Nova 1 Read online

  “Very well, only I’m a little touchy on that score, you see. I’ve been very unfairly criticized there ever since the Third Reich collapsed in 1945. You see, there was a much deeper intention behind the extermination of the Jews; that was little but a warming-up exercise to get the machinery going. The ultimate target—the course on which I was intending to embark by 1950 at the latest, before I was so rudely interrupted—was the extermination of the Negro races.”

  I gasped as the enormity of his plan came home to me.

  “Surely—surely, an error in tactics—” I began falteringly. In his almost boyish eagerness, he misunderstood what I was going to say. Leaning forward over the table, his eyes shining, he said, “Yes, perhaps it was an error in tactics—you see, I admit I commit errors occasionally—not to have announced my grand plan to the world. Then the Americans would have been sympathetic and stayed out of the war. Well, too late now to cry over spilt milk. If only I could have pulled off the extermination of the Negroes; admittedly it would have seemed rather controversial to begin with, but afterward I would have been accepted, I think its fair to say, as a benefactor.”

  “Except by the Negroes themselves?”

  He took my naiveté in good part.

  “My dear boy, even the Negroes themselves admit that nobody likes them. I would merely have followed that through to its logical conclusion. Heaven knows, I’ve never courted popularity for its own sake, but you yourself would admit that I’ve had to put up with more than my share of backbiting. Even the German people have to pretend to have turned against me.”

  He shook his head, looking very downcast. To console him, I said, “Well, Geoff, that’s the unfair way the world treats the defeated—there’s no respect for ambition nowadays—”

  “Defeated! Who was defeated? Have you fallen victim to all the lying Jewish bourgeois bolshevik anti-Nazi propaganda too? I’ve not been defeated—”

  “But surely in 1945—”

  “What happened in 1945 is neither here nor there! It just happens to be the year when I chose to step back and let others take over the arduous role of waging war and waking whole populations from their slave-mentality inertia.”

  “You don’t mean—you’re claiming a sort of psychological victory? A—”

  He poured us both another measure of red wine and watered it down with mineral water. “It was my old racist enemies who spread the lie that peace broke out in 1945. It is not true—what old Winston would call a terminological inexactitude, in his comic way. That was the year the Americans dropped the first A-bomb and started the nuclear arms race which shows no sign of slackening yet, particularly now that the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. have managed to goad China into joining the competition. We hadn’t the resources to manufacture war materiel on that scale, alas!”

  “But you can’t compare the Cold War with World War II, Adolf!”

  “Geoff to you, Brian.”

  “Geoff, I mean. Sorry.”

  “I’m not comparing. The one developed from the other; 1945 saw the change from one phase to the next. The continuity is clear. Look at the Russians! I don’t think much of the Slav races, but you have to hand it to them—their policy of aggression has been consistent for half a century now. I don’t know if you recall the name of Joseph Stalin? A bit of a rogue, but a man after my own heart. He told me back in—oh, 1938, I think it would be, that he would like to get into Europe—”

  “The Common Market—”

  “And of course he did so and, only last year, his followers were still obeying his orders and marching into Czechoslovakia just as I did, way back!” He clapped his thigh with genuine pleasure. “That was the time! A ball, as today’s youngsters would say! Beautiful city, Prague! The sun shining, the Wehrmacht in their best uniforms, the tanks rolling, everyone shouting ‘Heil—’ . . . well, ‘Heil Me’ let’s say, and the pretty Czech girls hanging flowers round our necks . . . The mood of genial reminiscence softened his rather harsh profile. “You were only a boy then, Brian . . .”

  “I can remember the occasion, all the same. But the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 is a different thing—”

  “It’s still part of World War II, just like the Korean War and Vietnam and the Middle East hot-pot. They are all conflagrations lit from the torch I started burning in Europe.” It was a concept almost beyond my grasping, and I told him as much.

  “I’ll have to beg to differ there. After all, the 1945 peace treaties—”

  “I’ve no wish to be unpleasant, but I was slightly more in the center of things than you were, after all. I’m sure that General Curtis LeMay doesn’t think of the war as being over, not by a long chalk. Men like that, strong men, men born with iron in their bones, they all have something of Bismarck in them—they hold the great vision of peace as merely a time for rearming. How’s the drink? More mineral water?”

