The Best Alternate History Stories Of The Twentieth Century Part 39

Here I was, surrounded by mystery-angry, bewildered, unsettled. And yet the first thing that escaped my lips was: "Helmuth, what's happened to you?" He guessed my meaning.

"This is real blonde hair," he said proudly. "And the eye color is real as well. I regret that I am not of the true genotype, any more than you are. I was given a hormone treatment to change the color of my hair. A special radiation treatment took care of the eyes."

As he was saying this, he was helping me to my feet, as I was still groggy. "Why?" I asked him. He would say no more about it.

The sun hurt my eyes as we exited down the ramp from the plane. Two tall, young men-also blonde-haired and blue-eyed-joined my son and helped to usher me inside the castle. They were dressed in Bavarian hunting gear, with large knives strapped on at their waists. Their clothes had the smell of freshest leather.

We had entered from the courtyard of the inner bailey. The hall we traversed was covered in plush red carpets and was illuminated by torches burning in the walls; this cast a weird lighting effect over the numerous suits of armor standing there. I could not help but think of the medieval castles Speer drew for his children every Christmas.

It was a long trek before we reached a stone staircase that we immediately began to ascend. I was not completely recovered from the effects of the gas and wished that we could pause. My clubfoot was giving me considerable difficulty. I did not want to show any weakness to these men, and I knew that my st.u.r.dy son was right behind me. I took those steps without slowing down the pace.

We finally came out on a floor that was awash in light from fluorescent tubes. A closed-circuit television console dominated the center of the room, with pictures of all the other floors of the castle, from the keep to the highest tower. There was also a portrait of Meister Eckhart.

"Wait here," Helmuth announced, and before I could make any protestations he and the other two had gone the way we had come, with the door locked behind them. I considered the large window on the right side of the room with a comfortable couch beside it. I gratefully sat there and surveyed my position from the new vantage point. Below me was another courtyard. In one corner was what could be nothing else but an unused funeral pyre. Its height was staggering. There was no body upon it. Along the wall that ran from the pyre to the other end of the compound were letters inscribed of a size easy to read even from such distance. It was a familiar quotation: ANY DESCRIPTION OF ORGANIZATION, MISSION, AND STRUCTURE OF THE SS CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD UNLESS ONE TRIES TO CONCEIVE IT INWARDLY WITH ONE'S BLOOD AND HEART. IT CANNOT BE EXPLAINED WHY WE CONTAIN SO MUCH STRENGTH THOUGH WE NUMBER SO FEW. Underneath the quote in equally large letters was the name of its author: HEINRICH HIMMLER.

"A statement that you know well," came a low voice behind me and I turned to face Kurt Kaufmann, the most important man in Burgundy. I had met him a few times socially in New Berlin.

Smiling in as engaging a manner as I could (under the circ.u.mstances), I said, "Kurt," stressing that I was not addressing him formally, "I have no idea why you have seemingly kidnapped me, but there will be h.e.l.l to pay!"

He bowed. "What you fail to appreciate, Dr. Goebbels, is that I will receive that payment."

I studied his face-the bushy blonde hair and beard, and of course the bright blue eyes. The monocle he wore over one of them seemed quite superfluous. I knew that he had 20/20 vision.

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

"You lack ideas, it is true," he answered. "Of facts you do not lack. We knew your daughter contacted you..."

Even at the time this dialogue struck me as remarkably melodramatic. Nevertheless it was happening to me. At the mention of my daughter I failed to mask my feelings. Kaufmann had to notice the expression of consternation on my face. The whole affair was turning into a hideous game that I feared I was losing.

I stood. "My daughter's a.s.sociations with a subversive political group are well known." There was no reason to mince words with him. "I was attempting to dissuade her from a suicidal course. Why would you be spying on that?"

The ploy failed miserably. "We bugged the room," he said softly.

"You dare to spy on me ? Have you any idea of the danger?"

"Yes," he said. "You don't."

I made to comment but he raised a hand to silence me. "Do not continue. Soon you will have more answers than you desire. Now I suggest you follow me."

The room had many doors. We left through one at the opposite end from my original point of entry. I was walking down yet another hall. This one, however, was lit by electricity, and at the end of it we entered an elevator. The contrast between modern technology and Burgundian simplicity was becoming more jarring all the time. Like most Germans who had visited the country, I only knew it firsthand as a tourist. The reports I had once received on their training operations were not as detailed as I would have liked but certainly gave no hint of dire conspiracy against the Fatherland. The thought was too fantastic to credit. Even now I hoped for a denouement more in keeping with the known facts. Could the entire thing be an elaborate practical joke? Who would run the risk of such a folly?

