PukeOnABook

Chapter Sixteen. April 10, 1993. This is the first time in a week I've had some time to myself and have been able to relax. I'm in a Chicago motel with nothing to do until tomorrow morning, when I'll take a tour of the Evanston Power Project. I flew out here Friday afternoon for two things: the Evanston tour and a delivery of hot money to one of our Chicago units. Bill started his press up Monday night, as soon as we had mixed the chemical additives into the ink, and he kept it going almost continuously until the wee hours of Friday morning, with Carol spelling him twice for a few hours of sleep. He didn't shut down until he had used the last of the banknote paper acquired for the purpose. Katherine and I helped by doing the cutting and by handling the paper at both ends of the press. The work nearly killed all of us, but the Organization wanted the money in a hurry. They really have a pile of it now! I had never dreamed of seeing so much money in my life. Bill printed just over ten million dollars in $10 and $20 bills-more than a ton of crisp, new banknotes. And they look good! I compared one of Bill's new tens with a genuine, new one, and I couldn't tell which was which, except by the serial numbers. Bill really did a professional job all around. Every bill even has a different serial number. This project just shows what can be accomplished with careful planning, dedication, and hard work. Of course, Bill had six months to set things up and practice with dry runs, before I was available to help him with the ink additives and the UV unit. He had all the bugs worked out of the process before beginning his three-and-a-half-day run. I brought 50,000 of the new 20's with me and delivered them to my Chicago contact yesterday. His unit has the job of "laundering" the bills, so that an equivalent amount of genuine currency will be available for the Organization's expenses in this area. That's really a much trickier and more time-consuming operation than theprinting. At the same time I left for here, Katherine was boarding a flight for Boston with $800,000 in her luggage. Later this week we will be making deliveries in Dallas and Atlanta. Getting through the airport security checks with all that hot money is a little ticklish, but as long as they don't do anything other than x-ray our luggage we'll be all right. The only things they seem to be looking for now are bombs and firearms. But just wait until they begin picking up our hot bills all over the country! I had a chance to do some thinking on the plane from Washington. From 35,000 feet one gets a different perspective on things. Seeing all those sprawling suburbs and freeways and factories spread out below makes one realize just how big America is and what an awesomely difficult task we have undertaken. Essentially, what we are doing with our program of strategic sabotage is hastening along somewhat the natural decay of America. We are chipping away at the termite-eaten timbers of the economy, so that the whole structure will collapse a few years sooner-and more catastrophically-than without our efforts. It is depressing to realize what a relatively small influence all our sacrifices are having on the course of events. Consider our counterfeiting for example. We will have to print and distribute in a year's time at least a thousand times as much money as Bill printed last week-at least $10 billion a year- before we will make even a barely measurable effect on the national economy. Americans spend three times that much just on cigarettes. Of course, we have two other money presses running on the West Coast, and we'll be setting up others in the near future. And if I can figure a way to take out the Evanston Project, that'll be a capital loss of nearly $10 billion in one stroke-not to mention the economic damage which will result from the loss of electrical power to industrial plants throughout the Great Lakes region. But we are doing something else which is really more important than our campaign against the System. In the long run, it will be infinitely more important. We are forging the nucleus of a new society, a whole new civilization, which will rise from the ashes of the old. And it is because our new civilization will be based on an entirely different world view than the present one that it can only replace the other in a revolutionary manner. There is no way a society based on Aryan values and an Aryan outlook can evolve peacefully from a society which has succumbed to Jewish spiritual corruption. Thus, our present struggle is unavoidable, completely aside from the fact that it was forced on us by the System and was not of our choosing. Looking at the events of the past 31 months from this viewpoint-that is, considering our constructive task of building a new social nucleus rather than our purely destructive war against the System-it appears to me that our initial strategy of hitting System leaders instead of the general economy was not really as bad a way to start as I had thought. It shaped the character of the battle from the beginning as us vs. the System, rather than us vs. the economy. The System responded repressively to protect itself from our attacks, and this caused it to isolate itself to a certain extent from the public. When we weren't doing much but assassinating Congressmen, Federal judges, secret policemen, and media masters, the people themselves did not feel especially threatened, but they resented the inconveniences caused by all the System's new security measures. If we had hit the economy from the beginning, the System could have more easily painted the struggle as one of us vs. the people, and it would have been easier for the media to convince the public of the necessity of collaborating with the System against a common menace-namely us. So our initial error in strategy has providentially made it easier for us to recruit now, when we are deliberately working to make things as uncomfortable for everyone as we can. And it isn't just the Organization which has been doing a lot of recruiting lately. The Order is also growing at a rate unprecedented in the last 48 of its nearly 68 years of existence. I surreptitiously made the Sign when I met our pickup man here yesterday-as I always do when I meet new Organization members now - and I was pleasantly surprised when he responded in kind. He invited me to be a guest at an induction ceremony last night for new probationary members in the Chicago area. I gladly accepted, and I was astounded to count approximately 60 persons at the ceremony, nearly a third of whom were inductees. That's more than three times the total number of members the Order has in the Washington area. I was nearly as moved by the ceremony as I was by my own induction a year and a half ago. April 14. Problems, problems, problems! Nothing has gone right since I got back from Chicago. Bill can't find any more of the paper he used for the last batch of money, and he asked me to help him improvise. We tried tinting some slightly off-color paper of the same basic texture and composition, but the result was unsatisfactory. Bill will keep looking for another supply of the original paper, while I continue trying different tinting processes. Then there was the delegation from the local Human Relations Council which visited the shop yesterday. Four Blacks and a sick, sick, sick White male, all wearing Council armbands, came into the print shop. They wanted to put a big poster in the shop window- the same kind one sees everywhere now, urging citizens to "help fight racism" by reporting suspicious persons to the political police-and leave a container for donations on the counter. Carol was behind the counter at the time, and she told them, in effect, to go to hell. That, of course, wasn't the right thing to do, under the circumstances. They would have reported us to the political police, if I hadn't heard the commotion and intervened. I came up the basement stairs with what I hoped was a convincingly Jewish expression on my face and went into a "So, vot's goink on here,already?" routine. I laid it on thick-not too thick, I hope -so they would get the message: the shop manager here was himself a member of a minority group, a very special minority group, and could hardly be suspected of harboring any hostility for the Human Relations Councils or their commendable efforts. The head lberal began complaining indignantly to me about Carol's rebuff. I cut him off with an impatient wave of my hand and directed a look of mock shock at Carol. "Of course, of course," I said, "leave your collection box here. It's for a good cause. But no vindow poster-not enough room. I vouldn't even let my cousin Abe put vun of his United Jewish Appeal posters there. Come! I show you where." As I officiously led the delegation toward the door, I ordered Carol back to work in my best Simon Legree manner. "Yes, Mr. Bloom," she said meekly. Out on the sidewalk I overcame my revulsion while I chummily put an arm around the shoulders of the Black spokesman and directed his attention to a store directly across the street. "Ve don't have so many customers here," I explained. "But my good friend Solly Feinstein has many people going in and out. And he has a big vindow. He vill be happy for your poster to be there. You can put it right under where it says 'Sol's Pawn Shop,' and everybody vill see it. And be sure to leave him a donation box- two donation boxes; he has a big store." They all seemed pleased by my friendly suggestion and started across the street. But the White, a sorry-looking specimen with pimples and an imitation Afro, hesitated, turned, and said to me: "Maybe we ought to get that girl's name. Some of the things she said to us sounded definitely racist." "Don't vaste your time on her," I responded brusquely, dismissing his suspicion with a wave. "She is just a dumb shiksa, She talks that way to everybody. I get rid of her soon." When I re-entered the shop Bill, who had overheard the episode from the basement stairs, and Carol were convulsed with: laughter. "It's not really that funny," I admonished them with an effort at sternness. "I had to do something right away, and if my pucker and my phony accent hadn't fooled that crew of sub-humans we'd be in real trouble now." Then I lectured Carol: "We can't afford the luxury of telling these creatures what we think of them. We have a job to do first, and then we will settle with that bunch once and for all. So, let's swallow our pride and play along as long as we have to. Those who don't have our responsibilities can get themselves investigated for racism if they want-and more power to them. " But I could not repress a grin when I saw the poster go into place in the pawn shop window across the street, blotting out most of Sol's display of used cameras and binoculars. He must really have had to bite his tongue! And now all the people who see that particular poster will make the correct mental association between the Council's thought-control program and the people behind it. The last thing to go wrong was Katherine coming down with the flu last night. She was scheduled to take a load of money to Dallas this morning, but she was too sick to go, and it looks like she'll be in bed for another two or three days. Which means that I'll be stuck not only with a trip to Atlanta tomorrow, but I'll also have to make the Dallas delivery. That'll be a whole day wasted on planes and at airports, and I need the time badly for getting ready for the Evanston operation. We want to hit the new nuclear power complex at Evanston during the next six weeks, while they're still guiding tourists through it. After the first of June, when it will be closed to the public permanently, knocking it out will become much more difficult. The Evanston Power Project is an enormous thing: four huge nuclear reactors surrounded by the biggest turbines and generators in the world. And the whole thing sits on concrete pilings a mile out in Lake Michigan, which supplies the cooling water for the reactors' heat exchangers. The Project generates 18,000 megawatts of electrical power-almost 20 billion watts! Incredible! The power is fed into the power grid which supplies the entire Great Lakes region. Before the Evanston Project went into operation two months ago, the whole Midwest was suffering from a severe power shortage-much worse than we have here, which is bad enough. In some areas factories were restricted to operating only two days a week, and there were so many unexpected blackouts in addition that the region was on the verge of a real economic crisis. If we can take out the new power plant, things will be even worse than they were before. In order to keep the lights on in Chicago and Milwaukee, the authorities will have to steal power from as far away as Detroit and Minneapolis, where there is none to spare. All of that part of the country will be hit hard. And it took 10 years to design and build the Evanston Project, so they won't be able to remedy the situation very soon. But the government has thought about the consequences of losing the Evanston Project too, and the security there is pretty formidable. One can't get near the place except by boat or airplane. And there are searchlights, patrol boats, and strings of buoys with nets of cable between them all around it, which makes the approach by water almost out of the question. The shore for miles in either direction is fenced off, and there are a number of military radar and anti-aircraft installations behind the fence, making any attempt to crash an airplane loaded with explosives into the plant very unlikely to succeed. It seems to me that about the only way we could mount an attack on the place by conventional means would be to sneak some heavy mortars within range, somewhere near the shore where there is a possibility for concealment. But, to my knowledge, we don't have that kind of weaponry available at the moment. Anyway, the really vital parts of the power station are in such massive buildings that I doubt a mortar attack could inflict more than superficial damage. So, Revolutionary Command asked me to tour the place and come up with some unconventional ideas-which I have done, but there are still several tough problems to be solved. My visit there last Monday gave me a pretty good idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the security arrangements. Some of the weaknesses are really quite astounding. Most astounding of all is the government's decision to let tourists into the place, even temporarily. The reason for that decision, I am sure, is the big fuss the anti-nuclear crazies have been making about the plant. The government feels obligated to show the public all the safety features which have been built into it. When I signed up for the tour, I deliberately loaded myself down with all sorts of paraphernalia, just to see what I could get into the plant. I carried an attach_ case, a camera, and an umbrella, and I filled my pockets with coins, keys, and mechanical pencils. On the ferry boat which takes tourists out to the plant there is very little security. They merely made me open my attach_ case for a cursory inspection. But when I got into the guard station at the plant itself, they divested me of my case, camera, and umbrella. Then I had to walk through a metal detector, which picked up all the metal junk in my pockets. I emptied my pockets for the guards, but then they handed the stuff back to me. They didn't look closely at any of it. So, one can at least sneak an incendiary pencil in. What really interested me, though, was that one old gentleman in my group was carrying a cane with a metal head, and the guards let him keep it during the tour. In essence, my idea is this: Since there's no way a single tourist can sneak in enough explosive material to wreck the place-nor any way he can position the small amount he could sneak in so it would be really effective, like punching a hole in one of the reactor pressure vessels, we may as well forget about explosives. Instead, we'll try to contaminate the plant with radioactive material, so that it can't be used. What makes this idea feasible is that we have a source, inside the Organization, for certain radioactive materials. He's a chemistry professor at a university in Florida, and he uses the materials in his research. We can easily pack enough of a really hot and nasty radionuclide-something with a half-life of a year or so-into a cane or a crutch, together with a small explosive charge for dispersing it, to make the entire Evanston Power Project uninhabitable. The plant won't be damaged physically, but they'll have to shut it down. Decontamination will be such an enormous task that the plant may very well stay closed permanently. Unfortunately, this will be a suicide mission. Whoever carries the radioactive material into the plant will already have been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation before he gets to the plant gate with it. There's just no practical way to provide for any shielding. The biggest worry is the radiation detectors which are all over the plant. If one of those gets a whiff of our man before he's ready to do his thing, it could get sticky. I noticed, however, no detectors in the entrance station of the plant, where the guards check the incoming tourists. There are several in the huge turbine-and-generator room, where the tourists are taken, and there is one beside the exit gate used by the tourists- presumably to guard against the unlikely event of a visitor somehow pocketing a piece of nuclear fuel and trying to sneak it out. But it seems not to have occurred to them that someone might try to sneak radioactive material into the plant. I remember pretty well where all the detectors are, and I'll have to consult with our man in Florida on the likelihood of one of them picking up something at a given distance from the material he will supply us. If an alarm goes off after our carrier is in the plant but before he gets to the generator room, he'll just have to make a run for it. But we'll try to design our gadget so as to give him the best possible chance. The whole plan is pretty scary, but it has one big advantage: the psychological impact on the public. People are almost superstitious in their fear of nuclear radiation. The anti-nuclear lobby will have a field day with it. It will catch people's imagination to a far greater extent than any ordinary bombing or mortar attack. It will horrify many people-and it will knock more of them off the fence. I must confess that I'm glad at this point that my probationary period still has 11 months to run and that I won't be asked to volunteer for this particular mission.

Gravitation, Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, Chapters 31 to 35

The Turner Diaries, Chapter 15 ==================== Chapter Fifteen. March 28, 1993. I'm finally back in the swing of things now. Over the weekend Katherine answered many questions for me and gave me the details, especially about local developments, which I failed to get from Henry Friday. While I was locked up the work on our communications equipment had to go on, of course, and now there are two other well-qualified people in the area handling that task. But there's still plenty of technical work left for me. Bill is a fine mechanical craftsman and gunsmith, but he can't handle the ordnance jobs that require chemical or electronic techniques. He gave me a long list of requests for special devices which came into our unit while I was in prison and which he had been obliged to put aside. We went over the list carefully last night and decided which items are most important for the current needs of the Organization. I then made up my own list of supplies and equipment needed to begin work. The top-priority items on Bill's list of requests are radio- controlled detonators and time-delay detonators and igniters. The Organization has been improvising in the latter category-and getting too high a percentage of misfires. We want a time-delay device which is adjustable from a few minutes to a day or more and which is 100 per cent certain. Another category of items requested is disguised bombs and incendiary devices. It is now just about impossible to get into any government or media facility without walking through a metal- detector, and all packages and mail are routinely scanned by x-ray. This will require some cleverness, but I already have a few ideas. And then there is Bill's own project, on which he needs some technical assistance: counterfeiting! The Organization is already successfully printing money on a fairly large scale on the West Coast, Bill said, and they want him to begin doing the same thing here. I understand now why the economic status of the Organization seems to have improved so much in the last year! Actually, since we switched to large-scale actions we've begun tapping some new sources of contributions-mostly fat cats buying "insurance," I suspect-but we are apparently still finding it useful to print some of our own money. Whatever genius is running our West Coast counterfeiting operation made up a very thorough set of instructions, which Bill showed me. The guy must have worked for the Secret Service or the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. He really seems to know his business. (Note to the reader: The "Bureau of Engraving and Printing" was the government agency which produced paper money in the United States, and the "Secret Service" was a police agency which combatted counterfeiting, among other things. As we know, counterfeiting was later used by the Organization not only to supply its units with funds but also to disrupt the general economy. In the last days of the Great Revolution, the Organization was dumping such huge quantities of counterfeit money that the government, in desperation, outlawed all paper money, requiring all monetary transactions to take place either in coin or by check. This move played havoc with public morale and was one of the factors leading to the final success of the Revolution.) Bill has already finished setting up nearly everything; he has a really fine shop for precision printing. He just needs help with the fluorescence problem. The instructions tell him what chemical additives to put in his ink, but not where to get them. And he is not sure about how to make and use an ultraviolet inspection unit for checking the finished product. That won't be hard. Our new working and living arrangement is radically different from the one we had before. Instead of sneaking around "underground," we are right out in the open now. There's a neon sign in the window of the printing shop, and it's listed in the Yellow Pages. During the day the shop is "open for business," with Carol behind the counter, but Bill keeps his prices so high that just enough work to maintain appearances comes in. His real work takes place after hours, usually in the basement, where the armory is. The four of us live above the shop, like we did over the old place, but we don't have to keep the windows blacked out. And Bill's pickup truck stays parked right on the street in front. So far as the world is concerned, we are just two young couples in the printing business together. The trick, of course, was in establishing false identities that would stand up to System scrutiny, but the Organization has developed an admirable degree of expertise along that line. We all have Social Security cards, and two of us have driver's licenses. The cards and licenses are genuine (I have heard some unpleasant stories about how the Organization obtained them), so we can open bank accounts, pay taxes, and do other things like anyone else. I just have to remember that my new name is-ugh!- "David J. Bloom." I am really being ribbed about that. Fortunately, the photograph on the driver's license is indistinct enough to pass for me, as long as I keep my hair dyed. The Organization had no choice about establishing new identities for all of us who are underground. A person without a documented identity simply can't function in this society any longer. One can't buy groceries or even ride a bus without showing either a driver's license or one of the new identity cards the government has begun issuing. It's still possible to get by with a fake in most cases, but the computerized system will be completed in another few months, and then fakes will automatically be detected. So the Organization decided to do it right and give us "genuine" credentials, even though that's a slow and difficult job. A few special units handle that task with cold-blooded ruthlessness, but the demand for new credentials still far exceeds the supply. It also appears that the System has become even more ruthless in its campaign against us. A number of our people-perhaps as many as fifty for the whole country-have been murdered by professional killers in the last four months. It's hard to fix the exact total, because some we suspect have been killed have just disappeared, and no body has been found. When our people first began to disappear or to be found floating in the river with their hands tied behind their backs and six or seven bullet holes in their heads, there was a widespread assumption among the Organization rank and file that these killings were internal disciplinary actions by the Organization itself. In fact, there was a period last fall when we were losing more members because of disciplinary executions than anything else. That was a time when morale was very low, and it was necessary to use extreme methods to convince waverers to remain steadfast in their obligations to the Organization. But it was immediately apparent to Revolutionary Command - and it soon became apparent to everyone else-that a new element had entered the picture. From our contacts inside one of the Federal police agencies we learned that our people are being killed by two groups: a special Israeli assassination squad and an assortment of Mafia "hit men" under contract to the government of Israel. Where both these groups are concerned, U.S. police have been given a "hands off" order by the FBI. (Note to the reader: The "Mafia" was a criminal confederation, composed primarily of Italians and Sicilians but usually masterminded by Jews, which flourished in the United States in the eight decades prior to the Great Revolution. There were several half-hearted governmental efforts to stamp out the Mafia during this period, but the unrestricted capitalism then flourishing provided ideal conditions for large-scale, organized crime and its concomitant political corruption. The Mafia remained in existence until virtually all its members-more than 8,000 men-were rounded up and executed in a single, massive operation by the Organization during the mopping- up period which followed the Revolution.)All the victims so far have been among our "legals." Apparently someone in the FBI gives the names of persons suspected of being members of the Organization but not yet under arrest to someone in the Israeli embassy, and they take it from there. We have made some reprisals-in New Orleans, for example. After two of our "legals," one a prominent attorney there, were murdered Mafia-style about six weeks ago, we mined the nightclub which served as the local Mafia hangout. When the bombs went off and the place burst into flames during a birthday celebration for one of their "underbosses," the fleeing patrons were met with merciless hails of machine-gun fire from our people, who were stationed on rooftops across from the only two exits. More than 400 persons lost their lives there that night, including approximately 60 members of the Mafia. But this new threat still remains very much with us, and it has severely damaged the morale of those of our members and partisans who are exposed to it-namely those who, by retaining their status as law-abiding citizens and operating under their own identities, do not enjoy the anonymity of us in the underground. It is clear that we will soon have to move against the source of the threat. April 2. Supply problem solved-at least temporarily. It required another one of those stickup operations which I really detest. I wasn't as nervous this time as when Henry and I pulled our first one-that seems half a lifetime ago-but I still didn't like it. Bill and I broke our list of needed items up into three categories, according to their source. About two-thirds of the chemical items we needed were not readily available on the general-consumer market and would have to come from a chemical supply house. Then, I wanted at least 100 wristwatches for timing devices, and they would cost us too much if we simply purchased them. Finally, there were a number of electronic and electrical components, some items of general hardware, and a few readily available chemicals, all of which could be purchased without difficulty and within the resources of our budget. I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday gathering up the items in the last category. The chemical problem was also solved Wednesday. That had been a worry, because suppliers of laboratory and industrial chemicals are now required to check out all new customers with the political police, just as are suppliers of explosives. I'd just as soon avoid that sort of scrutiny. But I checked with WFC and a found that one of our "legals" in Silver Spring has a small electroplating shop and could order what I need from his regular supplier. I'll pick the stuff up from him Monday. But the watches! I knew exactly what I wanted for our timers, and I wanted enough of the same style so that the timers could be standardized, both for efficiency in building them and precisely known behavior in operation. So Katherine and I robbed a warehouse in northeast D.C. yesterday and got 200 of them. It took two days of telephoning just to find the watches I was looking for. Then they had to be sent down to the Washington warehouse from Philadelphia. I told the man in Washington I was in a big hurry for them and would send someone out right away with a certified check for $12,000 to pick them up. He said they would be waiting for me in the front office. And they were. I wanted Bill to go with me, but he has been tied down with work at the shop all week. And Katherine really wanted to go. The girl has a wild streak in her that someone who doesn't know her well would never suspect. First, one of Katherine's makeup jobs, to protect my "David Bloom" identity and her own. Identity under identity under identity-I've almost forgotten who Earl Turner is or what he actually looks like! Then we had to swipe a vehicle. That only took a few minutes, and we followed the usual procedure: Park the pickup in a big shopping center, walk to the other side of the parking lot, find a car which is unlocked, and get in. I used a small bolt-cutter to cut the armored cable to the ignition switch under the dashboard, and then it was a matter of only a few seconds to find the right wires in the cable and attach clip leads. I had hoped there would be no violence at the warehouse, but my wish was not to be granted. We presented ourselves to the manager and asked for our package. He asked for the certified l check. "I have it," I said, "and I'll give it to you as soon as I check to see that the watches are the ones I ordered." My plan was to take the watches and just walk out the door, leaving the manager yelling for his check. But when the man came back with our package, two husky warehouse workers came with him, and one took up a position between us and the door. They were taking no chances. I opened the package, checked the contents, and drew my pistol. Katherine also drew her gun, and she waved the man near the door away. But then the door would not open when she tried it! She turned her gun on the worker and he quickly explained: "They have to push the buzzer in the office to unlock the door." I whirled back toward the manager and snarled at him, "Get this door open now, or I'll pay you for these watches with hot lead!" But he nimbly ducked out another doorway, from the office into the storage area, and slammed a heavy metal door behind him before I could react. I then ordered the female clerk at the desk to push the buzzer for the door. She, however, continued to sit as rigidly as a statue, her mouth wide open in an expression of horror. Beginning to feel desperate, I decided to shoot the lock off the door. It took four shots to do it, partly because my nervous haste spoiled my aim. We ran to the car, but the warehouse manager was already there. The bastard was letting the air out of our tires! I slammed the barrel of my revolver down on his head and sent him sprawling in the gravel. Fortunately, he had only partially deflated one tire, and the car could still be driven. Katherine and I wasted no more time getting away from there. What a life! It wasn't until this afternoon, when I had finished assembling and testing the first timer, that I was convinced that the fancy watches I wanted were worth the hassle it took to get them. The new timer works perfectly; it makes a positive, low-resistance contact every time, and I am sure it will reduce our percentage of misfires to practically zero. I also got Bill's UV inspection unit working for him, and he will be ready to print his first greenbacks as soon as I pick up his ink additives Monday. His product won't be perfect, but it should be close enough. In particular, it should pass all the standard tests used in banks to spot counterfeit bills. They'll have to take it to a lab to tell it's phony. And I finished designing three different bomb mechanisms that should pass an X-ray examination without arousing suspicion. One of them fits into an umbrella handle-batteries, timer, and all. The main shaft of the umbrella can be filled with thermite if one wants an incendiary device, or the handle can be detached and used as a detonator. Another timer-detonator combination will be built into a pocket transistor radio (that one can also be fired by a tone-coded radio signal), and the third will be an electric wristwatch, with the detonator and booster molded into the wrist band and fired by the watch's built-in battery. In each case, of course, the bulk explosives must be brought into an area separately, but they can be disguised in many different ways-cast like plaster, for example, into the shape of any familiar object, even painted the right color.

Chapters 26 to 30 of Gravitation. Chapter 26 Stellar Pulsations Chapter 27 Idealized Cosmologies Chapter 28 Evolution of The Universe to its Present State Chapter 29 Present and Future Evolution of The Universe Chapter 30 Anisotropic and Inhomogeneous Cosmologies

Gravitation, Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, Chapters 21-25 Some of the most difficult chapters, including embedding of four space into three space.

======== Translated from the German. Written to Celebrate 100 years since the battle of Leipzig, and 25 years of the rule of Kaiser William the second, Germany under Kaiser William II was published just months before WW1. It includes chapters on the Army and the Navy. ======== Fourth book. The German Wehrmacht. The Army. From Von Bernhardi, general of the cavalry z. D. Geographical position and economic development of Germany. The fate of Germany is largely determined by its geographic location. In the east the flood of the Slavic peoples surges against its open border. In the north of the Baltic Sea is the Scandinavian peninsula, the North Sea England. The exits to the ocean are ruled by foreign peoples. In the west the enemy France, in the northwest Holland and Belgium border the German Reich; in the south it is separated from the Mediterranean by high mountain ranges and in the south-east it joins Austria-Hungary, which in turn is oppressed by the South Slavic peoples who at the same time live in large numbers within its borders. As long as there has been a real Germany since the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, the German people have continued to fight in various directions in order to defend themselves against enemy attacks and to expand their borders. This is how today's German Empire came into being amidst the blows of the sword and the turmoil of battle, after heavy defeats and brilliant victories; but even today it is influenced by its geographical position. When Kaiser Wilhelm the second ascended the throne, however, Bismarck's statecraft had succeeded in substantially mitigating the dangers it opposed. Germany was united with Austria and Italy by an alliance aimed at joint defense in the event of an enemy attack, and there was an agreement with Russia under which both states assured each other of neutrality if one of them were attacked. At the same time relations with England were friendly. It was thus possible to temporarily isolate France. However, this did not remove the deep national differences between Germans and Slavs. Russia's distrust of German politics had at times assumed dubious forms, and only too soon did the opposition between the two empires find its political expression. In any case, it was clear that Germany's position of power rested primarily on its military strength, which made it valuable to its allies and terrible to its enemies. At the same time, the development of the German people in cultural and economic terms had taken a powerful upswing since the Wars of Unification and justified the proud endeavor not only to maintain the position of power that had been achieved, but also to gain an expanded sphere of influence and, with it, increasing world renown. This striving became a necessity after the foundations of a colonial policy had been laid, and the rapid population growth suggested the desire to gain settlement areas and to further increase exports in order to create employment opportunities for the growing masses; it pointed out to sea and showed the need for strong armaments at sea to protect trade and colonial activity. Army development, the main task of the state. From the beginning of the government of Wilhelm the second, two enormous tasks arose: the expansion of the army to maintain the position within Europe and the construction of a fleet to assert the necessary world power aspirations. Both tasks complemented each other. World politics was inconceivable without strong naval armament; but on the other hand even the strongest navy would have to be unsuccessful if the opponents of Germany succeeded in wrestling it in the country and robbing it of its European position of power. So the most important task of the state was the development of the army, which would ensure the superiority of Germany under all circumstances. At first the emperor found little understanding for these lines of thought among the people. The realization that Germany needed a navy only gradually broke through, and the people's representatives put up stubborn resistance to the expansion of the land army, with complete political ineptitude and mundane mischief. The struggle against the views of the Reichstag marked the gradual development of the army during almost the entire reign of Wilhelm the second. Later, the high demands for sea armament were often disadvantageous to her, and sometimes it seemed as though there was a lack of understanding for the fact that a sufficiently strong land army formed the necessary basis for all political activity, but especially for Germany's overseas policy. Army submission 1890. When Kaiser Wilhelm the second took office, the army numbered 468,409 men, excluding officers, civil servants, doctors and one-year volunteers. It was divided into 15 army corps and 2 Bavarian corps and consisted of 534 infantry battalions, 465 squadrons, 364 batteries, 31 foot artillery, 19 engineers, 5 railway and 18 and a third train battalions. In the spring of 1888, when a war seemed imminent, compulsory service in the Landwehr was extended to the age of 39 and the army was strengthened by around 700,000 men. But these conditions in no way corresponded to the principle of general conscription and justice. Numerous young men fit for duty could not be employed, in the event of war the old men had to be led against the enemy, while many young men had to be trained. The crews drafted as substitute reservists only served ten weeks, so they enjoyed a substantial preferential treatment. These were untenable conditions. An army reinforcement of around 80,000 men was therefore planned, to be brought in during the spring of 1890. Prince Bismarck declared himself ready to represent such a proposal before the Reichstag and to enforce it. Some changes had been made earlier. The sixteenth and seventeenth Corps were formed from excess troops; the field artillery was subordinated to the general commands after the general inspection was abolished; a brigade of two regiments was formed from the 4 railway battalions. The artillery training school was separated into the field and the foot artillery training schools; two cavalry inspections were established. In the meantime, however, a profound contradiction had developed between the Kaiser and the Reich Chancellor, which led to Bismarck's resignation on March 18 and his leaving Berlin immediately afterwards. His successor, General von Caprivi believed that he would not be able to push through the planned military bill with the existing composition of the Reichstag. It was therefore limited to the essentials and reduced to a reinforcement of the army by 18,574 men. According to the law of July 15, the army was to have 468,983 men and 538 battalions of infantry, 465 squadrons, and 434 batteries by the end of the existing septnate (March 31, 1894), 31 foot artillery, 20 engineer, 5 railway and 21 train battalions would exist. This of course did not fulfill the original purpose of the bill, and the political situation soon developed in such a way that further reinforcement of the army seemed absolutely necessary in the interests of national defense. Army submission 1892. Two years of service. The treaty with Russia, which ensured neutrality in the event of an enemy attack against us, had expired in 1890. It was not renewed on the German side. In Russia, with which strong tensions had already arisen, this aroused a deep distrust of German politics and opened the way for a Russian-French alliance. The political rapprochement between the two states took place very soon. In July 1891 a French squadron arrived in Kronstadt and was greeted with lavish celebrations, and in the autumn of 1892 the conclusion of a Russian-French treaty was announced. This gave rise to the possibility of war on two fronts, which made significantly increased armaments an absolute necessity. However, the government did not believe that it would be able to enforce this by maintaining the three-year period of service at the Reichstag; it was therefore decided, under the pressure of circumstances, to transition to two years of service at least for foot troops and field artillery. For this, the strength of the peace presence should be increased by more than 80,000 men, meaning increased to 492,000 common, the artillery increased significantly and some reinforcements were also planned for the cavalry, the engineers and the transport troops. Cadet corps, non-commissioned officers 'and non-commissioned officers' pre-schools should expand. Target practice funds were increased and funds were made available for the training of officers on leave of absence in the field and for foot artillery. However, the bill was rejected by the Reichstag, although the army administration had tried to arrange everything as cheaply as possible. The newly elected then accepted it with a small majority, but not without having made considerable compromises. On August 3, 1893, it became law. The increase of the cavalry had been refused, an engineer battalion was canceled, the number of men was fixed at only 479,229. The posts of officers, medical officers, civil servants and NCOs were to be subject to the determination of the Reich budget. The exercises in the reserve were discontinued in order to prevent the training staff from becoming overburdened. From now on the army was to consist of 538 battalions of infantry and 173 similar half battalions, which were to be supplemented to form whole battalions in the event of war, 465 squadrons, 494 field batteries, 37 foot artillery, 23 engineer, 7 railroad and 21 train battalions. The cavalry and mounted artillery men, who remained with the flag for three years, were only to belong to the Landwehr's first contingent for three years. The law was to be valid until March 31, 1899. This marked the transition from the septnate to the quinquennate. The duration of the determination was made the same as that of the legislative periods of the Reichstag. The new law did not overload the people. In spite of the fact that 97,028 men were transferred to the Landsturm in 1893 and 80,352 to the reserve, there were still 8,350 men, and in 1894 even 14,022 fully capable men remained as surplus. The expenditures for the army and the navy after the implementation of the army bill amounted to 13.8 marks per head of population, compared to 18.8 marks in France. In the following years only minor changes occurred. The foot artillery was divided into two inspections and four brigades in 1895. In the same year the Guard, first and fifteenth Corps rider detachments formed from charges of the cavalry, in 1896 one with the second Bavarian Corps. At the train two stringing departments (heavy horses) were set up for the foot artillery, as two of which had existed on a trial basis since 1891. On April 1, 1897, 86 full battalions were formed from the 173 half battalions, which were generally formed into regiments of 2 battalions and brigades of 2 regiments. These brigades were usually attached to the corps in question as the fifth. On the other hand, this measure, which made training easier, had the disadvantage that the framework available for accommodating the mobilization teams was considerably reduced. In the event of mobilization, this made it necessary to recruit more troops, but it could not be avoided. In 1897 and 1898 the independent rider detachments, now referred to as hunters on horseback, were increased by three and were given the strength of squadrons. In 1897 three new clothing departments were set up. In 1898 the position of General Inspector of the Cavalry was created and the number of inspectors increased to four. At the end of 1898 the army consisted of 624 battalions of infantry, 472 squadrons, 448 mobile and 46 mounted batteries, 37 foot artillery and 23 pioneer, 7 railroad battalions with an operations division, a telegraph test company, 2 airship divisions and 21 train battalions with 7 clothing departments. The airship department in Prussia had become an independent unit in 1895; the other belonged to the Bavarian army. The total strength, excluding 9,000 one-year volunteers, was 23,176 officers, 557,436 men, 98,038 horses and 2,542 artillery pieces. At the same time there were 934,360 reservists, 759,240 for the Landwehr, 759,240 for the first and 751,500 for the second, for a total of 2,495,100 men, who gradually had to reach 3,246,000 as a result of the reinforcement of the army. The further development of the army took place amid continued struggles with the Reichstag, which, guided by party interests and electoral considerations, pettily nagged at the proposals of the government without understanding the major political questions, which for its part believed that it was faced with a negative attitude of the people's representatives in having to be content with temporary and half measures. The great demands that had to be made for the expansion of the fleet naturally had a restrictive influence on the willingness of the Reichstag to approve the expenditures for the army. Army template 1898. As the current quinquennat neared its end, very important permits for the fleet had been made in 1897 and 1898. They seemed necessary as Germany was drawn ever deeper into overseas politics through the lease of Kiautschou and its colonial aspirations. It was also evident that the naval law that was enacted at the time would not end the expansion of the navy. It is true that the government declared in January 1899 that an extension of the enacted naval law was not being considered for the time being: after all, it is reasonable to assume that consideration for the construction of the navy had a major influence on the new demands for the army. The government demanded an increase in army strength by 23,277 men, mainly to increase the budget of the infantry, a strong increase in artillery and some new formations of the other weapons, especially the transport troops. She declared her readiness to keep the two-year period of service, if the training personnel were constantly able to cope with the increased demands and the establishment of large training areas was accelerated, and at the same time called for a change in the organization of the field artillery, which should now be directly subordinate to the divisions in peacetime. Three new army corps were also to be formed; one each in Prussia, Saxony and Bavaria. The Reichstag approved the main points of the bill, but cut 7,000 men of the required strength, approved the required 10 squadrons only in the form of detachments of mounted hunters without regimental association and looked away from an increase in the number of NCOs. It was expected that they could be replaced by teams who would volunteer for a third year and who were to remain in the Landwehr's first contingent for only three years. On March 25, 1899, after fierce parliamentary struggles that almost led to the dissolution of the Reichstag, the submission of these resolutions became law, which was to remain in force for five years until March 31, 1904. After that the army should be strong: 625 battalions, which were increased by only one, 482 squadrons, 574 batteries, 38 foot artillery, 26 pioneer, 11 traffic and 23 train battalions, a total of 495,500 common. The propagation should take place until 1903. The eighteenth Corps was established in Frankfurt, the nineteenth in Leipzig, the third Bavarian in Nuremberg. In spite of this, eight army corps retained fifth brigades, while two divisions had no cavalry. On the other hand, 16 machine gun sections were formed over the next few years to be assigned to the army cavalry. From now on, each division received a brigade of two regiments of field artillery, two divisions had to be content with one regiment for the time being. The heavy artillery of the field army to be formed from the foot artillery battalions consisted of howitzer and mortar batteries, four of them and six of them. The clothing departments were increased to ten; the traffic troops were subject to an inspection. In the railway brigade, which consisted of three regiments and two battalions, the operations department of the military railroad was reinforced. Then three telegraph battalions with clothing detachments were formed, with the loss of the telegraph test company; the military telegraph school was converted into a cavalry telegraph school with a clothing department. Furthermore, in 1901 the airship division was reinforced with a battalion of two companies with a clothing department. The teams required for these new formations were obtained through budget reductions. To speed up the mobilization, 1900 district officers and horse prototype inspectors were employed. According to the permits, the army counted 24,374 officers, 81,954 NCOs, 495,500 common, 105,885 horses and 3,126 guns on March 31, 1904, excluding the medical officers, civil servants and one-year volunteers. The annual contingent of recruits had increased to 243,621 men; Nevertheless, 98,992 men had to be transferred to the Landsturm and 82,786 to the reserve, a large number of which could undoubtedly be described as fit for service. The implementation of general conscription was far from being carried out. On the other hand, a naval bill had been approved in 1900, which provided for a planned expansion of the fleet within 16 years up to the strength of 38 ships of the line and 51 cruisers. This required very substantial expenses, and since the expedition to China, 1900-1901, had also devoured significant sums, the government temporarily waived the introduction of a new military bill and contented itself with the expiry of the law on March 31, 1904 for one year to be extended. Law of April 1905. It was not until the winter of 1904–1905, when the Anglo-French colonial agreement of 1905 also made the political rapprochement between the two states known and the Moroccan dispute with France loomed, that a further small reinforcement of the army for a further five years was required, the two-year service period was permanently fixed for the foot troops, the artillery and the train. According to the new law, by the end of the new quinquennate, the strength of the peace presence was to be gradually increased to 505,839 congregations without annual volunteers, but 12,000 economic craftsmen who had to be replaced by civilian craftsmen should not count towards this. In addition, the reorganization of 8 battalions, 9 cavalry regiments, 2 foot artillery, 3 engineer battalions and 1 telegraph battalion was approved. The existing 17 squadrons of fighters on horseback and 6 companies of foot artillery should be taken into account. The approved battalions were provisionally set up in ones or twos in the years up to 1909, but 48 machine gun companies in the latter year, since after the experience of the Russo-Japanese war it seemed desirable to equip the infantry with this weapon as well. In the cavalry, 5 hunter regiments, 1 (Saxon) Uhlan regiment and 2 Bavarian Chevaulegers regiments were established by 1909; the Bavarian cavalry then numbered 12 regiments, of which 5 were only 4 squadrons strong. For this purpose, one (Saxon) hussar regiment and a sixth hunter regiment were set up in 1910. In the field artillery, observation cars were introduced, which caused an increase in the horse budget. In the foot artillery, the training battalion of the shooting school was assigned to 4 companies. In addition, this weapon was formed in such a way that there were 14 regiments of 2 battalions (8, 9 and 10 companies each) and 4 regiments of 3 battalions and 12 companies each; also 1 training battalion and 1 experimental company. The number of clothing departments was increased to 14. The companies were renamed batteries in 1908. Among the pioneers, the guard battalion received one experimental company in 1905, and from 1907–1909 a pioneer command and one battalion were newly set up in the seventeenth, seventh and eighteenth corps. In 1907, a fourth telegraph battalion with a clothing department was formed for the transport forces. All telegraph battalions received radio operator departments up to that year. In Bavaria the telegraph company was reduced to 1 detachment of 2 companies with a radio operator. 1 inspection of the field telegraph was newly formed, to which 2 inspections by the telegraph troops were subordinate. The transport troops were increased by one test company, which was joined in 1907 as the second company by 1 motor vehicle division. Such was also set up in Bavaria. The third Bavarian Train Battalion received a third company. Army strength and crew 1910. On October 1, 1910, the army counted 633 battalions, 510 squadrons, 574 batteries, 40 foot artillery, 29 pioneer, 12 traffic and 23 training battalions, not counting the teaching and experimental troops, etc. Officials, annual volunteers and craftsmen 25,494 officers, 87,350 NCOs, 505,839 common, 114,162 horses, 3,126 artillery pieces and 384 machine guns. How little the army reinforcement brought about by this law corresponded to the actual number of crews available is shown by the fact that although the recruiting contingent in 1910 without 13,145 one-year volunteers was 252,462, in the same year 144,737 men were considered unfit for the Landsturm and 80,262 as future suitable had to be transferred to the replacement reserve. On the other hand, the training was promoted by the fact that the teams on the leave of absence were increasingly drawn on for service. In Prussia alone the number of people called for exercises grew to 375,659 by 1911. The reservists were mostly used to reinforce the companies and to set up missing third battalions, but special formations were formed from the soldiers who were first called up; and from reserve regiments that met at the military training areas towards the end of the quinquennate. The train represented an obvious weakness of the organization. The formations to be set up in the event of mobilization could only be formed by calling on cavalry reservists and had to have the character of improvisations. The number of these formations was in no relation to the strength of the train battalions and the existing train officers. Each train battalion had to set up: provisions, vehicle fleet and field bakery columns, field hospitals, the trains of the field administration authorities; also 1 appropriately composed reserve battalion, 1 replacement battalion and the extensive stage formations. The train battalions also had to help set up the bridge trains and the trains of the transport troops. Accordingly, they had a huge task to cope with, and it seemed quite questionable whether the peace organization provided for this would be sufficient in an emergency. In spite of this, no improvements were sought in this direction, probably for the sake of savings. Development of the political situation from 1905–1911. In the meantime the political situation had not developed favorably. After England had failed to involve Germany in an anti-Russian policy with regard to Manchuria through the Yangtze Agreement, England approached France and concluded the aforementioned agreement with Morocco by ceding Morocco to that country without affecting its rights and showing consideration for German interests. At the same time it offered France the prospect of its active participation in the event of a war over the Moroccan question. In Germany, people initially felt that France had gained against the country. At the same time in the course of the Japanese war and the revolution that broke out as a result, Russia was deeply shaken but on the other hand the lack of sufficient sea defense was clearly evident in relations with England, it was believed that the development of the navy should be taken into account in the first place. This seemed all the more necessary since the Russo-Japanese war had clearly shown under certain circumstances that cooperation between the army and the navy could gain great importance. The consequence of such considerations was initially the scant military bill of 1905; they then found further expression in the naval laws of 1906 and 1908, which not only brought a further increase in the fleet and the transition to the construction of capital ships, but also the lowering of the age of the liners and thus an acceleration of shipbuilding. The resulting costs were very significant, and it therefore seems understandable that the greatest possible restriction was imposed on army expenditures, all the more since the conclusion of the Algeciras Act and the Franco-German Agreement of 1909 ruled out an immediate danger of war. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had brought the possibility of Russian military intervention close, also passed without a European shock. Thus, in spite of the grave dangers inherent in the European situation, a new military bill was not tabled until the beginning of 1911, which was kept within the most modest limits due to financial concerns. The Army situation in 1911. According to the law passed on this basis on March 27, 1911, the army was to be reinforced by 9,482 men by March 31, 1916. At this point in time it should consist of 634 battalions, 510 squadrons, 592 batteries, 48 foot artillery, 29 engineer, 17 traffic and 23 train battalions. The number of clothing departments should be increased to 24. In addition, 112 machine gun companies were to be set up among the infantry, taking into account the 48 provisional and 5 machine gun divisions that were available from which companies were to be formed. In the future, each infantry brigade should be assigned 1 machine gun company. In the field of field artillery, 2 regiments and 6 Bavarian batteries were to be rebuilt, taking into account 20 mounted batteries, which had to be converted into mobile ones. A new company was to be formed for each of the 21 train battalions, and the organization of the higher train authorities was also to be reorganized. Major changes were planned for the transport forces. As early as April 1, 1911, the inspection was converted into a general inspection of transport and an inspection of military aviation and motor vehicles was established. On October 1st, radio companies were formed from the radio operators' departments; in the case of the airships, two new battalions of two companies were set up with the dissolution of the experimental company; the motor vehicle department was converted into 1 motor vehicle battalion with 3 companies. The railway troops should in future consist of 1 inspection, 2 brigades, 3 regiments to 2 battalions, 1 new battalion, the Bavarian railway battalion and the operations department of the military railroad consist of 3 companies. However, this organization and the other measures provided for by the law were only partially carried out on October 1st. The following remained to be formed: 1 infantry battalion, 4 machine gun companies from 4 similar departments, 38 mobile batteries using 20 mounted, 7 foot artillery battalions, taking into account 3 already existing provisional battalions that had been set up in the spring of 1911, 10 clothing departments, 1 (Bavarian) Pioneer company, 1 railway battalion, 1 telegraph battalion and 22 trainer companies. That was equivalent to a head count of 460 officers, 1,300 non-commissioned officers and 8,068 men. The strength of the army was therefore without medical and veterinary officers, civil servants, annual volunteers and craftsmen: 25,880 officers, 88,292 non-commissioned officers, 507,253 common men, 118,246 horses, 738 machine guns and 3,072 artillery pieces. The Political crisis of 1911. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1911, a serious political crisis had arisen. Since France disregarded the existing treaties with regard to Morocco, Germany sent a warship to Agadir to safeguard its rights and thereby put the jealousy of England in its place, which was now threatening Germany. The German nation unanimously demanded a powerful rejection of the opposing arrogance; the government, however, did not want to allow war over Morocco and concluded an agreement with France, to which, in return for moderate compensation in the French Congo and a few trade guarantees, it left the Sherif Empire and with it a tremendous increase in power. At least the threatened danger of war had led to the realization that the army reinforcement stipulated by the 1911 law did not correspond to the danger of the situation and that a further increase in the armed forces was necessary. Greater reparteeism also seemed desirable for the fleet. So the demands for the army and the navy entered into competition again and had a paralyzing effect in both directions. The naval bill, however, was essentially an organizational change; but another ship of the line was required and the number of submarines to be built was legally stipulated. A considerable increase in staff was the necessary consequence. Army template 1912. In spite of the fact that the resulting financial claims were relatively modest, and in spite of the war threats from superior enemies that had shaped the summer of 1911, the army administration once again believed that it could be satisfied with relatively low demands, which the Minister of War as the Minister of War was adequately labeled. Initially, two new Prussian army corps were to be established from mostly existing troop units and also newly formed: 17 infantry battalions, 6 squadrons, 41 batteries, 4 engineer, 1 traffic and 2 train battalions. The strength of the peace presence would be increased by about 29,000 men by March 31, 1916 and amount to 544,211 men. The number of machine gun companies was to be doubled so that each infantry regiment could have one. The engineer battalions were to receive floodlights, and the traffic troops were to be expanded by setting up an air force. The posts of staff officers and captains were to be increased with consideration for new mobilization formations and 22 new Landwehr inspections were to be established. In the light of the events of 1911, this bill was essentially approved by the Reichstag and passed into law on June 14, 1912. Only 15 Landwehr inspections were canceled, of which there were now 10, and there was the requested increase in staff officers in the small infantry regiments. Some of these permits were issued on October 1, 1912. The twentieth corps was established in Allenstein, the twenty-first in Saarbrücken. In the infantry, 1 regiment of 3 battalions and 11 third battalions were formed; 2 machine gun departments were converted into companies. 2 Prussian field artillery regiments with 6 batteries each were set up, and 6 Bavarian regiments received one new battery each. The foot artillery formed 5 new regiments using the overflowing battalions and batteries. The training battalion of the foot artillery shooting school was expanded to 1 regiment with 2 battalions; 10 clothing departments were reorganized. The pioneers were increased by 3 new battalions and 15 floodlights, the traffic troops by 1 Prussian telegraph battalion and 1 air force. In Bavaria, the telegraph detachment, as well as the aviation and motor vehicle departments, were expanded to include 1 battalion each and 1 air force was set up. Two new Prussian battalions of three companies were set up on the train, and one company that was still missing in Bavaria. At the beginning of 1913 the army consisted of: 647 infantry battalions and 1 training battalion, 109 machine gun companies, 13 machine gun divisions, 510 squadrons, 616 field batteries, 47 foot artillery battalions with 183 batteries and 22 clothing departments, 32 engineer, 18 traffic and 25 train battalions of 3 companies; 1 Prussian and 1 Bavarian infantry and 1 field artillery and 1 foot artillery shooting school. On the other hand, the authorized troops still had to form: 4 battalions and 109 machine gun companies, 6 squadrons (5 Prussian, 1 Bavarian), 17 batteries, 9 foot artillery battalions, 1 engineer battalion, 1 pioneer command, 6 floodlight trains, 1 railway battalion, 1 motor vehicle company, 21 train companies and 2 train commands. A part of these troops was to be formed in 1913 by increasing the number of floodlights to 11. How little it was possible to achieve the implementation of compulsory service is evident from the fact that in 1905 0.849 percent, in 1910, on the other hand, only 0.838 percent of the rapidly growing population were employed. Even bringing the organization of the army to a certain conclusion had not yet been successful. The army corps should normally consist of 2 divisions of 2 infantry, 1 cavalry and 1 artillery brigade, 1 hunter, 1 engineer and 1 train battalion. However, even after the 1912 law was implemented, 6 army corps retained the 5th Infantry Brigades; the 3rd battalions were missing from 18 regiments; 4 Bavarian cavalry regiments the 5th squadrons. There were also too few cavalry regiments and there were only 18 battalions of hunters. Clothing offices were not set up in several corps. There were also some other gaps to be closed. The train remained inadequately organized, and many engineer battalions lacked floodlights. Even a more or less uniform formation of the foot artillery was not achieved. So if in some respects the army had to be described as unfinished at the time, on the other hand it was at the height of modern requirements in terms of equipment and armament. That is still the case today. Armament. The infantry is armed with a Model 98 rifle, which can be considered a major improvement on the 88 rifle. With a caliber of 7.9 mm and an appropriate pack charge, it carries a pointed S-bullet and reaches an initial speed of 885 meters per second, which was achieved partly by the shape and lightness of the bullet, partly by a relatively strong charge and an improved smokeless powder. No rifle of any other army is superior to this weapon. Cavalry and foot artillery are equipped with a carbine of the same construction and almost the same efficiency; the cavalry is also armed with tubular steel lances; the field artillery received a self-loading pistol with a nine-cartridge magazine in the handle and a range of 1500 meters with a length of only 21.7 cm. The introduced machine gun, based on the Maxim system, is designed as a self-loading machine and allows a rate of fire of 600 rounds per minute. In the area of field artillery, after the introduction of the low-smoke powder in 1889, some improvements were made to the existing material. The double fuze was introduced for shrapnel, and soon afterwards the high-explosive grenade, which, however, did not prove very useful; In 1892 an automatic rope brake and the aiming surface were added, which made shooting from hidden positions easier, and in 1893 a new, more powerful shrapnel. In the meantime the question of the rapid-fire gun had become a burning one; it was primarily a matter of eliminating the return flow. This purpose could either be achieved in that the return of the mount was inhibited by a spur or by a device by means of which the tube could slide back on the lower mount when fired and be automatically brought forward again. The latter system was chosen in France, and the former in Germany. An appropriately designed gun, Model 1896, was introduced. The directional means have also been significantly improved. Soon, however, it was felt compelling to go over to the second system, and at the same time as France had stepped forward, to introduce protective shields for the service teams and to change the gun in 1896 in this sense. The new gun, which met all modern requirements, was introduced by 1907. The rate of fire is 20 rounds per minute. In addition to the field cannon, the army wields the field howitzer, a rapid fire gun of 10.5 cm caliber, which is designed to be effective against field-like coverings and targets behind cover with significant penetrating power and a steep angle of incidence. In addition, however, it provides a useful and, because of the larger caliber, very effective flat track section and is therefore versatile. In 1907 this howitzer was modified for return pipe and provided with protective shields. The "Feldhaubitzgeschoß 05" was also introduced with her, which can be used as shrapnel and grenade due to its peculiar detonator design. Each division is now to receive a howitzer division. A further acceleration of the fire was achieved by the unit cartridge, in which the projectile and cartridge are connected. In 1909, observation cars and telephones were introduced to the artillery. The heavy artillery of the field army had already received some new material in 1899. It was made up of howitzer and mortar battalions, those with 24 guns in 4, these with 8 guns in 2 batteries. As a flat-track gun, it carried a 12 cm cannon. The mortar had a caliber of 21 cm, the howitzer was 15 cm. In 1907 it also received very modern recoil guns, the heavy field howitzer 02 (caliber 14.97 cm) and the 10 cm cannon 04. With the introduction of wheel belts, the bedding was eliminated. The two mentioned guns were also used in the siege artillery, which in 1909 received a 13 cm gun instead of the outdated 15 cm cannon. It also carries 15 cm ring cannons, 21 cm and 28 cm mortars and 5 cm rapid fire cannons. The fortress artillery has a wide variety of material, as all cannons that can still be used are used here, which have been discarded elsewhere, including in the navy. Particularly heavy artillery - cannons and howitzers - are used in the coastal artillery, as these must take up combat with the enemy ironclad, so in some cases they must at least have an armor-piercing effect. Anti-balloon guns have also recently been introduced. In terms of artillery, Germany is probably at the forefront of all major military states. Fortress construction. The tremendous development of the artillery also had a decisive influence on fortress construction. Since the mid-1880s, concrete and steel cladding had to be used to protect against the effects of artillery. The profiles were reduced in order to hide the works from view, artillery and infantry positions were separated and finally the large forts were replaced by connected groups of several smaller works in new installations. Only the armored domes for assault guns and observation posts are now on the parapet, those of the combat guns inside the batteries are under the parapet, with howitzers raised above them. In the case of the large fortresses, the defense is completely placed in the fort belt, so city walls are no longer used. It remains to be seen whether the latter measure will prove successful. Only the future can teach us that. In addition, the most varied of views have been authoritative in recent years. Many fortresses have been closed, numerous new works have been built; Only recently has it been possible to introduce a solid principle into the land and coastal fortifications. Military transportation. The military transport system has experienced a tremendous upswing in recent years. The railway network has been expanded according to strategic considerations, and the latest technological inventions have been made available to the army. The main means of sending messages is the electric telegraph, which recently has no longer been tied to lines, but works wirelessly. Radio operators' departments are attached to the higher authorities and the advanced cavalry; You can also keep in touch with the airships by radio. In addition, the line telegraph remains in use, and telephones are also used in the army. Light signals are used under favorable conditions. Motor vehicles are also of great importance for the army, both for passenger transport and for replenishing the needs of the army. Truck trains were constructed for the latter purpose. For a premium they are maintained by industrial and trading companies in peacetime and are available in war. The bicycle and motorcycle are also used in the intelligence service. Aviation has at last experienced an extraordinary development. Either large dirigible airships or flying machines are used. They are mainly used for exploratory purposes, but can also be used to hurl explosive projectiles. The flying machines are monoplane or biplane; the airships are partly constructed according to the rigid principle of Count Zeppelin, partly as semi-rigid, partly as non-rigid Parsevall airships. Each of these systems has its advantages and disadvantages. Recently, airships like flying machines have been equipped with weapons for defense and attack. This development is still in its infancy, but it can already be overlooked that battles will take place in the air and that aviation will play an important role in the wars of the future. Clothing and equipment. Substantial progress has also been made in the clothing and equipment of the troops. Above all, the introduction of gray field uniforms is important in order to ensure that the troops in combat stand out as little as possible from the terrain. Vehicles and artillery have also been given field-gray paint. The men’s luggage and equipment were relieved. The bare weapons were also changed several times. In addition, all units received bicycles for the reporting service; the Infantry and the pioneers were equipped with kitchen wagons, one of which is to be given to each company. A new army saddle was introduced for the cavalry; Furthermore, each regiment now has two light bridge wagons and a telegraph wagon with them, after the cumbersome folding boat wagons that were initially introduced have been abolished. Smaller uniform changes and the introduction of various badges cannot be touched upon here. The room also did not allow the various budget changes, the increase and distribution of ammunition columns, as well as the organization of the authorities and preparations for mobilization to go into more detail. A few essential points should only be briefly pointed out. The number of army inspections had been increased to 7 and that of engineer inspections to 4. The number of district commands gradually increased to 303. Organization of the authorities. Various changes had also occurred within the organization of the War Ministry. The most important one can be described as the establishment of a Feldzeugmeisterei in 1898, which, in place of the general war department, took over the supervision of the procurement, manufacture and administration of the controversial means as well as of the personnel employed in this process, thereby relieving the ministry significantly; This was left with the provision on the introduction of new weapons. The Feldzeugmeisterei was responsible for the inspection of the technical institutes of the infantry and artillery, the artillery depot inspections with 4 artillery depot directorates, the train depot inspection with initially 4, now 2 train directions and the train depots, and finally the inspectors of the weapons and the artillery material. Similar orders were issued in Bavaria and Saxony. The remont system was regulated and expanded throughout the empire; NCO schools and NCO cadet schools were increased. Finally, of particular importance for the entire training was the procurement of large military training areas, 24 of which are currently available in the German Reich; they also serve as artillery firing ranges. The military justice system was completely redesigned. The medical and veterinary system also experienced various fundamental changes. Space forbids going into all these things in more detail. On the other hand, we must at least briefly mention the development of the General Staff, in which, alongside the War Ministry, the entire life of the Army is concentrated as if in a focal point in which the intellectual forces of the Army are trained for practical military activity. In the last 25 years it has undergone a significant expansion, partly due to the new formations, but partly also due to the great changes and new achievements in the war system that characterize the period mentioned, and due to the sometimes great development of the armies of other states. As early as 1889, three senior quartermasters were appointed instead of the quartermaster general, and in 1894 the head of the regional administration was added as the fourth has been. The number of departments was gradually increased - apart from two war history units - to ten. In addition, there was the trigonometric, topographical and cartographical department, which is subordinate to the head of the land survey. To facilitate the deployment, railway commissioners were created and the lines increased to 26. In 1898 the secondary budget was eliminated, and most of the officers belonging to it were transferred to the main budget in order to be able to cover the additional need for general staff officers in the event of mobilization. Since the senior quartermaster positions were also increased, the existence of the general staff in autumn 1912 was as follows: Under the chief of the general staff of the army with 2 adjutants, 6 senior quartermasters, 39 chiefs and 217 other officers of the general staff, 1 chief and 18 officers were assigned to the general staff, 19 officers in the railway department who are not general staff officers, 124 officers who are part of the general staff and 11 who are commanded to take up the country, 10 inactive officers and 22 line commanders. Some of these and other officers belong to the General Staff. Preparatory training for the General Staff takes place at the War Academy, which has also been expanded, but has increasingly lost its character as a free academy and has become a professional General Staff preparatory school. The Saxon and Bavarian General Staff developed in a similar way to the Prussian. If in the foregoing the external growth and organization of the army were described in broad outline, its mode of struggle and intellectual development must now also be examined in order to obtain a more or less accurate picture of the nature of the army. Fighting style and training. The way of combat has undergone profound changes in all weapons, primarily as a result of modern weapons, which have been expressed in numerous new regulations. With the infantry, one appeared as early as autumn 1888, which took modern conditions into account and was replaced by a new one in 1906 after the Manchurian War, which with numerous changes from 1909 is still in force today. The various successive firing regulations from the years 1889, 1893, 1899 and 1905 also tried to take account of the changed weapon conditions, especially after the introduction of the rifle in 1898 and the S ammunition, and to give combat shooting the necessary attention without questioning the careful training in individual shooting. The essence of modern tactics is to reduce losses in relation to the increased performance of firearms by moving the troops within the fire zone only in lines of fire or in many small marching columns that can easily find cover in the terrain. It is therefore deployed from the marching column at an early stage and developed for combat. But of course there must be uniformity of tactical will are preserved in this resolution. One seeks to achieve this through a strictly implemented discipline of the rifle lines and through the fact that not only the lower ranks but also the teams are trained to act independently in the sense of the combat concept and to understand the combat tasks. Any modern tactic that is to promise success must be an individualistic one. The spiritually superior people will therefore always gain a certain superiority, and education in school thus forms the basis of later military training. We should take this into account to a greater extent than it is today. Our regulations expect victory in attack and defense from fighting superiority by fire. Here it seems to me that there is a certain danger to our provisions, for history teaches that offensive victories have generally been achieved in spite of the defender's superiority by fire. Given the equality of weapons, it is quite natural that the defender lying covered and shooting calmly must achieve better results than the agile uncovered attacker. Attack victories are achieved partly through numerical superiority, partly and primarily through moral preponderance and the determined will to win despite all losses. But if the attacking infantry is asked to fight for superiority by fire, then the energy of the attack can be broken. It is all the more correct that our regulations place the greatest emphasis on the cooperation of the artillery with the infantry. A rich tactical development has also taken place in this weapon. The newly introduced guns, propellants, projectiles and aiming devices repeatedly forced new regulations and firing rules to be issued. Furthermore, efforts were made to simplify the tactical forms as much as possible, to improve the shooting method and to make the composition of the batteries as expedient and combat-oriented as possible. In this regard, the elimination of the second squadron for the batteries and the introduction of light ammunition columns, which were directly attached to the troops, were particularly important. The mounted batteries have also recently been formed into 4 guns. Increasing importance was attached to the exploitation of shrapnel and indirect fire; tactically on the interaction with the infantry. The artillery duel as an end in itself faded more and more into the background; the main task was to fight the enemy infantry, which is intended to facilitate the advance of friendly infantry as far as possible. All corresponding improvements and changes are gradually being reflected in the regulations of 1889, 1892, 1899 and 1907, the latter being improved in 1911 as a result of several new introductions, as well as in various shooting regulations. Such were issued in 1890, 1899 and 1907; the latter was partially reworked in 1911. The foot artillery has undergone a similar tactical development, and in 1908 received regulations that are still valid today. It has become the most essential task for heavy artillery in the army, in conjunction with the field artillery, to fight the enemy artillery down and to prepare for the infantry to break into the enemy positions. The agility that it has gradually acquired enables it to cope with this task. Artillery training has also made considerable progress. The first step towards this was the separation of the shooting school into a field and foot artillery shooting school and its gradual expansion. All young officers and all officers suitable to be battery operators are now being trained here; furthermore, training courses for officers on leave of absence have been set up. The frequent change of firing ranges also promotes training, and finally, since 1895, field artillery exercises have been taking place as an introduction to the maneuvers. The cavalry found it hardest to tear itself away from the old, glorious traditions and adapt to the demands of modern combat. The attack is no longer their main task; the focus today is on operational mobility; in combat, however, fighting on foot is completely on an equal footing with actual equestrian combat. This is due to the development of today's weapons system. It remains to be seen whether the cavalry divisions of 24 squadrons and, within their framework, the brigades provided for the case of war are strong enough. On the other hand, their efficiency is significantly increased by the allocation of engineers, mounted artillery and machine guns, as well as by equipping them with the excellent carbine 1898. For a long time the weapon suffered from the three-hit tactic, the unsuccessful attempt to adapt the misunderstood Frederickian tactics to modern conditions, and tactically moved in a dead formalism. The regulations of 1895 brought various practical simplifications, but no fundamental tactical change. The skirmish on foot was not given enough emphasis either, although a number of shooting regulations raised the shooting range significantly. It was not until 1909 that the meeting tactic for equestrian combat was eliminated, replaced by the use of command units on a wing-by-wing basis, and modern regulations were created, which admittedly still have many weaknesses. The training of the cavalry also suffers from the fact that larger exercises of independent cavalry bodies do not take place annually for the whole cavalry, while in war this activity is almost exclusively required. With the striving spirit that animates the weapon, it tries today to strip off the formalism even further and to let the operative element prevail in the leadership, regardless of tradition and personal inclination. The material and equipment are excellent and the riding training is at a high level. It is successfully cultivated at the military riding institute in Hanover and the riding school in Paderborn. Another riding school is to be established in Soltau in 1913. The new riding instruction from 1912 meets the most extensive requirements. Field Service Regulations. In the case of the other auxiliary weapons, too, a development guided by modern standards has taken place. The rules of engagement have been incorporated into the regulations everywhere; however, the provisions that are necessary for other conduct in the field, for march, rest, outpost, reconnaissance, veiling, conduct in front of and in fortresses and more are compiled in the "Field Service Regulations". The regulations issued in this sense in 1887 had to be repeatedly changed and expanded with the gradual development of the army and the numerous new introductions, especially in the artillery, the transport troops, in the airship sector and in the pioneer service, until the currently valid field service regulations finally appeared in the spring of 1908. By simplifying the rules and eliminating everything that is schematic, this has given the personality more room to maneuver and has made purposeful and simple provisions, especially for outposts, reconnaissance, veiling, marching orders, baggage, ammunition columns and trains. A special section contains the rules for the maneuvers, in which the entire training culminates. They strive for a behavior of all parts that is as warlike as possible and, in addition to brigade, division, corps and imperial maneuvers, provide for special exercises in fortress wars, pioneer and intelligence services, etc. as well as for the cavalry. Above all, they encourage and raise the offensive spirit. Lately the main emphasis has been placed on the exercises of large numbers of troops. Strategic military leadership. If numerous far-reaching changes in the military system have taken place in the field of tactics and equipment, the enormous numerical growth of the armies and the many new aids in warfare must also influence strategic military command. Moltke still reckoned that the army could essentially live on the means of the theater of war and therefore did not shy away from putting several army corps on one road in order to create versatile development possibilities and to be able to use large masses in narrow spaces. When he left office in 1888, Count Waldersee took his place, a brilliant soldier who, fully aware of his own abilities, refused to engage in a scientific systematization of strategy, but molded the judgment of his subordinates by constantly changing tasks and procedures everywhere and sought to emphasize what was expedient, which could be different in every situation. It was not until Count Schlieffen, who replaced him in his high position in 1891, that it was decided to develop a certain strategic system for the modern mass armies; he has the undeniable merit of having clarified this in the most varied of directions. Proceeding from the idea that all troops marching on one road would have to march into battle in one day and be fed daily from the rear, he set up the principle with the great depth of march of modern army corps that one should only have one corps on each marching road. At the same time, however, he was anxious to have the will to destroy the enemy in battle the clearest expression. He found the solution to this problem in enclosing the enemy wings while attacking the front. With the perfection of the weapons he believed that there would be an opportunity to save forces in the front in order to strengthen the decision-seeking wing. In all his theoretical and practical war exercises and also as a critic of historical events, he kept this point of view. This conception has gained a foothold in wide circles of the army. Against this, voices are also asserting themselves which, despite all recognition of the truths that Schlieffen taught, warn against the exclusive application of his principles. They point out that simultaneous attack in the front and flank presupposes superiority and thus the weaker army is deprived of the possibility of attacking. Even the victorious encirclement only guaranteed victory if its success could assert itself along the entire line of battle before a decision was made in the front, which apparently would not always be the case on very long fronts. One must therefore have more arrows in one's quiver than just the idea of embracing. Whether these concerns are given a certain justification or not, it is certain that Count Schlieffen significantly promoted the theory of operations and, in a certain sense, created the basis for the further development of modern strategy. Work in the army. In the army itself, free scientific activity suffers from the increased burden of practical service and from the abundance of technical knowledge required. They paralyze the creative power of one's own thought, as it can only result from a deep general education. In spite of this, the spirit of striving forwards, initiative and offensive thought has remained strong and lively in the army and forms the unshakable basis for great future achievements. Perhaps there has never been more work in the army than in the last 25 years, and there is a blessing power in this work itself. The greatest devotion and sacrifice can, however, in politics as on the battlefield only ever replace real power to a certain extent, and so no one who saw clearly could ignore the knowledge that the political situation and the means of power of our presumed opponents in no way corresponded to the development of the army as it was shaped under the pressure of the Reichstag. Change in public opinion. Meanwhile, there had also been a significant shift in public opinion. The course of the Moroccan dispute and the eventual agreement with France in 1911 had profoundly offended the pride of the German people. It was now recognized that the existing means of power were not sufficient to give the states of the hostile Triple Entente force against German policy. Now it was public opinion that returned to general Called for conscription and sharply criticized the army drafts of 1911 and 1912. In this mood the German people found the Balkan crisis of 1912. The collapse of European Turkey and the enormous growth of the Slavic Balkan states showed that in a European war Austria, allied to us, would never be able to use all its forces against Russia, but troops will always have to be left standing on the Balkan border. As a result, the balance of power between the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente was completely shifted to the disadvantage of the former, and under the pressure of these relations the government decided not only to strengthen the army, but also to further expand the fortifications, especially on the eastern border. The Army template of 1913. In the spring of 1913, 100 years after Prussia's glorious uprising against the Napoleonic tyranny and in the 25th year of the government of Kaiser Wilhelm the second, a new military bill was introduced and essentially accepted by the Reichstag, which at least to some extent closed the gaps in the army organization and which should make the nation's human resources more subservient to the development of military strength. The new law stipulates that the permits issued in 1911 and 1912, which were to come into force gradually over a number of years, would be carried out as early as October 1, 1913. In addition, 63,000 more recruits are to be hired each year, mainly to increase the budget for all weapons. There are also to be newly formed: In 18 infantry regiments the missing 3rd battalions, cyclist and machine gun companies in the 18 hunter battalions, 6 cavalry regiments and four squadrons still missing in Bavaria, 3 new regiments of foot artillery and 1 Wuerttemberg battalion, 11 engineer battalions, whereby the separation is made possible in field and fortress pioneers, 13 new transport troop battalions, among which 5 aviation and 2 new airship battalions are to be located, finally for the train 1 battalion and 20 companies. New clothing departments for the heavy batteries of the field army are also to be formed. In order to secure the replacement of non-commissioned officers, the non-commissioned officers are to be placed in a much better position, two new non-commissioned officers 'schools are to be created, and the non-commissioned officers' schools and cadet schools are to be strengthened in Prussia and Saxony. Even in peacetime a large number of officers were made available for the reserve formations. In view of the increased need for officers, the cadet schools are to be enlarged and a new war school is to be built. It is necessary to increase the number of civil servants for general and special administrative purposes, administration of justice and pastoral care. The medical facilities and practice areas are to be expanded. In total the increase amounts to 4,000 officers, 15,000 NCOs, 117,000 common and 27,000 horses, and in the future there should be 669 battalions of infantry, 550 squadrons, 633 batteries, 55 foot artillery, 44 pioneer, 31 traffic troop and 26 train battalions with 661 176 common. All of these measures are to be carried out as early as October 1, 1913; only in the case of special weapons will they have to be spread over a number of years. The procurement of war material is also to be accelerated, and Königsberg and Graudenz are to be converted into large arsenals. Significant funds are being made available for the expansion of the air fleet. The exercises of the leave status are increased. The military law of 1913 provides for a generous reinforcement of the army and tries successfully to make up for the omissions of earlier years. At least the guiding idea of the whole proposal, to expand general conscription according to the status of the population, has not yet been fulfilled, because even now a considerable percentage of those fit for military service are still absent from armed service. Above all, the train, whose importance for modern warfare is still underestimated, is not sufficiently reinforced. The overall organization cannot be described as complete either, as the higher formations for numerous excess troops are missing. It will not be possible to avoid reorganization of these in the future, since an excessively large increase in the peace budget during the two-year service period is a double-edged measure in that it increases the percentage of recruits in the war troops too much. Outlook into the future. Thus the law does not form a conclusion to the development of the army, but it does form a sound basis for the further development of the future and a strong and powerful expression of the state's political will to power. To a great extent, contrary to the previous situation, it increases the tactical strength of the army and will have a beneficial effect on the life of the army in the most varied of areas. It is particularly gratifying that the German people have finally convinced themselves of the need to develop military power and will hopefully be ready in the future to provide the means for further armaments. Then we can hope with confidence that the German army, when called to draw the sword for Germany's political will, will fight worthy of its old glory and fight for the German people's future as a world power and the world's first cultural power. Sea power and the navy. By Vice Admiral a. D. Baron von Maltzahn. Introduction and history. Explanation of terms. If they are protected by a sufficiently strong navy, trade and shipping, which connect a state across the ocean with the purchasing and sales markets of its industry, own colonies, capital invested overseas, profitable activities of nationals living there, not least the political reputation that the state has from energetic representation of these overseas relations, will create a position of maritime power. Thus, in the military-political sense, the navy becomes the carrier and representative of the sea power of a state. Without it, all maritime interests would form an element of weakness. For a continental state like the German Reich, of course, the continental position of power protected by the army was

