One Thousand Years (11 page)

“Those?
You might call them surprises,” Stern answered. “An
event was unexpected when the predicted or actual wave patterns did
not match our historical records precisely. We are still waiting for
more data to fully comprehend these. As it comes in, those surprises
are reconciled with the pattern, and change to green or blue. Most
of our satellites are retrieved regularly. Some of our most
sensitive ones will not be recalled until much later. In those
cases, we will have to wait for that to be resolved.”

“If
you want my opinion, you're being just a little too careful about not
using radio,” said McHenry. “My people are too busy down
there to be listening for what you're all up to.”

“Oh,
we are not afraid of being overheard down there,” said Stern.
“Your old equipment would not detect us. We do not need to use
the old-style radio bands. It is the Grauen we have to watch for.”

“You
have to understand, we don't dare fight them here,” said Dale,
her face revealing a touch of concern. “Their history is also
intertwined with ours.”

Stern
stepped onto his raised platform. “Correct. We must allow
them to go on with their activities, whatever it was, and no matter
how nefarious. There must be no distractions from us.” He
turned to address Dale. “
Sturmbannführer
,
perhaps you should show Herr McHenry to the upper storerooms.”

“Ah,
yes,” she said, smiling confidently again. “That is
something he would like to see. With your permission,
Standartenführer
?”

“Certainly.”

“
Heil
Renard!”
said Dale,
raising her hand.

“
Heil
Renard!”
answered
Stern.

Dale
led the way through another set of doors, and through another long
corridor. Everyone they passed in these halls wore SS uniforms.

“I
guess the Luftwaffe doesn't work in this department,” McHenry
observed.

“They
run the ship and do flight operations,” Dale replied. “We're
the historians.”

“If
you'll excuse me for saying, that doesn't sound like the SS I know
about.”

“And
what do you really know about the SS?” she laughed. “Sam,
you've got to get over your preconceptions. The SS is primarily
responsible for national security. That's an important function for
any society. Even the corrupt democracy of your day had its
counterparts in the FBI and OSS. This is serious business. Any
mistakes here would be a disaster. The Reich can't afford to leave
anything to chance. The task demands the integrity and the authority
of the SS. Men, women and children of the next thousand years would
be at risk if we messed up. Surely, you must be able to grasp this
by now.”

McHenry
understood her words but was not willing to give in. “A
thousand years,” he mused. “Isn't that how long Hitler
said the Third Reich would last?”

She
turned a corner and stopped before a numbered door.

“Adolf
Hitler was the greatest man in history,” she replied. Her
voice took a more reverent tone, smoothing her Chicago edge. “But
even he failed to see how powerful the vision was. The Third Reich
will stand for an eternity. You can depend on that.”

*

“We don't know when
an invasion of Europe will begin, but we do know that when it does
begin it will be the great test, not only of our men in the field,
but of us at home.”
—
Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady, (April 10, 1944)

The
door opened when she gave it a determined glare. “You're gonna
like this,” she said.

The
room was full of helmeted twentieth-century SS troops, about two
dozen in number. They wore the gray uniforms of the Waffen-SS, and
stood rigidly at attention. Every man was about McHenry's height,
with some variation. Dale was by far the tallest person in the room,
and she stood out in that way.

“Heil
Renard!” said the first man in the line. He was an officer in
the twentieth-century uniform, clicking his heels and standing
straight at attention with his right arm extended in salute.

“Heil
Renard!” Dale responded, saluting with a raised hand, curtly.
“Good morning,
Hauptsturmführer
.
We're speaking English for Herr McHenry here.
He is an American of the twentieth-century and does not speak German.”

“Good
morning then,” the man said, speaking with a flawless American
accent.

“Good
morning,” said McHenry, eyeing the troops. With the exception
of the one who spoke, the rest were too rigid to be normal men, as
though frozen in place. “May I ask what's going on?”

“I
was not briefed,” said the strange man.

