I stood from the desk and stretched. Darkness had fallen outside and within Henry Hall silence reigned.
Steve stayed down on the floor. His only movement was to lean forward from time to time and flick the end of a cigarette into the cola can, which was now so full of butts and sludge that it had long since ceased to fizz at each new fall of hot ash.
“What I don’t understand,” he said at last, “is how come, if this is all true, how come you can remember about it?”
“Exactly!” I said. “That’s what beats me too,” I said. “I mean if my body is out here, then why is my consciousness still part of the old world?”
“I guess,” said Steve slowly. “I guess if this guy Zuckermann was generating an artificial quantum singularity and you got caught in the event horizon then maybe . . . I don’t know . . .” He shrugged helplessly. “Heck, Mikey, nothing you’ve said means anything to me.”
“But you do believe me? You do, don’t you?”
He spread his hands. “I can’t think of a better explanation for the way you’ve been behaving. But in theory this could happen all the time, you know? Maybe it’s happened many times before. We’d never know it. Maybe there’s a thousand twentieth centuries. A million. All with different outcomes. You generated one of your own and you’re stuck in it.”
“That’s it,” I said. “But in my arrogance I thought I’d generated a better one. I thought if Hitler wasn’t born the century would have less to be ashamed of. I suppose I should have known better. The circumstances were still the same in Europe. There was still a vacuum in Germany waiting to be filled. There was still fifty years of anti-Semitism and nationalism ready to be exploited. There was still a Versailles Treaty and a Wall Street Crash and a Great Depression. But one thing at least . . .”
“What?”
“Well, this Rudolf Gloder, this Führer. I mean, at least he wasn’t as bad as Hitler. From what I could tell of him from that book he was human at least, sane. I mean there weren’t any death camps, no Zyklon B, no Holocaust, no frothing monomania, no genocide.”
Steve stood slowly, easing the cramp in his legs. “Oh Mikey,” he said sorrowfully. “Oh Mikey, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
I stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“This Hitler of yours, what happened to him?”
“He committed suicide as the Russians were pressing in on Berlin on one side and the Americans and British on the other. Shot himself and was burned in petrol in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Thirtieth April, 1945.”
“I think maybe,” said Steve going over to the computer, “that it’s time you had a look at some of these carts.”
He picked one up from the pile we had collected at the library, a small square box about three inches by four, and half an inch thick. He pulled at the casing and removed a smaller square of black plastic.
“Why can’t you tell me what it is you want me to know?”
“Unlike you,” said Steve, pushing the black square into a slit below the computer’s monitor, “I’m no history scholar.”
“So this is what, some sort of video then? Or is it like a CD-ROM?”
“It’s not like anything,” said Steve. “It’s a cart. It’s just a cart.”
I looked around the desk with a helpless air. “And where’s the keyboard?”
Steve shook his head. “Heck, Mikey, what do you think this is, a frigging piano?” He flicked a switch on the monitor and the screen lit up in orange and black. “You wanna watch from the beginning?”
He tossed me the cart’s casing. I looked at its title, printed in thick black German Gothic above a huge flaming swastika.
The Fall of Europe
“Oh shit,” I said, filled with bowel-dropping dread. “Yes. From the beginning.”
Steve put his finger on the surface of the TV and a menu flashed up, blue lettering in big block squares. He touched the first square. A faint spinning noise came from the interior of the computer and almost immediately an orchestral fanfare blasted from speakers in the corners of the room. Steve dived towards a fader switch and the volume dropped. Not before the wall was thumped and a bleary shout had told us to keep the frigging noise down.
Steve handed me some earphones and guided my hands to the volume fader.
“Donaldson and Webb Wo-o-rld History Series!” a voice proclaimed, as if announcing a heavyweight title bout. “The Fall of Europe.” The menu faded to a title screen, in the same Gothic lettering.
I dropped down into the chair in front of the monitor.
The film, and it was a kind of film—marginally interactive, allowing me to pause and access little side boxes of information using my finger on the screen—seemed to me to be aimed more at schools than at an Ivy League major, but it was just what I needed.
Just what I didn’t need.
“Here,” said Steve, “this goes with it.” The clear plastic casing of the cart holder contained a shiny printed cover, like the cover of a CD album. Steve pulled it out and gave it to me and from time to time I referred to this leaflet as I watched.
Donaldson and Webb Educational Media Cartridges
Series 3. World History.
Part V: The Fall of Europe
search index
Track 1
May 1932 The Nazi Party elected to the Reichstag. Versailles Treaty renegotiated with Britain, France and America. Pact with Stalin.
Track 2
1933–34 Launch of Deutschwagen Rotary Engined Automobile. Development of miniature evacuated tube components transforms burgeoning German electronics industry.
Track 3
1935–36 Edinburgh Agreement ensures mutual trade arrangements between British Empire and the New Reich. Licensing of German technological developments in return for British rubber concessions and use of eastern trade routes. Berlin Olympics attended by President Roosevelt and King George V.
