The Iron Dream. By Norman Spinrad. A Puke (TM) audiobook

The Iron Dream.
By Norman Spinrad.Show more

Let Adolf Hitler transport you to a far-future Earth, where only FERIC JAGGAR and his mighty weapon, the Steel Commander, stand between the remnants of true humanity and annihilation at the hands of the totally evil Dominators and the mindless mutant hordes they completely control.
Lord of the Swastika is recognized as the most vivid and popular of Hitler's science-fiction novels by fans the world over, who honored it with a Hugo as Best Science-Fiction Novel of 1954. Long out of print, it is now once more available in this new edition, with an Afterword by Homer Whipple of New York University. See for yourself why so many people have turned to this science-fantasy novel as a beacon of hope in these grim and terrifying times.
Other Science-Fiction Novels by Adolf Hitler:
EMPEROR OF THE ASTEROIDS.
THE BUILDERS OF MARS.
FIGHT FOR THE STARS.
THE TWILIGHT OF TERRA.
SAVIOR FROM SPACE.
THE MASTER RACE.
THE THOUSAND YEAR RULE.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE WILL.
TOMORROW THE WORLD.

About the Author.
Adolf Hitler was born in Austria on April 20, 1889.
As a young man he migrated to Germany and served in the German army during the Great War. After the war, he dabbled briefly in radical politics in Munich before finally emigrating to New York in 1919. While learning English, he eked out a precarious existence as a sidewalk artist and occasional translator in New York's bohemian haven, Greenwich Village. After several years of this freewheeling life, he began to pick up odd jobs as a magazine and comic illustrator. He did his first interior illustration for the science-fiction magazine Amazing in 1930. By 1932, he was a regular illustrator for the science-fiction magazines, and, by 1935, he had enough confidence in his English to make his debut as a science-fiction writer. He devoted the rest of his life to the science fiction genre as a writer, illustrator, and fanzine editor. Although best known to present-day SF fans for his novels and stories. Hitler was a popular illustrator during the Golden Age of the thirties, edited several anthologies, wrote lively reviews, and published a popular fanzine. Storm, for nearly ten years.
He won a posthumous Hugo at the 1955 World Science-Fiction Convention for Lord of the Swastika, which was completed just before his death in 1953. For many years, he had been a popular figure at SF conventions, widely known in science-fiction fandom as a wit and nonstop raconteur. Ever since the book's publication, the colorful costumes he created in Lord of the Swastika have been favorite themes at convention masquerades. Hitler died in 1953, but the stories and novels he left behind remain as a legacy to all science-fiction enthusiasts.

Chapter One.
With a great groaning of tired metal and a hiss of escaping steam, the roadsteamer from Gormond came to a halt in the grimy yard of the Pormi depot, a mere three hours late; quite a respectable performance by Borgravian standards. Assorted, roughly humanoid, creatures shambled from the steamer displaying the usual Borgravian variety of skin hues, body parts, and gaits. Bits of food from the more or less continuous picnic that these mutants had held throughout the twelve-hour trip clung to their rude and, for the most part, threadbare clothing. A sour stale odor clung to this gaggle of motley specimens as they scuttled across the muddy courtyard toward the unadorned concrete shed that served as a terminal.
Finally, there emerged from the cabin of the steamer a figure of startling and unexpected nobility: a tall, powerfully built true human in the prime of manhood. His hair was yellow, his skin was fair, his eyes were blue and brilliant. His musculature, skeletal structure, and carriage were letter-perfect, and his trim blue tunic was clean and in good repair. Feric Jaggar looked every inch the genotypically pure human that he in fact was. It was all that made such prolonged close confinement with the dregs of Borgravia bearable; the quasi-men could not help but recognize his genetic purity. The sight of Feric put mutants and mongrels in their place, and for the most part they kept to it. Feric carried his worldly possessions in a leather bag which he hefted easily; this enabled him to avoid the grubby terminal entirely and embark directly upon Ulm Avenue which led through the foul little border town toward the bridge over the Ulm by the shortest route possible. Today he would at last put the Borgravian warrens behind him and claim his birthright as a genotypically pure human and a Helder, with a spotless pedigree that was traceable back for twelve generations.
With his heart filled with thoughts of his goal in fact and in spirit, Feric was almost able to ignore the sordid spectacle that assailed his eyes, ears, and nostrils as he loped up the bare earth boulevard toward the river. Ulm Avenue was little more than a muddy ditch between two rows of rude shacks constructed for the most part of crudely dressed timber, wattle, and rusted sheet-steel. Nevertheless, this singularly unimpressive track was apparently the pride and joy of the denizens of Pormi, for the fronts of these filthy buildings were festooned with all manner of garish lettering and rude illustrations advertising the goods to be had within, mostly local produce, or the castoff artifacts of the higher civilization across the Ulm.
Moreover, many of the shopkeepers had set up street stands purveying rotten-looking fruit, grimy vegetables, and fly-specked meat; these fetid goods they hawked at the top of their lungs to the creatures which thronged the street, who in turn added to the din with shrill and argumentative cajolery.
The rank odor, raucous jabbering, and generally unwholesome atmosphere reminded Feric of the great marketplace area of Gonnond, the Borgravian capital, where fate had confined him for so many years.
As a child, he had been shielded from close contact with the environs of the native quarter; as a young man he had taken great pains, and at no little expense, to avoid such places as much as was practicable.
Of course it had never been possible to avoid the sight of the sorts of mutants who crowded every nook and cranny of Gormond, and the gene pool here in Pormi appeared not one whit less debased than that which prevailed in the Borgravian capital. The skins of the street rabble here, as in Gormond, were a crazy quilt of mongrelized mutations. Blueskins, Lizardmen, Harlequins, and Bloodfaces were the least of it; at least it could be said that such creatures bred true to their own kind. But all sorts of mixtures prevailed, the scales of a Lizardman might be tinted blue or purple instead of green; a Blueskin might have the mottling of a Harlequin; the warted countenance of a Toadman might be an off-shade of red.
The grosser mutations for the most part bred truer, if only because two such genetic catastrophes in the same creature ended more often than not in an unviable fetus.
Many of the shopkeepers here in Pormi were dwarfs of one kind or another, hunchbacked, covered with wiry black hair, slightly pinheaded, many with secondary skin mutations, incapable of more strenuous labor. In a small town such as this, the more arcane mutants were less in evidence than in what passed for a Borgravian metropolis.
