[What Might Have Been 02] Alternate Heroes Read online

  Hans Albert, still glowering from the argument with his brother, came to sit in the chair beside him.

  “Grand theories are in the air now,” Hans Albert said. “Wonderful ideas about extending the Poincaré theory of dynamics to include gravitation. But some fools oppose the work.”

  “Ah. Who invents this?”

  “Papa, physicists don’t invent. They’re not engineers. They propose theories and test them. Anyway, the ideas come from some Americans, Dyson and Feynman. And from our Heisenberg too, of course.”

  “Light,” he said, gazing at the warm play of candlelight on silver.

  Hans Albert nodded impatiently. “Of course! The role of light, following an innate curve made by matter, that’s in the theory. And space and time too, threaded together and warped by matter. The equations describing this reduce to Newton’s familiar prescriptions in the limit of essentially flat geometries. That’s what’s so exciting. I wish I could make you understand! You see—”

  “How heavy it is.”

  “What is?” His son frowned at the interruption.

  “Each ray as subtle as a rose petal,” he said dreamily, “bending down to the earth.”

  “Something like that,” the younger man said carefully.

  “And everywhere it bends. If we go far enough away, does the light streaming out from the stars seem to curve?”

  “Well, I don’t—”

  “Even to the end of things? Mustn’t light bend then, at least?” Hans Albert stared at him. “No disrespect, Papa, but you’re certainly not a physicist!”

  When Millie’s back was turned, he slipped out of the crowded room.

  The balcony was dark and empty, and the air rising off the lake was fresh. Overhead, a huge tapestry of stars blazed, a panoply of light streaking outward to the far horizons of the universe. It was a time to see not just backwards but forwards too. Someday, he thought, man would follow the elusive light of the stars, sailing out into the far reaches of space. Hans Albert could have told him how this would be done, but he already knew the truth of it in his heart.

  He had the sense again tonight of endings, of a wave that had travelled so far finally curving on a distant shore. So be it. He was ready for it; there were few things to regret. All in all, it had been a good life.

  Rosa had reached her C.

  And yet—and yet.

  The book Eddie had left for him was wrong in one respect. The sharks who snatched away the victory were not external. They swam in the dark waters of the soul. The trick was not to let them.

  He gazed up into the sky at the great gorgeous light.

  THE LAST ARTICLE

  Harry Turtledove

  Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.

  —Mohandas Gandhi

  The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force.

  —Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

  The tank rumbled down the Rajpath, past the ruins of the Memorial Arch, toward the India Gate. The gateway arch was still standing, although it had taken a couple of shell hits in the fighting before New Delhi fell. The Union Jack fluttered above it.

  British troops lined both sides of the Rajpath, watching silently as the tank rolled past them. Their khaki uniforms were filthy and torn; many wore bandages. They had the weary, past-caring stares of beaten men, though the Army of India had fought until flesh and munitions gave out.

  The India Gate drew near. A military band, smartened up for the occasion, began to play as the tank went past. The bagpipes sounded thin and lost in the hot, humid air.

  A single man stood waiting in the shadow of the Gate. Field Marshal Walther Model leaned down into the cupola of the Panzer IV. “No one can match the British at ceremonies of this sort,” he said to his aide.

  Major Dieter Lasch laughed, a bit unkindly. “They’ve had enough practice, sir,” he answered, raising his voice to be heard over the flatulent roar of the tank’s engine.

  “What is that tune?” the field marshal asked. “Does it have a meaning?”

  “It’s called ‘The World Turned Upside Down,’ ” said Lasch, who had been involved with his British opposite number in planning the formal surrender. “Lord Cornwallis’s army musicians played it when he yielded to the Americans at Yorktown.”

  “Ah, the Americans.” Model was for a moment so lost in his own thoughts that his monocle threatened to slip from his right eye. He screwed it back in. The single lens was the only thing he shared with the cliched image of a high German officer. He was no lean, hawk-faced Prussian. But his rounded features were unyielding, and his stocky body sustained the energy of his will better than the thin, dyspeptic frames of so many aristocrats. “The Americans,” he repeated. “Well, that will be the next step, won’t it? But enough. One thing at a time.”

