They watched Tamerlane's abortive attempt to repeat Genghis Kahn's
Asiatic Conquest. They stood by while a man from the far future gave
England's Cromwell the necessary encouragement for his _coup d'etat_.
("Cromwell's head will roll anyway," Laniq said cheerfully.) The pages
of history came alive again when Napoleon cavorted for them at Elba,
convinced by a man who appeared mysteriously out of nowhere to break
the chains of his exile and try his hand once more at world empire.
("Thank God for Wellington.") They watched Kerensky's provisional
government fall in the days of the Russian Revolution, paving the way
for Communist dictatorship. But Kerensky was betrayed from within, and
not by a Russian but a man from the future. ("We don't know about this
one yet, Barwan.") And not the Germans in a secret railroad train, but
men from the future in a time-conveyor, spirited Lenin back from Russia
in time to assume the mantle of empire and so pave the way for Stalin
and Malenkov.
"I want to show you one thing more before we head for the year 1954,"
Laniq told Tedor, whose head by now was swimming with a vast new--and
sinister--concept of history. "Did you ever hear of Adolph Hitler?"
* * * * *
The city was Munich in the early 1920's, narrow cobbled streets all
a-clatter with horses and wagons and learning the new sound of the
gasoline automobile and the swaying electric trolley. Munich, Germany,
city of commerce, transportation hub noisy with the sounds of arrival
and departure, its byways crowded with small homburgs, bicycles,
checkered caps. The Munich of the Beer Halls and great steins of hearty
German beer and singing and raucous laughter. But also the Munich of
unrest, distrust, intense intellectual turmoil, and the Munich which,
not many months later, was to be the scene of the abortive _putsch_ in
a beer cellar which started a slight little man with stray-locked dark
hair on his path toward world conquest.
They sat in a beer hall, Laniq and Tedor, and at a table near them sat
a man, young but with eyes which to Tedor were at once the most fiery,
most intense and oldest he had even seen. He was a man, Tedor guessed,
who would never know a tranquil moment in his life; cold, friendless,
fidgety, smouldering with nameless resentments.
"That's Hitler," Laniq said unnecessarily. "It is why we have come
here."
They had spent three hours in the beer cellar so often frequented by
Hitler, a second-rate poster artist, ex-Army corporal and smouldering
revolutionary.
A man came to the table and joined Hitler, not half a dozen feet from
where Laniq and Tedor sat with their beer. As the one was stamped
with his personality as clearly as ever a man could be, so the other
was poker-faced non-descript, neither German nor non-German, feverish
agitator nor tranquil pacifist.
"You have come," said Hitler, easily loud enough for Tedor to hear. "It
is good. I have spent the entire day thinking of what you have told me.
It is like a storm bursting inside of me, a happy torment, as if it
holds the seeds of a strife which can make everything clear, lucidly
clear for Germany and the world, their destiny, one the master the
other the follower. You will one day be a great man."
"Not I, Adolph. You harbor the inherent qualities for greatness."
"I know," said Hitler, and made it sound the most natural thing in the
world. "I was born for greatness, I will be great. But you have earned
it with your perception, your understanding, with your ability to point
out objectively what I could not see for my raging emotions."
"It is only common sense, Adolph. You had the idea; clearly, the idea
was in you. A year, two years, it would have materialized. I merely
acted like a catalyst."
"To the East," said Hitler in a dreamy voice, all the while his eyes
burned furiously, "is the Bolshevik, the Red Scourge, the hated, feared
enemy of mankind. To the West is the Democratic world, the England of
many centuries, the France of polite ways and laughable indecisions,
the young America, still trying its wings.
"Which is the enemy of the people? I will tell you which. It is as you
have said. The Red, the Communist Bolshevik is the enemy of the people.
Tell them, 'See, the Red is coming!' and they will run, to arms,
defending their homes and what they love as if it were Ragnarok itself.
Good. We will tell them that.
"And which is the enemy of Hitler, the real enemy of Hitler who--as you
say--was born to lead Germany, the Third Reich, to world glory? It is
not the Red Bolshevik, no. It is the West, with its standard of living,
its broad, idealistic aims which while incapable of bearing fruit
are nevertheless infinitely attractive; the West with its showcase
democracy, the West with its guaranteed personal liberties for morons
and sub-morons, the West which yearns after the individual to the
neglect of the state and so makes all individuals everywhere yearn so
too.