Still, as Feric elbowed his way through the foul-smelling crowds, he spotted three Eggheads, their naked chitinous skulls gleaming redly in the warm sun, and brushed against a Parrotface. This creature whirled about at Feric's touch, clacking its great bony beak at him indignantly for a moment until it recognized him for what he was. Then, of course, the Parrotface lowered its rheumy gaze, instantly gave off flapping its obscenely mutated teeth, and muttered a properly humble "Your pardon, Trueman."
For his part, Feric did not acknowledge the creature one way or the other, and quickly continued on up the street staring determinedly straight ahead.
However, a few dozen yards up the street, a familiar floating feeling wafted gently through Feric's mind; this indeed gave him pause, for long experience had taught him that this psychic aura was sure indication that a Dominator was in the area. Sure enough, when Feric studied the row of shacks to his right, his eyes confirmed the proximity of a Dom, and the dominance pattern was hardly the subtlest he had ever encountered either.
Five stalls sat on the street all in a line, presided over by three dwarfs, a Blueskin-Toadman mongrel with warty blue skin, and a Lizardman. All of these creatures displayed the slackness of expression and deadness of eye characteristic of mutants captured in a long-standing dominance pattern. The stalls themselves held meat, fruit, and vegetables in a loathsome state of advanced decay that should have rendered them totally unsalable, even by Borgravian standards. Nevertheless, hordes of mongrels and mutants flocked around these stands, snapping up the putrid goods at inflated prices without so much as a moment's haggling.
Only the presence of a Dominator in the vicinity could account for such behavior. Gormond was richly infested with the monstrosities, since they naturally preferred large cities where victims abounded; that such a minor town as this was infected was clear indication to Feric that Borgravia was even further under the spell of Zind than he had imagined. His immediate impulse was to pause, seek out the Dom, and wring the monster's neck, but upon a moment's reflection, he decided that freeing a few wretched and worthless mutants from a dominance pattern was not really worth delaying his long-awaited exit from the cesspit of Borgravia a moment longer. Therefore, he continued on his way.
At last, the street petered out and became a path through an unwholesome grove of stunted pine trees with purplish needles and twisted trunks covered with cankers.
Though this could hardly be described as a scene of beauty, it was certainly a welcome respite from the boisterous foulness of the town itself. Shortly, the path turned slightly to the north, and began to parallel the south bank of the Ulm.
Here Feric paused to stare northward across the wide calm waters of the river which demarked this section of the border between the fester of Borgravia and the High Republic of Heldon. Across the Ulm, the stately, genotypically pure oaks of the Emerald Wood marched in wooden ranks to the north bank of the river. To Feric, these genetically spotless trees growing out of the rich, uncontaminated black soil of Heldon epitomized what the High Republic stood for in an otherwise mongrelized and degenerate earth. As the Emerald Wood was a forest of genetically pure trees, so was Heldon itself a forest of genetically pure men, standing like a palisade against the mutated monstrosities of the genetic garbage heaps that surrounded the High Republic.
As he proceeded farther up the path, the Ulm bridge became visible, a graceful arch of hewn stone and oiled stainless steel, an obvious product of superior Helder craftsmanship. Feric hastened his stride, and was soon able to note with satisfaction that Heldon had forced the wretched Borgravians to accept the humiliation of a Helder customs fortress on the Borgravian end of the bridge. The black, red, and white building astride the entrance to the bridge was painted in the Helder colors in lieu of a proper flag, but to Feric it still proudly proclaimed that no near-man would be permitted to contaminate an inch of pure human soil. As long as Heldon kept itself genetically pure and rigorously enforced its racial purity laws, the hope still lived that the earth might once again be the sole property of the true human race.
Several paths from various directions converged on the customs fortress and, strangely enough, a sorry collection of mongrels and mutants were queued up outside the public portal, which was guarded by two purely ceremonial customs troops, armed only with standard-issue steel truncheons. It was a peculiar business indeed, for most of these creatures had no hope of passing a cursory examination by a blind moron. An obvious Lizardman stood right behind a creature whose legs had an extra joint. There were Blueskins and humpback dwarfs, an Egghead, and mongrels of all kinds; in short, a typical cross section of Borgravian citizenry. What deluded these poor devils into supposing that their like would be permitted to cross the bridge into Heldon? Feric wondered as he took his place in line behind a plain-dressed Borgravian with no apparent genetic defect.
For his own part, Feric was more than prepared for the thorough genetic examination he would have to undergo before being certified a pure human and admitted to the High Republic; he welcomed the ordeal and heartily approved of its stringency. Although his spotless pedigree virtually assured certification, he had, at some pains and no little expense, verified his genetic purity beforehand, or at least done so to the extent possible in a country inhabited chiefly by mutants and mutant-human mongrels, where, no doubt, the genetic analysts themselves were thoroughly contaminated. Had both his parents not held certificates, had his pedigree not been spotless for ten generations, had he not been conceived in Heldon itself, though forced by the banishing of his father for so-called war crimes to endure a birth in Borgravia, Feric would not have dared to presume to seek admittance to the spiritual and racial homeland he had never seen. Though instantly acknowledged as a true man on sight throughout Borgravia and verified as such by what passed for genetic science in that mongrelized state, he eagerly looked forward to the only confirmation of his genetic purity that really counted: acceptance as a citizen by the High Republic of Heldon, sole bastion of the true genotype of man.
Why then did such patently contaminated material presume to attempt to pass Helder customs? The Borgravian in front of him was a fair example.
True his surface veneer of genetic purity was marred only by an acrid chemical odor exuded by his skin, but such an obvious somatic aberration was sure indication of thoroughly contaminated genetic material. The Helder genetic analyst would spot it in an instant, even without recourse to instruments. The Treaty of Karmak had forced Heldon to open its borders, but only to certifiable humans. Perhaps the answer was merely the pathetic desire of even the most genetically debased mongrel to gain admittance to the brotherhood of true men, a desire sometimes strong enough to override reason or the truth in the mirror.
At any rate, the queue was moving along quite swiftly into the customs fortress; no doubt very rapid processing and rejection of most of the Borgravians was taking place inside. It was not long before Feric passed by the portal guards, through the portal itself, and stood on what might in a sense be regarded as Helder soil for the first time in his life.
The interior of the customs fortress was unmistakably Helder, in sharp contrast to everything else south of the Ulm, where unfortunate circumstance had confined Feric during his growth to manhood. The large antechamber had a floor of smart red, black, and white tile, and similarly styled paintwork embellished the polished oaken walls. The chamber was brightened by powerful electric globes. What a far cry from the crudely finished, poured concrete interiors and tallow candles of the typical Borgravian public building!