Chapter Fourteen. March 24, 1993. Today I was tried on the charge of Oathbreaking-the most serious offense with which a member of the Order can be charged. It was a harrowing experience, but I knew it was coming, and I am enormously relieved to have it behind me, despite the outcome. All during the months in my prison cell, I agonized over the question: Did I, by failing to kill myself before I was captured, break my Oath to the Order? I must have reviewed in my mind a hundred times the circumstances of my capture and the subsequent events, trying to convince myself that my behavior had been blameless, that I had fallen alive into the hands of my captors through no fault of my own. Today I related the whole sequence of events to a jury of my peers. The summons came this morning, via radio, and I knew immediately what it was for, although I was surprised at the address to which I was ordered to report: one of the newest and largest office buildings in downtown Washington. As an attractive receptionist ushered me into a conference room in a large suite of law offices, my apprehension was mixed with gratitude for the three-day period of recuperation I had been allowed since the breakout. I had just slipped into the robe which I found waiting for me on a coat-rack, when another door opened and eight other robed and hooded figures walked into the room and silently took seats around a large table. The last of the eight had his hood pushed back, and I recognized the familiar features of Major Williams. The proceedings were brisk and bathed in an air of formality. After a little more than an hour of questioning, I was told to wait in a smaller, adjoining room. I waited there for nearly three hours. When the others had finally finished discussing my case and had reached a decision, I was summoned back into the conference room. While I stood at one end of the table, Major Williams, seated at the other end, announced the verdict. His words, to the extent I can remember them, were as follows: "Earl Turner, we have weighed your performance as a member of this Order on two grounds, and we have found you wanting on both. "First, in your conduct immediately prior to the police raid in which you were seized and imprisoned, you gave evidence of a shocking lack of maturity and sound judgment. Your indiscretion in visiting the girl in Georgetown-an act which, although not specifically forbidden, was not within the realm of your assigned duties-led directly to a situation in which you and the members of your unit were placed in extreme jeopardy, and a valuable facility was lost to the Organization. "Because of this failure of judgment on your part, your period as a probationary member of the Order is being extended for six months. Furthermore, your time as a prisoner will not count as a part of your probation. Therefore, you will not be permitted the rite of Union before March of next year, at the earliest. "We find, however, that your conduct prior to the police raid does not constitute a violation of your Oath." I breathed an inaudible sigh of relief upon hearing this last statement. But then Williams continued, with a grimmer note in his voice: "The fact that you were taken alive by the political police and remained alive during nearly a month of interrogation is a far more serious matter. "In swearing your Oath, you consecrated your life to the service of the Order. You undertook to place your duty to the Order ahead of all other things, including the preservation of your life, at all times. You accepted this obligation willingly and with the knowledge that, for the duration of our struggle, it entails a very substantial possibility of your actually having to give up your life in order to avoid breaking your Oath. "And you were specifically warned against falling alive into the hands of the political police and were given the means to avoid this. Yet you did fall into their hands and remained alive. The information they extracted from you seriously hampered the work of the Organization in this area and placed many of your comrades in very grave danger. "We understand, of course, that you did not make a conscious decision to violate your Oath. We have carefully looked into the circumstances of your capture, and we are aware of the interrogation techniques the political police now use against our people. If you were merely a soldier in any other army in the world, you would be held blameless. "But the Order is not like any other army. We have claimed for ourselves the right to decide the fate of all our people and, eventually, to rule the world in accord with our principles. If we are to be worthy of this right, then we must be willing to accept the responsibility which goes with it. "Each day we make decisions and carry out actions which result in the deaths of White persons, many of them innocent of any offense which we consider punishable. We are willing to take the lives of these innocent persons, because a much greater harm will ultimately befall our people if we fail to act now. Our criterion is the ultimate good of our race. We can apply no lesser criterion to ourselves. "Indeed, we must be much sterner with ourselves than with others. We must maintain for ourselves a standard of conduct much higher than we demand of the general public or even of ordinary members of the Organization. In particular, we must never accept the idea, born of the sickness of our era, that a good excuse for nonperformance of a duty is a satisfactory substitute for performance. "For us, there can be no excuses. Either we perform our duty, or we do not. If we do not, we need no excuse; we simply accept the responsibility for failure. And if there is a penalty, we accept that too. The penalty for Oath-breaking is death." The room was perfectly still, but I could hear a buzzing in my ears, and the floor seemed to sway under my feet. I stood in stunned silence until Williams began speaking again, this time in a somewhat softer voice: "The duty of this tribunal is clear, Earl Turner. We must act in your case in such a way that every member of this Order who may, at some time in the future, find himself in circumstances similar to yours during the police raid on your headquarters, will know that death is inevitable if he cannot avoid capture-either an honorable death by his own hand or a less-than-honorable death at the hands of his comrades later. There must be no temptation for him to avoid his duty, in the hope that a 'good excuse' later will preserve his life. "Some of us here today have argued that this consideration- setting a firm example for others - should be the sole determinant of your fate. But others of us have argued that, because you had not yet achieved full membership in this Order at the time in question- because you had not yet participated in the rite of Union- your conduct can be reasonably judged by a different standard than would be applied to someone who had completed his probationary period and achieved Union. "Our decision has not been easy, but now you must hear it and you must abide by it. First, you must satisfactorily complete your extended period of probation. Then, at some time after the end of that period, you will be permitted Union-but only on a conditional basis, something we have never allowed before. The condition will be that you undertake a mission whose successful completion can reasonably be expected to result in your death. "Unfortunately, we are all too often presented with the painful task of assigning such 'suicide missions' to our members, when we can find no other way to achieve a necessary goal. In your case, such a mission will serve two ends. "If you complete it successfully, the act of completion will remove the condition from your Union. Then, even though you die, you will continue to live in us and in our successors for as long as our Order endures, just as with any other member who achieves Union and then loses his life. And if, by some chance, you should survive your mission, you may then take your place in our ranks with no stain on your record. Do you understand everything I have said?" I nodded, and answered: "Yes, I understand, and I accept your judgment without reservation. It is just and proper. I have never expected to survive the struggle in which we are now engaged, and I am grateful that I will be allowed to make a further contribution to it. I am also grateful that the prospect of Union remains before me." March 25. Today Henry came over, and he, Bill, and I had a long talk. Henry is heading for the West Coast tomorrow, and he wanted to help Bill fill me in on the developments of the past year before he leaves. Apparently he will be engaged in training new recruits and handling some of the Organization's other internal functions in the Los Angeles area, where we are especially strong. When he greeted me he showed me the Sign, and I knew that he had also become a member of the Order. In essence, what I learned today is what I had already concluded in my prison cell: the Organization has shifted the main thrust of its attacks from tactical, personal targets to strategic, economic targets. We are no longer trying to destroy the System directly, but are now concentrating on undermining the general public's support for the System. I have felt for a long time that this change is necessary. Apparently two things forced Revolutionary Command to the same conclusion: the fact that we were not recruiting enough new members to make up our losses in the war of attrition against the System, and the fact that neither our blows against the System nor the System's increasingly repressive responses to those blows were having any really decisive effect on the public's attitude toward the System. The first factor was mandatory. We simply could not keep up our level of activity against the System as our casualties steadily mounted, even if we wanted to. Henry estimated that the total number of our front-line combat troops for the whole country- those ready and able to use knife, gun, or bomb against the System-had declined to a low point of about 400 persons last summer. Our front-line troops make up only about a fourth of the Organization's membership, and they have been suffering a greatly disproportionate casualty rate. So, the Organization was forced to de-escalate the level of the war temporarily, while we still preserved a strong enough nucleus for another approach. Our whole strategy against the System was failing. It was failing because the great bulk of White Americans were not responding to the situation in the way we had hoped they would. That is, we had counted on a positive, imitative response to our "propaganda of the deed," but it was not forthcoming. We had hoped that when we set the example of resisting the System's tyranny, others would resist too. We had hoped that by making dramatic strikes against top System personalities and important System facilities, we would inspire Americans everywhere to initiate similar actions of their own. But, for the most part, the bastards just sat on their asses. Sure, a dozen or so synagogues were burned, and there was an overall rise in the level of politically motivated violence, but it was generally misdirected and ineffective. Without organization such activities have little value, unless they are very widespread and can be sustained over a long period. And the System's response to the Organization irritated many people and caused a lot of grumbling, but it didn't even come close to provoking a rebellion. Tyranny, we have discovered, just isn't all that unpopular among the American people. What is really precious to the average American is not his freedom or his honor or the future of his race, but his pay check. He complained when the System began busing his kids to Black schools 20 years ago, but he was allowed to keep his station wagon and his fiberglass speedboat, so he didn't fight. He complained when they took away his guns five years ago, but he still had his color TV and his backyard barbeque, so he didn't fight. And he complains today when the Blacks rape his women at will and the System makes him show an identity pass to buy groceries or pick up his laundry, but he still has a full belly most of the time, so he won't fight. He hasn't an idea in his head that wasn't put there by his TV set. He desperately wants to be "well adjusted" and to do and think and say exactly what he thinks is expected of him. He has become, in short, just what the System has been trying to make of him these past 50 years or so: a mass-man; a member of the great, brainwashed proletariat; a herd animal; a true democrat. That, unfortunately, is our average White American. We can wish that it weren't so, but it is. The plain, horrible truth is that we have been trying to evoke a heroic spirit of idealism which just isn't there any more. It has been washed right out of 99 per cent of our people by the flood of Jewish-materialist propaganda in which they have been submerged practically all their lives. As for the last one per cent, there are various reasons why they aren't doing us much good. Some, of course, are too ornery to work within the confines of the Organization-or any organized group; they can only "do their own thing," as a number, in fact, are. The others may still have different ideas of their own, or they simply may not have been able to make contact with us since we were forced underground. Eventually we could recruit most of these, but we no longer have the time. What the Organization began doing about six months ago is treating Americans realistically, for the first time-namely, like a herd of cattle. Since they are no longer capable of responding to an idealistic appeal, we began appealing to things they can understand: fear and hunger. We will take the food off their tables and empty their refrigerators. We will rob the System of its principal hold over them. And, when they begin getting hungry, we will make them fear us more than they fear the System. We will treat them exactly the way they deserve to be treated. I don't know why we held back from this approach for so long. We have had the example of decades of guerrilla warfare in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to instruct us. In every case the guerrillas won by making the people fear them, not love them. By publicly torturing to death village leaders who opposed them and by carrying out brutal massacres of entire village populations which refused to feed them, they inspired such terror in neighboring villages that everyone was afraid to refuse them what they asked. We Americans observed all this but failed to apply the lesson to ourselves. We regarded-correctly-all those non-Whites as mere herds of animals and were not surprised that they behaved as they did. But we regarded ourselves-incorrectly- as something better. There was a time when we were better-and we are fighting to insure that there will be such a time again-but for now we are merely a herd, being manipulated through our basest instincts by a pack of clever aliens. We have sunk to the point where we no longer hate our oppressors or try to fight them; we merely fear them and attempt to curry favor with them. So be it. We will suffer grievously for having allowed ourselves to fall under the Jewish spell. We stopped wasting our resources in small-scale terror attacks and shifted to large-scale attacks on carefully selected economic targets: power stations, fuel depots, transportation facilities, food sources, key industrial plants. We do not expect to bring down the already creaky American economic structure immediately, but we do expect to cause a number of localized and temporary breakdowns, which will gradually have a cumulative effect on the whole public. Already a sizable portion of the public has been made to realize that it will not be allowed to sit back and watch the war on TV in safety and comfort. In Houston, for example, hundreds of thousands went for nearly two weeks without electricity last September. The food in their refrigerators and freezers quickly spoiled, as did the perishables in their supermarkets. There were two major food riots by hungry Houstonians before the Army was able to set up enough relief stations to handle everyone. In one instance Federal troops shot 26 persons in a mob trying to storm a government food depot, and then the Organization got another riot started with the rumor that the emergency rations the government was handing out were contaminated with botulism. Houston isn't back to normal yet, with most of the city still subject to a staggered six-hour-a-day power blackout. In Wilmington we put half the city on the dole by blowing up two big DuPont plants. And we turned the lights off for half of New England when we knocked out that power-generating station just outside Providence. The electronics manufacturer we hit in Racine wasn't very big, but he was the sole supplier of certain key components for other manufacturers all across the country. By torching his plant, we eventually caused twenty others to shut down. The effects of these actions are not decisive yet, but, if we can keep it up, they will be. The public reaction has already convinced us of that. That reaction can certainly not be considered friendly to us, on the whole. In Houston a mob took two prisoners-suspects arrested for questioning in one of the bombings-away from the police and tore them limb from limb. Fortunately, they were not our people- just two hapless fellows who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the conservatives, of course, have redoubled their squawking and cackling that we're ruining all chances for an improvement in conditions by "provoking" the government with our violence. What the conservatives mean when they talk of an "improvement" is a stabilization of the economy and another round of concessions to the Blacks, so that everyone can return to consuming in multiracial comfort. But we learned long ago not to count our enemies, only our friends. And the number of the latter is growing now. Henry indicated that we have increased nearly 50 per cent in membership since last summer. Apparently our new strategy has knocked a lot of spectators off the fence-some on our side and some on the other. Perceptive people are beginning to realize that they won't be able to sit this war out. We are forcing them into the front lines, where they must choose sides and participate, whether they like it or not.

Germany under Kaiser William the Second was a three volume encyclopedia published in 1914. The first chapter was written by former Chancellor von Bulow, and discusses some of the issues of Germany before the first world war from a German point of view. In the mid-nineties in Rome, where I was ambassador at the time, my English colleague, Sir Clare Ford, said to me with a sigh: “How much more comfortable and convenient it was in politics when England, France and Russia formed the European Areopagus, and at most occasionally Austria needed to be consulted. ”Those good old days are over. More than four decades ago, the High Council of Europe was increased by one voting member who not only has the will to have a say, but also the strength to take part. State rebirth of Germany. A great piece of work was completed in the history of the world with the masterpiece of Prince Bismarck. The persistent heroism of the Prussian army and the unshakable devotion of the Prussian people had supported the purposeful will of the Hohenzollern for centuries under changeful fates, until the Brandenburg March became the Prussian great power. Twice the wreath that had already been won seemed to slip away from the state of Prussia. The devastating defeat of 1806 plunged Prussia from the admired and feared heights of Frederician fame. Those seemed right who had never wanted to see more than an artificial political structure in the proud state of the great king, which stood or fell with the monarch's unique statesmanlike and warlike genius. The uprising after the avalanche of Jena and Tilsit proved to the astonished world what unspoilt and indestructible power lived in this state. Such a willingness to sacrifice and such heroism on the part of an entire people presuppose a deeply rooted national self-confidence. And when the people of Prussia did not rise in a random uprising, like the much-admired Spaniards and the valiant Tyrolean peasants, but naturally submitted to the orders of the king and his advisors man by man, one saw in astonishment how national and state consciousness in Prussia were such that the people had been brought up to be a nation through the hard school of the Frederickian order. The reorganization of state life under the direction of creative men in the period from 1807 to 1813 won the state the conscious love and obedience of its subjects. The liberation struggle from 1813 to 1816 earned Prussia the respect of all and the trust of many non-Prussian Germans. It was a rich legacy that left behind the great times of uplift and liberation. But due to the retroactive effect of a dull and lackluster external policy and an internal management that neither knew how to give at the right moment nor how to refuse, this legacy was largely ruined over the next few decades. Towards the end of the fifties of the 19th century, Prussia lagged behind, as it had emerged from the wars of freedom, in internal attitude and external validity. The national unity movement had probably received its first solid foundation through the Prussian customs policy. But the day of Olomouc destroyed the hope of the German patriots, who expected Prussia to fulfill national wishes. Prussia seemed to be on its world historical mission, to renounce the power-political continuation of the unification value, which it had begun consciously in terms of economic policy. The transition of state life to constitutional channels had freed up new forces for national life. This state would have gained an infinite amount of inner vitality and national impetus if this loyal people had been called to political cooperation at the right time, as Stein and Hardenberg, Blücher and Gneisenau, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Boyen, and Yorck and Bülow-Dennewitz had wished. When the great step was taken thirty-three years too late, the trust between the people and the authorities was already too deeply eroded, the reputation of the government in the course of the revolutionary uprising had been too severely damaged for the modern forms of government to be able to bring immediate blessings. The course of Prussian politics was inhibited internally by a suspicious and doctrinal representation of the people, and externally by the undefeated resistance of the Austrian claims to supremacy. Almost in the twelfth hour Bismarck, appointed by King Wilhelm at the decisive moment, reached into the faltering wheel settings of the Prussian state machinery. The insightful patriots of those years were well aware that a normal historical development had to lead to the state unification of Germany under Prussian leadership, that the foremost aim of Prussian statecraft was to accelerate and complete this development. But all the paths that had been trodden to achieve the goal had proven impassable. The longer, the less seemed to be expected of the initiative of the Prussian government. The well-intentioned but impractical attempts to induce the German people to take control of their own destiny failed because the decisive driving force of the governments in Germany was lacking more than in any other country. In “Wilhelm Meister” the experienced Lothario replies to the melancholy Aurelie, who has a lot to criticize about the Germans, that there is no better nation in the world than the German, as long as it is led properly. The German, whatever tribe he may be, has always been able to achieve the greatest under strong, steady and firm leadership, rarely without such leadership or in opposition to his governments and princes. Bismarck himself told us in his “Thoughts and Memories” that he was in no doubt about this from the start. With brilliant intuition he found the way on which the hopes of the people would have to meet the interests of the German governments. More than any other statesman, he had penetrated the history of the nation whose leadership was in his hands. Behind the external context of the events he sought and found the driving forces of national life. The great time of the liberation and uprising of Prussia, that was born in Waterloo and consecrated by Schleiermacher in the Trinity Church in Berlin, never faded from his memory; at the beginning of his world-historical work it stood in full vividness before his eyes. He felt that in Germany national will and national passion are ignited not in friction between government and people, but in the friction between German pride and a sense of honor and resistance and claims of foreign nations. As long as the question of German unification was only an internal political problem, a problem about which the parties and between the government and the people quarreled, it could not generate a powerful, compelling national movement that would sweep princes and peoples. When Bismarck presented the German question as what it was at its core, as a question of European politics, and when the non-German opponents of German unification soon began to stir, he also gave the princes the opportunity to take the lead in the national movement to deliver. In Frankfurt, in Petersburg, in Paris, Bismarck had seen the powers of Europe in the cards. He had recognized that the unification of Germany could only remain a purely German-national matter as long as it was the pious wish and unfulfillable hope of the Germans and that it had to become an international matter the moment it reached the stage of realization. The struggle with the resistance in Europe was in the way of solving the great task of German politics. In such a struggle, however, the resistance in Germany itself could hardly be resolved. National policy was thus integrated into international policy, and the completion of the German work of unification through incomparable statesmanship and boldness was assigned to the inherited weakest abilities of the Germans, the political ones, and the innate best ones, the warlike ones. It was a fortunate coincidence that Bismarck found a general like Moltke, a military organizer like Roon at his side. At the same time, it was secured by the armed forces that had regained our European position as a great power. They took away the desire of the great powers to wrest from us the place in the European college that we had conquered in three victorious wars. Even if we were reluctant to have this place, it has not been seriously contested since then. With the exception of France, the whole world would have gradually made friends with Germany's position of power if our development had ended with the founding of the empire. State unification did not end our history, but the beginning of a new future. In the forefront of the European powers, the German Reich regained its full share in European life. For a long time, however, the life of old Europe had only been a part of the entire life of the people. Germany as a world power. Politics became more and more world politics. The world political paths were also opened for Germany when it gained a powerful and equal position alongside the old great powers. The only question was whether we should tread the new paths that lay before us, or whether we should shrink from further ventures in fear of the power we had just gained. In Kaiser Wilhelm the second, the nation found a leader who, with a clear vision and a firm will, led the way on the new path. With him we embarked on the global political path. Not as conquistadors, not under adventures and traders. We moved slowly, didn't dictate the pace let go of the impatience of ambition, but of the interests and rights that we had to promote and assert. We did not jump into world politics, we grew into our world political tasks, and we did not exchange the old European politics of Prussia-Germany for the new world politics, but we still rest today as before with the strong roots of our strength in old Europe. “It is the task of our generation to simultaneously maintain our continental position, which is the basis of our world position, and to look after our overseas interests in such a way, to conduct a prudent, sensible, wisely restrictive world policy in such a way that the security of the German people is not endangered and the future of the nation is not impaired.” With these words I tried on November 14, 1906 towards the end of a more detailed presentation of the international situation to formulate the task that Germany has to fulfill now and according to human judgment in the future: world politics as the solid basis of our European great power position. In the beginning voices were heard which criticized the treading of the new world political paths as a stray from the tried and tested paths of Bismarckian continental policy. It was overlooked that Bismarck in particular showed us new ways by leading the old to their goals. His work actually opened the gates of world politics for us. Only after the unification of the state and the political strengthening of Germany was it possible for the German economy to develop into a world economy. Only after the Reich saw its position in Europe secured could it think of standing up for the interests that German enterprise, German industrial diligence and commercial daring had created all over the world. Certainly Bismarck did not foresee the course of this new German development or the tasks of this new era in detail and could not foresee them. In the rich treasure trove of political knowledge that Prince Bismarck left us with, nowhere can we find the generally applicable sentences for our global political tasks, as he coined them for a large number of possibilities in our national life. We look in vain in the resolutions of his practical policy for a justification for the resolutions which our global political tasks demand of us. This new, different time was probably also prepared by Bismarck. We must never forget that without the gigantic achievement of Prince Bismarck, who made up in years with a mighty jolt what had been wasted and neglected in centuries, we would not have been able to experience the new era. But even if every new epoch of historical development is conditioned by the previous one, its driving forces more or less thanks to the past, it can only bring progress if it leaves the old ways and goals behind and moves on to others of its own. If we move away from the European politics of the first chancellor on our new world-political paths, it remains true that the world-political tasks of the 20th century are the proper continuation of the continental-political tasks that he fulfilled. In that speech of November 14, 1906, I pointed out that the succession of Bismarck was not an imitation, but demanded an advanced training. "If the development of things demands it," I said at the time, "that we go beyond Bismarckian goals, we must do it." The development of things, however, has long since driven German politics out of the narrowness of old Europe into the wider world. It was not ambitious unrest that urged us to emulate the great powers who had long been following the paths of world politics. The forces of the nation, rejuvenated by the state rebirth, expanded beyond the boundaries of the old homeland, and politics followed the new national interests and needs. To the extent that our national life has become world life, the politics of the German Reich became world politics. In 1871 the new German Empire gathered forty one million inhabitants within its borders. They found food and work in their homeland, better and more easily than before, under the protection of increased national power, under various conditions of traffic that were facilitated by the founding of the Reich, under the blessings of the new general German legislation. In 1900 the population was over fifty six million; today it has grown to more than sixty five million. This huge mass of people could no longer feed the empire within its borders in the old way. The increase in population posed a huge problem for German economic life and thus also for German politics. It had to be resolved if the surplus of German strength, which the homeland was unable to maintain, did not benefit foreign countries. Around 171,000 Germans emigrated in 1885, 116,339 in 1892, only 22,921 in 1898, and this last low number has remained average since then. In 1885, Germany was therefore able to provide a population twenty million smaller with less favorable living conditions than its sixty six million members at present. In the same period, German foreign trade rose from around six billion marks to over nineteen billion. World trade and people's nutrition are unmistakably connected. Much less, of course, from the imported foods themselves than from the increased employment opportunities which industry connected with world trade is able to provide. The development of industry, first and foremost, has solved the problem posed to national life by the population increase, without prejudice to the disadvantages initially caused by the surprisingly rapid pace of development in older areas of economic life. The enormous increase and enlargement of the industrial establishments, which today employ millions of workers and employees, could only be achieved by the fact that industry seized the world market. If they were still dependent today on the processing of the raw materials that the continent supplies and on the European market for the sale of their products, then there would be no question of the modern giant companies, and there would be millions of Germans who today directly benefit from having an industrial livelihood without wages or bread. According to statistical surveys, raw materials for industrial purposes to the value of 5,393 million marks were imported in 1911 and finished goods to the value of 5,460 million marks were exported. In addition, there is an export of raw materials, especially mining products, to the value of 2,205 million. Nutritional and luxury goods are imported for 3,077 million marks and exported for 1,096 million marks. These dead numbers gain life when it is considered that a great deal of German well-being depends on them, the existence and work of millions of our fellow citizens. World trade mediates these enormous masses of goods. They only go to a small extent on the land and waterways of the mainland, mainly over the sea on the vehicles of German shipowners. Industry, trade and shipping have won the old German economic life the new world economic forms, which have also politically led the empire beyond the goals that Prince Bismarck had set for German statecraft. With its 19 billion foreign trade, Germany is now the second largest trading power in the world, behind Great Britain with 25 billion and ahead of the United States with 15 billion. In 1910, the German ports saw 11,800 own and 11,698 foreign ships arriving, 11,962 own and 11,678 foreign ships leaving. The German shipping companies hire an average of 70 steamers and 40 sailing ships every year. In rapid development, we Germans have won our place in the forefront of the seafaring and maritime trade peoples. Necessity of the navy. The sea has become more important to our national life than ever before in our history, not even in the great times of the German Hansa. It has become a strand of life for us that we must not allow to be cut if we do not want to turn from a blossoming and youthful people into a withering and aging nation. We were exposed to this danger as long as our world trade and our shipping lacked national protection on the sea against the overpowering navies of other powers. The tasks that the armed forces of the German Reich had to carry out had shifted significantly since the continental protection that our army ensured us was no longer sufficient to shield domestic industry from disturbances, interference and attacks from outside. A navy of war had to stand by the side of the army so that we could enjoy our national work and its fruits. When, in the spring of 1864, the English ambassador in Berlin drew the attention of the then Prussian Prime Minister to the excitement that Prussia's action against Denmark had caused in England and dropped the remark that if Prussia did not stop, the English government would take military action against it Mr. von Bismarck-Schönhausen replied: “Yes, what are you actually going to do to us? In the worst case, you can throw a few grenades at Stolpmünde or Pillau, but that's all. ”Bismarck was right about that time. At that time we were as good as invulnerable to the ruling England, because we were not vulnerable at sea. We had neither a large merchant navy, the destruction of which could hurt us, nor an overseas trade worth mentioning, which we feared to have interrupted. Quite different today. We have become vulnerable at sea. We have entrusted Billions in value to the sea and with this value the weal and woe of many millions of our compatriots. If we do not ensure the protection of this precious and indispensable national property in good time, we are in danger of one day having to watch defenselessly as it is taken from us. But then we would not have sunk back economically and politically into the comfortable ex world's first sea and trading power.istence of a purely landlocked state. Rather, we would have been able to neither employ nor feed a considerable part of our millions of people at home. The result would have been an economic crisis, a crisis that could develop into a national catastrophe. Construction of the navy. The construction of a fleet sufficient to protect our overseas interests had become a vital question for the German nation since the end of the 1880s. It is to his great historical merit that Kaiser Wilhelm the second recognized this and applied the full power of the crown and the full strength of his own individuality to the achievement of this goal. This merit is further increased by the fact that the head of the Reich advocated the building of the German navy at the moment when the German people had to decide about their future and when, according to human calculations, the last possibility existed, for Germany to forge the sea armor it needed. The navy was to be built while maintaining our position on the continent, without colliding with England, which we had nothing to oppose at sea, but with full preservation of our national honor and dignity. Parliamentary resistance, which was still considerable at the time, could only be overcome if public opinion exerted sustained pressure on parliament. Public opinion could only be set in motion if the national motive was emphatically emphasized and national consciousness aroused in the face of the uncertain and discouraged mood that prevailed in Germany in the first decade after the resignation of Prince Bismarck. The pressure that had weighed on the German mind since the break between the bearer of the imperial crown and the mighty man who had brought this crown out of the depths of the Kyffhauser could only be overcome if the German people, who were in need of unity at that time and whose hopes and goals were unclear, had a new path set by their emperor and were shown the place in the sun to which they had a right and to which they had to strive. The patriotic sentiment should not, however, overflow and disturb our relations with England in an irreparable way, against which our defensive strength at sea was still quite inadequate for years and before which we were, as in that year, a competent judge in 1897 once put it, at sea like butter in front of the knife. To enable the construction of a sufficient fleet was the next and greatest task of post-Bismarckian German politics, a task which I, too, was primarily faced with when I was on the "Hohenzollern" in Kiel on June 28, 1897 on the same day and in the same place that 12 years later I asked for my release from His Majesty the Emperor. On March 28, 1897, in its third reading, the Reichstag accepted the proposals of the Budget Commission, which made considerable cuts in the government's demands for replacement buildings, reinforcement and new buildings. On November 27th, after the previous State Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt, Admiral von Hollmann, had been replaced by a first-rate force, Admiral von Tirpitz, the government published a new naval bill, which included the construction of 7 ships of the line, 2 large and 7 small Kreuzern, and demanded that the time for the completion of the new buildings be set at the end of the accounting year 1904 and that replacement buildings be carried out in good time by limiting the lifespan of the ships and determining the formations to be kept permanently in service. The draft said: “While fully respecting the rights of the Reichstag and without recourse to new sources of taxation, the allied governments are not pursuing an endless naval plan, but rather the sole aim of establishing a patriotic navy of such limited strength and strength within a reasonable period of time To create efficiency that it suffices to effectively represent the maritime interests of the Reich. ”The proposal pushed the naval policy on a completely new track. So far, individual new buildings had been requested and in some cases approved from time to time, but the navy had lacked the solid foundation that the army had in the nominal inventory of its formations. It was only through the determination of the lifespan of the ships on the one hand and the number of serviceable ships on the other hand that the fleet became an integral part of our national armed forces. The building of the German fleet, like other great tasks in our patriotic history before it, had to be carried out with an eye on foreign countries. It was to be foreseen that this momentous increase in our national power would arouse unease and distrust in England. The traditional politics of England. The politics of no state in the world moves as firmly in traditional lines as the English one, and England owes its grandeur not least to this tenacious consistency of its foreign policy, which has been independent in its final goals and basic lines of the change of party rule, not least of all to this tenacious consistency of its foreign policy world political successes. The be-all and end-all of English politics has always been the attainment and maintenance of English naval rule. All other considerations, friendships as well as enmities, have always been purposefully subordinated to this point of view. It would be foolish to want to dismiss English politics with the hounded word of "perfidious Albion". In truth, this alleged perfidy is only a healthy and justified national egoism to which other peoples, as well as other great characteristics of the English people, can take an example. During the second half of the 18th and the first of the 19th century stood England at the side of Prussia, especially in critical times of Prussian history during the Seven Years' War and in the age of Napoleon the First. It was less comfortable sympathy with the bold and laboriously rising blood-related state in the German north that determined the English attitude. For its purposes England stood by the side of the most capable opponent of the strongest European power and left Frederick the Great in a difficult hour, and cold-bloodedly abandoned Prussia at the Congress of Vienna when she saw her aims had been achieved. During the shackling of the French forces in the Seven Years War, England brought her North American possessions to safety. In the great years from 1813 to 1815, the stormy bravery of Prussia finally and finally smashed Napoleonic world domination. When Prussia had to grapple bitterly for every square kilometer of land in Vienna, England had won her world power and, after the defeat of the French enemy, could see it as secure for the foreseeable future. As the enemy of the strongest continental power, we were friends of England; through the events of 1866 and 1870, Prussia-Germany became the strongest power on the European mainland and gradually moved in the English imagination into the place which the France of the Sun King and the two Bonapartes had earlier taken. English policy followed its traditional direction of taking the front against the respective strongest continental power. After the fall of Habsburg Spain, the France of the Bourbons was England's natural opponent, from Marlborough's outstanding participation in the War of the Spanish Succession to the alliance with the victor in the Battle of Rossbach, which was celebrated in London like a triumph of British arms. After decades of jealous distrust of Russia, which had grown stronger under Catherine the second, British policy turned again and with full energy against France when Bonaparte led the armies of the republic to victory over all the states of mainland Europe. In the wrestling match between the First Empire and England, England remained victor, certainly primarily thanks to the unshakable and grandiose steadfastness of its policy, the heroism of its blue jackets at Abukir and Trafalgar and the successes of its iron duke in Spain, but also because of the tenacity of the Russians and Austrians and the impetuosity of our old Blucher and his Prussians. When, after the fall of Napoleon, the military preponderance seemed to pass from western Europe to the east, England turned its political front. England played a prominent part in the unfortunate outcome of the Crimean War for Russia and in the failure of the lofty plans of the proud Emperor Nicholas the first, and Emperor Alexander the second also found English politics not infrequently on his political paths, most noticeably in the Near East, the old hopes of Russian ambition. The English alliance with Japan emerged from considerations similar to the entente cordiale with France, which has a decisive influence on contemporary international politics. The interest that England takes in shaping the balance of power on the European continent is of course not only directed towards the well-being of those powers which feel oppressed or threatened by the superior strength of one. Such philanthropic sympathy seldom exerts a predominant influence on the political resolutions of the government of a large state. The repercussions of the European balance of power on English naval rule are decisive for the direction of British policy. And every shift of power which could not have such an effect in the wake has always been rather indifferent to the English Government. If England traditionally, that is, in keeping with its unchangeable national interests, is unfriendly or at least suspicious of the strongest continental power, the main reason lies in the importance that England attaches to superior continental power for overseas policy. A major European power which has so drastically demonstrated its military strength that it need not be prepared to attack its borders in the normal course of events is in a way gaining the national conditions of existence through which England became the world's preeminent sea and trading power. England, with her strength and her daring, could go out to sea with no worries, because she knew that her home frontiers were protected from enemy attacks by the surrounding sea. If a continental power possesses precisely this protection of the frontiers in its dreaded, victorious and superior army, it gains the freedom to pursue an overseas policy, which England owes to its geographical position. She becomes a competitor in the field in which England claims rule. English politics is based here on the experiences of history, one could almost say on the lawfulness of the development of nations and states. Every people with a healthy instinct and a viable state system has pushed to the seashore when nature has denied it. There has been the most persistent and bitter struggle for stretches of coast and harbor places, from Kerkyra and Potidea, about which the Peloponnesian War was ignited, to Kavalla, about which the Greeks and Bulgarians struggled in our day. Peoples who could not win the sea or were pushed out of it, tacitly dropped out of the great world historical competition. Owning the seashore means nothing more than the possibility of overseas development of strength and, ultimately, the possibility of expanding continental politics into world politics. The peoples of Europe who did not use their coasts and ports in this way could not do so because they needed all their national strength to defend their borders against their adversaries on the mainland. So the far-sighted colonial-political plans of the Great Elector had to be abandoned by his successors. The world's political avenues have always been most freely open to the strongest continental power. But England kept watch on these routes. When Louis the fourteenth suggested a Franco-English alliance with Charles the second, this English king, who was otherwise very friendly to the French, replied that certain obstacles stood in the way of a sincere alliance, and of these the most distinguished was the trouble that France took to become a respectable maritime power. For England, which could only be of importance through her trade and her navy, this was such a reason for suspicion that every step France took in this direction inevitably led to jealousy between the two peoples. After the Treaty of Hubertusburg, the elder Pitt expressed his regret in Parliament that France had been given the opportunity to rebuild her navy. Primarily as an opponent of French overseas policy, England became the enemy of France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which dealt the first sensitive blow to French supremacy in Europe, England with Gibraltar brought the key to the ocean and the core area of Canada, which was hotly contested by France. In the middle of the eighteenth century Lord Chatam said: "The only danger that England has to fear arises on the day when the French see France as a great naval, commercial and colonial power." And before the Crimean War, David Urquhart wrote: “Our island location only allows us to choose between omnipotence and powerlessness. Britannia will be the queen of the sea or be devoured by the sea." English policy has remained true to itself to the present, because England is today, as it was once, the ultimate sea power. The greater diplomatic conflicts have taken the place of the great conflicts of earlier times. The political purpose is unchanged. Germany and England. When Germany, after solving its continental political tasks, after securing its European position of power, showed itself neither willing nor able to forego embarking upon the world-political path, existence had to become uncomfortable for England. The consequences of this change could be lessened in their effects by diplomacy, but they could not be prevented. But if we can understand the traditions of British politics, such an understanding by no means implies that England has reason to expand the German economy into a world economy, German continental policy into world politics and, in particular, the construction of a German navy with the to encounter the same distrust that might have been appropriate in earlier centuries towards other powers. The course of our world politics is fundamentally different in the means and in the ends from the attempts at world conquest by Spain, France and at the time of Holland and Russia in the past. The world politics, against which England opposed so emphatically in the past, was mostly aimed at a more or less violent change in international conditions. We merely take account of our changed national living conditions. The world politics of other countries, often opposed by England, was offensive, ours was defensive. We wanted and had to become so strong at sea that every attack on us was associated with a very considerable risk for every sea power, and we were thus freed from the influence and arbitrariness of other naval powers in the protection of our overseas interests. Our powerful national development, primarily in the economic field, had pushed us across the ocean. For our interests as well as for our dignity and honor, we had to ensure that we gained the same independence for our world politics that we had secured for our European politics. The fulfillment of this national duty might be made more difficult by any British resistance, but no resistance in the world could relieve us of it. With an eye on English politics, our fleet had to be built - and that's how it was built. My efforts in the field of great politics had primarily to be directed towards the fulfillment of this task. Germany had to make itself internationally independent in two respects. We were not allowed to allow the law of our decisions and actions to be dictated by a policy directed fundamentally against England, nor were we allowed to become dependent on England for the sake of English friendship. Both dangers were given and more than once they were approaching precariously. In our development to maritime power, we were unable to achieve the desired goal either as England's satellite or as England's antagonist. The unreserved and secure friendship of England could ultimately only have been bought by sacrificing the very world-political plans for the sake of which we would have sought British friendship. If we had gone this way, we would have made the mistake that the Roman poet meant when he said that one should not propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. As England's enemy, however, we would hardly have had the prospect of getting as far as we did in the end in our development to become a sea and world trading power. Germany and England during the Boer War. During the Boer War, which strained the strength of the British Empire to the utmost and led England to great difficulties, there seemed to be an opportunity to touch the silent adversary of our world politics. As in the rest of Europe, the waves of Boer enthusiasm went up in Germany. If the government undertook to fall into the arms of England, it was certain to be applauded by public opinion. To many, the European constellation seemed favorable to a momentary success against England, and French aid in particular seemed secure. But the European community of interests against England was only apparent, and the value of a possible political success against England in the Boer question would still have been more apparent for us. The attempt to take action under the impression of the pro-bourgeois mood at the time would soon have resulted in disillusionment. In the French nation, the deep-seated national resentment against the German Reich would have quickly and elementarily suppressed the current resentment against England as soon as we had committed ourselves to England and a fundamental change of front in French policy would have been within reach. No matter how annoying the fresh memory of Fashoda might be for French pride, it weighed as light as a feather against the memory of Sedan. The Egyptian Sudan and the White Nile had not pushed the thought of Metz and Strasbourg from the French hearts. The danger was that we would be pushed forward by France against England, while France refused to cooperate in the psychological moment. As in Schiller's beautiful poem “Die Ideale”, the companions would have lost each other on the way. But even if we succeeded in thwarting England's South African policy through European action, nothing would be gained for our closest national interests. Our relations with England would of course have been thoroughly poisoned from that hour and for a long time. The passive resistance of England to the world politics of the new Germany would have turned into a very active opposition. It was precisely in those years that we set about establishing German naval power by building our navy, but England, regardless of a possible failure in the South African war, had the power to nip our development into a naval power in the bud. Our neutral stance during the Boer War arose from weighty national interests of the German Reich. We were not strong enough at sea to forcibly pave the way for us to gain sufficient naval power over and above the interests of England. In the wake of English politics, the British goal of curtailed development of German power at sea was just as difficult to achieve. Press discussions about the possibility of an Anglo-German alliance. The idea was obvious that the English resistance to German world politics and above all, to German naval construction could most easily be overcome by an alliance between Germany and England. The idea of an Anglo-German alliance has in fact been discussed in the press in both countries. Bismarck was already preoccupied with this idea, of course, only to elicit the resigned remark from him: "We would love to love the English, but they don't want to be loved by us." To enter into a contractual relationship with England on the basis of full parity and equal ties, stipulations which England could have cast off in the event of a change of government or the occurrence of other events independent of our will, while we would have remained bound by them, would not have served German interests. Nor could it have been enough for us that only this or that minister seemed inclined to a German-English agreement. In order to make an agreement sustainable, the entire government, and above all the Prime Minister, had to work towards it. Bismarck has pointed out how difficult it is to establish a stable relationship with England because long-term alliances do not correspond to English traditions and the opinions expressed by British politicians, even in leadership positions, or the current moods of the English press, are not worth unchanging promises. France, to which for many reasons British public opinion is more inclined than us, in which England no longer sees a rival and especially no serious competitor at sea and in world trade, England is in a different position than we are. Only with absolutely and permanently binding British obligations would we have an Anglo-German bridge in the face of the jealousy of broad English circles against the economic progress of Germany and, above all, against the growth of the German navy, and be allowed to enter into alliance. We could only bind ourselves to England on the assumption that the bridge that was supposed to lead over the real and supposed contradictions between us and England was actually sustainable. The world situation back then, when the alliance question was ventilated, was in many respects different than it is today. Russia had not yet been weakened by the Japanese war, but was willing to fortify and expand the position it had just gained on the east coast of Asia and especially in the Gulf of Pechili. Relations between England and Russia were tense at the time precisely because of the Asiatic questions pending between the two empires. The danger was that a Germany allied with England would take on the role against Russia, which Japan would later assume alone. Only we should have carried out this role under conditions which cannot be compared with the favorable conditions which Japan found for its clash with Russia. The Japanese war was unpopular in Russia, and Russia had to wage it over immense distances as a colonial war, so to speak. If we allowed ourselves to be pushed against Russia, we would find ourselves in a much more difficult position. Under such circumstances the war against Germany would not have been unpopular in Russia; it would have been waged on the Russian side with the national vigor that is characteristic of the Russian in the defense of his native soil. For France, the case foederis would have existed. France could have waged its war of revenge under not unfavorable conditions. England was then facing the Boer War. Her position would have been eased if her great colonial political enterprise had been supported and accompanied by a European entanglement such as had served England well in the mid-18th and first decade of the 19th century. In a general conflict, we Germans would have had to face a serious land war on two fronts, while England would have had the easier task of further expanding her colonial empire without great difficulty and profiting from the mutual weakening of the mainland powers. At last and not least, during a military engagement on the mainland and for a long time afterwards, we would not have found the strength, means and leisure to promote the development of our war fleet in the way we could. So we had only the option of bypassing English interests, as it were, of avoiding enemy clashes and docile dependency in the same way. England and the German fleet. So we have indeed succeeded in creating that power at sea, unmolested and uninfluenced by England, which gives our economic interests and our world-political will the real basis, and which to attack must appear a serious risk even to the strongest opponent. During the first ten years after the introduction of the naval bill of 1897 and the start of our shipbuilding, an extremely determined British policy would have been able to forcefully prevent the development of Germany into a naval power, to render us harmless before our claws had grown at sea. In England such action against Germany has been repeatedly called for. On February 3, 1905, the Admiralty's civil lord, Mr. Arthur Lee, declared in a public speech that one had to keep one's eyes on the North Sea, gather the British fleet in the North Sea and, in the event of war, “strike the first strike before the other party could find time to read in the newspapers that war has been declared”. The Daily Chronicle underlined this omission with the words: “If the German fleet had been destroyed in October 1904, we in Europe would have had peace for sixty years. For these reasons, we consider the statements made by Mr. Arthur Lee, assuming they were made on behalf of the Cabinet, to be a wise and peaceful declaration of the unchanging purpose of the Lady of the Seas. ”In the fall of 1904 the Army and Navy Gazette had stated how It was unbearable that England should be compelled, simply by the presence of the German fleet, to take precautionary measures which otherwise would not be necessary. “We have,” it said in this article, “at one point or another have had to blow the life out of a fleet that we had reason to believe could be used to harm us. In England, as on the mainland, there is no shortage of people who consider the German navy to be the only real threat to the maintenance of peace in Europe. Be that as it may, we content ourselves with pointing out that the present moment is particularly favorable for our demand that this fleet not be enlarged. "At the same time a respected English review wrote:" When the German fleet is destroyed, the peace of Europe would be secured for two generations; England and France or England and the United States or all three would vouch for the freedom of the seas and prevent the building of new ships which are dangerous weapons in the hands of ambitious powers with growing populations and without colonies. ”Just about this time, in the autumn of 1904 France was preparing to snub us in Morocco. A few months earlier, in June 1904, a French publicist had told me that the construction of our navy was causing great and growing unrest in large English circles. It is not yet clear there how the continuation of our shipbuilding is to be prevented, whether through direct ideas or by favoring the chauvinistic elements in France. Today England allows us to be regarded as a sea power, as the strongest sea power after itself. When, in the winter of 1909, an English speaker in parliament stated the fact that England would not need to arm so feverishly at sea if the arrival of German maritime power had been prevented ten years earlier, he expressed a thought that is understandable and perhaps correct from the standpoint of pure power politics. The opportunity to nip a nascent fleet in the bud, which England repeatedly used in earlier times and against other countries, could not have been employed against Germany, since we did not offer the flank. The peacefulness of German world politics. The fleet that we have created since 1897 and that makes us the second sea power on earth, admittedly at a great distance from England, ensures us the possibility to lend political power to the representation of our German interests in the world. Its primary task is to protect our world trade, the life and honor of our German fellow citizens abroad. German warships have fulfilled this task in the West Indies and East Asia. It is certainly a predominantly defensive role that we assign to our fleet. It goes without saying that this defensive role could expand in serious international conflicts. If the Reich were to be attacked willfully, no matter from which side, the sea as a theater of war will gain a completely different and increased importance than in 1870. That in such a case the navy and the army, true to the Prussian-German tradition, will take on the attack would see the best parade, there is no need to say a word about it. Completely irrelevant, however, is the concern that accompanied the construction of our fleet that Germany would like to awaken the aggressiveness with the strengthening of Germany at sea. Of all the peoples on earth, the German is the one that has been the least likely to attack and conquer. If we disregard the Roman journeys of the German emperors of the Middle Ages, whose driving force was more a great, dreamlike political error than an unbridled lust for conquest and war, then we will look in vain for wars of conquest in our past, similar to those of France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The 18th and 19th centuries, those of Habsburg Spain, Sweden in its heyday, and those of the Russian and English empires in the course of their fundamentally expansive national policy should be set alongside. In centuries we Germans have never striven for anything more than the defense and security of our fatherland. Just as the great king did not lead his undefeated battalions to adventures after the conquest of Silesia and the securing of the independence of the Prussian monarchy, so little did Emperor Wilhelm the first and Bismarck think about doing new things after the unprecedented successes of two great wars. If a people can boast of political self-restraint, it is the German one. We have always limited our own successes and have not waited for a limit to be set by the exhaustion of our national resources. Our development therefore lacks the epochs of blinding sudden ascent and has been more of a slow, undaunted forward work and progress. The restless way of other peoples to draw the incentive for new, greater ventures from the successes achieved, is almost completely lacking in the German. Our political style is not that of the daringly speculating merchant, but rather that of the thoughtful farmer who patiently awaits the harvest after careful sowing. After the Franco-German war, the world was full of fear of Germany's new war-like ventures. No plan of conquest of any kind was foreseen at the time. More than four decades have passed since then. We are richer in people's strength and material goods, our army has become stronger and stronger. The German fleet came into being and developed. The number of major wars fought since 1870 has been greater rather than fewer than earlier in the same period. Germany did not seek participation in any and coolly resisted all attempts to be drawn into warlike entanglements. Without pride or exaggeration it can be said that never in history has an armed force of such superior strength as the German served to the same extent for the maintenance and security of peace. This fact is not explained by our love of peace, which is beyond doubt. The German has always loved peace and yet had to take up swords again and again because he had to defend himself against foreign attacks. In fact, the peace was primarily preserved, not because a German attack on other nations was not carried out, but because other nations feared the German defense against any attack of their own. The strength of our armaments has proven to be a protection of peace that the last turbulent centuries have not known. A world-historical judgment lies in this fact. The addition of the fleet to our armed forces means an increased and strengthened guarantee of peace if German foreign policy is properly managed. Just as the army prevents the willful disruption of Germany's continental political path, so the navy prevents the disruption of our global political development. As long as we did not have the fleet, our vastly growing world economic interests, which are at the same time inalienable national economic interests, were the open target that the German Reich offered its adversaries. When we covered this nakedness and made the attack on the Reich at sea a risk for every enemy, we not only protected our own peace, but also with it the European peace. Our task was to obtain means of protection, not means of attack. After joining the ranks of the naval powers, we calmly continued on the paths we had previously trodden. The new era of boundless German world politics, which was often prophesied abroad, has not materialized. However, we now have the opportunity to defend our interests effectively, to counter attacks and to maintain and expand our position everywhere, especially in Asia Minor and Africa. The network of our international relations had to expand to the extent that we grew into our global political tasks. Far-away overseas empires, which we had little to worry about in the era of pure continental politics, became of greater and greater importance to us. Maintaining good, if possible friendly, relations with them became an important duty of our foreign policy. First and foremost, these were the two new great powers of the West and the East, the United States of North America and Japan. Here as there it was necessary to overcome certain temporary cloudings before the initiation of friendly relations could be thought of. Germany and the United States. During the Spanish-American war, strong sympathies for Spain had emerged in a section of German public opinion, which was not found to be pleasant in North America. Also, the way in which part of the English and American press portrayed incidents that had taken place off Manila between our squadron and the American fleet, clouded German-American relations. This disgruntlement reached its climax in February 1899, so that it seemed advisable to speak out emphatically about the initiation of more favorable relations between the two blood and tribe-related peoples. What I said in this direction in the Reichstag at the time has since proven to be true: “From the standpoint of a sensible policy, there is no reason whatsoever why Germany and America should not have the best relations with one another. I do not see any point where German and American interests met in a hostile manner, and in the future I do not see any point where the lines of their development would have to cross hostile one another. We can put it calmly, in no other country has America found better understanding and fairer recognition than in Germany during the last century.” Kaiser Wilhelm the second brought this understanding and recognition of America more than any other, and the establishment of a good and secure relationship with the United States is primarily due to him. He gradually won over the Americans through a kind treatment that was as consistent as it was understanding. He had good personal relationships with President Roosevelt. The dispatch of Prince Heinrich to America had the full hoped-for success. He made a major contribution to reminding both peoples of how many common interests they have in common and how little real contrasts separate them. It was also a happy thought of our emperor to shape the spiritual connection between the two Germanic peoples even more firmly and intimately through the exchange of well-known university teachers from German and American universities. Nowhere in the world have German intellectual life, German poetry, philosophy, and science found such sincere admiration as in the United States. On the other hand, in no other country have the wonders of American technology been studied so eagerly and so joyfully recognized as in Germany. This intimate exchange of intellectual and scientific achievements gained its external expression through the establishment of the exchange professors. The increasingly intimate relations between peoples and heads of state also fostered our political relations with the United States. Not only did we get on friendly terms with the Americans about Samoa, America also never stood in our way during the critical period which our policy had to go through at the beginning of the new century. There is hardly an empire, apart from Austria, where there are such natural prerequisites for lasting friendly relations with us as North America. About 12 million Germans live in the United States. Since the founding of the “German-American National League” in 1901, the endeavor has been growing in them to maintain and revive the connection with their old German homeland while remaining fully loyal to their new fatherland. As long as politics here and there are led by steady hands, exaggerated expressions of friendship are avoided as well as nervous moods in relation to the occasional friction that can always arise in the economic field, we need for our relations with the United States have nothing to worry about. Respect for one another on the basis and within the limits of self-respect will also be most conducive to friendship between us and the United States. Germany and Japan. Like our relationship with America, our relationship with Japan went through a period of resentment towards the end of the 19th century. Up until the early 1890s, we had served the Japanese as role models and were considered friends. Our military facilities, our warlike past found ardent admirers in the East Asian warrior people, and after the defeat of China the Japanese fancied and proudly called themselves the Prussians of the East. Our relations with Japan took a great shock when, in 1895, together with France and Russia, we forced victorious Japan to cut back its demands on the conquered China. When we fell into the arms of Japan, we lost many of the sympathies that had been accumulated there for decades, without reaping any special thanks from France or Russia. A picture drawn up by the German Kaiser around this time, which was only intended to serve ideal peace efforts, had been eagerly and successfully used by our opponents and competitors to destroy us in Japan. Years of diligence gradually made room for a better mood against Germany in Japan. We have no interest in opposing the excellently capable and brave people. Of course, we are also not there to take the chestnuts out of the fire for the Japanese. It would have been a considerable relief not only for Japan but also for England if we had allowed ourselves to be pushed against Russia for the sake of their East Asian interests. It would have served us badly. As unfortunate as it was the thought of annoying Japan for the beautiful eyes of France and Russia and of alienating us, so little could we be concerned with dividing us with Russia on account of the East Asian interests of other powers. Towards the end of the 1880s, Prince Bismarck once said to me, referring to Russia and Asia: “It is fermenting and rumbling in the Russian barrel very worryingly, that could lead to an explosion one day. It would be best for world peace if the explosion did not take place in Europe, but in Asia. We just have to not stand in front of the bunghole so that the peg doesn't hit us in the stomach. ”If we had allowed ourselves to be pushed forward before the Russo-Japanese war against Russia, we would have come to stand in front of that bunghole during the explosion. Occasionally I have heard Prince Bismarck say: “If Mr. N. suggests something that is useful for him but harmful to you, it is not stupid of N. But it is stupid of you if you accept it. " Continental and world politics. If, after having achieved the great goal of her European policy, Germany can reach into the wider world with her increased and constantly increasing forces, that does not mean that the whole sum of our national force has now become free for Business outside of mainland Europe. The transition to world politics means to us the opening of new political paths, the development of new national tasks, but not abandoning all old paths, not a fundamental change in our tasks. The new world politics is an expansion, not a transfer of our political field of activity. We must never forget that the consolidation of our European superpower position made it possible for us to expand the national economy into a world economy, and continental politics into world politics. German world politics is based on the successes of our European politics. At the moment when the firm foundations of Germany's European position of power begin to shake, the global political structure will no longer be tenable. It is conceivable that a world political failure would leave our position in Europe untouched, but it is unthinkable that a significant loss of power and validity in Europe would not result in a corresponding shaking of our world political position. We can only conduct world politics on the basis of European politics. The preservation of our strong position on the mainland is today, as in the Bismarckian period, the beginning and end of our national policy. Even if we have gone beyond Bismarck in terms of world politics, following our national needs, we will always have to assert the principles of his European politics as the solid ground under our feet. The roots of the new age must rest in the traditions of the old. Here, too, the guarantee for healthy development lies in a reasonable balance between old and new, between preservation and progress. The renunciation of world politics would have been tantamount to a slow and secure withering of our national vital forces. A policy of world political adventure without taking our old European interests into account might initially be attractive and impressive, but would soon lead to a crisis, if not to a catastrophe, in our development. The healthy political successes are not won much differently from the commercial successes: in a quiet journey between the Scylla of fearful caution and the Charybdis of daring speculation. Since the day when I took over the business of the Foreign Office, I have been firmly convinced that there would be no clash between Germany and England, which would be a great misfortune for both countries, for Europe and for humanity. If we one, built ourselves a fleet that would be associated with an excessive risk for any enemy to attack. Two, we did not engage in any aimless and excessive building and arming, no overheating our naval boiler beyond that. Three, did not allow any power to get too close to our respect and dignity, Four, also put nothing between us and England that could not have been made good. That is why I have always repudiated indecent attacks, which offend our national sentiments, from whatever side they might come from, but I have resisted any temptation to interfere in the Boer War, for such an attack would have inflicted a wound on the English self-esteem that would never have closed again. Five if we kept calm nerves and cold blood, and neither snubbed nor ran after England. "The basis of a healthy and sensible world policy is a strong national home policy." I said that in December 1901, when the Member of Parliament Eugen Richter wanted to construct a contradiction between the policy on which the new customs tariff was based, the protection of domestic work, in particular the agricultural, purpose, and the new world politics, which followed the interests of trade. The apparent contrast was actually a compensation, for the German world economy had emerged from a national economic life that had developed to its peak. The connection between politics and economics is more intimate in our modern times than in the past. Modern states react directly with their internal and external policies to the fluctuations and changes in highly developed economic life, and every significant economic interest soon presses for political expression in some way. World trade, with all the vital interests that depend on it, has made our world politics necessary. The domestic economic life demands a corresponding domestic policy. A balance must be sought and found back and forth. Seven years after the tariff negotiations, the then economically controversial balance between German world and home politics came into play on the occasion of the Bosnian crisis in 1908. This event is perhaps better than any academic discussion, the right real relationship between our overseas ones and to clarify our European policy. Until the Bosnian question was raised, German politics was predominantly dominated by considerations for our world politics. Not due to Germany orienting its foreign relations to its overseas interests, but because of England's displeasure with the development of German overseas trade and especially with the strengthening of German sea power which had an impact on the grouping of powers and their position in relation to the German Reich. The public opinion of the otherwise so level-headed and intrepid English people at times abandoned themselves to a completely unfounded, even senseless and therefore almost panic-like fear of a German landing in England. This concern was systematically nourished by no small part of the widely ramified and powerful English press. English encirclement policy. In English politics from the beginning of the new century the influence of King Edward the seventh, a monarch with an unusual knowledge of human nature and an art of treating people, of rich and varied experience, made itself felt. English policy was directed not so much directly against German interests as it tried to gradually checkmate Germany by shifting the European balance of power. Through a series of entents, for the sake of which many not unimportant British interests were sacrificed, it sought to attract the other states of Europe and thus isolate Germany. It was the era of the so-called English encirclement policy. A Mediterranean treaty had been signed with Spain. France naturally came to visit as the adversary of the German Reich, and the Anglo-French treaty over Egypt and Morocco in 1904 pushed the memory of Fashoda completely into the background. In the aftermath of the heavy defeats it had suffered on land and sea in the war with Japan, and severe internal unrest, Russia had decided to come to an agreement with England on spheres of interest in Asia, and thus brought England closer. Italy was wooed with zeal. Similar occa