The elevator doors opened and we were looking out onto the battlements of the castle. I followed Kaufmann onto the walk, and noticed that the view was utterly magnificent. To the left I saw the imported Russian serfs working in the fields; to the right I saw young Burgundians doing calisthenics in the warm morning air. I was used to observing many blonde heads in the SS. Yet here there was nothing but that suddenly predictable h.o.m.ogeneity.

We looked down at the young bodies. Beyond them other young men were dressed in chain-mail s.h.i.+rts and helmets. They were having at one another with the most intensive swordplay I had ever witnessed.

"Isn't that a bit dangerous?" I asked Kaufmann, gesturing at the fencing.

"What do you mean?" he said, as one of the men ran his sword through the chest of another. The blood spurted out in a fountain as the body slumped to the ground. I was aghast, and Kaufmann's voice seemed to be far away as I dimly heard it say: "Did you notice how the loser did not scream? That is what I call discipline." It occurred to me that the man might have simply died too quickly to express his opinion.

Kaufmann seemed wryly amused by my wan expression. "Dr. Goebbels, do you remember the Kirchenkampf ?"

I recovered my composure. "The campaign against the churches? What about it?"

"Martin Bormann was disappointed in its failure," he said.

"No more than I. The war years allowed little time for less important matters. You know that the economic policies we established after the war helped to undermine the strength of the churches. They have never been weaker. European cinema constantly makes fun of them."

"They still exist," said Kaufmann evenly. "The G.o.ds of the Germanic tribes are not fools-their indignation is as great as ever." I stared at this man with amazement as he continued to preach: "The G.o.ds remember how Roman missionaries built early Christian churches on the sacred sites, believing that the common people would still climb the same hills they always had to wors.h.i.+p... only now they would pay homage to a false G.o.d!"

"The ma.s.ses are not easily cured of the addiction," I pointed out.

"You compare religion to a drug?"

"It was one of the few wise statements of Marx," I said, with a deliberate edge in my voice. Kaufmann's face quickly darkened into a scowl. "Not all religions are the same," I concluded in an ameliorative tone. I had no desire to argue with him about the two faiths of Burgundy, the remnants of Rosenberg's Gnostics, and the majority of Himmler's Pagans.

"You say that, but it is only words. Let me tell you a story about yourself, Herr Goebbels." I did not consider the sudden formality a good sign, not the way he said it. He continued: "You always prided yourself on being the true radical of the n.a.z.i Party. You hammered that home whenever you could. n.o.body hated the bourgeoisie more than Goebbels. n.o.body was more ardent about burning books than Goebbels. As Reichspropagandaminister you brilliantly staged the demonstrations against the Jews."

Now the man was making sense. I volunteered another item to his admirable list: "I overheard some young men humming the Horst Wes-sel song down there during calisthenics." Manufacturing a martyr to give the party its anthem was still one of my favorites. My influence was still on the Germanic world, including Burgundy.

Kaufmann had been surveying rows of men doing pushups... as well as the removal of the corpse from the tourney field. Now his stone face turned in my direction, breaking into an unpleasant smile. I preferred his frown. "You misunderstand the direction of my comments, Herr Doktor. I will clarify it. I was told a story about you once. I was only a simple soldier at the time but the story made an indelible impression. You were at a party, showing off for your friends by making four brief political speeches; the first presented the case for the restoration of the monarchy; the second sung the praises of the Weimar Republic; the third proved how communism could be successfully adopted by the German Reich; the fourth was in favor of National Socialism, at last. How relieved they were. How tempted they had been to agree with each of the other three speeches."

I could not believe what I was hearing. How could this dull oaf be in charge of anything but a petty bureaucratic department? Had he no sense of humor, no irony? "I was demonstrating the power of propaganda," I told him.

"In what do you believe?" he asked.

"This is preposterous," I nearly shouted. "Are you impugning-"

"It is not necessary to answer," he said consolingly. "I'm aware that you have only believed in one thing in your life: a man, not an idea. With Hitler dead, what is left for you to believe?"

"This is insane," I replied, not liking the shrill sound of my own voice in my ears. "When I was made Reich Director for Total War, I demonstrated my genius for understanding and operating the mechanisms of a dictators.h.i.+p. I was crucial to the war effort then."

He completely ignored my point and continued on his solitary course: "Hitler was more than a man. He was a living part of an idea. He did not always recognize his own importance. He was chosen by the Vril Society, the sacred order of the Luminous Lodge, the purest, finest product of the believers in the Thule. Adolf Hitler was the medium. The Society used him accordingly. He was the focal point. Behind him were powerful magicians. The great work has only begun. Soon it will be time for the second step. Only the true man deserves Lebensraum ."