A few yards inside the portal, a Helder customs guard in a somewhat slovenly gray uniform with tarnished brasswork divided the queue into two streams. All the more obvious mutants and mongrels were directed across the chamber and out through a door in the far wall. Feric approved heartily, there was no point in wasting the time of a genetic analyst with shambling quasi-humans such as these. An ordinary customs guard was quite qualified to dismiss them without further examination. The smaller number of hopefuls that the guard directed through a nearer door included quite a number of very dubious cases, such as the foul-smelling Borgravian who preceded Feric, but nothing on the order of a Blueskin or Parrotface.
However, as he approached the guard, Feric noticed a strange and disquieting thing. The guard seemed to nod to a good many of the mutants he guided into the reject line as if acknowledging familiarity; moreover, the Borgravians themselves acted as if they knew the drill, and, strangest of all uttered not a word of protest at their exclusion, indeed displayed little emotion at all. Could it be that these sorry creatures were all so below the human geno-type in intelligence that they were incapable of retaining memories for more than a day or so and thus returned day after day ritualistically?
Feric had heard that such fixated behavior was not unknown in the real genetic sinkholes of Cressia and Arbona, but he had never observed anything of the like in Borgravia, where the gene pool was constantly enriched by the exile of native-born Helder who could not quite be certified true humans, but who certainly were close enough to bring the level of the Borgravian gene pool far above that of places like Arbona or Zind.
As Feric reached the head of the queue, the customs guard addressed him in a flat, rather bored tone. "Day pass, citizen, or citizen candidate?"
"Citizen candidate," Feric replied crisply. Surely the only conceivable pass into Heldon was an official certificate of genetic purity! Either you already held Helder citizenship or you applied for certification and were found pure or you were refused admission to Heldon. What was this impossible third category?
The guard directed Feric into the smaller line with no more significant a gesture than the slack nodding of his head in the indicated direction.
There was a pattern in all this, something about the whole tone of the operation, that Feric found profoundly disturbing, a wrongness that seemed to hover in the air, a deadness, a definite lack of the traditional Helder snap and dash. Had their daily isolation on the Borgravian side of the Ulm had some subtle detrimental effect on the esprit and will of these genetically robust Helder?
Wrapped in these somewhat somber musings, Feric followed the queue through the indicated doorway and into a long narrow room paneled in pine set off tastefully with ornately carved wooden trim depicting typical scenes from the Emerald Wood. A counter of black stone, polished to a high gloss and accented with inlaid stainless steel, ran down the length of the room, separating the queue from the four Helder customs officers who stood behind it.
These fellows seemed fine specimens of true humanity, but their uniforms were somewhat slovenly, and a certain proper soldierliness was absent from their bearing. They looked more like clerks in a money depository or a public post office than customs troops manning a citadel of genetic purity.
Feric's uneasiness grew as the sour-reeking Borgravian preceding him finished his short interview with the first of the officers, wiped fingerprint ink off his hands with a rather soiled cloth, and followed the queue on down the line to the next Helder official. At the far end of the long room, Feric perceived the entrance to the bridge itself, where a guard armed with a truncheon and a pistol seemed to be passing an extremely dubious collection of genetic baggage on through to Heldon. In fact there was an insane perfunctory air about the whole operation.
The first Helder officer was young, blond, and a prime example of the true human genotype; moreover, though Feric sensed a certain laxness in his demeanor, his uniform was better tailored than most of the others Feric had noticed, freshly pressed, and the brasswork was at least untarnished, if not exactly gleaming. Before him on the shiny black counter were a pile of forms, a scriber, a blotter, a soiled scrap of cloth, and an inkpad.
The officer looked Feric straight in the eye, but the manliness of his gaze lacked a certain conviction. "Do you hold a certificate of genetic purity issued by the High Republic of Heldon?" he asked formally.
"I am applying for certification and admission to the High Republic as a Citizen and a true man," Feric replied with a dignity he hoped was sufficient to the occasion. "So," the officer muttered diffidently, reaching for his scriber and the top form on the pile, and averting his blue eyes from Feric's person. "Let us dispose of the formalities. Name?"
"Feric Jaggar," Feric answered proudly, hoping for a flicker of recognition. For although Heermark Jaggar had only been a cabinet subofficial at the time of the peace of Karmak, there were surely those in the fatherland who Still revered the names of the martyrs of Karmak. But the guard showed no recognition of the honor implicit in Feric's pedigree and wrote the name on the form in a casual, even somewhat imprecise hand.
"Place of birth?"
"Gormond, Borgravia."
"Present citizenship?"
Feric winced somewhat as he was forced to admit his technical Borgravian nationality. "However," he felt constrained to add, "both my parents were native Helder, certificate holders, and pure humans. My father was Heermark Jaggar, who, served as undersecretary of genetic evaluation during the Great War."
"Surely you realize that not even the most illustrious pedigree can guarantee even a native-born Helder certification as a true man." Feric's fair skin reddened. "I merely wish to point out that my father was exiled not for genetic contamination but for service to Heldon. Like many other good Helder, he was victimized by the loathsome Treaty of Karmak."
"It's none of my affair," the officer replied, inking Feric's fingertips and applying them to the proper boxes engraved on the form. "I'm not much interested in politics."
"Genetic purity is the politics of human survival!" Feric snapped.
"I suppose it is," the officer muttered inanely, handing him the odious ink rag, contaminated by the fingers of the mongrel in the queue before him, and by fate only knew how many others before that. Feric gingerly removed the ink from his fingers as best he could with a small unsoiled corner of the rag, while the young officer passed his form along to the Helder on his right.
This officer was an older man with trimly cropped gray hair and a dignified waxed mustache; obviously he had been an impressive figure in his prime. Now his eyes were red and rheumy as if from fatigue, and his shoulders stooped as if with the actual physical weight of the tremendous responsibility they metaphorically bore, for on the shoulder of his tunic was the red caducous in the black fist emblematic of the genetic analyst. The analyst glanced at the form, then spoke in a diffident voice, without looking directly at Feric. "Trueman Jaggar, I am Doctor Heimat. It will be necessary to perform certain tests before issuing you a certificate of genetic purity."
Feric could scarcely credit his ears. What sort of genetic analyst was this that would so state the obvious while implicitly granting him the honorific of "Trueman" beforehand? Where was their sufficient cause to explain the slackness and incredible lack of rigor in the bearing and manner of the men manning this customs fortress?
Heimat passed the form to the underling at his right, a somewhat slender, fair young man with chestnut hair bearing the ensign of a scribe on his uniform. As the paper was handed over, Feric's attention was momentarily drawn to this scribe, and his puzzlement was instantly resolved in the most horrifying manner conceivable.
For although the scribe appeared genetically pure to all but the highly sensitized eye, Feric knew for a certainty that this was a Dom!