  I covered my glass with my hand. “No, thanks, just right. Well, we mustn’t argue—”

  “Excuse me, we must argue if you do not accept my point. My war, as I pardonably regard it, is still being waged, is breaking out afresh, and may soon even return to its fatherland. What does it all mean if not victory for me and my ideals?”

  Moved if not convinced, I felt I was in touch with greatness. “Always the old warrior, Geoff! You’ve never despaired, have you?”

  “Despair! Who can afford to despair? Besides, the world has given me little real cause for despair. Men of warrior caste are still alive everywhere.”

  “I suppose so. But I was a bit surprised by what you were saying just now about General LeMay. I understood that you basically had little respect for the American spirit?”

  Sipping his drink, he looked at me with reproach in his eyes. “Let’s be fair to the Americans. I know as well as you do that their whole continent is overrun by a rabble of Slavs and Jews and Mexicans and Spaniards and the sweepings of Africa and Scandinavia; but fortunately there is a backbone of Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon military morale there too. They aren’t all semi-Asiatic ghetto-infesting-decadents like Roosevelt. I know a backstreet racially inferior lackey-mentality has often prevailed in the past, but just recently a more upright no-nonsense element is coming to the fore and triumphing over the flabby democratic processes. I’m extremely encouraged to see the vigorous uncompromising attitudes of American leaders like Reagan and Governor Wallace. President Nixon also has his better side. Of course, the American practice-war in Vietnam was hopelessly ill-run and . . .”

  “Namby-pamby?”

  “Yes, good, namby-pamby . . . namby-pamby. Except for de Gaulle, the French are namby-pamby, eh? What was I saying? Yes, a more realistic spirit growing in America. They failed in logic by hesitating to use thermonuclear weapons in Vietnam, but that obscurantist attitude is altering and soon I expect to see them employing such solutions to restore discipline within their own frontiers.”

  “Incurably the grand strategist!” I smiled. “Do you find yourself reliving your old campaigns over and over?”

  “I don’t think so, not more than most people. I’d say I was a pretty average sort of person. I like to keep up with current events. A friend in New York sends me the Times every day. And, as I believe I told you, I’m now writing some poetry.” He smiled modestly, with a twitch of his moustache.

  “Don’t know how you’ll take this, Geoff, but do you think I could possibly see some of your poetry some time? Just take a peek?”

  He sat back and looked at me, half-laughing—yet I thought there was a mist in his eyes, as if my interest had touched him.

  “What possible interest could an old man’s poetry have for you?”

  Perhaps the watered-down wine had had its due effect. Hunching my shoulders over the table, I said, “You can hardly imagine what a deep impression you made on me when I was a kid. In England, we never had a strong leader like you in the thirties and, by God, we desperately need one again now—Harold Wilson’s much too mild and permissive! I—okay, it sounds sentimental—but you were a fa
ther-figure to me, Geoff, and to thousands like me who had the luck to fight in the war. All those marvelous torchlight processions you used to hold, and the shouting, and the beautiful deep-bosomed frauleins, and the way your troops kept so faultlessly in step! And then the dramatic way you just swept across Europe in the late thirties and early forties . . . It was wonderful to watch! I mean, it didn’t matter that we were on opposite sides; we knew you were really a friend of the British Empire.”

  “A better friend than the decadent Americans proved.” He looked down at his glass. “Yes, Brian, those were great days, no denying that. You needn’t reproach yourself for feeling as you do. Nobody’s in quite the same league today—the Russians, the South Africans, the Portuguese . . .”

  He shook his head. For a moment, we were both too full of emotion to speak. Then I asked softly, “Do you ever wish things had worked out differently, Geoff? I mean—for you personally?” I shall never forget his answer. He didn’t look up, just went on clutching his glass with hands that shook slightly (his old disease still occasionally troubled him) and staring down at the wine.