Friday, Robert A. Heinlein. ...with all governments everywhere tightening down on everything wherever they can, with their computers and their Public Eyes and ninety-nine other sorts of electronic surveillance, there is a moral obligation on each free person to fight back wherever possible-keep underground railways open, keep shades drawn, give misinformation to computers. Computers are literal-minded and stupid; electronic records aren’t really records …so it is good to be alert to opportunities to foul up the system. If you can’t evade a tax, pay a little too much to confuse their computers. Transpose digits. And so on... No matter how lavishly over paid, civil servants everywhere are convinced that they are horribly underpaid-but all public employees have larceny in their hearts, or they wouldn’t be feeding at the public trough. These two facts are all you need-but be careful! a public employee, having no self-respect, needs and demands a show of public respect. there ain’t no such animal as a well-documented conspiracy. Or sometimes too well documented but the documents contradict each other. If a conspiracy happened quite some time ago, a generation or longer, it becomes impossible to establish the truth. You should leave this planet; for you there is nothing here. The Balkanization of North America ended the last chance of reversing the decay of the Renaissance Civilization. It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named …but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.” Friday, Robert A. Heinlein. One. As I left the Kenya Beanstalk capsule, he was right on my heels. He followed me through the door leading to Customs, Health, and Immigration. As the door contracted behind him, I killed him. I have never liked riding the Beanstalk. My distaste was full blown even before the disaster to the Quito Skyhook. A cable that goes up into the sky with nothing to hold it up smells too much of magic. But the only other way to reach Ell-Five takes too long and costs too much; my orders and expense account did not cover it. So, I had been edgy even before I left the shuttle from Ell-Five at Stationary Station to board the Beanstalk capsule …but damn it, being edgy isn’t reason to kill a man. I had intended only to put him out for a few hours. The subconscious has its own logic. I grabbed him before he hit the deck and dragged him quickly toward a rank of bonded bombproof lockers, hurrying to avoid staining the floor shoved his thumb against the latch, pushed him inside as I grabbed his pouch, found his Diners Club card, slid it into the slot, salvaged his IDs and cash, and chucked the pouch in with the cadaver as the armor slid down and clanged home. I turned away. A Public Eye was floating above and beyond me. No reason to jump out of my boots. Nine times out of ten an Eye is cruising at random, unmonitored, and its twelve-hour loop mayor may not he scanned by a human before it is scrubbed. The tenth time- A peace officer maybe monitoring it closely. Or she maybe scratching herself and thinking about what she did last night. So, I ignored it and kept on toward the exit end of the corridor. That pesky Eye should have followed me as I was the only mass in that passageway radiating at thirty-seven degrees. But it tarried, three seconds at least, scanning that locker, before again fastening on me. I was estimating which of three possible courses of action was safest when that maverick piece of my brain took over and my hands executed a fourth: My pocket pen became a laser beam and “killed” that Public Eye-killed it dead as I held the beam at full power until the Eye dropped to the deck, not only blinded but with antigrav shorted out. And its memory scrubbed-I hoped. I used my shadow’s credit card again, working the locker’s latch with my pen to avoid disturbing his thumbprint. It took a heavy shove with my boot to force the Eye into that crowded locker. Then I hurried; it was time to be someone else. Like most ports of entry Beanstalk Kenya has travelers’ amenities on both sides of the barrier. Instead of going through inspection I found the washrooms and paid cash to use a bath-dressing room. Twenty-seven minutes later I not only had had a bath but also had acquired different hair, different clothes, another face-that takes three hours to put on will come off in fifteen minutes of soap and hot water. I was not eager to show my real face, but I had to get rid of the persona I had used on this mission. What part of it had not washed down the drain now went into the shredder: jump suit, boots, pouch, fingerprints, contact lenses, and passport. The passport I now carried used my right name-well, one of my names-a stereographs of my bare face, and had a very sincere Ell-Five transient stamp in it. Before shredding the personal items, I had taken off the corpse, I looked through them-and paused. His credit cards and IDs showed four identities. Where were his other three passports? Probably somewhere on the dead meat in that locker. I had not given it a proper search-no time! -I had simply grabbed what he carried in his pouch. Go back and look? If I kept trotting back and opening a locker full of still-warm corpse, someone was bound to notice. By taking his cards and passport I had hoped to postpone identifying the body and thereby give myself more time to get clear but-wait a moment. Mmm, yes, passport and Diners Club card were both for “Adolf Belsen.” American Express extended credit to “Albert Beaumont” and the Bank of Hong Kong took care of “Arthur Bookman” while MasterCard provided for “Archibald Buchanan.” I “reconstructed” the crime: Beaumont-Bookman-Buchanan had just thumbed the latch of the locker when Belsen sapped him from behind, shoved him into the locker, used his own Diners Club card to lock it and left hastily. Yes, an excellent theory…and now to muddy the water still more. Those IDs and credit cards went back of my own in my wallet; “Belsen’s” passport I concealed about my person. I could not stand a skin search but there are ways to avoid a skin search including (but not limited to) bribery, influence, corruption, misdirection, and razzle-dazzle. As I came out of the washroom, passengers from the next capsule were trickling in and queuing up at Customs, Health, and Immigration; I joined a queue. The CHI officer remarked on how very light my jump bag was and asked about the state of the up-high black market. I gave him my best stupid look, the one on my passport picture. About then he found the correct amount of squeeze tucked into my passport and dropped the matter. I asked him for the best hotel and the best restaurant. He said that he wasn’t supposed to make recommendations but that he thought well of the Nairobi Hilton. As for food, if I could afford it, the Fat Man, across from the Hilton, had the best food in Africa. He hoped that I would enjoy my stay in Kenya. I thanked him. A few minutes later I was down the mountain and, in the city, and regretting it. Kenya Station is over five kilometers high; the air is always thin and cold. Nairobi is higher than Denver, nearly as high as Ciudad de Mexico, but it is only a fraction of the height of Mount Kenya, and it is just a loud shout from the equator. The air felt thick and too warm to breathe; almost at once my clothes were soggy with sweat; I could feel my feet starting to swell- and besides they ached from full gee. I don’t like off Earth assignments but getting back from one is worse. I called on mind-control training to help me not notice my discomfort. Garbage. If my mind-control master had spent less time squatting in lotus and more time in Kenya, his instruction might have been more useful. I forgot it and concentrated on the problem: how to get out of this sauna bath quickly. The lobby of the Hilton was pleasantly cool. Best of all, it held a fully automated travel bureau. I went in, found an empty booth, and sat down in front of the terminal. At once the attendant showed up. “May I help you?” I told her I thought I could manage; the keyboard looked familiar. (It was an ordinary Kensington 400.) She persisted: “I’d be glad to punch it for you. I don’t have anyone waiting.” She looked about sixteen, a sweet face, a pleasant voice, and a manner that convinced me that she really did take pleasure in being helpful. What I wanted least was someone helping me while I did things with credit cards that weren’t mine. So, I slipped her a medium-size tip while telling her that I really did prefer to punch it myself-but I would shout if I got into difficulties. She protested that I did not have to tip her-but she did not insist on giving it back and went away. “Adolf Belsen” took the tube to Cairo, then semi ballistic to Hong Kong, where he had reserved a room at the Peninsula, all courtesy of Diners Club. “Albert Beaumont” was on vacation. He took Safari Jets to Timbuktu, where American Express had placed him for two weeks at the luxury Shangri-La on the shore of the Sahara Sea. The Bank of Hong Kong paid “Arthur Bookman’s” way to Buenos Aires. “Archibald Buchanan” visited his native Edinburgh, travel prepaid by MasterCard. Since he could do it all by tube, with one transfer at Cairo and automated switching at Copenhagen, he should be at his ancestral home in two hours. I then used the travel computer to make a number of inquiries- but no reservations, no purchases, and temporary memory only. Satisfied, I left the booth, asked the dimpled attendant whether or not the subway entrance I saw in the lobby would let me reach the Fat Man restaurant. She told me what turns to make. So, I went down into the subway-and caught the tube for Mombasa, again paying cash. Mombasa is only thirty minutes, 450 kilometers, from Nairobi, but it is at sea level, which makes Nairobi’s climate seem heavenly; I got out as quickly as I could arrange it. So, twenty-seven hours later I was in the Illinois Province of the Chicago Imperium. Along time, you might say, for a great-circle arc of only thirteen thousand kilometers. But I didn’t travel great circle and did not go through a customs barrier or an immigration checkpoint. Nor did I use a credit card, even a borrowed one. And I managed to grab seven hours of sleep in Alaska Free State; I hadn’t had any sound sleep since leaving Ell-Five space city two days earlier. How? Trade secret. I may never need that route again but someone in my line of work will need it. Besides, as my boss says, with all governments everywhere tightening down on everything wherever they can, with their computers and their Public Eyes and ninety-nine other sorts of electronic surveillance, there is a moral obligation on each free person to fight back wherever possible-keep underground railways open, keep shades drawn, give misinformation to computers. Computers are literal-minded and stupid; electronic records aren’t really records …so it is good to be alert to opportunities to foul up the system. If you can’t evade a tax, pay a little too much to confuse their computers. Transpose digits. And so on... The key to traveling half around a planet without leaving tracks is: Pay cash. Never credit, never anything that goes into a computer. And a bribe is never a bribe; any such transfer of valuta must save face for the recipient. No matter how lavishly over paid, civil servants everywhere are convinced that they are horribly underpaid, but all public employees have larceny in their hearts, or they wouldn’t be feeding at the public trough. These two facts are all you need-but be careful! a public employee, having no self-respect, needs and demands a show of public respect. I always pander to this need and the trip had been without incident. I didn’t count the fact that the Nairobi Hilton blew up and burned a few minutes after I took the tube for Mombasa; it would have seemed downright paranoid to think that it had anything to do with me. I did get rid of four credit cards and a passport just after I heard about it, but I had intended to take that precaution anyhow. If the opposition wanted to cancel me-possible but unlikely-it would be swatting a fly with an ax to destroy a multimillion-crown property and kill or injure hundreds or thousands of others just to get me. Un-professional. As maybe. Here I was at last in the Imperium, another mission completed with only minor bobbles. I exited at Lincoln Meadows while musing that I had garnered enough brownie points to wheedle the boss out of a few weeks R&R in New Zealand. My family, a seven S-group, was in Christchurch; I had not seen them in months. High time! But in the meantime, I relished the cool clean air and the rustic beauty of Illinois-it was not South Island, but it was the next best thing. They say these meadows used to be covered with dingy factories-it seems hard to believe. Today the only building in sight from the station was the Avis livery stable across the street. At the hitching rail outside the station were two Avis Retrigs as well as the usual buggies and farm wagons. I was about to pick one of the Avis nags when I recognized a rig just pulling in: a beautiful, matched pair of bays hitched to a Lockheed landau. “Uncle Jim! Over here! It’s me!” The coachman touched his whip to the brim of his top hat, then brought his team to a halt so that the landau was at the steps where I waited. He climbed down and took off his hat. “It’s good to have you home, Miss Friday.” I gave him a quick hug, which he endured patiently. Uncle Jim Prufit harbored strong notions of propriety. They say he was convicted of advocating papism-some said that he was actually caught bare-handed, celebrating mass. Others said nonsense, he was infiltrating for the company and took a fall to protect others. Me, I don’t know that much about politics, but I suppose a priest would have formal manners, whether he was a real one or a member of our trade. I could be wrong; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a priest. As he handed me in, making me feel like a “lady,” I asked, “How did you happen to be here?” “The Master sent me to meet you, miss.” “He did? But I didn’t let him know when I would arrive.” I tried to think who, on my back track, could have been part of Boss’s data net. “Sometimes I think the boss has a crystal ball.” “It do seem like it, don’t it?” Jim clucked to Gog and Magog, and we headed for the farm. I settled back and relaxed, listening to the homey, cheerful clomp clomp! of horses’ hooves on dirt. I woke up as Jim turned into our gate and was wide awake by the time he pulled under the porte-cochere. I jumped down without waiting to be a “lady” and turned to thank Jim. They hit me from both sides. Dear old Uncle Jim did not warn me. He simply watched while they took me. Two. My own stupid fault! I was taught in basic that no place is ever totally safe and that anyplace you habitually return to is your top danger spot, the place most likely for booby-trap, ambush, stakeout. But apparently, I had learned this only as parrot rote; as an old pro I had ignored it. So it bit me. This rule is analogous to the fact that the person most likely to murder you is some member of your own family-and that grim statistic is ignored too; it has to be. Live in fear of your own family? Better to be dead! My worst stupidity was to ignore a loud, clear, specific warning, not just a general principle. How had dear old “Uncle” Jim managed to meet my capsule?-on the right day and almost to the minute. Crystal ball? Boss is smarter than the rest of us but he does not use magic. I may be wrong but, I’m positive. If Boss had supernatural powers, he would not need the rest of us. I had not reported my movements to Boss; I didn’t even tell him when I left Ell-Five. This is doctrine; he does not encourage us to check in every time we move, as he knows that a leak can be fatal. Even I didn’t know that I was going to take that particular capsule until I took it. I had ordered breakfast in Hotel Seward’s coffee shop, stood up without eating it, dropped some money on the counter- three minutes later I was sealed into an express capsule. So how? Obviously chopping off that tail at Kenya Beanstalk Station had not eliminated all tails on me. Either there had been a backup tail on the spot or Mister “Belsen” (“Beaumont,” “Bookman,” “Buchanan”) had been missed at once and replaced quickly. Possibly they had been with me all along or perhaps what had happened to “Belsen” had made them cautious about stepping on my heels. Or last night’s sleep may have given them time to catch me. Which variant was immaterial. Shortly after I climbed into that capsule in Alaska, someone had phoned a message somewhat like this: “Firefly to Dragonfly. Mosquito left here express capsule International Corridor nine minutes ago. Anchorage traffic control shows capsule programmed to sidetrack and open Lincoln Meadows your time eleven-oh-three.” Or some such chatter. Some unfriendly had seen me enter that capsule and had phoned ahead; otherwise, sweet old Jim would not have been able to meet me. Logic. Hindsight is wonderful-it shows you how you busted your skull after you’ve busted it. But I made them pay for their drinks. If I had been smart, I would have surrendered once I saw that I was hopelessly outnumbered. But I’m not smart; I’ve already proved that. Better yet, I would have run like hell when Jim told me the boss had sent him, instead of climbing in and taking a nap, fer Gossake. I recall killing only one of them. Possibly two. But why did they insist on doing it the hard way? They could have waited until I was inside and gassed me, or used a sleepy Dart, or even a sticky rope. They had to take me alive, that was clear. Didn’t they know that a field agent with my training when attacked goes automatically into overdrive? Maybe I’m not the only stupid. But why waste time by raping me? This whole operation had amateurish touches. No professional group uses either beating or rape before interrogation today; there is no profit in it; any professional is trained to cope with either or both. For rape she (or he-I hear it’s worse for males) can either detach the mind and wait for it to be over, or (advanced training) emulate the ancient Chinese adage. Or, in place of method A or B, or combined with B if the agent’s histrionic ability is up to it, the victim can treat rape as an opportunity to gain an edge over her captors. I’m no great shakes as an actress but I try and, while it has never enabled me to turn the tables on unfriendlies, at least once it kept me alive. This time method C did not affect the outcome but did cause a little healthy dissension. Four of them (my estimate from touch and body odors) had me in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It may have been my own room but I could not be certain as I had been unconscious for a while and was now dressed (solely) in adhesive tape over my eyes. They had me on a mattress on the floor, a gang bang with minor sadism…which I ignored, being very busy with method C. In my mind I called them “Straw Boss” (seemed to be in charge), “Rocks” (they called him that-rocks in his head, probably), “Shorty” (take that either way), and “the other one” as he did not have distinctive characteristics. I worked on all of them-method acting, of course-reluctant, have to be forced, then gradually your passion overcomes you; you just can’t help yourself. Any man will believe that routine; they are suckers for it-but I worked especially hard on Straw Boss as I hoped to achieve the status of teacher’s pet or some such. Straw Boss wasn’t so bad; methods Band C combined nicely. But I worked hardest on Rocks because with him it had to be C combined with A; his breath was so foul. He wasn’t too clean in other ways, too; it took great effort to ignore it and make my responses flattering to his macho ego. After he became flaccid, he said, “Mac, we’re wasting our time. This slut enjoys it.” “So, get out of the way and give the kid another chance. He’s ready.” “Not yet. I’m going to slap her around, make her take us seriously.” He let me have a big one, left side of my face. I yelped. “Cut that out!” -Straw Boss’s voice. “Who says so? Mac, you’re getting too big for your britches.” “I say so.” It was a new voice, very loud-amplified-from the sound-system speaker in the ceiling, no doubt. “Rocky, Mac is your squad leader, you know that. Mac, send Rocky to me; I want a word with him.” “Major, I was just trying to help!” “You heard the man, Rocks,” Straw Boss said quietly. “Grab your pants and get moving.” Suddenly the man’s weight was no longer on me and his stinking breath was no longer in my face. Happiness is relative. The voice in the ceiling spoke again: “Mac, is it true that Miss Friday simply enjoys the little ceremony we arranged for her?” “It’s possible, Major,” Straw Boss said slowly. “She does act like it.” “How about it, Friday? Is this the way you get your kicks?” I didn’t answer his question. Instead, I discussed him and his family in detail, with especial attention to his mother and sister. If I had told him the truth-that Straw Boss would be rather pleasant under other circumstances, that Shorty and the other man did not matter one way or the other, but that Rocks was an utter slob whom I would cancel at the first opportunity-it would have blown method C. “The same to you, sweetie,” the voice answered cheerfully. “I hate to disappoint you but I’m a crèche baby. Not even a wife, much less a mother or a sister. Mac, put the cuffs on her and throw a blanket over her. But don’t give her a shot; I’ll be talking to her later.” Amateur. My boss would never have alerted a prisoner to expect interrogation. “Hey, crèche baby!” “Yes, dear?” I accused him of a vice not requiring a mother or a sister but anatomically possible-so I am told-for some males. The voice answered, “Every night, hon. It’s very soothing.” So, mark one up for the Major. I decided that, with training, he could have been a pro. Nevertheless, he was a bloody amateur and I didn’t respect him. He had wasted one, maybe two, of his ables, caused me unnecessarily to suffer bruises, contusions, and multiple personal indignities-even heartbreaking ones had I been an untrained female-and had wasted two hours or more. If my boss had been doing it, the prisoner would have spilled his/her guts at once and spent those two hours spouting her fullest memoirs into a recorder. Straw Boss even took the trouble to police me-led me into the bathroom and waited quietly while I peed, without making a production of it-and that was amateurish, too, as a useful technique, of the cumulative sort, in interrogating an amateur (not a pro) is to force him or her to break toilet training. If she has been protected from the harsher things in life or if he suffers from excessive amour-propre-as most males do-it is at least as effective as pain, and potentiates either with pain or with other humiliations. I don’t think Mac knew this. I figured him for basically a decent soul despite his taste for-no, aside from his taste for a bit of rape-a taste common to most males according to the Kinsey’s. Somebody had put the mattress back on the bed. Mac guided me to it, told me to lie on my back with my arms out. Then he cuffed me to the legs of the bed, using two pairs. They weren’t the peace officer type, but special ones, velvet-lined-the sort of junk used by idiots for SM games. I wondered who the pervert was? The Major? Mac made sure that they were secure but not too tight, then gently spread a blanket over me. I would not have been surprised had he kissed me good night. But he did not. He left quietly. Had he kissed me would method C call for returning it in full? Or turning my face and trying to refuse it? A nice question. Method C is based on I-just-can’t-help-myself and requires precise judgment as to when and how much enthusiasm to show. If the rapist suspects the victim of faking, she has lost the ploy. I had just decided, somewhat regretfully, that this hypothetical kiss should have been refused, when I fell asleep. I was not allowed enough sleep. I was exhausted from all the things that had happened to me and had sunk into deep sleep, soggy with it, when I was roused by a slap. Not Mac. Rocks, of course. Not as hard as he had hit me earlier but totally unnecessary. It seemed to me that he blamed me for whatever disciplining he had received from the Major…and I promised myself that, when time came to cancel him, I would do it slowly. I heard Shorty say, “Mac said not to hit her.” “I didn’t hit her. That was just a love tap to wake her up. Shut up and mind your own business. Stand clear and keep your gun on her. On her, you idiot!-not on me.” They took me down into the basement and into one of our own interrogation chambers. Shorty and Rocks left-I think that Shorty left and I know that Rocks did; his stink went away-and an interrogation team took over. I don’t know who or how many as not one of them ever said a word. The only voice was the one I thought of as “the Major.” It seemed to be coming through a speaker. “Good morning, Miss Friday.” (Morning? It seemed unlikely.) “Howdy, crèche baby!” “I’m glad that you are in fine fettle, dear, as this session is likely to prove long and tiring. Even unpleasant. I want to know all about you, love.” “Fire away. What will you have first?” “Tell me about this trip you just made, every tiny detail. And outline this organization you belong to. I might as well tell you that we already know a great deal about it, so if you lie, I will know it. Not even a little white fib, dear-for I will know it and what happens then I will regret but you will regret it far more.” “Oh, I won’t lie to you. Is a recorder running? This will take a long time.” “A recorder is running.” “Okay.” For three hours I spilled my guts. This was according to doctrine. My boss knows that ninety-nine out of a hundred will crack under sufficient pain, that almost that percentage will crack under long interrogation combined with nothing more than raw fatigue, but only Buddha Himself can resist certain drugs. Since he does not expect miracles and hates to waste agents, standard doctrine is: “If they grab you, sing!” So, he makes sure that a field operative never knows anything critical. A courier never knows what she is carrying. I know nothing about policy. I don’t know my boss’s name. I’m not sure whether we are a government agency or an arm of one of the multinationals. I do know where the farm is but so do many other people…and it is (was) very well defended. Other places I have visited only via closed authorized power vehicles-an APV took me (for example) to a practice area that maybe the far end of the farm. Or not. “Major, how did you crack this place? It was pretty strongly defended.” “I ask the questions, bright eyes. Let’s have that part again about how you were followed out of the Beanstalk capsule.” After a long time of this, when I had told all, I knew and was repeating myself, the Major stopped me. “Dear, you tell a very convincing story, and I don’t believe more than every third word. Let’s start procedure B.” Somebody grabbed my left arm, and a needle went in. Babble juice! I hoped these frimping amateurs weren’t as clumsy with it as they were in some other ways; you can get very dead in a hurry with an overdose. “Major! I had better sit down!” “Put her in a chair.” Somebody did so. For the next thousand years I did my best to tell exactly the same story no matter how bleary I felt. At some point I fell off the chair. They didn’t stick me back onto it but stretched me on the cold concrete instead. I went on babbling. Some silly time later I was given some other shot. It made my teeth ache and my eyeballs felt hot, but it snapped me awake. “Miss Friday!” “Yes, sir?” “Are you awake now?” “I think so.” “My dear, I think you have been most carefully indoctrinated under hypnosis to tell the same story under drugs that you tell so well without drugs. That’s too bad as I must now use another method. Can you stand up?” “I think so. I can try.” “Stand her up. Don’t let her fall.” Someone-some two-did so. I wasn’t steady but they held me. “Start procedure C, item five.” Someone stomped a heavy boot on my bare toes. I screamed. Look, you! If you are ever questioned under pain, do scream. The Iron Man routine just makes them worse and it worse. Take it from one who’s been there. Scream your head off and crack as fast as possible. I am not going to give details of what happened during the following endless time. If you have any imagination, it would nauseate you, and to tell it makes me want to throw up. I did, several times. I passed out, too, but they kept reviving me and the voice kept on asking questions. Apparently, the time came when reviving didn’t work, for the next thing I knew was back in bed-the same bed, I suppose-and again handcuffed to it. I hurt all over. That voice again, right above my head. “Miss Friday.” “What the hell do you want?” “Nothing. If it’s any consolation to you, dear girl, you are the only subject I have ever questioned that I could not get the truth out of, eventually.” “Go soothe yourself!” “Good night, dear.” The bloody amateur! Every word I had said to him was the naked truth. Three. Someone came in and gave me another hypodermic shot. Presently the pain went away, and I slept. I think I slept a long time. I either had confused dreams or half-awake periods or both. Some of it had to be dreams-dogs do talk, many of them, but they don’t lecture on the rights of living artifacts, do they? Sounds of a ruckus and people running up and down may have been real. But it felt like a nightmare because I tried to get out of bed and discovered that I couldn’t lift my head, much less get up and join the fun. There came a time when I decided that I really was awake, because cuffs no longer bothered my wrists and sticky tape was no longer across my eyes. But I didn’t jump up or even open my eyes. I knew that the first few seconds after I opened my eyes might be the best and possibly the only chance I would have to escape. I twitched muscles without moving. Everything seemed to be under control although I was more than a little sore here and there and several other places. Clothes? Forget them-not only did I have no idea where my clothes might be hut also there is no time to stop to dress when you are running for your life. Now to plan- There didn’t seem to be anyone in this room; was anyone on this floor? Hold still and listen, If and when I was fairly sure I was alone on this floor, get noiselessly out of bed and up the stairs like a mouse, on past the third floor into the attic, and hide. Wait for dark. Out an attic gable, down the roof and the back wall and into the woods. If I reached the woods back of the house, they would never catch me …but until I did, I would be an easy target. The chances? One in nine. Perhaps one in seven if I got really cranked up. The weakest spot in a poor plan was the high probability of being spotted before I was clear of the house … because, if I was spotted-no, when I was spotted-I would not only have to kill but I would have to be utterly quiet in doing so-because the alternative was to wait until they terminated me which would be shortly after “the Major” decided that there was no more to be squeezed out of me. Clumsy as these goons were, they were not so stupid-or the Major was not so stupid-as to let a witness who has been tortured and raped stay alive. I stretched years in all directions and listened. “Nothing was stirring, not even a mouse.” No point in waiting; every moment I delayed brought that much closer the time when someone would be stirring. I opened my eyes. “Awake, I see. Good.” “Boss! Where am I?” “What a time-ridden cliché. Friday, you can do better than that. Back up and try again.” I looked around me. A bedroom, possibly a hospital room. No windows. No-glare lighting. A characteristic grave like silence enhanced rather than broken by the softest of ventilation sighing. I looked back at Boss. He was a welcome sight. Same old unstylish eye patch-why wouldn’t he take time to have that eye regenerated? His canes were leaning against a table, in reach. He was wearing his usual sloppy raw-silk suit, a cut that looked like badly tailored pajamas. I was awfully glad to see him. “I still want to know where I am. And how. And why. Somewhere underground, surely-but where?” “Underground, surely, quite a few meters. ‘Where’ you will be told when you need to know, or at least how to get to and from. That was the shortcoming of our farm-a pleasant place but too many people knew its location. ‘Why’ is obvious. ‘How’ can wait. Report.” “Boss, you are the most exasperating man I have ever met.” “Long practice. Report.” “And your father met your mother at a swing ding. And he didn’t take off his hat.” “They met at a Baptist Sunday-school picnic and both of them believed in the Tooth Fairy. Report.” “Dirty ears. Snot. The trip to Ell-Five was without incident. I found Mister Mortenson and delivered to him the contents of my trick bellybutton. Routine was interrupted by a most unusual factor: The space city was experiencing an epidemic of respiratory disorder, etiology unknown, and I contracted it. Mister Mortenson was most kind; he kept me at home and his wives nursed me with great skill and tender loving care. Boss, I want them compensated.” “Noted. Continue.” “I was out of my silly head most of the time. That is why I ran a week behind schedule. But once I felt like traveling, I was able to leave at once as Mister Mortenson told me that I was already carrying the item, he had for you. How, Boss? My navel pouch again?” “Yes and no.” “That’s a hell of an answer!” “Your artificial pochette was used.” “I thought so. Despite the fact that there aren’t supposed to be any nerve endings there, I can feel something-pressure, maybe-when it’s loaded.” I pressed on my belly around my navel and tightened my belly muscles. “Hey, it’s empty! You unloaded it?” “No. Our antagonists did so.” “Then I failed! Oh, God, Boss, this is awful.” “No,” he said gently, “you succeeded. In the face of great danger and monumental obstacles you succeeded perfectly.” “I did?” (Ever had the Victoria Cross pinned on you?) “Boss, cut the double talk and draw me a diagram.” ”I will.” But maybe I had better draw a diagram first. I have a ‘possum pouch, created by plastic surgery, behind my bellybutton. It isn’t large but you can crowd one whale of a lot of microfilm into a space of about one cubic centimeter. You can’t see it because the sphincter valve that serves it holds the navel scar closed. My belly button looks normal. Unbiased judges tell me that I have a pretty belly and a sightly navel …which, in some important ways, is better than having a pretty face, which I don’t have. The sphincter is a synthetic silicone elastomer that holds the navel tight at all times, even if I am unconscious. This is necessary as there are no nerves there to give voluntary control of contraction and relaxation, such as is possible with the anal, vaginal, and-for some people-throat sphincters. To load the pouch use a dab of K-Y jelly or other nonpetroleum lubricant, and push it in by thumb, no sharp corners, please! To unload it I take the fingers of both hands and pull the artificial sphincter open as much as I can, then press hard with my abdominal muscles-and it pops right out. The art of smuggling things in the human body has a long history. The classic ways are in the mouth, in the nasal sinuses, in the stomach, the gut, the rectum, vagina, bladder, eye socket of a missing eye, ear canal, and exotic and not very useful methods using tattoos sometimes covered with hair. Every one of the classic ways is known to every customs officer and every special agent public or private the world round, Luna, space cities, other planets, and anywhere men have reached. So, forget them. The only classic method that can still beat a pro is the Purloined Letter. But the Purloined Letter is high art indeed and, even when used perfectly, it should be planted on an innocent who can’t give it away under drugs. Take a look at the next thousand bellybuttons you encounter socially. Now that my pouch has been compromised, it is possible that one or two will conceal surgically emplaced hideaways like mine. You can expect a spate of them soon, then no more will be emplaced as any novelty in smuggling becomes useless once the word gets around. In the meantime customs officers are going to be poking rude fingers into bellybuttons. I hope a lot of those officers get poked in the eye by angry victims-navels tend to be sensitive and ticklish. “Friday, the weak point of that pochette in you has always been that any skillful interrogation-“ “They were clumsy.” “-or rough interrogation using drugs could force you to mention its existence.” “Must have been after they shot me with babble juice. I don’t recall mentioning it.” “Probably. Or word may have come to them through other channels, as several people know of it-you, me, three nurses, two surgeons, one anesthesiologist, possibly others. Too many. No matter how our antagonists knew, they did remove what you were carrying there. But don’t look glum; what they received was a very long list reduced to microfilm of all the restaurants listed in a 1928 telephone book of the former city of New York. No doubt there is a computer somewhere working on this list right now, attempting to break the code concealed in it … which will take a long time as there is no code concealed in it. A dummy load. Sense-free.” “And for this I have to chase all the way to Ell-Five, eat scummy food, get sick on the Beanstalk, and be buggered about by brutal bastards!” “Sorry about the last, Friday. But do you think I would risk the life of my most skillful agent on a useless mission?” (See why I work for the arrogant bastard? Flattery will get you anywhere.) “Sorry, sir.” “Check your appendectomy scar.” “Huh?” I reached under the sheet and felt it, then flipped the sheet back and looked at it. “What the hell?” “The incision was less than two centimeters and straight through the scar; no muscle tissue was disturbed. The item was withdrawn about twenty-four hours ago by reopening the same incision. With the accelerated repair methods that were used on you I am told that in two more days you will not be able to find the new scar in the old. But I am very glad that the Mortensons took such good care of you as I am sure that the artificial symptoms induced in you to cover what had to be done to you were not pleasant. By the way, there really is a catarrhal-fever epidemic there-fortuitous window dressing.” Boss paused. I stubbornly refused to ask him what I was carrying-he would not have told me anyhow. Shortly he added, “You were telling me about your trip home.” “The trip down was without incident. Boss, the next time you send me into space I want to go first-class, in an anti gravship. Not via that silly Indian rope trick.” - “Engineering analysis shows that a skyhook is safer than any ship. The Quito cable was lost through sabotage, not materiel failure.” “Stingy.” “I don’t intend to bind the mouths of the kine. You may use anti gray from here on if circumstances and timing permit. This time there were reasons to use the Kenya Beanstalk.” “Maybe so, but someone tailed me out of the Beanstalk capsule. As soon as we were alone, I killed him.” I paused. Someday, someday, I am going to cause his face to register surprise. I retackled the subject diagonally: “Boss, I need a refresher course, with some careful reorientation.” “Really? To what end?” “My kill reflex is too fast. I don’t discriminate. That bloke hadn’t done anything to rate killing. Surely, he was tailing me. But I should either have shaken him, there or in Nairobi, or, at most, knocked him cold and placed him on ice while I went elsewhere.” “We’ll discuss your possible need later. Continue.” I told him about the Public Eye and “Belsen’s” quadruple identity and how I had sent them to the four winds, then I outlined my trip home. He checked me. “You did not mention the destruction of that hotel in Nairobi.” “Huh? But, Boss, that had nothing to do with me. I was halfway to Mombasa.” “My dear Friday, you are too modest. A large number of people and a huge amount of money have gone into trying to keep you from completing your mission, including a last-ditch attempt at our former farm. You may assume, as least hypothesis, that the bombing of the Hilton had as its sole purpose killing you.” “Hmm. Boss, apparently you knew that it would be this rough. Couldn’t you have warned me?” “Would you have been more alert, more resolute, had I filled your mind with vague warnings of unknown dangers? Woman, you made no mistakes.” “The hell I didn’t! Uncle Jim met my capsule when he should not have known the time I would arrive; that should have set off every alarm in my head. The instant I laid eyes on him I should have dived back down the hole and taken any capsule anywhere.” “Whereupon it would have become extremely difficult for us to achieve rendezvous, which would have aborted your mission as thoroughly as losing what you carried. My child, if affairs had gone smoothly, Jim would have met you at my behest; you underestimate my intelligence net as well as the effort we put into trying to watch over you. But I did not send Jim to get you because at that moment I was running. Hobbling, to be precise. Hurrying. Trying to escape. I assume that Jim took the ETA message himself-from our man, or that of our antagonists, or possibly from both.” “Boss, if I had known it at the time, I would have fed Jim to his horses. I was fond of him. When the time comes, I want to cancel him myself. He’s mine.” “Friday, in our profession it is undesirable to hold grudges.” “I don’t hold many, but Uncle Jim is special. And there is another case I want to handle myself. But I’ll argue with you later. Say, is it true that Uncle Jim used to be a papist priest?” Boss almost looked surprised. “Where did you hear that nonsense?” “Around and about. Gossip.” ‘Human, All Too Human.’ Gossip is a vice. Let me settle it. Prufit was a con man. I met him in prison, where he did something for me, important enough that I made a place for him in our organization. My mistake. My inexcusable mistake, as a con man never stops being a con man; he can’t. But I suffered from a will to believe, a defect of character that I thought I had rooted out. I was mistaken. Continue, please.” I told Boss how they had grabbed me. “Five of them, I think. Possibly only four.” “Six, I believe. Descriptions.” “None, Boss, I was too busy. Well, one. I had one sharp look at him just as I killed him. About a hundred and seventy-five tall, weight around seventy-five or six. Age near thirty-five. Blondish, smooth-shaven. Slavic. But he was the only one my eye photographed. Because he held still. Involuntarily. As his neck snapped.” “You never do.” “Was the other one you killed blond or brunet?” ‘Belsen’? Brunet.” “No, at the farm. Never mind. You killed two and injured three before they piled enough bodies on you to hold you down by sheer weight. A credit to your instructor, let me add. In escaping, we had not been able to thin them down enough to keep them from taking you…but, in my opinion, you won the battle in which we recaptured you by your having earlier taken out so many of their effectives. Even though you were chained up and unconscious at the time, you won the final fracas. Go on, please.” “That about wraps it up, Boss. A gang rape next, followed by interrogation, direct, then under drugs, then under pain.” “I’m sorry about the rape, Friday. The usual bonuses. You will find them enhanced as I judge the circumstances to have been unusually offensive.” “Oh, not that bad. I’m hardly a twittering virgin. I can recall social occasions that were almost as unpleasant. Except one man. I don’t know his face, but I can identify him. I want him! I want him as badly as I want Uncle Jim. Worse, maybe, as I want to punish him a bit before I let him die.” “I can only repeat what I said earlier. For us, personal grudges are a mistake. They reduce survival probability.” “I’ll risk it for this bucko. Boss, I don’t hold the rape qua rape against him; they were ordered to rape me under the silly theory that it would soften me up for interrogation. But the scum should bathe and he should have his teeth fixed and he should brush them and use a mouthwash. And somebody must tell him that it is not polite to slap a woman with whom he is copulated. I don’t know his face, but I know his voice and his odor and his build and his nickname. Rocks or Rocky.” “Jeremy Rockford.” “Huh? You know him? Where is he?” “I once knew him and I recently had one clear look at him, enough to be sure. Requiescat in pace.” “Really? Oh, hell. I hope he didn’t die quietly.” “He did not die quietly. Friday, I have not told you all that I know-“ “-because I wanted your report first. Their assault on the farm succeeded because Jim Prufit had cut all power just before they hit us. This left us nothing but hand weapons for the few who wear arms at the farm, only bare hands for most of us. I ordered evacuation and most of us escaped through a tunnel prepared and concealed when the house was rebuilt. I am sorry and proud to say that three of our best, the three who were armed when we were hit, elected to play Horatius at the bridge. I know that they died as I kept the tunnel open until I could tell by the sounds that it had been entered by the raiders. Then I blasted it. “It took some hours to round up enough people and to mount our counterattack, especially in arranging for enough authorized power vehicles. While we conceivably could have attacked on foot, we had to have at least one APV as ambulance for you.” “How did you know I was alive?” “The same way I knew that the escape tunnel had been entered and not by our rear guard. Remote pickups. Friday, everything that was done to you and by you, everything you said and was said to you, was monitored and recorded. I was unable to monitor in person-busy preparing the counterattack-but the essential parts were played for me as time permitted. Let me add that I am proud of you. “Be knowing which pickups recorded what, we knew where they were holding you, the fact that you were cuffed, how many were in the house, where they were, when they settled down, and who stayed awake. By relay to the command APVI knew the situation in the house right to the moment of attack. We hit- They hit, I mean-our people hit. I don’t lead attacks hobbling on these two sticks, I wield the baton. Our people hit the house, were inside, the designated four picked you up-one armed only with a bolt cutter- and all were out in three minutes eleven seconds. Then we set fire to it.” “Boss! Your lovely farm house?” “When a ship is sinking, one does not worry about the dining room linens. We can never use the farm again. Burning the house destroyed many awkward records and many secret and quasi-secret items of equipment. But, most compelling, burning the house gave us a quick cleanup of the parties who had compromised its secrets. Our cordon was in place before we used incendiaries, then each one was shot as he attempted to come out. “That was when I saw your acquaintance Jeremy Rockford. He was burned in the leg as he came out the east door. He stumbled back in, changed his mind and tried again to escape, fell and was trapped. From the sounds he made I can assure you that he did not die quietly.” “Ugh. Boss, when I said that I wanted to punish him before I killed him, I didn’t mean anything as horrible as burning him to death.” “Had he not behaved like a horse running back into a burning barn, he would have died as the others did …quickly, from laser beam. Shot on sight, for we took no prisoners.” “Not even for interrogation?” “Not correct doctrine, I so stipulate. But Friday my dear, you are unaware of the emotional atmosphere. All had heard the tapes, at least of the rape and of your third interrogation, the torture. Our lads and lassies would not have taken prisoners even if I had so ordered. But I did not attempt to. I want you to know that you are held in high esteem by your colleagues. Including the many who have never met you and whom you are unlikely ever to meet.” Boss reached for his canes, struggled to his feet. “I’m seven minutes over the time your physician told me I could visit. We’ll talk tomorrow. You are to rest now. A nurse will be in to put you to sleep. Sleep and get well.” I had a few minutes to myself~ I spent them in a warm glow. “High esteem.” When you have never belonged and can never really belong, words like that mean everything. They warmed me so much that I didn’t mind not being human. Four. Someday I’m going to win an argument with Boss. But don’t hold your breath. There were days when I did not lose arguments with him-the days he did not visit me. It started with a difference of opinion over how long I was going to have to remain in therapy. I felt ready to go home or back to duty, either one, after four days. While I didn’t want to get into a dockside fight just yet, I could take light duty-or a trip to New Zealand, my first choice. All my hurts were repairing. They hadn’t been all that much: lots of burns, four broken ribs, simple fractures left tibia and fibula, multiple compound fractures of the bones of my right foot and three toes of my left, a hairline skull fracture without complications, and (messy but least disabling) somebody had sawed off my right nipple. The last item and the burns and the broken toes were all that I recalled; the others must have happened while I was distracted by other matters. Boss said, “Friday, you know that it will take at least six weeks to regenerate that missing nipple.” “But plastic surgery for a simple cosmetic job would heal in a week. Doctor Krasny told me so.” “Young woman, when anyone in this organization is maimed in line of duty, she will be restored as perfectly as therapeutic art can achieve. In addition to that our permanent policy, in your case there is another reason, compelling and sufficient. We each have a moral obligation to conserve and preserve beauty in this world; there is none to waste. You have an unusually comely body, damage to it is deplorable. It must be repaired.” “Cosmetic surgery is all right, I said so. But I don’t expect to have milk in these jugs. And anybody in bed with me won’t care.” “Friday, you may have convinced yourself that you will never have need to lactate. But esthetically a functional breast is very different from a surgery-shaped imitation. That hypothetical bedmate might not know …but you would know, and I would know. No, my dear. You will be restored to your former perfection.” “Hmm! When are you going to get that eye regenerated?” “Don’t be rude, child. In my case, no esthetic issue obtains.” So, I got my tit back as good as ever or maybe better. The next argument was over the retraining I felt I needed to correct hair-trigger kill reflex. When I brought up the matter again, Boss looked as if he had just bitten into something nasty. “Friday, I do not recall that you have ever made a kill that turned out to be a mistake. Have you made any kills of which I am unaware?” “No, no,” I said hastily. “I never killed anybody until I went to work for you, and I haven’t made any that I didn’t report to you.” “In that case all of your killings have been in self-defense.” “All but that ‘Belsen’ character. That wasn’t self-defense; he never laid a finger on me.” “Beaumont. At least that was the name he usually used. Self-defense sometimes must take the form of ‘Do unto others what they would do unto you but do it first.’ De Camp, I believe. Or some other of the twentieth-century school of pessimistic philosophers. I’ll call up Beaumont’s dossier so that you may see for yourself that he belonged on everyone’s better-dead list.” “Don’t bother. Once I looked into his pouch, I knew that he wasn’t following me to kiss me. But that was afterward.” Boss took several seconds to answer, far beyond his wont. “Friday, do you want to change tracks and become a hatchet man?” My chin dropped and my eyes widened. That was all the answer I made. “I didn’t intend to frighten you off the nest,” Boss said dryly. “You will have deduced that this organization includes assassins. I don’t want to lose you as a courier; you are my best. But we always need skilled assassins, as their attrition rate is high. However, there is this major difference between a courier and an assassin: A courier kills only in self-defense and often by reflex…and, I concede, always with some possibility of error …as not all couriers have your supreme talent for instantly integrating all factors and reaching a necessary conclusion.” “Huh!” “You heard me correctly. Friday, one of your weaknesses is that you lack appropriate conceit. An honorable hatchet man does not kill by reflex; he kills by planned intent. If the plan goes so far wrong that he needs to use self-defense, he is almost certain to become a statistic. In his planned killings, he always knows why and agrees with the necessity…or I won’t send him out.” (Planned killing? Murder, by definition. Get up in the morning, eat a hearty breakfast, then keep rendezvous with your victim, cut him down in cold blood? Eat dinner and sleep soundly?) “Boss, I don’t think it is my sort of work.” “I’m not sure that you have the temperament for it. But, for the nonce, keep an open mind. I am not sanguine about the possibility of slowing down your defense reflex. Moreover, I can assure you that, if we attempt to retrain you in the way that you ask, I will not again use you as a courier. No. Risking your life is your business when on your own time. But your missions are always critical; I won’t use a courier whose fine edge has been deliberately blunted.” Boss did not convince me, but he made me unsure of myself. When I told him again that I was not interested in becoming a hatchet man, he did not appear to listen-just said something about getting me something to read. I expected it-whatever-to show up on the room’s terminal. Instead, about twenty minutes after he left me, a youngster-well, younger than I am-showed up with a book, a bound book with paper pages. It had a serial number on it and was stamped “EYES ONLY” and “Need-to-Know Required” and “Top Secret SPECIAL BLUE Clearance.” I looked at it, as anxious to handle it as a snake. “Is this for me? I think there has been a mistake.” “The Old Man does not make mistakes. Just sign the receipt.” I made him wait while I read the fine print. “This bit about ‘never out of my sight.’ I sleep now and then.” “Call Archives, ask for the classified documents clerk-that’s me-and I’ll be here on the bounce. But try not to go to sleep until I get here. Try hard.” “Okay.” I signed the receipt, looked up and found him staring with bright-eyed interest. “What are you staring at?” “Uh- Miss Friday, you’re pretty.” I never know what to say to that sort of thing, since I’m not. I shape up all right, surely-but I was fully clothed. “How did you know my name?” “Why, everybody knows who you are. You know. Two weeks ago. At the farm. You were there.” “Oh. Yes, I was there. But I don’t remember it.” “I sure do!” His eyes were shining. “It’s the only time I’ve had a chance to be part of a combat operation. I’m glad I had a piece of it!” (What do you do?) I took his hand, pulled him closer to me, took his face in both my hands, kissed him carefully, about halfway between warm-sisterly and let’s-do-it! Maybe protocol called for something stronger but he was on duty, and I was still on the disabled list-not fair to make implied promises that can’t be kept, especially to youngsters with stars in their eyes. “Thank you for rescuing me,” I said to him soberly before letting go of his cheeks. The dear thing blushed. But he seemed very pleased. I stayed up so late reading that book that the night nurse scolded me. However, nurses need something to scold about now and then. I’m not going to quote from the incredible document…but listen to these subjects: Title first: The Only Deadly Weapon. Then: Assassination as a Fine Art Assassination as a Political Tool Assassination for Profit Assassins Who Changed History The Society for Creative Euthanasia The Canons of the Professional Assassins Guild Amateur Assassins: Should They Be Exterminated? Honorable Hatchet Men-Some Case Histories “Extreme Prejudice”-“Wet Work”-Are Euphemisms Necessary? Seminar Working Papers: Techniques and Tools Whew! There was no good reason for my reading all of it. But I did. It had an unholy fascination. Dirty. I resolved never to mention the possibility of changing tracks and not to bring up retraining again. Let Boss bring it up himself if he wanted to discuss it. I punched the terminal, got Archives, and stated that I needed the classified documents clerk to accept custody of classified item number such-and-such and please bring my receipt. “Right away, Miss Friday,” a woman answered. Notoriety, I waited with considerable unease for that youngster to show up. I am ashamed to say that this poisonous book had had a most unfortunate effect on me. It was the middle of the night, early morning; the place was dead quiet-and if the dear thing laid a hand on me, I was awfully likely to forget that I was technically an invalid. I needed a chastity girdle with a big padlock. But it was not he; the sweet youngster had gone off duty. The person who showed up with my receipt was the older woman who had answered me on the terminal. I felt both relief and disappointment-and chagrin that I felt disappointed. Does convalescence make everybody irresponsibly horny? Do hospitals have a discipline problem? I have not been ill often enough to know. The night clerk swapped my receipt for the book, then surprised me with: “Don’t I get a kiss, too?” “Oh! Were you there?” “Any warm body, dear; we were awfully short of effectives that night. I’m not the world’s greatest but I had basic training like anyone else. Yes, I was there. Wouldn’t have missed it.” I said, “Thank you for rescuing me,” and kissed her. I tried to make this simply a symbol, but she took charge and controlled what sort of a buss it would be. Rough and rugged, namely. She was telling me clearer than words that anytime I wanted to work the other side of the street, she would be waiting. What do you do? There seem to be human situations for which there are no established protocols. I had just acknowledged that she had risked her life to save mine-precisely that, as that rescue raid was not the piece of cake that Boss’s account made it appear to be. Boss’s habitual understatement is such that he would describe the total destruction of Seattle as “a seismic disturbance.” Having thanked her for my life how could I snub her? I could not. I let my half of the kiss answer her wordless message-with my fingers crossed that I would never have to keep the implied promise. Presently she broke the kiss but remained holding on to me. “Dearie,” she said, “want to know something? Do you remember how you told off that slob they called the Major?” “I remember.” “There is a bootleg piece of tape floating around of that one sequence. What you said to him and how you said it is highly admired by one and all. Especially me.” “That’s interesting. Are you the little gremlin who copied that piece of tape?” “Why, how could you think such a thing?” She grinned. “Do you mind?” I thought it over for all of three milliseconds. “No. If the people who rescued me enjoy hearing what I told that bastard, I don’t mind their listening to it. But I don’t talk that way ordinarily.” “Nobody thinks you do.” She gave me a quick peck. “But you did so when it was needed and you made everywoman in the company proud of you. And our men, too.” She didn’t seem disposed to let go of me, but the night nurse showed up then and told me firmly to go to bed and she was going to give me a sleepy time shot I made only the usual formal protest. The clerk said, “Hi, Goldie. Night. Night, dear.” She left. Goldie (not her name-bottle blonde) said, “Want it in your arm? Or in your leg? Don’t mind Anna; she’s harmless.” “She’s all right.” It occurred to me that Goldie probably could monitor both sight and sound. Probably? Certainly! “Were you there? At the farm? When the house was burned?” “Not while the house was burning. I was in an APV, taking you here as fast as we could float it. You were a sad sight, Miss Friday.” “I’ll bet I was. Thanks. Goldie? Will you kiss me good night?” Her kiss was warm and undemanding. I found out later that she was one of the four who made the run upstairs to grab me back-one man carrying big bolt cutters, two armed and firing…and Goldie carrying unassisted a stretcher basket. But she never mentioned it, then or later. I remember that convalescence as the first time in my life-except for vacations in Christchurch-when I was quietly, warmly happy, every day, every night. Why? Because I belonged! Of course, as anyone could guess from this account, I had passed years earlier. I no longer carried an ID with a big “LA” (or even “AP”) printed across it. I could walk into a washroom and not be told to use the end stall. But a phony ID and a fake family tree do not keep you warm; they just keep you from being hassled and discriminated against. You are still aware that there isn’t any nation anywhere that considers your sort fit for citizenship and there are lots of places that would deport you or even kill you-or sell you-if your cover-up ever slipped. An artificial person misses not having a family tree much more than you might think. Where were you born? Well, I wasn’t born, exactly; I was designed in Tri-University Life Engineering Laboratory, Detroit. Oh, really? My inception was formulated by median Associates, Zurich. Wonderful small talk, that! You’ll never hear it; it does not stand up well against ancestors on the Mayflower or in the Doomsday book. My records (or one set) show that I was “born” in Seattle, a destroyed city being a swell place for missing records. A great place to lose your next of kin, too. Since I was never in Seattle, I have studied very carefully all the records and pictures I could find; an honest-to-goodness native of Seattle can’t trip me. I think. Or not yet. But what they gave me while I was recovering from that silly rape and the not-so-funny interrogation was not phony at all and I did not have to worry about keeping my lies straight. Not just Goldie and Anna and the youngster (Terence) but over two dozen more before Doctor Krasny discharged me. Those were just the ones I came into contact with. There were more on that raid; I don’t know how many. Boss’s standing doctrine kept members of his organization from meeting each other save when their duties necessarily brought them together. Just as he firmly snubbed questions. You cannot let slip secrets you do not know, and you cannot betray a person whose very existence is unknown to you. But Boss did not have rules just for the sake of rules. Once having met a colleague through duty one could continue the contact socially. Boss did not encourage such fraternizing but he was no fool and did not try to forbid it. In consequence Anna often called on me in the late evening just before she went on duty. She never did try to collect her pound of flesh. There wasn’t much opportunity but we could have found one if we had tried. I didn’t try to discourage her-hell, no; if she had ever presented the bill for collection, I would not only have paid ch

Dolby 5.1 The Complete Columbia Albums Collection Album 1, Captain Marvel La Fiesta Five Hundred Miles High Captain Marvel Times Lie Lush Life Day Waves Crystal Silence Captain Marvel, Alternative Take Five Hundred Miles High, Alternative Take Album 2, the best of two Worlds Double Rainbow Aguas de Marco Ligia Falsa Bainana Retrato em Branco e Petro Izaura Eu Vim da Bahia Joao Marcello E Preciso Perdoar Just one of Those Things Eu Vim da Bahia, Alternative take E Preciso Perdoar, Alternative Take Just one of Those Things, Alternative Take Album 3, The Master Summer Night Ravens’ Wood Lover Man Invitation Album 4 The Peacocks I’ll Never Be the Same Lester Left Town Body and Soul What Am I Here For Serenade to Sweden The Chess Players The Peacocks My Buddy The Hour of Parting Rose Marie This Is All I Ask Skylark Mosaic Would You Like to take a Walk Album 5 Another World Pretty City Keep Dreaming Sabra Anna Another World Sum Sum Willow Weep for Me Blue Serge Brave Little Pernille Club 7 and Other Wild Places Album 6 Children of Another World Don’t cry for Me Argentina Children of the World Livin’ it Up Street Tattoo Hopscotch Rainy Afternoon You, Me and the Spring Summer Poem The Dreamer Around the Day in Eighty Worlds Album 7 Forest Eyes We are Free Tails Part 1 & 2 Shades of Blue Heron’s Flight Forest Eyes Drowsy Silva Little Lady Eye of the Storm Album 8 Bonus Disc Four Brothers Early Autumn Cousins Blue Serge Blue Getz Blues Caldonia (What makes you Big Head so Hard) Infant Eyes Tin Tin Deo Polka Dots and Moonbeams

Gravitation, by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler,Chapters 16 to20. PREFACE. This is a textbook on gravitation physics (Einstein's "general relativity" or "geometrodynamics"). It supplies two tracks through the subject. The first track is focused on the key physical ideas. It assumes, as mathematical prerequisite, only vector analysis and simple partial-differential equations. It is suitable for a one-semester course at the junior or senior level or in graduate school; and it constitutes-in the opinion of the authors-the indispensable core of gravitation theory that every advanced student of physics should learn. The Track One material is contained in those pages of the book that have a One outlined in gray in the upper outside corner, by which the eye of the reader can quickly pick out the Track One sections. In the contents, the same purpose is served by a gray bar beside the section, box, or figure number. The rest of the text builds up Track One into Track Two. Readers and teachers are invited to select, as enrichment material, those portions of Track Two that interest them most. With a few exceptions, any Track Two chapter can be understood by readers who have studied only the earlier Track One material. The exceptions are spelled out explicitly in "dependency statements" located at the beginning of each Track Two chapter, or at each transition within a chapter from Track One to Track Two. The entire book (all of Track One plus all of Track Two) is designed for a rigorous, full-year course at the graduate level, though many teachers of a full-year course may prefer a more leisurely pace that omits some of the Track Two material. The full book is intended to give a competence in gravitation physics comparable to that which the average P h D has in electromagnetism. When the student achieves this competence, he knows the laws of physics in flat spacetime (Chapters one to seven). He can predict orders of magnitude. He can also calculate using the principal tools of modern differential geometry (Chapters eight to fifteen), and he can predict at all relevant levels of precision. He understands Einstein's geometric framework for physics (Chapters sixteen to twenty two). He knows the applications of greatest present-day interest: pulsars and neutron stars (Chapters twenty three to twenty six); cosmology (Chapters twenty seven to thirty); the Schwarzschild geometry and gravitational collapse (Chapters thirty one to thirty four); and gravitational waves (Chapters thirty five to thirty seven). He has probed the experimental tests of Einstein's theory (Chapters thirty eight to forty). He will be able to read the modern mathematical literature on differential geometry, and also the latest papers in the physics and astrophysics journals about geometrodynamics and its applications. If he wishes to go beyond the field equations, the four major applications, and the tests, he will find at the end of the book (Chapters 41-44) a brief survey of several advanced topics in general relativity. Among the topics touched on here, superspace and quantum geometrodynamics receive special attention. These chapters identify some of the outstanding physical issues and lines of investigation being pursued today. Whether the department is physics or astrophysics or mathematics, more students than ever ask for more about general relativity than mere conversation. They want to hear its principal theses clearly stated. They want to know how to "work the handles of its information pump" themselves. More universities than ever respond with a serious course in Einstein's standard 1915 geometrodynamics. What a contrast to Maxwell's standard 1864 electrodynamics! In 1897, when Einstein was a student at Zurich, this subject was not on the instructional calendar of even half the universities of Europe. "We waited in vain for an exposition of Maxwell's theory," says one of Einstein's classmates. "Above all it was Einstein who was disappointed," for he rated electrodynamics as "the most fascinating subject at the time" as many students rate Einstein's theory today! Maxwell's theory recalls Einstein's theory in the time it took to win acceptance. Even as late as 1904 a book could appear by so great an investigator as William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, with the words, "The so-called 'electromagnetic theory of light' has not helped us hitherto ... it seems to me that it is rather a backward step ... the one thing about it that seems intelligible to me, I do not think is admissible ... that there should be an electric displacement perpendicular to the line of propagation." Did the pioneer of the Atlantic cable in the end contribute so richly to Maxwell electrodynamics-from units, and principles of measurement, to the theory of waves guided by wires-because of his own early difficulties with the subject? Then there is hope for many who study Einstein's geometrodynamics today! By the 1920's the weight of developments, from Kelvin's cable to Marconi's wireless, from the atom of Rutherford and Bohr to the new technology of high- frequency circuits, had produced general conviction that Maxwell was right. Doubt dwindled. Confidence led to applications, and applications led to confidence. Many were slow to take up general relativity in the beginning because it seemed to be poor in applications. Einstein's theory attracts the interest of many today because it is rich in applications. No longer is attention confined to three famous but meager tests: the gravitational red shift, the bending of light by the sun, and the precession of the perihelion of Mercury around the sun. The combination of radar ranging and general relativity is, step by step, transforming the solar-system celestial mechanics of an older generation to a new subject, with a new level of precision, new kinds of effects, and a new outlook. Pulsars, discovered in 1968, find no acceptable explanation except as the neutron stars predicted in 1934, objects with a central density so high (around ten to the fourteen grams per cc) that the Einstein predictions of mass differ from the Newtonian predictions by 10 to 100 per cent. About further density increase and a final continued gravitational collapse, Newtonian theory is silent. In contrast, Einstein's standard 1915 geometrodynamics predicted in 1939 the properties of a completely collapsed object, a "frozen star" or "black hole." By 1966 detailed digital calculations were available describing the formation of such an object in the collapse of a star with a white-dwarf core. Today hope to discover the first black hole is not least among the forces propelling more than one research: How does rotation influence the properties of a black hole? What kind of pulse of gravitational radiation comes off when such an object is formed? What spectrum of x-rays emerges when gas from a companion star piles up on its way into a black hole? All such investigations and more base themselves on Schwarzschild's standard 1916 static and spherically symmetric solution of Einstein's field equations, first really understood in the modern sense in 1960, and in 1963 generalized to a black hole endowed with angular momentum. Beyond solar-system tests and applications of relativity, beyond pulsars, neutron stars, and black holes, beyond geometrostatics (compare electrostatics!) and stationary geometries (compare the magnetic field set up by a steady current!) lies geo- metrodynamics in the full sense of the word (compare electrodynamics!). Nowhere does Einstein's great conception stand out more clearly than here, that the geometry of space is a new physical entity, with degrees of freedom and a dynamics of its own. Deformations in the geometry of space, he predicted in 1918, can transport energy from place to place. Today, thanks to the initiative of Joseph Weber, detectors of such gravitational radiation have been constructed and exploited to give upper limits to the flux of energy streaming past the earth at selected frequencies. Never before has one realized from how many kinds of processes significant gravitational radiation can be anticipated. Never before has there been more interest in picking up this new kind of signal and using it to diagnose faraway events. Never before has there been such a drive in more than one laboratory to raise instrumental sensitivity until gravitational radiation becomes a workaday new window on the universe. The expansion of the universe is the greatest of all tests of Einstein's geometro-dynamics, and cosmology the greatest of all applications. Making a prediction too fantastic for its author to credit, the theory forecast the expansion years before it was observed (1929). Violating the short time-scale that Hubble gave for the expansion, and in the face of "theories" ("steady state"; "continuous creation") manufactured to welcome and utilize this short time-scale, standard general relativity resolutely persisted in the prediction of a long time-scale, decades before the astro-physical discovery (1952) that the Hubble scale of distances and times was wrong, and had to be stretched by a factor of more than five. Disagreeing by a factor of the order of thirty with the average density of mass-energy in the universe deduced from astrophysical evidence as recently as 1958, Einstein's theory now as in the past argues for the higher density, proclaims "the mystery of the missing matter," and encourages astrophysics in a continuing search that year by year turns up new indications of matter in the space between the galaxies. General relativity forecast the primordial cosmic fireball radiation, and even an approximate value for its present temperature, seventeen years before the radiation was discovered. This radiation brings information about the universe when it had a thousand times smaller linear dimensions, and a billion times smaller volume, than it does today. Quasi stellar objects, discovered in 1963, supply more detailed information from a more recent era, when the universe had a quarter to half its present linear dimensions. Telling about a stage in the evolution of galaxies and the universe reachable in no other way, these objects are more than beacons to light up the far away and long ago. They put out energy at a rate unparalleled anywhere else in the universe. They eject matter with a surprising directivity. They show a puzzling variation with time, different between the microwave and the visible part of the spectrum. Quasi stellar objects on a great scale, and galactic nuclei nearer at hand on a smaller scale, voice a challenge to general relativity: help clear up these mysteries! If its wealth of applications attracts many young astrophysicists to the study of Einstein's geometrodynamics, the same attraction draws those in the world of physics who are concerned with physical cosmology, experimental general relativity, gravitational radiation, and the properties of objects made out of superdense matter. Of quite another motive for study of the subject, to contemplate Einstein's inspiring vision of geometry as the machinery of physics, we shall say nothing here because it speaks out, we hope, in every chapter of this book. Why a new book? The new applications of general relativity, with their extraordinary physical interest, out date excellent textbooks of an earlier era, among them even that great treatise on the subject written by Wolfgang Pauli at the age of twenty one. In addition, differential geometry has undergone a transformation of outlook that isolates the student who is confined in his training to the traditional tensor calculus of the earlier texts. For him it is difficult or impossible either to read the writings of his up-to-date mathematical colleague or to explain the mathematical content of his physical problem to that friendly source of help. We have not seen any way to meet our responsibilities to our students at our three institutions except by a new exposition, aimed at establishing a solid competence in the subject, con- temporary in its mathematics, oriented to the physical and astrophysical applications of greatest present-day interest, and animated by belief in the beauty and simplicity of nature. Charles W Misner, Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler.