  The panzer stopped. The driver switched off the engine. The sudden quiet was startling. Model leaped nimbly down. He had been leaping down from tanks for eight years now, since his days as a staff officer for the IV Corps in the Polish campaign.

  The man in the shadows stepped forward, saluted. Flashbulbs lit his long, tired face as German photographers recorded the moment for history. The Englishman ignored cameras and cameramen alike. “Field Marshal Model,” he said politely. He might have been about to discuss the weather.

  Model admired his sangfroid. “Field Marshal Auchinleck,” he replied, returning the salute and giving Auchinleck a last few seconds to remain his equal. Then he came back to the matter at hand. “Field Marshal, have you signed the instrument of surrender of the British Army of India to the forces of the Reich?”

  “I have,” Auchinleck replied. He reached into the left blouse pocket of his battledress, removed a folded sheet of paper. Before handing it to Model, though, he said, “I should like to request your permission to make a brief statement at this time.”

  “Of course, sir. You may say what you like, at whatever length you like.” In victory, Model could afford to be magnanimous. He had even granted Marshal Zhukov leave to speak in the Soviet capitulation at Kuibyshev, before the marshal was taken out and shot.

  “I thank you.” Auchinleck stiffly dipped his head. “I will say, then, that I find the terms I have been forced to accept to be cruelly hard on the brave men who have served under my command.”

  “That is your privilege, sir.” But Model’s round face was no longer kindly, and his voice had iron in it as he replied, “I must remind you, however, that my treating with you at all under the rules of war is an act of mercy for which Berlin may yet reprimand me. When Britain surrendered in 1941, all Imperial forces were also ordered to lay down their arms. I daresay you did not expect us to come so far, but I would be within my rights in reckoning you no more than so many bandits.”

  A slow flush darkened Auchinleck’s cheeks. “We gave you a bloody good run, for bandits.”

  “So you did.” Model remained polite. He did not say he would ten times rather fight straight-up battles than deal with the partisans who to this day harassed the Germans and their allies in occupied Russia. “Have you anything further to add?”

  “No, sir, I do not.” Auchinleck gave the German the signed surrender, handed him his sidearm. Model put the pistol in the empty holster he wore for the occasion. It did not fit well; the holster was made for a Walther P38, not this man-killing brute of a Webley and Scott. That mattered little, though—the ceremony was almost over.

  Auchinleck and Model exchanged salutes for the last time. The British field marshal stepped away. A German lieutenant came up to lead him into captivity.

  Major Lasch waved his left hand. The Union Jack came down from the flagpole on the India Gate. The swastika rose to replace it.

  Lasch tapped discreetly on the door, stuck his head into the field marshal’s office. “That Indian politician is here for his appointment with you, sir.”

  “Oh, yes. Very well, Dieter, send him in.” Model had been dealing with Indian politicians e
ven before the British surrender, and with hordes of them now that resistance was over. He had no more liking for the breed than for Russian politicians, or even German ones. No matter what pious principles they spouted, his experience was that they were all out for their own good first.

  The small, frail brown man the aide showed in made him wonder. The Indian’s emaciated frame and the plain white cotton loincloth that was his only garment contrasted starkly with the Victorian splendor of the Viceregal Palace from which Model was administering the Reich’s new conquest. “Sit down, Herr Gandhi,” the field marshal urged.

  “I thank you very much, sir.” As he took his seat, Gandhi seemed a child in an adult’s chair: it was much too wide for him, and its soft, overstuffed cushions hardly sagged under his meager weight. But his eyes, Model saw, were not a child’s eyes. They peered with disconcerting keenness through his wire-framed spectacles as he said, “I have come to enquire when we may expect German troops to depart from our country.”

