CURRENT PRIMARY OPERATORS INCLUDE: LESSING. ALAN, NO MIDDLE INITIAL; MEISINGER, ANNELIESE; WREN, CHARLES HANSON; BORCHARDT. HANS KARL; SIMMONS. GRANT WILLIAM. FURTHER MEMBERS OF THE PARTY OF HUMANKIND MAY BE GRANTED TEMPORARY PRIMARY OPERATOR STATUS WHEN SO ORDERED BY TWO OR MORE OF THE LISTED PRIMARY OPERATORS. NO PERSON NOT A PRIMARY OPERATOR IS PERMITTED ACCESS TO INFORMATION CLASSIFIED AS SECRET.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Thursday, December 23, 2060
“Patty’s plane gets in from Seattle at 1445,” Wrench said. “It’ll be good to see her again.”
Lessing sighed. “Yeah, and me with six months of work and a week to do it in!”
“The price of glory!” The little man ran his fingers through his hair. He had been luckier than Lessing, with only “distinguished” silver sideburns to show for what he happily proclaimed had been a “life of sin.” On the other hand, Lessing’s thin, ash-blonde locks were rapidly vanishing. As Wrench put it, “the fuzz was wearing off the cue ball.”
“Look at this!” Lessing waved a hand at his crowded desk. “Everything from applications for special exemptions from the eugenics laws to status reports on our bases in the Persian Gulf, to letters from the parents of Banger boogies whining that their kids can’t get their supply of snuffy-doo in the National Service highway-rebuilding camp in Montana, to articles on DNA experiments to improve the race…! I don’t see any of this anywhere in my job-description!”
Wrench rolled his eyes upwards. “You’re where the train stops and the buck leaves the tracks, as they say. The reason Simmons makes such a great President is because he knows how to get work out of assholes like you.”
Lessing grinned, and Wrench asked, “By the way, do you want me to squire Patty to the Presidential Christmas party tomorrow night?”
“You never learned to keep your paws off little girls, did you?” Lessing joked. “Yeah, you take her. You’re less dangerous than those Marines in the honor guard.”
“You mean Jenny Caw’s personal drum, bugle, and banging corps?”
Lessing chuckled. “Don’t be rude! Jen’s marrying Hans Borchardt in June.”
“So? Think that’ll slow her down?” He looked around for Lessing’s coffee pot; it was empty, already washed, and put away for the coming holiday. “Though maybe a good German can keep our Miss Caw in line!” Wrench made jocular spanking motions.
“Oh, chug it, will you! I’ve got an appointment with some special envoy from New Sverdlovsk. You want to come?”
“If it’s not going to drag on. What’s it about?”
“No idea. Grant got a call from their embassy asking for me. Urgent, immediate, like now’. He says go, I go. A ‘private briefing session,’ his secretary said.”
“Security going to let me in?”
“If I say so.”
“Then I’ll drift along and keep you company. I still have to move some paper to push our Martyrs’ Day bill through Congress. The Mulders “
It hurt to remember. Lessing said, “I know. The Mulders… and Bill Goddard, Gordy Monk, and a lot of others. Ten years, and we’re just getting around to honoring them. Later is better than never, I suppose, but not by much.”
“Has it been that long? Well, you can’t say it hasn’t been interesting: the unmasking of the Coalition; the coup that failed; the fighting; Korinek’s public confession; the destruction of their secret camps; the trials; the expulsion edicts. All that’s over now, buddy. We won’t forget… it’s in every school book… but it’s high time we moseyed on.”
“The backlash…” Lessing shut his mind against memories of trucks and tanks and soldiers, the chaos and confusion, the rioting, and the aftermath.
“Let it lie! The Jews are gone, off to Ufa and Kharkov and Kuybyshev. We run our enclave, and they run theirs. No problem, as long as they don’t monkey with us.”
“That’s just it: they do monkey. They always have. Their history’s like a roller coaster: start at the bottom, struggle up, get to the top, then a long swoop down to catastrophe, then begin all over again.”
“Like Santayana said: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’”
“Whoever Santa Ana was, she was wrong. Nobody really learns from history. Even those who know it have to repeat it. People just stick on another name, pretend it’s new and different, and go around again.”
“Now you sound like Hegel.” Wrench shut his eyes and quoted. “Something like: ‘People and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.’”
“You’ve been reading books again!”
“Nope, just World Classic Comics… their special philosophy number.”
“Anyway, the Jews nearly beat us this time. The roller coaster almost didn’t go into its downswing.”
“It was our own fault. We let it happen.”
“Right. We let ‘em get our sympathy, give us guilt trips, preach to us about their phony ‘Holocaust,’ and work their way into the fabric of our society. We should’ve been more vigilant! Whatlnever understood was the cooperation they got from some of our corporations, our politicians, our educators and intellectuals and publicists! Such people don’t even deserve to be called collaborators or race-traitors! ‘Just plain stupid’ says it better! You’d think simple self-interest would have rung a few bells.”
“It’s called coin, man! I’ll bet there were some Roman merchants in Jerusalem who cried over lost business when the legions flattened Solomon’s temple, ran the Jews out of Palestine, and started the Diaspora in the First place!”
Lessing hunted for his wallet in the clutter on his desk. “They never give up, though. Their enclaves in Ufa and Kharkov and Kuybyshev are booming, full of immigrants, looking for more room, and spoiling for a fight.”
“Always Lebensraum, the eternal pressure on every ethnos group. Expand or perish.”
“Some of ‘em want to expand right back here: first to the People’s Republic of British Columbia, or to Central America south of our holdings in Mexico, then eventually to sunny California, Florida, and Second Avenue!”
“More like Madison Avenue, Wall Street, and right here in the White House. But not with us watching the door.”
“We can’t always be watching. Our roller coaster goes up and down too, and they still have friends here. Their propaganda was really good: a lot of average folks don’t like to remember what had to be done during the backlash and the expulsions. Too much mushy, liberal brainwashing for too long.”
“There are times,” Wrench marveled, “when I believe in the transmigration of souls.”
“What?”
“You sound so much like Bill Goddard that it amazes me.”
Lessing started to wriggle into his uniform greatcoat. “I studied history the hard way, like Bill did. I just started later, and it took me longer, that’s all. I was always a lousy student.”
Wrench came over to help him; Lessing’s twice-wounded left arm had never completely recovered.
Together they trotted down the snowy steps of the Executive Office Building, returned salutes from the black-clad Cadre guards on duty, and took Wrench’s American-made Homeland-500 limousine. It wasn’t a long drive over to the embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, but the winter had been exceptionally cold. Their destination had previously served as the embassy of Austria, but Pacov and Starak had altered the maps forever, and Borchardt had persuaded his Reunited German Republic to sell the place to New Sverdlovsk. They told their driver to come back in half an hour, stamped snow off their boots, and hurried inside. There they doffed their caps and coats and waited in an antechamber that was a memento of the building’s past. Eventually a pleasant-faced young woman came to escort them upstairs.