Part 6 (1/2)

Magus had explained that the torus would generate a s.p.a.cetime singularity in the form of an infinitely thin plane across the hole in the middle, through which every cross section would rotate perpendicular to s.p.a.ce-time like the elements of a smoke ring. But instead of emerging on the other side, the vessel would enter a realm in which s.p.a.ce and time would be interchanged: it would be possible to move freely in time, but in one direction only through s.p.a.ce. That direction had been calculated precisely to connect to the point in s.p.a.ce-a fifth of a light-year away now-that a particular spot on the earth's surface had occupied at the time targeted for Kunz's arrival in the twentieth century.

He had no way of telling how long the dreamy state of changelessness persisted-if, indeed, ”how long”

still meant anything at all. But then the panorama of all his mental processes laid out side by side began collapsing in on itself like the pieces of a clock being rea.s.sembled . . . and as the clock came back together, it began running again. The ghostly outlines around him took on their solid forms, the glow dimmed, and the various sounds around the c.o.c.kpit ran down and died. Then all was silent. The moment that Kunz had trained and steeled himself for had arrived. There was no time to be lost. He pressed a b.u.t.ton to open the hatch and stood up from the c.o.c.kpit.

He was outdoors, and it was nighttime as intended, with the air chilly and the moon hidden by clouds.

Sounds of drums and bra.s.s marching bands were coming from the distance, accompanied by singing and cheering. The machine was lying in an open area of ground shadowed by trees. All was still in its immediate vicinity, but a line of large buildings bounded the open area a short distance away, silhouetted against flickering orange light. The music and singing were coming from the far side. It was all uncannily close to what Kunz had been led to expect from his briefings. He was in the Tiergarten in the center of Berlin, the capital of Germany. It was the night of Monday, January 30, 1933.

At noon that day, after driving one hundred yards from the Kaiserhof Hotel to meet the aging President Hindenburg in the government offices on the Wilhelmstra.s.se, Adolf Hitler had been sworn in as the new German chancellor. So had come to power the man who would reject the world's attempts to achieve lasting peace through understanding, compromise, appeas.e.m.e.nt, and reason, and who in the eyes of the world would make them the very cause of war. Just when reason had finally come of age and could have pacified the world, one man's betrayal had caused pacifism to be dismissed as ineffective and ridiculed for a century afterward, thus setting the course for calamity.

Kunz transferred his equipment from the stowage rack to fastenings on his belt and inside his cloak, then climbed up out of the c.o.c.kpit, over the outer torus, and down the short metal ladder on the outside. As he reached the ground, a blue light s.h.i.+mmered briefly in the darkness some distance away out in the park.

He froze for a few seconds, but nothing more happened. Then, taking a tight grip on the a.s.sault laser beneath his cloak, he began making his way stealthily toward the buildings lining the Wilhelmstra.s.se.

The singing of the crowd became clearer as he approached the buildings. They were singing the Horst Wessel song-one of the party hymns of the ”Browns.h.i.+rt” n.a.z.i storm troopers. In the evening of that day, as news of Hitler's appointment spread through the city, tens of thousands of delirious supporters and Browns.h.i.+rts had gathered and marched in a ma.s.sive torchlight parade, out of the Tiergarten, through the triumphal arch of the Brandenburg Gate, and along the Wilhelmstra.s.se to celebrate their victory.

Hitler himself, after watching the parade for a while from the balcony of the Chancellery, had retired inside for a quiet dinner with Goring, Goebbels, Hess, Rohm, Frank, and a few others of his inner clique.

With the jubilant atmosphere putting everyone off their guard and all the noise and distraction in the streets, this had been judged the ideal moment for not only eliminating Hitler, but decapitating the n.a.z.i apparatus of its entire leaders.h.i.+p cadre to ensure its demise. A spot of diffuse, greenish glow flared somewhere across the park. Kunz stopped. The glow died away, and after a moment he moved on.

And then he almost walked into something in the shadows between two trees, where he had expected there to be open gra.s.s. At first he thought it was an automobile or a small building of some kind, but as he pa.s.sed by, the moon shone briefly through a c.h.i.n.k in the clouds and revealed the object to be circular in shape. It was a machine, in the general form of a torus, lying horizontal, ten feet or so in diameter. It had a metal ladder leading up over the outer ring to an enclosure of some kind in the middle. Kunz turned to stare back uncertainly at it, until he was walking fully backward. That caused him to b.u.mp into something else.

It was another machine. This one was in the form of two vertical disks about eight feet high and close together, like a pair of large wheels on a short axle, with a boxlike structure between them. In the moonlight Kunz could make out a black swastika on the outside of the disk facing him, and underneath it in German, the words GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. FORBIDDEN TO TOUCH. The only problem was, it didn't look to him like something that any government of the 1930s should have owned.