He could not have precisely specified the characteristics of the scribe which marked him as a Dominator, but the total gestalt of the creature's presense fairly shrieked Dom at him through all his known and perhaps several unknown senses: a certain rodential gleam in the creature's eyes, a subtle smugness about his bearing. Perhaps there were other guideposts that Feric perceived on an entirely subliminal level: a wrongness in the body odor detectable only to the back reaches of his brain, an actual broadcast of electromagnetic energy subtle enough to arouse his suspicion even though the dominance field was not being directed at his own person. Perhaps it was simply that Feric, a true man isolated for the most part among mutants and mongrels in a land heavily influenced by the Doms, had developed a psychic sensitivity to their presence that Helder who dwelt among their own kind lacked. At any rate, though constantly exposed to Dominators throughout his life, Feric had never been snared in a Dom's mental net, though at times his will had been severely taxed. This continuous exposure certainly enabled him to sniff out a Dom, whatever the subtleties of his method might be.
And standing there before him with scriber and form in hand at the very shoulder of a Helder genetic analyst in a most critical position was one of the loathsome creatures!
It explained everything. The whole garrison must be ensnared in varying degrees in the dominance pattern that this seemingly insignificant scribe had no doubt slowly and painstakingly constructed. It was monstrous!
But what could be done? How could men trapped in the dominance net themselves be convinced of the presence of their master?
Heimat had a small panoply of his science's paraphernalia out before him, but it seemed a paltry display; the Borgravian quack he had been forced to settle for in Gormond had employed a broader spectrum of tests than the Helder had equipped himself to perform.
He handed Feric a large blue balloon. "Breathe into this, please," he said.
"It's been chemically treated so that only the biochemical breath-profile associated with the pure human genotype will turn it green." Feric exhaled into, the balloon, knowing full well that this was one of the most basic of tests; innumerable mongrels had been known to have passed it, and, moreover, it was totally ineffective in weeding out Doms.
Presently, the balloon turned a bright green. "Breath analysis, positive," Heimat called out, and the Dominator scribe, without looking at either of them, made the appropriate mark on the form.
The analyst handed Feric a glass vial. "Expectorate into this, please. I will subject the composition of your saliva to chemical analysis."
Feric spat into the vial, wishing fervently that it were the face of the Dominator, who now looked up and stared at him with an infuriatingly feigned mildness.
Doctor Heimat diluted the saliva with water, then pipetted a bit of the liquid into each of a rack of ten glass tubes.
From a series of bottles, he decanted various chemicals into the tubes, so that the clear liquid in each turned colors: black, aqua, yellow, brickorange, aqua again, red, once more yellow, yet again aqua, purple, and opaque white.
"Saliva analysis, one hundred percent perfect," the genetic analyst called out. This test, taking ten separate characteristics of pure human saliva separately as genetic criteria rather than merely testing the total biochemical gestalt, had perforce a much greater precision. However, there were dozens of mutations from the true human norm that were in no way linked to the composition of saliva or breath, including the Dominator mutation itself, which could not be smelled out by somatic tests at all.
Feric glared at the Dominator, daring the creature to test his will and reveal his true colors. But of course the scribe directed no psychic energies in his direction. Why should he expose himself to a passing stranger and thus risk the dissolution of his dominance pattern, when circumstances foreclosed the possibility of adding him to the string?
Doctor Heimat affixed the twin electrodes of a P-meter to the skin of Feric's right palm with a gummy vegetable adhesive. The P-meter consisted of a device for detecting the minute changes in bioelectricity generated by psychic responses, and a pen-and-drum apparatus for recording the resultant psychic profile. Its adherents claimed that, properly used, it was efficacious in the detection of Doms.
But it was impossible to be certain that the Doms had no conscious control over their psychic discharges and, therefore, could not feign a genotypically human profile by carefully calculated acts of will.
"I'm going to make a series of statements and record your psychic responses," Heimat informed Feric diffidently. "You need not react verbally; the instrument is designed to measure your inward reaction."
He then reeled off a set of stock statements quickly, mechanically, and without apparent emotion. "The human race is doomed to certain extinction. The human genotype is the best true breed of sapient animal yet evolved. No genetic material could have passed through the Time of Fire entirely uncontaminated. The highest instinct of any sapient species must be to perpetuate its kind at the expense of all other sapient species.
Love is a cultural sublimation of sexual lust. I would sacrifice my own life for a comrade or lover." And so forth; a list of stimuli designed to elicit different patterns of psychic response from true men than from mutants and mongrels, especially Doms. Feric was quite dubious of the test's total validity, for a Dominator who could anticipate the order of statements by inside information or other means might very well be able to tailor his responses appropriately by filling his mind with thoughts calculated to produce the "human" galvanic response proper to the various statements. Still, when combined with a battery of more rigorous tests, it had considerable use; all but the most dominantly human mongrels, and perhaps the Doms, would be weeded out.
Upon completion of the statements, Heimat glanced perfunctorily at the pattern enscribed by the pen on the drum and announced: "P-meter profile, positive."
The Dominator scribe handed the analyst the form.
This the fellow signed, proclaiming: "Trueman Jaggar, I hereby certify you a pure example of the uncontaminated human genotype and verify your right to citizenship in the High Republic of Heldon." Feric was aghast. "That's all?" he demanded. "Three superficial tests and you grant me a certificate of genetic purity? This is an outrage! A quarter of the rabble of Zind could weasel past this farce!"
As he uttered these words, Feric felt a certain pressure against the ramparts of his mind, a lightning thrust of psychic energy aimed at the core of his will. For an instant, the vain and foolish nature of the fuss he was raising seemed glaringly apparent: a reasonable man did not rave like this in public; to continue in this way would vex any number of pleasant and harmless beings. Much the best course would be to melt into the ebb and flow of cosmic destiny and eschew the fruitlessness of resistance to the will of one's betters.
But even as the psyche of the Dominator reached out to sap his will, Feric, out of long experience, recognized the will-less pleasant drifting feeling for what it was: a Dom attempting to draw him into his net. Feric determinedly stoked the fires of his formidable will with the torch of righteous hate for these soulless creatures who would displace the supremacy of true men with their own obscene reign, whose highest emotion was the desire to exterminate their genetic superiors, who sought to turn the earth into their own squalid pigpen. Although the scribe showed no outward sign of either his attempt at domination or of its successful repulsion, Feric felt the horrid will-less moment dissolve in the fires of his fierce hate.
"Surely I, as a genetic analyst, am more capable of judging genetic purity than you are as a layman," Heimat had been saying while the psychic contest was fought and won.
"With three tests?" Feric said. "An evaluation of proper rigor would involve at least several dozen tests including tissue, blood, urine, tear, feces, and semen analysis."