Track 4
1937 Germany-wide social welfare and national insurance scheme launched. Austria and Germany united. Gloder awarded Nobel Peace Prize. Addresses League of Nations on “The Modern State.”
Track 5
1938 Pt. l Fourth Nazi Congress: shock announcement by Gloder of development at Göttingen Institute of weaponry harnessing power of the atom. Paris Conference boycotted by Germany. Detonation of atomic bombs devastates Moscow and Leningrad, killing Stalin and entire Politburo. German invasion of Soviet Union. Annexation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Greece, Turkey and the Baltic States.
Track 6
1938 Pt. 2 Capitulation of Scandinavia, Benelux, France and the United Kingdom. First Greater German Reich Conference in Berlin attended by King Edward VIII of Great Britain, Marshal Pétain, Benito Mussolini, Generalissimo Franco and other heads of state. Terms of cooperation agreed with United States of America. Mutual agreement brokered by Germany to divide Pacific control between America and Imperial Japan. British possessions in India, Australia and Africa effectively under German control. Canada allowed to remain neutral.
Track 7
1939 All Jews forced to evacuate countries under the control of Greater German Reich and emigrate to new “Jewish Free State” in area carved out between Montenegro and Herzegovina under control of Reichsminister Heydrich. American protests ignored. Rebellion in Britain quashed, over five thousand executed, including leading politicians and the Duke of York, brother of British King.
Track 8
1940–41 United States announces separate development of atom bomb. State of Cold War between Greater Germany and America. All diplomatic contacts closed.
Track 9
1942 Rumors of ill treatment and mass murder of citizens of Balkan Jewish Free State bring America to the brink of nuclear war with Greater Germany. Announcements of innovations in Germany rocketry and electronic telemetry cause United St
ates government to back down. Rebellion in Russia ruthlessly crushed.
Track 10
1943 Unified system of education imposed across New Europe. German to become first language of all Europeans. Discovery by Berlin government of secret American supplies to resistance movement in Portugal brings new threat of war between the United States and Germany.
Track 11
Credits. Copyright notice. Course notes. Suggested reading.
I watched the whole cart, Steve told me afterwards, with my mouth open. It seems my attitude never shifted, my hands never moved, my legs never crossed or uncrossed, my shoulder never dropped. It was as if, he said, I was in a state of near catalepsy. Only the movement of my eyes between the screen and the printed search index in my hands betrayed any sign of life or consciousness.
When it had finished, Steve leaned forward, flicked a switch on the computer and put a hand on my shoulder. I stared into the screen’s gray emptiness as the cart slid from its drive.
“Oh Christ,” I said, in a kind of whimper. “What have I done? What have I done?”
“Hey, don’t worry,” said Steve, massaging my shoulders. “It’s history. It’s all history.”
“Steve, what happened to the Jews? This Jewish Free State, does it still exist?”
“Look that was years ago, things have changed now. America and Europe are on pretty good terms. Europe even has free elections. More or less free.”
“You haven’t answered my question. The Jews, what about them?”
“There aren’t any. Not in Europe.”
“You mean they were moved? To Israel? What happened?”
A sudden loud knock on the door caused Steve to whip his hand from my shoulder and leap back to the center of the room. In answer to my raised eyebrows he shook his head, as puzzled as me as to who the hell might be calling on me at one o’clock in the morning.
The knock came again, louder this time.
“Come in!” I said.
Two men entered the room. They both wore the same checked shortsleeved shirts I had seen earlier in the day when Steve and I had sat at a table next to them in the outside courtyard of the Alchemist and Barrister while they bickered over maps.
NATURAL HISTORY
Still waters run deep
“Find me a map of the area,” said Kremer. “A geological map. The latest.”
Bauer scribbled on a request form, which he packed into a small, brass torpedo. Going over to the wall he asked Kremer how late he imagined they would be working that evening.
Kremer, hunched over the microscope, said nothing.
Bauer slipped the torpedo into the communication tube. He smacked the cap closed and listened as the torpedo was sucked away and clattered down the pipework on its journey to the first-floor typing pool. He looked at his watch: thirty-four minutes past five. Hartmann, Head of Documents, maintained that any document in the university could be retrieved and delivered within fifteen minutes. He had promised to buy Bauer a whole liter of Berliner white beer if he failed to live up to this proud boast by so much as a second. This should be a good test and on such a sultry August day, a large beer, maybe with a shot of raspberry, would be welcome.
“Ruth, a moment,” he said, beckoning his assistant. “Would you perhaps be so kind as to telephone my wife and tell her that I will be late home again this evening?”
Ruth nodded and moved stiffly to the telephone. She did not take kindly to being treated as a secretary.
Bauer returned to his part of the bench and began to sort idly and hopelessly through his papers. Kremer looked up from the microscope, snapping his fingers.
“Well? Where is it?” he said.
“The map? Good God, Johann, give them a chance. You only asked me a minute ago.”
“What? Really? Yes, I’m sorry.” Kremer smiled across at him like a rueful schoolboy. “Still, I do wish they would hurry up.”