Suddenly the air around him began crackling electrically. He dropped to the ground instinctively and covered his head. A tremor ran through the ground beneath him, and he became aware of light and a subdued pulsating sound. He looked up cautiously and found an eerie violet radiance bathing the area around him, centered on a point twenty feet or so ahead of where he was lying. As he watched, a shape materialized in the glow. It was about twelve feet long, and consisted of two pointed cylinders side by side, and in between them a framework supporting a bubble. The light and the sound died together, leaving the machine outlined in the moonlight. Kunz raised himself slowly onto one knee. He was about to stand up, when the top of the bubble hinged open and a head appeared, wearing a Lincolnesque stovepipe hat. The head peered one way and then the other, apparently without seeing Kunz, and then the rest of the figure scrambled out. It was wearing a tailcoat with gold-embroidered front and epaulets, pants with a broad stripe running down the sides, and s.h.i.+ny cavalry boots. The figure turned to hoist something out of the bubble that looked like a weapon, and then jumped down to the ground. That was when he saw Kunz. For a second they both stared. Kunz moved to s.h.i.+ft his cloak out of the way of his own weapons. The figure bolted for the shadows, and in the same instant the moon went back behind the clouds. By the time Kunz's eyes had readapted, the figure was gone.

Bemused and bewildered, Kunz resumed heading toward the Wilhelmstra.s.se. But his boldness and determination were ebbing. Something was obviously very wrong. At the back of a building which he recognized as part of the German Foreign Office, he pa.s.sed another torroidal machine, this time tipped at a crazy angle against the wall enclosing the grounds. He didn't even bother stopping to look at it, but now in a complete daze, followed the wall around to an alley leading toward the noise and the commotion, which brought him out onto the Wilhelmstra.s.se itself.

A column of storm troopers was marching down the middle of the road to a thunderous beating of drums, with trumpets blaring, banners flying, and a river of torches flowing away as far as the eye could see. Shouting people lined the sidewalks on both sides, and every window was packed with waving, cheering figures. As the mission planners had antic.i.p.ated, it would have provided the perfect cover for getting into the Chancellery building . . . if it weren't for his dress, he realized as he looked around. He was the only person in sight wearing a cloak. And not only that-all the men were wearing subdued combinations of heavy overcoats, flat caps or conventional felt hats-not one with a feather-and without exception, long pants. Kunz's cloak was only knee length, and his bright red socks seemed like beacons.

Then he saw the two German policemen in flat-topped helmets and greatcoats heading toward him along the rear of the crowd. Suddenly he started to panic. He turned, but a knot of onlookers had blocked the alley that he had emerged from. Desperately he turned the other way, but a crowd coming out of one of the doorways had cut off any escape in that direction. And before he could recover from his confusion, the policemen had drawn up in front of him.

The larger of the two looked Kunz up and down. He had heavy cheeks and a thick black mustache, and a fleshy sausage-neck overflowing from his collar. ”Don't tell me,” he said amiably in German, ”You've come back from a future age to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Fuhrer.”

Kunz gulped disbelievingly. ”How . . . how do you know?” he stammered.

”Oh, they've been showing up in dozens all night. You'd better come with us. The line starts a block farther along the street.”

They took him a short distance along the Wilhelmstra.s.se, and then down a narrow street that opened out into a cobbled court overlooked by high buildings and lit by gas lamps. On the far side was a stone building with wide double doors set behind a columned entrance arch at the top of a set of wide, shallow steps. And stretching out of the entrance in a ragged line three or four deep-like theatergoers waiting for the doors to open, mumbling among themselves and jostling as a cordon of more German policeman strove to form them into some semblance of order-was the strangest collection of characters that Kunz had ever seen.

There were several wearing military camouflage smocks, and a number of others in hooded, bodytight Ninja suits. One, in silver coveralls and something that looked like a football player's helmet, was arguing with two others, one of whom was wearing a pink cloak with emerald-green knee breeches, and the other a German fireman's uniform, but with a field marshal's helmet. Nearer the door, a bronzed, muscular Adonis in what looked like ballet tights and a fencing blouse was s.h.i.+vering beneath a greatcoat that one of the policemen had evidently lent him, while a few places back, another man with leather shorts and a Tyrolean hat similar to Kunz's was waving his hands and jabbering at a woman with a long tweed skirt, motoring bonnet, and fleece-lined flying jacket. One had an aviator's cap with goggles, another a Napoleon hat and tunic, and another an American Stetson with pantaloons. Here was a Louis XIV wig, there a diamond tiara worn with a raincoat, and farther along, a Cal. State T-s.h.i.+rt stretched over the bodice of a crinoline dress.