  In a voice from which he strove to hold back tears, he said, “I’m getting old and sentimental, as you know. But sometimes I despair of the world ever getting put to rights. The permanent East-West confrontation is well enough, and the two mutually interdependent persecution manias of America and Russia have served to maintain the world’s battle-alertness over some otherwise lackluster years. But . . .”

  He sighed. No man should look as isolated as he did at that minute. He resembled a mystic staring down a telescope the wrong way at a golden dream.

  “But . . .” I prompted. “You had a master plan?”

  “I’ve had emissaries come to me over the years, Brian. They come humbly to me, exiled here. Soviet and American—and British too, to begin with. They’ve come swarming to me in secret. Yes, and the little tin-pot rulers too. Nasser, Hussein, that Rhodesian fellow, that ingrate Chou En Lai, Castro—filthy little Communist! All on their knees here! Even—yes, even General Dayan of Israel. Not a bad fellow, considering . . . They’ve all begged me to take charge of their war aims, clarify them, implement them. ‘You can have the whole Pacific if you’ll help me take Peking.’ That’s what—h’m, memory’s going—that’s what Sukarno said. Always it was me they wanted. It’s the old charisma . . .”

  “Either you’ve got it or you haven’t,” I agreed. “Why didn’t you accept their offers—America’s and Russia’s, I mean?”

  “Because the imbeciles asked me to rule them and yet wouldn’t give me full power! He struck the table with his fist. “They wanted me and yet they were afraid of me! LBJ and I met in this very cafe, person-to-person—remember LBJ? This is confidential, mind you, and I don’t want it to go any further.”

  “You can trust me,” I assured him fervently. My eyes were starting out of my head. “You actually met LBJ here?”

  “He paid for the drinks. Insisted on it. Rather big-mouthed. He was in trouble with the Communists abroad and the Negroes and white-trash subversive crypto-mulatto elements at home. Would I help him? I said I would. With me in charge, the United States could have conquered the world. Not a doubt of it! Russia first—use up all those rusty old H-bombs!—pffft!—then Europe invaded and rationalized. Then the rest of the world would just be erased, wiped clean, starting probably with South America. Wiped clean. Nothing namby-pamby.”

  “Why didn’t LBJ take you up on it? It sounds like his big chance!”

  “If you can believe it, he had some harebrained scheme for preserving India from destruction. He was a yellow liberal at heart and the deal fell through.”

  I was aghast. “Why should anyone wish to preserve India from destruction, of all places?!”

  “My dear man, American colonialist ambitions are as much of a mystery to me as to you! A pity—together, or preferably me alone, we could have built a tidier world, an altogether tidier world where people would have to do EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE TOLD TO DO!”

  It was time for him to go. We trudged back to his flat together through the streets of Ostend. He was wearing his old gray trench coat which still bore the swastikas he had never bothered to remove. What symbols of nostalgia they were! In a flash I had found a title for the musical of his life which I had come to discuss with him: “Swastika!” I shall always think of that moment as one of the most dramatic in my whole life, the war notwithstanding.

  We halted on his doorstep.

  “I won’t ask you in,” he said. “The concierge is down with flu.” He always referred to Martin Bormann as “the concierge,” in his humorous way.

  “It’s been wonderful talking to you,” I said.

  “I’ve enjoyed it, too,” he said. “And I promise to come over for the premiere—provided that Jewish chap doesn’t write the music.”

  “Count on me,” I said simply. “And don’t forget—two-and-a-half percent of the gross.”

  We eyed one another in complete understanding. For sentiment’s sake, I knew how I wanted to bid him good-bye; but there were people passing, and I was a little embarrassed. Instead, I grasped his worn frail hand in both of mine.

  “Good-bye, Geoffrey!”

  “Auf wiedersehen, Brian, dear boy!”

  Blinking moisture from my eyes, I hurried for the airport, the contract in my pocket.