"Such an examination would consume too much time to be practical," the analyst said. "Few men with contaminated genetic material can pass these simple tests, and those who can are human for all practical purposes any-way, aren't they?"
Feric could contain himself no longer. "The creature beside you is a Dom" he shouted. "You are enmeshed in a dominance pattern! Exert your will and free yourself at once!"
Those behind him in the queue looked alarmed; even some of the clearly dubious mongrels seemed dismayed, as well they might. For a moment, the room was on the verge of uproar; then the faces of all seemed to dissolve into bland blankness as the Dom acted to preserve himself.
"You are clearly in error, Trueman Jaggar," Doctor Heimat said with utter mildness. "Lance Corporal Mork is a certified true man; surely you can see that if this were not so he would hardly be wearing the uniform of Heldon."
"Perhaps Trueman Jaggar is simply unfamiliar with the ways of Heldon, sir," Mork suggested with an irony audible only to himself and to Feric, the only man in the room who shared his grim secret, and who apparently could do nothing to harm him. "No doubt had any of us been forced to grow to manhood surrounded by mutants, mongrels, and Godknows what, we too might be seeing Doms in every nook and cranny."
Mork stared at Feric without a trace of a smile on his face or a hint of emotion in his eyes, but Feric could well imagine the satanic glee with which he was enjoying this moment.
Doctor Heimat returned Feric's form to Mork, who passed it on to the final officer behind the counter. "You have now been certified a true human, whether you think the tests were adequate or not, Trueman Jaggar," he said.
"You may accept citizenship or not as you please, but in any case, you are holding up the line."
Furious, but knowing that further conversation with Heimat or the treacherous Mork would prove pointless, Feric stalked down to the last official. The man who stood glancing at his form was a square, hard, bluff true man in prolonged late middle age, with iron-colored hair and a trim beard to match. The ribbons on his tunic announced that he was no peacetime soldier, but an old warrior who had seen honorable action in the Great War.
Nevertheless, the diffidence in his bearing and the slight lack of proper manliness in his eyes betrayed the sad fact that he, too, was enmeshed in the dominance pattern. Still a fellow such as this might well be encouraged to exert his will and fracture the pattern.
"You, sir," Feric said crisply, "do you not detect a certain slackness in your will, an unmanly readiness to go along with the flow of events?
Surely an old soldier such as yourself must realize that all is not well in this garrison."
The officer placed Feric's form in the orifice of a complex duplicating device. "Please look straight ahead at the red dot above the lens of the machine," he said.
Feric froze automatically for a second during which the officer threw a switch on the side of the duplicating machine. There was a very bright flash of light of extremely short duration; then a soft humming sound began in the bowels of the machine.
"You have been "certified a genotypically pure human, Trueman Feric Jaggar," the officer said mechanically. "In a moment I shall present you with your certificate. This must be displayed upon demand to any police, customs, or military official. Any tradesman may refuse your custom if you do not display your certificate upon request. You may not marry without it. Is this understood?"
"This is ridiculous!" Feric snapped. "Don't you realize that a river of contaminated genes must be gushing through this border crossing?"
"Do you understand the conditions of citizenship?" the officer repeated doggedly.
"Of course I understand! Don't you understand that you're under the influence of a Dominator?"
For a moment, the officer looked Feric square in the eye. Feric channeled every ounce of will he could muster into his gaze. A spark from his steely blue eyes seemed to jump the gap for a moment and glow fitfully in the pupils of the Helder officer.
"Surely, surely," the fellow muttered with a certain uneasiness, "surely you must be mistaken?"
At that moment, a chime rang inside the duplicator, and Feric's certificate dropped into the hopper. The sound caused the Helder officer to look away from Feric's eyes and Feric could sense that the fragile effect of the psychic counterforce he had been so strenuously projecting had been shattered by this caprice of circumstance.
The officer took the certificate from the hopper and handed it to Feric.
"By accepting this certificate, Trueman Jaggar," he said with perfunctory ceremony, "you accept all the rights and responsibilities of a citizen of the High Republic of Heldon and a certified true man. You may participate in the public life of Heldon, vote for and hold office, serve in the military forces of the High Republic, leave and enter the fatherland at will. You may not marry or propagate without the written permission of the Ministry of Genetic Purity, under pain of death. Knowing this, and of your own free will, do you accept citizenship in the High Republic of Heldon?"
Feric stared at the certificate which lay hard and smooth and glossy in his hand. On its clear plastic surface was engraved his name and date of certification, his fingertip patterns, his color photograph, and the signature of Doctor Heimat. This elegant artifact was suitably embellished with ornate scrollwork and swastikas in red and black which lent it a proper dignity of appearance. For years, even before his coming to manhood, Feric had dreamed of the moment when this sacred document would be his proudest possession. Now his appreciation of this moment was ruined by the defilement of the stringent genetic standards without which the certificate became a meaningless bit of plastic and pigment.
"Surely you are not going to reject Helder citizenship at this point?" the Helder officer said, displaying for the first time a hint of emotion, albeit nothing nobler than petty bureaucratic annoyance.
"I accept citizenship," Feric muttered, tucking the document carefully into his strong leather wallet which was firmly secured to his horsehide belt. As he strode toward the bridge entrance, he vowed that he would cling to this sacred privilege with more tenacity than this lot of sorry specimens had. He would avenge this outrage a thousandfold before he would let go of the Doms. A millionfold would still be insufficient.
Chapter Two.
A cool breeze swirled Feric's blue cloak about him as he stepped out onto the uncovered bridge over the Ulm.
The bridge bed consisted of wooden walkways on either side of a stone roadway, both wood and stone worn to polished smoothness by the passage of countless leather soles and latex wheels. The gentle wind blew across from Heldon, carrying the pleasant odor of the Emerald Wood to Feric's nostrils, helping to clear away the stink of the customs fortress and, for that matter, of all Borgravia.
With powerful strides, Feric set out across the bridge toward his destiny in the High Republic. A few steamers passed by him roaring smoke, clanging iron, hissing steam, but otherwise traffic seemed quite light, and the only pedestrians visible were perhaps a hundred yards ahead of him up the walkway. As a consequence, Feric was able to wrap himself in solitude as he walked, and contemplate what lay before him.
What lay before him was, in short, all that really mattered in the world: the High Republic of Heldon, in which the future of true humanity resided, if the true human genotype were to have a future at all. The states bordering the fatherland were comparatively rich in human genetic material, but since mongrels and mutants formed the vast bulk of their populaces, and had held political sway since the failure of the High Republic to crush their hold during the Great War, the likelihood that such governments would pass the stringent racial laws necessary to breed such debased gene pools back to the pure human genotype seemed nil. It had taken Heldon several centuries of rigorous enforcement of just such laws to purify the gene pool to the present degree, and even so Heldon had started with a clear majority of genotypically pure human stock, unlike the states around it, which at present swarmed with mutants and mongrels of the most obscene sort.