“Nothing
is going on, Herr
Hauptsturmführer
,”
said Dale. “This is Lieutenant Sam McHenry. He's an American
pilot. I am giving him a tour of the facilities.”

“Welcome,
Lieutenant.” The man clicked his heels again and reached out
to shake McHenry's hand.

“Thanks,”
said McHenry. It was a firm and warm handshake.

Dale
smiled deviously. “Sam,” she said, “the
Hauptsturmführer
is a robot.”

McHenry
stepped back and let his eyes sweep the room again. “A robot?”
he asked, dumbfounded, though not entirely surprised. “I just
assumed
Hauptsturmführer
was another one of your SS
ranks.”

“Yes,
Hauptsturmführer
is an SS rank.” said Dale. “It
would be equivalent to a
Hauptmann
in the Luftwaffe or a
Captain in the American army. But these are our SS troops.”

“Does
that surprise you?” asked the robot. He, or it — McHenry
wasn't quite sure — had remained standing with the rigidity of
a well disciplined German SS officer, but not that of a machine.

“I
thought I've seen too many surprises already, but yes, I am
surprised.”

“Really?”
The robot's expression feigned puzzlement. “But we know that
twentieth-century Americans have already discussed the possibility of
mechanical men.”

“Maybe
so, but it's different to see one.” McHenry gave another look
to the robot's platoon. Unlike the
Hauptsturmführer
, the
rest stood stiff like mannequins. “Are you planning to
invade?”

“We
stand ready to follow orders, whatever they may be.”

“These
mechanical troops are here just as a precaution,” said Dale.
“It is technically a unit of
Fallschirmjäger
, the
German word for paratrooper. If some kind of accident happened, like
a Tiger crash, or anything that might change history, we can mobilize
them to set things right again.”

McHenry
turned back to the robot. “Does that mean you can parachute
down from orbit?”

The
robot looked to Dale as though awaiting permission to reveal a
secret.

“Yes,”
Dale answered, nodding to the robot. “It is more complicated
than that.” Then, after a pause, she laughed and pointed a
finger down at his chest. “If you're thinking of stealing a
parachute, forget it. Humans can't survive that trip with the ones
that our
Fallschirmjäger
use. And you don't have access to the exits. The ship's main
rechner will see to that.”

“You
don't leave much to chance,” McHenry said, glumly.

“Sam,
you ought to know by now that we leave nothing to chance.”

McHenry
saw she was beaming with pride. A boastful, Nazi pride. He didn't
like it. He would not accept such perfection. He scanned the robot,
looking for flaws.

“Why
are the others so rigid?”

“They
are not active,” said the robot. “Their memories are
blank. Mine would also be reset if I were sent to the planet's
surface.”

“Reset?”

“They
will be given fresh instructions when needed.”

McHenry's
face expressed shock.

“One
thing you have to realize,” she interrupted, “is that we
don't want them to have any more information than necessary. Their
memories can be scanned by the Grauen if they're captured.”

“Yes,”
added the robot. “I am alert now only as a backup measure. If
Göring
and her crew are disabled, I can use whatever
means are available to either save or destroy the ship. But my
primary function is emergency intervention. If I go to the surface,
my memory will also be cleared, and given only the information I need
to carry out my mission.”

“And
this doesn't bother you?” McHenry asked, incredulously.

“Oh,
Sam!” Dale laughed. “He's a machine.”

“But
he is...” McHenry searched for the word, wondering what it
was that separated himself from this machine. Dale kept grinning,
seeming to enjoy teasing him. The robot stood at ease with himself,
watching McHenry as though studying him.

And
then it hit him. They were studying each other. This machine was
aware of itself — aware of
himself
.
It wasn't a machine at all in McHenry's mind, and yet it wasn't
upset that it might have its memory cleared. “He is
aware
,”
McHenry finally said to Dale, and then turned to the robot. “You
know
what's going on. They shouldn't be able to just erase your memory
like you're some kind of a radio.”