  Model leaned forward, frowning. For a moment he thought he had misunderstood Gandhi’s Gujarati-flavored English. When he was sure he had not, he said, “Do you think perhaps we have come all this way as tourists?”

  “Indeed I do not.” Gandhi’s voice was sharp with disapproval. “Tourists do not leave so many dead behind them.”

  Model’s temper kindled. “No, tourists do not pay such a high price for the journey. Having come regardless of that cost, I assure you we shall stay.”

  “I am very sorry, sir; I cannot permit it.”

  “You cannot?” Again, Model had to concentrate to keep his monocle from falling out. He had heard arrogance from politicians before, but this scrawny old devil surpassed belief. “Do you forget I can call my aide and have you shot behind this building? You would not be the first, I assure you.”

  “Yes, I know that,” Gandhi said sadly. “If you have that fate in mind for me, I am an old man. I will not run.”

  Combat had taught Model a hard indifference to the prospect of injury or death. He saw the older man possessed something of the same sort, however he had acquired it. A moment later, he realized his threat had not only failed to frighten Gandhi, but had actually amused him. Disconcerted, the field marshal said, “Have you any serious issues to address?”

  “Only the one I named just now. We are a nation of more than three hundred million; it is no more just for Germany to rule us than for the British.”

  Model shrugged. “If we are able to, we will. We have the strength to hold what we have conquered, I assure you.”

  “Where there is no right, there can be no strength,” Gandhi said. “We will not permit you to hold us in bondage.”

  “Do you think to threaten me?” Model growled. In fact, though, the Indian’s audacity surprised him. Most of the locals had fallen over themselves fawning on their new masters. Here, at least, was a man out of the ordinary.

  Gandhi was still shaking his head, although Model saw he had still not frightened him (a man out of the ordinary indeed, thought the field marshal, who respected courage when he found it). “I make no threats, sir, but I will do what I believe to be right.”

  “Most noble,” Model said, but to his annoyance the words came out sincere rather than with the sardonic edge he had intended. He had heard such canting phrases before, from Englishmen, from Russians, yes, and from Germans as well. Somehow, though, this Gandhi struck him as one who always meant exactly what he said. He rubbed his chin, considering how to handle such an intransigent.

  A large green fly came buzzing into the office. Model’s air of detachment vanished the moment he heard that malignant whine. He sprang from his seat, swatted at the fly. He missed. The insect flew around a while longer, then settled on the arm of Gandhi’s chair.

  “Kill it,” Model told him. “Last week one of those accursed things bit me on the neck, and I still have the lump to prove it.”

  Gandhi brought his hand down, but several inches from the fly. Frightened, it took off. Gandhi rose. He was surprisingly nimble for a man nearing eighty. He chivvied the fly out of the office, ignoring Model, who watched his performance in open-mouthed wonder.

  “I hope it will not trouble you again,” Gandhi said, returning as calmly as if he had done nothing out of the ordinary. “I am one of those who practice ahimsa: I will do no injury to any living thing.”

  Model remembered the fall of Moscow, and the smell of burning bodies filling the chilly autumn air. He remembered machine guns knocking down Cossack cavalry before they could close, and the screams of the wounded horses, more heartrending than any woman’s. He knew of other things, too, things he had not seen for himself and of which he had no desire to learn more.

  “Herr Gandhi,” he said, “how do you propose to bend to your will someone who opposes you, if you will not use force for the purpose?”

  “I have never said I will not use force, sir.” Gandhi’s smile invited the field marshal to enjoy with him the distinction he was making. “I will not use violence. If my people refuse to cooperate in any way with yours, how can you compel them? What choice will you have but to grant us leave to do as we will?”

  Without the intelligence estimates he had read, Model would have dismissed the Indian as a madman. No madman, though, could have caused the British so much trouble. But perhaps the decadent raj simply had not made him afraid. Model tried again. “You understand that what you have said is treason against the Reich,” he said harshly.

  Gandhi bowed in his seat. “You may, of course, do what you will with me. My spirit will in any case survive among my people.”