Kaufmann was working himself up, I could see that. He stood close to me and said, "You are a political animal, Goebbels. You believe that politics is an end in itself. The truth is that governments are nothing in the face of destiny. We are near the cleansing of the world. You should be proud. Your own son will play an important part. The finest jest is that modern scientific method will also have a role."

He turned to go. I had no recourse but to follow him. There was nowhere else to go but straight down to sudden death.

We reentered the elevator. "Have I been brought here to witness an honor bestowed on my son?" I asked.

"In part. You will also have a role. You saw the telegram!"

That was enough. There could no longer be any doubt. I was trapped amidst madmen. Having made up my mind what to do, I feigned an attack of pain in my clubfoot and crouched at the same time. When Kaufmann made to offer aid, I struck wildly, almost blindly. I tried to knee him in the groin but-failing that-brought my fist down on the back of his neck. The fool went out like a light, falling hard on his face. I congratulated myself on such prowess for an old man.

No sooner had the body slumped to the floor than the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened automatically. I jumped out into the hall. Standing there was a naked seven-foot giant who reached down and lifted me into the air. He was laughing. His voice sounded like a tuba.

"They call me Thor," he said. I struggled. He held.

Then I heard the voice of my son: "That, Father, is what we call a true Aryan."

I was carried like so much baggage down the hall, hearing voices distantly talking about Kaufmann. I was tossed on to the hard floor of a brightly lit room and the door was slammed behind me. A muscle had been pulled in my back and I lay there, gasping in pain like a fish out of water. I could see that I was in some sort of laboratory. In a corner was a humming machine the purpose of which I could not guess. A young woman was standing over me, wearing a white lab smock. I could not help but notice two things about her straightaway: she was a brunette, and she was holding a sword at my throat.

As I look back, the entire affair has an air of unreality about it. Events were becoming more fantastic in direct proportion to the speed with which they occurred. It had all the logic of a dream.

As I lay upon the floor, under that sword held by such an unlikely guardian (I had always supported military service for women, but when encountering the real thing I found it a bit difficult to take seriously), I began to take an inventory of my pains. The backache was subsiding so long as I did not move. I was becoming aware, however, that the hand with which I had dispatched Kaufmann felt like a hot balloon of agony, expanding without an upper limit. My vision was blurred and I shook my head trying to clear it. I dimly heard voices in the background, and then a particularly resonant one was near at hand, speaking with complete authority: "Oh, don't be ridiculous. Help him up."

The woman put down the sword, and was suddenly a.s.sisted by a young j.a.panese girl gingerly lifting me off the floor and propelling me in the direction of a nearby chair. Still I did not see the author of that powerful voice.

Then I was sitting down and the females were moving away. He was standing there, his hands on his hips, looking at me with the sort of a.n.a.lytical probing I always respect. At first I didn't recognize him, but had instead the eerie feeling that I was in a movie. The face made me think of something too ridiculous to credit... and then I knew who it really was: Professor Dietrich, the missing geneticist. I examined him more closely. My first impression had been more correct than I thought. The man hardly resembled the photographs of his youth. His hair had turned white and he had let it grow. Seeing him in person, I could not help but notice how angular were his features... how much like the face of the late actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge in the role of Dr. Mabuse, Fritz Lang's character that had become the symbol of a super-scientific, scheming Germany to the rest of the world. Although the later films were banned for the average German, the American-made series (Mabuse's second life, you could say) had become so popular throughout the world that Reich officials considered it a mark of distinction to own copies of all twenty. We still preferred the original series, where Mabuse was obviously Jewish.

Since the death of Klein-Rogge other actors had taken over the part, but always the producers looked for that same startling visage. This man Dietrich was meant for the role. Thea von Harbou would approve.

"What are you staring at?" he asked. I told him. He laughed. "You chose the right profession," he continued. "You have a cinematic imagination. I am flattered by the comparison."

"What is happening?" I asked.

"Much. Not all of it is necessary. This show they are putting on for your benefit is rather pointless, for instance."

I was becoming comfortable in the chair, and my back had momentarily ceased to annoy me. I hoped that I would not have to move for still another guided tour of something I wasn't sure that I wanted to see. To my relief Dietrich pulled up a chair, sat down across from me and started talking: "I expect that Kaufmann meant to introduce you to Thor when the elevator doors opened and then enjoy your startled expression as you were escorted down the hall to my laboratory. They didn't think you'd improvise on the set! Well, they're only amateurs and you are the expert when it comes to good, silly melodrama."