Stan Getz Roost Recordings (1997) Dolby 5.1 3+ hours. Complete Roost Recordings Album 1 On The Alamo (alt tk) On The Alamo Gone With The Wind Yesterdays Sweetie Pie You Go To My Head Hershey Bar Tootsie Roll Strike Up The Band Imagination (alt tk) Imagination For Stompers Only Navy Blue (alt tk of above) Out Of Nowhere 'S Wonderful Penny Split Kick (alt tk) Split Kick It Might As Well Be Spring (alt tk) It Might As Well Be Spring The Best Thing For You Signal (alt tk) Budo (alt tk) Complete Roost Recordings Album 2 Thou Swell The Song Is You Mosquito Knees Pennies From Heaven Move Parker 51 Hershey Bar Rubberneck Signal Everything Happens To Me Jumpin' With Symphony Sid Yesterdays Budo Wildwood Complete Roost Recordings Album 3 Melody Express Yvette Potter's Luck The Song Is You Wildwood Lullaby Of Birdland Autumn Leaves Autumn Leaves (alt tk) Fools Rush In Fools Rush In (alt tk) These Foolish Things Where Or When Tabu Moonlight In Vermont Jaguar Sometimes I'm Happy Stars Fell On Alabama Nice Work If You Can Get It Tenderly Little Pony Easy Living Nails

Chapter Thirteen. March 21, 1993. Today a new beginning. Quite a coincidence that it's the first day of spring. For me it is like a return from the dead- 470 days of living death. To be back with Katherine, back with my other comrades, able to resume the struggle again after so much wasted time-the thought of these things fills me with an indescribable joy. So much has happened since my last entry in this diary (how glad I am that Katherine was able to save it for me!) that it's difficult to decide how to condense it all here. Well, first things first. It was about four o'clock in the morning, pitch dark, a Sunday. We were all sound asleep. The first thing I remember is Katherine shaking me by the shoulder, trying to wake me up. I could hear an insistent buzzing in the background, which, in my sleep-fogged condition, I assumed was our bedroom alarm clock. "Surely, it's not time to get up yet," I mumbled. "It's the warning buzzer downstairs," Katherine whispered urgently. "Somebody's outside the building." That snapped me awake, but before I could even get my feet on the floor, there was a loud crash, as something trailing a stream of sparks came hurtling through the carefully boarded-up bedroom window. Almost immediately the room was filled with a choking cloud of gas, and I was gasping for breath in agony. The next couple of minutes are a little hazy in my memory. Somehow we all got our gas masks on without turning on any lights. Bill and I raced downstairs, leaving Katherine and Carol to man the upstairs windows. Fortunately, no one had yet tried to enter the building, but as Bill and I reached the bottom of the stairs we could hear someone outside with a bullhorn ordering us to come out with our hands up. I took a quick look through our peephole. The darkness outside had been turned bright as day by dozens of searchlights, all trained on our building. The glare kept me from seeing much of anything beyond the lights, but it was instantly clear that there were several hundred troops and policemen, with lots of equipment, out there. It was obviously futile to attempt to shoot our way out, but we laid down a brief barrage anyway-half-a-dozen quick shots each- from the upstairs and downstairs windows, front and back, just to discourage the people outside from attempting to force a quick entry into the building. After that, we all stayed clear of the windows and doors, which were immediately riddled with a withering return fire, and concentrated on getting as much of our essential equipment out through our escape tunnel as we could. The cement-block walls of the garage offered protection from the small-arms fire being sprayed at us from every direction. Bill, Katherine, and Carol relayed our gear down the long, dark tunnel, while I stayed in the shop and gathered together for them the things I thought we should try to save. In a frantic and exhausting three-quarters of an hour, they assembled a small mountain of armaments and communications equipment in the drainage ditch at the far end of the tunnel. Although the three of them did most of the carrying, at least they were not in danger of being shot. I had bullets whistling around my ears the whole while, and I was stung at least a dozen times by splinters of concrete chipped from the walls by ricochets. I still don't understand how I avoided being killed. I even managed to fire a few rounds back through the door at our attackers every five minutes or so, just to keep them under cover. Finally we had gotten out all our small arms and ammunition, about half our bulk explosives and heavier weapons, and all the completed communications units. Bill's tools were saved, because he has the tidy habit of keeping them all together in a tool box, but we abandoned most of my test equipment, because it was scattered all over the shop. We huddled briefly in the grease pit and decided that Bill and the girls would steal a vehicle and load our things into it while I stayed in the shop and prepared a demolition charge that would cover the entrance of our escape tunnel. I would give them 30 minutes, then I would light the fuse and make my own exit. Katherine broke away and ran quickly back upstairs, where she grabbed some of our personal items-including my diary- and then I shooed her back into the tunnel with the others for the last time. The downstairs doors and the boards over the windows were about half shot away by this time, and so much light was coming into the shop from the searchlights that any movement was becoming extremely hazardous. Working with nervous haste, I assembled a 20-pound charge of tritonal in the grease pit, just above the tunnel entrance, and primed it. Then I crawled along the floor, heading for the wall where approximately another 100 pounds of tritonal was stacked in small containers. I intended to run a length of primacord from that batch to the charge in the grease pit, so that the whole shop would go up in one blast, thoroughly covering everything in rubble. It would take the cops a couple of days to sift through the debris and discover that we had escaped. But I never made it to the wall. Somehow-I still don't understand exactly what happened-the charge in the grease pit exploded prematurely. Perhaps a ricocheting bullet hit the primer. Or perhaps sparks from one of the tear gas grenades which were still being lobbed into the place ignited the fuse. In any event, the concussion knocked me cold-and very nearly killed me. I regained consciousness on an operating table in a hospital emergency room. The next few days were extraordinarily painful ones. I wince at the memory. I was taken directly from the emergency room to an interrogation cell in the sub-basement of the FBI building, which was still only partially cleared of the rubble from our bombing seven weeks earlier. Although I was still disoriented and in extreme pain from my wounds, I was handled very roughly. My wrists were tightly handcuffed behind me, and I was kicked and punched whenever I stumbled or failed to respond fast enough to an order. Forced to stand in the center of the cell while half-adozen FBI agents shouted questions at me from all sides, I could hardly do more than mumble incoherently, even if I had wanted to cooperate with them. Even in my agony, however, I felt a surge of elation when I realized from my interrogators' questions that the others must have gotten away safely. Over and over again the men around me screamed out the same questions: "Where are the others? How many were in the building with you? How did they get out?" Apparently, the charge in the grease pit had successfully obliterated the tunnel entrance. The questions were punctuated with repeated slaps and kicks, until I finally sagged to the floor, mercifully unconscious again. When I came to, I was still lying where I had fallen, on the bare, concrete floor. The light was on, no one else was in the room, and I could hear the chattering of pneumatic hammers and other sounds being made by repairmen working in the corridor beyond my cell door. I ached all over, with the handcuffs causing me particular agony, but my head was nearly clear. My first thought was one of regret that I no longer had my poison capsule. The secret police, of course, had taken my little necklace away as soon as they had found my unconscious body in the wreckage of the garage. I cursed myself for having failed to take the precaution of carrying the capsule in my mouth before the explosion. Probably it wouldn't have been found there, and I could have bitten it as soon as I woke up in the hospital. In the days to come, this regret was to recur again and again. My second thought was also one of regret and self-recrimination. I was tormented by a suspicion so strong that it nearly amounted to certainty that my ill-advised visit to Elsa two days earlier was responsible for my predicament. Evidently, someone from Elsa's group had followed me home and then had informed on me. This suspicion was later confirmed indirectly by my captors. I was alone with my aches and somber thoughts for only a few minutes before my second interrogation session began. This time two FBI agents came into my cell, followed by a physician and three other men, two of the last three being large, muscular-looking Negroes. The third man was a stooped, white-haired figure of about 70. A nasty little smile flickered around the corners of his coarse-looking mouth, which occasionally split into a leering grin, revealing the gold caps on his tobacco-stained teeth. After the physician had quickly checked me over, pronounced me reasonably fit, and left, the two FBI agents jerked me to my feet and then took up positions near the door. The session was turned over to the sinister-looking fellow with the gold teeth. Speaking with a thick Hebrew accent and a disarmingly mild, professorial manner, he introduced himself to me as Colonel Saul Rubin, of Israeli Military Intelligence. Before I could even wonder what business a representative of a foreign government had questioning me, Rubin explained: "Since your racist activities are in violation of the International Genocide Convention, Mr. Turner, you will be tried by an international tribunal, with representatives from both your country and mine. But first we need some information from you, so that we can also bring your fellow criminals to justice at the same time. "I understand that you were not very cooperative last night. Let me warn you that it will go very hard for you if you fail to answer my questions. I have had a great deal of experience over the last 45 years in extracting information from people who did not wish to cooperate with me. In the end they all told me everything I wanted to know, both the Arabs and the Germans, but it was a very unpleasant experience for those who were stubborn." Then, after a brief pause: "Ah yes, some of those Germans, back in 194S and 1946-particularly the ones from the SS- were quite stubborn." The apparently satisfying recollection brought another hideous grin to Rubin's face, and I could not suppress a shudder. I remembered the horrible photographs one of our members who was a former Army intelligence officer had shown me years ago of German prisoners who had had their eyes gouged out, their teeth pulled, their fingers cut off, and their testicles smashed by sadistic interrogators, many wearing U.S. Army uniforms, prior to their conviction and execution by military courts as "war criminals. " I wanted nothing so much as to be able to smash the leering Jewish face before me with my fists, but my handcuffs would not permit me that luxury. I settled for spitting into Rubin's face and simultaneously aiming a kick at his crotch. Unfortunately, my stiff, aching muscles ruined my aim, and my kick only caught Rubin's thigh, sending him staggering back a couple of paces. Then the two Negro orderlies seized me. Under Rubin's instructions, they proceeded to give me a vicious, thorough, and scientific beating. When they finished my whole body was a throbbing, searing mass of pain, and I was writhing on the floor, whimpering. The subsequent interrogation sessions were worse-much worse. Because a public "show trial" was planned for me, presumably in the Adolf Eichmann manner, Rubin avoided the eye-gouging and finger-cutting, which would have disfigured me, but the things he did were fully as painful. (Note to the reader: Adolf Eichmann was a middle-level German official during World War II. Fifteen years after the war, in 39 BNE, he was kidnapped in South America by Jews, flown to Israel, and made the central figure in an elaborately staged, two-year propaganda campaign to evoke sympathy from the non-Jewish world for Israel, the only haven for "persecuted" Jews. After fiendish torture, Eichmann was displayed in a soundproof glass cage during a four-month show trial in which he was condemned to death for "crimes against the Jewish people.") For days at a time I was completely out of my mind, and, as Rubin had predicted, I eventually told him everything he wanted to know. No human being could have done otherwise. During the torture sessions the two FBI agents who were always present as spectators sometimes turned a bit pale-and when Rubin had his two Black assistants thrust a long, blunt rod up into my rectum, so that I was screaming and wriggling like a skewered pig, one looked as if he were going to be sick-but they never raised an objection. I guess it was much the same after World War II, when American officers of German descent calmly watched Jewish torturers work over their racial brothers who had been in the German army and likewise saw nothing amiss when Negro G.I.'s raped and brutalized German girls. Is it that they have been so brainwashed by the Jews that they hate their own race, or is it that they are just insensitive bastards who will do whatever they're told as long as they keep drawing their salaries? Despite Rubin's exquisitely painful expertise, I am now thoroughly convinced that the Organization's interrogation techniques are much more effective than the System's. We are scientific, whereas the System is merely brutal. Although Rubin broke my resistance and got answers to his questions, fortunately he failed to ask many of the right questions. When he had finally finished with me, after nearly a month-long nightmare, I had told him the names of most of the members of the Organization that I knew, the locations of their hideouts, and who had been involved in various operations against the System. I had described in detail the preparation for the bombing of the FBI building and my role in the mortar assault on the Capitol. And, of course, I explained exactly how the other members of my unit had escaped capture. All these disclosures certainly caused problems for the Organization. But since they were able to anticipate exactly what the political police would learn from me, they were able to nullify any potential damage. Mainly it meant hastily abandoning several perfectly good hideouts and establishing new ones. But Rubin's interrogation technique elicited only information in the form of answers to direct questions. He asked me nothing about our communications system, and so he found out nothing about it. (As I learned later, our legals inside the FBI kept the Organization informed as to just what information my interrogation was yielding, so we retained confidence in the security of our radio communications.) He also found out nothing about the Order or about our philosophy or long-range goals, which knowledge might have helped the System understand our strategy. As it was, everything Rubin got from me was of a tactical nature only. I believe the reason for this to be the System's arrogant assumption that the task of liquidating the Organization would be a matter of only weeks. We were regarded as a major problem but not as a mortal danger. After my period of interrogation was over, I was kept in the FBI building for another three weeks, apparently in anticipation of having me handy to identify various Organization members who might be arrested on the basis of the information I had furnished. None were arrested during this time, however, and I was eventually transferred to the special prison compound at Fort Belvoir where nearly 200 other Organization members and about the same number of our legals were being held. The government was afraid to put us into ordinary prisons because of the danger that the Organization might free us-and also, I suspect, because they were afraid we might indoctrinate other White prisoners. So all captured Organization members were taken to Fort Belvoir from all over the country and kept in solitary- confinement cells in buildings surrounded by barbed wire, tanks, guard towers with machine guns, and two companies of MP's-all in the center of an Army base. And there I spent the next 14 months. What happened to the plans for my trial I cannot say. Many people consider solitary confinement to be especially harsh treatment, but it was a blessing for me. I was still in such a depressed and abnormal frame of mind-partly the result of Rubin's torture, partly from a sense of guilt at having yielded to that torture, and partly just from being locked up and unable to participate in the struggle-that I needed some time alone to straighten myself out again. And, of course, it was nice not to have to worry about Blacks, which would have been a real curse in any ordinary prison. No one who has not been subjected to the terror and agony to which I was can understand the profound and lasting effect of such an experience. My body has healed completely now, and I have recovered from the peculiar combination of depression and nervous jitters with which my interrogation left me, but I am not the same man I was. I am more impatient now, more serious- minded (even somber, perhaps), more determined than ever to get on with our task. And I have lost all fear of death. I have not become more reckless-less so, if anything-but nothing holds any terror for me now. I can be much harder on myself than before and also harder on others, when necessary. Woe betide any whining conservative, "responsible" or otherwise, who gets in the way of our revolution when I am around! I will listen to no more excuses from these self- serving collaborators but will simply reach for my pistol. All the time I and-the others were at Fort Belvoir we were supposed to be incommunicado and were allowed no reading material, newspapers or otherwise. Nevertheless, we soon learned how to communicate to a limited extent with one another, and we established an oral news pipeline from the outside through our guards, who were not an altogether unsympathetic lot. The news we all wanted to hear, of course, was of the war between the Organization and the System. We were especially cheered up whenever there was news of a successful action against the System-an "atrocity," in the jargon of the news media- and we became depressed if the period between news of major actions stretched to more than a few days. As time passed, news of actions did become considerably less frequent, and the media began predicting with greater and greater confidence the imminent liquidation of the remnants of the Organization and the return of the country to "normalcy. " That worried us, but our worry was tempered by the observation that fewer and fewer new prisoners were joining us at Fort Belvoir. An average of one a day was being brought in when I first went there, but that number had declined to less than one a week by August of last year. Then came the great Houston bombings of September 11 and 12, 1992. In two earthshaking days there were 14 major bombings, which left more than 4,000 persons dead and much of Houston's industrial and shipping facilities smoldering wreckage. The action began when a fully loaded munitions ship, carrying aerial bombs to Israel, detonated in the crowded Houston ship channel in the pre-dawn hours of September 11. That ship took four others to the bottom of the channel with her, thoroughly blocking it, and also set fire to an enormous refinery nearby. Within an hour eight other massive explosions had occurred along the ship channel, putting the nation's second-busiest port out of business for more than four months. Five later explosions closed the Houston airport, destroyed the city's main power-generating station, and collapsed two strategically located overpasses and a bridge, making two of the most heavily traveled freeways in the area impassable. Houston became an instant disaster area, and the Federal government rushed in thousands of troops-as much to keep an angry and panic-stricken public under control as to counter the Organization. The Houston action won us no friends, but neither did it help the government's case. And it thoroughly dispelled the growing notion that our revolution had been stifled. And, after Houston, there was Wilmington, then Providence, then Racine. Actions were fewer than before, but they were much, much bigger. It became apparent to us last fall that the revolution had entered a new and more decisive phase. But more of that later. Last night was the most important action of all for those of us at Fort Belvoir. Just before midnight, as usual, two olive-drab buses pulled up in front of the gate to our prison compound. Ordinarily they bring in about 60 MP's for the midnight guard shift and take away the evening shift. This time it was different. My first inkling that a breakout was in progress came when I was wakened by the sound of a machine gun being fired from one of the guard towers. It was quickly silenced by a direct hit from the 105-mm gun on one of the four tanks in our compound. After that there was intermittent small-arms fire and a lot of shouting and the sound of running feet. Finally, the wooden door of my cell burst inward under the blow of a sledgehammer, and I was free.I was one of the lucky 150 or so who squeezed into the two MP buses and rode out in them. Several dozen others clung to the outside of the four captured tanks, whose inattentive crews had been the first targets of our rescuers. The rest had to go on foot, slogging through a downpour which providentially kept the Army's helicopters grounded. Altogether we lost 18 prisoners and four rescuers killed and 61 prisoners recaptured. But 442 of us-according to the news report on the radio-made it to the waiting trucks outside the base, while the tanks kept our pursuers at bay. That wasn't the end of the excitement, but let it suffice to say that by four o'clock this morning we had successfully dispersed to more than two dozen pre-selected "safe houses" in the Washington area. After a few hours rest, I slipped into a set of civilian work clothes, took the set of false identification cards that had been carefully and masterfully prepared for me, and, carrying a newspaper and a lunch pail, made my way among the morning job- goers to the rendezvous point I was assigned. Within two minutes a pickup truck carrying a man and a woman pulled up to the curb beside me. The door opened and I squeezed in. As Bill drove off into the rush-hour traffic, I held my beloved Katherine in my arms once again.

PREFACE. This is a textbook on gravitation physics (Einstein's "general relativity" or "geometrodynamics"). It supplies two tracks through the subject. The first track is focused on the key physical ideas. It assumes, as mathematical prerequisite, only vector analysis and simple partial-differential equations. It is suitable for a one-semester course at the junior or senior level or in graduate school; and it constitutes-in the opinion of the authors-the indispensable core of gravitation theory that every advanced student of physics should learn. The Track One material is contained in those pages of the book that have a One outlined in gray in the upper outside corner, by which the eye of the reader can quickly pick out the Track One sections. In the contents, the same purpose is served by a gray bar beside the section, box, or figure number. The rest of the text builds up Track One into Track Two. Readers and teachers are invited to select, as enrichment material, those portions of Track Two that interest them most. With a few exceptions, any Track Two chapter can be understood by readers who have studied only the earlier Track One material. The exceptions are spelled out explicitly in "dependency statements" located at the beginning of each Track Two chapter, or at each transition within a chapter from Track One to Track Two. The entire book (all of Track One plus all of Track Two) is designed for a rigorous, full-year course at the graduate level, though many teachers of a full-year course may prefer a more leisurely pace that omits some of the Track Two material. The full book is intended to give a competence in gravitation physics comparable to that which the average P h D has in electromagnetism. When the student achieves this competence, he knows the laws of physics in flat spacetime (Chapters one to seven). He can predict orders of magnitude. He can also calculate using the principal tools of modern differential geometry (Chapters eight to fifteen), and he can predict at all relevant levels of precision. He understands Einstein's geometric framework for physics (Chapters sixteen to twenty two). He knows the applications of greatest present-day interest: pulsars and neutron stars (Chapters twenty three to twenty six); cosmology (Chapters twenty seven to thirty); the Schwarzschild geometry and gravitational collapse (Chapters thirty one to thirty four); and gravitational waves (Chapters thirty five to thirty seven). He has probed the experimental tests of Einstein's theory (Chapters thirty eight to forty). He will be able to read the modern mathematical literature on differential geometry, and also the latest papers in the physics and astrophysics journals about geometrodynamics and its applications. If he wishes to go beyond the field equations, the four major applications, and the tests, he will find at the end of the book (Chapters 41-44) a brief survey of several advanced topics in general relativity. Among the topics touched on here, superspace and quantum geometrodynamics receive special attention. These chapters identify some of the outstanding physical issues and lines of investigation being pursued today. Whether the department is physics or astrophysics or mathematics, more students than ever ask for more about general relativity than mere conversation. They want to hear its principal theses clearly stated. They want to know how to "work the handles of its information pump" themselves. More universities than ever respond with a serious course in Einstein's standard 1915 geometrodynamics. What a contrast to Maxwell's standard 1864 electrodynamics! In 1897, when Einstein was a student at Zurich, this subject was not on the instructional calendar of even half the universities of Europe. "We waited in vain for an exposition of Maxwell's theory," says one of Einstein's classmates. "Above all it was Einstein who was disappointed," for he rated electrodynamics as "the most fascinating subject at the time" as many students rate Einstein's theory today! Maxwell's theory recalls Einstein's theory in the time it took to win acceptance. Even as late as 1904 a book could appear by so great an investigator as William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, with the words, "The so-called 'electromagnetic theory of light' has not helped us hitherto ... it seems to me that it is rather a backward step ... the one thing about it that seems intelligible to me, I do not think is admissible ... that there should be an electric displacement perpendicular to the line of propagation." Did the pioneer of the Atlantic cable in the end contribute so richly to Maxwell electrodynamics-from units, and principles of measurement, to the theory of waves guided by wires-because of his own early difficulties with the subject? Then there is hope for many who study Einstein's geometrodynamics today! By the 1920's the weight of developments, from Kelvin's cable to Marconi's wireless, from the atom of Rutherford and Bohr to the new technology of high- frequency circuits, had produced general conviction that Maxwell was right. Doubt dwindled. Confidence led to applications, and applications led to confidence. Many were slow to take up general relativity in the beginning because it seemed to be poor in applications. Einstein's theory attracts the interest of many today because it is rich in applications. No longer is attention confined to three famous but meager tests: the gravitational red shift, the bending of light by the sun, and the precession of the perihelion of Mercury around the sun. The combination of radar ranging and general relativity is, step by step, transforming the solar-system celestial mechanics of an older generation to a new subject, with a new level of precision, new kinds of effects, and a new outlook. Pulsars, discovered in 1968, find no acceptable explanation except as the neutron stars predicted in 1934, objects with a central density so high (around ten to the fourteen grams per cc) that the Einstein predictions of mass differ from the Newtonian predictions by 10 to 100 per cent. About further density increase and a final continued gravitational collapse, Newtonian theory is silent. In contrast, Einstein's standard 1915 geometrodynamics predicted in 1939 the properties of a completely collapsed object, a "frozen star" or "black hole." By 1966 detailed digital calculations were available describing the formation of such an object in the collapse of a star with a white-dwarf core. Today hope to discover the first black hole is not least among the forces propelling more than one research: How does rotation influence the properties of a black hole? What kind of pulse of gravitational radiation comes off when such an object is formed? What spectrum of x-rays emerges when gas from a companion star piles up on its way into a black hole? All such investigations and more base themselves on Schwarzschild's standard 1916 static and spherically symmetric solution of Einstein's field equations, first really understood in the modern sense in 1960, and in 1963 generalized to a black hole endowed with angular momentum. Beyond solar-system tests and applications of relativity, beyond pulsars, neutron stars, and black holes, beyond geometrostatics (compare electrostatics!) and stationary geometries (compare the magnetic field set up by a steady current!) lies geo- metrodynamics in the full sense of the word (compare electrodynamics!). Nowhere does Einstein's great conception stand out more clearly than here, that the geometry of space is a new physical entity, with degrees of freedom and a dynamics of its own. Deformations in the geometry of space, he predicted in 1918, can transport energy from place to place. Today, thanks to the initiative of Joseph Weber, detectors of such gravitational radiation have been constructed and exploited to give upper limits to the flux of energy streaming past the earth at selected frequencies. Never before has one realized from how many kinds of processes significant gravitational radiation can be anticipated. Never before has there been more interest in picking up this new kind of signal and using it to diagnose faraway events. Never before has there been such a drive in more than one laboratory to raise instrumental sensitivity until gravitational radiation becomes a workaday new window on the universe. The expansion of the universe is the greatest of all tests of Einstein's geometro-dynamics, and cosmology the greatest of all applications. Making a prediction too fantastic for its author to credit, the theory forecast the expansion years before it was observed (1929). Violating the short time-scale that Hubble gave for the expansion, and in the face of "theories" ("steady state"; "continuous creation") manufactured to welcome and utilize this short time-scale, standard general relativity resolutely persisted in the prediction of a long time-scale, decades before the astro-physical discovery (1952) that the Hubble scale of distances and times was wrong, and had to be stretched by a factor of more than five. Disagreeing by a factor of the order of thirty with the average density of mass-energy in the universe deduced from astrophysical evidence as recently as 1958, Einstein's theory now as in the past argues for the higher density, proclaims "the mystery of the missing matter," and encourages astrophysics in a continuing search that year by year turns up new indications of matter in the space between the galaxies. General relativity forecast the primordial cosmic fireball radiation, and even an approximate value for its present temperature, seventeen years before the radiation was discovered. This radiation brings information about the universe when it had a thousand times smaller linear dimensions, and a billion times smaller volume, than it does today. Quasi stellar objects, discovered in 1963, supply more detailed information from a more recent era, when the universe had a quarter to half its present linear dimensions. Telling about a stage in the evolution of galaxies and the universe reachable in no other way, these objects are more than beacons to light up the far away and long ago. They put out energy at a rate unparalleled anywhere else in the universe. They eject matter with a surprising directivity. They show a puzzling variation with time, different between the microwave and the visible part of the spectrum. Quasi stellar objects on a great scale, and galactic nuclei nearer at hand on a smaller scale, voice a challenge to general relativity: help clear up these mysteries! If its wealth of applications attracts many young astrophysicists to the study of Einstein's geometrodynamics, the same attraction draws those in the world of physics who are concerned with physical cosmology, experimental general relativity, gravitational radiation, and the properties of objects made out of superdense matter. Of quite another motive for study of the subject, to contemplate Einstein's inspiring vision of geometry as the machinery of physics, we shall say nothing here because it speaks out, we hope, in every chapter of this book. Why a new book? The new applications of general relativity, with their extraordinary physical interest, out date excellent textbooks of an earlier era, among them even that great treatise on the subject written by Wolfgang Pauli at the age of twenty one. In addition, differential geometry has undergone a transformation of outlook that isolates the student who is confined in his training to the traditional tensor calculus of the earlier texts. For him it is difficult or impossible either to read the writings of his up-to-date mathematical colleague or to explain the mathematical content of his physical problem to that friendly source of help. We have not seen any way to meet our responsibilities to our students at our three institutions except by a new exposition, aimed at establishing a solid competence in the subject, con- temporary in its mathematics, oriented to the physical and astrophysical applications of greatest present-day interest, and animated by belief in the beauty and simplicity of nature. Charles W Misner, Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler.

The Rage and The Pride (La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio) by Oriana Fallaci. You ask me to speak, this time. You ask me to break at least this once the silence I’ve chosen, that I’ve imposed on myself these many years to avoid mingling with chattering insects. And I’m going to. Because I’ve heard that in Italy too there are some who rejoice just as the Palestinians of Gaza did the other night on TV. "Victory! Victory!" Men, women, children. Assuming you can call those who do such a thing man, woman, child. I’ve heard that some of the insects of means, politicians or so-called politicians, intellectuals or so-called intellectuals, not to mention others not worthy of the title of citizen, are behaving pretty much the same way. They say: "Good. It serves America right." And I am very very, very angry. Angry with an anger that is cold, lucid, rational. An anger that eliminates every detachment, every indulgence. An anger that compels me to respond and demands above all that I spit on them. I spit on them. Angry as I am, the African-American poet Maya Angelou roared the other day: "Be angry. It’s good to be angry, it’s healthy." And I don’t know whether it’s healthy for me. But I know that it won’t be healthy for them, I mean those who admire Osama Bin Laden, those who express comprehension or sympathy or solidarity for him. Your request has triggered a detonator that’s been waiting too long to explode. You’ll see. You also ask me to tell how I experienced this apocalypse. To give, in other words, my testimony. Very well, I’ll start with that. I was at home, which is in the center of Manhattan. At exactly nine o’clock I had a sensation of danger, of a danger that perhaps would not touch me, but that undoubtedly concerned me. It’s the sensation you feel in war, or rather in combat, when every pore of your skin feels the bullet or the rocket as it approaches, and you perk up your ears and yell at the person next to you: "Down! Get down!" I pushed it away. It’s not like I was in Vietnam. It’s not like I was in one of the many wars, those fucking wars that have tortured my life since World War II. I was in New York for God's sake, on a marvelous September morning in 2001. But the sensation still possessed me, inexplicably. So I did something I never do in the morning and turned on the TV. The audio wasn’t working. The screen was. And on every channel—and here there are almost a hundred— you saw a tower of the World Trade Center burning like a giant match. A short circuit? A small plane gone off course? Or an act of deliberate terrorism? I stayed there almost paralyzed, fixed on that tower, and while I fixed on it, while I asked myself those three questions, another plane appeared on the screen. White, huge. An airliner. It was flying extremely low. Flying low, it turned toward the second tower like a bomber who draws a bead on a target and then hurls himself at it. That’s when I understood. I also understood because in that same moment the audio came back on and transmitted a chorus of primal screams. Repeated and primal. "God! Oh, God! Oh, God, God, God! Gooooooood!" And the plane went into that second tower like a knife going into a stick of butter. By now it was quarter past nine. Don’t ask me what I felt during those fifteen minutes. I don’t know, I don’t remember. I was a piece of ice. Even my brain was ice. I don’t even remember whether certain things I saw were from the first tower or the second. For example, the people the morning and turned on the TV. The audio wasn’t working. The screen was. And on every channel—and here there are almost a hundred— you saw a tower of the World Trade Center burning like a giant match. A short circuit? A small plane gone off course? Or an act of deliberate terrorism? I stayed there almost paralyzed, fixed on that tower, and while I fixed on it, while I asked myself those three questions, another plane appeared on the screen. White, huge. An airliner. It was flying extremely low. Flying low, it turned toward the second tower like a bomber who draws a bead on a target and then hurls himself at it. That’s when I understood. I also understood because in that same moment the audio came back on and transmitted a chorus of primal screams. Repeated and primal. "God! Oh, God! Oh, God, God, God! Gooooooood!" And the plane went into that second tower like a knife going into a stick of butter. By now it was quarter past nine. Don’t ask me what I felt during those fifteen minutes. I don’t know, I don’t remember. I was a piece of ice. Even my brain was ice. I don’t even remember whether certain things I saw were from the first tower or the second. For example, the people who threw themselves from the eightieth or ninetieth floor to avoid being burned alive. They broke the glass of the windows, they climbed up and jumped out like someone who jumps out of an airplane with a parachute on. They came down so slowly, waving their arms and legs, swimming in the air. Yes, they seemed to swim in the air, never arriving. Around the thirtieth floor though, they sped up. They started to gesture desperately, penitently I imagine, almost as though they were shouting for help. And maybe they really were. Finally they fell like rocks and splat. You know, I thought I’d seen everything in war. I’d considered myself vaccinated against war, and in substance I am. Nothing surprises me anymore. Not even when I get angry, not even when I get indignant. But in war I’d always seen people who died by the hand of others. I’d never seen people who die killing themselves, throwing themselves without parachutes from the eightieth or ninetieth or hundredth floor. In war, I’d always seen things that explode. That blow up in all directions. And I’d always heard a huge racket. Those two towers though, didn’t explode. The first imploded, swallowed itself. The second fused and melted. It melted just like a stick of butter placed on the fire. And it all happened, or so it seemed to me, in tomblike silence. Is that possible? Was that silence real, or was it inside me? I also have to say that in war I’d always seen a limited number of deaths. Every battle, two or three hundred dead. Four hundred at most. Like at Dak To in Vietnam. And when the battle was finished, the Americans would gather up and count them. I couldn’t believe my eyes. In the massacre of Mexico City, the one where I caught a fair number of bullets myself, they gathered at least eight hundred dead. And when, thinking me dead, they stuck me in the morgue, the cadavers I soon found around and on myself seemed like a deluge. Well, almost fifty thousand people worked in the two towers. And very few had time to evacuate. The elevators didn’t work anymore, obviously, and to go down on foot from the highest floors would have taken an eternity. Flames permitting. We’ll never know the number of dead. (Forty thousand, fifty thousand?) The Americans will never tell, so as not to underline the intensity of this apocalypse. So as not to give satisfaction to Osama Bin Laden and encourage other apocalypses. And anyway the two abysses that absorbed those tens of thousands of creatures are too deep. At most the workers will unearth pieces of scattered members. A nose here, a finger there. Or else a kind of paste that seems like ground coffee but is actually organic material. The residue of bodies pulverized in a flash. Yesterday the mayor Guiliani sent more than ten thousand body bags. But they went unused. What do I feel for the kamikazes who died with them? No respect. No pity. No, not even pity, I who always wind up giving in to pity. I’ve always disliked kamikazes, that is people who commit suicide in order to kill others. Starting with the Japanese ones from World War II. I never considered them Pietro Miccas who torch the powder and go up with the citadel in order to block the arrival of the enemy troops at Torino. I never considered them soldiers. Even less do I consider them martyrs or heroes, as Mister Arafat, hollering and spitting saliva, described them to me in 1972. (Or when I interviewed him at Amman, where his marshals were also training the Badder-Meinhof terrorists.) I just consider them vain. Vain people who instead of seeking glory in cinema or politics or sports seek it in the death of themselves and others. A death that, in place of an Oscar or a ministerial seat or a medal, will get them (they think) admiration. And, in the case of those who pray to Allah, a place in the paradise that the Koran speaks of: the paradise where heroes get to fuck houris. I’ll bet they’re even physically vain. I have in front of me a photo of the two kamikaze I speak of in my novel Inshallah: the novel that begins with the destruction of the American base (more than four hundred dead) and the French base (more than three hundred fifty dead) at Beirut. They’d had it taken before going to die, this photo, and before going to die they’d gone to the barber. See what lovely haircuts. What pomaded moustaches, what well–groomed little beards, what coquettish sideburns... I can just imagine how Mister Arafat would seethe with rage to hear me. There’s bad blood between us, you know. He never forgave me, either for the scorching differences of opinion we had during that meeting or for the judgments I expressed about him in my book Interview With History. As for me, I never forgave him anything. Including the fact that an Italian journalist who imprudently presented himself as "a friend of mine" found himself with a revolver pointed at his heart. So we don’t see each other any more. It’s too bad. Because if I met him again, or rather if I were to grant him an audience, I’d scream in his face who the martyrs and heroes are. I’d scream: "Illustrious Mister Arafat, the martyrs are the passengers of the four airplanes that were hijacked and transformed into human bombs. Among them is a four year old little girl who disintegrated in the second tower. Illustrious Mister Arafat, the martyrs are the employees who worked in the two towers and at the Pentagon. Illustrious Mister Arafat, the martyrs are the firemen who died trying to save them. And do you know who the heroes are? The passengers of the flight that was supposed to throw itself into the White House but instead crashed into the woods in Pennsylvania because they fought back! There ought to be a paradise for them, illustrious Mister Arafat. The real problem is that you are now a perpetual head of state. You play the monarch. You visit the pope, announce that you disapprove of terrorism, send condolences to Bush." And in his chameleon–like ability to contradict himself, he’d even be capable of telling me I’m right. But let’s change the subject. I’m very sick, as you know, and talking with the likes of Arafat gives me a fever. I prefer to talk about the invulnerability that many, in Europe, attributed to America. Invulnerability? What invulnerability? The more democratic and open a society is, the more it’s exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more it risks hijackings or massacres like the ones that took place for many years in Italy and Germany and other parts of Europe. And that now take place, magnified, in America. It’s no accident that non-democratic countries, countries governed by a police regime, have always hosted and financed and helped terrorists. The Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's satellites and the People’s Republic of China, for example. Ghadaffi's Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Arafat's Lebanon, Egypt itself, that same Saudi Arabia of which Osama Bin Laden is a citizen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, of course, and all the Islamic African regions. In those countries’ airports or airplanes I have always felt safe. Tranquil as a sleeping newborn. The only thing I was afraid of was being arrested because I used to write bad things about the terrorists. In European airports and airplanes, on the other hand, I always felt uneasy. In American airports and airplanes I actually felt nervous. Twice as nervous in New York. (Not in Washington DC, though. The plane at the Pentagon was a complete surprise to me.) In my opinion it was ultimately never an issue of "if": it was always one of "when." Why do you think that on Tuesday morning my subconscious felt that anxiety, that sensation of danger? Why do you think that despite my habits I turned on the TV? Why do you think that one of the three questions I was asking myself while the first tower was burning and the audio wasn’t working was that of a terrorist attack? Why do you think that when the second airplane appeared I immediately understood? Since America is the strongest country in the world, the richest, the most powerful, the most modern, almost everyone fell into that trap. The Americans did themselves, at times. But America’s vulnerability comes precisely from its strength, its wealth, its power and its modernity. It’s the usual story of the dog chasing its own tail. It comes from America’s multi-ethnic being, its liberality, its respect for its citizens and guests. Example: about 24 million Americans are Muslim-Arabs. And when a Mustafa or a Mohammed comes, say from Afghanistan, to visit his uncle, nobody tells him he can’t attend pilot training school to learn how to fly a 757 jet airplane. Nobody can keep him from enrolling in a University (something I hope will change) to study chemistry and biology: the two sciences necessary to wage bacteriological war. Nobody. Not even if the government fears that this son of Allah might hijack that 757 or that he might toss a vial full of bacteria into the reservoir and unleash a disaster. (I say “if” because this time the government knew absolutely nothing and the disgrace of the CIA and FBI goes beyond all bounds. If I were President of the United States I’d send them all packing for stupidity with wellplaced kicks to the posterior.) Having said that, let’s go back to the original thought. What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It’s their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology. Those impressive skyscrapers, so tall, so beautiful that while you raise your eyes to gaze at them you almost forget the pyramids and the divine buildings of our past. Those gigantic airplanes, oversized, which they now use as they once used sailing ships or trucks because everything here is moved by airplane. Everything. The mail, fresh fish, ourselves. (And don’t forget that they invented the air war. Or at least they’re the ones who developed it to the point of absurdity.) That terrifying Pentagon, that fortress which scares you just looking at it. That all–present, all–powerful science. That chilling technology that in a few short years has completely changed our daily lives, our millennial ways of communicating, eating, living. And where did he strike them, the reverend Osama Bin Laden? In the skyscrapers and in the Pentagon. How? With airplanes, with science and technology. By the way: do you know what gets me the most about this wretched multi– millionaire, this AWOL playboy who instead of courting blonde princesses and running wild in the night clubs (as he used to do in Beirut when he was 20 years old) enjoys himself by killing people in the name of Mohammed and Allah? The fact that his endless wealth comes from the earnings of a corporation specializing in demolition, and that he himself is a demolitions expert. Demolition is an American specialty. When we met I found you almost stupefied by the heroic efficiency and admirable unity with which the Americans have faced this Apocalypse. That’s right. Despite all the shortcomings that always get rubbed in their face—that I myself always rub in their face (though those of Europe, and of Italy in particular, are even more serious)—America is a country with important things to teach us. And speaking of heroic efficiency, let me sing a paean to the Mayor of New York. That Rudolph Giuliani to whom we Italians should kneel in gratitude. Because he has an Italian last name and an Italian origin and he makes us look good before the whole world. Rudolph Giuliani is a great mayor, one of the greatest. And that’s coming from someone who is never happy with anything or anyone, starting with myself. He’s a mayor worthy of another great mayor with an Italian last name, Fiorello la Guardia, and many of our mayors ought to go and study under him. They ought to come to him with bowed heads, or better with ash on their heads, and ask him: "Signor Giuliani, sir, please tell us how it’s done." He doesn’t delegate his duties to others, no. He doesn’t waste his time with bullshit and greed. He doesn’t split himself between the tasks of a mayor and those of a minister or deputy (is anybody listening in the three cities of Stendhal—Naples, Florence and Rome?). He ran over there immediately, and immediately entered the second tower, at the risk of being turned to ashes with all the others. He only made it out by a hair and only by chance. And in the space of four days he put this city back on its feet. A city with nine and a half million inhabitants, mind you, and almost two million in Manhattan alone. How he did it, I don’t know. He’s sick like me, the poor man. The cancer that comes and returns has got him, too. And, like me, he pretends to be healthy: he works anyway. But I work at a desk, for God’s sake, sitting down! He, on the other hand...He looked like a general who joins the battle in person. A soldier who charges with his bayonet: "Come on, people, come on!!! Let’s roll up our sleeves, move!" But he could do it because those people were, are, like him. People without airs and without laziness, my father would have said, and with balls. As for the admirable ability to unite, the almost martial compactness with which the Americans respond to disaster and to the enemy, well: I have to admit that then and there I was astounded as well. I knew, yes, that it had exploded at the time of Pearl Harbor, that is when the people huddled around Roosevelt and Roosevelt entered the war against the Germany of Hitler and the Italy of Mussolini and the Japan of Hirohito. I had caught a whiff of it, yes, after Kennedy’s assassination. But that had been followed by the war in Vietnam, the lacerating rift caused by the war in Vietnam, and in a certain sense it had reminded me of their Civil War of a century and a half ago. So, when I saw whites and blacks crying in each other’s arms—and I mean in each other’s arms—when I saw Democrats and Republicans arm in arm singing "God Bless America", when I saw them drop all their differences, I was flabbergasted. Just as I was when I heard Bill Clinton (someone for whom I've never harbored much tenderness) declare: "We must stand behind Bush. We must have faith in our president." I felt the same when those same words were forcefully repeated by his wife Hillary, now senator for the State of New York. And when they were reiterated by Lieberman, the ex–Democratic candidate for the vice– presidency. (Only the defeated Al Gore remained squalidly silent). I felt the same when Congress voted unanimously to accept war and punish those responsible. Oh, if only Italy would learn this lesson! It’s such a divided country, Italy. So factious, so poisoned by tribal pettiness! They hate each other even within their own parties in Italy. They can’t stick together even when they have the same emblem, or the same banner, for God’s sake! Jealous, bilious, vain, small, they think only of their own personal interests. Of their own careers, their own petty glory, their own small–town popularity. For the sake of their personal interests they spite each other, they betray each other, they accuse each other, they expose each other...I am absolutely convinced that, if Osama Bin Laden were to blow up Giotto’s tower or the Tower of Pisa, the opposition would blame the government. And the government would blame the opposition. The heads of the government and the heads of the opposition would blame their own party people and comrades. And having said this, let me explain where the ability to unite that characterizes the Americans comes from. It comes from their patriotism. I don’t know whether in Italy you saw and understood what happened in New York when Bush went to thank the rescue men (and women) who are digging in the ruins of the two towers trying to save some survivor but only coming up with the occasional nose or finger. In spite of this, they do it without giving up. Without resigning themselves, so that if you ask them how they do it they say: "I can allow myself to be exhausted, but not to be defeated." All of them. The young, the very young, the old, the middle aged. White, black, yellow, brown, purple...You saw them, didn’t you? While Bush was thanking them all they did was wave their little American flags, raise their clenched fists, and roar: "USA! USA!" In a totalitarian country I’d have thought: "Look how nicely organized this was by the Powers That Be!" Not in America. In America you don’t organize these things. You don’t manage them, you don’t command them. Especially in a disenchanted metropolis like New York and with workers like New York workers. New York workers are real pieces of work. Freer than the wind. They don’t even obey their unions. But if you touch their flag, or their Patria...In English the word Patria doesn’t exist. To say Patria you have to put two words together. Father Land. Mother Land. Native Land. Or you can simply say My Country. But they have the noun "patriotism." They have the adjective "patriotic." And apart from France, I can’t imagine a country more patriotic than America. God! I was so moved to see those workers clenching their fists and waving their flags and roaring USA–USA–USA, without anyone ordering them to. And I felt a kind of humiliation. Because I can’t even begin to imagine Italian workers waving the tricolor and roaring Italia–Italia. Oh, I’ve seen them wave plenty of red flags in the marches and rallies. Rivers, lakes, of red flags. But never very many tricolor flags. None at all, actually. Ill–led or tyrannized by an arrogant left devoted to the Soviet Union, they always left the tricolor flags to their adversaries. Not that the adversaries made very good use of them, I’d say. Nor did they waste them either, thank God. And those who go to Mass, ditto. As for that yahoo with the green shirt and tie, he doesn’t even know what colors make up the tricolor. I–am–Lombard, I–am–Lombard. That guy wants to take us back to the wars between Florence and Siena. So the result is that today you see the Italian flag only at the Olympics if you happen to win a medal. Worse: you see it only in the stadiums, when there’s an international soccer match. Which is also, by the way, the only time you’ll ever hear a cry of Italia–Italia. Well let me tell you something. There’s a big difference between a country in which the flag is waved only by hooligans in a stadium and a country where it’s waved by the entire population. Waved, for example, by indomitable workers who dig in the ruins to come up with an ear or nose of the creatures slaughtered by the sons of Allah. Or to gather the ground coffee. The truth is that America is a special place, my friend. A country to envy, to be jealous of, for reasons that have nothing to do with wealth et cetera. It’s special because it was born out of a need of the soul, the need to have a homeland, and out of the most sublime idea that Man has ever conceived: the idea of liberty, or rather of liberty married to the idea of equality. It’s special also because the idea of liberty wasn’t fashionable at the time. Nor was the idea of equality. Nobody was talking about these things but a few philosophers of the so–called Enlightenment. You couldn’t find these concepts anywhere except in big expensive books released in installments and called Encyclopedias. And apart from the writers or the other intellectuals, apart from the princes and the lords who had the money to buy the big book or the books that inspired the big book, who knew anything about the Enlightenment? The Enlightenment wasn’t something you could eat! Not even the revolutionaries of the French Revolution were talking about it, seeing how the French Revolution didn’t start until 1789, thirteen years after the American Revolution exploded in 1776. (Another detail that the anti–Americans of the good–it–serves–America–right school ignore or pretend to forget. Bunch of hypocrites!) What’s more, it’s a special country, a country to envy, because that idea was understood by often illiterate and certainly uneducated farmers. The farmers of the American colonies. And because it was materialized by a small group of extraordinary men. By men of great culture, great quality. The Founding Fathers. Do you have any idea who the Founding Fathers were, the Benjamin Franklins and the Thomas Jefferson’s and the Thomas Paine’s and the John Adamses and the George Washington’s and so on? These weren’t the small–time lawyers ("avvocaticchi" as Vittorio Alfieri rightly called them) of the French Revolution! These weren’t the brooding and hysterical executioners of the Terror, the Marats and the Dantons and the Saint Justs and the Robespierres! These were people, these Founding Fathers, who knew Greek and Latin like our own Italian teachers of Greek and Latin (assuming there still are any) will never know them. People who had read Aristotle and Plato in Greek, who had read Seneca and Cicero in Latin, and who had studied the principles of Greek democracy like not even the Marxists of my day studied the theory of surplus value. (Assuming they really did study it.) Jefferson even knew Italian. (He called it "Toscano".) He spoke and read in Italian with great fluency. In 1774 as a matter of fact, along with the two thousand vine plants and the thousand olive trees and the music paper which was rare in Virginia, the Florentine Filippo Mazzei brought him multiple copies of a book written by a certain Cesare Beccaria entitled "Of Crimes and Punishments." As for the self–taught Franklin, he was a genius. Scientist, printer, editor, writer, journalist, politician, inventor. In 1752 he discovered the electric nature of lightning and invented the lightning rod. Is that enough for you? And it was with these extraordinary leaders, these men of great quality, that the often illiterate and certainly uneducated farmers rebelled against England in 1776. They fought the War of Independence, the American Revolution. Well, despite the muskets and the gun powder, despite the death toll that is the cost of every war, they didn’t do it with the rivers of blood of the future French Revolution. They didn’t do it with the guillotine and massacres at Vandea. They did it with a piece of paper that, along with the need of the soul, the need to have a homeland, put into effect the sublime idea of liberty—or rather of liberty married to quality. The Declaration of Independence. "We hold these Truths to be self–evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..." And that piece of paper that we’ve all been copying well or badly from the French Revolution on, or from which we’ve drawn our inspiration, is still the backbone of America. The vital lymph of this nation. You know why? Because it turns the plebes into the People. Because it invites them, rather orders them, to govern themselves, to express their own individuality, to pursue their own happiness. All the opposite of what communism did, prohibiting people to rebel, to govern themselves, to express themselves, to get rich, and setting up His Majesty the State in place of the customary kings. My father used to say, "Communism is a monarchic regime, and it’s an old–school monarchy. Because it cuts off men’s balls. And when you cut off a man’s balls, he’s no longer a man." He also used to say that instead of freeing the plebes, communism turned everyone into plebes. It made everyone starve to death. Well, in my view America frees the plebes. Everyone is a plebe there. White, black, yellow, brown, purple, stupid, intelligent, poor, rich. Actually the rich are the most plebeian of all. Most of the time they’re such boors! Crude, ill– mannered. You can tell immediately that they’ve never read Galateo, that they’ve never had anything to do with refinement and good taste and sophistication. In spite of the money they waste on clothes, for example, they’re so inelegant as to make the Queen of England look chic by comparison. But they are freed, by God. And in this world there is nothing stronger or more powerful than freed plebes. You will always get your skull cracked when you go up against the Freed Plebe. And they all got their skulls cracked by America: English, Germans, Mexicans, Russians, Nazis, Fascists, and Communists. Even the Vietnamese got theirs cracked in the end, when they had to come to terms after their victory so that now when a former president of the United States goes there to visit they're in seventh heaven. "Bienvenu, Monsieur le President, bienvenu!" The problem is that the Vietnamese don’t pray to Allah. It’s going to be much harder to deal with the sons of Allah. Much longer and much harder. Unless the rest of the Western world stops peeing its pants. And starts reasoning a little and gives them a hand. I am not speaking, obviously, to the laughing hyenas who enjoy seeing images of the wreckage and snicker good–it–serves–the– Americans–right. I am speaking to those who, though not stupid or evil, are wallowing in prudence and doubt. And to them I say: "Wake up, people. Wake up!!" Intimidated as you are by your fear of going against the current—that is, appearing racist (a word which is entirely inapt as we are speaking not about a race but about a religion)—you don’t understand or don’t want to understand that a reverse–Crusade is in progress. Accustomed as you are to the double– cross, blinded as you are by myopia, you don’t understand or don’t want to understand that a war of religion is in progress. Desired and declared by a fringe of that religion, perhaps, but a war of religion nonetheless. A war which they call Jihad. Holy War. A war that might not seek to conquer our territory, but that certainly seeks to conquer our souls. That seeks the disappearance of our freedom and our civilization. That seeks to annihilate our way of living and dying, our way of praying or not praying, our way of eating and drinking and dressing and entertaining and informing ourselves. You don’t understand or don’t want to understand that if we don’t oppose them, if we don’t defend ourselves, if we don’t fight, the Jihad will win. And it will destroy the world that for better or worse we’ve managed to build, to change, to improve, to render a little more intelligent, that is to say, less bigoted—or even not bigoted at all. And with that it will destroy our culture, our art, our science, our morals, our values, and our pleasures...Christ! Don’t you realize that the Osama Bin Ladens feel authorized to kill you and your children because you drink wine or beer, because you don’t wear your beard long or a chador, because you go to the theater or the movies, because you listen to music and sing pop songs, because you dance in discos or at home, because you watch TV, wear miniskirts or short–shorts, because you go naked or half naked to the beach or the pool, because you fuck when you want and where you want and who you want? Don’t you even care about that, you fools? I am an atheist, thank God. And I have no intention of letting myself be killed for it. For twenty years I’ve been saying it. For twenty years. With a certain meekness, not with this passion, twenty years ago I wrote an editorial on this subject for the Corriere. It was an article by a person used to being with all races and all creeds, a citizen used to fighting all forms of fascism and intolerance, a lay person without taboos. But it was also an article by a person indignant at those who failed to smell the stench of a coming Holy War and who were letting the sons of Allah get away with a little too much. I made an argument that went more or less like this, twenty years ago: "What sense is there in respecting those who don’t respect us? What sense is there in defending their culture or presumed culture when they scorn ours? I want to defend ours and I am informing you that I prefer Dante to Omar Khayan." The sky came crashing down. They crucified me: "Racist! Racist!" It was these same progressives (who at the time called themselves communists) who crucified me. I got the same treatment when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Do you remember those bearded men with the gowns and the turbans who, before firing their mortars–or rather with each shot—shouted God’s praises? "Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!" I remember them very well. And I used to shiver hearing the word God coupled with the shot of a mortar. I thought I was back in the Middle Ages and I said: "The Soviets are what they are. But we have to admit that by waging that war they are protecting us, too. And I for one thank them." Again the sky came crashing down. "Racist! Racist!" In their blindness they didn’t even want me to speak of the monstrosities that the sons of Allah were committing on their POWs (they would cut off their legs and arms, remember? A little vice in which they’d already indulged in Lebanon with their Christian and Jewish prisoners.) They didn’t want me to say it, no. And just to be progressive they would applaud the Americans who, having lost their marbles in fear of the Soviet Union, were arming the heroic–Afghan–people. They trained those bearded men, and among them the most– bearded–one–of–all, Osama Bin Laden. Away–with–the–Russians–in–Afghanistaaaaan! The–Russians–must–go–from–Afghanistaaaan! Well, the Russians left Afghanistan. Happy? And from Afghanistan the bearded men of the most-bearded Osama Bin Laden arrived in New York with the un-bearded Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Saudis who made up the band of the identified nineteen kamikaze. Happy? Worse: now people here speak of the next attack that will hit us with chemical weapons, or biological, or radioactive, or nuclear. People are saying the next massacre is inevitable because Iraq provides them with materials. People are talking of vaccinations, of gas masks, of plague. People are wondering when it will happen. Happy? Some are neither happy nor unhappy. They couldn’t care less. America's far away anyhow, there’s an ocean between America and Europe...oh, no, my dear friends. There’s a mere thread of water. Because when the destiny of the West, the survival of our civilization is at stake, we are New York. We are America. We Italians, we French, we English, we Germans, we Austrians, we Hungarians, we Slovaks, we Polish, we Scandinavians, we Belgians, we Spaniards, we Greeks, we Portuguese. If America falls, Europe falls. The West falls, we fall. And not just in a financial sense, which seems to be what worries you the most. (Once when I was young and naive, I said to Arthur Miller: "Americans measure everything with money, they only think of money." And Arthur Miller replied: "You don’t?") We fall in every sense, my friend. And we’ll find muezzin instead of church bells, chador instead of miniskirts, camel’s milk instead of the old shot of cognac. Don’t you grasp even this? Do you refuse to understand even this?!? Blair understood it. He came here and brought the solidarity of the English people. Renewed it, rather. Not a solidarity expressed with chattering and whining: a solidarity based on hunting down the terrorists and on military alliance. Chirac, on the other hand, didn’t. As you know, last week he was here for an official visit. A visit scheduled a long time ago, not prompted by events. He saw the wreckage of the two towers; he learned that the death toll is incalculable and unspeakable, but he sure didn’t overextend himself. During the interview with CNN, my friend Cristiana Amanpour asked as many as four times in what way and to what degree he intended to take a stand against this Jihad, and four times Chirac avoided giving an answer. He slipped away like an eel. One wanted to scream at him: "Monsieur le President! Remember the landing at Normandy? Do you know how many Americans croaked at Normandy to kick the Nazis out of France?" Not that I see any Richard Lion hearts among the other Europeans either, apart from Blair. Certainly not in Italy where the government has yet to single out, let alone arrest, a single accomplice or suspected accomplice of Osama Bin Laden. For God’s sake, Mister Knight–of–Labor, for God’s sake!! In spite of their fear of war, every country in Europe has found and arrested some accomplice of Osama Bin Laden. In France, in Germany, in England, in Spain. But in Italy, where the mosques of Milan, Turin and Rome overflow with scoundrels singing hymns to Osama Bin Laden and terrorists waiting to blow up Saint Peter’s cupola, not a one. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Please explain, Sir Knight: are your policemen and carabinieri that inept? Your secret services that idiotic? Your civil servants that stupid? And are the sons of Allah we host all saints, all unaware of what happened and is happening? Or is it that if you make the right inquiries, if you single out and arrest those you haven’t singled out and arrested so far, you’re afraid of being tagged with the old racist–racist label? I, as you can see, am not. Christ! I don’t deny anyone the right to be afraid. Anyone who’s not afraid of war is an idiot. And as I’ve written a thousand times before, anyone who acts as though he’s not afraid of war is both an idiot and a liar. But in Life and in History there are times when one is not permitted to be afraid. Times when being afraid is immoral and uncivilized. And those who evade this tragedy out of weakness or lack of courage or habitual fence–straddling strike me as masochists. Masochists, yes, masochists. Why? Do you want to talk about what you call the Contrast– between–the–Two–Cultures? Well, if you really must know, it bothers me to even talk about two cultures: to put them on the same plane as though they were two parallel realities of equal weight and equal measure. Because behind our civilization we have Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Phydias, for God’s sake. We have ancient Greece with its Parthenon and its discovery of Democracy. We have ancient Rome with its greatness, its laws, and its concept of Law. Its sculptures, its literature, its architecture. Its buildings, its amphitheaters, its aqueducts, its bridges and its roads. We have a revolutionary, that Christ who died on the cross, who taught us (too bad if we didn’t learn it) the concept of love and of justice. Yes, I know, there’s also a Church that gave me the Inquisition. That tortured me and burned me a thousand times at the stake. That oppressed me for centuries, that for centuries forced me to sculpt and paint only Christs and Madonnas, that almost killed Galileo Galilei. Humiliated him, shut him up. But it also made a great contribution to the History of Thought: Yes or no? And then behind our civilization we also have the Renaissance. We have Leonardo da Vinci, we have Michelangelo, we have Raphael, we have the music of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven. And on and on through Rossini and Donizetti and Verdi and Company. That music without which we could not live and which is prohibited in their culture or supposed culture. God forbid you should whistle a tune or hum the chorus of Nabucco. And finally we have Science, for God’s sake. A science that has understood a lot of diseases and that cures them. I am still alive, for now, thanks to our science. Not Mohammed’s. A science that has invented marvelous machines. The train, the car, the airplane, the spaceships with which we’ve gone to the Moon and Mars and soon will go who knows where. A science that has changed the face of this planet with electricity, the radio, the telephone, the TV, and by the way: is it true that the gurus of the left don’t want to say what I have just said?!? God, what pricks! They will never change. And now the fatal question: what is behind the other culture? Damned if I know. I search and search and find only Mohammed with his Koran and Averroe with his scholarly merits (The Commentaries on Aristotle, et cetera.) Arafat also finds numbers and math. Again yelling in my face, again covering me with spit, he told me in 1972 that his culture was superior to mine, far superior to mine, because his grandparents had invented numbers and math. But Arafat has a short memory. That’s why he changes his mind and contradicts himself every five minutes. His grandparents did not invent numbers and math. They invented the graphic symbols for numbers that we infidels use as well. Math was conceived almost simultaneously by all ancient civilizations. In Mesopotamia, in Greece, in India, in China, in Egypt, among the Mayans...Your grandparents, my illustrious Mister Arafat, left us nothing but a few beautiful mosques and a book they’ve been breaking my balls with for the past thousand four hundred years like not even the Christians do with their Bible or the Jews with their Torah. And now let’s see just what are the positive features that distinguish this Koran. Positive, really? Ever since the sons of Allah half–destroyed New York, the scholars of Islam have done nothing but sing the praises of Mohammed, explain how the Koran preaches peace, brotherhood and justice. (Even Bush has been chiming in. Poor Bush. It goes without saying that Bush has to keep on good terms with the twenty–four million Muslim–Americans, convince them to squeal what they know about the relatives, friends or acquaintances who might turn out to be devoted to Osama Bin Laden). So what do we do with the whole Eye–for–an–Eye–Tooth–for–a–Tooth business? What do we do with the chador, or better with the veil that covers the faces of Muslim women so that in order to glance at the person next to them the poor wretches have to peer through a close–meshed net at eye–level? What do we do with polygamy and the principle that women count less than camels, that they can’t go to school, they can’t go to the doctor, they can’t have their pictures taken, etc.? What do we do with the veto on alcohol and the death penalty for those who drink it? This is in the Koran, too. And it doesn’t seem all that just, all that brotherly, all that peaceful. So here’s my answer to your question on the Contrast–between–the–Two–Cultures: I say in this world there’s room for everyone. In your own home you can do whatever you want. And if in some countries the women are so stupid as to accept the chador, or rather the veil you peer out of through a close-meshed net at eye level, that’s their problem. If they are such birdbrains as to accept not going to school, not going to the doctor, not having their pictures taken, that’s their problem. If they are such idiots as to marry some asshole who wants four wives, that’s their problem. If their men are so silly as not to drink beer or wine, ditto. Far be it from me to stand in their way. I was raised with the concept of liberty, I was, and my mother used to say: "Variety is what makes the world beautiful." But if they presume to impose the same things on me, in my home...And they do presume it. Osama Bin Laden says that the entire planet Earth must become Muslim, that we must convert to Islam, that he will convert us by fair means or foul, that this is why he massacres us and will continue to do so. And this can’t be pleasing to us. It can’t help but make us itch to turn the tables and kill him. But this thing won’t end, won’t die out with the death of Osama Bin Laden. Because there are tens of thousands of Osama Bin Ladens by now, and they’re not only in Afghanistan or in other Arabic countries. They’re everywhere, and the most hardened ones are right in the Western world. In our cities, in our roads, in our universities, in the ganglions of technology. That technology that any dolt can handle. The Crusade has been in progress for some time. It works like a Swiss watch, sustained by a faith and a malice comparable only to the faith and malice of Torquemada when he led the Inquisition. The fact is that dealing with them is impossible. Reasoning, unthinkable. Treating them with indulgence, tolerance or hope, suicide. Whoever thinks differently is deluded. This is coming from one who has known this type of fanaticism rather well in Iran, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Libya, in Jordan, in Lebanon, and at home. That is, in Italy. Known it, and had it chillingly confirmed through a number of trivial episodes—or rather, grotesque ones. I’ll never forget what happened to me at the Iranian Embassy in Rome when I asked for a visa to go to Teheran, to interview Khomeini, and I showed up wearing red nail polish. To them, this is a sign of immorality. They treated me like a whore to be burned at the stake. They ordered me to take off that red immediately. And if I hadn’t told them, or rather screamed at them, what I really felt like taking off—or better yet, cutting off of them...Nor can I forget what happened in Qom, Khomeini’s holy city where as a woman I was turned away from all the hotels. To interview Khomeini I had to wear chador, to put on the chador I had to take off my jeans, to take off my jeans I had to find a secluded place. Naturally, I could have performed the operation in the car in which I had arrived from Teheran. But the interpreter wouldn’t let me. You’re–crazy, you’re–crazy, you–get–shot–in–Qom–for– doing–something–like–that. He preferred to bring me to the former Royal Palace where a merciful custodian took us in and let us use the former Throne Room. I actually felt like the Virgin Mary who has to take refuge with Joseph in the barn heated by the donkey and the ox to give birth to Baby Jesus. But the Koran forbids a man and a woman not married to each other to be alone behind a closed door, and alas, all of a sudden the door opened. The mullah in charge of Morality Control barged in screaming shame– shame, sin–sin, and there was only one way not to wind up being shot: get married. Sign the temporary (four months) marriage certificate the mullah was fanning in our faces. The problem was that the interpreter had a Spanish wife, a woman by the name of Consuelo who was not at all disposed to accept polygamy, and I didn’t want to marry anyone. Least of all an Iranian with a Spanish wife not at all disposed to accept polygamy. At the same time I didn’t want to be shot, that is, miss my interview with Khomeini. As I was debating what to do in this dilemma... You’re laughing, I’m sure. These seem like jokes to you. In that case, I won’t tell you the rest of this episode. To make you cry I’ll tell you about the twelve young impure men I saw executed at Dacca at the end of the Bangladesh war. They executed them on the field of Dacca stadium, with bayonet blows to the torso or abdomen, in the presence of twenty thousand faithful who applauded in the name of God from the bleachers. They thundered "Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar." Yes, I know: the ancient Romans, those ancient Romans of whom my culture is so proud, entertained themselves in the Coliseum by watching the deaths of Christians fed to the lions. I know, I know: in every country of Europe the Christians, those Christians whose contribution to the History of Thought I recognize despite my atheism, entertained themselves by watching the burning of heretics. But a lot of time has passed since then, we have become a little more civilized, and even the sons of Allah ought to have figured out by now that certain things are just not done. After the twelve impure young men they killed a little boy who had thrown himself at the executioners to save his brother who had been condemned to death. They smashed his head with their combat boots. And if you don’t believe it, well, reread my report or the reports of the French and German journalists who, horrified as I was, were there with me. Or better: look at the photographs that one of them took. Anyway this isn’t even what I want to underline. It’s that, at the conclusion of the slaughter, the twenty thousand faithful (many of whom were women) left the bleachers and went down on the field. Not as a disorganized mob, no. In an orderly manner, with solemnity. They slowly formed a line and, again in the name of God, walked over the cadavers. All the while thundering Allah–Akbar, Allah–Akbar. They destroyed them like the Twin Towers of New York. They reduced them to a bleeding carpet of smashed bones. Oh, I could go on ad infinitum. Tell you things never told, things to make your hair stand on end. About that dotard Khomeini, for example, who after our interview held an assembly at Qom to declare that I had accused him of cutting off women’s breasts? He extracted a video from this assembly that was shown for months on Teheran television so that, when I returned to Teheran the next year, I was arrested as soon as I got off the plane. It looked bad for me, you know, very bad. This was the period of the American hostages...I could tell you about Mujib Rahman, who, again at Dacca, had ordered his guerillas to eliminate me as a dangerous European, and lucky for me an English colonel saved me at the risk of his life. Or about that Palestinian named Habash who held me for twenty minutes with a machine gun pointed at my head. God, what people! The only ones I’ve had a civil relationship with remain poor Ali Bhutto, the first prime minister of Pakistan, who was hanged because he was too friendly to the West, and the most excellent king of Jordan: King Hussein. But those two were as Muslim as I am Catholic. Anyway I want to get to the point of my argument. A point that will not please many, given that defending one’s own culture, in Italy, is becoming a mortal sin. And given that, intimidated by the inapt term "racist," everyone shuts up like rabbits. I don’t go pitching tents at Mecca. I don’t go singing Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s in front of Mohammed’s tomb. I don’t go peeing on the marble of their mosques; I don’t go shitting at the feet of their minarets. When I find myself in their countries (something from which I never derive pleasure), I never forget that I am a guest and a foreigner. I am careful not to offend them with clothing or gestures or behavior that are normal for us but impermissible to them. I treat them with dutiful respect, dutiful courtesy, and I excuse myself when through mistake or ignorance I infringe some rule or superstition of theirs. And the images I’ve had before my eyes while writing this scream of pain and indignation haven’t always been those of the apocalyptic scenes I started with. Sometimes I see another image instead, a symbolic (and therefore infuriating) one: the huge tent with which the Somalian Muslims disfigured and befouled and profaned the Piazza del Duomo at Florence for three months last summer. My city. A tent put up in order to beg–condemn–insult the Italian government that hosted them but wouldn’t give them the papers necessary to rove about Europe and wouldn’t let them bring the hordes of their relatives to Italy. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, pregnant sisters–in–law, and if they had their way, their relatives’ relatives as well. A tent situated next to the beautiful palazzo of the Archbishop on whose sidewalk they kept the shoes or sandals that are lined up outside the mosques in their countries. And along with the shoes or sandals, the empty bottles of water they’d used to wash their feet before praying. A tent placed in front of the cathedral with Brunelleschi’s cupola and by the side of the Baptistery with Ghiberti’s golden doors. A tent, finally, furnished like a sleazy little apartment: seats, tables, chaise–lounges, mattresses for sleeping and for fucking, ovens for cooking food and plaguing the piazza with smoke and stench. And, thanks to the customary irresponsibility of ENEL, which cares about our works of art about as much as it cares about our landscape, furnished with electric light. Thanks to a radio tape player, enriched by the uncouth wailing of a muezzin who punctually exorted the faithful, deafened the infidels, and smothered the sound of the church bells. Add to all this the yellow streaks of urine that profaned the marble of the Baptistry. (My, these sons of Allah sure have a long range! However did they manage to hit the target when they were held back by a protective railing that kept it nearly two whole meters away from their urinary equipment?) And along with the yellow streaks of urine, the stench of the excrement that blocked the door of San Salvatore al Vescovo: that exquisite Romanesque church (year 1000) that stands at the rear of the Piazza del Duomo and that the sons of Allah transformed into a shithouse. You’re well aware of this. You’re well aware because I’m the one who called you, begged you to talk about it in the Corriere, remember? I also called the mayor, who, I admit, came politely to my house. He listened to me, he agreed with me: "You’re right. You’re quite right." But he didn’t remove the tent. He forgot or he wasn’t able. I also called the Foreign Minister, who was a Florentine, indeed one of those Florentines who speaks with a very Florentine accent, not to mention being involved in the whole affair. And he too, I admit, listened to me. He agreed with me: "Oh, yes. You’re right, yes." But he didn’t lift a finger to remove that tent, and as for the sons of Allah who urinated on the Baptistery and shat all over San Salvatore al Vescovo, he moved quickly to appease them. (I understand that the fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins and pregnant sisters-in-law are now where they wanted to be. That is in Florence and in other cities of Europe.) So I changed tactics. I called a nice police officer who directs the security office and said to him: "My dear officer, I am not a politician. When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. I also know something about war and have certain skills. If by tomorrow you don’t get that fucking tent out of here, I will burn it. I swear on my honor that I will burn it, that not even a regiment of carabinieri could stop me, and I want to be arrested for it. Taken to jail in handcuffs. That way I’ll get into all the newspapers." Well, being more intelligent than the others, in the space of a few hours he got rid of it. In place of the tent there remained only an immense and disgusting stain of filth. It was a Pyrrhic victory, though. Because it had no effect on the other atrocities that for years have wounded and humiliated what used to be the capital of art and culture and beauty. It did nothing to discourage the other arrogant guests of the city: the Albanians, the Sudanese, the Bengalese, the Tunisians, the Algerians, the Pakistani, the Nigerians who contribute with so much fervor to the drug trade and prostitution which, it appears, are not prohibited by the Koran. Oh yes: they’re all right where they were before my policeman took away the tent. In the courtyard of the Uffizi Galleries, at the foot of Giotto’s tower. In front of the Loggia dell’ Orcagna, around the Loggie del Porcellino. Opposite the National Library, at the entrances to the museums. On Ponte Vecchio where every so often they kill each other with knives or revolvers. Along the banks of the Arno where they asked for and received municipal funding. (That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: municipal funding.) In the churchyard of San Lorenzo where they get drunk on wine and beer and liquor, bunch of hypocrites, and where they utter obscenities at women. (Last summer in that churchyard they even tried it with me, an old lady. Needless to say they lived to regret it. Oooh, did they regret it! One of them’s still there whimpering over his genitals.) In the historic streets where they camp out on the pretext of selling merchandise. By "merchandise" I mean purses and bags illegally copied from patented models, photo murals, pencils, African statuettes that ignorant tourists take for Bernini sculptures, stuff–to–sniff. ("Je connais mes droits, I know my rights" one of them hissed at me on Ponte Vecchio, one who I’d seen selling stuff–to–sniff). And God forbid that a citizen protest, God forbid that someone tell him to take–those–rights–of yours–and–go– exercise–them–at–home. "Racist, racist!" God forbid that a pedestrian brush up against a presumed Bernini sculpture while trying to walk through the merchandise that blocks the way. "Racist, racist!" God forbid that a metro cop should walk up to him and dare to say, "Signor Son of Allah, Your Excellence, would you mind moving over a hairsbreadth to let people get by?” They’d eat him alive. They’d go after him with knives. At the very least, they’d insult his mother and progeny. "Racist, racist!" And people just take it, resigned. They don’t react even if you yell what my old man used to yell during fascism: "Don’t you care at all about dignity? Don’t you have even a little pride, you big sheep?" The same thing happens in other cities, I know. At Turin, for example. That Turin that created Italy and now doesn’t even seem like an Italian city. It seems like Algiers, Dacca, Nairobi, Damascus, Beirut. At Venice. That Venice where the pigeons of Piazza San Marco have been replaced by little rugs with "merchandise" and even Othello would feel ill at ease. At Genoa. That Genoa where the marvelous palazzi that Rubens so admired have been seized by them and are now perishing like beautiful women who have been raped. At Rome. That Rome where the cynicism of a politics of every falsehood and every color courts them in the hope of obtaining their future votes, and where the Pope himself protects them. (Your Holiness, why in the name of the One God don’t you take them into the Vatican? Strictly on condition, of course, that they refrain from shitting on the Sistine Chapel and the paintings of Raphael.) And here’s something I really don’t understand. Instead of sons of Allah, in Italy they call them "foreign laborers." Or else "manual–labor–for–which– there–is–demand." And I don’t doubt that some of them work. The Italians have become such little lords. They vacation in Seychelles, come to New York to buy sheets at Bloomingdale’s. They’re ashamed to be laborers and farmers, and won’t be associated with the proletariat. But those of whom I speak, what kind of laborers are they? What work do they do? In what way do they satisfy the demand for manual labor that the Italian ex–proletariat no longer supplies? Camping out in the city on the pretext of selling merchandise? Loitering and defacing our monuments? Praying five times a day? And then there’s something else I don’t understand. If they’re really so poor, who’s giving them the money for the voyage by ship or rubber dinghy that brings them to Italy? Who gives them the ten million lira a head (at least ten million) necessary to buy the ticket? It’s not by any chance Osama Bin Laden looking to launch a conquest not only of souls, but of real estate? Well, even if he’s not the one giving them money, the situation bothers me. Even if our guests are absolutely innocent, even if there’s no one among them who wants to destroy the Tower of Pisa or the Tower of Giotto, wants to put me in chador, wants to burn me at the stake of a new Inquisition, their presence alarms me. It makes me uncomfortable. And whoever takes this situation lightly or optimistically is wrong. And even more wrong is the person who compares the wave of migration hitting Italy and Europe to that which spilled into America in the second half of the 1800’s or rather at the end of the 1800’s and the beginning of the 1900’s. Now I’ll tell you why. Not long ago I happened to catch a phrase uttered by one of the thousand prime ministers that have honored Italy with their presence over these past few decades. "Well, my uncle was an immigrant too! I can remember him leaving for America with his little cardboard suitcase." Or something along those lines. No, my friend. No. It’s not the same thing at all. And it’s not for two rather simple reasons. The first is that the wave of migration to America that took place in the latter half of the 1800’s was not clandestine and was not carried out by bullying on the part of those who effected it. It was the Americans themselves who wanted it, urged it, and by a specific act of Congress. "Come, come, we need you. If you come, we’ll give you a nice piece of land." The Americans even made a movie about it. That one with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and what struck me about it was the ending. The scene with the poor souls running to plant a little white flag on the piece of land they want to claim as theirs, so that only the youngest and strongest are able to make it. The rest wind up with diddly squat and some of them die in the process. To my knowledge, there was never any act of Parliament in Italy inviting or rather urging our present guests to leave their countries. Come–come–we–really–need–you, if– you come–we’ll–give–you–a–little–farm–in– Chianti. They came to us on their own initiative, with their accursed dinghies and in the teeth of the customs officers who tried to send them back. What occurred was not an immigration, it was more of an invasion conducted under an emblem of secrecy. A secrecy that’s disturbing because it’s not meek and dolorous but arrogant and protected by the cynicism of politicians who close an eye or maybe even both. I’ll never forget the way these stowaways filled the piazzas of Italy with assemblies last year to clamor for visas. Those distorted, savage faces. Those raised fists, threatening. Those baleful voices that took me back to the Teheran of Khomeini. I’ll never forget it because I felt offended by their bullying in my home, and because I felt made fun of by the ministers who told us: "We’d like to deport them but we don’t know where they’re hiding." Bastards! There were thousands of them in those piazzas and they sure as hell weren’t hiding. To deport them all they had to do was put them in line, please– right–this–way–sir, and escort them to a port or airport. The second reason, my dear nephew of the uncle with the little cardboard suitcase, is one even a schoolboy could understand. It requires only two elements to expound. One: America is a continent. And in the latter half of the 1800’s when the American Congress gave the green light to immigration, this continent was practically unpopulated. Most of the population was massed in the eastern states, in other words those on the side of the Atlantic, and there were even fewer people in the Midwest. California was practically empty. Well, Italy isn’t a continent. It’s a very small country, and far from unpopulated. Two: America is a very young country. If you recall that the War of Independence took place at the end of the 1700’s, you can deduce that it’s only two hundred years old and you understand why its cultural identity is not yet well defined. Italy, on the other hand, is a very old country. Its history goes back at least three thousand years. Its cultural identity is thus very precise—and let’s not beat around the bush: that identity has quite a bit to do with a religion called Christian religion and a church called the Catholic Church. People like me have a nice little saying: the–Catholic–church–has–nothing–to–do–with– me. But boy does it have to do with me. Whether I like it or