“Have you seen something?”
Kremer pinched the bridge of his noise wearily, his eyes closed. “No. Nothing.”
“You were examining the zinc and sodium levels?”
“Yes, but it’s nothing. Higher than average, but lower than our own supply here. We should be looking for something bigger, something much bigger.”
“What about those traces of methyl orange?”
“It’s contamination, it must be. That original doctor, I assume. What was his name?”
“Schenck. Horst Schenck.”
“Yes, him. The whole thing is insane, Dietrich. If I hadn’t seen it work on our mice I would believe it was all a hoax.”
Kremer turned back to his microscope with a sigh.
“Dr. Bauer?” Ruth held out the telephone towards him as if it were contaminated with anthrax. “Your wife asks that you come and say good night to your son.”
Bauer took the telephone and listened for a while in affectionate amusement to the quick breathing of his child.
“Axi?” he said at last.
“Papa?”
“Have you been a good boy today?”
“Papa!”
“I shall see you tomorrow.”
“Milk.”
“Did you say ‘milk’? You want some milk?”
“Milk.”
“Mutti will give you milk. I can’t give you milk over the telephone, you know. Ask Mutti for some milk.”
There followed more quick breathing and then a longer silence.
“Axel? Are you there?”
“Fox.”
“Fox?”
“Fox. Fox, fox, fox.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
Bauer heard a clatter as the telephone was dropped. After another silence Marthe’s voice echoed in his ear. “Hello, darling. We saw a fox today. In the garden. It’s his favorite animal now.”
“Ah. That explains it.”
“I think he’s got earache again. He says ‘naughty ear’ and bangs the side of his head with the palm of his hand.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing serious. I’ll take a look tomorrow morning.”
“How late are you going to be? That Jew student of yours wouldn’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry, darling. But what I’m working on. It’s very important. Top priority.”
“I understand. I do. But you will try and eat tonight, won’t you?”
“Of course. We’re very well looked after here, you know.”
“I know. The Führer’s favorites.”
“Good-bye, darling.”
Bauer replaced the receiver. Ruth was standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, looking busily at a clipboard to show that she hadn’t been listening.
“I think you might as well go home, Fräulein Goldmann. Professor Kremer and I can manage without you for the rest of the day.”
“I am very happy to stay, sir.”
“No, no. Please. No need.”
On her way out, Ruth almost collided with a breathless messenger from retrievals. A glance at his watch told Bauer that he would have to buy his own beer again this evening.
C
“Nothing,” said Kremer disgustedly. “Absolutely nothing. The most topographically boring, geologically undistinguished and minerally commonplace terrain in the whole wide world.”
“Not even especially pretty,” agreed Bauer. “For Austria, that is.”
“Then what is going on? What in deepest hell is going on?” Kremer hammered his pipe stem onto the map. “It simply makes no sense. No sense at all.”
“Maybe . . .” said Bauer hesitantly. “Maybe we have missed something obvious. You always taught me that every centimeter one moves from an erroneous first principle takes one a kilometer further from the truth. Maybe we are going in entirely the wrong direction.”
Kremer looked up from the map. ?
??Explain.”
“We are searching desperately for the cause of an effect that we do not understand. Perhaps it is the effect itself we should be examining.”
Kremer looked at him steadily. “Perhaps,” he said slowly, drawing out the word with reluctance. “But, Dietrich, we are down to thirty centiliters. The stakes are so high, the pressure from Berlin so intense. We cannot afford the luxury of a blind alley.”
“That is the point I’m making, Johann. A blind alley is where we are. Let us go back. Let us go back to the beginning.”
Bauer stretched out a hand to the shelf above the bench and pulled out the file marked “Brunau.”
AMERICAN HISTORY
The Gettysburg Address
“So, tell me, Mike. What do you know about Brunau?”
The voice was warm, interested and impressed, as if the speaker were asking me to do a trick to impress a friend.
I wondered what had happened to Steve. The speed and assurance of the two men—they had given their names as Hubbard and Brown—had left no time for questions or complaints. Would we follow them to their car please? It was right outside. There were some questions that I could help them with. It would be so useful. No need to bring anything and of course no need to worry.
I had been placed between Hubbard and Brown in the backseat of the first of two long, black sedans parked outside the doorway of Henry Hall, and it was only as we moved off that it had occurred to me that Steve was nowhere to be seen. I shifted round to give myself a view through the rear window to see if he was in the second car, but Brown, like an Edwardian schoolmaster, twisted my head gently but firmly back round to face the front.
We had traveled no more than twenty minutes before we turned off the road and into the driveway of a large house. As we got out of the car I could make out the clapboard of the gables, clinker-built like the background of that painting American Gothic. The air was soft and fragrant with the smell of pine trees.
Inside, I was led through to a dining room and shown a seat in the middle of a large, shining maple wood table. Hubbard sat opposite me and Brown stood at one end, fiddling with a coffeepot whose lid appeared to be stuck.