Beyond these states were such total cesspits as Arbona and Cressia where even the mutants themselves did not breed true from generation to generation, and to the east the vast Dominator-ruled pestilence of Zind.
Beyond that in all directions, naught but reeking contaminated wildlands with astronomical geiger counts, where nothing could live beside stomach-turning things resembling ambulatory carcinomas, animal and human stock mutated beyond all hope of recognition. No, only Heldon was the bastion of true humanity, and if the world were to one day be genetically pure again, it would have to be done by force of Helder arms.
Feric pondered his place in the common human destiny as his long, powerful strides carried him closer to the dozen or so figures on the walkway ahead of him. As a young man in Borgravia, he had easily mastered several areas of endeavor: the art of motive mechanics, the science of sloganeering, the crafts of interior and exterior design, clothing design, and pamphleteering. He had secured a livelihood from each of these sources at one time or another. Moreover, his pride in his true humanity, and the encouragement of his father, had caused him to study deeply the subjects of history, genetics, and military art for their own sakes. It seemed to Feric that a man of his varied skills would never lack for gainful employment.
His deepest desire, however, was not to enrich himself but to serve the cause of true humanity to the best of his ability. To this end, two choices seemed open to him in this new life in Heldon: embark upon a military career or enter politics. The choice was a difficult one. On the one hand, a military career promised the quickest road to concrete patriotic action, but only provided that the political leadership of the High Republic developed the will to properly employ its armed forces. On the other hand, politics was an avenue by which he might gain access to the very circles in which such decisions were made, but only by a tedious and deadening process of accommodation, wrangling, and weaseling, which struck Feric as essentially unmanly.
He resolved that he would not make such a momentous decision until destiny gave him a clear sign, one way or the other.
While he pondered these weighty affairs, the natural reflexes of his superb body and his consequent rapid gait bad carried him to within a few strides of his fellow immigrants on the bridge, and when he chanced to look up at them, his jaw fell open in amazement and dismay.
For there on the Ulm bridge, shuffling toward the bastion of genetic purity, was an incredible gaggle of the most blatant and disgusting mutants and mongrels imaginable! Here was a Parrotface whose mutated teeth formed an unmistakable beak. Here was a female Blueskin, and three humpbacked dwarfs, one with the Toadman warted skin as well.
And a manlike being whose gait clearly revealed two extra joints in his legs, alongside an Egghead with a grossly warped elipsoid skull. This was a sight common enough to the streets of Gormond, but on the bridge to Heldon, in a sense Helder territory itself, it was an inexplicable phantasm of horror.
Furiously, Feric broke into a near run, and caught up with the gristly menagerie in a few quick strides. "Halt!" he shouted. "What is the meaning of this?"
The collection of mutants came to a shambling halt and regarded Feric with a mixture of fear, befuddlement, and awe, which nevertheless seemed to him to have a hint of surliness.
"Your pleasure, Troeman?" the Parrotface croaked hoarsely in a vile voice which, however, seemed basically free of guile or malice.
"What are you folk doing on the bridge to Heldon?"
The quasi-men stared at him in what seemed to be genuine incomprehension. "We are traveling to the town of Ulmgam, Trueman," the female Blueskin finally ventured.
Were these creatures totally incapable of comprehending the impossibility of the situation? "How were you allowed on this bridge?"
Feric demanded. "Surely creatures such as yourselves will not presume to tell me that you are Helder citizens!"
"We travel on the customary day passes, Trueman," the Parrotface said.
"Day passes?" Feric muttered. Lord, were they actually issuing passes of entry to mutants? What treason to true humanity was this? "Let me see one of these passes," he commanded.
The Egghead reached into a greasy oilskin pouch which hung on a ragged thong about its neck and handed over a small red card. The card was made of cheap paperboard rather than plastic; nevertheless, it bore the Great Seal of Heldon and an engraved border of tiny locked swastikas, the traditional motif of the Ministry of Genetic Purity. In simple block lettering of a rather inelegant design, the card proclaimed:
"Day pass good for ten hours sojourn in Ulmgarn only on the date of May 14, 1142 A.F. Transgression of these terms punishable by death."
Thoroughly disgusted, Feric handed the card back. "Is this common practice?" he asked. "Are non citizens commonly admitted across the river for limited stays?"
"Provided there is a job to be done that true men, such as yourself, deem beneath their proper station," one of the dwarfs said.
So that was it! Feric had heard that Universalism was gaining popularity among the masses of Heldon, but he had scarcely imagined that the insidious doctrine promul-gated by the Doms had sufficient influence to actually weaken the stringency of the genetic purity laws. The Universalists demanded the breeding of mindless slave creatures to perform menial tasks, the sort of perversion of protoplasm that the Dominators practiced in Zind.
They were not yet powerful enough to achieve this unspeakable end, but apparently they had stirred up the slothful masses to the point where the craven government was actually permitting mutants to work in Heldon as a sop to this tendency.
"Revolting!" Feric muttered, and with a dozen long strides, he put the wretched quasi-humans behind him.
What he had seen thus far had deeply disturbed him. He had not yet entered Heldon proper, and already he had observed a customs fortress under the sway of a Dominator and a shocking relaxation of the genetic purity laws that could only be traced to the influence of Universalists.
Was the High Republic rotten to the core or merely contaminated around the edges? At any rate, his duty as a true man was clear: to exert his powers to the utmost to restore the rigor of the genetic purity laws, to work for their stringent, indeed fanatic enforcement, and to make full use of whatever opportunity destiny granted him to further this sacred cause.
With new determination and a growing sense of mission, Feric quickened his pace and fairly loped along the walkway toward the town of Ulmgarn and the great reaches of Heldon stretching majestically beyond.
The Ulm bridge debouched directly onto the main street of the town of Ulmgarn: an enameled sign atop a slim cast-iron pillar informed Feric that this substantial boulevard was known as Bridge Way. Before him was a spectacle that warmed his soul, burning away both the off-river breeze and the deeper chill of his encounters in the customs fortress and on the bridge. For the first time in his life, he beheld a town built by true men on uncontaminated soil and inhabitated by healthy specimens of the pure human genotype; what a difference from the sordid squalor and decay of Gormond!
In Gormond, the streets and walkways were naught but rude rocks pounded into the earth with hammers, on which one might expect to find the foulest of ordure and muck.