The Appointment, by Herta Muller. I've been summoned. Thursday, at ten sharp. Lately I'm being summoned more and more often: ten sharp on Tuesday, ten sharp on Saturday, on Wednesday, Monday. As if years were a week, I'm amazed that winter comes so close on the heels of late summer. On my way to the tram stop, I again pass the shrubs with the white berries dangling through the fences. Like buttons made of mother-of-pearl and sewn from underneath, or stitched right down into the earth, or else like bread pellets. They remind me of a flock of little white-tufted birds turning away their beaks, but they're really far too small for birds. It's enough to make you giddy. I'd rather think of snow sprinkled on the grass, but that leaves you feeling lost, and the thought of chalk makes you sleepy. The tram doesn't run on a fixed schedule. It does seem to rustle, at least to my ear, unless those are the stiff leaves of the poplars I'm hearing. Here it is, already pulling up to the stop: today it seems in a hurry to take me away. I've decided to let the old man in the straw hat get on ahead of me. He was already waiting when I arrived-who knows how long he'd been there. You couldn't exactly call him frail, but he's hunchbacked and weary, and as skinny as his own shadow. His backside is so slight it doesn't even fill the seat of his pants, he has no hips, and the only bulges in his trousers are the bags around his knees. But if he's going to go and spit, right now, just as the door is folding open, I'll get on before he does, regardless. The car is practically empty; he gives the vacant seats a quick scan and decides to stand. It's amazing how old people like him don't get tired, that they don't save their standing for places where they can't sit. Now and then you hear old people say: There'll be plenty of time for lying down once I'm in my coffin. But death is the last thing on their minds, and they're quite right. Death never has followed any particular pattern. Young people die too. I always sit if I have a choice. Riding in a seat is like walking while you're sitting down. The old man is looking me over; I can sense it right away inside the empty car. I'm not in the mood to talk, though, or else I'd ask him what he's gaping at. He couldn't care less that his staring annoys me. Meanwhile half the city is going by outside the window, trees alternating with buildings. They say old people like him can sense things better than young people. Old people might even sense that today I'm carrying a small towel, a toothbrush, and some toothpaste in my handbag. And no handkerchief, since I'm determined not to cry. Paul didn't realize how terrified I was that today Albu might take me down to the cell below his office. I didn't bring it up. If that happens, he'll find out soon enough. The tram is moving slowly. The band on the old man's straw hat is stained, probably with sweat, or else the rain. As always, Albu will slobber a kiss on my hand by way of greeting. Major Albu lifts my hand by the fingertips, squeezing my nails so hard I could scream. He presses one wet lip to my fingers, so he can keep the other free to speak. He always kisses my hand the exact same way, but what he says is always different: Well well, your eyes look awfully red today. I think you've got a mustache coming. A little young for that, aren't you. My, but your little hand is cold as ice today-hope there's nothing wrong with your circulation. Uh-oh, your gums are receding. You're beginning to look like your own grandmother. My grandmother didn't live to grow old, I say. She never had time to lose her teeth. Albu knows all about my grandmother's teeth, which is why he's bringing them up. As a woman, I know how I look on any given day. I also know that a kiss on the hand shouldn't hurt, that it shouldn't feel wet, that it should be delivered to the back of the hand. The art of hand kissing is something men know even better than women-and Albu is hardly an exception. His entire head reeks of Avril, a French eau de toilette that my father-in-law, the Perfumed Commissar, used to wear too. Nobody else I know would buy it. A bottle on the black market costs more than a suit in a store. Maybe it's called Septembre, I'm not sure, but there's no mistaking that acrid, smoky smell of burning leaves. Once I'm sitting at the small table, Albu notices me rubbing my fingers on my skirt, not only to get the feeling back into them but also to wipe the saliva off. He fiddles with his signet ring and smirks. Let him: it's easy enough to wipe off somebody's spit; it isn't poisonous, and it dries up all by itself. It's something everybody has. Some people spit on the pavement, then rub it in with their shoe since it's not polite to spit, not even on the pavement. Certainly Albu isn't one to spit on the pavement-not in town, anyway, where no one knows who he is and where he acts the refined gentleman. My nails hurt, but he's never squeezed them so hard my fingers turned blue. Eventually they'll thaw out, the way they do when it's freezing cold and you come into the warm. The worst thing is this feeling that my brain is slipping down into my face. It's humiliating, there's no other word for it, when your whole body feels like it's barefoot. But what if there aren't any words at all, what if even the best word isn't enough. I've been listening to the alarm clock since three in the morning ticking ten sharp, ten sharp, ten sharp. Whenever Paul is asleep, he kicks his leg from one side of the bed to the other and then recoils so fast he startles himself, although he doesn't wake up. It's become a habit with him. No more sleep for me. I lie there awake, and I know I need to close my eyes if I'm going back to sleep, but I don't close them. I've frequently forgotten how to sleep, and have had to relearn each time. It's either extremely easy or utterly impossible. In the early hours just before dawn, every creature on earth is asleep: even dogs and cats only use half the night for prowling around the dumpsters. If you're sure you can't sleep anyway, it's easier to think of something bright inside the darkness than to simply shut your eyes in vain. Snow, whitewashed tree trunks, white-walled rooms, vast expanses of sand-that's what I've thought of to pass the time, more often than I would have liked, until it grew light. This morning I could have thought about sunflowers, and I did, but they weren't enough to dislodge the summons. And with the alarm clock ticking ten sharp, ten sharp, ten sharp, my thoughts raced to Major Albu even before they shifted to me and Paul. Today I was already awake when Paul started thrashing in his sleep. By the time the window started turning gray, I had already seen Albu's mouth looming on the ceiling, gigantic, the pink tip of his tongue tucked behind his lower teeth, and I had heard his sneering voice: Don't tell me you're losing your nerve already-we're just warming up. Paul's kicking wakes me only when I haven't been summoned for two or three weeks. Then I feel happy, since it means I've learned how to sleep again. Whenever I've relearned how to sleep, and I ask Paul in the morning what he was dreaming, he can't remember anything. I show him how he tosses about and splays his toes, and then how he jerks his legs back and crooks his toes. Moving a chair from the table to the middle of the kitchen, I sit down, stick my legs in the air, and demonstrate the whole procedure. It makes Paul laugh, and I say: You're laughing at yourself. Who knows, maybe I dreamed I was taking you for a ride on my motorcycle. His thrashing is like a forward charge disrupted by an immediate call to retreat. I presume it comes from drinking. Not that I say this to him. Nor do I explain that it's the night drawing the shakes out of his legs. That's what it must be-the night, seizing him by the knees and tugging at the shakes, pulling them down through his toes into the pitch-black room, and finally tossing them out into the blackness of the street below, in the early hours just before daybreak, when the whole city is slumbering away. Otherwise Paul wouldn't be able to stand up straight when he woke. But if night wrenches the shakes out of every drunk in the city, it must be tanked up to high heaven come morning, given the number of drinkers. Just after four, the trucks begin delivering goods to the row of shops down below. They completely shatter the silence, making a huge racket for the little they deliver: a few crates of bread, milk, and vegetables, and large quantities of plum brandy. Whenever the food runs out, the women and children manage to cope: the lines disperse, and all roads lead home. But when the brandy runs out, the men curse their lot and pull out their knives. The salespeople say things to calm them down, but that only works while the customers are still inside the store. The moment they're out the door they continue prowling the city on their quest. The first fights break out because they can't find any brandy, and later because they're stone drunk. The brandy comes from the hilly region between the Carpathians and the arid plains. The plum trees there are so dense you can barely make out the tiny villages hiding in their branches. Whole forests of plum trees, drenched with blue in late summer, the branches sagging with the weight of the fruit. The brandy is named after the region, but nobody calls it by its proper name. It doesn't really even need a name, since there's only one brand in the whole country. People just call it Two Plums, from the picture on the label. Those two plums leaning cheek to cheek are as familiar to the men as the Madonna and Child are to the women. People say the plums represent the love between bottle and drinker. The way I see it, those cheek to cheek plums look more like a wedding picture than a Madonna and Child. None of the pictures in church shows the Child's head level with his mother's. The Child's forehead is always resting against the Virgin's cheek, with his own cheek at her neck, and his chin on her breast. Moreover, the relationship between drinkers and bottles is more like the one between the couples in wedding pictures: they bring each other to ruin, and still they won't let go. In our wedding picture, I'm not carrying flowers and I'm not wearing a veil. The love in my eyes is gleaming new, but the truth is, it was my second wedding. The picture shows Paul and me standing cheek to cheek like two plums. Ever since he started drinking so much, our wedding picture has proven prophetic. Whenever Paul's out on the town, barhopping late into the night, I'm afraid he'll never come home again, and I stare at our wedding picture until it starts to change shape. When that happens our two faces start to swim, and our cheeks shift around so that a little bit of space opens up between them. Mostly it is Paul's cheek that swims away from mine, as if he were planning to come home late. But he does come home. He always has, even after the accident. Occasionally a shipment of buffalo-grass vodka comes in from Poland-yellowish and bittersweet. That gets sold first. Each bottle contains a long, sodden stem that quivers as you pour the vodka but never buckles or slips out of the bottle. Drinkers say: That stem sticks in its bottle just like your soul sticks in your body, that's how the grass protects your soul. Their belief goes together with the burning taste in your mouth and the roaring drunk inside your head. The drinkers open the bottle, the liquid glugs into their glasses, and the first swallow slides down their throats. The soul begins to feel protected; it quivers but never buckles and never slips out of the body. Paul keeps his soul protected too; there's never a day where he feels like giving up and packing it all in. Maybe things would be fine if it weren't for me, but we like being together. The drink cakes his day, and the night takes his drunkenness. When I worked the early morning shift at the clothing factory, I heard the workers say: With a sewing machine, you oil the cogs, with a human machine, you oil the throat. Back then Paul and I used to cake his motorcycle to work every morning at five on the dot. We'd see the drivers with their delivery trucks parked outside the stores, the porters carrying crates, the vendors, and the moon. Now all I hear is the noise; I don't go to the window, and I don't look at the moon. I remember that it looks like a goose egg, and that it leaves the city on one side of the sky while the sun comes up at the other. Nothing's changed there; that's how it was even before I knew Paul, when I used to walk to the tram stop on foot. On the way I thought: How bizarre that something so beautiful could be up in the sky, with no law down here on earth forbidding people to look at it. Evidently it was permissible to wangle something out of the day before it was ruined in the factory. I would start to freeze, not because I was underdressed, but simply because I couldn't get enough of the moon. At that hour the moon is almost entirely eaten away; it doesn't know where to go after reaching the city. The sky has to loosen its grip on the earth as day begins to break. The streets run steeply up and down, and the streetcars travel back and forth like rooms ablaze with light. I know the trams from the inside too. The people getting on at this early hour wear short sleeves, carry worn leather bags, and have goose pimples on both arms. Each newcomer is measured and judged with a casual glance. This is a strictly working-class affair. Better people take their cars to work. But here, among your own, you make comparisons: that person's better off than me, that one looks worse. No one's ever in the exact same boat as you-that would be impossible. There's not much rime, we're almost at the factories, and now all the people who've been sized up leave the tram, one after the other. Shoes polished or dusty, heels new and straight or worn down to an angle, collars freshly ironed or crumpled, hair parted or not, fingernails, watch-straps, belt buckles: every single detail provokes envy or contempt. Nothing escapes this sleepy scrutiny, even in the pushing crowd. The working class ferrets out the differences: in the cold light of morning there is no equality. The sun is in the streetcar, along for the ride, and outside as well, pulling back the white and red clouds in anticipation of the scorching midday heat. No one is wearing a jacket: the freezing cold in the morning counts as fresh air, because with noon will come the clogging dust and infernal heat. If I haven't been summoned, we can sleep in for several hours. Daytime sleep is not deep black; it's shallow and yellow. Our sleep is restless, the sunlight falls on our pillows. But it does make the day a little shorter. We'll be under observation soon enough; the day's not going to run away. They can always accuse us of something, even if we sleep till nearly noon. As it is, we're always being accused of something we can no longer do anything about. You can sleep all you want, but the day's still out there waiting, and a bed is not another country. They won't let us rest till we're lying next to Lilli. Of course Paul also has to sleep off his drunk. It takes him until about noon to get his head square on his shoulders and relocate his mouth so he can actually speak and not just slur his words in a voice thick with drink. His breath still smells, though, and when he steps into the kitchen I feel as if I were passing the open door of the bar downstairs. Since spring, drinking hours have been regulated, and consumption of liquor is prohibited before eleven. But the bar still opens at six-brandy is served in coffee cups before eleven; after that they bring out the glasses. Paul drinks and is no longer himself, then he sleeps it off and is back to being himself. Around noon it looks as if everything could turn out all right, but once again it turns out ruined. Paul goes on protecting his soul until the buffalo grass is high and dry, while I brood over who he and I really are until I can no longer think straight. At lunchtime we're sitting at the kitchen table, and any mention of his having been drunk yesterday is the wrong thing to say. Even so, I occasionally toss out a word or two: Drink won't change a thing. Why are you making my life so difficult? You could paint this entire kitchen with what you put away yesterday. True, the flat is small, and I don't want to avoid Paul; but when we stay at home, we spend too much of the day sitting in the kitchen. By mid-afternoon he's already drunk, and in the evening it gets worse. I put off talking because it makes him grumpy. I keep waiting through the night, until he's sober again and sitting in the kitchen with eyes like onions. But then whatever I say goes right past him. I'd like for Paul to admit I'm right, just for once. But drinkers never admit anything, not even silently to themselves-and they're not about to let anyone else squeeze it out of them, especially somebody who's waiting to hear the admission. The minute Paul wakes up, his thoughts turn to drinking, though he denies it. That's why there's never any truth. If he's not sitting silently at the table, letting my words go right past him, he says something like this, meant to last the entire day: Don't fret, I'm not drinking out of desperation. I drink because I like it. That may be the case, I say, since you seem to think with your tongue. Paul looks out the kitchen window at the sky, or into his cup. He dabs at the drops of coffee on the table, as if to confirm that they're wet and really will spread if he smears them with a finger. He takes my hand, I look out the kitchen window at the sky, into the cup, I too dab at the odd drop of coffee on the table. The red enamel tin stares at us and I stare back. But Paul does not, because that would mean doing something different today from what he did yesterday. Is he being strong or weak when he remains silent instead of saying for once: I'm not going to drink today. Yesterday Paul again said: Don't you fret, your man drinks because he likes it. His legs carried him down the hall-at once too heavy and too light-as if they contained a mix of sand and air. I placed my hand upon his neck and stroked the stubble I love to touch in the mornings, the whiskers that grow in his sleep. He drew my hand up under his eye, it slid down his cheek to his chin. I didn't take away my fingers, but I did think to myself: I wouldn't count on any of this cheek-to-cheek business after you've seen that picture of the two plums. I like to hear Paul talk that way, so late in the morning, and yet I don't like it either. Whenever I take a step away from him, he nudges his love up to me, so naked, so close that he doesn't need to say anything else. He doesn't have to wait, I'm ready with my approval, not a single reproach on the tip of my tongue. The one in my head quickly fades. It's good I can't see myself, since my face feels stupid and pale. Yesterday morning, Paul's hangover once again yielded up an unexpected pussycat gentleness that came padding on soft paws. Your man-the only people who talk like that have shallow wits and too much pride tucked around the corners of their mouths. Although the noontime tenderness paves the way for the evening's drinking, I depend on it, and I don't like the way I need it. Major Albu says: I can see what you're thinking, there's no point in denying it, we're just wasting time. Actually, it's only my time being wasted; after all, he's doing his job. He rolls up his sleeve and glances at the clock. The time is easy to see, but not what I'm thinking. If Paul can't see what I'm thinking, then certainly this man can't. Paul sleeps next to the wall, while my place is toward the front edge of the bed, since I'm often unable to sleep. Still, whenever he wakes up he says: You were caking up the whole bed and shoved me right up against the wall. To which I reply: No way, I was on this little strip here no wider than a clothesline, you were the one taking up the middle. One of us could sleep in the bed and the other on the sofa. We've tried it. For two nights we took turns. Both nights I did nothing but toss around. My brain was grinding down thought after thought, and toward morning, when I was half asleep, I had a series of bad dreams. Two nights of bad dreams that kept reaching out and clutching at me all day long. The night I was on the sofa, my first husband put the suitcase on the bridge over the river, gripped me by the back of my neck, and roared with laughter. Then he looked at the water and whistled that song about love falling apart and the river water turning black as ink. The water in my dream was not like ink, I could see it, and in the water I saw his face, turned upside down and peering up from the depths, from where the pebbles had seeded. Then a white horse ate apricots in a thicket of trees. With every apricot it raised its head and spat out the stone like a human being. And the night I had the bed to myself, someone grabbed my shoulder from behind and said: Don't turn around, I'm not here. Without moving my head, I just squinted out of the corners of my eyes. Lilli's fingers were gripping me, her voice was that of a man, so it wasn't her. I raised my hand to touch her and the voice said: What you can't see you can't touch. I saw the fingers, they were hers, but someone else was using them. Someone I couldn't see. And in the next dream, my grandfather was pruning back a hydrangea that had been frost-burnt by the snow. He called me over: Come take a look, I've got a lamb here. Snow was falling on his trousers, his shears were clipping off the heads of the frost-browned flowers. I said: That's not a lamb. It's not a person, either, he said. His fingers were numb and he could only open and close the shears slowly, so that I wasn't sure whether it was the shears that were squeaking or his hand. I tossed the shears into the snow. They sank in so that it was impossible to tell where they had fallen. He combed the entire yard looking for them, his nose practically touching the snow. When he reached the garden gate I stepped on his hands so he'd look up and not go wandering off through the gate, searching the whole white street. I said: Stop it, the lamb's frozen and the wool got burnt in the frost. By the garden fence was another hydrangea, one that had been pruned bare. I gestured to it: What's wrong with that one. That one's the worst, he said. Come spring it'll be having little ones. We can't have that. The morning after the second night, Paul said: If we're in each other's way, at least it means we each have someone. The only place you sleep alone is in your coffin, and that'll happen soon enough. We should stay together at night. Who knows the dreams he had and promptly forgot. He was talking about sleeping, however, not dreaming. At half past four in the morning I saw Paul asleep in the gray light, a twisted face above a double chin. And at that early hour, down by the shops, people were cursing out loud and laughing. Lilli said: Curses ward off evil spirits. Idiot, get your foot out of the way. Move, or do you have shit in your shoes. Open those great flapping ears of yours and you'll hear what I'm saying, but watch you don't blow away in this wind. Never mind your hair, we haven't finished unloading. A woman was clucking, short and hoarse like a hen. A van door slammed. Lend a hand, you moron. If you want a rest you should check into a sanatorium. Paul's clothes were strewn on the floor. The new day was already in the wardrobe mirror, the day on which I have been summoned, today. I got up, careful to place my right foot on the floor before my left, as I always do when I've been summoned. I can't say for sure I really believe in it, but how could it hurt. What I'd like to know is whether other people's brains control their good fortune as well as their thoughts. My brain's only good for a little fortune. It's not up to shaping a whole life. At least not mine. I've already come to terms with what fortune I have, even though Paul wouldn't consider it very good at all. Every other day or so I declare: I'm doing just fine. Paul's face is right in front of me, quiet and still, gaping at what I've just said, as if our having each other didn't count. He says: You feel fine because you've forgotten what that means for other people. Others might mean their life as a whole when they say: I'm doing just fine. All I'm talking about is my good fortune. Paul realizes that life is something I haven't come to terms with and I don't simply mean I haven't done so yet, that it's only a matter of time. Just look at us, says Paul, how can you go on about being fortunate. Quick as a handful of flour hitting a windowpane, the bathroom light cast a face into the mirror, a face with froggy creases over its eyes which looked like me. I held my hands in the water, it felt warm; on my face it felt cold. Brushing my teeth, I look up and see toothpaste come frothing out of my eyes-it's not the first time I've had this happen. I feel nauseous, I spit out what's in my mouth and stop. Ever since my first summons, I've begun to distinguish between life and fortune. When I go in for questioning, I have no choice but to leave my good fortune at home. I leave it in Paul's face, around his eyes, his mouth, amid his stubble. If it could be seen, you'd see it on his face like a transparent glaze. Every time I have to go, I want to stay behind in the flat, like the fear I always leave behind and which I can't take away from Paul. Like the fortune I leave at home when I'm away. He doesn't know how much my good fortune has come to rely upon his fear. He couldn't bear to know that. What he does know is obvious to anyone with eyes: that whenever I've been summoned, I put on my green blouse and eat a walnut. The blouse is one I inherited from Lilli but its name comes from me: the blouse that grows. If I were to take my good fortune with me, it would weaken my nerves. Albu says: You don't mean you're losing your nerve already-we're just warming up. I'm not losing my nerve, not at all: in fact, I'm overloaded with nerves. And every one of them is humming like a moving streetcar. They say that walnuts on an empty stomach are good for your nerves and your powers of reason. Any child knows that, but I'd forgotten it. What sparked my memory wasn't the fact that I was being summoned so often-it was sheer chance. One time I had to be at Albu's at ten sharp, like today; by half past seven I was all set to go. Getting there takes an hour and a half at most. I give myself two hours, and if I'm early I walk a while around the neighborhood. I prefer it that way. I've always arrived on time: I can't imagine they'd put up with any lateness. It was because I was all set to go by half past seven that I got to eat the walnut. I'd been ready that early for previous summonses, but on that particular morning the walnut was lying there on the kitchen table. Paul had found it in the elevator the day before. He'd put it in his pocket, since you don't just leave a walnut sitting there. It was the first one of the year, with a little of the moist fuzz left from the green husk. I weighed it in my hand: it seemed a little light for a good fresh nut, as if it might be hollow. I couldn't find a hammer, so I split it open with the stone that used to be in the hall but has since moved to a corner of the kitchen. The brain of the nut was loose inside. It tasted of sour cream. That day my interrogation was shorter than usual, I kept my nerve, and once I was back on the street, I thought to myself: That was thanks to the nut. Ever since then I've believed in nuts, that nuts help. I don't really believe it, but I want to have done whatever I can that might help. That's why I stick to my stone for cracking nuts, and always do it in the morning. Once the nut's been cracked, it loses its power if it lies open overnight. Of course it would be easier on Paul and the neighbors-not to mention myself-if I split them open in the evening, but I can't have people telling me what time to crack nuts. I brought the stone from the Carpathians. My first husband had been on military service since March. Every week he wrote me a whining letter and I responded with a comforting card. Summer came, and I tried to figure out exactly how many letters and cards we would have to exchange before he returned. My father-in-law wanted to take his place and sleep with me, so I soon had enough of his house and garden. I packed my rucksack and early one morning, after he'd gone to work, I stashed it in the bushes near a gap in the fence. A few hours later I strolled out to the road, with nothing in my hands. My mother in law was hanging out the laundry and had no idea what I was up to. Without saying a word, I pushed the rucksack through the gap in the fence and walked to the station. I took a train into the mountains and joined up with some people who'd just graduated from the music academy. Every day we trekked and stumbled from one glacial lake to the next until it grew dark. Each shoreline was marked by wooden crosses set in the rocks, bearing the dates on which people had drowned. Cemeteries underwater and crosses all around-portents of dangerous times to come. As if all those round lakes were hungry and needed their yearly ration of meat delivered on the dates inscribed. Here no one dived for the dead: the water would snuff our life in an instant, chilling you to the bone in a matter of seconds. The music graduates sang as the lake pictured them, upside down, taking their measure as potential corpses. Hiking, resting, or eating, they sang in chorus. It wouldn't have surprised me to hear them harmonize while they slept at night, just as they did at those bleak altitudes where the sky blows into your mouth. I had to stay with the group because death makes no allowance for the wanderer who strays alone. The lakes made our eyes grow bigger by the day; in every face I could see the circles widening, the cheeks losing ground. And every day our legs grew shorter. Nevertheless, on the last day I wanted to take something back home with me, so I picked through the scree until I found a rock that looked like a child's foot. The musicians looked for small flat pebbles they could rub in their hands as worry-stones. Their stones looked like coat buttons, and I had more than enough of those every day in the factory. But those musicians put their faith in worry-stones the way I now put mine in nuts. I can't help it: I've put on the blouse that grows, I bang twice with the stone, rattling all the dishes in the kitchen, and the walnut is cracked. And as I'm eating it, Paul comes in, startled by the banging. He's wearing his pajamas and downs one or two glasses of water, two if he was as blind drunk as he was last night. I don't need to understand each individual word. I know perfectly well what he says while drinking water: You don't really believe that nut helps, do you. Of course I don't really believe it, just as I don't really believe in all the other routines I've developed. Consequently I'm all the more stubborn. Let me believe what I want. Paul lets that one go, since we both know it's not right to quarrel before the interrogation, you need to keep a clear head. Most of the sessions are torturously long despite the nut. But how do I know they wouldn't be worse if I didn't eat the nut? Paul doesn't realize that the more he pooh-poohs all my routines, with that wet mouth of his and the glass he's draining before clearing it off the table, the more I rely on them. People who are summoned develop routines that help them out a little. Whether these routines really work or not is beside the point. It's not people, though, it's me who's developed them; they came sneaking up on me, one by one. Paul says: The things you waste your time on. What he does, instead, is consider what questions they'll ask me when I'm summoned. This is absolutely necessary, he claims, whereas what I do is crazy. He'd be right if the questions he's preparing me for really were the ones I was asked. Up to now they've always been completely different. It's too much to expect my routines to really help me. Actually they don't help me so much as help move life along from one day to the next. There's no point expecting them to fill your head with lucky thoughts. There's a lot to be said for moving life along, but there's essentially nothing to say when it comes to luck, because as soon as you open your mouth you jinx it away. Not even the luck you've missed out on can bear being talked about. The routines I've developed are about moving from one day to the next, and not about luck. I'm sure Paul's right: the walnut and the blouse that grows only add to the fear. And what sense is there in shooting for good fortune when all that does is add to the fear. I am constantly dwelling on this, and as a result I don't expect as much as other people. Nobody covets the fear that others make for themselves. But with luck it's just the opposite, which is why good fortune is never a very good goal. On the green blouse that grows there's a large mother-of pearl button which I picked out from a great many buttons at the factory and took for Lilli. At the interrogation I sit at the small table, twisting the button in my fingers, and answer calmly, even though every one of my nerves is jangling. Albu paces to and fro; having to formulate the right questions wears at his calm, just as having to give the right answers wears at mine. As long as I keep my composure there's the chance he'll get something wrong maybe everything. Back home I change into my gray blouse. This one's called the blouse that waits. It's a gift from Paul. Of course I often have misgivings about these names. But they've never done any harm, not even on days when I haven't been summoned. The blouse that grows helps me, and the blouse that waits may be helping Paul. His fear on my behalf is as high as the ceiling, just as mine is for him when he sits around the flat, waiting and drinking, or when he's barhopping in town. It's easier if you're the one going out, if you're the one taking your fear away and leaving your fortune at home, and if there's someone waiting for you to come back. Sitting at home, waiting, stretches time to the brink and tightens fear to the point of snapping. The powers I've bestowed on my routines verge on the superhuman. Albu yells: You see, everything is connected. And I twist the large button on my blouse and say: In your mind they are, in my mind they aren't. Shortly before he got off, the old man in the straw hat turned his watery eyes away from me. Now there's a father with a child on his lap sitting on the seat facing me, his legs stretched out into the aisle. Watching the city go by outside the window isn't something he can be bothered with. The child sticks a forefinger up his father's nose. Crooking a finger and hunting for snot is something kids learn early. Later they're told not to pick anyone's nose but their own, and then only if no one's watching. This father doesn't think that later has arrived yet; he smiles, perhaps he's enjoying it. The tram halts in the middle of the tracks, between stops, the driver gets out. Who knows how long we'll be stranded. It's early in the morning and already he's sneaking a break when he should be driving his route. Everyone here does what he wants. The driver strolls over to the shops, tucking in his shirt and adjusting his trousers so no one will notice he's abandoned his tram in mid-route. He acts like someone who's so bored that he finally got up off his couch just to poke his nose into the sunshine. If he's planning to buy anything in one of the shops over there, he'll either have to say who he is or else he'll have to wait in line. If all he's after is a cup of coffee, I hope he doesn't sit down to drink it. He doesn't dare touch brandy, even if he does keep his window open. Every one of us sitting on the tram has the right to reek of brandy except for him. But he's behaving as if it were the other way round. My summons puts me in the same position as far as brandy is concerned. I'd rather have his reason for abstaining than my own. Who knows when he'll be back. Ever since I began leaving my good fortune at home, the kiss on my hand doesn't paralyze me as much as it used to. I crook up my finger joints so that my knuckles keep Albu from speaking. Paul and I have rehearsed this kiss. In order to approximate the importance of the signet ring on Albu's middle finger, to see how it affects the finger-squeeze, I made a ring out of a strip of rubber and a coat button. We took turns wearing it, and we laughed so much we completely forgot why we were going through the exercise in the first place. I learned not to crook my hand up all at once but gradually. That way the knuckles can block his gums and keep him from speaking. Sometimes when Albu is kissing my hand, I think of my rehearsal with Paul. Then the pain at my fingernails and the slobber on my hand aren't so humiliating. You learn as you go, but I can't show that I'm learning, and whatever happens I cannot laugh. If you're walking or driving around the leaning tower, where Paul and I live, you can't really keep more than the entranceway and the lower stories under surveillance. From the sixth floor up the flats are too high, so that you'd need sophisticated technology to see anything in detail. What's more, about halfway up the building, the facade angles out toward the front. If you stare up at it long enough you'll feel your eyes rolling back into your forehead. I've tried it often; your neck grows tired. The leaning tower has looked like that for twelve years now, says Paul, from the day it was built. Whenever I want to explain where I live, all I have to do is say: In the leaning tower. Everyone in the city knows where it is. They ask: Aren’t you afraid it might collapse. I'm not afraid, I say, it was built with reinforced concrete. Whenever I refer to the tower, people look down at the floor, as if looking at me might make them dizzy, so I say: Everything else in this city will collapse first. At that they nod, to relax the veins that are twitching in their necks. The fact that our flat is high up is an advantage for us, but it also has the disadvantage that Paul and I can't see exactly what's going on down below. From the seventh floor you can't make out anything smaller than a suitcase, and when do you see anyone carrying a suitcase. Individual items of clothing blur into big splotches of color, and faces turn into little pale patches between the hair and the clothes. You could guess at what the nose, eyes, or teeth inside those patches might look like, but why bother. Old people and children can be recognized by the way they walk. There are dumpsters located on the grass between our building and the shops, with a walkway running alongside them. Two narrow footpaths leave the paved sidewalk and circle around the group of bins, without quite meeting. From up here the bins look like ransacked cupboards with the doors torn off. Once a month someone sets them on fire, the smoke rises and the garbage is consumed. If your windows aren't shut, your eyes start stinging and your throat gets sore. Most things happen outside the entrances to the shops, but unfortunately all we can see are the rear service doors. No matter how often we count them, we can never match up the twenty-seven doors in back with the eight front doors belonging to the grocer, the bread shop, the greengrocer, the pharmacy, the bar, the shoemaker, the hairdresser, and the kindergarten. The whole rear wall is riddled with doors; nevertheless, the delivery trucks stop mostly in the street, out front. The old shoemaker was complaining he had too little room and too many rats. His shop consists of a workbench enclosed in a small space that is partitioned from the rest of the room by a makeshift wall of wooden planks. The man I took over from was the one who fixed the place up, the shoemaker said. Back then the building was new. The space was boarded off then too, but he couldn't think of anything to do with all those planks, or maybe he just didn't want to; anyway, he didn't use them at all. I knocked in a few nails and ever since I've been hanging the shoes up by their laces, thongs, or heels, they don't get gnawed on anymore. I can't have the rats eating everything after all, I have to pay for the damage. Especially in winter, when they're hungrier. Behind those planks there's a great big hall. Once, back in the early days, during a holiday, I came down to the shop, loosened two of the boards behind the bench, and squeezed through with a flashlight. There's nowhere you can put your feet, the whole floor skitters and squeaks, he said, it's full of rats' nests. Rats don't need a door, you know, they just tunnel through the ground. The walls are covered with electrical sockets, and the back wall has four doors leading out to the bins. But you can't budge them so much as an inch to drive the rats out even for a couple hours. The door to my workplace is just a cheap piece of tin-in fact, more than half the doors in back of the shops aren't doors at all, they're just tin plates they built into the wall to save on concrete. The sockets are probably there in case of war. There'll always be war all right, he laughed, but not here. The Russians have got us where they want us with treaties, they won't be showing up here. Whatever they need, they've shipped off to Moscow: they eat our grain and our meat and leave us to go hungry and fight over the shortages. Who'd want to conquer us, all it would do is cost them money. Every country on earth is happy not to have us, even the Russians. The driver returns, eating a crescent roll, in no particular hurry. His shirt has slipped back outside his trousers, as if he'd been driving the whole time. His cheeks are stuffed with food, he runs his hand through his hair, clutching a half-eaten roll and making more of a face than the effort of chewing calls for. Now he tidies up on the step up to the car, although not for us. For us he puts on a grouchy face so no one in the tram will dare utter a word. He climbs in, his other hand holding a second roll, while a third is poking out of his shirt pocket. Slowly the tram starts moving. The father with the boy has taken his legs out of the aisle and stretched them between the seats. His son is licking the pane, but instead of pulling the boy away, the man is holding the little one's neck so his little bright-red tongue can reach the window. The boy turns his head, stares, grabs his father's ear, and babbles. The father doesn't bother to wipe the dribble off the boy's chin. Maybe he's actually listening. But his thoughts are clearly elsewhere as he stares out through the saliva smeared on the windowpane, as if it were perfectly normal for windows to drool. The hair at the back of his head is shorn close, like on a pelt. Running through it is the bald line of a scar. For a whole week, when summer came and people began running around in short sleeves, Paul and I were suspicious of a man who to this day walks over from the shops every morning at ten to eight, empty-handed. Every day he steps off the paved sidewalk and follows the paths around the dumpsters and then steps back on the sidewalk and returns to the shops. At one point Paul couldn't stand it any longer, he stuffed some paper in a plastic bag and set out to follow the man. He didn't come back until lunch, equipped with a long white loaf of the kind you can carry under your arm. With that he headed for the street the next morning at a quarter past seven, and at ten to eight, after the man had completed his circuit of the dumpsters, Paul returned with the same loaf of bread now broken in two. Evidently the man is about forty, wears a cross on a gold chain, has an anchor tattooed on one inner arm and the name Ana on the other. He lives in a bright-green row house on Mulberry Street and every morning, before he makes his circuit of the dumpsters, he drops off a blubbering boy at the kindergarten. There's no reason for him to pass by our tower on his way home from the kindergarten, unless he just wants a change of pace. Though it's hardly a change if you take the same detour every single day. Paul says: The man walks by the trash cans because they're near a bar he just passed that's nagging at him. The brandy-like smell of fermenting garbage somehow eases his guilty conscience, so he does an about-face and orders his first brandy of the day in the bar. The rest of the glasses follow automatically. Around nine o'clock he's joined by another man wearing a short-sleeved brown summer suit, who only drinks two cups of coffee but stays at the man's table until five to twelve, when it's time to pick up the child. The boy is still crying at noon, when he sees the man waiting for him. To my nose the trash cans don't stink of brandy, but drinkers may have a different sense of smell. Still, why does the man insist on craning his neck and looking up while he's making his rounds down there. And who is that person who keeps him company in the bar. I suspect Paul has himself in mind when he says that the man is lifting his head up to heaven as he heads home, in order to stave off the guilt he feels at hitting the booze. And why does the child cry when he sees him, maybe he doesn't belong to the man at all. Paul has no idea but says: Who'd borrow a kid. Obviously Paul never does the shopping, or else he'd know that people really do borrow children to get larger rations of meat, milk, and bread in the shops. Why does Paul say this drinker goes to such and such a place every morning when in fact he only followed the man for one morning and part of an afternoon. It could all be coincidence rather than habit. Albu is trained to notice such things. At varying intervals, and just to confuse me, he asks the same thing at least three times before he's satisfied with the answer. Only then does he say: You see, things are getting connected. Paul says I should follow the alcoholic myself if I'm not satisfied with his report. But I'd rather not. A bag in your hand and a loaf under your arm doesn't make you invisible; it could easily give you away. I no longer stand beside our window at ten to eight, although every morning it occurs to me that the man is walking around down there, craning his neck. Nor do I say anything anymore, because Paul digs in so, insisting he's right, as if he needs this drinker in his life more than he needs me. As if our life would be easier if the man caught between his child and his drink were simply a tormented father. That may all be true, I say, but he still might be doing a little spying on the side. Now the driver has scratched the salt off his second crescent roll. The coarse grains burn your tongue and ruin the enamel on your teeth. And salt makes you thirsty, maybe he doesn't want to be drinking water all the time, because he can't go to the toilet while he's on duty, and because the more you drink the more you sweat. My grandfather told me that in the camp they used salt from evaporated water to clean their teeth. They would take it in their mouth and rub it over their teeth with the tip of their tongue. But that salt was as fine as dust. After the driver finished his first roll he swigged something from a bottle. Water, I hope. A truck full of sheep crosses the intersection. The sheep are crammed in so tight they can't fall over no matter how bumpy the ride. No heads, no bellies, just black and white wool. Only when we take the turn do I notice a dog's head in their midst. And a man in a small green climbing cap, the kind that shepherds wear, sitting in the cab, next to the driver. They're probably moving the flock to a new pasture-you don't need a dog at the slaughterhouse. Some things aren't bad until you start talking about them. I've learned how to hold my tongue before it gets me into trouble, but usually it's already too late, because sooner or later I always want to have my say. Whenever Paul and I don't understand something that troubles other people, we start to quarrel. Things quickly escalate until they get out of hand, and every salvo calls for an even more thunderous one in return. I think we see in that alcoholic man the things that most torment us, and these things are different for each of us, despite our common love. Evidently drinking troubles Paul more than my being summoned. He drinks the most whenever I'm summoned, and on those days especially I have no right to reproach him for his drinking, even though his being drunk troubles me more than.. My first husband also had a tattoo. He returned home from the army with a rose threaded through a heart inked on his chest. My name beneath the stem. But I left him nevertheless. Why in the world have you gone and ruined your skin. The only place that rosy heart might possibly look right is on your gravestone. Because the days were long and I was thinking of you, he explained, and everybody else was getting one. Apart from the chicken-hearts. We had our share of those, just like anywhere else. I didn't leave him for some other man, as he suspected, I just wanted to leave him. He wanted an itemized list of the reasons why. I couldn't spell out a single one. Are you disappointed in me, he asked. Or have I changed. No, we were both exactly the same as when we met. Love can't go on just running in place, but that's what our love had been doing for two and a half years. He looked at me, and when I said nothing, he declared: You're one of those who needs a good beating now and then, only I wasn't up to giving it to you. He meant it, since he knew he could never raise a hand against me. I believed it too. Up to that day on the bridge he wasn't even capable of slamming a door in anger. It was already half past seven in the evening. He asked me to dash out with him to buy a suitcase before the shops closed. He was planning to leave the next day for a two-week trip to the mountains. He expected me to miss him. But two weeks is nothing. Even our two and a half years weren't much. We left the store and walked through the city in silence. He was carrying the new suitcase. The shop had been about to close and the salesgirl hadn't cleaned out the case, it was stuffed full of paper and had a price tag dangling from the handle. The previous day there had been a down pour, the high, silty water was tearing at the willows along the river. Halfway across the bridge he stopped and squeezed my arm. He was kneading my flesh so hard, down to the bone, that I shuddered, and he said: Look at all that water. If I come back from the mountains and find you've left me, I'll jump right in. The suitcase was suspended between us; behind him I could see water, and branches, and muddy scum. I yelled: You can jump right now, with me watching. Then you won't have to bother going to the mountains. I took a deep breath and lowered my head. It wasn't my fault if he thought I wanted a kiss. He parted his lips, but I repeated: Go on and jump. I'll take full responsibility. Then I jerked my arm away so both his hands were free and he could jump. I was numb with the fear that he'd actually do it. Then I walked on, taking short steps, without looking back, so he wouldn't have to feel awkward, and so I'd be far enough away from the body. I'd nearly reached the far side of the bridge when he came panting after me and shoved me up against the railing, crushing my belly. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and forced my head down toward the water as far as his arm would let him. The whole weight of my body was hanging over the railing, my feet were off the ground, he kept his knees clamped tight around my calves. I shut my eyes and waited for a final word before I plummeted. He kept it short and said: All right. Who can say why instead of loosening his knees to let me drop he relaxed his grip on my neck, lowered me to the ground, and took a step away. I opened my eyes and slowly they rolled back down from my forehead and into my face. The sky hung there reddish blue, no longer firmly anchored, and the river was spooling brown eddies of water. I started to run before he registered that I was still alive. I never wanted to stop again. The terror came jolting up into my mouth, giving me the hiccups. A man wheeled his bike past me, ringing the bell, and called out: Hey, sweetie, keep your mouth closed or else your heart'll catch a chill. Reeling, I stopped in my tracks, my legs shaking, my hands heavy. I was burning and freezing and hadn't run far at all, just a short distance, but I felt as though I'd raced halfway around the globe. I could still feel his viselike grip cutting into my neck. The man wheeled his bike into the park, the tires left long ripples snaking through the sand behind him, the tarmac ahead was completely deserted. The park was a sheer wall of blackish green, the sky clutching at the trees. The bridge made me horribly anxious and I couldn't help looking back. And there stood the suitcase, right in the middle of the bridge, exactly where it had been left. And he was standing right on the spot where I had run away from death, his face turned to the water. Between hiccups I could hear him whistling. Very melodically, without missing a beat, a tune he had learned from me. My hiccups vanished, frozen between one wave of terror and the next. I raised a hand to my throat and felt my larynx bobbing. Everything happened in a twinkling, the time it takes for one person to assault another. And there he stood on the bridge, whistling O the tree has its leaves, the tea has its water, money has its paper, and my heart has snow that's fallen astray. Now I think it was a lucky thing that he grabbed me by the neck. That way no one could accuse me of provoking him. But he came very close to committing murder. All because he wasn't up to giving me a good beating, and because he despised himself for that. The father had nodded off and was holding the child so loosely I could see him falling any moment. Then the boy kicked him in the stomach with his shoes. The father gave a start and pulled the boy back onto his lap. The boy's little sandals are dangling like little toys, as if his parents had dressed him that morning in some of his playthings. Their new soles had yet to step on the street. The father has handed the boy a handkerchief to play with. It's knotted, and must have a hard object wrapped into the knot, which the child is now using to hit the windowpane. Coins maybe, keys, nails, or else screws the father doesn't want to lose. The driver hears the banging; he turns around and says: Go on, keep it up, those windows cost money, you know. Don't worry, says the father, we're not going to break it. He taps on the pane and points outside and says to the boy: See that, there's a baby inside there who's even smaller than you. The boy drops the handkerchief and says: Mami. He sees a woman with a stroller. And the father says: Our Mami doesn't wear sunglasses. If she did, she wouldn't be able to see how blue your eyes are. Whenever Paul asks me about my first husband, I say: I've forgotten all that, I don't remember a thing. I think I have more secrets from Paul than he does from me. Lilli once said that secrets don't go away when you tell them, what you can tell are the shells, not the kernel. That may have been true for her, but for me, if I don't keep something concealed, then I've already exposed the kernel. You call it shells, I said, when something goes as far as it did on the bridge. But you tell the story the way it suits you, Lilli said. How is it supposed to suit me, it doesn't suit me at all. Of course it makes you look bad, and him as well, Lilli said, but it suits you because you can talk about it however you like. Not however I like. I tell it the way it was. You just don't believe I'm telling you anything you wouldn't tell me. That's why you're going on about shells. The point is that no matter how often I tell these stories, they stay the same, like the secret about my stepfather. The last thing I need is to drive myself crazy wondering about the alcoholic by the trash cans. And who knows what he's thinking; after all, he's been seeing me next to the window for days on end as well. Finally, since we've never managed to agree about the alcoholic, Paul and I have given up puzzling about the people down below. Whether they move in a square or in circles or straight ahead, it's impossible to know them. Even if you go down to the street and walk right next to them, what can you tell. The fact that their gait looks alien, as if their toes were in back, has nothing to do with their feet, only with me. Of course we're still constantly looking out our window. And even though there's nothing puzzling about a car parked, to no apparent purpose, behind the shops, or else perched halfway on the sidewalk in front of our apartment house, where no normal person is allowed to park-this is more than enough to keep us busy. I prefer looking out the kitchen window. There the swallows fly through a vast stretch of sky in circles of their own invention. This morning they were flying low, and I chewed my walnut and could tell by looking at them that it was a whole new day. Since I've been summoned, it will have to stay a window day, even if I can see half a tree to one side of the Major's table. The tree must have grown the length of an arm since my first interrogation. In winter it's the bare wood that marks the time, in summer it's the foliage. The leaves nod or shake their head, depending on the wind, but I can't rely on that. When the question is short, it means Albu wants the answer right away. Short questions aren't necessarily the easiest. I'll have to think about it. You mean you'll have to think up some lie, he says. Of course you could have one all ready and waiting, but that takes brains. Which you don't have, sad to say. All right, so I'm dumb, but not so dumb as to say something that might hurt me. Nor am I dumb enough to let myself feel pressured when Albu's trying to gauge if I'm lying or telling the truth. Sometimes his eyes are cool, sometimes they burn into me so that… Sometimes Lilli is inside me and gazes too long into Albu's eyes. I shuffle my shoes under the table, then it's not so quiet. O the tree has its leaves, the tea has its water, money has its paper, and my heart has snow that's fallen astray. A winter and summer song, but for outside. In here you can quickly fall into a trap with foliage and snow. I don't know the tree's name, otherwise I'd sing ash, acacia, poplar in my head, and not just tree. I twist at the button on the blouse that grows. I never get as close to the branches as the Major, not from my small table. We both look at the tree at the same time. I would like to ask: What sort of tree is that. It would be a distraction. He wouldn't answer me, that's for sure, just scrape his chair forward and, with his trouser cuffs loose about his ankles, he might fiddle with his signet ring or play with the stub of his pencil and turn the question around: Why do you need to know that. What could I say then. He doesn't know why I always wear the same blouse, just as he always wears his signet ring. He also doesn't know why I twist the large button. And I don't know why he always keeps that chewed pencil stub, no longer than a match, lying on his table. Men wear signet rings, women wear earrings. Wedding rings make you superstitious, you never take them off until you die. If the man dies, the widow takes his ring and wears it next to hers, day and night, on her ring finger. Like all married people, Albu wears his narrow wedding ring at work. But jewelry at a job like that, tormenting people. It's not an ugly ring by any means, and if it weren't his it would be beautiful. The same is true of his eyes, cheeks, earlobes. I'm sure Lilli would gladly have stretched out her hands to stroke him; maybe even have introduced him to me one day as her lover. He's good-looking, I'd have had to say. Lilli's beauty was a given, what your eyes saw wasn't to blame for dazzling them so. Her nose, the curve of her neck, her ear, her knee, in your amazement you wanted to protect them, cover them with your hand, you were afraid for them, and your thoughts turned to death. But it never occurred to me that such skin might someday wrinkle. Between her being young and being dead, it never crossed my mind that Lilli might age. With Albu's skin, age is simply there, as if his flesh had nothing to do with it. His age is a rank to which he has been promoted in recognition of his sterling work. From this point on, nothing more will change, he will maintain his superiority, with nothing else to come but death. I wish it would come soon. Albu's good looks are flawless, tailor-made for interrogations, his personal appearance is never at risk, not even when he’s slobbering on my hand. Perhaps it is his very distinction that forbids him to mention Lilli. The chewed pencil on his table doesn't suit him, or anyone else his age. Surely Albu doesn't need to save on pencils. Perhaps he's proud that his grandson is teething. A photo of his grandson might serve instead of the pencil stub, except that here, as in all offices, it's probably forbidden to put family pictures on display. Perhaps a stub like that works well for his upright script. Or maybe a longer pencil would rub at his signet ring. Or maybe the stub is supposed to let me know exactly how much is being written about people like me. We know everything, Albu says. Maybe so--and here I agree with Lilli-about the shells of the dead. But nothing about their secrets, nothing about the kernels, about Lilli, whom Albu never mentions. Nothing about good fortune or common sense, which together may cause something tomorrow that I cannot foresee today. And nothing about what chance may bring the day after tomorrow; after all, I am alive. There's nothing special about the fact that Albu and I are looking at the tree together. Our eyes fall on other things at the same time as well: my table or his, a section of wall, the door, or the floor. Or he looks at his pencil and I look at my finger. Or he looks at his ring and I look at my large button. Or he looks at my face and I look at the wall. Or I look at his face and he looks at the door. Constantly looking each other in the face is tiring, particularly for me. The only things I trust here are the ones that don't change. But the tree is growing: it gave the blouse its name. I may leave my happiness a

Chapter Twelve. December 4, 1991. I went over to Georgetown today to talk to Elsa, the little redheaded "dropout" I met there a couple of weeks ago. The reason for my visit was to try to make a better evaluation of the potential of some of Elsa's friends for playing a role in our fight against the System. Actually, some of them-or, at least, people in similar circumstances-already are involved in their own war against the System. In the last month there's been a bewildering proliferation of incidents in which the Organization has not been involved. These have included bombings, arson, kidnapping, violent public demonstrations, sabotage, death threats against prominent figures, even two widely publicized assassinations. Credit for the various incidents has been claimed by so many different groups-anarchists, tax rebels, "liberation fronts" of one stripe or another, half-a-dozen far-out religious cults-that no one can keep up with it all. Every nut with an ax to grind seems to have gotten into the act. Most of these people are such careless amateurs that even our racially integrated FBI has been doing a fairly creditable job of rounding them up, but more seem to keep cropping up. The general atmosphere of revolutionary violence and governmental counter- violence that the Organization's activities have brought on is apparently responsible for encouraging most of them. The most interesting aspect of all this is the proof it represents that the System's grip on the minds of the citizenry is less than total. Most Americans, of course, are still marching in mental lockstep with the high priests of the TV religion, but a growing minority have broken step and regard the System as an enemy. Unfortunately, their hostility is usually based on the wrong reasons, and it would be nearly impossible to coordinate their activities. In fact, in the great majority of cases there is no reasoned basis at all for their activity. It is really just a massive venting of frustrations in the form of vandalism rather than political terrorism. They just want to smash something, to inflict some injury on the people they see as responsible for the unlivable world they are forced to live in. Vandalism on the massive scale we are seeing now is something with which the political police simply cannot continue to cope for very long. It is running them ragged. Besides the political vandals and the loonies, two other segments of the population have been playing an important role in recent events: the Black separatists and the organized criminals. Until a few weeks ago everyone assumed that the System had finally bought off the last of the nationalist-minded Blacks back in the '70's. Apparently they've just been lying low and minding their own business, and now they see a chance to get a few licks in. Mostly they seem to have been blowing up the offices of Tom groups and shooting each other, but they organized a pretty good riot in New Orleans last week, in which there was a lot of window- breaking and looting. More power to them! The Mafia, two or three of the big labor unions they own, and a couple of other organized-crime groups have been capitalizing on the disorder and the public apprehension by substantially stepping up their extortion activities. When they tell a businessman or a merchant that they'll bomb his place of business unless he coughs up a "protection" payment, they are more likely to be believed than they were a few months ago. And kidnapping has become a big business. The cops are too busy working on things the System is really worried about (namely, us) to bother the professional thugs, and they are having a field day. Taking a strictly cold-blooded view, we must welcome even this upsurge in crime, since it helps to undermine the confidence of the public in the System. But the day must also come when we will take every one of these elements which the System's "bought" judges have coddled for so long and put them up against the wall without further ado-along with the judges. I knocked at the address Elsa gave me-it is the basement entrance of what was once an elegant townhouse-and when I asked for Elsa I was invited in by an obviously pregnant young woman with a bawling infant in her arms. When my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw that the whole basement is being used as a communal living area. Blankets and sheets tied to the pipes which run along the low ceiling serve to crudely partition off half-a-dozen corners and niches as semi-private sleeping areas. In addition, there are several mattresses on the floor in the main portion of the basement. Other than a card table next to the laundry sink, where two young women were washing some cooking utensils, there is no furniture, not even a chair. Against one wall there is an ancient, wood-burning stove, which gives off the only heat in the basement. As I learned later, running water is the only public utility which the little commune has at its disposal, and they obtain fuel for their stove by scavenging in the neighborhood or by sending a raiding party upstairs to break up doors, bannisters, window jambs, even floorboards. Another, larger commune occupies the upper portion of the house, beyond the heavily barricaded steel door at the head of the basement stairs, but they often indulge in wild drug parties, after which they are in no condition to repel fuel-raiders from downstairs. The basement dwellers shun hard drugs and regard themselves as quite superior to the upstairs people. They nevertheless prefer the grubby basement for themselves, because it is easier to heat and easier to defend than upstairs, the only windows being a few tiny, dirt-streaked panes near the ceiling, far too small to admit any hostile intruder. In addition, it is cooler in the summer. Seven or eight of them were sprawled on mattresses, watching some inane "game" program on a battery-powered television receiver and smoking marijuana cigarettes, when I entered. The whole place was permeated by the stink of stale beer, unwashed laundry, and marijuana smoke. (They don't regard marijuana as a drug.) Two small boys, about four years old, both stark naked,were rolling on the floor and fighting near the stove. A gray cat, perched comfortably on one of the idle heating pipes near the ceiling, stared down at me curiously. The people on the mattresses, though, after a brief glance, paid no further attention to me. I could see that none of the faces illuminated by the TV screen was Elsa's. When the girl who had admitted me called out her name, however, one of the blanket- partitions in a far corner was suddenly thrust aside, and Elsa's head and bare shoulders became momentarily visible. She squealed with delight when she saw me, ducked back behind her blanket, and emerged a moment later in her "granny" dress. I was vaguely disturbed to catch a glimpse of another form on the mattress in the dim recess as Elsa parted the blanket and came out. A twinge of jealousy? Elsa gave me a quick hug of genuine affection and then offered me a cup of steaming coffee, which she poured from a battered pot on the stove. I gratefully accepted the coffee, for the walk from the bus stop had thoroughly chilled me. We sat on an unoccupied mattress near the stove. The sound from the TV and the noise being made by the crying baby and the two scuffling boys allowed us to talk in relative privacy. We talked of many things, for I didn't want to blurt out immediately the true reason for my visit. I learned a lot about Elsa and the people she is living with. Some of the things I learned saddened me, and some profoundly shocked me. I was saddened by Elsa's story of herself. She is the only child of upper-middle-class parents. Her father is (or was-she hasn't been in touch with her family for more than a year) a speech writer for one of the most powerful Senators in Washington. Her mother is an attorney for a left-wing foundation whose principal activity is buying up houses in White, suburban neighborhoods and moving Black welfare families into them. Until she was 15 Elsa had been very happy. Her family had lived in Connecticut until then, and Elsa had attended an exclusive, private school for girls. (Single-sex schools are illegal now, of course.) She spent the summers with her parents at their vacation home on the beach. Elsa's face glowed as she described the woods and trails around their summer home and the long walks she took by herself. She had her own little sailboat and often sailed to a tiny island offshore for private picnics and long, happy hours of lying in the sun and daydreaming. Then the family moved to Washington, and her mother insisted that they take an apartment in a predominantly Black neighborhood near Capitol Hill, rather than living in a White suburb. Elsa was one of only four White students at the junior high-school to which they sent her. Elsa had developed early. Her natural warmth and open, uninhibited nature combined with her outstanding physical charms to produce a girl who had been extraordinarily attractive sexually even at 15. The result was that the Black males, who also continually badgered the one other White girl at the school, gave Elsa no peace. The Black girls, seeing this, hated Elsa with special passion and tormented her in every way they could. Elsa dared not go into the restroom or even let herself out of the sight of a teacher for a moment while she was at school. She soon found that the teachers offered no real protection, when a Black assistant principal cornered her in his office one day and tried to put his hand inside her dress. Each day Elsa came home from school in tears and begged her parents to send her to another school. Her mother's response was to scream at her, slap her face, and call her a "racist." If the Black boys were bothering her, it was her fault, not theirs. And she should try harder to make friends with the Black girls. Nor did her father offer her any comfort, even when she told him about the incident with the assistant principal. The whole issue embarrassed him, and he didn't want to hear about it. His liberalism was more passive than her mother's, but he was usually intimidated by his thoroughly "liberated" wife into going along on any matters that touched on race. Even when three young, Black thugs accosted him on his very doorstep, took his wallet and wristwatch, and then knocked him down and stomped on his eyeglasses, Elsa's mother wouldn't let him call the police and report the robbery. She regarded the very thought of filing a police complaint against Blacks as somewhat "fascist." Elsa stood it for three months, and then she ran away from home. She was taken in by the little commune she is with now, and, having a basically cheerful disposition, she learned to be tolerably happy in her new situation. Then, about a month ago, the trouble arose which led to my meeting her. A new girl, Mary Jane, had joined their group, and there was friction between Elsa and Mary Jane. The boy Elsa was sharing her mattress with at the time had apparently known Mary Jane earlier, before either had joined the group, and Mary Jane regarded Elsa as a usurper. Elsa in turn resented Mary Jane's none- too-subtle efforts to entice her boyfriend away. The result was a screaming, clawing, hairpulling fight between the two one day which Mary Jane, being the stronger, had won. Elsa had wandered the streets for two days-that's when I met her- and then she had returned to the basement commune. Mary Jane, meanwhile, had gotten on the wrong side of another of the girls in the group, and Elsa pressed this advantage by issuing an ultimatum: either Mary Jane must go or she, Elsa, would leave permanently. Mary Jane had responded by threatening Elsa with a knife. "So, what happened?" I asked. "We sold her," was Elsa's simple reply. "You sold her? What do you mean?" I exclaimed. Elsa explained: "Mary Jane refused to leave after everyone sided with me, so we sold her to Kappy the Kike. He gave us the TV and two hundred dollars for her." "Kappy the Kike," it turned out, is a Jew named Kaplan who makes his living in the White slave trade. He makes regular trips to Washington from New York for the purpose of buying runaway girls. His usual suppliers are the "wolf packs," from one of which I had rescued Elsa. These predatory groups snatch girls off the street, keep them for a week or so, and then, if their disappearance has caused no comment in the newspapers, sell them to Kaplan. What happens to the girls after that no one can say with certainty, but it is thought that most are confined in certain exclusive clubs in New York where the wealthy go to satisfy strange and perverted appetites. Some, it is rumored, are eventually sold to a Satanist club and painfully dismembered in gruesome rituals. Anyway, someone in the commune had heard that Kaplan was in town and "buying," so when Mary Jane wouldn't leave they tied her up, located Kaplan, and made the sale. I had thought I was unshockable, but I was horrified by Elsa's story of Mary Jane's fate. "How," I asked in a tone of outrage, "could you sell a White girl to a Jew?" Elsa was embarrassed by my obvious displeasure. She admitted that it was a terrible thing to have done and that she sometimes feels guilty when she thinks about Mary Jane, but it had seemed like a convenient solution to the commune's problem at the time. She offered the feeble excuse that it happens all the time, that the authorities apparently know all about it and don't interfere, and so it is really more society's fault than anyone's. I shook my head in disgust, but this turn of our conversation gave me a convenient opening to the topic in which I was mainly interested. "A civilization which tolerates the existence of Kaplan and his filthy business should be burned to the ground," I said. "We should make a bonfire of the whole thing and then start over fresh." I had unconsciously raised my voice loud enough for my last comment to be heard by everyone in the basement. A shaggy individual got up from his mattress in front of the TV and sauntered over. "What can anyone do?" he asked, not really expecting an answer. "Kappy the Kike's been arrested at least a dozen times, but the cops always turn him loose. He's got political connections. Some of the big Jews in New York are his customers. And I've heard that two or three Congressmen go up there regularly to visit some of the clubs he supplies." "Then someone should blow up the Congress," I answered. "I guess that's already been tried," he laughed, apparently referring to the Organization's mortar attack. "Well, if I had a bomb now I'd try it myself," I said. "Where can I get some dynamite?" The fellow shrugged his shoulders and wandered back to the TV set. I then tried pumping Elsa for information. Which groups in Georgetown have been doing bombings? How can I get in touch with one of them? Elsa tried to be helpful, but she just didn't know. It was a subject in which she had no particular interest. Finally, she called out to the man who had strolled over earlier: "Harry, aren't the people over on 29th Street, the ones who call themselves 'Fourth World Liberation Front,' into fighting the pigs?" Harry was obviously not pleased by her question. He jumped to his feet, glared fiercely at the two of us, and then stomped out of the basement without answering, slamming the door behind him. One of the women at the laundry sink turned around and reminded Elsa that it was her day to prepare the midday meal and that she hadn't even put the potatoes on the stove to boil yet. I squeezed Elsa's hand, wished her well, and made my exit. I guess I botched things rather badly. It was incredibly naive of me to imagine that I could just walk into the "dropout" community and be politely directed to someone engaged in violent and illegal activity against the System. Obviously every undercover cop in Washington has been trying the same thing. Now the word must certainly be out everywhere that I'm a cop too. That blows any chance I may have had of making contact with anti-System militants in that particular milieu. Of course, we could send someone else over to try to find the "Fourth World Liberation Front," whatever the hell it is. But I wonder now whether there's any point in that. My visit with Elsa has pretty well convinced me that, in the people who share her life- style, there's just not much potential for constructive collaboration with the Organization. They lack self-discipline and any real sense of purpose. They've given up. All they really want to do is lie around all day screwing and smoking pot. I almost believe that if the government would double their welfare allowances, even the bomb throwers would lose their militancy Elsa is basically a good kid, and there must be a number of others whose instincts are mostly all right but who just couldn't cope with this nightmare world and so they dropped out. Although we both reject the world in its present condition and have both dropped out, in a sense, the difference between the people in the Organization and Elsa's friends is that we are capable of coping and they aren't. I cannot imagine myself or Henry or Katherine or anyone else in the Organization just sitting around watching TV and letting the world go by when so much needs to be done. It is a difference of human quality. But there's more than one kind of quality that's important to us. Most Americans are still coping, some barely and some quite successfully. They haven't dropped out, because they lack a certain sensitivity-a sensitivity which I believe we in the Organization share with Elsa and the best of her friends-a sensitivity which allows us to smell the stink of this decaying society and which makes us gag. The copers out there, just like many of the non- copers, either can't smell the stink or it doesn't bother them. The Jews could lead them to any kind of pigsty at all, and as long as there was plenty of swill they would adapt to it. Evolution has made skilled survivors of them, but it has failed them in another respect. How fragile a thing is man's civilization! How superficial it is to his basic nature! And upon how few of the teeming multitudes to whose lives it gives a pattern does it depend for its sustenance! Without the presence of perhaps one or two per cent of the most capable individuals-the most aggressive, intelligent, and hardworking of our fellow citizens-I am convinced that neither this civilization nor any civilization could long sustain itself. It would gradually disintegrate, over centuries, perhaps, and the people would not have the will or the energy or the genius to patch up the cracks. Eventually, all would return to their natural, pre-civilized state-a state not too different from that of Georgetown's dropouts. But even energy and will and genius are not enough, clearly. America still has enough over-achievers to keep the wheels turning. But these over-achievers seem not to have noticed that the machine their exertions keep running long ago ran off the road and is now hurtling headlong into an abyss. They are insensitive to the ugliness and unnaturalness, as well as to the ultimate danger, of the direction they have taken. It is really only a minority of a minority which led our race out of the jungle and along the first few steps toward true civilization. We owe everything to those few of our ancestors who had both the sensitivity to feel what needed doing and the ability to do it. Without the sensitivity no amount of ability can lead to truly great achievement, and without the ability sensitivity leads only to daydreams and frustration. The Organization has selected from the great mass of humanity those of our present generation who posses this rare combination. Now we must do whatever is necessary to prevail.