Kunz could do nothing but stare numbly. He was barely aware as the two policemen relieved him of his a.r.s.enal, frisked him for concealed items, and added the collection to a pile of rifles, submachine guns, revolvers, automatics, pistols, bombs, grenades, blasters, flamethrowers, hand lasers, beam projectors, bayonets, daggers, knives, axes, cudgels, clubs and weapons of every description acc.u.mulating on the far side of the court, guarded by more policemen. Then the two who had brought Kunz in escorted him to the end of the line, behind the Louis XIV wig and a huge bearded man in a sailor suit with paratrooper's jump boots. ”Wait here,” the amiable sausage-necked policeman said. ”It shouldn't be long.”

”What's happening?” Kunz asked, finding his voice at last.

”Why, the Fuhrer is coming here to talk to you. He's heard all the terrible things you people are saying about him, and he's very upset.”

Just then, two more policemen appeared from the direction of the street, steering between them the figure in the Charlemagne coat and the Abe Lincoln hat that Kunz had glimpsed briefly in the Tiergarten.

The figure stopped dead, looking as stunned as Kunz had been, while the policemen took charge of the plasma-bolt beamer, two sidearms, machete, and four subcritical fission grenades that he had been carrying, and then they led him over to join the line alongside Kunz.

”They're still coming in like homing pigeons back there,” one of them said to the two policemen with Kunz. ”We need all the help we can get.”

”It won't be long now,” the sausage-neck said to Kunz again. He indicated Kunz to the Abe-Lincoln-hat man with a nod of his head. ”Just stay close to Pinnochio here until they move you inside.” With that, he turned away to head back toward the Wilhelmstra.s.se after his three colleagues.

Kunz and Abe-Lincoln-hat eyed each other suspiciously. At last Kunz ventured, ”I, er . . . guess it wasn't such a unique idea.” Abe-Lincoln-hat stared at him. ”Where did you come here from?” Kunz asked him.

”The year of the Lord, 2124.”

”The Pacifist cause must really have been catching on by then, eh?”

”Pacifists?”

”Isn't that why you're here-to get rid of Hitler, the man who got pacifism a bad name?”

Abe-Lincoln-hat's eyes glared. ”Pacifism is Satan's design to disarm the hosts of the righteous, and Hitler is his agent! For by renouncing all war, the world shall deny the just war that is G.o.d's instrument.”

Kunz's expression hardened. ”There can be no just war,” he said.

”It is written, ”The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.'”

”What's a Bible freak doing here?” Louis-XIV-wig demanded, turning in front to face them. ”Religious fascism is no different from n.a.z.i fascism. Hitler invented the techniques of ma.s.s propaganda that gave the Fundamentalists the presidency in 2080.”

”Arghh! You . . . secular humanist!” Abe-Lincoln-hat grabbed him by the throat with both hands.

Sailor-suit-and-paratrooper-boots was also glowering back. ”Who did I hear was a pacifist? They were the b.u.ms who lost us white supremacy and let the Asiatics take the twenty-first century.”

”I am,” Kunz said, thrusting out his chin defiantly. ”So why are you here? Hitler was on your side, wasn't he?”

”He blew it. If it wasn't for his war, the colonial empires wouldn't have broken up, see. And I say all pacifists are wimps.”

”Oh yeah?” Kunz punched him in the mouth.

”All right, all right-enough of that.” Three policemen moved in to break up the fray. Just then, the doors at the top of the steps were thrown open. The murmuring and arguing in both directions-already a number of more recent arrivals had joined on behind Abe-Lincoln-hat-died away, and the line began shuffling forward.

The building turned out to be an auditorium, with rows of seats facing a raised stage. In the center of the stage was a speaker's rostrum, and behind it a row of chairs on which a dozen or so men in suits were already seated. They looked like government officials. Some remained quiet and were looking concerned, while others whispered agitatedly among themselves. A line of German policemen stood below the stage, facing the audience, and others were stationed at intervals along the walls. As the entrants dispersed among the seats, Kunz moved as far away as possible from the three that he had tangled with outside. He found himself a place halfway to the back on the extreme left of the auditorium, next to the side aisle. The murmuring and muttering had risen again, and already more arguments were breaking out in several places. As Kunz sat down and leaned back in his seat, he became aware of a man's voice behind him, speaking in a suave English accent. ”I mean to say, the b.u.g.g.e.r ruined our empire for us. Up until then, we hadn't been doing too bad a job of civilizing the world.”

”He ruined U.S. isolationism, you mean,” an indignant American voice that sounded as if it was from Brooklyn retorted. ”If we hadn't had ta come in and bale youse guys out for a second time, we'da had it made. We never wanted ta be no policeman for da whole woild.”

”Yes, and a fine mess you made of things, I must say.”

”A fine mess you left us, you mean.”

”You don't know what you're talking about.”

”Waddaya mean? So, what da you know about anything, then, huh, a.s.shole?”