"I will fire my people with hatred for the Red when hatred for the Jew
has weakened because one day we will exterminate the Jew. The one is
a legitimate hatred, the other a fancied one--but with the fires once
stoked, the hatred will burn brightly. When it turns, as assuredly it
will, to still a third and now unthinkable hatred, frenzy will ride
high the crest of a wave--and the legions of the Third Reich will turn
suddenly and devastatingly on the West, which today the German people
cannot hate but which will one day bear the brunt of their hatred and
power and rage because I, Hitler, tell them so."
"I am glad I could bring this to the surface in you so much sooner than
it otherwise might have appeared," said the non-descript man.
"_You_ are glad? _You?_" Tears streamed down Hitler's face, yet he
laughed. "Think how I feel. I, Hitler. A man today, a God tomorrow,
because you showed me the way. Name your price, request your reward;
when the world is mine the half you want shall be yours."
"I want only what is best for Germany and its people," said the man.
"What he means," Laniq whispered to Tedor, "is he wants what is best
for the monopolist. Naturally he's one of our own people. Fortunately
for the world, he drove this point home too strongly. Hitler will move,
and soon, making a wild, incredible bid for power. When it aborts, he
will bide his time for another decade, giving the free world additional
time to prepare."
"Why don't we wait for him outside, take him, and see what we can
learn?" Tedor demanded.
"Risk everything on that when we know Hitler will fail? This man
probably doesn't know the monopolist, anyway. He is a shadow figure,
a ghost. None of them knows his identity, at least that has been my
experience."
"Still--"
"Still nothing. The twentieth century's middle years are the
significant ones. Let all else ride if we must, for it is there the
monopolist will either succeed or fail with plans that will make the
dreams of a dozen Hitlers seem something less than child's play."
"Okay, Laniq. You win. But remember this; once we get to my stamping
grounds, I'm going to take over. Brief me if you want to, but I have
the contacts. Besides, I came hell-bent into the time-stream looking
for you and now I find apparently all my ideas need readjusting. I'll
be able to think a lot better with some affirmative action under my
belt."
"Very well. What do we do first?"
"Well, now--"
"We seek out my father in Afghanistan, naturally. He can do the
briefing you suggest. After that...."
"After that I take over," Tedor growled, then smiled. "Come on."
* * * * *
"My father's followers needed an out-of-the-way place like this," Laniq
explained as the time-conveyor dropped out of the time-stream and
cruised along above the desert. "We're building a spaceship, you see."
"A spaceship? What for? There is nothing worth while on the planets,
nothing worth the trouble to mine it."
"My fault, Tedor. I should have said a starship. If necessary, we'll go
to the stars. Oh, we can do it, although the trip will take generations
and only a few hundred people will find room. We won't do it unless the
monopolist forces us. If he gains the dictatorial control of time he's
seeking, we'll have no choice. We're collecting trophies, artifacts
of man's culture, just in case. We'll gladly put them in a museum or
return them if the monopolist fails." Laniq turned to the port, gazed
down on the desert sweeping by. Suddenly; "Tedor!"
Tedor stood beside her and stared down. There had been a village of
tents below them. There now were the remains of tents in a well-watered
oasis--but no village.
Fires smouldered below them. Charred wreckage lay strewn about the
rolling dunes and jumbled rock on either side of the oasis. A great
silver hull--the body of an incomplete starship, Tedor knew, lay on its
side, a dying animal, huge rents and gashes disfiguring it like ugly,
bloodless scars.
"Tedor--Tedor--I'm afraid!"
Tedor took the conveyor down, landing it adjacent to the wrecked
starship. He climbed out first, helped Laniq alight. Dazed, clasping
and unclasping her hands, she walked about the oasis. In some of the
burned tents dishes were set on crude tables. Personal equipment was
everywhere, on the floors, on the charred plastoid beds, in hastily
emptied lockers. Most of the fires had burned themselves out, but smoke
still curled lazily into the dry, hot air of the desert.
"They came, Tedor. They destroyed--everything."
Tedor stood mutely, uncomfortably, not knowing what to say. Everything
he thought about Laniq had changed so drastically in the space of a
few hours and now he wanted to help her, but could do nothing.
"Miss Hadrien. Miss Hadrien!"
They whirled together, saw a dark head poke itself out from behind one
end of the spaceship, large burnoose very white over the brown skin. It
was a boy of perhaps fourteen. He was trembling, his lips puckered. He
sobbed. "Oh, Miss Hadrien...."