The Textbook

Chapter Eleven. November 28, 1991. A disturbing thing happened tonight which could have had fatal consequences for all of us. A carload of young junkies tried to break into the building here, evidently thinking it was deserted, and we had to dispose of all of them and their car. This is the first time something like this has happened, but the abandoned appearance of this place may invite more trouble of the same sort in the future. We were all upstairs eating when the car pulled into our parking area and triggered our perimeter alarm. Bill and I went into the darkened garage downstairs and uncovered a peephole, so that we could see who was outside. The car had cut off its lights, and one occupant had gotten out and was trying our door. He then began pulling loose the boards which were nailed over the glass in the door. Another youth got out and came over to help him. We couldn't see their features in the darkness, but we could hear them talking. They were obviously Negroes, and they obviously intended to get into the place, one way or another. Bill tried to discourage them. In his best imitation-ghetto accent he shouted through the door: "Hey, man, dis place occupied. Move yo' ass on outa heah." The two Blacks jumped back from the door, startled. They began whispering to one another, and two other figures from the car joined them. Then a dialogue began between Bill and one of the Blacks. It went about like this: "We didn' know anybody was here, brother. We jes' lookin' for a place to shoot up." "Well, now you knows. So, git!" "Why you so hostile, brother? Let us in. We got some stuff and some chicks. You by yo'se'f?" "No, I ain' by myse'f, an' I don' wan' no stuff. You jes' better move on, man." (Note to the reader: The dialect of the Negroes in America contained many special terms relating to drug usage, which was endemic among them up to the end. "Stuff" meant heroin, an opium derivative which was especially popular. To "shoot up" was to inject the heroin into a vein. Both the Negro's drug habits and much of his dialect spread to the White population of America during the period of government-enforced racial mixing in the last five decades of the Old Era.) But Bill was unsuccessful in his attempt to discourage them. The second Black began a rhythmic pounding on the garage door, chanting over and over, "Open up, brother, open up." Someone in the car turned on a radio, and Negro music began blaring at a deafening volume. Since the last thing we could afford was to attract the attention of the police or of someone at the trucking firm next door with a continuation of this noisy scene, Bill and I quickly made a plan. We armed both the girls with shotguns and posted them behind crates to one side of the shop area. I took a pistol, slipped out the rear door, and silently crept around the side of the building, so that I could cover the intruders from the outside. Then Bill announced, "Awright, awright. I open de do', man. You drive yo' car right in." While Bill began raising the garage door, one of the Blacks went back to the car and started the engine. Bill stood to one side and kept his head lowered, so that when the car's lights hit him his white skin was not conspicuous. When everyone was inside, he began lowering the door again. The Blacks' car had not pulled in far enough for the door to close completely, however, and the driver ignored his command to move ahead another foot. Then one of the Blacks on foot got a better look at Bill and immediately raised the alarm. "Dis ain' no brother," he cried. Bill flipped on the shop lights, and the girls came out from their places of concealment as I slipped in under the partly closed door. "Everyone out of the car and flat on the floor," Bill ordered, yanking open the door on the driver's side. "Come on, bastards, move! "They looked at the four guns trained on them, and then they moved, although not without loud protest. Two of them, however, were not Negroes. When they were all stretched out on the concrete floor face down, all six of them, we saw that we had three Black males, one Black female-and two White sluts. I shook my head in disgust at the sight of the two White girls, neither of whom appeared to be over 18. It didn't take long to decide what to do. We couldn't afford the noise of gunshots, so I took a heavy crowbar and Bill picked up a shovel. We started at opposite ends of the crew on the floor, while the girls kept them covered with their shotguns. We worked quickly but precisely, one blow on the back of the head sufficing for each of them. Until the last two, that is. The blade of Bill's shovel glanced off the skull of one of the Black males and struck the shoulder of the White girl beside him, cutting into her flesh but not inflicting a lethal wound. Before I could bring my crowbar into play to finish her off, the little bitch was up like a shot. I had pushed the garage door down as far as I could after coming in, but it still had not latched properly and had meanwhile crept up about six inches. She scooted through this narrow opening and headed for the street, with me about 10 yards behind her. I froze with horror as I saw an arc of light swing along the dark pavement just in front of the running girl. A large truck was turning into the street from the parking lot next door. If the girl reached the street she would be illuminated by the truck's headlights, and the driver could not fail to see her. Without hesitation I raised my pistol and fired, instantly dropping the girl in her tracks beside the weed-overgrown fence separating our parking area from that of the trucking firm. It was a very lucky shot, not only in its effect, but also in that the roar from the engine of the accelerating truck effectively masked the report. I crouched in the driveway, drenched in a cold sweat, until the truck had thundered off into the distance. Bill and I loaded the six corpses into the back of the Blacks' car. He drove it off, with Carol following him in our vehicle, and left the grisly cargo parked outside a Black restaurant in downtown Alexandria. Let the police figure it out! The work on the new communications equipment is coming along quite well. The girls put so many units together before supper today-and the unfortunate events of the evening-that I couldn't keep up with the tuning and testing, which is my part of the work. If I had a better oscilloscope and a few other instruments, I could do more. November 30. In thinking over Saturday's events, what surprises me is that I feel no remorse or regret for killing those two White whores. Six months ago I couldn't imagine myself calmly butchering a teen-aged White girl, no matter what she had done. But I have become much more realistic about life recently. I understand that the two girls were with the Blacks only because they had been infected with the disease of liberalism by the schools and the churches and the plastic popculture the System churns out for young people these days. Presumably, if they had been raised in a healthy society they would have had some racial pride. But such considerations are irrelevant to the present phase of our struggle. Until we have in our hands the means for bringing about a general cure for the disease, we must deal with it by other means, just as one must ruthlessly weed out and dispose of diseased animals in any flock, unless one wants to lose the whole flock. This is no time for womanly handwringing. This lesson was brought home forcefully to all of us by what we saw on the TV news this evening. The Human Relations Council in Chicago organized a huge "anti-racism" rally today. The purported excuse for the rally was to protest the machine-gunning of a carload of Black "deputies" Friday, in downtown Chicago in broad daylight, presumably by the Organization. Only three Blacks were killed in the incident, but the System seized on it in order to squelch the seething White resentment against the Human Relations Councils and their deputized Black goon squads. Apparently these Black "deputies" have perpetrated even more shocking outrages against defenseless Whites in Chicago than they have around here. The Chicago rally, which was vigorously promoted by all the mass media in the Chicago area, involved nearly 200,000 demonstrators in its initial stage-more than half of them Whites. Hundreds of special buses, contributed by the city transit authorities, brought in people from all the suburbs for the occasion. Thousands of young Black thugs, wearing the armbands of the Chicago Human Relations Council, strutted arrogantly through the huge mob-"maintaining order." The rally was addressed by all the usual political prostitutes and pulpit prostitutes, who issued pious calls for "brotherhood" and "equality." Then the system trotted out one of their local Toms, who gave a rousing speech about stamping out "the evil of White racism" once and for all. (Note to the reader: A "Tom" was a Negro front man for the authorities or for Jewish interests. Experts at manipulating the masses of their own race, they were paid well for their services. Some "Toms" were even employed briefly by the Organization during the final stages of the Revolution, when it was desired to flush millions of Negroes out of certain urban areas into holding camps with a minimum loss of White lives.) After that, the skilled agitators of the Human Relations Council worked various sections of the crowd up into a real brotherhood frenzy. These swarthy, kinky-haired little Jewboys with transistorized megaphones really knew their business. They had the mob screaming with real blood lust for any "White racist" who might be unfortunate enough to fall into their hands. Chanting "Kill the racists" and other expressions of brotherly love, the mob began a march through downtown Chicago. Shoppers, workers, and businessmen on the sidewalks were ordered by the Black "deputies" to join the march. Anyone who refused was beaten without mercy. Then gangs of Blacks began going into the stores and office buildings along the march route, using bullhorns to order everyone out into the street. Usually it was only necessary to kick one or two stubborn Whites into a senseless, bloody pulp before the rest of the occupants of a department store or building lobby got the idea and enthusiastically joined the demonstration. As the crowd swelled, approaching a half-million persons toward the end, the Blacks with the armbands became more and more belligerent. Any White in the crowd who looked as if he wasn't chanting loudly enough was likely to be attacked. And there were several particularly vicious incidents which the TV cameras gloatingly zoomed in on. Someone in the crowd started the rumor that a book store they were approaching sold "racist" books. Within a minute or two a group of several hundred demonstrators-mostly young Whites this time-had split off from the main crowd and converged on the book store. Windows were smashed, and teams of demonstrators inside the store began hurling armloads of books to others outside. After an initial flurry of rage was dissipated by wildly tearing handfuls of pages from the books and throwing them into the air, a bonfire was started on the sidewalk for the rest of the books. Then they dragged out a White salesclerk and began beating him. He fell to the pavement, and the mob surged over him, stomping and kicking. The television screen showed a closeup of the scene. The faces of the White demonstrators were contorted with hatred -for their own race! Another incident in which the TV viewers were treated to closeup coverage was the killing of a cat. A large, white alley cat was spotted by someone in the crowd, who started the cry, "Get the honky cat!" About a dozen demonstrators took off down an alley after the unfortunate cat. When they reappeared a few moments later, holding up the bloody carcass of the cat, an exultant cheer went up from those in the crowd near enough to see what had happened. Sheer insanity! It is impossible to put into words how depressed we all are by the spectacle in Chicago. That, of course, was the aim of the organizers of the rally. They are expert psychologists, and they thoroughly understand the use of mass terror for intimidation. They know that millions of people who still oppose them inwardly will now be too frightened to open their mouths. But how could our people-how could White Americans-be so spineless, so crawling, so eager to please their oppressors? How can we recruit a revolutionary army from such a rabble? Is this really the same race that walked on the moon and was reaching for the stars 20 years ago? How low we have been brought! It is frighteningly clear now that there is no way to win the struggle in which we are engaged without shedding torrents- veritable rivers-of blood. The carload of carrion we left in Alexandria Saturday was mentioned briefly on the local news but not at all on the national news. The reason for the downplay, I suspect is not that sextuple killings have become too commonplace to be newsworthy, but that the authorities recognized the racial significance of the thing and decided not to encourage imitation.

Chapter Ten. November 16, 1991. The response of the System to last week's mortar attack is taking shape. For one thing it's more difficult to move around in public now. Police and troops have greatly stepped up their spot checks, and they're stopping everyone, pedestrians as well as vehicles. There are announcements on the radio about once an hour warning people that they are subject to summary arrest if they are unable to establish their identity when stopped. The Organization has already been able to furnish some of us with forged driver's licenses and other false identification, but it will be some time before everyone in the Washington area has been taken care of. Yesterday Carol had a close call. She had gone to a supermarket to buy the week's groceries for our unit, and a police patrol arrived while she was in the checkout line. They stationed men at each exit and required everyone leaving the store to show them satisfactory identification. Just as Carol was ready to leave, there was a commotion at one exit. The police had been questioning a man who apparently was carrying no identification, and he became belligerent. When the cops tried to put handcuffs on him he slugged one of them and tried to run. They tackled him before he had gone more than a few feet, but the cops stationed at the other exits all ran over to help. Carol was able to slip out a temporarily unguarded exit with her groceries. All this identity-checking has diverted the police from their regular duties, and the Thugs and other criminal elements are really taking advantage of it. Some Army personnel are also participating in the identity-checking and other police operations, but their main duty is still guarding government buildings and media facilities. The most interesting development is that the Human Relations Councils have also been given emergency police powers, and they are "deputizing" large numbers of Liberals from the welfare rolls,the way they did for the Gun Raids. In the District and in Alexandria some of these deputized Liberals are already swaggering around and stopping Whites on the streets. There are rumors that they are demanding bribes from those they stop, threatening them with arrest if they don't pay. And they have been hauling some White women into their "field headquarters" for "questioning." There they are stripped, gangraped, and beaten-all in the name of the law! The news media aren't breathing a word about these outrages, of course, but the word is still getting around. People are angry and frightened, but they don't know what to do. Without arms, there is little they can do. They are completely at the mercy of the System. It's hard to figure why the System is deliberately stirring things up by deputizing Liberals again, after the enormous amount of resentment that caused two years ago. We've talked it over among ourselves in the unit, and our opinions are divided. Everyone but me seems to think that the events of last Monday panicked the System and caused them to overreact again. Maybe, but I don't think so. They've had two months now to become used to the idea of a guerrilla war between them and us. And it's been nearly five weeks since we really bloodied their noses for the first time by blowing up the FBI building. They know that our underground strength nationwide couldn't be more than 2,000-and they must also know that they are wearing us down. I think they are unleashing the Blacks on the Whites strictly as a preventive measure. By terrifying the White population they will make it more difficult for us to recruit, thus speeding our demise. Bill argues, to the contrary, that the White reaction to the renewed activities of the Human Relations Councils and their gangs of "deputies" will make recruiting easier for us. To a certain extent that was true in 1989, but White Americans have become so acclimatized to the growing openness of the System's tyranny in the last two years that I believe the latest move will serve more to intimidate than to arouse them. We'll see. Meanwhile, there's a mountain of work waiting for me. Washington Field Command has requested that I furnish them with 30 new transmitters and 100 new receivers before the end of the year. I don't know how I can do it, but I'd better get started. November 27. Until today, I've been working my tail off, day and night, trying to get the communications equipment built that WFC wants. Three days ago-Tuesday-I rounded up the last of the components needed and set up an assembly line here in the shop, pressing Carol and Katherine into service. By having them perform some of the simpler operations in the assembly process, I may be able to meet my deadline after all. Yesterday, however, I received a summons from WFC which kept me away from the shop from early this morning until 10 o'clock tonight. One of the purposes of the summons was a "loyalty check. " I didn't know that before I reached the address I had been given, however. It was the little gift shop in which Harry Powell's trial took place. A guard ushered me into a small office off the basement storeroom. Two men were waiting for me there. One was the Major Williams from Revolutionary Command whom I met earlier. The other was a Dr. Clark-one of our legals-and, as I soon learned, a clinical psychologist. Williams explained to me that the Organization has developed a testing process for new underground recruits. Its function is to determine the recruit's true motivations and attitudes and to screen out those sent to us as infiltrators by the secret police, as well as those deemed unfit for other reasons. In addition to new recruits, however, a number of veteran members of the Organization are also being tested: namely, those whose duties have given them access to information which would be of special value to the secret police. My detailed knowledge of our communications system alone would put me in that category, and my work has also brought me into contact with an unusually large number of our members in other units. We originally planned that no member in an underground unit would know the identity being used by-or the unit location of -any member outside his own unit. In practice, though, we have badly compromised that plan. The way things have developed in the last two months, there are now several of us in the Washington area who could betray- either voluntarily or through torture-a large number of other members. We exercised great care in the recruiting and evaluation of new members after the Gun Raids, of course, but nothing like what I was subjected to this morning. There were injections of some drug- at least two, but I was in a fog after the first one and can't be sure how many more there were-and half-a-dozen electrodes were attached to various parts of my body. A bright, pulsing light filled my eyes, and I lost all contact with my surroundings, except through the voices of my interrogators. The next thing I remember is yawning and stretching as I woke up on a cot in the basement nearly three hours later, although I was told that the interrogation itself lasted less than half an hour. I felt refreshed, with no apparent after effects of whatever drug I was given. The guard came over to me as I stood up. I could hear muffled voices from the closed office; someone else was being interrogated. And I saw another man sleeping on a cot a few feet from mine. I suspect he had recently gone through the same process I had. I was led into another basement room, a tiny cubicle containing only a chair and a small, metal table-actually, a typewriter stand. On the table was a black, plastic binder, perhaps two inches thick, of the sort in which typewritten reports are bound. The guard told me that I was to read everything in the binder very carefully, and that Major Williams would then talk to me again. He pulled the door closed as he went out. I had barely sat down when a girl brought me a plate of sandwiches and a mug of hot coffee. I thanked the girl, and, as I was hungry, I began sipping the coffee and munching a sandwich while I casually read the first page of the material in the binder. When I finished the last page some four hours later I noticed that the sandwiches-including an uneaten portion of the one I had started-were still on the plate. The mug was nearly full of thoroughly cold coffee. It was as if I had just returned to earth- to the room-after a thousand-year voyage through space. What I had read-it amounted to a book of about 400 typed pages- had lifted me out of this world, out of my day-to-day existence as an underground fighter for the Organization, and it had taken me to the top of a high mountain from which I could see the whole world, with all its nations and tribes and races, spread out before me. And I could see the ages spread out before me too, from the steaming, primordial swamps of a hundred million years ago to the unlimited possibilities which the centuries and the millennia ahead hold for us. The book placed our present struggle-the Organization and its goals and what is at stake-in a much larger context than I have ever really considered before. That is, I had thought about many of the things in the book before, but I had never put them all together into a single, coherent pattern. I had never seen the whole picture so clearly. (Note to the reader: It is obvious that Turner is referring to the Book. We know from other evidence that it was written approximately ten years before the Record of Martyrs, in which it is mentioned-i.e., probably sometime in 9 BNE, or 1990 according to the old chronology. Turner mentions "typed pages," but it is not clear whether he means reproductions of typewritten pages or the originals themselves. If the latter is the case, then we may have here the only extant reference to the original copy of the Book! Several reproductions of the original typescript in binders fitting Turner's description have survived and are preserved in the Archives, but archeologists still have found no trace of the original.) For the first time I understand the deepest meaning of what we are doing. I understand now why we cannot fail, no matter what we must do to win and no matter how many of us must perish in doing it. Everything that has been and everything that is yet to be depend on us. We are truly the instruments of God in the fulfillment of His Grand Design. These may seem like strange words to be coming from me, who has never been religious, but they are utterly sincere words. I was still sitting there, thinking about what I had read, when Major Williams opened the door. He started to ask me to go with him, when he noticed that I hadn't finished my sandwiches. He brought another chair into the tiny room and invited me to finish eating while we talked. I learned several very interesting things during our brief conversation. One is that, contrary to my earlier belief, the Organization is getting a steady trickle of new recruits. None of us had realized it, because WFC has been putting the new people into brand-new units. That's why the new communications equipment is needed. Another thing I found out is that a significant fraction of the new recruits have been secret-police spies. Fortunately, the Organization's leadership foresaw this threat and devised a remedy in time. They realized that, once we went underground, the only way we could safely continue recruiting would be to screen new people in a foolproof way. Here's the way it works: When our legals have someone who says he wants to join the Organization, he is turned over immediately to Doctor Clark. Doctor Clark's method of interrogation leaves no room for evasion or deceit. As Major Williams explained it, if the candidate flunks the test he never wakes up from his little nap afterward. That way, the System can never find out why their spies are disappearing. So far, he said, we have caught more than 30 would- be infiltrators, including several women. I shuddered to think what would have happened if my own interrogation had revealed me to be too unstable or lacking in loyalty to be trusted with what I know. And I felt a momentary flash of resentment that Doctor Clark, who is not even an underground member, should have held the decision of life or death for me in his hands. The resentment quickly passed, however, when I considered that there is really no stigma to being a legal. The only reason Doctor Clark is not in the underground is that his name was not on the FBI's arrest list in September. Our legals play just as vital a role in our struggle as do those of us underground. They are vital to our propaganda and recruiting effort-our only close contact with the world outside the Organization-and they run even more of a risk of being found out and arrested than we do. Major Williams must have sensed my thoughts, because he put his hand on my shoulder, smiled, and assured me that my test had gone very well. So well, in fact, that I was to be initiated into a select, inner structure within the Organization. Reading the book I had just finished was the first step in that initiation. The next step took place about an hour later. Six of us were gathered in a loose semi-circle in the shop upstairs. It was after business hours, and the blinds were tightly drawn. The only light came from two large candles toward the back of the shop. I was the next to the last to enter the room. At the top of the stairs the same girl who had brought my sandwiches stopped me and handed me a robe of some coarse, grey material with a hood attached-something like a monk's robe. After I had put on the robe she showed me where to stand and cautioned me to be silent. Their features shadowed by their hoods, I could not make out the faces of any of my companions in that strange, little gathering. As the sixth participant reached the doorway at the top of the stairs, however, I turned and was startled to glimpse a tall, burly man in the uniform of a sergeant of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police slipping into a robe. Finally, from another door, at the back, Major Williams entered. He also wore one of the grey robes, but his hood was thrown back so that the two candles, one on either side, illuminated his face. He spoke to us in a quiet voice, explaining that each of us who had been selected for membership in the Order had passed the test of the Word and the test of the Deed. That is, we have all proved ourselves, not only through a correct attitude toward the Cause, but also through our acts in the struggle for the realization of the Cause. As members of the Order we are to be the bearers of the Faith. Only from our ranks will the future leaders of the Organization come. He told us many other things too, reiterating some of the ideas I had just read. The Order, he explained, will remain secret, even within the Organization, until the successful completion of the first phase of our task: the destruction of the System. And he showed us the Sign by which we might recognize one another. And then we swore the Oath-a mighty Oath, a moving Oath that shook me to my bones and raised the hair on the back of my neck. As we filed out one by one, at intervals of about a minute, the girl at the door took our robes, and Major Williams placed a gold chain with a small pendant around each of our necks. He had already told us about these. Inside each pendant is a tiny, glass capsule. We are to wear them at all times, day and night. Whenever danger is especially imminent and we might be captured, we are to remove the capsules from the pendants and carry them in our mouths. And if we are captured and can see no hope of immediate escape, we are to break the capsules with our teeth. Death will be painless and almost instantaneous. Now our lives truly belong only to the Order. Today I was, in a sense, born again. I know now that I will never again be able to look at the world or the people around me or my own life in quite the same way I did before. When I undressed for bed last night, Katherine immediately spotted my new pendant and asked about it, of course. She also wanted to know what I had been doing all day. Fortunately, Katherine is the sort of girl with whom one can be completely truthful-a rare jewel, indeed. I explained to her the function of the pendant and told her that it is necessary because of a new task I am undertaking for the Organization-a task whose details I have obliged myself to tell no one, at least for the present. She was obviously curious, but she didn't press me further.

Chapter Nine. November 9, 1991. What a day! At two o'clock this afternoon an extraordinary session of the Congress convened to hear an address by the President. He was to ask for special legislation which would allow the government to stamp out "racism" and combat terrorism more effectively. One thing he intended to ask the Congress for, according to the press, was the long-expected internal-passport law. Despite our destruction last month of the computer to be used with this passport program, the government is obviously pressing ahead with it. The Capitol had been surrounded by somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 secret policemen and armed, uniformed soldiers. Jeeps with mounted machine guns were everywhere. There were even two tanks and several APC's. Members of the press and Congressional staffers had to pass through three separate rings of barricades and barbed wire, at each of which they were thoroughly searched for weapons, in order to approach the Capitol. Helicopters whirred overhead. No band of guerrillas bent on sabotage or assassination could have gotten within two blocks of the place, even in a suicide dash. In fact, the government obviously overdid the security arrangements just to heighten the sense of urgency of the occasion. The spectacle of all the troops and guns around the Capitol left no doubt in the minds of the TV viewers, I am sure, that there is an emergency situation in the country which calls for the strongest possible measures from the government. Then, as the TV cameras were preparing to switch from the crowded scene outside the Capitol to the speaker's podium in the House chamber, where the President would be speaking, a mortar round-although no one realized that's what it was- exploded about 200 yards northwest of the building. TV watchers heard the explosion but couldn't see anything except an indistinct puff of gray smoke floating above the Capitol. For the next few seconds there was general confusion. Soldiers with gas masks on were scurrying in one direction, while grim- faced secret policemen with drawn pistols were running in the other direction. The TV commentator announced breathlessly that someone had set off a bomb in one of the Capitol parking lots. He babbled on for a little less than a minute, speculating as to who had done it, how they had managed to get the bomb past the security forces, how many persons had been hurt by the blast, and so on. Then the second round landed. This one went off with a bang and a flash about 50 yards in front of the TV camera. It made almost a direct hit on a squad of soldiers manning a machine gun behind a heap of sandbags in the Capitol's east parking lot. "It's our mortar!" I shouted. It must have also dawned simultaneously on every man with military experience watching the scene that a mortar was responsible for the two explosions. Mortars are marvelous little weapons, especially for guerrilla warfare. They drop their deadly rounds silently and almost vertically onto their target. They can be fired from total cover, and persons in the target area cannot tell from which direction the projectiles are coming. In this case I guessed immediately that our people were firing from a secluded, densely wooded area on the west bank of the Potomac, just over two miles from the Capitol. Henry and I had checked the area out some time ago for just such a purpose, because every important Federal building in Washington is within 81 mm-mortar range of it. About 45 seconds after the second round the third one landed on the roof of the south wing of the Capitol and exploded inside the building. They had the range now, and the projectiles began raining down at four-to-five second intervals. Practically everyone, including most of the TV crews, had scrambled for cover, but one intrepid cameraman remained at his post. We saw beautiful blossoms of flame and steel sprouting everywhere, dancing across the asphalt, thundering in the midst of splintered masonry and burning vehicles, erupting now inside and now outside the Capitol, wreaking their bloody toll in the ranks of tyranny and treason. It was all over in about three minutes, but while it lasted it was the most magnificent spectacle I have ever seen. What an impression it must have made on the general public watching it on TV! And there was more excitement today, both in California and New York. The Los Angeles City Council was convened for the sake of watching a telecast of the President's address to Congress before voting on several "anti-racist" ordinances of their own. Just about the time the fireworks started here, four of our men, using phony police identification, walked into the council meeting there and began throwing grenades. Eight council members were killed outright, and our men made a clean getaway. An hour earlier, in New York, the Organization used a bazooka to shoot down an airliner which had just taken off for Tel Aviv with a load of vacationing dignitaries, mostly Jews. There were no survivors. (Note to the reader: A "bazooka" was a portable launcher for small rockets, used primarily as an infantry weapon against armored vehicles during World War 11, 60-54 BNE, and already obsolete by 8 BNE. Tel Aviv was the largest city in Palestine during the period of Jewish occupation of that unfortunate country in the Old Era. The ruins of the city are still too radioactive for human habitation.) All in all, it has been a busy day for the Organization! I am greatly invigorated by these demonstrations of our capability for launching multiple, simultaneous strikes against the System, and I am sure that the same is true of all our comrades. Despite all the noise and smoke and wreckage caused by our attack on the Capitol, only 61 persons were killed, we learned from later news reports. Among these are two Congressmen, one sub- cabinet official, and four or five senior Congressional staffers. But the real value of all our attacks today lies in the psychological impact, not in the immediate casualties. For one thing, our efforts against the System gained immeasurably in credibility. More important, though, is what we taught the politicians and the bureaucrats. They learned this afternoon that not one of them is beyond our reach. They can huddle behind barbed wire and tanks in the city, or they can hide behind the concrete walls and alarm systems of their country estates, but we can still find them and kill them. All the armed guards and bulletproof limousines in America cannot guarantee their safety. That is a lesson they will not forget. Now they are all raging at us and solemnly promising the public that they will stamp us out, but after they have had a chance to think about it some of them will be ready to consider "buying insurance." The great weakness of the System is its utter moral corruption. They have us vastly outmanned and outgunned, but not one of their leaders is motivated by anything other than self- interest. They are ready to betray the System the instant they can see an advantage in doing so. For now, we mustn't let them know that they are all inevitably headed for the gallows. Let them think they can make a deal with us and save their necks when the System falls. Only the Jews are under no illusions in this regard. As for the public, it's a little early yet to know what the spectrum of their reactions to today's exploits will be. Most of them, of course, will believe just what they're told to believe. Basically, they want to be left alone with their beer and their television sets. Their mentality is a reflection of the movie-fan magazines and the TV sitcoms with which the System keeps them saturated. (Note to the reader: The word "sitcom" apparently refers to a type of television program popular during the last years of the Old Era.) Nevertheless, we must carefully monitor the public's feelings toward the System and toward us. Although the great majority of them will continue to support the System as long as their refrigerators are kept full, it is from the public that we must draw our recruits in order to make up for our losses. Our present inability to recruit is a source of great worry to everyone. Rumor has it that there has not been a single new recruit in the Washington area in the last two months. During that time we've lost approximately 15 per cent of our strength. I hope conditions aren't as bad elsewhere. Of all the segments of the population from which we had hoped to draw new members, the "conservatives" and "right wingers" have been the biggest disappointment. They are the world's worst conspiracy-mongers - and also the world's greatest cowards. In fact, their cowardice is exceeded only by their stupidity. The current conspiracy theory being circulated among conservatives is that the Organization is actually in the pay of the System. We are hired provocateurs whose job is to raise enough hell to justify the repressive counterrevolutionary and anti-racist measures the System is taking. If we would just stop rocking the boat, things would be easier on everyone. Whether they believe that theory or not, it gives them an excuse for not joining us. At the other extreme, the knee-jerk liberals have forgotten all about their "radical chic" enthusiasm of a few years ago, now that we are the radicals. They take their ideological cues from the "smart" magazines and columnists, and the "in' thing at the moment is to be solidly pro-System. In their own way, the liberals, despite their pretensions to sophistication, are as mindless and as easily manipulated as the conservatives. The Christians are a mixed bag. Some of them are among our most devoted and courageous members. Their hatred of the System is based on-in addition to the reasons the rest of us have-their recognition of the System's role in undermining and perverting Christendom. But all the ones who are still affiliated with major churches are against us. The Jewish takeover of the Christian churches and corruption of the ministry are now virtually complete. The pulpit prostitutes preach the System's party line to their flocks every Sunday, and they collect their 30 pieces of silver in the form of government "study" grants, "brotherhood" awards, fees for speaking engagements, and a good press. The libertarians are another group which is divided. About half of them support the System and half are against it. They are all against us, however. The ones who are against the System just happen to see the System as a bigger threat than the Organization. As our credibility grows, more and more libertarians will support the System. There is probably no way we can use this group. No, there is not much hope for making inroads into any of these various ideological segments of the population. If we are able to find new recruits, it will be among those who are presently uncommitted. The System's brainwashing has not bent everyone's mind out of shape. There are still millions and millions of good people out there who neither believe the System's propaganda nor have allowed themselves to be seduced to the animal-like level of existence of so many who live solely for the sake of gratifying their senses. How can we motivate these people to join us? Life is uglier and uglier these days, more and more Jewish. But it is still moderately comfortable, and comfort is the great corrupter, the great maker of cowards. It seems that, for the time being, we have already caught all the real revolutionaries in America in our net. Now we must learn how to make some more, and quickly. November 14. We had a visit from Henry today, and I learned some of the details of Monday's mortar attack on the Capitol. It had involved only three of our people: Henry and the man who helped him carry the mortar parts and the projectiles to their pre- selected firing spot in the woods and get everything set up, and a girl with a small transmitter in a park a few blocks from the Capitol who served as a spotter. She radioed range corrections to Henry's helper, while Henry dropped the projectiles into the tube. The range settings I had calculated had been almost perfect. They used up all the 81 mm ammunition which was stolen from Aberdeen last month, and Henry wanted to know whether I could improvise some more. I explained to him the difficulty of the task. Bombs we can make-fairly sophisticated ones, too. But mortar projectiles are something else. They are far too complex for our present capabilities. Anything I might be able to improvise would be a very crude approximation to the real thing, with nowhere near the accuracy. We will just have to raid another armory, with all the risks that entails, before we can use our mortar again. Another thing I talked to Henry about is the rash of relatively minor bombings which have occurred in the last two or three days. There have been a hundred or more of them all around the country, including four in Washington, and they have puzzled me in several respects, mainly the choice of targets - banks, department stores, corporation offices-but also their apparent amateurishness. For every bomb which exploded, it seems that the police discovered at least one which fizzled. Henry confirmed my suspicions: the bombings-at least, those in this area-are not the work of the Organization. That is interesting. We seem to have unintentionally galvanized some of the latent anarchists-or God knows what-who have been lurking in the woodwork. The media, of course, have been attributing everything to us- which is embarrassing, in view of the amateurishness-but perhaps the phenomenon itself is not a bad development. At least, the secret police will have a lot more to keep them busy, and that will take some of the pressure off us. The growth of nihilism, which the System has encouraged for so long, may now be paying off for us instead of for the System. Today I had a rather interesting experience myself in this regard. I had to go into Georgetown to take care of a minor communications problem for Unit 4. Georgetown, once the most stylish area of Washington, has succumbed in the last five years to the same plague which has turned the rest of the nation's capital into an asphalt jungle. Most of the high-priced shops have given way to "gay" bars, massage parlors, porn stalls, liquor stores, and similar capitalist ventures. Garbage litters the sidewalks, and Liberals, who used to be pretty scarce there, are swarming all over. But there are still many Whites living in Georgetown-after a fashion. The once-fashionable townhouses have their windows boarded up now, but many are occupied by colonies of squatters, mostly young dropouts and runaways. They lead a marginal, brutal existence, begging for handouts in the streets, rummaging through trash bins for leftovers, occasionally stealing. Some of the girls engage in casual prostitution. Virtually all of them-or so I thought until today -keep themselves in a permanently drugged condition. Since the System stopped enforcing the drug laws last year, heroin has been about as cheap and easy to get as cigarettes. The cops generally leave them alone, although some of the stories about what goes on among these kids are horrifying. Inside their strongholds, the boarded-up buildings in which they cook and eat and sleep and make love and give birth and pump dope into their veins and die, they seem to have reverted to a pre-civilized life style. Kooky religious cults, involving lots of incense and incantations, flourish among them. Various brands of Satan- worship, reminiscent of the ancient Semitic cults, are especially prevalent. Ritual torture and ritual murder are rumored to take place, as well as ritual cannibalism, ritual sex orgies, and other non-Western practices. I had finished my chore for Unit 4-which, having some of our more Bohemian members, blends more unobtrusively into the Georgetown scene than any of our other units could-and was headed back to the bus stop when I came across an all-too-familiar incident. Two young thugs-they looked like Puerto Ricans or Mexicans-were struggling on the sidewalk with a redheaded girl, trying to pull her into a doorway. A prudent citizen would have passed by without interfering, but I stopped, watched for a moment, and then started toward the struggling trio. The two swarthy males were distracted just enough by my approach to give the girl a chance to break free. They glared at me and shouted a few obscenities, but they did not try to catch the girl, who quickly put a hundred feet or so between herself and her would-be abductors. I turned and went on my way. The girl walked slowly, allowing me to catch up to her. "Thanks," she said, flashing me a warm smile. She was really quite pretty, but very shabbily dressed and no older than 17-obviously one of Georgetown's "street people. " I chatted with her as we walked along. One of the first pieces of information I elicited from her was that she had not eaten in two days and was very hungry. We stopped at a sidewalk diner, and I bought her a hamburger and a milkshake. After that she was still hungry, so l bought another hamburger and some french fries for her. While she ate we talked, and I learned several interesting things. One was that life among the dropouts is more diversified than I had thought. There are colonies which are on drugs and colonies which strictly abstain from drugs, colonies which are racially mixed and all-White colonies, sexually balanced colonies and all-male "wolf packs." The groups are also divided along religious-cult lines. Elsa-that is her name-said she has never been on drugs. She left the group she was living with two days ago, after a domestic dispute, and was in the process of being dragged into the lair of a "wolf pack" when I happened by. She also gave me some good leads as to who is responsible for the recent bombings which puzzled Henry and me. It seems to be general knowledge among her friends that several of the Georgetown colonies are "into that sort of thing-you know, trashing the pigs." Elsa herself seems to be completely apolitical and not concerned one way or another about the bombings. I didn't want to pry too much and make her think I was a cop, so I didn't push her for more information on the subject. Under the circumstances I really couldn't afford to bring Elsa back to our headquarters with me-but I still had to fight the temptation. I slipped her a five-dollar bill when we parted, and she assured me she would find a place for herself in one of the groups without difficulty. Probably she would go back to the group she had left. She gave me their address, so I could look her up. Thinking it over this evening, it seems to me that we may be overlooking some potentially useful allies among these young dropouts. Individually they are not very impressive, to be sure, but it may very well be that we can make use of them in a collective way. It bears further consideration.

If This Goes On. Robert A. Heinlein. It was cold on the rampart. I slapped my numbed hands together, then stopped hastily for fear of disturbing the Prophet. My post that night was just outside his personal apartments-a post that I had won by taking more than usual care to be neat and smart at guard mount…but I had no wish to call attention to myself now. I was young then and not too bright-a legate fresh out of West Point, and a guardsman in the Angels of the Lord, the personal guard of the Prophet Incarnate. At birth my mother had consecrated me to the Church and at eighteen my Uncle Absolom, a senior lay censor, had prayed an appointment to the Military Academy for me from the Council of Elders. West Point had suited me. Oh, I had joined in the usual griping among classmates, the almost ritualistic complaining common to all military life, but truthfully I enjoyed the monastic routine-up at five, two hours of prayers and meditation, then classes and lectures in the endless subjects of a military education, strategy and tactics, theology, mob psychology, basic miracles. In. the afternoons we practiced with vortex guns and blasters, drilled with tanks, and hardened our bodies with exercise. I did not stand very high on graduation and had not really expected to be assigned to the Angels of the Lord, even though I had put in for it. But I had always gotten top marks in piety and stood well enough in most of the practical subjects; I was chosen. It made me almost sinfully proud-the holiest regiment of the Prophet’s hosts, even the privates of which were commissioned officers and whose Colonel-in-Chief was the Prophet’s Sword Triumphant, marshal of all the hosts. The day I was invested in the shining buckler and spear worn only by the Angels I vowed to petition to study for the priesthood as soon as promotion to captain made me eligible. But this night, months later, though my buckler was still shining bright, there was a spot of tarnish in my heart. Somehow, life at New Jerusalem was not as I had imagined it while at West Point. The Palace and Temple were shot through with intrigue and politics; priests and deacons, ministers of state, and Palace functionaries all seemed engaged in a scramble for power and favor at the hand of the Prophet. Even the officers of my own corps seemed corrupted by it. Our proud motto ‘Non Sihi, Sed Dei’ now had a wry flavor in my mouth. Not that I was without sin myself. While I had not joined in the struggle for worldly preference, I had done something which I knew in my heart to be worse: I had looked with longing on a consecrated female. Please understand me better than I understood myself. I was a grown man in body, an infant in experience. My own mother was the only woman I had ever known well. As a kid in junior seminary before going to the Point I was almost afraid of girls; my interests were divided between my lessons, my mother, and our parish’s troop of Cherubim, in which I was a patrol leader and an assiduous winner of merit badges in everything from woodcraft to memorizing scripture. If there had been a merit badge to be won in the subject of girls-but of course there was not. At the Military Academy I simply saw no females, nor did I have much to confess in the way of evil thoughts. My human feelings were pretty much still in freeze, and my occasional uneasy dreams I regarded as temptations sent by Old Nick. But New Jerusalem is not West Point and the Angels were neither forbidden to marry nor were we forbidden proper and sedate association with women. True, most of my fellows did not ask permission to marry, as it would have meant transferring to one of the regular regiments and many of them cherished ambitions for the military priesthood-but it was not forbidden. Nor were the lay deaconesses who kept house around the Temple and the Palace forbidden to marry. But most of them were dowdy old creatures who reminded me of my aunts, hardly subjects for romantic thoughts. I used to chat with them occasionally around the corridors, no harm in that. Nor was I attracted especially by any of the few younger sisters-until I met Sister Judith. I had been on watch in this very spot more than a month earlier. It was the first time I had stood guard outside the Prophet’s apartments and, while I was nervous when first posted, at that moment I had been no more than alert against the possibility of the warden-of-the-watch making his rounds. That night a light had shone brightly far down the inner corridor opposite my post and I had heard a sound of people moving; I had glanced at my wrist chrono-yes, that would be the Virgins ministering to the Prophet… - no business of mine. Each night at ten o’clock their watch changed-their ‘guard mount’ I called it, though I had never seen the ceremony and never would. All that I actually knew about it was that those coming on duty for the next twenty-four hours drew lots at that time for the privilege of personal attendance in the sacred presence of the Prophet Incarnate. I had listened briefly and had turned away. Perhaps a quarter of an hour later a slight form engulfed in a dark cloak had slipped past me to the parapet, there to stand and look at the stars. I had had my blaster out at once, then had returned it sheepishly, seeing that it was a deaconess. I had assumed that she was a lay deaconess; I swear that it did not occur to me that she might be a holy deaconess. There was no rule in my order book telling me to forbid them to come outside, but I had never heard of one doing so. I do not think that she had seen me before I spoke to her. ‘Peace be unto you, sister.’ She had jumped and suppressed a squeal, then had gathered her dignity to answer, “And to you, little brother.’ It was then that I had seen on her forehead the Seal of Solomon, the mark of the personal family of the Prophet. ‘Your pardon, Elder Sister. I did not see.’ ‘I am not annoyed.’ It had seemed to me that she invited conversation. I knew that it was not proper for us to converse privately; her mortal being was dedicated to the Prophet just as her soul was the Lord’s, but I was young and lonely-and she was young and very pretty. ‘Do you attend the Holy One this night, Elder Sister?’ She had shaken her head at that. ‘No, the honor passed me by. My lot was not drawn.’ ‘It must be a great and wonderful privilege to serve him directly.’ ‘No doubt, though I cannot say of my own knowledge. My lot has never yet been drawn.’ She had added impulsively, ‘I’m a little nervous about it. You see, I haven’t been here long.’ Even though she was my senior in rank, her display of feminine weakness had touched me. ‘I am sure that you will deport yourself with credit.’ ‘Thank you.’ We had gone on chatting. She had been in New Jerusalem, it developed, even less time than had I. She had been reared on a farm in upper New York State and there she had been sealed to the Prophet at the Albany Seminary. In turn I had told her that I had been born in the middle west, not fifty miles from the Well of Truth, where the First Prophet was incarnated. I then told her that my name was John Lyle and she had answered that she was called Sister Judith. I had forgotten all about the warden-of-the-watch and his pesky rounds and was ready to chat all night, when my chrono had chimed the quarter hour. ‘Oh, dear!’ Sister Judith had exclaimed. ‘I should have gone straight back to my cell.’ She had started to hurry away, then had checked herself. ‘You wouldn’t tell on me, John Lyle?’ ‘Me? Oh, never!’ I had continued to think about her the rest of the watch. When the warden did make rounds I was a shade less than alert. A mighty little on which to found a course of folly, eh? A single drink is a great amount to a teetotaler; I was not able to get Sister Judith out of my mind. In the month that followed I saw her half a dozen times. Once I passed her on an escalator; she was going down as I was going up. We did not even speak, but she had recognized me and smiled. I rode that escalator all night that night in my dreams, hut I could never get off and speak to her. The other encounters were just as trivial. Another time I heard her voice call out to me quietly, ‘Hello, John Lyle,’ and I turned just in time to see a hooded figure go past my elbow through a door. Once I watched her feeding the swans in the moat; I did not dare approach her but I think that she saw me. The Temple Herald printed the duty lists of both my service and hers. I was standing a watch in five; the Virgins drew lots once a week. So it was just over a month later that our watches again matched. I saw her name-and vowed that I would win the guard mount that evening and again be posted at the post of honor before the Prophet’s own apartments. I had no reason to think that Judith would seek me out on the rampart-but I was sure in my heart that she would. Never at West Point had I ever expended more spit-and-polish; I could have used my buckler for a shaving mirror. But here it was nearly half past ten and no sign of Judith, although I had heard the Virgins gather down the corridor promptly at ten. All I had to show for my efforts was the poor privilege of standing watch at the coldest post in the Palace. Probably, I thought glumly, she comes out to flirt with the guardsmen on watch every time she has a chance. I recalled bitterly that all women were vessels of iniquity and had always been so since the Fall of Man. Who was I to think that she had singled me out for special friendship? She had probably considered the night too cold to bother. I heard a footstep and my heart leaped with joy. But it was only the warden making his rounds. I brought my pistol to the ready and challenged him; his voice came back, ‘Watchman, what of the night?’ I answered mechanically, ‘Peace on Earth,’ and added, ‘It is cold, Elder Brother.’ ‘Autumn in the air,’ he agreed. ‘Chilly even in the Temple.’ He passed on by with his pistol and his bandolier of paralysis bombs slapping his armor to his steps. He was a nice old duffer and usually stopped for a few friendly words; tonight he was probably eager to get back to the warmth of the guardroom. I went back to my sour thoughts. ‘Good evening, John Lyle.’ I almost jumped out of my boots. Standing in the darkness just inside the archway was Sister Judith. I managed to splutter, ‘Good evening, Sister Judith,’ as she moved toward me. ‘Ssh!’ she cautioned me. ‘Someone might hear us. John Lyle-it finally happened. My lot was drawn!’ I said, ‘Huh?’ then added lamely, ‘Felicitations, Elder Sister. May God make his face to shine on your holy service.’ ‘Yes, yes, thanks,’ she answered quickly, ‘but John … I had intended to steal a few moments to chat with you. Now I can’t-I must be at the robing room for indoctrination and prayer almost at once. I must run.’ ‘You’d better hurry,’ I agreed. I was disappointed that she could not stay, happy for her that she was honored, and exultant that she had not forgotten me. ‘God go with you.’ ‘But I just had to tell you that I had been chosen.’ Her eyes were shining with what I took to be holy joy; her next words startled me. ‘I’m scared, John Lyle.’ ‘Eh? Frightened?’ .I suddenly recalled how I had felt, how my voice had cracked, the first time I ever drilled a platoon. ‘Do not be. You will be sustained.’ ‘Oh, I hope so! Pray for me, John.’ And she was gone, lost in the dark corridor. I did pray for her and I tried to imagine where she was, what she was doing. But since I knew as little about what went on inside the Prophet’s private chambers as a cow knows about courts-martial, I soon gave it up and simply thought about Judith. Later, an hour or more, my reverie was broken by a high scream inside the Palace, followed by a commotion, and running footsteps. I dashed down the inner corridor and found a knot of women gathered around the portal to the Prophet’s apartments. Two or three others were carrying someone out the portal; they stopped when the reached the corridor and eased their burden to the floor. ‘What’s the trouble?’ I demanded and drew my side arm clear. An elderly Sister stepped in front of me. ‘It is nothing. Return to your post, legate.’ ‘I heard a scream.’ ‘No business of yours. One of the Sisters fainted when the Holy One required service of her.’ ‘Who was it?’ ‘You are rather nosy, little brother.’ She shrugged. ‘Sister Judith, if it matters.’ I did not stop to think but snapped, ‘Let me help her!’ and started forward. She barred my way. ‘Are you out of your mind? Her sisters will return her to her cell. Since when do the Angels minister to nervous Virgins?’ I could easily have pushed her aside with one finger, but she was right. I backed down and went unwillingly back to my post. For the next few days I could not get Sister Judith out of my mind. Off watch, I prowled the parts of the Palace I was free to visit, hoping to catch sight of her. She might be ill, or she might be confined to her cell for what must certainly have been a major breach of discipline. But I never saw her. My roommate, Zebadiah Jones, noticed my moodiness and tried to rouse me out of it. Zeb was three classes senior to me and I had been one of his plebes at the Point; now he was my closest friend and my only confidant. ‘Johnnie old son, you look like a corpse at your own wake. What’s eating on you?’ ‘Huh? Nothing at all. Touch of indigestion, maybe.’ ‘So? Come on, let’s go for a walk. The air will do you good.’ I let him herd me outside. He said nothing but banalities until we were on the broad terrace surrounding the south turret and free of the danger of eye and ear devices. When we were well away from anyone else he said softly, ‘Come on. Spill it.’ ‘Shucks, Zeb, I can’t burden anybody else with it.’ ‘Why not? What’s a friend for?’ ‘Uh, you’d be shocked.’ ‘I doubt it. The last time I was shocked was when I drew four of a kind to an ace kicker. It restored my faith in miracles and I’ve been relatively immune ever since. Come on-we’ll call this a privileged communication-elder adviser and all that sort of rot.’ I let him persuade me. To my surprise Zeb was not shocked to find that I let myself become interested in a holy deaconess. So I told him the whole story and added to it my doubts and troubles, the misgivings that had been growing in me since the day I reported for duty at New Jerusalem. He nodded casually. ‘I can see how it would affect you that way, knowing you. See here, you haven’t admitted any of this at confession, have you?’ ‘No,’ I admitted with embarrassment. ‘Then don’t. Nurse your own fox. Major Bagby is broadminded, you wouldn’t shock him-but he might find it necessary to pass it on to his superiors. You wouldn’t want to face Inquisition even if you were alabaster innocent. In fact, especially since you are innocent-and you are, you know; everybody has impious thoughts at times. But the Inquisitor expects to find sin; if he doesn’t find it, he keeps on digging.’ At the suggestion that I might be put to the Question my stomach almost turned over. I tried not to show it for Zeb went on calmly, ‘Johnnie my lad, I admire your piety and~ your innocence, but I don’t envy it. Sometimes too much piety is more of a handicap than too little. You find yourself shocked at the idea that it takes politics as well as psalm singing to run a big country. Now take me; I noticed the same things when I was new here, but I hadn’t expected anything different and wasn’t shocked.’ ‘But…‘I shut up. His remarks sounded painfully like heresy; I changed the subject. ‘Zeb, what do you suppose it could have been that upset Judith so and caused her to faint the night she served the Prophet?’ ‘Eh? How should I know?’ He glanced at me and looked away. ‘Well, I just thought you might. You generally have all the gossip around the Palace.’ ‘Well … oh, forget it, old son. It’s really not important.’ ‘Then you do know?’ ‘I didn’t say that. Maybe I could make a close guess, but you don’t want guesses. So forget it.’ I stopped strolling, stepped in front of him and faced him. ‘Zeb, anything you know about it-or can guess-I want to hear. It’s important to me.’ ‘Easy now! You were afraid of shocking me; it could be that I don’t want to shock you.’ ‘What do you mean? Tell me!’ ‘Easy, I said. We’re out strolling, remember, without a care in the world, talking about our butterfly collections and wondering if we’ll have stewed beef again for dinner tonight.’ Still fuming, I let him take me along with him. He went on more quietly, ‘John, you obviously aren’t the type to learn things just by keeping your ear to the ground-and you’ve not yet studied any of the Inner Mysteries, now have you?’ ‘You know I haven’t. The psych classification officer hasn’t cleared me for the course. I don’t know why.’ ‘I should have let you read some of the installments while I was boning it. No, that was before you graduated. Too bad, for they explain things in much more delicate language than I know how to use-and justify every bit of it thoroughly, if you care for the dialectics of religious theory. John, what is your notion of the duties of the Virgins?’ ‘Why, they wait on him, and cook his food, and so forth.’ ‘They surely do. And so forth. This Sister Judith-an innocent little country girl the way you describe her. Pretty devout, do you think?’ I answered somewhat stiffly that her devoutness had first attracted me to her. Perhaps I believed it. ‘Well, it could be that she simply became shocked at overhearing a rather worldly and cynical discussion between the Holy One and, oh, say the High Bursar-taxes and tithes and the best way to squeeze them out of the peasants. It might be something like that, although the scribe for such a conference would hardly be a grass-green Virgin on her first service. No, it was almost certainly the “And so forth.”’ ‘Huh? I don’t follow you.’ Zeb sighed. ‘You really are one of God’s innocents, aren’t you? Holy Name, I thought you knew and were just too stubbornly straight-laced to admit it. Why, even the Angels carry on with the Virgins at times, after the Prophet is through with them. Not to mention the priests and the deacons. I remember a time when…‘He broke off suddenly, catching sight of my face. ‘Wipe that look off your face! Do you want somebody to notice us?’ I tried to do so, with terrible thoughts jangling around inside my head. Zeb went on quietly, ‘It’s my guess, if it matters that much to you, that your friend Judith still merits the title “Virgin” in the purely physical sense as well as the spiritual. She might even stay that way, if the Holy One is as angry with her as he probably was. She is probably as dense as you are and failed to understand the symbolic explanations given her-then blew her top when it came to the point where she couldn’t fail to understand, so he kicked her out. Small wonder!’ I stopped again, muttering to myself biblical expressions I hardly thought I knew. Zeb stopped, too, and stood looking at me with a smile of cynical tolerance. ‘Zeb,’ I said, almost pleading with him, ‘these are terrible things. Terrible! Don’t tell me that you approve?’ ‘Approve? Man, it’s all part of the Plan. I’m sorry you haven’t been cleared for higher study. See here, I’ll give you a rough briefing. God wastes not. Right?’ ‘That’s sound doctrine.’ ‘God requires nothing of man beyond his strength. Right?’ ‘Yes, but…‘ ‘Shut up. God commands man to be fruitful. The Prophet Incarnate, being especially holy, is required to be especially fruitful. That’s the gist of it; you can pick up the fine points when you study it. In the meantime, if the Prophet can humble himself to the flesh in order to do his plain duty, who are you to raise a ruction? Answer me that.’ I could not answer, of course, and we continued our walk in silence. I had to admit the logic of what he had said and that the conclusions were built up from the revealed doctrines. The trouble was that I wanted to eject the conclusions, throw them up as if they had been something poisonous I had swallowed. Presently I was consoling myself with the thought that Zeb felt sure that Judith had not been harmed. I began to feel better, telling myself that Zeb was right, that it was not my place, most decidedly not my place, to sit in moral judgment on the Holy Prophet Incarnate. My mind was just getting round to worrying the thought that my relief over Judith arose solely from the fact that I had looked on her sinfully, that there could not possibly be one rule for one holy deaconess, another rule for all the rest, and I was beginning to be unhappy again-when Zeb stopped suddenly. ‘What was that?’ We hurried to the parapet of the terrace and looked down the wall. The south wall lies close to the city proper. A crowd of fifty or sixty people was charging up the slope that led to the Palace walls. Ahead of them, running with head averted, was a man dressed in a long gabardine. He was headed for the Sanctuary gate. Zebadiah looked down and answered himself. ‘That’s what the racket is-some of the rabble stoning a pariah. He probably was careless enough to be caught outside the ghetto after five.’ He stared down and shook his head. ‘I don’t think he is going to make it.’ Zeb’s prediction was realized at once, a large rock caught the man between the shoulder blades, he stumbled and went down. They were on him at once. He struggled to his knees, was struck by a dozen stones, went down in a heap. He gave a broken high-pitched wail, then drew a fold of the gabardine across his dark eyes and strong Roman nose. A moment later there was nothing to be seen but a pile of rocks and a protruding slippered foot. It jerked and was still. I turned away, nauseated. Zebediah caught my expression. ‘Why,’ I said defensively, ‘do these pariahs persist in their heresy? They seem such harmless fellows otherwise.’ He cocked a brow at me. ‘Perhaps it’s not heresy to them. Didn’t you see that fellow resign himself to his God?’ ‘But that is not the true God.’ ‘He must have thought otherwise.’ ‘But they all know better; we’ve told them often enough.’ He smiled in so irritating a fashion that I blurted out, ‘I don’t understand you, Zeb-blessed if I do! Ten minutes ago you were introducing me in correct doctrine; now you seem to be defending heresy. Reconcile that.’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, I can play the Devil’s advocate. I made the debate team at the Point, remember? I’ll be a famous theologian someday-if the Grand Inquisitor doesn’t get me first.’ ‘Well … Look-you do think it’s right to stone the ungodly? Don’t you?’ He changed the subject abruptly. ‘Did you notice who cast the first stone?’ I hadn’t and told him so; all I remembered was that it was a man in country clothes, rather than a woman or a child. ‘It was Snotty Fasset.’ Zeb’s lip curled. I recalled Fassett too well; he was two classes senior to me and had made my plebe year something I want to forget. ‘So that’s how it was,’ I answered slowly. ‘Zeb, I don’t think I could stomach intelligence work.’ ‘Certainly not as an agent provocateur,’ he agreed. ‘Still, I suppose the Council needs these incidents occasionally. These rumors about the Cabal and all…’ I caught up this last remark. ‘Zeb, do you really think there is anything to this Cabal? I can’t believe that there is any organized disloyalty to the Prophet.’ ‘Well-there has certainly been some trouble out on the West Coast. Oh, forget it; our job is to keep the watch here.’ Chapter 2. But we were not allowed to forget it; two days later the inner guard was doubled. I did not see how there could be any real danger, as the Palace was as strong a fortress as ever was built, with its lower recesses immune even to fission bombs. Besides that, a person entering the Palace, even from the Temple grounds, would be challenged and identified a dozen times before he reached the Angel on guard outside the Prophet’s own quarters. Nevertheless people in high places were getting jumpy; there must be something to it. But I was delighted to find that I had been assigned as Zebadiah’s partner. Standing twice as many hours of guard was almost offset by having him to talk with-for me at least. As for poor Zeb, I banged his ear endlessly through the long night watches, talking about Judith and how unhappy I was with the way things were at New Jerusalem. Finally he turned on me. ‘See here, Mr. Dumbjohn,’ he snapped, reverting to my plebe year designation, ‘are you in love with her?’ I tried to hedge. I had not yet admitted to myself that my interest was more than in her welfare. He cut me short. ‘You do or you don’t. Make up your mind. If you do, we’ll talk practical matters. If you don’t, then shut up about her.’ I took a deep breath and took the plunge. ‘I guess I do, Zeb. It seems impossible and I know it’s a sin, but there it is.’ ‘All of that and folly, too. But there is no talking sense to you. Okay, so you are in love with her. What next?’ ‘Eh?’ ‘What do you want to do? Marry her?’ I thought about it with such distress that I covered my face with my hands. ‘Of course I do,’ I admitted. ‘But how can I?’ ‘Precisely. You can’t. You can’t marry without transferring away from here; her service can’t marry at all. Nor is there any way for her to break her vows, since she is already sealed. But if you can face up to bare facts without blushing, there is plenty you can do. You two could be very cozy-if you could get over being such an infernal bluenose.’ A week earlier I would not have understood what he was driving at. But now I knew. I could not even really be angry with him at making such a dishonorable and sinful suggestion; he meant well-and some of the tarnish was now in my own soul. I shook my head. ‘You shouldn’t have said that, Zeb. Judith is not that sort of a woman.’ ‘Okay. Then forget it. And her. And shut up about her.’ I sighed wearily. ‘Don’t be rough on me, Zeb. This is more than I know how to manage.’ I glanced up and down, then took a chance and sat down on the parapet. We were not on watch near the Holy One’s quarters but at the east wall; our warden, Captain Peter van Eyck, was too fat to get that far oftener than once a watch, so I took a chance. I was bone tired from not having slept much lately. ‘Sorry.’ ‘Don’t be angry, Zeb. That sort of thing isn’t for me and it certainly isn’t for Judith-for Sister Judith.’ I knew what I wanted for us: a little farm, about a hundred and sixty acres, like the one I had been born on. Pigs and chickens and barefooted kids with happy dirty faces and Judith to have her face light up when I came in from the fields and then wipe the perspiration from her face with her apron so that I could kiss her no more connection with the Church and the Prophet than Sunday meeting and tithes. But it could not be, it could never be. I put it out of my mind. ‘Zeb,’ I went on, ‘just as a matter of curiosity-You have intimated that these things go on all the time. How? We live in a goldfish bowl here. It doesn’t seem possible.’ He grinned at me so cynically that I wanted to slap him, but his voice had no leer in it. ‘Well, just for example, take your own case.‘ ‘Out of the question!’ ‘Just for example, I said. Sister Judith isn’t available right now; she is confined to her cell. But…‘ ‘Huh? She’s been arrested?’ I thought wildly of the Question and what Zeb had said about the inquisitors. ‘No, no, no! She isn’t even locked in. She’s been told to stay there, that’s all, with prayer and bread-and-water as company. They are purifying her heart and instructing her in her spiritual duties. When she sees things in their true light, her lot will be drawn again-and this time she won’t faint and make an adolescent fool of herself.’ I pushed back my first reaction and tried to think about it calmly. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Judith will never do it. Not if she stays in her cell forever.’ ‘So? I wouldn’t be too sure. They can be very persuasive. How would you like to be prayed over in relays? But assume that she does see the light, just so that I can finish my story.’ ‘Zeb, how do you know about this? ‘Sheol, man! I’ve been here going on three years. Do you think I wouldn’t be hooked into the grapevine? You were worried about her-and making yourself a tiresome nuisance if I may say so. So I asked the birdies. But to continue. She sees the light, her lot is drawn, she performs her holy service to the Prophet. After that she is called once a week like the rest and her lot is drawn maybe once a month or less. Inside of a year-unless the Prophet finds some very exceptional beauty in her soul-they stop putting her name among the lots entirely. But it isn’t necessary to wait that long, although it is more discreet.’ ‘The whole thing is shameful!’ ‘Really? I imagine King Solomon had to use some such system; he had even more women on his neck than the Holy One has. Thereafter, if you can come to some mutual understanding with the Virgin involved, it is just a case of following well known customs. There is a present to be made to the Eldest Sister, and to be renewed as circumstances dictate. There are some palms to be brushed-I can tell you which ones. And this great pile of masonry has lots of dark back stairs in it. With all customs duly observed, there is no reason why, almost any night I have the watch and you don’t, you should not find something warm and cuddly in your bed.’ I was about to explode at the calloused way he put it when my mind went off at a tangent. ‘Zeb-now I know you are telling an untruth. You were just pulling my leg, admit it. There is an eye and an ear somewhere in our room. Why, even if I tried to find them and cut them out, I’d simply have the security watch banging on the door in three minutes.’ ‘So what? There is an eye and an ear in every room in the place. You ignore them.’ I simply let my mouth sag open. ‘Ignore them,’ he went on. ‘Look, John, a little casual fornication is no threat to the Church-treason and heresy are. It will simply be entered in your dossier and nothing will be said about it-unless they catch you in something really important later, in which case they might use it to hang you instead of preferring the real charges. Old son, they like to have such peccadilloes in the files; it increases security. They are probably uneasy about you; you are too perfect; such men are dangerous. Which is probably why you’ve never been cleared for higher study.’ I tried to straighten out in my mind the implied cross purposes, the wheels within wheels, and gave up. ‘I just don’t get it. Look, Zeb, all this doesn’t have anything to do with me or with Judith. But I know what I’ve got to do. Somehow I’ve got to get her out of here.’ ‘Hmm… a mighty strait gate, old son.’ ‘I’ve got to.’ ‘Well … I’d like to help you. I suppose I could get a message to her,’ he added doubtfully. I caught his arm. ‘Would you, Zeb?’ He sighed. ‘I wish you would wait. No, that wouldn’t help, seeing the romantic notions in your mind. But it is risky now. Plenty risky, seeing that she is under discipline by order of the Prophet. You’d look funny staring down the table of a court-martial board, looking at your own spear.’ ‘I’ll risk even that. Or even the Question.’ He did not remind me that he himself was taking even more of a risk than I was; he simply said, ‘Very well, what is the message?’ I thought for a moment. It would have to be short. ‘Tell her that the legate she talked to the night her lot was drawn is worried about her.’ ‘Anything else?’ ‘Yes! Tell her that I am hers to command!’ It seems flamboyant in recollection. No doubt it was-but it was exactly the way I felt. At luncheon the next day I found a scrap of paper folded into my napkin. I hurried through the meal and slipped out to read it. I need your help, it read, and am so very grateful. Will you meet me tonight? It was unsigned and had been typed in the script of a common voicewriter, used anywhere in the Palace, or out. When Zeb returned to our room, I showed it to him; he glanced at it and remarked in idle tones: ‘Let’s get some air. I ate too much, I’m about to fall asleep.’ Once we hit the open terrace and were free of the hazard of eye and ear he cursed me out in low, dispassionate tones. ‘You’ll never make a conspirator. Half the mess must know that you found something in your napkin. Why in God’s name did you gulp your food and rush off? Then to top it off you handed it to me upstairs. For all you know the eye read it and photostated it for evidence. Where in the world were you when they were passing out brains?’ I protested but he cut me off. ‘Forget it! I know you didn’t mean to put both of our necks in a bight-but good intentions are no good when the trial judge-advocate reads the charges. Now get this through your head: the first principle of intrigue is never to be seen doing anything unusual, no matter how harmless it may seem. You wouldn’t believe how small a deviation from pattern looks significant to a trained analyst. You should have stayed in the refectory the usual time, hung around and gossiped as usual afterwards, then waited until you were safe to read it. Now where is it?’ ‘In the pocket of my corselet,’ I answered humbly. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll chew it up and swallow it.’ ‘Not so fast. Wait here.’ Zeb left and was back in a few minutes. ‘I have a piece of paper the same size and shape; I’ll pass it to you quietly. Swap the two, and then you can eat the real note-but don’t be seen making the swap or chewing up the real one.’ ‘All right. But what is the second sheet of paper?’ ‘Some notes on a system for winning at dice.’ ‘Huh? But that’s non-reg, too!’ ‘Of course, you hammer head. If they catch you with evidence of gambling, they won’t suspect you of a much more serious sin. At worst, the skipper will eat you out and fine you a few days pay and a few hours contrition. Get this, John: if you are ever suspected of something, try to make the evidence point to a lesser offence. Never try to prove lily-white innocence. Human nature being what it is, your chances are better.’ I guess Zeb was right; my pockets must have been searched and the evidence photographed right after I changed uniforms for parade, for half an hour afterwards I was called into the Executive Officer’s office. He asked me to keep my eyes open for indications of gambling among the junior officers. It was a sin, he said, that he hated to have his younger officers fall into. He clapped me on the shoulder as I was leaving. ‘You’re a good boy, John Lyle. A word to the wise, eh?’ Zeb and I had the midwatch at the south Palace portal that night. Half the watch passed with no sign of Judith and I was as nervous as a cat in a strange house, though Zeb tried to keep me calmed down by keeping me strictly to routine. At long last there were soft footfalls in the inner corridor and a shape appeared in the doorway. Zebadiah motioned me to remain on tour and went to check. He returned almost at once and motioned me to join him, while putting a finger to his lips. Trembling, I went in. It was not Judith but some woman strange to me who waited there in the darkness. I started to speak but Zeb put his hand over my mouth. The woman took my arm and urged me down the corridor. I glanced back and saw Zeb silhouetted in the portal, covering our rear. My guide paused and pushed me into an almost pitchblack alcove, then she took from the folds of her robes a small object which I took to be a pocket ferretscope, from the small dial that glowed faintly on its side. She ran it up and down and around, snapped it off and returned it to her person. ‘Now you can talk,’ she said softly. ‘It’s safe.’ She slipped away. I felt a gentle touch at my sleeve. ‘Judith?’ I whispered. ‘Yes,’ she answered, so softly that I could hardly hear her. Then my arms were around her. She gave a little startled cry, then her own arms went around my neck and I could feel her breath against my face. We kissed clumsily but with almost frantic eagerness. It is no one’s business what we talked about then, nor could I give a coherent account if I tried. Call our behavior romantic nonsense, call it delayed puppy love touched off by ignorance and unnatural lives-do puppies hurt less than grown dogs? Call it what you like and laugh at us, but at that moment we were engulfed in that dear madness more precious than rubies and fine gold, more to be desired than sanity. If you have never experienced it and do not know what I am talking about, I am sorry for you. Presently we quieted down somewhat and talked more reasonably. When she tried to tell me about the night her lot had been drawn she began to cry. I shook her and said, ‘Stop it, my darling. You don’t have to tell me about it. I know.’ She gulped and said, ‘But you don’t know. You can’t know. I…he…’ I shook her again. ‘Stop it. Stop it at once. No more tears. I do know, exactly. And I know what you are in for still-unless we get you out of here. So there is no time for tears or nerves; we have to make plans.’ She was dead silent for a long moment, then she said slowly, ‘You mean for me to … desert? I’ve thought of that. Merciful God, how I’ve thought about it! But how can I?’ ‘I don’t know-yet. But we will figure out a way. We’ve got to.’ We discussed possibilities. Canada was a bare three hundred miles away and she knew the upstate New York country; in fact it was the only area she did know. But the border there was more tightly closed than it was anywhere else, patrol boats and radar walls by water, barbed wire and sentries by land . and sentry dogs. I had trained with such dogs; I wouldn’t urge my worst enemy to go up against them. But Mexico was simply impossibly far away. If she headed south she would probably be arrested in twenty-four hours. No one would knowingly give shelter to an unveiled Virgin; under the inexorable rule of associative guilt any such good Samaritan would be as guilty as she of the same personal treason against the Prophet and would die the same death. Going north would be shorter at least, though it meant the same business of traveling by night, hiding by day, stealing food or going hungry. Near Albany lived an aunt of Judith’s; she felt sure that her aunt would risk hiding her until some way could be worked out to cross the border. ‘She’ll keep us safe. I know it.’ ‘Us?’ I must have sounded stupid. Until she spoke I had had my nose so close to the single problem of how she was to escape that it had not yet occurred to me that she would expect both of us to go. ‘Did you mean to send me alone?’ ‘Why… I guess I hadn’t thought about it any other way.’ ‘No!’ ‘But-look, Judith, the urgent thing, the thing that must be done at once, is to get you out of here. Two people trying to travel and hide are many times more likely to be spotted than one. It just doesn’t make sense to …‘ ‘No! I won’t go.’ I thought about it, hurriedly. I still hadn’t realized that ‘A’ implies ‘B’ and that I myself in urging her to desert her service was as much a deserter in my heart as she was. I said, ‘We’ll get you out first, that’s the important thing. You tell me where your aunt lives-then wait for me.’ ‘Not without you.’ ‘But you must. The Prophet,’ ‘Better that than to lose you now!’ I did not then understand women-and I still don’t. Two minutes before she had been quietly planning to risk death by ordeal rather than submit her body to the Holy One. Now she was almost casually willing to accept it rather than put up with even a temporary separation. I don’t understand women; I sometimes think there is no logic in them at all. I said, ‘Look, my dear one, we have not yet even figured out how we are to get you out of the Palace. It’s likely to be utterly impossible for us both to escape the same instant. You see that, don’t you?’ She answered stubbornly, ‘Maybe. But I don’t like it. Well, how do I get out? And when?’ I had to admit again that I did not know. I intended to consult Zeb as soon as possible, but I had no other notion. But Judith had a suggestion. ‘John, you know the Virgin who guided you here? No? Sister Magdalene. I know it is safe to tell her and she might be willing to help us. She’s very clever.’ I started to comment doubtfully but we were interrupted by Sister Magdalene herself. ‘Quick!’ she snapped at me as she slipped in beside us. ‘Back to the rampart!’ I rushed out and was barely in time to avoid being caught by the warden, making his rounds. He exchanged challenges with Zeb and myself-and then the old fool wanted to chat. He settled himself down on the steps of the portal and started recalling boastfully a picayune fencing victory of the week before. I tried dismally to help Zeb with chit-chat in a fashion normal for a man bored by a night watch. At last he got to his feet. ‘I’m past forty and getting a little heavier, maybe. I’ll admit frankly it warms me to know that I still have a wrist and eye as fast as you young blades.’ He straightened his scabbard and added, ‘I suppose I had better take a turn through the Palace. Can’t take too many precautions these days. They do say the Cabal has been active again.’ He took out his torch light and flashed it down the corridor. I froze solid. If he inspected that corridor, it was beyond hope that he would miss two women crouching in an alcove. But Zebadiah spoke up calmly, casually. ‘Just a moment, Elder Brother. Would you show me that time riposte you used to win that last match? It was too fast for me to follow it.’ He took the bait. ‘Why, glad to, son!’ He moved off the steps, came out to where there was room. ‘Draw your sword. En garde! Cross blades in line of sixte. Disengage and attack me. There! Hold the lunge and I’ll demonstrate it slowly. As your point approaches my chest -, (Chest indeed! Captain van Eyck was as pot-bellied as a kangaroo!) ‘- I catch it with the forte of my blade and force it over yours in riposte seconde. Just like the book, so far. But I do not complete the riposte. Strong as it is, you might parry or counter. Instead, as my point comes down, I beat your blade out of line,‘ He illustrated and the steel sang, ‘and attack you anywhere, from chin to ankle. Come now, try it on me.’ Zeb did so and they ran through the phrase; the warden retreated a step. Zeb asked to do it again to get it down pat. They ran through it repeatedly, faster each time, with the warden retreating each time to avoid by a hair Zeb’s unbated point. It was strictly against regulations to fence with real swords and without mask and plastron, but the warden really was good … a swordsman so precise that he was confident of his own skill not to blind one of Zeb’s eyes, not to let Zeb hurt him. In spite of my own galloping jitters I watched it closely; it was a beautiful demonstration of a once-useful military art. Zeb pressed him hard. They finished up fifty yards away from the portal and that much closer to the guardroom. I could hear the warden puffing from the exercise. ‘That was fine, Jones,’ he gasped. ‘You caught on handsomely.’ He puffed again and added, ‘Lucky for me a real bout does not go on as long. I think I’ll let you inspect the corridor.’ He turned away toward the guardroom, adding cheerfully, ‘God keep you.’ ‘God go with you, sir,’ Zeb responded properly and brought his hilt to his chin in salute. As soon as the warden turned the corner Zeb stood by again and I hurried back to the alcove. The women were still there, making themselves small against the back wall. ‘He’s gone,’ I reassured them. ‘Nothing to fear for a while.’ Judith had told Sister Magdalene of our dilemma and we discussed it in whispers. She advised us strongly not to try to reach any decisions just then. ‘I’m in charge of Judith’s purification; I can stretch it out for another week, perhaps, before she has to draw lots again.’ I said, ‘We’ve got to act before then!’ Judith seemed over her fears, now that she had laid her troubles in Sister Magdalene’s lap. ‘Don’t worry, John,’ she said softly, ‘the chances are my lot won’t be drawn soon again in any case. We must do what she advises.’ Sister Magdalene sniffed contemptuously. ‘You’re wrong about that, Judy, when you are returned to duty, your lot will be drawn, you can be sure ahead of time. Not,’ she added, ‘but what you could live through it-the rest of us have. If it seems safer to ‘She stopped suddenly and listened. ‘Sssh! Quiet as death.’ She slipped silently out of our circle. A thin pencil of light flashed out and splashed on a figure crouching outside the alcove. I dived and was on him before he could get to his feet. Fast as I had been, Sister Magdalene was just as fast; she landed on his shoulders as he went down. He jerked and was still. Zebadiah came running in, checked himself at our sides. ‘John! Maggie!’ came his tense whisper. ‘What is it?’ ‘We’ve caught a spy, Zeb,’ I answered hurriedly. ‘What’ll we do with him?’ Zeb flashed his light. ‘You’ve knocked him out?’ ‘He won’t come to,’ answered Magdalene’s calm voice out of the darkness. ‘I slipped a vibroblade in his ribs.’ ‘Sheol!’ ‘Zeb, I had to do it. Be glad I didn’t use steel and mess up the floor with blood. But what do we do now?’ Zeb cursed her softly, she took it. ‘Turn him over, John. Let’s take a look.’ I did so and his light flashed again. ‘Hey, Johnnie-it’s Snotty Fassett.’ He paused and I could almost hear him think. ‘Well, we’ll waste no tears on him. John!’ ‘Yeah, Zeb?’ ‘Keep the watch outside. If anyone comes, I am inspecting the corridor. I’ve got to dump this carcass somewhere.’ Judith broke the silence. ‘There’s an incinerator chute on the floor above. I’ll help you.’ ‘Stout girl. Get going, John.’ I wanted to object that it was no work for a woman, but I shut up and turned away. Zeb took his shoulders, the women a leg apiece and managed well enough. They were back in minutes, though it seemed endless to me. No doubt Snotty’s body was reduced to atoms before they were back-we might get away with it. It did not seem like murder to me then, and still does not; we did what we had to do, rushed along by events. Zeb was curt. ‘This tears it. Our reliefs will be along in ten minutes; we’ve got to figure this out in less time than that. Well?’ Our suggestions were all impractical to the point of being ridiculous, but Zeb let us make them-then spoke straight to the point. ‘Listen to me, it’s no longer just a case of trying to help Judith and you out of your predicament. As soon as Snotty is missed, we-all four of us-are in mortal danger of the Question. Right?’ ‘Right,’ I agreed unwillingly. ‘But nobody has a plan?’ None of us answered. Zeb went on, ‘Then we’ve got to have help … and there is only one place we can get it. The Cabal.’ Chapter 3. ‘The Cabal?’ I repeated stupidly. Judith gave a horrified gasp. ‘Why … why, that would mean our immortal souls! They worship Satan!’ Zeb turned to her. ‘I don’t believe so.’ She stared at him. ‘Are you a Cabalist?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then how do you know?’ ‘And how,’ I insisted, ‘can you ask them for help?’ Magdalene answered. ‘I am a member-as Zebadiah knows.’ Judith shrank away from her, but Magdalene pressed her with words. ‘Listen to me, Judith. I know how you feel-and once I was as horrified as you are at the idea of anyone opposing the Church. Then I learned-as you are learning-what really lies behind this sham we were brought up to believe in.’ She put an arm around the younger girl. ‘We aren’t devil worshipers, dear, nor do we fight against God. We fight only against this self-styled Prophet who pretends to be the voice of God. Come with us, help us fight him-and we will help you. Otherwise we can’t risk it.’ Judith searched her face by the faint light from the portal. ‘You swear that this is true? The Cabal fights only against the Prophet and not against the Lord Himself?’ ‘I swear, Judith.’ Judith took a deep shuddering breath. ‘God guide me,’ she whispered. ‘I go with the Cabal.’ Magdalene kissed her quickly, then faced us men. ‘Well?’ I answered at once, ‘I’m in it if Judith is,’ then whispered to myself, ‘Dear Lord, forgive me my oath-I must!’ Magdalene was staring at Zeb. He shifted uneasily and said angrily, ‘I suggested it, didn’t I? But we are all damned fools and the Inquisitor will break our bones.’ There was no more chance to talk until the next day. I woke from bad dreams of the Question and worse, and heard Zeb’s shaver buzzing merrily in the bath. He came in and pulled the covers off me, all the while running off at the mouth with cheerful nonsense. I hate having bed clothes dragged off me even when feeling well and I can’t stand cheerfulness before breakfast; I dragged them back and tried to ignore him, but he grabbed my wrist. ‘Up you come, old son! God’s sunshine is wasting. It’s a beautiful day. How about two fast laps around the Palace and in for a cold shower?’ I tried to shake his hand loose and called him something that would lower my mark in piety if the ear picked it up. He still hung on and his forefinger was twitching against my wrist in a nervous fashion; I began to wonder if Zeb were cracking under the strain. Then I realized that he was tapping out code. ‘B-E-N-A-T-U-R-A-L,’ the dots and dashes said, ‘S-H-O-W - N-O - S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E - W-E - W-I-L-L - B-E -C-A-L-L-E-D - F-O-R - E-X-A-M-I-N-A-T-I-O-N - D-U-RI-N-G - T-H-E - R-E-C-R-E-AT- I-O-N - P-E-R-I-O-D - T-H-I-S - A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N’ I hoped I showed no surprise. I made surly answers to the stream of silly chatter he had kept up all through it, and got up and went about the mournful tasks of putting the body back in shape for another day. After a bit I found excuse to lay a hand on his shoulder and twitched out an answer: ‘0-K -I-U-N-D-E-R-S-T-A-N-D’ The day was a misery of nervous monotony. I made a mistake at dress parade, a thing I haven’t done since beast barracks. When the day’s duty was finally over I went back to our room and found Zeb there with his feet on the air conditioner, working an acrostic in the New York Times. ‘Johnnie my lamb,’ he asked, looking up, ‘what is a six-letter word meaning “Pure in Heart”?’ ‘You’ll never need to know,’ I grunted and sat down to remove my armor. ‘Why, John, don’t you think I will reach the Heavenly City?’ ‘Maybe-after ten thousand years penance.’ There came a brisk knock at our door, it was shoved open, and Timothy Klyce, senior legate in the mess and brevet captain, stuck his head in. He sniffed and said in nasal Cape Cod accents, ‘Hello, you chaps want to take a walk?’ It seemed to me that he could not have picked a worse time. Tim was a hard man to shake and the most punctiliously devout man in the corps. I was still trying to think of an excuse when Zeb spoke up. ‘Don’t mind if we do, provided we walk toward town. I’ve got some shopping to do.’ I was confused by Zeb’s answer and still tried to hang back, pleading paper work to do, but Zeb cut me short. ‘Pfui with paper work. I’ll help you with it tonight. Come on.’ So I went, wondering if he had gotten cold feet about going through with it. We went out through the lower tunnels. I walked along silently, wondering if possibly Zeb meant to try to shake Klyce in town and then hurry back. We had just entered a little jog in the passageway when Tim raised his hand in a gesture to emphasize some point in what he was saying to Zeb. His hand passed near my face, I felt a slight spray on my eyes-and I was blind. Before I could cry out, even as I suppressed the impulse to do so, he grasped my upper arm hard, while continuing his sentence without a break. His grip on my arm guided me to the left, whereas my memory of the jog convinced me that the turn should have been to the right. But we did not bump into the wall and after a few moments the blindness wore off. We seemed to be walking in the same tunnel with Tim in the middle and holding each of us by an arm. He did not say anything and neither did we; presently he stopped us in front of a door. Klyce knocked once, then listened. I could not make out an answer but he replied. ‘Two pilgrims, duly guided.’ The door opened. He led us in, it closed silently behind us, and we were facing a masked and armored guard, with his blast pistol leveled on us. Reaching behind him, he rapped once on an inner door; immediately another man, armed and masked like the first, came out and faced us. He asked Zeb and myself separately: ‘Do you seriously declare, upon your honor, that, unbiased by friends and uninfluenced by mercenary motives, you freely and voluntarily offer yourself to the service of this order?’ We each answered, ‘I do.’ ‘Hoodwink and prepare them.’ Leather helmets that covered everything but our mouths and noses were slipped over our heads and fastened under our chins. Then we were ordered to strip off all our clothing. I did so while the goose pumps popped out on me. I was losing my enthusiasm rapidly-there is nothing that makes a man feel as helpless as taking his pants away from him. Then I felt the sharp prick of a hypodermic in my forearm and shortly, though I was awake, things got dreamy and I was no longer jittery. Something cold was pressed against my ribs on the left side of my back and I realized that it was almost certainly the hilt of a vibroblade, needing only the touch, of the stud to make me as dead as Snotty Fassett-but it did not alarm me. Then there were questions, many questions, which I answered automatically, unable to lie or hedge if I had wanted to. I remember them in snatches: of your own free will and accord?’ ‘conform to the ancient established usages-a man, free born, of good repute, and well recommended.’ Then, for a long time I stood shivering on the cold tile floor while a spirited discussion went on around me; it had to do with my motives in seeking admission. I could hear it all and I knew that my life hung on it, with only a word needed to cause a blade of cold energy to spring into my heart. And I knew that the argument was going against me. Then a contralto voice joined the debate. I recognized Sister Magdalene and knew that she was vouching for me, but doped as I was I did not care; I simply welcomed her voice as a friendly sound. But presently the hilt relaxed from my ribs and I again felt the prick of a hypodermic. It brought me quickly out of my dazed state and I heard a strong bass voice intoning a prayer: ‘Vouchsafe thine aid, Almighty Father of the Universe: love, relief, and truth to the honor of Thy Holy Name. Amen.’ And the answering chorus, ‘So mote it be!’ Then I was conducted around the room, still hoodwinked, while questions were again put to me. They were symbolic in nature and were answered for me by my guide. Then I was stopped and was asked if I were willing to take a solemn oath pertaining to this degree, being assured that it would in no material way interfere with duty that I owed to God, myself, family, country, or neighbor. I answered, ‘I am.’ I was then required to kneel on my left knee, with my left hand supporting the Book, my right hand steadying certain instruments thereon. The oath and charge was enough to freeze the blood of anyone foolish enough to take it under false pretenses. Then I was asked what, in my present condition, I most desired. I answered as I had been coached to answer: ‘Light!’ And the hoodwink was stripped from my head. It is not necessary and not proper to record the rest of my instruction as a newly entered brother. it was long and of solemn beauty and there was nowhere in it any trace of the blasphemy or devil worship that common gossip attributed to us; quite the contrary it was filled with reverence for God, brotherly love, and uprightness, and it included instruction in the principles of an ancient and honorable profession and the symbolic meaning of the working tools thereof. But I must mention one detail that surprised me almost out of the shoes I was not wearing. When they took the hoodwink off me, the first man I saw, standing in front of me dressed in the symbols of his office and wearing an expression of almost inhuman dignity, was Captain Peter van Eyck, the fat ubiquitous warden of my watch-Master of this lodge! The ritual was long and time was short. When the lodge was closed we gathered in a council of war. I was told that the senior brethren had already decided not to admit Judith to the sister order of our lodge at this time even though the lodge would reach out to protect her. She was to be spirited away to Mexico and it was better, that being the case, for her not to know any secrets she did not need to know. But Zeb and I, being of the Palace guard, could be of real use; therefore we were admitted. Judith had already been given hypnotic instructions which-it was hoped-would enable her to keep from telling what little she already new if she should be put to the Question. I was told to wait and not to worry; the senior brothers would arrange to get Judith out of danger before she next was required to draw lots. I had to be satisfied with that. For three days running Zebadiah and I reported during the afternoon recreation period for instruction, each time being taken by a different route and with different precautions. It was clear that the architect who had designed the Palace had been one of us; the enormous building had hidden in it traps and passages and doors which certainly did not appear in the official plans. At the end of the third day we were fully accredited senior brethren, qualified with a speed possible only in time of crisis. The effort almost sprained my brain; I had to bone harder than I ever had needed to in school. Utter letter-perfection was required and there was an amazing lot to memorize-which was perhaps just as well, for it helped to keep me from worrying. We had not heard so much as a rumor of a kick-back from the disappearance of Snotty Fassett, a fact much more ominous than would have been a formal investigation. A security officer can’t just drop out of sight without his passing being noticed. It was remotely possible that Snotty had been on a roving assignment and was not expected to check in daily with his boss, but it was much more likely that he had been where we had found him and killed him because some one of us was suspected and he had been ordered to shadow. If that was the case, the calm silence could only mean that the chief security officer was letting us have more rope, while his psychotechnicians analyzed our behavior-in which case the absence of Zeb and myself from any known location during our free time for several days running was almost certainly a datum entered on a chart. If the entire regiment started out equally suspect, then our personal indices each gained a fractional point each of those days. I never boned savvy in such matters and would undoubtedly have simply felt relieved as the days passed with no overt trouble had it not been that the matter was discussed and worried over in the lodge room. I did not even know the name of the Guardian of Morals, nor even the location of his security office-we weren’t supposed to know. I knew that he existed and that he reported to the Grand Inquisitor and perhaps to the Prophet himself but that was all. I discovered that my lodge brothers, despite the almost incredible penetration of the Cabal throughout the Temple and Palace, knew hardly more than I did-for the reason that we had no brothers, not one, in the staff of the Guardian of Morals. The reason was simple; the Cabal was every bit as careful in evaluating the character, persona, and psychological potentialities of a prospective brother as the service was in measuring a prospective intelligence officer and the two types were as unlike as geese and goats. The Guardian would never accept the type of personality who would be attracted by the ideals of the Cabal; my brothers would never pass a-well, a man like Fassett. I understand that, in the days before psychological measurement had become a mathematical science, an espionage apparatus could break down through a change in heart on the part of a key man-well, the Guardian of Morals had no such worry; his men never suffered a change in heart. I understand, too, that our own fraternity, in the early days when it was being purged and tempered for the ordeal to come, many times had blood on the floors of lodge rooms-I don’t know; such records were destroyed. On the fourth day we were not scheduled to go to the lodge room, having been told to show our faces where they would be noticed to offset our unwonted absences. I was spending my free time in the lounge off the mess room, leafing through magazines, when Timothy Klyce came in. He glanced at me, nodded, then started thumbing through a stack of magazines himself. Presently he said, ‘These antiques belong in a dentist’s office. Have any of you chaps seen this week’s Time?’ His complaint was addressed to the room as a whole; no one answered. But he turned to me. ‘Jack, I think you are sitting on it. Raise up a minute.’ I grunted and did so. As he reached for the magazine his head came close to mine and he whispered, ‘Report to the Master.’ I had learned a little at least so I went on reading. After a bit I put my magazine aside, stretched and yawned, then got up and ambled out toward the washroom. But I walked on past and a few minutes later entered the lodge room. I found that Zeb was already there, as were several other brothers; they were gathered around Master Peter and Magdalene. I could feel the tension in the room. I said, ‘You sent for me, Worshipful Master?’ He glanced at me, looked back at Magdalene. She said slowly, ‘Judith has been arrested.’ I felt my knees go soft and I had trouble standing. I am not unusually timid and physical bravery is certainly commonplace, but if you hit a man through his family or his loved ones you almost always get him where he is unprotected. ‘The Inquisition?’ I managed to gasp. Her eyes were soft with pity. ‘We think so. They took her away this morning and she has been incommunicado ever since.’ ‘Has any charge been filed?’ asked Zeb. ‘Not publicly.’ ‘Hm-m-m-That looks bad.’ ‘And good as well,’ Master Peter disagreed. ‘If it is the matter we think it is-Fassett, I mean-and had they had any evidence pointing to the rest of you, all four of you would have been arrested at once. At least, that is in accordance with their methods.’ ‘But what can we do?’ I demanded. Van Eyck did not answer. Magdelene said soothingly, ‘There is nothing for you to do, John. You couldn’t get within several guarded doors of her.’ ‘But we can’t just do nothing!’ The lodge Master said, ‘Easy, son. Maggie is the only one of us with access to that part of the inner Palace. We must leave it in her hands.’ I turned again to her; she sighed and said, ‘Yes, but there is probably little I can do.’ Then she left. We waited. Zeb suggested that he and I should leave the lodge room and continue with being seen in our usual haunts; to my relief van Eyck vetoed it. ‘No. We can’t be sure that Sister Judith’s hypnotic protection is enough to see her through the ordeal. Fortunately you two and Sister Magdalene are the only ones she can jeopardize-but I want you here, safe, until Magdalene finds out what she can. Or fails to return,’ he added thoughtfully. I blurted out, ‘Oh, Judith will never betray us!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Son, anyone will betray anything under the Question-unless adequately guarded by hypno compulsion. We’ll see.’ I had paid no attention to Zeb, being busy with my own very self-centred thoughts. He now surprised me by saying angrily, ‘Master, you are keeping us here like pet hens-but you have just sent Magg