  THE HORARS OF WAR

  by Gene Wolfe

  Gene Wolfe is an engineer who served in the United States Army during the Korean War. He knows engineering—and he knows war, and with this joint knowledge has composed a story that has more than a little to say about both. It is a fine example of second-generation science fiction, the examining in greater detail, many times with greater art, of the older and more familiar themes of this medium. In the primitive, or flaky-pulp, days it was enough to cook up an android and have him step, steaming, from the pot. But Mr. Wolfe, with sharp skill, goes a great deal further.

  The three friends in the trench looked very much alike as they labored in the rain. Their hairless skulls were slickly naked to it, their torsos hairless too, and supple with smooth muscles that ran like oil under the wet gleam.

  The two, who really were 2909 and 2911, did not mind the jungle around them although they detested the rain that rusted their weapons, and the snakes and insects, and hated the Enemy. But the one called 2910, the real as well as the official leader of the three, did; and that was because 2909 and 2911 had stainless-steel bones; but there was no 2910 and there had never been.

  The camp they held was a triangle. In the center, the CP-Aid Station where Lieutenant Kyle and Mr. Brenner slept: a hut of ammo cases packed with dirt whose lower half was dug into the soggy earth. Around it were the mortar pit (NE), the recoilless rifle pit (NW), and Pinocchio’s pit (S); and beyond these were the straight lines of the trenches: First Platoon, Second Platoon, Third Platoon (the platoon of the three). Outside of which were the primary wire and an antipersonnel mine field.

  And outside that was the jungle. But not completely outside. The jungle set up outposts of its own of swift-sprouting bamboo and elephant grass, and its crawling creatures carried out untiring patrols of the trenches. The jungle sheltered the Enemy, taking him to its great fetid breast to be fed while it sopped up the rain and of it bred its stinging gnats and centipedes.

  An ogre beside him, 2911 drove his shovel into the ooze filling the trench, lifted it to shoulder height, dumped it; 2910 did the same thing in his turn, then watched the rain work on the scoop of mud until it was slowly running back into the trench again. Following his eyes 2911 looked at him and grinned. The HORAR’s face was broad, hairless, flat-nosed and high-cheeked; his teeth were pointed and white like a big dog’s. And he, 2910, knew that that face was his own. Exactly his own. He told himself it was a dream, but he was very tired and could not get out.

  Somewhere down the trench the bull voice of 2900 announced the evening meal and the others threw down their tools and jostled past toward the bowls of steam
ing mash, but the thought of food nauseated 2910 in his fatigue, and he stumbled into the bunker he shared with 2909 and 2911. Flat on his air mattress he could leave the nightmare for a time; return to the sane world of houses and sidewalks, or merely sink into the blessed nothingness that was far better . . .

  Suddenly he was bolt upright on the cot, blackness still in his eyes even while his fingers groped with their own thought for his helmet and weapon. Bugles were blowing from the edge of the jungle, but he had time to run his hand under the inflated pad of the mattress and reassure himself that his hidden notes were safe before 2900 in the trench outside yelled, “Attack! Fall out! Man your firing points!”

  It was one of the stock jokes, one of the jokes so stock, in fact, that it had ceased to be anything anyone laughed at, to say “Horar” your firing point (or whatever it was that according to the book should be “manned”). The HORARS in the squad he led used the expression to 2910 just as he used it with them, and when 2900 never employed it the omission had at first unsettled him. But 2900 did not really suspect. 2900 just took his rank seriously.

  He got into position just as the mortars put up a parachute flare that hung over the camp like a white rose of fire. Whether because of his brief sleep or the excitement of the impending fight his fatigue had evaporated, leaving him nervously alert but unsteady. From the jungle a bugle sang, “Ta-taa . . . taa-taa . . .” and off to the platoons left rear the First opened up with their heavy weapons on a suicide squad they apparently thought they saw on the path leading to the northeast gate. He watched, and after half a minute something stood up on the path and grabbed for its midsection before it fell, so there was a suicide squad.

  Some one, he told himself. Someone. Not something. Someone grabbed for his midsection. They were all human out there.

  The First began letting go with personal weapons as well, each deep cough representing a half dozen dartlike fletchettes flying in an inescapable pattern three feet broad. “Eyes front, 2910!” barked 2900.