  Model felt his face heat. Few men were immune to fear. Just his luck, he thought sourly, to have run into one of them. “I warn you, Herr Gandhi, to obey the authority of the officials of the Reich, or it will be the worse for you.”

  “I will do what I believe to be right, and nothing else. If you Germans exert yourselves toward the freeing of India, joyfully will I work with you. If not, then I regret we must be foes.”

  The field marshal gave him one last chance to see reason. “Were it you and I alone, there might be some doubt as to what would happen.” Not much, he thought, not when Gandhi was twenty-odd years older and thin enough to break like a stick. He fought down the irrelevance, went on, “But where, Herr Gandhi, is your Wehrmacht?”

  Of all things, he had least expected to amuse the Indian again. Yet Gandhi’s eyes unmistakably twinkled behind the lenses of his spectacles. “Field Marshal, I have an army too.”

  Model’s patience, never of the most enduring sort, wore thin all at once. “Get out!” he snapped.

  Gandhi stood, bowed, and departed. Major Lasch stuck his head into the office. The field marshal’s glare drove him out again in a hurry.

  “Well?” Jawaharlal Nehru paced back and forth. Tall, slim, and saturnine, he towered over Gandhi without dominating him. “Dare we use the same policies against the Germans that we employed against the English?”

  “If we wish our land free, dare we do otherwise?” Gandhi replied. “They will not grant our wish of their own volition. Model struck me as a man not much different from various British leaders whom we have succeeded in vexing in the past.” He smiled at the memory of what passive resistance had done to officials charged with combating it.

  “Very well, satyagraha it is.” But Nehru was not smiling. He had less humor than his older colleague.

  Gandhi teased him gently: “Do you fear another spell in prison, then?” Both men had spent time behind bars during the war, until the British released them in a last, vain effort to rally the support of the Indian people to the raj.

  “You know better.” Nehru refused to be drawn, and persisted, “The rumors that come out of Europe frighten me.”

  “Do you tell me you take them seriously?” Gandhi shook his head in surprise and a little reproof. “Each side in any war will always paint its opponents as blackly as it can.”

  “I hope you are right, and that that is all. Still, I confes
s I would feel more at ease with what we plan to do if you found me one Jew, officer or other rank, in the army now occupying us.”

  “You would be hard-pressed to find any among the forces they defeated. The British have little love for Jews either.”

  “Yes, but I daresay it could be done. With the Germans, they are banned by law. The English would never make such a rule. And while the laws are vile enough, I think of the tales that man Wiesenthal told, the one who came here the gods know how across Russia and Persia from Poland.”

  “Those I do not believe,” Gandhi said firmly. “No nation could act in that way and hope to survive. Where could men be found to carry out such horrors?”

  “Azad Hind,” Nehru said, quoting the “Free India” motto of the locals who had fought on the German side.

  But Gandhi shook his head. “They are only soldiers, doing as soldiers have always done. Wiesenthal’s claims are for an entirely different order of bestiality, one which could not exist without destroying the fabric of the state that gave it birth.”

  “I hope very much you are right,” Nehru said.

  Walther Model slammed the door behind him hard enough to make his aide, whose desk faced away from the field marshal’s office, jump in alarm. “Enough of this twaddle for one day,” Model said. “I need schnapps, to get the taste of these Indians out of my mouth. Come along if you care to, Dieter.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Major Lasch threw down his pen, eagerly got to his feet. “I sometimes think conquering India was easier than ruling it will be.”

  Model rolled his eyes. “I know it was. I would ten times rather be planning a new campaign than sitting here bogged down in pettifogging details. The sooner Berlin sends me people trained in colonial administration, the happier I will be.”

  The bar might have been taken from an English pub. It was dark, quiet, and paneled in walnut; a dart board still hung on the wall. But a German sergeant in field gray stood behind the bar, and despite the lazily turning ceiling fan, the temperature was close to thirty-five Celsius. The one might have been possible in occupied London, the other not.