CHAPTER ONE "All of them should have been very happy…" THEIR problems were solved: the poor they no longer had with them; the sick, the lame, the halt, and the blind were historic memories; the ancient causes of war no longer obtained; they had more freedom than Man has ever enjoyed. All of them should have been happy… Hamilton Felix let himself off at the thirteenth level of the Department of Finance, mounted a slideway to the left, and stepped off the strip at a door marked: BUREAU OF ECONOMIC STATISTICS Office of Analysis and Prediction Director PRIVATE He punched the door with a code combination, and awaited face check. It came promptly; the door dilated, and a voice inside said, "Come in, Felix." He stepped inside, glanced at his host and remarked, "You make ninety-eight." "Ninety-eight what?" "Ninety-eight sourpusses in the last twenty minutes. It's a game. I just made it up." Monroe-Alpha Clifford looked baffled, an expression not uncommon in his dealings with his friend Felix. "But what is the point? Surely you counted the opposites, too?" "Of course. Ninety-eight mugs who'd lost their last friends, seven who looked happy. But," he added, "to make it seven I had to count one dog." Monroe-Alpha gave Hamilton a quick look in an effort to determine whether or not he was joking. But he could not be sure-he rarely could be sure. Hamilton's remarks often did not appear serious, frequently even seemed technically sense-free. Nor did they appear to follow the six principles of humor-Monroe-Alpha prided himself on his sense of humor, had been known to pontificate to his subordinates on the necessity of maintaining a sense of humor. But Hamilton's mind seemed to follow some weird illogic of its own, self consistent perhaps, but apparently unrelated to the existent world. "But what is the purpose of your survey?" he asked. "Does it need a purpose? I tell you, I just made it up." "But your numbers are too few to be significant. You can't fair a curve with so little data. Besides, your conditions are uncontrolled. Your results don't mean anything." Hamilton rolled his eyes up. "Elder Brother, hear me," he said softly. "Living Spirit of Reason attend Thy servant. In Your greatest and most prosperous city I find vinegar phizzes to grins in a ratio of fourteen to one-and he says it's not significant!" Monroe-Alpha looked annoyed. "Don't be irreverent, "he advised. "And the proper ratio is sixteen and a third to one; you should not have counted the dog." "Oh, forget it!" his friend answered. "How goes the tail chasing?" He wandered around the room, picking things up and putting them down under Monroe-Alpha's watchful eye, and finally stopped in front of the huge integrating accumulator. "It's about time for your quarterly prediction, isn't it?" "Not 'about time', it is time. I had just completed the first inclusive run when you arrived. Want to see it?" He stepped to the machine, pressed a stud. A photostat popped out. Monroe Alpha undipped it and handed it to Hamilton without looking at it. He had no need to-the proper data had been fed into the computer; he knew with quiet certainty that the correct answer would come out. Tomorrow he would work the problem again, using a different procedure. If the two answers did not then agree within the limits of error of the machine, he would become interested in the figures themselves. But, of course, that would not happen. The figures would interest his superiors; the procedure alone was of interest to him. Hamilton eyed the answer from a nonprofessional viewpoint. He appreciated, in part at least, the huge mass of detail which had gone into this simple answer. Up and down two continents human beings had gone about their lawful occasions-buying, selling, making, consuming, saving, spending, giving, receiving. A group of men in Altoona, Pennsylvania, had issued unsecured aspirant stock to subsidize further research into a new method of recovering iron from low grade ores. The issue had been well received down in New Bolivar where there was a superabundance of credit because of the extreme success of the tropical garden cities along the Orinoco ("Buy a Slice of Paradise"). Perhaps that was the canny Dutch influence in the mixed culture of that region. It might have been the Latin influence which caused an unprecedented tourist travel away from the Orinoco during the same period-to Lake Louise, and Patagonia, and Sitka. No matter. All of the complex of transactions appeared in the answer in Hamilton's hand. A child in Walla Walla broke its piggy bank (secretly, with one eye on the door), gathered up the slowly accumulated slugs and bought a perfectly delightful gadget, which not only did things, but made the appropriate noises as well. Some place down in the innards of the auto-clerk which handled the sale for the Gadget Shoppe four holes were punched in a continuous roll of paper; the item appeared in the owner's cost accounting, and was reflected in the accounting of the endless chain of middle distributors, transporters, processors, original producers, service companies, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs-world without end. The child (a bad-tempered little blond brat, bound to prove a disappointment to his planners and developers) had a few slugs left over which he exchanged for a diet-negative confection ("Father Christmas' Psuedo-Sweets-Not a tummy ache in a tankful"); the sale was lumped with many others like it in the accounts of the Seattle Vending Machine Corporation. The broken piggy bank and its concatenations appeared in the figures in Hamilton's hand, as a sliver of a fragment of a super-microscopic datum, invisible even in the fifth decimal place. Monroe-Alpha had not heard of this particular piggy bank when he set up the problem-nor would he, everbut there are tens of thousands of piggy banks, a large but countable number of entrepreneurs, lucky, and unlucky, shrewd and stupid, millions of producers, millions of consumers, each with his draft book, each with printed symbols in his pouch, potent symbols-the stuff, the ready, the you-know-what, jack, kale, rocket juice, wampum, the shekels, the sugar, the dough. All of these symbols, the kind that jingle and the kind that fold and, most certainly, the kind that are only abstractions from the signed promise of an honest man, all of these symbols, or more correctly, their reflected shadows, passed through the bottle neck formed by Monroe-Alpha's computer, and appeared there in terms of angular speeds, settings of three-dimensional cams, electronic flow, voltage biases, et complex cetera. The manifold constituted a dynamic abstracted structural picture of the economic flow of a hemisphere. Hamilton examined the photostat. The reinvestment of accumulated capital called for an increase in the subsidy on retail transfers of consumption goods of three point one percent and an increase in monthly citizens' allowance of twelve credits-unless the Council of Policy decided on another means of distributing the social increment. "'Day by day, in every way, I'm getting richer and richer, '" Hamilton said. "Say, Cliff, this money machine of yours is a wonderful little gadget. It's the goose that lays the golden egg." "I understand your classical allusion, "Monroe-Alpha conceded, "but the accumulator is in no sense a production machine. It is merely an accounting machine, combined with an integrating predictor." "I know that, "Hamilton answered absently. "Look, Cliff, what would happen if I took an ax and just beat the bejasus out of your little toy?" "You would be examined for motive." "Don't be obtuse. What about the economic system?" "I suppose, "Monroe-Alpha told him, "that you want me to assume that no other machine was available for replacement. Any of the regional accumulators could...” "Sure. Bust the hell out of all of them." "Then we would have to use tedious methods of actuarial computation. A few weeks delay would result, with accumulated errors which would have to be smoothed out in the next prediction. No important result." "Not that. What I want to know is this. If nobody computed the amount of new credit necessary to make the production-consumption cycle come out even-what would happen?" "Your hypothetical question is too far-fetched to be very meaningful," Monroe-Alpha stated, "but it would result in a series of panics and booms of the post-nineteenth century type. Carried to extreme, it could even result in warfare. But of course it would not be-the structural nature of finance is too deeply imbedded in our culture for pseudo-capitalism to return. Any child understands the fundamentals of production accounting before he leaves his primary development center." "I didn't." Monroe-Alpha smiled tolerantly. "I find that difficult to believe. You know the Law of Stable Money." "'In a stable economy, debt-free new currency must be equated to the net reinvestment,'" Hamilton quoted. "Correct enough. But that is Reiser's formulation. Reiser was sound enough, but he had a positive talent for stating simple things obscurely. There is a much simpler way to look at it. The processes of economic system are so multitudinous in detail and involve so many promises to be performed at later dates that it is a psychological impossibility for human beings to deal with the processes without the use of a symbol system. We call the system 'finance' and the symbols 'money.' The symbolic structure should bear a one-to-one relationship to the physical structure of production and consumption. It's my business to keep track of the actual growth of the physical processes and recommend to the policy board changes in the symbol structure to match those in the physical structure." "I'm damned if you've made it any simpler, "Hamilton complained." Never mind I didn't say I didn't understand it; I said I didn't understand it as a kid. But honestly-wouldn't it be simpler to set up a collective system and be done with it?" Monroe-Alpha shook his head. "Finance structure is a general theory and applies equally to any type of state. A complete socialism would have as much need for structural appropriateness in its cost accounting as do free entrepreneurs. The degree of public ownership as compared with the degree of free enterprise is a cultural matter. For example, food is, of course, free, but...” "Freeze it, pal. You've just reminded me of one of the two reasons I had for looking in on you. Busy for dinner tonight?" "Not precisely. I've a tentative date with my ortho-wife for twenty-one hundred, but I'm free until then." "Good. I've located a new pay-restaurant in Meridian Tower that will be a surprise to your gastro tract. Guaranteed to give you indigestion, or you have to fight the chef." Monroe-Alpha looked dubious. He had had previous experience with Hamilton's gastronomic adventures. "Let's go to the refectory here. Why pay out hard cash for bad food when good food is included in your basic dividend?" "Because one more balanced ration would unbalance me. Come on." Monroe-Alpha shook his head. "I don't want to contend with the crowds. Honestly, I don't." "You don't really like people, do you?" "I don't dislike them-not individually." "But you don't like 'em. Me, I like 'em. People are funnier than anybody. Bless their silly little hearts. They do the craziest things." Monroe-Alpha looked morose. "I suppose you are the only sane one in the lot." "Me? Shucks, no. I'm one long joke on myself. Remind me to tell you about it sometime. But look-the other thing I came to see you about. Notice my new sidearm?" Monroe-Alpha glanced at Hamilton's holster. In fact, he had not noticed that his friend was bearing anything new in the way of weapons-had he arrived unarmed Monroe-Alpha would have noticed it, naturally, but he was not particularly observant about such matters, and could easily have spent two hours with a man and never noticed whether he was wearing a Stokes coagulator or a common needlebeam. But, now that his attention was directed to the matter, he saw at once that Hamilton was armed with something novel...and deucedly odd and uncouth. "What is it?" he asked. "Ah!" Hamilton drew the sidearm clear and handed it to his host. "Woops! Wait a moment. You don't know how to handle it-you'll blow your head off. "He pressed a stud on the side of the grip, and let a long flat container slide out into his palm. "There-I've pulled its teeth. Ever see anything like it?" Monroe-Alpha examined the machine. "Why, yes, I believe so. It's a museum piece, isn't it? An explosive-type hand weapon?" "Right and wrong. It's mill new, but it's a facsimile of one in the Smithsonian Institution collection. It's called a point forty-five Colt automatic pistol." "Point forty-five what?" "Inches." "Inches...let me see, what is that in centimeters?" "Huh? Let's see-three inches make a yard and a yard is about one meter. No, that can't be right. Never mind, it means the size of the slug it throws. Here...look at one." He slid one free of the clip. "Damn near as big as my thumb, isn't it?" "Explodes on impact, I suppose." "No. It just drills its way in." "That doesn't sound very efficient." "Brother, you'd be amazed. It'll blast a hole in a man big enough to throw a dog through." Monroe-Alpha handed it back. "And in the meantime your opponent has ended your troubles with a beam that acts a thousand times as fast. Chemical processes are slow, Felix." "Not that slow. The real loss of time is in the operator. Half the gunfighters running around loose chop into their target with the beam already hot. They haven't the skill to make a fast sight. You can stop 'em with this, if you've a fast wrist. I'll show you. Got something around here we can shoot at?" "Mmm...this is hardly the place for target practice." "Relax. I want something I can knock out of the way with the slug, while you try to burn it. How about this?" Hamilton picked up a large ornamental plastic paperweight from Monroe-Alpha's desk. "Well...I guess so." "Fine." Hamilton took it, removed a vase of flowers from a stand on the far side of the room, and set the target in its place. "We'll face it, standing about the same distance away. I'll watch for you to start to draw, as if we really meant action. Then I'll try to knock it off the stand before you can burn it." Monroe-Alpha took his place with lively interest. He fancied himself as a gunman, although he realized that his friend was faster. This might be, he thought, the split second advantage he needed. "I'm ready." "Okay." Monroe-Alpha started his draw. There followed a single CRACK! so violent that it could be felt through the skin and in the nostrils, as well as heard. Piled on top of it came the burbling Sring-aw-ow! as the bullet ricocheted around the room, and then a ringing silence. "Hell and breakfast, " remarked Hamilton. "Sorry, Cliff-I never fired it indoors before." He stepped forward to where the target had been. "Let's see how we made out. " The plastic was all over the room. It was difficult to find a shard large enough to show the outer polish. "It's going to be hard to tell whether you burned it, or not." "I didn't." "Huh?" "That noise-it startled me. I never fired." "Really? Say, that's great. I see I hadn't half realized the advantages of this gadget. It's a psychological weapon, Cliff." "It's noisy." "It's more than that. It's a terror weapon. You wouldn't even have to hit with your first shot. Your man would be so startled you'd have time to get him with the second shot. And that isn't all. Think...the braves around town are used to putting a man to sleep with a bolt that doesn't even muss his hair. This thing's bloody. You saw what happened to that piece of vitrolith. Think what a man's face will look like after it stops one of those slugs. Why a necrocosmetician would have to use a stereosculp to produce a reasonable facsimile for his friends to admire. Who wants to stand up to that kind of fire?" "Maybe you're right. I still say it's noisy. Let's go to dinner." "Good idea. Say-you've got a new nail tint. I like it." Monroe-Alpha spread his fingers. "It is smart, isn't it? Mauve Iridescent it's called. Care to try some?" "No, thank you. I'm too dark for it, I'm afraid. But it goes well with your skin." They ate in the pay-restaurant Hamilton had discovered. Monroe-Alpha automatically asked for a private room when they entered; Hamilton, at the same moment, demanded a table in the ring. They compromised on a balcony booth, semi-private, from which Hamilton could amuse himself by staring down at the crowd in the ring. Hamilton had ordered the meal earlier in the day, which was the point which had caused his friend to consent to venture out. It was served promptly. "What is it?" Monroe-Alpha demanded suspiciously. "Bouillabaisse. It's halfway between a soup and a stew. More than a dozen kinds of fish, white wine, and the Great Egg alone knows how many sorts of herbs and spices. All natural foods." "It must be terribly expensive." "It's a creative art and it's a pleasure to pay for it. Don't worry about it. You know I can't help making money." "Yes, I know. I never could understand why you take so much interest in games. Of course, it pays well." "You don't understand me. I'm not interested in games. Have you ever seen me waste a slug or a credit on one of my own gadgets-or any other? I haven't played a game since I was a boy. For me, it is already well established that one horse can run faster than another, that the ball falls either on red or on black, and that three of a kind beats two pair. It's that I can't see the silly toys that people play with without thinking of one a little more complicated and mysterious. If I am bored with nothing better to do, I may sketch one and dispatch it to my agent. Presently in comes some more money." He shrugged. "What are you interested in?" "People. Eat your soup." Monroe-Alpha tasted the mess cautiously, looked surprised, and really went to work on it. Hamilton looked pleased, and undertook to catch up. "Felix...” "Yes, Cliff." "Why did you group me in the ninety-eight?" "The ninety-eight? Oh, you mean the sourpuss survey. Shucks, pal, you rated it. If you are gay and merry-merry be-behind that death mask, you conceal it well." "I've nothing to be unhappy about." "No, not to my knowledge. But you don't look happy." They ate in silence for a few minutes more. Monroe-Alpha spoke again. 'It's true, you know. I'm not." "Not what?" "Not happy." "So? Mmmm...why not?" "I don't know. If I did I could do something about it. My family psychiatrist doesn't seem to be able to find the reason." "You're on the wrong frequency. A psychiatrist is the last man to see about a thing like that. They know everything about a man, except what he is and what makes him tick. Besides, did you ever see a worry-doctor that was sane himself? There aren't two in the country who can count their own fingers and get the same answer twice running." "It's true that he hasn't been able to help me much." "Of course not. Why? Because he will start with the assumption that there is something wrong with you. He can't find it, so he's stuck. It doesn't occur to him that there might be nothing wrong with you and that might be what was wrong." The other man looked weary. "I don't understand you. But he does claim to be following a clue." "What sort?" "Well...I'm a deviant, you know." "Yes, I know," Hamilton answered shortly. He was reasonably familiar with his friend's genetic background, but disliked to hear him mention it. Some contrary strain in Hamilton rebelled against the idea that a man was necessarily and irrevocably the gene pattern handed to him by his genetic planners. Furthermore he was not convinced that Monroe-Alpha should be considered a deviant. "Deviant" is a question-begging term. When the human zygote resulting from the combination of two carefully selected gametes is different from what the geneticists had predicted but not so different as to be classified with certainty as a mutation that zygote is termed a deviant. It is not, as is generally believed, a specific term for a recognized phenomenon, but a catch-all to cover a lack of complete knowledge. Monroe-Alpha (this particular Monroe-Alpha-Clifford, 32-847-106 B62) had been an attempt to converge two lines of the original Monroe-Alpha to recapture and reinforce the mathematical genius of his famous ancestor. But mathematical genius is not one gene, nor does it appear to be anything as simple as a particular group of genes. Rather, it is thought to be a complex of genes arranged in a particular order. Unfortunately this gene complex appears to be close-linked in the Monroe-Alpha line to a neurotic contrasurvival characteristic, exact nature undetermined and not assigned to any set of genes. That it is not necessarily so linked appears to be established, and the genetic technicians who had selected the particular gametes which were to produce Monroe-Alpha Clifford believed that they had eliminated the undesired strain. Monroe-Alpha Clifford did not think so. Hamilton fixed him with a finger. "The trouble with you, my fine foolish friend, is that you are bothering your head with things you don't understand. Your planners told you that they had done their level best to eliminate from you the thing which caused your great grandfather Whiffenpoof to raise garter snakes in his hat. There is a long chance that they failed, but why assume that they did?" "My great grandfathers did nothing of the sort. A slight strain of anhedonism, a tendency to...” "Then why act like they had to be walked on a leash? You make me tired. You've got a cleaner pedigree than ninety-nine out of a hundred, and a chromosome chart that's as neat and orderly as a checker board. Yet you're yiping about it. How would you like to be a control natural? How would you like to have to wear lenses against your eyeballs? How would you like to be subject to a dozen filthy diseases? Or have your teeth fall out, and have to chew your meals with false choppers?" "Of course, nobody would want to be a control natural," Monroe-Alpha said reflectively, 'but the ones I've known seemed to be happy enough." "All the more reason for you to snap out of your funk. What do you know of pain and sickness? You can't appreciate it any more than a fish appreciates water. You have three times the income you can spend, a respected position, and work of your own choosing. What more do you want out of life?" "I don't know, Felix. I don't know, but I know I'm not getting it. Don't ride me about it." "Sorry. Eat your dinner." The fish stew contained several large crab legs; Hamilton ladled one into his guest's trencher. Monroe-Alpha stared at it uneasily. "Don't be so suspicious, "Hamilton advised. "Go ahead. Eat it." "How?" "Pick it up in your fingers, and crack the shell." Monroe-Alpha attempted to comply, somewhat clumsily, but the greasy, hard surface skidded between his fingers. He attempted to recover and knocked it over the edge of the balcony rail at his elbow. He started to rise; Hamilton put a hand on his forearm. "My fault," he said. "I will repair it." He stood up and looked down at the table directly beneath their booth. He did not see the stray bit of seafood at once, but he had no difficulty in telling approximately where it had landed. Seated at the table was a party of eight. Two of them were elderly men who wore the brassards-of-peace. Four women alternated with the males around the table. One of them, quite young and pretty, was dabbing at something which seemed to have stained her gown. The wayward crab leg was floating in a crystal bell of purple liquid directly in front of her; cause and effect were easy to infer. The two remaining men were both armed, both standing, and staring up at the balcony. The younger, a slender youth in bright scarlet promenade dress, resting his right hand on the grip of his sidearm, seemed about to speak. The older man turned coldly dangerous eyes from Hamilton to his youthful companion. "My privilege, Cyril," he said quietly, "if you please." The young brave was clearly annoyed and reluctant to comply; nevertheless he bowed stiffly and sat down. His elder returned the bow punctiliously and turned back to Hamilton. The lace of his cuff brushed his holster, but he had not touched his weapon-as yet. Hamilton leaned over the balcony, both his hands spread and plainly visible on the rail. "Sir, my clumsiness has disturbed the pleasure of your meal and invaded your privacy. I am deeply sorry." "I have your assurance that it was accidental, sir?" The man's eyes were still frosty, but he made no move to draw. But he did not sit down. "You have indeed, sir, and with it my humble apology. Will you graciously permit me to make reparation?" The other glanced down, not at the youth, but at the girl whose gown had been splashed. She shrugged. He answered Hamilton, "The thought is taken for the deed, sir." "Sir, you leave me indebted." "Not at all, sir." They were exchanging bows and were about to resume their seats, when a shouted remark from the balcony booth directly opposite interrupted them. "Where's your brassard?" They both looked toward the source of the disturbance; one of a party of men-armed citizens all apparently, for no brassards were to be seen-was leaning out of the booth and staring with deliberate rudeness. Hamilton spoke to the man at the table below. "My privilege, is it not, sir?" "Your privilege. I wish you well." He sat down and turned his attention back to his guests. "You spoke to me?" asked Hamilton of the man across the ring. "I did. You were let off lightly. You should eat at home, if you have a home. Not in the presence of gentlefolk." Monroe-Alpha touched Hamilton's arm. "He's drunk, " he whispered. "Take it easy." "I know, "his friend answered in a barely audible aside, "but he gives me no choice." "Perhaps his friends will take care of him." "We'll see." Indeed his friends were attempting to. One of them placed a restraining hand on his weapon arm, but he shook him off. He was playing to a gallery the entire restaurant was quiet now, the diners ostentatiously paying no attention, a pose contrary to fact. "Answer me!" he demanded. "I will, "Hamilton stated quietly. "You have been drinking and are not responsible. Your friends should disarm you and place a brassard on you. Else some short-tempered gentleman may fail to note that your manners were poured from a bottle." There was a stir and a whispered consultation in the party behind the other man, as if some agreed with Hamilton's estimate of the situation. One of them spoke urgently to the belligerent one, but he ignored it. "What's that about my manners, you misplanned mistake?" "Your manners, "Hamilton stated, "are as thick as your tongue. You are a disgrace to the gun you wear." The other man drew too fast, but he drew high, apparently with the intention of chopping down. The terrific explosion of the Colt forty-five brought every armed man in the place to his feet, sidearm clear, eyes wary, ready for action. But the action was all over. A woman laughed, shortly and shrilly. The sound broke the tension for everyone. Men relaxed, weapons went back to belts, seats were resumed with apologetic shrugs. The diners went back to their own affairs with the careful indifference to other people's business of the urbane sophisticate. Hamilton's antagonist was half supported by the arms of his friends. He seemed utterly surprised and completely sobered. There was a hole in his chemise near his right shoulder from which a wet dark stain was spreading. One of the men holding him up waved to Hamilton with his free arm, palm out. Hamilton acknowledged the capitulation with the same gesture. Someone drew the curtains of the booth opposite. Hamilton sank back into the cushions with a relieved sigh. "We lose more crabs that way," he observed. "Have some more, Cliff?" "Thanks, no," Monroe-Alpha answered. "I'll stick to spoon foods. I hate interruptions at meals. He might have cooled you." "And left you to pay the check. Such slug pinching ill becomes you, Cliff." Monroe-Alpha looked annoyed. "You know it's not that. I have few enough friends not to wish to lose them in casual brawls. You should have taken a private room, as I requested." He touched a stud under the railing; the curtains waved across the arch, shutting them off from the public room. Hamilton laughed. "A little excitement peps up the appetite." In the booth opposite the man who had waved capitulation spoke savagely to the one who had been wounded. "You fool! You clumsy fool! You muffed it." "I couldn't help it," the injured man protested. "After he waived privilege, there was nothing to do but play drunk and pretend I meant the other one." He dabbed futilely at his freely bleeding shoulder, "In the Name of the Egg, what did he burn me with?" "No matter." "Maybe not to you, but it is to me. I'll look him up." "You will not. One mistake is too many." "But I thought he was one of us. I thought it was part of the set-up." "Hummph! Had it been, you would have been told." After Monroe-Alpha left to keep his date, Hamilton found himself at loose ends. The night life of the capital offered plenty of opportunity for a man to divest himself of surplus credit, but it was not new to him. He tried, in a desultory fashion, to find professional entertainment, then gave up and let the city itself amuse him. The corridors were thronged as always, the lifts packed; the Great Square under the port surged with people. Where were they all going? What was the hurry? What did they expect to find when they got there? The presence of some types held obvious explanations. The occasional man with a brassard was almost certainly out at this hour because his business required him to be. The same rule applied without exception to the few armed men who also wore brassards-proclaiming thereby their unique status as police monitors, armed but immune to attack. But the others, the armed and richly costumed men and their almost as gaudy women-why did they stir about so? Why not remain quietly at home with their wenches? He realized, consciously and sardonically, that he himself was part of the throng, present because it amused him. He knew he had no reason to feel that his own sense of detached amusement was unique. Perhaps they all came to keep from being bored with themselves, to observe their mutual folly and to laugh. He found himself, later, the last customer in a small bar. The collection of empty cups at his elbow was impressive. "Herbert, "he said at last, to the owner back of the bar, "why do you run this joint?" Herbert paused in his tidying up. "To make money." "That's a good answer, Herbert. Money and children, what other objectives are there? I've too much of one and none of the other. Set 'em up, Herbert. Let's drink to your kids." Herbert set out two cups, but shook his head. "Make it something else. I've no kids." "Sorry-none of my business. We'll drink to the kids I haven't got instead." Herbert poured the drinks, from separate bottles. "What's that private stock of yours, Herbert? Let me try it." "You wouldn't like it." "Why not?" "Well, to tell the truth, it's flavored water." "You'd drink a toast in that? Why, Herbert!" "You don't understand. My kidneys..." Hamilton looked at him in sharp surprise. His host looked pleased. "You wouldn't guess, would you? Yes, I'm a natural. But it's my own hair I'm wearing. And my own teeth...mostly. Keep myself fit. Good a man as the next." He dumped the liquid from his own cup, and refilled it from the bottle he had used for Hamilton's drink. "Shucks! One won't hurt me." He raised his drink. "Long life!" "And children, " Hamilton added mechanically. They tossed them down. Herbert filled them up again. "Take children, " he began. "Any man wants to see his kids do better than he did. Now I've been married for twenty-five years to the same woman. My wife and I are both First Truthers and we don't hold with these modern arrangements. But children...we settled that a long time ago. 'Martha, ' I said to her, 'it don't matter what the brethren think. What's right is right. Our kids are going to have every advantage that other kids have. ' And after a while she came around to my way of thinking. So we went to the Eugenics Board...” Hamilton tried to think of a way to stop his confidences. "I must say that they were very kind and polite. First they told us to think it over. 'If you practice gene selection, ' they said, 'your children won't receive the control benefit. 'As if we didn't know that: Money wasn't the object. We wanted our kids to grow up fine and strong and smarter than we were. So we insisted and they made a chromosome chart on each of us. "It was two, three weeks before they called us back. 'Well, Doc, ' I said, soon as we were inside, "what's the answer? What had we better select for?' 'Are you sure you want to do this?' he says. 'You're both good sound types and the state needs controls like you. I'm willing to recommend an increase in benefit, if you'll drop it. ' 'No, ' I said, 'I know my rights. Any citizen, even a control natural, can practice gene selection if he wants to. ' Then he let me have it, full charge." "Well?" "There wasn't anything to select for in either of us." "Huh?" "'S truth. Little things, maybe. We could have arranged to leave out my wife's hay fever, but that was about all. But as for planning a child that could compete on even terms with the general run of planned children, it just wasn't in the cards. The material wasn't there. They had made up an ideal chart of the best that could be combined from my genes and my wife's and it still wasn't good enough. It showed a maximum of a little over four percent over me and my wife in the general rating scale. 'Furthermore, ' he told us, 'you couldn't plan on that score. We might search your germ plasm throughout your entire fertile period and never come across two gametes that could be combined in this combination. ' 'How about mutations?' I asked him. He just shrugged it off. 'In the first place, ' he said, 'it's damned hard to pick out a mutation in the gene pattern of a gamete itself. You generally have to wait for the new characteristic to show up in the adult zygote, then try to locate the variation in the gene pattern. And you need at least thirty mutations, all at once, to get the child you want. It's not mathematically possible. '" "So you gave up the idea of planned children?" "So we gave up the idea of children period. Martha offered to be host-mother to any child I could get, but I said 'No, if it ain't for us, it ain't for us.” "Hmmm. I suppose so. Look-if you and your wife are both naturals, why do you bother to run this place? The citizen's allowances plus two control benefits add up to quite a tidy income. You don't look like a man with extravagant tastes." "I'm not. To tell you the truth we tried it, after our disappointment. But it didn't work out. We got uneasy and fretful. Martha comes to me and says 'Herbert, please yourself, but I'm going to start my hairdressing studio again.' And I agreed with her. So here we are." "Yes, so we are, "Hamilton concurred. "It's a queer world. Let's have another drink." Herbert polished the bar before replying. "Mister, I wouldn't feel right about selling you another unless you checked that gun with me and let me loan you a brassard." "So? Well, in that case I guess I've had enough. Good night." "G'night." CHAPTER TWO "Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief...” HIS TELEPHONE started to yammer as soon as he was home. "Nuts to you," said Hamilton. "I'm going to get some sleep." The first three words were the code cut-off to which he had set the instrument; it stopped mournfully in the middle of its demand. Hamilton swallowed eight hundred units of thiamin as a precautionary measure, set his bed for an ample five hours of sleep, threw his clothes in the general direction of the service valet, and settled down on the sheet. The water rose gently under the skin of the mattress until he floated, dry and warm and snug. The lullaby softened as his breathing became regular. When his respiration and heart action gave positive proof of deep sleep, the music faded out unobtrusively, shut off without so much as a click. "It's like this," Monroe-Alpha was telling him, "we're faced with a surplus age of genes. Next quarter every citizen gets ninety-six chromosomes...” "But I don't like it," Hamilton protested. Monroe-Alpha grinned gleefully. "You have to like it," he proclaimed. "Figures don't lie. Everything comes out even. I'll show you." He stepped to his master accumulator and started it. The music swelled up, got louder. "See?" he said. "That proves it." The music got louder. And louder. Hamilton became aware that the water had drained out of his bed, and that he lay with nothing between him and the spongy bottom but the sheet and the waterproof skin. He reached up and toned down the reveille whereupon the insistent voice of his telephone cut through to him. "Better look at me, Boss. I got troubles. Better look at me Boss. I got troubles. Better look at me, Boss. I got troubles...” "So have I. Thirty minutes!" The instrument shut off obediently. He punched for breakfast and stepped into the shower, eyed the dial, and decided against the luxury of a long workout. Besides, he wanted breakfast. Four minutes would do. Warm soapy emulsion sprayed over his body, was scrubbed in by air blast, was replaced at the end of the first minute by water of the same temperature in needle jets. The temperature dropped, the needle jets persisted for a few seconds, then changed to a gentle full stream which left him cool and tingling. The combination was his own; he did not care what the physiotherapists thought of it. The air blast dried him with a full minute to spare for massage. He rolled and stretched against the insistent yielding pressure of a thousand mechanical fingers and decided that it was worthwhile to get up, after all. The pseudo-dactyls retreated from him. He pushed his face for a moment into the capillotomer. Shave completed, the booth sprayed him with scent and dusted him off. He was beginning to feel himself again. He tucked away a quarter litre of sweet-lemon juice and went to work seriously on the coffee before turning on the news roundup. The news contained nothing fit to be recorded permanently. No news, he thought, makes a happy country but a dull breakfast. The machine called out the plugs for a dozen stories while the accompanying flash pictures zipped past without Hamilton's disturbing the setting .When he did so, it was not because the story was important but because it concerned him. The announcer proclaimed "Diana's Playground Opened to the Public!"; the flash panned from a crescent moon down to the brutal mountain surface and below to a gaily lighted artificial dream of paradise. Hamilton slapped the tell-me-more. "Leyburg, Luna. Diana's Playground, long touted by its promoters as the greatest amusement enterprise ever undertaken off earth or on, was invaded fry the first shipload of tourists at exactly twelve thirty-two, Earth Prime, These old eyes have seen many a pleasure city, but I was surprised! Biographers relate that Ley himself was fond of the gay spots-I'm going to keep one eye on his tomb while I'm here; he might show up...” Hamilton gave half an ear to the discourse, half an eye to the accompanying stories, most of his attention to half a kilo of steak, rare. "Bewilderingly beautiful, weirdly sensuous low-gravity dancing. "The gaming rooms are thronged; the management may have to open annexes. Particularly popular are the machines offered by Lady Luck, Incorporated-Hamilton's Hazards they are called by the trade. In fact...” The picture that went with the spiel did not show a throng in Hamilton's estimation; he could almost feel the trouble the pick-up man had gone to in order to shoot favorable angles. " -- round trip excursion tickets which entitle the holder to visit every place of amusement in the Playground, with three days hotel accommodations, strictly high-gravity, every room centrifuged." He switched it off: and turned to the telephone. "Connection-one one one zero." "Special service," a husky contralto answered him presently. "Gimme the Moon, please." "Certainly. To whom do you wish to speak, Mister, uh, Hamilton?" "Hamilton is correct. I would like to talk to Blumenthal Peter. Try the manager's office at Diana's Playground." There was a delay of several seconds before an image appeared on the screen. "Blumenthal speaking. That you, Felix? The image at this end is lousy. All streaked up with incidentals." "Yeah, it's me. I called to ask about the play, Pete...what's the matter? Can't you hear me?" The face of the image remained quiet for a long three seconds, then said suddenly, "Of course I can hear you. Don't forget the lag." Hamilton looked sheepish. He had forgotten the lag-he always did. He found it difficult to remember, when staring right into a man's live features, that there would be a second and a half delay before that man-if on the Moon-could hear, another second and a half for his voice to travel back, three seconds lag in all. Three seconds lag seems inconsiderable but it is long enough to stride six paces, or fall forty-one metres. He was glad there was no phone service to the minor planets; it would be maddening to wait ten minutes or so between sentences-easier to stat a letter. "Sorry," he said. "My mistake. How was the play? The crowds didn't look so good." "Naturally the crowd was light. One shipload isn't Noah's Ark. But the play was okay. They had plenty of scrip and were anxious to spend. We reported to your agent." "Sure. I'll get the report, but I wanted to know what gadgets were popular." "Lost Comet went strong. And so did Eclipses." "How about Claiming Race and Who's Your Baby?" "Okay, but not too heavy. Astronomy is the angle for this dive. I told you that." "Yes, I should have listened to you. Well, I'll figure out a revamp. You could change Claiming Race right now. Call it High Trajectory and rename the mobiles after some of the asteroids. Get it?" "Right. We'll redecorate it in midnight blue and silver." "That's right. I'll send a stat to confirm. That's all, I guess. I'm clearing." "Wait a minute. I took a whirl at Lost Comet myself, Felix. That's a great game." "How much did you drop?" Blumenthal looked suspicious. "Why about eight hundred and fifty, if you must know. Why do you assume I lost? Isn't the game level?" "Certainly it's level. But I designed that game myself, Pete. Don't forget that. It's strictly for suckers. You stay away from it." "But look-I've figured out a way to beat it. I thought you ought to know." "That's what you think. I know. There is no way to beat the game." "Well-okay." "Okay. Long life!" "And kids." As soon as the circuit was clear the phone resumed its ubiquitous demand. "Thirty minutes. Better look at me, Boss. I got troubles. Better...” He removed a stat from the receiver; it shut up. "To Citizen Hamilton Felix 305-243 B47," it read, "Greetings. The District Moderator for Genetics presents his compliments and requests that Citizen Hamilton visit him at his office at ten hundred tomorrow." It was dated the previous evening and had an added notation requesting him to notify the moderator's office if it were not convenient to keep the appointment, refer to number such-and so. It lacked thirty minutes of ten hundred. He decided to comply with the request. The Moderator's suite struck Hamilton as being rather less mechanized than most places of business, or perhaps more subtly so. It was staffed with humans where one expects auto-gadgets-the receptionist, for example. The staff was mostly female, some grave, some merry, but all were beautiful, very much alive, and obviously intelligent. "The Moderator will see you now." Hamilton stood up, chucked his cigarette into the nearest oubliette, and looked at her. "Do I disarm?" "Not unless you wish. Come with me, please." She ushered him as far as the door to the Moderator's private office, dilated it, and left him as he stepped through. "Good morning, sir!" a pleasant voice called out. Hamilton found himself staring at the Moderator. "Good morning to you," he answered mechanically, then, "For the love o', !" His right hand slid of its own volition toward his sidearm, hesitated, changed its mind, and stopped. The Moderator was the gentleman whose dinner party had been disturbed by the incident of the wayward crab leg. Hamilton recovered some of his poise. "Sir," he said stiffly, "this is not proper procedure. If you were not satisfied, you should have sent your next friend to wait on me." The Moderator stared at him, then laughed in a fashion that would have been rude in another man-but from him it was simply Jovian. "Believe me, sir, this is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. I had no idea that the gentleman who exchanged courtesies with me yesterday evening was the one I wished to see this morning. As for the little contretemps in the restaurant-frankly, I would not have made an issue of the matter, unless you had forced me to the limit. I have not drawn my tickler in public for many years. But I am forgetting my manners-sit down, sir. Make yourself comfortable. Will you smoke? May I pour you a drink?" Hamilton settled himself. "If the Moderator pleases." "My name is Mordan", which Hamilton knew...”my friends call me Claude. And I would speak with you in friendship." "You are most gentle-Claude." "Not at all, Felix. Perhaps I have an ulterior motive. But tell me: what was that devil's toy you used on the cocky young brave? It amazed me." Hamilton looked pleased and displayed his new weapon. Mordan looked it over. "Oh, yes," he said, "a simple heat engine burning a nitrate fuel. I think I have seen its pattern, have I not, on display at the Institution?" Felix acknowledged the fact, a little crestfallen that Mordan was so little surprised at his toy. But Mordan made up for it by discussing in detail with, apparently, lively interest the characteristics and mechanism of the machine. "If I were a fighting man, I would like to have one like it," he concluded. "I'll have one fashioned for you." "No, no. You are kind, but I would have no use for it." Hamilton chewed his lip. "I say...you'll pardon me...but isn't it indiscreet for a man who does no fighting to appear in public armed?" Mordan smiled. "You misconstrue. Watch." He indicated the far wall. It was partly covered with a geometrical pattern, consisting of small circles, all the same size and set close together. Each circle had a small dot exactly in the center. Mordan drew his weapon with easy swiftness, coming up, not down, on his target. His gun seemed simply to check itself at the top of its swing, before he returned it to his holster. A light puff of smoke drifted up the face of the wall. There were three new circles, arranged in tangent trefoil. In the center of each was a small dot. Hamilton said nothing. "Well?" inquired Mordan. "I was thinking," Hamilton answered slowly, "that it is well for me that I was polite to you yesterday evening." Mordan chuckled. "Although we have never met," Mordan said, "you and the gene pattern you carry have naturally been of interest to me." "I suppose so. I fall within the jurisdiction of your office." "You misunderstand me. I cannot possibly take a personal interest in every one of the myriad "zygotes in this district. But it is my duty to conserve the best strains. I have been hoping for the past ten years that you would show up at the clinic, and ask for help in planning children." Hamilton's face became completely expressionless. Mordan ignored it and went on. "Since you did not come in voluntarily for advice, I was forced to ask you to visit me. I want to ask you a question: Do you intend to have children any time soon?" Hamilton stood up. "This subject is distasteful to me. May I have your leave, sir?" Mordan came to him and placed a hand on his arm. "Please, Felix. No harm can be done by listening to me. Believe me, I do not wish to invade your private sphere-but I am no casual busybody. I am your moderator, representing the interests of all of your own kind. Yours among them." Hamilton sat down without relaxing. "I will listen." "Thank you. Felix, the responsibility of improving the race under the doctrines of our republic is not a simple one. We can advise but not coerce. The private life and free action of every individual must be scrupulously respected. We have no weapon but cool reason and the appeal to every man's wish that the next generation be better than the last. Even with co-operation there is little enough we can do-in most cases, the elimination of one or two bad characteristics, the preservation of the good ones present. But your case is different." "How?" "You know how. You represent the careful knitting together of favorable lines over four generations. Literally tens of thousands of gametes were examined and rejected before the thirty gametes were picked which constitute the linkage of your ancestral zygotes. It would be a shame to waste all that painstaking work." "Why pick on me? I am not the only result of that selection. There must be at least a hundred citizens descended from my great gross grandparents. You don't want me-I'm a cull. I'm the plan that didn't pan out. I'm a disappointment." "No," Mordan said softly, "no, Felix, you are not a cull. You are the star line." "Huh?" "I mean it. It is contrary to public policy to discuss these things, but rules were made to be broken. Step by step, back to the beginning of the experiment, your line has the highest general rating. You are the only zygote in the line which combines every one of the favorable mutations with which my predecessors started. Three other favorable mutations showed up after the original combinations; all of them are conserved in you." Hamilton smiled wryly. "That must make me still more of a disappointment to you. I haven't done very much with the talents you attribute to me, have I?" Mordan shook his head. "I have no criticism to make of your record." "But you don't think much of it, do you? I've frittered away my time, done nothing more important than design silly games for idle people. Perhaps you geneticists are mistaken in what you call 'favorable characteristics.'" "Possibly. I think not." "What do you call a favorable characteristic?" "A survival factor, considered in a broad sense. This inventiveness of yours, which you disparage, is a very strong survival factor. In you it lies almost latent, or applied to matters of no importance. You don't need it, because you find yourself in a social matrix in which you do not need to exert yourself to stay alive. But that quality of inventiveness can be of crucial importance to your descendants. It can mean the difference between life and death." "But...” "I mean it. Easy tunes for individuals are bad times for the race. Adversity is a strainer which refuses to pass the ill equipped. But we have no adversity nowadays. To keep the race as strong as it is and to make it stronger requires careful planning. The genetic technician eliminates in the laboratory the strains which formerly were eliminated by simple natural selection." "But how do you know that the things you select for are survival factors? I've had my doubts about a lot of them." "Ah! There's the rub. You know the history of the First Genetic War." "I know the usual things about it, I suppose." "It won't do any harm to recapitulate. The problem those early planners were up against is typical...” The problems of the earliest experiments are typical of all planned genetics. Natural selection automatically preserves survival values in a race simply by killing off those strains poor in survival characteristics. But natural selection is slow, a statistical process. A weak strain may persist-for a time-under favorable conditions. A desirable mutation may be lost-for a time-because of exceptionally unfavorable conditions. Or it may be lost through the blind wastefulness of the reproductive method. Each individual animal represents exactly half of the characteristics potential in his parents. The half which is thrown away may be more desirable than the half which is perpetuated. Sheer chance. Natural selection is slow-it took eight hundred thousand generations to produce a new genus of horse. But artificial selection is fast, if we have the wisdom to know what to select for. But we do not have the wisdom. It would take a superman to plan a superman. The race acquired the techniques of artificial selection without knowing what to select. Perhaps it was a bad break for mankind that the basic techniques for gene selection were developed immediately after the last of the neonationalistic wars. It would be interesting to speculate whether or not the institution of modern finance structure after the downfall of the Madagascar System would have been sufficient to maintain peace if no genetic experiments had been undertaken. But pacifist reaction was at its highest point at this time; the technique of para-ectogenesis was seized on as a God-given opportunity to get rid of war by stamping it out of the human spirit. After the Atomic War of 1970, the survivors instituted drastic genetic regulations intended for one purpose alone-to conserve the Parmalee-Hitchcock recessive of the ninth chromosome and to eliminate the dominant which usually masks it-to breed sheep rather than wolves. It is wryly amusing that most of the "wolves" of the period-the Paramlee-Hitchcock island is recessive; there are few natural "sheep", were caught by the hysteria and co-operated in the attempt to eliminate themselves. But some refused. The Northwest Colony eventually resulted. That the Northwest Union should eventually fight the rest of the world was a biological necessity. The outcome was equally a necessity and the details are unimportant. The "wolves" ate the "sheep." Not physically in the sense of complete extermination, but, genetically speaking, we are descended from "wolves," not "sheep." "They tried to breed the fighting spirit out of men," Mordan went on, "without any conception of its biological usefulness. The rationalization involved the concept of Original Sin. Violence was 'bad'; non-violence was 'good.'" "But why," protested Hamilton, "do you assume that combativeness is a survival characteristic? Sure-I've got it; you've got it; we've all got it. But bravery is no use against nuclear weapons. What real use is it?" Mordan smiled. "The fighters survived. That is the final test. Natural selection goes on always, regardless of conscious selection." "Wait a minute," demanded Hamilton. "That doesn't check. According to that, we should have lost the Second Genetic War. Their 'mules' were certainly willing to fight." "Yes, yes," Mordan agreed, "but I did not say that combativeness was the only survival characteristic. If it were, the Pekingese dog would rule the earth. The fighting instinct should be dominated by cool self-interest. Why didn't you shoot it out with me last night?" "Because there was nothing worth fighting about." "Exactly. The geneticists of the Great Khan made essentially the same mistake that was made three hundred years earlier; they thought they could monkey with the balance of human characteristics resulting from a billion years of natural selection and produce a race of supermen. They had a formula for it-efficient specialization. But they neglected the most obvious of human characteristics. "Man is an unspecialized animal. His body, except for its enormous brain case, is primitive. He can't dig; he can't run very fast; he can't fly. But he can eat anything and he can stay alive where a goat would starve, a lizard would fry, a bird freeze. Instead of special adaptations he has general adaptability." The Empire of the Great Khans was a reversion to an obsolete form-totalitarianism. Only under absolutism could the genetic experiments which bred homo proteus have been performed, for they required a total indifference to the welfare of individuals. Gene selection was simply an adjunct to the practices of the imperial geneticists. They made use also of artificial mutation, by radiation and through gene-selective dyes, and they practiced endocrine therapy and surgery on the immature zygote. They tailored human beings-if you could call them that-as casually as we construct buildings. At their height, just before the Second Genetic War, they bred over three thousand types including the hyperbrains (thirteen sorts), the almost brainless matrons, the clever and repulsively beautiful pseudo-feminine freemartins, and the neuter "mules." We tend to identify the term mule with fighters, since we knew them best, but in fact, there was a type of mule for every sort of routine job in the Empire. The fighters were simply those specialized for fighting. And what fighters! They needed no sleep. They had three times the strength of ordinary men. There is no way to compare their endurance since they simply kept on going, like well designed machines, until disabled. Each one carried fuel...”fuel" seems more appropriate than "food", to last it for a couple of weeks, and could function beyond that time for at least another week. Nor were they stupid. In their specialization their minds were keen. Even their officers were mules, and their grasp of strategy and tactics and the use of scientific weapons was masterly. Their only weakness lay in military psychology; they did not understand their opponents-but men did not understand them; it worked both ways. The basic nature of their motivation has been termed a "substitute for sex sublimation," but the tag does not explain it, nor did we ever understand it. It is best described negatively by saying that captured mules became insane and suicided in not over ten days time, even though fed on captured rations. Before insanity set in they would ask for something called vepratoga in their tongue, but our semanticists could discover no process referent for the term. They needed some spark that their masters could give them, and which we could not. Without it they died. The mules fought us-yet the true men won. Won because they fought and continued to fight, as individuals and guerilla groups. The Empire had one vulnerable point, its co-ordinators, the Khan, his satraps and administrators. Biologically the Empire was a single organism and could be killed at the top, like a hive with a single queen bee. At the end, a few score assassinations accomplished a collapse which could not be achieved in battle. No need to dwell on the terror that followed the collapse. Let it suffice that no representative of homo proteus is believed to be alive today. He joined the great dinosaurs and the sabre-toothed cats. He lacked adaptability. "The Genetic Wars were brutal lessons," Mordan added, "but they taught us not to tamper casually with human characteristics. If a characteristic is not already present in the germ plasm of the race we don't attempt to put it in. When natural mutations show up, we leave them on trial for a long time before we attempt to spread them around through the race. Most mutations are either worthless, or definitely harmful, in the long run. We eliminate obvious disadvantages, conserve obvious advantages; that is about all. I note that the backs of your hands are rather hairy, whereas mine are smooth. Does that suggest anything to you?" "No." "Nor to me. There appears to be no advantage, one way or the other, to the wide variations in hair patterns of the human race. Therefore we leave them alone. On the other hand-have you ever had a toothache?" "Of course not." "Of course not. But do you know why?" He waited, indicating that the question was not rhetorical. "Well...it's a matter of selection. My ancestors had sound teeth." "Not all of your ancestors. Theoretically it would have been enough for one of your ancestors to have naturally sound teeth, provided his dominant characteristics were conserved in each generation. But each gamete of that ancestor contains only half of his chromosomes; if he inherited his sound teeth from just one of his ancestors, the dominant will be present in only half of his gametes. "We selected-our predecessors, I mean-for sound teeth. Today, it would be hard to find a citizen who does not have that dominant from both his

