Part 5 (2/2)

In Berlin, it was Russia. The cloud that darkens the world looms darkest in Berlin. The apathy that grips the world is epitomized in Berlin. A people with no sense of guilt and no reason for hope, nor stirring to the promise of a re-armed Germany. A bled and devastated people, shorn of their chief strength, their national pride.

Jean said, ”I've seen enough. Haven't you, Fred? How much can you take?”

”One more,” I said. ”Russia.”

”Don't be silly,” she said. ”How would we get into Russia?”

”_We_ wouldn't. But _I_ would.”

”Look, baby, whither though goest, I--”

”Up to here,” I said. ”Who's the big boss in this family?”

”Now, Fred--”

”Now, Jean--”

”Get away from me. This time, it won't work. If you think that for one second you're going into that no man's land alone--and--”

It took some talking, to convince her, it took some lies. She'd wait, she agreed finally, in Switzerland. In comfort for a change.

It took two diamonds to get to the right man, and it took a formula from there. A formula that is learned in the first year of college chemistry on my planet, a formula for converting an element. A formula this planet couldn't have been more than a decade short of learning, anyway.

The last man I saw in Berlin went along, for which I was grateful, though he didn't know that. I don't speak Russian, but he did.

They were careful, they don't even trust themselves. I told Nilenoff the formula came from America, and there were more, but I needed money. I didn't tell him the fallacy in the formula; it had taken us three years to realize what it was.

My trips were limited, directed, and avoided the seamier side. I saw the modern humming factories, and the mammoth farms. No unemployment, no waste, no ”capitalistic blood sucking”--and the lowest standard of living in the industrialized world. A vast, bleak land peopled with stringless puppets, with walking cadavers.

I remembered the faces of the crowds and the strangely mixed people in America, their obvious feelings, emotions and rivalries. There was nothing strange about these people of Russia--they were dead, spiritually dead.

The country that could have been a cultural and industrial center of the world was a robot-land of nine million square miles, getting ready for war, getting ready to take over the dreams of Hitler and make them come true.

I came out with a promise of ten thousand American dollars for every one of the future formulas I had a.s.sured them I could get to. I came out with the knowledge that I'd be a watched man from now on.

In Switzerland, Jean said, ”Well--?”

”I'm ready to go home,” I told her.

”America, you mean?”

”Where else?”

”I've been alone,” she said, ”and thinking. I've gone back to Sunset and Pacific Coast Highway and traced it all forward from there. And I don't think America's your home.”

Very cool her voice, very tense her face. I smiled at her.

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