"Thor..." I began lamely, but could think of nothing to say.

"He's not overly intelligent. I'm impressed that he finished the scene with such dispatch. I apologize for my a.s.sistant. She had been watching the entire thing on one of our monitors and must have come to the conclusion that you are a dangerous fellow. In person, I mean. We all know what you are capable of in an official capacity."

As we talked, I took in my surroundings. The size of the laboratory was tremendous. It was like being in a scientific warehouse. Although without technical training myself, I noticed that there seemed to be a lack of systematic arrangement: materials were jumbled together in a downright sloppy fas.h.i.+on, even if there were a good reason for the close proximity of totally different apparatuses. Nevertheless I realized that I was out of my depth and I might be having nothing more than an aesthetic response.

"They closed the file on you," I said. "I thought you had been kidnapped by American agents."

"That was the cover story."

"Then you were kidnapped by the Burgundians?"

"A reasonable deduction, but wrong. I volunteered."

"For what?"

"Dr. Goebbels, I said that you have a cinematic imagination. That is good. It will help you to appreciate this." He snapped his fingers and the j.a.panese girl was by his side so swiftly that I didn't see where she had come from. She was holding a small plastic box. He opened it and showed me the interior: two cylinders, each with a tiny suction cup on the end. He took one out. "Examine this," he said, pa.s.sing it to me.

"One of your inventions?" I asked, noticing that it was as light as if it were made out of tissue paper. But I could tell that whatever the material was, it was st.u.r.dy.

"A colleague came up with that," he told me. "He's dead now, unfortunately. Politics." He retrieved the cylinder, did something with the untipped end, then stood. "It won't hurt," he said. "If you will cooperate, I promise a cinematic experience unlike anything you've ever sampled."

There was no point in resisting. They had me. Whatever their purpose, I was in no position to oppose it. Nor is there any denying that my curiosity was aroused by this seeming toy.

Dietrich leaned forward, saying, "Allow me to attach this to your head and you will enjoy a unique production of the Burgundian Propaganda Ministry, if you will-the story of my life."

Without further ado he pressed the small suction cup against the center of my forehead. There was a tingling sensation and then my sight began to dim! I knew that my eyes were still open and I had not lost consciousness. For a moment I feared that I was going blind.

There were new images. I began to dream while wide awake, except that they were not my dreams. They were someone else's!

I was someone else!

I was Dietrich... as a child.

I was b.u.t.toning my collar on a cold day in February before going to school. The face that looked back from the mirror held a cherubic-almost beautiful-aspect. I was happy to be who I was.

As I skipped down cobbled streets, it suddenly struck me with solemn force that I was a Jew.

My German parents had been strict, orthodox, and humorless. An industrial accident had taken them from me. I was not to be alone for long. An uncle in Spain had sent for me and I went to live there. He had become a gentile (not without difficulty) but was able to take a child from a practicing Jewish family into his household.

It did not take more than a few days at school for the beatings to begin, whereupon they increased with ferocity. There was a bubbling fountain in easy distance of the schoolyard where I went to wash away the blood.

One day I watched the water turn crimson over the rippling reflection of my scarred face. I decided that whatever it was a Jew was supposed to be, I surely didn't qualify. I had the same color blood as my cla.s.smates, after all. Therefore I could not be a real Jew.

I announced this revelation the next day at school and was nearly killed for my trouble. One particularly stupid lad was so distressed by my logic that he expressed his displeasure with a critique made up of a two-by-four. Yet somehow in all this pain and anguish-as I fled for my life-I did not think to condemn the attackers. My conclusion was that surely the Jew must be a monstrous creature indeed to inspire such a display. Cursing the memory of my parents, I felt certain that through some happy fluke I was not really of their flesh and blood.

Amazing as it seems, I became an anti-Semite. I took a Star of David to the playground and in full view of my cla.s.smates destroyed it. A picture of a rabbi I also burned. Some were not impressed by this display, but others restrained them from resuming the beatings. For the first time I knew security in that schoolyard. None of them became any friendlier; they did not seem to know how to take it.

Suddenly the pictures of Dietrich's early life disappeared into a swirling darkness. I was confused, disoriented.