Chapter Eight. November 4, 1991. Soup and bread again tonight, and not much of that. Our money is almost gone, and there still hasn't been anything from WFC. If our pay doesn't come through in the next couple of days, we'll have to resort to armed robbery again-an unpleasant prospect. Unit 2 still has what seems to be an unlimited supply of food, and we'd already be in a much worse way if they hadn't given us that carload of canned goods a month ago-especially since we now have seven mouths to feed. But it is just too dangerous to drive up to Maryland for our food supply. The chances are too great of running into a police roadblock. That is the most noticeable-and to the public it must be by far the most irritating-consequence to date of our terror campaign. Travel by private automobile has become-at least, in the Washington area- a nightmare, with enormous traffic jams everywhere caused by the police checks. In the last few days this police activity has increased significantly, and it looks as if it will remain a regular feature of life for the foreseeable future. So far, however, they haven't been stopping pedestrians, bicyclists, or buses. We can still get around, although less conveniently than before. Oops, there go the lights again. This is the second time this evening we've had to break out the candles. Until this year, the worst power shortages have occurred in the summer, but it's November now and we're still stuck with the "temporary" 15 percent voltage reduction they imposed in July. Even this perpetual "brownout" isn't saving us from an increasing number of involuntary blackouts. It's obvious that somebody's profiting from the power shortage, though. When Katherine was lucky enough to find some candles at one of the grocery stores last week, she had to pay S1.50 apiece for them. The price of kerosene and gasoline lanterns has gone out of sight, but the hardware stores never have any of them in stock anyway. When I next have some free time, I'll see what I can improvise in that direction. We have been maintaining the pressure against the System during the past week with a lot of one-man, low-risk activities. There have been approximately 40 grenade attacks against Federal buildings and media facilities in Washington, for example, and our unit is responsible for 11 of them. Since it is now virtually impossible to enter any Federal building except a post office without a complete body-search, we have had to be ingenious. On one occasion Henry simply pulled the pin on a fragmentation grenade and then slipped it down between two cartons on a big pallet of freight waiting outside the freight door of the Washington Post, wedging it so that the safety lever was held in place by the cartons. He didn't wait around, but news reports later confirmed that there was an explosion inside the Post building which killed one employee and seriously wounded three others. Most often, however, we have used grenade-throwers improvised from shotguns. They give us a maximum range of more than 150 yards, but the grenade always explodes sooner than that unless the delay element is modified. All one needs to use them effectively is a place of concealment within about 100 yards of the target. We have fired from the back seat of a moving auto, from the restroom window of an adjacent building, and-at night- from a patch of shrubbery in a small park across the street from the target building. With luck one can hit a window and get an explosion inside an office or a corridor. But even when the grenade bounces off an outside wall the explosion shatters windows, and the shrapnel keeps people jumping. If we keep it up long enough we can probably force the government to shutter all the windows in Federal buildings, which will certainly help raise the consciousness of Federal workers. But it is clear that we can't maintain this kind of activity indefinitely. We lost one of our best activists yesterday-Roger Greene, from Unit 8-and we are bound to lose more as time passes. The System must inevitably win any sort of war of attrition, considering the numerical advantage they have over us. We have talked this problem over among ourselves many times, and we always come back to the same stumbling block: a revolutionary attitude is virtually non-existent in America, outside the Organization, and all our activities to date don't seem to have changed this fact. The masses of people certainly aren't in love with the System-in fact, their grumbling has increased steadily over the past six or seven years as living conditions have deteriorated - but they are still far too comfortable and complacent to entertain the idea of revolt. On top of this is the enormous disadvantage we suffer from having the System controlling the image of us which reaches the public. We receive a continuous feedback from our "legals" on what the public is thinking, and most people have accepted without hesitation the System's portrayal of us as "gangsters" and "murderers." Without some sort of empathy between us and the general public we can never find enough new recruits to make up for our losses. And with the System controlling virtually every channel of communication with the public, it's hard to see how we're going to develop that empathy. Our leaflets and the occasional seizure of a broadcasting station for a few minutes just can't make much headway against the non-stop torrent of brainwashing the System uses for keeping the people in line. The lights have just come on again-now that I'm ready to hit the sack. Sometimes I think the System's own weaknesses will bring about its downfall just as quickly without our help as with it. The incessant power failures are only one crack among thousands in this crumbling edifice we are trying so desperately to pull down. November 8. The last few days have seen a major change in our domestic affairs. The population in our shop increased to eight last Thursday, and now it's down to four again: myself, Katherine, and Bill and Carol Hanrahan, formerly of Unit 6. Henry and George have teamed up with Edna Carlson, who also came to us after Unit 6's disaster, and with Dick Wheeler, the only survivor of a police raid on Unit Eleven's hideout Thursday. The four of them have moved to a new location, in the District. The new arrangement has us better divided along functional lines than before-as well as solving the personal problem which had been worrying Katherine and me. We here in the shop are now essentially a technical-services unit, while the four who left are a sabotage-and-assassination unit. Bill Hanrahan is a machinist, a mechanic, and a printer. Until two months ago he and Carol operated a printing shop in Alexandria. His wife doesn't share his mechanical genius, but she is a reasonably competent printer. As soon as we get another press set up here, her job will be to produce many of the leaflets and other propaganda materials which the Organization clandestinely distributes in this area. I will continue to be responsible for the Organization's communications equipment and for specialized ordnance. Bill will assist me with the latter and will also be our gunsmith and armory- keeper. Katherine will have a chance to exercise her editorial skills again, to a limited extent, in that she will have the responsibility for transforming the typewritten propaganda we receive from WFC into camera-ready headlines and text for Carol. She will be able to use her own discretion in making condensations, deletions, and other changes necessary for copyfitting. Bill and I finished our first special-ordnance job together yesterday. We modified a 4.2 inch mortar to handle 81 mm projectiles. The modification was necessary because we have so far been unable to pick up an 81 mm mortar for the projectiles which we grabbed in the raid on Aberdeen Proving Ground last month. One of our gun-buff members, however, had a serviceable 4.2 inch mortar which he had kept hidden away since the late 1940's. The Organization is planning a very important mission in the nextday or two, in which the mortar will be used, and Bill and I were under pressure to finish the job on time. Our main difficulty was in finding a piece of steel tube of the right I.D. to weld inside the 4.2 inch tube, since we have no lathe or other machine tools at this time. Once we found a supplier for the tube the rest was fairly easy, and we are proud of the result-although it weighs more than three times as much as an 81 mm mortar should. Today we did a job which was simple enough in theory but which gave us more trouble in practice than we had anticipated: melting the explosive filler out of a 500-lb bomb casing. With a great deal of straining and swearing-and with several good burns from the boiling water we managed to splash all over ourselves-we got most of the tritonal explosive from the bomb into a variety of empty grapefruitjuice cans, peanutbutter jars, and other containers. The work took all day and exhausted everyone's patience, but now we have the makings for enough medium-sized bombs to last us for months. I think that I will find Bill Hanrahan a congenial comrade-in-arms for carrying out our unit's new duties for the Organization. (We are now designated Unit 6, and I am in charge.) Certainly the new living arrangement here is more congenial for Katherine and me, now that we are sharing OUR building with another married couple instead of with two bachelors. I just wrote "another married couple," but, of course, that was a slip of the pen, since Katherine and I are not formally married. In the last two months-and particularly in the last two or three weeks- however, we have experienced so much together and become so dependent on one another for companionship that a bond at least as strong as that of marriage has developed between us. In the past, whenever one of us had an Organizational assignment to carry out, we usually contrived to work together on it. Now such collaboration will not require any contrivance. It is interesting that the Organization, which has imposed on all of us a life which is unnatural in many respects, has led to a more natural relationship between the sexes inside the Organization than exists outside. Although unmarried female members are theoretically "equal" to male members, in that they are subject to the same discipline, our women are actually cherished and protected to a much larger degree than women in the general society are. Consider rape, for example, which has become such an omnipresent pestilence these days. It had already been increasing at a rate of 20 to 25 per cent per year since the early 1970's until last year, when the Supreme Court ruled that all laws making rape a crime are unconstitutional, because they presume a legal difference between the sexes. Rape, the judges ruled, can only be prosecuted under the statutes covering nonsexual assaults. In other words, rape has been reduced to the status of a punch in the nose. In cases where no physical injury can be proved, it is now virtually impossible to obtain a prosecution or even an arrest. The result of this judicial mischief has been that the incidence of rape has zoomed to the point that the legal statisticians have recently estimated that one out of every two American women can expect to be raped at least once in her lifetime. In many of our big cities, of course, the statistics are much worse. The women's-lib groups have greeted this development with dismay. It isn't exactly what they had in mind when they began agitating for "equality" two decades ago. At least, there's dismay among the rank and file of such groups; I have a suspicion that their leaders, most of whom are Jewesses, had this outcome in mind from the beginning. Liberal civil rights spokesmen, on the other hand, have had only praise for the Supreme Court's decision. Rape laws, they said, are "racist," because a disproportionately large number of Blacks have been charged under them. Nowadays gangs of thugs hang around parking lots and school playgrounds and roam the corridors of office buildings and apartment complexes, looking for any attractive, unescorted White girl and knowing that punishment, either from the disarmed citizenry or the handcuffed police, is extremely unlikely. Gang rapes in school classrooms have become an especially popular new sport. Some particularly liberal women may find that this situation provides a certain amount of satisfaction for their masochism, a way of atoning for their feelings of racial "guilt." But for normal White women it is a daily nightmare. One of the sickest aspects of the whole thing is that many young Whites, instead of opposing this new threat to their race, have apparently decided to join it. White rapists have become more common, and there have even been instances of integrated rape- gangs recently. Nor have the girls remained entirely passive. Sexual debauchery of every sort on the part of young White men and women-and even children in their pre-teens-has reached a level which would have been unimaginable only two or three years ago. The queers, the fetishists, the mixed-race couples, the sadists, and the exhibitionists-urged on by the mass media- are parading their perversions in public, and the public is joining them. Just last week, when Katherine and I went into the District to pick up the salaries for our unit-which finally came through, when we were down nearly to our last can of soup-there was a nasty little incident. While we were waiting at a bus stop for a homeward- bound bus I decided to run into a drugstore a few feet away to buy a newspaper. I was gone for no more than 20 seconds, but when I came back a greasy-looking youth - approximately White, but with the "Afro" hair style popular among young degenerates - was taunting Katherine with obscenities while dancing and weaving around her like a boxer. (Note to the reader: "Afro" refers to the Negro or African race, which, until its sudden disappearance during the Great Revolution, exerted an increasingly degenerative influence on the culture and life styles of the inhabitants of North America.)I grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around, and hit him in the face as hard as I could. As he went down I had the deep, primitive satisfaction of seeing four or five of his teeth come washing out of his shattered mouth on a copious flow of dark-red blood. I reached into my pocket for my pistol, fully intending to kill him on the spot, but Katherine seized my arm, and caution returned. Instead of shooting him, I straddled him and directed three kicks at his groin with all my strength. He jerked convulsively and emitted a short, choking scream with the first kick, and then he lay still. Passersby averted their eyes and hurried on. Across the street two jerk-offs gawked and hooted. Katherine and I hurried around the corner. We walked about six blocks, then doubled back and caught the bus at another stop. Katherine told me later that the youth had run up to her as soon as I had entered the drugstore. He had put his arm around her, propositioned her, and started pawing her breasts. She is fairly strong and agile, and she was able to jerk away from him, but he blocked her from following me into the drugstore. As a rule Katherine carries a pistol, but the day was unseasonably warm, unsuited for a coat, and she wore clothes which left no room for concealing a firearm. Since she was with me she hadn't even bothered to carry one of the tear-gas cannisters which have become essential articles of dress for women these days. In that regard it is interesting to note that the same people who agitated so hysterically for gun confiscation before the Cohen Act are now calling for tear gas to be outlawed too. There have even been cases recently where women who used their tear gas to fend off would-be rapists have been charged with armed assault! The world has become so crazy that nothing really comes as a surprise any more. In contrast to the situation outside, rape inside the Organization is almost unthinkable. But there is no doubt at all in my mind that if a genuine case of forcible rape did occur, the perpetrator would be rewarded with eight grams of lead within a matter of hours.When we got back to the shop, Henry and another man were waiting for us. Henry wanted me to give him a final rundown on the sight settings for the mortar we had modified. When they left, they took the mortar with them. I still don't know what they will use it for. Katherine and I are both very fond of Henry, and we will miss his presence in our new unit. He is the kind of person on whom the success of the Organization will ultimately depend. Katherine had already taught Henry most of her tricks of makeup and disguise, and when he left with the mortar she gave him the greater part of her supply of wigs, beards, plastic gizmoes, and cosmetics.

The Final War, Louis Tracy 1896 The Final War. By Louis Tracy, published eighteen ninety six. THE FINAL WAR. CHAPTER ONE. THE BALL AT THE EMBASSY. THE month of May in Paris, if the elements be reasonably propitious, is a perfectly delightful period, and May-day of 1898 heralded in the promise of a gracious summer. The French capital was more than ordinarily full of visitors, and life in the world of fashion was like the changeful scenes of a ballet divertissement. Americans were there “from Chicago and New York, spending millions made in packing pork." Russian notabilities abounded, and Germans, the male element vastly predominating, were in such numbers that the wonted supply of lager beer fell short in the cafes. A mad whirl of gaiety and light-heartedness filled the thoughts of every class of society. This social abandonment was, if possible, accentuated by a species of political electricity that permeated the air, and of which all men were dimly conscious. The new Ministry had taken up and developed the policy of colonial expansion given effect to by their predecessors, and a singular rapprochement with Germany was vaguely supposed to have contributed in a very remarkable way to the furtherance of French ambition. Both countries had been working amicably together for nearly a year, and already the result was felt in the most vulnerable portions of the British Empire. It is true that England had long ago secured all the best markets for her produce, that her ships carried five-sixths of the commerce of the world, and that her surplus population had the pick of many continents wherein to live and prosper. But a determined attempt was now being made by her great commercial rivals to take from her some, at least, of the advantages gained by centuries of enterprise backed up by daring perseverance. The Rhine dwindled into a stream of no political significance. Men openly said on the boulevards and in the brasseries of Paris and the beer gardens of Berlin that the star of England was beginning to wane. As a witty Frenchman put it: “The bones of Englishmen whiten the by-ways of the world: they make most excellent sign-posts for our future progress.” But at the British Embassy, Lord and Lady Eskdale and their beautiful daughter Irene, felt that, come what might in the future, it was their present duty to maintain in regal style the hospitable traditions of the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, and thus it came to pass that the first night in May was chosen for an official dinner, to be followed by a grand ball. Strange and disquieting rumours were afloat. Scarce formed into words, they hinted at a fatal blow to be struck at some predominant power. To Captain Edward Harington, who not only filled the position of junior military attaché at the Embassy, but was also the accepted lover of Lady Irene Vyne, the Home Government owed the first suspicion of a secret and hostile combination. He had pieced together some curious observations, made in his presence by certain high officials in France, and his conditions seemed no less accurate than alarming. Inquiries made amongst the London bankers, with whom nearly every foreign prince had large dealings, showed that there had been a steady and continual withdrawal for no accountable reason, of the securities they held. This was enough to put the Government on the alert. Harington’s timely service was of considerable value, and he reaped the benefit, for the kindly interest of an exalted personage means much. In fact, a staff appointment at Aldershot, when the next vacancy occurred, was promised to him. His sister Ethel, a charming girl of Irene’s age, was in Paris on a visit to the Eskdales, and it was one of those coincidences suggestive of arrangement that Lieutenant Frank Rodney, of H.M.S. Magnificent, should have chosen gay Lutetia as the scene of a short leave of ten days. Harington and he were fast friends, and it was not unlikely that the tie of friendship might be strengthened, if the guardsman had not judged amiss the tendency of the pleasant-mannered sailor's thoughts. It was his ardent wish that Rodney might marry his sister, and Ethel had even stronger views on the question than her brother, so for once the course of true love appeared to be running smoothly. The gathering in Lady Eskdale's reception room before dinner was announced was very select indeed. The French President and his wife, the Russian Ambassador and the Grand Duchess, the German Ambassador, the French Ministers of War and Marine, the Governor of Paris, and quite a number of other great people made the brilliant salon glitter with the magnificence of their diamond stars and ornaments, whilst the lovely dresses of the women toned down the gorgeous uniforms by their softer hues. The British Ambassador, of course, took in Madame la Presidente to dinner. His interested and urbane manner gave no indication of the troubled state of his thoughts, though in very truth there had that afternoon been much cause for perplexity. A cipher telegram, dispatched at midday to London, was unaccountably interfered with en route, and a call from the Foreign Office for a repetition resulted in even greater confusion. In the endeavour to put matters right he also discovered that the telephonic communication between the two countries had unaccountably broken down. Now, his message to Lord Salisbury, contained a very plain intimation that affairs were in an alarmingly unsettled condition in France, whilst large sales of British securities on the Bourse had emanated from inspired quarter, and not from any public movement. These sales had been proceeding steadily for some days, and had seemingly culminated that morning. From this condition of affairs he argued the necessity for keen watchfulness on the part of the British Government. By an extraordinary' blunder, this message, although in a cypher believed to be known only to three men in London and three in Paris, was metamorphosed into an absurd reference to the weather, and the repetition brought about an inexplicable medley of meaningless nonsense. But Lord Eskdale was even more suave than usual to the President's wife. There had been a grand review of the garrison of Paris that day, and the lady, with the fanfare of the trumpets still in her ears, asked the Ambassador what he thought of the troops. “They were superb,” he replied. “Their soldierly qualities were such that I almost regretted it.'” “But why?” “I would prefer to see such perfect manhood engaged in the arts of peace rather than part and parcel of a huge machine of destruction.” “That is exactly what I should expect to hear from an Englishman,” said Madame. The Ambassador laughed. “Have we such a poor reputation as fire-eaters, then?” he queried. “You speak with the accent of success,” she retorted. “It is always the interest of those who have the booty to prate of peace.” “In such a matter, England’s interest,” he replied gravely, “is the interest of the world. The preservation of the peace of Europe is our inheritance.” Madame smiled. “What would you do,” she asked, “if the French were to dispute your guardianship?” “Ah. Madame,” returned the courtly Ambassador, “it is not your men we fear, it is your women.” “You laugh!” exclaimed Madame, stung by his playful treatment of her words. “But take care. A hundred years ago France taught the world the art of government. She must now teach it the art of empire.” Lord Eskdale glanced rapidly at her, and for a moment a troubled look rested upon his face. “A woman is seldom epigrammatic,” he reflected, “without being also indiscreet.” Then aloud, with perfect serenity: “You have achieved more than half the task already, my dear lady.” Madame paused appreciably before she answered, with a quick look at her companion: "In what sense?" “Our hearts are already prostrate; it needs but the subjugation of our arms.” “Ah, you were only leading me up to a pretty compliment. But I am glad that you acknowledge it is for us to contest with you the domination of the world.” “I yield it to you now, without a murmur of dissent,” he said. The Ambassador was clearly in a frivolous mood, so she changed the conversation to the prospects of the exhibition two years later. Why, he never knew until afterwards—but Lord Eskdale felt that he added years to his life during the progress of that meal. It was apparently unending, and it required all his powers of self-command to restrain himself from cursing the excellence and prodigality of his cook. At last it came to a conclusion, and Lady Eskdale rose, whilst his Excellence'' escorted Madame la Presidente to the door of the drawing-room. He returned at once, to find that the President and the Governor of Paris wished to be excused from attending the ball on the ground that affairs of departmental importance in connection with the spring maneuvers of the army in the north required their attention. Their departure helped to break up the other men into groups, and Lord Eskdale encountered Harington, who was present officially near the door. “Edward,” he said. “Where is your friend Rodney? Can I see him at once?'” Harington laughed. ”To tell the honest truth,” he replied, “he is dining in my bedroom, where he will dress, as he is bound to Ethel for the first dance.” “Tell him to prepare for a long journey at once, without anyone being the wiser. You do the same, and meet me in my private office in five minutes.” The guardsman was clever enough to smilingly assent as he lit a cigarette, for the German Ambassador had come to say that he also had pressing official work which would prevent him from remaining longer, and he hurried from the room. In one of the passages Harington met Irene. He glanced hurriedly around to see if anyone was looking, then took her in his arms, hopelessly crushing her frock the while, kissed her fervently, and said: “Good-bye, dearest. Your father will explain, but don't say a word to a soul.” And he disappeared towards his own apartments. Irene thought he had taken leave of his wits, but she kept her amazement to herself, nevertheless. When Frank Rodney heard his instructions, he thanked Heaven that he had had his dinner, seized some of Harington’s clothes and shirts, in case he should not have time to go to his hotel, and in three minutes announced himself ready for orders. When they reached his Excellency’s study they found him awaiting them. Without any preamble he thus addressed the naval officer: “Lieutenant Rodney, I wish you to catch the ten o'clock train from the Gare de Lyon for Italy. Vou will reach Modane to-morrow morning at eight o'clock. From there send by Italian cable the single word “Britannia” to the Governor of Malta, and to Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, who commands the Mediterranean fleet, which is at present at Valetta. Repeat these two messages from Turin in the afternoon in case the first may have miscarried, as the officials at Modane are French. A homeward bound P and O steamer arrives at Brindisi thee following morning, and you must catch it, if necessary taking a special train for the purpose, and wiring the captain to wait for you as a Queen's messenger. Go on to Malta and tell the Governor in person the circumstances under which I sent you, and proceed by the same steamer, if you can, to Gibraltar, where you will then find the Mediterranean fleet. Here is 250 pounds in gold for your expenses, and this sum should be ample for all contingencies. It is now 9 15. You can do what I ask?“ “Yes, sir,” replied Rodney, “ But my leave expires in two days." “Captain Harington will get that put right for you at the Admiralty. You, Harington, will leave for London by the eleven o'clock train, and, if you reach there by to-morrow morning—it is possible you may be detained—find Lord Salisbury or the Under-Secretary, and tell him my precise instructions to Lieutenant Rodney, subsequently explaining matters at the Admiralty. To-day my telegraphic dispatches have been interfered with, and from other indications I fear immediate and pressing European complications." “It is an odd thing, sir,” said Harington, “that the French army maneuvers should be held so early this year, and quite close to Brest, whilst the Germans have followed their example in the locality of Bremerhaven.” “And this morning, sir. whilst driving with Eth—I mean Miss Harington—near Vincennes, I counted 400 field-guns with their limbers, drawn up in a barrack square, and an astonishing number of empty trucks on some adjacent railway sidings,” added Rodney. "I know, I know,” said Lord Eskdale, who was much agitated. “But now, my dear boys, go, and God be with you. If I am mistaken, Harington, return here towards the close of the week. Leave by this door, as it commands readier access to your rooms,” He silently shook their hands and opened a door other than that by which they had entered. Their preparations were soon made, and Rodney was evidently wishful to say something which he found difficulty in expressing. At last he spoke: “By-the-way, Harington,” he said, “his Excellency forgot one thing. I will wire you at the club at Modane tomorrow to say I have got through. It may be allowed to pass even if the frightful burst-up which this business seems to indicate comes off. One more word, old chap, kiss Ethel for me.” “Oh,” said Harington, “I didn't know you had reached that stage. Good-bye, old fellow, and good luck.” And their fiacres rattled off through the lines of carriages which were bringing up guests to the Embassy. The Russian Ambassador and several French Ministers had by this time absented themselves, and Lady Eskdale received more than one laughing complaint from a wife concerning the ungallantry of a missing spouse. Her ladyship was puzzled, but could get no opportunity of a quiet word with her husband, who looked completely at his ease chatting with various distinguished personages. Irene and Ethel, who were, beyond doubt, the loveliest women present, were astonished at the absence of their wonted partners, and if Irene had some perception of the facts of the case, she obeyed her lover’s instructions and kept her scant information to herself. At last Ethel Harington lost all patience, and asked Lord Eskdale if he knew where her brother was. His Excellency smiled as he replied: “Both he and Lieutenant Rodney have left Paris on affairs of State. They had no time even to say ‘Good-bye’ to you, my dear.” Whereupon Ethel, in wonderment, communicated the news to Irene, and they both marveled greatly; but the fact did not prevent them from scribbling a name in front of every dance on the programme. About midnight Lord Eskdale’s English valet managed to reach his minister and whisper: "There is an English gentleman in the hall, my lord, and he says as how he has a note for your lordship from Captain Harington, and he will give it to no one but your lordship personally." “Take him to my study, Jenkins,” was the reply, and when his Excellency entered the room later he found awaiting him a stout, red-faced Briton, in the regulation check suit and deerstalker hat of the middle-class Englishman, when travelling on the Continent. “Is your Excellency, my lord—I mean is your lordship his ex—that is to say, my lord, are you” "Yes, I am Lord Eskdale,” was the kindly answer, much to his relief. "Well, my lord, my name's Briggs, William Briggs, of Catford, where I do a bit in the bicycle line, though I don’t ride much myself nowadays, being a bit too heavy above. I’ve bin over 'ere a week, my lord, partly on business and partly on pleasure, as the saying is, and I was a-goin' home to-night when a young gent 'e comes up to me on the platform, an' he says, says 'e: 'You 're an Englishman?' 'Why, anybody can see that,' says I. An' says 'e: 'Are you in any special 'urry back?' and says I: ' It's the season, but I won't lose much for the matter of a few hours. But why d' ye ask?' Says 'e: ' I 'm Capting Harington from the Hembassy. 'Ere's my card,'—which 'e gev me—'I want yer to do his lordship the Hambassador a service. Will yer stop till the morning train and take im'—meaning you. your lordship—' a note on a matter of great himportance to England, and 'ere s a fiver for yourself.' E seemed in desperate earnest, my lord, an' I wouldn't take 'is fiver, but 'ere s the note, ' and he handed Lord Eskdale an envelope addressed to himself and endorsed. '' Per kind favor of Mr. Briggs. “ 'E said as 'ow I wasn't to give it to anybody but your lordship’s own self, my lord." and Mr. Briggs glowed with the thought of the fine story this would make for the habitués of the Cat and Anchor at Catford. The note ran as follows: "Whilst detained for a moment in a block of carriages outside the Embassy, I heard one coachman say to another that he wondered why the President and a lot of Ministers and Ambassadors were driving off to Versailles at this time of the night. Here on the platform, there are General de Rosny, who, as you know, is Chief of the Staff, and a large number of staff officers travelling to Brest by the northern line. I thought you should know this.—E. H.” “Mr. Briggs," said Lord Eskdale, when he had gravely re-read the penciled message, "you have, indeed, done your country a good turn by your readiness to postpone your journey. Will you write to me from Catford and assure me of your safe arrival there?” “I will, my lord,” and Briggs visibly inflated. “You had better stay here to-night, as it is so late, and I presume your luggage is at the station. My man will look after you. Good-night.” Briggs did not explain that his luggage, consisting of a woolen shirt, a pair of socks, a brush and comb, and six collars, was contained in the small handbag on the table— his mind was too full of the glorious possibilities of Catford. The President’s wife had retired at midnight, and by three o’clock the last carriage had rolled away from the courtyard of the Embassy. Lady Eskdale was about to seek her husband and chat with him concerning the events of the night when a closely-veiled woman sprang out of a hired carriage at the entrance to the Embassy, sped silently past the astonished footmen, and approached her ladyship. It was Madame la Presidente, pallid, with a fever-light in her eye. “My dear,” she said in trembling accents. “I like you, and I have come, wrongly, perhaps, to warn you. You will be called upon to leave France before many hours have sped. I tell you that you may be prepared. Farewell!” Without another word of explanation, she quitted her astounded hostess, and was rapidly driven off. CHAPTER TWO. A COUNCIL OF THE POWERS. DURING the same night a strange scene was being enacted at Versailles. On Leaving the British Embassy Lord Eskdale's principal guests entered their carriages. Quiet directions were given to their coachmen, and the vehicles turned into the magnificent avenue of the Champs Elysees, already radiant with the freshness of early spring. They sped swiftly along past the Arc de Triomphe, and entered the Bois de Boulogne. It was scarcely ten o’clock when they passed Longchamps, on which the white tents of the soldiers, who had that day been renewed, shone beneath the moon. Soon Passy was left behind, and the hoofs of the horses clattered along the deserted streets of the village of Versailles. The carriages drove through the great gates of the Court of Honour, and pulled up before a narrow doorway where their occupants got out. In a tapestried room above, a small group of men awaited them. Here, in the pleasure palace built by the great Louis, where he feasted with his mistresses and learnt the fatal news of Blenheim that shattered his ambitions—where Napoleon, too, met his Ministers after his brilliant campaign in Italy, and rested before making his last dash to Waterloo—a grim and unexampled Council was being held. There were scarcely twenty persons present, but each was a figure of commanding importance in European politics. The military and diplomatic strength of a whole continent might be said to be represented here at its best. It was a strange alliance, hereditary foes meeting in friendly union, and Ministers who had for years schemed against each other with all the artifices of cunning at last linked together in a common purpose. No small issue could have achieved this miracle. Before these men was set the hardest and most momentous task that ever perplexed the strength and wisdom of the world. The President of the French Republic took the chair at the head of the table. Opposite him was General Caprivi, the Chancellor of Germany. To right and left were M. Hanotaux and Count Holbach, the French and German Foreign Ministers, and several of the chief diplomats of both countries. Near the President sat a tall and distinguished-looking man, with hair of iron-grey, and a grave, impenetrable countenance, who seldom spoke, but at whom, from time to time, those around him glanced uneasily. It was General Gourko, the trusted emissary of the Tsar of Russia. Other faces, too, known in every Court in Europe, and feared in many, might be seen. Each one was grave and anxious. It might have been thought that some guilty bond held them in artificial union. Distrust seemed to peer from their eyes as a chance remark called up the lurking fires of hereditary hate. Yet there was a respectful silence when the President opened the conference. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have just paid the last official visit of a President of France to the representative of the Court of England. The armies of Germany and France are on the point of success. Tomorrow before noon we shall be at war with England!” He turned, with a true French love of dramatic effect, to mark the effect of these words. The only response was a grave bow from Count Caprivi. “The details we, of course, all know. It is enough for me to say that they have been efficiently carried out. England is secure and confident. Her Ambassador is occupied in the dance. Her navy is distributed over the globe. Her army is in India. And yet at Brest and Bremerhaven there are the invincible armies of the two allied powers, together with transports that will carry to the shores of England a mighty army. To-morrow we shall land upon those shores. Within a week we shall be at the gates of London. There is nothing that can withstand us. It may be that the instinctive courage of the English race may lead to a defence of London. We may not be able to occupy the city for three weeks. But I believe you are with me when I express the conviction that within a month the British Empire will be shattered, and that the flags of the chief united powers of Europe will float from the dome of the Mansion House!” He paused and requested M. Hanotaux to detail the exact position of their preparations. Reading from an official document, the Foreign Minister showed how absolutely complete were the plans of the two allies, and how unsuspicious the English Government. An army large enough to win a continent, and a navy that might sweep a dozen oceans were ready to pounce upon the little island they all so deeply feared. A murmur of approval followed the recital, and then Count Caprivi interrupted: “Time is precious, and we have much to settle. The destruction of Great Britain is a matter of simple generalship. We need not waste time in estimating the number of days or the details of military occupation. We may regard the British Empire as already struck off the map. But I must remind you that several points remain yet to be settled in our joint treaty. How is Great Britain to be dismembered, and how are we to share her dependencies?” Here M. Hanotaux rose and walked behind the chair of the President. Touching a cord that hung down from a roller upon the wall, he liberated a large map of the world which covered the whole space. It had many curious lines upon it and strange colours. Across the British Isles were written the words: “Under joint government.” It was the map of the world as it was intended to be after the collapse of England. The strange colours were the emblems of the foreign powers that had bidden for her colonies. The lines were marks to show how, in the greed of cruel appetite, the confederates had arranged to share some fair possession and split up a fertile country into fragments. “Here," said the President, “is a precis of what we have already arranged. You will see,” pointing to the map, “that Canada falls to France. East Africa to Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa are governed by a joint board for the profit of the allies. Malta and Aden are dismantled. Dover is held by a joint garrison. England herself,” he concluded, “will be governed by a military-council in the interests of France and Germany for a time at least. We are not inclined to be merciless, and if she behaves herself, we may be induced later on to grant a limited form of home rule, which will necessitate a sanction for all legislative measures from a combined Board of Administrators, meeting alternately at Berlin and Paris. We shall also occupy Ireland to watch movements in England, and stamp out any signs of rebellion. Turkey and the Egyptian question can be settled satisfactorily at a later date.” “There yet remain," said the German War Minister, “Gibraltar, India, West Africa, the West Indies, the Chinese possessions, and a number of smaller but yet difficult points.” An eager discussion now arose, in which no one seemed prepared to come to a point. And at times there passed looks of malice and anger ill-suppressed as some slight word lit up hideous depths of selfishness or jealousy. At last M. Hanotaux observed: “We might begin with India. It is a large and splendid territory. France at least." At this point General Gourko's impassive face relaxed. Turning to the President, he said: “There is no need to discuss that point. India is claimed by Russia.” M. Hanotaux started—and turned red. A huge plum!” he exclaimed. “Do you want the lion's share, sir, without doing the lion's part?” “M. le President.” said Gourko calmly, paving no heed, “there can be no discussion on this head. My instructions are final and peremptory. You say we are not fighting for our spoil. Is it not agreed that Russia is part is to hang hack and make no move till the moment comes—if ever such a moment needs to come? You forget, perhaps, that it is you, and not we that have demanded this blow. You have been forced to action by the decline of your commerce, the decay of your trade, your imperative need of fresh markets, your lack of colonies. England has seized all that is fairest on earth, and you can no longer exist against so huge a monopoly. You are both in desperate straits, and the imperative voice of your suffering peoples forces you to close with this all-devouring race which is checking your growth, crushing your strength, and throttling your prosperity. That is why you have formed this alliance, is it not?” He paused, but there was no answer. “Russia, however,” he continued, “has no such need. She has rich and fertile lands. Siberia alone adds a second empire to her throne. What she wants is, no doubt, a sea-coast. That sea-coast is India. If Russia helps you to secure the success of schemes she is not interested in, she demands that sea-coast. Gentlemen, you cannot oppose the resistless necessity of things. Russia must and will secure for herself the Indian Empire.” His words fell inexorable and unanswerable. The quiescence of Russia was essential to England's overthrow. It was essential to the peaceful division of spoil. Large though the price she asked, there could be no refusal. Then rose a debate upon Gibraltar, and it well-nigh brought to a close the temporary alliance between the powers. That impregnable fortress was coveted by all. But Count Holbach had not come unprepared for this. He had, that morning, had a long interview with the Spanish Minister, and it was in his power to outwit his French comrade. He proposed that Gibraltar be returned to Spain. To his joy, the French Minister accepted this method of settlement as the most satisfactory way out of the difficulty. If he could have seen a letter bearing the official stamp from Madrid that even then lay in M. Hanotaux's pocket, he would perhaps have been less satisfied with himself. Even now had the allies commenced to scheme against each other. And thus the Conference went on, and by slow degrees all of the British Empire that remained was divided between the two countries. What was left of England was a crippled island under the heel of a despotic military government, a tributary state of less consequence than Bulgaria, and a people crushed, ruined, and enslaved. “One point only,” observed Caprivi, as the Council was about to rise. “Germany, of course, claims Belgium.” The Frenchmen started to their feet at this amazing announcement. “Impossible!” cried the President. “Not so,” replied Caprivi calmly. “It is no doubt a prize of value, but we are prepared to pay for it.” M. Hanotaux turned upon him a look of disdain. “And what payment do you presume to consider adequate?" he said. The German put his finger carelessly upon a map which lay on the table. Then quietly: “We offer Alsace and Lorraine!” It was a startling denouement of the grim drama of hatred and selfishness that had just been played. But the German statesman knew his men. Before he returned to Paris that night he placed in his pocket a signed precis, in which Belgium figured as a German dependency. It was almost dawn when the Council rose. “Adieu, gentlemen,” said the President with a bow. “When we next meet, it will be in Whitehall.” CHAPTER THREE. THE SCENE IN THE HOUSE. EARLY the following morning it was known throughout London that something unusual was happening. The Lynx-eyed chroniclers of Ministerial movements brought to Fleet Street the intelligence that the Foreign Office had been thrown into unwonted commotion, as soon as it was opened, by the arrival from Paris of a young officer who sent in an urgent demand to see Lord Salisbury or the Under-Secretary. The Prime Minister was away, but after the messenger had been closeted with the Under-Secretary for ten minutes, a telegram was dispatched to Hatfield, and special communications were sent to the residences of all the Cabinet Ministers summoning them to an immediate meeting. Meanwhile, the Under-Secretary had driven over to the War Office, where, in a short time, he was in close conferences with Lord Lansdowne, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Commander-in-Chief. Wild rumours of every description were soon rife in the city, but the mood of the public generally was one of incredulity. In the absence of certain information it was felt that the importance of these incidents had been unduly exaggerated. Never had the political horizon been more serene, or the sense of public security more strong. Still, curiosity was sufficiently roused to draw a large number of spectators to the assembling of the House of Commons at midday. But the aspect of the House was not one calculated to allay anxiety. Its members, as if constrained by a common impulse, had gathered from far and near in full numbers. There was no vestige of the carelessness which is generally to be discerned on days usually set apart for private business. Scattered about the precincts of the House in groups, they were earnestly discussing the occurrences of the morning, oppressed with vague forebodings that presaged a crisis. Within the Chamber itself the scene was still less reassuring. The front Ministerial bench was absolutely unoccupied, and none but lieutenants kept watch and ward. Even the Opposition leaders were missing, save in two instances, and it was noticed with surprise and consternation that these gentlemen were summoned away almost as soon as they arrived. Excitement grew to a high pitch of tension when it was learned that a joint meeting of party leaders was then being held in the apartments of the Leader of the House, and that a courier had been dispatched by special train to Windsor. Alone, amid all this bewilderment, one small body of men sat, grim and unmoved, as if disturbed by no passions but their own, and with minds firm set upon a common purpose. It was the Irish party, who had been fortunate enough to secure first place in the ballot for precedence upon this day, and were seeking to convince their fellow-members of the urgent importance of an Act to secure self-government for the County of Cork. Whilst the gravest statements were flying about the corridors of the House, and Liberals and Conservatives alike were thrilled with the sense of a common peril, the Irishmen did not swerve for a moment from their purpose. The debate had commenced in an acrimonious manner; it had now become tragic. Finding no Cabinet Minister to assail, the Irish members consoled themselves by assailing each other. Mr. Healy had denounced Mr. Justin McCarthy, Mr. Sexton had denounced Mr. Healy, and Mr. Redmond had fallen on all three. The speeches disclosed a remarkable versatility in terms of abuse which reached its height when Mr. Dillon observed, amidst loud applause, that "the British lion would have his wings clipped unless he washed his hands in the flames of repentance," and added that Mr. Balfour had been for twelve years the hereditary-enemy of the Irish race. Conspicuous amongst all was Dr. Tanner, whose crude and elementary style seemed born of the rude shocks of Parliamentary adversity. Twice had he sought to stretch the rules of the House as far as he might without breaking them, and twice had the Speaker called him to order, and threatened to name him. The debate had already lasted three hours. Dr. Tanner had got to the length of shaking his fist under the nose of a mild and inoffensive brother who had unfortunately cheered him at the wrong moment, and the Speaker was on the point of rising to fulfil the usual painful duty of bidding him withdraw, when, from behind Mr. Guyll's chair, Mr. Arthur Balfour appeared, followed by every occupant of the Treasury bench, whilst the Opposition leaders also quietly took their places. Upon each face there was an air of gravity which not even the severest issues had hitherto called forth. A swift movement passed over the House, and in a moment—as though its members had learned the arrival of Ministers by intuition—every seat was occupied. Rarely had the Second Chamber been so crowded. Excitement grew when it was noticed that Lord Salisbury had entered the Peers' Gallery, and with him the Cabinet Ministers who belonged to the Upper House. There was a dead silence— the oppressive stillness that is less a calm than the momentary pause in the fury of a tempest. Dr. Tanner sat down abruptly, awed by the solemnity of the moment. Without delay, and amidst a general hush, the leader of the House rose to his feet. As he advanced to the table it was noticed that he had no longer the languid manner commonly ascribed to him. He stood upright, pale, stern, determined, with an air of resolute pride and the dignity befitting a supreme occasion. There was no need for him to claim, in formal language, the indulgence of the House for interrupting its proceedings on a matter of State of pressing importance. Every eye was directed to him, every ear was strained to catch his opening words. “There devolves upon me, sir," he began, turning for a moment to the Speaker, and not without a trace of emotion in his voice, “a grave and responsible duty. I have to inform the House that a crisis has arrived more serious and more pressing than any which has hitherto occurred in the history of this country. Without warning and without just cause, whilst enjoying prosperity at home and in apparent peace with all the world, in the fullness of that content and happiness which have marked the reign of a wise and beneficent Sovereign to whom we draw still closer in loyalty and affection at a moment of common trial, we are faced with a danger which calls for all our courage and all our patriotism. Three hours ago there was placed in the hands of Her Majesty's Government a declaration of war from France and Germany.” These words, spoken slowly and distinctly, fell upon the ears of the House in a deathlike stillness. For a moment its members seemed stunned. Mr. Balfour’s statement was difficult to credit, hard to understand, and, in the solemn stillness which followed, the House seemed groping in amazement to discover the sense of the phrases they had heard, to realize the terrible import that they bore. And then a thrill swept through the Chamber—a thrill of horror, of indignation, but not of fear. The House of Commons never looked more dignified and impressive than when, after its first impulse of surprise, it sat rigid and impassive to hear the full story of this catastrophe. “When I tell you, sir,” continued Mr. Balfour, “that by the terms of this declaration we have not merely to anticipate the attack of two powerful enemies, but that we may expect it now, at this very moment—that, in fact, hostilities have already commenced—this House will realize that the present is not a time for lengthy explanation. It will be enough for me to say that, without previous negotiations, demands have suddenly been made of Her Majesty's Government—demands shameful to receive and shameful to repeat in this House. Our enemies, whom yesterday we deemed our friends, asked nothing less than the dismemberment of the British Empire, and I need not say that it was in consequence of the immediate and scornful rejection of this ultimatum that the declarations of war, signed by the heads of the two combined nations, were handed to us. We,” and here Mr. Balfour drew himself up to his full height and turned upon the House, “we needed not the formality of a conference with the Parliament of England to indignantly cast aside the terms of peace, such as they were. We knew that you stood, in equal scorn and unanimity, behind us.” He paused, and in a moment a ringing cheer went up. The House had regained its composure, if it lost nothing of its excitement, and, a wave of passionate emotion passed over it, fusing all parties into one—the party that stood behind all differences and made the British nation. The Leader of the House then explained in greater detail how the two Ambassadors had called upon Lord Salisbury, and how the terms they asked had been peremptorily rejected. They had then handed in the formal declarations of war, which dated from midday. Free passage from England had been demanded and granted, and the representatives of France and Germany were no longer on our shores. There was redoubled excitement when he described the prompt action of the Government. “At such a juncture,” he continued, “when England is face to face with two of the strongest nations of Europe-and Heaven grant that this be all!—it is no time for the accentuation of party differences. Two allied countries should at least be faced by a united people. We deemed we should be best showing the indomitable strength and single patriotism of our beloved land if for purposes of national defense, the line of political difference should entirely disappear. It was with this idea foremost, and, secondly, to ally with ourselves the best intellect and resource of England, that Her Majesty-'s Government sent for the leaders of the Liberal Party and asked them to assist in forming a Council of National Safety. “It is, I am aware,” he went on, amid enthusiastic cheers, ”an unusual course, but our danger is also unusual. It is no time to stand by the shibboleths of form or precedent. It would be almost an insult to add that such assistance was even as soon as asked, and that a Council has been formed by mutual agreement which includes all that is most wise and most experienced in English statesmanship. “If our enemies have counted upon the acerbities of party warfare as any evidence of a disunited nation, they will learn, bitterly and to their cost, that the tumult of political strife can never disturb, however slightly or remotely, the deep and eternal love that we all bear alike to our native land. They will come to realise that jealousy and rivalry pass away before the dangers that threaten us, and that we stand before the foe one race, one empire, one people, one party.” Mr. Balfour sat down amid a scene of extraordinary enthusiasm. He had struck, nobly and well, the one note common to all Englishmen. There was a moment's pause, and then Sir William Harcourt rose. His voice was broken with emotion as in brief words he thanked the Leader of the House for giving utterance with fervour so intense to the feelings of all parties. “Sir,” he concluded, turning full upon the Speaker, “from this moment there is no Opposition. The very term ceases to exist in the hour that our shores are threatened by a foreign foe. The Government has no supporters more warm than those who in time of peace have been compelled by conviction to oppose its policy." The nerves of the House were so overwrought that it was perhaps well there should have occurred something in the nature of an anti-climax. The Irish party- had given no sign of the feelings that actuated them when Mr. Joseph Chamberlain rose to continue the discussion with a few incisive words. He recalled to the memory of the House some recent utterances of M. Constans in the French Senate. “That statesman,” he observed," has not refrained from hinting at disunion on our own shores. He has plainly told us that a foreign enemy might look for help from Ireland. But,”—and the right honourable gentleman glanced fixedly at the Irish benches—“he went on to say that if the French Government had to deal with similar threats of disloyalty from any essential member of the Republic they would speedily settle insubordination by sending the ringleaders to New Caledonia.” He was continuing when, to the amazement of the House, Dr. Tanner leaped to his feet, evidently under the stress of ungovernable excitement. Advancing several steps along the floor of the House between the crowded benches of startled members and hastily unbuttoning his frock coat, he exclaimed fiercely: “Did he say that?” Then tearing one arm out and exposing a white shirt sleeve, he cried out to Mr. Chamberlain: “Tell him what I say. Tell him that if he dares to set his dirty foot in this country I’ll fight him and his bottle-holders single-handed myself!” So saying, he flung off his coat into the middle of the gangway, and to the amazement of all and the consternation of those near him, squared up his fists as if he was then and there desirous of tackling M. Constans and bringing him to book in the very presence of the august Chamber. The reaction had come. Mr. Chamberlain hastily sat down, and the House, in relief after its pent-up excitement, first shrieked with laughter, and then exhausted itself in wild applause. For the first time in his Parliamentary career Dr. Tanner had violated a strict law of the House and remained unrebuked. It needed but the moment and it had arrived. The Irish party, standing upon their benches, cheered and cheered to the echo the utterances of their comrade, who, with the feelings of a hero, modestly resumed his seat, half awed by the unusual spectacle of an indulgent House. It was noticed afterwards, as a significant fact, that it was Mr. Chamberlain himself who had succeeded in rousing this splendid burst of patriotism from the Irish members. But the House quickly regained its ordinary gravity when Mr. Balfour again addressed it. He begged members to consider ways and means. They must not imagine that, however great the surprise, the country was unprepared. Even at that moment the War Office was in close consultation with the Admiralty and with the authorities at the Horse Guards. He asked them, however, to pass a Bill granting the Government fifty million pounds for war purposes, and he suggested that the Bill might be read a third time, and become law that day. “I am sure I shall meet the approval of the House,” he continued, “if I inform it that Her Majesty's Government have lost no time in asking the late leader of the Liberal Party, a statesman whom we all revere, Mr. Gladstone,”— here there were loud cheers from every side of the House —“ to join the Council of National Safety. I need not adhere too closely to the forms of the House on such an occasion, and I will at once read the telegram he has dispatched in answer. Mr. Gladstone says: “I am shocked beyond expression by your news, but I am ready to devote to the service of my country the last few hours that remain to me. I shall indeed be gratified if the scattered remnants of an old man's energy be found still serviceable in a cause so noble as the protection of his native land. This is not merely a battle between England and her enemies, it is a struggle between order and anarchy, between the principles of peace and the passions of selfishness and envy. This outrageous declaration of war is nothing less than a betrayal of humanity. Let it be England's glory that she takes up the quarrel on behalf of freedom, honour, and prosperity, and earns anew the gratitude of the world. For present purposes, I would suggest the immediate reduction of the interest of our Consols to one percent, under conditions that will protect the poor, as affording the best evidence of the moral force that lies behind our national strength. It is a time for cheerful self-denial. I leave for London by the next train.” Mr. Balfour passed on, and informed the House that the Government had resolved to reduce the charges on Consols as recommended, thus freeing their hands for further loans, and had already closed the Stock exchange to prevent a financial panic. Government brokers would be appointed for the transaction of necessary business. “As an evidence of the gravity of the situation,” he added, “I may state that during the progress of this debate I have learned that every British cable has been cut since midday, and our enemies have only left us in telegraphic communication with the United States, as, to cut the Atlantic cable would be an act of war with the American nation.” There was no need for further discussion. Within ten minutes after the reading of the brief Bill which granted the Government fifty millions, it had been passed a third time. Dr. Tanner once more found himself popular by his willingness to disencumber the House of business. “Let it not be said, sir,” he declared, “that Ireland is not willing to make sacrifices at a time of peril. We will withdraw the County of Cork Self-Government Bill for six months, and in saying this, I know that the people of Cork are at my back. [Loud cheers from the Irish benches.] We are the more ready to take this step, sir, because we see before us the prospects of a holy row worthy even of the best energies of the Irish party. [Laughter and applause.] At such a moment Cork is in the van.” [Renewed applause.] The House rose at five o’clock. In two hours it had received the announcement of war and had made every preparation in its power to meet the enemy. The Briton is, perhaps rightly, accused of being stolid. It is certain that the members of Parliament left Westminster with as much sang froid as if they had just given their sanction to a new railway bill, or had resolved to add a shilling to the dog-tax. But the news had long since spread through London and been flashed to the remotest districts of the United Kingdom. The public at first received the thrilling intelligence with incredulity, but as their doubts were dispersed, an intense desire to be up and doing made itself felt throughout the country and in the Metropolis. Business in London was at a standstill. The streets were crowded with what, at another time, might be regarded as a mob, but was now clearly recognizable as a national gathering animated with one thought, one purpose, one enthusiasm. There needed some outlet for the high-wrought feeling that prevailed. It was fortunately provided by the statement that Her Majesty the Queen had left Windsor, and was on her way to Buckingham Palace to take up her residence in the Capital during the time of war, so as to be near her people and her Ministers. There was a mighty rush of the excited multitude to Hyde Park, and as the Queen passed through in an open carriage, though the days were still cold, a wild, vociferous tumult of inextinguishable cheering rose from the vast throng. It was a nation voicing its own patriotism to its visible head. When Her Majesty reached the Palace, the Mall and Buckingham Palace Road were crammed tumultuously. Distinctions of rank had faded with differences of political conviction, and, without waiting for solicitation, the Queen appeared upon the balcony leaning on the arm of her eldest son. There she remained several minutes, firm, proud, and erect, whilst her people raised cheer after cheer to assure her of their confidence, their loyalty, and their invincible courage. The enthusiasm of the citizens of London was no idle boast, for in that memorable hour the citizen army of England was giving its heart's blood for the defense of the country. CHAPTER FOUR. HOW MAJOR PERKINS WON THE V C. AT five o'clock that afternoon, Wednesday, May third, 1898, the chief coast-guard officer at Worthing telegraphed to London, Portsmouth, and Dover: “A vast fleet of ships-of-the-line, apparently French and German are standing in for the shore. They are now about ten miles out at sea, S W by S." Half-an-hour later he wired again: “Fleet distant five miles. Advancing in four lines abreast. Six cables’ length between each line. Outer lines thirty-six armour-clads. Inner lines forty troopers, Messageries Maritimes, and North German Lloyd steamers. Big flotilla of gunboats and torpedo boats ten miles out. Possibly one hundred. Weather calm.” At 6 15 p m. he sent this message: “Presume this is enemy announced by telegraph from London. Fleet anchored in same formation two miles out. Troopships and liners crowded with troops. Have counted 109 smaller craft. Preparations for landing being made. What shall I do?” To which the answer was given: “Go to telephone office. Wire is switched on to Horse Guards. Send constant advice of progress of events.” And the first message which was received by Lord WolseIey at the Horse Guards was to the following effect: “A number of flat-bottomed boats, or floats, each containing some two hundred men, have put off from the troopers, and the Volunteers are lining the beach.” The Commander-in-Chief could not help smiling as an aide-de-camp repeated the concluding words to him, but anxious lines appeared in his face as he glanced at his watch, and saw it was only five minutes past seven. “I hope the Brighton and South-coast people have kept their word, Brabazon,” he said to a staff officer who was standing near the fireplace. “Well sir, the traffic-manager meant what he said,” was the reply. “I heard him tell the driver of the first train, which left Victoria with the Guards at 6 10, that if he got to Worthing within the hour he drew 50 pounds to-morrow, but if he didn't he got the sack.” "What is the exact disposition at this moment?" “Fourteen South-Western trains, each containing one thousand men, were ready at Aldershot at 5 30, waiting our telephonic orders, and they have since left at regular intervals of five minutes between each, the first starting at 6 p m. The London, Brighton, and South Coast Company are dispatching trains with regulars and volunteers from Victoria, London Bridge, and Clapham Junction as fast as they can fill them. By eight o'clock we should have ten thousand men there, by nine o'clock twenty, and in the early hours of the morning seventy, with two hundred guns.” “I think we estimated that fifty Maxims would be in position on the sea front by 7 30 p m?” "Yes, sir." "Well," said the Commander-in-Chief, "we can now look into the Commissariat and field transport arrangements. Every man has a day's cooked rations with him, but we must be prepared for developments at that particular locality, although I fail to see how the enemy can possibly effect a landing if the fleet creates a timely diversion." At that moment the Channel Squadron, under the command of Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, was steaming east from Spithead at the rate of ten knots per hour. The Admiral's pennant was hoisted on board the Magnificent, whilst the other vessels under his command were the Royal Sovereign, Blenheim, Empress of India, Endymion, Repulse, Resolution, Achilles, and Agamemnon. These, with twenty-two torpedo boats and the gunboat Speedy, were all the available force at his disposal for immediate action, so skillfully had the enemy planned the time and manner of his attack upon our shores. With the exception of one, or possibly three, the most powerful ships in our Navy were in the Mediterranean, in China, in North America, in Australasia, at the Cape—anywhere on the face of the broad waters save in the English Channel. Lord Charles Beresford had received by semaphore the second of the coast-guard's telegrams before he gave the signal for departure, and he knew that he had nine warships to oppose thirty-six of equal or superior class, whilst he realized that the proportion of the enemy's smaller craft to those under his command was equally appalling in the mere point of view of numbers. But of hesitation or doubt in his actions or in his heart there was none. No sooner was the fleet under way than another signal was made from the Admiral's ship, and when the words '”Remember Nelson” were deciphered, even the strict discipline of the British Navy could not prevent a great cheer bursting forth from every ship in the line. These things were noted by the anxious watchers on the shore, and when Sir Evelyn Wood arrived at Worthing at 7 30 p m to take command of the defending forces, he found a telegram awaiting him from Lord Wolseley to inform him that naval assistance might be expected shortly after eleven o'clock. The Admiralty officials who made this calculation could not, of course, know what Lord Charles Beresford's exact plans were, but of one thing they were quite certain— he would attack the enemy as soon as ever he could reach them. When the combined French and German fleets first hove in sight, the quiet little town of Worthing was naturally thrown into a state of intense excitement. The head constable informed the Mayor, and the Mayor sought the advice of the Town Clerk, who recommended that the fire-bell should be rung. This was promptly done, with the result that in ten minutes every soul in Worthing knew that the town was likely to be bombarded forthwith. The man in charge of the fire-engine got steam up—evidently laboring under the impression that he must do something—and in the result he had his salary increased for the act, as the first shell from the enemy's flagship struck and fired the Town Hall, which must inevitably have been burned down but for the prompt arrival of the engine. The local volunteers, to the number of 211, spontaneously gathered with their arms and accoutrements in the principal thoroughfare, and the resident major, a most worthy and stout linen-draper, placed himself at their head, mounted upon a horse that served admirably for the dual purpose of parade and parcels delivery. He was busy behind his counter when the strange tidings of imminent invasion reached him. His cheek blanched and his heart beat tumultuously when he rushed upstairs to tell his wife, and that good lady suggested the immediate closing of the shop and a hasty retreat to her father's residence in the country. But the major was stout of heart as of body. In a state of high nervous exaltation be sought for his sword and cross-belts, saying, as he donned them: "No, Margaret; my place is here. It will be a poor day for England when the first Volunteer officer who is called upon to do his duty flinches from the consequences. Kiss me, my dear. I cannot bear to meet the children, but, God willing, we will all come together again in peace and happiness." And he hurried forth to see to the secure girthing of his horse. Fortunately there was a very large supply of ammunition on hand with the sergeant-instructor, as the corps was engaged upon its annual target practice, and the men rapidly stuffed their pockets with cartridges until they had over one hundred rounds each. Then they fell in, in two companies, and the major, Perkins by name, thought it his duty to make a speech, as the circumstances were such as did not, to his knowledge, come within the purview of the Volunteer Regulations. “Comrades,” he said, “our worthy Mayor has informed me that war has been declared against us by France and Germany, and we now know that Worthing has been singled out for attack. Whoa, hoy, whoa, there, “for a shell screamed through the air, passed into the Council Chamber of the Town Hall and burst there with a terrific report, and the Major's mount was tolerably fresh, as Saturday was his hardest day. The Major managed to return his sword, observing sotto voice: “I never can sit a horse with a drawn sword in my hand,” and continued aloud: “These Frenchmen and Germans are here in their hundreds of thousands, and they do not demand ransom from Worthing, but seek to destroy our town at once. They are worse than highway robbers, as they ask for both our money and our lives. It is our duty, comrades, to resist them to death.” [Loud cheers from the crowd, an interlude which the drill-instructor utilized to squint down the front rank of one company to see if the dressing was all right.] “I am not much good at tactics myself.” went on Major Perkins, “but I know what to do here. We must line the shore and let no damned foreigner set a foot on English soil until he steps over our dead bodies. Companies, form fours—left. By your right, quick march!” Arrived on the Marine Parade, the Major and his little host found that six of the enemy's battle-ships had approached to within a mile and a half of low-water mark. They were on the western side of the pier, which they scrupulously refrained from damaging by their subsequent fire, as they expected to find it extremely useful when the active work of disembarkation began. An occasional shot was leisurely fired at the town, not so much by way of serious bombardment as to demonstrate that they were in earnest and would stand no nonsense. The plan of the allies was now quite apparent. It was their intention to rapidly land sufficient troops and machine guns to hold the outlying portions of Worthing against any possible counter demonstration by the British, until three complete army corps, numbering 150,000 men all told, were concentrated in the locality. This number of troops actually accompanied the expedition. They carried a fortnight's stores with them, and by the time a forward movement on London could be undertaken the French and German commanders estimated that reinforcements of three times the number of the expeditionary force would be at hand, whilst their fighting power would be enormously enhanced by the arrival of a vast quantity of stores and field ordnance. Major Perkins extended his men on the beach in single rank with two paces interval. He told them to lie down, to sight their rifles at 400 yards, to aim low, and to concentrate their power, by order of their section commanders, on particular boats. These dispositions were hardly made before half-a-dozen launches appeared from the seaward side of the six warships, and rapidly steamed, or were rowed, towards the shore, in such fashion as led the onlookers to believe that the occupants expected no resistance. They were soon bitterly undeceived. Volunteers are, as a rule, excellent marksmen, and bullets poured into the advancing boats at such a rate that the commander of the enemy's advance guard thought it best to retire until the sea front had been vigorously shelled by the battleships. At this momentary repulse of the enemy the little defending force set up a great yell of delight, and the stout Major rode up and down the shingle inciting his men to keep up the reputation of Worthing, as though the quiet little watering-place was accustomed to similar murderous proceedings as part of the season’s routine. So far not an Englishman had been injured, as the fire from the troops in the floats had been uncertain and ineffectual. But now the game was to assume a more desperate character. A perfect tornado of shells swept the sea front, wrecking every house facing the Channel, and killing and wounding a great number of people of all ages and both sexes whose curiosity had caused them to watch the progress of events rather than seek safety in flight. Special attempts were made by the enemy to clear the beach of the unexpected line of defence which had proved its powers so unpleasantly, but it was far from easy to hit men lying down at the water’s edge, and the only real living target was the Major on his horse. Both man and animal were in a perfect frenzy of excitement, and appeared to have charmed lives. More than once a time-fuse shrapnel burst right in front of them, but the zone of fire covered by the missiles in the shell left the space around them inviolate, and although appealed to by his subordinate officers to dismount, the Major would not listen to the suggestion. From his elevated position he could see that a very much larger number of flat-bottomed boats and launches were now gathered behind the ironclads, and when the cannonading ceased something like 2000 troops were swiftly ferried towards the shore, with the evident determination to make good their landing this time. Whilst a few of the flotilla made straight for the beach the majority headed towards the pier and feu d’ enfer kept up between the belligerents on the sea-shore prevented the defenders from noting the undisturbed occupation of the pier-head by the enemy. A volley from the leading boat brought down Major Perkins and his charger, but the Major arose from a cloud of dust, drew his sword, and shrieked in a shrill falsetto, for his natural voice had gone long since: “I 'm not dead yet, lads. Give it to 'em.” But the end was seemingly close at hand. More than half of the Worthing volunteers were killed or wounded, and the survivors were now firing blindly and ineffectively, being mad with the battle fever, and dazed with the singing of bullets and the smash of the projectiles against the stones on the beach. Already some hundreds of Frenchmen had gained the platform of the pier and were forming up to advance into the town, whilst the leading launch was within a few feet of ramming her nose into the gravel beach, when the Major devoted all his remaining energies to one last yell: “Fix bayonets! Centre close! Double!” and he jumped into the surf, brandishing his sword like a maniac, A big German officer leapt from the bow of the boat to meet him, but his heel turned on an uneven boulder, his lunge missed, and the Major hit him such a hearty whack on his steel pickel-haube with the flat of his sword that the German fell stunned into the sea, and was quietly but speedily drowned. But now a fierce roar of many voices came from behind the Straggling group of volunteers. Ere anyone had realized what was happening, two companies of the Grenadier Guards flung themselves into three of the enemy's launches and gutted them with the bayonet as terriers might clear out rats under like conditions. Two more companies deployed to left and right of the pier on the Marine Parade, and poured a hailstorm of lead into the advancing French column and their comrades in the boats, and, when the ornamental ironwork gates at the entrance of the pier had been smashed down, a couple of Maxims were run into position, with the result that the enemy dropped like swathes of grass before the sweep of a scythe. A second time had the attack failed, utterly and disastrously. Sir Evelyn Wood had now arrived and assumed control of affairs. The first Battalion of the Grenadier Guards had been conveyed from Victoria to Worthing, fi