On high Mount Kailas Lord Siva was attracted by the noise and dust of the battle. He gazed upon the serpent, all glossy and glistening with his own and his foeman’s blood. His scales and fine markings shone bravely in the sunlight. The god admired the serpent’s beauty, and by his divine powers he brought him over to Mount Kailas. So pleased was Lord Siva with this slim, handsome, and vital creature that he kept him, and honored him. and nourished him with milk and fruit throughout the eons of the Kali Yug. Indeed, sometimes Lord
Siva transformed himself into a great serpent of like aspect and journeyed through the worlds of men and gods, arousing awe and inspiring devotion wherever he went.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Wednesday, April 20, 2089
It was still early, but the crowds already were gathering beneath the snapping flags: the traditional American red-white-and-blue side by side with the red-white-and-black swastika banners of the Party of Humankind. Music thumped and boomed in the distance as the high school bands warmed up for the afternoon’s parade, and hawkers hustled the audience with foot-long belly-burner sausages, periscopes, pennants, chair-canes, sunshades, lemonade, sodas, and cotton candy. Children raced to and fro, ignoring the rows of sweating, uniformed policemen and the pleas of their parents, to play and shriek and laugh in the sunshine of Washington in April. Spring was in the air: a fragrance compounded of grass and leaves and early flowers, dust, exhaust fumes, perfume, popcorn, cooking hotdogs, sweat, and excitement.
Today was the two-hundredth anniversary of the birthday of the First Führer.
Lessing’s unmarked limousine avoided the parade route. He had his chauffeur take the less-crowded back streets as they sped southeast toward Suitland.
The buildings, the people, and the atmosphere itself bore little resemblance to the first time he and Wrench had passed this way, back in ’42. Now things were different: new construction was everywhere; American cars — better designed and cheaper than the Japanese models — filled the streets; the sidewalks thronged with black and brown Party uniforms and the reds, blues, and yellows of current fashion; and the holo-vid dioramas in the store windows called and sang and cooed and tempted, advertising products un-dreamed of nearly half a century before.
It was a new world — not a brave, new world, perhaps, but a reasonably happy one.
Much of the old had departed. Sadly, that included Wrench. The little man had succumbed to a heart attack last year, in October, while the skies shed grey tears and the shrivelled black and brown leaves of autumn drifted down.
The world was much emptier without him.
Lessing touched the “remind” button on his limousine’s compu-sec console and barked, “Agenda?”
The pleasant, sexless computer voice replied: “Attend the First Führer’s Day Parade at 1300 hours. Read the speech in the red compartment of your briefcase. Return by 1450 hours for the commemoration party in the Rose Garden. Dinner with Chancellor Borchardt and family at 1800 hours at Blair House. Do not forget roses for Liese.”
He smiled. “Couldn’t forget if I tried. She’d kill me.”
It would be good to see Hans and Jen again. Borchardt almost never came to Washington nowadays: too much to do in Europe, and Africa was seething with problems again. The Khalifa’s Islamic nation was surrounded by clamoring Black states, hunger was rife, and nobody was willing to take the tough steps needed to solve things. Jen also had not been back to the States since a Vizzie terrorist had killed her mother in 2073. The Party never had succeeded in rounding up all of the Vizzies, and they kept resurfacing in their characteristically nasty manner. In a funny sort of way Lessing missed Jen almost as much as he missed Wrench.
He had forgotten how simple the compu-sec was. It was saying “Repeat?” over and over in plaintive tones.
“Cancel. Agenda for tomorrow?” He hoped there wasn’t much, but he knew better.
“Visit Sperm Bank Lebensborn at 1000 hours. Confer Leader’s Medal upon its director, Doctor Paul Lorch, at 1015. Meet with Senate Subcommittee for the Department of National Service at 1110. See Congressman Michael Radcliffe at 1235, regarding com-mutation of death sentence upon Alfred H. McLahan, convicted of drug sales to minors….”
“Cancel that last. Inform the Congressman that I will not intervene.” If there was any crime Lessing hated, it was the peddling of drugs to kids. Patty’s three children had come close to being lured into the dragsters’ trap, and if she hadn’t been extra vigilant, snuffy-doo would have turned their brains into mush by now. It was hard being a single parent, even temporarily, but Patty would cope. At the moment her astronaut husband couldn’t help with child-rearing: he and seven others were tramping the red deserts of Mars.
“You have a private conference with Chancellor Borchardt at 1300. Topics include the merger of American and European currencies, the Turkish threat in the Adriatic, the rebuilding of the stadium of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, and the skirmishes between Indian and Thai troops near Rangoon. Then lunch at 1330. Rest from 1430 to 1600 hours. Meet Patty and her children at 1630, and dine with Chancellor Borchardt and his family at the German Embassy at 1730.”
“What about Professor Peel of the National Academy for Genetic Research? Wasn’t I supposed to look at some experiment or other?”
“Yes. That meeting has been postponed until April 28th.”
“Minor stuff?”
“You will find letters prepared for your signature in the blue compartment of your briefcase. Most are requests for the naming of towns and public buildings after Party figures.”
Renaming had grown into a major industry. The surprising thing was that in addition to the obvious heroes of the Party, there were requests for relative unknowns. Lessing had seen applications for commemorations of Otto Skorzeny, the commando who had rescued Mussolini by glider; for Hanna Reitsch, the woman test pilot who had once personally flown a V-1 rocket — and nearly made mincemeat of herself doing it; for Leon Degrelle, the heroic commander of a Belgian SS Division; for a whole gaggle of Ukrainians and East Europeans who had been persecuted back during the years of Jewish dominance; and for many others. Some college in Nebraska even wanted to name its agricultural school after Walter Darre, the Third Reich’s Minister of Agriculture; he had urged that industrial society be abolished and replaced with a hereditary peasant nobility — about as far from today’s bustling, international world as the Cro-Magnon caves!
“What else?”
“In the green compartment you will find personal letters from Cadre-General Timothy Helm, PHASE-Commandcrs Charles Gillem and Herbert Salter, Colonel Theodore Metz, who developed the Magellan surveillance system, and others not on my known-list. The TV commentator, Jason Milne, also has been trying to reach you regarding the proposed construction of Siberian camps to accommodate the last Jews from England.”
Lessing would get to most of the correspondence when he could. Ten years ago he would have answered the whole batch in one afternoon, but age had slowed him down. Milne was the most urgent: the world’s remaining Jews had been given land, food, tools, self-government, and all the conveniences. Nobody was bothering them, yet they never seemed to stop meddling. Some bleeding heart was always ready, moreover, to invite them back into the Aryan ethnos sphere and let the whole mess start up all over again! Milne was a friend, though; he’d give the Party’s position just the right degree of gentility, logic, and bite.