Time had pa.s.sed. Now I was Dietrich as a young man back in Germany, dedicating myself to a life's work in genetic research. I joined the n.a.z.i Party on the eve of its power, not so much out of vanity as out of a pragmatic reading of the Zeitgeist. Naturally I used my Spanish gentile pedigree, and entertained my new "friends" with a little-known quotation from the canon of Karl Marx, circa 1844: "Once society has succeeded in abolis.h.i.+ng the empirical essence of Judaism-huckstering and its preconditions-the Jew will have become impossible."

The n.a.z.is were developing their eugenic theories at the time. To say the basis of their programs was at best pseudoscientific would still be to compliment it. At best, the only science involved was terminology borrowed from the field of eugenics.

I was doing real research, however, despite the limitations I faced due to Party funding and propaganda requirements. My work involved negative eugenics, the study of how to eliminate defective genes from the gene pool through selective breeding. a.s.suming an entire society could be turned into a laboratory, defective genes could be eliminated in one generation, although the problem might still crop up from time to time because of recessive genes (easily handled).

The decision to breed something out of the population having been made, the door opened as to what to breed for, or positive eugenics. Now, so long as we were restricting ourselves to a question of a particular genetic disease, we could do something. But even then there were problems. What if some invaluable genius had such a genetic disability? Would you throw out the possibility of his having intelligent offspring just because of one risk?

Add to this valid concern the deranged, mystical ideas of the n.a.z.i with regard to genetics, and the complications really set in. They wanted to breed for qualities that in many cases fell outside the province of real genetics-because they fell outside reality in the first place.

During this period in my life I made another discovery. I was no longer a racist. My anti-Semitism vanished as in a vagrant breeze. I had learned that there was no scientific basis for it. The sincere n.a.z.i belief that the Jew was a creature outside of nature was so much rot. As for the cultural/mystical ideas that revolved around the Jew, the more I learned of how the n.a.z.is perceived this, the more convinced I became that Hitler's party was composed of the insane. (An ironic note was that many European Jews were not even Semitic, but that is beside the point. The n.a.z.is had little concern with, say, Arabs. It was the European Jew they were after, for whatever reasons were handy.) Although I had come full circle on the question of racism, something else had happened to me in the interim. My hatred for one group of humanity had not vanished. My view of the common heritage of h.o.m.o sapiens led me to despise all of the human race. The implications of this escaped me at the time, but it was the turning point of my life.

Even at the peak of their popularity the world of genetics was only slightly influenced by n.a.z.i thinking. Scientists are scientists first, ideologues second, if at all. To the extent that most scientists have a philosophy it is a general sort of positive humanism: so it was with my teacher in genetics, a brilliant man-who happened to fit the Aryan stereotype coincidentally-and his collaborator, a Jew who was open about his family background, unlike me.

They were the first to discover the structure of DNA. No, they are not in the history books. By then Hitler had come to power. The n.a.z.is destroyed many of their papers when they were judged enemies of the state-for political improprieties having nothing to do with the research. But I was never found guilty of harboring any traitorous notions. Long before the world heard of it, I continued this work with DNA. Publis.h.i.+ng this information was the last thing I wanted to do. I had other ideas. By giving the n.a.z.is gobbledygook to make their idiot policies sound good, I remained unmolested. There would be a place for me in the New Order. I remembered when Einstein said that should his theory of relativity prove untrue, the French would declare him a German, and the Germans call him a Jew. At least I knew my place in advance.

Through the haze of Dietrich's memories I could still think; could reflect on what I was a.s.similating directly from a pattern taken from another's mind. I was impressed that such a man existed, working in secret for decades on what had only recently riveted the world's attention. Only last year had a news story dealt with microbiologists doing gene splicing. Yet he had done the same sort of experimentation decades earlier.

What had been a trickle suddenly turned into a torrent of concepts and formulae beyond my comprehension. I felt the strain. With quivering fingers I reached for the cylinder and...

The images stopped; the words stopped; the kaleidoscope exploding inside my head stopped; the pressure stopped...

"You have not finished the program, Dr. Goebbels," said Dietrich. "It was at least another ten minutes before the 'reel change.' " He was holding the other cylinder in his hand, tossing it lightly into the air and catching it as though it were of no importance.

"It's too much," I gasped, "to take all at once. Hold on, I've just remembered something: Thor, in the hallway... is it possible?" I thought back over what I had experienced. Dietrich had left simple eugenic breeding programs far behind. His search was for the chemical mysteries of life itself, like some sort of mad alchemist seeking the knowledge of a Frankenstein. "Did you-" I paused, hardly knowing how to phrase it. "Did you create Thor?"

He laughed. "Don't I wis.h.!.+" he said, almost playfully. "Do you have any idea what you are talking about? To find the genetic formula for human beings would require a language I do not possess."