Laniq went to him, patted his shoulder. "Mahmud, there now. It must
have been awful, I know. There, Mahmud."
With someone to comfort him, Mahmud cried all the more. He wailed
loudly, letting the tears gush down his cheeks, abandoning his body to
wracking sobs.
Tedor who spoke Persian and understood it, realized the boy would go
right on crying and Laniq comforting him and so not finding time to cry
herself. And so he said, "Mahmud, tell me what happened. Tell me where
Miss Hadrien's people are."
Mahmud sniffled, blinked his eyes, plucked a handful of gummy dates
from the folds of his burnoose. He munched, sniffled again. "Dead," he
sobbed. "They are all dead, almost."
Laniq sobbed too, clutching little Mahmud's shoulder more firmly.
"Dead?" she cried. "Dead? Where?"
"Maybe not all, Miss Hadrien. Those that could, fled--taking the dead
with them. It happened not long ago when three round craft came down
from the sky and burned everything. They struck without warning. My
people fled."
"You are very brave, Mahmud," Laniq declared. "What--happened to my
father?"
"The Hadrien Sir was badly hurt, Miss. Of that much I am sure. They
carried him with much moaning and bleeding into their craft, your
people did, and went to the West. 'Laniq' he kept mumbling. He looked
at me while they carried him and said 'Laniq! you tell Laniq we went to
Nevada. She'll know where. Tell Laniq we went to Nevada, but tell no
one else.' That is what he said and I, Mahmud, remember every word."
"Thank you, Mahmud. And what about you?"
Mahmud smiled for the first time. "Oh, presently I will return among
my people who fled in the face of all this terror from the sky. But it
will not be the same."
"It will be the same," said Laniq. "They are your people."
"I say it will not be the same, but thank you, Miss. I will go among my
people with my great sadness and remember yours forever."
"If I thought you would be happy, I would take you with me."
"Miss--" Mahmud looked at her hopefully.
"No, Mahmud. You won't understand this, not yet. But they are your
people, your home and your world. You could not pick up the threads of
a new life and a new way of life without sorrow. Your people did what
anyone else would have done, including _my_ people. They had their own
homes to protect; they could not throw their lives away vainly in my
people's defense."
Mahmud smiled again, then turned to go. "I was hoping you would say
that, Miss Hadrien." He trotted off with head high and shoulders
squared.
"He'll be all right, I think," Laniq said. "We'd better get to Nevada,
Tedor."
Together they ran for the time-conveyor. It hurt her not to, but Laniq
never looked back at the devastated community.
* * * * *
"Seventeen, red," fat Dorlup proclaimed to the croupier in a Reno
gambling joint.
The wheel spun, the ball clicked, rattled, jumped with it.
"Seventeen, red," declared the croupier in an awed voice as he raked
a tall stack of chips toward the one Dorlup had placed in the red
seventeen. Dorlup gathered the stack in with his pudgy arms and
deposited it carelessly in the growing mountain of chips nearby.
"You're wonderful," the honey-blond solidio actress told him, squeezing
his arm to add emphasis.
There was no shaking Beti, not since that day, months ago, when she had
steered Dorlup into the Automat in New York. Since then he had been
across the country three times, and she with him. He had gained a lot
of source material for his solidio, and it amused him after a few days
when he realized Beti was spying on him for someone. He didn't care,
since he had nothing in particular to hide. And, anyway, there were
certain joys of which Beti was truly the mistress, despite the vacuum
which seemed to exist inside her skull.
"You _are_ wonderful," Beti said again.
Dorlup patted her hand without real affection. "Everyone in here thinks
I have a system. _The_ system to beat the game, I might add. There is
only one system. I know that system. Roulette wouldn't have a chance
where we come from."
"It all rides on eight, black," Dorlup told the croupier.
"All?" The man's polish had cracked.
"All."
"Eight black," the croupier intoned a moment later. The crowd ooh'ed
and aah'ed.
"Well," said Dorlup, and gathered in the chips again.
"Mr. Dorlup?" someone at his shoulder asked.
"Yes, I am Dorlup. What do you want?"
"Come with me."
"What for?"
"Don't make a scene, Mr. Dorlup," the man said in a soft voice. Then in
a language which Dorlup had not heard for six months: "It is important
that I talk with you."