“He's
still a machine,” said Dale.

The
robot stood there, now grinning like Dale, but it didn't say
anything. McHenry couldn't think of it as a machine. He wondered
what it was thinking.

“There's
no use in arguing with you people,” he conceded. Neither Dale
nor the robot said anything for the moment. He had no hope of
knowing what the robot was thinking, but Dale's smirk led him to
assume she was relishing this victory. She looked every bit the
victor, towering over him with her imposing physique, and flashing
her perfect white teeth. The word
arrogance
crossed his mind and it stuck. He had thought this about her before,
and about many of these people, particularly Mtubo the SS, but the word fit
her in this moment in time.

He
finally understood. These people hadn't merely advanced their
physical bodies. Their brains must have been advanced as well,
presumably by Nazi science. And then there was the all-too-easily
forgotten fact that she was old enough to be a great-great
grandmother. There was no telling how much smarter they were. Her
arrogance may have been justified—

No,
he was wrong. It wasn't arrogance at all.
It was
confidence
.
The word fit all of them like the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
He never had a chance to overpower them, and he now knew that
outsmarting them was out of the question. That realization was like
a stake into his heart.

“Don't
feel bad,” said Dale, her grin fading into an expression of
concern. “You're learning.”

“Not
fast enough,” he replied.

“You
have all the time in the world.”

He
wanted to contradict her. He did not have all the time in the world.
He had a war to fight.

“Let's
have lunch,” she said. “That's one thing I'm sure you'll
enjoy.”

*

SCHOOLS TO FINANCE P-51 MUSTANG
In February, boys and
girls of the schools of Washington County financed the purchase of a
Flying Ambulance, buying $182,000 worth of War Bonds and Stamps. The
goal was $110,000. Bond and stamp sales in March totaled $75,000.
This month, April, the schools of the county are being asked to
finance a P-51 Mustang Fighter, which has the “highest ceiling
and the highest speed of any fighter in existence.”
These fighters cost $75,000 each.
—
The Washington Reporter, (April 10, 1944)

The SS officers' mess was not at all like the Luftwaffe pilots' mess.
The food could be the same, but they sat in an alcove rather than a large
open room. McHenry sat across from Dale at the small table that could
seat six at most.

He
was also surprised that he could ask for any food he wanted. “Why
do the Luftwaffe pilots all eat the same thing?” he asked.

“Tradition,”
Dale explained. “It goes back to the early days of space
flight when everyone ate together. It's like a social exercise to
them. It probably helps to pass the time when they're in transit.
But we're on a different schedule. And we don't have the same
traditions. Now, what would you like?”

“What
are my options?”

“The
rechner can serve anything you want.”

“Steak,”
he answered. “With potatoes, greens, gravy and a cola.”

Almost
immediately, the food emerged from the dispenser in the center of the
table. But he was less surprised than he would have been the
previous day.

Dale
ordered something in German, which looked like a salad.

“Where
is everybody else?” he asked.

She
smiled. “Most of us eat at our stations, but there are also
several break rooms where we can relax.”

“You
guys must work a lot.”

“We
do.”

He
was still surprised. “Every single day? All you people do is
work from morning to night?”

Now
she was surprised. She looked in his eyes. “Don't you know?
We work twenty-four hours a day — with breaks, of course.”

McHenry
eyed her warily. “You don't sleep?”

“Not
since we were teenagers. Nobody does unless there is a special
medical need.”

He
looked down at his steak and wondered if it was real, then cursed
himself for even thinking that it could be.

“Don't
fret so,” said Dale, consoling him. “Hasn't your
sleeping gone well?”

“Only
too well,” he said, very conscious of the odd way she said
that. He continued eating, no longer caring whether it could ever
have been real. “Just tell me one thing...”

“What's
that?”

He
set his fork down and straightened up. “If I'm the only one
who sleeps around here, then why does everyone need their own
quarters?”