lanroyd needed a drink.
Cleve answered the door with a full drink in his hand. “Have this, old boy,” he said; “I’ll mix myself another. Night for drinking, isn’t it?” The opinion had obviously been influencing him for some time; his British accent, usually all but rubbed off by now, had returned full force as it always did after a few drinks.
Lanroyd took the glass gratefully as he went in. “I’ll sign that petition,” he said. “I need a drink to stay sober; I think I’ve hit a lowpoint where I can’t get drunk.”
“It’ll be interesting,” his host observed, “to see if you’re right. Glad you dropped in. I needed drinking company.”
“Look, Stu,” Lanroyd objected. “If it wasn’t for the stickers on your window, I’d swear you were on your way to a happy drunk. What’s to celebrate for God’s sake?”
“Well as to God, old boy, I mean anything that’s to celebrate is to celebrate for God’s sake, isn’t it? After all . . . Pardon. I must be a bit tiddly already.”
“I know,” Lanroyd grinned. “You don’t usually shove your Church of England theology at me. Sober, you know I’m hopeless.”
“Point not conceded. But God does come into this, of course. My rector’s been arguing with me—doesn’t approve at all. Tampering with Divine providence. But A: how can mere me tamper with anything Divine? And B: if it’s possible, it’s part of the Divine plan itself. And C: I’ve defied the dear old boy to establish that it involves in any way the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments, or the Thirty-Nine Articles.”
“Professor Cleve,” said Lanroyd, “would you mind telling me what the hell you are talking about?”
“Time travel, of course. What else have I been working on for the past eight months?”
Lanroyd smiled. “O.K. Every man to his obsession. My world’s shattered and yours is rosy. Carry on, Stu. Tell me about it and brighten my life.”
“I say, Peter, don’t misunderstand me. I am . . . well, really dreadfully distressed about. . .” He looked from the TV set to the window stickers. “But it’s hard to think about anything else when . . .”
“Go on.” Lanroyd drank with tolerant amusement. “I’ll believe anything of the Department of P
sionics, ever since I learned not to shoot craps with you. I suppose you’ve invented a time machine?”
“Well, old boy, I think I have. It’s a question of. . .”
Lanroyd understood perhaps a tenth of the happy monolog that followed. As an historical scholar, he seized on a few names and dates. Principle of temporomagnetic fields known since discovery by Arthur McCann circa 1941. Neglected for lack of adequate power source. Mei-Figner’s experiment with nuclear pile 1959. Nobody knows what became of M-F. Embarrassing discovery that power source remained chronostationary; poor M-F stranded somewhere with no return power. Hasselfarb Equations 1972 established that any adequate external power source must possess too much temporal inertia to move with traveler.
“Don’t you see, Peter?” Cleve gleamed. “That’s where everyone’s misunderstood Hasselfarb. Any external power source . . .’ Of course it baffled the physicists.”
“I can well believe it,” Lanroyd quoted. “Perpetual motion, or squaring the circle, would baffle the physicists. They’re infants, the physicists.”
Cleve hesitated, then beamed. “Robert Barr,” he identified. “His Sherlock Holmes parody. Happy idea for a time traveler: Visit the Reichenbach Falls in 1891 and see if Holmes really was killed. I’ve always thought an impostor ‘returned.’ ”
“Back to your subject, psionicist . . . which is a hell of a word for a drinking man. Here, I’ll fill both glasses and you tell me why what baffles the physicists fails to baffle the ps . . .”
The Compleat Boucher Page 34
