"Come with me," the German said, and walked off, not even looking behind to see whether Royland was obeying. This itself demonstrated how unlikely any disobedience was to succeed. Royland followed at his heels, which of course were garnished with silver spurs. Royland had not seen a horse so far that day.
A Japanese stopped them politely inside the administration building, a rimless-glasses, office-manager type in a gray suit. "How nice to see you again, Major Kappel! Is there anything I might do to help you?"
The German stiffened. "I didn't want to bother your people, Mr. Ito.
This fellow appears to be a fugitive from one of our camps; I was going to turn him over to our liaison group for examination and return."
Mr. Ito looked at Royland and slapped his face hard. Royland, by the insanity of sheer reflex, cocked his fist as a red-blooded boy should, but the German's reflexes operated also. He had a pistol in his hand and pressed against Royland's ribs before he could throw the punch.
"All right," Royland said, and put down his hand.
Mr. Ito laughed. "You are at least partly right, Major Kappel; he certainly is not from one of our camps! But do not let me delay you further. May I hope for a report on the outcome of this?"
"Of course, Mr. Ito," said the German. He holstered his pistol and walked on, trailed by the scientist. Royland heard him grumble something that sounded like "Damned extraterritoriality!"
They descended to a basement level where all the door signs were in German, and in an office labeled wissenschaft-slichesicherheitsliaison Royland finally told his story. His audience was the major, a fat officer deferentially addressed as Colonel Biederman, and a bearded old civilian, a Dr. Piqueron, called in from another office. Royland suppressed only the matter of bomb research, and did it easily with the old security habit. His improvised cover story made the Los Alamos Laboratory a research center only for the generation of electricity.
The three heard him out in silence. Finally, in an amused voice, the colonel asked: "Who was this Hitler you mentioned?"
For that Royland was not prepared. His jaw dropped.
Major Kappel said: "Oddly enough, he struck on a name which does figure, somewhat infamously, in the annals of the Third Reich. One Adolf Hitler was an early Party agitator, but as I recall it he intrigued against the Leader during the War of Triumph and was executed."
"An ingenious madman," the colonel said. "Sterilized, of course?"
"Why, I don't know. I suppose so. Doctor, would you—?"
Dr. Piqueron quickly examined Royland and found him all there, which astonished them. Then they thought of looking for his camp tattoo number on the left bicep, and found none. Then, thoroughly upset, they discovered that he had no birth number above his left nipple either.
"And," Dr. Piqueron stammered, "his shoes are odd, sir—I just noticed.
Sir, how long since you've seen sewn shoes and braided laces?"
"You must be hungry," the colonel suddenly said. "Doctor, have my aide get something to eat for—for the doctor."
"Major," said Royland, "I hope no harm will come to the fellow who picked me up. You told him to report himself."
"Have no fear, er, doctor," said the major. "Such humanity! You are of German blood?"
"Not that I know of; it may be."
"It must be!" said the colonel.
A platter of hash and a glass of beer arrived on a tray. Royland postponed everything. At last he demanded: "Now. Do you believe me?
There must be fingerprints to prove my story still in existence."
"I feel like a fool," the major said. "You still could be hoaxing us. Dr.
Piqueron, did not a German scientist establish that nuclear power is a theoretical and practical impossibility, that one always must put more into it than one can take out?"
Piqueron nodded and said reverently: "Heisenberg. Nineteen fifty-three, during the War of Triumph. His group was then assigned to electrical weapons research and produced the blinding bomb. But this fact does not invalidate the doctor's story; he says only that his group was attempting to produce nuclear power."
"We've got to research this," said the colonel. "Dr. Piqueron, entertain this man, whatever he is, in your laboratory."
Piqueron's laboratory down the hall was a place of astounding simplicity, even crudeness. The sinks, reagents, and balance were capable only of simple qualitative and quantitative analyses; various works in progress testified that they were not even strained to their modest limits. Samples of sulfur and its compounds were analyzed here. It hardly seemed to call for a "doctor" of anything, and hardly even for a human being. Machinery should be continuously testing the products as they flowed out; variations should be scribed mechanically on a moving tape; automatic controls should at least stop the processes and signal an alarm when variation went beyond limits; at most it might correct whatever was going wrong. But here sat Piqueron every day, titrating, precipitating, and weighing, entering results by hand in a ledger and telephoning them to the works!
Piqueron looked about proudly. "As a physicist you wouldn't understand all this, of course," he said. "Shall I explain?"
"Perhaps later, doctor, if you'd be good enough. If you'd first help me orient myself—"
So Piqueron told him about the War of Triumph (1940-1955) and what came after.
In 1940 the realm of der Fuehrer (Herr Goebbels, of course—that strapping blond fellow with the heroic jaw and eagle's eye whom you can see in the picture there) was simultaneously and treacherously invaded by the misguided French, the sub-human Slavs, and the perfidious British. The attack, for which the shocked Germans coined the name blitzkrieg, was timed to coincide with an internal eruption of sabotage, well-poisoning, and assassination by the Zigeunerjuden, or Jewpsies, of whom little is now known; there seem to be none left.
By Nature's ineluctable law, the Germans had necessarily to be tested to the utmost so that they might fully respond. Therefore Germany was overrun from East and West, and Holy Berlin itself was taken; but Goebbels and his court withdrew like Barbarossa into the mountain fastnesses to await their day. It came unexpectedly soon. The deluded Americans launched a million-man amphibious attack on the homeland of the Japanese in 1945. The Japanese resisted with almost Teutonic courage. Not one American in twenty reached shore alive, and not one in a hundred got a mile inland. Particularly lethal were the women and children, who lay in camouflaged pits hugging artillery shells and aircraft bombs, which they detonated when enough invaders drew near to make it worthwhile.
The second invasion attempt, a month later, was made up of second-line troops scraped up from everywhere, including occupation duty in Germany.
"Literally," Piqueron said, "the Japanese did not know how to surrender, so they did not. They could not conquer, but they could and did continue suicidal resistance, consuming manpower of the allies and their own womanpower and childpower—a shrewd bargain for the Japanese! The Russians refused to become involved in the Japanese war; they watched with apish delight while two future enemies, as they supposed, were engaged in mutual destruction.
"A third assault wave broke on Kyushu and gained the island at last.
What lay ahead? Only another assault on Honshu, the main island, home of the Emperor and the principal shrines. It was 1946; the volatile, child-like Americans were war-weary and mutinous; the best of them were gone by then. In desperation the Anglo-American leaders offered the Russians an economic sphere embracing the China coast and Japan as the price of participation."
The Russians grinned and assented; they would take that—at least that.
They mounted a huge assault for the spring of 1947; they would take Korea and leap off from there for northern Honshu while the Anglo-American forces struck in the south. Surely this would provide at last a symbol before which the Japanese might without shame bow down and admit defeat!