The streets of Ulmgarn were paved with smooth, perfectly maintained concrete, and the walkways, too, were of concrete artfully decorated with inlaid glazed bricks in yellow, gold, and green, and both were spotless.
In Gormond, the ordinary buildings were of sheet metal and timber, and the larger ones of unadorned poured concrete. Here the ordinary buildings were of glazed brick in a multitude of colorful hues, set off with lushly modeled wooden facings; the more majestic edifices were of rich, dark, polished stone, embellished with ornate brasswork facades and heroic statuary. Swarming on the streets of Gormond was a mongrel horde of Blueskins, dwarfs, Eggheads, Parrotfaces, Toadmen, countless other varieties of pure mutants and mongrelized crosses, and human mutant hybrids; a random collection of bits and pieces of dozens of different species cobbled together piecemeal and dressed for the most part in reeking rags. In grand contrast, the streets of Ulmgarn were graced by fine specimens of true humanity wherever the eye might fall: tall fair men with blond or brown hair, blue or green eyes, and all their parts of the proper order and in the right places, handsome women of the same coloring and configuration, and all dressed in a rich variety of garments of leather, nylon, linen, and silk, furs and velvets, adorned with silver and gold jewelry and many colored embroidery.
The whole generated a psychic aura of genetic and somatic health, a spirit of racial purity and high civilization, that uplifted Feric's soul and overwhelmed him with gratitude for and pride in his genetic good fortune. These beings were the crown of creation, and he was one of them!
Squaring his shoulders, Feric set off down the street in search of a meal, and thence to the roadsteamer station, for he planned to set off for the great southern Helder metropolis of Walder which lay just north of the Emerald Wood directly after an early dinner. There, in the second grandest city in the fatherland, he would perhaps tarry a while before traveling further to the capital of Heldhime, deep in the heart of the industrial center of Heldon. Surely his destiny lay in one or another of the great metropolises of the High Republic, rather than in the towns bordering the Ulm or the Emerald Wood.
Feric sauntered past shops offering all manner of riches and wonders. Here were stalls offering the bounty of the land, and shops purveying the finest of clothing for men and women. On Bridge Way, one could purchase the latest and most carefully crafted mechanical and electrical devices: steam engines for the home and the slave mechanisms they powered, clothes washers, wood-working tools, grain mills, pumps and winches of every conceivable sort. Other emporiums offered richly carved furniture, outer garments of leather or synthetic rubber of the highest quality and gloss, paints and turpentines, medicines and remedies famous even in Borgravia for their potency, every manner of civilized product one might imagine or desire.
Scattered among these shops were sundry eating houses and taverns.
Feric paused outside several of these in turn, sniffing the aromas which wafted out into the street and observing the clientele. Finally, he selected a large tavern called the Eagle's Nest, which was housed in a red brick building whose facade was embellished with painted scenes from the Blue Mountains. The central motif expressed in graphics the legend written above it: a large black eagle landing on its nest atop a snowcapped mountain. The doors to the tavern were opened wide, the smells drifting through them were pleasant enough, and from within came the vague sounds of some sort of fervent discussion. All in all, the place seemed appetizing to Feric's hunger, and the hubbub within piqued his curiosity.
Upon passing through the tavern door, Feric found himself in a large vaulted common room filled with sturdy wooden tables and benches.
Perhaps forty men or more were scattered about the room sitting at the tables and drinking beer from large ceramic mugs upon which the Eagle's Nest motif had been painted. The attention of perhaps half the men in the room was focused on a slight figure in a trimly cut green tunic who perched on the edge of a table against the far wall haranguing a small group clustered about him; the rest of the customers conversed with each other and were quiescent. Feric chose an empty table well within earshot of the slim, intense speaker, but somewhat outside the commotion that surrounded him. A waiter in a brown uniform with red piping approached him even as he seated himself.
"The present leadership of the High Republic, or more accurately the deadheads and simpletons who profane the seats of the Council Chamber with their unclean buttocks, has not the vaguest notion of the true threat to Heldon," the speaker was saying. Though there was a faint trace of superciliousness about his lips and a light hint of mockery in his voice, there was something about the very sardonic humor of his bright black eyes that drew Feric's attention and approval.
"Your pleasure, Trueman?" the waiter inquired, diverting Feric's attention momentarily.
"A mug of beer and a salad of lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, and whatever other vegetables you may have at hand that are fresh and uncooked."
The waiter gave Feric a somewhat arch look as he departed. Meat was, of course, the traditional staple in Heldon as elsewhere, and upon occasion Feric indulged himself with this questionable fare, since fanatic dedication to vegetarianism seemed to him both impractical and perhaps a bit unwholesome. Nevertheless, he knew full well that progress up the food chain from vegetable matter to meat concentrated the level of radioactive contamination of foodstuffs, and he therefore eschewed flesh as much as possible. His genetic purity was not his to squander on the indulgence of his appetite; in a higher sense it was the common property of the community of true men and demanded to be guarded as a racial trust. A peculiar look from a waiter now and then was not enough to keep him from sticking to his racial duty.
"And of course your buttocks would better grace the seat of power, eh Bogel?" bellowed a bluff fellow whose face was somewhat reddened by overconsumption of beer.
His comrades showed their appreciation of this remark with crude, albeit good-natured, laughter.
The speaker Bogel seemed to have been brought up short for a moment.
When his reply came, Feric sensed that it sprang not from inborn instinct but from a sharp, if somewhat cold and mechanical, intellectualization.
"I seek no personal power for myself," Bogel said impishly. "However if such a fine specimen as yourself urges a Council seat upon me, what an ingrate I would be to thwart your desires!"
This drew somewhat pallid laughter. Feric directed closer attention to the men attending Bogel. They seemed divided up into two rough classes: those few who were paying serious and rapt attention, and those in the majority who seemed to regard the dapper little man with his bright eyes and thin saturnine features as some sort of comic entertainment.
Nevertheless, both groups seemed to be composed of the same sort of fellow by and large: middle-aged, two-fisted beer drinkers, shopkeepers, craftsmen and farmers by the look of them, plain honest folk whose understanding of affairs of state could hardly be deemed profound. It seemed to Feric as if this Bogel overestimated his audience, putting on, as he did, an air of intellectual sarcasm and superiority in a public tavern.
"Thus might a Dominator speak!" another fellow roared. There was more loud laughter, but this tune tinged with a certain uneasy quality.
For the first time, a certain fire became evident in Bogel's eyes.
