Philip Dick - The Man in the High Castle

“Just a little,” Pferdehuf said. “Quite a fire-eater. He should be about eighty, now. Seems to me he advocated some sort of crash program to get Japan into space.”

“On that he failed,” Reiss said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s coming here for medical purposes,” Pferdehuf said. “There’ve been a number of old Japanese military men here to use the big U. C. Hospital. That way they can make use of German surgical techniques they can’t get at home. Naturally they keep it quiet. Patriotic reasons, you know. So perhaps we should have somebody at the U.C. Hospital watching, if Berlin wants to keep their eye on him.”

Reiss nodded. Or the old general might be involved in commercial speculations, a good deal of which went on in San Francisco. Connections he had made while in service would be of use to him now that he was retired. Or was he retired? The message called him General , not Retired General .

“As soon as you have the picture.” Reiss said, “pass copies right on to our people at the airport and down at the harbor. He may have already come in. You know how long it takes them to get this sort of thing to us.” And of course if the general had already reached San Francisco, Berlin would be angry at the PSA consulate. The consulate should have been able to intercept him—before the order from Berlin had even been sent.

Pferdehuf said, “I’ll stamp-date the coded radiogram from Berlin, so if any question comes up later on, we can show exactly when we received it. Right to the hour.”

“Thank you,” Reiss said. The people in Berlin were past masters at transferring responsibility, and he was weary of being stuck. It had happened too many times. “Just to be on the safe side,” he said, “I think I’d better have you answer that message. Say, ‘Your instructions abysmally tardy. Person already reported in area. Possibility of successful intercept remote at this stage.’ Put something along those lines into shape and send it. Keep it good and vague. You understand.”

Pferdehuf nodded. “I’ll send it right off. And keep a record of the exact date and moment it was sent.” He shut the door after him.

You have to watch out, Reiss reflected, or all at once you find yourself consul to a bunch of niggers on an island off the coast of South Africa. And the next you know, you have a black mammy for a mistress, and ten or eleven little pickaninnies calling you daddy.

Reseating himself at his breakfast table he lit an Egyptian Simon Arzt Cigarette Number 70, carefully reclosing the metal tin.

It did not appear that he would be interrupted for a little while now, so from his briefcase he took the book he had been reading, opened to his placemark, made himself comfortable, and resumed where he had last been forced to stop.

…Had he actually walked streets of quiet cars, Sunday morning peace of the Tiergarten, so far away? Another life. Ice cream, a taste that could never have existed. Now they boiled nettles and were glad to get them. God, he cried out. Won’t they stop? The huge British tanks came on. Another building, it might have been an apartment house or a store, a school or office; he could not tell—the ruins toppled, slid into fragments. Below in the rubble another handful of survivors buried, without even the sound of death. Death had spread out everywhere equally, over the living, the hurt, the corpses layer after layer that already had begun to smell. The stinking, quivering corpse of Berlin, the eyeless turrets still upraised, disappearing without protest like this one, this nameless edifice that man had once put up with pride.

His arms, the boy noticed, were covered with the film of gray, the ash, partly inorganic, partly the burned sifting final produce of life. All mixed now, the boy knew, and wiped it from him. He did not think much further; he had another thought that captured his mind if there was thinking to be done over the screams and the hump hump of the shells. Hunger. For six days he had eaten nothing but the nettles, and now they were gone. The pasture of weeds had disappeared into a single vast crater of earth. Other dim, gaunt figures had appeared at the rim, like the boy, had stood silent and then drifted away. An old mother with a babushka tied about her gray head, basket—empty—under her arm. A one-armed man, his eyes empty as the basket. A girl. Faded now back into the litter of slashed trees in which the boy Eric hid.

And still the snake came on.

Would it ever end? the boy asked, addressing no one. And if it did, what then? Would they fill their bellies, these—

“Freiherr,” Pferdehuf’s voice came. “Sorry to interrupt you. Just one word.”

Reiss jumped, shut his book. “Certainly.”

How that man can write, he thought. Completely carried me away. Real. Fall of Berlin to the British, as vivid as if it had actually taken place. Brrr. He shivered.

Amazing, the power of fiction, even cheap popular fiction, to evoke. No wonder it’s banned within Reich territory; I’d ban it myself. Sorry I started it. But too late; must finish, now.

His secretary said, “Some seamen from a German ship. They’re required to report to you.”

“Yes,” Reiss said. He hopped to the door and out to the front office. There the three seamen wearing heavy gray sweaters, all with thick blond hair, strong faces, a trifle nervous. Reiss raised his right hand. “Heil Hitler.” He gave them a brief friendly smile.

“Heil Hitler,” they mumbled. They began showing him their papers.

As soon as he had certified their visit to the consulate, he hurried back into his private office.

Once more, alone, he reopened The Grasshopper Lies Heavy .

His eyes fell on a scene involving Hitler. Now he found himself unable to stop; he began to read the scene out of sequence, the back of his neck burning.

The trial, he realized, of Hitler. After the close of the war. Hitler in the hands of the Allies, good God. Also Goebbels, Göring, all the rest of them. At Munich. Evidently Hitler was answering the American prosecutor.

…black, flaming, the spirit of old seemed for an instant once again to blaze up. The quivering, shambling body jerked taut; the head lifted. Out of the lips that ceaselessly drooled, a croaking half-bark, half-whisper. “Deutsche, hier steh’ Ich.” Shudders among those who watched and listened, the earphones pressed tightly, strained faces of Russian, American, British and German alike. Yes, Karl thought. Here he stands once more… they have beaten us—and more. They have stripped this superman , shown him for what he is. Only a…

“Freiherr.”

Reiss realized that his secretary had entered the office. “I”m busy,” he said angrily. He slammed the book shut. “I’m trying to read this book, for God’s sake!”

It was hopeless. He knew it.

“Another coded radiogram is coming in from Berlin.” Pferdehuf said. “I caught a glimpse of it as they started decoding it. It deals with the political situation.”

“What did it say?” Reiss murmured, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and fingers.

“Doctor Goebbels has gone on the radio unexpectedly. A major speech.” The secretary was quite excited. “We’re supposed to take the text—they’re transmitting it out of code—and make sure it’s printed by the press, here.”

“Yes, yes,” Reiss said.

The moment his secretary had left once more. Reiss reopened the book. One more peek, despite my resolution. He thumbed the previous portion.

…in silence Karl contemplated the flag-draped casket. Here he lay, and now he was gone, really gone. Not even the demon-inspired powers could bring him back. The man—or was it after all Uebermensch ?—whom Karl had blindly followed, worshiped… even to the brink of the grave. Adolf Hitler had passed beyond, but Karl clung to life. I will not follow him, Karl’s mind whispered. I will go on, alive. And rebuild. And we will all rebuild. We must.