"Thus might speak a Universalist sympathizer or a man enmeshed in a dominance pattern," he said. "The Human Renaissance Party is the deadly enemy of the Dom and his Universalist dupes and lackeys; no one denies this, least of all the scum themselves. Ridicule of the Party or its leadership therefore serves the interest of the Dominators. How do we know that such words were not put in your mouth by an inhuman master?"
With this Bogel smiled, indicating that this was meant as jest. However this subtlety seemed totally lost on the poor fellow's audience; countenances darkened and a certain surly atmosphere began to build.
Clearly this Bogel, while obviously possessed of a keen mind, had no instinct for moving men in the desired direction with oratory.
"You dare suggest that I am on a Dominator's string, you pathetic wretch!"
Bogel seemed somewhat lost; certainly he had not wanted to provoke anger against himself, but just as certainly that was rapidly becoming the result of his words. At this point, the waiter arrived with Feric's salad and beer. Feric sipped diffidently at the beer and picked at the food, intent now, for some reason he barely understood, on studying the drama being played out before him.
Bogel smiled somewhat weakly. "Come, come, my friend," he said.
"Don't be so solemn and serious-minded. I accuse no one here of being on a Dominator's string. Though, on the other hand, how can any of us ever be sure that anyone else is not enmeshed in a dominance pattern? That's the insidious horror of the creatures: true men such as ourselves cannot fully trust each other as long as one wretched Dom still lives within the borders of Heldon."
This seemed to mollify the crowd somewhat, at least to the point where Bogel was allowed to continue.
"This bickering among us is an object lesson in the depths to which Heldon has sunk under the present limp-wristed regime," he pointed out.
"I'd stake my life on the fact that there isn't a true man here who wouldn't reach out to wring a Dom's neck if such a creature were to make itself apparent. Yet you shrink at supporting a party dedicated to ruthlessly rooting these vermin out. There isn't a true man here who would not slay his own offspring should that child betray the human race by mating with a mutant or a hybrid. Yet, tempted by sloth, you go along when the Council, under Universalist pressure, relaxes the genetic purity laws in order to allow foreign mutants to enter Heldon to do work that the lackeys of the Doms have convinced you is beneath your station. Surely in a town such as Ulmgam, in such close proximity to the Borgravian pestilence, good Helder such as yourselves would be up in arms and ready to flock to the standard of the Human Renaissance Party in droves, once I proclaimed our dedication to the preservation of the racial purity of Heldon and the ouster of the fools on the Council who to curry favor with slackers and rabble would betray the iron rigor of our genetic purity laws!"
"Well spoken!" Feric felt constrained to utter aloud. His voice, however, was lost in the general cheering, for suddenly Bogel had touched his audience in their simple yet noble sense of racial pride. Others in the tavern now gave over their private conversation and turned their attention to the slim, dark-haired speaker.
"Or so I in my naive musings imagined when I decided to journey from Walder to these border regions in search of support for our cause," Bogel continued after the ovation had subsided. "But instead of a righteously enraged citizenry, what did I find? Slothful slaggards too bemused by the prospect of having lesser beings take their tasks upon themselves to protest this outrage! Naive bumpkins who believe that all Doms have been driven out of Heldon because a government of fools and racial eunuchs tells them so!"
It was too much for Feric to bear. This Bogel obviously spoke out as a true patriot. His speech had cogency, his cause was just and more than worthy of support, he had momentarily captured the hearts of his audience, and yet now he had thrown away his moment by indulging in tortured self-pity instead of building to a roaring demand for concrete and ruthless action. Instead of cheers, he was drawing renewed hostility.
The man was a good speaker as such, but a clear failure as a political agitator. Perhaps, though, the situation could be saved.
Feric leaped to his feet and shouted in a bold, clear voice:
"There are those of us here who are neither slaggards nor naïve bumpkins!" This voicing of the crowd's own hostility insantly drew all attention to him; Bogel himself did not attempt to interfere, since Feric's words had revealed to his sharp mind the foul situation he had put himself in. All waited anxiously to hear Feric's next words, would he attack the speaker or speak in his defense?
"There are those of us here to whom your words are a ringing challenge!" Feric continued, noting that Bogel's eyes had brightened, his thin lips creased in a smile.
"There are those of us here who will not tolerate the impudence of mutants or the contamination of human soil by one instant of their unclean presence. There are those of us here who are ready to rip Doms apart with our bare hands when we see them. True men! Pure men! Men fanatically dedicated not merely to the preservation of the racial purity of the present High Republic of Heldon but to the extension of the absolute rule of true men to every humanly habitable spot on the surface of this sorry earth!
In the heart of even the most slothful slaggard lives this hero willing to take up arms to preserve the pure human genotype! Our very genes cry out, exclude the mutant!
Drive him before you! Slay the Dom wherever you find him!"
The audience broke into hearty prolonged cheers. As the cheering went on, Feric observed that every pair of eyes in the tavern was upon him; lines of psychic energy seemed to connect the center of his being with the heart of every man in the room. It was as if the wills of the audience fed their full power into his own will, which in turn returned their fervor to them magnified tenfold, in an ever-building spiral of psychic power that flooded and enlarged his being, a massive racial force that was his to direct where he willed. A sudden inspiration struck him: he would give this energy a concrete outlet, a target.
"And a Dom may be found not far from this very place," Feric continued when the cheering had lapsed.
"Yes, there is a Dominator in your midst, and in the most monstrous place conceivable! This creature is within the reach of your fists at this very moment!"
A silence descended upon the room into which Bogel spoke: "It's men like you that the Party needs, Trueman!
Tell us, where is this hidden Dominator? I warrant there isn't a man here now not ready to rip him to pieces!"
Feric was quite pleased that Bogel had caught the spirit of the moment. His cause had merit, it was the cause of true humanity; his efforts deserved reward.
"Incredibly enough, a Dominator has secreted himself in the heart of the customs fortress on the Ulm bridge entrusted with protecting your genetic purity," Feric said.
"He holds the entire garrison in a dominance pattern!"
A horrified gasp issued from the men in the tavern. Instantly, Feric went on. "Think of the horror of it! This stinking monstrosity has secured certification and serves as a scribe to the genetic analyst empowered to grant certification to prospective citizens. From this citadel, he saps the will of the garrison and the analyst so that a veritable river of contaminated genes may gush into this area like the contents of a sewer to poison the posterity of your sons and daughters! Further, there is no one in the garrison not enmeshed in this pattern, no one able to dislodge the foul beast or smash his net!"

A din of angry muttering filled the tavern now. They were clearly ready to carry out the racial will as he directed. Their deepest instinct had been fully aroused, the iron determination to protect the human species. A fire had been ignited which could only be quenched in Dominator blood.
"What are we waiting for?" Feric bellowed. "We have our hands, and some of us are ar